#i think these are all warning signs

[lotus-pear]

finally started p5 royal ‼️‼️‼️‼️

expect some royal trio art soon they are my dearly beloveds (minus akechi i hope he dies in this reality too)

[parasolladyansy]

BW Survival AU - lesson 5

She will admit she was careless.

The woods around Nuvema looked especially beautiful today, some rare beams of sunlight catching the icicles on the bare branches. She brought her gaze higher, taking a few steps back when she bumped into him!

She yelped, startled then terrified, flailing then falling in a clumsy heap! Haze & Snow were by her side in an instant, but the man didn’t touch one Poké Ball (though he instinctively reached for them, just as startled).

Slowly, very slowly, he rose his other hand to say, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

They froze, catching their breath from the fright. As she looked in his eyes, every breath felt like an eternity…

His name was Ikrit.

He said their great-great grandmothers were friends, & that they were friends with a Unovan man who was friends with…her somehow?

She could scarcely believe it. Could she even chance believing him? But then…how else could he know she was friends with Ingo? She heard he had disappeared about 7 years ago from townsfolk. Could he truly have been in the past, in a completely different region?

He spoke to her in the same language she was born speaking (from Hoenn, he said…Fallarbor Town), & the Froslass who accompanied him seemed oddly familiar…as was the impeccably neat handwriting in the old letter she held in her icy fingers. It matched the script in the journal he offered as further proof, as well as the train postcard she still kept with her few belongings to read when she was feeling sad.

She paused, thinking.

Her first instinct was to make a run for it - have Haze create an illusion while Snow used Blizzard to offer more cover for them to disappear. That was still an option. The only reason she hadn’t already was something about the way he spoke to her - kindly, directly, without suspicion or fear.

Is Reshiram…telling her that this one was okay…?

…It has been a long, long time since she had a human friend…& maybe this strong, intelligent trainer could help her put things right in this region…

She can always disappear later if it turned out he was bad.

Lesson 5: Find safe people…but be careful.

—

A/N: Even in this very sad timeline, Ansy still met her Valentine (Happy Valentine’s Day!) 💌

It’s funny to think about how Ingo & Ansy’s fates seem tied together between DxP REWRITE & this AU, though as a twist of that same fate, Ingo is the one to try & save Ansy on this timeline. ;u;

Like in his canon timeline, Ikrit spent a lot of time traveling around the various regions, & while in Kitakami, he met Ingo (maybe at the Crystal Pool, maybe in Mossui - not sure). The results of that meeting, & his own research he conducted in Sinnoh (ever the researcher), is what led him to smuggling himself & his Pokémon with Ingo to frozen Unova.

Ingo told him to look for Ansy while he went to Gear Station, probably saying something like, “If you find her…bring her with you.” He’d have come with him, but it could be that he didn’t have the heart to, in case what Ikrit found was awful ;u;

[xskyll]

If it hasn’t been clear, Izuku is messing with his headset irl when he has his hands by the sides of his head. On that note, I’d like to extend a big thank you to each and every one of you for never asking me about the logistics of how this VR system works.

Prev / Next

First

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

stan: how can you be polyamorous and aroace, or…whatever mabel called it?

ford: in my case, i have my family and i have my platonic polycule. i would prefer to never have to interact with anyone outside these two groups

stan: what about soos and wendy? they’re not in either of those groups

ford: first of all, i am soos’ uncle, second of all, are you saying you don’t believe i would both die and kill for wendy?

stan: you’ve got a weird way of defining family, six

ford: it’s my favorite way

[cementcornfield]

Offseason Thoughts!!

ok i know a lot of people are dreading this offseason because it’s going to be Long it’s going to be Dramatic, but honestly i’m so here for it. like lowkey i love this time of year because really it’s the time for completely unbridled optimism in a lot of ways. if we do A, B, and C, who’s to say that that doesn’t fix the team and we win the super bowl next year? you literally can’t know for sure that it WON’T work!! (i didn’t say it was a time for realism, i said optimism, perhaps delusionally so 🥲) 

plus i’m just genuinely interested in all the roster building stuff. figuring out contracts and how those might work, free agency, the draft and everything that those things entail - love it! all about it! so if you’re a sicko like me who IS into all of this (and i completely understand if you aren’t because it WILL be exhausting) i thought i’d make a little overview about the things we’ll be dealing with over the next several months. 

