#but she entertains us with the demon blade and not with hammers

[mars-gallavanger]

[robininthelabyrinth]

NMJ is used to taking care of everyone else. He's not used to being taken care of. After getting injured or sick or a qi divination or something, his loved ones all come together to take care of him. He learns more people care deeply about him than he realized.

And if you can include a scene with someone bathing him or washing his hair, I would be ecstatic.

ao3

“- and no excuses!” Nie Huaisang’s voice was a little shrill, but under the circumstances, Nie Mingjue didn’t entirely feel like he could object.

After all, all the yelling, shrill or otherwise, was a sign that Nie Huaisang was sincerely worried about him, something Nie Mingjue usually did his best not to doubt. His little brother was self-absorbed and carefree, just the way he’d vowed he’d let him be years before when Nie Huaisang had been little more than a child. So even if Nie Huaisang’s behavior annoyed him or worried him, which it often did, even if it seized up his heart to think about what might happen when he was gone, when there would be no one to take care of his brother for him, it still pleased him beyond measure to see his brother grow up happy.

So what if it meant taking on some extra burdens, meant doing that little bit more to conceal his hardships and portray himself as the unshakable older brother Nie Huaisang saw him as? So what if his brother’s complaints sometimes acted as thorns hooked deep in his heart, itching under his skin, making him wonder does he really think of me that way and have I gone too far this time, maybe he hates me now and all that?

Nie Huaisang was yelling at him again, voice painfully shrill and piercing, but for Nie Mingjue, to hear his brother worried for him and not from him made for a nice change.

Anyway, he himself had probably been just as shrill, when it had been his father that –

It wasn’t that bad, he reminded himself. Baxia was as strong a presence in his mind as ever, their bond uninterrupted. It only looked bad from the outside.

It looked – pretty bad from the outside.

Nie Mingjue tried to smile at Nie Huaisang, but for some reason that just seemed to make things worse: Nie Huaisang’s eyes filled up with tears at once and the scowl on his face deepened. “I’m serious, da-ge! Really serious. I’ll take care of everything, you won’t need to worry about anything at all – for real, this time – and in return, you’re staying put until the doctors say you’re better.”

Nie Mingjue nodded obediently.

Nie Huaisang burst into tears and fled the room before Nie Mingjue could even offer him a hug.

Watching his little brother run, Nie Mingjue sighed and turned his gaze towards his (usually) reliable head disciple standing guard in the corner of the room, trying to ask with his gaze what in the world he was doing wrong, but Nie Zonghui’s eyes were red like a bad attack of spring fever and he wouldn’t even look at him.

It was not, in Nie Mingjue’s view, a very effective way to guard him. Not that he needed guarding – maybe if he’d had no choice but to return injured to Jinlin Tower, that pit of vipers and nest of foxes, but despite the gravity of his wounds they’d still managed to make it as far as this little outpost in disputed territory. Even if it was a stretch, they could put soldiers here and call it justified as being land under the command of Qinghe Nie…though possibly Jin Guangshan would try to find some way to use them doing that to his advantage.

And Nie Mingjue wasn’t exactly up for another war at the moment.

He wasn’t up for anything.

“Stop thinking of politics,” Nie Zonghui said, and his voice was hoarse as if he’d been swallowing sobs. Nie Mingjue wondered how he’d guessed. “I always can tell because your nose wrinkles whenever you think too hard about it…ah, A-Jue, you scared us.”

Scared his half-generation uncle enough to revert back to using childhood nicknames, apparently.

Nie Mingjue wished he could say something to comfort him.

Well, if he were wishing for things, forget wishing that he hadn’t been struck temporarily mute, he might as well go the full way and wish that the terrible creature he’d been fighting – a demon of especially vicious character, and so unexpectedly near to Lanling, too! – hadn’t taken advantage of the weakness he still suffered from, after the Nightless City, to attack his saber rather than himself.

Might as well wish, too, that he’d never been captured in Yangquan in the first place. That he’d never been beaten or tortured, that he’d never had a hundred Wen feet kicking at his saber in some pale shadow their sect leader, attempting to break him as their sect leader had broken his father.

How he had felt when the demon’s blow had fallen straight onto his blade and she had cracked –

Baxia was fine. He could feel her.

(He remembered his father shouting for someone to bring him his saber, long gone, and wondered –)

Baxia was fine.

He’d examined her a thousand times and couldn’t see any true damage – the physical damage was artificially induced, located at the far end; for a regular saber, it wouldn’t be anything to think twice about, a bit of hammering in the forge and it would be as if it had never happened, with no lingering weakness. It was only if her spirit had been harmed, or the bond between them, that his own spirit would be injured, his mind affected, and that hadn’t happened. He’d checked, was checking, time and time again. She was fine.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell anybody that.

When the blade had cracked, he’d reacted on instinct in a fit of panic, sending all of his qi immediately to his bond with Baxia, desperately and frantically trying to ensure that his soul wasn’t torn out of his hands the way his father’s had been, that gruesome descent into madness and frothing aimless rage. The demon had sensed his distraction and gone for his throat with its claws, and then the rest of the Nie sect that had come on the night-hunt with him had descended upon it like howling wolves, throwing everything they’d brought with them at it.

Not a good night-hunting strategy (what if the demon hadn’t been alone? what if it was huddled together with other creatures of resentful energy the way they usually were, and using up their arsenal on it left them vulnerable? what if they encountered something on the way back?), but admittedly very effective.

The demon had been utterly vanquished – and really, all the admonishments not to think of politics aside, it was very unusual for such a thing to be lurking around in the environs of another Great Sect like that, especially when that sect had invited its guests to casually night-hunt to entertain themselves – and now they were here.

Or rather, he was here, lying in bed with needles stuck in him like a porcupine, drinking bowl after bowl of medicine as his brother frantically hovered over him. And Nie Mingjue was yielding to it all without complaint even when it was really annoying (he’d never been a very good patient) because he understood, having once been there in Nie Huaisang’s place when his father had been in his, except all his complaisance seemed to be only making Nie Huaisang even more upset.

Baxia grumbled in his mind, having apparently realized that they weren’t going night-hunting again until she was fully repaired and all the worry-warts around him satisfied, and he comforted her with his own misery at the idea: stuck in bed, not allowed to train, not allowed to hunt –

He’d tried to mime the idea of doing some correspondence, since much of it was in fact urgent and he couldn’t even imagine how much of the endless work of being sect leader would pile up in the event of an elongated absence, and Nie Huaisang had thrown a fit, and also several teacups.

Apparently he wasn’t even allowed to do that.

Nie Mingjue sighed and sank back into the bed, briefly putting on an exaggerated pout that made Nie Zonghui laugh a little, the sound wet in his throat. But then, once he’d turned away and followed Nie Huaisang out the door, Nie Mingjue’s pout faded into a resigned sigh.

A little while later, he heard familiar voices at the door.

“ – came as soon as I could, of course,” Jin Guangyao was saying, sounding a little – amused? Long-suffering? What a strange emotion for him to openly display, given the circumstances. Even if he was enjoying someone’s misfortune, and Nie Mingjue knew that his sworn brother often did, he would normally be more tactful about expressing it. “Your missive wasn’t very clear about what the issue was, Huaisang.”

Well, that would explain it. If it was Nie Huaisang, being called to assist with a disaster might mean anything from the dramatic breaking of a fan to the even more dramatic prospect of being forced to actually do some work for once in his life. It very rarely referred to actual disaster.

There was the muffled sound of sobbing – it turned Nie Mingjue’s stomach to hear Nie Huaisang like that, but the last day or so had shown him that there was nothing he could do about it – and then some quiet discussion, too low to hear without trying, and Nie Mingjue had gotten some very stern lectures on how much he was not to try anything for a while.

The murmuring continued for a little, and then – “What?!”

A moment later, Jin Guangyao rushed into Nie Mingjue’s room, usual smile still frozen on his face and his eyes a little wider than usual. It was a refreshingly subdued reaction, Nie Mingjue thought: none of the wide-eyed teary eyes or drooped shoulders that usually accompanied Jin Guangyao’s demonstrations of upset feelings, the pity-me scenes that felt so staged now that Nie Mingjue knew what an able actor Jin Guangyao was.

This time, though, he seemed almost sincere.

Jin Guangyao stopped a few steps into the room, staring at where Nie Mingjue was lying, expression still frozen for a moment, and then the ice melted and the artifice returned, a look of sorrow and sympathy – look at how bad you’ve made me feel by being hurt like that – that made Nie Mingjue want to sigh. He’d been happier, their relationship better, before he’d gotten to peek under the mask Jin Guangyao wore, but it hadn’t been the truth, and he always preferred a hard truth over a soft lie.

“Oh, da-ge,” Jin Guangyao murmured. “Da-ge, poor da-ge…how are you feeling?”

Nie Mingjue said nothing, of course, and Jin Guangyao frowned.

“He can’t talk,” Nie Huaisang said, having followed him into the room. “His throat was nearly ripped out –”

For fuck’s sake, it was a scratch.

“– and he was almost entirely drained of his qi. I could barely feel his heartbeat when I arrived! And he hasn’t been acting like himself, either! I don’t know, I just – I don’t remember what it was like, la – last – last time –”

The tears were starting again, and Nie Mingjue tried to raise a hand to reach out to Nie Huaisang, wanting to comfort him, but something about the gesture made Nie Huaisang sob even harder and even Jin Guangyao looked a little taken aback, even a little stricken. Maybe it was the amount of effort it took for him to lift his hand, the way he had to stop and start the movement? The way his fingers trembled with the effort it took to keep it up in the air?

(His father hadn’t been like this at all. Maybe Nie Huaisang had been too young, Nie Zonghui too distant, but Nie Mingjue remembered it as if it were yesterday – there hadn’t been weakness, not like this. His father had been in a coma for three days and nights, and then he’d woken up. He’d seemed fine at first, not weak at all beyond the usual sluggishness that followed after a period of unconsciousness, and then he’d asked for his saber – and kept asking, no matter how many times they tried to explain –)

Baxia was fine.

The weakness was his own.

It wasn’t like that.

“How can I help?” Jin Guangyao asked. “Sect business –”

“I need someone to watch over him,” Nie Huaisang interrupted, wiping his eyes. “Someone who knows him well. He’s not…his reactions are all wrong. He goes into these dazes sometimes, doesn’t respond, and even when he seems present, he’s flinching at things that aren’t there or being nice and I just…I really can’t tell how much he’s really here or how much of it is reacting on, I don’t know, some sort of childhood instinct. So it has to be someone familiar with his habits, his likes and dislikes.”

Jin Guangyao was blinking rapidly. “And – me? You want me to...I was his deputy, yes, but – surely you or someone else in the Nie sect would be more appropriate?”

“Sect Leader Nie has always respected the differences between rank,” Nie Zonghui volunteered, voice low. “It would hurt his pride to be seen in such an undignified state by someone who wasn’t family.”

The blinking stopped, Jin Guangyao’s rapid thinking abruptly (and visibly) hitting a wall. “I’m – I’m not family.”

“You’re his sworn brother, aren’t you? That’s almost the same as being brothers, which makes you family,” Nie Huaisang said practically. “I’ve written to er-ge, too –”

He’d what?!

“Anyway, I know how good you are at managing things, but it wouldn’t really be appropriate for you to be involved in Nie sect business, would it? It might put you in an awkward situation, having to negotiate against your father.” Nie Huaisang gave Jin Guangyao another hug. “You just focus on taking care of da-ge, all right? I don’t want – if anyone found out, they could –”

He was going to start crying again, Nie Mingjue thought miserably, and wondered if people could die of dehydration by means of tears.

“Nothing will happen to your brother while he’s in my hands,” Jin Guangyao said, and Nie Mingjue even believed him. If there was one thing Jin Guangyao hated, it was being blamed for anything – even if he wanted Nie Mingjue dead, which Nie Mingjue was sure he did sometimes, he would never let it happen while he was the responsible party. Which was why it was something of a surprise that he was allowing himself to be made responsible. “It’ll be all right, Huaisang. You have to believe that.”

