#lots of fun in all their timelines and in the realms too

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 84

Amity Park absolutely adores her little ghostling, her little Gatekeeper who was of her own ectoplasm, reborn from her own blood in the center of her new heart. She absolutely adores her baby, practically a newborn, being only a year dead! 

So of course she had to gush and boast about her little phantom to the other city spirits! They all got together to gossip sometimes after all. And both Smallville and Fawcett started to gush about their own little ones back! 

Gosh they should set up a playdate at some point, her little phantom could use some friends in the mortal realm. Well some more friends, three is obviously not enough. Oh, Gotham and Bludhaven have come over as well! It’s a playdate then! 

Now if only each of their world’s timelines were synced up, but at least everyone is around the same age! 

[marshmellohi]

Links Meet AUs List

A lot of AUs get lumped together with Linked Universe, so I wanted to make a list comprising any and all original Links Meet AUs I could find! Please let me know if I’m missing something, you want your AU to be removed, a link is broken, or if you know an AU’s status so it can be moved to the correct dedicated category.

DISCLAIMER: Please pay attention to the content warnings on some of these AUs! I haven’t personally read every AU so I don’t know what some contain, but if an AU has something you don’t vibe with, there are more than plenty of others that you will love on this list! Please be respectful and kind to everyone! This list is both for archival purposes and to appreciate the creativity of the community!

Additional Notes: Some AUs have dedicated Tumblrs, some can be found through original tags, some are only on ff.net or ao3, etc. I have a separate list for AUs limited to Discord/DMs that I have not included here unless I receive permission to do so! Also, if something is separated by ||, that means that theyre 2(+) separate AUs by the same creator in the same tumblr… if that makes sense LOL. This list is Always Updating so be sure to keep an eye out for any new AUs!

PUBLIC

• A Link to the Present

• Across the Galaxy

• Ageless Soul

• Bonus Links

• Branching Timelines

• Chain as Cryptids

• Chained Spirits

• Chains of Time

• Courage of Ages

• Culture Shock

• Deuy’s Links Meet

• Dimensional Links

• Dreamverse AU || Identity Fraud AU

• Echoes of Courage

• Exodus

• Fallen Heroes

• Garden of Heroes

• GodLinks

• Hearts Linked Together

• Heroes Spirit

• House of Heroes

• Kings Comic

• Limited Hero

• Link and the Links || Soldier Poet King

• Link Between Links

• Link Rejoin

• Linked Across Dimensions

• Linked Arena

• Linked By Illustrations

• Linked Dreamscape

• Linked End

• Linked History

• Linked Keys

• Linked Maze

• Linked Spirit

• Linked Through the Centuries

• Linked Universe

• Linked World

• Link’s Fun Road Trip

• Little Links

• Magic’s Wake

• Meowmix’s Linked-verse Journey

• Minas Linkverse

• Monstrous Fusion

• Names of Courage

• Realms of Hylia

• Recalled

• Rifts in Time

• Sister’s Linked Meets

• Suncaster

• Tangled Chains [Lou]

• Team Timeless

• That Broken Promise

• The Hyrulian Valhalla Saga

• The Links We Share

• The Phantom Timeline

• The Sacred Realm

• Too Many Links [Zee]

• Train Whistles and Wedding Bells

• Unchained AU

• Winter Links AU

PRIVATE

AUs where the info is limited to Discord, DMs, and/or friends. Not typically published/shared publicly. Permission is asked to acknowledge these AUs here before posting.

• A Linked Week

• Fractured Timelines

NON-LINK BUT THEY STILL MEET

Crossovers with Zeldas, Ravios, Ganons… pretty much the exact same thing but with other characters.

• Lots of Ravios

• LU Ravioverse

• Strangers Across Eras

• Voice of Wisdom

• Wielders of Wisdom

LINKMEET LITE

Links meet, but it’s not the focus of the story/in the background (example: a world where all the links exist at the same time but the focus is on one specific character/the others dont come up much)

• Father of Time

• Royal Reads

INACTIVE/DEAD

An AU qualifies for the inactive category when: 1.) its been 2+ years since an update and 2.) it’s unfinished; or, 3.) the creator explicitly stated that they were discontinuing it. LMK if one still has a pulse!

• Into the Zeldaverse

• Link and the Links

• Linked By Time

• Linking Together

• Misfortunate Monsters

• Tangled Chains

• Zelda in the Multiverse

UNSURE/MIA

AUs where I am unsure of the status and thus need to contact the creator, the creator’s deciding where to go with it, or I can’t locate the original page. This is mostly for me- consider this kind of like a ‘to do’ list. Any insight is welcome!

• Bagel’s AU (N/C)

• Birdo’s AU (U)

• Cotty’s Linkverse (N/C)

• Chain Reaction AU (Nuked)

• Factorial’s AU (N/C)

• Fortu’s AU (N/C)

• Hyrule Bound (N/C ; Iirc there was a fanfiction but I can’t find it anywhere)

• Link Madness’ AU (N/C)

• Minty’s Linkverse (U)

• Missing Links in Time (U)

[bluerosefox]

Our Well Deserved Break

Its

Shenanigans (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Time again!~

-x-x-

Danny, our boy the Ghost King, looking over a small team going over relic's given or 'offered' to Pariah Dark over the years both before and after he was sealed away. As they're taking inventory of the chaotic offering room, they stumble across a certain artifact.

This artifact is able to summon a set number of people (it does have its limits) of the users wishes to them and it sets up a barrier around the surrounding place so no one summoned gets out. You know, those kinds of artifact's certain people use to summon heroes and or villains into a room and have them fight to see whose the strongest or for a tournament, Yeah that kind of artifact!

Danny, who found the item, takes a look at after being told what it does. Then out of the corner of his eye he spots himself in a mirror in the room and see's his crown floating above his head and feels the full weight of his responsibility since before and after his crowning. Yes he had help with his advisor, despite how cryptid he can be at times, and of his council but still the weight was a bit too much for a teenager like him.

An idea struck his mind when he hears the ticking of a clock behind him. Without saying a word Danny looks back and raises an eyebrow at Clockwork whose staring at him in silence as well. He glances at the item, tilts his head a bit before...

Smiles in only the way CW knows would both be good for Danny and amusing for him. He nods and says "One weekend should be fine. All timelines will be paused for them. I suggest telling your friends to help prepare for your guests. Enjoy and have fun my King."

"YES!" Danny's voice echoing in the offering room made many ghosts in the room jump for a bit.

This was totally going to be fun!

-x-x-

When the following weekend arrived, young and very stressed teen heroes from across the multiverse are suddenly pulled from their worlds and are summoned into the Infinite Realms. Before any of them can panic or start fights a voice rang out above them and when they looked they could see a young teen, with a crown floating above his head, white hair, and glowing green eyes sitting on a throne.

He smiled and said

"Welcome fellow stressed out Heroes and Heroines to Phantom's Keep! I'm King Phantom, recently crowned fifteen year old, and this is the Infinite Realms! The birth and ending of the multiverse afterlife! Now don't worry none of you are dead or anything like that. I summoned you all here for one reason and one reason only..."

Here Danny paused, just to troll a tiny bit, and could see some of the more tense heroes readying up for a fight or at least argue to let them go. He grinned though and then said.

"And thats.... TO HAVE FUN!"

After that he floated out of his throne and with a flourish in the air he waved his hands and his throne room changed with party decor all around. Tables off to the side appeared with food and drinks from well everywhere and anywhere the multiverse, balloons rose from the ground and floated upwards, streamers flew across above to attach themselves to the other sides, the castle lights shifted to a dim and music began playing from somewhere.

