#he looked into some tomes to read what forbidden content was in the tomes (most of them are magic he already knew)

[soundleer]

im so tired but my brain is still thinking of this one headcanon latelyyyy

what if jevin is like a librarian as one of his hobbies, especially assigned to lend safe tomes and archives and keep watch of the forbidden ones... this crossed my mind bc he reminded me of blueberry pie cookie from cookie run. jevin would look similar to her if he was a cookie like...

c'mon like look at them, do you see my vision- i seem to REALLY like blue lads who rarely smiles and do magic oopsieee

....OH I HAVE AN IDEAAAAAA!!!! but i gotta yap on the tags though (so used to doing that, its like whispering to me and i like to whisper my thoughts lol)

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: I love your long posts which make for great reading and I wish you could do more because you’ve got such a range of astonishing interests. I’m hoping because you’ve served in the military you would have studied military thinkers. Do you think the Art of War by Sun Tzu is way overrated by everyone? I studied him a bit for my masters but I still couldn’t get my head around him. Interested to know your thoughts. Thanks!

“To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength; to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear." - Sun Tzu's Art of War, Chapter IV - Tactical Disposition, Clause 10.

Sounds cool, doesn’t it?

But what the hell does this quote really mean? Do you know what it means? Can anyone else tell me?

Look, I enjoy a good Sun Tzu quote as the next person. Only recently I was exchanging thoughts with a fellow blogger whose studying Thucydides, Clausewitz, and Kissinger for an advanced course at the US Naval War College. Even he prefers Sun Tzu over Clausewitz. I can see why too. If you can make sense of chapter one of Clausewitz’s tome On War you deserve a Nobel Prize.

Unlike my very learned fellow blogger, there are lot of folk who don’t know Sun Tzu at all. They can quote him, but almost certainly out of context. As someone who partly grew up in the Far East and even learned Chinese and Japanese (a pitiful but functional degree of fluency) I’m embarrassed (not hard since I’m English) when I hear other Western compatriots romanticise and elevate Eastern icons to mythic status that the Chinese themselves have never done.

I am even more bemused than embarrassed after having hung up my military uniform for ‘civvy’ corporate clothing at how badly abused Sun Tzu’s book is in the corporate world. In my workplace I grit my teeth at corporate high flyers who mistake a balance sheet for a real battlefield by quoting Sun Tzu out of their arse, and then as self-styled ‘corporate warriors’ work themselves up in a lather of testosterone induced self-importance to crush their corporate enemies into the dust.

This is why the The Art of War by Sun Tzu has invited a jaundiced eye roll. And rightly so. I can see why many view Sun Tzu as over-rated because many easily impressed people go all woo woo over anything ancient and Eastern.

It’s become a familiar trope to say the art of ‘strategy’ as a science began 2,500 years ago with the writing of The Art of War. I would dispute this. Not that the writing of Art of War was the earliest written but whether I would call it a manual of strategy per se - more on this below in my answer.  However you rate or overrate the Art of War it’s important to have perspective and remember this book is written in 512 BC. Other than the bible and some religious books, there are not many books that can survived thousands of years and still remains a steady bestseller and enjoys a wide influence in military academies and army staff colleges today and even as far into board rooms.

The question behind your question is just as interesting to me: why did Sun Tzu and his Art of War gain such traction in the West?

Sun Tzu (544-496 BC) wrote the original text of The Art of War shortly before 510 BC. During most of the past two thousand years, the common people in China were forbidden to read Sun Tzu's text. However, the text was preserved by China's nobility for over 2,500 years. The Chinese nobility preserved the text of The Art of War, known in Chinese as Bing-fa, even despite the famous book-burning by the first Emperor of Chi around 200 BC. The text was treasured and passed down by the Empire’s various rulers. Unfortunately, it was preserved in a variety of forms. A "complete" Chinese language version of the text wasn't available until the 1970s. Before that, there were a number of conflicting, fragmentary versions in different parts of China, passed down through 125 generations of duplication.

Indeed at the beginning of the twentieth century, there were two main textual traditions in circulation, known as the (Complete Specialist Focus) and (Military Bible) versions. There were also perhaps a dozen minor versions and both derived and unrelated works also entitled Bing-fa. Of course, every group considered (and still considers) its version the only accurate one.

When I last visited China before the Covid pandemic for work reason, I had time off to go to a couple of museums that housed the fruits of a number of archeological digs uncovering the tombs of the ancient rulers of China in which sections of Sun Tzu’s works were found. These finds have verified the historical existence of the text and the historical accuracy of various sections. I understand new finds are still being made.

The first complete, consistent Chinese version was created in Taipei in the 1970s. It was titled The Complete Version of Sun Tzu’s Art of War." It was created by the National Defence Research Investigation Office, which was a branch of Taiwan's defence department. This version compared the main textual traditions to each other and to archeological finds and compiled the most complete version possible.

This work was completed in Taiwan rather than mainland China for a number of reasons. Mainland China was still in the throws of the Maoist Cultural Revolution, which actively suppressed the study of traditional works such as Sun Tzu. The mainland had also moved to a reformed character set, while Taiwan still used the traditional character set in which the text was written. Only today is the study of Sun Tzu in mainland China growing, interestingly enough, through the translation of Sun Tzu into contemporary Mandarin. Based on the archeological sources we have today, we are reasonably certain of the historical accuracy of this compiled version that is the basis of what most people use today.

Surprisingly, the Art of War only came to light in the West around the 18th Century.  

Historians believe it was first formally introduced in Europe in 1772 by the French Jesuit Joseph-Marie Amiot. It was translated at the time by the title “The thirteen articles of Sun-Tse”. Joseph-Marie Amiot (1718-1793) was not just a Jesuit priest but also an astronomer and French historian, as well as fervent missionary in China. He was one of the last survivors of the Jesuit Mission in China (he died in Beijing).

Many of the historical problems with understanding Sun Tzu's work can be trace back to its first Western translation in French. A Jesuit missionary, Father Amiot, first brought The Art of War to the West, translating it into French in 1782. Unfortunately, this translation started the tradition of mistranslating Sun Tzu's work, starting with the title, The Art of War (Art de la guerre).

This title, copied the title of a popular work by Machiavelli (a criminally underrated writer on military strategy), but it didn't reflect Sun Tzu's Bing-fa, which would be better translated as "competitive methods."

We cannot say what effect being translated by a Jesuit priest had upon the text. It was unavoidable that the work's translation reflected the military prejudices of the time era when war was both popular and Christian. It was also unavoidable that most future translations would reflect some of the first translation's prejudices. However, war was on the verge of becoming much less Christian in the West since this time was the era of the French Revolution (1789).

The work might well of slipped into obscurity after its initial publication, but it was discovered by a minor French military officer. After studying it, this officer rose to the head of the revolutionary French army in a surprising series of victories. The legend is that Napoleon used the work as the key to his victories in conquering all of Europe. It is said that he carried the little work with him everywhere but kept its contents secret (which would be very much in keeping with Sun Tzu's theories).

However, Napoleon must have started believing his own reviews instead of sticking with his study of Sun Tzu. His defeat at Waterloo was clearly a case of fighting on a battleground that the enemy, Wellington, knew best. Wellington’s trick at Waterloo was hiding his forces by having them lie down in the slight hollows of this hilly land. This is exactly the type of tactic Sun Tzu warns against in his discussion of terrain tactics.

After Napolean, Sun Tzu's theories made their way into western military philosophy. Many of his ideas are reflected in the ideas of work of Carl von Clausewitz. who defined military strategy as "the employment of battles to gain the end of war."

The first English translation of The Art of War is less than a hundred years old. Captain E. F. Calthrop published the first English translation in 1905. Lionel Giles, an assistant curator at the British Museum and a well-known sinologist and translator, attacked this early translation, and he published his own version in 1910. It soon began to be read alongside Clausewitz’s 8 volumes of turgid German military prose.

It wasn’t long before military thinkers were ditching Clausewitz for Sun Tzu because no one could get past Chapter One of Clausewitz’s On War. The “Clausewitz is dead, long live Sun Tzu” school was first championed by the influential British military theorist B.H. Liddell Hart in the 1920s.  Basil Henry Liddell Hart (1895-1970) was a captain in the British Army. He was a very influential military theorist and historian, and author of several books such as The Future of War (1925) and Strategy (1954). Having witnessed first-hand the mechanised onslaught of the Great War, Liddell Hart sought a philosophy of warfare based in the prudent use of technology, psychology and deception - and the avoidance of the 'total war' catastrophes of preceding decades.

The main idea of Liddell Hart is to bring the set of principles of warfare in a so-called ‘indirect approach’ to the enemy. His advocacy in his scholarly work of an ‘indirect strategy’ over direct, frontal operations, was a reaction to the high casualties of the Western Front in the First World War. But his ideas were not simply about physically outmanoeuvring an opponent. Instead he pushed for a psychological scheme: to strike from unexpected directions, to generate strategic dissonance, and to induce paralysis. Hart’s well-known thoughts are “Only short-sighted soldiers underestimate the importance of psychological factors in time of war”, “Originality is the most important from all military virtues”, and “The principles of war could shortly be condensed in a single word: concentration”. 

Liddell Hart believed that distilling historical insights of strategy and operations would offer the chance to avoid the costly disasters of modern war and ensure a more cost-effective route to success. He imagined technological solutions in the form of air power and mechanised land forces outflanking and shocking an enemy at the tactical level. This would be complemented by taking indirect strategic ‘ways’. Like his contemporary J.F.C. Fuller, Liddell Hart considered concentrations of air and armoured forces driving deep into enemy territory to destroy their ‘nervous system’. The psychological aspects of this were central, since acquiring an advantage demanded moves that were unexpected, with precise attacks at the most vulnerable points. As the most influential military writer of the modern age, revered and reviled by three generations of strategists, armchair and armipotent, his controversial theories of armed attack laid the foundation of the famed German Blitzkrieg.

Hart’s championing of Sun Tzu’s work as articulated through his own works got a new lease of life as the world gingerly settled into the ice bath of the Cold War. The rise of Communist China, against all the odds having defeated the well disciplined nationalist armies of Chian kai-Shek, was a wake up call for the West. There was a general befuddlement among western military analysts to explain the secret of Maoist success. There was an intellectual inquest in the 1950s and 1960s for some way to explain (and, it was hoped, learn to counter) Maoist military doctrine. Sun Tzu was seen as one of the historical and cultural sources of some particularly Chinese or Asian way of war, and his work made its way into Western discussions of counterinsurgency and asymmetric warfare.

Into the breach - and with fortuitous timing - appeared a new translation of The Art of War that was to become the defining translation right down to our day. Liddel Hart provided the foreword to Samuel Griffth’s 1963 translated copy of the Art of War. It was to quickly become a key text in US war colleges and this version is still to this day favoured by most of these institutions. We also studied Griffith’s translation at Sandhurst alongside Liddell Hart’s ideas.

There is no question that Griffith’s translation has become the standard go to translation to this day in military circles - that is until James Clavell’s more populist and looser translation came along in the 1980s. One can see why. Griffith’s translation provided a number of historical Chinese commentaries on the text. It should also be noted that Griffith’s strengths was his immense experience in the military and knowledge of military history as a brigadier general in the U.S. Marine Corps.

However, this was also his version's greatest flaw. Like many other critics I have the impression that Griffith did not really believe or understand all of Sun Tzu. Indeed he would often explain away Sun Tzu's direct statements without making it clear that this was his commentary and not what Sun Tzu wrote. The other main criticism and this one is stylistic and therefore just my opinion, Griffith was also not much of a writer. By our standards today, much of Griffith’s language can seem awkward and dated.

Looking back it feels ironic of the US military were wrapping their heads around Sun Tzu as way to get inside the Chinese communist mind (of Mao the military strategist especially). Unknown to them Mao had desperately tried everything to get hold of a copy of the Art of War from the Chinese Nationalists. Cambridge historian and doyenne of intelligence history, Christopher Andrew in his book The Secret World: A History of Intelligence, wrote that the theory that Sun Tzu’s The Art of War was critical to mastering contemporary warfare is propagated through the use of a tantalising anecdote: “During the civil war between Communists and the Kuomintang regime [Mao Zedong] sent aides into enemy territory to find a copy of it.” The ancient text, ostensibly, was of such vital importance that Mao was willing to risk men’s lives to obtain it, while Chiang Kai-shek vowed to protect it all costs. It’s a questionable anecdote at best as there are no historical evidence of it.

We can say that the notion that Sun Tzu’s slim treatise is considered both potent and slightly dangerous - providing the master key to unlocking victory in war through the ages - is a compelling myth that refuses to die. Mao most likely never ordered a clandestine operation to pilfer the text, nor did Chiang Kai-shek give any thought to shielding its contents from prying eyes. Both men certainly read it long before the start of their civil war, both most likely had ready access to it during the conflict, and neither man won or lost based on adherence or divergence from its teachings. But undoubtedly it set the hearts of Western military theorists aflutter in trying to unlock the secrets of Eastern military thought.

Sun Tzu and his ideas in a reincarnated form took hold of the wider public imagination in the 1980s. The 1980s was synonymous with Japan. With the perceived rise of Japan as a global economic power and the changes in post-Mao China, there was a Western (meaning American) search for more explanations. What was the secret of Asia’s rise? How were Japan and China ‘doing’ this?

In Western business circles it was for a time trendy to read it because of the perception that it was part of what made Japanese businesses so successful during the 70s and 80s. Management gurus and other corporate consultants certainly latched on to it and touted it as a way for Western businesses to re-orient their entire management and business philosophy. I don’t know if that ever actually was the case in Japan - my father who worked in both China and Japan in the corporate world at a very senior level said it wasn’t - but what is true is that in the West as the Japanese economy languished into the lost decade of the 90s so too did interest in Japanese business practices, and thus Sun Tzu.

The idea that The Art of War was a kind of how-to guide to ‘strategy’  was made especially popular by Hollywood in the 1980s. Oliver Stone’s iconic film ‘Wall Street’ seemed to typify the ‘greed is good’ New York capitalist scene of the 80s and 90s. Hollywood mirror imaged the rise of the corporate raiders and junk bond kings like Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. Hollywood sent thousands of American businessmen off to read Sun Tzu to look for ‘leadership secrets’. This is part of a general Western fascination with ‘timeless Asian wisdom’, the American idea that ‘the mysterious East’ is possessed of secret knowledge. American and European businessmen were enamoured of the idea that “a battle is won or lost before it ever begins”, a saying that reinforced traditional American business attitudes about a winning mentality and a ‘can-do’ spirit being two keys to success.

Because Japan and China were trendy in the 1980s and 1990s it also influenced Western popular culture, not just fashion (think Kenzo) but also comic books (manga) and anime. In this Eastern friendly climate it led a number of popular fiction authors to release their ‘own’ versions of the work to capitalise on its newfound popularity. These versions were more about the pop culture of the era than Sun Tzu. Unfortunately, though popular, none of these versions took advantage of the work completed in Taiwan creating a definitive version of Sun Tzu's text by this time. These versions were based either on old English translations (the Calthorp and Giles versions) or incomplete Chinese sources. However, all of these versions remain popular today, despite their questionable sources and poor quality of translation.

In 1983, James Clavell updated The Art of War translation of Lionel Giles and published it in a very popular version. This started a very common practice in English translation: creating a ‘new’ version from other English translations instead of going back to the original source. Authors today continue to follow this practice, which only perpetuates and exaggerates the problems with early translations.

Thomas Cleary, another well-known author, did his own The Art of War translation with historical commentary in 1988. Again, his name recognition did much to increase awareness of Sun Tzu, even if his work did nothing to improve the general quality of the translation.

Looking back the whole Sun Tzu as a business model fetish in the 1980-90s was really pretty silly, rather like 80s shoulder pads. Of course, there are some similarities in leadership regardless of profession, but the basic goals and working environments of war and of business are so wildly different that applying Sun Tzu to business is superficial at best.

So to me the problem is not that Sun Tzu is ‘overrated’ per se, the problem is that every half baked author out there try to apply its principles to every problems that mankind have. The Art of War, as the title suggest, is not The Art of Managing your Business, the Art of Winning in Competition against your classmates, The Art of picking up Women, The Art of Living Life to the fullest. It is, and only is, The Art of War. It is ‘overrated’ only if you expect it to answer every problems in your life.

The Art of War is not the word of God. It is a war manual advocating common sense with pithy aphorisms - and a very good one.

It’s not that I think the Art of War is over-rated it’s that the more common problem is that many people vastly under-rate Sun Tzu. By misreading Sun Tzu thoughts and ideas, I believe many are in effect under-rating the problems which Sun Tzu is addressing, namely war, or the continuum of conflict resolution where divergence in interests of multiple parties extends to the possible use of lethal force on a massive scale. A lot of people trivialise this problem with idiocies like “what if someone threw a war and nobody came” (clue, they would win, then hunt down and enslave or kill everyone too foolish to contest the issue, as has happened countless times in human history) or “ban war” (said ban apparently enforced by throwing flowers at soldiers).

Understanding that war is a very real and intractable problem is necessary to fully appreciate the genius of Sun Tzu’s work, especially where it avoids fixed and easily definable tactics specific to the Warring States period and instead illustrates timeless concepts of out-thinking the enemy at every level of conflict. That the text is still mostly readily applicable or at least reasonably insightful after thousands of years is a testament to the inability of humans to push warfare beyond the fundamental aspects of conflicting interests and continuum of forcible resolution Sun Tzu addresses.

Still, the particular translation matters far less than having an appreciation that, in war, you have an active opponent who is trying to out-think and counter any moves you make, and having an appreciation of non-dualistic philosophical reasoning more characteristic of Chinese classics generally. The classic symbol of Yin-Yang (and a number of derivative versions) illustrates apparent dualism as being a part of a deeper structural unity which does not permit a fixed division into separate parts.

Hence the difficulty of applying the principles of the Art of War to artificial ideas of “winning/losing” (or war/peace, right/wrong, us/them) as categorical absolutes rather than negotiated possibilities in a continuum of desirability/costs. And it is very difficult, no one should sugar coat that. Humans sort and construct their perceptions of reality by appeal to such gross simplifications. Binary logic is an immensely powerful tool in many areas because it leverages the ability to simplify complexity and then build valid inferences based on fixed premises. But at some point you have to go beyond that to have a more fluid response to reality as it is. Which Sun Tzu does for the reality of war.

I would recommend anyone to read it. At the end of the day it’s a book of highly general aphorisms that effectively synopsise the essential insights that apply to all kinds of human conflicts. Turning an enemy's flank has the exact same effect in 2500 B.C. and in 2000 C.E. and it has the same effect in the boardroom, or public market as it does on the battlefield. Deception and intelligence are still used in exactly the same way, whether conquering foreign lands, or stealing market share from a competitor. It's a book about common sense; but common sense must seem profound to those who have none.

Overall, I think Sun Tzu’s Art of War is a worthy read and not overrated because in our society of over educated achievers, common sense is in as short of supply as it has ever been; if this book can provide the meaningful framework for educating very bright people in down to earth common sense, that can only be a good thing.

The value of the book then is to drive home the fact that, in human conflict, there really is Nothing New Under the Sun (Tzu).

Pardon the pun and thanks for your question.

[hxseok-honee]

atlas heart || part 25

a/n : so sorry it took so long getting this update out !! i had a disgusting amount of work to do and i really was not doing anything else for a few days -- i really hope you like it!! pls lmk what you think about things now that jimin (and we) know everything! its gonna get,,,, i wanna say messy but messys not even enough to cover how messy its gonna get

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________________________________

Jimin can’t remember the last time he’d closed his eyes for more than a few minutes. Time goes by so fast these days that he’s partially convinced he’s been falling asleep and not realizing it. The hours between class and dinner every day are spent in the library, his headphones shoved into his ears haphazardly while he tunnel visions onto what’s been in the back of his mind since the beginning of the year.

Those spare hours had turned into days and days into weeks -- weekends where he doesn’t even glance at his phone, unaware of the growing concern of his friends. It’s almost May now, the chill of early spring having melted away around him without him realizing. His schoolwork stopped being a priority ages ago, and he knows his grades are really taking the hit for it. He vaguely remembers Namjoon confronting him one night some time ago -- a week? Two weeks ago? -- but he can’t for the life of him recall the contents of that conversation. Something about hating to play the ‘prefect card’, but having no choice. He doesn’t even know if he’s still on the quidditch team. It doesn’t matter -- nothing matters when seeing everything with the perspective he’s got now.

Practically buried in scrolls and books, Jimin could care less about the time and the fact that he’s very obviously breaking curfew right now -- the library’s been empty for hours now, and the light outside the window has well past faded into pitch black darkness. He had to hide from Pince around 10pm, barely managing to catch the click of the librarian’s heels through the music blasting in his headphones to keep him concentrated -- it’s a miracle that she hadn't caught him, really. He’d never be able to focus properly back in his room, not when he’s this close to putting the pieces together.

It’s there, right there, everything scattered in his brain. He knows it’s sitting right in front of him, he can feel himself trying to hyperfocus on anything that can blatantly tell him what he needs to know. Flipping through the pages of a book with one hand and shuffling through scrolls with his other, he glances down at a scrap of paper with his own handwriting, chicken-scratch on a ripped up piece of parchment for him to refer back to every few minutes. There, in black ink, the words ‘vampire’ and ‘veela’ are written and then, later, crossed out. There’s one below it -- ‘maledictus’ -- that remains uncrossed and haunts his every thought.

For the better half of the week, he’d spent his nights scouring the bookshelves for any text he could find on blood malediction -- there isn’t much to show for his efforts. Too rare a condition to have any extensive research done, he could barely manage to put together a few measly scrolls and one book with less than a full chapter on the subject. Sighing heavily, Jimin leans back in his chair, rubbing at his temples while he reconsiders the information for what feels like the hundredth time.

It fits the fact that she has a blood condition… but it’s not right. There’s no mention of a potion or even of regularly experiencing sickness. Y/n is in the Hospital Wing like once a month. There wouldn’t be anything Pomfrey or Hoseok could do to help her if she was a maledictus…

He considers that maybe those things are part of blood malediction and that there just isn’t enough documentation for him to verify it. But there’s something nagging at him, telling him this isn’t right. He thinks back over everything he knows, trying to pull up the major details that could help him finally get some sleep. Ignoring the fact that he very well could doze off, even with his loud ass music, he lets his eyes close so he can think. It takes a few minutes, but eventually he’s sitting up in his seat, eyes wide as he recalls something said to him almost months ago, forgotten amidst everything else on his mind.

“What’s the deal with your roommate, Tae?”

“Who, Stephen?”

“No, not fuckin’ Stephen -- Jungkook!”

“Well, how the hell was I supposed to know?”

“Because Stephen doesn’t look at me like I’m the bane of his existence.”

“Yeah… I don’t know what you did to make Jeon Jungkook hate you, but it must have be serious--”

“Just tell me what you know about him, Tae.”

“I mean… nothing crazy, really -- an only child, comes from old money. Probably as old as the Malfoys or the Potters. His family’s the purest of purebloods. And always Gryffindors, just like the Malfoys are always Slytherins. It’s kind of nuts, having a family history like that.”

Jimin stumbles out of his chair, already making his way down the aisles of bookshelves, almost crazed with concentration.

Purest of purebloods -- there’s not a single pureblood family that isn’t documented in a registry… registry… regis-- aha!

Turning down an aisle designated for family registries dating back centuries, he scans the shelves at a lightening speed, finally coming to a halt in front of a tome titled Gryffindor Legacies. Hauling it from the shelf, he doesn’t even bother returning to his table, taking a seat right there on the floor.

Flipping straight to the back to search for the family name, he locates it easily and heads to appropriate page. Searching the family tree down generations, it takes him several pages of flipping through Jungkook’s ancestors’ lives to finally get to his parents. They’re the most recent entry -- new editions of the book are printed with each new generation, the original, handwritten copy belonging to the respective families. It’s an inefficient system for sure, but Jimin’s not exactly complaining when he’s the one benefiting directly.

Scanning the page, from the birth of his mother -- Jeon Eunha -- to her school days, from her marriage to his father all the way to Jungkook’s birth. Jimin expects the next part to follow the same structure of his mother’s story, recounting his childhood, but it diverges from that almost immediately with some extra lines that he almost feels don’t exist in the original copy at the Jeon family residence.

Not long after the birth of their first and only child, they were met with circumstances leading to the adoption and care of another, the recently orphaned infant girl, Y/n Y/l/n. In her days at Hogwarts, young Eunha had become friends with a female Ravenclaw student, who had a noticeably sickly pallor about her at all times. She was to become her closest lifelong friend. The same night in which Y/l/n was to give birth to her first child, she and her husband met an untimely fate in the form of a violent animal attack in the backyard of their own home. The Jeon family were the first to arrive at the premises, deciding immediately to take in the infant child and raise her alongside their own son. Not much else is known about the girl, only that she and the Jeon heir were to become inseparable.

Jimin stares down at the page, unblinking. There’s a lot of information to process, but the things that stand out most to him are the fact that Y/n’s mother was also apparently afflicted with the same illness as Y/n, and --

‘Violent animal attack’? I knew the car accident thing was bullshit, but… did her mom not even die in childbirth? Why would she not tell me… there’s nothing suspicious about an animal atta--

Almost like his brain has started to short-circuit after the long nights and lack of sleep, Jimin’s thoughts are gone instantly, replaced by the mental image of a book sitting not a even a few aisles away, on a table littered with all of the information he’d ever needed in the first place. He’s completely incapable of registering anything around him as he races back to his table, his mind flipping incomprehensibly between the information in front of him and all of the pieces of his memories, details that make too much sense in this moment to match anything but this one conclusion.

Most Muggles, however, will die from the extent of their injuries… all known instances of Muggle attacks have been portrayed in the media as ‘animal attacks’ so as to preserve the secrecy of the wizarding world…

Given the extent of the available research and data, collected almost entirely from male subjects afflicted with lycanthropy, not much is known about the hereditary components related to a female werewolf. Therefore, it is unknown if a pregnant female werewolf's transformations would affect the ability to carry the pregnancy to term…

Without any humans nearby to attack, or other animals to occupy it, the werewolf will attack itself out of frustration…

“My mom died in childbirth and my dad… just a… just a freak accident you know, no one’s fault or anything…”

Because werewolves only pose a danger to humans, companionship with animals whilst transformed has been known to make the experience more bearable as the werewolf has no-one to harm and will be less willing to harm themselves…

“You want to talk about forbidden, Jeon? Let’s talk about your illegal animagus status-”

The way one must imbibe it is very unique among potions, in that a goblet full of wolfsbane potion must be taken each day for a week preceding the full moon…

“…you know how long it takes me to make a full set of vials for you. I barely have enough to make it last 3 days…”

The monthly transformation of a werewolf is extremely painful if untreated and is usually preceded and succeeded by a few days of pallor and ill health…

“He was lowkey carrying her down the stairs… she looked kinda sick actually…”

Throwing scrolls behind him without care as he searches for the one with the final detail, he pulls his phone out when he finds it -- a book listing all of the recorded moon cycles for over a century. Jamming his thumb down on the icon that’ll take him to his search engine and typing with blind panic, he finds himself yanking out his headphones by the cord with one sharp tug when the answer flashes back at it him on the screen, and he realizes that almost all of the pieces are in place.

The quidditch match against Slytherin -- it was the night before a full moon.

“No, no… no, no, no, this can’t be right. This isn’t happening, this can’t be right, she can’t be--” Jimin remembers the text he’d sent to her almost 8 hours ago, sitting unanswered, and he moves without thinking. Slamming his hands down on either side of the moon cycle record, he flips frantically to the cycle for this current month, April of 1978. What he sees there has his heart dropping out of his chest.

“Next week? It’s next week? But that means she’d have to be feeling the effects of it this wee--” He’s cut off by the feeling of his phone buzzing in his pocket, and he reaches for it almost desperately. It’s Y/n, finally responding to his concerned texts with nothing more than a single line. His blood turns to ice when he reads it.

