#au;; Malevolence Absorber

[ofstarsandskies]

Magilou didn't object to his obtuse plan. Which is good as he didn't really have a better alternative as a malakless one quarter Chromatus user. Julius says it's good cause he'll live longer, but in terms of protecting himself and others with it, he's useless.

"Alright, let's do it!" Straightening out his knees, Ludger strode forward with... hardly any trouble at all. The tiny tremors from the dragon whipping around to catch whatever Victor's doing tests his balance a little bit, but otherwise they're a completely mobile unit!

"Sorry for the wait, Victor! What the pla--"

Ludger didn't have to finish his question as a black blur just narrowly avoided colliding into them as he flew into the building behind them. The impact leaves Victor on his knees gasping for breath, though Ludger can't tell what other injuries he might've suffered.

"Victor! Hold on, we're--!"

"Don't," Victor's order stops Ludger's advance. "Focus on the target."

As much as Ludger wanted to insist, he knows Victor'll protest if he acts against his wishes. The best he can do is grant Victor a moment to recover (although how he'd do that is a good question) by stalling their oversized foe. So... despite his feelings, Ludger nods and turns away to face the dragon.

The dragon recognizes it's been granted an opportunity to eliminate its main pursuer as it queues another malak arte as it stares at the fallen Victor. Even if his hands weren't occupied at the moment, Ludger couldn't trust he had the firepower to break its concentration. However, they might still have a way to help if he heard earlier right!

"Magilou, can you absorb the spell from here? Or do I need to get closer?"

Frankly, a part of her had expected that she might get left behind.

Velvet probably would have done that. Or maybe she wouldn't have. It was getting hard to focus with the pain, she had to admit. Still, Magilou tried to make herself stand all the same. No matter how stupid that idea was, it was one that wouldn't leave her.

Quickly enough, she became aware of a couple of things happening. Ludger rushing to her side, and Victor gallantly making himself a distraction. That... was far from what she had expected. Jokes on her for expecting, perhaps? Ah well, what times was there to think about these things? She allowed Ludger to help her and accepted the offered gels without question.

She munched on one, feeling the relief within moments while Ludger helped her onto his back. The plan sounded simple enough, even with her current state. Aim and fire while he ran. Then they'd combo it once she was back to full strength. She offered a shaky thumbs up and an equally shaky grin as she winked.

"I think I can manage that."

She held onto him as best as she could and prepared herself to fight. Hopefully this would be as easy as it sounded. If not? Well, that would make things more interesting.

"Ready... when you are!"

[ofstarsandskies]

ToB AU Skit -- A Real Drag(on)

Based on a thread I've got with @talesofourworlds where the trio fight a dragon. Little lore, Victor does know the Abbey's innards... from years ago. So his info's out of date (he has no idea Magilou left and thinks "Magilou" is an alias not to get hounded by passersby) and he's in no rush to fix it. Dragon killing doesn't care whether the Abbey exists or burns to the ground.

[madaqueue]

playlists

what a waste | "army dreamers" x kate bush

synopsis: on what would have been his twentieth birthday, you visit geto's grave

pairing: suguru geto x reader

themes/content: semi-canon curse au. angst. language. death/loss.

word count: 1.3k

a/n: here's some angst bc i've been in a mood for the past few days and am allergic to being happy!

The grass is damp under your skin, the rain from this morning clinging to your clothes, the smell of wet earth lingering despite the absence of clouds in the sky. This is the closest it’s gotten to raining on this day in years, what would be a sign of late winter opening into spring, but today it just feels dreary and cold.

Sighing, you place the bouquet of lilacs - his favorites - onto the stone, careful to not cover the plaque adorning the granite. At this point you could recite it in its entirety without needing to see it, the words burned into your mind from the countless days you spent reading and rereading it, hoping that the shape of the characters would finally make it sink in.

Suguru Geto

Cherished and loved.

The epitaph still feels halfhearted, empty. Even though you and Satoru spent weeks trying to figure out what to write, everything you came up with felt hollow, unable to capture his essence. You wanted to do him justice, but you just couldn’t; he’s more than a plot of land and some words engraved in stone.

Of course, it’s a moot point: the grave is empty, anyways. After the fight against Toji, Shoko had to completely destroy his body, the risk of it being used maliciously too great. A shudder runs down your spine as you picture it, the cruelty of using your best friend’s corpse for something malevolent.

Would he notice? Would it bother him to know what had happened to his flesh? What makes a person, anyways; is it the body, or is it something else? You hope he doesn’t mind what had to happen to him after his heart quieted and his breathing stilled.

Are you at peace, Suguru?

You can’t help but wonder if, after everything, death brought him a respite from the pain he endured while alive. You knew the nature of his cursed technique, the necessary consumption of evil; in absorbing it, did it make him, too, evil? Was he plagued by the darkness he was destined to destroy?

You hope not. Despite the wickedness he witnessed, he nevertheless dreamed, hoping for a brighter future.

–

“What did you wanna be when you were a kid?” you ask through a mouthful of ramen.

Suguru sits across from you in the booth, forearms resting on the table as he eats his lunch. “What do you mean?” he questions, tilting his head ever so slightly.

“What did you want for a job? There’s no way you wanted to be a sorcerer,” you chuckle. “Like, I wanted to be one of those people who makes the cool brick patterns along sidewalks.”

He holds back a laugh at your answer. “I’m not sure, I don’t think I ever really thought about it.” He pauses, taking another bite of his food. “But I guess if I had to pick, probably a musician or something, maybe guitar, I always liked how they could make something sound beautiful with just their hands,” he muses softly.

“I could totally see you on a sick guitar,” you grin.

“Yeah, but I got my cursed technique too early. I never really got a chance to do anything but this,” he shrugs. “Maybe in another life.”

“Maybe,” you smile.

–

Now, the guitar you picked out for him, an acoustic one crafted in dark wood, sits in the back of your closet collecting dust. You were supposed to give it to him for his birthday. He was supposed to play it. He was supposed to be here, be alive, be celebrating with you.

Pain shoots up your palm as you look down, realizing your hands have been clenched into fists, your nails beginning to draw blood. Shaking out your arms you take in an uneven breath, a desperate attempt to steady yourself.

All the things he never got to do.

“I’m sorry, Suguru,” you whisper to yourself, placing a bloodied hand over the grass covering his grave.

He should be here. He never even got to turn twenty, never got to have kids or the family he wanted, hell, he was just a kid himself when he died. Just a fucking kid.

–

“That…that can’t be right,” you stammer. “There’s no way.”

“I’m sorry,” Satoru places a hand on your back, tears slowly rolling down his cheeks. “I - fuck - I couldn’t save him. I was too late.”

“No, no, no, no,” you begin to spiral, gaze rapidly shifting over the ground as you process his words.

Suguru was dead. Killed by a man named Toji Fushiguro, trying to protect the Star Plasma Vessel, the one who was supposed to assimilate with Master Tengen.

“I don’t…I don’t know what happened,” Satoru chokes out, “But…I saw his body. He’s gone.”

A scream echoes down the corridor - was it yours? Everything feels far away as Gojo wraps his arms around you, sobs racking your body as you cry into one another.

–

Shaking your head, you wipe the tears that have begun to fall as you remember the day you lost him. Despite the years that have passed, you remember it like it was yesterday, the way the setting sun covered you and Satoru as the night air came in, unable to move from that spot as you wept together.

The sickest fucking part was that it didn’t even matter.

When Riko Amanai, the Vessel, was found dead, they just got a replacement, another body to stand in for Master Tengen’s needs. They told Suguru to protect her with his life and he did, but ultimately the loss of hers was inconsequential to the upkeep of Jujutsu society; just as one flower died they plucked another.

But they couldn’t regrow Suguru’s soul.

–

Four men.

That’s how many it took to carry his body from the basement of Jujutsu High. You watched in silence as they passed you, unspeaking, unwavering, unbothered as they bore his weight.

It feels wrong, somehow, like he should be heavier. He always had this gravitational pull, this universe-sized soul that drew everything to him - shouldn’t they be able to feel that?

How heavy is a body? How heavy is the grief it carries?

–

“Hey,” a voice pulls you back to the present, the sun beginning to hang low in the sky as you ground yourself, idly tugging at the dirt beneath you. “I’m glad to see you,” Satoru greets warmly as he walks across the graveyard towards you.

Since the last time you saw him he’s aged, the creases around his eyes deeper than a twenty-year-old’s should be, an air of sadness clinging to him like wet clothes after being caught in the rain.

“You too,” you smile as he sits next to you in the damp grass.

Neither of you explicitly make plans to see each other here every year, yet you both tacitly know you wouldn’t miss this, the annual reconvening one you simultaneously cherish and dread. Suguru deserves to be celebrated, but it’s also a reminder of the time he didn’t get, the birthdays cut short when his life was stolen from him.

The two of you sit in silence for a while, content without speaking as a cool breeze picks up, dusk settling in.

“He should be here,” Satoru mutters, his knees tucked up to his chest.

“I know,” you murmur as you lay on your back, gaze unfocused on the darkening sky above you.

Another momentary pause falls between you.

“Did you love him?” he asks.

“Yeah,” you answer truthfully. “Did you?”

“Yeah.”

You let out a shaky breath. “Satoru?”

“Mhm?”

“Do you think that was enough, that we loved him?”

He tilts his head to look down at the grave that separates you, the lilacs you brought now lightly covered in a layer of dew. Sighing, he brushes away the tears that had been forming along his lash line. “I hope so.”

“I hope so, too.”

He reaches an arm out to you, holding your hand in his as you both place your empty palms onto the dirt.

“Happy birthday, Suguru,” you whisper.

[dustcollectingbones]

Gentleman and Gentleladies, I have been blessed by a vision

I saw art of the if Sam got merged with the Archivist in the Hilltop rift and thought, “miserable British podcast boy merged with representative of a greater mysterious god, who is tied to eyes? Why that sounds familiar!”

So hear me out: in this au, the hilltop anomaly leads the to an alternate universe, in an old detective agency in Arkham, USA. Sam, now missing many memories and forcefully merged with the similarly amnesiac Archivist, appears in said detective agency, killing two detectives due to the Archivist lashing out.

Now stuck together, the two must navigate, with the Archivist as Sam’s eyes and Sam as the Archivist’s body, they uncover mysterious cults and monsters, following the trail of the two detectives. Eventually, they end up uncovering the underground city, before discovering that a cult has been attempting to pull the entities into this universe, rather than the Protocolverse, before they send our protagonists to the Archivesverse, mid-apocalypse.

This is where the pair uncover the true origins of the Archivist, attempting to reach the Hilltop anomaly again to return to their original universe, only to be defeated at the hands of a Eye avatar, the King in Yellow, who wishes to take control of the panopticon by absorbing (and therefore becoming) the Archivist. At their last knee, a powerful Web avatar, by the name of Kayne, grants them one last chance, offering to bring them back to the Malevolent universe, albeit several centuries into the past to retrieve the Blackstone for him, revealing that he had manipulated their journey from the start.

He had beckoned Arthur Lester and Peter Yang to build their detective agency at the Hilltop anomaly, he had pulled the strings (ha) to send Sam and the Archivist towards the Malevolent universe, he had strung (ha) them along so that they may form a bond and become prepared for the journey ahead of them.

What follows is roughly the same to Malevolents story, albeit with different main characters and slight different powers for John/the Archivist. Also in place of the Great Old Ones is the dread powers, their “foot in each universe” being the avatars.

[the-silver-chronicles]

WIP Wednesday + My OC as... & What Faerie Court Does Your OC Belong To? & What Does Your Soul Look Like?

Tagged by @g0dspeeed @voidika @socially-awkward-skeleton @deputy-morgan-malone @direwombat @adelaidedrubman and @onehornedbeast

Tagging @shallow-gravy @inafieldofdaisies @strangefable @strafethesesinners @josephslittledeputy @minilev @chazz-anova @cassietrn @snake-in-the-garden @corvosattano @ec-10 @deputyash @derelictheretic @henbased @jacobmybeloved @ladyoriza @nightbloodbix @vampireninjabunnies-blog @neverthesameneveranother @wrathfulrook @carlosoliveiraa @thewanderer-000 @softtidesworld @josephseedismyfather @skoll-sun-eater @vasiktomis and @afarcryfrommymain + anyone else who wants to join.

One WIP, two quizzes and a sharing visual stuff of Silva with the My OC as.... Here's the "What Faerie Court does your OC belong to?" Quiz and the "What does Does Your Soul Look Like?" Quiz.

Here's the WIP of that unnamed "Arranged Marriage" AU, with Silva agonizing over her life so far (after a shower no less) as she waits for Faith to come back with a dreadful wedding dress. Snippet below:

[Silva's] head in gloved hands, she fought the urge to grab a fistful of dark hair and rip it out. To scream and curse... at what? God? Her father? Joseph and the prophets before him who were too cowardly and self-absorbed in their own dead delusions to even try not to fuck someone's life over for once?

Or would she curse herself? For agreeing to this arrangement, despite how much she hates it? For hurting others with her very presence, being forced to wander in their vision even after taking the lives of loved ones, whose blood has since been washed off, but not the scars and lesions that are scattered over her damaged hands, a reminder of the lives she took? Curse herself for not putting her own needs, her desires, her hopes and dreams before others, just as Kamski insisted she do?

Silva didn't know. She didn't know what to do anymore. It was far beyond what she initially knew. Far from what she was taught in the Minas. Eden's Gate wasn't like Father's battalions of Enforcers, cruel and deplorable in their mission, nor were they like the Apostles, teaching malevolence and hidden in shadows.

Eden's Gate had a mission, one with the best of intentions, but were spreading terror in their methods, even if they seemed a bit remorseful, which doesn't change the fact they have ruined lives indefinitely, nor excuse the recruitment of psychopaths like the Cook.

It was uncanny just how much qualities about the Project that she could despise and how much she could differentiate it from the likes of her father's Enforcers. It didn't make it any better that Joseph and John seemed genuine in their desire to have her as apart of the family, even when her gut argues that it's nothing more than a ploy, a deception, with her stomach coiling in agreement, the very reminder that she'd be married to Jacob in the coming weeks making her nauseous again.

Despite the personal cost of her freedom, she had to do it, especially if it meant peace for the Resistance and the freedom of Hudson and Pratt... and Burke as well she guessed. She could also breath a little easier with the knowledge that she had forced Joseph to acknowledge that this marriage was, at best, a tactical ploy for peace, more-or-less, and convinced him to give not only his word that Jacob would not try anything of harmful or sexual nature towards her, but also had him forbid his older brother as "the Father" from even thinking to do such acts, or else she would not agree to anything more.

Silva knew from experience that a profeta's word was as reliable as a rickety old bridge worn down from age, but if he backed out on any of the agreements, not only would he face backlash from herself and the Resistance, but most likely a few of his own people as well.

It still didn't change the fact she was a prisoner here both presently and with the reminders of how guilty her own conscience really is.

She gave the Resistance a standing chance for freedom, however that is going, even if it meant she was restricted in her own.

Jannah, Elsa would be so disappointed in me. Worse then disappointed probably. She'd return from the ashes if she could, and then go on to berate Silva of not only her martyr tendencies, but also give her an earful for all the times Silva had told Elsa to keep track of her own well-being while being mindful of others.

How hypocritical of me.

Does that make me closer to Father than it does Paul now?

Silva wasn't sure how to answer that, but she couldn't blink the welling tears away, no matter how much ferocity she put in.

Here I am... on a bed in Faith's Gate... a prison in all but name, surrounded by people I have hurt in more ways than one... crying to myself... as I can do nothing for my friends and neighbours who I can't even communicate with, no less hear from... all the while I'm waiting on Faith to get me whatever wretched wedding dress the Seeds had stolen to have me wear... while in nothing but my undergarments and the thinnest bathrobe.

