#definetely on my list of things to do before i kill myself

[magnoliamyrrh]

also on a kinda different but similar train of thought, people who dont have chronic pain and fatigue making fun of those of us who do for being willing to try just about anything are just. cruel and stupid and annoying

already annoying to think that modern western medicine is the only one who has any answers. but a)they have no ability to understand the absolute desperation that years on end of severe chronic pain and fatigue puts you in b)they havent yet figured out that if you have a chronic illness or issue, especially a more misunderstood one, or one more common in women, western medicine is in many cases likely to not do much of anything or even make you worse, and after years on end you realize many if not most doctors are fucking idiots who dont actually understand anything

[clarascuro]

Clara Reads City of Bones Part 2: Lord Help Me, I’m Back On My Bullshit *Spoilers*

I haven’t written about this in a week. I was using the fact that my copy had a shirtless dude on it as an excuse not to read it or be seen with it, but my lovely lovely friend lent me her copy, so now I can take it with me everywhere! Thanks, Ailinn!

The Characters

Now last time, I don’t think I really expressed this with enough force, but I hate the characters in this book with every once of strength in my body. They suck, they suck so much, and I’m stuck with them for the next 500 PAGES. So let’s take a look at our motley crew and dive into why I want to beat them senseless and leave them for dead:

Clary Fray: Clary Fray is not a name. I need to get that out of the way. If you walk up to me and introduce yourself as Clary Fray, I will laugh in your face, because that is so very obviously a fake name that you make up on the spot. Clary Fray is the kind of name you’d get if you fed a baby name book into a predictive keyboard and told it to come up with one of it’s own. It sounds like a makeup line for women with very low self-esteem. I wish the actual character was as entertaining as her name is, but to be entertaining, you have to actually have a personality. Clary draws, which is only slightly higher than reading on the list of Passive Activities to Trick Your Readers Into Thinking This Blank-Slate is an Actual Character With Agency. Did I mention she has no agency? She doesn’t find anything for herself, she has to be led there by love interests mysterious strangers, and when she encounters things out of the ordinary, things like demons, faeries, angels I’m assuming, she just accepts it, because if she doesn’t accept it, then she won’t fall in love with the bad boy, and the Cassandra Clare can’t write definetely--not-Harry Potter porn. Clary is dull, infuriating, and lucky for me, the point of view character for the whole book. Blech.

Simon: Simon is Clary’s best friend who’s in love with her. He doesn’t get any character traits (and given the other personalities we see, I’m using that term lightly) outside of that, because he doesn’t have any bearing on the plot besides that. He’s also one of the few poc in the book

Alec: He’s here, I guess. He’s one of the magic guys. That’s about it so far. I think he plays piano.

Isabelle: I genuinely have no idea what this character is supposed to be. I assumed that she was going to be Clary’s rival in love, and that they would hate each other. They way she’s written suggests that she’s supposed to fill that role. She’s catty and hot, which in YA-Land mean she’s an enemy, but Clary gets along with her too well for her to be even a minor antagonist. Maybe it’s because, again, Clary is not a character. She’s a waifu body pillow. You can’t conflict with anyone of you don’t have any thoughts or feelings or desires, but still, I can’t think why she’s written this way if she’s not going to fight with the lead. I get this uncomfortable, gross feeling reading her. She doesn’t ever do anything super mean to the lead, but the book spends so much time painting her to be this sexy, dangerous seductress who’s out to destroy you, even though she hasn’t really done anything. There’s a scene where Clary dreams that Isabelle is naked and being all sexy and evil, but outside of just Being Hot, Isabelle hasn’t done anything to earn that reputation in Clary’s mind. I don’t know why Cassandra Clare’s doing this. Is it because of misogyny? I think it might be misogyny.

Jace: Oh, Jace. Sweet Jace. I would pay to have you run over by an eighteen-wheeler. Jace is a bad boy, but actually he’s just a dick. He’s an angel (I think) and he’s a bastard garbage man who deserves to be beaten with a rough switch. He is smug, he is rude, he makes fun of Clary all the time, and he’s totally gonna kiss her in the next few chapters, because life is unfair. Jace is not human, and he looks down on humans, for being human. How dare they. If I had the choice to either spend half an hour with Jace Bonecity, or chew off my own leg, guess who’s getting a prosthetic leg, babey!!! He’s not even the entertaining kind of bastard. Cardan from The Cruel Prince is complete bastard, and he’s entertaining as fuck, mostly because that book is better written, but also because Cardan is a disaster gremlin who doesn’t care about the consequences and is also madly in love with his mortal enemy, which is vastly entertaining to watch as it plays out. Jace is just mean. He sucks and I hate him.