Here is a list of all the internal free agents we are going to have to make decisions on, along with their expected cost and the likelihood of us keeping them

^Here is our expected cap space for the next few years (taking into account expected cuts like Rankins, Hubbard, and Cappa) plus some extra commentary.

as you can see, we have MORE than enough cash and cap space to be very aggressive this offseason. will we be? it’s certainly not in our reputation to do so, but they HAVE been making baby steps over the last few years to catch up to the modern nfl. the most recent example of which is firing coaches like lou before their contracts are up! very uncharacteristic of the brown family. and i think this reflects rumblings you hear on twitter that the organization is frankly embarrassed at how this season went (rightfully so). so i think you can expect they will do SOME things to reflect this urgency, even if it’s not as much as we’d like them to do. 

the biggest decisions to be made: what do we do about tee?? what do we do about trey?? and then of course extending ja’marr, which i don’t think is a decision at all for anyone, but they’ve gotta decide how to do it to make both sides as happy as possible, when they struggled with that right up to the first game last season 😭

Tee: obviously if you’ve been following this blog you know i want to keep tee. i think we can pull it off and i think it will be beneficial to the team long term. but there is an argument to be made regarding his durability/injuries and whether the resources we’d spend on him would be better spent elsewhere like on fixing our historically bad defense. however, to that i say that we’re actually already one of the biggest spenders in terms of cap space on defense, and it didn’t help at all lmao. once we get rid of people like sheldon rankins and sam hubbard, who are definitely no longer worth the value of their contracts, we will free up a significant portion of the cap and use it to find better value free agents that can help us. the strategy going from overpaying for bad players to paying average amounts for average players. because with a top 5 offense like we had this year, we truly only need an average defense, unlike the HISTORICALLY bad one we had this year!

(now a caveat to this is if the bengals would actually show they’re willing to go all out and spend BIG on the BEST defensive free agents, then perhaps that’s worth more than keeping tee. but the only thing with that is that i just don’t believe the bengals would do it either way. even in 21 when we fixed our whole defense with free agency, we still did it by acquiring a bunch of smaller name value free agents, who ended up performing far above what the market thought they would. and i imagine that will be the strategy by the FO whether we keep tee or not.) 

you can also say that a large part of our FO’s failure the last few seasons has been that we aren’t keeping our Known Talents. we drafted and developed jessie bates into a star, and then we let him go because we thought we could easily replace his value for cheaper in FA and the draft….and three years later safety is still a huge hole on our roster. DJ Reader is another example of a key player for our team that we thought we could replace and we failed dramatically. looking at tee, who is the replacement we have in line? jermaine?? for SO MANY reasons that is no longer a viable plan lmao. Someone in FA? this is a weak FA class. so we’d let tee walk and then probably end up overpaying for a lesser talent? what’s the point of that? okay maybe we draft a WR high to replace tee? well i’m hearing that it’s also not a great WR draft. and to expect a first year rookie to come in and offer even half of what tee does is also not a super sound strategy! (not to mention we’d have to spend a high draft pick that should probably be used on defense!) 

tag tee? maybe! but i don’t think it’s as likely as extending him at this point. the second tag will be expensive (i think over 25k? maybe 26k) and that takes up a big chunk of our cap space if that’s what we’re worried about. plus it will piss off tee, to be tagged twice and not given the benefit of being able to get a long term deal? with his injury history especially? players hate that shit. i think it’s more beneficial for both parties to just do an extension at that point if we want to keep him. you can spread the cap hit out easier for the team, and tee won’t have to worry about his long term security as much. 

