#Well that was a ride

[blackjackkent]

Given that all the cultists keep talking to her in ways that make her head ache, Rakha is almost relieved to look down at the center of the Temple and see that, after so much toil and terror, she has finally found what she is looking for.

Orin stands atop a raised dais at the center of the temple platform. Stretched at her feet, unmoving, is a familiar form - Lae'zel. For a moment, Rakha thinks they are too late, that she is dead, and the beast in her head keens with triumphant glee at the thought...

But then her chest rises and falls, almost imperceptibly.

She lives.

Rakha releases a breath that it feels like she has been holding for days. She had not realized the full extent of the tension that has been holding her upright, driving her forward, until now; it feels as if the strings holding her in place have been cut, and she almost collapses to her knees with the sheer weight of relief.

But she can't. Not yet. It isn't over. And her head aches as Orin lifts her gaze and smiles that dagger's-edge smile at her.

"Shhhh... shhhhh..." the changeling croons softly to Lae'zel's unconscious body. "Your savior approaches... scuttling in without the tyrant's rock..."

Rakha comes to a halt a few feet away. Orin glares at her, snarling like a creature whose nest has been invaded. "You are a mangled blood-brain," she hisses. "Thinking Father could be refused!"

Then her head snaps back, her nostrils flaring, the mocking laughter replaced instantly with rage. "I know what you did!" she cries. "Spilled my grandfather's crimson... He was mine! He showed me the way, how to slice and slit. He guides my daggers still."

She flicks a wrist, and one of those knives is in her hand suddenly, a long and curving, wickedly sharp blade.

Slowly, tenderly, she lowers its edge to sit under Lae'zel's jaw, and her lips curl again with manic hunger. "Did it think it could protect?" she sneers. "Did it think it could save? Only the blades can offer salvation!"

Another moment, and the blade will cut and slice and bleed and it will all be over. Rakha's head aches and aches, stabbing, blinding, and she can barely breathe, so strong does the beast urge suddenly wake and roar inside her skull.

Yes. Bleed her dry, the final cut, and then we shall take your head as you took hers, sister, sister, sister, failed attempt to be what I once was, broken bleeding bleating BITCH--

Something in her so desperately wants to see that blade draw its line in Lae'zel's flesh, to see every throat in this place, friend and foe alike, bleed until there is nothing left and all eyes are empty and staring and beautiful. Something in her is a monster that wakes at the moment of crisis, and sometimes it is so strong that she feels broken and shattered beside it.

But she has learned. She has learned so much.

She has learned from Wyll's hand on her arm, his warmth and his unerring goodness that has drawn her to the light out of the great black pit where he found her. His love, offered to her when she has least felt she deserved it, and which she has tried in a halting, faltering way to give back out of every functioning bit of her heart.

She has learned from Jaheira's steady solidity, the pillar beneath a rotted and rickety platform - the woman who watched over her in the darkness and told her at the darkest moment that she was not lost.

She has learned from Minsc - roaring, raging, just as mad as she, showing her that the broken bits of her do not bar her from being something greater, that justice and violence can live in the same skull.

She has learned from Karlach's kindness. From Gale's knowledge. From Minthara's focused determination. From Astarion's inner battles and Shadowheart's final triumphs. From Halsin's wisdom. From Isobel's forgiveness and Aylin's vengeance.

And she has learned from Lae'zel, the first voice she has memory of hearing. Attack with purpose and savor your kills. She has learned that she has the strength to guide her own hand and to turn on the god that bore her when the need is just.

Her head lifts, her voice a solid, booming roar, knocking the beast backwards within her and echoing to the stone rafters above.

[INTIMIDATION] "Harm her, and I will unleash the agonies of Bhaal upon you!"

Orin's head snaps up and she giggles maniacally, the blade falling away from Lae'zel's neck as she focuses on Rakha directly. "Yes," she squeals. "Yes! Give me agony! Pluck me bone from socket. Stroke me with a jagged edge until my skin shreds wet and red."

(A/N: Big props to Maggie Robertson; this is SO creepy, lol. Eeeeeeek.)

With a sudden smooth motion, she leaps over the altar to stand in front of Rakha, her other victim for the moment forgotten. "You still don't remember, do you, blood-kin?" she purrs gleefully.

Her body shifts, twists - settles into a new form, taller, broader in the shoulders. Rakha's own body, the one she's only bothered to see in a mirror a handful of times. Clear of the lines of the worm or the scars of the road, the face she must have had before her memories were lost.