Other Characters: Basically just Clary’s mom, who’s keeping a secret from her and also dies or something (I cared not one ounce) and her Uncle Luke. The only reason he’s noteworthy is because he says he doesn’t want Clary to call him “uncle” because it “...reminds him of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” ajklajkhakjfh????? what the fuck does that even...like people aren’t rolling up to family reunions like “oh shit sorry Uncle Robert, i’m just gonna call you bob now, cause this very common familial address reminds me of an mid-nineteenth century anti-slavery novel that most people these days haven’t even read” like??? what the fuck? Have I mentioned Luke is white? I’m guessing that since Clary’s mom is very obviously like magic or something Luke is her magical servant or bodyguard or whatever, and it’s a reference to the Uncle Tom stereotype that the book helped popularize, but it was like...a throwaway line. Like a joke or something. Not like...foreshadowing a major plot development. Did this book have any editors?

The Plot

I may have mentioned this before, but the plot straight up sucks. In the space of three or four chapters, Clary:

discovers magic is real

watches someone die

runs away from her mom

runs back home when her mom is attacked

gets attacked by a monster

gets taken to a magical school or whatever

This might not seem like a lot, but it all happens so fast that I was getting whiplash reading it. Things just happen, and Clary never sits down to process them or anything, so the reader never gets time to process them before the next batshit thing happens. These are all dramatic plot points, but the characters are so dull and the writing is so bad that you don’t care that they’re happening. Clary finds out that magic is real and she’s just like “:/ gotta go get coffee now” I’m genuinely angry that the writing is this poor. I should care that magic is real, I should care that her mom dies, but I just don’t. I don’t care if Clary lives or dies, because I don’t care about Clary. SO MUCH has happened in the span of like, fifty pages, but it feels like nothing’s happened, because the writing never changes and Clary’s reactions never change. How can I get invested in the story if the main character’s not even invested?

The Dialogue

You know those out-of-context B99 quotes that people like to make into memes about their favorite characters? That’s basically 90% of the dialogue in this book. Every other line is this punchy, hip, little quip to make you go “wow. these characters sure are fun and hip, just like me, the Average American Teen” but actually they are very bad. I don’t feel like I’m reading an exchange between two characters, I feel like I’m reading an Instagram writing prompt. Cassandra Clare also likes to punctuate her trendy dialogue with a lot of descriptive tags. People in this book are always rolling their eyes and biting their lips. It doesn’t add anything to the scenes, it just pulls you out of the story and reminds you that you’re reading a book by a middle-aged Jewish woman. Please note: I in no way discriminate against Cassandra Clare for being a middle-aged Jewish woman. I myself will be a middle-aged Jewish woman some day, if the Shadowhunters fandom doesn’t kill me first. My only point is that she’s out of touch and her writing sucks.

Rating So Far

4/10-It fulfills it’s basic role of being a book, but there’s not much entertainment value outside of that. At this point I’m keeping myself entertained by imagining Jace has a booger hanging out his nose during every scene and everyone else is just too polite to point it out.

[whowhatwitch]

this is here because i need to start letting shit out more and this is just as good a place as any right....

Well I started this process trying to type a rough draft of the letter steven and I are writing to come out to grandma and poppa… last night I lowkey had finished it, at least to the point of having most everything I wanted to say down on the page and it just needed to be tuned and shaped up…… then the fucking browser crashed a hundred times and I lost it all. There was so much good shit in there that I had really felt was going to translate well to them, and now it’s all gone.

Fucking sucked. I cried about it. Obviously I was crying about other shit too but for it to come out was the crash, the straw that broke the camels back you know?

I still want to cry about it, because now I have to basically start all over BUT I have to get everything that’s weighing on me right now at least semi out because It’s extremely difficult for me to keep my train of thought when the dominos start to wobble and fall.