It may not be as rock bottom as walking in a blizzard barefoot in a shitty dress at 10-years-old while Enforcers searched for her across the bridge to the Minas, or sailing on a boat with little supplies, taking care of an infant barely two weeks old, and tending to an injured hermana after escaping a successful massacre on the one community she thought truly understood her. Nor was it like the day she returned to the county, into her resident home, without her hija in hand to carry to bed, and as if to kick her further, find out the legacy Elsa wanted to leave behind in the form of her floristry had been stolen away during Silva's absence. But it was still suffocating, and she couldn't help but mourn for the normalcy she almost regained.

Here's the results for the "What Faerie Court Does Your OC Belong To?" Quiz.

Elsa Omar (Far Cry The Silver Chronicles, The Harbinger's Salvation AU)

Yeah this describes Elsa. She generally doesn't take in account the feelings of others in canon nor in this AU. Elsa is very selfish, and only cares for the people closest in her family circle (mainly Silva, Persephone, & Ezekiel + Azriel and Mercy if she got to meet them), everyone else is a pawn to use and abuse for whatever means necessary, especially in The Harbinger's Salvation AU, where her older sister is under the control of the Apostles of Zachariah. Elsa is narcissistic and vain, as well as a compulsive liar to majority of people to boot. She has no problem enacting on every vice (smoking, drinking, screwing, etc) without shame, even if it is detrimental to her overall health and social apathy. Credit where credit is due, she's achieved sleeping with nearly everyone in the county, something even Adelaide hadn't achieved. But its the fact she's careless of everyone's feelings and also gives zero fucks about looking through peoples things to see what she can use for blackmail. She's absolutely NOT a good person, it just happens to be that her goals are either beneficial to others (her work with the Resistance in the AU even if she's not in it for their fight but more so her sisters' safety, having gathered enough evidence of Eden's Gate' crimes to send Joseph to prison for life to protect Silva and Persephone, etc) or even she has morals or ideals she wouldn't cross/adopt (absolutely knows for certain that Adam's Guard is not safe nor should be left to exist, wouldn't join the Apostles because of their habits to bring terror and death to others, and wouldn't join Eden's Gate because they restrict peoples' freedoms in what they want to do for their lives besides devote it to God which would be a very unhappy place for Silva and Azriel, etc) even if those are because it goes against her self-interests. Elsa is willing to take massive risks, which though can be dangerous, she's always confident of the rewards it brings. And just because her bones are brittle doesn't mean she's not willing to go down rough and dirty to win.

Now for the "What does your soul look like?" Quiz.

Azriel (Far Cry The Silver Chronicles, Wings And Horns original work)

I mean this pretty much describes Azriel. Neglected by her parents and then was almost killed by them as they tried to sacrifice her to prove themselves worthy of staying in Eden's Gate, was always shunned for her interests in technology and invention from within the project did not help her mentally. Nor did the isolation. Afraid everyone is out to get her, this 9-year-old puts up a ferocious front in order to at least look the part of scary. Which offputs people from her or undermine her with sympathy she doesn't understand nor want. She feels as if no one wants her, nor do they want to understand her, choosing how she should live her life. Well, at least until she meets Silva in a chance encounter that changes the fate of the county and Silva's role in the Reaping and the Collapse. The first time the Voice felt fear that day. And it wouldn't be the last time either.

Now for the "My OC as..." stuff. I tried to find a faceclaim that I thought was true to Silva. (RANT: I had to go to f***ing Quora for this. And I hate Quora with a burning passion. I still receive their emails to this day. No I don't want to know how to make a Spinach cake, I'm not interested in the quantum physics of a blackhole and no I don't want to be involved in the debate on whether its criminal to leave the toilet seat up, IT IS, debate over!). Anyway Silva's current faceclaim for the time being (or indefinite if I feel that "do you know what, this person is right for Silva") is actress Mina El Hammani. In order to use and create this template I used this trustworthy meme generator, who never disappoints me (unlike Quora).

Maybe I should make one of Paul one day. That would be interesting dissecting him like this.

[holly-fixation]

Everyone loves a good old fix-it AU, and in the case of Final Fantasy VII, it usually involves burning all the BAD things at Nibelheim: Jenova's body and Shinra Manor (at least the basement).

Though I am guilty of this same easy plot line, I cannot believe it to be true in universe. Fair warning, what follows is a break down of in game Canon, analysis, and my own headcanons on what would happen if Jenova's body burned.

In game canon:

Everything that lives and dies on the Planet returns to the planet. The Planet gives life to the next soul born. This keeps the Planet's circle of life rolling and the Lifestream strong. The Lifestream is every soul that has died on the planet, becoming this sort of consciousness soup as you see in the Who Am I sequence of FF7.

Why does this matter?

Every soul that dies on the Planet becomes one with the Planet. And this poses a problem when a malevolent alien lands on the surface.

In the videos Gast recorded in Icicle Village, Ifalna explains that Jenova spread a virus and that the Planet would never be able to fully heal itself as long as it exists. The surviving Cetra "defeated" and "confined" Jenova to the Northern Crater/Cave. And despite its confinement, "it could still come back to life at some time."

In the game, Sephiroth's goal is to become a god by summoning meteor, which would force all the planet's energy (the Lifestream) to one place for him to absorb.

Adding just a little bit of content from Advent Children: Geostigma, the virus that spreads S cells, is assumed to be connected with close and long proximity to mako. Mako is refined Lifestream for energy generation. Sephiroth is dead at this point.

Also, Sephiroth's plan in Advent Children: "The last thoughts of geostigma’s dead. Those Remnants will join the Lifestream and girdle the planet – choking it, corroding it."

Analysis/My head canon:

Defeated and confined do not mean killed. "It can come back to life" can easily mean "it can regain control of itself". Think about cryo-stasis where a body and (hopfully) a mind can be kept suspended with minimal aging usually up to a certain point, say waiting for a cure to be discovered for a person's terminal illness (yes I am using Mr. Freeze's wife as my example but hear me out). What I'm saying is, Jenova's probably not DEAD dead at the Northern Crater.

The Cetra probably were probably warned by the Planet that if Jenova were to die, it's virus would enter the Planet/Lifestream itself (like Geostigma). So my conclusion has always been, (even from my first play through of the game when I didn't even know about the scenes with Gast and Ifalna or the movie), Jenova is alive from the moment she landed on the Planet. In stasis? Yes. Mobile? Hell no. Psychologically active? No in game evidence and though I do love the idea, (this will does not apply in this post though).

So long story long, Jenova's burned body may lead to early Geostigma/Jenoav's specific virus and rotting of the planet from the inside out. It may accelerate Jenova's plans instead of halting them indefinitely. And God forbid whoever in the fix it burns the body also throws her remains into the mako below, she might rebuild her body using the Lifestream itself. After all, Sephiroth wanted to absorb the Lifestream to become a God. Why wouldn't Jenova be able to do the same?

Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[deusvervewrites]

Heroic Cultivation AU: So I was reading through this and saw your mentioning about being unsure if AfO would go through with any of the cultivation stuff because he's lazy as heck. I also saw you mention that you weren't too familiar with xianxia stuff. To be clear, the first point is true and the second is fine, but I know a little bit and wanted to add in because I think AfO going demonic cultivator could in fact work. If you already know this, then sorry for bothering you with the long message.

So to start, in most xianxia there's standard cultivation as theory, which is the whole philosophy-and-slow-meditation-self-reflection-and-growth path to immortality. This tends to exist as the background foundation of How Cultivation Is Supposed To Work. Then there's cultivation as practiced, which is borne of cultivators (and xianxia authors) looking at that theory and going "man, that's gonna take so long to get me immortality and ultimate power, and it's gonna be so boring just sitting around meditating to get there instead of doing anything... what if instead I took some really good drugs to get high as a kite, dosed myself with steroids on top of that, and did some nice feng shui in order to cut that down? Couple decades, maybe a few centuries tops, instead of taking thousands of years or something. Yeah, that sounds good." This both feels more proactive, even if it's against the strict spirit of things, and it lets the xianxia author have the characters actively doing stuff with arrogant characters competing for the best resources to ascend or what-have-you to provide conflict. It also dodges out having prolonged sessions of meditating in a cave for power being something other than a background aspect - there will be characters doing it, but unless they're strong enough to astral project or something then odds are you won't have those characters really involved in the plot actively because they're spending 99% of their time, well, in a cave. So already we're more in AfO's lane of finding shortcuts to save time and effort on the road to power.

Then there's demonic cultivation. Now, exactly what demonic cultivation actually means isn't the most well-defined beyond the association with demons and badness, I don't think all xianxia stories even have it as a distinct thing, but if present it'll usually be considered a cheat and power shortcut even compared to normal-cultivation-as-practiced. Practitioners of demonic cultivation will be making deals with demons if demons actually exist and are sentient and communicative in the setting, stealing artifacts of malevolent and cursed power and the REALLY wild drugs, stealing power from others by draining their life force and using their bodies as grisly ritual components, reanimate corpses, backstabbing allies, re-absorbing the passive malevolence and resentment generated by their evil deeds in a downward spiral of cruelty and power, and generally just doing Very Bad Things to get power even faster. If the story's protagonist is a normal cultivator of some stripe then the demonic cultivator is a convenient enemy, whose path to power provides easy moral superiority and maybe a message about seeking strength "The Right Way". If the protagonist is a demonic cultivator then they probably won't engage in the more morally repugnant possibilities (except maybe against "deserving targets," maybe - the morality can sometimes get kind of protagonist-centric, who'd have thunk it), they'll probably be motivated by revenge against a cultivator who is still considered "righteous" despite however the protagonist feels wronged, and there may be some flavoring of calling out how in practice normal cultivators still commit violence against others to hurry toward power and the demonic cultivator is only a problem for using unapproved methods. (How well that lands does require interrogating what the story's version of demonic cultivation actually is, of course. Just redirecting existing bad juju energy to achieve good deeds? There may be a point there. Running the Orphan Juicero 5000 to get the power to conquer an empire? Hold on a minute, there.)

The thing is, especially noticeable as this was being typed out, a lot of those things are pretty similar to stuff AfO is already doing. Reanimating corpses and creating minions from what's left from others? Hello Nomu. Reveling in the cruelty of his actions? You bet. Stealing power from others to get stronger, faster? Heck, that's his whole Quirk right there. All that needs to change is for him to learn enough about cultivation to do that in the direction of cultivation, instead of just Quirks and mundane society. I'm imagining a realization something like this:

AfO: "So I could try engaging in slow and inactive self-reflection to access that brat's power. Cringe."

AfO: "Or I could rearrange the furniture in here and take some good weed to hurry that along. Still too slow."

AfO: "Or I could go all in on this Demon King thing, drink the Airport Cultivator Jungle Juice, get gruesome with it, and really start cooking with gas."

AfO: "Yes, that's what I'll do. Garaki, make preparations for my new path to ascension."

Garaki, who's been spending the last three days frantically going through whatever sources on cultivation and cultivation manuals he can patch together without rest because he majored in Mad Science not Cultivation and all this is horribly documented nowadays, and AfO certainly isn't going to do the esoteric research himself: "Of course, sir."

My knowledge of Cultivation is in a weird spot because I knew about the Orphan Juicer 5000 in theory but I don't know how authors have put it into practice and how many centuries it shaves off of a Cultivator's training program, so all of this is quite fascinating

[late-to-the-magnus-archives]

Yellow City, Chapter 15 - a Malevolent AU

This happened sometimes, when Parker was working on more than one case. He got so focused on the one in front of him that the other seemed to solve itself. That the other, in fact, fit together like puzzle pieces, and he just hadn't noticed.

Chapter fifteen of Yellow City. Note: this chapter is not explicit, but the fic is.

AO3

-----------

Parker hadn’t really spent much time in places with lots of books. He still recognized the smell.

Weird.

His nerves still buzzed, a deeply unpleasant echo of something bad, but he didn’t feel sick, didn’t feel infected, and the horrible sense (familiar, hated) of his own body putrefying was gone.

Even weirder. He managed to open his glued-shut eyes.

Huh. Some room he’d never seen in his life. Human-sized bed (funny how tiny that felt after all this time). A door. A little dresser. A table by his bedside with a sandwich and a glass of… was that milk?

Tucked just underneath the sandwich’s plate lay a neatly folded piece of paper.

Welcome back, Mister Yang. You are in the Scriptorium. Tabby healed you, and I left you some food on the table. There are fresh clothes in the dresser; I had to guess at your personal style. Please, help yourself. Call out to me when you would like to talk. —The Keeper 

Huh.

Huh.

Being awake and alive was weird enough. Why’d she do all that?

Wouldn’t be the first god who’d done something unasked-for. The Defiler did it to obligate him. Hastur did it to please Arthur. The fuck was this for?

Parker searched his memory. He couldn’t think of anything he’d done that might prompt all… this.

And he knew the feeling of what he’d been hit with. Knew what The Defiler had used. That spell was horrifying, and Y’golonac had never even bothered to clean up after attacking with it, but just rotted Parker to the bone and then dragged him back again from the dead.

Had he died? The note didn’t say he’d died.

Parker salivated. The sandwich looked good. Milk, too. “Fuck it,” he said, and ate. While he did, he studied the note. Yeah… yeah. He wouldn’t like to talk yet. Getting dressed held more appeal.

The clothes—dear gods, clothes. Actual pants. A shirt. Socks. Socks! He almost moaned as he pulled it all on. She’d even included boxers.

For a moment, fully clothed, he lay back on the bed and stretched, just feeling it all and absolutely relishing it. This was nice. Even if it didn’t last, it was nice.

He still didn’t want to talk. Maybe after he got eyes on the place. Yeah.

Arthur’s description of the Lady’s home had made no damn sense. Sounded like black cobwebs the size of buildings all along the walls, and coffin-bookcases, and about six hundred arms reaching around corners. Couldn’t be like that.

Moving very quietly, Parker opened the door and peeked out.

So the good news was it wasn’t a trick, and not Y’golonac’s palace. The bad news was it didn’t look too far off from what Arthur described.

Dark. Kind of drapey. Light way up high, like moonlight peeking through windows too inset to see. Enormous, still shapes that maybe were coffin-bookcases, though coffins for what, he didn’t know. Sure looked to him like a few Hasturs could stand in those things, one on top of the other.

Right. So it was back into the nice, cozy room… or learning the truth of this place.

He was an investigator. He stepped out of the room and quietly closed the door.

It wasn’t quite as dark as Arthur had said, at least. There was a rug under his feet, absorbing sound. He kept to the wall, counting steps. No one bothered him. No acolytes, no guards, no servants. Hastur didn’t have any, either, but this was so much bigger than his temple. Parker could feel it.

He couldn’t resist getting over to one of those coffin-shelves to see what he could see. Books. Just books? None in any language he knew. The letters weren’t even ones he recognized half the time.

They weren’t in the condition Arthur had described, though. Dusty, sure; but Arthur had made it sound like they were water-logged, burned, and ruined.

They were fascinating. He’d honestly never imagined so many books. He wondered what they said. 

He wondered if “Keeper” meant “keeper of books.”

He put the book carefully back and continued exploring.

How the fuck big was this place? A tiny child-like part of him wanted to shout and hear the echoes.

A light ahead. Warm. Flickering firelight, humanly comforting.

Well, that was obviously where they were. And there was no way they didn’t know where he was. Fuck it. Nothing to lose today. “Lady!” he shouted, louder than needed, so he could hear the echoes and get her attention at the same time.

“Hello, Mister Yang.” Her voice was huge in this space, like it was coming from the walls, the ceiling, all around him. “How are you feeling?”

