#chaos hearts

[butterbabyflapjack]

ＣＨＡＯＳ ＨＥＡＲＴＳ

[ PAIRING ] Messmer the Impaler x hornsent princess!reader

[ SUMMARY ] Messmer is feared throughout the land. Your world, his flame has razed; your family gone, yourself his prisoner. He’s given you every reason to hate him. So why does heat flood your veins at his touch? Doth your wretched heart crave his to come and claim you?

[ RATING ] explicit, 18+

[ WARNINGS ] enemies to lovers as an extreme sport, mutual pining, snake bites, light bondage, monsterfucker, inhuman anatomy, size difference, hurt and comfort, passionate sex, hate sex, dark romance, slow burn, minor character death, attempted rape (not by Messmer), canon typical violence and warfare, more tags to come

✧˖° read here or ao3

CHAPTER 1

[ AUTHORS NOTE ] Soooo I did not mean for this to be so long. I got carried away–I can't help myself. And I’m sure there's parts which are messy since editing chapters this long melts my brain so I hope you’ll forgive me <3 Enjoy!

This land was not always weighed by death. Not always wrought by ash and ruin.

The Impaler, Messmer, changed that. Inked his name to its cause. Proud, it seemed, to wear the flame-soaked flag his crusade waved in the broken halls of your people.

He changed a lot of things in what would become his land of shadows, and always in manners most cruel.

The people feared him.

You feared him.

Ear craned to whispers of his name.

You lived a sheltered, privileged life, despite your lust for ungilded freedom, and your father wouldn’t tell you the state of things, how close this war had gotten. He often told you nothing at all, in truth, beyond the length of your duties as a woman and sole daughter of his house. But you feared the worst–for yourself, for those around you. Feared that death was fast approaching, for something of it shivered in the air, made its mountain calm taste ashen. And what is calm, if not what veils the savage storm which lies beyond it?

Something was coming. Of this your nightmare’s warned, though it seemed no one would voice their shared concerns. Playing fool to the obvious, as though to hide from truth would keep it from ever finding you.

You needed your brother; your only and cherished sibling. Your kin and closest friend. Needed to speak with him about your worries, needed to salve them, but he’d been garrisoned near Rivermouth for nearly two moons, a sentry against the threat of Messmer’s men–but no longer.

Today was the day he finally came home.

Your heart swims with warmth at the notion, as for days and nights you’ve fretted he may never return.

He was practically your twin, your brother Sven. People often believed such was true, though you were younger. And his imminent arrival was your first thought upon waking. To embrace him safely your sole intention when throwing yourself from your dusky blue bed at the silver of dawn, wrestling inside the arms of your emerald overcoat. Slipping on dirtied shoes your father would be ashamed of with all the clumsy, stumbled excitement of an eager child.

Sven is home…!

You were anxious to see him, even if your intentions of doing so well before your father ineluctably found him were far from merely greeting him home.

With this in mind, you rushed from your private chambers. Down through the broad, stone-floored hallways of your family’s hold, and knew not how you knew his procession arrived, only that you knew. Perhaps it was the song of the field birds, or those of the surrounding pines; that small forest which surrounds your sprawling, mountainous city. Or perhaps it was merely his presence in the air, something clung to the leaves like dappled dew, but you knew; Sven was home. He was safe, and you meant to keep it so.

The chill of the outer courtyard couldn’t receive you fast enough as you rushed past servants and guardsmen out into the dawn. The courtyard filled with horned mounts and war carts, brimming with the sounds of armor and hooves, as inside the gates amasses your brother’s wearied men at arms. And when you see Sven slipping off his steed alongside them, you fail even to call his name. Something catching in your throat as you merely bolt toward his presence, with him too distracted loosing his horned steed’s bridle to see you bounding there. Informed with a breathless grunt upon you tightly seizing him that you’ve come to greet him, swarmed by a hug that might seek to wring him of his very life. 

After tensing in bewilderment, he laughed; his exhales shaking you. “Someone’s eager to greet the dawn.”

“I’d be eager to see you no matter what time it is,” comes your mumbling in his chest.

He clasps one solid arm around your far more fragile form, bronze armor twisting leather joints as he brings you to his ochre-draped chest. Holding you there for warm moments, before shifting his hold somewhat in effectively prying you off him.

He surmises you a moment, as though confused by such fierceness of emotion. Eventually smiling softly. “Good morrow to you as well, dear sister.”

“You’re home,” is all you can muster, like you can’t quite believe it still, and a chuckle harbors once more in his throat.

“I’m home,” he agrees, quite simply. “Had you room for doubt I would be?” 

To this, you withhold response.

He lacks the helm of his fellow horned warriors, of whom it seems what remains of his regiment’s traveled here. Donning instead a fabric mask he now pulls from his nose and face; dark, shoulder-length hair spilling past his crown of two goat-like horns, their curves spiraling toward the sunlight.

He seems to decipher your worries as you eye his men, as you eye him ; giving your chin a small pinch in the effort to snatch you from them.

“I’m well,” he assures you. “You worry far too much.” Glancing at the vine-twisted keep far behind you, he wonders, “Have you told father of my arrival?”

Your expression’s wry. “Has it been so long you’ve forgotten I’m not entirely witless?”

One corner of his lips quirks as his hand shifts to your hair, ruffling it up a bit despite your instant protests. “Happily, it has not. And I’m glad of it. I’d prolong his inevitable criticisms for as long as possible.”

“I’m rather offended you hadn’t told me of your arrival, however,” you point out whilst slapping his giant, armored hand away, to which his dark brows pinch incredulously. 

“I only just arrived! I hardly know how you knew it.” 

Pressing back your responding grin, you shed the skin of levity in favor of matters more severe; ones you’ve rushed here to find him for in the first place.

“Come,” you tell him, in the guise of welcoming him home. “You must be tired. And before our unfortunate father finds you, I have questions of your time at the blockade.”

And though Sven sighs, he doesn’t stop you–allowing himself to be pulled by one hand toward the keep whilst his soldiers behind him toil with horses and armament; some greeting family, others guiding their horses back home. 

“Of course you do,” he mutters, unenthused. “Though I assure you father’s relayed the state of things well enough.”

He hasn’t, and Sven must know that. Your father confides in you nothing. He loves not your gender, preferring you’d been yet another son, and nor does he love you were born without horns. He thinks less of you. Sven can’t deny this unfortunate truth. And he won’t worm his way from your questions by playing fool to it.

“I’d rather hear it from you,” you state, forcing tension from your tone. 

Past chamber after chamber, you drag him searching for one vacant of any eyes that might spot you. And though Sven’s much taller than you, it’s like he’s dragging his feet in some useless attempt to dissuade you.

“My, you’re slow,” you chastise, leaning more weight toward your aims, more or less lugging the tall man forward. “Have you suffered so greatly on your journey that you now walk as a feeble old man?”

He rolls his hazel eyes, though at your taunting, his pace rises to meet yours all the same. “I’ve only just arrived,” he complains. “Have we not time to tarry?”

No, you bite back from saying. Instead steering him inside a broad, open storeroom where you two can be alone. We don’t. 

The room is quite barren, many of its supplies shifted elsewhere in support of the war. And after glancing about in ensuring your privacy, you turn and stare up at your brother hard.

He looks at you with subtle perplexion. Meeting your solemn gaze as all lightness is slowly bled of him.

“What troubles you, sister?”

You’re not sure what to say. Knowing the words, yet somehow sure he will resist them.

In your troubled silence, he takes your arm in reclaiming your wandering gaze again, guiding your worry more toward his. 

“What is it?”

Your mouth presses flat before you manage to force the words out.

“We have to get out of here.”

A crease weighs his brow. “What do you mean, get out of here?”

“I mean it isn’t safe here,” you tell him with more insistence in every second drawn on. 

