#another web weave upon ye all

[ao3fujoshevik]

chase you to the end of the world — just to say your name once more // orpheus & eurydice — lu guang & cheng xiaoshi

hozier, “talk” | hadestown, "wait for me" | michael gibson, orpheus and eurydice | euripides, orestes

[alpydk]

Eclipse - (Part 6) - "Invisibility"

2 chapters left the write. Will be done before the move...

The orb awoke and throbbed as his mind drifted away with the shadowed figure, the subtle glow growing brighter with each moment, and he had felt his body slow after each step. He no longer saw the grass or the dust that rose as his boots kicked forward. There was nothing but the musty smell of the books on the shelves, the surrounding candlelight flicking upon the walls, the soft touch of lips on his collarbone.

Ao3 Link

Mystra sighed as she heard Elminster’s questions. She didn’t particularly care about how Gale had returned, only why he was there with the slither of Karsite Weave embedded in his chest. Unstable, dangerous, were the words spoken to her as she gazed down upon the Material Plane at the mortal that had once served her. Maybe he was dangerous, but not to her, so why was it so important that he be saved?

Ignoring the arguments Elminster tried to put forth to her, she spoke with a distant tone. “With the uprising of the Absolute, it is important that we strike as soon as possible; the orb solves both the situations.” She viewed Gale lying against the body of the pale vampire within his tent and tapped her fingers irritably at her side. He was so quick to give his love, and with this, she knew she had been wrong about choosing him all that time ago. “Just deal with the problem.”

---

“… Did you just stop loving me?” Trying to sleep next to Astarion, Gale couldn’t help but hear these words keep coming to him. He could remember the sadness behind them, the longing, similar to the way he had spoken to Mystra during his prayers so many times before.

Such love for another mortal like this was lost to him as he lay in the tent, racking his brain for answers. Oh, what a tangled Weave we web; a moment of writing poetry and running his fingers up the leg of a woman, the shadow not as dark as previous days but still no clue as to whom this person was. He tossed and turned, jealous of Astarion’s ability to meditate so easily, and decided it was better to just start the day.

Gale left the tent, the sun slowly rising over the horizon, and he whispered a quiet prayer to Mystra before going in search of another ill-fated magic item. The path today would be a long one, over the bridge from near Waukeen’s Rest, through the winding trails close by and eventually, if they were lucky, to the Shadowlands. He held out little hope for this to be an easy journey, but the idea of soon reaching Baldur’s Gate drove him forward.

Near the campfire, he prepared the ingredients for their meals for that their day. Cooking had somehow fallen to him thanks to a hastily made stew the first night, and now he took great delight in creating each dish with a little experimentation. Tonight would be something simple, using the vegetables they had collected previously; a little garlic, next, some of the meat. He paused, looking at the items beside him, his mind going blank at what should come next. Let me work my magic. He could see the pot in front of him, the delicate hands that stirred, and he felt as he wrapped his arms around her body, her voice shooing him away from ruining another dish.

“You’re up early.” Shadowheart’s voice drew him from the memory.

Shaking his head, his eyes passed over the vegetables as he remembered what he needed to add next in the recipe. “Yes, well, you know how it is. The early bird prepares the breakfast, or something of that ilk.”

She smiled before sitting down next to him. “And we greatly appreciate it.” She watched over his hands for a moment as he examined a few carrots. “Something the matter?”

Gale furrowed his brow before replying. “I just seem to be a little out of sorts at this time. Not enough sleep, I feel.”

“Oh? Is Astarion keeping you up at night?” She said with a smirk.

“Not in the way you believe he is. With my condition as volatile as it is, we’ve resigned ourselves to just getting to know one another, if you must so know.”

Shadowheart gave him a look that suggested she knew exactly what type of activities that included, but decided not to push the matter any further. “Any further insight into the memory dilemma?”

He paused from the cooking, his mind already elsewhere as she was speaking. “Hm? No, not quite. Currently, it is but a grain of sand on the beach that is our current situation.” Gale gestured to his head as he spoke, the tadpole writhing eagerly at the activity of the last few weeks.

“Well, if it’s any consolation, memories aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”

---

Elminster heard Mystra’s command but struggled to believe the words she had spoken; that Gale was alive and on route to Baldur’s Gate. After ten years, it was impossible and though he tried to seek answers, Mystra had little she could offer him other than the orders that he was to give; that Gale was again fated to die.

He left the Astral Plane, first to answer the questions given by Corlin the day previous, a vague response that Gale had merely been under Mystra’s service, and that the news of his death was just one of the goddess’ requests during their time together; that it again was on a need-to-know basis and to no longer speak of Gale, even with his nearest and dearest.

As he left the academy, he spotted the young girl, Lúthien, with her deep brown eyes, her dark curls trailing behind her. He watched as she practiced the illusion spell with her peers, conjuring up the bust of Mystra with ease and then laughing as they added minor features of horns or a moustache. He chuckled to himself at the innocence of youth, but knew deep down that in a few short months, the girl’s opinion of the goddess would change drastically.

His second order had been to aid with the girl’s mother. Mystra had little patience for watching over those she did not deem important and instead liked to delegate tasks until it was necessary that she be involved. Here, she was delegating with the use of magic upon the crystal ball that had been granted. She knew that Gale’s beloved would watch over him continually and would pray if anything were to go wrong, and that meant efforts could be used elsewhere, such as keeping balance in the Weave, or playing politics amongst the other gods.

The distrust that arose when he began speaking to Gale’s loved one was well-founded; ten years of little communication between them, building up a considerable rift. Elminster had watched as the ball had glowed its subtle green before revealing Gale on route to the Shadowlands, the traces of the Weave entwining around his very being. He heard the whisper of a thank you from her, and with that excused himself in a hope that the two lovers would find each other once more.

Reaching Gale would prove to be the most arduous task for Elminster, not in terms of finding him or even sending him the simulacrum. No, instead it would simply be meeting him in person again after so long apart; trying to hide the emotions of the last ten years of grief, of trying to convey Mystra’s intentions without the bitterness and anger he was feeling. The elderly wizard took his time scrying the plane for Gale’s location before observing him for some hours, watching as he cast basic spells upon undead enemies.

---

I’m a wizard, not a cat-burglar. This time, Gale’s own words rung in his head as they crept around the bend of the dirt path. He saw the shadowed figure walk ahead of him, her arm held out towards him and a muffled laugh as she pulled him behind the bookshelf; kisses placed upon his neck trailing up his jawline.

“Darling do keep up. We can’t waste time here.” Astarion’s voice drew him from yet another confusing memory that he longed to follow. Goosebumps prickled his skin, and the orb gave a gentle hum with the sensations the thought had given him; something more than he’d had during the brief encounters with his vampiric friend.  

Gale hurried after the group, the sounds of a few ghouls not far behind him. Their meeting with the Githyanki on the bridge had been unexpected and now all they hoped for was to continue unharmed so they could reach the Shadowlands by nightfall, where they could make camp and recuperate. His knees creaked as he walked, and a part of him longer for his mind to take him back to that dimly lit library of wanted kisses and secrecy.

The orb awoke and throbbed as his mind drifted away with the shadowed figure, the subtle glow growing brighter with each moment, and he had felt his body slow after each step. He no longer saw the grass or the dust that rose as his boots kicked forward. There was nothing but the musty smell of the books on the shelves, the surrounding candlelight flicking upon the walls, the soft touch of lips on his collarbone.

His foot rolled on a stone, and he stopped, his breath caught in his throat and his heart pounding. Rubbing his chest brought the orb to calm down, but with each passing second that his concentration faltered came another moment that his life, and the lives of those around him, was at risk of ending.

“Incende!” Shadowheart’s voice rose in front of him, and he heard the growl of a creature close by take the hit of the flames.

The undead had caught up to them and now he would need to focus for good if they were to survive; to take his mind away from voices, memories that weren’t his own, of his greatest mistake ebbing at his soul.

---

Camp was prepared earlier than expected that day, the ghouls having left everyone wearier than they had anticipated. The Shadowlands would unfortunately have to wait until the morning when they would be more prepared for what was the come. Gale sat near his tent, listening in on the squabbling of Shadowheart and Astarion. Tonight’s topic, relationships: Shadowheart had been trying to pry for information about Astarion’s connections for some time before turning the questions over to those closer to home, and Gale frowned as the vampire faced his attention over to him.

“So, do you have loves waiting for you once this is all over?” Astarion spoke inquisitively.

Gale felt the hairs stand on the back of his neck as he thought over Mystra and her love for him from the Astral Planes; near on a decade of romance and love between them. His mind then faltered to the darkness of the book, to skipping between the goddess and the shadowed figure that haunted him so recently. “You know what - that is not the easiest of questions for me to answer.”

Shadowheart spoke up with her opinion on the matter. “You mean just waiting, like a lovesick puppy? Short-term amusements are much less hassle.”

Astarion smirked in agreement, giving a sly wink over to Gale, who sighed deeply. Their own short-term amusements had been enjoyable, but Gale knew he could not commit to anything or anyone in his current state, let alone have something like he’d had with the goddess so long ago. The only thing he craved right now was stability, for the orb, and for his mind.

Again, the orb pulsated, demanding another item. He’d been through so many in the last tenday and it seemed each hour was becoming shorter than the last, with the demands it put on his body. Gale crawled into his test, his muscles aching, his nerves on fire as he dug through his pack trying to find something, anything he could feed to it. A small necklace was the comfort he discovered this time as he held it to his chest, letting the item be devoured by the markings on his chest. He collapsed onto the bedroll, exhausted both physically and mentally, and let his mind retreat to the calm he had been so desperate for.

“Gale?”

 He sat up, hearing the voice, feeling oddly comforted by its presence.

“It’s me, Tav. Elminster has given me a way to watch over you. Are you well?”

There was a brief pause, and he wondered if this message would come without the regular declaration of love and longing as he had heard in previous days. Strangely, he wanted to hear the words, his heart longing for some form of comfort after the hard day.

“I miss you. I love you.”

He held the smile back and thought over the words. Tav? No, there was no recollection of this person, and he felt a level of guilt at how much energy they were putting in to contacting him each day, especially now watching over him almost as if they were the goddess herself. Elminster, however, was a welcome name, one which he had not heard in over a year despite his prayers to Mystra. With the orb as it was, and now the recent developments, having Elminster in contact could potentially be a lifesaver. Gale thought about what he wanted to say, knowing the spell’s limitations; knowing he had to be concise. “Tav? I’m sorry, but I believe you may have the wrong person. I know nobody of that name. Elminster, however, I require a meeting with.”

Letting the words leave him, he lay his head back down, thinking how much more time he had on this world, thinking of his goddess. Gale of Waterdeep. The words felt like static in his mind, as if he could not hold on to the memory. Gale Dekarios. An image of Mystra overlapped with another, their bodies the same but faces slightly different, one kind and warm as he had known, the other cold and distance. Even these memories were no longer safe, it seemed, and he scrunched his eyes closed, trying to remember the love she had given him. He brought his hand to the earring, trying to hold on to the semblance of her which he knew so well; the goddess who had loved him.

Evening grew and Gale took the time to cook for everyone, deciding that living in the present was the safest option. He listened as they joked. The knowledge of the tadpoles in their minds was not important when compared to the friendships that had been building as they had travelled the roads. The cool touch of Astarion’s hand on his arm as they all spoke was a welcome sensation, bringing comfort after the difficulties experienced earlier in the day.

“Come back to my tent with me, darling.” The vampire’s smooth tone whispered into Gale’s ear.

For a moment, he was tempted to go with him, to lie with him on the bedroll and place touch-starved hands on his pale skin, but the thought now brought with it a new emotion: guilt. He couldn’t do this knowing that the woman who claimed to love him was watching over him, missing him so intensely. Gale excused himself, hoping that sleep would be the cure for all his ailments.

[cilil]

"I want to feel," Míriel said, "and to let go without worry." 

As soon as those words left her mouth, she could see that her lady understood what desires she had hidden in her heart. Vairë let out a small hum and pulled on a thread she had been spinning with two fingers, holding it in front of her. 

"I can give that to you, if you wish."

"How so?" Míriel fearlessly held her gaze when the Valië's eyes lit up with something akin to excitement. 

"I could turn you into my next masterpiece."

✦ ⁺ ‧ Day 7 ⁺ Vairë x Míriel ✦ ⁺ ‧ Synopsis: Vairë offers to comfort Míriel and takes care of her in more ways than one. ✦ ⁺ ‧ Featuring/prompts: Femslash, friends with benefits, emotional/therapy sex, bondage/shibari, oral (female receiving) ✦ ⁺ ‧ Warnings: Smut ✦ ⁺ ‧ Writer challenges fulfilled: 5, 6 Also available on AO3

AN: And for the final day of @silmsmutweek I present to you some beautiful femslash. I'm so glad this pairing got first place on my poll. Enjoy!

It was with one final stitch and a crimson thread that Míriel finished yet another masterpiece for her lady, and she took a step back to admire the tapestry. She could hear the gentle, soothing sounds of weaving and spinning behind her as Vairë worked, her many hands always busy and ever moving, but she felt her gaze resting on her, her interest piqued by the completion of her work. 

In front of Míriel, woven into the eternal webs of the Valië through their shared efforts, was the image of her great-grandson lying in a pool of blood, the same vivid crimson that she had just held in her own hands. She glanced down at her palms, almost expecting them to be stained, yet all she found was the thread she had been working with. 

It was just another piece.

Still, her heart ached. The image in front of her held a certain finality, another fate of a descendant of hers ending in tragedy. Míriel had never known her great-grandson, the man whose likeness she and her lady had captured in this tapestry, but she couldn't help feeling a sense of kinship. 

"You are in pain," Vairë observed. 

"I am." Míriel turned around to face her, not wishing to gaze upon her lost kinsman any longer. At the Valië's silent command, two Maiar arrived to collect the tapestry and put it in its proper place, then left the two women alone again. 

"I believe you need to rest."

"I had ages to rest in your husband's halls, my lady." 

Vairë let out a small laugh, a sound reminiscent of the soft tinkling of falling needles. "Well then. If you say so, I shall take your word for it. Still, I think you could use a small break. A distraction, perhaps?" 

Her mien softened when she saw Míriel's hesitation. "Please, dear, let me ease your burden for a while, if that would please you." 

"I..." Míriel's eyes followed the soothing, rhythmic motions of Vairë's many hands, and it awakened a strange longing inside her. It suddenly seemed to her as if the Valië's graceful, ethereal form held a wellspring of comfort and inner strength that she wished to drink from and to be embraced by. 

"I would like that, yes." 

Vairë's luminous gaze rested on her, calm in spite of the incessant movement of her many hands, and she appeared to be pleased by her response. 

"Very well. Tell me then, my dear, what is it that you crave?" 

Míriel pondered her question in silence for a few moments. Many thoughts flitted through her mind, yet with every passing second she felt as though the longing inside her grew, awakened by her lady's presence. She had come back to life years ago, but she hadn't returned to the world of living; at times she almost forgot she had a hröa again, her feelings and sensations dulled by the tranquillity and otherworldliness of Mandos. There were needs she had been ignoring and denying herself for too long, chief among them the warmth and touch of another. Perhaps it was improper of her to ask, but she felt emboldened by the Valië's offer and years of companionship the two of them had shared. 