I’m fine, just feeling under the weather.

--

When Jimin bursts through the door of Dumbledore’s office just past 3am, the headmaster’s already seated at his desk, evidently waiting for him. He’s donning a light blue robe with a matching sleeping cap perched delicately on his head, suggesting to Jimin that he’d somehow woken up knowing he was soon to greet a guest. All of the panic invading Jimin’s body is masked just slightly by guilt, only now realizing how late it is and how intrusive he must seem in this moment.

“Mister Park, you certainly are out quite a bit past curfew, no?” Jimin stands in the doorway cradling all of the scrolls and books he’d been hoarding the last few weeks -- he can’t very well have left a huge pile of evidence back in the library. It would have taken no time at all for someone to look through it and see there were connections everywhere to lycanthropy, even if he himself had been blind to it for so long.

“... Park? Mister Park?” Jimin jumps, lifting his tired eyes to meet Dumbledore’s concerned ones. The man continues once he’s got Jimin’s attention. “Surely, you must need something from me, or you wouldn’t appear so…” He doesn’t finish his sentence. He doesn’t need to. Jimin’s aware of the state he’s in -- the dark rings under his eyes, his ruffled clothes and hair, the way he’s holding his books like he needs to protect them with his life. He looks unhinged. He feels unhinged.

Realizing he has absolutely no idea how to approach the subject of a potential werewolf at Hogwarts with the school’s very headmaster, Jimin decides to start by moving toward the chair in front of Dumbledore’s desk.

Maybe I just need to sit down and take a deep breath. That should help--

He doesn’t even make it two steps before one of the many books he’s holding crashes to the floor between them, falling open to the page he’d stuck a pencil in to save his spot. The moon cycle for April of 1978 stares back up at him, and when he flicks his gaze up to peer at Dumbledore, he sees the headmaster’s expression has hardened with caution.

“Professor--”

“Have a seat, Mister Park.” Jimin’s heart lodges in his throat at Dumbledore’s tone, never having heard such a sharp edge to the kind man’s voice. He moves to the chair, setting the obnoxious amount of research haphazardly in his lap. His eyes will only go so far as the top of Dumbledore’s desk, unable to bring himself to meet the man’s eyes.

“Sir, I… need to ask you something.” When he isn’t granted a response, he swallows hard, pushing forward. “If there were to be a student at Hogwarts with a… peculiarity of sorts… how would you go about dealing with that?”

“How would I deal with what, Mister Park?”

“That student.”

“I’m not quite sure I know what you mean.” Jimin lifts his eyes then, confused, but he’s met with a deliberately ignorant smile.

“Sir?” Dumbledore’s smile, albeit strained, only widens.

“I think you may be suffering from a lack of sleep, Mister Park. There are no students at Hogwarts with any peculiarities, as you call it.” Jimin stares suspiciously up at him, knowing Dumbledore can tell that Jimin doesn’t for a second believe that claim. Breaking eye contact, he glances down at his lap, trying to figure out how to keep this conversation going. Trying to figure out why he’s even here.

Jimin looks down at himself and the pile of incriminating evidence, cursing his idiocy when he realizes just how bad this situation must look. A student out of bed way past curfew, barging into the headmaster’s office holding weeks of research and making outrageous claims about a potentially dangerous student. And he’s a Ravenclaw no less.

Shit. He probably thought I was some nosy little fucker trying to expose her and get her expelled.

Knowing that he’s risking a lot by being straightforward, he takes a single deep breath and meets Dumbledore’s eyes, his own filled with determination.

“Sir, I know about Y/n Y/l/n, and I know you do, too. I need to know how to take care of her. I need to know how to help her. I need you to tell me what to do because, to be honest with you, I’m freaking out.” The way Dumbledore’s examining him as he speaks tells Jimin that he’s right, but more importantly, it tells Jimin that Dumbledore hadn’t been expecting him to want to help.

“That is a very serious accusation you’re making, Mister Park, especially in this political climate. Very serious.” Jimin doesn’t waver when he responds.

“I know, sir. That’s why you’re the only one I’ve made it to. Because I need your help. Because I know you can help.” Dumbledore narrows his eyes, peering at Jimin over the tops of his half-moon spectacles.

“Have you considered the fact that just you knowing this information at all has placed Miss Y/l/n in more danger than she’s already in?” As soon as the words leave Dumbledore’s mouth, Jimin’s heart is stopping in his chest. All the times that Hoseok and Jungkook had told him to mind his business come rushing back, and he feels himself becoming sick to his stomach. Of course it’s more dangerous for her now that he knows -- he’d been too selfish to even think it through, too nosy for his own good. He had done all this to try to understand her, to try to be a better friend who can help when she needs it, but it’s all bullshit. Everything he thought he had done for her sake had actually been for his. For him and his stupid curiosity.

Lifting his head as a thought comes to mind, Jimin doesn’t even think twice before speaking.

“Can you erase my memories?” The headmaster’s eyebrows fly to his hairline, his expression becoming amused as Jimin continues rambling. “Can’t you obliviate me or something? Wouldn’t that be the best way for me to help her? Wait… but do you have to erase everything I know about her -- will I still know her? Can you make sure I still know her? I really like her! I don’t like Hoseok or Jungkook very much -- they kind of scare me -- but I like her! I don’t want to forget her, but also if me knowing that she’s a werewolf is only going to cause her more trouble, then I really think you should make me forget--” Dumbledore lifts his hand calmly, effectively silencing a frantic Jimin.

“Have you always had such a one-track mind, Mister Park?” Jimin smiles weakly, offering a half-joking response.

“It’s my only redeeming Ravenclaw quality…” Dumbledore chuckles before scratching at his forehead with a heavy sigh.

“Unfortunately -- and I do truly mean that -- I cannot erase a student’s memories. So, you and I will need to continue this difficult conversation.” Jimin considers the man’s words, knowing that it really would be better for everyone if he had his mind wiped clean and hating that he’d unknowingly put Y/n even more in harm’s way. He looks up when Dumbledore sighs again.

“Mister Park, you do understand that you are strictly forbidden from informing anyone else of this situation, yes?” When Jimin nods immediately, opening his mouth to assure the man that he wouldn’t say a word, Dumbledore only shakes his head. “No, Mister Park, I’m not sure you really understand. This situation is infinitely more complicated than you could ever imagine, so it is absolutely imperative that you keep this information to yourself.” Jimin blinks, unsure what’s meant by ‘infinitely more complicated’, but he nods again.

“I’ve put her in enough danger just by being here, Sir -- I’m not breathing a word of this to anyone.” Dumbledore examines him a moment longer, essentially staring into Jimin’s soul to gauge his trustworthiness. Eventually he nods, leaning back in his chair.

“What advice would you like me to give you, Mister Park?” Jimin stays silent, thinking hard about any way that he can make Y/n’s life easier, especially after all the trouble he’s caused up to now. His mind flashes back to the conversation he’d overheard in the library. He opens his mouth slowly, choosing his words with care.

“Sir… how does a student that isn’t even taking Potions know how to brew the wolfsbane potion? Isn’t it nearly impossible?” Jimin sees Dumbledore’s eyes flicker with recognition, and the headmaster responds cautiously.

“…If that student isn’t taking any kind of Potions course at all, they’d need to already be an expert from having dedicated all their studies to the art of potionmaking. They would also need an immense amount of private mentoring, even if they are taking Potions. We do not teach the wolfsbane potion in the curriculum. As I’m sure you can imagine, it wouldn’t fare well in these times…” Jimin squints, putting the pieces together quickly in his mind.

“And where would a student like that find this kind of… private mentoring?” The headmaster hums at Jimin’s question, peering down at him with knowing eyes.

“Well, Mister Park, if you wish to receive mentoring on much… safer forms of potionmaking, I’m sure Professor Slughorn would be happy to help you. However, if you are asking me about Mister Jung Hoseok of Slytherin House, and if you are wondering just how he became capable of caring for Miss Y/l/n at the young age of 13, well… you’re looking at his mentor.”

--

When Jimin leaves Dumbledore’s office almost an hour later, he feels like his head is going to explode. The nights of sleeplessness seem to also have come rushing back to him at once, and he’s not sure if he’s going to collapse first from the exhaustion or from the weight of everything he knows now. For a moment, he considers that maybe he really should ask someone to erase his memories -- Jungkook or Hoseok, perhaps.

Yeah, I’m sure they’d absolutely love to do me that favor.

Dragging his feet as he trudges down the corridor in the direction of Ravenclaw tower, Jimin stops short at a window when movement down by the Black Lake catches his eye. Almost as if thinking about them has caused them to materialize before him, Jimin watches the silhouette of Jung Hoseok stroll casually down by the shoreline, followed not long after by Jeon Jungkook racing toward him, a body perched precariously on his back. It’s not hard to see that Y/n’s clinging weakly to him as he runs, her arms wrapped around his shoulders as he keeps his hands hooked under her knees. Jimin can see that she’s got a gown on from the Hospital Wing, and it’s obvious that Jungkook and Hoseok have snuck her out from under Madam Pomfrey’s stern supervision.

They head for the Forbidden Forest, Y/n reaching back for Hoseok when Jungkook passes him. She beckons him forward, and Jimin watches as the three of them disappear together into the trees. He sighs deeply when he can no longer see them, muttering to himself under his breath as he makes his way to his room, overcome with extreme guilt at the entire situation.

“You’ve really gone and done it now, you fucking idiot.”

[drabblesforsanguine]

Letting Go - Oneshot

Summary: Miraak lets go of the past and looks towards his future.

Pairing: Miraak/f!LDB

Warnings: fluff, flirting, light angst, brief descriptions of ptsd, mentions of violence, possible thalassophobia triggers

Word Count: 1879

Prompt: none

A/N: this is the first oneshot I've ever posted on this site, so pls be gentle lol. Also I'm on mobile, so sorry about any spelling/grammatical errors. Find me on ao3 

The only sound to be heard was the soft splash of the oars cutting through the water. No sound of waves crashing against the shore or the cry of seagulls, for even they didn't fly out this far.

If he squinted hard enough, Miraak could just barely make out the rocky outline of the northern coast far behind the Last Dragonborn.

The midday sky above was overcast and the ocean breeze was bitter. More than once he'd seen her shiver from a particularly harsh gale only to pretend that she didn't. A storm was brewing on the sea behind him, though with luck it would be many hours before it reached them.

"Not much further, now." Her eyes were fixed on the dark waves as she spoke.

"You've been saying that for the past hour." He grumbled, his arms starting to feel sore from this seemingly endless amount of rowing.

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, a faint teasing smirk on her lips.

"Well, this time I mean it."

His gaze flickered down to the wooden chest resting by her feet, his curiosity still piqued as to its contents and purpose for being here.

He'd asked about it at the beginning of their voyage, among many other questions, but of course she'd just shrugged him off like she always does and said he'd find out once they were far out at sea. Well, they were far out enough.

He stopped rowing and fixed her with a hard stare.

"I'm not rowing another inch until you tell me what we're doing out here."

She finally turned and faced him fully, one of her dark eyebrows arched upwards. With a dead serious look in her eyes, she spoke.

"Isn't it obvious? I'm going to kill you, lock your corpse in this chest and dump it in the sea."

He blinked at her once, twice.

"Is it impossible for you not to act like a child all the time?"

She rolled her eyes then, with a sigh, she leaned over the chest and lifted the lid. Miraak peered inside with curiosity. His eyes narrowed at what he saw.

"Are those..."

"The Black Books, yes." She said, wrapping her arms around herself as another breeze rolled by.

True to her word, inside the confines of the chest were all seven of Hermaeus Mora's forbidden tomes, each individually wrapped in animal skins and tightly bound with rope.

"He will not be happy if we do this." Miraak cautioned after a short pause, his eyes still fixed on the evil books before him.

The books that had brought him nothing but suffering. Just looking at them made him feel... uneasy, for lack of a better word. It was the same feeling he always had in Apocrypha: alone, yet constantly under watch by an unseen entity.

She just shrugged nonchalantly. "He's not exactly thrilled with me anyways."

He stared at her, his brows pinched together. "Why?"

For a moment she appeared confused. "For starters, I shot him with Auriels bow, temporarily destroyed his plane of Oblivion and stole his favorite champion?"

He rolled his eyes and huffed out a breath. "No. I mean, why are you doing this?" He gestured towards the chest to make his meaning clear.

"Oh," she mumbled, suddenly avoiding eye contact with him. When she finally focused back on him, it was with a seriousness he'd rarely seen from her before.

"These books have brought us nothing but misery -- you most of all." He winced involuntarily at her words, but she continued. "Maybe doing this will give you- us, some closure. If not, then at least it'll piss Hermaeus Mora off, which is good enough for me."

He scoffed, "He is probably laughing at us as we speak, you know."

"Yeah. Well, he can choke on his own tentacles for all I care. Now, are you gonna keep rowing or what?" She asked, feigning irritation as she shut the lid of the chest.

He rolled his eyes but seeing as she revealed why they were there, he stayed true to his word and continued pushing the boat further out to sea.

"You are too eager to defy the Daedra." He admonished lightheartedly.

She shrugged, "We defeated him once. We can do it again."

He gave no response, though there were many things he wanted to say. Most notably that she was naive to think they could defeat a Daedric Prince twice. They'd merely gotten lucky the first time. He wanted to say that, but he didn't.

After a brief silence, she spoke again.

"How long has it been now?"

"Nine months, 14 days." He answered without skipping a beat.

"How time flies," she mused. "It feels like only yesterday that I was nursing you back from the brink of death."

"Don't remind me."

She smirked at his sour tone.

"Come on, I wasn't that bad of a caretaker."

Again, he didn't respond.

Miraak would much rather forget those first few weeks after he was freed from Apocrypha -- after she freed him from Apocrypha -- when he was so weak and ill that he couldn't even walk by himself, and he was forced to rely on the Dovahkiin's good will to help him.

He hated feeling so powerless. So vulnerable.

He'd learned from an young age how to take care of himself, but all those years trapped in Oblivion made him forget. For a long time it pained him to admit how much he needed her in the beginning, to help him remember how to be human. It wasn't quite as painful to admit now, but he'd still rather not be reminded of it.

"Is it such a bad thing to let others take care of you from time to time?" She asked, as if reading his thoughts.

"In my time, relying too much on others was a good way to get yourself killed."

"You're not in that time anymore."

She looked at him with a sincerity that made his insides ache. He almost couldn't stand it -- these feelings she aroused in him.

He looked down at the chest again, just so he didn't have to bear that look anymore.

"This should be far enough." She said suddenly.

Miraak stopped rowing and secured the oars in place. He watched curiously as she reached into her satchel laying on the bench beside her and withdrew an iron padlock. She paused for a split second before reaching out towards him with the padlock.

With little hesitation on his part, he took it from her open palm, his fingers lightly grazing against her skin. He saw goosebumps raise on her arm as he withdrew his fingers, but chalked it up to the cold. For a Nord, she didn't handle the cold very well.

His hands felt heavier than usual as he reached forward and snapped the lock shut around the latch, sealing the chest.

When he looked up at her, there was a hint of relief in her eyes. Like a huge weight had already been lifted from her shoulders. He felt it too.

"Ready?"

He nodded, unwavering.

They both stood carefully as to not tip the small rowboat over, each grabbing one side of the chest, and leveraged it precariously on the boats edge. Kneeling side by side, they shared one last look of determination then, after a deep breath, they pushed the chest overboard. Together they peered over the edge and watched it sink into the dark water below. With all luck, it will remain lost to the depths of the Sea of Ghosts forever.

Then they waited.

A minute passed, two minutes. For what felt like forever they remained there, holding their breaths as they stared into the icy water. Nothing ever happened. No mass of angry, slimy tentacles appeared over them, threatening to disembowel them for desecrating his precious tomes.

When it finally felt safe to do so, they each exhaled their long held breaths. Relief finally settled in his bones.

She spoke after another significant pause, if only to break the ice.

"When I 'won' the Oghma Infinium, the first thing I did with it was drop it into the sea. At least now it's wretched cousins can keep it company."

"Mora will not let this go unpunished. Sooner or later he will have his revenge." He hated that his voice wavered ever so slightly. He was never one to show fear. He could feel it, yes, but he certainly never showed it.

If she noticed, she gave no indication.

"Yes, he will," she said, her tone not lacking in surety. "And when he does, we will face him together."

Then she turned towards him, a faint smile on her face. His stomach nearly jumped out of his throat when her hand slowly slid over to rest atop of his own. Strangely though, he didn't move away. He should've moved away, but he found that he didn't want to.

Even before he'd been imprisoned for thousands of years, Miraak had gone out of his way to avoid intimacy. It was nothing but a weakness to be used against him. After being completely devoid of the touch of others for so long, he'd forgotten how nice it could feel.

Seeming to act on a will of it's own, his hand turned upwards and sought her own significantly smaller one. Her ice cold skin immediately warmed at his touch.

"Together." He repeated with a nod.

Her smile grew a little bit brighter, her cheeks turning a faint pink. It was only due to the cold air, or so he told himself.

"But until then," he continued, "let's get somewhere warm. You're freezing out here."

She gave his hand a little squeeze before pulling away, much to his disappointment. He tried not to let it show, but the way her smirk grew even more told him he was not as stoic as he thought.

His disappointment quickly faded, however, as he watched her take a seat on the bench he'd previously occupied. Still smiling, she crossed one leg over the other and pat the empty space next to her.

"Yes, let's go home."

Home. She'd never called it that before. It was always 'my house' or 'the house', but never 'home'.

Struggling to contain his own smile, he sat down next to her and started unfastening the oars. Before he could react, she scooted closer to him and huddled against his side, digging her hands into his robes for warmth.

She was shivering worse than he'd realized.

He wrapped one of his arms around her to grab the other oar. She angled her body in a way that allowed him to row while still being close enough to absorb his warmth. With a tranquil sigh, she rested her cheek on his chest, the peek of her head stopping just below his chin.

He tried to tell himself she was just cold, but he knew better. He'd always known better.

It was in that moment, with his ferocious little Dragonborn cuddled against his body for warmth, he realized that she was his home, and to his surprise, that wasn't such a scary thought.

For the first time in a long time, he had something worth holding onto and he never planned on letting go.

[grimwalked]

Open//for Belos muses

He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be doing this... But how else was he going to find more information? He’d already looked through all the books in the castles library and even went through the forbidden stacks of several of the towns libraries, but he couldn’t find anything of what he was looking for...

So now he’s here, standing outside the emperor’s personal library. Only the most restricted of information was accessible solely by Belos. If that fact alone wasn’t enough to keep the boy away, the enchantment on the door’s lock should have made him turn back.

However, in reading so many books on wild magic he picked up things here and there, including how to bypass heavily enchanted locks. From a pouch on his hip he pulled out his palisman that quietly transformed into his staff form.

Hunter took a deep breath and drew a small golden spell circle in front of the lock. There was a loud click and he stashed Rascal away before trying the door. The knob turned easily, the large door creaked softly as he opened it. No one was inside... Good.

Quickly he hurried it, softly closing the door behind him. It wasn’t a large room but there were still several book shelves filled to the brim with tomes and grimoires. It would take him some time to look through them, but he hoped he’d find something quickly. He wasn’t sure how long he would have until his uncle came back here.

Hunter sifts through books, skimming their contents, trying to find anything talking about wild magic. One looked promising and he starts to flip through the pages, trying to glean what he can from it.

A noise catches his attention and he shuts the book, clutching it to his chest as he spins around to face the door.

“U-Uncle! I-I-” the boy stammers out, his heart hammering in his chest as he looks up at the older man. He has no explanation. He can’t talk his way out of this.

[boyslaughplus]

2nd Brassica Bonus Short Story

We spontaneously wanted to do something nice for April Fools this year but ended up posting this story days later on our Blog. Now we resurrect our Tumblr by posting this here as well. Have fun reading this cute story from when Hans hasn’t turned into a flirt yet, and was still a teen! (oﾐﾟﾛﾟﾐ)o

On the first day of the fourth month, almost a full decade ago, the rulers of all kingdoms allied with Auxtome convened to discuss and negotiate matters that were of little interest to a certain adolescent princess named Avril. Matters like infrastructure, trade agreements, and other things that made her yawn just at the thought.

Within Poisson, her country, the princess was quite famous for being energetic and mischievous, rather fitting with the deep red color of her hair. But no one minded because she was also aware of her duties and never failed to fulfill them. Still, full days of economic discussions were just about last on the list of things Avril wanted to spend her time with.

Thankfully, her parents were the ones attending the conference. She only accompanied them to make her debut among all the young royals that would be at the palace. And while that too had its downsides as far as she was concerned, the prospect of spending two weeks in Auxtome and meeting new, possibly interesting people still left her excited.

Their carriage was passing through Auxtome’s capital, its streets adorned with flowers and decorated festively to welcome the esteemed guests from all around the continent. Even as her mother spoke to her, Avril could hardly tear her eyes from the window.

“The conference begins right after we arrive, but the crown prince of this land, Prince Hans, has volunteered to give all young royals a tour of the palace. He is about your age. I trust you will dress… appropriately for the occasion?”

Avril had no need to look at her mother to recognize the look she was giving her, and the meaning it was meant to convey.

“Of course mother, I have brought garments suitable for every occasion,” she replied.

“Good,” her mother acknowledged, pleased, and turned back to her husband now that they were nearing the palace grounds.

Avril smiled to herself. An entire day without her parents or retainers promised to be delightful. And she had a plan to make the most of all the possibilities that were already racing through her mind.

Atop the foyer stairs of his family’s palace, Prince Hans was waiting for his guests long before the first one arrived; his posture sublime and his smile well practiced. At only 13 summers he was quite young to be given such an important duty, but he had long established himself as reliable and well-versed in social affairs. Next to him stood his half-brother, Lorens, a few years younger and much more prone to show it. Hans didn’t dislike him per se, but it was always exhausting to have him near during official business. Or when he wanted some quiet. To his relief, he would only stay through the greeting.

All around the room were attendants to aid the guests and lead them to their quarters before escorting the princes and princesses back once the tour was set to begin.

“Could you quit your fidgeting?” Hans asked his half-brother as he glanced to the side. “You’re representing our family today, just what would our guests think of us if they saw you right now?”

Lorens sighed deeply and tried his best to copy Hans’ demeanor.

“But no one’s here yet. It’s tiring to stand still for so long.”

“Practice makes perfect,” Hans replied sternly. “You’ll learn to endure before long.”

Before long unfortunately only described how long it took for Lorens to forget his discipline again. But Hans was used to this.

As the first guests arrived, Hans stepped down the stairs for the greeting and raised his charm to the max. Lorens remained in his shadow, politely participating in the greeting but drawing little attention. Although he didn’t show it, Hans felt quite relieved.

The guests were so plentiful that even the astute crown prince had trouble remembering all their faces and names immediately, but he knew there would be a second greeting once all the young royals assembled for the palace tour, and the coming days left enough time to memorize all the names of their parents.

And thus, the time for the tour quickly arrived!

About a dozen young royals now gathered in the foyer, from nearly just as many kingdoms; one of them from the kingdom of Radix and another, the youngest prince hailing from Theotherkingdom. Although Hans couldn’t seem to remember his name, or face, no matter how hard he tried.

The last royal to introduce themselves was one with hair as deeply red as cherries, who was dressed in clothes so dashing that even Hans felt a hint of jealousy.

“I am Avril of Poisson. Pleased to make your acquaintance, everyone.”

“Likewise, Prince Avril. Thank you for joining us today,” Hans smoothly replied and proceeded to announce the schedule for the day.

Unbeknownst to him, Avril smiled to herself that her deception was a success. Everyone seemed to share Prince Hans’ impression that she was a prince—a boy—and while she felt no desire to be one for more than a few hours, Avril was quite thrilled to spend the day as the other princes’ equal and not a potential future bride.

With the introduction out of the way, Hans lost no time to begin the tour, leading the group of royals past every notable part of the palace. As such, it went on for quite a while!

As he talked about his home and its long history, Hans couldn’t hide his pride. He made sure not to ramble, still there was no shortage of anecdotes coming from the young prince. Most of his guests seemed quite captivated. But Avril felt her boredom reach critical mass.

“And here we have our palace’s library,” Hans continued, elegantly gesturing towards it, ever unaware of the princess’s disinterest. “No other library in the entire kingdom, maybe even the world, has such an extensive collection of magic tomes. Some of them are so rare and powerful, that they are locked within a separate chamber.”

For the first time since the tour started, Avril’s ears perked up.

“Not even I am allowed to enter it, but rest assured, the rest of the library is still as exciting as it is stunning.”

The tour continued and Hans led everyone past the royal family’s private chambers, through luxuriant halls filled to the brim with paintings of all the noble figures of Auxtome’s history, and many more attractions until they reached one of the larger banquet halls the palace housed. Prince Hans turned to his guests, an unwavering smile still on his face.

“Now then, I’m sure all this walking on top of your travels has left you with quite an appetite. Our chefs have prepared all of our kingdom’s finest specialties, so eat to your heart’s content. If there is anything you need, our attendants will be right at your service.”

As he wrapped up the tour and exchanged some more pleasantries with a few of the other royals, Hans looked around to make sure that everything was in order.

The first thing he noticed was the absence of his half-brother. He had been sure Lorens would have joined again by the time food was served. Not least of all because Lorens’ mother probably urged him to build connections with the other kingdoms’ royals.

And then Hans realized that a certain red-haired prince was missing as well.

Politely excusing himself from the conversation, Hans beckoned his personal attendant over.

“Say, have you seen Prince Avril?” he whispered so no one else would hear.

“No, my lord. By the time we reached the banquet hall, he was already gone.”

Just for a second, Hans furrowed his brow.

“And you thought not to inform me of this? We have to find him immediately!”

The attendant apologetically bowed, but Hans was already rushing towards the door, slowing down halfway as he realized the others might notice something was wrong if he didn’t.

His pace quickened again as soon as he was out of sight. As he backtracked the path they took to the hall, Hans looked around, growing tenser by the second. If something had happened, it would be his responsibility.

A commotion near the library finally drew his attention. Most of all, a voice he knew well.

“Lorens? What is going on here?” Hans asked as he saw the younger prince standing inside the library, shaking, surrounded by a group of tense looking guards.

Lorens’ face lit up as he saw the other.

“Brother! You need to stop them!”

Hans shot a questioning glance towards the guard closest to him who gulped, before stumbling over his words.

“M-my Lord, it is not how it looks. We heard a sound within the forbidden section of the library and came looking for an intruder, only to find that one tome is missing.”

He hesitated, glancing over to his fellow guards who were suddenly immensely captivated by the floor.

“A-and Prince Lorens right next to where it should have been.”

Hans sighed and slowly turned to his brother, raising a brow.

“I didn’t take it!” Lorens protested, immediately understanding the unspoken question.

“You heard him,” Hans said to the guard, primarily out of a sense of obligation. “You don’t intend to question the word of a prince, do you?”

“O-of course not!” replied the guard. “We never suspected Prince Lorens, but we still have to inform the king and queen of the missing book and his trespassing.”

Now it dawned on Hans what his half-brother wanted him to stop. Once more he turned to Lorens, who he’d never seen with such a pleading look on his face. For a moment Hans thought about what he would say. Then he turned back to the guard.

“I shall give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you mean to fulfill your duty, but all such a report will accomplish is that it draws attention to the fact that someone could steal one of our most prized artifacts from right under your noses. You’ll be lucky if you just lose your jobs.”

The guards flinched.

“But what should we do then, my Lord? Hiding the theft would surely be worse!”

“Isn’t that obvious? Search for the thieves! Who knows how far they might have gotten during all this time you wasted here.”

“Y-yes! Of course!”

The guards frantically spread out to search the area, leaving the princes on their own.

“Thank you, brother! I knew you would help me,” Lorens chirped.

“It was nothing. Had you been more confident, you could have solved this on your own; don’t forget that you are a prince!”

