#I.. a creature without blood per say

[qinchez]

━ .ᐟ₊⊹ PAIRING: myth/dragon sylus, x female mc ( mc’s name is surina ).

━ .ᐟ₊⊹ SUMMARY: tidbits of conversation have an immediate effect on sylus, making him reminiscent his earlier days with his beloved.

━ .ᐟ₊⊹ GENRE: very myth focused. heavy angst. no comfort.

━ .ᐟ₊⊹ NOTES: i started writing only recently and english isn’t my first language so take this with a grain of salt. quotes mentioned are not mine but canonically in the game.

“i made it while you were getting your marshmallows. i didn’t have a lot of time, so the final product is rough around the edges …. are you satisfied with it, my beloved?”

ruby eyes facing iridescent ones. warmth being spread along one’s face and through their hearts, the source of heat not caused from the bonfire but the blossoming feelings exchanged between them both.

“yes … i am.”

it seems that she liked the flower crown he made for her. good. it made him happy that she did, but little did she know that wasn’t the first time she was given one from him.

she had forgotten, all memories of him gone, and it hurt more than expected. he didn’t blame her per say, but having to act as if she was a stranger, as if she wasn’t the one he loves, the one he longed for after waiting for so long to meet her hurt.

glimpses and flashbacks of were all he had of their doomed past.

surina was the sole reason for his humanity. the girl who named him. sylus, the ruthless, decisive, cruel, and merciless leader of onychinus, named by his beloved. even after his death and even without her remembering anything, he still chooses to go by said name. kindly welcoming the remaining fragments of her instead of nothing at all. the feeling of her being a part of his life is something that he has always longed, sometimes even, begged for.

she had taught him to be human. having such a profound effect on sylus. she was the one who gave him a purpose and a sense of humanity, these no longer welcome fragments still remaining a part of him, accepting whatever parts of her remain. her influence on him so deep that he chose to continue living under the name she had given him. her lasting impact on him was so significant that sometimes he yearned for her to be there, even in just some small capacity.

he had always clutched onto his humanity, in his own words, mistakingly believing he was a normal person. growing up and thinking he was one and trying to bend his identity into something he is not, refusing to come to terms with the fact that he is not human anymore, but a monster instead. he was scared. not only was his appearance changing, but his entire view of himself. who is he? who has he become? the very way he saw himself was now tainted.

her love acted like a balm over his injuries. as if she’s wiping away the blood from injuries caused by his own self. the act is so tender, a stark reminder of the way she viewed him, the way he wished to be viewed. like her equal, her companionship, and her love. he would love to simply exist as the man she loves.

accepting his identity as a monster also meant the fact that he always had a soft spot for animals. dragons have long been depicted as mythical monsters with powers and a fearsome presence. they are creatures of legend that inspire fear and awe in those who hear their name, always associated with destruction and chaos, yet symbolizing creation along with destruction. sylus had always been aware of this perception, sometimes even choosing to bask in it all. after all, he is strong, fearsome, and capable of unleashing destruction. although sometimes, that perception couldn’t be more different than what he is or wanted to be. people often thought of dragons as cursed animals. ones that should be locked away and are incapable of any love and affection, not knowing that said deemed impossible human love would be the cause of this dragon’s demise. a creature that is always perceived incapable of harboring such emotions, and an animal that could never be human, falling utterly in love. a love that made him thought he could live as a human too, and one that couldn’t last long.

a dragon’s curse that consists of killing his beloved. one that the two fated lovers … two star-crossed lovers whose fates and souls are entwined, could not escape, no matter how much they tried. no matter how many tears were shed and no matter their relentless efforts, it would always be futile. doomed by the narrative, the two lovers’ unwavering fight against their fate will never suffice. fate will continuously plunge the two lovers into the abyss as was written. the blood-red greatsword constantly reappearing, longing to be thrust into the dragon’s ruby like chest.

his heart, gleaming and vulnerable always seemed to beckon the blade. as if it was begged to be destroyed, as if his death was the key to some greater truth. she, his lover, was doomed to forever be his arch-nemesis. continuously finding herself the unwilling hand of fate, and the wielder of the cursed sword.

“….. you must press on. because if you don’t … there’s no going back.”

no matter how much she tried, how much she strained her own body to stop it all, it’s as if her body had a mind of its own, refusing to be controlled by her. agonizing screams pierced the abyss yet fell upon deaf ears. and to make matters worse, he was the one further plunging the sword further into his own chest. she knows him well enough to recognize that this is his last act of rebellion against their predestined fate, and a final laugh in the face of the curse, ending it on his own terms.

her hands and body were trembling, every gasp of pain from him resulting in a guttural sob escaping from her, tearing through the void. she could feel his pain and she wishes she can make this stop somehow, but all her attempts were futile, the curse merely mocking her for even trying to defy it. his ruby eyes, always the most gentle with her, were still filled with love and warmth but they now shimmered with a bittersweet resolve — a sight that broke her even more. the eyes that she adores, ones that always shone with an outwardly brilliance, that could put even the shiniest of gem stones to shame, were now getting dimmed as life was seeping from them.

he was bound to this blade, his soul burning with it. their sacred love now destroyed, and the stars weeped for them over and over. stars that have always shone so brightly were now dimmed with sorrow, mourning the tragedy of their love. every flicker of their light seemed to carry the grief of love once shared, an eternal lament to a love that couldn’t defy its cruel destiny.

the sword that was now pulsing, was ready to engulf him whole. he was slipping away between her fingers, the love of her life, dissolving into fragments, every shard carrying a piece of his soul, along with her own. even the stars that were weeping, their light flickering out one by one, the pain and suffering exhibited being enough to fully extinguish their light. it was as if the stars were paying tribute to the grief and agony that transpired.

she embraced him with all the strength she could muster, arms fully wrapped around his body, begging to anchor him to this world, to her. he was her other half, their souls and hearts bound forever. fingers were now desperately clinging onto him, as if to etch her love into his very being, and whispered pleas were being uttered.

“stay. please … please stay. don’t leave me, not like this, not again …” her voice was breaking, carrying the weight of their agony and the weight of a thousand lifetimes of loss.

she didn’t know who she was praying and begging to, but it didn’t matter. she would pray to every god that existed and kneel before every god and beg and beg and beg, if it meant she can have him next to her. she would scream her desperation to the heavens if she had to, move mountains, and commit every sin known to mankind if it meant he would not leave her side. she would beg until her knees buckled and her body gave up on her, knees bleeding from the ground’s cruel embrace, just so they can live the simplest of lives together. she wishes she could rewrite the stars and undo their doomed fates, no longer wanting anything else from the world, except his presence, because a world where he does not exist was one she could not endure.

she pressed her forehead against his chest, feeling his erratic heartbeat of his heart — possibly for the very last time. the heart he gave to her without a second thought as it was hers since the beginning of time. he was merely returning it back to it’s rightful owner. with the last of his strength gathered, he kisses her forehead and whispers a goodbye, his eyes brimming with tears and love for her. her body shook, wracked with sobs that echoed the depth of her anguish as she listened to his heart as it stopped beating. as he slipped away, she was left with her own self, and an incurable tear in her heart. after all, no matter how much she longed for it, her love alone would never be enough to defy the cruel narrative that bound them.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Petard, Part III

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/01/miskatonic-networks/#landlord-telco-industrial-complex

Last week, Trump's FCC chair Brendan Carr reversed a rule that banned your landlord from taking kickbacks in exchange for forcing you to use whatever ISP was willing to pay the biggest bribe for the right to screw you over:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/fcc-chair-nixes-plan-to-boost-broadband-competition-in-apartment-buildings/

Corporate fascists and their captured regulators are, of course, that most despicable of creatures: they are plagiarists. Like so many of our tech overlords, they have mistaken dystopian sf as a suggestion, rather than as a warning. I take this personally, because I actually wrote this as an sf story in 2013, and it was published in 2014 in MIT Tech Review's Twelve Tomorrows, edited by Bruce Sterling and published in 2014:

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262535595/twelve-tomorrows-2014/

I adapted it for my podcast, in four installments:

https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_278

https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_292

https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_293

https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_294_-_Petard_04

And, given the new currency of this old story, I thought it was only fitting that I serialize it here, on my blog, also in four parts.

Here's part one:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/30/landlord-telco-industrial-complex/#part-one

Here's part two:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/31/the-blood-speech/#part-two

And now, onto part three:

One of the early Ftp code contributors was now CTO for an ISP, and they'd gotten their start as a dorm co-op at Brown that had metastasized across New England. Sanjay had been pretty important to the early days of Ftp, helping us get the virtualization right so that it could run on pretty much any cloud without a lot of jiggery and/or pokery. Within a day of emailing Sanjay, I was having coffee with the vice-president of business development for Miskatonic Networks, who was also Sanjay's boyfriend's girlfriend, because apparently ISPs in New England are hotbeds of Lovecraft-fandom polyamory. Her name was Kadijah and she had a southie accent so thick it was like an amateur theater production of Good Will Hunting.

"The Termite Mound?" She laughed. "Shit yeah, I know that place. It's still standing? I went to some super sketchy parties there when I was a kid, I mean sooooper sketchy, like sketch-a-roony. I can't believe no one's torched the place yet."

"Not yet," I said. "And seeing as all my stuff's there right now, I'm hoping that no one does for the time being."

"Yeah, I can see that." I could not get over her accent. It was the most Bostonian thing I'd encountered since I got off the train. "OK, so you want to know what we'd charge to provide service to someone at the Termite Mound?"

"Uh, no. I want to know what you'd charge per person if we could get you the whole Mound — every unit in the residence. All 250 of them."

"Oh." She paused a second. "This is an Ftp thing, right?"

"Yeah," I said. "That's how I know Sanjay. I, uh, I started Ftp." I don't like to brag, but sometimes it makes sense in the context of the conversation, right?

"That was you? Wicked! So you're seriously gonna get the whole dorm to sign up with us?"

"I will if you can get me a price that I can sell to them," I said.

"Oh," she said. Then "Oh! Right. Hmm. Leave it with me. You say you can get them all signed up?"

"I think so. If the price is right. And I think that if the Termite Mound goes with you that there'll be other dorms that'll follow. Maybe a lab or two," I said. I was talking out of my ass at this point, but seriously, net-censorship in the labs at MIT? It was disgusting. It could not stand.

"Damn," she said. "Sounds like you're majoring in Ftp. Don't you have classes or something?"

"No," I said. "This is basically exactly what I figured college would be like. A cross between summer camp and an Stanford obedience experiment. If all I wanted to do was cram a bunch of knowledge into my head, I could have stayed home and mooced it. I came here because I wanted to level up and fight something tough and even dangerous. I want to spend four years getting into the right kind of trouble. Going to classes too, but seriously, classes? Whatever. Everyone knows the good conversations happen in the hallway between the formal presentations. Classes are just an excuse to have hallways."

She looked skeptical and ate banana bread.

"It's your deal," she said.

I could hear the but hanging in the air between us. She went and got more coffees and brought them back along with toasted banana bread dripping with butter for me. She wouldn't let me pay, and told me it was on Miskatonic. We were a potential big account. She didn't want to say "But" because she might offend me. I wanted to hear the "but."

"But?"

"But what?"

"It's my deal but…?"

"But, well, you know, you don't look after your grades, MIT'll put you out on your ass. That's how it works in college. I've seen it."

I chewed my banana bread.

"Hey," she said. "Hey. Are you OK, Lukasz?"

"I'm fine," I said.

She smiled at me. She was pretty. "But?"

I told her about my talk with AA, and about Juanca, and about how I felt like nobody was giving me my propers, and she looked very sympathetic, in a way that made me feel much younger. Like toddler younger.

"MIT is all about pranks, right? I think if I could come up with something really epic, they'd –" And as I said it, I realized how dumb it was. They laughed at me in Vienna, I'll show them! "You know what? Forget about it. I got more important things to do than screw around with those knob-ends. Work to do, right? Get the network opened up around here, you and me, Kadijah!"

"Don't let it get to you, you'll give yourself an aneurism. I'll get back to you soon, OK?"

#

I fished a bead out of my pocket and wedged it into my ear.

"Who is this?"

"Lukasz?" The voice was choked with tears.

"Who is this?" I said again.

"It's Bryan." I couldn't place the voice or the name.

"Bryan who?"

"From the Termite Mound's customer service desk." Then I recognized the voice. It was the elf, and he was having hysterics. Part of me wanted to say, Oh, diddums! and hang up. Because elves, AMR? But I'm not good at tough love.

"What's wrong?"

"They've fired me," he said. "I got called into my boss's office an hour ago and he told me to start drawing up a list of people to kick out of the dorm — he wanted the names of people who supported you. I was supposed to go through the EULAs for the dorm and find some violations for all of them –"

"What if they didn't have any violations?"

He made a sound between a sob and a laugh. "Are you kidding? You're always in violation! Have you read the EULA for the Mound? It's like sixty pages long."

"OK, gotcha. So you refused and you got fired?"

There was a pause. It drew out. "No," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "I gave them a bunch of names, and then they fired me."

Again, I was torn between the impulse to hang up on him and to hear more. Nosiness won (nosiness always wins; bets on nosiness are a sure thing). "Nicely done. Sounds like just deserts to me. What do you expect me to do about it?" But I knew. There were only two reasons to call me after something like this: to confess his sins or to get revenge. And no one would ever mistake me for a priest.

"I've got the names they pulled. Not just this time. Every time there's been any kind of trouble in the Termite Mound, MIT Residence has turfed out the troublemakers on some bogus EULA violation. They know that no one cares about student complaints, and there's always a waiting list for rooms at the Termite Mound, it's so central and all. I kept records."

"What kind of records?"

"Hardcopies of emails. They used disappearing ink for all the dirty stuff, but I just took pictures of my screen with my drop and saved it to personal storage. It's ugly. They went after pregnant girls, kids with disabilities. Any time there was a chance they'd have to do an air quality audit or fix a ramp, I'd have to find some reason to violate the tenant out of residence." He paused a moment. "They used some pretty bad language when they talked about these people, too."

The Termite Mound should've been called the Roach Motel: turn on the lights and you'd find a million scurrying bottom-feeders running for the baseboards.

I was going to turn on the lights.

"You've got all that, huh?

"Tons of it," he said. "Going back three years. I knew that if it ever got out that they'd try and blame it on me. I wanted records."

"OK," I said. "Meet me in Harvard Square, by the T entrance. How soon can you get there?"

"I'm at the Coop right now," he said. "Using a study-booth."

"Perfect," I said. "Five minutes then?"

"I'm on my way."

The Coop's study booths had big signs warning you that everything you did there was recorded — sound, video, infrared, data — and filtered for illicit behavior. The signs explained that there was no human being looking at the records unless you did something to trip the algorithm, like that made it better. If a tree falls in the forest, it sure as shit makes a sound; and if your conversation is bugged, it's bugged — whether or not a human being listens in right then or at some time in the infinite future of that data.

I beat him to the T entrance, and looked around for a place to talk. It wasn't good. From where I stood, I could see dozens of cameras, the little button-sized dots discretely placed all around the square, each with a little scannable code you could use to find out who got the footage and what it's policy was. No one ever, ever, ever bothered to do this. Ever. EULAs were not written for human consumption: a EULA's message could always be boiled down to seven words: "ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE." Or, more succinctly: "YOU LOSE."

I felt bad about Bryan's job. It was his own deal, of course. He'd stayed even after he knew how evil they were. And I hadn't held a gun to his head and made him put himself in the firing line. But of course, I had convinced him to. I had led him to. I felt bad.

Bryan turned up just as I was scouting a spot at an outdoor table by an ice-cream parlor. They had a bunch of big blowing heaters that'd do pretty good white-noise masking, a good light/dark contrast between the high-noon sun and the shade of the awning that would screw up cameras' white-balance, and the heaters would wreak havoc on the infra-red range of the CCTVs, or so I hoped. I grabbed Bryan, clamping down on his skinny arm through the rough weave of his forest-green cloak and dragged him into my chosen spot.

"You got it?" I said, once we were both seated and nursing hot chocolates. I got caffeinated marshmallows; he got Thai ghost pepper-flavored — though that was mostly marketing, no way those marshmallows were over a couple thousand Scovilles.

"I encrypted it with your public key," he said, handing me a folded up paper. I unfolded it and saw that it had been printed with a stegoed QR code, hidden in a Victorian woodcut. That kind of spycraft was pretty weaksauce — the two-dee-barcode-in-a-public-domain-image thing was a staple of shitty student clickbait thrillers — but if he'd really managed to get my public key and verify it and then encrypt the blob with it, I was impressed. That was about ten million times more secure than the average fumbledick ever managed. The fact that he'd handed me a hardcopy of the URL instead of emailing it to me, well, that was pretty sweet frosting. Bryan had potential.

I folded the paper away. "What should I be looking for?"

"It's all organized and tagged. You'll see." He looked nervous. "What are you going to do with it?"

"Well, for starters, I'm going to call them up and tell them I have it."

"What?" He looked like he was going to cry.

"Come on," I said. "I'm not going to tell them where I got it. The way you tell it, I'm about to get evicted, right?"

"Technically, you are evicted. There's a process-server waiting at every entrance to the Termite Mound doing face-recognition on the whole list. Soon as you go home, bam. 48 hours to clear out."

"Right," I said. "I don't want to have to go look for a place to live while I'm also destroying these shitbirds and fixing everyone's Internet connection. Get serious. So I'm going to go and talk to Messrs Amoral, Nonmoral and Immoral and explain that I have a giant dump of compromising messages from them that I'm going public with, and it'll look really, really bad for them if they turf me out now."

It's time for a true confession. I am not nearly as brave as I front. All this spycraft stuff, all the bluster about beating these guys on their home turf, yeah, in part I'm into it — I like it better than riding through life like a foil chip-bag being swept down a polluted stream on a current of raw sewage during a climate-change-driven superstorm.

But the reality is that I can't really help myself. There's some kind of rot-fungus that infects the world. Things that are good when they're small and personal grow, and as they grow, their attack-surface grows with them, and they get more and more colonized by the fungus, making up stupid policies, doing awful stuff to the people who rely on them and the people who work for them, one particle of fungus at a time, each one just a tiny and totally defensible atomic-sized spoor of rot that piles up and gloms onto all the other bits of rot until you're a walking, suppurating lesion.

No one ever set out to create the kind of organization that needs to post a "MIT RESIDENCY LLC OPERATES A ZERO-TOLERANCE POLICY TOWARD EMPLOYEE ABUSE. YOU CAN BE FINED UP TO $2000 AND/OR IMPRISONED FOR SIX MONTHS FOR ASSAULTING A CAMPUS RESIDENCE WORKER" sign. You start out trying to do something good, then your realize you can get a little richer by making it a little worse. Your thermostat for shittiness gets reset to the new level, so it doesn't seem like much of a change to turn it a notch further towards the rock-bottom, irredeemably shitty end of the scale.

The truth is that you can get really rich and huge by playing host organism to the rot-fungus. The rot-fungus diffuses its harms and concentrates its rewards. That means that healthy organisms that haven't succumbed to the rot-fungus are liable to being devoured by giant, well-funded vectors for it — think of the great local business that gets devoured by an awful hedge-fund in a leveraged takeover, looted and left as a revolting husk to shamble on until it collapses under its own weight.

I am terrified of the rot-fungus, because it seems like I'm the only person who notices it most of the time. Think of all those places where the town council falls all over itself to lure some giant corporation to open a local factory. Don't they notice that everyone who works at places like that hates every single moment of every single day? Haven't they ever tried to converse with the customer-service bots run by one of those lumbering dinos?

I mean, sure, the bigs have giant budgets and they'll take politicians out for nice lunches and throw a lot of money at their campaigns, but don't these guardians of the public trust ever try to get their cars fixed under warranty? Don't they ever buy a train ticket? Don't they ever eat at a fast food joint? Can't they smell the rot-fungus? Am I the only one? I've figured out how to fight it in my own way. Everyone else who's fighting seems to be fighting against something else — injustice or inequality or whatever, without understanding that the fungus's rot is what causes all of those things.

I'm convinced that no normal human being ever woke up one morning and said, "Dammit, my life doesn't have enough petty bureaucratic rules, zero-tolerance policies, censorship and fear in it. How do I fix that?" Instead, they let this stuff pile up, one compromise at a time, building up huge sores suppurating with spore-loaded fluids that eventually burst free and beslime everything around them. It gets normal to them, one dribble at a time.

"Lukasz, you're don't know what you're doing. These guys, they're –"

"What?" I said. "Are they the mafia or something? Are they going to have me dropped off a bridge with cement overshoes?"

He shook his head, making the twigs and beads woven into the downy fluff of his hair clatter together. "No, but they're ruthless. I mean, totally ruthless. They're not normal."

The way he said it twinged something in my hindbrain, some little squiggle of fear, but I pushed it away. "Yeah, that's OK. I'm used to abnormal." I am the most abnormal person I know.

"Be careful, seriously," he said.

"Thanks, Bryan," I said. "Don't worry about me. You want me to try and get your room back, too?"

He chewed his lip. "Don't," he said. "They'll know it was me if you do that."

I resisted the urge to shout at him to grow a spine. These assholes had cost him his home and his job (OK, I'd helped) and he was going to couch-surf it until he could find the rarest of treasures: an affordable place to live in Cambridge, Mass? Even if he was being tortured by his conscience for all his deplorable selloutism, he was still being a total wuss. But that was his deal. I mean, he was an elf, for chrissakes. Who knew what he was thinking?

"Suit yourself," I said, and went and made some preparations.

#

Messers Amoral, Nonmoral and Immoral had an office over the river in Boston, in a shabby office-block that only had ten floors, but whose company directory listed over 800 businesses. I knew the kind of place, because they showed up whenever some hairy scam unravelled and they showed you the office-of-convenience used by the con-artists who'd destroyed something that lots of people cared about and loved in order to make a small number of bad people a little richer. A kind of breeding pit for rot-fungus, in other words.

At first I thought I was going to have to go and sleuth their real locations, but I saw that Amoral, Nonmoral and Immoral had the entire third floor registered to them, while everyone else had crazy-ass, heavily qualified suite numbers like 401c(1)K, indicating some kind of internal routing code for the use of the army of rot-fungus-infected spores who ensured that correspondence was handled in a way that preserved the illusion that each of the multifarious, blandly named shell companies (I swear to Cthulhu that there was one called "International Holdings (Holdings), Ltd") was a real going concern and not a transparent ruse intended to allow the rot-fungus to spread with maximal diffusion of culpability for the carriers who did its bidding.

I punched # # #300# # # on the ancient touchscreen intercom, its surface begrimed with a glossy coat of hardened DNA, Burger King residue and sifted-down dust of the ages. It blatted like an angry sheep, once, twice, three times, then disconnected. I punched again. Again. On the fourth try, an exasperated, wheezing voice emerged: "What?"

"I'm here to speak to someone from MIT Residences LLC."

"Send an email."

"I'm a tenant. My name is Lukasz Romero." I let that sink in. "I've got some documents I'd like to discuss with a responsible individual at MIT Residences LLC." I put a bit of heavy English on documents. "Please." I put even more English on "Please." I've seen the same tough-guy videos that you have, and I can do al-pacinoid overwound Dangerous Dude as well as anyone. "Please," I said again, meaning "Right. Now."