Danny grinned brightly down at them and their shocked faces. oh that's funny, thank goodness Tucker is recording this and Jazz is gonna scrapbook this party for him (she plans on making them for all the guests as a party gift later, you know to remember how fun the party was)

"Now all of you are stressed out teen heroes with a lot of responsibilities on their shoulders! Believe me, I know that feeling, been there done that still doing it even now! But! My advisor says this will be both fun for me and good for you guys to spend one whole weekend here to de-stress and have fun! I do have some ground rules though. One your timelines are in fact PAUSED, you don't have to worry about calling your parents or if you got mentors to let them know where you are at. Two you are all heroes here, many of you are from different worlds and if you are from the same world they already know or CAN be trusted with your real identities but you are NOT required to remove any masks or de-transform or anything like that, if you wish there are masks on that green table over there you can stick on if you want to keep your identities hidden and are spelled to stay on and fuzz the minds of anyone trying to remember your looks once its on, even if they catch a good look at you right now it'll fuzz their memories of you once the mask is on and even after the party don't worry we thought of the time. Three, boys and girls rooms will be at different wings within the Keep! Just ask any of the maid or butler ghosts that will be joining us shortly and they will guide you to the rooms! Fourthly! There are sparing rooms if you wanna test your strengths with others, I only ask please don't get too carried away. We are here to have fun not make enemies! and lastly PLEASE DO NOT try to leave the castle, we are in the very afterlife of the multiverse people, its like the ocean and even I find it hard to navigate it sometimes. Portals can open up to any and all worlds, different timelines, etc etc. I have key items here in the castle that can pinpoint YOUR timeline and world so when the party is over I can send you home no problem, so again please do not attempt to leave."

Danny paused to take a breath, okay ground rules set up and warnings given. He could see the absolute bewildered looks on all the heroes faces and held back a laugh. He smiled however when one of the teens, mask on his face already and dressed in green, yellow, and red asked 'Why?'

"Why? Well... I think its time us teens get to have some fun without worrying about the next big bad or world ending event. Even if just for a weekend, we do deserve a break. So... Lets have some fun for once!" Danny responded.

[starfall-dream]

Okok hi, I had more thoughts regarding this AU and a little headcanon I had about our poor little friend Withers... and also the Gods in this au- but mostly Withers. (Since I've been playing around with him for my own yan BG3 isekai thing)

I feel like this might be very different from what you have in mind for the worldbuilding (as I remember you mentioning how this isn't the game at some point but I might be thinking wrong), but I thought this was on my mind, and just in case this might inspire something, I thought about saying it. So don't feel pressured to reply to this. It's just me getting my thoughts out there because why not and I wanna hear your thoughts too!

With Withers I've been playing around with the idea that, since in BG3 he is the one who let's us play around with classes, stats, reviving long lost party members, stuff like that I thought it would be pretty neat if he actually knew of other timelines or had some sort of magic that had some sort of ability tied to it for Withers to know/look into the knowledge of things like stats, classes, and possibly the fact that reader is from a whole other realm/world. Possibly even knowing the meanings for when they talk strange. He definitely lets on for more than he shows in the early game at least.

So in my AU I sorta lean into that and have Withers and the reader character get really close as friends because, "at least someone has a sense of what is going on and can explain in a way that I can understand". Probably has to explain that they're a human fighter or a ranger (especially later on when characters like Wyll get way more protective, he might start trying to move them away from the front lines at some point. Even if he taught us swordfighting it's still 'too dangerous' for his darling out there so they gotta pick up being a ranger to even think about contributing to the combat)

That actually leads me to my second batch of thoughts! Reader's class. I know you said they were leaning towards a fighter class but as I said before I feel like soon enough archery or being a ranger might be more viable, or if they get the attention of a god they might just get cleric (not as plausible as ranger but one can assume). The thought of them playfully or jokingly making an oath and becoming a Paladin is also funny but just as impossible. Still, always fun to play around with, especially since clerics in general sometimes don't even get a say in becoming a cleric, poor reader might just suddenly become the cleric to someone like Sune who even covers more darker aspects of romance (as a god of romance)... at least from what I've read off her Forgotten Realms wiki page. For all we know, someone might just "you're my cleric now, we're getting soft tacos later" the poor reader and they'd have no say in it.

The possibilities could be endless!

Honestly I love withers, he's great.

In my head, reader technically doesn't have a class, they just fall into fighter since it would make the most sense in my head. I didn't even think about ranger though, even though that was the first class I played as. I feel like they would be a mixture of any class that doesn't use magic, since they really can't.

I think since withers has more of an understanding of things, reader and him and a nice relationship. I think reader just confides in him about a lot of things and he offers very wordy and lengthy advice. It's like a grandpa and grandchild relationship.

[the-elusive-soleil]

Some things that might have happened if the Valar had gone to war with Morgoth immediately after the Silmaril theft, and evacuated the Sindar, Avari, and very first Men to Aman to escape the continental destruction:

Nobody swears any Oaths. Feanor doesn't get the chance to, because the Valar go after Morgoth before he can.

He would have liked to go help with the war, but the Valar have made it clear that the Eruhini need to keep out from underfoot, and Ulmo is actually enforcing this one.

Feanor does contribute weapon designs in exchange for the promise of the Silmarils being returned to him ASAP.

(We have the sun and moon, I feel like I should say. The Valar made them when they needed light sources for the war and it was clear they weren't getting the Silmarils back all that soon.)

There's a lot of excitement when the new arrivals show up. Olwe is ecstatic to see his brother again - with a Maiarin wife and a daughter, too!

Thingol is upset about losing his realm and also grieving his friend FInwe, but cautiously intrigued to meet Finwe's family.

Feanor has become High King of the Noldor at least in name, but in practice what's developed is that Fingolfin and Maedhros and Caranthir and Turgon handle a lot of the day-to-day and Feanor is so busy crafting that he never noticed the shift. No one is super interested in telling him.

Thingol very nearly breaks it all open by accident, but they avoid a crisis just in time.

The Avari disappear into the outlands and forests and assimilate as little as possible.

Thingol and Melian start up a new city, but it's...not quite the same.

Luthien is restless. Her parents' new city might not have a girdle, but she feels fenced in anyway - partially with her parents not wanting her to stray too far in this strange new place, and partially because she's the one and only half-Maia and stunningly beautiful and everyone wants a piece of her, so to speak.

Funnily enough, certain of the Feanorians know exactly how those itchy feet feel, and her father doesn't hate them in this timeline.

She's not into hunting to kill things, really, but Celegorm teaches her this neat trick that sometimes you can just say you're 'going hunting' and head off to the woods to do whatever you want, like running just for the sake of it or dancing without anyone watching you, and no one will ask any questions.

She ends up spending a lot of time with him and the twins and Aredhel.

(Celegorm and Luthien eventually get married, because why not.)

(Melian gives her blessing on the condition that their firstborn son marries Nimloth, who goes along with it because she trusts Melian's foresight. Or, alternatively, they might have a daughter who marries Beren when he comes along; that'd be a fun twist.)

(The point is that Elrond and Elros eventually exist. They aren't in need of adoption, but they develop a surprising bond with their uncle Maglor.)

Almost forgot, the dwarves got brought over, too.

Caranthir does a lot of the negotiation with them, since his bluntness meshes best with their ways.

They and the Men keep having new generations be born and die, and it's...an adjustment for the elves.

Finrod, nonetheless, becomes great friends with a Man called Balan and his folk.

Caranthir encounters a Haladin woman named Haleth when she comes to court to arrange for greater independence for her people. He's in love at first sight. It takes her a little longer.

None of Caranthir's family understands why he'd choose to go through the eventual heartbreak of losing a spouse, but he ignores them all, and gets married anyway.

They have an astounding number of children. This is partially because they have better proximity and aren't in survival mode, partially because it takes them a sec to figure out how human conception works, and partially because Caranthir wants there to be as much Haleth in the world as possible before she's inevitably gone.

Hurin Thalion and Morwen have three lovely children. Nienor probably has a different name. Lalaith lives to an astoundingly old age, healthy as a horse.

Tuor and Idril, of course, get together. Turgon is a bit less enthusiastic about it this time, what with Tuor just being A Guy and not Ulmo's champion, but when would that ever stop Idril. Tuor does die eventually, but they have a good life till then.

Feanor ends up liking the Men and dwarves a lot more than anyone thought he would. He learns All The Languages, and loves to swap techniques with the dwarves and bounce off Men's ingenuity.

Also, the Sindar introduce a radical notion called marriage counseling, which is apparently something you invent if you're coping with Arda Marred instead of trying to maintain an assumption of perfection. They've also invented family therapy. Feanor and Nerdanel, and really the whole House of Finwe, benefit hugely from this.

Oh, and elf/dwarf relationships become hugely popular among the Noldor, because when your dwarf spouse dies you can literally go see them at Aule's house still as long as you're discreet about it, so no one bats an eye when Celebrimbor announces his engagement to the craftswoman Narvi some time down the line.