Nie Huaisang sniffed and finally wiped away his tears. “You’ll see what I mean soon enough,” he said ominously, and stalked out with Nie Zonghui a few steps behind, shooting Jin Guangyao an apologetic look as they left.

Nie Mingjue couldn’t tell if he agreed or disagreed with Nie Huaisang’s words.

“I hope da-ge doesn’t mind my forwardness in agreeing to help him,” Jin Guangyao said, coming closer to the bed to look down at him, his expression simpering and fake as it always was these days.

As much as that falsity annoyed him, how could Nie Mingjue mind? He knew, as Jin Guangyao did not, what his brother was afraid of; anything that could ease his brother’s mind, if only for a moment, was good.

(Why would Jin Guangyao agree to be the one responsible for him? A demon of such strength shouldn’t have been anywhere near Lanling. And this little outpost was nothing, unguarded, vulnerable; they didn’t have any defenses if Jin Guangshan decided to do something against them here, and yet Jin Guangyao willingly agreed –)

He couldn’t tell Jin Guangyao that he appreciated what he was doing and knew how hard it was, how much of a burden it was, so he reached out and caught his sleeve, tugging it lightly, and tried to smile at him.

It wasn’t any more successful than when he’d tried it on Nie Huaisang – less tears, but it made Jin Guangyao frown in a way that looked actually sincere, as if Nie Mingjue had done something incorrect – so he tugged on his sleeve again, like a child, until Jin Guangyao instinctively lifted his hand to stop him. Nie Mingjue exerted himself, caught it, and drew the words for an apology on his sworn brother’s palm.

My fault, he thought at Jin Guangyao, hoping that he’d understand. I’ve troubled you.

My fault.

It was his weakness. His family’s, his father’s, his own – why should others pay for it, the way he’d paid for his father’s? All he’d ever wanted was to keep them from having to go through that type of suffering.

Jin Guangyao’s hand was trembling, he suddenly noticed, and opened eyes that had slid shut with temporary exhaustion to look at Jin Guangyao again.

His sworn brother’s face had gone ashen, his lips pressed together tightly as if something was upsetting him.

“Da-ge?” he said, strangely hesitant, but Nie Mingjue didn’t understand what he was trying to ask him and was too tired to really try. He squeezed Jin Guangyao’s hand again and released him, letting his hand fall down to the bed.

He checked once again on Baxia.

She was fine. She was right there, their bond as strong as ever.

(“Where is my saber?” his father asked, rubbing his face. “Pass Jiwei to me, A-Jue, will you?”)

He shivered.

Opened his eyes.

The room had been reorganized, he noticed, and the light was different, although not too much – had he fallen asleep? He must have.

Well, he was still healing. It was normal.

“Da-ge!” Jin Guangyao was still there, too. “Can you hear me now?”

Nie Mingjue nodded.

“Good,” Jin Guangyao said, and seemed to even mean it. “Is there anything I can get for you?”

My saber, Nie Mingjue thought, and started shivering again, the room suddenly gone terribly cold even though he was under two layers of blankets already.

Baxia was fine. She was only out of his sight because they were fixing her – it was a small thing, nothing to a normal saber, easily repaired. It was only taking so long because they would have to find a good forge and bring over a smith familiar with spiritual weapons.

Baxia was fine.

He wouldn’t ask for her. He wouldn’t.

“– leader Nie! Look at me – can you hear me? Sect Leader Nie, Meng Yao has a question for you –”

Nie Mingjue turned his head with some difficulty and blinked at Jin Guangyao, who looked relieved. He’d used his old name for some reason, maybe to get Nie Mingjue’s attention, and even that much was a bit of a surprise. Jin Guangyao hated his old name, would prefer to pretend it had never existed, and this was the first time Nie Mingjue had heard it from his lips since the ceremony in which he’d received the new one.

“Good,” Jin Guangyao murmured, seeing him. “Good – yes, da-ge. You’re back. Good. Look at me.”

Nie Mingjue tried to mouth the word ‘question’ at him, but it felt like it was impossible to communicate properly. The lack of language frustrated him immensely, even if the usual anger that was always so quick to leap to his side at the first instance of such frustration didn’t come, too buried beneath the fear.

Luckily, Jin Guangyao was quick and smart and after a few moments seemed to understand. “Oh, ah, the question? Yes. That. Ah...I wanted to know if there was something you wanted.”

My saber.

Nie Mingjue shivered.

Baxia was fine.

“I rearranged the room to your preferences –” He had, too. Even the light fell differently. “– but I’m not sure what else I can get for you that you might need or enjoy.”

Nie Mingjue considered trying to ask for correspondence again, something to do that would be useful, but quickly realized the futility of that.  Still, he didn’t really do anything else, other than work; he’d long ago given up all his old hobbies in favor of his duties, being sect leader and training himself for war and eventually war itself, and even he didn’t remember what they were anymore.

“As da-ge knows, he has always been a mystery to me,” Jin Guangyao added, a little bit of self-depreciating humor in his words. That old joke between them (had it been a joke?), about how Meng Yao would constantly be trying to figure out what Nie Mingjue liked so that he could serve him better and Nie Mingjue constantly being disinterested in every vice he tried to present him with…after everything, Nie Mingjue had started to wonder if it hadn’t been a joke at all, if Meng Yao had been truly frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t find any chink in his armor, a weakness he could exploit to hold over his head.

He was so weak now, though, and yet Jin Guangyao made the same joke.

Was there anything, really, for him to do? Jin Guangyao must be terribly bored, forced to be a babysitter for a man who couldn’t even speak to convey his wishes, and wouldn’t –

Actually, now what he thought about it, there was something.

Nie Mingjue lifted his fingers and twisted them into the hand sign they’d used during the Sunshot Campaign to mean ‘break camp’.

Jin Guangyao stared at him blankly.

He made the sign again, hoping to convey meaning. There wasn’t anything in the room he could point to, and he’d never been especially talented at pantomime, yet surely Jin Guangyao with his quick mind would be able to puzzle it out – every time he made that sign, they would stop moving, set up the tents, and the first thing he’d want, every time it was possible, was –

“A bath?” Jin Guangyao asked, and Nie Mingjue nodded in relief. “I’ll order one set up right away. Anything else?”

Nie Mingjue pointed to the pile of his clothing that was now neatly folded up on a nearby table – and much reduced, by the look of it. Not a surprise. The always-efficient Jin Guangyao would have sent the worst pieces, the ones that had been cut off his body by the doctors, away to be retailored.

Jin Guangyao frowned at it. “You want to get dressed? No…to get ready to receive visitors?”

Nie Mingjue nodded.

“Why? Who are you expecting?”

After some contemplation, Nie Mingjue held up two fingers.

Jin Guangyao blinked.

Sighing, Nie Mingjue pointed at himself – one finger – and at Jin Guangyao – three fingers – and then held up two again.

“…you want to get bathed and dressed before er-ge arrives?”

It was so good to have someone by his side that understood him. Losing his trust in Meng Yao’s character had always been the worst part of that entire experience, the realization that the person he’d thought was a friend had never existed but had instead been deliberately manufactured to match his tastes, but losing the help of such a competent deputy hadn’t been great, either.

“Da-ge, are you sure?”

Nie Mingjue nodded. He couldn’t let Lan Xichen see him like this – the Nie and Lan sects had always been closer allies than they’d been with the others, and they’d been friends since childhood. While not physically present, Lan Xichen had seen some glimpses of what Nie Mingjue had gone through when his father had been dying, and again right after he’d died.

He’d been the one to whom Nie Huaisang had revealed that one letter that Nie Mingjue had thought he’d burned, the one that he hadn’t actually intended on ever using, the one that laid out what he’d say if he were to say goodbye – it had only been theoretical, a way to get out frustration. He would never have been so selfish as to let the awful burden that had fallen on his shoulders fall in turn on Nie Huaisang.

But Lan Xichen hadn’t really believed him back then, when he’d explained that he didn’t mean it, that he didn’t have any plans to do anything that would make such a goodbye necessary. He’d worried himself sick over him back then.

He’d worry now.

Nie Mingjue knew Lan Xichen loved him, he did, even if sometimes recently he felt that Lan Xichen might take him a little for granted. Lan Xichen loved him, so Lan Xichen would worry about him, but Lan Xichen also expressed his worries through trying to fix things.

He didn’t want to have to deal with that right now. There was nothing that needed to be fixed – Baxia was fine, he was fine, it was just a matter of healing for him and a bit of reforging for her.

It was fine.

“Da-ge, the bath is ready.”

Nie Mingjue pulled himself back out of trying to check on his bond with Baxia again to find that it was, steaming and hot; the servants must have moved it in while he wasn’t paying attention and then departed again. He tried to pull himself up to sit, but Jin Guangyao pressed down on his shoulder with surprising strength.

“Let me help you, da-ge,” he said, and Nie Mingjue graciously didn’t call him out on how much he was clearly enjoying himself. It was nice to think that part of that enjoyment was in helping him, as opposed to merely being in a position of power, but it was so hard to tell with Jin Guangyao – he wasn’t even sure the man himself knew which it was.

Shakily, with Jin Guangyao’s assistance, he sat up, and put his feet on the ground, only to have to wait while Jin Guangyao fussed around removing the acupuncture needles that had been left behind, murmuring something about having gotten the doctors’ approval. After that was done, Jin Guangyao helped him painstakingly totter over to the bathtub – his sworn brother might have only mediocre cultivation, but he was still stronger than Nie Mingjue was now, with his qi depleted and his battered body little more than dead weight. Nie Mingjue was as dependent on him as a small child on their parent. Once there, he helped brace him against the wall, helped remove his inner robes, and finally, blissfully, helped him slide into the bathtub.

“Da-ge has so many scars,” Jin Guangyao said, and Nie Mingjue looked at him.

Jin Guangyao was studying him with a strange expression on his face. He hadn’t allowed him to assist him with bathing before, Nie Mingjue recalled; he had been trying to maintain a divide between personal servants and military hierarchy, and Jin Guangyao – Meng Yao, then – had been a guest disciple, not a servant. Even when there were no personal servants to be had and Jin Guangyao had offered, Nie Mingjue had refused, not wanting his deputy to feel as though he were being looked down upon.

Still, it wasn’t as though the man hadn’t seen his bare chest before – there had been times on campaign when a bath hadn’t been possible, only a quick dip in the river to wash off the blood, and Jin Guangyao had even helped stitch him up a few times when an enemy’s blade had struck true and the doctors were busy elsewhere – so Nie Mingjue wasn’t sure what was drawing his interest this time.

Normally, he would have asked.

Normally, he would have gotten angry at the presumption, less because of the violation of social norms than because he was embarrassed, and when he was embarrassed he got angry. That was his temperament, the way he’d been raised, always defaulting to anger instead of other, less comfortable emotions, and he’d tried very hard to avoid passing along those habits to Nie Huaisang. He hoped one day to see Nie Huaisang teaching children of his own with new habits, different habits – for his little brother to scold him for being a bad example to the younger generation, for him to have a reason to try harder to be better.

He couldn’t ask now, and there was no point in being angry. Or embarrassed, for that matter.

Jin Guangyao’s hand came to his shoulder, and then slid down to his chest, the pressure of his fingers light and barely present. There was nothing sexual or threatening in the gesture, simply curiosity.

“So many new scars,” Jin Guangyao murmured, and Nie Mingjue looked down at his chest: raised red lines all over, old injuries scabbed over and scarred and healing. His cultivation was at such a high level that even scars eventually faded away, but many of these were too new. The marks of a knife, a sword, a whip, the remnants of blunt weapons that hit so many times that they pierced skin, even the indentation of human nails driven in deep…

The worst of it was his left side, right above his ribs, where the knife marks were precise and orderly, triangles of flesh cut like fletching; he had made a habit of not looking at himself there, yet that was where Jin Guangyao’s fingers went.

“How did this happen, da-ge?” he asked, staring, his gaze unnervingly intent. “Who tried to skin you alive?”