There was an elongated and ominous pause, punctuated by muffled rustling and grumbling, and what may have been typing on an old-fashioned, mechanical keyboard. "Come up," a different voice said. The elevator to my left ground as the car began to lower itself.

#

I'd expected something sinister — a peeling dungeon of a room where old men with armpit-stains gnawed haunches of meat and barked obscenities at each other. Instead, I found myself in an airy, high-ceilinged place that was straight out of the publicity shots for MIT's best labs, the ones that had been set-dressed by experts who'd ensured that no actual students had come in to mess things up before the photographer could get a beautifully lit shot of the platonic perfection.

The room took up the whole floor, dotted with conversation pits with worn, comfortable sofas whose end-tables sported inconspicuous charge-plates for power-hungry gadgets. The rest of the space was made up of new-looking worksurfaces and sanded-down antique wooden desks that emitted the honeyed glow of a thousand coats of wax buffed by decades of continuous use. The light came from tall windows and full-spectrum spotlights that were reflected and diffused off the ceiling, which was bare concrete and mazed with cable-trays and conduit. I smelled good coffee and toasting bread and saw a perfectly kept little kitchenette to my left.

There were perhaps a dozen people working in the room, standing at the worksurfaces, mousing away at the antique desks, or chatting intensely in the conversation pits. It was a kind of perfect tableau of industrious tech-company life, something out of a recruiting video. The people were young and either beautiful, handsome or both. I had the intense, unexpected desire to work here, or a place like this. It had good vibes.

One of the young, handsome people stood up from his conversation nook and smoothed out the herringbone wool hoodie he was wearing, an artfully cut thing that managed to make him look like both a young professor and an undergraduate at the same time. It helped that he was so fresh-faced, with apple cheeks and a shock of curly brown hair.

"Lukasz, right?" He held out a hand. He was wearing a dumbwatch, a wind-up thing in a steel casing that was fogged with a century of scratches. I coveted it instantly, though I knew nothing about its particulars, I was nevertheless certain that it was expensive, beautifully engineered, and extremely rare.

The door closed behind me and the magnet audibly reengaged. The rest of the people in the room studiously ignored us.

"I'm Sergey. Can I get you a cup of coffee? Tea? Some water?"

The coffee smelled good. "No thank you," I said. "I don't think I'll be here for long."

"Of course. Come and sit."

The other participants in his meeting had already vacated the sofas and left us with a conversation pit all to ourselves. I sank into the sofa and smelled the spicy cologne of a thousand eager, well-washed people who'd sat on it before me, impregnating the upholstery with the spoor of their good perfumes.

He picked up a small red enamel teapot and poured a delicious-smelling stream of yellow-green steaming liquid into a chunky diner-style coffee-cup. He sipped it. My stomach growled. "You told the receptionist you wanted to talk about some documents?"

"Yeah," I said, pulling myself together. "I've got documentary evidence of this company illegally evicting tenants — students — who got pregnant, complained about substandard living conditions and maintenance issues, and, in my case, complained about the network filters at the Termite Mound."

He cocked his head for a moment like he was listening for something in the hum and murmur of the office around him. I found myself listening, too, but try as I might, I couldn't pick out a single individual voice from the buzz, not even a lone intelligble word. It was as though they were all going "murmurmurmurmur," though I could see their lips moving and shaping what must have been words.

"Ah," he said at last. "Well, that's very unfortunate. Can you give me a set and I'll escalate them up our chain to ensure that they're properly dealt with?"

"I can give you a set," I said. "But I'll also be giving a set to the MIT ombudsman and the The Tech and the local Wikileaks Party rep. Sergey, forgive me, but you don't seem to be taking this very seriously. The material in my possession is the sort of thing that could get you and your colleagues here sued into a smoking crater."

"Oh, I appreciate that there's a lot of potential liability in the situation you describe, but it wouldn't be rational for me to freak out now, would it? I haven't seen your documents, and if I had, I can neither authenticate them nor evaluate the risk they represent. So I'll take a set from you and ensure that the people within our organization who have the expertise to manage this sort of thing get to them quickly."

It's funny. I'd anticipated that he'd answer like a chatbot, vomiting up Markov-chained nothings from the lexicon of the rot-fungus: "we take this very seriously," "we cannot comment on ongoing investigations," "we are actioning this with a thorough inquiry and post-mortem" and other similar crapola. Instead, he was talking like a hacker on a mailing list defending the severity he'd assigned to a bug he owned.

"Sergey, that's not much of an answer."

He sipped that delicious tea some more. "Is there something in particular you wanted to hear from me? I mean, this isn't the sort of thing that you find out about then everything stops until you've figured out what to do next."

I was off-balance. "I wanted –" I waved my hands. "I wanted an explanation. How the hell did this systematic abuse come about?"

He shrugged. He really didn't seem very worried "Hard to say, really. Maybe it was something out of the labs."

"What do you mean, 'the labs'?"

He gestured vaguely at one cluster of particularly engrossed young men and women who were bent over screens and worksurfaces, arranged in pairs or threesomes, collaborating with fierce intensity, reaching over to touch each others' screens and keyboards in a way I found instantly and deeply unsettling. "We've got a little R&D lab that works on some of our holdings. We're really dedicated to disrupting the rental market. There's so much money in it, you know, but mostly it's run by these entitled jerks who think that they're geniuses for having the brilliant idea of buying a building and then sitting around and charging rent on it. A real old boys' club." For the first time since we started talking, he really seemed to be alive and present and paying attention.

"Oh, they did some bits and pieces that gave them the superficial appearance of having a brain, but there's a lot of difference between A/B splitting your acquisition strategy and really deep-diving into the stuff that matters."

At this stage, I experienced a weird dissonance. I mean, I was there because these people were doing something genuinely villainous, real rot-fungus stuff. On the other hand, well, this sounded cool. I can't lie. I found it interesting. I mean, catnip-interesting.

"I mean, chewy questions. Like, if the median fine for a second citation for substandard plumbing is $400, and month-on-month cost for plumbing maintenance in a given building is $2,000 a month, and the long-term costs of failure to maintain are $20,000 for full re-plumbing on a 8-10 year basis with a 75 percent probability of having to do the big job in year nine, what are the tenancy parameters that maximize your return over that period?"

"Tenancy parameters?"

He looked at me. I was being stupid. I don't like that look. I suck at it. It's an ego thing. I just find it super-hard to deal with other people thinking that I'm dumb. I would probably get more done in this world if I didn't mind it so much. But I do. It's an imperfect world, and I am imperfect.

"Tenancy parameters. What are the parameters of a given tenant that predict whether he or she will call the city inspectors given some variable setpoint of substandard plumbing, set on a scale that has been validated through a rigorous regression through the data that establishes quantifiable inflection points relating to differential and discrete maintenance issues, including leaks, plugs, pressure, hot water temperature and volume, and so on. It's basically just a solve-for-x question, but it's one with a lot of details in the model that are arrived at through processes with a lot of room for error, so the model needs a lot of refinement and continuous iteration.

"And of course, it's all highly sensitive to external conditions — there's a whole game-theoretical set of questions about what other large-scale renters do in response to our own actions, and there's a information-theory dimension to this that's, well, it's amazing. Like, which elements of our strategy are telegraphed when we take certain actions as opposed to others, and how can those be steganographed through other apparent strategies.

"Now, most of these questions we can answer through pretty straightforward business processes, stuff that Amazon figured out twenty years ago. But there's a real risk of getting stuck in local maxima, just you know, overoptimizing inside of one particular paradigm with some easy returns. That's just reinventing the problem, though, making us into tomorrow's dinosaurs.

"If we're going to operate a culture of continuous improvement, we need to be internally disrupted to at least the same extent that we're disrupting those fat, stupid incumbents. That's why we have the labs. They're our chaos monkeys. They do all kinds of stuff that keeps our own models sharp. For example, they might incorporate a separate business and use our proprietary IP to try to compete with us — without telling us about it. Or give a set of autonomous agents privileges to communicate eviction notices in a way that causes a certain number of lawsuits to be filed, just to validate our assumptions about the pain-point at which an action or inaction on our side will trigger a suit from a tenant, especially for certain profiles of tenants.

"So there's not really any way that I can explain specifically what happened to the people mentioned in your correspondence. It's possible no one will ever be able to say with total certainty. I don't really know why anyone would expect it to be otherwise. We're not a deterministic state-machine, after all. If all we did was respond in set routines to set inputs, it'd be trivial to innovate around us and put us out of business. Our objective is to be strategically nonlinear and anti-deterministic within a range of continuously validated actions that map and remap a chaotic terrain of profitable activities in relation to property and rental. We're not rentiers, you understand. We don't own assets for a living. We do things with them. We're doing commercial science that advances the state of the art. We're discovering deep truths lurking in potentia in the shape of markets and harnessing them — putting them to work."

His eyes glittered. "Lukasz, you come in here with your handful of memos and you ask me to explain how they came about, as though this whole enterprise was a state-machine that we control. We do not control the enterprise. An enterprise is an artificial life-form built up from people and systems in order to minimize transaction costs so that it can be nimble and responsive, so that it can move into niches, dominate them, fully explore them. The human species has spent millennia recombining its institutions to uncover the deep, profound mathematics of power and efficiency.

"It's a terrain with a lot of cul-de-sacs and blind alleys. There are local maxima: maybe a three-move lookahead shows a good outcome from evicting someone who's pregnant and behind on the rent, but the six-move picture is different, because someone like you comes along and makes us look like total assholes. That's fine. All that means is that we have to prune that branch of the tree, try a new direction. Hell, ideally, you'd be in there so early, and give us such a thoroughgoing kicking, that we'd be able to discover and abort the misfire before the payload had fully deployed. You'd be saving us opportunity cost. You'd be part of our chaos-monkey.

"Lukasz, you come in here with your whistleblower memos. But I'm not participating in a short-term exercise. Our mission here is to quantize, systematize, harness and perfect interactions.

"You come in here and you want me to explain, right now, what we're going to do about your piece of information. Here's your answer, Lukasz: we will integrate it. We will create models that incorporate disprovable hypotheses about it, we will test those models, and we will refine them. We will make your documents part of our inventory of clues about the underlying nature of deep reality. Does that answer satisfy you, Lukasz?"

I stood up. Through the whole monologue, Sergey's eyes had not moved from mine, nor had his body-language shifted, nor had he demonstrated one glimmer of excitement or passion. Instead, he'd been matter-of-fact, like he'd been explaining the best way to make an omelet or the optimal public transit route to a distant suburb. I was used to people geeking out about the stuff they did. I'd never experienced this before, though: it was the opposite of geeking out, or maybe a geeking out that went so deep that it went through passion and came out the other side.

It scared me. I'd encountered many different versions of hidebound authoritarianism, fought the rot-fungus in many guises, but this was not like anything I'd ever seen. It had a purity that was almost… seductive.

But beautiful was not the opposite of terrible. The two could easily co-exist.

"I hear that I'm going to get evicted when I get back to the Termite Mound — you've got a process-server waiting for me. That's what I hear."

Sergey shrugged. "And?"

"And? And what use is your deep truth to me if I'm out on the street?"

"What's your point?"

He was as mild and calm as a recorded airport safety announcement. There was something inhuman — transhuman? — in that dispassionate mein.

"Don't kick me out of my place."

"Ah. Excuse me a second."

He finished his tea, set the cup down and headed over to the lab. He chatted with them, touched their screens. The murmur drowned out any words. I didn't try to disguise the fact that I was watching them. There was a long period during which they said nothing, did not touch anything, just stared at the screens with their heads so close together they were almost touching. It was a kind of pantomime of psychic communications.

He came back. "Done," he said. "Is there anything else? We're pretty busy around here."

"Thank you," I said. "No, that's about it."

"All right then," he said. "Are you going to leave me your documents?"

"Yes," I said, and passed him a stack of hardcopies. He looked at the paper for a moment, folded the stack carefully at the middle and put it in one of the wide side-pockets of his beautifully tailored cardigan.

I found my way back down to the ground floor and was amazed to see that the sun was still up. It had felt like hours had passed while Sergey had talked to me, and I could have sworn that the light had faded in those tall windows. But, checking my drop, I saw that it was only three o'clock. I had to be getting home.

There was a process-server waiting ostentatiously in the walkway when I got home, but he looked at me and then down at his screen and then let me pass.

It was only once I was in my room that I realized I hadn't done anything about Bryan's eviction.

[sleepyqweeb189]

"Hey, Cheese! How have you been?" Dragonberry spoke as she let herself and her guards in.

"I've been good, thanks. Anything you need, i know you need me. Now come, lets go to the conference room." Celestial Cheese got up from her chair and waved off her servents.

Dragonberry laughed it off annoyingly. She grinned in annoyance as she followed her "friend" to the conference room. As they walked, the gold shines through the lights, and the party continued outside as they could hear the music and feel the vibration of the beat. Once they reached the conference room, Celestial Cheese looked over at Dragonberry's guards.

"Do they have to be here?" Celestial Cheese asked.

"Yeah. Of course. I need them to show you something of mine, " Dragonberry spoke with enthusiasm.

Both Dragonberry and Celestial Cheese sat down across from each other. Dragonberry held up her arm and made a motion, and her guards both pulled out a vial filled with Jam with the labal "Subject 8" and the other guard pulled out a small cake hound that looked weak and tired. Celestial Cheese felt a bit of unease seeing the little cake hound all weak, reminding her of people.

"What is this...?" Celestial Cheese asked, trying to sound like she wasn't on unease.

"Let me explain, i noticed the girl's blood has special properties per se. Remember i said about her blood being a good combination with any creatures, yes?" Dragonberry spoke calmly.

Celestial Cheese nodded. Dragonberry turned to her men and nodded. One guard gave Dragonberry a small syringe and took some of the Jam before she stuck the syringe into the small Cake Hound. The small Cake Hound cried out and whimper. Dragonberry didn't say anything for a bit as she watched the cake hound sowly get better and started to run around the table.

"What does this show, friend?" Celestial cheese raised her voice.

"Well, the girl's blood is quite unique. The girl's blood seems to replace lost blood, no matter what type it seems to be... including cookies..." Dragonberry explains.

Celestial Cheese flinched a bit. Cookies...?

"Yes... my dear and i want to propose something. I want you to find her, and once you do, bring her to me, and i will give you her body as a source to bring you "beloved kingdom" back..." Dragonberry offers the deal.

Celestial Cheese thinks about it. Bring her people back? Without the use of technology, without it being fake...?

Eyes reveal so much.

BAAU Creator : @cuppajj

[icycoldninja]

Lab Visit (Sephiroth x Scientist!Reader)

(Set in Crisis Core)

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

Sephiroth was due for a physical today. He was supposed to receive new Mako injections and stamina boosters, as per Hojo's orders. You, one of Shinra's top scientists, had been ordered to complete this procedure. While the very mention of such a task frightened your fellow scientists, you were not to be deterred. Sephiroth was a bristly, rather cold person, but he wasn't as cold to you, which could probably be credited to the little friendship the two of you had built. Over the years, Sephiroth's visits to the lab had brought you company, real company, not the ramblings of some deranged lunatic who lurked about in the shadows. Sephiroth was different, both physically and mentally, though you could never tell why. There was something about him that enabled his very presence to be both calming and terrifying all at the same time. Yes, the man could be nice at times, but there were several disastrous instances where he lashed out in anger at anyone who dared approach him with a needle or syringe, though when you did it, you were a different story. One could even say...he trusted you. This trust allowed you to do things to him no one else could, such as take samples of his blood without him going ballistic and destroying everything in the lab in a fit of rage--or possibly, fear.

"Y/N," A low, sinister voice intoned, as an old man with greasy black hair tied back in a low ponytail emerged from the shadows.

"Dr. Hojo," You greeted, feeling yourself tense under his menacing gaze. Of all the scientists--no--all the people in Shinra, Hojo was who you detested the most. The acts he'd committed were unforgivable. Turning your own assistants and fellow scientists into mutant creatures for "research"?! Unbelievable! Not to mention the things he'd done to Sephiroth before you'd even arrived. You hadn't even uncovered the details of what happened, but you knew it had to be bad.

Still, Hojo was your employer; he was paying your wages and providing you with opportunities to learn and grow your experience--as well as chances to talk to Sephiroth more often, so you had to grit your teeth and bead it.

"The subject will be here soon," He finally said, sounding rather giddy. "Prepare the equipment. I want samples of everything." You gulped, knowing full well that when Hojo said he wanted "everything", he meant everything. Skin samples, hair samples, sweat samples, and more. You barely finished gathering up your gear when a familiar figure trooped through the door.

"Dr. Y/N, how do you do?" You spun around, trying--and failing--to hide the grin on your face.

"General Sephiroth, a pleasure to see you again. Do have a seat." Sephiroth nodded before tugging off his leather trench coat, revealing his lack of underclothes. He hung the coat on a rack on the wall and took a seat on the hospital-style bed you'd prepared for him. From the corner, Hojo watched, a devious glint in his eye. You busied yourself with gathering up vials and beakers, and such, while the two men glared at each other silently. After several minutes, Hojo departed, presumably to slither back into whatever hole he crawled out of, leaving the two of you alone in the room. Almost instantly, the tense mood was lifted.

"I can't believe you can put up with him," Sephiroth sighed, crossing his bare arms. You shrugged, sterilizing a needle with alcohol.

"Believe me, I'm trying very hard not to throw something acidic at his head." Your eyes met, smirks both plastered on your faces.

"I would like to see you do that," Sephiroth chuckled, extending his arm for you to prick.

"And to do so would be my dream come true," You responded, gently pricking his arm with the needle and drawing a few small drops of blood.

Sephiroth nodded, a smile on his face as he relaxed into the hospital bed. Over the course of the next hour, you collected all the samples Hojo would need for his sick creations, and once the Mako infusion drip was in, you were both free to chat, about work, about your own personal lives, about everything. Throughout the entirety of this short visit, Sephiroth looked happier than you'd ever seen him, even though he was in a place he hated. He was happy with you, and you were happy with him.

Once the infusion was complete and Sephiroth was free to leave, he did so reluctantly, for the only reason he braved the nightmares of this lab, the only reason he subjected himself to experimentation, was so he could see you.

[atarathegreat]

BAKUGO NOW

Did you say: fantasy AU Bakugo smutt?

Dragon Prince Bakugo.

Bakugo wasn't opposed to an arranged marriage, per se. His mother and father were done with their exploring, and his mother was done berserking. Bakugo himself still hunted, but his mother and father were done with what they called 'young people activities'.

Besides, a marriage meant a celebration, and a celebration meant that everyone got to go wild. Drinking, sparring, dancing! It would all be so much fun for him and the others. It was like Bakugo could already smell the ale and feel the punches that he would be earning. It excited him to no end. Whoever was going to be his wife, as lucky as she was, would have to manage with him being as rowdy as he pleased. Maybe he would get lucky, too, and she would be a barbarian like him, just as rowdy.

"Bakugo, are you really going to wear that nasty pelt?" His mother, Mistuski, stood in the arch to his chambers, soon to be shared with a stranger, "You wear that dirty thing to go hunting and fishing and you want to wear it for a wedding celebration?"

Bakugo turned and glared at his mother, all while taking heavy steps toward the pile of clothes and pelts in the corner, "You want me to wear these overly fancy rags? Do I look like someone who wears green? I'm likely to be mistaken for a boar or a nightwalker!" He was wrong, of course, as he usually was, but his mother understood his anger. Her son didn't like fancy items or flashy jewelry. But his hunting pelt? Surely he had better sense than that. "Don't you want to make a dazzling first impression on your future wife?" Mitsuki smiled, holding up a nicer, cleaner pelt.

"I don't rightfully care. Our marriage is political at best, and a mothers move to get me married at worst." Bakugo plopped onto his bed.

Mitsuki was shocked. Not that he was wrong, her son was intelligent, but that he had openly said it without knowing what was leaving his lips. Sure, political was the best way to call it, bringing barbarians and the clerics together in, at least, a shaky alliance. But it would also be a lie to say that her and her husband hadn't also planned it so that her son would have a wife sooner, maybe even kids if he felt like being the bare minimum for a husband. Mitsuki sighed and sat next to her son, her awfully thick-headed son, "Can you just do as I ask you? Just this once, let this go smoothly?" She hated to beg her son to be clean, but she knew that there was a soft spot somewhere in him.

"If I do, will you get off my back about it?"

"I might."

To relent and let his mother have her way would bite him in the ass later, but he got up and switched the pelt out, securing a lighter wolf pelt at his hips, "Happy now?"

"Okay! Be ready by midday and don't get covered in blood, this needs to be a good impression for the girl and her family." Mitsuki clapped as she left, feeling triumphant.

Come midday, her victory was null. The poor girl's family had sent her alone. From Ethel to Kazar, the young lady had traveled in the back of a wagon with nothing but a simple dress. No jewels, no colors, not even a smile. Mitsuki watched as the girl stepped from her wagon, simple flat shoes hidden under the long fabric of her skirts. She was supposed to be a noble, but she looked like a little peasant child who begs for money.

"I thought clerics wore robes and traveled together?" Her husband, Masaru, watched the girl with pity, "She looks sad."

Her soft flat shoes were dirty and torn, like the bottom of her dress, and the rest of her was...grey. Her and her aura were dull and grey and defeated. As if she had nothing left.

"So much for that alliance, huh?" Bakugo scoffed, returning inside the castle to avoid the silent creature that would be his bride. She wasn't interesting enough to keep him around for anything, and he wouldn't subject himself to the nap she would give him. His mother, on the other hand, refused to let this be the ending or a fail. Mitsuki smiled and took the girls hands in her own, "Hello, sweetheart. How was your trip?"

"Long, Your Highness." The girl even sounded like a field mouse, how adorable, "Long and silent."

If anyone had paid attention for a fraction of a second, they would have seen that the wagon rode off as soon as her foot touched the ground. Sad. But Mitsuki was happy that the girl was in Kazar now, at least she would grow to have some semblance of a family that would travel with her. Mitsuki nodded, "Call me Mitsuki. What is your name, hun?"

"Y/n." She responded well enough, albeit timidly. Masaru suspected that Y/n was raised in one of the many families that viewed the woman as caretakers and mothers. A devastating fate when women were as strong as the men if given the chance to build muscle. There was no doubt that Bakugo would be upset by this girl not being strong or loud. "Where is your family?" He was curious, who was this girl and why was she alone?

"They sent me alone. Said that the alliance meant little to them so long as I was out of their sight." Y/n spoke without confidence, but as if she believed every word she said, "They wanted to thank you for taking this burden off their hands."

That struck Masaru in a visceral way. Her own family saw her as a burden? How awful. She was anything but, and she was cute, clearly had nice genes for a cleric.

"I wish to apologize. I... I know little. I cannot read or write; I hardly understand my own ways. I'm useless and lack the ability to bring anyone joy." It was so awful to hear the things she said about herself. Y/n was pretty, Mitsuki could already see the beautiful grandchildren she would gain from this girl and her son. Good genes and good genes bred better genes, in her mind. "But I am willing to learn, if there is anyone with the patience to deal with my stupidity. I can clean, but I've never been praised for the work." She was so upfront about what she thought was things they would turn her away for.

And this behavior persisted into the celebrations. Y/n isolating herself in the corners, in the shadows, avoiding the others who wished to get to know her and welcome her to the clan and village. It was upsetting.