His echo was good. Hers was better. “Okay,” he said, which didn’t mean much, but he wasn’t great with words. “Uh. You?”

“Tabby is safe, my guest has regained his consciousness and his health, and I am well. Thank you.” She let out a low, soft chuckle. “Are you still hungry? I assumed you would prefer me not to hover, so I left something that wouldn’t spoil. Except the milk, I suppose, but I did a tiny enchantment on the glass to keep it cold.”

Was she checking to see how he valued it? What he’d trade for more? “It was good.  Milk was good, too. Haven’t had that in a while. So what do I owe you?” Might as well get to it.

“It was complimentary. I view it to be poor form to charge a guest who had no choice in his visit.” She let out a rumble that he more felt than heard, but it wasn’t a bad noise. “I appreciated your efforts, you know. It was very kind of you, particularly since we had just met.”

Sure. He wasn’t buying this. Why not say it? He’d already faced down one god today. “You’re a god. This shit’s always transactional. You don’t gotta schmooze me.”

“I find transactional relationships distasteful, Mister Yang. Whenever possible, I prefer to avoid them.” She let out a sigh. “I do not need humans the way my cousins do. I like humans, make no mistake; I would not have gotten involved if I did not, regardless of how nicely Arthur Lester asked me. But I need no gratitude from you.”

Okay. There was much to untangle there. Parker chose what thread to pull. “They need humans?”

“Correct.” A creak, and a bookshelf shifted near him, and a long, multi-jointed arm clad in black silk and a lace glove ( holy fuck ) picked through the books and pulled one off the shelf. “The Great Old Ones and the lesser gods are part of the same cosmic ecosystem that humans are. As humans grow, and flourish, and multiply, you create billions of little moments of magic and choice and tenacity; and these are the building blocks of what the Dreamlands used to be.”  

More clues, falling into place. “Sounds like we need each other.”

Another hand folded down from the ceiling, impossibly high, and opened the book; inside, a portrait of a tentacled horror and a human interfacing in what looked like worship decorated the page. “We do. In return for what humans create, we gods help form the world you live in, both metaphysically and literally. We take the threads of reality that Yog-Sothoth wove when he created matter and space and time, and make them habitable. Some are deities of life and growth, like the Great Mother, Shub-Niggurath. Some, like a certain bastard who deserves no further mention, are deities of rot and death. And there are others; deities of music and madness, like Hastur, deities of fire or magic or knowledge or any number of other things. In times before, we co-existed, barely registering one another save for the machinations of certain sects. The Dreamlands was self-sustaining with its own discrete populations of humans, not to mention the incredible variety of minor gods and demigods and half-humans, and all of them a font of creativity, of magic, of will that shaped the Dreamlands and kept it mostly stable, and beautiful, and constantly fueled when a human from one of the other worlds dreamed something totally new into existence.”

Did she always share so much? Was like a year of classes in here. “It ain’t like that now,” he said. “Gods’ve died. I’ve seen the pieces the witches collected. I’ve seen the busted statues in that Contract pavilion. And people… there’s a lot fewer of them, too. So the balance is off, and not just in the Dreamlands.”

“You’re quite discerning,” she said. “The Fires of Y… I don’t know that I can properly express the amount of blood spilled, Mister Yang.” She sighed, heavy. “The ones who died when the bombs fell were lucky; their death was instantaneous. The ones who did not fell to a slower, crueler fate; starvation, disease, their bones decaying within their body from the radiation—think of it like a kind of magic that damaged the fundamental building blocks of your body. And by the time any of us knew about it, it had happened, and…”

She let the word trail off and it was like the spare light in the Scriptorium dimmed, like the bookcases hunched over him. One of the hands, a left one, sagged. There was a ring on it; on its left ring finger, a glittering red jewel set into the silvery band.

“They are lucky the witches begged Shub-Niggurath to intervene. She is the most powerful of us, at least the only one who is willing and able to help; she was able to stop the complete destruction of humanity. But I imagine you know that story already.”

Parker exhaled slowly. “Some of it. Asenath said there were lots of worlds. That somehow this fucking… fire happened in all of them at the same time. That true, too?”

“It is true.” The bookcase shifted again, fanning out, and the ring-bearing hand began to poke through the titles. “When the Dreamlands were still whole, my Scriptorium was based in a place called Leng. It was a crossroad for many worlds, chaotic and dangerous, but it enabled me to gather knowledge from many places and many different universes. Timelines. For whatever reason, somehow, some way… The one who shared the information regarding the Fire of Y did so in every single timeline, and every single timeline had fools arrogant enough to bring about the devastation of those bombs.”

Weird. That made a lot more sense than a lot of the piecemeal versions of this he’d been told. “So they’re all like Cloud City?”

“They’re all gone, Mister Yang. All that remained was gathered to one world, one place and time, and sustaining that stability requires more than we have to give.”

Yeah. That tracked, too. He breathed for a moment, considering. Then he nodded. “Two things.”

“Ask away.”

“So, one. Seems to me like one small population on one Earth can’t sustain you guys forever. Am I right?”

“Correct.”

“Yeah. Two.” He took a slow breath. “I don’t think they all know that, but I think Hastur does.”

“Hastur most certainly knows; I cannot truly speak for the others.” She sighed once more. “Since the Fires, the only god I have spoken to is Shub-Niggurath. The others… Well. I believe you are very familiar with those who approach with empty hands and harsh words.”

“Uh.” Parker stared blankly at the nearest hand. “Nothing… good happens to those guys?”

“Yes.” And this sound was most certainly not a happy one, and the bookcase shifted again; and these books were…

A book shouldn’t have a presence.

“Hm… Ah, yes.” She pulled one off the shelf, one of the dozens that sat in a neat row. It had a beautiful green leather cover, the pages within a gentle cream, and something that looked disturbingly insectoid reinforced the spine. “This, Parker Yang, is what remains of the god H'chtelegoth.”

And the sound that came out when she opened it split the air, split his ears, split worlds—

“Holy shit!” Parker gripped his ears.

She snapped it shut, just as quickly. “H'chtelegoth came to me demanding the Parchments of Pnom, an item that I had in my collection. In exchange, he was ‘willing’ to give me back Sor—one of my acolytes.” The god paused, then, and it was like she was steadying herself. “Something you must understand is that these Parchments… They contain a genealogy, of sorts, for us. On its own, harmless; like how most of my collection is, on its own, harmless.”

One of the hands trembled.

“My acolyte knew better. She knew what he intended to do with them; he intended to use them to gain allies, to form a coup and enable the harvesting of the rest of the humans. Part of what keeps many of the Great Old Ones on a level playing field is not knowing who may or may not be more powerful; it is a risk to enter into a territory war. But enough gods who have been convinced they are descended directly from my ilk stirring the pot, and you may have a problem. She… She died to ensure I knew.”

Holy shit .

So being descended from an Outer God was important. And also, pissing the Keeper off meant getting turned into a screaming book.

Fucking gods.  

He had to keep a grip on himself. Casually, he began to pace.

It felt really good to have his hands in his pockets while he paced. Familiar. Easier to think. “So when the gods finally fuckin’ die out because the Dreamlands go to hell, humans will too, right?”

“It is certain.” She replaced the terrifying book onto the shelf. “If all of us were to fall… well, reality itself will begin to erode. Humanity may crawl onward for a time, but matter itself will fall apart. The protections that were put in place to hold back the radiation would fail, and in time, the last human would breathe their last breath. A slow, sad end to a very sad story.”

Yeah, no shit. “Gimme a minute. Okay?” 

“Take as much time as you need. I can wait.” The shelf of books-that-were-not-books slid upward, away, gone, protected. 

He resumed pacing.

He didn’t want to know this. When a guy knew things, big things, he had to act on them. That’s how it worked. At least, for him.

He knew it wasn’t really on his shoulders. She wasn’t asking for help. Didn’t matter, though. Now, it wasn’t just save the miserable world from the gods. It was fix it or everyone dies. 

It wasn’t fair. His god had betrayed him. Everything he’d believed had been ripped away. Justification for the bad things he’d done had been burned to ash, and now, this. This.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “Fuck,” he said louder. “Fuck!” And he spun and punched the blank wall between shelves. 

“FUCK!” The Keeper howled, rattling distant windows and making those fucked-up person-books shiver.

That was startling as hell. “Whoa, what? What?” His eyes were huge. “You fuckin’ felt that?”

A silhouette appeared at the distant firelight. “Keeps?” Tabby called. “You good?”

“Oh!” The hands jerked backward a bit. “I… Alright, first, yes, I did feel that, but it didn’t hurt, and I didn’t take it as an aggressive action towards me.”

Parker stared at Tabby, his eyes huge. “I punched her! I… I didn’t know she was the wall!”

“Oh, Keeps, you big baby,” Tabby scoffed, jogging over.

“I didn’t swear because of that,” the Keeper protested. “I got caught up in him swearing, because you’re right, Parker: it’s fucked.”

“Sure, sure. Like this wasn’t a ploy for my attention.” Tabby rolled her eyes, patting one of the hanging hands as she walked to the spot of wall. “Here?”

“Stop it.”

“So you don’t want me to kiss it better?” Tabby aimed her gaze somewhere ceiling-wise.

The Keeper paused for a guilty moment. “He is very strong,” she said. “I am terribly wounded.”

“You mean your pride is wounded,” Tabby said, pressing her lips to the spot on the wall.

“I assure you, it is not.”

Tabby snorted. “It should be. This is embarrassing.”

One of the hands reached down and ruffled the girl’s dark hair, and Tabby stuck her tongue out at the other.

Parker did not know how to handle that casual affection. At all. At least the power dynamic and occasional sadism of Hastur and Arthur (even with all the new, weird changes) made sense to him. This did not, was dangerous, and threatened ( Charlie) the comfortable it didn’t happen like you thought story he told himself.

So he shelved it. “I got something to say.”

“It had better be an apology,” Tabby said mock-sternly.

“Be nice to him,” the Keeper said. “Please, Parker—unless you prefer Mister Yang. But please, speak.”

He stared at Tabby for a second. Like hell was he apologizing for a god being the wall . “Look, how long would it take to… no, that’s the wrong way to do this.” He bared his teeth for a moment. “Sorry. I suck at talking. Okay. Hastur’s got this plan. He’s got a plan for Carcosa that includes shrinking it three times and, I think, still working solid. How much time you think that’ll buy everybody?”

“You need not apologize, Parker. I quite like hearing your thought process.”

Sure.

“As for this plan, I haven’t seen it, but…” The god clicked her tongue a few times. “Guessing on what Hastur would do, given the fact he reportedly has a brain… I’d say another two centuries the first downsize, assuming he reduces Carcosa by about a third. If he reduces it up to half, maybe three. Perhaps another century on the second. As for the final… It depends on who is left.”

Parker licked his lips. “I’m goin’ off incomplete information here. All right? So. Bear the fuck with me.” He was back to pacing. “If the gods got… fed better, or whatever the fuck they get outta dealing with people, could that slow down more?”

“In essence. We either need fewer gods or more humans, or a better way to deal with the Contracts.”

Tabby made a face.

“I know.”

“I’m guessing here,” he said. “Contracts. Asenath said the Mother tried to make that fair, but… still… weighted toward humans. Right? Best she could, while still putin’ the squeeze on you assholes. No offense.”

“None taken. I can’t Contract, Parker. Outer God.”

“But he’s right,” Tabby said.

“Can’t Contract,” said Parker. “But you sure as fuck ended up speaking through her out there. Did you get fed by that? Whatever you get through that?”

“I am fed by the natural chaos of the universe, Parker. It is my nature, as it is the nature of my siblings.” Somehow, the hanging hands managed a shrug. “As for our sojourn… That was a necessity, if I am to attend the vote.”

“Keeps can’t leave the Scriptorium.” Tabby leaned against the nearest bookshelf; another arm appeared, pulling a quite-nice armchair out of nowhere and set it next to her, and tapped the girl on the shoulder until she sat in it. “It’s a whole thing. Long story that we don’t know the answers to yet.”

“Your friend asked for my vote,” the Keeper said gently. “I’d spent a long time avoiding getting involved in anything like this. I had never even thought about it. But I decided, since my participation in the vote will bring my cousins’ attention to me whether I desire it or not, it’s time for me to do my part in helping fix things. And that started with getting eyes on what was happening.”

“And testing how much power I could hold until I exploded,” Tabby added, “and monitoring my blood sugar levels so I didn’t pass out, and scribbling down all your observations of how excited you were to be outside, and—”

“Yes, thank you Tabby, I’m sure Parker understands.”

They were getting off track. “I understand more than that,” he said. “Asenath said the Mother helped you do it. Right?” 

“Correct. She provided me with an artifact that allowed me to siphon off most of… I’m not sure how to describe it.” She let out a low, sheepish laugh.

“I can,” Tabby said eagerly.

“Tabby.”

“It won’t even be a truly heinous sex joke, I promise.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You shouldn’t. Anyway. So gods are big—big bodies, big souls, big magic. Keeps especially is huge, because she’s an Outer God and all of them tend to be pretty cosmic in scale. You take something that big and try to put it into something small, something’s going to have to give.” And for a moment, her face flickered, grew grim. “You may recall, uh, what was going to happen to Arthur if Y’golonac’s ritual succeeded.”

“Yeah.” Low. He knew his shame. There was no point in pretending otherwise.

“That is the reason many Great Old Ones can’t Contract, either, and no Outer Gods can; it is rare for a human to possess the power of will to harbor even a piece of them.”

“I know. It’s why I didn’t even consider it might be fucking Hastur calling himself ‘John,’” Parker said. “Assumed a servitor. Never thought it’d be an equal to the Defiler.” He sighed. “If I had… dunno. It would’ve gone down different. But the Defiler didn’t think of it, either, so. There’s that.”

Not much of a comfort.

“The artifact the Great Mother gave me allows me to, in essence, tether myself to Tabby’s soul to enable my consciousness to leave the Scriptorium. It is easily done, given that our mark connects us as it does, and that I am quite motivated to not burn her out; for the vote, I will need to do more, but the artifact should allow me to keep Tabby’s soul tethered to my own while I occupy her body. We just… need a bit more practice.”

“It’s not perfect yet, but I’ve got the smartest and prettiest girl in the whole wide universe on my side,” Tabby said, batting her eyelashes at the ceiling.

Fuck, these two. He stuffed more into that shout about it later box. “Okay. So. So.” He gripped his hair. “Back on track, okay? I know our population’s shrinking. Fucking Wastes take more every year. Arthur’s town—Harper’s Hill—there’s lots like that, that got sort of… eaten. Okay. So. If the gods…” He had to say this right . “If the gods were able to do more, hold back the Wastes, make the Lake and the ocean not just fucking wet death , humans could… make more of us. Right? The population could grow again. And if that could happen, they could feed more fucking gods. And if that happened, the gods could… protect humans more, and we could expand even more. Re-open places like Harper’s Hill, I dunno. Something. Right?”

The two said nothing for a moment, but Tabby was grinning. “I told you, Keeps, he and I are the same person.”

“That is what you said.”

“I can smell it. I'm on some fuckin’ wolf shit right now with how good I sniffed that out.”

“You were right,” the Keeper said primly.

“What?” said Parker, because what?

“What you’ve said is… an idea, yes,” the Keeper said. “A fascinating theory—one that makes sense, but I do not believe I would have reached it quite as quickly.”

“Yeah, well, being mortal makes you skip a few steps,” he muttered. 

This was the kind of reasoning the Defiler had always praised, too, but that… that praise hadn’t been true. It hadn’t been enough for his god to even like him . 

That wasn’t important now. “Pretty sure fucking King in Yellow’s already on board. He likes complicated bullshit.” 

