#eden recognizes that he needs a pillar

[kiwiwritescrap]

*falls into frame very quickly* aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAA

Another seerrrriiieeeessss

This one is not an og series, this is actually a bnha hermitcraft au concept created by the brilliant @marshy-system! Please go check them out, they’ve created some great stuff. Without further adieu, I present the first part of the Hermitcraft Bnha Au!

Of course Scar was tied up. The last thing he remembered was being knocked out cold by a group of villains and dragged away. He twisted his hands, rope burning his wrists. He looked around, realizing he was in some sort of abandoned warehouse. Before him stood three villains, which he knew well. Helsknight, a cloning experiment gone wrong, Evil X, Xisuma’s twin who went south, and Scorpio, his friend Gemini’s old counterpart.

“Well, Total, it appears we meet again.” Scorpio hissed. He stepped out of the shadows.

“Scorpio.” Scar spat.

“Oh, don’t sound so bitter. I had my reasons for leaving.” He narrowed his eyes.

“I’m aware.” Scar looked around, searching for some way to use his quirk to escape. The floor was made of thick steel, and he could barely sense stone underneath. Scar fidgeted his hand, but he couldn’t manage to even get a spike of rock up from the ground.

“Struggling?” Helsknight said from the back. Of course Scar couldn’t do anything. The ropes around his wrist had been enhanced by Helsknight’s quirk.

“What do you want from me?” Scar asked.

“Simple, really. You’re bait.” Scorpio said. Scar heard something from above him. A whistle. The sound echoed through the building.

“Oh, you guys are in for it.” Scar smirked. Two people dropped from the ceiling, which Scar instantly recognized as Gemini and G-Force.

“Ha!” Gemini shouted as she landed. She scattered acorns across the floor, bringing her hand up swiftly and causing several fully-grown oak trees to sprout up, creating a barrier. “G-Force, get him out of here!”

“On it!” The winged hero called back.

“Gemini!” Scorpio had torn through the branches of one of the trees, and was running at Gemini. He raked his hand into the trunk of one of the trees as he ran, causing it to decay and forming beads of energy around his hand. Scar turned away from them as the two former friends locked into battle. G-Force was struggling with the ropes, trying to get them untied.

“They’re reinforced!” Scar said.

“That would explain-” G-Force was cut off as he was dragged back by Evil X and thrown into a wall. He got back on his feet and charged forward, powering himself with his wings and slamming into Evil X, sending him flying. G-Force went back to work, and after a great deal of effort, managed to free Scar. He grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him up through a hole in the warehouse ceiling. “Stay here, I’m going to go help Gemini.” He dove back into the warehouse. Moments later, he returned, Gemini behind him rising up on a pine tree.

“You alright?” She asked. Scar nodded.

“How did you find me?” Scar asked.

“Well, since you didn’t come back from your scouting mission, we started to get a bit suspicious, so we started going around to the known hideouts.” G-Force explained. He flicked his wings impatiently. “I should get going.” He waved goodbye and flew off.

“Come on.” Gemini said. “We should get going.” Scar made a pillar of stone from the ground up to the roof, and he and Gemini climbed onto it. It carried them to the ground. “Oh, I almost forgot.” She handed him a set of boots. “The Hivemind just sent these over today.” Scar put them on and activated them, and he hovered a few feet in the air.

“These are great!” He said.

“They said they may need some more testing, but said they should work alright for moving around.” Gemini explained.

“That’s alright.” He shrugged. He and Gemini went back to their Agency, where they found Eden, pouring over a holographic map.

“Welcome back!” He said. “Woah, Scar, it looks like you got hit by a bus!”

“You could say that.” His memories of being taken hostage were gradually coming back, and he vaguely remembered Evil X hitting him into the ground pretty hard.

“Well in any case, go get cleaned up, we have something we need to show you.” Cub said. Gem sat down, brushing leaves off her clothes. Scar left and went to his room of sorts, where he kept belongings for when he was on longer missions. He changed out of his hero costume and into more comfortable clothing, taking his crutches and headed back into the main room. He carefully sat down, and Cub expanded the map. “Alright. The red buildings are villain hideouts. What do you see.” Scar studied the pattern the hideouts were in, realizing something.

“They’re encircling the city.” He said.

“Exactly.” Cub said. “And, our eyes on the inside say that there’s talk of a plan, called Project Ouroboros.”

“The snake that ate it’s own tail?” Gem said.

“Yes. The hideouts are circling the city, meaning they could move in from the outside and have us surrounded. And whatever their project is, can’t be good.” Cub explained. “I sent this schematic to the other agencies.”

“What if this is a red herring?” Scar suggested.

“Weren’t we talking about snakes?” Gem rolled her eyes.

“You know what I mean. What if it’s a fake plan, to throw us off?” Scar said.

“I wouldn’t put it past them. We still don’t know how many people they have on their side.” Cub sighed. “But they might outnumber us.”

“It’s really late, we should all go get some rest.” Gem said. “We’ll be able to think better in the morning.”

“Good idea.” Scar nodded. He said goodbye to his friends, then returned to his room, as he was stationed at the agency. He laid down, closing his eyes as thoughts of the sinister Project Ouroboros swirled in his mind. Whatever it was, Scar was sure it would pose quite the challenge.

[flowerflamestars]

Fate and Fervor

PART ONE  PART TWO  PART THREE  PART FOUR  PART FIVE  PART SIX  PART SEVEN  PART EIGHT

For the first time in five centuries, Cassian watched the sun rise over mortal lands.   Raw as a new recruit he let the blizzards frigid wind breathe its secret’s around him, nearly so cold as his mountain home. Pink and blue, the world was superficially still in this hour before people began to move, but still here Cassian was, looking for something.   Nothing he could name or place, but Cassian trusted his instincts above all else.   There was something here- Not the something that resolved itself from the shadow of an open door to twist into the body of his brother, but the look on Azriel’s face gave agreement to Cassian’s  wordless tension.   Az ruffled his own hair, crossing the room in two strides and making a face that managed to silently convey he disagreed strongly with Cassian’s need to have every single window- four, imported glass every one, this room alone worth more money than he wanted to think about- to lean on the other side of the threshold where Cassian sat, between propped open balcony doors.   “Amren raided the hall of records- twelve Archeron generations.”