Bakugo found her after a hefty search (a search of ten minutes where he wasn't actually looking but happened to glance at her a few times before finally approaching). "What's wrong? Do you not realize how grateful you should be for this?" Bakugo came on strong, he was aware of that, but who hid during their own wedding celebrations? She seemed to be brushing it all aside and acting as if this was what she deserved. "Apologies. I'm not supposed to interact with anyone." Y/n was a mumbling mess, never speaking louder than she thought she needed to. It pissed Bakugo off to no end. "Whatever. If you don't want to be down here, then go to bed. You'll bring the mood down." He returned to the sparring corner of the big room, joining in with the fights.

Y/n, with a lot of difficulty, managed to find the bedchambers where she would be sleeping. It was Bakugo's room, of course, she knew that, but now she would also occupy the space. It was a messy space, a man's space. How was she supposed to feel at home in this strange place, with strange people, and an even stranger lifestyle? She was used to the women being small, quiet, never drawing attention to themselves. The women here in Kazar, they didn't seem to care about the consequences of having the attention. Aside from that, the women were muscley and brawn. They even knew how to read.

She crawled into the windowsill and looked up at the stars. For a brief moment she foolishly thought about whether her family was missing her. It was a dumb thought, one she wiped away quickly.

Meanwhile, Bakugo was sparring and drinking, thoughts of his new bond gone as he drowned his liver in ale and whatever foods had been made. His concerns were with winning the matches he was in. Zero thoughts of the girl up in his window. When he did finally stumble his way up to his chambers, Y/n was there immediately. Her gentle hands held cold cloths to his alcohol warmed cheeks. "What the hell are you doing to me, woman?" Bakugo grabbed her wrists to keep her hands on his face. The way she stared at him, wide eyes that reminded him of a frightened doe staring at a hunter as she waited for him to make a move.

"You're too damn quiet." Bakugo moved his face closer to hers, wanting to see what type of reaction he could pull out of her. Y/n seemed like a stoic girl and Bakugo wanted to see her lose her temper, to see her make any face except that doe eyed stare. So, he kept moving closer, until his lips touched hers and he'd never felt something so soft. He would blame the ale later.

Her body was rigid, yet loose, as Bakugo held her cheeks to keep her from moving away from him. Her tongue tasted of fruits, wild berries and water from a stream. It was addicting for the man, even if he was just some drunken barbarian at the moment.

Something about her softness was drawing him in. The way she moved how he wanted her to and the careful way she touched him, like he was as fragile as she was. It was different, in a good way.

"You have a choice in this." He mumbled, unable to make himself pull his lips away from hers, "Just because I am your husband does not mean you have to do everything I wish."

And she still didn't reject him or his advances. It was almost like she leaned into them, put more pressure in her gentle touches and soft caresses. The pelt around his hips hit the wall before the floor as he tossed it, not really giving a damn about where it went as long as it was off of him. "You're cute, I'll give you that." Bakugo mumbled as he walked her backwards towards the bed, bunching the skirts of her dress in his hands, "I wonder if the rest of you is as soft as your hands..."

"I'm not worth your physical affections." Y/n fell back easily onto the bed, never pushing Bakugo away. A loud laugh exploded in his chest at her words, "You're worth it if I find you worth it. You clearly aren't smart enough to gauge that."

Soft was an understatement. Plush and soft, Bakugo couldn't keep himself from squeezing every inch of her skin. "Soft as a hawk sprite chick. You ever felt one of them?" Bakugo nuzzled against her collar bone, "I'll catch one on my next hunting trip so you can."

This girl, this woman that Bakugo has been married to, what type of life had she led? Why was she so subservient to him? She didn't even fight him as he undressed her. He was a stranger to her, and she just... let him do as he pleased. Would she even make noise if he didn't ask her to?

Bakugo bit at her neck, smiling to himself at the involuntary gasp that he had pulled from her. He had caused a sound, though it was soft, to leave her without asking. "You're softer than the women here, you know that? It's nice, but I want you to talk more. Fuck, scream at anything if you want." Bakugo shuffled his pants down his legs and laughed at the way she avoided eye contact. It was apparent that she would be someone he'd have to have a small amount of control over, but that was the fun with some of these things. Bakugo leaned over her and grabbed her chin, "I want to see these pretty eyes on me."

Without a second of warning or even courtesy of being careful, Bakugo snatched her to the edge of the bed and snuggled his cock deep within her hold. She was soft, and it felt like she was trying to pull him deeper. "There you go, just keep squeezing." Bakugo pulled back a little to look at the connection he had forged, "Stretched fuckin' wide, you know that?"

She was cute when she whimpered, her unscathed hands gripping at Bakugo's rougher skin was nearly driving him absolutely crazy. This stranger, this quiet woman that Bakugo was so, so sure he would hate, had managed to make herself the center of Bakugo's, albeit drunken, world. There was nothing to stop him from leaving his teeth marks across her skin, and she looked a lot better with his markings. He had to think for a moment about how wonderful it would be to see her running to him after a hunting trip, how excited she would be to see him return was something he was hoping to see one day.

The pleasure was getting him too lost in his mind, making him think that maybe being married wasn't so bad, that maybe it wasn't just a political marriage. He didn't even see that he was hurting her, but she didn't sound like she was in pain. Blood started to stain the pelt blanket below her, causing a slight bit of concern. "Are you okay?" He didn't stop, she was too comfortable, but he also wouldn't make the mistake of thinking her body was as tough as a barbarian womans. "Stings a little, but it's okay~" Every word sounded like it was laced with euphoria. Maybe she had never felt such a thing, never had sex. Perhaps her body was as strong as a barbarian womans, she just hadn't ever used it.

"Hold on to me if you need to, I'll take care of you." Bakugo mumbled, putting more of his teeth marks across her neck.

[xo-hugs-n-kisses-ox]

Rumination

Ruminate

(v.) To think about something deeply

After Edward left her, Bella Swan fell apart. Desperate to try and save his eldest daughter, Charlie brings his youngest daughter to Forks to see if she can bring her sister out of her depression.

Now, y/n must try to help her sister find her way back to the light while also trying to navigate her Junior year of high school in the odd town of Forks.

---

Chapter Nine: Ultimatums

Now Playing: Twilight by bôa

Warnings: cursing, mentions of blood, spiders, mentions of fighting, reader has beef w/ Edward

Bella and I had an icy silence between the two of us. Jacob refused to talk to her after she chose Edward. I didn’t blame him. I felt betrayed, too, that my sister would choose him and his family over her own flesh and blood.

Well, she won’t be made of flesh and blood for much longer, I thought bitterly.

Charlie tried to get us to talk about it. Neither of us could without revealing the secret about vampires.

Sometimes, I think about telling Charlie about them just to spite my sister. I don’t, though. It would put him in too much danger, and that’s only if he believed me, which was doubtful.

I spent most of my time at Emily’s. The spare room was entirely mine now, and Sam had hung up decoration for me.

“This is as much your home as it is ours,” he had told me. I’m embarrassed to admit that I cried.

Jacob and I were closer than ever. Paul and I were still distant and icy. I didn’t have the energy to fight with him, and he kept his distance. I had explained as much as I could to Max about why I had been ignoring him, and we had made up about it. Sort of.

He was still sore about it, but he accepted the fact that I had things I just couldn’t tell him. He also had a lot more of an objective take on Bella and I’s situation, so he was good for perspective.

---

Emily’s house felt more like home to me than my actual house did. I could express my worries and hurt without fear of putting anyone in danger, and the house wasn’t accessible to vampires. It made me feel better.

I had just come back from a shift at Roy’s when I stumbled in, kicking off my shoes and collapsing face first into the couch to fall asleep.



---

I was avoiding going home, so we went to La Push. The boys played various games along the shore, and I was collecting shells and pretty rocks.

Leah was walking with me. She didn’t say anything, and I was grateful. After a while, Seth bounded up and held his hands out.

“Look!” He said, laughing, “Look what I’ve got!”

Curious, I peered at his cupped hands only to see a massive, hairy spider peering back at me.

I shrieked, stumbling backwards in my attempt to get away from the nasty thing. Leah stopped me from falling by grabbing me under my arms, but I continued to scramble away. Seth laughed and chased me with the damn thing, and I’ve never run faster in my life.

I sprinted back to Sam and Emily, ducking around Jacob and Paul as I made my escape through their game of football.

“Knock it off, Seth!” I demanded as I used Jared as my personal shield. Seth grinned, lunching forward. I shirked again, shooting backwards.

Paul picked Seth up around his torso, hauling him over his shoulder.

“Quit tormenting Y/n before she kicks your ass,” He warned, “She’s the one who helps make your food, and Emily’s not immune to bribes from her.”

Seth only giggled, dropping the spider down into the sand. I hastily backed up further from the scuttling creature as it hurried over to the brush.

---

Bella’s going to Florida with Edward. He got the tickets per my suggestion to try and get my sister to change her mind. If she was a vampire, she couldn’t see Renee and Phil in Florida. She couldn’t be in the sunshine. I hoped it would help.

---

Bella and Jacob were talking again. It was a relief. Maybe he could help change her mind, since going to Jacksonville didn’t.

Edward texted me the results, and I nearly threw my phone in the deep fryer. During my shift at Roy’s, my thoughts were filled with ways I could possibly get my sister to want to stay human. All of them revolved around Edward leaving again, but I knew it was too late for that to happen again.

I was walking to my truck when I saw a familiar face standing beside it.

Paul was leaning against the driver’s side door, his burly arms crossed over his chest. I tossed him the keys after unlocking the car, sliding into he passenger’s seat and waiting.

I wasn’t mad at him anymore. Not like I had been. The closest thing I was feeling was disappointment. He still didn’t apologize, not verbally, at least. It had pissed me off to no end that he refused to say the two little words that would fix everything, but Emily had made me rethink my anger.

Bella had just gotten back from Italy. All the guys were out patrolling. Seth and Leah were hanging out with us at the house.

Paul and I had gotten into another argument where both of us were being pigheaded only to annoy the other. He had stormed off in one direction, and I had gone the opposite way he did. Emily had come to find me.

“What are you so upset about?” She asked calmly, sitting behind me to braid my hair.

“He won’t acknowledge that he’s wrong!” I had said, and she had just hummed.

“You want him to say that he was wrong in his actions?” She asked, and I opened my mouth to respond. She continued before I could, “But were you not also wrong?”

I paused, thinking.

Sighing, I answered, “We’re both wrong.”

“Then what is it that you want from him?” She asked, always a voice of reason. I was quiet for a long minute as I tried to come up with an answer.

“I want him to say sorry.” I said at last, “I want him to apologize. And before you say anything, I won’t apologize first. He started this issue and he keeps starting shit. I’ll only apologize if he does first.”

She was quiet as she sectioned my hair out, running her fingers through it slowly.

“He has never been good with words,” she told me, and I laughed mirthfully, “He has always been someone who pays attention more to actions. He may never say he’s sorry, his pride might not allow for it at times, but he always shows what he feels.”

In the months following that discussion, I had payed more attention to his actions. We still argued, insults were still thrown, but my anger fizzled out quickly.

When he had made a jab about Bella that had pissed me off enough that I stormed off, he saved me dinner. The plate had the best parts of whichever foods we were eating that night, taken from his own plate and given to me.

He had made a snide comment about Max, and I had spat back about having a life outside of the pack. He had been the one to storm out, then, but I woke up to movie tickets on my bedside table. The note on them wrote, “Since you have a life, allegedly.”

He was still an ass, and he was still moody with a hair-trigger temper, but I was slowly starting to see beyond it again.

I didn’t want to apologize before he did. He was prideful, but so was I.

So I did what he did for me.

I pissed him off by making a dig about his capabilities and helpfulness a few weeks ago. As an apology, I convinced Emily to make wings for dinner since they were his favorite. He had looked at me oddly when I put the plate down in front of him, but I didn’t say anything and neither did he.

He and I argued in the car about my being a burden to him, and how he should just leave if he was so bothered. It resulted in him slamming the door and storming off into the woods. I brought an entire chocolate pie back from Roy’s for him.

I supposed that if he was an ass, I was, too.

---

I was sitting with Emily and Seth in the living room, watching old movies while the rest of the pack were out patrolling.

Seth was sitting in front of me on the floor as I put his hair into elaborate styles Renee used to put my hair into. Emily had just come back with the popcorn when Embry and Quil dragged Paul into the house. Both of them looked fine, but Paul’s face was cut open and his hands were split.

“What happened?” Emily demanded as I stood to go get the first aid kit from the kitchen.

I came back to the living room and found Paul refusing to let Emily near him, “It’s going to heal anyway, quit fussing!”

Still relatively intolerant to his bullshit, I grabbed him by his wrist and dragged him to the kitchen. He let me pull him along, snagging a chair from the dining table to sit on. I grabbed a wash cloth and wet it with warm water, carefully cleaning up his face.

“What happened?” I asked quietly, dabbing away the trickling blood from his brow.

“We were chasing the redhead, and she kept jumping between our land the Cullen’s,” he explained, “The big one followed her onto our land and I got him off. Cut my face in the process.”

I pursed my lips, but didn’t say anything.

I turned around to grab the disinfectant and dabbed a q-tip into it, tracing it along the cuts on his face. It ran from his hairline down to his brows, cutting across his nose and down across his lips. Already, the bleeding had stopped and the skin was ever so slowly closing. His hands were more or less just scraped up, already healed from his accelerated healing.

I assume the one who broke the treaty by leaping over the creek was Emmett. He was by far the largest of the Cullens, tall and wide almost like Jared was. He was nice enough any time he dropped Bella off back at the house. He almost reminded me of Embry, playful and excitable. But despite his intentions, he had broken the treaty.

“Emmett broke the treaty,” I said aloud, voicing my thoughts as my eyes focused on Paul’s, “What does this mean going forward?”

He shrugged, “It’ll have to be renegotiated, most likely. We don’t want an all out war since Victoria’s still loose and on our turf, and neither do they.”

I nodded, feeling weary.

Paul went to sleep on the couch after I cleared him. I cleaned up the cloth and tissue I had used, putting the first aid kit back where I found it. I, too, went to sit on the couch. Paul moved his legs when he saw me coming, settling them into my lap when I was comfortable.

Jacob came back after lunch. He had been talking to Bella, he said, and reported that Edward was trying to keep her in the dark about Victoria in the name of “protecting her.”

I took a deep breath, pulling out my phone. I dialed his number, waiting.

He picked up on the third ring, and I didn’t wait for him to speak.

“Either you keep my sister in the know, or I do it for you, Edward.” I told him flatly, “Which do you prefer? You can sugar coat it to hell for all I care, but we both know that I won’t.”

He was silent for a long moment.

“I see you’re still believing everything your dogs tell you,” he commented dryly, and Paul opened his eyes to glare narrowly at the phone in my hand.

“And I see that you’re still a cowardly little bitch,” I snapped back, “You have twenty four hours to explain the Victoria shit to my sister before I do it myself.”

“Last I heard, you two weren’t exactly on speaking terms,” he countered, and I felt triumphant.

“Don’t believe everything you hear, right?” I taunt, “Besides, she doesn’t have to hear it from me. There’s a good deal of people who don’t like the fact that you baby her for your own comfort.”

I was met with silence, and I smiled.

“Twenty four hours, leech,” I reminded, hanging up the phone.

---

At Roy’s the next evening, Max was sitting in a booth with papers surrounding him. He didn’t order much, more occupied with his current history assignment than eating. I didn’t blame him, the essay was brutal and the topic was plain boring. I only did it to get it over with, and it took me three of the eight days since it was assigned to get it finished.

Unfortunately, my friend wasn’t so smart and waited until the last possible moment to start and finish the essay from hell.

“Max, take a break and drink some water,” I ordered, “You look like you’re going to pass out.”

Wearily, he leaned back and rubbed his face.

“I hate this essay,” he bemoaned, “I hate school. Why can’t I just drop out?”

“Because then your mom would actually kill you,” I grinned, pushing his water towards him pointedly. He sighed dramatically, sipping the drink until it was at least half gone. Satisfied, I left him to his work once more.



 ---

(Edited 1/5/25)

***Trying to add some more of Max! Lmk if you guys want anything in particular!

That’s a wrap for this chapter!! What’d you guys think ?? Also I lied, reader will be getting to understand the Cullens most likely in the following chapters

Anyway, peace out ✌️ 💕

(ps if y’all have any requests for scenes, things you’d like to see me write, etc etc lmk!!)

(pps i didnt forget abt max i promise)

[prismaticpichu]

You wanted prompts for Angeal and Sephiroth?

I like the idea of Angeal slowly getting Sephiroth attached to modern appliances or concepts, especially since Seph has been so sheltered. Maybe Seph starts copying him, solely because he associates this stuff with Angeal. And Angeal is an all-positive force for good lmao

AHHHHHHHHH!!! I did!!!! And this is an ADORABLE one 😭💙💙💙

Tyyyy, Alto!! You got it!!

*zelda cooking music*

~

"Hmm-hmmhmm-hmmhmmm~"

Strong fingers cracked the egg in a smooth, soundless split, not a drop of yolk running loose as it splashed into the batter like liquid sunshine, not a single shell or shadow to be seen. The entire apartment now billowed with the sweet, mingled fragrance of cocoa and vanilla, a toasty warmth ballooning from the preheating oven as Sephiroth's gaze oscillated between the timer and his friend's masterful performance, completely marveled. Completely captivated.

He had never seen anything like it.

...Well, alright: he had seen eggs before, but hardly the kinds that didn’t hatch into Zoloms, dragons, or other cold-blooded creatures—let alone ones that were split asunder so neatly, and without a supernova of eggshells as the result of making direct contact.

How did one do that?

How did one crack an egg without it exploding in their hands like a water balloon?

How did one, per se...

Do all of this?

Noting his sheer wonder, Angeal's hum bubbled out into a chuckle, neatly plunking the eggshells into the trash can and tossing his comrade a quiet, knowing smile.

"Heh, I must say, I'm pretty honored. Some people tend to find this part prettyyy boring."

Sephiroth blinked, his awe momentarily eclipsed by a burst of shock. "Boring?" he parroted, peeling his elbows off the kitchen counter.

Angeal nodded, relaxed and unbothered. He cracked another egg into the bowl. "Mmmhmm."

"But..."—Sephiroth paused, watching yet another pearl of perfect, unmarred yolk splash onto the sandy mix—"but this is fascinating..." He sounded almost offended, incredulous. "Who finds it boring?"

It better not be—

"Genesis," Angeal chuckled, disposing of the last of the eggshells.

Sephiroth's face turned wooden.

"Hey, don't hold it against poor Gen: he just, y'know... prefers to eat things, not prepare them."

"...So he's impatient?"

"I prefer the word 'eager'," Angeal amended, a playful dash of authority in his tone. He then flashed him another knowing smile. "But... yes. Quite impatient. Especailly with the brownies."

"See, I just don't under—... brownies?" Sephiroth's eyes widened, completely discarding his previous qualms in favor of this much more important information, the word floating from his lips as if only spoken in legend. "Did you say brownies?"

Angeal's smile only broadened, brightened. "I did."

"...You know how to make brownies?"

"Yessir."

"As in: chocolate rectangular prisms of fudge?"

The man's eyes must have been as round as two obsidian moons, luminous as the sun.

He didn't care.

He didn't need to care...

Not around his friend.

Presently, Angeal had bent down to fish around for something in the cabinets, but Sephiroth could still hear the smile in his voice as he quipped, laughing, "Y'know, Sephiroth... I don't think there's a soul on this planet who would ever say that besides you." It was said like a joke, phrased like a tease, annunciated like a jab—

Yet it warmed Sephiroth's heart like an embrace.

He turned away as the smile threatened his lips, an inexorable force.

C'mon, friend, what do you say: want to be my co-chef...?

Mmphhh. Weren't we just granted these apartments?

Well, yes.

And you want to sully it with food residue already?

Heh, well... they're going to get dirty eventually, no? Might as well start early.

"..."

C'mon, Sephiroth. You won't regret it.

..No.

He did not regret it.

"Alllright!" A loud, heavy thump. "Here we go! Last step."

Turning back to the counter, rattled, Sephiroth was surpised to see that a large, milk-white, wire-leaking... something had been placed atop it, and was promptly plugged into the nearby outlet as if it didn't look like something that was meant to grind him into mince meat—especially with the metal, webbed device protruding from the bottom...!

He took a step back, defensive.

Genesis would have surely expected him to hiss like a frightened housecat.

"Alright! You wanna— whoah, Sephiorth?"

"What is that?" Sephiroth's eyes narrowed, knifelike. "Some kind of weapon? Of war...?"

"What? No!" Angeal's voice sounded as if it was bisected between amusement and concern, his countenance just as divided. "It's a mixer."

"A what?"

"A... mixer?"

"Of internal functions?"

"Interna—... what? No! Of course not!" Angeal broke into a bit a laugh now, raising his hands in a sign of peace. "It's an automatic mixer! You know—" But he stopped himself, waiting a beat, realizing from Sephiroth's expression alone that the man clearly didn't know, and that being condescending or blithe about it would only damage the situation further. He instead lowered his hands, watching Sephiroth carefully, assessing his expression—tense, triggered, anxious. Wide and alert in ways that Angeal would never be able to fully understand, but in ways that he had learned, knowing good and well that Sephiroth's dubiousness wasn't his fault, that it was baked into his soul after years upon years of experience. Nightmares. Abuse. Things that had taken time for Sephiroth to even confide in him about, and things he would never mishandle.

Not for long as he lived.

So, instead, with his hands lowered, he lowered his voice just so, and—

"It's okay, Sephiroth..." Calm, collected, kind. "I would never do anything to hurt you... okay?"

They weren't many words, but they were true words. Loud words. Sincere words.

...

And words that rang true, ultimately, as Angeal turned on the mixer, as he guided Sephiroth's hand across the bowl as he mixed the ingredients, beating the egg into the batter and watching as the color swirled, as his hand grew shaky and some mix splattered and as they laughed, both of them, giving life to the first of many beautiful memories to be baked into that apartment, the first of many beautiful lessons. And games. And shenanigans.

...and lectures.

"The same old", as Sephiroth would come to call it.

And when the cake was finally done, and Genesis had returned home from his mission, there was only one thing he wished for as his nineteenth birthday candle was kindled that very same night:

I wish this could last forever.

[merlingenrecs]

The truth comes out—and things go terribly. Perhaps Arthur doesn't take the news well and draws his sword. Perhaps Uther finds out and Merlin is strapped to the pyre. Perhaps Merlin has to escape from Camelot and leave all he loves behind. Can there be a happy ending? A hopeful one? Or will things forever fall apart?

Today's gen fic rec theme: Magic Reveal Gone Wrong!

↓ Find the list of fanfic recs under the cut! ↓

⚬ I don’t know you anymore by cynthia1314, 1k, rated T https://archiveofourown.org/works/49552066 summary: Arthur felt his blood turned cold. Was this a dream? He wondered frantically. There was no way Merlin just killed his uncle without even touching him. That was magic, but Merlin couldn’t have magic, could he? Or perhaps that was an unknown creature who wore his friend’s face.

⚬ The Lies that Break Us by Fulgance, 2k, rated T https://archiveofourown.org/works/934566 summary: Arthur reacts badly.