Nie Mingjue didn’t understand the question. He pointed at Jin Guangyao.

“What?” Jin Guangyao asked, not understanding. “Do you want me to get you something?”

Nie Mingjue shook his head. He pointed again, this time at his side at the place he preferred not to think about, and then once again at Jin Guangyao himself.

Jin Guangyao stared back at him, blank for a moment until he understood, and then he visibly flinched. “Me?” he said, his voice rising an octave. “No, I didn’t –”

It hadn’t been him directly, no, but the person who had done it had been his student – had boasted about being trained by Wen Ruohan’s chief torturer, the inventor of all those terrible machines that they’d heard rumors of, some of which they’d brought out to show him through intimate demonstration – the sick feeling in Nie Mingjue’s stomach when he’d found Meng Yao standing above him, smiling, and realized that the person that had been spoken of was him…

It might as well have been him that did it.

“I hadn’t realized,” Jin Guangyao said. His fingers had fallen to the edge of the tub, holding on until his knuckles were white. Anger, Nie Mingjue thought with the experience of a connoisseur, but he didn’t understand why it would make Jin Guangyao angry. “They shouldn’t have touched you. They weren’t allowed –”

Nie Mingjue didn’t especially want to hear any more of Jin Guangyao’s excuses – there were always excuses, he’d found, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t forgiven him for it already, or did Jin Guangyao think that he’d sworn brotherhood for nothing? – so he closed his eyes and let himself sink down into the water until it was over his head.

It was peaceful under the water, disconnected from the rest of the world. He didn’t have to think about Jin Guangyao ordering his torture and then covering it up, or maybe even ordering them not to do it but not keeping close enough watch to prevent it; he didn’t have to think about all the people that Jin Guangyao couldn’t use, the ones that didn’t get the benefit of such an order.

He didn’t have to think about all those feet kicking his Baxia like she was a dog they wanted to put down, or Meng Yao holding her in his hands and asking him how many slaps he thought it would take until she shattered the way Jiwei had shattered, or the invitation to go night-hunting at Lanling that led him straight to a demon that knew exactly where to strike –

Baxia was fine, he reminded himself. Fine.

Hands abruptly appeared in front of his eyes, bursting into the underwater scene in a frenzy of bubbles, catching him around the shoulders and pulling him up into the air to see Jin Guangyao’s white face and hear him shouting, “Are you mad, staying under for so long?! You’re not a fish; you can’t breathe water!”

Nie Mingjue blinked at him.

“You’re no Jiang sect child of the river,” Jin Guangyao scolded. “What’s wrong with you? Do you not want to live anymore?”

(“Stop stalling and get me my saber!” his father roared, his hand lashing out too quick for Nie Mingjue to avoid, the full-force blow sending him staggering and breaking something inside of him in more ways than just the physical. “Do you not want to live anymore?”)

Nie Mingjue missed the water already.

Jin Guangyao’s fingers tightened on his shoulders. “You’re not allowed to go, da-ge,” he said. “Not when I just realized that I want to keep you around.”

Nie Mingjue shook his head, realizing that Jin Guangyao had misunderstood his silence. It wasn’t that he wanted to die, he wouldn’t do that to Nie Huaisang, but that sometimes he didn’t know if he would be able to stay.

Baxia was fine – wasn’t she?

“Just don’t move, all right?” Jin Guangyao huffed, and settled down behind him. He found some soap and began scrubbing at Nie Mingjue’s skin as if he were a piece of laundry, although he didn’t use enough pressure for it to actually hurt. The repetitive movements were soothing, lulling him to relax – especially when Jin Guangyao, grumbling something about stress, jabbed him repeatedly in certain acupoints to force his muscles to release stored-up tension – and after a little while Jin Guangyao stopped being so rough.

“Huaisang was right,” he said after a while, having shifted over to running his fingers through Nie Mingjue’s hair as if he were a child, carefully detangling each knot he encountered. “You really are acting far too nice. Shouldn’t you be scolding me for overstepping?”

Nie Mingjue shook his head lightly, careful not to jostle Jin Guangyao’s hand.

“No? Then something else, surely. Where’s your anger, da-ge?”

Nie Mingjue looked down at his hands, his saber hand instinctively curling up to grasp a hilt that was no longer there. It looked wrong to see them like this, empty.

(“Where is my saber?” his father cried out. “My saber – my saber!”)

He wasn’t his father.

That he would die of a qi deviation, die young, years before his time – this he had accepted. But he would not die the way his father died, angry, lashing out at all the ones he loved most, not if he could do anything about it.

Maybe in the future, when he lost himself fully, he would become a resentful ghost in human flesh, a raging monster fit only for slaughtering – if his thoughts themselves had already begun to lie to him, to drip poison into his ears and into his heart, if despite everything Baxia was actually gone and he was already dead and he just hadn’t realized it yet –

For as long as he could manage, Nie Mingjue wouldn’t let himself be angry.

Did he still doubt Jin Guangyao? Yes, of course. But what good would it do to suspect him now? If he tried to accuse him, even he wouldn’t believe his own testimony.

(“- they say your father died of rage –”)

“Come on, then,” Jin Guangyao said, coaxing him like a child, and his hands as he helped him out of the bath were almost gentle. “I’ve got you some new robes. I’ll help you into them.”

Nie Mingjue caught his hand.

“Da-ge? Do you want something?”

My saber. Where is my saber?

He shook his head and let Jin Guangyao help him back to the bed. He sat heavily there and stared at his hands as Jin Guangyao wrapped him in a new set of robes – his own, he thought, but he couldn’t tell if it was the extra set he’d brought with him to Lanling or if it’d been brought from the Unclean Realm.

Was there enough time for someone to come from the Unclean Realm? They had smiths there, and forges –

Where is my saber?

He stared at himself in the mirror, Jin Guangyao lingering behind him, and closed his eyes.

Like all cultivators, especially good cultivators, Nie Mingjue had a very good understanding of his spiritual energy, the way his qi moved through his meridians and settled in his dantian. He felt it every time he cultivated. His spiritual energy was drained dry right now, but if he really pushed and strained himself, he could squeeze up a small droplet of qi and guide it through the whole cultivation sequence. He could watch it carefully, wait for it to hit the place where he connected with Baxia – where he could feel her, echoing back at him. Intact.

She was fine.

She was.

She had to be.

Nie Mingjue felt someone start to braid his hair and frowned a little: perfect memory or not, he didn’t think Jin Guangyao knew the right braids. There were very subtle nuances to the ones he wore, significant ones; copying another version of his own hairstyle might be making a grievous error. He’d been wearing war-braids almost the entire time they’d known each other, after all…

He opened his eyes.

It wasn’t Jin Guangyao behind him.

“Welcome back, da-ge,” Lan Xichen said. His eyes were red around the edges, as if he’d been crying, or trying very hard to keep from doing so. “How are you feeling?”

Empty, lost, afraid – oh, Xichen, I’m so very afraid –

“Huaisang said to tell you that if you don’t stop doing whatever it is that’s keeping your qi drained, he’ll lock your spiritual energy away,” Lan Xichen said after a few moments, when it became clear that Nie Mingjue wasn’t going to respond. “And I have to say, I agree with him.”

Nie Mingjue lowered his head, feeling guilty. He shouldn’t be causing them any more worry than they already had – Nie Huaisang’s eyes were never empty of tears, and it was all his fault.

“You need your spiritual energy to recover if you want to heal,” Lan Xichen said. His hands did not falter as he made the braids – the right ones, too, a sect leader at peace who was in temporary retreat due to ill health. “And you will heal, da-ge. We’ll do everything that we can to help you.”

Nie Mingjue’s shoulders slumped. That was a familiar refrain by now, and his eyes drifted down in the mirror in front of him to look at Liebing, tucked away in Lan Xichen’s belt as always – Lan Xichen would want him to meditate while he played, no doubt. As far as Nie Mingjue knew, there was no guqin here for him to play Clarity, but there were other songs available.

“I’ve asked Wangji if he would play something calming for you, if you think it would help, but I won’t force you,” Lan Xichen said, and Nie Mingjue raised his eyes to meet his in the mirror, surprised. His old friend tried to smile but didn’t quite succeed. “I’m not entirely up to doing it myself, I’m afraid. Liebing requires perfect control of breath, and I’m…”

He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them once more.

“Do you know how much I’d miss you, da-ge?” he asked, voice low. “How much emptier my life would be without knowing that you were there? And not just me – all of us.”  

Nie Mingjue didn’t know what to say.

“There’s Huaisang, of course, but you know that. Your sect, your family…even A-Yao has been unusually upset about the idea of something more happening to you, he was engaging Nie Zonghui in a conversation about the defenses in place here in the event someone tried something last I saw. Wangji dropped everything to come rushing here when I wrote to him, and – you’ll never believe this – Wei Wuxian himself followed him here, asking about your health.”

Wei Wuxian? Here, so close to Lanling? That was a terrible idea.

“He’s being careful,” Lan Xichen assured him. “He went with Wangji and Jiang Wanyin to examine the site of the night-hunt – they’re saying it’s suspicious that a demon of that power managed to end up this close to Lanling, especially undetected, with you going in without any warning and the demon targeting you in such a specific way.”

It was suspicious. Also, Jiang Wanyin was here?

“I don’t know how he found out, he just showed up here,” Lan Xichen said. “I think Nie Huaisang might have written to him? Either way, he wanted to help.”

Nie Mingjue’s brow wrinkled.

“If you’re wondering why, it’s because he respects and admires you,” Lan Xichen said. “You helped him so much during the war; he wants to repay you…everyone does. You’ve done so much for all of us.”

Nie Mingjue shrugged. He really hadn’t – he’d only done what he’d need to, nothing more.

“You mean so much to all of us,” Lan Xichen murmured, finishing the braids and putting his hands on Nie Mingjue’s shoulders. “Oh, da-ge. Please hold on for us.”

(He thought of how his father looked at the end, gurgling on his own blood, red seeping out of his eyes and ears and nose as well and looking almost relieved to be going – relieved that his endless nightmare would finally come to an end, that he could rest at last in his grave…)

Nie Mingjue nodded and ducked his head to hide the tears brimming in his own eyes.

He’d stop checking, he promised silently. Baxia was fine, he thought, or maybe she wasn’t, but he hadn’t yet lost his mind, hadn’t yet started lashing out, and all those he loved were here by his side, ready to support him and help him however they could, if they could.

He would need to have faith.

He was still afraid, terribly afraid, but – he would, he could, rely on others to help support him, when he couldn’t support himself.

They wouldn’t let his anger eat him alive, and so he couldn’t let his fear do the same.

Nie Mingjue raised his hand and covered one of Lan Xichen’s with it.

He licked his lips, swallowed.

Forcing himself to speak felt like trying to break the Lan silencing spell, but he had to do it.

“Xichen,” he croaked, voice barely audible. “…Baxia?”

Where is my saber?

Lan Xichen’s hands tightened on his shoulders.

“Repaired,” his friend promised him. “Reforged by the finest spiritual smith in Qinghe. Huaisang is on his way to bring her to you now.”

Nie Mingue smiled.

A shichen later, Nie Huaisang pressed Baxia’s hilt into his hand, expression worried, all of them worried, all of them staring at him to see what would happen as he held his saber and carefully pressed some little, tiny part of the spiritual energy he’d been saving up into her.

Baxia sang out her song, bright and clear and unblemished, full of righteousness and rage.

Nie Mingjue closed his eyes and wept in relief.

She was fine.

[thesolitarystripe]

Any World of Warcraft Fans?

This is a scene I have been sitting on for, forever. Well, since last expansion. I write a lot of lore about my guild and original character in the game World of Warcraft. While I do not own any of Blizzard Entertainment’s characters or anything else in the world of Azeroth, Tindyl’s story is absolutely my own. If anyone was curious, I dreamt up this scene while listening to this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7kF4MXXCoA

There is also a second part to this scene that came to mind later on and over a different song so I may write that up next, or at some point. Anyway, this was fun. It’s nice to get away from the writing prompts every once in a while and write something else. If people enjoy the Tindyl series, I have a lot of content written about her that I would be happy to share and elaborate on. Most of these characters have been written about and introduced in all the previous writings I’ve made but they are all based on actual raiders in my guild. Some are still here and some are not. If they weren’t given a name within the story, it is safe to assume they are no longer in my life but they included in the story because sometimes side characters don’t stick around forever. 