The younger prince’s enthusiasm dampened a little, but he nodded in understanding.

“So what were you doing in the forbidden part of the library?” Hans asked, his suspicion that Lorens might have taken the book not entirely quelled.

“I just… I wanted to learn. I’m not making any progress with my magic training.” Lorens quietly replied, a pout forming on his face. “The books there are about powerful magic, right?”

“They are. But that’s hardly where you should look for knowledge if you are struggling with the basics. Now let’s get you out of here.”

Hans didn’t wait for a reply before turning around and walking out of the library.

Lorens only hesitated for a moment, still he had to run to catch up with his brother.

“Wait, where are we going?” he asked, slightly out of breath.

“Your room. If there’s a criminal on the loose, you shouldn’t stroll around the castle on your own.”

The young prince stopped in his tracks, visibly displeased at the notion of having to remain in his room for a yet undetermined amount of time, but he continued to follow without complaints.

Once his half-brother was within his chambers, Hans turned back to the door only to be held up by a hesitant voice.

“What about you?” Lorens asked.

“I’ll have to take care of our guests until the situation is resolved.”

“That’s not fair, I want to help, too!” the younger prince protested.

Hans looked at the other, giving him as much of a sympathetic smile as he could muster.

“You’ll help me by staying out of trouble.”

“Okay…” Lorens relented.

Back in the hallway, Hans gestured the guards to lock the door to Lorens’ private quarters.

While it hadn’t been a lie that Hans worried about his half-brother being on his own while an intruder roamed the palace, it was only true in the case that Lorens himself wasn’t the thief. Locking him in for the time being was sure to avoid further problems in either case. Hans was quite pleased with his pragmatic decision. But the issue of the vanished Prince Avril still weighed on his mind, so Hans hurried back to the banquet hall. In the best case, Avril had joined the others by now. And even if not, Hans couldn’t stay away for too long or it would reflect badly on his hospitality.

Prince Hans did his best to appear more composed than he felt as he strode through the doors into the hall. The other royals seemed to enjoy the buffet, and there were no signs that anyone had caught wind of the commotion at the library.

Stifling a sigh of relief, Hans joined in with the crowd just to be seen, hoping his brief absence hadn’t been noticed by too many. He had barely finished a first round through the room when something red caught his attention from the corner of his eye.

Avril was back.

Making sure to appear unfazed, Hans approached her.

“Prince Avril, we haven’t had the pleasure of conversing since our greeting. I hope the tour was to your liking?”

Avril smiled at him, a hint of mischief in her eyes, but Hans didn’t seem to notice.

“Oh yes, it was quite long, but your palace is impressive indeed.”

Hans relaxed at her words, sure she would have said something if her brief absence would have been due to unpleasant reasons.

“The library especially,” Avril added, looking into Hans’ eyes just a little too deeply, a knowing grin on her face.

Confusion overcame the prince. Was Avril insinuating that she saw what happened there? Or might she be the culprit?

“That’s true, the library is among my favorites as well,” Prince Hans said, for the first time struggling to keep up his smile. “Would you like to visit it again? Maybe pick up a book or two?”

Hans failed to hide the silent accusation within his questions, leaving Avril visibly amused.

“Why, that sounds wonderful. Another book would certainly do no harm.”

Now Hans was sure that she was toying with him, but without proof he could not accuse her so lightly.

“Great, just give me a moment, then we can leave.”

Hans gracefully stepped on a small stage near the buffet, usually used for musicians, and it didn’t take long until all royals in the room had their eyes on him.

“My esteemed guests, I hope the food was to your liking. From now until dinner, you are free to spend your time however you like. You can return to your quarters or enjoy some recreation at one of the many facilities you have seen today. If there is anything on your mind, do not hesitate to approach me or the attendants that will be serving you for the duration of your stay.”

As soon as it was socially acceptable for Hans to leave, he returned to Avril, who he had never let out of his vision.

“Well then, shall we go?” he asked, his smile more forced than usual.

The walk towards the library was tense. Should Hans be mistaken, an accusation of this scale would surely cause heavy repercussions not just for him but potentially their standing with Poisson as well. If he was right though…

They passed Lorens’ quarters, and a thought made Hans stop in his tracks. Did his half-brother maybe see Avril in the library? Was he not the thief but a witness, perhaps?

“My apologies, I just remembered that I have to ask my brother about something. It will only take a second.”

Tensely, Hans made the guards unlock the door and stepped into the room. But the prince he was looking for was nowhere to be seen.

“Lorens?” Hans called out as he looked around the room. “Now is not the time to play tricks, I need to speak with you!”

Avril followed him into the room and promptly walked towards the bed.

“Hey, what’s that?” she asked, holding up an old-looking book and feigning ignorance.

Hans paled on the spot. It was a tome he had never seen before. Surely the one that was stolen!

His mind was racing. So was Lorens the culprit after all? Did he escape somehow after realizing that Hans still suspected him? But then why was the book still here…

The grin on Avril’s face ultimately told Hans the truth.

“It was you, wasn’t it?!” he let slip more bluntly than he had ever spoken to another and immediately covered his mouth in panic.

Avril simply laughed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she teased and started flipping through the book.

“Stop that! What have you done with Lorens?”

Hans slowly regained his confidence now that he was sure he found the thief, but her casual demeanor still confused him deeply.

“Nothing. I just took pity on the poor boy. Locked away by his own brother, it was quite heartbreaking to watch.”

“Half-brother. And this room is certainly not a prison!”

Avril closed the book and stepped closer to Hans.

“You're right, breaking him out wasn’t even difficult.”

Hans gasped at the ease with which Avril admitted breaking into a prince’s quarters and taking him away.

“Where have you taken him? What do you want? Money? Is this a scheme to gain the upper hand in the negotiations?”

Avril’s smile briefly faded before she burst into laughter.

“Why are you always so serious? No wonder the tour was duller than Poisson’s tundras. I just want to have some fun!”

Hans blinked in confusion.

“Fun? This is a game to you? Stealing an ancient artifact and abducting a prince are grave matters!”

Avril sighed theatrically and tossed the book over to Hans, who clumsily caught it before checking frantically if it was undamaged.

“Relax. I never meant to keep it, and your brother is just fine. He even went with me voluntarily.”

“Of course he did,” Hans cursed under his breath but felt some relief that Avril seemed to harbor no malicious intent. Her actions caused him a major headache nonetheless.

“Well, fine. I’d be willing to let all this be bygones if you just tell me where he is.”

Disappointment showed on Avril’s face.

“What? But it just got interesting…”

She fidgeted a little, clearly reluctant to say anything more. Hans remained stern.

“Alright, I give in,” she eventually said. “He’s at the top of the eastern watchtower.”

“Atop the—” Hans blurted out, unbelieving, but quickly found his composure again. “That is absurd. You would have never managed to take him there in such a short amount of time.”

A hint of a smile reappeared on Avril’s face.

“Are you sure? I also broke into the forbidden part of the library and this room with no one noticing. I’m quite skilled~”

Hans opened his mouth to retort, but paused. Avril was right, she had already done what he believed to be impossible. At least a chance that Lorens was really in the tower existed.

“Fine, but you’ll come with me. I won’t let you out of my sight again until this is resolved!”

A broad grin spread across Avril’s face.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Prince Hans did his best not to complain as they ascended the stairs of the eastern watchtower. Not just because it took them minutes and climbing stairs wasn’t exactly his favorite pastime, but because Avril kept whistling a cheerful song. Drifting slightly off-key every other bar, and he could tell it was on purpose.

Two flights below the top, he lost his patience.

“Is it your goal to torment me, Prince Avril, or is there a deeper meaning in this noise I just can’t see?”

“Prince Hans, how could you insinuate such a thing!” Avril replied, acting playfully hurt. “I simply like the echo within this tower. And the face you make when you’re trying to hide your annoyance~”

Hans paused and turned to Avril.

“What face?” he asked, genuinely unsure.

“This one,” Avril said cheerfully. “The fake smile you just barely manage to keep up. Unless someone looks you in the eyes for too long, or notices that it’s just a facade, or maybe both, and—”

“Enough!” Hans shouted—his face bright red—and turned away. “I don’t know what I did to you to deserve this, but please cease this mockery.”

For once Avril stayed quiet and the two of them silently continued their climb. Shortly before they reached the top, she softly spoke up.

“There is no deeper meaning. And I’m not trying to torment you. I simply thought you could benefit from loosening up a little.”

“Loosen up?” Hans asked unbelieving. “I’m the crown prince of this land, such a luxury isn’t within my grasp.”

“See, that’s why you’re so boring,” Avril said and passed Hans, who had stopped on the stairs. “Being the crown prince is all the more reason to let loose any chance you get. As long as you fulfill your duties, no one can even get mad at you.”

“And just what would you understand of—” Hans began to retort as he followed Avril up the stairs, but then they reached the top of the tower.

Which was utterly empty?

“You lied to me!” Hans complained as he stomped up the last few steps. “Lorens was never here, was he?!”

“How mean! I think I just misremembered. Maybe he was in the western watchtower?”

For just a second Hans contemplated the possibility, but he had given the red-haired royal the benefit of the doubt too many times already.

“Oh no, I won’t believe another word you say! You sent me on a wild goose chase for nothing but your own enjoyment.”

“I think a wild goose would be much harder to catch than that docile little brother of yours,” Avril replied matter-of-factly.

Prince Hans stared at her for a moment, overflowing with a powerful mixture of anger, annoyance, and a few other emotions he had trouble deciphering this very second.

“You… I… gah!”

Without another word, he stormed off as Avril burst into laughter behind him.

He could hear her follow down behind him not long after, and even as he sped up, she suddenly appeared right next to him.

“Wait up, where are you going?”

“Downstairs,” Hans grumbled, not keen to be roped into yet another of her pranks.

“Aw, but you didn’t even take in the view, it’s quite stunning.”

“I know, I live here.”

Avril fell back a few steps as she noticed his disdain, but she wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Maybe I overdid it a little. How about I tell you if you’re getting closer to your brother’s location to make up for it?”

Hans quietly contemplated her suggestion. Of course it could be another ploy to make him run in circles. Still, maybe Avril really was remorseful and if he had to search the entire palace anyway…

“Very well, my prince. But if I sense so much as the hint of a lie, I’ll inform our parents of your misdeeds today.”

Avril promptly picked up pace and caught up to him.

“That won’t happen, promise!”

Hans wasn’t entirely sure if it was the first time he had seen the other royal smile without any kind of mischief in mind or if he just hadn’t seen her smile so up close, but he felt a lightness in his stomach that he had trouble rationalizing.

He couldn’t like her; not like that. Especially because she was a boy! Or so he thought. It was quite the confusing situation for the young prince.

The two of them had soon searched the entire eastern half of the palace. Avril did little but nudging the other prince into a different direction when he appeared to be stuck, but she thoroughly enjoyed their unconventional game of hide and seek. Hans on the other hand grew ever more flustered to spend so much time alone with the red-haired prince. His mind was racing, trying to come up with explanations for the surge of new feelings he experienced while they were in close proximity.

As time went on, his searching became less and less thorough, eventually just boiling down to a question of “Is he around here?” that was always answered with a simple “No.”

When he grew tired, Hans sat down in one of the palace’s lounges and Avril slouched down next to him with posture so unbecoming of a royal, it was almost offensive to Hans. As if out of reflex, he straightened his own to be even more perfect.

“Say, are you sure you’re not a peasant who just happened to sneak into this tour?”

Avril looked shocked, or maybe just surprised, but she heartily laughed before replying.

“So your silver tongue does have some edge to it. If I pester you a little more, do you think you might permanently lose that stick up your a—”

Hans jumped up, a distraught look on his face.

“Prince Avril, don’t utter such a vulgar word within this palace!”

“So if we go outside, it would be okay?” she asked, amused.

“Well, I mean…”

As many other times this day, Hans was at a loss for words. He still wasn’t used to this feeling. No one else had ever made him feel like he wasn’t in control, and the more it happened, the more unsure he was if he truly despised it.

He took a deep breath.

“I don’t know? Get your a-ass outside and try it if you want.”

The deep blush that appeared on Hans’ face was about as amusing to Avril as the words that caused it, but most of all she enjoyed watching him lose the need to always be proper. Some might call her a bad influence, but she truly believed she was doing him a favor. And herself. Because her day had become significantly more enjoyable since coaxing the crown prince out of his shell.

“Shouldn’t we find your brother first?”

Hans’ expression darkened slightly.

“We’ve already searched almost the entire palace, and all remaining rooms are off limits. Besides, what need do you have for finding him? You know exactly where he is!”

Avril feigned mulling over his words.

“Off limits? Just which rooms might you be talking about?”

A realization dawned on Hans, and he didn’t like it one bit.

“Oh no, you didn’t,” he whispered sharply before storming out of the room, his destination more than clear.

“Did what?” Avril asked innocently as she jogged up to him.

“Don’t act like you don’t know, you’ve hidden him in my personal quarters, haven’t you? The one place no one but me and a select few servants are allowed to enter!”

Avril chuckled.

“If you put it like that, it makes me want to go there all the more~”

Without another word, Hans hurried to his room. The guards were still in place, and normally he wouldn’t have believed that anyone could get past them, but as he stepped inside he saw… Lorens. Lying on Hans’ most luxurious carpet surrounded by a pile of his magic books.

“Brother!” Lorens happily exclaimed on reflex before his expression turned sullen. “You found me.”

“Of course I have! But what were you thinking, hiding in my quarters?”

“Prince Avril told me to. He said he’d let me look through the stolen book if you didn’t find me.”

Upon hearing this explanation, Hans shot an angry glare towards Avril, who sheepishly smiled back at him.

“You should know better than to take part in such foolish ploys! Don’t you realize that he simply used you; made you complicit in his crimes?”

“No offense,” he added towards Avril before questioning just who he was angry at.

“I’m sorry,” Lorens grumbled and got up from the pile of books. “I just want to become a better mage. Like you.”

The words got stuck in Hans’ throat, but he had no chance to reply anyway, as Avril stepped in.

“Aw, you can’t get angry at him, can you? He just wants to be more like his big brother!”

“W-well, there are better ways to go about that,” Hans deflected, still flustered.

“Why don’t you teach him? You even have that special book with you.”

Just then Hans realized he was still clutching the book Avril stole from the library. He went through multiple stages of panic that others might now think he was the thief before concluding that no one else in the palace would even know what the book looked like.

“It is not yet my place to teach,” Hans said sternly.

Avril now joined Lorens to put on her best puppy eyes.

“Aw, please, just a little. I wanna see some magic, too.”

It took quite a bit of begging, but eventually the two of them wore Hans down.

“Okay, fine! But I’ll just go over the basics. We need to return the book before my parents hear of its absence.”

A celebratory cheer went through Hans’ chambers and its perpetrators expectantly sat down on the chaise longue. Hans began reciting what his magic instructor taught him years ago, much to Avril’s disappointment who had expected a much more hands-on presentation.

“In essence, the core of magic is to manifest a will, and turn it into reality. Our world, however, does not allow its balance to be upset. Anything you gain will be taken away in equal measure. Estimating these risks is the greatest skill a mage can have.”

The only one still captivated by Hans’ lecture at that point was Lorens. But even his enthusiasm dampened when the words sank in.

“Wait, no matter what you do, there will be downsides to your spells?” he asked, for the first time grasping this most basic concept their magic entailed.

“Indeed, though not all consequences are negative per se.”

The younger prince seemed to think for a moment, only to get up, suddenly looking rather bored.

“Hm, I’m not sure if I want to be a mage then. I’m gonna get some food.”

And with that, he was gone. Hans stared at the door, both caught off guard and somehow unsurprised that his half-brother would be so quick to give up for such a half-hearted reason.

Avril stifled a laugh but spoke no further of Lorens’ sudden departure.

“What a fool,” Hans mumbled to himself. “But maybe I’m the fool for expecting any different.”

“Well, to be honest, you didn’t exactly make magic sound exciting,” Avril said and promptly yawned. “Can’t you just show off a spell or two? That’d be much more fun than all that boring theory!”

Hans sighed and began returning all the books that were strewn around the room back to the shelf Lorens took them from.

“There are no spells, like you’d find them in fairy tales. The technique is always the same, just the will you manifest differs. Of course, the difficulty increases the more complex said will is, but—”

“Then show me that!” Avril interrupted him, her excitement rekindled. “Do you think I could learn it, too?”

Hans hesitated as he looked at Avril, who stood so close to him he thought he could feel the warmth of her smile. He averted his gaze, a soft blush on his face.

“W-well, if you have talent, it might very well be possible.”

The crown prince proceeded to explain the basic technique he spoke of and showed her an application of it that had no significant downsides: making a piece of paper float through the air. Upon completion of the spell, it would simply fall to the ground where it would remain for as long as it floated previously.

As simple as it was, Avril was delighted. Hans even made it fly in ornate patterns, which made her want to try it all the more. For a while that was all the two did, Avril concentrating on her will and the piece of paper she meant to free from gravity’s effect, while Hans observed, correcting her form and giving advice from time to time.

“There! I think it just moved!” Avril exclaimed excitedly, but what little distance the paper may have floated upwards became nothing again right that instant.

“Don’t let up your focus. A half-manifested will harbors unpredictable dangers!” Hans said, still deep in his instructor role.

They continued for a short while longer, but Avril could not repeat her earlier success.

“This is harder than I thought…” she grumbled as she sank down to take a break.

“Don’t fret, most magic novices need at least a month before they first see any kind of success,” Hans tried to comfort her. “Still, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we really need to return the book! Dinner is only an hour away.”

“Alright, alright, just give me the book and I’ll put it back.”

Avril got up again to reach for the stolen tome, but Hans quickly grabbed it.

“Oh no, I’ll go with you. I won’t leave you on your own with this book again!”

“I can’t break into the library if I have to take you with me,” she retorted slightly irked that he still didn’t trust her. Though she couldn’t fault him either…

“Why not? How have you broken in, anyway?”

“Duh, I climbed in through the window,” Avril replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

At first Hans thought she was joking. But as she quietly looked on, it dawned on him she spoke the truth.

“Through the window?! Do you know how far up we are?”

Now it was Avril’s turn to look at him in disbelief.

“Yes? But if you don’t lock your windows, that’s still the easiest way inside.”

“Well, I will not risk my neck by clambering up the palace walls! We’ll have to sneak in through the door.”

“Fine, but don’t blame me if we get caught,” Avril relented and took Hans by the hand to lead him out of the room. Hans hardly managed to form even a single coherent thought until she let go again.

By the time they reached the library, most guards that Hans had sent to search for the thief had returned to their positions. They didn’t think twice about Hans entering the room or even about the book he was carrying, but going through the door to the forbidden section would be another story.

Hans led Avril to a part of the library where they were on their own to think of a plan.

“And if I try to distract them?” she suggested.

“That won’t work. They’re more alert than usual, so at least some would remain at the door.”

“Then I’m out of ideas. Why don’t you just use magic?”

By now Hans knew Avril well enough to realize she wasn’t joking, but the idea still seemed absurd to him.

“Magic? I may as well stab a knife into my leg right here and now. Who knows what may happen if I just willed this book back to its rightful place.”

Avril shrugged.

“I didn’t say to teleport it back, we could just turn ourselves invisible and walk right past the guards.”

Prince Hans drew breath to object, but as he thought about it, he had to admit that the idea wasn’t half-bad. He cleared his throat as he composed himself again and calmly replied.

“Very well, I still don’t like the risk, but we may as well try.”

He had never attempted to turn invisible before, but it shouldn’t pose any more problems than another form of transmutation. As he began to put a spell on them, Avril joined in, following through with what she had learned earlier. Whether it actually helped was hard to discern, but soon they were invisible! Even to each other.

“It worked!” Hans exclaimed, unable to hide his excitement at the success. “But I can’t see you, Prince Avril. M-may I hold your hand again? Just… to know where you are?”

He half expected her to laugh, but instead he felt her hand reaching out to him. The prince clumsily took it, and the two made their way to the door of the forbidden part of the library.

Hans’ heart was pounding as they sneaked past the guards, not just because of stress. To his relief, the spell held up, and they made it inside with no problem. Avril lead him to the shelf she had stolen the book from, and Hans quietly returned it.

“That wasn’t so difficult now, was it?” she whispered.

“N-no,” Hans replied, ever conscious of her hand in his. “Now let’s return before we’re visible again.”

No longer than it took to go back, were they invisible, and Hans let out a sigh of relief as they reappeared. Avril let go of his hand, and as disappointed as he was, he felt quite glad too because his own had started to become rather clammy.

“That was fun!” Avril said with her usual carefree smile that no longer irritated Hans.

“Indeed, it was,” he admitted truthfully. He couldn’t remember when last he felt so free of his princely burdens. “Now shall we get ready for dinner? I feel rather peckish.”

To that Avril agreed quite readily, and for the first time in hours, they parted ways to each go to their quarters.

For once, Hans wasn’t the first to arrive. It took him quite a while to pick out his outfit, since he wanted to impress. More than usual. He was only apart from Avril for a short while, but it made him realize something that had crept up on him the entire day. He felt drawn to this prince. Like he had never felt before. And even at the risk of sullying his reputation as a perfect crown prince, he wanted to confess to him just what he felt.

The hall was already filled with many royals, even more than earlier that day, since even the adults were present now. As he looked around hopefully, he couldn’t find who he was looking for. His heart ached a little as he strolled across the room, turning his head towards anything red he spotted. But it was never the prince he longed to see.

Just as he began to doubt if Avril was even there, he felt a gently tap on his shoulder. His hope renewed, he spun around and saw… a girl. In a dress more beautiful than he had ever seen. A girl with deep red hair and a smile he would never mistake for someone else's.

“P-prince… Avril?” he hesitantly asked.

“Princess. But otherwise, yes,” she said cheerfully.

Hans still couldn’t believe his eyes.

“B-but, earlier you were—”

“Wearing more practical clothes. It’s not that easy to climb in a dress, and I didn’t want all the princes to approach me during the tour.”

Prince Hans nervously swallowed. Just as he accepted having fallen in love with a boy, Avril sprung yet another surprise on him! But his feelings hadn’t changed. Unlike his assumptions of who he felt attracted to.

“So… have you no interest in being approached at all?” Hans asked and blushed further as he realized how transparent his question was.

Avril raised a brow but still appeared cheerful.

“What, you’ve seen me in a dress for just a minute and already feel the need to confess to me?”

“N-no! That need was there even before!” Hans blurted out and quickly looked around if anyone had overheard.

Avril laughed warmly.

“So it wasn’t my imagination then. I suppose I don’t mind if it’s you who expresses interest~”

The relief Prince Hans felt was immense. He once again composed himself and looked at Avril, who suddenly seemed even prettier than before. Hans could hardly tear his eyes from her. So much so that…

“Oh no,” he whispered as he realized. “Our spell from the library… I’m afraid it’s recoil just began.”

All across the room, the royals turned their heads to the stunning young couple. Even besides being good looking under normal circumstances, now they weren’t just visible, they were hyper-visible. No one in their vicinity could look away from them without considerable effort!

“My, then we better look deserving of all this attention,” Avril said, not fazed in the slightest, and linked her arm with that of Hans.

At first the prince felt a little self-conscious under everyone’s stares. But as the evening progressed, he rather relished them. Before long, the magic induced stares had faded but the two of them were still more than eye-catching.

“Why did you play all these tricks on me?” Hans asked when quiet had fallen over them for a short while.

“Hmm,” Avril replied thoughtfully. “You were just there. And I was curious if there was more to you than that boring, perfect prince you always try to look like.”

Hans appreciated her straightforwardness, but was a little disappointed that was all there was to it.

“I already told you, I have to act that way since I am the crown prince.”

“No, you don’t. I’m the crown princess of Poisson, and I’m doing just fine.”

Prince Hans gasped.

“You are what? And no one admonishes you for your mischief? Or your manners? Even dressing as a prince to fool other royals?”

The princess laughed once more, and the sound filled Hans with warmth.

“When you put it like that it sounds pretty bad, but I promise I can act the part when I have to! In fact, I work all the harder to fulfill my role if it means I can afford such freedoms in return,” she said and brushed a strand of hair out of her face, almost looking bashful for once. “You should try it too, all the pressure is easier to deal with if you allow yourself to just be free sometimes.”

Her words resonated deeply with Hans. It seemed like such a simple truth, but also one that is easy to overlook.

“I will,” he replied and took her hand into his. “If you show me how, I’ll gladly follow.”

[raendown]

For the @madatobiweek prompts generation swap au and fairytale au. 

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 9590 Rated: T+ Summary: Tobirama doesn't have much in life, just a younger brother to protect and a job that doesn't pay enough to feed them. He knows that hunting in the king's forest is forbidden but for Hashirama he would risk everything. In the forest he finds meat to put on the table for the last living member of his family.

And in the forest he finds a tower, a boy imprisoned, and a future he could have never dreamed of.

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I Never Asked For My Pedestal 

If one asked the local authorities they would say that Tobirama had no good intentions in the forest that day. Hunting in the royal forests was expressly forbidden, an edict passed with no explanation only a year or two after Tobirama was born, but for the families as poor as his there was often little choice but to take that risk. It was the thought of seeing his younger brother going hungry that drove him in to the trees week after week in search of a meal he could not legally afford on his own. 

Once Tobirama had been the third son of four, had reveled in the guiding love of his older siblings, happily joined in the doting when another was born and he wasn’t the youngest anymore. Then sickness had swept through their village and while the lords and ladies locked themselves away safely in the castle Kawarama and Itama, his two beloved elder siblings, took themselves away to die quietly in the forest where they would not infect the others. And from that day Tobirama was left with nothing but his own two hands to work and feed his baby brother Hashirama. 

Like so many other days in the years since they had been alone, Tobirama’s job working for one of the local farmers couldn’t quite pay enough to feed them both. Hashirama, wonderful smiling Hashirama, was an innocent young lad who lived with his head constantly lost in daydreams and greeted his brother at the end of each day with a hug and a hundred questions. Were they situated anywhere else he would have been forced to find work himself no matter Tobirama’s urges to baby him but with the forest behind them and the guards growing lax in their patrols it had become almost routine to find dinner through other means. 

Not, of course, that such conditions had ever convinced him to grow inattentive himself. 

Tobirama was only moments from loosing an arrow to take down a buck which would have kept them well fed for several weeks when he heard the sound of hooves. He cursed himself for a fool as he lowered his arms and cast about for somewhere to take cover. It made sense to hunt in a different place each time he came here. Even a skilled woodsman like himself left some traces of his passing and traversing the same paths over and over could only make it easier for someone to catch him in his lawbreaking. But he should have known better than to come here so far beyond the woods and fields that he’d spent the last decade mapping out in his mind. This area was largely unknown to him. Promises of new and unsuspecting game had drawn him farther from home; now he was paying the price for answering that siren call as he realized that he’d forgotten in his hunger to scout an escape route first. 

Desperate for any way to return safely to his brother at the end of the day, Tobirama leapt for the first place he saw that looked as though it could conceal his over-average height. The boulder was tall, if not very wide, and the small pocket of space behind it could really only be seen if one walked right up to the cliff it sat at the base of. With his heart in his throat he threw himself behind the rock. 

He was immediately forced to bite his tongue to keep from crying out in surprise when he fell through the screen of ivy he’d thought was covering solid stone. 

As soon as he figured out which way was up Tobirama did what he could to resettle the ivy so it hung still, less evidence of his presence. Then he turned to stare down the cavernous emptiness of what looked to be a passageway carved through the mountain. Since there really were only two options, forwards or back out in to the open, he hurried on in to the darkness. It wasn’t entirely dark, actually, some kind of light was clear at the other end, but with the ivy blocking out any light from this end made the passageway feel twice as long as he was forced to feel each step out before setting his weight down. Even using such caution he nearly rolled his ankle several times. 

