#get ir heavy is dead reference

[randomuzerthelozer]

The callie is dead

[raayllum]

So what's the Mirrored Trio Theory?

The Mirrored Trio theory is, for lack of a better explanation, a two pronged theory regarding the way the main trio will parallel both the generation that led to / immediately received Aaravos upon his fall (himself, Leola, and a speculative human who may or may not have been a mage / helped to found Elarion) and how they may also parallel the Orphan Queen, Jailer, and Aaravos yet again. So put your tinfoil hats on and strap in because it's going to be a speculation heavy one, lads! We're going to get deep in the weeds.

Fallen Trio

So the first trio we want to talk about is what I'm going to, for lack of a better term / meta simplicity, refer to as the Fallen Trio, consisting of Aaravos, Leola, and 'Elarion' — our stand-in for a potential human Aaravos had a close dynamic with that may be intertwined with the human city of Elarion.

First, I want to talk about Aaravos and Leola. We get our first mention of Leola in S5, specifically with Leola's Last wish being a star for both Xadians and for humans, who use it to navigate and "to find their way in the endless darkness of the night." This is fitting given that what we know of unicorns from the book one novelization — that they gave primal magic and stones to humanity out of mercy and compassion — and that Tales of Xadia singles her out further as the specific unicorn to do so, although it omits primal stones from the equation:

This is, of course, a big parallel between Leola and some details we know from Aaravos as well, who also gave gifts to humanity: the relic staff that Ibis identifies as truly belonging to Aaravos ("It was a gift from one of the Great ones" / "If you seek to return that staff to its true owner...") and, as Claudia says, dark magic:

However, there's also been indications that Leola might've been a Startouch elf (tweet from Aaron Ehasz identifying her as the Startouch child + the star on the star chart map, although it's not entirely clear), that star magic can be reality altering, that Startouch elf designs had unicorn like horns protruding from their foreheads, and that history can change and shape things differently than they necessarily were.

Either way, unicorns are one of the few creatures we know to also possess the Star arcanum and, seemingly like the Startouch elves, are all but gone from Xadia (+ the Pentarchy)'s physical plain. And that she, like Aaravos, were two Star(touch) beings who both wanted to help humanity and help them develop magic, but did so in very different ways. Whether they are literally related or the same species, I think this parallel between them means they're set up to have an almost sibling-esque bond — one that existed, and one that accordingly fell apart under the brunt of dark magic and other disagreements, as TDP is prone to do.

(Put a pin in Callum and Ezran for now, cause we're going to circle back to them shortly.)

Bare minimum, Leola and Aaravos will have to be foils if not contemporaries of each other, given the closeness of their original goals in manifestation, regardless of motivation. This is particularly true given that Aaravos preys on mages in particular and that dark magic (plus a little Star magic, maybe?) allows him to literally possess people who have done dark magic, which can be no happy accident.

Given that Leola seemed dead set on giving humans primal magic, it seems unlikely she might've been too keen on a dark magic, alternative development either, which we know came after, thanks to Ripples.

It happened long ago, when humans had only just learned to hold fire in their hands without burning. They nurtured their precious primal flames secretly—in the dark of night, beneath shadows and shrouds—as cultivating its glow drew the eyes and ire of monsters. Eventually, for the audacity of their fire, they were hunted, and—though they looked to the stars for salvation—the stars, too, looked down upon them with disdain. Humanity had been given something it was never meant to have.

So again, you have two characters with very similar goals/desires, but very different ideas of how to achieve said goals. This one of the reasons why, I think, that TDP loves to have siblings disagree, as it's an effective way of having more worldviews on display with some hope for reconciliation or the tragedy of deterioration, or both. Callum and Ezran stand alone as the one sibling pair that hasn't been terribly wrenched apart by political or ideological disagreements thus far, save for Sarai and Amaya, who were torn apart by Sarai's death.

Which brings me to my next point: if Aaravos and Leola had a sibling like bond, did he lose her to their potential ideological disagreements, or did those disagreements actually cost her life?

Whether Leola just walked away and likewise abandoned him (like Soren), became too distant in disagreement to continue having some sort of bond (like Harrow and Viren, and Janai and Karim), flat out died (like Khessa, Harrow, and Sarai), or all three, that could be one of the many cogs motivating Aaravos to keep turning the wheel of the cycle, as grief has often been the primary motivator throughout history, even amongst the 'villains'. A "song of love that loss" that Aaravos has chosen handpicked "instruments" for, after all (4x03, 4x04).

And like I said, Callum and Ezran are long over due to have a disagreement, given that they haven't had a substantial one since season one, and given that Ezran has grown to only be more assertive than he was since then, not less. This could easily be over Runaan (Callum, having already sworn himself to helping Rayla free her parents, and Ezran, understandably holding onto anger and grief concerning Harrow's death). I'm sure there are also plenty of other things they could heavily disagree over in the future, like military aid or action or how to approach trying to defeat Aaravos, etc.

The point to all of this is that I think Ezran could be a very good stand in for Leola — at least in terms of being selfless, deeply compassionate, uncomplicated, and adamant about giving people their freedom even at the cost of themselves and even if that gift can be misused or discarded (3x04) — which means Aaravos could offer a potential parallel to Callum in the sibling split. Aaravos, who turned to dark magic as an option regardless of or precisely because of the potential violence, and Callum, who argues for the Nova Blade whereas his brother still always champions a non-violent route thus far.

After all, TDP loves to have their "person A is estranged from their sibling and is determined not to lose their lover" parallel, given that it's happened four times (Harrow, Viren, Sarai; Viren, Harrow, Lissa; Claudia, Soren, Terry; Janai, Karim, Amaya) already.

Now, this could be wildly off base as we know very little about Leola and even less about her potential dynamic with Aaravos, but if we follow along with the idea that Ezran could parallel her and Callum could parallel Aaravos, I think now maybe we can talk about Elarion and Rayla.

Years ago we learned that there was a place on Xadia's map (both sides) that was named after someone who had a deep connection to him, and that many of his choices are based around this relationship. Given the Midnight Star poem, people defaulted to Elarion ("Elarion, black-eyed child / her twisted roots spread deep and far / The humans’ might sparked by the light / of Aaravos, her midnight star") although I've also considered Kalik.

And while I'm still not unconvinced that Elarion isn't just a name like Elara and Laurelion, before Aaravos changed his name, combined, I do think Elarion has to be important in Aaravos' backstory, and that it's more than likely that a founder of Elarion / a human involved with Elarion for a variety of reasons.

For starters, while we can be told that Aaravos had a soft spot for humans at one point, giving us a specific person or dynamic to think of is helpful in regards to emotional investment, and in helping to explain why he may have developed said soft spot. We also know, thanks to a birthday post years ago, that a human once gave him a gift:

He thinks that if he cared for the idea [of birthdays], he’d like to remember the taste of a smooth red fruit a human had plucked from a tree for him, once. It had been so crisp, and so sweet.

While this could've been the Orphan Queen (we do know, thanks to 1x01, that there's a tree planted in the castle courtyards 300 years ago, but we don't know it was an apple tree), an apple transfer like this one feels far more "Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden and knowledge isn't always a Good thing" type schtick. Not only does it seem to indicate a more intimate bond, it also might foreshadow the reason Aaravos Fell.

One of the most interesting, but perhaps more discreet, reasons I think there's a connection between 'Elarion' as a person and Aaravos is because of the nature motif running between what little we know of Elarion and to do with Aaravos' mirror and appearance motifs. The Midnight Star is riddled with flower and nature symbolism, referring to it as a "trembling seed" and "fading bloom," that "her roots took hold" and later became "twisted," and that before the gift of Aaravos, she was "wilting" with "bone-white branches". And Aaravos' mirror and the box that held his matching key have blooming flowers on it.

See the flowers along the bottom on the actual frame of the mirror, then sculpted along the sides, and the top? Yeah. We also know that flowers themselves, thanks to Tales of Xadia, are featured in a story told both in Katolis and amongst the Moonshadow elves in particular, featuring an elven thief who steals what you value most, leaving only flowers in their wake. This is the only story in all of Tales of Xadia that we see two cultures share, even if they interpret it wildly differently.

Flowers that were always gone by morning, and gifts that couldn't be accepted or understood ("I’ve got one more gift for you, Callum: I'm going to keep you safe. I have to. I love you too much not too [...] Taking on hard choices and going to dark places is an act of love. It’s a gift. So, please let me give you this gift, Callum. Stay safe, and stay in the light").

We also know that whoever Aaravos loved, he inevitably lost whether due to time or tragedy. While this form of grief is one the show has explored, it was previously largely only through Harrow, who mourned Sarai for 9 years upon losing her, and who avenged her by slaying Avizandum, and more briefly through Ethari believing Runaan was dead.

That was, until season four, where Callum grieving Rayla and dealing with the fallout of that grief and distance turned it into more of an accentuated plot point, both before and even after her return.

Before, losing your partner in this manner would've been something Callum had witnessed, but not experienced. Now, whether the show wants Callum to sympathize with Aaravos or not, it is an experience that they could both understand, particularly if it is going to be one of Aaravos' main motivators.

Thus, we have a disagreement set up between 'siblings' (Leola, Aaravos; Ezran, Callum) as well as lost love (Elarion, Aaravos; Rayla, Callum) as a big motivator for choices, grief, and what possibly led to the fall. That Aaravos, at least in practice / thematic lineups, being a Callum who lost his Rayla and his Ezran*, and then lost himself.

Therefore:

Aaravos — Callum

Leola — Ezran

Elarion — Rayla

[ * This is not to say that Callum would pull an Aaravos and go on a hellbent 1000+ year revenge scheme, because he's not like that, but I do think it could be a very poignant and apt parallel of giving him and Aaravos more in common than they currently have, which is about nothing but magical curiosity and connection. ]

However, 90% of this is all speculation of things that have been kept supremely under wraps. For something a little more tangible simply because we have slightly more information, let's talk about the

Imprisonment Trio

The Imprisonment Trio, as the name implies, refers to the two humans who seemed to directly (the Jailer) and potentially indirectly (the Orphan Queen) be involved in imprisoning Aaravos (the third in this trio). This time, however, I'm going to argue that Aaravos — in terms of his imprisonment — is going to parallel someone other than Callum, but we shall see.

To start, I want to look at the Jailer and the Orphan Queen, since their parallels to Callum and Ezran respectively are the most obvious.

We don't know for sure whether the Jailer came from Katolis, but we know that the Orphan Queen did, eventually taking on the throne from the previous royal family and starting Harrow and Ezran's royal line, first hinted at in 3x05 with "Only orphans can ascend to the throne". Ezran has been directly compared to her in both role and appearance by the show's framing and by characters like Rex Igneous in 4x08: "I should have seen it before. Long ago, it was a human who saw through the Fallen Star's schemes and helped Xadia put an end to them. You look so much like her." This plays well into Ezran's tendency to discover or unearth long lost things, most notably Zym's egg, just as the Orphan Queen became the Truthteller of Aaravos' treachery.

Callum, for his part, is a human mage, just like the Jailer. He's clever, very talented with magic, and despite being Aaravos' preferred prey as a mage will ultimately — like the Jailer — play a role in his defeat. He will also work with and for the archdragons and their wills, but has no problem being disobedient either, in the name of concern or mercy, much like how the Jailer kept Akiyu alive rather than tell the archdragons the truth. And like the Jailer, he understands the potential danger of knowledge: "The entire world would be in danger if she let him live with this knowledge" / "I need you to kill me."

Like the brothers, they were a (future) royal and mage working together, starting off what perhaps was a long tradition of Katolian monarchs having high mages. If, as often theorized due to having an Aaravos-y twin box (S2 novelization) and his love of puzzles, Kpp'Ar is indeed descended from the Jailer, that adds another layer onto Kpp'Ar being one of Callum's predecessors as High Mage. While Ezran has the job and the bloodline of the Orphan Queen, Callum would've more directly inherited the position of (high) mage from the Jailer's thematic and occupational line.

Granted, there are differences. Most notably, the Key of Aaravos was given to Callum, not to Ezran, although there could be potential future parallels between the brothers and the Sunfire siblings, with Karim unable to undo Kim'Dael's chains because his sister is still queen, and the brothers needing to work together to fully use the cube. I wouldn't be surprised if Ezran learns more about the cube and the Orphan Queen in S6 while Callum still has some unknowns to its true meaning, leading to some delicious dread and dramatic irony. But I digress.

The point is that the Jailer and the Orphan Queen both had their roles to play in imprisoning Aaravos, and that Callum and Ezran, respectively, will both have their roles to play in trying to keep Aaravos contained, only to inevitably somehow fail in a way that allows him to escape, if by another's hand. We do know the brothers will be going to weird ruins in a future season thanks to some out-of-context spoilers that have yet to pass, and the Ruins of Elarion would certainly fit:

Which, just like the out-of-context spoiler card, you might've noticed that I haven't mentioned Rayla and who she's going to be paralleling yet. Well, that's because this time / generational pass around, I think she's going to be the primary foil to Aaravos.

Now, this train of thought isn't new by any means. I've thought Rayla paralleled Aaravos reasonably well since S3 aired largely due to their status as ghosted/banished elves, a compassion for humans (at least implied for Aaravos) that other elves disapproved of, and their dynamics with Callum and Viren, respectively.

Both Rayla and Aaravos have to work to earn their high mage's trust ("And should we trust you? Have you told us the truth about everything?" / "And why should I trust you?") over the course of season one for Rayla and season two for Aaravos, ending in promises of allegiance and togetherness: "You've got to stay with me" / "I will stay with you" (2x09). Aaravos leads Viren to his doom in being tackled off the Pinnacle, and Callum throws himself off the Pinnacle after Rayla.

You can imagine my delighted surprise, then, when S4 simply cranked it up even further: Rayla was hunting Aaravos' mage ("I spent two years hunting"), and Aaravos was hunting Rayla's mage ("Yes, mages were his prey"). Rayla wants to protect Callum and kill Viren, and Aaravos had promised to save Viren and use Callum. Even for Callum himself, 4x04 and 4x07 seemed like clear set up for Rayla symbolizing agency in Callum breaking free from Aaravos' control someday, putting the two in literal opposition to each other. Two potential paths (although picking Rayla, at least at first, may not be mutually exclusive from picking Aaravos).

Rayla, who was also harshly punished by Xadia with no trial.

This isn't to say that Aaravos didn't do anything wrong and is being unjustly punished — far from it — or that Aaravos' imprisonment and subsequent freedom won't have parallels to anyone else like say, Callum, who will likely be imprisoned by Aaravos through possession in S6 and ultimately freed by Rayla. More so that imprisonment of different sorts has been a running theme throughout Rayla's arc, and that Callum — who is primed to be Aaravos' chain breaker, whether through possession or not — could also be hers (if not just her parents') the way he has routinely been in the past, whether it was from instigating the events that eventually led to her binding (chain) coming off or saving her from being emotionally stuck (3x08) or from doing anything for her freedom (5x01, 5x08). He's primarily been someone who is tethered to freedom when it comes to recognizing and breaking cycles (chains of history) or literal restraints, and it's only in season four and season five that he's shifted to being both tied to freedom and having himself restrained.

I've speculated in the past this may result in Callum (and Ezran) leading to Aaravos' release in order to save/free Rayla; however, the show may not want as much of a repeat from 5x08, and freeing the Moon fam from the coins also resulting in Aaravos' freedom through an escalation of events would also keep that ironic thread, so it could really go anywhere.

Two humans, one elf, and endless tragedy, repeating and breaking cycles all at the same time. Ezran, discovering important info about his ancestor and possibly the Key; Callum, following in the Jailer's footsteps and unravelling the final puzzles of the prison and figuring out how to undo it; and Rayla, ghosted, banished, vying against Aaravos for the control and agency of his latest pawn who also happens to be the love of her life.

So for the Imprisonment Trio:

The Orphan Queen — Ezran

The Jailer — Callum

Aaravos — Rayla

In Conclusion

Is any of this something? I don't know, honestly. I think it's plausible, at least partially. I think it'd be neat. We know TDP likes varying intergenerational parallels and looking at how history repeats, whether that's directly through family (blood or not) lines, or by having repeating plot points (the dragon quartet, or Rayla being immobilized) and trials (Rayllum facing Sol Regem, much like Ziard, etc). We know there was someone Aaravos loved and lost, we know he's not above using what people want against them, and the connections between Ezran and the Orphan Queen are just Text at this point, although how they may manifest further, we don't know.

This is just one particular stab at it, and an examination of three of the series' most interesting (potential) trios. We'll simply have to see if anything here hit the nail on the head.

As always, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed!

—Dragons Out

[doomedandstoned]

TEMPLE OF THE FUZZ WITCH Unleash Magnum Opus, ‘Apotheosis’

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

We introduced you to TEMPLE OF THE FUZZ WITCH in our compilation Doomed & Stoned in Detroit and the band subsequently played Ohio Doomed & Stoned Festival in 2019.

Now past the pandemic years, the band's sound has matured and evolved to encompass frightening black metal textures, in addition to the stalwart doom sound they forged in the beginning. On their third LP 'Apotheosis' (2024), Temple of the Fuzz Witch execution is nothing short of tight, demonstrating an uncanny penchant for conjuring apocalyptic atmospheres. Every member of the team is on point and collaborate to create something dark and powerful.

While not pitched as a concept album, savvy listeners will pick up on the subtext of fallen angels, drawing from Biblical, Zoroastrian, mystical, and traditional lore to create a singular work of terror that could well be a sequel to Dante's Inferno.

Apotheosis is the process of becoming deity (an idea long held by Egyptian, Greek, Buddhist and Christian beliefs), so perhaps this album concerns the rise of those angels who fell like lightning to our planet after a failed coup against The Almighty in heaven. Now is their time to rise again and terrorize mankind, as foretold in St. John's Revelation, The Books of Enoch, Kabbalah, and Milton's Paradise Lost.

Joe Peet's blistering bass welcomes us to "A Call To Prey," with bravura drumming from Taylor Christian and Noah Bruner's grungy guitars following not far behind. We prey upon your fear sings frontman Noah with windswept ire. One could imagine hearing this voice echo in the dead of night over moonlit hills and forests.

"Wight" is a foreboding doomer with elements of black metal. Noah teeters between jaded vocals with menacing growls. Wight is a reference to a ghostly creature, and there's sinister, foggy element to the song, as evil spirits vow:

We’ll break you Damned You’ll never be free We’ll break you For all eternity

"Nephilim" made me recall how damningly heavy Temple of the Fuzz Witch was at Ohio Doomed and Stoned Fest. You can get a sense of it with a pair of good speakers, but seeing them live punches even harder. Vocals vary in character between forlorn cries, as depressed hushes declare, "You will see, I will feed." Fiery yells and guttural rumbling join ravaging drumwork and hailing tremeloes as the song progresses.

"Bow Down" lives in familiar stoner-doom territory, with southern sludge riffing suggesting a revelrous lot dedicated to the worship of their master. Here the singing here is clear, clean, and resonant, intersected by harsh vocals that shout defiantly: Bow down and worship the sky, we pass beyond the glowing light.

"Sanguine" has become one of my favorite words, lately, though I've struggled for an appropriate reason to include it in my writing. It basically means making the best of a bad situation, remaining confident despite the odds, optimistic even when faced with nihilistic uncertainty. Lyrics allude to "Yahweh's condemned," "diabolic souls" who were "cast into swine" by God's Son, and now look to overtake Earth when Satan is loosed from the Bottomless Pit. Bittersweet riffs and damning low end remind me of Purple Hill Witch, and there are some badass chord progressions here. This one has been lingering in my head for days.

"Cursed" gives us little clue as to who the Cursed are, other than they have "sought the watchers in the blacks" and that their "moment has now passed" and now "there's no return." The Watchers are most likely fallen angels from the Book of Enoch, the Nephilim referenced in the book of Genesis. Maybe the cursed ones were acolytes of the Nephilim, but we're given only scraps, hints, fragments to piece together the mystery.

"Raze" opens with muted drums and a swarm of distorted guitar noise that almost seems like a portent of the great horde, here to "end all humans." It takes the perspective of the Fallen, who are still loyal to Lucifer. I have carried his black mark, all the way from the very start.

Strumming arpeggios suggest the clock is ticking in "Apostate," one of my favorite tracks of the record for its sheer dread. Downtuned, dissonant guitar chords make the ire of Noah's roaring vocals all the more convincing, as four lines are repeated thrice:

Await the hallows Swallow the earth The apostates Filled with dread and woe

"Ashes" brings the album to a head with another highlight of the record, a slow headbanger if there ever was one. Vocals are terrifying, referencing "vows of the damned" and Ahriman the evil spirit of early Iranian religions -- the very embodiment of destruction.

It's good to see Ripple Music continue to expand its portfolio into doom territory. Look for Apotheosis by Temple of the Fuzz Witch, dropping this Friday, April 5th (get it here).. Stick it on a playlist with Electric Wizard, Saturnalia Temple, Cough, Coffins, and Moon Coven.

Give ear...

LISTEN: Temple of the Fuzz Witch - Apotheosis

SOME BUZZ

With riffs and lyrics as bleak and crushing as a Michigan winter, blackened doom outfit Temple of the Fuzz Witch brings a unique take on the doom genre, their unwaveringly nightmarish sonic processions being raised to another level with frontman Noah Bruner's jaw-dropping balance of crypt-worthy growls and astoundingly grunge-styled clean vocals. Never the darkness has felt so magnificent and compelling, and their aptly-titled third album "Apotheosis" has everything to put the mighty trio on every black and doom metal fan's radar for years to come.

Launched in 2017 with a 3-track EP, the Detroit three-piece has successively released two albums: "Temple of the Fuzz Witch" (2019) and "Red Tide" (2020). Temple of the Fuzz Witch is now set to unleash the beauty of its unique occult-driven nihilism with "Apotheosis". The album was recorded and mixed by Pete Grossman at Bricktop Recording, and mastered by Chris Fielding at Skyhammer Studio. Its artwork was created by Sarah Fazriah and Zoro (Mysteriousfour).

Apotheosis by Temple of the Fuzz Witch

About the album, the band says: “The lyrics and concept as an album are more overt and less cryptic than the previous Temple releases. Everything is bigger, heavier, and darker. Rather than making just another doom record, we wanted to do something that stepped outside of the box a little bit. Established fans will still find catchy riffs that are staples of doom but will be surprised with some new twists on the genre with the introduction of blackened vocals and some more up-tempo tracks.

Lyrically the album is deeply rooted in the esoteric and spiritual. We came at the album with a very introspective mindset, and each of us was able to add a little bit of our own soul to it. I think when people hear the lyrics and music together they'll find something fresh, but dark, to connect with.”

Follow The Band

Get Their Music

[voidbeans]

The Explorer (Kill the Prophet chapter 1)

Someone is singing on the Castleway. Now, this would typically be considered a fairly ordinary occurrence, if not for the fact that the singing is rarely being done by the corpses.

Passing through all four central kingdoms as it does, the Castleway is used for a multitude of purposes, not least among them the punishment of traitors and criminals. The lesser ones, generally. Those of import are most often dealt with personally by those they have wronged, and often with a certain flair and originality befitting their crimes. But for most, the Castleway is where they face their retribution, though it is sometimes considered more than they deserve.

The road itself is a patchwork of hard-packed dirt, cobbled stone, and tough wooden slats, depending on where you stand. As borders and rulers have changed, so too has the Castleway, going through countless damages and repairs until it is unrecognizable from the wide earthy trail it was in the early days. It is still wide, of course, wide enough to fit three full-size wagons side by side. And it is busy. The people flow like fish through a river, on carts and horses, in groups and as one; shouting, talking, laughing. Trading amongst themselves, breaking off old relationships and forging new ones, gathering fame and fortune and everything in between, all in the course of one journey. One can learn more about the world from following the Castleway than from any storyteller or newscarrier in the realm, it is said.

None of this is entirely relevant to this particular tale, however, or at least not quite so relevant as the stakes.

The stakes, referred to as ‘the Judge’s fingers’ by the general populace, line the Castleway on the left side. Heavy wooden stakes, as big around as trees, taller than even the most towering of persons, driven into the ground, each through a small wooden platform. They are spaced out irregularly along the path, so it is nigh impossible to guess how close one’s proximity will be to the next (nigh impossible only when considering the factor of luck. Remove that and it is simply impossible to guess).

These Judge’s fingers are where the aforementioned traitors and criminals face their retribution. To be sentenced to the Castleway is to be sentenced to either a slow, excruciating demise or a merciful release, on the whims of the Judge Eternal and Final. It is to be cruelly and brutally abandoned, to have the strings cut on your control over your fate. It is to be tied to a stake by the side of the road, and left there; handed over to the gods and the elements. Most die after only a couple of days. Brought down by starvation, storms, fires, the savagery of beasts or humanity. There are endless forms of death waiting on the Castleway. It is simply a matter of which one gets to you first.

There are not always occupants of the fingers, but it is often safe to assume that there will be one or two watching you as you pass by, eyes bright with anger or dark with despair. Some will shout, some will beg, some will cry. Some will say nothing. Most are already too dead to make a sound. This one, however, is singing.

It’s an unfamiliar song, the tune high and haunting, the voice sweet and rough, like crystallized honey. And it is ruining Ridley’s day.

It is incredibly bothersome to have your entire life’s purpose usurped by a corpse that refuses to die or shut its mouth. Alright, Ridley supposes, that’s a bit dramatic. But drama, as well, is a piece of what he was born to do, and at this particular moment he is having a disastrous time attempting to do it. The song on the breeze has a nasty habit of throwing him off his own melody, and every attempt to drown it out is met with new fervor from the singer. It’s frustrating as all hell, and Ridley has yet to see the face of his foe, which only stokes his ire further. He keeps his eyes on the fingers, scanning the expressions of those both alive and dead, watching their lips to see if they move. He wants to look upon the one who is ruining his day… and perhaps punch them. He hasn’t quite decided yet.

He’s nearly given up on trying to locate the singer and decided to push on and ignore the irksome voice, when he sees them. He can’t quite see the figure’s mouth moving from his vantage point a ways down the road from them, but he knows it’s them upon first sight. It can be no one else.

The figure stands tall and proud, despite being tied to a stake and the fact that they appear to be no more than five and a half feet of height. Unlike the others, they hold their head high, not a hint of defeat shown. As he gets closer, it becomes clear to Ridley that the figure is smiling as they sing, a soft, smirking grin, as if they know something everyone else does not.

Up close, Ridley can make out the words on the sign nailed into the post above the singer’s head. The letters are a slash of sanguine paint on dark wood, but they are easy enough to interpret: This man is sentenced to the Judge for heresy and refusal to submit to arrest.

The heretic himself is slight of build, with the type of lean muscle that comes from working with a weapon. His features are sharp yet fine, as though delicately cut from a rough stone; pointed chin, high cheekbones, distinctly sloped nose. There is a pale smattering of freckles across said nose and cheekbones, standing out prominently in the brilliant sunlight. His eyes glitter silver with humor and defiance, the expression turning their swampy grey color to radiance. His lashes are unusually long and dark, giving those eyes a captivation that is difficult to look away from. His hair, an auburn reminiscent of leaves in the falling season, falls just to his shoulder in the slightest of waves. He is dressed in the simple white shirt and leather breeches granted to prisoners, but he manages to make them look like the garb of a prince.

He continues to sing as Ridley watches, despite how he must have noticed the other standing there. He doesn't give any indication, however. Ridley folds his arms and glares, a challenge waiting to be met. The singer's eyes flick to him briefly, and he lifts an eyebrow in… invitation, it almost seems like. Well, Ridley’s not about to let that opportunity go.