If you’re a WoW nerd too, let me know!

Let go.

That insidious voice. It spoke, it wouldn’t stop speaking.

Such a heavy burden you carry. Soon you will be free of it.

Tindyl blinked wildly, as if the words were made of acid, blistering her eyes and eyes as shadows clouded her horizon. Where was she? The voices of her allies seemed so far away. “Tindyl!” That was…who? The archdruid settled her hand against her forehead, knee coming down to the fleshy ground stained a sickening purple with hues of crimson pustules and jagged openings like wounds etched inside flesh. Ny’alotha. The Waking City. Wasn’t that where she was? Tindyl looked at the ground but saw only grass; her hand pressed flat against the blades that were no longer the emerald green of her childhood but black and charred. Swiftly, her head shot up and her skin was painted in streaks of orange. Fire. So much fire. Teldrassil! Tindyl was off her knees and running, the screams of her kin drowning out the whispering that sucked her deeper into madness. The Kaldorei leapt over a fallen branch, the limb blazing upon what was once scared ground. Their home. Two feet turned into four, claws printing in deep against the soot covered ground as the long feline body surged forward.

“An’da!” Tindyl was running toward the fleeting shadow of a male night elf. The large figure shapeshifted from elf to bear. Her father, it had to be. She could see him in the distance, tossing others over his hulking shoulders and carrying them out of the flames that engulfed their home. The smoke was suffocating, she choked on its thick plumes but didn’t dare slow her pace as she ran after her father—she had not seen him in…She had not seen him since Teldrassil fell. Tindyl stopped, body transfiguring again until she was whole and back upon two legs. A night elf. “An’da,” her voice was softer, weary eyes following the shade of her father who never looked back. She had lost him already. This was not reality.

All alone in the depths…

That voice. Tindyl covered her ears, grit her teeth and shook her head, eyes falling closed against the deceit spread before her. These visions were not her own, her father was already dead.

“Tindyl!” The night elf opened her eyes and sucked in a sharp breath. The world had returned, her present moment. The images of Teldrassil, the fallen, the smoke and blood, vanished. She knew that voice. Tindyl turned her head and saw her dearest friend, the pandaren’s hand was outstretched as if the physical contact would solidify her friend in time and space. They just needed to touch. All around them the eyes of The Corruptor sprouted out of the ground, shrieking and hideous. Tindyl’s eyes swept the battlefield, taking account of her people and those that still stood. Her guild fought bravely, fighting against their own demons surely as N’zoth infiltrated the quiet corners of their minds. She turned to Kagurah, took a single step before she staggered backward in the face of an enraged ally. Their paladin. He had succumbed to the madness.

“Highlord,” Tindyl held out a hand, but the man was charging toward her with sword drawn. “Forgive me,” she whispered as her hands pushed forward and the winds of their natural word rushed out from her fingertips. The gust knocked the paladin back but only stalled him. Kagurah summoned a totem, seeing the change in their once trusted ally who now sought to see their leader’s blood. Before the totem’s effect could stop the human, a great hammer brimming with light struck Tindyl and brought her, stunned, to her knees.

“Tindyl!” Tindyl knew that voice, even in her weakened state where her limbs would not obey her mind. Her warrior. Eyes flickered over and caught the fading vision of her lover, his black hair whipping around his face as he thrust his sword up and into one of the looming eyes; his shield was held up to block a counter assault as he looked over his shoulder just in time to watch the hammer drop and strike down the Archdruid. Tindyl wished she could have comforted him. The look of worry on his face made her heart sink. That was her last thought as she flopped backward, lying upon the ground where the paladin had stunned her. Everything grew dim, the edges of her vision blurred. There was a vague recognition of Kagurah’s magic swirling about her in attempt to heal but Tindyl was sinking, being swallowed up by the darkness. It was quiet, almost…comforting.

“Tindyl.” A new voice. No, an old voice. “Tindyl.” How much time had passed between Tindyl’s body thumping against the ground to the moment her eyes peeled open, she couldn’t say but when she opened them and the haze began to clear away, she looked up at the ethereal form of her father.

“An’da?” Her voice croaked as if it had been unused for centuries. Her father’s arms slipped beneath hers, seeming to lift her up.

“On your feet,” he commanded gently, his face more tender than Tindyl ever remembered seeing it before. There was so much left unsaid between them after she had chosen to join the Alliance. Bai’len, the Guardian druid set like thick roots in his old ways—he disagreed with her choice and more so, hated her pursuance of healing magics. Tindyl’s lips parted as if to speak but all she could manage was to stare at him, eyes glittering even in the dank lighting of the old god’s lair. “Do you not remember who you are? Where you’ve come from? Your people are with you now.” As her father spoke, Tindyl looked away only for a moment and felt more sets of hands pressing her spine upward, setting her on her feet. She saw the ghostly white fingers that held her up in tandem with the strong arms of her father.

“An’da, I’m sorry.” Tindyl wept silently, tears cascading down her cheeks as the light within her faded.

“My child,” Bai’len’s rough fingers curled around Tindyl’s jaw, dwarfing her. “Stand firm in who you are. Feel the strength of your ancestors restore you. Remember who you are and who you were meant to be, hm?” Tindyl’s brow furrowed as her father looked out to where her allies still fought, even in the wake of her loss. They were covered in blood, some brought to their knees as weapons were knocked from their grasp. N’zoth was slithering into their minds, exposing their grief over the fallen Kaldorei and sinking into their souls. “Save them.” Bai’len looked at Tindyl. “Elune makes no mistakes,” his hand shifted from her jaw to the plump curve of her cheek. “Heal them.” The permission to use her gifts from her father. It was like a door had opened within her heart. Tindyl’s arms flew up above her, eyes searching for the light that beamed down upon her like Elune herself reached down her moonlit tendrils and washed away the corruption from her favored druid’s mind. The peaceful rains of Tranquility fell over their party. Hibikami, once brought to his knee felt the renewal of his ferocity, scraped up his axe and heaved it in one mighty blow. The weapon sliced through the air and planted within the sclera of one of N’zoth’s eyes. The creature wailed and fell. The dwarf laughed, sprinted forward to collect his weapon only to chop down another crying stalk. Kagurah looked to where Tindyl’s body had rested when she felt the rain, it could have only come from their Archdruid.

All the while, Bai’len held his daughter, smiling. Tindyl’s eyes had left the spotlight that Elune shined down upon her, glued now to her father’s face. She wanted to stay in the moment for the rest of her long life. Bai’len looked down at her and their eyes met. They regarded one another for several moments before Tindyl was snatched out of her father’s arms. The druid yelped softly, tumbling across the floor and into the torso of their human priest. A life grip.

“Tindyl, are you alright?” The human was touching her shoulder, but the moment Tindyl righted herself and crawled back on her knees she was looking back toward where her father had held her. Where she’d felt the embrace of her people holding her up. They were all gone. Breath came in short, rapid puffs as she held her gaze longer, hopeful that Bai’len would return. It was nothing more than a fleeting vision sent to her by Elune, perhaps. “Archdruid!”

“I’m fine,” she said suddenly, coming to her senses and feeling the weight of her responsibility. While she grieved upon the ground her guild still fought. A quick swipe at her eyes and she was nodding. “I’m fine,” she said again as she rose to her feet. The priest stood with her; hands latched on to Tindyl’s arm. There was a lull in the fight. Everyone paused and looked to her both with relief and concern. They were taxed. Exceedingly tired. “My friends,” she panted softly, seeing the despair in their eyes. Tindyl shook her head, “do not succumb to the darkness, drown out the whispers of N’zoth. Stand firm in who you are.” The words of her father echoed within the grotesque halls, and she felt emboldened. “Do not forget why you are here, why we fight.” Tindyl bared her canines, “For Azeroth!” A rally of cries reverberated the air, sending a new pulsing energy through their party. Tindyl’s body conformed to the four-legged feline once more, she leapt through the air, claws sinking in to a newly sprouted eye. It shrieked as her fangs sunk into its bulbous head, it bled and wilted to the ground. The cat sprinted alongside Kagurah, rubbing along the Pandaren’s hip once as they exchanged a look. ‘Don’t die on me again.’ Tindyl could hear it now. The cat grinned, a growl wrapped around it before the two dove back into battle.

Back-to-back they fought. Wisps of water flowed up and out as Kagurah spread her healing rain and the leaves of Tindyl’s magic swirled around her allies, mending their wounds. Their third healer, the priest, joined them a glittering ring formed around him and pulsed outward to strengthen and heal their allies. Together, they would save their home. For the Alliance, for the horde, and for all the lives lost throughout the trials of both sides.

[captainkoolguy]