I wish I was nicer to myself because I feel like my frustration here is more to do with ALL of the things that I need to get done in the next week and how not-confident I am in my ability to do so effectively. This is me kind of wasting time on the tasks at hand but this is one of those tasks so it isn’t completely that…

Want a list? Let’s do a list, then I will have it and will also be able to see exactly how fucked I am::

Clean grandmas house

Clean out the garage at grandmas house

Weed the back yard at grandmas

Weed the front yard at grandmas

Work on the garden at appaloosa

CLEAN appaloosa

Landscape appaloosa

Clean Montreaux before oct 8th

Polish wood floor at montreaux

Apply for steven’s Medicaid (call someone about it dude)

Switch out locks on storage unit

LOOK IN storage units

Relocate Dodge

Clean rust off driveway

And that is just the super time sensitive stuff. It’s probably more than that, and I know my daily to-do has more on it than that, but if I tried to type all that out I would actually break my mentals.

It is so difficult to just keep typing stream of consciousness especially since my typing isn’t as fast as it used to be, thought I don’t know if that’s because of how small this keyboard is because it is quite tiny…it’s definetely a lack of practice but it could be both right lol

As far as actual constructive dumping…. I just want to dump it all out and set it on fire to be honest. I wish Steven and I could just run away and start over somewhere no one knows either of us, no ties to our old lives or anything, none. That sounds really drastic probably but, people having expectations of me when I can’t expect or even count on the majority of them is seriously killing me. I feel so stuck.

This is what I started with yesterday, what I built my masterpiece off:

so this is me trying to get somethings and particulars straight in my head, because we have to come out to our grandparents like yesterday and there's no way around it, because we need them to be able to testify and we are using he/him pronouns for all of that... cant hold anything out of sight when everyone is using he/him all the time every time, everywhere.

It's extra weird because I never really considered 'coming out' to them until it became apparent i would have to add myself into it to help them understand, mostly because we just didn't look that far into the future more than anything.

this year has been so weird. it feels like it took forever and also barely any time at all, just because i was consciously not paying attention to the time, but also I was avoiding numerous responsibilities, that's what i do, i'm an avoider, so having this conversation means me confronting and putting to words things I have only done enough to explain to people who's opinion hasn't really hinged on the survival of my family's roof over their heads... having to rely on them to pay rent this year has made everything so much more difficult, because we Tried to bring it up before, I did, and their reaction was Not ideal at all...

"We don't believe children are capable of making decisions like that, nor do we believe it is a decision that can be made, but you can't tell an adult how to be unless they're hurting someone" ... not exactly but more or less.

It was really a moment for me, even for mom, I really thought they believed children had even a shred more agency than that, but they just don't, which is nuts to me, though I can't say exactly why.

For me, it's 🌽 a later in life thing only because I didn't have the language other than full tilt one or the other - I knew there were "trans" people (though they were called something different) at a relatively young age, mostly because of media and the vast array of people that my mother knows, but it wasn't something I knew about, you know?

If i had known that I could explore the way people addressed me, I would have;

If i had known that I could explore the way I dress (which I did but it wasn't really the same, I didn't feel like I had the same amount of agency about it) with actual intent, I would have;

if I had known that I could explore my role in society and relationships with real disregard for the binary.. that I could confidently insert myself in "male-dominant" spaces without having to be a certain version of "the" female, I fucking would have...

If I had known I wasn't somehow wrong for not being as "girly" as people thought I should be or would turn out to be, I could have been other things...

from here I basically went “but how should it actually read; where does it start?”

I have to apologize to you both: I have been lying to you, specifically since you asked outright over this summer. I really did not know how to handle it, with everything else going on, it just seemed like if I pulled on that string everything would come unraveled. I tried to introduce the topic once and your reactions were very discouraging, so we just tried to fly under the radar about it, but we can’t do that anymore, and we don’t want to. We want to be our authentic selves with you both, because we love you and you mean the world to us.

First, and foremost, I am Non-Binary, meaning I do not think of myself through the lens of male OR female. For the last two years I have been privately identifying outside of the gender binary – what I mean by “privately identifying” is that I introduce myself to strangers with that label if they ask for it, but I do not really offer it up in my everyday life. This is coming up later in life for me because I never had the language to describe it, many people did not, and now that I do, it feels good to embrace something about myself that I have been trying to fix my entire life.