ANYWAY this got long, honestly tee should have just been his own post lmao. but this situation is deifnitely the most interesting to me and seeing how it goes will be FASCINATING. 

Trey: he requested a trade last offseason because he knows that his current contract is significantly less than he deserves for the value he offers (and that was BEFORE he got first team all pro and led the entire nfl in sacks this season, oh god 🥲) we have him under contract, but would he be willing to play under it? or would he retire like he threatened to? i’m honestly not sure, and i hope it doesn’t come to us finding out. we need to keep our star players happy, which means we need to figure something out here. do we extend him? he just turned 30, which the FO always frowns upon when it comes to extensions lol BUT he also just had his best year? i don’t think even our idiotic FO could say that just because his age starts with a 3 now means he’ll be washed next season or even the season after. what i’m seeing on twitter is that he’s expected to get at least one more deal of 2-3 years. and looking at the age of elite edge guys in the league, i think that that’s fair! and if you ask me, completely and totally worth it to keep trey. i mean jesus, who do we even have on defense if we lose him?? i think this one is a no-brainer, we’ve gotta offer him an extension for more money and i think he’d still be willing to take a reasonable deal to stay. 

Ja’Marr: oh my god. i’m still filled with SO MUCH RAGE when i think back to how CLOSE we were to getting him signed last offseason. we were RIGHT THERE. all the rumors were saying it was basically a done deal!! all the numbers and years were agreed upon!!! but our cheap-ass FO couldn’t just get over themselves and structure the guarantees to match how most deals are done in the rest of the league!! they showed they’re willing to do a modern structure for Joe, they need to show they’re willing to do it with the rest of our stars. especially our first team all pro triple crown winning stars!! jesus christ!!!

the only thing that offers me some comfort is that ja’marr is still on the same path, contract-wise, as Justin Jefferson. they also couldn’t get over the hump before his fourth year even when both parties wanted to, and he ended up signing a massive contract in june the next year. i’m hoping that we can accomplish the same on a similar timeline because oh my god i do not need all the drama of ja’marr missing training camp again! and when you look at all the other WRs up for an extension this offseason (garrett wilson probably the only one who even comes slightly close to ja’marr’s level), i think it’s fair to say that ja’marr is setting the market whenever he signs. then like with justin’s last year, the other WRs will all sign slightly below. so i’m hoping hoping hoping that there’s no motivation on either side to drag this out. but of course, we’ll see!! 

and then we’ve gotta think about the lesser free agents like Mike G, Mike H, BJ, Germaine…i have no idea what we do with them. i’d like to retain Mike G…..the three defensive vets i dunno! they’re good locker room leaders…mostly? they’re still solid if not losing a step. should we bring them back for reasonable vet deals? probably?? can we find better value in FA?? i’m honestly not sure. like you don’t want to lose these guys but it’s also hard to say that we should keep them at all costs when you look at the defensive performance last year. i just don’t know here. i’d hope we keep at least one of them? BJ maybe being the most important in my eyes? 

there’s so much more to talk about honestly but i’ll stop yapping for now! what do you guys think we should do?? i’d love to hear your thoughts! 

[angeart]

Howwwww did you angst the world tour?? 🎀

this question made me giggle so much oh i'm glad you asked :3c there was so much yummy grian angst in the hc world tour!

it's all about grian and his penchant for destruction. he doesn't even mean to! he's not trying to be pesky; quite the opposite. he's curious but restrained, trying to be good, trying to follow instructions. he's not malicious at all! he's just there to see what people were up to, open and friendly and curious, eager to look and learn and praise. not a bad intention in sight... and yet things seem to break wherever he goes. everything he touches goes wrong.

the guilt churns, acidic and overwhelming, and grian's miserable. why is he like this? he's trying so hard, why is this the only way he can ever be? why can't it stop?