You try to duck aside another blow, staggering away from the arc of a blade before Jael'yn drops it. The heavy greatsword clatters to the floor and a hand catches you full-on in the face, grasping you hard. A foot hooks your own and suddenly the world is tipped on its side before you're smashed into the reflective stone steps while the air is knocked out of you. Cait and Brint are brought down into the ground either side of you by the guards, struggling tiredly against them. "Hah! That wasn't so hard... not like me." Jael'yn insists with a grin. "I'm very hard." she releases your face and pulls you back to your feet with apparent ease, capturing your arm and locking it behind your back. Yet more guards continue to file into the throne room, a hopeless number of them... have they sent every single elf that can hold a stick after you? Your legs are barely holding you up, but relaxing your weight only serves to wrench your arm as you're brought forward to a structure built right in the middle of the throne ro— oh, of course... A stockades. With enough space for two at a time, even, and judging by the stains covering the wood, you suspect they're used for more entertaining forms of punishment these days... Ryn's carried right along beside you, groaning weakly. Although it's to your other companions that Jael'yn turns, at least before idly waving them off. "Unfortunately, we've only got space for two at a time, but don't you worry cuteness, we'll get back to you later." You put up only a customary struggle before you're locked into the stockades with a resounding click... only to find that the neck and wrist holes are lined with soft leather. "Huh?" "Heh, yeah... nobody wants a splinter when they're getting fucked after all. Dealing out a punishment gets a lot less fun when the vict— criminal is making the wrong kind of cries, obviously." The guard captain explains with a smile, once again letting a foot of demonic tongue spool out of her mouth before sensuously licking soft, painted lips. "You know, I bet if we keep this up I'll be a demon in nooo time." When her hands start to strip you out of what gear still even remains clinging to your body after the fight, she sneaks in the occasional grope until your ass is bare to the open air. "Why what a lovely asshole you have!" she sighs, spreading your cheeks between her palms and spitting right onto your ring. "You just stay there and keep my second-in-command comfortable. Poor thing must be just aching for somewhere warm to put her dick." You're still shivering at the sensation of hot spit turning chill on your asshole when the scent of a distinctly stallion musk hits you full-on in the face. The elf infront of you looks like she's barely five foot, and honestly? She appears to be rocking a cock a quarter of her height; a great big mare-cock no less, with a mottled shaft, and a broad flat head already drooling ivory. A little ring sticks out of the front, and when she loops a finger through it and slowly pulls back she reveals a long rod of beads that she draws out of her stretchy cumslit. Her breath hitches with every little orb that stretches her, until the toy is completely removed. A thick load of cum-laced pre squirts out and hits you dead-on in the face, setting your heart to hammering nearly out of its chest. The scent of a rutting slut washes over you again, sweet pheromones getting you salivating and ready. Two thick balls hang from a similarly mottled-looking sack, visibly pulsing in time with the small elf's heartbeat. "I got here late, Captain Jael'yn is going to punish me even more later..." she whispers... although that doesn't exactly sound like a complaint. "Come on, if I don't get you thirsty you won't be ready to take the Captain's dick!" She pinches your nose until you open wide, immediately mashing her cum-oozing cockhead past your slender lips and pressing your tongue flat. The immediate taste of musk and shemale hormones is enough to hit you like a shock, and your already-weak legs go limp. Breathing only serves to drown you in fuck-scent further — what breath you can get anyway — and when your eyes drift across to the neighbouring stockade you can see that Ryn's being likewise forced to wrap her lips around a bitch-breaking futa fuckstick. Drool runs down the corners of your mouths, pooling and drooling out where it grows thick with precum. You try to moan, groan, anything... but it only tantilizes your lover-by-restraint further, judging by the way she whimpers and moans. Ryn gurgles too, eyes rolling back and makeup running as she's railed in the face hard enough to rock the stockades. Jael'yn lets out a laugh, running her fingers through the elf's hair with one hand while reaching over to grab at yours with the other. "Yeah... we'll let them know we've got you... but not until me and all of my boys and girls have had their way with you." She slaps your face gently and returns her attention to Ryn. "Well? Are you going to stand there drooling? Or actually suck this dick?" While you're moaning and groaning, yet more hands find your body... and you're totally unable to look behind you and see the owner of the cock that flops down between the cheeks of your ass. Whoever it is, they've got feminine hands... but again, with most elves that still isn't exactly telling. More importantly they don't intend to take their time with you, dishing out a hard slap that sets your asscheeks to jiggling before hilting themselves in you until the second 'spank' noise is simply the clap of hip-to-ass. You can barely move within the restraints, but now that there's some dick in your ass at least your hips are being held up. Breathing is the next issue, and if you don't get this horse-cocked shemale to cum you're going to have some other problems. Fuck, there's so much movement around you that it's hard to keep track of everything. You suck and moan as hard as you can, doing your best to pleasure the elf's monstrous horse-cock. The hammering in your ass is potent distraction, but by now you're riding high on the hormonal scent of this woman hammering your face... not to mention the only tiny gasps of breath you're able to snatch away. At last you can feel it much more than hear it — the sound of men and women moaning is loud enough in your ears as it is — when she grows thicker at the base with unspent seed. It's hard to get your jaw open any wider, but when you do it's as though the flood barriers were kicked over; a tankard's-worth of musky mare semen floods your stomach until all you can taste is jizz at the back of your teeth. The guard pulls out slowly with a shiver and a moan, jerking the spit-and-spunk covered length until she can nut one last thick glob of shemale cum onto your face. You're still spluttering and gasping for breath, riding the high of getting railed the whole while, when you're struck in the face by two more ropes of cum... fuck, these guards are just jerking off on you now! Yet more streaks land on your butt before there's a feminine whimper from behind and your bowels are flooded with elf seed. Your prostate is hammered insistantly, leading you to drooling cum out to add to the steadily-growing puddle on the floor. You shake your head to get the cum from your vision, only to find the next guy or girl is lining up with your abused asshole while yet more elves position themselves in front of your face. It's only possible to catch a small look at how your companion is doing... and it's about what you'd expect from a stockades gangbang. You do catch the perfect moment though; Jael'yn pulling her dick out behind strands of sticky spit and cum and nutting right on a still-moaning Ryn's face. The massive guard captain lets out a little laugh, petting Ryn on the head before turning her attention back to you and scowling. "Well, you're looking fucked up enough, but still..." the guard behind you is displaced by a small shove from her, and yet another mythic pole slaps its way down into the cleavage of your ass. You clench unconsciously and shiver, opening wide for the next elf to have their way with your mouth while spooge leaks from your already-abused ring. "I'll just have to think of this as lube then!" Lube? Oh— oh fuck... You try to put your feelings into words, but it's hard to do much more than gurgle around a mouth filled with cum and cock as you're spread wide around the guard captain's thick dick. Your feet stamp at the floor and a muffled squeal erupts from you as she sinks the first foot of length into your already-ravaged rear. You'd blame that pressure for stealing your breath away if it weren't something you were still struggling to get reliably, although you're now rather glad one of the first guards had a round with you first... she's so big. "There it is! A painted slut, a naughty, naughty boy taking their punishment!" she cries, still pressing more cock into you. The elf hammering at your face pulls out, spraying hot musky jizz across your face while yet another replaces them. You can hear a muffled whimper from Ryn, and a few orgasmic moans that tell you she's getting... very much the same treatment. Pricks slide into your hands, forcing you to take a hold so that they can fuck your grip in an impromptu handjob while a line begins to form. It hasn't taken long for the potent musky mixture to have you rabid for more, and the captain claps resoundingly against you just as that thought locks in place. More... "Mmm, that's a lovely ass you have. Maybe they'll let me keep you after! Ride you around on my cock all day until you're as far-gone as I!" Jael'yn grins wickedly, reaching down to run her fingers through your sodden hair. "How about it? You can even call me Mommy." You groan out something illegible — gods you aren't even sure what you're trying to say — and roll your hips. "I know sweetie, I know... just let it go." she shushes you, before drawing back and letting out a hungry, predatorial growl. Her hips become a blur, and rather suddenly you're being smashed hard into the stockades with enough force to shift them. Both you and Ryn rock forward as you're pounded brutally by the dominant gothic futa-zon. "Come on, beg for Mommy!" she cries, spanking your ass with a messy, sticky 'slap'. You sure try to beg... at least until a second dick pushes in alongside its twin in your mouth before both fire off their loads, leaving you gagging with a very full stomach. When they pull out you're actually dizzy now, unable to feel, taste, or smell anything that's not just raw fuck. Ryn's being thoroughly spitroasted, with the horse-dicked second in command giving her much the same pheromone treatment as you've already gotten... fuck, that was so good. Abruptly Jael'yn goes still, and your eyes go wide as you are flooded with jizz, and spanked over and over until you're sure she's put a print on your ass in the perfect shape of your hand. The stinging becomes a red-hot tingle, and your own orgasm crashes across the shore with her in a very lurid display. Your eyelids flutter when she slowly drags herself out, and yet another dick pushes into your mouth and cums while ivory waterfalls from your brutalized backdoor. The darkness in the corners of your vision grows deeper and creeps further when you try to catch another glimpse of Ryn, only to see the captain lining up to spitroast with her horse-cocked second. A fist sinks into your asshole then, but even that extra stimulation can't keep the shadows out... and you're plummeting.

[officialotakudome]

New Post has been published on Otaku Dome | The Latest News In Anime, Manga, Gaming, Tech, and Geek Culture

New Post has been published on https://otakudome.com/section23-announces-june-2021-slate/

Section23 Announces June 2021 Slate

Section23 has announced it’s June 2021 home media slate:

HOUSTON, March 30, 2021 – Home video distributor Section23 Films today announced its June slate of releases which includes Sentai Filmworks supernatural action series, Dororo!  Available on English dubbed Blu-ray June 29th.

Product details follow, in order of release

  Coming June 2021

  Title:                 MYSTERIOUS GIRLFRIEND X

Published by:    Sentai Filmworks

Distributed by:  Section23 Films

Run Time:         375 min.

Street Date:      6/1/2021

Format:             BD

Language:         English & Japanese with English Subtitles

SRP:                $59.98

SYNOPSIS:  Mikoto Urabe might be an anti-social loner who sleeps on her desk, carries scissors in her underwear, and laughs insanely for no apparent reason, but when Akira Tsubaki comes into contact with her saliva, he finds himself inexplicably addicted to her. And if that’s not an unusual enough basis for a relationship, what’s even weirder is that not only does Urabe seem to find this twisted state of affairs to be completely normal, but she already appears to have plans for her new friend! But can a girl having great expectorations for you be a good thing? Find out as Urabe puts a spittle love in Tsubaki’s heart and things get REALLY bizarre as “sharing spit with a girl” takes on an entirely new meaning in the most dysfunctional bodily functional anime ever: MYSTERIOUS GIRLFRIEND X!

Title:                 WORLD TRIGGER

Published by:    Sentai Filmworks

Distributed by:  Section23 Films

Run Time:         3275 min.

Street Date:      6/8/2021

Format:             BD

Language:         1450 / 1825 min. English & Japanese with English Subtitles

SRP:                $149.98

SYNOPSIS:  Four years ago, a mysterious gate to another world suddenly appeared, allowing malevolent creatures called “Neighbors” to invade Mikado City! Impervious to normal military hardware, the Neighbors seemed unstoppable until the Border Defense Agency turned the tide with a new form of weapon called a “Trigger”. Now the Neighbors are still here, lurking, while young Osamu Mikumo, one of the BDA’s latest Trigger trainees, is under orders to not use his new abilities…. orders that Osamu violates when he sees a new classmate being dragged into a Forbidden Area! Instead of staging a rescue, however, Osamu is stunned to see the boy defeat the Neighbors by himself! Who is Yuma Kuga, where did he get his powers, and is he some form of Neighbor are just the first of many mysteries that Osamu will have to solve in WORLD TRIGGER!

Title:                 TO LOVE RU DARKNESS

Published by:    Sentai Filmworks

Distributed by:  Section23 Films

Run Time:         300 min.

Street Date:      6/15/2021

Format:             BD

Language:         English & Japanese with English Subtitles

SRP:                $69.98

SYNOPSIS:  Becoming the significant other of an alien Princess has been hard enough on Rito Yuki, but just as he’s starting to cope with life with Lala, their domestic “bliss” is torn asunder when not one but TWO more princesses are dropped into the mix!  Needless to say, having Lala’s sisters, Nana and Momo, transfer to Earth is a recipe for disaster, especially after Momo decides that the way to horn in on Rito’s relationship with Lala is to bring in even more girls!  And, of course, this is the point when galactic scourge Yami, the Golden Darkness, decides to pop by with an army of possessed high school students!  Now it’s no longer a question of whether Rito will last to the end of the week, but whether Earth itself will survive the ultimate romantic cataclysm in TO LOVE RU – DARKNESS!

Title:                 QUEENS BLADE REBEL WARRIORS

Published by:    Sentai Filmworks

Distributed by:  Section23 Films

Run Time:         480 min.

Street Date:      6/15/2021

Format:             BD

Language:         English & Japanese with English Subtitles

SRP:                $79.98

SYNOPSIS:  The Queen’s Blade tournament may be over, but the stories of the feisty feminine fighters continue in a scintillating collection of bodice-ripping, chest heaving yarns that will leave you breathless! First, the surviving sword maidens scatter across the lands seeking fame and fortune! With that additional exposure, however, come new dangers: witches, tentacle monsters, and even each other! Then, when the once-noble Queen Claudette’s ways seem to have turned to oppression and persecution, a new generation of warriors must take up their naked blades! Baring their fury in open rebellion, an unprecedented force of femme fatales come together with the goal of stripping the evil queen from her throne! If a heart of gold lurks in the breast of the noblest warriors, prepare to bear witness to a treasure trove of improbable magnitude in the QUEEN’S BLADE – REBEL WARRIORS COLLECTION!

Title:                 DORORO

Published by:    Sentai Filmworks

Distributed by:  Section23 Films

Run Time:         600 min.

Street Date:      6/29/2021

Format:             BD

Language:         English & Japanese with English Subtitles

SRP:                $89.98

SYNOPSIS:  Life as an orphan in feudal Japan is brutal, and while street thief Dororo has managed to survive, wile and craft can only go so far in the body of a child.  Then, just when it seems that Dororo’s luck has run out, he’s rescued from a man-eating ghoul by a mysterious young man wearing a doll-like mask and artificial limbs that conceal deadly blades!  Born without arms, legs, sight, hearing and even skin after his father crafted a monstrous deal with the forces of darkness, Hyakkimaru now somehow seeks out the demons who cursed him, regaining one of his lost attributes for each monster slain.  With deadly secrets from his own past to protect, the young thief joins into an alliance with the impossible warrior, setting forth on a quest to restore Hyakkimaru’s stolen humanity and rid Japan of devils in DORORO!

Title:                 SWORDGAI

Published by:    Sentai Filmworks

Distributed by:  Section23 Films

Run Time:         600 min.

