#idek what this is but have it lmao
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bratbarzal · 7 months ago
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On Your Side (NH13)
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Pairing: Nico Hischier & Fem!OC Poppy Jensen
Rating: 18+ MDNI (chapters marked with *)
Tropes: Friends to Lovers, Accidental Pregnancy, Fake Dating, Miscommunication, Slow Burn (Kind Of)
General Warnings: Angst, Smut (marked with *), Fluff. (chapters will contain individual warnings)
Summary: Poppy Jensen’s job with the New Jersey Devils was supposed to be her first big step into adulthood - a way to prove to herself and her overbearing parents that she could make her own way in life. She was never supposed to become involved with any of the players. Becoming best friends with their captain was stupid. Getting her heart broken by him was tragic. Getting knocked up with his child was just plain messy.
prologue
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four*
chapter five
chapter six
chapter seven
chapter eight
chapter nine*
chapter ten
chapter eleven*
chapter twelve
all related asks - all related posts
Bonus:
On My Side* aka Nico comes home to Poppy after scoring his first ever career hat-trick for the Devils, set around 8 weeks after the events of the fic, 6k words
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four-pointed-leaf · 8 months ago
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hey guys mira’s gonna go to taco bell and get stuff do you want anyth. oh. um. you guys like. good? yeah? okay it looks like you’ve got it handled i’ll just get you a crunch wrap for later siffrin bye
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unadulteratedloathings · 4 months ago
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posting unfinished gifsets that were going to rot in my drafts: 3/?
SEX EDUCATION — 3.03
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essiestarr · 20 days ago
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Wip for what was supposed to be an illustration for ectober month, but Uni had me by the collar, toes brushing the concrete and all
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firestorm09890 · 12 days ago
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World Survey Report cont. Radiant Garden contains a princess and a prince. The princess has no relation to the royal family, but she is one of very few beings that shine with pure light. All the world centers on her, and her presence maintains the good and righteous order of the world. The other does not have this quality. He has no relation to the royal family either, but despite his obvious dark inclinations, the Lord of the land saw fit to make him the heir to the world. Neither are yet old enough to comprehend the enormity of their roles. When they are both of age, let us hope that the light of the princess is enough to counteract the darkness of the prince.
Duality and expectations
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siarven · 7 months ago
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I made this for cara but thought I should use it to FINALLY make a proper pinned post on here! (image descriptions in alt text)
Hello everyone (:
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I thought I'd use this to properly re-introduce myself. These days I have a lot going on irl, so I'm not as interactive on here as I used to be. However, I love making new friends and getting to know their projects :D Some of my most important friends are from here, even if most of them are no longer active on writeblr (we have migrated to discord), so if you think we'd vibe pls shoot me a message!!
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What you can expect:
Started out as an artblr, then turned into a writeblr, now it's mostly me collecting inspiration, art and writing references, with some infrequent original writing wip/art posts ✴︎ — more info about tags and writing below the cut — ✴︎
✴︎ — #queer tag - I reblog a lot of queer related posts, particularly about aro/ace and gender related topics
✴︎ — #inspirational - art, writing, photography, nature/environmental issues related topics, history, paleontology, archaeology; things I find inspiring and fascinating :D
✴︎ — i love all of the creatures, fictional or real, but less in a "cute videos" and more in a "I love how our world works" type way. I worked at a wildlife sanctuary for a year after school and learned a lot there. one day i will be the forever home for an old cat nobody else wants
✴︎ — sometimes I still post art and or writing, though I guess there'll be more art on Cara if you wanna follow me there (less AI threat)
✴︎ — i study concept art, work as a freelance illustrator, and am currently working on my MA thesis project "Fragments of the Infinite"
✴︎ — my main wip novel (Dream's Shadow) is probably finally getting close to being Finished. Feels somewhat surreal. idk if it's even worth querying it because it really doesn't fit into the current publishing world but it's not actually finished yet anyway so... we can worry about that later
✴︎ — very into fantasy with cool worldbuilding in particular. don't much care for elves/dwarves/.. fantasy preindustrial england type worlds, but dungeon meshi is my current obsession so if it's deeply developed and interesting enough I don't really mind :)
✴︎ — hopepunk my most beloved! i do love when characters get put through the wringer to get to their hopeful ending though. Sometimes, things are tragic in a bittersweet way, and that is okay too
✴︎ — deeply nuanced, complicated, messy morally grey characters driving the narrative
I am open to tag games, but will probably only manage to respond to like 10% of them... it's not you, it's me
Always open for DMs or asks <3
I try to tag everything as well as I can, if i forget, ask to tag <3
If you're into TMA, I have a podcast/TMA blog @moth-song-archives; my rambling animals/shitposts/memes/other fandoms/... blog is @lirhin, and I have a dedicated art blog @siarvenart
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a hopepunk dark fantasy story with creepy/horror elements set in another world; small scope that transitions into epic fantasy later on
Status: draft 6.5 completed at 141k; currently mini-beta round. First in a trilogy
✴︎ —1st, 2nd and 3rd person limited, present tense ✴︎ — hopepunk, sibling dynamics, dysfunctional family, power of kindness & love, platonic love, queer characters, queer-embracing worldbuilding, mental & physical trauma, light & dark, secrets, tragedy, lies, betrayal, loss of innocence, holding on & letting go, cute creatures, (in)humanity, trees, religion & belief, growing up, monsters, dreams, nightmares.
