#first issue: the courtyard size

[queerandcartoons]

Last saturday I ended up spending the next 12 hours on sims making a recreation of the ninjago monastery and it's like, day 3 of the build and ohhhhhhhhhhh LORD i wanna scream lol this is so much harder than i thought

[vivwritescrappythings]

words fall short

knight!könig x plus-size!fem!reader

part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 5 - part 6

you can’t stop thinking about some rude words said about you at last night’s feast, but your knight doesn’t let you worry for long.

tw: plus size reader, fem reader, kissing!, negative self talk, body image issues

wc: 2.5k

masterlist

—

Winter’s chill had settled over the castle. Snow blanketed the courtyards and gardens, ice frosting the windows with flowers at the corners of the panes. The evenings stretched longer, fires became more comforting.

You found your days occupied with the other ladies in court, the social season in full swing as you attended parties and feasts and balls. It was hard to watch your father still hold out hope, each event had him sending middle-aged suitors your way. Each one was worse than the last, his desperation apparently growing.

König did not broach the subject of your dance, so neither did you. You chalked it up to the lack of sleep and your knight being far too kind. That was all it could be, a misunderstanding on his part of his duties. Maybe he did not like seeing you dejected.

Nothing more.

The day was slow and lazy, a thick layer of snow covering the land around the palace forced everyone to the comfort of their hearths. You were curled up in an overstuffed armchair near the large fireplace in the library, slippers kicked off onto the carpet and knees drawn up beneath your skirts as you read.

The library was your favorite part of your father’s decision to relocate you to the royal palace, you had never had access to so many books in your life. It was a lesser-traversed part of the castle, members of the King’s Counsel occasionally searching the shelves for some historical ledger that had been filed away. They hardly did more than green you politely.

If anything, König’s presence was what alerted them, his large stature looming near a column that stood a few paces away from your preferred armchair. Their gasps of surprise pulled you out of your reading, your eyelashes fluttering over your cheekbones before your gaze cut to König’s conspiratorially.

He always met your smirk with a slow blink of his blue eyes beneath his shroud. You were starting to memorize the broad variety of his expressions, hanging onto every movement of his eyes and tilt of his head. It was easier to decipher what he was feeling—his eyes were shockingly expressive when you actually paid attention to them.

Any time he startled a lord he straightened up like a peacock ruffling its own feathers, squaring his shoulders and stacking his head at the top of his spine rather than his typical slouch. That was when you realized he enjoyed the way they paled at the sight of him, their stammered greetings to you.

You would not have been surprised to learn he was smiling beneath the shroud.

You thumbed through the book in your lap absently, chewing your lower lip as you stared at the flames crackling in the hearth. There were few interruptions that morning but you still found yourself distracted.

Words from last night’s feast still lingered in your mind.

At first it had been a normal evening. The great hall had been outfitted with long tables lined with candles and greenery from pines arranged into elegant centerpieces. The king was celebrating the birth of yet another son, so the food was plentiful and the drink flowed freely.

Even you had been allowed a cup of dark blackberry wine so sweet it nearly hurt your teeth.

It warmed you from head to toe, your smile coming easier and conversation tumbling from your lips before you could even consider your words. You had been seated with other ladies from the court, your father up on the dais with the king and the queen.

You were speaking with Mary across the table when you heard the first whisper of your name intermingled with the voices around you. It ran a chill down your spine like a fingernail sliding along your vertebrae.

It was impossible to place. Perhaps it was not your name at all, just a string of syllables that sounded enough like it to alert you. Slant rhymes had always been your favorite poetic device, why would you not encounter it in real life as well? Or at least it was easy enough to convince yourself of it the first time.

The sound of your name kept going off like a bell, the word said so softly each time that you continued to convince yourself it was something else entirely. Mary did not seem to notice, so you wrote it off as paranoia.

The first snippet of conversation reached you as the bards took their first break and guests stood to stretch their legs. It was quiet, just a scratch at the edge of your ear. “I heard that her sister married into the Garrick family, but her poor father is desperate to find a match for her.”

You looked up, jaw set as you scanned the people around you. None seemed to be looking your way. It felt as though a bucket of cold water had been tossed over your head, soaking you to the bone.

“Well, she is rather strange compared to what I have heard of her sister, it is said that Ser Garrick married a great beauty.”

“Unfortunate that it does not run in the family.”

Strange.

Strange.

Strange.

It was all you could think about. You never found out who said it, part of you was glad that you never knew who labeled you as such.

You had tossed and turned the entire night, worrying over being thought strange. Strange. You were many things: brash, loud, difficult, stubborn… but strange? It hurt more than you had expected it to.

König had noticed your sour mood as he escorted you back to your chambers, badgering you to know what had happened. You did not have the heart to tell him. The fear of looking into the cool blue of his gaze and finding that he, too, believed you to be strange was too great. You did not think you could bear it.

So you let the word fester.

“My lady.” You jolted at the sound of König’s voice cutting through your thoughts. It took you a few moments to blink the blur out of your vision before you looked up at him over the back of the armchair, the emerald green fabric soft against your cheek.

“Yes?” you responded, sounding more exasperated than you intended. He took a few steps forward, the gray cloak affixed to his shoulders swishing against his armor with his movements.

Your tone must have made him reconsider before he shook his head slightly, the fabric of the black hood over his face settling into place once more. “It is obvious that something is on your mind, my lady,” he finally said, slouching to meet your gaze. “You have not even turned a page in several minutes.”

Heat of embarrassment blistered across your face before you could even think to deny König’s words. You opened your mouth to argue, to tell him that he should be paying more attention to your surroundings than your mannerisms.

Instead you took a breath, looking away from the knight back to the fire. “Do you think I am strange, König?” you asked. You allowed the cover of your book to fall shut, fingertips running over the fabric.

He paused for a moment, cocking his head to one side. You watched as he cast a long glance around the room before moving in front of you, kneeling on the plush rug with one knee as his forearms rested on the flat of his thigh.

Your eyes widened, you straightened a bit out of your contorted sitting position. The question begged a yes or no answer, not something… intimate.

“Why would you think that?” König asked, his accent making the words harsh. It was so sincere you already felt the sting of tears in your eyes.

You huffed, expression crumpling. The frescoes on the buttressed ceiling begged for your attention as you tried to find your words. “Last night… during the feast I overheard a conversation about my being strange and that being the reason my father has struggled to find me a match.”

It pained you to admit it. Repeating the words made it feel so much more real.

You took a deep breath, pressing on despite the tears building at your lash line. “So it begs the question, do you think I am strange?” You were brave enough to look at him again. “You are the only person I can ask. The other ladies in court would lie and my father would as well.”

König’s deep breath was audible, his body leaning toward you. His head tilted back, the two of you close enough that you could see the light of the fire on his blonde eyelashes.

“I think you are wonderful, my lady.”

His gloved hand took yours from where it rested on the cover of your book, fingertips smoothing over the ridges of your knuckles as he drew your hand toward his chest.

Your heart was in your throat, his compliment rendering you speechless. It would be easy for you to try to dismiss his words as a lie, brush them off as a kindness to you. But his eyes were sincere, rounded with gentleness as he looked up at you.

“Wonderful seems like an exaggeration,” you mumbled. You suddenly felt too aware of the extra flesh beneath your chin, the way your upper arm spread out as it pressed against your side.

König snorted, shaking his head.

You spoke before he could, gently trying to tug your hand back. He kept it in his hold. “They also wasted no time comparing me to the great beauty that is my sister.”

“Your sister?” König kept close, his hip pressed against the emerald green cushion of the armchair. “The woman with you at the tourney?”

You nodded, scraping your teeth over your lower lip without mercy. At that rate you would chew it until you were bleeding.

He shrugged, his breastplate now touching your thigh through your heavy skirts. “She was beautiful, yes, but no more so than you,” he said, the same sincerity in his tone. “It was you that caught my eye, my lady.”

“Truthfully?” you asked, voice trembling.

König’s free hand reached up, his palm finding the curve of your cheek. The leather of his glove was warm, broken in enough that it felt almost soft.

“I would not lie to you.” There was no room for you to question him.

You took a deep breath, your cheek pressed into his palm as you looked down at him. Your throat was closing, tears stinging behind your eyes as you struggled for something to say.

Then König surprised you.

He released your hand, pinching the bottom of the black hood over his face as he leaned even further into you. You watched the frayed edge of the fabric lift higher and higher, greedily awaiting the secrets beneath.

His skin was just as pale as you expected, gnarled scars marking his neck. The scar tissue was shiny and white in some areas, tinged pink with lingering irritation in others. You wondered if he sustained the wounds in battle along the eastern border, but you could not find your voice to ask.

Honey-blonde stubble scraped across jaw, the same color and the locks of hair you could see curling out from beneath the fabric of his hood. You would never have guessed his hair was long enough to reach his shoulders. If anything, you expected it to be cropped close to his scalp.

Two scars met on his chin, crossing into an X just below the curve of his lower lip. One went vertical, bisecting his pale pink mouth before jutting off to the right and disappearing beneath the black fabric of his hood.

“König,” you whispered, bewildered at what earned you the privilege of seeing his face, even just a part of it.

“Forgive me, my lady, my words simply continue to fall short.”

His palm slid against your cheek, fingers curling around the nape of your neck as he brought your lips to his. You braced a hand against his chest, the metal of his armor smooth beneath your touch. His heartbeat thrummed somewhere beneath all the layers.

It took you a moment to kiss him back, your eyelashes brushing against the bunched up fabric of his hood as you finally closed your eyes. Your mouth moved clumsily against his—the most you had ever kissed was the cook’s son behind the grainery when you were fourteen. It was a tender and nervous thing, far from the slow and sure press of König’s lips.

His fingers caressed the hinge of your jaw, tilting your head to match the slant of his. The scrape of his stubble against your face sent chills all the way to your toes. Your mouth parted on a soft sigh, letting him slot his scarred lower lip between them.

The feeling of his smile was so distracting that you almost pulled away just so you could finally see it.

There was a vague sense of danger curling up your spine as his tongue teased between your lips. You should have pushed him away, rebuked him for advancing on you and immediately searched for your father. Instead you were leaning so far toward him you would have toppled out of the arm chair if not for the spread of his shoulders and his forearm pressed against your collarbone.

“You must meet my daughter, I assure you she has a wit that catches most lords off guard.” It was your father’s voice drifting between the shelves of books that reminded you of the severity of the situation.

König was already pulling away, dropping his hood back into place as he gracefully brought himself to his feet. You removed your hands from him with reluctance, the only soothing balm the quick press of his lips against your hairline through the fabric.

You did not have enough time to marvel at his speed before your father and a lord you did not recognize rounded the last shelf into your little alcove. Your knight was already at his typical spot against the column, studying the newcomer for threats.

A fake smile plastered itself to your face, hiding the fact that you wanted to scream as you stood to curtsy. The man already was appraising you, watching you like you were a horse he was purchasing.

“Lord Fischer, meet my daughter,” he said cordially. The man was your father’s age, maybe older. But he smiled and greeted you politely.

You wanted to retreat into König’s embrace, pepper kisses along his scarred throat and coax his lips back to yours. Instead you sat down across from your father and Lord Fischer with your hands folded in your lap. The conversation was polite, nothing remarkable or interesting was said before your father proposed he joined you for supper that evening. It was the last thing you wanted, but nevertheless you stood and walked with your father and Lord Fischer to your father’s chambers.

As always, König dutifully followed.

[genshingorlsrevengeance]

Remember the story of Beidou, Noelle, Eula, Shenhe, Ganyu, Ei, and Yae wih a S/O who got shrunk?

Well what if the opposite happend.

As in Beidou, Noelle, Eula, Shenhe, Ganyu, Ei, and Yae dealing with their S/o turning comically large.

(Genshin Impact) Beidou, Noelle, Eula, Shenhe, Ganyu, Ei, and Yae's S/O becoming comically large

Beidou simply stares at S/O as they now nearly rivaled the ship in size, even when kneeling.

(Beidou) "Well, guess we're not taking you with us anywhere soon."

(S/O) "How did this even happen?!"

(Beidou) "Beats me. We'll figure something out though, don't you worry your little head now...Er, rather big head.-"

(S/O) "Can you at least say that without a smirk?"

Beidou made no reply as her smirk only grew bigger.

Maybe someone around Liyue Harbor knew of a legend or some kind of drink to help S/O shrink?

Or maybe even Xiangling could cook something to do that!

...Well, that dish would have to be pretty big.

(Beidou) "S/O, me and the crew will get you right as rain, we'll have to set sail for a day or two."

(S/O) "So what am I going to do?!"

(Beidou) "I'm going to find the Traveler, they saved the harbor, surely they can save your size!"

Noelle is stammering at the sight of her S/O. A minute ago, they were only slightly taller than her.

Now, they were nearly the size of a house in the city.

(Noelle) "WHAT HAPPENED?!"

(S/O) "I-I have no idea! I just blinked and...!"

Noelle immediately stands on the top of her toes, giving S/O a reassuring grip on their shoe.

(Noelle) "I'll grab Master Jean! Wait right here!"

(S/O) "R-Right....Not like I got anywhere to go anyway..."

A crowd was forming around S/O, but due to their size, they were able to trail Noelle with their gaze, seeing just how fast she ran.

(S/O) "Could she always run that quickly...?"

Eula's eyes go wide with shock, as S/O now stood over the trees without any issue.

Which was concerning, since they were only the same height as her thirty seconds ago.

(Eula) "What in the hell...?"

(S/O) "E-Eula?! Are you down there?"

S/O did their best to crouch down without crushing her or knocking down any of the trees.

For once, she was completely at a loss for words.

No quip or remark to address the situation.

(Eula) "A-Ahem! We'll get you back to normal, we just have to...uh..."