Cassian huffed a laugh. Six in the morning and Azriel already sounded exhausted by the surprises and sisterly infighting. “Can you believe she didn’t know? Fey would think having royal blood didn’t matter.”   His brother’s lips twitched. “It does explain a few things.”   The wind twisted around them, silent to ears not Illyrian, keened, keened keened- somewhere, some thing, fire without flame. Cassian let his head thunk back against the door. Nothing here was as expected.   Not just Feyre’s beloved and difficult sisters, or Lucien Vanserra in the heart of things, but this estate. Lavish, but-   “You catch the double wardings?” Cassian asked.   Azriel sighed. “Everywhere. This whole damned place is a blood magic deathtrap.” Respect was heavy in his tone, and Cassian could understand it. Lucien had to have brought himself to near death to put the wards in place. A Courts heir, high fae, bleeding for two mortal girls.   Illyrians also had a long history of protecting what they loved at any brutal cost.   And here was a far more dangerous world than Feyre had described; not desperation and cold waiting for them, but magic and secrets in their place.   “How’s the border?”   Cassian sometimes forgot how remote Az could be in company. A messy youth of laughing when the other option was despair had grown into a silent expressiveness that still made Cassian grin.   As he did now, watching Azriel’s whole face twist in a near-comical horror. “Blown to shit,” He ran a hand through his hair again, pulling on the curls. “No, Cas, it’s gone.”   “Tamlin hasn’t?..”   With perfect silence, Az stepped around the sprawl of Cassian’s body in the doorway, pointedly clipping one wing with his hip. He followed, snow immediately drifting in his hair, landing featherlight on Cassian’s bare shoulders.   The view was uninterrupted by anything so spartan as walls or coverage, the house a defensive nightmare. Just long sloping lawns and gardens broken up by magic rich, absurdly dense patches of forest. He’d hide Illyrians in those trees, have to rely on surprises and traps.   “Straight shot less than a league from here to Spring,” Az tilted his chin toward the dark and snowy forest, “Archeron land goes right to the Wall.”   What had possessed humans to build, to live, so close to the cursed thing?   “The borders down, Feyre’s sisters have been here this whole time,” Cassian didn’t like the odds, half wanted to go over each of their sprawling magical traps himself. It wasn’t, couldn’t be safe here. “Is Tamlin that afraid of Vanserra?”   Az shook his head. “He was dying, when he came here.” Cassian didn’t have to ask for explanation; secrets and history were the ken of Azriel in their every shape. “The magic at the border wasn’t a fight, he shattered it. Walked on foot through the woods, burning so hot it went to the bedrock, stopped half dead there.” He pointed with one scarred hand to a snow-buried rose garden.   “They saved him?”   “Something happened,” Az replied, “Something made him live.”   Cassian recognized the tone, gave into the urge to drum fingertips on the iced over railing. “Something like being the son of a high lord, or something like Rhys keeping Feyre alive?”   “I can’t tell,” Azriel admitted, with a grimace.   The wind sang around them with that phantom scent of fire, something, something just beyond reach. Cassian didn’t ask if Az could hear it too. —- The breakfast room was a masterwork.   After an hour of talking that turned to plans to slowly letting themselves be utterly savage at the very idea, much less the reality of syrupy, utterly untrustworthy charming Rhysand, the eldest Archeron sister’s had come downstairs.   The empty house benefitted them. No maids to watch and try to help as they hauled in new furniture, no footmen insisting they could carry the vast rug the sisters dragged in between them.   No eyes to see where they stored the family secrets.   Nesta rolled out the thick carpet with one hard kick of a dainty foot, and huffed. “If he lies to our faces I’m going to stab him.”   Elain, comparing fine porcelain patterns with each hand, snickered. “Even if he does, Feyre will want to know why.”   “I think,” Nesta said, utterly even, “She’d believe his word over ours.”   Elain didn’t throw down the plate, but she was later grateful this particular pattern, covered in silver stars and ever-blooming poison flowers like an alchemists eden, was charmed against breakage as it slid to the ground.   Nesta was a perfectly straight pillar, staring down at the plush green and purple pattern beneath her feet. Trying to hide the full scope of her hurt, even from Elain. High walls and grace and rage- but underneath it the largest heart of them all.   It had gone unspoken between them, that they’d silently imagined Feyre in their number again someday. The things they’d done- building her spaces in the house, signing her name for the Councils seal: a Lord Archeron might technically always be in legal charge, but it’s beneficiaries were his three, precious daughters.   Nesta had made sure of that.   Their father would never pass them the title- but everything else was theirs: Feyre, Elain, Nesta, the last of their storied bloodline.   A home, a place, a fortune. All Feyre’s whenever she should want it.   Their land was dangerous too, growing more worrisome every day- but they’d missed their sister. They’d broken laws too numerous to count to stay safe and powerful, to maintain a corner of the world she might one day live in with them.   Elain crossed the room to take her elder sister’s hand. The triplicate strand of pearls that lived on Elain’s wrist now that their home was full of fae had to have been cold, but Nesta didn’t flinch. “Feyre loves us,” Elain said, softly, “I don’t know what she wants now, but it had to have been her idea to bring the High Lord here.”   “A reckless, stupid idea,” Nesta grumbled.   Elain laughed, “So stupid it’ll probably get us killed. But she’s home.”   The laugh was what made Nesta look up, her shining eyes so completely like their mother’s Elain savored the sight. She’d been taller, her blue grey gaze more metallic and the fine boned cheeks she’d blessed them all with more inclined to smile; but Nesta was utterly the child of their most beloved parent.   “If we die, we’ll die together,” Nesta sighed. “Do you think that if you kill a High Lord you can really steal the power?”   There was just enough dry humor in her voice for Elain to laugh again. “We could test it on Beron.”   Nesta ran her hands down her skirt, flaring the fine faery velvet to shake off ash and dust. They’d dressed for conquest together, every inch rich merchants daughters. “We’ll be beat to it, I’d imagine.”   They would be, Elain was sure. Sorcha, who deserved her revenge the very most, would have it. Already had in some way- stolen essential, ancient power, given Lucien back a part of his birthright Elain couldn’t fully comprehend.  Nesta had spoken wryly, but the furrow between her eyes returned. They were thinking the same thing; wouldn’t say the Lady of Autumns name aloud in these spaces now shared with a Shadowsinger. Couldn’t speak to each other of what was to come even alone, in their newly invaded house.   Like Elain, Nesta believed in an absolute form of justice.   Beron was going to die.   Unbidden, lean brown lines returned to the forefront of her thoughts. Lucien’s clever hands- that Elain should not be letting herself long for- riven with burns at the touch of that crown.   Autumn-born, but cast out. Power. A chance, revenge, the war to come- they had plans for it. Plans upon plans: for if they could hold the estate, for evacuation and weaponry. The three of them together took care of separate spheres, but Nesta held the most in her head.   Elain didn’t wonder how far they’d have to go; there was no too far, not to keep their family safe.   Even if they had to be kept safe from the very people their sister had made a family of. - Cassian counted windows and clear views, walking on silent feet behind Feyre through her families home.   Even motion was a struggle, the third shift of his wings loud enough Azriel was looking at him. It wasn’t the luxury- not the quiet or beauty of this place putting him on edge. Not even the conflict- coming here was a bad idea, and he knew it.   Cassian didn’t even know what he was looking for.   Until Feyre swung open yet another beautiful door, and Cassian stopped breathing.   Bathed in bright morning light of a wall-sized window, Feyre’s sisters had beat them to breakfast. Arrayed in finery, at the head of the table sat Nesta, steaming porcelain cup in her hand so fine Cassian could see through it.   How he made it from the doorway to the seat at her right hand was a dangerous proposition- Cassian didn’t know how. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing, but the deep steadying breath was a mistake.   The pearls in her hair alone were worth a fortune.   He wanted to dismiss her beauty, the vanity as it juxtaposed with things Feyre had said. The sister whose heart was an ocean, vast but unconquerable. The same sister who hadn’t protected her.   But Cassian was too much himself, too long a dearest friend to Mor to dismiss any woman based on appearance.   Not braided in to show off the shining darkness of her hair, but affixed loose to the ends of pins like water drops. The pearls moved when she did, a chime through the still, tense air Cassian wasn’t sure anyone else could hear.   It wasn’t a question he’d ask.   Cassian wanted- he wanted to stop staring at her. Wanted her to look back at him so badly he’d bitten a hole in his cheek, the copper tang of blood not enough to forget the smell. He wanted an excuse to get up from this lavish power play of a breakfast table, to have a reason to walk past her again and catch Nesta Archeron’s scent.   Velvet and pearls and ink- past that, herself: fire, mixed with the cold tang of high mountain air.   It was intoxicating. The ink she’d scrubbed from her hands didn’t show, but it complimented completely that raging smell, like a tundra forest fire. Cassian could tell too that she was armed- knives under that velvet dress, a stinging scent that could only mean ash wood somewhere on her person.   The danger only increased his racing heart. And then Nesta Archeron turned her pale, perfect face on him. Impossible cheekbones, full lips, sharp jaw, keen eyes.   “What,” She snarled, “Do you think you’re looking at?”   Her voice rang like a bell through his skull.   Cassian was not High Fae. Not even low fae, really- Illyrian’s were so different as to be considered outsiders to even the rest. Savages. He’d never needed anyone to explain to him what bullshit it was; but, Cassian was Illyrian to his bones, blooded and born of open skies.   He was different, and so was capable of realizing he was looking at a fellow threat.   The ash was in her hair- pins? It had to be, had it been anywhere near her skin Cassian wouldn't scent it the way he was now. The fire and iron of her rage and arms, growing stronger with the uptick of Nesta’s heart.   It hit him all at once, the commonality of this entire spread.   He couldn’t make himself look away, but there was something familiar even about the silk in Elain’s hair.   Nesta was looking at him like she wanted to rip out his throat. Beautiful- the bones of her proud face were as flawless as the pearls, paler than their sheen. Cassian, still hearing her voice in the air, only to his ears, wanted to see how close he could push her to doing it.   Her pale gaze bobbed down to his lips for a scant second, and then out. Look at me, Cassian thought, before realizing her furious eyes were following the line his wings made around his body. Black in this light, the scars hidden. Was she measuring? The out of body insanity he’d been feeling since he walked past her shouldn’t leave room for pride, but there is was, leaving Cassian light headed.   If Nesta wanted to go for his throat, she’d have to touch him. Human- her teeth were like his, bruising, not faery pointed. Her mouth-   Like a door slammed shut in Cassian’s face, every bit of Nesta dismissed him, every bit of her attention forward once more.   She smelled like fire and every fine thing in the world- Cassian was burning.   Distantly, he listened to Feyre snap something toward her oldest sister in offense, Elain’s sweet voice chiming in. In the distraction of the conversation he heard the rustle of Az’s wings, but Cassian ignored his brother’s subtle turn in question.   Without permission or a conscious plan, Cassian leaned right over the table corner into Nesta’s space, like they were the only people in the room. “You know about Sangravah.”   Nesta stopped speaking mid-sentence. She’d moved toward him, not away. This close, he could see the pulse beating in her throat, and fought not to stare like a madman. Savage, Cassian thought again, with very different bitterness.    “Do I know the Night Court was invaded, a city leveled, and within a day it’s High Lord showed up on my doorstep?” She hissed, meeting his gaze. “Yes.”   Nesta had known, and she’d laid a trap.  A brilliant jab, after Rhys’ speech about strength and the war to come. Everything in this room came from the North- imported china, but painted in the Rainbow. Night Court silver. Wall hangings, the kaleidoscopic silk of Elain’s clothes, the very rug beneath their feet: Sangravah.   Cassian had seen with his own eyes the smoking ruin Hybern had left of half the city.   “I had no idea the merchant network worked so quickly,” Rhysand drawled mildly, sipping tea like they were having a casual discussion.   Cassian had the quicksilver thought of smashing his fist into his beloved brother, trusted High Lords face.   The Archeron sisters were not going to be handled.   But Nesta was still looking right at him. Cassian knew that expression on Illyrian faces- a predator that had smelled blood. She was good, too good. After all, he’d fought with Rhys for a full day about this particular direction: bringing danger to Feyre’s human family, taking the war over the Wall prematurely if things went sideways.   They were her sisters, it was ultimately her call. That didn’t mean he had to agree with it.   How did Nesta know?   “The families,” Nesta said, matter of fact and deadly, “Lost good sailors to the fires. When the stone burned, the water did too.” Feyre had opened her mouth in horror, but Nesta plowed on. “If we can’t keep people safe in your land, what makes you think we could provide for you safe haven to hide from your war?”   Cassian wanted to reach out and touch her.   “No one,” Rhysand said, “Is hiding.”   Feyre leaned around his wings, mouth twisting. If she took note of the electric bubble of space Cassian had accidentally created and Nesta had taken over with sheer rage, it didn’t show. “We’re sure father couldn’t have been on any of the ships? He wasn’t there when it happened, right?”   They were so close a pearl hit Cassian’s nose as Nesta’s attention snapped left, the back of her braid stabbed through with a pin long enough to double as a dagger. A faery killing dagger, gleaming ash wood- Cassian couldn’t have backed away if the room were on fire.   “Feyre,” It was Elain who sighed her name. Resplendent in pink and pearls of her own, she showing a whole different face than the woman who’d stabbed Azriel yesterday. “Father is not working the trade routes.”   Feyre shook her head, already glancing back at Rhys, “Can we find out for sure? Send someone in case”-   “He’s in the City of Gods,” Nesta said, flatly. “Or he was a year ago, getting arrested for gambling debts. I doubt he got much further.”   Feyre’s face crumbled. A scream would have drawn Rhy’s attention less quickly, and Cassian himself hated to see her hurt, but he was busy struggling to breathe. If he’d been less close the sorrow that emanated from Nesta would have been hidden. Anger was one thing, an unholy terror in her rage, but-   But the urge to rip apart whatever had hurt Nesta was overwhelming. It rattled in his veins, terrifying to even himself. What was wrong with him?   “I’ll find your father, wherever he is,” Rhys promised Feyre is a low voice. She leaned into the touch of his hand, blue eyes over-bright.   Late, too late, Cassian caught Elain watching him. He knew she was armed too, under all that silken beauty. She was softer than her sisters, a gentle ghost in Feyre’s stories. Giant eyes and winsome dimples seemed to only reinforce that vision- but she’d stabbed Azriel. Loved and absolutely trusted from her every gesture one of the most dangerous unaligned faeries in Prythian.   Twisted her face in an expression of total wickedness that belonged on Feyre’s face to raise brows at Cassian- at the lack of space between him and Nesta.   Cassian sat back in his chair, clenched hands hidden by the table.   Not fast enough to miss the impossibly quiet rattled sound of a breath leaving Nesta when he moved. Not a bit of it showed on her face- for all that Cassian could smell sadness, a cool unmovable rage, beautiful to see, was all that reached the world.   A queen, riven of ice and pearl.   The next youngest might have been flounced like a princess, but Cassian couldn’t imagine she wasn’t just as controlled. Courtier and queen then- quick poison and vengeful crusade, hand in hand. Feyre had failed, on a cataclysmic level, to describe her elder sisters.   They should have seen it coming- an impossibly young human woman who’d freed them from Amarantha. She’d come from somewhere, for all that most days she seemed more like a sister, a friend.   Instinctive deep breath burned his lungs with Nesta’s scent all over again. If he pulled on that murderous dagger, would the whole thing unwind? He wanted with a stark insanity to know how long her dark hair was. Could he fill both hands with its softness, breathe in her scent?   Cassian hadn’t missed it when he’d scooped her out of the fight the day before. But her fear had clouded everything- a fear of him so complete and overwhelming he’d felt sick- left no room for the wildness that pounded his skin- and then of course, all he’d smelled was his own blood.   “Fey,” Began Elain, her deceptively soft voice carrying, “Father has made it clear he doesn’t want to be involved. We can send sailors to check on him, but it would be easier to plan if you told us why you’re here.”   He wondered how old they were. From Feyre’s stories, Cassian had been sure Elain was the youngest. But old enough to wed- old enough to be entangled with Lucien bloody Vanserra- and Nesta was clearly an adult in her prime.   The Cauldron-gifted savior of Prythian was the baby of the family.   And making a guiless younger sibling face that made the long-scarred wounds where Asteria had lived ache. “I wanted to make sure you were alright.”   “Bullshit,” Nesta snapped.   Cassian bit his cheek again to stay silent, mouth twisting without his permission. She was a nightmare- a beautiful nightmare that wasn’t going to let this already messy plan come together without a fight.   A small noise had escaped Elain- not even censure, tiredness? Before the two older- he was sure of it- Acheron’s were meeting eyes in a silent understanding that scrunched Feyre’s face into a scowl.   “You both think that?”   That they exchanged glances once more before Elain tried again was enough to audibly set Feyre’s teeth.   “You can always come home,” Elain told her, staring down the table with it’s gleaming crystal and china, utterly sincere. “You have a place here with us, no matter what, Feyre. But”-   Nesta interrupted, hurt buried from her voice but not Cassian’s senses, throat burning at her pain. “You let us think you were dead. If not for Lucien, we would have no idea what happened to you.”   “And,” Elain went on, like Feyre didn’t look like she’d been slapped, like Rhysand wasn’t staring at Nesta with a thunderous, barely contained danger, “We understand these are very dangerous times.”   It was all wrong- Cassian had fought against this plan on the basis that mortals over the Wall killed faeries, killed those who associated with them. It was still the greatest danger here, but how thoroughly had they misunderstood what they were walking into?   These women were already involved in their own way, all the more in peril because of it; they weren’t going to be able to contain this situation, they were only going to make it worse. Cassian was going to make it worse if he didn’t get a hold of himself, if Rhys kept looking at Nesta like that.   It was an effort to be still, to stay silent. Every instinct in Cassian’s body was telling him to move: to reach out and find some way to soothe that raging pain in Nesta Archeron, who he’d known all of a day, to put himself bodily between the bright flame of her mortal beauty and the anger of a High Lord. His brother- who would never-  Despite the overwhelming tension in the air, Feyre scoffed. “How did Lucien know I was alright?”   Trapped at the corner of table Cassian got the full view of Elain’s eye twitching before her whole face smoothed.    Nesta had no such compunctions. “I believe he was somewhat aware of whatever has put that crown on your head.”   Moonstone today- like a distant echo to Nesta’s shower of pearls. Cassian knew damn well what Rhysand was doing, giving his emissary a crown, but Feyre didn’t. Equal parts marveled and self-self-conscious at the splendor, she’d refused- not ready or too stubborn, he didn’t know- to look at Rhys’s affection for what it might be.   With a long, slow breath, Rhys finally set down his tea cup. “We’re not here for refuge. The tragedy at Sangravah was not the first attack, nor will it be the last. We need to call on old alliances if anyone is going to survive.”   Silken- not gentle, there was the voice of the woman who could love the lost heir of Autumn- Elain breathed, “Human alliances?”   Feyre nodded, and Cassian wished there were some way to stop her before she went on, painfully earnest. “I’m the emissary of the Night Court, I need to speak to the Council of Queens. If they’ll listen, help, we all might have a chance. Hybern won’t stop”-   No one had to explain further, as Cassian imagined few people ever did speaking to Nesta. The look on her face had been icy, now she might as well have breathed frost. “And you’re High Fae, so you cannot set foot in the sacred palace. You want to bring the Council of Queens here?”   Breaking his silence with clear regret already on his face, it was Azriel that answered. “We have been unable to infiltrate the council. It’s a deathtrap, to our kind. It might only be safe to engage here, on mortal land.”   “It’s a deathtrap for a reason”-   “Hybern,” Rhys cut in smoothly, “Has been preparing for this war for millennia. The king aims to take this entire continent, and there will be nothing to stop his march into mortal countries. If we cannot band together now, we’ll fall, one by one.”   “No,” Nesta growled, a nearly-faery noise. “No. Hybern has declared war on the Night Court, I will not let you bring that violence south.”   “It’s the only safe way,” Feyre said, voice cutting. “I just need your house, just for a few days. The message is sent. But we should plan together. We’ll keep you out it, keep you safe, Rhys can”- Not Nesta, who’d stood from the table to yell all the better, but Elain, her pale cheeks drained of color who didn’t let her younger sister finish. “What do you mean, the message has been sent?” Feyre, Cassian thought, you didn’t. One hand on Rhysand’s forearm, Feyre raised her chin. “I invited the Queens here. We don’t have time to argue, they’ll have the message by nightfall.” — Elain had told herself not to be surprised by her younger sister’s actions anymore.   One High Lord, two High Lords- the Lord of nightmares and shadows- breaking a curse older than all of them, fighting monsters, becoming fae.   Nothing had truly disappointed her before this moment. Feyre, who wanted so badly to do the right thing, who was trying to protect her new family: but who would protect them? Their vassals, their land, the fragile, infinitely valuable legacy of their blood that Elain and Nesta had lied and committed treason to hold onto?   She’d been right- Nesta had been right.   There were a hundred moving pieces before them: the household staff, who’d return in a day, if that when the blizzard ended. Their vassals relying on them- the extra gold and food they provided in winter, the orphanage full of children who had no idea how dangerous or precarious their world was. The Crown of Autumn in a hatbox, the slight of hand involved to keep their ships sailing and their goods sold.   Her engagement ball, the invitations sent. Lucien’s safety, Sorcha’s plan. That the war starting might be here- that those battles wouldn’t have a chance to kill them if the Queens decided to take their lives themselves, as was their legal due.   Elain needed to breathe. To think.   All she could do was look at her sister- not Feyre, not now- at Nesta, and understand the sorrow, the anger that spooled between them.   Trapped, once again.   Elain didn’t realize she’d risen until her skirt snagged on the chair, stopping her progress to Nesta’s side for a split second before the dark-eyed shadowsinger to her left freed it with an inclined head.   Later, she would think about how this court- family, so clearly a family- didn’t seem to agree either.   But first she rounded the corner to take Nesta’s hand. Shoulder to shoulder, they wouldn’t flinch. She wanted Lucien.  Colder than the ice gathered at the windows, Nesta’s voice was clipped. “You invited the entire Council of Queens to meet the High Lord of the Night Court, under our roof?”   Before Feyre could answer the hulking Illyrian who had been staring at Nesta like she were both miracle and doom interrupted with that whiskey warm voice of his, “Feyre, you didn’t ask?”   Nesta didn’t look at him, didn’t move her focus from the High Lord whose unnatural gaze was on them both, but Elain felt her hand, hidden by their skirts, spasm.   Humans had told stories of his kind for generations. The true of heart, warriors whose honor was life, whose promises were magic, who protected the innocent at all costs. Myths, surely, but this was the Commander of the Legions.   Honor was perhaps something they could lean on.   “We don’t have time to fight,” Feyre insisted, a transparent lack of understanding on her face, “Hyberns next attack could come at any time. I can do this, we can do this.”   Smoothly, the Lord who they feared even across the sea nodded, spread his hands in a very human gesture of compliancy, wrong to behold. “I know that you don’t trust me, don’t know me. But please believe I won’t allow any harm to come to Feyre’s family.”   Feyre’s family- their fate’s bound together inescapably.   Elain had had more than enough assurance for one morning.   She didn’t need to look to know Nesta felt the same, to guess from her thrown back shoulders and rigid body that Nesta wanted nothing more than to be out of this room. Time to think, to plan, to be alone- but she wouldn’t, couldn’t back down from the fight.   And Rhysand wasn’t done.   “We’ll shore up your defenses, guard your home for as long as needed. Feyre’s letter is the first real message we’ve gotten to the Queens, but our interests align. We”-   Elain shook out the heavy woven silk of her skirts, rainbow shimmer settling under her steady hands. Ignoring the whole lot of them- winged warriors, Feyre’s confusion, Rhysand’s false straightforwardness, she turned to Nesta. “Tea?”   Nesta cocked her head, in step, the graces that served them again and again. “Of course, I’ll see you this evening.”   Time then, she needed time as well. And long enough for them to wait for Lucien.   Elain addressed the room at large, like Rhysand hadn’t spoken. “Please do enjoy the comforts of our home. The kitchens are stocked, if not staffed, and the library is down the hall. You’ll find extra clothing in the scullery and more firewood in the closets of all the greatrooms. Avail yourselves to whatever you need, we’ll see you tomorrow.” “Elain”-   Nesta made it to the door first, holding it open for them both before the satisfactory slam rocked the entire wall.   In low tones, Nesta asked as they reached the stairs, “Do you know where Lucien is?”   Elain shook her head, “He was talking about checking on the outlying farms.” Nesta sighed, on the step above as they’d been braced to head in opposite directions. “Later,” she said again, reaching out quicksilver fast to squeeze Elain’s hand again. “We’ll figure it out.”   She managed to smile in return before stumbling down the stairs, fast enough to trip. It was longer way outside, down twisting marble and across the grander spaces of the house, but Elain still managed to pull on her fur cloak and step out into the crisp, bright world before she had company.   She strode into the snow regardless, ducking around the house on slick stone paths, cold clear air her greatest companion.   “Elain,” It was Feyre, of course.   For a half moment, Elain contemplated just ignoring her. When they were children, truly young, the only thing that made Feyre angry was to lack for attention. It wasn’t normally a problem; even at their most desperate, their father had affection to spare for his youngest, precious daughter.   It would be almost fair, she’d ignored their qualms, the very circumstances of their lives.   But no, Elain was better than that. No matter what, she’d missed her sister and there were things that had to be said.   “Elain,” Called Feyre again, sliding into step beside her on those longer faery legs that Elain couldn’t get used to. Always gangly, little Fey now moved with perfect, silent grace. “You can’t refuse to plan with Rhys because of the letter. We need the Queens to”-   Gently, gentle as she could manage, Elain interrupted. “The problem isn’t Rhysand,” She said, trying and hoping Feyre would actually listen. If Nesta had this talk with her, it was going to end with screaming. “You wrote that letter, Feyre.”   Familiar and still utterly different blue faery eyes blinked widely a her. “I was,” She stumbled over the words, “I was a human and now I’m fae, and the emissary of the Night Court. The best choice to write to the Queens.”   Five steps from the haven of her solarium, Elain stopped walking. “Feyre,” She said again, and this time she couldn’t hold back the anger in her voice. “You wrote the letter. You signed it with your own name too, didn’t you?”   Feyre stopped too, set her feet wide and stubborn.   Through the glass, Elain could see her orchids blooming. If she made it to those doors, there’d be no Night Court. Just soil and moss only she’d ever touched. Potted lemons blooming, the air warm and moist, some actual damned quiet- but she had to have this talk.   Elain sighed. “Rhysand, none of them know any humans. Not in recent history, anyway,” Feyre opened her mouth as if in protest, but Elain held up a hand, “You grew up here. You know the punishment for associating with faeries in this land is death, Feyre.”   No one cared the original Acheron fortune had been built on the back of wrangling a deal with a faery smith. That even now, Nesta, under the auspice of their father’s authority, kept faery bargains on the continent.   What mattered was this: the wild land along the Wall had no ruler. It belonged personally to the Council of Queens, but with true governance more than an ocean away, human lords- whose estates might as well have been tiny kingdoms, for their absolute power- had to keep the peace. Faeries came over the Wall- not faeries of the continent, whose gated kingdoms and vast reaches had always interacted with humans in some way- but faeries of Prythian who played by different rules.   Killing. Stealing maidens in the night. Hunting humans like prey.   So the highest echelon of Lords, Flatha and Tiarna, petitioned the Queens they traced their own bloodlines back to and it was written into law: death, usually at the hands of your very own liege, at the word of your neighbors.   Human slow, Feyre touched Elain’s arm. “The meeting will stay secret,” She told her, wide eyes sincere, “There will be Illyrian’s to guard if anything goes wrong, and Rhys will keep you and Nesta safe.”   Lucien, markedly, was not included in the count to be protected.   All at once, Elain was exhausted. She didn’t want to be angry. Not at her naive and beautiful sister, all of nineteen years old, who’d fought and died and been transformed. Little Feyre, a true hero, who’d always had a good heart.   Tired too, that for all that goodness, Feyre really thought Elain was afraid for herself.   “You signed it Archeron,” Elain snapped before she could stop herself. “Just because father bankrupted all of us doesn’t mean he ever stopped being a lord. Ua Flaithbertaig, Feyre. These people lived without a leigelord for a generation, we’ve only begun to fix things. They will be punished, we will be punished.”   “When the Queens meet with us, they won’t punish you for being present.” Feyre said lowly.   “If they meet with you, Feyre!” Elain found herself shouting and stopped, breathing out her nose. She’d been wrong; maybe Nesta should have had this conversation- maybe she’d have been sharp enough for Feyre to take her seriously.   “Nesta is not Banfhlaith, Fey,” Elain tried very hard to say evenly. “She can’t petition for clemency. Lucien is living under a false identity- there’s no one to protect us, no one who can intervene.”   “But Rhys,”-   Not for the first time, something prickled in Elain’s palms at the sound of Feyre’s familiarity with the High Lord of the Night Court. There was more there than a bargain, whatever that binding tattoo meant. Feyre loved him.  Elain knew she didn’t mean harm, wanted to trust her sisters new friends- but that was just it.   They were new- foreign and horrifically powerful. Good intentions wouldn’t protect human lives in a violent game that had spanned centuries.   “Rhysand,” Elain managed to say normally, calmly even, “Is not going to stop a war with an enemy that held him captive for a half a century to protect three hundred human vassals who have nothing to do with the conflict.”   The stubborn set of Feyre’s stance had become kinetic with anger. “Nothing?” She shouted back, flawless immortal hands flung into the air, “War is coming. People are going to die, Elain. During the last war”-   She sounded just like Nesta, when she was angry. But then again, Nesta never talked down to Elain. “The last war was almost six hundred years ago,” Elain snarled back. “The Queens hate the High Lords, Feyre. Our country is allied with the faeries of the continent, humans live in the Glass Mountains, go to university in the Weeping City- the world has changed.”   “The world changes, but you don’t, right?” Feyre said, brittle with anger. “You have Tamlin’s riches, so you get to play lady again.”   Elain had a hundred reasons Feyre was wrong- that without a leigelord, an Archeron in power, their people had nothing. Bound to their ancestral land without protection. No divorces, no founding of new institutions, they couldn’t even pick new crops to grow on estate land without their lords word. With their father out of power, they were trapped- and forced to pay the crown tax individually, more than twice what the estate under Elain and Nesta took.   The fiefdoms of their slip of human land weren’t fair- but the sisters were lucky enough the Queens had never awarded the ancestral Archeron lands to anyone else. Their father might not have given a damn, but the least they could do was try to make things better.   But none of that came out of her mouth as her sister kept speaking. “What’s the plan? Say the war never comes. What, you’re really going to marry Lucien? Lie to everyone. Let him pretend to be your human husband for a hundred years until you die?”   When Nesta was younger, she used to panic. It would crash over her, hold her fast in it’s grip- she told Elain it was like a vise in her chest, all the time, but sometimes it squeezed so tight she couldn’t breathe. The world went white.   Elain had promised her to help hide it- for Feyre to never see- but she’d vowed to herself to find a way to hold Nesta’s hand when the world tried to crush her.   The world was white now.   “Get out.” Elain said, colorless.   Surprise visibly interrupted Feyre’s anger. “What?”   Elain didn’t pause to say it again. She started walking, those last five steps strangely light, as though the ground were further away. But two of her steps was one of her sisters now.   “Elain,”-   “No,” Elain said, refusing to look up, lest Feyre see her burning eyes. She wasn’t going to cry. “What’s done is done. Whatever danger is coming, I’m not going to face it having slapped my own baby sister.”   The brightness of the icy day dazzling her eyes, Elain lurched away and into those safe glass walls. Humid heat and the smell of smoke hiding behind green growing things wrapped around her like an embrace. Lucien had laid some magic over this place, kept her plants safer even than the expensive glass provided. I’ll have to thank him, Elain thought, the orchids lush before her.   But she passed their shelves, went all the way to that back until she was screened from the outside world by potted palms, and sank to the stone floor.   Twenty five.   Elain was twenty five years old- how long would it be before she looked older than Lucien? Three years, six years, ten years? How could she know how things would progress?   He’d never mentioned leaving. Seemed, not just as his human guise, but in those quiet moments that were Lucien and nothing else, to perhaps love the land the same way she did. He might change his glamour with time- human faces change- but Elain knew the real ageless beauty. He belonged here with them.   She didn’t know how she would change.   They had to survive- it wasn’t all a lie, hadn’t ever been, and maybe, maybe, if they lived, Elain would make sure Lucien knew it. — Despite the moonless night, Cassian found Nesta Archeron outside.   He’d resisted all of ten hours.   He shouldn’t have gone looking for her. That he knew- there was no way she'd come out into a dark and frozen night for company. In fact, Cassian wasn’t sure Nesta liked anyone’s company.   But he couldn’t talk himself into staying away, anymore than he could get her burning scent off the back of his tongue. Like something had possessed him, Cassian couldn’t stop tasting it on the air. Even in the sky overhead, his lungs burned with mountain cold and raging fire. Like home.  Nesta didn’t make sense to him.   The older sister who’d failed to protect Feyre. The wrathful pillar of ice ready to challenge a High Lord without a trace of fear. The woman who seemed determined to go down fighting- not just for her sisters- but for every single human in these lands.   The spitfire who’d broken his noise, and come back for more.   She looked at him like he was dirt beneath her boots- and Cassian couldn’t stop thinking about her.   So like the Cauldron damned masochist he was, Cassian found himself waiting in a dead garden, struck dumb by the play of false firelight over her relentlessly beautiful face.   Magic- of course- Vanserra’s raw power intermingled so deeply into the Archeron’s land that it was beginning to take on small characteristics of faerie. Will-o-whisps were old Autumn magic- and inclined to lead mortals and faeries alike to their death in their original form. Those bouncing around the Archeron’s dormant garden seemed more interested in the roses.   Or perhaps the woman sitting beside them.   “Is it common Night Court manners to sulk in the dark?” Nesta asked, back to Cassian as she faced the sky.   “It’s not a good time to be alone at night.”   Nesta remained silent. The will-o-whisps drifted closer, painting red over the old gold of her hair. Cassian fought the urge to smack one away from her fragile mortal form.   An itch was starting his veins-  familiar dismissal in her silence that seemed to reach right down inside him. What was Cassian doing? This woman didn’t need- or want his attention. Cassian liked fighting, but that didn’t mean he needed to take a few extra kicks to the ribs.   He was just rocking back, silent even on the frosted ground, when Nesta turned to look up at him.   One eyebrow rose. Cassian fought the urge to tuck his wings tight and shift, to lessened the impact of his sheer size standing over her. He settled for crossing his arms.   And there was the other eyebrow, gods damn him.   Her voice had razor edges. “Why hasn’t your High Lord told my sister they’re mates?” High Lord rolled out of her mouth like a curse, briefly catching him before Cassian caught up with her words. What? “What?”   It wasn’t that Cassian hadn’t guessed the same thing. It wasn’t even that the rarity or the impossibility- the ten thousand childhood stories that clenched beneath his sternum to damn him with the very word mates- but Nesta had known Rhys for two cauldron damned days.   “It effects her just as much, Feyre should know why there’s a crown on her head.” Nesta had continued.   Something about her- gods, that face- the sharp tilt of chin, that she still hadn’t bothered to rise, the unremitting aggression in her tone that left no quarter- boiled the blood in his veins like this was a spar he’d have to fight to win. The battles he actually remembered.   She looked even better without the gems and pageantry. A sword unsheathed, ready for devastation.   “You don’t,” Cassian began, locking on eyes whose color he’d lost in the dark. “Get between a male and his mate. You won’t like the consequences.”   That had Nesta shooting to her feet. Blue- her eyes were blue. Cassian could see it in the will-o-whisp fire now; lighter than Feyre’s, dawn rather than high noon. He’d been closer to her this morning. Now, alone, it was a world of difference to breathe the same air.   “I wouldn’t want to be between Rhysand and anything,” Nesta spat, face up to meet him, “But Feyre deserves to know.” How was she so small? Petite- Cassian couldn’t call her delicate with that gaze that wanted to set him on fire. But she barely, hardly, came up to his shoulder, and that didn’t seemed to concern Nesta one bit. She’d stepped right into his space. Aggression- not violence- dominance. Nesta Archeron fought like a faery.   No, a gods damned Illyrian.   “They’re not”- Cassian tried to say, but Nesta cut him off.   “Am I wrong?”   Horribly, suddenly, all Cassian wanted to do was laugh. She wasn’t wrong at all, and he’d bet his entire fortune she rarely ever was. He swallowed it down to a smile, but Nesta saw enough for her eyebrows to spike high once more.   “Mates are rare beyond measure,” Cassian said, before she could interrupt. “But it’s not instant. Permanent, but the bond takes time to snap into place.”   Time to find, if you were Illyrian, equal parts damned and lucky as he was.   Her quick, clever eyes were following the gesture of his hands- Cassian was grateful for half a heartbeat before he paused, and that beautiful gaze was back on his face.   “If- if- Rhys is feeling the bond, but it hasn’t snapped into place for Feyre, then he’s probably trying to give her time.” Nothing about Nesta’s face changed, but the tilt of her head leveled. “Mate bonds aren’t- they’re resolute, completely.” Cassian didn’t have the words- or the desire to tell Nesta- that he thought Rhys was being an idiot. That Feyre needed all the information to choose. But he could also understand his oldest friends fear. Rhysand would take the rejection, no matter what, no matter what it did to him. He had only feeling, not the song on the wind to lead him. “And this is really none of our business."   And Nesta laughed. “When she finds out in the middle of a war zone and tries to throttle him, it’ll be our business.”   Again, Cassian agreed with her. He’d didn’t think it would be a real rejection- anyone with eyes could see how in love they were falling. Gods, he’d had to live with it, both of them set off like sparks every time the other entered a room.   Feyre was going to be furious at being kept in the dark.   But he couldn’t admit that. “Is violence how all human women show their affection?” Cassian found himself drawling. He’d leaned down into her space again without realizing it. The fast beat of her heart- ash still bound in her hair- the light of her eyes- Cassian could take an awful lot of violence.   She smelled like a storm. “Or is Vanserra just that lucky?”   Not just a storm- lightening, as her eyes flashed. Cassian wanted to take back the words immediately, but some stupid impulse kept him frozen. He could feel his pulse in his fingertips, in his wings.   For all that Cassian was drowning in the sweep of rage like so much heavenly fire that had driven him from skies time and and time again, Nesta smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to know, General?”   She turned without another word and swept away, will-o-whisps following, to leave Cassian in the dark that rang with her voice.   His hands were shaking. What was the gods damned point?