When Ava and her parents arrive at the hospital, they find her older brother Ben in a deeply unnatural coma - and nobody can tell them what happened. Despite the magical abilities of the Asim Healers, there seems to be no way to save him. But then, why do they still keep him alive? As Ava slowly learns the magnitude of how terrible Ben's situation (and impossible his future) truly are, she finds herself embroiled in a larger conflict, ready to hook its claws into her as well. And the one person she cares about most - who always had her back - is gone. So despite everything, there's only really one choice: Find out how to save him and try anyways.
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the travel journal of a young scientist, documenting the cultures, places, people and creatures she encounters on the way (art/text)
Status: storyboard/script 2nd draft completed; beta feedback
✴︎ —1st person present ✴︎ — 66 double pages of art accompanied by ~10k text ✴︎ — hopepunk, (body) horror, religion & belief, nihilism vs making your own meaning, platonic love, queer characters, queer-embracing worldbuilding, transitioning with magical body horror means, mental & physical trauma, light & dark, deep worldbuilding, eldritch monsters, loss of innocence, SO MANY creatures
Features: a tidally locked planet orbited by 5 moons and populated by giant eldritch monsters; two trans aroace main characters; body horror; so much art; the most gratuitous worldbuilding project; character driven narrative
When the fifth moon hatches during Thorn's own naming ritual, making her one of 2 people who saw it happen, she knows she's been chosen. But back at home, nobody believes what she saw, choosing to instead take the moon's disappearance as a sign of celebration as it mirrors religious scriptures. So Thorn sets out to find physical proof, and uses the opportunity to document her travels. She doesn't know that her view of the world will be thoroughly challenged, but she also doesn't know about the friends she'll make <3
I have various other wips, some of them are linked in my header. I'll return to them at some point, but these 2 are my current projects for 2024:)
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read-write-thrive · 5 months ago
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y’all who are voting for me to genderbend everyone better be ready for even longer delays since I’ll have to rename everyone and come up with how their characters change depending on the swap 😭 I’ll do it don’t get me wrong I’m just also thinking ahead yk
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zero3six · 6 months ago
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Do machines cry too?
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bxriles · 4 months ago
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Lmao okay wait. I got asked that question about Feyre/Bryce/Aelin and I went down a lil rabbit hole and somehow ended up on a subreddit of people arguing over who would win in a fight if it were Feyre vs. Aelin.
And I am CACKLING right now because it seems like the bulk of people on that thread think Aelin would win, and the people who think Feyre would win are SO. UPSET. Like they are BIG MAD that anyone would think Aelin would win hahahahahaha
I'm cackling. I can't breathe I'm laughing so hard omfg. People really do 100% project themselves onto Feyre. They really think they ARE Feyre!!!!! I'm crying. Send help I can't breathe 😂😂
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grave-gift · 7 months ago
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If you guys are gonna buy one thing during the steam summer sale make it Dave the Diver.
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The best word to describe this game is delightful. Catch fish with your spear gun during the day and run a sushi restaurant at night, and discover the secrets of the magical blue hole you dive in where every species of fish is present and the geography is changing everyday. There's combat, there's collection, there's a great story line, there's farming, there's fish farming, there's minigames, the animation and art and music are fantastic. It's GENUINELY fun, and genuinely funny. I've played it for 60 hours and I'm not done the main story line yet. Oh did I mention it's $20? And it's on sale for less?
