#jen's scribbles

[jenthetranskitsune]

Love having writer's block while working on a pivitol chapter :) sooo funn..

To the few who follow me/my side blog for Eye On The Skye, sorry, it's probably gonna be a bit till the next chapter... I have a few one shots/shorter stories that won't leave my brain so I'll probably get some of those finished before ch 13

[scribe-kitsune]

The sound of boots on metal made her look up to see Ward approaching her. She avoided letting her hand instinctively twitch towards her knife. “We should talk.” She raised an eyebrow, those were not great words to start with, “About?” He took & released a breath, leaning against the railing a few feet from where she was sitting under it, “You’ve been avoiding me.” Skye winced. She had been hoping that the specialist had somehow not noticed that. “Yeah, so?”

This took longer than expected.

[graveyardcrab]

feeling good feeling sassy

practice sketches… first time drawing him

bad habit of changing my styles

[devilatelier]

[jenoutof10]

an alternate version + sketch

i dont usually share sketches but i do like the sketch better than the finished product for this one LOL so here. i was struggling sb

vampire reo bcs i can 🎉

also cs olivia rodrigo's new song is crazy good sorry LOL

[sapphic-kpop-fics]

Fri(end)s (Huh Yunjin x Reader)

Angst, kinda unhealthy situationship, kinda happy ending where they get their shit together.

You're in my head

I had plans for the weekend

But wound up with you instead

Back here again

Yunjin hadn’t answered any of your texts this week, after you had seen each other the Saturday before and hooked up like you had in the past. It had always ended this way, you hook up, argue a bit while she insists you’re just friends

“Y/n?” you heard as soon as you answered the call from Yunjin, her voice raspy like she had been crying.

You were currently getting ready to hang out with your friends and go to a club.

“Jen? Everything okay?”

“Can you come over?” Her voice wobbles like she’ll start crying any second, your heart breaks for her but you shouldn’t blow off your friends to comfort your situationship, right? This is was something that happened often, her calling you only when she’s upset or horny or usually both.

“Jen, I wish I could but I’m actually busy.”

“Oh…” a deep breath, and you can hear her start to cry a bit, “okay, that’s okay…I’m sorry for calling, I shouldn’t have. Go have fun.” She rushes out the words so her voice wouldn’t tremble as much when she spoke.

“Wait Jen. I’ll be there 20.”

“Thank you.” And the she hangs up.

You press the contact of your best friend, Yeji.

“Hey Yeji…” you start

“Don’t tell me you’re canceling again.” She said already knowing where this was heading.

“I’m sorry..”

“Are you going to see her?”

“What? No.” Not believable at all.

“God dammit y/n, I told you, you have to stop seeing her. She’s literally ruining you.”

“No she’s not.” You insist.

“Just last night you were crying in my apartment because she hadn’t texted you back in a week.” Yeji argues, proving her point.

“I can’t help it… she sounded really upset.” you admit, voice quiet.

“I know.” Your best friend knows you’re still going to go see the girl, as you weren’t very good at self control when it came to her, “Be careful. Try not to end the night yelling and crying this time.” A reference to the many arguments you and Yunjin shared, mostly at her lack of feelings but she’d say it’s because you have too many feelings.

So you go to her dorm, where Chaewon lets you in and gives you a pitiful look, even her members knew that the way she treated you wasn’t okay. You didn’t want to think about the amount of people who felt that way, like you were prey trapped and unwilling to leave even when rescued.

You softly knock on her door and whisper a “jen?”

“Come in.” It’s small, almost unheard through the thick wood of the door.

When you walk in, your heart kinda breaks. She’s sitting on the floor in front of her bed, arms around her knees with ripped paper littering the floor in front of her, lyrics scribbled on the tiny pieces. You sit next to her silently waiting for her to open up.

“I love my job. But people can be so horrible sometimes.”

You had figured her songwriting had been a topic among hateful “fans” online from the scattered paper in front of you.

Her head leans against your shoulder now and instinctively you wrap your arm around her. And you sit there like that in silence for hours until she feels better, once again throwing away your night to help the girl.

Friends, just for now

Yeah, but friends don't say words that

Make friends feel like more than just

Friends

“You’re so beautiful you know that?”

You both were drunk after a night out with mutual friends and of course, you ended up in Yunjin’s bed without your clothes. The compliments weren’t normal though, Yunjin would say you’re hot and compliment you of course she wasn’t a monster however it was only during sex but here she was cuddling into you, whispering little compliments and confessions as if it’s nothing, you assume the alcohol has something to do with it.

“I wish I could treat you better.” You freeze your hand that’s rubbing her back when she finishes, “it’s just so….scary.” Her words are slurred, obvious she’s still drunk and so are you which is why you make no move to stop her from talking, “you deserve better.” Is all she gets out before falling asleep in your arms.

Friends are not supposed to get too close

And feel emotions that

We're feeling now, now, now

We ain't slowing down, down, down

It was another night where she had called you late, asking you to come over, saying she “needed” you in that pouty voice to get what she wants. So here you were standing in her room after she took all of her weeks frustration out on you, looking at her as she’s turned away from you.

“I think I love you.” You whisper as the ginger girl is getting dressed after one of your nights together. She freezes as she’s about to button her pants and sighs, you know what the sigh means and you knew this would be her response but you wanted her to know how you felt.

“I’m sorry, i don’t feel the same.” She deadpans, though you can tell she’s masking something underneath, “you said that was okay.”

“…it is.”

“Great.” She says as she starts walking to her door to open it as a gesture to get you to leave.

“I shouldn’t have fucking answered.” You mumble, meant to only be said to yourself but of course she heard you.

“But you did. You always do.” Finally turning to look at you, “it’s pathetic really. The way you come crawling to me no matter what I do.”

“That’s not true.”

“Really? I can bet that if I called you tomorrow after insulting you all night, you’d still answer.”

“That’s not true.” You shake your head, though you know it is true. It’s like something takes over you when she calls and you can’t control anything.

The way she laughs at you is mocking, and mean. She could be mean sometimes, not often, only when she was particularly stressed with her schedules and you were usually the one she took it out on whether it was in bed for hours or insulting you and mocked you until you cried and left.

“Oh really? Then what happened tonight?” Her head tilts, a challenge.

She was right, last week had ended exactly as it was going now and of course as soon as she called you answered and came over. Just like she said. You didn’t answer, avoiding her eyes that are staring at you. Tears dripped from your eyes.

“Are you fucking crying?” She scoffed, “i think you should go.” She finalized.

You don’t take another second to think before you’re pushing past her and out her door, tears falling more frequently now. Unfortunately, Chaewon sits on the couch in the living room right next to the door you have to leave out of. Her eyes connect with yours and there’s a mix of pity and worry.

“Are you okay?” She asks, but you knew she heard what was said and that Yunjin tells her everything.

“Fine.” Is all you say before opening the door and leaving, you hear Chaewon yell for Yunjin before the door closes fully, her voice angry.

Now, I'm over pretending

So let's put the "end" in friends

You’re sitting on Yunjin’s bed as she paces her room and lectures you once again on how she doesn’t want a relationship and she just wants to be friends that have fun together.

“We’re friends. That’s it.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” She affirms, voice hard, she means it.

‘’Maybe we shouldn’t be.”

“What?” Yunjin had only now started showing emotions other than annoyance at you.

“Maybe we should…. Put the end in friends if you know what I mean.”

“No. I need you.”

You laugh, it’s a bitter one as opposed to all the other times she made you laugh, a chill goes up Yunjin’s spine at the sound, looking to the ground as you do so.

“No you don’t. I don’t think you ever really did.”

“That’s not true.” Sounding familiar to one of the last times you saw her, this time she’s saying it.

“Don’t lie Yunjin. You never cared about me.”

Yunjin flinches a bit at the use of her full name, you had never called her that not even during your worst arguments, you had only and always called her Jen.

“I did. I cared.”

“You have a shitty way of showing it.”

Being faced with the truth, Yunjin’s heart feels like it’s shattering. The consequences of her actions had finally caught up to her, unfortunately one of them was losing you.

“You should go Yunjin. I don’t want to see you ever again.”

Your cold voice surprises Yunjin, it was a stark contrast to how you would speak to her even if arguing you never really raised your voice at her. It shocks her so much that she doesn’t hesitate to finish getting dressed and walking right out of the door without another word.

4 months later..

In your bed as you try and rest for the night your phone buzzes three times next to you.

Huh Yunjin

Hey.

I know it’s been a while.

I miss you.

You

Leave me alone.

Huh Yunjin

Open the door.

You’re confused at the message but then you heard a knock, this crazy woman actually showed up. You didn’t know if you felt upset or happy, I mean yes you shouldn’t be seeing her especially after four months of silence but then again she had never made the effort to show up to your place and talk to you, unless she was drunk.

When you look through the eye hole in your door, you see Yunjin same as a few months earlier but her hair is now a red color. Her eyes are red and puffy like she had been crying, she’s wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt as opposed to her usual attire when seeing you. She looked broken and it hurt you, so you open the door. Her watery eyes look at you in surprise when you finally open it, walking in after a few seconds of staring at you.

“Why are you here?” You ask as soon as your door is closed.

“Um-I-I don’t know.” She stutters, “i just wanted to see you i guess.”

You had never seen her like this before the usual confident girl was fidgeting with her hands and her eyes are fixed on her shoes, her voice was quieter than usual and sadness laced all of her words. You don’t know why you do it, an hour ago you would’ve said you hated her and you still might but your feet are moving and suddenly your arms are wrapped around her. She freezes in shock but returns the hug, her arms squeezing you tightly enough that you wouldn’t be able to get away, now that she is comforted by you the tears that filled her eyes are rapidly rolling down her face as she cries on your shoulder.

“I’m sorry.” She says after she calms down.

“For what?”

“Everything.”

You’re still hugging, Yunjin’s death grip not lightening yet.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you since we last talked.” Now starting to pull away from you, “I treated you horribly and you didn’t deserve it. We were never just friends not since we met I know that, I was just scared.”

“J-“

“I love you.” She cuts you off, she had said the words before in bed while fucking you but you didn’t know if she meant it and you still couldn’t tell.

“I don’t trust you.” You say, plain and simple, you felt sugarcoating was pointless at this point.

“You shouldn’t.” Her head shakes, “but I would really like if you gave me the chance to earn it back.”

“I don’t know Jen. I don’t wanna get hurt anymore.”

“I’ll be better. I will do anything.” The ginger girl grabs your hands, “I want to be with you, for real this time. And I’m such an idiot for not realizing sooner.”

“Yeah, you are.” With a playful smile that Yunjin returns, the tense air now becoming more comfortable. Her forehead rests against yours.

“Does this mean you’ll give me a chance?” Her voice is hopeful, and she’d be embarrassed by the pathetic nature of her question.

“It’s going to take a while.” She pulls her head away shocked, not expecting you to actually agree, “we can’t just go back to how we were, I’m talking starting from scratch.”

“I can do that.” She agrees a little too quickly.

“Go home.” You tell her as you let go of her hands a few moments later.

“I can’t stay?”

“Starting from scratch Yunjin. Take me on a date first and then you can maybe have sleepovers.”

“You’re going to be the death of me.” A smile on her face, then she walks out of the door giving you one last smile, excited to get home and plan a date so she can finally prove how much she wants you.

——————————————————————————

Part 2 where Yunjin experiences growth and earns your trust back and is the best gf ever???

[qilingxiong]

九龍城寨之圍城 | Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024)

I've rewatched this movie more than once, since seeing it in theatres back in August, and each time was just as good as the first if not better. Given that, I now have many thoughts so I'm subjecting y'all to listening to why you should watch it:

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (九龍城寨之圍城 or gau2 lung4 sing4 zaai6 zi1 wai4 sing4) is a martial arts action/crime film directed by Soi Cheang. It is an adaptation of the manhua City of Darkness by Andy Seto, and its source novel of the same name by Yuyi. The film's cast has established Hong Kong names folded in with newer-generation actors, starring Raymond Lam, Louis Koo, Sammo Hung, Richie Jen, Terrance Lau, Philip Ng, German Cheung, and Tony Wu (Aaron Kwok gets a cameo role, too).

