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sunnywritings · 4 years ago

Text

you’re amusing

request: n/a pairing: pirate!dream x reader genre: angst/fluff word count: 6k warnings: fighting, bloodshed(not graphic) summary: captainpuffy’s crew raids your island. :)

extra: i spent two days writing this and it turned out to be 14 pages on google docs- please- lmao. um anyways,, you can use my au if you’d like(just @ me if you do!!/credit me), feel free to ask questions and i’ll answer and give y’all the info i have on it! :) also this is NOT edited dsifds anyways!! (i dont usually add keep readings but this is so long im sorry please-) - - - - - - - - - -

winter was never kind to us, the only things that seemed to warm us all were the bread and pastries niki made, or the fire we’d have ever night. otherwise, the town was silent, not a peep from anyone simply trying to survive.

we were close, or at least some of us are. every now and then you’d here whispered talking, most now guarded and isolated from the first attack. tubbo and tommy were the two that spoke the most to each other, tommy commonly being seen entering and exiting tubbo’s florist shop, except not always with flowers.

he’d leave with weapons now, newly crafted and made swords or arrows, shields sometimes even. it wasn’t new but it was still shocking that this is what the town had come to. what used to be a lively, social town now filled with the cold, bitterness of a half victory.

wilbur hadn’t been seen for a couple of weeks, the only signs he was still in there were the fact patrols were still being sent out. tommy, techno, and purpled all wandering the island, weapons drawn and looking out for that one boat.

‘masked raiders’ is what they called them, the members rather than the ship. the title was earned when their raid leader had become recognizable for their white eye cover/bandana and mocking smile.

no, the ship itself was called ‘ethereal fury’. led by the infamous captain puffy. legends say it’s hundreds of years old, passed on to their family like an heirloom, yet no one knew who would lead it next.

you stared out over the waters, one leg over the cliff side and the other tucked up, elbow leaning against it and palm in hand. your bow sat beside you, the bundle of arrows scattered around messily. organization was never your strong suit, but aim was. tubbo had crafted you personalized throwing knives, your initials craved into the handle.

your hand clasped around one of the knives, running your thumb delicately over your initials. glancing up at the sky, you took note of the time, pressing a hand against the ground and standing. purpled would be home soon, and you needed to check him over for wounds. he was your brother, as reckless as he was, he never learned to take care of himself.

with a sigh you walked around, picking up the discarded arrows, sliding your bow over your back. the string pressed against your front, though it became an invisible, phantom of a feeling when you turned around, hearing noise from the waters.

around another island in the distance pulled a ship, not too far away from your home island. quickly you pulled a shrinkable scope from your pocket, an intention fundy had given you to test, looking around the boat for a symbol.

and there it was, the ram horns on the front of the ship. quickly a gasp left you, from your post you ran for the watchtower. the cliff was a watchpoint and practice area, one you commonly went to.

you rushed up the mossy watchtower stairs, almost stumbling. finally, you reached the bell, grabbing the string inside and frantically ringing the bell.

it’s noise rung out, hurting your ears, yet you continued to hit it and let the sharp sound fill the island. immediately you heard the upsurge from the side, hearing the draw gate start to close and defense barriers begin to set up. techno and tommy must’ve been closing in when you hit the bell, what ironically and unfortunately perfect timing.

the cold wind stung at your skin and face as you raced back down the stairs and to the cliffside. you kneeled, pulling your bow back out and drawing an arrow from your quill. your sight was aimed down at the ship, keeping a steady aim and stare on the offensive, and enemy raiders.

the ship began to slow, and you could see the cannon windows begin to open. steadying your grip on the arrow you aimed slightly up, breathing in before releasing the arrow, exhaling while you shut.

the arrow zoomed through the air, piercing directly into the opening of the cannon. the window immediately shut on that opening, and you took out another arrow, quickly changing positions to be further in the shrubbery. loading another arrow you aimed at the pirate ship again, watching them begin to dock. the moment you saw a sign of movement you fired the arrow, repeating your breathing process. it hit against the board that let them down, bouncing off and into the waters, though you had been inches away from hitting someone's foot.

you glanced up slightly from where you had been aiming, the white sticking out against the rest of the outfit. pain shot through your lungs at the aggressive and sharp inhale you took. the leader of the masked raider’s was staring directly up at the cliffside, though not at you, but rather at the watchtower.

quickly you rolled into the bushes, back against a tree while peering out at them. you saw two of the raiders jump out, one throwing a fireball at the wooden defenses and the other throwing two potions down. their swords gleamed, even from how far back you were. suddenly, you heard a familiar warping sound.

drawing your attention over, you watched a black and red hooded figure land, glancing over the town. they stood beside the watchtower, only about twenty feet away from you. slowly you leaned a hand down, grabbing a pebble. keeping it held firmly in your hands you reared your hand back, throwing it at the shrubbery on the other side of the watchtower.

that got their attention, and you got a good glimpse of their face. a half demon, black horns prominently protruding from their forehead and white eyes. you bit your tongue to prevent any noise, pulling a throwing knife out of its sheath. it was silent for a moment before the half demon began to walk over to investigate, sword drawn.

you had to block out the noises of the battle below in order to focus, inhaling softly and slowly. tunnel vision took its effect, and everything around you became noiseless, void while you zoned in on this half demon’s back. the knife flew from your hand, embedding yourself into their shoulder.

“agh!” the half demon shouted, flinching forward and dropping their sword before spinning around, growling. clearly they were angry, ripping the throwing knife from their shoulder and looking at it. their blood was white like their eyes, and while they seemed focused on the throwing knife you drew the dagger you had strapped to your thigh.

from where you were you could hear the half demon’s breathing, before their gaze flickered to the shrubbery you were in. your eyes met, and before you realized what you were doing, you had sprung out of the bushes, lunging at the half demon.

their grip on the knife changed, clasping tightly around your throwing knife. while you swung to the side in an attempt to hit them, they swiped at you. the knife clipped your shoulder, but you had managed to slash across their leg.

you rolled away, on your good shoulder, the adrenaline numbing the sting from the wound. the half demon took a step back to look at you, seemingly unfazed from the wound. they slowly took steps towards you, while you stood there, shifting your feet into a fighting stance.

suddenly they rushed at you, stabbing the knife down at you. your knife raised, meeting the knife in the middle. while you both struggled to push the other knife away, you rose a foot, kicking the half demon in the stomach. they flinched, gasping while being kicked back.

your throwing knife dropped, and while you quickly moved, ducking to pick it up, the half demon threw their own knife at you. it landed in your shoulder, which brought a gasp of pain from you.

glancing over, you saw the half demon running at you again, sword drawn, having picked it up when they were kicked away. you stared, rage now burning in your stomach. when they took several swipes at you, you managed to duck or back away from the strikes. when the barrage of hits ended you swung forward, slamming the handle of your knife into their head. the half demon got knocked down, and before they could get back up again, you slammed into their stomach. you hit the handle against their head once, twice, and finally three times before they were down for the count.

standing up you inhaled shakily, reaching a hand up and ripping out the knife. you gasped again, stifling a cry of pain by biting your lip. tears burned in your eyes before you rolled the half demon over, slowly taking all their weapons. you hesitated before grabbing the half demon by the back of the hood, dragging them over to the watchtower. you propped them up against a wall inside, leaving their practically emptied bag there.

new sword in hand, you walked out, the pain slowly returning from your dying adrenaline. returning to the cliffside over town, you stared down at the battle, panting softly. the battle reigned on, techno fighting the masked raider’s leader, tommy fighting the one that started the fire, and purpled fighting the one that splashed potions. from what you could see the battle was in the town’s favor, philza even shooting arrows down from above the town’s biggest building, the townhouse, where wilbur, fundy, and philza all lived.

with a sigh you readied yourself to go down the cliff, shaking out your arms, not without a spike of pain in your left one. slowly, you used your heels to ground you to the earth, sliding your way down without hurting yourself too badly. scrapes now littered your hands when you hit the ground, quickly running into the town.

the battle was louder now, metal clashing against metal and the sounds of the crackling fire. you ducked beside the bakery, peering inside for niki.

when you looked inside you saw her behind the counter, the traveler jack inside with her. they seemed to be talking, jack gesturing to the battle outside while niki shook her head. she saw you, pausing before waving. jack turned to look at you, scowling, which seemed to be his natural expression. you waved back before looking back at the battle, huffing.

the fire was spreading uncomfortably close to the townhouse, though philza seemed fine from above. it was fundy you were worried about, less than about purpled but still worried. the fox hybrid had been taught to fight, but hadn’t completed his training, and was even a few years older than purpled. he’d been babied for so long by wilbur that he hadn’t gotten the chance to train.

glancing around at the battle, you made sure all of them were distracted before running, sprinting across the open field. the clinking of the swords grew louder as you ran past them. unfortunately, the moment you got close to the townhouse, you heard the loud sound of cannon fire. the noise pierced the air, a ringing noise now sitting in your ears as you watched the cannon ball hit directly into the townhouse.

“no!” you screamed, voice cracking. the impact knocked you off your feet and threw the sword away from you, though you scrambled back up, you were forced to watch the townhouse crumble and fall. philza managed to swoop down with his wings. “phil, fundy’s still in there!” you shouted at the advisor, who paused with wide eyes.

“get him! i need to help techno!” he shouted back before dashing off, not even giving you a chance to rebuke. you exhaled heavily before running into the burning remains of the townhouse, roughly scrambling through while coughing from the smoke.

lifting the broken wood, “fundy! where are you!” you shouted, coughing afterwards. faintly you heard him call back, a weak ‘help!’ from within the rubble.

dashing over, you quickly began to remove the wood, ignoring the sting from the fire. it burnt your skin, licking at it to create new wounds while you simply continued to move. finally you found the fox hybrid, grabbing his hand and pulling him out. his fur was burnt slightly, tips singed. you put a hand on his head, forcing him to duck with you. “c’mon! this place is gonna collapse!” taking hold of his hand you rushed fundy out of the building, with him stumbling behind you.

when you both managed to get out, only a few moments later did the building groan, the rest finally collapsing. your hands shot to your knees, crouching while you coughed aggressively. fundy pat at your back, covering his own cough with an arm. “thank you.” his voice was hoarse, yet almost broken sounding. you glanced up at him, nodding before walking a little bit away. picking up the half demon’s sword, you handed it to fundy. “protect yourself.” even your voice was hoarse, strained from the smoke and coughing.

he nodded at you before both of you turned to the battle still raging on. ringing set in your ears again, the pain coming back like a tsunami. you winced, crying out in pain before collapsing to your knees. burn wounds littered across your hands and upper arm, the stab wound to your shoulder not doing any better from the ash that now rests atop it.

your breathing had become labored, shaky on top of that. fundy rummaged through a he had, taking out a healing potion. he kept a hand on your back, “tilt your head back.” you glanced over at him before doing as told. the fox hybrid pushed the bottle to your mouth, pouring half of it for you to drink. you gulped it down like it was water and you were going through a drought. leaning your head back forward, he drank the rest of the potion. “thank you.” you muttered, able to feel the energy returning to your body, watching the burn scars fade slightly and feel the stab wound stop bleeding and scab over.

he hummed, removing his hand quickly after that while discarding the bottle. “now let’s get back to this battle right?” fundy grinned, one of his fox ear’s flicking. you smiled back up at him, standing up and taking out your dagger. “we got some raiders to beat the shit out of.”

together, you rushed towards the battle, though fundy diverged from you, running to philza. you kept running straight, sprinting to where purpled was fighting, though his opponent’s back was to you.

just as you were above to slash at him you heard the call out, “george! behind you!” it came from the one tommy was fighting.

the one now known as ‘george’, spun around, swinging his sword. you ducked back, sword swiping over your stomach and head. you spun, pressing your hands off the ground and kicking him into the stomach, knocking him back towards purpled. while you landed your brother slashed george in the side, rearing a hand back and punching him square in the face while he was in shock.

his glasses crumbled to the floor, now broken, blood dripping down after it. he gasped, and while you moved around george to purpled’s side you could see why. george’s nose had been broken from purpled’s punch, and your brother still wasn’t letting up. purpled landed another punch into his gut, shoving george back again. the enemy raider let out a small fry of pain before punching back at purpled, hitting him in the shoulder.

it was slow motion when you watched the raider’s leader appear behind george, and as george ducked, the leader’s sword swung towards purpled. you dived forward, knocking purpled out of the way. the sword hit empty air while you stood back up, glaring at the masked raider. their head turned to stare at you before one of their hands rested on george’s shoulder. george glanced at the leader before running off into the battle.

you stared at the masked one, or the bandana, shifting the grip on your dagger. right now you really wished you hadn’t given fundy that sword. it was silence between you two before he bolted forward, swinging at you. you backed up, ducking and dodging his rapid swinging.

purpled shouted, “catch!” you glanced over only for a second, dropping the dragged and catching the sword, spinning on your foot and clashing your swords together. the clink rang out, the renowned, mocking smile forming on the leader’s expression.

you stared flatly, glaring before smiling. the masked leader paused when you smiled, quickly spinning around and hitting purpled’s dagger away. with his back turned, you slashed down it, cutting through his shirt and drawing blood.

the masked leader paused before aggressively swinging at him, pivoting and slashing the blade at you. you bounced his blade off, taking steps back while he took steps forward, making aggressive slashes at you.

the tip of his sword hit you every once in a while, making shallow cuts first to your arm and then one to your chest. finally something intervened, though it definitely wasn’t what you hoped for.

“stop the fighting or he’s fucking dead!” the fire started called, sword to someone’s neck. you and the masked raider both paused, looking over. fundy was beaten up, bleeding from his lip and nose, slashes made down his arms and a couple on his legs.

you gasped, “fundy-“ your voice started, but before you could move the masked raider’s sword was put in front of you like a wall. slowly you looked over at them, staring with wide eyes. purpled came to your side, weapon discarded and glaring up at the masked raider. “back up.” he commanded, but his demand fell upon deaf ears.

the masked raider continued to stare at you while one of his companions shouted, “drop your weapons and give up! one fucking arrow or knife comes at me and he’s gone!” the sword moved closer to fundy’s neck, who managed to hold his head back slightly, his eyes wide, mouth tightly closed, and arms drawn in.

“let him go-“ your voice was quiet at first, before your fist nestled around the grass below you, though it was practically dead. “let him go!” you shouted, voice breaking halfway through, tears finding their way to your eyes. “he’s just a teenager how the fuck can you do this! you’re threatening to kill us for what? greed! fucking satisfaction you sick fucks!” you continued to scream, even when the masked raider moved his sword closer to your neck.

tears spilled over your eyes, “if you’re gonna do it then fucking do it! but leave him alone! fuck off! we’re a small island! a fucking family that you made distrust each other from the first attack! what’re you gonna do? stab me?” you reached up, grabbing his sword and bringing it to your neck. your grip was tight enough to cut your hand, blood dripping down the blade. “do it then you fucking sick prick.” from behind the bandana you could feel them staring at you, as if actually contemplating it.

their sword dropped as they walked forward, crouching down and grabbing you by the collar of the shirt. they smiled, “drop the fox!” they called, holding an amused tone of voice. “we’re taking this one.” as they spoke they hoisted you up, lifting you slightly off the ground. you squirmed, and as much as you hated it you had to accept they were stronger than you.

“no you aren’t!” purpled shouted, swinging the sword you had discarded towards their arm. another sword intervened, but not by who either of you expected.

wilbur scowled at purpled, pushing your brother away. “stand down purpled.” he ordered. purpled opened his mouth to speak, but wilbur didn’t give him the chance. “you heard me.” he glared before looking over at the masked raider.

“leave.” was all he said, turning his back on the masked raider, walking across the burnt town-square and over to where fundy had been dropped.

the masked raider tossed you over his shoulder, where you wiggled, hitting at their back while cussing bitterly. the raider who had started the fire was handed a pouch of gold while wilbur took fundy, leading the fox hybrid away from the raider.

the raider whistled, “and thank you-“ the masked raider shouted after a moment, “sapnap! c’mon we don’t have time for this!” they called. ‘sapnap’ groaned, rolling his eyes before going along. “and see you all another time!” he mock bowed while the masked raider walked up the board.

you hit at their back with closed fists, wiggling. “let me go!” your voice echoed, screaming, though no one listened. no one in the town could look at you, the only ones who did make eye contact were purpled and techno, one who looked regretful and the other looked guilty. both were wounded, techno more so than purpled, before they were gone from your sight.

the board was hauled onto the ship when sapnap got back on, george and the half-demon getting their wounds tended to as you were set down. the masked raider set you down against a pole while the boat got moving. feeling the boat lurch forward, you moved with it, wincing when your head hit the back of the pole.

your eyes closed, biting your tongue before opening your eyes. when you opened them you saw the captain staring at you, ram horns decorated with gold jewelry. you yelped, trying to flinch back even further from the captain.

alas, that did nothing as she only grew closer. you shut your eyes tight, tucking your chin and grabbing onto your own wrist tightly. the feeling of a hand on your chin brought back all your fear, and it only worsened when you were forced to look up, opening your eyes out of shock. she stared down at you, studying your expression and how you reacted. you were forced to stare back, and your fear mixed with anger burned into your eyes and stomach, boiling like a geyser.

“good job dream, now we have leverage.” she hummed, smiling. “welcome to ethereal fury.” captain puffy stared down at you before letting go, simply taking a few steps back. her sword shifted as she moved, and with a snap of her fingers you were being picked up again, this time by strangers. ‘dream’ seemed to be the masked raider, who stood beside the captain.

the new people holding you were up some not out on the battlefield, you assumed they were behind the canons or simple helpers. one was a half endermen and the other looked more dead inside, and bored, than sapnap did behind dream.