Eula has absolutely no idea what to do.

At the very least, S/O could make her scouting duties easy.

...Maybe she could convince them to let her ride their shoulder until they return to their original size.

Shenhe stares at S/O with an unflinching gaze.

One would be forgiven to think that she was completely unfazed by S/O's sudden increase in size.

However, she was anything but.

(Shenhe) "Could you always do that?"

(S/O) "N-No! I have no idea what this is!"

Shenhe's first instinct is to get Cloud Retainer, but she was hesitant to leave them alone.

(Shenhe) "We will get Master. Please, come along with me."

Shenhe insisted on staying on the ground to protect them from any potential threat.

Big or small, she would not let anything touch S/O.

Except for every tree and boulder they accidentally walked into.

Ganyu's stress levels go through the roof.

As did S/O.

(Ganyu) "Wha-I-Bu...?!"

She couldn't even form the words, as S/O panicked at almost hitting the building they were nearby.

(Ganyu) "P-Please wait here, I know who can help us!"

Ganyu doesn't want to leave S/O alone, but only Cloud Retainer could do anything about...whatever this was!

She is absolutely panicking the entire time as she runs as quick as her feet can carry her, any previous fatigue felt vanishing into the wind.

Ei is concerned, but more confused than anything by what happened to S/O.

(Ei) "What in the world...?"

(S/O) "I...I have no idea!"

Whatever this was, Ei would find a way to make her S/O normal.

She has S/O rest in the courtyard as a group of guards protect them from anyone who would mean harm.

But given their size, they probably didn't need it, not including the fact they were in one of the most guarded areas in Inazuma.

(Ei) "I wonder if Miko would have anything to say..."

Ei shook her head at the thought.

(Ei) "She would probably laugh..."

Yae's stomach hurts from laughing, seeing S/O's terrified expression as they now stood almost nearly the size of the Sakura tree.

(S/O) "WHAT THE HELL?! YAE, DID YOU DO THIS?!"

(Yae) "If I could, you would have found out much much sooner. And probably not on top of the hill."

She could probably find a solution very quickly, but part of her wanted to see how this long.

Not that S/O did, but if only they weren't at such a precarious position.

If they fell, now it wouldn't kill them but it would certainly hurt.

But at the very least, she now had a couple good ideas for some light novels.

And who better to sell it than the actual living giant?

[eatmeandbirthmeagain]

King Baldwin x reader when she arrived to marry Baldwin she’s is accompanied by her many pet animals like dog, cat, snake and such and Baldwin is in awe. He also has to try to get her animals to like him since they’re over protective of her and anyone they don’t know who approaches. Thank you 😊

♡ Queen Of The Animals - King Baldwin x Reader ♡

♡ Fluff ♡

A/N: Hello Anon, thank you for the request! This is such a cute idea, I appreciate it. As always, this is based on the film Kingdom Of Heaven, not the real historical figures. Enjoy!

PS: Also this has a desctiption of y/n

TW: Leprosy

It was evening by the time the soon to be queen arrived in Jerusalem. The setting summer sun bathed the ground in a soft glow.

Baldwin awaited her arrival anxiously from the front of the castle. He had been told very little about his future wife and was looking forward with anxious anticipation to meet her.

Finally, they arrived. The princess was accompanied by royal officials and her father. But not only that. There were carts attached to several horses, and they seemed to contain cages?

He could not see what was in the cages from where he was sitting, but as the horses approached, he could vaugley make out what was in them.

Animals.

Many animals, of all different shapes and sizes. His confusion was replaced with pleasant surprise and amusement.

Baldwin smiled behind his mask at this sudden revelation. Clearly his future wife was an animal lover. He stood slowly, his body ached from remaining seated for so long.

He hoped that she had been warned of his condition before she came. He assumed that such a thing would be a rather unpleasant surprise.

Y/n was in fact aware of this, and had agreed to marry him regardless. On the condition her many pets could accompany her to Jerusalem to stay with her in the castle.

Amongst her collection was a snake, a greyhound dog, two cats, a small monkey, a swan, and her horse. She had arrangements made for their housing at the castle already, which was part of the organization between her future husband's mother and her father.

She had, however, assumed that Baldwin had been told about this. He had not. 

The monkey and swan would stay outside, the swan in a small, newly built pond in the courtyard and the monkey would reside in the large cage it arrived to Jerusalem in. Her dog was well trained, having raised it from a puppy so it would be allowed indoors, same went for the two cats and the snake (which would live inside an indoor cage). Y/n hoped that her husband would not have an issue with this and that he was an animal lover, just as she was. 

As the future queen dismounted her horse, she made the first pleasant eye contact with her soon to be husband. She was beautiful. Her long, soft looking hair was pulled into a braided bun and her eyes shone like emeralds in the setting sun. 

The princess was also far from disappointed by her husband's appearance, or what she could see of it at least. He captivated her from first glance. His striking blue eyes were the only feature she could see of his masked face and they looked at her with nothing but kindness. 

The wedding was set to be that evening so she barely had any time to greet him before they were both ushered away to prepare.

Of course, she saw to her animals being settled in and taken care of after the long journey before her preparations for the wedding were started. 

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

When the hour of the wedding arrived, Baldwin's nervous anticipation increased to excitement, as did y/n’s.

The future queen looked forward to her husband becoming acquainted with her animals and the king was just happy to finally have a companion after many years of loneliness.

The affairs of the wedding passed by all too quickly and very soon the new queen was being shown to the king's chambers for the night, accompanied by her dog and two cats.

The maids helped to make sure she was comfortable with all of her belongings before leaving the two alone for the night. Needless to say, the young king was pleasantly surprised once again by y/n being accompanied by a few of her animals.

“I hope you do not mind” were the first words she spoke to him “I just prefer that they remain in the room that I do overnight, so I can make sure they are safe”.

Baldwin smiled. "It's quite alright my lady, I do not mind at all” he replied. “I must say you are the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on, y/n” he took a step closer to her. Y/n smiled softly and looked down at the ground, “you're too kind my lord” 

“Please, just call me by my name. We are husband and wife now, I need to ensure your absolute comfort in my kingdom-” he was cut off by a low growling sound. Glancing down he saw the queen's greyhound standing beside her, a protective snarl on its face.

“Oh Venus, there is no need to protect me” she knelt down to stroke his soft fur, the aggression leaving the dog's face as she did so. “He is my husband, there is nothing to be afraid of” she looked up at Baldwin, “I’m so sorry, he is very protective. He was trained by my father to keep me safe when he was away from the castle.”

The king chuckled, “it's quite alright”

“Here, why don't you hold out your hand so he can get to know you?”. Baldwin agreed and knelt down slowly, his tired body aching.

He held out his good hand slowly, allowing the dog to smell his scent, determining if he was safe or not. After a few seconds, the dog pushed his head against Baldwin’s hand. Y/n grinned and praised the dog, “that means he likes you. Go ahead, you can stroke him now” she said. The king rubbed the dog's head gently, causing it to whine happily. “There we go, you see Venus, he is friendly and you two need to get along” they both smiled at that.

“I am sure we will get along very well my queen."

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

For the next hour, y/n introduced Baldwin to each one of her animals. Even the outdoor ones. Each one liked him very much, trusting his presence almost instantly.

This was a very good sign to the young queen. After her years owning her pets, she noticed that they were usually a very good judge of character and if they liked her husband so much, then he must be a good man.

By the time the two returned to the royal chambers, Baldwin was utterly exhausted. The day, although brilliant, had been very strenuous on his weak body.

The two had been speaking when she noticed him cover a soft yawn with the back of his bandaged hand. She smiled and looked into his tired eyes lovingly.

“Shall we get some rest now?” she offered, her voice gentle and sweet. He liked her voice very much, it was so pretty. “Yes please my darling. If we could continue this conversation tomorrow, that would be brilliant”

Y/n nodded before standing and helping her husband to his feet as well.

The two prepared for bed before settling down under the covers. Y/n was oddly surprised when Baldwin removed his veil, exposing soft, curly blonde hair.

She was not sure what she was expecting, but it was not something that she assumed he had. She made sure to complement it highly, as to make him feel perhaps less uncomfortable about being so exposed around her.

This worked very well and she noticed some of the obvious tension leave his body as she did so.

 “Do you mind if I remove my mask? I am wearing bandages so you are not subject to looking at my imperfections” He offered once they were both settled.

Y/n smiled sadly at his words, tilting her head to the side. “Go ahead, but I can assure you that I shall see no imperfections” she placed a gentle hand on his arm. The king felt his heart flutter at the touch.

He signed anxiously and nodded, sliding the mask from his face. Y/n did not flinch at his appearance. Although his nose and cheeks were covered with bandages, she could see how the disease had ravaged his appearance, but she still did not see any imperfections or reason to not be attracted to him.

Reaching a hand up slowly, she cupped his face in her hand, stroking his bandaged cheek gently. “You're very handsome, you know,” she said with a smile.

She could have sworn she saw him blush underneath the bandages.

The two spoke for a bit longer sitting up, before they were both interrupted once more by the sudden feeling of two small weights pressing into the end of the bed. Looking down, they both chuckled at the sight of the queen's two siamese cats getting comfortable on top of the plush covers.

“I hope you do not mind that either, they are used to being close to me” y/n offered, looking over at her husband who was grinning at the adorable sight.

“Oh no it is quite alright, I think it's rather sweet” he replied, before yawning into his hand again. “We shall rest now, you seem very tired” y/n told him, before laying down properly.

She opened her arms, gesturing for him to lay against her chest. Baldwin was shocked by this. “You do not mind my illness? I could not bear the thought of infecting you-” he asked cautiously. Y/n only smirked and rolled her eyes slightly.

“You are my husband, of course I do not mind. I refuse to be wed to someone who I can't hold in my arms and no illness will stop me from doing just that”. This put his tired mind at ease and did not hesitate to cuddle against her soft chest.

“There we go, is that nice?” y/n asked, her voice was so soothing. “Mmh, yes. I like this.. Very much.. I love you y/n, you're incredible…” his voice trailed off as she felt his body relax, his breath evening out.

The young queen smiled in a mix of amusement and delight at how quickly he fell asleep. He did not even await her reply, but she gave one regardless. “I love you too Baldwin, I can not wait to spend my life with you”.

[tiptapricot]

Kombatember Day 1: Family

Jacqueline Briggs and Cassandra Cage are born in close succession to each other.

Raiden hears about the Cage child first, though surprisingly, from Sonya, not Johnathan. She has a fond but resigned tone when she tells him, her eyes tired and warm. She explains that she’ll be taking leave from her position as Special Forces emissary to the White Lotus for a short time to manage the birth and keep the child out of harm’s way. It is one of the rare times Raiden sees her smile, and one of the even rarer times she seems embarrassed.

Johnathan takes her place a week later, as a temporary position only, and Raiden is struck by the new… weight he carries.

“I never thought I’d be a dad…” he mentions offhandedly one night, as Raiden stands with him in the belly of the Jinsei chambers, re-casting his wards. “Heck of a feeling.” Johnathan cracks a smile, but his eyes are dim. “Heck of a responsibility…”

***

Kung Lao and Liu Kang come to the temple in close succession.

Kung Lao arrives wrapped in his father’s tunic, a look of delight on the man’s face as he delivers him to Lord Raiden’s doorstep for a proper blessing. Raiden smiles down at the newborn as he takes him, cradling him in his arms as he traces prayers in arcs of light above his skin.

“You have a lovely name,” he murmurs. “I am sure you will make the Elder Gods proud.”

The child can barely crack his eyes open yet, but still, he reaches, cooing softly as his fingers stretch up and grasp for the heavens.

***

Jacqueline Briggs is born at a hospital in New York City. Raiden does not meet her for several months, but hears stories from Johnathan, and catches a call home from Sonya about having “their girls” meet. The Briggs family takes a long time to ever introduce them. Jackson Briggs has never been one for this life, not after his death, and he seems… hesitant to allow Raiden into another piece of it.

Nonetheless, on one particular summer day when the air is humid and the sky is heavy with summer rain, Raiden visits. It is Johnathan that brings him, of course, to meet the new children and to (confidentially) have Raiden see if there are any… issues with either of them. Their fathers have both been touched by the energy of the Netherrealm, after all, and Johnathan has his worries.

The Briggses have moved out to a farm in the countryside by then, surrounding themself with old vestiges of Americana and making a home for themselves away from the wreckage of war. Raiden feels… oversized in their house. He does not fit here among the picture frames and the scented candles and the discarded, muddy work boots. He does not fit well amongst the living. He stinks too sharply of the dead.

It is Jackson that carries the children out of the back room, one girl swaddled neatly in the crook of each mechanical arm, and Sonya following closely behind. He looks tired and unsure, leaning down to press his forehead to a sleeping Jacqueline’s before holding her out to Raiden. Raiden smiles.

“I will not hurt her, Jackson Briggs.”

His face tenses, knots, his eyes darting down to her before he sighs through his nose.

“I know,” he murmurs.

***

Liu Kang arrives to the Shaolin covered in blood.

He is a small boy, hardly a year old by the looks of him, pulled from the mangled arms of two bodies found at the foot of the sky temple and delivered swiftly into Raiden’s care. His men said it may have been animals. The knife wounds in their necks speak of assassins.

Raiden does not humor keeping him at the temple. It is too cold for a child of his size, and the bouts of rain will only leave him shaking.

So he brings him to the monks. To clean, and raise, and care for.

The trip is short, a burst of light into the inner courtyard, the guards on watch already rushing to meet him and relieve him of his charge. But the child holds on. Raiden glances down when he feels small hands tugging at his robe, smoothing a finger briefly over the dark wisps of hair sticking to the infant’s cheek.

“They will not hurt you, little one,” he murmurs. “You will be safe here.”