Street Date:      6/29/2021

Format:             BD

Language:         English & Japanese with English Subtitles

SRP:                $89.98

SYNOPSIS:  Infernal Weapons grant their wielders incredible power, but as each blade and hammer hosts an evil spirit, contracting their services requires a price few are willing to pay. Even the few who can master a demonic weapon without becoming its slave, the Chrysalis, are destined to slowly lose their humanity, transforming into beings of pure violence known as Busoma. For years, the secretive Shoshidai have sought to gather all such devices and hide them away, but not even they can always resist the temptation to take the weapons for themselves. What chance, then, does young Gai Ogata stand after his dying mother, possessed by the sword, Shiryu, leaves it for his infant hands? And when his own arm is destroyed and replaced with one made from that same sword, all hell will be unleashed in SWORDGAI!

About Section23 Films:

Section23 Films provides home video marketing and distribution services for a variety of companies, including Sentai Filmworks, Switchblade Pictures, Maiden Japan, Kraken Releasing and AEsir Holdings.  With its special focus on genre entertainment, Section23 Films distributes some of the very best anime, martial arts, and horror titles on the market today.

[muralixheiress]

intertwine | rachel + helaine

@rachelxvanallen​

If she’s surprised at the size of their forces, perhaps more than she should be, it isn't a thought she entertains for too long a period as they go along with their plans. It isn’t a fight to take lightly and she recognizes and appreciates the efforts of those who dared to take the step at all, no matter who they were or what their reasoning. 

Steadily, expectantly, there is a scattering of forms as they near their destination, the monstrous wave of demonic influence hovering in the surrounding air the closer their approach. Despite the distance once employed beyond its territory, Helaine is certain she’s never truly escaped its reach; the feeling familiar and almost welcoming if only due to it soon symbolizing, at least in part, an end. No matter the outcome, inevitably this journey forward meant the hell experienced this far in, the haunting memory of a task so daunting, would finally collapse and fade. If she’s made it this far, it’s enough. Her struggles until now would be enough. She had managed to make it back somehow in the end, to see all their faces at least once. 

And if she can manage to send this hulking eyesore down with her, the weight of a hammer twice her size barreling down just as soon as an entrance is secured for her fellow volunteers, surely that was a victory worth celebrating even in a life beyond this one. 

Uncommon and perhaps even strange in her grasp, there is a longer blade in hand, a sword even, gleaming with a power and potential that she’s only wary of in less experienced hands. The daggers that dance forward then, summoned freely from their place beneath a billowing, familiar dress coat and without a touch of a finger, charge ahead as a means of minor distraction and testing, painted in similar aura as they strike the creature. They draw blood if only barely, though give no reason for the beast to flinch much if at all and as much may have been expected. Their purpose had still been served in spite of the ‘failure’ and the witch seems to go along with it easily enough. 

The other who eventually joins her side, one who seems to halt in step with her following a quick dodge from the break in ice and ground beneath them when the armored mass moves ahead and shakes the very foundation on which they stand with its heavy, unnatural steps, is skilled in a way she can surely use as well. If the mark on display and what little she’d been given of the woman already is any indication, at least. 

With that, a glance is cast aside, a plan well in mind from ages back that only needed the right tools to implement. She’s passing the sword along without much in the way of prior understanding then, speaking only to allow room for what seemed important enough. “I’ll assume you’re a decent hand.”  

[aion-rsa]

Best Horror Movies to Watch on Shudder Right Now

https://ift.tt/30bB2Uk

It’s safe to say that the world is a bit weird right now. Much to some people’s surprise, horror movies can often be a way for fans to make sense of things and confront their fears in a safe space. Streaming service Shudder offers a large array of horror movies, TV shows, and even podcasts covering the full spectrum of the macabre. But how do you know where to start?

We’ve put together a guide to some of the best films the service has to offer. The Shudder catalogue is always growing and changing so we’ll keep this updated – head back for the latest additions and new suggestions.

(All entries are available in both UK and US unless stated otherwise!)

Hammer

The Vampire Lovers (1970)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

After literally decades in which the classic Hammer Films library of horror titles was often difficult to see (especially in uncut, properly framed prints), the legendary studio’s catalog has been gradually trickling out in recent years via specialty home video companies and the streaming space.

Read more

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13 Greatest Hammer Horror Monsters

By Marc Buxton

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The Vaults of Hammer: 14 Unmade Hammer Horror Movies

By Marc Buxton

The Vampire Lovers — based on a story by Sheridan Le Fanu — was one of the films that marked Hammer’s turn from the somewhat staid films of the 1960s toward the more lurid material of the ‘70s, spiced up with more sex (especially of the woman-on-woman kind) and larger quantities of blood. Polish actress Ingrid Pitt gives a breakout performance as the vampire Carmilla and the movie is entertaining, but one can’t help but cringe at the leering approach to sexuality, no matter how beautiful the subjects.

Hammer

Countess Dracula (1971)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

Countess Dracula stars Ingrid Pitt in her second big Hammer role, this time as the title monster, who preserves and replenishes her youth by bathing in the blood of virginal young women. The story has nothing to do with Dracula, by the way, and is loosely inspired by the legend of 16th century Hungarian noblewoman Elizabeth Bathory.

Like other Hammer films of the time, Countess Dracula ramps up the blood and sex in an effort to keep up with the changing film marketplace of its era. It’s not one of the studio’s better efforts, but director Peter Sasdy (Taste the Blood of Dracula) lets the period details and Pitt’s unabashed charms do most of the heavy lifting.

Wake in Fright (1971)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

Ted Kotcheff’s nightmarish story of a school teacher who becomes trapped in an outback town after drinking too much and running up a gambling debt is highly unusual horror. This is a nihilistic and bleak view of outback life as the locals coerce the broke John (Gary Bond) into increasing destructive behavior and a full on descent into hell. Wake In Fright is grubby, brilliant and highly disturbing.

Black Christmas (1974)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

Stone cold classic slasher film where a group of Sorority girls are hassled by a stalker making obscene phone calls during the holiday season. Black Christmas is that rare beast, a stalk n’ slash which turns out to be actually scary, thanks in part to classy central performances from Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder, and the masterful direction of Bob Clark, who went on to make Porky’s.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

One of the true landmarks of ’70s horror cinema, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre remains one of the most relentless and terrifying films of all time — even as it barely spills a drop of the blood that its title seems to promise. Its simple tale of a small group of hippie kids running smack into a houseful of rural cannibals spoke to the cultural divide roiling the country at the time, and its low-budget aesthetic gave the whole thing an air of documentary realism. A delirious masterpiece.

American International Pictures

Squirm (1976)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

There’s something inherently gross about earthworms which writer/director Jeff Lieberman milks to maximum effect in this low-budget 1976 chiller, one of that decade’s wave of “nature strikes back” horror movies that included efforts like Day of the Animals, Kingdom of the Spiders and Frogs.

This time, a downed power line sends an electrical jolt into the ground, causing hordes of eyeless creepy-crawlers upstairs to munch on the inhabitants of a small town. Rick Baker provided the gory make-up effects, which led the MPAA to demand numerous cuts to the film upon its initial release. There is some clumsy direction and acting, but the worms more than make up for the movie’s flaws.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Wes Craven’s 1977 cult classic sees an extended family become stranded in the desert when their trailer breaks down and they start to get picked off by cannibals living in the hills. It’s brutally violent but it also has things to say about the nature of violence, as the seemingly civilized Carter family turn feral. The film was remade in 2006 but the original is still the best.

Severin Films

Patrick (1978)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

This 1978 Australian shocker tells the story of a woman named Kathy (Susan Penhaligon), who works as a nurse and begins taking care of a comatose patient named Patrick (Robert Thompson). She soon discovers that not only is Patrick responsive to her, but he has unforeseen psychic powers that he can turn to murderous use against anyone who upsets him.

Read more

Movies

Best Horror Movies on Netflix: Scariest Films to Stream

By David Crow and 2 others

Movies

The 20 Best Horror Movies on Netflix UK – Scary Films to Watch Right Now

By Rosie Fletcher

Patrick was a cult hit in its native land, spawning both a 1980 sequel and a 2013 remake, and it allowed its director, Richard Franklin, to get to Hollywood and direct the actually pretty good Psycho II. There is quite a large repository of horror and other genre efforts from the land down under, but Patrick remains one of its most entertaining examples.

The Changeling (1980)

A classic haunted house ghost story that frequently makes horror best of lists The Changeling sees a bereaved composer move into a creepy mansion that’s been vacant for 12 years. Vacant that is, except for the spirit of a little boy who met an untimely death…

An unravelling mystery with a sense of intrigue and pathos that draws you into the narrative, all the way to the sad and disturbing final act revelation.

Anchor Bay

Fade to Black (1980)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

This 1980 psychological thriller stars Dennis Christopher as a lonely, troubled young man who is obsessed with movies — and begins to kill those he feels have wronged him while dressed as famous cinematic characters.

It’s kind of surprising that no one has remade this over the years — the references to other horror movies and self-aware sensibility predate the Scream franchise by 16 years, making this an early example of the kind of post-modern horror that dominated the genre for several years. On top of everything, it’s a witty, crackling yarn with a terrific performance by Christopher (watch also for an early performance by Mickey Rourke as a bullying co-worker).

The Beyond (1981)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

Italian workhorse director Lucio Fulci dabbled in many genres, but was clearly most in his element with horror. His “Gates of Hell” trilogy may be the highwater mark of his career, and the second film, The Beyond, is a gruesome, surreal, Lovecraftian treat about a Louisiana hotel that may be a portal to said nether regions. It doesn’t always make sense, but the movie is a must-see and a Fulci favorite.

Hellraiser (1987)

Directed by Clive Barker based on his novella The Hellbound Heart, Hellraiser is an infernal body horror featuring S&M demons who’ve found a way out of a dark dimension and want to take you back there.

This is the movie which introduced chief Cenobite Pinhead (played by Doug Bradley) – who would return for seven more Hellraiser sequels. But the first is of course, remains the edgiest and the best. Hellbound: Hellraiser II is also available.

Society (1989)

This outrageous body horror satire was the directorial debut of Brian Yuzna. It stars Billy Warlock as a young man who suspects his family are into some weird stuff when his sister’s ex gives him a video tape showing seriously sinister activity. Part Stepford Wives-esque mystery part utterly bonkers gross out comedy Society is a cult classic which demands at least one watch.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

A cyberpunk hybrid of Eraserhead, Blade Runner, Scanners, and your worst nightmares about machines run amok, Tetsuo: The Iron Man was the first feature by iconoclastic Japanese filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto (who also stars in the picture). Surreal, shockingly violent, and unforgettably relentless, Tetsuo is a fever dream of orgasmic human/metal mating and murder that is almost indescribable and utterly strange. You can’t unsee this perverse triumph of twisted imagination

The Exorcist III (1990)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

Of the several attempts at a sequel, only this one by original author William Peter Blatty (who also directed) hits the mark. Woefully underrated at the time of its release, The Exorcist III puts a handful of secondary characters from the first story at the forefront of a chilling new tale that respectfully spins off the original in a new direction. And one central sequence (the hospital corridor scene) remains a minor masterpiece of sustained unease leading to a shocking payoff.

We wrote more about how great this movie is right here.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

It may not the precisely faithful retelling that the title implies, but Bram Stoker’s Dracula ��� filtered through the vision of director Francis Ford Coppola — remains one of the best versions of the story to date.

Read more

Culture

The Bleeding Heart of Dracula

By David Crow

Movies

New Dracula Movie Coming from Blumhouse

By Tony Sokol

Gary Oldman is magnificently over the top as the Count, and it’s terrific to see characters from the book that were never realized onscreen before appear here. Best of all is Coppola’s insistence on practical, in-camera effects, old-fashioned camera tricks and a lush color scheme, making this not just a fine Dracula movie but a love letter to all the great Hammer and Universal films that came before it.

Ring (1998)

Hideo Nakata’s adaptation of Koji Suzuki’s novel is one seriously scary film which marked the height of the J-horror explosion into the West. It features a haunted video tape, which, seven days after you’ve watched it causes the viewer to die with a look of contorted agony on their face.