“now i find it awfully impressive you managed to take down bad,” that sentence got the half endermen to tighten their grip on you, “but i’m not all that happy you did it to begin with.” puffy turned to look at you, unsheathing one of her daggers. “now you can either tell us everything about yourself and the island,” the tip of the dagger pressed against your lips, applying pressure on your lower one, “or you can decide to not speak at all.”

your jaw fell loose, and the light pressure applied to your mouth made it fall open slightly. the cold of the blade shot through your head, the metallic taste was a bitter reminder of what was happening. she removed the knife after a moment, to give you the opportunity to speak.

you looked up at her slowly, glaring. “your men tried to kill one of my friends,” your voice was low, words slow, “so frankly, you can suck my fucking dick.” a smile drew onto your face, “because at least mine is bigger than half your men’s.”

puffy stared back at you, and while the fear and loss of confidence dwelled in your stomach, you were determined to keep staring back.

finally, she laughed loudly as well. your expression and body slacked at the noise, eyes widening. “that’s a good one kid, a good one.” puffy leaned slightly down to look at you, smiling. “you’re amusing, so full of spite it seems.” she stood back up, sheathing the knife. “i like this one.”

dream rose a brow before scoffing, him and sapnap walking over to george and ‘bad’. “release them.” puffy ordered, which got everyone’s attention.

slowly you were let go, you stretching by rolling your arms, though you winced right after. your arm was still sore from where bad had stabbed you. hesitantly you glanced around, unsure of what to do now that you were let go, though puffy brought your attention back to her. “alright kid, now you’re not one of us so don’t get the wrong idea, but you’ll definitely have to stay in the cell for a couple of days.” those words brought your scowl back.

“well if your so-called dream hadn’t insisted on taking me you wouldn’t have to worry about me.” you grumbled. puffy laughed again, though it sounded more mocking this time.

puffy grabbed you by the wounded shoulder, tugging you over. her nails dug into your wound, which made you wince out of pain, biting your lip and whimpering slightly. she let up on her grip, though she still dragged you down into the bottom of the boat, through a staircase. down there was one guy cracking jokes and the other laughing. the one making jokes was in blue, a scar down one of his eyes, and the other was in a colorful outfit, goggles on top of his head and a book in hand.

you stared at them for a moment, and eventually they both looked over at you, pausing in their conversation. puffy continued to tug you forward, and as you passed them they both returned to conversation, though more hushed this time.

when you looked forward again you saw puffy pulling you towards a cell, which was quickly opened with one of her keys. you inhaled sharply when she pushed you inside, landing on your side.

you sat up as puffy spoke, “now if you behave for a little we might consider letting you join, or return to your companions.” she locked the door again, spinning the key. quickly you went to the bars, shaking them a couple of times. you knew it was futile, only the width of your arm could fit between those bars.

moving back in the cell you sat against the wall, sighing while tilting your head back. this was gonna be a long few days wasn’t it.

- - - - - - - - - -

you woke up to the sound of the cell door opening, jolting up. pain shot through your shoulder when you sat up, staring with wide eyes at the door. dream stood there, bandages and gauze in his hands. he stared at you before clearing his throat, “puffy sent me to clean your wounds.” the raider muttered, walking towards you.

before he could reach you your back had hit the wall, distrust dwelling in your stomach. dream’s posture was slack, relaxed and unafraid, clearly he didn’t take you as a threat for now. no words were spoken as you slowly turned, huffing while showing him your back first.

the sound of him sitting down was the only noise in the cell, besides hearing your own breathing. when he stopped moving the noise of his breathing became clear as well, and oddly your breaths had been in sync. you flinched when a rag touched your shoulder wound, clearly he had doused it in gauze to clean and disinfect it. he stopped moving for a moment, waiting before slowly wiping the rag down the cut. it wasn’t necessarily long, just a deep stab in your shoulder, which hurt like all hell.

after a moment of repetitive wipes to the wound, he removed the rag, using his other hand and tugging your sleeve down. you bit your lip to distract yourself, fidgeting with your hands. “lift your arm.” his voice was surprisingly soft, calm to an extent. you did as instructed, wincing, though all he did was begin to wrap the bandage around your shoulder. he lifted a hand, gently pulling your arm down after he’d looped the bandage around the front, pulling the rest down onto the flat of your wound.

he cut the bandage off, though his other hand stayed on your arm for a moment longer before he removed it. you shifted, turning around and holding your arms out. the gauze rag he had used was tainted with a light red, though he still used it to clean the shallow cuts to your arms. his hands moved slowly, and you watched him work, closely studying his expression, or lack thereof, and his hands.

when he finished bandaging your arms his head tilted to look you in the face. silence settled between you two, only the sound of your breathing filled the room.

“why’re you listening to puffy and helping me?” your voice came as a surprise to even yourself, having blurted out the words.

dream only stared back before a smile formed on his expression. “puffy was right. you are amusing.” his tongue clicked, raising a hand and pulling his bandana back. piercing, green eyes stared at you, bright somehow even in the darkness of the cell, a taunting, yet charming smile painting his face. “i’m glad i chose you over the fox.” dream’s words were practically purred out, voice filled with amusement. you couldn’t help the small blush that spread to your face, both from his eyes and sudden change in voice. “try and get some more sleep doll, we have a long couple of days to go.” he leaned towards you, grinning before patting the top of your head.

the bandana returned to cover his eyes after he gathered the gauze rag and bandages, walking out of the cell and locking it. you stared wide-eyed at the spot he once sat at and the cell door. a sharp breath left you, one you didn’t realize you were even holding. who the fuck was this raider? and who did dream think he was to do that to you? but most importantly, what did he mean?

- - - - - - - - - -

dream had visited you a couple more times over however long it had been. mainly he had been bringing you food and water, his excuse was always, ‘puffy sent me down to do this’. the more he used it the less you cared, you were tired of that excuse, you just wanted to know what he saw in you that had him coming back.

on the brighter side, you had met a few of the other crewmates. quackity and karl were the two you had passed before below deck, they seemed fun and even cracked jokes with you despite you being in a cell. they had made you laugh for the first time since you got here, it was refreshing too. you had also met ranboo, the half endermen, and punz, the one who had looked dead inside. though it was more you had heard his name was punz, from ranboo who had been coming down to check on some storage.

anytime you tried to ask how long you’d been down here you never got a certain answer, just an ‘uhhh’ and then a shrug, or being flat out ignored. at this rate you were tempted to shimmy out of the bars and see if there was a window you could jump out of. it felt like you could swim to shore with how long you had been cooped up in here.

you heard his footsteps again, he had come by enough for you to recognize them. turning, you looked at the cell door, focusing back in, seeing dream walking. something hopped in your stomach, seeing him carry a tray of food and a glass of water.

he opened the cell door again, “puffy had me-“ you interrupted him, “oh quit the fucking excuse, if you’re gonna bring me something at least tell me why you’re coming.” dream looked mildly shocked you had snapped at him, shoulders stiffening.

his jaw clenched while he set the food down, water beside it. you grabbed the food, picking up the bread and biting into it. cold as always, “well? you gonna talk or you gonna keep shoving your head into your ass?” you swoop your hand in a vague ‘get it going’ gesture.

dream paused again before laughing, sitting down. “i’ve always been interested in you. since that first raid we pulled on your island,” he started, while you slowly continued to eat, “when we lost and were retreating you didn't shout in victory like the other island protectors did. you turned around and helped the others of your island, checked on them, made sure they were fine, and began to help set up housing for those who had temporarily lost it from our cannonballs.” his words slowed considerably, pausing to breathe.

another smile formed on his expression, though not a mocking one, “something about you drew me in, something i can’t explain.” dream undid his bandana, resting it on one of his crossed legs. he leaned forward and towards you. his eyes scoured your expression, looking for something, which had developed a look of mild shock. you didn’t think he paid that much mind to you before they had taken you.

he leaned back, standing up and tying his bandana back on. dream offered a hand out, “your days in the cell are up.” a grin split across his expression when you took his hand, stumbling after pulling yourself up. “oh doll, you’re gonna love it here.”

dream led you out of the cell, careful to support you to avoid you falling or stumbling, even as you climbed the stairs. the daylight burned you eyes when you saw it again, squinting up at the clouds before glancing around. the crew had all gathered by the stairs, puffy in the front.

you paused to glance at dream, who was still grinning, before looking at puffy. she was smiling, taking strides towards you. the ram hybrid stared down at you for a moment, letting the silence ring out before she spoke.

“we want you to join ethereal fury.” puffy offered, “we all here believe you’d fit right in with us, training as a team, close as a family, and forming a bond with everyone here.” the ram hybrid hummed, finishing her small speech.

silence sat between you two again, the only noise was the waves rocking the boat. dream’s grip on your shoulder tightened slightly, but not as to intimidate you into joining, more of anticipation.

a small smile formed on your face, “sure.” why not try it? you’d probably return home eventually anyways, right? the crew burst out into cheers, karl running at you and pulling you into a hug, “welcome!” he shouted, shaking you slightly.

they were so trusting of you. but why? they’d barely known you, didn’t know if you’d say yes to joining. it made no sense to be this trustworthy.

dream pulled you away from karl, pulling you into a tight hug while quackity shouted something about getting the tequila and rum out. “welcome to the team, glad to have you here.” he shifted back slightly, using a hand to tilt your head up and kissing your forehead, smiling. a blush rapidly spread across your face, eyes widening slightly, and your posture and expression momentarily falling slack.

maybe this was the start of something new, a good new, and frankly? you couldn’t wait to see where it led.

121 notes · View notes

bluwails · 4 years ago

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Ive been real inspired by @chipper-smol 's au. I find myself snickering at Ghost/feral's antic mainly because I have young siblings and in my home there is never a dull moment. Child antics are literally my life rn and I cant help but relate.

So while on a nostalgic trip i was struck with this poorly written fic. And I hope you enjoy.

No edits because we die like men!

The time for rest had asserted its hold over Hallownest again as bugs wound down from the days toils. The servants and knights had quietly excused themselves to their personal quarters and the kingsmoulds that marched dutifully down each hall had slowed to a silent pace.

The white Lady had taken in the idea to walk the palace before retiring to her personal quarters for the evening. Dryya, her most respected and loyal guard, walked quietly behind her as she stiffled a yawn much to the white lady's amusement. She had dismissed her hours ago to rest but she stubbornly stuck to her and insisted on being around to protect her on her leisurely stroll.

" Your majesty, you need not worry for me. I will-" Dryya gaped stiffling another sign of encroaching sleepiness," -be with you until you retire to your bedroom."

She still felt fascination bubble under the surface as she observed her; a warm aura seeping off of her.

As a higher being they will never need these things like rest or daily meals. But they merely adopted the actions to blend more with the society around them. Just like her dear wyrm, Things like sleep were never on the forefront of their mind. They could spend decades awake and unbothered by the need. But they made resting a habit to demonstrate that one should rest after work.

Shuffling down the halls toward her favorite veranda befor she heard an unfamiliar scuffling. It was hurried but small. Most likely a small bug.

"Behind me your majesty." Dryya hissed pulling her nail from her side her alert instantly raised. As late as it was not many would be awake, much less in the halls working so fervently.

As they turned the corner they spotted two familiar horns working quickly with a brush and bottles of ink.

It was the feral vessel.

" You cheeky Sqwib! " she screamed shocking the little vessel. Their small hand dropping the brush they'd use to vandalize the walls. "You are at it again!" Dryya huffed indignant at the vessel as she marched over, sheathing her nail, and quickly bonking them between the horns.

" Do you know how you terrified the Queen?" She growled seizing their ink colored hands. " and to top that, you dare vandalize the white palace yet again!"

"Dear knight, there is no reason to be so harsh. " the white Lady softly appealed. "The walls can be cleaned and the ink replaced but the trust from a child cannot." She calmly lectured using a branch to pet the vessel.

"You are to lenient with them my lady." She huffed releasing them. Dryya was no fan of the feral vessel. Time and time again they'd watch and suffer their pranks. Many a time her nail was stolen only for it to be returned muddy or, miraculously, bent at the tip.

She was not the only one of the five knights to have their belongings weaseled from them and returned in less then favorable conditions.

"They are just being a child Dryya." WL cooed as she slowly squatted in front of them. "Soften your heart towards them. If only for me."

The knight reluctantly huffed again as she faced away. "Praise the Queen's endless patience, you little tyrant, you are saved for now. "

The white Lady smiled warmly as she looked the small vessel over. At this time they were meant to be tucked away in bed. The schedule their father made, though strict was optimize for their healthy growth. She suspected in full that the pure vessel had curled themselves into bed without a second thought, while their sibling ran through the halls causing their daily commotion.

In all honesty, she found their outbursts charming. Each trick, prank and shenanigan they pulled continuously showed her how lively they truly were. When they'd arrived from the abyss with their sibling, she lamented at their sight. Seeing them as nothing more than walking corpses until she heard of what would honestly sound like a farce. They'd barely stepped foot into the white palace before they entered a meeting between the dreamers, with no command or reason, and unleashed the most ungodly revolting smell. Shocking and disgusting the entire gathering forcing them to vacate the room entirely.

When her wyrm ranted about them that evening on how they indignantly, stomping their tiny grub feet and blantly ignoring him, forced them to clean the entire room alongside the retainers as punishment she could not help but laugh in an odd mix of relief and joy releasing a knot in her chest she did not know she held.

Looking again to the picture on the wall it was of clearly her dear wyrm. Her giggle chimming like bells as she observed it further. It was simple and childish as but it was an accurate representation of her wyrm. His elegant crown like horns now simple zigzags, their fangs drawn large and silly, with their tongue poked out in a not very gentlemen manner. (She suspects this is how they saw their father when they ranted at them.) It was crude, hurriedly painted, and was encompassed by tiny hand marks and had all the makings of a goofy Caricature and she wished she could save it.

"I see the throws of art beckoned you from your deep sleep small one." knowing full well they did it to mess with the king again. "maybe we should have Lurien tutor you to bring out your talents?" She questioned aloud watching the vessel furiously shake their head from the corner of their eye.

"Then what brings you from bed?"

The child twisted at their fingers looking down as they snuck peeks at her face.

They signed quickly keeping their ink covered hands slightly in sight. But It obvious it was something else. It was no news to her that they held many things back from them. And the curiosity of what it could be danced in the back of her mind, but she refused to force them anymore than they'd allow.

"You know you require rest in order to grow." She purred gently as she angled her small one's mask toward her.

Their mask tilted in a way that mimicked a pouty huff. Her heart swelling at how cute they were. She could not help but poke a small amount of fun.

"So you do not wish to grow anymore?" She questioned exaggeratedly tilting her head and placing a branch to her cheek.

They seemed to freeze at the and mull the thought around in their head. To her, this was the sweetest gesture. She'd remembered when the two vessels first molted and got their bearings. Though they thought no one was watching, she caught them do a small jig in celebration of their new body. Wiggling their newly formed fingers, touching their more angled faces and observing their budding wings.

" I'd say you'd want to." She whispered calmly retrieving her handkerchief to clean them.

"How can one so small hold such large secrets?" She hummed wiping the pink ink from them.

The vessel signed, a cheeky air to them as they flexed their arms nearly rupturing her heart from cuteness alone.

"Dryya please get someone to assist in cleaning up. " with a bow Dryya reluctantly left grumbling to herself.

"Now as much as I would love for you and to stay up and get into all kinds of mischief. I would say its time for bed. " She cooed admiring their clean face.

The vessel gestured again with more emphasis.

"I see." She hmmed making a show of thinking of what to do. In reality she had an idea of what to do. Somewhere deep in her memory was a song that. She could not remember the face that sang it to her but she remembers it working nearly every time. Ushering her to sleep. "Then would you care to accompany me on the veranda?" She asked pointing to the large glass door not far behind them.

Nodding they streched their arms up towards her. Obligating the gesture she swept them up in her branches as she walked slowly to the door.

she allowed small blooms to bloom on her creating a pleasant perfume before sitting on her stool already set up outside.

The vessel signed again gesturing at themselves.

Chuckling she squeezed them close to her. "Not essentially. You are of two pale beings and void." She murred quietly; her light warming them as they sunk into her lap. "You don't really need sleep. But its good because it helps you grow." She hummed wrapping her branches around them.

They gestured wildly again wiggling their fingers above their head causing her to erupted in laughter.

"Yes." She snickered "maybe if my wyrm slept and rested more they would grow as well I will be sure to suggest it to them later." Feeling the small ones shoulders shake in signs of laughter she hugged them.

" you remind me much of him in his younger years." She thought aloud as the vessel shook their head furiously. " well the both of you refuse to sleep on time so I imagine you two are similar in that sense." She mused as the small threw a small tantrum.

"Very well, shall I sing you something to assist you to sleep?" They nodded sinking back into her lap, placing their head on her chest.

As they sat, staring out into the lush garden and flickering lumaflies below she hummed a quiet tone shutting her eyes calling upon the memory.

Her branch rubbing small circles into their child's back as her voice trilled lyrics long thought lost to her:

Lay down your head and I'll sing you a lullaby

Back to the years of loo-li lai-lay

And I'll sing you to sleep and I'll sing you tomorrow

Bless you with love for the road that you go

May you sail far to the far fields of fortune

With diamonds and pearls at your head and your feet

And may you need never to banish misfortune

May you find kindness in all that you meet

May there always be angels to watch over you

To guide you each step of the way

To guard you and keep you safe from all harm

Loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay

May you bring love and may you bring happiness

Be loved in return to the end of your days

Now fall off to sleep, I'm not meaning to keep you

I'll just sit for a while and sing loo-li, lai-lay

May there always be angels to watch over you

To guide you each step of the way

To guard you and keep you safe from all harm

Loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay, loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay

Loo-li, loo-li, loo-li, lai-lay

Loo-li, loo-li, loo-li lai-lay

Loo-li, lai-lay

Only the soft breathing and the feeling their body relax and their shoulders ease indicated they drifted off.

"Sweet dreams my small one."

Thanks so much for reading. In all honesty i have only played hollowknight for about a month and half and im already so invested in the fandom. (I'm still getting my butt handed to me by ogrim. Please dungy boi stop throwing sh!t at me long enough so i can hit you. You broke all my fragile charms alreday!-🥺😢) You guys are so creative and fluffy and have no problem hurting my tender sensibilities.

For those curious the song is called sleepsong by secret garden. I used to listen to it ages ago before bed.

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mercurialmist · 4 years ago

Text

Orts, Meghan Murphy, 2021

When coral and poppy lipsticks melt into waxy pools they are scraped away. Yet the empty tubes remain, rimmed with colorful remnants of time.