***

Human children grow so fast. Raiden has seen it happen countless times, and yet it never fails to surprise him.

In the blink of an eye, Cassandra Cage and Jacqueline Briggs are old enough to walk, then talk, then joke, then fight. They take to the work like fish to water, at first as spectators to their parents’ training, then prospective hires, and then…

“The Shirai Ryu say they have someone for this team, too, the Hasashi Takahashi kid.”

Raiden looks up from the proposal laid out on his desk. Johnathan is leaning back, his feet kicked up on the wood, fingers drumming a rhythm into the tactical cloth of his thigh.

“I… was not aware the two of them had—”

“Oh!” Johnathan sits upright, face surprised. “No no no not uh… like that, just… He’s Takahashi’s son, but grandmaster Hasashi helped bring him up. Name’s Takeda. Hasashi says you’ve seen the kid in action a bit, back when all that kamidogu shit went down. They think he’d be a good fit for our ranks.” He huffs. “And, Cass says Jacqui’s already been smitten with him in his first handful of visits to the training gym, sooo… good for team synergy.”

“Mm.” Raiden looks back down at the report. It is an… interesting proposal. A new group to help ally various factions together via their next generations. It would be the first of its kind, at least since the alliances during the tournament, and poses a powerful threat to their enemies should the bonds work as proposed.

Should they not, however…

Raiden’s brow furrows, but he aims for a pleasant expression when he addresses Johnathan once more.

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention.” He smiles. “I will consider the recommendation. Thank you, Johnathan Cage.”

***

Raiden loses track of the number of times he is contacted about Kung Lao fighting too roughly. Not following his forms, breaking protocol for cheap hits, wrestling fellow Shaolin into the dirt. He is talented when he tries, they say, but is too easily angered when his pride is bruised.

It is why Raiden is not surprised when he receives yet another letter with word of the same kind of incident.

He is surprised, however, for that letter to include Liu Kang.

He has never transported himself to the Shaolin temple so quickly.

He finds the two of them sitting on the stone steps by one of the training yards, Liu Kang sporting an awfully purple cheek and Kung Lao nursing a bandage on his forearm. They’re laughing about something with each other, lounged casually in their training clothes, but at the sight of Raiden, they both tense and sit up straight.

“Lord Raiden!” Liu Kang exclaims. He is the first to his feet, bowing deeply. Kung Lao follows, his movements practiced and eyes wary.

Raiden waves for them to relax, removing his hat and leaning down to get a better look at Liu Kang.

“What in Earthrealm have you two been doing…” he hisses.

Liu Kang shrinks, shooting a glance back to Kung Lao. Raiden moves to him next, taking his arm gently to inspect the damage. It doesn’t seem broken, but he can see the spotting of blood beneath the linens. He frowns.

“We just fought too seriously, that’s all,” Kung Lao mumbles. “It’s not a big deal.”

Raiden’s gaze flicks to Liu Kang, who makes a strange face and hangs his head slightly. “It has been a little boring. I’ve already mastered the techniques I’ve been shown, but the masters say I haven’t. Lao challenged me to beat him and I accepted. We didn’t mean to get out of hand.”

Raiden sighs and straightens, taking a moment to find his words.

“I… understand you are not used to being away from family, Kung Lao,” he begins. “And Liu Kang, I know you are being given harder training but you—” He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose briefly before staring down at them. They are young boys, so old already but still so fragile. Too fragile for the life ahead of them.

“But you are meant for better things than this,” Raiden says. “You are meant to aid in Earthrealm’s protection. By the words of the Elder Gods, and your families, and my own choice, you are to be raised as champions. Champions must learn to follow the rules before they can break them.”

Both boys stare up at him, worry and determination hard in their features. Raiden sighs again and crouches down on one knee, summoning his best smile.

“Focus, that is all I ask. Focus, and you will be great warriors in time, I know it.”

***

Kung Jin is nearly older now than Kung Lao ever was.

It is a thought that strikes Raiden one morning, as clear and piercing as a knife.

What a painful thing, he thinks. What an awful truth to bear.

He makes his way down to the memorial wing after morning prayers, walking quietly past the statues to the more intimate area of personal altars in the back. Liu Kang’s spot has a littering of small gifts, and Kung Lao has a wilted mix of flowers and treats spilling onto the floor of his. His family has not forgotten him, or his loss. They visit the temple regularly, even if their taste for Raiden has soured.

Raiden removes his hat, setting it to the side as he kneels before the inked portraits of his fallen boys. Their expressions do not change now, frozen in time and memory. He takes a breath.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, the same as he has every day before. The same as every day for years past now. The same as he will every day on, forever.

The room yawns, aching and quiet.

“I’m sorry you met your ends for me.”

[rotworld]

8: Forgotten

art by @exorbitantsqueakingnoises

your small band of refugees has finally found a safe place beyond the imperium's reach, but this paradise does not come for free.

->warhammer 40k. original necron/reader. contains graphic descriptions of violence, corpses, torture, (robot) insects going into orifices, coercive relationship, possessive/controlling behavior, mentioned memory issues, brief mention of self-harm.

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At sunrise, little legs come scurrying into your quarters. Pinprick footsteps tiptoe up the side of the bed and perch on the pillow beside you. Something beeps rhythmically. You groan, rolling away from it. Thin, spidery limbs climb the shape of your body beneath the blankets and perch on top of you like a persistent cat seeking attention. It beeps louder. It wobbles back and forth.

“I’m up, I’m up,” you mumble. The beeping stops. The thing crawls down the bed and creeps up the windowsill, the morning light glittering on its metal carapace. This canoptek scarab is specialized for delicate tasks, the grooves in its tiny, rounded paws intended to slot against circuitry and gently rewire damaged internal processing centers. It was a gift, the first of many. It wakes you in the morning and skitters after you throughout the day.

The smell of food chases the fog of sleep from your mind. Someone has been here recently. Breakfast waits in a silver tray on the bedside table. It’s not a stale rations bar or a cracked tin of corpse starch but food, fragrant and fresh and still hot. Hard boiled eggs from a local avian species, diced greens and fresh fruits, spice-seasoned beans drizzled with sauce and topped with leaves of garnish. It feels like a dream but it can’t be. You’ve never seen anything like this, couldn’t have imagined it even at your hungriest and most desperate. Your eyes burn with tears as you slide the tray onto your lap. You never knew beans could taste like anything more than soggy cardboard and rust. 

After breakfast, you get dressed. A robe has already been selected for you and folded neatly in a chair along with the accompanying sashes, cords and jeweled accessories. Each layer is light and airy so you aren’t overwhelmed by the pleasantly warm weather, but you still feel weighed down by all the thick gold bands and layered bead necklaces and jeweled brooches. It feels absurd to make so much noise while you move, everything clinking and clattering together. You wonder if you’ll ever get used to it.

A pair of intimidating gold and silver figures guard your bedchambers, standing just outside the door. Each holds a shield the size of their towering body and a monstrously large blade. They do not move. They do not breathe. You could easily mistake them for statues if not for the soft hum of their internal machinery. “Good morning,” you say quietly. Expressionless skeletal faces stare back. In perfect unison, they tuck their blades behind their backs and bow deeply—a traditional expression of submission to your authority. You hear them fall into step behind you, marching at your back. Your scarab struggles to keep up and scurries up to your shoulder, clinging gently to your robes. 

The palace is still under construction. There are large slabs of unbroken stone lying around, half-carved pillars and unfinished sculptures, the intricate tile patterns leading to the courtyard in the midst of meticulous assembly. A row of enormous statues marks where the gates will be someday, a looming wall adorned with the symbols of the Runaadi Dynasty. For now, there are only rolling green hills speckled with shrubs and wildflowers. The lychguards remain here at your urging, standing sentinel in the shade of towering trees flushed with spring blossoms. They stand so still that the delicate pink blossoms falling from the branches land on their bodies and sit undisturbed. 

As you descend into the valley, you start to hear voices. Chatter and laughter and the playful shrieks of small children. Unlike the scrap metal shanties and toxic ooze lakes of your youth, this is a gentle world of crisp, clear air and blue skies. Small huts with thatched roofs form a modest village, the grass thinning into what will someday be common dirt pathways. The fields are colorful and sweet-smelling with flowering crops. The storehouse is filling with grains. Furry, four-legged beasts graze on grass at the outskirts. There are no munitions assembly lines and backbreaking quotas, no Arbitrators stalking the streets with scowls and shock batons. There is no squabbling for the last ragged, moth-eaten blanket in the frigid shadows of the Underhive.

People wave and smile. A few children rush over to give you freshly picked flowers. Tryphena comes to see you with a grin on her face and grass stains on the knees of her trousers. There are small, prickly seed pods and leaves sticking out of her short, white hair. “Come to see the common folk?” she teases. “I’d give you a hug, but I might stain your outfit with my dirty peasant hands.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” you say, rolling your eyes. She smells like damp soil and leather. When she wraps her arms around you, she squeezes tight like she’s afraid she might not have another chance. “How are things?”

“Good.” She says it hesitantly, glancing back at the village in something like disbelief. “Everything is good. Dayn got that hole patched in the tannery’s roof. Gellora’s baby is due any day now. We’re building a library, too.” She points to a new structure just past the well, several people dragging wagons of lumber and stone over to build the foundations. “Hardly have enough books to fill it, but that could change someday. Wouldn’t that be something? Talis said I should write a book about we got here.” She picks absently at a starburst scar under one eye. The wound is no longer fresh but it is recent and still healing. It had been self-inflicted; a brutal knife wound intended to vandalize the fleur-de-lis tattoo that only lingers in disconnected spots of ink.

“You don’t want to?” you ask her. 

She’s quiet for a long time, staring out at the fields and the grassy slopes. There are mountains in the distance, great peaks capped with snow and a cloudy haze. No one goes that way anymore. It’s the edge of the world as far as they’re concerned. Two Imperial ships sit in the shadows of those mountains, left to rust and rot. One landed gracefully. One bears a peculiar scar of anti-aircraft weaponry, a clean incision like a scalpel cut unraveling the steel. It crash-landed, gouging a smoldering scar across the landscape like a stripe of forest fire.

“I’m still having nightmares,” Tryphena admits. “About being found here. Sometimes it’s an Explorator fleet, stumbling upon us by chance. Sometimes it’s no accident. Inquisitors of the Ordo Hereticus. My own Sisters, clad in fury. They burn everything and everyone to ash, but it’s the way they look at me that haunts me come morning.” 

You watch a man hang a damp blanket on a clothesline. A woman draws water from a well. Children run past, the youngest clutching a stuffed animal with sooty stains peppered across its raggedy fabric skin. “No one is going to find us here,” you say, your voice quiet but firm. 

“If it happened once, it can happen again.” She looks towards the mountains. 

“Nurakhet isn’t on any Imperial map. The tides of the Warp are too treacherous for anyone to risk coming this way. And even if they do…” You clutch the jeweled brooch affixed to a sash hanging over your shoulders—the symbol of the Ruunadi Dynasty. It’s an impossibly ancient antique, luminescent crystals and delicate metalwork forged before even the simplest unicellular lifeforms had begun to swim through the primordial seas of your ancestors’ homeworld. It rested in a stasis container for untold millennia, protected from the ravages of time in subterranean darkness.

“If anything comes here,” you say, “they’ll protect us. They’ll honor the pact.”

Tryphena frowns tightly but she nods, her gaze drawn to white tufts of cloud drifting through the sky. You stand with her in silence for a while, watching the sun rise and the village brighten. “I’m grateful to you,” she says after a time. “We all are. But are you alright?” 

You’re startled by the question. “Of course I am. You see what I’m wearing, right?” 

That’s not what she meant and you both know it. “This was always meant to be the start of something different. Something better than what we had before.  What good is a peace bought with blood?”

“It really isn’t like that,” you insist. You smile, hoping she doesn’t see the tension in it. You look her in the eye and squeeze her shoulder. “Tryphena, I mean it. There’s nothing to worry about. The most strenuous thing I’ve had to do all week is walk from one end of the palace to the other.” 

She cracks a smile. “What hardship! All that walking. Next you’ll tell me that dinner was served on a gold plate, but there was no dessert.” 

The scarab beeps on your shoulder, the glowing node embedded in its body flickering. There’s a shrill, electronic noise, a hiss of static, and then a voice. “Consort, your presence is requested in the western solarium.” It’s Zereb, curt as always. You apologize to Tryphena but she waves you off, insisting she has things to do anyway. You feel her stare lingering on your back as you walk away. 

The lychguards are still where you left them. They bow when you return and shadow you on the long, pleasant walk back to the palace. “Good morning, Zereb,” you say. 

A long sigh emanates from the scarab. Zereb doesn’t breathe—he has no lungs. He makes the sound only to ensure you understand just how exasperated he is. “Is it good? Truly? Do you know what I’m doing right now?” 

“I’d rather not know, but I bet you’re going to tell me—” 

“I am studying the human phallus,” he interrupts. “It is loathsome. Perhaps the most inelegant, repulsive structure in the natural world.”

“Ah,” you say.

“The Phaeron is displeased. He asked me why you insist on abandoning the lychguards when you leave the palace, as though I have unique insight into your rudimentary cognitive processes.” 

“Is he displeased because I left them behind?” you ask. “Or because you insulted me?”

“Irrelevant,” Zereb says. 

You stray from the path. The lychguards abruptly change course to follow you. The trees lining what will one day be a grand, crystalline walkway have sea green leaves and large flowers, starburst blossoms with several layers of pointed petals. You pick several. “Do you know what he likes?” you ask.

There’s a long pause. “What he likes?” Zereb repeats with confusion.

“Yeah. You know. Favorite color, favorite place in the palace, things like that. I know I could ask, but I’d like to try surprising him sometime.”