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vrieseasees · 2 years ago
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OK HEAR ME OUT ... *nothing comes out of my mouth*
This is where the viewer tries to figure out if that was just a ploy or he was really actually into it *throws hands up and walks away backwards*
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cant remember which post i pulled that flashback from... it's somewhere in this blog lol i died when i remembered i drew that and didnt know why
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mumms-the-word · 3 months ago
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Dark Future, Dark Reality
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Part 1
Characters: Solas x fem!Lavellan, Varric Tethras, Dorian Pavus, Leliana Summary: When Iren Lavellan is cast into the future via Alexius's spell, she wants to believe everything is just a temporary nightmare. But as she encounters and speaks with Solas, the details of the dark future become all too real to her and she struggles with how much the future has changed her friend. Solas is not the man she has grown to care for in their travels up to this point. Torn between longing for the man she left behind and the man she must leave behind soon, she fights her way through Redcliffe Castle, wrestling with guilt, fear, and a desire to save a man who refuses to be saved. A/N: Did you want Solavellan angst just a week before Veilguard comes out? of course you do. I'm zooming through my new inquisitor's game before the next game comes out but I couldn't let In Hushed Whispers go by without writing a bunch of pining and angst and so on. You know me. Part 2 is here, but the whole thing can be read on AO3 here!
Your spymaster, Leliana. She is here. As are your companions.
Where? Are they all still alive?
I do not know. But you must find them. If you can.
Fiona’s words repeated in Iren’s head as she stepped softly over the cracked flagstones of the Redcliffe Castle dungeons, peering through the gloom. The dungeons were more shadow and frigid water than stone and wood, illuminated only by weak, blue torch flames and the hazy glow of red lyrium. It was difficult to see much of anything, but even so she searched, looking through the bars of every cell she passed. She had to find them. Whether dead or alive, she had to know.
She had dragged Solas, Varric, and several Inquisition soldiers into this mess. Whatever their fates were, they were on her head.
If Dorian and Fiona were to be believed, Alexius’s spell had cast them an entire year into the future, into a world so bleak and broken it was difficult to make sense of. The evidence of catastrophe was all around them, in the red lyrium all over the place, in the way the air felt mutable and wrong, in the heavy, howling emptiness of these dungeons. As though every soul in Thedas had already perished. Each time they passed another cell without any signs of life, the feeling of her and Dorian being the last two people alive in the world increased, pressing down on Iren like a millstone around her neck.
Some cells were empty, their occupants long since dead and disposed of. In others, the dead remained, curled against the floor, their faces cast in darkness, or they stood as twisted, desiccated statues out of which red lyrium grew in abundance. Iren forced herself to study each body, dread churning in her gut, just in case it was someone she recognized. Thus far, Grand Enchanter Fiona and the young elven mage, Lysas, were the only living occupants. Neither were in any state to help. Both were more dead than alive.
She pressed on, stubbornly placing one foot in front of the other to keep searching. More empty cells. More darkness. More silence. Keep searching. Keep looking. Leave no space unchecked. You must find them.
But would she find them dead or alive? Which was worse, in this hellscape?
Keep searching.
She approached yet another room of cages, her cold hands stiff as she pushed the heavy door open. At first, she heard and saw nothing. But then something shifted in the far corner.
“Is someone there?”
Her heart leapt into her throat.
“Solas,” she breathed. She would recognize his mild tenor anywhere. She set a hand on Dorian’s arm as he tried to draw his staff, stopping him. “Wait. That’s Solas.”
“Who?”
But Iren didn’t answer. In the far right corner cell, a pale hand gripped one of the metal bars and then disappeared back into the gloom. She wanted to rush over, but cautious sense prevailed, and she crept forward quietly instead, glancing at the other cells to be sure. All empty.
But she had heard him. She had glimpsed him. There, in the last cell on the right. As she drew even with the bars of his cell, she saw him moving within, his pale form appearing ghostly in the darkness.
“Solas.”
He didn’t hear her. He paced and shifted restlessly in his cramped space, like an animal in a cramped cage. Huge shards of red lyrium grew out of the walls and pointed toward him like dull blades, a constant threat, but he moved around and through them without thought. Dipping a shoulder to pass beneath one large crystal that jutted out at neck level. Turning his head just before a sharp fragment would cut his cheek. Stepping around a cluster of crystals that grew out of the flagstones. Each motion a habit, a series of muscle memory movements that spoke of weeks, months of confinement in this one small space.
How long had he been here?
