#just assume that i i think at least once about his hairy pits a day

[koskela-knights]

Jaakko Koskela on the couch in his white fishnet top, the blue sweats and his arm curled up around the couch to accentuate his muscular bicep and hairy armpit… if that wasnt some strategic position to make gays like me go feral and horny then what was it rly for, huh

[milfbailorgana]

I posted it 

The urge to nest had been bothering Han for almost a week now. He knew, in the back of his head, that the urge meant he was in preheat, but he really wasn’t going to let himself hide in the Falcon for a week, pretending like he didn’t have things to do.

But the urge was overwhelming now. Han could feel it gnawing at the pit of his stomach, along with the beginnings of his heat; the feeling was a restless anxiety and restless urge to do something.

Huffing and getting up from where he was meant to be relaxing in the captain’s chair after fixing some faulty wiring in the Falcon’s cooling system, he walked down the corridor and pulled up the cover to one of the smuggling compartments with a grunt. It was empty, not having seen much use since he joined the rebellion. A little dusty but otherwise clean. Hidden. Safe.

Han dropped his pillow and blanket into the hole. If this is where Han’s hindbrain wanted him to spend his heat, who was Han to deny it. He’d come a long way from Corellia and Qi’ra and their singular bunk where anyone could walk in on her helping him through his heat, but it seemed his mind still hadn’t adjusted to the fact he was safe here. Well, as safe as one could be, in the rebellion.

Chewie was somewhere else on the base, which meant Han could raid his room. He wasn’t sure if it was unusual for an omega to want the scents of many different people around them, even non-humans, but his nests always felt the best when he could smell his family all around him. He grabbed Chewie’s blanket and pillow, standing for a minute to debate taking the fitted sheet but deciding against it. It was too much of a hassle and he had two new scents to add to his nest this heat, he would be fine without it.

He pressed his face into the pillow to take a deep inhale of Chewie’s scent, reveling in the familiar smell. Chewie smelled like motor oil and fur and something else that was distinctly Wookiee. It was what home had smelled like for the last ten years. Sighing, Han dropped Chewie’s things into the compartment and contemplated when he had last taken his birth control. It wasn’t yesterday, and certainly not the day before, but if he took two today, he’d be fine, right? It almost made Han long for his days in the imperial navy, where he was kept on heat suppressants, but he shuddered remembering how bad the heat afterward had been. Without Qi’ra he’d had to go to Lando, cramping and feeling slick drip down his thighs, hoping the man wouldn’t take advantage of him.

Grabbing Lando’s things was easy. He had never cleaned out his closet after Han took his ship and even though those clothes were almost ten years old by now, Lando liked to leave Han a shirt or cape whenever they spent time together. Whether Lando knew he brought them into his nest during heats or just left them around to mark his territory was unimportant; Han was grateful. Not that he’d ever tell Lando that. He grabbed the lilac cape that had been hung up in the closet a few months ago and pressed it to his nose, breathing in the scent of linen and something smoky that always followed Lando around before tossing it into the smuggling compartment.

Now, getting Luke and Leia’s scents in his nest would be more tricky. Neither of them stayed on the Falcon, and Han didn’t exactly know where they were staying, let alone their room codes. Plus, walking around the rebellion base smelling like he did was not Han’s idea of a good time.

His scent suppressants had gone missing over a tenday ago. Well— missing was relative. Chewie could probably find them if Han bothered to ask him to look, but his pride and the assurances he’d made to his hairy friend that ‘yes, I am going off my scent suppressors willingly, I think being drug free would be good for my system’ with his fingers crossed behind his back meant that wasn’t possible. Curse past him and his procrastination problem.

Comming Luke wouldn’t be a problem. Han was sure the beta would lend him a jacket or blanket or something if it would help Han through his heat, but the princess was a different story. She’d started giving him looks ever since he’d come off his scent suppressants and she had finally noticed he was an omega. If Han really thought about it, the looks might be about the fact he was in preheat and ignoring it, but it could just as easily be that as her thinking him less capable than another alpha or beta. Han wasn't very inclined to believe that someone who called Chewie a walking carpet on first introduction wasn’t probably a bigot in another way.

He rumbled in frustration— a noise he’d picked up from Chewie— stomping back to his room. He pulled out the stack of blankets Chewie had gotten him when they had first gotten the Falcon, just in case Han wanted to nest like a good omega should, rather than shacking up with a rando he’d picked up at a bar. If Han was honest with himself, he’d always preferred the heats he had on the Falcon. The familiar setting calmed something inside of him and Lando— the only alpha Han had ever let fuck him on the Falcon— was, admittedly, a good alpha. Too bad he was playing by the rules now. Not to mention, the last time they’d talked was... not pretty.

Han threw the blankets into the smuggling compartment and lowered himself inside after them. The compartment wasn’t exactly tall— the walls only came up to his armpits when he stood— but whatever his hindbrain wanted, Han was going to have to provide. Setting up a nest was never something Han had been particularly good at. His nests never looked pretty or elegant or clean, but he made them work. Arranging the blankets and pillows around the compartment in whatever order would appease his omega brain, Han contemplated what lay ahead. Usually in this situation, Han would be flying to a seedy bar on a seedy planet to for a seedy alpha to fuck him. Unfortunately, a snowstorm had come in the night before and was forecast to last at least a week and there was no way anyone was granting Han clearance to take off.

And the alternative: fucking someone on base. He’d considered it, of course he had, but it was completely off the table. Han had a policy: there was no way in hell he was going to fuck anyone he might have to talk with again later. It just led to knothead alphas feeling entitled to his body and Han wasn’t doing that again.

So here he was. Sitting in one of the Falcon’s smuggling compartments, getting ready to ride his heat out with nothing but toys. It certainly wasn’t any omega’s favorite way to spend a heat but it wasn’t like he hadn’t done it before. With the way he never tracked his heats and Chewie doing his best to make sure Han didn’t sleep with any shady people, Han had weathered multiple heats with just a knotting dildo and his fingers.

Flopping down once his nest was as complete as it was going to get for now, he pressed his face into the closest blanket. It was one of his designated nesting blankets so he couldn’t smell anything but Han assumed it probably smelled like him. He’d been told during a heat once that he smelled like delicate jogan fruits and honey, and since Han wasn’t exactly going to ask someone what he smelled like— nor had he ever actually smelled a jogan fruit— he supposed that was the best he was going to get.

Han climbed out of his nest and traipsed into his bedroom, where his compad and birth control were.

The birth control was easy. Han took three from the bottle and dry swallowed them. That should make up for his missed days, right?

The compad was harder. How was he supposed to write this message to Luke? ‘Hi, I’m horny and needy and I just need your jacket so I can sit next to it and feel safe whilst I get myself off’? It was stupid.

Han flopped on his bed and stared at the ceiling. He’d never had to do anything like this before. He’s never had a group of people he could almost call a pack. As much as being in the rebellion made him nervous (one of Jabba’s goons could pop up any time to take back what the Hutt was owed) the people here were some of the best Han had ever met. It wasn’t exactly a high bar, as a street rat turned imperial soldier turned smuggler, but the kindness he had been shown in his few months in the rebellion was nice, even if Han didn’t think it was deserved most of the time.

Han could feel the beginnings of heat gnawing at the pit of his stomach. Soon he would be slick and open and wanting. He didn’t have time to put this off.

He groaned and opened the device, finding Luke’s contact

H.Solo: hey kid

H.Solo: you know that jacket I lent you for the ceremony?

H.Solo: the yellow one?

H.Solo: I need it back for something

H.Solo: pretty urgently

It was seconds before he got a reply from Luke

L.Skywalker: of course!

L.Skywalker: I'm glad you messaged me now, I’m about to start combat practice with my squadron

L.Skywalker: Leia should be free, I’ll ask her to bring it to you

Kriff.

H.Solo: Kid

H.Solo: You don’t need to do that

H.Solo: I’ve got it under control, actually

But it seemed Luke had already started his training.

He really didn’t need that temptation around. Leia, who smelled like leather and something earthy that was unidentifiable to Han. He wasn’t sure there was any scent better than it. In his weaker moments Han could admit to wanting to press his face into her neck and drown in her smell, and this was certainly one of his weaker moments.

But as much as he wanted her, Han couldn’t let himself. Whenever he let an alpha with any power over him into one of his heats it always ended up with he and Chewie being blackmailed and Han having to do things he didn’t want to. Han would stick to fucking strangers he picked in bars, thank you very much, even if it dissapointed Chewie.

Han whined in the back of his throat and got up to pace. There was no way he could let Leia see him in this state.

Taking deep breaths to calm himself down— Leia didn’t need to be smelling a distressed omega along with one going into heat— Han left his room and walked back to the smuggling compartments, tugging the metal cover back over his nest.

Moving to the ‘fresher, Han took a moment to stare at himself in the mirror. His face was flushed and his hair was messy. He looked exactly how he felt: hot and out of control. It was a look Han wore a lot whilst working on the Falcon, though, so Han hoped he wouldn’t look too bad.

There was no way to disguise his scent, but Han hoped if he looked out together enough, Leia would assume he had a plan for his heat beyond fucking himself on a toy.

Alphas love to butt their heads in where they don’t belong, especially if they think it’s good for an omega, and the princess was definitely one of those righteous types.

Han froze from where he was trying to tidy up his hair when he heard the entrance ramp to the Falcon being lowered. Kriff. Either Chewie was back or Luke had given Leia the code for his ship. Either way Han wasn’t particularly enthused.

Straightening his shirt to make himself look as presentable as possible, he walked to the ramp, clearing his throat loudly. “Entering someone’s ship without knocking is rude, you know? I could’ve been naked”

[kaesaaurelia]

the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready

For @whumptober2020 day 31: Today’s Special: Torture (specifically "experiment")

This fic has a companion piece about Crowley’s angel friend here and what happened to her after the war, but you don’t need to have read that to read this.

Satan/Crowley; brief mention of an ill-fated OC / OC pairing.  Content warning for body horror, abusive/toxic relationship with an enormous power differential.  Also, it’s not so much that Crowley doesn’t consent to any of this, it’s that Satan doesn’t care what he wants and Crowley tells himself after the fact that This Is Fine.  This is in addition to the torture implied by the prompt.

"It's not too late to stay here," Vehuel told Gadreel, and he suppressed an eye roll.

"No, no, I have to go, Lucifer wants me there," he reminded her. "I'm his favorite."

Vehuel was irritated with him, he could sense it easily. She was so ridiculously prudish about him and Lucifer, as she was about everything, as if she and Len always making eyes at each other and vanishing to take their long romantic walks around the galactic center or whatever stupid thing had been objectively less bad, somehow. At least Lucifer was interesting. He had ideas, which was more than anybody, even Vehuel, could say about Len. "I'm sure he wouldn't want you to get hurt for his sake, then," said Vehuel, snottily. "Since he likes you so much."

Gadreel suppressed his reaction to that; it wasn't Lucifer's fault he sometimes got hurt, it was only that Lucifer trusted him to do dangerous jobs and not whine about it if things got a little hairy, and she was envious of that. "I'll be fine," he said. "And besides," he added, trying to make peace, "I'd love to see the look on that wanker Gabriel's face when we storm in and take Heaven. Aren't you looking forward to that?"

"Yeah, I guess," she said, not sounding as enthusiastic as he would've hoped. "I'm just worried something bad will happen to you."

Poor Vehuel; she was always so concerned about everyone but herself. Gadreel knew things would be all right, though. It was a good thing Vehuel had him around, really, otherwise she'd never get anything done. "Besides, God told you not to worry, didn't She?" Tormenting Vehuel with that never got old; it was the only thing God had said to her, and of course, she'd worried about it a lot since then.

She snorted. "I thought we were disobeying Her now?" she asked.

