#Pervasive Nothingness

[turiyatitta]

In the Midst of Unseen Certainty

In the theatre of the cosmos, I find myself seated at the crossroads of belief and disbelief. On one hand, the theist, passionately defending his faith, on the other, the atheist steadfastly voicing his skepticism. I observe this dialogue as an unbiased spectator, each side offering a symphony of thoughts that forms a rich intellectual melody that resonates within me. The perspectives of both…

[zaebeecee]

To Sever a Loveless Bond

••RadioDust Soulmate AU••

Part 21/?

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Read on AO3

•••

I know it’s been over a month but to make up for it this chapter is nearly 10k words and a whole lot of stuff happens. Like… a whole lot of stuff. Thank you again for sticking with me, y’all, you mean the world to me.

I headcanon Alastor as having had hEDS in life. Also, in our house we call Vox’s assistant Blink in fanfic because we need to call him something

CW for violence, non-consensual/forced nudity, various forms of torture, slut shaming, Vox being a creepy fuck, blood ritual stuff, electricity super fucking Alastor up in the short term

•••

Alastor and pain were not, nor had they ever been, strangers to one another.

It was true, of course, that he quite enjoyed causing harm of both the physical and the emotional variety to those around him… and the psychological, when opportunity knocked. However, he knew pain much too intimately for such knowledge to come from base violence and chaos; it was a gift that life had begun to give him at a young age, his body plagued with a strange malady that neither his maman nor the few doctors they could afford were able to identify. It caused him pain most every moment of every day, and that, in turn, transformed the pain into something… else, something almost familiar and comfortable.

There even came a time that Alastor had convinced himself that pain was no longer a hindrance for him. Of course, there were different kinds of pain, but when one could never escape from it, embracing it became second nature.

The pain that jarred Alastor out of the nothingness of unconsciousness and into the wakeful dark was nothing like the pain of his life, nor like any other pain he had felt in the time since. An odd sort of tingling sensation lay across every inch of his skin, pervasive and just irritating enough to be impossible to ignore; it persisted until he tried to make any movement at all, at which point the fuzzy, staticky sensation spiked quite immediately into the pain of a thousand hot needles piercing through skin and muscle and deep into bone. His breath came in a sharp and ragged gasp as his eyes flew open, focusing on a neon-edged black abyss that stretched endlessly above him before he was forced to screw them shut again.

“You’re getting soft, Alastor.”

That voice, always an unpleasant intruder in his everyday life when simply heard through a television speaker, was more biting than the hurt that wracked his body as it seemed to slice into his eardrums with its brusque, smug self-satisfaction. Alastor gritted his teeth, lip curling as he forced one eye open again, attempting to look around through the red lens of his monocle only to find that it had been taken off of him.

“Not very hospitable surroundings, old pal,” Alastor hissed with all the venomous sarcasm he could muster in the moment. “Losing your touch at playing host?”

“Perhaps not hospitable, but certainly appropriate.” Vox wasn’t in his line of sight, and Alastor took a moment to try and figure out where the fuck, exactly, he was. He was lying flat on his back on a hard, unyielding surface, metal fastened about his wrists, his legs, and the middle of his abdomen. His clothing had been removed, and he could feel that something thin and sharp had been pushed into his flesh along most of his major muscle groups down his arms, legs, and abdomen, but he couldn’t tell what it was. And his strength… it felt like every ounce of his control over his body and his power had been siphoned from him. “Are you feeling proud of yourself?” Vox asked.

“Usually,” Alastor said, keeping his voice flippant as his grin tightened. “About what, specifically?”

Alastor heard Vox’s footsteps before he saw him. The other overlord stepped up to the slab he was lashed down to—bolted to, really—and stared down at him with that… look that he got when he was (as Alastor had always put it back in the day) ‘thinking like a capitalist’. It was something that was trying for cold and appraising, but was full of too much… greed? Hunger? Alastor didn’t know what to call it, but whatever it was, there was too much for his gaze to truly be called dispassionate.

Vox was maintaining his calm, a fairly impressive feat these days. “You actually allowed yourself to be baited. By Valentino,” the television overlord said with what sounded like every ounce of derision he possessed. “And you always fancied yourself above such base behavior.”

Alastor giggled as a pain stabbed his chest from the inside, like a knife shoving up through his sternum. “Says the one who’s simply let Valentino use him as a meal ticket for the past forty years.”

“I wouldn’t be laughing if I were you,” Vox snarled, a crack in that carefully-constructed image he so dutifully maintained. One of his hands hit the table beside Alastor’s head and he leaned forward to loom over the Radio Demon as Alastor turned his face away, still snickering. “You aren’t exactly in an advantageous position here, Alastor. Do you really want to push me right now?”

“Of course not,” Alastor said with a false contrition, his eyes cutting over to Vox while his face remained turned away. “These newfangled flatscreens topple so easily. I would be absolutely mortified if I broke your face again.”

Fury passed across Vox’s screen for a moment… but only a moment. It calmed, quite suddenly, as he raised his other hand and extended his index finger. Alastor had only a moment to wonder what the actual fuck was happening before Vox touched one of the somethings buried in his arm.

“FUCK!!” Alastor screamed, the word torn from his lips unbidden, as a horrific jolt of unadulterated and pure agony shot through his arm, down into his fingers and up into his shoulder and neck. His hand spasmed, joints cracking and claws gouging the metal table, as his head snapped to nearly lean his ear against his shoulder. The next moment, the overwhelming sensation of active torture vanished, leaving behind a throbbing hurt and the occasional uncontrolled twitch of his fingers and shoulder.

Alastor gasped for breath against the feeling of a heavy weight on his chest, his smile widening as he focused on Vox’s face, studying him as though he were a mildly interesting test audience for a new pilot. “What…” Alastor’s voice gave out, and his head twitched, before he managed to focus again. “…the fuck… did you do…?”

Vox raised an eyebrow. “You’re providing me with intensely useful metrics,” he said. “I had an idea for a new game show, but I hadn’t had the chance to actually perform any meaningful tests to determine what, precisely, would be an appropriate range. After all, it has to be painful enough to be entertaining, but not so painful that the contestants will either pass out or explode too quickly.”

Alastor curled his lip. “I am not your test subject.”

“You… are, actually.” Vox smiled at him, a smile that was nasty and cold and nothing like what he let most other people see. “Listen. Alastor. You are the one who elected to enter into my domain. You nearly tore the damn building down. If I let you go, you’d just proceed to destroy everything you could get your hands on.”

“Obviously,” Alastor hissed.

Vox ignored the interjection. “So, clearly, I can’t release you; it’s not in the company’s best interest. And, if I have you here anyway, I may as well make use of you.”

The word brought the taste of bile into Alastor’s mouth, and he jerked against his bindings, but his body felt… weak. It was as though it didn’t want to obey the commands of his brain. “I am going to free myself from this little contraption of yours, and the moment I do, I am going to fucking kill you.”

“I’m sure you’ll try,” Vox allowed. “But we both know that if you could kill me, you would have already done it.” He turned away, going back to whatever he had been doing out of Alastor’s line of sight. “To answer your question, I’ve inserted silver-plated wires into your muscles. Silver is the most conductive metal, so it will be the most efficient in transferring electricity directly into your flesh. I’m going to gauge your responses to different levels of electrical shock in different places. And you can try to break out all you like, but your nervous system and your brain aren’t communicating right now, and probably won’t be until long after I’m done here.”

Alastor found himself laughing, the sound high and weak as he struggled to breathe, as though the electric shock had flattened his lungs. “And you say I’m sick.”

“You are,” Vox said. “But I really do have to ask. How, exactly, was it that Val got you to come here?”

Alastor snorted. “Why so curious?”

“Because Val is an idiot. But you were so very upset when you arrived.” Vox returned to the table and leaned his hip against it, folding his arms as he looked down at Alastor once more. “I’m sure it will interest you to know that Angel Dust is with him again.”

Alastor wasn’t sure what, precisely, his face did when Vox said that. Whatever it was, though, it was clear that Vox wasn’t expecting it. The television overlord’s eyes widened for a moment before narrowing, his teeth gritting visibly and his left eye spasming briefly. Alastor kept his own voice as steady as he could. “You can’t keep me here forever, Vox,” he said, his voice low. “When I am done with you, and when I am done with Valentino, there will not be enough of you left to even whimper in the radio chorus.”

“I can’t believe you’re doing all of…” Vox’s screen glitched, and he shook it a little, clearing the image. “You’re endangering yourself, debasing yourself, degrading yourself, and for what? A common whore?”

Alastor’s smile sharpened. “The fact that you think he’s common shows how incomparably myopic you are, Vox.”

Years ago, Alastor had realized that he had never truly understood Vox’s mind or how it worked. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking at any given moment, and his motivations (particularly where Alastor himself was concerned) had always been downright unfathomable. That was why, Alastor supposed, he couldn’t predict Vox’s movements when he suddenly held up another silver-plated wire in his clenched fist and slammed it down into Alastor’s arm, piercing straight through the little spider in the crook of his elbow.

Alastor’s scream morphed into laughter that sounded unhinged even to himself, punctuating continued shrieks of agony as electricity shuddered into his soulmate mark. Eventually, it didn’t even sound like it was coming from his own mouth, his consciousness disconnecting and reconnecting as though trying to find a particularly weak station signal on an old radio.

You can’t keep me here forever, Vox.

He knew that more he repeated it, the easier it would become to believe.

•••

Angel stumbled across the bare tile floor and slammed into the wall across from the doorway, unable to catch himself to cushion the blow to his shoulder and the side of his head. His teeth ground together as his socked feet slowly slid across the cold ceramic, his body slipping down the wall in what felt like slow motion until he landed on his hip in an inelegant, uncomfortable slump.

He could still see the agony on Alastor’s face as he collapsed, hear the soft buzz of electricity as he twitched involuntarily, like the moment now seared into his memory had happened moments ago when, at this point, it had to have been more than four hours. When Valentino had dragged him from the studio and into the nearest room with a surface flat enough to pretend to be a bed, he had proceeded to treat Angel like a rag doll, beating him and touching him, taking out what seemed to be every frustration he had built up since the 70s on Angel’s defenseless flesh. He had once thought he could never feel more worthless and disgusting, but Valentino had proven him wrong. Angel hadn’t even been aware of leaving the room, only vaguely registering that he was being dragged down the hallway before Valentino opened a nondescript door and threw him inside.

“I have given you everything you have.”

He tried not to let his pain show on his face. He really did. Even so, Angel could feel the corners of his eyes pinching with pain as he slowly opened them and looked up at Valentino, the overlord standing in the doorway, blocking it with his arms and the cape-like wings that twitched, threatening to open. Valentino would have almost looked dispassionate, were it not for the blood on his claws and spattering the front of his shirt.

Angel’s blood.

The same blood now smeared on the wall behind him, marking the path of his descent like the trail of a large and dying snail.

Angel didn’t answer, and Valentino took his silence as response enough, baring his teeth and digging gouges in the doorframe. “You were nothing before I found you,” he hissed. “Nothing. And without me, you would always be nothing. After everything I have given you, this is how you repay me?”

Angel had never felt so tired in his entire life. Something deep in his mind told him that this, right here, was it. This was going to be the rest of his life. Valentino was stupid, sure, but he wasn’t a complete idiot, and he must have grown his extra hands to make it easier to hold a grudge because the porn overlord had never and would never forgive what he determined to be a true betrayal. In Valentino’s eyes, Angel had betrayed him; no amount of apologizing or flattery or cocksucking would ever be enough to lift him out of the hole he had dug himself into. It wouldn’t be enough for Valentino to turn him out, of course—no, Valentino would much rather make Angel Dust’s life an active Hell for the rest of eternity—but it would be hanging over him for the rest of time, unless he threw himself on an exorcist’s spear during the next extermination.

Angel’s voice was flat in his own ears when he spoke. “Fuck you, Val.”

Valentino’s eye twitched behind his sunglasses. “You will eat those words, Angel Dust,” he said. Angel thought he might leave then, but instead, he said, “He will never love you.”

I know that.

Still, hearing it out loud, and from Valentino of all people, cut through Angel’s haze of numbness with a hot blade that seemed to slice into his core. He flinched, but he didn’t say anything, and because Valentino’s vision sucked, he didn’t notice.