⚬ A Blessing in Disguise by s0mmerspr0ssen, 20k, rated T https://archiveofourown.org/works/42762729 summary: After Camelot is almost lost to Agravaine and Morgana, Merlin is about ready to reveal his magic to Arthur. But when he finds out Gwen is pregnant, Merlin’s priorities shift. Soon, he is focused on keeping little Prince Amhar safe from harm, no matter what. Merlin sets out to invoke a blessing on Arthur’s son, hoping to keep evil forces at bay, but things quickly spiral out of control…

⚬ Confirmations by DollopheadedMerlin, 12k, rated G https://archiveofourown.org/works/46113418 summary: Merlin feels overburdened and under the weather, but he doesn't want to add stress to Arthur's efforts in revitalizing his kingdom after recovering the throne from Morgana, so he tries not to take it personally when Arthur gives him a hard time. But when reports tell of a dragon within Camelot's borders and Merlin gets dragged along on a mission against his nature, the king only seems to double down on his mistreatment of his servant, making protecting the royal clotpole a lot more difficult as he fights off an untreated fever.

⚬ Let Me Die, Let Me Drown, Lay My Bones In The Ground by quotidian_void, 40k, rated M https://archiveofourown.org/works/56036113 summary: The storm that had passed through Albion didn't only bring devastation to Camelot.It also brought a party belonging to the king, queen and princess of a distant land on the edge of Albion's maps. As per propriety and courtesy, the king of Camelot was required to hold a feast and provide accommodation for them. The feast started off smoothly, the royals of Camelot getting along quite well with the royals from Harden.But a single questioned changed everything. Including the destiny and future of Arthur and Merlin.

⚬ The Magic In Your Blood by Aimael, 68k, rated M https://archiveofourown.org/works/24527002 summary: "Arthur had to wonder, whether he should not feel something, anything at all, that would hint at him being controlled by Merlin. Even as he tried, he still felt nothing." Merlin is heard saying things that he shouldn't have said, and Uther is determined to do whatever it takes to free Arthur from the sorcerer's influence - which might be more difficult than expected.

⚬ Refined by Fire by wryter501, 155k, rated T https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11306307/1/Refined-by-Fire summary: It began, as any shift in destiny did, with a choice - run and hide, or stay and fight. And because Merlin chose to stand still, his destiny and Arthur's - and others' - took a sharp right turn. Discovered by the knights, arrested by Arthur, Merlin faces Uther's questioner and judgment... Gold is, after all, refined in the flames... Mid-season 3 in-canon reveal.

⚬ Learning Curve by VikingSong, 14k, rated G https://archiveofourown.org/works/52184794 summary: Arthur and Merlin each face steep learning curves when Arthur experiences an unexpected language immersion. Miscommunications abound, things are lost in translation, and—unsurprisingly—chaos ensues in the court of Camelot. When painful secrets come to light and the definition of loyalty is called into question, Arthur and Merlin must work past linguistic and interpersonal barriers to reach an understanding. Or: In which Arthur speaks the language of the Old Religion, Merlin pulls research all-nighters, and the council members discover they don’t remember nearly as much Latin as they thought they did.

⚬ Rend and Rebuild by PeaceHeather, 100k, rated T https://archiveofourown.org/works/14866667 summary: One wrong move in the heat of battle changes everything. Merlin is a sorcerer, and Arthur has stabbed him.

⚬ New Beginnings by nsowlwrites97, 33k, rated T https://archiveofourown.org/works/31863937 summary: The words seemed to lose their meaning the more Arthur tried to make sense of them, bleeding in and through each other like ink dissolving in water. The only fact he knew to be true – absolutely, permanently, irrevocably true – was that Merlin was dead.

⚬ Beauty in the Ashes of Our Lives by Fulgance, 20k, rated T https://archiveofourown.org/works/934780 summary: After Merlin is executed for Uther's murder, Arthur's world falls apart.

⚬ Atlas by ParadiseAvenger, 10k, rated T https://archiveofourown.org/works/34723003 summary: In pursuit of a sorcerer, Arthur and his knights stumbled into a cave. As the ceiling collapsed on them, Merlin had no choice except to reveal his magic or let all his friends die. That choice was not a choice at all.As Merlin's magic began to run out and tensions with the knights run high, it seemed he might have made the wrong choice after all.

⚬ Is this resolve? By kyrakaryanne, 1k, rated T https://archiveofourown.org/works/47559634 summary: Arthur could kill Merlin, for this. Not because the law would justify it, but because Merlin would never stop him.

⚬ Help Thou Our Host by signy1, 22k, rated T https://archiveofourown.org/works/53393428 summary: One way the battle of Camlann could have gone. On the night before the battle, Merlin only has one request for Gwaine." When I'm dead, I want you to remember me for who I was, rather than what I was. If you can."

⚬ Whatcha Say by darkbluedark, 3k, rated T https://archiveofourown.org/works/46337155 summary: The roof caves in and the truth comes out.

⚬ The Goose, the Bad, and the Ugly by sinivalkoista, 3k, rated G https://archiveofourown.org/works/38503747 summary: Arthur is turned into a goose, and Merlin tries to catch him and turn him human again before Camelot is destroyed.

⚬ Whispering Your Name by CaffeinatedFlumadiddle, 22k, rated T https://archiveofourown.org/works/19874179 summary: The Dorocha. They are the voices of the dead, my child. And, like the dead, they are numberless. Or: A different take of the dorocha. Instead of them being faceless screams that attack you, they are actually figures of the dead. Merlin doesn't quite realize how much death affected him until him and the knights go to close the veil. ⚬ Because It Was by Gingeraffelene, 4k, rated K+ https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13607047/1/Because-It-Was summary: Arthur reacts badly to Merlin's revelation and quickly regrets it, but not quick enough. How does one find an all powerful warlock who doesn't believe he deserves to be found?

[ashensgrotto]

Poor Unfortunate Souls (Part 1)

Characters: Azul Ashengrotto x Reader

Word Count: 7,398

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3a (You are Here) Part 3b

Per request from @twistedcece and @mermaidfan76 , I finished the third part to my Yandere Soulmate AU - yes, I have officially given it a name now. I think I might do a piece per each of the books in Twst - but I haven’t made any solid decisions yet.

Also - due to this being the third part, hence Octavinelle’s chapter in the game, this next part is going to be divided into two parts. The main reason is because there is a bit that happens and I want to make sure that I take my time with writing everything out for it, never mind that I am covering two overblots - Leona’s and Azul’s - in this section. I am also planning on revisiting part 2 and fixing that up a bit more - and I’ll post an update when that happens.

Now, fair warning, although this is likely not going to be graphic, it does show more of the possessive/obsessive behaviors that yandere characters are known for as well as the underlying threatening behaviors they can exhibit as well. I do not agree with these behaviors that are as follows, but I’m covering my basics.

Every single day

And every word you say

Every game you play

Every night you stay

I’ll be watching you

***

Eyes of pale blue watched from the shadows of the infirmary as their owner kept their gaze fixed on the form of (Y/N). Normally, your delectable skin was smooth and soft - without a flaw in sight; now, bruises and cuts covered every inch of your form - though the blood had been cleaned away and your body had been covered by bandages and medication. You were still healing from the attack by the three Savanaclaw students, but several more injuries had been imprinted upon you.

Another overblot, another battle… another loss.

Leona’s power-hungry drive to prove that Malleus Draconia wasn’t invincible during the spelldrive tournament had back-fired horribly. The students of Heartslabyul as well as the vice-warden of Diasomia and a freshman of Savanaclaw had snuffed out the headwarden's plot before it could take root - halting it before any serious damage could be done. With the plan foiled and the dorm now turning on him, Leona's anger and jealousy had begun to overtake him. 

Azul and several other dorm leaders and their students had looked on as the air became dry, making it difficult to breathe. A creature that took on the monstrous form of a lion had come after all of them - all done with Leona’s powerful magic. It was lucky that Deuce, Ace, Trey, and Cater had been there - as well as Riddle. The five had experienced an overblot before and were the ones that would try to hold Leona back - to snap him out of it. The fool girl that you were, the one that Azul was head over heels in love with, raced from the safe confines of the colosseum, the octomer shouting after you, telling you to stay by his side - it was too dangerous.

You ignored Azul’s cries as you raced to the front lines, your (h/c) blowing in the wind as your eyes squinted against the onslaught of sand that had taken to the skies. As you had done with Riddle, while Leona was distracted, you slapped the headwarden of Savanaclaw across the face. Leona had turned his attention to you as you shouted at him - claiming that you understood what it was like to be "second best," how no matter how hard you tried there was always going to be someone better than you. All watched as the magicless guest of Octavinelle stared hard into the overbloted student's eyes, the eyes of a corrupted prince.

"I feel your pain, I feel your sorrow," you simply said, "and you have forgotten yourself, Leona - you have to remember who your friends are and what it is you fight for. You are more than what you have become. Please - remember who you were, who you will be… who you are."

Azul's eyes widened as the sound of shattering glass echoed across the playing field, Leona slumping forward as the dark creature behind him faded into dust. You, as difficult as it was due to your previous injuries, knelt on the ground beside Leona as the members of Savanaclaw came forward to help the headwarden to his feet - all traces of his blot completely gone. 

Everything had been a haze for Azul following that. He couldn't believe you - his soulmate, keeper of his heart - had deliberately disobeyed him. He told you that the world of Twisted Wonderland was far too dangerous for someone like you, and yet you continuously put yourself in harm's way. What would happen if you got yourself killed? Injuries could heal and scars would remain, but if an overblot happened again and wouldn't reason with you like Riddle and Leona had done? Azul wouldn’t know what to do if he lost you - he would go mad without you.

Something had to be done.

Azul shifted in his chair before he felt the presence of two others. He looked to see a twin set of heterochromia eyes glowing in the dark.

"Jade. Floyd."

The twins appeared beside Azul, Jade on his right, Floyd on his left.

"I assume you've brought what I requested."

"Indeed, several poor unfortunate souls are in dire need of assistance with this year's exams coming up," the older of the two smiled.

"And you might like specifically who signed up for a meeting with you," the other snickered, his sharp teeth baring in the darkness.

Azul took the paperwork from Floyd and shifted through it, one brow arching as he read off the names in his head… only stopping on three names in particular.

"Hehe… it would seem that (Y/N)'s closest friends have their own dirty little secrets," Azul smiled, handing the paperwork back to Floyd, "Excellent work, you two. With this knowledge, I might be able to actually give her a reason to despise them - they won't tell her about our little arrangement anyways, thinking they'll be able to beat my game. How many students have signed up so far?"

"A little over two hundred - all houses and ranges of classes," Jade answered.

"Perfect, continue bringing them in," Azul answered, "I want the headmage to get the message that it's us who run the school, not him - the poor fool. And I have the perfect idea in mind on how to persuade him."

The twins grinned in agreement, Jade asking, "And what of your little mermaid princess?"

"I'll handle her - poor dear will be distraught, but it will work in my favor," Azul smiled wickedly, "Oh, and make sure to keep her in the dark if she asks about this - the other members of the dorm know not to get involved in our affairs; especially after how I took care of the last headwarden."

The tweels needed no further explanation as they nodded, bowed, and disappeared into the darkness again to fulfill Azul’s orders.

Azul stood and walked to your bedside, resting a gloved hand on top of yours, reaching down to kiss your forehead, "Please forgive me - but what I am going to do is only for your own good."

***

You tucked a tray under your arm as you finished gathering the last of the dishes before heading out to the lounge area.

Today seemed awfully quiet with only a few students of the dorm working today - however, there were talks about new staff members joining that had been floating around, peaking your interest. You also noticed how in the next few weeks, your schedule to work in the lounge had decreased even further - making you wonder how you were ever going to pay for the rent in the dorm, which was not cheap. You had some pay still saved up, but you still needed to eat and launder your borrowed clothing, which was also expensive. You looked up, and saw Azul standing with Jade and Floyd on the steps that lead to the entrance of the Mostro Lounge - perhaps you could discuss the issue with them.

You head over as Azul’s gaze shifts from the twins to you, his signature smile greeting you, “(Y/N). How is everything going? You look much better than a few weeks ago.”

“Thanks to your help and consistent assistance,” you smile with a nod of thanks.

“Of course, my dear,” Azul smiled as he approached, resting a hand on your shoulder, “The headmage entrusted me with your safety, after all… until I can find a way home for you of course.”

“Speaking of which,” you say, “have you found a way? It’s been about a month and a half, almost two, since I came here.”

“I’m afraid you have to give me time, angelfish,” Azul answered, “You can’t get something for nothing, you know.”

You nod in understanding, “And, I wanted to ask - my hours at the lounge have been greatly reduced and I was wondering why.”

The twins grinned wickedly, making you shiver a bit at their smiles as Azul came around you, his arm holding you close to his side as the long overcoat of his dorm uniform draped around the two of you, “Why, angelfish - it’s primarily because we’re adding a few new faces to the family, of course! A few boys owe me for using a specialty study guide I created for them that guaranteed a passing grade for the exams that took place earlier this week.”

“It’s that… cheating?” you asked.

“It’s a fine gray area,” Azul answered, “The questions on the exams have been the same for decades - a few minor changes here and there, but nothing worth losing a night of sleep over. I get the answers in a legitimate way and create the guides for students to use at their discretion. In order to get those guides, however, they have to be willing to pay the price if they fail to meet my expectations.”

“Which is what?”

Azul smiled, raising his cane with the pale lavender colored magestone within, “Well, those that fail to make it into the top fifty, of course! But, let me give you an idea of how many and who exactly would take the bait and wriggle like worms on hooks.”

The magestone began to glow and soon you heard shouting and scraping noises out in the hall before bodies of students were pulled into the entryway of the lounge before yourself, Azul, and the twins. There were roughly two hundred, if not more; over half of them were freshmen in the dorms of Savanaclaw, Scarabia, and Ignihyde while several others bore the crests of Pompfiore, Heartslabyul, and Diasomia, several others you recognized as sophomores like Azul, Jade, and Floyd, and there was only a handful of juniors among the crowd. On each student’s head was a sea anemone - teal at the base and purple on the top that waved and wiggled as if being controlled, and very likely was by Azul’s magestone. Several of the students began shouting and arguing, only stopping with a snap of Azul’s fingers, which caused the sea anemones to knock everyone’s heads together.

“Well, well, what have we here? A band of misfortune souls who failed to break into the top fifty?” Azul smirked, “Welcome to Mostro Lounge. I’m sure you’re all WELL aware of who I am, but let’s go over it anyway. My name is Azul Ashengrotto - I am the housewarden of Octavinelle dorm, the manager of the Mostro Lounge cafe, and, as of today… you have to listen to everything I say.”

“You each made a bet with me and lost,” Azul continued, “As per the terms of our contract, you are to devote yourselves to my service until such a time you graduate.”

“Hold it! This is all a huge scam!” a familiar voice called out.

“Ace?!” you asked, eyes widening, “What are you doing here?!”

 “Ace Trappola,” Azul narrowed his eyes on the red head, "a freshman, if memory serves correctly, and a friend of (Y/N). Your accusations are insulting, quite frankly. I upheld my end of the bargain and provided you with a flawless study guide for your exams. If you had used them properly, you should have scored at least a ninety."

"Yeah, I did," Ace growled, "I got a ninety-two. But you never told me you'd given the same study guides to this many people!"

"Ace is right!" Deuce’s voice called out from the crowd as voices murmured amongst each other, "No study guide could help us break into the top fifty with the deck this stacked!"

"When everyone scorin' over ninety, even with my eighty-five, my spot in the rankings is no different than when I was failin'!" Grim groaned.

"Have you boys never heard of client confidentiality?" Azul asked, crossing his arms over his chest, "All of you fools - I mean, gentlemen - all had your own reasons for seeking out my help. Details who made a contract with me, what kind of contract it was, and why it was made… Well, that's privileged data. Who am I to divulge someone's personal information to a third party? I am a man of integrity, thank you very much."

"Azul, please reconsider," you whispered softly, "These are student's lives you're playing with. They had to pay you for the contract, why do they have to suffer the consequences for failing to meet your end of the deal when they had no idea how difficult it actually would be?"

"My dear sweet child," Azul looked down at you, speaking in a condescending tone that you did not recognize at all, "All of these poor unfortunate souls had their chance to make it into the top fifty for their classes. They failed and failed miserably. Some were close, I have to give credit where credit is due after all, but they missed the mark by a mile."

"Azul, please," you say again, "Please let them go."

Azul's eyes sparkled then as a smile spread across his face, his teeth becoming bare as well as his gums - looking more like a predator by the minute.

"Well, I always was a man with an eye for a bargain," Azul answered, "After all, you would do anything for your three friends here, if I am correct?"

You shift your gaze from Azul to Ace, Deuce, and Grim as the crowd looks on, each of the students holding their breath in anticipation. You looked back at your employer and nodded.

Azul shook his head, clicking his tongue before turning toward Jade and Floyd, "Get our newest recruits working - we have a full night ahead of us. In the meantime," he wrapped his arm around you, "I have some business to discuss."

***

You perched on the sofa in Azul’s office as the headwarden pulled one of his golden contracts out of the vault, holding it up for you to inspect. 

"(Y/N), this is the initial contract that you signed with me when you began," Azul spoke, handing the contract for you to inspect, "Per the terms your agreement, I will allow you to work and live within Octavinelle until such a time comes that I find a way for you to return home. Your payment to me, as you have nothing to give, would be any pay you earned within the lounge - I have allowed you to keep any tips left behind and some of the paychecks due to your want for independence. Now, that display you showed for those fools in the lounge has made me… want to reconsider my actions."

You look up from the contract, still begging, "I said I would do anything if you would release them."

"And I will accept that, however," Azul's face turned dark as a wicked smile spread across his face, "would you be willing to accept the price and the deal I have in mind?"

He pulled out another contract, this one blank, and as he spoke, his words spread on the page as if he were writing them himself.

"The deal I have for you is simple: in exchange for the freedom of all of those who signed my contracts for the study guides this term - including the names of Ace Trappola, Deuce Spade, and Grim - you, (Y/N) (L/N), will belong solely to me. Your body, your mind… your everything. You will remain by my side until the end of your natural born life."

You look up at him, your eyes widening in realization, "Azul - this is a marriage contract."

"I would prefer 'engagement', but marriage also works," Azul answered.

"Azul! That's not fair!"

"You're right, it isn't," Azul set the contract down on the table and knelt before you, grasping your hands in his, holding them tightly, "It's not fair for me to give up two hundred souls who signed away knowing what the repercussions would be if they failed my bet. However, I'm willing to do it for you, (Y/N). I would do anything for you. And do you know why?"

When you shake your head in a negative, Azul smiles at you fondly, "It's because I love you, (Y/N). I have searched my whole life for you - looking in every corner of Twisted Wonderland to find you. And when you appeared in the mirror chamber, lost and distressed, I wanted nothing more than to hold you close and I vowed then and there I would do everything in my power to keep you safe. You are… my soulmate. My match."

"Azul, we're… that's crazy!"

"You might think so now, but in time you'll understand, I promise," Azul kept his grip tight on your hands as he stroked your hair away from your face, "Now, about that contract -"

"Forget it. I won't do it."

"But your friends, (Y/N)? You said you would do anything for them. Was that a lie?"

"N-No, but…"

"Well, then, since we seem to be in agreement…" Azul placed the contract before you, spinning his cane around before it transformed into his fishbone pen and offered it to you, "Take a gulp, take a breath, go ahead and sign the scroll."

You hesitantly took the pen and closed your eyes as your name was spread across the dotted line.

As soon as your name was completed, Azul snatched the contract up and smiled, "It's a Deal!"

A glow came from the contract before the light enveloped you yourself, a bubble appearing around you and sealing you off from the world. You slammed your fists against it, shouting at Azul to release you.

"Payment for the deal is needed, angelfish," Azul smiled, "Like I said before - you can't get something for nothing. So, I'm going to take something so trivial you will never even miss it… your legs."

You stop for a moment, fear running through you like a cold shower as you whisper, "My legs?"

"You got it, sweet cheeks," Azul smiled, turning his attention toward you, "I need to keep you nearby at all times - and the thing that separates us is, well, human features. I am by no means human - some have called me a monster because of what I truly am. I was born in the sea, live in the sea… and you will too."

***

Three days had passed by since you had signed on the dotted line… three days since Azul made the announcement that the new recruits were free to leave - all thanks to a selfless individual who would not be named… three days since he took your freedom from you. You hadn’t shown your face to the school nor in the lounge during that time - not that you could - but everyone seemed to get a sense there was something else that now lurked in the large aquariums of the Octavinelle dorm. 

Not that you could blame the guests for being suspicious.

As soon as Azul had told you you would live under the sea, your legs had been swapped out for an ornate fishtail - pale sea green in color with scales of emerald speckled here and there. He kept you confined in the large aquarium that had spread throughout the dorm like a maze, the most open area in the Mostro Lounge. Azul requested that you stay out of sight from the other students, only coming when he called for you - which was often in the evening after everyone had left. When Azul wasn’t around, you were free to do as you wish - which often was raging at him or curled into yourself to try and comfort your poor broken soul. 

You had placed your trust into someone that should never have been trusted in the first place - and you had no one to blame but yourself.

“Well, I guess your herbivores weren’t kidding when they said they suspected something happened to our guest.”

You whipped your head around to see Leona and Riddle looking at you from behind the glass of the large aquarium.

“T-this… THIS IS INHUMANE!!” Riddle looked like he was about to blow a gasket again.

“Riddle? Leona?” you asked, coming forward and resting your hands against the glass, “What are you doing here?”

“I’ll ask the questions,” Riddle shouted, “What in the sevens’ names are you doing in there?!”

“Keep your voice lowered!” you hush, “If he finds out you saw me…”

 “Who?” Leona asked.

You look down, biting your lip.

Leona crossed his arms over his chest and nodded, “I see.”

“What? What is it? Who did this to her?” Riddle asked, “I’ll have their head!”

“Riddle, you’re too quick to jump to conclusions,” Leona turned his attention back to you, “I am assuming this has something to do when several of my dorm members were pulled into Octavinelle a few days ago - as well as some of members from the other dorms, mainly those three idiots you hang around with.”

“What? Deuce and Ace were pulled in here? What for?” Riddle asked.

Leona looked between Riddle and you before explaining, “Deuce, Ace, and the little demon came to me, asking for my help - said that they made an issue and that our magicless guest was in trouble. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but now that I’m seeing it…”

“It’s true,” you answered.

Riddle was still a bit lost, “Who did this to her, Leona?”

“Azul.”

“What? Why?” Riddle asked.

“You humans wouldn’t understand what most of us beastmen, fae, and merfolk often experience as children,” Leona answered, “However, I believe I know the reason why. Azul believes that our magicless guest here is his soulmate.”

You and Riddle blinked a bit, “Soulmate?”

Leona nodded, “There are often rumors that spread around about the concept of soulmates - how there is one special soul that is unique to one individual. Everyone has a soulmate - whether they are family, friend, or romantic - but they are far and few in between, a rarity. Those of us who are lucky to even encounter our soulmate will often hold onto that person as if our life depends on it - and in this case, Azul is rather possessive of it.”