The residue of laughing painted lips cling to hollow silver shells. The stifled air, moist with trapped memories, turns acidic, tarnishing the silver bullets in blues and greens. The weaker metals succumb to corrosion and the smooth geometric objects of the vanity descend into the mirrored surface…an infinite reflected universe of pock-marked moons and rust-cratered pits. Glass perfume bottles, whose contents have long-since evaporated, reveal droplets of gooey condensation on the inside.

Every time I turn on a faucet the water splutters in mud brown streams before finally fading to a pale yellow trickle.

Inside this house there is no letting go.

We can’t even replace the carpets, until the carpets speak for themselves—abruptly unraveling to trip us up. Failing plumbing stains the walls in murky teardrops, rivulets cascading down, down into the earth—and the same shade of paint is used to cover up the blooming mold. The wallpaper-ed rooms are less lucky—if the wallpaper is no longer in production then it stays, doomed to gradually be absorbed by the sweating house. A bathroom with walls of vibrantly colored, life-sized birds has faded from ornate detail to abstract shapes. The yellow finch that used to watch me with a discerning eye, has been reduced to the silhouette for a toddler’s puzzle.

The house gasps, groans, wheezes and secretes …

There are birds of all materials here. Porcelain eagles, taxidermy ducks and pheasants, delicate glass swans, a bronze peacock figurine…..

On the wall of the den is the mounted head of an indeterminant creature. Its mouth is open to reveal pointed white teeth and I see my brother and I reflected in the protruding marble eyes.

“It’s a fox,” I say.

“No,” my brother responds resolutely. “It’s an opossum.”

The toy box, an excavation site where the heavy wooden blocks of my mother’s childhood lay at the bottom and my own plastic toys float towards the top, all webbed together by the roots of tangled doll hair. We prefer to play with the bronzes—a collection of dog-sized statues line a room, an infinite circular migration. We climb on to ungiving saddles, little hands grasping cold buffalo horns and clutching at the faces of stoic Mohican chiefs.

I am all too aware of the constant surveillance that follows my padded footsteps. The walls are covered in heavy oil paintings, depicting dramatic scenes of nature—a ship caught in the throes of an angry sea, horses (so many herds of horses) in various landscapes—galloping, grazing, leaping into the air with rolling white eyes—and two large portraits of them, stationed in the heart of the house.

The grand piano sits below their looming faces—a glossy sacrificial altar. The ebony surface is covered in a clutter of picture frames, the many factions of a tangled family tree. The newest faces and unions vie for the front, dangerously close to the edge, while past, ended marriages and children long grown linger in the back.…. It’s the photos that don’t make it in the frames that matter—those candid moments that break through the glossy sheen.

I enter rooms on tip-toe, and hold my breath, always waiting for…what? To see the statues scramble back into place? The portraits conversing? I can’t even find peace in the bathroom, where a framed, larger-than-life nude woman bathes in the moonlight, glancing accusatorially over her shoulder at me.

And when it all becomes unbearable, all that empty, heavy space, all the unblinking eyes, I defy the house the only way a child can. I open the home stereo system, installed under the old record player, and press play on the album ‘Now That’s What I Call Music. 9.’ There is something immensely satisfying about filling the space with the pulsating base of Missy Elliot and dancing spastically around the house. Pausing in front of china cabinets and display cases to flail my limbs wildly. I am both defying the on-looking artefacts and also moving, running, prancing, and crawling for them. I scream the obscene lyrics, and when I don’t know the words I fill the void with howls, yelps and guttural cries.

In the summer, we collect dozens of inky black tadpoles from the pond and bring them inside to observe their evolution into frogs. With transfixed satisfaction we watch the wiggling amphibians absorb their tails and gills, to sprout webbed feet, gradually preferring the floating branches to the depths of the tank.

By the time the frogs are leaping and croaking, their startling ruckus is too erratic and I can feel the house expelling their presence. When I release the frogs, I think of the mounted fox, collecting dust in his perpetual snarl, glass stags frozen in flight, the bronze boar in everlasting terror and the hounds always tensed to lunge.

We have granted these things a power and their stillness now vibrates with a tension that will surely crack if the white porcelain arms of ballerinas, extended high over heads, don’t finally rest.

Every closet and drawer is filled with them. Racks of dresses hang in a shocking burst of color that even years of mothballs can’t subdue. Stacked boxes of white leather gloves, waiting to either mold itself to my skin in a permanent grasp or disintegrate from the shock of warm, pulsating flesh. His imposing army of suits, the outgrown shells of a larger-than-life man.

Over the years, we grow bolder and shift through her dresses, fingering the stiff fabrics and choosing our favorites.

“Try them on girls,” they whisper.

We are all silent as the rigid materials swallow our pre-pubescent bodies, but there is no warm encasing or folding of fabric over our slight frames. The dresses stubbornly maintain their womanly shapes, and we are just sticks propping up the figure of her.

It’s when we start to move that the ritual commences. There is something intimate and precious, and thrilling, because we know it is wrong to be wearing her clothes. In these gowns we feel elegant and graceful and hold our heads high as we twirl and pirouette through the house like a coronation—a sense of importance and birth-right.

We baptize the stiff dresses in our sweat and the dusty-dry fabric greedily soaks in youthful beads of perspiration…a secretion of inheritance.

…10 years later

“Now that I’ve left, when I come back to the house I feel like that boy, Holden, from Catcher in the Rye,” he says with a half-smile. His posture is rigid though, and I find my brother’s resigned behavior maddening, as if we hadn’t spent our childhood living here. Hands stuffed in his coat, he winds through the room, giving the furnishings a wide berth.

“Remember,” he continues, “how Holden loved the Natural History Museum as a child and suddenly he can’t bear going back because he’s changed and everything remains the same inside the museum?”

I only vaguely remember something about a red (or was it orange?) hat and a carousal. His eyes finally land on the oversized portraits of our great-grandparents, dominating the living room, and his expression sets.

“Meg,” he is resolute but I can sense a dread in his voice that alarms me.

“I love you and I want to set you free.” He emphasizes “free” as if it means so much more than I understand.

“Sometimes the power of a place, an artefact, or a story, can help guide us into our own. But this has gotten way out of hand. We,” he gestures around the room to indicate our family, “we were once the weavers of our truth. But, suddenly our hands couldn’t keep up with the loom, or it was like the loom didn’t need us anymore…and now we’re tangled, trapped, suffocating in our own creation, while the story shuttles on. I hope that you are able to let it all go…leave this tangled mess where it lies. Perhaps pause to wonder at the knots, frayed ends, and faded dyes…at this jumbled creature that has enveloped you, and what it once was. I want you to feel the blood start to circulate back into limbs that you haven’t even realized are numb, wrapped up in this vice-like thread. When all this is over, maybe take a strand or two with you to carry around as a reminder.”

In the back of my mind I can hear my cousins’ comments about how lost my brother is. How ungrateful he is to turn his back on all that our family has worked so hard to achieve, and how our spoiled upbringing is the only explanation for his dissatisfaction.

“I don’t understand…”

He surges on:

“You know how Grandpa taught me how to fish? And how I was so excited that I nearly hooked myself in the eye?” I smile fondly as he touches his brow, where a small scar disrupts the arc of hair.

“That never happened. I got this scar from hitting my head on the coffee table. I don’t even like fishing. And I barely remember them!”

He gestures accusatorily at the serene, smiling faces on the wall.

I am horrified.

I was born shortly after my great-grandparents had died, and grew up envying and reveling in everyone else’s memories of them.

“I started to catch on that everybody in our family had these special moments with them, and that there was never any kind of timeline or specific setting. And everyone is always trying to up each other with how meaningful their memories are. Aunt Susan got herself into trouble when she went a bit too far with her sailing story, involving that storm and shipwreck, forgetting that Grandpa never learned to swim.”

He picks up a porcelain horse from the mantle-piece and snaps a leg off. For a moment I swear I hear the terribly crisp ‘crack!’ of breaking glass, resounding through the house. Instead, there is only my own sharp gasp and a dull splintering sound.

“This isn’t hand-made, limited edition porcelain from Vienna. It’s acrylic. Probably from China. Maybe there was an original figurine once-upon-a-time, and maybe Grandma really did smuggle it back from Europe in her jacket, but this particular one is the third acrylic replica—in our lifetime—to be placed here.”

He looks at me pleadingly, “surely you must have caught-on that something was up…”

I look around the room; was there an imperceptible dulling of color and light? Had there always been so much…stuff? Every surface is covered with the treasured belongings of my great-grandparents. I finger the scratchy wool of pillows she crocheted. Here was his rifle collection, above a desk littered with her stationary and a heavy glass paper weight. And suddenly I feel those binding ties that he had been talking about. Every object, painting, and photograph that has been eternalized in my memory over the years, is connected to me by hundreds of threads tied to my ribcage. As I stare at the tremoring silky strands, I wonder whether I spun this web or if the objects themselves cast the net. And now I can never unsee or un-feel myself caught, suspended, propped-up in this thing. I realize that these are ties only I can sever. But what if these little connections are what hold me upright? I picture myself a crumpled heap on the floor, with no more wonder and certainty to buoy me back up.

“Hurry!” My brother says, an edge of desperation in his voice, “before it is too late.”

I frantically begin to pull…and pull and pull and the fibrous strings just keep coming….slipping, wet and glistening, through my skin… and then with a panic I press on my stomach and, instead of my bottom ribs, all I feel is soft, vulnerable intestines. I am unraveling myself. I am this thread, and I was moments away from unmaking myself.

Suddenly, my brother’s face transforms. As I watch, it continues to mutate between gender and age, and yet there is something familiar looking back at me. In skin that is soft, taut, and lined—all at once—I glimpse iterations of the same eye-shape, and pointed chin. And I am not afraid. “You have passed the test. And so, you have earned these—The Scissors of Acceptance, and The Stone of Truth.” They pass me a pair of small silver scissors and a whetstone, that sits reassuringly in the palm of my hand.

“But ask yourself: why was it so easy for my little tale and demonstration to nearly unspool you?”

When does the silence of family secrets, glaring omissions and mysterious gaps, accumulate to become more substantial than what is known? Perhaps the unspoken and unacknowledged is the backbone of the narrative. Perhaps one doesn’t necessarily contradict, or negate, the other.

I can not pull, or exorcise this thing from my body; I must accept it for what it is and be grateful that it supported my trembling legs until I could stand on my own. I use The Scissors of Acceptance, sharpened by The Stone of Truth, to cut the strings. Each snip of the scissors is a snapped chord—a violent jerk, quivering, and finally stillness.

I leave the house. And these ‘orts’—leftover fragments of the past—trail behind me in a soft silver wake. As I continue moving, the ghostly little strings begin to tentatively seek each other, connect like grasping hands, and eventually these remaining ties are the beginning of something new, and whole. A sheening garment, light as air, covers me like a second skin—as comforting as a blanket and protective as armor.

See more of Meghan’s work at: https://www.everythingforever.net/meghan-murphy

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the--regenerating--degenerate · 5 years ago

Text

Sol Invictus

Chapter Three: Escape From the Muninn

Blake didn’t know what she expected when she saw the Muninn from the viewing screen on the bridge of the shuttle as it traveled between the Red Claw and the Muninn. Maybe, she thought, the Muninn would be like the Union ships, haphazardly built with garishly painted markings from whatever world she had came from.

Maybe the Muninn would be like the Atlassians: clean, hard lines; polished until they gleamed in the void, their overly pompous commanders’ House sigils proudly displayed on their bows, next to the sigil of the Protectorate.

The Muninn, however, was none of those.

She hung there like a shadow in the void, a black specter. No lights other than the brief flash of landing guides. The hard projected lines of her railguns could only be seen in the flashes of passing starlight, which made the Muninn all the more intimidating.

Knowing those guns were there, but only seeing them for small flashes in the darkness of the void.

And inside that sleek shadow were dozens of pirates. Standing between her and a single Atlassian officer, who Blake had to rescue.

Well… just my luck. Blake sighed, as she schooled her emotions, creating a mask of stoic indifference, even as worry and nerves plagued at her. She needed to be calm. She needed to be collected.

“I can’t believe we are actually negotiating with these, humans,” the pilot, a tall Faunus with goat horns curling around his ears, bitterly grumbled from beneath his pale white Grimm Ursa mask. “We should wait for Brother-Commander Taurus Adam then take the ship and the prize for ourselves.”

“And risk it being shot,” the co-pilot, flattening her feathered plum, shot back. “I agree with you brother. It is humiliating, but we have very few other options.”

The pilot growled, but let the subject drop and soon the shuttle was drifting towards the hanger of the black ship.

“Muninn. This is the shuttle of the Red Claw. May we land?” The co-pilot radioed.

Several seconds passed. Blake forced down her panic, taking deep breaths. She would need to play her part flawlessly. Any hint that something was amiss, the pirates would stop the deal and her chance of avoiding war would have slipped through her fingers.

Even if the pirates tried to run, Adam would be arriving with the frigate Wilt and several more Raiders, nearly two hundred more White Fang in total. Not even a pirate such as Raven Branwen would want to face against those numbers.

And if Adam got a hold of the Schnee… Then war was inevitable.

Menagerie wouldn’t survive against Atlas. Blake’s mood was turning dark just at the thought of it, and that was before Blake even considered what she had seen at the very edge of Wild Space.

What she had seen of Adam’s newest ‘ally.’

She shuddered as though a cold wind had blown through the cockpit of the shuttle. No, Blake could not fail. She steeled her spine and donned the white Grimm mask that all White Fang wore.

“No answer Sister-Lieutenant,” The co-pilot reported. “Should I hail them again?”

“Hail them again,” Blake ordered, “If they don’t answer… Well… Then we are going to board them.”

The pilot turned in seat. “There’s only six of us the shuttle…”

Blake cut him off.

“We have the Red Claw who will be able to fire on the Muninn and keep them off-balance, as well as the element of surprise. We’re not going to try and take the ship, just get the Schnee and get out.” Blake allowed a savage smile to cross her lips. “Are you telling me that the White Fang aren’t worth a dozen pirates each? They’re used to fighting against the unarmed, the weak and defenseless.”

Both the pilot and copilot barked a harsh laugh at that, though it was cut short as the comms buzzed.

“Shuttle.” The voice was slightly distorted and crackled with static, but was clear enough. “This is the Muninn. You are allowed to land.”

“Finally,” the copilot scoffed as the pilot turned the shuttle towards the open hanger door.

The shuttle landed with a heavy thud, the void door slamming shut behind them as the hangar was quickly repressurized.

Blake had taken five of her White Fang aboard the shuttle with her, leaving only a bare skeleton crew aboard the Red Claw and all of them, including the pilot and co-pilot, stood lined up at the ramp. Blake wanted to make an impression.

The ramp lowered with a hiss from the hydraulics as Blake stepped onto the armoured plated deck of the Muninn, her security following after, weapons low, but readied.

Just in case.

Well, this is sure to build trust with our new partners, she pessimistically mulled as she entered the dimly lit hangar bay. There was no way in the Green Hell she was going anywhere aboard Branwen’s ship without some measure of protection.

To do otherwise was just asking for a knife in the back from these voidscum.

Speaking of Branwen, the Dread Pirate-Queen had come down to meet her guests personally.

Branwen was a tall woman, with dark, almost blood-red eyes and long black hair hanging down past her thin waist. She wore a short dark, crimson, almost blood red overcoat with a thin leather belt. Sheathed at her side was a short gladius sword. Perfectly suited for cutting and stabbing in an enclosed space.

And she had brought her own two tagalongs. Beside her was a short woman, her hair cropped close to her skull, with several tattoos and kill markings decorating her upper arms. The woman wore an arrogant smirk as she took in the sight of the White Fang. The woman’s arrogant, smug demeanor immediately invoked a healthy distaste in Blake.

The last, much to Blake’s surprise, was also a Faunus. A lizard? Maybe snake Faunus? Blake wasn’t exactly sure. The Faunus was almost the spitting image of Branwen, save for the scale ridges on her forehead, the slitted pupil lilac eyes and the long, lush, but wild blonde hair which also hung down past her waist.

“Captain Branwen Raven Ist Muninn,” Blake greeted the Pirate Queen with a respectful nod of her head, as she and her White Fang escort approached the three other women. She hesitated, “It is… A pleasure to finally meet you.”

Branwen smiled a little at that and returned the nod.

“Belladonna Blake I presume? You do not have to greet me like that. I’m just a pirate. We don’t tend to stand too much on ceremony.” Branwen was patronizingly polite.

The smug woman seemed to muffle a chuckle at that, while the blonde Faunus rolled her eyes in obvious boredom.

“I suppose you wish to see the prisoner? See that I’m not leading you on?”

Blake nodded. “I will need to send something back to my leader as proof. He will trust my word.”

Branwen raised a hand, indicating the blonde Faunus next to her. “Yang will take you to see her; however, I’m not going to allow more than one of you to leave this hanger. You must understand.”

Blake figured this was going to be an issue. Branwen was flexing; she wanted Blake and her White Fang escorted to understand who was in charge. Whose ship they were on. Which was fine, Blake had no desire to play the game of who was top dog.

Or top cat in Blake’s case.

All Blake wanted to do was get the prisoner and get out. And hopefully stop a full out war from breaking out in the Galaxy.

Simple desires really.

“That’s fine.” Blake shrugged, as she turned to Yang. “Lead the way,”

The Faunus woman hesitated for a second, as she seemed to wish to argue with Branwen but evidently decided it would have been a waste, as she gestured with a nod of her head for Blake to follow her.

The two travelled in relative silence for moments, through the narrow corridors, turning this way and that around the many sharp corners and turns. The Muninn, Blake, realised was not some repurposed freighter like Red Claw; she was a warship through and through.

The corners made excellent defensive positions, funnelling boarders into kill zones, and they also had the added bonus of confusing the enemy as they made their way past the critical locations; the engine room, the power generators, and the bridge. Blake considered herself to have a very good memory and an excellent sense of direction, but even she was having a difficult time remembering where they were going.

“How much longer?” Blake finally asked as she followed her guide down another short hall.

“Soon.” Yang answered in a flat monotone, turning down another corner.

“I didn’t know that Branwen had Faunus amongst her crew. What clan?” Blake asked her, curiosity finally getting the better of her.