spoilers for grian's world tour video below <3

plantie pointed out to me how, during the tour of scar's train, when grian got rid of scar's arrows—the glitched ones that doc put there—he was so desperate to point it out after scar just glossed over it. as if he wanted to show that he can do something good. he can be helpful, he can fix things instead of just breaking everything.

but then we have all the other things, right? grian can't escape it.

when he was with etho and the mushroom farm exploded, he sums it up in a wretched if confused apology: "i'm so sorry. the two times i tried to use it, i broke it :( and created a water source floating— which i don't know how it happened— and flung the TNT, which i really don't understand—"

they move on, but it's so clear it lingers.

etho isn't blaming him. he's amused and brushes it off and moves along, unbothered, but grian himself can't wrap his head around it. about that propensity to breaking things, even unintentionally. the way nothing is safe around him.

he tells etho: "i can't stop thinking about your mushroom farm. why does everything i touch break, in new and unexpected ways?"

(not to mention when etho's showing him frogger and grian plays, almost instantly etho goes: "uh-oh, the game's broken", with a little huff of laugh. it wasn't exactly tied to anything grian did, but still something i wanted to point out, since grian was there for it <3)

and then grian goes to zedaph, right?

the very first game zedaph shows him. the very first. grian plays the way he was told to, the way he was meant to, and— he breaks it.

zedaph just laughs and moves them on.

(just sprinkling in a side note that zedaph's furnace minigame also didn't seem to work the way it should've—)

by the time grian gets to pearl's, it's starting to be a pattern that's so clearly eating away at him, making him anxious. he doesn't want it to happen again!

and yet.

pearl invites him to play her wordle game, and grian mindlessly goes and pushes the wrong button trying to start it... instantly stepping away with a quiet groan of a dread-filled "...oh-" followed by: "i just— ruined it already."

there's something about the mood switch. the way he seems more restrained and tame, silently upset with himself, trying so hard not to mess things up further. questioning why this is happening again. why he can't stop making it happen.

he walks over to the reset game button and asks, carefully: "can i press reset? is it gonna hurt? 🥺👉👈"

pearl reassures him he can, with a sigh noting that it'll just take a while.

there's an almost hysteric laugh from grian, followed by an exasperated, upset scream. "everything i touch breaks! when i went to e— i broke etho's thing when i went to— not frogger, his— his mushroom farm i— it blew up."

"you blew up his mushroom farm?? how? what did you do?!"

"yeah, i— i broke zed's game, instantly, pretty much, it's—"

"oh my gosh :("

"sorry 🥺"

pearl is quick to reassure him, though. "well, luckily for you, this is— you doing that (pushing the wrong button) does not break the game. it's just, you now have to wait for it to reset."

she makes sure grian knows that he didn't mess up anything terribly here. he didn't break pearl's game. it's okay! it's fine!

and then grian right clicks to open the book, and instead makes bonemeal pop out of a composter.

i think at this point pearl is a little bit taken aback by how wrong everything really seems to be going around grian. she makes sure to say, "it's fine," again, just so grian won't start worrying about it all again. "you're clicking on everything that people do not usually click on today. but it's okay. it's still not broken! it's not broken, it's alright, it's okay— i've got failsaves for people like you."

it's so sweet how she really tries to soothe him— and yet she can't help but let out that last remark.

people like you.

those few words surely lodge in more than all the reassurances. they're like splinter, proving grian right.

eventually, he gets to skizz.

during the tour of skizz's base, skizz shows him a horse statue and starts talking about how he lost his first horse at an event that grian was also a part of. and grian's stomach instantly sinks.

he asks hushedly, a bit confused, trying to remember: "was i there?"

skizz laughs. "you were absolutely there, dude."

which leads grian to ask, uneasily: "did i do it?"

skizz waves his hands, quick to easily reassure that no! that's not it, grian didn't do it!

grian lets out an oh with such palpable relief, and goes on to explain about how, "i remember witnessing it, but sometimes it's hard to disentangle whether i did it or not. coz i tell you what, on this tour i've broken everyone's stuff."