I’ve always been like this, but before a few years ago I didn’t know that there was middle ground to be had rather than a malfunction in my construction. For me, it is more about no longer trying to fit into any one box of gender, not male not female, but a combination of both and a sum of nothing.

Gender is a social construct humans use to categorize themselves because as a species we label every aspect of life, but the argument that it dictates anything about a person’s “role” in their life has never really made sense to me. Life is about balance and experience. My experience is that I never liked my name or hearing people refer to me as “she/her” because of the social context that came with it – it made me feel like I was broken or wrong because I never felt comfortable or happy when people would gush about me looking pretty, but then when people in a store are confused by the way I dress, that actually makes me feel a small amount of comfort and happiness.

You know when a person spells your name wrong or confuses you for someone else, confidently addressing you by the wrong name? The urge that you must correct them, I’ve never really had that—beyond the identity issues that stem from having a copy of my mother’s face.

This is not me asking you to use “they/them” pronouns to address me, but it is me explaining why maybe other people would do that. Technically (if you do research) it could be said that “non-binary” people are considered “trans” but that does not apply to me, and that is what is great about the entire concept being a construct humans made up, because I can say that this label (nonbinary) fits me, but that one (transgender) does not. I have never really identified heavily with my given name, but I also have never come across any other name that did feel like it belonged, so I don’t intend to change my name… if we get to a point where you’re comfortable using different pronouns, that would be so lovely, but I am realistic and I know that would be difficult for y’all.

Just know that I am still the same person, even more so now that I do not need to hide this part of myself, hopefully. Finding a label that describes oneself can be a helpful tool for life: helps a lot to be confident in yourself and to trust your intuition, and it makes it easier to get to know people because you know yourself.

That having been said, I must introduce you both to someone.

His name is Steven Riley Wolfe, and he is my little Brother. He goes by Steven in honor of our father, and he uses he/him/his pronouns, identifying as a “trans-man.” He has been living this way for the last five years with his friends online and even at school (in Johnson), having told me officially at the end of 2019, and having told dad mid-2021 (dad even put him on his facebook as his Son in family relations - we found that after he had passed, it was emotional for both of us).

Just like with myself, it all started when he was younger: he didn’t fit in the box people tried to put him in. He wore the dresses and pretty things because he liked to make the people around him happy and hear them say nice things to him, and even now he still enjoys feeling pretty like that (clothes do not have genitalia OR gender, so he still wears dresses when he is in the mood, so you know), but he does not identify with the body he has and the constructs/roles that surround the label he was given as Female at birth. He is only 14 so there is only so much “transition” to be had in the near future, especially because we live in Florida, but please understand that this is not a phase and it is not him seeking attention – he was living like that completely in secret and I just happened to notice some things because I had also been exploring the topic, so I called him out on it. We all know how intelligent and wonderful he is, he is still that same person. Yes, the dishonesty is not ideal, but there are kids who have been thrown out on the street and worse for coming out to their families, and he just wasn’t sure which way it would go – neither am I to be honest but necessities are necessary. My biggest worry is that your way of “accepting” this, will be spending the next three years until he is 18 trying to convince him somehow that he is wrong about this very personal aspect of himself…

When I found out Amanda was pregnant, I had a feeling the baby would not “be” whatever they said it was, so I made sure that Dad gave him gender-neutral names for exactly this reason, however bullies ruined “peyton” for us all, so when he hears that name he associates it with him being picked on and bullied all through his time at Creel Elementary. The name thing is really no different than my husband preferring David over Dave, or Poppa using Scott instead of Jan, or grandma using Sandy/Sandra depending on the setting she is in… it’s no different than Eldon/Army ( I know he is a bad example of a human but the name thing is what matters here), no different than when someone gets married and they change their last name, or someone named William goes by Bill or Robert by Bob…

It is important to me that he grows up with confidence in himself, agency over his body and thoughts, and that he is comfortable and happy – which means being authentic, every where and all the time.