“You seem to know him well.”

“I do.” Parker paced. “K’thanid will be on board. Nath-Horthath wil, too. Those guys are big hitters.” And he sighed. “I fuckin’ hate it. I’m not… into this. Get me? I hate this. But I want us to survive, and we can’t do that without you people . But you can’t survive without us, either. It’s gonna take investment on your parts before we can give back.” And he breathed heavily. He had to get this right. “So if we’re gonna do this, vote first. Then that Contract system’s got to be updated. Fuck. Fuck. Maybe whatever the Mother gave you can work for other gods, too. The rules’ve got to change, don’t they? How the fuck…” He sighed. “Does it make a difference if bigger gods get to do it? Does that… I dunno, help the gods under them? Maybe mean less Contracts needed? I’m gettin’ ahead of myself. Sorry. Words ain’t my strong suit.” He’d talked too much. He knew he had. It never went well when he did. He clenched his jaw, dropped his head, and paced.

“You were utterly wasted on Y'golonac,” the Keeper said, voice low.

“Oh, you’ve got her in a mood now,” Tabby said, and winked at Parker.

Parker closed his eyes tightly for just a moment. “Naw. Got all the blood he wanted spilled. Arthur was just better.”

“He used you as a hammer when you were a surgeon’s blade. That worm-brained fool—did he keep you in the dark? He must have kept you on a very short leash. I imagine you would have been impossible to stop if you'd been allowed to act of your own volition.”  

That was a load of horseshit.

Though she wasn’t completely wrong. There had been no wriggle room, no space for failure. And he’d only failed once.

Once had been enough. He swallowed and didn’t answer.

Her voice was full of wonder. “Gods, I hate him. The petty cruelties are one thing, but to waste such potential. Abhorrent.”

“He—” There wasn’t anything to defend. Nobody had said anything like that before.

Or… maybe they’d said some of it. Asenath (who was biased). Arthur (who was nuts). But this was coming from someone without shared history, who stood to gain nothing from it.

Reality called. Gods didn’t care for him. This praise was suspicious , no matter how… nice… it would be if it were true. “He promised things and did them. Kinda hard to argue with that.” It wasn’t an answer. Too bad. “Just tell me what you want outta this, talking to me, telling me shit. I want it laid out going in. No surprises.”

“From you? Nothing, at least at present; in the future, who knows? I believe you have promise; I believe you’re a wickedly smart man who was willing to sacrifice himself to protect my marked, not to mention bold enough to challenge me, one of the most powerful creatures in the universe, directly to my face when you felt I was speaking out of turn.” She laughed, light and pleasant. “Though I will say, I don’t believe you were aware at the time. At present, Parker Yang, all I can offer is a choice. Once Hastur has finished tearing Y’golonac a new asshole and the riot has dispersed, you may, of course, return to him and to Arthur. Or… If you wish, you may stay.”

Oh, what the fuck was happening now? “Stay?” 

“If you desire, you do not have to go back to Hastur. You could stay here, in the Scriptorium, under my protection; not as a priest, or an acolyte, but merely as yourself. You may dress as you please, spend your days reading or learning or doing nothing at all—you would be able to meet the others who dwell here, under my protection.”

“No more collars,” Tabby said.

Parker stared.

“Consider it thanks for your efforts to ensure my wife was safe when Y’golonac attacked,” the Keeper said, voice gentle. “You need not answer now; you may even change your mind, if you decide to leave, and I will… what’s the metaphor? Put a foot in the door?”

“No. I think you want ‘keep the light on’ or ‘keep the door cracked’, or something like that,” Tabby said.

“I demand no Contracts, no pledging of your soul, no worship. Merely a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’”

“Kind of like it was before,” Tabby said, very quietly.

“Before… My acolytes came and went as they pleased,” the Keeper said quietly. “Perhaps, once things are better, you may as well.”

Parker straight-up didn’t believe this.

Come on. This kindness? This generosity? From a self-proclaimed one of the most powerful beings in the universe? Bullshit.

But he heard her. And the fact that she didn’t demand an answer right now was more important than sandwiches or boxers. “Thanks.” He knew that was abrupt. Not enough. Too bad. He was out of words. “I think I need to go back. Arthur… I wanna see where that’s going.” He needed to see this through.

He needed to see Y’golonac defeated.

He needed to go home.

“I understand,” the Keeper said, and it felt like she knew Parker meant more than he said. “Do you want to leave now? Or… Would you like some time to center yourself? Time will only pass for us.”

He frowned. “How long I been in here?” 

“With us? About… nine hours. Out there? Maybe ten minutes. Long enough for the mayhem to have finished.”  

He stared. He’d been in here nine hours. “Took a while to fix that shit, huh?” he said thickly.

Tabby made a face that said everything Parker needed to know. “Yeah. Had to get some backup from Keeps.”

“Healing is not my forte, but power I have in spades. Tabby was able to channel quite a bit of it, and at last we were able to purge the infection from you.”

“It was worth it, though.” Tabby grinned. “Keeps cried.”

“I did not.”

“You pulled through, though. Might have been through the power of spite, though,  especially since it looks like you shook off whatever lingering hold he had.”

The truth popped out without warning. “He killed me lots of times with that.” Parker found himself shaking a little. “I really didn’t die this time?”

“I was not going to allow that to happen. Anything worth fixing is worth fixing correctly. Would you like to sit down for a bit?”

He would not like that. Maybe needed it, but would not like it. Nope. Limit reached. Feeling red-faced, he said, “Can I go?” Fuck, he wasn’t trying to be rude. 

“As you wish. If you decide you wish to speak to me again, let Hastur know.” She paused. “Actually… Let Arthur know. I have a good feeling he’ll be able to call upon me if he needs to. I would give you a more direct egress, but I would rather avoid Hastur barging in.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. He’s always digging in everybody’s drawers,” said Parker.

“I’ll see you out,” Tabby said, hopping out of her armchair. “Sorry.”

“For?” He tensed.

“It was a lot.” The girl put her hands in her own pockets as she walked, leading him through the bookcases effortlessly.

“Oh.” Maybe his scale for “a lot” was off. “Not really.”

“Nah. I recognized that look on your face; same one I had when I first got shoved in the Scriptorium more than seven hundred years ago.” She shook her head. “Pretty sure, anyway. Didn’t have a mirror at the time.”

“Fuckin’ old for a human.” Said slightly aggressively.

“I know. I look good for my age, huh?” She grinned at him. 

“Yeah. But you didn’t die?”

“No. I was sort of…” She paused, scrunching up her face as she thought. “I guess ‘portaled’ is correct, though it was more of a… I had a friend who, as it turns out, was one of the Mother’s witches, back before the fires. One day she just… She said she hoped I would understand, and gave me a shove, and I ended up in the Woods.” She laughed, low, flat. “It was a pretty big surprise for me. I was a psych major.”

“A witch saved you?” And he took a moment. “What is a ‘sike major?’” 

“Oh, shit, right—you guys don’t really have higher education.” And that made her look sad. “I was in school; I went to a place called Miskatonic University. I studied psychology, which is understanding how the human mind works. I…” She paused. “I wanted to help people. But it wasn’t a discipline that had anything to do with magic. Fuck, I thought magic was pretend, you know? Stuff you read about in books, that didn’t really happen, and though my friend called herself a witch I assumed it was in the sort of ‘let me read your cards’ and ‘this crystal clears negative energy’ sort of way, not a ‘I’m going to portal you to a freaky eldritch forest and see if you’ll worship my god, which by the way is also a real thing you have to contend with.’”

Crystals and cards were tricky magic he went absolutely nowhere near, but it sounded like Tabby hadn’t known they held power.

Or maybe they hadn’t, in her world. She’d lived a life without magic.  She’d known a world without gods… and it had still burned.

He couldn’t go there yet, but chose another thread to pull. “A doctor for the mind?” 

“Yeah. That exactly.” She smiled. “I, uh… I had it really rough as a kid. I wanted to… I wanted to help other kids not end up like me.”

“A head-doctor. Shit. That sounds useful. And yeah. I get that desire. It’s why I became a cop. None of them fuckin’ helped me as a kid, so.”

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions, I suppose,” Tabby sighed. “I… I’m sorry it was so shitty for you. Especially if it was shitty enough that you decided to be a cop, yeesh. No offense.”

He shrugged. “Well, it meant I’d be above the law, too. Needed that, for what I was doing.” And he blurted it: “Beat the fuck out of a few child molesters, though. So that felt pretty good.”

Tabby whipped around at him and beamed. “Fuck yes! That’s the shit cops should do!”

He looked at her. “You too, huh?” he said, getting right to the heart of why someone, an adult, would have such a passion about that particular crime.

For a brief moment, she froze. A series of microexpressions flitted across her face; surprise, confusion, realization. Sympathy. Grief. “Yeah,” she said, flat. “...Yeah.” She started walking again. “Sort of… Sort of hoped the gods had done away with that one. Like they did homophobia and stuff. Cultural bullshit. But… Well, I mean, fuck. Predators everywhere, I guess.”

So many threads to pull. “Predators always think they can get away with shit, human or god.” 

She looked at him. “You aren’t wrong.”

He was too tired to be delicate. “Bet you’re glad that radiation your wife-god mentioned happened to yours.” 

“Sure fucking am. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.” She let out a soft laugh. “...Did you… Were you able to get yours?”

“Some.” Even. Flat. “One died of old age. One was gone, fuck if I know where. One I fucking murdered on the dock, and that’s the one Y’Golonac used to get my attention. I stopped caring after that. Had other things to do.”

“...I haven’t thought about it in a long time. Funny how that sort of happens, huh?” She shrugged. “Is that why you got so prickly at Keeps at the Hall of Contracts?”

“When was I prickly?” he said, prickly.

“When you called her out about that Contract—what’d you say? ‘It’s more than most of these shits will ever do?’” Tabby clicked her tongue.

His shoulders relaxed. “Oh. That. In part, yeah. Just. People like to make noises at things they don’t approve of without fucking offering any other options.” He shrugged. “Dunno. Rubbed me wrong. Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize, man. It was deserved. You called her on it, and she admitted it.” Tabby gave him a playful punch in the arm, earning a startled look. “She… It’s kind of different, for them, but she knows… What happened, with me. And she had a similar experience with one of her brothers, though he more wanted to… I dunno. I was trying not to go insane and die at the time.”

Parker stopped dead and stared at her. “That can happen to gods?”

“He wanted control of the Scriptorium.” Her lips pressed into a thin line. “She was barely over a hundred; it was just over a year after the Fires. He was older, thought he was smarter and stronger.” She let out a soft breath. “Might have been outside it, fuck, I dunno. We don’t really know exactly how this place works, just that she’s tied to it.”

“She felt it when I punched the wall. Uh.” He looked a little sick. “We’re—”

“Oh, right, all that. Pfft.” Tabby rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry she freaked you out when she shouted like a lunatic. Just so we’re clear: you absolutely didn’t hurt her. She was being a drama queen. And she gets excited when people yell, and likes to join in, so it was a prime opportunity for her. Yeah?”

Parker stared at her. “We’re inside of your wife-god. Maybe I’m not gonna think too much about that.” 

“Yeah, I don’t recommend it. It’s complicated. But she can also, like…” Tabby stuck out her hands, as if trying to manipulate something Parker couldn’t see. “She can also like… not be in places, in here? She is it, but she isn’t. It’s all deeply within the realm of what she and I both call ‘Outer God bullshit’ and it is also something that I had to deal with when she and I weren’t on the best of terms.” Tabby paused. “Or, well… When I wasn’t on the best of terms with her, I guess. Another long story.”

He had reached his limit and gone beyond it at this point. “I need to go home.”

“Yeah, yeah. Workin’ on it. Need to go just a touch further… there. That’ll do it.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a doorknob. “Hey, just in case you decide not to come back: it was nice to meet you. You’re fun to talk to.”

He wasn’t sure how to respond to that weirdness. “Sure. Dunno about your wife-god, though. No offense.”

“None taken. I’ve had a long time to get used to her, you know?” She laughed, holding the doorknob out to nothing, and a large set of wooden doors sprouted from the knob’s handle.

Someone on the other side was calling his name. 

That felt weird. So weird. Calling for him, trying to find him, like it mattered he was gone? Really?

For him?

“Sounds like your ride’s here. Y’know… Keeps likes you. Even if you decide not to take her up on the offer, it’d be cool if you visited. You can bring Arthur too, if Goldenrod lets him go.”

“I… yeah. Maybe.” Probably not. Arthur was… one did not bring Arthur places. Arthur went places, very much on his own. 

There was nothing left to say, so Parker gave her a nod, and stepped through.

#

Hastur grabbed him before his feet even touched the churned-up ground.

This place was absolutely fucked. It had been the Contract pavilion. Now, it was rubble. Rot ate the grass and melted the stone; chunks of statuary lay where they’d been exploded, and a black groove in the ground announced where something large had been forcibly pushed right out the entrance.

Hastur was… 

Hastur. 

Was.

Angry.

Hastur was so fucking angry. Parker had never seen him truly angry, and hadn’t realized that until this moment. Petulant, ridiculous, fussy, demanding… but this. This was angry, and Parker suddenly realized that even at their worst moment, he had never gotten Hastur like this.

“You’re okay!” Arthur cried from below, and he sobbed. “Fuck… fuck, I thought he got you.”

“‘Kissinger’ did not win,” said Hastur in a voice like thunderstorms at sea, and any words Parker had left dried up and died like plants never watered.

He trembled. Hastur was so angry.

Hastur picked up Arthur (who reached for Parker, reached, with both hands, and Hastur brought them together without hesitation), and then flew.

From above, it was clear where the fight had happened. It was like some kind of pointed fire, like an aimed explosion, burning the ground and ruining the part of Carcosa that served to give gods access to the human world.

And suddenly, that mattered. Suddenly, that was important, because it wasn’t just what gods wanted to do , but something they needed , and no one was really safe to be around when starving, and if they all fucking killed each other now, there’d be no chance to save anyone, ever.

“Fuck!” Parker said. He couldn’t stop shaking.

Arthur held him.

Tentacles trapped them both, shielded them both, and kept them together.

Arthur’s tears cooled on Parker’s neck. “I thought he fucking got you.”

He couldn’t handle this. No one could handle this. What in fuck was this? “He did get me. Fuckin’ Keeper made it better.”

Hastur growled.

Oh, no, all the other angry sounds had been play growls , nothing serious, nothing like this sound that warped the air and ached like old wounds and made Parker cry out and made his eyes water and—

Arthur raised his face and kissed him. Deep, intimate, without hesitation.

Not expected. Nope. Acceptable response not found. Parker’s gaze rolled to Hastur, who had to react badly to this, who had to respond with crushing rage, who would hurt him so much that he’d wished he had stayed in the spooky library with the crazy ladies.

It did not happen.

That growl happened, low and scary, but not at him . Parker could feel it. Parker knew it. “He will pay for this,” Hastur threatened.

Arthur breathed, forehead against Parker’s, and he was still leaking tears. “Don’t fucking scare me like that again. And sorry. I should’ve asked.”

“I…” He what? He fucking what? “I don’t get it.” 

Arthur met his gaze, and Parker stopped breathing because this man was sane. “You’re an idiot,” Arthur said. “You could’ve just fucking walked over to us, or waved, or anything other than what you did. I thought he fucking killed you.”

Hastur still wasn’t hurting him? “I… no. He didn’t. For once.”

Arthur’s voice shook. “Fucking hell, Parker.”

Carcosa looked fine. Normal. Like it always did: stupid, showy, uneven, pieces given over to other gods with no sense of symmetry. “Where is he? Where’s the Defiler?”

“In his temple,” Hastur said, low, dangerous, “and he will stay there tonight.”