You steal another glance at the opened doorway beside you, before taking his hand to steer him deeper into the room, away from what prying ears might hear you.

“I’ve heard whispers,” you state, in a whisper all your own. Staring up with desperation, attempting to wring the truth from his dodging hold. “The Impaler…”

Sven’s forearm tenses, though you press on.

“He’s reduced Moorth to naught but ruin, has he not?”

Jawline growing tight, some faint darkness glints his eye in a way suggestive that he did not want you to know this.

“We’ll take the city back,” he says, but you won’t have his dodging.

“Father insists our paths of trade aren’t broken, but I’m not the ignorant simpleton he thinks I am,” you say, fearful and sullen. Determined for whatever ugly truth. “He’s incinerating everything, isn’t he?”

“Who?”

“You know who!” your voice now raises. “Stop treating me like some blissful, ignorant child!”

In his reluctance, silence follows, though you read him well enough. Know your brother better than anyone. And you see something beyond the stone-wall of him splinter.

“That’s why you’re here, then… Isn’t it?” you press him, as your nervous heart still trembles. “To defend these halls… Belurat far beyond them… There’s nowhere else to fall back to. He’s ransacked everything else.”

He doesn’t immediately respond. Instead studying you with the hesitance of not knowing what to say, how honest to be with you.

You demand full honesty. “Tell me it isn’t true.”

Through his tension, he says not anything. 

Biting the inside of your lip so harshly it stings, you take both his hands in yours, squeezing harder than you mean to.

“We have to go,” you insist in one breath, unblinking. Hushed enough to hide such treason from any walls that may have ears. “We have to leave the city. Now. We’d be fools to wait any longer.”

The line of his jaw turns to stone as he studies you. 

“And go where?” he wonders at last, voice bladed against you. “There’s nowhere in reach where Messmer’s flames cannot find us.”

You’re left without answers, for there are none for such an impossible thing.

“We’ll find a way through the shadow veil,” you insist in desperation; disheartened to hear his weary scoff. Gripping his hands still tighter to win his ear. “I’ll tear the bloody thing apart myself if I have to,” you persist, not knowing if you even can, if such a thing is possible. “I’ll–”

“Enough,” your brother halts you, with such uncharacteristic firmness it stills your tongue at once.

A flicker on his brow seems to regret his harshness of it, though he carries on unyielding even so. “There’s nowhere more safe than inside these walls. And even were there not, who are we to abandon our people here? While we ourselves flee for spurious safety in the night?”

Our people…

The notion ties labyrinthine cords inside you. For though you care for your people–our people–don’t want them to suffer Messmer’s wrath…

Some of your people’s practices are those of pure horror. Traditions and rituals with shamans–with people–you’ve always found barbarous. Beyond what one can bear. Impossibly cruel.

Still. Even with the bad, there is good here. Hundreds of innocent lives that might be snuffed out. 

But when it comes to their lives, or your brothers…

You choose your brother’s every time, without question. Over every single soul that elsewise exists.

You hold Sven’s gaze as obstinately as he holds yours. “I’m leaving,” you say. “Tonight. And you’re coming with me.”

He regards you still more discontentedly, as some thread inside him fails in tearing through. And when he pulls his hands from the unyielding strangle of yours, there’s the smallest smile forced to his lips that might’ve convinced anyone other than you. 

“I understand your disquiet,” he says. “Truly, I do.” He brushes back some hair behind your ear, as if this alone might cease this war inside you. “But such depth of concern is unfounded. Worry not, dear sister... Messmer’s forces will not reach our city. Nor will the Tower Settlement fall.” 

As you frown, his thumb swipes your chin as though to swipe the shape of it from you.

“You underestimate me,” he says, with a glisten to crinkling eyes. “I’ll protect you, as I always have. As you know I always will. In this, you can be certain. And with it allow this matter to rest.”

You merely scowl at him. “You’re… You’re being stubborn… pigheaded… I–”

He laughs before frustration lets you finish. Drawing you to him. Hugging your scowling close whilst he strokes the back of your hornless head with playful fingers.

“I’ve heard tell of my being such,” he agrees, lightly. “Enough that I fear it must be true. The pigheaded prince, they call me.”

His embrace is comfort enough that your fears are near forgotten. Though it slips through your grasping fingers all too swiftly as he lets you go, with guidance toward the doorway where the two of you both entered. 

It’s obvious that he would see this conversation’s end, while you consider it hardly started.

“I also fear our father’s already loathe to’ve not addressed me,” he says, with this in mind, though with little relish. “I’m sure I’ll be his unwilling captive in the war room at least till dusk. After which…”

He pauses just before the doorway, turning you toward him with gentle hands.

“I expect you to sit with me at whatever feast he’s surely hosting.”

Your attempt at jest’s still murky with clouds of doubt. “A feast… I suppose your presence warrants as much...”

His eyes, even now, cast a sparkle. “Is that doubt on your tongue?” he ribs you. “My presence warrants several feasts, at least. Lavish ones, where the whole of the city stumbles home drunk from them.”

You look away, in no mood for his usual liveliness. And his fingers grace your upper arms in catching your gaze once more. Eyes passing between your worried ones.

“Be at peace, dear sister,” he says, with firmness reassuring, even now. “Leave worry with me. I won’t let ill befall you.” He gives your arms a squeeze. “Save me a spot at the table tonight, will you? Near some comely friend of yours. I could use a lovely distraction.”

You fight back the smallest smile in response. “I’ll have no part in you breaking some poor girl’s heart again.”

“Then I’ll take care not to break it this time,” he teases. 

As he’d guessed, you did not see your brother again till the world became swallowed by night.

Your father’s great hall is thunderous. Partiers laughing, people jeering, as though the only one worried is you.

How can they all be so ignorant of what death approaches?

You wish you could shrink from it; this jovial place. But you’re not one to cast aside a more pleasant reunion with your brother than the short one you shared this morning, so you stay, beside his and your father’s empty seats at the longtable as instructed.

As a man slick with sweat reaches toward you across the table for yet another leg of lamb, a darkened presence hovers just behind where you sit.

“Is this seat taken?”

The boldness, to ask such a thing of your brothers chair. Only a nitwit would speak such stupidity, and you turn to see said nitwit standing there.

He’s older, with a tangle of horns on his brow. A thin smile and small eyes, with teeth greased with the ale which surely prompted this.

Yet another, it would seem, after your affluent hand. As if your father hadn’t plans to sell you to whoever’s hand flattered his own most. 

“Yes,” you say brusquely, turning away more rudely than you mean, though you find it hard in that moment to care. 

You grab the flask of ale before you and suck it down as though you mean to drown in it.

Wherever is your damnable brother?

Wiping amber from your lips with an unladylike hand, you endeavor to breathe some fresh air. Standing up far too quickly, to the effect of nearly toppling over, and it’s no wonder you don’t often drink liquor.

Wavering your way from the hall, you make your way out into night. Out, through the courtyard, knowing not where you wander, only that you’d rid yourself of all raucous and smell of that festivous hell.

Ale warms your veins, yet you still rub gooseflesh from your arms as you wander in your long-sleeved gown up the stairway of the keep’s curtain wall, thinking to look out at the darkness beyond the sprawling city’s light.

The breeze is stronger up here, on the wall’s utmost walkway. Curling the length of your skirts in about you, tugged to and fro with the wind's invisible hands. And you stare outward, full of worry, not aware that you aren’t alone.

“Didn’t know I’d have such fine company.”

It’s a gruff voice which greets you, and you turn with a start, though it’s only a grizzled guard who addresses you. A graying old man with kind eyes and a knobby head of horns. Is your father so wanting of forces he’d pluck some greybeard from his bed to man the bailey?

“Apologies,” you say, “I didn’t mean to interrupt your watch.” Vacillating a moment, before adding, “I’d stay a while, if you’d allow it.”