With a flourish, the bard twirls around and deposits himself on the wooden platform at the base of the stake. He makes himself comfortable, crossing one leg over the other with pointed elegance. He flicks his eyes up to the heretic and attempts a scowl, and is met with absolutely nothing in return. So it’s going to be like that, is it? I see. Well, two can play at that game.

Two, as it turns out, cannot play at that game. The heretic continues to sing, and the song continues to distract Ridley in all his attempts to drown it out. To be honest, the bard isn’t exactly sure what he had intended to do here. He has a habit of making decisions like this, taking action without even considering what action to take.

The song never seems to end, the verses carrying on and on until Ridley nearly becomes convinced that it’s the only song he will ever hear again. No matter how intently he listens, he cannot for the life of him figure out the language. The words flow like a river, the vowels rolling like waves and the consonants crashing on the shore. It fits beautifully with the singer’s voice, Ridley has to admit, the slightly rough tone adding an unexpectedly welcome contrast to the smooth melody. The tune is just begging for a harmony.

Damn my nature, Ridley thinks as he begins to hum, testing the notes until he finds the ones that fit, turning the heretic’s song into a duet. He can’t follow along with the words, but the rest of it is easy enough to pick up. He sings loudly, lifting his voice up to carry along the Castleway. He’s always had a powerful voice, it’s one of the qualities that determined his prowess as a bard from a young age. There had been people listening to the heretic’s song from the start, but once Ridley joins in, more and more heads turn as they pass on the road, and some even stop to listen. Mostly families, dragged over to the side of the road by young children captivated by the music. Some merchants stop by, nodding gently along to the tune before moving along on their path. A group of soldiers for hire scowl at them as they pass, and Ridley scowls back. He’s never much liked soldiers. There’s another bard that stops as well, and performs an elegant dance for the heretic, bowing at the end before skipping away, humming the tune as she does so. And there’s an oddly pale figure, with strange ink-black eyes and silvery hair despite its apparent youth, who stays longer than the rest, standing before the platform with its head cocked to one side, a mysterious glimmer in its eyes. The heretic ignores it, but Ridley stares right back at the figure, taking in its expensive clothing and well-groomed facade. It meets his eyes with a cool, amused gaze, as unbreakable as stone. Now, Ridley may have a strong voice and a stronger will, but he folds under that gaze. He lowers his eyes as the figure smirks and walks away, strolling as though it has all the time in the world.

Not long after that, the song ends. The heretic’s voice trails off into the wind, and he closes his eyes, tilting his head back against the rough wood of the stake he is tied to. He appears… peaceful, content. It’s not an expression one would expect to see on the face of someone condemned to death, but then again it has already become clear that this someone is not much like the others.

“Thank you,” the singer says as Ridley is preparing to rise to his feet and leave, feeling silly and a bit embarrassed over what he has just done. Ridley startles. “For what?”

The heretic opens his eyes and smiles. “You made it beautiful.”

He’s talking about the song, Ridley realizes. “It was beautiful before,” he says in response. “Without me.”

“Not nearly as much,” the heretic points out. Ridley finds himself blushing faintly, proud of himself. “Well, you know, it comes with being the most famous bard and storyteller on this side of the four kingdoms.”

“Famous?” the heretic quirks an eyebrow. “Are you really?”

Ridley shrugs. “Probably. More famous than you, I’d bet.”

“Well, that would be because I am infamous, my small singing friend.”

Ridley has to bite down on his lip until he draws blood to keep himself from bursting out indignantly at being referred to as small. “I suppose that makes sense, you being a heretic and all.”

The heretic cocks his head, the light catching on a set of tiny ragged scars just around the edges of his mouth, mostly faded. “Is that what they call me? Heretic?”

“It’s not a very pretty name,” Ridley agrees. The heretic grins, the pale scars stretching. “I prefer Faraday,” he says.

“Now that is a pretty name,” Ridley bends over and plucks a pristine white daisy from the patch growing around his feet. “Faraday. Day. Daisy. Faradaisy. Can I call you Daisy?”

Without waiting for an answer, the bard plucks a few more of the flowers and begins weaving them into a crown. “So, Daisy, if you are not a heretic, what then are you?”

Faraday hmms in thought, tilting his head back against the wooden stake once again. “I am someone who believes,” he says, softly yet firmly.

“Is that not what we all are, at heart?” Ridley points out. He isn’t looking, but he can hear the heretic’s laughter. “I suppose you would call me a prophet, then,” Faraday confesses.

A prophet. Interesting. “I find that prophets and heretics are often the same, depending on who you ask.”

That laugh again, a shockingly harsh sound. “You speak true. Unusual for a storyteller, in my experience.”

“Many stories are true,” Ridley bites back, defensive.

“Many are not,” Faraday returns. Ridley huffs, defeated. He turns back to his daisy crown, but the silence quickly begins to bother him.

“You know, you’re in surprisingly good spirits for someone sentenced to death,” he says, forcing himself to remember the situation the other is in. Don’t get attached, Riddles. But if Faraday hears the bitterness in his tone, he doesn’t show it.

“Oh, I’m not going to die,” the prophet replies, confident as a king. Ridley whirls around to frown at him, doubtful. Faraday smiles brightly, tilting his head away from Ridley so the hair falls back from his throat, revealing another scar, this one thick and fairly recent, judging by the clear visibility of the stitches holding the flesh together.

“I have been sentenced to death too many times to count,” he explains softly, his rough honeyed voice falling uncharacteristically flat. “And not once has it killed me. Why should this be any different?”

“Gods,” Ridley chokes out, openly staring. He’s never seen a scar like that. He’s never seen a wound like that. He hadn’t thought anyone could survive something like that, let alone come out of it walking and talking and singing, for Executioner’s sake. “What did you do?”

“To make the world want my head on a platter?” Faraday sighs. “Well, that’s quite simple. I killed their gods.”

He speaks it as nothing more than a statement of fact, with the same tone and inflection as one saying I saw a bird today or perhaps the weather’s been shit lately. The words carry no weight. No music swells, no bell is tolled, the sun remains in the sky. Entirely uncharacteristic for the announcement of what may very well be the most consequential demise in all of worldly history.

A jest, then.

Ridley barks a laugh, the sound emerging much louder than intended. Faraday’s head lolls in his direction, his expression unchanged. Humorless. Ridley clears his throat.

“And how does one kill a god?” he asks, playing along.

“The same way one kills anyone else,” Faraday says, his voice a song that chills to the bone. “They are not immortal, you know. They do not age, do not suffer from illness or mortal malady, but where it matters they are just like you or I. They live, until they do not. Until something or someone kills them.”

“Nothing can live that does not die,” Ridley murmurs, the words rising from their throat unbidden.

“The sacred promise of the Executioner,” the prophet concedes. “I’ve come to understand that when she first spoke those words at the dawning of what is, she was speaking of herself.”

Ridley turns to face him fully, crossing one leg over the other and tilting his head in consideration. “Did she tell you this herself?

The prophet’s stormcloud eyes are fixed on the horizon as he visibly grinds his teeth into his lip. It is the first sign of negative emotion that he has shown since the bard laid eyes on him, and it strikes Ridley in that moment that he is fucking serious.

“You’re fucking serious.”

Faraday’s unwavering attention is locked on him now, and he gives the subtlest of nods. Such a small motion, yet carrying the weight of the world on its shoulders. Ridley has never been particularly close to religion himself- his most common use of the gods is to swear in their names- but faith is ingrained so deeply into every path he walks that to fathom the idea of the objects of that faith simply… ceasing to exist is impossible. He imagines the temples falling to ruins, heavy stone crushed by roots thrusting from the ground. Grave markers for the lost heart of the nation. The people who invest so much of themselves in their gods, in the stories and songs and promises, no longer knowing who to turn to with their prayers.

“They call me a heretic,” Faraday’s voice is nothing more than a breath of wind in his ear. “When all I am is someone who believes.”

He should turn away. He should turn his back and set off down the Castleway, let the road carry him to another place, another stranger along the way. Leave this one behind and forget him. Forget the feverish light in his eyes, the scars on his throat, the terrifying implications of his prophecies. Go on now, there is nothing here for you. Turn away now, keep singing your song. But the only song he can hear is the prophet’s. It swells in his ears, rising like a wave. It crashes down on him, soaking him through until he shivers, dripping, in the midday sun. Drowned, then tossed back up onshore.

He clears his throat.

“In the end, aren’t we all?” he says, repeating his response from earlier. This earns him a genuine thin smile, which in itself is somehow more disturbing than anything yet said in conversation.

In one smooth gesture, Ridley gathers the flower crown he’d been weaving up into his hands and begins working at it again. “Alright then,” he says, his tone much less hysterical now that he’s fully allowed himself to be pulled under the waves into madness.

“Alright?”

Ridley keeps his gaze on the delicate plant matter in his hands, sure that if he meets the prophet’s eyes again he will be ensnared in an inescapable net. As if it is not already too late. No matter how hard the back of his mind pulls at him like a puppeteer, something else already has the hook buried in deep. It’s in those eyes, in that voice. “Tell me your story. I am, as I am quite sure you have noticed, an entertainer. I collect stories. I have something of an addiction, if you can call it that, and something tells me that I won’t find anything like you again in my lifetime.”

Once again, Faraday’s face is a mask. He would be very good at cards, Ridley observes idly and nonsensically. “You won’t,” he replies simply.

“Go on then,” Ridley urges, hearing the curiosity in his voice and cursing how obviously it comes through. I would be terrible at cards. I am terrible at cards.

“Ah, now I am afraid that will cost you, my friend.”

Ridley blinks; once, twice, three times in rapid succession. “I- I don’t have much-”

Faraday chuckles, and Ridley searches desperately for something he said that could be funny in some context. “Oh, not money. Nothing like that. Something much simpler.” he hesitates, as though building an aura of control in the situation, despite his physical powerlessness. Infuriatingly, it works.

“Freedom,” he says eventually. Ridley’s heart stutters.

Faraday seems to catch on to his train of thought and relieves him of having to say it aloud. “If you wish to know my story, which I will give to you willingly, you must free me from this stake and let me carry on.”

The natural response to this would be no, thank you, it was presumptuous of me to ask, I will be on my way now, enjoy death, but unfortunately for Ridley, the natural flow of this conversation has long since devolved into a whirlpool. So he is left with a choice. What, in this absurd situation, is the correct path? Freeing a condemned soul from their rightful retribution is in itself a wrongdoing punishable by at least a year in a decrepit cell, and yet… where is the crime here? What has this individual done, other than speak of what he believes in? If that earns him death, then any holy man in the country should be right there with him breathing their last.

They call me a heretic, when all I am is someone who believes.

…. Fuck.

Slowly, carefully, Ridley rises to his feet, setting the completed flower crown on the wooden platform. Lifting his eyes to the prophet, he fumbles for the tiny knife slid through his belt, there in the case of emergency. Delicately, he takes it out and moves toward Faraday, slicing the ropes keeping his hands lashed to the stake first. It is a lot harder than it looks, and by the time the thick fiber falls into pieces under his blade, Ridley is panting. Shaking his aching fingers, he kneels to work at the ropes at the prophet’s feet. As soon as he gets them loose enough Faraday steps out of them. He stands in the light of the already-setting sun, the amber sky seeming tailored to frame him. He spreads his arms wide and breathes in, the act seeming to fill his whole body and bring him to life. He was alive before, but held back. Tied down. He is free now, and he is vibrant.

Faraday takes a step forward, and his foot brushes the flowers left where Ridley had been sitting. He considers them, then sweeps down and takes the crown into his hands. He turns it over, examining it. Some of the petals are slightly crushed, but it lends a sort of unique beauty to the object. Faraday seems to think so as well, for he sets the crown gently on his head, moving it gently back and forth until it settles onto his brow. “I’ll be taking this as part of my payment,” he says simply, and Ridley can do nothing but nod dumbly.

Without another word, Faraday sets off down the Castleway. As the day has worn on, most of the traffic has vanished, and the two of them are nearly alone on the wide expanse of road. He does not look back.

And then, as though he had never stopped, he begins to sing.

[killtheprophet-blog]

|: THE EXPLORER

Someone is singing on the Castleway. Now, this would typically be considered a fairly ordinary occurrence, if not for the fact that the singing is rarely being done by the corpses.

Passing through all four central kingdoms as it does, the Castleway is used for a multitude of purposes, not least among them the punishment of traitors and criminals. The lesser ones, generally. Those of import are most often dealt with personally by those they have wronged, and often with a certain flair and originality befitting their crimes. But for most, the Castleway is where they face their retribution, though it is sometimes considered more than they deserve. 

The road itself is a patchwork of hard-packed dirt, cobbled stone, and tough wooden slats, depending on where you stand. As borders and rulers have changed, so too has the Castleway, going through countless damages and repairs until it is unrecognizable from the wide earthy trail it was in the early days. It is still wide, of course, wide enough to fit three full-size wagons side by side. And it is busy. The people flow like fish through a river, on carts and horses, in groups and as one; shouting, talking, laughing. Trading amongst themselves, breaking off old relationships and forging new ones, gathering fame and fortune and everything in between, all in the course of one journey. One can learn more about the world from following the Castleway than from any storyteller or newscarrier in the realm, it is said. 

None of this is entirely relevant to this particular tale, however, or at least not quite so relevant as the stakes. 

The stakes, referred to as ‘the Judge’s fingers’ by the general populace, line the Castleway on the left side. Heavy wooden stakes, as big around as trees, taller than even the most towering of persons, driven into the ground, each through a small wooden platform. They are spaced out irregularly along the path, so it is nigh impossible to guess how close one’s proximity will be to the next (nigh impossible only when considering the factor of luck. Remove that and it is simply impossible to guess). 

These Judge’s fingers are where the aforementioned traitors and criminals face their retribution. To be sentenced to the Castleway is to be sentenced to either a slow, excruciating demise or a merciful release, on the whims of the Judge Eternal and Final. It is to be cruelly and brutally abandoned, to have the strings cut on your control over your fate. It is to be tied to a stake by the side of the road, and left there; handed over to the gods and the elements. Most die after only a couple of days. Brought down by starvation, storms, fires, the savagery of beasts or humanity. There are endless forms of death waiting on the Castleway. It is simply a matter of which one gets to you first. 

There are not always occupants of the fingers, but it is often safe to assume that there will be one or two watching you as you pass by, eyes bright with anger or dark with despair. Some will shout, some will beg, some will cry. Some will say nothing. Most are already too dead to make a sound. This one, however, is singing. 

It’s an unfamiliar song, the tune high and haunting, the voice sweet and rough, like crystallized honey. And it is ruining Ridley’s day. 

It is incredibly bothersome to have your entire life’s purpose usurped by a corpse that refuses to die or shut its mouth. Alright, Ridley supposes, that’s a bit dramatic. But drama, as well, is a piece of what he was born to do, and at this particular moment he is having a disastrous time attempting to do it. The song on the breeze has a nasty habit of throwing him off his own melody, and every attempt to drown it out is met with new fervor from the singer. It’s frustrating as all hell, and Ridley has yet to see the face of his foe, which only stokes his ire further. He keeps his eyes on the fingers, scanning the expressions of those both alive and dead, watching their lips to see if they move. He wants to look upon the one who is ruining his day… and perhaps punch them. He hasn’t quite decided yet. 

He’s nearly given up on trying to locate the singer and decided to push on and ignore the irksome voice, when he sees them. He can’t quite see the figure’s mouth moving from his vantage point a ways down the road from them, but he knows it’s them upon first sight. It can be no one else. 

The figure stands tall and proud, despite being tied to a stake and the fact that they appear to be no more than five and a half feet of height. Unlike the others, they hold their head high, not a hint of defeat shown. As he gets closer, it becomes clear to Ridley that the figure is smiling as they sing, a soft, smirking grin, as if they know something everyone else does not. 

Up close, Ridley can make out the words on the sign nailed into the post above the singer’s head. The letters are a slash of sanguine paint on dark wood, but they are easy enough to interpret: This man is sentenced to the Judge for heresy and refusal to submit to arrest. 

 The heretic himself is slight of build, with the type of lean muscle that comes from working with a weapon. His features are sharp yet fine, as though delicately cut from a rough stone; pointed chin, high cheekbones, distinctly sloped nose. There is a pale smattering of freckles across said nose and cheekbones, standing out prominently in the brilliant sunlight. His eyes glitter silver with humor and defiance, the expression turning their swampy grey color to radiance. His lashes are unusually long and dark, giving those eyes a captivation that is difficult to look away from. His hair, an auburn reminiscent of leaves in the falling season, falls just to his shoulder in the slightest of waves. He is dressed in the simple white shirt and leather breeches granted to prisoners, but he manages to make them look like the garb of a prince. 

He continues to sing as Ridley watches, despite how he must have noticed the other standing there. He doesn't give any indication that he has. Ridley folds his arms and glares, a challenge waiting to be met. The singer's eyes flick to him briefly, and he lifts an eyebrow in… invitation, it almost seems like. Well, Ridley’s not about to let that opportunity go. 

With a flourish, the bard twirls around and deposits himself on the wooden platform at the base of the stake. He makes himself comfortable, crossing one leg over the other with pointed elegance. He flicks his eyes up to the heretic and attempts a scowl, and is met with absolutely nothing in return. So it’s going to be like that, is it? I see. Well, two can play at that game. 

Two, as it turns out, cannot play at that game. The heretic continues to sing, and the song continues to distract Ridley in all his attempts to drown it out. To be honest, the bard isn’t exactly sure what he had intended to do here. He has a habit of making decisions like this, taking action without even considering what action to take. 

The song never seems to end, the verses carrying on and on until Ridley nearly becomes convinced that it’s the only song he will ever hear again. No matter how intently he listens, he cannot for the life of him figure out the language. The words flow like a river, the vowels rolling like waves and the consonants crashing on the shore. It fits beautifully with the singer’s voice, Ridley has to admit, the slightly rough tone adding an unexpectedly welcome contrast to the smooth melody. The tune is just begging for a harmony. 

Damn my nature, Ridley thinks as he begins to hum, testing the notes until he finds the ones that fit, turning the heretic’s song into a duet. He can’t follow along with the words, but the rest of it is easy enough to pick up. He sings loudly, lifting his voice up to carry along the Castleway. He’s always had a powerful voice, it’s one of the qualities that determined his prowess as a bard from a young age. There had been people listening to the heretic’s song from the start, but once Ridley joins in, more and more heads turn as they pass on the road, and some even stop to listen. Mostly families, dragged over to the side of the road by young children captivated by the music. Some merchants stop by, nodding gently along to the tune before moving along on their path. A group of soldiers for hire scowl at them as they pass, and Ridley scowls back. He’s never much liked soldiers. There’s another bard that stops as well, and performs an elegant dance for the heretic, bowing at the end before skipping away, humming the tune as she does so. And there’s an oddly pale figure, with strange ink-black eyes and silvery hair despite its apparent youth, who stays longer than the rest, standing before the platform with its head cocked to one side, a mysterious glimmer in its eyes. The heretic ignores it, but Ridley stares right back at the figure, taking in its expensive clothing and well-groomed facade. It meets his eyes with a cool, amused gaze, as unbreakable as stone. Now, Ridley may have a strong voice and a stronger will, but he folds under that gaze. He lowers his eyes as the figure smirks and walks away, strolling as though it has all the time in the world. 

Not long after that, the song ends. The heretic’s voice trails off into the wind, and he closes his eyes, tilting his head back against the rough wood of the stake he is tied to. He appears… peaceful, content. It’s not an expression one would expect to see on the face of someone condemned to death, but then again it has already become clear that this someone is not much like the others. 

“Thank you,” the singer says as Ridley is preparing to rise to his feet and leave, feeling silly and a bit embarrassed over what he has just done. Ridley startles. “For what?”

The heretic opens his eyes and smiles. “You made it beautiful.”

He’s talking about the song, Ridley realizes. “It was beautiful before,” he says in response. “Without me.”

“Not nearly as much,” the heretic points out. Ridley finds himself blushing faintly, proud of himself. “Well, you know, it comes with being the most famous bard and storyteller on this side of the four kingdoms.”

“Famous?” the heretic quirks an eyebrow. “Are you really?”

Ridley shrugs. “Probably. More famous than you, I’d bet.” 

“Well, that would be because I am infamous, my small singing friend.” 

Ridley has to bite down on his lip until he draws blood to keep himself from bursting out indignantly at being referred to as small. “I suppose that makes sense, you being a heretic and all.”

The heretic cocks his head, the light catching on a set of tiny ragged scars just around the edges of his mouth, mostly faded. “Is that what they call me? Heretic?”

“It’s not a very pretty name,” Ridley agrees. The heretic grins, the pale scars stretching. “I prefer Faraday,” he says. 

“Now that is a pretty name,” Ridley bends over and plucks a pristine white daisy from the patch growing around his feet. “Faraday. Day. Daisy. Faradaisy. Can I call you Daisy?”

Without waiting for an answer, the bard plucks a few more of the flowers and begins weaving them into a crown. “So, Daisy, if you are not a heretic, what then are you?”

Faraday hmms in thought, tilting his head back against the wooden stake once again. “I am someone who believes,” he says, softly yet firmly. 

“Is that not what we all are, at heart?” Ridley points out. He isn’t looking, but he can hear the heretic’s laughter. “I suppose you would call me a prophet, then,” Faraday confesses. 

A prophet. Interesting. “I find that prophets and heretics are often the same, depending on who you ask.” 

That laugh again, a shockingly harsh sound. “You speak true. Unusual for a storyteller, in my experience.”

“Many stories are true,” Ridley bites back, defensive. 

“Many are not,” Faraday returns. Ridley huffs, defeated. He turns back to his daisy crown, but the silence quickly begins to bother him. 

“You know, you’re in surprisingly good spirits for someone sentenced to death,” he says, forcing himself to remember the situation the other is in. Don’t get attached, Riddles. But if Faraday hears the bitterness in his tone, he doesn’t show it. 

“Oh, I’m not going to die,” the prophet replies, confident as a king. Ridley whirls around to frown at him, doubtful. Faraday smiles brightly, tilting his head away from Ridley so the hair falls back from his throat, revealing another scar, this one thick and fairly recent, judging by the clear visibility of the stitches holding the flesh together. 

“I have been sentenced to death too many times to count,” he explains softly, his rough honeyed voice falling uncharacteristically flat. “And not once has it killed me. Why should this be any different?”

“Gods,” Ridley chokes out, openly staring. He’s never seen a scar like that. He’s never seen a wound like that. He hadn’t thought anyone could survive something like that, let alone come out of it walking and talking and singing, for Executioner’s sake. “What did you do?” 

“To make the world want my head on a platter?” Faraday sighs. “Well, that’s quite simple. I killed their gods.”

He speaks it as nothing more than a statement of fact, with the same tone and inflection as one saying I saw a bird today or perhaps the weather’s been shit lately. The words carry no weight. No music swells, no bell is tolled, the sun remains in the sky. Entirely uncharacteristic for the announcement of what may very well be the most consequential demise in all of worldly history. 

A jest, then. 

Ridley barks a laugh, the sound emerging much louder than intended. Faraday’s head lolls in his direction, his expression unchanged. Humorless. Ridley clears his throat. 

“And how does one kill a god?” he asks, playing along. 

“The same way one kills anyone else,” Faraday says, his voice a song that chills to the bone. “They are not immortal, you know. They do not age, do not suffer from illness or mortal malady, but where it matters they are just like you or I. They live, until they do not. Until something or someone kills them.”

“Nothing can live that does not die,” Ridley murmurs, the words rising from their throat unbidden. 

“The sacred promise of the Executioner,” the prophet concedes. “I’ve come to understand that when she first spoke those words at the dawning of what is, she was speaking of herself.”

Ridley turns to face him fully, crossing one leg over the other and tilting his head in consideration. “Did she tell you this herself?

The prophet’s stormcloud eyes are fixed on the horizon as he visibly grinds his teeth into his lip. It is the first sign of negative emotion that he has shown since the bard laid eyes on him, and it strikes Ridley in that moment that he is fucking serious. 

“You’re fucking serious.” 

Faraday’s unwavering attention is locked on him now, and he gives the subtlest of nods. Such a small motion, yet carrying the weight of the world on its shoulders. Ridley has never been particularly close to religion himself- his most common use of the gods is to swear in their names- but faith is ingrained so deeply into every path he walks that to fathom the idea of the objects of that faith simply… ceasing to exist is impossible. He imagines the temples falling to ruins, heavy stone crushed by roots thrusting from the ground. Grave markers for the lost heart of the nation. The people who invest so much of themselves in their gods, in the stories and songs and promises, no longer knowing who to turn to with their prayers. 

“They call me a heretic,” Faraday’s voice is nothing more than a breath of wind in his ear. “When all I am is someone who believes.” 

He should turn away. He should turn his back and set off down the Castleway, let the road carry him to another place, another stranger along the way. Leave this one behind and forget him. Forget the feverish light in his eyes, the scars on his throat, the terrifying implications of his prophecies. Go on now, there is nothing here for you. Turn away now, keep singing your song. But the only song he can hear is the prophet’s. It swells in his ears, rising like a wave. It crashes down on him, soaking him through until he shivers, dripping, in the midday sun. Drowned, then tossed back up onshore. 

He clears his throat. 

“In the end, aren’t we all?” he says, repeating his response from earlier. This earns him a genuine thin smile, which in itself is somehow more disturbing than anything yet said in conversation. 

In one smooth gesture, Ridley gathers the flower crown he’d been weaving up into his hands and begins working at it again. “Alright then,” he says, his tone much less hysterical now that he’s fully allowed himself to be pulled under the waves into madness. 

“Alright?”

Ridley keeps his gaze on the delicate plant matter in his hands, sure that if he meets the prophet’s eyes again he will be ensnared in an inescapable net. As if it is not already too late. No matter how hard the back of his mind pulls at him like a puppeteer, something else already has the hook buried in deep. It’s in those eyes, in that voice. “Tell me your story. I am, as I am quite sure you have noticed, an entertainer. I collect stories. I have something of an addiction, if you can call it that, and something tells me that I won’t find anything like you again in my lifetime.”

Once again, Faraday’s face is a mask. He would be very good at cards, Ridley observes idly and nonsensically. “You won’t,” he replies simply. 

“Go on then,” Ridley urges, hearing the curiosity in his voice and cursing how obviously it comes through. I would be terrible at cards. I am terrible at cards. 

“Ah, now I am afraid that will cost you, my friend.”

Ridley blinks; once, twice, three times in rapid succession. “I- I don’t have much-”

Faraday chuckles, and Ridley searches desperately for something he said that could be funny in some context. “Oh, not money. Nothing like that. Something much simpler.” he hesitates, as though building an aura of control in the situation, despite his physical powerlessness. Infuriatingly, it works. 

“Freedom,” he says eventually. Ridley’s heart stutters. 

Faraday seems to catch on to his train of thought and relieves him of having to say it aloud. “If you wish to know my story, which I will give to you willingly, you must free me from this stake and let me carry on.”

The natural response to this would be no, thank you, it was presumptuous of me to ask, I will be on my way now, enjoy death, but unfortunately for Ridley, the natural flow of this conversation has long since devolved into a whirlpool. So he is left with a choice. What, in this absurd situation, is the correct path? Freeing a condemned soul from their rightful retribution is in itself a wrongdoing punishable by at least a year in a decrepit cell, and yet… where is the crime here? What has this individual done, other than speak of what he believes in? If that earns him death, then any holy man in the country should be right there with him breathing their last. 

They call me a heretic, when all I am is someone who believes. 