At a broad glance, the movie follows several major triads in 1980s Hong Kong and their power struggle to control the Kowloon Walled City (a densely populated urban enclave, which for decades evaded direct governance by either the British colonial or Chinese powers in the area). We're introduced to the KWC and the triads' major players through the eyes of Chan Lok-Kwan (Raymond Lam), a man fleeing Vietnam and attempting to make a life for himself in HK. He winds up seeking refuge in the KWC, and comes to call both the city and the people he meets in it a home worth defending.

The narrative itself is not the most complex, but if you enjoy '80s Hong Kong films in these genres, it's solid fare and a harkening back to that decade. All the major themes like brotherhood (and brotherhood vs blood), vengeance, and struggle with conflicting loyalties are there, alongside an internal search for identity and belonging within Hong Kong. But the highlight in it is that the plot connects feast after feast of utterly stunning fight choreography, made all the more impressive by the fact that, according to Louis Koo, quite a few major cast members had never filmed this kind of action before. All their training was done just for TotW, and oh, does it pay off. I can't make good gifs, so you'll have to watch and see for yourself. It's not action for action's sake, either; listening to the head stunt choreographer discuss how different characters' fighting styles were crafted shows off how fight scenes aren't breaks in the story, they tell the story, and deepen our understanding of the characters.

The setting of the Kowloon Walled City truly makes the action in TotW stand out. It's a unique space to stage all these major fights, as the KWC's buildings at the time were packed together close enough to resemble a singular block from the outside. Once inside, it's a stacked, dark maze of uneven paths, stairs, and rickety roofs, with electrical and television cabling snaking over/around/through everything. Fight scenes in these streets feel thrillingly claustrophobic, with lots of acrobatics and near-dodges as characters navigate these tight alleys of the KWC. Each impact as a character goes flying into a wall, or is launched down a flight of stairs or onto a roof, is wonderfully visceral to watch.

All credit and hopefully awards are due to the production and set design teams for their work, in crafting this environment for the story and its fights. The visual/spatial representation of the KWC is the film's other glorious highlight, alongside the choreography. Whole streets of the KWC were recreated for this, filled with every mundane, period-accurate detail from the lives of ordinary people who would have lived there. It's impossible to catch all the intricacies put into making the KWC come to life again onscreen, just from watching the film. Shots like the credits sequence offer close-ups of harder-to-see details, and videos like a tour of the KWC set by Terrance Lau, acting as his character Shin, show off things from the drinks in the fridge at the corner store to the scribbled writing on the walls by the public taps. This film was designed with a drive to faithfully represent what the Kowloon Walled City had been like, how it looked when it was lived in, and they achieved it to an incredible degree.

That dedication extends to more than just the sets, though. The emotional core of TotW revolves around the KWC's inhabitants, and how they were the ones who made the city what it was, a home for about 35,000 people at a time. The film doesn't treat the KWC as just an eye-catching location to stage some fights; its characters might be fictional and overloaded with jianghu powers, but it goes out of its way to show how ordinary people might have lived, worked, and socialized within the historic city. It shows off why, despite its (not unwarranted) dark reputation, so many chose to live in a place that was once the densest urban center on the planet.

And this brings us to the acting, because the cast all do a very good job bringing their characters to life as the heart of the KWC. Louis Koo is fucking fantastic and arguably the scene stealer of the film as Cyclone, the triad leader in current charge of the KWC. He's grumpy, magnetic, and dangerous when he must be, but he also cares so very, very deeply about the inhabitants within his jurisdiction. Terrance Lau's Shin acts as his charismatic and capable right hand man, as well as protégé to Cyclone, befriending Chan Lok-Kwan and helping him become accustomed to life in the KWC. These two, along with the snarky Twelfth Master (Tony Wu) and the masked + imposing AV (German Cheung) become a quartet with great chemistry and friendship, the next generation to watch over and protect the Kowloon Walled City. Outside the KWC cast, antagonist figures like Sammo Hung, Philip Ng, and Richie Jen's characters are intimidating and compelling as threats to the city, and the lives people have etched out within its walls.

All of these things put together, and Twilight of the Warriors is a deeply fun, enjoyable, and rewatchable film (so good, in fact, that Hong Kong has submitted it as its nomination for the 2025 Oscars). The movie doesn't lose its emotional throughline in the promise of an action-packed ride it fully delivers on, and it uses its narrative, setting, and choreography to pay tribute to an earlier era of Hong Kong, as well as highlight + humanize a piece of the region's history that might not be quite as well known to some.

(The Kowloon Walled City was demolished and its inhabitants relocated in 1993. The area where it once stood is now a park, with some historic buildings preserved. If you're curious about people in the KWC before demolition, City Of Darkness: Life In Kowloon Walled City (1993) by Greg Girard and Ian Lambot is a collection of photographs and first-hand recountings from residents, recording their lives and stories. I'm in the midst of reading it right now.)

If anything I've said has piqued your interest whatsoever, I say to give Twilight of the Warriors a try, if you have a free two hours to spare. Something in it will be worth it for you. And if I've failed to convince you with any of this, or you need one more push, here's the trailer for the film:

And if I did manage to actually get anyone to seek out this movie, please tell me! I'd love to know your thoughts.

[moonkake-143]

𝐄𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞'𝐬 𝐋𝐚𝐛𝐲𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐡 | Into the Labyrinth

Goblin King!Eddie X AFAB/Fem!Henderson Reader

Edited By the lovey: Jen

Contents: Slow Burn, One sided pining from Eddie turned mutual, love at first sight, fluff, angst, no use of y/n

Summery: Your time starts now and your first challenge awaits.

Chapter 2/? {wc: 5.7k}

Masterlist

Part 1  Part 2

The walk felt long and arduous, especially with the sun beating down on you as hard as it did. How odd it was that you were just under the cover of darkness back home— it had been cold and stormy, but here the sun was high up in the sky, with clouds only partly covering the land. Below you, the grassy hill felt as if it went on forever, and for a beat, you thought it did— a sick trick already at the start, but one thing remained a constant in your mind.

        Find Dustin and get out of there.

        You thought those words over and over like a mantra, or hell, even a prayer, pushing yourself forward despite the burning sun. Despite the clock that timed you from the top of that damn hill. Despite the handsome, curly-haired man who brought you here in the first place.

        Cursing him, you shook your head and continued your trek, finally reaching the bottom of the hill and landing on a dirt road. The surrounding fields were barren, and crops rotted in tipped-over barrels. The area was devoid of life, and as the smell of charcoal invaded your nostrils, you scrunched your nose in disgust, picking up the pace. With sunken thatch roofs, the houses were charred, and when you came closer, you noticed arrows stuck in the rotting wood. You noticed the claw marks that scarred the doors and the rust-colored stains that marred the sides of the cottages. There had been some sort of struggle; a carnage that had been long forgotten, but there were no bodies in sight— as if they had just up and vanished.

       Just what happened here?

        As you walked, the ash-stricken houses began to converge the closer you walked towards the forest, as if a village was waiting deep inside. A growing uneasiness followed you until you finally stopped in front of a signpost, realizing that the dirt road forked into two paths— one that went into the forest, and another that continued towards abandoned farmland. Both signs were illegible, written in a language that resembled the scribbles of a two year-old. But even if you could translate them, the wooden signs were so damaged, rotting and falling apart, that you struggled to decide which way to go.

        Without warning, a gust of wind swept through you, and you shivered, rubbing your arms to combat the sudden chill. Now you really wished you had a jacket, rather than just a tank top. However, you noticed that the wind whisked a trail of leaves into the woods.

        If that wasn't a sign, then you didn't know what was.

        Taking a deep breath, you followed them down the path.

        Time seemed to stand still as you walked through the damp forest, but then again, time felt a lot different here. The trees provided a much-needed cover from the burning sun, casting gloomy shadows. It seemed to be a logging camp, with a scattering of wooden cabins that looked in better shape then the ones outside, but were still unsettling to walk past. You found more arrows, with rusty axes embedded in the trunks of trees, but nature seemed to overtake them. Grass and daisies grew in the gaps between abandoned machinery, covering the pieces in moss. More houses seemed to go deeper into the forest, all seemingly abandoned and overgrown.

        As you walked, the humidity caused your hair to frizz up and covered your entire body in an uncomfortable layer of sweat. You let out a huff and wiped the condensation from your brow, your legs aching.

        How long had you been walking for? Was this all for nothing? Had you gone the wrong way? Was there no labyrinth at all? Questions swirled around your mind as your chest swelled, your breath shortening. The heat was not helping— it felt suffocating, as if the entire forest was a damp sauna. What was it with this sudden change in weather?

       With a ragged breath, you finally stopped walking, and your vision blurred with tears. Anxiety gnawed at your very core, your body tensing and trembling as you buried your face in your hands, taking deep breaths. Slowly, you tried to steady yourself, your head aching and pulse pounding. As the pain in your chest subsided, you lowered your palms from your eyes, slowly opening them.

        In front of you wasn't the dirt path, but a large gate— one that hadn’t been there before. It was tall and deeply ornate, with a stone arch and iron bars that were curled into what looked like bats. Moss and vines twisted along the cobblestone pillars on either side, but what caught your eye was the wide, seemingly endless wall that encompassed the labyrinth. You slowly walked up to it, grabbing onto the iron bars and pulling— but the gate was locked.

        "Come on, I've come this far…” you sighed.

        "Halt! Who goes there?”

        Jumping in surprise, you spun and frantically looked for the source of the voice, bringing your arms up in a defensive position— albeit a rather weak one.

        "Who’s there?!” you called out.

        The disembodied voice seemed to chuckle at your attempt at intimidation.

        "I should be asking you that! What brings a human to my neck of the woods?”

        The voice sounded feminine and held a jolly lilt of humor, one that eased your stance slightly. Looking around, you kept your fists up, stepping forward. Maybe those karate classes from elementary school would kick in if something did happen.

        Then as swift as the wind, someone from the top of the gate dropped behind you.

       "Boo!”

        Yelping, you tripped and landed on your bottom, stirring up dust that caused you to cough.

        Curse your lack of instincts and balance. Those classes did nothing to prepare you.

        When the dust settled, you found a pair of striking blue-green eyes staring you down. You let out a gasp, quickly scooting backwards in a feeble attempt to crabwalk away from her. She was sun-kissed, as if she spent her life outside, with freckles dotted across her nose— or was it dirt? You couldn't tell, but she was studying you like a specimen, her eyebrows married in concentration at the possibility of you being a threat. But then she relaxed and flashed a sharp-toothed smile, her teeth both blinding and scary.

        "So it is you! The girl Eddie’s always on about!”

        "Wh-What?”

        "Oh, sorry for startling you— here, lemme help you up.”

        She grabbed your forearm, hoisting you up as if you weighed nothing, and you winced as her sharp claws lightly grazed your skin. Her dirty-blonde hair was chopped just above her shoulders, her eyes crinkling under her wide grin. How could she smile even more?

        "Who are you?”

        "Oh right, I’m Robin! I watch over this gaudy-looking gate!”

        Robin stepped back from you, and it was then that you fully took her in. She wore a similar outfit to Eddie's, dressed in a poet shirt and tight trousers, with gloves fit for an archer. Slung over her back was a longbow and a quiver of arrows, and a dagger was sheathed to her hip. Gold piercings adorned her ears, which were long and pointed— something you had only ever read about in fantasy novels.

        "You’re an elf…?”

        "Oh hells no! A goblin, actually! Never seen a goblin before? We're nothing like those posh pricks!"

        "No, I've never seen a real goblin before..."

        "And it's been a while since I've seen a human! They're quite rare around here.”

        Shaking your head, you stared at her in awe. Goblins always were depicted as small, evil green things, but Robin— she looked human. It made you wonder what elves really looked like.

        "I know, I am quite stunning, but I'm afraid I'm taken!"

        You realized you were staring for longer than was socially acceptable, and your face turned bright red as you broke your stare.

        "You're really the girl he's always talking about, huh? I can see why he likes you.” The relaxed tone disappeared from her voice, her previous expression returning as she studied you. The goblin woman then began to circle you like a vulture, sizing you up and scanning you from head to toe.

        "What? Why are you doing that? Robin, right? Please, can you let me inside?”

        "Woah, one question at a time. Start with the most important one.”

        "Can you please let me inside?”

        "I can, but that’s not the right question.”

        "What? What do you mean not the right question?”

        "You ask a lot of questions, huh?”