"I want to feel," Míriel said, "and to let go without worry." 

As soon as those words left her mouth, she could see that her lady understood what desires she had hidden in her heart. Vairë let out a small hum and pulled on a thread she had been spinning with two fingers, holding it in front of her. 

"I can give that to you, if you wish."

"How so?" Míriel fearlessly held her gaze when the Valië's eyes lit up with something akin to excitement. 

"I could turn you into my next masterpiece."

Vairë held out one of her hands, and when Míriel moved to take it, her thread wound itself around her arm like a silvery snake. Perhaps she should be afraid, yet all she felt was intrigue. The light pressure of the thread against her skin brought a strange sense of comfort and security, and she wondered how it would feel to be bound completely. 

"And once I have done so," Vairë continued, "I could make you feel even more, be it pleasure or pain, whatever you desire. Would you like that, dearest?" 

Míriel's response came without hesitation. "Yes." 

"Wonderful." Vairë smiled. "Now undress for me, my lovely." 

She discarded everything she had been holding, safe for the silver thread her third pair of hands continued to spin, and rose to her feet to approach the former queen of the Noldor who swiftly obeyed her command. Míriel noticed then that she felt neither shame nor discomfort while exposing herself. There was something soothing in the Valië's aura, even as she eyed her naked form with unconcealed desire; it felt good to be regarded in such a way after ages of passionless abiding in the halls of the dead. 

Vairë examined her like a piece of prized fabric, gently running her fingertips down her chest, spine and arms, while her second pair of hands cupped her cheeks to marvel at her face. 

"You are so beautiful, dearest," she whispered, her voice vibrating with delight. "You will be a masterpiece indeed." 

"You flatter me, my lady," Míriel breathed. The touch of a Valarin queen was beyond anything she had experienced in her old life and it caused her entire body to shiver and tingle. 

"I have thought that for a long time. It delights me that you would give yourself to me, even for just one night." 

Vairë appeared to complete whatever measurements and calculations she had made in her mind and moved to stand behind her. Her fingers gingerly grasped Míriel's wrists to position her hands behind her back before she began humming a few notes to summon her thread like she had done earlier, commanding it to wrap around the trembling Elf's lower arms.

Míriel flexed her muscles experimentally, only to find that she was firmly bound and now unable to move her hands, and a small moan escaped her. Soon she would be at her lady's mercy completely. 

"Does it feel good? Or am I hurting you?" Vairë asked. She held the end of her thread between two fingers, waiting for her response before she continued. 

"I can take it," Míriel insisted, a hint of stubbornness in her tone. "It feels good like this."

"As you wish, dearest." 

She closed her eyes to savour the exciting new sensation. Vairë's thread wound itself around her chest and upper arms a couple of times to fully immobilise them, then around the base of her neck and down her torso, forming intricate knots and a diamond-like pattern and looping around her torso a couple of times. It felt like a tight embrace, like she was a precious flower held in place by unyielding vines. Míriel's breath quickened, and arousal caused her entire body to heat up and wetness to pool between her legs, threatening to drip down her thighs. 

Mercilessly, the thread wrapped itself around her breasts, tight enough to hold but not squeeze the soft flesh. Delighted by her own work, Vairë cupped them with a pair of her hands, another one resting on her shoulders. 

"Open your eyes," she whispered, "you should see how gorgeous you look like this." 

Míriel obeyed just in time to see her lady beginning to toy with her nipples, eliciting another moan from her. "Please, I need -" 

She couldn't think of words to describe what she was feeling, but the Valië needed none. Instead of moving on to her legs, Vairë gently lifted her and carried her over to a nearby divan that she liked to rest on every once in a while. She placed her Elven friend and lover on top of it with a tender reverence that made Míriel feel protected, cared for, *loved*, an emotion that caused tears of joy to well up in her eyes - another that she had so sorely missed. For as lovingly as Irmo, Estë, Námo and Nienna had taken care of her when she was dying and afterwards, none of them had quite managed to make her feel like Vairë could. 

The Valië's warm hands were on her once more as soon as she came to rest on the divan, one trailing down her torso. 

"Do you want me to go on, my lovely?" 

"Yes. Please." 

Two hands spread Míriel's legs, then folded them gently so the silver thread could tie her thighs and lower legs together. Bound and exposed, there was nothing she could do except watch as her lady admired her work for a moment, then lowered herself to her knees in front of her. She felt soft lips kissing her folds before Vairë began to lap up her arousal and push her tongue inside. 

Míriel felt like she was in heaven; finally her desires were being fulfilled. She had longed to have someone making love to her again, being inside her and pleasuring her until she forgot all the woes that plagued her, and Vairë was giving it to her in a tender, attentive and so very careful manner, not overwhelming her with fast, hard penetration like another lover might have. Bit by bit, she was reintroduced to the mind-numbing bliss her living body could experience, and the sensation was intensified by her inability to move. She was trapped in the most delightful manner, forced to endure the pleasure bestowed upon her.

The Valië was taking her time, using only her tongue to both devour her like a delicious treat and tease her swollen pearl to bring her ever closer to climax. Her hands remained where they were, merely holding her in place; she wasn't going to use them today, and Míriel was grateful for it. She would be ready to receive more of her lady another time, yet for now this was all she wanted, and it almost seemed as though Vairë had read her thoughts - and perhaps she had indeed. Míriel was at a point where she could no longer shield her mind nor worry about her ability to do so. 

When she finally came, she let out a soft cry of bliss, tearing through the silence that had previously engulfed them, save only for the occasional moan and muted noises of wet flesh meeting one another. Vairë's tongue gave her a few final, indulgent licks, then she raised her head to look up at her exhausted companion. 

"Do you want me to remove your bindings, or would you like to stay like this for a while longer?" 

"Stay," Míriel decided breathlessly and was rewarded with a pleased smile.

"Good. I would like to keep admiring you."

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[themunflower]

Pokemon Headcanons: Textiles!

- The silk of spider Pokemon is used in the textile industry with surprising frequency. However, fabric made with the web is often pricey. Even the lower-end spider silk fabrics that are made with web from the Spinarak and Tarountula lines.

- Perhaps fittingly, the Dewpider line's web sees a lot of use in making swimwear. It repels water, so it's VERY good for reducing drag in water.

- The Galvantula line produces web used to make THE most expensive fabric out of them all. Lightweight, yet strong; if you weave it right it can actually be used as light body armor.

-----

- Silk factories often have a LOT of Beautifly and Dustox living around them. This is intentional. They actively feed and protect them so when their Wurmple offspring evolve, they will allow the workers to retrieve the Silcoon and Cascoon to raise them until they evolve so the discarded cocoons can be harvested for the silk. The workers and the Pokemon basically have an unspoken agreement with one another.

- Yes, Whimsicott ARE used to acquire cotton. Cottonee aren't generally used due to their small size not giving enough cotton. Whimsicott are not shorn too much at a time, and their cotton re-grows fast enough to safely get several harvests out of the same Whimsicott in the same year.

- Wooloo/Doubwool AND Mareep are both used to obtain wool but Mareep is a less common choice, due to not having enough to shear anymore upon evolution. And Everstone collars are expensive.

- The black parts on a Hydreigon's head, neck, shoulders, and wings? Those are feathers. And they are REALLY soft. However, due to how difficult they are to harvest without being mauled, Hydreigon down clothing is VERY expensive.

[tri-poke]

Crawler=who=wanders-faster-than-the-spit-that-burns=like=an=ash=spewing=forest=fire-when-it-gets-in-your=eyes-before-I-tear-into-your=back=half-while-you-are-blinded scuttles in a half circle so most of her eyes are pointed right at the Matriarch and mimes a hop with five of her legs, remaining safely stuck to the wall while conveying the idea that she is having a tiny hissy fit.

She sends to the Matriarch: You see! I told you I was too scary. I said you should send one of the smaller warriors. One of the young ones. Their tiny flicker minds will break. I see the dumb flicker one is so frightened he will deficate in his pants and probably hurt himself when he tries to use his smaller-than-a-male weavable=metal mites=that=bite=us=between=our=hairs=so=hard=that=we=flail=in=our=itching-sized Amentum sack to kill me.

Zach is just able to work out that she just described Revolver's revolver and that that must be the equivalent in time to translate it for the Matriarch's reply.

Yes. He will hurt himself with the gun. Or, worse, First-Who-Is-Open. Put on your invisibility like the weaving-that-protects-you-from-foul-weather again before the damage is done.

Crawler vanishes, though Zach can still feel that uncomfortable presence at the spot like some kind of movement in the corner of his eye… just not in the corner. And he still hears Crawler's sending back to the matriarch which his brain interprets as blowing a raspberry.

The Matriarch sighs and sends: Very well, First-Who-Is-Open. I see the truth of what you say. Do as you say and even if all other trace of you is lost, you will have saved the world.

If you can think of a way to formalize the agreement between my people and yours, return to this place and I will find a worthy way to reward you for yet another gift. Until then, go in peace, and pray for peace between our people. For all other ways forward are shut in the musical=notes I know to pluck upon my web. Yet another war between us as we have fought so many before and at least one of our people's must surely die. So I would rather both our webs prosper in peace.

From nowhere at all… but also definitely not quite where she was before, Crawler sends, there would be more prosperity if I went with them to kill off their competition and make First-Who-is-Open the only Queen.

The Matriarch doesn't dignify that with a response, just another sigh. And then she waves one foreleg in a decent approximation of a human waving goodbye before making her stately way back toward her cave.

[joysofescapism]

Book Review: Mayhem at Prescott High by C.M. Stunich

There’s one girl you don’t mess with at Prescott High, not unless you want them to come for you. Those dirty, rotten Havoc Boys might be a gang to everyone else, but they’re family to me. My f*ckbuddy. My first love. My husband. My challenger. My confidante.

There’s trouble brewing in the halls of our high school, and it’s spilling into the streets. Once upon a time, Havoc held Prescott in an iron grip. But for senior year, we want the whole goddamn city.

This year, we’ll have to drop bodies if we want to own the underground. Good thing that’s something we excel at. The Havoc Boys are artists, their brushes made of bone, their paint a brilliant ruby red.

One Havoc Girl for five Havoc Boys. I wear the crown; I warm their beds; I hold their leashes. We’re going to take back our school, our city, our lives—I’m just praying to whatever vengeful god will listen that the price for all of that doesn’t cost me a letter in our dark acronym. H.A.V.O.C.

Read my quick review below the cut.

Okay! We’re 3 down, 2 more to go!

Mayhem at Prescott High focused more on the gang war with Havoc's rival. It also has more sex in here. Yes, more than the previous ones. The first part of the book is literally Bernie and Victor's honeymoon, so.

Victor also finally got his shit together and talked himself into needing to “share Bernadette” with the rest of his boys.

Also, Oscar, despite being a genius, he lacks communication skills. He needs to get his head out of his ass, seriously.

At this point, everyone could agree that Bernadette’s list isn’t just a list anymore. It has a direct relation to Havoc’s problems. It was all just a huge web of deceit, greed, and violence. I actually do commend Stunich for weaving it perfectly.

If you’re here, that only meant that you got past the initial cringe. That’s fine because now, we can fully immerse ourselves into the plot as it thickens.

I’m also giving Mayhem at Prescott High another 3 stars.

I need something more. We’re on the third book already, I need to see more progress. Despite the series having already so much going on plot-wise, I still feel like something is lacking.

Enough chit-chat, and onto the next one!

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[see-arcane]

The Magnus Archives: The TV Show

Because it really is a cool idea in theory. (Though maybe not in practice, if Netflix’s letdown of Archive 81 is anything to go by. Condolences.) Some things to throw in the hypothetical pot if TMA ever did make the jump to a visual medium:

1.  Of course we keep that sweet, sweet analog aesthetic. Jon reading the written statements, reciting them into the recorder. Keep some of the classics—"Anglerfish,” “A Guest for Mr. Spider,” “Do Not Open,” etc, all the greatest hits—but throw in some alternate stories to make sure it isn’t an exact repetition of the podcast. And, doubly of course, we get to see the statements as they happen in the statement giver’s recollection.

2. Yes, the Web is at work, pulling its strings, Annabelle Cane weaving and crawling in the corners. But the Mother of Puppets isn’t alone this time. The fans going in would already be expecting the devious Ultimate Design waiting at the other end of the great big Fearpocalypse. Bring Fears to Earth, gnaw on it, dupe the puppets into letting them out into a wider multiverse, blah, blah. History repeats. 

3. But now there’s another player. One who’s extremely, excruciatingly Aware of the way the story plays out. Let’s call this character ‘the Author.’ Maybe Jon will mistake it for the same horror Gertrude thought she destroyed back in “Crusader,” another variant of an Archivist. All they really know is that it’s some other Eye-addled monstrosity keeping a close Watch on Jon and the others.

4. Much of the main arcs play out as expected. Rituals thwarted with pointless blood, puppet strings pulled, marks and scars collected. Except things turn slightly cockeyed towards the far end of the series. Why? Well, the funniest thing happens. Maybe before the big successful All-Fears-Included summoning. Maybe after. But at some point, despite the Web’s best efforts…

5. …Jonathan Sims starts stumbling upon these audio tapes. They look somewhat like his, they’re labeled with his handwriting. And when he plays them, the voice that reads the statements claims to belong to Jonathan Sims, the voices around that voice claim to belong to people Jon knows. But they aren’t. Similar, yes, but those people are all strangers. All the threats and conversations and arguments are so close as to nearly be perfectly parallel to the horrors going on in the TV show, but they have already happened.

6.  Somewhere Else, they have already happened. You can guess why.

7.  “It’s always the same, more or less,” says the Author in the warped voice of the first Jonathan Sims, mottled with eldritch Eyes, ancient as tragedy. (How long has he been here, on this Earth? Decades? Eons? Does it matter?) “The Web may be the only Fear with a concept of the future, but damn if it isn’t unoriginal. The same plot playing out. Cause pain. Cause terror. Corner the puppets into opening the door to consume more. If it has a brain, it isn’t the brain of a Spider. Just a tick. Eating, eating, eating, always wanting more, always assuming there will be more to conquer. Until there isn’t. …Until there wasn’t.”

8.  “What do you mean?” asks TV Jon, dreading the thought that he already Knows the answer. And he does. Jon the Author says it anyway:

9.  “The Fears have eaten their way through an entire multiverse, Jon. Every Earth but this one. The only world in all this screaming buffet with another crack in Hill Top Road it hopes to squeeze through. Whatever is at the other end, the Web will lead the Fears through to it, if only to hold off The End’s cannibalism for another minute. I have tried, Jon. On every world, I have tried to stop it. To prove to the Web’s puppets that the only way to end the cycle is with a sacrifice. Starvation.”

10.  “The End,” gulps TV Jon. “…The Extinction.”

11.  “Call it what you want. But the Web can’t win again, if you can even call it winning. It’s a rigged game, even for it. No matter how far it runs, how much it consumes, The End will conquer once there are no more human chattel left to use up.”

12.  Dramatic shit! Anyway, this being a cosmic horror tragedy, of course the Web is victorious in the end, rushing the Fears down Hill Top Road’s drain. But with two key differences.