…. Fuck. 

Slowly, carefully, Ridley rises to his feet, setting the completed flower crown on the wooden platform. Lifting his eyes to the prophet, he fumbles for the tiny knife slid through his belt, there in the case of emergency. Delicately, he takes it out and moves toward Faraday, slicing the ropes keeping his hands lashed to the stake first. It is a lot harder than it looks, and by the time the thick fiber falls into pieces under his blade, Ridley is panting. Shaking his aching fingers, he kneels to work at the ropes at the prophet’s feet. As soon as he gets them loose enough Faraday steps out of them. He stands in the light of the already-setting sun, the amber sky seeming tailored to frame him. He spreads his arms wide and breathes in, the act seeming to fill his whole body and bring him to life. He was alive before, but held back. Tied down. He is free now, and he is vibrant. 

Faraday takes a step forward, and his foot brushes the flowers left where Ridley had been sitting. He considers them, then sweeps down and takes the crown into his hands. He turns it over, examining it. Some of the petals are slightly crushed, but it lends a sort of unique beauty to the object. Faraday seems to think so as well, for he sets the crown gently on his head, moving it gently back and forth until it settles onto his brow. “I’ll be taking this as part of my payment,” he says simply, and Ridley can do nothing but nod dumbly. 

Without another word, Faraday sets off down the Castleway. As the day has worn on, most of the traffic has vanished, and the two of them are nearly alone on the wide expanse of road. He does not look back. 

And then, as though he had never stopped, he begins to sing.

[cosmic-conundrums]

Someone is singing on the Castleway. Now, this would typically be considered a fairly ordinary occurrence, if not for the fact that the singing is rarely being done by the corpses.

Passing through all four central kingdoms as it does, the Castleway is used for a multitude of purposes, not least among them the punishment of traitors and criminals. The lesser ones, generally. Those of import are most often dealt with personally by those they have wronged, and often with a certain flair and originality befitting their crimes. But for most, the Castleway is where they face their retribution, though it is sometimes considered more than they deserve.

The road itself is a patchwork of hard-packed dirt, cobbled stone, and tough wooden slats, depending on where you stand. As borders and rulers have changed, so too has the Castleway, going through countless damages and repairs until it is unrecognizable from the wide earthy trail it was in the early days. It is still wide, of course, wide enough to fit three full-size wagons side by side. And it is busy. The people flow like fish through a river, on carts and horses, in groups and as one; shouting, talking, laughing. Trading amongst themselves, breaking off old relationships and forging new ones, gathering fame and fortune and everything in between, all in the course of one journey. One can learn more about the world from following the Castleway than from any storyteller or newscarrier in the realm, it is said.

None of this is entirely relevant to this particular tale, however, or at least not quite so relevant as the stakes.

The stakes, referred to as ‘the Judge’s fingers’ by the general populace, line the Castleway on the left side. Heavy wooden stakes, as big around as trees, taller than even the most towering of persons, driven into the ground, each through a small wooden platform. They are spaced out irregularly along the path, so it is nigh impossible to guess how close one’s proximity will be to the next (nigh impossible only when considering the factor of luck. Remove that and it is simply impossible to guess).

These Judge’s fingers are where the aforementioned traitors and criminals face their retribution. To be sentenced to the Castleway is to be sentenced to either a slow, excruciating demise or a merciful release, on the whims of the Judge Eternal and Final. It is to be cruelly and brutally abandoned, to have the strings cut on your control over your fate. It is to be tied to a stake by the side of the road, and left there; handed over to the gods and the elements. Most die after only a couple of days. Brought down by starvation, storms, fires, the savagery of beasts or humanity. There are endless forms of death waiting on the Castleway. It is simply a matter of which one gets to you first.

There are not always occupants of the fingers, but it is often safe to assume that there will be one or two watching you as you pass by, eyes bright with anger or dark with despair. Some will shout, some will beg, some will cry. Some will say nothing. Most are already too dead to make a sound. This one, however, is singing.

It’s an unfamiliar song, the tune high and haunting, the voice sweet and rough, like crystallized honey. And it is ruining Ridley’s day.

It is incredibly bothersome to have your entire life’s purpose usurped by a corpse that refuses to die or shut its mouth. Alright, Ridley supposes, that’s a bit dramatic. But drama, as well, is a piece of what he was born to do, and at this particular moment he is having a disastrous time attempting to do it. The song on the breeze has a nasty habit of throwing him off his own melody, and every attempt to drown it out is met with new fervor from the singer. It’s frustrating as all hell, and Ridley has yet to see the face of his foe, which only stokes his ire further. He keeps his eyes on the fingers, scanning the expressions of those both alive and dead, watching their lips to see if they move. He wants to look upon the one who is ruining his day… and perhaps punch them. He hasn’t quite decided yet.

He’s nearly given up on trying to locate the singer and decided to push on and ignore the irksome voice, when he sees them. He can’t quite see the figure’s mouth moving from his vantage point a ways down the road from them, but he knows it’s them upon first sight. It can be no one else.

The figure stands tall and proud, despite being tied to a stake and the fact that they appear to be no more than five and a half feet of height. Unlike the others, they hold their head high, not a hint of defeat shown. As he gets closer, it becomes clear to Ridley that the figure is smiling as they sing, a soft, smirking grin, as if they know something everyone else does not.

Up close, Ridley can make out the words on the sign nailed into the post above the singer’s head. The letters are a slash of sanguine paint on dark wood, but they are easy enough to interpret: This man is sentenced to the Judge for heresy and refusal to submit to arrest.

The heretic himself is slight of build, with the type of lean muscle that comes from working with a weapon. His features are sharp yet fine, as though delicately cut from a rough stone; pointed chin, high cheekbones, distinctly sloped nose. There is a pale smattering of freckles across said nose and cheekbones, standing out prominently in the brilliant sunlight. His eyes glitter silver with humor and defiance, the expression turning their swampy grey color to radiance. His lashes are unusually long and dark, giving those eyes a captivation that is difficult to look away from. His hair, an auburn reminiscent of leaves in the falling season, falls just to his shoulder in the slightest of waves. He is dressed in the simple white shirt and leather breeches granted to prisoners, but he manages to make them look like the garb of a prince.

He continues to sing as Ridley watches, despite how he must have noticed the other standing there. He doesn't give any indication, however. Ridley folds his arms and glares, a challenge waiting to be met. The singer's eyes flick to him briefly, and he lifts an eyebrow in… invitation, it almost seems like. Well, Ridley’s not about to let that opportunity go.

With a flourish, the bard twirls around and deposits himself on the wooden platform at the base of the stake. He makes himself comfortable, crossing one leg over the other with pointed elegance. He flicks his eyes up to the heretic and attempts a scowl, and is met with absolutely nothing in return. So it’s going to be like that, is it? I see. Well, two can play at that game.

Two, as it turns out, cannot play at that game. The heretic continues to sing, and the song continues to distract Ridley in all his attempts to drown it out. To be honest, the bard isn’t exactly sure what he had intended to do here. He has a habit of making decisions like this, taking action without even considering what action to take.

The song never seems to end, the verses carrying on and on until Ridley nearly becomes convinced that it’s the only song he will ever hear again. No matter how intently he listens, he cannot for the life of him figure out the language. The words flow like a river, the vowels rolling like waves and the consonants crashing on the shore. It fits beautifully with the singer’s voice, Ridley has to admit, the slightly rough tone adding an unexpectedly welcome contrast to the smooth melody. The tune is just begging for a harmony.

Damn my nature, Ridley thinks as he begins to hum, testing the notes until he finds the ones that fit, turning the heretic’s song into a duet. He can’t follow along with the words, but the rest of it is easy enough to pick up. He sings loudly, lifting his voice up to carry along the Castleway. He’s always had a powerful voice, it’s one of the qualities that determined his prowess as a bard from a young age. There had been people listening to the heretic’s song from the start, but once Ridley joins in, more and more heads turn as they pass on the road, and some even stop to listen. Mostly families, dragged over to the side of the road by young children captivated by the music. Some merchants stop by, nodding gently along to the tune before moving along on their path. A group of soldiers for hire scowl at them as they pass, and Ridley scowls back. He’s never much liked soldiers. There’s another bard that stops as well, and performs an elegant dance for the heretic, bowing at the end before skipping away, humming the tune as she does so. And there’s an oddly pale figure, with strange colorless eyes and silvery hair despite its apparent youth, who stays longer than the rest, standing before the platform with its head cocked to one side, a mysterious glimmer in its eyes. The heretic ignores it, but Ridley stares right back at the figure, taking in its expensive clothing and well-groomed facade. It met his eyes with a cool, amused gaze, as unbreakable as stone. Now, Ridley may have a strong voice and a stronger will, but he folds under that gaze. He lowers his eyes as the figure smirks and walks away, strolling as though it has all the time in the world.

Not long after that, the song ends. The heretic’s voice trails off into the wind, and he closes his eyes, tilting his head back against the rough wood of the stake he is tied to. He appears… peaceful, content. It’s not an expression one would expect to see on the face of someone condemned to death, but then again it has already become clear that this someone is not much like the others.

“Thank you,” the singer says as Ridley is preparing to rise to his feet and leave, feeling silly and a bit embarrassed over what he has just done. Ridley startles. “For what?”

The heretic opens his eyes and smiles. “You made it beautiful.”

He’s talking about the song, Ridley realizes. “It was beautiful before,” he says in response. “Without me.”

“Not nearly as much,” the heretic points out. Ridley finds himself blushing faintly, proud of himself. “Well, you know, it comes with being the most famous bard and storyteller on this side of the four kingdoms.”

“Famous?” the heretic quirks an eyebrow. “Are you really?”

Ridley shrugs. “Probably. More famous than you, I’d bet.”

“Well, that would be because I am infamous, my small singing friend.”

Ridley has to bite down on his lip until he draws blood to keep himself from bursting out indignantly at being referred to as small. “I suppose that makes sense, you being a heretic and all.”

The heretic cocks his head, the light catching on a set of tiny ragged scars just around the edges of his mouth, mostly faded. “Is that what they call me? Heretic?”

“It’s not a very pretty name,” Ridley agrees. The heretic grins, the pale scars stretching. “I prefer Faraday,” he says.

“Now that is a pretty name,” Ridley bends over and plucks a pristine white daisy from the patch growing around his feet. “Faraday. Day. Daisy. Faradaisy. Can I call you Daisy?”

Without waiting for an answer, the bard plucks a few more of the flowers and begins weaving them into a crown. “So, Daisy, if you are not a heretic, what then are you?”

Faraday hmms in thought, tilting his head back against the wooden stake once again. “I am someone who believes,” he says, softly yet firmly.

“Is that not what we all are, at heart?” Ridley points out. He isn’t looking, but he can hear the heretic’s laughter. “I suppose you would call me a prophet, then,” Faraday confesses.

A prophet. Interesting. “I find that prophets and heretics are often the same, depending on who you ask.”

That laugh again, a shockingly harsh sound. “You speak true. Unusual for a storyteller, in my experience.”

“Many stories are true,” Ridley bites back, defensive.

“Many are not,” Faraday returns. Ridley huffs, defeated. He turns back to his daisy crown, but the silence quickly begins to bother him.

“You know, you’re in surprisingly good spirits for someone sentenced to death,” he says, forcing himself to remember the situation the other is in. Don’t get attached, Riddles. But if Faraday hears the bitterness in his tone, he doesn’t show it.

“Oh, I’m not going to die,” the prophet replies, confident as a king. Ridley whirls around to frown at him, doubtful. Faraday smiles brightly, tilting his head away from Ridley so the hair falls back from his throat, revealing another scar, this one thick and fairly recent, judging by the clear visibility of the stitches holding the flesh together.

“I have been sentenced to death too many times to count,” he explains softly, his rough honeyed voice falling uncharacteristically flat. “And not once has it killed me. Why should this be any different?”

“Gods,” Ridley chokes out, openly staring. He’s never seen a scar like that. He’s never seen a wound like that. He hadn’t thought anyone could survive something like that, let alone come out of it walking and talking and singing, for Executioner’s sake. “What did you do?”

“To make the world want my head on a platter?” Faraday sighs. “Well, that’s quite simple. I killed their gods.”

I killed their gods. I killed their gods. I killed their gods.

“Well,” Ridley says simply, sounding a few shades more hysterical than he had intended, “that would do it.”

Faraday nods, a slight acknowledging dip of the head, and turns his face to the horizon, his eyes sparkling in the light of the setting sun. “They are dead,” he says again, more to himself than to anyone else. “Whether they fell by my hand or another’s, I cannot say. But I know. I have stood upon their graves. I know.”

Ridley studies him, attempting to work through the puzzle that is Faraday the condemned. The prophet is sincere, that fact is as clear as day. Insane, but sincere. I am someone who believes, he had said. Someone who believes… Someone who believes.

It would be better if I left him here to die, Ridley thinks to himself. It would be the best thing to do. To most, it would be the only thing to do. But Ridley is someone who believes as well. Believes in hearing the full tale, in seeing it through to the end no matter how many tavern patrons or bored lords are screaming at him to quit the racket. There’s a song here. I can feel it.

Faraday startles when Ridley begins sawing at his bonds with his small dagger. “What are you doing?”

“You have a story,” Ridley babbles, justifying his actions to himself as much as to Faraday. “There’s something- I think there’s a story here. Something good. Something to make a legacy out of. I’m not- It can’t end here. I don’t think it’s supposed to.”

Faraday watches him, a slow, genuinely delighted smile crossing his scarred lips. “I never thought anyone would tell my story,” he says, and the soft surprise in his voice awakens a twinge of pity in Ridley. “I don’t see why not, it’s bound to be an adventure. I’ve always wanted to go on an adventure, you know?”

The ropes fall away in a slithery heap, landing in a puddle at Faraday’s feet. The prophet steps away from the stake, stretching his arms wide and throwing his coppery head back so the light shines full in his face. Now that his hands are free, the thick bands of scar tissue around each wrist are clearly visible, indicating countless bindings and chainings. He looks like a saint, standing there scarred, dressed in the simplest of clothing, long hair lifting in the wind. He looks like a king. He looks like a mistake waiting to be made.

When he has finished soaking up the last of the sunlight, Faraday bends to collect the crown of daisies Ridley had made. He places it on his head as reverently as he would a crown. “It suits you,” Ridley tells him. Faraday smiles, but it quickly falls as he glimpses the sign hung over his stake.

“They called me a man,” he mutters. “I do not like being called a man.”

“I understand that,” Ridley sighs. “I’m not always a man either.”

Faraday lingers on the sign a moment more, before turning on a heel, as fluid as a dancer, and strides off down the Castleway. He picks up his earlier song again, belting it loud to the heavens and the core of the earth. Ridley shakes his head as he follows, wondering what in the name of the Judge, Jury, and Executioner he has just gotten himself into.

At least it will be an adventure.

[consul-valerius]

A Whisper, A Promise

Quick, fleeting moments from The Duke's past: a run in with a school teacher, failed connections, burnt dosa, and the ocean.

Rating: a light T rating for cursing and heavy themes

Characters: Samuel and his family !

A/N: I was working on several different WIPs, but this one just. came to me. and felt like it needed to be written lol A more serious look at Sam's childhood/adolescence that have been swirling around in my head for a bit. For a fuller context, Sam's bio can be found here ! If there are any translation issues I am sorry in advance-- I based Sam's hometown off of the Tamil Nadu area for reference heh

Content warnings: misgendering/dead naming, implied corporal punishment, implied injury and descriptions of pain

The familiar sting of a ruler was the first thing Sam registered as he was suddenly pulled back to reality. His chin was still pressed against his chest, head turned down in a silent snooze.

“Samanya! Don’t make me address you again!”

Cradling his hands to his chest, Sam glanced up incredulously at his teacher; the man sneered down at him, the ruler still poised to strike him again. The expected snickers and giggles stung Sam’s ears. He huffed, averting his eyes as his wispy bangs fell into his face.

“It won’t happen again, sir.”

He spoke it through his teeth, clenching his hands, trying to soothe the ache away. Pleased with his student's submission, the teacher stalked back up to his podium, a notable pep to his step. Sam felt his cheeks flush; a spark rushed to his fingers. It would be so easy to simply enchant the ruler so that it was in his hands, to hold that asshole in place while Sam showed him just how much those blows could hurt—

Sighing, he refocused his attention back to his notes, the previous night’s errands still tugging down on his eyelids.

*****

“We’re all planning a trip up north next weekend, Anya! You have to ask your family if you can come with!”

“That sounds really fun, but I… It just isn’t going to happen.”

“Aw, your folks love me though! Our parents play chaturanga every weekend!”

“It’s not that, it’s just—”

“Ugh, it’s fine. I forget you’re a mom of what, three is it now?”

“I’m sorry—”

“I said it’s fine. Let’s just go home already.”

“I still have to wait for Muthu to be let out…”

*****

Sam was too busy wrangling Muthu and Roshni to register the smoke filling up the kitchen.

“Careful not to burn mama’s food, Anya,” Saurya commented, voice neutral, as she carefully cubed the stack of potatoes in front of her. She didn’t raise her head up as Sam shouted, audibly kicking Roshni aside as the young girl wailed.

“It’s your head if you ruin dinner again, Ni-Ni!” Sam hissed, quickly trying to salvage the dosa that was sizzling away. Oil spit back up to his hands, singeing them. Still, Roshni clung to his leg, pouting and whining about the lack of attention. “Muthu! Can you be helpful for once? Go get your sister!”

“No! She always tries to take over what I’m doing and just winds up wrecking things!”

“Liar! No I don’t! Amma, tell him to let me help!”

“Hey, I am not your—”

“Samanya.”

All chatter immediately ceased; it felt like the very air in the room was zapped out. The only other sound was Saurya’s knife meeting the cutting board, a knowing smile not hidden on her face.

“Amma, I—”

“Dinner should already be served. What’s the meaning of this, then?”

Somatra folded her arms across her broad chest; she quirked a brow down at Sam, expectant. Sheepish, Sam sighed, folding his arms behind his back.

“I… I lost control of the kids. They just won’t listen to me, and—"

“Chinnamuthu. Roshni. Respect your eldest sister and do as you are told. Saurya,” Somatra’s ire quickly turned to her second eldest child. “You most of all should be helping your sister. You are not a child any longer. Back to work, now, all of you!”

Clapping her hands quickly, each of her children quickly scattered to return to their work. Saurya sliced into the potatoes with a renewed force. Sam quickly turned away, his cheeks flushed. He blamed the smoke for how misty his eyes had become.

He bristled at the firm squeeze to his shoulder.

“You will get the hang of it one day,” his mother spoke into his hair, her lips grazing his scalp in a mock-kiss. “You will make a wonderful mother one day.”

*****

“Is that everything?”

“I… yeah. I think.”

“You look cute when you blush like that, you know?”

“Do I? You should… You should keep making me blush then.”

Soft, sheepish laughter. He reached over and gently, as if afraid, tucked a stray strand of hair from Sam’s face.

“I’d love to… maybe somewhere more private? Maybe dinner?”

“Oh, I—”

“Amma! What’s taking so long? My feet hurt?”

“Amma…? You’re a—?”

“No! No, it’s not like that! They’re just my sibling—”

“Amma, come on! I’m hot and sleepy!”

Quickly, too quickly, that tender expression twisted into something more familiar, something that made Sam’s stomach drop. Snatching his bags, he forced them into his siblings arms. They shouted as he used a magical string to tug them along as he stomped away. His cheeks felt like they were on fire.

*****

Sam blinked slowly, his hands laid on his chest, facing upwards. He still felt them throbbing underneath all the bandages. He knew he should clean them again soon, but he felt weighed down. Not by the light blanket over him, but something else, something larger. Moonlight peaked past the blinds of his room— it wasn’t really his room. He shared it with Muthu, Saurya, and Roshni. Balan was still sleeping with his mother, but one day, soon, he would join the rest of his siblings. Before, it used to be just his. Before he could even remember it ever being his.

He hissed softly as he tried to clench his hands into fists; the pain was enough for him to feel a wave of nausea hit him.

The others were all deep sleepers; they each had their own days weighing heavy on their brows. Saurya had to spend more time in the market to make up for Sam’s recovery; it did little, but the money was needed either way. Her resentment was still etched onto her face, even in her sleep. Shaking his head, he slipped out of bed on wobbly feet. Moving his hands sent a surge of panic in his chest; he worried he was making the wounds worse, that the pain would be too much and he would just wake the others. Standing on unsure feet, he listened and waited, keeping his hands drawn to his chest. All was still for a long moment.

And then he was managing to wiggle out of the window unnoticed, slipping away with the breeze.

It was a full moon. The ocean greeted him with an muted glee; the foam tickled his exposed toes. Inhaling deeply, he relished the brine. He wasn’t sure when he had last breathed like this, truly felt the air in his lungs. Had he been holding his breath for that long? And he hadn’t drowned yet? Eyes fixed to the moon, he stepped out into the water, grinning as the tides slipped past his toes, soothing his ankles. He didn’t mind his nightclothes getting wet; his hands were holding his forearms as he hugged himself, his eyes shut. The pain was dull and constant, and yet he still smiled. The water embraced him, tender, soothing. If he listened hard enough, he was sure the lazy waves were speaking to him, whispering something only meant for him.

“Samanya?”

Gasping, Sam whirled around, magic painfully surging to his fingertips. He groaned, keeping one hand extended in defense as he keeled over. Muthu gasped, rushing to the water’s edge. At seeing it was his brother, Sam sighed deeply, his expression falling, palms throbbing.

“What are you doing here, Muthu?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Respect your elders. I can do as I please.”

Sam’s expression softened as Muthu pouted; the boy caught his bottom lip between his teeth, tears threatening to spill from his eyes.

“I got scared…”

“Whatever for?”

“I woke up, and you were gone.”

Sam’s eyes widened; without thinking, he was reaching out for his brother, coaxing him into the water with him. It hit Muthu past his knees; he hadn't inherited his mother's height like Sam had. He clung to Sam’s legs as Sam brought him to stand in front of himself. Strong, confident arms wrapped around Muthu’s shoulders, keeping him snug against Sam's legs and stomach. The boy leaned back into the embrace, trying to keep them as snug together as possible.

“That isn’t scary, dumb-dumb. You should have just went back to sleep. I won’t ever be far.”

“You promise?”

“Can you see it out there? That big black mass?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Those are the Pearl Isles. All the rich fuddy-duddies go there to booze up and fuck around.”

“Samanya, papa says you shouldn’t curse like that!”

Sam laughed, a booming sound. It clashed with the waves catching at their legs. The current was picking up, the icy water chilling them both to their bones. Still, Sam was beaming, the white of his teeth illuminated by the moon. At a certain angle, he looked blissful. In another, he looked deranged.

“Sam, I’m getting nervous…”

“Just a bit more, Muthu. I have you. Isn't the water nice?”

“It’s a full moon—”

“All those assholes go there. The queen and all those silly little princesses. They all fuck around in the pearl jewelry we harvest for them.”

“Sam…”

“I hope the queen's next necklace is stained red. I hope my blood never washes out of those pearls. I hope she chokes on them—”

“Sam, I want to go home! I’m scared and cold!” Muthu cried, tightening his grip on Sam’s legs. He tried dragging him back, desperate. “Please, Samanya.”

Sam winced, looking away to the moon, to the islands, to the waves. A whisper tickled his ears again. Sighing, he released Muthu’s hand.

“Alright. Let’s go home.”

[foryoumyheroes]

hi! I dont know if you are still taking request, or even active but if you are, could you do a headcanon with todoroki having a s/o that loves drawing him ? they could be already on a relationship or not ur choice

Hi anon! If you're reading this I previously replied that I am sort of taking requests, but I was inactive until recent. In order to make that up to you I'll give you both a scenario fic and headcanons since I was struck by inspiration to write this! Hope you enjoy!! I kinda spiraled off topic asdfgh 

Pls accept my word-vomit like I’m a cat giving you a dead rat. 

The Campos 

Todoroki x Artist!Reader

"How is it possible for anyone to be that handsome." 

Even you were surprised by the words tumbling out of your own head, stopping your pencil in its place and as you froze like a still frame. It wasn’t long before you felt heat creep up your body, painting your cheeks all the way to your ears with a red like the sunset. 

It was always like this. 

There was nothing artistic from the way his image always flowed from your pencil in hurried lines and messy scribbles, and there was no beauty from how you always hunched over into the collar of your shirts whenever you felt the burning of your emotions. You wrote Todoroki [Name] and [Surname] Shouto in the margins of your notebook as if you had reverted back to primary school, doodled among little tiny hearts and sketches of his side profile. 

Maybe your parents were right. You should’ve just gone to art school like they had said and fallen down the path of them and so many of your other relatives. But at fourteen you were just so caught up with wanting to be different. You had to be. You had to get off the beaten path and flow out of the frame you were confined in. You said that in this family you would never be the best artist, but you could become the best Hero that the [Surname]s had ever had. You were a Hero-in-training, but you knew that at heart you would always be an artist. 

And now at sixteen you were at a loss. You were at a loss because whenever you looked over at the last window seat in 1-A, your talents always fell short. There was nothing you could draw that could bridge the distance you felt, to calm the foreign feelings in your body. Your drawing skills had not diminished while you practiced war, but you were backtracking now. Perhaps you really should’ve gone to art school instead. 

Maybe then you would find a way to express how you truly felt. 

Nothing you wrote or drew now could match up to the endless admiration you had for one Todoroki Shouto. 

Everyone else was mere background noise to Todoroki when he set his gaze on you. 

Although Bakugou and his group of friends were in the common room shouting and making a ruckus and Todoroki’s own friends were giggling at the back of him, tossing frosting, floating bowls of batter to Iida’s ire. 

His eyes always sought you out. 

It was difficult to explain why. Even now, with you in a baggy sweatshirt and loose jeans rolled at the ankles, Todoroki wondered why he was paying you so much attention. The world around you was spinning and you were at an impasse. You were only writing in your notebook, probably jotting down notes at a speed he couldn’t comprehend. Your head was always buried in that Campos notebook.  

With a loud screech, Kirishima bumped his hip on the dining table, jostling both you and him from your standstill, pencils rolling across the wood. Your eyes immediately flashed up and met with his wide heterochromic ones. A deer in the headlights. The two of you turned away as quickly as it came, ignorant to the pink that bloomed on both of your cheeks while a spark flickered across his left cheek. 

“Whatcha drawing there, [Name]?” Kirishima asked boisterously, pulling out the chair beside you while you heated up like a furnace, waving your arms around wildly and sputtered like a train engine. You couldn’t snatch it away fast enough and his dark eyes fell on your doodle-ridden pages with a soft, “Oh.” His lips formed a small O shape. His eyes carefully looked up at the hot-and-cold boy before dropping back down to your page. You carefully averted your eyes, fixing [e/c] orbs on some faraway wall until he carefully pulled your notebook toward him and quickly scribbling something down, pushing the pages back toward you. 

When you snuck a peek at the drawing of a blond gremlin with spiky hair like a porcupine, and a crude drawing of a K and B underneath an umbrella, a loud laugh tumbled out of your mouth. 

It was as if Todoroki didn’t exist anymore as you gave Kirishima your full attention, laughing to whatever jokes he made or witty one-liners. 

He wasn’t a poet. He didn’t know the words. 

Others could talk about how selfish he was for having his mother’s pretty face and his powerful Quirk; boys and girls have tried before, handing him letters in his locker and bouquets of flowers, but that never mattered to him. Only you have stayed on his mind. His attractive features and his Quirk only had stock to it if it helped him win over your affections. 