He also didn’t stop.

“You’re more brainless than I thought, amorcito,” Valentino said with a remarkable level of control. “To believe that someone like you could be enough to sway the Radio Demon? You’re gutter trash, a filthy crack whore who would sell out his own family for a dime bag. He won’t look twice at the best this shithole has to offer. What makes you think something like you could change that?”

It would have been easier to take if Valentino had been yelling, but he wasn’t. No, it was that soft, mocking tone he took when he knew he’d found one of the flaws that made a crack in Angel’s psyche big enough for him to dig his claws into and pour his words in like poisonous smoke. Angel wanted to tell him to go fuck himself again, but he was so… tired.

Angel lowered his head. Valentino said something about not trusting him on his own while he checked on the status of the building, and then he left, closing the door behind him. Angel heard the click of the lock, the slow retreat of footsteps… and then nothing.

Slowly, Angel raised his head again, glancing around at where he had been left now that Valentino wasn’t around to observe his mild curiosity and trepidation. It looked like one of the many, many storage rooms VoxTek had scattered around the building; very few of them had a dedicated purpose, instead serving as a place to put furniture or equipment when rooms on the floor were being cleaned or the tech was being updated or any number of other reasons you might want bulky items neatly stacked somewhere out of the way.

This particular storage room appeared to be currently in disuse, the only other thing inside (besides Angel himself) being a bare, stark white lightbulb set high in the ceiling with no visible switches to turn it off. Outside of that, he saw nothing but bare off-white walls and bare white tile, both only marred by Angel’s blood where he had smeared it along the wall and let it drip onto the floor. It was almost blinding, and Angel screwed his eyes shut, letting his head fall back with a soft thud of impact that shouldn’t have hurt but sent pain shuddering all along his spine.

Now that he was alone, Angel felt nothing but pain. Cold seeped into his skin through his socks, the only clothing he had been allowed—and only because Valentino hadn’t bothered to rip them off—and he shivered, wrapping his arms around his bent legs and burying his face in his knees. The mark on his leg pulsed softly, like a heartbeat, and he realized he was crying.

This is so fucking pathetic, he thought, even though he was well aware that berating himself wouldn’t do shit for him or anyone else. All he wanted to do was get out of this room, find Alastor, and get both of them out of there. He’d happily break Vox’s screen if that was what it took.

No matter how badly he wanted to do something, to do anything at all besides sit uselessly in a closet trying to stop crying, he knew it was useless because even if he did manage to find Alastor and free him and even actually stand up to Vox, Valentino could use that fucking chain to stop him. It would be trivial. It wouldn’t help. It might even make Alastor’s situation worse.

Then again, you’re making a lot of assumptions. Alastor might not even still be here. How could Vox keep him? Why would he stay?

Why did he come here in the first place?

Angel sniffled, raising his head just enough to rub his eyes and listening to any sounds he could pick up coming from anywhere else in the building. Even though the power had come back on, it sounded like most of the systems weren’t currently running; more than likely, a ton of fuses had blown, and it would probably take a while to fix them. Since he couldn’t hear the omnipresent and overbearing electric hum that usually followed him whenever he was in this damn place, he was able to pick up the distant and muffled sound of voices somewhere below him, even more distant equipment banging and crashing as employees dealt with the aftermath of Alastor’s rampage, and a hollow sort of nothingness that came with the knowledge that he was alone and no one would be coming for him until Valentino decided to let him out.

Angel’s breath hitched in a sob and he cursed himself, pressing the heels of two hands into his eyes. “Stop it,” he muttered to himself, but it did nothing to stem the burgeoning tide of tears burning as they leaked out through tightly-clamped eyelids and soaked his palms. A third hand balled into a fist and struck the wall behind him, a sensation that did nothing but increase his frustration and make him wish he had something considerably more fleshy to rip apart. “Stupid,” he hissed, not even certain who he was saying it to anymore. He needed to think of something, but his mind was so—

A cold hand wrapped around Angel’s wrist and he screamed, jerking away and striking out at the sudden intruder. His hand hit nothing but air until his knuckles collided with the wall in a sharp snap that made him gasp with pain, yanking it back and cradling it to his chest. Nothing else touched him.

“What the fuck?” Angel whispered, rubbing tears from his eyes to clear his vision. There was nothing else in the room, just him, that blinding lightbulb, his blood, and his shadow.

No. Not his shadow.

Angel’s eyes widened as his vision adjusted and he could actually tell what he was looking at. Alastor’s shadow was on the wall beside him, back a couple of feet as though giving him room. There was something almost apologetic in the way the dark, angular, contorted figure held its hands and the way its mouth twisted into the sort of deep and worried frown Alastor’s own face seemed incapable of wearing. As Angel lowered his arm, raised on instinct to guard his face, the shadow seemed to relax minutely and return to a shape more familiar but no less off-putting.

“…Alastor…” Angel felt as though his heart was breaking at the same moment as the very sight of that shadow caused it to swell, two of his hands moving to the floor between his knees so he could lean forward and reach out a third hand. Angel rubbed his eyes with his fourth hand, sniffling wetly and clearing his throat. “Hey, Big Guy, come back, it’s okay,” he said, the words coming out as a rough murmur.

The shadow tilted its head, in a sense, before drifting across the wall back towards Angel. It reached out towards him, then stopped, twitching sharply like it was in pain.

“…!” Angel slid back over to the wall, placing his hands against the surface; as his fingers touched the blackness that formed the shadow, he felt that depthless cold again, the same that he felt every time Alastor had swept him into his own personal darkness. “What’s wrong?” he asked, pushing past the hurt of his ruined throat. “Are you— is he—…” He wasn’t sure how to ask what he meant.

The shadow’s twitching stilled, its form shifting in minute ways like it was actually catching its breath. Its face tilted down towards Angel’s hands before it moved its own arms, and as it did, Angel watched its shadowy fingers cascade across the backs of his own hands, like it was entwining their hands. The cold made him shiver, but he didn’t move away; even if his fingers had gone numb, he would have stayed right where he was.

“I’m so sorry,” Angel murmured. He reached up a third hand, but didn’t touch the wall. Instead, he watched his own shadow move closer until it touched Alastor’s. Instantly, as though it could feel his shadow hand like a real touch, it tilted into the touch and began practically nuzzling his shadow palm with the top of its head. Even though Angel wasn’t touching the wall, he could have sworn he felt the ruffle of hair, the hard ridge of an antler, and even the soft fur of an ear against his palm and fingers. “I don’t know what to do,” he confessed, watching as the shadow kept pressing its head against the silhouette of his hand. “Val locked me in here and won’t let me out until he comes back.” The shadow’s mouth twisted into a snarl, as if the very mention of Valentino had triggered some sort of rage within it. “And even if I…” Angel shook his head, moving his fingers to make his shadow scritch the manifestation’s ear. “…he won’t let me out of his sight. I know he won’t.”

At those words, Alastor’s shadow straightened, and as it removed its hands from Angel’s, it felt like he had suddenly dipped his fingers into hot water, so sudden was the return of warmth to his skin. The shadow hesitated at Angel’s surprised gasp, but it swept along the walls until it reached the door, and within moments, it had vanished through the crack at the base.

“Wait…!” Angel called, but the shadow was out of sight before he even thought of getting the word out. Slowly deflating, Angel had less than a breath to wonder what he was going to do now when he heard a tiny click from the door. Angel gasped, backing away, but it didn’t open. It didn’t sound like anyone was out there at all, least of all Valentino and his unbridled rage.

When he heard nothing else, Angel slowly got to his feet, placing his hand on the handle and pressing down. With another little click, the door creaked open, and Angel carefully peered out into the dim hallway. There was no one else, not even the terrifying and comforting shape of Alastor’s shadow lurking in the dark. The rooms sounded completely empty, everyone who normally would have been on the floor doubtless busy with the destruction happening far below him.

Angel glanced back at the closet, then made his decision and closed it behind him, twisting the lock with his thumb. He then ran down the hall, heading for the stairwell that would take him to a back hall he could use to reach his dressing room. Valentino wouldn’t check there first, second, or even third, and he had clothes in there that he could change into while he was thinking. He didn’t have a lot of time and he needed to make the most of the little he did have.

Alastor was somewhere in the building, after all, and Angel wasn’t going to leave him, soul contract be damned.

•••

It had been a long time since the vibe (that was the right word, right?) of the hotel had felt this… off. The Hazbin Hotel had its problems, just like any business, and the residents sometimes had their problems, but the atmosphere wasn’t usually this heavy. In fact, this was as bad as it had gotten since the evening after the last extermination.

Charlie had been yelled at for pacing, which meant she was now standing behind the front desk, watching everyone else. Niffty was still hanging out with Husk, who was doing his best to keep her occupied while they waited for any kind of news, silently validating Charlie’s own opinion that he really was a sweetheart under all of his grumpiness. Cherri was sitting with the guy apparently named Arackniss, who was also apparently Angel Dust’s brother, and Charlie would have eaten a whole pinecone for the chance to ask him just… so many questions if it wasn’t for the fact that this was definitely not the time. Moxxie, Millie, and Loona were only a short distance from them; occasionally, it looked like the five of them were interacting a little, but for the most part were just waiting for news (and, in I.M.P.’s case, for their boss to come back).

Charlie knew how they felt. She was certain everything was fine and there was no question that contract things could take a long time, but she couldn’t stand not knowing where Vaggie was. She pulled out her phone, but her girlfriend still hadn’t sent her anything since the text saying Prince Stolas was looking the contract over, and that had been forever ago.

The wait was driving her insane, and Charlie was trying to come up with something that she could do to pass the time (that wouldn’t end with Husk yelling at her to sit down) when the front door opened with an abrupt jerk.

Immediately, Charlie was alert, and she saw that awareness spread through the rest of the room as everyone diverted their attention to Vaggie and Blitzø as they came in, the imp shutting the door behind him. He pointed at Charlie as they approached, Charlie herself hopping over the desk and hurrying over to meet them halfway. “Your girlfriend flies like a fucking maniac,” Blitzø said, his voice winded.

Vaggie looked entirely unapologetic, and didn’t even look at him as she pulled the folded contract from her pocket. Charlie clasped her hands together in front of her chest as everyone else began gathering, some at more of a distance than others. “So? How did it go?”

“He found a loophole,” Vaggie said, offering the contract out for Charlie to take, which she did almost on reflex. “We just have to figure out how to get it to work.”

“How to—?” Charlie blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not going to pretend I perfectly understood everything he said,” Vaggie said, glancing at Blitzø; he shrugged at her, and she turned back to Charlie. “But in a nutshell, the contract is still active because Valentino keeps increasing the value of his soul. Because of the wording in the contract, since he’s lived here for six months, you now have the power to do that. If you change the value to less than he’s made for VoxTek, the contract will end. But I don’t know how you’re supposed to do that.”

“He didn’t say?” Charlie asked.

Blitzø shook his head. “If he’d known, he would have told us. Soul contracts aren’t his bag, he’s not that kind of Goetia. Moxxie,” he added a little sharply.

Immediately, the other imp straightened. “Sir?”

“You’re good with contracts,” Blitzø said. “Go over it with the princess, see if you can’t help her figure out how it works.”

“Wha— um, yeah, sure.” Moxxie cast Blitzø an almost suspicious look, but broke away from Millie, crossing to Charlie. “If that’s okay with you?”

“Oh, yeah, please,” Charlie said. “We don’t deal with a lot of contracts here, and when we do— well. Alastor usually handles that,” she said a little sheepishly. It felt like every time something new cropped up this past month, she was faced with yet another thing she didn’t know how to do. Shaking off the feeling, she said, “Come on, let’s go back here.”

She led Moxxie through a hallway back behind the front desk to the management office, a place that she herself rarely used; though it was officially her office, Alastor and Vaggie got a lot more use out of it than she did, tending to paperwork or restocking orders and other more tedious work while she handled the face-to-face, public relations sort of duties. Charlie hesitated, then sat at the chair behind the desk, inviting Moxxie to pull a chair over and— “Oh!” Charlie blinked. “I didn’t hear you follow us.”

“That’s my M.O.” Arackniss leaned against the closed door, one set of arms folded across his chest. He had the same expression on that he’d had ever since Charlie first saw him, one that she had a Heaven of a time trying to read. “I thought you could use someone who’s got experience with Sinner contracts. Crimson don’t usually work with those, right?”