Iconic J-horror girl ghost Sadako has been riffed on and ripped off so many times by now that her incredible power may be somewhat diminished but this is still a masterful horror film that demands to be seen at least once.

Audition (1999)

Takashi Miike’s horror classic is a weird mix of melodrama, mystery, and excruciating torture as a widowed man fakes a casting call for a made-up movie in an attempt to meet the perfect woman and gets more than he bargained for. Frequently making it to best horror of all time lists, Audition is a beautiful nightmare of needles and piano wire that’s impossible to forget.

Ginger Snaps (2000)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

Ahead of its time in many ways, this cult Canadian favorite from director John Fawcett and screenwriter Karen Walton stars Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins as death-obsessed teen sisters whose relationship is put to the test when one (Isabelle) turns into a werewolf. Sharply funny and deeply insightful about the bonds of sisterhood, the fearsome power of female sexuality, and the loss of innocence, Ginger Snaps is a film well worth rediscovering.

Wendigo (2001)

Maverick independent producer/director/actor Larry Fessenden – who runs his own low-budget genre film factory called Glass Eye Pix – had perhaps his finest moment behind the camera on his third directorial effort, an eerie, low-key tale of a family from the city running into menaces both human and supernatural during a trip to the country. Fessenden is adept at blurring the line between what is real and not, creating a hallucinatory experience that is uniquely his own.

Dark Water (2002)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE UK

Remember when J-horror was all the rage and you couldn’t move for long-haired, jangly pasty-face ghosts? Dark Water was one of the best of them.

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Sponsored

Best International Horror Movies: A Beginner’s Guide

By Don Kaye

Movies

Best Horror Movies on Hulu

By Alec Bojalad and 1 other

Based on a story by Koji Suzuki and directed by Hideo Nakata – the team behind apex J-horror Ringu – it sees a mother and daughter move to an apartment which seems to have haunted water. Creepy but not gimmicky, there’s a family drama at the center of this chiller. 

A Tale Of Two Sisters (2003)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

Kim Jee-woon’s chiller sees sisters return to the family home after a spell in hospital to be tormented by their new stepmother, and troubled by ghosts in the house. Released at the peak of the J-horror/K-horror boom, this is a highly sophisticated and deeply scary addition sub-genre. It was remade in 2009 as The Uninvited but skip that, the original is infinitely superior.

Oldboy (2003)

Park Chan-wook’s shocking, twisty revenge thriller sees a man held hostage in a hotel room for 15 years with no idea of why. When he’s finally released he has just days to track down his captor and discover his motives.

The second part of director Park’s Vengeance Trilogy (which is also a standalone – though Sympathy for Mister Vengeance and Lady Vengeance are also available in the US), it’s packed with standout sequences like the infamous corridor hammer massacre and the eating of a live octopus. The ending is bonkers too.

Teeth (2007)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE UK

Vagina Dentata is the mythical condition at the centre of this satirical horror that sees a virginal young woman bite back when she’s pressured into sex. A comedic take on the rape revenge trope, Teeth casts Jess Wexler as the avenging angel taking down the men who try to assault her in a cautionary tale that might feel even more satisfying post Me Too.

Let the Right One In (2008)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE UK

Let the Right One In is a beautiful Swedish supernatural romance between a lonely bullied 12-year-old boy and a little girl (in the film) called Eli who looks 12 too, but most definitely isn’t. It’s a tale of companionship and loyalty but also murder and revenge. Delicate and nuanced, this is one of the most interesting vampire movies of recent years.

The House Of The Devil (2009)

Ti West’s authentically ‘80s looking homage to ‘Satanic Panic’-era movie making is a very successful slow-burn indie, which sees a young woman take a babysitting job and find herself in grave danger at the hands of her mysterious employers. Comes with a slightly bonkers ending but the attention to detail and great central performance should please genre nuts no end.

Buried (2010)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE UK

Ryan Reynolds stars in this incredibly tense horror thriller from Rodrigo Cortes. Based entirely around a man (Reynolds) in a coffin with a phone and a lighter trying to work out what’s happened to him and why, it’s almost unbearably claustrophobic at times. Will he be rescued in time to save his life? What the devil is going on? And why are there snakes down his trousers? All is revealed over the course of 95 stressful minutes.

Absentia (2011)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

An early feature from Mike Flanagan, the man behind Oculus, Doctor Sleep and The Haunting Of Hill House this is low budget and not entirely polished at the edges but shows early signs of Flanagan’s deft hand at suspense, slow burn hills and emotional horror. The story follows a woman who’s husband has disappeared discover that a strange tunnel might be the key. Well worth checking out.

Antiviral (2012)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE UK

Brandon Cronenberg’s directorial debut is a good-looking but icky body horror that delves into the world of celebrity obsession. Caleb Landry-Jones stars as a man who works at a clinic specialising in selling celebrity viruses. In this world super-fans can pay to be infected by their idols’ pathogens making them feel more connected. But warring big businesses want to control the rights to the hottest celeb diseases and a virulent black market has blossomed.

Following in his father’s footsteps, this is a smart sci-fi horror that’s not for the squeamish.

The Bay (2012)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE UK

Oscar winner Barry Levinson directs this found footage eco-horror charting the spread of a deadly parasite in a small town on the Chesapeake Bay. Constructed from snippets of news reports, police footage, and personal videos it’s a nightmarish portrait of what might really happen to a town during an outbreak, which was praised for its realism.

Black Rock (2012)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE UK

Directed by Katie Aselton from a screenplay written by her husband, mumblecore darling Mark Duplass, Black Rock is a taut tale of former friends on a girls weekend who are hunted by a group of men after a horrible accident. It’s a somewhat generic story elevated by the performances of Aselton herself, Kate Bosworth, and especially Lake Bell who goes full feral in the fight for survival.

The Pact (2012)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE UK

A film of two halves that’s not always entirely successful, The Pact is worth checking out for several terrific scares that’ll have you jumping out of your seats (and then possibly thinking “wait, what?”).

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Movies

Best Horror Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now

By Alec Bojalad and 3 others

Movies

New Horror and Sci-Fi Movies Break Out at Fantasia Fest

By Don Kaye

Caity Lotz plays a young woman who returns to her childhood home after the death of her mother and disappearance of her sister who starts to experience strange phenomena in the house. Is it something supernatural, or could it be something scarier still? Not entirely consistent but when it works it really works.

Big Bad Wolves (2013)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE UK

The second feature from Israeli directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado is a black-as-sin super-violent crime horror about a child killer, the cop who wants to bring him down, and the father of the latest victim. Released the same year as Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners, it plays almost like a brutal and occasionally darkly funny companion piece.

The Borderlands (2013)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE UK

The Borderlands is a British found footage movie with shades of The Wicker Man and Kill List which focuses on a small church in Devon which appears to be experiencing miracles. Men are sent by the Vatican to investigate and discover strange phenomena which could be related to former pagan worship in the area.

The Borderlands is a cut above your average horror movie for it’s great chemistry between the lead, dry sense of humour and an absolutely terrifying ending. Released as Final Prayer in the US.

We Are What We Are (2013)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

This US remake of the Mexican horror of the same name is a slightly different beast to its counterpart, and perhaps better for it (you can watch and enjoy both for different reasons). Cold In July’s Jim Mickle directs this suspenseful, bloody tale of a secluded family who indulge in violent traditions who become more visible to the world than they’d like after the matriarch of the family dies. Ambyr Childers and Julia Garner star in this nuanced cannibal tale.

It Follows (2014)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE UK

A different kind of infection movie. David Robert Mitchell’s breakout horror hit is a terrifying tale of a sexually transmitted ghost – a shape-shifting ghoul that will relentlessly tail its victim at a walking pace until the curse is passed on. Maika Monroe stars as the latest to be tagged, trying to find a way to either pass the curse on or destroy it forever.

Deeply spooky, It Follows will stick with you long after the film has ended.

Starry Eyes (2014)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

This satanic horror takes a swipe at Hollywood as a nervous young starlet, Alex Essoe, sacrifices her body and soul in exchange for fame and fortune.

Starry Eyes is a #metoo movie ahead of its time, and a gross out body horror to boot. It’s directed by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer who went on to make the not-that-great remake of Pet Sematary from last year, but don’t hold that against them.

The Hallow (2015)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE UK

Corin Hardy’s directorial debut is a folk horror mixed with fantasy as a conservationist and his wife and son move into a woodland home only to discover there are strange creatures living in the forest. Some effective jump scares, memorable monsters and a weird wistful ending marked Hardy out as one to watch.

Better Watch Out (2016) 

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

Another Christmas horror movie, this one much more recent. Olivia DeJonge plays the young babysitter trying to protect her 12-year-old charge Levi Miller when intruders threaten the house. Or at least you’ll think that’s what the film is about for the first 20 minutes at which point the rug gets well and truly pulled. Violent, funny, fresh and with excellent central turns this is a fun horror at any time of the year.

Train to Busan (2016)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

Just when you thought the zombie genre was running out of gas, Train to Busan comes barreling down the track at full speed to give it a jolt again. Director Yeon Sang-ho wisely puts an endearing relationship between a father and his little girl at the heart of the movie, keeping audiences invested as the pair fight to stave off an undead invasion on their bullet train. The zombie action is familiar if also freshly orchestrated, but the movie is gripping to the genuinely moving finish. 

The Transfiguration (2016)

Loved Let the Right One In? Check out this similarly arthouse slow-burn vampire-adjacent tale about a troubled teenage boy obsessed with vampires who finds love and redemption through his relationship with an equally damaged girl. It’s set against a backdrop of violent crime in New York and plays like a social realist drama with genre tropes built in.

One Cut Of The Dead (2017)

Very much a film of three parts, it starts as what looks like a low budget Japanese zombie film gone wrong, morphs into an interesting meta movie, and ends with a final third that’s more joyful than you could possibly imagine. The fun is in the discovery so try to avoid reading about this, instead hang around until the end for a clever, funny, and uplifting love letter to indie film-making.

Terrified (2017)

A weird Argentinian horror with some extremely effective scares, Terrified is probably best avoided by anyone shut in alone prone to hearing strange noises in the house. Terrified begins with a couple who hear sounds coming from the sink and rapidly escalates into a story of multiple ‘hauntings’ by otherworldly creatures, and the paranormal investigators who are trying to crack the case. Non-linear and not exactly packed with logic or explanations, what Terrified does have is scares in spades.

Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017)

Issa Lopez’s horror fairytale is also set against a background of violence, this time in the Mexican drug cartels. We follow Estrella, a recently orphaned ten year old, who joins up with a group of orphaned kids. Estrella believes she has three wishes, but in her world wishes don’t often come true as planned.

Similar in tone to Pan��s Labyrinth, Tigers Are Not Afraid is a beautiful, lyrical fantasy, rich in imagination, juxtaposed against horrific real world events

The Witch In The Window (2018)

A creepy ghost story which sees a father and his estranged son attempt to fix up an old farmhouse which is haunted by its previous occupant, a malevolent spirit who only grows stronger as the house gets repaired. A family story with successful scares, The Witch in the Window could be a good pick for anyone craving an old fashioned chiller.

The Beach House (2019)

The Beach House is a quirky new Shudder original from debut writer/director Jeffrey A. Brown. It sees a young couple take trip to a holiday home but find friends of the young man’s parents are also staying there. Then as night falls a strange fog descends, bringing with it something strange from the sea…

Plot light, FX heavy body horror that’s slickly executed and well worth a look.

Gustavo Figueiredo/RLJE Films

Color Out of Space (2019)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

The works of legendary horror author H.P. Lovecraft have always been difficult to translate to the screen, since much of his prose is told from inside the crumbling minds of unnamed protagonists who sense — but often never actually see — the evil cosmic presences closing in around them.

Director Richard Stanley (Hardware) has an innate sense of what makes Lovecraft work, however, and Color Out of Space — about a family whose farm is infected by a nameless entity that crashes to Earth inside a meteorite — captures much of the otherworldly eeriness of one of the author’s most famous stories. But the movie also stars Nicolas Cage, who does his Nicolas Cage thing and occasionally ends up fighting the material.