-  The Author is left behind while TV Jon and Martin are sucked up during the detonation, as TV Jon had become that extension of the Eye’s Pupil. Yadda, yadda, tragic Pupil-Jon stabbing. Author Jon feels the power of the Eye flooding down and away, the only thing that had been keeping him alive. But he can still see what the Eye Beholds on the other side of this Hill Top Road. The big prize waiting for the Fears. Seeing it as he devolves/dissolves, all eyes and unspooled tape and the dying silhouette of a man, he laughs. Madly, giddily, hideously, he laughs. And then he Looks.

At the ‘heroes’ who chose to pass the Fears on, yet again.

At the screen.

At us. (?)

And as it fades to black in that Earth, only his unblinking eyes are visible. Author Jon’s voice recites, as if from mocking memory:

“If anyone’s listening, goodbye. I’m sorry and…good luck. Statement Ends.”

- His eyes are gone. The screen is full black. We almost think the show is over…

-  …and then, we hear that ominous, fatal sound.

[CLICK.] 

[INT. GEORGIE AND MELANIE’S APARTMENT]

[THE ADMIRAL IS PURRING, MELANIE IS COOING NONSENSE TO HIM.]

MELANIE

Alright, get off, I’ve got to finish the rest of this--,

[A RUSTLE OF PAPER IS INTERRUPTED BY THE JOSTLING OF THE TAPE RECORDER, PLASTIC UPON A COFFEE TABLE. MELANIE MAKES A SHUDDERING SOUND OF RECOGNITION. A PAUSE BEFORE SHE SIGHS, RELIEF AND IRRITATION MINGLED. THE COUCH SQUEAKS AS SHE RISES. THE TAPE RECORDER SCUFFS AGAINST THE TABLE AS SHE PICKS IT UP.] 

Georgie, this isn’t funny, why would you leave one of these laying around? Almost gave me a heart attack.

GEORGIE

(from another room, coming closer) What isn’t funny?

MELANIE

(playfully irate) This! Why would you leave one of these fucking things out? Oh, and it’s recording, cute. If this is to get back at me for the laundry, it’s a bit much.

[A DRAWN PAUSE, TAUT AS WIRE.]

…Georgie?

GEORGIE

(small, thin, Knowing) Oh my God.

[CLICK]

13. Ouroboros ending, baby!

[dramioneden]

do you know of any fics where there’s a pregnancy scare or Draco accidental gets hermione pregnant?

Dramione Unplanned Pregnancy Fic Recs 

Hi Nonnie, Sorry it has taken me soooo long to reply to this ask. To answer your question, yes I have a few (76) “accidental”/unplanned pregnancy Dramione fic recs to offer - because Draco and Hermione seem terrible at planning pregnancies. So I’ve broken this down into ones I’ve read & recommend and ones on my TBR you might want to give a try. I also categorized the fics into Teenage Pregnancies, Wartime Pregnancies, “Adult Draco and Hermione forget contraceptive” Pregnancies, Marriage Law Pregnancies and “Hidden” Pregnancies. So here is the ultimate guide to Dramione Accidental Pregnancy Fics, hopefully there is something on this list that will satisfy your ask. Happy Reading!

Teenage Unplanned Pregnancy:

Recommended Fics

Snow Storm by kblynne

8th year Post-war healing coping, Head Boy and Head Girl, teenage pregnancy.

Always Mine - A Dramione Fanfiction by SamadiW

8th year, Head Boy and Head Girl. The unplanned pregnancy is more of a secondary/later arc. Main arc on development of relationship between Hermione and Draco. Mixes the right amount of angst with the right amount of sexy.

Fics on my TBR that you might want to try:

From Venice with Love by jamieblye

In Private by acro acro

Locked In by goldhorse

His Sweet Dream by Supernerd22

I Didn’t Know by TriDogMom

Of All the Idiot Things by Lady Imara

Unbreakable by cleotheo

What Happened After The Canaries by Silver Lioness

Wartime Unplanned Pregnancy

Recommended Fics

Broken Chains by Leave It At That

Another Dramione, where Harry and Ron escape, but Hermione is left behind. As Draco and Hermione are forced together by a very perverted characterization of Voldemort, they realize they must rely on and trust each other to survive Voldemort’s demands. Forming a tentative trust and rare magical bond, together they set about playing the roles expected of them until they can find escape.

Resistance by GracefulLioness @graceful-lioness

Very well written, 7th year divergent. Instead of spending the war camping with Harry and Ron, Hermione spends it camping with Draco after they escape a battle together.

The Importance of Breeding by Jessiy  @jessiyl

Interesting twist on “what both sides of the war decide to do about the dwindling wizarding population”. Voldemort comes up with a “perfect mate” spell - guess who Draco’s perfect mate is?  

Manor of Conception by psiphifan

Harry and Ron, escape without Hermione. As punishment to the Malfoy’s for letting Potter get away, Draco is given Hermione to “breed”, thereby sullying his pure blood line. As dark as the set up is, Draco and Hermione adjust to their predicament quite adeptly. A “wartime subversion” read that hurts a bit … but climaxes a lot).

Fics on my TBR that you might want to try:

The Gift of Joy by biscuitsforpotter @biscuitsforpotter 

I Spy by gnrkrystle

The Power of Love by cleotheo

The Edge of the World by phlox

Balaur by two_ff

Tergeo by LadyKenz347 @ladykenz347

Consequences of War by NJ Coffee Queen

The Letter by RN2017

Haeres Genitus: The Begotten Heir by little miss moonlight

“Adults who forgot a contraceptive” - Future fic Unplanned Pregnancies

Recommended Fics

Precious Things by herbeautifullie @herbeautifullies

Beautifully told in a series of vignettes that take place every Christmas over a number of years. The author conveyed and developed Draco’s introspection as he falls in love with a family he never expected or wanted. Well written, emotional character/relationship study.

Liking by Ladyoneill

An adult affair between Draco and Hermione leads to adult conversations (with some input from Narcissa).

Fics on my TBR you might want to try:

A Year and a Day by Mistrus

Best Laid Plans by persephone_stone @persephonestone​

Careless by wish123

A Series of Very Bad Decisions by damnedscribblingwoman @fearsometinywit​

Unexpected Gifts by cryptaknight

Unintended Consequences by rainsrabble @rainsrabble

Knocked Up by dolphinroxy

The Side Witch & The Gift and My Witch & Her Gift by SeptimaBode

Once Upon a Night by longdistance

Ordinary People by inadaze22 @inadaze22

Surround Me by Taintedembrace

The Sweetest Downfall by xXBeckyFoo

A Wonderful Caricature of Intimacy by Countess of Abe @countessofabe

Beautiful Mistake by pinayflava90

One Night Stand with Consequences Series by ruthy4vrsmoaked @ruthy4vrsmoak-ed

Constellations in Flourish and Blotts by MarshmellowMcGonagall @marshmallowmcgonagall

Gasping, Talking, Screaming, Crying by Gette

Heaven Forbid by empathaique

In the Heat of the Storm by xxDustNight88 @xxdustnight88

whispered through the trees by notawitch2580

Back to You by NJ Coffee Queen @mnem85

Circle by wanderlustfaery

Freedom’s Consequence, Rapture’s Reward by CelticSass

Marriage Law (but still unplanned) Pregnancy

I read and recommend all three fics in this sub-genre:

Desperate Marriage by x.Chrissy.x

Nice twist on the Marriage Law trope. After breaking up with their current fiancés when they find them cheating (Ron x Astoria), instead of letting the Ministry choose their spouses for them, they choose each other. Note: I don’t want to give spoilers away, but I think it should be noted that though it’s not tagged, be aware that a couple loses a pregnancy in this. As someone who has lost a pregnancy before, I was not put off by how it is handled, but found it emotional and relatable. There is an HEA and there is a happy healthy pregnancy and I did enjoy the fic completely even the emotional part.

Ninety-Five Percent by HufflePuffMommy @hufflepuffmommy

Draco and Hermione are 95% compatible - who would have thought? ;) I really enjoyed this marriage law fic - has courting quality to it, through all the tension and angst (and denial).

An Unconventional Escape by Ariel Riddle @ariel-riddle

Loved this twist on the “marriage law”. Voldemort has won and his wizarding world is facing population problems due to infertility of purebloods. He enacts a new law that purebloods can choose captive muggleborns as spouses. The only muggleborn for Draco is Hermione - and she’s suspicious, but clever enough to figure out his dastardly persona is more pretense for show.

Secret Child/Hidden pregnancy trope: Not only was the pregnancy an accident, it was kept a secret from Draco.

Recommended Fics

Amongst the Mango Trees by ViolaMoon @violamoonfanfic

Post-war, while in a happy affair with Draco, Hermione discovers his family has him engaged to Astoria, hours after she finds out she’s pregnant. She decides to leave and start over in Australia with her parents.

Breathe by RZZMG @rzzmg

In spite of a loving affair with Hermione, Draco feels obligated to see through his engagement with Astoria. But when he runs into a pregnant Hermione months after they break-up, he must dig deep to be his own man and not his father’s.

Seven for a Secret by Musyc @willhavetheirtrinkets

Anonymous sex during Beltane, has Draco putting pieces together when he encounters an 8 year old spitting image of himself.

Unspoken Words by LilithShade @lilithshadefanfic

Post-war, Future fic. Hermione and Draco have a one night stand. Nine months later, Hermione shows up at St. Mungo’s in labor. Draco is the doctor on duty.

Always You by Emerald2402

When there is trouble in paradise between Ron and Hermione, Draco just happens to be in the right place at the right time with a shoulder for her to cry on. A couple years later, the child she brings to St. Mungo’s with a fever, bears a striking resemblance to him.

The Trouble with Love Series by bentnotbroken1 @bentnotbroken1fanfiction

8th year Hogwarts setting. Accidental pregnancy is secondary arc, post-war coping/healing and Dramione affair primary arc. Note that the first in the series: The Pitfall is complete, but the second in the series is still a WIP (as of time of post 11/2020).

Fics on my TBR you might want to try:

Consequences of War by bentnotbroken1 @bentnotbroken1fanfiction

Aparecium by LadyKenz347

An Awfully Big Adventure by NJ Coffee Queen @mnem85

The Best of Me by MrsRen @mrsren

Choosing Destiny by AkashatheKitty @akashathekitty

Let There Be No More Curse by lexiatel @lexiatel

Nowhere Left to Run by FallenInDreams @fallen-in-dreams

Rose by longdistance

Second by LadyAlinor @ladyalinor

Seventeen by smithandbarrowman @smithandbarrowman

The Silver Dragon by KittenShift17 @kittenshift-17

Webs We Weave by mayghaen17 @mayghaen17

What’s in a Name by ImSlytherinatHeart

Full Body Control by lun27

Growing by the Minute by lozlol

Heartbreak and Horntails by AtHomewithWords

The Taste of Honey by Buzzy

[marius-vieremont]

Shortest Retirement Ever.

Pearly rays of moonlight shone down upon the mage in the garden as he quietly watered the roses, silvery highlights in his dark hair glinting. There were more now than he’d had several years prior; with all the trouble they’d seen over time and all the worry he’d been put through, it was no wonder. But he supposed he should be grateful that he had just as many laugh lines on his face as he did wrinkles of concern, thankfully none of which were particularly noticeable yet - he wasn’t that old!

This evening, though, it was worry that chased the smiles away from Marius. He and Ghost had only just returned from traveling and while they’d enjoyed themselves thoroughly, in the last few days, his husband had seemed to be… struggling. Little flares of temper, moodiness - just now, he’d outright snapped at Marius over a disastrous dessert. It hurt, yes, but it perturbed him more. It wasn’t like the generally even-tempered man to snap at anyone, let alone him - and especially for something as inconsequential as a dessert.

Something was wrong. He could feel it, as surely as he could feel the coming rainstorm, despite there being nary a cloud in the star-scattered sky. Setting aside the watering can, he pivoted on his heel and lowered himself down to the ground, legs crossed, long skirts tucked primly under him. Closing his pale eyes, he exhaled deeply and reached inward, reached for the Creator’s thread that was bound to his soul. He could feel Sebastien in the house, below him, no doubt cleaning up the shards of the plate he’d smashed, the familiar cool press of the Fog welcoming him in. It danced around his consciousness in wisps, souls calling out to him in sibilant whispers as he walked along the black edge of awareness. There was nothing. No clue for Sebastien’s little tantrums, absolutely not a single thing amiss in the swirling darkness… so he moved on.

Inhaling slowly, his senses centered on that connection, then slid out along the lines that spun out like spidersilk, that connected the anchor stones that rooted Ghost in the man that he was, the man they had, in a way, molded him to be with traits shared from their own personalities - the man they all loved, in their own way.

And here, he frowned. The end of one strand was severed and frayed at the end, like a pulled thread floating in the breeze with nothing tying it off. Dawn. That was Okuni’s stone. Where was it? He couldn’t sense it anywhere, only the torn webbing of the soul-strand, limp and bedraggled. It was just… gone. What had happened? Had Okuni been hurt? It was impossible for the stone to have been taken from her and to his knowledge nothing had occurred to make her want to give it away… the only way to find out would be to try to reach her.

What was just as troubling was the strand that led to Day… Idristan’s stone. Marius jerked in ugly surprise as he realized there was vile, black ichor dripping down the thread - Ink. He’d been told that the Ink wasn’t an issue currently, but there was damning evidence right before his metaphorical eyes that it sure as hell bloody was. He could fix it, halt the infection’s progression with a weave at some cost to his own aether reserves, but it would be better than severing another anchor stone. It’d only be temporary, but he could buy them some time. He’d need Idristan for it, as soon as possible.

Whatever had happened, one fact was utterly unignorable. A new stone would need to be forged to seal Dawn again. Perhaps one for Day, if he couldn’t come up with a permanent fix to cleanse the ink from the stone. And there was only one person on this star, if he could be called that, that knew how to forge an anchor stone for the Fog: Isolvar.

Opening his eyes, the mage rubbed his face. He’d hoped that his dealings with the dragon were over but apparently destiny had more in store for them. It wasn’t information he was likely to give up without getting something of equal value in return, either. At least there was one person that he could consult on what a dragon might want, being that he held one in his soul: Lyrin’a. Perhaps he could shed more light on what had happened to the two stones, as well.

Lifting his gaze to the stars and raising one slender hand to gently touch his own stone, wrapped in the cord about his neck, he sighed. He’d come to the bottom of the matter and he liked none of it - but at least he’d found out sooner rather than later, this time. Rising and dusting off his skirts, he made his way inside again, the door closing faintly behind him as he went in search of his linkpearl.

@hiraethwyl @liminal-storage @roses-and-grimoires @phantom-xiv

Lyrin'a, Okuni, Idristan and Ghost all belong to their players.

[abyssmalice]

Profile - re. mobile / the Speaker ;

Name: "Freyja" (The Lady)

Real Name: Tonia Agapova

Age: ??? (21+ physically ; ∞ in reality)

Species: Human(???) / Irminsul-Human Immortal

Vision: None / Cryo / ???