Your hands slide down the glass, “That’s why… that’s why he…”

Leona nodded, “And I also had a part in it, too, (Y/N). However, we don’t have time to discuss it. We need to figure out a way to fix this.”

“How?” Riddle asked, “It’s not like we can just… confront Azul about it - he’ll deny it, knowing the sneaky student that he is. Rule breaker…”

“I’m assuming he used his unique spell on this one.”

“Yes, ‘It’s a Deal,’” you answered.

Leona thought for a minute before nodding, “I have an idea - usually I’d ask for some sort of payment, but it seems I owe you twice for everything that has happened to you. Consider this a free of charge gift of mine.”

You blink, “What are you going to do?”

Leona smiled, his teeth bared, “I’m going to teach that cephalo-punk a lesson he’ll never forget.”

[sturns-mermaid]

Threatening Letters | Amour and Chris

more of them here

𖤐 wc: 1.1k | proof read Sofia 🖤

The dull lighting of the mail sorting room cast dark shadows over your surroundings; only silence and your breathing were audible. You’d spent hours sorting love letters, though you didn’t care; you were just waiting for time to pass. This wasn’t how you wanted to spend your Friday afternoon at all, you’d much rather be at home reading your poetry books or writing poetry. However, since your mother Venus had noticed you were ‘isolating’ yourself, she paired you with your twin sister, Cupid, in the mailing department. Despite your protest, you were forced to help with Valentine’s Day preparations. Now, alone in a dark room, you’re stuck sorting through endless letters. You didn’t mind. Being alone was something you grew to love. Being an outcast and all, you were the only one like you, the only dark version of Cupid.

It started the day of your and your twin sister’s birth, your mother had been alone that day giving birth, and she never talked about your father. Unaware she was carrying twins, she expected a single baby girl. After Cupid’s birth, her sweet coos delighted them; her tiny hands reaching for her mother’s finger were adorable. Then suddenly a dark shadow cast over the delivery room. The nurses were frantic as they took baby Cupid aside and set her in a small container as she cooed happily. Your mother’s eyes widen as she screeches in pain from another baby pushing its way out of her already sore body, that baby being you. Your delivery was awful. Your cries were blood-curdling screams, and your small, red face showed your distress. After the nurses had cleaned you up and handed you back to your mother, you were still stirring, not being able to find comfort in any position your small body turned. Your mother, of course, adored you anyway, she looked down at you and smiled, noticing your different colored eyes both a different hue, unlike Cupid, who had the same color. She initially thought your fussiness stemmed from it being your first day out, but she quickly realized this was a recurring issue. You were a tough baby, to say the least. You would cry at all hours of the night, which in turn, would make Cupid cry — leaving your poor mother to care for both of you in the night’s dawn. As you grew older, you found people didn’t pay much attention to you since your christening Cupid was happily squealing, whereas you were squirming and screaming causing the audience to let out horrified gasps and judgemental whispers.

Everyone wanted to be around Cupid. She was friendly, easygoing, and the sweetest girl. Those words echoed through your mind as you thought about the traits they used to describe you. Being the complete opposite of Cupid people thought you hated love and were deceiving and malicious. You were not a fan of love but deceiving and malicious? You just liked being alone and at peace without people’s useless rambles echoing in your ears. Sure, you were born with those traits but it wasn’t your fault it was how you were born the ‘evil cupid’. It was still a mystery how you ended up being the evil version of Cupid I guess where there’s good there is also bad. Being an outcast wasn’t so bad. You got to have peace, considering no one would talk to you, as they were afraid of you, but it had its perks. The only people you did talk to were your sister, Cupid and on occasion, your mother — but those times were mainly her trying to lecture you to be more social, which in other words, meant ‘be more like Cupid’.

And of course, you had a best friend like many other people did, sure he wasn’t human, and yes he only sat and stared at you until you fed him but he still kept you company. Binx was your cat’s name, although you never considered him to be your cat per se you didn’t hold him captive, he was his creature and he could come and go as he pleased. Most days he would come around when he was hungry interrupting your thinking time when you sat on the floor and stared into his eyes, it was almost like he was communicating with you somehow. You would sit there for an hour or so until he would let out a small mewl and you would bring his bowl over and then watch him eat. He didn’t like to be a pet, so instead, you talked with him and kept him company while he ate.

The sound of a new letter arriving down into the already spilled-over pile in front of you broke you from your thoughts. You groaned, watching the letter swiftly slide out from the tube and onto the table where you were organizing them, making a small whoosh sound as it landed on the pile of the others. Your job was fairly easy, just sorting through the letters and sending them to the rightful owners. You only needed to put them in the recipient’s assigned mailbox, which you usually did, but sometimes boredom led you to place letters randomly; the thought of people receiving the wrong letters thrilled you. This letter, however, was different: it didn't have the usual sender name or returning address on the cover of the envelope. Instead, it had a stamped yellow sun, it intrigued you as you carefully picked it up and examined it. This letter seemed like any other one except for the stamp of course — which seemed like it was drawn on with the brightest yellow marker. It almost made you physically recoil at the idea of someone sending such a letter with no name.

However, you were dreadfully bored and wanted something to keep you entertained. Using your black manicured nail, you carefully sliced open the envelope and pulled out the neatly folded letter, noting its perfect penmanship. Then it dawned on you that the name on the top of the folded letter said ‘Amour’ which was a nickname you had. It was ironic given who you were but, no one addressed you by that anyway except for your mother and sister. Suspecting a sick prank, you narrowed your eyes at the letter but continued unfolding it nonetheless, gasping upon seeing it addressed to you. Who would send you such a letter? Your mind raced with millions of thoughts and questions. You were never the one for love or anything, so you were amused that this letter was more of a threat until you read the words written almost perfectly on the paper.

Dear Amour,

I like your different colored eyes.

These are not lies, I know you wish to be seen.

You are not mean.

I want to know what you will not show.

Hidden within the depths of your being, for these I will accept.

Your secret admirer

divider; @dollywons

tags; @itsmaddielouis @oliviasthatgirl @brianna-grace12 @scorpio1205 @submattenthusiast @courta13 @mattsplaything @conspiracy-ash @anyaa2s @sturnshood @stxrsniolo @sofia-is-a-sturniolo-triplet-fan @immaqulate @t0riiiis @heartsonlyforchris @blushsturns @hearts4werka @mattsbows @sweetshuga @leoslaboratory @angelic-sturniolos111 @leeeeree @pair-of-pantaloons

[videogamedogbracket]

Hello, and welcome to the Video Game Dog Bracket!

Do you like dogs? Do you like video games? Do you like dogs from video games? If yes, then this is the tournament for you! 

I’ve been wanting to host my own bracket for a while now - ever since I submitted a character to one of them a few months back, swore to myself I wouldn’t get invested in the results, but then ended up doing just that. Thanks a ton to @artificialkids-2k23-official, without whom this bracket wouldn’t exist!

The rules for submission are fairly straightforward, but I’ll list them here anyway. (Updated 6/3/23)

An obvious one, but all characters submitted must be dogs, wolves, or mythical creatures that are canine in nature (i.e. Cerberus or a dog-like Pokémon). Foxes are on thin ice. 

Anthropomorphic dogs are okay. However, please don't send in anime boys with dog ears or whatever. I think that's pushing the definition of "dog" a little too much.

Characters must have originated from a video game or visual novel. If they appear in a game, but it’s an adaptation of a movie, for example, they won’t be counted.  No, Homestuck doesn't count as a video game.

Named characters are preferred and will be given priority. I’m not saying that you can’t submit Granbull or every Nintendog, but in the case that there are more submissions than bracket spaces, they probably won’t make it in.

Please only submit one character at a time. The form is open to multiple responses per person, so you can submit as many characters as you like. (Just be reasonable with it and don’t send the same one over and over again?)

Also, while sending several characters from the same source material is appreciated, they aren't all going to make it into the bracket. I'm looking for a varied and diverse lineup, and want to limit it to about three characters per source. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but just...don't get upset if all twenty characters from the same thing don't get accepted, okay?

Currently, the plan is for submissions to close on June 9th, but this may be subject to change based on the amount of traction this bracket gets. As of right now, submissions are planned to close on June 5th instead!

Finally, here’s a quick list of characters that are automatically going to be entered into the bracket as per the “poll runner’s bias” clause. Please don't submit any of them, they're already participating!

Amaterasu (Okami)

Toby (The Great Ace Attorney)

Fondue (Rhythm Thief)

Gab (Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma)

Pepita (Trauma Center: New Blood)

Rex (Fossil Fighters)

Koromaru (Persona 3)

Missile (Ghost Trick)

That’s it for now. Thanks for submitting!

Obligatory inspiration tags for visibility: @funny-polls @mostredactedbracket @autisticgirliesbracket @fuckingstupidbracket @adhdxautismshiptournament @mfshipbracket @emoboybattle @goldenretrieverguybracket @purplegreenbracket @beefy-babe-showdown @unluckiest-character-ever @ot3showdown @justsomeguypoll @vs-coughing-baby @tokenhumantournament​ @jamesbracket​ @least-sexy-man-competition​ @baby-brawl-bracket​ @thing-fight​ 

[vacantgodling]

i am back to do another round of (mostly) answering all the questions of an ask game and this time it is @ink-flavored's fantasy ask game! i’m gonna be doing this for my GIANT fantasy wip the chronicles of lathsbury (tcol) bc uh this story is just fucking massive and i never give myself excuses to talk about it so i’m gonna. as per usual, i'm not gonna answer ALL the questions; if i don't have a good answer or it doesn't apply i'm just gonna skip the question :)

if you’re curious of tcol’s actual plot (becuase there is one, surprisingly) have a little blurblet here:

Piper Fairwind (she/her), Deux Undershield (she/her), Sandra “San” Dearborn (they/she), Clear Brightendale (he/him), and Forte Symphonia (he/him) are the newest contingent in The Aegean Guild of Explorers. They all are chosen for various reasons, and begin their hopefully promising career at literally the same time that The Labyrinth is beginning to grow more restless than it ever has been before. Why? The Demon King, Lord Evondra — unbeknownst to anyone yet, is beginning to awaken from her 300 year long slumber and she’s out for blood. Her very presence amplifies the power of monsters and beasts within as her hatred of all Terraneans seeps into The Labyrinth’s very core. The five of them get swept up in the mix, because destiny’s knocking and they have no choice but to answer the call.

but without further ado:

📚What “type” of fantasy is your WIP? High, low, urban, historical etc.?

high fantasy through and through lmao. i really don't usually tend to dabble too hard in other types of fantasy ig? i should at some point but high fantasy just has my whole kokoro tbh.

🌍Does it take place on a fantasy planet, or somewhere on Earth (hidden or not-so-hidden)?

it takes place on a separate planet, technically, though i'm thinking of planet more in the fantastical way and not planet in a sci fi sense. its got a lot of 'western fantasy' / tolkien esque elements yknow. like in lotr, arda is a planet but you don't really think about it in that way, yknow what i mean?

💭If your WIP doesn’t take place on Earth, where did you draw inspiration from to create your new fantasy world?

a lot of it is lotr not even gonna hold you. technically the two largest inspirations for tcol are lotr & the jrpg game etrian odyssey bc that's when i first created the characters, and that's why there's a labyrinth mechanism that holds monsters in this wip at bay.

when it comes to the actual locations... good question. it kind of is very generic 'western fantasy' vibes which again kinda comes a lot from tolkien (i still have a documentary i have to watch regarding what fantasy was like before lotr kinda shaped the entire genre, and maybe whenever i do it'll influence how i go about writing and shaping my fantasy wips.

i guess the other inspiration i can say would be my desire to have a black-centered fantasy story. all the characters in tcol are black (as with many of my wips unless i specify otherwise)--but when it comes to adding blackness to my stories, the jury's still out on the best ways to do that. i'm not gonna fully delve into my racial issues in this post cuz that literally has nothing to do with anything but just know that everyone in tcol is black LMAO (theres another word i wanna say but i never use aave online unless im talking to other black people whoops)

🧝Do other fantasy species exist in your WIP? Describe them! & 🤓Are there any intelligent magical creatures, ones that can communicate with language? How do they interact with wider society? & 👹Are there monsters or other dangerous beasts in your WIP? How are they differentiated from standard wild animals, or other magical creatures?

the main breakdown of "beings "species" or "beings" in this wip are:

terraneans -> they're what i call humans to the left. they are humanoid and mortal, but they have differing features and slightly different biological characteristics than humans generally speaking (ie: terraneans have a lifespan of 150-200 years, they have pointed ears, and their whole sana/cava/ars thing. basically, terraneans are very similar to the half-elf dnd class with more words PFF. also they can't be pale unless they're dead or have died for a certain amount of time. everyone is tan or darker :>). terraneans are what most of the main cast are and most of the varying stories of this wip center around terraneans and their connection to the land and the gods. and speaking of gods

gods -> deities play a huge role in tcol because i think pantheons are interesting. they're more of the greek-mythos variety of deity in the sense that they are imperfect beings; they simply hold a lot of power and the ability to create and destory the cosmos as we know it. there's a lot of messy drama among some of them and the main deity of this world, IISIDIA has unintentionally caused many MANY issues but she pretends to not see it. cough. there have also been instances of terraneans being venerated to being gods (beings such as MARTH, The Lady of the Mists, and EFFE, for instance), and some deities have alters or basically, parts of themselves that are still them but have split off into different beings with different roles (ie: IISIDIA has a known alter, IDMIR; MIRANKA has a known alter to kisks called RANKIMA, etc).

guardians & oracles -> because deities cannot directly interact with terraneans, there are 'in betweeen' beings, or (kinda) essentially "demigods" if i were to put it in laymans terms. guardians can only be venerated once every age (and when the main story starts we're in the fourth age, and then the second book goes into the fifth age, and each age's ending is marked when a guardian is venerated. so far the guardians are lath (who if you know anything about me, i'm insane about him), immordia, and arian :> when it comes to oracles, that's a bit more complex; they're not fully demigod-esque, but they do have divine inspiration basically. there's 3 major kinds of oracles and i won't fully get into all the weeds of them but there are oracles of the deities: MUINENS, MIRANKA and YLENE, called OOMs, OOMIs, and COHs/Champions.

monsters -> monsters are essentially flora and fauna that have been touched by The Hands of Qhozion (aka chaos magic which is a corrupted form of the deep magic, cantillo). most people just call it chaos bc for many plot reasons, no one but MIZDARR knows that QHOZION exists. and this basically corrupts them into corrupted and twisted creatures of rage, fury, and power. all monsters (now) reside within The Labyrinth, which was the feat that got lath venerated to the first guardian. but again this is so many weeds so i'll cut it here. basically they're fucked up with no rhyme or reason lmao.

beasts -> are different than monsters; sort of a Next Stage in evolution to monsters: they are creatures who were touched by chaos, but they have ars which is magic and/or sentience. meaning that they are stronger, more cunning, and are able to speak etc. the strongest of all beasts is called The Demon King and they rule over monsters and beasts alike from within the Labyrinth. the current demon king and main antagonist of the first story is Lord Evondra; who ate her father after he was killed in The War of the Seven Sons to ascend his position.

🤝Are the different fantasy species all living together, or does everybody keep to themselves?

pretty much separately though there are certain junctions where the they can cross paths.

there are 3 major continents on terrae (the world) where terraneans reside: mainland terrae (where the kingdom of lathsbury and all of her constituents reside in city-states loyal to the crown), diisai (a large island that lays to the west of the eastern sea, where the federation of diisai resides; they do not have a major empire/kingdom in the same way mainland terrae does, but they do have a close relationship with the kingdom and are essentially considered a vassel state), and kiskkaddon (which is a northern badland desert peninsula that sticks out from mainland terrae but is wholly cut off from the mainland's culture by the desert and mountains that separate the two regions).

within terrae exists The Labyrinth; there is one large opening in the capital city of Lathsbury, but there are hidden entrances throughout mainland terrae. this is where all the monsters and beasts on the continent reside including The Demon King; as they were corralled by the gods (mainly MUINENS) and the first guardian lath and his sword/companion, ensio. the labyrinth is only able to be traversed back and forth by terraneans; gods are unable to enter (though their power can penetrate through it in certain instances and one exception technically, MIZDARR for... reasons cough), and monsters aren't able to leave the labyrinth's walls. beasts are also an exception to this and can travel back and forth but that's not really known knowledge--it really depends on how much ars/power they have tm.

related to The Labyrinth the three exceptions where beasts and monsters live are Diisai/Kiskkaddon -- because those landmasses were never corraled into the labyrinth proper however only monsters exist in those areas and they are SIGNIFICANTLY weaker than the monsters/beasts of mainland terrae due to being further away from The Hands of Qhozion. the origin of chaos in terrae actually lies in MIZDARR's domain, The Thicket, which is an island in the middle of a saltwater lake. the other origin point is the fallen city of Argos, for reasons in the first age. technically monsters and beasts exist in another place too, Lapsundi, the hidden world, but like again this is already so long so i'm not gonna get too into that.

gods exist outside of the realm of terrae--the sky, in the hidden places, or the bowels of the earth (or characters like MIZDARR who do have specific areas associated with them). they are unable to interact with terraneans or the world directly, except through prayer and divine inspiration and most of their work is carried out through guardians--who actually don't usually interact with terraneans either, though they can. oracles are usually the main go between. and because gods can change shape, sometimes they hide in plain sight to observe terraneans.

☮️What are the different fantasy species’ customs and cultures? How well do they get along with each other, if at all?

this is too long of a conversation to get in depth and the cultural aspect of things is something i'm still working on because each individual city-state has their own culture LOL. i have a city building questionnaire saved to do for all of the cities that i literally just haven't gotten around to bc its SO MUCH. cough.

either way though, to answer the second question monsters and beasts don't get along with terraneans at all and vice versa; monsters are fueled by chaos and kill each other and terraneans virtually indiscriminately, which is why The Labyrinth was created--terraneans were basically on the verge of extinction due to them in the first age, which then lead to the rise of The Demon King. when terraneans learned about beasts and The Demon King and their sentience, they did try to come about creating a peace treaty... but that led to the War of Seven Sons so.... you can see how well that went LMAO.

the gods in general have mixed views about chaos--there are those like IISIDIA and MUINENS who outright detest it and find it to be an abombination (and MUINENS specifically has made it her misson over the past thousands of years to try and figure out where chaos is coming from, why, and how to curb it) meanwhile there are others such as YLENE, YUTARA, and MIZDARR that are more neutral/benevolent about it. chaos is apart of the world so much as chaos is, so we cannot fully stop it from existing but instead learn to live with it. this is a big plot thread within book 2 of this series, so i won't go into much further depth but YEAH.

terraneans amongst themselves is a mixed bag as any human esque society is. there hasn't been a grand scale war among terraneans since the War of Lathsburian Succession in the second age, and this is mainly because IISIDIA, in a rare showing, possessed an OOM and basically said "if y'all mfs ever war with each other again i'm blowing this bitch UP" and no one wants to test the literal most powerful deity in the universe to see if she's joking or not LMAO-- this doesn't mean that there isn't strife and tensions and that war hasn't come close before. ie: before the 7 sons incident, terrae almost went to war due to a coup, if it wasn't stopped by a mentally unwell duchess in a murder-suicide. so uh. yeah. and even in the fourth age now, there's whispers of another coup forming up but this one is very very much unchecked and has been in the works for several decades so hashtag yikes :D

⏳Are there any dramatic lifespan differences between your fantasy species and humans? How does that influence their societies and relationships with each other?

taking out the second half of that question bc humans don't exist on terrae LMAO. but yeah. to be very general:

terraneans -> 150-200 year lifespan. basically double that of a regular human tm. the one exception is guilders tend to have shorter lifespans and usually die around 30s-40s bc traversing the labyrinth is not a fucking game LMAO

monsters -> too varied to put a number to it, but they're essentially immortal, but mortal (as in they can be killed)

beasts -> same hat, immortal as in they can live forever, however are killable. same thing goes with The Demon King, its the only "mortal" deity.

gods -> immortal and unkillable but can be injured

guardians -> immortal and unkillable but can be injured

oracles -> same lifespan as terraneans bc they're the same thing basically

👑What’s the political configuration of your WIP? Kingdoms, nations, something else?

one major kingdom (The Kingdom of Lathsbury) comprised of city-states and two vassel states that are technically independent but like are they really lmao. so each city is ruled by a duke/duchess that are either appointed by the king, or are handed down through bloodline (which is easiest) unless they decide to abdicate. the king (all rulers of lathsbury, regardless of gender, are called kings) is chosen by an OOM and they have to be 30 years old before they can take the throne. there has only been (1) exception to this, and that was king mitica the nomad of the first age, but that was also when terraneans were on the verge of extinction so desperate times call for desperate measures. anyway, he was chosen at 18 instead of 30, and had the longest reign of any terranean king, dying at the ripe old age of 148 LMAO, so 130 years lmao.

diisai and kiskkaddon operate a bit differently; diisai has a council of elders who make decisions jointly and they all have to be unanimous to make decisions though there does tend to be one "speaker" who speaks for the entire nation. kiskkaddon is more similar to how kings of lathsbury are chosen, and is done so by oracle however it is done by oracle of RANKIMA (aka MIRANKA) instead of an oracle of MUINENS like lathsbury. RANKIMA is also all about partnerships, so technically kiskkaddon always has 2 rulers at once and they have to work together to rule.

and very very technically snake's canyon is a bit different because they don't really have specific duke or duchess that rules anything but everyone just kind of. exists. there. cough.

⚠️What’s the political climate of your WIP? Are nations on the brink of conflict, or enjoying many years of peace?

conflict has mostly always been between beasts/monsters and terraneans, and while things since the labyrinth was constructed have been like. relatively okay, realistically only the second and third ages were truly peaceful. at the end of the third age with the veneration of arian to guardian status, that's very much the major catalyst to the war of the 7 sons, so the fourth age started off with a BANG. but after that was over for the most part, its been 300 years of "relative peace".... but all that's about to change LOL.

✊What’s the social climate of your WIP? Are people struggling against inequality or war?

generally speaking terraneans have always kind of been a struggling sort and its only been in the past few hundred years that everyone has FULLY begun to prosper. there's more trade and innovation than ever; more and more people are leaving their homes to continue to build the guild system and cultivate fame and riches from it, and guilds are becoming the backbone of the kingdom in terms of generating wealth, commerce, trade, and general wellbeing--despite the usual short life expectancy of guilders tm.

things are brewing underneath the surface however. just before the beginning of book one, the oracle chosen king luther, was killed in a freak accident, and the OOM did not choose a new king yet--in his stead his youngest brother, aran, is ruling as the duke of lathsbury, and this is the first time something like this has ever happened. because of that, there are murmurs among nobles to try and depose aran from the throne (which makes me mad LEAVE HIM ALONEEEE). theres also concern regarding the growing power of guilds in general--elites don't like them LMAO. so. there's some tension, but it hasn't reached its peak yet. BUT OH IT WILL.