His eyes crease as he smiles, pushing himself up off the half-wall he’d previously leaned upon.

“Stay as long as you like,” he says. “There’s naught much to look at. Boredom’s making me numb.”

Your attempt to return his smile falls short. “I fear I may fail to salve boredom, if that’s what you hope. I’m not presently much for conversation.”

He quirks a grandfatherly brow. “Long night?”

If he wasn’t so kindly, you might be aggrieved he’s still insistent on chatting away through the night. But as it were, you just sigh. Staring out into the darkness beyond the city. 

“One longer has yet to grace me.”

“Say no more,” he says, understanding. “The quiet’s a balm for such things.”

Relieved, you take him up on such advice.

You stay on the wall with this stranger who feels somehow a friend for some time. Likely longer than you ought to. And it thaws you, inch by inch, of that worry which clings; enough till you finally clear your throat to speak, to somehow return this man's kindness. Though as you turn to say a word, a flicker of light in the distance instead captures your focus.

Standing straighter, you're drawn like a moth to that faraway glisten. Watching as one glimmer turns to four. Then a dozen. Then more. Unable to turn away from whatever those pinprick lights are as they loom so far across the horizon, like stars dragged over ground. Asking the graybeard, “Do you see that…?”

You hear the old man’s armor shifting as he seems to adjust his gaze.

“...Aye,” he says at last. “I see it.”

You cannot look away. And how some flickers of light can distress you, you fail fully to grasp or name why. “What is it?”

Silence, as the graybeard beside you stares.

“...M’not sure,” he utters at length. Perturbed, a touch, it seems. “Though whatever they are… They're getting closer.”

Reaching one grizzled hand toward his neck, the old man grasps a silver looking-glass from where it dangles upon his chest, raising it in scanning outward. And with a glance at him, you wait with bated breath for word of what's seen.

“...Too dark to see for certain,” he murmurs, his tone more weighed than before. His eye staying glued to his contraption. “...There’s perhaps two dozen… N’whatever they are, they’re too large to rightly be torches…”

For stretching moments, he stares outward, as do you. Until finally he offers you his looking-glass, slipping its delicate chain off from round his neck.

“Take a look,” he offers, and in disquietude you do, not so much as thinking to decline him. Something raising every fine hair on your skin, though the reason eludes. 

You see…

…Flames.

The distance holds them small, in the palm of its night-drenched hand, though with every second passed they grow larger. Wavering midst the shadows, as if lumbering side to side; as though flame itself's somehow walking.

You peer past the lens to stare with the naked eye again. And it's then you first feel it. The ground come so slowly to life. A sensation so subtle at first you cannot hear the distant thuds which crescendo each minute vibration, more and more, til you cannot deny them. A sort of hum. A twisting of earth. More rhythmic with each second dragged on.

Despite how vague and far those groans of earth, whatever could be their cause flashes images of horror inside your mind. Of something you’ve only heard tell of; a wickedness only since dreamed. Of machines, gnarled and vast, designed with the fuel of bodies. Tall as any tower. Barred as any gael. Fashioned for death and the installation of fear in any soul hapless enough to look upon them.

Just its image painted in your mind inscribes fear in you now, as was its architects intention.

You stumble back a step, eyes growing wide in the darkness as you stare at those ever-growing flames. And though you lack any proof of their purpose, some piece inside you knows what they are. Why they’re here.

The looking-glass tumbles with a delicate plink from your grasp, while the man beside you’s expression draws confusion.

“What is it?” he asks, but you’re already running. Down the bailey’s length, down stairs, through the courtyard's growing dim.

Sven.

You hear the graybeard’s horn sound behind you, and though you should find relief in what little solace its call to your father’s forces might bring you, you cannot care. It matters little. For surely those golems grow nearer with every lumbering step, and there’s nothing you or your father’s dwindling men can do to stop them, not if all tell you've heard about Messmer is true.

The ground further shakes, undeniable in what it might bring you, as you enter the sconce-scattered castle. Fighting the length of your damnable skirts as you bound in through the hallways as fast as you can, as already panic clouds your vision.

Messmer will feed your bodies to his golems one by one. Impale all others. Leave your ashes to rot on a graveyard of spears, your tombs like a forest. Your corpses charred black, with faces frozen in whatever terror his flames found you in; whatever anguish his spear brought before the mercy of death.

You run still faster; in past the broad, opened doorways of the dining hall, where merriment’s paused in favor of scattered, flummoxed eyes and panicked questioning, though even that you find hard to hear.

You need to find Sven. Need to drag him to any place far from here. You have to protect him, as he always has you–even from himself if you must, and such is his dauntless, stubborn pride that you likely will.

There’s no stopping what may come, you should have dragged him from this place far sooner, you–

You're too late.

You were too late–dammit, you–!

Reeling as you turn one hallway’s bend, you're forced to shove your way past those filing into the corridors; servants, guardsmen, guests, all traveling with purpose or else questioning if you're under attack. And it's nothing short of a blessing catching eye of Sven's height lingering above the masses, as he likewise spots you; gaze alight with relief as he fights his way toward you.

Lodged within the crowds of mismanaged havoc, he takes your arm and drags you further into the keep, beyond the rising panic of those behind you. 

The ground further quakes. Iron chandeliers overhead further quivering. 

How close must they be now? Those colossal, wandering flames?

“I saw them,” you tremble as Sven further leads you, knowing not where he guides, too dazed to question. “I saw them, Sven. The furnaces. I–I couldn’t–they were so far away, but they–”

“I should have sent you away this morning,” he says, almost to himself, which does nothing to allay that viperous terror twisting through you. Sounding to wrest up whatever hope he has left whilst adding, “Though it’s not too late.”

It’s then that you realize he’s leading you in the direction of the stables.

You seize his wrist; stopping him in his tracks as his impatient, worried expression turns across one shoulder, his gaze alone questioning whether you’ve succumbed to sudden madness.

“I won’t leave without you,” you tell him, knowing already his intent. That he’d send you off and remain behind here. As of course he would, seeing reason to fight, though you won’t allow it.

This stubborn, stubborn man.

He doesn’t answer. Instead attempting to drag you on again, though you dig your heels in as sediment trembles from the rumbling walls all around you. 

“I’m not leaving without you!”

You don’t mean to shout, but you do. 

He looks at you as though you’re a war he’s already lost.

“I can’t leave while the city needs defended,” he argues, resolve fused to his every sinew. 

His valor is nothing short of infuriating.

“Then I’m staying with you.”

“No, you’re not!”

“Should you put me on a mount I’ll simply ride right back,” you protest, gaze growing wild. “You can’t make me go anywhere unless you ride by my side in ensuring it!”

His look is of utter frustration. But as horns blare and some distant, bone-deep tremor once more shakes the earth, inspiring a ripple of far away screams in the castle, there isn’t time to dissuade you. And with an agitated breath, he diverts course in leading up a set of winding stairs–those leading toward the hallway of your bedroom, where he guides you with swiftness.

“Stay here,” he says, ushering you inside your chambers. Seeming barely to accept such a compromise. “Bar the door. Remain hidden. I’ll return for you.”

The rapid beating of hooves and heels sounds far below your bedroom's balcony window, and too soon Sven's turned to leave, with you grabbing his wrist before he is able. “Don’t go! Don’t… Don’t go out there, Sven…!”

Tears burn your eyes, their threat overwhelming your lashes, and the resolve of Sven's own expression crumbles somewhat to see it.

He takes your face gently in his both hands while you plead with him once more, “Don’t go…” Steering you just a touch closer in placing a kiss upon your brow.

“Do as I’ve told you,” he bids, resolutely. “Allow no other entrance. I’ll return here as soon as I’m able. You have my word of this.”

And with this, he is gone. His warmth left on your cheeks as tears spill where his touch had been.