nobody was upset with grian when things broke, but here he is, several hermits down, still unable to leave it to rest. because it's him. it's him who did all of that, somehow, and he didn't mean to, but it doesn't matter. it happened anyway.

and now he can't even tell what is and what isn't his fault anymore.

the guilt is deep rooted, leaving anxious assumptions and dark, jagged precipices. how much did he destroy? what else should he be feeling guilty about? how far does this go?

he keeps breaking things, and it's such a blur that he can no longer tell what is and what isn't his fault.

the tour continues, and he delves into skizz's pyramid. and it's just— it's just a tunnel to swim through. nothing to mess up, besides potentially dying to suffocation, right?

and yet you can hear skizz shrilly exclaim: "oh he's going to end up breaking something!!"

and, (plantie's words: ) grian hearing that and just wondering, is that all i'm good for? is that all i'm known for? is that all i am?

there's no room for doubt; not really. that is what grian does, all the time, whether he wants to or not. he breaks stuff. he just— he doesn't mean to. and this tour is one big show of how powerless he is against it. (how everyone expects it from him anyway.)

despite it all, grian perseveres, trying out skizz's game, stubbornly dedicated and trying to win. (to pass; to have something to be proud of, at least—) and he gets to the powdered snow section.

there, he jumps across to a pathway that he was meant to circle to through the snow instead.

it's not breaking anything, not really. not even the rules. it's not cheating! he's just— he just did something skizz did not expect, but that was entirely possible within the game's design, even if not intended. he exploited it to his advantage; a risky, tricky shortcut.

and yet skizz remarks with a laugh: "this is what grian does! he breaks games!"

no matter what grian does... is that all he'll ever be?

is that all they'll see?

he fails getting through skizz's game, is thanked for play-testing, praises it all, they talk it all away, and...

and then grian goes to tour mumbo's base.

and fails to even die properly to his llama—

and then mumbo shows him his archive machine, and instantly panicks when grian gets curious about it, begging him not to touch anything. and grian says: "your stomach just fell through didn't it?" and after mumbo's immediate agreement, he adds: "and rightfully so. coz, almost everything i've touched on this tour has broken."

there's not a sliver of surprise to mumbo's anxious rushed: "yeah, yeah yeah! please stop now." because, of course things have broken. of course what grian touches is bound to go wrong. of course—

and then mumbo very carefully tells grian what to do with the machine.

grian does as he's told.

mumbo looks up and pauses, a frown crossing his face as he takes it in. he notes that grian probably did it too fast—

(something went wrong)

(something broke)

mumbo says: "i can't believe you come along and every single thing in my base starts [going wrong/breaking/malfunctioning]"

and then grian mysteriously ends up with an extra book from mumbo's machine, much to mumbo's dismay. grian's confused, cogs spinning as he tries to figure out what did he mess up this time to result in this.

it's clear mumbo wants grian away from his machine. it's not safe. (grian isn't safe.)

"maybe just give that to me and maybe just step away from the contraption. and then— maybe just leave me to—"

grian's upset and bewildered voice cuts in: "i didn't do anything wrong this time :(("

he's trying so hard.

he's trying so hard to be good and do things right and not mess anything up.

(it isn't working.)

(it's never bound to work, is it?)

mumbo ushers him away, and ends up showing him another cool invention—an elevator. except the second mumbo hits the button, a creeper shows up and explodes it. (it's midday.) (it wasn't even meant to be there.)

this one isn't grian's fault at all, but with everything that's happened— well, it's easy enough to link it to grian's presence. like a bad luck omen.

apprehensively, grian asks if the elevator broke, and mumbo—a bit bewildered by the reality of it—says that no, it seems to still work. "amazingly," he tacks on, disbelieving.

grian's relieved. "ohh, i thought we were in big trouble there!"

besides himself, mumbo anxiously agrees: "augh. i was like, if every single creation that i show breaks in some fashion, i'm just gonna quit."

because this isn't normal. none of this is, least of all everything at once. it simply doesn't happen.