There’s another, much longer pause. “I do not think he remembers what he likes.” 

“There must be something,” you insist. “He must like Ruunadi spearblossoms, right? He just had more of them planted in the courtyard.” 

“That is because he heard you say that you liked them,” Zereb says. 

“He likes gold, doesn’t he? He keeps giving me more.” 

“The first piece of jewelry you accepted from him was a golden bangle.” 

“Well, what about…” You stop yourself. Those light blue stones, you were going to say, the ones he just used in a spectacular mural in the dining hall—until you remembered they’d been used in the tile flooring of your luxurious bathing chamber. You’d made an off-handed comment once while sitting in the palace garden together. You liked those tiles. It was the color of Nurakhet’s sky just after sunrise, a shade you’d never seen before coming here. 

“Perhaps you could tell him that you like when I have free reign over the observatory?” Zereb proposes. “You especially like when I have several uninterrupted weeks of privacy and do not need to debase myself with the study of human anatomy. Yes, I think it would please him greatly to hear that.” 

“Sure,” you say dryly. The lychguards guide you back to the path, beneath the shadows of looming statues and a great arch of stone. It’s so empty here compared to the village. Most of the Ruunadi Dynasty has yet to awaken. Those few who work tirelessly to construct the palace are little more than automatons, sleepwalking shells directed by the Phaeron’s will. Zereb has told you that they are recreating the old Ruunadi palace down to the smallest painstaking detail, a futile task that may take the rest of time. They keep making and remaking sections. Statues are meticulously carved and then shattered in frustration, their faces unfinished collages of features that don’t match. 

The lychguards stop walking suddenly. You turn back and find them angled towards a different hallway, clearly expecting you to go in that direction. “I thought I was supposed to go to the western solarium,” you say. 

“That was a lie,” Zereb admits. “Sometimes you are reluctant to return if I am truthful.” You don’t move. Zereb knows, somehow. He always does—both of them. Maybe the lychguards silently report your every move, or maybe the scarab tracks your movements. “Consort. I know we are not always in agreement. But it is good that you are here. Your presence has a noticeable stabilizing effect—”

“He doesn’t even know who I am, Zereb,” you say tiredly. “He thinks I’m someone else.” 

“The Phaeron says you are his consort, therefore you are.” 

“This isn’t sustainable. You said his memory was affected by waking early and his IFF transponder isn’t functioning normally. So what happens if it gets fixed? What happens if those memories come back? What if—” 

“Enough,” Zereb hisses. You recognize that hushed, fearful tone. There’s a long agonizing silence before he speaks again. “I must insist that you change your robes later. The Phaeron has already waited so long to see you. He would not care if you came to him covered head to toe in dirt, for the dirt would become precious for touching your skin.” 

You take a deep breath. “I guess you’re right. I shouldn’t worry about things like that,” you say. “I’ll be right there.” There’s a crackle and then the scarab falls silent. The lychguards follow you closely as you begin descending a flight of stairs that seems to go on forever. The palace changes from a warm, sandy brown to sleek black, shiny like obsidian. Veins of bright green pulsate in seams and crevices. The deeper you go, the more alien everything becomes. Enormous structures twist, piston and ripple in ways metal and stone should not. Jutting obelisks shine with strange symbols. The walkways are constantly changing, floating platforms gliding silently across great chasms. You would get lost here without the lychguards to guide you down the proper steps, across the proper moving sections of flooring, into the proper doorways and chambers. 

This is where the Ruunadi Dynasty has slept for longer than you can even imagine. 

The chamber you’re led to is not like the others. Rather than the unnerving quiet, silence save for the constant, bassy thrum of machinery, there is sickening noise. Muffled screams and sobbing. Wet squelches. Flesh peeled, nauseatingly slowly, from bone. Blood spatters tall surgical slabs, dripping constantly down the sides.

“Darling,” purrs Amuresha the Relentless, your savior, your jailor, your husband. “There you are. I had just begun to worry. You dismissed the lychguards.”

“Only for a moment,” you assure him. He stalks forward from the shadows and your head raises, craning your neck to keep your gaze on his face. Amuresha, like all necrons, is cursed for all his unlife to wear a visage of death. The living metal of his body is sculpted into a skeletal form, an elongated skull for a face with a grim, unchanging expression. His chest is a broad plane with horizontal slits mimicking a ribcage, connected to his pelvis by nothing more than a flexible metal pole serving as a spinal column. Rather than clothing, his body is adorned with colorful protrusions mimicking garments and jewelry. Layers of thin, flexible metal sheets hangs in front of his legs to form a ceremonial loincloth and a cloak of interlocking hexagons form a cloak over his shoulders. A flared crown juts directly from his skull, wide and colorful like the wings of a bird. 

“A moment is all it would take to lose you, beloved. You are not like I am.” He reaches for you, metal fingers curling against your cheek. You hear his internal cooling systems kicking into high gear as he overheats himself, cognitive processors humming dangerously, just to warm his living metal to a comfortable temperature. “You are perfect,” he murmurs. “Just as you have always been.”

You smile sadly. It’s hard to know exactly what Amuresha sees when he looks at you. He knows something is wrong. He knows time has passed since the days of flesh, but how long, exactly, eludes him. Zereb has told you he was married once—and that the marriage fell apart in a rather spectacular fashion. Somehow he holds two truths simultaneously; that it was mere days since that last screaming argument that drove his spouse away, and yet staggering cosmic ages have also passed. He knows he is made of living metal and he knows you are not, and no effort has been made to reconcile the two.

He says you are his consort. Therefore, you are.

“Are you going to join me for lunch?” you ask. You take his hand in yours. It’s much larger, each metal digit stretching far beyond the length of your own fingers. 

“Soon, my love. I have work to finish here. Come and see.” You don’t want to. Your stomach churns at the thought of what’s waiting for you in the darkness of this room. But Amuresha bends slightly, bringing your hand to the stylized indents on the lower half of his face resembling the grimace of a skull. “Love?” he asks, so soft and hopeful that your heart aches. 

“Of course,” you say. He can’t smile but the green glow in the dark sockets of his face seems to brighten. 

He leads you. He walks slowly. He never lets go of your hand. The lighting in the tomb chambers is incidental, any illumination the result of machines carrying out their functions. Amuresha makes more light for your benefit, encouraging the walls and pillars to glow more brightly. Your breath hitches as the rest of the chamber becomes gradually visible. You see things that will return in your nightmares. 

There are humans—bits and pieces of them—scattered across the chamber. Heads preserved in stasis cubes and torsos dangling from angular meathooks, bodies bisected and vivisected and peeled like fruit. The worst are the ones that are still alive, strapped to metal examination tables. Some of them thrash as much as their bindings will allow, trying to scream through their gags. Some are motionless, staring blankly at the ceiling. Blood trickles from their ears, nose and mouth. The ones that still have tongues make noises that are almost words; curses, prayers, oaths of vengeance. The ones that still have eyes stare at you with fear and awe and hatred. 

“We have been studying, Zereb and I,” he says, chuckling as though you might find this amusing. He strolls down aisles of death and butchery, leading you along at a leisurely pace. The stench of rust and rot and death is unbearable. Zereb is here, hunched beside one of the slabs. He is slighter in frame than Amuresha, his chest section narrower, his limbs more delicate. Living metal encases him like a robe, a rounded sheet covering his head like a hood. He glances at you with five gleaming bulbs, gemstone bright, set in his face. A swarm of scarabs, much smaller than yours with much sharper limbs, crawls around restlessly by his feet. The scarab on your shoulder whispers an apology.

“What have you been studying?” you ask, eager to leave as soon as possible. 

“Oh, all manner of things! There is so much wonder in the flesh. I wish to emulate its softness for you. Its warmth. Its sensitivity.” His hand wanders down your back, squeezing your hip suggestively. “I have studied males of this species most extensively,” he says, lowering his voice to a sensual purr. “They are unseemly, I know, but they are more complex than they appear. Just like us, they sometimes copulate purely for pleasure. Perhaps I will be able to do this again soon. Love you in the ways of flesh, just as I once did.” 

You’re too stunned to answer. You didn’t think it was possible. Amuresha has nothing resembling genitalia, just smooth metal between his legs. Zereb’s mentions of his studies earlier ceases to be amusing and suddenly becomes a concern. 

Amuresha stops beside one of the slabs. “Do you recognize these, my star?” he asks.

He wants you to look. Your heart pounds. Bile climbs up your throat at the sight of the body lying there. It’s a woman. Her armor is cracked and shattered in places, bloody from the oozing wounds underneath. Her hair is white, cropped just above the shoulders. There is a fleur-de-lis tattooed beneath her eye. She’s chewed and struggled against the gag in her mouth so much that it’s dug into her face hard enough to expose slippery insides, the meat of her cheek muscles. Her eyes are glazed over but even through the blood loss and agony, you can see the clarity and the sheer magnitude of her hatred for you.

Across the room, Zereb gives a command. The scarabs rush up the side of the slab in a wave. A man babbles through his gag, and then he cries, and then he screams. 

“These…these are…” You’re going to be sick. “I…I thought you killed them already.”

“My love,” Amuresha says softly. He turns you towards him, framing your face in his hands. “Don’t be afraid. Yes, these are the creatures that followed your retinue here. They can’t harm you anymore, you see?” 

You don’t want to look but he makes you, turns your head and forces you to watch Zereb pluck the gag out of the man’s mouth. Scarabs rush in, a few impatient ones wriggling into his nostrils instead, making his eyes bulge and his flesh distend around them as they burrow into his brain. He shivers and retches, fingers scraping the metal slab he’s trapped against so hard they bleed. He gags and retches and gurgles violently, blood trickling from every invaded orifice.  Zereb bends over him, studying his face intently and searching for some hidden sign. When he sees it, he makes a slight gesture. A wave of the hand, two fingers extended. 

You don’t think you’ll ever forget the noises he makes. The wailing. Wordless, mindless animal fear. His struggles turn to trembling and then he goes completely still. Mouth hanging open. Eyes blank. Rivulets of cerebrospinal fluid dribble from his bloody nose. 

Amuresha mistakes the cause of your frightened whimper. He holds you, a hand smoothing over your head in gentle, affectionate strokes. “You are safe here, my star,” he whispers. “You and your courtiers are under my protection. No harm shall come to you.”

You cling to him, keeping your eyes squeezed shut. You can still smell the rancid stink of decay and inhumane cruelty. You can still see Tryphena’s Sister, her bloodshot, hateful eyes, the peek of her mandible through mangled skin. “You promise?” you say weakly. 

“I swear it,” Amuresha says. “You are safe, now and forever. As long as you are here. With me. I love you, darling. I will love you until the stars have all died.” 

His grip tightens until it’s bruising. You tell him you love him, too.

[vex-bittys]

Flufftober 2020: Day Nineteen

Prompt: Sharing a Bed

Pairing: Swapfell (fanon) skelebros

Category: Familial

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“AND THE ENTIRE PREMISE OF THE STORY IS THAT THE SKI LODGE MIXED UP THE RESERVATION AND THE ONLY ROOM LEFT HAS ONLY ONE BED!”

Mutt watched the city pass by in a blur as the taxi wove through traffic and his brother complained loudly about Blueberry’s manuscript, which he had so graciously offered to critique. Blackberry apparently took the job very seriously, waving around the sheaf of papers he’d printed out so that he could read Blue’s work during their conference trip.

Mutt unloaded the taxi and carried their luggage into their hotel, checking in while Blackberry continued his tirade about “IMPLAUSIBLE PLOT ELEMENTS” and “GROSS LOGISTICAL INCOMPETENCE.” He hoped that Blueberry had the mental fortitude to withstand Blackberry’s laundry list of negative opinions. His brother could be quite abrasive, as evidenced by the fact that the hotel staff refused to make eye contact with him, not wanting to attract any of his loudly disgruntled attention.

“the room key, m’Lord,” Mutt murmured, offering the keycard to his brother and using an honorific that he hoped would soothe Blackberry’s seemingly endless agitation.

Blackberry waved the keycard away. “TAKE OUR LUGGAGE UP TO OUR ROOM,” he ordered Mutt as if his brother worked as a bellhop for the hotel, a bellhop who would be lucky not to receive a rebuke in place of a tip. “I NEED TO GO OVER THE ITINERARY FOR TOMORROW.”

Mutt hauled the suitcases to the elevators, feeling a brief flash of sympathy for the conference planner. Blackberry did not simply “go over” an itinerary. He passive-aggressively suggested changes until the human delegates of the Integration Council surrendered to his whims. Nothing could stop Blackberry when he set his mind to something, not since he was a babybones being spoiled by his big brother.

Black’s first utterance, like most babybones, had been “MUH!” which would have worked out fine if they'd had a mother to look after them. To avoid the inescapable humiliation of being called Mom by his baby brother, Mutt had opted for a tougher nickname, and even Blackberry himself never knew the truth of it. Still, in the role of a single parent, Mutt took the blame for letting Blackberry grow up spoiled.

Mutt missed his bossy babybones brother. Despite their unstable situation as young skeletons on their own in a dangerous Underground, Blackberry had always been affectionate with him… until he grew up and decided that a proper Royal Guard didn’t need pesky emotions or brotherly affection. Sure, he would fight until he dusted to protect Mutt, but a hug? Out of the question.

Mutt dragged the suitcases into the room and tossed them onto one of the queen-sized beds. He stared at the luggage for a moment as his mind turned the word bed over and over until an idea fell out of it. 

Only one bed!

Mutt swept the suitcases onto the floor. Next, he hurried over to the window and pried it open. Their room faced a courtyard because Blackberry would never choose a room without a view. It took some effort (and the loosening of the bolts that held the bed securely to the floor and wall), but Mutt managed to haul the entire bed (frame, mattresses, bedding and all) to the window and tip it over the edge until it plummeted to the courtyard below like a cartoon piano.