You staunchly refuse the cruel suggestion of your heart; that this may be the last time you see him. Uncertain how you’ll barricade your door with no lock on its innermost side, though you’re desperate to keep your mind busy, to heed Sven’s instructions. So with great effort, you squeeze yourself in behind your bed’s massive headboard, barely managing to shove it inch by awkward inch away from the stone-hewn wall. Shoving with all your strength until the mass of it blockades the doorway.

Time is as much a weapon as any sword. And as you wait for your brother's return, heart tangled by vines in your chest, you seek to pry yourself from terror enough to stumble out onto your balcony, where night wraps you up in its arms.

The song of steel and iron grows ever louder from down below. Your view half-concealed by the edge of the castle. Horns sounding more in the darkness. The rumble of beasts and mounts and men shaking into the ground. And your strained eyes grow wider upon seeing a haze of flame glowing just outside the city, bewitching the air to a blistering hellscape of dancing cinder and molten fog.

Such a harrowing sight overwhelms you.

Whatever has come, it is here.

Your hands grip desperately to the terrace’s balustrade as the world around you abruptly lurches in place, and with a vicious crack one section of walls round the city erupts into pieces, struck by some mammoth blow beyond what your vision can see. Stones tumbling like naught more than ash as a behemoth lumbers in through the wreckage. A mountainous cage of a being, weighed slow by its body of metal; stomach burning with the piled corpses of past feasts. Its silhouette singed against darkness, twisted by hundreds of arms reaching out through the bars of its belly; burned slow enough to long to be free.

You long to look away, yet can scarcely remember to breathe. The cities outmost towers growing brighter with ashes and flame in a nauseating dance of destruction that would see all before it laid waste, as behind the crushed path of each furnace, Messmer's forces are free to bleed in. 

The city you've known all your life slowly transforms beyond all recognition. Your sense of time broken, sands scattered to the wind, as you watch the growing onslaught in horror. Your pupils shrinking from a vicious, sudden trail of horrid brightness as tendrils of flame lick the air, weaving through it, met soon by a chorus of screams that grow shrill before melting. Lungs scorched in a firestorm that sets the very sky on fire, and you've never seen anything like it. Like a dragon assaults your city, though even they cannot wield such a vicious flame.

You can do nothing but watch as fire tangles through buildings and streets. Your fingernails digging into your palms till the marks left behind may soon bleed.

Sven…

You… You can’t just stay here, sequestered in your room like this-!

You have to find him,

You have to help him–!

But if you leave, how might he find you amidst the chaos?

You have to stay here. He needs to know where you are when he surely comes back, for he will. He’ll come back. His word was given.

Villagers run through the streets as flame leaks its way its alleys; into the very reaches of your father’s keep, as its bailey comes crashing at the slam of a furnace golem’s gnarled excuse for a fist. And as your world shakes you hear Messmer’s men storming in through the courtyard. Hear the clashing of metal grow near. The screams of terror in hallways, all while fear tears through your bosom like an animal clawing to get out.

Where is your brother?!

It feels as though an eternity has held you breathless in its clutches, and as the sounds of war draw nearer, your walls feel to close in.

Footsteps soon sound within the corridor behind your shuttered doorway. Soldiers grunting, weapons clattering to the ground beside a distant woman’s shriek. And then the handle of your door’s taken hold of. The wood of it shuddered by what seems an impatient hand; rattled against how your bed keeps it fully from opening.

Your attention hones tightly toward it.

Sven…?

It remains as a thought, your throat’s tautness not letting you speak it. As you watch in a silence that would strip all reason raw while the door falls eerily still.

You’ve no time to react before your chamber’s entrance blasts violently open in a hailstorm of splintered wood and flame, whipping the room with embers as you stumble back and scream from the ruined blockade of your doorway. 

Snowflake cinders hang loosely in the air as your eyes strain through the rubble, and you know not the man who stands there in the wreckage, whose outline swirls amidst wisping smoke, though he’s wearing Messmer’s red. A pointed helm adorns his looming outline, its steeple skyward, and from his breadth a dripping crimson cowl falls lapping at his heels. Armored head to toe in blackened steel save the shape of his slowly smiling lips as he beholds you. And though you can’t see his gaze through the intricate, beak-like visor he wears, you you can feel his curious eyes scanning over your shape.

“Well… What have we here,” he croons above the distant hymn of bloodshed; that war below now muted by growing unease. “A hornless trollop all alone in her chambers… Tucked away, it would seem, just for me…”

His cruel lips curve as you instinctively falter from him, recoiling further toward the terrace at your back, even when its height would further trap you.

The man steps in through your doorway's ruin, unperturbed by anxious lack of welcoming him in.

“You aren’t quite as foul as the rest of them,” he observes, almost to himself. In no real hurry to approach you, as instead he makes a game of dread. Bits of broken wood twisting beneath his heavy, prowling footsteps as he draws ever closer, and though you glance to the ravaged doorway behind him, with him its gate its passage feels to shrink.

“Not the talkative sort?” he wonders, idly, with a falsely exhaustive sigh. “What a pity… I'd hear your tearful pleas, were it up to me.”

His drawing nearness springs a trap in you, and unthinkingly you try to flee. Though as you bolt in sprinting past him you find he’s far faster than you could have believed.

He’s snatched your wrist in his harshly armored grip before you can even flinch, his every finger steel and pointed. Flinging you without mercy onto the rubble of your bed as a cry tears from your chest, your body shaken as you tumble. 

“Such a morsel I’ve found myself,” he breathes, becoming feverish as a predator above prey. “You do look hornless… Though I’d be sure of it. Let us see if you have any defilements in places I haven’t yet seen, hm?”

Terror wraps fists around you, and though you scramble to get up, to run, he’s on you in an instant. The weight of him shackling you down against your ruined mattress on the floor. The snakelike scales of his ruby tabbard scraping up your kicking legs as he roughly straddles down your writhing form, and though you strike his half-masked face in desperation it does naught but scrape your fingers raw.

He laughs at the attempts to dissuade him. Snatching your wrists and squeezing until you fear your bones might crack.

“There’s that flame,” he croons, tone gleefully debased. “I thought for a moment you’d bore me. How long might that tiny flame flicker before tamping out, I wonder?”

With hungry hands, he grips and tears the flowing fabric of your gown at the seams, ripping it from your thighs as alarm makes you mindless, has you kicking out wildly in the attempt to be free.

“Let me go!” you scream, voice stripped by panic. “Let me go! Get off of me–!”

His breathy laughter’s a horrible thing. But all at once it’s frozen in his throat; locked away as his muscles all seize. Its cruelty marred instead to a painful choke, something congealed, as a swing of metal shears the air behind him, slashing through what seems his severed spine.

His form grows rigid with the realization of death. Wavering in how he pins you, before slumping down like a lifeless tree whilst your lungs are crushed beneath him. And though you fight to claw him off, his weight of steel proves too much for your waning strength.

Some hand seizes the cowl which drapes the dead man’s neck, tearing his body from you. And with a gasp of needed breath you’re overcome to see Sven, like a beacon above you; his red-slicked sword in hand.

Blood and ash fill the lines of his handsome face. Concern whiting his brow as he reaches down to take your shell-shocked hand.

There’s little time to coddle you.

“Are you hurt?”

Tension cleaves to every inch of you, though as you struggle to swallow, you also strive to nod your head. 

“I’m… I’m fine.”

The need to thank him once again for saving you, as it seems he always does, trembles past your mind with you too overwhelmed to fully grasp it. And Sven’s jaw is hard as he holds your trembling hand, his fingers weaving through your own.

“Come,” he says, not wasting words. Towing your stumbling fragility with him from the horror of your chambers. 

You haven’t made it far at all before the clamor of many footsteps resounding in these hallways soon assails you. And round the corridor's bend, just several yards before you, comes a cluster of soldiers in regalia you don’t recognize, so they must be Messmer’s men. Led by a knight in red like that of your bedroom.