"I'm just saying," he said. "Anyway, why don't you lend me some of your eyes? Then I could see trouble coming." God had run out of eyes when She was making him, so he barely had any compared to Vehuel. Well, no, he had seven at this point, but only because he'd bothered Vehuel until she'd shared her bounty of eyes with him early on in their existence.

Her halo flared, which it always did when she felt very strongly about something, and she drew her wings over herself. "I really don't want to, sorry. I'm kind of worried I won't be able to take care of myself?"

"What? No! Why?" he asked, because Vehuel had a lot of flaws, but if there was anybody who could take care of herself, it was Vehuel. She'd saved him from falling into the sun once! And she'd stopped a wayward comet from striking the Earth at the last minute, sacrificing her wings! (Then some officious bastard from Heaven had yelled at her, because it was supposed to hit the Earth, apparently, and nobody'd told them. Heaven was so useless.) And she'd always jumped between him and people who were trying to push him around, which was a little embarrassing, but also... well, it was nice, to know somebody cared that much about you. "You're bigger and meaner than me," he pointed out, "I need the eyes more."

"No, you're definitely meaner than me," she said. "Remember what you did to poor Len?"

Len had broken her heart, and he'd ruined those two gas giants, from what Vehuel told him. Of course, her account was very biased, because she still loved Len, but Gadreel could see through all that. "He deserved it! It was justice. It's not really meanness if it's deserved, is it?"

"I don't think anyone really deserves to be tied to a comet and left for a few million years until he's missed at the next all hands meeting," Vehuel said, because sometimes she wasn't any fun at all.

"Sure they do!" he said. Especially if they were Len, who had been laughing at her behind her back and making up stories about her, and Gadreel wasn't going to tell her that, but when she found out hopefully she would beat Len up and he'd be very sorry. "Anyway, you're still bigger than me."

"By a smidge, Gadreel, it won't matter if either of us has to fight -- I don't know, Michael or someone like that. Listen, how about you stay in front and I go behind you and watch out for anyone trying to sneak up. We'll work together," she said, brightly.

"Oh, fine," he said, rolling his eyes. "But you'd better pay attention." She would; he was just being an arse about it.

"I'm not gonna let anything happen to you!"

"You'd better not," he said. "I won't let you forget it if you do."

"I know, that's why," she said, and she shoved him. "You'll be fucking insufferable for eternity otherwise."

That, at least, was something he was great at. "I'm going to be fucking insufferable for eternity anyway," he assured her.

On the long flight to Heaven he felt her rage; her halo was bright, and you just couldn't hide feelings that strong, no matter how you tried. But he had assumed it was anger with Heaven -- against their cruelties and injustices, and the stupid rules they'd make up whenever something wasn't going their way, and how boring and bland they were -- and he'd let his anger mix with hers; a silent yes, I agree; yes, we will fix this; God made us and She will regret it because we may be small but we are clever and angry and a force to be reckoned with.

Having her behind him made him confident, and gave him the courage to launch himself at the first Heavenly angel they came upon. He knew what he was doing; knew how to disrupt the delicate balance of the archangel's gravity and collapse her in upon herself so that she couldn't attack them, and he knew with Vehuel behind him, the archangel couldn't possibly get at him first.

But then a terrible feeling -- pain -- spread across his body, before the archangel even noticed anything amiss, and Gadreel looked back, only to see Vehuel holding something long and sharp; a line of pure force. It glowed with a light that was not Lucifer's, but God's.

He stared at her; stared at the thing she held. She must have been carrying it this whole time, and it hurt, and she had used it to hurt him, and --

A seraph bumped into her, and Gadreel used the moments to gather himself together and hide from her. Had she... had she been angry at him all along? He watched her throughout the battle, keeping his distance, keeping away from her, and saw her slash at all their friends -- well, all his friends, they hadn't really liked her -- had she been envious, maybe, that he'd had other friends? Was that it? And then he saw her speeding towards Lucifer, something bright clutched in her hands, and Gadreel knew that she must hate all of them so much to put herself in danger from a fucking supernova just to kill everyone else. He sped away before the flash of heat and light, and avoided any damage, but he saw her, furious and hurting and burning as Heaven's forces dragged her off the battlefield.

--

Vehuel's trick with the supernova hadn't killed Lucifer, but it had cost him a lot of his forces, and Heaven -- who had been outnumbered at first, because apparently half of them were stuck in a meeting with Gabriel -- had defeated them easily after that. God, in Her infinite cruelty, had relegated them to some lower place, some other plane, which was somehow both uncomfortably chilly and unbearably hot at the same time. Gadreel lay in that place, having barely made it out of the pit of boiling sulfur. Everything hurt, and he felt bound by gravity, of all the stupid things, and the spiral of his body was unwinding as he made his way away from the lake of sulfur, pulling himself with his hands.

Gadreel could see others crawling out of the sulfur around him, and a few even still falling into the lake with horrendous splashes. "Come on, come on, get moving!" snarled somebody, and Gadreel thought she looked like one of the cherubim who'd been at some of Lucifer's meetings. He couldn't remember her name, but he was pretty sure she hadn't had scales before. It was clear she thought she was very important, on account of being a cherub, and Gadreel instantly disliked her.

Still, she seemed to know what was going on. "What's happening?" he asked. "Can you help me? I think I'm... broken," he said. Ugh, his whole core was trying to stay curled, but he'd been absolutely maimed so it was just lolling out weirdly to the side. It wasn't comfortable at all.

"No! Too much to do," she said. "And besides, that would be counterproductive. We're supposed to be being evil now," she said, sniffing.

"Evil?" The concept was foreign to Gadreel, and he waited a few moments for it to filter into his understanding. "That's stupid, though, isn't it? God kicks us out and claims to be Good so we've got to be Evil in defiance?"

"Yeah, that's right," said the cherub. Well, obviously not a cherub anymore. What was her name? Dagana, that was it. Something like that. Ugh. When had she got scales? "What's wrong with that?"

"Well, isn't it playing right into God's hands? If we really wanted to stick it to Her shouldn't we be Good?" he asked.

Maybe-Dagana scowled at him, and shoved him along with several clammy hands. He hissed in pain as the edges of his being scraped against the rough rock of the cavern. "Get moving!" she snarled. "Line starts back there!" She pointed to a line that was already forming; it looked like Gadreel had a ways to go before he could even start waiting for... whatever was happening.

People around him were chattering about names, about forms, and Gadreel had thought those things weren't supposed to matter anymore, like ranks -- or, well, they wouldn't have, had Lucifer won. Perhaps that was why they still did. They seemed pretty cheery about it on the surface, but all Gadreel could sense was other people's pain, and impatience with the line, and their anger at God. "What's this about getting a new name?" he asked the person in front of him.

"Oh, you don't know?" they said. "Satan's remaking us."

"S..." He hesitated on the sibilance. "Satan?"

"The Adversary of God! Lucifer is an old name," they informed him, cheerfully.

Gadreel didn't really like where all this new branding was headed. It seemed awfully God-reliant, and he didn't much fancy being on Team Hello, We Lost To God. Lucifer could explain it to him, though, he was certain of it. They'd probably misinterpreted everything he'd said, Gadreel decided. Lucifer had this way of making complicated things easy to understand, but unfortunately that meant sometimes the morons got it all turned around when they passed it on.

"Do you... do you want a new name?" he asked his new comrade.

"Well, why wouldn't I? God gave me this one, it's bad news. Stands to reason."

"Yeah. Yeah, no, got to get away from that rubbish," Gadreel agreed.

"Although I did hear he made somebody called Leonard keep his name," they added. "Feel a bit sorry for that poor bastard."

"Oh, Len's an arsehole, if anyone deserves to be stuck with the name God gave them it's him." He warmed to his subject, appreciating something to be furious about that he wasn't personally still wounded from. "D'you know what he did to my friend?" he asked. And then he remembered.

"What?" they asked.

"He..." Gadreel didn't have the heart. "He... Nothing. Nothing, he didn't do anything to any friends of mine. But he's a bastard, steer clear."

"Well, all right, if you say so," they said.

The line was interminable and Gadreel grew more and more miserable by the hour. Occasionally he tried to convince some of the people in front of him that he was actually Lucifer's favorite and should be allowed past them. Sure, he wasn't the only of Lucifer's favorites, but Gadreel knew he was Lucifer's favorite favorite. He could tell. Lucifer cared greatly for him, and would want to know he had survived. But they all laughed at him and told him everybody said that, and so, Gadreel stayed in the line, crawling gradually past deep pits so black it hurt to look into them, and rivers of pitch.

Finally, finally he came to the front of the line, and there was Lucifer, sitting on a throne in front of a great ocean of molten lava. He was beautiful still, but there was something... slightly off about him now. Gadreel couldn't pinpoint what it was, exactly; he didn't see any specific difference. Maybe he was imagining things. He didn't seem to be leaking light anymore, although Gadreel could see a trickle of it leading to a larger puddle, which -- oh. Which had flowed into the lava -- had maybe made the lava?

That was a lot of light he'd lost. No wonder he looked different. Gadreel felt awful now, acting like his own wounds were all that serious.

Gadreel made his way painfully to a spot at the base of the throne. "Gadreel," said Lucifer, scintillating with what looked like approval.

But it was approval Gadreel couldn't feel anymore, and he wondered if he'd done something wrong. And he realized he had; he'd vouched for Vehuel, like a gullible idiot, and --

"Come here," said Lucifer, gently, reaching out a hand large enough to encompass galaxies, and Gadreel remembered what it was to trust again. "You're very upset."

"We lost," said Gadreel. "We lost and it's --"

"Your fault. Yes, in a way," he said, cradling Gadreel.

Gadreel, who had been barely hanging onto some important pieces of himself this whole time, almost wished he had shaken apart on the way down. "I. I'm sorry."

"We all are," said Lucifer, gently. "But sorry doesn't do anything, does it? Still. I'm here to put you back together, and I'm sure you can work to --"

"Yes! To make things right!" said Gadreel.

Lucifer laughed, and it sounded wrong. "Oh no, haven't you heard?" he asked, with that sort of glimmer that meant he was going to say something that Gadreel understood, and most people did not. "We're in the business of making things wrong now." And Gadreel, for the first time, didn't understand it; there was a joke in it, somewhere, but -- "But we don't really have time to discuss all of that, do we? I'm going to have to remake you." And without waiting for an answer, he seized Gadreel by his central spiral -- the one that had been hurting him so much all this time, because it was very much not in the center of him like it was supposed to be -- and yanked.

Gadreel thought he had known pain when Vehuel had carved him up, and then he thought he'd understood pain when he fell into the pit of boiling sulfur, and in the hours after that, he'd assumed he had become used to pain, waiting in the line for Lucifer to see to his wounds, but none of that was true, it turned out, because none of that pain was in any way comparable to having your very essence pulled out and your whole self unspooled in Lucifer's hands. Lucifer chuckled to himself. "Most people scream when I do that," he said, pleasantly, as if it was a funny little joke.

Gadreel had been too startled to scream at first, and then in too much pain after to make any sort of sound, and now that Lucifer was twisting him and laying him out and tugging him this way and that, ripping him to pieces and smoothing over the rips with careful fingers digging into his being. It was all he could do to just hang onto existence.

He didn't say anything; he didn't trust himself not to say the wrong thing. Lucifer laughed again, and Gadreel realized he didn't need to say anything; Lucifer could see right through him, see everything about him. He was reminded of the times he'd communed celestially with Lucifer, and it had been -- it had been so much, he had never been able to see all of Lucifer's thoughts, but Lucifer had come away understanding him better than he understood himself. Only this time he couldn't see into Lucifer at all, and he was completely at Lucifer's mercy.

He shivered, and pain shot through him in all the places Lucifer had wrenched apart or pushed together.