In crowded places and busy gatherings, when he stood in solidarity, when his hands hung by his sides and his eyes were left with nothing to see, he wondered what primitive part of him was always acting out. How his hands wanted to cut off all connection with the logic in his brain and reach out to grab yours. How he always silently watched you from faraway, physically unable to tear your visage away from his eyes. His body always acted without reason — the heavy palpitations against his rib cage, the rose against his skin, the sweat on his palms, the dilation of his pupils. 

He wondered how he was in Heaven just by being near you. 

He wondered what it would take to get you to look at him for once. 

But your eyes would just be deep within the confines of your Campos notebook, impervious to his lingering thoughts of you.

Surprisingly it was Todoroki who offered to clean up after his friends while they went into the showers to wash away the flour and frosting that coated their hair and skin. The night had already been long by the time they turned in, heavy and drowsy after making several tins of uneven, ugly cupcakes. He had to do something with all of this energy, he thought, scrubbing away at stubborn stripes of sugar that painted the counter tops.

The lights were off and only the streaks of moonlight filtered through the large windows of the dorm room. You had left with Bakugou’s group several hours earlier, accepting Kirishima’s invitation to go to the nearest konbini for ice cream with an open hand. 

Now it was just him. 

Tossing the rag in the wash bin, he was about to make his way back to his room when his eyes fell upon the dining table and he found your notebook. 

How could he not know it was yours. He had seen it within your hands more times than he could count, more obsessively than Midoriya’s Hero Analysis for the Future No. 13. He wondered if that was why he was so interested in you. Your dedication to your studies were admirable. Nearly twenty-four-seven. 

Carefully, he crept closer to it, as if it was a bomb going to detonate before he picked it up. 

The pages curled and crinkled in his hands, and he debated opening it. 

It was just a school notebook, right? You probably only had notes and worksheets hidden inside of it. 

Maybe he could get an answer to your time. He could discover the subjects that you were struggling at, or even find one that you were better than him at. You were a couple ranks below him in the class grades. When he returned your Campos to you he could ask to study with you. 

He flipped it open and his heart stopped at the sight. 

Shit, shit, shit! you thought, running down the stairs, taking two at a time. It was late enough that the elevators were locked for curfew and you cursed Aizawa-sensei for putting your room at the very top of the building. After you had gotten back from the konbini with your friends, cheeks hurting from how hard you were laughing at Kaminari’s antics and Sero’s sarcasm, you had completely forgotten that you left your notebook on the kitchen table. You only remembered when you dug through your bag only to scramble around when nothing came up. If anyone like Hagakure or god forbid — Mineta, found it, you would never live it down. You were lucky enough that Kirishima was a good sport about it. He knew how to keep his mouth shut, but everyone else? 

You wondered if it was too late to transfer schools. 

Your feet landed harshly on the carpeted ground after the final step, head snapping back and forth for your notebook, but froze at what you saw. 

Even in the dim light of the moon and past the hand clamped over his face, you could see the heavy pink on his cheeks. 

Your heart dropped. 

“I — “ His hand fell to his side and you were given a full view of the strong flush on his face. “That’s my notebook... Todoroki-kun.” 

When the Campos dropped to the floor and he dashed across the common room, hand around your waist and his lips on yours, you found that you didn’t need flowery words or an arsenal of artistic techniques to express how you felt. 

Your hands wrapped around his neck, locking him deeper in the embrace, fingers cording through his soft red and white hair. 

The instinct to be closer to him would be all you need to overcome the division between a desire for him and the stillness of your body. 

Headcanons: 

After you two get together and it becomes more obvious that you’re drawing him, he’ll coax you out of doing it in secret.

He’ll ask to take pictures of the drawings on the margins of your notebook or if you’re drawing it on scrap paper, he’ll ask to have it after you’re done with it. 

He keeps it in a box uwu and he has to upgrade every year because it keeps on getting full. 

Even if you’re not drawing him, you ask him to pose for you so you can take references for your other drawings. He’s just so proportionate!! 

It makes him so happy every time he sees it!! He nearly catches on fire every time. 

The fact that you’re expressing your affections in this special way makes him so soft?? 

He once tried to draw you in return but he has like zero to none art experience. Even had no experience in his childhood because all he wanted to draw was All Might and Endeavor wouldn’t allow that. 

Instead you offer to teach him the basics on how to draw and you two continue bonding that way!! You sit on his lap because that’s the best spot to be close enough to guide him and show him how to draw while you drone on and on about shadows, anatomy, perspective, and he’s just nodding along without a single word going to his brain because he’s just staring at you the entire time. 

[“Shouto-chan, did you get that?” 

“Yeah...boxes?”]

If you draw him complete pictures he keeps it on his wall, and eventually his dorm room looks like he’s about to string red yarn around it because it’s blanketed with paper all over like he’s uncovering a murder conspiracy. 

A/N:  The picture that I used for the page breaks is Anselm Feuerbach’s “Peonies” and I actually saw it in real life at the Neue Pinakothek!! It’s one of my favorites and I even got a mousepad of it bc I’m a dork asdfg 

The Kirishima and [Name] scene is inspired by this comic by marbitss and I was inspired to write a lot of prose after reading Nicole Krauss’ The History of Love!

[mythgirlimagines]

It’s near impossible to miss this infamous taiko drummer! Nicknamed “The Summoner of the Rising Sun” by regular festival goers, introducing Myth Anon, the Former Ultimate Drummer!

—————-—————————————

BACKSTORY AND TALENT

Myth was born and raised in a heavily traditional family that prides itself on its traditional values, alongside her two older sisters (who quickly rebelled and started illustrious sports careers). If there’s one thing that Myth looks forward to every summer, it’s the annual festivals that come every year, with the boisterous taiko drummers being a particular favorite of hers. One faithful summer, one of the taiko drummers that she idolizes so much decided to take her under their wing, in order to become a fully-fledged taiko drummer. Before you knew it, Myth became a massive staple of festivals everywhere, thanks to her loud voice and bombastic stage presence. When not performing at festivals, Myth likes to cheer on her sisters in their respective sports competitions, or upload drum set covers on the internet (with the help of her more technologically-adept friends). Myth’s skills in both taiko drumming and set drumming gave her the title of “Ultimate Drummer”, once she hit high school age. As an adult, her drumming skills are still going strong, and she’s currently working on chaperoning a bunch of Ultimates at the Kibo-Con.

——————————————————-

RELATIONSHIPS

Wyre Anon, Former Ultimate Samurai

Myth’s family and Wyre‘s family have been formidable allies, ever since the dawn of time, and Myth and Wyre themselves are no exception, being two birds of a feather, when it comes to sheer energy and wildness, as well as their strict upholding of their ancestor’s traditional values. Historical enthusiasts like to call them “possible time travelers from the past” or “living relics”, whenever they’re seen side-by-side. Wyre is one of the most formidable warriors that her family has ever seen, and is a beast in both brute strength and swordplay, and has an unshakeable code of bushido to those that treat her with respect, underneath that wild, feral and almost dog-like personality.

Outfit: Cleanier and smoother hair with a Nippon Icchi headband around her head, a red oni mask on the side of her head, a green and light brown haori and an off-white obi that houses a brown scabbard over a black gakuran uniform, bandaged arms and legs, black socks and white zori sandals.

Anon Scar, Ultimate Delivery Girl

Scar’s parents are the owners of the “Witch’s Brew Kitchen”, which is a restaurant that is famous for its dark and fantasy-esque wares and the employees acting a lot like what the modern generation refers to as ”chuunibyous”, when on the job. When Witch’s Brew Kitchen eventually offered online -induced delivery, they sent their ambitious daughter to deliver food (along with a couple of other employees) to all of the homes of the hungry (if lazy) customers. Time after time, Myth just winds up befuddled by Scar’s various odd actions. But Myth regularly helps Scar with deliveries, for her muscular build owes very well to lifting particularly heavy orders, much to the overworked Scar’s elation. 

Outfit: A black delivery uniform with added spiked belts, and her hair in a ponytail, the scarf from her original design..

Fusion Anon, Ultimate Racer

Able to back up his extensive and nerdy knowledge of race cars and the race track with the ability to race down the track at high speeds, Fusion became famous for his superb skills, despite his age, and made a massive name for himself in the car racing circuit and as Hope’s Peak’s ”Ultimate Racer”. Fusion and Myth regularly protect and fuss over the other Ultimates, along with Scar. In turn, Fusion and Scar regularly watch over Myth, to make sure that her fiery attitude doesn’t get her into any trouble. Myth may consider bringing her oendan team to cheer Fusion on, during his races.

Outfit: A blue jumpsuit with yellow thunderbolt designs over the red t-shirt from his original design, yellow gloves, black and white sneakers, goggles on top of his hair.

Fusion Anon II, Ultimate Pinball Wizard

With a heavy appreciation for the hobbies and pastimes of the olden days, Fusion II made a name for herself as the top pinball champion in any arcade that she happens to find eye-catching and cool enough. In an attempt to be seen as cool by her peers, Fusion II attempted to adopt the image and fashion sense of a greasy rebel without a cause that were so popular in the mid-1900s. But upon seeing a fellow history geek (albeit, a fan of the the entirely wrong time period), Fusion II’s spiked greaser shell quickly broke and her geeky side just sprang out. The two girls love to talk about their respective time periods together, and Myth learned that Fusion II wasn’t as much of a troublemaker as she thought.

Outfit: Bangs greased back, a black leather jacket and matching leather pants and fingerless gloves over the undershirt from her original design, boots from her original design.

Just Anon, Ultimate Gunslinger

Being born and raised in a kill-or-be-killed world that could take advantage of his small and weak build (and his general laziness), Janon had to master the use of a certain weapon to make it out alive and into his comfortable bed. Janon specializes in quickly drawing a gun out of his holster, shooting it with mighty precision, and putting it back into his holsters, without anybody knowing what hit them. Janon’s sheer disrespect for everybody (apart from Curious and Iris, but he’d be shot dead in an alley before said soft spot is made public) really puts him at odds with Myth, and Janon just finds Myth (and her drumming) really loud and intrusive on his (extremely-long) beauty sleep.

Outfit: A black cowboy hat, a blue and pink poncho over the formal wear and mask from his original design, brown holsters that house his pistols.

Sparkle Anon, Former Ultimate Statistical Analyst

Blessed with a high intelligence quotient and a love for calculating statistics, Sparkle works for several global companies and helps prevent them from making foolish decisions that could cause their businesses to crash and burn. Assisting all of these high-profile companies gave her quite the large ego, and combined with her love of all things theatrical, you’d get a heavily melodramatic, self-proclaimed “SUPERBLY SPECTACULAR STATISTICAL SOMMELIER”, who regularly boasts about all of the random statistics that she can name off the top of her head. Myth seems to be one of the few people that can tolerate her volume, and thinks Sparkle would make an excellent addition to her group.

Outfit: A grey pantsuit over a pink dress shirt and matching heels, the cape and glasses from her original design.

Egg Anon, Former Ultimate Thanatologist, and Wet Sock Anon, Former Ultimate Revolutionary

While similar in aesthetics and their love for inserting out-of-left-field and cursed comments into otherwise normal conversation, Egg and Wet Sock are very  different in terms of personality and talent. Despite being superbly chaotic and almost too obsessed with the concept of death, Egg is surprisingly a great grief counselor to people in mourning, while Wet Sock leads a rebellion group with an iron fist and doesn’t mince their words when it comes to the terrible state of the world. While Myth was initially unnerved by the twins, Myth eventually found out just how kind and dependable Egg and Wet Sock was in spite of their cursed comments and less-than-conventional worldviews. 

Outfits: Skull masks (symbols of Wet Sock’s movement), black sweaters with white stripes on the sleeves and a red heart in the center, blue ripped jeans and spiked black boots.

Curious Anon, Jr. Ultimate Fashion Designer

Curious was born into a family that was at the top of both the social and the fashion ladder, and Curious has been put to work designing clothes, ever since he started showing considerable skill in sketching out and designing clothes. In spite of their age, Curious is known as a fashion genius and a pioneer in the new age of gender-non-conforming formal wear, with the hybrid suit-dress being a particular speciality of their’s. Curious has a very gullible personality, and Myth regularly takes advantage of their gullibility to plan some mischief together and just toying with the fashion designer in general, much to the ire of Janon and the Freak Twins. Myth also loves modeling for them.

Outfit: Hair tied into a ponytail, a green tuxedo with white wedding dress material on the ends and white heels.

Anon Nerd, Former Ultimate Priest

Born into an extremely religious family, Nerd’s family repeatedly drilled all of the God-loving philosophies into his head and trained him to become a professional priest (just like every other man in his family) for as long as he lived under their roof. While Nerd is patient and calm, when it comes to conducting religious ceremonies, he’s the complete antithesis of that, the second he steps outside of a religious building, or the second anybody disrespects his faith, being loud, violent, and vulgar. While Nerd initially had a disrespectful and terrible attitude in the eyes of Myth, Nerd and Myth eventually became closer, thanks to their protective attitudes and shared strong and unshakeable moral codes.

Outfit: Same outfit as the original, but with the addition of a golden cross necklace.

Eldritch Anon, Ultimate Mangaka

Too scared of the outside world to even leave the squalid apartment that he resides in, Eldritch, desperate to wake the world up to the fact that they live in a dystopia, decided to write manga under the pet name “Sheeple Savior”, which are usually about seemingly-normal towns suffering from horrible atrocities, that everybody (but the “chosen one”) remains completely blind to. Years of living in an isolated apartment, combined with his already paranoid and pessimistic mindset, means that he shows a hostile distrust to everybody, with Myth’s loud and overbearing attitude just scaring the miniature mangaka away. Myth also can’t handle all of the subject matter that Eldritch writes.  

Outfit: Long and unkempt hair, a white and baggy t-shirt with a spiral in the center, the shorts, socks, and slippers from his original design.

Dream Anon, Ultimate Barista

Originally getting a job at the local coffee shop to earn some extra pocket money, as Dream spent more and more time as a barista, she eventually became one of the most popular employees at the coffee shop, thanks to her cheery and peppy attitude and the sheer passion that she puts into making and serving coffee. Before meeting Dream, Myth has never had coffee before (due to her upbringing, she prefers tea), and Dream regularly likes offering a plain latte to anybody who never had coffee before. This has led to disastrous and chaotic results, as the taiko drummer went on an utter rampage, and it took several cups of green tea and Wyre to calm the drummer down.

Outfit: A grey ski cap, a green apron over a black t-shirt with a white illustration of a steaming cup of coffee, a pink flannel shirt wrapped around her waist, grey shorts, black socks and pink sneakers. 

Iris Anon, Jr. Ultimate Bed Tester

As a young and optimistic girl with very big dreams, she takes all of the tasks thrown at her seriously and with great gusto, no matter how ridiculous the side hustles are. But her most successful side hustle yet has to be a bed tester for a heavily influential bed-manufacturing company, called “Sweet Dream Industries”. Getting the Starry Iris Badge of Approval is how one knows that a bed is comfortable and satisfactory to sell. Needless to say, when Myth first met Iris and heard about her talent, she was outright cackling for minutes on end. Once she got over the thought of Iris’s talent, she began viewing Iris as a younger version of her, and is extra protective of Iris for that reason.

Outfit: Hair in two messy braids, glasses on top of her head, galaxy-printed pajamas, yellow ankle socks.

Purple Anon, Ultimate Card Shark

Though originally the scion of a very influential family, Purple’s parent ended up going bankrupt after accidentally getting tangled up in the criminal underworld. Now at the bottom of the social and monetary ladder, Purple decided to take to the gambling tables, in order to replace the riches that her family ended up losing. From there, the shy scion learned about her talent for deceit, and became known by many as the Ultimate Card Shark. Ever since Myth heard about Purple’s talent, the strong-moral-compassed drummer didn’t want to tangle with anyone who lied for a living. This makes Purple one of the few Kibo-Con attendees who Myth openly dislikes, much to the dismay of the timid gambler.

——————————————————-

PERSONALITY

Drummer!Myth has a very loud voice and an equally boisterous presence, which really helps her be heard in the festivals that she regularly attends, as well as leading her oendan group/band. Despite seeming overbearing, rough, and hard-headed, once you get on her good side, you have only the most loyal and supportive friend by your side. Despite being the youngest sister in her family, she often acts like a supportive and protective older sibling to the Ultimates and Jr. Ultimates. She loves using her strength to help anybody in need, and it gave her infamy amongst her hometown, for her helpful attitude and the physical abilities to back it up. Apart from drumming, Drummer!Myth also has a love for sports (thanks to her two older siblings) and ancient history and traditions (thanks to her upbringing), and wouldn’t tolerate anybody who disses either of those things. 

—————————-——-——————-

APPEARANCE

Drummer!Myth has wild and tousled brown hair in a ponytail held by a white ribbon with a pink headband around her head. Drummer!Myth simply wears her oendan/festival wear, which consists of a sleeveless robe that’s white on the left side and blue on the right side with a special purple pattern on the bottom, and tying it all together is a pink obi. Underneath the robe are white bandages that bind her chest and black shorts. The bracelets on each of her bandage wrapped arms match her shorts and she wears white socks and geta sandals that boost up her height.

——————-————————————

I honestly have no idea why, but I decided to go for a different drummer, as opposed to the kind that Max is. I decided to take cues from the two best fictional taiko drummers I know: Saeko from Haikyuu, and Tomoe from Bandori! I hope you like this design! Let me hear your opinions on this AU!

[sasorikigai]

‘ TRUTH ‘ + Why didn't you tell Ryou about what you're planning to do when it came to Bi-Han? Out of protection? Or out of the fear both of your lovers would surely stop your hand from slicing his throat?

SEND  ‘ TRUTH ‘  +  A  QUESTION  AND  MY  MUSE  HAS  TO  ANSWER.  NO  LYING  ALLOWED. || anonymous, mention of @sonxflight and @frozenbreath || accepting

💥 || Hanzo Hasashi is certain that he is going mad again; he feels as if he cannot go through another one of those terrible times. And he should not recover this time. He begins to hear voices, and he cannot concentrate. In the broken, crumbled reflection of his being, what looks back at him is disgust and wrongness, the stark contrast of what is and what should be, or maybe any number of indescribable things, the strange complexities that makes him incomplete and yet human. Nothing looks back at him, even no tangled web of experience as the silent griever of his bones would melt each somber breath. 

Sometimes, he is fervently red and such burdened pressure gets curled around his ribcage; a junction of death and art dancing to tiny beats of time. His conversations repeat somewhere between absorbing interest and the heart of a romantic. A cornucopia that lives deep within his lungs on a full eloquent rhythmical blackness where he catch words between his breaths and he bites his lips in feverish affliction and agony. He is heavy with gravity of his guilt, as his religious suffering embeds sempiternally upon the blood-streaked, red glassy reflection of his eyes. 

“I have tasted death not once, not even twice, but three times, and it has left a mark on my tongue,” of course, he was referring to the times shortly after Harumi and Satoshi’s death, as his depression remained the strongest drug that would barely sustain the eidolon of his nonexistent, floating life as the ruination of his guilt and wrath whirled surging cruelty as Hanzo Hasashi punished himself physically and mentally through blood-streaked lips, bruised and broken ribs, and mangled contusions of his eyes and cheeks. When the riverbed of his happiness began to dry, skin scratching onto stone, bleeding heavy, as his numb blood became a poor imitation of sweet water of his vitae flowing through him, he would feel the buzz of his skull as he would find the flow and parch his skin of conscious attentiveness as all knowledge of his own attempt at his life would give his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion. 

“I had to detach myself in mind and spirit, so they would never know. I knew I was going to carry on no matter what the cost, because that’s the kind of a person that I am. Ever since I have tasted death, and began to live in dead houses, I have never felt the breath and blood and bones of a structure, and however I feel inexpressibly grateful and undeserving of their love, it was despair crawling inside of me, instigating my long-harvested and fueled vitriol vengeance and ire that won me over. I lived in my damned loneliness, because my being felt like the marrow has been sucked out, and I felt hollow and brittle,” Hanzo slowly limps from his standing position, and sinks back to the tenebrous shadows; to all his sudden, sullen, and dark moods. 

Knowing that he still sees death’s spectrum, its compulsion, its weakness, its appetite - he fears no oblivion nor the scar of abyss floating within the weakened cadence of his pulse - only plunges him deeper into the fathomless ocean of lament and guilt. “If I was going to not stand against the outlasting pain and guilt I have felt from not being able to protect Harumi and Satoshi, it was the weight of my misery’s pull that I strike Bi-Han down with the same excruciating suffering that they died in absolute vain. I should have been the one who died. It was me who Lin Kuei fucking wanted, but I suppose they have succeeded in that they rattled me with undying chains of lamentations; lamentations and defeat.” 💥 || 

[the-odd-job]

Up in Flames chapter 20 - Rain (Ashes Part 2)

Rating: Explicit Warnings: Major Character Death, Chose Not to Use Category: Other Fandom: Transformers Relationships: Megatron/Sunstreaker, Megatron/Sideswipe, Sideswipe & Sunstreaker Characters: Sunstreaker, Megatron, Sideswipe, Flatline, Nova Storm Additional Tags: Dubcon, Mechpreg, Sticky Words: 6728

( Previous )

“I’m sending you to Cybertron.”

Just like that. There was no warning, no ‘would you like to’ (hah, as if there was ever going to be that), just the announcement that hey, they’d be doing this now, congrats!

Sideswipe’s optics snapped open from where he had been basking in the pleasant afterglow of—for once—getting some of Megatron’s attention on himself. The tyrant’s frame was all but scorching to the touch where Sideswipe was stretched along his side and partly on top of him, but damn, the mech had stamina.

“What?!” Sunstreaker snarled from Megatron’s other side, and Sideswipe could feel his desire to push himself upright to glare at the warlord all proper like.

But after a testing twitch, the languid heaviness in his limbs made him think better of it. See, first Megatron had fragged Sunstreaker absolutely strutless in some… Whatever reunion thing this was.

And then, like he hadn’t just exerted himself to the pits and back and then again, Megatron had decided to fuck Sideswipe too.

Sideswipe had no complaints about that. Neither did Sunstreaker for that matter, because his brother had been really unsure if he could’ve survived any more of Megatron’s attentions. It probably wasn’t an unexpected spell of kindness or mercy on Megatron’s part, but likely more something along the lines of not wanting to completely burn out the carrier of his sparkling.

While apparently still having some frustrations of his own left, because man, Megatron had gone hard on him. Again, Sideswipe didn’t have a single complaint about that and it was some spectacular interfacing–

But he was a little dented and sore right now. 

At least it looked like Megatron had finally worked through whatever aimless aggression he’d had left after beating some Autobots. That had only taken all of two days, too.

Of course, then they got to the end, and suddenly they were being told they were going to get sent to another planet, where there definitely wouldn’t be interfacing like this because it didn’t exactly sound like Megatron intended to come along. He was kind of needed on Earth, anyway.

“You’re sending us to that dead chunk of metal?” Sunstreaker continued in a furious hiss.

It wasn’t about the deadness of the planet to him, though. “The slag are we supposed to be doing there anyway?”

It wasn’t about lack of things to do either, really.

“You will pay Shockwave’s compound a visit,” Megatron growled right back. It didn’t take a genius to surmise what had prompted this, based on that.

“This is about the Autobots, right?” Sideswipe asked, and although tired, he was nowhere near the shape Sunstreaker was in, so he leveraged himself partly up to look at the warlord. Megatron’s optics were as baleful as ever, but Sideswipe wasn’t a coward any more than his brother was. “You don’t want them to get their hands on the sparklet?”

Megatron inclined his helm at him. “There is a far lower threat of Autobots on Cybertron.” And the Prime wasn’t there. Who was, at this point? Wreckers were probably off-world. Ultra Magnus? Elita and his troops? Maybe a few others. 

And who in their right mind would try to bring down Shockwave in his lair with soldiers that limited? The rumored security Shockwave maintained was enough to dent even the strongest of optimists.

For the safety of the sparkling, Megatron seemed intent on sending them into the middle of that. Which… Well, it would at least remove the sparkling from the Autobots’ reach pretty effectively. Even if they tried to follow, they’d still need to go toe to toe with Shockwave and his drones and countless automatic defenses, not to mention the Seekers and other Decepticons stationed with him, before they could get to Sunstreaker and the sparkling. That was practically suicide.

So, if the goal was to keep the sparkling from falling prey to the Autobots’ ill intent, it was a solid plan.

Didn’t make a certain someone any more happy with it.

At the same time… Sunstreaker’s engine was revving like mad, and not from nice things like arousal or the like, but even he couldn’t deny Earth wasn’t the safest place. The Autobots had gotten into the Victory before. Jazz had already paid them a visit. They were just lucky the Autobots hadn’t seemed so hell bent on ‘freeing’ Sunstreaker at the time as they had become in further practice—after Ratchet’s visit, really. Them and their pissing need to confirm for themselves what influence Sunstreaker was under, when Ratchet refused to share.

And then thinking Sunstreaker was under enough influence to warrant killing the sparkling if nothing else worked. Or, slag, would they have tried to bring the protocols offline anyway, and then just reprogrammed him if that fucked him up beyond the point of no return?

No point thinking about all that now, though. It hadn’t come to pass.

But it could, still.

Unless they were on Cybertron, under Shockwave’s ever so loving care.

That was a bit of an issue though. “You think he won’t put us on a dissection table for being split-spark?” Sunstreaker asked sharply, engine still snarling and his vocalizer not much better.

Megatron glared at him. “Shockwave knows better than to go against my orders. You’re free to consent to his research, but he’s not permitted to touch you without your permission—nor is he allowed to harm the sparkling in any way, indirectly or not.”

Seemed… Reasonable enough, considering this was Megatron they were talking about. Shockwave was one of the most dangerous Cybertronians currently in existence, and not just because he was an amoral and emotion free intellectual, but because he was just as formidable physically. 

Except there wasn’t much question that Megatron could and would kick his aft if Shockwave stepped out of line. It was only logical to obey, lest you bring harm and potential death upon yourself. Right?

Frag, he had no idea what went around in Shockwave’s helm. Could they trust this situation, or would they end up getting their spark all cut up in the name of Shockwave’s hunt for ever increasing knowledge?

Did they have any choice in taking the risk?

They didn’t, not really. Megatron wanted it, and what Megatron wanted, Megatron got.

Sunstreaker was still growling. “What happened to contributing to the sparkling, anyway?”

Megatron barely missed a beat before growling back an entirely aggravated, “I think I have contributed an adequate amount, wouldn’t you say?”

That… Yeah. Sunstreaker took a moment to consider the fact there was a very sizable pool under his aft, and more still leaking right out of him, and that probably wasn’t going to change anytime if you took into account the amount of transfluid Megatron had pumped into him.

Sunstreaker grumbled something under his breath. Sideswipe snickered before pushing himself fully to sitting–

Only to flop across Megatron’s chassis, folding his arms in front himself and resting his chin on them.

As casual as Sideswipe made the act, he was prepared for painful retaliation. This had to be testing some boundaries.

Nothing ever came, though. Megatron’s look of surprise quickly melted into a single raised optical ridge that only earned a grin from the red twin.

Boundaries successfully pushed!

Sunstreaker had dedicated himself to sulking and didn’t even look their way. He was an ass like that.

“When?” Sideswipe asked, tilting his helm a bit. Megatron didn’t need to ask what he was referring to, of course. He wasn’t an idiot.

“As soon as your brother gathers the strength to move.”

Sunstreaker quieted for a second, and Sideswipe’s laughter rang at the same moment as his twin broke his silence to the tune of some very angry cussing.

Way to offend a mech there, Megs.