(not when grian isn't there, anyway.)

mumbo notes that he needs to work on his lighting, and grian nods wisely saying it's a perpetual issue, but the anxiety is digging its talons in now, unrelenting. (what else is going to go bad in grian's presence? what else will he mess up? what else will he break? why is he like this?)

another remark that comes after this is mumbo's nervous: "i've actually just built up the automatic sorter which does this—which you're not gonna touch. we're banned from touching any redstone contraptions!"

and what can grian do but oblige? (but he can at least look, right?)

but does it ever change anything?

does it matter?

-

at the end of the day, the others don't think too much about it.

they all say their part, pass their judgment, wave their hands, dismiss, move on. it doesn't keep them up at night.

... i think it might keep grian up at night.

a cacophonous collection of word snippets, aimed at him or woven around him, digging under his skin until it bleeds. a noose of inescapable fate, a tightening band around his chest that promises he can only ever be one thing:

a vessel for destruction.

it doesn't matter if he wants to be.

shackles and chains and a cosmic inevitability written into his skin, etched into his bones, tangled into his bloodstream. and an ever-rising guilt like stormy sea, far above his head now, drowning him.

(maybe he's not meant to be near other people and their things.)

(maybe he's not meant to touch games that were constructed with so much effort and love and passion poured into them.)

(maybe he shouldn't—)

==========

bonus screenshots from discord DMs (with extra sprinkles of hmtb mentions):

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==========

bonus hmtb quotes because i kept thinking about it:

He always destroys the things he loves most, after all.

and:

He destroyed everything he touched, and when there was nothing left, he destroyed the only remaining thing: himself.

-

[nyxi-pixie]

'skk dont like each other they literally always say they wanna kill each other'

as if they dont mean it in the most weirdass possessive 'no one else gets to kill you' way. as if dazai no.1 romanticiser of death osamu isnt being completely insane about it (bc what do you MEAN you've thought about killing him EVERY DAY for SEVEN YEARS)

(theyre also Lying bc theyd never actually kill each other otherwise theyd have done it already. its just a fun little exchange they have to be like 'wow ur so awful and detestable i wanna give u a lil kiss on the forehead (with a bullet<3)')

[coriander-candlesticks]

I was pouring a promised libation out to Hermes, Apollo, Aphrodite, and Dionysus this afternoon (I'd asked them for help with a personal matter involving a sibling) and as I was looking up at the sky talking about the situation I saw three hawks start to circle something a little ways in the distance. Hawks aren't exactly uncommon here but it had been a while since I'd seen any, let alone three at once, so it caught my attention.

And while I was trying to figure out what type of bird they were (not an eagle, too short a neck to be a vulture, etc) one of them swooped down into a neighbor's backyard and back up along the tree in my backyard, close enough that, if a branch weren't in the way, I would have been able to see its feather markings. While hawks were somewhat usual, experiencing that certainly was not. So, of course, when I got inside I looked up if any Greek gods are associated with hawks.

And, of course, Apollo is.

I've been thinking a lot about the difference between "this is just a Thing That Happens" and a sign so it was nice to see a direct example of how something differs when it's coming from a god.

[rubiatinctorum]

friendship advice is SO FRUSTRATING! show that you're interested in people's lives but be careful not to idolize them or else they'll think you think you're beneath them and then they'll start to think it too. provide some incentive for people being your friend but don't live in service of your friends because then you'll attract people only looking to use someone. do things worth admiring but don't talk about them to people or else you're asking for too much attention. be attentive but not too attentive or else you're creepy, take initiative but not too much or else you're clingy, and never ever ever ever ever hope for anything better than your lot.