"How you screamed as my knife split your skull," Orin hisses, now in Rakha's voice, deeper, harsher. Her lips curl in the smirk that Rakha's have only held in her darkest moments. "Your brain juices sticky and sweet."

(A/N: This is kinda fun. :D We don't ever get to hear the player character VA get any big speeches, they only ever get little ambient lines moving around the world. Tempted to do a Durge!Hector run now just to hear what his voice sounds like making a speech. :D )

She draws closer, lifting a hand almost to touch Rakha's cheek - and Rakha sees that she is holding a tadpole carefully in one palm.

"A little hole... big enough for the worm," she sneers. "Your body a blood sack to feed it." Her fist clenches around the tadpole, which erupts in a sudden burst of blood.

(A/N: It is so weird to see Rakha with her eyes intact and her skin un-wormed.)

She leans forward, draws her bloody fingertips against Rakha's jaw. "The favorite of Bhaal turned meat-puppet, strung up by the sinews and plucked by my hands..."

Rakha feels frozen into immobility. She doesn't know what the others are doing behind her - waiting for a sign to strike, perhaps. For a moment she can't think about them. She can only think about the flickering images that begin to rattle through her brain as Orin slowly shifts back into her own form.

Narrator: A straggling memory rises - the day your tyranny should have engulfed this world, it was you who were the first to be enslaved.

Narrator: Orin's smile was the last thing you saw, her bright blade glinting as she chiseled into your skull. Her reckless digging left your mind shattered. She robbed you of your bloody birthright, reduced you to nothing. Nothing but pure hate, and now it burns, yearning for vengeance.

Her head aches and the tadpole writhes and the beast screams and she clenches her fists at her sides, flame flaring around her fingertips. The fury is unsettling and there is no escaping the fact that the beast wants this violence too - but this is a killing with purpose. Jaheira has said it, Wyll has said it. Lae'zel would say it if she was conscious. Orin must die. It is the only way she can face down the taint in her blood and perhaps find the strength to walk away from it.

"Husk," Orin growls. "Maggot. A Bhaalspawn, slip-sliding in filth with these pigs." Her eyes flick to Wyll and Jaheira, to Minsc, to Minthara. Her lip curls disdainfully. "You don't deserve the murder-lord's blessing."

(A/N: We have the option here to tell Orin that she's the product of incest and that Sarevok has lied to her, and she gets BIG mad about it. However... I really don't think that's top of mind for Rakha? She's far more concerned about her own issues tbh. :P )

"Forget Bhaal." Rakha's voice rasps in her throat, tight and hoarse. Focused with every ounce of concentration she can manage. "It's your Netherstone I've come for."

Rage roars across Orin's face. "It opens its lips and spews filthy lies!" she screeches. "No no NO!"

Rakha flinches as the changeling closes with her, spittle spewing from her mouth.

"None can resist Father's blessing!" The Weave is starting to ripple and churn around Orin's body, a strange dark undulation that Rakha has never seen before. It curls around her body like smoke. "He tells me, whisper-quiet. The lies must be cut from your throat!"

She spreads her arms with a maniacal smile. "Come close, my Death's Heads! But keep your blades unblooded! Bhaal demands a duel! He wants to taste my domination. An altar flowing with his own unwilling flesh. Draining, dying, drip, drip, drip--"

There's a low, familiar buzzing hiss from behind her. Sceleritas appears on the stairs, and clicks his tongue in gentle disapproval. "You should have trained harder, Master," he murmurs.

Rakha isn't sure what he means - but it doesn't take her long to find out.

The Weave writing around Orin's body suddenly rises to a fever pitch and then explodes in a burst of orange-white light. When it fades... she has become a monster.

Magical walls shoot up around the dais, cutting Rakha off from her friends. Fear shoots through her, animal terror blocking out everything else.

Orin's slayer form roars and lunges forward, intent on slitting Rakha's throat.

The battle, at long last, is joined.