Weapon: Catalyst / Spear

Constellation: Somniator (The Dreamer)

Affiliation: The Irminsul

Epithets: Memory of the Leylines / Speaker of the Leylines / God of Hearts

FC: Zero (primary); Karina Leopold (primary); Kanoyeel.kkll.Preciel (secondary)

Appearance:

Appears as a young woman in her early twenties with long brown hair, some of which is tied into a pair of braids on each side of her head. Leyline flowers are weaved into the braids, matching the simple white dress she wears. Tends to wear a black cloak decorated with star patterns and fur trims with a heavy hood that easily obscures her features.

If said hood gets knocked off, they’d get a quick peek of a freckled face, a single sky-blue eye - and where there should be a second eye, a leyline flower grows from the socket, large enough to hide the fact that she’s missing an eye there at all.

Personality:

A delicate existence. Her presence is soft and quiet, while her distant smiles nonetheless radiate the faint warmth of sunbeams coating fresh snow. But the moment she is thrust into the need to fight or struggle, her gentleness becomes the mercy of death and her warmth into the spilling of blood. In that way, she is the same no matter what the situation is - the only difference is if she’s smiling or not. For there is nothing to be happy about in the aftermath of a slaughter.

Yes. She will avoid conflict no matter the cost. For what has her greatest struggle against the destinies of the gods brought her except misery and an eternal exile into the land without time? She will give her kindness and her wisdom and her smiles to any who ask - but the moment she must give her heart in any amount or form, that is the end of it.

(And yet. And yet. Her heart is burning. And the leylines remember all that has ever happened. How could she forget it - the devastation, the numbness, the grief? But what can one person do against the gods—)

Biography

Once upon a time, Teyvat was brought into existence.

But before that genesis, there was another world. Another Teyvat. Much the same as the one that stands in existence now, but - Celestia, it seemed, was very much in the mood to be experimental, in those ancient of ancient times.

The constellations were a little dimmer, scattered, different. People followed different paths, created different futures - and of those destinies, unlike the one we know of now, a boy with the name of a hero did not have a misadventure in a world beneath the earth.

No. His fate would be different. The boy destined to be a hero would gain his dark strength at another time, with the heavens already guiding him and his faith. That would be his divine future, and so, the world was shaped to lay down the road he would inevitably follow.

It just so happened, the day before, that boy’s little sister giggled and said to their mother: “Before Ajax comes home, I’ll go pick some berries to make into a pie for him!”

And so she did.

And so, blind to the webbing of the gods, she stepped down the road her brother was destined for - and fell, fell, fell.

But the story, unexpectedly, does not end there. Even though the odds were far more stacked against a defenseless little girl lost in a land of never-ending danger. No, it won’t end there, because she decided, swore, promised on her dying breath to the leylines - it wouldn’t.

(Some things are simply more certain than the fates woven for us by the gods.)

It was just too unfortunate, really - that in her time in the Abyss, the Cryo Archon also declared war on the heavens.

(Some things are simply more certain than the fates woven for us by the gods. But the Tsaritsa was a god herself, and so it went, that there was something more absolute than her attempt to change god-given fate with another god-given fate.)

By the time the poor girl climbed out of hell, the world was falling apart. The land was scorched, the dead piling in millions. Snezhnaya had long since been wiped off any maps that still existed. Soon, Celestia would have to rewrite the slate and build it all anew—if they did not abandon this module altogether for another iteration.

It was too late. It was too late. She was too late so for what did she even try—

“—That’s how it is!” Freyja hums, a small and breathy laugh leaving her. “There was nowhere else to go but back into the Abyss, so that’s what I did. And of course, there was nowhere else to go after that, so I just stayed there. Lonely? Oh, for a little bit. But the leylines actually make great company. They remember everything, after all.”

[taxinealkaloids]

Hi! I was wondering if you would like to say something ab your Elias, Gertrude, and Agnes dynamic because if yes I would love to hear it

(Also, your art is absolutely amazing. Sjdhwhdhehdheh thank you so much for drawing 💖)

Thanks! I’d like to start posting art more consistently but I’ve been so busy.

Also, YES absolutely I would like to talk about Them, at some point it’d be nice to present all this in a more organized manner but for now I’ll just throw some thoughts at you. (under a cut because it ended up being a bit on the lengthy side oops)

My general concept for these three is that due to Gertrude and Elias being connected through Beholding (I like to treat this bond as a lot more substantive than it was shown to be in canon because frankly it’s a crime that it wasn’t further explored and utilized as a plot device) at the same time that Gertrude and Agnes are bound due to Gertude’s semi-failed attempt to cripple the Desolation, the three have all ended up stuck in the same spiderweb, so to speak. I haven’t quite decided if the Web meant for Elias to get roped into this or if, like in canon, the extent of it’s plan was to weave Gertrude & Agnes together. I think it’d be interesting if they were all meant to get tied up together because I like to think of the mother of puppets as a better schemer than she ended up being in canon and because it adds another layer of mystery for the three of them to deal with (ie, what exactly is the Web hoping to achieve here? None of them are sure how extensive the plot is, so it’s an unknown factor; something that fundamentally does not agree with the base nature of anyone eye-aligned.) This connection manifests itself by causing the three to occasionally walk in each other’s dreams, randomly receive each other’s thoughts and feelings, and even have brief body-switching experiences where it’s like suddenly one person’s consciousness is in the other’s body (like the characters in Sense8 do, if you’ve seen that show). In general those episodes only last a few seconds but are extremely disorienting. There’s definitely quite an adjustment period when all this starts happening and everyone’s dealing with the sudden random urges to commit arson or fill out Excel spreadsheets. It’s especially a danger for Elias and Gertrude who are both trying to hide things. Having your mind occasionally taken over by the very person you’re trying to hide those things from is incredibly antithetical to that goal. I have a lot of half-formed ideas for problems that could arise due to these kinds of things happening unpredictably at undesirable times, I think it could range from very dramatic to absolutely hilarious which is fun to play with.

I imagine any sort of plot around these 3 would revolve around trying to unravel the Web’s plot and figure out what exactly the nature/purpose of their connection is (and potentially sever it). However, they can’t work together to solve it, because of course they’ve all got layers upon layers of ulterior motives and are nearly as concerned with sabotaging each other as they are with sabotaging the Web (which, of course, is what the Mother was counting on).

Elias: if I play my cards right here, I could potentially use this to figure out and stop the Web and the Desolation

Agnes: If I play my cards right here, I could potentially use this to figure out and stop the Web and Beholding

Gertrude: I could stop all three.

And so instead of pooling their resources they’re all going behind each other’s backs and lying about it and using their bodyhopping/mindsharing/dreamwalking occurrences as opportunities to spy on each other and/or surreptitiously glean info from the others without them knowing that’s what’s going on. This is a ridiculous undertaking, honestly, because even if they weren’t semi-telepathically linked and therefore likely to figure out what the others are doing anyway, Elias is watching most of what the other two are doing at all times and usually knows when they’re lying. So a lot of their group conversations are just…everyone tells everyone else blatant lies about what they’ve been up to, everyone is aware these are blatant lies, and no one calls anyone out because…. pot, kettle, you know?

Agnes is generally pretty happy to share her experiences with the Desolation w/ Gertrude; she’s never gotten a chance to talk about them to anyone outside the cult and likes Gertrude’s straightforward, free-from-religious-bias responses to what she has to say. Gertrude is able to get a lot out of her just by asking and she’ll even reveal quite a lot to Elias, though that’s usually more by accident. She wants to talk and often lets slip more than she means to.

Gertrude is a bit more wary and holds those of Beholding’s secrets that she knows a bit closer to her chest; she doesn’t want to tell any associate of the Lightless Flame something that could potentially help them trigger a Desolation-flavored apocalypse.

Meanwhile Elias doesn’t so much hold his secrets close to his chest as “keep them in a hermetically sealed double-locked encoded safe in the secret basement of his brain” and there’s no way anyone’s drilling him for information without him clocking it right away and subtly shifting the conversation to a more advantageous subject (for him). The instant Agnes and/or Gertrude show up in one of his dreams he immediately switches whatever it is to the most banal, irrelevant scene ever, like being stuck in traffic or doing his taxes. (What’s the point in living so long if you can’t even control your own dreams, right?)

(Gertrude and Agnes: Really? THIS is what you dream about??)

(Elias, completely stonefaced: Yes.)

While Elias tends to favor gathering and analyzing information to fully understand a situation before acting on it, Gertrude (and to some degree Agnes) feel more productive when they’re actually out doing legwork. So Gertrude’s breaking into Elias’s office to scan his files, she’s vanishing halfway across the country to chase a lead without so much as a day’s notice, Agnes is taking a page out of the Beholding avatars’ book and conducting “interviews” for information (she starts with her cultist minders and spreads outwards from there) but instead of using the Beholding power of compulsion to help the conversation along, she’s using the less delicate but undoubtedly effective Desolation method of “fire really close to the subject’s face”, and Elias is…doing none of this but rather simply watching the other two do it and ending up with the same information in the end. Works out for him!

The main problem here is the fact that with everyone trying to go behind everyone else’s backs all the time they end up impeding each other’s efforts to get the Web pinned down and, with them also spending so much time focusing on stopping each other’s entities, the spotlight is shifted off of the Web. so their behavior is really playing into the Mother’s hands (all eight of them).

In terms of general interpersonal relationships:

Gertrude and Elias are…not friends. Both are pretty sure they’re smarter than the other and definitely entertain frequent fantasies of murdering each other when one’s finding the other particularly infuriating. Despite that they actually end up just...hanging out a lot because they both have a habit of using their friends to death (which is why it’s a good thing they’re not friends). They have the same sense of humor though and honestly they probably don’t find the other’s company as distasteful as they like to claim.

Plus, the entire archive staff is scared of at least one if not both of them, and the fact that they seem to spend so much time in close collaboration doesn’t make anyone more inclined to establish social connections with either one. So they’re kind of workplace allies by default. (Honestly most of the staff assumes they’re sleeping together and because this rumor raises infinitely less questions than “they’re working to prevent the incorrect apocalypse from happening before they can make the correct apocalypse happen” they let it propagate)

(tbh it probably happened once but they both agreed to never mention it again.)

Also, I think Gertrude knew near immediately that Jonahlias was in no way the same person as Elias-Elias but didn’t do anything because tbh she didn’t care for og Elias and liked him better now that he’d apparently been taken over by some sort of bodysnatching monster (though obvs she would NOT admit that).

So, like, first meeting she had w/ him after his promotion she walks in, takes one look, and internally is like “ah. This man is no longer Elias Bouchard. Thank God, maybe I can actually work with him after all.”

Likewise, the instant Gertrude walked in with her soul tied up with the Desolation’s Messiah he noticed but said nothing about it. (I think the mark left on her by the Desolation would show up as something he could physically see; she mentioned in one of the statements that the bond hurt so maybe her flesh always looks a bit like it’s being set on fire from the inside out to someone with supernatural vision powers and he just has to pretend this isn’t alarming.)

For his part, Elias genuinely likes Gertrude. Most of the time. At least some of the time. He respects her and her utter ruthlessness for sure, but she’s extremely strong willed and nigh impossible to intimidate and he fluctuates wildly from being like “she was the perfect choice for Archivist, I’m so glad I picked her” and “I need to kill her right now immediately and get a new Archivist, I cannot work with this one”.

Agnes is…an interesting case because due to her bizarre upbringing she has a hard time figuring out what she feels about anything, ever. She wildly fluctuates from being overly sensitive/worried about hurting others to being absolutely sadistic, and can jump from a calm/withdrawn state to pure rage in an instant. She’s largely still figuring out who she wants to be while struggling with the fact that she’s not meant to get to pick who she wants to be at all.

Gertrude and Agnes find each other absolutely fascinating, they both think the other is the most compelling person they’ve ever met (or, rather, not met, it’s complicated). Agnes likes having a connection to someone outside the lightless flame cult, and likes the idea that Beholding’s archivist (who is rather infamous among lightless flame cultists and unanimously feared) ‘belongs to her.’ (Gertrude would maybe not entirely agree with that perspective but she doesn’t…hate the idea either).

Meanwhile, Gertrude knows their bond is part of a bigger scheme and on some level, the Web is tying them all in knots, and really she should be looking for a way to sever the bond. And she will! She’s definitely planning on figuring that one out. Elias accuses her of putting it off in order to find out more about Agnes and the lightless flame, and yeah, maybe she is, but so what? That’s useful information. And Elias must agree, or he would have sounded more upset. (He does agree, but he also dislikes the idea of Gertrude being part of someone else’s scheme and he REALLY dislikes the idea of being part of someone else’s scheme himself.)

Elias finds Agnes interesting the way one would find, say, a new species of venomous snake interesting; there’s a lot to be learned from careful observation and the implications of it’s existence are intriguing but you don’t want it near you. Her volatile nature makes her unpredictable, which makes her dangerous.

As a result he tends to use what knowledge he has about Agnes, the Desolation, and her fate as leverage to make his incineration less appealing. This works, for the most part; while Agnes finds it extremely irritating she also does want to hear what a Beholding-aligned non-cultist can tell her about her nature. She just does not appreciate Elias’s insistence on being infuriatingly obtuse all the time.

Agnes also does not appreciate the idea that the Archivist does not, in fact, belong entirely to her and that she has to share custody with this guy. Who even is this guy. She’d like to set all his paperwork on fire. (Really she’d like to set HIM on fire but Gertrude said she couldn’t.)

One thing Agnes does admire (or at least find interesting) about Elias is his usage of compulsion to get people to tell him things. She can definitely appreciate the usefulness of that, having grown up with a bunch of crazed zealots who refused to give her a straight answer about anything, and even ends up employing similar tactics herself, as I mentioned earlier. She knows Gertrude and Elias have very different perspectives on how compulsion should be utilized and privately, she agrees with Elias. If one has an advantage, why not use it? She doesn’t tell Gertrude this, nor does she tell her about the “interviews” she conducts, though she often wants to.

All three of them have very unique brands of incredible interpersonal tension with each of the others, so when they’re all sharing a dream at the same time the atmosphere is less “electric” and more “nuclear reactor meltdown”. They’re not sure that they could actually kill each other through dream-to-dream communication (Elias doesn’t think so, so probably not) but chances are that’s gonna be put to the test at some point.

I actually started drafting a fic about all this at one point lmao just cause I had so many ideas for specific scenes I thought would be interesting but realistically I’ll never have time to finish that. Still I definitely want to expand on all this because I’m obsessed with their potential AND the actual canon of tma pretty much never went into it so….my house now. Thanks so much for indulging me on this sdkjfhskj I thought this would be so much shorter than it ended up being

[chongoblog]

INTRODUCING THE PURPLE SASQUATCH

Hey everyone! I wanted to let you all know that I’ve been cooking up some OC’s recently and I really want to share them with you all!! Unfortunately I don’t have any artistic talent, but I’m sure that if I give a half-hearted visual description, then I can sit back and hope that you all will love them enough to provide that part!!!!!!!!!!! :D!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(under the readmore)

So these OC’s are a member of a central group known as the “Purple Sasquatch”. They are a small group of cowpokes that travel around the Wild Wild West together. But not just any Wild West. A different Wild West than what we might know. One overrun with great beasts and cryptids. They are infamous for being a close-knit team that always wears the color purple in some capacity and are known by some others to be “in the pioneer business for selfish reasons” only bothering to fight monsters near native villages and not even bothering with helping build the new towns. They each conceal their true identities, opting to use a codename reflecting an instrument used for artistic creation due to the head of the group’s belief that the earth supplies a grand canvas and beautiful materials. It is simply up to them to use what is provided to create masterpieces in collaboration with the earth. Additionally, once one has become a member of the group for long enough to prove their loyalty, they are marked by wearing iconography of a bug on them in some way.