Their party pauses upon sighting you, as does yourself and a stiffening Sven. His giant hand gripping yours more fiercely.

Silence, as time strips thin and the lot of you warily eye one another.

“You there,” the red knight says, his voice like brass. “You are the son of the false, impure king, unjustly throned in these lands, I presume?”

Shifting slowly forward, Sven secures himself one step before where you stand, stricken beside him.

“Would that I were,” he says, ever defiant. “What difference does it make?”

The knight before you slowly smiles, though its quick to fade away. 

“We’d make a sigil of your broken body in the courtyard,” he says. “I’d hoped to fell you outside. Alas, we must now drag you there, instead.”

The line of Sven's shoulders grows taut, before abruptly he shoves you from him, your hand stripped from his–pushing you further behind him.

“Go,” he orders, not glancing back. “Run.”

You tremble, and cannot move but to shake your head. Salt soon stinging your vision. Unwilling to obey him.

“No–”

“Go!” he shouts, yet still you cannot heed him. Will not heed him.

The red knight tilts his chin, gesturing three soldiers carry on before him. And already your brother’s sword is raised; knocking back one spear that would see him dead, and then the another. Repelling blows as each comes raining in, trading strikes through the bedlam.

He holds them off for much longer than any man rightly should, such is your brother, such is his mastery of sword. Sweat soaks his brow, blood spilling through his armor with every blow he fails to break. Felling two of Messmer's men as two more are sent by the man in red to take their place, and you're terrified he’ll tire before the end of them. 

You scarcely notice, at first, how beneath his steps bubbles forth a glowing pool of red.

You watch in pure horror as flames like vines slowly leak up through the cracks of the floorboards, tendrils of searching crimson, while Sven’s too caught by battle to heed them. And the moment you cry out for him to run is already a cry too late, as those flames burst forth with sudden violence. Flinging from their center a massive spear, pierced up from the very ground he stands on, as though formed from the shadow of his feet.

The spear flings forth with impossible strength, goring high into the ceiling like the shoot of a savage, crooked tree. It’s hilt still buried in the ground as its speartip thucks up high in the timber above you; piercing through Sven's middle, metal lifting through his ribs.

His body's rigid where he hangs, high above where once he'd stood fighting. And you forget what feeling even is as his body gradually falls limp. Sword slipped from wilting fingers. Clattering to the ground so far below his hanging feet.

All you can see is him and that spear he hangs on. An awful monument to a moment that will live with you forever. And you stare at this nightmare of him; balking backward. Stare, as your heart crumbles into pieces, and you can do nothing else. 

Sven…

You can’t find breath enough to even cry his name, though it trembles in the pit carved where your heart and lungs once lived.

Those soldiers still alive before you part within the haze that strangles your breath, making way as someone else approaches, though you hardly notice as you stand there. Defeated. Tears blurring your vision to a melted, burning thing. 

….Sven…!

He cannot hear those cries you fail to utter. And even should you scrape them from your chest, he’ll never hear your words again. Nor your larks. Nor your laughter. 

Just this once, you might've protected him. Just this once. Yet here you've failed him. 

“Do not prolong the inevitable,” a low, serrated voice condemns from midst your shrouded torment, and you blink away what tears you can, straining through grief to see a dreadfully towering man, so tall no common hallway could ever hope to hold him.

You’ve only heard tell of Messmer. That his hair is red as bloodied fire. That his eye, his only eye, is as gold as Marika’s sins. That two winged snakes adorn him, with agile minds and bodies it seemeth all their own. And yet even those two snakes now watch you, along with their wretched master. Their emerald eyes trained to your every movement, though you shift none.

You bite back your tears; anguish giving way to anger. Your jawline like glass, so hard and close to splintering, but still you’ll grit your jaw up at this red-maned savage as though on his neck you were clamping down, tearing the very life from him.

His captain steps forward, but Messmer’s lengthy, muscled arm raises scarcely enough to halt him in place, though his order's immediately heeded. And though his captain’s face lay hidden behind a snake-like helm so similar to Messmer’s own, you can sense the confusion which braces through him.

“Not her,” says Messmer, so low you scarcely hear him. And you stare, at this monstrous man, while he meets your gaze with what seems not an ounce of pity. 

His eye, you admit, is a strangely beguiling thing. Like a spell that might dissect the furthest reaches of you. Its gold so strangely brilliant, like a pinprick of flame, gnawing through the darkness.

“...Take her,” his deep voice at length breaks through the enchantment of his gaze, and you at once feel panic swell at such an order. “We couldst use another specimen for the storehouse.”

And then, he is gone; turned without another word said, as though he matters of much more import to attend to than whatever in any hell his decreed fate as ‘specimen’ might bring you.

You far prefer death.

When Messmer’s captain comes for you, obedient dog that he is, you immediately try to run only for your gown to snag you back within his clutches. And as he lifts you beneath one arm like a satchel of wheat, you snarl and you fight with every bit of strength remained in you; transformed into a hopeless, feral thing. Clawing at his legs, biting at his wrist despite his armor blunting every blow at him, until he slaps you so hard your vision blurs and all sound’s replaced by the ringing of your skull, your body hanging momentarily limp.

It does no good, your fighting, though you scream and writhe and fail to stave back tears as you’re carried from your father’s ruined castle.

The world outside is smoldering waste.

All is fire and ash. 

You see no one else left living.

You have nothing.

Nothing.

This demigod of flame has taken everything from you. Has burned away your heart to an ashen pit. And while you are still living, you will do everything within your power to gift him the very same.

[ AUTHORS NOTE ] f’s in chat for Sven, rip gone too soon 😔 I actually felt really bad killing him, but I wanted to give you a legitimate, visceral reason to hate Messmer so he had to go. Anyway thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts 💕

[nsbfenro]

Working on something

Testing

[ur-daily-inspiration]

[evanhereonearth]

Solas, outnumbered seven to one, overpowered by a lot more than that, betrayed by his best friend Mythal who bound him to her service and coerced him into leaving the Fade and coerced him into making a weapon that would make an entire people tranquil to stop the war she started AND ignored him when he said it would create *checks notes* a blight and made him do it anyway. Solas, facing seven blighted wannabe gods who turned on his best abusive friend Mythal when she finally stood up to them after CENTURIES of him begging her to do just that and starting a rebellion to free all their multitudes of slaves: *creates the veil, imprisons the blight and the Evanuris, and preserves all life in Thedas* World: FUCK THE DREAD WOLF, GOD OF TREACHERY AND LIES *worships the Evanuris and their dragon thralls*

Solas: zzzzzzzzzz (knocked out cold from saving the world for LITERALLY SEVERAL MILLENNIA MORE)

Tevinter: *razes what's left of Elvhenan, steals all their magic, enslaves the elven people for entire length of Solas's world-saving-induced coma*

Also Tevinter: *breaks into the fucking black city and brings out the blight*

Also also Tevinter: *uses so much blood magic that the veil ends up in tatters*

The Blight: >:)

World: fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck *throws everything they can at the blight, including--*checks notes again*--the blight

Orlais: you know what sucks? elves. let's kill them all

Ferelden: good shout, mes amis

Orlais: you know what also sucks? mages. put them in prisons.

Ferelden: you're full of good ideas when you're not invading us

Free Marches: MAGE PRISON, YOU SAY?

Orlais: add templars who can decide to murder them or make them tranquil on a whim at any moment

Ferelden and Free Marches: *frantically taking notes*

Rivain and Nevarra: we're just going to be...over here...