Charlie didn’t know what he meant, but apparently Moxxie did, because he stood up straighter. “How do you know him?” he asked, his voice immediately guarded and almost hostile.

Arackniss raised an unimpressed eyebrow, holding up one hand. “Cool your jets, kid,” he said. “I ain’t had the dubious honor of his acquaintance, but he has… entered my sphere of awareness, you might say. He don’t interest me, in any case.”

Moxxie was incredibly tense as he stood, watching Arackniss like he was thinking of… well, from what Charlie had learned after getting in on the ground level (as it were) in Hell society, it looked like Moxxie was thinking about shooting him. Instead, he said, “I didn’t really deal with Sinners there, no. And the contracts we do make with Sinners these days are a lot different and don’t have anything to do with souls.”

Arackniss walked over and placed two of his hands on the desk, looking at Charlie as she sat down in the office chair. “Right. So, let’s look at that contract and see exactly what it says.”

“Ah— right,” Charlie said, opening it up and smoothing over it with her hand to keep it flat against the desktop. The paper had that smooth, almost glass-like quality that paper tended to get when it was really aged; according to the date, it was more than fifty years old, by Sinner reckoning. She scanned over the words, looking for relevant passages, before her eyes lit on something likely. “Ah, here we go, maybe,” she said. “It says… The Contractee—” she glanced at the beginning of the text “—which is Angel Dust, hereby agrees to relinquish ownership of their quintessence to the Aheydrun, which I’m guessing is Valentino, for the purposes of manifest energy transference, defeasance of volition and percopacity and the supersedence thereof, and engagement in the vocation of indecorous dramatization in accordance with paragraph four until such time as the Contractee has repaid their determined value, the appreciation of which is subject to the Aheydrun’s discretion.” She hesitated, then looked up. “What’s an Aheydrun?”

Arackniss shrugged at her. Moxxie frowned. “It’s a Goetian word. It sounds archaic. I don’t know it, but I’m guessing that’s what Vaggie and Blitzø were referring to.”

Charlie nodded. “…so… Angel signed his soul over to Valentino and gave him the promise to perform in any film asked of him, all of the power his soul acquired during the span of the contract, and signed over his free will? …why?”

“Because he either didn’t read it or didn’t understand it,” Arackniss said. “Doubt most any Sinners would understand that shit, it’s intentionally worded to be confusing.”

Charlie nodded and looked down again. “The Aheydrun can determine the value… and Vaggie said that I can do that now, because he’s lived here for six months?”

Moxxie shrugged. “If that’s what Prince Stolas said, it’s probably right.”

“Okay,” Charlie said. “How, though?”

“That’s the question. May I?” Arackniss asked, holding his hand out. Charlie nodded and passed it to him, and he took it, looking it over quickly. “Sinner contracts ain’t as ritualistic as Hellborn contracts. You know, we took the concept and… capitalized it, you might say. Assumin’ Valentino followed those rules, it’ll be something kinda ritualistic, but more like a password of sorts.” He waved one hand, thinking, and Charlie was suddenly reminded of the way Angel flailed his arms when he was trying to process his thoughts. “…say if, when Valentino first set the price, he took a piece of paper and drew some kinda symbol on it, then spoke the new value and burned the paper. From then on, he’d hafta draw the same symbol on the same kinda paper and burn it in the same kinda fire every time he reevaluates Tony’s soul.”

Moxxie nodded. “…I guess that would explain why he doesn’t do it very often.” He took the contract from Arackniss and started looking not at the text, but rather at the front, back, and sides of the paper itself. “I only observed Valentino twice, but that’s all I need to know that he’s the kind to simplify things wherever possible.”

Charlie looked between them. “…blood?” she suggested.

Arackniss thought for a moment. “…it would be the most cliche, so… it’d make sense if he thought’a that first.”

“Sinners really are obsessed with the idea of blood sacrifice,” Moxxie sighed. “But it’s the easiest way to transfer energy, so that makes sense.” He tilted the contract again. “The back of the paper is discolored, like something spilled on it. But he clearly takes good care of it. If the paper itself is enchanted, maybe he just cut himself open and bled on the contract itself.”

“What if we’re wrong?” Charlie asked with a frown.

“Then the contract will have blood on it. That’s about it.”

“…right. That makes sense.” She opened the drawer and pulled out the letter opener Alastor had insisted that they have for their office (which was funny because he always just opened envelopes with his claw anyway), a thin and curved knife with a simple dark wood handle and an ebony blade. Moxxie put the contract down, and Charlie placed the blade against her palm, lightly closing her fingers around it. She took a breath, and— “Wait, how much am I supposed to say his soul is worth?”

Moxxie and Arackniss exchanged looks. “…how much has Angel Dust made in his career at VoxTek?” Moxxie asked. “Less than that.”

Charlie understood—she really did!—but she felt her eyes misting up anyway. “But that seems so mean,” she complained. “I don’t think Angel could be bought with any amount of money, he’s priceless!”

Arackniss made a sound like he was surprised. “Sweet as that is, Princess, it—”

“Charlie,” she interjected.

“Okay, sweet as that is, Charlie, him being considered priceless the problem we’re dealin’ with,” he said. “It don’t matter what you say. It ain’t what you really think and it’s just breakin’ the contract. And if you lowball it, he’s gonna think it’s real fuckin’ funny.”

“Yeah?” Charlie asked, then, “…yeah, that’s… that’s true. Okay.” She knew how sex jokes worked. Nodding once, she almost cut her hand open, before Arackniss held his hand out again. “Ow! What?” Charlie asked, quickly moving her hand away as the knick on the side of her palm, which the knife split when she jumped, oozed a drop of blood that only fell on her pants because she moved back.

“It has to be as close to what he did as possible,” Arackniss said. “That means we need his… blood, or his DNA, or something, in addition to yours. If this is how he did it, he imbued it into the contract every time.”

Charlie’s nose wrinkled. “Ew.”

Moxxie threw his hands up. “How are we supposed to get that? We don’t have time!”

Fighting past the thoughts that the phrase Valentino’s DNA conjured in her head, Charlie sat up. “Oh! Oh, wait, no, I know!” She scrambled up and ran to the door, opening it and calling out. “Niffty! Niffty, I need you!”

Both of the men behind her made confused mutters, but Charlie ignored them as Niffty came scampering down the hallway and slammed into Charlie’s legs. The little maid wrapped her arms around one of the princess’s calfs, staring up at her with an excited smile. “I love to be needed,” she said throatily.

Charlie chose to ignore that. “Do you want to help save Angel?”

Somehow, Niffty’s eye grew wider. “YES.”

“Then I need a little bit of your collection,” Charlie said. “Specifically, I need just a bit of the specimen you gathered at Consent.”

Niffty blinked once, twice, and then gasped before she started giggling. “Be right back!” she trilled, running off.

Charlie returned to her seat, Moxxie and Arackniss still staring at the door. “Her collection,” Moxxie echoed flatly. “Do I want to know what she collects?”

“Bugs.”

“…uh-huh.”

Niffty was nothing if not efficient, running back into the office and hopping onto the desk to offer Charlie a little tuft of white and black fur. “Is this good?”

“It’s perfect. It’s okay if I destroy it, right?”

“Sure,” Niffty said. “It’s only a little bit of my sample, and besides, if nothing else…” Her face turned downright terrifying. “I can always get more.”

“Thank you, Niffty,” Charlie said, thinking again how glad she was that she had so much time to adjust to the force of personality that was Niffty.

“Uh-huh!” Still looking genuinely thrilled to have been helpful, Niffty hopped down, running out of the room again.

Arackniss watched her go. “…bugs,” he said, not looking away from the door. “So then, what’s that fur?”

“She stole part of Valentino’s ruff,” Charlie said. “It’s apparently part of his body.”

“…she did that at Consent?” Arackniss asked, something that sounded almost like respect entering his voice. “…she really is some woman, ain’t she?”

“She’s great,” Charlie said, squinting at the back of Arackniss’s head. She didn’t have time to unpack that. Instead, she checked between them for any more interruptions, then sliced her palm open, gathering the blood in her hand and dropping the fur into it. She thought for a second, and then said, “I, Charlotte Morningstar, current Aheydrun of the Contractee named herein, have reassessed the value of the Contractee’s soul and have determined its worth to be sixty-nine cents.” She tilted her hand, the blood trickling onto the contract before the fur tuft landed with a small, wet splat. There was a strange, undefinable sound, and then the blood began to vanish into the words of the contract themselves, even dragging the blood-soaked fur along with it. When she looked up, she noticed the other two staring at her. “…what?”

Moxxie blinked once, slowly. “…sixty…” He trailed off, shaking his head.

“I do understand sex jokes, y’know, I’m not exactly single, and I wasn’t wasting his opportunity to get that printed on a shirt,” Charlie said. “So… how do we know whether or not it worked?”

“It looks like it did something, at least.” Arackniss took off his hat, then ran his hand back through the fur that made up his hair. “Guess we’ll have to wait an’ see.”

“Right.” Charlie closed her hand around the cut in her palm, staring at the contract again. She was getting so tired of waiting. “Can you two do me a favor?”

The response was hesitant. “I… guess…?” Moxxie frowned. “Will this get me beaten up?”

“No!” Charlie said, hopping up. “Noooo no no no, it’ll be fine. Just tell people I had to step out for a minute but I’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” Arackniss said. “You didn’t tell us where you’re goin’, and we ain’t gonna stop nobody who tries to follow you.”

“That’s totally fair. Thank you,” Charlie said. “And… thank you, both of you. Seriously.” They both looked surprised, but she just grinned, offering them a wave before hurrying out of the office and down another hall to the service door.

I’m so tired of waiting. I’m not going to do that anymore. If you care about something, you fight for it, right? Right.

So that’s what I’ll do.

•••

It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than nothing. Angel didn’t keep a lot of normal clothing in his dressing room, but shorts and a tank top were better than nothing, and he pulled them on (skipping shoes, as they would be too loud) as he thought.

Vox had Alastor. Alastor was clearly in some kind of pain, judging by his shadow’s strange behavior and its disappearance. That meant Vox was probably doing something, and he wouldn’t be doing something just anywhere; he had an image to maintain, after all, and the only way he would publicly torture the Radio Demon would be if he was doing it for a television show.

I know Vox better than that. He wants this to be private. Personal. Intimate, even.

Angel snuck back out of his dressing room and took off, heading for the wall and quickly scaling it to disappear into the vents. He didn’t get to do this much, since he usually had eyes on him at all times, but one of the ways he’d become friends with Rocky over the years was finding opportunities to drop on the big lug out of nowhere. Angel had the building memorized, and he quickly traversed the vent system, heading up to the floor where the Vees kept their own private suites. He was familiar with Valentino’s, but he had never been in Vox’s, and when he pivoted direction he got his very first glimpse of the place.

“Okay, just— just stay here,” a voice said below Angel. God dammit. Vox’s assistant. Angel seriously couldn’t stand the guy and his sycophantic bullshit, and he barely even remembered his name even after knowing him for thirty years. Blink? Was it Blink?

Angel peeked in to see who he was talking to, and froze, though he shouldn’t have been surprised. Blink was holding his hands out placatingly and talking about how dangerous things were, while across from him sat… Vark. Enormous, sharp-toothed, wide-eyed Vark, Vox’s pet land hammerhead shark that had once gone everywhere at his heel until the creature grew too large to easily traverse the corridors. Now, Angel rarely thought about Vark—out of sight, out of mind, and all that—but of course he would be in Vox’s suite if he wasn’t swimming around in the giant fish tanks that seemed to stretch the height of several floors.

Vark made a noise somewhere between a dog’s yap and the sound a shark might make if sharks made noise, and Blink backed up sharply. “No,” Blink said firmly. “Sit. Mr. Vox wants you to stay here. He’ll be back. Okay?”

Vark tilted his head, and Angel smirked. It was the same look Fat Nuggets gave when he didn’t understand something, which was all the time.

Blink, like he was just satisfied that Vark was seated now, quickly hurried out of the room and locked the door behind him. Immediately, Vark stood up, then wandered to the door in a mild confusion before wandering back and then starting to meander around the room with no real destination in mind.