Oil is the head of the clan, always donning his trademark purple Stetson that has seen quite a few rough days. Incidentally, it was noticed that the somewhat torn hat looked exactly like the head of a beetle. This was what inspired him to put the Sasquatch together. His short sandy blonde hair and deeply tanned skin contrast each other like nobody’s business, and he wears a dark purple vest over his large muscular frame. He founded the troupe of pioneers after he and a couple others came across a cryptid that had been terrorizing a native tribe and they managed to subdue it together while also protecting its life from another crew of pioneers who wished to hunt it. He acts as a moral core, being the strong leader that everyone finds only fitting to follow, but is never afraid to get tough when he needs to.

Chisel is considered to be the second in command, and is one of the most wanted people in the country. She is a Beastial (which is an in-universe version of a Furry lol) of the Fox variety, sporting a dark crimson fur coat. Despite the darker fur coat, she still opts to wear a beautiful purple poncho weaved by a tribe that she and oil had helped when they had first formed the Sasquatch. The poncho has beautiful patterns of mantises sewn upon them. Chisel is most wanted because she will not take no for an answer and won’t tolerate injustice for even a moment. This gets her into trouble with the wrong people, but when you’re as handy as Chisel is with a revolver, that sort of problem settles itself.

Clay was one of the three founding members of the Sasquatch and was indispensable for helping to somehow, against all odds, subdue a number of the cryptids they meet. With a heart of gold and an adoration for the beasts that walk the earth, it seems almost magical how he can make the Sasquatch’s horses run almost twice as fast simply by giving them a genuine pep talk. Others have wondered if he can talk to horses, but he denies being able to. He sports a short buzzed head of red hair and green eyes along his freckled face. He’s usually found wearing a purple fringe jacket, with each fringe having a very small hand-sculpted ant he sculpts together after he makes a friend. However, if you threaten his friends, then he’s perfectly capable in a fight. After all, he’s learned that some people unfortunately don’t want to be friends.

Watercolor is an exciteable zoologist who wears thick glasses to frame her brown eyes, almost always wearing her frizzy purple-dyed hair in a ponytail. While she’s far from equipped for any danger, that doesn’t save her from her own curiosity as she was originally found by the Sasquatch trapped in the web of a monstrous spider. The group never let her live it down, granting her a spider-shaped bolo tie. that she wears over he denim overalls and purple flannel. She isn’t incredibly helpful in a fight, but she has quite the mind for strategies on the fly and is always able to lighten the mood.

Brush is an Avian Beastial (a Bird Furry) with bright orange feathers and a white tuft around the chest. He’s considered to be the one that’s most “out there”, constantly tinkering around with any machinery they might be able to find, always attempting to create “an imaginative window into the future!”. Some of these inventions can be useful, such as stun guns and keeping food cold. Others are mundane (such as a ball that can “read your mind so long as you answer its twenty yes or no questions first”) or simply don’t work. But seeing what Brush has whipped up is never a dull experience, especially with his theatricality regardless of how dull the item itself comes across. He almost always wears a denim jean jacket and denim jean shorts, usually covering anything else he can wear in denim. This has been mentioned to him multiple time and he simply does not care. On the back of his denim jacket is a sick looking purple dragonfly design

I might have more one day, but I hope you enjoy these cool characters!!! I know that I don’t really do original characters that much, but I wouldn’t be shocked if I end up shifting my content around these little bastards! They’re just so unique, I doubt I’ll do anything like them again!

If you decide to draw fanart of any of them I’ll die in real life! Send it over my way!! Thank you all!!

[kopikokun]

(Don't) Tell Me More༄ m.taeil

↳ Taeil's loaded, and that's a severe understatement. So, what on earth is this rich kid doing cleaning pools every Sunday? Looking for love, of course, and a little help with rubbing sunscreen on his back. Ultraviolet protection's a must; it's getting real hot in here.

pairing: (secret rich kid) pool boy!taeil x gn rich kid!reader

genre: fluff, suggestive

warning(s): the suggestive bit is the unaddressed tension, and the one joke about bad porn taeil makes. overall, just the ~vibes~ haha

word count: 2153 words

author's note: i got... carried away. no worries, the starved taeil fans deserve a meal. idk how many years it'll take for the next one. also, please notify me if i accidentally used any gendered language. i’ve checked multiple times, but i’m human, and would sincerely appreciate if you pointed out any of my mistakes or even offered feedback ♡

☆༓･*˚⁺‧͙ 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁: do i wanna know (arctic monkeys) ✧ head over heels (loveleo) ✧ honey (moxie) ✧ dance with me (sir, please) ✧ doubt (hippo campus) ✧ heat waves (glass animals)

← BACK TO NAVI.

Labour isn’t Taeil’s forte. Born with a gold spoon between his lips, and six digits in his bank account at five, he’s lived a life beyond lavish.

Fridays are reserved for piano lessons and tennis, Saturdays for buttering up his father’s potential clients in country clubs, and Sundays for swimming in the five meter deep pool in his backyard. Well, at least, Sundays used to be.

Taeil’s plenty passionate about swimming–freestyle, backstroke, butterfly–but about cleaning swimming pools? Not so much.

So, why is he spending every Sunday afternoon sweaty, swathed in sunscreen, and despairing over chemical imbalances? The answer is simple, and lazing on a deck chair at this very moment: you.

You’re new–courtesy of the raise in your father’s already outrageous salary–and when Taeil first lay his eyes upon you at the park, he was enamoured. He’d actually tripped on a root in his trance, and you’d crouched beside him to ask whether he was alright. Humiliated, he’d silently hobbled after as you lead him to a bench. You’d nursed the wound he hadn’t realised he’d sustained as best you could: rinsing and dabbing it dry.

“I’ll walk you home,” he’d said. “A token of appreciation, if you will.”

You’d accepted his token. The walk wasn’t far, but it was likely because you made for such good company. Taeil would be engrossed even if you droned on about cheese for an hour, which coincidentally, is exactly what Mr. Liu’s monologue had entailed the month before. That conversation had bored him half to death however.

It felt too quick; your estate was already looming over him, auguring the end of your encounter when he’d finally recovered from his ignominy. Desperate for more, Taeil had blurted out the first thing in sight: your pool. That’s why you’d mentioned your dad needing a pool cleaner every weekend, and how, despite being clueless in the department, Taeil had wholeheartedly offered himself. You’d been elated, beaming, over the moon. How could he say no?

It had seemed appealing in the moment, but his train of thought had been superficial. Turns out, those mass-produced specially-targeted summer chick-flicks were lying! Who would’ve guessed? Pool boying was not just flaunting your washboard abs and bulging biceps as you netted a few leaves. Oh no. The first few test cleans Taeil had done with his pool… well, it became off limits for a week. And an actual expert had to be hired. Those gritty aspects aren’t the most marketable, or inherently sexy, so Taeil supposes the chick-flick deceits are partially excused.

But back to what matters: you. Your–how should he put it?–spunk, hadn’t been anticipated. Not an ounce of that pretentious reticence the local wealthy feel entitled to prevails in you. It’s refreshing. You’re adrenaline personified. Just your presence has Taeil’s heart palpitating. Since he’d been hired, every week has been more fleeting glances, yearning touches, puckish banter. And last week… well, there’s no time for that, because now you’re beckoning him over, your hand wrapped around a tube of sunscreen. Taeil prances to you, complaisant.

“Sit,” you urge, dragging a wicker stool in front of you. “You’re done for today, right?”

“Yeah, water didn’t need treatment this week. Just skimmed the surface for debris.” Taeil hesitates. He feels awkward after last week, when he’d kissed you. Yes, kissed you. You haven’t said a word about it since, and there’s no way in hell he’s doing it first. “But, it’s okay. I’m gonna go soon.”

“Aww, please, Taeil? Sit?” You pat the chair and smile, eyelashes glinting in the sun. That’s all it takes for Taeil to succumb, the rattan crackling beneath his weight. Your fingers graze his arm. “It’s a hot day, huh? A swim would be nice.”

His eyebrows crease. "Sorry, were you waiting?"

“No, no, it’s fine.” You tilt your head. “But…”

“What?”

“Do you want to go swimming with me?”

Taeil fists the material of his swim shorts, spine erect. The fabric crinkles. Whether he wants to what? “Oh, uh, well, I don’t wanna intrude. I’m sure your parents wouldn’t be happy about me swimming in their pool.”

The heat of your body seeps into his skin as your arms coil around his. “They don’t mind, and if they did, they’re not home to say so.”

This feels like the start of a trashy porn. Taeil flushes. “Oh.”

“So? What do you say?”

His adam’s apple buoys. “Sure. Wouldn’t hurt, right?”

“Exactly.” The sunscreen’s cap clacks open. “Here, you gotta reapply more.” Taeil extends his palm, and you squeeze some into it.

He deliberates his next move. It’s difficult to think when you’re gazing at him like that, lashes batting and lips curled into a demure smile. “You don’t mind if I”–he rubs his nape with a free hand–“uh, take off my shirt, right? I don’t wanna dirty your pool.”

“Sure! I definitely wouldn’t mind, so long as you’re okay with it.” You tuck your knees to your chest. “Why? Do you want me to look away?”

“No, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t making you uncomfortable.” Taeil’s going to pass out, he’s betting money on it.

He doesn’t, but he does glow incandescent when he strips himself of his clammy shirt. The humid air only exacerbates his feverish blush.

Growing up, Taeil’s parents always emphasised presentability, and he’s nothing if not presentable. He’s proud of his physique, diligently maintaining it with rigorous exercise, and sure, he’s had a few self-conscious blips, but they’re transient. Taeil knows he’s attractive, yet under your keen eye, he rubs sunscreen–on his neck, chest, and abdomen–hunched forward.

“Do you need help?” You peer over his shoulder, wagging the aquamarine bottle like bait. “With your back. You know, for the spots you can’t reach?”

You’ll be the death of him. You’re going to kill him, but he honestly wouldn’t mind that. Taeil’s never had any ‘spots he can’t reach’, but, “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

Your fingers are ridiculously delicate, like you’re weaving gossamer across his back–sunscreen webs, if that’s a thing. Taeil’s sure someone would pay grotesquely for that. Mr. Liu would.

Neither of you speak, only the sound of skin against skin drifting alongside the scent of coconut oil and cocoa butter. At one point, your nails unintentionally trail his back, and Taeil shivers.

His body tingles with the vestige of your touch, and when he assumes you’re done, you stun him with a good, hard, satisfying squeeze to his shoulders; the ones twined rigid from graft. Taeil actually groans in relief, which had probably stunned you. Or maybe that’s what you were hoping for.

Internally, he’s broiling in mortification, but externally, his shoulders slacken, his head hangs forward, and his exhales are long and grateful. It’s embarrassing. For crying out loud, he has his own professional masseuse, yet when it’s you doing it–yeah, he needn’t elaborate further. He’s gushed about you enough.

“Feels nice, right?”

“God, yeah, it feels”–a particularly forceful squeeze elicits another groan from him–“good. Do you have any experience? You’re amazing at this.”

“Just my dad. When I was younger he used to pay me to massage his shoulders after work,” you say, fingers miraculously knowing exactly which muscle to knead at what intensity. Is this what heaven feels like? “Well, there was also the massage course I signed up for a few years ago.”

“Well”–another sigh–“it definitely paid off.”

“It better have, given how pricey it was.” Your lilt is roguish, and it sounds like you’re enjoying this as much as Taeil is.

He wants to die like this, but you’re already standing, and stretching your arms overhead before he can really soak the sensation in.

“Let’s go for that swim, huh?”

“Uh,” Taeil blinks, dazed, “yeah.”

He trails after you, facing away when you lower yourself into the water without qualms. Duh, it’s your pool. Why would you have scruples about swimming in your pool? Taeil, on the other hand, dithers, because it’s not his pool, and he can’t help but fret that your parents could walk in on you swimming with the pool boy.

“Hurry up! A little water’s not gonna hurt you.”

“I’m not scared of the water,” he says, staring pointedly at you. He’s never felt so vehemently for someone before, and you’re so… unpredictable. It’s invigorating. It’s terrifying. Do you like him, or are you just bored?

He ventures as far as sitting on the edge of the pool’s deck, where water kisses concrete. His legs dangle, acclimating to both the temperature, and the reality that he really is about to jump into his employer’s pool. The water is cold, caressing his leg as you wade closer to stand between his knees. Your eyes sweep over him. Taeil’s stomach coils. He hopes you like what you see.

“You okay?” you ask, hand over his right knee. It’s freezing. “You look a little flushed.”

Your hand crawls further up his leg. “Yeah,” he scoffs, “I wonder why.”

“Aw, don’t be shy,” you grin, upturning your palms and offering them to him. “Come on.”

Taeil should’ve thought your motives through, but how could he have denied your invitation? He’s still a guy, and well, it’s you. Regardless, he should’ve scrounged up some semblance of prudence because it was blatant what you’d needed his hands for. To pull him under. Literally.

The tug is harsh and efficient, jolting him forward into the polar depths before he can object. Taeil’s not thinking straight–the stark contrast in temperatures pummel his rationality–so he grabs the closest thing he can: you. It’s reckless of him, given the two of you are in the deep end and he could drown you. But risks evade his psyche as he loops his arms around your waist, your body pressing into his. Fortunately, he won’t be facing charges anytime soon because you do resurface, still in his arms, and strangely, you’re not pissed, you’re laughing. Laughing so hard your head’s thrown back, and your body trembles. It’s not funny–you could’ve died for God’s sake–but Taeil feels a rumble course through him; a chuckle, a giggle, a laugh. Now, he’s laughing too, though there’s nothing funny about this. He’s laughing because you’re laughing, and that’s enough of a reason for him.

“Are you okay?” you finally say, titters dissolving into a faint smile. “That was mean of me, sorry.”

Your face is inches from his, so Taeil’s voice shrinks. “No, it’s fine. I’m sorry I grabbed onto you though. And, oh, uh”–he starts loosening his grip of you–“sorry I–”

"No, wait.” This time, it’s your arms curling around him. “It’s fine. I don’t mind this. It feels… nice.”

“Yeah… it - it does.”

The water laps at his sternum, and Taeil takes his chances by nuzzling his nose into the crook of your neck. You let him, though neither of you know each other enough for this kind of intimacy. Maybe that’s why he’s so enthralled by you. Hell, you don’t even know he’s the son of some rich socialite. To you, he’s just the pool boy. Maybe that’s why you’re playing along with him. Because there’s something exhilarating about chasing something you shouldn’t when you’ve never had to run before. Because there’s a thrill in pain when you’re unscathed. Because when you’re someone like you and Taeil, mistakes can be afforded. Anyway, what does Taeil know of pain? In fact, what does he know of you to think this? It isn’t like he knows what your intentions are with him. You’re unpredictable. That’s your whole schtick. It’s funny, because Taeil knows your pool’s pH levels better than you.