Blights 1-5: i've got a great idea i've got a great idea

Blights 1-5 after a while: my great idea didn't work :(

Archdemons 1-5: ....... :(

Evanuris 1-5: ......... :(

Solas, waking up in 9:40ish Dragon: what the...WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCKING FUCK. they can just KILL MAGE CHILDREN? AND PURGE ALIENAGES? AND ALMOST EVERY ELF IN TEVINTER IS A SLAVE? *absolutely rabid, seeks out the Dalish, as remnants of his people*

The Dalish, at Solas: *ARROWS*

Solas: ......fuck this shit, fuck all of this shit, fuck these tyrants in particular, fuck this fucking...UGH

The veil, after all this: (o.O:0oO.)

The remaining blighted Evanuris and the 99% of blight that did not escape: :)

Solas: well, that is a problem, going to need to address that ASAP, but turns out millennia of coma doesn't leave a spirit spry

Corypheus, busting out of warden jail: I AM FREE

Solas: hm, could kill that guy letting him unlock my orb, since he broke into my blight prison in the first place and defo deserves dying

Corypheus: veil needs a certain je ne sais quoi, a...bigger hole. i will make one.

Wardens: yes, good plan, blighted magister man. we are in control of the blight inside us and also heroes *in death, sacrifice = divine justinia's ritual sacrifice under thrall*

The veil:

O

Corypheus: >:( but like...not dead

Solas: well, i did not see that coming

Lavellan: *in chains, threatened with execution*

humans: KNIFE EAR >:(

Lavellan: *hole in the sky, hole in her memories, hole in her fucking hand* fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, wait, this hole in my hand helps close holes in the SKY

Solas: *.* It seems you hold the key to our salvation

Lavellan: i'm sorry what

humans: HERALD OF ANDRASTE!!!!!!!! *falls to knees*

Lavellan: I'M SORRY WHAT

Chantry: *choking in the corner*

Cassandra: time for you to decide the fate of the world

Lavellan: I'M. SORRY. WHAT???????? you know what? fine. *stops alexius from blood magicking his way through redcliffe and time itself, gets punted into a hellscape of nightmares and makes it back with the help of a rebel tevinter mage* the mages i rescued from becoming probable slaves to tevinter are our allies and dorian is my new best friend for being the only reason i made it back alive and the whole world didn't die *dabs*

Cassandra: >:(

Mother Giselle: >:(

Lavellan: ffs

Corypheus: *dragon temper tantrum*

Lavellan: *somehow escapes both dragon and Corypheus, trudges through blizzard, collapses*

Mother Giselle: *.* I FEEL A SONG COMING ON

Literally everyone but Solas: *falls to their knees*

Solas: a word?

Lavellan: OH THANK HEAVENS

Solas: these people are wack and aren't going to like that Corypheus is using elven magic *cough*, they're a hairsbreadth from executing us at all moments lol, btw here's a castle, you know, for you cos i highkey see myself in you and god i'm so fucking lonely

Lavellan: me too but wait, what the fuck is happening. you know what? fuck it. solas, what if we kissed,,, in the fade

Solas: what IF we kissed,,, in the fade *fade tongue*

Solas: ...you continue to surprise me. you show a wisdom i have not seen...since my deepest journeys into the fade!

Lavellan: don't you dare walk away from me now

Solas: okay vhenan i stay

Vivienne: this is a DEMON and NOT A PET

Lavellan: *blinks* right, no, this spirit kid who is the literal only reason we escaped Haven alive is my son now. if he hadn't read roderick's mind we'd all be avalanched or blighted dragoned, so SUCK IT UP

Vivienne: >:(

Cassandra: >:(

Sera: >:(

Bull: >:(

Varric: >:(

Solas: :D

Wardens: btw we're doing blood magic and raising an army of demons. not really our fault but also not NOT our fault? idk, blight in the blood, morally grey area. get it? grey...war--never mind, we'll be at adamant xoxo

Cullen: lotsa soldiers gonna die

Lavellan: fuck, is there another choice?

Advisors: ...no

Cory's dragon: *burninating the adamant, burninating the wardens, burninating all the people and this crumbling ROCKY BRIIIIIIDGE! CRUMBLING ROCKY BRIDGEEEEE*

Lavellan, flying through the air hundreds of feet towards the ground: fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck *opens a rift into the fade*

Everyone but Solas: FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK WE'RE IN THE FADE

Solas: we're in the FADE!!!!!

Lavellan, after escaping the nightmare's lair: glad half the team is pissed at me, what's next, an imperial ball? how hard can that be?

Orlesians: they invited an ELF SAVAGE >:(

Lavellan: you know what, fuck this and fuck Celene for genociding the entire Halamshiral alienage and fuck you, Gaspard, you can be Briala's little French Orlesian bulldog

Half the Inquisition: *shocked pikachu*

Morrigan: allow me to shemsplain all of elven history to everyone, including Solas, yourself, and all the ancient elves in this temple

Lavellan: you know what? okay. *rubs at Mythal's vallaslin, makes eyes real big* who is this "Mythal"

Solas: *choking in the corner*

Cassandra, muttering: i do not want to do a ritual to a false god

Morrigan: lemme have the well, lemme have it, i deserve it more than you

Lavellan: ...abso-fucking-lutely not *drinks from the well out of pure spite*

Solas: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, VHENAN

Lavellan: idk vhenan, this world sucks and i wanna make it better and i love you

Solas: ...you are everything and you inspire me, hurry, i need to tell you i'm the dread wolf but am going to break up with you and remove your slave markings instead and btw they're basically a drawing of me in my true form and honestly, this whole thing is real fucked up and you're the only real person in my entire life who sees me

Lavellan: wait what

Solas: i'm bad and don't deserve you and had to harden my heart to save the world before and everyone hated me for it so i'm projecting when i say you must harden your heart to a cutting edge to kill Corypheus, I'll explain after we kill him

Lavellan: ...oh yeah guess we should do that but I gotta go meet Mythal first

Solas: wait what

Mythal: *is Morrigan's mum, is only mostly dead, also 100% cool with overriding her servants' will entirely for shits and giggles, 0/10 do not trust* i'll help you if you fight this dragon lol

Morrigan: *choking in the corner*

Corypheus: *has a mahoosive temper tantrum when Mythal's pet dragon kills his pet dragon, dies*

Solas: ;-; ilu, inky, what we had was real but i'm afraid to do to you what Mythal did to me. I MUST AWAY

Lavellan: ....

World: HERALD OF ANDRASTE!!!!!!!!!!!!*

*some restrictions may apply, like in a couple years we're going to forget everything you did and be real mad at you

Solas, somewhere: been there, vhenan

World, two years later: :D we're here to hate you, right on schedule

Qunari: you are in need of the gentle path. therefore, we are coming to kill you all

Solas: like hell you will. but come to think of it, this is a good excuse to see vhenan again

Lavellan's arm: TIME TO DIE

Solas: defo another good excuse to see vhenan again. probs should study that arm anyway

Lavellan, after several Qunari too many: CAN ANYTHING IN THIS FUCKING WORLD STAY FIXED

Inquisition, including Divine Victoria: *shocked pikachu*

Lavellan: i'm going back through the fucking looking glass to talk to some ancient elven sentinels with Mythal's magic whisper well, they're the only fucking thing that makes sense here

Qunari: *destroying everything in sight but getting hounded by the dread wolf at every step*

Lavellan, whose arm is trying to kill her but is following Qunari through her own people's magic mirror world: ...i think i'm in love with the dread wolf

Companions: pfffffft

Cole: :D YES, YOU ARE AND HE LOVES YOU TOO

Lavellan: thank god i have you, cole, my spirit son

Solas, in a statuary garden of petrified Qunari: i suspect you have questions

Lavellan: honestly, fen'harel, not really

Solas: *shocked pikachu* well done

Lavellan: i'm real tired and you could have just trusted me back in Crestwood.