"What shall I name you?" Lucifer asked, several eyes looking him over impassively. He felt strange and hollow. He felt wrong. Lucifer watched him become tangled in on himself and untied him patiently, saving him from himself. "Hmm. How about Crawly? It's very descriptive."

"Crawly," said... Crawly. It was a fitting name, he told himself. It was the right name. Lucifer, his friend and leader, had given it to him, not God the tyrant.

"I'm glad you like it," said Lucifer. He grasped Crawly around the middle and plunged him into the pool of lava in front of him, and all the pain he'd felt in the process of being remade repeated itself, but worse. He was in agonies for what felt like days, years, centuries... and then Lucifer pulled him out again and placed him gently on the ground. "I will find you when I need you, Crawly," he said, and then he was left to slither off, and Lucifer had moved on to tend to the next of his fallen army.

--

When Lucifer needed him next, Crawly had already been bullied into doing a lot of fetching and carrying for other people. Bigger, stronger people; mostly ones who still had limbs, and could therefore both fetch and carry more easily than Crawly. He learned many things in this period; he learned that sometimes bits of the outside of himself would slough off, but that there was more new Crawly underneath and that he wasn't actually dying. He learned that people didn't like it when he called Lucifer Lucifer, and they didn't believe him when he said he'd worked with Lucifer, or done special, important things for him. He learned, also, that God had cut them all off from Her love, which was fine, because who wanted it anyway? Several people theorized that this was why none of them could feel each others' joy anymore; several others, more morosely, suggested that perhaps they had lost the capacity for joy. But they would win it back, of course, when they overthrew God later.

Later couldn't come soon enough for Crawly; he was cold all the time, and he missed his halo.

Eventually, Lucifer found him. He looked different now; he wore the form of -- was it a human? It might be. Crawly hadn't seen the designs up close, but he'd heard them described, although the rumor mill in Heaven wasn't always very reliable. Whatever his shape, though, he was Lucifer, and it was a relief to see him again. Crawly felt a jolt of affection for Lucifer, that he should stoop to taking the form of something so weak just for fun, and he slithered up to Lucifer eagerly. "I have sssome problemsss," he said.

Lucifer bared his teeth in a way that Crawly thought was a smile. "I have some solutions! Why don't we find out if they match up with your problems?" And he picked Crawly up and wrapped him around his person, and for the first time since the war, Crawly felt safe. Safety was oddly nervewracking, but it was still such a relief to feel it.

Lucifer took him to a private, quiet place, then, and reshaped him once more, breathing him gently into a form much like his own. It hurt less than being remade, but Crawly was pretty sure he'd got something wrong about the hips, because they didn't feel very sturdy.

As soon as he mentioned that, Lucifer had insisted on testing the form out, making sure that it worked, because, he explained, he was going to be the first demon sent up to Earth to cause problems for God. Filled with pride, Crawly tried his very best; if he could do what Lucifer asked of him, maybe he could be instrumental in winning their next fight with Heaven.

The tests could be fun; Crawly found that sometimes he enjoyed the human equivalent of celestial communion, for all that it was much less overpowering than the real thing. But sometimes his human body would begin to fall apart, when Lucifer pushed him too far. Lucifer reminded him that there was value in knowing these limits; it was much better for him to know when the body would fail before taking it out into the field.

But a lot of the tests were pretty tedious, and Crawly hadn't liked them at all. Being strangled, for example, hadn't been any fun at all, and drowning had been awful. Lucifer had insisted on doing that five or six times, because he was certain he'd done something wrong with the way the lungs connected up to the mouth, but it turned out humans were just laid out very strangely. "Gabriel designed them," Crawly reminded him, and this earned him warm laughter and burning fingers threaded through his new hair, a lovely sensation, before Lucifer pushed his head under the water another time, just to be sure.

Crawly still wasn't entirely sold on this whole being evil to contradict God thing -- if they were going to be evil, it should be for its own sake, shouldn't it? -- but Lucifer had explained to him that there was going to be a rematch, another war, which they'd win handily if only they worked at doing everything they could to thwart God's plans, to weaken and demoralize Her forces and their resolve, and Crawly thought he understood it better now. So when Lucifer declared that his body was probably working well enough to head up to Earth, Crawly had been eager to get started.

"What do I do now?" he asked, wide-eyed.

Lucifer raised a gentle hand to caress Crawly's face, and Crawly was almost, not quite but almost over the shock of not feeling his affection viscerally.  This touch, Crawly told himself, this gentleness... it would have to be enough, for now.  "You get up there," he said, "and make some trouble."

[bubonickitten]

TMA fic: Night Terrors

Summary: At first, Jon assumes his nightmares are just that: bad dreams. But it's only a matter of time before he is forced to acknowledge what it means to be the Archivist.

Cross-posted to AO3 here.

[Spoilers up to MAG 132. CW for canon-typical horror, unsettling dream/nightmare imagery (think MAG 120), some passive suicidal ideation, and some spider mentions here and there.]

Jonathan Sims has had the same nightmare since he was eight years old, with only slight variations.

Sometimes he is the fly in children’s overalls being offered up as a meal. He can feel the anxious buzz of the delicate wings on his back, a foreign and sickening vibration humming its way across his exoskeleton. Four feet rub together nervously in front of him in an uncanny, insectoid pantomime of hand-wringing. The looming form of Mr. Spider is made all the more horrifying by his hundredfold vision and his inability to blink.

Sometimes he is the larger fly, offering up a victim as sacrifice. He can feel his face contorting, features molded into the horror-stricken face of Mr. Horse that still haunts him on sleepless nights. He is forced to watch his offering devoured, slow and excruciating. After, the monster turns its eyes on him.

Most often, though, he is the spider. Or, rather, he watches from the spider’s perspective, a prisoner trapped behind the creature’s many hungry, glinting eyes, as helpless as a fly caught in a web. The dream sequence unravels in slow motion and he is forced to witness the weeping faces of his intended prey for what feels like hours. Enormous block letters bear down on him, announcing the spider’s insatiable hunger, its demand for more, more, more.

Finally, blessedly, he is allowed to close his eyes, but the relief is always fleeting, for when he opens them seconds later, he sees the aftermath of a massacre: smears of reddish-brown blood coating the walls, the floor, the wilting flowers in their vase.

Then, he hears a knock on the door. He sees many – too many – hairy black limbs reach out to open it. He catches a glimpse of a terrified, familiar, but still nameless face through the crack. He always awakens just as the victim opens his mouth and begins to scream.

Jon may have managed to wrench himself away from Mr. Spider, but the fear and the guilt still cling to him years later, like the wispy strands of a broken web. It’s only right that they follow him into his dreams.

~~~

Jon isn’t sleeping well lately.

Well, that isn’t new. But he’s sleeping even worse than usual.

It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, Jon tells himself. The new job is stressful.

The Archive is a monument to entropy. A tornado could have swept through and blown things into a more sensible order than the previous Head Archivist left them. The Archives contain nearly two centuries’ worth of case files, and they're scattered about with no discernible system of organization. Material isn’t sorted by format: cassette tapes are thrown haphazardly into the same boxes as loose leaf paper. It isn’t sorted chronologically: case material from the mid-1800s can be found mixed in with recent statements from the 2000s. As far as Jon can tell, it isn’t even sorted thematically; on a cursory perusal, the statements boxed together seem to vary wildly in content, comprehensiveness, and verifiability.

In fact, the conspiratorial part of Jon’s brain can’t shake the feeling that there’s an eerie sense of curation to the disorganization. The more rational part of him knows that Gertrude Robinson was simply elderly, set in her ways, and secure in a position that she had held for decades. Elias isn’t one for hands-on management in the best of cases; there was little to no risk of him actually making his way into the Institute’s basement to observe the way Gertrude ran her Archives, let alone to actually discipline her for lax work ethic.

Either way, though, the result is the same. 

The first thing Jon had noticed when he walked into his new office a week previous was a stack of unmarked boxes against the back wall behind the desk. They were partially covering what at first glance appeared to be fingernail scratches on the floorboards, but he told himself that he didn’t have time to dwell on that and deliberately pushed it to the back of his mind. He could deal with it later – or, with any luck, not at all. 

The first box he opened contained a handful of unlabeled cassette tapes, a stack of blank index cards in a plastic sandwich bag, an empty manila folder, a nonfunctioning USB thumb drive, and a mess of loose papers with no coherent theme: some fragments of personal correspondence (unsigned and handwritten on yellowed paper in nearly illegible cursive), the scattered typewritten pages of a statement (pages 2 and 7 of 10 missing, presumed lost), and a hand-drawn map of what looked like a labyrinth. The second and third boxes contained more of the same: scattered documents and a yawning void of context. The fourth box was completely empty. The fifth contained only a single matchbook with a faded spider printed on its surface, rattling around the bottom of an otherwise vacant box. 

Unmarked boxes, improperly-preserved documents, no rhyme or reason, a layer of dust, and an ignition source. It wasn’t a good start – and, unfortunately, it seemed representative of what the job was going to look like, at least for the first few months. 

But beyond that, Elias had been insistent that Jon begin creating audio recordings of statements as soon as possible. Jon had initially chosen to interpret “as soon as possible” to mean “as soon as everything is organized,” and after seeing how big of a task that was, he was careful not to promise a time frame. After the third email from Elias inquiring about Jon’s progress with digitizing the old statements, though, Jon was honest: every day, he found himself adjusting the project timeline as they found more and more statements misfiled or missing.

“I believe it would be best for you to begin recording the statements as you go along,” Elias said. It was obviously an order, but he masked it as a friendly suggestion. Jon hates when he does that; it feels manipulative and condescending, like a parent (or grandparent, in Jon’s case) presenting the illusion of choice to a child and daring them to call it out for what it is.

Jon never was good at keeping his mouth shut, though.

“My first priority is to ensure that everything is cataloged and stored properly. Digitization will go more smoothly if everything is in order before -”

“You have three perfectly competent assistants,” Elias interrupts. Jon bites his tongue before he can make a snide remark about competence. “I’m certain they can handle a bit of filing without your close supervision.”

“But we -”

“I want you to begin making audio recordings, Jon,” Elias interrupted, finally adopting a tone that brooked no argument. “It all has to be done eventually, and it doesn’t matter what order you go in, so you may as well pick a place and start.”

“Some of the documents are incomplete.” Jon couldn’t quite manage to keep his annoyance out of his tone. “I found pages of the same statement scattered across three different rooms -”

“Start with the statements that seem complete, then. If you find more related case material elsewhere later on, you can simply make supplemental recordings.”

And with that, Elias had walked away before Jon could protest further.

So, yes. He’s stressed. The Archives are an unmitigated disaster, Jon only has three assistants to help him put them back into some semblance of order, and Elias wants him to embark on a massive digitization project when they still haven’t even inventoried the contents of most of the unlabeled boxes piled around the place. It’s like standing in the immediate aftermath of an earthquake and being told to start construction on a new building before the damages are assessed or the rubble is cleared. Oh, and he isn’t given any blueprints for direction.

Sleep troubles are to be expected.

~~~

These nightmares are new.

It isn’t that all of Jon’s nightmares involve spiders. He does occasionally have standalone nightmares that are perfectly spider-free: finding himself back in uni and failing a class he’s never attended and doesn’t remember signing up for; being chased by something sinister and tripping over nothing, only to wake up just as its teeth puncture his throat; waking in an unfamiliar place surrounded by things just to the left of human, hiding behind names he knows well and faces he does not recognize.

But this is the first recurring dream he’s ever had where spiders do not feature prominently.