[bloodsoaked-rainbows]

Let your spotify predict your 2024! Shuffle your on repeat playlist and the first twelve songs represent your 2024

Thank you so much for the tag, @agentpolarbear!!! <3<3

January: Centuries - Fall Out Boy

February: Rachel's Song - Vangelis

March: Welcome to the Black Parade - My Chemical Romance

April: 't Smidje - Laïs

May: The Curse - The Longest Johns

June: Hell's Comin' with Me - Poor Man's Poison

July: Inkpot Gods - The Amazing Devil

August: Anne Louise (2023) - The Longest Johns

September: The Captain's Daughter (2023) - The Longest Johns

October: Titanium (feat. Sia) - David Guetta, Sia

November: Lean On - Major Lazer, DJ Snake, MØ

December: Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard - Paul Simon

RIP me in the first half of the year ig

tagging @alexisapossiblepenname, @alllthequeenshorses, @chiakery, @witchdrugs, @denselittlerose, @doodlebugdpj, @sadlynotsappho, @wren-of-the-woods, @rebelandrichgirl, and anybody else who'd like to!! <3

[julnites]

Red riding hood comic collab with the wonderful @yeehawpim (go check out their blog for loads of great comics!) 🌷 See the layouts he did here!

[chloesimaginationthings]

RIP Michael Afton, you would of LOVED Foxy’s log ride

[ofhoovesandheart]

the mustangs of salt wells creek 🐞

[inkskinned]

the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.

three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.

two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.

their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.

one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.

i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.

i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.

and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?

you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.

a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.

someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Five foot something and he's royalty.

[arctic-hands]

I'm not upset discussions of Sally Ride these days don't leave out the fact that she was a lesbian and therefore the first known queer person in space (albeit a fact only known after her death), but I hate that the fact that what is left out is that she, while part of the Roger's Commission after Challenger exploded, was the whistleblower who made sure the information for the defects of the O-rings made its way to Richard Feynman, who then famously, publicly, and on camera demonstrated how icy coldness (such as the cold and icy weather the morning before Challenger launched) could critically deform the O-rings used and keep them from forming a seal. This was also only revealed after she died. (x)

Whenever Sally Ride comes up these days among my (overwhelmingly queer) friends, we all acknowledge that she was a lesbian and celebrate what a role model she was not just for girls but for queer kids (and adults) too, but everyone is always surprised when I bring up the whistleblowing thing, which I think is damn shame and a disservice to her legacy.

[not-museing-around]

📞 (Danny to Ross, modern Mark...)

Though Danny never drank, meeting with Ross' family had been more stressful than she knew what to do with. Having been given a ride home while Ross stayed behind, Danny opened a bottle of wine and poured a single glass. It was the second glass that actually relaxed her. Perhaps too much.

Calling Ross from the tub in their bathroom she'd cleaned to a pristine state, Danny looked down at the red liquid as she spoke. "You know what I should have listened to you. Those guys? They don't know me." Danielle leaned her head back against the edge of the tub and narrowed her eyes at the ceiling. "They-They don't know us. They don't know o-our lo-they don't know how much I love you.. Screw those guys. Let's just get married. Let's just- just do our own thing.. And I don't care. We're going to have beautiful curly haired babies some day and they can't stop us." What she didn't really know was if she got Ross' answering machine or if he'd even picked up.

[teaboot]

To be clear, while I DO spoil my beautiful and handsome cat son,I don't mean that I spoil him in a chew-my-shoes, overfeed-him, give-him-people-food, wander-off-leash kind of way.

I spoil him like a well-to-do businessman would spoil his one and only firstborn son with a sugar lolly during Sunday promenade at the pier, where he might traipse about in his little sailor suit and watch the boats go by.

[satans-knitwear]

It may have been accidental, but i think someone irl asked me out for a drink 😱😻Treat me ~ Tip Me ~ More of me

[themadzarka]

Aww they're picking flowers together, isn't that cute?

[sasukeless]

what if i was devoted to you as a knight is to his king and became your right hand and sword and i was ready to lay my life for you and your dreams

what if i was devoted to you as a dog is to his owner and i would attack and maul anyone who dared to touch you but i’d also bite and claw you if you ever tried to leave me

what if

[egophiliac]

WOOO we're finally getting some Ride Kamens story content! ...and it's mostly Leon getting REALLY into being a small business owner! this is (unironically) an excellent sign for the future.

(what do you mean the Agent isn't wearing cat ears 24/7 in every outfit) (can't hear you la la laaaaa)

[formulanni]

Thunderstruck!

Tag list: @st-leclerc @rubywingsracing @saviour-of-lord @three-days-time @the-wall-is-my-goal @albonoooo @ch3rubd0lls @brawngp2009