🏰Are there royals and/or nobility in your WIP? How do they treat the common people? What do the common people think of them?

there are! it varies from area to area, however, because of how the kingdom's king is chosen there's actually more of a 'lax' cooperative nature between many people and those of a higher ranking (if they are good rulers but there's always bad eggs). the reasoning is because oracles choose kings, anyone that you speak to could at any point be chosen to be king, so it makes sense to respect everyone. PLUS comraderie in terraneans is one of their biggest tenants; as they came into the world of terrae having to rely on themselves and the gods to survive, so there's a deep generational disposition to help others. most nobles are very respectful of the common folk and use their leadership and positions to help others; a good example is duchess aria lathsbury of wish of palanthia, who is beloved and adored by all of those under her.

however, with the growing wealth and prosperity that the labyrinth is beginning to afford, it is causing larger gaps between the upper and middle class, and so cracks are slowly beginning to form. greed is the source of all evil as you know. so, things haven't fully gotten to that point yet by the time of the first book but things are beginning to slowly shift.

💎What are the hallmarks of a higher-class person in your WIP? What marks someone as lower-class?

ummm honestly its hard to say as each noble is different. some nobles are down to earth and hardly distinguishable from their common class peers (such as lord kiba; most people forget his status because he doesn't carry himself in that way), meanwhile others make it their personality that they're noble (such as lady illiana, his stepsister). as society is generally prosperous, its not necessarily about what they wear or how they dress though those can be indicators; as well as their weaponry, or homes, which can also be indicators. but a lot of people say that those who are nobility (if they are or otherwise) is their leadership abilties. characters such as sir keevan are generally thought to be nobility, though he actually isn't at all--but his gregariousness, leadership and prowess make him appear noble-like to others.

i think the best way to explain it is that people view nobility as people who are leaders, and not people who have money or material wealth. and even though some people can be nobilitiy solely through material wealth, they won't be respected or thought of as someone of noble ranking if they don't have those leadership qualities.

🙇Are the common people expected to serve the higher class in some way, explicitly or implicitly? Are some kinds of service more respectable than others?

societally, they aren't 'expected' to serve the higher class in a sort of reverent or 'because they're better than you' kind of way. there's a lot of "respect is earned" vibes throughout the entire wip and just because you're born into high class, if you want people to listen to you or respect you, you do have to earn their trust. this is why there's a lot of cooperative society vibes around class and class in general in terrae is much more fluid-its much easier to learn a trade or interact with people if you're earnest about it; and things like schooling and housing don't cost money in a traditional sense. most people aren't extremely bad off (nowadays) so honestly, the court of public opinion determined by what you do for your constituents is more important than actually having wealth. that's what the current underbelly coup against duke aran has been taking so long; its not about using money or force to depose him, its about turning the tide of the public against him.

generally speaking though, there aren't really any like, jobs that are "more respectable" than others. while individual opinion will obviously differ, as a whole, terranean society is of the mindset that every sort of occupation is necessary for the betterment of society. a knight, a duke, a guilder, a prostitute, a doctor, and a farmer are all the same level of valuable to society. what matters is if you use your role for betterment or to be a piece of shit lol. i suppose the one exception to this is oracles, as they have divine inspiration and they speak directly to the gods which is extremely important. so they are held in a slightly higher regard than other occupations tm.

🪖How are wars fought in your WIP? Swords and spells, firearms, war machines?

*whispering so IISIDIA can't hear me* swords and spells mostly. firearms are a newer invention of the past like ~50 years or so into the 4th age and theres a LOT of discourse around them. but there hasn't been any wars or whatever (yet cough) for them to be used. so mostly swords and magic tm.

🏢What kind of unique or magical architecture exists in your WIP?

so the most important magical structure is The Labyrinth. bc i've talked about it ad nauseum, i'll try to be brief, but basically it operates pretty much the exact same way you think it might based on the name. its a maze like entity that has a mind of its own (to an extent) and is greatly influenced by magic in both its construction but also internally. things move and shift, mirages and illusions will make you lose your way, and its absolutely teeming with monsters and beasts alike :) the structure itself was created with cantillo and by IISIDIA herself so the thought is that its basically unbreakable... but that is technically not the case. tm. book 2 spoilers cough.

💰How does trade function in your WIP? Merchant caravans, local markets, dragon drop-shipping?

merchant caravans, local markets, and by sea is pretty much the major ways that trade happens. bc mainland terrae is mostly land though so mostly through caravans and beasts of burden does trade happen if its not on a local level.

📦Are there any specialized or magical imports/exports that your fantasy societies rely on? Why are they so important?

getting into this delves more into the weeds of things i don't fully have the brain for yet, HOWEVER, the biggest thing that i do know is there is high demand for monster hair and hide in order to make clothes and especially, most interestingly, weaves, wigs and so on. its very similar how black people use synthetic or human/horse hair to create elaborate hairstyles, same can be said for terrae however their hair parts all come from monster hair :>. there's certain species (that i haven't developed yet bc flora and fauna is genuinely my LEAST FAVORITE part of worldbuilding holy shit) that are better for these material than others, and when i figure it out y'all are gonna be so cooked lol.

💵What kinds of currency exist in your WIP? Do people use gold coins, barter and trade, or something else?

sooo technically currency exists. i don't know much about what it is yet bc economics makes my head hurt. however, i do know that a higher prized form of currency (and what is more common among the common folk) is bartering and trading; not just items and resources but favors, skills, and even introductions to other people. its not uncommon for people to offer their service or time in exchange for something else--and the bartering system is HUGE within guild culture. when you need any type of monster part or something from the labyrinth, you can usually go to any kind of bar and they'll have a notice board where you can put up requests and rewards for services or other goodies.

thinking about it i want to say that they use coins for everything because mining is a pretty big thing esp in towns like Kingsburrow. and i imagine they just have different sizes and styles of coins to denote different things. and i don't think their money is made of silver or gold, i wanna say its made of a completely different fantastical mineral that is in abundance in terrae. i just haven't figured it out yet. LMAO. i'll come back to this eventually.

👚What kinds of clothes do people wear in your WIP? What accommodations are made for any fantasy body parts?

i can't answer this in full bc culture varies across different city states, however i will briefly mention that different guild classes tend to wear different kinds of clothes: ie, hunters of eros tend to wear a lot of furs and hides and are generally more exposed with light armor bc they're about speed. meanwhile, protectors are heavily armored in a style more similar to medieval knights. there's much more to this but again, we'd be here all day and i haven't fully decided yet so like, hit me up like several years from now when i finally stop freaking out over the timeline and start filling in details.

🏙️Are there any especially famous cities or nations in your WIP? What are they known for? & 🚩Are there any especially infamous cities or nations in your WIP? What earned them the sour reputation?

figure i would do these two together lol. all the major city states are pretty much known for something, so let's have a brief overview of the major cities (i'm literally just gonna copy and paste from my large worldbuilding doc lmao)

LATHSBURY (Lathsburian): Lathsbury is the capital of The Kingdom of Lathsbury and is named after the first Guardian of Terrae, Lath. It’s known for its entrance to The Labyrinth, it’s bustling and diverse culture as it’s a huge traveling and trading hub, for its Guilds, and being the base of all government operations. 

KINGSBURROW (Lathsburian): As Kingsburrow was established near the same time, and has close proximity to Lathsbury, most people who live in Kingsburrow consider themselves to be Lathsburian. It’s known for its rich mineral deposits and mining culture. 

EROS / ARGOS (Aegean): The swampy, dense Eros is a converted fortress city that stands in the shadow of the crumbling and foreboding Argos—the first capital and city of Terrae thousands of years ago. Eros is known for its hunters and dark hunters, and their seemingly never ending devotion to culling the vast chaos that lies beneath Argos’s dilapidated streets, in hopes of one day reclaiming the city and restoring it to its former glory. 

MARTHVEIL (Veilian): Marthveil is the birthplace of alchemy and a hub of innovation, and is the most technologically advanced city in all of Terrae, with electric lighting being one of its main highlights. It’s named after the god of alchemy MARTH who was born in the region. 

HYTRÖTH (Püerthian): Hytröth lies at the foot of the sacred Mt. Hytröth, which is also known as MUINENS’s home. It’s no surprise that the Protector’s Academy and the largest OOM Temple are located here. They call themselves Püerthian because they are sheltered under the towering Mt. Hytröth from the worst of the north’s pain. 

SILVERKEEP (Silvian or Lathsburian): The hub of medicinal research in Terrae due to the incredible and sheer vast biodiversity of plants that can be found nowhere else in Terrae. They call themselves Silvian however, implants from Lathsbury are extremely common so it’s more of a blended culture. 

MORDIGA (Diisaian): The capital of Diisai, and the hub of harvest, food and drink. It’s known for its beautiful rolling hills and it’s residents are known to be quite superstitious.

SNAKE’S CANYON (Illumese): On the Eastern edge of the continent lies the dark badlands of Snake’s Canyon. They are known for their canyon built homes and the guild class, Illuminators or Hexers.

WISH OF PALANTHIA (Palanthian): The residents of Wish of Palanthia are known for their kindness, generosity, and agreeable nature. The city is famous for being the site where a peace treaty was signed after the first and last Terranean civil war. Etched in stone in the center of the city is the grim promise the city stands to uphold: Should Terraneans ever war amongst themselves again, IISIDIA will destroy all life on Terrae. 

BASS LANDING (Canterian): Taken from cantatio, the Canterian people of Bass Landing are famous for their music and arts.

EASTHOLLOW (n/a): Easthollow lies close to Eros and the Western bank and is nicknamed “The Guild City” as any willing adventurer must travel to Easthollow to pass the Guilder’s exams and be chosen in the guild bid before they can become a guild hand proper. The city is called “hollow” because there are no permanent residents that reside here; and as such it has no significant cultural heritage. 

KOSS (Koskans) -> A seafaring city, named after the god of the seas himself KOST and located at the major junction between Mainland Terrae and the Eastern Sea. All major trade sea trading routes pass through here and its floating markets are famous throughout Terrae.

UBWYN (THE CITY OF SORROWS) (n/a): Ubwyn is mostly a ruin now, but it was the first place the Nomads that would eventually become The Lathsburians established after they fled from Eros after The Day of Fissures. It’s mostly remembered as a cultural site, and some say they do occasionally see what seems to be a tall, pale, ghostly woman floating among the ruins at night.

🥪What kind of unique and/or popular foods exist in your WIP? Magical foods?

haven't got too in the weeds of food yet, but if you wanna read a funny incident about food in this wip, how about you read The Quest for the Perfect Labyrinth Honey Loaf and lemme know what you think lmao

🚗How do people travel over land in your WIP? Are there any magical machines that help?

no machines :) just horse or beast of burden. perhaps deer and moose or other cloven animals are tameable i just haven't decided yet bc fuck flora and fauna PFF

⛵How do people sail over oceans and seas in your WIP? Are there any magical machines that help?

no machines :) by boat! however, before you travel across the ocean its always good to pray to the sea god KOST, as he invented boats and seafaring and you may as well get his blessing before you start venturing into his domain.

✈️Is air travel possible in your WIP? Through magic, technology, or a mix of both?

nope, though the first place to discover such a thing will be marthveil, they just haven't gotten that far yet lol.

🪄Is there magic in your WIP? Where does it come from? & 🎆How does magic work in your WIP? How can it do all those fantastic things?

OO BOY IS THERE MAGIC. so there's actually a LOT of different kinds of magic in terrae so to make my life simpler i'm just gonna do more copy and pasting from one of my NUMEROUS worldbuilding docs.

but very very basically, all Terraneans’s souls are made of sana (health and vitality), cava (chaos energy), and ars (magic potential). None of these are perfect percentages (they don’t have to equal 100 basically). Your soul needs to have at least 30% ars in order to use any kind of magic whatsoever. so if you're rocking a 50-29-15 set up for instance, y'aint using magic lmao. while most people don't know their exact thresholds, medics specifically tend to know their breakdown due to the growing technology in Silverkeep to measure this, as well as they need to know what their sana limits are so they don't kill themselves tm. and speaking of that, here are the kinds of magic:

Sana Inanem — is the practice of using excess sana in order to heal the wounds of others. This is strictly used by the medic class. Wounds can be surface level or internal and the only limit is the amount of 'excess' sana you have (essentially, how much sana can you give away without killing yourself). Usually a base threshold sana of 55% or more is needed.

Subortus — is an offshoot of sana, but is one of the “extraction” magics. It is the practice of utilizing the sana properties of plants and the ars of beast/monster parts in order to create potions, remedies or salves that have a variety of functions. It is the only magic that you do not personally need the base threshold of ars to use it. 

Diruam — a protective, fire based magic used solely by medics. In order to use diraum, like any sana based magic, you must have an excess of sana. While it is not particularly powerful offensively, it is a quite useful defensive last resort

Vis — is the magic of the force of your own will and is extremely versatile. It is the most common magic used by magic users in Terrae. 

Muram — is a magic only used by alchemists and involves using the scientific and biological understanding of the world around you, in order to break down and transmute the components of things around you into other things, such as plants to steel or dirt to gold. It allows you to change the state, composition, and properties of essentially any matter. 

Lumine — is an offshoot of vis and is one of the “extraction” magics. Lumine is only used by illuminators and allows a user to draw the ars out of other beings or rocks/minerals (which are rich in ars) to channel energy. Illuminators can also be called hexers as they can do darker things with lumine unto others. 

Tenom — is an offshoot of vis and is one of the “extraction” magics. By drawing out the cava of beasts and monsters you can turn yourself into a brute force powerhouse. Tenom however has extreme drawbacks, as its over usage can lead to death or insanity. 

Chaos Touched — Isn't necessarily a magic in the traditional way, but it is a blessing from the god MIZDARR, most usually to rangers, gifting them the ability to see and sense chaos (or corrupted cantillo) in the world around them, appearing like an aura around beings and beasts affected by it. it is also a skill that is developed by dark hunters (though not as proficently as rangers) as they are in close connection with cava thanks to usage of Tenom.

Cantatio — Is the second oldest form of magic and literally brought the universe into being as it is the magic of creation through music. It is very rare that Terraneans are able to grasp this ancient and complex magic, but some very skilled bards have been able to dabble in it on occasion.

Cantillo — is the oldest form of magic and what contains the fabric of the universe, only able to be wielded by IISIDIA. It's also known as "deeper magic" and its too much for any mortal or god outside of her to comprehend.

🚫What CAN’T magic do in your WIP? Where does the mystical power fall short?

the only thing magic can't do, essentially, is create immortality (though you can be risen from the dead) or deify someone unless the gods will it. the great thing about vis especially, is the sky is the limit on what you can do and the only determining factor is your own power and discipline. the other thing is control time--time is always moving forward at its own pace and you can't change that. you also can't dimension hop; time and space are apart of cantillo's jurisdiction and only IISIDIA can control that.

🤕What are the drawbacks to using magic in your WIP? Do they improve or get worse depending on how powerful you are?

Tenom has the most disasterous side affects of its usage so tl;dr the more you use tenom the more your sana will be consumed by cava to the point that you can eventually be overcome and overrun by it and become a monster yourself. :D

🔮Who can wield magic in your WIP? Everyone, a select group, or basically nobody?

people who use magic are called artisans (bc it comes from ars), and as aforementioned, you need 30% ars to be able to do magic in any capacity; if you don't have that then you can't use magic at all. there isn't any way to increase this either, though subortus doesn't require the usage of one's internal magic to do, so basically if you don't have ars you can always try subortus.

💪How do people wield magic in your WIP? Are magic users able to bend it to their will, or merely guide it?

do whatever you want baybeee you got free will LMAO

🔨Is magic considered useful or dangerous in your WIP? Do different cultures or species view magic differently?

generally considered useful! magic is entertaining and awe inspiring, or its useful and practical. bc as i said before most terraneans are community oriented, they tend to use their magic (most of the time) to help others. obvs again theres people who do use it for bad and evil but fuck those people LMAO.

tenom & lumine specifically are definitely more side eyed however, because they are more deadly than other forms of magic and can either cause severe harm to yourself (tenom) or to others (lumine). lumine itself does have its practical uses, as in Snake's Canyon artisans who can use lumine are vital to ensuring that the area is lit and traversable. tenom does have practical uses to aegeans (people who live in eros) because only dark hunters (aka people who use tenom) are able to traverse argos to try and clear it of the monsters within it HOWEVER it is so extremely dangerous that many people are against its usage. eros has no interest in entertaining outsider's opinions on the matter though.

🤷Is there a way someone could lose their ability to use magic? Has it ever happened before?

not really. essentially, its apart of your 'genetic' make up, and there's really no way to 'change' those percentage numbers... unless you use tenom enough and then you become a monster, but then basically you just cease having sentience?? so like ig you can count that but in general magic is just sorta something you're born with the ability to do or not.

⚙️How has magic influenced the level and complexity of technology in your WIP? & 🧪How does magic interact with scientific advancements in your WIP? Are they considered the same?

magic has allowed society to progress in interesting ways and the way that people have come to the conclusions that we have in our world. while science has been a major inovator for us, for terraneans magic is at the heart of innovation because magic itself (especially when you get into things like subortus and muram) is a science! while they haven't fully escaped the equivalent of the medieval period, in some ways they have very much advanced in ways that we hadn't in similar circumstances due to the proximity to magic. firearms (not automatic ones), as well as electrict are the two current biggest innovations that are equivalent to our world that have been discovered in the hub of innovation, Marthveil. and silverkeep is constantly improving and advancing their medicinal techniques as more and more about the composition of the soul and the relationship between sana, cava, and ars is discovered. but because magic itself is so prevalent, things that we use in our society aren't really things that i feel like will ever occur to them to use in theirs. i can't really think of any examples rn bc basically i don't really like making modern magic wips too often LOL so that's why tcol is like this but yeah i'm sure when i think more about what tech they do and don't have i'll get more into the weeds of this.

i do know they definitely have plumbing though. i refuse to allow chamber pots and throwing shit in the street to be a thing LMAO.

⚔️Are there any special magical objects in your WIP? What do they do? Who owns them?

telus weapons and objects are rare; they're basically magic imbued weaponry or trinkets, which allows people who don't have ars to bypass the usual requirements of being able to do magic (having ars) but limits the usage because usually the object or weapon only has a few specific abilities and doesn't have a mind of its own so it can't be as versatile. its very hard to create such a weapon; usually they're blessed in some manner by a god. there aren't really any that show up in any of the stories (unless you count guardian weapons as telus weapons but those are Very Very different) that i have for this wip, but perhaps i should and can make a side story about one. i think i would have it take place in diisai.... but i'll ponder that later lol.

🧐Do people research magic in your WIP? What’s the most popular or prestigious topic of study? The least popular?

technically people only research magic when they're trying to become a certain class of some kind. i'll just list out the "specialty" magics real fast ->

MEDICS study sana inanem, diruam and subortus

ALCHEMISTS AND GUNNERS study muram

HEXERS/ILLUMINATORS study lumine

BARDS study cantatio

DARK HUNTERS study tenom

all other classes use some form of vis, if they use magic at all as its not a requirement (ie: MBAs, rangers, protectors, hunters)

because not everyone can do magic, its not really a requirement of standard education and you usually only seek it out if you're trying to do shit in guilds or if you're trying to be in a particular field of sorts. (and as an aside, there isn't really a difference between engineers and alchemists in tcol simply because muram is also very good for construction and those types of things)

the most popular would be sana inanaem and subortus because everyone needs a medic or doctor at some point in their life, and silverkeep university is the most prestigious institution in terrae for study.

the least popular is lumine because it is very niche and mostly only those from snake's canyon use it. and even then its not a structured sort of study, its more field-learned.

⚕️How has magic changed the landscape of medicine and healing in your WIP?

sana inanem allows for a sort of catch all healing. you don't necessarily need the specifics like how we do in scientific healing; the magic itself will smooth out whatever ails you from internal bleeding, to coughs or fevers, to broken bones. i will say that generally speaking sana inanem because it is more intensive on the healer themselves, tends to be saved for physical ailments like injuries and the like; subortus tends to be the go to for other like infections and things because it is less taxing if it needs to be used over a period of time. sana inanem in the case of illness is a sort of 'last resort'

the other thing is that very extremely powerful medics are able to do things that are virtually impossible for us to do which is bring someone or something fully back from the dead. the phoenix maneuver is what it's called and its been studied for generations, however there has only ever been one medic on record ever able to do such a thing and that is Karenza Hawkins. she has been studied extensively to determine why she is able to do this and its because she has the rare condition (that i have to name) where sana is practically spilling out of her, she has an 80-20 sana to ars ratio. though this should disqualify her from being able to do magic bc she doesn't have the magic 30% because she literally has so much sana it literally spills out of her and she is able to heal irregardless. this unfortunately means though that any other magic outside of sana inanem is completely inaccessible to her. but still, its a marvel to behold and seeing her perform the phoenix manuever on a deer is the way she's introduced in book 1 :)

🏬What kind of magical professions can a magic-user pursue in your WIP? Is it considered especially prestigious, normal, or below respect?

like i said somewhere before all careers are basically considered important to upholding society so none of them are looked down upon in anyway really. magic users also aren't really beholden to one specific path unless you want to learn a specific kind of magic--however, if you want to learn vis, then you're essentially able to do anything you want without barriers. be free <3

🎭Has magic brought about social good in your WIP? Social ills?

generally i'd say magic has brought social good; but just like any tool it can be used for negative things. tenom is the only magic with a sordid history because it did not develop naturally and was not blessed by the gods. after vis came into being during The Day of Fissures, the Chieftain of Argos, Whisper of the Fire along with her head researcher Tenoma began to fervently study the limits of vis to try and find a way to combat the horrors that seeped out of Argos. this led to the creation of the Hunters With Magic research facility which basically conducted horrifying experiments of increasing cava on dissenters to Whisper's rule, and eventually led to the first 'true' dark hunter's creation, Twilightsorrow Idanly. it was horrific, and even now the history and methods are closely guarded secrets in eros; a lot of the general research itself even being destroyed from that time period. its a Hot fucking mess lemme tell you.

🙅Are there any kinds of forbidden magic? What kinds, and why?

not necessarily? there are certain magics that you simply cannot learn, essentially cantillo. like. its literally and physically impossible. but pretty much everything else is fair game.

🤔Are there any kinds of “forgotten” or ancient magic that nobody remembers anymore? How was the knowledge lost?

not really. some origins of certain magic (like tenom) have been lost, but not the know how.

🫥Are there any kinds of magic that are intentionally hidden from the general population? Who’s hiding this knowledge, and why?

The Hands of Qhozion and the origins of chaos are intentionally hidden. any of those who have discovered its power have been drawn to ruin. this is because QHOZION does not want anyone or anything to know that he exists; at least not until he's ready to reveal himself and take revenge of his own kinda against his own self. the only character that knows the full extent of what it is is MIZDARR; but he cannot speak on this for various plot reasons, and MUINENS has always been suspicious of him because he knows much more than he's letting on. he may in fact (and kinda does) know more than IISIDIA herself... which is worrying lmao. and its really just because IISIDIA chooses not to acknowledge this and has split herself in various ways. so.

all of this is book 2 plot stuff so i'm not gonna get too into the weeds about it but yahhhh.

