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hamliet · 4 years ago

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The Crows Summon the Sun

Or, Hamliet’s review of Shadow & Bone, which gets a 4.5/5 for enjoyment and a 3.5/5 in terms of writing.

The true heroes of this story and the saviors of the show are the Crows. However, the problem is that the show then has an uneven feel, because the strength of the Crows plotline highlights the weaknesses of the trilogy storyline. But imo, overall, the strengths overshadow (#punintended) the weaknesses.

I’ll divide the review into the narrative and the technical (show stuff, social commentary), starting with narrative.

Narrative: The Good

It’s What The Crows Deserve

I went into the show watching it for the Crows; however, knowing that their storyline was intended to be a prequel, I wasn’t terribly optimistic. And while it is a prequel, the characters have complete and full arcs that perfectly set them up for the further development they will have in the books (which I think should be the next season?). Instead of retreading the arcs they’d have in the books, which is how prequels usually go, they had perfect set up for these arcs. It’s really excellent.

Jesper, Inej, and Kaz are all allowed to be flawed, to have serious conflicts with one another, and yet to love each other. They feel like a found family in the best of ways. Kaz is the perfect selfish rogue; he’s a much more successfully executed Byronic hero than the Darkling, actually. Inej is heroic and her faith is not mocked, yet she too is flawed and her choices are not always entirely justified, but instead left to the audience to ponder (like killing the girl), which is a more mature writing choice that I appreciated.

Jesper is charming, has a heart of gold despite being a murderer and on the surface fairly greedy, and MILO THE EMOTIONAL SUPPORT GOAT WAS THE BEST THING EVER. I also liked Jesper’s fling with Dima but I felt it could be better used rather than merely establishing his sexuality, like if Jesper and Dima had seen each other one more time or something had come of their tryst for the plot/themes/development of Jesper.

Nina and Matthias’s backstory being in the first season, instead of in flashbacks, really works because it automatically erases any discomfort of the implications of Nina having falsely accused Matthias that the books start with. We know Nina, we know Matthias, we know their motivations, backgrounds, and why they feel the way we do. It’ll be easy for the audience to root for them without a lot of unnecessary hate springing from misunderstanding Nina (since she’s my favorite). Matthias’s arc was also really strongly executed and satisfyingly tragic. Their plotline was a bit unfortunately disconnected from the rest of the story, but Danielle Gallagan and Callahan Skogman have absolutely sizzling chemistry so I found myself looking forward to their scenes instead of feeling distracted. Also? It’s nice seeing a woman with Nina’s body type as a romantic and powerful character.

Hamliet Likes Malina Now

Insofar as the trilogy storyline goes, the best change the show made was Mal. He still is the same character from the books, but much more likable. The pining was... a lot (too much in episode 4, I felt) but Malina is a ship I actually enjoyed in the show while I NOTP’d it in the books. Mal has complexity and layers to his motivations (somewhat) and a likable if awkward charm. Archie Renaux was fantastic.

Ben Barnes is the perfect Aleksandr Kirigan, and 15 year old me, who had the biggest of big crushes on Ben Barnes (first celebrity crush over a decade ago lol), was pretty damn happy lol. He’s magnificantly acted--sympathetic and terrifying, sincerely caring and yet villainous in moments. Story-wise, I think it was smart to reveal his name earlier on than in the books, because it helps with the humanization especially in a visual medium like film. Luda was a fitting (if heartbreaking) backstory, but it is also hard for me to stomach knowing what the endgame of his character is. Like... I get the X-men fallacy thing, but I hope the show gives more kindness to his character than the books did, yet I’m afraid to hold my breath. Just saying that if you employ save the cat, if you directly say you added this part (Luda) to make the character more likable (as the director did) please do not punish the audience for feeling what you intended.

I also liked the change that made Alina half-Shu. It adds well to her arc and fits with her character, actually giving her motivations (she kinda just wants to be ordinary in a lot of ways) a much more interesting foundation than in the books. Also it’s nice not to have another knock-off Daenerys (looking to you Celaena and book!Alina). Jessie Mei Li does a good job playing Alina’s insecurities and emotions, but...

Narrative: The Ehhhhhhh

Alina the Lamp

Sigh. Here we go. Alina has little consistent characterization. She’s almost always passive when we see her, yet she apparently punches an officer for calling her a name and this seems to be normal for her, but it doesn’t fit at all with what we know about her thus far. Contradictions are a part of humanity, but it’s never given any focus, so it comes across as inconsistent instead of a flaw or repression.

I have no idea what Alina wants, beside that she wants to be with Mal, which is fine except I have no idea what the basis of their bond is. Even with like, other childhood friends to lovers like Ren/Nora in RWBY or Eren/Mikasa in SnK, there’s an inciting moment, a reason, that we learn very early on in their story to show us what draws them together. Alina and Mal just don’t have that. There’s the meadow/running away thing, but they were already so close, and why? Why, exactly? What brought them together? The term “bullies” is thrown around but it isn’t ever explored and it needed to be this season. If I have to deal with intense pining for so many episodes at least give me a foundation for their devotion. You need to put this in the beginning, in the first season. You just do.

A “lamp” character is a common metaphor to describe a bad character: essentially, you could replace the character with a lamp and nothing changes. Considering Alina’s gift is light, it’s a funnily apt metaphor, but it really does apply. Her choices just don’t... matter. She could be a special lamp everyone is fighting over and almost nothing would change. The ironic thing is that everyone treating her like a fancy lamp is exactly the conflict, but it’s never delved into. We’re never shown that Alina is more than a lamp. She never has to struggle because her choices are made for her and information is gifted to her when she needs it. Not making choices protects Alina from consequences and the story gives her little incentive to change that; in fact, things tend to turn out better when she doesn’t make choices (magic stags will arrive).

Like... let’s look at a few occasions when Alina almost or does make choices. For example, she chooses to (it seems) sleep with Kirigan, but then there’s a convenient knock at the door and Bhagra arrives with key information that changes Alina’s mind instantly despite the fact that Bhagra’s been pretty terrible to her. If you want to write a woman realizing she’s been duped by a cruel man, show her discovering it instead of having the man’s abusive mother tell her when she had absolutely no such suspicions beforehand. There’s no emotional weight there because Alina doesn’t struggle.

When she is actually allowed to carry out a bad choice, the consequences are handwaved away instead of built into a challenge for her. Like... Alina got her friends killed. More than once. I’m not saying she’s entirely to blame for these but could we show her reacting to it? Feeling any sort of grief? She never mentions Raisa or Alexei after they’re gone, just Mal, and I’m... okay. They were there because of you. Aren’t you feeling anything? Aren’t you sad? The only time Alina brings up her friends’ deaths is to tell Kirigan he killed her friends when they were only there because she burned the maps. She yells at Kirigan for “never” giving her a choice, but she almost never makes any, so why would he? Alina has the gall to lecture Genya about choices, but she herself almost never has to make any.

Which brings me to another complaint in general: Alina’s lack of care for everyone around her when they’re not Mal, even if they care for her. Marie dies because of her (absolutely not her fault of course) but as far as we know she never even learns about Marie. She certainly doesn’t ever ask about her or Nadia. Alina seems apathetic at best to people, certainly not compassionate or kind.

The frustrating thing is that there is potential here. Like, it actually makes a lot of psychological sense for an orphan who has grown up losing to be reluctant to care for people outside of her orbit and that she would struggle to believe she can have any say in her destiny (ie make choices). It’s also interesting that a girl who feels like an outsider views others outside her. But the show never offers examines Alina’s psychology with any depth; it simply tells us she’s compassionate when she is demonstrably not, it tells us she makes decisions when it takes magical intervention to do so. It’s a missed opportunity. This does not change between episodes 1 and 8, despite the episodes’ parallel structures and scenes, which unintentionally reinforces that Alina had little real development.

Inej and ironically Jesper and Kaz embody the concept of “mercy” far better and with far more complexity than Alina does. The Crows have reactions to the loss of people who even betray them (Arken, etc), learn, and course-correct (or don’t) when they are even loosely involved in having strangers die. They’re good characters because they change and learn and have their choices matter. When they kill we see them wrestle with it and what this means even if they are accustomed to doing so. Jesper can’t kill in front of a child. Kaz wonders what his killings do to Inej’s idea of him.

Narrative: The Mixed Bag

Tropes, Themes, Telling vs. Showing

So the show’s themes in the Alina storyline are a mess, as they are in the trilogy too. Tropes are a very valuable way to show your audience what you’re trying to say. They’re utilized worldwide because they resonate with people and we know what to expect from them. The Crows' storyline shows us what it wants us to learn.

Preaching tells, and unfortunately, the trilogy relies on telling/preaching against fornicationBad Boys. It’s your right to write any trope or trample any trope you want--your story--but you should at least understand what/why you are doing so. The author clearly knows enough about Jungian shadows and dark/light yin/yang symbolism to use it in the story, but then just handwaves it away as “I don’t like this” but never does so in a narratively effective way: addressing the appeal in the first place. If you really wanna deconstruct a trope, you gotta empathize with the core of the reason these tropes appeal to people (it allays deep fears that we are ourselves unlovable, through loving another person despite how beastly they can be), and address this instead of ignoring it. Show us a better way through the Fold of your story. Don’t just go around it and ignore the issue.

The trilogy offers highly simplistic themes at best--bad boy bad and good boy good, which is fine-ish for kid lit but less fine for adult complexity, which the show (more so than the books) seems to try to push despite not actually having much of it.

Alina and Mal are intended to be good, we’re told they are, but I’m not sure why beyond just that we’re told so. Alina claims the stag chose her, but in the show it’s never explained why at all. Unlike with Kaz, Inej, Jesper, and hell even Matthias and Nina, we don’t see Alina or Mal’s complex choices and internal wrestling.

Like, Inej’s half-episode where she almost killed the guy they needed was far more character exploration than Alina has the entire show, to say nothing of Inej’s later killing which not only makes her leaps and bounds more interesting, but ironically cements her as a far more compelling and yes, likable, heroine than Alina. We see Inej’s emotional and moral conflict. We can relate to her. We see Kaz struggling with his selfishness and regrets, with his understanding of himself through his interactions with and observations of Inej, Alina, the Darkling, Arken, and Jesper.

We don’t explore what makes Mal or Alina good and what makes them bad. We don’t know what Alina discovers about herself, what her power means for her. We are told they are good, we are told she knows her power is hers, but never shown what this means or what this costs them/her. Their opportunities to be good are handed to them (the stag, Bhagra) instead of given to them as a challenge in which they risk things, in which doing good or making a merciful choice costs them. Alina gets to preach about choices without ever making any; Inej risks going back to the Menagerie to trust Kaz. Her choices risk. They cost. They matter and direct her storyline and her arc, and those of the people around her.

Production Stuff:

The Good:

The production overall is quite excellent. The costumes, pacing, acting, and cinematography (for example, one of the earliest scenes between the Darkling and Alina has Alina with her back to the light, face covered in his shadow, while the Darkling’s face is light up by her light even if he stands in the shadows) are top-notch. The soundtrack as well is incredible and emphasizes the scenes playing. The actors have great chemistry together, friend chemistry and romantic when necessary (Mal and Alina, the Darkling and Alina, Kaz and Inej, Nina and Matthias, David and Genya, etc.) All are perfectly cast.

The Uncomfortable Technicalities Hamliet Wants to Bitch About:

The only characters from fantasy!Europe having any trace of an accent reminiscent of said fantasy country's real-world equivalent are antagonists like Druskelle (Scandinavia) and Pekka (Ireland). When the heroes mostly have British accents despite being from fantasy Russia and Holland, it is certainly A Choice to have the Irish accent emphasized. The actor is British by the way, so I presume he purposely put on an Irish accent. I'm sure no one even considered the potential implications of this but it is A Look nonetheless.

The Anachronisms Hamliet Has a Pet Peeve About:

The worldbuilding is compelling, but the only blight on the worldbuilding within the story itself (ignoring context) was that there are some anachronisms that took me out of the story, particularly in the first episode where “would you like to share with the class” and “saved by the horn” are both used. Both are modern-day idioms in English that just don’t fit, especially the latter. The last episode uses “the friends we made along the way.” There are other modern idioms as well.

IT’S STARKOVA and Other Pet Peeves Around the Russian Portrayal

Russian names are not hard, and Russian naming systems are very, very easy to learn. I could have waved “Starkov” not being “Starkova,” “Nazyalensky” not being “Nazyalenskaya,” and “Safin” not being “Safina” as an American interpretation (since in America, the names do not femininize). However, “Mozorova” as a man is unfathomable and suggests to me the author just doesn’t understand how names work, which is a bit... uh okay considering a simple google search gets you to understand Russian names. They aren’t hard. I cannot understand why the show did not fix this. It is so simple to fix and would be a major way to help the story’s overall... caricature of Russia.

Speaking of that... Ravka is supposedly Russian-based, but it is more accurately based on the stereotypes of what Americans think of Russia. Amerussia? Russica? Not great.

The royals are exactly what Americans think of the Romanovs, right down to the “greasy” “spiritual advisor” who is clearly Rasputin and which ignores the Romanov history, very real tragedy, and the reason Rasputin was present in the court. The religion with all its saints is a vapid reflection of Russian Orthodoxy. The military portrayal with its lotteries and brutality and war is how the US views the Russian military. The emphasis on orphans, constant starvation, classification, and children being ripped from their homes to serve the government is a classic US understanding of USSR communism right down to the USSR having weapons of destruction the rest of the world fears (Grisha). Not trying to defend the Soviet Union here at all, but it is simplistic and reductive and probably done unconsciously but still ehhhh.

However, I’m not Russian. I just studied Russian literature. I’ve seen very little by way of discussion of this topic online, but what I do see from Russian people has been mixed--some mind, some don’t. The reality is that I actually don’t really mind this because it’s fantasy, though I see why some do. I'm not like CANCEL THIS. So why am I talking about this beyond just having a pet peeve?

Well, because it is a valid critique, and because it doesn’t occur in a vacuum. The Grishaverse is heralded as an almost paragon for woke Young Adult literature, which underlines itself what so frustrates me about how literary circles discuss issues of diversity and culture. Such praise, while ignoring its quasi-caricature of Russia, reflects a very ethnocentric (specifically American) understanding of culture, appropriation, and representation. All stories are products of their culture to various extents, but it bothers me on principle what the lit community reacts (and overreacts sometimes?) to and what people give a pass to. The answer to what the community reacts to and what it gives a pass always pivots on how palatable the appropriation is to American understandings and sensibilities. There’s nuance here as well, though.

I'm not cancelling the story or thinking it should be harshly attacked for this, but it is something that can be discussed and imo should be far more often--but with the nuance it begs, instead of black/white. But that’s a tall ask.

#s&b #hamliet reviews #shadow and bone #six of crows #kanej #jesper fahey #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #alina starkov #malyen oretsev #the darkling #darklina #malina #aleksander kirigan #netflix shadow and bone #s&b review

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bard-of-worlds · 3 years ago

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Chapter 14

Marinette sighed as she closed the program on her computer and leaned back. She wasn’t sure what she was thinking, but this, something was bothering her………. She didn’t know what it was but something was missing with what they knew about Lila. Come on, what is it? I mean okay Lila is working with both Gabriel and she seems to be on a conversational basis with Hawkmoth, we already ruled him out before, and according to Adrien the Collector got both Nathalie and his bodyguard, so who could he have given the Miraculous to if he was Hawkmoth? There isn’t anyone that he trusts, and his bodyguard was apart of that party and Nathalie was with him when they both left the city………but what am I missing? She thought as she looked at her blank screen as Adrien looked at her with worry.

“Your Ladybug face is showing my lady,” Adrien said with a smirk and Marinette looked shocked and blushed as the two Kwami in the room chuckled. “The fact that Lila is working with both my father AND Hawkmoth?”

Marinette looked at him, seeing the way his eyes were troubled and she sighed. “Oh, Kitty……”

“I thought the same thing my lady……… and about Lila? When Kagami was Akumatized the second time…….. I think Lila tried to make a deal with Onichan,” Adrien said with a bitter edge to his voice and Marinette looked at Adrien in shock.

“Remind me again, wasn’t Onichan after Lila to kill her?” Plagg asked and Tikki nodded. “Okay, she’s a psychopath or a sociopath.”

“Yeah……. I don’t know what we should do,” Adrien admitted as everyone looked at him. “But with everything we’ve got, maybe the most we should do is wait for now, I mean there’s Sabrina and her new partner, we might find out where Hawkmoth is hiding!”

“But Adrien, if he’s in the area of your home……” Marinette said and Adrien nodded.

“Yeah, but we have to find him, we don’t have a choice……. And since we figured out why he might want our Miraculous…… I thought about my mom,” Adrien admitted and Plagg winced and looked down.

“Kit……” Plagg said and landed on Adrien’s head as Adrien tried not to cry.

“I mean, it makes sense right? But that means that he knows what happened to mom and he never told me……” Adrien said and Marinette felt her heart break a bit.

On the surface, this was another mark against Gabriel but the sheer odes against it…… but the more that she thought about it the more it made sense. If Gabriel was Hawkmoth then how he always tried to keep Adrien locked in, out of the way of Akuma………. He was the head and owner of a company so he could ditch work and become Hawkmoth whenever……. But the Collector, that was the only mark against him. And they didn’t know that powers couldn’t affect the wielder, and Mayrua had created a Senti-Monster on her own!

As they all thought about it Plagg looked around the room and frowned. He hated Gabriel for how emotionally abusive he was, but he didn’t know that he could admit that

“So let’s table that and talk about the feelings between you two instead! I mean when the Bug’s parents called you down for that game it was just getting good!” Plagg said causing Adrien and Marinette to blush as Tikki giggled.

“Let’s leave them alone, me and Plagg will be on the rooftop balcony!” Tikki said as she shot forward and grabbed Plagg and pulled him up and through the door to the roof. Adrien looked up at the roof and took a deep breath.

As soon as breached the door, Tikki spun around and looked at Plagg with a scowl. ”Plagg, did you have to do that!?”

“What’s wrong Sugar-club? Wouldn’t you be happy that they’re finally letting each other know what they feel?” Plagg asked and Tikki only sighed.

“Before yes I would, but something happened…….. Fluff happened,” Tiki said and looked down as Plagg’s eyes widened.

Down below Adrien looked up at Marinette and smiled at her. Marinette looked away and blushed, her mind going miles in seconds as she tried and failed to figure out how to bring up everything she needed to, so after a few seconds Adrien started.

“So we have to talk about this, don’t we?” Adrien asked with a smirk as Marinette

“We do,” Marinette said and sighed as she looked up at Adrien with a hard look. “And I have to tell you about something, something that happened before everything the other day…….. I need to tell you about Chat Blanc.”

Adrien looked at Marinette and saw such despair and pain in her eyes that Adrien was caught up in this desire to grab her and hug her.

“Chat Blanc? Who was that, I never even heard of him……. Was Theo hit by Hawkmoth when I was away or something?” Adrien asked and Marinette shook her head and looked at Adrien with sorrow.

“No, one did but everyone did. It would have happened in the future, and the victim was you,” Marinette said and Adrien went still and looked at her shocked as she started to cry.

“Me?” Adrien said faintly as he felt himself grow cold as he looked at Marinette as she cried. He wanted to hug her and never let go,

“The whole city was underwater, the ‘Tower was on its side and the Moon was broken. I cleansed it and you said that our love was what destroyed everything,” Marinette sobbed out as Adrien looked at her in horror and pain as he shook his head, a hundred different things going through his mind.

“Oh Bug,” Adrien whispered as he put his arms around her as she just cried and he held her, letting her just cry as he whispered to her. “I’m here, I won’t become his victim, I promise.”

“Our love, that’s what you said caused it,” Marinette bit out and for a moment Adrien went still as anger suddenly went through him before horror hit him as he made connections in his head, connections that he hoped wouldn’t prove to be true.

“I signed my name for that barred I gave you and transformed to deliver it, then Bunnix appeared and then, and then….,” Marinette said as she started to cry.

As Marinette cried and leaned into Adrien she tried to think about everything was different now, how the rest of the team was helping each other and everyone was on board, what happened that caused Chat Blanc wouldn’t happen again, she would make sure of it.

“Oh Mari, I’m sorry you had to hold this in on your own, I really am,” Adrien said and part of him was sure that he was right about his fear, but as he held Marinette he let deal with her feelings.

A few moments later Marinette took a deep breath and moved away, a shaky smile on her face. “Thanks Adrien.”

“Anytime,” Adrien said as he looked at Marinette. As he looked down at her he swallowed as he zeroed in on her lips and for a moment he remembered how she had kissed him when Dark Cupid had corrupted him and then when they had been hit by Oblivio. He looked at Marinette as she looked back at her and smiled shakily at her as he noticed that she was blushing. “Say, when everything with our court dates are over and everything works out okay, how about you and me watch a movie when I get my new place set up? Just us and our kwami, a good movie or two, and some food?”

Marinette looked at Adrien and blushed harder, looking away from him as her mind went strange places and she chuckled lightly and looked at him with a coy smile.

“I’d like that Adrien,” Marinette said softly as she put her arms around his neck and smiled at him with a strange expression on her face as her suddenly felt heavy as she opened her mouth.

As Adrien started to feel strange and after a few seconds he acted on them, slowly he moved his head towards her as Marinette did the same as they both closed their eyes slowly before a call came from below.

“KIDS GET OVER HERE!” Tom bellowed and Marinette and Adrien both blink and seeing how close they were they to each other, they jerked apart and laughed shakily as they realized just what they had almost done and they laughed as inside Adrien and Marinette were both fuming.

“Dad only does that if it’s important, we should check it out,” Marinette said as she rushed towards the ladder down as Plagg and Tikki came from above, shooting into their chosen's pockets.