The heat from the red lyrium seemed to pulse as Iren drew nearer to the bars of the cell, the crystals the only source of warmth, twisted and unnatural, in this freezing cold dungeon. The red haze coming off the corrupted lyrium made the air swim as if she were in a dream, but he was no illusion. This was Solas, in the flesh.
What was left of him.
“Solas,” she said again, softly, taking hold of one of the bars. “Can you hear me?”
He turned at the far wall, dragging his gaze up from the floor, and then jolted to a halt, his eyes widening in shock. For a moment, he couldn’t speak, and then—
“Iren,” he breathed. He took a step closer, lifting an arm as if to take hold of the cell door again, and then halted once more, his arm dropping back to his side with a clenched fist. “You’re alive?”
She nodded, tightening her hold around the bar. His eyes glowed with a strange, sickly red light, but any other detail about him was lost amid the darkness and red lyrium miasma surrounding him. “I’m here, Solas.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “We saw you die.” His voice rang with a strange metallic echo, warped and wrong. “Yet you are no spirit. No illusion. How is this possible?”
“We traveled through time. I can’t explain it. I…”
“Allow me,” Dorian said, producing a key they had plucked off a Venatori jailer’s body. He unlocked the door and pulled it open, speaking as he worked. “In brief, no, we’re not dead. Not yet anyway. The spell Alexius cast displaced us in time. We just got here, so to speak, plucked directly from the throne room one year ago and dumped here. Simple, really.”
As Dorian explained, Solas emerged from the darkness, out into the blue light of the nearby torches. Iren stifled a gasp.
The red haze from the lyrium clung to his body, flickering around a frame that was dangerously thin. Already a slender yet lean man, now his wool shirt hung off him as though he were little more than bone, the knuckles of his hands like sharp peaks, his cheeks sunken in. Beneath his pale skin, turned bone white and ashen in the strange light of the dungeons, his veins stood out stark and bright red. Each beat of his heart sent a crimson glow webbing outward from his core, nearly in time with the pulsing of the red lyrium crystals around them. The blood vessels and pupils of his eyes shone with that same crimson light, and beneath his eyes, his skin had turned gray and black, bruised by exhaustion and months of torment.
He was a dead man walking. A corpse holding onto the barest thread of life.
But his focus was on Dorian. “Displaced in time,” he repeated, as if to himself. His focus sharpened, a sudden, almost frenzied urgency tinging his voice. “Can you reverse the process? You could return and obviate the events of the last year. It may not be too late.”
“That is the plan,” Dorian said. “You catch on quick. Good to know someone understands me around here.”
Solas frowned. “You would think such an understanding would stop me from making such terrible mistakes. You would be wrong.”
Iren was barely listening. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. His body bore the subtle signs and markings of a year’s worth of living as some madman’s prisoner, but the damage ran much deeper than the surface showed. The red lyrium haze, the glow that pulsed in his veins, that shone out from his eyes…it went far beyond any healing spell she knew, beyond any herbal remedy that she had memorized.
“Solas…what happened to you?” she asked quietly.
His ashen lips twisted in a grim, humorless smile. “Red lyrium. It kills, but slowly. I am dying.”
“Dying?”
She didn’t want to believe it, but she had never seen anything like this. He was…changed. Though he carried himself with the same somber gravity that he often adopted back at Haven, when all eyes were on him, he no longer stood as tall as before. The bend of his shoulders and the gauntness in his face spoke volumes. He was exhausted, worn down to nothing. All traces of his subtle humor and gentle kindness had been destroyed, replaced by cold detachment. His mind may be as sharp as ever, but physically, he was no more than a shadow of his former self.
It made her heart ache with a pain deeper and heavier than she dared name.
She reached out a hand to touch him. To do what, she didn’t know. Offer him comfort. Attempt a healing spell. See if he was even real. But he took a step back, out of her reach.
“Do not.” Though warped by the metallic tone, his words were firm and unyielding, almost sharp. “This is not something your healing magic can alter.”
“There must be something I can do. Or something I can try.”
“No. There is nothing. My death is inevitable. And there are more important things at stake.”
There was no room for argument in this tone. As if his death were no more than a minor, immutable fact. The evidence was carved into his body. Bruised deep into his skin. Radiating within his blood. He was dying.
But Iren pressed her lips together. “You’re not dead yet. Maybe I can—”
“No. I do not matter here. You do.”