"I’m not a Faunus,” Yang answered, voice dripping with bitterness without looking back.

“You are not? But you look like one.”

“Gene-tailoring.” Yang suddenly stopped and turned to face her, a sardonic smile on her lips, her hands waving in the air. “Vat edited and genefucked.”

Blake felt her temper rise. “Gene tailoring? So what are we now? Just a cast-off? A fashion statement?”

“Leave it, White Fang,” Yang warned, her hands clenched into fists.

“Why? Angry that some Faunus is annoyed because you thought of us as some fetish you could imitate,” Blake snapped back.

“Because it's none of your business. You really think I want to look like this?” There was a dull echoing thud, as Yang punched the armoured wall of the corridor. “Raven never really gave me much of a choice. And guess what? It turns out, screwing with someone’s as an adult has some pretty significant side effects.”

Yang jabbed her finger at Blake’s chest. “So don’t talk about what you don’t know White Fang.”

Blake hesitated and then nodded, dropping the subject.

Yang held her stare for a second longer, before turning on her heel. “This way.”

Blake followed her through several more turns before the came to a door flanked by two pirates armed with heavy shotguns.

The blonde punched in a code and the door slid open with a hiss.

Blake nearly gasped. Sitting there in her stained and tattered white uniform, was Weiss Schnee, The Heir Apparent of the Protectorate of Atlas.

The Schnee looked up as the light poured in. Though Blake’s eyes were hidden beneath her small white Grimm Mask, the two locked eyes. The prisoner’s eyes were a pale ice blue, filled with defiance, with hints of fear around their edges… Those eyes were almost enough for Blake to feel pity for her.

Almost.

The Schnee was still an Atlassian. And the scars they had left on Menagerie and the Faunus still ran deep.

No, Blake would not pity her. This wasn’t about pity. Or Atlas, or even completely about Menagerie. This was about the galaxy and the danger that was threatening to drown it in a tide of darkness.

“Well, there you go. One Heir Apparent of blah-blah, caged up and ready to go.” Yang’s tone dripped sarcasm as she shut the door. “Satisfied?”

Blake nodded. “So your captain was telling the truth.”

“Raven never lies.” Yang was bitter as she led Blake back to the hanger.

The trip back was just as disorienting as it had been on the way there.

Well… looks like I’m going to need the other White Fang. Blake silently cursed. She had been hoping for a quick infiltration and extraction. Now she was going to have to conduct a full boarding exercise with the five of her White Fang… Who she would then also have to get rid of.

Her plan was turning into a messy quagmire which she had little control over. True her original plan of infiltration did not offer a great deal more control. But it offered more than a running gunfight down those tight, maze-like corridors.

“Satisfied?” Branwen asked as Yang led Blake back into the hanger.

“I will confirm with Brother-Commander Taurus Adam, that you have Weiss Schnee,” Blake said, giving her a nod. “However… I must insist that myself and the White Fang I have with me, remain on this ship.”

“Not very trusting are you,” Branwen goaded, crossing her arms.

“No more than you are,” Blake replied evenly, her eyes catching sight of a dozen well-armed pirates emerging from the gloom in the hangar. “We will remain in our shuttle, until the rest of the White Fang arrive.”

Branwen smiled a viper’s grin. “Of course you are. But I’m going to keep the hangar guarded. For your own safety. You are after all my guests.”

Blake paused at that. Her stomach coiled. Raven had to suspected something. Had she seen through her already?

Blake took a breath. She needed to keep cool. Keep calm.

“Thank you Captain Branwen Raven Ist Muninn.” Blake bowed her head, inwardly cursing her rotten luck.

----------

Ruby nearly jumped in surprise as the door banged opened and Yang stormed into the room. Her features were pulled into a thunderous scowl and Ruby could have sworn she could feel the heat of her rage radiating off her sister.

"Yang?"

“The White Fang is here, Rubes. You ready?” Yang asked after she had taken a moment to calm herself.

Ruby glanced over at Crescent Rose now fully assembled. Several magazines, fully loaded, were laid out in neat order beside her precious rifle.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Ruby answered with a nod to her backpack by the door. Everything she had brought with her from the academy was packed away and ready to go.

“Good.” Yang seemed to hesitate as she looked over at Crescent Rose. “Ruby…”

Ruby smiled as she patted Yang’s shoulder. “Yang… I’ve travelled all over with dad on his old freighter. We lived on the edge of the frontier. I’m no stranger to gunfights. I can handle myself. I’m not a little girl anymore.”

The: I don’t need you to look out for me like you used to, went unsaid; but Ruby could tell Yang had heard it as clear as a thunderclap. There was a brief flash of pain in Yang’s eyes, which much to Ruby’s joy, quickly turned into a burning sisterly pride.

“Alright then. Let’s go over your plan one last time,” Yang said as she took a seat on her cot.

Ruby rolled her silver eyes but smiled. “Okay step one: Get the prisoner her weapons back. You will head down to the armoury, subdue the guard there, then come back here for me. Step two, we head down to the brig… fighting our way down there if we have to.”

“Getting the weapons shouldn’t be much of a problem. Gris, the armourer, likes me. A lot. If I can, I’ll try and get the explosives too… though no promises. If I do, I’ll plant some charges throughout the ship,” Yang added.

Ruby nodded. “Step three, rescue the ‘princess’ and book it to the hanger. Step four, take care of the White Fang.”

“That’s when I’ll detonate the explosives if we have ‘em,” Yang chimed in as she stood up and went to her locker, sliding several magazines for her pistol into belt.

Ruby nodded again, “Step five, take the White Fang shuttle back to the White Fang ship.”

“I’ve seen the readout on it. It looks like a small freighter. There shouldn’t be more than a dozen on her. Including the six on-board the Muninn right now,” Yang added, as she closed her now empty locker and slipped on her brown leather jacket.

“Which leads us to step six, we take the ship then Fold out of here,” Ruby finished as she picked up her loaded magazines and clipped them to her belt. “ You ready?”

Yang looked over at her sister, then gave a single nod, before punching her fist together. “ Always. Let’s do this.”

----------

The door to the armoury hissed open as Yang stepped inside. Rifles, shotguns, pistols and various blades decorated the inside of the locked cage. The smell of gun oil, the click of parts being taken apart, cleaned, then reassembled filled the still air. An older man, grey with age, heavyset, dressed in clothes stained with years of grease and cleaning lubes barely looked up to acknowledge her as Yang walked in.

“Yang.” The man grunted before turning back to his work.

“Hey Gris. You still got that Schnee’s weapon?” Yang asked as she approached the cage.

The man gestured with a grunt and a sideways nod of his head to the far table. Laying there was the rapier with basket hilt. Beside it was a slim, beautifully decorated pistol still in its white leather holster.

“Beautiful isn’t she.” Gris said admiringly, as he picked up the rapier and held it up to the light. “Vinbranium micro woven with nerosteel. Strong, supple, light as a feather. But capable of piercing anything short of full Atlassian Marine boarding plate and shield.”

Yang rolled her eyes, but kept quiet. She knew better than to interrupt Gris when it came to weapons. The old man could wax poetic for hours at a time, his eyes lighting up with pure joy as he rattled off calibres, stopping power, rates of fire, explosives, blade lengths, metal alloys and cutting potential.

If his poetics were interrupted, the stubborn old man would become sour and ill-tempered, which would make it that much more difficult to get anything out of him. So even though Yang was now on a schedule, it was easier just to let him talk.

“And this… Never in all my days did I think I would ever see one with my own eyes.” He pulled the slim pistol from its holster. “An Arma Gigas. Handcrafted by the pinnacle of Atlassian gunsmiths. Small, you wouldn’t think this thing was more than an over-engineered pea-shooter. But let me tell you, if less than half of the things I have heard about these are true… This is a man stopper. Not a great many things alive this piece couldn’t put down.”

Gris looked over at Yang and grinned at her bored expression; as he placed the pistol back into its holster. “I mean… Not as well as that cannon on your hip. But still she’ll do her job. And do it well.”

“Interesting and all.” Yang tried not to let urgency colour her tone, “but I’m not interested in a weapons lesson. I’m just here because I want them.”

Gris eyed her carefully as he leaned back. “Is that so? Well… I’m sorry to tell you that Vernal already claimed the rapier. The pistol is going to Raven. She wants it as a trophy."

"Well… I don't really care. I want them." Yang lowered her tone to a near whisper. Gris was probably the only friend Yang had on this ship, outside of her sister. She hoped he would catch her meaning.

"Vernal wanted the pistol too. Before Raven claimed it as a trophy.” Gris continued as though he hadn’t heard her, “Wanted it bad. Lucky for her I was here to set her straight. You see the Arma Gigas are gene-coded for the one she’s made for. If anyone else then the Schnee was to pull the trigger… well… they would have to get used to wiping their ass with the other hand.”

“Gris…” Yang warned, her temper slowly getting the better of her. “I need those weapons.”

Gris eyed her dispassionately. “And I can’t allow you to take them.”

“You aren’t going to be able to stop me.”

The man shrugged. “You can’t shoot me. If you do, everyone is going to know about it.”

Yang’s eyes widened as she caught his meaning. “So I am going to have to hit you. Put you down hard.”

“Probably break a few bones in the process.” Gris agreed.

“I… I’m sorry Gris.”

“Tear the cage door open when you do it,” he continued as though he hadn’t heard her. Shuffling tools around, placing them almost delicately back into the various toolboxes stacked around the armoury cage. “You’re more than strong enough.”

He paused, looked up at Yang. “Your sister... always gave me the creeps… Something’s not right about her, be careful. I’m sticking my head out for you with the Captain. I won't be around to help with her.”

“Ruby’s all I got left Gris.” Yang almost snarled, but managed to choke it back. “I burned too many bridges back home… And I’m nuking the ones here with an orbital strike.”

Yang reached up and grabbed the cage door, then ripped it from its hinges in one savage pull.

She looked down at Gris as he turned his back on her. “I’m sorry about this… I really am.”

Then Yang threw a haymaker into the side of his head. Gris did not even try to defend himself, merely curling up into a ball, as Yang rained heavy blows into his body.

-----

Bile rose up in Yang’s throat as she and Ruby raced down the claustrophobic corridor. She tried to drive the feeling of her fists smashing into a defenseless Gris, of bones snapping and the muffled screams of pain from her mind.

Gris was tough. He would be okay, she told herself; as the two sisters with Yang in the lead, charged down another hallway.

She began to slow down. They had been lucky so far, the two of them managing to avoid wandering pirates, but now they were coming up onto the brig. There would be guards and they were going to have to be dealt with.

As soon as Ruby or Yang fired, the ship would be alerted that something was happening in the lower decks. Yang guessed they would have only have a couple of minutes before Raven sent every pirate she could down there.

Probably less.

Raven was a suspicious woman. She’d probably think the White Fang was going to make a play of their own.

Getting to the hangar… That was going to be the interesting part.

Yang came to a stop, just before the corner to the brig. Ruby almost slammed into Yang as she too skidded to a halt, pressing her back against the wall.

“Alright… Just around here is the brig. Should only be two guards.” Yang whispered as she pulled Ember Celica from her holster. “I’ll move first to draw their fire. You cover me, got it?”

“Got it,” Ruby whispered back, as she brought Crescent Rose to a ready position, then tapped Yang on the shoulder to let her know she was ready.

Yang turned the corner, levelling her pistol as she did. The two guards looked up, eyes widening in surprise as they did. Ember Celica roared once, catching the first in the chest with a large, heavy slug.

The man’s chest exploded open, dropping to the ground in a wet splatter of meat and viscera. The second guard was fumbling to raise his shotgun when a three-round burst from Ruby, who must have stepped out with her, caught him the chest.

The guard collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.

“Thought I said I would move first?” Yang asked as the two rushed to the door.

“You also said to cover you,” Ruby replied sweetly as she kicked the shotguns away from the guards’ bodies.

“Fair,” Yang grinned, as the door to the brig opened shedding light into the dark prison.

The Schnee glanced up as the light stung her eyes. Yang was already moving and with a powerful tug, she ripped the bars from the cell.

“Well… as promised here we are. Ruby give the Heir her weapons,” Yang said as she took cover inside the door. “Sorry princess we got to move, and move quick. Think you can keep up?”

“I can handle myself,” The Schnee snapped.

Yang risked a glance back, frowning slightly as the Schnee flinched when Ruby offered her the rapier and pistol, slapping Ruby’s hand away as she climbed to her feet.

Ruby for her part seemed unaffected by the rude gesture and merely shrugged.

“Alright we ready?” Ruby asked as she took cover across from Yang.

“Yeah…” Yang nodded, as she gave what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

The Schnee glared at Ruby as she tested the draw in her rapier. “Who are you?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ruby apologised, as she held out her hand again. “I’m Ruby Rose. I’m here to rescue you.”

The Schnee looked down at the hand and shuddered slightly as though someone had offered something rather unrecognizable and offensive on a stick. Yang frowned and was about to reprimand the Schnee, when she caught Ruby’s eye and gentle shake of her head.

Time and place, Yang.

“Ahhh no worries.” Ruby giggled, “not everyone has an appreciation for the classics.”

Yang snorted. “You mean ancient vids that no one understands anymore.”

Ruby nodded as she led the way out of the brig. “That too.”

----------

“What is that?” One of the White Fang asked as klaxon alarms began to blast throughout the hanger.

A second later Blake’s sensitive ears picked up another sound. One she had sadly become very accustomed to over the past few years.

Gunfire.

“Someone’s shooting,” Blake answered as she grabbed her weapons from the locker. “Quick, get your weapons and get to cover. The pirates might think it’s us behind this and I don’t want unwelcome visitors thinking they can come and take our shuttle.”

While the other White Fang got to cover in the hold, Blake took a chance and ducked out from the shuttle. Keeping down and to the shadows, she made her way behind a large stack of crates.

She took a peek and cursed.

A dozen or so heavily armed pirates had gathered in the hangar, in preparation to storm and take the shuttle.

Suddenly the shipped bucked. The power died and red lights flashed as emergency lighting and secondary power sources came alive. The pirates scattered for the most part. Running to their station, to bring systems back online, preparing for what could be a boarding action.

And in doing so, only leaving a token force to watch the hanger and the White Fang.

If they do that could work out in my favour. Blake thought to herself as she kept herself low and made her way back to the shuttle hold. We kill enough of them here, we could make a break for the Schnee’s cell.

“Lights went out. What’s happening?” One of her Sister’s whispered from across the hold.

“Maybe Brother-Commander Taurus has arrived? Maybe he is leading a boarding party.”

Blake didn’t think so.

“Brother-Commander Taurus would have told me if he was planning something like this.” Blake whispered back, “now keep quiet and-”

The sound of gunfire outside interpreted Blake and the next thing she heard was booted feet running across the armoured decking of the black ship.

“Quick, let’s move. Come on princess keep up!” Someone loud and boisterous called.

Blake thought she recognised the voice of that not-Faunus vat freak, Tang, or Jang, whatever her name was, as she stormed up the shuttle ramp.

Behind her, two other pairs of feet followed close behind as three humans charged into the hold. One of whom was the Heir Apparent.

Blake leapt up, pistol levelled. Her five kin joining her. The three intruders, the blonde not-Faunus, a small brunette with red highlights and a long scarlet cape and of course, Weiss Schnee, the Heir Apparent, were surrounded and outgunned.

“Well… Shit.” The blonde grimaced as the three humans found themselves surrounded.

“Wonderful, from pirates to White Fang all in the span of less than ten minutes.” The Schnee complained as her pistol bounced from kin to kin. “Great job.”

“I should thank you for bringing us Weiss Schnee.” Blake smiled coldly beneath her mask as she stepped from cover. “You have done the White Fang a great service.”

Then she turned on her heel, levelling her pistol at one of her Brothers. The pistol barked, striking the White Fang in the head, sending him crashing down.

The White Fang sat there, stunned, as they struggled to process what had happened. Blake gunned down another, then another.

The three humans, not looking a gift horse in its mouth, raised their own weapons. In less than five seconds, all the White Fang lay dead, and three armed women were now pointing their weapons at Blake.

Blake shook her head. Taking off her mask she allowed amber eyes to meet silver, lilac and ice blue. “We don’t have time. Assuming you are responsible for those explosions, it won't take them long to get the ship back up to full power.”

“She’s right.” The silver-eyed girl with the red cape spoke up. Blake felt herself shivering uncomfortably as the girl got closer. There was something… off about the girl. Something Blake could not put a finger on.

Just a general feeling of offness.

"What do you suggest then?" The girl asked, lowering her rifle.

Blake shook off the feeling. "You were going to try and take Red Claw weren't you?"

All three nodded.

"Let me join you." Blake pushed, "you can tell them you took me hostage. There’s only four of them on board. We can take them, then escape.”

“Why should we trust you?” The Schnee interrupted. “You just murdered your friends, Faunus. Why?”

“We don’t have time for this.” Blake snapped back. “Either trust me or don’t. But I can help you.”

The Schnee opened her mouth to interject but was cut off by red cape.

“She’s right. We don’t have a choice. I can fly us.”

“Well… That went simpler than planned.” The blonde grinned cheekily as she pushed passed her to join the red-caped girl in the cockpit, leaving Blake alone with the Schnee.

“I don’t know what your plan is White Fang. But for now, it doesn’t matter. I will be watching you though.” The Schnee hissed as she went to join her allies.

The shuttle roared to life. A second later, the hanger boomed as the small railguns underneath it blasted open the void doors, shredding them like paper before the engines ignited and the shuttle blasted out into the void.

----------

Ruby grimaced as the last of the remaining White Fang was nearly blasted apart by a close-range shot from Yang’s pistol. It hadn’t taken much to get them to cooperate. The cat Faunus had told the truth., They now had a ship, courtesy of the White Fang.

Ruby ran to the cockpit and jumped into the pilot’s seat… And then froze.

She had never seen anything like this before. The shuttle was simple enough. Though somewhat unfamiliar, the controls were simple enough to figure out. These… These were a mess.

“What’s wrong Ruby?” Yang asked as she jumped into the co-pilot chair beside her.

Ruby looked up, panic welling in her chest. “Uhhh… Well… I think I found the flaw in our plan. I’m not entirely sure on how to fly this thing.”