Angel took his eyes off the shark to, instead, look around the room as best he could from his vantage point. Vox’s room was exactly what Angel expected, all the same sorts of sleek style and dark colors accented with electric blue and red. It was clean and sterile in a way that put Angel on edge, and he knew beyond a doubt that this was not somewhere he wanted to be.

He was about to move away when something else caught his eye: a glimpse of red, so different from Vox’s that he couldn’t help stopping and taking a second look.

Alastor’s coat.

Not just his coat, either, but that was the first thing he noticed: Alastor’s coat, laid out on the corner of Vox’s bed near the foot, with such care that it looked like it had been smoothed over with hands. Next to it, his shirt and pants were folded with his standing collar, bow tie, and monocle, his shoes set on the floor nearby.

It was… almost reverent, and that made it fucking creepy.

Angel hadn’t found Alastor, but he had found his clothes, and he would think about how skeevy that was when he had even two spare minutes. There was no vent near the bed, which meant he was going to have to play this as carefully as possible, because otherwise he was losing an arm.

Carefully, Angel began unfastening the vent cover, but even with as quiet as he was being he attracted Vark’s attention. The shark swiveled and stared up at him with wide eyes, and Angel froze, staring back. There was no barking frenzy or any other noise; Vark just stared, his tail wagging back and forth slowly, looking for all the world like he was confused about how this visitor had come visiting but wasn’t too fussed about it.

“…you are, without a doubt, the best Vee,” Angel whispered. Vark wagged a little faster when he was spoken at.

Since there was no frenzy and it wasn’t like he could just hide again and make Vark forget he was there, Angel finished and pulled the vent cover into the vent itself before leaning out. Still, Vark watched him with concentrated interest, and Angel slowly lowered himself onto a round metal table and crouching before his socks could slip.

Angel looked around quickly, his eyes falling on a bag of treats. Picking them up, he showed them to Vark. “These yours, sweetie?” Vark perked up immediately. “Then I’ll tell you what,” he continued, keeping his voice as friendly and gentle as he could. He pointed at Alastor’s clothes. “I need those. You lemme get ‘em, and this whole bag’s yours. Deal?”

Vark blinked, following the line of his hand, then walked over to Alastor’s clothes. He sniffed the coat and then sneezed immediately, and Angel had to suppress a laugh; he knew he had gotten used to the Radio Demon’s intentional ‘stay away from me’ odor, but he couldn’t imagine how it would smell to something so hypersensitive.

Vark cast Angel a look that was almost plaintive. Angel snorted. “Yeah. Yeah, I need all that.” He would have sworn Vark sighed before he leaned forward and, to Angel’s shock, grabbed the sleeve of Alastor’s coat between his teeth. Angel almost told him to stop, but Vark wasn’t paying attention; he tugged it off the bed, then dragged it to the table, dropping the sleeve on the surface in front of Angel and wagging.

Angel stared at him. “…you’re a lot smarter than you look,” he said, pulling out a squishy meat treat that smelled like fish and tossing it gently. Vark immediately wiggled with excitement and snapped it out of the air, revealing his massive teeth and an incredibly terrifying snap of his jaw. Angel’s laugh was more nervous this time. “Oh my god you got a lot of… mouth… dontcha?” He cleared his throat. “Wanna get me the rest?”

It took longer than Angel would have liked, but it kept Vark happy and calm, so he stayed crouched while Vark brought him each part of Alastor’s attire in exchange for a treat until Angel had all of it gathered up and held against his torso in his third set of arms.

“Thanks, Vark. You’re a good boy,” Angel said. Vark leaned towards him, and Angel hesitated before carefully reaching out and rubbing him on the front of his head between his eyes. Vark purred, then wandered off, like he was happy to have done a good job and had officially lost interest now that he had been praised. Angel couldn’t be mad about it, and he climbed back into the vent, putting the cover back in place before anyone came in.

At least something went right.

It was harder getting around with his arms full, but Angel took his time to make sure he didn’t drop anything, carefully searching floors where he knew Vox did most of his work. His lack of direction and his desperation were just driving him into frustration when Angel didn’t see anything or hear anything, but he felt something… like the air itself was being disturbed by some kind of interference.

That, he thought. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. He was sure of it.

Angel followed that strange feeling as it grew heavier, leading him to a strange room that seemed really big but only had an illuminated table and computer console right in the center. Angel assumed there was other equipment in the dark, but he couldn’t see a damn thing. It didn’t matter, anyway, because the interference had turned into the low sound of radio static that followed Alastor everywhere but was normally so quiet it couldn’t be heard over the other ambient noises. If it wasn’t for the fact that VoxTek was so silent right now, Angel never would have heard it.

Alastor was lying on his back in the center of that table, fastened down with metal shackles and either asleep or unconscious. Angel let himself out of the vent and, after ensuring there was no one around, hurried to the side of the table and assessed the situation. Alastor was bleeding from a series of thin metal rods that had been slipped into his body through incision that had been made in his muscles, the ends of those rods rigged up to wires that ran along the floor and into the console.

“Alastor…” Angel breathed, but the Radio Demon didn’t stir. He hadn’t really expected him to. He didn’t want to leave, but there didn’t seem to be a way to force the shackles open, since they were actually a part of the table.

Angel started moving to the console, but stopped, one wire in particular catching his eye. The skin around it was bloodier than the others, and it looked like it hadn’t been slid into an incision, but had instead been stabbed straight down into… into Alastor’s soul mark.

I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you, Vox.

Grinding his teeth, Angel went to the console and racked his brain with everything he knew about passwords around the company, and namely, the ones he knew Vox had used in the past. It took a few tries, but Angel finally got the proper combination of symbols Vox favored, a couple of sets of numbers that seemed to have some meaning, and the name Clifford that popped up in Vox’s security shit a lot (whatever that meant). With a beep, he got the controls loaded, and carefully combed the menus until he found the option to release the shackles with a metallic snap and the hiss of hydraulics.

Abandoning the console, Angel ran over to the table, carefully dropping the clothes next to Alastor’s legs and leaning over the other demon. “Alastor,” he whispered urgently, reaching out and gently stroking the deer’s hair. “Alastor. C’mon, Smiles, wake up.”

Alastor’s face twitched with pain, his smile strained even while unconscious, and it took him a moment to start opening his eyes. He jerked when he saw Angel over him, probably only registering a shape, and Angel moved back a few inches and waited. Alastor looked mildly unseeing for a few moments before his eyes slowly focused. “…am I asleep?”

“Why, y’feel like you’re dreaming?”

“…no,” Alastor said. He meant something else. Angel didn’t have time to ask.

“We gotta go, Smiles,” Angel whispered. “I gotta get these wires outta you. It’s gonna hurt and you need to not make noise. Okay?”

“Oh, goodie,” Alastor said weakly, immediately slipping into flippant business mode when he saw that Angel seemed to be focused and hurrying. He laid his head back and closed his eyes. “Quiet… as a church mouse, sha… I promise.”

“You ain’t never been in a church,” Angel accused, leaning down to slowly begin working the wires out of his arm.

Alastor hissed. “Well, they seemed very… quiet from… the other side of… town, in my… defense.”

“Pretty sure all mice squeak.”

“I… do not squeak.”

Angel threw down a second wire. “I got evidence that says otherwise.”

Alastor glared down at him. “You have no such thing.

Angel smiled at him, then went back to what he was doing. “I won’t tell. It’s my special knowledge, nobody else gets that.”

As another wire slipped out, Alastor drew a breath, then started speaking in a voice that was almost hesitant. “…Angel—”

“Don’t,” Angel cut him off, speaking as gently as he could but not looking at his face. “Don’t. Not right now. I know, we gotta— we’ll talk. I promise. But not now. Okay?”

Without looking at him, Angel couldn’t know what Alastor might be thinking. But, eventually, he just said, “…of course. You’re right.”

To Alastor’s credit, he did little more than hiss or grunt at the stabs of pain, and soon Angel had every wire removed except the one that had been stabbed into him. Angel moved up and laid one hand on Alastor’s chest, a second on his bicep, and a third on his wrist. “This is gonna hurt,” he warned.

Alastor turned his head enough to look him in the eye. “…I know.”

That sounded loaded.

Angel wrapped his fourth had around the wire and waited for Alastor’s nod before he pulled straight up, pushing down with his other hands to both hold Alastor still and leverage himself up. Alastor’s face contorted in pain, and Angel moved his hand from the Radio Demon’s chest to his mouth, clamping down over his lips to muffle his cry. As another hand wrapped around the bleeding soul mark, Angel leaned down, pressing their foreheads together. “Shh, Smiles, it’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

Alastor’s breathing was labored and stuttering, and Angel could feel the hot moisture of each exhale, the scrape of Alastor’s teeth, the occasional touch of his tongue…

“Come on,” Angel whispered before he could get any bright ideas. He had never seen Alastor so vulnerable, and this was absolutely not the time for anything but business. “I got your clothes. We gotta get you outta here. Can you walk?”

“Of course,” Alastor grunted, though he still needed Angel to leverage him into a sitting position. He then helped Alastor into his clothing as best he could, which ended up being slacks, shirt, suspenders, shoes, and monocle. Angel left the top two buttons of the shirt undone, and with Alastor’s current state, the collar, tie, and coat were out of the question. Alastor seemed to think the same thing, because he took them in his hands and hesitated before his face contorted in pain and they vanished into shadow.

“Okay. Come on, up,” Angel said, holding his hands out to Alastor. Slowly, the Radio Demon took them, clearly hyping himself up to stand.

“Where the fuck do you two think you’re going?”

Fear shot through Angel, and he felt Alastor stiffen. Angel looked up, and just at the periphery of the ring of illumination around them, he saw—

“Val,” Angel whispered.

He didn’t know how to describe the look on Valentino’s face. Angel had never seen it before. Slowly, he began to advance, his eyes on Angel. “You really have learned how to be slippery, haven’t you, amorcito? Can you imagine my surprise when I came back to your little holding cell and found you gone?”

“Val, I—”

“And then,” he interrupted, “I hear that someone broke into Vox’s room and removed a few… items. Did you think you were being slick, Angel Dust? Did you really think you would get away with it?”

Angel held his hands up, not looking at Alastor and silently begging him to run. “Val, don’t…!”

“Do not tell me what to do!” Valentino shouted. He reached one hand out, clenched his fist, yanked…

…and nothing happened.

Angel stared at Valentino, waiting for the feeling of a chain around his throat that would drag him to the ground… but it never came. It took a moment for Valentino to come to the same conclusion, and he murmured, “…the fuck…?” before repeating the motion.

Still, nothing happened.

Valentino was in shock. Angel was in shock. What happened? Where was his chain? Where had it gone? Why couldn’t he feel it?

After a breath, Angel decided it didn’t matter. Instead, he put his hands on the metal table, scrambled up onto its surface, and launched himself at Valentino. He heard Alastor shout something, but he didn’t look, and soon all he heard was an enraged scream as Angel dragged his claws through Valentino’s face.