We really hope you can understand that we were only trying to keep the peace in all the tumult by not telling you. I didn’t want to force him before he felt like he was ready (kids get scared telling adults things they don’t want to hear, it’s just a fact of life I think) and he wasn’t ready to face the possibility of losing you guys in any capacity, nor was I. Life is not any less tumultuous now but the level of tumult means we should really all be on the same level, the same island in the storm if you will.

We are willing and able to answer any and all questions, though I do ask that you come to me first so he is not trying to explain big huge life concepts to you guys, but again we are so very sorry it took us until the last second to work up the courage, hopefully it was all for naught, but when I first tried to introduce the topic, ya’ll made it very clear you didn’t agree with the concept and didn’t believe that children were capable of thinking like that or making those decisions… but this is not a decision, it is much more of a realization he had and now understands. Like discovering you are lactose intolerant… changing your diet makes your life better – changing the way you identify can do the same.

[haunting-kind-of-high]

The Shadows In Our Minds (Part 6)

What Lies Beyond The Shadows

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 7

Warnings: Swearing, major character death, suffocation

Tag list: @musicphanpie-b, @imin-loveanon, @ordinary-chaos, @sandersandthesides, @ajumbleofwords, @demonickittykat, @zadi-jyne, @serenefreakgeek, @fandons-mangoes, @leesacrakon, @gayfagg, @tree4life25, @loverofpizzaandallthingssweet

Notes: A massive thank you to @musicphanpie-b for helping me out with the dialogue and some amazing suggestions and tips. Prepare for lots of italics in this chapter :) I didn’t check for errors, so excuse any mistakes you may find haha

Read on AO3 here

“Virgil?” the king asked incredulously as he looked at the young sorcerer in front of him. 

“Surprise,” Virgil grinned with a smirk, spreading his arms as his eyes met the monarch’s. 

“You… you are alive?” The king stared at the man in front of him. Part of him wanted to run towards Virgil and to wrap his arms around him. To embrace him and never let go of him ever again. But the king knew that Virgil was a dangerous sorcerer and everything but pleased. It would not be a good idea. 

It was then that the king realised: the man he had believed to be his own son, had been the sorcerer all this time. There was no curse, but instead, the Sorcerer himself had been the reason behind the darkness that seemed to be consuming the palace. 

“So…. my dreams-” 

“That was all me,” Virgil replied, “every single bad dream and anxious thought came from me. Of course it was me.”

“Virgil, I thought you were dead!” the king exclaimed. Even though he knew Virgil was the reason that many innocent people have lost their homes, their family or their own lives, he was relieved the man was still alive. Even after everything Virgil had done, the king still cared for him. 

“Oh come on,” the Shadow Sorcerer said, “you didn’t seriously think Roman could defeat me, did you?” 

“I-”

“After all,” he continued, not acknowleding the king’s attempts to speak as he took a few steps closer to said monarch. “I believe it was your idea to train me, like a fucking weapon. I believe it was you who told the wielders that, with me in the military, no one would have to worry about hostile invasions anymore. If I recall correctly, it was just you wanted to raise me like a fucking PUPPET.” 

With every word, his voice grew louder and the king noticed a cloud of shadows had formed around the sorcerer. His lips twitched and formed a smirk that practically radiated anger. The king knew this wasn’t good. 

“Virgil,” he tried, “trust me, it was never like that-”

“No, I understand.” the young sorcerer scowled, his hands clasped behind his back again. “You only wanted what was best for me, didn’t you? You only did what you did because you loved me, right? Well, I have one question for you: how did you think that it would be good for a five years old to learn how to defend himself in a damn war? Did it never occur to you it would have been better for him to explore his powers? To develop himself? Have you ever stopped to consider my feelings before you decided to put strings on me and make me yours to dictate? Did it never occur to you that what you wanted, that what you believed was best, was only what you wanted? Were you so blinded by protecting yourself and your country? Was that all you could think about? Did my feelings not matter to you?”

“We wanted to protect you.” the king tried, locking eyes with the man in front of him. “We wanted you to learn how to control your powers to protect you from yourself.”

The shadows in the room grew bigger and darker as Virgil chuckled softly, pacing through the hall. The shadows clinged to him and seemed to follow him as he moved through the room. 