The concept of consequences now—after all this time without, after complete certainty that they could do anything they want at any time—filled Parker with something akin to joy. “He’s… in lockup?”

“He is awaiting trial,” Hastur thundered. “And tomorrow, he will have it. ”

Damn. “Because of the pavilion?”

“Idiot.” Arthur sighed, so close they shared heat. “He attacked someone else’s possession. He attacked a human, and we’re so fucking rare. He fucked up the Contract system for everybody. His fucking… filaments were everywhere, almost fucking invisible. Nobody saw them but you.”

“So it… it’s good?”

“The Contract system is down,” said Hastur, grim. “Firmly down. It will not be easy to repair in a hurry.”

And Parker now understood why that was bad. “Fucking hell.” And he knew how Y’golonac worked, knew exactly what had gone down today: “He wanted you to attack him. He wanted to blame you for it going down because the violence is obvious.”

Hastur’s rumble was…

Oh, the god was still angry, yes, so furious, but that right there was a pleased sound, and it struck Parker as every inch as dangerous as rage. “Yes, little traitor,” Hastur said. “That is correct. It seems your former master had laid a trap.”

“It would’ve been so much worse,” said Arthur. “Hastur was supposed to be weaker when it happened. Thanks to you, it happened early. We can handle this because of you .” And his lips touched Parker’s ear. “He kicked the Defiler’s ass. It was fucking great. ”

They’d clearly been going through a time in the ten minutes since the Defiler tried to kill him. “Uh-huh.”

Arthur rested his forehead on Parker’s shoulder.

It had been ten fucking minutes! Parker looked at Hastur.

That rage still loomed, still bloomed, still blossomed, but it had… gentled. “You no longer smell of rot.”

What? “Sure.” He swallowed. “You gonna kill me? He… Arthur’s touching me.”

“Arthur has done more than that in the past. He has taken you into himself, and amortization is overdue,” said Hastur, amused. “You were attacked. You vanished under a writhing tangle of hideous growth and filthy putrescence. Then… the Keeper responded.”

Amori-fucking-what? “I was gone ten minutes, ” said Parker helplessly.

Arthur met his gaze. He was so close. “I thought we lost you.”

Too close. “You’re gonna get me killed.”

“No,” said Arthur. “You’re our partner.”

“Wait. I…” Puzzle pieces, fitting together just fine, only he hadn’t been paying attention. “Wait. You… but… wait, Hastur is… uh.”

Hastur… laughed. Low.

“You’re our partner, ” said Arthur again.

Had they always meant—

Wait, this wasn’t—

They were at the temple. “Fool,” said Hastur fondly (and still definitely laughing at him), and then they were inside. And the evening was beautiful, and the night was cool, and he slammed the doors behind them. They gonged, loud, metallic, final.

Parker shuddered. He didn’t know where to look.

Hastur was back to growling. It rattled decorative vases and bowls, made incense sticks dance in their basins, sent ripples along the surface of the bath to splash against the far lip. “He will pay.”

“He will.” Arthur stroked his arm. “He will.”

Everyone needed a bath. Hastur was covered in soil and what might be pieces of god-flesh. Arthur was dusty, grass in his hair, smears of mud or something worse. Parker was…

Parker was in clothes Hastur did not like, and Hastur growled as he plucked at them. 

“No!” Parker shouted, clutching his sweater to his chest. “No. A gift. From the Keeper.”

Hastur actually sniffed imperiously. “Remove it. I cannot see your flesh.”

Oh, the fuck was all of this?

“Sorry, again,” said Arthur. “I should’ve asked.”

Whiplash. Talking to any of these guys was whiplash. “What?” said Parker, frozen.

“I kissed you. I don’t think you’re ready yet.” And Arthur unhooked the big (ruined) skirt thing and slipped out of his boots.

Parker stared.

“Off,” Hastur rumbled.

“The fuck do you care?” Parker blurted at him, because Hastur was safe to yell at, because Hastur wouldn’t get sad eyes like Arthur could.

“I want to see you,” said Hastur.

“So it ain’t just putting me in things because I complained, after all?” Parker snapped.

Hastur… froze.

Caught. Caught! He was caught! Parker pointed at him. “You lied to me.”

“I teased you,” said Hastur. “Also, I did not lie. I merely withheld some of the truth.”

“I’d so fucking have you in lockup for a night if you were one of my guys,” Parker found himself saying because he’d apparently gone mad.

Hastur cupped under his chin with a thin and flexile tentacle and raised his face. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Power… over me .”

Oh, dear gods, the way he’d said that —

“Parker. That stuff might not do so well in the water,” Arthur said gently because Parker was still clothed (and Parker was glad he was clothed because things had responded right the fuck away and this was just too much on top of everything with the Keeper and—)

“Yeah,” Parker verbalized, and took off the Keeper’s gifts.

Hastur watched him.

It wasn’t like Hastur ever fucking blinked, but Hastur didn’t fucking blink, and the power and penetration of that gaze was so different from Y’golonac’s and Parker was still stuck on power over me and—

“How did she help you?” said Arthur already in the water.

Focus, Yang, he thought. “She… her, uh. Wife. Healed me, somehow.”

“I will repay her,” Hastur rumbled.

“No. Lady said it’s because I tried to save her wife when the Defiler attacked, so I paid for my own care, apparently,” said Parker who could do nothing about his almost painful arousal, and so just went into the water. 

Arthur went under, scrubbed himself, and straightened, water streaming, puffing, and steaming in the cool night.

Parker stared at him, distractedly washing his arm. “Partner.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean. I mean I’m partner.” He paused. “I sound like a fuckin’ idiot.”

Arthur laughed softly. “Yes. You are partner.”

“You meant…” Parker waved vaguely.

And he could see the strain, see the effort of will to give as clear an answer as possible: “I mean… you’re partner with us. Whatever that looks like. You’re staying. You’re safe. You’re… you’re ours, and we’re yours.”

“Dunno that’s so much of a ‘we’ thing,” Parker muttered, and turned to look at Hastur.

Hastur looked so damned amused.

Parker narrowed his eyes and turned back to Arthur. “What’s all that fucking mean, Lester?”

“Whatever it means as we figure it out.” Arthur squeezed out his hair and headed for the edge of the pool.

“I don’t do so good without fuckin’ boundaries!” Parker shouted after him.

“So we’ll make them. You don’t want to be touched, you don’t get touched. You don’t want to be partners, you can back out.” Arthur looked at him over his shoulder, sane, sober, shockingly steady. “But I don’t want you to. We, you and I, are part of something. Hastur was part of it because he was part of me. It’s all changed, now. It’s a mess. But I think we can… we can fix this, Parker. The three of us.”

Okay, maybe not so sane at all. “Fix this? Fix what? What the fuck?”

“Just think about it.” Arthur grabbed a towel and left.

“Food,” said Hastur.

“Ugh,” said Arthur.

“Food,” said Hastur.

“FIne,” said Arthur, and they were behind the silk screen and out of sight.

Parker sat in the water up to his chin and went quiet for the next hour.

#

They let him. Let him sit in there, stewing, perhaps literally and figuratively. Let him think, let him take his time, and try to find words again now that they’d all gone up like magician’s flash paper.

He could see now that he’d misunderstood… well, a whole fucking lot. That once Arthur was marked (and Hastur was sure he couldn’t be “taken away”), once Parker had apologized (and Hastur had approved), and Arthur continued to heal and they actually talked in the mornings… yes. He could see it so clearly.

This happened sometimes, when Parker was working on more than one case. He got so focused on the one in front of him that the other seemed to solve itself. That the other, in fact, fit together like puzzle pieces, and he just hadn't noticed.

It seemed so obvious now.

And it was terrifying, because it wasn’t how he’d thought… families? Partnerships? The fuck would he call this? Well. This wasn’t how he thought they happened at all.

He’d literally gotten into a fight when he met Charlie the first time at a crime scene, because Charlie was trying to take photos, and Parker thought he’d fuck up evidence. But then Charlie had spoken smart, and spoken soft, and gotten Parker calmed down if not quite laughing, and then taken him out for coffee and pie, and… 

And they kept going out for coffee and pie, and it was really obvious, and Parker knew he wanted that man from the moment Charlie Fucking Dowd stood up to him in front of a dead body.

Charlie had gotten to him, but he’d known Charlie would. Known, because what Charlie said hit home, because when Charlie smiled Parker smiled, when Charlie cried, Parker wanted to kill whatever made him do that.

That wasn’t this.

Parker had always known when he was attracted to people. That part was easy.  He hadn’t expected… this. He hadn’t known he felt like this. None of this.

He wanted to be partners, and it had snuck the fuck up on him like a silent cloud, the kind bringing rain so quiet and light that he didn’t even know it was going to rain until he was in it.

Yeah, he thought. That was the right comparison.

He already was partners here . He didn’t want to live with the Keeper. He wanted to live with them.

He wanted to touch Arthur back.

Fuck, he wanted to see what Hastur would actually let him do, how far he could go.

Parker Yang realized he wanted to stay, and he hadn’t known he did, and now that he knew, had no idea what to do about it.

Just stay, of course, not really being an option. It was too complicated for that. Wasn’t it?

Arthur: complicated. Very complicated, guilt and hope tangled up like some knot that would just have to be cut or it’d always stay tangled. 

Hastur…

Would be his god. Not Arthur’s god. Their god.

Parker realized he was shaking when he noticed the ripples sliding away from him to splash against the sides.

Complicated. And on top of all of this, the Dreamlands were failing, humanity was dying out, and the only way to save anyone was a wild play, a one in a million chance, with everyone working together, and completely reworking the damned Contract system—which had been smashed to shit, so. Maybe they could make it better. 

What would it be to do that with them instead of alone?

He’d assumed alone. Sure, alongside the Keeper, and alongside other gods willing to do shit, and with Arthur peripherally, but this wasn’t that. This was… together.

Side by side, not just facing each other across a room.

Safe. With a god who actually wanted them to live?

Arthur’s kiss lingered, and Parker raised his fingers—soapy and perfumed—to touch his own lips.

He could hear those idiots talking over there. Hastur’s low rumbling and Arthur’s sweet tenor, and he knew he could just walk right over and join them.

But then what? What came after that? 

Parker had no idea how to do this.

Whatever it means as we figure it out, Arthur had said.

Maybe… maybe he didn’t have to know how to do this.

That was a big fucking risk to take. Go into a thing without knowing how and you could blow that whole thing up.

But what if he didn’t?

“I don’t deserve some fucking relationship ,” Parker murmured into the water, and then thought, so? Lots of people got shit they didn’t deserve.

But if this wasn’t going to last… if it was all going to go to hell at once because of this trial, or wasn’t going to survive what came after, was it worth it? He clenched his fists. He didn’t know. Who would know? That was too big a thing to know.

Parker startled badly as Hastur lifted him from the water. 

“You are getting wrinkly, little traitor,” said Hastur, still so damned amused like all of this was funny and not just the craziest shit Parker had ever tried to juggle.

“You don’t say that name the same way no more,” Parker accused. 

“Whom you have betrayed has changed,” Hastur said. “Food.”

Whom he had betrayed had changed. Wow. Wow. “Really don’t wanna eat, big boy.”

“You will eat.”

Parker decided to ask the Keeper if he could have time off from eating, because this was stupid.

He also decided he wouldn’t answer the partners thing tonight. Much as he might like some of the outcome, he wasn’t ready yet. Not yet.

But maybe he’d push a little.

After some spicy soup with bits of egg in it (grudgingly admitted to be delicious), Parker decided he wouldn’t lie on the edge of the bed tonight, which he usually did when Hastur was in it with Arthur. Not tonight.

He glared, daring, challenging , before climbing over this ridiculously huge mattress toward them.

Hastur did nothing.

Parker got up behind Arthur, who smiled at him before lying down.

Hastur did nothing.

Parker lay right behind Arthur, curved against him, and slid one arm around his waist, glaring daggers at the god the whole time.

Hastur… fucking purred . “Yes,” he said.

Arthur made a happy sound and was out. Asleep. Parker would never figure out how in hell he did that so fast every night.

“You have made the wise choice,” said Hastur.

“I ain’t made no choices yet, buddy,” said Parker, daring, pushing.

Hastur chuckled at him, a low sound that pulsed through his purr like some kind of engine.

Fuck, thought Parker. I am in over my head.

But somehow, he fell asleep soon after.

----------

Notes:

Keeper and Tabby cameos thanks to @sepiabandensis, who brought her ladies in for this one.

[jollybirdtheorist-new-art-blog]

My made up lore on Ninjago's dark matter/condensed evil

Yooo so I was both bored and very unsatisfied with Ninjago's extreme lack of lore soooo *coughs this up before scurrying away*

Dark matter, otherwise know as condensed evil is considered an enigma by many including Ninjago's top researchers it's usually referred to as condensed evil, dark matter, demons blood, the nightmare virus and many other names depending on the region where it's recognized and the people speaking about it since different cultures in ninjago come up with different names for the same thing due to their culture and how it has developed .

Condensed evil is typically a dark and ominous mystery to Ninjago's inhabitants. It's appearance is that of a dark viscous substance similar to molasses and it's properties are almost akin to that of a virus or mindless parasite.How dark matter functions Dark matter works by contaminating an environment,a food source or bodies of water. Once an environment is contaminated by condensed evil the malevolent substance will proceed to infect a living being by either being absorbed by the skin or ingested via contaminated food or water. Condensed evil's corruption is not bloodborne due to its primitive state and cannot be spread through reproductive body fluids or inherited by parents. It can however be transmitted via saliva, scratches and mucus (similar to rabies but not half as deadly).

The symptoms of corruption caused by condensed evil and condensed evil's potency depend on the amount of exposure a living being has been subjected to and what the quality of the condensed evil is .If only a living being is exposed to condensed evil via skin to skin contact for at least 5 minutes they will begin to feel minor discomfort and a mild burning feeling around the skin that has been exposed causing rashes and inflammation as well as a strong itching sensation, the subjects mood will be akin to that of an annoyed teenager.

If a subject's skin is exposed to condensed evil for 20 minutes the rashes formed on the skin will become an angrier shade of red and medium sized sores will be formed on the flesh as the inflammation begins to get worse, the mild burning sensation will begin to get worse similar to that of boiling water and the victim will begin to experience lightheadedness and a mild level of nausea, the subjects mood will be stressed, angry and mildly violent.

If the victim's skin had been exposed for 30 minutes or more the sores will proceed to get worse and become similar to 30 degree burns, the reddening of the flesh will become a reddish purple due to the inflammation becoming worse and constricting the victim's blood flow, the burning sensation will go from that of boiling water to being set on fire. Lightheadedness and nausea can and will get worse as well as the victim's mood as they begin to froth at the mouth and become both extremely violent and aggressive. At this stage it's too late for the victim as they are turned into a weak minded puppet for the corruption.

Additional note: the effects of condensed evil strongly depend on the quality of condensed evil. The quality of the condensed evil used in this data set was medium quality . Low quality will have weaker effects (however it's still important to get the condensed evil off ASAP since time is of the essence if you desire to save the victim.) high quality condensed evil is extremely dangerous and has faster and more serious effects and side effects.

This is the conclusion of page 1/3 from condensed evil research file

Also yep I'm incorporating the lore I just coughed up into my freaking au and you can't stop me cause.....well I made it and I can bend my creations to my will.

