#a barter

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

A Barter 2

Warnings: suggestions of death, I am a dark blog and I write dark things.

Summary: You are bargained to be wife to the witcher if he can slew the beast in the village.

Character: Geralt of Rivia

**note, I am not a Witcher genius or aficionado and so I may get some things wrong.

As usual, I appreciate any and all feedback and enthusiasm. Please reblog and leave a comment. Love! 😍

You watch the witcher set off into the fog from between the slats of the barn. It’s been a fortnight crammed into the space. The stench has faded to something tolerable but the tension hasn’t. 

The now orphaned maiden clings to your arm. That’s what she is now. The man in black all but confirmed it. His horse tramps off into oblivion without hesitation as he sits tall in his saddle, disappearing into the haze. You sit back as your companion sniffles. 

“They’re dead? All of them?” 

“It would seem,” you sigh and lean on the wall.  

Your sister was a sweet girl but even before the revelation, you had little hope. Especially as your mother went to search and did not return. Your father has only you and your brother left. Marsh is a child still but he will grow into his legacy, so long as you father lasts that long. 

“How could this happen to us? Why Krescent? We are a good pious village,” she whines, her sniveling grating your addled nerves. 

“Bad things happen to all, regardless of prayers,” you resign. 

“That is blaspheme,” she accuses. 

“It is the truth. It has happened to all in the wretched place. And if this witcher should be able to slay the evil, then I too shall walk off to my own doom, only a living one.” 

She looks at you with her watery eyes. They are such a pale shade of green that they look almost yellow. She always reminded you of a swampy witch, the ones in the stories you whispered so the elders did not hear. 

“I suppose...” she begins, “marriage is destined to all. It shouldn’t be such a surprise.” 

“To him?” You wonder grimly. “Perhaps, at least, I will be away from this cursed land, that I should not look upon it and think of my...” your voice catches as the witcher’s words crash upon you. Your legs buckle and you slide down the wall and fold against your knees. “They truly are gone.” 

Caralyn mops away her tears as she kneels at your side. Your own eyes do not weep though your chest concaves. You brace your head as your elbows rest on your knees. You take a deep breath. 

“My father did not protest,” you murmur. “He is too dumbed without my mother to do anything.” You look at her, still hunched, “you must promise to look after Marsh.” 

“I promise,” she avows and brushes your sleeve softly. “I will keep him close to my own brothers and sisters, now that it is up to me to see to them.” 

You nod and frown deeper, “I’m deeply sorry for your parents, Caralyn. They were always so kind.” 

“So kind, I do wonder why it should be them instead of me,” her eyes spring with tears again and she lowers herself to her bottom. She wipes her nose messily and heaves.  

You wring your hands. You wonder the same of your mother and sister. How can it be that Lessa would wander off and you would be left behind to miss her. Your mother was always the order in your life and now it is chaos. 

Along with grief, is more terror. What should happen should the fogler, or whatever he called, it not desist? What if the witcher were to defeat the monster? Should he really claim your hand? A wife?  

Caralyn is right, it is not great surprise to be wed. It is a young woman’s fate but this... what sort of wife can you be to someone like him. The tainted. The sort spat upon at even the lowest tavern. 

“He was not... hideous,” Caralyn suggests as if reading your thoughts. 

You scrunch your nose at her, “how he looks is the least of my woes.” 

“Tall. Strong.” She offers. 

“Car, stop,” you chide. 

“You must... must try to hearten,” she shifts closer so her legs touch yours and she leans a little, as if to comfort you. “As our mothers would always tell us, we must be good wives one day. No matter who. I’m certain if you prove a good loyal wife, he would not treat you as one of his beasts.” 

You stare at her and hum. She is not incorrect. You were never to choose your husband so it should be that it doesn’t matter so much who it is. Only that you serve him well. 

“A man is a man, even if witcher he be,” she declares. 

[wuntrum]

the brushes you use for digital art dont Actually matter that much and its more about core art principles and technique or whatever. but maybe this next brush will be the one

[femin-ink]

Monday - Blonde Day

Instagram: spookykins

Follow for more: @lipsticknink

[sinensis26]

I take back what I said earlier: I would absolutely sell my craft creations, and by "sell" I mean "trade for something I equally value". Do you like my punk rock giraffe stuffie? You can have one for $81... or a bag full of coreopsis seeds. A knit fringe lumberjack hat? Thats $195... or a jar of local honey. Ill sew new clothes for all of your kid's dolls, usually $300+ in labor and material, but Id rather they draw me a really cool picture that I can hang on my fridge.

[let-the-water-hold-me]

Spookykins

[helenofblackthorns]

simon lewis is his own pov is so funny because I was rereading the scene of him summoning Raziel and the way he's like "oh I don't know how introduce myself because I'm just Some Guy who has no titles or great deeds to his name :/" DUDE YOU KILLED LILITH?????????

[ew-selfish-art]

DP x DC AU: Danny desperately wants to find the explosion guy. Tim is really good at covering his tracks... he didn't account for ghosts.