The teens ran into the living room and saw Tom and Sabine on the couch looking at the TV. On it was a scene of one of the local hospitals as three ambiances were out front with doctors bringing people in. “And repeating the top story, over twenty people within ages from 10 to twenty were found earlier today asleep, dead to the world. So far all the doctors have said is they are not in danger of dying and seem to have all their organs and no marks that could explain their state. This reporter will update on this developing situation as it develops,” The reporter said as Tom turned off the TV and shook his head.

“After everything, I wondered what could shock me. If Hawkmoth hadn’t set off an attack earlier today I would have thought it was him again,” Sabine said and Marinette looked at Adrien who shook his head as she felt Tikki press against her and she nodded to him before turning to her mother.

“It’s terrible, but why did you call us down?” Marinette asked and Sabine sighed and looked at them.

“Nadia called, her station is sending out interns to ask around where they were found, and they were found within two streets of us so for the next few days we might have people coming and asking to talk to us, so I want you to only open the door if you know who is on the other side and Adrien, keep away from the windows or stay in Marinette’s room,” Sabine said and Adrien blushed and looked away as Marinette started to stammer and Tom chuckled, Adrien meanwhile looked into his mind, remembering a lot of Tabloid ‘reporters’ and what they would do for a story, if one of them found out he was here………….. he didn’t want to think about what some of his fanatics would do, much less what his father would do.

“So you two up for a little four-part tournament of Mecha-Strike?” Tom asked and he was met with three grins.

XXXXXXXXXX

Kim sighed as he got out of the pool and toweled off as he walked towards his chair. As he looked up at the skylight and saw the night sky and the moon shining down he tried to calm down, even after swimming lanes he couldn’t quiet his mind. He was still very angry about what happened to Marinette, he might not be too bright but he knew all about law, and what happened was against all of the laws of both respect and dignity! Before he could spiral like Marinette a towel hit his head. He looked out from under it and saw his girlfriend Odine walk towards him, her peach skin was wet, her swimming leotard dripped as she walked over, her swimming hat in her hands, her short red hair free and her brilliant turquoise eyes above her freckles shined with worry.

“Hey, you were hitting the lanes hard tonight, what’s up?” Odine asked and Kim sighed and looked away.

“A lot of things, I don’t know where to start,” Kim said as he looked at Odine.

“Well start at the beginning, what happened?” Odine asked and Kim sighed and looked down. Odine was his girlfriend but she was also a friend of Marinette and Nino, they had all gone to elementary together and they had been friends for a long time, only he, Nino and Mari had a longer friendship.

“Marinette was expelled without a hearing!” Kim bit out and Odine just blinked a few times before she looked at Kim and she started to growl. Kim swallowed; Odine’s grandfather had been a judge and she was very

“What?! What happened?” Odine demanded and Kim scowled and looked away.

“It was crazy, first a stolen test answer sheet was found in Marinette’s bag, then Lila supposedly was pushed down the stairs in the courtyard and then Lila led the way to Marinette’s locker and then the Owl expelled her on the stop!” Kim said bitterly and Odine sat down and looked at Kim with a scowl.

“And you didn’t stop it?!” Odine demanded and Kim looked down.

“I was shocked! And then before anything else could happen there was a Mass Akuma attack and I was one of the victims!” Kim defended and Odine gasped and looked at him with a scared look on her face and he smiled at her. “But it stopped in mid-attack, weird really, and after that, I was kinda out of it for about twenty minutes.”

“Oh, Kim that was terrible!”Odine said as her own nightmare flashed behind her eyes, when she flooded Paris and most people had been stuck in buildings, thankfully most buildings had been airtight because of her powers.

“Yeah. I thought that the principal would at least give her a hearing her but when other class representatives tried to get it he threw them out, yelled at them and me and Max were barely able to get away without detention! My little buddy said he was going to talk to Marinette about her rights, but then the Akuma and he’s gone silent!” Kim defended and Odine huffed and looked at him with a scowl on her face.

“Who the heck does that scum think he is!?” Odine asked and Kim grinned darkly.

“Yeah well my buddy sent me a message the other day, she’s suing them for what they did and she will get a hearing,” Kim said and Odine grinned darkly and started to chuckle.

“Good, very good,” Odine said evilly and Kim started to feel scared for a few moments before he realized that she wasn’t thinking about him.

“Yeah…… say do you want to get something to eat tomorrow? Just the two of us?” Kim asked and Odine looked at him shocked before she blushed and nodded, not noticing how close the two were to each other.

“Hey you two! The pool’s closed, go shower and change and I’ll lock up when you leave! And no PDA HERE!” A voice startled the two of them and they both looked down and saw how close they were to each other and laughed as they moved towards the changing rooms, both blushing as they walked away.

About ten minutes later they walked out the doors and the lifeguard locked the doors behind them and Kim smiled at Odine.

“Would the lady like an escort home tonight?” Kim asked as he offered her his arm. Odine giggled and accepted it and off they went. As they walked they made small talk, Odine smiling at Kim as they walked, when she was with him she knew she would be okay no matter what happened, that her dreams weren’t too far out of reach.

“Hey, Odine are you okay?” Kim asked and Odine looked at him and she looked away, only for Kim to put his other arm on her shoulder. “If there’s anything I can do to help, anything at all you just have to say it you know?”

“I…… I just haven’t had a good week at school, Kagami’s been having the same troubles lately,” Odine admitted and Kim raised an eyebrow.

Kagami in Kim’s mind was one of the most straightforward girls his age, coming in behind Odine, Marinette and Chloe. If both she and Odine were having troubles then it was probably like Lila, someone not something.

“What is it, or who?” Kim asked as they turned down a side alley that went to a small courtyard near the Tower. Odine opened and closed her mouth, not knowing how to describe it but if Kim had seen through Lila.

“The school has a new principal and student, there putting more…….” Odine trailed off as she looked ahead of them and gasped.

“What…….. Ah, Shi-bal,” Kim breathed as they saw over twenty bodies on the grounds of the small space before them. Odine ran towards a child’s body as Kim ran towards an older body lying face down and rolled it over and saw a woman whose chest was moving up and down. “She’s still breathing!”

“Here too!” Odine called out, looking around for anything. “I don’t have my phone, it’s getting repaired!”

“Mine too, stay here I’ll get help!” Kim called out as he ran away, leaving Odine alone.

A few moments later a low moan came from an older woman in a beige blouse and dress. Odine ran towards her and crouched down and looked at her, the woman looked elderly and had her white hair in a bun. “Who’s there?”

“I’m Odine, my boyfriend is getting help, hold on!” Odine said and the woman grinned at her, looking at her with glowing eyes that shocked her.

“Oh….. good. I ssee you, you’ll do what needs to be done, protect her, get the others please,” The woman said as she pushed a small white square box with a red circle in the center of it into Odine’s hand. “Don’t let anyone know you have her, promise me!”

“I don’t understand….” Odine began holding the box when the woman lunched and grabbed her.

“PROMISE ME!” The woman said fiercely and Odine nodded and the woman slunk back down and Odine examined her and saw that she was still alive.

Odine looked at the box and frowned before she put it into her purse as she heard a siren, looking up she saw Kim running back towards her with police and paramedics following along behind him. Waving Kim and one paramedic came over to her and she looked relieved that help had come. “This woman just woke for a few moments, she didn’t say anything but she was semi-coherent!”

“Good work, I’ll take it from here!” The paramedic said as he started to look over the woman.

As Odine stepped back a police officer came to her and smiled at her. “Good work, but we’ll need to make a statement about what you two found, I’m sorry but we need everything we can to help these people.”

Odine nodded and Kim took her hand and squeezed it, both of them drawing strength from each other as they followed the policeman. The box in Odine’s purse made it feel even heavier as she walked, not knowing that her destiny had been changed, that her life would change in the short term and become stranger but better.

XXXXXXXX

Max looked at his computer as he quickly hacked into the school database and frowned. It had been too easy to do that, he would have to try and send a message to the school about how easy it was to get into it. As soon as he was in he went through a few files here and there on school evens before sending Lila’s file to a cloud server set up in Russia.

As she floated, Kaalki looked at Max as he worked, Max finding her stare and looking away.

“Not so, honorable is it?” Max asked bitterly and Kaalki looked back at Max and smiled at him, her eyes holding understanding and

“By a certain point of view, it is,” Kaalki said bluntly as she floated there and looked at her chosen with a calm look. “Many of my own have been spymasters or helping with steeling things that they needed too. Honor is in the reasoning, not the doing as one of my first ones said.”

Max smirked as he finished his work as Markov came back online and floated upwards he looked at Max who was turning on another computer next to him. “Finished with your shadow work Max?”

“Yes, for now, let’s just get the file and then start looking into Lila,” Max said as he quickly navigated to the cloud website and download Lila’s file before opening it. As he looked over it he frowned as he saw the numerous health concerns that were listed for Lila with no doctor’s note to back them up.

“I don’t know procedures about this Max, but shouldn’t there be notes from her doctor scanned in?” Markov asked and Max nodded as he finally found the data he needed from the file and turned back to his hacking one, quickly finding the school in question he started to look for an online yearbook.

“Yeah, they should,” Max muttered as he finally found a list of students and then looked at the number of graduates for each year before Lila came to Paris and frowned when he saw a few numbers off, more than he thought. “Markov, I want to know who didn’t graduate from this school and what happened to them, I’ll hack into the records and find out where Lila was before she was here.”

“Of course Max, give me a minute,” Markov said as he slotted into the computer and started to absorb the data as Max worked.

“Done, three students beyond Lila left this school for other reasons. One is a grade lower than Lila would have been, two are the same age and both left not long after Lila did,” Markov reported and Max nodded as he worked.

“Good, find out what happened to them please,” Max said as he found the school and location where Lila had been before. He frowned, the city wasn’t one of the big ones that he expected a diplomat to have been sent to, something was wrong……… he needed to find out just what had happened in this city to have sent any diplomatic staff there long enough for Lila to go to school? Wait, this says she left this one after only four months? I guess an appointment to overlook something for the embassy would explain why she and her mother were only there so long, but why, where did they go after that? Max thought as he looked at his screen and tried to figure out why Lila had moved when she did. As he sat there and let his mind wander over all the possibilities for why that was done, he couldn’t find anything. He knew that Lila said her mother was a diplomat, but with what they all knew he doubted it. He tried to think of what kind of job her mother could have that let them travel so much, but still the longer he tried to the more he came up empty for an answer.

“I found them Max………. it’s not good. One of them is a girl named Arianna Bianchi; she’s currently in a monastery…….. I tracked down a medical report that she tried to take her own life,” Markov said mournfully and Max swallowed. “I found social media posts and she was cyber-bullied a lot, the sheer viciousness of some of these posts……. The other is a girl named Daniela Candreva, she left the school after testing out the grade and is currently studying to become a prosecutor, I think I can find her address to email her. But Max…….. most of the posts are about what ‘she’ or ‘they’ did to Lila,” Markov said and Max almost told him to send a message off but stopped himself and shook his head.

“Why would Lila……oh god!” Max said faintly and started to shake in fear as everything started to make sense to him.

“Max, what is it?” Markov asked and Kaalki looked at him in concern.

“That’s what she would have done with Marinette, because she discovered Lila was lying! She made this class hate her and then she tormented the girl until she did that!” Max snarled and Kaalki looked sick.

“Yes, it fits. The way she was acting, she had to have had practice at this. she goes to a new school…….” Max began and Markov took over.

“And someone either finds out about Lila or she finds a target to get the rest of the class on her side, and then when things go too far she’s either already gone or moved schools. Smart, evil but smart,” Markov said bitterly and

“Scum, I haven’t seen such monsters in centuries! I thought that modern schools looked for that! People like that actually like it! Why else if she’s been doing that for how long?!” Kaalki snarled as Markov unhooked himself and floated upwards. Max looked at his computer as he saw the data on it, he found another discrepancy and looked at Markov with a hard look.

“Markov, I’m going to find her third school, do what you did again with the second, we hunt for any and all evidence about what happened while Lila was there,” Max said as Kaalki nodded as Markov connected to the computer again.

“One thing bothers me, what about the younger child?” Kaalki asked and Max went still. Markov beeped and made a ‘smily face’ with his visor.

“Good news, from what I found the child only moved away with his family because of a death in his family, nothing to do with Lila!” Markov said and Max released a sigh and Kaalki floated with a lightened look in her eyes.

“Well, there’s that at least,” Max muttered as he looked back to his computer and sighed.

Kaalki looked at Max and his creation as they worked and hid a chuckle as she smirked. He might be a worthy Horse after all are very smart. But they all saw the big picture, but we have to remember the little things and how they affect the big. She thought as she floated there and looked at Max as he and Markov hacked. “Still what does she get out of this all? No one is pure evil, three are reasons for everything that is the truth of the universe. But what is Lila after?”

“I don’t know…….. Markov new mission; I want you to look into the relationships of each student in Lila’s class before she joined up……. Wait see if there’s a class chat first,” Max said and Markov ‘nodded’ with his visor and Kaalki floated over to his shoulder.

“There is, and three people are active tonight,” Markov said and Max nodded.

“Then let's talk, time to hack into it,” Max said softly as he looked at his screen.

“Done Max, I found a chat and I’ll need to relay and translate it but we’re in,” Markov said and Max nodded.

As Max looked at the chat room, he kept his mind blank and he hoped that these people would help him.

“We’ll be visible to them all in 3.2.1, message sent,” Markov said and Max nodded and started to type.

Starhacker909 has joined the chat.

Bloodhunter; Who the hell is Starhacker909, Rob did you invite somebody new

StrikeBak; No, who are you and how’d you get in here?!

Starhacker909; Wait, please! I’m sorry about this but I needed to talk to you about a person named Lila Rossi, she got a friend of mine expelled a few days ago!

Stanford; That witch is still doing that again!?

Bloodhunter; Okay Starhacker909, we’ll talk if you tell us what city you’re in!

Max breathed a sigh of relief and Markov blinked his eyes.

“Max, my barriers were hit by ten viruses and whoever is behind it is trying to find out where we are but I fought them off and they stopped, I think we’re safe for now,” Markov said and Max nodded as he looked at the screen.

“Markov, try and find out if Lila really did what we think she did at other schools, if she did we need to talk to a lot of people about her,” Max said grimly and Markov ‘nodded’ and Max started to text as Kaalki watched from behind him, a somber look on her face.

XXXXXXX

Odine looked at the small box as she sat in her room as the box set on her desk next to her bed as she looked at it. After the police had questioned them she had been driving home, her father had been worried when the police had shown up but after being told that she had found the people on the news he had relaxed a little. After she had gotten o her room she had locked the door and put the box on her desk as she looked at it, trying to understand why she hadn’t said anything about it, and why that woman had been so instant that Odine take it. After a few moments she took a deep breath and opened it, a moment later a ball of light shot up into the air, forming into a tiny grey creature with a large head with blue eyes, a fin on its back, a small snot, short arms and it grinned at her.

“Hi! I’m Bottla, nice to meet you!” Bottla said and Odine swallowed a screamed as she looked at Bottla as it looked around with a frown. “Wait……. Where’s Melisa?”

“You mean the old woman, she’s at the hospital,” Odine said and the creature gasped!

“Oh no, she found us!” Bottla said and looked around, a scared look on its…..her? face as Odine looked at the creature and tried to calm Bottla down.

“Hey, calm down. She was okay and breathing last I saw her,” Odine said and the little creature nodded and looked at her with a strange look on its face.

“Sorry, I’m Bottla, the Dolphin Kwami of Discord and …….” Bottla began before Odine gasped.

“A Kwami?! Like Ladybug, Chat Noir and Hawkmoth?!” Odine interrupted Bottla who nodded before going still.

“Ladybug….. Tikki’s chosen?! What happened to bring them out into the light of day?” Bottla asked and Odin looked at the Kwami in surprise.

“You don’t know what’s been happening in Paris!?”

“We keep moving, staying ahead of the Seven Deadly,” Bottla said and Odine looked at the kwami with a bad feeling going through her.

“The who?” Odine asked and Bottla sighed and looked away.

“The holders of seven of the 7 miraculous of Dark Emotions, they’ve been tracking me and mine for years, I’ve lost so many friends to them,” Bottla said and sniffed as Odine looked at the Kwami in concern before she remembered what Melisa had told them.

“Was one of them responsible for what happened there?” Odine asked and Bottla nodded.

“The sin of Gluttony; the Vulture. Those people who were hurt won’t wake up until the egg she forms is used up or destroyed. And the sin of Lust; the Ant gave her eggs to her, we destroyed a Soldier before

“Soldier?” Odine asked and Bottla nodded.

“A non-sentient monster created from the Ant’s Powers. The created warriors obey the one who activates them, wielder or civilian,” Bottla said and Odine swallowed.

“What are they after?” Odine asked and Bottla looked down and away.

“Me, my power of Turmoil causes all abilities to be turned on whoever used them, Melisa got away by hitting the Soldier so it would go after Vulture instead of us,” Bottla said and looked at Odine with a hard look. “If they take my Miraculous, then they can do whatever they want with no way to counter their powers.”

“So these Miraculous have been passed down for how long, and most of the time they’ve been hunting you?” Odine asked and paled when Bottla shook her head.

“No, it’s the same people……… They have a ritual that uses the energy that the Vulture gathers to empower them and extended their lives. Anything they kill, they all gain the years, in the past they left totems near where battles might happen to gather the years of killed soldiers, WW1 and 2 gave them centuries!” Bottla said with a haunted tone

Odine looked at the kwami as she tried to figure out what to do. The easy thing to do was get in touch with Alya, she ran the Ladyblog and if anyone could get a message to Ladybug then she could. But then the woman trusted her with this, and why shouldn’t she do something to help out? By the way the kwami was talking, if she was able to get even one of them away from the Seven then she might be able to stop them. And her home was perfect, it was in a section of the city away from the center and the main roads, if…..when the other seven made it to the city she would be out of the way. And she knew the sewers and catacombs well, she had played there as a child and knew them almost as well as she knew the streets. And Bottla was a dolphin, her favorite animal.

“If I used your Miraculous to transform, can I breathe underwater?” Odine asked and Bottla nodded and Odine took a deep breath. “Then I have one question, what’s the name of the hero who uses it to transform?”

XXXXXXX

Alya blinked her eyes as she woke up and looked around, seeing Chloe’s room in the hotel and for a moment she was confused before she looked down and saw Trixx sleeping on her chest and then remembered everything. She after they had all learned how much of a psycho Lila was she, Chloe and Sabrina had done a quick interview, she had transformed and had Sabrina record ‘Ladybug’ and ‘Apisera’ and talk to Chloe about how she had been retired and Chloe had agreed with them, only saying to listen to their ‘teacher’, a good trick they had to keep Kwami from being on the news and in the public eye.

As she looked around she saw Sabrina and Chloe leaning against each other with their kwami sleeping on their chosen, she smirked as she looked at them. Who knew that the three of them loved to watch feel-good movies or that Chloe was such a romantic? As the sun shined down Chloe and Sabrina both woke up, all the kwami did as well.

As Sabrina got up she looked around and saw Alya as Chloe turned the news on as she grabbed a PDA and looked over it, smiling as she listened to the morning news.

“……… And in local news, if you can head over to the zoo tomorrow, the tickets will be half price and there’s a presentation on fire safety there as well. And next on Moth Watch, the latest Akuma was defeated by three heroes, our protectors Chat Noir and Ladybug with the help of a new hero we haven’t been able to get in touch with, as usual, the victim has been hidden and the reason why they were influenced,” The reporter said as Chloe looked at the screen, scoffed and muted it, causing Alya to look at her with a raised eyebrow.

“What, have you got a thing against the press?” Alya asked as Trixx landed on her right shoulder

“Yeah. No offense Alya, but a lot of the reporters on the Hawkmoth case are worse than tabloids writers,” Sabrina said

“Daddy tells me that reporters are always trying to get dirt on people who were Akumatized, a reporter even had a piece about how a girl who was almost raped before she was Akumatized in the first month should have fought harder,” Chloe said bitterly and Alya gasped before she nodded.

“Trash like that, you should give them nothing at all, they’re just a stain on journalistic integrity,” Alya growled and Sabrina looked at her with a strange look as Chloe grinned evilly. Alya looked up and saw the look Sabrina was giving her and Alya looked ashamed. “And before you say anything about my interview with Lila, I never published it because I was still working on fixing it before I met Trixx here for the first time and after that well…..”

“Yeah, nice to know that you’ve got a good head on your shoulder,” Chloe said Alya nodded. “Thankfully daddy went down hard on all the editors, something about banning their people from any events he or mom held in the city,” Chloe said with a dangerous purr and Alya whistled as Sabrina giggled evilly as the Kwami looked at each other shrugged.

“Nice……” Alya said with a smirk and looked at the two girls as they looked at their bodies and Chloe felt her hair and shuddered.

“So, I’ll get the first shower, then I’ll order breakfast while Sabrina showers and Alya can finish last and Sabrina can act like she’s drying off when the food gets here,” Chloe said as Alya looked at Chloe with a frown as she tried to figure out what Chloe meant. “Me and Sabrina will get dressed in my walk-in closet, Alya, you will get dressed in the bathroom. Order the usual for me Sabrina, and ask Alya what she wants, and don’t forget the honey mustard please”

Alya opened her mouth closed it and nodded after she realized Chloe’s plan. She grinned as Chloe walked away but frowned as she looked at Sabrina who grinned back at Alya as Barrk sighed as he ate a small part of a dog cookie.

“One thing I don’t get it, why do you act like a servant to Chloe all the time?” Alya asked and Sabrina looked away and Alya felt a little bit dirty for a second. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to……”

“It’s not a good story, but well……” Sabrina said and sighed and looked away. “My grandfather on my dad’s side and Chloe’s were godbrothers growing up, they promised we would have a place with each other…….. and after I moved here with my dad four years ago…….. I just didn’t want to be around people for a while and I got to like acting.”

“So it was an act? Everything?” Alya asked in complete shock and Sabrina grinned at Alya.

“Yeah, I actually bought most of the ‘gifts’ Chloe gave me, it was all part of our plan really,”

“But your Akuma?” Alya began and then winced. “Sorry……. ‘Don’t talk about what caused it’, forgot for a moment there.”