By the time he reached the other end Tobirama was close to cursing out loud. His eyes had only just finished adjusting to the darkness when he finally stepped out in to the light again, squinting with his chin tucked down to make the readjustment easier. When it felt less like tiny knives digging in to his eyeballs he gave a few experimental blinks then raised his chin.

Only to drop his jaw and let it hang loose as he took in the sight before him. 

What he had taken as a pathway underneath the mountain was in fact the entrance to a hidden oasis in the very center, a field hidden on all sides by the cliff that Tobirama had always believed to be just one solid peak. Crystal blue water sparkled in a small lake, untouched grass grew lush and green, yet all he could see was the massive white stone tower that rose from the very center of the clearing. So tall it would have been visible from the outside with only a few more feet, the structure was made entirely of pale granulite and stood alone with no other buildings nearby. At the base he could see where there had once been an entrance but it had since filled in with stones and boulders. Who, he wondered, would build such a graceful monument to loneliness only to seal it up in such a manner? 

He very much intended to find out. The bricks were pretty but their cut looked rough and uneven, perfect for a man in good fitness to scale his way to the top. He had only just shifted his weight to step forward when movement caught his attention and sent him scrambling back in to the safety of the dark passage. 

Not a moment too soon, it turned out. As he watched, a woman stood from where she had been crouched next to the lake, hair white as his own and a sweeping robe to match blending in with the shine of sunlight on water. Her face was severe enough to make him grateful he hadn’t accidentally caught her attention but instead was able to observe from afar the way she floated across the field and stopped at the base of the white tower. There she tilted her head back to look up at the very top. 

“Madara,” she called, a melodic voice that for some reason turned his stomach. “Let down your hair.” 

Before he could wonder what the hell that even meant Tobirama bore witness to the single most baffling sight he had ever seen. A face came to the window high up in the sealed tower, man or woman he couldn’t tell from this distance, and struggled to lift something over the wooden sill. Then coil upon coil of hair the color of the darkest night came spilling down, down, down until the very end of the impossibly massive braid jerked to the end of its length just an inch or so before it would have brushed the ground. Seemingly unimpressed with this incredible phenomenon, the woman took hold of the braid with both hands and called out above once more. Then she was rising in to the sky as ostensibly whoever had thrown her the pseudo rope was now reeling it all back up as well with her weight added on. 

Tobirama waited but neither the woman nor the other figure appeared at the window again and before long he realized that he didn’t truly want either of them to catch him there where he was so clearly not supposed to be. And besides that he had a brother waiting at home with an empty belly. None of this was any of his business. With one last long glance at this new mystery Tobirama told himself to forget what he had seen and turned to head back in to the forest, hoping against hope that whoever had sent him scurrying in to the unknown had moved on as well. 

He did what he could to put the oasis and its wonders out of his mind in the days that followed. Seeing the light in his brother’s eyes when he came home with the deer he’d finally managed to take down was enough to keep him content for a day or so but the morning beyond that he found his thoughts wandering. Who was that at the top of the tower? How did they come to be in such a place? With the bottom sealed up it was obvious that the figure with such fantastically long hair would have no way down. Tobirama couldn’t help but wonder if they had chosen to shut themselves away from the world or if that sickeningly beautiful face were perhaps more sinister even than he’d first imagined. 

There was only one way to find out. 

For nearly a week he managed to resist before the pull of the unknown drew him in just the same as the thick tomes he studied in the public library whenever he had a chance. Strictly speaking it would be at least a few more weeks until he needed to hunt again; after salting and curing most of the prime cuts they could rely on venison whenever there wasn’t money for other foods. But the mountains in the distance called to him, whispering the secrets that only he knew of, and Tobirama could only resist for so long before he found himself asking Hashirama to be safe while he was gone and heading in to the trees once more. 

It felt strange to traverse these fields and forests with no bow upon his back, although he supposed that it was nice not to worry for once about leaving tracks. There was nothing illegal about walking in the King’s woods. Without the need for his usual caution he was able to make the journey in about half the time it might have taken him on any other day, the sun barely at its zenith by the time he crested a small hill and began to look around for the sheet of vine concealing the entrance he’d fallen through before. 

Were he any less alert his future might have gone very differently from that moment – or perhaps been deleted entirely. Only his sharp reflexes sent him whirling behind the closest tree when he spotted a flash of white from the corner of one eye. He was out of sight not a moment too soon as the woman he had seen calling up to the tower emerged from the hidden passageway and set off through the forest with a rather annoyed looking expression. In one hand she carried an empty basket that Tobirama would have bet his last penny she intended to fill by either foraging through the woods or making the journey in to the village. Whatever the case, she would likely be gone for several hours. 

Oh how the fates had smiled upon him. Now was the perfect time to sate his curiosity. Feeling almost gleeful for his good luck, Tobirama forced himself to remain still for several minutes past when the woman was out of sight just to be sure and then dashed towards the ivy. In his enthusiasm he very nearly forgot to step carefully along the dark uneven ground but there was at least no one around to watch him wobble and stumble as he hurried along until finally he was stepping back in to the bright midday sun. Somehow the massive white tower was only more impressive at a second glance yet he wasted very little time in admiration, moving forwards until he had reached the base where stones and mortar sealed what would have been the easiest way in. After a quick circuit around the whole thing he concluded that his first guess had been correct. He would have to climb.

Luckily he had come prepared for just such an activity. He stomped both feet to settle them in his sturdiest shoes and shook his hands out to loosen the muscles, wary of a cramp at just the wrong time. Then he paused the moment he laid his hands on the rough hewn bricks. Head tilting back, eyes squinting above, Tobirama considered the call he had heard before. 

There was no one here, he reasoned with himself again. If he looked a fool then there was no one to carry the tale of it. With that in mind he cleared his throat and firmly reminded his voice that now was not the time for nervous cracks. 

“Madara,” he called loudly in a false soprano, “let down your hair!” 

Even as he winced at how terrible his impression had been there came a movement at the window above. Then suddenly coil upon coil of midnight hair came tumbling down towards him only to snap taut just before the ground. For a moment he could only stare. It was hard to believe that had actually worked. Then he paused a moment longer to wonder if his weight might hurt the scalp on the other end of this incredible length. Only when the pseudo rope gave an impatient ripple did he suck in a deep breath, reach out with both hands, and begin to scale the tower at a much quicker pace than he’d been expecting to. 

With his feet walking up the side to keep him straight and arms strong from years of hard labor Tobirama was scrambling over a wooden windowsill almost in no time, taking in the petulant figure several feet away, hair anchored and knotted around a hook so as not to pull on his head and arms crossed over his chest while he pouted towards the floor. 

“You sound like you swallowed a frog,” the man growled. “What’s the matter, hit yourself with one of your own curses, witch?” 

Tobirama could only stare, unsure of what to say. In a word the man was gorgeous. Skin china pale without the sun’s rays, broad shoulders thick with muscles from dragging around the weight of so much hair, and a face with almost delicate features that still somehow screamed of masculinity. He was a masterpiece. When his pout deepened the expression only served to make him look more adorable in the sort of way that made Tobirama’s heart flutter traitorously in his chest.

“Cat got your tongue? Or maybe it finally shriveled up and fell out from all the acid lies you spit.” 

Such antagonism could only mean that his residence here was not a happy one, though it still remained to be seen whether or not he was being held against his will. Clearly he wasn’t the biggest fan of the woman he was expecting to come up to him. 

“Real mature, giving me the silent treatment. Didn’t you just leave? Thought I’d have the whole afternoon without your evil stench. I hope you didn’t come all the way back up just because you forgot something, I could have thrown it down. At your head.” With a snort and a faintly vicious smirk as he presumably imagined throwing something at the woman’s head, at last the strange man looked up – then gasped and attempted to reel backwards with fright in his eyes. “Who–!?” Before he could even finish his startled exclamation the anchored hair jerked him to a stop and he froze in place, trembling from head to toe. 

“I apologize, I did not mean to frighten you,” Tobirama murmured. His voice, if possible, seemed to startle the man even further. 

“You’re not the witch! You’re…like me. A boy!”

Considering he was well in to his second decade Tobirama gave some thought to correcting that. He was a man, not so much of a boy anymore. Now was hardly the time for semantics, though, so he let that go in favor of inching a single step forward just to test the waters. When the other man trembled again he angled his body to make it as clear as possible that he was heading towards the hook built in to the floor. 

“My name is Tobirama,” he said as non-threateningly as he could. “What’s yours?” He already knew that, of course, obvious from the words that gained him entry to this tower. It was just polite to ask really. 

“None of your business!” 

“I see.” He hadn’t really expected politeness in return. 

The closer he got the more worried the man looked until with carefully projected movements he bent down and freed the massive braid from the hook trapping its owner in place. As soon as he was free the man scrambled backwards, though Tobirama noted that the worry was colored now with a sort of curiosity he knew all too well.

“What do you want from me?” 

“Nothing,” Tobirama admitted truthfully. “I stumbled upon this place a few days ago and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. There was a woman – is that the one you call a witch? – she called for you to let down your hair and I wanted to know what sort of person could have such impossible locks. They’re impressive. What’s your name? You know mine, it’s only polite to share.” 

For a moment the man hesitated. Then he asked very quietly, “Is it? I wouldn’t know. Will you do anything bad with my name?” 

“Anything bad?” Tobirama repeated, baffled. 

“Well I don’t know! I’ve never met anyone else before!” 

“Never!?” 

Sticking out his bottom lip in another pout only brought this fascinating stranger back to be cute. “I’ve spent my whole life here in the tower. Well, I suppose I wasn’t born here. That old hag certainly isn’t my mother but she did explain to me once how babies are made so I suppose I must have been somewhere else once.” He considered his very first visitor with deep gravity. “My name is Madara.” 

It was a good name, strong, the sort of name that wouldn’t be common in the lower classes. For whatever reason it sounded almost familiar but Tobirama couldn’t quite put his finger on why and he was hardly going to waste his time digging through memories just now. Trying to remember the manners classes he’d taken as a youth from a friendly neighbor, a poor imitation of the gentrification proper noblemen were raised with just in case he somehow encountered one of the royal family, he tucked in one arm and spread the other wide in a clumsy bow. 

“Your acquaintance is my pleasure to make,” he said. The words felt too large and fancy in his mouth and halfway through the sentence he realized he’d said it all wrong. Madara didn’t seem to mind. 

“What now?” 

“How do you mean?”

“You said you wanted to know who was up here and now you do. So what will you do next?” The straightening of his spine spelled confidence but the way he reached out to take a solid grip on his heavy braid just in case was more obvious than he probably thought. Someone who spent all their time away from other people probably hadn’t had many lessons in being sneaky. 

For the first time Tobirama allowed his eyes to slide away from the figure he’d gone to so much effort to meet, gazing around the room to take in all he could. Basic furniture and sparse entertainment options made the place look even more like a prison than the sealed exit at the bottom. He noted there seemed to be no exit from here either. However one was meant to travel down the tower when it was built, the way appeared to have been cleverly hidden from view now. For Madara there truly was no way out. He could have climbed his own hair, of course, but doing so would have left him stranded at the bottom with no one to unhook him from the anchor. 

All of this combined with the way he spoke of ‘the witch’ left Tobirama with only one choice, a stupid choice, a choice that would surely put him in to danger. 

“I could take you away from here,” he said. Phrasing it like a suggestion felt safer for the psyche of a man who had never left his prison but in his heart he knew that he couldn’t leave Madara to his fate, not now that he knew of the situation. Stolen away as a child so young he remembered nothing but the tower that caged him? It might not be Tobirama’s responsibility but he would never sleep again if he walked away now. 

Clearly Madara was not well versed in the art of kindness judging by the startled look on his face. Not a big surprise there. 

“A-away?” he asked.

“You’re clearly not here of your own free will. I intend to come back and, if you wish, free you from this place.” 

“Free…” Brows furrowed, Madara worried at the loops of his makeshift weapon. “Isn’t it…isn’t it terribly dangerous outside of the tower? When I was young I used to plan how I would run away from here but I never did – and lucky for that! The world is so dangerous! All of my books have stories to tell about bandits and people with bad magic; there’s just too many people who would try to steal me away!” 

Tobirama cocked his head to the side. “I assume you believe they would steal you for the same reason the witch keeps you here, whatever that may be?”

He almost regretted his words immediately as Madara's eyes narrowed in suspicion. It only became obvious that the man had slowly begun to relax when he tensed up again at the idea of giving away what must be some sort of secret. Knowing he needed to tread carefully if he wanted to build any sort of trust, Tobirama very carefully did not react to that expression and did his best to give the impression he wasn’t interested himself in this secret. 

“I believe I can keep you safe from anyone who might want to hurt you,” he declared instead. He might not have been the most refined peasant but his skill with a blade could rival that of the royal guards themselves. Or so he’d been told him once by an uncle who served in the palace until an injury left him unable to carry the buckets for cleaning or fetch the arrows for lords too lazy to walk across a field and fetch their own. Unless they encountered a magician of some sort he truly was confident he could protect this man. And since the only magician he’d ever seen round these parts was the wizened old woman who performed tricks for the court the odds felt pretty low on that happening.

“What’s it like?” Madara asked. “The world?” 

“Very big. Full of different things. Scary at times but if you use your head you can usually think your way out of things.” That was how he’d gotten through life, anyway. 

“That sounds terrifying and wonderful all at once.”

Clearly he was considering it but it was just as clear from the wary hesitation in his eyes that Madara had no intentions of following through on the offer. After spending his entire life locked in the same tiny space Tobirama couldn’t really blame him for that, either. He would have been frustrated if he hadn’t already expected that answer, planning ahead in his mind for when he could make the trip out here again. 

“I can ask as many times as it takes for you to be brave,” he promised. 

 A promise rashly made but it was one that he kept. Though he could not stay for long that day Tobirama was in the woods and calling for Madara to let down his hair only a few days after. Hashirama, the understanding brother that he was, simply waved from the doorway and told him to enjoy whichever adventure had captured his attention so. 

Their visits were all quite the same at first. Before he left the first time Tobirama instructed Madara to hang something in the window whenever the witch was gone so he would know it was safe to call up. Each time he scaled the tower and crawled over the sill Tobirama then happily spent however many hours he could spare answering all of Madara's questions about the outside world, asking his own questions in turn about life here alone. He was pleasantly surprised to know that his new friend had been provided books on mathematics and spent quite a lot of his time rereading the few novels he was allowed to have. Stifled as it was by isolation, it was obvious Madara possessed a mind just waiting to flourish. 

Watching confidence grow in his friend week by week was a special sort of joy that Tobirama would almost liken to how it had felt to raise Hashirama on his own – except he’d never been struck by the beauty of Hashirama's face in a beam of sunlight or listened rapturously to the rolling timber of his brother’s voice.

Falling in love was, perhaps, not of his smartest ideas. Of all the people he might have taken an interest in Madara was the most dangerous. Not because he thought the younger man could hurt him but because at the moment he was the only person who had ever been kind to Madara and it would only be too easy for such affections to be misplaced. The last thing he wanted would be to take advantage of someone who had put so much trust in him. 

With caution in mind Tobirama came back to Madara knowing that he himself was growing only more and more attached with each visit yet also knowing that he could not in good conscience abandon anyone stuck in this situation no matter how it all ended. There was no doubt in his mind that eventually it would be his own heart that came away with a wound but to know that Madara would find a better life than the one he had so far led, well, he couldn’t say that didn’t make this all worth it. Even if he had despised Madara to the bone he would still have come back to help. No one deserved to be kept locked away and never feel the kiss of freedom. 

Even destitute as they were, Tobirama appreciated the freedoms he and his brother enjoyed now more than ever. 

It took until the first time that Madara very nearly worked up the courage to follow him out of the tower for the man to trust him with the secret of his servitude. For all the many times they had spoken for hours upon end it had been difficult for Tobirama to bottle his curiosity, to allow such a sensitive subject to come to light on its own, and his patience was rewarded at last on the day Madara hung his feet out the window and stared at the ground so far below them. 

“How would you get down?” he asked as though it had only just occurred to him. Their plan had been for Tobirama to remain behind and free the long hair from its anchor once the other had reached the bottom. 

“Don’t worry about me,” Tobirama soothed him. “When I first came upon the tower I had planned to climb up with just my hands. I’m sure I could just as easily climb down.” 

“All that way!?” 

“It isn’t so far. When I’m out on a hunt I’ve scaled cliffs twice that height with half as many good handholds.” 

Trusting Madara with the knowledge that most of his food came from illegal poaching in the royal forest had been an easy choice. Not because he doubted the man would ever truly work up the nerve to escape but because he believed in the seeds of loyalty that grew and flourished with every day their friendship strengthened. 

“You know…I used to dream about the world when I was younger, about making some daring escape on my own. I would have done it back then for sure. Too innocent, too ignorant of all the darkness that’s out there. But even if I had known about bandits and knights and all the ways I could hurt myself without anyone there to help, the one thing that held me back was…myself.” Madara reached up to play with the shorter hairs growing around his face. “She stole me for the power that I was born with and I hate her but she’s never tried to hurt me as long as I stay. What if I ran and got caught again by someone who didn’t treat me as well?” 

“Keeping you locked in a tower doesn’t really strike me as treating you well,” Tobirama murmured under his breath. When Madara flashed him a grin he knew he’d been heard. 

“Of course that’s the part that you would comment on. You’re a good person. From what I know of people, anyway.” 

As careful as he had ever been, Tobirama took a step forward to bring them closer. “In what way?”

“Don’t play coy, we both know you’re curious as hell about why that witch keeps me here. I mentioned flat out that I have some kind of power and you still don’t ask. You’re always so careful about making me feel safe.” Madara's lips twisted in a wry expression as though acknowledging his own vulnerabilities.

“Your secrets cannot be my own unless you choose to entrust me with them.” There was really no point in denying that he was curious but even as he realized that he hadn’t been quite as subtle as he imagined Tobirama hoped to impress that he had no intentions of forcing anything the other didn’t want to tell him. He had learned a long time ago that trust was something earned, not asked for. 

His efforts were clearly appreciated. Swinging back from the window, Madara set his feet on the floor and smiled warmly. The expression suited him probably more than he’d ever been told. 

“I trust you with my life,” he declared. 

“Poor taste,” Tobirama couldn’t help but tease. He smiled to himself when Madara roared with laughter. 

“Maybe. But they’re my secrets and I’ll give them to whoever I please, so there!” 

Just hearing those words sent the heart in Tobirama’s chest galloping double time and he couldn’t stop himself from leaning forward on to the balls of his feet as the mystery he had turned over in his mind a thousand times unfurled itself before him. 

“You might have noticed that my hair is just a little long,” Madara began with a touch of sarcasm. “She won’t let me cut it. I don’t know how or why, she’s never bothered to explain, but my hair has some kind of magical properties – healing properties – and the longer it is the more potent the magic becomes. If I cut it short I would be able to heal small cuts and scrapes. With it long as it is now the power is so strong that my healing reverses the signs of aging.”

“Sweet flame…”

“It’s why she keeps me trapped here. She might look young but that witch is ancient, old enough to be my great grandmother. But with the power I have in me she can stay young and beautiful. Or at least she thinks she’s beautiful.” He snorted in obvious disagreement. 

Completely unsure of how to respond, all Tobirama could think to say was, “She’s not my type.” 

Madara blinked. Blinked again. Then his head tilted back and once again he roared with unfettered laughter. It was far from attractive, brash and quite similar to the bray of a donkey, and Tobirama admitted with the solemn taste of defeat on his tongue that he had never been more in love. It was a laugh that had never been taught shame or self-consciousness, beautiful in its innocence. 

“Good to know that you have no plans to use me as bait,” Madara declared when he was able to draw breath again.

“Setting aside the vomit I can feel rising in my throat at the very thought, I would never use someone in such a deceitful manner.” Reaching up to tug at a lock of his own hair, Tobirama eyed the dark braid so long it could loop several times around the entire room. “So. Magic hair. I really should have been expecting that and yet somehow I was not.”

“I guess it’s nice to be the one with new and interesting information for once.” 

The two of them shared a look and from that moment on something very subtle changed between them. 

Meat had never been so plentiful in their home as the days now with Tobirama making the journey through the forest every chance he had between working for the farmer who paid him so little. It didn’t occur to him how deeply he’d buried his head in the clouds until Hashirama greeted him home one night and asked with a grin if he would ever get to meet the one who had captured his aniki’s heart. Tobirama had made a point of holding off on another visit the next day just to spend some time with his sibling. Sweet Hashirama was such a good little brother. It was hard to believe he had ever done anything to deserve a love like the one they shared. 

Over the months that followed Madara very nearly followed him away from the tower on three different occasions. Though he never quite made it past his own balcony Tobirama could see the way his gaze lingered on the snow drifts with curiosity and wonder, how he traced the shapes of spring with naked longing in dark eyes. 

“What’s really holding you back?” he asked one day when he had stayed perhaps a little later than he usually would have.

“Her,” Madara whispered. “I want to leave and never come back but…what if she follows? What if she finds me?” He paused and looked away with something like pain etched in to his features. “What if she hurts you? After everything you’ve done for me I can’t imagine repaying your kindness by leading her straight to you.”

“I can protect myself,” Tobirama reminded his friend, daring to step close enough for their arms to brush together. Small touches were all he ever allowed himself. 

The minutes passed but he held his silence, allowing the other to follow whatever paths his thoughts had led him down. When their eyes met again he was surprised to see that all gravity had faded and instead a mischievous grin was looking back at him. 

“Can you protect yourself from this?” Madara demanded, both hands raised as though to give a solid shove. 

He was frozen halfway through the motion by a voice calling out from below. 

“Madara, let down your hair!” Both of them looked at each other in panic even as Madara slid off the windowsill and moved towards the anchor on muscle memory alone. 

“She’s supposed to be gone for hours!” he hissed. “What do we do?”

“Don’t keep her waiting. Keep her attention away from the window once she’s up here so that I can slip out. I’ve told you before I can climb down on my own, don’t worry.” Tobirama make shooing motions with both hands to hurry the other along. Only when Madara finally leaned down to begin looping the end of his hair around the metal ring did Tobirama turn and madly search for a place to hide. 

There wasn’t much, even less that was close enough to the window that he could sneak out undetected. For once in his life he cursed his own tall stature as he discarded a standing mirror that would have been perfect were it not two heads shorter than him and too thin to crouch behind. To the other side of the window there lay a sizable storage chest he might have fit in but the noise he would have made climbing out vetoed that option even before he checked whether there was enough room inside. A frantic noise from behind sent Tobirama scrambling in to the only viable hiding spot he was able to see. 

Usually it was children who hid themselves behind the drapery and thought themselves concealed. He could only pray that the witch didn’t think to look down at her own feet lest she spy his. 

Forcing himself to keep still as he listened to the sounds of the witch he’d heard so much about clambering in to the dungeon she had created was probably the hardest thing Tobirama had ever done. Her weight made less noise than the voluminous robes he had once seen her in, silk and satin whispering as they dragged across the wooden frame. Her shadow fell over him and for a single heartbeat he felt the very blood in his veins go cold thinking that she’d seen him. Then it moved away and Madara's voice captured her attention, his only opening.

“You said you’d be gone longer,” his friend snarled. 

“It isn’t for you to wonder at my comings and goings.” Her voice was melodic in the way Tobirama had always imagined an evil witch’s might be, honeyed and soft to draw you in until the frost hidden in her words bit and snapped, striking just at the moment one was foolish enough to trust her. 

“Hmph, I’ll wonder at whatever I please.” 

Praying that his friend wouldn’t go overboard in his attempts to keep drawing attention, Tobirama peeked around the curtain and barely held in a sigh of relief to see that the coast was clear. He wasted no time slipping over to the window and sliding on to it, movements as fast as he dared to make them without allowing his clothing to give him away with their rustling. Madara's eyes flicked over to meet his own in farewell but it was only a moment. As he turned himself around to descend feet first he could hear the other man give vent to a loud grumble. 

“And how many new babies did you kidnap while you were away today? None? Ah, I suppose you stopped and gobbled them up for your lunch then. Is that why you’re back so soon? Too full from your snac-!”

His voice cut off with the ringing sound of a slap and Tobirama went still just out of sight, eyes wide, glaring at the stone between him and the woman he so desperately wished did not exist. 

“Do not forget that I hold your life in my hands,” the woman’s voice hissed, all softness forgotten. “It is only by my mercy that you aren’t chained to the walls with only bread and butter to soothe the aching emptiness in your belly – or would you rather a taste of such a life to remind you of your place?” 

“No,” Madara surrendered. Even without being able to see him anymore Tobirama could hear the defeat in his tone. Fingers clenching against the bricks until they scraped and bled, he clung to the side of the tower and wished death upon the evil within it. Never had he hated another person so much. He wasn’t even sure she truly qualified as a person, barely human in his eyes after all the things he’d heard of her, and that opinion was only solidified as he bent all of his willpower in to convincing himself not to climb back inside and give her a taste of his bloodied fists. 

Only the knowledge that doing so would make things worse for the one he wished to protect held him back. 

“Say my name,” the witch purred. “Go on, answer me properly this time. Would you like a taste of what you truly deserve, my little magic boy?” 

“No, Kaguya-sama.”

“Ah, I do so love the sweet music of obedience when you say my name. Go. Begone to your room. You may count yourself lucky if I see fit to bring you your dinner after such offensive behavior.”

Though he waited Tobirama heard nothing more after the sound of Madara freeing his hair and dragging it all with him to one of the walled off areas that Tobirama had never asked to see. Bedrooms were private places and for someone afforded so little privacy he’d never seen fit to invade Madara's. 

Climbing down was as arduous yet uneventful as he imagined it would be. By the time he reached the bottom his arms were nearly ready to fall off and his fingers had all gone entirely numb. After shaking out his limbs and resting until the sensation came back Tobirama considered whether he should wait a little longer until darkness fell, dark skies offering what little protection they could against wandering eyes that might look out the window at just the wrong time. In the end he decided that it would be just as easy to spot him then as it would now and someone who just returned home was less likely to be gazing out at the world than someone settled in for the evening. His heart hammered in his throat as he took off across the hidden grove like a rabbit fleeing from a wolf’s jaws. 

Hashirama greeted him with a smile when he came home, stumbling through the front door with no memory of his journey back through the woods. Worry replaced his usual cheer as soon as he took in the expression on his brother’s face.

“I’ve just made tea!” he said. “Come, sit! What on earth is wrong?” 

Like a little mother hen the younger man fluttered around their modest kitchen, cups rattling together when he pulled out too many for just the pair of them, lips pursed anxiously until he finally made it back to the table with the promised tea. With all his running around it had probably gone half cold but Tobirama found he didn’t mind. It was nice to be cared for, even in the moments like now when he felt a little guilty about it. He should have been the one taking care of Hashirama as the older sibling. 

“You look like you’ve been summoned before the royal court!” 

“Worse than that.” Tobirama gratefully accepted the tea that slid across the table towards him. “I just came face to face with the urge to take the life of another human being. And I know that I would have felt no guilt for it.” 

“Oh my…” Hashirama swallowed but – bless his soul – there was no judgement on his face. 

Unable to look away from the dark liquid steaming before him, Tobirama drew in a breath and let it back out slowly. “I should have been honest with you a long time ago. Will you listen to my story?” 

“Always. You’re allowed your secrets Anija!” His brother’s voice was so full of love and understanding that it made him ache. “If you trust me with them I would love to hear what you have to say.” When he finally looked up Hashirama was beaming as though to share things between them was a great gift rather than simply the way it should have been from the very start. 

So Tobirama told him the truth about where he had been disappearing to over the past year. He told Hashirama about the young man he had met locked away in a tower, though he did not reveal why. That was not his secret to tell. He described the witch who kept his friend locked away and admitted that he hadn’t the faintest idea of what her true powers really were. When he had said all the words that he could force along his tongue he fell silent and waited to hear the verdict, the opinion, of one who thought so differently than himself. 

He was startled by the hand that reached across to take his own. 

“You love him,” was the first thing his brother said. 