        Robin finally stopped in front of you and stared, a smile slowly appearing on her face. She was quiet, letting you stew in your own mind.

        What was she talking about? You said please, was that not enough?

        You turned your back to her, opening your arms and lifting them to the sky.

        "Open Sesame? Abracadabra?”

        Robin burst into a fit of laughter, her own face turning red as she clutched her abdomen, her shoulders shaking. You dropped your arms in embarrassment, cheeks flushing as you wracked your brain for what could have been the answer— why wouldn't she open the gate?

        Oh wait.

        "...Will you please open the gate?”

        "Now that’s more like it!”

        Robin turned and pushed vines aside to reveal a wooden lever, pulling it down. The mechanisms began to churn, the cranking of the gears becoming louder as you walked closer. Anxiety quickly settled into a permanent place in your stomach.

        "How bad is it?”

        "The truth? Terrifying. Are you really going in there?” Robin watched you with curious, worried eyes.

        "I have to…for my brother.”

        "You mean the brother you wished away? How admirable. But here’s your official warning: a mere human like you may not make it out alive. The labyrinth is no game to take lightly— you might forget which way is which, fall into a pit of spikes, or encounter a monster thirsty for blood— you'll never know what you might find.”

        Staring wide-eyed at the open gate, you turned to her.

        "There are monsters in here? You're not messing with me?“

        "Afraid not, but here— you might need this.”

        Robin unclipped her dagger, quick to wrap the belt around your waist.

        "Promise we’ll be friends if you make it out alive?”

        "When I make it out…”

        "That's the spirit! Now go get 'em! Don’t die!" Robin’s smile was blinding as she pushed you towards the entrance. "Good luck, and don’t take anything at face value!”

        You swallowed the lump in your throat as you stared at the stone walls, which seemed to beckon you inside. Taking a breath, you crossed under the gate, which quickly fell shut behind you with a loud bang. You jumped, turning to see the goblin woman waving from the other side.

        Letting out a surprised huff, you faced ahead once more.

        "Alright, I gotta find Dustin," you thought. "I've only got thirteen hours— how am I even going to track that? Robin mentioned monsters...at least she gave me this…"

        Pulling the dagger from its place on your belt, you examined it. It was a simple thing wrapped in leather, with a slightly curved blade. Embedded in the hilt was a red stone, possibly a ruby. You held it out and slashed at the air, imagining your target as someone with curly hair and brown doe eyes. Once satisfied with yourself, you sheathed it away and continued your journey.

        You walked slowly, taking in your surroundings and keeping a watchful eye out for any traps. Brown roots covered the stone walls and spilled onto the path in thick chunks. You carefully maneuvered around them, but the passage seemed to go on forever, and you slowly went from a walk to a jog, and from a jog to a sprint, running down the path with no end in sight.

        Your careless running finally caught up to you when you tripped over a thick, gnarled root, toppling over and tumbling to the ground. Knees digging into dirt, you huffed as you looked up, and from the corner of your eye, you saw it.

        The labyrinth was moving.

        By the looks of it, it changed ever-so slightly— nothing the careless eye could catch so quickly. The walls shifted in what looked to be a wave of magic, pulsating as if they were alive, and the root you had just tripped over slowly disappeared, rescinding into the stone crevices behind you. Was the labyrinth alive after all? Or was this Eddie’s doing?

        You punched the ground in frustration as the pain in your knees became a dull ache. Groaning, you sat up against the wall, your face red not just from exhaustion, but the anger that bubbled to the surface.

        "You can’t be serious!" you screamed at the bright blue sky, hoping someone— anyone— would listen. "What the actual fuck am I supposed to do? Hey, Eddie! Yeah, I have a feeling you can hear me, you prick! What the fuck!? You didn't say it fucking moves! Or that there were monsters in here!”

        You were met with dead silence as you leaned your head against the stone wall, catching your breath and closing your eyes.

        "Alright, this is fine, just breathe. This is like one of those DND campaigns. Yeah, okay, maybe none of this is even real. Did I finally lose it? What if Dustin is dead? Oh god, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself— what if I'm dead too?! What if mom finds me on the side of the road?!” Your ramblings carried through the silence of the labyrinth, hands trembling as you raked your fingers through your hair in anxious panic.

        Tears threatened to escape your eyes, and you tried to will them away, but had to shove your palms against your eyes to force them to hide. You wouldn’t cry, not over this, not over hypothetical scenarios. Dustin was alive— he had to be. You remembered his bubbly laugh. You remembered how curious he always was, often getting into trouble. You remembered how he tucked his head of curls under your chin when you watched movies together. Then you thought about how scared he must be without you there, in the dark and surrounded by terrifying monsters who could eat him if they wanted to. You tucked your knees close to your chest, hiccups erupting from your body as the tears you tried so hard to fight back flowed from your eyes.

        "Are you alright, dear?”

        You jumped at the sudden voice. It was a gentle thing, feminine and holding a motherly lilt that pulled you out of your internal dread. You searched for the source of it, eyes teary.

        "Would you like a spot of tea? I believe I have some leaves perfect for brewing.”

        The source of the voice finally revealed itself to you, hanging from a vine on the wall. Rubbing the tear stains from your cheeks, you leaned towards the creature. A spotted mushroom sat on its head, and delicate, glistening fairy wings sprouted from its back. You shook your head at the question.

        “What troubles you, my dear?”

        The fairy was small but seemed wise with age, with pointed ears that stuck out from her dark brown curls. Her skin was golden, as if the sun blessed her, and she wore a dress made of leaves. Her voice was warm and inviting, but her golden eyes looked you over with sorrow and worry— a mother's gaze, no doubt.

        "It’s this maze! It moves without warning! How am I supposed to get through it in thirteen hours?! Dustin is probably scared to death and it's all my fault!”

        "Oh dear, our king hasn’t properly warned you of the labyrinth, has he? Well, I can tell you with certainty that the brother you shed tears for is safely tucked away in his manor. Our king is kind and always watches over us, including little ol’ me. But in this place, things are not what you expect— for example, take that wall in front of you. It is no ordinary wall.”

        The fairy's wings gently fluttered as she lifted herself towards the wall. Placing a small hand against it, she seemed to keep floating forward.

        Slowly calming your tears, you picked yourself off the ground and approached the wall. Hand outstretched, you expected yourself to stop short, only you stumbled forward.

        "So it’s an illusion...” You walked further and were finally able to place your hand against the cobble, where you saw paths on either side. The fairy slowly settled onto your shoulder, her wings limply hanging downward.

        "I’m sorry, dear— my wings don’t quite flutter how they used to. Can you set me down near that mushroom there? Thank you.”

        "No, I should be thanking you. I needed your help.” You crouched and held your palm towards your shoulder. The fairy hopped onto it, and you set her on the dirt.

        "Oh dearie, it was nothing. Now go, he’s waiting for you!”

        "Thank you again.”

        The fairy gave you a warm smile before waving you away, her hands sparkling as you straightened up. There were two paths to choose from, both looking nearly identical. You looked to the right first, which was lined with spotted mushrooms, and then to the left, where flowers grew from stone walls. Your feet moved towards the left path, distracted by the flowers, but you stopped. 

        "Maybe the flowers are a trap. Their smell is so overwhelmingly sweet, it's giving me a headache— I can't go that way.”  You shook your head and swiftly turned to the right, following the mushrooms down the path.

        You walked and walked for what felt like hours, the pulsating walls shifting from gray cobblestone to green hedges, the changes taking place in your peripheral vision. When you looked over your shoulder, you noticed that shrubbery covered the opening you came through. You pulled the dagger from its sheath and carved an arrow into the ground, marking your path. Keeping the knife out, you trekked through the hedge maze, and when you reached a dead end, you sighed and turned back— only for the arrow mark to be missing.

        "What the hell? This is such a sick joke— I swear it was right here! Ugh!” You stomped, and the stone tile beneath your foot clicked. Your breath stalled short as your eyes darted around, but you saw nothing. You heard the sudden rustle of leaves, and turned to find that the dead end had opened into an archway. It could have been some sort of trap, but you were desperate, and hurried through the opening.

        The passage slowly opened to a courtyard surrounded by round hedge walls, and you froze as fear took hold of you. Between two pillars, you found a mysterious creature sleeping. It was blocking something— a door.

        "This has to be the way. Of course it wouldn’t be so easy. I need to find a way around this thing— whatever it is."

        You surveyed the creature from a distance, still frozen in fear and awe. Curled like a sleeping housecat, it resembled a golden lion with feathered wings. How were you going to get around it? Your sweaty fingers gripped the hilt of the dagger Robin had given you. It wasn’t much, but you took comfort in having something to defend yourself with. You inched forward, trying to find a way around the beast.

        The animal stirred and you froze immediately, sweat beading on your temple as you defensively held the knife in front of you. The creature then growled and twisted, stretching out in its sleep. A crystal ball rested under its paw, suddenly lighting up, and an all-too-familiar voice shouted through it.

        "Chrissy, wake up!”

        The creature hummed and swiped at the ball, which rolled its way towards you. Maybe this was your chance for contact— to see if your brother was alright.

        You quickly sheathed the dagger and dropped down to hoist the crystal ball into your hands, backing away from the creature. Larger than the one previously offered to you, the orb reflected a man with shaggy curls. You glared at his image, but Eddie's attention was elsewhere as he shouted at someone, his voice muffled by all the noise around him. In the background, you heard the sounds of goblins yelling and knocking each other over as something metal loudly clattered to the floor.

        "Eddie, the kid is causing too much trouble! He nearly decapitated little Mike with a sword just now! You watch him, I need a break!” 

        "Stevie you can't leave now! He likes you!"

        "Not my problem! And stop calling me that!

        The unknown man huffed in annoyance before walking off and Eddie rolled his eyes before he let out a heavy sigh. 

        "Some one else was watching over Dustin? And he was around a sword?!"

        Eddie's pointed ears twitched at a high-pitched scream and he groaned, before turning his head to face you.

        "How many times do I—? Oh hello, Miss Henderson.” His eyes widened, not expecting to see you on the other end of the crystal.

        "Where is he?” Your voice was low and angry as you quickly hid behind a pillar, but he seemed distracted.

        "Where’s who? Hey!" The ball jostled as it was ripped from his hands. "Get back here!” He started chasing after the thief, and when he seemed close, you heard childish laughter.

        "Dustin, is that you!?” Your eyes brimmed with tears as you clutched the ball close, a relieved sigh escaping— none of your fears had come true. 

        The laughter became louder as your brother’s gummy grin took center stage, his blue eyes crinkled with glee as he ran, the crystal shaking in his hands.

        "Dustin! Dustin! Are you okay?!” Your voice shook as you tried to get his attention, lowering it as the sleeping creature stirred. He laughed and joyously called your name.

        "I okay, no worry!”

        "Are you sure? You're not hurt? Where are you?” Your questions came out quick, but he giggled, his curls bouncing as he ran.

        "I at Eddie's house! I like it here and I like Eddie! He play with me and I still eat my veggies, like you say! But Eddie don’t eat.”

        "I’m coming to get you, okay? I'll be there soon. Then we’re gonna go home and eat all the ice cream you want. If the goblins do anything bad, then you hit them real hard and run away.”

        "Yay!" The boy cheered, but his running slowed, his eyes droopy and tired. "Pinky promise...?”

        "Pinky promise…I…I love you.”

        "Love you…” he yawned.

        Suddenly he was scooped up, laughing sleepily— something you didn’t think you would miss so much.

        "I’ll take that back now, you little rascal— time for bed.”

        The image shook once again as Eddie plucked the crystal ball from Dustin's grip, holding it out to show the two of them. Dustin dug his face into his shoulder and clung to his neck, legs wrapped around his torso. The man’s eyes were gentle as he shifted his attention from the boy to you, and with a soft voice, he stared you down.

        "You have eleven hours— I'll see you soon.”

        Red smoke filled the crystal, and when it cleared, he was gone.

        "What was all that about? No, forget him, Dustin is okay. He's been eating and now he's going to sleep. See me soon? When I see Eddie, I’m gonna—"

        You set the large crystal ball on the ground and turned to the now very-much-awake creature— one that was half-human, dressed in a white and gold toga. Her ocean blue eyes were piercing, her golden hair perfectly framing her soft face.