Your fingers scrape into his sopping hair.

Or maybe he likes you for you. Maybe he likes what little of you he does know. So, does he want to know more?

“What do you think of me?” he murmurs against your skin.

“You’re fun.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, then, what do you think of me?”

Taeil lifts his head from your shoulder, the strength of his embrace withering. “Honestly, I don’t really know.”

You grin. “See? It’s hard to put into words, right?”

“I guess,” he smiles. You make it sound nice that you don’t know him. You make it sound like there’s just too much that you can’t express it. Maybe that’s what’s happening right now. Maybe there’s just too much Taeil likes about you to comprehend, so he thinks there’s nothing he really likes about you at all.

��You’re funny, Taeil.”

He isn’t. “Thanks.”

Taeil’s unsure how much time passes; long enough that the water’s gone tepid at least.

“Do you… like me?” he asks. Maybe if he hears you say yes, he’ll know what all the things he adores about you are.

There’s a pause.

“You’re fun, right?” you ask, thumbing a rivulet from his cheek.

“Yeah, I’ve been told I am.”

“Then, yes.” Your lips brush his. “I like you, Taeil.”

[teacupfulofstarshine]

jet-lagged heart

summary: logan’s research in antarctica has finally finished, he has job offers from three of pretoria’s major universities, and there are three plane tickets sitting in his backpack. he’s going to south africa to be with virgil. he’s going home.

(or: a fic about the first time virgil and logan meet in person, set in @lovelylogans absolutely phenomenal sense8-inspired 2021 big bang fic)

CW: minor anxiety

wordcount: ~1.7k

pairing: romantic analogical, platonic sides

read it on ao3!

It has long become habit for Logan to wear his earpiece constantly. He can’t remember the last time he took it off other than sleeping and showering - he puts it on daily along with his glasses. 

“Hello there,” a familiar voice says, a familiar weight draping around his shoulders. Logan smiles, leaning back and tipping his head against his boyfriend’s shoulder. “How are you, hmmm?”

“Excited,” Logan says. Virgil presses a kiss against his cheek, and Logan feels the uncontrollable urge to stim. One hand flaps at his side, and he can feel his cluster flapping in unison - a surge of joy from Patton, fond exasperation from Roman and Remus, mild annoyance from Janus, and nothing but lovelovelove from Virgil. 

“Today is the day. When does the plane leave?” 

Logan glances down at his wrist, only to realize that he isn’t wearing his watch. He blinks, and suddenly the arm in front of him is bare and tattooed with a bright blue paw-print-patterned watch on it. He blinks again, sees himself and Virgil reflected in his mirror, and quickly does some mental math. “Approximately four hours from now.” 

“Did your virtual interviews go well, umthandi?” 

“I have offers from three separate universities around Pretoria. Will you help me select which offer I should accept?” 

“Of course.” 

“Thank you, kochanek,” Logan hums, turning to nuzzle into Virgil’s stubbly cheek. 

“I have your bedroom prepared in our apartment,” Virgil says. Logan turns to look up at him in confusion. 

“Are we not sharing a bed?” 

Virgil flushes slightly, and Logan feels him rubbing at the back of his neck. “I know that sometimes you get anxious when crowded, and sometimes you get overwhelmed by the presence of other people. I thought it would be best to prepare a place where you could retreat and rest from the world.” 

Logan laughs, and he feels Patton laughing with him (even if Patton doesn’t really know what he’s laughing about.) “What?” Virgil says, and when Logan turns around he sees Virgil standing in front of a jacaranda tree in his yard, pouting. 

“You do not count as people, kochanek. None of our cluster does. You haven’t for some time.” Virgil becomes even more embarrassed - Logan can feel it surge in his chest. He leans forward and gently kisses Virgil’s nose. “I appreciate your sensitivity. It’s one of the many, many things I love about you.” 

Virgil presses a hand to Logan’s cheek, and Logan leans into the warmth before he can stop himself. He watches Virgil smile at him, blinks and sees the lovestruck expression on his own face, and closes his eyes happily. 

*~*~*~*~*

“Did you buy the -”

“Yes, Janus,” Logan sighs, swinging his carryon over his shoulder and tapping at the Bluetooth. “For the seventeenth time, I used the money that you and Roman wired me to buy tickets for the seats around me so that no one will notice me talking to myself when I have to take the earpiece out.”

“You had better be bloody cautious.” Logan takes a step into Janus’s office, careful not to disturb the papers spread across the carpeted floor in an intricate web. Janus, sitting in the middle of the madness, reaches out and underlines something in dark yellow highlighter. “I will not have someone sending me psychic pain because they were stupid enough to get caught and experimented upon.” 

Logan is familiar enough with his cluster to feel the worrypanicfearterror don’tgetintotroubleican’tgetyououtofpleasepleaseplease vibrating in Janus’s chest. He reaches out and squeezes Janus’s shoulder, pretending he doesn’t notice when Janus drops his head briefly and squishes his hand. “I promise to be careful, Janus.” 

“You better,” Janus says. Logan takes another step and glances up at the arrival and departure board to find his gate.

*~*~*~*~*

“Had to take the earpiece out for the flight, huh?” Remus says, lounging upside-down in the empty seat next to Logan. Logan, who is focusing on his e-reader, offers a discreet nod. “Sucks to suck, my man. Sucks to suck.” 

Logan doesn’t verbally respond, and Remus takes it as full permission to keep going. “Your boyfriend was telling me all about poison plants the other day - did you know that a deadly nightshade and a tomato are in the same family?” 

“Solanum lycopersicum,” Logan murmurs, glancing around to ensure that no one is paying attention to him. Remus babbles on about plants for a few more minutes, flipping himself upright and flopping into Logan’s lap. “Do you mind?”

“I don’t, actually, thank you for asking!” Remus laughs. Logan puts his hand below his e-reader, where no one else will see it but Remus, and flips him off. “You’re gonna have to come visit the rest of us soon or we’ll think you’re playing favorites.” 

Logan looks directly at the exaggerated fake pout on Remus’s face and says, “I do have a favorite. It is not you.” 

Remus rolls his eyes and slides off the seat, disappearing before he hits the floor.

*~*~*~*~*

Patton looks up with a mouthful of sandwich to see Logan slumped in the air in front of him, one hand pressed against his forehead. 

“Rough flight?” 

“Travel headache, plus a visit,” Logan mutters. Patton hums, narrowing his eyes just slightly to judge which member Logan saw by the frown pinching his face.

“Remus?” A nod. “I’m sure he meant well.”

“Unexpected.” 

“Don’t you have your earpiece in?” 

Logan shakes his head briefly. “Not on a plane.” 

“Ah.” Patton reaches out and gently pats Logan’s shoulder. “How much longer until you land in Pretoria?” 

Logan glances down at his watch, then in front of him. Patton blinks and he’s sitting next to Logan, staring at a screen at the front of the plane that tells the expected arrival time. “Ninety minutes, give or take.” 

Patton leans over and gently presses against Logan’s shoulder with the side of his head. “Hang in there, Lo. I know you can do it.” 

Logan sighs, again, but his face relaxes a little. Patton blinks again, and Logan disappears just as his students return from the lunchroom. 

*~*~*~*~*

“Virgil, calm yourself down,” Andisiwe says. She offers Virgil a cup of coffee, but he doesn’t take it, too busy pacing back and forth in front of the arrivals and departures board. 

“The flight was supposed to be in ten minutes ago,” Virgil says. “The board still says that the flight was supposed to be in ten minutes ago, so why isn’t the flight in?” 

“You cannot control the weather,” Andisiwe says. She sets the cup of coffee down on the small airport end table next to her own depleted cup, her purse, and the book Virgil brought in a fruitless effort to distract himself. “We knew that he might experience some turbulence leaving Antarctica, to say nothing of the layovers and connecting flights and the myriad of other things that come with air travel. You would know if he had been hurt or killed, would you not?” 

Virgil’s entire body runs ice-cold at the mention, and he takes a few quick, panicked inhales. He feels reassurance flood his body - his mother’s hand on his shoulder, Patton’s arm around him, Roman’s hand on his back, right between his shoulderblades. He feels Logan’s hand slide into his, and he exhales shakily. 

“You’re right,” he says, speaking to his mother and his cluster in unison. “Thank you.” 

Patton and Logan both squeeze gently, Roman rubs his back and pats him a few times, and his mother smiles at him knowingly. 

“Has he arrived, then?” she asks. 

Virgil blinks, and he’s sitting in a plane, watching Logan collect his luggage from an overhead compartment and head down the aisle. He blinks again, and he’s back with his mother. 

“He’s offboarding now,” Virgil sighs. Andisiwe pats his shoulder and takes a seat next to the end table she’s claimed, taking a sip of her coffee. Virgil takes a hasty swig of his own before turning back to the gate. 

It isn’t long before he spots a familiar face, backpack and duffel bag slung over his shoulders and rolling suitcase behind him. Logan’s hair is slightly mussed, glasses smudged, tie loosened. Virgil blinks and he’s looking at himself, taking in his own wide eyes and spreading grin and feeling an immeasurable amount of love well up in his chest. He blinks again, view changing but love remaining, and Logan is smiling at him, speeding up to a not-quite jog as he weaves through the crowd. 

“Logan,” Virgil breathes, reaching out as Logan releases the handle of his suitcase and slips his bags off his shoulders. He spreads his arms, and Logan slides into him effortlessly. Virgil buries his face into Logan’s hair and inhales the familiar scent of shampoo and body wash and Logan that haunted him all those months Logan was in Antarctica. He feels himself slip briefly into Logan’s body, feels strong arms around him and kisses being pressed into his hair repeatedly (he hadn’t even known he was kissing Logan’s head) and hears a rabbit-rapid heartbeat. 

“I have missed you,” Logan sighs softly, and Virgil lets his whole body relax around Logan’s. 

*~*~*~*~*

“Is the apartment too small?” Virgil asks, anxiously opening the door and shooing Logan inside. He’d insisted on taking the majority of Logan’s luggage, despite his protests; Logan just smiles fondly and steps into the living room. It’s furnished with a television, a sofa, a small bookshelf in front of the window full of plants, and a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf on the wall. Logan notes with increasing joy that there are two whole shelves cleared off for him to put books on, once he unpacks or has his mother send some from Poland.

He can see over a small dividing wall into the kitchen, with a table in the center and two chairs. There’s a hallway leading down to an open door, through which Logan can see glimpses of a toilet and bathtub, and one door on either side of the hallway; he presumes those lead to the bedrooms. 

“Is it okay?” Virgil repeats.

“it is perfect,” Logan says. “Truthfully, the specifications of the apartment do not matter. We could live anywhere in the world so long as we lived together. The apartment is wonderful because it is ours.” 

Virgil takes Logan’s face, hands warm, and Logan leans up to kiss him again. 

[mybg3notebook]

Lore: Details about the “Orb”

Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.

Let's start with the context, because everything related to Gale is packed heavily with Forgotten Realms lore, and since the game is not fully released, whatever extra information that the game could provide to help us understand this is not there yet. Also, it's always important to keep in mind this post about "Context, persuasion, and manipulation" to be sure we are talking in the same terms. 

The lore

I'm going to enumerate some objects or elements related to Forgotten Realms lore that I personally see worth checking out in addition to other “orbs” that I've seen the fandom put attention on. All this information can be expanded using the references and sometimes wiki, even though I personally distrust forgotten realm wiki, unless I can check that info from the original sources.

Shadow Weave

The Shadow Weave is the space between the strands of the Weave. If the Weave is a spider's web, the gaps in between are the Shadow Weave. Shadow Weave reaches everywhere the Weave does, and more. It is not subject to Mystra’s laws or state of well being. If Mystra were to die and the Weave collapses, the Shadow Weave would persist. [Magic of Faerûn 3e. Personal Comment: Yes. It explicitly says in the book that it’s independent of Mystra’s well being. Clearly this has been modified in 4e since the Shadow Weave needs the structure of the Weave to be somehow stable. It collapsed when the Weave did so, so we can see this begins a series of inconsistencies]

Shadow Weave is a dark and distorted copy of the Weave created by Shar, more suited for spells that drag life or confuse the mind (necromancy, control, illusion schools), and gives more difficulty to cast spells that manipulate energy or matter (evocation or transmutation schools). It can't sustain spells that produce light. Both Weave and Shadow Weave are means to use Raw Magic (see at the end of the post). The more familiar a mortal becomes with the secrets of the Shadow Weave, the more detached they become from the Weave. Shadow Weave is NOT a part of Mystra, so Mystra can't block people from accessing magic via Shadow Weave. 

It’s a common mistake to make the analogy that the Shadow Weave is to Shar the same way the Weave is to Mystra. No. Shadow Weave is NOT Shar, while the Weave is Mystra. Shar never developed that level of commitment, making herself one with the Shadow Weave. This is one of the reasons why she could not sustain the Weave during the Spellplague when she tried to corrupt it completely into Shadow Weave. 

All this information belongs to Magic of Faerûn 3e and the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 3e and novels of 4e. There is nothing about Shadow Weave in 5e. If it weren't for Ed Greenwood's twitter, we should have guessed it disappeared from the lore. So far we know it's slowly recovering in the same way the Weave is. And the Shadow Weave doesn't feed on Weave. For some mysterious reason, fandom started to think so due to BG3.

Death moon orb

This artefact belongs to the 3rd edition, created by a Netheril wizard. From him, it passed to the hands of Szass Tam, who saw it destroyed when the Spellplague corrupted the magic in it. I won't give more details about this object because it looks so unrelated to what Gale has in his chest. Not only is its shape inconsistent with what we see in-game, its powers and properties are unrelated to what is explained in EA. The object is cursed, compelling its owner to cause greater acts of evil; it has a size that changes and looks like a violet-black sphere. In my opinion, the only detail in common with Gale's “orb” is the name "orb". Which is a fallacy, since Gale says explicitly that he uses the word "orb" for the lack of a better one, because clearly what Gale has in his chest is not an orb, but a mass of Black Weave. 

Netherese orbs

These objects are found in Neverwinter MMO in the quest Whisper in Darkness:

The Netherese are foul plague upon this world, corrupting everything they touch. They have cursed the Gray Wolf Tribe, turning them into bloodthirsty monsters. We must find what the Netherese intend to do with their werewolf slaves. The Shadovar Emissaries use the Netherese Orbs powered by Soul Shards to communicate orders from the Prince of Shadow.

This is all the information we have of this object. That's all. It comes from a Neverwinter MMO game which belongs to 4th edition. Once more, the concept that Gale's “orb” is not an orb but a black mass of untamed magic makes me believe that these objects don't apply either. The nature of their magic is compatible though: Netherese orbs are made from shadow magic by Shadovar, descendant of Netheril stuck in the Plane of Shadow (called Shadowfell later on, read more in the post of "The Netherese in 1492DR"). This plane is the source of Shadow Magic, they don't use Raw Magic. Ethel explicitly said in BG3 that Shadow Magic is Netherese Magic, so maybe we can consider this object filled with Netherese magic? In any case, these Netherese orbs are used for communication... which has nothing to do with Gale's “orb”'s properties. There is also no reference of consuming Weave to remain stable.