At first, all he can see is the fog, pressing in on all sides. If the dream lent itself more to cartoon logic, it’s the type of fog that could be molded like putty. He doesn’t make the conscious decision to move; the dream simply puppets him forward and he lets it take him. He doesn’t even notice the open grave until one foot is suspended over it, and when the dream loosens its grip on him, he throws his weight backward, swaying off-kilter and nearly stumbling into another pit that has appeared just behind him.

The fog recedes just enough for him to make out the dozens of empty graves now surrounding him.

Then it starts to move back in, tendrils reaching out to him like the myriad limbs of a living, breathing creature, coating his skin and filling his lungs, and all at once he is pummeled with the overwhelming revelation that he is alone. It’s not just that there isn’t anyone around for miles. It’s not even just that he will never again see another living person. No. It’s that he is, for all intents and purposes, an island. No one knows him. No one ever has, and no one ever will. And he has never known anyone else, either, only carefully constructed personas meant to mask the self – if there even is such a thing as the self.

He will die here, and nothing will remain of him, and no one will notice that he disappeared. And that’s… that’s okay. It’s right. It’s exactly as it should be.

Someone is screaming. Actually, he realizes belatedly, someone has been screaming for a while now, but only now does it manage to reach him through the haze.

Once again, the dream forces him to move. It maneuvers him around the vacant graves, drawing him ever closer to the voice. When he is finally brought to a stop, he is wrenched forward and his gaze is forced downward to behold a shivering figure sprawled six feet beneath him in the earth and mud. She looks familiar, but it takes a few moments before he can place her.

Naomi Herne.

She nearly weeps in relief when she sees him, another living, breathing person after so long lost in the mist. She reaches up to him, begs him to help her, but when he tries to kneel and extend a hand, he finds that he cannot move. He cannot speak. He cannot blink.

He can only watch, and so he does.

The seconds stretch into minutes stretch into hours, and the whole time she pleads with him to say something, to say anything. He watches as her fingers dig deep furrows into the walls of her prison and eventually her pleas dissolve into hopeless whimpers.

He wakes up in a cold sweat, feeling as if he never slept at all.

Untangling himself from the sheets, he stumbles into the bathroom, turns on the faucet, and splashes cold water on his face. As he stands and stares at his reflection in the mirror, he notices how pronounced the dark circles under his eyes have become. Naomi Herne’s statement had been unsettling, certainly, but apparently it’s affected him more deeply than he had initially thought.

It’s not all that surprising, he supposes. There have been a lot of changes in his life recently. The content of the statements he reads is… upsetting. He’s stressed. It would be strange if he didn’t have trouble sleeping.

It’s fine. It’s normal. He’s fine.

  ~~~

 The next night, he dreams of Naomi Herne again.

And the night after that. And the night after that.

Every time, she begs him to say something, to take her hand. She needs to hear another human voice; she needs to feel a human touch; she needs an anchor, anything to chase away the isolation.

At some point, though, she begins to curse him. He is her jailor, her tormenter. She would rather be completely alone, to be left to suffer in dignified privacy, than to have her loneliness amplified by that unwavering stare. Why is he doing this to her? Why won’t he just say something?

As usual, he cannot make a sound, and he cannot look away.

~~~

Jonathan Sims and Melanie King rubbed each other the wrong way from the moment they met eyes, and she is no more pleased to see the Archivist in her dream that night.

They both watch as Sarah Baldwin pleads with an unseen, unforgiving assailant. They look on in revulsion as she staples her skin back together. The scene plays over and over and over again, and eventually Melanie wrenches her gaze away from Sarah and hones in on the Archivist. All of her fear transmutes into anger and she unleashes a torrent of accusations, railing against him for his arrogance, his callousness, his foolish conviction that he knows better than everyone else, that he understands anything at all.

He can’t open his mouth to argue with her, but even if he could, he’s not sure that he could counter her allegations.

Melanie is still shouting at him when he is pulled from the hospital and finds himself in the graveyard again. Naomi Herne is huddled in the corner of her grave tonight, knees hugged tight to her chest. She is utterly silent. He wishes he could look away, but the dream has his head locked in place and his eyes plastered open and he watches her for the rest of the night.

Jon wakes up all too aware of his skin and what lies beneath it.

~~~

The tables in the dissection lab are piled high with pulsating hearts, quivering lungs, and writhing bones.

Hand trembling, scalpel in hand, Dr. Lionel Elliott slices into an apple as if demonstrating how to dissect a human heart. The Archivist catches the glimmer of tooth enamel, the glint of a silver crown on one of the molars, and a shared wave of nausea crashes over both of them. The professor begs the Archivist to take the apple from him, but as always, the Archivist is immobilized. He can feel every ounce of the Elliott’s helpless fear as if it is his own.

The Archivist knows what Elliott is thinking. He wants to run. He wants to curse. He wants to beg. He wants to bury the scalpel in the Archivist’s unblinking eyes. Instead, his blood curdles and his limbs contort and his joints dislocate and he writhes like a live butterfly pinned to a board in front of an uncaring, ceaseless watcher.

The Archivist feels all of it along with him, and neither of them can scream.

It’s only a dream, of course, but Elliott feels so alive that Jon wakes up with a sense of pity all the same.

~~~

 The Archivist wants to tell Helen Richardson not to open the door, but his jaw is wired shut with invisible thread.

The Archivist has lost count of how many times he has been forced to watch as the Distortion’s maze devours her, the scene playing recursively in its mirrored hallways.

Of course he dreams of her. She disappeared right in front of him and he could do nothing to stop it. In quiet moments, the scar that the Distortion gave him still twinges, and brings with it the deep ache of guilt. It’s to be expected that it would bleed over into his dreams.

  ~~~

 Letter by letter, Tessa Winters consumes the keyboard. An eerie, cold glow highlights every detail of her pained expression. Although the Archivist’s mouth will not open, he feels one of his molars crack under the crunch of plastic, and as Tessa moves on to the monitor, a shard of glass slices into the roof of his mouth. The blood pools on both of their tongues, trickles down their throats, and they both wish they could gag.

The Archivist's thoughts unravel into acute angles and sharp edges, shredding his consciousness to ribbons. He is a collection of garbled text and rogue characters, of noisy pixels and castoff artifacts, of corrupted extensions and crossed wires.

It’s cold, and it hurts.

       IT%’s/ côLd &&;t <<hurts>>.

                 I̴t̸'̴s̴ ̵c̸o̸l̶d̵, ̵a̵n̶d̴ ̸i̴t̴ ̸h̶u̸r̵t̸s̶.̸

                                                                                                                                                             Ï̵̡̻ͅț̴͘'̴̰̙͒̌͠ͅs̶̻̿̎ ̴̞c̵̮̒̾ơ̴̞͕̕͝ļ̴̱̅d̶̥̣͎̈ ̵̨͕̀̿̊a̵̗̪̽̆n̶͕̩̞͆d̵̦̮̳͐̏͗ ̵̢̻̑ȉ̷̪t̸͓̉͒ ̶̮͉̹̇͠h̵̳̻̞͝u̴̢̬̣̒ř̴̠́t̵͍̟͛ṡ̷̨̤͓͒̾.̸̦̭̓

                                                                                                                                                                          I̶̢͚͓̤̗̹̱̠̱͚̤̾t̶̛̳̏̑͐͗́̍̈̿̄͒͗́̔̈́̈́̈́̚̕͠'̵̡̧̦̖͚͓͙͙͕̜̻̣̙̲͓̑͂͋̾̊̄͌̀̑͒̚ͅͅṣ̶̛̻͚͓̫̜̀̂͌͌̈̈́̃̽̏̐̔̌ ̵̗̫̓̊̾̇͆c̷̨̑̀̈́̇̊̇̑͊́̂̊̇͘̚͘̚̚̚͝ǫ̵̈́̎̿͑̔̔̑͛̀͋̉̋̓̾l̷̙̯͙͍͇̟̭̳͉̹̳̖͎͇̲͖̝̖͈̺̍d̴̡̫̼̗̮̹̎̌̽̏̂̐̑̈̏̀̃͆͗͂̓̚͝ ̴̧̛͈̭̼̭̰͔̥͓̟̲́̒̊̍̉̌͆̇̆̑͗̑̿̉̅̑͒̽̈̿a̵̳̰̽̌͆͂̏͒̌̓̔̈͐̆̿̕͝n̸̨̢̧̧̲̺͙̗̪̻͎̥͉̥͔͇̠͙̫͒̌̅̃͒́̌̈́͐̀̈͘̚͘̕͝͝ͅḋ̵̢̡̧̜͇̜̤̠̺̜̦̲̳͓̼̩̣̼̭̱͐̿̿̍̿̀͌͊̃̿͊̕͠ ̶̭̩̥̲͈͚̟͇̱̹̼̩̪̙̱͒́͑̌͒͐̕͜ỉ̸̲͇̬͓̫̪̞̜̱̪̻̲̎̿́̃̽̕͘͠͝ţ̸̗͙͍͍̫̞͚̞͓̙̼̝͚͕̮̋͋̏̌͂͗̈ ̵̨̟̗͉̯̘̙̫̱̹̱̲̘̪͖̤̱̟̦̘̹̟̎̐̌͗̾̋̿̄͜͠h̴̢̡̨̢̛̫͓̠̤͉̠̩̮͙̞̪̏̇͊̈͂̿̅͋͌͘̚͠ư̵̰͙̯͖̈́̄̊͌͐̾͐̃̈̈͒̑͠ͅr̷̨̛̗͈̣̰̘̲̩̦̙̅̃̽͛͒̈͜͠ͅṯ̶̮͕̺͖̹̺̺̦͈̰̮͚͇̳̘̺̤̹̭͐͊̏̓̅̊̏͌́̒́̚̕͘͘͜͝͝͠͝s̶̺̻͔̹̙̟̭̜̏̆͗͂̔̄̔͋́͆̀̋̈́͌͂̚͝.̶̘͚͚͓͕̝͖̪͔̼̙̲̞͎͉̩̳͍̙̩̋̆̅͒̇̅͌̆͗̉̋͊͒͐̔̅̏̕͜͝͝ͅ

    ~~~

When Jon finally bolts upright into wakefulness, he knows.

These are not his nightmares.

They are shared dreamscapes.

No, not shared. Invaded.

Just recently he had noted how long it had been since last he was the spider in his nightmare, but maybe that was premature.

At least the others showed up at the Institute to give their statements on their own. Tessa Winters, though, was his fault. He wrote the forum post that drew her to him. She wouldn’t be in his dreams if he hadn’t cast that net. He spun a web and waited for the prey to wander in, all because he needed to know and was willing to lure someone in under false pretenses just to get the answers he craved. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t intend this – the consequences are the same.

And Tessa Winters knows it. She meets his gaze, equally unblinking, baleful and accusing. He is a thing with too many eyes, gorging himself on her suffering, devoid of empathy or humanity. When she looks into his eyes, she sees a ravenous, pitiless voyeur, and even if the Archivist was allowed to speak, he would not dispute her claim. After all, the Beholding is the feeling that something, somewhere, is letting you suffer, just so it can watch, and the Archivist is its pawn and its representative and its instrument. Tessa's eyes pin him in place just as effectively as the ever-present Eye in the sky.

He is becoming – has become? – that which he fears, and he cannot look away.

It really isn’t all that different from the spider dreams after all, except this time there are witnesses to his sins.

  ~~~

 The words on the paper are blurry and his head feels full of cobwebs. His eyes itch and sting in equal measure, making it ever more difficult to keep his heavy eyelids from drifting shut. He keeps nodding off, leaning forward and jerking upright as soon as the sensation of falling grips him.

“-n? Jon!”

“Wha-” Jon startles as Martin’s voice finally reaches him through the fog. “I – what?”

Martin has a concerned look on his face. That seems to be his default state these days, Jon thinks distantly.  

“I kept saying your name but you were just… you weren’t answering.”