The explosions make it onto TV as purported terror activity and most people haven't heard of that part of the world much less ever given a second thought to care about it. The only real reason it gets reported on has something to do with the Justice League and... Danny knows too much.

He's been in training for Clockwork's court (which he's suspicious of- feels like kingly duty bullshit- but Danny is playing along out of curiosity for now) and he's learned a lot about how the living and non-living worlds collide. That means learning about CW's usual suspects- one of which just happened to have a ton of bases around the area Danny was seeing on the news.

It didn't take long for Danny to try to piece together that whoever blew up Nanda Parbat was trying to fuck with the League of Shadows, and was doing it successfully. Less green portals in the world the better, same goes for assassins. But it gets Danny thinking... Maybe he can employ similar tactics on the GIW Bases that keep spawning on the edges of Amity Park. It would at least set them back while he and his friends navigated the help line desk to request Justice League intervention. None of them can leave Amity Park, so outreach is going to have to be creative.

So Danny figures he'll just find the guy. Call up some ghosts who were there, or er, came from there and get a profile and track him down. But the ghosts keep saying it was The Detective. Annoying!

Danny goes full conspiracy theory, gets Tucker and Sam involved, and begrudgingly asks Wes Weston his thoughts.

He hadn't expected Wes to garble out a thirty minute presentation (that had 100 more slides left to go before he cut it off) about how Batman totally trained with a cult and so did his kids. Danny kind of rolled his eyes but... hey, new avenue of searching in the Infinite Realms at least.

The ghosts confirm that Bombs is for sure not Batman's MO- But maybe his second kid would know? The second kid was already brought back to life though, so no way to easily reach him... Danny starts to realize that this might be the work of a Robin now. Wasn't the red one known for solving cold cases? (Sam provides this information- its a social faux pas to not know hero gossip at Gotham Galas- everything she's learned is against her will).

It all comes to a head when Danny goes about the hard task of opening a portal for the guy to come through at just the right time, explain the infinite realms so he doesn't panic and then describe what the fuck was going on with the GIW. It takes months, just over a full year, of random (educated guesses) portal generating- Finally, Red Robin drops into the land of the dead.

"So, you're the guy I've got to talk to about explosions right?" Danny enthusiastically asks.

Tim thinks he's died and landed in the after life following 56 hours of being awake and plummeting off the side of a building into a Lazarus pool. Nothing makes sense about the kid in front of him.

"Yeah, I got a guy for munitions." Tim answers cooly.

"How do you feel about secretly sanctioned government operations that violate protected rights?"

"Gotta get rid of 'em some how. Need me to point you in the right direction?" This might as well be happening.

[loktauri]

Pookie...

[vamprisms]

yea? well i hope your favourite working class character behaves in an absolutely middle class way in the adaptation because the writers, sorry, copyright owners don't even know hungry anymore

[starcurtain]

Sometimes I think about the fact that we have absolutely no information on how long Aventurine actually spent in slavery.

He fled from the Avgin massacre as a young child, and we didn't see him again until he was a grown adult. I doubt he could have survived entirely on his own at that age and Sigonia's conditions seem too harsh for people to randomly adopt orphans, especially from a rival/outcast clan...

We do know that the master we see on screen was not his only master, because he was purchased from someone else, but we have no idea how many masters he had total before his final one, how many times he could have fled and been recaptured, how many times he was bought and sold...

We do know that Aventurine appears to have been kept on Sigonia or somewhere similarly tribal for those missing years, since his first request to the IPC is for Jade to take him to her "chief," but we don't even know how long Aventurine has been out of slavery. He doesn't look massively different in age from his "trial" with Jade to how he looks in-game now, and he did not rise through the IPC ranks over time like Topaz but won his role directly through his gamble with Jade and then later proving himself on Iymanika.

Basically, all this is leading to a big question: Is it possible that the Aventurine we know is only barely out of slavery? That there may be something like five years or fewer separating him from the wastelands of Sigonia? That he learned all these new behaviors, all this new information about how to operate as a free person in the universe, in what likely amounts to 2-3 years of Jade's guidance and his own hard work?

Man, what an incredible character. Really a standout among my very favorites.

[canonkiller]

something has snapped in me I feel like a hippie. I lay awake for two hours last night thinking about the feasibility of making my own dye pigment. what happened at the turn of the year bro

[wren-of-the-woods]

Okay but why did Jaskier have two spoons in the prison in season two? Did the prison meal just... come with two spoons? Did he barter with a guard for a second one? Has he been there long enough to have multiple meals with multiple spoons??

[femin-ink]

Instagram: spookykins

❗ Follow for more: @lipsticknink

[of-mutts-and-men]

I need to give my poor body a break but jerking off for multiple hours a day is just so tempting 😓😓. I really need a vibe or something that can run all day no charge lol. Aka another person. Surely there’s at least one needy thing out there to make a good desk pet….

[let-the-water-hold-me]

Spookykins

[asmodeauxx]

★PARASITE★