Devastation orb

The mention of a "devastation orb" happens only in Yartar in Princes of the Apocalypse (related to the god Tharizdun, the mad god): 

In page 5 we have some context: Four elemental cults grow in power in the Sumber Hills, claiming abandoned keeps that connect to an underground fortress once part of an ancient dwarven kingdom. The leaders use elemental magic to create devastation orbs capable of ravaging the countryside. They’ve been testing these magic weapons, bolstering the cults’ ranks, and infiltrating various communities, all directed by visions the prophets receive from the Elder Elemental Eye (Tharizdun). These orbs are plainly described as: essentially bombs of elemental energy to unleash natural disasters.

In page 222 we have a more detailed explanation of what these elements are: 

Devastation Orb: (Wondrous item, very rare) A devastation orb is an elemental bomb that can be created at the site of an elemental node by performing a ritual with an elemental weapon. The type of orb created depends on the node used. For example, an air node creates a devastation orb of air. A devastation orb measures 12 inches in diameter, weighs 10 pounds, and has a solid outer shell. The orb detonates 1d100 hours after its creation, releasing the elemental energy it contains. The orb gives no outward sign of how much time remains before it will detonate. Regardless of the type of orb, its effect is contained within a sphere with a 1 mile radius. The orb is the sphere’s point of origin. The orb is destroyed after one use.

Again, I don't see a real connection with Gale's “orb”. These devastation orbs are not netherese-based, they have elemental energy, and despite the explosion, they don't have any mechanics that resemble the consumption of Weave to remain stable. However, I do find a link between these devastation orbs, their process of construction, and the book that Gale found out. The remotest concept I can scratch here is that, whoever crafted the book with that piece of blackest Weave, could have used the knowledge of the construction of these devastation orbs. Instead of filling them with elemental magic, they filled it with a blackest weave of netherese magic. A procedure that could have been applied to the netherese tadpoles as well.

That's all the information I could gather that remotely is called “orb” or has some vague chance to be that blackest weave.

The Game BG3

In the game, all the info that Gale provides in EA about the “orb” is given before his revelation. The what it is, the how it works and the how it feels. In the revelation scene we only learn the details that are personal and intimate for Gale: the why he ended up with the orb, and potential solutions he can guess so far. To show proofs:

During the meeting:

Tav [Wisdom/tadpole] Try peering into his mind. If he won't open up, you'll sneak in.  [Success] Narrator: For a split second you see a swirl of untamed magic – then his defences drop like a portcullis. 

During the Protocol:

Tav: I simply want to know what it is you're keeping from me Gale: I'm dangerous. Not because I want to be, but because of... an error I made in the past.  [before Gale speaks of his loss] It makes me dangerous – even in death. [after Gale speaks of his loss/tadpole intrusion] I told you how I sought to win the favour of Mystra. I did this by trying to control a form of magic only one wizard ever could. I failed to control it. Instead it infested me. It makes me dangerous... even in death. […] Tav: The darkness inside you, what is it? Gale: It's magic from another time and another place. It is something that is beyond me, yet inside me. That makes me dangerous... even in death. 

During the stew scene or the ask for artefacts in neutral or lower approval

Tav: [Wisdom/tadpole] you sense secrecy and danger. Use your tadpole to probe Gale's thoughts. [Success] Narrator: you become one with Gale's mind and you can feel something sinister oppressing you. It's... inside of you, a mighty darkness radiating from your chest. You could try to push further, but your hold over Gale feels brittle. It won't be easy delving deeper without him noticing. Delve deeper: [Success] Narrator: “ you see through gale's eye, staring down the corridor of a dread memory. A book, bound, then suddenly opened. Inside there are no pages, only a swirling mass of blackest Weave that pounces. It's teeth, it's claws, it's unstoppable as it digs through you and becomes part of you. And gods, is it ever-hungry.

Gale: The only way to “appease” said condition is for me to take powerful magical artefact and absorb the Weave inside. [...]Tav: What happens if you don't consume any artefact? Gale: Catastrophe. [...] Think of it as... tribute. The kind a king might pay to a more powerful neighbour to avoid invasion. As long as I pay there will be peace. But should I ever stop, along comes a war. I can assure the battlefield would extend well beyond the borders of my body alone. [...] I will consume the magic inside. What was a powerful artefact will be rendered no more than a trinket. But it will save my life- even if only temporarily.

Tav: That condition of yours is a very expensive one. Gale: I obtained it in Waterdeep. Nothing there comes cheap.

Artefacts scenes:

Gale: I can feel the storm abating. [...] I will feel it stir again – like a distant thunder sending tremors through the soul. I will need to consume another artefact before the lightning strikes. There's no choice but to find more. [...] It's good to perceive this constant fear repressed into a quiet scare. Let's hope it will last a good long while.

During Revelation scene:

Gale: The gist of it is that he sought to usurp the goddess of magic so that he could become a god himself. He almost managed but not quite, and his entire empire – Netheril – came crashing down around him as he turned to stone. The magic unleashed that day was phenomenal, rolling like the prime chaos that outdates creation. A fragment of it was caught and sealed away in a book. No ordinary book, mind you; a tome of gateways that contained within it a bubble of Astral Plane. It was a fragment of primal Weave locked out of time – locked away from Mystra herself. ‘What if’, the silly wizard thought. ‘What if after all this time, I could return this lost part of herself to the Goddess?”

Narrator: You feel the tadpole quiver as you realise Gale is letting you in. Into the dark. You see through Gale’s eyes, staring down the corridors of a dread memory. A book, bound, then suddenly opened. Inside there are no pages, only a swirling mass of blackest Weave that pounces. It’s teeth, it’s claws, it’s unstoppable as it digs through you and becomes part of you. And gods, is it ever hungry… [...] This Netherese taint.. this orb, for lack of a better word, is balled up inside my chest. And it needs to be fed. As long as it absorbs Weave it remains stable – to an extent. The moment it becomes unstable, however.. [...] It will erupt. I don’t know the exact magnitude of the eruption, but given my studies of Netherese magic, I’d say even a fragment as small as the one I carry…. It’d level a city the size of Waterdeep

Tav : I should godsdamned kill you GALE: Perhaps that is what I deserve, but you deserve no such thing. To kill me is to unleash the orb. 

So far, if we don't use the tadpole, we learn from Gale that he is unwillingly dangerous, there is an ancient magic stuck in his chest—acquired in Waterdeep—that he never could control and it inspires a dreadful state of mind (constant fear). It requires Weave to stay stable, and if it is not fed, a catastrophe will happen that will extend past his body. 

With the Tadpole we learn, in addition, part of the details we can learn during the revelation scene: it's a swirl of untamed/chaotic magic which is an ever-hungry "blackest weave". 

During the Revelation Scene all the information acquired by the tadpole intrusion is given, in addition to describing this mass of magic as an "orb" despite its inaccuracy. We also learn that killing Gale will only unleash the orb instead of putting an end to the problem. 

Gale said everything that is important related to the orb before the party scene, excluding only the personal information since he is a private person. This was exactly the boundary he set when he promised during the stew scene that he was going to explain the what, not the why. With the use of the tadpole we only learn details, simple extra descriptions; all information that Gale will willingly share during the revelation scene anyway.

We can learn a bit more of the “orb”'s function if we explore the goblin party. There, Gale explains part of the mechanism of the “orb” in a "poetic" way, that may or may not be taken exactly as such:

Gale: Two shadows are darkening my soul.The shadow within and the shadow without: you. You led me down this path. [...] I don't know myself anymore. All this... It's not who I am. Around you, I'm not who I want to be. I should leave. 

Tav: [Insight] Stay. We make each other stronger. We make each other survive. /OR/ [Deception] You don't stand a chance alone. You're free to go. I dare you. 

[Success][DC15] Gale: [...]. Few things are more powerful than the will to live. But carnage such as this.... the shadow within is spreading like poison, corrupting kindness and compassion. [...]. Tonight I need to wash my hands of blood and my mind of shattering memories. 

This shows that when playing an Evil Tav who sides with the Goblins, we have an extra description for this “orb”. Again, I ponder every bit of information with its context: Gale is a poet, and he tends to speak with metaphors specially when it comes to emotional painful states of mind or when it comes to the “orb” (which puts him in a very emotional state that even the tadpole doesn't), so these lines can perfectly be understood as a poetic way to describe his deep regret for participating in massacring the Tieflings. However, there is this detail that I can't overlook: the shadow within, understood as the blackest Weave, is spreading across his body, corrupting his good essence. As we saw in the post of "Extensive list of Gale's approvals", compassion and kindness are key elements in Gale's personality. This scene shows a potential that is not explored in EA: the “orb” seems to set a path in which it will corrupt Gale. 

Now this could be considered as a potential beginning of a shift of alignment, but it goes against what Sven said several times in interviews and presentations: he stated that they were not considering to change alignments in the companions (if you can imagine all the extra branches that it opens up, it makes sense not to allow it given the already colossal proportions of the game), so it's hard to suspect how Gale would evolve from here, or if this situation will give him reasons to attempt to kill this Evil Tav eventually (which is my personal guess). Sven suggested many times that companions could potentially kill Tav or other companions during their sleep. We saw this happening in EA with Astarion. Using datamining content, we saw the same with Lae'Zel and Shadowheart. I don't see why not to give in-character reasons to make this mechanism work with Gale as well.

As an extra (datamining) detail, we have Ethel's vicious mockery line emphasising the concept of "the shadow within":

Ethel: I can smell what's under those bandages wizard, you're all rot and ruin.

Putting aside the unnerving detail that Gale's concept art has bandages on one of his hands while the game is oblivious to this, the idea of Gale's “orb” as a source of rot and ruin, in combination with that necrotic aura when he dies, gives us a sure idea that there is a “disease” spreading in Gale's body as a consequence of this blackest weave stuck in his chest.

All the in-game information was presented, so now let's drag conclusions: Comparing all the information extracted from the scenes, we can now consider how much potential has the lore object named before:

Shadow Weave: Could Gale's “orb” be a fragment of Shadow Weave?

Strengths of the argument: Gale's “orb” is described as "blackest weave". It could barely be a hint, even though the Shadow weave has no canon colour nor physical description in the corebooks. So this is a very weak strength.

Weaknesses of the argument: Shadow Weave doesn't feed on Weave (this is a fallacy so far I've checked. It would make no sense to feed on the same object that it needs to exist.) Shadow Weave doesn't explode nor is chaotic. 

Death moon orb:

Strengths: It's called an "orb". And it was made by a netherese arcanist, so it must contain “netherese magic”.

Weaknesses: This object was destroyed during the Spellplague. It's a physical orb which changes size, but it's not an "amorphous mass" of magic. It doesn't consume Weave.

Netherese Orb:

Strengths: It's called an "orb". It's made of shadow magic (which is not netherse magic in corebooks but in game Ethel used both denominations as synonymous). We know Shadovar are masters of Shadow Magic. Read more in the post "The Netherese in 1492DR".

Weaknesses: This object doesn't appear in the corebooks. It's used for communication. It doesn't seem to have any explosive properties nor consumes Weave.

Devastation orb:

Strengths: It's called an "orb". They explode with the intensity to destroy a city. 

Weaknesses: It's made of elemental magic (not netherese magic). It's a solid object, a bomb (not an amorphous mass). It doesn't consume weave.

Personal speculation

I don't think any of these canon objects are or inspired Gale's “orb”. If we take the descriptions in-game as they are, and considering the importance that Karsus and his folly have been given in the whole game (to the point that Larian added ingame books explaining part of it) I support two hypothesis that, by now, they must be obvious for lorists since I want to work with what the game (and datamining) gives me: 

1- The concept that this is a piece of corrupted Weave that Karsus' Avatar allowed to have access to when he disrupted the Weave. Gale calls it “primal weave” as well, which is a concept that doesn't exist so far in the corebooks, and one could relate, very barely, with raw magic. Maybe.

2- Heavy magic (key concept during 2e)

To understand this we need MORE lore (I know, this has no end; this is why I think a lot of misunderstandings with Gale’s character come from the big holes of lore that EA leaves, which is obvious, it's EA) So, allow me to clear out the concepts: 

Karsus' Avatar is the name of the spell that caused Karsus' folly and made him a god for just an ephemeral moment. The notes regarding the spell’s essence were nowhere to be found. It’s believed that Mystra, the reincarnated form of Mystryl, snatched the spell information from the ruins of Karsus’s enclave and sent it “on an eternal journey to the ends of the universe” (who knows what this means). Besides, as if this were not enough precaution, Mystra changed the rules of magic on the material plane making it impossible to cast spells over 10th level. Karsus' Avatar was a 12th level spell.

Raw Magic is “the stuff of creation, the mute and mindless will of existence, permeating every bit of matter and present in every manifestation of energy throughout the multiverse. Mortals can't directly shape this raw magic. Instead, they make use of a fabric of magic, a kind of interface between the will of a spellcaster and the stuff of raw magic. The spellcasters of the Forgotten Realms call it the Weave and recognize its essence as the goddess Mystra.” [Player's Handbook 5e]

The creation of the Weave allowed all mortals to have access to magic through study. The Weave works like a barrier and an interpreter to use the real source of magic: Raw Magic. For more information on this, check the wiki (otherwise each of these posts will be mini books of lore). Few mortals can tap magic from the raw magic. Spells like silver fire are part of the raw magic. Some wild mages can tap into it as well, but at the cost of making their spells very random. Only Weave-disruptive events can allow an uncontrolled influx of raw magic into the world (which can be considered what happened during Karsus' folly)

Mythalars are immense artefacts that work like intermediates of the Raw Magic. They don't use the Weave, they have direct access to Raw Magic and were used to power up magical artefacts around them (thanks to these objects the Netheril cities floated in the air). Touching a mythalar causes instant death since Raw magic is harmful for most mortals.

So the first hypothesis (corrupted Weave) means that when Karsus cast this spell and became the Weave itself for a brief moment, he may have access to Raw magic directly. His spell Karsus' avatar started using common Weave, but in the second he connected deeply with the Weave and with Mystryl's powers, he had access to Raw magic as a god. His spell may have changed the source of its power from the Weave to Raw Magic, adding the latter's randomness and chaos to the spell itself and therefore, corrupting the Weave. The transition, so violent like the whole event, may have corrupted part of the Weave that was being used while casting the spell. According to Gale's description, the “orb” stuck in his chest is a piece of Weave with the active effect of Karsus' Avatar (the spell), but the Narrator gives us the extra information that it's corrupted. Apparently Gale never realised this object was corrupted, or may have known it and he tried to cleanse it so he could return it to Mystra. Either way, the source of the corruption may have been the sudden transition to Raw Magic during the casting. My main problem with this hypothesis is how a spell can be stuck in a piece of Weave, since Gale's “orb” maintains Karsus's avatar's effect. 