“Of course,” Virgil said, his voice low and full of malice as the memories from his youth came back to him. “That is why you took me in. That is why you let the best magic wielders of the land come here to train me. That is why you trained me how to fight. That’s why you learned a kid how to use his power to take out his enemies. What kind of person would think that was any good? It wasn’t good for anyone but you. It only benefited you! so don’t try to tell me you did what you did because you cared about me, because I know that’s not true.” 

“We wanted to give you the opportunity to develop yourself and your powers,”  the king answered trying his best to convince Virgil. He was not going to deny what he did; he knew there was no point in that. It had happened, that was definetely true. But he never had any ill intentions he just… didn’t think about the consequences his actions would have on the kid. Virgil was right, he was blinded by the child’s immense powers and he did things that he shouldn’t have. The king made mistakes, a lot of them. But if he could go back in time, he would have done so many things differently. He would change it all. Virgil deserved so much more than what he got. But the king never did what he did out of ill will. 

“I would have done fine without your meddling!” Virgil yelled as he stopped his pacing. His voice was distorted by his magic. For a few moments, the shadows turned pitch black and they quickly drifted towards the king. “You took me away from my home, from my life! You ripped me away from my family!  Away from everything I knew! Do you know how it feels to be torn away from your house, from your village? Do you know how terrified I was? You never told me anything until we reached the palace. I couldn’t even say goodbye to my parents! If it wasn’t for you, I would have been just fine! I never got the chance to explore my powers for myself, I never got to experiment! You took that from me. You took my childhood from me!”

“That is not true,” the king tried again, “we-”

“No, no it is true!” Virgil interrupted the king once more. His voice was less distorted than it had been before and the shadows faded slightly, but they still remained. “Sure, I might have had the chance to play, to be a kid. But what’s that when there’s one other kid to play with, and that one kid doesn’t even remember that you fucking existed? Like you never happened? No one here even cared about me. The staff greeted me when they passed me, the wielders praised me for my progress in training. You, you called me your son. Every. Single. Day. But no one, absolutely no one, ever loved me. All you saw was my power, my potential. No one stopped to appreciate me for me, no one saw the child crying out for help inside. I was nothing more than a decoration to Roman, to all of you. A weapon, at most. Because what kid knows how to attack and defeat people before their eighth birthday? What kid has to learn how to kill people when they’re seven years old? That isn’t a childhood. That is the military. You wanted to turn me into a weapon, to use at your will. But that’s not what a kid is supposed to be! That isn’t how a kid is supposed to grow up!” Near the end of the sentence, the shadows had grown darker again and the distortion had returned. His brown eyes were filled with nothing but fury and rage. 

As the king looked into those eyes, as he heard the words Virgil spat at him, he felt guilt. He felt pain, like a dagger was forced into his heart. The king did love Virgil. He did see him as a son. Even now, twenty years later, after everything that had happened, the king still saw Virgil as his son. And the fact that Virgil actually thought he didn’t love him, that hurt him. So much. Because even now, the king loved him. He had never stopped, no matter how many people Virgil had killed. For no matter how many crimes someone might commit, sometimes, it’s hard to let go of them.   

“Virgil, trust me,” the king pleaded, “that was never our intention. We truly only wanted the best for you!”

“If that was what you thought was best, then why didn’t Roman have to train like that? Why could he sit around, play outside, do whatever he wanted, while I was forced to train, to exercise? I used to think that it was the normal thing to do, that he would start training as soon as he turned five. But it never happened. As long as I was here, he never had to train like me. Why didn’t you make him do the same? Was it because, unlike me, he could never be a threat to your kingdom? If you really thought that what you did was best, then why, in Heavens name, did Roman not have to go through that?”

“Roman is different,” the kind said, realising he would not be able to justify this to Virgil. “He does not possess magic, so-”

“That’s why he didn’t have to learn to fight until he was old enough? I had to learn to fight from my fifth birthday. And don’t tell me that’s because I possess magic. I overheard your conversation with Onye. You only wanted me as a weapon. I was a tool for you, not a son with potential.”

This caught the king off guard. Onye was one of the wielders who trained Virgil, and the monarch would have frequent meetings with him discussing Virgil’s progress in training. But he never knew Virgil had overheard them. That would explain his statements, the king realised. That would explain his behaviour and his thoughts that the king never cared about him.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, hoping that Virgil would explain it to him. 