A familiar exasperation rose up within her. “So there’s nothing I can do? Nothing at all?”
“No.” His jaw hardened and he clasped his hands behind his back, all sharp angles and steely silence. She clenched her hands at her sides, swallowing frustration that was little more than thinly veiled despair, and glared at him. For a moment, they merely gazed at each other, Solas’s usual grim sobriety weighed against her stubborn stare. Neither budged, until at last he sighed softly, relaxing a fraction.
“What you can do is this: return and make sure none of this ever occurs,” he said. “And if—when you succeed in returning to your own time, it’s best that you do not bring anything from this time back with you. This red lyrium is a slow poison without a cure. I cannot let it affect you, too.”
Her eyebrows drew together. “Can the effects of red lyrium spread so quickly? Just by touch?”
“Perhaps. It is better not to risk it.”
“So you don’t actually know.”
A flicker of irritation crossed his features, a ghost of the man she had befriended back in her timeline. It was good to see that that Solas still lived, buried deep within this new corrupted form. That somewhere beneath the unrecognizable frame he now bore, her friend was still within, with all his stubborn pride and ridiculous opinions.
It hurt as much as it comforted. This was no mere dream of the Fade. This was a new reality, a potential future. This Solas, with all his wounds and pain, was real. What he had lived through was real. All of this was real.
And in this timeline, she had abandoned him. He had every right to act coldly toward her.
It was her turn to relent. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. But Solas merely shook his head, silent.
“As charming as all this is,” Dorian interjected, glancing between them, “we should get back to the matter at hand. Alexius? Remember?”
“Alexius is not the one that need concern you,” Solas said. “He serves a master, the Elder One. He reigns now, unchallenged. After you stop Alexius, you must be prepared.”
“Prepared?” Iren asked. “For what?”
“To stop the Elder One.” He focused his glowing gaze on her, more serious than she had ever seen him. “I will tell you all I know. But remember this future, Iren. It may help you prevent it.”
—————
Solas spoke low as they moved through the remainder of the dungeons, checking for other survivors. He spoke of the Elder One assassinating Empress Celene and of the chaos that descended on Orlais. He spoke of an army of demons, pouring out of the rifts that only grew more numerous and more unstable without Iren there to close them. Even more gravely, he spoke of the Inquisition and Ferelden armies attempting assault after assault on Redcliffe Castle, always working separately, only for the Ferelden forces to retreat after three failed attempts. But not the Inquisition. In their final assault, only a few short months ago, they were overwhelmed by the demon armies of the Elder One and slaughtered, down to the last man.
“Even Cassandra?” Iren asked. “Cullen? Our friends?”
Solas shook his head. “I can only assume based on what I have heard, and what little I have seen. I have heard of no other survivors, other than myself, Varric, and Spymaster Leliana. Why they keep us alive now is a mystery. The Elder One has already won.”
“Don’t say that,” she said, sharp. “Anything can be stopped.”
Solas let out a short, rough laugh. “You would not say that if you had experienced these things firsthand. Any hope of stopping this Elder One died when the Veil was torn asunder.”
“You’re talking as if all of this is inevitable, even if I do make it back to my time,” she argued. “I can’t afford to think like that. I have to believe he can be defeated.”
“He can be defeated, but not by fools who ignore the dangers even when they are staring them in the face.”
Iren’s face flushed as her temper rose. “So I’m a fool now?”
“Yes, if you continue to treat this world like some dark fairy tale,” Solas snapped, anger flashing through his words. He stopped to face her. “In this world, the Elder One has already secured his victory, and the world has spiraled into chaos as a result. I am not telling you this to pass the time, Iren. These. Things. Happened.” He paused, searching her face, and then added firmly, “You cannot hope to defeat him if you close your ears to the truth now.”
She clenched her jaw, refusing to back down from his stare. But he was right. As was so often the case, he was right, even when she wanted to argue the finer points with him.
Pretending all of this was a dream would help no one. No matter how much she wished to convince herself that this could all be washed away, the evidence was all around her. Even if she did make it back to her timeline, she would have to carry these memories with her. The more tangibly they lingered in her mind, the better prepared she would be to predict the Elder One’s next moves. It made sense.
Much as she hated it.
Dorian, several paces ahead, turned to look back at the two of them. “I’ll just search the next room alone, then, shall I?”
They both ignored him. He shook his head and disappeared through another door, leaving them to their silent staring.
“All right,” she said quietly, after the silence had stretched on too long. “Then tell me everything. Starting with how I died.”