⛪What are the popular religions in your WIP? Where is each belief more prominent?

so weird scenario; there isn't really an popular or major organized religion in tcol. the gods exist as a fact, and many different people have many different practices and have different gods that they favor more than others but like there's no like. majorly approved/state sponsored/populist belief. even oracle temples differ from temple to temple in how they practice and the gods themselves are quite benevolent in it. many of the gods feel as though they exist to aid terraneans and the world of terrae itself; and not the other way around (which would be that the world exists for them and their pleasure) so like while it can be appreciated to have terraneans worship or reach out, to a lot of the gods terraneans are simply children that they look after and nurture with or without thanks. its simply part of being a deity, its their duty if you will.

to kind of give a quick run down of places where there is an obvious preference:

MARTHVEIL -> as is in the name, they are very partial to MARTH

EROS/ARGOS -> YLENE, BRULENE and LENEYUBR (the combination of YLENE and BRULENE)

HYTROTH -> MUINENS

KISKKADDON -> RANKIMA, which is an alter of MIRANKA

KOSS -> KOST

SILVERKEEP -> YUTARA

MORDIGA (and Diisai generally) -> KIBARUM

BASS LANDING -> The Musicians of Creation, which include Nitarr, Tuara, Rana, Ranae, Wanao, and Waname

WISH OF PALANTHIA -> as the name suggests, Palanthia

THE LABYRINTH ITSELF -> The Demon King, obviously lol

📢Are there any particularly influential religious institutions in your WIP?

time for more copy paste <3

The Frosted Arches -> The largest Oracle House for MUINENS is located in Hytroth (up north) and it is considered the sacred homeland of the goddess. Oracle Houses for MUINENS don’t have standardized names the same way that MIRANKA’n oracles do, and that is specifically because they’re so old and for a long while, there was only One place (really) that oracles were and the rest were offshoots and only local Things. the large institutions we see for MUINENS don’t crop up until after the War of Lathsburian Succession.

House of Carnations -> where Oomi’s study and become the oracles. break off temples and for MIRANKA are named after different plants and flowers that have lovely scents. The House of Carnations is the largest and is in Wish of Palanthia where MIRANKA was born. Flower Houses (as they’re called generally) can pop up anywhere in Terrae and usually every town has at least one to help with relationship disputes. As of the year _(haven't decided)_ they were made mandatory for every township or city to have one per a certain population size. 

The Arena -> the only place where Oracles of YLENE practice and it is only located in Eros. it is exactly what it sounds like — a giant arena where the Champion lives their day to day life. they hold strategy meetings, sacrifices and prayers, and battle to the death for anyone who wants the honor of becoming the next champion can challenge them. they also tend to host extreme sporting events. Occasionally Champions will have a right hand man (or two) called Tacticians, who serve the symbolic role of Brulene as she is to YLENE. However, only the Champion has direct contact with the goddess.

🙏Is devotion to a particular religion expected of people? What happens to non-believers?

being a non-believer isn't really a thing? this is sort of a universe wherein it is a fact that the gods exist; however they don't demand that you serve them and there are no consequences for being apathetic or neutral to their existence. some people are definitely more religious than others, but honestly for many people the gods are just sort of a thing that exist and they just continue on with their lives about. hell, even though oracles are divinely inspired, a lot of times especially when people go to OOMIs, do so out of the help they can provide and not necessarily because they are religious. so tldr devotion and more zealot practices do exist, but like you also don't have to give a shit if you don't want to lmao.

🫵Can the deities in your WIP grant people special powers? When do they choose to do so?

sort of? deities can bestow favor upon you in certain ways-or certain deities can. the ones that are more likely to provide blessings are YUTARA, as both the deity of medicine and gender expression, their gift is towards genderqueer people who pray to them in desire of their body to match their inner self. this isn't really a 'special power' but people with all sorts of anatomy can exist if they pray to YUTARA fervently enough and they hear your prayer. 2 characters who have been blessed by them are Jagoda Arthea (a trans man who has top surgery and what we would consider working phalloplasty - as in he can have kids) & Charissa Goodwyn (a trans woman who has breast augmentation but still has her dick and is sterile), though many more exist tm.

MIZDARR can grant the Chaos Touch to those he decides but it is very unclear why he decides to do so? there's not much rhyme or reason, but more often than not these people do tend to become or already are rangers. one character who is especially unique is Eryn Arcus, who is Chaos Touched since birth but it has left her completely blind outside of the chaos she can sense. the other character is a spoiler :P

finally, guardians are ALWAYS venerated from especially noteworthy or prophecy fulfilling terraneans. MUINENS has venerated the most guardians (3 to be exact- 2 known and 1 spoiler) however, MIRANKA venerated Arian in the third age :). this is slightly different than granting powers because basically its giving you one step under a god status lol.

🗣️Can anyone commune with the deities in your WIP, or do they only answer to special devotees?

nope, you gotta be an oracle or a guardian to directly communicate with the gods and even then theres only certain gods that do communicating through them. a lot of it has to do with the power that gods have. i'm quite a fan of the whole if you look at a deity you will simply vaporize type shit so unless you're some sort of divine... good luck with that.

📞Is it rare to be contacted by higher beings, or does it happen all the time?

super rare bc its literally impossible for gods to speak with terraneans unless they're oracles lmao. and with oracles they don't necessarily speak with the god themself... its a bit confusing to explain but basically the god's energy/will manifests within them bc they're divinely inspired/a conduit for their word. the reason why they tend to be so vague is that the inherent inability for gods and terraneans to connect means that it is difficult for oracles to decipher and explain the will of the gods in a way that can be understood by the common people. some more powerful oracles are better at it but its still difficult and taxing.

🧩Are there prophecies in your WIP? Do people believe in them? & 🌟Have any prophecies ever come true in your WIP’s history? How important are they to your WIP in the present?

yuh LMAO. many if not most prophecies come true in some way shape or fashion, however prophecies tend to be more individual focused; its really very rare that an oracle gets a prophecy for an entire event or anything like that--though it has happened that multiple oracles have recieved visions and prophecies regarding a string of individuals that are all connected to an eventual large event; however its very rare for those connections to be made until after the fact unless it is alarming enough to get brought before The Frosted Arches.

there's currently a prophecy in progress for one of our main characters though i won't tell you which :D (it'll be obious who if you know anything about tcol tbh)

👂Can anyone hear prophecies in your WIP, or do they only appear to certain people, like oracles? & 🤐Are prophecies kept secret, or told to everyone who wants to hear? Why?

only to oracles (specifically OOMs because MUINENS is a goddess of fate and destiny). they don't tend to have large scale prophecies that are told aloud to the public; if they recieve a vision that great then they usually have to take that information all the way to The Frosted Arches and then among the high council they will decide what next steps should be taken to ensure that MUINENS's will is achieved.

on the flip side, usually whenever babies are born, parents will take them to the nearest OOM to have them receive their oracle's blessing. this is basically a prophecy about how their life is going to go and while sometimes vague, or nondescript, there are times when it is quite... pronounced and alarming. usually in those rare instances, the parents are advised by the best course of action for their little one.

🗡️Is killing monsters or magical creatures a viable profession in your WIP? Is it lauded work or scorned?

yup that's what guilds are for! that's not their only purpose, but what modern (as in start of book 1) guilds do a lot of is killing monsters within the labyrinth lol.

😢Are monsters legitimately dangerous, or are they simply misunderstood?

DANGEROUS ITS NOT A FUCKING JOKE THEY CANNOT BE REASONED WITH DEADASS

beasts are misunderstood but also legitimately dangerous and unpredictable and while they are similar to monsters they are very much not the same thing.

💀Can people commune with spirits of the dead in your WIP? How? & 👻Do spirits wander freely in your WIP? Why? Is there a way to help them pass on?

you can't really, but it isn't uncommon to see them in certain places. tl;dr terraneans cannot pass on unless they are properly buried, and their spirit will wander aimlessly throughout terrae unless their body is buried OR unless The Lady of the Mists finds them and guides them to Cerullius; which is essentially a "heaven" of sorts. its a reuniting with IIARAN. you can't really speak to them if you see them but occasionally travellers have seen spirits wandering and have been able to guide them back to their bodies so they can be buried and pass on.

😱Is it considered normal or taboo to speak with the dead in your WIP? Does it vary from culture to culture?

its seen as a good deed, if you can. again something something terrae is basically socialist/communist or whatever but its seen as something you should do because no one should be forced to wander forever. also, its usually not speaking to them as y'all are on different planes of existence and more like following the ghost to its body and giving it burial rites.

⚰️Is it possible to completely resurrect someone in your WIP? How? If not, has anybody ever tried?

yup! phoenix manuever i talked about before lol. only Karenza has ever been able to do it.

🗺️Is your WIP a globe-trotting adventure, or is all the adventure contained in one place?

technically book 1 and book 2 kind of all take place between the labyrinth and lathsbury but bc tcol is a huge world and i have a lot of side stories in it you can argue its a bit gloe-trotty. but characters do travel often.

🧚Is adventuring common in your WIP, or something only for fairytales?

common!

🪙When people go on adventures in your WIP, what are they looking for? Fame, fortune, power?

all of the above :)

🦸Are there any legendary heroes or adventurers in your WIP’s history? What are they famous for?

YEAHHH so time for some more lists tm

lath of argos (aka Lath, Guardian of Valor) & ensio montero (aka Ensio, Sword of Valor) -> famously helped the goddess MUINENS among 33 other warriors corral monsters and beasts from across the lands of terrae into The Labyrinth, slaughtering many stragglers so they would no longer pose a threat to terraneans and giving their lives in the process. Lath became the first guardian, and also gave the people of Terrae who left Eros after the day of fissures their eventual name Lathsburians

immordia gallant (aka Immordia, Guardian of Exploration) & her son, gawain gallant -> famously helped the first Lathsburian ship make the journey across the treacherous eastern sea, holding the boat afloat long enough to allow the first lathsburians to make it to shore before giving her life in the process. if it weren’t for her contributions, the Diisaians would never have been discovered and the Diisaians would never know their distant Lathsburian cousins existed which both are grateful for.

king mitică the nomad -> tl;dr made sure the lathsburians didn’t go extinct and is regarded as the greatest king who ever lived; humble, modest, wise, and measured.

karlan of the sea -> the first leader of the diisaians who helped them journey across the great eastern sea and was favored by the god, KOST

i haven’t named this guy yet but he’s the leader of the kisks and basically he’s the one who helped them travel from the mountains of ubwyn to where kiskkaddon is today.

king savon the evergolden -> the principle force in the war of the seven sons who held back the depouring of the labyrinth that his brother ziri the windless caused. if it weren’t for his tactile prowess and leadership it’s very likely that the lathsburians would’ve all perished tm <3

a lot of these heroes are very lathsbury focused but it’s bc i haven’t really started branching out into the other city states and what’s going on with the timelines and whatnot! but fear not! there will be So Many More LMAO.

🦹Are there any infamous villains in your WIP? How were they defeated?

listtsssss

whisper of the fire, first chieftain of argos -> she’s a villain to ME so that’s why she’s going on this list idc. anyway after her horrifying and tyrannical also short ass reign, she was killed by the first COH, hyla at the behest of YLENE. her death caused the beginnings of the aegean civil war which eventually ended with the creation of the nightwillow clan.

prince ziri the windless -> fuck this guy specifically. anyway lord evondra personally kills him because Fuck this guy specifically.

lord evondra -> that’s spoilers <3

QHOZION -> that’s also spoilers <3

🌄How much has the landscape and environment of your WIP been shaped by magic? Have entire mountains been wiped off the map, or is everything the same as if magic didn’t exist?

well, the entire world came into being via musical magic—

jkjk (but it did) but to answer the question, the best example is the kiskkaddon desert, which is a sentient entity. i haven’t fully decided if its sentient because it is RANKIMA herself, or if its a completely separate entity, but basically kiskkaddon itself is a word that means “swallowing” and thus its the all swallowing desert. conditions are harsh and its all magically related lol. it could alllllso potentially have something to do with Phyddione which could be a cool tie in so i may explore that a bit 🤔

🌥️Are there any magical places in your WIP that are kept hidden from outsiders? Why?

The Thicket, where MIZDARR resides, is hidden because it is the birthplace of chaos and to go in there is to risk being touched by The Hands of Qhozion. MIZDARR can somewhat control how much chaos seeps through the thicket into Terrae, but as he warned MUINENS thousands of years ago, there’s only so long that he can hold chaos back before it is fully unleashed :>

[dragon-susceptible]

TDP Rewatch S2 E5: Breaking The Seal

Berto got the intro voice! I guess it's more the recap voice, it's the 'previously on' thing.

It still gets me in the heart that Harrow even says he's done terrible things, and he's not sure they were justified. He has regrets.

Avizandum having ragged spots in his wings reminds me of some real world science. So it's not unrealistic for him to be able to fly with the level of damage he has, the holes are fairly isolated and relatively small. If we're going to accept that a creature as heavy as a dragon could fly with wings that aren't double its own size, it's fine; bats also fly regularly with equivalent damage.

It does remind me of the Real Science of horns, though, and how the Moonshadow elves' horns canonically defy that science in multiple directions. I get why they didn't have Runaan's broken one bleed in the first episode, because of the rating, but he absolutely should have been bleeding. Also, in Lunabloom he makes reference to Rayla's horns sharpening (normal horn development) and says they'll be Fully Grown within a few years, which isn't a thing, per se, with real horns. Horns typically continue to grow for the entire life of the creature that has them. That said, sometimes we use the term "fully grown" to just mean "has reached adult form", and it doesn't mean they've stopped growing entirely, so that could also be all Runaan meant.

Back into the current episode; "Dismount, disarm, and proceed alone to the meeting point" just reminded me of that scene from The Two Towers book where the Three Hunters and Gandalf are heading into a meeting with . . . I wanna say it was Theoden? It's been a while since I read it, and Gandalf fussed about giving up his staff because He's An Old Man, Haldir, He Needs It, and Haldir is just like I don't get paid enough for this. Please just cooperate. and Gandalf was ready to argue until Aragorn started roasting him for being a petty bitch.

The monarchs interest me so much, honestly. I appreciate how Ahling, Fareeda, and . . . god I forget the other king's name. The three who were already there were talking and laughing comfortably until Viren showed up, and then Ahling tried for sympathy and kept getting Interrupted by Viren.

I fucking love Aanya's introduction. Her interactions with Viren in this episode are pure fucking gold. She goes hard-faced when Viren initially asks after her regent, and clearly assesses the situation while he's talking, and then he starts to bend over all condescending to say "these matters require an adult perspective." And she just goes Cute to reply, "It seems then that I am a crown without an adult, and you are an adult without a crown. Let's just begin." And she just turns her back and strides to HER throne, because fuck this guy. The power of this little girl. Viren gets verbally murdered by a 12 year old.

I just wanted to look longer at the elven silhouettes that Viren summons here to scare the other rulers. Runaan's there in the center, Callisto and Andromeda to the right of him. The hair sort of looks like Skor to the left, but there's no weapons and the build is too vague to be sure. What I find interesting is that the elf furthest to the left in the highlighted section is Rayla's silhouette, an elf Viren shouldn't have even known was there. There's also the figures to Ahling's left, which are slightly faded, but who I can't identify for certain as elves.

this is just gonna be an image heavy post, sorry.

I find it intriguing that even Viren's false shades have the binding on their wrists, and Rayla doesn't seem to be one of these. Andromeda, Skor, Callisto, and Ram are the only ones he's summoned as more than silhouettes on the walls. He has them shuffling like zombies too.

So he adds feral snarls and shambling to the Moonshadow elves, to make them creepier. He adds spikes to the portrayal of Sunfire elves, and height, to make them more intimidating. All of his elves have blood red eyes. This is such blatant fearmongering. I also appreciate how the other monarchs are clearly moved by this display, but Aanya sees the manipulation for what it is, because she's been dealing with it for years as a child ruler.

FLORIAN that was the last dude's name.

That is not exactly the kind of name I would have expected from a Viking analogue lmao, fantastic.

I had a friend who was deep into RWBY the first time I watched this and I cannot unsee RWBY's Pyrrha when I look at Queen Fareeda.

See here it is again, this thing with Viren, strength is more important than goodness. He snaps when Aanya is undecided, because her decisions aren't strong enough for him. Meanwhile, it's actually a much stronger position (as she points out!) to actually stop and think about this situation rather than just taking the word of some random Guy from another kingdom and committing her entire country to a war effort.

She has SO MANY fair points, Ahling.

He really just roasts his own kid in the middle of a royal meeting huh lmao. I do think it's interesting that he doesn't die later - I'm pretty sure he's the one they said survived but was in a coma or something. What happened to his kingdom in the time lapse? Was Kasef's mother in charge of the kingdom? Did he have younger siblings?

Would it even be a mercy for Ahling to wake up and find out what happened to his son?

I love how unimpressed Aanya is with Viren's offer of a story.

OKAY I NEED TO WRITE THIS SHIT DOWN, TIMELINE TIME, FIRST USEFUL THING VIREN'S EVER DONE, JESUS

Okay so this is interesting, Ezran is 10, but Harrow only became king 9 years ago. So Sarai married Prince Harrow. And he took the throne telling Sarai he wanted to make a difference from how his father ran things, which has implications for what Katolis used to be like.

Fellas, is it gay to call your best friend "beautiful" in wistful tones while staring at him getting his family portrait done, and only mention his beautiful family as an afterthought?

Also Viren telling them they could move without consulting the artist, who was clearly still working on the family portrait, was rude AF and if I was the painter (not that I can paint) I would have splattered his pretty clothes with the ugliest yellow on the palette. The best part is Harrow would have thought it was so funny I wouldn't even be in trouble for it.

Viren's account of the history does include Harrow inviting him to stand with him in the portrait, but it is just his retelling, even if it's animated as a flashback. We already know from Rayla's flashback earlier that characters' memories/stories aren't necessarily how things actually went in this universe, and it still bothers me that Harrow was frowning in his official portrait with Viren where Viren wasn't. I suspect he wasn't the one who suggested it after all.

Harrow and Sarai were such tender parents, my heart hurts watching them cuddle with baby Ezran. I like that Harrow's so acutely aware of the class distinctions in his country. It makes me think that's maybe what bothered him about his father's reign; that's what he's so dedicated to changing.

"Lady Justice?" His little smirk when he leaned back and told her "She was wearing her robes." He knew that's where her mind was going to go and he was so fond about it. "Ah, so a boring dream." She says while snacking. I love how casually supportive she is, while also trying to bring lightness to a situation that's clearly distressing him.

I do think it's intriguing that Harrow does mention skin color in his list of things that would affect a person's position in the system, given we don't really see evidence of that in the systems we witness. The races that matter are elf and human; colors within those divides don't have nearly as much of an effect on the story. Maybe I missed or forgot something - or maybe most of the story takes place after this, and Harrow just really succeeded in addressing the inequality.

Amaya standing beside Sarai on her throne is such a good little background detail. She was crownguard before she was a general, it seems. I wonder if Sarai was too, and that's how she met Prince Harrow. I saw a post point out a while back that Callum's three parents are Soldier (Sarai), Poet (Damien), King (Harrow), and now I can't get that out of my head as I think about them.

Says something about Viren's arrogance that he's telling Aanya this story of her parents' sacrifice as if she didn't grow up hearing it.

Poor Bait.

I love the background reactions to Harrow's offer of help to Annika and Neha. Sarai and Amaya are on his side. The reaction of the public doesn't seem to be poor - and realistically, most of the common people wouldn't know at that point how badly this offer of help might affect them. They would just know that their king is offering help to people in need. Viren's the only one who reacts with anger or dismay, and his reasons are fundamentally selfish. It's better to let others die when you can help, just to avoid sharing in their suffering, in his mindset, and Harrow just disagrees.

I wonder if Callum ever accidentally reminded Harrow of Viren. Carrying around stacks of books, bright-eyed and intellectual.

I wonder if he'll remind Harrow of Viren even more, as an adult mage, and how that may affect their relationship in Arc 3.

Viren just randomly having a piece of the magma titan supports my running theory that he just randomly goes on trips to Xadia to "harvest ingredients", likely stoking the fires of Xadian aggression.

His bitter af tone mentioning that he wasn't Harrow's closest advisor is telling. I'm so fucking suspicious.

The guards watching over this sparring match just standing stock still even as their monarchs bicker, and then throw a spear between them, and then exchanging money about it, give me life. I love those little details.

"Is it intelligent?" "What? What do you mean?" "Does it think? Does it feel? Does it have a family?" I like this moment so much because it frames Sarai as someone who values life, all life, right away. "Then is it the last of its kind?" We know she's a soldier. We also know that she doesn't fight because she hates what's in front of her; she doesn't even fight just to defend what's behind her. She fights when she believes she's minimizing harm.

She would have gotten along with Runaan, if they'd met in good circumstances, and that hits, for me personally.

It's interesting that Sarai is already so suspicious of Dark Magic. I wonder what experiences she's had with it up until now to make her so solidly convinced it's a bad idea. "You said you wanted to build a better world, to really change things. That's going to take decades of hard work. There's no monster you can slay and solve all your problems! There's no shortcut! This is going to be a very slippery slope! Harrow, tell me you won't do this."

"It's our only chance."

Something about how when Harrow did something Sarai vehemently disapproved of, she fought with him about it, and she never changed her position, but she stood by him anyway to keep him safe, contrasted with how when Harrow did something Viren disapproved of, he fought with him about it and trapped his soul in a bird and tried to murder his sons to stage a coup.

Amaya was going to go on this mission whether Sarai did or not. I like that, the contrast between them.

Funny how Viren said the Magma Titan lived near the Xadian border, but after he got Harrow to agree to the mission, turns out it's actually on the Xadian side of it. Which makes this significantly more dangerous.

Interesting. The hidden outpost from a couple episodes ago isn't new, which was the impression I got from how Fen and Amaya talked about it; it's where Harrow and his group are planning the assault on the Magma Titan. I wonder if that's true or a plot device for Viren's story. Or just because the animators didn't want to or didn't have time to make a new background site.

Harrow "talks with his hands", a lot, just gestures a lot while he talks, and Amaya cracking a joke about how "look he's signing" to make Sarai laugh was adorable, but it also makes my heart ache because. Callum does that. That's a bit of Harrow's mannerisms in Callum. Ezran doesn't do that as much, he's more like Sarai.

Funny how Viren's so confident about how they just need to "open it up and take what we need", but he doesn't make a move to actually assist in doing that. He leaves that to Amaya and Neha.

Callum talking to Bait about Harrow's letter made me cry again. This poor kid.

Okay, but the story telling choice of framing breaking the seal of Harrow's letter with breaking the shield of the magma titan was so powerful.

Little baby Ezran with Bait for a palate cleanser. I do appreciate those moments from the credits sketches.

[asbeel]

Beginning snippet of the destiel fic I started writing but I realised its too canon divergent so I stopped

A case had gone awry, as per usual, but the stakes have changed. It was meant to be a quick hunt, but a series of empty leads had strung the Winchester brothers and their guardian angel to become creative. Some research had revealed the attack patterns of the creature, which allowed the hunters to realise their new target is a pureblood werewolf. And so, the three reconvened in their motel-of-the-week to discuss their next course of actions.

“Makes sense.” Sam said, nodding in agreement. When all solutions had failed, it was Dean who proposed the idea. The plan was to use him as the worm on a hook, as he fit the profile for the werewolf's victims better than Sam had.

After years of hunting, the Winchester brothers had long desensitised to plans involving self endangerment. If Dean wanted to throw himself in front of a truck, nobody could stop him. “Simple, in-and-out.” Dean remarked, but he understood the possibilities.

“You lure it to a nearby forest—“

“Fake-out that son of a bitch.”