[des2dream]

My Thoughts About Opaline......

After the release of My Little Pony: A New Generation, I patiently waited for the inevitable TV series to come after that. Eventually when Make Your Mark and Tell Your Tale did release, we were met with the young unicorn, Misty Brightdawn and her boss, Opaline Arcana the self-proclaimed "Alicorn queen". It took me a while to get used to her character design, but I eventually grew to like it. We've had alicorns as villains before in G4, but Cozy Glow used dark magic to become an alicorn while Celestia and Luna had their evil counterparts (Nightmare Moon and Daybreaker). Because all the alicorns in the previous show were noble princesses, I think this was the first time in MLP that we had an alicorn character that's just full-on bad guy. No boost of magic. No counterpart. No evil clone. Just a regular character who just so happens to be a fire alicorn villain. Her voice acting is pretty good too so thank you, Athena Karkanis! She made a pretty decent villain for G5, but something that I found myself mixed on was her backstory. She onced lived in The realm of Skyros as an alicorn filly, but was jealous of Celestia and Luna for their powers to raise the sun and the moon. If we're to assume that Opaline was born an alicorn, what about Celestia and Luna? Were they born alicorns? Then again, in the G4 Season 6 premiere when Flurry Heart was born an alicorn, it was said that the birth of an alicorn was something that was either rare or never seen before. What about The Realm of Skyros? Is it a realm specifically for alicorns? Are there more of them? Yeah, it's a lot to dive into since G5 is a supposed sequel series to G4 and alicorn history is already confusing enough. Not to mention keeping up with the timelines here. All that aside, I did enjoy Opaline as both a character and villain. I also love her villain song from Tell Your Tale! It's a lot of fun. Oh, Opaline Arcana! You beautiful mess!

Artists: Starsbursts, ShadowReindeer, & aztrial

[m2jay]

Soul Touch [Ford x OC]

Here's a little preview of what's in the story. Thanks to the release of "The Book of Bill" and the dating sim game "Swooning Over Stans," I think it was time for me to contribute to the Gravity Falls fandom and write a fanfic. Here's a part of it:

◬◬Bill's POV◬◬

"A X O L O T L! My time has come to burn! I invoke the ancient power that I may return."

        To think that using the last of my powers in Stanley's mind would lead me to this. That damn con artist is really going to get it this time. As I invoked the strength I had left inside, I managed to survive within the cosmos life other deities are able to do. Banished to a realm amongst the stars, I was met with the AXOLOTL. Though soothing of a presence, it's not my style.

        I crave chaos and destruction, one that leaves me with a good laugh. Seeing the terror amongst humans is absolutely amusing, and it's fun to see how far they'll go for their own selfish desires. They live in a meaningless way. There's nothing good about the world they fight so hard to go on in. Why do they fight so hard for a life that just ultimately has so much struggle in the end? Having infinite power is where it's really at. They're all too stupid to understand.

        The party had stopped. Time was dead and meaning had no meaning. Existence was upside-down and I reigned supreme briefly. I had it all. 

        Everything was in my grasp, even ol' Fordsy too. The fact that I was outsmarted by his lesser half is an absolute embarrassment to my existence. It's not fair, and I will get him back, along with the whole damn Pines family. They will get what's coming to them once I get out.

        I've been locked away in Theraprism in Dimension #5150. It's a neutral zone that's outside of time. If I were stronger, I'd have destroyed this useless place. I'm tired of pretending to be something I'm not in order to get out of here.

        I had many crimes against reality against me. I've done memory laundering, breaking and entering the fabric of space-time, chrono-infanti-regicide, multilevel  marketing, psychic torture, the "2nd-Dimension Incident," and Weirdmageddon. Personally, I don't think this is all that bad to keep me locked up in one of the highest wellness centers of space and time.

        People don't change, not even GODS. Wanna know how to get out of a mental ward, kid? It's faking it. You tell them what they want to hear. You mask everything. Don't be your true self. Trust no one.

        My power isn't as strong as the AXOLOTL, but I still got it. I've managed to fabricate a book that will go out into the Pine's family's dimension. I call it "The Book of Bill." Pretty clever, right? It's pretty impressive if I do say so myself.

        If anything, of all gods, why am I here? Isn't there some Christian entity or something that went against the God or whatever. If anything, why not blame all my atrocities on that guy, huh? Don't a lot of people do that anyways to get away with things? I mean seriously, I'm not the embodiment of bad itself or anything. Let's blame it on that Satan guy. There's so many dimensional timelines, I can't be the ONLY BEING THIS BAD HERE! 

        I can't lose my cool completely here. Heck, not even at all. I need to keep up the façade in order to get out. That's right, and I'll be out here soon. I just know it. My all-seeing eye is still capable of looking through the abundant paths people can take. I see the last opportunity and will take it for myself. 

        Sixer, you're in for something that cannot be fixed. I'll make sure you regret not taking my hand to rule dimensions and travel across galaxies at my side. When I get my hands on you again, I will turn you back into a gold statue that'll be erected onto my record player, forever in a musical dance that spins. You'll be sorry.

        As for your good for nothing brother, there's an end for him that I am counting on. Just you wait, Stanley. Punching my eye and breaking my body in the mind space will be the last time you'll ever lay your mortal hands on me.

        I need to smear my mind blank. The SEA ANGEL of the Theraprism is here. Oh, how she's easy to manipulate. I guess it's why you can consider the gal an angel. It's a shame for her, really, because she's so easy to manipulate. The way she thinks I'm actually changing is HILARIOUS! What a shame for them for when their time comes. They'll all see.

        "Bill Cipher, good stars!" The dim-witted SEA ANGEL greeted happily.

        "Yes, good stars! Haha.." I greeted. 'Haha..'

☪︎ ･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆･ﾟ ･ﾟ·:｡･ﾟﾟ･❂

Links to the fanfics will be listed here so far:

Wattpad

Quotev

[666writingcafe]

Disruption

MC

I knew that I had to get the brothers settled down for the evening before I can even begin to look at any of these applications, and I thought I did a fairly decent job of making sure everyone had what they wanted.

But of course, the moment I sit down at the desk in the study and crack open the first one off the stack of papers, I hear people yelling.

"Why are you talking like that?! You're making fun of me, aren't you?!" That sounds like Levi.

"Wha?" And there's Mammon. "No, I wasn't tryin' to make fun of ya...little guy." Groaning and cursing to myself, I get up and step outside the study.

"Quit calling me that!" Levi shouts. "You...you moron!"

"HEY!" Mammon hollers. "That's no way to talk to your older brother!"

"Older brother?! A total moron like you? I've never thought of you as my older brother, not for a single second!"

"SAY WHAT?!"

"Guys, enough," I gently reprimand. "It's too late for you two to be screaming like this. People are trying to sleep."

"Oh, shut up, Zephyr!" Levi snaps. "This is none of your business!" I narrow my eyes at him.

"I don't appreciate you speaking to me in that tone." For whatever reason, my warning makes Mammon laugh.

"You've never been on my level, Levi! Not in the Celestial Realm, and certainly not here! And ya never will be! I'll always be the boss of you!"

"Mammon--" I get interrupted by Levi growling as he rushes up to his brother and punches him in the face, making him stumble momentarily. This is definitely making their fights in my timeline seem like child's play in comparison.

"Say what you want. I'm still strong enough to knock you to the ground."

"You think ya can take me in a fight with those granny punches of yours? All right, bring it on!" Oh, that's not happening on my watch. I'm not about to let them destroy the library. There's no way I can clean up that kind of a mess before Lucifer returns.

So, I clear my throat and say the first spell that comes to mind.

"Bringers of discord, may a curse be upon you! I am the one called Zephyr. Hear me! Transform! May you be small, weak, and timid!" The brothers' eyes widen as a bright light envelops them. Moments later, they've turned into cute little Chihuahuas.

"There. That's better." I'll have to thank Solomon for teaching me that particular curse. It's really effective.

Once Levi and Mammon realize what I've done, they run up to me and begin yipping at my feet.

"Oh, it'll wear off in the morning," I tell them. "I just need to work in peace for a few hours, and I can block out the sound of your barking a lot easier."

"What's going on in here...?" Oh shit. I didn't hear Lucifer come in the house.

This is awkward.