But after a bit more rest and some much needed fueling, Sunstreaker managed to drag himself from the berth. He was still a barely contained ball of violence, but equipped with far too great awareness of his shaking limbs that completely robbed him of any honest chance at expressing his feelings through anything except waspish words.

Sideswipe ignored that. The ire wasn’t really aimed at him anyway. Megatron got most of it, but anyone else they happened across wasn’t really spared either. 

Megatron mostly ignored it too. Sometimes Sunstreaker got growled responses, a few times he got claws, but really there wasn’t near as much reaction as there could have been. That only seemed to make Sunstreaker even more annoyed, the hissy fit he was busy throwing spiraling to rival anything they’d seen Starscream dish out.

That fact wasn’t lost to the Decepticons, either. There were muted snickers, whispered words comparing Megatron’s two (apparently primary) flings, and talk about how he had to have a type right there.

But all of it was spoken where Megatron couldn’t fully hear it, lest he be given a reason to administer some punishment for lack of respect or whatever. 

After they’d fetched their few possessions from their quarters, it was honestly an excessive amount of Decepticons that were ordered to accompany them to the space bridge. There was no question that Megatron was very serious about not giving the Autobots a chance to successfully do a damn thing, even assuming they’d had the time to recover even somewhat.

Which they probably hadn’t, if Sideswipe’s assessment of how many injuries they’d all acquired was even close to the truth. They had held their own fine outside the Ark last he’d seen, but of course then the Seekers had basically carpet bombed the lot of them, and if that didn’t hurt he didn’t know what did.

But so they made it to the site of the space bridge without an incident, and the twins unboarded the best space taxi, Astrotrain. “How did you even have everything set up so quick?” Sideswipe asked from Megatron as he trotted up to the big mech overseeing the space bridge’s activation.

Megatron glanced at him. “Soundwave arranged everything. On my order.”

Ah. So while they were busy having the lights fragged out of them by Megatron, he’d apparently had the time to let his third know about his plans.

And of course Soundwave would get things done. What had he even gotten up to? Informed Shockwave, arranged the Decepticons on this end to escort duty, set up the activation of the bridge itself, and made sure the Decepticons on Cybertron’s end were prepared to receive them and bring them to Shockwave’s compound? Something like that, probably.

There were no Autobots to be seen even by the time the bridge portal opened. “Enter,” Megatron ordered them with a careless gesture in the direction of the portal as it whirled to life.

Sunstreaker growled. “I hate you.” A digit was jabbed at Megatron’s chassis, but despite that, his brother marched towards the bridge. Sideswipe followed after throwing a quick, “See ya!” at the warlord.

“Have a safe trip!” Skywarp wished them with a wave. Sideswipe waved back with a grin.

Meanwhile Starscream hissed, “Good riddance,” right where Sunstreaker was sure to hear it. The SIC became the target of one intense glower, but Sunstreaker didn’t do more than flip the bird at him before stopping at that last step that would have taken him into the portal, waiting until Sideswipe was next to him.

Then they took it together, the scenery of the Earth changing into the green and blue vortex of the bridge’s interior. “Wonder if we’ll get to see any of Shockwave’s experiments,” Sideswipe mused as they walked along the tunnel.

“Just as long as we don’t become those experiments,” Sunstreaker grunted back at him.

Sideswipe laughed. “Come on, have a little faith! I don’t think Shockwave’s dumb enough to go against Megs.”

His brother didn’t have time to make more than a noncommittal noise before they cleared the bridge and appeared on the other side. The dead, dark, cold landscape of Cybertron greeted them—familiar metal beneath their pedes, but no light beyond that the stars cast from the sky that had by now cleared of its old pollution that had once covered nearly all of the planet.

Their home, now nearly inhabitable.

More Decepticons were waiting for them, all of them Seekers. One of them stepped forward to greet them, and that was one they could recognize—if only because his trine had rained acid across Cybertron, much to the chagrin of the Autobots. “I’m Nova Storm,” he introduced himself. One of the Rainmakers, no doubt about that. “Are you okay to drive the way to the compound? It’s not far and the roads should be in passable condition.”

After being carted everywhere via a shuttle, driving sounded pretty nice. Plus they could enjoy the scenery a bit more.

What there was to enjoy. Broken landscape, old marks of explosions, jutting, torn structures as far as the eye could see.

But it was Cybertron.

“Yeah, we’re good,” Sideswipe confirmed. “Just show the way.”

They got a nod in return before all of the Seekers transformed and took to the air on one gesture from Nova Storm. The twins transformed as well and raced after the fliers as they zipped forward, following each other in pairs of two. Even had the roads not been in bad enough condition that they couldn’t go full speed and had to swerve around obstacles on irregular intervals, they would never have kept up with Seekers, but the fliers took that into account. They flew slower than they could, and although still considerably faster than the twins, the pair at the front would loop back around to become the last pair, and repeat so there was always a line of Seekers right ahead of them, pointing the way.

The roads, while far from perfect, were indeed in passable condition the whole way. They didn’t need to transform again before they’d already reached the doors of the compound—and that after driving by all manner of defenses for a considerable time already—the Seekers transforming as well and dropping down around them.

The doors opened to the fliers and the brothers followed them inside. Things were… Honestly you couldn’t even call it lit with how dim everything was, but not like lights were strictly necessary for their species anyway.

It was clear, though, that the fact Cybertron hadn’t orbited a star in a long time was severely affecting life on it. There weren’t many ways to generate energy anymore, especially with the core of the planet almost as dead as the surface.

Sideswipe wondered if the planet would eventually cool enough to make life for their species upon it completely impossible, at least on the surface. The lower decks had always gotten progressively hotter the lower you went. Maybe that still held true to an extent and the few mecha left on the planet could escape beneath the surface even if the temperature dropped too much.

“How many mecha are left on Cybertron, anyway?” Sideswipe asked as they walked the dark but spacious hallways deeper and deeper into the compound—and lower by a level or two, too.

“There are a few more Decepticon bases scattered around,” Nova Storm responded, just vague enough that their question was answered without providing any important intel to them. “Some Autobots are still holed up in Iacon, too, but we don’t have the resources to smoke them out. Same holds true for them too, though.”

“So a stalemate, like on Earth?”

“The whole war everywhere is that right now, I’m pretty sure.”

Something needed to give on one side or the other for things to change.

...Something had given. They’d left the Autobots and stripped their forces on Earth of some of their strongest frontliners.

But was that a change big enough?

What about if they officially changed sides? Sunstreaker wanted to fight the Autobots after what they’d done to him, and Sideswipe couldn’t say he had much against the idea either, not after that whole disaster.

Would that be enough to tip the scales? Could he give their spark and its two frames that much credit?

But that was a moot point right now. They weren’t even on Earth anymore, and wouldn’t be for who knew how long, and it didn’t sound like there was much fighting going on on Cybertron. So, no battles for them to participate in, for either side.

Just a war neither side could win.

“These will be your quarters,” Nova Storm said as they came to one door along a corridor of doors that Sideswipe assumed held other rooms for other occupants. He physically opened the one he pointed out. Most of the Seekers that had accompanied them dispersed at that—only Nova Storm and one other stayed. “I hope you’ll find them adequate. We left a few datapads with some entertainment on them for you, but with how long on energy we are, you probably had more to do on Earth. Sorry about that.”

“Can we spar? With each other, I mean,” Sideswipe asked as he looked inside the room right after Sunstreaker. It was furnished as sparsely as the quarters they’d had on the Victory, but these were over twice as big.

But obviously space wasn’t such an issue on planetside as it was on a spaceship. 

“Yeah, sure. Hold on…” Nova Storm went quiet for a moment before they were pinged with a map of the compound—or that of a part of it, anyway. Many portions were clearly omitted, so Sideswipe suspected what they’d gotten was just the area they were allowed to explore, and the rest was off limits.

Shockwave was the secretive sort, anyway.

“You should find your way around with that. We have pretty strict ratios so I can’t suggest burning through too much fuel, though.”

“We’ll be careful,” Sideswipe promised. So… Cybertron might’ve been the safer location for the sparkling, but it looked like life was pretty difficult on it. Not that that should’ve come as much of a surprise. Even the Autobots had known that the Decepticons sent most of the energon they acquired back to Cybertron for a reason.  

“Also,” their Seeker friend continued, his optics glowing in the dark as he looked between them, “Flatline has offered to edit your armors to be a little more… Well, no offense, but you look pretty Autobot. He thought it might be a good welcome present.”

That was… Awful nice and thoughtful. Sideswipe blinked in surprise. “Really? He could do that?”

“Yeah, sure. We have the raw materials for it. If you want to?”

Did they want to? Sideswipe locked optics with Sunstreaker and they… Considered the offer. The suggestion was pretty clear: make them look more Decepticon.

It was weird how almost everyone already treated them like they belonged to the faction, despite the fact they had never officially switched sides, only ditched the Autobots. Technically, then, they were Neutrals right now, and that was a dirty word.

But maybe it being a dirty word was why no one called them that. Plus the fact Sunstreaker was, you know, carrying Megatron’s offspring, which in the optics of most probably tied them to the warlord rather effectively.

Not that that was untrue, it was just that… Would it last after the sparkling’s separation? It was like everyone assumed it would.

And in all honesty they were slowly leaning towards the it would themselves.

And they knew they looked the part of an Autobot, had for a long time. They had almost no sharp edges on them, no claws, no fangs. None of the things they’d used to have before joining the ‘Bots, just on account of being Kaonite, and Kaonite gladiators at that. 

If they could have that back… 

It was tempting. No, not just tempting. They wanted it. 

Here they had an opportunity for it.

So why not take it?

Sideswipe nodded at Sunstreaker, then turned his attention to Nova Storm and nodded again. “Honestly, that would be great. If it’s not too much trouble.”

“It’s not. He’s itching to have something to do, anyway,” Nova Storm said with a lopsided grin. “There’s not too much of a need for a medic right now.” And Shockwave probably didn’t involve him in all of his research and experiments, if any at all. He wasn’t sure about that, but hey, if they could give the poor mech something to do, while benefiting from it themselves?

Hell yeah.

“Then we’d love to,” Sideswipe confirmed again, nodding more firmly this time. Nova Storm nodded back at him, before pinging them again, this time with a location on the maps they’d just gotten. “His repair bay is there. Go see him whenever you’re ready and he’ll set you up with everything he needs from you.”

“Sweet. I think we’ll go do that right now.” Not like they had anything better to do. Besides, it’d be nice to have it done ASAP, and just… Get to enjoy their frames again, instead of feeling like they were missing something. 

Because they were missing something. They were missing quite a few things, actually.

“Sure. And here’s my comm. Give me a call if you need anything,” Nova Storm said in parting before he took his leave down the corridor with just a wave at them, the other Seeker leaving with him—but also after giving them a wave.

Seriously. They were getting treated like they were already Decepticons in all kinds of ways. 

He couldn’t really object to it, though. It was honestly pretty nice.

They closed the door to their room and set down the hallway into the opposite direction, following the map they had until they reached a set of double doors. There wasn’t any more light here than anywhere else, and these doors didn’t just slide out of the way automatically either.

Could they just walk in? Sideswipe wasn’t sure about that, so he gave the door a knock instead.

They only waited for some seconds before the door was opened by a mech from the other side. “Flatline?” Sideswipe asked for confirmation’s sake.

“Ah, you must be Sideswipe and Sunstreaker,” the mech said, looking between them. “Here about your frame edits?”

Straight to the point, huh? “Yeah. We’d kinda like to take you up on that offer.”

“Stellar! Come on in and let’s talk.”

They did. The repair bay was near pitch black like the rest of the place, but that continued to not be a hindrance with all of the other sensors and scanners in their race’s use, that didn’t require one speck of light to work. 

Flatline led them to the back of the room with a desk and some chairs. “Alright, what I’ll obviously need from you are designs for what you’d like to look like. I challenge you to come up with something I couldn’t do.”

Sideswipe laughed in good humor at that. “I think we’d just like to return to our pre-Autobot builds, and I don’t think those designs are too out there. Sorry.”

The medic and whatever frame editor he was on the side sighed in a totally exaggerated manner. “Oh well, I’ll just have to live with that. Do you have any pictures of your old designs I could build schematics based on?”

Sunstreaker nodded and fetched his drawing pad from his subspace. Its screen came to life as about the only source of light in the room aside from their optics, and his brother quickly navigated to his drawings of them, as they’d been. 

Could they really be that again..?

“Oh, that’s thorough,” Flatline noted, his optics brightening in what looked like excitement. “Did you draw these yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“Impressive! And these are what you want? No changes?”

Sideswipe considered it for a moment, looking at the images Sunstreaker had drawn, and his brother was doing the same. Now was their chance to change whatever they wanted to, huh? But had they ever really had complaints about their old looks? As much as they had been slaves at the time they’d gotten their final upgrades, they had still had some word in what they wanted to look like, as long as it fit the right aesthetic—and standards of attractiveness, but who was going to complain about that?

They’d liked their looks before the Autobots had edited them to look less dangerous, less Kaonite, less Decepticon.  

“No changes,” Sunstreaker answered after they’d come to their decision, pushing the drawing pad a little closer to Flatline, who nodded and pulled out a large datapad of his own. He plugged it into Sunstreaker’s pad and deftly downloaded all of the pictures of their old frames as references for himself, as well as the schematics of their frames that Sunstreaker pointed out to him. There wasn’t much to do without those… But maybe Sunstreaker had kept them with his other images in hopes of something like this happening.

Even if they’d never before had any actual hope of it.

“Alright then. Now, if you’d take your armor off,” the medic instructed when he unplugged his datapad and inspected its newly acquired contents, “Hmm… All of it off, it looks like. Your downgrade really was thorough…”

“You don’t say,” Sunstreaker snorted.

Flatline shook his helm in disapproval, probably at whoever had stripped them of all of their edges, and not at Sunstreaker. “There’s a private room behind that door if you don’t want to go walk through the halls on your protoforms back to your quarters. It’s safe within the compound, but understandably that can feel a bit disconcerting.”

You don’t say. Sideswipe made a face. This was the downside of complete edits, you had to be all… Defenseless while they were done. Protoforms just weren’t meant to be uncovered for anything else except planetary entries in its alt-mode. Nothing else. And yeah, for gladiators and warriors that was especially going to have every single instinct screaming at them.

This wasn’t going to be fun.

But the results? Those would be worth it.

“If it’s cool we’d like to stay out of sight,” Sideswipe said as he began to unlock his armor and remove it. 

All of it. Literally all of it. Flatline nodded at him, but was courteous enough to not watch the process that Sunstreaker joined in on after just a small delay. Off came their chestplates, their collars, their pauldrons, rerebraces, gauntlets, gloves, waist cinches, groin pieces, cuisses, poleyns, greaves, sabatons...

Helmets and faceplates. 

Everything.  

They didn’t stop before every piece of armor was stripped off of their frames and nothing but bare protoform was left on every inch of them, their patchy exoskeletons the only thing left to protect their internals. 

But then they were done. “I’ll take good care of your armors, fear not,” Flatline promised, then gestured at the door he’d pointed out, “This should take me a few groons. The door’s open, but you can lock it behind yourselves.”

“‘Kay,” was all Sideswipe said before they scurried off to the private room, their protoforms still in the middle of returning to their armorless configurations. That was always a weird feeling, to kind of just… Deflate, when there wasn’t armor to fit into. 

They did lock the door behind themselves. There was a berth in the small room, some surfaces for medical equipment that wasn’t there right now, a few chairs. About as bare as their quarters, but that just meant they couldn’t mess with anything they weren’t supposed to mess with.

How disappointing.

They both hopped onto the berth, though neither laid down. Sideswipe poked at some of the exposed machinery in his thigh; Sunstreak inspected his digits and the little joints left to open air.

Pits, their protoforms weren’t fragile, they knew that much, but they still felt mighty fragile right now. 

At least there wasn’t anyone to see them. Thank Primus for small mercies.

But after the novelty of seeing all of their protoform died off, in settled the boredom. Sunstreaker merely pulled out his drawing pad again and set to sketching, but he was always better equipped to handle not having anything to do. Sideswipe watched for a while as the shape of Megatron slowly materialized onto the canvas, but that wasn’t going to entertain him forever. In the end he pulled out a datapad he had some Earth games on, plugged into it, and set to virtually shoot things. 

Considerably safer than the real thing, but nowhere near as exciting, either. But eh, beggars couldn’t be choosers. It’d do.

The image of Megatron was almost done and Sideswipe was just about bored of his game when there was a knock on the door a moment before Flatline peeked in. Sideswipe checked his chronometer, and for as many groons as it had taken, it still felt like Flatline had been pretty quick about it.

Not that he was entirely sure how long stuff like this usually took. “I’m done. If you’d come to fit everything on so I can see if anything needs any tweaking.”

“That was fast,” Sideswipe commented despite how much he wasn’t sure if it was fast. They both dropped off the berth and followed after the medic as he retreated from the door back to the repair bay.

“Thank you,” Flatline said, so maybe it really was faster than the average since he wasn’t corrected on the point. Huh.

The lights of the room brightened enough to grant some color vision on top of other sensor readings. Sunstreaker’s engine rumbled in pleasure the moment they set their optics on their retrofitted armor pieces. Everything was missing paint on so many spots, but that was their problem to fix and didn’t come as a surprise.

What was more important was that nothing looked anything like the shape they’d left it to Flatline’s care in. They could still recognize it as theirs, but now it really… It really was theirs. Gone were the rounded edges on everything, replaced by sharp corners and wicked spines and spikes.

And in the midst of it all, Sideswipe could spy the armor of his servos, and the claws that now decorated the tip of every digit—long, sturdy, sharp, dangerous, with not only a menacing point made to pierce, but also a long cutting edge at the bottom.

Just as they were in the Pits. They were made to hurt, rend, damage.

His spark felt fit to vibrate straight out of its chamber and the sparkling sharing the space in Sunstreaker’s core was paying very close attention to the excitement that was bouncing between their two halves. Sunstreaker tried not to show anything on the outside, but his optics were still too bright for normalcy.

Sideswipe didn’t even try to hide it and rushed straight for the armor bits that belonged to him, hovering his servos over them in awe.

Frag.

“This is so awesome,” he breathed as he began to pick the pieces up in reverse order from what he’d removed them in, fitting them in place one by one. They locked in place and merged with his systems, and he could feel the paintless extensions integrate with him—all the edges he barely remembered the feeling of.

Now he could re-experience all of it, and pits, it felt good. He couldn’t get the pieces on fast enough, and Sunstreaker was little better as he fit his own armor over his protoform. The sparkling didn’t understand yet. It had never had a physical body. It didn’t know what it felt like to love your body.

But it would, eventually. For now Sunstreaker could only soothe its confusion, make it focus on just the emotion, and not so much on the source of it. 

They weren’t sure if they’d ever redressed themselves this fast, and Flatline took clear pleasure in their eagerness. He directed them to a mirror as soon as they were done, and Sideswipe drank in the sight just as hungrily as Sunstreaker, even if he was the less vain half of them. 

They looked like they were supposed to look. That was the root of it—the rightness. They looked every bit as savage as they had once upon a time, like they could go to the Pits right now and fit right in. 

Well, aside from the fact they were missing a good portion of their paint jobs.

“Does anything feel off?” Flatline asked as he stared at the both of them critically. They turned in front of the mirror, staring at themselves, staring at each other, drinking in the sight—feeling it. 

“My right shoulder feels kinda funny?” Sideswipe eventually said, rotating said shoulder.

“Let me have a look.” The medic wasted no time poking, prodding and tugging at the area, humming to himself. “It’s a bit loose. If you’d take that off so I can tighten it a bit.”

Sideswipe did so, handing the armor back to Flatline and watching as he returned to his workbench.

It barely took any time at all before he was back already. “Try now.”

Now they were talking. Sideswipe grinned at the mirror. “Fits perfect. You’ve got some mad skills on you, mech.”

Flatline huffed. “Thank you,” he said again, turning to Sunstreaker and asking about the fit of his armor too.

Sunstreaker pointed out his thigh and knee, and those came off for some tweaking as well—and again, once they were returned, they fit just like they were supposed to. 

Sideswipe still couldn’t stop looking at himself, looking at Sunstreaker, looking at them… He would’ve said there were no traces of Autobot on them anymore, but that wasn’t true. 

Flatline had preserved their insignias—scratched out insignias. They still stood on in the middle of their chestplates, a reminder of what they had been—what they weren’t anymore. Megatron’s work right there for everyone to see.

But they didn’t have Decepticon insignias on them either. 

Sideswipe mused about that silently for a moment before deciding to just bite the bullet and ask about it.

“Lord Megatron hasn’t said anything about giving you your insignias,” came Flatline’s answer, provided with a shrug. And again there was that, talking as if they already were Decepticons—although maybe in a bit more unofficial capacity than most, if they weren’t given ‘their’ insignias.

Yet. Would that happen at some point too, if they opted to fight for Megatron? Would they become officially Decepticons? Officially enemies of their former faction, instead of just being suspended between the two sides, nominally Neutrals?

Except there wasn’t really being true Neutral when carrying the sparkling of one side’s fragging leader.  

And… There was one other Autobot thing about them. “I have your fangs and other dental pieces too,” Flatline, and Sideswipe couldn’t contain his squee.  

“Those too?” His voice was way too high, wasn’t it? But slaggit, his fangs.  

Flatline just grinned at him. “Of course. They were part of your designs. Would you lay down for me so I can fit them in?”

That wasn’t even a thing worth asking. Sideswipe all but flew to the nearest berth and laid down on it, the medic only fetching the pieces of denta before coming to him. He didn’t need to ask Sideswipe to open his mouth, or for him to unlock his denta. Flatline’s field was amused, but he didn’t say anything as he simply removed the denta that had been fitted in to replace his rightful ones too long ago.

Flatline did the opposite, slotting in the flat razors first, and then, four fangs far too long and sharp—just how Sideswipe liked them. He was way too eager to lock those in once the medic said he was ready, and barely waited for permission to get up before he had already returned to the mirror, this time to inspect his mouth.

Most of his denta didn’t look dangerous, never had, and weren’t meant to. You couldn’t see the cutting edges they were.

But his canines. Pits, those looked menacing in all kinds of ways, and sank into the slots in his mouth always made just for them, except for the longest time there had been nothing to fit into those spaces.

Now there was.

He almost missed it when Sunstreaker laid down too. “And four triple-canines for you,” Flatline said, brandishing those dental pieces before repeating the process on Sunstreaker’s mouth—sans the razor bits. Sunstreaker had never had those, nor did he want them.

He enjoyed chewing a bit too much. 

Sideswipe would happily give up his ability to chew a damn thing if it meant his bite was absolutely devastating. Maybe he’d even remember how to not snip his own glossa clean off!

And just like that, they both had their fangs back. Sunstreaker joined him in admiring their new-old dental configurations.

Slag. This was almost too good to be true. They were so un-Autobot, again.

It felt damn good.

Flatline watched them take everything in for a while before he spoke up, kind of but not really interrupting them. “If everything fits as it should, Sunstreaker, I’d like to check you and the sparkling.”

Sunstreaker didn’t put up a fight about that, just nodded and laid down on the berth Flatline pointed out. The medic plugged in and Sideswipe stood to the side—still sorta maybe admiring every bit of himself—as he worked through Sunstreaker’s systems, inspecting things, running tests, taking readings. Predictably Sunstreaker was asked to bare his spark sooner rather than later, too, which he did without complaint, though a little tensely. 

But Flatline didn’t do anything untoward, just scanned the sparkling and performed a visual inspection on the little thing that honestly wasn’t so little anymore. “It looks to be growing healthy and strong. Congratulations for that. Nothing seems off; the frame’s coding is progressing as it should, too. You’ll have a hearty sparkling in your hands soon enough.”

“How soon?” Sunstreaker asked, closing his chestplates back up when Flatline signaled he had no more interest in his spark or internals. 

Flatline paused for a moment, presumably looking at the readings he’d just taken before answering, “Three deca-cycles, I’d say.”

That was… Not the longest time, but still pretty long to spend in a base that had barely any energy in its use. Even now the lights were dimming back down, making optics next to useless. Sunstreaker nodded all the same. Not like they had much of a choice, and really, if they wanted the sparkling to stay safe, then this… Was the best option. 

They’d just have to deal.

“How do we know it’s starting to separate?” Sideswipe asked as Sunstreaker sat back up and swung his legs to the floor.

Flatline laughed lightly. “Oh, trust me, you’ll know. It’ll hurt like the pit. Spark pain, you know how intense that can be.”

“...Nice,” Sideswipe commented. Sunstreaker dragged a servo down his face, not really… Looking forward to that. As familiar as they were with pain, physical pain couldn’t even hold a candle to spark pain. And sure, they suffered from chronic spark pain—yaaaay split-spark—but somehow they doubted even that was going to compare to having the sparkling sever the bond to its carrier. Bondmates didn’t have a habit of surviving their partner’s death.

And they were going to experience the breaking of a bond, even if it wasn’t that of mates.

So, that couldn’t be fun!

“Right,” Sunstreaker sighed all the same, already resigning himself to that future, what with it being completely inevitable.

“Just let me know once it starts,” Flatline instructed them. “I’d prefer to supervise the process, especially considering you’re only half-spark. One of split-spark twins getting ignited isn’t very well documented.”

“Will do,” Sideswipe promised.

There was a beat of silence before the medic nodded. “You’re free to go, if you have no other questions. If something comes up at any point, you know who to call. I hope.”

Sideswipe snickered. “You, I’m guessing. Thanks. And extra thanks for the retrofits, they’re slagging fantastic.”

“You’re very welcome. Now go enjoy them and add some paint on there. If you need more light, you can request a room to be brightened a bit for a limited duration.”

“Noted,” Sunstreaker said, pushing himself off the berth entirely and leading the way to the repair bay’s doors. Sideswipe followed, giving Flatline a wave and another quick, “Thanks!” before they headed back for their quarters.

Time to do some painting, and then figure out how the pit they were going to kill time while staying here.

( Next )

[lake-arrius-caverns]

Nerevarine Rising

Chapter 8: Life Lessons

summary En route to Vivec City, the twins experience a couple of strange encounters. Ribyna hits Fahjoth with some cold, hard facts.

content warnings uh very minor character death ig

tag list @boulderfall-cave , @padomaicocean (lmk if you’d like to be added!)

read under the cut or on AO3, cheers 👍

:: First :: || << Previous << || >> Next >> || :: Masterpost ::

—————————————————————————————

If Fahjoth had been hoping for a calm, relaxing stroll to Vivec City, he was to be sorely let down. Granted, it did help to take his mind off of his unsettling encounter with the Dunmer, who Fahjoth had come to realise was one of the sleeper agents that Cosades had discussed with him not an hour prior. Fahjoth tried to remind himself that he was lucky to have escaped unscathed, but he would surely need to discuss it with Cosades once he and Ribyna returned to Balmora. 

The first of the day’s unsettling events started just after the twins passed by Seyda Neen, when the quiet of the lazy afternoon was pierced by a horrendous scream. After jolting to a stop they both began to search for the source, without success until Fahjoth happened to look to the sky. 

“Holy shit—!” he gasped, grabbing Ribyna by the arm and yanking her along as he stumbled back to a safe distance. The shrieking continued, growing louder and louder until it was abruptly cut off by the body of a Bosmer striking the dusty road at tremendous velocity. Fahjoth couldn’t tear his eyes away as the skull collided with the ground and split open on impact with a sickening crack. 