“Oh.”

Martin worries his bottom lip between his teeth. Jon can tell that he wants to say something, but he just stands there waffling, and –

“What?” Jon snaps, and then he and Martin wince at the same time. “I’m… I’m sorry, Martin. I – I’m just tired.” He rubs his eyes furiously, trying to chase away the haze. “I’m sorry. Did you need something?” 

“I… Jon, when’s the last time you slept?”

Silence.

“Maybe you should have a lie down? I made up the cot in the storage room, and –”

“I’m fine,” Jon replies through gritted teeth.

“You’re falling asleep at your desk. Actually, um,” – a small, cautious grin crosses Martin’s face – “I don’t know what paperwork you used as a pillow, but you have ink on your face.”

Jon groans and scrubs at his face with both hands.

“You really do need to sleep, though,” Martin ventures again, gentle but firm.

“I… I don’t want to,” Jon says stiffly. As soon as the words leave his mouth, he curses himself for the honesty – Martin is going to want to talk about that now, and –

“Why?”

Jon is silent, steadfastly refusing to look Martin in the eye.

“Fine,” Martin sighs, exasperated. “But you can’t go forever without sleep, I don’t care how stubborn you are.”

He’s right, Jon knows.

Jon did manage a full 70 hours awake before he started nodding off in spite of himself. For the past few days, he’s been allowing himself short naps, setting his phone alarm at hour intervals to wake him long before he can enter REM sleep.

It isn’t sustainable, but the alternative is haunting people’s nightmares, looking into their eyes and Beholding what they see when they look at him: Cold, calculating predator. Unblinking voyeur. Too many hungry, prying eyes, feeding on their terror, stripping them of their dignity, soaking in their trauma with cruel fascination –

“Jon.”

“Fine,” Jon grumbles. “Sixty minutes.”

  ~~~

 Whenever he slips into the dreamscape, Daisy promises to hunt him down. Finish what she started. Bury him in a shallow grave and leave him to become yet another mystery.

The Archivist wonders if being killed in the dream would wake him up, spare the other dreamers from his scrutiny for just one night.

He wonders how Daisy would react if he was able to tell her that he resents the absence of her knife at his throat just as much as she does.

  ~~~

 Six months.

For six months, he wanders, an uninvited, hated guest in those familiar dreamscapes.

The Archivist wants nothing more than to throw himself into an empty grave, to turn the damp earth into a prison with six-foot-high walls, to break his legs in the fall so that even when his resolve crumbles and he tries to clamber out of the hole, he will be unable to do so. The other dreamers would be safe from him, then. There would be nothing for him to watch but unyielding soil and the chill, impenetrable fog above.

He Knows that the Eye is still there behind the veil of fog; he can feel its unceasing gaze, but at least in the lonely cemetery, he cannot see it.

There is an open grave in front of him, its waiting maw calling him forward, promising to shackle him, to hobble him with blindness and paralysis. He stands at the edge, knees locked and eyes peeled, staring down into a plot that he desperately wishes belonged to him, and him alone. The dream keeps him there for what seems like hours, taunting him, holding relief just out of reach.

Then, the dream turns him around and pulls him inexorably toward his true objective. Once again he is forced to watch as Naomi’s freezing, bloodied fingers scrabble uselessly on the walls of her prison. Her tears have left trails in the mud on her face, and when she looks up at him, she asks the same question she does every single time: Why are you doing this to me?

Eventually – after far too long standing statue-still, eyes locked on Naomi’s pained, desperate face – the Archivist is yanked onward toward the waiting carnage of the dissection lab, the mournful singing of the coffin, the undulating mass of ants.

When Jane Prentiss shambles toward him, he can feel the worms burrow into his skin all over again. He wants to scream, to scratch, to grab a corkscrew and start digging – Dig, comes the intrusive thought, blinking in his mind like a marquee: Dig. Dig. Dig. – but his mouth and his hands are not his own, and his eyes – so many eyes, so reminiscent of the spider – are fixed on Jane. Her otherworldly screams pierce the night as she burns, and the Archivist desperately wishes he could clamp his hands over his ears to block out her death knell.

Being brought before Georgie Barker is almost worse than confronting Jane Prentiss. If she could still feel fear, the Archivist is certain she would wear the same expression as the others. Instead, there is only a mix of pity and resignation. Over and over again, Jonathan Sims has walked into burning buildings for even the slightest chance of having a question answered. She wishes she was more surprised to see what he has become, but she is so intimately familiar with his pattern of self-destruction and stubborn curiosity, and she has long since recognized it for what it is: a fatal flaw, coaxing him toward tragedy like a moth to the flame.

The exterminator makes no distinction between the Archivist and the Flesh Hive, and Georgie Barker likely wouldn’t, either. As always, the Archivist cannot find it in himself to argue.