“It’s as I said,” Virgil responded manner-of-factly as he started pacing through the room again, his eyes never meeting with the king’s. “I overheard one of your conversations. I believe you told him that I was learning well and that I would be a great addition to the army. That with me, you’d never have to worry about losing a battle ever again.”  

The king remembered that meeting. Not well, but vaguely. He had talked to Onye about Virgil and they had discussed whether or not the kid would eventually be fit for the miltary. It was not long before - 

“Virgil,” he muttered softly, “is that why you ran away?”

Virgil responded with a bitter chuckle as he raised his head to look at the king. His eyes did not only show rage, but now there was something there that looked like derision. Maybe even pain. 

“Did you think I would want to stay in a place where people only wanted me for my power?” Virgil asked mockingly as he stopped dead in his tracks again. The monarch thought he even heard a bit of pain in the sorcerer’s voice. 

“We were worried about you!” the king exclaimed, keeping an eye on the shadows that were still spreading. “After you vanished, I sent all my soldiers out to search for you. We even posted posters around the kingdom to tell citizens to keep an eye out for you!”

“Do you think I didn’t notice?” Virgil responded. His voice remained cold, but still calm. However, the shadows grew darker very quickly, giving away how much rage the sorcerer felt as the memories of his childhood came back to him. “When I left, I went back to Mauta, hoping I could see my family again, only to see the village had been flooded by soldiers. They were stood in front of my old house, like guards, looking out for me. It didn’t feel like you wanted your son back. You wanted your weapon, your prisoner back. My village wasn’t safe for me. So I hid, waiting for the soldiers to leave. The only safe place, were the damned woods. And I waited there until they left. But they didn’t leave. They remained there for weeks and I gave up trying to ever go home. I had to live from wares I’d stolen from people in the village until I knew enough magic to conjure up my own food. I had to sleep on the cold floor of a cave with nothing to protect me from the cold until I learned how to create a blanket or mattress. All because you never thought it was of any importance for me to learn how to use my magic to take care of myself. It was fine, as long as I knew how to fight, right? I have lived in those woods for twenty years because I had nowhere else to go.”

“Virgil I didn’t know…”

“You know, I thought that you did what you did because you cared. I thought you helped me because you wanted to give me a chance to develop my powers.  But apparently that was not the case. You only did that because you needed my powers for your own fucking army. If you had minded your own business, or if you treated me like an actual son, we wouldn’t be here. The whole Shadow Sorcerer wouldn’t exist.”

“Virgil, trust me,” the king finally got out, “I did truly care about you. You were like a son to me. You still are! I never wanted that to happen to you. I never wanted you to get hurt like ths.”

“But it did,” Virgil snapped, the shadows that followed him now cloaked the entire room in near darkness. “It happened. And now we’re here. All because you wanted to do ‘good’ And where did that get you? What did you gain? Nothing. Instead, you lost. Everything.”

Those words hit the king. Hard. He had lost. All this time, he had thought that his son had returned after his quest to the south, but it appeared to be Virgil. And his son had not returned. That meant that- 

“Roman,” the king muttered softly, realising what this meant. “You killed my son.”

“No,” Virgil said, again with that bitter chuckle of his. “You killed him. You created me. Created this,” - he gestured to himself and the shadows around him - “You made this happen. And now it’s time you pay for those mistakes.”

The last sentence had been incredibly distorted by the sorcerer’s magic and the shadows made the room nearly pitch black. Virgil slowly approached the king in front of him with a dangerous smirk. The king tried to speak, but he felt like his throat was being squeezed shut by an outside force. No sound could leave his mouth, but at the same time, no air could enter his system. He tried to get one more glance of the man he considered his son before he blacked out. 

As he saw the king’s body go limp, Virgil stepped closer, to ensure the monarch was really dead, before easing up on him. The shadows slowly faded as the sorcerer was finally able to find his peace. Finally, he had gotten that was he really wanted. Revenge. Or at least, the first bit of revenge. After twenty years, he had finally gotten the revenge he craved. With a smirk, he disappeared in the shadows, and the king’s corpse with him.