[buckingham-ashtray]

The Invisible Clubber........................ SMILING. CAN'T STOP SMILING. LIFE SO HAPPY. LOVE. LOVE LIFE. BEAT GETTING FASTER. CAN'T STOP SMILING. NOW JUST HARMONY. NO BEAT. MELODY. STOP MOVING. SMILE TO THE SKY. ALL STANDING STILL. BEAUTIFUL. NEVER BEEN SUCH HARMONY IN ALL HISTORY. WANT TO KISS EVERYONE. THEY WANT TO KISS ME. BREATHE IN. BREATHE OUT.................

Sebastian's Story.......... Sometimes I wonder what it'll be like to die. I'll find myself drifting off, staring at something, anything and I'll stop blinking. I feel my whole body slowing down... My heartbeat... And I wonder how long it'll be broken

*Sorry that I couldn't find the source where I got this from and have no idea when this was released. If anyone has the link I will be very glad to insert it!

[mechieonu]

haven't seen HH yet & my only real hope is that charlastor keeps whatever dynamic they had goin on

[solace-seekers]

screaming into the void <3

[ironmanstan]

. <- brainwormed

[presidentofthelipglossclub]

yknow sometimes i wonder where i get all my confidence from and then i dress up and i remember that i’m actually the hottest bitch alive. anyways no i don’t think i have an ego problem why do you ask.

[baby-prophet]

do you think my roommate will rat me out about vaping in the bathroom .............

[acourtofquestions]

Kingdom of Ash Chapter 58

Chapter; Highlights

Not that there was much Elide could do.

Despite the generous gift of power that ran through the Lochan bloodline, she possessed no magic, no gifts beyond reading people and lying.

Rushed to get bandages, hot water, and whatever salves or herbs the healers calmly requested. None of them shouted. They only raised their voices, magic glowing bright around them, if a soldier was shrieking too loudly for their words to be heard.

The sun was barely over the horizon, judging by the light at the windows set high in the Great Hall, and so many already lay injured. So many. Still they kept coming, and Elide kept moving, her limp becoming a dull, then a sharp ache. A minor pain, compared to what the soldiers endured. Compared to what they faced on the battlements.

She didn't let herself think of her friends.

Didn't let herself think of Lorcan, who had not come to the chamber last night and had not sought them out this morning. As if he didn't want to be near her. As if he'd taken every hateful word she'd spoken to heart.

So Elide aided—and did not stop.

No, that magnificent horse trampled them, fearless and wicked, just as Chaol had predicted. A horse whose name meant butterfly

—stomping all over Valg foot soldiers.

Had his breath not been a rasp in his chest, Chaol might have smiled. Had men not been cut down around him, he might have laughed a bit, too.

But Morath was launching itself at the walls and gates with a furor they had not yet witnessed. Perhaps they knew who had come to Anielle and now hewed them down. Aelin and Rowan fought back-to-back, and Fenrys had plowed his way down the battlements to join Chaol by the second siege tower.

Morath, it seemed, did not think to surrender. Only to inflict destruction, to break into the keep and slaughter as many as they could before meeting their end.

His shield bloodied and dented, his horse a raging demon herself beneath him, Chaol kept swinging his sword. His wife lay within the keep behind him. He would not fail her.

Soon now. They'd win the field soon, and the song in his blood would quiet.

Part of him didn't want it to end, even as his body began to scream to rest.

Yet when the battle was done, what would remain?

Nothing. Elide had made that clear enough.

She loved him, but she hated herself for it.

He hadn't deserved her anyway.

She deserved a life of peace, of happiness.

He didn't know such things. Had thought he'd glimpsed them during the months they'd traveled together, before everything went to hell, but now he knew he was not meant for anything like it.

But this battlefield, this death-song around him ... This, he could do. This, he could savor.

The golden helmets of the khagan's army became clear, their fiery horses unfaltering.

Finer than any host he'd fought beside in a mortal kingdom. In many immortal kingdoms, too.

Obeying the death-song in his blood, Lorcan let his shields drop. He did not wish it to be easy. He wanted to feel each blow, see his enemy's life drain out beneath his sword.

The earth shook beneath thundering hooves, and arrows screamed overhead. Then there was roaring. And then blackness.