The Bosmer bounced and rolled after landing, carried along by the momentum from the fall before finally coming to a stop where the twins had been standing mere seconds before. Within seconds, a stark red stain had begun to pool out around his head, and that coupled with the expression of agonised terror frozen on the now very dead Bosmer’s face made Fahjoth feel severely ill. 

“Fucking— gods alive…” Fahjoth breathed, drawing his hands up to cover his mouth in horror. Silence fell over the scene for a few seconds during which nobody moved, with both twins instead staring at the broken body lying prone and twisted on the path in front of them. Then, as Ribyna took a hesitant step forward and crouched down beside the body, Fahjoth shook his head in dismay. 

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do, Beebs—” he started, before his voice died in his throat as he realised exactly what Ribyna was doing. He had been under the assumption that she was attempting to help, to see if there was anything that could be done for the unfortunate fellow, but then he came to realise that he had been sorely mistaken once he noticed Ribyna going through his pockets. 

“Ooh, this looks fancy, don’t it?” Ribyna remarked, holding up an oddly elongated yellow hat with a fur-lined brim. Fahjoth was speechless, but as she began to rummage through the Bosmer’s belongings once more, he finally found his voice. 

“Ribyna, what the fuck?!”

Ribyna whipped around, a picture of wide-eyed innocence, looking surprised to see Fahjoth so angry. He wasn’t sure whether that made him feel more or less incensed. “What?”

“What d’you mean, ‘what’?! You can’t just—” He gestured vaguely to the body, almost too outraged to splutter his words out. “You can’t just... take shit from someone who’s just died! I bet the body’s still fucking warm, for gods’ sakes!”

With a thoughtful expression, Ribyna reached out again and pressed her fingers against the Bosmer’s crumpled chest. With a petulant look on her face, she turned back to face Fahjoth again. “Okay, it is, but that’s besides the point,” Ribyna said stubbornly. “Look, it’s all about the hustle, bro. If he’s got valuables, we can sell them! That’s how this shit works!” 

“Well, it shouldn’t be!” Fahjoth spat. “It’s disgusting! It’s wrong!”

Ribyna didn’t rise to Fahjoth’s chastising, but she did narrow her eyes and stare at him coolly, even after he’d finished. “Look, you need to get used to this kind of shit,” she warned, pointing a finger up at Fahjoth accusingly. “This is what we have to do to get by sometimes. In case you hadn’t noticed, we don’t have too many friends here. So you might as well get off your high horse ‘cause it won’t do you any fucking good here.” She turned back to the corpse, continuing to loot the Bosmer of everything valuable that he carried, so that Fahjoth finally had to look away out of revulsion. “And that goes for people, too. If anyone fucks with you, you need to fuck with them back. You’re too bloody... soft-hearted for your own good, you.” 

With a heavy scowl, Fahjoth shook his head. He knew exactly what she was referring to; his catastrophic trip to Arkngthand, which was the last thing he needed to be reminded of. The indignation burned in his chest, and he spared Ribyna one more glance before walking around the corpse and skulking along down the road again, hands in pockets and shoulders tense. “Whatever. Catch up to me when you’re done, I’m not hanging around to watch this.”

“Fine. Will do,” Ribyna replied as Fahjoth stormed off. Even from a distance, he could pick up on the vexation lacing her tone. 

Once he was alone with his thoughts, Fahjoth slowed his pace and began to reflect on the argument. Guilt started to gnaw at his gut over snapping at his twin and leaving her on her own, but more than that, he was hit by a wave of doubt. Her harsh words had been hurtful, but perhaps they were truthful, too. 

Maybe she’s right, he thought sullenly, kicking a stone in his path and watching it ricochet along the road. Maybe he did need to toughen up…

The stone finally rolled to a stop, and Fahjoth was surprised to see it land in someone’s long shadow. A Dunmer, donning a Bonemold cuirass and boots, stood in the middle of the road, his rich auburn hair gleaming in the low sunlight. He faced Fahjoth directly, red eyes fixed on him with the ghost of a smile on his angular features. 

Fahjoth offered a smile in return as he changed direction to walk around him; but the stranger stood to the side simultaneously, blocking the road and causing Fahjoth to abruptly stop. Perhaps that had been an accident, he reasoned. So Fahjoth gave an awkwardly apologetic laugh and tried again, only to have the Dunmer once again sidestep and stand in his way. 

That couldn’t have been an accident. It was clear now that he was blocking Fahjoth’s path on purpose. 

“Could you move, please, mate?” Fahjoth asked, keeping his tone polite despite the mild annoyance he felt. “You’re sort of in my way.” 

“Afraid not, friend,” the Dunmer responded, his voice unusually melodic and chipper. “Allow me to introduce myself! It is I, Nels Llendo.” 

“Right...” Fahjoth was baffled. “Can I help you, then? I’ve kind of got somewhere to be.” 

The Dunmer, Nels Llendo, simply folded his arms and continued to smile that charming yet unsettling smile. “Ah... I see you have not heard of me,” he said softly. “A shame. Well, no need to tremble in fear. Nels Llendo is a reasonable man, hardly the cutthroat some would make me out to be. To cut to the chase, I offer you a fair and healthy proposition.”

A cutthroat? Fahjoth frowned, staring at Nels in disbelief while he stood motionless, rooted to the spot. Was this a robbery? He wasn’t feeling very threatened by Nels’ friendly disposition, but then his eyes fell on the gleam of a sword’s hilt hanging at his waist. With trepidation, he dared to ask, “What proposition?”

“A very simple proposition, actually,” Nels replied. “You will give me fifty septims, and in return, you will be allowed to continue safely on your journey. Nels Llendo gives you his word as a gentleman that, once our transaction has taken place, you have nothing to fear from me. What say you?”

And there it was. Trying not to let his apprehension show in his body language or voice, Fahjoth stood his ground. “No way. I’m not just gonna hand over my gold to you, mate.” 

Nels shook his head, tutting in a very exaggerated show of disappointment. “I fear you are making an unwise decision, my friend. But, so be it... though I do hate to soil my clothes with your blood. No matter. Such is the life of Nels Llendo.” Before Fahjoth could respond, Nels had whipped his sword out from its sheath and held it aloft, the enchanted blade gleaming with a flaming red sheen. “You have made the wrong choice, outlander.”

As Fahjoth took a hasty step backwards and reached for his own blade, very conscious of Nels already advancing on him, the sound of approaching footsteps and a voice gave both Mer pause. 

“Oi!”

Once he caught sight of Ribyna marching towards them — her backpack a lot fatter than it had been when they left Balmora — Nels instantly sheathed his sword and, to Fahjoth’s surprise, sank into a low, elegant bow. 

“Hello, my dear. Nels Llendo at your service.”

“Nels Llend—?” Ribyna rolled her eyes, tilting her head back and rubbing her brow. “Oh, gods...”

“Oh? My name is familiar to you?” he questioned, perhaps mistaking her irritation for apprehension. “Fear not, my dear. Nels Llendo is far from the heartless villain some have made me out to be. From one as charming and gracious as you, I would ask for but a single kiss.” 

Fahjoth had to do a double-take, turning back to Nels in bewilderment. “You what?” Then his mouth fell open in outrage. “You were just about to kill me over fifty septims!”

Nels, however, paid Fahjoth no heed, his attention focused solely on Ribyna. “It would be the most precious prize I have ever solicited from a... client.”

Fahjoth was silent, looking between the two with unease. Though he would have liked nothing more than to jump in, to tell Nels in no uncertain terms to piss off and leave them alone, he did not want to risk drawing Ribyna’s ire by speaking for her. Instead he waited, and when Ribyna spoke up, it was the last thing he had been expecting to hear. 

“And if I do, me and my brother can pass? You won’t touch either of us?”

Nels held up a hand, placing the other sincerely over his chest. “I give you my word.”

After a second or two of hesitation, Ribyna took a step forward. Fahjoth, with great discomfort, spoke up at last. 

“Ribyna, you don’t—”

“Shut up, Fahjoth.”

Fahjoth's jaw hung open, aghast but rendered totally speechless once again as Ribyna began to approach Nels, closing the gap between them. Once she reached him, she placed her hands deliberately on each of his shoulders, the look on her face one of sheer determination. 

Overcome with intense awkwardness, Fahjoth dropped his gaze — but before he could turn away completely, a sudden blur of movement caught his eye and his head snapped back up just in time to witness Ribyna thrusting her knee into Nels’ crotch, and hard. 

The once cocky and self-assured bandit crumpled to the ground in an instant, a wheezing yelp of pain hissing from between gritted teeth as he was reduced to a quivering ball of pain. Fahjoth was motionless, struck dumb with astonishment. 

Apparently, Ribyna wasn’t finished yet. Taking the opportunity while he was downed, Ribyna knelt beside Nels and began to go through his pockets, quickly fishing out a sizable coin purse and shoving it in her own. “Oh, and I’ll be taking this,” she announced, patting Nels roughly on the cheek. “Y’know, for compensation.” She then stood up, dusted herself off and began to head off, muttering a scathing insult under her breath as she did so. “Prick...”

Fahjoth cast one last glance at Nels, still curled up on the ground with tears streaming down his cheeks, before he turned away and trotted along in Ribyna’s wake as she strode onwards without a care in the world. He ambled along mutely beside Ribyna, occasionally throwing his twin an incredulous glance, still barely able to comprehend what had just happened. As grateful as he was for the lengths to which she would go to defend him, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Ribyna had handled the situation rather poorly. Eventually, he tentatively voiced what was on his mind.

“D’you think you might’ve gone a bit too far?”

“What?”

“I mean…” Fahjoth waved his hands vaguely and grimaced. “Knocking his bollocks in? Couldn’t we have just tried talking to him? Looked to me like he might’ve listened to you.”

Ribyna stopped in her tracks and rounded on Fahjoth with a scowl. “He was blackmailing us, Fahjoth, in case you hadn’t noticed! I didn’t want to try and reason with him, he was about five seconds from shoving his sword down your throat!... That wasn’t a euphemism, stop smirking! Anyway, he might’ve just got nasty again if I’d turned him down.” 

Fahjoth quickly arranged his features back into an expression of solemn concern, though he still quietly fought to keep a straight face. “Okay, fair enough... But stealing from him as well? What if he goes to the guards?”

Ribyna scoffed. “What, him? A highwayman? If he’s as infamous as everyone reckons he is, then good luck to him is all I can say. We’ll see how seriously the guards take him from inside a prison cell.”

“Good point...”

In the quiet that followed as the pair meandered on down the southern path, Fahjoth found his thoughts wandering back onto something that he wanted to get off his chest. “By the way, I’m... I’m sorry for snapping at you earlier. I was just... shocked, I suppose. But you’re right. I probably do need to wise up.”

“Yeah...” Ribyna offered Fahjoth something between a smile and a grimace. “I’m sorry as well. I didn’t mean to rag on you so hard. I only say it cause I care about you. You do know that, don’t you?” 

His spirits lifted, Fahjoth turned to face Ribyna, beaming with delight. “Aww, and you call me soft-hearted?” he remarked. Ribyna faltered, flushing with embarrassment over her unintentional sentimentality. 

“Don’t even start,” she growled, quickening her gait to avoid looking at Fahjoth in a futile attempt at saving face. “Shut up, or else you’ll go the same way as our good friend Mr Llendo.” 

Fahjoth laughed as Ribyna rushed on past, jogging on ahead a short distance until she stopped at a signpost on the side of the road a few yards down the path. But as she squinted to peer at the weather-worn wood, Fahjoth slowed his pace and came to a stop a few metres behind.

“Come on, I think we’re nearly there—“ Noting Fahjoth’s distance, Ribyna stopped mid-sentence and turned to look at him quizzically. Fahjoth struggled to hide a grin as he instead wore a deliberately thoughtful expression. 

“What?”

“Well, it’s just... I thought he was quite handsome, personally. I’d’ve kissed him!”

Ribyna groaned in exasperation, rolling her eyes and trying to hold back a smile. “You would!” she scoffed, turning away and continuing on her way down the road, to where Vivec City awaited them through the evening mist. “Shame he didn’t ask, then. Maybe I should’ve tried to set you two up instead of kneeing him in the nuts.” 

“At least you’ll know for next time!” Fahjoth laughed. As he hastened to catch up with Ribyna, he raised a hand to shield his eyes against the peachy glare of the sun low on the horizon, its vibrant fire in the sky signalling that the moons and stars would soon take its place. 

[tatooines-ghosts]

HAPPY 2020s ENDING Y’ALL!!!

Enjoy a little blog-exclusive Shades AU that I affectionately refer to as the No Jedi Allowed AU, feat. everybody’s favorite prequel-era Mandalorian bounty hunter.

Sometime this last summer, while trying to work past writer’s block, I toyed with a little AU idea for funsies, I made a post about it, said I wasn’t going to do anything else with it, and left it at that. Until a month or two ago when, still in the throes of writer’s block, I took that little AU idea and figured “fuck it, I’m not working on the next chapter, but at least it’s writing SOMETHING Shades related” and made a real thing out of it.

This is Part 1. Future parts will come out at some point in the future, I’m thinking about making these a holiday special or something haven’t decided yet. (And really it’s only blog-exclusive because I cannot make a series on AO3 and remain anonymous so...)

Enough rambling. Please read, I hope you all enjoy this look at how things might have gone a little differently if a couple Jedi didn’t end up going all the way out to Tatooine to stick their noses into Hutt business.

Please assume content warnings given on AO3 may apply to this story as well. Also, beware spoilers if you are not fully caught up on the main story.

No Jedi Allowed AU - Part 1

Jango Fett heaved a long sigh as the door closed behind him. He had just finished up a long job for Jabba, one that should have been quick but ended up requiring well over a week of stake outs and reconnaissance, but in the end he got his man, as he always did. Jabba had at least expressed his gratitude suitably, in money and amenities. He had given Jango one of the better guest suites and was probably going to send up one of his better girls for a night of entertainment.

Jango began shedding his armor, considering what he would do with the slave girl. He really didn't have the energy to draw anything out. He hoped it wasn't going to be a new girl, explaining how things work was more effort than he cared to expend. Really he just wanted a shower and to sleep, but he wasn't about to leave his stuff unattended with a stranger on the way.

There was a light rap on the door.

"Enter."

The slave entered pushing a dinner cart. Jango breathed a sigh of relief. "Skywalker, nice to see you again."

She flashed him a small smile. "Been a while, hasn't it, Jango?" She paused just over the threshold and let the door lock behind her. "The usual tonight?"

"Sure." He finished removing his armor and set it aside carefully aside. "Get yourself ready, I'm hitting the shower first."

He stepped into the 'fresher, leaving Skywalker alone. Ten minutes later, he was stepping back out, with the provided robe draped around him. His clothes were a little rank, and the quick rinse he gave them in the shower wasn't enough to really clean them. They'd get a proper wash when he got home.

Skywalker had set up dinner, laying out the food and drink from the cart on the little dining table for him. She was perched at the holotable, flipping through the selection of games. There weren’t many games, as most visitors to a Hutt pleasure den were usually otherwise occupied in their rooms, or wanted to watch porn.

"How's dejarik sound? I'm not feeling anything particularly strenuous tonight."

"Fine." Jango sat down in the free seat. He grabbed the complimentary bottle of liquor and poured himself a healthy glass. He offered Skywalker a drink, but she declined. She did pick at the fruit he offered to share. There was always more food than he could eat, and he knew the slaves didn’t get fed nearly as well as guests.

She made the first move on the dejarik board. "How's Boba?"

They fell into comfortable conversation about Boba, about Skywalker's sister, about the recently finished racing season – Jango congratulated Skywalker on another victorious season. They played a few lackluster games of dejarik. That was a bit unusual, Skywalker was a worthy opponent, and she didn’t usually lose more than once or twice.

He beat her soundly for the fourth time in a row, the board resent, his turn to make the first move, but instead he checked the time. "I think I'm going to turn in. It's late enough."

"Yeah," she agreed distractedly. She fiddled with the edge of the gauzy white shawl wrapped around her. She looked pale, uneasy.

Jango gave her another critical, searching look. Her behavior was odd enough, was she supposed to be spying on him? Bribe him, coerce him, assassinate him? He knew Jabba wasn’t opposed to taking out a troublesome being with some poison served by a pretty face, but Jango hadn’t done anything to offend his second-best employer recently. The Hutt had no reason to want him dead, or otherwise intimidated.

Maybe Skywalker was just having an off day, or dealing with some other problem. He wasn’t going to ask. Wasn’t his business.

Her outfit tonight was white and copper, paper-thin linen wrapped in layers to be made suitably opaque, with copper metal accents to draw the eye and match the heavy collar around her neck. It was one of her softer, looser costumes. Aside from looking pale and anxious, Skywalker looked pretty good, a little softer, better fed. Jabba kept his slaves starved and stick thin, save for a few exceptions for the fetishists. This was a change, but not a poor one. Maybe Skywalker was being treated better after another successful racing season.

He turned off the holotable and stood up to stretch. The bed was looking very comfortable, and he wanted to get out of here early tomorrow morning.

Skywalker didn't move. "Jango, I need your help."

He fell still. This was a first, she had never asked for his help before. He'd taught her a few tricks to defend herself against handsy patrons who hadn't paid for the privilege to touch her. Maybe someone was a little more aggressive than she could handle. But Jabba had enforcers on staff whose job it was to take care of people like that. There wasn't anything else he could do for her. She had nothing to ask him to smuggle of planet, and there probably wasn't anything she knew of that he could bring to her. Which meant she was about to ask him to do something very stupid and probably impossible.

"What is it?"

She turned her wide blue eyes to him, her lower lip was caught between her teeth, and she worried it as she considered her next words. He could read her indecision clear in her face. His heart sank. If she was so afraid to even say the words, it couldn't be anything good.

"I need you to free me and my sister."

Jango actually laughed, a single, dry bark. "You're joking." She wasn't. "You want me to steal you from the Hutts? Never gonna happen. Jabba would kill us both for just considering it."

She didn't seem particularly disappointed with his rejection. She implored, "Please, Jango, you're our only hope for freedom."

"No. No way." Even if he wanted to, Jango wouldn't risk earning Jabba's ire, no matter how much he liked Skywalker.

Yes, he felt sorry for Skywalker and her little sister. Being born slaves was unfortunate, but it was their rotten luck that they ended up being owned by Jabba the Hutt. If anyone touched Jabba's property, or thought they could steal from him, they were dead already. Jango had been hired several times to bring in a bounty on someone who had done exactly that. He was not going to put himself on Jabba's shit list.

"I'm pregnant!" she blurted out. "Please, Jango, I can't let my baby be born a slave too." She shifted her arms, removing the shawl from around her waist, and there was the unmistakable roundness to her belly. "I don't even know if Jabba will let me keep my baby."

Jango sighed heavily. "He let you keep your sister."

"Because I didn't give birth to her, because he needed leverage over me after my mom died." She drew a shaking breath; he could see tears gathering in her frightened eyes. "He hasn't even made up his mind on whether he'll let me have the baby. Any day now he could take them from me if it stops me from being able to serve. He'll cut the baby out of me, he'll kill them. And if I do get to have them, then what? He'll steal them from my arms, or just use them like he uses Shila. Please, Jango, I can't go on like this. I want my baby to live. I want to raise them. I want Shila to grow up and know what freedom is."

Jango didn't move, didn't speak, his eyes stayed on Skywalker. His brain was already picking at the idea; it wouldn't be too difficult to – no! He was not about to ruin his career and risk his life for a pregnant slave girl, it's not like the baby was his. What stake did he have at all in Skywalker's future? None! If he tried helping her and they got caught, Boba would be left fatherless. The boy might never know what became of his father. But Anakin... she was the victim of her circumstances. Her little sister and her unborn baby were innocent of the whole matter. They were just slaves.

It wasn't like Jango was opposed to slavery, it was a lucrative evil for the dark corners of the galaxy, and it kept him paid, fed, and employed. He was a mercenary; he wasn't a saint, or even really a good person. Killing was never personal, it was for the job, but he still had a code of honor. And abandoning Skywalker after she asked for his help, after she had exposed herself to be in such a vulnerable position… that was breaking his code.

Would he be able to live with himself if he left her here to her fate? If Jabba stole her child, would he ever be able to look her in the eye again? And Boba... was this the kind of example he wanted to set for his son? Disregarding the lives of children and babies because he didn’t want to risk his own neck. Shameful. Dishonorable. No true Mandalorian would sacrifice a child’s life for their own comfort.

"Ossik," Jango hissed under his breath, dropping back into his seat. "Okay. Fine. I'll get you out of here."

X

Freeing Skywalker and her little sister was easier than Jango suspected it would have been. Granted it was easy for him to go where he needed in the palace, and nobody looked at him twice. He met Shila Skywalker, the little ad'ika he had heard so much about from her older sister. It was clear they were family, they shared the same face, but where Anakin was fair haired and blue-eyed, Shila was dark haired and brown-eyed. Reportedly she looked like their mother, Shmi, but Jango had never met the woman. Shila was young, only three years old, and she was quiet and shy, and frightened of Jango; a fact that was not helped at all when Jango had to cut the slave chip out of the child's stomach. It was just beneath the skin, and he didn't have to cut deep, so he was able to be very quick about it, but it still had to be done without pain killers.

It hadn’t been pleasant or fun for any involved. Skywalker had to hold the child down, keeping her hand pressed over Shila’s mouth to muffle the screams. But Jango had been the one with the knife. It would probably be some time before the child trusted him.

She flinched away from him with a whimper, hiding her face in her sister’s shoulder when he offered his hand after it and apologized. “Sorry, ad’ika, but you were very brave.”

The elder Skywalker, on the other hand, hardly made a sound when Jango carved out her chip from her shoulder.

With the girls freshly unchipped, Jango smuggled them unseen into his ship and stowed them in a hidden compartment in his cargo hold. It was specially lined to block life signs from most scanners, and certainly anything Jabba had his hands on out here. He left at dawn, nobody looked twice as he had made several comments before about leaving early, and he had never made a habit of staying very long in Jabba's palace in the first place.

Only when he was safely in hyperspace and clear from any Hutt influence did he release his cargo from the hold. Shila had been soothed to sleep by her sister, but Anakin was fully alert and terrified.

"Thank you for doing this," she said gratefully. "Jango, I don't know how I'll ever be able to thank you. You saved our lives."

"Don't thank me yet. Just because I got you out of there doesn't mean you're safe. Jabba's not going to like losing you."

"I know." Her hand moved behind Shila, rested against her belly. "But you've given us a chance."

A few hours later there was a small explosion at Jabba's palace. Nobody was injured, and the damage was minimal, but it threw everyone and everything into hysterics. In the chaos, it took time for someone to take count of the slaves, and then they noticed two very valuable slaves were missing. Search parties uncovered the hastily buried tracker chips, coated in dried blood and sand. Jabba's wrath was terrible and he turned the planet of Tatooine upside down looking for Anakin Skywalker.

X

Jango landed Slave I on the storm tossed landing pad, rain drummed against the hull. It was midday, though the rainclouds were so thick it might as well have been midnight. He dropped from the cockpit down to the passenger hold, where Skywalker sat with her sister.

Anakin, he supposed he should get used to calling her by her first name. They were aliit now. Whether she knew it or not, when Anakin had thrown her lot in with him to gain her freedom, Jango had brought her into his tiny clan. There really was no way to get around it. Releasing the Skywalkers into the galaxy to fend for themselves was as good as putting a blaster bolt in the back of their skulls. Jabba would have them back and dead, or worse, by week’s end. There was safety, at least, in a clan, security under the Fett name; even if the clan had doubled it in size overnight.

Shila was sleeping soundly, curled in her sister's arms and lap, but Anakin was alert and worried.

"What's that noise? An attack?"

The rain was so familiar to Jango, he tuned it out automatically. "What? No, that's the rain. Water falling from the sky," he had to clarify. He realized rain probably wasn't a word that ever got thrown around on Tatooine.

Anakin glowered at him. "I know what rain is. My mother told me." Her cheeks went pink. "I just didn't realize it made much noise."

Jango gave her some credit. "It is coming down rather hard out there. Come on. We'll get you inside and into more suitable clothes."

Kamino was cold, and the cloner's kept their facility chilly. Anakin's service costume was not going to cut it. He opened the cargo ramp, a blast of cold, wet air swept in.

He heard a gasp and a yelp behind him, Shila had woken up. Anakin tried to comfort the child in Huttese, but Jango could see her own eyes were wide with fear. This much rain and water had to be a shock. But Jango was hungry, tired, and ready to change into something more comfortable. He didn't want to stand here until the desert natives got used to rain.

"Come on," he said again, taking Anakin by the arm and pulling her forward. They walked quickly from ship to facility door, Jango keeping his grip firm so Anakin didn't slip and fall on the wet walkway, her shoes were less suitable for the slick metal than her clothes were for the climate. By the time they stepped inside, Anakin was shivering. Whether from the cold and wet, or everything else, he wasn't sure but thirty seconds in the downpour had turned her costume downright indecent. The flowy white linen had turned translucent and plastered against her body. It made the curve of her belly even more obvious.

It was a good thing Skywalker was so distracted looking around at everything else to not notice him staring and frowning at her. Well, more accurately, staring at her abdomen. A seed of doubt quickly settled and bloomed in his mind – not the first to grow since he agreed to free the Skywalkers, and he squashed it like the others. Having a baby around soon was going to make things interesting.

He sighed softly and shook his head. That little bastard was going to cause him a lot of trouble, he knew it already. After all, it had been the baby that tipped him over to helping the Skywalkers in the first place and inevitably put him on Jabba’s shit list.

How long would it be until Jabba put a bounty on his head? He couldn't possibly be so lucky as to escape without suspicion.

Jango stepped off down the hall, wondering whether the Skywalkers should be seen by a doctor first or if he should just take them home. When the ad'ika began to complain of the cold and the wet, he bypassed the corridor turn that would lead to the medical wing.

Their apartment had that mild, unlived in scent when he stepped in. Boba would have been left with his Kaminoan caretakers while Jango had been gone for a few weeks.

"Come on. We'll get you dried and change clothes before getting you to a doctor."

"Doctor?"

Jango stepped into the 'fresher and dug out some clean towels. He buried his derisive snort in the linen closet. "I doubt Jabba wasted any expenses on having you checked out, didn't he?"

"No, he didn't." Anakin folded her hands over her belly. "I thought for the longest time it might be dead inside me, but I've started to feel them move."

Jango handed her two towels. "How far along are you?"

"Almost six months."

Anakin bent to wrap Shila in the fluffy towel so she didn't see Jango frown at her. He was no expert, but he was almost certain most women were bigger by the time they were five or six months pregnant. Sure, she looked pregnant, but only barely.

"You sure about that?"

Anakin stilled, but nodded, her voice was low and confident. "Yes. I know exactly when it happened."

Jango wasn't going to press the issue. The Kaminoans could figure out the nitty gritty biological details. He moved to the bedrooms, "I'll find you some dry clothes. Won't fit all that well, but they'll be warmer and more suitable than that costume." He pulled a shirt and a pair of pants with a soft, drawstring waistband from his closet. The Kaminoans would have no trouble fabricating something more suitable for Anakin and Shila to wear, but this would do short-term. The little girl's clothes were the basic pants and tunic of Tatooine, but Anakin's costume would be entirely unsuitable for Kamino's climate, not to mention just daily life.

Jango grabbed a shirt from Boba’s room for Shila. It was big enough to be a dress on the child, and the sleeves fell past her hands, but it was workable with a few adjustments. Anakin's clothes were just as ill-fitting, but she didn't complain. She just had to pull the drawstring tight to keep her pants secure around her waist.

"It's only temporary," Jango assured her as she tugged at the oversized shirt. "We'll get you some better fitting clothes ‘fabbed once the Kaminoans get their measurements."