Lucifer stops in front of the library doorway, taking a proper look at the scene in front of him. As he glances between me and the dog version of his brothers, I can see the quick progression of his emotions in his eyes.

Anger.

Confusion.

Irritation.

Contemplation.

Resignation?

"Was it justified?" he sighs. Not the question I expected him to ask, but I can work with it.

"Yes," I respond, trying to sound as confident as I can. "They were interrupting me from my work." Lucifer focuses his attention back on the Chihuahuas.

"Look, it's not like I have the time or skills to string them up properly to the ceiling--" He holds up his hand, signaling for me to shut up.

"It's fine," he tells me. "I'll take them for a walk. Just do what you need to do for Lord Diavolo." I'm taken aback as he walks over and scoops the dogs up in his arms. I fully expected for him to tear into me for punishing his brothers without his knowledge or consent, but he hasn't even given me a light warning to not do it again.

And then I smell it.

Nutmeg.

I'm lucky that he turns his back to me quickly and swiftly walks out of the library, for I can't hide the growing smirk on my face to save my life.

This is definitely going to amuse Barbatos.

Taglist: @lost-in-time-wanderer, @fuzztacular, @dianedancer18, @sweetbrier2908, @flare-love, @completelyshatteredbrokenmschf, @thunderlightning351, @l3v1chan, @anxious-chick, @5mary5, @expressionless-fr

[katyspersonal]

hey sorry i know you get a lot of asks but i really wanted to know if you think midra and shabriri could be related by blood? i am not sure who else to ask.

Awhhh it isn't just this, it is also that I am stuck on my phone and only got so many pictures here, when I prefer to answer asks with screenshots spam! XD But this question doesn't offer very much to bounce off of from what the source material offers so time to use my imagination..? 🤔

I did an analysis of Frenzied Flame's and Three Fingers' "timeline" in this ( x ) post, but the thing is! Previously those afflicted by Frenzied Flame had to contact the Three Fingers and had to be grasped by them directly, not only if they wanted to be a Lord, whereas the "become too sad and you will get Frenzied Flame" disease is stated to start FROM Shabriri! Even when eyeballs afflicted by it across Lands Between carry his name now:

^ Vyke's one is unique in this case, because he WAS grabbed by the Three Fingers! Meanwhile, as for the Shadow Realm:

So, in case of Shabriri's relation, I believe he'd have to be of younger generation than Midra and his servants! I also think this because Three Fingers are imprisoned under Leyendell. In fact, BURIED there!

(Tomb of an ancient god line) Also, there are no Winter Lanterns (the ER edition I mean xD) or wandering Aging Untoucheable that apparently are heralds of big Frenzy Nuke that collect the frenzied eyeballs in the Lands Between where Frenzied Flame is! It is also a pointer towards Three Fingers having been weakened/"killed" since the time Midra himself was grabbed by them!

My idea is that whereas Three Fingers are called readerless, technically Shabriri was the one and only "reader" for them! Functionally he is comparable with Gowry more than with Enia, but I have the mental image of him having the glimpse at these fingerprints desperately trying to get out, and deciding that it was a good idea to bring about what they wanted rather than personal pain/revenge or some grand idea of ending all suffering. (As much as I LOVE the joke that Allant and Shabriri are depressed and manic side of the same concept hdgfjfhfjgdf)

^ The crime of slander he got punished for WAS accusing Nomads of worshiping the Frenzied Flame, and judging from his expression he knew it wasn't the end 🌛 That's why I think he knew what he was doing all along, playing with Marika's fear of fire because no way any of that shit gets anywhere near her precious Erdtree *looks at Fire Monks incantations repeatedly stating Fire of Giants was enemy for GO it could burn the Erdtree* *looks at her being scared of Messmer's flame*

So, if we say he is a later relative of Midra, there is still the important factor that he inflicted Frenzied Flame on himself rather than was already infected by it! If we say he had a natural affinity to "listen" to Three Fingers because of being born by someone in Midra's Manse who was infected, that'd be direct relation! I do think that the torch Nanaya is cradling IS that of hers and Midra's son, so let's say they had another child who they yeeted out of their place for hopeful adoption so Inquisitors don't kill them or at least they have a better life 🤔 Either that child then would be ancestor of Shabriri, or Shabriri himself! He could have still had a natural hunch, or be vaguely aware that his ancestors were isolated and perished by Frenzied Flame and got curious to learn what it WAS! Maybe that's why he went digging into the tomb, rather than just found it?

Personally, I think emotionally it works better if Midra and Nanaya only had one child, who failed to become a Lord! But as I was typing this response, the idea of them getting (another) child outta here for better life started to look fun x) Coincidentally, 1) I draw Shabriri's original body with black hair that Nanaya has and 2) I was discussing the similar "dooming self by getting curious about heritage your ancestors SAVED you from" trope recently about Beatrice from DS1 vfhgfhh It looks like I can't escape this trope xdd

^ I also can offer an idea of collateral/distant relation, since devs made darn sure you can see Midra's Manse used to have the same flowers as Shaman's Village! Midra's servants, who were Hornsent unlike him, were hunted by Hornsent Inquisitors as "heretics", and tolerating all that WAS what brought Midra and his people to Frenzied Flame! They probably bullied fellow Hornsent exactly for serving the shamans (or closely related people) as nobles when by their understanding shamans were unworthy of living!

I insist that Dominula Celebrants are descendants of surviving shamans (here ( x ) are more justifications for that), so, say, Midra's relatives from there escaped, and Shabriri was amongst their descendants! + yeeted to live in another place because apparently no shamans not celebrants keep males around jfggvbgh

Latter one would imply a very long generational gap though! However, this idea might have given more insight on why Shabriri's word had a weight to begin with! The interesting detail is, developers edited out the part about him having been a noble! It was in the original unpatched version, then patched out:

And for now, the mention of him being a noble is only saved in Shabriri's Woe version as one of keepsakes we choose at the start of the game.. but that is only in localization! The Japanese original DID patch it out as well!

Fuckin sneaky patching out Nameless Moon Presence flashback hfgyygjg And before, I didn't second-guess it! If his word mattered so much as to people to believe his slander about something so crucial for the fate of the Erdtree, he had to hold an important position anyways! But after the DLC I start to question whether instead, he was amongst the people Marika held dear due to sentimentality 🤔 Especially much earlier in the timeline. Maybe she was slightly more willing to trust what little was left of her folks than anyone else! She might have even been aware of what happened with Midra's Manse if he was connected with the shamans (or just shaman but not living in the village as a male), let alone the possibility of sealing Three Fingers herself, so the "not this shit again" effect worked very well!

___________________

In the conclusion, I think the relation is possible! I AM weak for "consider not being so curious about (bad) fate of your ancestors because nothing good will come of it" trope it seems hfgthvgg It could even solve the weirdness of editing out his noble status! I am still giving him pretty clothes tho

[atopvisenyashill]

fanfic recs part deux

i wanted to post this forever ago but i’ve been reading soooo slowly lol and i still have like 30 fics bookmarked that i want to read ntm trying to find old fics i liked but didn’t bookmark. i think most of these are one shots altho some of them are series or multi chapter. i put a lil star next to the ones that are multi chapter if you’re someone who wants something long to read. also, the ones that are pretty colors are the ones i’m very fond of.