When at last he finally awakens, he is not surprised that she leaves with such finality, her parting words condemning him as a lost cause. He pushed on past the point of no return, just like she always feared he would, and she has no desire to watch him burn.

  ~~~

 Jon may not have been allowed to toss himself into a lonely grave, but the coffin welcomes him with an eager appetite, and imprisons him in much the same way. He may be unable to move, but at least his body is his own, unlike in his dreams; he may not be able to escape, but at least he can speak.

“After the mission. I was planning to kill you,” Daisy tells him, matter-of-fact. He knows why the moment she starts talking about her dreams. “Realized you weren’t human. Needed to die, as soon as it was safe. Never mind Elias and his… insurance.”

“And now?”

“Don’t know. I – I miss dreaming. You don’t sleep, down here.”

Jon finds the prospect of eternal wakefulness in this place downright horrifying – the endless boredom alone sounds like torture – but... no sleep means no nightmares. 

“Daisy, you should know, I – I’m… if I wasn’t human before, I’m, uh – I’m even less now.”

The distant rumbling of the shifting earth picks up in volume until he can feel it in his teeth.

“Yeah.” Daisy doesn’t sound surprised. “Well, at the moment, I don’t care.”

“And if we get out?”

“But we can’t get out.”

“No.”

The noise grows in volume, drowning out his voice.

I really should have known better, he thinks to himself. Of course his rib wasn’t a strong enough anchor. He’s so alienated from his own body at this point, so far from human that he couldn’t even die properly. How many times has he found himself thinking, What’s another scar? In a way, he feels just as detached from his body when he’s awake as he does in his nightmares. The idea that a part of his body would call to him from outside the coffin… it’s just as ridiculous as his rushed, irresponsible deductions about the NotThem’s table.

“I’m s – I’m sorry,” Daisy stammers, snapping Jon out of his reverie. “I’m sorry, Jon.”

“So am I,” Jon replies. For everything, he does not say.

The rumbling fades, and silence descends on them in a rush.

“You know,” Jon begins after a minute, choosing his words carefully, “I… I didn’t know, at first. That the nightmares were real.”

Daisy says nothing, and Jon interprets it as permission to go on.

“I – I thought that they were just my nightmares. That the first statements I took hit me harder than I’d expected. I was so dismissive to the first few people who came in to give their statements in person, and I assumed that my – my guilt over how I treated them was manifesting as nightmares, since I refused to process it in real life. That I was just…” He lets out a bitter laugh. “That I was just stressed about the new job.”

“When did you figure it out?” Daisy asks levelly.

“I… I think I suspected after a few months? But I just – I told myself that I was being ridiculous. I went through a bit of a – a paranoid phase, and I thought that I was just… overthinking things. I tend to do that, to just – obsess, and let my imagination run wild –”

Daisy snorts. “Yeah, I gathered that.”

“I – I've had a lot of practice with denial, I suppose,” Jon says, sheepish. “Or feigning denial, at least. Playing the skeptic was… safer. Admitting out loud that I believed in – in monsters felt like it would… draw unwanted attention, I suppose. That it would somehow provoke the thing watching me to strike. I convinced myself that pretending to be ignorant would keep the monsters at bay.”

“That’s…”

“Stupid, I know.”

Daisy gives a dry chuckle.

“I had to give up the act after – after Prentiss attacked the Archives,” Jon continues. “Even after that, though, I still wanted to believe that the nightmares weren’t real. But then one day I woke up and – and I just knew –”

The dirt around them begins to press in again, forcing the air from his lungs. Jon feels Daisy’s fingers brush his wrist and he takes her hand. Not alone. Not alone. Not alone.

Then the pressure lets up all at once and they are both left gasping in its wake. 

“Keep talking?” Daisy’s voice has that desperate, pleading edge to it again. It’s so at odds with the Hunter that Jon knows, more like prey than predator. “I – I need – I don’t want to be alone.”

“Not alone,” Jon murmurs, as much for himself as for Daisy. “The dream that made me realize – her name was Tessa Winters. I took her statement, and that night she was in my dreams. The way she looked at me, I just… I knew. She was really there. Her eyes were so – so accusing, like she knew that it was my fault that she was there. And – and it was. The other statement givers came to me on their own, but she likely would have never come to the Institute if it wasn’t for me.”

“Oh?”

“I – I posted on a message board, soliciting supernatural experiences related to technology.”

“You can use a computer, then,” Daisy teases, a smirk in her voice.

Jon smiles too, and for the briefest moment he forgets where they are. “I just turned 30 this year, Daisy,” he says, rolling his eyes, and she snorts.

“Still, I can’t picture you making forum posts.”

“I had an ulterior motive,” he admits, his smile fading as the old guilt bubbles up. “I had found Gertrude’s laptop, and I needed help breaking into it, so I – I figured maybe I could lure in someone who knew computers, take their statement, find a way to casually ask them to have a look at the laptop for me. It worked, but then she appeared in my nightmares, and – if I hadn’t drawn her to me, she wouldn’t be there.”

Daisy makes a noncommittal sound. Jon shuts his eyes tight and takes a deep, faltering breath.

“And then – after the Unknowing, I – I should have died. I was dead, technically. My brain was still firing – dreaming,” he says with distaste, “but I had no pulse, no respiration, no… no other signs of life.” He feels the pressure of tears in his eyes and he fights to keep his voice steady. “You should have seen the way the doctors and nurses looked at me as they were explaining it. A – a medical mystery – a marvel, really – the sort of thing that most professionals would kill for a chance to study – but they couldn’t wait to get away from me, to hurry me out the door.” He pauses to take a deep breath, but between the crushing earth and his own grief, he can’t fill his lungs. His exhale comes out shallow and shaky. “And – and Georgie, and Basira, and Melanie, and –”

Daisy tightens her grip on his hand. It’s so surreal that Jon almost laughs. This is Daisy. Daisy, who seized him by the throat, who tried to kill him, who enjoyed seeing him terrified and begging for his life, who took such pride in the scar she left him with – and now she’s comforting him. He isn’t sure how to process that turnaround, so instead gives her hand a squeeze in return, clears his throat, and continues.

“So – so for six months, I was in a coma. If you can call it that. But the whole time, I was dreaming. For six months, I walked through the same nightmares, over and over and over again. There was no waking up to escape it, and – and it meant that the other dreamers couldn’t escape me, either. Up until then, if I was awake while they were asleep, they could get away from me, but – but I was in the dream every hour of every day, so I was there every night they slept. And the way they look at me – like I’m a monster – it just… they’re not wrong, but I just wish – I wish I could tell them that I’m sorry, that I don’t want this either, that I don’t want to watch. The Eye doesn’t let me speak, though – or move, or – or blink. I am an observer, and an observer does not interfere.” He laughs then, a little hysterically. “It – honestly, it felt like longer than six months. I lived through the same scenes so many times that I started to feel so numb to it all.”

“What about my part of the dream?” Daisy asks quietly.  

“I – ever since the Unknowing, whenever I get to your segment, there's nothing but the coffin. I always enter it, but it never brings me to you. Until now, I suppose,” he says with a humorless chuckle. “Oddly enough, though, I always found myself wishing you were there.”

“Really.”

“Yes, I – it’s hard to explain.” He hesitates for a moment before settling on honesty. “You always looked at me like I was prey, instead of predator. Or – or maybe like I was a predator, but a – a weaker predator, something that could be killed. A monster that could be vanquished. I… I wanted you to catch me. I suppose I thought that maybe – maybe if I died in the dream, it would end the cycle, and release the other dreamers from the Eye.”

“Might have killed you in real life, though,” Daisy points out. “If the dreaming was the only part of you that was alive.” 

“It may have,” Jon agrees.

Daisy lets that linger for a minute, heavy and revealing.

“I… I don’t think I want to die,” Jon eventually continues, “but I can't stop thinking that maybe it would be… better, if I did? All that would happen is that the world would lose another monster, and – and that would be fine. It would be right. But I still…” He chokes on his words, something between a laugh and a sob. “God, when did not wanting to die start to feel selfish of me?” 

The dirt around them shifts, sibilant and imposing. They hold their breath, as if speaking might provoke it. Daisy waits for the rustling to settle again before she speaks.

“Why did you come here, Jon?”

“To – to find you, to get you out –”

“Yeah, but why? I nearly killed you. Would have tried again. Would have liked it.” She huffs. “I know you didn’t come here out of any loyalty to me. So, why?”

“I…”

“To get yourself killed?”

“No, I – I really did want to get you out of here.”

“Why did you come for me, then? Out of guilt? To justify not dying?”

“I…” Jon sighs heavily. “Yes, I – I suppose. And - and Tim was dead. Sasha is dead, and Martin is... gone, and when we found out you were still alive, I just - I didn't want to lose anyone else. I couldn't just leave you here, not if there was a chance I could bring you back.”

Daisy is silent. Jon knows that she wants him to say more, and he takes a deep breath.

“The others don’t trust me – not that I blame them, I don’t trust me, either. Martin is… he has his own plans. Georgie wants nothing to do with me. Melanie hates me for not having the decency to die, blames me for everything that’s happened. Doesn’t even think I’m me anymore, just – just some monster wearing a familiar skin, and – well,” he laughs uncomfortably, “I have a hard time arguing with her assessment.” He takes a deep breath. “And – and Basira, she… she doesn’t put much stock in my humanity, either. Sometimes she sees me as an asset to be used, but…”

He trails off, feeling faintly guilty for his mixed feelings on Basira. She encourages him to use his powers when it will help further their goals. She doesn’t go so far as to claim that the ends justify the means, but she does frequently remind him that they need to be pragmatic, like Gertrude. The rest of the time, though… she looks at Jon like he’s a dangerous animal, unpredictable and poised to strike. He knows that she’s fully prepared to put him down if it starts looking like he’s too dangerous to be allowed to live, and although that hurts, he’s also glad that there’s someone who he can trust to put an end to him if he loses himself.

Nonetheless, it’s frustrating to be hated and feared for what he can do – to hate and fear himself so thoroughly – while still being expected to embrace those powers whenever it’s deemed useful. He’s more of an instrument than a person now, a tool to be used and then locked safely away once he’s fulfilled his purpose. At the same time, though, it at least offers him some semblance of control. He may be a vehicle for the Eye’s machinations, but perhaps he can balance it by giving their side an advantage in whatever way he can, principles be damned.

And he did give Basira explicit permission to use him.

Sometimes he wishes he had Gertrude’s certainty, or Basira’s resolve, or any sort of confidence in his own convictions. Most of the time, though, he fears what he could become if he was more decisive. He doesn’t trust himself to live without doubt.

He doesn’t know how to explain all of that to Daisy, though.

“I don’t – I don’t expect them to trust me,” he says instead. “Or like me. It seems dangerous to be near me at all, and I’m not exactly” – he huffs out a short, bitter laugh – “I’m not good enough company to risk it. It hurts, and it’s lonely, but I – I do understand. But I can at least make myself useful –”

Without warning, the Buried constricts itself around them in a rush, strangling his words and stealing the air from his lungs. This time, it feels like hours pass before it finally relaxes its chokehold. The only conversation that passes between them for a long time is synchronized, frenzied gasping for what little chill, stagnant air the Buried deigns to permit them.

“We’re the same, you know,” Daisy says eventually, forcing the words out even as she struggles to catch her breath. “I'm afraid of what I am, or - or was, or could be again. I needed the Hunt. Liked it, even – I enjoyed the thrill of the chase, the kill. But now I – I look back and I’m disgusted. I hurt people who didn’t deserve it. Even the actual monsters were… I wasn’t killing them because I cared about justice, or protecting others, not really. I was feeding on the fear of the prey. It made me feel alive –”

An abrupt coughing fit interrupts her then, and several minutes pass before she’s able to continue speaking through the grit coating her tongue.

“All I’ve felt since I came down here is fear and pain and guilt. I accept that – I should feel guilty, and I – I probably deserve more punishment than this. But still, I… I want to see the sun again, to breathe fresh air, to –” Her breath hitches. “I – I want to see Basira again.”

Jon can just barely hear her sniffling, but knows better than to draw attention to it.

“But – but if I leave here, I – I know I’ll hear the blood again. I don’t know who I am without the Hunt, but I – I still don’t want to go back to it. I deserve to be here – but I also want to leave – and that feels selfish. But I suppose it really doesn’t matter, does it?” When she laughs, it almost sounds like a bark, hollow and brittle. “There’s no way out.”

“No way out,” Jon repeats. “But maybe… maybe the world is safer without me in it – without… without either of us, I suppose.”

“Yeah,” Daisy chokes out, her voice hovering between a laugh and a sob. “That’s – that’s pretty messed up, isn’t it?”

Jon lets out his own tearful chuckle. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.” He pauses. “You said that – that you don’t sleep down here, that you don’t dream?”

“Yeah.”

“That's probably for the best,” he sighs. “At least this way, the Eye can’t reach the dreamers anymore.”

“And at least we’re – we’re not alone?”

“No. Not alone.”

“I’m glad that you’re here, Jon,” Daisy blurts out in a rush. “I know that’s horrible of me, but – but it’s the truth.” She takes a shaky breath. “I don’t want to be alone. I’m… I’m glad I’m not alone.”

“I’m… I think I’m glad, too,” Jon admits.

He wasted so much time pushing people away, refusing to trust, rebuffing any offer of help. Georgie told him that he needed human connection to help him stay human, and she was right, but when he finally admitted that – by the time he finally resolved to trust the others, regardless of his doubts – it was too late. When he woke up in the hospital, there was no one left to offer their hand when he reached out for help. Even worse, he can’t exactly deny that it’s his own fault.

But now, trapped here in the cold and the damp and the cramped, suffocating dark, Daisy holds his hand. The firm pressure of her grip is comforting, despite the clamminess of their skin. He can’t remember the last time he was touched with anything less than malice.  

“I’ve been alone since I woke up,” he continues, “and – and afraid of what I’m becoming. It’s nice to have someone who – who understands what it’s like. I think this is the most companionship I’ve had in… in a long while. It’s nice to be the one seen for once – by something other than a monster.”

Daisy tightens her grip further, and Jon marvels at how such a simple gesture is so much louder than words.

A silence falls on them then – a bizarrely companionable one, so incongruous with their current predicament. They clutch each other in the dark, focusing on one another’s breathing to coax them through the irregular ebb and flow of the earth pressing down on them, peppering the gloom with quiet conversation whenever the Buried gives them an inch to breathe.