Mutt leaned out the window to check his handiwork. Sure, the mattresses had taken out a few lounge chairs and tables, but who sat outside in a hotel courtyard anyway? Nobody now, that was for sure. Blackberry could deal with that issue during checkout if anyone dared to make the egregious mistake of confronting him about his faults as a temporary tenant.

Blackberry stormed into the room minutes after Mutt had schooled his face into an expression of mild confusion. “WHO DID THAT HUMAN THINK HE WAS DEALING WITH?” snapped Blackberry triumphantly before trailing off to take in the hastily remodeled hotel room. The story of the battle for the conference itinerary fell by the wayside in light of this puzzling new development.

Mutt spoke before Blackberry could gather words. “m’Lord it seems that there’s been some sort of booking error. there’s only one bed.”

Blackberry’s sockets narrowed to slits, and his eyelights traced the path of destruction from the bare bolts and obviously unfaded queen-sized bed shaped rectangle of carpet to the open window where surprised shouts drifted up from the courtyard outside. He inhaled deeply, paused, then exhaled. The conference started early in the morning the next day, and he would need to rest his lungs to point out various acts of incompetence committed by the Council until late into the night.

This matter of the mysteriously missing bed could wait. Whatever reason Mutt had for wanting to share this single bed, Blackberry decided not to argue with him. They hadn’t shared a sleeping space since Black wore stripes, but it didn’t bother him to revert to the old habit, just this once.

With a sigh, Blackberry unpacked his suitcase and donned his pajamas. Mutt stripped off his jacket, sweater, and pants and dropped the clothing directly onto the floor. Wearing only a tank top and his boxers, Mutt curled up on one side of the bed. Once he’d properly prepared himself to sleep, Blackberry joined him, awkwardly tucking himself into Mutt’s arms. Mutt readjusted his brother so that Blackberry’s skull rested under his chin.

Slumber claimed Mutt almost immediately, but Blackberry laid awake for awhile as he usually did. He actually… enjoyed the sensation of Mutt being curled protectively around him. It brought back nostalgic feelings of being a babybones, protected and carefree with no responsibilities to trouble his mind.

Closing his sockets, Blackberry leaned into his brother’s embrace, and right before he drifted off to sleep he thought that perhaps the premise of Blueberry’s manuscript might not be so farfetched or terrible after all.

READ ON AO3

DAY EIGHTEEN | INDEX | DAY TWENTY

[sam-glade]

Find the Words Tag

Tagged by @mrbexwrites here and @mister-writes here - thank you💜

I'll pass it onto: @cee-grice @squarebracket-trick @chauceryfairytales @ceph-the-ghost-writer. Your words are: brick, tree, cloud, sun.

I've got enough of The Prince's Shadow to find these words surely...

From @mrbexwrites: dark, bright, part, thing

DARK

Gullin clapped him on the shoulder and turned around, taking a key crystal on a small chain out of his pocket. He wrapped it around his Knife and stabbed the air, then turned the Weapon as if it were a key. A vertical slit appeared a foot above the ground, then grew sideways, to the size of a barn door. Inside it, there was the Void littered with unreal stars. Gullin stepped into it without hesitation. The slit shrank, until it disappeared, leaving Lissan on his own, in the dark, empty clearing.

BRIGHT

The mention of the brat soured Erya’s mood, not helped by the bright sun beating relentlessly on the paved courtyard outside the Central Command. She exchanged her spectacles for dark-tinted ones and pulled the sleeves over her hands — her knuckles were sunburnt already. Bracing herself, she stepped out into the light.

PART

“I’d like Nikols Thunderglass to take on this role.” Erya blinked at her, but no, she’d really just… suggested her own second in command for the post. Very rarely would a captain general part with their right hand, but then Anthea would be one of these few cases. This wasn’t the main issue with the suggestion.

THING

Gullin paused at the intersection of the Chestnut Promenade with the road that ran along the bank of the river. Turning right, he’d get to the pub where his friends were probably gathering, and they’d toast him and congratulate him, and for the first time since he could remember, this was the last thing he wanted.

~*~

From @mister-writes: catch, teeth, hand, and remember.

CATCH

Gullin had sent a sergeant here a couple of days ago. Her name was Linna, and she wielded a Staff shod in a thin layer of cold iron. She was good enough to catch the Brigadier’s attention. She needed a chance to shine, to justify a bursary for officer’s commission. She didn’t return. She’d been accompanied by a guide from the Infantry, but his report didn’t add up. Gullin suspected that he’d turned tail and ran when things started to heat up. Hence the Brigadier himself came to see what had happened to her and to deal with the rampaging Sword.

TEETH

“Lie still, sir.” The unfamiliar voice was coming from a distance, but he listened to it nevertheless. He didn’t feel like trying to move again, and instead focused on swallowing down the bile. He sucked in air through clenched teeth while taking stock of all his limbs and appendages. His head hurt. So did his left arm. His left side smarted. Broken ribs or just fractured, he wondered as he was getting used to the pain.

HAND

Anthea sat at the head, imperious as always in her favourite wine-red gown, with a silver circlet with a delicate multi-rayed star on her brow. She held herself straight, with her head high, and the Shadow’s eyes lingered on her familiar features. Her lush, dark hair was immaculately gathered in a silver filigree net at the back of her neck, and her steel-grey eyes looked at her peers with the comforting hardness. Light caught the silver signet ring with the Moon-and-Star emblem on her right hand as she set down the cut-crystal wine glass. She wore the ring over a thin black glove made of fine leather.

REMEMBER

Gullin stopped by the Hall of Contemplation first. He put the broken Staff on the temporary memory shrine there, where it would wait until Linna’s family was notified and they would make arrangements for the funeral. That was, if she had any family. Gullin was feeling increasingly guilty that he couldn’t remember anything about it. He instructed the enlisted Sword standing guard there to put up a notice with Linna’s name, to give her comrades a chance to say their farewells.

[bigimotikwriting]

Their Future - Part 21

Master Post

Back in Lady Ryuely's courtyard, Yumemi once again stood before the Pool of Sight. She would have preferred to have Ichiko and Suzume there, but time was of the essence.

Even without the rings, even without having a clear mental connection to Munto, she had to bring him home.

Closing her eyes, she reached deep into her memories: the ones Munto had shared with her from his childhood, the first time they met, when she jumped from the ferris wheel into his arms, when he held the bridge between their worlds open so she could save her friends, the day they exchanged the rings, their first kiss.

If human emotions formed akuto, then surely that was enough to find him, wherever he was.

She opened her eyes and furrowed her brow in concentration as green, blue, and golden lights started to sparkle around her clenched fist. A slight breeze started to pick up as she carefully began to repel the forces of space-time once more.

She imagined herself as no more than a tiny fractal, traveling along the paths of light, cutting a winding way to where her king was.

What felt like hours must have only been a few minutes, but Yumemi found herself tiring rapidly. The strong thread leading the way became weak and frayed. She held on as long as she could under the increasing strain.

Munto! Where are you? she called out in her mind.

***********

Munto, where are you?

Yumemi's voice, soft and distant, resonating like the traces of an echo. A tiny prick of light formed in the space next to Gridori, who made a wide sweeping gesture, expanding the light into a circle.

Within the circle, Yumemi was visible: determined, arm outstretched, green eyes shining, caramel hair blown back as she repelled forces the size of planets to carve a path into the void.

"Munto!" Her arm extended, breaking into the dark space.

In desperation, Munto tried to scream her name, only to find that no sound issued from his throat. Somehow, Gridori had morphed his form to mangle the vocal chords before swapping bodies, and Munto had no time to magically make them work again. He couldn't warn Yumemi.

"Yumemi!" Gridori called out in a cruel mockery of the precious endearments Munto had shared with her in the past. "Languish away, pathetic king, and reflect on your mistakes."

With these words, he moved forward to grab Yumemi's hand. Munto screamed silently in anguish and rage as a brilliant white light filled through the space-time. When the light faded, he hurriedly looked around.

Gridori and Yumemi were gone.

Munto dropped his head in defeat.

[krenenbaker]

Stop the World - 2: Seize the Moment

Pairing: Malleus/Cater

Warnings/Features: Angst (eventually with a happy ending), mention of death, (somewhat?) posessive Malleus Draconia

Summary: Cater and Malleus have found a comfortable rhythm to their lives in their last year at Night Raven College. But as the threat of change creeps closer, their fears about the future do too.

Malleus: Clinging onto the present

Notes: I've been working on the third and final part of this (thanks mostly to Inky!!), but I realized that I haven't actually posted the second part here yet, only on my AO3! If you haven't yet, you can read the first part here, which can be read before or after this one. Now just to finish the final part... And I will actually post the third part here in a timely manner once it's finished, instead of a month later! ^^;

Tags: @dove-da-birb, @inkybloom-luv, @silvers-numberonefan, @azulashengrottospiano (if you'd like to be tagged, or not tagged, in the writing I post, please let me know!)

Part 1 | Part 3 | AO3 Version (ft. all chapters)

When Malleus made a commitment, he put everything he had into it. He was aware that this intensity could be off-putting to some. It tended to scare people away. Even more so with everyone already fearing him for his name, strength, size, and social position.

Everyone, it seemed, but the human sitting beside him that very moment, leaning into his side. The one who was brave enough to approach him with a smile and, curiously, gentle taunts a number of months ago. The human who slowly opened his heart, gifting everything from his tears to his name, and let Malleus - no, "Mal" - make his claim, finding true warmth, and laughter, and love within. The little human who became his most precious Treasure.

Despite their differing positions - and shared masculine identity - both of their families were generally supportive, as were his future subjects. Or they would be, were Malleus not the next, and last, Draconia in line for the throne. He knew that he was expected to marry and subsequently sire an heir. Or two. Or five. And though his people held no prejudice against same-gender love, his heart had been captured by someone who - as he was - could not produce children. (There were ways, of course, which would be discussed when the time was right.)

While there were also very few issues with marriage between nobility and other classes, the same could not be said for relationships between a fae and a human... especially a human foreigner.

(Perhaps it was time for that to change. For the kingdom to begin to heal from the past and enter a new era.)

Even so, another thought plagued his mind. Malleus also knew that time would continue to pass, and it would not be kind. He would see his partner, his Treasure, his Cater age and wither and die as he continued to live on. He would barely even reach middle age as moss would inevitably begin to creep onto a slowly weathering gravestone.

And even now, their time together at Night Raven College was passing terribly fast and was nearly through. In mere months there would be no more lazy afternoons at each other's dorm for tea. Visits into town to try spicy ice cream or the newest artistically prepared coffees would end. There wouldn't be any more weekends in the school library studying with their legs softly pressed together as they sat sharing a textbook. And quiet moments at dusk, watching the sun dip down over the trees in the courtyard, like this evening, would cease.

He would never wish to admit so, but it hurt.

Malleus just wanted things to stay as they were. No royal duties to fulfill. No judgements. No cruel time eating away at their bodies. Just him and Cater, sitting side-by-side as the stars slowly appeared above them.

He feels a slight tenseness from his companion. Well, the sun has set; it must be becoming cold for a human. He gently grabs Cater's hand, both to offer some warmth, and in an attempt to quiet his own worried mind.

In that moment, Malleus swore that he would keep Cater Diamond by his side. He was committed to his human... no matter what comes.

[gust-jar-simulator]

Y’know what would be fun and fucked up.

Since I’m still full of spite about Dark being a costume gimmick instead of grabbing BOTW!Link by the throat and giving him the perfect identity crisis gut punch, I think I deserve to dial up the angst knob.

I already have an idea for how to write Dark as a satisfying, if still obviously gimmick fight, but I just remembered that the Palace of the Four Sword is a thing.

The Four Sword Sanctuary kind of moves around between games, but it’s meant to be in the center of Hyrule, that center just changes because the map is insane. In Minish Cap, the sanctuary is in a courtyard in the center of Hyrule Castle, behind an invisible door.

In Link To The Past, if I recall right, the Palace of the Four Sword is a secret dungeon in the base of the Pyramid of Power, which is the Dark World’s substitute for Hyrule Castle.

So.

Let’s play a game.

We could put this either in the undercroft of Hyrule Castle in BOTW, or roughly under it in TOTK, since I do like the idea of The Depths being used as that game’s version of the Dark World. Four Swords and Four Swords Alliance seem to depict the ruins of the sanctuary slightly open to the elements, so it might not be perfectly under the castle this far down the timeline- we could even move it somewhere closer to the Minshi Woods. The Palace of the Four Sword, to me, is either one of two things: the corrupted remains of the Four Sword sanctuary, or a separate location constructed specifically by the royal family to imprison all the loose ends. I lean towards the first option.

You want your gimmick gear? You want Majora’s Mask?

Fight the shade of the Hero of Time for it.

You want the Bow of Light?

Fight the shade of Twilight Princess Zelda and her wolf for it.

You want the sailcloth?

You’ll have to rip it out of the cold dead hands of the man who killed a god.

If you’re like me, and you want some Four Swords rep or even just a singular crumb of Vaati, I think having a location like that- a hero’s tomb of some sort under the palace where you do a boss rush to mug them for their stuff- is a fun reference to start with, but apparently in development they tossed around the idea of Minish Cap’s shrinking mechanic. I am pouncing on this idea like a feral wolf because absolutely nothing recontextualizes mob threat assessment like that first boss battle in Deepwood Shrine.

The reason I shouldn’t be put in charge of writing videogames is because I’d make a gimmick dungeon in the Minshi Woods where you get shrunk to Tom Thumb size and then have to fight a keese.