“I don’t know how you do that,” Tobirama murmured. “How you just look at someone and see how they feel even when they don’t say it.” 

“Well of course you never have to say anything, Anija, I always know what’s in your heart!” 

Hashirama squeezed his fingers a little tighter and Tobirama the sensation deep inside his chest. 

“This world does not deserve you, Otouto. I…you’re right. There might be some feelings on my part. But you understand why I can’t say anything to him?” He was both glad and disheartened to see the other nod. 

“Do you have a plan?” Hashirama asked. 

“Yes.” Tobirama chewed his bottom lip with thought. “I knew the moment I heard his story that I wanted to help him escape but of course he’ll need somewhere to go. I want to bring him here. My hunting can keep us all fed and if I’m not traipsing through the forest so often I’ll have time to see about picking up extra work somewhere else. You would like him. And if there’s anyone that would be a good friend for someone in his situation it would be you.” 

“I can’t wait to meet him!” 

Chest spasming with the clenching of his heart, Tobirama bowed his head. “You’re okay with this?” 

“Of course! Goodness, I can’t believe you haven’t spirited him away already and hidden him under your bed!” While Hashirama's mouth turned up with a little giggle Tobirama felt his cheeks grow warm. Just imagining such a scenario had him forcibly moving his thoughts elsewhere. He didn’t want to think about how much he would enjoy Madara in any sort of context concerning his bedroom. Not with his little brother right there.

Knowing that he had Hashirama's blessing was a weight off his chest that he hadn’t acknowledged was even there until it was gone. The two of them had always been close enough that keeping any sort of secret felt wrong no matter what the younger said. Freeing himself of that guilt made each step lighter as he disappeared in to the woods the next time he was able to slip away, mumbling promises to himself under his breath that the next time he entered these trees it would be in search of food and nothing more. 

With his head so lost in thoughts of the future and all the many ways it could play out his trip to the hidden oasis flew by almost without notice. His feet tread along the familiar path on muscle memory alone while he tried to imagine what expression Madara would wear the first time his feet touched grass, how quickly his body would tire when travelling long distances for the first time, what expression he might wear to see the hustle and bustle of a real village after a lifetime of quiet solitude. It was hardly the first time he had fantasized about such things but they had never had such an immediate taste of anticipation before. 

It was only when he had made his way through the passage and looked up to see a familiar blue strip of silk hanging in the window that he realized how lucky he’d been with his timing, how carelessly he had crashed through the forest in his rush to get here. All it would take would be one unexpected meeting with the witch and everything would be ruined. Neither he nor Madara knew where she went during the times she left him alone in the tower but neither truly cared to know. She was gone. That was all that mattered. 

“Madara,” he called up, excitement tight in his voice. “Let down your hair!” 

He only needed to wait half a minute before coil after impossible coil came flowing down to brush the earth, a scant few inches longer than it had been the day he first made this climb. After the amount of times it had been since then Tobirama’s arms were stronger than ever and he pulled himself up the side of the tower with a speed that would have impressed himself but a few months before. 

Full of hope and happiness after speaking with his brother, it felt like nothing less than a cold knife in the heart when Tobirama crawled over the windowsill to be confronted with the sight of a purpling bruise on Madara's cheek. His friend stood tall and proud in the face of his stare, undoubtedly aware of why, refusing to be ashamed of his own situation. It wasn’t the first time Tobirama had seen a mark like that on the other man but it was the first time he’d understood that it wasn’t a result of clumsiness or any sort of accident. Just the sight of it had his blood boiling with rage all over again.

“I know what you’re going to say–” Madara began. Tobirama cut him off. 

“Come with me.”

His words gave the other pause. “Okay, so I didn’t know you were going to say that. I should have, you’ve said it before, but I thought…”

“You don’t need me to tell you that how she treats you is wrong, you’re not stupid.”

“Damn right!”

“Please,” stepping forward, Tobirama dared to be so bold as to take his friend’s hand. “Come with me. My brother has already agreed that you can stay with us. I can show you anything you want to see and teach you anything you want to learn. Come with me. Let me take you away from here.”

To his great surprise Madara did not pull away, only turned his head to look out the window with a familiar distant gaze. He wanted to, that much was obvious, wanted to know what it was to be entirely in control of his own destiny. 

“I would stay with you?” he murmured. 

“For as long as you want to.”

“You don’t think you’d get tired of me pointing out when you’re being a boor?” Madara's grin was sharp and yet so very fragile, steel encasing glass so ready to shatter. 

“I could never tire of you in any way,” Tobirama admitted. It was perhaps a bit too honest but if it got him the results he’d been trying to achieve for an entire year then it was worth the pain of laying his heart bare. Madara's freedom was worth everything he had to give and more. 

Much to his pleasure he was not met with disgust or dismay or even the sort of hesitance that comes before rejection. Instead he was blessed with the sight of a warm pink spreading over Madara's pale cheeks, chin ducking in to his wide collar almost shyly and then immediately jerking upright in defiance of his own emotions. Watching him navigate the roller coaster of his heart would always be a pleasure and an amusement both. 

Breathing deeply with determination in his eyes Madara took a single step forward, bringing them closer than they ever had been before, close enough to feel the heat of each other’s bodies, sharing air as their gazes locked. 

“Ask me one more time,” he demanded. 

“Come with me.”

“Okay.” 

Unlike all the other times they had spoken these exact same words there was something different in him now, a straightness in his spine, a steadiness in his voice. Tobirama felt almost as though his heart were fluttering in his throat. Difficult as it was he managed somehow not to float straight off the ground as a pink tongue flicked out to wet Madara's lips and then his friend was leaning forward, closer than close, brushing their mouths together with all the innocence of one who knew nothing of the world but the feelings he carried in his heart. 

“You’re sure?” Tobirama whispered. 

“Of you? Yes.”

While he was still trying to breathe past the thunder in his ears he found himself rather pleasantly distracted by the touch of lips against his own once more and this time he had enough wits about him to respond in kind, drinking in the sweet sounds that followed like fine wine. He had only kissed one boy before. Puberty had left him restless, curious, all too aware of the way some of the eyes of others near his age had followed him around. His explorations then had been chaste and unsatisfying enough that he turned his attention away from any sort of intimate pursuits – that is, until the day he realized exactly how attached he had become to the boy in the tower. 

He was still flying high with his head in the clouds when they parted, Madara's hand tightening where they were still linked between them. Nothing in his life so far had ever quite compared to the joy he felt when he saw his friend, his most precious hidden treasure, move to anchor his hair in its usual place. When he secured it through the ring bolted to the floor he did so at the opposite end from his own head to allow himself a rope with which to climb down. 

“You’ll follow after?” he asked, already moving to the window. 

“Always,” Tobirama promised. “Wherever you go, so long as you’ll have me, I will follow.” 

“Here’s hoping you enjoy the view from behind then.” Filled with the wild energy of escape, Madara sent him a wink before clambering up and over the sill. He waited just long enough to look back and make sure that Tobirama had taken the ends of his hair to lower him down with. 

Then he took a tight grip with both hands, closed his eyes, and with a smile unlike anything Tobirama had ever seen before he put his trust in to another’s hands along with his weight. Watching his head disappear from sight was sweet. Hearing his voice give a triumphant crow only moments later was even sweeter. The strain on his muscles was next to nothing as Tobirama fed the massive braid of magic hair downward bit by bit; strangely he found the most difficult part was convincing himself not to cry. An odd feeling. He’d never been the type to get overwhelmed by his emotions like that. 

It took several minutes longer than his own descent would have for Madara to reach the bottom. Tobirama made sure the journey downward remained slow and steady to make him as comfortable and unafraid as possible. Only when he felt the line go slack did he allow his stance to waver and his arms to relax and the second he was sure the other had reached the ground he was dashing over to the window to look down. 

Madara's neck craned back to look up at him, on hand cupped around his mouth while the other waved madly through the air.

“Tobirama,” he called, “let down my hair!” Then he looked down at his own feet and even from so far above his voice could be heard crying out with excitement. “It tickles! The grass tickles! This is amazing!” 

No matter how quickly he was able to tear his eyes away Tobirama was doomed. There was no denying the tears gathering in the corners of his eyes any longer, though he consoled himself that they were at least tears of joy. Tears for the happiest he had ever been in his entire life. In this moment he could not imagine anything else that he could possibly wish for. 

He should have known the universe would prove him wrong. After freeing the hair from its anchor for what he hoped would be the very last time it was only one quick-as-possible climb down familiar stones before he too was standing in the lush grass and admiring the wonder on Madara's beautiful face, laughing at the way dark hair dragged along the earth unattended. Though he knew that they should hurry away from this place he couldn’t quite bring himself to break the moment until finally the other’s eyes returned to him and pale hands reached for his own. 

This, this was the moment in which he could ask for nothing more, he realized. With Madara's fingers between his own he had everything he could ever need. 

“I did it.” Words whispered thick with disbelief, sharp with joy, lighter than the air they breathed. 

“Welcome to the world,” Tobirama whispered back. 

“Take me away from here,” Madara demanded. “Take…take me home. I’ve never had a home before.” 

“You can have one with me.” 

Where the witch had gone they did not know. How she would react to finding her captive missing they had no idea. Tobirama knew only one thing for sure as he slipped off his shoes to offer the other and led them towards the passageway in to the rest of the world. 

He would protect this man no matter what. Whatever the future held he would fight to protect this precious treasure that he had found, that he had freed, that he had fallen in love with and never looked back. 

[dokuhebi]

❛ kings die, realms fall, but magic endures. ❜

THE WITCHER 3 PROMPTS // @snakereign Everything in this world is different to them. From the wood making up tables, bookshelves and furnishings, to the materials making blankets, clothing and curtains. Born from bushes, trees and animals the serpent has simply never seen before. But despite how foreign everything here is, it is they themself who remains the exotic and misplaced one. The outlander. If they had felt hunted in their old world - and how constantly tracked down like a witch they were - this new realm offered countless more enemies to contend with. Fools who wanted them for power, spare parts in wizard like potions, or zoology. While being formidable and immortal certainly aids them in staying safe, they know better than to take on a world of enemies. They had done it once before, and although they ought to consider themself lucky to have come out alive of that war, they had learnt some hard lessons. One was never too powerful to need friends. It was their luck that they had found the company of someone with similar interests and passions, someone who did not shy away from their more ferocious side, but did not treat them like some animal either. A man who could see them for what they were, a mixture of many, a multifaceted leviathan who could bring harm or fortune to those smart enough to use them wisely. And how Voldemort proved to be smart enough, perhaps even too smart for their liking. It was rare they had to stay on guard, yet be too sweet-talked and ensnared to remind themself of that. He knew how to offer them enough information to keep them around, but never so much that he outlived his use to them. He kept himself a few steps ahead, and they are both aware and complacent with this. He’s made too compelling an argument with that silver tongue of his, to ever have them drifting or losing interest. So they wait for him, even when he disappears on his own agenda. Knowing better than to ask him where he has been when he returns. Had he wanted them to know, surely they would have been granted the right to accompany him. After all, even the most vicious dogs swore loyalty to those who kept them well fed. And the young man knew precisely how to sate their appetite. The doors quiet groan is what alerts them to the fact that he has returned. As the sun starts to sink low enough to be engulfed by the horizon. Vanishing in brilliant oranges and reds, painting the room in vivid saffrons. Such colours catch upon the vipers porcelain skin, flesh white as snow now used as a canvas under the suns fleeting rays. Warm hues faintly reflected where their night kimono slips lazily down their shoulder. Ivory arms, collar and legs bared to gentle but flame like colours panting their figure. Perched on the stone window arch, gazing down from their godlike view at the forests hundreds of feet below. Not timid of the fall, but admiring the height. Admiring the newness, truly reborn in this moment, when they gaze at things they have never seen before. Their fingers had been idly combing through raven black hair, until eager eyes move instead to the sound of his return. He is greeted instantly by their light smile, one that so quickly loses its tenderness when the edges of fangs can be seen. They slip gracefully from the windowsill they had been seated at, to meet him at his side. To scan his eyes and body for anything that may signal trouble. Whether he had run in to any, they don’t know. They do know however, that if he had, he had handled it as usual, and returned to them unscathed. “I did as you asked,” they say, a tome left upon the desk. What knowledge lies within the weighted book they do not know, they can not decipher its meaning despite being fully capable of reading it. Too inexperienced in this world to understand the gibberish of spells, foreign creatures, lands and names. But he had asked for it, so they had provided. In full anticipation to have their efforts rewarded, and having exercised all the patience they had within themself simply waiting for his return, “will you show it me then? One of the forbidden curses those lesser wizards keep muttering about?” They live for these lessons, thrive under his instruction, his tutoring. Magic is a power that is not within their veins, much like the muggles of this world. Yet unlike those muggles, they are not completely without something special, the chakra they harbor enabling them to produce attacks monstrous in its own regards, something so very similar to witchcraft. They follow him to the small coffee table, finding their seat beside him on the couch, listening to each word from his mouth and watching the artifact he draws out. A wand. And they watch next as the little demonstration begins, as his simple command has the summoned snake, courtesy of Orochimaru, suddenly wrapped under mind control. It is so effortless, so tasteful, so immediate. While the conjured snake is a loyal companion to Orochimaru, and would do their bidding without question, it now has lost all ability to do just that. Imperio. Far more sophisticated than the mind control those in the vipers realm are capable of. They are in awe instantly, enamored by the demonstrated power, enamored by how he makes it look second nature. How within a moment of his attention, with a single breathed command, this venomous and lethal summon is his new play thing. Golden eyes shift to the man when he speaks, inquisitive eyes following his every movement. “Magic... I imagine such a word is interchangeable with power, is it not?” they reply, leaning against him now, giving in to their tactile nature. They watch the snake innocently obey each command, as they rest their head against Tom’s shoulder. Too comfortable perhaps, around the charming man. A man who has even lulled the infamously distrustful serpent in to deeming him their home, their place of refuge. Not because they mistake his power as anything less than it is, but because they are hellbent on surrounding themself with any and all power - if not from their own sylphlike body, then instead they would content themself being beside his. They draw their hand lightly down to run their fingertips over his wand, to feel the texture curiously, an elegant motion before their hand brushes over his arm a moment to be gathered back to their person, “... the magic of this world, can it be mine?” With their summon finally having its free will returned, the reptile makes its way over to the two humans. Ever so complacent with what had happened, seeing no difference in the requested duty of killing on command, or being puppeted a moment. A bronze body lazily slips away from the small table it had been perched on, sliding instead to creep up the coach and languidly lace itself around and over the laps of the wizard and shinobi. Their hand moves to brush over its scaled body next, “there are those born without magic in this realm, I have seen them. Have none ever tried to get it regardless? Have any ever succeeded?” A more cunning smile replaces their previous one now, as they lift their head from his shoulder ever so slightly, to instead correct a tassel of dark brown hair, “you shall mark the first king to never die, and be the founder of a realm indomitable,” they say, golden eyes meeting his umber pair, ensnared instantly by the intelligence so clearly living there, their gaze against his the contrast of the pale yellow moon meeting the midnight sky, “for as long as I am permitted at your side,  I will make it so, and you will want for nothing my dear Lord,” they place a hand to his shoulder now to get to their feet, to saunter across the room and fix them both a drink, even the alcohol a rather differing taste here for them. They lean on the table a moment to watch him, to inspect his reactions before offering him his drink and a more tamed smile.  “I do hope I have sworn myself to a generous king.”

[edmund-valks]

Sometimes you wake up dead

The wagon rattled and bumped along the once-smooth road, the iron of its rims doing little to soften the lumps of raised cobblestones. The sensation was an odd one, but so was everything these days. Nothing made much sense from the last month or so. Before that… He shook his head, smiling ruefully at his wandering thoughts. There was nothing before that that applied to now; best not worry about it.

When the conveyance finally came to rest, he clambered down from the wagon bed. After giving his thanks to the driver, along with the agreed upon coin, he readjusted his black paisley cravat and headed east. That was the way to Corin's Crossing. Though it was unlikely to be home again, he had to check.

The town had clearly seen better days. So have its inhabitants, he added mentally, chuckling. Most of the former residents were mangled corpses, as far as he knew. That was the kind of thing that happened when some kind of undead plague or a Lich King rode through and was later fought back. Die to the undead, become undead, die to those who kill the undead… it wasn't exactly a recipe for a pretty corpse.

He, however, was apparently a very pretty corpse. He'd had several offers from parts vendors to replace various bits with some of their functional but less aesthetically pleasing inventory. They would, they said, also pay him a significant amount in addition to providing the limb swap free of charge. While the concept was intriguing, he had little desire to sell his body in that sense.

So here he was, a freshly raised ex-corpse, still dressed in his funereal finery, minus the jacket. He strolled the empty streets between collapsed buildings, rebuilding them in his mind. His memory was very good; he could recall exactly what each structure had been, often down to the names of its inhabitants or owner.

But, of course, that wasn't what he was here for. He turned off from the main drag, humming to himself as he went. The library where he'd worked had burned and then collapsed in on itself, but perhaps his home had cared better.

A few minutes brought him near the shores of Lake Blackwood, where a number of former homes could be found in varying states of ruin. His wasn't in the worst condition, but it was definitely uninhabitable. The ceiling had caved in and the walls were full of gaping holes where bricks had gone missing. He sighed.

He poked about anyway, trying to find anything left of his life. There wasn't much point, though. It had been many years since he'd collapsed at work and died, apparently to be embalmed and interred with some degree of respectful care. The area wasn't dry enough for much to stick around that long. Unless…

He shifted some rubble, looking for a certain part of the floor. A fallen beam had to be shifted to get to it, but the trapdoor was still there. With a short laugh, he wrestled it open, descending into the stale air below.

What had once been his personal stash of books he didn't want to answer questions about was now the last remaining link to the past he had. The old pack was still there, right by the entrance. He stuffed it full of dusty tomes then headed back to where he'd separated from the wagon.

The driver was there, goods still being unloaded. They exchanged pleasantries, including confirmation that he would be a return passenger as well. As things continued to be removed from the wagon, he looked over the rescued books, trying to decide what to do with them.

More than half were probably junk at this point. He didn't imagine the undead really had an interest in books banned by the Church for being too frank in their portrayal of human sexuality. He'd keep one or two for reference, get rid of the rest.

After deciding the future disposition of the volumes on science and the arts, he came to the last book. It was black still, entirely unfaded, the cover embossed with an even blacker black in the shape of a skull. Opening the cover, he smiled at the familiar title page with its name plate.

Property of Greyffin Blackwood, it read. He ran a well-preserved finger over the lettering, nodding in satisfaction. He'd never done more than occasionally look before, but in his current condition, it was probably fine to give the contents a proper try. Necromancy couldn't be too bad, after all, or else he'd still be gravebound. No time like the present to finally start that new hobby.

Climbing back into the wagon-bed, he started reading the basics of the forbidden science as they headed westward.

[empressofrizalia]

Mahou Sensei MSPA-tan! Chapter 1: Welcome to Alterra Academy!

[For you folks out there who are still thirsty for MSPA Reader content after the end of Friendsim. Hope you don’t mind the AU.]

You fuss about with your robes as you stand on your spot in the front row along with probably a hundred other students in the Grand Auditorium of Skaia Universal Institute of Thaumaturgy, or SUIT for short.  Thaumaturgy, in lay man’s terms, is a fancy-schmancy word for the study of ‘majyyk’.  Yup, that’s right.  Majyyk is a thing on Planet Earth, or at least in this iteration of Earth.  They are are not to be confused with ‘magic’, which is completely fake and only good for performing at lame children’s parties.  There are a lot of schools all over that are devoted to imparting the arcane, miraculous, and once forbidden knowledge to children everywhere.  You are one of those children.

The sound of crisp purposeful footsteps on a stone floor catches your and your classmates’ attention.  You look up the stage to see Headmaster Wiseman walking along the stage and onto the podium set at the middle while the school faculty stand on either side of him a few feet away.  Supposedly, it would be proper to describe the appearance of any important character that comes along in a story, though in this case, there is just no point in wasting words and energy.  The geezer was basically Gandalf from Lord of the Rings.  Of course, that is to say, he looked so much like Gandalf that he might as well be Gandalf.  All majyyk school headmasters were Gandalf.

The Hall fall silent in anticipation as Headmaster Gan—er, Wiseman fondly regards everyone.

“Today marks the end of yet another era,” he said in his old wizened voice.  “Congratulations, batch of 2612 graduates! You have all done well these past seven years.”

You smile, feeling proud of yourself.  All those years of hard studying led to this glorious moment.  Soon, you’ll be well on your way to become a Grandmaster Mage, the highest position of honor all wizards/witches/mages/whatever aspire to gain.  Not bad for a kid like you who’s just starting on the chapters of puberty while everyone else around you had already finished.

“However,” the Headmaster continues, “Graduation doesn’t mean an end to learning.”  All the graduates, including yourself, gave him puzzled looks.  What does he mean by that?

“Your real training into becoming civilized members of society, begins now.  Once I call your name, step up and receive your diploma.”  Your batchmates get called one by one.  As your last name is somewhere near the end of the alphabet, it would be a while before you get your turn.  Sooner or later, the sound of names being called turn into a dull monotonous droning in your ears.  Your eyelids begin to feel heavy.

“MSPA Reader…”  Your head lolled to the side as drowsiness slowly takes over you.

“MSPA Reader?” A jab at your side startles you awake.  You look to the side where the jab came from and you made eye contact with a batchmate who tells you to get your ass up on stage already.  Realization hits you like an empty bottle to the head and you hurry up to the front with your face flushed from embarrassment.  The rest of the event goes on without a hitch.

As with nearly everything else in a majyyk school, a graduate’s diploma is more than just a simple fancy roll of paper saying you’ve accomplished some grueling years of hunching down with your nose buried in a dusty old tome or waving a stick around.  In the majyyk world, a graduate’s diploma isn’t only a mark of achievement, but also an aid for deciding the new full fledged mage next step towards their future.  You unroll the parchment to take that first look upon your destiny.  The words appear with a flash the minute it was spread wide open.

"ALIEN TEACHER"

Eh?

EEEEEEEEEEEH?!

This has got to be a mistake! You need to have a word with the Headmaster right away!

“A teacher, eh? For aliens?” said Headmaster Wiseman, taking a sip of his earl gray tea.  “Well, if that’s what it says in your diploma, then that’s the end of the matter.  You must train hard in order to become a great mage.”

There has to be some kind of misunderstanding! Don’t real teachers, majyykal or otherwise, need some kind of license to be able to teach at any respectable educational facility? Plus, you’re only thirteen! And what is this about aliens?!

“Now calm down. There’s no reason for you to fret,” said the Headmaster.  “The principal of the school you’ll be assigned to is a friend of mine.  She’ll get you up to speed in no time.  Just do you best and you’ll be fine.”

Okay…

“Good. Now get out of my office.”

A few days later, you’re dressed up in your best suit with a handful of your belongings stuffed in a single suitcase and on board a plane going from the Big Island of Hawaii to a place called the Alterra Islands.  From what you’ve heard from whispers and read and watched from the internet (mages here aren’t as averse to modern science and technology), Alterra was a chain of man-made islands smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  It was made to help foster relations between the humans of planet Earth and the aliens of planet Alternia.  Yes, aliens… You have found that they’re also a thing on Earth… and the universe.  Apparently more than a decade ago, the Alternians—or trolls as they called themselves—first arrived to Earth as refugees fleeing from the civil war raging on their homeworld.  They were sick, hurting, and desperate from their long journey.  Their leader, a male troll named the Signless, was the one to initiate first contact between them and the humans.  He was willing to trade their tech and ships in exchange for food and the care of the well-being of other trolls with him.  With the help of a renowned wealthy polymath, the trolls were slowly acclimating to life on earth, though it wasn’t without its own set of problems.  To make a long story short, people can be dicks.

The flight from Hawaii to Alterra didn’t take long.  After a couple of hours, you disembark the plane and went on to look for your guide who was mentioned to be waiting for you at the airport.  You look around and see an adult male troll with nubby horns and red eyes dressed in a similar respectable fashion as you though the had a gray vest rather than a jacket with a candy red tie and had the sleeves of his dress shirt folded to his elbows.  He carried a sign with your name on it.  That must be him.  You walk over and introduce yourself.

“So you’re the new teacher? I gotta say, I didn’t think you’d be so young,” he said.  He seemed like such an amicable fellow.  You admit that you were scared of him at first since you've never spoken to a troll before.

He gives a friendly chuckle.  “Don’t worry about it.  Once you get settled, you’ll be spending a lot of your time talking to trolls.  You’ll get used to it in no time.  By the way, I’m Kankri Vantas.  I teach Social Studies at the academy.  You may have also heard of me as the Signless around the time of the first contact.”  You nod as you stare at him in awe.  He became quite the celebrity after the first contact, an icon for peaceful relations between human and trollkind.  You have no idea why he was called ‘Signless’, but you decided not to ponder about it too much.  You never thought he’d be the one guiding you of all people.

“Anyway, shall we go? The principal of the school you’ll be teaching in is expecting you.”

The two of you leave the airport with him taking the lead.  Mr. Vantas takes you to a cab that had been standing in wait.  He takes the seat next to the human driver while you get settled on the backseat.  Once you leave the airport grounds, he begins to give you a little basic information.

Alterra is a little chain of four main islands that serve as the home base for the troll residents as well as their embassy on Earth.  The islands each host a division of Alterra Academy.  The middle school division where you’ll be working is built on Isle-2 where you are currently on.  On average, there are about seventy-thousand students earn their education on Alterra, ranging from kindergarten to university levels.  Most of the students are young trolls who hatched on Earth.  There are human students as well who are usually the children of the humans who worked on the Islands.  Each island also has their own facilities for food and utility production, waste management, justice system, and a local economy—pretty much everything that can qualify Alterra as its own little sovereign nation.  Though international trading was limited to a whole line of products that suited the needs of their fellow trolls living on other nations.  The construction of the islands was commissioned solely by a billionaire explorer named Jake Harley, who you remember to also be the main sponsor for SUIT.  Could it be that he’s also a mage like you?

You looked out the window as Mr. Vantas babbled on.  You marveled at the lush greenery that was teeming with strange wildlife.  Some resembled Earth animals, some seemed more like mythical creatures, the rest were downright strange.  Mr. Vantas explains to you that those creatures were the lusii that were smuggled from Alternia.  Your eyes nearly bug out upon hearing that as you spot one of larger creatures snap its jaws on a smaller one and proceed to tear it apart.  These creatures were supposed to care for children?! Was Mr. Vantas raised by one of them?

“Yes, it has been that way since the beginning.  Adult trolls aren’t best suited to care for young… with a few rare exceptions…”  He went on to explain about trolls with jade blood who along with taking care of the Mother Grub who lays the eggs for the troll species, care for newly-hatched trolls or grubs to prepare them for their trials.  And the fact that he was raised by one since grubhood despite the fact that he should have been culled instead due to his mutant blood color.  You turn your attention back up front to see the somber expression in his eyes through the rear-view mirror.  You have learned about the different castes trolls have according to their blood color a few days before your departure via web search.  It was quite strange, but the cruel hierarchy built on it was anything but pleasant.  No wonder Mr. Vantas and his followers went to rebel.

“Oh, sorry. I got a bit carried away. Am I bumming you out?” He asked, snapping from his reverie.  You tell him that it’s fine.  It’s okay to be sad every now and then.

A little while later you spot a bunch of tall fancy buildings coming up in the distance.  Your ride gets closer until it stops by large metal gate bearing a shield emblem bearing a spirograph between a pair of stylized wings with a banner underneath bearing the words: Alterra Academy in Times New Roman capitals.  You get off the taxi and stared at the school in wonder as Mr. Vantas addressed the security guards who opened the gates to let you in.  Is this really a school? The structure of the buildings remind you of a scenic European town, though the roads were void of any vehicle save for a few cable cars.  Teenagers, both troll and human, walked around in gray and black uniforms heading for the same direction up north.  You get a lot of stares while your guide gets a lot of smiles and greetings.  After a moment, Mr. Vantas hails a cable car for the both of you.