“What!” the white-haired girl screeched behind them. “You can’t fly this?”

“I didn’t say that!” Ruby shot back defensively. “I said I’m not entirely sure on how to. I thought that after flying my dad’s old freighter and the fighter sims at the academy that this piece of junk would be similar, but…”

“My Gods… I’m going to die here,” Ms. Schnee loudly whispered to herself as she collapsed into another chair. “I’m going to die being blown to bits because some frontier bumpkin thought too much of herself.”

“Hey!”

“I don’t want to interrupt,” the Faunus called out. “But the Muninn is coming around on us. I got energy signatures spiking. She’s readying her main guns.”

“Aw...Fucking Void…” Yang snapped. “Where are the shields on this thing?”

Yang fumbled with several switches. While Ruby frantically pushed several more, suddenly the ship shook, tossing the four around as the Red Claw buckled from a heavy hit.

“Muninn just hit us!” The Faunus girl called from a screen in front of her. “Port side aft.”

“Never mind the shields, Yang. Just punch in the Fold coordinates!” Ruby yelled as she grabbed the control stick and opened the accelerator.

The White Fang ship hummed as the engines roared into life. The Red Claw took off, but the Muninn followed close behind.

“Muninn steadily gaining. Energy spiking. She’s going to fire,” The Faunus girl reported, fear slowly growing more apparent in her voice.

The Red Claw shook violently again. The four women could hear the hull twisting and groaning as the shot sheared the armoured plating.

“Grazing shot. Top deck. Port side.”

The ship shook again with another devastating blow. “Direct hit. Port side. Aft.”

Ruby’s eyes went wide as she realised what that meant. “They’re aiming for the Fold drive. Yang! We need those coordinates now!”

“I’m trying, I’m trying!” Yang yelled back, “I need some time!”

“We don’t have time you blonde brute!” Ms. Schnee snarled, “White Fang, does this ship have a torpedo?”

Behind Ruby the cat Faunus looked up from her screen and nodded. “Several but only one loaded in a tube.”

“Dolt!” Ms. Schnee kicked Ruby’s chair to indicate that she was talking to her. “Get some distance, then bring us around. I was top in my torpedo class. I can hit Muninn.”

Ruby shook her head. “Muninn’s too fast. We won’t get enough space. Besides one torpedo? It would get picked off by the point defence before it came within a hundred kilometres... But we can buy us some time.”

She pulled the stick hard and Red Claw turned. Right into the teeth of Muninn. “Ms. Schnee get ready.”

“We’re little more than a dozen kilometres. It’s too short for an effective torpedo shot.” Ms. Schee snapped.

“We don’t need an effective shot. All we need is the radiation blindness.” Ruby shot back.

The Schnee paused. Then grinned. “A good plan. The name is Weiss by the way.”

“Ruby… But I already told you that…” Ruby grinned back, as she pushed Red Claw into her attack run.

Radiation blindness could happen rather often in space. It was when a burst of radiation hit your ship’s sensors; which would cause them to malfunction for a brief periods of time, leaving nothing but static and white noise on the viewing screens. It was something that could happen a number of ways: a bad solar wind, a nebula, a passing bit of space junk.

Or in the case of the Muninn when a fifty kiloton nuclear warhead got swatted out of space by numerous point defence weapons. Then detonated less than a few kilometres in front of your ship.

The effect would be like a flash-bang going off in a small room, as opposed to a steady degradation of system at war with constant reboots and scrubs. The sensors of Muninn would be flooded by dirty, polluted light and a backwash of harsh radiation, rendering her blind for several precious seconds.

The Red Claw did not escape through the maneuver unscathed, however. One last shot smashed into her prow; the spine of the ship rocked and cracked. Sparks jumped, fires were started and Ruby knew that the last shot had been a near fatal one. But they had blasted through and the Muninn was still blind.

“Yang! Please tell me you got something,” Ruby pleaded as the precious seconds her maneuver had bought them were spent.

“Yeah! Got it! Were good now! Ready to Fold on your mark!”

Ruby looked down at her watch. “All aboard Air Ruby. Folding in three, two, one. Mark.”

Space, time, gravity. Billions upon billions of kilometres were pulled into a singularity of space and time. Red Claw shot forward, bearing her precious cargo.

They were safe.

For now.

#RWBY #rwby fanfic #Yang #Ruby #Blake #Weiss

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elaianna · 5 years ago

Text

Sacrifice

[ Artwork: Promises by Iskander1989 ]

[ I couldn’t choose between two scenarios involving the same man/sacrificing for Thomas, so the anon gets two versions- this is a slightly edited version of an old post to give insight on that sacrifice]

One Year Ago

On the one hand – or rather, the one cheek – his face was burning. There was a proper lighting of blood beneath his skin, swelling a bulging where the bulk of the damage had been done. His jaw sat poorly on his skull, leaning to one end where the swelling was worst. It left his right eye shut, unable to open from the girth of flesh that formed an apple beneath his caterpillar brow.

On the other hand, the wind was screaming around the dingy, sloop they had managed to abscond with. With his limbs in poorer state than his face, Thomas possessed little capacity to row or aid in the ropework. Naught but himself and eight men were left. The sodden, salt-damaged and bloody remnants of his crew. Nine men – and one.

The past days … weeks? Had it been a month? … all slurred in his mind. But through the pain, he caught call to recollect. The tenth man desperately huddled aboard the sickly sloop had been their savior. Indeed, were it not for his station, Tom would have been dead long before the strange ‘pirate’ could have endeavored to rescue him. The why of that particular act was still hanging in the air … a question for dry land, perhaps.

Stephan, the man had said, by way of Hadley. Not a name Tom knew – and he knew quite a many, especially in the realm of seafarers.

“Ho! – HO! Lighthouse!” called one of the men in a hoarse, salt-scoured voice.

Stormholme was lay ahead, and it brought a vestigial smile to Tom’s face. Even in an overcast storm, he could still find his way home. They ran the ropes in and tightened the sail to give them the wind, scraping over the choppy waters toward the harbour.

Twenty-three days and counting.

Elaianna could feel the pit of her stomach twisting into more and more of a knot. She could hardly sleep. She barely had an appetite. It was all too familiar a sensation. Waiting. Hoping. Praying. Not knowing what had happened to her husband. Wondering if he was gone– if she would ever see him again.

And if she did, would it be him that she saw?

Sitting at her desk, she had asked her handmaiden to leave her for the evening. She needed time and space to herself. She didn’t want to admit to anyone what she had done. She didn’t want to admit what was going through her mind. She stared at the parchment, addressed to an office in Stormwind.

Arthur Daud,

I am writing to inquire about the state of our agreement, and if you have already cashed in your end of the

That was it. That was all she could write. She could feel anger flaring up. Anger at herself for writing as if her husband were some item, but at the same time, she couldn’t risk writing down and leaving evidence of the deal made a year ago.

A deal where she sacrificed her sense of pride, her sense of dignity, and anything else that Daud requested of her, in order to preserve the life of Thomas. She recalled the deal in vivid detail. She had sat in a meeting with Arthur Daud and finagled the terms of a deal. In order to save Thomas’s life, she had to sacrifice him in the same breath. The void entity would have his vessel when the time came, but she put her foot down to avoid him acquiring that time on his terms. Only when Thomas died of natural causes, only when he died without Daud’s interference in any shape or form, would he get what he wanted, and then, when he did, he was to avoid the family and the company just as he was to avoid them now. She wouldn’t have anyone who knew Thomas see him after his death. She wouldn’t put their family through that. What other choice did she have? If she didn’t agree to the deal, then she lost Thomas for good. He remained dead. He remained in the Shadowlands.

Frustration continued to rise. Thomas was gone, he disappeared. What other conclusion could she draw, other than Daud must have gotten what he wanted. She’d never have a body to confirm it. She’d forever live without the closure of knowing. It would torment at her, that she traded her husband’s life... for her husband’s life, and that she had taken closure from her family.

Then she heard it– the bells of the harbour. She stood up so fast that there was a clatter as her chair fell behind her. Racing towards the balcony, she ignored the frigid whip of the winds as they blew over her, and stared towards the harbour.

Entering into the shallow waters of Stormholme harbour, was a precarious sloop.

The vessel was beaten, wind-worn and rife with cannon damage. The headsail was nearly shred, and it was only through a tight hold on the ropes that it could swell with any wind. By a cursory glance, it seemed fit for the bottom of Sailgrave, not cruising into the protected holdings of Stormsong Valley. Spit, gristle, and willpower seemed to keep the ship afloat.

Given the lack of any weaponry aboard, there was no call to arms. Though one of the harbour guardhouses did rise with activity. There was a pause in the harbour bells. The spyman atop the eastern tower held his glass to eye and –

“MEDIC! MEDIC! MEDIC!”

The cry was followed by a horn blast, the fat-belled trumpet at the spyman’s side coming full of air. As was commanded, so came to be. Attention and sound came from the upper estate, and soon enough men in white frocks rode down to the harbour, just in time for the decrepit sloop to all but ‘ram’ into the dockhead.

There was a still moment, filled only by the ‘clack-clack!’ of horse hooves coming from the harbourway until …

CRRRRKK – KSSH!

The foremast split with a sad, sickening sound like broken twigs. It fell forward in an impotent display of destruction, falling without consequence onto the dockhead. Bubbles began to emerge around the sloop, betraying it’s hull failures – she was slowly, slowly sinking right there in the harbour.

All that Elaianna could make out from where she stood was the small vessel making it’s way into the harbour. She squinted, and took note of what disrepair she could see from a distance. The foremast wasn’t aligned. By the time she had turned from the balcony to race down the stairs of Stormhollow castle, she missed the very thing she scrutinized collapsing.

The medics were on their way before she was. Yet the lady wasn’t far behind. She didn’t have time for a saddle. If she was right, then she had already lost twenty-two days worth of time. She had to be right. What other peoples would come back into Stormholme harbour in such a state? She could reason a great many people seeking refuge after dealing with the Horde on the open sea, or pirates, or other dangers. But she tried to think optimistically. She had to. Even if she was running out of that optimistic steam.

Click-click. Click-click.

Arriving after the medics, Elaianna swung one leg over the horse, and landed with a light ‘thud’ on the ground. She ignored the looks she acquired from what few paid mind to the new arrival. The Duchess riding a horse bareback, like a man, in a dress? It drew a few glances, but the attention was ultimately on those who had returned from sea.

“What is going on? What is the state of things?” she asked the first man she found.

The man in first attention was a medical professional – at least he must have been, by the white-frock coat and the elbow-high rubberized gloves he wore.

“My Lady – please, we aren’t sure yet. These men are severely injured, we need to get them to the – “ he spoke as he turned toward the Duchess, head bowed in respect. Yet he was cut off by a sudden, loud ’thump!’.

As it turned out, most of the men trying to climb off the broken sloop were not in any condition to walk, let alone climb. Many scuffled and fell to the knees as they came onto the dock, immediately in the arms of the white-coats who cooed to the salt-scoured men with a chorus of, ‘Whoaa – whoa!’s and ‘steady now, steady –’s.

Elaianna looked towards the vessel as the first of the men fell onto the wooden boards of the dock. Her brows were knit in concern. “–I don’t care who these men are, see to it they are all seen to, and the duchy will fund all medical costs,” she instructed to the same white coat professional.

However, the last man off the derelict once-sea-faring vessel merely collapsed the instant he touched the wooden dockboards. One arm hung limp at his side, earlier clutched with delicate attention to his chest. His right eye was swollen shut, stained with black and yellow bruising. The weatherworn rag trousers he wore were stained to a sickly orange. By the shaking, he seemed to possess rather … poor vitality.

All the same, a tiny hoarse call left his blistered lips, ”Ain’ no place .. like hooome~”.

Elaianna’s eyes went wide as that hoarse voice called out. It wouldn’t have been heard over the commotion, were it not for the Lady being so familiar with the sound of her husband’s voice.

“THOMAS!”

Holding up her skirts up as Elaianna sprinted forwards, dropping to her knees beside him. She felt the burn of knees being skinned by the rough wooden boards. “Thomas, Tom… Oh tides. Tides.. You’re…” She looked up and towards the medic she had first bothered, waving him over. “Medic! Over here!”

At the waving of the Duchess, the medic rushed forward with his satchel in hand.

With the sound of his wife’s voice, Thomas tried to move. It was a valiant effort, truly, but availed him very little. His torso rose in a breath, but the airflow caught in his throat and hitched with a twitching of the ribcage. His left arm tried to reach out toward her, but it seemed ill-fit for service at the juncture of his upper arm and shoulder.

“Thhff – ick. Thfickk – Mff .. “ he attempted to speak, with little grace. The swell of his blistered lips gave terrible aid in pronunciation, and left him impotently waving a few spare fingers at the other men as he spoke.

Elaianna reached a hand out, fingers delicately caressing whatever part of his arm looked the least swollen and prone to feel pain at her touch, rather than any sense of calm. “–Shhh, dear. Shh. We’ll have plenty of time to talk once you’ve been looked after.”

A concentrated groan left him at her statement.

He rose somewhat, coming up to keep his weight on his hip as he wagged a limp hand at the coughing, beaten and bloody men being attended to by the medics.

“M’boys – th’thhfick – sick, sick. No water in five .. “ his voice trailed off, too sucked from moisture and nourishment to do much other than whistle with a hoarseness further.

“We’ll get them watered, love. They’re already being taken care of,” she assured Thomas gently.

The medic crouched beside Thomas and stuck his jaw tight, appraising the Admiral’s poor state of condition. A few lines creased themselves in the man’s brow, and he called over two other men to help him lift the half-conscious sailor into a stretcher.

“… I will be honest, my Lady,” he spoke in address to Anna, “I am not certain how his grace is even alive. With your leave, we must get him to the infirmary immediately at risk of fatality … “ His eyes trained on Anna in wait for the slightest indication of an ‘OK’. As urgent a matter as it was, they were still on her order above all else.

Leaning out of the way, she gave the man some room to inspect her husband. His words gave reason for her complexion her to pale. She couldn’t lose him. She couldn’t have him returned to her only to die. “Do what you must to save him. Please,” she urged, rising to her feet.

Don’t you dare die on me now.

As simple a command as that was enough to strike the medics into action.

With a thorough grunt, the three men loft Thomas into a stretcher despite his half-lidded arguments. With quite fine timing, a horse-drawn carriage arrived with a massive red cross on the side of it, and the rear doors flung open to accept the Duke within.

The other sailors were being quickly allotted to other stretchers, and those of standing-health were given to horseback to be taken to the manor’s infirmary. Most were of reasonable state, enough to hold their heads aloft at the very least. One amongst them, a younger man by comparison, seemed to lack anywhere near the injured state of the rest.

“Your grace? Are you coming with us, or riding ahead?” The medic spoke to Elaianna as he stepped up into the front of the carriage, leaving a space in case the Duchess desired to ride with her husband.

Elaianna glanced to the carriage, then towards the horse she had ridden all the way down to the harbour. She waved at one of the passing dockworkers. “You there,” she called out, stopping the young boy in his tracks. “Can you ride a horse?”

“Yes, ma'am– Lady– Grace.”

“Take my horse, and head to the castle. Ride ahead, and alert them that the Duke is en route with life threatening injuries, and several others are on their way to the infirmary for the same treatment. – Hurry.”

The boy nodded and sprung into action with the orders given by the Duchess herself.

Only then did Elaianna turn and hurry to the carriage, letting her actions answer the medic’s question. As she climbed inside she stayed as near to Thomas as she dared without being in the way of the medic. “I’m not leaving him alone,” she told him.

The conviction of her voice allowed only a nod in response from the medic.

Three of them went about their work to attempt to stabilize Thomas as the carriage rocked to and fro along the cobbled road. One of the men held a lantern aloft as the other two pressed and prodded the Admiral’s wounds for information.

“NNGHH! – “

One of the medics frowned at the pained response.

“I’m feeling separation – atleast two are floating in the abdomen.”

“Two? Tides … wait, one here as well. L3 – which do you have floating?”

Another press came against Thomas’ side.

“NGHH – hgh, hghh – mhh .. “

“R1 and R3, both outside ligament limits. The bruising is consistent with rapid, repeated blunt force trauma. I’m seeing stippling … a studded tool.”

There was a calm, methodical tone to their voices. Quite professional, and rightly so. Stormholme held no half-baked professionals, least of all medical staff. As fate turned, the Anchor Trading Company held quite a need for finely talented healers.

“Heart rate is rising … I see clam and fever. We need to brace and get an airway – “

“I’m on it, get me a tubing and a separator for his throat – “

The carriage hit a bump, and Thomas head rocked forward, and then back. There was an uncomfortable ‘krrkt!’ sound as he came back to a rest. Both medics cringed, locking their teeth and simultaneously commanding the third to hold Thomas’ neck and head in place.

Amidst the ongoing diagnosis and preliminary treatment, there was a scouring of wind past the carriage windows. Unnoticed, apparently, by the medics focused on their work – it whistled like a man’s voice. A mocking, taunting tight-lipped tune.

“Not yet,” Elaianna mumbled to herself– or was it to the wind? “Not yet.”

She could feel her heart pounding heavily in her chest. She was anxious, and truth be told? She was terrified. She couldn’t lose him. Not now. Not yet. Not again.

“Hang on, Thomas,” she murmured softly. “Hang in there, love. Stay anchored with us now…”

Yet as they spoke of a separator for his throat and needing an airway, she had to turn her head to hide her cringe. She couldn’t watch that. She’d have the memory burned in her mind if she did.

Keen was the mind that looked away.

There was a thick, strangulatory sound as the medics intubated Thomas. They produced a hinged, metal tool to hold the flaps of his throat open as they put a tube to his trachea. Attached was a hand-pump which could provide a steady flow of air.

While oxygen was quite welcome, it produced quite an audible pain in the man as his lungs swelled and – in doing so – pushed his shattered ribcage to and fro.

A stronger man might have kept his mind, but there was only so much rope on a ship. Thomas had thrown all he had overboard, and thus gargled and fell unconscious from the pain.

As his eyes rolled back and his breathing steadied without the constant clenching of his muscles from pain, the whistling halt. Were the medics wise to the sound, they had no mention or care for it. They were too busy halting the steady decline of Thomas’ blood pressure.