ALSO, i am always trying to recreate the absolute high i get whenever the fire of our blood and the black widow update. i like to rec them bc i love them but also bc one is very pro greens and ones very pro blacks and i personally love how differently they approach the question “can the dance ever actually be avoided?” with their stories. Also best part (imo) is no one gets butterfly effected away!!!

but okay onto the fics i've read and enjoyed let's goooo-

AUs where someone is butterfly effected away

viable alternatives by madina -> ✨dance au where rhaenys decides to get involved in the life of her son a little bit earlier, and researches a way to artificially inseminate rhaenyra. it deals a lot with the childhoods of daemon, viserys, and rhaenys, and features a lot jacemond and jacegon. butterfly effects away the dragon twins. also, if you like the series, there's some cute art made for it.

wrestling with snakes by madgirlslovesong -> ✨imagine book canon but viserys has the personality of viserys ii instead of viserys i. it's interesting, and intricately plotted out, and i love fic where you can see the work the author put into detailing everything. butterfly effects away all the kids, also, there's art here.

from ashes to embers by ladyalianora -> ✨rhaenyra is reborn just before viserys takes a wife, told by the gods she must attempt to stop the war. plays kinda fast and loose with timelines and canon (it's a mix of show and books). i adore the characterization of rhaenyra in it. butterfly effects away all of the kids.

all you have is your fire (and the place you need to reach) by sunchaser -> ✨rec-ed by @camagueyys rhaenyra and qoren are engaged in order to bring dorne into the realm. as part of the agreement, qoren comes to foster at king's landing until rhaenyra is of age, where they will move to Summerhall, which will become rhaenyra’s seat to pass onto her children. except, of course, people die and the line of succession for dorne and the iron throne starts getting very complicated. i love the concept of rhaenyra marrying qoren and i like the way this fic explores that, and also i love how aemma and alicent are written in this.

longing comes running by theicedragon -> ✨wherein rhaenyra's first born is a daughter named velaena instead of a son named jacaerys. velaena becomes rhaenyra's heir and develops an interesting relationship with her uncle aemond. this is my new obsession. i love the way the fic really digs into how gender and legitimacy intersect and the ways that would impact valaena (and rhaenyra). i reblogged a graphic for it a while back too, show the author some love if you're interested!

An Excerpt From Chapter Two ("The Heiress and the Eldest Son”) of Maester Orwyle’s History of Rhaenyra I's Reign by lamelessnes -> incredibly short (like 350 words) but it’s written in the style of fire and blood and i think it’s fun. AU where Rhaenyra is forced to marry Aegon.

writ in blood by zzbkit4 -> ✨rhaegar wins on the trident but the war is a long way from over. i’ve mentioned this one before because it’s an au scenario a lot of people love to think about and it’s REALLY well done. mostly catelyn’s pov with a fair amount of dornish povs, as well as lyanna, benjen, and rhaella.

AUs where love saves the day and anyone who doesn’t like it gets stomped into paste

fear in his eyes by raybyanothername -> driftmark au. daemon notices aegon seems scared of otto, then catches otto smacking aegon around just before the fight. this one is all sweetness which is perfect if you're in the mood for that. i really loved the lucemond dynamic especially; i think it's a very realistic portrayal of the way two small kids would deal with the fallout of a violent incident like that.

when first we faced, and touching showed (how well we knew the early moves) by mrdcai -> rhaenyra pushes harder for jacaerys and helaena to marry, so alicent is forced to allow the two to spend time together to see if they suit. there's a heavy focus on romantic rhaenicent that i love in this one, and it’s also just (imo) well done in how the relationships all develop. i’m very fond of this one!

breakdowns by raybyanothername -> a bunch of aus where person a has a breakdown in front of person b and it avoids the dance. the pairings were really fun and interesting!!

a knight of the north by stevem1 -> au where the kingsguard do their goddamn duty and there’s midwives taking care of lyanna & baby jon. i love daynes, i love starks, this has daynes and starks. i wish it wasn’t just a one shot tho bc lyanna, ashara, and ned all in winterfell is so interesting to me.

main canon/canon compliant

even to the edge of doom by lilith_morgana -> rec-ed to me by @riana-one . joanna's life as she grows up, falls in love with tywin, has children, and then dies. i enjoyed it a lot, i thought it was a really great take on joanna as well as great way of depicting tywin.

before the day is done by crossingwinter -> ✨rec-ed to me by @allyriadayne . an overview of elaena targaryen’s life from her time in the maidenvault to her old age. i loved it a lot!!!! multi chapter AND focused on my girl, amazing ten stars out of five.

the queen of love and beauty by catelynstark956 -> ✨otherwise known as the harrenhal au where ned and catelyn meet at the harrenhal tourney and fall in love. i adore this fic sooooo much, so romantic, such a great read on the dynamics between everyone in the lead up to robert’s rebellion.

the dunk & egg universe by ariel2me -> ✨a bunch of ficlets set during the time where dunk & egg are traveling westeros together. i really liked it, got the more adventurous/humorous tone down very well.

post canon/twow speculation

in the midst of the ruins by iday -> jonsa fic, post war for the dawn. while living out his days out of sight and out of mind, jon gets a raven from winterfell with only two words: "come home." so he does. brienne and podrick are also there. very cute, contained little story, and an older jonsa fic.

varg-hamr/wolfskin by undercovercaptain -> a take on jon's ressurection and sansa as the girl in gray that i think is well done and also roughly what i predict will happen (leaving room for some crazy grrm-ness tho, obviously)

saw you in the snow by sleepingwithwolves -> another girl in gray esque take but with bran coming to sansa in a weirwood dream as well as jon. my soft spot is "bran helping his siblings through dreams" so!!

[bunnakit]

(please bear with me this is the most convoluted question known to man, but whenever you post for asks I can't help but want to scratch my weird lore theory itch, sorry not sorry)

So, like, the chomer's got fancy magic powers, right? And there were those photoshoots back during Treasure where each member had some kind of prop, right? And we've seen a couple kind of appear in other mv's like the telescope showing up in Answer, or Mingi's lines all coming through the radio in Fireworks when he was the one who had the ham radio as a prop. And, arguably, the candelabra Seonghwa has in the photoset and then the lantern he has in Wonderland. (I personally like to think that there are a couple other magic pirate artifacts already in play and its just that whatever they do hasn't been relevant to mention in the diary lore or the point of the timeline we're currently at yet).

I was just kind of idly thinking about how Hongjoong had a wand in that photoset, which hasn't specifically shown up anywhere again in that exact same form, (and quite frankly how in the heck they would ever work a wand into an mv)

and then I was like 'a wand is basically just a long stick, how would you adapt-... wait a minute'

a cane is also basically just a long stick. That he has in Guerrilla and Don't Stop, (and I know Don't Stop is not part of main canon and its own thing, but I love how they just spin slightly different AU flavours of their own lore as it suits them, and the cane in Don't Stop is.... kind of significant in the mv soooooo)

This was my crazily-roundabout way of asking if you had any thoughts/theories etc about Hongjoong and wands/sticks/canes, normal, magical, or otherwise and the lore

AAH LORE ANON YESS thank you for gracing my inbox its always a treat

so i kind of have weird theories on this? my friend [@pop-off-nabokov] and i were doing some Cromer Silvia conspiracy board theories one night and we realized something really interesting about trends in ATEEZ MVs and their themes in general.

so the captains symbol looks A LOT like like The Wheel tarot, a card that essentially breaks down the alchemical symbols of life (with EIGHT in the outer ring)

and then you have their entire last album theme The World

the wands could either be a reference to a 'of wands' tarot or the wand-like objects shown here in The World

and one of the big themes i noticed throughout Halazia is Hongjoong and Seonghwa play off each other in a theme of 'as above, so below' - Seonghwa is bathed in light and on the surface and we meet Hongjoong as Wooyoung gestures down and the camera pans downwards where Hongjoong, dressed in dark colors, seems to be a figurehead of a different gathering.

as for the lantern in Wonderland, well, i've got something for that too

The Hermit also depicts a lantern!

we also have...

Judgement

and...

The Fool - okay this one is a bit of a stretch but the pose is pretty spot on and the meaning of The Fool feels very lore!San (and really, all of the boys entering their journey in the Z World)

so i don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that ATEEZ features a lot of nods to tarot and perhaps some of the artifacts may be related to them in some way. now if they're magic like the Cromer or not? who is to say. i certainly would love to find out the looking glass allows you to see through the dimensions or something similar, or that the staff/wand has the same abilities as the breakers or who knows.

and if we want to be extra ridiculous about it, well, i hope this is at least good for a laugh

please always come to my inbox with any thoughts or questions. i hope my answers are always at least a little fun to think about.

[sea-creature-things]

Grimwalker things

Chapter 3: Eyes

This chapter deals with grimwalker's magenta-red eyes and it is angsty. Writing angst was very fun, I'm hoping it turned out well.

This one took a surprisingly long time to make... I struggled a little with letting everyone shine and not getting trapped in the Noceda-siblings-pitfall. This one also has a lot of flashbacks so i hope the timeline is still clear.

Next chapter will be wholesome again!

Read here below the cut or on AO3 with this link:

Gus was lying on his couch-bed in the basement, with Hunter next to him on his mattress. It was long past bedtime, but neither of them were even close to sleeping. For Hunter this was just another Tuesday, but Gus should’ve been off to dreamland by now.