For the first time, a flicker of genuine pain crossed his face and he looked away. “No. Do not ask me that.”
“Solas, I’m not a child. There is no need to protect me.”
“You misunderstand. And it is of no benefit to you.”
She threw one hand into the air, exasperated. “According to who? You’ve talked of nothing but what has happened to everyone else, to this world—”
“Because it is the world that matters!”
“—but never once have you said how I died or what happened to you and Varric,” she continued, raising her voice over his. “How am I supposed to save you, or save myself, if I don’t know what I’m up against when I get back? How can I guarantee anything if I don’t know what I might face?”
“We do not matter so much as the world at large,” he said, his voice rough.
“You matter to me,” she snapped.
He shook his head again, turning his face away, and fixed his gaze on the far wall, his eyebrows lowered. Light and darkness cast his profile in stark relief, black and white, sharpening the planes and angles of his face. Pools of shadow gathered in the hollow of his cheek, of his throat, darkening the bruises beneath his eyes by contrast. In the flickering blue torchlight, the line of his jaw was honed to a knife’s edge. The only color came from the glow in his eyes, a scarlet shade the color of rage, a rage that was not his own but had been forced upon him, sinking into his blood, consuming him from the inside out.
For a moment, he looked lethal, a predator, ready to bear sharp fangs and lunge for the kill. And then the shadows shifted, and all she saw was the hollow death mask of a dying man running out of time.
This world had changed him. He was all shattered glass and ragged edges now. Sharp, brittle, trying to be strong and resolute but shredded raw by months spent in one small dungeon cell while corrupted lyrium slowly ate away at his body, his mind, his will. This whole time, whenever he spoke, his tone had been steely, almost cruel in its coldness. He was less patient here, more frenetic. No more the mentor or the teacher, the wisdom-giving friend, but a dread harbinger.
But the Solas she knew was still in there somewhere. She had seen him, a glimpse, flickering at the edge. And that faint specter of the man she had grown to care for was what kept her tethered here, grounding her in this reality, even as it wrung out her heart to see this world so horrifically twisted and empty. The Solas she knew would want her to equip herself with as much knowledge as possible to stop this Elder One. Even if it hurt. Perhaps especially if it hurt.
And whether this Solas or that Solas liked it or not, she would use that knowledge to save as many people as she could, starting with him.
She took a step closer to him. He flinched faintly and took a step away. Always keeping her just beyond arm’s reach.
“Please,” she whispered. “Tell me what happened the day I di—I disappeared.”
At first, he pretended not to hear her. But then he released a breath through his nose, glancing sidelong at her. It only took another second or two for him to cave. “Very well. I had forgotten how stubborn you were.”
She smiled slightly. “Indomitable focus, remember?”
A hint of a smile passed over his lips. The first real smile, however faint, she had seen in this dreadful world, other than Dorian’s cavalier smirks. His eyes softened. “I do.”
It was the hint of encouragement she needed. She took another small step closer, prompting him with a quiet, “So…?”
This time he didn’t step away. But his expression grew somber again as he lowered his gaze to the floor between them. It took him a moment to find his voice.
“The magic Alexius used to transport you to this time appeared to us as a tear in the fabric of reality. It ripped apart your body in seconds before sealing itself closed, leaving behind nothing more than scorch marks and silence. It was…” He swallowed, his throat bobbing. “Swift. Swift and unstoppable. There was nothing I—nothing we could do.”
Iren said nothing, letting the severity of the memory settle over her. She tried to imagine it from his perspective…and failed. He had painted the scene in so few brushstrokes…
A realization washed over her with a cold shiver. His hesitancy, the pain that had crossed his features the first time she had asked, his resistance…it all suddenly made sense. It wasn’t her he was trying to protect from the memory.
It was himself.
“With you gone,” he continued, not noticing her sudden chill, “Alexius unleashed his forces upon us, ensuring that none would escape. Varric and I fought to the point of exhaustion, down to the last crossbow bolt and wisp of magic. But Alexius’s forces were too numerous. They wasted no time chaining us to our cells. There, we have remained. Until now.”
“Solas…I…”
He passed a hand over his eyes as if shielding himself from seeing the past. “Forgive me,” he whispered. “If I had been stronger, more powerful…none of this would have happened.”
“Don’t talk like that,” she chided quietly. Creators, what she wouldn’t give to touch him, red lyrium or not. She felt so useless standing there an arm’s length away while he tore open old wounds to sate her foolish curiosity.