@breath-of-sindragosa

@flxwer-petals

@ladyvanserra

@illyrianinterrasen

@missanniewhimsy

@tntwme

@ourbooksuniverse

@pitterpatterpot

@thestarwhowishes

@abillionlittlepieces

@my-fan-side

@the-eightofswords

@wonderland–memories

@ourbooksuniverse

@cohen-theeleven

@donnarosemary

[ask-the-party-god]

its back...

the shadow its back, now that we have the orb its pursuing us through these catacombs, and were STILL heavily pregnant, god this is so stressful

and were back in the dark world babyyyyy

in our frantic attempt to escape the shadow we ran through several rifts and ended up finding ourselves back in this place... somewhere else though, maybe we can find a better rift back home?

... exploration notes? ROMAN architecture? oh my god this place really connects everwhere doesnt it? oh boy more hubris... people trying to activate the gate... this guy theorizes that humanity was ‘cast out of eden’ through one of these gates, that we arrived to earth cast away through a gate, and so beyond it must lie ‘eden’... meanwhile here i am, just trying to open a rift back to the town so i can get to the doctor and get medical assistance

also yeah, more info on alys, whatever illness she had, it didnt kill her suddenly, salim and tasi were... devastated for a long time

god, this place REALLY feels like a grand, lost civilization... oh woah- the RADIO turned on and we got to talk to yasmin briefly! the... doctor pulled her away though... hes suspiciously keeping us in the dark...

oooh- the lines on the pillars coincide with the mural behind! i had to spin them into position and now theyre glowing... now i just need to activate this... i genuinely feel like im exploring some antediluvian tech here

... woah... also she just gave the baby a name... amari, to honor salims mother, amara... awwww and oh god dammit, of course theres a vial of vitae that needs refilling, the portal wont work like this... deeper into antediluvian territory we go :I

following a trail of blood... surely this wont go wrong at all... oh- a vitae refilling station??? that seems... intriguing :o oh SHIT alexander???? we got a familiar name-drop there, so this expedition was, if not promoted by him, at least INSPIRED huh?

and... alien chants... so there IS something here huh? it spoke though, so uh... maybe ill be a bit less scared of it! oh god, documents about their vitae harvesting grounds... yeah something maybe escaped those harvesting grounds and is here with me right now? sheeeesh... oh no oh no i am going to the harvesting grounds i think- that is a chamber designed to lock one door when the other opens, that is a room designed to not let anything in or out without safety measures

oh no... oh FUCK this is a maze with mechanical doors that extend when you step on certain buttons and EVERY floor tile is a button??? oh fuck i hate this kind of thing im so going to die

... oh my god? it got me but- but it recognized me? it spoke, “tasi trianon? how... how can you live?” and then... left me, what... the

actual

FUCK-

he is one of the members of the expedition, and hes lost it...

hes lost his mind, his humanity, he blames tasi for... breaking the world??? losing them ‘in her place’? what did we do? what did we do?

yeah... that looks about right for a place to uh, extract vitae

[witch-of-letters]

A Mirror Shattered (Callum Lynch x Reader)

When they first brought you here, to one of their Animus facilities (or ‘prisons’ as you liked to call them), they didn’t bother giving you their names. You didn’t ask them to. It didn’t matter to you. But one day, a woman, a head scientist as you’d later learn, introduced herself as Dr Sofia Rikkin. The rebel in you told you to remain silent and hostile but when you saw that shine of honesty in her eyes, you reluctantly swallowed your anger and talked to her as calmly as you could at the time (given how restrained and nervous you were).

  She explained your purpose there - they would put you in the Animus and watch your memories - ‘genetic’ memories to be precise. You listened to her patiently and when a pause came, you told her that you knew how that machine worked, how it wouldn’t be your first time in there. You felt a little amused when you saw her face change from calm and collected to surprised. Guess she wasn’t used to hearing that.

  Once they ‘released’ you into the ‘social’ area of the facility, you weren’t surprised to see so many kidnapped people in the slightest. You were a long-ago-initiated assassin, a Master. You were a brilliant hacker, IT-specialist, historian, fighter, and on top of that, a great expert on the artefacts of Eden. You previously had the chance to study them very closely, and that alone gave you an edge - you knew exactly how Apples and the other artefacts worked, and what their purpose was. Minerva had chosen you as her ‘champion’ for the fight against recently released Juno, for by the time you actually got into that facility, Desmond Miles had been long gone.

  While Desmond was your cousin (and one of the closest friends you’ve ever had), it didn’t stop him from foolishly pressing his palm against that damn pedestal. As grim as 'inevitable’ solar-wind/energy (you surprisingly couldn’t remember which one was right) collision sounded, it was far better than whatever Juno had in store for humanity. Everyone was devastated at his death, even his distant and cold father, who normally would never shed any tears. Fortunately, the team didn’t disband and together with Shaun and Rebecca, you somehow managed to move on - and that’s where the backstory abruptly stops.

  At first, you didn’t bother with socializing with the people around you. They kept themselves away from you, not knowing who you were but knowing why you were brought here. For as long as you could, you kept interactions with any of them at a minimum, not only because they were complete strangers but also because you needed some space to observe everything - the structure of the building, guard patrol schedules etc.

  On one day though, you saw the eyes of a person who looked like he had seen better days, had a better life. You didn’t know why he did it but when your eyes met, his lips whispered the words ‘Where am I?’, clearly stating that he knew nothing about Abstergo. Thankfully, the guards didn’t pay any attention to that, but you chose to look the other way and poke at your untouched steak.

‘Where am I?’   - the words kept repeating in your head, over and over again. ‘You have absolutely no idea what you have gotten yourself into, pal.’ you thought while laying on your bed, awake and in the middle of the night. You suddenly wished you could send a message to your teammates, let them know where you were but alas, you didn’t have a laptop at your hand’s reach, or even a simple phone to poke around in the Templars’ internal network and search for the Apple located in this damn building.

  Once they put you into the Animus the next day, they kept replaying Ezio’s memories - memories, that you had already gone through at the Auditore mansion - to find the place he had hidden the Apple in. What they didn’t know was actually your rather strange ability to directly interact with your genetic memories and ancestors. While no one could explain that - even Minerva - you found it useful, and right now, very comforting because you knew that all of them - Altaïr, Ezio, Connor, hell even Edward - were watching over you, unable to physically aid you but staying there with you as your pillars of sanity. 

  Callum, as you finally learned his name, was slowly getting accustomed to life in here. Moussa became his first friend, then Emir, and as bizarre as that sounds, even Nathan (the descendant of a traitor, Duncan Walpole). You kept noticing him glancing at you whenever you entered the hall to have lunch or spend some time playing basketball.

  Once you got your tray with lunch, you sat at the table next to him. You told him the words you first thought of after he first arrived here.

  ‘You have absolutely no idea what you have gotten yourself into, pal.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ you smirked.

  ‘We are prisoners in here. Forced to revisit the memories of our ancestors. Find what they seek.’ Suddenly he seemed very confused at your words.

  ‘Who’s “they” and what are we supposed be to looking for?’ You subtly shifted your gaze to your surroundings, looking for anyone eavesdropping on you. The camera wouldn’t be able to hear your conversation in this hall anyway.

  ‘Ancient artefacts. Not made by a human.’

  ‘Are you saying there are aliens out there?’ As amusing as that sounded, you kept your poker face.

  ‘It would be rather difficult to explain it to you here where we are not exactly alone. Besides, I’d need the artefact in my possession in order to show you how it looks like, and how it can be used.’ Now you saw him in deep thought, probably just processing your words. An alarm signalled for you to finish your lunch, and then go back to your designated cell.

  ‘I think I might be able to get one for you.’ Since the guards were already approaching, you had only enough time to give him a small nod. ‘Finally.’

  Some days later, Dr Rikkin asked for you to step inside her lab. Whether it was for another ‘interview’ or not, you frankly didn’t give a fuck. And then...you saw it. The Apple, laying inside a small chest, just waiting for you to come and get it. But you wouldn’t dare to do it. It wasn’t the right time.

  ‘I have an offer for you, Y/N. One that would benefit both of us.’ You already knew what she was about to tell you. ‘Not a chance.’ you thought.

  ‘Oh, please. Don’t tell me that I’m going to have to dig deeper, and when I’m finally finished, you’ll have your father pardon me. That scenario won’t happen, I assure you.’ For a moment she looked sad but the she made her face neutral again. She knew you were right but what else could she offer you for your cooperation? You wouldn’t budge so easily. She decided to be honest with you, for reasons she herself couldn’t understand. Perhaps you were just charming enough.

  ‘No. He won’t. But I do want to help you. I-’

  ‘Look, it will never work out between us. I know that you’re trying to bring Callum on your side by telling him a story about how both of your mothers were killed by an assassin but he won’t get you what you want. No one here will.’ you paused, to let her mull over your words a bit. Not giving her the option to open her mouth, you continued.