•••

[werewolveswithdiaries]

and you can be fine for a few days, weeks, months, and then it suddenly hits in violently foamy waves. depression: a mental disorder characterised by pervasive feelings of sadness, worthlessness, total loss of interest, emotional numbness, often accompanied by trouble sleeping, eating normally, functioning.

you thought you killed that part of you this time but it returned.

suddenly getting up from the bed in the morning became the heaviest chore and a few days later you woke up with horrible pain because even going to the bathroom is too heavy.

and it spirals bigger and bigger: messy room, matted hair, foul smelling kitchen, rotten food, unfinished dishes, incomplete assignments, absences from work or school, sweaty and dirty bedsheets.

friends become strangers, messages are left on unopened or seen, social outgoings are far away in your rear view mirror. it is not that you do not care, but you cannot help yourself up. you care but your chemically imbalanced brain does not.

doing anything at all feels like trying to climb up a big rock on a slippery mountain trail while you have chains around your ankles and being pulled behind.

time is so much slower, painfully slow and consuming. showers sting now, blood glued on your sleeves, hidden bloody tissues. “you should clean up, you risk an infection” but how could you bother when all is meaningless?

it feels like it s always been this way, it feels that you have no escape.

tears form in your eyes as you realise you do not even have the energy to hold up a pen and write the goodbye letters - just in case.

people worry, you hate yourself for not being able to mind what they re saying, all words spoken to you are fading far away into distance.

you can feel yourself disappearing, a body left without any emotionality. you are too exhausted to even be frightened about what s happening to you.

it s all so heavy. everything is blank. hopelessness. a hole sucking and shattering everything that ever matter. nothingness. despair.

i want to get out, please get me out

[nightcolorz]

I do like ghost lestat hes funny as shit, but I also think it’s dumb as hell how they translated the aspect of the book where Louis is so used to lestat as a routine domestic part of his life that after he dies he often feels him there in places where he isn't because of how much he longs for him and made it lestat is a silly ghost. louis mistakenly imaging the feel of Lestat’s breath on his neck when he wakes up in his coffin only to roll over and find the space next to him cold and barren, the familiar routine echo of Lestat humming to himself as he returns home from a hunt that Louis swears for a moment he hears while he’s sitting cross legged with a book in his lap that fades into nothingness when he remembers that he threw lestats body in a swamp and watched him burn into nothingness before his eyes, the ghost of a touch on his shoulder, the devilish smile in the corner of his eye, and amc took that and made it “Louis is hashtag crazy and he is constantly literally accompanied by a fully formed hallucination of lestat that bitches comedically while Louis makes out with Armand and eats paper and smokes passively aggressively in the background”. Like ok wow way to stomp on all the subtlety and annihilate the pervasive sense of grief and loneliness there 😭😭. Why does amc iwtv have such a habit of taking subtle, quiet and thoughtful parts of the books and making them as extreme and overblown and ridiculous as possible. God forbid a tv show not be constantly exciting and intense or meme worthy for a moment ig 😭 modern viewers don’t want things to be quiet or slow paced, totally. And the thing is I don’t even rlly mind representing this grief visibility by a “ghost” of lestat being present, but the implication that he is a literal hallucination that Louis often interacts with is so stupid imo like they should have just made it a metaphor or smth cuz dude

[redlyriumidol]

THEDAS; a fanmix collection for the settings of dragon age: the veilguard. listen on spotify: TEVINTER / ANTIVA / ANDERFELS / RIVAIN TEVINTER / opulent, magnificent, but creepy, sinister... corrupt city of darkness and hedonism. immense gothic cathedrals of dark stone tower above the downtrodden masses that scurry beneath. so much history, so much culture, but the blood will never wash out. ANTIVA / italian, with hints of spain. neighbours sit around in the streets to play guitars or lutes and sing and clap together. beautiful twisting spires, refinement, but there's a seedy underbelly, the stink of leather and the risk of murder- the people are joyful nevertheless- wine, food, song flows from every open window. ANDERFELS / vast, open, nothingness. a feeling of pervasive doom, a searching for some sign of the maker in the unforgiving wastelands under an expanse of empty sky. grim soldiers clad in grey march across the dusty landscape, the king has long abandoned his people who must fend for themselves against the constant threat of darkspawn. RIVAIN / their lives are intertwined with the sea. fishing nets, the smell of salt. pirates and sailors come and go, drinking spiced rum at the taverns. and there's an old magic there which sits on the skin, it's as natural to them as breathing. respected seeresses with wrinkled, weather-beaten faces ply their trade under the smoke of burning herbs and cured fish. women sell branches of rosemary on street corners. hints of spanish romani culture and music, north african and al-andalus.

[sucrosette]

★— ⋆｡˚ [What If We Rewrite the Stars?]

For Day 4 of Carry on Countdown 23, Stars.

On proposals.

Rated M for Baz and Simon getting (un)surprisingly frisky.

⋆｡˚

If Basilton ever proposed to anyone– not that he had anyone in mind, and certainly not his roommate who wanted very much to defang him and who Basilton certainly did not want to snog– he already had his plan laid out. Mage weddings were notoriously elaborate and romantic, as anyone with their thumb to the page of Mage Histories would have been well aware, so of course Basilton, best mage in his class, would already have his plan. Not only did he have the general populace of magekind to contest with, but also his very own mother.

Everyone bloody well knew she’d hung the moon for his father. Basilton couldn’t hide the scowl the thought of his father brought him, shaking his head to clear his mind of it. He refocused himself back to the empty field before him and then up to the clear sky above.

If his mother had hung the moon, he could bloody well rewrite the stars.

It’s in the theory of it, not the literalness of the thing. He wasn’t trying to throw the entire universe out of sorts or ruin planetary alignments. What Basilton was going for was a simpler thing, the illusion of rearranging them. He wasn’t entirely sure into what yet, at least not for the proposal, he knew that should be more personal, but for this practice bout, he has an idea.

He’d already tried a number of quotes from the classics, “I defy you, stars”, “there was a star danced”, “the stars are painted”, and that was only a small sampling of the Shakespeare he’d performed for the empty field and night sky, but nothing had taken yet. He’d tried any number of classics, a good few popular modern publications, several different poems, and just about any song that had broached the top one hundred in the past decade that also made mention of the barest, but nothing had taken yet.

Today, Baz is trying something a little off the cuff. Not exactly about the stars directly, but maybe something that could cause that illusion. ‘You would not believe your eyes–’ his wand flourishing elegantly out and up towards the starts, but as soon as the phrase leaves his lips, the field floods with fireflies. Fireflies. Which were not stars. He supposed at least something had happened, but the phrases were too tied together, either as some sort of ubiquitous social thought or a pervasive tie within his own mind.

Baz lets out a sigh and sits himself back down in the grass, hand resting palm up on his knee, facing the swarm of lightning bugs in front of him, staring off into utter nothingness. A firefly lands on his palm, it’s little legs tickling at sensitive skin.

So they were real.

Basilton was probably going to get in trouble for this.

⋆｡˚

The moment Baz knows he’s going to ask Simon Snow to marry him is the same moment they’d banished the room to a swirling galaxy all around them. He’s awestruck, confused, alight with affection for the soft contact between their hands, even amid all the violent, frustrated thoughts flying about his head in a haphazard flurry.

He knows he shouldn’t think such ridiculous things about Simon Snow. It’s not like he’s ever going to confess to him, let alone ask Snow to marry him, but Crowley, something about the stars pulled down into their room is doing something to him. It’s not the feeling of fire in his veins, nor the crackling electricity on his skin, nor even the ridiculous alluring way Simon looks all open and vulnerable like this, but the whole situation.

Of course it was ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star!’ he’d spoken the magick into. He knows it’s not a spell, he’d tried it a dozen and a half times before this in a dozen and a half different ways and come to nothing for it. But this time, burned clean with Simon’s magickal fire at his fingertips…

This is as close as he’s gotten to success, it’s more magnificent than he could have possibly envisioned in all his years as a mageling up to this. It would probably be better than he could ever hope to deliver too, but that doesn’t matter to Baz in the moment. All he can think is there’s no one else he’d rather share a sight like this with than Simon Snow.

Merlin and Morgana’s sake, he’s a bloody lovestruck nitwit and Baz has never been more certain of anything before. He’s going to ask this ninny to marry him one day, if they both survive the year.

⋆｡˚

It happens two years after their graduation. Simon and he both are on break from classes and Baz’s father and stepmum have flown the girls to the states for their own hols away from home. Oh sure, Baz and Simon could’ve joined, but an extended stay with his dad sounds like hell to Baz, so Baz and Simon decide to take their holiday in Ireland. Well, rather Baz decides and Simon can’t deny it’d be nice for a change of scenery. Okay, so the weather wouldn’t be much different from London, but he’d never been before, and Baz excited always makes for a good time.

Apparently, the mages in Ireland are absolutely insane, in that their spells are like nothing anywhere else in the world, old magicks still running wild throughout the lands, but also in that they also throw a damn good holiday party. Baz has never been one to avoid an excuse to show up and show off, especially now that he’s got such a divine dancing partner. Simon makes excuses, says he doesn’t know the steps, he’s got two left feet, he’ll trip them both up, but he lets Baz drag him around from place to place anyway.

He doesn’t like to be in the spotlight anymore, Baz knows, not on his own. But Baz also knows when he’s holding Simon’s waist and leading him in their dances, in their lives, the world falls away from both of them, leaving everything but the music and their footsteps behind.

It’s an impulse, a moment of downtime between the parties and the socializing and sightseeing, a moment where Basilton doesn’t have anything planned in his neatly penned itinerary, and Simon sights a theatre across the way from their cafe where Baz had been enjoying coffee and cake.

“Let’s see a movie,” Simon hums between sips of his thick cocoa, eyeing the titles in the display across the way.

Baz hums his own acknowledgment, watching Simon more than anything else around them, nodding before Simon even decides on a feature for them. “Why not? We can have an easy night tonight too, take the night off dancing and stay in our room, enjoy some whiskey in our bed, kick our feet up.”

Simon’s eyes are already twinkling, his feet tapping under the table excitedly, and Baz knows he’s made the right decision immediately.

It’s a musical they agree on, something loud and high energy, in contrast to Baz’s idea of a lazy evening, but Baz can never say no to a musical, and Simon doesn’t really care one way or another whatever they watch. So it’s a musical they’re watching.

It happens not too long after the hour point in the movie. The song starts playing. Not just any song, but The Song. Baz hears it and he knows this is going to be the song that changes everything about his proposal, that it’s going to be powerful enough, popular enough, to sink into every blade of grass and tree and rock and, oh this song is going to be good magick. There’s not a doubt in his mind.

His fingers are already twitching to find his wand and try it, iching to see if he could get it right the first try, to see if the magick’s already powerful enough for it. Simon must sense his insane spike in energy though, because his hand snakes out to grasp Baz’s and twine their fingers together, squeezing over his digits and bringing him back from the machinations of magick for the rest of the movie.

Simon listens through all Baz’s technical ramblings on the music, the inspirations the writer’s must’ve taken, the absolute chops on one singer in particular, the confusing choices made about the one singer who had supposedly been an operatic. Simon listens patiently through it all until warm whiskey settles Baz’s anxious energy and the movie’s finally forgotten between their lips.

“You’re terribly adorable when you get like this, you know, Pitch?” Simon asks before stealing a soft, slow kiss, his warm hands cupping Baz’s cool cheeks to keep them close together. Simon presses Baz’s back down to the mattress and climbs atop him, knees braced at Baz’s waist, straddling him slow, kisses trailing tender along Baz’s jaw and cheeks until Baz is humming low for him.

Baz’s hands wander up Simon’s bare back, following the notches of his spine tenderly, mapping his back all the way up to his wings, even though Baz knows these plains of Simon better than he knows his own hands. “Oh, shut up, Snow,” Baz groans, voice heated between shared kisses, lips wet with their want, “You’re just as bad going on about any and every new pastry we try.”

“I am,” Simon doesn’t even bother to deny it, kisses wandering over Baz’s neck, marking him with soft love bites, sucking the skin underneath dark with his affections, “But there’s better things to think about right now, aren’t there?”

Baz’s fingers crawl up Simon’s wings, dragging soft over their leather, lips quirking into a frown. Simon wasn’t wrong, he supposed, but he wasn’t going to just say it outright. “Why don’t you tell me what you’d like me focusing on, love, and we’ll go from there…”

Simon kisses a soft trail down Baz’s chest, unbuttoning his perfectly pressed shirt as he goes, “You know what I want, Baz.”

One of Baz’s hands slides off Simon’s wings to grip over Simon’s ass, gripping tight and forcing them to grind together, pulling a sharp gasp from Simon above him, the nails remaining edging just on this side of sharp against sensitive joints. “Words, love. I won’t ask nicely again.”

“You,” Simon rasps into his chest, nosing over the soft hair there, “Just you.”

Baz’s tongue darts out to wet his own lips, grinding them together again before that same hand slips to wrap Simon’s tail about his wrist, tugging it sharp in the moments following. “Needy thing,” Baz murmurs back, but he doesn’t argue against it. Baz’s always been terribly bad at denying Simon when he was honest with him, “I’ll give you what you want, love of mine, all you want and more…”

The moments melt into hours like that, between heated kisses and soft marks burned into skin, hands tugging in hair, gasps and moans lost to the air between them. Naught between their skin but Simon’s whispered worship and Baz’s quiet praise, pressing closer and closer into each other until nothing remained but each other. 

Still, it keeps playing in Baz’s head the next morning, that week, through their anniversary and the rest of the month too. “Rewrite the Stars,” the song rang in his mind, and Baz knew that was exactly what he intended to do, what he’d always intended to do.