He just had too many things floating around in his brain.

It had been a little over a month now. Gus thought they had acclimated quite well to the Human realm. He was proud of his new understanding and expertise.

Luz had taken them to so many exciting places! The movies, the supermarket, human picnics, an ice cream shop. That last one was a little weird for them. Ice was supposed to scream, but here it was just lying there.

Gus knew their food was different, he just never imagined how different. The flavours were so rich and there was a LOT of sugar. In everything actually, not just the ice cream. Even though the witches couldn’t digest certain things, Gus loved human food.

He especially fawned over the fastfood restaurants. It was absolute insanity to him. Restaurants in the Boiling Ilse were supposed to be fancy, they were an experience.

Gus and his dad would always go for special occasions. Those places attracted illusionists, who made the room just a little more special. Making glasses sparkle, making flowers float around or giving the room a golden glow.

He missed that so much, but he was sure they would do it again soon. They'd celebrate saving The Ilses by going to the fanciest restaurant they could find!

Not this otherworldly 'McDonald' thing. Although, he would love to show his dad some day. It was honestly amazing how the place handled food. And it was very fast indeed!

The group also returned to the mall a couple times. Gus had taken it upon himself to show his buddy around. Hunter had missed their first opportunity, and while Gus totally understood, he was still bummed.

So, he’d looked around with a guide-perspective in mind. After he got over his initial excitement of course. The mall was so unbelievable big, it felt like the shops were endless. It was a little overwhelming. The Demon realm markets had nothing on the mall. Luz was so amazing for doing all of that for him, for all of them.

Camila was just as adamant as her daughter about keeping them all happy. She took such good care of them.

Gus had never missed a mother in his life. It was always him and his dad against the world and he loved that. But Camila had become a second or third parent to all of them so quickly. It was… it was impressive honestly.

The more he missed his dad, the more he sought comfort by Camila. And she gave it to him so readily. She fed his love for human things, encouraged him about the portal and kept his hopes up.

She was a lot like Hunter in that way. They let him be scared and sad, before comforting him.

Just a few hours ago Camila offered to have a movie night! They had done that before and everyone was excited. This time though, she suggested they watch Jurassic Park, because Gus and Hunter had loved that fossil book so much.

The boys were absolutely enthralled. They loved the technology, the characters and of course all the dinosaurs. Amity and Willow didn’t care for it, but were amused all the same.

Vee proudly explained all the special effects, but still got a little quiet when the T-rex tried to break the car. Willow helped by bumping their shoulders and asking how she thought that part worked.

Gus loved hearing about the human’s version of illusion magic.

Luz had seen the movies many times before. She called it a classic, but kept interrupting with spoilers. It got to the point where Gus and Hunter would shush her whenever she opened her mouth.

When there was a tense scene with the kids and two velociraptors, Luz wanted to assure them the characters would be fine. She only got the first few syllables of her sentence out.

“Don’t worry-“

Hunter, who had been sitting next to the spoiler grinch the entire time, wrapped his arm around her shoulder and clasped his hand over her mouth. He pushed her against him to prevent her from escaping.

“Luz shut up!”

He had been too immersed in the movie to really think about his actions. If his mind wasn’t so full of dinos, he would’ve been worried about Camila sitting right there. Or Luz herself being uncomfortable. But he never had to worry either way.

Luz burst out in a muffled, uncontrollable laugh.

“I swear to Titan…” Hunter growled with as much amusement as actual annoyance. He shook her back and forth. She laughed even harder and slapped her knee.

Hunter finally let her go and she melted into the couch in a fit of giggles. Some poorly constructed sentence about their obsession with the movie somehow escaped her lips.

He hadn’t noticed it before, but everyone around him was cracking up too. Gus grabbed him from the couch so they wouldn’t miss the end of the chase scene.

Luz clearly wasn’t wrong. They had been fanboying through the entire movie and it didn’t stop after the credits rolled.

They’d kept their excitement up all the way through their bed-time routine. And had still not calmed down when they got downstairs. They recreated scenes from the movie with dramatic vigour, which wasn’t hard for an illusion witch.

Gus even made some really convincing velociraptors with his magic. Who chased the duo around while they pretended to be Ian Malcolm and Alan Grant.

They were making quite the ruckus and eventually got told off. Amity yelled from the top of the stairs to be quiet, causing Luz and Willow to shuffle her off to bed. And after laughing about that too, the boys finally settled down.

She was right of course. It was late and the girls were trying to sleep. Gus tried to do the same, not wanting to mess up his sleep schedule. But he ended up just lying there, thinking.

Hunter said it would be “one of those nights” and grabbed a book instead. Even with the fairy lights, the room was rather dark. Perfect for sleeping, just not for reading. Gus wasn’t going to question it though. That was a conversation for another day.

Or was now the perfect time?

It was late at night. They were cozy and warm. Hunter had finally gotten comfortable enough to relax with him. Gus had even seen him go to sleep earlier than him a couple times.

But not tonight. It was “one of those nights” after all. So yeah, it was a bad idea.

They had ‘deep talks’ before, but this was a difficult one to have, even on a good day. He wouldn’t want Hunter to lose his comfort, to disturb his brand new peace.

But he still couldn’t sleep! He had to talk about something.

“The human realm is pretty cool huh?”

“Absolutely.” Hunter smiled. He put the book aside to give his buddy his full undivided attention. Gus loved when he did that.

“I mean, that movie!” Gus magicked a T-rex with hearts and sparkles above his head. “So cool!”

“I know right!” Hunter was ready to go an another fanboy rant. “The part where the T-rex defeats a velociraptor?! and then the roar— and then the banner falls down!”

“Peak cinema!” Gus quoted Luz and they both laughed.

Their human friend hadn’t been talking about tonight’s movie. But she used the phrase a lot, so now Gus did as well.

"Yeah, I kinda like this place.” Hunter smiled down at his hands. But then seemed a little frazzled and quickly continued talking. “N-Not that I don’t like our own realm, or-"

"No I get it.” He interrupted him and Hunter relaxed again. Gus moved to lay on his side, looking down at his bro.

“I was worried that I wouldn't be able to enjoy the human world, with the way we got here,” Gus said. He couldn’t help the pain that seeped into his voice with that last part. Hunter’s expression softened even further, Gus didn’t think that was even possible. “but I have. I really, really have."

"Me too." Hunter bumped his fist into the witch’s shoulder, making him sway back and forth with a giggle. “And we’ll find a way back eventually.”

“Of course!” Gus wasn’t worried about that. Those feelings came and went like waves, but right now his hopes were high. “We’re gonna get that portal working.”

He felt their conversation coming to an end. He was definitely not done talking.

“You know what else is peak cinema?”

“What?”

“The actual cinema!” Gus bounced up, sitting on his knees and pumping his fists excitedly. “You remember when we went there? That movie was so funny! And that big box of popcorn was really delicious, you’re just hit with that smell when you walk in!”

“Shhhh,” his friend tried to calm him. “Amity might yell at you again.”

“She yelled at us, Hunter.” Gus made a pointed hand movement between the two of them. “She yelled at us.”

“Alright, alright.” Hunter snorted. “But you should still settle down.”

“Fffffine…” Gus laid back down on his side, hoping Hunter had not caught onto him yet. “Oh! Do you remember that picnic we had?”

“Um yes?” Hunter looked at him a little confused.

“We went to that field with the hill and we were able to use our magic because there weren’t any humans around.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Hunter deadpanned. “That was last week.”

“And then there’s the time we-“

“Gus.”

“The time we went rafting. And we-“

“Gus.”

“… Yeah?”

“Go to sleep!” Hunter snorted as he pushed his full palm into the witch’s face. Gus made an offended noise when he was pushed onto his back.

“You’re one to talk.” He crossed his arms with a huff.

“That’s…” Hunter pointed a finger in the air, but lost his gusto pretty fast. “That’s fair. How about we both try to sleep? See who gets there first.”

“You’re on!” Gus was determined to beat him. But fair was fair, he had to actually try to sleep.

Hunter couldn’t help the smirk that formed on his face. Did he really think he could win from an insomniac?

Well, he should at least try.

Soon enough, he was the one just lying there, thinking. He could hear steady breathing next to him. The younger boy had lost as predicted.

Gus had a point though, Luz had led them through all sorts of crazy activities. Hunter’s memories of the ‘rafting’ thing were both fond and extremely unpleasant.