Solas: this world is broken, i must tear down the veil

Lavellan: yep, i'm one "knife ear" away from putting a knife in the next human's ear who says it tbh, i'd rather live in the fade with you and my spirit son, can i help you pls vhenan

Solas: ...no

Lavellan: wtf

Solas, internally panicking because he followed Mythal wherever she went and she dragged him to literal hell and trauma and now his one true love is offering to follow him while he probably makes things worse again: absolutely not, no, but i love you forever

Lavellan's arm: >:(

Solas: ...right, i gotta take that

Lavellan: wait what

Solas: i will never forget you *trundles through mirror with severed arm*

Lavellan: oh fuck my entire life, you know what, Ferelden and Orlais? Inquisition is no more, i'm going on sabbatical to Stone Bear Hold where at least people are not insane and Storvacker loves me, and then i'm going home to the castle vhenan gave me. don't call me. byeeee

ten years later

Varric: gonna go stop Solas, who invented the veil and is From Fade, from doing things i don't understand, wish me luck, inky

Lavellan: WAIT ONE GODDAMNED SECOND I'M COMING WITH YOU

Varric: no <3 i found a complete rando who will fuck everything up

Rook: hey, what if i drop a statue on this nuclear arsenal protecting the biggest biological weapon of mass destruction known to all of thedas? that'll help

Neve, a literal mage who should know even small rituals can blow up and kill you: probs not a good idea but Varric, a dwarf who knows nothing about magic or the veil or the Fade whatsoever says this ritual must be stopped At All Costs By Any Means Necessary so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Varric: Solas I will shoot you with Bianca

Solas: ffs stop *breaks Bianca*

Varric: can you promise me your way is better

Solas: i know way better than to make promises like that, have you seen this world???

Varric: GOTCHA, YOU LYING LIAR WHO LIES

Rook: TIIIIIIIIIIIIIMBERRRRRRR

Varric: defo going to attack the guy whose millennia of existence has been centred on this massive magical problem i do not even comprehend a little after waiting ten years to ask a single question about it when he'd already got going *tries to stab Solas*

Solas, feeling everything he's spent all of world history protecting the world from breaking out of jail: turns the dagger and stabs Varric instead

Elgar'nan: >:)

Ghilan'nain: >:)

Solas: oh for fucking FUCK'S SA--*exit, stage Fade Jail*

Blight: >:)

Rook: oops

Neve and Harding: omg this could not possibly be our fault at all, not even a little. it's Solas's fault, the lying liar who lies

Lavellan: i will not murder this stupid child, i will not murder this stupid child, i will not murder this stupid child

Morrigan: we have to help the stupid child

Lavellan: we have to help the stupid child

Morrigan and Lavellan: *look at each other*

Lavellan: when this is over, i stg--

Morrigan, who has millennia of memories of Mythal abusing Solas and decades of Flemythal abusing her: yeah no i will throw you a going away party and take care of Dorian for you and help you get your boyfriend back and no way will i fight him, this is actually ridiculous

Ferelden, Orlais, and the Free Marches, all of whom turned on Lavellan ten years ago: hELP help HELP there's BLIIIIIGHT

Lavellan to Leliana: you owe me a hundred gold

Leliana: *hands over a solid gold nug*

Ferelden: X_X

Orlais: X_X

Free Marches: X_X

Lavellan: *grits teeth* i better go meet with rook

Rook: andaran atish'an, honoured inquisitor

Lavellan: yo. sure would be nice to be meeting without our gods, you know, destroying absolutely everything i've spent a quarter of my life protecting and rebuilding after the last apocalypse but here we are i guess

Morrigan: *smirks at shade*

Northern Thedas: ROOK IS THE BEST

Southern Thedas: is rook tho

Ghilan'nain: muahahaha i have so many drago---nooo you killed my dragons and i am BLEEDING LIKE A MORTAL PIECE OF MORTAL SCUM

Elgar'nan: my dragon used to be bigger :(

Ghilan'nain: your dragon's fine

Elgar'nan: Ghilly, make it bigger again

Ghilan'nain: can't, too sad. blood. :(

Southern Thedas: *throwing nugs at blight* hELP

Lavellan, with half of Southern Thedas crammed into skyhold: thanks for the castle, vhenan, we'd all literally be dead without it, again

Morrigan: erm, Inky? seems everyone's telling Rook Solas is just a big monster lying liar who lies and blaming him for everything

Lavellan: that's what people do, blame Solas. had a bad day? blame Solas. Mythal wants to sever the titans' dreams? Blame Solas. Rashvine nettle sting? Blame Solas. Bring the veil 5/7 or so of the way down themselves after releasing the blight? Blame Solas. Rook let the gods out? Blame Solas

Morrigan: Inky.

Lavellan: you want me to go pour out my heart to the person who imprisoned vhenan and let out Ghilan'nain, Mother of Tentacles, and Elgar'nan "My Dragon is Bigger than Your Dragon" First and Worst of the Evanuris, don't you

Morrigan: yee

Lavellan: FINE but you better spill every ounce of tea you've got on the stupid child before i go because i need to at least make rook squirm a LITTLE

Morrigan: i thought you'd never ask

Elgar'nan: you won't make my dragon bigger??? fine i'll move the moon instead

Northern Thedas: i'm sorry what

Anyone at sea anywhere on the planet: I'M SORRY WHAT

Ghilan'nain: *throws a temper tantrum and dies*

Elgar'nan: >:(

Solas: fuck this shit, i'm getting out of Fade Jail

Rook: :(

Minrathous: fuck fuck fuck FUCK fuck fuck fuck FUCK FUCK FUCK

Solas: hello, people who enslaved my people for millennia, i am here to save the day i guess

Minrathous, slapping blight tentacles out of their faces: ...honestly thank you

Solas: wait what

Rook: I ESCAPE FADE JAIL SOLAS YOU BASTARD LYING LIAR WHO LIES

Lavellan: i will not murder the stupid child, i will not murder the stupid child, i will not murder the stupid child

Solas: you know what, fair play, here's the dagger, there's elgar'nan, ima bite his dragon, you go have a great time. have fun storming the blight tentacle

Venatori, poster children for the Leopards Who Eat People's Faces Party: nooo the leopards keep eating our faces

Minrathous: wow who could have possibly predicted that

Everyone who has ever met a Venatori: yes, yes, very sad

Elgar'nan, eating every face in the magesterium and effectively cleansing Tevinter of the worst of its monsters in one fell swoop: ah, rook, you can't kill me, i have the biggest dragon ever to dragon

Dread Wolf: honestly he's kinda not wrong, this dragon is a bastard and i am like a fifth of its size and getting p tired, ngl

Rook's Blighted Companion: welp gonnae put this trauma to use for the greater good. go go gadget blight tentacles, release the Dread Pupper

Elgar'nan: *shocked pikachu*

Dread Wolf: *chomp*

Elgar'nan: *throws a temper tantrum and dies*

Solas: oh ffs finally

Rook: not so fast

Solas: oh ffs here we fucking go

Rook: i don't actually want to fight you

Solas: wait, what

Rook: i think this is all my fault but everyone keeps telling me i'm the hero and that's fucked up. and your vhenan, she's nice to me, no one really else is, i'm just everybody's apocalypse therapist, and i even kinda like you tbh, my whole team basically does fun stuff without me and doesn't even invite me to book club and emmrich's the only one who asks me about my feelings instead of just asking me to do stuff for them, and anyway, i'm going to trust the inquisitor here because i'm honestly starved for connection and she thinks you're worth saving so can we talk i don't wanna fight

Solas: what

Lavellan, out of sight, reliving the litany of "i will not murder this stupid child": oh haha awkward

Solas: look,,, i've been bound to the service of an ancient elvhen god for millennia and everything i do, whether i know it or not, is for her, so i can't do what you want and this sucks

Lavellan: even if i'm here, walking the din'an shiral with you?