  ‘Your father, you, and your countless followers can’t seem to understand that the Order you’re all trying to achieve so hard will never be realised. While we Assassins fight for the Freedom, we understand that we can’t give people too much of it, or the world would become even more chaotic than it already is. The Order on the other hand practically equals slavery. You are trying to find the Apples of Eden like the one behind you.’ She turned to look at it but made no move to close the lid of the chest.

  ‘What do you think your fellow Templars would do to the innocent people? Enslave them. Make them mindless puppets to play around with.’

  ‘My father has always said that our the Templar Order would make our world peaceful. That we would never have to fight anyone again.’

  ‘Then you were either raised as a blind mole or an ignorant fool. Look around you. Why do we, perfectly normal people, have to be kept in cells and used as your personal Indiana Jones’ to find a thing that you have absolutely no real knowledge of? Oh yes, you have absolutely no idea how the Apples, or should I say any of the Eden Artifacts, work.’ She was stunned, to say the least. The things you just said...seemed baffling to her. She slowly and with a small hesitation, started to believe your words. The Templars had neither good and peaceful intentions nor the knowledge on any of the artefacts of Eden, and that one day, it would be their downfall.

  ‘I believe you, Y/N, but unfortunately, I don’t have the power to release you. My father would never betray the Order or its principles.’

  ‘But I see that you can. I’m not going to offer you a place within the Brotherhood. You can come there yourself if you want to. The only thing I’m actually pleased about is that you finally know the truth and recognize it. No one benefits from lies - everyone has to swallow the bitter pill in the end .’ With that, you left her lab, letting her think it over and decide for herself, whether she’ll betray her father or not.

  While you were talking to Sofia, Callum faced his shadowy ancestor in his cell, staring at him through the glass window, looking him in the eye. After the last Animus session, he began experiencing hallucinations, dubbed “the Bleeding Effect”. He couldn’t tell the difference between what was real and what wasn’t. Unbeknownst to him though, Alan Rikkin was looking at him through the one-way mirror, silently observing his moves. He was fascinated by it because as a Templar, he would never be able to experience such a thing. It just didn’t work on the Templars as a whole. But there was also that feeling of dread like he knew something bad would happen with his ‘guest of honour’, like he would be able to tear down the whole facility if he kept gaining Aguilar’s combat experience. He would have to keep a close eye on him.

  You don’t hear it when it happens. The Riot. You simply stare at the ceiling, doing nothing. Then suddenly, Moussa barges in through the door to your right. You jump up from the bed and raise an eyebrow, silently asking ‘What?’ He only smiles and throws you a strong rubber baton.

  ‘We goin’ hunting now?’ you ask.

  ‘After you.’ he motions to the door, and without a thought, you ran into the hall so fast, that Moussa is having trouble with keeping up with you. The more unconscious or dead bodies you pass, the stronger your will fight is. Spotting a guard stepping out of a hallway, you run up to him and jump in the air, just high enough to flip and land on his shoulders, twisting his neck with your thighs. Your companion is very impressed, to say the least. When you finally reach the main hall, you see the other Assassins having finished the fight in there. Emir runs up to you.

  ‘We need to find Cal.’ you’re quicker than Moussa.

  ‘In the Animus room. He’s there, I know it.’

  ‘Then let’s go!’

  The fight between you six and the guards doesn’t last long. Nathan lays dead on the floor along with Emir. It was safe enough to take a breath. Callum though has another idea in his mind apparently, and runs away to God knows where. Then you realize that he’s after Sofia. ‘She will escape, Cal. You won’t catch her in time.’ The three of you - Moussa, Lin, and yourself, leave the room, but not before bowing your heads in respect of your fallen comrades.

You and Callum escape the facility.

  ‘You want to get that Apple, don’t you?’ he asks you one night after your escape. You nod.

  ‘I was after it long before I let myself get captured by them. Sometimes it’s necessary to take such risks.’ You briefly thought of Lucy and her betrayal. ‘But they don’t always pay off.’

  ‘I assume you know much more about the Creed.’

  ‘I do. I’m one of its current leaders actually. I know that you’re not familiar with the name of William Miles but he’s the one who is trying to keep the Brotherhood together. He’s given away a lot of things to keep it that way, and I’m trying not to let him down because he’s the only blood family I have left.’ You hug your shoulders, and Callum puts his jacket on your shoulders, trying to keep you warm and at the same time comfort you.

  ‘True, I don’t know him but you could introduce us to each other someday perhaps? Right now, we need to follow Alan Rikkin and retrieve the apple he’s stolen.’

  ‘That’s the part where you realize that we Assassins can never afford any holidays. We always have to be on the move, always have to be alert and cautious. It gets so tiresome sometimes that you wish you were already dead and at peace.’ He actually laughs at this. What would Moussa and Lin say about this? Perhaps the guy upstairs knows, you can’t tell.

  ‘Indeed. Now, let’s sleep. We won’t have enough time for it tomorrow

The next day is practically all a blur to you. Alan and his followers converge at a ceremony in a Templar sanctuary in London to celebrate their ‘triumph’. You all dress up into black hooded outfits. Rikkin begins his speech. His neck gets pierced by a hidden blade. He lies in a pool of his own blood, while Callum retrieves the Apple from his hands. Sofia cries for her father and vows revenge against Cal. The four of you depart, vowing to protect the Apple from the Templars.

Present day, Luxembourg

"How glad am I to finally have you back in my arms," Shaun sighs as he holds you close to him. You squeeze him tighter, letting a tear escape your eye.

"And I you, Shaun. Frankly, it was a mess in there. I’m glad that it’s finally over."

"Me too but I know that you were able to handle things in there just like you always do - perfectly."

"Don’t flatter me, you bastardo." you mocked him with a perfect Italian accent, which he loved, if anyone asked you. Rebecca went over to you two and gave you a tight hug which you happily returned.

"I was really worried, Ryder. Try to be more careful next time, okay?"

You rolled your eyes, “I always am. Now let me go and attend the Council. As rather useless as it is, I need to give them a full report about what happened in Spain."

”Alright, go but return ASAP. We’ll need you, and this guy over here specifically.’ She pats Shaun on the shoulder and he answers with an indignant ‘Hey!’

As soon as you leave the room, you spot Callum standing in the shadows at the end of the long hall. He looks you in the eye and nods. You nod back.

The plan is set in motion.

[perfectcreaturerarelyseen]

The Fate of the Fae | 04 (m)

Pairing: Andrew Hozier-Byrne/Unknown Female

Genre: Fantasy, Modern, Romance, Smut, Fluff, Angst

Word: Chapter 4: 1,821

Summary: Andrew Hozier-Byrne unknowingly searches for the woman that pulled him from the bog 3,000 years ago. Unknown to either of them that in this modern world their souls are still intertwined from the life they shared long ago. She is unavailable, he’s not giving up. Will the woman that inspires his music be wooed by his songs or will he lose his chance? That’s Wasteland, Baby!

Note: A/N: This is a story requested by my best friend to be written about her favorite musician. I have been inspiried by his songs and specific lines. Any reference to his music is used in the name of inspiration and creating art. I do not own any of his music. Any reference to Hozier in this story is fictional and used by the author in the name of crafting art. I want to thank all who read it. I have fallen in love with writing this story and would love to hear from you. It will be written in installments. The finished story will be at the very least over 50,000 words. Enjoy.

The Fate of the Fae: Chapter 4

They called her the willow woman and the forest father was hopelessly heartsick for her.

As they trekked back from the forest father’s cabin to the doomed village he fell in love a little more each day. It was small things. The way her front right tooth was a little crooked but she never tried to hide it when she laughed, which to his delight was often.

Her laugh was like the tinkling sound of shells strung from his cabin roof. It rang through the clearing. He could tell from looking at the elder and the lines creased into her forehead she was losing hope. However her daughter, the willow woman, was hopelessly hopeful still. She maintained that they could save the village.

The forest father did not share her same hope but he still loved to hear her talk about the happier times her village would come to know in the future.

She believed he would save them.

He knew desperately that he was no savior.

When the elder fell asleep at night he would walk the edge of the woods with her. She was the first woman he’d known that did not jump at the sound of the baying monsters deep in those dark woods.

She closed her eyes and relished the sound.

She was wild.

And feral.

He was in love already.

It was unheard of a fae born outside of a clan being with the daughter of an elder.

It was more than unheard of it, it was forbidden.

He knew, he knew, he could not be with her.

Yet, still he'd let his fingers graze hers as they walked, talking about anything and everything. Her dreams, his music, the woods, the water, the trees, this earth that was constantly changing.

One night when he grazed her fingers with the rough tips of his calloused hand she slipped her hand into it. He was shocked and almost froze his heart beating faster than it ever had. He felt foolish in a way. The forest father, pillar of pride, falling in love. He couldn’t help it. It was a force beyond him.

He gripped her hand tighter as if he could keep her anchored to him that way. He ran his thumb over the back of her hand and she did not say anything about how rough his skin was.

They did not talk then. They did not need to. They both could hear what the other’s heart was calling out.

They were in love.

They were doomed.

Such is the fate of the fae.

OoOo

When his time came they could lay him gently in the cold dark earth and he would crawl back to her. The thought came to Andrew’s mind from somewhere deep inside. He felt a connection to this woman, Madison, in a way he had never been connected to someone before.

He needed her. Every move of her body, everything she did made his heart ache. She pushed her long hair back over her shoulder and it almost looked purple in a trick of the light. It was like a punch to the stomach seeing that hair color but he couldn’t tell why.

She looked instead of amazed by his magic trick of pulling the name from thin air impressed. Like this was the response she had been hoping for.

'I’m...” He started to say just to fill in the silence that stretched long and thin between them. She eyed him suspiciously.

“Andrew.” She supplied just as he had and he shook a little. Did she actually know the name or did she recognize him?

“Do you know who I am?” He asked stupidly feeling like it was an arrogant question. It felt different though, as if he was asking her if she knew who he was from a long long time ago even though this was their first meeting.

“No...should I?” She didn’t meet her eyes when she said it. She was hiding something. He frankly didn’t care.

“No. I’m nobody.”

“Everybody is somebody.” She replied a wry smile on her face. That smile matched his. A slightly crooked front tooth. Some memory wanted to tug itself free from his mind but he wouldn’t allow it. Stay in the moment he told himself over and over again.

Her smile faltered as her phone let out a high electric chirp. She quickly pulled it out of her pocket and glanced down at the screen. A look of almost horror passed over her face and she stuffed the phone into her pocket. Scanning the crowd as if looking for someone she turned wide eyes to him.

“I’ve got to go.” She told him in a rush and started making her way through the small crowd of people still hypnotized by the music and gyrating to it’s call.

“Wait...wait please!” He shouted following her through the crowd and out onto the busy street.

“I need to be somewhere.”

“I need to talk to you. Can we exchange numbers or something?” Or anything he thought desperately. He’d gladly throw her laughing over his shoulder and carry her back to his hotel if she’d let him. He shook his head. It was another thought that felt completely foreign to him.

“I...no...I just can’t. Let me go Andrew.” He wasn’t even touching her but he could feel the weight of her words. She was telling him to back off. He respected everything about her so he did. Stopping dead in his tracks on the street he watched her as she wandered away from him. Every movement of her body moved him. When she moved he was moved. It was a desperation.

When she was a good ten feet away she stopped dead in her tracks and paused. He held his breath as she paused. He watched her pull something out of her pocket then she spun on her heels and marched towards him. She got close enough that she could grasp his shirt. She yanked and he obligingly lowered his head.

“Tell no one I gave you this.” She slipped a piece of paper into his hand. The feel of her hot breath on his ear blowing strands of hair that tickled his face made him grow hot. He wanted to turn and let their lips simply brush. A featherlight kiss as if he had never been there. Then he saw the wide eyed look she carried and he drew back. She was scared. Scared of what she’d just done.

She spun back around and stalked off down the street.

He took the time to glance down at the piece of paper tucked into his hand. Her name and a phone number were crawled in hurried handwriting. He looked up but she’d already disappeared. The smell of perfume like lilies of the valley still hung in the air.

He felt empty without her presence. He carefully folded the paper and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

“Hey, I thought you’d abandoned me for another stranger.” Larry joked coming up behind him and almost scaring the crap out of him. He refrained from jumping at the sound of his voice. Still her stared up the street as if the very weight of his stare could force her to come back.

“Any stranger, the stranger the better.” He murmured thinking of this purple haired Cinderella running off down the street at the call of her phone as if the very device owned her life.

“Ready to head back?” Larry clamped him on the shoulder. He had to lift his hand to reach his shoulder as Andrew was sprouted like a tall tree. He waited a few moments before answering still staring at the space she had occupied only moments before. He waited to see if she would return. When the silence had stretched on too long he turned to Larry.

“Yeah mate. Let’s head back.”

He couldn’t help but turn his head one last time and he could swear he saw her resting against the building, one booted foot resting against it, watching him. When he blinked though she wasn’t there.

OoOo

She watched him go until he was safely down the street. Then she turned the corner and rushed down the sidewalk.

“What took you so long?” His voice was slick like oil, the serpent long sent from Eden to terrorize her. She looked up at him, her keeper.

“I had to shake someone.” She told him as he ushered her towards the black town car waiting for her at the curb with a hand on her lower back. Frankly a little too low for her liking.

“Anyone I need to take care of?” He chewed on his toothpick and raised one questioningly eyebrow at her. A chill went through her body. She could imagine what he would do. The blade he would bury in his sternum and jerk until silver blood spilled across the sidewalk. Not Andrew, please not him.

“No I took care of it.” She hadn’t. She’d made everything worse by giving him her number. It was stupid. She couldn’t help it if she tried. When they danced, like they were standing still, like they were the only people in the room, she could feel every ounce of love she felt for him lifetimes ago. She ached for him and his absence from her now hurt like the very knife cut this snake of a man would dig into her if he found out what she’d done.

“As you say.” He mumbled climbing into the back of the car with him. She felt trapped as he closed the door and she stared out the dark tinted windows. She could see but hardly be seen.

Such was the fate of the fae.

OoOo

One winglessly winged creature trapped in the darkness of the life predestined for her drove from the sight of her love long past.

The other trudged through the streets, seeing her in every woman that danced and laughed merrily along the houses of sin he walked past.

Both held the other in their mind.

Both ached for each other.

Both felt the absence of one another in their arms, their hearts, the place they held the ultimate sensual flame.

They felt empty.

The man of the forest pulled out a lighter and lit another cigarette. In the flame he could see her and he could feel himself falling for the flame. He could hardly turn his eyes away from the burning red flame. All you ever have is your fire. Don’t tame it. Never ever tame those demons. He knew though, this feeling building inside of him, the feeling over her note burning like fire in his pocket needed to be kept on a leash.

He thought it ended when he knew love’s perfect ache.

He knew now that this feeling of emptiness would never leave.

Not until he felt the weight of her in his arms.

Her.

Madison.

Such was the fate of the fae.

OoOo

[timetrickster]

Aloha Oe X Edith Nox Crossover Episode 3: Gaia, The Eternal Garden

EPISODE 3! Let's GO!

@cometworks for her amazeballs characters and story.

Tagging: @thelysstener , @coloursintheblur

FADE IN:

INT. EDITH’S LIVING ROOM

After the trip through time having ended with an emotional scene between friends. The next day, JUSTIN sits on the EDITH’S couch looking sad. To which with worry and concern EDITH jumps in to comfort him.

EDITH

What’s wrong, Justin?

JUSTIN didn’t respond but acknowledges her presence.

JUSTIN

I’m fine… don’t worry.

EDITH’S powers glow within her senses.

EDITH

You know I’m an Empath, right? I’m not gonna leave till you feel better.

JUSTIN

I know… I just… I feel bad for yesterday. I shouldn’t have taken her back to see Clementine.

EDITH

No, don’t feel bad. You were doing something thoughtful for Violet.

JUSTIN

I didn’t mean for things to get out of hand…

EDITH holds his head on her lap treating him like a child. She pats his hand and caresses his hair to make him feel better.

EDITH

I know you mean well for Vi, but don’t feel sad or bad. Again you were trying to do something nice for her. And Clem was everything to her and her happiness…

JUSTIN

I know… I feel bad for having to stop her to save her.

EDITH

You knew what was best and you had to do the right thing. Even if you had to hurt her feelings in the process.

JUSTIN

Yeah… also, thank you for this.

He refers to the head patting and hair caressing.

EDITH

No problem.

She looks on the table seeing a new shiny object.

EDITH (cont’d)

What’s this you working on?

JUSTIN

It’s an Interdimensional Generator. It generates enough energy to open a gateway to the universe. Gotta get home somehow.

EDITH

Do you think we can visit your home universe??

JUSTIN

It’s still a prototype so I’m not too sure if it’ll properly work… unless I plug it in with the Time Drive to compensate for the external energy. Plus with Tachyon particles it’ll make the chance of opening a portal greater.

JUSTIN gets up from EDITH’S lap and grabs the prototype. Rushing out the door and returning to The Eternity. He runs to the engine room and grabs nearby tools and gets to work. EDITH follows with her cup of raspberry tea and far from view. NOEMI having flown sees her running to the ship.

VIOLET as well walked the path to her home. The two friends follow her as well. JUSTIN having finished the new plug in, smiles with glee. Rushing to the command deck, seeing Edith ready in her seat and holding on to her tea. NOEMI & VIOLET walk in and rush to their seat immediately.

Meanwhile outside without anyone’s knowledge. IMPERIUM arrives only to stowaway on the ship.

JUSTIN

Ready?

EDITH

Aye aye captain!

NOEMI

Let’s go.

VIOLET

Yes.

JUSTIN smiles at VIOLET’S response then pushes the lever forward. The portal to Universe 727 opens quickly and The Eternity flies through. The planet Gaia is within sight. JUSTIN smiles seeing his adopted world.

JUSTIN

Guys! Come look!

EDITH

Wouldn’t we get side effects?

JUSTIN

Only for Time Jumps, we’re in space. Come look.