“In case you were wondering, this is the student town,” he says after sitting down next to you.  “This is where the student dormitories, shops, and recreational facilities are.  The school building is further forward.”

The ride is peaceful for the most part as the cable car moved at a steady pace, but then a little later, you notice a hoard of students coming in running and rushing.  Some were riding on skates and skateboards, taking the back rail of the cable car to tag along.  Others were driving automobiles despite being definitely underage.  Some were riding on the backs of what you guessed were their lusii.  And there were some who are even flying! Had you been an average Joe, that last part would really surprise you.  It’s a good thing you’re a mage.  Anything is possible with the power of majyyk! You’ve thought of using it to send yourself to the straight to the principal’s office, but alas, teleportation only works if you have a clear picture of your destination, which you don’t.

Your cable car is soon stuffed with more students to near bursting.  What the hell is happening?

Your answer came in the form of a public announcement: “To all students: this is the Guidance Committee,” says a woman’s voice with a New Jersey accent.  “This week is Zero Late Attendances Week, and it’s only ten minutes before the bell.  Let’s hurry it up!” Oh, that’s why.  “Any students late this week will be issued yellow cards! Please try to arrive with plenty of time to spare!”

You could hear Mr. Vantas laughing.  “Haha! I love Zero Late Week.  It gets so lively!”

That’s great and all, but shouldn’t you hurry up too? It wouldn’t look good on you as a teacher to be late to your first class.

“It’s alright, Mx. Reader.  As a teacher, you’re allowed to be late for ten minutes at the very least.  Any later, and not only does your class get canceled, you’ll get a mark on your record.  Do it enough times, and you’ll get slapped on with a hefty fine.  We can't have our educators and role models slacking off and leaving a bad impression on our dear students now, don't we.  But you seem like a punctual sort, I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

That’s nice.  Ten minutes was enough time to run and buy a breakfast sandwich or a tall coffee before getting to class when running late for any reason.  Cooking isn’t one of your strong suits.

A minute later, you feel a tickling sensation in your nose.  You try hard to fight the urge to sneeze, for it’s simply impolite to blow your nose around company.

AACHOO!!

You fail miserably.  So miserably that with an uncontrolled burst of majyyk, you somehow manage to create a draft strong enough to not only flip the skirts of the surrounding female students all at once, but also make the cable car jump an inch off the rail it was on.  The girls blab to each other in slight panic while others berate the boy passengers, accusing them of being perverts for peeking at their undergarments.  Mr. Vantas turns to look out the window with a blush on his cheeks.

“Bless you?” he says, sounding quite unsure of what had just transpired.  You thank him and apologize as you pull out a handkerchief to wipe the snot dribbling down your nose.

The Principal’s Office is quite spacious.  The floors and the ornamental window frames where made of polished wood.  The decor approach was rather minimal—just a desk, a chair, a coffee table, a red two-person suede couch, a few paintings depicting famous comedians along the walls, and a couple of bookshelves full of books (mostly about baking, practical japery, and mystery novels) and knick-knacks.  Mr. Vantas had left you alone so he can attend to his other duties.

“Why, if it isn’t our new teacher, hoo hoo!” the principal of Alterra Academy, a jolly elderly woman named Jane Egbert according to the nameplate on her desk.  “Welcome to Alterra.”

You give a polite bow.  It’s nice to meet you.

“Headmaster Wiseman has told me about you.  Graduating at only thirteen? You’re quite the prodigy.”  You blush at her flattery.  Shucks, ma’am.  You don’t have to go through that.

“Hoo hoo! Now there’s no need to be so modest.  Wiseman tells me your diploma told you to be a teacher for aliens for your post-grad training, is it not? Then you’ve been given quite the task.”

You agree.  It was truly odd that a kid like you would be assigned such a grown-up job.  Though everyone in the room understands that there was absolutely nothing that can be done about it.

“I’m not going to lie, Mx. Reader, this job will probably be difficult.”  Principal Egbert’s voice took a slight serious tone.  “If it’s too hard for you, you’ll have to return home.  And there’ll be no second chances.  Are you prepared to accept that?”

This was it.  There’s no turning back. You’ve gone through a lot, and spent a lot just to get the ticket to fly to this place. The kid side of you thinks that it’ll be too much to handle and it's better to just go back home, but the budding adult side of you screams at you to not back down of the first real challenge life has thrown at you.  You want to be the greatest mage in the world, do you? Then you might as well swallow your kiddy pride, stand up straight, clench your asscheeks, and say, “I’ll do it!”

“Bravo! Then it’s settled.”  Principal Egbert clapped her hands, happy at your answer.  “But first and foremost, you must gain some practical experience.  Let’s make it from today to March.”

Of course!

“We’ll begin today. Let me just page the Staff Guidance Officer to get you started.”  She pushes a button on the telephone at a corner of her desk and calls for a Ms. Porrim Maryam to come to the Principal’s Office.  You sat down on the couch as you wait.  A couple of minutes later, the door opens and someone steps in.

It was another troll, a lady troll to be exact.  Her horns are much longer and pointier than Mr. Vantas’ with one of them being hooked.  Her short cropped hair is styled neatly to accentuate her narrow face and perfect cheekbones.  Like him, she’s dressed in a professional yet stylish manner with her white blouse, jade green maxi skirt, and black high heels.

“Are you in need of assistance, principal?” she asks in a soft kind voice and makes note of your presence. “And who might you be? A new student, perhaps?”

“I’m fine, Ms. Maryam,” the principal replies.  “That child, however, is actually a new teacher here at the academy.”

Ms. Maryam covers her mouth with a dainty manicured hand in mild surprise.  “Really? But you’re so young.”  If you had a penny for every time someone commented about your age, you'd have three pennies.  Maybe more in the near future, but for now you have to settle with three.

You explain your situation to Ms. Maryam who relaxes a bit.  “I see.  Can’t say I still approve, but if that’s what has been decided and it can help you in some way, then I won’t object.  Though if there’s something you don’t understand, please feel free to consult me.”  You nod.  You’re going to need all the help you can get.

“Hoo hoo!” Principal Egbert chuckles. “Now that everything’s said and done, you may take this class roster,” she hands over a booklet to you.  “Your assigned homeroom is Class 413.  Ms. Maryam can show you the way.”  Ms. Maryam’s jade eyes seem to widen in astonishment at the mention of Class 413.  The principal just gives her a knowing look in return.  You can’t help but wonder if there was something no one is telling you, or are willing to tell you.  You take a moment to wonder if taking this teaching gig was really a good idea.  You then catch yourself and shake off the terrible quitter thoughts creeping into your mind.  You can do this.  You’ve already agreed you can do this.

Your mind was still preoccupied by the thoughts of Class 413 as you and Ms. Maryam walked within the silent halls of the school, passing classroom after classroom.  Each one of them had glass pane windows so you could see a typical class setting that often consists of mixed troll and human students being taught by either a troll or human teacher.

Ms. Maryam seemed wary the minute Principal Crocker brought them up.  Even as she walked next to you, her posture seemed somewhat rigid and there was a furrow on her brow.

You decided to just get on with it and ask her what Class 413 was like.

“Hm? Oh, I’m sorry.  I suppose you deserve to know at the very least since you’ll be serving as their homeroom teacher.”  She hesitates for a bit.  “Class 413 is… a tad problematic.”

Problematic? That could mean a lot of things, most of which aren’t very good.  Is she saying that you got stuck with a class full of delinquents?

“No, not per se,” Ms. Maryam says.  She then stops walking, so do you. Is there something wrong?

She swivels her head around, possibly looking for other presences in the hall.  Then she turned back to look straight into your eyes.  There was an serious look on them you didn’t think you’d see on someone with a motherly temperament.  “Listen closely,” she says.  “What I’m about to tell you is extremely confidential.  No one else but the founder, the principal and a select few members of the staff and faculty, including myself, know of this.  Not even Earth’s mainstream media knows anything.  I’m going to tell you this since you’re going to be in charge of Class 413 for however long you’re here.  But I ask that you promise to keep a tight lip on this subject.  You do not, under any circumstances, reveal any of this to anyone.  Do you understand?”

You say yes.  Boy, this was intense.  First day on the job and you’re already getting wrapped up in some kind of weird conspiracy.

Ms. Maryam gives you a warm smile.  “I know I could trust you,” she says.  “Alright, here it is.  Around a perigee, or month before your arrival, a second Alternian spaceship crashed on this planet.  Unlike the one our group escaped in, this one was much smaller, possibly a minor cruiser.  It landed into the ocean not far from the islands.  As far as the rest of this world is concerned, it was just a huge meteor.  But for those who remember life on Alternia, we quickly realized what it truly was, and we immediately scrambled to retrieve it before it sank further into the deep depths.  What we found after we forcibly opened it, shocked us.”  She took a deep breath.  She seems shaken about the subject, even a while after the incident.

“Children,” she continued.  “We found children.  They looked to be about to be six sweeps, or thirteen years old at the very least.”

Wow.  That’s just terrible! You’re so shocked by this news that you can’t think of anything to describe what you’re really feeling right now other than shock.  Those kids weren’t any older than you were and they somehow managed to escape their planet and into outer space all alone?

“To think that a group of children would go so far to flee from Alternia by themselves.  It tells me—us—that things at the homeworld aren’t getting any better.  Perhaps it’s getting worse.  I’m not sure,” a somber Ms. Maryam says.  “We took them in and decided that it would be best for them to try and acclimate to life here.  From the way things look, they’re probably going to spend the rest of their lives on this planet.  However, these wrigglers were hatched from Alternia, and they don’t take well to being in close proximity as an adult troll.  Not even my Kankri could win them over.  Frankly, I don’t blame them.  Alternian adult trolls tend to be dangerous toward youngsters.”

You don’t know much about what Alternia was like, but from what you’re hearing in conjunction with what you’ve heard from Mr. Vantas and read from the internet, it sounded like a place that made Hell look like paradise resort in comparison.  No offense.

“None taken. You’re right, actually. It’s why we fled in the first place.”

You suggest that if troll teachers aren't able to help those kids, why not try human teachers?

“We have already tried that as well.  But humans aren’t well versed to Alternian social norms and cues.  All attempts on successful rapport ended in disaster… for the humans.  At this point, we’re at our wit’s end, but our founder constantly reminded us to never lose hope.  He firmly believes that these wrigglers could be rehabilitated.  Personally, I and a few others think so too.”

Ms. Maryam looks at you thoughtfully.  “You know, I’m starting to think that perhaps your assignment as a teacher here may be more than a mere coincidence.  Yes, I see now.  Where the adults have failed, you might succeed.  Given your relatable age, they’d probably be more willing to let their guard down and communicate with you.”  Oh, cool.  This might turn out to be easier than you thought.  “But don’t get too comfortable.  If you’re not careful, they’d walk all over you once given the opportunity.  I suggest that you watch your back around them.”  Welp, there go the last vestige of confidence you have left.

You both resume your walk, your hand tight around the class roster.  You look up to see the numbers on the classrooms gradually climb up.  Class 409… 410… 411… 412…

“Here we are.”  You almost bump into Ms. Maryam when she stops in front of a classroom near the end of the hall.  A sneak peek through the window shows you a room full of troll kids talking to each other, playing around, or just off doing their own thing.  You’re not sure if there are any humans mixed in as you couldn’t see even a hint of peach, brown, or black in the sea of gray skin and candy corn horns.  A troll boy with a pair of horns that oddly resembled flashlights takes notice of you and gives a flirty wink.  You back away and draw closer to Ms. Maryam.

You take a moment to open your class roster and get a glimpse of your prospective students.  You count a total of forty kids.  That’s forty troll kids from the hellplanet Alternia.  Forty troll kids who Ms. Maryam says might hurt either your body and ego (or both) should you allow it in any way.  It must have taken a lot pedial put-downs to get them to sit still for their one-on-one photo-op to make this roster.  Not all of them looked very happy.

But you don’t know, a fair lot of them also seem kind of nice.  Maybe this isn’t going to be so bad after all.

“Make sure to remember their names and faces quickly, okay?” Ms. Maryam reminds you.  You swallow a lump in your throat as you stood in front of the door, hands shaking.  Can you really do this? Can you really teach so many alien kids like this? You take a deep breath to calm your nerves and reach for the knob of the wooden door.  It’s now or never...

EXTRA

ALTERRA ACADEMY FACULTY & STAFF DOSSIER

Name: MSPA Reader

Age: 13 years

Occupation: Aspiring Grandmaster Mage, Alterra Academy newbie teacher

Notes:

-Shaped like a friend

-Junior majyyk user

-Protect them

~oOo~

Name: Kankri “The Signless” Vantas

Age: 16 solar sweeps/35 years

Blood Color: Candy/Human Red

Occupation: Alternian revolutionary/religious icon, Earth troll representative/ambassador, Alterra Academy Social Studies teacher

Notes:

-Love and equality for all

-Righteous leggings under professional garb

-Shouty when angered

~oOo~

Name: Porrim “Dolorosa” Maryam

Age: 35 solar sweeps/76 years

Blood Color: Jade Green

Sign: Virgo Occupation: Signless’ guardian/mother, Academy Staff Guidance Officer, Student Guidance Councilor

Notes:

-Team Mom

-Rumored to be a Rainbow Drinker/Troll vampire

~oOo~

Name: Jane Egbert, née Crocker

Age: 80 years

Occupation: Alterra Academy Principal

Notes:

-Ex-heiress to a baking empire

-Practical japerist

-Senior Sleuth

[starscreamloki]

When Witches are Thieves and Tricksters are Saviors, all will fall

Chapter One - Witch

Imagine: You’re an immortal witch who was cast out of Asgard and kept in a cell in another realm where you couldn’t escape nor hurt anybody. When Loki learned about you, he was instantly curious and did all the research necessary to find you. He also learned that you were unstoppable when you used to possess the mind stone. Loki started to pay you very interesting visits, where he actually developed a sort of fascination and loyalty to you, to the point where he actually plotted to break you out, get the stone from Vision and give it to you so you could join forces and do the unimaginable together.

Warnings: none

Words: 3562

A/N: I had a little trouble getting this story kicked into gear. Biggest issue was that I had a couple of possibilities to cross over in AU’s, and one of the biggest problems was that Marvel and Norse Mythology aren’t always compatible. So I had to figure out a direction where this would go, but I think I have found it. For now I have 5 chapters planned for this story, but you might never know what happens along the way.

-----

“Like an animal they caged me, locked me away to forever rot, no contact with the outside world. But you know what? When you cage a beast it will grow restless, it’ll start to pace, and with time it will build up a burning rage that will claw to get out.

Try as you might, but the powerful creature I am can not be locked up for long. Maybe a hundred, maybe a thousand years. But I can never die and there will always be someone who wants to bask in my power, use it or steal it. And when they do, I will break free and hunt those who caged me.

For no rational being would ever lock up an immortal witch who wields the very powers of the universe.

My name is Morganna, and I will be set free…”

***

Loki licked the top of his finger and turned the next page of his book. He quickly scanned the images drawn there and read their captions. The authors notes weren’t always readable due to the fallen state in which the book was, but Loki could imagine what they said or just skip past the smudged letters to complete the words.

The book itself was a thousand years old and he had sought hard to find it in the library, but when he did, he was overjoyed. Like an addict he devoured the pages almost wanting to inhale its content.

When he had finished the book in a matter of mere hours, he had rummaged through the library looking for more information about the person he had been reading about, but little was known and his search was fruitless.

Frustrated he stomped out of the library, the thousand year old book still under his arm, and went to his chambers. He needed more information and he wouldn’t get it here in Asgard. But he knew a place where he would be able to get more information and thus he had a trip to prepare.

***

“And for that”, Odin said, “you will be imprisoned on Muspelheim until the end of your days” his judgement fell and with that he tapped Gungnir on the ground, sealing my fate.

Fury overtook me, but the bonds which held me in place made acces to my magic impossible, and I could do no more than just scream. I screamed at the Allfather for his judgement, called him names and wished him dead, but it mattered not for his words had been spoken. I fought and struggled against the guards who tried to collect me after his judgement, but it was to no avail, for I couldn’t access my magic. Without it I was powerless, I, the mightiest witch who had ever walked the Nine Realms. Not even death would be a match for me, for I had escaped it’s claws many times.

The guards dragged me away from Hlidskjalf and Odin’s scrutinizing glare. I spat and glared at everyone I passed trying to kill them with nothing but my glare, but I couldn’t kill them any less with my glare just as the simplest creatures of the universe couldn’t.

I trashed my bonds, rioted and gave the guards a run for their money as they dragged me through the shining city of Asgard. It felt like my last stance, because when I would arrive upon Muspelheim my fate would be sealed for who knew how long. But the guards were with many and as they dragged me on to the bifrost I attempted to run off it and plunge myself in the depths that lay beneath. But by know the guards had learned and try as I might, I couldn’t even throw myself of the Rainbow Bridge. I wasn’t afraid of dying, as I said before, I hade deluded death many times.

No, the fear the Muspelheim put in my heart was far greater than death, even if my death proved permanent, and I trashed and fought the last metres of the Bifrost to the Observatory. I nearly took out the guards had it not been for Heimdall who intervened. At that point I knew I was defeated, for I could not escape his all-seeing eyes, nor could I talk myself out of this for Heimdall was, and forever would be, loyal to the Allfather.

As Heimdall opened the Bifrost I saw my destination and swallowed hard. Fear gripped my heart and took control over my body and my mind, and as the guards pushed me to Muspelheim, a tear rolled down my cheek. I felt the heat of the realm wrap itself around me and then the power of the Bifrost engulfed us and send us away to our destination. My destination.

My prison…

***

Loki set foot on the Bifrost and started to walk. A little bit of a heavy heart because he wasn't sure he'd get past Heimdall but he needed to get to Midgard, for that might be the only place where he could find his answers.

When he entered the observatory, Heimdall greeted him without looking at him. “Prince of Deception, to Midgard it is?”

“If you'd be so kind, good gatekeeper” Loki answers while biting his tongue at the snippy remark Heimdall had just made.

With a swift move Heimdall put his sword in the control panel and opened the Bifrost to Midgard. “Oh, and Loki. Should you try to come back with that witch at your side, the Bifrost will forever remain closed to you.”

Loki looked at Heimdall, trying to hide his surprise, but he should’ve known, for Heimdall sees all. Well, almost all…

With that Loki is pulled away and transported to Midgard. Heimdall watches him leave and switches his gaze toward Muspelheim where he sees the witch. Nothing had changed since the last time he had looked at her, or the thousand other times he had looked upon her in the past eons. She wouldn’t ever change, nothing would ever change, for the witch would never be able to escape her prison.

With a light touch Loki landed on Midgard and immediately used his magic to change his wardrobe to fit that of Midgard. Of course that black suit would make him stand out among the Midgardians walking in jeans and sweaters, but he’d rather choose stylish over comfortable, even though he would be heading for a dusty library.

Well, dusty… On the outside the Library of Congress in Washington was a spectacular sight to behold, and most certainly not dusty. But as Loki quickly quipped through the books he knew, and as expected, he needed access to the basement of the library where the most precious tomes and ancient books of mankind were stored.

Loki actually found it sad that one of reasons why humans had to guard books from other humans, was because they otherwise would defile them.

He walked to the secluded area of the library where he casually passed the guard, took the elevator to the lowest floor, walked passed the security systems there, and entered the basement which was filled with books and probably contained one or more that would give him the information he needed. He laughed at how easily humans were fooled by him, a little trick here, a little illusion there and he could get anywhere he wanted without any human ever catching him or stopping him.

He walked passed the hundreds of racks containing forbidden or ancient books, carefully pulling them out, quickly reading a few pages of content, and then putting them back until he had found a couple of books that looked promising.

He plunged down in one of the wooden chairs (couldn’t that have been a more comfortable chair?, he thought), and started reading- nay, devouring the books. The more he read about his subject, the more his heart sank.

This would be a difficult and dangerous quest for him, but still he hadn’t had enough answers. The fact was, he had to get back to Asgard to get those. And to get those answers he had to treat with a number of Aesirs he actually didn’t want to confront about this subject. Loki shuddered.

He carefully placed all the books back, making sure to not leave a trace behind - not that they would be able to find him, but better safe than sorry - and he walked outside.

“Heimdall, if you’d be so kind?” he said with a little bit of restrain in his voice. The Bifrost opened right then and there in the middle of Washington for al Midgardians to see, and Loki was transported back to Asgard.

Back to the place where he could possibly get the answers regarding Morganna.

***

I paced my prison for days, tested its mettle, but the prison was strong. Layer upon layer of strong magic had been woven to form my cage and outside my cage burned the fires of Muspelheim. The denizens of the realm had also tested my confinement from the outside, angry claws running along its surface, fiery breaths tested its metal and glass, but it wouldn’t break, not even scratch.

Even Sultur, Ruler of this realm, wasn’t able to set me free with his almighty powers that made the lower demons cower. It was only then I realized I would never get out of this without some proper help.

Eventually the demons got bored of trying to enter my prison and just ignored my presence. Only Sulter occasionally swung by to have a little chat. He wanted to know all there was about Asgard for one day he would lead to its destruction. If only I would be present to witness that! That would wipe the smug smile of Odin’s face!

And thus I waited. Time was hard to tell in a realm that didn’t have night or day, and the boredom almost drove me insane. Maybe it had driven me insane, I do not know, because I haven’t seen anything else for a long time than the insides of my cage and the demons that stalk around it.

Maybe the most horrible part is that my body is completely weakened. I could not get out of the cage, the demons could not get in, and therefore nobody came brought me food or water. Any other being would just have died from this lack of replenishments, but I did not, for I could not.

It was the everlasting blessing and curse of being immortal.

***

When Loki stepped into the observatory and Heimdall closed the Bifrost, Loki didn’t waste a single minute to delve deeper into the subject.

“Heimdall, pray I ask you, were there ever criminals that you are not allowed to speak of and what had happened to them?”

Heimdall gave Loki a glancing look. “If there were, I would not talk about it, for I would’ve taken an oath not to do so,” his cryptical answer came.

Loki gritted his teeth. Sometimes he just hated this all-seeing creature that forever dodged every question.

Loki opened his mouth to wage his Silver tongue but Heimdall cut him off. “I’ve seen where you have been and what you have sought. You’d be wise to not further press the matter young Prince, for my lips are sealed about the matter.”

Loki let out an angry harumph and stalked out of the Observatory, muttering some curses at the Keeper of the Gates.

He walked through the halls of Asgard looking for the one person who might want to answer his questions; his mother.

She was surprised at his visit, but he wanted to talk to her without Odin around, and so they settled for dinner in her chambers, just the two of them.

“Mother, the other day I was in the library and I came across a reference to an event I’ve never heard of,” Loki started.

His mother gave him a careful look. She was well aware that her son was up to something for he wouldn’t often visit her in this fashionably manner unless he wanted something. “And what might that be?”

“The book spoke about an event that happened long ago, also referred to as Waters Purification. But as I sought through the books of old, I couldn’t find much about it.”

Frigga looked stern at her son, a glimmer of recognition crossed her eyes as he named the event, but she reeled herself back in, hoping her eyes hadn’t given anything away.

“Pray tell me mother, do you know more about this?”

Loki looked at his mother, an innocent look plastered across his face. But sometimes he could not even fool his mother, for mothers knew their children and when she spoke, Loki wasn’t surprised. “You are talking about Morganna?”

Loki only gave her sly smile as an answer.

“Loki, I want you to forget that name. She-- You--,” Frigga struggled for words. “Just forget her.”

Loki gave her a sour look afore he spoke, “why? I’m merely curious about this… Witch? That is what they called her. Why am I not to know? And why is almost all information regarding her… missing?”

“Loki, enough,” his mother spoke softly. “Forget it.”

“WHY?” Loki spat as sudden rage overtook him. Why was his mother so reluctant to talk about her? As he saw the look of hurt on his mother's face, he quickly composed himself, putting a calm demeanor back on his face. “Then answer me please, why am I not to know?”

Frigga looked at her son, her brain searching for a plausible answer, but she had none and thus there was nothing left to say but the truth. “Because I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Loki opened his mouth to protest at her answer, but she put her hand up and spoke before him, “and that is the end of this conversation, and thus it’s subject, Loki.”

Loki snapped his mouth shut and scrutinized his mother. But he knew all too well that she would not give in and that indeed it was the end of the conversation.

The remainder of their meal they hardly spoke, and when Loki left his mothers chambers a fire was burning within him. Because the harder someone told him not to do something, the more he would!

***

From my solitary confinement I saw Muspelheim change. Fires that once roared like dragons turned into mere fireflies as time took hold of them.

Demons came and demons went, Surtur came and Surtur went, and all that time I didn’t know how much time had passed. It felt like a hundred years, but it could as well have been a single year.

Sometimes there was entertainment when the demons fought among themselves, ever trying to get higher on the social ladder. I laughed at them. Pitiful creatures. If I were ever to get out of my cage I would subjugate them all!

But my cage remained locked, and all I could do was dwell on the past, lost in memories of things that had once been, and sometimes lost in things that might have been.

Or could be.

***

Loki considered talking to Odin about Morganna, but he quickly flung the idea away. It would lead to no answers and the both of them having a fight and being frustrated. And even though he loved to get under Odin’s skin from time to time, this wasn’t the moment nor the subject to achieve some form of mischievous joy out of it.

He paced back and forth through his chambers thinking about where he could get a clue. Midgard wasn’t an option, nobody living there would be old enough to even remember the event, and their books had given him a little bit information, yet it had been meager. Searching every realm wasn’t a good idea either, and if she was on Asgard, he surely would know about it… Wouldn’t he? Considering how hard everyone tried to hide the information she might as well be.

He paced through the palace and it suddenly hit him how eerie quiet it was. It took Loki a couple of seconds to discover why, it was passed midnight and everybody was asleep. Suddenly the tiredness hit him like a tidal wave and the trudged to his chambers and let himself fall on the bed.

Their he lay thinking about what he had discovered about his subject, Morganna. Her last know whereabout had been Asgard which was roughly 1000 years ago and she had been a very powerful witch back then. From the lists Loki had seen, she had been formidable indeed.

According to legend it all had to do with the ability she was born with, the ability to replicate, and later even absorb, other beings abilities. With those powers at her disposal she stole and copied a great deal of abilities from others like controlling the elements - including plasma and ether - cloaking, levitation, the power to walk through walls, or crawl on them, dream manipulation and so much more.

But there had been two treats that she had been most known for; shapeshifting and - in Loki’s eyes the most desirable - regeneration, the one thing that granted her immortality.

A shudder of pleasure ran down Loki’s spine. The things he could do if he would be immortal! Every realm would either lie at his feet or tremble in fear. Loki relished in that thought, and with that feeling warming his cold, Frost Giant heart, he fell asleep.

***

As I said before, boredom can drive one mad. And when you start to hear voices, you surely will doubt your own sanity.

I had heard the tricks of my mind many times while I rotted in my cage. Made friends with them, played with them, and in the end, betrayed and slaughtered them. The voices had learned a long time ago not to disturb me any longer, for I would devour them before they even could speak.

Until one night - or was it day? - A voice spoke to me. Anger flared inside me and like a hunter I scoured my mind in search of that voice. My prey!

But when I found the voice it was not as I expected it would be, for the voice wasn’t mine. I felt something reach out to me. It searched for me, called my name, and I could taste the thirst of the voice reaching out for me.

I was sure, this wasn’t a trick from MY mind.

And thus I answered. “Yes, Lost One, you have found me.”

“If I have found you, and I know where I am, than how am I lost?” the voice cleverly asked.

“It is not what you know now, or where you are, but it is what is in your heart.” I answered him. I never was one for pretty little lies, just utter and destroying truth. I could feel the person behind the voice was taken aback by my answer, even hurt, but I didn’t care. “Why are you seeking me out, Young One?”