        "It seems you caught me napping— you must be the famous Henderson girl I hear so much about.” The creature's voice was soft and tired, her eyes staring you down as you stood away from her.

        How did all of these creatures know you?

        You kept still, your heart furiously beating in your ears. You were sure she could hear it too.

        "That knife at your hip— I hope you weren't planning on using it on me. Otherwise, you might have been my lunch.” she grinned nonchalantly.

        You quickly shook your head— a lie.

        "Come closer, don't be shy. I’m Chrissy and I promise I won’t eat you— there are things here that are far worse than me. Now for your test!”

        You slowly began to approach her, noticing three large locks on the door behind her.

        "Test? What kind of test?”

        "It’s really easy, just answer some riddles and unlock the door behind me to continue towards the city. Easy-peasy!”

        "Wait, riddles? You're a sphinx?” You wracked your head for the story, remembering the creature from a book of Greek mythology you read for history class.

        "Well no, I’m a goblin. We come in all shapes and sizes." Chrissy was a large creature, but she began to shrink, her lion legs shifting into human ones. Her toga reached her ankles, and her bare feet seemed to have been dipped in gold. Her blonde hair fell just past her shoulders as she yawned, arms stretching out above her head.

        You watched in awe and she smiled brightly, giving you jazz hands. The golden bangles around her wrists clanked when she did so.

        "Alright then, I have three riddles for you. If you can’t solve them, then unfortunately, you'll be...misplaced.”

        "Wait, misplaced? Where to?”

        "Typically you’d be placed anywhere in the labyrinth, but in this case, I was told to send you back to the beginning.”

        Your eyes widened and she laughed, her jewelry jingling as she approached you.

        "So, are you ready or not? You don’t have that much time…”

        Taking a deep breath, you nodded. Hopefully all those Dungeons and Dragons sessions would pay off.

        "I’m ready…I think.”

        She clasped her hands together in prayer and her blue eyes gently closed. When she opened them a few seconds later, they glowed a bright gold. You flinched at the unexpected change, but tried to relax. This was your first true test.

        "Your first riddle is this: if given one, you’ll have many or none at all.” Her voice echoed throughout the landing, shaking the hedge walls.

        You steadied yourself and delved deep into your mind, stewing in the question. You had to think carefully; if you gave the wrong answer, you would have to start all over again. And if you did, there most likely wouldn't be a kind fairy creature to help you. What would you even choose to say? There were so many choices.

        Wait.

        Taking a deep breath, you shakily gave your first answer.

        "A choice…?”

        Chrissy smiled, and a lock from behind her fell to the floor.

        "That is correct— your destiny is shaped by the choices you make on your journey through life. Many choices can alter your path, whether they lead you to ruin, or lead you to glory. Choices give the power to challenge your fate. Now your second riddle is this: some are cherished, some are hated, and even if lost, they remain with you.”

        You stared at her, taking in her words, imprinting them into your mind. It could be people— maybe it was. But how are lost people still with you? In your heart?

        Suddenly you thought of your father, the day he left Hawkins ingrained into your memory. Your mother was pregnant with Dustin at the time— you remembered her crying after work, still in her scrubs. You remembered the day she came home with your brother in a carrier and how she cried for weeks after. You remembered seeing her less often. You remembered waking up to feed Dustin when your mother worked night shifts. You remembered not having a Sweet 16th after he was born. You remembered helping to pay for his racecar bed. You remembered getting him to say your name for the first time. It was his first word. You remembered raising him, and you remembered loving him so much. But you remembered the sleepless nights before tests. You remembered missing school to watch over him when he was sick. You remembered crying when he wouldn’t stop. You remembered having to swallow back the tears when your mother was there. The memories were a cocktail of pain, loss, and happiness.

        You remembered…

        "Is the answer memories?”

        Another of the locks fell to the ground, causing it to shake.

        "Correct— memories are powerful. They may hold a person's love or hate, their joy and their grief, and some may choose to block them out. The memories you hold dear will always be imprinted into your heart, even as years pass. Our memories shape us, and you are now stronger because of them. Keep those memories close, for even if they hurt, they are a part of who you are. Now, your last riddle is this: they arrive every night, whether invited or not. They can be seen, but not heard or touched. If one falls, they all keep moving.”

        You absorbed her words into your mind— you needed to get this right, or you would be doomed to reset this death trap. Tapping your foot, you tried to wrap your head around the riddle. You looked up at the sky above you, falling into a distant memory.

        "Whas in da sky?”

        "Those are stars, Dustin. You can only see them clearly out here.”

        "Why?”

        "Because it's dark here.”

        "The dark is scawy...”

        "It can be, but the stars will always keep you safe.”

        "How?”

        "Well, you see that up there? That’s the North Star— when it comes out, you make a wish on it. And guess what? If you follow it, it can take you home.”

        You sat on the driveway with Dustin in your lap, staring up into the starry sky. There had been a blackout, and your mother was still working at the hospital. The sudden darkness had scared the boy, and you tried to calm his cries by bringing him outside.

        "It can?”

        "Yeah, and do you wanna know the coolest thing?”

        "Wha?”

        "Sometimes stars fall from the sky. They say bye-bye to their mommies and they go on their own adventure. They fly by and spread their magic dust to make you happy.”

        "Really? They not scawed?”

        "Maybe, but it’s okay to be scared. Their mommies are always watching.”

        "And sisters?”

        "Yeah buddy, their sisters watch them too.”

        Dustin leaned against you, staring up at the sky with awe in his bright blue eyes. The stars, despite the blackout, kept on moving.

        "Is Mommy still working?”

        "Yeah, the hospital needs a lot of help, so she’s staying late.”

        "I sleep with you?”

        He looked up at you with pleading puppy-dog eyes, and how could you say no to that? You sighed and gently nodded.

        "Yeah, you can sleep in my room 'til Mom gets back.”

        He cheered and leaned against you, his eyes starting to close, and for a second, you thought a comet shot through the sky.

        You wished things were different.

        "Stars— the answer is stars.” Your voice came out shaky and unsure, and you held your breath until finally, after what felt like years, the final lock clicked open and fell to the ground with a heavy thud.

        "Correct— for centuries, the stars have guided the lost, and today, their memory guides you forward. Whenever you feel lost in your heart, unsure of how to navigate the darkness within, then look to the night sky. Follow the stars and allow them to guide you, just as they guided others long ago. Just as the stars keep moving, so will you. Congratulations— you have passed the test and may continue on your journey.”

        You held your breath, your eyes wide with shock. Your heart raced as you stood still, as if one wrong move would send you back to the start of the labyrinth. But your anxiety melted into joy when you realized that you had done it— you had passed the first test. You let out a shaky breath, your trembling hands quickly rubbing away the joyous tears that poured down your cheeks. Breaking into a smile, you turned to the orb, pointing at it with a determined fire in your eyes.

        "See that, Eddie?! Fuck you, I did it! Bring it on!”

        Chrissy smiled and tried to hide her laugh. She closed her glowing eyes, and when she blinked them open, she was herself again.

        "Do watch out for traps, won’t you? I would like to see you at the banquet.”

        "Banquet?”

        "Yes, I would like to see you there alive and well. We have a celebration coming up and would love to have you there.”

        You stared at her with confusion etching your features— as if you would voluntarily spend another second in this godforsaken place.

        Chrissy stepped aside as the door swung open, exposing a topiary of a lion on the other side of the passage. You turned to her as she stretched and yawned, her form shifting back to her more animal-like appearance. Swallowing a lump in your throat, you were finally able to voice your concern.

        "Are the next trials harder?”

        "Well, everything has its difficulties and everything has its solutions. You’ll be fine, just keep looking ahead.”

        "Alright, thank you!”

        You took a deep breath, and with a newfound excitement, you passed through the doorway, your eyes trained on the topiary ahead. You looked back at Chrissy, who seemed to settle into sleep, and with a wide smile, you began to run. Your shoes pounded against the flagstone floor as you hurried through the passage.

        But then the flagstone was gone, there was no ground, and your eyes widened as you fell down a gaping abyss. You clawed at the edge of the stone, but it was too late. Your heart raced as you helplessly flailed your arms, the darkness swallowing the scream you let out as you plummeted into the unknown. Was this the your fate all along? Had you made the wrong choice? Gone the wrong way? Were you going to die?

       "I should have looked where I was stepping."

        You fell down, down into the abyss, and the darkness consumed you.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading! I know it took almost a year to get here but it's here! I'm a full time college student and coming up with original puzzles for this was no easy feat I'll tell you what. I promise I haven't given up yet! Don't forget to reblog, like and comment it really helps! (gosh I sound like a Youtuber lol) But anyways thank you again for reading and back to the writing cave I go!

Taglist: (If you want to be placed on it comment under here)

@fan-girl-97 @sh0wthyself @maxstecc @mirkwoodshewolf @bellalillyrose @under-the-clouds @bllshtbel @ali-r3n @darknesseddiem @ladyjbrekker @mewchiili

[sugarsnappeases]

Can you yap about ritawalburga

hello yes i certainly can!! okay this is all still pretty fresh from the womb and stems from a vision i scribbled down in my notes app a few nights ago when i didn’t have wifi and therefore couldn’t text jen, but it ties in w my mission to make grimmauld place more Fucked Up (can’t remember if i’ve ever spoken about said mission before but. it’s fairly self-explanatory… i want that place haunted and semi-sentient and hungry)

so. basically. we’re post-first war. regulus is dead. sirius is in azkaban (and also disowned so as good as dead, really). orion is deathly ill and then later dead. and it’s just walburga and kreacher living in that big old house.

and grimmauld place is angry.

the wards in grimmauld place have been fed by the blood and the magic and the Presence of centuries of head of houses. lords of the noble and most ancient house of black. and walburga has failed them. sure, she provided the house w an heir and a spare, she did her duty, but then she lost both of them, she Failed. and now there's no heir. no spare. no lord bc orion is dying dying dead. no future for the house of black and grimmauld place is angry and dying and collapsing in on itself, shadows wrapping themselves around walburga's neck and squeezing, filling every crevice with despair and rot etc etc etc

and in canon... one could argue... that walburga's portrait, permanently fixed to the wall in the entrance hall, bigger than any of the other portraits, is her way of trying to assert some control over the house. she can be angry and bitter and hungry too. she is a part of the house too. a part of the legacy of the blacks.

in this au however, there's rita. tenacious reporter going to great lengths to get the scoop on the mystery surrounding orion's illness - he died at 50, he's a wizard, he should've lived a lot longer and it's unusual for illnesses to be incurable in the wizarding world. and she's nasty and determined and she shows up at grimmauld place again and again and again. she tries to ask for an invite to tea, tries to break in, tries to sneak through some sort of crack in her animagus form, tries to spy from outside through windows; she tries all sorts. grimmauld knows, obviously, and is incredibly hostile.

eventually, she asks again if she might visit walburga, and she says yes, because she's lonely or bored or curious or perhaps because she wants to spite the house. they have tea. they talk about nothing for half an hour or so. rita asks if she can visit again. walburga says yes. because rita is interesting and company and she pushes back against the things walburga says in a way that she never gets from kreacher (and she misses that pushback, which left the house with sirius, with orion. not w reg obvs lol). and the house hates it but walburga is angry and bitter and hungry too and she keeps letting rita back in. over and over and over again and they talk and they drink tea and the house is rotting around them, bearing down upon them w it's misery and it's fury, but rita is a spark of life. and maybe she kindles a bit of a fire in the ashes of the hearth. and maybe walburga likes her.

and maybe one day rita says why don't we go somewhere else for a change, and walburga (who hasn't left the house at all in years) says okay. and so she leaves and never comes back.

then, i was texting jen about this, obviously, and she said.... what if the house just completely crumbles when she walks out which is sooooooo sexy. like it just collapses in on itself. slumps down into a lifeless heap until sirius crosses the threshold again later. we also spoke about this ritawalburga happening in the context of the bellareg marriage au which makes me crazy and i would be happy to scream about if anyone wanted. but yes this is my ritawalburga.

[jenthetranskitsune]

Not my best work but I figured I should share it anyways, was fun to write.

[muse-write]

Towering Past

Here's my entry for the 2024 Inklings Challenge (@inklings-challenge)!