EDITH gets out of her seat, with NOEMI & VIOLET following. They see what JUSTIN sees, Gaia. A shining world with a vast green color to it.

JUSTIN

Say hello to Gaia… my adopted home… well… one of them.

EDITH

Oh my Eden! IT’S BEAUTIFUL! Let’s go! Let’s go!

NOEMI

Uh… it’s really nice.

VIOLET

HOW DID YOU DO THIS?! We need to return home now!

JUSTIN

Come on Violet, we’re in my home universe. Please have a little fun.

VIOLET

Hm.

EDITH

Please.

EDITH turned on a puppy dog face, which VIOLET cannot resist despite her serious demeanor.

VIOLET

Fine! Just one trip and you take us back when we’re done. You got it, hero?

JUSTIN scared by her commanding personality nods.

JUSTIN

Yes, ma'am.

The Eternity flies down to the planet meanwhile IMPERIUM lurks in the shadows behind the friends.

IMPERIUM

This shall be interesting.

CUT TO:

EXT. CASTLE FLORANA.

In the airfield, The Eternity lands quietly. JUSTIN and the gang leave the ship. To find guards awaiting near the door.

GUARDS 1 & 2

Prince Justin.

They do a salute toward him.

JUSTIN

Guards.

He gives them a simple nod to recognize them.

EDITH

You’re a prince?!

VIOLET

Why have you withhold this information?!

JUSTIN

Yes and… uh… well, I guess I forgot to mention it.

JUSTIN leads the gang to the castle, as their walk included JUSTIN’S tour guide introduction to his adopted home of Gaia.

JUSTIN

Welcome to Gaia, The Eternal Garden! This is the Kingdom Of Florania. My adopted mothers and fathers rule this kingdom. I have my two aunts in their respective kingdoms, as well as one uncle ruling his own and leader of Florania’s armies.

They walked past intriguing and alien worlds. EDITH with her phone takes photos of literally everything. NOEMI looks around to get a lay of the land. VIOLET holds her serious demeanor but hides the fact she wants to explore some more. The group arrives at the castle doors.

The doors open instantly and show a throne room with style. The floor was laid with shining gold, the pillars we’re trees that rose higher than anyone with many more flowers surrounding it. There were five thrones, two sitting higher above the rest. While three symmetrically apart were placed below them. There were people sitting and discussing in the thrones.

JUSTIN along with the rest of his friends walk toward them.

JUSTIN

Hi mom, mom, mom, dad, and dad.

They all turned to see JUSTIN and his new friends. ANGELIQUE stands up and rushes toward him.

ANGELIQUE

My baby boy!

She hugged him instantly and kisses his face multiple times.

JUSTIN

Momma!

EDITH, NOEMI, & VIOLET make little laughs at his expense. ANGELIQUE notices his new friends.

ANGELIQUE

Hi! Nice to meet you! My name is Angelique. I am the High Queen of this kingdom.

EDITH the bundle of joy she becomes instantly excited meeting a Queen from another universe.

EDITH

Hi! My name is Edith Nox! It’s nice to meet you! I’m really excited to be here!

ANGELIQUE

I can tell little one. Nice to meet you.

ANGELIQUE turns to NOEMI.

ANGELIQUE (cont’d)

And you are sweetie?

NOEMI a nervous wreck as always, but he pushes himself to speak more confidently.

NOEMI

Hello… your highness? My name is Noemi Sol… uh…

ANGELIQUE

You’re a nervous boy, aren’t you?

NOEMI nods and keeps his head down for a bit. Until ANGELIQUE puts her hand on his shoulder.

ANGELIQUE (cont’d)

Hey, it’s okay sweetie. It’s very nice to meet you, Noemi.

NOEMI

Uh… (clears throat and picks himself up) It’s very nice to meet you too ma’am.

ANGELIQUE’S smile made him smile, she turned to VIOLET.

ANGELIQUE

And who might you be? A fearless warrior?

VIOLET with the enormous amounts of confidence you’ve ever seen.

VIOLET

I am Princess Violet Choi of the ??? Kingdom, your majesty.

She kneels as a form of respect toward ANGELIQUE. ANGELIQUE does the same for VIOLET as well.

ANGELIQUE

A fearless warrior indeed. As well as a royal, it is nice to meet you as well. Where are you all from? Earth?

JUSTIN

From a different universe.

ANGELIQUE looked at JUSTIN for a moment, then back at EDITH, NOEMI, & VIOLET.

ANGELIQUE

Really?! We’ve never had visitors from another universe before! It is nice to meet you all! Since you will be our guest for the day, I will have my son and a few of his siblings around to show you around the town.

EDITH

Yay!

ANGELIQUE

Children!

The few siblings assemble quickly. BARA zooming into the throne room with LEANA on his back and ICARUS flying in the room.

ANGELIQUE

Meet some of my children, my second and third eldest and middle child have gone away on trips. But the children around shall show you around.

JUSTIN’S siblings rush up to meet each of their eldest brother’s new friends. Starting with BARA & LEANA who meet EDITH first. Zooming toward her first.

BARA

Hello! I’m Bara!

He says with a smile and thumbs up. LEANA jumps off his back and introduces herself to EDITH as well.

LEANA

Hi! I’m Leana! You’re really pretty!

The excitable EDITH jumps with joy to meet new aliens, BARA an alien with superspeed and LEANA are lioness little girl.

EDITH

Hi! Nice to meet you too! I’m Edith! You’re fast! And you’re so adorable!

She says to both of them. ICARUS lands before NOEMI.

ICARUS

Hey, dude names Icarus. You a Volantigar too?

NOEMI finally meeting JUSTIN’S winged adopted brother becomes nervous.

NOEMI

Uh… no… actually… I’m human… from another universe… I’m also a Necromancer. We usually have… uh… mutations and stuff and I got wings.

ICARUS

That’s cool dude.

NOEMI

Haha… Thanks, dude.

LEANA rushes toward VIOLET.

LEANA

Hi!

Her smile, allowed VIOLET to let her guard down a little.

VIOLET

Hello…

VIOLET (V.O)

WHAT DO I DO?! WHAT DO I DO?!

LEANA

Edith told me your name is Violet. That’s a really pretty name.

VIOLET

Yes… yes, it is and thank you for the compliment.

LEANA

Want me to be your partner to show you a round?

VIOLET smiles.

VIOLET

I’d love that.

NOEMI sees LEANA.

NOEMI

You’re adorable!

VIOLET picks up LEANA like a baby and roars at NOEMI.

VIOLET

BACK OFF SHE’S MY PARTNER!

EDITH walks up to ANGELIQUE.

EDITH

I apologize… she’s a bit rough around the edges… please forgive her.

ANGELIQUE

It’s alright sweetie. Some of my kids are the same way.

She looks at JUSTIN.

JUSTIN

Mom!

EDITH & ANGELIQUE both laugh.

ANGELIQUE

Always a stubborn boy that one. Go now, enjoy the tour of our kingdom.

CUT TO

EXT. FREYR. AFTERNOON

JUSTIN, EDITH, NOEMI, VIOLET, BARA, LEANA, & ICARUS walk into town. Well to be exact, JUSTIN walked, EDITH piggybacked on BARA’S back will super speeding his way. NOEMI & ICARUS flew because of their wings, VIOLET with LEANA on her back used her ice magic creating a road of ice leading to the town. JUSTIN tired from the walk.

JUSTIN

You guys couldn’t have waited for me?!

They laugh at him then continue on. JUSTIN does his whole introduction thing to his friends.

JUSTIN (cont’d)

Welcome to Freyr, the little town that connects to our castle and home to The Mother Tree.

EDITH the lover of nature takes an instant photo.

JUSTIN (cont’d)

Also… (he looks at his watch) It’s almost time you guys!

BARA, ICARUS, & LEANA pull EDITH, NOEMI, & VIOLET near The Mother Tree. It blooms greatly, sprouting alien flowers beyond human imagination. EDITH had clenched both fists together as she was excited for the natural blooming of a tree. A wave of wind had flown near the tree and the fragrance of pomegranate filled the air. A sweet aroma made the denizens of Freyr fill their hearts with joy and content.

EDITH closes her eyes due to the smell, feeling the same feelings as the denizens. NOEMI felt a sense of calmness and VIOLET’S feels some semblance of happiness.

EDITH

What was that?

BARA

The Mother Tree blooms and the smell of pomegranate fill the air with its magical scent.

After that magic moment, the group enjoys a night on the town. They eat food, do fun activities, listen to music, and so much offered to them. They walk toward the castle, EDITH holding a small potted plant as her souvenir from Gaia. VIOLET with a blade made from dark blue crystal, as the handles have a design of a flower. NOEMI a necklace holding onto a diamond in the shape of a star, which in truth has an actual star inside.

JUSTIN is carrying LEANA as she is asleep and as her big brother, his responsbility. BARA & ICARUS tired from their night on the town walk with them.

EDITH

What did you guys get?

VIOLET

I got a Crystal Flower Sword… so pretty!

EDITH

Noemi?

NOEMI

I got Peri a star necklace.

JUSTIN steps into the conversation

JUSTIN

It has an actual star in it by the way.

NOEMI

REALLY?!

JUSTIN nods while smiling.

JUSTIN

Jewelry is usually from the Light Kingdom. My aunt rules there and the kingdom is in the clouds so it’s easy for most jewelers to get some falling stars. And I know your little sister is gonna love that.

The stars in the sky were bright and shining. The friends and siblings arrive at the castle doors. It opens instantly but without expectations. The echo of a slow clap is heard in the room. The friends see ANGELIQUE and the rest of the kings and queens outcold.

JUSTIN, BARA & ICARUS rush toward them with concern.

JUSTIN

Moms! Dad! (He breathes heavily while still holding Leana) What happened?

JUSTIN stands up, tilts his head.

JUSTIN (cont’d)

Violet… Icarus… arm yourselves.

VIOLET & ICARUS knowing what he meant, draw their nearest weapons on their persons. ICARUS summons a weapon with his gauntlet and summons sword. VIOLET’S ice magic makes a sword and she draws the Crystal Flower sword.

JUSTIN (cont’d)

Bara… get your suit now. Take Leana to bed too,

BARA zooms to JUSTIN to grab LEANA and zooms away to find his suit and put LEANA to bed. JUSTIN draws both his weapons his katana and laser revolver. EDITH sets her plant down somewhere safe and NOEMI places the necklace in his pocket. Both summon their magic into their hands waiting for whatever impending attack is to come for them all. All of a sudden a familiar voice echoes throughout the room.

It was IMPERIUM’S voice.

IMPERIUM (V.O)

Hello once again, Time Trickster.

JUSTIN recognizing him instantly, he was quick to react. His face morphed into shock then to anger. He clenched his teeth, his nose crinkled and his eyebrows lowered as he wears his so called “war face”

JUSTIN

Show yourself Imperium.

IMPERIUM (V.O)

I see you brought your new magic friends to our universe. Their magic was quite… what’s the word? (He takes a few seconds to find the right word.) Delectable. Necromancing, Cryokinesis, Empathy. I do enjoy absorbing this… magic.

His voice was calm yet when he spoke it felt more sinister.

VIOLET

Show yourself, you coward!

IMPERIUM (V.O)

Oh, Violet. Always the warrior aren’t you? A scared blood blue little girl hiding behind a heart of steel.

VIOLET

I fear no one.

IMPERIUM (V.O)

Yet I can sense that deep down… you are afraid. I absorbed Edith’s magic… you can’t deny that.

IMPERIUM (V.O) (cont’d)

Noemi… the withdrawn mutant. Forever nervous and hates being left alone. Afraid of standing out. How, pathetic?

NOEMI

Shut up!

His voice trembled a little as he said that.

IMPERIUM (V.O)

Was that your best response to my insult? And Edith… the girl who represses her rage... afraid of what may happen when she releases it. 

EDITH’S face shown tears in her eyes, knowing that what he said was true. She remained silent.

He appears before all of them, as he continued slowly claps. The echo finally stops as his hands stopped clapping. He still maintained his primary red color and his same featureless body except for his glowing white eyes. JUSTIN jumps in front of all them and stands as their defender.

IMPERIUM

Time Trickster. Big fan. A pleasure to finally talk to you. (His voice became more emotional. As he switched from sinister to decent) I mean, all you did was chase me down and shoot my ship and thrown me into another universe only to freeze me in time and bury me at the bottom of the ocean. And so far… you haven’t disappointed. I would like to apologize for your parents, I absorbed their energies and gained their power which was most exquisite. Such power they have within them.

JUSTIN

I’m gonna kill you.

His voice lacked emotion but made up with seriousness and depth.

IMPERIUM

That’s the Time Trickster I wanted to see! Legends talk about you as a hero of the universe. A mysterious vagabond who walks forever in time. But to your enemies they speak of you as a monster, fearing the emotionless face of a Time Walker.

JUSTIN charges immediately. IMPERIUM reacts by freezing him instantly.

IMPERIUM

So eager to fight.

Now ready to fight, he slowly walks toward the group. All of sudden everything stops, from BARA’S point of view. He zooms in within his Voltar Suit. A gigantic armored suit. He breaks JUSTIN free and then generates electricity in both hands.

He rushes toward IMPERIUM which he then claps both hands creating a rumbling wave of sound. Which disrupts IMPERIUM’S physical form as it starts to separate itself piece by piece. Looking like an abstract piece of art. JUSTIN rushes back to the group and holds his katana and holstering his revolver. BARA stops his super speed and stands by JUSTIN.

JUSTIN

Get Moms and Dads out of here now.

BARA nods and super speeds his way with their parents in hand. IMPERIUM regains his physical form quickly. VIOLET fires a blast of ice which he absorbs quickly. He turns into a full on ice monster. Forming a sword with his right arm swinging it around at the group. NOEMI flies away ad holds his arms in and has his hands formed in a certain way.

Green energy hand formed around both arms and his eyes glow green and his face showed what appears to be a skull. Ghosts are suddenly summoned and begin attacking IMPERIUM as they try and break down his ice form. ICARUS flies around him while attacking with whatever weapon he summons. All sharp objects even blasters. EDITH begins to breath heavy and her aura turns red.

She roars this scream that sounded of pain and agony and summons what seems to be a beam of “Wrath” and fires it at him. EDITH faints instantly after draining her energy. JUSTIN rushes over and catches her, VIOLET stands in front of both them to defend them from any of IMPERIUM’S attacks.

JUSTIN

ICARUS!

ICARUS lands in front of JUSTIN.

JUSTIN (cont’d)

We need a crystal… they’re capable of absorbing energy. Can you make a containment unit?

ICARUS

Leave it to me!

ICARUS flies out of the room to go to his Workshop. BARA returns to get more licks in at IMPERIUM. The heat from the lightning bolts managed to be absorbed by him and he transforms into a lightning monster. He zaps away the souls and blasts NOEMI out of the air sending him to the ground. BARA with his Voltar suit and tries to be a lightning rod.

He absorbs what he could which helped him to go faster than the eye can see but IMPERIUM freezes him in ice stopping him completely. VIOLET blasts more ice in attempt to slow him down. His right leg absorbing the ice magic as his legs starts to drag. He blasts her with a lightning shock and kneels on the floor in pain. JUSTIN lays EDITH down on the floor and stands up.

He stands up and breathes in and puts both his hands out his eyes glow white. A mark in the shape of an oval appears on his forehead. IMPERIUM just suddenly stops and begins to twitch everywhere. Everyone watches as JUSTIN do this newfound power. All of sudden the absorbed energy begins to fly out of his body.

JUSTIN waves his hand as if he were doing some ancient spell or ritual. The energy absorbed returned to everyone from who he had taken. He reverts to his normal self, a glowing red featureless body with white eyes. JUSTIN’S eyes revert back to normal and the mark disappears. IMPERIUM was on his hands and knees, breathing heavily for air.

IMPERIUM

(Heavy breath in and out) You really live up to the legend.

ICARUS returns with a pink crystal containment unit. It shaped as a rectangular box made out of the material. He hands it to JUSTIN.

JUSTIN

Thank you.

He holds the box out but IMPERIUM holds his hand out to stop him for a moment.

IMPERIUM

Wait… just to warn you. Something dark is coming for their universe.

JUSTIN looks at VIOLET for a second as she also overheard the conversation. He holds the box out and IMPERIUM is imprisoned within the Crystal Box. JUSTIN breathes heavy then a sigh of relief. He sits down with the box in one hand and lays down on the floor due to tiredness.

JUSTIN

Here we go again…

FADE TO BLACK

END OF EPISODE 3

[pamphletstoinspire]

Catholic Social Doctrine - Part 1 - The Dignity of The Human Person

Here is Part 1 of a seven part series outlining the Four Pillars of Catholic Social Teaching. Forget The Da Vinci Code or the Hidden Secrets of the Vatican or the other conspiratorial rubbish people run around looking for in the Church’s attic. Here is the real Best Kept Secret in the Church:

The Dignity of the Human Person

Catholic social doctrine mystifies many people. Is it political or theological, spiritual or practical, left or right, modern or ancient?

Rather like the moment Jesus asked his apostles, “Who do people say that I am?” and got a wide diversity of opinions and guesses back, so today the Church’s social teaching is regarded with tremendous confusion.

It’s good, then, to take a look at how the Church herself understands her social doctrine and to see how she traces the roots of this doctrine back to the teaching of the Twelve Apostles.

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church does this and is the indispensable basis for understanding everything that follows from it. In the words of Pope St. John Paul II: “The theological dimension is needed both for interpreting and for solving present-day problems in human society” (Centesimus Annus, 55).

The first thing to notice is that the Church’s teaching on social doctrine is indeed rooted, as all of her teachings are, in the apostolic Tradition — particularly as it is expressed in Scripture. This, in itself, is often a revelation to many moderns, both Catholic and non-Catholic, who often seem to be under the impression that Catholic social doctrine is an attempt by the Church to be hip, not an attempt to be faithful to the teaching of Christ.