On one hand, Karsus' Avatar main effect is “to absorb god-like powers”. In that moment of history, this spell was aimed at Mystryl, and therefore to the Weave. The disruption of the event “stuck” the effect of “absorbing weave” in a piece of Weave, while the chaotic nature of this “orb” could be attributed to the direct presence of Raw Magic, also stuck in it. Now, another weakness of this hypothesis is that nothing of this causes a "corruption disease" as Gale implies it (we only know that the failure of the spell turned Karsus into stone). So we don't have a good argument for this effect beyond the one “I believe that since the moment was disruptive, it must have corrupted something, and that corruption is quite unhealthy in a mortal body”. Which it's not of my liking, but this is what we get up to this point in EA.

The second hypothesis I talked about is another lore concept intimately related to Karsus in 2e: Heavy Magic (which I personally prefer over the first hypothesis). 

Heavy magic is physical, tangible magic, usually presented as a viscous mass of chaotic nature. It can crawl, entering into cracks of a wall or a body, for example. Karsus created a distilled version of this magic called super heavy magic, and experimented with people. The subject eating a bit of this magic will have heavy magic spread on all the inner walls of their body and will kill them (it's not a disease, but it spreads inside and kills). The usual effect of the stable super heavy magic was to magnify the powers of a spell or enchantment (it allowed spells to be stuck in it), however it could be used for everything. 

Karsus used this element to enhance enchantments on walls, for example projecting illusions endlessly. This means that this product has the ability of keeping a spell functioning in it (as we see that this black weave keeps the function of the Karsus' avatar). [Dangerous Games, 2e]

Naturally, heavy magic absorbs life energies (maybe another characteristic fitting the concept of disease and necrotic effects). There is an event (2e) related to this aspect in which the renegade arcanist Wulgreth became a lich after heavy magic overflew him [Power and Pantheons, 2e]

As it is easy to see, this concept shares a lot of similarities with the object stuck in Gale's chest. But there is still more:

In the novel Dangerous Games (2e), strongly focused on how Karsus experimented with Heavy Magic, it is explicitly said that Karsus infused himself with super heavy magic before casting Karsus' avatar (probably to magnify the spell power but we also know that heavy magic can get spells stuck in it). He grew taller, and glowed in a white-silver radiance. Babbling arcane chants, the super heavy magic raged within him until he came into a state of being between a man and deity. Then it followed his folly. Karsus “died”, turning his body into red-hued stone, bound in eternal torment to relieve repeatedly the moment he became aware of his folly. 

So there exists a chance that a pieces of super heavy magic (in which Karsus was infused when all this happened) may have kept Karsus' Avatar effect stuck in them. One of these pieces could have been recovered later around the red stone where Karsus is now. This could potentially be the object or, at least, in what it had inspired Gale's “orb”. It's also worth noticing that one of the main characters in this novel Dangerous Games was looking for ways to safely contain heavy magic and avoid its damaging effect, so there is extra lore information about vessels that could justify the sealed book that Gale found in Waterdeep. 

As an extra detail on this matter, we know that the runes of teleportation may have been made with heavy magic: "Gale: See that rune? Netherese, I think. Weave's so thick on it, it's almost viscous." 

Since Gale is calling "Weave" to the element attached to the teleport runes, it makes me wonder if this was a slight variation that Larian made of the canon concept of Heavy Magic to not add new concepts to the already complex world of Forgotten Realms. Maybe, in the end, both hypotheses are the same: the second one is strictly more canon-related than the first one, which is more or less the same but simplified in terms and concepts. 

As a last conclusion from my personal point of view, I see no much sense in calling this thing “orb”. In game it's clearly described as an amorphous black mass, not an orb. And it made me remember Gale's original description, when the EA was not released yet: it's the only way where I can see its nonsensical origin, which was done in a completely different context. 

Gale has one ambition: to become the greatest wizard Faerûn has ever known. Yet his thirst for magic led to disaster. A Netherese Destruction Orb beats in his chest, counting down to an explosion that can level a city. Gale is confident he'll overcome it, but time is not on his side.

After the game was released in EA, Gale's description changed radically, and therefore his current description has a different approach entirely, removing the concept of "orb" for what we know in the game: “ancient chaotic magic”. 

Wizard prodigy: Gale is a wizard prodigy whose love for a goddess made him attempt a dread feat no mortal should. Blighted by the forbidden magic of ancient Netheril, Gale strives to undo the corruption that is overtaking him and win back his goddess’ favour before he becomes a destroyer of worlds.

This is one of the many details that make me believe that Gale's original concept/character was changed significantly before the EA release. But this is a mere personal speculation. For more details on netherese magic, read the post of "The Netherese in 1492DR".

Source: 

2nd edition: Powers and Pantheons, Netheril: Empire of Magic, Dangerous Games by Emery Clayton. 3rd Edition: Faith and Pantheon, Magic of Faerûn 4th edition Player's Handbook 5th edition: Player's Handbook, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide

This post was written in May 2021. → For more Gale: Analysis Series Index

[chrysalispen]

pursuit/predation (zenoswol)

This was a lot of fun LMAO I hope you all enjoy reading as much as i did writing it! Commission for @noxi-lumi featuring their WoL, Raziela Undeni <3

NSFW under cut. CW for mildly violent imagery (it is Zenos, after all).

======

Two and a half fulms below the angled opening of his makeshift bolthole, Zenos yae Galvus peered up at the sky with a borrowed face to watch the storm that had raged for two days. The levin-aspected aether in the northern hinterlands of Gyr Abania often lent itself to violent thunderstorms, with static bursts that rendered the escarpment too hazardous to cross. There were waypoints in the mountains to seek shelter from the weather but he had eschewed them, thinking that the fewer encounters to detain (and bore) him, the better. 

He had ever chafed at forced inactivity, but all in all, Zenos reasoned, this was but a temporary setback. Man was a beast bred for hunting, a pursuit predator, and he was nothing if not the pinnacle of that ideal. He would do as his ancient ancestors had done: bide his time and await his next opportunity. Once the storm had spent itself, he could go.

He whistled the opening bars of a parade ground march under his breath - a low and toneless sound like loch winds moaning around the corners of sandstone - and let his eyes fall shut.

Seconds and minutes passed as an age. Bereft of aught else to entertain him, his thoughts turned to his memories of the Eorzeans’ champion: that wild creature of sword and spell. Eikon-slayer. Saviour of the savages, so-called. Epithets overheard from idle barracks' chatter, although Zenos set little stock in the distinction between his own kind and the rest of the world as others did. Garleans bled the same, quailed in fear the same, and died screaming the same as any savage, and she had long since proven her mettle to his satisfaction. She strode the world as he did, towering above her fellows, a beast without peer. 

He still recalled with crystal clarity the day they had met. Then he had barely paid mind to her paltry attempts to halt his advance; countless enemies had attacked him out of fear or desperation to stave off the inevitable, after all. Even so, he had seen neither of those things in their hero's magenta eyes. A grim sort of determination, to be sure; the steely resolve he would expect of one well-versed in the path he walked himself- but no fear. 

There had been another emotion which he still couldn’t quite define, the faintest flicker of something. Curiosity, mayhap. His own exultation in the heat of the fight, mirrored in her mien. A reflection of himself, some alternate path he had never chanced to walk. 

Whatever it was he had seen that day, it had moved him to spare her life. 

And how right he had been to do it. She was worth a score of tribunes on her own-- fivescore, if the truth be told. Had she agreed to his proposal, or had he kept his word rather than indulge his lust for violence in that precise moment… 

How very different things might have been. 

Well, perhaps, he amended. They each had their parts to play. But upon the stage of his imaginings, anything was possible. There he could entertain to his heart’s content his fantasies of his friend returned to him, stronger still for her own tribulations. 

He meant to duel her again and had no doubt she would oblige him.  The prospect of it did not deter him; no, he yearned for the excitement of it. The surge of heat through the veins with each perfectly executed step, air burning the throat and whistling in the lungs, the ever-present specter of death looming over one’s shoulder-- what was violence, in truth, but a dance? Were not those dances with the most precarious, most intricate of steps best enjoyed with a partner of comparable skill? 

In the end that was what he had seen in her: a worthy partner, at long last. Whether to stand at his side or to test her blade against his, he would accept both, but to fight his most precious friend once more, to recapture that kindled flame-- that would be a fine thing.

Oh yes, that would be quite fine indeed.

Remembered delight shuddered its way across the surface of his skin, a delicious and almost delicate frisson that bored its way down his spine to curl and tighten in the pit of his belly. Zenos was no stranger to lust; since his majority plenty of his lessers had used their bodies to curry his favor for some petty reason or other, with naught in their hearts save ambition and fear. Carnal knowledge was both prosaic and vulgar, rutting the sole province of mindless beasts, and it had not taken him long to decide that such matters held little of interest or value to him. 

But this sweet and languorous warmth, like honey in a well-steeped tea-- he realized that he did not mind it so very much. It reminded him of the menagerie, and his last sight of her before he had opened his own throat and bled out into the flowers. Joy, pure and transcendent. 

Yes, he decided; this pleased him.

With a soft grunt Zenos shifted his hips. The motion left him keenly aware of the physical evidence of his arousal against the mild rise below his navel, where it strained against twin cages of cloth and leather for freedom. That spreading ache was not a sensation entirely alien to him, but it did strike him strange how very aware it made him of this borrowed body on such a base level. Heat and hyperawareness punctured the fine invisible layers of his detachment with the pinpoint precision of a sewing needle through linen.

His eyes fell shut once more in a series of slow and lazy blinks: a contented feline drowsing atop a fresh kill. 

He settled one hand over the seam of his breeches where the fabric was pulling taut and palmed himself, running his fingers lazily along the firm ridge his cock had formed beneath the thick weave. If he paid heed only to those slow and teasing strokes, he could convince himself that it was her, touching him so intimately---her hand dragging those sharp and immaculate nails he had glimpsed up and down his length. Scratching their points with calculated ease along the underside of his shaft, applying just enough pressure through the fabric to leave tiny trails of fire in their wake. 

A soft groan rumbled deep in his chest, and Zenos tilted his chin back so as to rest his head against the rock, thighs spreading to accommodate his girth. What would she do, he mused, should she chance to see him caught in the web of his own desire? Driven to distraction by the mere thought of her, the very picture of the animal in full rut which he had so scorned? 

The irony of it would amuse her, he had no doubt about that. Perhaps she might grin at the spectacle. 

Perhaps she would even laugh. He presumed to imagine it, a sight and sound he had yet to experience. A wicked, throaty peal of mirth. The toss of short sable locks, the tilt and swivel of long tufted ears, the stretch of her long and graceful neck as she tossed her chin. Grinned at him, feral and dark, that smile he so loved to see before her inevitable riposte. 

Savagery to rival his own, swathed in leather and crimson.

So thinking, Zenos’ fingers drifted upward of their own accord, straying from the insistent need betwixt his opened thighs to work at the waistband of his breeches instead. 

Lashes fluttered like a courtesan’s fan at the edges of angular cheekbones, suffused with color and dewy with a light band of sweat despite the chill within his shelter. In his mind’s eye, she straddled him as her clever fingers worked the buttons and laces that bound him fast, impatient to pluck her prize from its confines. He fancied he could feel the contained heat of her core against his leg even through the barrier of her smalls, burning as though the sun itself had branded him. 

When he raised himself to pull the offending fabric to his knees, it was she who closed her hand about his cock, grasping him just a touch too snugly. Her thumb stroked tiny circles over the foreskin as the shaft lunged eagerly within the cage of her palm; he could almost hear a hum of low-pitched approval. Each stroke she made eased the smooth, hot skin to retract and expose his crown: deeply flushed, its tip already glistening with precum. Zenos sighed, his borrowed body rocking upward to thrust into her hand, seeking friction to accompany that narrow squeeze. Anything would do, really. Except he needed--

Shallow breaths rasped unsteadily in the close space as he slicked his palm with his own saliva, grimaced, then took himself in hand once more. 

Wet heat and resistance alone nearly undid him. His startled inhalation made a sharp and rasping echo that he barely heard, lost as he was in his fantasy. She had shed her duelist’s garb, laid herself bare to embrace him with long and powerful thighs, like velvet-wrapped steel. He shuddered at the effort it took to control himself, to let gravity carry her down to sheathe him in her depths, to let her move atop him to counter his thrusts with her own: a beautiful beast with lips for kissing and teeth for tearing. She laid both to work upon his throat and his shoulders with each upward snap of his hips-- drank deep of him, and he of her, until his stomach ached from ribcage to groin with unrelieved tension. 

Violence in its own sense, he thought. A dance most intimate, and as real and as pure as the day they had parted.

“Yes, my beast,” he hissed aloud. The sibilant sound of his pleasure rose and reverberated around him, a chorus of empty whispers. “Just so.” His free hand fisted in a handful of loose gravel and his mouth fell slack and the spare limbs and lean angles of this unfamiliar vessel, all wrong, not his, arched like a bowstring. His heels dug into unyielding rock rather than bedsheets for purchase. Her fingers entwined with his, sharp nails grazing his knuckles, tiny cuts to blend with the myriad small scars left by 

(hunting. a pale silver-white web of scar tissue in the center of his left palm - his true vessel's left palm - where his fourteen-year-old self pierced it with a crystal. a parting gift to the first man he ever killed. its tendrils radiate outward between each of his fingers like the cracks made in a pane of shattered glass)

arrows and fletching. She was close; he fancied he could hear the labored rattle of her breathing with each small moan she made. Bracing her weight against his torso and balancing upon his thighs to bounce, sounds only he could hear tumbling from imaginary lips parted and glistening, her cunt flexing about him like a silken vise as she approached the edge of release and swept him along like an incoming tide--

--and the pressure in his groin dropped, at last, and when he spilled, his seed splashing over his frantically moving fist and locked fingers and onto the muscled slope of his exposed belly, it was her name which fell from his lips, not hero or beast but Raziela, Raziela.

Long moments passed before he opened his eyes, chest heaving and fingers numb and loosely wrapped about his spent cock, still pulsing beneath his touch. The syllables of her name seemed to echo in his ears, a mantra to recite to himself until he had locked it into his memory to recall at a whim. 

He waited in patient silence, willing his pulse to slow and his lungs to expand in an unhurried rise and fall. There was a low rumble from the opening of his shelter and after long moments, a flicker of lightning. The storm was passing and with it the levinstrikes. He would be able to move soon.

With movements as slow and languid as a sleepwalker’s, Zenos reached for the belt he had removed upon entering the cave and dug through its pockets until he found something that would serve as a washcloth. His gaze, as he wiped himself down and rearranged drab layers of linen and oilcloth into some semblance of order, was very far away, fixed upon the thinning clouds and the wheel of stars beyond. The moon hung low in the sky, bloated and orange.

I wonder where you are, my friend, he thought. If you have given thought to our meeting at all. 

“Raziela,” he whispered once more, as if testing the sensation of her name on his tongue. In the darkness of the cavern, his eyes glittered like a hungry cat’s.

It was only a matter of time before they were reunited; he would make certain of it. Once he had regained his true form, they would have their dance. A grand reunion upon a great stage, two stars to burn bright, and oh, there would be such a burning. To capture this bliss and relive it with her-- he would give anything in his power, and the very star itself would tremble at their union.

When he emerged from the cavern at last to clear skies and a still night, the moon hid its face behind a passing cloudbank like prey that had caught his scent. And within the bounds of his stolen vessel, Zenos yae Galvus smiled to see it.