I could feel him mulling over the new pet name I gave him but he putted it aside and answered, “I never intended to be here, I just strayed along the wrong path and found you.”

“LIAR!” I shouted back. “Don’t ever lie to me again for I am Truth!” I felt him shudder. He would not openly show his fear, but I could feel he was very impressed. “Tell me the truth! Why are you searching for me?”

It was silent for a moment but when the answer came, I could feel the truth in his words. “Because I am curious.”

I scoffed. “Little Trickster, you and I both know that is only half of the truth.” I could feel him bristle, a little bit of doubt crossing his mind for I had so easily guessed his trademark. But then a fire started to burn within him and again his answer rang true. “I want to set you free.”

The answer dripped with eagerness, with longing. An anticipation of pure thrill, almost at the border of suicidal.

I laughed. It wasn’t a mean laugh but a genuine laugh. One filled with my own eagerness to be free, but also a laugh filled with trepidation for I might as well never get free. “Little God of Mischief are you sure you want to set me free? Because with all that cold, Frost Giant blood running through your veins you might easily get burned when you try to pick your way to my cage.”

I felt him reel back, a little bit more of that fear taking over. But he pushed it back and let the coldness in him cool his fears. “I am sure; and I can” his bold answer came.

I laughed again. “If one could do it, it would be you, Loki Laufeyson.”

I felt him cringe at the name but he didn’t step back. “Tell me where I can find you,” he ordered me.

For the first time since… Well… long, I felt something that was akin to a little spark of hope. Maybe indeed he could set me free.

And thus I showed him my cage.

I showed him the denizens that dwelled around it and the bonds of magic placed upon it. I showed him all he needed to know, and with that he looked straight into the burning fires of Muspelheim.

Next Chapter

----

Taglist: [let me know if you want to be added]

[mercuryismygenius]

Book Review: ‘How Bad Writing Destroyed the World’

How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis by Adam Weiner

Despite the subtitle, Weiner only focuses explicitly on Rand in two chapters, the Introduction and the final chapter. The rest of the book is dedicated to the publication and social fallout of an 1863 Russian novel, What Is to Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky.

What Is to Be Done? is probably one of the most influential novels we have never heard of.

(Putin preening around shirtless on a fucking horse makes so much more sense to me now.)

First, a few caveats: One, this book is a literary analysis. Yes, it gets political, but Weiner is a literature professor, and the book focuses on Russian writers, including Dostoevsky and Nabokov.

Two, there is no glossary of terms and people. I often found myself looking back through previous chapters trying to remember who was who and why it mattered.

Nonetheless, any effort is worth it for the discussion of the power of literature and ideas (in this case, a damaging power). Turns out, Ayn Rand is the modern heir of Chernyshevsky’s legacy, for, “with the exception of Rand’s substitution of capitalism for socialism, her objectivism is precisely the same as Chernyshevsky’s rational egoism” (200).

How Bad Writing Destroyed the World moves chronologically, actually starting with Dostoevsky, his early style, and his experiences with the Petrashevsky Circle, a group Lenin has cited as the progenitor of Russian socialist movements (31). Specifically, Dostoevsky met Nikolai Speshnev, a radical revolutionary who was “rationally calculating, philosophically enlightened, politically uncompromising, and prepared for action” (31-32)---and identified by Weiner as “a possible historical prototype for [Chernyshevsky’s] uncompromising revolutionary superman, the ‘rigorist’ Rakhmetov” (36).

As I said, this book is a literary analysis.

Weiner touches base with Dostoevsky in several other chapters, but in Chapter 2, “‘The most atrocious work of Russian literature’,” he summarizes What Is to Be Done? The chapter heading comes from the reaction of a contemporary critic---a reaction that seemed to be the general consensus at the time, except for the fanatics who latched onto the book as a bible. For some background, here is the Wikipedia entry on What Is to Be Done?, although Weiner is more thorough. He organizes his summary around four Platonic dreams the character Vera Pavlovna has, which represent her ascending Socialist enlightenment. Yet, despite the diametrically opposed positions of socialism and capitalism, in Chernyshevsky we can see Rand quite clearly.

For example, in What is to Be Done? Vera Pavlovna, in her quest for both independence and Socialism, forms a collective of seamstresses---a working girl sorority, so to speak---and “because the interest of each seamstress coincides with the interests of the collective, the business is successful” (45). Naturally, when fans tried to replicate these collectives, their businesses failed, because reality is complex and generally full of humans.

Too bad Objectivists don’t know this history. In Weiner’s Introduction, he cites an excerpt from Alan Greenspan’s testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, in which Greenspan admits “’I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms’” (13). No kidding.

Another parallel is how much characters talk, philosophize, navel-gaze, and generally congratulate themselves on their rationality and selfishness, both of which lead to ‘correct’ political views. Weiner notes that Chernyshevsky’s characters 

attach ‘great importance’ to rejecting certain desires as false and fantastical while retaining others as authentic, because Chernyshevsky’s rational egoism requires people to act on their desires, but only those desires that are underwritten by logic, and only that logic which leads to socialism (51).

Change Socialism to Capitalism, and it’s Atlas Shrugged. More to the point, “the essential core of both Chernyshevsky’s and Rand’s thought is not socialism or capitalism but the tyrannical will to control humanity and shape its destiny” (9).

Basically, Weiner successfully makes his case about Ayn Rand and Nikolai Chernyshevsky---in only three chapters (the Introduction, Chapter 2, and Chapter 8).

Not that the rest of the book is filler. As stated above, Weiner touches base with Dostoevsky, outlining his attempts to counter Chernyshevsky via deconstruction, and later he cites Nabokov’s scathing, parodical dismantling of both Chernyshevsky and Dostoevsky.

Additionally, Weiner traces the revolutionary activities of Russian socialists, the most significant being Sergei Nechaev, a terrorist and conman, whose basic philosophy was none other than Chernyshevsky’s Rakhmetov, “who lives solely for the success of the revolutionary cause” (99). Of course, a man like Nechaev could never be content merely imitating a prototype, and had to publish his own writings. “The Catechism of a Revolutionary” is probably Nechaev’s most well-known work, and in it he outlines his revolutionary ideal [summarized by Weiner]: 

He has cut himself off from the civil order, from the world of education, from the sciences, from conventional morality, from all human society. His only passion is hatred of the existing order and the only science he practices is the merciless science of destruction (109). 

Weiner also notes that the work “reeks with the revolutionary methodology of Nikolai Speshnev: infiltration, conspiracy, and blackmail” (99).

Not only do these chapters discussing “revolutionary” development in Russia evoke current Russian practices, but also much of contemporary political discourse in general, with Weiner noting that “the tyrannical urge in Lenin to shout down any opposition by means of generalization, simplification, or whatever device he deems expedient results in the heaping up of insults and slogans in place of logic” (164).

Sound familiar?

The thread connecting these late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian socialists to mid-to-late-twentieth- and early twenty-first-century American capitalism is Ayn Rand.

Which is not to dismiss or ignore all the other factors of U.S. sociopolitical dynamics, but Rand has had an inordinate influence on the Right in the U.S., and Weiner traces a continuous ideology.

And yes, living up to his subtitle, Weiner gives a few revealing tidbits about Rand and her worldview.

Her admiration for a serial killer, for one. “Infatuation” is the word Weiner uses, and the serial killer was William Edward Hickman, on trial in 1928, “soon after Rand’s arrival in the United States.”

Rand was so taken by Hickman’s story that she used him as the prototype for the hero of a novel she never wrote that she wanted to call The Little Street. In her notebooks, Rand wrote with loathing about the “mob” that had formed around Hickman and reasoned that the public outcry was a reaction to his “daring challenge to society.” Hickman was “one of these rare, free, clear spirits” whom the mob cannot control. She valued his “remorselessness,” “strength,” “his calm, superior, indifferent, disdainful countenance,” and “his immense, explicit egoism” (196-7)

All of Weiner’s citations come from The Journals of Ayn Rand, and there is no indication whatsoever that she ever had a change of heart.

On a brief sidenote (and for disclosure purposes), I have only ever been able to get through one of Rand’s books, Anthem, which is more of a novella. It’s certainly not a tome like Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead. As a surface read, it’s not that bad, belonging to the same basic dystopias of Orwell’s 1984, or Zamyatin’s We. In Anthem, the future is run by a government that’s basically the bastard child of socialism and communism combined, and citizens are as much a hive mind as humans can possibly be, using the pronoun “we” instead of “I.” One man escapes all this. 

We and 1984 are each far superior both in social commentary and in style.

When I first read Anthem, I thought it was twice as long as it needed to be. Narratively speaking, it is---the protagonist regains his sense of individuality halfway through, reclaiming the word “I” and thus the concept of individuality. Rand just keeps going though. Because the protagonist needs to find the sacred and forbidden word “ego.” Which is Latin for “I.” Hence the ending seeming redundant to me when I initially read it. “Ego” as the base for “egoism,” however, adds another level to Anthem, and its length makes sense. 

Rand does not care about the individual. She cares about the bully. Having a sense of self (“I”) is not enough. One’s sense of self must be predicated on having one’s boot on someone else’s neck (egoism). So yeah, simply using the word “I” to refer to himself after an upbringing in a collective doesn’t suffice. The protagonist only arrives when he finds his Ego.

Thanks for the literary insight, William Edward Hickman. Of course, “not one word did Rand write about the actual victim of Hickman’s crime, Marion Parker [the 12-yr-old for whose murder Hickman was specifically on trial]” (197).

Weiner further dissects Rand’s hypocrisy, her “tone deafness” (196), her inability to adhere to her own dictate to “check your premises,” and an attitude that at best can be described as myopic. Specious and delusional might also apply. Essentially, Rand’s approach is to begin with her desired conclusion and contort her premises to match---the exact opposite of what she claimed to value: rationality. 

Weiner briefly touches on a particularly emblematic example: the Prometheus myth. Most of us know this one. The gods controlled fire, Prometheus stole it, gave it to mortals, and Zeus punished Prometheus by binding Prometheus to a rock and having an eagle tear out his liver each day.

However, in Atlas Shrugged, 

the Promethean Galt climbed a mountain in order to discover “the fountain of youth,” which he intended to bring down to men [Rand 178]. Instead, “after centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains and he withdrew his fire---until the day when men withdraw their vultures” [Rand 517]. Rand amusingly substitutes a collectivist vulture for the standard eagle in her version of the myth of Prometheus (207).

Rand’s version of the myth is either an intentional manipulation, or incompetent literary understanding. She removes all context, snatches the idea of the unfairly-punished-for-doing-something-beneficial character, and arranges her players according to who she wants her audience to label the hero, and who the villain. 

This is just bad writing---it’s advertisement writing---propaganda writing. It’s telling the audience what to think. But as Rand intends Atlas Shrugged as a piece of propaganda, we’ll forego assessing her narrative abilities.

That still leaves the philosophical problems. First, the notion that the fire naturally belonged to Prometheus. It didn’t. He didn’t create it, invent it, develop it, or even assemble it---he stole it. We love him for it---he’s our cultural hero---but in the face of Rand’s twisted telling, we must acknowledge that it is not “his fire.”

Second, as an analogy, the Prometheus myth fails Rand’s purposes because the parts don’t align. Here’s the story again: The gods (those in power) controlled fire, Prometheus (the outlier/equalizer/anti-1%) stole it, gave it to mortals (society at large), and Zeus (chief of the ‘people who count’/ the 1%) punished Prometheus by binding Prometheus to a rock and having an eagle (Zeus’s symbol) tear out his liver each day. 

Mortals don’t punish Prometheus, Zeus does. Those in power hated that someone leveled the playing field, even a tad; thus, Rand’s designated heroes are the Zeus’s, withholding their benedictions until mortals properly worship them. She doesn’t have a Prometheus figure in her works---she can’t---because Prometheus, who acted selflessly, is antithetical to Objectivism.

Checking one’s premises includes analyzing analogies to make sure said analogy applies to the situation. But Rand, and her followers, have a tenuous grasp on actual logic and rationality. Her followers do, however, have a habit of similar distortions, i.e. mangling the point.

On a final note, Weiner discusses fan interactions with Rand’s works, much as he did with What is to Be Done? And this is another reason I recommend this book. We---especially us bibliophiles and story-lovers, those of us with positive fandom experiences, and those of us working in books or movies or any storytelling medium---we often wax philosophic on the power of stories. The pen being mightier and all that. 

We talk less about detrimental effects. We try when it comes to hate speech (and defining what hate speech is); it might come up with the Twilight series, or its derivative, Fifty Shades of Grey. I mean, what do these stories say about relationship goals, and is that really why people read them? But actually acknowledging that stories can be more than stories, and that textual analysis is a skill many haven’t developed to a usable degree---that’s not a favored topic.

(I have many many many thoughts on this; suffice it for now to merely point out that textual analysis is not the same thing as reading for fun, though you can do both (even to the same story).)

But how far, really, can bad books inculcate harmful ideas into a cultural subconscious? According to Weiner,

In an essay entitled “The Psycho-Epistemology of Art” Rand boasts that many fans of The Fountainhead had reported to her that they had resolved dilemmas in their own lives by asking, “What would Roark do in this situation?”--whereupon “faster than their mind could identify the proper application of all the complex principles involved, the image of Roark gave them the answer.” This is the precise method of brainwashing through idolatry that I have been describing in this book: it works by switching off critical thinking in order to facilitate identification with an idol. In another essay on the nature of fiction Rand argues that a rational person reads a novel in order to find there “an image in whose likeness he will reshape the world and himself. Art gives him that image; it gives him the experience of seeing the full, immediate, concrete reality of his distant goals” [Rand, “Art and Sense of Life”]. This is precisely how a human being yields up his volition, hollows out his personality, and allows himself to become a “Manchurian Candidate,” triggered to perform whatever action is required. Roark is a terrorist who blows up a huge building in New York City, so a reader who asks, “What would Roark do?” and then allows Roark’s image to guide his actions might do just about anything (199-200).

The idea that art exists only on the sociopolitical level is hardly unique to Rand. In Dostoevsky’s early career, he had butted heads with the critic Belinksy about the nature and purpose of art (as does every society). Dostoevsky claimed that art=art and that it required no agenda; “the one thing that Belinsky demanded of artists, however, was the pursuit of political and social ideas of a particular tendency” (28). In the Soviet Union, art was for the State---to exult and exonerate its “particular tendencies.” 

To define art as having a singular purpose limits expression---limits thought and diversity of voices---and thus acts as a form of censorship. It’s the defining characteristic of propaganda, which, by limiting the function of art, petrifies its purpose, and limits the number of interpretations to ONE. Art, however, exists on multiple levels---the political, the personal, the communal; as unfettered expressions of the imagination, or as observations of the real world. And there are multiple ways to interact with art. Meanings may not be absolutely infinite, but they are varied and often fluid. 

The degree to which Rand’s followers clung to the “distant goals” of her fictions as irrefutable reality came to disastrous conclusion---one foreseeable by critics of Rand---in the financial crisis heralded by Alan Greenspan. A crap economy is not the only danger, however.

. . . Greenspan’s ignorance, dogmatism, and hubris blinded him to material proofs that invalidated his worldview. That is what you would expect from an ideologue. But now let us imagine a sociopath’s encounter with objectivism, which tells him that his relentless, amoral pursuit of material or political gain is the very thing that makes him better than the people he tramples to get to the top. Presumably such a reader of Ayn Rand’s novel does not probe deeply into this philosophy. He does not wince at Rand’s stylistic lapses. Nor does he perform “due diligence” on the ideas presented. He plunders what he needs from them and goes back to work with the pleasant new belief that his rapaciousness has solid intellectual and even moral foundations. To some this justification of greed must be irresistible (17-8).

The idea of “due diligence” is most striking. Skills such as reading comprehension and information literacy have a reputation as belonging to stuffy librarians or pedantic snobs. But the inability to distinguish between the subjective and the objective is dangerous. Its benign form is flame wars. In its more insidious form, as Weiner aptly shows with Ayn Rand, a story can be wielded as an instrument of destabilization, or just generic oppression. Because I’m pretty sure some of those sociopaths are in power right now, consulting Rand wherever they’re not cherry-picking Bible verses.

I used the phrase “on a final note” rather a long ways up there. And then I just kept going, which is really what this book does. As focused as it is on a few specific Russian writers of a specific era and Ayn Rand’s probably-unintentional debt to them, it makes you think. It made me think. On literature, on history, on politics and social movements, on propaganda, and very much on the necessity of information literacy (because I don’t believe in banning books).

I just hope that if somehow he comes out with a second edition, he includes a damn glossary.

[phantomshadow]

My take on a Venom movie - Agent Venom, Lovecraftian Themes, Agents of SHIELD Crossover

Ever since he was introduced in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man, Venom has been a fan-favorite Marvel villain/anti-hero. The character made his big-screen debut in 2007′s Spider-Man 3, being played by actor Topher Grace. His depiction in the third part of Sam Raimi’s trilogy was one met with backlash from fans who loved the character, seeing as his arc felt very rushed due to an already-convoluted story.

Ever since then, a Venom movie has been stuck in development hell over at Sony Pictures. During that time, Sony rebooted the Spider-Man movies with Andrew Garfield playing the web-headed hero and then, through a deal with Marvel Studios, allowed Spidey to appear in the third Captain America movie (now played by young actor Tom Holland) and officially join the Marvel Cinematic Universe, teaming up with Iron Man himself in his first MCU solo movie.

Happy to see that sweet cash from success again, Sony Pictures was quick to announce a new movie starring Spider-Man-related characters Black Cat and Silver Sable, and also revive that Venom movie idea, even casting the wonderful Tom Hardy as the symbiotic villain. 

Now, what everyone’s worried about, is the fact that it’s not clear if those movies will be part of the MCU. Some argue that they could work like the ABC and Netflix TV shows, where while they do happen in the same universe, they tend to stick more to their own plots, or maybe Sony is just going crazy and willing to make a whole different universe to play with (the so-called “Sony Marvel Universe”). I think it will be like the TV shows, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Regardless, here’s a little of my opinion on how they could make an interesting Venom movie without Spider-Man (oh yea, did I mention they don’t want to have Spider-Man in the movie? Yeah...):

Firstly, make it based off Agent Venom, but instead of being Flash Thompson, make the evil symbiote’s host the original Venom, Eddie Brock.  

When the Venom symbiose was acquired by the U.S. government, they gave rise to a new super-soldier project called Project Rebirth 2.0, seeking to bond the now-tamed alien symbiote to a soldier. That soldier was, of course, veteran Flash Thompson. 

Now, I know this isn’t classic Venom, and I know that some people don’t like him that much. And also, that’s supposed to be an older Flash Thompson! So what the hell!?

Well, Flash Thompson is still a teenager in the MCU, so I don’t want him to turn into Venom... yet. 

Recently, Eddie Brock, much like Flash, has been working with military forces and even on a recent Carnage comic book series, he was there to help take down his long-time rival Carnage who was trying to awaken a Lovecraftian elder god who just so happens to look like a giant symbiote. And guess who’s rumored to be the villain of the movie? Yep, Cletus “Carnage” Kasady.

I think Eddie Brock, in this universe, could take the role of a veteran U.S. soldier, willing to take part in a super soldier program. He bonds with the symbiote, and he becomes Agent Venom... with no Spider-logo since he has no connection to Spider-Man.

The plot of the movie would be very inspired by the most recent Carnage comic... the one I mentioned before where he tried to awaken an elder god...

In the movie, the U.S. military would find not one, but two alien symbiotes the inside a cave from a distant island. They captured them and decide to first test the more agitated one in a convicted serial killer called Cletus Kasady, thinking that if the alien proved itself too much for the psychopath’s body and killed him, it wouldn’t be much of a ploblem since it was a serial killer and all. 

Cletus goes even insaner, and breaks out off the U.S. facility he was being kept, hearing a mysterious calling in his mind, louder and louder... a call to awaken the elder god Chthon. 

To do it, he must acquire a book called “the Darkhold”. Written by Chthon himself, the book is Marvel’s version of H.P. Lovecraft’s “Necronomicon”, a tome full of forbidden knowledge that can make the weak-minded go insane. Thanks to the already-insane and blood-thirsty mind of Carnage, was can read the contents of the book and summon Chthon in the island where the symbiotes were found.

That book is already a part of the MCU, having made its first appearance in the fourth season of Marvel/ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. 

The season involved people using the Darkhold to acquire powers, and Ghost Rider. As of the end of the season, the whereabouts of the book are unknown. I think it would be fine to think that the books is still somewhere hidden on Earth, and a fight against its current guardian could happen in the movie, finally giving us that movie-TV tie-in.

Agent Eddie “Venom” Brock, who can sense a little of Chthon’s calling and sense the presence of his sibling symbiote, is assigned to get the book from Kassady’s hand and prevent the villain from awakening Chthon. 

The movie could also feature Silver Sable, giving us our first introduction to the character before her movie with Black Cat. 

It would be implied that the symbiotes are part of Chthon, turning them into Lovecraft-style extra-dimensional aliens. 

At the end of the movie, Carnage opens a portal to Chthon’s dimension and almost succeeds in summoning the elder god. The portal is fragile, so it can only take the passage of one individual. A character from Brock’s team, potentially a love interest, sacrifices herself to close the portal, and Brock beats up and locks away Carnage.

After-credits scene shows that some symbiotes arrived on Earth through the portal. Since they’re only parts of Chthon, they managed to pass trough the portal without having it close. 

Aaand, that’s it, really. In the future, Eddie Brock could lose the Venom symbiote and it goes on to take Flash Thompson as a host. Flash and Eddie basically swap places in this universe. 

Yep, that’s it, I guess.

[empires-of-athos]

October Nishi Drabble 04

Post Heavensward, pre the end of the Dragonsong war, Nishi was at a very ugly place (more so then he usually is). Like Sef I need to get around to writing up stuff about Vertaux as well. Also you can’t tell me that the Ice chandelier doesn’t put off a cold chill. Also danced around directly mentioning a CERTAIN EVENT in MSQ that...well he’s still coping with that, but most people who’ve played through Heavensward content can pretty well guess what that is.   Word of the Day: Spell Word Count: 987 Nishikurag’a was never one fond of relying on magic, but when the need came he wasn’t adverse to looking for answers even if there were none to be found. He was even less fond when people interrupted his search.

His room in the Free Company was colder than most of the house. Once upon a time he'd loathed the cold but over the long time they spent in Coerthas and Ishgard proper he'd become not only accustom to but more comfortable in a slight chill, hence why his room was lit by the gentle glow of enchanted ice that danced the soft blues of magic across his room and had the added bonus of keeping the temperature relatively low.

Albeit for reading the lighting was poor and required an extra lamp at his desk but that was hardly an issue. Such was how Nishikurag'a could be found more often than not when he even bothered to be around the Company house these days. Alone in the quiet cool solitude of his room, pouring over tome after tome, tale after tale and myth after myth. Taking down notes, references, looking for answers.

The means to which healers of all variety applied their magics - when the fallen fell it restored their strength and will little of it had to do with their true health hence the worlds continued need for chirurgeons despite their magics. That which did often healed the soul and not the body or vice versa. The dead could be reanimated but not brought back.  Primals promised sweet words the could not commit to. Alexander could turn back but what had occured couldn't be changed. The ascians only presented illusions and shadows -

Magic was full of an insufferable amount of half answers to the problems of this world. He'd already exhausted what books he had. The library again perhaps. If he could sneak back into the forbidden section again-

His ears set back in annoyance at the knock at his door, giving little more then a grunt of acknowledgement over his mug of cocoa (he'd learned long ago that coffee was awful for his nerves and he couldn't brew a tea that wasn't bitter to save his soul) to who ever it was that was intruding now, pointedly sticking his gaze back down into his books refusing to glance the persons way.

"Ah Kuraga-"

"What do you want Vertaux?" Now he DEFINITELY wasn't going to look the other's way. The -last- person he wanted anything to do with at the moment...okay the last person that he wouldn't stab on sight that he wanted nothing to do with at the moment was the arrogant elezen who decided to bother him.

"Why Kuraga, I'm hurt! Can't I just, stop by to see what one of my allies is doing?"

"You could. But you don't. You wouldn't be talking to me if you didn't want something now spare us both and get on with it."

"Well you're no fun." The faux pleasant voice dropped as Vertaux shook his head shrugging. "If you must be that way I need help with a little project of mine and you're just the person for it."

He finally looked up at him, staring Vertaux down with a glare that screamed of how little he bought that chocoboshit excuse. He'd be better off saying the twelveswood was on fire.

"Alright look, H'isiri is traveling with Sef, Titania is still in Ishgard dealing with...something, and you're the only person whose actually in the guildhall right now, so you're the best I have at the moment."

Closing the tome he had in his hand his glare didn't ease at all as a heavy sigh escaped him. "What are you working on that's so damn important you can't wait for one of them to come back?"

"Well after some matters involving my peers-" Other casters got it. "I realized I could be doing *vastly* superior spellcraft then what I've been allowing myself and I need a test subject for some of my casting."

"....and why do -I- care and why should I help?"

"Care?" Vertaux laughed proudly shaking his head again. "Kuraga I'm not asking you to care or even understand. As far as why you should help..." Humming in thought as he glanced around the room, his eyes resting on the portrait hung not far from where Kuraga sat. "I mean- helping people who need it wasn't that his whole-"

The look that Nishikurag'a shot Vertaux threatened to drop the temperature of the room even further. For just a moment his eyes let off a bright blue glow that was starkly noticeable in the dull light of the room. Lip curled back in a sneer, baring fang. "I suggest you use that brain of yours to actually think of the next words you choose to utter."

Insensitive perhaps but stupid he was not. Not by a long shot. Hands up defensive though he shrugged it off. "I mean the guildmaster. Isn't it our duty to help people in need by his say in things? Besides its not good for you to be brooding and miserable all the time."

He knew damn well that in fact NOT who he'd been initially talking about but it wasn't worth having to explain to W'kaixen why he murdered the resident black mage for running his twelve be damned mouth. Taking in a heavy breath as he stood from his desk. "Its noted that you seem to remember that only when you're the one in need. Likewise it should be noted while you may be right about my brooding - being in your presence will do little to none in the ways of aiding it. Fine i'll help you on the condition you don't bother me for the rest of the week. You don't talk to me, you don't come see me, and if we wind up at the same place at the same time you keep your mouth shut and leave me alone."

"Really that's all it takes? Why - I'd do that anyway. Done." He laughed in that half mocking way that Vertaux oft did. He really hated magic.

[hey-i-wrote-a-story]

Chapter 32 Into the Unknown

           Gently, Scott brought the small Maltese out of his kennel. The fluffy white dog with the nappy fur was nervous by nature, and as such took a long time to grow accustomed to anyone. The little guy tended to cower from strangers and had a tendency to shake. It was only with the people he loved that he’d leap about, play, and bark happily. The little dog loved Scott McCall. While it took him some time to accept most people, he took to Scott instantly. There was something about him that was just comforting. Scott held the Maltese in his arms, where the dog settled in immediately, resting his chin on Scott’s bicep and wagging his tiny tail. Scott stroked his head gently, speaking to him as if they were old friends. In fact, this was only the second time Scott had seen him in twice as many months. To look at them, they seemed to be the best of friends who saw each other every day. With the ongoing chaos of strange young fans and the flying monster they brought with them, taking a moment to tend to his part-time job was a much needed chance to catch his breath.

           “You ready to come see the doctor, Bello?”, Scott asked. Bello looked up at Scott with a joyous expression, his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. “Who’s a good boy? I think you are. Are you a good boy?”

           Bello rolled over in Scott’s arms to show his belly, which Scott began to scratch. Dr. Deaton, who stood by the metal examination table, shook his head in admiration.

           “Had I tried to coax him out of there, it would have taken all day. Then when I had him out, he’d spend the next hour hiding in corners.”