In reality, however, Catholic social doctrine springs not from some social, economic or political theory of recent vintage. Rather, it arises from the often uncomfortable fact that God has given us not one, but two, great commandments. The first is, of course: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). If the faith simply consisted of this commandment, we would be able to go to some sort of private worship ceremony in our prayer closet and pay no attention to anybody but God. It would be the perfect “Me and Jesus” sect of one.

But Jesus forever complexified matters when he immediately added: “And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:39-40). Yet he complexified it further still, when he ratcheted up the command to love others as we love ourselves — which gave us enough slack to treat others as badly as we treat ourselves — to the command that we love one another as he has loved us (John 15:12).

It is from the demand of perfect love, not merely for a perfect God, but for highly imperfect neighbors, that all of Catholic social teaching springs. The whole doctrine is plainly impossible and absurd without the grace of God, of course — like expecting a horse-whipped and crucified man to walk out of a tomb in a miraculously glorified body. But since the confidence of the Church is that this is precisely what has occurred, let’s take a look at Catholic social teaching anyway.

Catholic social teaching sits on a throne with four legs:

1. The Dignity of the Human Person 2. The Common Good 3. Subsidiarity 4. Solidarity

Over the next four columns, we will look at each of these, starting presently with the dignity of the human person.

Catholic social teaching begins at the beginning, with the fact that God is the origin of all that exists and the measure of what should be. Every social reformer, even an atheist, who cries in outrage, “That’s not the way it is supposed to be!” — when a child starves, or an oppressed worker commits suicide, or a war breaks out, or a poor mother is bled white by tyrannical taxes or a lunatic dictator starves his people — has in the back of his mind, however dimly, a notion of what the Church calls “the dignity of the human person.”

That dignity is rooted in the fact that each and every human person is not a mere animal and still less a mere thing. This is why slavery is evil: It reduces persons to things called property. It is why prostitution is evil: It reduces persons to things used to gratify a particular sensation. It is why murder is evil: It reduces persons to things called corpses.

Each human person is a creature made in the image and likeness of God: an animal with a rational soul, capable of communion with God, able to love, to think creatively, to see, think and feel beyond mere appetite. We are not a means to an end. We are, according to the Church, the only creatures in the universe that exist for our own sake (The Church in the Modern World, 24): made out of the sheer love of God and intended for free union in the love of God.

In short, Catholic teaching on our dignity begins with the fact that creation — especially the creatures called homo sapiens — is entirely gratuitous. Out of sheer love God created both the universe and us and calls us to share in his divine life. He forgives our sins, generously pouring himself out to us while calling, teaching and enabling us to do as he does and to become participants in his divine life.

All authentic religious experience takes us toward this reality, which is why the Golden Rule — “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” — is universally recognized. Cats see no reason to be fair to mice, but humans grasp that everybody is owed fair dealing, justice, etc. — even when they won’t admit it. Some will try to deny this, but the fact is that when people selfishly try to deny it to others, they always claim it for themselves and complain that they are being treated unfairly. This elemental demand for justice and human rights is the giveaway that we intuit something different about the nature of human beings: the fact that we are creatures made in the image and likeness of God.

This primordial recognition of the moral law is called “natural revelation” and is at the root of subsequent supernatural revelation, which begins to take place through the call of Israel as God’s chosen people.

Israel’s expression of this primordial insight about the dignity of the human person comes (as is typical for this ancient people) in imagery that is profoundly liturgical. So we see, for instance, in the creation narrative of Genesis 1, a description of creation that is redolent of the liturgical imagery of Israel. Creation is pictured as the construction of a gigantic temple, just as the Temple in Jerusalem was festooned with decorations to recall Eden.

And just as ancient temples had an image representing their peoples’ god or gods, so the Temple of Creation built by God in Genesis has an image of God as well: man and woman — any man and woman, every man and woman. Everything else in all of creation exists for their sake. Even the very law of God himself is made for man, not man for the Law (Mark 2:27).

Man and woman are placed in the Garden as priest-kings and queens, tasked with tending the garden of creation. (Genesis uses Hebrew words to describe the work of Adam in the garden identical to those used to describe the work of the Levitical priests in the Temple.) Adam and Eve’s primordial task is union, fruitfulness, rule, work and worship — all reflections of the love, creativity, lordship, power and beauty of the God whose image they reflect.

To be sure, sin enters into the picture with the Fall. But sin is, nonetheless, not the most basic fact about us. Sin is always parasitic on the most basic truth: that we remain creatures in the (damaged, but not destroyed) image and likeness of God.

That puts Catholic anthropology at odds with American culture, which comes out of a Calvinist and Puritan ethos — and which, therefore, sees original sin and the Fall, not the image of God, as the most fundamental truths about us. The simplest way to describe the difference is to say that our culture sees virtue as the mask and sin as the horrific face of the person, while Catholic anthropology sees sin as the anonymizing mask and virtue as the true face of the person, made in the image of God and, in Christ, exalted to participate in divine nature.

Because our dignity comes from our created nature — from the kind of creatures we are — and not from what we do, we retain our human dignity despite our sins. And since God is love, his intention for us remains in love, despite whatever sins we commit. And God’s will is always bent on our salvation: a salvation that involves the whole person (body, soul and spirit) and his relationships with every person and with all of the created world.

This brings us to the next leg on the throne of Catholic social teaching: the common good. Of which, more next time.

BY MARK SHEA

From: https://www.pamphletstoinspire.com/

[kijiboop]

Unfree World - One Shot “Flight”

A/N: warnings for A/B/O dynamics and sexually explicit interactions. 

All around me, nephilim and angels were fleeing through the gates. Overhead on the pillars stood Lucifer and Rishona, their wings spread wide as they held the gates, both singing the hymn of opening in flawless harmony. I still couldn’t believe Eden was real, let alone that there was a way for us to go there. Most of us had nothing more than an overnight bag and maybe some things in a garbage bag, whatever supplies we could stuff into a carriable state in a hurry. Some of us had even less.

I heard wingbeats and looked up as a brilliantly colored angel circled over me and then started to drop for the ground. I grinned when I recognized Killian. He was already aiming to land near Peg, his mate who was overseeing the transportation of what scientific gear they had been able to scavenge. He practically pounced on her and I heard her cry of surprise before she started to laugh. The laughter was welcome, especially after twenty-five years of angelic oppression and hiding.

“Ginny?” I turned when I heard my name and smiled when I saw Hunter. He was one of the fallen angels I knew fairly well from Hogback. “Could you um… I need some help.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m your girl. What can I do?”

I bit back a grin when his face flushed and he tilted his head to indicate behind him. “It’s… It’s Remy. He still can’t fly and I can’t carry him anymore.”

I nodded and followed him back to where Remy sat on the ground, wrapped in a blanket and his whole body seemed to list to the side, blown by the wind from Earth behind him. He looked up at me and smiled. “Hey,” he said in a wispy voice.

“Hey,” I sighed as I knelt down beside him. “How are you feeling?”

“A-OK,” he replied and gave me a thumbs-up with fingers so thin that I was afraid the blanket would bend them. “I just need a minute and I can walk again.”

I moved around so I was kneeling in front of him and Remy turned his head so he couldn’t meet my eyes. “Remy,” I said softly. “Look at me.”

“You don’t have to do this,” he whispered, still not meeting my eyes.

“I know.”

“You should be saving this. I know there’s a right one out there for you.”

I sighed and reached to lace my fingers through his. “Remy, look at me,” I repeated gently and he did this time, guilt written all over his face. “There’s a right one for you, too. You just haven’t found them yet. Neither have I. In the meantime, I can help you and I want to.”

“I’ll be fine in a minute,” he whispered. “Honestly, Ginny. I’m just tired.”

“Then kiss me and take a little rest.” I ran my hand down his cheek and watched him close his eyes with a long sigh. He leaned closer when I slipped my hand behind his neck and drew him forward, kissed him carefully. “It’s okay,” I murmured and smiled as his hands came up to frame my face. “It’s okay to need something.”

He sighed and kissed me, pulling me into his arms as the blanket started to slide off his shoulders and he shook out his long wings. I felt the shadow of another set of wings over us and I looked up to see Hunter standing with his back to us, shielding us with his wings to give us as much privacy as he could. “I don’t need,” Remy whispered against my neck as he held me tightly. “I don’t… want.”

I shifted in his lap, ran my hands over his shoulders and behind his neck. “There’s a difference between what your heart wants and what your body needs,” I told him softly. “I know that. Your body needs this. If you deny that, your body won’t survive to find what your heart’s looking for.” He kept his face pressed into my shoulder and I ran my fingers through his hair. “Please, let me help.”

“I don’t deserve this,” he rasped.

“You deserve to be happy,” I said and smiled when he looked up at me. “And I’ll admit,” I added in a more playful tone that made him blush, “you feel really damn good.” I took the edge of the blanket and pulled it closer around us as he gave in with a smile and rocked me back into the grass. I helped him with the belt of his pants, unfastened the fly and ran my fingers over his rapidly stiffening cock.

“Ginny,” he groaned when I gently closed my hand near the base of his cock, pressing my palm over his knot. “I’m not…”

“Would you stop arguing and help me with my pants?” I teased and was rewarded with a sheepish smile. Remy paused a moment, then reached down and helped me wriggle free of my jeans and panties. As he lowered himself down against me, I curled one leg around his hip and kissed his mouth when it was within reach. He groaned again and sank down, his cock pressed against my thigh as he stretched his wings over us. “Yes,” I whispered against his mouth and arched my back happily when he probed against me, his erection slipping easily between my labia. “Please.”

“You feel so good,” he moaned against my neck as he pressed deeper. “I wish I loved you, Ginny.”

I nosed against his face and he tilted his head to meet my eyes, breathing hard. “I do love you,” I whispered. “It’s a different kind of love.” Remy closed his eyes with a long, drawn-out groan and he kissed me again, hungry this time. He thrust against me and I gasped at the rush of sensation, then pushed my face into his shoulder, begging him in tiny sounds. His movements became more focused, more rhythmic as he rocked me back against the blanket, getting closer each time to what he needed. “Knot me,” I begged him, my lips brushing the edge of his ear. “Please, Remy.”

“Yes,” he rasped and I arched my back when his hand slipped behind me, lifting my hips up so he could press himself deeper. I watched his face as he moaned, then joined him in a breathless gasp as his knot locked into place within me. His thrusts were short, barely movements as much as pulses of his hips as he grunted quietly in my ear. “Yes.”

I writhed and clenched, felt his body try to draw back like he would thrust back in again but the knot prevented it. I moaned at the tug of his body and he answered with a low growl in his throat as he chased his orgasm. Finally, I fastened my ankles behind his back and bit back a joyful scream as he arched his back and howled himself out, wings wide and trembling in the sunlight. He collapsed back down and clung to me, his muscles trembling under my hands as I kissed his shoulder and neck.

“I wish you were mine,” Remy breathed against my skin and I smiled. “You feel so good. I hate myself for wanting you, for hungering for another angel’s mate.”

I ran my fingers through his sweat-damp hair and kissed his cheek. “Do you?” I asked him softly and his eyes found mine. “You want me?”

Remy stared into my face for a long time, then closed his eyes and tears started to trickle down his face. “I do,” he breathed. “God, Ginny, I want you. I want you to be mine. I want your smile to light my way home and your arms around me when I come to rest.”

I caught his cheeks between my hands and pulled him down to kiss him. “I love you, Remy,” I whispered. His eyes opened and I smiled at him. “Remiel.”

Slowly, he watched my eyes with growing disbelief and wonder before he kissed me hungrily again. “Ginny,” he gasped. “Virginia. I love you.”

“I’m yours,” I grinned when he paused in kissing me to sit back, pulling me with him. “If someday, someone else becomes yours or someone else becomes mine… we can talk about that when it happens.” I kissed him again while he flapped his wings in excitement, raising a wild wind around us. “Be my mate and I’ll be yours.”

Remy almost launched himself to his feet, pulling me up into his arms as he did and wrapping me tightly in his wings as he kissed me. I gasped at the strength in his embrace, at the sudden surge of vitality I felt under my hands. When he calmed down enough to unfurl his wings again, the sun shone on a face filled out from the drawn, desperate angel I had known. Muscle no longer wasted from disease and starvation twitched under my hands and I beamed up at him, awestruck. “You’re my savior,” he whispered, then scooped me against his chest again and I screamed when he took off into the air in a thunder of wings.

@genevievedarcygranger @lucifers-trash-stash @vizhi0n @girlwiththepapatattoo @gh0stboy @roguesandsaviors

[coreapologetics]

Why Is God Silent?

Dialogue with a doubter by Ron Davis

The following is a response to one of the many people God has privileged us with helping in the area of religious doubt. There is great anonymity in this process, and this blog does not violate this in any way. This person asked, “Why doesn’t God interact with me in an existentially substantive way?” This blog is a response to this question. I am sure there are many who can benefit from this response, so we have decided to make it available you in this format. If you need help in this area, or any other area of religious doubt, please feel free to contact us. We would love to help!

Why doesn’t God interact with me in an existentially substantive way? Many followers of Christ desire to have a real existential relationship with God that is consistent. You most certainly are one of these people and find yourself expressing, “I want to love you, but where are you?” I do not think this is unreasonable, nor do I think it is impossible to answer. I want to address this from a few areas. This is a very complex issue, and I want to try and cover it in a substantive way in this response but also, at the same time, begin a conversation that will continue.

This issue seems to be affected by the metaphysical concepts of reality and how “knowing” is even possible. I say this because you are struggling with accepting a reality where God exists but is silent, and the best we can hope for is agnosticism. The alternative explanation also troubles you because Christian theism is absurd without a personal relationship with God  — a concept that seems to elude you at this moment. In other words, a correspondence with reality (as defined by Christian theism) and a plausible correlation to the world you experience seem to be in opposition (or at least disjunctive). Thus, the question has to be asked: can we really know with precise certainty that true existence, and knowing/comprehending it, is something to be grasped? Within this framework/discussion, certainty is as much existential as it is intellectual. For instance: you are 100% certain that you have anxiety/confusion over why God does not existentially relate to you on a more regular basis. This certainty is as much an existential concept for you as it is an intellectual one. 

Consciousness demands an interaction and explanation of reality that requires confidence in our senses, cognitive abilities, etc., but it also requires our senses and cognitive abilities to be connected to an objective referent. Since we do not have one outside of our senses and cognition, the idea of exhaustive, 100% certainty is more of a straw man than an actual pillar of cognitive and/or faith related concepts of reality. I have come to embrace the idea that I can be certain that I exist and Christ, the resurrected Lord, is my Savior. This certainty is existential, i.e., peace of God, forgiveness of sins, joy, etc.; and it is also intellectual, i.e., the rationality of Christian theism, claims of Scripture, evidence (scientific, historical, anthropomorphic), etc. When I engage both of these, the most reasonable response is: yes, I truly exist and Christ is the impetus of this admission and the Truth by which I correspond to reality and correlate to the world (physical, emotional, spiritual). So, for me, 100% certainty is exhaustive inside of the proper faith framework. Outside of these parameters, what certainty can anyone have? Thus the beauty of the gospel: the brokenness of the world that brings about your anxiety over these issues has found its remedy in the person of Jesus Christ who came for one purpose: to redeem mankind and the world. From our discussion, you seem have experienced this redemption and have hope in Christ and the potential perspective that you, to a 100% certainty, not only exist but have value in God through Christ.

If the former is accurate, it requires admission of the value of humanity, even a single human, to be part of the redemptive expression of biblical concepts, i.e., God cares for mankind because of the redemptive work of Christ. The problem lies inside of the expectations you have for a relationship with a God who “loves,” has made himself “known” through natural and divine revelation, but seems to be hiding himself from the very ones that he claims to love and be reconciled to through Christ. So…let me make a connection to the previous discussion about “knowing” to the concepts of what is known by engaging the parameters of transposition. I would describe transposition as a way of life by which knowledge comes downward to us through sensory experience, i.e., we gather information from an existential and intellectual process providing lower level knowledge that connects to higher level experiences and/or concepts. For instance, you are reading this email because your eyes see organized funny-shaped objects that your brain has assembled into meaning. These objects were introduced to you as lower level knowledge that transposes into higher level understanding. Thus, all communication/learning takes place within this process, i.e., “knowing” is a fluid reality and not a static one. It seems reasonable to conclude that the the experience of knowing through sensory perception is a reflection of a principle that operates in the spiritual realm. Modernity did more than bifurcate these two realms (natural/supernatural), it also produced the desire within humanity to do so. (Maybe this is evidenced throughout history, but it seems to be more prevalent in post-enlightenment epistemology.) God does not share this desire, and it is evidenced by the Incarnation. Jesus brought both worlds together in a way that had not been realized since Eden (pre-Fall). Agreeing with Jürgen Moltmann, “Embodiment is the end of all God’s works” (God in Creation, 244). This Word-become flesh expression of reality enabled the redemption of man as the seen and unseen worlds merge into the beautiful expression of divine humanity — a God-man who redeemed a fallen world and forever merged two worlds together. No wonder Paul exclaims that we are “in Christ” all throughout his writings. Thus, the miraculous advent of Christ in the Incarnation gives the fullest expression of transposition: humanity can become vessels filled with the Spirit of God allowing the acts of redeemed men/women to become nothing less than works of the Divine.