Jan. 12, 2023

H.,

Sorry for not responding to your Christmas letter…or your New Years’ letter. Really, I am! I know you probably think I’m tired of this method of communication—and I can’t rightly say I’m not—but there was more to my lack of response than sheer avoidance. I know you well enough to know you haven’t watched the local news anytime recently, so you might not have heard about the October explosion on the upper east side of the city. They’re saying it was a bomb planted in the subway system. It took out half the Northern line and a couple of blocks in every direction.

I have my own story to tell about that explosion, but I would sound insane, so I’ll leave this letter at that. And anyway, my hand is hurting from scribbling this letter out in record time now that I feel up to writing at all. You at least know I’m alive and hopefully you believe I wasn’t avoiding responding on purpose.

How are Jen and the kid doing? If you weren’t so set on letters like this you could text me pictures, you know! Why can’t you just call me like a normal person, H.?!

Love,

Frankie

Jan. 17, 2023

Dear Frankie,

Thanks for responding—finally. I was about to hop on a plane or send a strongly worded letter to your commanding officer just to make sure you hadn’t dropped off the face of the earth. I suppose a cellphone would make this kind of thing easier, but we’ve had that conversation too many times to rehash it now. Jen’s doing fine. Eric is running around and getting into trouble, and we both know who he takes after on that score. I always was a good son, Mother always said. If you please, you might want to drop by and visit next time you’re in the area; you might have some tips born of experience for how to deal with a little boy who insists on coloring on the walls.

What a vague way of ending your story; you aren’t saying you were anywhere near the explosion, are you? I know it’s your job and all, but don’t blame a man for getting worried when his sister defuses bomb threats on the daily. Anyway, you know I wouldn’t find any of your stories insane, and you must tell me your version of events. Just don’t wait another two months to do so, or I really will send your CO a letter asking after you.

Glad to know you’re alive,

Henry

P.S. In the envelope is a bracelet Jen borrowed from you a few years back. She was very worried that you thought she was planning on keeping it forever.

Feb. 10, 2023

H.,

I’ll tell you what happened if you insist. But you have to promise me not to laugh. I haven’t told anyone else what happened; I’m not entirely certain it was not a vivid dream. And you know I’m not much of a storyteller, so it won’t rank among your beloved novels. But it will be what happened to me, as accurately as I can put it. Forgive the late letter. This took days to write down.

First off, the explosion wasn’t an explosion at all—so you can put your fears about me being among the defusement team to rest, at least this time. I had woken that morning to a leisurely day, not having so much as a drill to look forward to on my day off, and that meant I had a clear view out the window at the precise moment a tower erupted from the concrete sidewalk only a block or two away from my apartment. When I ran from my complex down the street, I had no thought of entering the tower—I didn’t even know if it was that kind of tower, one that could be entered—but I knew someone had to check it out, and that someone had best be me, with my gun and military training. I brought my Sauer and phone with me (not being a technophobe like you) and approached the tower.

It was not pretty or elegant or admirable in any way. In fact, it was rather ugly, with sharp jagged peaks—I forget what they are called—at the top, and the walls made of black brick—except it wasn’t brick, it was more like marble or stone, lopsided and uneven, like the tower had been thrown and glued together. And it was completely silent. Nothing moved, except at the very tip-top there was a flashing blue light. Like a signal. It didn’t seem to be Morse code or any other signal method I could make out.

And then something moved in the very highest window, and through a pair of binoculars I took from a man next to me (there was a crowd forming by now) I peered up at it and saw that it was a human.

Henry, do you remember Lieutenant Gorsk? A few years back. It was him. Somehow he had found his way into the tower and all the way to the top, and any doubt of my venturing in there was put to rest.

I would find him.

I am ashamed to say that I didn’t prepare. I was so afraid that if I went back home and returned with gear it would prove to be a dream that I marched straight up to the entrance—I know you’ll beg for a real description, but all I can say now is that it was a door, black and wood of some kind, with an ornate gilded knob for a handle—opened it, and walked through, my hand on my Sauer the whole time. I still had the binoculars from the man outside.

This is where it gets insane, H. The interior of the tower was like one of those ancient cathedrals, you know the ones, like in England. The ones tourists go to and exclaim about and take pictures of sunlight streaming through the windows. Though there wasn’t any stained glass here. And the windows—don’t laugh—they didn’t look out onto Seattle, H. They looked onto a completely different world.

I can’t describe it. I can’t remember it all that clearly, either, it’s a huge blur in my head, after the hospital and…anyway, I remember that outside the sky was red—like blood-red, and below there was a dark river, sluggish and black and I didn’t like to look at it for very long, so I turned away and looked at the tower instead. It was Gothic, I guess. You’re the architecture freak. I’ve attached some pictures below, so make of them what you will.

Anyway, I’d entered a large foyer-like hall, with a great staircase sweeping up the far side and climbing the walls in spiraling loops. There were statues in this room, tons of them, but they were—they had such terrible expressions of sadness and terror that I couldn’t look at them for long, either. Even more than the sights, it was the feeling that stays with me, even months later; there was something utterly depressing about the place despite its eerie beauty. It sank deep into my bones and chilled me to the core. But I had to get to Lieutenant Gorsk. I tightened my fingers on the Sauer and began up the stairs, ready for…well, anything. I had no idea what to expect from a place like this.

And what I encountered, I had no way of expecting at all.

What descended down the stairs towards me when I had only climbed a few steps was a horde of—I don’t know what to call them. Demons, I suppose. They were not like the demons you see on church windows under the feet of angels. Some of them almost looked human, but were spindly and covered in scales like lizards or dragons or fish, scales that were matte and dark and reflected no light. Others weren’t human at all, but animal-like, though they resembled no animal I’ve ever seen except that they traveled on four legs, or maybe more. The horde of things surged toward me and I raised my gun to shoot.

I have killed people in my career, H., you know that. I’ve spent entire nights awake in my bed unable to get rid of their faces. I killed these things almost too easily, though the scaled ones gave my bullets some trouble. I had to resort to picking up a sword, fallen on the ground a few feet away from a bleached skeleton, to pierce through the gaps in the armor. It was helpful in preserving my ammo, since I’d only brought the few rounds that were in my gun, and I would need one round for when I reached the top--though I wondered what kind of other world I’d stumbled into. Who had this person been who had ventured in and died with a sword in their hand?

I proceeded up the stairs past the corpses, which were dusting away as though they had never existed in the first place. The tower reared up above me. Along its walls were grotesque tapestries of things I do not wish to remember, and I kept my eyes on the stairs and the gaping doorways I passed, waiting for another horde of demon-like things. I have been a soldier for decades, and never have I been more grateful for it than when I was ascending those stairs. My training kept me safe.

I reached the first landing and had to fight through another horde. I will not describe them all—some of them I don’t remember clearly enough, and others were simply too odd to put into words. All I know is that, with gun and sword, I managed to clear a path up the stairs.

But then one of them got the first hit in. I remember these clearly: three large, hulking things, with mouths like lions and bodies like eagles, large golden wings sending strong wind swirling around the landing. I could not move forward. My bullets barely pierced their hides. My sword could not break through their guard, and one of them sent an arm forward and its claws slashed my shoulder to ribbons. It burned like a gunshot wound, and I knew there was no hope of me defeating all three of them. I could only run and hide and hope they didn’t pursue me, so I turned and left the staircase to venture into the rest of the tower.

This floor was full of branching halls and large empty rooms that smelled of decay. The red sky outside left a garish red tint to everything that unnerved me, but I ran down hallways at random and tried to remember my way back to the stairs in case I lived long enough to return. The lion-eagle creatures chased me, but gave up soon afterward, and vanished into other areas of the tower. I ducked into an empty room and used the relative peace and quiet to inspect my arm. It was bleeding heavily, and I made a note to myself to check it for infection later in the day, assuming I survived that long.

I could have turned around. Abandoned my quest. Left Lieutenant Gorsk up at the top of the tower and returned to the peace of my house, a peace I had fought so hard for and tried to attain for so long. But you know what he did to me, Henry.

At the time, it seemed obvious to me that this was my second chance at justice. My chance to make peace, finally, with what had been done to me, and leave it in the past.

It never occurred to me to wonder how Gorsk had found his way here, or what had been done to him in the process, until much later on that day.

I wrapped my wound in strips from my shirt and hoped it would hold and wished I had some antiseptic, but a dirty shirt would have to do as gauze. Then I tried to creep out of the room, but realized that the door was locked. I had not closed it.

Demons appeared in the room around me, the scaled spindly ones I had fought off before, and I had become used to their movements and attacks and knew with relative certainty how to defeat them. A few strong strikes with a sword would weaken them, a gunshot through the head would finish them off. I would rely mostly on the sword now; I was running low on ammo, and I did not know how many more floors I would have to fight through. I refused to think about the fight back down once I reached the top. There had to be ten demons in the room, and my shoulder was burning and slowed me down, and there were quite a few close calls I prefer not to think about. I don’t know what it would have been like to be killed by one of these things and I don’t want to imagine it. They had sharp teeth meant for ripping and biting, and at some point after I killed a few of these I began tearing those teeth from the corpses’ mouths for extra weapons.

Ten of these demons were more than enough to test me, but with a lot of luck I managed not to die, and had a pocketful of demon teeth-blades to show for it at the end.

The door unlocked by itself as the last demon corpse dusted away.

I ventured back to the stairs, losing my way a few times in the process, and it was amazing what a relief it was to see the familiar grand staircase spiraling up over my head once again rather than the red wash of the old windows. The castle grew darker as I headed further up, and there were less and less windows, and less and less red, until I began to long for the light, eerie as it was. It was never dark enough to blind me, but it was surely dark enough for the shadows to shift and move and look like demons. I have had decades of experience calming terror in combat; this tower tried my nerves in a way I have never experienced before and hope to never experience again. In all of those books you’ve read, have you heard the phrase, “bear wrongs patiently”? In the military, I turned that into a talent. I bore the hazing, the combat, the setbacks and the horror and the fear. I tried to do that here, too, but the tower seemed to steal that control away from me, until even I was left trembling like a little girl surrounded by monsters. I gripped my gun in one hand and my sword in the other and ventured on, wishing more and more that I did not feel such an urge to find the Lieutenant. Wishing that I could be normal and move on from that time.

You can maybe understand why it took me so long to finish writing this letter.

I will leave it at that for now, so that you can get your letter in two months and not feel the need to call up my superiors. Though I think a glare from you, looking like some Oxford don, might just frighten Commander Paik more than all the roughest thugs in the city.

Love,

Frankie

Feb. 18, 2023

Frankie,

I don’t quite know how to start this.

First, let me say thank you for trusting me with your story. I don’t think you’re insane, and I didn’t let out a single chuckle.

Second, I am familiar with that tower. It appeared in my own city—around the time yours did. It looked exactly as you describe, and the pictures confirmed it. It was the same, or one of the same type. I entered the tower, though not at all for the same reasons.

You see, when I looked up at the top of it, in the window I saw Jen. Of course, I couldn’t leave her there.

I did not tell you of this before because I did not wish to worry you or cause you alarm; after all, what transpired became something much greater and more beautiful than I could have imagined when I first stepped through the door.

I sympathize with your quest to get to Lieutenant Gorsk. I remember him very well, and I wish I could have been there too, to punch him in the face (a second time, if you remember!). I don’t know if I can condone your mission, nor the intentions you implied, but after what the man did to you, I can’t say I wouldn’t have considered the same. And considering you are not writing me from a jail cell, I need to know the end of the story as soon as you can bring yourself to give it to me.

I did not bring a gun with me—you know my stance on them well enough—but, as with  you, there were plenty of demons. I have never been a fighter, but I picked up a stray sword and a dagger or two and managed to hide and slip past many, and fought those I couldn’t. It was with a great deal of trepidation that I climbed those stairs—I can only imagine you, flying up them like a goddess of vengeance with wings at her feet! It was an eerie experience for me; the light made everything look as though blood covered it. The sun outside was not—right. It was deep and vibrant and would have maybe been pretty if not for the sickly pallor to the sky around it, like when a tornado is about to touch down.

I deciphered that I had entered a new world a little earlier than you. I had found a storage room to hide in—and what a storage room, with jars and masks and boxes—and could not help reading a few of the files I found stuffed in drawers (I know you’re rolling your eyes at me about now, so stop it!). The files were plain documents, just text written in a crusted brown substance I refused to consider any further than necessary, but I couldn’t read a word of it. It was not Latin, nor Greek, nor any derivation of any language I have ever come across. The letters themselves were indecipherable, and anyway I felt like it was best not to know what was written in them, so I shoved the papers back into their drawers and did my best not to wonder. I am not very good at that, but it was time to move on, and my survival (and Jen’s) relied on not being overly distracted by the theoretical.