“Silver bullet to the heart.”

The two spoke almost recklessly. The brothers trust one another to stay alive, no matter the danger. Regardless, they never stay dead.

"No, that is a terrible idea." Castiel interjected. "We can not ensure your safety from afar... If you go along with this plan, I can not protect you."

As Dean looked down at Castiel where he sat at the bed, the angel looked at him in disbelief. For one fleeting moment, he feels the invisible handprints from that night.

"You don't get a say in this, Cas." Dean snapped, the sharp words rolling off his tongue. "Not after you got yourself willingly possessed by the fuckin' devil."

"It was a necessary loss—"

"My ass!" To any bystander, Dean was angry. But truthfully, a part of him felt betrayed. "What were you gonna do if Lucifer never left, huh? What if he never let you go?"

Castiel shot up from his seat, and a memory projected onto Dean's eyes: their lips meeting and continuing to find each other. "I did what I believed would take to destroy Amara, and I was willing to make that sacrifice to save the world."

Dean licked his lips and Castiel's eyes flick down for a split second— watching his tongue just like that night, but he was too frustrated to notice. “You think you can make decisions like that without consequences? There are people who get hurt from your self-sacrificial bullshit!”

At his brother’s outburst, Sam interrupted. “Alright, that’s enough—“

"Don’t pretend you are any more righteous than me, I am not half the hypocrite you are.” Castiel asserted.

Dean never thought before speaking, and this was no different. His policy on conversations was the same as his policy on hunting: kill first, talk later. "You're a fallen angel, Cas, you've never been righteous!”

"Dean—"

"And who's fault is that!?" Castiel's voice rang around the room as a nearby light bulb shattered.

The humane side of Dean screamed at him to stop, causing regret to flood his blood. His words left a bitter taste in his mouth, once carrying bitter lies, and his stomach filled heavy with rampaging cicadas at Castiel's outburst.

The two stare at each other in silence, anger bouncing between the walls. Castiel's eyes had always been on Dean's, which is something he revelled in that night. So when the angel hardened his gaze and looked away, the hunter felt his concrete heart shatter down to fine powder.

"Goodbye, Dean. I hope you find the werewolf." Castiel gave Sam a curt nod as a farewell before walking out of the door.

“Hold on— Cas!” Sam yelled after the angel.

Dean kept his back to the door, unable to bear the sight of Castiel leaving... again. The door slammed as he stormed away, causing Sam to pace around the room. Dean peered at the tall mirror in front of him, unsurprised to see an apathetic facade.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

For funsies, do you have thoughts about what pokemon each Cullen would be most likely to have? Like idk why but I picture Emmett with a Growlithe

I swear to god I had answered this somewhere but since I can't find it, I doubt others can find it.

Let's do it.

Alice

Per the Pokemon universe, Alice is very clearly a psychic and while a powerful one is more or less bog-standard and less terrifying than Sabrina.

I imagine Alice would have a Kadabra and they would have great fun together as Alice communicates for them and uses them to teleport her places she wishes to go.

Bella

Bella has an Eevee, not only is it appropriately normal/non-interesting looking but it's very vulnerable looking, weak compared to its potential evolutionary forms, and has that evolutionary potential to become almost anything for all Bella wouldn't really recognize that fact.

She'd love Eevee because it's a normal type, just like her, because Bella is so normal it hurts.

"Bella, that means only fighting types are super effective against you"

"I am so average."

Carlisle

Carlisle has a Chansey that becomes a Blissey that is his wife Esme. See, Carlisle was working at a Pokemon Center (as one does) and one day came in a tragic Chansey that had had to run away from its trainer and in the process lost its egg.

Everyone had given up on Chansey and Carlisle, cursing himself for being a vampire and probably terrifying the life out of her, ends up taking her home.

Chansey thrives in her new environment and, as all Chansey do, becomes progressively weird the more happy she is. Chansey evolves into a Blissey, a creature that will run at lightening speeds to offer you an egg in your time of need.

It is accepted in the Cullen household that Esme the Blissey is the Cullen mom. It's so accepted, they forget it's weird.

Bella comes to their house and Edward promises she'll love his mother.

Who is his mother?

The Blissey making Italian food in the kitchen because Isaballa is Italian right? (Despite Blissey only saying "Blissey" the plot does not change at all and Bella just assumes that when Blissey goes on a long chirping rant to her it's about how great Edward is.

Yeah, Edward must be her favorite blood sucking child.)

Edward

Edward doesn't have a pokemon.

This is because as a vampire he didn't want to corrupt a good, benign, pokemon with his presence (only the fact that Carlisle and Esme are so pure prevents him from feeling too terrible about Esme). So, Edward wants to gravitate towards more... ah... let's call them tempermental pokemon such as Gengar.

However, Edward doesn't actually want a Gengar, as he wants to be a good person worthy of the world, and a Gengar also doesn't want him for that same reason.

When he meets Bella, there's a dramatic moment where she helps him accept that he too can have a pokemon like a real boy. As Bella tells him what to get, and he wants to impress her, I imagine he gets a Dragonair as it's so beautiful and elegant, just like Bella thinks Edward is (he's never allowed to evolve it into a herp de derp Dragonite).

Emmett

Growlithe and Arcanine in the pokemon world I think are a little too associated with duty/law enforcement to quite be Emmett's thing. Growlithes, while dogs, are very much watch dogs and have a steadfast seriousness when it comes to protection/the law or what have you.

I'm really struggling with him, actually.

I'm going to go with Aipom, good natured but extremely mischievous (and perhaps a little short sighted) who love to live in groups and are just looking for a good time.

Emmett would think his Aipom is the shit.

Emmett also has a Magikarp because he thinks it's hilarious. Its name is Splash. He will never ever trade it.

Esme

Esme is a Blissey. See above.

Though, a happy (but weird), day might come about when coming back from doing the shopping (which Blissey happily does now without having to worry about eating people even if the towns people of Poke Forks are a little surprised that the Blissey is just out there shopping... alone... or going to parent teacher conferences and just... acting like people) and what do you know there's an egg.

"This is our egg, Carlisle" Esme the Blissey clearly pantomimes.

"Sure," is what Carlisle says because he doesn't want to disagree (and pokemon work in mysterious ways) but he did not do the thing that you know humans do to procreate.

Anyways, point being, Esme at one point might have a little Happiny.

Rosalie looks on it with envy because while she adores Esme, EsMe CaN HaVE ChiLDrEN anD isN't a VAmPIrE.

Jasper

Jasper has a Houndoom from his glory days at war. He tries to tell people it's not a Balrog.

Jasper is wrong, it is a Balrog.

Renesmee

There's a story here.

There is great debate over what pokemon Renemsee should get as it should be as special and wonderful as she is. Edward wants to give he ran Eevee, like her mother (Bella's Eevee having since evolved into some state Bella thinks is more cool/better) and for the symbolism of potential and growth that Eevees represent.

Bella wants to give her daughter a Dratini, something that will grow up to be beautiful and elegant and otherworldly (and never a Dragonite, never, it will only stay a Dratini).

Esme of course offers her beloved daughter Happiny (but isn't that your child Esme???) as well as an egg in Renesmee's time of need.

Alice wants her with something adorable like a Pichu, Azumarill, or what have you. It will look great in pictures. And must never ever be allowed to evolve.

Emmett wants to give her a Magikarp which they will name "Splash Two" or "Splashnesmee".

Jacob, of course, wants to give Renesmee a Mightyena because it's a wolf. "It will eat her face, Jacob" Bella does not want to do this even if she admits the symbolism is touching.

In all the bickering, Renesmee stumbles across a Cleffa (stumble being that a spaceship arrived and hit her in the face). Cleffa, being extremely rare and alien, is not recognized by the Cullens who stare and wonder "what is that thing".

Alice supposes it's cute, if not what she had in mind, she can work with this. Bella, Edward, and Jacob are all still upset and trying to get Renesmee to give the thing to Esme to raise so she can have their pokemon instead.

Renesmee ends up with all the pokemon, but does not get rid of Cleffa.

Rosalie

I actually put Rosalie as having a Chikorita. Chikoritas are steadfast, loyal to those they love, as well as courageous. While a Vulpix and Ninetales would appeal to Rosalie's aesthetics, being incredibly beautiful, Chikorita would have all the qualities she'd look for in a friend/partner that is a Pokemon while also being able to be nurturing/help with chores and things (via the use of helpful vines versus well fire balls).

[xcaptain-winterx]

Hey, I’m very excited for your Kinktober 2023 celebration!

Here’s my ask:

Character - Lloyd Hansen

Kink - Praise/Cuddling/Aftercare

Bonus - Werebear!Lloyd

Okay, so the idea is that Lloyd wasn’t always a werebear, but he got turned into one, just like how the witch in Beauty and the Beast turned the prince into a monster.

Werebear!Lloyd has found his mate and dragged her home. But even after she calmed down from being kidnapped, and then finding herself in a weirdly intense relationship with this creature/man… Lloyd is struggling with the bear’s instincts. They’re so different from his own. He liked rough, dirty sex that ended with him slipping out the door fifteen minutes after the deed was done. The bear wants to cuddle, and if he doesn’t get the appropriate amount of cuddling in, he’s on edge and cranky. Really cranky - and he takes it out on Lloyd.

Nowadays, Lloyd craves cuddling. He used to hate it. The bear inside of him demands he spend hours cuddling with his mate, multiple times per day. Lloyd finds that he needs to praise his mate. He has to gain her approval - the bear demands it. All of a sudden the selfish, rude, and vicious Lloyd Hansen has developed a teddy bear streak, thanks to finding his mate and he doesn’t know how to handle it.

How does he reconcile the werebear’s powerful instincts with the human side of his personality, especially when the bear’s need for softness with its mate refuses to be denied?

Little Cub

softdark werebear!Lloyd Hansen x reader

summary: above

warnings: small amount of fluff, monster kink, big dick, smut, rape, Lloyd being himself, humiliation, dark stuff, kidnapping, blood

a/n: English is not my first language, meaning you will probably find a lot of misspelling etc. I think I did a lot of mistakes in this fic. This is kinda a dark fic….just so you know. Will do another part if you request it

Main Masterlist Kinktober 2023 Masterlist

Lloyd Hansen Masterlist

Lloyd is planning how he’s going to torture the fucking cunt who cursed him into this beast. He perhaps was a monster, but still didn’t deserve that. His words. It’s not his fault that he didn’t want to kiss her. That bitch looked ugly as fuck.

He can still feel how his bones cracked and muscles twisted as he transformed. The painful screams he let out as he became the thing she cursed him to be in all eternity.

A bear. A giant light brown bear with sharp claws and teeth.

There’s not a moment he isn’t reminded of what he is now, even when he isn’t in his other form. From his now sharper and longer finger nails to how his body is now covered in more hair, though, he must say, he likes the mustache.

Not only is his normal physical form now different. Lloyd is so hungry all the time and mostly for meat. Problem is that he’s alone in his castle with no staff or anyone to bring him food. Well, there once were people, but his hunger got the best of him. Now, he’s all alone. He’s forced to go into the woods and hunt for whatever living creature he sees. On lucky days, he finds humans in the forest, hunting or just taking a walk, but most days he just finds deers, bunnies or wolfs.

The hunger isn’t his biggest problem though, no, it’s how fucking hard he gets for no reason at all 24/7. He could be sitting down in one of many lounge areas and suddenly get a boner without thinking of anything slightly dirty. It’s not like he doesn’t have needs and jacks himself off a lot, but this is way different. It’s painful. When he tries to ignore it, he feels how the beast is making him feel like a thousand bullets are piercing through his skin. Like needles are boring through his bones and muscles. His muscles tense, his nails getting longer, veins popping until he transforms into what he hates most. Once transformed, the need to breed is so strong he humps everything which is near him, trying to get rid of the pain. In his other form, he doesn’t feel like him. It’s like he’s only half himself. The bear is a constant voice in his head, making him insane.

Over time, Lloyd got better at controlling it, but the smallest things could set the beast in him free. He only leaves his castle to hunt for food. He can’t even drink his sorrows away because he already drank every bottle in the castle….in just three months.

Oh, but Lloyd would’ve never guessed how lucky he would get today when he goes to hunt in the woods.

Today, you are on a walk in the forest. The sky is covered in thick grey clouds. It’s getting grayer by every passing second. You just wanted to go on a quick walk to clear your head, but got lost, though you are not panicking. You would be, if you knew what was going to happen because not so far away you caught the attention of the hungry eyes of Lloyd. His pupils are dilated that there is no white anymore. Your sweet smell making his dick painfully hard. Lloyd already smelled you miles away, running immediately into the forest when he first caught the smell of your scent.

You walk down an old path, asking yourself how you get out of the forest, until you hear something. You turn around, but see nothing. A breath leaves your lungs you didn’t know you held in. Just as you are about to continue down the path, you come face to face, well, more like face to chest, with the chest of a big man. Hair is covering his entire chest and as you move your eyes upwards, you can see his dark eyes staring right into your soul.

You don’t move, you can’t move. You’re too scared to make a move.

“Run, rabbit” he says, flashing you his sharp teeth in a cocky manner. Fear finally crosses your face, and a scream leaves your mouth as the man slowly starts to get bigger. You take off and run away, his laugh fallowing you. You run through the woods, like your life depends on it because it probably does. There’s no explanation that you can think of as to what he is. You just know that he’s not good.

It starts to rain, first, only small drops before a full on shower. The once dry ground is now muddy and slippery, making you almost slip. The falling raindrops are hitting your cheeks and making it sting like needles. You almost don’t hear a loud growl behind you due to the rain. It’s getting closer and closer.

In your panic you don’t see the wet mud line before you and the next thing you know, you slipped out and fell into the mud, but at least not face first.

You turn around in the mud to see a giant bear in-front of you, looking at you with his cold dead eyes. The color of his fur, the sharp teeth and the look he is giving you makes you realize that this monster in front of you is the man.

You somehow can’t scream, even as the beast jumps at you and presses you deeper into the mud and before you know it, this monster raises his claw and rips your clothes off in one swift move. You try to get out from under him with no luck.

He’s too big.

The beast sniffs you before grazing his teeth over your collarbone to your stomach. Silent tears start to run down your face.

It suddenly puts a claw on your left shoulder and presses your right leg up, putting you in an uncomfortable position. You feel something hard touch your pussy and it’s then when it dawns on you what is going to happen.

The monster doesn’t give you a chance before slamming his dick into your pussy, giving you no time to adjust. This time you scream. You scream like you are getting torn apart because you literally are. It feels like someone is cutting you open.

Lloyd doesn’t care about your screaming or your tears, he’s desperate for this, no matter how fucked up it is. He’s diving into your pussy over and over again. As Lloyd thrusts into you, his furry hips slapping against yours in a primal rhythm. He growls low in his throat as he takes you, his thrusts deep and powerful.

You feel pain with only a little bit of pleasure. Even if you know your climax is approaching, you are begging him to stop. The begging coming out as screams for mercy.

Lloyd’s thrusts are growing deeper and more powerful, his groans echoing through the woods. He doesn’t care that you come around his dick and neither that you start coating his dick in your blood. He thrusts faster into you before shooting his sperms into your pussy with a loud roar.

Your eyes widen a last time as his cum fills you up before the black around your vision takes over. This doesn’t stop Lloyd though, from rutting into your passed out form again and again, needing to release.

Once Lloyd is done, he pulls out of you, automatically growling, well, more like the beast in him, as his sperm spills out of your abused pussy. Still in his beast form, he turns to make his way back to the castle, but something pulls him back.

The beast.

It’s making his body feel like it’s on fire, burning down with no way of putting it out. He falls to the ground, feeling like he’s going to die until he smells you. Lloyd looks over at you, not understanding why you stopped the monster’s torture on him. He slowly manages to get up and goes over to you, grunting before biting into your leg and pulling you with him to his castle.

As he arrives, he drags down to the cells. Lloyd grunts as his body becomes smaller again once he lets go of your leg. The hair falling down, the ears vanishing and his teeth and claws shrinking. He stands up, getting used to his body again, feeling exhausted now that he feels all the orgasms he had. Having an orgasm as a bear is like having three orgasms and he had five bear orgasms. He is ready to go to sleep.

His eyes move to you before he walks out of the room, not staring at your naked body, but your soft face framed by your beautiful hair. He shakes his head as he realizes what he’s doing and walks out, slamming the cell behind him and locking it.

Your body is in pain is the first thing you realize as you come back from what felt like the dead. You open your eyes, blinking a few times before you start to realize where you are. Curses leave your mouth as you try to move your body, deciding to just stay in the position for a while as the pain grows bigger every time you try to move. You look at the room from the ground, gray stone walls, no windows, cold hard stone ground and prison bars as a door.

“No no no no no” you say over and over again, panicking at the fact of where you are. You manage to move in an upward position, letting your back rest against the cold stones. A deep pain interrupts from your leg as you move it and as you look down at it, you see a deep bite mark. It’s still red and bloody, looking like out of a true horror movie. Not only that, but you can also see the dried blood on your body at your pussy. The rest of your body, including your hair, is covered in now dry mud.

You cry as you remember what happened, the beast catching you and fucking you in the mud. You don’t know how you got here, but looking at the bite mark, you can imagine that wherever you are, the monster is here too.

“Stop crying so fucking loud” a voice whispers aggressively from behind the bars.

You lift your head to look at the voice and see the man from the woods, the man who transformed into a monster.

“Go away!” you scream at him.

The man sighs and throws his head back, annoyed. He pushes himself off the wall and leans with his head pressed on the bars. A mocking pout spreads on his face.

“Aww, is the girl scared of the bad big bear?”

You wipe your tears away, looking at him with pure rage. “Fuck you”.

Lloyd laughs, his sharp teeth shining brightly in the moonlight from the small window. “Again? You truly are a freaky hell of a woman” he says, winking at you.

The veins in your neck are about to pop as you charge at him. Well, try to charge at him, but your legs give midway out, falling right onto your knees.

“Cute” he says, looking unimpressed.

You lay defeated on the floor, feeling dirty and gross. You wished you never would have entered the woods.

He looks at you, feeling weird, like he feels a deep pain in his heart. Pity? Sadness? Regret? God knows what it is, but Lloyd doesn’t like it. He can feel the beast inside him starting to get hectic, needing to be pet out.

His gaze wanders to you once again. Normally, he would have killed his victims by now or eaten them, but the beast won’t let him eat you, even though you taste so delicious.

Lloyd thinks for a moment, before asking, “what’s your name?”.

“Why should I tell you my name?”

Lloyd opens the door. “Because I’m hungry and your blood smells delicious”.

You gulp and say “My name is y/n”.

He steps closer and crouches down in front of you, grabbing your face and pulling it harshly as you try to move your head away from his soft touch.

“Such a pretty name to such a pretty face and pussy” Lloyd says smelling your dirty hair.

Not only can he smell you but also you him. You smell a dark woody smell mixed with sweet apple. Two opposite smells, one sweet and the other a strong manly smell, but they still fit together like two sides of the same coin. Now that he’s so close, you can analyze his face, from his thick mustache to his light freckles and beautiful eyes that aren’t as dark as you remembered them to be.

“Are you going to kill me?” you ask, trying not to shake out of fear.

Lloyd’s eyes move to meet yours, his eyes boring into you. He thinks for a minute, trying to ignore the beast before making a decision.

“No”

“N-No?” you look at him slightly confused. You truly thought he would kill you.

Lloyd lets go of your face and stands up and then simply walks out of the cell, not locking it. You think for a second of escaping. It’s a now or never situation, but you know you wouldn’t make it far in your condition and you are not that keen on seeing the monster in his form again, so you wait and are happy with your decision because not a second later he walks back in the cell with a bucket in his hand.

As he comes closer, you see that he is carrying a bucket filled with water and a wet cloth hanging on the side. Once in front of you, he puts the bucket down, making water splash down from the side.

“Clean up” Lloyd says, looking down at you. You nod, waiting for him to walk away, but he doesn’t, he just continues to stare at you.

You don’t know what to do; you don’t want him to watch your naked form even more. He looks like he’s waiting patiently for you to do something.

Just as you are about to grab the cloth and clean yourself, thinking he wants to watch you, he kicks your arm away from the bucket, making you wince.

“Oh, thank you, Lloyd, for being so nice and giving me something to clean up. How kind of you” Lloyd says sarcastically. He got you something to clean up with and you don’t even bother to thank you. Typical women.

You can’t believe what you are hearing. This man, monster, who kidnapped you, raped you and hurt you wants a thank you. Not only are you confused as to his demands, but you also just learned that his name is Lloyd.

“Are you deaf!”

Lloyd’s screaming brings you back and you quickly shake your head. “Thank yo-“

“Is that what I told you to say!” he screams again.

“You told me to thank you and that’s what I-“ you can’t finish your sentence because Lloyd splashes some of the water on you.

“Say ‘thank you, Lloyd, for being so nice and giving me something to clean up. How kind of you’. Now!”

“But-“ he sprinkles with his fingers some water on you again.

“Say. It”. You wipe your face before finally saying what Lloyd wants you to say. He grins as he stands straight again, but the grin doesn’t seem evil this time. It looks like a happy grin and if you look closely, you could see a small blush. Lloyd walks after soon after you said at, leaving you alone in the locked. Just as he’s about to walk around the corner, he turns back to you.

“Maybe you last longer than the last ones”

With that, he fully leaves, leaving your scared form alone.

The sky is pitch black and the air of the night cold as you are woken from your slumber by footsteps. You know there is only one other person in this place and you don’t want to see him. You act like you are still asleep, facing the wall, trying not to move, which is hard because you are freezing.

After you washed yourself with the bucket of water, you forgot you don’t have something to dry yourself with it or even to sit your ass on. The cold floor and the air are making you shake like crazy. You won’t be surprised if you catch a cold.

The footsteps come closer and closer. The closer they get, the more you notice those footsteps are heavy and sound like more than two feet.

A shiver runs down your spine as you realize who-or what, it is.

You lay your face more into the floor, trying to sink into it, scared of what will happen soon. You can still feel his seeds inside you.

The footsteps stop in front of the cell and put a hand over your mouth. With some luck, the beast will just walk away if it sees you asleep. All hope is lost though, as the lock rattles. It rattles for some seconds before it stops.

Maybe it can’t open it in this form. Maybe it will walk away.

A scream almost leaves your lips as the beast suddenly trashes against the cell, trying to get in. It doesn’t take long before the cell door slams open. A tear slips down your cheek as the monster walks into the cell. Everything comes flashing back from when the beast was on top of you, slamming into you repeatedly. You hear it come closer and just beg god to let it be over fast. The claws of the beast turn you onto your back, but he doesn’t get on top of you. Instead of getting on top of you, the bear lays his head on your stomach, snuggling into you.

You are shocked at that action, not understanding what’s going on. You hold your breath, waiting for something to happen, but nothing does.

You open your eyes and see the bear with closed eyes on your stomach, looking like a big puppy. As confused and freaked out as you are, you don’t complain.

He’s so warm.

After a while, when you are sure he’s 100% sure he’s asleep, you dare to put your hand on his head. He stops snoring as you do it, before continuing letting out soft snores.

You smile, seeing this huge bear be soft, even though he’s a monster-well, you don’t really know what he is.

This doesn’t mean you like him, though.

No.