           Scott rested Bello on the table. The little dog looked very much at home there, as long as Scott’s arms were around him. “Aw, he’s a good dog”, the young man observed.

           “You’re a natural-born healer, Scott.” Bello remained perfectly still as Deaton gave him his shots. The little guy never took his eyes off Scott. His tail never stopped wagging. “I suppose that makes the inevitable solution to our current problem all the harder to accept.”

           Scott kept his eyes down on Bello, busying himself with scratching his ears. “I’m not ready to accept it.”

           “There may be no other way to defeat this creature. Mrs. Yukimura and I have both been searching. I’ve even turned up some legends that were new to me. Knowing what we’re dealing with has helped. But it hasn’t helped much. We keep finding the same thing. It just reinforces what we already knew.” Deaton paused to take a breath. “Scott, it looks like the only way to banish The Unspoken is through a sacrifice.”

           His reply came as quick as it was stern. “We’re not going to let it come to that.”

           Scott returned Bello to his kennel, offering him a small biscuit as he closed the door. “We should call Mrs. Herman and let her know Bello’s ready to be picked up.” He looked in at the little dog, who was bright-eyed and happy inside his temporary home. He began to wrestle with a plush toy beside him. It squeaked as he hugged it close. Deaton allowed Scott to collect his thoughts.

           “There’s just got to be another way”, Scott said at last.

           “I’m sure there may be. It was only a couple years ago that we feared your best friend would be lost to an ancient demon. The challenge is finding that other way.”

           Scott’s eyes brightened. “Wait. Kanima venom. If we could expose it to—“

           “I thought so, too. But…”

           Deaton stepped aside to reveal a small experiment set up on the table behind him. It appeared to be a miniature dynamo or some other makeshift device to produce an electrical charge. Donning rubber gloves, Deaton flicked a small switch and the device hummed to life. A small lance of electricity arced back and forth between two points. He picked up a small vial which held a small amount of viscous fluid at the bottom. “Given the amount of electrical energy The Unspoken contains…” He poured the contents of the vial down onto the small arc of electricity. There was a popping sound, a shower of tiny sparks, then the smell of ozone. As Deaton turned off his experiment, a wisp of smoke rose from the machine and was gone in an instant. He pointed with a gloved hand at the small machine. It looked exactly the same. There wasn’t even the faintest trace of venom anywhere. The electric discharge evaporated it.

           “What if we used a lot more of it—“, Scott ventured.

           “Kanima venom’s not the kind of thing you can buy by the gallon at the local filling station. There simply isn’t that much to come by. Even if there was, the result would be the same, only on a much larger scale.”

           “You’re not saying we need to consider the sacrifice…”

           “What we need is more information, which so far has been in very short supply. I am open to suggestions. I honestly don’t know where to begin.”

           “I might”, Scott said, his eyes bright again. He went to his backpack and retrieved an old hardcover coffee table book. “I almost forgot I had this. This is one of the things Stiles dug up back when I was first bitten. He was looking everywhere for anything that would help me during the change.” Scott dropped the book down on the table. It was a book of monsters, of the kind made for kids active in Dungeons & Dragons or other role playing games. The painted cover illustration of some tremendous monster emerging from what could have been a wormhole in space was well done, if a bit over the top. Deaton looked at the title, which was written in intricate lettering.

           “Into the Unknown: The Ultimate Guide to Monsters and Beings of This and Other Worlds.” Deaton scrunched his brow. “I take it this isn’t going to be the most academic of tomes.”

           “Not hardly”, Scott said, flipping pages. There was an entire chapter on lycanthropy and werewolves that was filled with post-its, colored sticky-tabs, and notes scrawled in the margins in Stiles’ semi-legible hand writing. Past the werewolf section, there was very little in the way of research notes, save for a small illustration here and there including a were-creature of some kind. The book was mostly pictures, some with 360-degree views of the fantastic creatures in question, to aid young readers in drawing the monsters on their own, or including them in gameplay. Scott paused on one page that looked unfamiliar to him. Beyond Stiles’ noted pages on werewolves, Scott never spent a lot of time perusing the book. The drawing he saw filled an entire page. It was a huge gray monster with a body not unlike a dinosaur’s, or perhaps a rhinoceros. It had six legs, three on each side. It was covered in heavy gray scales and had a mooselike head topped with hideous antlers. Below the image was the word:

           Bilgesnipe.

           Scott made a frowny face. “Hmp. So that’s what that is.” Hurriedly, he moved on to the page he was looking for. He slid the book over to Deaton. “Look at this.”

           The page he showed the veterinarian displayed a furry monster (it could have been a werewolf, or a giant cat, or something else entirely), mouth open and fangs bared, claws at the ready. It was squaring off with a monster four times its size that bore a passing resemblance to The Unspoken. Deaton considered the book with newfound interest. His eyes glanced at the chapter heading at the top of the page.

           “Fearsome Monsters from Other Dimensions”, he read aloud. He skimmed the next several pages and saw nothing else like it. “Is this the only part of the book that mentions it?”

           “Afraid so.”

           Deaton looked at the caption below the drawing. “An Ailuranthrope prepares to do battle with an interdimensional traveler for whom he is no match. A monster so terrible that its forbidden name brings painful death upon any who dare speak it.”

           “Not 100% accurate”, Scott conceded, “but it does tell us at least something. If The Unspoken can get a mention in kid’s book on monsters—“

           “Then there is lore out there for us to access if we can find it”, Deaton answered, finishing the thought. “This is interesting, if nothing else. I may be able to turn something up in a source I hadn’t thought to before.”

           “I hope we find something new soon. I don’t like the way the drawing has The Unspoken rearing back to eat that were-cat.”

           Deaton picked up the book and stared hard at the page before him. Scott could tell that his druidic mentor was thinking something he was not yet ready to share. He figured he’d know in another moment if Deaton was on to something.

           “May I hold on to this for a while?”, he asked.

           There it was. The sign the wheels were turning in his boss’s head. “Sure. Keep it as long as you like.”

           Scott grabbed up his backpack and made for the door. He didn’t want to be away from his new charges for too long. Deaton stared at the page a bit more, then looked up as Scott opened the door. Deaton opened his mouth as if to say something, but stopped himself. Scott paused. “Is there something else?”

           Deaton smiled. “No. Not yet, I don’t think.” He held up the book, adding, “I will look into this. Nice work, Scott.”

           “Just making sure everybody gets through this alive.” And with that, he was gone.

           Deaton’s smile dropped as soon as Scott had departed. He didn’t want to say anything else now. No need to raise any hopes until he was sure.

                                                       *    *    *

           Kira awoke to a tingling in the fingers of her left hand. She blinked herself awake and was reminded by what she saw that she had fallen asleep on the couch while taking a break from her energy-sensing practice (which is what she was calling it) that her mother had her doing. She was sore and spent and would have preferred to flop back down on the cushions and drift back to sweet oblivion, if not for the small arcs of electricity dancing along her fingertips.

           “What the--?”  She sat up and looked at her hand. She had never lost control of her power while she slept. She suppressed a shudder and took a deep breath, balling her hand into a fist and smothering the electrical charge. She still felt the slight itching beneath the skin, the tingle of the electricity fighting to get out, like a puppy desperate to go outside. See? This is what you get, mother. With all the ‘Push harder, push harder, try again’ business and now I’ve lost control of my abilities and I will most likely burn the house down the next time I go to bed or possibly char-broil the entire junior class the next time I use the school swimming pool—

           She stopped. She had been pushing harder, following her mother’s instructions. Maybe this wasn’t loss of control. Maybe this was…something new. Maybe the secret to accessing it was to stop pushing so hard. Kira loosened her fist and watched as the electricity rolled up her fingers to dance in arcs along her nails. Maybe the trick was to just…let go. Kira opened her hand wide, palm up and fingers spread. The electrical charge she had generated leapt up from her palm. It zipped up perhaps a foot high, then to her surprise, too a sharp right turn and shot across the room. The day was warm but with a welcome breeze, so the door had been left ajar to allow in some fresher air than the a.c. could produce. The small jolt shot out through that small opening. Kira sat up, looking. What was that about? Again, she felt the itching in her palm and release another small charge. Again, the same result. The jolt leapt up, angled sharply, and zipped out the door. If it was that puppy she’d just been thinking of, she’d swear it wanted her to follow it.

           What if that was it? She had no illusions that her power had become sentient, but if she had made a connection with what she’d been reaching for, she needed to maintain it. Kira took another deep breath and closed her eyes. Without pushing, without forcing, she opened her palm and let her power reach out. This time she let the power do the work for her. It was like a glowing line that stretched out beyond her, beyond the house. Where was it going? What was it reaching for?

           There.

           There it was. Not the big burst of energy she was certain was the monster. This was smaller, though no less foreign. It pulsed and crackled, somewhere off there in the distance. Kira stood up and began to walk slowly across the room. She did not open her eyes, but she navigated the room without running into anything. It had less to do with her familiarity with her surrounding than following the pull she felt inside her. In moments, she was on the front lawn. The pull, the pulsing she felt kept drawing her forward. Soon she was making her way down the walkway toward the sidewalk. She stopped to focus on what she felt far ahead of her. If it wasn’t the monster, what was it? Now with eyes open, Kira glanced back at the house. Should she go back inside and get her mom? No, not yet. Not until she had something substantial to tell her. She reached her arm out in front of her and allowed another jolt to leave her palm. Out it went, at first lingering in the air a moment, then darting far in front of her like a shot.

           “Okay, Fido”, Kira mumbled under her breath. “Show where Timmy fell down the well.”

           Kira quickly lost track of any sense of movement. She was focused intently on the energy pulling her forward. As she continued on, pausing here and there only for a moment to release another tiny charge of energy to keep the connection going, moving onward with the same surety of a compass pointing true north. The target for which she aimed became clearer and clearer as she went. She got another flash that knocked her back several paces. It was the scary face again. Angry, or frightened, or possibly in pain. Blank eyes wide, mouth open, mop of hair aglow around it like a mane. Definitely not the monster, but it was definitely something. Rather than being scared off by it, Kira felt a renewed determination to find out what it was. She quickened her pace, now noticing a flow of energy around her. Telephone wires, street lamps, neon signs, even traffic lights pulsed briefly with lances of electricity, all pointing Kira in the direction she needed to follow. The energy never lingered long enough to disrupt any device’s day to day workings, and mostly went unnoticed by passersby. But they weren’t looking for them, either. Kira was.

           She was so close now. The energy source ahead of her practically screamed at her to better draw attention to where it was. Kira felt her power flow through her freely. He limbs, fingers, and brow were alive with electricity just beneath the skin. She stopped and closed her eyes. “Okay, whatever you are. Show me your ugly face one more time.” Kira let her body relax and the power surge through her. The invisible line flowing from her to whatever being lay at the end of it grew stronger. How long would he have to probe? How long until she made contact? Not long. Again the face appeared in Kira’s mind, but this time she was ready for it. She allowed it to come without letting it push her back. There was the face again, eyes ablaze and mouth wide. Kira pushed it away just a bit, far enough so she could get a better look at it. It was surrounded by gleaming thistles of light, of energy, and the face, though distorted and hideous, was undeniably that of a girl. It was a girl Kira had seen before. Where had she--? Then the realization struck her like a thunderbolt. The last time she had seen this face, it held an expression of terror, eyes wide and growing blank. For beneath its chin talons protruded from its chest, pouring blood onto the highway.

           Kira shook herself from the vision and broke contact. “Oh my God. Erin?”

           Kira understood what she had connected with. If this was Erin, or whatever was left of her, she would be dealing with a monster of an entirely different kind. Now she had something substantial. More than that, now she needed advice and she definitely needed help.

           Kira turned her head to the side and called out, “Mom? Could you come out here, please? Like, now? I really need your—“

           She stopped talking. Where the hell was she? Kira was nowhere near home, that much was certain. Inwardly, she chastised herself for thinking she was. She saw the street lights and power lines that led her on her search. So caught up was she in tracing the source of the energy pulse that she had forgotten for a moment how far she had wandered. And how far was that, exactly? Kira turned around, expecting to see a neighboring street corner or road sign to help get her bearings. No such luck. She was well outside of her neighborhood. In fact, she was very nearly outside of her area code. Behind her was dirt road and tall trees. In the distance, she could almost make out a paved road beyond the one of dirt and gravel. Kira blinked. “I’m lucky I didn’t wander into traffic”, she mused.

           Kira then turned to see what was before her. She stood at the end of the dirt road which emptied out onto a paved lot. It was the parking lot and service access to the Beacon County Power Station. The huge structure with its high walls and impressive towers strung with multiple electrical lines stretching out in all directions loomed before her. Even without focusing, she could now feel the energy source pulsing from within those walls, beckoning her inside. She was on the edge of town. She had never intended to wander this far. It was a miracle her feet weren’t killing her. Kira reached a hand up to rub the back of her neck as she considered her situation. He knuckles bumped against something familiar. The hilt of her sword. Strapped to her back was her sword. She had no memory of picking it up as she left the house. She didn’t know if she had grabbed it absently or by reflex. She was just glad she did. Looking ahead of her, she saw a metal door on the front of the power plant. It stood out from other entrances in that it was painted bright blue, and it had been ripped off its hinges. It was tilted at an angle, hanging precariously from an upper hinge that appeared ready to give out at any second. There were scorch marks and a hole where the door handle should be, and a streak of melted metal down the front and pooled on the ground which no doubt had formerly been that handle.

           Kira swallowed hard. “Well, I shouldn’t go in there, that’s for sure.”

           Kira stepped carefully over the demolished door as she ventured inside the plant. The place looked even bigger on the inside than it did on the outside. She was surrounded by large devices and machines she couldn’t begin to identify. Small signs on the wall provided arrows pointing in various directions toward things like dynamos, generators, turbines, and condensate pumps, whatever those were. No directional sign pointing the way to any monster-controlled, possessed electrical zombie chick, unfortunately. Even if there had been, Kira doubted she would have spotted it among the multitude of warning and hazard signs posted liberally at gate fronts and along the walls reminding workers that at any moment they were less than a few inches away from things that could kill them instantly. Delightful.

           Before Kira was a wide hallway beneath a high ceiling, with extension into smaller hallways, leading to different areas separated by chain link fences bearing more warning signs about painful death awaiting around every corner. Where to start? Kira was finding it hard to focus among the ongoing track in her head playing the all-time favorite tune of What am I doing what am I doing oh God what the hell am I doing?

           “Um…hello?”, she said, feeling like an idiot the second the word came out. But she didn’t know what else to say, considering there was no one around. Somehow that didn’t seem right to her. Well, duh. She had a scrunched door with a melted handle behind her and giant power things in front of her, any one of which could have an unspeakable monster’s energy minion hanging around them. Whoever worked her was probably a little busy at the moment.

           Kira tried to focus on the original energy source that had drawn her here. There was too much interference, too much input to hone in on it. From a distance, the unnatural energy stood out. But here, with an abundance of energy pulsing and surging all around her, it was impossible to make out. As she ventured forward, Kira even thought she could feel a different kind of power flowing beneath her feet. She looked down and saw only concrete floor. Keep it together, Kira, she thought. It was advice she was going to have a hard time following. The silent air was cut with the sound of a powerful electrical discharge. As if lightning had struck from inside the building, the air was suddenly filled with static and the stench of ozone. The lights faded in and out, the temperature spiked, making it harder to breathe, and Kira thought she heard the sound of a man screaming.

           “Okay, investigation time’s over”, Kira said. He phone was in her hand and she was already dialing for help. She was about to press the button to call her mom, but stopped. “No”, she decided. “If I’m going to call for backup, I know exactly who it is I want.” She swiped the screen as she had a million times before, saw the photo of the face that had brought her comfort so many times, and pushed the button beside it.

[marauderingbad-blog]

Yer a Werewolf, Remus

PART 1/3

Read the Full Story on ArchiveOfOurOwn  http://archiveofourown.org/works/11614782 

James wasn’t a stalker--at least not in his own imagining of what a stalker was--but he had certainly developed some pretty grade-A stalker strategies in the past few months. For instance, James had a secret calendar that he only worked on with Sirius and Peter (or, really, that he worked on with Peter by association only, since Peter rarely helped--he was kind of just there). What were the contents of this secret calendar, you ask? Oh, only the whereabouts of their other best friend, Remus Lupin.

So, okay, that sounded like some serious stalking, but James was convinced it was for a good cause. None of them quite bought Remus’ inconsistent excuses for where he disappeared to so often, so they took figuring out what was wrong into their own hands. They’d been tracking his absences from school, looking for a pattern.

James had the calendar spread out before the three of them on the dormitory floor. He chewed on the tip of his quill, observing the days of the month associated with the absences. Remus definitely disappeared around the same time each month...then another marking on the calendar jumped out at James, a little circle.

“Hey, guys…” he began hesitantly, pointing his index finger at the moon symbol. “Does it seem like...like Remus is always gone at the full moon?” James asked, looking up suddenly.

Sirius had been momentarily distracted from their task at hand by the leaping toadstool he had nicked from herbology class. And how amusing it was to hear Peter squeal when he plugged it into his nose.

“Erm..” he responded distantly without removing his eyes from the pitiful leaping mushroom that was now bouncing from Peter’s scalp to his nose. Despite his lack of full attention, the information soon came to settle somewhere in his brain.

“Hang on..” he said, this time with investment as he looked up at James. “We did realize that he was disappearing monthly, right? Do the dates line up with the full moon?” He asked as he scrambled through earlier versions of the chart, going back into the spring of last year, which had been their first year at Hogwarts.

Peter frantically tried to extrecate the toadstool from his nose, “Sirius!” he whined. James chewed on his lip, paying Peter and Sirius’ antics no mind for the moment. He looked for the little moon marking on the pages as Sirius flipped through them. The calendar sheets had just come printed with the marking, James hadn’t really thought anything of it...until now.

“Yeah…” James confirmed, his voice hesitant, contemplative. “The dates all seem to be during and around the full moon.”

“The night of and day after, to be exact…” Sirius said quietly as he surveyed the chart, his eyes scalding with alacrity. He looked up at James with an astonished, thrilled gaze. This was the most significant breakthrough they had reached to date. He sat up from his relaxed pose on the floor to a more alert position with his legs crossed.

“What sicknesses relate to the lunar cycle?” Sirius asked breathlessly as he pulled over their tome on magical diseases and maladies. “What are Remus’ symptoms?” he asked, grabbing his quill and beginning to make a list on a stray piece of parchment, saying them aloud as they revealed themselves in his mind. “Exhaustion...weakness… malaise. Those are post-full moon..” His handwriting was nearly illegible but James and Sirius didn’t need the script to remember.

“I don’t see what any of this would have to do with the full moon,” Peter said dismissively.

James, meanwhile, remained quiet, nodding as Sirius spoke. “That sounds right,” he said, flipping through another one of the wizarding medical texts they’d taken out of the library. James looked up “moon” in the glossary, trailing his finger along an unfamiliar word--it instructed him to turn to the entry for lycanthropy. On a whim, James chose to turn to this term over all the others that were listed under “moon.”

“Oh…” James uttered aloud as he read the description--lycanthropy was simply the technical term for the condition of, well...being a werewolf. He resumed biting down into his lip, glancing up at Sirius. Was it insane to even mention it? He cleared his throat.

“This, ah, this says a condition related to the moon is...being a werewolf,” he said. “I mean, duh,” James added as if to lighten the mood. “Let’s just see--let’s see what it says happens to people afterwards. You’d think they’d be all...strong and aggressive, right?” he reasoned, and then didn’t fit Remus at all. “Following the full moon,” James read aloud. “Werewolves often experience exhaustion, malaise, illness, muscle pain, and general weakness and aches of the body.” he trailed off, looking up again at Sirius.

At first, Sirius snorted with disbelief, then grinned. “Remus? A strong, aggressive werewolf?” he sniggered incredulously at the image. “That’s almost as fucked as Peter being a Gryffindor.” he scoffed but his grin vanished the moment James began to read off the exact symptoms he had scribbled down.

“That...I mean--those symptoms could be common for loads of…” Sirius attempted to justify the coincidences, but for once, words failed him. “Erm…I guess I dunno..” He said blankly as he swallowed hard, his expression becoming somber.

But he did know. The similarities of symptoms and timing of Remus’ disappearances had too many uncanny similarities to lycanthrophy to be coincidence, and even as Sirius tried to dismiss the suggestion something inside him had completed the puzzle. He just didn’t want to see it. If they were right, which they must be, then every month Remus would transform into a killing monster, at least, that’s what he had been told about werewolves. And for how long had this been happening to him? Surely, the boys had recognized that Remus was suffering and that it must be something terrible if he would lie to his best friends to keep it a secret, but this is a completely different inconceivable level.

Sirius suddenly felt overwhelmingly sad. He met James’ gaze, knowing by his expression that he was experiencing similar thoughts.

James held Sirius’ gaze for a moment, then looked away, ruffling his hair, both in contemplation and in a somewhat anxious way. It made sense--the absences, how sick and frail he looked when he came back, the secretiveness. James’ mind played through every stereotype, every prejudice of what a werewolf was that he’d heard growing up--he’d always taken it for granted that they were monsters, since that’s what every story portrayed them as, whether fictional or real accounts from The Prophet, and it was how everyone talked about them.

Nonetheless, James had to let go of these conceptions, because he couldn’t reconcile them with what he knew of Remus. He’d never really considered that a werewolf was a normal person for most of the month--or that they weren’t just scary grown-ups like Fenrir Greyback, but potentially kids like Remus.

Taking a breath, James broke the silence. “Well, when all’s said and done, Remus is probably the least monster-like of all of us, so I suppose all that stuff everyone says about werewolves is just rubbish,” James concluded.

“Wait, I still don’t get it,” Peter said. “What are you lot talking about werewolves for?”

Sirius listened to James and nodded his head eagerly. “Definitely.” he agreed with resolution. They knew Remus all too well to think otherwise.

His thoughtfulness ceased abruptly when Peter opened his mouth. “For fuck’s sake…” he groaned. “You really are a daft cow. Do I need to spell it out for you? With illustrations in case the words are too big for you?” Sirius spat impatiently.

“Remus is a werewolf, you dim git.”

He turned back to James with his composure returning. “And we have to help him. Right?”

Peter’s eyes looked as if they were about to bulge out of his head. “A werewolf, but they’re…”

James held his hand up, effectively cutting Peter off. “Don’t finish whatever was about to come after that but. We all know what werewolves are supposed to be, and we also all know who Remus is,” he resolved, not wanting to entertain even a moment of negativity against Remus. James fixed his eyes intently on Sirius and nodded. “Of course,” he said determinedly, then leaned back onto his elbows, surveying the books they’d already taken out. He sighed, “I think we’re going to need some different books.”

~~*~~

James was lounging on his bed in the middle of one of their research powwows several weeks later, reading a book he’d nicked from the forbidden section of the library. He was munching on chocolate frogs as he did, carelessly getting his chocolate covered fingers all over this priceless text that probably dated to the Middle Ages or something. He suspected this might be the very reason why some of these books were forbidden in the first place--they weren’t all about dark magic, so it was probably more that the school didn’t want twelve year olds like James messing them up. But it was a necessary sacrifice--the chocolate got James’ brain working.

“Wait, so, animals can’t be turned into werewolves, even if they get bit by one?” he asked, looking over at Sirius, not even really bothering to address Peter. James was never totally sure what Peter did during these “study” sessions, but he never contributed anything worthwhile.

“So...Could I turn into a Werewolf by eating Remus’ food?” Peter asked once again from his bed as he continued to stuff Remus’ peppermint toads into his unhinged mouth.

Sirius had lost count of how many times Peter had asked them that. Considering how close they were to developing a plan to help Remus, he was currently in the midst of one of his frustrated states--And when Sirius was frustrated, someone had to suffer. This time (well, most of the time, really) it was Peter. Sirius was now lying with his back to the floor with an absurdly large and boring book levitated just above his face. As he finished scanning each section, the page would automatically turn itself.

“I swear on Merlin’s beard,” Sirius growled slowly. “if you ever ask me that ever again I will stuff those toads so far up your arsehole that you’ll have to chew them and swallow them back down. If you’re not going to help us then at least shut your bloody face before I enchant the hairs on your head to lace your mouth permanently shut.” Sirius snarled.

James rolled his eyes and quietly marveled at what it must be like to want peppermint toads so badly you’d be willing to risk becoming a werewolf; not that you could become a werewolf by sharing food with one, obviously, but still. Peter’s uncertainty implied he’d been willing to take the risk.

Peter hid behind his bed curtains, whimpering softly. He hesitantly glanced out at Sirius, who returned his look with a fiery glare.

Sirius was mid-glare when he remembered that James had spoken to him--immediately his expression relaxed. He sat up onto his forearms and looked thoughtfully into something James and Peter could not see for a moment.

“Erm, I dunno but...” He considered this concept, continuing to mentally search. “I mean--if you think about it, loads of animals have to coexist with werewolves. I’ve never heard of a were-beaver or some shite.” he sniggered. “It must only infect humans.”

James chewed thoughtfully on his lip. “And if animals can’t get it...there are ways for wizards to turn into animals, right? Like McGonagall!” James jumped up into a sitting position in excitement. “Remember when she transformed from the cat on the first day of class?” he asked excitedly. “What was that called again? We could do that! Then we could at least keep him company!”

“ANIMAGI,” Sirius burst out, his eyes wide with thrill as their eureka moment came to manifest. “THAT’S IT. We could become animagi!” He stood up, his heart pounding and began to pace the room in thought. “Not many people have done it but it’s obviously possible. And wizards certainly must have done it without having to register.. And then We could stay with Remus the entire time and he couldn’t possibly say no since as animals he won’t be able to infect us. You and I can figure it out, James. Let’s fucking do it.” He finished with a grin.

“B..b..but.. wait...We’re not registered..” Peter squeaked. “Dumbledore wouldn’t let us register….”

Sirius rolled his eyes and scoffed. “We’re not going to register--As I just strongly implied, you dundering sloth. And Dumbledore’s not going to know. No one’s going to know..and no one’s going to tell.” He finished, eyeing Peter. “McGonagall must have books on it in her private collection..something to point us in the right direction.. One of us could schedule a meeting with her and distract her and the others could just take a look..”

“James..” Peter said in a pleading voice (realizing he was his only chance) as he sat on the end of James’ bed (making it sink on the side he was sitting on). “T..this is a bad idea.. We could get expelled, James.. We could go to Azkaban! This is illegal! I don’t think…..Sirius is just being….--”

Sirius snorted and interrupted him. “--We’ll put it to a vote then. Naturally, Peter chickens out. A true Gryffindor through and through. James, what do you say, mate?” he asked eagerly.

James beamed at Sirius, boldened by the encouragement and confirmation that this could work, they could do it. He turned to Peter as he spoke, his grin diminishing slightly, but only into a wry sort of smirk. “Peter,” he said as if reasoning with a petulant child. “We’re not going to register and we are certainly not going to tell Dumbledore anything,” he said, nodding in agreement with Sirius. James’ expression turned grave as Sirius insisted no one told, his eyes focused steadily on Peter in that moment, unblinking.

“Do you think it’d work if we told her another class assigned us an essay on our favorite professor? We could interview her on being an animagus, how she did it. Maybe she’ll mention a few books and we can find them,” he suggested, then bit his lip, his thoughts growing ever bolder. “Or…” he trailed off for dramatic effect. “She may still have something in her office, and we do have an invisibility cloak,” James pointed out.

Peter’s only chance proved to be not much of a chance at all. James’ mind was utterly made up. “We won’t get expelled and no one is going to Azkaban,” he said dismissively. “Merlin’s beard, Pete, they don’t send kids to Azkaban. If we get caught--which we won’t--we plead ignorance. Say we forgot you had to register,” he shrugged, leaning back into his pillow. “Knowing Dumbledore, he’ll be impressed.”

“I’m in,” James said swiftly. “I’m all in.”

Sirius’ smirk curled and the fire in his grey eyes flickered.

To Be Continued