"It's fine," Anakin said quietly, fingering the shirt fabric, it was probably sturdier than anything she'd worn in a long time. Jango's clothes were made for warmth and wear. "This will do."

Jango took them back from the apartment and into the cloning complex, through the cold white hallways to the medical facility. It wasn't empty, it never was. With how many clones the Kaminoans spat out, the medical facilities were always busy; someone was always hurt or sick or injured, or having their genetic aberrations evaluated for viability. But the entrance from Jango's side of the facility kept him separated from the main body. He had mentioned the cloners to Anakin before, but he wasn't sure how much she had picked up on though. It had been a passing conversation as he taught her how to play sabbac. He felt like explaining it in whole might be a bit much for the newly-freed slave.

His side of the medical facility was a little clinic set aside from the main body of the medical wing. It was just one room; the medical bed dominated one side, while cabinets of medication and supplies lined the other walls. There were two doors, one they came through and another that went into the larger facility.

Jango flipped a switch on the panel by the facility door, it would summon a doctor. It must have been a slow day because a Kaminoan stepped into the room a few moments later, one of the doctors. Her big eyes scanned over Anakin and Shila before turning to Jango.

"What can I do for you today, Jango?"

"Doctor Wey Luma, this is Anakin and Shila Skywalker, new additions to my aliit. They both had subdermal chips removed that need patching up, and health checks, and Anakin's pregnant."

Kaminoans weren't nearly as expressive as humans, but Jango could see the excitement in Wey Luma's face. The doctors working with the clones were human specialists, but it wasn't like they came across any pregnant ones in this facility. She would probably become a scientific celebrity just on the fact that she got knocked up. He hoped Anakin wouldn't mind the scientists pawing at her. Probably not, she had enough practice with drunk Hutt patrons, and the Kaminoans wouldn't want to fuck her.

He turned to the Skywalkers, "Wey Luma will take care of you. I need to make some arrangements for your stay here."

"Okay." Anakin nodded and set her sister on the bed at the doctor's encouragement. Jango left the room and pulled up his comm.

He made a call to Taun We to arrange for a bigger apartment, they would need more space with Anakin, Shila, and a baby on the way. Plus supplies and clothing for the new additions.

And it was time to get Boba back from his caretakers and introduce his son to his new aliit. By the time he stepped back into the exam room, Anakin was perched on the medical bed, and Wey Luma was practically buzzing with excitement.

"Such hybridizations are almost unheard of," the doctor trilled. "You could provide us with priceless data."

Anakin looked nervous. She chewed on her lower lip while her hands rested over her little belly. "Would that mean you'll make sure the baby is healthy?"

The Kaminoan paused, confused. Jango stepped in quickly. "They'll take care of you and the baby regardless of whether you agree to let them study you."

"Oh, yes, of course," Wey Luma insisted quickly. "We would not withhold medical treatment. But… you would just do us an enormous favor if we were able to study you and your child."

"What's so special about it anyway?" Jango asked before Anakin had to agree to anything.

"He's half-pantoran. Humans and pantorans typically do not mix genetically."

Jango grunted in understanding. He understood only the most basics of genetics, and he imagined Anakin understood even less. "She'll think about it."

There was nothing else they needed from the doctor, so Jango took them back home.

Taun We was waiting with Boba and a small crate of supplies, the new clothes. Kaminoans were nothing if not efficient; the clothing fabricators must have gotten Anakin's measurements from the medical scans.

There wasn’t time for more than the quickest introductions, as their apartment had to be packed up and everything moved into bigger quarters. A squad of droids expedited the process, and after only a couple hours, they were fully moved into a new apartment.

Taun We and the droids left the newly expanded Fett clan alone to get properly acquainted.

“Boba,” Jango put a hand on his son’s shoulder, pushing him forward ever so slightly. “This is Anakin and her sister Shila Skywalker.”

Boba’s dark eyes traced over the Skywalkers. Confusion curled in his head, father had never brought home anyone before, much less a woman and child. He’d met a few of his father’s more trustworthy associates before, but Anakin didn’t look like a bounty hunter or well… much of anything. What was it about them that had prompted such a sudden uprooting? Why were they now living together?

He’d heard Jango and Anakin muttering about a baby earlier during the move. Was that why? Was she his father’s… girlfriend? Was Shila his half-sister? A natural born Fett heir?

Jango’s grip tightened on Boba’s shoulder and he quickly remembered his manners. “Hello.” He nodded quickly to Anakin and Shila, and then turned to his father for further explanation.

“Anakin and Shila are alit now. I expect you to treat them as such.”

Aliit? Them? That word meant something in Mando’a, Jango wouldn’t throw it around casually. But he knew his father’s adopted clan lines, he knew the branches and offshoots, and distant relations belonging to the family that had taken his father in as a boy. Skywalker was not one of those family names.

“Where did they come from?”

“Tatooine.”

That illuminated very little for Boba, but he could hear the mildly dismissive tone in his father’s words. Now was not the time for more questions.

Jango pushed Boba forward a little more. “Anakin and I need to talk. Can you keep Shila entertained?”

“Oh, okay.” Boba craned his neck a little to peek behind Anakin’s legs, where Shila was hiding. “Shila?” The child buried her face in the back of Anakin’s thighs.

Anakin smiled slightly and scooped her hand behind the child’s head and pushed her forward towards Boba. She said in gentle Huttese, “Go on, Shila, go with Boba.”

Shila stumbled forward, gripping tightly to Anakin’s sleeve. Her eyes were wide and frightened, and Boba didn’t miss the way she flinched away from Jango.

“Introduce yourself.” Anakin prompted.

Shila stuttered out in Huttese a quiet little, “H-hello.”

Boba looked back to his father once again, asking silently if Shila only spoke Huttese. His father nodded curtly, yes.

No worry there, Boba was near fluent in Huttese, so he smiled at the little girl and said back to her, “Hello Shila, I’m Boba.”

Her eyes lit up when she finally understood his words. Boba offered his hand and the child took it. He led her off down the hallway to her new bedroom, right across the hall from Boba’s.

“Let’s see what kind of toys we can find.”

Boba thought he was getting a little too old for toys, but the move had unearthed a lot of old stuff he had nearly forgotten about. He pulled the box down and set it on the floor for Shila to explore while he moved to the open door and tried to listen to whatever his father and Anakin were discussing, but they were speaking too quietly for him to overhear. Jango was clattering around the kitchen, preparing their evening meal, but also making enough noise to purposefully discourage eavesdropping.

Annoyed and disappointed, Boba turned back to Shila. She had tipped most of the boxes contents out onto the floor and had promptly ignored all of them for the plush Aiwha that was almost as big as she was. It must have been a gift or something, though Boba had never particularly cared for the stuffed animal; or many plus toys in general. Shila seemed to like it, though, so he held no qualms bestowing it upon her. Shila was so delighted and excited over the gift, she even dragged it out to the kitchen when they were called for dinner to show Anakin what Boba had given her.

Shila was all set to sit the Aiwha at the table with them for dinner, but Anakin had her put it back in her room. Jango wouldn’t have cared either way – it wouldn’t have been the first time a toddler would have insisted that a favorite toy had to be a dinner guest – but Anakin was still trying to figure out her place in this whole affair, so he wasn’t about to step in a parent her baby sister. Not yet at least.

Shila was still very much frightened of him, even without his armor and the knife, it would be some times before she warmed up to him. Probably when the pain and scar from her tracker faded. Having everyone around her able to speak the same language helped, but Jango knew the child couldn’t only know Huttese for forever. Galactic Basic was a must, as was Mando’a, and Kaminoan would be useful too. He had no doubt Shila would pick up new languages quickly, children that young learned fast. Anakin on the other hand needed to start Mando’a lessons as quickly as possible, picking up the language would be harder for her, but it was something she had to know.

Nobody in his aliit would not be fluent in Mando'a.

"You keep using that word," Anakin observed over dinner. "'A-leet' what does it mean?"

"Aliit means family, of the same clan."

She frowned at him, her brow furrowing in suspicion. "But we're not-"

"You are newly freed slaves. You have no clan or family. You're foundlings and I have taken you in, so now you are part of my aliit. The galaxy is safer for you this way, you have protection."

Anakin stared at him, caught between gratitude and suspicion. “Does this mean we will have to change our names?”

For practical reasons, it would be safer for Anakin and Shila to adopt new surnames; it reduced the chance people would recognize her by name. But he understood the importance and attachment beings could have to family names. If he told her she had to change, she would probably do so without complaint, but that might make her resent the name, resent him and this gift of freedom he was giving her. Then again, this wasn’t something he felt was within his power to decide for her. “Not if you don’t want to.”

Anakin nodded slowly, considering something else. “Does that mean we’re trapped here?”

Trapped wasn’t the word that Jango would have chosen, but he knew where she was coming from. What was the point of being free if you had nowhere to go except back to slavery? With no home, no family, no resources, or friends to turn to Kamino could feel like a trap.

“For now,” he said reassuringly, “You are safe here, and hidden. Kamino is not widely known to the galaxy, nor will the Hutts think to search for you here. And there’s no chance of anyone seeing you and turning you back over to him. If you find staying here to be truly interminable, I can make other arrangements for you, but it will take time.”

Most of the suspicion left Anakin, though Jango could still read a little unease in her. Freedom would take time to adjust to, and it had been less than a day. Her eyes skimmed over him and to the dark, rain-lashed windows that made up a wall of their living area. She managed an uneasy smile and said lightly, “Well, it is very different from Tatooine.”

[morkhan]

Will Byers is Gay: The Evidence So Far

With the release of Stranger Things 3, there has been a lot of discussion kicked up about the character of Will Byers and his sexuality (or lack thereof). I've seen a lot of takes about what "it's not my fault you don't like girls" was intended to mean, many of which seem to take it in isolation, so I wanted to make a post putting it into what I think is its proper context; not an isolated incident, but the latest carriage in veritable train of queer themed language and imagery that has followed Will Byers since episode one of season one, and before that. You ready? Alright, let's go.

Season Zero: the Montauk Files

Before Stranger Things became Stranger Things, it was called Montauk. Like many would-be show makers, the Duffer Bros put together a "show bible" describing the premise, setting, tone, and characters of the show they intended to make. Like many shows, a lot of these ideas changed or were lost on their way to the screen, but it's always worth looking into their original concepts. Here is their description of Will Byers in the Montauk show bible:

Obviously, the major whammy there is in the first line "sexual identity issues." But there are some other interesting notes, like his "colorful clothes" that you might want to keep a lookout for on your next rewatch. Now, onto...

Season 1

The thing to pay attention to regarding Will in season 1 is in the language used to refer to him when he is not present (which he isn't for most of the season).

Episode 1: the subject of bullying comes up right away in the conversation between Joyce and Hopper. "The kids, they're mean. They laugh at him, laugh at his clothes, call him names." "What's wrong with his clothes?" "I don't know!" This harkens back to the Montauk show bible, but it's arguable, since it's never made clear what about his clothes draws ire.

She also mentions that he is "sensitive," "not like most," and that his dad said he was "queer" and called him a "fag." Hopper asks "is he?" to which she replies "He's missing is what he is!"

Episode 3: Troy says he's not missing, he's dead. "Probably killed by some other queer."

Episode 4: Troy, again "Will's in fairyland, flying around with all the other little fairies, all happy and gay."

Sensitive, queer, fag, fairy, and gay are all used to describe Will in season 1, but perhaps more notable is the fact that they aren't used to describe anyone else. If the show were truly period accurate, let's be real; the whole party would've been called queers on a pretty regular basis, because "queer" doubled as a generic insult back then. But in season 1, these words are only ever used in relation to Will, with one exception; in episode 6, Steve says to Will's brother, "I used to think you were queer." So it's not even an active accusation in that moment; it's used in the negative.

Hell, Troy walked up to Lucas mockingly proposing to Mike and proclaiming his love for him, and he still didn't call them queers. That language is reserved for Will.

Now granted, most of these are used as insults by characters who don't like Will, but still; as a writer, if you want your audience to remember something, repetition is an excellent way to embed it in their minds. There's a reason for the specificity of language surrounding Will, and a reason that language keeps coming up over and over and over again.

Season 2

Season 2 retires much of the homophobic language used to insult Will, replacing it with "Zombie Boy." The only homophobic language used in season 2 is the word "faggot," used by Billy's father to refer to Billy, who expresses a clear interest in women (and an arguable interest in one particular man, but that's the subject of another post).

Still, there is an arguable bit of queer theming in Will's conversation with Jonathan regarding the benefits of being a "freak" and how normal people never accomplish anything. Jonathan even invokes bisexual icon David Bowie to make Will feel better about his "freakishness."

The clearest piece of queer theming for Will in season 2 comes in episode 8, in this beautiful speech from Joyce to Possessed Will:

"When you turned eight, I gave you that huge box of crayons, do you remember that? It was 120 colors. And all your friends got you Star Wars toys, but all you wanted to do was draw with all your new colors. And you drew this big spaceship, but it wasn't from a movie. It was YOUR spaceship; a RAINBOW Ship, that's what you called it. And you, you must have used every color in the box. I took that with me to Melvald's, and I put it up. I told everyone who came in, 'My son drew this.' And you were so embarrassed, but I was so proud. I was so, so proud."

This is one of the most powerful memories of her son that Joyce has, an image so strong and distinct that she uses it to invoke his true identity against the monster that is slowly subsuming him. She notes very specifically that it's not something he copied, but something that came entirely from Will himself, an image that she felt represented him so perfectly that she took it with her to work and proudly touted it as his to everyone she knew. The Rainbow Ship is Joyce's picture of her son's very heart, and surely I don't need to explain to you how powerful a piece of queer imagery the rainbow is.

Some subtextual stuff; in episode 9, when the girl asks Will to dance, he stammers "I... I don't..." and only goes to dance with her when Mike literally pushes him towards her.

During the final montage, the scene cuts to different characters in time with appropriate lines from the song: "every move you make" cuts to Mike and El (as he is teaching her to dance), "every vow you break" cuts to Nancy dancing with Dustin (as she technically cheated on Steve with Jonathan), "I'll be watching you" cuts to Lucas dancing with Max (as she has playfully called him 'stalker' all season). What line cuts to Will? "Every smile you fake," specifically on the word fake, while Will dances with a girl wearing this expression:

That is not a real smile, that is not a comfortable boy, and that is not an accident; Noah Schnapp is one of the best actors in the entire show, and of the young boys, he is the one the Duffers trust most to do dramatic heavy lifting.

Do you want it to be a little more explicit? Okay, here is that scene in the script:

I mean, that pretty much speaks for itself. It's less explicit in the actual show, but it's still there, you know?

Season 3

And now, the biggest and most explicit thing to date; The Scene. I mean, you could discuss the obvious subtext in the simple fact that Will is the only male main character who has yet to find a girlfriend or express any interest in girls whatsoever, but that pales in comparison to The Scene.

The setup for The Scene is pretty simple; after declaring "a day free of girls" in order to get his friends to run the D&D campaign he's probably spent a significant amount of time creating, his friends have blown him off to continue bemoaning their girl troubles, so Will has decided to leave. Mike, realizing too late that he has genuinely upset his friend, chases after him to try and get him to come back.

A back-and-forth argument ensues, where Will accuses Mike of ruining the party and abandoning his friends in favor of girls, and Mike, in the heat of the moment, responds with "It's not my fault you don't like girls!" After which, everything stops. There is a full second of silence, and a close up on Noah Schnapp's face so you can take in his reaction.

There is a lot to unpack here. Now, acting is up to interpretation to a degree, but to me, that expression conveys two primary emotions; shock, and betrayal. That face says "how could you?" Because here's the thing; regardless of what Mike does or doesn't know about Will's sexuality, Mike knows for a fact that Will has been called a queer all his life by everyone from his school bullies to his own fucking dirtbag father. By invoking even the specter of that, Mike has crossed a fucking line, and he knows it. And we know he knows it, because he immediately backtracks and tries to mitigate the damage. But it's too late. The damage has been done.

I also think there is a tinge of fear in that image. Just a moment of soul raking panic that pretty much every closeted queer person knows intimately. It's very brief. But I think it's there, if you look.

This scene sends Will into an emotional tailspin that culminates in him tearing down the literal last bastion of his childhood in a fit of sorrow and rage. His innocence has been destroyed. He cannot regain what he has lost, and he can never go back to the way things were before. This is the emotional climax of his arc for season three. It's a powerful one-- shame it comes in the third of eight episodes, but that's neither here nor there.

And that's pretty much it for now. Any one of these things taken in isolation could be very easily dismissed, but here's the thing; they aren't isolated incidents. They are part of a clear and consistent pattern, one that goes all the way back to the show's inception, before even one minute of footage was filmed. And this pattern points to one very obvious conclusion; the Duffer Brothers have always intended, and continue to intend, for Will Byers to be gay.

Now, for the obvious question; why haven't they made it explicit yet?

The answer is as unfortunate as it is obvious; I don't know.

It's entirely possible that there is some external force that the Duffers have to answer to that is preventing them from actively pursuing this particular storyline. This happens all the time in Hollywood, and it could be anything from Netflix to Noah Schnapp's parents to Noah Schnapp himself just being uncomfortable with it. Many are the creators who dream Big Gay Dreams only to run into the horrors of our Forced Hetero Reality. If the Duffers ultimately submit to these pressures, I hope you won't be too hard on them. This shit is harder than you think to get to the screen sometimes.

But it's also possible that they just aren't ready for it yet. That they have been saving this for a future storyline, that they just want their characters (and the actors) to get a little older before they pursue this particular storyline explicitly, but they've been busily laying groundwork for it so that anyone paying attention will know it's coming.

I don't know. Only time will tell for sure.

For now, I can tell you this; I see a great deal of evidence that the Duffers still intend for Will to be gay, and precisely zero that they have changed their minds.

I hope that holds true.

[bi-in-july]

30 Day WOL Challenge #1

June 8 // Aftermath, 2381 words

She was a most perplexing creature, this Warrior of Light. Or Darkness, he supposed it was now, given current events.

Semantics aside, she was every bit the hero here that she was in the other realm, the one with the Garleans. Every bit the hero in both as she was in her numerous other forms, really. And yet, she was the only one who seemed to resent the title, the only one who hid from it. The only one who, in all but name, was anything but a conventional hero.

Emet Selch had only had the opportunity to speak with her other shades on a few occasions, and they had been only a fraction of the many that made the whole. Shades was an apt description. Hollow shells - vain, simple, ignorant, blank. Any hopes he’d have of catching a glimpse of a memory or sliver of a resemblance were always rather quickly and decidedly dashed. Audrieth was certainly no exception.

But she was different. And perhaps that made her closer to the real thing than he cared to admit.

He had studied the way her palette shifted, saturating with a streak of passionate scarlet when she beheld the emergence of her miqo’te accomplice from the aetherstream. In an instant, both she and the hyuran fellow had been kneeling at her side, scarcely believing she was in their arms once more. Emet Selch had smirked to himself. How easily they had forgotten their suspicion and ire in the presence of their thought-to-be-gone friend.

For much of the rest of the conversation - mostly a boring display of affection from the hrothgar and musings about the supposed mysteries of Qitana Ravel - that splash of red had persisted, though it did subdue. This was not the first companion she had seen restored to life, he supposed, watching as she relaxed, her world no longer turbulent with grief and at ease with a sense of peace. 

One by one, the Scions had disappeared, already turning their focus to the next task at hand as they made their way back to the huts of the trees. One by one, until Audrieth remained. Her sparkling eyes followed them, faring them well with a smile. It was perhaps the most honest her face had been since she had arrived. She must truly be overcome with relief if she allowed herself to be this vulnerable. 

As they departed, he watched the black seeping back into her aura, with a mix of silver it seemed. The Ascian straightened in his physical form, perking up at the sight. Now that was interesting.

“What a touching reunion that was,” he drawled to her back. Another surge of black accompanied the tensing of her shoulders, her fingers curling against her palms. But as usual, she answered him with a silence that told him all he needed to know. 

“It fair brought a tear to the eye,” he continued, “But as we both know, such moments are nothing if not momentary.” She heard him approaching, her head tilting to the side to hear his words better. Or perhaps to locate the source, should she need to pounce. Curious thing. Her bangs hid her eyes from him, but rather than pursed lips, hers were parted, black ever expanding around her.

“Before long they will remember their many differences,” he finished as he arrived at her side and peered down at her, “and return to squabbling.”

Now he could behold those windows to the soul, as red as her earlier outburst of emotion. Her dark lashes shaded them from the sun and he could practically see the gears churning, hear the creaks and hisses, as she mulled through some thought that she was getting ready to share. Though her gaze was pointedly directed toward the ground in front of them, he knew exactly where her words would be addressed. Her mouth opened fully and closed promptly. Then again, twice more. A spiral of black and silver spinning and spinning around her.

“You are welcome,” he said with a smirk. “Expressions of emotion do not come easily to you, do they, dear? Not to worry, I will not force your vocal gratitude.”

There was that characteristic eye roll. Her red eyes flashed upwards, a light crackling in the air between them. “You are insufferable.”

“You seem to be suffering me rather well thus far.”

Her arms crossed with her rather predictable denial and frustration. “Don’t get excited,” she warned him, “Just because I find you useful doesn’t mean I trust you.” Or enjoy my company, he inwardly chuckled.

“Of course not,” he said, theatrically giving her his best offended expression. “The Warrior of Light would never think anything of her mortal enemy. I’d be a fool to believe otherwise. Though it does wound me to think you are only ‘using’ me.” He tsked at her. “I thought heroes were better than that?”

Audrieth turned to face him now, but where he had expected to find a defiant glare or an admonishing look, she instead appeared thoughtful. Her eyes were searching him and for a moment he actually genuinely shuddered.

Who was it he was speaking to again?

“You didn’t use void magic.” There was a question here and an oddly timed one at that. Emet Selch blinked at her as he placed her face once more in his mind.

“Void is not the only source I draw upon, this is true,” he answered slowly with realization. “Are you referring to my retrieval of the thaumaturge?”

Audrieth gave him a single nod, her eyes unchanging. “You could have brought her back with void magic, but you didn’t.”

He shrugged. “Well, you wanted your friend back in one piece, did you not? A shadowy replica would not do. Not to mention,” he smirked again, “I cannot imagine you would have allowed me to let loose any other unspeakable creatures on this plane.”

She visibly shuddered at the thought, but remained steadfast in her attempt to talk to him. He had not seen such a swelling of black in her before. He half desired to call her out right then, but thought better of it. She was a prickly one. It would be more rewarding to let her speak.

“I didn’t know you used other forms of magic.” Her head was cocked and Emet Selch was momentarily distracted by the uncharacteristic and endearing sight. The two of them began to walk and the Ascian was becoming increasingly intrigued by where their steps would carry them. She was only about a half fulm shorter than his current form, but with the way she was carrying herself she seemed smaller, younger, unsure.

“Well, my dear,” he chuckled, “I would not have concealed my true nature well within that little empire if I had been opening void-gates at each stroke of the hour. You will find I possess a vast array of talents.” He enjoyed the way ‘dear’ rolled right off of her, like a skipping stone barely touching the surface of the water. That was just like a mortal not to notice something so painfully familiar. She truly had no idea who she was.

“What did you use, then?” she asked, interrupting his thoughts, her eyes firmly on his now. “How did you bring her back?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “What is the phrase? ‘A magician never reveals his secrets?’”

Her eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Don’t give me that. Tell me how you did it.”

“You cannot do me harm with your eyes,” he said, chuckling again as she continued to glower at him. “Why? Is it not similar to how you heal?”

She paused, and all of the warmth of the red from earlier turned cool. “There is a difference between healing and bringing back the dead,” she said, her voice lower now. “I’ve never seen someone plucked from the stream before.”

“Gods, how weak you all are,” he mused aloud, “No wonder you all are so frightened and easily swayed.” He couldn’t fathom feeling so powerless. The things he could do at the snap of his fingers were only myths and legends, even for Hydaelyn’s most esteemed champion.

Audrieth suddenly moved to stand in front of him, blocking him off from walking any further. They nearly collided, but his movements were slow enough that he anticipated the new obstacle and came to a halt before her. 

“You want my gratitude? You want my trust?” she asked, her eyes blazing, as red seeped back into her aura. “Answer my questions. With straight answers, not distracting insults.”

Emet Selch let out a heavy sigh. “Back to threats, are we?”

“It’s not a threat,” she said, jutting up her chin a bit, “It’s compromise. I need a reason to heed you and allow you near my friends.”

“Oh? And my reviving of the dead is not reason enough?”

“It’s...a start,” she said hesitantly, “Look, I just-” She cut herself off, tearing her eyes away from his as she was bombarded with waves of complex feelings she didn’t fully understand. He watched the black and silver and red and blue mixing and blurring like water-colored paint, patiently waiting. 

“You need me,” she finally said, “I don’t know what for, but there’s a reason you haven’t been interfering with anything we’ve done yet. You say you’re also being honest, which I don’t trust for a second. But you want something from me, I can tell.” 

Her eyes darted up to his once, more gauging his reaction. He wasn’t going to give her one. But oh, was this getting to be very interesting indeed. “Is that what you think?” he asked, his face passive and unreadable.

“Well, you’re not outright denying it or insulting me, which makes me think I might not be too far off,” she said, her weight shifting. She was gaining confidence, her shoulders rolled down again as she relaxed.

“Aren’t you clever. You can read me like a book.” His smirk reached the outer edges of his cheek. “I can keep no secrets from you.”

She pointedly ignored his sarcastic jabs and continued, “And the fact that it’s me, and no one else here, means something. Based on all of the other Ascians I’ve met, it means power.” Audrieth stood a bit taller now, not taller than him, but certainly meeting his gaze head on. “So, I have a proposal.”

Emet Selch tilted his head, squinting as sunlit rays bounced off of his conversation partner. For a moment, the light disrupted his vision, and everything with Audrieth’s profile shone a blinding white. It was amusing watching her, letting her think she had all the answers. He enjoyed teasing her so much he was always startled when she managed to surprise him. 

“Go on.”

The elezen took in a shaky breath, her eyes as cloudy as he was sure her thoughts were. “If you tell me what I want to know, I will be even more powerful.” 

One of his eyebrows quirked. “And?”

She flipped some strands of hair which had tumbled onto her chest over her shoulder, trying in vain to hide her apprehension. “It is in your best interest to help me. If you tell me how you brought Y’shtola back, teach me even-”

Emet Selch lifted a hand to stop her. “Well, well, well. The Warrior of Light wishes to bargain with an Ascian. What would your little friends think if they could hear you now, I wonder? I did not know Hydaelyn taught her minions to grovel so shamelessly.”

“I’m not a minion and you know it,” she shot back, red starting to swallow up the black. He could not help but notice that her cheeks were flushed now as she spoke. “And you are dodging the question, like you always do. Trustworthy people do not dodge questions.”

He let out a snort of laughter as he watched her fume. “Yes, because you have never dodged a question in your life.”

Audrieth huffed and looked away again, glaring at a nearby glowing spore. “Case in point,” she grumbled. Perhaps he had ruffled her feathers enough.

“Forgive me, my dear,” he resigned his torture. Poor thing could only handle so much. “You are quite entertaining when you are flustered.”

Though her words were low, he thought he could make out something resembling a rather charged dismissal. Yes, her short patience had been lost, he realized. This was about the part in most conversations where he allowed her to leave, having given up on trying to understand or solve his riddles. But something made him want to speak further.

“The fact of the matter is, it is not something I can teach or share with you.”