“No, it’s okay. A…….person I liked didn’t notice me when I left them a gift…….. when he hit me I was cursing how I acted and I think Chloe for her part of our plan…….. at least I think, you know how when you’re ackumatized you forget about a minute before and what he offers you?” Sabrina said as Barrk rubbed his head against Sabrina’s check,

“Yeah. But romance, that’s hard,” Alya said and Sabrina chuckled.

“At least I’m not like Marinette and Adrien!” Sabrina said and Alya laughed a little as Trixx giggled while Bark nodded.

“Bugs and Cats kit, they always orbit around each other. The stories I could tell you about them all,” Trixx snickered as Bark nodded.

“Yep, I remember sometime around 800 years ago, me and my chosen were tracking down this necromancer when we came across the Black Cat, we worked together for about a month tracking the varmint down and saving all we could and all he could talk about was this girl he knew, turned out she was the Ladybug of the time,” Barkk said and Sabine looked at her kwami, for a moment she had forgotten that Barrk and the other kwami were as older as their concepts, the sheer time they had been around staggering for a moment.

Sabrina looked at the TV screen and paled at what she saw. “OH MY GOD!”

“What?! Oh,” Alya said as she and the Kwami turned and saw the screen, the reporter in the foreground as behind him was a shot of last night in front of the hospital.

“CHLOE GET OUT HERE!” Sabrina screamed and Chloe shot out of the bathroom a moment later clad in a yellow robe as Pollen flew behind her.

“What is it……” Chloe trailed off as she saw what was on her TV as Sabrina raised the volume.

“ at this time nothing has changed since last night, the victims are still unconscious but sources have reported no casualties at this time. Police are still looking for what could have caused it with the Park by the ‘Tower still closed as the ECDC look it over. With nothing new to go on, most authorities are waiting for any of them to wake up to hopefully explain what happened to them……. And now on to the weather,” The reporter said moments before Sabrina muted the screen again.

As Chloe dripped onto her floor she looked at the screen in horror, horror that was mirrored on the faces of Alya and Sabrina.

Chloe however was feeling something else, she remembered an old meeting from when she was a lot younger when she was learning to read. She couldn’t remember it but she heard something like this before, she couldn’t remember what it was exactly but it was there.

“This is terrible; I wonder if it’s something to do with Hawkmoth?” Sabrina asked and Chloe hugged her as Alya looked at the screen with a hard look.

“It sounds familiar, doesn’t it?” Trixx asked and the humans looked at the kwami. Pollen and Barrk were looking at the screen while Trixx floated upside down.

“Trixx, are you okay?” Alya asked and Trixx just floated there for a few moments before snarling. “Trixx?!”

“No, I…….this is something I’ve faced before, but I can’t remember when!” Trixx snarled as old emotions came back, emotions the kwami couldn’t place.

“I’ve never heard of something like this, but it was a long time ago,” Pollen admitted and Trixx just floated there as Alya looked on in concern.

“Why can’t you remember?” Alya asked softly and Trixx just kept floating and Alya shared a look with Chloe and Sabrina.

“We lived a lot longer than you all, and sometimes when the old Guardians would take us out the box, sometimes the others would come back having forgotten things,” Pollen said darkly and Chloe held Pollen to her body as the Kwami relaxed against her.

As the three girls exchanged worried looks, the way Chloe called Master Fu a ‘cult baby’ yesterday came back to them. Chloe was only speaking in jest, but the evidence was something that they couldn’t deny. If the guardians were a cult like Chloe suggested, then they all might be in more danger than they thought they were, with the surprising fact that Hawkmoth might not be the only foe they would have to face.

XXXXX

Lila smiled as she looked at the Hotel before her, all she had to do was find anyone who worked here and say that she was a friend of Chloe’s and that she was blocking her calls. Then all she had to do was say that she was worried because of the class chat, well that was enough for the old-timers to tell her how Chloe was feeling. If she could find out anything about how she was feeling about the New Bee because of how much pride Chloe had, how she was worried she might do something, and if anyone heard her then that’s all the better for when she was Akumatized.

As she walked into the lobby she looked around and smiled, there were enough people there that she could do her plan and not be obvious about it. She saw a woman with tan skin in a white uniform talking to a man behind the desk and she walked towards it as a woman with purple hair and dark skin walked out of the elevator, but Lila ignored her once she saw the dark clothing the woman wore, writing her off as a goth once she saw colors of her hair and clothing.

“Excuse me, but I haven’t been able to get in touch with my friend Chloe for a while, and since the new Bee hero was revealed on the news last night I was worried about her reaction,” Lila said as the two people by the counter looked up at her.

“No Madame Chloe is currently in her room and I believe that she is fine and doesn’t want anyone to come up there now,” The man said as the goth walked closer and looked at Lila with a strange look on her face.

“Is she okay, she’s my friend. With the last text of we exchanged I’m so worried about her, it seemed like she was angry when she wrote them, and well with Hawkmoth….” Lila trailed off and noticed a few people looking at her from the mirror behind the counter and barely kept from smirking.

As the man looked at the Italien, Marina looked at Lila and frowned, she remembered Alya talking about a girl who was a liar and how she messed up, if this was that girl who tricked her daughter then so help her then she would beat the girl herself.

“Miss Chloe was alright the last I saw her,” The woman said and Lila grinned, not seeing Penny looking at and frowning.

“Oh good, I mean the way the texts I saw, it was all I could do to try and talk to Chloe about it, I was so worried about her,” Lila said sweetly and Penny looked at Lila, she knew the girl looked familiar, but she couldn’t remember where she had seen her.

“I…..well she did look like she was crying last night,” The woman muttered and Lila grinned, something that she could use against Chloe to string along Hawkmoth was just what she needed. She might not have turned Marinette into an Akuma yet, but the return of Queen Wasp might win her some points. As she wondered if Chloe would get expelled before or after Lila got her Akumatized?

Before Lila could say anything else Penny finally reached the desk and spoke up from behind her.

“Hey, you got our mail from yesterday right, J’s been chomping at the bits to finalize the paperwork on a few things,” Penny called out and the woman behind the counter nodded and handed over a bundle of mail.

“Here you go ma’am. Will you and your friend be leaving us soon?” The woman asked and Penny shrugged.

Lila looked at Penny, something about the woman was bothering her, she knew she had seen her before but she couldn’t remember where. She looked at Penny as she shrugged.

“Maybe not too soon. There’s this girl who tried to start a rumor that Jagged made up a song about her when she was a pre-teen of all,” Penny said as Lila’s eyes shrank as she realized she was looking at Penny Rolling, the woman in the chief’s outfit gasped and shook her head.

“That reminds me about this lying girl my daughter told me about, I can’t believe that there are such people out there, liars that just want to make themselves look good!” The chief said and Lila paled a little and took half a step backwards.

Her lies and tales were all to get a good life for herself, but sometimes people just didn’t understand why she did what she did and those people always made trouble. She fought back against them and set things up so her revenge would happen after she left, and was it her trouble that people never understood that she and they were legitimately fighting?

As Lila slipped away as the woman chatted about their own experiences with liars, Penny suddenly went still and then turned and saw Lila’s back as she left the hotel, finally realizing exactly who that had been and cursing the lost chance to give that young lady a piece of her mind.

“Is everything okay ma’am?” The woman behind the counter asked and Penny shook her head.

“Yes, everything is fine for now, I just need to give someone a talking to,” Penny said darkly as she took the mail.

#Miraculous Ladybug AU/ The Law is The Law #mlb fandom #mlb fic #mlb sugar #lila salt #lila rossi bashing

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alicelioncourt · 2 years ago

Text

x-over with another vampire fandom

Velvet Velour occasionally lifted her corset without straps back onto her chest. Because of the size of the black-and-red corset itself, it kept rolling down slowly as she walked. This time, her butt was emphasized not by thongs, but by leather pants-pipes of a dark, almost burgundy color narrowed to the bottom. Her overall appearance this time was more like a BDSM show star than a regular stripper.

She was going to visit not so much for the sake of the very orgy to which she was invited; and not so much for the sake of drinking the blood of a real virgin - rather, she wanted to see all her vampire acquaintances. Especially Nadia.

Miss Velour's loose long hair swayed like flames in the breeze. There was nothing left to do to get to the right house.

“Damsel, I'm so glad you decided to come with me,” VV smiled sweetly at her companion.

"I didn't want to go there," the Brujah grunted back. “If Isaac hadn't asked to look after you, I wouldn't have gone.

“But you do realize I don’t need a babysitter or—”

“I would call it a bodyguard”. Damzel, unlike VV, was dressed in her usual clothes. She had no desire to have fun at an orgy. And in principle, she really didn’t want to be there: she didn’t know anyone from there.

“I don’t need a bodyguard either.” VV blew her a kiss, then placed her hand gently over her heart. “But still, thank you. We need in that house.

A cozy courtyard with bushes neatly trimmed in the form of vaginas made VV freeze for a moment with interest in order to consider such “works of art” at least a little. There have been a few more since her last visit.

"What the hell?” Damsel tried to figure out if she was imagining it or not.

“Oh, never mind,” Velvet Velour sweetly answered her, gently pushing her towards the entrance to the house. "It’s just that Nadja’s husband has such a hobby”.

"Cut bushes in the form? ..”

“You can ask him about that yourself,” the Toreador reminded her.

There was a line ahead of them. The Nosferatus and other, as yet unidentified, clans entered the house on the sly.

“Is this your first time here?” Damsel asked her with a frown.

"I won’t say that I often come here, but Nadja always invites me. But for me, there is not always time for this. Orgy takes place twice a year.”

“Toreador…” the Brujah snorted at her, rolling her eyes.

As their turn progressed, VV could already see behind this veil of secrecy the protruding plastic horns of one of the mistresses of this wonderful house.

"VV!” Nadja rushed to her, scattering kisses on both cheeks. The girls tried not to stain each other with lipsticks. "You look great!”

“You too!” Velvet Velour praised her. "I am glad to see you.”

Damsel watched their exchange of pleasantries. From the outside, they looked like some newfangled Barbie girlfriend dolls stuffed with fetishes. She also noted that Nadja had an incomprehensible accent, but she did not comment on this.

“And who is that cute red sweet with you?” She still didn't let go of VV's hands from hers. A little more, and they would have begun to circle like witches in a coven around a fire.

“This is Damsel. Brujah. This time my half-brother could not come, and she volunteered to be my companion.”

"Hello," Damsel put her hands on her hips. For Nadja, she looked like some typical representative of those who would pinch you in the doorway and try to wring out your wallet.

"Make yourself at home. Our virgin is already here. The orgy will start soon.”

Nadja let go of VV's hands and patted sweetly, anticipating the beginning of this fun. All the gathered vampires were dressed in fetish costumes: some in sequins, some with a codpiece and covered full-body harnesses.

Damsel heard someone in the room chatting for a very long time. At the same time, his surroundings became more and more stunted with every word. At first, Damsel thought that this vampire was one of the Kwei-jin, except that he was far from Asian, and besides, he did not bite anyone.

“This is an energy vampire,” Velvet Velour satisfied her curiosity. "Relax”.

"I'm not tired”.

“But look around, how beautifully decorated everything is here!”

"Cool, yeah. And who are they?” She waved her hand towards a group of people with cameras. “Are we breaking the fourth wall? Masquerade? Did not hear? I hope at least the Sabbat is not here?”

Indeed: almost-Kwei-jin, violation of the Masquerade and the Sabbat to boot - hello, madness. And she would not want to exacerbate the clan curse by their presence. Otherwise, she will definitely blow the whole house.

Footsteps were heard at the top of the stairs, and a very handsome and imposing Kindred appeared. Unlike the others, he wasn't wearing a sexy suit.

“Dear Kindreds, I have decided that I will not take part in an orgy!”

“What are you talking about…” Nadja looked at her husband in shock. Laszlo continued to broadcast his bombastic speech:

“I only love my wife and...”

Nobody listened to him. With a dissatisfied groan, the Kindreds began to leave the house.

"No no! Wait! But what about a virgin?” Nadja rushed to check on their new guest. But as soon as she pulled back the curtain that hid him from prying eyes, to as her eyes saw a picture of how their guest entertains himself in an indecent way, jumping on a chair with a dildo.

This only further disappointed the potential participants in the orgy.

“And you seriously enjoy going to these things?” Damsel adjusted her beret, pushing it to the side a little more.

“It's just a little misunderstanding, I'm sure. Wait." VV went to calm down Nadja, who was freaking out, leaving Damsel alone with the other residents of this house.

Everyone was very depressed and looked askance at Laszlo, who was proud of his act.

“Fuck,” the Brujah commented on the situation. “Orgies are not my thing”.

Now they have to wait for the cute roses to comfort each other. In the meantime, “the lady is not in trouble” felt among the male part of this house those who would bring beer and snacks to everyone if they were alive. After this, it was only necessary to thump.

#nadja #wwdits #damsel #vtm #vtmb #what we do in the shadows #laszlo #va #vampire the masquerade #bloodlines #velvet velour

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quietlyimplode · 4 years ago

Note

for those angsty/concerned prompts: clintasha and # 20. “Do you have someone who can look after you?” pls? psst I really like your writing dnbdbsnfnd

Hey Anon! Thanks so much :). I really like this prompt and just bleeds angst. So here we go! It’s gonna sit with other one shots here.

“Ma’am, can you follow my finger?” The nurse holds her hand up and Natasha tries, she does, but her head hurts and the doctor is pulling stitches from her forehead to her ear.

“Ma’am, follow my finger.” Natasha huffs in annoyance.

They did this already. There’s a faint ringing in her ears that hasn’t gone since she got hit in the head with the butt of the Ak47, the long handle stronger than her head, breaking the skin open.

She would have forgone medical, but it was one of the conditions of her release on this assignment, Fury making her visit medical after every mission after what happened after Argentina.

This was her ticking this off, even though her head is pounding, despite the copious amounts of lidocaine and anaesthetic pumped into the wound. It’s not the worst injury she’s had but it is one of the most annoying she’s had recently.

The doctor ties off the last of the stitches and gives her a pat and a smile.

“Only 7 stitches.” She says proudly. “Any nauseousness or vomiting, come straight back.’ She says, looking at Natasha in the eyes. “Do you have any questions?”

Natasha shakes her head and regrets it instantly. He vision is now doubling, a whitish tinge covers her peripheral vision and it makes her head pound more.

“Okay. You’re good to go.” She hears her say. “Nadia here, will go through your medications.” The doctor leaves, and Natasha is thankful. One less person to fool.

She hops off the bed and leans, making a show that she doesn’t need to steady herself, her vision is off, almost double vision. It’s like she’s been dosed with the old KGB drugs back in the day.

She stops herself laughing at her own joke, the nurse, Nadia looks at her and says.. something.. Natasha can’t quite attend to what it is.. was.

“You need to take this in 2 hours, that’s when the pain killers will wear off. I suggest you take it then, if you wait, it will hurt more.”

Natasha nods as she’s supposed to. Takes the drugs from the nurse, as she’s supposed to. Walks towards the door, and remembers to thank the nurse, as she’s supposed to.

She want’s to get to her room. Wallow. Pass out. Stop her ears ringing and close her eyes to the double vision.

The nurse stops her at the door, and she tilts her head, confused.

“Ma’am, do you have someone who can look after you?”

Natasha smiles. “Of course,” comes the words from her mouth, the lie is the easiest one she’s told today.

The nurse steps aside and Natasha almost stumbles out the door, suddenly her feet feel too big and her body is at odds with her movement. Fatigue pushing in.

She makes it to her room. She strips off her clothes, the clingy polyester feeling like daggers in her skin.

She forgoes the shower, wanting the water to wash the mission off her skin but knowing that she would most likely pass out if she were to do so.

Naked, she finds a towel and wets it, rubbing it first over her face, cringing at the blood that comes away from her neck. She continues down her body, wiping away sweat and marking the bruises for cover up later. Finally she looks in the mirror, she sees a small child with a cut on their head, and almost cries out at the visions her mind places instead of her reflection.

She’s had this injury before, last time it was a makarov pistol but the cut and subsequent concussion is similar.

‘Push through.’ She tells herself now, as she did last time, moving from the bathroom to the bedroom, laying down naked on the bed.

She loses time.

She’s sure of it.

The towel that she wiped her body down with, is on the floor.

Maybe she slept?

She’s naked.

She hates waking up naked.

She sits up and regrets it. Her dizziness is back with a vengeance and she pushes down nauseousness, bile moving up her throat into her mouth. She waits to move until it subsides and then takes a deep breath. Makes herself get underwear and pants to pull them on. She opens her drawer and sees the glint of her hand cuffs, sitting pretty on her pyjama top. She fingers them and wonders if it would help. Help ground her, push this unsettling feeling and tension away, push her into a deep sleep that she can just…. float away.

She closes the drawer again.

Stands.

Can’t stop the nauseousness this time as it’s caustic taste fills her mouth. She’s forced to spit it into the bin, the quick movement makes her vomit again and the smell permeates the room.

Her head is pounding. She pulls the pyjama top over her head, and pain lances through her head.

“Ow.” She moans quietly, allowing herself the acknowledgement of pain. Natasha looks over to the bottle of painkillers.

She has no idea how long it’s been since she was at medical. She hates medication - the one they’ve given her making her tongue loose and loopy.

Deciding against them, she throws them on the floor, the bottle popping open and spilling the contents everywhere. She doesn’t know why she did that.. the throbbing in her head manageable is she just..doesn’t…move.

She lays down tentatively, almost sitting up so that she doesn’t have to move her head.

Maybe the hand cuffs aren’t a bad idea. The more she thinks on it, the better it seems. She pulls them out, encloses it on the bed post and then around her wrist. As the metal touches her, she breathes down panic.

This is good, she tells herself strongly.

This is needed.

Duty and the discipline of the old days.

Madam says it’s tithing to Red Room.

Madam says it will give her a blank mind.

Madam says…

Clint shuts down his computer, sighing softly at the monotony of paperwork. His brain hurts more now than it did when he started, this kind of work way harder than fieldwork in his mind.

If it was just field work he would be done in less time than typing out a damn field report.

Clint stretches as his phone goes off, he looks at the number, confused to see Shield Medical pop up.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Barton?”

“Speaking.”

“Mr. Barton, you’re Agent Romanoff’s emergency contact. We’ve tried to call her after she came in this afternoon with a severe concussion, she said that she had someone who could take care of her, but no one is picking up on her cell.”

Clint swallows down worry. She didn’t call. Natasha has no one except him. She doesn’t trust anyone. Not with pain, not with injury. It’s a miracle she’s been going to medical after missions, but he suspects that’s only because of the threat from Fury.

“Yes?” He asks.

“Are you with her Mr. Barton?”

“Thanks, I’l check in on her. Do you need anything else?” He doesn’t answer the question.

“Yes, if you could call us to let us know if she needs anything? More painkillers, or a higher dose?”

Clint shakes his head at the phone. He’s doubtful thats she took the first lot. He moves as fast as he can to the dormitory levels.

“Ok. Thank you, I’ll call back on this number.”

“Thanks Mr. Barton.” The lady says and hangs up.

Clint is almost running. Panic infusing his movement. He falters with his phone, dialling Natasha’s number, and cursing when it rings out.

He picks the lock to her room, and opens the door. He smells the acrid vomit smell and curses under his breath.

“Natasha?” He announces his presence, as he moves to her bedroom. Louder now, he looks around for her. He hopes she’s in the room. Hopes she hasn’t run away.

“Oh no no no no no.. Nat…” the words just fall out of his mouth when he sees her. She’s on her side a trail of bile coming from her mouth and her hand handcuffed to the bed. The cut above her eye stands out, large and red against her pale skin.

He squats next to her, unsure what to do. He thinks he should wake her, but what if that’s not right?

He finds a towel on the floor, covered with bright pink blood, he folds it over and wipes the bile from her face.

“Tasha.. Tasha?” he moves next to her, their faces level.

“Nat?” Firm hands hold hers, he unlocks the handcuff from the bed and off her wrist, places it on the floor.

“Tash,” he touches her face and she flinches, closer to awake than asleep now.

He sits back on his heels and waits, speaking softy as she rouses.

“Hey Tash, why you always gotta do this alone? Huh? Why not call me? I’d’ve come. I would’ve sat with you. Annoyed you, and made sure you’re not in this alone.”

She orients to his voice but he keeps talking.

“You’re not alone. You have me. I’m sorry you think this is the only way. Sorry you had to go back to the old ways and the old patterns of coping. But you don’t gotta any more.”

She’s watching him now. He smiles at her.

“You hear me?” He asks her, a genuine question.

She dips her head, pain crossing her features.

He looks around for the pain killers and finds them spilt on the floor. Eyes watch as he he picks them up.

“No.” She tells him. The first thing she’s said.

“Ok.” He holds up the handcuffs.

“Do you need these?” Her pale face flushes red with embarrassment and her eyes look up away from his.

“No.” She whispers.

There’s silence in the room, and Clint moves slowly to the other side of the bed, lays next to her and takes her hand.

“You’ve got me.” He whispers. “You’re not alone.” Her head drops to look at him.

“You have someone to look after you, if you need it.” He tells her firmly.

“Ok?” Natasha looks over him from head to toe, breathing slowly.

“Ok.” She concedes.