[iantimony]

almost no longer tuesdaypost

listening: I FINISHED TWILIGHT MIRAGE !!! AND THE POSTMORTEM!!! it was so good. i'm powering through the road to partizan episodes right now, i'm in episode 4! i AM listening to them on 1.3 speed to get through them a little more expeditiously, and i'm also not letting myself backtrack if i miss a line or two, just kinda absorbing the vibes before slamming into partizan proper!

reading: flight of a one-winged dove, bloodletter, post canon sangcheng, mind the tags, i'm not normally a sangcheng girly but this really really hit. never knew i was a dancer, isozyme, modern AU lesbian sangcheng, maybe i AM a sangcheng girly now?? anyways mind those tags etc

watching: cowboy bebop with boyf :) we're on episode 22, we'll probably watch the movie soon ...? was told around here is a good spot to do that, so as much as i always like watching things In Publication Order, will probably do that soon

making: i have frogged and restarted that stupid star stitch laptop case like six times. i am committing to it now. i really didn't like the original shape of the object i was creating using the spruce crafts tutorial that comes up immediately when you google "star stitch tutorial", but i found this one (has one less double crochet on the ends) and i like it a lot better. so i'm working through that now! i also had a moment a few days ago that was like. ok i want to restart it. but before i do that i should wind the skein into a ball so it's less annoying. ah shit my ball winder is winding it really fucked up and wonky, oh i googled it and i can take the top off and pop the gear back into place and that should fix it! gotta find a screwdriver for that first -- so tl;dr i fixed my ball winder, wound the skein into a ball, and started the project again. huzzah.

also, started another fanfic! what if harrowhark was the abhorsen-in-waiting. she's actually been the abhorsen for about a decade, the previous abhorsen died ages ago but she's been pretending that her father is in seclusion or something and has just been sending her out on his behalf. gideon was mysteriously dropped off and raised alongside harrowhark for reasons unknown. the kingdom is ruled by lich-king john gaius, a member of the royal bloodline who has dipped too much into free magic, transcended death and, while not malevolent specifically, has really started to cock things up kingdom-wide re: the dead. ianthe is a free magic sorcerer. i just think there's a lot of tasty potential there.

misc: i am once again On An Antibiotic [confetti] if i am not patient zero for the next antibiotic resistant bacteria it will be a goddamn miracle. anyways. onwards. hopefully this is the last one for a while…!!

[jjdogasaur]

Prismatic War Prologue - Broken Peace

Okay so before getting into this, I'll have to lay down some things. 1. There is going to be some possibly upsetting content in later chapters, so I will tag them up here and down in the tags.

2. The Prism Gate in this au is an entity of its own and is malevolent, but anything else that comes from the prism dimension (Whiz-bang, Glowbes, Prismatics) aren't inherently hostile.

3. Technology is more advanced in this Continent but is still monstrous. Some characters will have given themselves prosthetics, tools, or weapons that may have not appeared in the actual game.

Okay I think that's it alright let's go

It was just another nice day in The Continent, when strangely, the Prism Gate had opened and closed abruptly. This was odd behavior for the astral portal, as previous documentations had displayed it either enticing an innocent monster into its colorful entrance, or forcefully pulling one in, and releasing it suddenly. Even stranger, the gate began performing the act again, again, and again. Airborne monsters had analyzed that prismatic monsters were being dropped at rapid rates in high amounts, why was the gate doing this? Where was it obtaining so many monsters, and how? Panic slowly began to set in as hundreds of monsters began emerging from the Teleporter. Some were sobbing, some were hyperventilating, some had even passed out as soon as they exited the Teleporter. This had highly concerned the various monsters who had stayed behind on The Continent to either watch over monster young or had no desire to live on the Outer Islands. 

“Are you okay?! What in Great Galvana is going on?! Why is the Prism Gate here?!” Pickle, a Riff replied, quickly gathering a group of frightened baby monsters into a nearby shelter.

A Bowgart that appeared to have been injured by debris from the suction of the Gate replied with a horrified expression.

“The gate… That wretched Gate… It just appeared and began sucking in monsters before we even knew what was happening! Even those who had tried to hold on to whatever they could were consumed by that thing!” Pickle was horrified, but confused. Wouldn’t the prismatic monsters that entered the gate, willing or not also have evacuated? Where were any of them?

“Wait, if it just started absorbing monsters, wouldn’t Prismatic monsters that were affected by the gate have also left? What were they doing?” The Bowgart continued their speech in terror. “Those who were a;ready affected didn’t even care about the carnage that was happening around them. While everyone was in a panic, trying desperately to not be consumed, those perilous Prismatics just laughed, cheered, and even encouraged us to stop resisting. They danced around the portal, before being absorbed into its soundless void like the rest. Oh Blasoom, they’re coming!”

Before Pickle could fully process what was happening, barricades were being shoddily made as monsters began flooding into the castle. The Outer Islands had been completely abandoned, and all of the young monsters were shrieking and crying out of fear. What’ll happen next now?

[bk-179]

YEAH ITS VERY FRUSTRATING. speaking of ships like that, most of the commons/rares/ovenbreak exclusives were only remembered as existing due to their relations to the “flashier, cooler” epics in kingdom. Like Roquefort being reduced to “mysterious non-binary (tho they erase that part sometimes too) phantom thief that we ship with dilf-y almond” while ignoring the fact that this mf is one of the most complex characters in that game oh my god they have so many layers I love roque

but uh yeah. Also Ty for seconding me on the wizards point I mentioned! We get literally no reason for their departure in either universe, and in both main games, they just straight up abandon all the life they make. Stardust in kingdom is the most extreme/notable example; considered a “failed”/flawed cookie, he was kinda just. Plopped into space as dough and abandoned and the stars had to raise him. Even if the wizards weren’t malevolent or whatever, their negligence hurt countless cookies. Re-Watching the kingdom city of wizards story? Stardust was fucking correct.

He had genuinely justified views of the wizards and their shitty behavior; Moonlight isn’t opposing them because she’s supposed to be the “good one”, she’s denying his points because she was ALSO CULTIVATED TO BE A TOOL AND WAS ONLY ALLOWED TO STAY AND GROW AND LIVE CUZ SHE WAS MADE “PERFECT”. watching the argument between the two, Moonlight strikes me as the “golden/favorite/gifted” kid who was groomed by the wizards into absorbing all the these stories and legends of grandiose and supreme intelligence and magical sainthood. She’s trapped in the city by both her duty (of which she had no say in accepting) and her cultivated devotion to parents who just… left her.

Speaking of trapped, BLUEBERRY PIE COOKIE. I’m not sure if it’s the same in kingdom, but in OvenBreak, one of her main things was that she was magically bound via curse to the archives, essentially dooming her to being trapped within a dead city forever. Why did she get cursed? She was searching for knowledge on her long-gone gods in a book they told her never to read from. Seriously what the fuck actually. She was punished and doomed for trying to understand and process the disappearance and natures of her parents. Those were her parents. And moonlight’s parents and stardust’s parents too. That’s their dads and moms dude what the hell im going insane

but uhhhh yeah. The wizards went to get the milk I have no idea how people can still say they’re the “good versions” of the witches ESPECIALLY in kingdom. Both are twisted, callous gods that toy with the lives of desserts like it’s just another Wednesday. Both figures haunt the narrative of their respective cookies, with both their absence and presence. God I’m going insane

Also PLEASE tell me abt ur magical girl au actually. it sounds like it’s super cool!!!

I saw ur post/ask about epic-legend privilege and common-rare hate and let me tell you the pain is REAL. ESPECIALLY with the ancients specifically getting away with so much bullshit over the years. Some of the kingdom fandom is super dope and some of it is more toxic than Chernobyl

my specific gripe with *that* part of the community around kingdom is just… how much of the nuance of the stories are erased and ignored when you give someone who failed English class an iPad. I don’t like being one of those “I’m smarter than you and ur headcanons are stupid” ppl (from first hand experience they are horrible to deal with good god I’m never logging in to fandom.com again), but the lack of media literacy has produced some dog water takes about the stories of the legends + ancients especially. And I’m emphasizing legends too, cuz OvenBreak community is much less guilty of this in my experience but we gave Sea Fairy’s flaws a pass for YEARS and I’ve only ever seen it called into question when I got back into cookie run late 2023. And the post was from April this year we were tripping for a long time 💀

but yeah anyways! The god cookies have pulled some dodgy shit since launch and I’ve rarely seen it explored within fan works or as part of a character analysis.

Take what you were saying about Pure Vanilla and his involvement of Gingerbrave in the BeastYeast plot line for example. How fucked up is that? Pure vanilla is 1. A grown ass man, 2. Fully recovered from the injuries from whatever story mode shit he was in at this point, and 3. A LITERAL GOD? And guess who he brings to solve his problems. 3 RANDOM ASS KIDS

dude wizard and strawberry didn’t 100% have to go (but let’s be real they’ve been so conditioned to do this quest crap that they’d probably choose to go anyway) but brave? They’re a HEAVILY disordered kid who has endured such fundamental developmental trauma (Almost no one talks about the oven and witch when relating to brave btw and it’s insane but that’s for another day) that it’s morphed into him basing their whole identity on 1. Being brave, and 2. Helping people. Even if pure vanilla didn’t sense anything off with the kid’s debilitating dependency on being brave and Not Being Alone and eagerness to fight and kill and die for people she’s known for barely a minute, you’d think the *adult* man could at LEAST say “hm. This is a dangerous god mission. I shouldn’t bring these kids with me.” There is much more I can say but I think u get the general jist.

PV is not a saint. Him, along with every other ancient, is a cookie with both immense power and important flaws who makes mistakes. While everyone has flaws and everyone makes mistakes, these guys have had more time to grow and power over their lives than almost all other characters in this setting ever will, and the sheer weight of some of these, dare I say, juvenile mistakes have had devastating consequences on families, friends, kingdoms, and even the cookie species as a whole. With great power comes great responsibility, but the ancients have been living life as if no one paid the electric bill, when in reality, they’re running the city’s generators.

YES THANK YOU

Especially the part with Sea Fairy because her obsession with Moonlight literally keeps putting the world at risk

Also if an epic cookie has too simple of a design or a basic story they’re forgotten immediately. Like Lime, Sandwich, Macaron, or Salt.

[ofstarsandskies]

Comprehensive List of All of Ludger's AUs

Because we always ascend jokes here (and mobile users getting a bone), this is an all-encompassing list of every AU for Ludger featured on this blog. This list will get updated as I add new AUs because God has cursed me for my hubris and this problem grows with time.

Xillia 1 & 2 Canon-Related Verses

Ale Zawiodlem -- Failed Bad End: Ludger kills Gaius, is defeated, and is imprisoned to await his death sentence.

Ulegly Wiceprezes -- Post-Bad End: Ludger serves as acting president with Rideaux, who wasn't used for Bisley's Soul Bridge, as his adviser.

Presidential Protection -- Sub-Verse of Ulegly Wiceprezes: Vera assigns Asbel Lhant to act as Ludger's bodyguard and hopefully inject a little life back into Ludger.

Otherworldly Refugee -- Xillia 1+2 AU: Ludger ends up in Orda Palace just as Jude and Milla escape Laforte Labratory. He's jailed with Jude and eventually escape to try and follow Milla.

Brother of Thieves -- No-Curse & Thief AU: Ludger's a fanboy of Phantom Thief Crown and ends up helping Leia try to prove Crown's innocence for Striborg Train Incident. Later gets entangled in a four-way race against Julius, Victor, and Spirius to gather the "Waymarkers" to the mythical "Land of Canaan". 

Silent Lamento -- Mute!Pre-Xillia 2: Trauma from watching Claudia die renders Ludger 100% mute and he takes a job as an inn chef instead. 

An Ordinary Life -- Modern AU: Ludger is a graduated culinary school student who works at a small cafe in Trigleph and gets kidnapped by Kresniks' Mafia Boss, Victor. 

Unfortunate Stowaway -- Pre-Xillia 1: Brothers Ludger & Julius are aboard the Zenethra as it passes through the Schism. Ludger's desperate to find his big bro.

The Star Which Shines Brightest -- Bad End+ Angelic Layer AU: Spirius hosts a game called the Spyrital Layer with special Spyrite models to encourage their adoption over Spyrix. As President, Ludger must play using his real name for transparency purposes.

Other Tales of Game Verses

Malevolence Absorber -- Tales of Berseria Verse: The Kresnik clan make a pact with Innominat to absorb malevolence into themselves and wield it into what they call the Corpse Shell. 

Mute Oathkeeper -- Tales of Zestiria Verse: Maotelus becoming the new Empyrean leader forces the Kresnik clan to swear Oaths as a means of strengthening their pact with Innominat's strength. 

Knightly Dreams -- Tales of Graces Verse: Ludger trains at Barona's Knight Academy with Julius as his instructor. Julius sabotages his exams to flunk him out, but gets dismissed from duty after discovery and Ludger eventually graduates as Cedric takes power. 

Krolewski Pomocnik -- Tales of Link Verse: Ludger takes several odd jobs due to a million gald's worth of medical debt. He's secretly friends with Gaius and helps him out for "special favors".

Original/Unaffiliated Verses

For What is a Clean Office -- Julius Detective Verse: Ludger is an orphan who is later adopted by his half brother Julius and his mother Cornelia. Julius opens up his own detective agency that Ludger helps keep clean for an allowance/paycheck.

Incompetent Summoner -- Apprentice Wizard Verse: Star is an apprentice wizard who tries his hand at demon summoning and ends up summoning a Ludger from another dimension who went to hell instead of Canaan's reincarnation cycle. 

Demon of the Bells -- Medieval Verse: The Kingdom of Elympios attempts to destroy the Kingdoms of Rieze Maxia using experiments on those born with a “Chromatus” to go berserk upon an external stimulus. 

LOL Zombies -- Zombie AU: Ludger meets Elle on the road after he gets separated from Julius once zombies raided their shelter. Seeks to find his brother and possibly another group to help keep them both safe. 

Fire Emblem Verses

Hymn of Lost Days -- FE Fates Verse: The Kresniks are descendants of the ancient Mage Dragon Kresnik who live way up in the mountains of Nohr. Bisley plans to train the clan to kill the Nohr Royal Family and take over. 

Time Betrays -- FE Three Houses Verse: Kresnik is a Nabatean who has limited control over time who survived Nemesis’ slaughter by fading into obscurity. Bisley hands Ludger & Julius over to TWSitD as per the plan to wreck the church for not recognizing Kresnik as part of the 10 Elites. 

Ephemeral Warrior -- FE Awakening Verse: Ludger is a member of the Shepherds who is mainly there to die in battle because his older brother died protecting him.

ETC. Games/Anime Verses

Replacement Third Vessel -- Genshin Impact Verse: Ludger is created to serve as Istaroth's new vessel as the original "Kresnik" (consisting of Julius & Victor both) is cursed for disobeying Celestia.

Journey to Remembrance -- Honkai Star Rail Verse: Kresniks are followers of Fuli who seek to become memokeepers. Ludger seeks to fulfill all his childhood dreams before shedding his body behind alongside his brother.

Demon Lab Assistant -- SMT: Devil Survivor Verse: Julius is named a terrorist after the Lockdown and Ludger gets a job at a lab attempting to resummon demons into Tokyo after Song of Hope ending. 

Fate of Twin Stars -- Yugioh 5Ds Verse: Ludger and Julius are chosen for Spirius' "Satellite Reformation Program" where they're granted citizenship to Neo Domino as long as they fulfill the program.

Nicaea Paranoia -- Devil Survivor 2 Verse: Ludger and Nova become demon tamers unrelated to either faction as they search for where Julius may have gone missing. 

London’s Finest Soup -- Code:Realize Verse: Ludger and Julius run a diner in Lower London that Julius pays for using money from working with Twilight. 

Rudonya -- .hack//G.U. Verse: Ludger is an newbie invited to a guild called the Twilight Brigade run by Crown (Julius) with his sub-captain, Maxwell (P!Milla). 