That got her attention. Her hesitant curiosity drew her questioning eyes back to him. “It’s not?”

He shook his head and sidestepped around her, wishing to continue their pace. He half expected her to stand her ground and block him from moving, but she let him pass, her eyes following him. “To be able to grasp what I accomplished by procuring your friend,” he said, “There is an entire universe of knowledge you would need to grasp first. And you,” he glanced back at her over his shoulder, “...are not ready.”

That ever so predictable denial flared up once more. “I am ready.”

“No, you are not,” he sighed. “But you will be.” He watched her disgruntled expression turn to one of intrigue. She opened her mouth to respond.

With a snap of his fingers, he was gone from her vision, hiding in the shadows somewhere, watching the aftermath of their little interaction. Red and blue clashing, fighting and forcing the black and silver away. A frustrated stamp on the ground whose sound was muffled by the soft grass beneath it. But Audrieth was still after that, breathing steadily until her heartbeat returned to its normal pace. And after a few moments more, one of her Scion accomplices called her, bringing her away from her wandering thoughts and back to their mission. The colors subdued to their standard gray. 

But just before Emet Selch decided to depart, to shift his ethereal gaze to another tortured soul, he caught a glimpse of silvery shimmer, that almost seemed to reflect the light of the sun.

[mrneighbourlove]

Into the Dark and Unknown: Ch 4. Forbidden Knowledge

"... and this concludes all the text on our culture." Uktena's words slowly rattled into Bonegrinder's brain. The Anagari had fetched several novels from the shelves for the human guests. "Anymore questions?"

Leere frowned, raising her hand. “What makes the Mortuus so dangerous?”

"They use living beings as hosts for demons." Uktena explained to Leere. "They sacrifice that poor person's soul to bring forth the demon to do their bidding."

“Is every single individual Mortuus evil?”

"From our experience, they even use their own children as sacrifices sometimes." Uktena turned to the shelves and pulled off a book on the Mortuus. He flipped open to a page about possession and placed it on the table for Leere to read. "These are the usual tattoos used to summon demons of various hierarchies. Yet, their ultimate goal is to summon an old and forgotten god, long locked away. We don't speak his true name, and instead refer to him as Chaos."

Bonegrinder shut the book so quickly, it echoed. "Tiny princess needs not hear of horrors."

“I... was that my Tattoo inscribed there?”

"... no." Bonegrinder tried to save face. "Just a similar look is all. Nothing to concern yourself over. Best to forget it." He started to put away the book.

Leere turned to the librarian. “There can’t be a whole species of an evil individuals.”

She turned her growing ire to Malik. “I read a report there was a group of Mortuus who attacked Hyrule castle, but some insisted they sought help.”

“True, but they tried to kill the Queen.”                  

"Our experience with the Mortuus begs otherwise, princess." Uktena was not going to argue with Leere, just state his point from history. "Why do you think Mother put up such a barrier? It is to keep them out of Omisha. After the last incident..." The librarian suddenly wore a sorrowful expression. "Mother was so heartbroken. We were heartbroken for her. We do not want a repeat of the past."

"Whether they truly sought help or not, it does not matter." Bonegrinder dismissed the thought. "What matters is keeping everyone safe, tiny princess. That includes you."

“Holy insufferable Din. What does it take for a woman to get answers?” Leere scowled, pointing to Bonegrinder. “Hand me the book.”

"No."

"I can just get you another copy---"

Bonegrinder glared at Uktena, his meaning of 'shut the fuck up right now' coming across very clearly.

“Get me another copy.”

"... I rather not lose my head to the shaman here." Uktena held his hands up in defense. "He's obviously trying to prevent you from finding out something of cruel and hurtful nature."

"Exactly and it's going to stay that way."

Malik decided this would be one contest of will he’d stay out of.

Leere glared at her friend, feeling hurt. “I came out here to learn. You are actively denying me knowledge.”

"Bonegrinder does not want you to have knowledge of..." He tried to think of the best way to say it. "Of what... of why you have that tattoo."

“Because my guardians wanted to kill me right? Summon a dread lord? Oh! Maybe a terrible demon? Or how about a god! Big shock! Give me the book.”

"... that's not it."

“Then I’ll find out myself.” With her patience wearing thin, she trotted out of the library.

"Wait, wait, you need an escort!" Uktena called after the princess. "Damn it, tell her and go get her before she stumbles upon---"

"She is finally happy and getting better, he does not want her sad again!" Bonegrinder bellowed at Uktena. "You do not presume to order this Anagari, bookworm."

"Okay, okay, fine!"

~

Leere and her company spent another day at Omisha. Her daytime was spent sulking after storming out of the library. It was only when she met with Solani again had Leere's mood brightened. The little bird-girl wanted to play hide and seek with the human. It was so cute, Leere couldn't resist. The princess learned Solani snuck a book so she and her friends could understand Leere's speech more. This connection melted Leere's heart, so much so that by the end of the session, she wondered if she should adopt her own children. When night came, however, Leere's mind returned to her desire of knowledge. She wanted to learn just what exactly Bonegrinder wanted to keep from her. When she felt confident Malik and Boney were asleep, she snuck out of her hut, dashing silently back to the library. Once there, she called out lightly, not wanting to be too loud in case anyone was asleep.

"Hello? Uktena?"

"Do humans always visit libraries at late hours of the night?" Uktena was never far from the precious books. He had the duty of protecting their history and recording it. Yawning, he hung down from the ceiling, looking at Leere. "What is it you seek?"

"I seek the knowledge Bonegrinder wished to keep from me about Malus." Leere kept her tone strong, straightening to show she wasn't going to back down.

"Third shelf from the bottom, in the middle row." Uktena gestured to the selection of novels on Malus. "You won't find their magic in there, just accounts of history."

“That’s all I need.”

Leere was quick to go to shelf. Unfortunately, Malik was waiting around the corner, grabbing the book and hold it close as he crossed his arms. “What do you think you’re trying to pull?”

The Mortuus couldn’t believe this. “You got to be kidding me here. What does it take for a woman to get what she needs?”

Malik shook the book in her face sternly. “I heard you sneaking out. You’re lucky that snake is a heavy sleeper. He told you to drop the subject on Malus. We have to respect his wishes while out here.”

“I thought you hated him?”

“I respect the Mother. I don’t want to upset her hospitality.”

Leere jumped for the book, and Malik lifted it out of her reach, easily towering over her. “Malik, we both wanted to learn more about prophecies, histories, and the threats and friends that could be found in both Omisha and Malus. You’re acting like a jerk!”

The Gerudo chuckled as she jumped a few more times in her little statement. Her words did have meaning though. “We should consider that Bonegrinder and the Mother have their reasons for keeping Malus so isolated. What if we learn something that you regret?”

“Excuse me?” Leere scowled, feeling like she was being coddled by just another Gerudo in her life. “You think you’re so immune to the effects of bad history?”

“I’ve seen enough horrors to-”

“You don’t think I haven’t seen horrors? You don’t think I know I have trauma sometimes from thinking about the things I have seen? Malik. I know there are many horrors in the world. I know them. God I wish I could forget them too. But if forgetting them, or never facing them again meant that innocent people died, or that another little girl couldn’t be saved from being traumatized, I’d never do it. I’d face those horrors a thousand times over and have my mind clouded by terror as result, just so I could save those people.”

Malik listened closely to Leere. His arms lowered, and the book fell to his side. He sometimes forgot how much this woman had been through. “I apologise. You were right. Bonegrinder shouldn’t keep this knowledge from you. And I shouldn’t see you as fragile little thing.” He walked over to a table, placing the book down. Waving his hand over, he shocked Leere. “Well, what are you waiting for? We have much to see. Librarian. Are there any other books of history?”

"Those on the third shelf are history; those are the ones you currently are reading. The wars that Omisha has had with Malus are on the fourth shelf. It's not exactly a fond read, many lives were lost during the war before Mother constructed the barrier." Uktena then gestured across the room. "If you wish to know of the prophecies, you can read what little material we have, or you should seek to ask Mother. She knows more than all of us."

“Maybe you should tell Mother we asked. Please leave us.” Malik waved his hand, not really thinking about what he asked.

Leere was nice enough to give Uktena a bow of gratitude. “Thank you.”

As Malik and Leere read the books, they read this history of Malus. At least what they could. The war that was mentioned was, to be honest, rather barbaric and did not shy from the details. Swarms of Mortuus mages, corrupting the flesh of the dead, puppeteering the living against their will, and summoning demons of awful ilk. The Mortuus themselves were described closely to Leere’s own appearance. Pale skin, darker hair, red eyes. Some, however, were described with red and black eyes instead of the usual white. They could be anywhere from 5.1 to 5.11 feet tall, only on the rarest of occasions being anything taller.

What was described of the land was either the murmurs of fairy tales, such as a cursed metropolis unlike anything else in the world, or accounts of monsters of Mortuus who meant no harm in their travels. The lands were hilly at the Omisha border. Great expanding grasslands that hid terrifying predators. In a desert that marked as a border between southern and central was a tale of massive colossi that wandered the land, indiscriminately killing anything that came before it. Within the southern lands were also accounts of underground villages that were made in order to hide away from the monsters and cultists that lived in the capital city. Massive crystalized towns that had little barriers of their own. Leere was disheartened to learn that these own barriers had to make sacrifices of their own.

Finally, the biggest myths to be heard. That the land was cursed by a God to have a blanket of death and destruction, despite so much of it being so beautiful. That none could experience the fay that lived in the western forests, or swim with sirens in the north. Two monsters that worried Leere and Malik was a tale of a mighty sea serpent that lived trapped in a lake. Simply named the Devourer. Another was a Dragon that flew with no sound, knew no pain, and had blood as black as coal.

All in all, Leere and Malik were beginning to form their own ideas of what the Mortuus was, until they found a hand written note. Reading it over, it was scribbled in a rushed job.

‘I cry for the world. I don’t expect to live long after writing this. My people, the Mortuus, are dying. Madness has split us down the middle. A darkness has infested our hearts. Many of us are being forced into exile, we’ve finished creating underground establishments, with shining crystals that channel light from the surface, but I don’t know if that will keep the madness away forever. I fear what will happen if we stay hidden the earth for a prolonged period of time while our dark brothers and sisters fester on the surface. I’m going to flee Malus. I will search out those who can save us, and unite our people once more. I can only hope there will be those who will listen. My oracle speaks of a tribe of newly formed witches who have made a monarchy. Perhaps I can go to them. There’s also the Golden Kingdom of Legend, or the even the Mother of all Omisha. I have to have hope. But I feel so, so cold writing this letter. I had a run in with a beast, and it scratched me. Feel so itchy. So cold. Please, help us.’

Leere looked to Malik, her face filled with regret. “He speaks of the Lorleidians, but he also speaks of their formation. How old is this letter?”

Malik shook his head. The Mortuus seemed to be both terrible fiends, yet also held victims among them. “Too old Leere.”

Uktena returned with more books. This time, it was not limited to Malus. There were more novels on the prophecies he managed to find, but it was like putting together a puzzle with all jagged ends. Very little of the prophecies made sense. Some of the riddles were confusing and other rhymes were almost impossible to solve.

"I recalled the blonde prince saying that old Bonegrinder was always singing a horrid lullaby about death and some kind of twisted fate revealed..." The Anagari placed the text on the table for the humans. "These are books pertaining to the Mother Goddess; the highest of high, in all her glory and might. Humans call her Balance. We call her Kaksa." He flipped open the novel to a picture depicting an outline of a form with seven wings unfurled, but one broken. On the next page, there were two more outlines, one with horns and the other with oddly, long fingers. "These two were her left and right hands, Maker and Destroyer. We call them Prama and Dhakk. Is this what you were referring to when you asked about a prophecy?"

“I-” Malik paused, not expecting this information. “Is this important about Malus at all, or Omisha? I fail to see how the tale of another pantheon can enlighten us.”

"Another pantheon is incorrect, this is the only pantheon." Uktena paused for a minute to gaze upon their confused expressions. "You do know that your golden goddesses are the children of Balance... right?"

“No?” Leere said.

Malik almost scoffed at the idea. “Please, the Golden Goddesses created the Earth. I doubt any God or Goddess before them would be so lazy or not have the pride to do it themselves. Where are these three gods then?”

Now it was Leere’s turn to worry if Malik was over stepping his bounds. “How about we go politely ask the Mother what she knows? You know, she she’s still awake.”

"The Golden Goddesses helped create parts of this world, but not all in this world." Uktena nearly rolled his eyes at the human ignorance. "I have so often wondered how humans just leave behind all account of religion if it benefits them. I, on the other hand, would not like to risk being... how do you put it? 'Smited'." He then chuckled at Leere's inquiry. "Mother never sleeps. Come, follow me. I will see if you will be willing to accept your audience."

Both did so, with Malik trying to remember that Uktena had a point. He had seen many spirits and gods in the last century alone. “I suppose the story of creation does only speak of how Hryule and its majesty was created, and not the rest...”

"You would do well to remember that while each culture has its respective religion, in some unique way, all the gods, goddesses, deities, spirits, whatever you call them, tie in together." Uktena reminded them. "Different names, same divinity." Once Uktena had escorted them to the grand throne room, there lounged Mother, reading the latest report from her scouts. "Mother, I beg forgiveness for interrupting you, though the humans seek your knowledge."

"This late?" Mother peeked out from behind her scrolls. "I thought humans had this thing called a 'bedtime'?"

Leere cleared her throat first. “I had thoughts on my mind. Questions that needed answering. Mother, we wish to ask what the story of Maker, Destroyer, and Balance has to do with Omisha and Malus?”

"Ah, so you wish for a lesson of how all that is came to be." Mother put away her scroll and rose from her throne. "Which question first, beloved tiny princess of Bonegrinder? Do you wish to hear the tale of the deities themselves? Or how they play into our home and Malus?"

“The deities themselves, if you may.” Klinge bowed his head, wishing to know for himself.

"The deities are the creators of this world, young lord." Mother told Malik as she used her magic to create an outline of Balance. "This is who the humans know as Balance. She is the Mother Goddess. No other god or goddess is above her. She is responsible for keeping harmony within the world." She gestured to the drooping eighth wing. "However, eons ago, there was a disruption in the heavens..."

“If that isn’t the tale of every god.” Malik muttered. In fact, it made him livid. Why did the gods infighting ruin humanity?

"Balance's two hands, Maker and Destroyer, had one job; help her keep harmony in the universe." Mother then depicted two other figures with the outline of the angelic deity. "Maker and Destroyer were happy with their jobs. But then Destroyer decided he wanted more. He did not like that Maker could have his creations and he was limited to pulling monstrosities out of shadows." Then she said, "And he certainly did not like it when Maker expressed his love for Balance."

“That sounds petty.”

"Destroyer was in love with Balance, and did not want to share her love with his brother." Mother showed the horned figure attacking the other with elongated arms and fingers. "He tried to be rid of his brother but Balance intervened, keeping Destroyer from hurting Maker further. He cursed his brother to be retained in flesh form, yet did not realize Balance's clever spell. Whatever was dealt upon Maker, was then reflected to Destroyer. Thus, the brothers were then trapped on earth in flesh."

Leere gulped, wondering the obvious. “Where are they now?”

"Balance is still in the heavens, waiting for the day of prophecy. Supposedly, to keep the brothers from causing further upsets in this world, she will come down and a host will serve as her flesh form," Mother held up another outline of a woman, merging the figure of Balance with the chosen one. "She will come here, keep her brothers from causing a war on the earth, and then transport them back to the heavens with her. From the way the story goes, when she kept Destroyer from hurting Maker, she was injured herself." She gestured to the drooping eighth wing. "The Mother Goddess would have been here a long time ago, but without her helpers to help her run the universe and having to recover from a grave injury, it has taken many lifetimes over."

“She’ll take over the body of some poor girl? That’s intolerable.” Malik spoke, unhappy with this legend. “The Gods play games with mortals no matter what their own status. It’s beyond ridiculous.”

Leere noticed the Mother avoid her question. Once more, she asked again. “If the God of Balance is in the heavens, what forms did Maker and Destroyer take?”

"... we have located one of the brothers. The other we speculate his form based upon a past meeting." Mother told Leere, seeing no reason to lie. "His memories have still not yet returned of his true identity. While the gods and goddesses do like playing their games with mortals, they also do much for us. Some of the deities are just a little crueler than others." She waved away the figures of magic, and then told the pair. "Yet, Maker and Destroyer are not who we need to worry about now. It is Chaos incarnate... you might know him as Teufel."

“What?!” That certainly got a rise out of Malik. She only needed to mention Teufel once by name to ablaze his fury. “What do you know of the Devil?”

"We call him Taunin. The god of chaos." Mother told Malik with a frown. "Balance's counterpart. Supposedly, the oldest tale in our history is Balance and Chaos were two parts of one whole. They loved each other. However, Chaos became greedy and when Balance 'rested', brought havoc across the world. So with a heavy heart, Balance banished Chaos to earth with the help of Maker and Destroyer to forever roam the world he tried to wipe from existence."

“...I’ve heard everything I needed to know.” Malik’s voice shook in a cold tremble, and he rose to leave.

"Did I say I was done?" Mother's voice cut sharply through the room. "There is more you need to know."

“More? What more do I have to know!” Malik’s anger finally broke. “You claim the Gods do good for mankind. But all I see, hear, and feel from them is tragedy! Demise placed a curse of darkness to plague Hyrule and surrounding lands for eons! The God of Fire for the Hasai drove their Emperor mad with goals of conquest! The Golden Goddesses knowingly broadcasted the ultimate source of power so mortals would fight over it for all time! And now you tell me that these Gods I’m just hearing about now are responsible for entrapping the purist of evil I know on Earth? Teufel led one the Gerudo genocides! He killed my mother and my people! Tell me! What do you know of my suffering that the Gods have committed against me with their petty squabbles? What do you know of the Devil of Hyrule bringing suffering down upon me!”

"... do you truly think that your people, the Hylians, and the Hasai are the only ones who have suffered?" Mother sounded cold. "While there are gods and goddesses who have been cruel to their creations, there are those who have looked after their children. Whether it be a game to them, a form of punishment, or a lesson in obedience, we are all subjective to their will.”

“I never said that they were the only ones. But the Gerudo were my family, Grand Mother. And the Gerudo have been nothing but victims in the face of the gods. Do you have anything you wish to add?” Malik’s voice dropped from his booming anger to simply being tired.

"Yes, you will have time to make use of that anger. A war is coming with Teufel." Mother then told Malik. "And you have a very important job to do."

“I know that more than anyone.” Malik gave a bow of his head. “My questions have been answered. I will return to sleep now.”

Leere stayed kneeling, waiting for the Mother to speak to her.

Mother then turned her gaze to the princess.

"Little one... I know you wish to visit Malus." Mother informed Leere, a touch of disappointment in her tone. "And I know you still plan to find a way to go there. Yet, Malus is a place of horrors, my beautiful girl. I would be lying if I said I wished for you to learn of your people. The Mortuus are a... despicable race who love to toy with their puppets and torment the living." She then told her. "You understand why I will not lower my barrier, and you understand why I wish to keep you from the land... yet, I have no power to stop you if you do wish at some point to go. For now, I will do my best to answer your questions."

“I read about a Mortuus in your library. He said he was looking for help for his land. What became of him?”

"He was found injured, over three hundreds years ago." Mother informed Leere. "We did not eat him, nor did we harm him. We tried to heal him, but it was too late. He managed to tell us of an underground city full of Mortuus who did not agree with the usual ways. We do not know the location of this city, but it is somewhere hidden and safe from prying eyes. However, I could not risk my own children going into the land to seek a needle in a haystack."

“And what do these gods have to do with Omisha and Malus?”

"... the Teufel that Malik is so familiar with, that is their god." Mother took a slow breath. "More than likely, they have been supplying him with body after body after body until they find the perfect host."

“That’s.... that’s despicable.”

"Teufel has had many bodies over the years," Mother elaborated with a look of pure hatred on her face. "Even used some of my children for his purposes." She then slithered around behind Leere and gently placed a hand on her shoulder. "And at some point... even you were intended for that purpose."

Leere froze feeling the Mother touch her. She felt something colder at what she said to her. “Forgive me. But that’s hard to believe. Teufel was still sealed away thanks to my father even before I was born for, well, since Malik was in his first human life.” Leere looked up to Mother, focusing her gaze. She was a curious woman, and a clever one too. “One of the books I read also contained information on the Mortuus referring to a God of Destruction. Never anything about chaos. I’m sure this Teufel is certainly evil, but is he really the one behind Malus, and not another being, such as Dhakk?”

"What makes you think the Mortuus would not try to control a deity as great as Chaos? Think upon it, Leere, and you will understand why I am wary of you going back to your homeland." Mother then explained the purpose of Destroyer to the girl. "While Destroyer is given a bad reputation, his purpose is simply to ensure that when certain beings are no longer needed, they disappear. He makes sure the flow of energy of this world is reusable for Maker. Keeping Balance happy/"

“I thought he loathed his brother with a passion?” Leere crossed her arms like a kid, poking holes in Mother’s story. As a scholar, she couldn’t help but here clear bias in the Mother’s statements. “I doubt anyone can control a Diety. I can control people myself, but that takes incredibly powerful magic, and all the concentration I can muster.”

"He loathed that Maker loved Balance and Balanced loved Maker. So yes, he did hate his brother. But that happened eons after the three had lived in harmony for even since time began." Mother then asked Leere. "Your brothers and sisters make you mad, right? You're argued and been jealous, and sometimes, you've even hurt them and they've hurt you. I'm sure you've fought before. Think of this as a sibling spat." The Echidnan then said, "Imagine what would happen if the Mortuus came together to control a deity. Not just one soul doing the magic but many."

“I’ve never met this Teufel before, but aren’t you worried you might be... paranoid?” Leere smiled to try and cushion the blow of her wording. “You see Teufel and the other Mortuus as your enemies. I can see you might think it easier to lump them together.”

"What you call paranoia, I call safety. My barrier, my suspicion, it is for a reason. You have not seen your people stitched together to make a carcass puppet, hearing their spirits beg for the relief of death, and the look of horror on families' faces when they realize what has been done to their loved one."

“No. Not my own people. I’m very lucky for that.” She took hold of Mother’s hand, feeling a warmth. “It’s terrible when awful evils try to bring harm to the beauty in our world.”

"And humans call us evil, judging us for our looks instead of knowing us. There are many different forms of evil, beautiful one, but the worst is perhaps... ignorance." Mother gently led Leere up the stairs past her throne. It was pitch blackness. "And my ignorance cost me."

“You’re a beautiful good too you know.” Leere’s eyes tried to adjust to the darkness ahead. “Where are we going?”

"You will see why I do not wish for you to go to the Mortuus. For you to stay safe and not make the same mistakes as I did."

“Is that a good idea? I’ve seen much darkness in my life before...”

"Take it as a warning of what could happen." Mother then slowly started adjusting light to the room. With her magic, she lit several candles on fire. There in the middle of the room, was a body in cased in solid amber. "This is my husband Melekh... and my son, Aibgor." It was not a single person, but two combined into one. Stitches were holding the Echidnan together, and it was a monstrous thing done to a monstrous species. "Teufel used them against me when I did not bow to his wishes. He wanted me to invade neighboring countries, start a war in his name, and have the others bow to him. I refused."

Leere winced, her hand squeezing Mother’s tightly. She had never met Teufel, but the more and more she learned about him, she hoped she never would. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Are they... still alive?”

"No... Melekh and Aibgor were in torment." Mother looked sad, but most of all... defeated. "He had the Mortuus stitch them together like it was an experiment. Would a body be stronger if it was composed of more souls?" She sighed heavily, placing her hand on top of the amber. "Puppeteer against their will... he had them fight their own people. Slaughter them. Then he set his sights on me." She took a deep breath and admitted. "I had to kill my own mate and son or else they would have killed more of us. I keep them here to remind me of why the country of Malus cannot be trusted. Anyone in throws with Teufel will hurt more innocents... and I will not lose anyone else."

Leere winced, her hand squeezing Mothers tightly. She had never met Teufel, but the more and more she learned about him, she hoped she never would. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Are they... still alive?”

"No... Melekh and Aibgor were in torment." Mother looked sad, but most of all... defeated. "He had the Mortuus stitch them together like it was an experiment. Would a body be stronger if it was composed of more souls?" She sighed heavily, placing her hand on top of the amber. "Puppeted against their will... he had them fight their own people. Slaughter them. Then he set his sights on me." She took a deep breath and admitted. "I had to kill my own mate and son or else they would have killed more of us. I keep them here to remind me of why the country of Malus cannot be trusted. Anyone in throws with Teufel will hurt more innocents... and I will not lose anyone else."

Leere held Mother’s arm close, and she stared up at the matriarch. “I know this might sound childish to someone as ancient as you, but my psychologist tells me that when I think of awful memories, I should seek out a person I trust. Would you like to come dream with me for the night?”

"Bad memories can also be a good defense. A reminder of what happened, and what cannot happen again." Mother then chuckled. "It is not childish. We Echidnans usually seek comfort with a bed mate. Not only for pleasure purposes, but as you have probably experienced with Bonegrinder, some like to cuddle. Him, especially."

“I, uh, have done both once.” Leere couldn’t hide the flush on her face, even in the deep dark. “I’d be honoured to cuddle with you, as too keep us safe from the nightmares tonight.”

"Ah, so Bonegrinder told you the tale of Anagaris being good for chasing away nightmares," Mother told Leere with a slight smile. "Though each of us Echidnans have a good purpose for chasing away evil. Kokyangwutis spin webs to bring good dreams."

“Oh! I thought he was just being positive. That’s what I meant. I don’t have any special powers to keep nightmares away, I just wanted to sleep with you. I MEAN- I rest with you. I know it can be difficult to be with your own negative thoughts, and having someone to hold can be what you need. I’m not coming onto you. Not that you aren’t beautiful I mean. I just-I-uh-oh god I’m tired. I’m not some horny human I swear to you. I am sincere at just wanting to help you feel comfortable...” Leere petered off from her rambling, embarrassed she’d declare something else to make her appear like an even bigger fool.

"Hahahaha!!!" Mother actually laughed. "Oh, sweet girl, you worry too much. I do think that a proper rest will do you good. If you wish for a peaceful sleep, then you may share my nest."

“Thank you”, was all Leere could muster out of her.

"Though if sex is what you are looking for, then I'm sure you could always find a willing partner who is eager to experiment intercourse with a human being." Mother wanted to clarify. "If that's what you were referring to."

“Nope. Nuh-uh. No. Not going there.” God, kill her now. “Let’s just go to bed and forget the last minute.”

"Very well, this way." Mother started to ascend the ceiling and was part of the way upward before she returned to the ground. "I forgot that humans are not the best climbers."

“You could always carry me? I’m sure you’ve always wanted to sneak away with a princess in the night.”

"I suppose that is a dream that could be entertained." Mother extended her spider legs from her back, gently plucking the princess from the ground. "Just hold still." She then climbed to the ceiling once more to reveal a huge bedding. "Humans do like to sleep on soft things, right?"

“Very much so.”

"Then pick your place first." Mother set Leere down on the plush pillows and grasses.

Leere crawled onto the bed, sighing heavenly. Lots of information was on her mind. Gods, Devils, her origins, her people. So much to take in. Without speaking a word, she fell was asleep.

________________________________________________________________

Previous Ch. https://mrneighbourlove.tumblr.com/post/190443537461/into-the-dark-and-unknown-ch-3-test-of-will

Next Ch. https://mrneighbourlove.tumblr.com/post/190819547466/into-the-darkness-and-unknown-ch-5-a-blink-into