I reached the top of the tower perhaps slower than you, but with far fewer injuries (please tell me you went to the hospital, Frankie!), and emerged from the stairs into a long corridor that extended to a single door. This part of the tower was not a maze, as I had discovered in the lower levels; it was very straightforward and clear about where I was meant to go. That door was my destination, and behind it must be Jen, and the window through which I had glimpsed her.

There were no enemies laying wait for me along that corridor, but I fully expected there to be some monstrous creature waiting for me behind the door. I grasped the knob. It swung open easily, terrifyingly easy.

I assume this room looked much the same for me as it did for you—circular walls, broad windows letting in that wash of red light anew, a view of a mountain range of some other world, dark and strange, stretching out beyond. Jen was there, and I called her name, but saw that she could not move, because, though she stood, she was enclosed within a barrier of some sort—her hands, I saw, were burned where she had attempted to push through it. There would be no breaking it.

And then the monster—appeared. I mean that very literally; one moment it was not there, and then I blinked, and it was. I could not make sense of it at first; it did not fit your descriptions at all of any of the demons you encountered. It was hulking and winged, but appeared to be made of chitin all over its body, like an insect has, and blue flame flared from the gaps in this natural armor. It bared teeth—I suppose would be the expression, on something that had such an unnatural face—at me, and there were two rows of sharp needle-like prongs.

This terrified me.

But it held Jen, my wife, the mother of my son, and what would I ever say to Eric if I let this beast harm her, or whatever it planned to do with her? Whisk her away? Kill her? Keep her imprisoned here, like some damsel out of a fairy tale, to lure adventurers with?

I tightened my grip on my sword, feeling a sense of hopeless doom fall upon me (yes, that was the only way to describe it, let me have my sense of poetry once in a while without mocking me, Frankie!). There did not seem to be a way I could triumph over such a foe. But neither could I hide or flee or distract it. So fight I must, even if it led to my own death.

I see no reason to regale you with the battle; there was nothing glamorous about it, as you well know. Suffice to say, I charged at it, which was not a good strategy, and my strategy changed to accommodate this. I was injured (and Jen gave me a good lecture about my stupidity later) and the pain nearly made me sick, but miraculously I managed to stay upright. It was a long battle, the monster was fast and strong and wanted me dead as badly as I wanted it dead, and I was afraid every instant, but eventually I managed to get lucky, and the blade sunk deep into one of those infinitesimal cracks in the monster’s chitin, and with a wrench I managed to twist the blade hard into its heart. That is not a feeling I wish to relive, Frankie.

But in the end, the monster lay there, its breath rattling out, and the barrier simply disappeared, just as the monster had suddenly appeared. Jen could move again—she later told me that the barrier had not been there until, presumably, my hand had touched the door; the monster’s doing, I assume—and she rushed to my side. I have never before felt like a brave man, especially when compared to you, brave sister, and I wish it had not taken such awful circumstances to turn me into one.

Jen told me later that she had no idea where she had been; in a moment she had been whisked from the living room of our house to the top of the tower, and for hours she had been staring out at that dark mountain range and the red sky and attempting to find a reasonable way of climbing out. The door had been locked, and the lock had repaired itself even as she had broken it, and escape seemed hopeless, unless she were to throw herself out, and she had not been quite that desperate yet.

Hearing your story, I simply wonder why? Why was it Jen who was picked up and plopped in that window to send me creeping up the stairs? Why was the same done to Lieutenant Gorsk? Was it a punishment? Or coincidence?

Do you have any theories, Frankie?

Henry

Feb. 30, 2024

Henry,

I never would have imagined that you had had such an experience, or that both of us have been carrying it around with us for months without letting on. We’re both stubborn—well, a soldier’s language isn’t something I want to subject you to, so I’ll leave it there.

When I finally did reach the top—though I don’t think it was so much as a goddess of war as a very frightened, very stubborn military-trained soldier—it looked the way you described it. The same long corridor, the same door at the end, the same suspicious lack of enemies. I had one bullet left in my Sauer, and plenty of demon teeth in my pockets.

Except there wasn’t a monster for me. Maybe the tower had decided I’d had my fill. Maybe the final challenge I encountered was the monster. I don’t know. I didn’t think much of it then. I just knew that odious lieutenant was behind that door, and I needed to get in there and shoot him dead, military protocol be damned.

It was a desire for murder, plain and simple, but I wasn’t thinking about the consequences then. I was thinking about those two years of hell, with the king of demons being Lieutenant Gorsk and his stinking breath and wandering hands and my only savior the friendship of Corporal Alice Lewis.

I turned the door, and there he was. Oddly, he was kept in place by the same barrier you described.

H., have I ever told you how easy it is for me to kill someone with a gun? My trusty Sauer, familiar and worn in my palm, my callouses formed around it, my target in its sights. It’s far easier to pull the trigger on my old friend than it is to take my Swiss knife and stab someone in the guts, but I’ve done both. I was prepared to do either, if it meant ridding the world of someone like Gorsk.

By now it’s been…what? Eight years since I was under his command? Not that long, in the grand scheme of things. Two years of hell, and eight years recovering.

I’ve put him out of my mind as best I can. I had almost imagined that I could go my whole life and think only of moving forward, but that vanished the second I laid eyes on him again. All my old rage and hatred and desire for vengeance came back to me in a moment, and propelled me up those stairs. Maybe in that way I was some goddess of vengeance after all.

My gun was lined up with his temple. He stood there, unable to move, his hands and arms burned by the barrier, knowing that I would be the last sight he saw. There was no doubt in his mind in that moment, I’m sure, that I would kill him.

I did. I did kill him, Henry.

I pulled the trigger and he fell back against the wall. It was a clean, cold kill. The door behind me unlocked, and I stepped out onto the stairs again. Going down, there were no enemies to fight, and I relived the moment I had shot him again and again, and did not regret leaving his body there at the top of the tower. I was victorious, the winner, the survivor, and I had killed the man who had made my life a misery for years.

I returned to my apartment, and the tower…crumbled. It fell, brick by brick, stone by stone, back underneath the city, and left no sign it had ever been there. I was quite satisfied with myself, and didn’t feel guilty about what I’d done until that night, when I remembered suddenly that he had had a wife, the last I had heard. Maybe a son, too, but I’m not sure. The next morning, while I ate breakfast, he appeared in the news—but not news of his death. Instead, there was something about some promotion to Major General, and I stabbed myself with my fork and threw my plate across the kitchen.

I realized what had happened soon after that.

I am not writing this from a jail cell, Henry, because to all intents and purposes Lieutenant Gorsk is still living—in this world, anyway. In whatever terrible, twisted mirror world I found myself wandering through, Lieutenant Gorsk is dead, a bullet’s clean entry and exit wound through both sides of his skull. I know I killed him, and I must live with knowing that I was capable of doing so, that I was fully aware of what I was doing. In my mind, he lies in a pool of spreading blood.

Love,

Frankie

[megidonitram]

Everyone's Running From Something (ch. 4)

A Baldur's Gate 3 University Professor AU

Rating: M

Quick Summary: Astarion and Gale are two University English professors precariously mentoring a troubled 19-year-old and falling in love.

💖Main Pairing : BloodWeave,(Astarion/Gale) 💕Side Pairings: Shadowheart/Nocturne, Karlach/Dammon, Wyll/The Dark Urge, Tav/Tav 💔Past Pairings: Gale/Mystra, Astarion/Sebastian, Astarion/Tav

<=Previous Chapter | Master List | Ao3 | Next Chapter =>

**Please see Master List Entry for Full Content Warnings**

⏰Chapter Warning⏰ None

The all-hands meeting for the beginning of the semester went the same way every all-hands meeting at the beginning of semesters go. Every professor and TA in a humanities field got squeezed into a conference room that wasn’t quite big enough, had a powered sugar donut or a couple cubes of assorted melon with half a Styrofoam cup of burnt coffee, and listened to the departmental dean give an un-rousing speech about being on the same page with the other departments. Then he talked at nauseam about school policies and ran a quick training session over a new time-tracking software that would be implemented in 3 weeks’ time.

Gale scribbled down notes on a big yellow legal pad and tried to ignore Jen and Astarion, making faces at each other as he wrote. He’d been in academia long enough to know they’d both be crying to him in a few weeks when they messed up their timecards.

As the meeting drew to a close, a dapper man with slicked-back chestnut hair and a car salesman smile stepped into the room. Astarion went stiff like a cat puffing up to defend itself. The dapper man just gave him a plasticky, knowing smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

The dean perked up a bit as he noticed the man lingering in the back of the room. “Raphael, what a pleasant surprise! I had no idea you would be joining us,” he exclaimed, “We were just finishing up. Are there any words of wisdom you’d like to impart to our humanities faculty?”

“Oh, nothing so important,” Raphael said, and suddenly Gale understood why Astarion was so on edge. Everything about the man oozed with a disingenuous charm that made Gale’s hair stand on end. “I just realized I forgot to send out a notice about the upcoming donor gala the next coming Friday. I realized you were all in a meeting right now, so I thought I’d pop in and remind you in person.”

Raphael’s eyes landed directly on Astarion as he spoke his next sentence. “There is a reasonable expectation that faculty attend these events.” Out of the corner of his eye, Gale saw Astarion’s expression go steely. “After all, we want to show up and show out for the people who allow us to do so much.”

“Of Course!” The dean chirped. “I know I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

The meeting adjourned, and Astarion immediately made a break for the door. Gale hurriedly gathered his things in one arm, instinctually following after the only person in the room he really knew, like a baby duck.

Raphael stepped into Astarion’s path before he could get out of the meeting room. “Ah, we meet again, Dr. Ancunín!” Raphael’s voice dripped with sugary contempt. “I will see you at the donor gala, won’t I?”

“Perhaps. Are you thinking about calling in that favor I owe you?” Astarion’s voice was clipped, his face unnervingly blank.

“I think I’d like to wait on that a little longer, but I would like you there in case I change my mind.” Before Astarion could respond, Raphael’s gaze slid off him and onto- “Dr. Dekarios! Wonderful to see you. Are you settling in well?” He reached out a hand to him.

Gale stuffed his legal pad into his work so he could shake Raphael’s hand. “Exceptionally well!” he replied. “Everyone’s done their utmost to make me feel very welcome!”

“Oh, you don’t have to fib on your new colleagues’ account, Dr. Dekarios. I’m more than familiar with how surly certain members of the English department can get.” Raphael laughed congenially, but Astarion shot him a poisonous look.

“I’m not lying to you, sir,” Gale replied. “Astarion’s been nothing but professional.”

“Well, perhaps he’s going a bit soft.” There was a flash of something dangerous behind his eyes. He turned to Astarion. “I shall see you next Friday.” It was a command more than a farewell, but he walked away all the same.

Astarion muttered under his breath. Gale didn’t catch what he said but could make an educated guess. Astarion exhaled a deep breath like he was equalizing pressure.

He turned to Gale and said, “Thank you.”

Gale blinked. “Of course.”

Astarion opened his mouth to say something else, but the words couldn’t or wouldn’t form.

Shadowheart stepped in between them, too concerned with responding to a text message to notice the weird tension. “Karlach wants to get drinks.” She said. “She got stuck in traffic and doesn’t want to drive all the way down here for nothing.”

“Roveer’s?” Astarion asked, a very weary resignation in his voice.

“Yes, probably.”

“Nothing like running into your students at a sports bar a week before classes start…” Astarion grumbled. “Fine. Let me finish here, and I’ll meet you there in, oh… 15 minutes.” He turned to Gale. “Are you coming?”

“To the office?”

Astarion gave him a perplexed look. “To the bar.” He clarified. “You should take the opportunity to meet Karlach.”

Gale could feel himself going bright red as Shadowheart snickered. “Right. Yes. I would love to.” He replied.

“I’ll let Karlach know you’re coming. She’ll be thrilled.” Shadowheart replied, giving Gale a warm smile. “I’ll go lock up. See you in a bit.”

“Come on then.” Astarion replied, nodding for Gale to follow him.