The reason they should hire me anyway is because in a game where weapon durability is a mechanic and yet there are No Blacksmiths, I’d make a questline where you have to visit the fae folk to bring back the secrets of metallurgy, just one sidequest of many to help rebuild what Hyrule has lost in the wake of the Calamity. The Minish are the ones who forged the Picori Blade, after all, you can play a whole game about it.

Also, just to round the whole thing out, while I like the fact that the Master Sword tries to murder you in BOTW I think it would have been cool to fight the shade of you from 100 years ago in the Lost Woods as a trial before you earned the right to wield her. Our lad has too many hangups and issues, make him stab them in the face.

[wangsejabin]

Chapter 73

When the decree was announced, many people were surprised.

In the palace, concubines are promoted either on the initiative of their superiors or when they have sufficient seniority. In the case of the Eastern Palace, apart from Empress Fu and the Crown Prince, the Crown Princess is the only one who is qualified to ask for a title for Pan'er.

   This is a sign of the harmony between the wives and concubines in the Eastern Palace.

   Empress Fu's decree was already prepared, but then this happened.

   Nian Qiu came to ask Empress Fu about it.

Empress Fu smiled and said, "Since she can think this far herself, this palace will allow her this favor."

   When Pan'er found out about it, she was surprised, but it was a good thing, and the decree was soon issued.

As Pan'er was still in confinement, she couldn't have an enthronement ceremony, but as the order had been issued, the rules and regulations should be made clear.

It was just as well that there was a courtyard opposite Hu Liangdi's, which was of the same size as Hu Liangdi's, so the prince instructed Fu Lu to have someone clean it up. The Prince ordered someone to prepare the courtyard for her, but before he could send someone there, the Crown Princess had already ordered someone to do so.

   The people of the Eastern Palace were surprised by this change in the Crown Princess.

   But surprise is surprise, these were all things the Crown Princess should do, the other people can not say anything.

The prince thought that the crown prince's consort would have to perform in front of people after doing this, but he discovered that there was no movement at all in the Hall of Virtue, as if she had done her part and left the rest.

The first thing that happened was that Fu Chun went to the Yuqing Palace to report that the courtyard for Su Liangdi had been tidied up. She also asked if the second son and the fifth county princess were going to have a full moon feast, and if so, the crown princess would prepare in advance.

   The Prince considered the matter of the full moon banquet, and did not intend to hold a big one, but just to celebrate in the East Palace.

   For one thing, the birth of the dragon and phoenix babies had already made a big splash, and for another, he had considered that the Grand Duke did not have a big full moon feast in the first place. The Prince Consort's eldest son was already in poor health, so if the eldest son didn't have a feast, the second son couldn't very well have one, since it would have sent a message to the outside world, and outsiders would have made speculations, which would have shaken the current stability of the Eastern Palace.

   The Prince went to explain to Pan'er about this.

She had been blessed to be able to give birth to her two children, and she had been given the title of Liangdi and wasn’t bothered about a full moon feast.

   "We'll make it up when they turn one year old."

The more Pan'er didn't say anything, the more the Prince would feel guilty.

Pan'er could not say anything comforting at such a time, but could only distract his attention by gossiping about something else, such as how the two children were doing today, or what Yue'er had done.

   As the two children were being mentioned, the nannies brought them over.

   The two children were already at full term, but they were not the same as when they were first born, and it was because of the good milk of the nursemaids that the two little ones had been fed well. Especially after the redness from the birth was gone, the two little ones became whiter and whiter day by day, and they looked healthy.

The only thing is that Yue'er was smaller than his sister.

   But he was in good health, could eat and sleep.

   Pan'er guessed that he was robbed of nutrients by his sister in the womb and was congenitally inferior. However, Chou Chou was indeed a better eater than her brother, and while Yue Er was full after a short while, she had to eat for at least a quarter of an hour.

Therefore, even though they both had little root-like arms and legs, Chou Chou's little lotus root limbs were thicker than her brother's.

   Looking at her daughter, who had been squeezed by the fat flesh on her face to make her eyes the same as her brother's, Pan'er suddenly had a moment of clarity: "Your Highness, do you think she's a bit fat?"

   This question was obviously beyond the Crown Prince's expectation, and he carefully examined her, comparing her appearance to that of the First and Second County princesses at the same time, and indeed she seemed to have put on a little weight.

   But again, the Prince didn't think so, he thought it was because those children were all a bit frail.

He thought it was because the children were all a bit weak, but since Wan Yin was so healthy, it didn't matter if she was a bit fat.

   After thinking about it, the prince said, "She has just turned one month old, and babies in swaddling clothes are all chubby, and they will only lose weight when they are older."

   "That's what Aunt Qing said, but I can barely hold her."

The one who had once given her that feeling was Yue-er in a previous life.

When Yue'er was born, he was quite heavy, and at that time she was not comfortable with the nurse arranged by the Crown Princess, so she secretly fed her son herself. At that time she still felt pity for her son in her heart, everyone else was eating the nurse's milk, but he had to eat his own mother's milk.

   Why did she think this way? It was because the nursemaids all ate special meals, while she was afraid of being victimised and ate Bai Jue's meals from the time she was conceived, while her meals were given to Bai Jue. Naturally, the palace maid's meals were not much better, so she felt that her milk was not nourishing, and in order to make up quality with quantity, she would feed more each time.

It was only when the child was almost two months old and carried out to meet people that she was awakened to this self-pitying state of mind.

Hu Liangdi said that the child was too fat, and at that moment, although she was timid, Pan'er was not stupid and could see that Hu Liangdi really resented, rather than envied, the child.

   Then she looked at the second son, who was not much older than Yue'er, quite strong and healthy, but not so fat that his eyes were squeezed out like Yue'er's. Only then did she realise that her son was really fat, and not all children in swaddling clothes were like that.

But she didn't change, she continued as before, and by the time he was a year old, Yue'er had become a veritable chubby little boy. Everyone in the palace knew that the crown prince's third son was surprisingly fat, but fortunately the crown prince didn't say anything on the surface, and since the crown prince didn't say anything, others naturally didn't dare to say much on the surface, but private ridicule was inevitable.

It was not until Yue'er had passed the age of three that he slowly slimmed down under her deliberate moderation.

   Pan'er now felt that her daughter had the beginnings of this. She had deliberately fed her son so fat to protect herself, but now she could not afford to do so, and her daughter must not become a fat little girl.

"You can't hold her because you don't have the strength, you don't need to since there is a nurse.”

“There are nannies and palace maids, just let them hold them." The crown prince said.

   So people are easily influenced by the people around them, hearing the crown prince say this, Pan'er felt that her daughter was not fat again, it was only cute if she was chubby.

   "What a little chubby girl, you can't get any fatter, if you get any fatter you'll lose your eyes. Come, give daddy a hug."

After the initial surprise, the Prince was now used to this mode of speaking to the child by Pan'er, it was her abruptness to which he was still not accustomed, such as now, when she tucked the child in while talking.

   It was not the first time she had done such a thing, but each time the Prince was a little uncomfortable with it.

   He was still the Crown Prince, and even the Crown Princess wouldn't dare to stuff Zong Duo into his arms.

But he had become accustomed to it.

   But the child had already been tucked in, and the Crown Prince could not say that holding the child was too damaging to his image, so he had to take it. Luckily, Fulu was resourceful enough to clear the room every time this happened.

   As soon as his daughter was in his hands, the Prince felt a weight in his hands.

He held it steady and weighed her, and it seemed to be a lot heavier than the last time he had held her.

Looking down to examine her, he met his daughter's eyes that had been squeezed into the same Danfeng eyes as her brother's, which were the original words of Pan'er, and the Prince was amused upon being reminded of them.

   "Ooohhh ummmm ......" Chou Chou seemed a little excited to see a new face in front of her, a slurred tone escaping her mouth and a string of bubbles spitting out.

"Drooling again, be careful daddy doesn't dislike you," Pan'er was busy picking up a hanky and wiping her, "Aunt Qing said you might be getting teeth, how old are you to be getting teeth."

   "Ooohhhhhhhhhhh ......"

   With a sweet look of disgust, Pan'er nodded at her little chubby face and said, "What an ugly girl, let's see what you do when you grow up and can't get married."

   "Ooohhhhhhh mmmm ......"

   Feeling someone glaring at her, Pan Er only looked at the Crown Prince.

   "How can my daughter not be able to get married."

   Pan'er laughed dryly, "I'm just saying." She was busy picking her son up and teasing him as a cover up.

   She was the one who said that her daughter was ugly every day, and she was the one who was afraid that she would not be able to get married. When he was about to leave, the prince looked back and wondered in his heart if Wan Yin was really a bit fat.

   --

   On the day of the full moon, the entire Eastern Palace was in a state of joy.

Although there was no big full moon feast, the servants were all rewarded with three months' salary. At noon, the Prince Consort hosted a family banquet at the Hall of Virtue, during which Pan'er brought her two children over to show her face.

   It is possible that with the Crown Prince present, everyone was relatively restrained, but Pan'er did not ignore the admiring glances. One of the most present gazes was that of Zhao Xiyue, who had finally emerged from her courtyard after more than a year.

   But Pan'er sees that she doesn't seem to have grown much, just from the envious and jealous look in her eyes, she has kept herself locked up for nothing these days.

   The Crown Princess, on the other hand, had really changed quite a lot, with a gentle and smiling look that somehow reminded Pan'er of Empress Chen in her previous life.

   In her previous life, Empress Chen had smiled like this, and since her rebirth, Pan'er had always felt that the Prince Consort gave her the wrong feeling, thinking that it was because she was a few decades younger.

   Pan'er did not stay long.

She had to stay in for another month to recuperate from the birth, so she stayed for a while and then took the babies back.

   However, she did receive a gift from everyone, including Zhao Xiyue.

When she returned, because of her previous relationship, Pan'er specially called Xiao Dezi to ask him about the recent movements in the Hall of Virtue.

According to Xiao Dezi's description, Jidetang has become much more virtuous recently and seems to be finally acting like a qualified crown princess. In addition to requesting a title for Pan'er, as well as preparing the yard, just waiting for Pan'er to move in, but also caring for the sick. Ma Chenghui had asked for a doctor.

   And particularly diligent in visiting elders, since the birth of the eldest son, the Crown Princess would rarely go to the Kunning Palace for greetings, now she goes every day, not only to the Kunning Palace, but also to the Cining Palace, every day both placesare visited, no matter the weather.

"Every day she goes to Cining Palace?" Pan'er was surprised.

   The Empress Dowager did not like the Crown Princess too much, probably because Emperor Cheng'an's dislike for the Crown Prince was too obvious, so the Empress Dowager was not close to the Eastern Palace family.

   However, the Empress Dowager was not the real mother of Emperor Cheng'an, she was the Empress of the main palace, and Emperor Cheng'an's own mother consort died early, so there was only one Empress Dowager in the palace. The Empress Dowager was also aware of this, and was usually extremely gentle in her dealings with people, and was even-handed with everyone in the palace, so there was no fault to be found.

   "Yes, the Crown Princess goes to Cining Palace every day to pay her respects."

This is a little surprising, before the crown prince consort would only visit on the 15th of every month, she was probably also aware of how the empress dowager would not like her, simply unwilling to waste effort, but now she is interested.

   The whole thing adds up to something fishy, but in a flash, Pan'er figured it out.

The Crown Princess knew that the relationship between her and the Crown Prince was difficult to repair and that the two lacked trust.

As for the Cining Palace, the reason is that she really wants to find a backer for herself.

   But the Empress Dowager?

The Queen Mother is not familiar with the Empress Dowager, but just by looking at her style of dealing with things, she knows that this is a smart person, without her own son in the end the waist is not hard, so the Empress Dowager is following the attitude of Emperor Cheng'an to do things.

   The Empress Dowager is a very good friend of the Emperor, and she has a great deal of respect for these two, but not bad for Empress Fu either. Since Emperor Cheng'an did not like the Crown Prince, could the Empress Dowager like the Crown Princess?

But soon Pan'er learns that she is wrong, for the Crown Princess actually injured her leg trying to protect the Empress Dowager who was enjoying the scenery in the imperial garden.

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Chapter One

[CW: transphobia, internalized transphobia, crushing loneliness]

I woke disoriented from dreams of swirling snowfall in narrow, cobbled streets. It took me a moment to figure out where I was. The white plaster ceiling, close enough to touch. A narrow, wood-paneled room. A bustling, bare-chested boy just visible over the edge of the bunkbed...my roommate?

Oh.

Oh. I was in Oakridge House, at Harmine University. I felt a wave of relief wash through my rib-cage. I had made it. I had placed high enough on the merit exams. I’d gotten out. I wasn’t stuck in that frigid little mill town anymore. I had...classes?

I sat bolt upright, smacked my head on the ceiling, and fell flat again, swearing and rubbing my head through my jumbled mop of dark curls. Had Alexi seen that?

He had.

He was laughing at me.

“What bell is it?” I groaned.

He shrugged. “Ninth? I think.”

As I rubbed my head, I peeked through the messy fall of my hair, admiring the gliding play of muscles in Alexi’s back as he turned and stretched. He was only a year or two older, but his body fit together, like it made sense, and the curves of his pectorals above his taut stomach looked so...yummy.

I flushed a little at the thought. It was envy, that was all. It must be, right?

In comparison, my own chest was disappointingly flat and shallow. I was hyper-conscious of how ill-suited my body was, how it just wasn’t right. I was short, scrawny, but also somehow lanky, like a bedraggled bird with half its feathers gone, or a half-drowned cat. The worst part was that I felt like everyone knew it, like I couldn’t hide my own discomfort with myself, my own awkwardness.

I sighed quietly. If only I could act easily, fluidly with people, like Alexi. I was uncomfortably aware of how many friends he had, while I had...well...none. So far. It was only my first term. Well, almost second term. Okay, time to stop thinking.