But by thankful speed, they arrived then at the infirmary. The rear doors opened abruptly to reveal a half-dozen strong team of healers and a tidesage ready to take the Admiral within. As they stabilized him and got him onto a gurney to wheel within the primary trauma ward, a black-coated bird swooped down to perch atop the wagon. It remained there as Thomas was wheeled inside, watching. Arthur Daud had come to keep an eye on his prize, waiting for the moment.

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thesunlounge · 5 years ago

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Reviews 292: Quiroga

For whatever reason, I feel a close kinship to the far-out sonics emanating from Napoli and among the many eclectic and adventurous artists working there, I am particularly zoned in on the productions of Walter Del Vecchio, otherwise known as Quiroga. With his label Really Swing and alongside a collection of like minded musicians and producers that includes the 291out collective, Dario Bass, Bop Singlayer, and Edizioni Mondo main-man L.U.C.A., Quiroga has created a wonderfully weird and completely unique universe, which, to paraphrase and expand on what I said in my review of Cups and Balls, mixes live instrumentation and sampling to explore the outer realms of library music, Italo funk, soul, chill-out, ambient, drone, and jazz fusion. And on Passages, the long-awaited full length from the artist released through Hell Yeah Recordings, all of these styles (and more) have been deftly woven into an immersive journey of paradise balearica. Riffed out expanses of stoner prog give way to laid back stretches of sun-kissed jazz, with sea foam pads washing over e-piano starscapes and cinematic orchestrations wrapping the heart in golden threads. Energetic house jammers break into funky keyboard freakouts, exotica textures morph and mutate through fourth world jungles, instrumental hip-hop burners sparkle with aquatic chill-out energy, and shimmering new age electronics ripple through interstellar oceans as the spirit is transported to some faraway dreamworld, one where all worries, anxieties, and fears melt away into a fantastical coalescence of Caribbean beaches, Hollywood sunsets, Mediterranean breezes, and Afro-cosmic jungles.

Quiroga - Passages (Hell Yeah Recordings, 2019) Passages starts with “Got Your Love,” which originally opened the B-side of Quiroga’s Vol 8 on Really Swing. Interstellar transmissions flitter while tribal machine toms interact with gurgling vocalisms. Aquatic squelches filter and flow as the drums pull away, leaving smeared out keys to hover, and as the rhythms drop back in, the vibe is like a dopamine kissed hip-hop instrumental, with cut-up breaks lead by jazzwise snares and claps rocketing around the spectrum. Voices diffuse in and out over layers of ambiance, resulting in a narcotic call and response of soulful cut-ups and spiritual falsettos. Synthesizer leads continue morphing joyously as the tripped out rhythms pull in and out, sometimes sucking the air away while ping-ponging electro oscillations fire amidst delirium voice layers. “Martinica Feelings” also comes from Vol 8 and features Luca ‘Presence’ Carini and Vincenzo ‘Warren’ Ciorra of the ever amazing 291out. Carini’s bass moves through romantic motions, sometimes pulsing low, other times slapping and quacking through zany prog ascents, while slow motion funk drums crush the air. Ciorra’s wah guitar traces hallucinogenic curlicues as pianos bang out midnight chords, and at some point, a delay soaked six string casts ethereal moonspells. Later, after a smashing drum and blazing synth passage, we break into a classical jazz guitar solo, all clean glassy perfection snaking amidst jangling tambourines and sensual bass slides. Harmonious mermaid choirs coo in the background while layered riffs execute magical conversations across the spectrum and there are these passages of beatless wonderment, with one seeing everything wash away as aqueous synth waves blow across the void, while another features gorgeous guitar webs floating above hand percussion vibrance.

At the start of “The Zoist,” synthetic wind blasts carry cyborg computations, equatorial arps flutter, and fat bottomed bass squelches ride on a lo-fi machine groove, with snare and kick cracking through spacey reverberation. Pads generate a calming glow and cut-up chime strands are threaded into the percussive panorama while Dario Basslino’s electric piano smears into starlight overhead. And as hissing voices raise hair on the back of the neck, the robo-basslines journey further and further into future funk fireworks. There’s a false ending that sets white noise whooshes and sunset pianos afloat amidst an ambient paradise, one that perhaps recalls film scores from the Golden Era of Hollywood. Then, as the drums work back in, conga accents and mechanized clicks mutate things into a low slung tropical house jam, wherein greasy basslines wiggle and slide, shakers push the body towards hypnosis, and pianos dance on sunbeams...the whole thing coming together and radiating that deeper than deep Moodymann glow. The B-side opens with “North Hollywood Witches” and its clippy kicks and snares stoking an ecstatic groove, with brass chords flashing and lowdown funk basslines slithering beneath the blaring flamboyance. Smoother than silk keyboard solos flow up and down the scale and cymbals and cowbells progress into strange electro patterns while the kick drum pulsates nervously. Wavering synth chords intertwine and the drums move into an irresistible swing, all setting the stage for what is surely the best synth solo all year…this monstrous and magnificent lead ripping through the cosmos and smothered in galactic delay, shredding ever towards the center of the universe and dripping layers of rainbow psychedelia over the stuttering machine funk jam out.

“Non dire notte” was released on Quiroga and Hell Yeah’s first collaboration, the Viaggio a Tulum EP, and again features Carini and Ciorra of 291out. Colorful tom fills and cymbal patterns set the stage, while a fuzzed out bass guitar drops weirdo doom riffs. Horror movie themes rain down from a stormy sky and huge tom fills push thunderous bursts of air before it all reduces to a haze of euphoric voices. The drums smash back in as Carini drops sludge funk bass sorcery and Ciorra’s guitars morph through delirious vibrato fx, coming out the other side like some sort of space age liquid. At some point, things take a turn, with everything fading away in favor of a mutant acid lines and cymbals that blur into granular static. Then, as the sinister rhythm section returns to stomp druggily through lands of shadow, harmonious voices are reduced to a feverish fog, freakedelic guitar licks disperse into phaserwave hallucinations, and Goblin-style synths climb ever higher towards a blood red moon. The first LP ends with the fittingly titled “Africa Addio (Ode to Fourth World),” wherein woodwinds from various cultural traditions bleat and scat over a hand percussion panorama. The ethno-groove is given further shape by shining mallet tones until an unexpected breakdown, and once the propulsive drum energies re-emerge, a contrabass slips and slides through freeform motions while brass synthesizers cast spells of exotica. Electric pianos are used for percussive effect and dance along mesmerically with the spiritual percussion groove and throughout the track, I detect touches of Finis Africæ, though as if merging with a wilder sensibility recalling Art Ensemble of Chicago or even Sun Ra. In other words, it’s music for interplanetary jungle treks and astral adventures into the rainforests of the Congo.

“Città di Mare” first showed up on Quirago’s Cups and Balls, and here appears in edited form. The original introduction of pot-soaked drumming and 80’s prog sequencing is excised and Quiroga drops us straight away into world where soft waves of fusion synthesis create ethereal dreamscapes above a massive downbeat shuffle, here sourced by Aniello Gentile. Electric piano lullabies, again from Bassolino, drift peacefully overhead and low slung bass guitars dance around the fretboard as the groove progresses further and further into smokey lounge territory. A deeply emotional synth solo soars above expressive tom fills and vibrant cymbal and shaker patterns, with everything awash in vibes of mysterious twilight. It’s almost as if the synthesizer solo is trying to mimic the paradise scats of a 50’s jazz diva, with the track evoking some fantasy rememberance of 1940’s era big city nightclubs. The e-piano sometimes works itself into hallucinogenic vibrato waves, while at other times it backs down into sultry blues fantasias surrounded by narcotizing synth swells. And completing the classical jazz vibe, the song softly fades away on brush stroke snare rolls, cymbal taps, and pianos that seem too disperse into vapor. “Luzhin Defence” marries woodwind synthesis and kosmische sequencing to create a new age starscape, one where galactic wisps generate underwater ripples. Existence itself slowly modulates through layers of aqueous fog and at some point, sequences constructed from glowing crystals dance through the mix. It’s as if Quiroga is scoring a 90’s RPG, specifically an exploration of some faraway gemstone cavern, with synthesizers sounding like plucked strands of glass, cushiony basslines dancing, and french horns bluring into cloudform majesty amidst a hypnagogic tapestry of Reich-ian minimalism.

In C-side closer “Amori Proibiti,” echoing e-piano chords are awash in AOR melancholia and synthesizers trail laser liquids. The drums smash on a perfect downtempo groove, with subdued yet funked out basslines following in support. Occasionally, the electronics oscillate out of control and blast the mix with starshine tracers while elsewhere, increasingly romantic piano excursions see high notes blurring into midnight panoramas. Finger rolling conga rhythms join in as the drums pick up energy and after a vocal bass synth sings soft fusion harmonies, the rhythms reduce to a hand drum whisper while at the same time, strings swell amidst alien textures, resulting in a stretch of synthesized symphonic majesty. Later, after the mix squelches into silence, the beats crack back in, now surrounded by interstellar cloudforms…these deeply affecting synth layers evoking some orchestra of the cosmos. Side D opens with “Chiaia Sunset” and its new age arpeggiations cycling amidst wisps of galactic light. A bouncy house rhythm enters…airy and hypnotic…with claps cracking, rattling cymbal patterns tickling the mind, and basslines moving with emotional funk fluidity. The vibe continues growing impossibly hopeful, resulting in stretches of pure ocean dance mesmerism, wherein drunken synths whoosh across the spectrum, further enchanting the spirit. Then comes a piano solo that is so perfect as to almost defy description…a simple yet timeless ivory led dream exploration that I can only compare to Cantoma’s “Sea of Blue” (which is about as high praise as I can possibly give). It’s so easy to close your eyes and sway along to the sunset incantations and tropical house vibrations, especially as the pianos back into radiant chord themes while increasingly trancey electronics add touches of cosmic ecstasy.

“Viaggio a Tulum” introduced me to Quiroga’s weird and wonderful world, as the track was first released by Hell Yeah back in 2017. We cruise on a hip-hop kissed house beat, with slapback snares carried by kicks, woodblocks, shakers, and cut-up tambourines. Oceanic synths cycle through each ear and a voice repeats “good”, bringing a perfect touch of summer anthem magic while squelching leads dance over sequential bubble clouds. Oscillations soar overhead and laser blasts mutate as a polysynth dazzles with neon melodics, which move in counterpoint to the booty shaking bass progressions. The stereo field is alight with pointillist keyboard patterns that circle toward the stars and all the while, string synth orchestrations bathe the body in spiritual warmth. The drums wash out at some point, leaving behind shakers and rimshots, and after whooshing blasts of sonic shimmer obscures all vision, we drop into funky fried fusion brilliace, with e-pianos dancing like Herbie Hancock, bass notes sliding into subsonic growls, and angel voices swelling into ethereal dissonance. And like in “Got Your Love,” Quiroga crafts a soulful call and response, with voices sourced from who knows where repurposed into a vibrant and jammed out vocal house climax. Closer “Bava” also comes from the Viaggio a Tulum EP and two years later, the track is a mysterious and otherworldly as ever. It’s like exploring an underwater cavern, wherein everything is smothered in hiss. Rhythmic clacks smear into drone psychosis and feedback voices scream as alien sonics bubble in from the depths, with Quiroga reveling in pure abstraction and making the enigmatic choice to conclude his epic journey of fusion kissed balearica with a futuristic experiment in musique concrète.

(images from my personal copy)

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nivilliain · 7 years ago

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Smile Like You Mean It (Chapter 10)

Name: Smile Like You Mean It Fandom: Villainous/Villanos AU: Smile!/Valiant Beta Reader: @rachrar Rating: E to Teen Warnings: Brainwashing; Torture; Summary: After Zug goes missing, White Hat and Lumencia try to find him. However, they end up in a strange dimension with darkness under its smiling surface.

Banner artwork edited from a piece I commisioned @theinsanefruitloop-chan to do

[First] [Previous] [Next]

“MOTHER FUCKER!”

Zug kicked a nearby garbage can. Yet again he had ended up in another dimension that wasn't his. At least this time he could instantly tell this wasn't his world. He checked his pocket sized dimensional transporter.

“Don’t go red... Don’t you fucking dare go red..”

The ‘Eldritch Juice’ bar turned to red.

Zug screamed in fury, nearly throwing the device- not for the first time. Instead he settled for kicking the garbage can again. Without the device he really was stuck- or at least at the mercy of whatever Hat was in this dimension. He sorta was already since he needed samples from an Eldritch in order to make the device work.

At least with the device he could leave as long as he had enough samples.

Zug huffed and sat down, slipping the device back into his pocket. He snaked his hand under his bag and rubbed his face. This meant another rigmarole of doing whatever this world’s Hat wanted. If he had to share another lab with another ‘ug’ scientist he was gonna scream. Or scream more.

That's when he felt someone grab him and pull him down. The smell hit him as he was slammed up against a sewer wall, the knife against his throat glinting in the sunlight before the manhole cover was pushed back into place.

“You... you you... oh....hoo ho.” The man with the knife spat. “I’m going to enjoy this, you bastard.”

“Do I fucking know you?” Zug asked, not the first time he had been held at knife point.

The military looking man scowled. “No, but you’re gonna suffer for what you’d done.. Doctor Smug.” “Ah, see, I can’t help you with your revenge kick.” Zug said. “I’m not this ‘Doctor Smug’, cause I’m Dr Zug. And I’m not even from this dimension.”

Suddenly flashing a light at Zug’s eyes, the man growled and dropped him. “Shit...” He helped him up. “You’re not infected. Sorry man.”

“Infected?” Zug asked. He had learned very early on in his dimensional travels that he needed to get as much info as possible early on.

“Right, yeah, you don't know.” The man said. “This world is infected by a parasitic virus intent on turning every living thing into a happy zombie.”

Zug pulled a face of disgust strong enough to affect the surface of his bag. “Gross..” He rubbed his shoulder. “So like, you’re the resistance right?” “Right. I’m Cooper.” He grunted. “I’ll take you to CL.”

“Codenames, how cute.” Zug mumbled, following him. The device just HAD to turn red in such a problematic universe.

Zug tried not to breathe in the air too much as he was led to a clearer area. The moment everyone saw him, they grabbed weapons and flashlights. His eyes were bombarded.

“Chill” Cooper said. “He’s not Smug.”

A woman walked over. “Yet another one from an alternative dimension?”

“Seems so Wellis.”

“Whoa- whoa-!” Zug said, shielding his eyes. “Another? Who’s been here before me?”

Wellis looked to Zug. “A woman at least.. She was captured.”

“What did this woman look like?” Zug said, his heart leaping into his throat. Had they gone looking for him?

“Hmm.. I didn’t catch her name but she had candy coloured hair..” Wellis said, trying to remember details.

“Did she have a hoodie with a horn?” Zug asked, stepping closer to this woman.

Wellis took a step back, hand on her knife in its harness. “Not when I saw her. She was wearing a yellow Smile hoodie when I met her.”

“Smile hoodie?” Zug asked, thinking it was an odd detail he should probably question.

“The ‘happy zombies’ are named Smile Citizens.” Cooper explained. “Organization running everything is called “The Ministry of Joy”, run by ‘The Minister’-”

“Which we suspect is just Smug.” Wellis added.

Zug scoffed. “Wow, this Smug bastard has been busy.”

“You have no idea.”

Everyone looked towards one of the tunnels. Out stepped a tall man in a trench coat. Judging by the way he held himself, this was ‘CL’. The man walked over to him and leaned down to look at Zug closer. “Yes... you might pull it off.”

“Whoa, I ain't pulling anything ‘off’,” Zug stepped back. “I gonna fucking ollie out of here the moment I can.”

“How will you do that?” CL asked him, eyeing him.

Zug crossed his arms. “Not telling you.”

CL stood straight. “I’m judging its the device in your pocket.” He said “And the reason your still here is you need something special to power it.” He turned his back to Zug. “You know... if even the smallest amount of the Smile Virus gets into your world or any other world it will quickly take over. It could be a single drop.”

“I’ll be careful.” Zug growled.

“Oh? But you already have some on you.” CL pointed to Zug’s shoe without even looking at him.

Zug lifted his foot, scowling. Where he had kicked the garbage can there was a small mark of black. He groaned. This was a nightmare.

“If you help us get rid of the virus you’ll be able to leave without any risks.” CL said. “We’ll even help you get the fuel. Deal?”

“Like I have a fucking choice..”

---

Smug had reached a new level of happy he didn’t even think was possible. As he walked into the kitchen to find his Smile Hat making breakfast he felt a sense of relaxation and familiarity wash over him.

It hadn’t taken Smug long to think of a new, better name for White Hat now he had been corrected. Not with a smile like that.

“Good Morning Smug!” Smile Hat said cheerfully. He placed the plate down for Smug. “I made you a special breakfast!”

It was eggs and bacon that had been put into the shape of a happy face. Smug smiled under his bag before thanking him and eating. He watched Smile Hat busy himself about the kitchen. Smile’s curly tendril hair was on full display. Smug had yet to find Smile’s hat.

Smile Hat placed food in front of L.O.L, Hysteria and Euphoria. “Remember, a balanced breakfast makes for a healthy day.”

The two girls began to eat. Hysteria had finally normalized with her correction and was nearly identical to Euphoria. They practically were twins. It was good because they kept each other busy.

“The Minister wants to see you today.” Smile Hat said out of nowhere, a single black tear rolling down his cheek from his black eye.

Smug reached over and wiped it away. “I promise I’ll be right over.”

The rest of the morning went by fairly quickly, but Smug could feel Minister’s emotions building. They all could. They were all connected.

So Smug found himself running up the last couple of steps to the platform that oversaw the coaster and the Minister. “Sir! I’m here!”

The Minister’s eyes- one yellow and one black- rolled up to see Smug. He then shifted up further in one swift movement, eye level with the tiny scientist. The coaster groaned and creaked with him- it was a part of him. It moved.

“Where is my portal?” He boomed, voice deep and loud.

“S-sir.. I ran the tests and the Smile Virus.. I-it removed his ability to travel dimensions too!”