She shouldn’t have asked. She shouldn’t have pushed for answers. Wasn’t that how they ended up in this mess? In every mess? Because she couldn’t leave anything well enough alone? If the blame had to be laid at anyone’s feet for all the horrors of the last year, it should be at hers, not his.
She chanced another step closer. “None of this is your fault, Solas. You can’t blame yourself for what happened in this world.”
He dropped his hand with a mirthless laugh, shaking his head. “You say that with such conviction, but you have no idea what I have—” He cut himself off, turning his face away, his hands clenched at his sides. He took a deep breath. “What I have experienced. You know nothing of this world. It is far worse than you understand. To you, this will be nothing more than a terrible dream. But in this world, an entire year has passed, the people crushed beneath the whims of the Elder One and his armies. If you had seen what I have seen…endured what I have endured…”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and then again, stronger this time, “Solas, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t mean to cause you more pain.”
“No. There is nothing you can do or say to cause me any more pain than I have already endured.” And just like that, his vehemence cooled, leaving behind only weary acceptance. “And you are right. You must know what you are up against.”
He took a slow breath, meeting her gaze once more with careful detachment. She struggled to hide her disappointment and her guilt. Any ground she had gained moments ago was lost. He was back to grave business once again, the Solas she knew buried deep down where he could no longer be hurt.
“Now…I trust your curiosity is now satisfied?” he asked. Without waiting for her answer, he turned toward the door Dorian had disappeared through some time ago. “We must find Varric and a way to reach Alexius. That is all that matters here. We should waste no more time.”
Then he stepped through to the next corridor, leaving her alone in the cold darkness of the dungeon chamber.
She struggled with herself a moment, wrangling guilt and shame and embarrassment into something she could swallow. She was such a fool. Silent, she followed after him, heading past yet another row of cells trying to focus on the tasks ahead.
They found Varric shortly after, safe and sound. Or as safe and sound as one could be after a year spent in a dungeon cell surrounded by red lyrium. Like Solas, he looked gaunt and pale, a dying man’s husk for his normally stocky and well-built body, but he spoke with his usual casual levity. Though it seemed more forced and less vibrant than usual, he acted as though none of this horrific future had actually affected him.
But Varric had always been a very good liar.
“Solas told us everything,” Iren said. “The Elder One, all that he’s done…”
Varric nodded. “Yeah. To say it’s ‘bad’ out here is an understatement. The past year has been a damn nightmare.”
“Are you all right?” she asked. She heard Solas snort quietly behind her and winced. “Right, stupid question.”
But Varric just gave her a crooked grin. “I think I look pretty good for a dead man, honestly. Just saying, the not-dying version of this red lyrium stuff? Worse. Way worse.”
“Were you in there with the red lyrium this whole time?” she asked cautiously. She knew how much Varric hated it. How much it had cost him.
“The red lyrium came later,” Solas answered for him, his face carefully blank. “After the first few methods of torture proved insufficient to produce any new information about you.”
Torture. He said it in a tone so matter-of-fact, she nearly missed it. She stared, speechless with muted horror, but he was already moving on. Already gathering himself up and drawing away toward the door.
Varric grimaced. “Aw, Chuckles, you don’t have to scare her like that.”
“She wants to know,” was Solas’s distant answer.
“You were tortured?” Iren whispered, looking to Varric for an answer. But Varric just shrugged.
“These Venatori don’t appreciate a good story,” he muttered under his breath. Then he followed Solas toward the door.
Iren learned to stop asking questions after that.
—————
Iren caught a glimpse of the torture methods of the Venatori firsthand as they burst in to save Leliana. If anything, she looked worse than the others, her skin mottled and unnaturally gray, her blighted flesh hanging off her bones as though all the strength and vitality had been sucked from her body by some vampiric demon. She bore no traces of red lyrium corruption, but she was dying as surely as the others. Everyone was dying here.
Leliana had even less patience for rehashing the details of the past than Solas, though it was Dorian attempting to ask for details this time.
Enough! This is all pretend to you. Some future you hope will never exist. I suffered. The whole world suffered. It was real.
Iren’s eyes had been on the bloodied and rusted torture elements when Leliana spat those words out to Dorian. Though they lay inert now, all she could see were the brands blazing white hot, inching toward her friends’ bodies, the sharp pokers and tools with which they could cut, slice, stab, tear…
What marks did her friends bear that she couldn’t see? Scars healed by time, or possibly even magic, as Alexius forced them to stay alive in hopes that they would reveal some secret about her, even after she was supposedly dead.