[katieslittlethoughts]

on life lost too soon…

Everyone’s favorite thing to say in response to grief is that it gets better with time. One day it won’t hurt this bad. One day you’ll be able to say their name, think about them, talk about them without reliving their death, over, and over, and over again.

It’s a lie.

Not everything gets better with time. In fact, you’ll be walking down the street, be reminded of them, and lose them all over again. The tightness in your throat will remind you it’s still there, like the cricket that lives under your house. Grief doesn’t always get better. In fact, oftentimes it never does, life isn’t taken quietly; we aren’t ripped away without a sound.

I was 12, she was 13, and now I’m 21, but she’ll stay 13, suspended in the eternal nothingness that awaits us. Nearly nine years have passed, almost a decade, nearly the length of time she left her indelible mark. That’s nine years she didn’t get. Nine years since her loss ripped apart my skin, revealing a crimson stream, a stream I now frantically seek. The first day of high school, eighth grade culmination, the first kiss, the first time getting too drunk, high school graduation, the first day of college—just moments to some, but to me, it’s an entire life left unfinished.

Every milestone is just another she’ll never have, another reminder of the unfinished story left in obscurity. And with each milestone, the belief, the one everyone says and regurgitates back at you, the one you used to roll your eyes at, the one you used to never understand, gets stronger and stronger until it is woven into every thought: it gets better.

It gets better.

Just three little words: it gets better. Three little words everyone hates to hear in the trough of grief, depression, hopelessness, in the moments you can’t imagine life going on, and yet they persist. Three little words that with each chasm bridged, you find yourself believing in, more and more, until you find yourself saying them. You almost want to laugh. Those three little words you came to dread, those three little words you hated, those three little words you now find yourself clinging to because you finally understand: it’s a promise.

The sadness, the emptiness, turns into nothing more than a whisper, just as promised. You have one good day, then you have another, and eventually, that darkness you had resigned yourself to will be nothing more than a memory. A harmless memory to remind you of how far you’ve come, a memory making you want to dance in the rain, inspiring you to send letters littered with childish joy, overfilled with love to everyone you love.

That darkness you thought you’d never escape, that pervasive darkness without even a whisper of light, overcome as if it was never even there.

I wish I never knew it, so life could go on without this knowledge. I wish I couldn’t even imagine the darkness that devoured her. But if this was my destiny, I wish I never knew what it was like to catch that fragile glimpse, so soft you almost miss it. I wish I never knew what it was like to search for it, for it to get brighter, and brighter, and brighter. I wish I couldn’t say now that I see where the darkness ends, so close I can almost touch it. I wish I couldn’t look back. I wish I didn’t even know I could, and sometimes, I wish I never made it out. Is it awful to wish, wish to go back? To wish I couldn’t even imagine the end because now I’ll be wishing for the rest of my life she saw it too.

This light that committed the worst betrayal. How could it not have revealed itself to her? How dare it not reveal itself? This mocking light that brings hope—how could it hide away? This hope, this hope I never wanted to know, because she never did.

How dare it even be real? And why reveal it to me, and not her? If it was so precious, it should have been hers. With her bright smile, her shameless joy, her unapologetic passions, her endearing quirks, her overwhelming talent—she was too remarkable, too breathtaking, too bound for greatness to be lost so soon. The grey-haired veterans love to tell us our lives haven’t even started, so how could hers have ended?

I end my days the same way: wishing I could share the light, wishing she could have felt it too… wishing.

A wish that never came true, and never will.

So now I cling to my anger. The anger at the world, at the cracks on the pavement, at the chips on the wall, the anger at nothing at all. The anger that life went on, just as everyone had promised.

I’ve made so many memories, so many memories meant for her, that should have been with her. I look around and in the face of my happiness I’m only reminded it’s happiness she’ll never experience. She’s dead and it seems all her unfulfilled dreams got buried with her.

I’m afraid one day I’ll forget the curve of her smile, the sound of her laugh, the way she made me feel—I’m afraid I’ll forget… her. I catch myself every now and again, laughing without holding her ghost. Has it already started?

Each milestone rips at my stitches, and I’m glad for it. My blood pours out, an unbroken current, waiting for my skin to be brought back together. If I forget the pain, will I forget her too? Is this all I have left? A wound, my only proof that she was ever here.

And so I’ll pick apart my stitches. I’ll piece myself together sloppily, hoping to be undone once again. And as I watch the crimson tide flow from my veins, I’ll hope to have just one glimpse—just one fleeting second—of the life she never lived.

[numerousbees1106]

WASTELANDS PART 2: PRIMARY SUCCESSION (TEASER/PROLOGUE)

I do not know when the actual Primary Succession story will be posted. This is a teaser/prologue made for angstpril2024 and to assure readers that yes, there is in fact a second part of this series in the works. It may not be ready to start posting until next year, or it could be ready next month. I simply do not know. I apologize for the wait, but I have provided small snippets of this series in between to hopefully quench your appetites.

Enjoy!

Leia was nine years old.

The night was cold and quiet in that way that only snow can make something quiet, a light blanket of it muffling the wide, wild expanse. This was their smaller palace, the one she lived in with her parents, far from the bustling cities and their stone-metal-glass structures that felt like grit against her animal bones.

As she drifted half-asleep in her giant bed, wrapped in her soft fur blankets (blankets her mother had originally disapproved of, citing animal welfare, but Leia always had a talent for picking out clothing and blankets and such made of fur of animals that had lived happy lives: she insisted that she could feel the creatures’ creature-ness still living on in the items, but she got the feeling that nobody really believed or understood her), she dreamt faintly of a great, icy dragon wrapped around a snow-covered peak, snow geese and winter ptarmigans flying around its mighty head.

And as that dragon lifted its snout to bellow out across the frozen tundra, she first smelled the smoke.

It was an acrid thing, pervasive and invasive, pungent and miasmic. It curled and coiled like some great, heinous beast from another world, a silent yet ravenous monster creeping ever closer.

Terror clenched at her chest. She’d only ever smelled smoke outside before, near the crackling campfires that had always filled Leia with an instinctual dread. But why was it here now, in the house? She didn't understand.

Cowering under her beloved blankets, she waited with baited breath as distant shouts began to echo through the halls, morphing quickly into screams of pain and terror. A whimper of fear escaped her, but she hardly dared to breathe, bundling even deeper into her nest of blankets and pillows and sheets despite the oppressive heat. Maybe if she burrowed deep enough, she would fall asleep, and when she awoke maybe everything would be back to normal.

She stifled a gasp of pain. In her mind’s eye, the soft lights that ebbed and flowed around her began to disappear, some slowly dimming and fading into nothingness, others suddenly vanishing. They left shadowy voids in their wake that felt to Leia like someone was twisting her stomach inside-out, like she was losing all her teeth at once.

Physically, she wasn’t doing much better. The room was unbearably hot now, the dry, scorching air burning her eyes. The air was nearly unbreathable, choked with caustic smoke, and the screams now echoed from everywhere at once.

“Leia!” She heard her mother’s frantic voice scream. “Leia, where are you?!”

Trembling, Leia slowly peeled some of the blankets away from her face, but was immediately met with a blast of billowing heat and toxic smoke. Something collapsed nearby. The castle was falling apart around them.

Leia wanted so badly to burst out of her protective cocoon, to run into her mother’s arms, but she felt paralyzed, trapped within her own body, pure animal fear spidering her senses. All she could think about was the smoke that had furled and snapped, its silent, intense malevolence staining the air, its gaseous jaws lying in wait to snatch her up.

“Leia!” Her mother’s cry sounded farther away now, hoarse as she broke into a coughing fit that faded with distance.

“Momma,” she whimpered as her head spun, her chest aching and the heat oppressive. Closing her eyes, even as the fire roared on like the rumble of a faulty engine, she felt tears streak down her cheeks.

An ungodly bang resounded through the room, shaking Leia to her bones and dragging her back into a consciousness she hadn’t realized she’d lost.

In her mind’s eye, she saw herself, a tiny and helpless baby dragon of ice and snow, her white scales dull and stained with smoke and soot, wrapped in blankets like broken eggshells, small and weak and vulnerable. With quasar-eyes, she, as the dragon, gazed up to see a silhouette forming in the suffocating heat, chasing the smoke and flame away with large shakes of its massive head, its legs and tail brushing literal tons of debris off to the side effortlessly.

Another dragon stood in the awning of her room, its scales the same color as the soot that haunted the now-smoldering fires, its eyes a deadly crimson red that somehow felt infinitely sorrowful to her. Chains, glowing red-hot in the near-darkness, bound the dragon’s wings to its side, a collar of thorns dribbling supernova blood onto the once-white diorite tile. It moved towards her like vapor, reaching out with misshapen talons to cradle her gently against its chest, a bubble of silence and tranquility encasing her as if the dragon had reassembled the shards of her eggshell back around her.

Wrapped in her favorite blanket, she felt massive, stiff arms carry her, through what felt like infinite twisting hallways and dozens of doors that crumbled to ash at the stranger’s touch, out into the sudden and stunning frigidity of the mountain air, away from the hellish atmosphere of the burning palace and into the arms of a man she didn’t know.

She blinked up at him, momentarily blinded by the harsh glint of the full moon against the snowy mountain fields, shivering despite the thick blanket she was wrapped in as the stranger called out to the dragon-man as he raced back inside.

The stranger cursed, readjusting his grip on Leia, turning soft, intelligent eyes down onto her. She couldn’t quite make out what he was saying - her mind was racing far faster than it ever had before, and though she heard the words she couldn’t understand them. The stranger looked familiar -

“Tide-Tail?” She croaked, her throat feeling scratched and torn from the inside, a foul sulphuric taste lingering in her mouth. Each breath sent shivers of pain through her upper chest, a violent coughing fit overtaking her until a mask was pressed against her face, Tide-Tail giving her a strained smile as he nodded. The air that rushed into her lungs was oddly sweet, calming her minutely as she turned her head to watch her home burn so fiercely that it stained the ebony sky a wretched pale gray.

The dragon-man emerged from the inferno, carrying a woman draped limply in his arms.

Leia’s heart twisted with panic as she recognized the soot-stained face as her mother’s.

The dragon-man turned once more, racing back into the rapidly collapsing palace, his retreating form quickly obscured by the rabid flames and billowing smoke. Leia twisted and wriggled out of Tide-Tail’s grasp, racing over to her mother’s side, ignoring the sharp sting of the snow against her bare feet.

“Mom,” she whimpered, curling up against her, watching as her mother’s eyes twitched open for a brief moment.

Tide-Tail was by her side in an instant, pressing another mask to Leia’s mother’s face before turning and rewrapping Leia in her blanket.

“You’ll get frostbite,” he scolded gently, pulling out a silvery emergency blanket from a large bag that he had draped over his shoulders.

“Please,” Leia’s mother gasped as Tide-Tail gently laid the blanket over her. “Please, take care of her.”

“Of course, your majesty,” Tide-Tail murmured softly, his eyes filled with sorrow as the Alderanian queen’s already rapid, shallow breaths became strained gasps, the oxygen mask dutifully delivering air to lungs that simply couldn’t take it in. Leia remembered the mysterious illness her mother had, the illness that nobody really told her about other than that it affected her mother’s lungs.

Still, trembling as she pressed against her mother’s side, she found that they needn’t had told her anything about it at all - knowing about it wouldn’t have saved her mother’s life, their words would have meant nothing, their words did mean nothing as the star-speckle Leia kept close to her heart dimmed and faded away.

The dragon-man reappeared, holding Papa’s body. Leia didn’t need to look up to know that it didn’t matter now - his star had vanished, too.

“We must move quickly,” a voice that felt like 10,000 flickering embers said, gently yet with an urgency that belied the peril they were in. “This was no accident - nobody is here because nobody was called.”

Tide-Tail - that wasn’t actually his name, she knew, but didn’t much care - stood, gently scooping Leia up into his arms. She screamed. How could they expect her to leave her mother and father lying there, cold and motionless in the snow? How could they expect her to allow herself to be dragged away from everything she’s ever known and loved?

Tide-Tail flinched, a sort of nervous fear uncurling in his presence as he shot an uncertain look over his shoulder at the darkened woods beyond.