#clintasha fic #clint/nat fic #clintasha #injury tw #whump fic #ask away #my fic #hurt/comfort #marvel fic

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where-theres-smoak-2 · 3 years ago

Text

Darkling Character Analysis

Full disclaimer, I’ve not read the books, though I have ordered the first so I am hoping to have read that soon. But just so you are aware this character analysis is based entirely on the show version of the character. Obviously there will be spoilers for all of season one. Also I just want to say that my aim with this analysis was to sort of get into The character’s head and so alot of this is just what I think the character might have been thinking, feeling and what his motivations may be, it does not mean I agree or disagree with his actions. When I am giving my view on his actions I will try to make it as clear as possible. Also this is just my interpretation of the character and my own opinions on the character, it is ok if you disagree. So obviously this is an analysis of the character The Darkling but I am also going to be talking about his relationship with Alina so I guess its also a sort of analysis of their relationship too just solely from Aleksander’s side of it. I will be using all of the names he has interchangeably because he has so many that I don’t know which one to stick with (seriously haven’t seen a character with this many different names since Jace from Shadowhunters) so sorry if that’s annoying. Fair warning this one is probably the longest analysis I have ever written and they are usually pretty long so I would suggest if you are going to read this maybe get some beverages and snacks first. I mean I think it shows how compelling and interesting a character he is that I was able to waffle on as long as have about him. But yeah its long. Of course you can also always scroll on past. But if you would like to read it then the rest is under the tag.

Ok so first off I think the show does a really good job of building up the character in the first episode by giving us some information on The Black General before we and Alina officially meet him, they really give the character this air of mystery by giving us only a small amount of information about him but also by not letting us see his face. We get small tantalising glimpses of him, a shot of his boots in the mud, his carriage passing by, the back of him with his cloak billowing in the wind as the skiff enters the fold. It’s just enough to peak the audience’s interest. But most of what we learn in episode one is from what other character’s tell us. The very first mention we get of The General is from Mal and it’s a very small detail but I actually think it can tell you alot about The Darkling’s character. When Mal and Alina come across the Grisha practising Mal says ‘They’re always picking on us when their General’s not around.’ This seems like such a throwaway comment designed to show us how the First Army feel about Grisha and paints this picture of the Grisha thinking they are higher and mightier than those who are not Grisha. But it actually suggests that if they only do it when The General is not around then he does not tolerate Grisha bullying First Army. That he doesn’t think its ok for them to act like they are higher and mightier than those who are not Grisha and that he believes in humility even. Which I think is really interesting. This tracks with Nadia’s comment later in episode three when she says that General Kirigan insists that the Grisha eat peasant fare to keep them humble. Yet while he encourages humility he also makes sure that the Grisha have everything they need in order to flourish and he obviously cares a great deal about the Grisha, I feel like rising the Grisha up and making them strong has been pretty much his only drive and motivation over the hundreds of years since the fold was created.

The other thing we learn which is repeated a couple of times by a few of the characters is that The General cannot bring down the Shadow Fold. In fact I think there are two conversations about it. The first between Inej, Jesper and Kaz when Jesper asks why the General hasn’t taken it down to which Inej replies ‘Have you ever put out fire by adding more fire?’ The other conversation is more flippant and is between Dubrov and Mikhael, where Mikhael sarcastically says the General is there to save the day and Dubrov asks if he’s going to tear down the fold. So on two occasions we have characters believing the General is powerful enough to fix the problem of the fold only for them to be corrected and told that he can’t. It seems like the show wants to make it very clear that the General will not be destroying the fold and I could be reaching here but this could be foreshadowing for later when we learn he doesn’t desire to bring down the fold.

Of course even after the first episode the character of the Darkling still remains a bit of a mystery. He’s the kind of character where the more you learn about him the more questions you have. This tactic of giving us small pieces of information about him, just enough to keep you interested continues throughout the season and of course you have the twist in episode 5 where its revealed that he’s the ‘villain’. And yes I did put villain in quotation marks because I personally feel like its too simplistic a term to use for the character. I do feel like he’s more than just a two dimensional villain and there is alot of complexity to the character and his actions just for him to be considered the ‘bad guy’.

So lets have a look at some of those actions and think about what might have been his motivations and what he might have been thinking and feeling. I want to start with one of the more controversial of his actions and as a warning this is a sensitive topic. One of the earlier things we find out about is that General Kirigan gifted Genya to the Queen. I’ll be honest when I first watched this scene I was so caught up in the new character and what was going on in the scene that I didn’t think much about Genya’s comment about being a gift to the Queen but when I thought more on it later I realised that it was a rather dark idea, that you could gift a person to another person. It becomes especially darker later when you find out what Genya suffered at the King’s hands. I kept wondering a few things, one being why the General would gift a child to the Queen in the first place, two whether he knew what the King was when he put Genya under the royal family’s care and three if he didn’t why he didn’t remove Genya when he discovered what was happening with the King. I do feel that we didn’t get enough information in the show (I don’t know if there’s more information in the books) to really answer these questions but I’ll give it my best shot. Firstly why would the General gift a child to the Queen? Well I actually think this one is easy to answer, he needed a spy within the Royal Family. We know that Aleksander has suffered and been betrayed by a king in the past. He won the Old King a war and in turn that King turned on not just Aleksander but on his people too. I feel like Aleksander was blindsided when this happened and he just didn’t see it coming and because of that his people were slaughtered. It would make sense then that the General would want to keep an eye on the royals and get a warning if they were planning on turning on Grisha again. I also think this is why they refer to Genya as a ‘gift’. That was just the wording the General used to manipulate the royals. Here’s a gift that I am granting you out of respect and to honour and please you, is going to go over a lot better than hey here’s a spy I want in your household. Genya is essentially the General’s trojan horse. As for it being Genya as oppose to someone else, like a trained adult Grisha, well I think that’s because it would be easier to get the royals to take a child into their household than an adult, even as a gift. They will be alot less suspicious of a child than they would an adult. Also they might bond with a child and therefore treat them as more of a confidante as time goes on. As well as that Genya had a very specific set of Grisha abilities that made her perfect for a vain Queen. I may be wrong on this one but thinking back to my history education I think I remember being taught it was fairly common during the time period if a young lady was discovered to have a particularly special talent, like say singing for example, they may be given as a gift to the Queen as this may gain favour for the maiden’s family if she is made a lady in waiting. So if I am right about that then whilst it might seem strange to us it may have been a fairly normal practise to the characters. I mean Alina didn’t seem shocked when Genya said she was a gift to the queen it was learning about the King that upset her.

Also I do wonder if some of the reason why he placed her with the royal family was because he believed she wouldn’t fit in with the other Grisha, she does say that she is almost as rare as Alina. I don’t know for sure but maybe the General suspected she would struggle with being different from the other Grisha and so decided the best way to help her grow and flourish was by giving a special mission of her own.

Ok so what about question 2? Did he know what kind of person the King was when he placed Genya under his care. In my opinion I don’t think he did. I am basing this on how he always seems to want to make Grisha safe and wants them to flourish and also due to his actions with Alina when things between them became more intimate, we know that consent is something Aleksander cares about. So to me it would be out of character for him considering how much he cares about the Grisha and consent for him to knowingly put Genya under the King’s care whilst having the knowledge of what would happen to her. I feel like he would also consider it as a disrespect towards Grisha from the King for him to harm a Grisha woman like that especially as she was ‘gifted’ to them. Also when Alina herself asks a similar question in episode 7 when she says ‘did you think Genya was safe when you placed her under the King’s watch?’ To me I think the Darkling looked somewhat upset that she would think that he would knowingly put Genya in that situation. However I do think that by the time Alina was discovered and brought to the Little Palace he was aware of what was going on with Genya and the King as he makes that comment about Alina remaining at the Little Palace with him to train undisturbed. The way he said undisturbed made me think he thought the King might decide he wanted Alina and the General was warning the King away, making it clear that if he wanted the fold destroyed he would have to leave Alina alone. His actions here in protecting Alina also make me think that he didn’t know at the time of placing Genya with the Royal family what would happen to her. He doesn’t want to make the same mistake with Alina that he made with Genya.

As for number 3, why didn’t he remove Genya from the King’s care once he did find out about what the King was doing? I saw a few comments about this. All of them saying the same that because he didn’t get Genya out he was as bad as the King and was complicit in what happened to Genya. But I actually think it’s more complicated than that. For one thing technically he did remove Genya from the King’s care when he had her poison the king and then made her Corporalnik. Though obviously he didn’t do it immediately. We’ve got no timescale as to when he find out so who knows how long they were planning this. But also there was one line in episode 3 that I think answers this question best, when the General says ‘I may lead the Second Army, but the King is still the King.’ Whilst the General is powerful he still only has so much power over the King. He needed the King’s permission just to have Alina at the Little Palace and for her to train, which is what the demonstration Alina had to go through in episode 3 was all about. I don’t think the General had the power to just walk into the Grande Palace and take back Genya. The only way he was getting Genya out of there was by killing the King. Also correct me if I am wrong but I feel like what the King was doing to Genya was a large part of the General’s motivation for poisoning the King. I mean we weren’t given much information about the King other than what he was doing to Genya, which made me think that’s why he was poisoned as we weren’t told about any other bad things the King had done that might lead to the General deciding to poison him. I think once he found out what the King was doing to Genya he allowed her to be the one to carry out the poisoning knowing that she would want revenge rather than trying to remove her right away and potentially causing tension with the royal family and also making it harder if not impossible for Genya to be the one to exact her revenge on the King. I guess what I am saying is its possible that Genya was the one who wanted to stay because she wanted to be the one to kill the King. I mean that’s the impression I got from her conversation with Alina where she says ‘I waited for years for my chance at revenge.’ For all we know General Kirigan might have offered to remove her from the Royal household and she might have told him she wanted to be the one to help him take down the King. Whatever his motivations were and however much he may or may not have known I think we can all agree that him ‘gifting’ Genya to the Queen was a mistake. I personally feel like it was more of a similar mistake to when Alina burned the maps. She had good intentions, she did it to protect someone she cared about, but in the end she caused others harm. With Alina she wanted to protect Mal and her whole unit was killed. With Kirigan I think he hoped a spy in the Royal household would protect the Grisha but in the end Genya was harmed by the King. One question I do have is whether Kirigan feels any guilt over what happened to Genya, whether he regrets his decision. I mean we did see him protect Alina from the King when he insisted she remain at the Little Palace. But was that just because it was Alina, the Sun Summoner? What if it were someone else. For example say the King came to the General and said he had taken a fancy to Marie, or Nadia or Zoya, and asked for them to be sent to the Grande Palace, would the General have agreed or would he have made some excuse as to why they couldn’t go, maybe even sent them on an assignment to protect them? There’s no way we can really know the answers to these questions as we just don’t know enough about the situation. All we know is that the General ultimately decided to get rid of the King but even then we don’t know for certain what his motivations for that were.

I suppose you could say that him plotting against the king and conspiring with the apparat to usurp the throne was also a ‘bad guy’ move. But to be honest after telling us everything that the King did and just generally presenting the royal family in a negative light, I was surprised that Alina had such a problem with what the General did. To me it didn’t make sense for her to be upset and using that against him. I mean after learning what he did to Genya I was fully on the Darkling’s side when it came to killing the King. If they were trying to present this as a ‘villain’ move on the Darkling’s part then they did a poor job of it because I completely understood where he was coming from with that one.

I felt a similar way with his other big ‘villain’ move when he expanded The Fold into Novokribirsk. At first I found it hard to have sympathy for them considering literally a couple of minutes before we were being shown that the soldiers were planning on murdering everyone on the skiff as soon as it docked. Couple that with the fact that Zlatan had arranged to assassinate Alina and once again I found myself on the Darkling’s side, I mean screw Zlatan and his soldiers. It was another case of it wasn’t until I rewatched it that I realised the villainous part of what the Darkling did was that there were civilians in the city that were also killed. To be honest I do wish that the show had done a better job of showing those civilians to really get across the horror of what the Darkling did. I mean on a rewatch I could see a few civilians mixed in with the soldiers but they were blended in so were hard to spot. I guess that was the purpose of Zoya having family in the city, to tell the viewer that there were innocents there but I just don’t think it made enough of an impact. I feel like if they had focussed in on actual civilians running and being swallowed by the darkness as well as the West Ravkan soldiers it would have had a bigger and more horrific impact. Instead it just kind of came across as the bad guys who had been built up as being bad throughout the season, who were rebels and who had tried to kill the main character, were finally eliminated. Lets be real if Alina had been the one to take out those soldiers we would all have been cheering. Lets talk about Game of Thrones for a moment as an example (spoiler alert for GOT here) however you felt about the way Dany’s descent into madness was written one thing the writers did right in The Bells episode was focus on the civilians that Dany was killing on the ground. They cut away from Dany completely and stayed on the ground with her victims and so you get that impact of what she has done, you see the horror in what she has done and I think this is something that would have worked well with Shadow and Bone. If they had just cut away from the skiff for a scene showing the civilians, the victims that were being effected by what the Darkling was doing then I think I would have been more shocked and effected by his actions.

Ok so lets focus back in on the character and talk about what his motivations might have been for Novokribirsk. Why did he expand the Fold and take out the city? Well again I don’t think its hard to answer that question. We have to remember that he is a General that is fighting a war on three fronts. He’s fighting the Fjerdans on one side, the Shu Han on another and then the cherry on top is that the West Ravkans are rising up in rebellion. It’s already hard enough having to fight two enemy countries without also having to split your forces again to deal with a rebellion. The General knows that they are already overstretched without having to split their force again to deal with Zlatan. So if you look at it from his point of view striking down Zlatan now before the rebellion gets too large is a tactical military move. Also the fact that it is such a violent move will act as a deterrent for any remaining rebels who might think of trying to restart Zlatan’s movement. As well as to Fjerda and Shu Han, a this is what we do to our own people when they act against us so think about what we might do to you if you cross us, kind of deal. As for the innocent civilians that were in the city well I think the Darkling would convince himself that it was a numbers game. He might have killed hundreds of civilians but as far as he sees it he has spared thousands of lives that would have been lost if they had gone to war with West Ravka. By now the General knows the cost of war, so to him sacrificing a few hundred civilians is worth the price of saving thousands of his soldiers. Of course there is another motivation for the General, one that is less military strategy and more personal and emotionally driven. As Kaz says he was a man fuelled by vengeance. These soldiers standing on the dock had turned their back on Grisha and even worse than that they had tried to kill Alina. In the scene where The Darkling is talking to the Conductor and the Conductor admits to agreeing to assassinate Alina for a million kruge you can see how angry this makes The Darkling. This idea that someone would harm Alina for something as material as money is unforgivable to him. I said in a previous post that I wondered if the General always planned to expand the fold into Novokribirsk and I actually think the answer to that is no he didn’t. I actually think he was trying to make up his mind about what to do about Zlatan and his rebels, its possible he had a number of strategies to go with and was trying to decide which to choose, with expanding the fold being the most extreme of them. I actually think this here is the moment he decides to go with that plan. As he walks away from the Conductor and the Conductor asks ‘tell me how I can help’ The Darkling replies ‘you already have.’ I actually think what he meant here was you’ve helped me make up my mind. Them daring to harm Alina was the linchpin.

Which brings me to the next part of this analysis, The Darkling’s manipulation and relationship with Alina. One of the great things the show did with the Darkling’s character was making him so complex and nuanced that the audience is in very much the same position as Alina when that reveal is made about Aleksander being the Black Heretic. Just like Alina (if you haven’t read the books) you are left sort of blindsided. Also just like Alina the audience is left wondering how much of it was a manipulation. Was all of it part of his manipulation? Or were there some moments that were real? Did he care at all about Alina or was he just interested in her power?

Well I will say this, while I do think he always planned to manipulate her, I don’t think he ever planned or tried to use seduction as part of that manipulation. I think we have to remember that he was waiting for the Sun Summoner for hundreds of years and I think he spent that time creating his plan for her and her power. We also have to remember that when he was creating this plan he was expecting to find a child. I think his plan was to earn her trust as a mentor and build a confidence between them. I think he planned to bring her up with his ideals, to bring her up believing the best thing was to use the fold as a weapon, to bring her up to always want to protect the Grisha and to bring her up to embrace her power. However this whole plan had a wrench thrown in it when he does finally find Alina and she’s not a child, she’s a grown woman and one that has been taught her whole life that the Sun Summoner’s purpose is to tear down the fold. Changing the ideals and beliefs of an adult is alot harder to do than a child. On top of that I think he does develop real feelings for her. But these feelings get in the way of his plans, which makes everything all the more complicated for him.

Lets go to the moment they first meet. I do think right from the get go he is intrigued by her and mean I think when you watch the scene you are so focused on Alina and what she must be going through and feeling, how scared she must be being dragged in front of this powerful General that she’s only ever heard stories about, that we don’t think about what this moment meant to the General. I mean he has been waiting for this woman for so long. She could be the solution to all of his problems, a fix for all of his mistakes. She has been his one glimmer of hope in the vast darkness of eternity. And now she’s here in front of him. Jessie said in an interview that Alina felt a connection to Aleksander right from the beginning, but I think he felt a connection to her too. I think you can even see the moment they make that connection and it’s when he takes her wrist in the tent.

Once he takes her wrist they never break eye contact even as he draws her sleeve up higher, their eyes are glued to each other. Then they both pause for a few beats and again just stare at each other.

The tension between them is so thick it almost makes you want to yell get a room at the screen. It’s like they both suddenly felt something click between them, a oh I know you, kind of moment. But I also feel like Aleksander is a bit surprised by this feeling, he wasn’t expecting it. They don’t break eye contact until The General cuts her arm releasing her power and causing her to look down in surprise. But almost immediately Alina brings her eyes back to his. One kind of cool little detail I did notice is that you can see the reflection of the beam of light in both their eyes.

It’s like a thread connecting them both, I don’t know why but it sort of reminds me of that red thread of fate legend. But also with them both having dark eyes the beam of light reflected in them sort of reminds me of yin and yang. The other thing of note is the General’s facial expression when he sees her power. Whilst everyone else is looking on is awe and surprise, he looks almost content, definitely happy and maybe even a bit hopeful. To me he kind of looks like he’s just had all his prayers answered.

I think Kirigan is further intrigued by Alina in episode two when she talks back to him with that rant about maybe he hasn’t found anyone with her power because they didn’t want to be found. I think its the first time in a long while that anyone has stood up to him and not just said yes sir. I actually found it really comical how surprised he was when she said no to him. You just know he hasn’t heard that word much in recent lifetimes. But I do think this plants those first seeds of him seeing her as an equal to him. I think this is where he starts to see her as not someone to bow at his feet but someone who belongs at his side. Then when she confesses that she hid from the testers because she didn’t want to feel even more alone I think he really saw something of himself in her. I mean you can see his facial expression shift. I think this furthers his idea that she is meant to be at his side, that she is the same as him and I think even at this early stage he begins to hope that maybe she is someone who will understand him as no one else ever has. In that moment he is determined to make sure she doesn’t ever feel alone again and that is why he tells her ‘you are Grisha, you are not alone.’ You can see from the passion in his voice when he says it that this is something very personal to him.

However despite this connection he feels to her and the care I think he has for her too, he does manipulate her. I think one of the more obvious manipulations happens in episode 4 when he takes her to the fountain. Something that is worth noting is that before setting out on their ride Aleksander takes off his Kefta. Their Keftas in the show are presented as their armour, so I think it was a very deliberate move on his part to sort of send the message to her, look I’m taking my armour off for you and I am being vulnerable and open to you. He furthers this by giving her his name to create this familiarity between them. Then he takes her to a place that is personal to him and then he really gets into his manipulation game. Here’s the thing though, I feel like most of the time when we think of manipulation we think of lies. But sometimes the best way to manipulate a person is through twisting the truth and I think this is what he does here. From their conversations so far I think he has figured out that Alina feels like an outsider and that she fears being alone and not fitting in. I definitely think he uses this information to manipulate her by telling her the story about how he used to go to the fountain as a boy after he discovered he was descended from the most hated Grisha in Ravka and wished to be anybody else. He knows that Alina will respond to this story, that it will make her feel sympathy for him and also make her feel like he is someone who understands her and therefore someone she can trust and rely on. He is also most definitely being deceitful in that he knows she thinks he is talking about being related to the Black Heretic when in fact he is the Black Heretic. However that doesn’t mean that what he said was untrue. I really do think he used to go there as a boy and wish to be someone else. As for being the descendant of the most hated Grisha in Ravka well my theory there is that he could actually be talking about Morozova. In the flashback in episode 7 Aleksander says that he and Baghra are his descendants and that means that if he created the amplifiers than Aleksander could create an army. Baghra gives the warning that Aleksander will die like Morozova. This makes me think that Morozova died in quite an unpleasant way, maybe even killed because he was feared and hated. I mean sure the Black Heretic is the most hated Grisha in all of Ravka now, but whose to say there wasn’t someone who came before him? Another Grisha who was hated like the Black Heretic is now. And maybe when Aleksander was a boy he discovered he was the descendant of Morozova and that was a burden on him, so much so that he wished he was someone else.

I also think he was being genuine when he talked about how he is never seen as the solution only a reminder of the problem. I mean we’ve seen this ourselves in episode one its one of the first things we learn about him, that he can’t bring down the fold. I also think he’s being truthful when he says they always need someone to blame but again he’s twisting this truth. Alina thinks he means he is being unjustly blamed for not being able to fix the Fold but I think he actually is talking about how the Old King turned on him. I’m also sure over the years many people have blamed him and the Grisha for all the ills the world has suffered. But I do think he really meant it when he told her that he wouldn’t let the world make her the new Heretic. I think making sure that doesn’t happen is something he cares deeply about and I think it shows that he does have some care for her that he is so determined that she doesn’t go through what he did with the world turning on him.