***

The all-hand meeting was on the third floor, so by the time they’d returned to the basement and back up a floor to leave, Gale was starting to fear his knees wouldn’t survive the week- let alone the semester. “There has to be an elevator in this building.” Gale huffed and puffed as he hoofed it up the last flight of stairs. He didn’t want his new colleague’s first impression of him to be of him on his hands and knees wheezing. “I can’t take much more of this…”

“There is, but personally I don’t like chancing it unless I really don’t want to be in a meeting.” Astarion slowed to a stop at the top of the stairs to wait for him. He didn’t seem any worse for wear, but he also seemed much trimmer than Gale was- or at the very least, his shirt accentuated the pleasing nip of his waist. Gale wondered if Astarion was a swimmer. “A history adjunct got stuck in it overnight a few years past, and it still reeks a little bit when it gets hot enough.”

Gale laughed, but Astarion very pointedly did not.

The conversation lulled a little bit.

“Do you mind if I ask you something?” Gale asked.

“That entirely depends on what you want to ask.” Astarion stepped into the hallway, taking a moment to slip into his grey wool peacoat before they ventured outside.

“Raphael, is he always…”

“Such an ass?” Astarion finished his thought. Gale wouldn’t have used such a strong word, but Astarion had gotten the spirit of the question right, at least. “He’s usually much worse.”

“Oh?”

“He’s a glorified middleman with too much power and time on his hands.” Astarion scoffed. “He enjoys putting things in people’s way and watching them try to wriggle their way out of problems he created. My advice is to deal with him as little as possible.”

“Is he who you went to talk to earlier?”

Astarion gave him a poisonous look that only confirmed Gale’s suspicion.

They walked across campus in uneasy silence. The bitterly cold wind whipped and whistled, tossing the last remnants of fall leaves across the concourse. The few student residents who’d gotten in that morning had either decided to hold up in their rooms or were enjoying their free time in more exciting corners of town. Gale found himself wondering what Xenia was doing... He hoped she wasn’t all alone in an empty dorm.

“Does Xenia have many friends?” Gale asked as they approached a crosswalk leading to the block of shops across from campus.

“Hm?” Astarion tapped the pedestrian-call button, which commanded them to ‘wait!’ in a mechanical voice. “I think she probably has more friends than she realizes she does. Kids like her tend to think they’re alone in everything.”

“Poor kid… Seems like she’s been through enough.” Gale sighed. There was something heartbreaking in the phrase ‘kids like her.’ It was sad to think that there were more 19-year-olds out there carrying emotional burdens far too heavy for their age- sadder still to think that if there weren’t, then Xenia would be alone.

“She’ll figure herself out eventually. She’s not like…” Astarion paused, seemingly a little shocked by what he was about to say. He leveled a wary glance at Gale. “She’s not a quitter, I mean.”  

“I’m sure she’s not. I just hope she doesn’t run herself ragged.” The walk light flashed, and they hurried across the street.

***

They were comedically out of place in Roveer’s Roadhouse. A group of grown adults in Oxford dress crowding around a sticky Bud-Lit branded high top surrounded by a bevy of flatscreen monitors playing every sports broadcast under the sun. Shadowheart was already nursing a syrupy cocktail out of a chipped margarita glass.

An extremely tall woman with a red tipped mohawk and smiling eyes bounded over to Gale and clapped a firmly friendly hand on his shoulder. “You’re the new Adjunct, I take it?” She asked. “I’m Karlach, Professor Cliffgate, if you’re nasty.”

“Gale Dekarios.” He reached out to shake her hand. She fist-bumped him instead, and Gale got a glimpse of a nasty burn scar peeking out from the sleeve of her jacket. “It’s a pleasure!”

“Aw, I have a great-aunt named Gale!” Karlach replied.

“I get that a lot…” Gale sighed. “I like your hair!”

“Thanks!” Karlach tussled her own hair. “Told my kiddos they could pick what color I dyed it if they all passed their benchmarks.”

“Does Balduran give benchmarks?”

“Oh, no. Teaching university is my side gig,” Karlach replied. “I’m actually a full-time middle school teacher.”

A spindly girl with bleach-blonde hair pulled into space buns sidled up to the table, clutching a notepad. “Can I take your order?” She seemed quite put upon being asked to do actual work on a slow day.

“Vodka Soda,” Astarion replied, holding his ID out to the server.

She took it and dropped it in her apron, jotted something down on her notepad, and turned to Gale with an expectant look.

“I’ll, uh, take a Corona,” Gale replied. He’d never ordered a Corona in his life, but it seemed like an acceptable ‘getting drinks with colleagues’ kind of an order.

The server stood there staring at him a moment long before she asked, “ID?”

“Oh, um…” Gale patted for his wallet and realized he left it in his desk drawer. “I didn’t realize I would need it…”

“You didn’t realize you’d need an ID at a college bar?” Astarion asked dryly as he turned to the server. “Just put it on my tab.”

The server nodded and walked away without asking if they needed anything else.

“Wow Gale, just one day on the job, and you’re already bumming free drinks off the department chair.” Shadowheart teased. She took a sip of her drink crinkling her nose at the taste.

Gale flustered. “I-I was going to pay with my phone, I swear! I wasn’t planning this.”

“Relax. We’re not so underpaid that I can’t afford to buy you one beer.” Astarion rolled his eyes. “You can return the favor when you get your first paycheck.”

Gale blushed. “Alright.”

The server brought them their drinks without another word, then plopped down at the end of the bar to scroll on her phone. Gale pushed the lime through the neck of his beer bottle and watched it fizz as it sank to the bottom of the dubiously golden liquid.

“So, did I miss anything important at the all-hands?” Karlach asked idly, stirring her bourbon and coke.

“You know you didn’t,” Shadowheart replied. “We’re changing timecard systems, and Raphael and Astarion are in another one of their weird power struggles-there, I saved you an hour and a half.”

Karlach’s eyes lit up, and she turned towards Astarion. “Before the semester even starts?” There was a conspiratorial glee in her voice. “What the fuck could he have possibly done this time?”

“Why spoil the mood by ruminating on that rat bastard?” Astarion said. He picked the lemon slice out of his drink and laid it on a napkin. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Fair.” Karlach shrugged. She turned back to Gale and fixed him with a warm smile. “So, Gale, what brings you to the wonderful world of higher education?”

Gale had thought a lot about what he would tell people when they asked him why he wanted to teach college. He’d written little speeches in the shower about the joys of teaching language and the satisfaction of helping students reach their goal, but sitting in a group of other English professors, that suddenly all felt very trite.

“I was a public librarian, but I had to step away from my last position when I got divorced.” He admitted. “I found a job at a community college teaching database management, and I realized I’d just always missed teaching.” He took a long pull of his beer. The sour of the lime battled with the bitterness of the beer on his tongue.

“Library science might be a harder industry to break into than academia. It must have been tough to leave that behind.” Astarion mused.

“I do miss it terribly sometimes… but my ex helped me get into graduate school and got me my first library job. If I stayed, I would never be able to make anything that was truly mine.” Gale sighed. He could see the wheels spinning in Shadowheart’s head as she tried to figure out his age.

“You talk like you’re as old as this bag of bone,” Karlach pointed a thumb at Astarion, who glared daggers at her. “But there’s no way you’re that old.”

“I’m 35.” Gale clarified.

“That’s a little bit older than I thought, but still nowhere near as old as Astarion,” Shadowheart said.

“You are barely two years younger than me.” Astarion snapped.

“Barely a decade older than Gale, too.” Shadowheart shot back.

Astarion rolled his eyes and muttered something into his drink. “Did you go to get your master’s straight out of undergrad?” he asked.

“Yes, why?”

Astarion shrugged. “That’s just quite young to be with someone that well-established in their field.”

“Oh, we didn’t get together until I graduated.” That wasn’t entirely true. They didn’t get together publicly until he graduated. He didn’t know why he was still defending Mystra. It wasn’t like any of his new colleagues would ever meet her.

“I wasn’t trying to imply anything…” Astarion lied.

“Of course not.”

They both took a sip of their drink, holding awkward eye contact.

“Well, here’s to making something for yourself then,” Shadowheart said, holding her drink out to Gale for a cheers.

Gale clinked the neck of his beer bottle against her glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

[hannahssimblr]

note: you don't need to know how to pronounce Garda Síochána - just know it's what we call our police force in Ireland. Any mention of garda/guards is in reference to the cops. Jude is saying the Síochána bit (the full name) to be funny and emphasise the fact that they are entirely unarmed. If you do want to know how to pronounce it then here is someone saying it right.

We are greeted at the doctor’s waiting room by two familiar faces. Shane and Joe look up when we enter, and the biggest, dopiest smile I’ve ever seen spreads over Joe’s face. “What’s up guys! You got ticks too?”

“Um, yeah.”

He fist bumps me, then Jen, “Hell yeah! Tick friends. Four thicks with ticks. We should get that tattooed.”

“Good idea,” I slump into a creaky seat and immediately start fidgeting with a ballpoint pen on the table. While the others chat to one another I begin to draw random shapes onto the corner of a magazine. 

“So we lose four tents,” Shane is saying, “And we all get ticks. Would ye say that’s the biggest failure of all time?”

“We can go back and get the tents though, lad,” Joe says, “Sure I can remember where we were and all.”

“They’re in the dump by now for sure,” Jen says, “So annoying because I actually really liked that tent, and the sleeping bags too. Like, we lost a bloody fortune worth of stuff that we could have used to go to a music festival or something.”

A fat pigeon lands on the windowsill and I quickly sketch it out, not realistically, but a stupid cartoon version who is trying to swallow an entire loaf of white sliced pan in one gulp. I cock my head. It’s actually a bit grotesque. Maybe I should scribble it out. 

“Man, I’m just glad that Jude made it out of there alive,” Joe says, “We didn’t know if you were going to make it.”

“What, like, do you think I was going to get shot to death by the Garda Síochána?”

“No, I dunno, like.”

“Thanks for abandoning me, by the way.”

“Oh stop it Jude,” Jen punches my arm, which throws my line off, “He’s in a huff because we saved ourselves instead of coming to find him, but anyone would have done the same.”

“Well you were fairly busy!” Joe protests, “Off with Clóda.” I’m not looking at him, but I can practically hear the exotic wiggle of his eyebrows, “C’mere, man, did you ride her?”

I glance quickly at Shane who is staring at the floor, “Nah, I didn’t.”

“What? You had the chance and you didn’t take it? You’re crazy, Jude. If that’d been me I’d have-”

I zone out as Joe, the chronic virgin, starts describing what he would have done and not done, while dimly aware that Jen is giving out to him for being disrespectful. The pigeon drawing is coming along. Maybe I’ll make this guy into a new character and put him in different scenarios. I draw a newer version of him on the next page with eyes looking in two different directions and I chuckle to myself at how stupid it looks. 

“That’s a cool drawing,” Jen murmurs, peering over my shoulder, “you should bring it home and glue it into your sketchbook.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“-Oh yeah, and that reminds me,” Joe goes on, moving fluidly from his thoughts about Clóda to the next topic without so much as a pause for breath. He’s like a tap that never stops dripping. “I’ve been thinking of getting a tattoo, like an actual tattoo, you know I was joking about the Thicks with Ticks thing before, but now that I’m sixteen I’ve been like, maybe I should get one if my ma or da lets me, and like, I was thinking that Jude is really good at art and all, so it’d be cool if I got him to draw something for me that I could get tattooed on me, you know?”

I sit up wielding my biro, “Where, man?”

“Huh?”

“Where’d you want your tattoo? I’ll do a sketch for you now.”

“Oh cool, yeah, like maybe my neck, like here?” He runs a finger from his ear to his shoulder, “Like something cool, a dragon or whatever, breathing fire, and maybe with its tail curling around like that.”

“A dragon, yeah?” I lean across Jen and push his head to the side to stretch out the skin and I start drawing.

He glances at Jen after several minutes, “How’s it look?”

She keeps a straight face, “Yeah, unreal. It’s a dragon alright.”

I finish it off with a few flourishes and then Joe shows it off to Shane, “Well?”

Shane splutters.

“Is it cool?”

“C’mere give me a proper look,” he turns him all the way around and stares intently at the drawing. “Man, that is the most detailed penis I’ve ever seen.”