Daisy talks about her childhood dog, and The Archers, and how people are always surprised to learn that she has a sweet tooth. She tells Jon about the first time she and Basira went camping: They had stretched out beneath the night sky and Basira taught Daisy the constellations, the origins of their names and the legends they represented. Affection welled up in her as she listened to Basira muse about how even though the constellations vary across time and culture, humans have always shared this collective impulse to look up at the sky and make meaning out of randomness.

For the first time in a long time, Daisy had been truly present in the moment; for once, she wasn’t gnashing her teeth, impatiently anticipating the next hunt. Basira’s voice anchored her in the present, and the call of the blood was drowned out by a flood of warmth and devotion.  

Jon talks about the Admiral, and his brief foray into AmDram at uni, and how he's always hated poetry, but then he read some of Martin's, and, well... some of them were quite good, actually. Jon confesses that he too has an unexpected sweet tooth. Martin somehow guessed; whenever Jon was having a particularly rough day, Martin would make his tea sweeter than usual. Martin never drew attention to it, and Jon never commented on it, but it was... touching, if he's honest with himself. He wishes that he had told Martin then that he noticed, that he appreciated the gesture - that it made him feel seen in a good way for once.

Jon misses Martin desperately, worries for him fiercely. Worse, he knows with a certainty that Martin will never know just how much he is missed. He spent far too long underestimating Martin, taking him for granted. Sure, Martin had stumbled a lot in the early days, but when Jon learned that Martin had lied on his CV, he was actually impressed. It's remarkable how competent Martin managed to be with no prior experience or qualifications to speak of. Daisy listens as Jon rambles on about how Martin is so much braver and cleverer than Jon or anyone else ever gave him credit for, and how much he wishes he could tell him that now.  

They go back and forth like that, confiding in each other about their regrets, and the apologies they will never get to make, and all the things they miss. They talk about fears, and monsters, and what it means to be human. They talk about choices.

Jon does not dream. Daisy does not hear the blood. Together, they listen to the quiet.

[sly2o]

Okay, but if in the Hunger Games the last two players were Clarke and Octavia, which one do you think would win and why? I'm not taking into account the emotional attachment. So, i really think that C has a 50% chance at winning. Look, O is very ruthless in a fight, brave and doesn't give up, but C is also not only someone who doesn't give up, but she has her wits too. She's cunning, resourceful, shrewed, ruthless and can totally cut a bitch if she has to.

Hi anon,

I’m going to answer this in the form of a drabble.

—

There were three bangs last night. The pictures of the smart kids she had met during training from districts 5 and 10 had finally met their end. Clarke pursed her lips as she thought of them laughing and high fiving what felt like a lifetime ago. As he finished packing up her sleeping area she did a soft double clap of her hands as a farewell to them.

Now there were two. Just herself, and the girl from district 8. 

That girl was not messing around in training. She was the textbook example of “not here to make friends”. 

Except for that one time Clarke had caught her stepping out of the elevator.

Clarke had been locked out of the elevator trying to get back upstairs to her room. After a few minutes of sitting beside the tube Octavia had stumbled out crying and muttering to herself. 

“I’m sorry Bellamy…”

“Who is Bellamy?” Clarke asked softly looking up at Octavia from her position on the floor. 

Octavia, surprised by Clarke whirled around - immediately putting her brave mask back on. 

“He’s none of your business!”

For the remaining days at training Clarke had asked around. Her mentor had told her that Bellamy was Octavia’s brother. He had done everything to keep her name out of the draw - but she still had been picked. Apparently she had put her name in the draw a couple times as a means to barter in their district.

The sun continued to rise as the day began and Clarke slowly made her way through the ruins that made the arena towards the well. 

During the early days of the games a young girl she had partnered with had speculated that the ruins were actually District 13. But Clarke wasn’t so sure. The plants were too dense. And didn’t district 13 make weapons? The ruins seemed to be a series of cages and pits - occasionally dotted with buildings where strange plants could be seen through the windows. 

Whatever the answer was - that young girl wasn’t ever going to know. She died walking into one of those buildings where the plants that looked like they held delicious golden berries suddenly turned and consumed the girl alive. Clarke had watched through the window with horror - unable to help as the vines had quickly wrapped the girl from several ends.  

Going slowly Clarke listened intently, constantly look around herself. Sometimes she doubled back to take a new path. More than once this strategy had saved her life from the trackers on the other teams. But as she backed up for a third time—

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

And then a scream followed.

Clarke was so startled she nearly fell over. Luckily she didn’t as from her left side she heard loud crashing sounds as something impossibly big was making its way towards her.

But first something- that is someone- smaller emerged from the woods on the left. It was Octavia - sprinting as fast as she could away from whatever it was. 

Now it was Octavia’s turn to nearly fall over as she bumped into Clarke. She had not expected to literally run into Clarke, and was quickly reassessing what to do next.

Clarke didn’t give Octavia time to think. Clarke pushed Octavia to the ground and then she bolted away - the sounds of “YOU BITCH” echoing behind her. But Clarke knew she had to get away from this dangerous girl with the swords, and away from the monster that was still crashing through the woods after Octavia. Hopefully whatever that thing was would do the dirty work for her and end these miserable games.

However as she ran it was clear that the monster hadn’t quite caught up with Octavia in time. She could hear the crashing sounds behind her, and Octavia’s yelling. 

I need to find a place to hide before she does, Clarke thought to herself.

The buildings Clarke dared to not enter were coming up in front of her. 

Clarke bit her lip and ran faster, towards the building with the plants with the golden berries. 

Taking a quick look behind her - Clarke knew Octavia was at least 30 seconds behind her, and luckily the trees were dense enough to hide what she was doing.

Clarke opened the door to the building with the berries outwards, and then hid behind the door in the triangle shape it made with the outside of the building.

Please work, please work, please work, Clarke silently prayed to herself. Closing her eyes and hanging on tight to the outside door handle.

It did.

Octavia went bounding into the building after where she had assumed Clarke had went. 

But it only worked for a moment.

The double doors inside were a clear marker that told Octavia to double back out. Clarke could hear Octavia shuffling on the ground in front of the door as she moved around searching for where Clarke went. 

The loud thundering noises through the forest were getting louder now.

Using her foot against the fall behind to help propel her, Clarke slammed the door forward and into Octavia. Clarke had taken Octavia off guard - she heard a sickening snapping sound and Octavia had slumped to the floor. 

However as Clarke went to run around her and away, Octavia caught her foot, sending Clarke slamming into the hard brick ground. 

They both struggled. Clarke trying to get away. Octavia - her leg apparently broken - was determined to keep Clarke next to her. 

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Both Clarke and Octavia looked up in horror. The monster had arrived.

It was big and hairy. It looked like a picture of an ape she had seen when in school - but overgrown and angry. 

The monster bounded towards them. 

Clarke grabbed one of the loose bricks next to her. Octavia flinched, loosening her grip as she expected Clarke to use the brick as a weapon in her beating. Instead Clarke threw it - it sailed out of her hand, and through the glass window of the room with the golden berries.

Immediately the vines - starving for better light, air, and flesh - crashed through the opening grabbing at everything in front of them. 

The vines intercepted the monster on its path towards Clarke and Octavia - tripping the monster and chewing him up quickly.

Clarke kicked at Octavia and finally was free from her grasp. Her knee had been injured when Octavia had knocked her down - but Clarke staggered away as quickly as she could. 

Taking one last look back - she saw the fear in Octavia’s eyes as the first vine grabbed hold of her leg.

“Tell my brother my loc-” Octavia started, but it was too late, a vine had lacerated her neck. 

Clarke felt her stomach drop as she continued to back away from what she had done, and quietly hoped she’d never have to tell Bellamy, whoever he was, anything about this horrible moment. 

—-

TL;DR - I think Clarke would win because of environmental factors. In this case, I put them essentially in Pauna’s zoo. We know Clarke can survive in this condition - she did with Le/xa and Pauna. However it was just a straight up forest or desert… I think I would give it to Octavia. In this quick write up I didn’t give enough time to Octavia slicing up Clarke before Clarke narrow escaped (but I want to hit publish on this post and not turn it into something I spend months perfecting).

Thanks for your ask,Lynne

[tessatechaitea]

A Text Adventure Review: Enchanter by Infocom

Hopefully the Council of Elders can ignore how I BLORBed myself on the second turn and we can move on to ending the wicked reign of the vile Sorcerer Krill without ever mentioning it.

I don't like to criticize the Council of Elders because I don't want to live the rest of my life as a toad but what kind of sorcerous douchebags send an apprentice wizard out on a dangerous mission with just his spellbook? The entire beginning of this game is foraging for food and water so that I don't die of thirst or hunger before I die from Krill's lightning bolt or fireball. At least start me off with the BERZIO spell, you tightwads! After loading up on supplies and learning the REZROV spell from some old crone in a deserted village, I REZROV my way into the castle. As I do so, Krill probes my mind. But sensing nothing but incompetence and a teetering house of anxiety built on a crumbling foundation of Impostor Syndrome, he shrugs his shoulders and returns to his dark work. Speaking of dark work, I FROTZ my battered brass lantern so that I won't be eaten by a Grue. While stumbling around the castle, I discovered a beautiful jeweled egg that could be opened. Not by somebody as moronic and clumsy as me of course! So I just smashed it open to discover a damaged scroll inside. And because magic can solve any problem, I simply cast KREBF (which I found on a scroll just outside the castle) on the egg and the scroll, fixing them both. I'm perplexed that the KREBF spell wasn't the first spell taught to me by the Council of Elders, seeing as how I fuck up everything I touch.

For those uninitiated with magic, here are what some of the spells I mentioned earlier do.

Parlor Magician After discovering the ZIFMIA scroll by KREBFing it and the egg, I found I was no longer a Charlatan! I was growing as an enchanter! Soon, I'd be powerful enough to be probed by my father and he'd have to acknowledge me! I mean Krill. Krill will have to acknowledge me. My main goal as a Parlor Magician was to grow my book of spells. After adding the EXEX spell (make things move with greater speed) and the VAXUM spell (make a hostile creature your friend), I decided I had enough spells to solve another problem: a door so well guarded by magical creatures that I had no hope of ever getting through it. See, I had a dream about an idiot who was too dumb to see the illusions on the door and thus was safe from harm. And my cousin, the treasure hunting jerk exploring The Great Underground Kingdom, was just the dolt to open that door! I had seen him previously in a large mirrored hallway so all I had to do was ZIFMIA him, VAXUM him, and lure him to the door by showing him my beautiful jeweled egg! Then by motioning to the door, the moron would simply walk right past the danger, saving me the trouble of disenchanting the illusion before I could get through the door. And with that accomplished, I was stronger than ever before! I was a Novice! Novice Enchanter At this point, I simply lost track of when I went up a rank which means I'll be fudging these headers. After becoming a novice, I think I helped gave meaning to the life of some stupid turtle when I allowed him to help me find a powerful scroll (not the powerful scroll. Just a powerful scroll!). I thanked him like all good and decent people would do but I don't think I scored any points for thanking him. That was a missed opportunity to really confuse people by allowing them to win the game with 395 out of 400 points because they were rude and didn't thank the turtle. Speaking of winning with only 395 points out of 400, I have something to admit when I get to the end of this...review? Um, what do I call this thing where I sort of discuss the game but also sort of just act like it's a story I'm writing but then also tell stories about my personal life that nobody actually wants to hear? Intermediate Enchanter I probably leveled up after helping the turtle. It makes sense since you get points simply for eating and drinking in this game. I figured I was powerful enough to steal the powerful scroll (the actual powerful scroll!) from The Terror's weird lair at this point. So I found my idiot cousin and forced him to give me the map and pencil he'd taken earlier because he's a greedy dick. Using the magic map and magic pencil, I freed The Terror from his cell by drawing a line on the map but then trapped him again by erasing some other lines. Then I stole his scroll and he was super pissed. But I was probably a real Enchanter at that point! Enchanter I'd love to say that I became an Enchanter because I'm such a huge genius but in reality, I think I mostly remembered the solutions to a bunch of the puzzles in this game as I stumbled upon the items that could help solve those puzzles. That being said, the only part of the game I mapped was The Terror's prison maze so I easily recognized it when I found the map. And since the pencil is found with the map, it wasn't that much of a leap to figure out what to do. I also remembered what to do with the turtle as soon as I attempted to get the brittle scroll and was hit by a spear trap. Plus once I found the ZIFMIA spell and realized I had to summon a being, I knew I had to summon the adventurer to help with something. It wasn't until I had the dream of the simple guy opening the plain door that I figured out how to use him though. I also knew I had to memorize a spell or two for the next puzzle I was going to tackle: surviving getting sacrificed. That one was easy because the OZMOO spell tells you that it's the solution by being a spell that allows you to survive an unnatural death. I'm not sure if I needed to EXEX myself to do all the moves before getting sacrificed again but I did it anyway. With that accomplished, I now had a sharp sacrificial dagger to cut the ropes on the jeweled box that enabled me to get another scroll I needed! I don't remember what scroll that was because at this point I was really flying through the game and didn't want to stop to write about it. I'm writing this a day or two later because I simply assumed my memory would be up to the task of recounting the story accurately. This won't be the last time an assumption has made a fool out of me! Although I think it was the MELBOR spell that protected me from evil beings. It makes sense because you need it to get to the final puzzle where you face Krill. If you're not protected, I think you just keep getting caught by hairy jerks whenever you enter Krill's tower. Oh yeah! I also ranked up again! Probably! Master Enchanter Finally, I had everything I needed to defeat Krill! I KULCADed his illusory staircase, IZYUKed myself so I didn't fall into the bottomless pit, and headed into his evil lair with all the correct spells memorized to defeat him! Obviously I couldn't know beforehand what spells to use because I'm an enchanter and not a psychic. So I had to die a few times before I figured it out. Also I had to realize I didn't yet