Slight diversion here but I do want to talk about whether or not this hatred the world has for him is justified, I mean he did create the fold and that fold has killed alot of people since its creation. So surely just the fact that he created the fold is enough to solidify him as the villain. Well I think that depends on why he created the fold. I mean we get three different versions of how and why the Fold was created. The first one we hear is in episode 4 when Alina tells us the story that is taught to children in school. They say that history is written by the victors, and whilst I personally don’t think there were any victors in the creation of the fold, The Black Heretic disappeared with its creation, presumed to be dead, so the Old King probably considered himself the victor and was left to decide the history. Therefore this story was most likely the Old King’s version of events. In this version of the story it talks about how the Darkling hungered for more power after being made the Kings military advisor and this made the king fear that the Darkling would try to overthrow him. So he put a bounty on his head and that of anyone who stood by him. Eventually the Heretic realised he was outnumbered and decided to create an army using forbidden science. But he failed, creating the fold and killing himself and countless others. The second version we get is from Baghra and it is similar to this one. She says that he created the Fold to use as a weapon, that he tried making an army with merzost and that he didn’t think about what that would do to the people who lived there, that it turned the men, women and children into the Volcra. That she had warned him there would be a price and that he didn’t listen. She also says that he took a noble’s name to hide after. Baghra’s version paints Aleksander as power hungry and as someone who will stop at nothing to get what he wants no matter the cost. But there are somethings I think its worth noting about her version. The first is that it is very brief, sort of like the cliff notes version, as they are in a hurry and she needs to get Alina out of there pronto. She doesn’t have time to go into all the details so she tells her enough to convince her to leave. Which brings me to my second point, Baghra’s motivation here is to get Alina to flee, so logically the best way to do that is to tell her the worst parts of the story and leave out anything that might make Alina feel sympathetic towards Aleksander and therefore hesitate about leaving. Another thing to remember is that Baghra whilst she might know somethings wasn’t there for a lot of it, she didn’t see Luda killed by the soldiers just knows that she was killed and she didn’t witness the confrontation between Aleksander and the soldiers. However what she did see likely had an effect on her. There is one moment in particular during Baghra’s story where she becomes emotional and choked up, there are tears in her eyes and you just know she is reliving a bad memory and that is when she talks about the women and children who were turned into the Volcra alongside the soldiers. Think for a moment about where Baghra was when the fold was created. She was inside the sanctuary with the women and children who were hiding from the soldiers. Which means that she would have witnessed them turning into the Volcra which must have been a horrifying scene.

Eventually we get to episode 7 and we learn what really happened when the fold was created and the story is more tragic that first told. I mean first you have the whole situation with Luda. He obviously loved her deeply and I can only imagine how painful it must have been to see her murdered right in front of him and to feel that guilt of her dying because she was protecting him. I mean the words ‘just mortal’ now make me want to burst out crying anytime I hear them. Then he gets to the sanctuary and there’s all these Grisha there that need protecting. I think he feels a responsibility for them. Then his mother reminds him that they are not fighters, they make things. Which gives him the idea of creating an army using merzost. It is worth pointing out here that when telling the tale to Alina Baghra says that she warned Aleksander that there would be a price for using merzost, but when you actually see the conversation what she says is that whilst the small science feeds them merzost feeds on them. This suggests that the price to be paid is by him. So yes he was aware there would be a price but he assumed he would be the one paying it. I think if he knew that the people inside the sanctuary would be turned into Volcra he might not have gone through with it. This is another thing that makes the story even more tragic. Aleksander was driven to create his own army by his wish to protect his people, but he lost control and ended up destroying the very people he was trying so hard to protect. Another thing I noticed when Alina is telling the story of the heretic in episode four when she gets to the part about the Heretic being killed along with countless other you can hear what sound like screams in the background, also Aleksander looks really sad and guilty. It is also right after that he says he had devoted his life to undoing the great sin aka the creation of the fold. We see this look of guilt again when Alina confronts him in episode 7 about being the one to create the fold and therefore responsible for the deaths of her friends and parents. You see him look to the floor.

I really do think that he has alot of guilt about the fold, he sees it as a mistake. We see both Baghra and Alina make the claim, the fold was no mistake. But in episode 7 we learn that it was, Aleksander did not deliberately set out to create the fold. It wasn't his intention. It seems to me that he wanted to bend the will of the soldiers to his, to make them his own army, but I think he lost control due to the emotional state he was in at the time. I mean right before the soldiers were threatening to murder all the people inside, including his mother, and were mocking him about Luda’s death. He was grieving, he was angry and he was fearful for his people. We were told the fold was born out of greed but lets be real it was born out of grief and out of pain and anger and fear.

So if he considers it such a big mistake why doesn’t he want to tear it down? Well I think its two fold. On one hand he might be afraid of what he’ll see. It’s like Kaz says to Zoya ‘it’s dangerous to go looking for the dead. What you see may haunt you for the rest of your days.’ Tearing down the fold will reveal all the destruction he caused to the land and to the people who lived there, he’d have to really confront what he did to his own people. But I think another motivator is what he said about undoing the great sin. I think he thinks if he makes the fold useful then at least it would have made the ‘deaths’ of his people mean something somehow. If creating the fold cost them their lives then maybe by making it a weapon that can be used to protect Grisha will make their ‘deaths’ a worthwhile sacrifice.

Ok so diversion over, lets go back to the Darklina relationship and how much of his actions were a manipulation. We’ve already established that he was being manipulative when taking her to the fountain and was telling her twisted truths. But if we stick with episode 4 there’s the scene where she comes to visit him at night in the war room. This whole scene I actually think he was being completely genuine. I don’t think any of it was part of his manipulation of her. First off is the way they are both dressed. They are both in their nightclothes which gives this idea of them being more intimate and more exposed to each other. I said above that the Kefta is seen as the Grisha’s armour, well here neither one of them are wearing their Kefta. They have both taken off their armour and are letting each other in. When Alina first finds him he is looking over the war map and you can see that he looks troubled, which you know fair enough considering he’s fighting a war on two fronts, having to deal with getting supplies through the fold and how to deal with the rebels. I love the way he looks at Alina when she comes in though, its just so soft and I feel like he feels instantly calmer when he sees her. But then he starts talking about how he’s been fighting the war alone and lost friends, about how their own people are turning on Grisha just as their kin once did and he is clearly thinking back to when the Old King was hunting him and his people. When the shadows start creeping in I think his pain is very real, I don’t think this was an act at all and once again if you listen closely you can hear those faint screams in the background. Then Alina dispels the shadows with her light and repeats his words back to him, ‘you are not alone.’ I think in this moment he truly does feel like he’s not alone. That he has found someone who understands him and who is his equal, who is like him. So he reaches out and cups her face and tells her he’s been waiting for her a long time. But then she pulls away and says she should go. I think Aleksander is afraid at this moment that he has frightened her away or that he misinterpreted the situation and he becomes very confused. So when she lingers at the door he goes to it and contemplates calling her back, just as she struggles with whether she should go back. But then she walks away and I think he thinks that maybe he was wrong and she doesn’t feel the same as him and he is a little angry with himself for losing focus and for feeling something for her and so he locks the door between them.

Another question I asked myself was whether he always intended to put the stag collar on her and to control her powers. In my opinion this one has a bit of a yes and a no answer. I think he kept changing his mind. He clearly knew that by killing the Stag and putting the amplifier on her he would gain control of her powers. As I said early I think his first draft of the plan, shall we say, was to find the Sun Summoner as a child, to gain her trust as her mentor and teach her that the Fold is a weapon to be used as opposed to something that needs to be torn down. If he had found her as a child he would have had a lot more control over her and could shape her into what he wanted. However when they find the Sun Summoner she’s an adult and believes that its her fate to tear down the fold so he has to do a rework of his plan. On top of that he’s got this problem that she clearly doesn’t want to be the Sun Summoner she has no interest in saving anyone and she just wants to go back to being a mapmaker in the First Army. I think it is during that speech where she talks about him transferring her power to someone else that he starts to look into whether that is possible. But as he gets to know her more I think this changes again and he starts to feel things for her and I think he starts to believe that they want the same things and that maybe taking control of her powers won’t be necessary. I think the turning point for him is in episode 5. In the breakdown video of their first kiss Jessie says Alina goes to the General’s rooms because of what happened the night before in the war room where they had a moment in episode 4. Alina wasn’t sure what that moment meant and so she was seeking out Aleksander because she was intrigued and wanted to know if there was something there. Aleksander is once again clearly happy to see her but I do feel like there is some awkwardness there because of what happened in episode 4 and because he feels like he had misinterpreted things and maybe was too intense with her. It’s an interesting dynamic because as Jessie says in that video in this moment he is the vulnerable one. One moment in particular that I think shows this vulnerability is right after she helps him into his Kefta. Again going back to the whole the Kefta is armour thing. When Alina first enters the room like in episode 4 she is wearing her dressing gown she has come to him with her armour off so to speak. He is also out of his Kefta and this early conversation is playful where they are joking about Ivan and the Volcra. But after she puts the Kefta on him is when his mood shifts a little and you see him kind of tug the Kefta tighter around himself. I feel like he was trying to protect himself because the more time he spends with her the more vulnerable and confused he feels, he’s feeling alot of feelings he hasn’t felt in a long time and I think he knows by now that he is well on his way to falling in love with her and this scares him a bit because he has lost loves in the past. Him putting the Kefta back on is like him attempting to put that armour back on. There is another way of looking at it too though. It’s worth noting that on this occasion Alina is the one helping him put the armour/Kefta on, like she is the one giving him protection. Then he turns around Alina is alot closer then he anticipated and you can actually see him struggling to even form words. Then she leans in close to him like she's about to kiss him but changes her mind and walks into the other room leaving our poor guy more confused than ever. Then Alina makes the speech about how she finally feels like she is part of something bigger and that they can offer hope to the Grisha and to Ravkans. In this moment our girl was talking straight to our boy’s heart. I think this is all he has ever wanted to hear her say, especially the ‘we can offer hope.’ I think he really means it when he says it means a lot to him and you can hear the passion in his voice when he says ‘you mean a lot.’ Of course when she looks down he once again becomes afraid he’s overstepped, gone too far and so he tries to backtrack with ‘to everyone’. And well we all know what happens next. Alina kisses him and as he says after he is surprised and not many people do surprise him. I think there is something about this woman that just makes him lose all his senses until his whole world becomes about her. I feel like throughout episode 5 Aleksander feels like he’s gotten everything he’s ever wanted. Because maybe she does feel the same way he does, maybe she wants the same things he does, maybe he has found his life partner, another immortal who will always be by his side, finally he’ll never have to feel alone again. I think the moment I decided this fool was definitely in love with Alina was the look on his face when she enters the room and he sees her in his colours for the first time. After watching her demonstration I think he does see her as his equal. He’s in complete awe of her and the only time he looks away is to look at the Monarchs to see their reaction. Basically from the moment Alina kisses him to this moment where he is seeing her take command of the room and truly showing her power, having people bow to her, Aleksander is living his best life, he’s on cloud nine.

Then he gets word that someone has located the stag. We don’t see the scene where he gets informed of this but you can imagine he probably can’t believe his luck. Not only are things perfect between him and Alina but now someone has found the amplifier. But I feel like he gets a bit of a reality check when he discovers that Mal is the one who found the stag and he’s now here in the Little Palace. I feel like Aleksander sort of came crashing down to earth here and realised he might have a bit of a problem. Once again he’s having to do a quick, rapid, rework of his plan. Which brings us to another moment where the Darkling is being manipulative. He uses Mal to find out what Alina’s favourite flower is. I mean I suppose you could argue that he’s only doing what every other person does when they want to get a gift for their crush and don’t know what would be best, ask the best friend. But all jokes aside this move was clearly calculative on The Darkling’s part. But I couldn’t help but wonder why he decided to use the Irises. What was his motivation here. It’s clear that he has already won Alina over seeing as she was kissing him not to long ago. Well I said earlier that I think he changed his mind about using the collar on her. I do think after their conversation in episode 2 where she talks about how she didn’t want any of it and could he transfer it he thought she was going to be a problem and difficult so maybe he should look into finding a way of controlling her power. In the beginning she was focussed on her old life and I feel like she didn’t have much loyalty or care for the Grisha, it took her awhile to accept who she was and she was also struggling to use her powers. All she wanted was to go back to Mal and I think this may be why, or at least part of the reason why The General takes their letters. For one he didn’t want her to go back to him and so making her think that Mal didn’t care would encourage her stay put and discourage any ideas of leaving. I mean given her comment in episode 3 where Alina asks Genya if anyone had ever escaped the Little Palace, which the General overheard, its not that surprising that he would decide to confiscate any of her correspondence out of the Palace in case she was organising a breakout with Mal. Secondly as I said she was having trouble using her powers and I think after reading the letters maybe he figures out that its because of Mal that she is struggling, so he either stopped the letters because he wanted her to continue feeling abandoned by Mal and therefore he was hoping she would shift her dependence onto him or because he knew if she let go of Mal then she would be able to control her power more and more power for Alina means more power for him to control. This was all very manipulative on his part and obviously not the actions of someone who cares about Alina’s feelings but at this point she wasn’t Alina to him she was the Sun Summoner, a tool to be used and he was thinking as a General who had people and a whole country to protect and if that meant putting the collar on this stranger then so be it. I think he set out to win her trust to make it easier for him to put that collar on her when the time came. But then as he got to know her more, started catching feelings for her and after their conversation in episode 5, I think he decided that maybe he wouldn’t need to use the collar after all. My theory is that he got her the flowers and he took her to the war room instead of the dinner because he was planning to tell her some of the truth. I don’t think he was going to tell her about who he really was and about him being the Fold’s creator but I do think its possible that he intended to tell her about the Stag and maybe even try to convince her about using the Fold as a weapon. So I think he just wanted to put her in as good a mood as he could if that makes sense, sweeten her up before he brought it up. Also telling her about the Stag means telling her about Mal. I think he actually felt a little threatened by Mal because having read their letters he knows how she feels about Mal. So he wants her attention as much on him as possible. I think he very much felt like his dream was slipping away. As for the make out on the war table moment, that could have also been an attempt to keep her sweet on him like the irises. But as I’ve said before Aleksander seems to lose all his senses when he’s with Alina. When he’s with her the only thing he’s focused on is her, and I personally think it was just a case of he really wanted to kiss her. Some of it might also have been to reassure himself that those feelings between them were real, especially now that Mal has shown up. I mean they are both so giddy and happy when they break apart for him to answer the door that I find it difficult to believe that the whole kiss was a cold manipulation, he was grinning like a school boy. My favourite kiss between them (as steamy as their make out session was) was actually the one where he comes back to kiss her one last time. This is right after he has learnt that she was the target of an attack that happened inside of his Palace, which is the one place where his people are supposed to be safe. I think in that moment he just needed to reassure himself that she is safe, you can see his desperation in the kiss. There was just something so soft and pure about it. If I am sure about anything is that one was definitely real, I may have small doubts about the other kisses but that one kiss was 100% true.

Things only get worse for Aleksander in episode 6 when he realises that Alina is missing. I think how he behaves in this episode tells us alot about how he really feels about Alina. He becomes somewhat unhinged when she goes missing and only becomes more so the longer she is gone from him. His sole focus is on her and finding her, to the point where he kind of forgets about anything else as we see when Fedyor comes to report about Nina, The General has completely forgotten there were other missions and things he was dealing with. Later when he calls Zoya to tell her to prepare a team to track down ‘Alina’s abductors’ and she puts forward the suggestion that Alina ran by herself, he doesn’t even consider it a possibility. The idea that she would willingly leave him is just too hard for him to wrap his head around because as he says to Zoya he is sure he knows exactly how she feels. He is usually the composed, unfazed General but he very much snaps at this moment and I think reveals more than he intended to Zoya, who clearly looks surprised by his outburst. He even says himself with Alina gone he’s not himself, he’s feeling unbalanced and tense without her. So when Zoya offers to help him relax he tells her that he’ll relax when he has Alina. I think its important as well that he says Alina and not the Sun Summoner. It’s not the Sun Summoner he’s lost without its Alina. When he finally catches up with Kaz and is told that Alina fled on her own you can see how shocked he is at this.

And even then he has trouble believing it because he once again asks where she is and its not until the line ‘It was pretty clear she wasn’t interested in being a captive any more’ that it begins to set in for him and you see his shadows creep in. After you can see the heartbreak set in and then the anger.

This anger only grows when he learns that she is with Mal and that she is going after the Stag. I think he very much feels like everything has been snatched away from him in a blink of an eye. I think he is angry that he was blindsided by it and he’s angry that he let his feelings for her cloud his judgement and distract him from his plans. Because of his feelings for her he might now have ruined all his plans and, as he would see it, risked the safety of the Grisha in doing so. Naturally its back to plan A of forcing the collar on her, because no matter how he feels about her he can’t let that distract him from his mission to protect the Grisha again.

However no matter how angry he is at her and how hurt is is that she ran from him, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about her. I see alot of arguments that he can’t have loved Alina because you can’t hurt someone you love like he did when he put the collar on her. But I’m calling BS on that one now because the people you love are the people who can hurt you the most, especially when they are hurt or angry. It doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t love you it just means they are human and make mistakes. However that doesn’t mean you should tolerate those mistakes or brush them under the rug, absolutely they should be called out for them and held accountable for them and I am really glad that Alina does do this. The Darkling's anger at her is what drives him to find her and to kill the stag himself so he can collar her and I think this anger builds up whilst he is away from her, again showing how unhinged he has become without her. But I feel like some of that anger ebbs away a bit when he does find her and once she is in front of him again. That moment when he finds her and the stag and Mal is hurt and he calls out to her that she can’t save them, that as powerful as she is she does not have the power to heal. He is obviously thinking back to Luda here. Because as powerful as he was he was not powerful enough to save her, in that moment he was utterly powerless to keep her from dying. I think despite how hurt he is he cares about her too much to watch her go through the same pain and grief he did which is why he offers to heal Mal if she gives him the Stag. The similarities between the two scenes (the one with Alina, mal and the Stag and the one with Aleksander, Luda and the king’s men) are clear and I think really have an effect on Aleksander. I think when he says that Mal was only protecting Miss Starkov there are two interesting points. One is the use of the term Miss Starkov. This is a name he mostly called her when they barely knew each other and I think he is trying to distance himself from her again by making things more formal between them. The other thing is that it draws a parallel between both Mal and Luda. Both Mal and Luda were just trying to protect the people they love and Aleksander clearly doesn’t think either one of them deserved to die for it so he lets Mal live.

Another scene I want to talk about real quick is the one right before he puts the collar on her. This scene is eerily similar to when they first meet. Once again they are back in a tent. Once again the scene starts with the Darkling’s back to her and with Alina in the hands of a guard/s. I said before that I think alot of the reason why he decides to collar her is because she doesn’t share his views and he feels like he needs to control her so he can weaponize the fold and save his people. That he was angry at himself for believing she might be his equal and share his goals. I think this scene where he talks to her shows that. The fact that he lowers himself to her level I think shows that he does see her as an equal. Then he talks about how together they could end all wars and protect their own and asks isn’t that what she wants. I think he is still clinging to that belief that he wasn’t wrong and that they did want the same things and maybe some part of him was still hoping he might not need to use the collar. But then she asks if they are going to tear down the fold and you can see the disappointment on his face because he understands now that she won’t see it his way. So instead he deflects the question and I think this is the moment that cements his choice to collar her.

Further evidence that he does still care about Alina comes when he puts the collar on her. This is obviously a very distressing and gruesome scene. What he is doing is obviously wrong and I think deep down he knows it too. He can’t bear to look at her as it happens and so her turns away and its the second time he does as he also looks away in guilt when he threatens Mal. I don’t think he can handle her looking at him like he’s a monster and he can’t cope with seeing the betrayal and hurt in her eyes. It is also worth noting that I think part of the reason why he goes through with putting the amplifier on her is like he said to Mal, he thinks that over the years she will come to forgive him. Now this conversation where he talks about how she might take years to forgive him but he had patience also tells us that the fact that he is hoping for forgiveness shows that he knows what he is doing to her is wrong, that it is something that will require forgiveness. When he comes to see her later in her tent, can we just talk for a moment how nice that tent was, I mean he really went all out for her with lace and flowers like he somehow thought that would make up for him fusing a antler into her collar bone, but again even the fact that he gives her all these nice things shows that he wants that forgiveness and the way he approaches her as well is cautiously, like you would a wounded animal. He knows he’s hurt her and made her angry so he comes in with sweet words of compliments, telling her how special she is, and very quickly comes to know that she’s not having any of it. I mean that look she gives him when he first comes in, if looks could kill he’d be six feet under now. But I really do think he did go to her just because he wanted to talk to her, despite his words to Mal about having the patience to wait however many years it will take for her to forgive him, he wants to fix things between them now. He doesn’t want her to be angry with him and he doesn’t want her to be in pain. He’s desperate to get back what they had in episode 5. Also I think its important that we remember that until that conversation with her in the tent he didn’t know that she had discovered who he really was, so when she ran he believed that she had ran because she wanted to be with Mal which I think contributed to his anger at her and his feeling of betrayal. He couldn’t understand why she would want to be with someone who he believes never appreciated who she really was and who is mortal and will eventually just be a blip in her very long lifetime, instead of being with him who is her equal and immortal like her. This is another occasion where I feel like he gets a bit of a reality check and realises that she didn’t run because of Mal, she ran because of his own lies. So all that anger he felt at her ‘betrayal’ was unjust. But then I think he feels a different sense of betrayal in how easily she believed Baghra. I mean looking at it from his point of view she didn’t come to him and ask for his side of the story or demand an explanation she just trusted Baghra and ran. He is clearly desperate to make her understand and you can see his composure begin to fail as he stands and tells her that everything he is ever done has been to make Grisha and Ravka safer. I really do think that line was true, he really does believe that what he’s doing is the right thing for his people and his country. You can feel his frustration and desperation continuing to build throughout the scene as he pretty much pleads with her to understand and can see that she doesn’t. I think the part that really hurts him though is when she says ‘we could have had this, all of it. You could have made me your equal, instead you made me this.’ This line is so powerful and I think its at this moment that he realises just how badly he has messed up. To be told that his actions are the reason why he hasn’t got her, the one thing he wants more than anything else in the world right now. Also the line of making her his equal I think would have hit him hard because he did see her as his equal and so I think he’s surprised that she believes that he didn’t make her his equal and then when she says ‘instead you made me this’ he realises that whilst he might have seen her as his equal he wasn’t treating her as one. His need for control made her a slave to him and I really think that in this moment he is realising that, I genuinely think this dumbass got so caught up in his own dream of what the two of them together could be that he didn’t realise that whilst he thought he was protecting her and helping her grow into this saviour for their people he was taking away her choices and he was making her feel like a captive, the dummy didn’t think to ask how she felt about any of it because he assumed he already knew, it was the same as what he wanted, to protect their country and people. So his anger when he says the line ‘fine make me your villain’ isn’t just directed at her but himself too. It’s not just his hurt and anger that she doesn’t understand his reasons and that she isn’t seeing it his way, it’s also because he knows it was his own actions that lead him to that moment when the woman he loves is standing in front of him and looking at him like he is a monster. He can’t go back and he can’t undo it and worse than that he can’t seem to get her to understand why he did it. I think he feels trapped and so the only thing he can be to her now is her villain.