He felt powerful while steering the boat. It was like steering an airship, one of the very few things he missed from home.

Gus, Amity and Vee were very frightened. It was stupid, but he liked being the protective one for once. He was usually the one that needed comforting, so it was a nice change of pace.

Willow was looking fierce as always, but Hunter could tell she was secretly afraid too. Or at the very least worried. Him and Luz were the only ones actually enjoying the River Rapids.

It helped that he knew it was safe. As rough as the river looked, the real speed wasn’t anything special. They had all experienced much worse back home. On top of that, Luz had assured them that Human water wasn’t boiling.

It was fully confirmed after Amity fell in the river…

They all freaked out, her girlfriend most of all. She almost dove in after her. Luckily, Amity knew how to swim. Hunter and Willow steered the boat towards a sand bar, so they could reunite with their fallen comrade.

“Omigosh Amity!” Luz ran towards her, hugging the drenched witch. “Are you okay?!”

“Yes, don’t worry Batata.” Amity smiled. “I’m fine! The water here is harmless right?”

“Yes of course!” Luz answered like it was the most obvious thing ever. She never learned what it took to make a lake or river back home safe to swim in. “I know my super awesome girlfriend is not going down by the likes of the River Rapids.”

The couple twirled each other around, laughing like the idiots-in-love that they were. Gus, Vee and Willow cooed at their overly-sweet display and voiced their own happiness over the fact that Amity was fine.

“The Blight survives another day.” Hunter congratulated her, after hoisting the boat out of the water enough for it to stay put.

“Ha-ha,” Amity punched him lightly in the stomach, “I can see you trying to come up with some dumb joke already.”

“I’m just saying…” Hunter smirked. “You can never call me a wet cat ever again!”

He gestured to her state of being. Not a single person could deny she looked like a soaking cat. If Ghost fell in the river instead, the differences would be impossible to find.

Judging by the snickers and giggles that erupted, he was right. Gus made a set of neon blue cat-ears appear on Amity’s head. Which made Willow and Vee burst out in a roaring cackle.

“Awwww~” Luz covered her mouth, trying to hide that her adoration was turning into a laugh.

Amity turned beet red. That face was a common occurrence, but it was still amazing. Ever. Single. Time. The abomination witch swatted the illusion away and turned to Hunter with a fury he hadn’t seen in a while.

She had chased him around with a purple ball of fire, while he ran with rowdy laughter.

Now that Hunter thought back, those memories were mostly fond. He felt so happy and free. He was surrounded by an incredible amount of warmth.

He almost felt like a normal kid.

But the feeling never lasted. Normal was just not in the cards for him. Everything reminded him of that.

The few books on Grimwalkers he was able to find were burned into his memory. The pages haunted him, but realisations of what they meant still snuck up. And when it inevitably did, anxiety and panic would seep into his skin.

It had been the usual reason for his insomnia the first few weeks in this house. Amongst other things. But he went from sleeping due to complete exhaustion, to sleeping because he wanted to. Well, sometimes.

Nowadays, it was mostly the nightmares that send him back into the hopeless feelings he’s grown so accustomed to.

It always started the same.

Golden masks on a dark forest floor, bleeding into the grass. Bones scattered everywhere. Fog blocking his view.

Then cracks would form, first in the masks, then in the ground itself. Hands would rise from them, decaying hands, clawing at his feet, gripping his legs.

Then he fell.

A large fissure widened right underneath him. The hands dragged him further down. Dirt and blood spilled into his mouth, filled his eyes, clogged his ears. The earth gave way and he fell. He fell right back into his hands.

Hunter woke up in a cold sweat.

He shot upright, his eyes wouldn’t open, his mouth felt dry from the mud, he still couldn’t hear anything! He desperately clawed around him, trying to find an escape. His breathing hitched, was there still earth in his throat?

He tried to cough it out, but there was no resistance. His lungs heaved and his head spun. He kept grabbing and scratching and clawing. But all he felt were soft blankets and a cold wooden floor.

His right hand slammed against something hard. His wrist send a shot of pain through his arm.

Wait.

His eyes were open. He could see fairy lights and a couch. Soft blankets and a wooden floor…

Right.

He was in the basement. No forest, no masks, no blood. No Belos. There was nothing in his throat, or his eyes, or his ears.

He was safe.

That was the couch he just hit. His head spun quickly to the witch sleeping on it. Gus was facing him. He had his duvet all the way past his head, only his face was peaking out. His eyes were closed and his breathing was slow and steady.

He was still sleeping.

Hunter thanked the Titan. Disturbing Gus right now would absolutely break him. His own breath finally found some regularity. He tried his best to focus on the four fingers technique.

With every breath, Hunter felt his stress ebb away. His head still hurt though. He decided splashing some water on his face might help.

He soundlessly ascended the stairs, he was an expert at that by now.

He wondered what time it was as he walked to the bathroom, avoiding all the creaky floorboards. He went straight for the sink and didn’t bother to turn on the light.

The cold water felt like nirvana on his skin. It slowly cooled down his skin and his headache faded away. He washed his face and hands, and his neck for good measure. He breathed steadily between every splash of icy heaven.

Eventually he felt grounded again and took his towel from the rack. They had to extend the rack to hold six towels instead of two. Hunter often felt bad that Camila had to buy so much extra inventory.

Nevertheless, he was very happy with the soft fabrics on his face. He would be forever grateful for Camila Noceda. She was so compassionate.

He dried his face and hung it back on the rack. As he moved back towards the sink, his gaze caught on his own reflection in the mirror.

His magenta eyes stared back at him.

He stopped dead in his tracks. The blend of magenta and red was glinting in the mirror. Even in the dark the colours were clear to see.

Red eyes.

It was the very mark of a Grimwalker. Their most recognisable part. He was once again reminded what exactly he was.

It had only recently turned into such an issue for him. Magenta irises just weren’t weird in the demon realm.

Sure, the masked helped, but most people didn’t know anything about Grimwalkers. Besides, other people had weird colours too. Like very bright green or yellow.

Here in the Human realm though, it was the strangest thing.

Hunter got asked ‘how he had red eyes’ by humans on the street quite often. Just earlier today he had one of those encounters.

———

The Hexsquad, as they liked to call themselves, was hard at work in their clubhouse. The bright summer sun was shining through the windows of their newly renovated place.

They had fixed the giant holes in the walls and the floor, they had hung colourful wallpaper, Camila had given them an extra rug and Luz had found an old bean bag in the attic. They had even found a tiny ‘cooler’ at a yard sale.

They tried to decorate the place as much as possible with plants and string lights. The witches had made drawings of their families and Luz had put up a poster of the portal door, as much as she remembered.

Hunter was still fixing the old chair that had been there forever. He was almost done with the stitching, but that would have to wait a little longer.

They were trying to build a portal and it was proving very difficult.

They were scattered on the floor with notepads and books. Vee had tried to organise the pens, erasers and pencils in the middle. Put the pile dispersed every few minutes.

They were all trying to brainstorm human-versions of the ingredients they needed, yelling suggestions across the room every now and then.

Hunter was also trying to remember the portal he had seen in the castle. It was different from the one Luz had made, bringing them straight to the Human realm instead of the in-between she had described.

He was sporting a similar look to Gus and Amity. Hands in hair, staring at the pages. Hunter sighed frustrated, his own pages were still so empty.

That’s of no use to her.

Willow let out a despairing groan and snapped her notebook closed. She sat up straight to stretch.

“Let’s take a break.” She said, more like a demand than a offer.

“Yes please…” Gus flopped on his stomach with similar noises of pain.

Amity and Vee joined in with their own agreement. Hunter tried to ignore them and focus on his 1/4-filled page. From the absence of a certain human’s voice, he guessed Luz was doing the same.

But you can’t just ignore a conversation that’s happening right next to you. Amity suggested to go into town and Vee seemed excited about a particular place.

So, to the objection of Luz and Hunter, the witches and demon stood up and evacuated.

“Wait guys, I have to-“ Luz tried, but her girlfriend interrupted.

“Nope.” Amity said sternly. She grabbed her arm and tugged until she stood up.“You have to take a break.”

Gus was already out the door.

“But if we just-“ Hunter started.

“No.” Willow took the notebook he was scribbling in away.