have the GONDAR spell (which I didn't know existed but after being burned to death by dragon's flame a few times, I began to suspect I was missing a spell to protect me from fire). It took me almost no time to discover the spell because I hadn't gone into the library that game and thought, "Oh, isn't there a scroll with the Dusty Book?" There wasn't. But I did investigate the rat tracks which lead to a hole in the wall which led to the GONDAR spell which led to Krill's inevitable defeat! After defeating the dragon, I turned Krill's next henchman into a lizard with the CLEESH spell. Then Krill shit himself as I began to recite the GUNCHO spell. That's a spell that banishes a creature to another plane! I succeeded with the spell or maybe he teleported away. It was hard to tell for sure. In any case, I won! I scored a full 395 out of 400 points! Oh. Shit. Candidate for Membership in the Circle of Enchanters Yeah. I fucking tanked it, dude. I mean, I was now about to enter the Circle of Enchanters but with a huge stain on my permanent record. How could I have missed five points?! How embarrassing! I checked out Infocom's Invisiclues to see where I could have missed five points and the only five point puzzle was KREBFing the shredded scroll that was inside the egg. But I'd done that! The Invisiclues also said you get ten points for opening the egg. I began to suspect the Invisiclues were wrong and had those two point totals mixed up because I never actually opened the egg. I just broke it and then fixed it with the KREBF spell. I reloaded and experimented a bit and, yep, that was the five points I missed. Some Enchanter I turned out to be! SCORES Game Title: Succinct and to the point. I would have preferred Zork IV because I love when game designers become mired in a world that was so popular they find they can't reasonably abandon it, at least not for economic reasons. It's why Terry Brooks wrote five thousand Shannara books! Puzzles: Terrific! I really wish I hadn't played this game when I was younger because I feel like they were fair enough that I would have figured them out now as an adult. It's also possible that if I hadn't had Kim Schuette's solution at hand, I would have worked harder at solving all the puzzles before diving into the clues. It's pretty much the only reason I beat Trinity back in 1990. Because I was a freshman in college with two games on my Apple IIe that I'd brought with me, Trinity and Dragon Wars. Also because I wasn't distracted by things that we're all distracted by today, like the Internet and more Internet and other things that are pretty much just the Internet. I could say I was too distracted to beat Trinity because I was drinking so much beer and getting laid all the time. But I'd rather tell the truth and brag about having beat Trinity without any clues, no matter how big a hit my sexy rock and roll reputation takes. Gameplay: The only weak bit with Enchanter is the part where you need to eat and drink and sleep. And it's made even worse because it's implemented so weakly! Sure, I guess I like that a loaf of bread lasts the entire game and I don't have to worry about dying of hunger. And I don't have to worry about thirst because I can always refill my jug. But if they don't really matter and only provide a limited number of turns so high that nobody probably ever died of hunger in this game, why bother? The sleeping I liked though because the dreams were a really nice way to provide hints to puzzles that might not have been so obvious. Like the dream that points to entering the Gallery without a light source. Quite clever, really. Graphics: It's an Infocom game, dumby! Although they did eventually get into graphics so maybe I should apologize for expecting modern readers to know Infocom mostly ignored graphics. Except in games like Infidel where one of the major puzzles was translating ASCII hieroglyphics! Concept: The best concept! I love pretending I'm a magic user like Gandalf or Fonzi. Fun Time: Like Border Zone, I think I may have spent about six hours total on it. That might not seem like a lot for an Infocom game that I beat and you might be thinking, "That Grunion Guy is a fucking genius!" And you should keep thinking that instead of remembering how I had already read clues about it thirty years ago. Hopefully when you think about this review later, like when you're excitedly telling your significant other about this great blog you've been reading, you only really remember the part where I typed, "Grunion Guy is a fucking genius." "Grunion Guy is a fucking genius" has a pretty good ring to it, doesn't it? Just listen to it: "Grunion Guy is a fucking genius." Hopefully you just said "Grunion Guy is a fucking genius" out loud. And hopefully there were other people nearby to hear you and reply, "Is Grunion Guy a fucking genius? Yeah, yeah. I guess Grunion Guy is a fucking genius, isn't he?!"

[wahbegan]

A brief life history/biology of It

NERD ALERT posting this shit again since the trailer just dropped

The actual nature of IT: So It is an extradimensional entity, similar to H.P. Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones. It originated in something King refers to as “The Macroverse”, a sort of universe outside our universe. It is one of two opposing entities, It and “The Turtle”, a cosmic creator entity. Unlike The Turtle, Its only real biological imperative seems to be destruction. It’s implied that both entities were created by some sort of force/God more powerful than either, simply referred to as “The Other”, but that’s not elaborated on much. The most common theory is that The Dark Tower entity Gan and “The Other” are one and the same.

It is referred to as Pennywise and Bob Gray while in human form, and The Spider, Consumption (vs. The Turtle’s Creation), or The Deadlights in Its true form. The Deadlights seems to be an ambiguous term, and at various points is used to reference to Its true form, Its eyes, and the space outside the universe that It inhabits, it’s all kept kinda vague and intentionally hard to grasp.

Anyway, Its true form exists outside the universe and physically cannot be processed by human minds. Those who see Its true, undisguised form are immediately driven irrevocably insane or killed. The closest approximation Ben Hanscom can come to describing Its true form, which he briefly sort of catches a peripheral sense of, is “an endless, crawling hairy thing” made of “dead” orange light

Its motivation: As mentioned above, it seems to have been created as a force of consumption first and foremost. The “writhing,” lights that comprise the creature seem to be destructive in and of themselves, consuming whatever they come into contact with. It is deeply intelligent, however, and doesn’t run purely on instinct. It is shown to have a sadistic streak, although it probably isn’t sadism in the same sense we think of it. It sees humans strictly as prey animals and sources of amusement, believing them so vastly inferior to Itself as to be negligible. It claims to eat worlds and reality, a statement seemingly corroborated by the effect of The Deadlights on Its surroundings, but the only things It seems to go out of Its way to consume are human children , apparently Its main source of sustenance. It can eat any human, but It prefers Its food terrified. Once again, it’s unclear whether It really understands the full moral ramifications of this, It simply thinks of it as “salting the meat”. Therefore, It usually goes after children because they’re the easiest to scare. Based on what little we know about how It interacts with human beings, and The Dark Tower character Dandelo, whom Stephen King has confirmed is of the same species as It, we can assume that the entity is feeding on the emotion of fear itself as much as, if not more than, the actual flesh of Its prey.

Powers/abilities and weaknesses: In Its own realm and form, the Deadlights, it can be assumed to be nigh-omnipotent. However, in this universe, It is both empowered and limited by whatever physical form It takes. Its main power, of course, is shape-shifting, which It refers to at one point as “putting on airs” and is likened to wearing various masks. Its most common tactic is to appear to children as a clown (Pennywise) to lure them close enough to strike, before transforming into something said child is terrified of. Additionally, It (or at least the part of It that can manifest in our world) came to the land that later became Derry, Maine millions of years ago and seems to exert a certain amount of God-like control over the immediate area. Violent deaths and mysterious disappearances are quietly hushed up or swept under the rug, and the citizens are all apathetic to them for reasons they don’t fully understand themselves. Additionally, It can cause nasty hallucinations in Its targets and exert a level of psychological control over people. Now, as i said before, Its greatest strength (shape-shifting), is also Its ultimate weakness. Once It’s locked into a form, It has to abide by the “rules” of that form as dictated by the imagination the form was drawn from. When in werewolf form, for example, silver can severely injure It, enough to make It retreat. The only way to truly defeat It that we see is the Ritual of Chüd, a mystical battle of wills where the child’s imagination is essentially pitted against the creature. Just as childhood fears and trauma make It stronger, imaginative childhood beliefs and the bond between friends can weaken It. Yes, it’s all very Care Bear(TM) after-school special, but it fits in very well with the themes and message of the novel. 

Forms It takes: -Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Implied to be Its favorite form) -Corpses of Its victims’ loved ones in various states of mutilation and decay (also a reliable standby for It) -Two young drowned boys with orange pom pom fingertips -The Teenage Werewolf -The Mummy -Dracula (with razorblades for teeth and eyes resembling blood clots) -A giant bird (twice, once with a silver tongue with orange growths resembling pom poms on it, and once with several balloons tied to Its wings) -A swarm of flying, flesh-colored leeches -A school of orange piranhas -Jaws -The Creature From the Black Lagoon -The Crawling Eye -Syphilitic homeless man (the disease advanced past the point that he should be dead) -Bev’s abusive father -Frankenstein’s Monster -An 8-foot tall were-doberman -The Witch from Hansel and Gretel -A massive uncanny valley statue of Paul Bunyan (based on this real statue in Bangor, Maine)  -The moon with Pennywise’s clown-face, with ragged holes where the eyes should be -A gigantic, unnatural black spider. (Its “final form” the Losers face, this form is unique in that it isn’t drawn directly from the viewer’s imagination. It only appears this way in Its own lair, stating that It “does not dress at home.” It is not, however, an accurate depiction of Its appearance, but is instead the human mind trying to make sense of what it’s seeing without going insane. The Losers repeatedly state they can almost make out Its true form moving behind the image of the spider their brains have created, but don’t want to as they know what will happen. The second time they face the spider, it appears to be pregnant, indicative of Its state as about to reproduce. It’s not stated how exactly It does this beyond that It appears to lays eggs, but due to Its nature, i assume It reproduces asexually.

NOTE: No matter what form It takes, It usually retains some elements of Pennywise, usually the orange pom pom buttons on his clown suit in one form or another. This is probably because the orange pom poms themselves are reflections of the "baleful orange glow” of The Deadlights. There are often other cracks in Its masks, so to speak, clues pointing to Its true nature as not a natural part of this universe, such as Its defiance of conventional laws of physics (leaning so far out of a window that It should have been overtaken by gravity and fallen, holding balloons that float against the wind, etc.) and the fact that It never casts a shadow. 

Its life-cycle: It hibernates for about 27 years and then awakes, almost always coinciding with a horrific, brutal act of violence. It then preys on the town’s children for anywhere from 14 months to a few years before another tragedy or act of violence, which must be greater than or equal to the event that woke It up in terms of brutality, sates It and It goes back into hibernation. This is only interrupted once, during the First Ritual of Chüd. The second one is implied to kill It for good, or at least Its earthly manifestation, but it’s left ambiguous.

Its history (as known to the protagonists):  -Millions of years ago: It came to Earth in an event similar to an asteroid crash and began to exert control over Derry, influencing it and helping it grow as Its personal killing and feeding pen (At one point, the entity states that It created Derry “In Its image”). -1740: It awoke for unknown reasons and preyed upon the town’s children for 3 years, only going back into hibernation when the entire town of over 300 settlers disappeared without a trace. Local histories chalk the disappearance up to an Indian massacre, but only one building was burned, and no bodies were ever found. -1851: It awoke when a man poisoned his entire family and then committed suicide by ingesting a copious amount of Amanita phalloides, and went back into hibernation for unknown reasons -1879: A group of lumberjacks found the remains of another lumberjack camp that had been snowed in for the winter. All 9 of their bodies were in pieces. It’s unclear how directly It was involved with this atrocity, but judging by the timeline, one can assume the event awakened It. -1904: It awoke when a lumberjack massacred 4 men in a bar, in full view of all the patrons, who seemed strangely unaffected by the violence happening in front of them. The lumberjack was later lynched by crazed townsfolk, many of whom were present during the massacre and did nothing to stop it. It was present on the periphery of these events but took no direct part in them. -1906: It went back into hibernation after an ironworks exploded, killing 108 people, 88 of whom were children on an Easter Egg hunt. One of the victim’s heads was found several days later and several blocks away in a woman’s apple tree. -1929: It awoke when the infamous (in-universe) Bradley Gang were gunned down by a vigilante mob. It appeared and participated during the massacre as some sort of clown, though details of Its appearance varied depending on who was looking at It. Most notably, It always appeared to be wielding the same kind of gun that whoever was looking at It was holding.  -1930: It went back into hibernation after popular club The Black Spot was burned down by a white supremacist group with several people trapped inside. It appeared at the end of the event as a giant bird with balloons tied to Its wings, carrying away one of the white supremacists in Its talons. -1957-58: It awoke when Dorsey Corcoran was beaten to death by his abusive stepfather. There is no mention of It being present at the murder, and It has no confirmed kills for this cycle until several months afterwards. For these reasons, it’s not even 100% clear that this is what woke It up, but given the absence of any other inciting event and the stepfather’s behavior being consistent with other people who committed atrocities under Its influence, it’s generally assumed to be by fans. This cycle is the most fleshed out in the novel, during which It murdered several children including George Denbrough, Betty Ripsom, Dorsey’s older brother Eddie Corcoran, both Victor Criss and Reginald yes I said Reginald “Belch” Huggins, and Patrick Hockstetter. It was eventually forced back into early hibernation by the First Ritual of Chüd.  -1967: Interesting side event, It’s unknown to what degree or where It can manifest while in hibernation mode, but Richard Macklin, Dorsey’s stepfather and murderer, committed suicide in Falmouth, MA, leaving a note which simply read “I saw Eddie last night. He was dead.” Given Its proclivity towards taunting victims with dead loved ones, one could reasonably guess It appeared to Macklin and drove him to suicide. However, this behavior would be “out-of-cycle” and is never confirmed or elaborated on. -1984: It awakened after a young man, Adrian Mellon, was beaten nearly to death and thrown off a bridge in a homophobic hate crime. It was present as Pennywise at Mellon’s assault and began feeding on him in front of both his boyfriend and his attackers. It then went on one final killing spree before being defeated and seemingly killed by The Losers.

HOPE THIS HELPS any additional questions just ask

Oh yeah and uh here’s what i think personally is the best artistic depiction of what Its true form might be like