Torture. Red lyrium. Demons. Death.
It was real.
Her words rang in Iren’s head as they made their way, stoic and silent, through the rest of the lower floors, creeping ever upward and forward toward the surface. She was only half-paying attention when Dorian opened the door leading out into the courtyard, only distantly aware of the green-tinted light spilling through the doorway. She heard Dorian swear in Tevene and dragged her gaze up to see what had alarmed him.
She stepped out into the courtyard with a gasp.
“The Breach! It’s…”
“Everywhere,” Dorian finished. He looked shaken for the first time in that dark future.
What had formerly been just one ugly, green-glowing wound in the heavens had spread, the very sky rippling and churning with sickly-looking clouds and ribbons of Fade light. Colossal columns of stone hung suspended in the air while whole chunks of buildings and ruined towers floated over their heads, as though bits of the Black City that hovered just out of sight in the Fade had been brought to bear down upon the mortal, living world. The grass at their feet bent not from the brush of a natural breeze but from hazy washes of magic that swept around them like filmy curtains, thin but tangible even to the naked eye. All around them, flakes of ash and small rocks floated skyward, drawn in by the pull of the Breach, by the gravity of a sky so shattered there was nothing solid left to rely on.
The overall effect was so disorienting, Iren nearly lost her footing simply standing just beyond the doorway. More than anything else she had seen so far, this nearly brought her to her knees. Her mind struggled to make sense of where the world ended and the Fade began, where the Veil was supposed to be, which parts were meant to be mutable Fade structures and which were the hand-hewn stones and walls of Redcliffe Castle. She stared up at the broken head of an Andraste statue, larger than any statue she’d ever seen for any Creator, god, or prophet, as it hung suspended and slowly rocking in the sky. No such carving existed near Redcliffe, of that she was certain.
The world was warped, shifting, neither Fade nor not-Fade but something in between that refused to make sense. The longer she gazed up at the sky, the more she felt as though she would fall into it, her feet lifting from the ground like the small stones around her, the whole world tilting as she was dragged upward into that sea of green and gray.
She staggered, catching herself with her staff, and forced her eyes onto something that wasn’t moving. The flagstones at her feet. “I don’t understand.”
“The Veil is shattered,” Solas said, joining her outside and staring up at the sky. He leaned more heavily on his staff now for support, the shadows beneath his eyes darkening in the eerie green light.  “There is no boundary now between the world and the Fade.”
Shattered. There was no Veil here. Nothing keeping the Fade from spilling over and twisting the world, rewriting the rules, and leaving only chaos in its wake. No more Thedas apart from the Fade. No more Fade apart from the world. It was all one and the same.
And it was hell.
She saw Solas’s jaw clench. “It is not supposed to be this way.”
“Understatement of the age, Chuckles,” Varric muttered, but Solas ignored him. He turned to Iren instead, red-glowing eyes intense in the fluid light of the broken sky.
“This world is an abomination,” he said, every word weighted. “It must never come to pass.”
She nodded. Something in his tone spoke of warning beyond the threat of the Elder One, but she couldn’t discern what. And with very little time on their side and the Elder One the most immediate threat, she elected not to ask.
“I’ll do everything I can to keep this from ever happening,” she said solemnly. “Ever again. I swear it.”
“Good,” he murmured.
“Let us put those words to the test, Herald,” Leliana said, drawing her bow and notching an arrow. Iren followed the point of the arrowhead over to the upper level of the courtyard, where several demons prowled, eager for something new to hunt and devour. “There are still many obstacles between us and the throne room where Alexius cowers and hides.”
Iren readied her staff with a nod. Even here, demons could be killed. First them, then Alexius, and eventually, one day, the Elder One. Simple.
For now.
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akechi-if-he-slayed · 9 months ago
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ap bio exam so bad i started drawing shuake inside the mc packet
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trafalgarlawsdepression · 1 year ago
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vampire and vampire hunter au bc halloween ig. lore is that zoro is a dogshit vampire and sanji is a dogshit vampire hunter and they live cringe ever after
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kindahoping4forever · 2 years ago
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Three new clips of Ashton performing with Joshua and the Holy Rollers last night
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saryasy · 3 months ago
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just made a giant jar of pesto having never tasted it before so I don't even know how close or far I am 😭
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