I rubbed my face and kicked off my blankets, then scooted down the ladder. I was wearing pajamas that I’d begged from the School Laundry along with my standard issue linens and blankets. I was acutely aware that they were several sizes too large.

Alexi didn’t look at me, busy packing his spellbooks into an expensive-looking leather case embossed with a flashy allegiance insignia. Glumly, I headed to the washroom. It had always made me uncomfortable, the brusque indifference that boys showed each other. Like I was born with the wrong expectations, like my body was anticipating a world of interaction that was warmer and more friendly, something...else.

I relieved myself in the water closet, then splashed my face with hot water (the plumbing here was incredible, after growing up in Stuhkrad) and shaved. I looked unhappily at my face—too many things wrong with it to count. Better not to linger looking at it. I shoved the feelings down into the compressed ball of leaden resignation I was used to carrying around in my ribcage.

When I got back to the room, Alexi was gone. Our room wasn’t very large to begin with, but he’d made it considerably smaller with a beautiful, polished oak desk. He’d even asked me first, which I thought was nice. Come to think of it, he proposed most—okay, all—of the ideas for our shared space, and I had gone along with them agreeably. I didn’t take up very much space, after all, and to tell the truth I liked it that way. It seemed right, somehow.

I threw on some of the baggy, dark clothes I’d brought from home (this accurately described all my clothes, actually) and, hauling my bookbag, hurried through a maze of courtyards and corridors, bustling with other students, to the morning frenzy of the dining commons.

Though Harmine drew students from all over the Imperial Democracy and even from adjoining nations, with a wide variety of different hair-styles, eye-shapes, skin-colors and accents, almost everyone wore the same muted neutral colors that were in favor with the Yavenese Imperial Standards. I shuffled along with the press of bodies, attracting no notice, keeping my head down.

I slipped through the packed dining hall, full of knots of shouting, laughing boys and long tables of students with bleary faces and dark half-circles under their eyes, also mostly boys. I slunk to the least busy corner, grabbed a handful of food, and fought my way back outside. I sat on the wide shallow steps with a scattering of other students, munching a cold sausage inside a dense roll of black bread and reviewing my notes from yesterday’s lecture. Students streamed past me, up the steps and into the dining hall.

The sunlight was making my paper notes too bright to look at. I hunched over my notebook, trying to shade it. A gusty fall breeze swirled showers of giant golden maple leaves around the wide courtyard like a tumble of coins. I looked up from scanning scrawled equations, closed my eyes and took a long breath in through my nose. The sweet, loamy smell drew me into a deep current of nostalgia for the mossy forests and cool streams my child-self had played in.

I sighed softly and opened my eyes, and immediately stiffened like I’d been gut-punched. There was a girl in front of me, coming up the steps. Actually there were two girls (rarely did girls walk anywhere alone here, I had noticed) but I unintentionally locked gazes with this one as soon as my eyes opened.

She looked a few years older than me. She was wearing a thigh-length navy skirt and jacket, over a creamy white blouse. I saw her serious mouth, and a light furrow between her eyebrows as she studied me and then an intensely clear yearning boiled up and kicked me in the stomach like a draft horse—ah-shit-I-wish-I-could-look-like-her—as I looked in her eyes. Eyes that were like vernal pools on the forest floor, filled with brown leaves, still and dark, except for when they rippled mysteriously with some deep movement.

All of a sudden, I realized I was staring and dropped my gaze to the steps between us, my face rapidly flushing hot. Damn it! I knew this yearning. It didn’t always happen, but sometimes, when I looked up and saw a strikingly pretty girl, it came utterly unwilled, a helpless reflex. And I would know—I would know—that I could never admit this to anyone because then—

Something compelled me to look shyly back up at her, and I saw she was still looking at me with that faint furrow, not quite a frown—was it pensive? Was it curiosity? Then they were past me. I sat there, hunched and hot-cheeked, for a long minute, then groaned in confusion and put my head in my hands.

Girls had always stirred a deep-set craving in me—a craving that was utterly unlike the fascination I felt towards some boys. It was a craving that made me deeply uncomfortable. Not just because it was entangled in a sexual lust that felt too intense, like I was trapped on an out-of-control carriage careening down a much-too-steep hill, but also because—oh no, the hot clawing plunge into shameful memory—

~ ~ ~

I had been on the roof of the featureless gray block of the tenement back in Stuhkrad with my older sister Kisma. We’d both grown up here. The sunset sprawled glorious and bloody across the horizon. We were both sitting on the edge. I kicked my feet over empty space and looked at her. She took another drag and passed the thick-rolled cigarette to me. I took it automatically but didn’t bring it to my lips. Tobacco made my stomach hurt but I still liked to come up here with her for her smoke break. It was our time.

“Kisma...” I hesitated.

“Mm?”

The words were so heavy. I struggled to lift them out, to show them to her.

“What do you think about, um, a-about, you know, um, k-kuffa?”

“Kuffa?” She raised an eyebrow at me. There was no scorn in her voice, which emboldened me a little.

“Yeah, you know, the people who, um, change into girls.” I had to look away at this point. I couldn’t show her the truth in my eyes. The words began to rush out of me. “From boys, I mean. Or from being girls, into boys. Or somewhere between?”

“Eli,” she said slowly, “why are you asking me this?”

I stared into the gory dying of the sunlight. My throat was tight, my heart flooded with panic and shame and unmourned grief. She was right. This was too dangerous of a question to ask. Imperial social hygiene propaganda was brutally clear about exactly what citizens should think of degenerates. And there were informers everywhere. My foolish hope that I could alleviate my crushing loneliness, even with someone as close to me as Kisma, was just that—foolish. The next question I had readied—whether she would be willing to call me Ellie, instead of Eli, at least when we were alone—died and turned to ash inside me. It was just dumb luck that I hadn’t blurted that out, too.

“N-no reason.”

“Okay, okay,” she sighed. “Look. If I were to think anything about...them, it would be questions. How? How do you even do that? And here? Here, in Stuhkrad? And why? Oh, Eli, why? Surely there’s nothing that’s worth being hunted and hated like that?”

I risked a glance and saw her staring at me, stricken. I looked intently at the concrete I was squeezing with bloodless knuckles. I’d dropped the cigarette, I noticed.

“You already have such a hard time with those lunatics that hurt you after school. If you—they would murder you, Eli.”

I nodded stiffly.

~ ~ ~

Tenth bell began ringing and I stuffed my notes away and hurried to class.

[theanimeview]

[Event Review] Ronin Expo 2023

By: Katherine Cañeba | @kcserinlee

TL/DR

This was a fun, friendly annual expo for the Los Angeles area that focuses on cosplay and art vendors. It benefits from its location in Little Tokyo for additional food and shopping options that helped make the event effortlessly feel bigger than it actually was. Great for families and first-time con-goers.

Location: Terasaki Budokan (Little Tokyo), 249 S Los Angeles St. | Los Angeles, CA 90012

Date: 21 October 2023

https://www.ronin-expo.org

Size and Scale + Food Alley

This was a small convention that was manageable in size and had a good amount of potential activities for attendees. One could not attend every single thing happening, but one could window shop (or actually shop) at a leisurely pace through the Seller's Hall twice and still have time to get food, chase after cosplayers for photos, attend a panel or two, or even leave the expo entirely for an hour or two and return later.

The venue, Terasaki Budokan, was small enough to navigate fairly easily with the help of a printed map and event schedule. Admission wristbands allowed attendees the freedom to enter and leave the venue as they pleased. This made it easy to go outside to the food trucks or elsewhere in walking distance around Little Tokyo. Also, it is a relatively new building, with clean bathrooms significantly contributing to my positive impression (other than a poorly installed door lock on the disabled stall in the Women's bathroom).

I and other attendees ventured over to Kinokuniya Los Angeles two blocks away at some point in the afternoon to kill time between events and/or to shop around Weller Court when the art vendor options had been thoroughly explored.

There were two food trucks for the event. Both parked on Los Angeles Street, the street outside the main entrance. The first was Okamoto Kitchen and the other was Fluff Ice.

Health and Safety Policy

https://www.ronin-expo.org/general-info

For ADA concerns, the whole Expo took place on the ground floor of the venue, with no stairs impeding the use of wheelchairs or walkers. The doorways to all sections of the venue were kept propped open, with the exception of the Panel Room, which one could easily knock on and be let in by the event staff or panelists.

Security was effective in that there was only one entrance (a metal gate opening onto the sidewalk), and there were between five and ten event staff at tables on either side of the entrance to greet people. They checked for event wristbands for those attempting to reenter the venue. There was a second exit in the Courtyard that one could use without issue. Custodians and other venue-affiliated staff were also visible throughout the day, keeping the spaces clean and orderly.

Regarding masks: in Southern California, COVID is still around, but people have generally moved on and ditched their masks since summer or even before that. Every now and then, I hear of someone I know who got COVID and thus disappears from public activities for up to two weeks, but there is little fuss made about it. Anyone can wear a mask in any given context if they so choose, and it is particularly encouraged to wear a mask if one is sick with some kind of respiratory illness. However, the majority of people do not wear a mask in public anymore, whether indoors or out. This was the same at Ronin Expo: a handful of people wore masks, but most people didn't. Nobody seemed to be getting ragged on for wearing a mask or for not wearing a mask. Everyone was free to have fun in the way they felt was best for themselves.

Seller's Hall

Artists were mostly in the Seller's Hall, with a handful of vendors outdoors on either side of the entrance area after coming through the main gates. Part of the gymnasium used for the Seller's Hall was specifically used as the Gamer Zone.

Vendors were all happy to chat, compliment us on our outfits, answer questions about their merch, or even give out freebies in the spirit of the event. (I never thought I'd see the day when I would just be handed a Pokémon trading card pack for free, but these guys were seriously that generous.) I saw very few Sold Out signs even by late evening, so inventory seemed sufficient.

Outside of the free stuff, there were a lot of cool items being sold, too. One that I thought was really interesting was an amigurumi Dobby (from Harry Potter). I have never seen one before and I may never see one again!

Cosplay Areas

The Courtyard was an admittedly cramped outdoor area with some greenery (some low-lying plants and a small tree) used as a cosplay photo zone, and it connected the singular Panel Room to the rest of the areas. I had some difficulty navigating around the other people milling about in this area without bumping into them, particularly with elaborately dressed cosplayers whose outfits could be destroyed by an accidental run-in with someone else. If empty, however, the Courtyard would have been a visual treat and a peaceful getaway spot to take in a bit of nature. I would recommend not lingering in this area for too long due to the crowding.

Entertainment - Attendee Experience

The Plaza Stage was outdoors with plenty of seating thanks to an added set of bleachers in addition to the concrete benches flanking the stage, built into the building exterior. Some notable stage events included panel discussions with English voice actors for Jujutsu Kaisen, BLEACH, and Dragon Ball Z. I enjoyed eating my lunch from the Okamoto Kitchen food truck while listening to the actors discuss details about the English VA subset of the entertainment industry.

I also attended two panels, both held in the Panel Room. They are:

Intro to Visual Kei and Fan Talk | 2:45-3:45 PM

I definitely feel as if I got schooled while attending this panel, as I had only a vague idea of what Visual Kei is before hearing the panelists' take on it. For those that do not know, Visual Kei is a music scene and movement that originated in Japan during the late 1980s, influenced by glam rock and other 1980s rock music styles. The panelists shared some supremely entertaining photos and music videos of the most prominent Visual Kei artists, from their origins in the late 1970s to the present day, and their knowledge and passion shone through despite serious logistical issues with their presentation.

Something of note to me was that the panelists were rather harsh when mentioning YOSHIKI (from X Japan fame). They said that he claims to "take credit for everything" by stating that X Japan started Visual Kei in the early 1980s. According to the panelists, it was actually X Japan's slightly older contemporary 44MAGNUM that first started the trend.

I appreciated what I learned from the panel, but given that I was fresh off the YOSHIKI Classical 10th Anniversary World Tour concert in Los Angeles the night before, I am admittedly a YOSHIKI fan who did not take too kindly to the panelists' opinions. Whether or not 44MAGNUM were the true founders of the Visual Kei fashion era, I believe that X Japan was still the band that contributed the most to popularizing it due to their own all-eclipsing popularity (in Japan and even internationally to an extent). Perhaps 44MAGNUM walked so X Japan could run. But I am willing to excuse YOSHIKI's allegedly exaggerated self-importance because I feel as if he deserves at least a little bragging rights. At the end of the day, his accomplishments as a musician, composer, producer, etc. have brought pride to Japan on the international stage. No other Japanese artist or group can quite compare as of yet.

Unfortunately, the panelists encountered difficulties while attempting to display their PowerPoint presentation on the projector, which proved to be unresolved. As a result, we were directed to view their content directly from a laptop screen. These issues stemmed from Mac/PC incompatibility between the panelists' laptops and the venue's equipment. Although it was difficult to view and appreciate their content on such a small screen, the panelists managed to compensate for this inconvenience through their enthusiasm and deep knowledge of the subject matter. I especially enjoyed how their Visual Kei cosplay outfits and Sanrio Kuromi plushies on display helped enhance the atmosphere and felt like it completed the vibe. Given how well the presentation ended up at the end, I feel like it was unfortunate that a few audience members decided to depart during the early stages of the presentation, likely due to the ongoing efforts to resolve the technology-related setbacks.

A Hideo Kojima Fan Panel | 6:30-7:30 PM

This panel was also hosted at Anime Expo 2023, but I wasn't able to attend it at the time. The panelists claimed to be practiced with it because this was their third time presenting the material, and it definitely showed. The panel was engaging and funny, and the panelists connected well with the audience. (I'd like to award extra points for the quiz with prizes at the end, too!)