Overcoming Sadness -- Fragile Dreams Verse: Ludger is a wandering, non-hostile ghost who tries to help those who are still alive survive. Meets and swears to Seto he won't pass on until Seto finds another living person. 

Test Subject -- Portal Verse: After Julius is converted into an AI, Ludger is made a test subject in an attempt to better tame JuliOS. Refuses to leave even after the research team is neurotoxined to death. 

Misaimed Trust -- PsychoPass Verse: Ludger watches Julius kill his mom after she tries taking Ludger hostage for ransom. Julius' low psychopass and Bisley's bribery lets Julius go scott free, which Ludger agrees with. He then moves in with his brother.

What Makes a Heart Beat? -- Granblue Fantasy Verse: Kresniks are Primal Beasts whose "wings" are an impregnable armor infused with chaos matter. Pair Ludger and Julius are sent skyward to develop and eventually slay the archangels.

[azurevi]

3 halloween tales (cater, jade & vil)

This is really random, but the ssr cards for the halloween show have given me many au ideas, so here are my self-indulgent stories inspired by them. The Cater one is especially long because I got a lot of ideas about it. For the Vil one.. it's pretty disappointing how it turned out, but I hope it's not too bad. PLEASE READ THE WARNINGS!

WARNINGS : death (all), mild mention of gore (cater), war + mild possessiveness + violence (jade) [let me know if there're more!]

the heart and its eternal weight

Cater is a cemetery caretaker. It isn't that he really loves it, but his father was one. He feels like it is only right to take after his steps.

He isn't into superstitions. Some people find distaste in his job, but it's something crucial for Cater. People, even after they're dead, should still be honored, and so deserve a hospitable place to rest. 

Everyday is a routine for him. Sometimes, though, the families of the passed talk to him about their stories and their emptiness once their loved ones are gone. Cater finds the beauty and softness in humans by hearing these stories, and it makes him even more dedicated to his job. 

It's natural to him, dying. His father was killed in an unintended accident, and sometimes it seems like his death could have been avoidable just as much as it was inevitable. He just wishes that he had had more time with him.

One of the lessons his father taught him about graveyard caretaking is to beware of ghosts. Those who recently died are more visible and intimate with the world of the living, and so they might appear before humans. Some are inhostile, of course, but there are malevolent ones.

Lore has it that some ghosts prey on hearts. It is said that the heart is the most important part of a human, as it is accountable for life, death and emotions. People believe that ghosts can be revived with a fresh, still-beating heart, and as a result the human giving up their heart will die in place of the ghost. Basically, the heart can also create ripples in the fabric of space-time.

Because of his job, he isn't all that popular among others, and he only has a few life-long close friends, his mother and sisters by him. So even if he has a crush on the most admirable person he's ever seen, he still won't make it known in fear of rejection. He figures that he still has time to figure it out.

And he's wrong. News about your tragic death spread around quickly like wildfire, and he's devastated. It feels wrong to even feel so, because he has never been acquainted with you in the first place.

Your body is buried in his cemetery, and a lot of people come to your funeral that day. Some of your family members are so heartbroken and pitiable, and so Cater offered to be their listener.

All he can hear is about the great work you've done, the care you put into everyone you met, the warmth that radiated off you while you were still alive. It breaks Cater how he's never had the privilege to know you, to experience all your graces with his own perspective.

One night, the moon is lit and hung up high in the sky, so close that it seems to be prying on Earth and the people roaming on it. Cater is patrolling with his lawnmower when he hears quiet and uncertain sobs.

He is creeped out, yes, but he's also curious. He's never seen a ghost before, and it could be a human for all he knows.

He's proved wrong once again, as he discovers your opaque body behind a giant tree. You are hugging their legs close to your chest, and a rotting hole's visible where your heart should be.

There's no way you can be hostile, and you certainly won't kill him for his heart, so Cater decides to approach you gently, tentatively, like you're smoke that will disperse the moment he intrudes.

To his surprise, you can hear him clearly, and even invite him to sit down with him. It's so bizarre -- a ghost asking for a conversation! But Cater doesn't mind as he pops down beside you. He notices how although you were no longer solid, it still feels like tense when his hand passes through you. Certainly it's because you've been dead not for long.

And so the two of you indulge in heartful conversations, and Cater finds himself regretting even more about how he never gathered the courage to go up to you. Mid-conversation you tell him about all the things that you wish you could've done and all the ideas you wished to spread.

Cater probably shouldn't have, but he is so absorbed in your ambitions and kindness that he offers to carry out all these great things for you. After numerous confirmations, you agree too to let him carry out your thoughts.

And so Cater works in his neighbourhood, sharing campaigns and donating, taking care of lost pets and cats and partaking in environment improvement. He's never felt so fulfilled before, and it's the first time he feels like he's genuinely making a difference in the world.

In times he's not representing you, he brings you up on the little hill behind the cemetery where the moon and stars are so close and vibrant, where they all dance in the dark ballroom and pulse in excitement of being seen. He wishes he could show you more hidden gems, but your spectral spirit cannot be too far away from your body. 

But it's enough.

A month passes and Cater notices subtle change in your behaviour as well as appearance, like how you're responding with less enthusiasm and how the hole in your chest is growing bigger. When he finally asks about it, he's told that ghosts generally only stay in the world of the living for 49 days, and their heart will rot away in this period. After that, they will have to go to the underworld, never be back again.

Cater is certainly shocked that the lore is more than a children's makeup story. He is well aware of the significance of the heart in relation to the soul and life. 

He asks if you'd like to have his heart instead, so bluntly and casually. You seem to return to their original intimate self when you refuse. 

"I'm already gone. It's you, the living, who should be making changes,"

So he pretends that you're not getting more and more unresponsive and less and less generous. He turns a blind eye against your wavering figure and how you can't be seen at all in the sun. He plays dumb when in reality, you're slipping away before his very own eyes, heart rotting away like nothing more than a fruit.

It hurts finally knowing and understanding someone and having to lose them. 

On the 48th day, you are already but a still, soulless shadow, leaning beside your gravestone and fresh, white flowers. Cater can still see you. Sometimes he thinks that you chose to be seen.

And he can't bear to see you go. To see your dreams go into flames, to watch such a pretty soul just - vanish.

So he gives you his heart. Alive and beating and sentimental. It doesn't even hurt a bit. 

You wake up immediately, your eyes glowing and body solidifying. 

"What have you done?" 

"What I can do to make a change,"

Time is starting to rewrite itself. Cater is going to die in your place. The space around you was warping and folding into itself, softly and rightly like a lullaby.

Just before you slip into darkness, you gather up a whole bunch of rose petals and desperately stuff them into the hole in Cater's chest, as if they can give him life in lieu of a heart, and you are sobbing and clinging onto his still warm arm, never wanting to let go.

It's all Cater wants, to save a wasted soul and to make a difference. 

And so he cradles your face, and leans in the moment everything goes black. When he wakes up again, he's weightless in the cemetery, where a bunch of well arranged roses lie on his buried body.

a melancholy specimen

To Jade, beauty needs to be preserved to be constant. It's just like flowers. They die away without proper care.

Just when he thinks he's seen all the beauties of the world and is getting bored of it, he meets you. A blooming flower sparkling in the bland, old boring world around it. He's immediately captivated - how a person can still manage to flourish in such a rotten world where everything is depressing and all man is for themselves!

You're the most elegant piece of art he's seen, and that's something considering that he owns a museum. Innocence lies in your eyes and bravery sings itself between your lips.

You find him just equally amusing -- gentlemanly, insightful and just a touch of flirtation. The two of you fall in love like Alice down the rabbit hole - amused and unstoppable, fascinated by the wonders evolving about.

But the world doesn't give a damn about love, nor do they understand your dreams of a bright future where everything is close to hearts. They call you both madness and nonsense.

"Their souls are tainted with war and sorrow. They are beyond the point of rescue. Victory and glory are all that can feed their ego,"

Jade is disappointed. War has gouged people's eyes out and filled them with wails and ash.

The two of you are the only stars in the night sky, still fighting for salvation, yearning for a better future where trees grow and flowers yearn for the sun. You promote and do your best to lift the veil of darkness off the world. 

But the sun doesn't understand either. War keeps going on and on, and people never have the time for aesthetic relaxations. It refuses to shed light on its pitiable humans.

"We should evacuate, Jade. They say a bomb is dropping tomorrow,"

Jade doesn't care and can't care. The most paramount thing is to open his eyes to the beauty of this world. He doesn't want to become one of those barbarous men, tasting dirt and blood on their tongue while they glorify violence and brutalness.

He stays behind while his neighbourhood dies away. You are the only ones yet to leave. 

"Please don't leave me, Y/N. You're the only light in my life,"

You can't bear to leave him, and so you stay. The bomb is dropped, and it's too close. Too hot. Too cruel, too inhumane. It ravages everything in its way, burning all the darkened things to the ash and bringing the only beauty left in this world with it.

Jade wails. Broken cries are engulfed by nearby explosions and the cackling of flames. Your soulless body lies amidst the destruction, just another wilted flower in the slit of a rock, deprived of water and sunlight.

He finally understands. Nothing can save the world anymore. It's gone way too far, and it will never recover from malevolence. All he can feel is pity for his world as his heart ache with spite.

Bandages around his hands, he wraps your corpse up completely, preserved underneath the layers. You will be his reminder that there was once a flower in this drought, an anchor keeping him from becoming one of those barbarians.

lifeless silhouette in the dark night

You can never recognize directions. You find yourself stumbling upon a seemingly inhabited mansion in the middle of the woods. Cold and bruised, you knock on its door.

Welcoming you is a tall man with blonde and lilac hair called Vil. His skin is unnaturally white, and his eyes seem to glow like orbs that eat your souls. But you are too tired to make notice of all these details, and he's kind enough to let you stay for the night.

He treats you with ravishing cuisine and a grand bedroom that was as grotesque as the rest of the house. Afterwards, he leaves you to rest, but not before warning you not to get out of the room post midnight.

You oblige- for the first half hour. Then you start to hear wails and footsteps that amplify and disappear. It's impossible to sleep.

The next morning, you confront Vil about it. He refuses to face the questions as he ushers you to get going, and so off you go.

You spend another day lost in the woods, then somehow come face to face with the mansion again. Vil is beyond shocked to see you, but then he breaks into a deep smile.

"It's almost as if you belong here,"

Weirdly enough, you could agree, There seemed to be an invisible force pulling you towards Vil. After dinner, he orders you not to leave the room again before making his leave.

Broken wails. Recurring footsteps. You can't bear it any longer, and you also wonder if Vil is aware of this. He properly is, and thus tells you to stay safe inside the room.

But dumb curiosity gets the best of you, and you open the door and step into the endless corridors.

The wails come from the host's room, where Vil is supposed to be. You're closing in when its door is suddenly flung open, and out runs a panting Vil.

"Vil? What are-"

His eyes are bloodshot and there's red stain in the corner of his mouth. Sweat dots his forehead. He looks disheveled and the complete opposite of how he was during dinner.

"You shouldn't be here. Get back - get back in!"

His voice booms in your skull, and you're running back to your room before you notice. 

It's another sleepless night.

To your luck, Vil doesn't wait for you to bring the incident up.

"Don't be creeped ou by it, please."

He seems very uneasy about it, but he's obstinate to give you an explanation.

Turns out that he is a vampire. One that has lived for 500 years and is waiting for his eventual death. He's seen everything in this world and lived through the best and worst of humanity. He understands people's fear about vampires, and so he resides in the remote part of the wood. He only ever drinks the blood of small animals that he hunt, and never has he once killed a man.

He knew nothing about what'd happen to him when he became a vampire. If he'd known about the repercussions, he'd never have become one in exchange of eternal beauty. Now he has to turn someone else into a vampire to end his immortality. It is only a cycle.

 Every night the moon rises and spills into his room, and he has to fight his urge to go out and taste the sweet blood of humans. 

There are times when he slips and loses control, but he always manages to get back to his senses. But it seems that your presence here in the mansion is awaking his desire to suck you dry.

You're bewildered to say the least, and frankly horrified. But at the same time you feel pity for him, for he is just a man who can't ever do anything as atrocious as hurting people.

And so you offer to end his suffering. Of course Vil disagrees. He just talked about how he never wanted to take a life, and now you're offering yourself to him? He'd never allow it.

But you're even more persistent. You keep staying in his mansion, and his sanity slips a little more every night. And you know that he's contemplating too, for he never tries to kick you out of his mansion.

"You deserve a rest, Vil. For your love and selflessness. For all the unspoken kindness you bestow on others. It is only fair that you get to rest,"

Vil has lived a life. He's but a mere walking corpse now, and a rest -- a sleep -- sounds just like what he needs.

And so he rests. Vil falls into a deep, serene sleep while you endure each and every dark night.

[dwellordream]

“I accidentally bought two zonbis in Haiti. My zonbis are not the walking dead but rather the common, everyday spirits of the recently dead, zonbi astral. The spirits were captured from a cemetery in a mystical ritual and then contained in an empty rum bottle. I did not do the capturing and containing; this feat was achieved by a man named St. Jean, who made his living (in the face of chronically high unemployment) as a bòkò, or sorcerer, in a neighborhood near the cemetery in downtown Port-au-Prince.

I had gone to interview the bòkò, and when I complimented a colorfully decorated bottle that sat on his altar, he asked if I would like to have one like it. In agreeing, I got much more than a decorated bottle. My encounter with the sorcerer turned into something far more complex than the commission of what I took to be an art object. When I returned to pick up the bottle, St. Jean performed a complex ritual that infused human life into the bottle and transformed the container into a living grave, housing a human–spirit hybrid entity. 

The essence of the zonbis’ spirit life emanates from shaved bits of bone from two human skulls. The zonbis in the bottle cannot properly be understood as souls but rather as fragments of human soul, or spirit. In Afro-Haitian religious thought, part of the spirit goes immediately to God after death, while another part lingers near the grave for a time. It is this portion of the spirit that can be captured and made to work; let’s say, a form of “raw spirit life.” The bòkò performed a spontaneous ritual, which began when he popped a cassette tape into a player. 

Our soundscape was a secret society ceremony to which he said he belonged. He put these skull shavings into the bottle, along with the ashes from a burned American dollar and a variety of herbs, perfumes, alcohols, and powders. Robert Farris Thompson spelled out the logic of this sort of “charm” in his work on minkisi (containers of spirit) from the Kongo culture, which are surely one of the cultural sources of the zonbi: The nkisi is believed to live with an inner life of its own. The basis of that life was a captured soul. . . . The owner of the charm could direct the spirit in the object to accomplish mystically certain things for him, either to enhance his luck or to sharpen his business sense. This miracle was achieved through two basic classes of medicine within the charm, spirit-­embedding medicine (earths, often from a grave site, for cemetery earth is considered at one with the spirit of the dead) and spirit-­admonishing objects (seeds, claws, miniature knives, stones, crystals, and so forth).

In my bottle, the spirit-embedding medicine includes cemetery earth, but also more to the point, the skull shavings. At some previous time, St. Jean had most likely prepared the skulls in a sort of spirit-extracting ritual, treating them with baths of dew, rain, and sunshine. The skulls had been given food (which they absorb mystically, as spirits in the invisible world generally do) and had been baptized with new, ritual names. Their names would have been cryptic phrases, such as je m’engage (I’m trying) or al chache (go look). Each skull would have been charged with a specific strength, job, or problem to treat. 

Presumably, these skulls were activated with the ability to enhance luck, wealth, and health. “Spirit-admonishing medicines” instruct the zonbis in the work that they are being commanded to do on my behalf. Ingeniously, this technology of good luck zonbi-making involves dressing the zonbis in the very instructions and work directions the maker intends them to perform. The mirrors around the center of the bottle are its “eyes for seeing” and will identify any force coming at me with malevolent intent. The scissors lashed open under the bottleneck are like arms crossed in self-defense. 