Jen and I cling to one another cackling. 

“Even the spurts of cum, fuck sake, you’re sick,” Shane starts shaking with laughter too while Joe panics and tries to wipe it away with his hand. “Aw, are you serious? Is it just a dick?”

Shane looks again and shrieks “The veins!”

“No, you’re going to have me go into the doctor with a cumming dick on my neck?”

“You don’t like it?” I pretend to be offended and clutch my heart, “That wounds me, really.”

Jen joins in, “Yeah, he worked hard on it, how could you be so cold?”

The doctor comes to the door, “Joseph Roche?”

He stands up and gives us all the most aggressive middle fingers he can muster. “Fuckers,” he says, and follows the doctor out while we all collapse in fits of hysterical laughter. 

Beginning // Prev // Next

[enchantra35]

Please allow me to scribble down some of my thoughts regarding the latest episode of Agatha All Along and particularly people's reactions...

I find most of the reactions towards Teen somewhat... childish? The hatred towards him feels that of a child who's annoyed that the antagonist got in the way of their hero.

I've spent 4 years studying literature to learn one over basic thing; Context always matters.

It doesn't take a genius to understand what happened at the end of the episode. Teen/Billy/Wiccan is, for one, well... a teen. Secondly, we need to take account his own pov. In his eyes, he saw Agatha murder Alice and steal her powers. It is what he saw with his very own eyes. It isn't easy to disprove what he saw and Agatha realistically cannot prove that she didn't mean to harm Alice. There's also the emotional bond that Teen has already developed until that point and especially at the beginning of episode 5 where they exchanged brooms. To top it all of, Agatha taunts him in a really nasty manner. So, by all means, his grief and anger is justified.

What is not justified and I agree with most people on that, is his unsolicited attack on Jen and Lilia. We can argue that Jen didn't seem to care too much about Alice's death, but that doesn't justify her being thrown out of the Road in a murder attempt. It's something that doesn't really make sense and it's a bit out of character for Teen.

However, what is important here is that we basically know next to nothing about Teen/Wiccan. Sure, most of us suspected that he's Wiccan from the start, but aside from that, we don't know much else. We don't know what led him to Agatha's doorstep. We don't know who put the Sigil on him for sure. And we certainly don't know why he embarked on this journey to cross the Witches' Road. We aren't aware of any of his motivations so far (I guess we'll find out soon enough). This is why I'm a bit "annoyed" about this preemptive negative reaction towards him.

Another point that was raised is people's fear that the show will suddenly become about him. My own view that this is very unlikely. Yes, Teen/Wiccan is arguably one of the most important characters after Agatha herself (who's undoubtedly the protagonist) but he won't steal her light. He's a core character, like Monica Rambeau in Wandavision, but like hers, his role is is more of that of a deuteragonist/antagonist at this point of the show.

To clarify, I don't mean to chastise anyone. Everyone's entitled to their own opinions. This is just mine in regards to the vitriol Teen suddenly received after episode 5. To conclude, it's only to be seen whether Teen is the real "villain" of the show or the antagonist or anything else.

[welcometololaland]

Hello Lola! This your nice ask week ask! I want to know the origin story of you as a fic writer! What was it that drove you into this life? And I'd also love to know: A someone who collaborates with other writers, what is it like to develop a story and work on it with someone else? How is that organised and scheduled? Not to get too col and corporate about it, but I was to know the strategy lol

hey cig, you know there's nothing i like more than corporate catch phrases, so i couldn't help but circle back to this ask 💜

i started writing fic when i was about 14, although none of those stories exist on the internet anymore (thankfully). truthfully, i've dabbled in creative writing my entire life - i remember sitting out the front of my parents' campervan on holiday and scribbling stories as a six or seven year old - so fic writing was a natural extension of that.

as for co-writing fic - i'd encourage everyone to give it a go if you haven't already. imo it's an incredibly rewarding experience (way better than group projects at school or team building games on corporate retreats). i think the number one thing to remember is that co-writing requires more flexibility - you have to give up any timing expectations and some creative control. but if it works, if the vibe is good, you'll end up with something even better than you could have written yourself.

one of my favourite parts of the experience is bouncing ideas back and forth and getting increasingly ridiculous. seeing the original aquarium rock disaster idea come to life in the rainbow fish was one in a long line of incredibly fun moments writing with jen (@strandnreyes). similarly, the owen strand fire safety agenda in (un)professional services was something that rae (@rmd-writes) and i laughed over for DAYS and kept bringing back in as we wrote successive parts. i also count all my rosie (@dustratcentral) fics as co-writes even though she will fight me (cursed is a state of mind, the ring-in, phonography, the morning (part 2), carlos and the baby c- omg sorry, spoiler) because writing someone else's brilliant idea is a task in itself and i'm so lucky that she lets me do that from time to time 💜

i think the easiest way to do it is to each pick a pov and go from there. a structure/outline will definitely help you, which is most commonly established by dumping all of the ridiculous messages from a chat into a google doc. then it's a matter of writing, reading what the other person has written and constantly checking in to make sure that you understand where the fic is going.

to be honest, every finished co-write i've done (and some are fleeting and don't quite get off the ground and you have to be okay with that) has been very, very easy. i actually think that they're easier to write than solo fics (but that might just be me). something about the shared experience really gets me going!

if anyone else has any experience, please feel free to jump in!

thanks for the ask, cig 💜

[thewhumpcaretaker]

◈━ 𝑩𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒉 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑰𝒄𝒆 - 𝑪𝒉. 𝑰: 𝑷𝒆𝒔𝒌𝒚 𝑯𝒖𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝑽𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒍 ━◈

Summary: On a flight to Antarctica, Jens struggles to power through his pain and prepare for inevitable collapse. But reality is already breaking down.

TW: nightmare, panic, generally scary imagery, mention of hallucination, mention of passing out

To Professor Elinor Fernsby, or To Whom it May Concern: If you find this letter on my person, it is because you have, despite my best efforts, discovered me unconscious at an inconvenient time. As you know, I was cleared with sufficiently good health for this excavation despite chronic pain in the form of migraines, and a history of fainting spells. I received a clean medical screening stating that elevation changes do not affect my condition and that I have not had a fainting episode or incapacitating migraine in the past six months. At the time of the screening, that was true. My health has in fact been all but normal of late. However, I neglected to mention some changes that began almost as soon as preparations began for the trip. I'm confident that it's only pre-trip jitters, but I have lost consciousness five three times over the past week, for over an hour on each occasion. Therefore, I thought it best to give you some explanation in the event of my collapse. You've been very good to me, Professor. It wasn't my intention to deceive you or to compromise the effectiveness of the team. I have full confidence that my symptoms will not impact my performance. They are sure to lessen as I settle into the excavation site. They are also not a danger to my long-term health. I will recover without any treatment - simply place me out of the way and I will awaken within several hours shortly, good as new, truly as if it never happened. If I'm screaming, If I make any sounds, please ignore it. I assure you that I don't feel a thing. Above all, I implore you not to send me back. I don't need to be airlifted, under any circumstances. My body's eccentricities are a nuisance, I know, but not a real issue. I have signed all of my waivers and I reiterate here that you bear no legal or financial liability for my health. I want to personally assure you that you bear no moral liability either. It's my wish to remain onsite no matter what. I MUST be on this mission. It's at the crux of my research and I may never get another chance. You understand what that means to a man like me. I remember your stories of traveling to the Nevado del Ruiz in Columbia when you were younger - how you flew out despite conflict in the region. Surely you understand that risks must be taken at times for the sake of discovery. So, I leave my pesky human vessel in your very capable hands and hope to be back inside it soon. Sincerely, Jens Vídalín

Reading it back, Jens realized that the last sentence was the most egregious lie of them all. He had never hoped to be back inside his human vessel once in his entire existence. Was it better than the places he went when he wasn't there? Yes, but that didn't say much.

He scribbled a few more times over the crossed-out sections and folded the letter safely out of sight into his pocket. Thank goodness he was seated far enough from the others to do that, and thank goodness it was done. He was shaking all over from the effort of keeping his eyes focused enough to write. The pain had started almost the moment he'd signed the final paperwork for the trip, and it hadn't stopped for even a moment. It was at first just a dull ache at the back of his head, but by the time he boarded that morning, it had become an incessant, stabbing shard of ice embedded through his skull from back to front. The back of his head was cold to the touch and his face looked visibly bloodless. He was sweating profusely and it wasn't from heat - the thin bomber jacket around his shoulders certainly wasn't keeping him warm. It was almost enough to tempt him into retrieving his snow clothes out of the overhead bin, but he didn't want to draw attention to himself. They were nowhere near Antarctica yet and wouldn't be for many more hours. Yet his body seemed to have decided he was already there.

At times like this, a thought sometimes flashed through his head, an unwanted thought: that it would be very good to be wrapped in something warmer than fabric, to have arms around his shoulders. The thought confused him because the real thing had always been so underwhelming. He found himself thinking of Emily, back in Liverpool. Her arms had been so ridiculously bony, and seemed to go everywhere and jab everything without enclosing anything. He hadn't liked to be touched by her. No, he wanted to be wrapped in something more substantial than arms, something like the all-enveloping sunlight on a summer's day.

He dared to slide open the window porthole a fraction, but there was no rush of heat. Outside, a white fog engulfed the plane. It had traveled south with them on a tailwind for thousands of miles now, blocking out the sun and creating turbulence. The cabin jolted for the umpteenth time, and as it did, it seemed to smear out of itself, to double in his vision.

His eyes flashed back to the cabin interior, away from the window. It wasn't the same way he'd left it. As he looked down the center aisle, it stretched on forever, the cockpit door quite missing and instead giving way to an endless, empty corridor between the seats. There were no people in them. He was alone.

That's not real. That's not real. You're just hallucinating. Never mind that it wasn't exactly reassuring to be hallucinating already. Things were getting bad.

The pain was gone, he noticed. So he wasn't in his body anymore. He was passed out, probably sagging against the open porthole as if asleep. Worse than hallucinating, then.

He fought with his breathing, tried to focus on the mottled plastic texture of the armrests under his knuckles, staring down the aisle the way one might stare down the ledge of a skyscraper. Don't look at it. It's not real. If it's scaring you, and it’s not real, you don't have to look at it. But he couldn't bring himself to close his eyes. If he did, surely someone would walk down the aisle towards him. He knew it. There was someone else on the plane with him - not his colleagues and innocent strangers on the real plane, but someone or something among these infinite rows of seats.

He should get up, he should run. With fumbling hands, he reached to unlatch his seatbelt, and looked both ways. There was no one. But yes, yes there was. In one of those seats, wherever he wasn’t looking, there was someone, and he even thought he knew where: probably towards the back of the plane. He started walking in the opposite direction, towards where the cockpit had been.

Wrong move. A low "ding," and the seatbelt light turned on. No leaving your seat. That meant the thing saw him. He cautiously disobeyed it, took another step forward, and the cabin lights went dark. Only the seatbelt signs continued glowing, over every row, a sickly green. He was a sitting duck. He threw himself into the nearest seat and latched the seatbelt. “Just don’t hurt me. Please, whatever you’re trying to do…we can talk about this.” But the lights didn’t come back on, and seatbelt signs stayed lit. He leaned back, pressed into the headrest, and let himself hyperventilate.

They were behind him, whoever they were. He knew it, he could feel it. Look back. Don't look back. Look back. Don't look back. He drew air into his lungs at a frantic pace until his fingertips were stinging with thousands of stars. Stars... the dark cabin clouded over fully black and he was in space. In deep space, where there is nothing between anything else for farther than he could comprehend and so it must have a direct line of sight straight to him. The void clutched at him and tore at him, tore the air out of his lungs into the vacuum before he could finish inhaling, and suddenly the wall of the plane jolted into him and he was awake in his seat with his head throbbing so badly that he had to close his eyes.

He'd gotten even colder, in his mind's absence. His heart ached too, like he’d been shot through the chest, and somehow, it made the cold feel a hundred times worse. He checked his watch. It had been four hours.

Was the thing still there? He started to look over his shoulder, towards the back of the plane, and found he was too terrified to do so. Yes. Even if it couldn’t reach him right now, it was still there, watching him.

Leave me alone, he thought, as harshly as he could. Whoever you are, leave me alone. But he had no possible leverage against it. He was begging.

Next ▹(coming soon)

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