Neither of the panels I went to hit maximum attendance, but this one was particularly minimal. While I have never personally played any Metal Gear games, I remembered casually watching my brothers play them while we were growing up and being struck by how much they got into a seemingly simple game. I ended up being very much a Japanese Role-Playing Games (JRPG) person throughout the PS1 and PS2 eras. I did feel a little strained to understand aspects of the presentation because I lack the foundational experience of Kojima's most famous projects, but I appreciated the insight into Kojima's creative process and his unique style that he has built into the many games he was involved in over the years. For example, imagine playing a game in which pausing the game even once results in getting the "bad ending" where the damsel in distress dies! Apparently, that's Kojima. To learn more about this fascinating creative mind, the panelists recommended picking up Hideo Kojima's autobiography The Creative Gene (perhaps from a Kinokuniya near you).

Final Judgments

Venue: 5/5

Staff: 5/5

Organization, Layout & Management: 4.5/5

Organization, Media Use: 4/5

Attendance: 4.5/5

Affordability: 5/5

Overall: 4.7/5

–

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Copyedited by: Peggy Sue Wood | @pswediting

[wanderrajasthan]

City Palace Jaipur, India (History, Built By, Inside and How to Reach)

Jaipur is one metropolis that transports you back to the Rajput era the instant you place foot there. It is dotted with architectural wonders and this is the purpose why the metropolis sees a great vacationer footfall all yr spherical. One such architectural delight right at the center of Jaipur is the City Palace; a image of the regal and royal days of the town. Whenever you want to explore Jaipur, just book taxi service in jaipur.

History of City Palace

City Palace turned into constructed through Sawai Jai Singh who headed the Kachwaha Rajput Clan and holds the credit of being the founder of Jaipur. The palace served as his dwelling throne and he started the development of the palace way inside the seventeenth century as he wanted to shift the capital of the country from Amber to Jaipur.

Architecture of City Palace

The original shape of City Palace turned into constructed with the aid of Maharaja Jai Singh II who commenced with the outer wall. Over the many years considering that then, buildings and courtyards had been introduced to the premises and so all of the structures in the palace date undergo a specific timestamp.

Inside City Palace

The gates of City Palace/ Pitam Niwas Chowk

City Palace has 3 gates leading to it; Tripolia Gate, Virendra Pol and Udai Pol. The essential palace also has four smaller gates within the courtyard named Pritam Niwas Chowk which leads to the Chandra Mahal. It is assumed that those gates have been constructed to represent the four seasons and four Hindu deities namely Lord Vishnu, Lord Shiva, Goddess Parvati, and Lord Ganesha.

Mubarak Mahal

Translating to ‘Welcome Palace’ in English, Mubarak Mahal dates again to the 19th century and changed into built via Maharaja Madho Singh II for him to welcome his guests. The creation fashion of this Mahal also displays lines of European tradition as nicely since the Maharaja used to host several overseas dignitaries.

Chandra Mahal

Located on the western side of City Palace, Chandra Mahal has a grand peacock gate at its front. Paintings depicting the old town of Jaipur, floral carvings, and breathtaking mirror embellishments will depart you spellbound. This constructing has seven flooring with each floor having been given a unique call like Ranga-Mandir, Sukh-Niwas, Mukut Mahal, Pitam-Niwas, Shri-Niwas, and Chhavi-Niwas.

The armory

Erstwhile referred to as Anand Mahal Sileh Khana or the Maharani Palace, the first actual issue that catches your attention in this armory is the lifestyles-size shape of a horse that is carrying complete-body armor like horses was after they went out on the battlefield with their rider.

Bagghi Khana

Bagghi approach a chariot and right here you may see the diverse chariots and royal rides utilized by the royal circle of relatives. You can also see the royal chariot which become used to move the royal deity and a European styled cab which changed into proficient through Queen Victoria in 1876 to Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II.

Diwan-e-Khaas

This is the royal darbar in which the Maharaja used to preserve a private audience along with his courtiers. Photography is illegal in this segment of the palace. The royal throne known as ‘Takht-e-Rawal’, along side the chairs utilized by the courtiers ornaments this corridor, the ceiling of that is painted in a salubrious blend of gold and red.

Diwan-e-Aam (Sarvato Bhadra)

Diwan- e- Aam is the open corridor you notice first while you input City Palace. It used to serve as the hall for holding a public target market by way of the Maharajas of Jaipur. 

Govind Dev Ji Temple

Dedicated to Lord Krishna, this temple on the basis sees a outstanding quantity of devotees each day. The temple is thronged with human beings in the course of Shri Krishna Janmashtami competition.

How to attain City Palace in Jaipur

City palace is positioned between the nearby markets referred to as Badi Chopar and Choti Chopar in antique Jaipur. It is about 12 km from Jaipur Airport and approximately 4.5 km from the railway station. You can without problems take an automobile, cab service in jaipur or a cycle rickshaw to reach the palace. You can also avail the provider of top automobile condo corporations in Jaipur and explore all of the famous sightseeing locations of Jaipur within the consolation of a private cab.

Also Read :

Romantic Places To Visit in Jaipur

 Places to Visit in Jaipur at Night

[biglisbonnews]

The Female Architect Behind Buenos Aires's Underground Necropolis During a recent spring afternoon in Buenos Aires, some 70 people crowded into a narrow, subterranean corridor straining to hear an actor in a blue dress. “This place doesn’t exist in the annals of Argentinian architecture,” the actor informed them in Spanish, motioning to two columbariums stacked 14 niches tall. “And the architect’s signature isn’t hidden in any of this monument’s walls.” The group was gathered in the Sixth Pantheon, a two-level labyrinth of crypts, tunnels, and sunken gardens tucked within the city’s largest cemetery. In 2019, a local drama company, the Mutant Woman, began staging immersive theater performances in this underground city of the dead. By the end of 2022, A More Realistic Work Than That of the World had become one of the hottest tickets in town, selling out within minutes. In the production, fictional cemetery workers guide attendees through the Pantheon’s nine interlinked galleries and 40,000 vaults. Along the way, audiences meet Ítala Fulvia Villa, the female architect behind the midcentury marvel, whose name and contributions were nearly forgotten—until now. For years, this striking work of modernist architecture was either overlooked entirely or attributed to Clorindo Testa. The famed brutalist did indeed contribute to the Great Pantheon, as it’s also called, but the actor dressed as Villa wanted to make one thing clear—“Here, he worked for her. She was his boss.” The Pantheon is hidden in the very center of Chacarita Cemetery, which covers some 230 acres (about a third the size of Central Park in New York City) in one of the city's hippest neighborhoods. Chacarita opened in 1871 partly because its predecessor, Recoleta Cemetery, refused to take yellow fever victims. As with Recoleta, Chacarita is laid out along boulevards lined with Art Deco, Art Nouveau, and neo-gothic mausoleums housing everyone from ex-presidents to tango legends. But walk past the ornate memorials and the cemetery opens onto a vast swathe of grass. Many tour guides simply cross this lawn not bothering to tell people about the subterranean mausoleum that lies beneath. French architect Léa Namer, who has raised awareness of the Sixth Pantheon with a website, a series of exhibits, and a forthcoming book, first came across the building in 2013. “I had this feeling of being in mythology, like Orpheus going down into the underworld,” she says of descending one of its colossal stairways. “It was like discovering a large, forgotten city.” The Pantheon was an attempt to accommodate an unprecedented number of dead after rural migrants and European immigrants flocked to booming Buenos Aires during the early 20th century. With space for some 23,200 coffins and 17,000 urns, the Pantheon was designed to meet the demand. And yet, the first time Namer noticed sunlight from internal courtyards filtering through concrete latticework, she saw the hand of someone who “tried to do his or her best to make the people visiting their dead, their relatives, feel good.” Namer’s Argentinian friends and colleagues could tell her little about the Pantheon or its origin. Even in 2018, an article in La Nación, one of Argentina's two primary newspapers, focused on Testa’s contributions—the exact extent of which are unclear, though it’s widely agreed he was responsible for designing the concrete screens with geometric cutouts and matching sculpture of a cross near the entrances. But the La Nación article never once named the project’s lead. A 379-page history of Chacarita cemetery, Angels of Buenos Aires, barely mentions the Sixth Pantheon, focusing instead on a series of smaller subterranean pantheons near the cemetery’s entrance. As Namer embarked on her own painstaking research, she unearthed a 1961 issue of Nuestra Arquitectura that featured the newly built Pantheon. It said the creators “sought to eliminate the sensation of a catacomb.” It described electric coffin elevators—still used today—and a state-of-the-art deodorizing system. It also listed those involved in the project, including Testa, who was then in his 20s, and, hidden in the magazine’s table of contents, the project’s planner and director: Ítala Fulvia Villa. “For me, it was a shock,” Namer said of discovering that the lead architect was a woman, “because when I was downstairs in the Sexto Panteon I felt something I never felt before while visiting a building. Now, almost 10 years later, I think I can say I almost fell in love with the building.” Among the few surviving documents pertaining to Ítala Fulvia Villa are letters from Argentina's Central Society of Architects, such as one offering condolences on the death of her father Celestino Villa, an Italian engineer who came to Argentina during the great European immigration wave. Some of them address Ítala, who never married or had children, as Señorita Arquitecto. The use of the masculine form of the word shows just how few arquitectas existed in Argentina at the time, and has inspired the creators of A More Realistic Work to make a docufiction film that borrows "Señorita Arquitecto" for its title. Villa was only the sixth woman to enter the University of Buenos Aires's architecture school. After graduating in 1935, she went on to become the sole woman among the 12 members of the Austral Group, a collective that included the designers of the famed butterfly chair. In 1937, Villa was one of the group members who helped their modernist muse, Le Corbusier, flesh out his master plan for Buenos Aires. Though the plan was never officially adopted, their vision of a waterfront “business city” eventually materialized in the form of Puerto Madero, a waterfront neighborhood in the city's central business district. Villa would go on to dedicate her career almost exclusively to urbanism, at one point creating a much-lauded, though never realized, plan to modernize the isolated and underserved Bajo Flores neighborhood in Buenos Aires. In the 1950s, while working in the city’s Directorate General of Architecture and Urbanism, she oversaw the building of several underground pantheons in Flores and Chacarita cemetery, including the Sixth Pantheon. Very little has been written about Villa’s intentions behind the Sixth Pantheon, according to Argentinian researcher and architect Inés Moisset, who featured Villa on her site “Un Dia | Una Arquitecta.” But Moisset sees much in common with urban, modernist interests—namely the idea of minimalist apartments and collective housing (in this case, in the form of crypts), the importance of circulation, experimentation with materials like reinforced concrete, and the idea of freeing up space for recreation. “I think we can deduce that the same ideas that [modernists] used for the cities of the living, she used for the cities of the dead,” Moisset said. The Pantheon was the city’s “it” resting place when it first opened, and yet it wasn’t included in Francisco Bullrich’s seminal 1963 survey Contemporary Argentinian Architecture, a slight that Moisset believes must have been intentional. “On the one hand female architects are always less recognized, but on the other hand I suspect that there was something personal between Bullrich and her,” she says. Like so much surrounding Villa, this is speculation. Even the exact date of her death in 1991 is unknown. Whatever the cause of Bullrich’s omission, Moisset believes it doomed the Pantheon to decades of obscurity. To remedy this, Moisset, alongside Namer and others, launched a petition calling for Buenos Aires to recognize the Pantheon as “one of the most significant examples of modernist architecture and landscaping, both locally and internationally.” The petition won the support of city legislator María Cecilia Ferrero, and the Pantheon is expected to receive final approval as a cultural landmark sometime in 2023. Advocates hope the designation will help win funds to restore the complex. Until now, much of the Sixth Pantheon’s upkeep has fallen on freelance caretakers hired by family members of the deceased. During the 50 years he has worked in the cemetery, 75-year-old Coco Alvarez, who tends to the Pantheon’s oldest gallery, has gone from cleaning and maintaining about 500 crypts to just 80 or so. These days, he says, few from the younger generations visit the Pantheon as relatives of those interred also begin to die off. This, at least in part, has caused the Pantheon to become “very neglected,” Alvarez says. He believes the city’s efforts to maintain it are just for show. “They come, they look, they take photos, but they never do anything,” he says. “I put in the lightbulbs, the trash cans, the ladders so people can climb up—the city doesn’t give me anything.” A More Realistic Work is currently on break, but the Mutant Woman theater company aims to remount the show in Chacarita soon. Those who attend are likely to see pigeons roosting inside gaping holes in the ceilings, crypt covers that have had their bronze numerals and crucifixes stolen, and covers that have gone missing entirely, revealing the coffins and urns inside. News reports describe “total abandonment” and urban explorers upload videos of their “terrifying” visits. The show’s carefully choreographed trajectory doesn’t shy away from the Pantheon’s more unsightly areas. “Even though it’s sad, it’s also beautiful in a very weird way," says co-creator of the production Victoria Roland. “If we’re talking about preservation and cultural patrimony, of course, this place should be much better taken care of,” she continues. “But for the play, which is an act of contemplation and an aesthetic event, you don’t judge these things. You just try to see what all these mixed sensations make you feel about death.” Roland believes the play has helped raise awareness of the Pantheon, and she and director Juan Coulasso have worked closely with its advocates. Among other things, they helped Namer install a ceramic plaque crediting Villa as the Pantheon’s architect and another plaque on Villa’s family mausoleum, located in the older part of the cemetery. Both have since been bleached by the sun, but Namer—true to her name—plans to replace them when she returns to Buenos Aires. Roland can no longer recall the plaque’s exact location, bringing to mind a line from the play. “It’s just like that,” an actor told the audience. “Once you go down, you get lost. It doesn’t matter where you walk or which corridor you choose, you always get lost. I think that’s what she wanted.” https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/chacarita-cemetery-female-architect-villa-pantheon