The dollar bill in the bottle instructs the zonbi spirits to attract wealth. The herbs are for the zonbis to heal me of sickness and disease, while the perfumes are to make me attractive and desirable. St. Jean created for them a magnetic force field by placing two industrial magnets as a kind of collar on the neck of the bottle. This object is now swirling with polarity, intention, and life. It is what Stephan Palmié has called “a life form constituted through ritual action.”

This zonbi bottle refuses the Western ontological distinction between people and things, and between life and death, as it is a hybrid of human and spirit, living and dead, individual and generic. In Afro-Creole thought, spirit can inhabit both natural and human-made things, and what is more, this force can be manipulated and used, often for healing and protection, sometimes for aggression or attack. When I later interviewed the bòkò, I learned about the deep moral ambiguity of the zonbi astral. 

St. Jean told me that the zonbis were trapped in the bottle until the time when, as with every person, their spirits would go on to God. The bòkò instructed me to ask the zonbis for anything I wanted, because, captured and ritually transformed, they were working for him, and now, as if subcontracted, for me. I realized that I was effectively in the position of a spiritual slave owner. Besides being dismayed and upset, I found it puzzling that people would practice the enslavement of this “raw spirit life” considering that their ancestors suffered extreme brutality during colonial slavery in Haiti, where the life expectancy of an enslaved person on a plantation was only seven years. 

Planters fed and inaugurated the modern system of Atlantic capitalism through dehumanization, starvation, and torture; these were the routine ways of extracting production value to fund the obscenely lucrative sugar trade. But, then again, the living take charge of their history when they mimetically perform master–slave relationships with spirits of the dead. The production of spiritual (and bodily) zonbis shows us how groups remember history and enact its consequences in embodied ritual arts. 

The slave trade and colonial slavery—whose modus operandus was to cast living humans as commodities—are quite literally encoded and reenacted in this living object. Just as slavery depended on capturing, containing, and forcing the labor of thousands of people, so does this form of mystical work reenact the same process in local terms. It is, as Taussig famously put it, history as sorcery. Under slavery, Afro-Caribbeans were rendered nonhuman by being legally transposed into commodities. 

Now, the enslaved dead hold a respected place within the religion. In what might seem counterintuitive, Randy Matory recently argued that in Afro-Latin religions, “instead of being the opposite of the desired personal or social state, the image and mimesis of slavery become highly flexible instruments of legally free people’s aspirations for themselves and for their loved ones.” He notes that in these religions, the slave is often considered the most efficacious spiritual actor. 

The relationship between spirit worker and the dead is inherently unequal and exploitative, yet it is nuanced in fascinating ways that give the spirits of the dead some agency. Usually the dealings between people and the zonbis are just that—economic affairs, caught up in a system revolving around money, work, captivity, predation, and coercion. I did feed the zonbis a ritual meal of unsalted rice and beans, feeling somewhat sheepish the entire while. But I was determined to operate in as ethical a manner as I could toward this bottle, which its maker understood to be a living thing. 

Who was I not to take care of my obligations to the zonbis? I was haunted by a comment made by the scholar Luminisa Bunseki Fu-Kiau at a conference. “When you put our ‘charms’ and ‘fetishes’ in your museums,” he said, “you are incarcerating our ancestors.” I did not want to get in trouble in any way, either with the living or the dead. I had been privy to a case of sorcery involving a malevolent zonbi. I watched while Papa Mondy, an expert healer in spirit work, diagnosed a teenager who had taken sick and was acting strange. 

After extensive consultation and divination, Papa Mondy informed the boy’s mother that someone with bad intentions had voye zonbi (sent a zonbi) against the teen and had “sold” the boy mystically to a secret society. The teen had been captured mystically in the unseen world, and his life force was being “eaten.” In a family drama of sickness and healing, once again the transactions of slavery were at play. This diagnosis reenacted the capture, sale, and exploitation of the life of a person, here in the unseen world of everyday Haitian life. 

The cure—and the teen was cured, at least in the semipublic neighborhood narrative—involved a complex process of ritual freeing, negotiating, and buying back: an unraveling and undoing of the spiritual enslavement. The director of this healing ceremony was Papa Gede Loray, himself a spirit of a former colonial slave—considered the best “worker” among the spirits—who came to possess the priest Mondy for most of the proceedings. The teen was ritually buried, lying down (up to his neck) beneath a light layer of earth in a symbolic grave, and the zonbi was tricked and forced to remain in the grave when the boy was lifted out.

The zonbi was quickly covered up with earth then bound and tied to the spot with a rock and a rope. These Haitian spirit workers once again performed some of the actions famously used against the African enslaved— tricking, capturing, binding, and shackling—but this time the ritual actors were the present-day descendants of slaves, enacting the commodification and traffic in humans through the ritual vocabulary most salient to their history, in what Connerton called “the capacity to reproduce a certain performance.” The boy was freed of the zonbi, but he still needed to be “bought back” from the secret society.

Since it was unclear (as it often is) who sent this misfortune, the crucial redeeming deal had to be made with Bawon Samdi, the spirit-in-chief of the recently dead and the ultimate authority over the cemetery. We were going to buy the boy back from the cemetery, before the cemetery swallowed him up. We went, quite late at night by now, to an intersection of two roads where diplomatic spiritual protocol necessitated that the family make a payment to Met Kalfou, the spirit of the crossroads. Si kalfou pa bay, simitye pa pran, goes this important principle: “If the crossroads won’t give (way), the cemetery won’t take (accept).”

When we got to the cemetery, Papa Mondy set up shop next to the tomb of Bawon. An elaborate series of ritual exchanges ensued. Mondy gently ripped the boy’s clothes from his body until he wore only his underthings and then laid the boy on top of the tomb. To the accompaniment of prayers and prayer-songs, Mondy swept the boy with a broom to remove any remaining negativity. He entreated Bawon to buy back this boy from those who wanted to steal him and stood pleading with two arms outstretched while the rest of the small group sang behind him. 

First he spoke to the afflicted boy, but really to us, to the dead, and to the evil-doer. “Now you are known by the cemetery. Now you are like one of the dead. How can you kill a dead man, mon cher? They can do nothing to you.” Next he addressed Bawon: “You are the one with power over death. You are the only one who can kill him,” said Mondy. “I sell this boy to you, and you alone are buying him. It is you who will determine the day he will die.” Papa Mondy knelt down and threw down a small package wrapped in brown paper, held together with pins. He deftly poured rum over the whole thing and lit a match.

 A hungry blue flame engulfed the clothes, the brown paper, and the precious four hundred and twelve dollars that were inside. With this monetary sacrifice, Bawon was paid and the boy was bought. Mondy stood the boy atop the tomb and dressed him in clean white clothes. He told the boy he would no longer be under the influence of other humans or spirits who wished to harm him—only Bawon “owned” him. That night in the cemetery, the teen boy was literally, and with Haitian currency, sold to a moral and powerful guardian, in order to escape being owned by a malevolent and exploitative one. 

In this case, selling a person was an act of redemption, a far cry from—and yet also an echo of—the Atlantic slave trade. One cannot help but notice the various profound ways that layers of historical events and conditions are remembered and mimetically enacted through ritual, from the slave trade to the current patronage system of politically powerful “big men” and their more vulnerable followers. This religious logic also bears a parallel to the Christian notion that Jesus pays the debt of sin for the believer, whose soul is bought and paid for through the blood of the crucifixion. 

In both cases, a supernatural entity can buy the spirit (or soul) of a human and become that person’s mediator with the unseen world and the afterlife. Some Vodouists understand Jesus as the first zonbi. This myth holds that Jesus’s tomb was guarded by two Haitian soldiers, who unscrupulously stole the password God gave when He resurrected Jesus. The soldiers stole the password, sold it, and the stolen secret is now part of the secrets of sorcerers. If we examine the story carefully, we see that the buyer of people (Jesus) is victimized by people rebelling against him. 

The ordinary folk—the soldiers—are stealing from God, who after all set the terms of all negotiations. In this story, the sorcerer acknowledges his opposition to (Roman Catholic) Christianity, which, in its affiliation with landowning elites, has not always served the interests of everyday Haitians. Yet insofar as being made a zonbi is a terrifying form of victimization, this story also sympathizes with Jesus. In a beautiful ironwork sculpture by Gabriel Bien-Aimé, cut and hammered from a recycled oil drum, Jesus with his crown of thorns is being taken down from the cross with a chain around his neck. 

At the other end is the sorcerer controlling him. Like the colonial slave, or the oppressed worker, zonbis also possess the potential for out-and-out rebellion. There are plenty of stories of people who ask these “bought spirits” for wealth, land, or political promotion and who cannot provide the food demanded in return. Then the zonbis are said to rise up to attack their owners, consuming their life force as payment. Eating them through magic, the zonbi becomes more and more powerful as its master wastes away through sickness. 

St. Jean himself was said to have been “eaten” in this manner, consumed by his own enslaved zonbi, turned cannibal in response to St. Jean’s voracious greed. Perhaps that process is what is described in this mural, painted on the interior wall of a Vodou temple. Here, a sorcerer (indicated as such by his red shirt and by the whip in his hand, a tool used to “heat up” ritual and activate spiritual energy) is attacked by hundreds of skeletal figures while facing a tomb. 

Taussig, the Comaroffs, and others have written about the ways such sorcery narratives are provoked by, and are a rendering of, the basic mechanisms of capitalist production, that is, the creation of value for some through appropriating and consuming the energies of others. Haitian spirit workers have redescribed this aspect of capitalism in religious ritual. 

Seen this way, zonbi-making is an example of a non-Western form of thought that diagnoses, theorizes, and responds mimetically to the long history of violently consumptive and dehumanizing capitalism in the Americas from the colonial period until the present. Zonbis can be understood as a religious, philosophical, and artistic response to the cannibalistic dynamics within capitalism and a harnessing of these principles through ritual.”

- Elizabeth McAlister, “Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-Whites: The Race and Religion of Zombies.” in Zombie Theory: A Reader

[k7l4d4]

Luz SMASH!! (Just Kidding!) An Owl House AU Idea!

Hello all, this here is an AU Crossover Idea for, you guessed it, the Owl House! This idea crosses the Marvel Universe with that of the Owl House, helped by the fact that both are run through Disney, it isn’t a full on crossover, as only specific elements are supposed to be relevant. Now, on to the background information and premise! Everybody clap your hands!!

First off, in the Marvel Universe, Gamma Radiation, the highest known form of radiation and incredibly deadly besides, comes in a third variant that possesses Mutagenic properties, causing Superpower bestowing mutations in those exposed to it, and live that is. This third form is the emissions of an ancient existence known as “The One Below All,” a malevolent mindless monstrosity that sits below all of existence, and is the gestalt of all hate, pain, negativity, and suffering, as well as the physical embodiment of the concept of destruction itself. For all that The One Below All is dangerous, it lacks both a mind and a personality of its own, needing sufficiently malevolent and outright evil individuals to act as hosts for it and give it a mind and personality to work with. 

But I’m getting sidetracked. One of the big themes of The One Below All is that those who wield powers from his Radiation, known as Gamma Mutates, are incapable of truly using their powers for good. I call bull on that. Destruction isn’t evil, it just IS, nor can The One Below All decide how those who wield his power decide to use it, and while certainly some have chosen the path of wickedness, others have counted themselves among the most powerful of heroes, such as the Hulk himself! As I see it, destruction and creation are intrinsically linked; for something to be created, their must be room for it to inhabit, ergo, something must be destroyed. The power of the Gamma Mutates is the power to create Change, whether for good or evil is irrelevant. So, I thought, why not give the power of a Gamma Mutate to someone already known as a harbringer of change, chaos, and destruction of the prior status quo. I’m talking about Luz Noceda ya’ll!!

Luz's Home Earth is a variant of the Marvel Earth, minus the Mutants who are one world down the metaphysical scale, and she's well acquainted with the unusual, the bizarre, and the super, if only due to TV and the Internet filling her in. This version of Luz has always had her head in the clouds, being slightly off-put by how little the Supernatural events going on in the world touch her home town. (After gaining her abilities she gets a little more appreciation of why that sleepiness is usually a good thin) Luz gained her Gamma Mutate abilities due to her mother, Camila, helping with a Gamma Radiation-based clinical trial years prior. For the longest time, Luz's latent abilities lied dormant, only emerging when she enters the Isles, and gradually at that, only becoming noticeable when she tries to free the prisoners in the Conformatorium and actually making slight headway before her arms give out. Luz's Gamma Mutate abilities manifest, at first, as a form of absorption and emission, allowing her to take in energy and emit it as her own, with a Gamma Charging twist. The big issue is two-fold, in that Luz both has very poor control over the ability and cannot reliably absorb or emit at will just yet, and she also personally dislikes her powers, as she feels they undermine her dream, as well as her goal, of being a Witch, often looking for excuses not to use them or practice with them. When she finally manages to get over her hang-ups, Luz also discovers that she has the power to temporarily convert others into Gamma Mutates themselves by emitting raw Mutagenic Gamma Radiation directly into their bodies. By temporarily, I mean it lasts from around a minute to an hour, depending on how strenuous their activity is, and she has no control how their Mutate Status will manifest in the slightest. Her absorption ability only works in the form of directed energy, such as a flame, light, or electricity, things of that nature; she absolutely CANNOT absorb another person's energy directly from their body, and trying to do so causes her body to emit large amounts of Gamma uncontrollably as a result. Her distinctive signature trait that marks her as a Gamma Mutate, that is to say the Green coloration the vast majority of Gammas typically have in some form, manifests in her skin and hair, but does so in an odd way, fluctuating in response to her energy stores, causing her to become more green in color the more overall energy she has absorbed into her body so far, and fading back to normal the less she does. Because she can absorb Light as an energy source, Luz always has a slightly green tint to her skin and hair, even when at her absolute lowest energy store, but most people can't actually tell, only being able to note that something is off about her appearance but can't figure out WHAT it is.

Luz’s powers have a REALLY bad habit of kicking in at literally the worst possible moment, such as releasing a sudden burst of energy out of nowhere when she or her friends need to be stealthy, or accidentally absorbing a very much needed spell cast by Eda or one of the others when they are in a pickle.

Like in Canon, Luz lies to her Mami about going to Camp, but makes a better effort of staying in contact with her in a more meaningful capacity than just passing emojis at her. She also reveals the fact that she is a Gamma Mutate to Camila, in the hopes of gaining an explanation as to HOW she’s one, as well as any advice she can give on keeping herself or others safe.

Other MU elements are most definitely present, for one thing, do to some of the chaotic events resulting in conflict between known heroes, magic is a known force on her Earth, so Luz KNOWS magic is possible, she just doesn't know how, and her mother has been adamant about her not trying to learn on her own, mostly out of concern for her safety. I would say that Eda is familiar with Doctor Strange and other Earth-born Magic users, and may even have some practice with their methods, if only to stick it to Belos and only in the form of Cantrips and the like, as well as being more familiar overall with Earth and Human Culture, as opposed to her just above baseline knowledge that most Boiling Islanders have canonically. She's still not totally savvy, but she's heads and shoulders above her Canon self, in that she genuinely knows what the things she's selling actually are, but still sells them as random garbage anyhow just because the weird and insane explanations she gives are more likely to get her sweet, sweet profits!  Eda, in addition to her Con-Woman gig, was tasked by the Magical Orders of Earth to monitor and intercede with Magical Matters on the Isles as price for allowing to keep her portal and her scams running, as well as charged with keeping the Portal as far from Belos' grubby mitts as she can.

If you all have any questions, comments, or anything, feel free to let me know!