Read our full review here.

Host (2020)

You thought there were no new movies being made during lockdown? Turns out you were wrong. This utterly ingenious horror was conceived, shot and completely in just 12 weeks during lockdown.

Read more

Movies

Host Explained: How it was Made, Easter Eggs and all Your Questions Answered

By Rosie Fletcher

Movies

Host Review: Zoom Horror That’s Fresh and Frightening

By Rosie Fletcher

Host is a found footage film told via Zoom and it is comfortably the most current and relevant thing you will watch. It’s also extremely scary, in part because of how terribly relatable it is but also because of the excellent FX and stunt work which elevates this from a cool concept to a genuinely exciting and cleverly made horror that will almost certainly be the defining genre movie of the year.

Shudder

Spiral (2020)

ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE US

Marketed as a gay-themed response to Get Out (and not to be confused with next year’s Saw spin-off using the same title), this Shudder original finds same-sex couple Aaron (Ari Cohen) and Malik (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman) moving from the big city to rural Illinois along with Aaron’s teen daughter (Jennifer LaPorte) from his previous marriage. Once there, the family encounters not just plain old homophobia (the film is set in the mid-1990s) but other secrets hidden beneath the peaceful small-town veneer.

Bowyer-Chapman gives a strong central performance as Malik, a struggling writer who is the first to sense that all is not right, but your mileage may vary regarding the fairly obvious set-up and whether the social commentary is woven as successfully here as it was in Jordan Peele’s groundbreaking thriller.

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[comic-movieheroesranked]

Cinematic Comic Characters Ranked! (Year 2004) Part I

After two consecutive years of multiple Comic movies, 2004 took it a bit slow with only five movie releases. Blade returns one last time in Blade: Trinity as well as Spider-Man in Spider-Man 2! We also get a spin on two cult classics with AVP: Alien vs Predator. Finally we also get the debut of two comic characters in Hellboy and Catwoman. Let’s start off the list with #40 through #21!!!

*SPOILERS AHEAD FOR ALL HIGHLIGHTED MOVIES ABOVE*

Cameo Appreciation: Stan Lee (Spider-Man 2) Another blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo, but it's the first time Stan Lee saves someone, as he pulls a girl away from the path of falling debris as Spider-Man faces off against Doc Ock.

Cameo Appreciation: Ben Parker and Norman Osborn/Green Goblin (Spider-Man 2) Two father figures that both died in the last film come back as illusions(?) to the two people who inspired them the most. Uncle Ben returned to help guide Peter as he decides on whether or not to continure as Spider-Man or lead a different life. Norman comes back to haunt his son into becoming the new Green Goblin and to convince him to go after Peter and seek revenge.

40. Ilsa Haupstein (Hellboy)

"Hell will hold no surprises for us."

I forgot this girl was in this movie every time she wasn't on screen. She doesn't even really do anything but is extremely loyal to her man. She always has this big hammer around but we never really see it in action either. Anyways, when the big bad demon is released she accepts death pretty well and dies with her man.

39. Dr. Edgar Vance and Chief Martin Vreede (Blade: Trinity)

"There's nothing stopping them now."

These two were familiars who would do their vampires dirty work while the sun was out. They both successfully drug Blade for their masters but that's about it for their success. Vance ends up getting drained dry by Drake and Vreede gets shot down by Blade after he shuts down their human farm.

38. John Jameson (Spiderman-2)

"The world is full of big jerks."

It's not that John was the nice guy that finished last, it's just that he was the wrong guy. I'm sorry at the end of the day if a girl isn't feeling you, it does not matter how successful you are at life. Mary Jane figures this out when she kisses him in their apartment one last time. It does suck that he was left at the alter, he was a decent guy he didn't deserve that.

37. George Hedare (Catwoman)

"Don't speak. Consider it a condition in our relationship."

Throughout the whole movie we're played to think George-a misogynistic, arrogant, piece of scum-is the villain. Turns out he's not, but he's still a shitty person. Just because he runs a fancy makeup company lets him believe he can do who and whatever he wants. This ends up being his downfall because he doesn't even notice his wife is plotting against him until she shoots him dead. Can't say I was upset.

36. Ray Cumberland (Blade: Trinity)

"Don't fuck with my thing."

Ray leads a new enemy against Blade, the police force. After Blade gets recorded killing a human, Ray tries to take him down. Of course he doesn't believe in vampires and for most of the movie nothing bursts his bubble of ignorance. It isn't until the end when he thinks he's caught Blade's body but it transforms back to Drake's corpse right in front of Ray's eyes.

35. Ophelia (Catwoman)

"Catwomen are not contained by the rules of society."

Ophelia is just weird cat lady who has all this knowledge about the history of Catwomen, women gifted with abilities of a cat. She owns a bunch of cats, to no one's surprise, including Midnight, the cat that has the power to grant women like Patience with the ability to become Catwoman.

34. Rosalie Octavius (Spider-Man 2)

"I love that brilliant mind of his."

As soon as I saw Rosalie I knew she was going to die. With Otto clearly being the villain but appearing as a nice guy, I knew something drastic was going to happen that would push him over the edge. That something was killing Rosalie, his brilliant wife that supports all his ambitions. And just to rub salt to the wound, we had to see her die because of his mistake when trying to work his new invention.

33. Harry Osborn (Spider-Man 2)

"I'm ruined! I have nothing left-except Spider-Man!"

Y'all know I hated Harry in the first Spider-Man movie and my hatred for him only grew in this one. He's just a big douche that can't get over the death of a father that only showed him the bare minimum of interest. He's a dick to Peter and ends up finding out he's Spider-Man. After more self-loathing, he ends up discovering his father's secret room where he hid the Green Goblin. I cannot wait to see where this takes us *notice my sarcasm* in the next film.

32. Agent Clay (Hellboy)

"Well, come on in. Meet the rest of the family."

There's a running gag about his new hair piece looking like it would on a doll and it's so true. Hellboy lowkey fake for acting like it looked good, a real friend would've had him fix it asap. He's apart of the mission to destroy the hellhound eggs that goes completely wrong. He squares off against zombie/not zombie, Kroenen. And since Kroenen can't die Clay's bullets do nothing as he gets stabbed repeatedly. He somehow doesn't die then and there and his fate in the hospital is never revealed after but it's predicted he wasn't going to make it.

31. Sommerfield, Zoe, Hedges and Dex (Blade: Trinity)

"My friends are coming to kill you."

The members of the Nightstalkers, a new group of vampire hunters. Blade says they have no idea what they're doing and he's absolutely right. Aside from Sommerfield, who ends up making the virus that will kill all vampires, they don't really add anything to Blade's already impressive arsenal. When Drake attacks their hideout he kills Sommerfield, Hedges, and Dex easily and then kidnaps Sommerfield's daughter, Zoe. She's a brave one, especially at her age, not showing an ounce of fear while she's being held captive and even courageously telling Drake he's going to die before she gets rescued.

30. Sally (Catwoman)

"I must be in my cubicle alone."

Shy people like Patience need friends like Sally. Friends who will say the dirty things they're thinking out loud and will drag the shy ones around to get into some trouble. That's what she is, and I appreciate that. She's also the first person to get sick from using their job's new beauty cream, giving the first signs to the movie's overall plot. In the end she ends up with her steaming doctor so she's winning.

29. Jarko Grimwood (Blade: Trinity)

"Hey, dickface. You seen my dog?"

The muscle of the vampires who owns a vampire Pomeranian. If that isn't weird enough the dude is always at the receiving end of King's jokes and a rivalry easily starts between them. He's basically a giant toddler and ends up getting his ass beat the entire movie until King finally puts a bomb in his mouth, killing him.

28. Graeme Miller, Maxwell Stafford, Adele Rousseu, and Mark Verheiden (Alien vs. Predator)

"I'd rater have one and not need it then need and not have one."

So obviously the only reason we had a bunch of crew members in this movie was so there would be more chances for us to see all the different ways the aliens and predators could kill. Out of all the minor characters I found these four to be the most important. First we got Adele, the only female besides Alexa who also makes a very good point when it comes to carrying her gun. However, homegirl doesn't appear to know how to use it when a bunch of creepy spider aliens show up and lay alien eggs down her throat. Graeme and Mark are two guys constantly arguing because Mark thinks Graeme is just a useless scientist, which is correct, honestly. Despite Mark having two broken legs, I think he would've put up a good fight against the first alien had it not been for the other two jumping in. Graeme meets his end when he successfully gets a gun but wastes all the bullets on one spider alien, despite the fact that there's several more about to hatch and take over his body. Finally, there's Maxwell. He's Weyland's assistant and kind of an asshole? Like the whole time he's just a dick to Alexa for no reason so I didn't feel bad at all when a predator shows up and sticks a spear through him.

27. J. Jonah Jameson (Spider-Man 2)

"I want Spider-Man!"

The famous New York editor who thinks the only real story is the one he tells himself. Despite the fact that he clearly does not like Spider-Man, Jameson is still really entertaining throughout the movie. He's also Peter's most reliable source of income during his troubled times and he doesn't abuse that either. He really is one of those people you kind of have to accept isn't going to change.

26. Danica Talos (Blade: Trinity)

"Now we're getting somewhere, my pet."

This girl was so annoying and unnecessary. She reminded me of the little girl from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the spoiled one who ended up being a rotten egg. She likes to toy with people, especially King, but gets pissy if they clap back, especially King. When she's torturing the poor guy she ends up getting hit with the virus for vampires and dies, all while King mocks her as he gets away.

25. Grigori Rasputin (Hellboy)

"You will never understand what kind of power you have."

The main bad guy who's only good at summoning demon hounds that can't die and giving speeches about his time served in a hell dimension. Because of his time sent there he's really eager to get a portal between hell and Earth open so that Earth is destroyed once and for all. He really should've had a backup plan since his main plan revolved around our hero, Hellboy, betraying everyone and opening the portal. When it fails the demon living in him comes out and kills him and his forgettable bae.

24. Charles Bishop Weyland (Alien vs. Predator)

"I need this."

Weyland is the reason everyone is at an underground pyramid full of aliens. He's a rich explorer who just wants to be remembered by something great he did just before he dies of whatever sickness he has. The Predator tries to spare him-it can sense he's dying-but Weyland ain't no punk and lights the thing on fire. The Predator isn't a punk either though and ends up killing him just after that.

23. Laurel Hedare (Catwoman)

"I'm a woman, I'm used to doing things I don't want to do."

At first I want to feel sorry for Laurel. She has insecurities due to her husband cheating on her with the younger women who literally stole her job. It sucks, but its really hard to feel sympathy when she knowingly tries to make a beauty product that will eventually kill its consumers public just so she can keep making money. She also kills anyone who tries to stop her, including her cheating husband. Her skins also super tough as a side effect for constantly using the cream so she can actually do damage when she fights Catwoman. She can also fall off a building a lot faster and keep her body intact when she hits the ground.

22. Tom Manning (Hellboy)

"You never, ever light a cigar that way."

Tom is the director of the FBI and it's mainly his job to deny the existence of Hellboy to the public even when Hellboy is seen fighting a demon hound in the middle of a very public carnival. He doesn't get along with Hellboy because he thinks he's reckless and lacks respect to higher figures of authority and he's absolutely right in both cases. However, after they each work together to bring down Kroenen they bond for the very first time over cigars.

21. May Parker (Spider-Man 2)

"Everybody loves a hero."

At the beginning of the movie I was definitely getting 'Aunt May is going to die' vibes, which sucks because Peter just lost Uncle Ben in the last film. As movie progressed it was obvious that Aunt May's arc would be about her living on post-Uncle Ben's death, with her main struggle being able to pay for the house Peter grew up in. I also like that she didn't instantly forgive Peter for what happened to Uncle Ben. She didn't blame him, but she was also hurt and just needed to be alone. Her being Doctor Octopus's hostage was a bit comical though.