It’s after this conversation that his demeanour towards her changes and you can see that he sort of stops trying to win her over. He’s not as gentle with her, I mean he ties her to the deck of the skiff and answers mockingly when she points out it’s not a good look for him with the ambassadors. I did notice though that after that conversation he seems to have trouble looking at her. When they are walking to the skiff and he tells her that Mal is being held captive and will be released if she does her part, he isn’t looking at her but straight ahead and this is something he does alot when he is threatening Mal. The moment when he takes off her cloak he does glance down at her. I seen alot of debate about that scene, as it does come across as having a bit of sexual tension in it and some people thought it was a rather sexy scene whereas others pointed out that he was holding her captive and mocking her. Me personally I actually think its both. People talk about how it has to be one or the other. But yes in that scene he is holding her captive and that part’s not sexy but there is a moment where I feel like he still feels that draw to her. Before reaching up to undo her cloak it seems to me like a hesitates for a moment. When he goes to whisper in her ear that he doubts they’ll notice her feet and I think he feels that pull and that attraction to her and he is really close to her, I don’t think he’s been that close to her since the war room in episode 5. You can see him lean slightly towards her and I think he really is struggling with the desire he feels for her which is why he steps back with the cloak rather forcefully, like he's having to force himself away from her again. It kind of reminded me of the scene where she helped him into his Kefta. So no the situation itself is not sexy but I do still think there is tension in the scene because the attraction they feel for each other didn’t just disappear despite how hurt and angry they are at each other. It’s like their words are saying one thing but their body language is saying another.

When they are in the Fold again at first The Darkling avoids looking at her particularly when he is forcing her to use her power to create the tunnel of light. His focus is on The Fold. Again I think this shows that he is determined to not let his feelings for her get in the way for his goals, yet he knows he is taking away her free will and her choice and that’s hurting her so he can’t really stand to look at her. Its the same when she asks to tear down the fold and he answers why would they destroy the best weapon they have. Again he doesn’t look at her when he says it because he knows that he deceived her by letting her believe that was what they were going to do and he doesn’t want to see the disappointment and betrayal in her eyes. Again this is something he does alot and look, I love The Darkling’s character, I do, but that doesn’t mean I can’t recognise his flaws and for me I kind of saw him as a coward for this. I mean if you are going to deceive and manipulate a person and force them to do something you know they don’t want to do, then at least have the decency to look at them. He does however look at her when she tries to save Novokribirsk after he lets the fold consume it. He stops her and you can see the anger when he says they are traitors who tried to kill her and that this action was retribution. I think he hates the fact that she is trying to save the very people who tried to hurt her. But again he looks away from her when he sees the way she is looking at him and how horrified she is by what he has done.

Their very last interaction is when she uses the dagger to cut the amplifier from his hand and shows him what she is and that she’s the one the stag chose. He sees this as her betraying their people which is interesting because at the end of the episode Alina says that Kirigan turned on his own people. So they both believe the other turned on their own people, the problem here is that I feel like Alina feels more loyalty towards the non Grisha Ravkans, she still sees them as more her people due to spending more time as just a ordinary mapmaker then as Grisha but the Darkling has more loyalty towards the Grisha. Its like how you know parents aren’t suppose to have a favourite child but we all know they do. Well I feel like the Ravkans are Alina’s favourite child and the Grisha are the Darkling’s. Of course they still care about the other but their ‘favourite’ is their priority if that makes sense. By the end of the season when we see the Darkling emerge from the fold I think he is feeling very angry and very betrayed by Alina, however I actually think the fact that she bested him has only made him look at her as even more of an equal than before. Not only is she someone who will stand up to him but now she has become someone who can match him. I do think he’s in this very complicated situation where he is on an opposite to the person he believes is essentially his soulmate. However as much as I think he does love her I still think he will put his people above her and so will continue to act in what he considers to be the best interests of his people. It also seems like he’s got some new powers and was able to create shadow soldiers which again is interesting because he basically just accomplished what he meant to do in the first place when he created the fold, he’s created his own army.

Ok so that’s all for now to be honest I could talk about the Darkling forever but I think this is already long enough so if you have read all the way to the end thank you for your time. I am thinking of doing other character analysis posts so keep an eye for that if its something that interests you, I think I might do Alina next. I’ll also post my thoughts on the book once I’ve read it.

#the darkling #general kirigan #darklina

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thatnerdwolfnell · 4 years ago

Note

Pocky challenge: MC x Main six

The Pocky game is a party game played withPocky, a Japanese chocolate- or candy-coated biscuit snack. Two participants place the Pockybetween them “Lady and the Tramp” style, and try to be the last to hold onto the biscuit, often resulting in a kiss.

^coppied from google.

Ohohoho. Yes. Thank you. I love you. This would have been done yesterday, but I was a dumb bastard and I ran out of my meds so I was busy feeling like general shit. Sidenote: me and my uni friends used to do this with gummy bears before Covid because we have no shame I guess? Idk.

Pocky game Mc and Main 6

Asra:

He loves it. Even when you kiss him regularly he still loves the thrill and challenge of the game.

He has a bit of a competitive streak so if he has to he will full on kiss you and suck the slimy ass pocky out of your mouth. (I'm sorry for that image)

When he pulls out some strawberry pocky hes already got that cheeky knifecat smirk on his face.

He rattles the box a bit specifically to draw your attention

He gets that dark heavy sparkle in his eyes as he puts the strawberry end between his lips and just looks at you, completely still.

You try to hide your smile, you love when he gets like this.

Asra has a thing for games.

You shift over on the couch enough that you can take the end of end of the pocky in your teeth.

He leans in to take another bite and steadies you with an unexpected hand sliding up from the small of your back.

you raise an eyebrow

The corner of his mouth twitches up into a grin.

he takes a deep breath and holds it as he inches closer. He somehow has nibbling the pocky within millimeters down to a practiced skill and he always holds his breath when he starts getting close. It's a focus thing and probably to keep from moving too much. You can tell he expects to win.

You lace a hand through his hair gently anchoring at the nape of his neck, and bite off most of your end

He blinks in surprise and finally lets out his breath slow enough that it catches in his throat and sends goosebumps down your spine.

His face is so warm next to yours. You can hear his heartbeat, quick and shallow in his chest.

"Gib ub yet?" You ask. There's not much left of the pocky but you know he won't stop.

He grins around the pocky.

The hand on your back slides to your waist. The other skims along your thigh and you gasp slightly.

He doesn't break eye contact. You let out a shaky breath as he nibbles just enough off to keep your lips from touching. If you moved you could easily kiss him.

He plays dirty. He likes teasing you. Waiting for your next move.

You kiss him hard and push him down onto the couch taking the whole last bit of the pocky in your mouth and crunching down.

He tilts his head back and laughs his hair falling back into his face.

"mm I think you cheated" he smirks and leans in to kiss along your jaw

"So did you." You say. You grab another pocky and smooth his hair away from his face before you push off.

Nadia:

Well Nadia isn't really one for party games but she IS one for food. (I think we have a couple different canon scenes I could use as evidence here)

She's never heard of it but she's intrigued.

It's after dinner and you're both still at the table. This isn't something she would ever do in public

"If you wanted me to kiss you, all you had to do was ask...but if you'd rather earn it that can be arranged"

She takes a pocky and gently feeds the end in your mouth.

"If you drop it you'll have to earn my kisses some other way. And I'll be sure to make it a very long night."

She smiles sweetly with just a hint of a smirk and your heart skips a beat.

The way she looks at you with so much reverence, like you're one of her intricate, beautiful machines and she'll take you apart piece by piece just to understand every part.

She starts eating her end and you do the same. She somehow looks elegant with her lips pressed around the pocky and the heat of her breath condensing against the chocolate.

She pauses at the very last bit and let's you close the gap. Her lipstick tastes sweet and floral.

You deepen the kiss and run a hand along her shoulder.

She grabs you by the waist and leans you back against the table in one smooth movement without breaking the kiss.

One hand pins your wrist against the wood above your head while the other is still wrapped around your waist under your back so that it arches slightly.

"I didn't say you could do that, MC." There's amusement in her voice that draws in a low whisper.

She gently caresses down your neck stopping in the middle of your chest. "But I don't want to wait."

She kisses you and you kiss back letting your hands wander through her hair while she presses down over you.

"that's good, love. We should do this more often."

Julian:

He suggests it at the rowdy raven one night. A game he picked up in his pirate days.

"Come on, who's down for a little fun? Make the party more interesting."

Nadia rolls her eyes.

Portia immediately looks at you and pointedly tilts her head at Julian, wiggling an eyebrow suggestively.

You blush a little. You're about to volunteer to play when Lucio steps in.

"I'm up for the challenge. Give you a chance to get near my lips, hey Jules?"

If Julian is disappointed, he doesn't show it. He just grins and pulls out a pocky. "Alright that's the spirit!"

They move down the pocky rather fast and it's clearly a competition. Neither hesitates before meeting in the middle. Julian pulls of with a dramatic peck before pulling away just as fast.

"Anybody else?"

"I'll go!" You take your chance a little too quickly and you see Portia smile in the corner of your eye.

Ah MC. Perfect!" He seems surprised. Maybe a little flustered.

You take a pocky in your mouth and offer him the other end.

He blushes and leans in to start chipping at the biscuit.

He smells like salt and leather. You can feel his heartbeat in his lips moving the stick.

You lean in further, resting a hand on his knee as if for balance. He stiffens but you can see his smirk grow wider.

You both hesitate at the last little piece, caught in the moment of closeness. You start to move to take it and kiss him but he pulls away before you do.

You look at him startled. He's bright red and flustered.

"Ah. um MC I- I didn't think you were going to-"

He's been doing this. Avoiding you when he knows you both want it. You've had enough of that.

"Did you want to?"

He blinks. "What?"

"Kiss me. Did you want to?"

You hold him under your gaze and his eyes soften into something like longing. Or guilt. Or hunger.

"...yes." he says it simply and quietly. Like the only true thing he can find in a single soft word.

And you kiss him. You feel him melt into the kiss and he's kissing you back.

You hold his face in your hands and he pulls you in closer.

You can feel how much he wants this. Like water in the desert. His brow is furrowed in desperation. You break away.

The hurt in his eyes is obvious and you brush his hair out of his face rubbing a thumb along his cheek.

"Hey," you look him in the eyes and try to convey everything in that look. "I'm not going anywhere, you get that?"He nods.

"We can have this all the time." You say.

His eyes wander down your body. "All the time..." He repeats softly.

You kiss him again, much gentler this time. He pulls you in and you feel like THIS is how things were always supposed to be. And this is the life you want to have. With Julian and your friends, and everything right in the world.

Muriel :

He is a blushy boy. But he's been approaching things like this with curiosity, and maybe even wonder, even if it can be hard to tell.

He never refuses a touch or a kiss, and for a while you weren't sure he knew he COULD refuse.

You don't want to make him uncomfortable and you were worried he just tolerated it for your sake.

While he's been getting better, he still lacks awareness of what he wants and likes. You've been helping him figure out his boundaries after years of having them constantly violated and convincing himself that it doesn't matter.

When you told him he seemed surprised. "No, I like it, MC. I always like it." He made it clear that he would say no if he was uncomfortable, "like with cantaloupe or bananas." He said.

(Not eating foods he didn't like had been game changer. A lot of textures bother him.)

Since then he's been making more of an effort to initiate and touch has become something of communication for him.

Hand squeezes for comfort, an arm barring you from accidentally stepping in a rabbit hole, a touch on the shoulder to say "be careful", a nudge to say "look at this", a nuzzle into your neck to say "I love you"

It's just easier than talking. It's how he's always talked to Asra amd Inanna despite the telepathy.

But this is something different.

"But...why?" He asks as you take a pocky from the box. He's already blushing like crazy.

"Because it's fun." You say and you put the end in your mouth.

He frowns but you can see the amusement in his eyes.

He takes a small bite off the end and leans back chewing it curiously.

You laugh. "No, you're supposed to keep going and we hold on until we get to the middle."

"Oh." He leans back in and starts eating away at his end. He looks at you for confirmation, a look of confusion on his face.

You smile and inch closer.

He's bright red and you can feel the heat from his face and his heartbeat, strong and fast.

You both pause at the last bit, daring the other to make a move.

His green eyes are bright and sharp as they lock with yours for just a glance.

Then he closes the gap kissing you gently. Eyes closed, taking the last bit before moving away.

A hand rests on your waist and the other on your shoulder.

"Sorry, did you want the last bit?" You think he's teasing you, but the alarm in his eyes say he's completely serious.

You laugh "no, of course not. I just wanted to kiss you."

He smiles and pulls you into his arms. "I know. But I thought you still... might have wanted it." He shrugs.

He looks down at you and you feel his heart skip. "You could still taste it. ...if you wanted to that is."

What? His mouth twitches up into a slight smirk.

OH.

You kiss him for real this time. And you both end up on the floor of the hut laughing.

You kiss him again.

And he kisses you.

Again and again and again.

Portia:

Yeah she's definitely played before.

Something about the kitchen staff at the last masquerade?

Anyway the rowdy raven has gotten, well, rowdy.

Julian brought the pocky and there's enough overly competitive people in the room that there's been a few kisses.

Portia grabs the box from brother and shakes it teasingly in your direction.

"MC!" She winks. "How about it?"

Her face is flushed from Mazelinka's sangria that she snuck in (which you're pretty sure is actually just pure liquor) but Portia can hold her drink despite going red rather quickly.

You grin. "If you think you're up for it."

You get up and sit down next to her and move a piece of hair off her shoulder, resting your hand there longer than you need to.

She's beautiful when she's smiling like this, having fun.

You can't help a bit of a smile when she leans into your hand slightly while she takes out a pocky.

While you're distracted, she suddenly pokes the end into your mouth making you jump back in surprise.

"Mm hey!"

She just laughs leaning back in the booth letting her giggles fade with a snort.

"Don't drop it!" She says between laughs.

"I'b not!" The pocky is still hanging from your mouth and you wiggle it around for emphasis.

She leans forward and takes the other end in her mouth.

Her eyes sparkle and suddenly she's reaching her arms around your waist pulling you in closer

Your eyes widen and she smirks. You feel the exhale of a silent laugh on your skin.

You're so close and she's so warm. Your heart is pounding.

There isn't much left of the stick and you're not sure if–

Oh.

You didn't mean to but now your lips are together and they're warm and solid and everything seems to explode at once.

The last bit of pocky falls to the ground as you gasp.

She frowns slightly when you pull away, but she still has that self-satisfied expression.

You lean in again and lift your hand towards her face. Hesitating. Waiting for permission.

But then she gives you a look through her lashes. She glances again at your lips.

You tilt your head as you lean in and close your eyes, cradling her face in your hand and letting the other press against her waist.

She moves closer and you can feel her chest pressing against yours.

You pull her tighter and she makes a small delighted noise between a laugh and a gasp.

"Oh. I love this." You say between kisses.

She grins. "This'll be an adventure, hey?"

Lucio:

He sets the box of pocky on the table in front of you.

"You've heard of the pocky game right?"

You nod, unsure of where this is going. Normally Lucio is pretty straightforward about kissing you.

"Well how about a little wager? If you win I'll get you whatever the hell you want, a whole shopping spree of the finest jewels, clothes, whatever."

You nod again. "Alright and if you win?"

He shifts uncomfortably wringing his hands. "Well, if I win.... youhavetotakeCamiotohisvetcheckup."

You sigh. Oh god. So that's what this was about. Camio HATED the vet. That rascal of a bird would be screeching insults the whole time.

You could see why Lucio was trying to get out of it.

You love that little shit, but damn he could be annoying. He's the kind of bird that will hold a grudge for about a week, and he does not take vet trips lightly.

"Please?" Says Lucio, "and if we meet in the middle we go together."

"You realize that I could just say no and make you do it yourself, right?"

"But you're not going to because I'm your boyfriend and you love me?"

You frown.

"Okay but then you wouldn't get to kiss me. Plus Camio likes you more, he'll be nicer with you there."

You pause considering. It WOULD be good to have a buffer instead of leaving the poor vet with Camio and Lucio by themselves.

"Fine, but ONLY if you win, remember?"

"YES!" he eagerly grabs a pocky and sticks one end in his mouth.

You take the other end and start chewing as fast as you can.

He takes a moment to get his bearings and catch up but once he does you're both at the very end right before the middle.

Neither of you want to move, both trying to avoid the task.

You try to get him to back down by inching a little closer, but he stays put.

He moves the tiniest bit.

And then you kiss.

fuck.

"YES!" He shouts, jumping back in triumph.

"You have to come too, still." You say.

Yeah but i won't mind if you're there."

You sigh and lean back.

"Oh come on don't look like that. We'll do a half shopping spree. That seems more fair anyway. I get half a win, you get half a win."

You laugh. "Alright, alright. Where is that stupid bird anyway?"

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amiramorozova · 3 years ago

Text

Dual Summoner x the darkling pt. 6

After dinner, I returned to my room where it was in the tidemaker hall. Walking into the room I picked up a sketchbook that Baghra had given me and picked up the pen. I sat on the bed feeling restless and started to sketch in it. I was used to this as I had done this when I needed something to relax before bed. I had always sketched the same thing as a stag and knew the tales of Morozovas stag and how sun summoners were perfect for it.

I could never kill an animal, not even for its power...not unless I had to. I thought

I was unsure why I had this connection to it but I had seen a similar sketch in my childhood home. My father had drawn the stag and looked at it but he refused to go searching for it. I didn't really care but found it comforting when I drew it. After that, I decided to free sketch on the next page figuring there was no harm in not having a drawing in mind to just relax. I started to notice it was getting dark as I stopped and touched my freehand with the hand that sketched to form a small amount of light as I continued. Watching the image form I didn't give it a lot of details until I finished seeing it was a sketch of general Kirigan.

What is with me today? I thought

I put the pencil up and closed the sketchbook as I got up from the room to look out the window. I knew if I had to go after the stag someday I would need to get free and I had Baghra on my side. I remember her saying that someone was looking for it but I knew enough was going on as I threw the light up and it surrounded me in warmth one last time before fading and then I went to bed. I figured a good night's rest would be best for now.

The next morning I went to eat with everyone for breakfast after I was ready to join them, the meal was the normal breakfast. I liked that but the tension in the room didn't stop no matter what. Baghra's words about every summoner wanting to be the general's pet came to mind and I knew I was not one of those summoners. I worked hard for everything I did here in the little palace.

"Amira, did you sleep well?" Nadia asked

"I did, I did some sketching before bed." I said

"that animal again?" Marie asked knowing she couldn't say stag

"yeah, I guess I got my father's artistic talent." I said

"I heard we're allowed to choose between training today and free time. Show me." Nadia said

"We can do a bit of both. I need to go see Baghra later." I said

Nadia nodded as we started to head out after breakfast, most of the tidemakers walked away from us. We went to my room instead of immediately heading out to the training grounds and went into my room. It was always kept neat and in place cause I hardly did much with it since getting the room. I grabbed my sketchbook and let her see. Nadia seemed to be looking through the book to see my sketches. Mostly of the stag that I would see sometimes when I sleep but then she stopped on the last one and showed it to me.

"Your talent is showing, it looks just like the general." She teased "If I didn't know any better I'd think you had a crush."

"I can assure you I do not." I said as I took the sketchbook from her and put it away. "Now come on, I have to meet with Baghra."

Nadia smiled as we went walking out to the training grounds. I saw glares at me and I didn't care at the moment. I headed for Baghra's training quarters and Nadia went to work with other tidemakers as I knew today I was focused. I needed to get this out of my head but when I came to her door I saw a note as I took it.

Amira, meet me at your private training area. We're doing something different and for the sake of your powers, this will be best. - Baghra

What does she have in mind? I asked

I went to the training area I had for myself as I walked the path knowing that this was going to be different from my normal sessions with her. When walking my thoughts went through my head knowing this wasn't like her. As I made it to the clearing I saw my parents standing there with Baghra. I stood there in shock and realized why we had to come here now as Baghra was supposed to inform the general when people came into the little palace.

"Your training again with your parents today." Baghra said

"But they sent me here to train with you." I said

"I'm not a sun summoner girl, I can't train you on techniques you have the potential to do." Baghra said, "Your father can. General Kirigan should be busy today as usual and I heard you did well."

Before I could say anything Baghra had walked off and for a minute we all caught up on things. It'd been nine years since I came to the little palace and I missed them so much. I wanted to hug them and never let go. I wanted to go home more than anything in the world.

"Has he seen you yet?" Father asked

"Yeah, papa he has." I said, "I was chosen to go on the tidemaker mission with the other tidemakers."

I went into details on what happened with the mission and what transpired how he'd amplified my power yesterday. Since I only used the tidemaker power in front of everyone except Baghra and my friends. I knew there was no way to avoid that I'd let someone in beside Baghra.

"I told my friends the truth and they've kept my secret." I said

"Do you trust them?" Father asked

"I do, they have had my back since I got here. I want to leave this place but I have no choice but to stay." I said

Father and mother knew that it was true what I said as I didn't have a choice in staying here. Baghra was my teacher and I was grateful for her lessons. I didn't want to be the reason for hope for people when I am not one summoner. I knew that was harsh but I knew being here the more I felt drawn to the shadows.

My parents didn't really ask much more before they started to do training with me. My mother had been harsher with me than she was when I was a child. I realized she was holding back when I was a child. I got back up and I didn't hold back with her either as we trained together. Still she put me through a ringer to keep up with her.