Solas: ...vhenan

Lavellan: ;_;

Solas: ;_; ...I cannot

Morrigan: yo dread wolf, my mum's a piece of work and i have all her memories and everything she did to you was fuuuuuuuuucked up, anyway, over to her, honestly not pissed you killed that part of her btw, she reeeeally fucked you up, but rook somehow managed to talk her out of her essence, so that's impressive

Solas: what

Mythal: yeah i kinda tore you out of your home and twisted you from your purpose and made you do murder and worse for me for millennia and said i wanted your wisdom and then never ever listened to you ever and just dragged you through every atrocity i created and perpetuated

Solas: it hurts and i guess you're going to kill me now so here's the dagger ;_;

Mythal: it's still mostly your fault but i was there too i guess, anyway, i release you from my service, which i could have done at any point in the past several millennia but instead I tortured you endlessly, lol god of retribution, that's me. k bye

Solas: what the fucking fuck

Lavellan: right there with you, like literally forever, our love is a miracle and the only thing i can even cope with

Solas: yeah honestly fuck this shit, i'm out, i will put myself in fade jail

Lavellan: you are not going by yourself i stg take me with you i wanna go home

Solas: ...home is a literal prison now

Lavellan: sealed away from all this shit? from getting blamed for everything we do no matter how much we sacrifice? if it's you and me there together, i don't care if it's a grey box full of darkspawn

Solas: there's no darkspa--

Lavellan: ffs i said i want to go, you don't have to sell me on it. you're the only person in this world who Gets It. we go on together, forever.

Solas: *.* my wife

Lavellan: *.* my wolf

Northern Thedas: and rook saved the world from the dread wolf, who was a lying liar who lies

Southern Thedas: *busy being dead and blighted*

Lavellan: yeah, fuck this shit, we're out

You can now download this shitpost in beautifully formatted PDF, courtesy of @amburuthings. Thank u for your service *salutes*

You all have had me howling with the tags on reblogs, thank you, I am absolutely dying in deadline hell and needed that

[ladyredmoon13]

DCXDP prompt

Summer of change.

Maddie Fenton was many things, and a patient mother of two was only one of them. Here lately, however, Maddie found her patience wearing thin with their youngest child. Now she loved Danny. He was her son, after all, but here lately, his actions and overall dismissive attitude towards everything from his grades to his responsibilities was starting to get to her.

She and Jack had tried everything they could think of to try and get Danny to behave and reconsiderhis actions. From taking away his phone, restricting time with his friends, to full-on grounding him. Nothing seemed to work. They were running out of options, but there was one last thing she wanted to try before, even considering bringing up the suggestion of military school to her husband.

"Hey Jack?" She called to her husband from the living room." Yeah, Madds?" He called back from his position over the kitchen table as he tried to fix the trigger on their latest invention. Hoping that this will be what they'll need to finally catch that ectoplasmic nuisance of a ghost boy.

"Your cousin, the one from Gotham; the one you introduced me to at our wedding. He's a cop, right?"

-------------------------------------------------------

Detective Harvey Bullock was a man of little patience and even less tolerance to the kind of nonsense that the usual scum of Gotham City drummed up.

The only times he could ever really recall ever having more patience and tolerance than a saint was when he was growing up with his favorite cousin. So when said favorite cousin called him up out of the blue, asking for a favor, Bullock did little else, then say, "Sure thing," and " anything for you, little Jacky.'

That was how he got roped into looking after his cousins son for the summer. At first, he was hesitant. Asking Jack if he was sure he wanted to do that. After all, he didn't really have much experience with kids( and no, the Bats kids don't count).

But when Jack started telling him about all the trouble his kid was getting into. The arguments, the mysterious bruises, the skipping school, etc. The boy was on the start of a one-way street down to a bad place, and Bullock didn't like it. So he sucked it up and asked his cousin when he could send him.

Now Harvey knew he wasn't a good role model, that Gotham wasn't the safest place for any saine parent to raise a child, let alone send one here; but now that he was told what was going on with Danny. Bullock found himself determined to get the teen to turn over a new leaf. "Who knows," he thought to himself hopefully, "maybe Gotham was the perfect place for him to do it?"

[bluestarlett]

SHUT UP

DONT CHAT TO ME look at my partner’s designs of the cosmic cast. Look at them and WEEP BECAUSE THEYRE SO GOOD

Reason they look so different is because this is if they were FD characters and not cosmic characters SHUT UP AND LOOK AT THEM SHUT UP

[pianokantzart]

Something something Illumination joke

[tdutb]

here have my random cccc doodles

[grapedemon]

CCCC but as a person(?)

I just wanted to doodle the album cover :]

[variouspolltournaments]

Propaganda

Ballister Boldheart and Ambrosius Goldenloin: No Propaganda Submitted

Mind and Heart:

Mind is referred to as "The Sun/Mr. Sun" throughout the album, and Heart is referred to as "Mr. Moon"

Sundrop and Moondrop:

Sun and moon r very silly. They're theater kids forced into a childcare role. Sun has So Much anxiety and moon is evil but not out of his own free will. They're the blorbos of all time <3333

[prisma-palace]

i had a vision

[butterbabyflapjack]

Having fun writing tortured messmer 💕

(slight spoilers for chaos hearts)

The world had been so simple, once.

No longer.

Not for many, many years, which have stretched so long their length is far past measure.

You.

You did this.

Or was it his mother?

His mother, fair and light as the wings of a golden bird. Yet a dove with a sinister song this whole land has come only to see the weight of, and can they be blamed?

Such blasphemy, the question. And yet he asks it now. A question he thought not ask till only recently. Never once questioned the worth, the merit, the righteousness of his mother nor her cause throughout this entire crusade, not even as he felt so many lives snuffed out at the merest flicker of his flame. Thousands of lives: gone, in a mortal’s heartbeat, pressed flat beneath his fingers as they tiptoed ‘cross this land with the ease of marble pieces ‘cross some game. They mattered not–they deserved it. Deserved worse. Would have seen his mother, his flesh and blood, bared and beaten and whatever remained of her bloodied, ribboned flesh stuffed inside a cage where she would lose all sense of sanity. Would see her meet such a fate now, or worse, for what she’s done.

They deserved this.

This fiery, unforgiving retribution set out by his mother, enacted by his hand.

So why did his heart grow tight and cold, crystalline in its splinters, at the sight of a horned women clutching her grasping babe; the both of them charred and frozen black in the wasteland which was always left behind his reaching flame?

Tis why he was sent here. To rid this place of the blasphemous, the barbarous, the undeserving.

Was that all he was, then?

Death?

Death to the innocent?

Death to screaming mothers and the tears of clutching babes?

Yet they weren’t innocent.

Far from being so.

These thoughts are foolish. This heartache even moreso.

When did he succumb to such mindlessness?

You did this.

You. And that silken thread of softness hiding underneath the bitter whole of you, like a bloom beneath a blade.

[domicosstuff]

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil

Drawings I made Instead of doing schoolwork

[0ne-eyed-ghost]

HI TUMBLR i'm completely new to this. enjoy my rambling HELLO TO THE CHONNY JASH HMS PEOPLEESPECIALLY . ! Expect more of this if I ever remember to post :] I've literally only been at this for ... 2 months.......?? 2 months into the fandom? And only like. a month of properly being fully invested. And I've already worked out my own designs ........ [Mostly.!] First up we have Heart !! First character I looked at designing due to being assigned them by my friend group [hi gang :) !!] This LITTLE - Anyway I have good emotions toward him and enjoy him so much...... /pos Feel free to ask me anything abt the design, notes or concepts behind it! I will ramble your ear off. Be prepared... ALL OF THIS IS ENTIRELY HEADCANNON OKAY !! dont kill me /silly

[disruptivevoib]

Hefty but crucial (to me) overhaul of the Bidding Piece!

[tornado1992]

He's just so kind to kids