What does this have to do with the silence of God (divine hiddenness)? Everything. The coming of Christ, as the transpositional act of God for man, produced the vehicle by which the world can know the good news of the gospel. Is God silent? Is he hidden? I would like to answer this with another question: are we silent? This broken world that we find ourselves in required a redemptive act — an act that could only be carried out by the One who could unite both the seen and the unseen. The transpositional nature of the Incarnation is evidence of the “beyond knowing” concepts of the Divine, and we, as his followers and mouthpiece, will sometimes have a hard time connecting our lower level learning with the higher level knowledge of the redemption of man, the love of God, and, most importantly, the existential nature of our relationship with him. Why is this so hard for us to grasp in our post-enlightenment world? We have a tendency to let reductionism run rampant without recognizing it for what it truly is: a way of perception and, not necessarily, a way of revealing, i.e., is it not a method by which cognitive realities can be clearly defined but a informative process that engages a part of the equation but not the whole. I think it is impossible to grasp what our existential relationship with God should/could be by comparing it, reductionistically, to relationships we have with friends, family, etc. It seems more prudent to construct a concept of the hiddenness of God based upon the transpositional elements of our relationship with him. Maybe the silence of God is more about the epistemic failure of man than an existential failure of God. Agreeing with Alvin Plantiga, the epistemic environment of mankind is not functioning inside of the original design of God, i.e., we live in a fallen world. This provides a framework by which epistemic blindness can be a reality (of course we have sinful structures, noetic failure/blindness, human freedom that brings epistemic harm, etc.). 

Maybe the silence of God is better described as the blindness of man, i.e., we have not positioned ourselves well to experience the existential presence of God. Is this because God is elusive and the road to experience with the Divine is a shadowy trail on the epistemic journey of existence? I would have to say, no. It seems better to conclude that we have, from a transpositional perspective, failed to connect the beauty and grandeur of God because we do not perceive the true benevolence of God inside of our own lack of being truly benevolent. Of course there could be a myriad of transpositional short-comings, and this is to be expected. After all, we live in a fallen world with a broken epistemic environment that will one day be redeemed, and the new heaven and the new earth will bring about what is so longed for — a return to an Edenic relationship with God. And this is all made possible by the redemptive work of Christ bringing hope to the world and the beautiful existential encounters with the Divine — even if they are remote, sporadic and seemingly fickle.

[saved-to-be-sent]

Thoughts on Elijah

It is one of the most challenging and overlooked statements of God when He asks Elijah for a second time, “What are you doing here?” in 1 Kings 19. Elijah, fresh off his part in displaying God’s majesty against the priests of Baal, has fled to the desert in fear of Jezebel. God calls to him, “What are you doing here?” Elijah gives Him a list of reasons why he is alone, hiding in the desert mountain of Horeb. It is reminiscent of Eden, when God called out, “Where are you?” to Adam and Eve—God is fully aware of the circumstances that brought Elijah to this place. He knows of the subjugation of the servants of the Lords and of the failures of the weak in Israel. He is entirely conscious of Jezebel’s order for Elijah’s death. Yet he asks. His question is not one of ignorance, but of quiet confrontation. It is a deep question; it is not the “why” of the situation, nor the “here” of the hideaway, nor even the “you” of the prophet. As a whole, God is leading Elijah to evaluate his heart at a deep level.

When God questions—whether he questions us, the prophets, Job, David, etc.—He is giving a chance for a heart to come to Him plainly, to find the true core of the issue and present it. When Elijah responds from a purely human level—as we all do so often—God says, “Come outside, I want to show you something.” And God causes things to pass before Elijah: fire, earthquake, and wind. It is important to note that God has been all of these things, and Elijah knows it. God has been wind from the beginning, as the Spirit that moved over the surface of the formless and void; His Spirit was in the wind that parted the sea to allow Israel to escape Egypt, and as the storm that enveloped Sinai. God’s might has been an earthquake: He split the Earth to swallow the evil of Israel after Sinai, and He opened the gates under the sea to flood the Earth in the time of Noah. He has been fire, both as the pillar to guard and guide Israel in the desert and as the consuming miracle in Elijah’s battle with Baal. All these things the Lord has been, all these things are clearly in his power and ability. Yet Elijah knows that none of these are God. It is not until the still, small voice, the quiet whisper, that Elijah is in the presence of Yahweh.

So God asks again: “What are you doing here?” In this repetition there is so much more than the first asking. In this, God says, “Now that you have seen all these things that I have been, that I could choose to be—now that you have seen that I don’t need to be these things, that I am God enough for you to recognize me as a whisper, again I ask you, ‘What are you doing here?’” He gives Elijah another chance, as He does with all of us, to change course, to reaffirm his trust in the God who could be so many things yet chooses intimacy Elijah, for his part, holds his ground in fear. He is more afraid of the influence of Jezebel than he trusts in the God who had just delivered him. It is a sad reminder of the frailty of our spirits and our need for faith. How frequently do we ourselves flee to a desert in fear of something or someone we have no reason to fear? How often does God then follow us, reminding us of His power and presence, yet we stand firm in our fears? God, if we are watching, parades before us daily reminders of all He has been and done for us, then whispers through His Spirit of His presence.

But we persist in our fear. We insist that the “why” of the situation is far more important than the prior displays of God’s continuing power. What all of this fear does, both for us and Elijah, is give God cause to continue demonstrating His authority, which can often make our current “why” and “here” seem downright pleasant. Elijah is intending to be rooted to his spot for fear, but God says, “Go back to the thick of it. Go back and be involved in the fight for my kingdom.” Elijah is set on the path to anoint his replacement at this point, and God is telling the prophet that the Lord moves despite fears. The fight for the Kingdom advances, and Elijah does not have the option of sitting it out. The Lord takes his fears and anxieties and says, “Still will I use you. The things you say you would do if not for fear I will do. I will bring you with me and you will see how and who I AM.”

What might have happened had Elijah released his fears and gone willingly?

What might God do with us if we go?

[the-empires-weapon]

Tirall

My hands are buzzing. All of my consciousness is restrained within the physical form of my body as the Force gathers within my limbs and tucks between my bones. Every scrap that flows into me, every living sense of it, is pulled into my form and locked into place. Made into storage space and then hidden within itself. I can feel the rapid fluttering of my eyelids, and the pull and stretch of my body. I think my lower lip is trembling. My fingers are twitching with the phantom pain, coils upon coils stuffed into each digit like taut springs.

My body is more alive than ever before, and I burn.

...den.

It’s something so distant I can’t pick it up. I can’t read it past the simple noise. A note, a sound, something without meaning or cause. It’s static in my ears. Saliva under my tongue.

...den, are you alright?

A tug, a quiet one, pulling at my mind. Concern.

G...you well...

Somebody’s there.

I tighten my grip on the tension within my body as my muscles stay loose. I pull my mind from its abyss and back to reality. I’m suddenly aware of the sun shining through the lids of my eyes, and the prickle of grass beneath my back. I finally hear the voice for what it is.

“Commander Eden, wake up.”

I flick my eyes open. I’m startled to see the face above mine - marred by scars, callous, twisted into a look of fear.

“Ar...cann?” I blink, still within a bit of daze. I slowly reach under me and push up, minding the dizziness in my head. “Where . . .?”

“Commander, you seem unwell. We’re just outside the base. You were . . .” Arcann stops there. I look to him; he’s kneeling next to me, lines of his body all taut as always. And when I look away from him, and around, I recognize where we are. We’re still on-base, resting in the grass several yards below the main promenade. Within my trance, I’d completely lost track of space - and of time.

I put a hand to my forehead. “How long was I- well, asleep?”

“Nobody’s seen you since this morning,” he insists. “Lana told me you’d taken the day off. For the third time this week.”

“They aren’t . . . ‘days off’. They’re preparation,” I mutter. Before he can ask, I drop my hand look back to him with a half-formed smile. “Sorry, Arcann. Was there something you needed? Or Lana?”

“I had wanted to speak with you. Lana hadn’t been sure where you were. I thought you had a Force Bond with her.”

“Oh- yeah. Um. I haven’t been feeling well, so I had to- erm. Close it,” is my excuse. Much as I wish he would, he’s clearly not buying it, and the lift of his brow says so. I have to remind myself that Arcann’s traumatized, and healing - not a fucking imbecile. I sure was the same way when I was younger (though again, I have to remind myself, we’re the same age). Again, I change the subject quickly. “So, what did you need? Sorry you found me sleeping on the job - I’m around if you need to talk.”

He looks around, as if almost paranoid. “This . . . doesn’t feel like the right place.”

“Because people might overhear?” I shrug. “Honestly, I’ve never seen anybody come down here before. That you found me, even, surprises me.”

“As I said, I’d wanted to talk.”

I nod. “Go on,” I tell him. Still, he hesitates. Another quick pass to make sure we were alone, and he finally sat, cross-legged, pooling his hands in his lap. He looks awkward like this, vulnerable - so much different from the Emperor I’d fought just a few years ago, much different from the man who’d locked me up and frozen me in carbonite. He looks human. For a long time, I hadn’t even thought he was one.

More monster than man.

But, then again, I can’t say I wasn’t the same, once upon a time. (Even now.)

“I . . . have a gift for you.”

Now that, that really makes me start. “Really?” I can tell my eyes are lighting up even if without intent. “You didn’t have to do that, Arcann. If I’d known, I would’ve gotten something for you in return.”

He shakes his head. “You’ve given me more than enough, Commander. You’ve given me an attempt at another life. You’ve given me an attempt at redemption. That’s a gift in itself.”

“Arcann, you’re the one that gave yourself the chance. You’re the one who decided you wanted to change. I’m just your enabler,” I joke. Still, I ask, “What is it, then? I hope you didn’t go through a ton of trouble just for me.”

“I’ve left it for you at your rooms, but I did bring a picture,” He explains. Arcann pulls out a small viewing device and turns it on. I’m stunned by the image - a set of gauntlets looking as if they were made from gold, with tiny parts and pieces wired together to make a flexible-looking glove that’d cover from forearm to fingertips. It’s clearly Zakuulan-shaped, modeled after their typical attire and style, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. That, and looking - from the simple holo - extremely sturdy. And if they’d be just the right size for my hands.

To say I’m a little beyond words is an understatement.

“I’ve been working on them since I joined the Alliance,” he explains quickly, as if he has to do so as fast as he can. “I didn’t use any resources, just what I had on hand, and nothing was taken from your stocks, simply- I asked your friends for measurements, and modeled them best I could, and-”

“Arcann, you can forge metal like that? For armorsmithing?”

When I look to him, I’m surprised to see he’s blushing. That, and not meeting my eyes at all. It’s harder to tell on the side of his face littered with scars, but it’s damn-near obvious on the other side. It’s stunning to even think that I’ve embarrassed him.

“I . . . learned from Knights of Zakuul.”

“Those look so beautiful,” I say, and I mean it. “I can’t wait to try them on. I . . . why didn’t you say you could do that? That’s really fantastic, Arcann. I didn’t know you were so talented with your hands.”

“It . . . wasn’t a skill I exercised very often. Truth be told, it’d been a long time since I forged a piece like that. Perhaps since Thexan’s death.”

I feel my expression soften with worry. “I’m guessing Valkorion wasn’t all-over the idea?”

“I was too busy. And I felt too vulnerable already. Here, I . . . feel freer.”

“. . . you should. That’s why I wanted you to come to Odessan. To heal,” I explain. I reach up and take his hand - it’s obviously shaking, and I want him to relax. When he looks over, I give him a kind smile. “They look so amazing, Arcann. Thank you. If it’s helped you feel better at all, you should continue forging. Maybe it can provide some clarity for you?”

He looks stunned himself at that. “You want me to . . . forge armor for the Alliance?”

“Not if you don’t want to!” I say with a rapid shake of my head. “Not for other people - for you. Make what you want to, what makes you happy. I can tell you’re really proud of the work, and having something to do that comforts you is just fantastic for healing. That’s why I was so active in the cantina dance scene, and ring fighting. Helped me get my head on my shoulders.”

This time, his face scrunches up. “You . . . danced.”

“Well, not in a tutu and ballet slippers, but yeah. For me, it put me back in my body - gave me a feeling of power and agency. I needed those things, for my own recovery. That’s part of how I’ve healed. S’why you can see me sparring every other day in the gym,” I chuckle. “Seriously though - I appreciate it. Those gauntlets look beautiful. You have true talent, Arcann.”

He looks down into his lap again. I think I hear him mumble something, but I don’t catch it the first time. I raise a brow, and he repeats it, just a little louder: “I didn’t think it was anything special.”

“Of course it is! It’s a pretty rare skill, I-” I stop, realizing what he means. I reach up with my other hand and take his hand in both of mine. When he looks back to me, I nod, serious. “Arcann, just because he didn’t put stock in it doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. His words aren’t law - you know that. I know it’s hard to get rid of that feeling, but it’s true. Just because your father didn’t see the worth in it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

His eyes widen a little bit. I recognize the expression - probably mirrors mine back when I was realizing bits and pieces of conditioning that I’d figured out how to undo. Some kind of “click”, or epiphany. Recognizing it in somebody else’s face is refreshing. And to think that I helped get him there.

But of course, he pulls his hand back. Tucks both back into his lap again. And mutters, and mumbles, and continues to blush.

The moments like these, where Arcann’s shy and weary, were few and far between. More common when we were alone, for sure - but it feels like it reflects more of who he really is, and less of who he parades as being. Not to say his obsession with “redemption” and “atoning” was fake, but moments like these reveal more to his true feelings. It’s reassuring and a little terrifying. It wasn’t too long ago that I was in the same place, or so it feels.

But then again, my reality was skewed. I’d skipped five years that others had to live. I’d only really felt “fixed” shortly before-

Arcann finally speaks up.

“I . . . feel as if I still owe you much. For listening, and for being a pillar when I cannot. And you’ve been fighting many battles I haven’t had the chance to see - and another is coming, I know it. I can only hope that with these, I can still offer you some kind of protection, even if I’m not able to be there in body,” he looks back up to me, and nods. “It’s just one of the ways that I want to thank you.”

“Arcann . . .” I start. I stare at him, for moments longer, looking at the honesty on his face - and I finally sigh, and shake my head. “Arcann, you never need to feel like you owe me a debt. Do you understand? I care about you. I want to see you succeed.”

“And this is how I do that,” he tells me, a little more insistently, “By forging my way up, and protecting those who have offered me aid.” He nods to me, and finally looks up at the sky. “It is . . . getting late.”

It’s a clear end to the conversation - as if his awkwardness can’t handle it anymore. And it is getting to twilight, truly the better part of the day absorbed. I nod with him, and finally get up and stretch. “Then I accept your gift, Arcann. And . . . thank you. For caring.” He nods, and rises with me. I smile, and hold out my hand. “Walk back to the base with me?”

This time, I think I finally see his lips turn up, on both sides. A smile.

“It would be my pleasure, Commander.”

He takes my hand, and we walk back up to Odessan’s base.

[support-groups]

Learning to trust yourself

How often in life do you feel like you can’t trust people?  Hopefully you have someone, or several people that you can trust, but many of you have been hurt over and over by the very people you thought had your back.  You believed them to be worthy, only to be let down.  It is something we are seeing currently unfold in the United States.  Allegations of abuse against those in leadership positions, from Hollywood to the White House; scores of women have been spurred to come out with their story because a few brave women led the way.   Everyone’s story of why they didn’t trust themselves enough to say something or do something in a bad situation is different, speaking up against someone in power is often beyond brave, their abusers/tormentors often have the money and time to fight. This is true in cases of Rape, Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, Abuse, Divorce...the stakes are high, but what if in all matters of life, both big and mundane, we learned to trust ourself?  To listen to the little voice inside that says this isn’t right, this is too important to ignore.This is true in cases that have nothing to do with assualt and abuse, but can refer to dealing with grief and loss.  We so often push those emotions down because we feel that we are supposed to have a “stiff upper lip” and march on.  I have done this so many times I cannot count, why couldn’t I trust myself and others to support me in times of need?  Simply put, I thought it would make me seem less formidable and that was important to me. “We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.” -Jane Austen, Mansfield Park So why exactly have we become so conditioned not to trust ourselves?  Answer, because others around us make it almost impossible to do so.  For example, you are standing around chatting in the morning over a cup of coffee, you mention you are going to do something, ANYTHING and you will get the opinion of everyone in the room telling you to do what THEY would do.  You probably didn’t even ask.  You tell someone bad news and they turn it around about themselves, grief, theirs is worse, sadness, same, breakup, they have an opinion….  We start doubting, am I grieving too much, am I too sad, should I be feeding my child all organics, should I vaccinate, should I take that trip, should I, SHOULD I?! Self doubt creeps in and all the trust you had in yourself goes out the window. “But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units -- because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back. Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves anymore, and when that happens there is nothing left except perhaps to find some strong sure man, even though he may be wrong, and to dangle from his coattails.” -John Steinbeck, East of Eden We have to stop allowing other people, those with White Coats all the way down to friends, from talking us out what we know to be true (caveat, we are not saying to not believe your doctor about diagnoses, medication, vaccinations, things of that nature).  When you feel sick and you are told it is in your head, Fibromyalgia sufferers, can I get an amen?!  This is a real disease and you may have to fight for a diagnosis, but it is real and you can thank Lady Gaga herself for bringing this disease into the forefront and out of the dark closet a lot of people wish to kick it into. What about Religion?  How many people do you know, or perhaps you are that person, that stays in an abusive or dead marriage because you promised till Death do us Part?  Some religious leaders even encourage women and men to stay because it is their duty.  No, your duty in life is to keep you and if you have children, safe, healthy and happy.  Sorry to burst any religious bubbles, but here is a truth, believe your own truth and recognize that death can mean physical death, or death of feeling, trust or joy, in our minds, it is all applicable and valid.   “A mind that trusts itself is light on its feet.” -Nathaniel Branden, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem Learn to trust yourself by allowing yourself the time to consider all your options. Take a chance, if you have never actually trusted your own decision making skills you might not make the best decision your first time around, but guess what, it was your decision and it was yours to mess up.  It is part of life to try something and see what happens.  It is actually really freeing.  If things don’t turn out well, evaluate why, what went wrong?  Figure out what you can do differently next time.   “Never let the thoughts of self-unworthiness re-arrange your prepared passion for failure. You can do it even if others say you can't. But you cannot do it if you tell yourself you can't.” -Israelmore Ayivor Trust yourself enough, love yourself enough, be prepared for great things to come your way.  