"Good Job Amira." Mother said

"I work hard, I won't give up." I said

"Next lesson." Father said

I prepared for my father as he did his own kind of training with the light. I struggled with his techniques of light. They were so much more advanced than I was but I got it a little bit. I didn't give up until I semi mastered them so I could keep practicing and when that was done I sat down breathing a bit harder as I laid back.

"You two are so unfair." I said jokingly

"Hard work and practice pays off." they said together

I closed my eyes letting myself feel vulnerable with them around. I laughed a bit knowing that it wasn't everyday I got my butt handed to me by my own parents. they were so much stronger than I was but I would one day surpass them. Maybe they were right that hard work and practice paid off. Maybe I could take down the fold someday and end the search for sun summoners.

I heard them talking to themselves as I laid there with my eyes closed. The sun on my face and the feeling of responsibility not present. I subconsciously touched the part of my cheek the general's fingers had lightly touched as I opened my eyes looking up at the sky.

I shouldn't be able to feel his shadows yet I can...I really wonder if he could feel the sun hiding. I thought

While in my thoughts I sat up quickly feeling that same feeling of shadows close by. I looked around knowing he did know where I trained and my father's secret could be at risk. Yet I didn't see anyone's insight when it came to the surrounding area. I figured maybe I was just paranoid or maybe...maybe he is watching.

would he try to make father join the 2nd army if he knew? Father would resist but his interest in me would possibly do more harm than good at the moment. I thought

Aleksander Morozova's pov:

Walking out there I noticed all tidemakers but Amira were present. I wanted to check and see if she was still needing to heal or if she was ok. Something about this tidemaker bothered me like there was something she was hiding. I walked that path she walked when she trained alone.

Coming into sight I saw her talking with her parents who I had no idea where in the palace. Mother must have brought them here and I could see she missed them dearly as they hugged and talked. I watched a bit seeing her mother not letting up on her own daughter.

Amara is as tough as my mother is on her own child. I thought

As I watched I was about to leave when I saw something that caught my attention. Amira and her father were sun summoners and Amira was a dual summoner. I thought about the Grisha text knowing there was no talk of a dual summoner when it came to Grisha. She was the first of her kind but like the mother, her father didn't let up either.

I saw her lay relaxed after her training with her parents and decided to stay and watch. I saw her touch her cheek where I had touched to see how badly she was injured. I knew something was different about her but I could not place my finger on it. Still, I saw her suddenly sit up to look around as I started to back up.

soon I'll have her in my grasp..the dual summoner. I thought

#shadow and bone #darkling #team darkling #darkling x reader #fanfic #general kirigan

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countessmorgasson · 4 years ago

Text

Out of Body Experience~

You guessed it. Smutty Asra x MC!! Their first time...

Gender Neutral MC

(Disclaimer: Based on Asra’s route. 🍋 warning!)

Today was perfect.

In fact, every day has been just one perfect day after another.

You and Asra managed to fall into a comfortable routine, as outlandish as that might sound, but you made it work. Business at the shop was better than ever, after tales of your work in the palace made it through town. Of course, even if they hadn’t, Nadia was more than generous in compensating the two of you for your efforts with the masquerade. Neither you or Asra were one for material things, but you had to admit there was a comfort in knowing you were in sole possession of your shop- no more rent, and the freedom to close shop whenever you had a slow day.

None of that really mattered in the end.

You let your mind run freely as your head nestles against Asra’s chest, closing your eyes when his fingers playfully tangle in your hair.

Today was perfect of course, but something was making you restless. It’s like there was pure energy in the air, and you were breathing it in. You should be tired so close to midnight, but there you two were, cuddling on a windy night, magic flowing freely between your touch.

Asra’s voice is music to your ears when he speaks.

“You’re a little cold, m/c. Do you want me to close the window?”

Now you’re aware of goosebumps rising on your arms. Turning to face Asra, you shake your head with a smile.

“Why would I do that, when you can warm me up?”

“I like that idea better.” He pulls you closer and uses both arms to squeeze you tightly. With your lips only inches away, you dip forward, slowly, indulging yourself in a sweet kiss.

“Mmm...” You can feel the heat on Asra’s cheeks when you pull away. “What was that for?”

“I didn’t know I needed a reason,” you attempt to talk as soothingly as he sounds, but you’ve got to catch your breath. It’s the same thing every single time. You’re always so flushed after kissing him- you don’t think you’ll ever be used to it, and yet it comes so naturally.

Testing your theory, you bring your lips to his once more. You settle comfortably in his hold, as slow kisses lead to a make out session. Heartbeats drown out the sound of the wind outside as you barely stop to even breathe- you want more.

Both of you want more... and more...

But Asra pulls away, almost painfully. He cups your face, and in his eyes you see something you almost don’t recognize. It’s been ages since he’s looked at you with such... longing.

“Was I going too fast..?” You blush furiously now, but Asra only smiles, despite looking a little forlorn- and winded...

“No, of course not-! Well... no. I- just...”

You arch an eyebrow, watching him sputter words out in an oddly formed sentence.

“Asra. Just say it.”

Instead, his warm hand runs up and down one of your arms, fingers gingerly poking at your skin in wonder. He’s stalling.

“We don’t usually get so... intimate.”

You try not to let your face give away your reaction.

“What are you talking about? We kiss like that all the time.”

With a sheepish chuckle, Asra shrugs in agreement.

“...I know. I think I’m getting ahead of myself.”

Despite that, you see a shift in his eyes. He’s gazing at your lips... and then lower, over your entire body, before meeting your curious eyes. Even in the silence, you hear his desires- nearly screaming at you.

I want you... I need you...

You want to give in so badly, but you’re thrown off by his hesitance.

“...Have we ever been intimate?” You ask. Maybe you haven’t been together like that in the past few years, but what about before that? During the times you can’t remember? You take his hand and raise it to your lips, for a slower change of pace.

“Never,” he admits. Now you can’t help but let your surprise show. You’ve known each other for so long... loved each other so long... He notices your reaction with a breathless laugh.

“Surprised?”

“A bit...” but you wave it away. “You’ve never wanted to?”

His nervous chuckle is answer enough.

“I want to, too.” You whisper. “Are you comfortable with that?”

You’re inches away from his lips again- and you’re not really sure when you let yourself get so close to him, but you feel his hand on the small of your back. The other hand is brushing the hair out of your eyes.

You wait patiently for his reaction. He nods furiously, and not a moment later you push forward into a kiss so intense it feels like your lips are crashing against each other’s. Asra’s hands reach into your hair and you linger at his waist, desperately pulling him closer, closer...

“M/c...” Shaky hands trace over your body, flirting with the buttons on your clothes. He’s working slowly, not quite undressing you yet.

So that’s how it’s going to be?

You smile against his lips, letting him take his time. There’s no rush. Time seems to slow anyway, as Asra’s lips trail along your jaw and your neck. You shut your eyes, letting your heartbeat take you away. You reach for his free hand- the other is around your waist- and bring it to your lips, kissing feverishly over his fingers, his palm, wrist... anywhere you can reach.

Finally, you feel the cool air hit your bare skin as you shrug your clothes off...

Asra’s gaze settles on every part of your exposed body- and for once- even as flushed as he is... he’s eyeing you almost greedily. It sends a shiver through you, but you push your nerves aside and pounce.

You lay his head down, against the comfort of your bed.

“Let me see you...”

You marvel at him as each layer of clothing falls to the ground. You could spend hours like this, running your fingers along his golden skin... or better yet, your lips. You bend down and run your lips- your tongue- down his chest and stomach. To your delight, Asra lets himself moan.

Oh... what an amazing sound. You’ve got to do whatever it takes to hear that again.

You trail back upwards, and clasp his hands with yours. His cheeks are red and his eyes glassy.

“Are you sure?” You ask again, half-stalling. Your nerves seem to have caught up with you, and it’s all over your face.

“Are you?”

“Absolutely.”

With that, Asra takes charge, sitting you both up. His hands are warm along your back as he shifts around- his entire length slowly pushing into you when you settle on his lap.

You don’t even realize how tightly you clutch his shoulders. You shut your eyes, but you’re seeing stars. All you hear is Asra, sighing like the wind’s been knocked out of him. Your thighs begin to twitch with every minor movement. Hands run down your back, sending tingles through you head to toe.

You’ve never, never felt like this before.

“Oh, m/c... m/c...”

Asra seems to share the pleasure, moaning your name repeatedly into your ear as you begin to rock against his lap. Even with your eyes closed, you’re still somehow seeing him...

And it hits you. This is the most connected you two could possibly ever be. Heart, body and soul.

The physical touch is incredible, and yet you’re somehow not in your own body- you can’t explain it.

You don’t feel the bed underneath you, or the cold wind through the open window.

You feel your heartbeat, thrumming against your chest tenfold. You feel a fire in the pit of your core, but the heat extends to your fingertips, to your head, your toes... like you’re burning from the inside.

You feel Asra inside you, besides you, against you. His own heart in yours. Your bodies and minds as one...

Were your eyes even closed, or did the world around you melt away? His purple eyes are wide when they connect with yours, and you lean forward, pressing your foreheads together. You sway against each other like an ocean’s tide against the shores... your bodies are intertwined like roots to the earth.

This isn’t normal sex.

This is something ethereal. Is it because you two are magicians? Because of who you are? Your body..?

Your thoughts begin to fade away, and suddenly there’s light protruding from the two of you. You push harder into Asra, taking him in as deeply as you can. That movement alone causes him to mumble something into your ear, but you’re too high to hear.

“Ohhh...”

The two of you move in a perfect rhythm, as if you were made to fit like this. Your body desperately caves into Asra’s slow grinding. The fire inside you seems to burn brighter- you’re suddenly so breathless, and all too aware of the tension that’s about to burst.

“Asra..!” You start clawing at his back, shuddering as you near the edge...

“Me too, m/c. I... I’m...”

It’s too much- you can’t take it anymore.

You shut your eyes once more, seeing nothing but stars at your release.

A whine escapes your lips when it happens- but all you’re aware of are the waves of sheer pleasure crashing into you.

For a moment, you think you’re in a dream.

“It can’t possibly feel this good,” you think.

...or did you say that aloud?

You open your eyes, feeling reality piece itself back together around you as you come down.

You and Asra are still in the same tight hold, but it’s different now. The energy’s dispersed, and you can actually look into his eyes without nearly rolling your own back into your head.

He’s bright red, completely breathless, suggesting he went through the same experience you just came down from.

Can you even move anymore? You only stare at each other in awe, struggling to let the air back into your lungs.

He reaches forward and smooths your hair back again. You didn’t even realize how disheveled it got. You’re both still trembling as you wait to calm down. You’re at a loss for words, but Asra only gazes into your eyes- still slightly flushed.

“That was...” he shudders with a weak smile. You press a kiss to the corner of his lips before slowly pulling yourself away.

You both roll in between the sheets, trying to resume the perfect cuddle you started with earlier. Sometimes you still feel a soft twitch in your legs when you move, but you’re suddenly so exhausted all you can do is busy your face in Asra’s chest.

“...love.” You mutter to yourself.

“Hmm?”

“What we just... it felt like pure love.” you finish the sentence he started earlier, craning your neck to look at him once more before you fell asleep.

“Exactly. I love you, m/c.”

The last thing you feel is a kiss on your shoulder.

#the arcana #the arcana asra #asra alnazar #asra x mc #asra smut #my writing #mine #fluffy #smut #🍋

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justice4harwin · 3 years ago

Text

Light’s Corruption-Chapter VII

Summary: With few friends at the Little Palace, Alina must work to win the favour of her fellow grisha and their commander, who makes her feel light headed every time she sees him.

After training in Os Alta for two years, the king grows tired of waiting and demands the Sun Summoner joins a western post near the Fjerdan border along with the rest of The Second Army to test her abilities.

Something happens. Suddenly, Alina wants blood to run down the rivers and those who stand in her and The Darkling’s way will be blinded by her light and swallowed by his shadows.

It won’t be pretty.

Pairing: The DarklingxAlina

Rating: 18+ (better safe than sorry, u know)

Anyone fancy a playlist?

As usual, the tags are in the comments; if you no longer want to be in the list or wanna be added, please don’t hesitate to let me know :)

Click here for chapter VI

Chapter 7: Within the Palace's Walls

Dear General Kirigan,

Dear General

Dear Kirigan

Dear Darkling

"Ugh!" Alina let her face drop on top of the paper, not caring if the ink got into her face, and groaned, loudly and at length. "Why?!" She asked into the nothingness of her room.

She had no reason to write to him. She knew he must've had frequent reports of the ongoings of the Little Palace, so she had no other excuse except to admit the truth, which was that she craved his attention, even if he was days away.

This was so pathetic of her; letting go of a life-long unrequited love just to fall into the arms of the first man who complimented her, even if she did feel a strange pull towards him.

What she needed was time for herself. Yes. She had finally said goodbye to Mal, falling for someone else so quickly would do her no good.

Oh, but Saints! The way in which he had kissed her, like he'd been waiting for centuries, like she was a treasure, like he truly wanted her. She had kissed people before, but never like that. She had enjoyed it, sure, but always stopped it before the clothes started to disappear. It usually bored people, but Alina didn't mind that much. It wasn't like when Genya was in the room while she bathed, helping her get to whenever she needed to be in time by pulling at the knots in her hair and handing her a towel. Genya was trustworthy, she was her friend and she had never given her one of those looks that had made her uncomfortable during her training at Poliznaya, nor made an unwanted comment or advance on her figure.

But The Darkling… That day, she had felt more than willing to let him have his way with her; nobody had set her body aflame the way The Darkling had done that afternoon a few weeks prior; she dreamt of it at night and woke up sweaty and hot, and it was a real effort to not daydream about it during her day.

General Imbecile Brute,

I write to you on this day to let you know of the first snow at the Little Palace. It makes quite the pretty paint...from the inside.

Also, I cannot stop thinking about you and your kiss, and I've been staring at the rose you gave me for such long amounts of time I fear my eyes will cross and I'll be stuck like that forever.

Please, tell me: do you feel the same? Mark 'yes' or 'no'.

Forever at your service,

Alina Starkov, Sun Summoner, Idiot.

Ps: You're not an imbecile, only a little rude; and you're not a brute, but some of your manners need polishing. Other than that, you're perfect.

Signed again,

Alina Starkov, she who lacks decency.

She looked at the letter, a low, prolonged, pitiful sound parting from her lips that turned into an animalistic groan. She grabbed the piece of paper, scrunched it into a small ball and threw it into her fireplace.

The snow covered the grounds of the Little Palace almost entirely, the lake would soon be completely frozen, and finalize the beautiful picture. Some Grisha were excited over the opportunity to skate. Alina had never done it, but Marie and Nadia promised to teach her.

From her horse, Alina moved uneasily. She still wasn't used to horse-riding, but Nina had invited her along with a few of her friends, who were all of different orders. It was a chance she wouldn't miss.

She tugged her kefta closer and held onto the reigns, advancing slowly along with the group, heading to the edges of the woods that surrounded the place.

A Fabrikator passed her a flask of kvas, and despite her dislike for the strong drink, Alina took it anyways and tried not to grimace as the liquid went down her throat.

If she were honest, she'd rather be inside the warm walls of her room in the Little Palace, chattering the afternoon away with Genya. She hadn't need to ask if the Tailor could join them at the stables; Alina was well aware of how little regard the other Grisha had for her -until they needed something-.

"I heard a few of you have been working on new keftas." she tried to make light conversation with the woman as she handed her her kvas back.

"Yes." she answered politely, "We're making a special fabric that should give us more freedom of movement during battle."

Alina rose her eyebrows. It wouldn't help her much if she didn't improve her fighting skills, but it was an interesting idea.

"How's it coming along?"

The woman tried to hide a grimace.

"It's complicated, but we're making some progress."

Alina smiled.

"Maybe you can tell me more about it during dinner." she suggested. "I, for once, would love a different type of trousers."

The woman smiled starkly, her blond hair getting on her face.

"They are rather stiff, aren't they?"

"I can barely flex my legs as it is."

The woman, whose name was Lada Alina remembered, agreed.

"I know. They're not suitable." she said in a strange tone, to which Alina gave her an odd, sideways look.

"Did you hear Zoya is back?" Fedyor interrupted, marching up to keep up with them.

Alina stared at him, groaned, and rolled her eyes.

"That's great." she said dryly.

Her absence was nice while it lasted.

"Maybe if I get under her skin and she attacks again, The General will send her off for a longer time. Or better yet, I could actually beat her."

Who was she kidding? Zoya was a formidable fighter, and Alina was just starting to win every now and then. Also, she suspected that Nina might have gone easy on her during their first sparring match a few weeks prior. She hadn't won against her ever since.

"Tell me about it." the woman in question said, rolling her eyes. "I don't understand her obsession with being on The General's inner circle."

"Says the one who is in the inner circle." Fedyor pointed out.

"Barely." Nina made a gesture with her hand, as if trying to rest importance to the matter. "Besides, it's not such a big deal. I don't know why everyone makes such a fuss about it."

"Well, the higher we are, the better we can protect other Grisha." Alina said, almost hesitantly. "I mean, if we have The General's ear, more ideas will flow about. I'm sure everyone has something to contribute to the cause."

"You don't need to worry about that, sun bean;" Nina smirked. "You're the Sun Summoner, it's likely he'll listen to you."

Alina's cheeks flushed as everyone in the group turned to stare at her.

"I think it's good to aim high;" Fedyor said, drifting the attention to himself, thanks the Saints. "As long as it's for the better of the Second Army."

Nina looked away and uttered something only Alina heard.

"Oh, yeah, betterment of forced servitude."

The Summoner stiffened on her saddle at the bitter words. Was Nina unhappy at the Little Palace? Why? She was one of the most powerful Grisha there; she lived in the most secured place in all Ravka, and her General held her in high regard.

A part of Alina wished she had never hidden her light. Maybe it would've been for the better to leave Keramzin, to leave Mal behind sooner.

It also made her think of someone who scarcely passed through her mind those days: her own mother.

She shook her head, ridding herself of such thoughts. She was thankful for the commodities and safe life she had at the Little Palace. Even if she was one of a kind, everyone else seemed to be adapting well to her, especially since she began to summon on her own and join in their little games by the lake.

She had been hesitant about it at first, but Genya insisted that going would be a great opportunity to both show her power and make allies.

"Besides, they won't believe you're a snob or a fraud if you show them a little." she had said, lazily lounging on a chair as they shared a nice tea one afternoon, while the queen took an especially long nap the very same day the Duke of Balakirev had arrived at court.

Lately, Alina felt more normal, and she was sure that her latest choices had a lot to do with it. From showcasing her powers, to sitting in different sections on different tables during meals and just talking normally about trivial things -even if those did exhaust her mind- and wearing an Etherealki kefta, she was more approachable, and the other Grisha seemed to slowly start to notice it too.

"It's not enough."

"We surely do deserve some more credit." she spoke, even if she didn't fully believe in the sentiment. The First Army was full of otkazat'sya, and they didn't have the advantages of bullet-proof clothing, private tents, furs for the winter and three decent meals per day.

It was all so difficult for Alina. She had once envied the advantages The Second Army possessed over The First, yet she couldn't deny there were other kinds of dangers for the Grisha, that not everything was perfect inside the walls of Os Alta.

Like the distrust of those who weren't like them, their fear, tamed only by their usefulness due only to the Black Heretic's greed.

All around her, her fellow Grisha nodded their agreements.

She wondered, briefly, what would Grisha life be like in Ravka if The Fold hadn't been created in the first place. What would happen if she ever managed to tear it down?

She didn't want to dwindle in those thoughts further.

With the Winter Fete approaching, everyone at the Little and Grand Palace seemed to buzz with all kinds of different energy. The servants were comprehensively nervous and stressed as they ran from one place to the other. Alina's fellow Grisha were either excited or indifferent, but none the less they all put the same amount of effort into practicing their yearly demonstration.

As for Alina herself, she had received the news that she was expected to showcase her power in front of the royal family and the other nobles of Ravka.

"The king wanted to throw a bigger party; invite diplomats from all continents and such, but General Kirigan insisted that it wasn't necessary yet." Genya said one afternoon, as Alina braided her hair.

She was seated very still, her eyes continuously darting from one side to the other as if trying to peek at her friend's work, concern etched on her face.

"He seems impatient." Alina commented, to which Genya huffed, accommodating her friend's new possessions on her vanity with a precision that seemed borderline obsessive.

"You have no idea. He can't wait to see the mighty Sun Summoner." she said, pouting and trying to imitate his deeper voice.

Alina frowned, said nothing, and continued braiding, her movements slowing but almost precise.

The Darkling

Miss Starkov,

Due to my sudden absence, I had no time to notify you that I shall oversee your training personally from now on.

Being far away, I do not wish for you to stall, so I leave you some instructions on what to practice and how, and a few reading recommendations fo-

He leaned back in his chair and sighed.

He was being a fool, and he hated it.

Writing to her with instructions on how to practice her summoning was a foolish idea. She was barely starting and needed overseeing, and the only one besides himself who could help her was his mother, who remained bitter at the woman. He really wanted to know what Alina had said to Baghra to make her so upset.

He almost smiled, feeling something wickedly, childishly happy in his chest at the possibilities.

Tossing the letter into the fire, he leaned back in his chair.

Teaching her through letters would only lead to disaster, but how else would he know about her? How else could he earn her trust while being so far away?

Pathetic.

"Moi Soverennyi." Ivan presented himself, bowing before further entering his tent. He offered him an envelope. "A letter from the Grand Palace."

The Darkling took it and quickly read it, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. Although he had convinced the king that inviting foreign diplomats was not yet a good idea, the stupid man insisted that the Sun Summoner performed alongside the other Grisha. Alina was finally able to summon on her own, but he knew a part of her still feared her gift; putting on a show for an audience was not the best idea.

He…worried? for her?

"We will have to be back in time for the Winter Fete."

Ivan grunted. "I hate that thing."