Silently, the dragon-man held out his arms, and Tide-Tail handed her over to him.

Darkness, like wings, soothing and promising a safer tomorrow, wrapped around her mind.

She fell unconscious.

[sociopathicghost]

What's reality to you might be an illusion.

There's a pervasive reality about how things function in our world. We're all ensnared by a so-called system that restricts us from realizing our full potential. When examined from a macroscopic perspective, the notions of good and evil become irrelevant. The universe, indifferent and unfeeling, doesn't care about our moral distinctions. I often contemplate the essence of living, recognizing its inherent pointlessness. Yet, ending one's life doesn't seem to be a viable option. As Rust Cohle aptly puts it, it's the "damn programming." We are biologically and psychologically programmed to exist on this planet, where most people are just walking corpses, going through the motions of their daily routines. They call it living, marked by fleeting moments of dopamine-induced pleasure. These chemicals trick us into feeling emotions, even when rationally, everything is ultimately meaningless.

All our cherished memories and experiences, whether deemed good or bad, amount to nothing more than nostalgia when reflected upon. But what's the purpose of nostalgia when life itself is driven by evolution and constant change? Time doesn't pause for anyone, nor does the universe. You may be in one place now, but in the next few moments, you'll be somewhere else. The relentless progression of time underscores the futility of our existence.

Consider the absurdity of being the most intelligent species ever to exist, only to live for a mere 80 years before succumbing to death. It feels like a colossal waste. Yet, acknowledging this isn't necessarily pessimistic; it's simply a harsh truth that many find difficult to accept. This perspective often leads me to leave tasks unfinished, as the realization dawns that everything will eventually dissolve into nothingness. The efforts, struggles, and sacrifices invested in mere existence seem ultimately futile. I repeatedly reject the idea of participating in societal norms and expectations. I feel an intrinsic sense of not belonging here. The societal constructs we adhere to often appear artificial and meaningless in the grand scheme of things. We are driven by biological imperatives and social constructs that bind us, leaving little room for genuine autonomy. Our lives are punctuated by chemical reactions that dictate our emotions and actions, making us feel as if we're living, when in reality, we're merely existing. The moments of happiness and sorrow are fleeting, and their significance diminishes over time. What remains is a sense of emptiness, a realization that all our experiences and memories are transient.

Moreover, the concept of progress, both personal and societal, seems illusory when viewed through the lens of cosmic indifference. We strive for goals, endure hardships, and seek fulfillment, yet in the end, all our efforts are rendered insignificant by the vastness of time and space. This recognition can be both liberating and disheartening. It liberates us from the burden of societal expectations but also confronts us with the stark reality of our ephemeral existence.

I often question the value of persistence and ambition. Why expend so much energy on endeavors that will ultimately fade into oblivion? The blood, sweat, and tears poured into achieving success or overcoming challenges seem wasted when viewed against the backdrop of inevitable extinction. The societal pressure to conform and achieve feels misplaced when our very existence is but a fleeting moment in the grand cosmic timeline. I find myself in a perpetual state of disconnection from the societal framework. The notion of belonging feels alien, as if I'm not meant to participate in the prescribed roles and routines. This sense of alienation isn't a cry for help but rather an acknowledgment of a deeper truth: that the constructs we cling to for meaning and purpose are fragile and often illusory.

The recognition of life's inherent futility and the artificiality of societal constructs compel me to question the very foundation of our existence.

[aufaits]

prologue — a feeling you thought you'd forgotten.

[ A SONG FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD STARTS PLAYING, A MELODY THAT REMINDS YOU OF A TIME WHEN YOU WERE A HAPPY CHILD — ONCE. ]

Think of it like this: homes in suburban Atlanta have a sort of universality to them. A prototype of the American sprawl, later able to transform, under the hands of film crews into Texas, or Washington D.C., or, in the case of some particularly pervasive Netflix shows, into nostalgia for the 80s that never were, the emotion given tangible form.

You, Vivien, flit through that nostalgia, eyes held fast shut. Oh, don't worry. You've done trips like this before, felt the dips in your stomach as you hovered over ice-churned waters, reminded yourself that the only way out is through, clear as a sword's strike. But other trips did not have this— memory as a house as a memory, the ghosts of late spring wrapping themselves around you with all the grace of lazy cats.

Self dislocates from body, mind drifts through that house, the quiet hours of afternoon when it is–was-is your domain and yours alone. Your finger runs along the dial of the radio, pop hits fading in lieu of college radio, soft synths blossoming around you. There is the you that was, curled up amidst golden beams, watching the dust drift through them, waiting for the house to fill once again.

And there is the you that is now, watching from the outside and inside, eyes unblinking, mouth dry. The song pervades, knife pick against skull, the crooning of the singers a faint buzz against the understanding that this home is no more.

The foundation stands still, of course. The walls haven't moved. But this place can only exist in memory now. Vivien, you of the waters, you of the stone removed, find yourself shocked to alertness at the thought, hands scrabbling against arm rests, eyes flung wide, the soft patter of drums falling away. There is only the you that is now, only the blade of crisp light pressing against windows, cutting through the gentle blanket of memory.

Nostalgia plays a funny game — feed her and find yourself hollow too.

[ A FIDGETABLE, ANALOG ITEM, CAN BE KNIFEY THOUGH YOU BETTER HAVE A GOOD REASON FOR IT TO BE ]

Your hand reaches for your neck, grasping for the necklace that you still imagine sits there, on occasion. It was a gift from college graduation, a good luck knot twined in gold, the small box wrapped in red and pressed into your hand by your father.

The necklace is gone now, tucked away in that same box, nestled in your bag of things. For a time, you tried to wear it, tried to keep it close, bunch each time that you reached up to grab it, the customary need to fiddle blossoming, a sense of bile rose up in your stomach instead. This was in the— the After, as you call it to yourself, the word and fact taking on all traits of a blade.

Instead, you fiddle at your ring, a solid claudaugh ring turned upside down. Up and down it slides on your finger, never quite rubbing raw against the skin, but occasionally creeping close. It happens like a dream, like something rote. It happens without thinking.

There's a weight around your neck that isn't present, and a ring wound fast that feels like nothing. In the stillness of yourself, the future feels like both things. In it is terror, the sense of measuring yourself up and coming short, but there is satisfaction as well, certainty crisp on the tongue. There is being and nothingness, wound together on a moëbius string, your own thoughts tracing that infinite path. When you fall to sleep, you barely realize that it has come to you.

[ A PLACE OF GREAT PERSONAL SIGNIFICANCE, BE THAT POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE ]

For a moment, there's a memory of water— your grad school apartment, crystalizing around you, sticky with summer, freezing with winter. It tastes like your life forming around you, a crysallis dissolving you to nothing and rebuilding you from the start.

It smells like maliase and hope, like the crackle of sparks and the freeze-dried tinge of microwavable meals. It feels like a certain quality of light, the compressed beams clipping clean through you.

You cannot help but think of this place and that as the same, the whole of you caught in the lap of waves on shore, the tides of your life changing direction once again.

You ebb and you flow, you rise and you fall, and again and again you find the correct current. Perhaps you are not the lady of the waters, not Vivane as your mother named you, but the waters still claim you as home.

In the end, they wear through everything, cut clean to the bone of truth. What else can you do but follow them?

Feet find ground, hands wrap around your bag. The memory clears, your smile curves.

This moment could not be anything but itself, something new placed gently in your hands. You hope that you do not break it.

> © holly warburton, return trip.

[lobrac]

death is more chaotic than you would think.

it's sinking slowly into the deeps of a cold, cold lake, dark tendrils of calm reaching up to swallow you whole and at the same time it's tumbling through rapids, swelling and tossing and twisting as you scramble for a hold on life.

it's a warm embrace and a stab in the back. It's a frozen wonderland and a scorching desert. It's the stars, twirling and twinkling and dancing above as you breathe the deepest breath of your life and it's the final one blinking out as you exhale. It's waking up before dawn to see the sun rise over a meadow and watching it crash into earth and being helpless to stop it. It's an explosion. It's a breath. It's forever and it's a moment.

It's there, and then it's gone.

It's not as simple as it looks. it's a heartbeat, a frozen melody, the steady pedal note to your heart finally silenced, a racing mind finally stilled.

It's a final breath and knowing it's the last.

It's a prayer to a forgotten god, one who laughs and dances and twirls mockingly out of reach, taunting and teasing with smiles and promises of a golden land under a forever sun that is just out of sight, a bursting world of colour and happiness that isn't really real, just another way to trick you.

It's silence. pervasive. constant. it's finality in the most final way.

it's accepting, with open arms, stillness.

and then everything is quiet.

forever.

So first of all, you have written this wonderfully and beautifully, and I appreciate you taking the time to write this.

Though I believe that your image of death is rather complicated. I imagine it as a very short moment, an instant where you stop living. It's a moment in time that cannot be precisely measured.

It's a moment that is infinitely short yet eternal. You are stuck in a vast nothingness for seemingly forever. That is until the time of judgement comes.

You are judged by an ineffable being, a greater deity that upholds morality. They decide whether you will continue in the world of the living, the land of virtues or the land of the sins.

Of course this is only my imagination of what might happen after we take our last breath and become one with eden.

We may never really know. But if the grim reaper ever tells me their secrets, I will not hesitate to share this knowledge.

[t4tails]

I was a bit of a late bloomer for my generation, was still a blank flank as a preteen. I floated the idea of me never getting a cutie mark to my grandmare, cuz she basically raised me? And she told me that ponies who die without ever getting a cutie mark get sent to purgatory. Something about them not making enough of an impact on ponykind, good or bad, to get sent to Heaven or Hell. I got my cutie mark a few months later, and I guess it's partially because she scared the shit out of me and made me more motivated to figure myself out? And like, I like my job, my life is pretty alright. But in hindsight, kind of fucked up of her to threaten her grandfoal with an afterlife of eternal nothingness just because they hadn't found a purpose in life yet, imo,

that kind of attitude is definitely really pervasive with older ponies of equestria, but idk i think its just further tied into the problems with religion and our monarchical system of government. ponies will put so much importance on celestia and luna and will worship them as basically gods, when the only thing that really sets them apart is their alicorn status. and idk then you start thinking about race relations between pegasi unicorns and earth ponies and how we're essentially kept separated and thinking we're inherently different instead of all just ponies inside and thats kind of where i start thinking blank flank "oppression" is very low on the list of priorities especially when most ponies grow out of it

[forgottenyear]

It is not necessary for me to understand every detail of our system. But it is interesting, all the same. It is not like this post will prevent me from writing about something more pertinent, since I have nothing more pressing to write about at this time.

We are drawn to organizational structures. It is a facet of who we are. The organization of our system is an intriguing puzzle.

--

The unfused part appears to be the constant. I have no certainty about if this holds true with Angela, but only because I have no access to the bulk of her memories.

I am not aware of access to the unfused parts memories, but I was also unaware they were a part until relatively recently in the life of the body. I am not aware of when they front or how often, except in rare cases. It is well within the realm of possibility that I have access, but I am not aware that I am accessing their memories instead of my own.

I also do not have access to more than a few of Angela’s memories. Given the unknowns around the chemicals put into us by others (so they could exploit the body), I have assumed memories were interrupted in their biochemical formation.

There is a big difference between the few memories I have of her time, and the absolute nothingness of the unfused part’s times in front. But, Angela’s memories more closely resemble the unfused part’s as far as my access goes.

--

Speaking of memories, the boy is also a part. I have access to more memories from them than the others. But if I use a different measure, that of percentage of memories related to time in front, maybe there is no difference – between the boy and the girl parts, that is.

--

Now that I have got this far, only tangentially touching on the intended thread of this post, I need to think about “my own” memories.

My childhood consists of memories of all that was unique or interesting or fun. If I am correct in assuming I am the child part (from the “execrable list,” as I call it, that someone wrote in our early scrawl), it kind of makes sense that these would more likely be my personal memories from the time.

It makes sense that a child would be co-present for our adventures on the farms, or that I would love that we had a vice principle in primary school that everyone called Mrs. Crabapple (she was nearly as old as the three story school building that had to be retrofitted with the current fads of indoor plumbing and electricity, and she likely graduated from the local “normal school,” which later became a large part of the state’s university system) because Bart Simpson’s teacher was also Ms. Crabapple.