-Team SG

References:

https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/10/17/3-ways-to-develop-self-trust/

https://relationship.supportgroups.com/

https://divorce.supportgroups.com/

https://abuse.supportgroups.com/

https://rape.supportgroups.com/

[aesirfalling]

Death

Part 4 of 6 (Vanille, Song of the Ancients: Atonement) - Together We Brought the Moon Down

Character/Full ATB Skill Study of the Final Fantasy XIII Cast Set to Nier: Automata Music.

She cannot tell what is more enticing: the spring dawn’s breezes heavy with birdsong and dew, or the promise of one final heartbeat, somber and steady against the back of her eyelids. Sleep, she murmurs, weaving flowers with her delicate braceleted hands and smiling soundlessly to the sun. Sleep where all friends and family have long been lowered into their eternal rest.

Sleep, so that we can all dream.

  I’m not leaving.

Vanille! You have to listen to me! They want you to die! They –

So what if I want to die? What if I should and need to die, Fang? What then? Haven’t we caused enough suffering? Haven’t we failed enough? Haven’t we –

It’s not your fault! It’s never been your fault! If anyone’s ever –

No one told me. But I see them. I hear them. I know. You can’t live and die for me, Fang. You’ve always done everything. Live –

No! Vanille!

  The souls. They come.

The towns. The world. They come…

She walks alone to the end of the altar like a bride waiting to be given away, warm silks flowing like a river over the crystal dust in her hair. She’s kissed Fang in this cathedral when the Order wasn’t looking, sworn that she’d love her partner forever, always be hers, theirs, all the way to the end of time. Even if the Cathedral would fall. Even if the wind of the lost would consume her from the inside out. Even if…

But I’m not just Oerba Dia Vanille, you know? She grins innocently, pulling out of the kiss as the Order puts her sister – partner – lover in chains, drags her out of the saint’s view. Oerba Dia Vanille belongs to Oerba Yun Fang.

Vanille the l’Cie belongs to death and God.

  Your dreams. Can I give them back? Your smile? Your tears? I hear your craving for your mother. Don’t weep over the beloved… I understand, I understand. Do you want another story? What about another myth? I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what I can –

Sometimes the voices of the dead are calming, other times violent and seething; the Order knows how it goes – they’ll send priestesses after her, restrain her as she wanders blind in the halls of the cathedral, sedate her as she shrieks from darkness that is not her own. The fall of the crystal pillar… the encroaching chaos… every year as people have to walk towards another land, every district of Luxerion and Yusnaan lost to the unforgiving ocean, all the worlds that won’t ever come back, all the people –

“Saint!” A stern voice yells – a priestess? – frantically waving a fan over her face. “Remember your friends. Remember your name. You must not lose yourself to the dead!”

My name. My family. Serah’s sympathetic face, so young and so, so kind, listening intently to her tale in Bodhum and then twisting, so painfully, in a vision that no human can endure for years on end. Hope as a child, struggling to hold a gun, then just vanishing into the night air, disappearing without a trace –

“Do something for me, will you? Keep smiling. I – it makes me happy when you smile.”

The seizing stops. She feels them let go of her, slowly letting her bruised and exhausted body collapse and settle against the cool marble floor. It’s dark. How long has it been? Nobody’s in the church at this hour anymore. There are painted glass windows in her line of vision, pictures of Pulse and Etro serving their all-knowing Father. Are Hope and Serah in her massive crowd of voices, even now? Why can’t she hear them?

Does it just mean she doesn’t love them enough to pick them apart from the others?

I love you, she thinks despairingly to herself, and that’s when the tears start pooling, a cold and unforgivable thing even more chilling than the stone of the Cathedral itself. The Order will let her cry. They know it means that she still remembers. All I’ve ever wanted is to love all of you until I die.

  The years pass even in Fang’s absence. She treasures the seeing stone above everything else – without Fang’s consciousness, Fang’s body, Fang’s bravery flowing into her veins from those calloused hands clutching her own, she feels dreadfully incomplete. Her prayers in front of Bhunivelze’s altar ring hollow, as ugly as the half-Ragnarok Fang became in all those years past. But she will be enough this time, even in her deformity.

Smile, Fang, she laughs to herself behind a mural of Etro bleeding out in the first desert of the world, picking Fang’s language apart as the taller woman tries to gesture around a group of bandits, they’ll never flirt with you otherwise.

“Please rise, Saint. There are twelve more couples waiting to receive your blessing.”

A thousand years and I’ve never wanted to be holy.

  The dead never cease; she supposes death never really ceases, either, so she buries herself in prayer, learning ancient languages and rituals that she never truly understands. If Hope was here, this would be easier, she reflects miserably, drinking moodily from the cup of water left outside her chamber by the acolytes. Or Serah and Noel. Or even Yeul herself. While watching everyone from within the crystal, Fang and I entertained ourselves by trying to track the Yeuls. Fang had laughed at me for suggesting it. But when we were as we were…

“The people would not grieve if you do not pronounce everything perfectly, your Holiness,” one priest shakes his head at her, the picture of religious compassion. “All the people want are hope and salvation. If you promise it to them, then it will become real.”

Hope is dead and Light won’t ever wake up, the words rise to her lips, but she swallows them. She smiles at the man, the first man to show her any kind of kindness in months, and lets him pray by her feet. “God has a merciful and human heart,” she begins, and he doesn’t contradict her. “And so does his Savior.”

  It’s only later, way later, when she’s sitting together with Hope again in a church in the new world that she understands the true meaning of her eidolith. They are walking together through the gallery, feeling the statues and squinting at the texts, before Hope pulls her over and points out something to her. A maiden veiled and prostrate, trying to repent – and before her, glowing all rosy and beautiful on the most glorious tree of Eden, a wreath of apples.

The forbidden fruit, in so many ways, is life itself.

“Is Fang Adam, then?” She jokes, elbowing him. “Is that how all of this makes sense, now?”

“You can ask her about it,” he responds nonchalantly, his lips curved up in a small smile. “I certainly did not remember creating her in my image.”

  A bonfire, a village, a market. Somewhere to stop, somewhere where we’d not be noticed or recognized, somewhere where I could just buy her drink, and she a chocobo for the two of us to ride the world with. A place where I could laugh at her bad jokes. A place where she could complain about the dirt in my hair. A place where we could be human, where we could fail, where we could die and bury ourselves in leaves and snow…

The mirage shatters, as it always does. Fang wants the Clavis. If the Clavis is destroyed – if she can’t perform the Soulsong – what can they do?

“It’s too late to stop, Saint,” she recites, a line repeated to her by the senior priestess, who claims to have heard God. “This world is ending, and we need you to bring us to the next shore.”

  “Lightning thinks crystal is eternal,” Lumina scoffs, raven feathers and dark boots, a Farron girl from the most retro Cocoon the Pulse girl can think of. The girl dances and jumps all around the Saint, hugs her from behind and pulls on her hair. It’s strangely comforting to have visitors. It’s been a while since she’s seen Fang, and a bit longer since the Order’s given up trying to hound up a little girl who can materialize behind bars and out of thin air. “I say, she really just needs to come here and look at you.”

Our crystal pillar… it should have never fallen. It was supposed to be indestructible, infallible. Yet the bond between Fang and I had not been strong enough. Yet our love had cracked and given away throughout the flow of time. Yet I…

“Do not die, Vanille,” Lumina suddenly breathes by your ear, Lightning-serious and Lightning-sad and Serah’s smile all intertwined together in one. 

“Everything is going to be fine.”

[whatisonthemoonarchive]

Hyung Jin Nim's convoluted path to claim of authority

Beginning in January of 2015, Hyung Jin Nim (HJN) had a dilemma. He was determined to claim he was the rightful authority instead of his mother. The problem: Rev. Moon had stated on numerous occasions that Mrs. Hak Ja Han Moon, as True Mother, would be the extension of his authority. HJN had even admitted that True Father had produced a flowchart for leadership that had True Mother at the top and himself below True Mother. There had been a crowning ceremony (one, not three as SC members claim), but that had been for succession of the True Parents, not the succession of True Father, and it was conditional, and True Mother was there with True Father crowning HJN (although the SC addressed this problem by simply photoshopping True Mother out, as if True Father alone was appointing his successor.

How to deal with this problem and wrestle the throne from his mother. He tried three different approaches.

First Approach: Hostage victim/Stockholm Syndrome. On January 25, 2015, HJN, in his sermon “God Save the Queen,” floated the theory that True Mother was like a hostage victim, undergoing the Stockholm Syndrome. While she was the “top person in the church hierarchy,” there was a “dark alliance” of three groups of “hidden rulers” that got control of True Mother in order to “get control of the whole church.” (This followed after several months of sermons on hidden rulers of the world and the US government, and even in this presentation HJN noted that the US president is not really in control, but is just a salesman for the most powerful men, who are really pulling the strings.) As he stated, “True Mother is a hostage…she is in a hostage scenario,” experiencing the Stockholm Syndrome psychologically and spiritually, and we must free her. This scenario provided HJN a justification for assuming leadership. The problem with this scenario for HJN is that few recognized her as experiencing such a syndrome and even if she was, it meant she could be freed and reassume leadership.

Second Approach: TM vacates the position due to her failure. HJN subsequently floated the contention, which remains to this day, that True Mother failed in her mission. Because she failed in her mission, she vacated the position of True Mother, and, as the appointed successor to True Father, HJN then needed to assume control. This assertion was soon post-dated to claiming she failed even while True Father was still walking the Earth, with HJN declaring that True Mother tried to influence True Father away from what HJN advanced as TF’s fundamental role to be sexually intimate and have babies with other women. This to HJN was a major failing of True Mother.

HJN also began to highlight any differences of opinion between True Father and True Mother, calling their home a “palace of malice,” saying that True Father was very harsh with True Mother and she did not always handle properly when he released his “wrath of God” on her, and even that he threatened divorce. A video snippet of an extemporaneous comment in Korean of True Father from his  July 16, 2012, “Keynote Speech at the Inauguration of the Abel Women’s UN,” was widely circulated by the SC with a translation depicting True Father as making a very harsh comment on True Mother. However, a translation of that same passage by Mrs. Hee Hun Standard, who was official interpreter for True Father from 2000 to 2012 and a translator of his texts since then, presented a very different translation, one in accord with True Father’s official and other extemporaneous remarks in which he uplifted True Mother and affirmed that through the Fall, Heavenly Mother was lost, but now is revealed through True Mother. (Mrs. Standard provided an explanation, from the point of view of a translator, how such a mistranslation by the SC version could come about, which probably should have been recognized right away given that it was at such variance from True Father’s other comments.)

 The problem with the SC’s perspective of TM failing as a determinate of authority is this: “Who decides whether or not True Mother failed?”  Most of the worldwide membership does not accept it. HJN certainly doesn’t hold standing as an impartial arbiter, given that he is an aspirant to leadership and the crown, and holds some disappointment about being dismissed from his position and his brother Kook Jin Nim being fired. At times, True Father has made strong statements about many members of the True Family, including True Mother and including Hyung Jin Nim (on whom the “wrath of God” has been visited as well), but in context one finds great praise for True Mother and recognition of her accomplishment. Indeed, when one looks at the body of True Father’s words, throughout his life, one common denominator is great praise for True Mother and the accomplishment of the position of True Parents. For example, True Father stated the following on April 14, 2012:

 “At the point where the evidently divided internal God and external God are perfectly reunited, Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Moon, …were able to become True Parents in the Garden of Eden with no shadow of the Fall…” April 14, 2012.

  There are also reports of others in this regard:

  Dr. Donna Ferrantello: “At the Abel UN Conference special HDH at the Palace in late July 2012, just one week before his illness that took him to the hospital, Father shared to a small group of 30 or so WFWP participants (I was one) and some Korean leaders present. “Father said that ‘if the pillars of the church come down, I will be with True Mother always…in her arms, loving her and guiding her.’”

Peter Kim, in his Feb. 22, 2010 “Report to the World National Leaders Assembly” (Yucheongung, Korea), communicated True Father’s recent words:  “… today I declare to Heaven and Earth that True Mother came to the level of perfection equal as me, Father said. We are completely equal and on the same level. True Father said that. So, ever since then, in my mind, when I say True Parents it doesn’t matter. In my mind, True Father and Mother, both of them are included in that. Always two. So, True Father and True Mother are at the stage of level of perfection—completion. “What about True Children? Father said there in his prayer, ‘Hyun Jin, you are in the position of Cain. Kook Jin you are in the position of Abel. So from now on the two of you must unite and come to me through True Mother.’ Father said that. You must come to me through your Mother. Because your Mother reached the level of perfection and she is in between myself and you—my children. So you have to come through Mother.”

  Approach Three:  Absolute male primogeniture. Ultimately, HJN promoted a perspective that doesn’t have the above pitfalls in terms of asserting authority (although it yields a new one). This claim is that inheritance of the leadership position, or absolute authority, can only be from male to male. In other words, the hard and fast rule for assuming authority is a form of absolute male primogeniture, one that goes beyond stating that in succession males have a preference over females to one that states in actuality succession can only be from male to male. Quite simply, HJN and the SC claim that True Mother is disqualified from being the authority figure because she is a woman; her proper role is just as an advisor and support to her son or holding a figurative position as True Mother, but she is divested of power. On the basis of this, no longer does HJN need to convince people that True Mother failed—that is irrelevant; True Mother was never actually placed in charge, but wrongfully took power on True Father’s passing from his rightful successor.

  HJN solidified his view in a ceremony held in the Sanctuary Church, in which he had his wife, Yeon Ah Nim, bow down to their own son, Shin Joon Moon, as a way to affirm that she would not assume authority after HJN’s passing, but that she would be below the son.

 HJN further expressed this view of extreme male primogeniture in the Sanctuary Church-created The Constitution of the United States of Cheon Il Guk, wherein it is stated:

  “The King of CIG is the head of state of the United States of CIG. The Kingship is bequeathed from the Lord of the Second Advent Moon Sun Myung to his son Moon Hyung Jin as second King and then to Moon Shin Joon as third King. The Kingship will be bequeathed henceforth to a son of the presiding King. If the King has no son then the Kingship will be bequeathed to a male heir within the direct lineage of Moon Hyung Jin.”

  This view, that inheritance is restricted to males, is HJN’s ultimate rationale for claiming authority has been bestowed upon him. And while it is a newly presented view, it is one that he promotes very strongly and unequivocally, as can be seen in his bequeathing ceremony to his son and the SC’s constitution. And it is useful in that it does avoid the problems cited in the above rationales, providing a clear basis to claim authority. And, as HJN notes, it does accord with earlier Korean history.

The problem is that this view of HJN and the SC does not accord with True Father’s own leadership and words. Where did True Father ever say that only male heirs can be in charge? At one leaders meeting at East Garden, he had stated that any of his children were candidates to succeed True Parents. In HJN’s January 25, 2015 sermon, a flowchart was unveiled with True Mother on the top and HJN had stated that True Father “had mandated this as the governing structure.” And True Father’s words, particularly since the formation of the Women’ Federation for World Peace and TF’s declaration of the Age of Women, showed an intention to forge a new path separate from that of the historically male-dominate only leadership structures in Korea and elsewhere toward greater equality. For example, True Father stated at the Ceremony for Proclaiming and Celebrating True Parents’ Cosmic Victory, on June 14, 1999:

 “I will proclaim this to heaven and earth… From now on, Mother stands in a position equal to my own. The age of the equality of man and woman has come.”

[the-empires-weapon]

Weapon in Copero Pt. 6

The ruins are rushing up to meet my vision. The ruins - and the ship lingering nearby, situated near the tops of still-standing pillars. I can see the two figures climbing in. I can sense his mind as he fights against my own.

Theron Shan.

I can hear the ship’s engines through the buzzing in my ears, and I stretch my hand out as I giving a horrific shriek. Explosions come from the ship, make it falter. Minor damage. That’s all I need.

“END OF THE LINE, THERON!” I hear behind me. I recognize that voice. Lana. Another sound, a missile shooting off from behind me and into the hull of the ship. More damage. More time.

“NO, VALSS! YOU CAN’T WIN!”

The Chiss is jumping from the ship, shouting something to Theron, but I don’t care. I can see him now, really clearly. I grab for the tool at my waist.

Hand on my shoulder. “Love, you can’t-”

I shake off Lana’s grip. The tiny wrench, I lift it to my lips, and I slide it against the implant in the back of my mouth. I can sense the sudden shock in Theron’s mind. The sudden reaching out, as if he could stop me-

I grip the fake tooth and pull.

BLEEDING BLEEDING BLEEDING SUSTAINED INJURY BLEEDING-

I shoot into the sky. Past Valss, past the pillars, crashing into the ship as it starts to rise to the sky. Men are shouting. I’m grabbing for the doors, but three men are shoving the doors closed, and I see a sliver of Theron’s surprise as the door slams shut.

BANG. BANG.

The men inside are shouting. Shouting, because my fists are leaving harsh dents in the door, fighting to break through. My growls make blood and spittle drip down the doors. I scream again, fingers digging into steel. Each slam coming from the strength of my shoulder and into my fist.

“I T-TRUSTED YOU, THERON SH-SH-SHAN!”

So many open minds. So many minds to feed to fear.

“I T-T-TRUSTED YOU WITH MY LIFE, TH-THERON!”

A flurries of hits. A well-worn, crackling crater. I pull back my fist one last time.

“I WON’T ALLOW YOU T-T-TO ESCAPE AND RUIN EV-VERYTHING, YOU T-T-TRAITOR-!”

Eden.

I stop. My whole body freezes and goes cold. His mind is blossoming open, like a lotus, and it’s so all-encompassing that my mind and body can hardly handle it. It’s crystal-clear, after so long of it being closed. My grip on the side of the ship falters. The blood pools in my mouth, frigid against my teeth.

Eden, I’m . . . I’m sorry.

I hear the skittering of little droid limbs against the steel exterior. I turn to look at them with wide eyes, and I see the cluster of them preparing shots, and I act on instinct.

I let go.

Theron . . .

I feel my body fall as I desperately reach out one more time - and feel him disappear as the ship blasts away and out of my reach.