The Darkling nodded in agreement. After all those centuries, he was more than bored of them. It was always the same waste of time and resources for his army, only to entertain the nobles for a few hours. As if they would not go back to turning their back on them the very next day.

Those fools often seemed to forget that his Grisha could have them for lunch if they so wanted it.

Privileged as The Second Army may seem, people were wary of them, even the nobles who lived in the surrounding areas.

"But they will not attempt anything so long as they need us."

"We have little choice, Ivan."

"We could always host it near The Fold and accidently push the royal family inside it." he said, sardonic as usual.

"Tempting." The Darkling smirked, setting the letter aside with little care.

The Heartrender stepped aside to allow him out, and The Darkling marched towards the river, where a few of his fabrikators were working on a new skiff. It wasn't nearly as grand as the one Alina had boarded that fateful day, but that was due to a different purpose.

There was a strange device being placed underneath it.

"Are you sure this will work?" he asked Petya.

The woman hesitated for the briefest moment, and The Darkling reminded himself internally to summon new graves for his Grisha.

"Such a pity." he thought, sincerely.

"Yes. So long as the Squaller sets a slow pace and nobody exerts themselves too much, they should be able to pass in relative tranquillity."

He had a feeling it would not work. His Grisha had already tried several times to cross through the river, but David Kostyk was sure his new invention would cancel out the soft sounds of the skiff against the water and dwindle the sounds of a heartbeat.

"Do not expect the path to be clear." he said.

"That is exactly why we're going, sir." a Squaller, Igor, approached and bowed. "If this works and we can clear the path, we should be able to make it to the other side eventually."

"Let us hope it does not take too many tries." he said.

Too many Grisha lives, he had wanted to say.

"David is rarely wrong, Moi Soverennyi." Petya said.

That was true. David was one of his best Grisha, which was why The Darkling tried to keep him inside the safety of the Little Palace's walls unless absolutely necessary.

Still, The Darkling though the plan stupid and a waste; but it was either that or forcing Alina into The Fold, and she was far from being ready to make a crossing, even through its thinnest point up north.

As a Squaller, a Heartrender, two Healers and two Inferni boarded the skiff, followed by a few strong otkazat'sya men from the First Army, The Darkling thought of David.

He thought of Alina.

And his thoughts returned to David.

With a sharp nod, he sent off the small team to do their last test and headed back to his tent, where he began to write a letter addressed to Mr. Kostyk.

Click here for chapter 8

#shadow and bone #shadow and bone fanfic #alina starkov #aleksander morozova #darklina #darklina fic #alina x darkling #alina x aleksander #genya safin #nina zenik #fedyor kaminsky #david kostyk

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all-the-names-are-taken-aaaaa · 4 years ago

Text

Lie Lie Bye

Alya sighed as she looked at the Akuma shelters Tv. She wished she was out there. The footage would be so good for her blog. It was easily the strongest akuma ever. Lila had everyone go to the shelter though. She was worried about her getting out and targeting them. Alya wasn't too worried. They took everything but her clothes and hid them after locking her in that closet. Plus they were pretty sure she kept the pin in her purse so she could not transform. Alya took notice of the fact ladybug had yet to show up. Everyone was getting nervous untill Chloe shreeks "that is Ladybugs kwami" Alya sighs again thinking 'when did that brat get here she was not with the class.' There was a loud bang as the camera shook then fell facing were the reporter ran. The reporter and crew are shown trying to free Marinette from a fallen building. 'Ugh why is it always her. Bet she would not be helping her if she knew what that girl had done.' Alya thinks. The Tv switches to another live stream. The fight is long and hard. Chat manages to defeat the Akuma. Tikki purifies the butterfly befor passing out. Chat stops in front of the reporter "Ladybug is missing possibly hurt. I have to go"

"As many of you saw our fellow reporter trying to free one Marinette Dupain-Cheng rubble earlier today. What you did not see was the brave action taken by this young woman. Marinette was seen assisting many injured people who would most likely have died without first aid befor the incident. Marinette saw a little girl that had been separated from her mother and mother and dived to shield her from the colapsed building. Now to the reporter who found her"

The reporter from earlier in the day stands in front of a hospital. "The brave young woman you saw earlier today is undergoing a life saving surgery. The surgery is the first of it's kind. It is extremely risky. It has been determined that the surgery is the only way Miss Marinette Dupain-Cheng will survive. Marinette was injured protecting a young child barierly four years of age. I need a moment -"

The camera switches "Take your time Nadia. Marinette Dupain-Cheng is a wonderful, amazing, and kind girl. I speak from personal experience. Everyone here at Tvi has her best wishes in mind. The people she helped are being checked on in the hospital. The child has only scraps and bruises thanks to-" Alya cuts the tv off. Her phone started going crazy.

"Chill guys the cure will fix everything" Alya sends to her panicking freinds.

Chloe responds "Unterly redicoulous. Alya you had a Miraculous. You know they have timers. You should-" Alya does not bother reading the rest of Chloe's text. "Quit trying to make us feel bad for that lieing traitor." Alya sends back. Then her phone goes silent afterwards. Shrugging she goes to bed.

It had been a week and ladybug has not showed back up only her kwami. There had been a hand full of minor akumas. They did minimal damage. Paris thanks luck for that. Two weeks and a temporary ladybug shows up. Chat appears less but on time for every akuma attack. The Akuma class have become outcast because of their behavior around the subject of the hospitalized hero.

Week three

"Are you sure you are ready to return?" Kagami asks handing the earrings to Marinette. "Do I have a choice? We are in the Akuma class after all." Marinette responds while making a jester to Chloe. "Utterly ridiculous they try to stop Mayrue they nearly killed ladybug and countless others." Chloe snaps out. "Once we get Hawkmoth we can bring justice for our bug" Luka states continuing a melody. They had all become permanent heros with new costumes after Marinette was allowed visiters. Now that she is allowed to leave to hospital they decided to meet up at her place. Chat/Adrian was invited but he could not be around Marinette for very long without crying. He had gotten better as she got proper prosthetics but originally any time he saw her mechanical, technological parts he cried. Now though Marinette looked and felt almost completely normal if not for the massive amount of strength on her right side. He did explain why he could not do anything to stop Lila and how much he regretted it. Marinette understood and had forgiven him but he had not forgiven himself. Kagami had to be held back by both Luka and Chloe as to not hunt down Gabriel for having Lila spy on his own sun and the fact Lila was blackmailing Adrian by stating one sentence from her would have him under house arrest was enough to have Marinette seeing red. Though the crying boy snapped both the girls out of it.

Chat running by the bakery yelling Akuma was enough to snap Marinette out of her thoughts. Kagami and Marionette went one way while Chloe and Luka went another. They had learned quickly splitting up in groups offered advantages. However not long after heading out Ryuuko pulls Ladybug down within sight of the akuma but also within sight of Hawkmoth. "Inform the others I will keep him busy." Ladybug explains.

The others quickly take out the Akuma but Hawkmoth is quick to make his move too. He manages to stab ladybug through her right shoulder. Marinette felt the pain as one normally would but as soon as Hawkmoth turned his attention to her teammates she pushes forward ripping off his miraculous. Chat rushes forward knocking Gabriel out with his staff. Queen Bee holds chat back and Luka holds Kagami back. Ladybug falls back just barely able to cast the cure befor passing out. Adrian collects all the things related to the miraculous and turns them in. The team decide to reveal their identities as to clear Adrian name and help with the lawsuits Marinette is preparing.

"The broadcast is supposed to air 30 minutes after class starts." Adrian was nervous. This was the first time he were coming back to class since Hawkmoth was defeated. Gorilla and Abby were their fulltime bodyguards now.

"Yeah I'm just hoping the principal corporates with the police." Marinette responds. Adrian nods. They enter the classroom. Many of their classmates say harsh things about the so called traitors but none come close to them in fear of their bodyguards.

When it comes time for the broadcast Ms Bustier makes it a class activity because why not? Only for the class to stare in shock at the the back row of their class. Marinette, Adrian, and Chloe continue to ignore their class as they ask questions. Ms Bustier tries to scold them for "not taking part in class discussion"

"Why the hell should my client disclose any information to a bunch of incompetent self righteous idiots who nearly killed ladybug!" Chloe's bodyguard snaps. Nino looks horrified. Juleka covers her mouth in shock. The pen in Nathaniels hand snaps. Ms Bustier looks taken back "My students wou never-" the door slams open. "Alya Cesaire and Lila Rossi are to come with us impatiently. If you refuse we will take you by force. You have been deemed a threat to those around you" The man said. He clearly was not an officer but the man behind him is. Alya yells something about diplomatic immunity. "Alya Cesaire and Lila Rossi you are under arrest for attempted murder." The officer states while the man beside him just looks exasperated. "We only did it because we thought she was Mayrue! We only locked her in a closet!" Someone yells. "A closet in a building you knew the Akuma was targeting. If she had not of sent her Kwami through the air vents the Akuma would not have been stopped. If she had not gotten out dozens of people would have died including her. In case you have forgotten the miraculous cure did not fix anything that happened during that time because there was not a ladybug to case it so those people are still healing." The man states. "She looks perfectly fine now" Kim says. Chloe takes off part of Marinettes mechanical are and "yeet"s it at Kim's desk were it breaks in two. "Life saving risky surgery" is all Chloe says while picking up and returning Marinette hand. "As for the rest of you. You will give statements then head straight home unless told otherwise. Your parents are being contacted as we speak."

Nino, Nathaniel, Sabrina, and Juleka were allowed to stay. Ms. Bustier had to leave for the day. As it turned out the only one that had any idea what had happened was Nino who thought he had convinced his girlfriend not to act on what Lila said. Nino had no idea anything had happened that day until that moment. He believed Marinette stayed to help people because that is who she is. Ms. Bustier is fired as a teacher and brought up on charges of neglect as no teacher or adult for that matter could be that blindof all of what went on inform of them.

Nino gains temporary Miraculous. Nathaniel becomes Foxie. Juleka becomes Bunbun. They all continue to be heros for different reasons.

The classmates directly involved go though the justice system. Those that helped plan or just knew about it were sent to different schools for troubled teens.

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the-melting-world · 4 years ago

Text

Strength | Side B: “Chasing Dials”

Art by @ligiawrites

~ In which a secretive barhand brings in the new year…

The Trio Appearances: Kipling | Khleo | Ozy

Arcana LI appearances: Asra | Nadia | Lucio | Valdemar

Track Origins: “Chasing Dials” by Blanco White

Not sure if this is the right track? The full album can be found here: Strength

Khleo is Non-binary and uses she/they pronouns interchangeably

cw: alcohol, implications of vampirism, mentions of blood

~ 2.3k words

***

Fireworks broke and rained hot glitter over the southern border of Center City and Goldgrave. A handful of bartenders were off duty and on the move.

Khlee von Heine walked among them. She was the only one who hadn’t taken the time to change out of her work clothes. Her coworkers were loud, merry, and prone to recklessness as they stumbled from one pop-up bar crawl to the next.

“Another year,” Gabe managed to roar over the next round of fireworks. “Can you believe we fucking did it?” He took a deep swig from the communal growler. The night was far from young and the barhands had lost track over how many times they refilled it. Gabe reluctantly handed it off to the next coworker so they could say their piece.

Khlee hung back in order to stand under a wooden arch whose sign was eclipsed in dead vines. But Khleo had committed its message to memory years ago.

Der Biergarten.

The plot of land overgrown in weeds and other invasive species was still up for sale, to Khleo’s relief. Though it was out of the way on most of her delivery routes, Khleo did her best to stop by every now and then. Just to make sure no one had bought up the property.

The barhand checked to see that her coworkers were distracted as she stepped up and snatched a flyer with the lot info off the gate. She folded it up and quickly tucked it in her pocket before the arm of a good friend looped around her neck.

Basil leaned on Khleo as he pressed the convex surface of the growler against her sternum.

“Your turn.”

Khleo playfully shoved him off of her, but kept the growler. She took a sip. Basil and the other barhands chided her — she was supposed to make a toast.

“Fine. Fine.” Khleo held up the bottle. “To progress.”

They made a show of peering into the depths of the amber glass. “Maybe this year we’ll get lucky and actually make some, yeah?”

Someone snatched the growler out of their hand. Gwendolyn? Max? The streets were too dark to tell.

Khleo’s friends were off. They blended in with the city’s bar crawlers as they chased down the next booze cart. People wanted refills that night, not whatever Khleo was about to say next.

Later when Khleo had returned to her apartment, she traded her work clothes for something softer and more comfortable. Then she dug through the pocket of her discarded jacket and retrieved the folded up flyer.

It was a short walk from her kitchen to the bedroom. There was no bed frame or vanity, just three lumpy mattresses stacked on top of each other that she rescued from the alley when she first moved in.

The room was already small, but it felt even more congested thanks to the uneven piles of text, of which there two types — loose leaf recipes or pages ripped out of cookbooks and cheap serial novels with depictions of bejeweled dragons on the covers.

The only piece of real furniture around was an antique dresser, the drawers of which were broken and jutting out like crooked teeth.

All except one.

Khleo took a deep breath before crouching and using both hands to work the bottom drawer open. Like always, it did not come quietly, but with a little patience and a lot of swearing, Khleo managed to pull it out.

Most of the drawer’s contents belonged to her late adoptive father, Hans von Heine. However, it was an unmarked jar that Khleo reached for. She screwed it open and tucked the flyer for the piece of real estate between old flyers and newspaper clippings back when the garden used to host events. The jar had cash in it too. Whatever Khleo could spare went into the jar. Most of it came from what was left of her tips after paying rent, bills, and whoever she needed in order to keep certain people off her back and out of her business.

Khleo sealed the jar and did her best to ignore the tightness in her chest as she struggled to get the drawer to shut all the way. Once she had, she found that her breathing had become more than a little unsteady. It only got worse when she heard the fireworks going off outside.

Khleo shut their eyes and leaned their forehead against one of the crooked drawers, trying not to dwell too much on where they were this time last here. As it turned out, they were right here, drunk and crying at the foot of this very dresser.

Khleo curled up on their side. Yes, tonight their head was buzzing from the alcohol, somehow both heavy and light. Yes, the tears had found their way to the surface again. Khleo was never one to hold them in as long as they could find the space to spill them.

Things would be different this year, Khleo told themself. They would make sure of it this time.

***

(Lucio’s POV)

Lucio hated the smell of this place. Rotting and damp. It was hard to believe that they were still in Vesuvia.

“You always have such a sour expression on your face whenever I come to feed. Why so, my Count?”

The silky, sardonic voice belonged to Lucio’s host, Quaestor Valdemar.

“Don’t call me that,” Lucio snapped. He wanted to fold his arms and stifle some of the shivers running up his back, but he couldn’t as long as he was hooked up to Valdemar’s device.

“My apologies, Lucio,” Valdemar corrected themself coolly.

Another shiver climbed up Lucio’s neck as he bit back the urge to say, I don’t want to be called that either.

“Tell me, what plagues you?” They added with a chuckle. “Don’t you like your living arrangement?”

Ever since cutting a deal with the scientist turned demon, Lucio had been living out his days in the lowest cellar of the Lazaret. When he was first brought back from the Devil’s realm, he had been too weak to demand anything else. At the time, all he cared about was that he was alive and wouldn’t be devoured by the courtiers.

Lucio glanced at the tube looping around his forearm, its transparent pathways already inflated with his blood.

But at what cost?

Lucio grinded his teeth. It was too late to consider that now.

This was how it always went anyway. Lucio would be presented with an opportunity — a way to improve what he could not on his own. He would leap at it, no questions asked.

Why, after all this time, after all those treacherous dealings could he not bring himself to stop and think things through?

As the last of Valdemar’s toll left his body, Lucio started to wonder what his mother might say about all of this. But he’d rather eat another shitty bargain than go down that road right now.

“Your contribution to our arrangement hasn’t been as satisfying compared to when we first began.”

“What are you trying to say?” Despite his nasty tone, Lucio was grateful for the distraction. “My blood’s not tasty enough for you?”

“It used to be,” Valdemar said. “I’ll be honest with you, Lucio, I agreed to keep you around as an energy reserve primarily for that reason. The notion of devouring you in one sitting and having to share with my dear contemporaries was not nearly as attractive as the possibility of having your flesh to dine on whenever I needed to during this indefinite campaign in your current reality.”

Lucio hissed as Valdemar unceremoniously removed the needle from his vein. He wasn’t sure how to react to what he had just heard. Thanks to Valdemar’s mask, all Lucio could read from their expression was the growing crow’s feet at the corners of their blood red eyes.

“So?”

Valdemar applied a cotton wad to the puncture wound and dug it in with their thumb.

“Ow! Hey – Owie!” Lucio yelped.

“So, my Count,” they sweetly clarified as they kept up the pressure, “I need you to find a way to restore that vitality you once possessed. Technically, you’re in peak physical health. I don’t know if you’ve looked in the mirror lately, but the evidence of your tussle with the plague has all but disappeared from your eyes. Your hair has been growing…” they took a moment to scan their critical gaze over the pale blond patches clinging to Lucio’s jaw. “You could easily blend in with the citizens.”

Lucio swallowed. “B-blend in? Why the devil would I want to blend in?”

Valdemar made a less than human sound as they peeled back their mask and bared their needle-sharp teeth at the former Count.

“Right now you taste like a boneless, gutless, gill-infected inferior breed of mackerel. And I prefer to have rare, mercury-rich, vinegar-glazed bluefin tuna. Captivity is poisoning your blood. So I’m giving you permission to get out there in your beloved city and find a way to sweeten it.”

The Quaestor gave Lucio a not-so-gentle shove in his chair. They replaced their mask as they straightened up. The former Count’s eyes widened as he covered his hand over his arm. The last thing he wanted was to piss off Valdemar. But he didn’t know the first thing when it came to what they were asking him to do.

“What happens if I can’t, erm… make my blood taste better? What if spending time in the city doesn’t work?”

The Quaestor sighed, their emotions back in check. They were already half occupied with cleaning their instruments and storing the sacks of Lucio’s blood in a portable cooler for later.

“Then I will have no choice but to invite my courtier companions over for a nice potluck dinner.” They glanced up. The crow’s feet were back. “And you’ll be the forgettable appetizer that no one asked for.”

Later, when Valdemar was kind enough to row Lucio across the stretch of water to the mainland, they suggested, “You should find some people who are very healthy. Outside of captivity, fish are the most robust when they’re in competition with other capable anatomies.”

Lucio hugged what was left of his royal uniform – a tattered speckled cape – around his shoulders. He grumbled, “Would you, for fuck’s sake, stop comparing me to a fish, Quaestor?”

Unperturbed, Valdemar said, “We’ve arrived.”

Lucio lowered his hood and blinked out at the morning overcast sky. His top lip curled into a distinctive snarl as he recognized where they were.

“Not here. Anywhere but here.”

Valdemar gestured to the nearest dock. “Get out, Lucio.”

The former Count wanted to blot out the images of the slumped architecture and purge his nostrils of the stale watery stench.

“Not the Flooded District. I can’t stand this place. Can’t you see that it’s a failure that I don’t need reminding of?”

“Lucio, don’t be so foolish,” Valdemar said almost tenderly as they nudged him out of the boat. “The entire city is your failure. Much of which is hard to see. Oh, but it’s there. Now go on,” they said as if encouraging a child at the fairgrounds, “go find someone healthy. I’ll come to retrieve you in a fortnight’s time.”

Lucio couldn’t believe he was watching Valdemar row off into the mist. He tried to take a deep breath, but the air was so bad that he just ended up coughing.

Even though Valdemar had been correct about Lucio’s appearance, looking nothing like he did in the days when he was the Count, he still found himself trying to crowd off his features with his hood any time a resident passed him by on the floating, rickety streets. But to his relief, no one seemed to know or even care about who he was or might be.

As soon as Lucio relaxed his shoulders and began walking with more confidence, the inner walls of his stomach suddenly contracted. Then he remembered. He had just given blood. Lots of it. Usually, the Quaestor supplied him with something to eat, but this time they hadn’t.

“Damn them,” Lucio hissed. He cradled his abdomen like it was made of glass as he tried to make his way towards some kind of common plaza. He had no money, but perhaps he would be able to find a dumpster to rummage through.

He was passing by a narrow alley when he caught a glimpse of the impossible out of the corner of his eye.

A lion.

Its coat was creamy and short all over. Its size was nothing short of mythical.

Lucio was tempted to shout at the two idiots occupying the alley with this beast on the loose, but they seemed both aware of its presence and entirely calm about it.

One of them was slumped against the wall of the grimy building. Despite their threadbare attire and weary expression, they were smiling at the other.

“No, Khlee. Please don’t. You’ll be late for work.”

The person squatting before the first seemed to be focused on the task of sewing up what appeared to be rips in a heavy cloak. Even with their short jacket, Lucio could detect the shape of their arms. Their brown curls had enough volume to hide most of the details in their profile.

“Nah. I’m already late. This’ll only take a minute.”

There wasn’t much time to take in the rest of their features before the big cat stepped up, blocking Lucio’s view of them.

< Can I help you? >

Lucio ran. He nearly tripped over himself getting out of there so fast. But he didn’t go far. He gripped the edge of a building and poked his head out, waiting for the lioness and her human to emerge. When they finally did, Quaestor Valdemar’s words from earlier echoed in Lucio’s mind.

Go find someone healthy.

Well, the individual strolling confidently down the street with a full grown lion at their side was definitely looking like the healthy sort.

At the moment, Lucio wasn’t really thinking about what would happen to him if he failed Valdemar’s taste requirements.

Right now, his stomach was hurting.

If the body of this lion tamer was any indication, they knew where Lucio could find himself a meal.

#the arcana #khleo the barhand #arcana albums: strength #arcana albums #count lucio #lucio #lucio the arcana #quaestor valdemar #valdemar #valdemar the arcana #montag morgasson #the arcana fic #the arcana fanfic #the arcana fanfiction #my writing #cw alcohol #cw blood mention #cw vampirism

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