It makes sense that a child would remember sledding in the sandpits that always ended with someone sliding too far and going into their respective brooks.

I have assumed that my memories were just sanitized memories lifted from the boy part’s collection, but this post has given me back my memories because I was more likely co-conscious at these times. The memories are not scrubbed of unpleasantness because those are the moments when I was not present.

The boy has his memories of these times, but although understandably similar, mine are not necessarily his.

Why was this not obvious from the beginning?

And it also makes more sense, now, that my memories do not have the unbearable hopelessness that theirs do. I assumed they were moments when we forgot to feel hopeless, but this was an unconvincing argument, given how oppressive and pervasive their hopelessness is. Figuratively speaking, there is no sunlight in their memories. (Have you ever seen “Dark City?”)

--

Anyway, that is my description of how our system is organized. Or, it would have been, had I not stumbled onto a more productive tangent.

[habizuh-studios]

I've Held My Heart Close All These Years

Since the day he woke up here and again, and again, and again, he has never felt happiness. Until there is a light, and he's set free. A word rings in his head: Ascension. Out of the coffin after ninety-six years, however, can change a lot. Especially if there were countless people to see it.

OR: Xie Lian ascends from the coffin and chaos ensues :) ---- Chapter 2- Melancholic Joy:

(A grateful and uninhibited joy for the goodness of being, but one tinged by sadness at the pervasiveness of evil and melancholy because it all comes to an end... ____ He enjoys it while he can.) AO3 LINK (Next Chapter)

He Xuan, disguised as Ming Yi, almost never comes to heaven. The keyword here is almost because right now he is being dragged there by Shi Qingxuan to watch a new god ascend. Which, if you look on the bright side, is great, because now he has an excuse to freely get new information for Hua Cheng.

The problem is he is really not in the mood right now.

“Come on, Ming-xiong!” Shi Qingxuan had said. “This is important! Do you know how many vacant spots we have here? It could be a new elemental master, like a Fire Master! Come on, don’t you want to take a look? A tiny peek, and then you can go back… eating… or whatever, come on!”

His half-death glare did nothing to make Shi Qingxuan even hesitate a little, which is just great. Maybe later he could play a drinking game and take a shot every time they dragged him along to whatever adventure they felt like going on. Bonus sips for however many times they’ve said ‘come on’ while doing so.

The sky rumbles and quakes. The bell tolls a lot. Like, more so than usual, which is normally… not very many. It’s just there to cheer them on. If the bell had a face, He Xuan thinks it would be screaming, or bawling, or maybe both with how loud and how many times it's ringing. It’s starting to hurt He Xuan’s ears. Still, he follows Shi Qingxuan to watch whoever it is ascend. Once the light finally recedes back into nothingness, he hears a lot of gasps, one of them coming from right next to him. He can see why.

There is a dead body in front of him. A dead body has ascended.

Well, it’s probably not dead, but if someone said it was, He Xuan would believe them without a second thought.

The god’s skin reminded him of a stiff, shiny cloth, with the way it fitted around its bones like some twisted Ghost City meat. The dark, matted hair looked and smelled like it was covered in blood. The clothes were so bloody that He Xuan couldn’t guess the original color of them. It had more places where it was bleeding even more fresh blood.

In one word: bloody.

That does not help the dirt, grime, and tears it is also covered with.

Not to mention it was especially chilling with the new-looking, shiny silver mask it was wearing. The body, as He Xuan will name it, is wearing a mask adorned with exquisite detailed carvings. Though everything else was dirty beyond compare, the mask remained untouched as if it was only just made. A legend resurfaces in He Xuan’s mind.

The legend of Guoshi Fangxin.

Appointed as the Guoshi for His Highness Tai Hua, or Lang Qianqiu, he taught him for years before his seventeenth birthday, in which he hacked all the people there into corpses and killed everyone at the gilded banquet. Later, he was buried and sealed in a coffin after Lang Qianqiu defeated him, as the legend goes…

Was that Guoshi Fangxin?!

Did he ascend from the coffin!?Ling Wen arrives with little fanfare. “General Xuan Zhen,” she says. “please bring the new god to your palace to heal. I will look into this matter at once.”

He Xuan watches as General Nan Yang and General Xuan Zhen carry the body to the former's palace. After they’re out of sight, he makes a tactical retreat. That body really woke him up.

“Shi Qingxuan-” he starts, but Shi Qingxuan fills in his story for him,

“N-need a moment?” they ask shakily. Lucky for him, he does need a moment. Just not like what they’re thinking. Shi Qingxuan would want comfort from another person, but they know He Xuan, or in their eyes, Ming Yi, would not. Hopefully, they can find their brother or something.

“Yeah,” he replies. Thank goodness for Shi Qingxuan.

____

A few minutes later, he’s back at the Earth Master’s palace, using the communication array to contact another Supreme.

“What is it?” The Supreme in question drawls lazily. “What do you need, money? Food? It will be added onto your debt.”“Nothing of that sort,” He Xuan sneers, though Hua Cheng cannot see it. “Someone new has ascended to heaven. Thought you might want to know who it is?” He can feel Hua Cheng become more attentive, probably hoping it was his god. He probably would have paused if he were below himself. “Well then? Who is it?”“That’s the thing,” He Xuan says. “What ascended was, basically, a corpse.”“A corpse? Not a ghost?” Hua Cheng inquires. He can tell that he’s very interested. “Can ghosts even ascend? No, like, a corpse. It might have been alive, but it certainly looked dead. I might be wrong, but I believe it’s the Guoshi Fangxin. I could check for you.”“Perhaps you could. That’s certainly interesting.”“Do you want me to go to General Xuan Zhen’s palace?”“I really don’t care.”“Okay…”____

And that was how He Xuan found his way to General Xuan Zhen’s palace. Fucking great.

Fate really doesn’t like him anymore, does it?

He absent-mindedly goes through the routine of getting past some of the junior officials and insists he can find Guoshi Fangxin on his own. Which is how he finds himself peeking through a random door. And of course, he has to deal with the bullshit that is Guoshi Fangxin is sitting up, probably awake.

Listening closer, he hears… something. Akin to sobbing, maybe.

____

When he awakens, there is pain.

There is always pain.

But the pain is lesser, now.

And everything felt so… light. And he can see, in what feels like forever. When was the last time he truly saw? It isn’t as beautiful as the gold-white light and the people, but it’s something other than nothing. He’s endlessly grateful for this dream.

He tries sitting up, which doesn’t work. His core isn’t what it used to be. He wishes he could experience this dream to the fullest, but this works as well. Despite everything, it’s still him. He’s still here.

It’s so good.He eventually finds his way up, supporting himself on the soft lumps below him. His arms aren't what he wishes they were, but he can still move them. He still tries. His face stretches into something, he doesn’t know what. It pulls at his skin uncomfortably, but he can’t stop.

He tries to make a sound. It doesn’t work.

His arms still work, so he reaches up to his throat, feeling… something. It’s hollow. Maybe a hole? Or a scar? Something. He can’t talk anymore. He wishes he could express his joy, but the sound won’t come out.

He must stay strong for this to continue. He realizes he’s kept his eyes closed the whole time.

He names the color he saw; red. It was red he saw beneath his eyelids. Another beautiful color, he thinks. Red.

Oh wow, he has eyelids too.

He cracks open his eyelids a tiny bit; enough for light to seep through his eyelashes. It’s beautiful.

The design is elegant but not too much, from what he can see. The walls are white. There are carvings along the pillars. He gives his moments some time to adjust before opening them up some more. It seems almost like a white flash, the way he processes it- it’s too much, too fast, but still he can’t help but want more.

Heaven, he thinks. This is Heaven.  He relaxes, allowing himself to take in the sight of this perfect place slowly. He feels a sense of joy, a feeling of contentment. He’s shaking, that much he knows.

His head gets tired, or maybe it’s just him. He looks down. The soft cloth beneath him becomes blurry. He blinks some wetness away from his eyes, but they fall, staining it. His face scrunches up painfully. He doesn’t feel bloody anymore. He’s still dirty, though. He’s messy.

Blood- the blood inside him- rushes down his arms and chest. It has been since he sat up. It feels good. There is an infinite amount of it inside and outside of him. Blood is always a constant; whether dry or wet or blue or red or-

It’s always there. Inside of you.

His blood is red, too.

His shoulders shake. He hears something creak .

His head leads his eyes towards the noise. Standing in between… two doors, is a person, a real, living person.

He could cry from joy, he is crying from joy. He could lift his arms, but he can’t talk. He wants to see them.

Catching the stranger's eye, the stranger hesitantly walks in. He stares at them in awe.

The stranger wears detailed black and gold robes. The gold matches the stranger's eyes, which are narrowed and locked on him. Dark hair is tied up in a high ponytail, but his bangs still cover some of his face.

Before, he didn’t have enough time to study the people in front of him; he was too overcome with emotions to even register their facial expressions. Years of solitude have probably rubbed off some of his social skills, but the stranger looks… weird. Disgusted? Hesitant? It’s certainly something, he knows.

Maybe it’s uncomfortable, the way the stranger shuffles his feet and looks like they’re working up the courage to say something. He doesn’t know why it catches him off guard when he finally speaks.

“Are you the Guoshi Fangxin?”

[redlyriumidol]

these are the vibes I picture for the settings of dreadwolf (which I tried to transmit in my playlists):

tevinter/minrathous: opulent, magnificent, but creepy and fucked up, corrupt city of darkness and hedonism. immense gothic cathedrals of dark stone tower above the downtrodden masses that scurry beneath. so much history, but the blood will never wash out

antiva/treviso: italian obviously, with hints of spain. neighbours sit around in the streets to play guitars or lutes and sing/clap together. beautiful twisting spires, refinement, but there's a seedy underbelly, the stink of leather and the risk of murder- the people are joyful nevertheless- wine, food, song flows from every open window.

anderfels: vast, open, nothingness. a feeling of pervasive doom, a searching for some sign of the maker in the unforgiving wastelands under an expanse of empty sky. grim soldiers clad in grey march across the dusty landscape, the king has long abandoned his people who must fend for themselves against the constant threat of darkspawn.

rivain: their lives are intertwined with the sea. fishing nets, the smell of salt. pirates and sailors come and go, drinking spiced rum at the taverns. and there's an old magic there which sits on the skin, it's as natural to them as breathing. respected seeresses with wrinkled, weather-beaten faces ply their trade under the smoke of burning herbs and cured fish. women sell branches of rosemary on street corners. hints of spanish romani culture and music, also north african and al-andalus.

[mahayanapilgrim]

Dzogchen Instruction of Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö

Om Svasti

Lordly Guru, most supreme refuge, may your feet ever adorn my crown.

Sublime holder of the teachings, you have requested me to summarize the path into pith instructions for you to practice. As I myself lack any deep experience, I feel it would be inappropriate for me to do so. Nevertheless, to avoid disappointing you, I'll write a synopsis of what the masters of the past have said.

Begin by destroying the house of the analytical mind, and decide upon the groundless and rootless nature of all. This dharmakaya awareness that transcends ordinary mind is without essence and identity - lucidity without a reference point, completely free. It is awareness without dwelling, unobservable and free of notions such as existence, non-existence, permanence and nothingness.

It isn't a mere vacuity; it is the Great Perfection, the spontaneous three kayas, quintessential luminosity itself abiding as the ground, the great dharmakaya.

To experience it there is no need for a contrived path; simply rest in your own nature. Whatever else you practice, such as the generation phase (utpattikrama) or perfection phase (sampannakrama), will not be a distraction. This is it, there is no need for anything else!

To avoid distraction and vagueness, which may occur at the beginning of the practice, remain mindful and sustain awareness. Eventually mindfulness itself will dissolve into the dhâtu, that which is all-pervasive and enduring like the sky, and within which there is nothing to hold onto or release, neither purity nor impurity. Everything arises naturally - without suppression or encouragement, complexity or simplicity - it is simply the dynamic display of compassionate awareness: settle into this.

This view should be as stable as a mountain. Meditation should be as unmoving as an ocean. Conduct should be relaxed and loose, regardless of what appears. As for the result, simply settle into awareness.

Don't dwell in the past or anticipate the future. Regardless of whatever appears to the six consciousnesses, do not be attached, allow things to pass. This is the meaning of self-liberation.