A great rumbling could be heard in The Minister’s chest before he gave a loud roar of anger. When Yellow Hat had been infected his ability to travel through the void had been stripped away. It now seemed to be a side effect of the parasitic virus, almost like it was designed that way.

“THEN INVENT SOMETHING!”

Smug trembled a little, from both how loud he was but also the fear. “S-sir, even if I could we’d need some sort of f-fuel and that could only c-come from an Eldritch w-who isn't infected.” He stuttered. “A-and we can’t risk making a cure-”

The Minster leaned closer to the platform. “We might have to... we need to spread. We NEED to spread our happiness to everyone.”

“M-maybe we could just... s... stay...”

The narrowing of The Minister's eyes caused the scientist to bow his head. “F-forgive me sir. I will see if I can... can figure something out. If I can’t, then we can make a cure and use him.”

“Good.”

#villianous #villainous au #valiant au #smile! au #smile! fic #my writing

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calamity-writes · 7 years ago

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EH 01 - MAY-DAY! MAY-DAY! M-

Remember, if you get caught-” The Keeper's expression was hard as he looked over the hunter who stood before him in the airlock. The blue vallaslin on the Keepers forehead pulsed in time with the man’s heartbeat, the luminescent tattoos giving his nerves away. No doubt the purple etched into Milliara’s own face was doing the same.

“I won’t get caught.”

“But if you do,” The Keeper said sternly. He grabbed Milliara’s chin with his free hand. Even thick with arthritis, his fingers were strong enough to hold her there even as she reached up to knock the hand away.

“If I do,” Milliara said through clenched teeth, “You worry about keeping your end of the agreement. I’ll keep mine: I was working alone.”

“The spirits are malcontent,” Keeper Lavellan said. Pressing thin lips together, he pushed Milliara away from him from his grip on her chin. “I do not expect you to return, Mi'elgara.”

He shook his head, stepping out of the airlock and gesturing to the shadows where the clan’s first waited. Emerald green covering half the man's face, Varlas crossed his arms, watching through narrowed eyes. Waiting for a misstep, as he had since Milliara had first set foot aboard the Aravel.

“I should go with her,” the other hunter said to the keeper, though Milliara could feel his eyes on her as she pulled the helmet of her pressurized suit over her head, tucking her ears in carefully so they wouldn’t catch. Once the finest make that money could buy, it was scuffed and blackened, a pastiche of Orlesian and Dalish tech. But it worked, and none of the elves on the Lavellan Aravel were willing to part with more than broken parts.

“Varlas,” the Keeper said to his grandson with a warm pat on the shoulder, “Are not expendable. Mi'elgara is. I doubt she will betray us, we have what she cherishes most.”

Varlas nodded, and after a moment’s hesitation, he reached for the airlock controls. Milliara checked the suit’s pressure, hands practiced as they ran her last safety checks. The HUD blinked to life in the familiar lilac that was now etched deep into her skin.

“Depressurizing on your signal.” Varlas’s voice was tinny through the speaker in her helmet.

“Clear.” She said, grabbing onto the pack of gear that had waited by her feet, and looped it over her head and shoulder. She cinched the strap tight so the pack wouldn't float out of place

She could hear the hiss as the vacuum of the Lavellan Aravel sucked the air of the airlock back into the main ship. She took a deep breath of cycled air, the familiar carbon taste already seeping onto her tongue. Get in, get what they wanted, get out.

“Optimal tangent point approaching to intersect with the Temple. Opening hull doors in ten…nine…”

Simple. So why was she nervous?

“...six...”

The Elvhen had to find out if the skirmishes between the Templars and Magi was going to erupt into a war and risk the a mass exodus of the Fereldan and Orlesian refugees towards the outer systems where the Aravels lived safely. Milliara needed the Elvhen, and so here she was, heading back deep into human controlled space to spy on what was possibly the most heavily guarded meeting in hundreds of years.

“No pressure,” she murmured to herself.

“...two...one.”

The Hull door swung open. Distant stars swam as a familiar vertigo swept over her. It lasted only a moment. With a deep breath, Milliara grabbed the door, and yanked herself forward, launching forward into the void.

“Remember what's at stake, Mi'elgara.” Varlas’s voice crackled with static. In the background, she heard the Keeper order the Traveller’s exit of orbit. She was about to be on her own. The commlink snapped with static as the Aravel severed their connection.

Milliara swallowed her reply. There was no one to hear it and saying it outloud wouldn't make her feel better. Instead she looked at the icy moon’s surface below her. Haven, it was called. Rock, snow, and a swarm of ships that orbited it of her. The brilliant and impressive, painted gold to reflect the light of any stars they passed, the Templar fleet was the closest. The ragtag collection of Magi ships hid in the lee of the moon. Too far for her to reach safely without being noticed.

First she had to get into one of the Templar ships, then into a shuttle. Then she’d worry about how she’d get to the Moon’s surface. Milliara twisted, using the small thrusters on her suit to change her vector towards a shuttle that was still docked to one of the nearer Templar ships.

The Hound

Nose close to the glass of her datapad, Knight-Enchanter Haylan snuck a glance around it to check that the door to the barracks was still closed. The last thing she needed was Gavin walking in just as the story was getting to the good part. Huddled into her bunk, she squinted at the door before scrolling down to the next paragraph of Feral-dan Love, Volume 4. It was trash, but it was such good trash she couldn’t help it.

His bare chest heaved in the glow of the lake, golden luminescent algae lighting him in a godly glow. His eyes sparkled as he held out a hand to her, and his lips pulled into a smile that sent Riathlyn’s heart all aflutter.

“Come swim with me,” Alissar said. “You’ve never looked more beautiful than you have in this moment.”

Ruth-Lynne sucked in a breath, and took a step forward, pulling down the zipper of her pressure suit-

The hiss of the barrack’s door gave Haylan just enough time to swipe the smut from her datapad, replacing it with the Herbalwiki entry she’d been editing earlier. Cheeks burning, Haylan started tapping at the screen, pretending that’s what she’d been doing all along as Fallon’s blonde head poked into the room.

The woman arched an eyebrow at Haylan’s red face and smirked as Haylan huffed in reply.

“Lake scene?” she asked.

“Wh- N-“ Haylan said, swinging her legs off the bunk and holding up the data pad to show the herb entry.

“Lake scene,” Fallon said with a nod. “C’mon, it’ll be there in a bit. Knight Captain wants us in the briefing room.”

“It wasn’t…” Haylan said with a frown, locking her datapad and hopping off the bunk to follow. “I was working.”

The snort from her squadmate was enough to tell Haylan that Fallon didn’t believe her. Glowering in silence, the enchanter shoved her hands into the pockets of her flightsuit and led the way up to the bridge where the Knight Captain and her Second were waiting.

A hard woman, Captain Faulkner stood by a holo table, arms crossed and staring down at a slowly spinning debris field shown by cyan light that flickered and glitched in the centre. Pixels, static and flashes of green light kept disrupting the holo, and Haylan frowned as she looked from Faulkner to Gavin who stood nearby, his face solemn.

“Good,” Faulkner said, looking up at the two women. “We received orders at 09h10 that there was an attack on the Peace Talks between the Magi and Night Templars. Current reports are difficult, there’s…” she paused, frowning at the glitch that hovered in front of her. “…there’s an anomaly that’s causing communications to be spotty. Reports are unreliable but Command believes that survivors are minimal.”

With a gesture, Faulker zoomed the view of the holotable out to show the remainder of the moon that once held the temple of Sacred ashes. Shattered, a few large pieces drifted close to each other over the surface of a gas giant below: Frostback. Ruined ships spun in nothing, torn to shreds.

Haylan blinked, feeling the heat seep out of her. They’d intentionally been kept out of the way during the peace talks. The Hounds weren’t supposed to exist, and if things went south, they needed to continue to be the Ace in the Templar’s hole.

“Who did it?” Fallon asked, hands clenching at her sides. Open, closed. Open… closed.

“We’re not sure, no one’s claimed responsibility yet.” Faulkner paused again, brow creasing. “What we do know is that the Temple of Sacred Ashes is destroyed, the Divine is missing and the anomaly is some sort of disruption in the Veil. That means it was one of the Magi. You have one hour to pack up, we ship out on the hour to Frostback’s nearest Station, Haven. Dismissed.”

The Medic

Space was quiet. No sound travelled in the vacuum as the world flashed brilliant green and a wave of force expanded out from the moon ahead. Sitting next to her brother, Peanut grabbed onto the control panel and braced herself as the green wave raced towards them.

The Adaar’s ship bucked, steel and carbon fibre groaning under the force of the explosion. For breathless seconds, Pea was sure the hull would give way. Next to her, the other Qunari frantically tried to steady the ship.

Something fizzled and popped in the console, and Pea felt herself start to lift out of her seat as the artificial gravity slowly ebbed away.

“What was that?” she asked, brushing back white curls from her face. Without gravity to hold it down, her hair was lifting up tighter to her cheeks and horns. Wedging one foot against the floor and the other leg against the underside of her seat, Pea pulled her hair back, braiding it to keep it out of the way.

“I don’t know,” Tanim said, squinting at the controls and tapping at them before grunting in annoyance. “Fitzed us good though, Gravity’s off, so’s our engine control. I’ll go see if I can fix it, keep your eyes peeled for anything weird.”

“Weirder than that?” Pea asked, pulling herself back into her seat and buckling in to keep from floating away. The last thing she wanted to do was crack her horns on the ceiling of the ship. “Guess it’s a good thing we were late…” she said quietly. There was a green light shifting and flickering where the Temple had been.

“..or I’d have been split-pea soup!”

The Queen

“How bad is it?”

Hands on the table, the Hero of Fereldan shook her head. Her hair was black, tied back into a braid that hung over her shoulder, brushing the surface of the holo table she leaned against. Ice blue eyes stared at the video of the explosion and she could feel a muscle start to twitch in her jaw. One of the many windows held a redheaded woman’s portrait with the ‘connected’ icon in the lower right.

“It’s very bad,” she told her husband, glancing away from the video to look at him with the smallest of smiles. It didn’t reach her eyes. “The Temple of Sacred ashes is gone. Just gone.”

“Hello Alistair,” Leliana’s voice said, crackling with static. “We’re still investigating, but unidentified life forms have been emerging from the tear, and causing us difficulty. I cannot talk for long, I am afraid.”

Alistair walked up to stand next to his wife, resting his hand over hers and giving it a gentle squeeze.

“What can we do to help?” He asked.

“Send support, military, healing supplies. I would ask for anything you can spare, but I’m aware how delicate the political situation is right now,” Leliana said. “Commander Rutherford and Seeker Pentaghast will do what they can to hold the hostiles at bay until we can stem the tide.”

“I should be there,” Rythlen said, frowning. “I could help.” Even as she said it, she knew Leliana was right. Until they found out who was responsible for the attack, anything more than token aid would imply that Fereldan supported the Templars or the Magi. It didn’t matter which, both sides would argue that the other was at fault.

“No,” Leliana said. “I-“ there was a crack of static, and Leliana cleared her throat. “I must go. I will relay more information when I have it.”

The comm window blinked closed, and Rythlen sighed, straightening.

“She said she’d never seen anything like it before,” she said, leaning her head onto Alistair’s shoulder. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. Considering what we’ve been through…”

“Yeah, that’s saying something,” Alistair agreed, wrapping his arms around her. “We’ll figure something out, Rybee. We’ll find a way to help. I promise.”

The Spy

Someone was following her. Whoever it was didn’t ping the suit’s radar, but Nathyara had learned to trust the prickle on the back of her neck. Someone was following her, even though when she’d turned to look over her shoulder, the hallway had been empty.

The Magi and the Templars had gathered in the main sanctuary, and their arguing voices could be heard echoing through the temple’s hallways all the way up to where Millie crouched, hidden in a dusty alcove.

The prickle was still there, and the woman slowly reached for the knife stashed in her boot. The radar was fine, she knew. More than once it had saved her ass, but now it wasn’t showing /anything/. Behind her visor, Nathy frowned. The radar still wasn't showing anything, but from the corner of her eye, she caught a whorl of dust spin against the flagstones.

Someone was following her.

Nathyara activated the thrusters on her suit and leapt at where the person should be. Knife drawn, the woman thrust down with both hands in what was surely a deathblow. Casualties were to expected in this line of work.

The air flickered under her. A small form in a blackened space suit now where empty air had been a heartbeat before. Nearly a foot shorter than Nathyara was, the person was well short of where Nathy had aimed her knife. Instead of stabbing the stalker in the chest, Nathyara slammed into them, sending them both to the stone floor.

Nathyara, taller, heavier and stronger, quickly got the upper hand. Knife in hand, Nathy stabbed at the stalker again, but the small person twisted, dodging the knife as it sought their throat. While it cut into their shoulder, that was hardly a killing blow. Nathy wasn't given a second chance, the stalker grabbed the knife and tore it away, sending it skittering along the stone floor to rest against a large wooden door.

Fuck.

Time to improvise.

Using the stalker's movement, Nathy wrapped her arms around the smaller person’s neck. Tightening the headlock, Nathy held on tight as the stalker batted at her arms, her helmet, anything to get Nathy off, to get air flowing back into their lungs. But each strike was weaker, more desperate and less effective.

Then they went still.

Waiting for another few breaths, Nathy let go and pushed the small assassin away. Before she stood, Nathy listened carefully to hear if anyone had heard the scuffle and was on the way to investigate. There were muffled voices from beyond , but while they were heated, they didn’t seem to be about what had happened in the hallway.

Creeping forwards, Nathy carefully picked up her knife and pressed the door ever so gently to open it a crack and hear what was being said. A woman’s voice was begging, and a man’s laughed.

“Please, I beg of you, do not do this,” she was saying. Her accent thick and Orlesian. Was that the Divine? But then who was the man?

Maeve was yanked back and then slammed into the door, knocking it wide open and cracking the acrylic of her visor. Stumbling into the room, Nathyara blinked as she was hit again from behind, and the world exploded into green.

Milliara waited as the human stood, walking over to pick up the knife that had been knocked away. She knew something was wrong when she’d rounded the corner of the hallway and the woman she’d been tailing was gone. Now she was sprawled on the floor of an old as shit temple with a burning shoulder and crushed windpipe.

Sucking in air and watching to be sure the human didn’t turn around to finish the job, Milliara slowly pushed herself to her feet, taking care to be as quiet as possible. Splatters of red on the flagstones told her that she’d need to repair the suit before she could re-enter the vacuum. Hopefully duct tape would last long enough to reach a relay point with the Dalish.

Lungs burning, Milliara, crept up behind the human as they seemed to try to eavesdrop through the door ahead of them. With both hands, the elf grabbed the other woman’s helmet, yanking back before slamming it into the door with a satisfying crunch. The door swung inwards, forcing Milliara to alter her plans. Instead of cracking the woman’s helmet into the door again, she tackled her, sending them both flying forward. Something flashed towards them, and then everything flashed green.

They didn’t land. Instead, they tumbled through weightlessness, or… the world tumbled around them. Milliara let go of the woman, clamping her hand over the tear in her suit to keep her air from escaping. Her injured hand held onto her attacker.

She hissed through the speakers on the side of her helmet. Her voice was raw, words too painful to say. Even the hiss had hurt near enough to bring water to her eyes.

“Who are you? Did you do this?!” the human asked, knocking Milliara’s hand free, and sending them drifting apart, spinning slowly in the air. Around them was spongey ground rising up in mounds, and Milliara reached out, stopping her rotation by resting her hand against one of the ‘mounds’.

Slowly they settled against the ground. Whatever it was, it seemed to have gravity, just not in a way that made sense.

Milliara shook her head, then made the sign of long ears against her helmet with her free hand, looking over the human’s suit a bit more closely. There was no insignia. No colours to signify which nation the woman fought for.

“Elf? You're an elf?”

Milliara nodded, and pointed to her throat. No words.

Something chittered and clicked from off to Milliara’s right. Glancing over, she saw a horde of…. Of somethings there. Boys, toddlers through to prepubescent, all wearing a very familiar face. Their eyes were empty, pale and glowing as their teeth snapped and chittered excitedly, as though they were talking amongst each other.

All at once, the heat was gone from her. The anger at her mission getting interrupted, the anger at the woman for maybe poisoning her… everything was gone in the face of this new horror. How could- there was no way this could be real. It was a projection, an illusion.

“Come on, before they get us,” the human yelled, grabbing Milliara’s wrist and yanking her along. The flare of pain in her shoulder urged the elf into action, her feet digging into the soft ground. She was lighter than the human, but faster. All the years in space had helped form her species for low-grav environments just like this. Wrapping her hand around the human’s, Milliara used their hands to point to a slash of green that twisted in the air ahead of them. They just needed to get there, get through.

Someone in a golden suit was waiting there, holding the glowing light ‘open’ to show dark space beyond. Safety from the very wrong children that were scampering after them on hands and knees.

Scrabbling up the steep incline of slime and rock and spongey ground, Milliara and the human took turns dragging each other forward, tumbling into the slash of green and out…. Out into a debris field of slowly rotating rocks, bodies and detritus from the fleets that had been destroyed.

Hand still to her shoulder, Milliara blinked, her already aching lungs not able to draw enough air through her damaged throat to keep conscious. She felt arms wrap around her, one over her own hand on her shoulder... And then nothing.

#Entropic Horizons #Reboot #Milliara #Nathyara #Rythlen #Haylan #Peanut #I decided to re-write it. The earlier writing was a bit spotty and this way I can streamline some of what wasn't working

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magnomagus-janus · 7 years ago

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MUSE AESTHETICS: HORROR EDITION.

BOLD WHATEVER APPLIES & tag people. add stuff & even change the format to your liking! naturally, repost; don’t reblog!

STOLEN FROM: @femmelieutenant TAGGING: @ofarkhxm, Anyone! Everyone~! @

CLASSIC.

black and white. powder puffs. red lipstick. winged eyeliner. white kitten heels. black lace lingerie. icy blue eyes. rain. abandoned cars. skeletons. acid. poison. voyeurism. switchblades. strangling. overcoats. looking over your shoulder. trans-Atlantic accents .private detectives. dinner parties. haunted mansions. cobwebs. perfect blonde curls. kitchen knives. shock. cellars. dust. ghosts. dark alleys. empty streets. horn-rimmed glasses. radiation. zombies. serial murder. suspicion. paranoia. the city. witches. the devil. cannibalism. conspiracies. amulets. abject terror. the American South. the American Northeast. England. analog cameras.

CRYPTID & URBAN LEGEND.

aliens. blinding light. dark woods. driving at night. claw marks. bite marks. men in black.memory loss. dismembered bodies. sewers. flashlights. cell phones. video cameras. cars with tinted windows. unlabeled cassette tapes. bugs. big cities. urban crimes. clowns.something rustling outside your window. glowing light. unsolved mysteries. suburbia. mirrors. the american pacific northwest. the american midwest. hiking. backpacking.

GOTHIC.

gaslights. corsets. ballrooms. candlelight. mist. starless nights. full moons. cobbled streets. horse-drawn carriages. mysterious strangers. bogs. moors. forests. mountains.castles. velvet. silver. brass. gold. jewels. domino masks. the opera. dangerous romances.tragic romances. violins. roses. lilies. empty graves. crosses. cemeteries. snow. ice. the gallows. crows. milk-white skin. ambiguous illness. fangs. pointed nails. something howling in the night. capes. gloves. top hats. straight razors. lightning. pipe organs. underground caverns. bats. mice. rats. ravens. cats. pearls. attics. talismans. axes. wood. isolation in a room full of people. vampires. werewolves. ghosts. coffins. western Europe. eastern Europe.bones. churches. catacombs. mausoleums. books.

PARANORMAL.

malevolent spirits. seances. spells. missing bodies. hidden graves. white noise. static. flickering lights. rings of salt. demons. poltergeists. dark histories. old buildings. cold air. wells. urban exploration. a dog barking at unseen things. iconoclasm. black ooze. old photographs. dark bodies of water. crucifixes. priests. possession. exorcisms. dolls.

SLASHER.

bloodbaths. massacres. wanton nudity. newspapers. leather jackets. letterman jackets. converse sneakers. obscured faces. social unrest. bonfires. lakes. babysitters. high school. lockers. dead leaves in the fall. jack-o’-lanterns. passing shadows. outdated television sets.nightmares. psychiatrists. hospitals. unstoppable forces. gunfire. police. landline telephones.improvised weapons. halloween. secrets. revelations. cut wires. character masks. scrunchies. wild curls. jeering children. parties. fire. swearing. revulsion. california. the american midwest. ambulances.

THRILLER.

daylight. fluorescent lighting. morgues. unwavering eye contact. tension. lit rooms. empty rooms. killer in plain sight. a dog digging in the newly-planted flower bed. steely gazes. paperwork. anagrams. codes. convicted killers. missing persons. law enforcement. federal agents. small towns. suspicion. paranoia. subdued terror. dimly-lit parking lots. a noise in the distance.

COSMIC.

ancient forbidden tomes. dead astronauts. empty space stations. nihilism. unblinking eyes. dark prophecies. the end of the world. mad cultists. human sacrifice. insanity. New England. the deep ocean. monsters. tentacles. dark rituals. dark magic. primordial gods. lost civilizations. ancient aliens. human-monster hybrids. fish people. unspeakable names. alien gods. that which cannot be named. the abyss. blasphemous, forgotten lore. the darkness between the stars. distorted reality. forbidden knowledge. esoteric orders. dark gods. irrationality. liminal spaces. the void. grotesque idols. horrible truths. masks. mad artists. mad thespians. a thousand eyes. a gaping, toothed maw. ancient mysteries. the insignificance of humanity. hopelessness. despair.

#{meme}#{added cosmic horror part!}#blood warning #mention of things #blood mention

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thisisheavynews · 5 years ago

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Why Black Sabbath Are Heavy Metal’s Greatest Band – Rolling Stone

When Black Sabbath first attempted to tour America in 1970, they had a Hell of a time. “We had to face the mayor of [every] town,” drummer Bill Ward once recalled. “We were banned all the time. They were afraid of us. They thought we were going to put a spell on you.”

Although Mick Jagger and Sammy Davis, Jr. had already publicly flirted with satanism, Black Sabbath — whose members all wore crosses to ward off evil — were much too scary for the United States. Their self-titled debut album sported a witchy woman on its cover, their eponymous song detailed an ill-fated dalliance with a demon (“Please God help me!”), and, in the U.K., their label took things one hooved step further by printing an inverted cross on the inside sleeve with a passage about a dead, black swan floating upside down in a lake as a preamble for what was inside. The group had nicked its name from a 1963 Boris Karloff horror movie, and both its name and fright-flick lyrics sparked confusion and new mythologies nearly everywhere they went.

Over the years, rumors have abounded that Church of Satan founder Anton Szandor LaVey hosted a parade in their honor in San Francisco that year (not true, the Church’s High Priest, Magus Peter H. Gilmore tells Rolling Stone — though there was a Sabbath float in a gay pride parade in the Golden Gate City that year), and then there were whisperings that the Manson Family were fans of the band, which makes no sense since the Tate-LaBianca murders were a year earlier. And then there were the misunderstandings that had nothing to do with black magic: Ozzy Osbourne recalled in his autobiography how when the band played Philadelphia, a group of African American concertgoers were disappointed the band didn’t live up to their expectations. “You guys ain’t black,” one of them told Osbourne. Black Sabbath were a mystery, and it was the mythology of Black Sabbath that built heavy metal.

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Many bands can claim responsibility for the genre’s bludgeoning guitar lines and intensely intense vocals (Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin are obvious go-to’s, and critic Lester Bangs once curiously cited the Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat as a starting point), but the group most responsible for metal as the world knows it today is Black Sabbath. The song “Black Sabbath,” the first track on their first album, begins with eerie sound effects of rain and church bells (a brilliantly gothic detail that foreshadowed the darkness to come) before exploding with guitarist Tony Iommi’s lumbering, Godzilla stomp of a riff and Osbourne pleading to heaven to deliver him from Satan — lyrics he based on a nightmare bassist Geezer Butler had had. They wanted to feel scared and they wanted you to feel scared. Over the next eight years, they used that song as a prototype for new sounds — speeding it up, funking it up, stretching it out, wringing the blues out of it, inverting it into lucious folk music — essentially creating the Rosetta Stone for metal with their early discography.

The band’s first eight albums, the ones made by Osbourne, Iommi, Butler, and Ward, are still vital, enigmatic, and inspiring. On an album like Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, the band transitions from the blunt-force riff pugilism of the frightening title cut (dig that almost Black Flaggy breakdown, “Nowhere to run to … “) to the intricate, contemplative “Sabbra Cadabra” within a few minutes — and it makes perfect sense.

Those albums, compiled into Rhino’s new limited-edition LP box set, The Vinyl Collection: 1970 – 1978, represent the multifaceted essence of not just Black Sabbath but metal and hard rock as a whole, proving why they weren’t just the first but also the greatest metal band. And vinyl is the best way to experience the music since you can ponder the quixotic artwork (who is the witch on the cover of Black Sabbath? why are there airmen on Never Say Die? what was Bill Ward smoking when he wore see-through red tights for the cover of Sabotage?) and feel the pacing and admire the grooves of the music as the LP spins on the turntable. (And to sweeten people’s appreciation, the box set also includes replica tour programs from the Seventies, which oddly include Osbourne and Iommi sniping at each other in the interviews within — it shows how the prickly pair made the band’s chemistry work.)

But it’s the music that remains most powerful. You can hear the breakneck thrashing of Metallica and Slayer in “Children of the Grave” and “Symptom of the Universe,” the manic riffs of the Sex Pistols and Ramones are steeped in “Paranoid,” and the downer-rock groundwork of grunge reverberates through songs like “War Pigs” and “Into the Void.” Although Black Sabbath went on to record brilliant albums with Ronnie James Dio and Ian Gillan in the Eighties, the group’s original lineup sowed the seeds for a whole musical culture in the previous decade on their first eight LPs.

The reason the music was so game-changing — and so excellent — was because it was a reflection of who these four men were offstage. The band members have each made much of their working-class backgrounds, growing up in post-War Birmingham, England. Iommi accidentally lopped off the fingertips of his fretting hand, forcing him to relearn the guitar and draw inspiration from Gypsy-jazz virtuoso Django Reinhardt. Osbourne came from a big family and worked as a car-horn tuner and in a slaughterhouse before spending time in jail for burglary; eventually his dad bought him a PA, setting him on the road to music making. Butler grew up in an Irish-Catholic household but suffered from undiagnosed depression causing him to feel like an outcast. And Ward had a humble upbringing where his parents encouraged his drumming. When they formed Black Sabbath (né Earth, smartly né the Polka Tulk Blues Band) in 1968, they all were avowed fans of the blues and heavy rock like Jimi Hendrix and Cream but as Butler once said, “We just took it one step heavier.”

The secret to Black Sabbath’s sound in the beginning was that they wanted to be big. The first original song they they remember writing was “Wicked World,” a skittery blues number about what an abomination the planet was in 1969 with poor people dying in the gutter. But it’s on the second song they wrote, “Black Sabbath,” where they consecrated their approach. Iommi and Butler (formerly a guitar player) colluded to make the riff sound massive, like more than the two of them playing at once, and Ward approached his instrument not so much like Ginger Baker but like an expressionist painter, adding drama to each of Osbourne’s pleas for salvation. The first single they put out, included in the box set as a bonus cut on its mono-only Monomania compilation, was a cover of American hard rockers Crow’s “Evil Woman,” a chunky blues number advising cruel-hearted ladies to steer clear of the band members. It was two years after Fleetwood Mac’s “Black Magic Woman” (and the same year as Santana’s) and two years before Eagles’ “Witchy Woman” — and none of this means anything since Black Sabbath courted every kind of women throughout the Seventies, regardless of their evil affiliations.

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But beyond the cover versions, each band member found his groove. Iommi was the riffmaster general, capable of whipping out a song like “Paranoid” in an afternoon; to this day, Osbourne says that while he and Iommi have had their personal differences, nobody writes riffs like Iommi. The guitarists once said that he would sometimes put himself in a grim mood on purpose in order to write riffs, but his impish personality and love of pranks suggests they just come naturally to him. Osbourne was the king of melodies, sometimes copying the riff, sometimes going way out. Butler was the wordsmith, the “Irish poet” as Ward has dubbed him (even though Butler unapologetically rhymed “masses” with “masses” in “War Pigs”), writing about his general malaise with the world. He and Ward together were the band’s glue, creating a heavy groove that no other band has matched. Together, they concocted a curious mix of footslogging blues and ornately gothic melodies that paradoxically both paid tribute to and showed a great fear of death and the underworld.

And then there was their look. If the peace and love generation dressed themselves like an acid trip, Black Sabbath were like a PCP nightmare with their garish clothes, Osbourne’s fringe jacket, and their mid-Seventies wizard garb. They looked as scary as they sounded. You knew that their racket was unwittingly born of a beautiful dysfunction, a natural urge that came out of the four of them together.

Music critic Lester Bangs infamously closed his Rolling Stone review of the album Black Sabbath (which was incidentally released in the U.K. on a Friday the 13th) with the punchline that Sabbath were “just like Cream! But worse.” He eventually became a fan as the group became more nuanced, but he missed out on the directness that separated them from Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce. Where Cream had a song like “Sunshine of Your Love,” Sabbath used a similar riff for Black Sabbath’s “N.I.B.” and infused it with dark psychedelia and a thicker wallop. Their music was much more barebones and much more like a slap in the face; Cream were genteel London noblemen by comparison.

Butler wrote lyrics about H.P. Lovecraft–inspired trippiness (“Behind the Wall of Sleep”), astral projection and love (“Planet Caravan”), war (“War Pigs,” “Hand of Doom,” “Children of the Grave”), and feeling like an outcast (“Paranoid”). He avowed the band’s love of Jesus Christ in the wake of a British sorcerer allegedly hexing them (“After Forever”) and his love of drugs (“Sweet Leaf”). “Into the Void,” one of the band’s heaviest early songs, was an elegy for a dying planet: “Back on earth the flame of life burns low/Everywhere is misery and woe/Pollution kills the air, the land, the sea/Man prepares to meet his destiny.” It was the opposite of megahits in 1971 like Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World” and the Bee Gees’ “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.”

“Sabbath was everything the Sixties weren’t,” Metallica frontman James Hetfield once beamed. “Their music was so cool because it was completely anti-hippie.”

In their defiance, Sabbath embraced nuance. Just look at the grooves of 1970’s Paranoid or 1971’s Master of Reality, and the folky ballads are immediately noticeable next to ragers like “Lord of This World,” as are effects like the gurgly voiced “I am Iron Man” that opens one of their most famous songs or the choking weed cough of “Sweet Leaf.” It’s a paradox of detail and dudeliness. A mono version of the Master track “Into the Void” on Monomania is even thicker and heavier than the one on the record, and you can feel the power they were starting to tap into with their music on the way the verse riff on “After Forever” returns with an extra dimension of bass-guitar smackdown. They were masters of their own reality.

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On 1972’s unimaginatively titled Vol. 4, the group broke new ground and recorded some of their most creative sounds. It was the band’s proud cocaine moment (“We wish to thank the great COKE-Cola Company of Los Angeles,” read the liner notes) and they paid tribute to their powdery muse on “Snowblind.” But there was a new depth of sound on the weighty “Wheels of Confusion” and thumping “Supernaut.” The ballad “Changes” featured a piano and a mellotron with an orchestral string sound, and it was disarmingly fragile. The record closes with “Under the Sun,” a tune that grinds slower and slower and slower as it ends until you’re looking up from the dirt. “Life is one long overdose,” Osbourne sings.

The group had leveled up, and its music would grow more and more complex on 1973’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and their last masterpiece, 1975’s Sabotage (which sports a deceptively corny album cover despite the impossibly hard-hitting riff on “The Thrill of It All”). Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’s “Killing Yourself to Live” is like a Black Sabbath glossary that finds Osbourne screeching, “I’m telling you, believe in me” — and you want to with all the blues riffs, Sgt. Pepper psychedelia and surprising a breakdown. In the middle of it he whispers “smoke it” in one speaker, and “get high” in the other, and you don’t know if it’s peer pressure or an admonition. That album’s “Who Are You?” is a buoyant synth track Osbourne dreamt up, complete with a proto-industrial rattle, and the record as a whole variously features Iommi playing synth, flute, organ, bagpipes, and piano, while Ward expanded his repertoire to bongos and timpani.

And on Sabotage, they invert the folky, Latin jazz jam at the end of “Symptom of the Universe” by pairing one of their heaviest-ever songs, “Hole in the Sky,” with a quirky acoustic jam called “Don’t Start Too Late.” And once again, you can see in the grooves how complicated a song like the gloomy “Megalomania” on Sabotage is by the way the rungs contort. “Symptom,” too, contains some of Butler’s trippiest lyrics, in which he asks you to “take [him] through the centuries to supersonic years” and “swim the magic ocean I’ve been crying all these years,” making it one of the band’s biggest headfucks. The megagothic “Supertzar” is an instrumental piece Iommi dreamt up, complete with a 55-voice choir, and it was majestic enough for the band to use it to open their shows on the tours that followed.

Drink, drugs, and too many years on the road got the better of them on their two final releases of their initial run, 1976’s Technical Ecstasy, and 1978’s ironically titled swan song for Osbourne, Never Say Die!, and the music is noticeably less inspired but still rocks as hard (if not a little harder) than Led Zeppelin’s two final albums. Oddly, the Never Say Die! single “A Hard Road,” with its slick swagger got them back on Top of the Pops, eight years after they played “Paranoid” on the U.K. music show, making them pop stars. But the intra-band bacchanalia proved too much for the group and they oustered Osbourne for his herculean drug use (even though they were all using), ultimately giving him the opportunity to defy all odds and become a bigger solo star than the band in the Eighties all while they started over with Ronnie James Dio and inspired a new wave of heavy metal fans with their Heaven and Hell album.

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At their peak — whether that’s their first trilogy of heavy-hitting albums or the technical ecstasy of their work in the mid-Seventies — Black Sabbath were the touchstone for everything that followed. Although the band members have each scoffed at the metal tag over the years, they’ve never denied their influence on the genre and the bands whom they have inspired.

In the five decades since they formed, Black Sabbath’s music has been interpreted in many different ways. Metallica reveled in the complexity of their mid-Seventies recordings. Megadeth zeroed in on the hits (“Paranoid” and “Never Say Die”) and thrashed them up. Pantera surprisingly tackled the ballad “Planet Caravan.” Van Halen, who went out on their first big tour supporting Sabbath, once flirted with calling themselves Rat Salad after an instrumental on Paranoid. Cypress Hill, Ice-T and Busta Rhymes all sampled Sabbath. And the band Sleep is basically a Sabbath tribute band, formed at a time when the band was less fashionable. Moreover, Weezer, Green Day, Charles Bradley, Blondie, Foo Fighters, Replacements, the Roots, Beastie Boys and Courtney Love, among dozens of others, have covered their songs. Without these eight records, music would sound drastically different.

Weirdly, some of the band members don’t fully appreciate the work they put into their records. “I was always disappointed with our albums because of the fact that we were a fucking great live band,” drummer Bill Ward said in the liner notes to the 1998 live album Reunion. “I felt we always lost something by trying to record what we did.” But long after the original lineup fell apart, it’s what they put on their LPs that cemented their legend.

Since 1979, the original members of Black Sabbath have reunited and broken up and carried on with solo records. Everything finally came full circle in 2013, when they released 13 (sadly without Ward and not included in the box set) showing they still had it in them to conjure their dark spirits for tracks like “Damaged Soul” and “God Is Dead?” that could have come out anytime in the Seventies. The album was a worldwide smash, notching the Number One positions in the U.S. and U.K. The determination, and the willingness to work through their differences, harks back to a lyric on Vol. 4’s “Under the Sun,” and one that captures the spirit of the band:

“Just believe in yourself you know you really shouldn’t have to pretend/ “Don’t let those empty people try to interfere with your mind/ Just live your life and leave them all behind”

Long may this message echo through centuries into supersonic years. Hail Black Sabbath, Lords of This World!

from Heavy News https://thisisheavynews.com/why-black-sabbath-are-heavy-metals-greatest-band-rolling-stone/

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