“Leaving now would only-“

“No.” Vee came to join the plant witch for a duo to behold. Hunter looked up at the girls with slight fear, hidden by stubbornness.

“But-“

“NO!” Both of them yelled and Flapjack chirped incessantly. Alright, the message was clear.

“Sorry guys, but you’ll have to sit this one out.” Amity said to the palismen.

They were cuddled up in a dog bed that Camila had given them. The magical creatures all said things along the lines of ‘fine by me’ or ‘have fun’. It was safe to say they weren’t heartbroken about being left alone.

Hunter stood up under the pointed gaze of the girls. But he made no motions towards the door, looking at his pen apprehensively.

Vee grabbed the back of his shirt and basically dragged him out of the door. Hunter let out a yelp while stumbling backwards, looking at Willow who just followed with a smirk on her face.

“Okay Vee, where did you wanna go?” Luz asked after stretching in the sun. Seemed like Amity already convinced her.

“There’s this boba place that I’ve really wanted to try.” Vee shifted to her human disguise. “I don’t know where it is exactly, but I know what it’s called.”

Apparently that was good enough for Luz’s phone, because shortly after pressing a few buttons she was leading them through town. Vee and Amity on either side of her.

Even though they no longer looked like twins, the basilisk and the human still resembled sisters. Acted like it too.

The boba shop was small, but it had a few tables and sofas. The place was decorated with a pastel colour pallete, the counter had photo’s of their products on display and the wall behind it had their menu on chalkboards.

They found a table in the corner with 6 seats and started deciding on their order. Luz and Hunter were tasked with memorising everything.

“Oh no…” Luz gasped after patting every pocket that her pants had. “I forgot my wallet!”

The table was filled with a moment of shock. Before they could despair over walking all that way for nothing, Vee fished a couple of banknotes from her pocket.

Luz’s sigh of relief as her sibling deposited two 20-dollar bills in her hands, was quickly replaced by confusion.

“Wait. How?”

“Camila gave it to me for this exact situation.” She said with a cat-like grin. Luz pouted at her.

Vee playfully hit the back of her head, messing up her hair. Luz retaliated by ruffling hers. Before they could turn it into a fight, Gus told her to order already.

“Right, we’ll be back in a minute.” Luz chirped and tugged Hunter along.

The cashier who greeted them looked to be around their age. He had a mint green apron on over a white T-shirt. Blue hair peaked out of a hat with he shop’s logo on it.

“Welcome to Boba Pop, may I take your order?” The guy practically did a double take to look at Hunter. “Wow, dude. I love your contacts! Where did you get ‘em?”

“My what?” He asked confused. He was not prepared for this question, he didn’t even know what it meant.

“Your eyes,” The cashier pointed at his face. “That red colour is awesome.”

Hunter was a little overwhelmed. This guy had never experienced social anxiety and it showed. At least now he knew what they were talking about.

“Oh this is my-“

“Favourite colour!” Luz jumped in. “It’s his favourite colour.”

She smiled weirdly at the guy and Hunter looked at her confused too. Then the realisation that he couldn’t say ’natural colour’ to a human hit him like a lightning spell.

“Oh! Yeah, I really like… con-tats.” He laughed awkwardly. The energetic cashier seemed oblivious to their weird behaviour.

“Cool! Where did you get them?”

The duo looked at each other with the same stumped expression.

“They were a gift!” Luz managed to improvise. She looked smug at her own answer. “For his birthday.”

Hunter looked away with a wobbly smile when he thought ‘yeah my very first birthday’. He quickly repressed it.

“Um yes,” He said, “and we don’t know where they got them. The friend I mean, who got them for my birthday.”

Hunter trailed off and looked to Luz for guidance. She was just smiling at the employee so he did the same.

“Aww, thats too bad.” The blue-haired boy looked genuinely dejected. Then he straightened his back and looked at them a little shocked. “Oh! I’m so sorry. May I take your order?”

“Oh no, don’t worry.” Hunter tried to assure him, waving his hands frantically. Luz offered both guys some mercy by starting with her own order.

Luz tried her best to ordered everything, but couldn’t remember some of the details. She blanked completely on Willow’s order and looked at the grimwalker next to her for help.

“Jasmine green milk tea with half ice.” Hunter said with absolute certainty. Luz smirked at him. “What?”

“Nothing~”

“Is that all?” The cashier asked, putting it into the machine. Hunter still wondered how those things worked exactly.

Luz confirmed and payed for their order. They only had to wait a little bit for the employees to make everything. When it was done, they said goodbye to the blue-haired guy and walked back to the others.

Vee was probably the happiest to get her drink, but the others were excited too. They opted to take the drinks to go instead of sitting at the table. It seemed like a waste of a six-person table to Hunter, but the rest wanted to walk around in the sun.

And so they walked around town with their cold drinks, enjoying the nice summer weather.

They walked past clothing shops, cafes, restaurants. Making plans to remember certain places for future visits. Eventually their drinks ran out and they crossed the road for a trashcan.

From there they saw a ‘cute little park’ as Amity called it, obviously they had to go there.

They walked towards the charming elm trees, but when they rounded the corner of the fence they stopped dead in their tracks.

There, on a pedestal stood two large stone statues, wearing clothes straight out of a history page.

Witch-hunter history.

Luz stopped so abruptly that Gus bumped into her. Amity was holding her hand and felt a tug when her girlfriend halted. Willow, who had been walking next to Gus, recoiled from their crash.

The three witches immediately voiced their curiosity and concern.

Hunter recognised him too. Vee only noticed because he fell silent. Just a second ago they were talking about tea, now he stared up at this thing with an unreadable expression.

She followed his gaze. The bone-chilling realisation almost made her shapeshifting unstable.

“That’s… Belos.” Luz managed to get out after her friend’s concerned murmurs.

The witches surrounding her all looked at her bewildered, then snapped their attention to the statue.

The pedestal read: Gravesfield folklore, The brothers Wittebane.

Hunter felt like his body was about to crumble. That was indisputably the face of the man he had called uncle his entire life. And that was his brother. That was Caleb.

That was his blueprint.

A disgusting feeling rose in his throat. He felt like the world was spinning around him. Light-headed and reeling, his mind was blaring alarm bells. He couldn’t hear what Luz was saying to their friends, the sounds around him were distant and distorted.

He couldn’t stop looking at him.

His lungs were threatening to give out. Irregular short breaths entered his body, while breathing out felt impossible. He was in the verge of hyperventilating.

Vee felt a little woozy and off-balance. The hold on her shapeshifting was weakening. She felt her hands turn back into claws and saw some green spots forming on her arms. A nauseating feeling tumbled in her stomach.

They had statues. Belos and his brother had statues here. Two witch-hunters had statues here.

A sharp sound to her left broke her out of her daze. Hunter was looking even more wobbly than she felt. She could see the panic in his eyes. She tracked his gaze once more and it finally clicked.

On instinct she grabbed his hand, her claws dug into his skin. He barely felt it. Hunter slowly turned to her, still feeling spaced out. Vee gently tugged on his arm and walked backwards.

He let her lead him over grass, feeling too overwhelmed and scared to pretend he was okay. She tugged her brother along, until they were out of earshot, making sure he was with his back towards the statue.

She took his other hand and squeezed them both, this time being mindful of her sharp claws. The pressure helped him focus a little, but breathing was only getting more difficult.

“Breathe Hunter.” Vee spoke clearly. He squeezed her hands back, desperately trying to ground himself.

And like a broken spell or an unlocked chain, his lungs finally worked again. His irregular gasping for air turned into irregular deep breaths.

“Just breathe.”

The basilisk carefully looked back at the group. The other witches were still inspecting the sculpture and listening to Luz talk about Philip.

It looked like they had successfully slipped away.

“Just breathe.” She said again, calm and pointed.

She coached him through his rising stress, and slowly his hyperventilating stopped. He followed her calming breaths, eventually he moved onto his familiar four-fingers technique.

Vee’s hand now floating in the air in case he needed it. In time, Hunter calmed down. He looked at her with nothing but gratitude. She had helped to prevent a full-on panic attack.

“You okay?” She asked attentively.

“Yes.” Hunter blew out a hefty breath one more time. “Thank you.”

“We’ve gotten pretty good at this, huh?” Vee let out a loaded sigh and a shaky chuckle. Hunter nodded with a tired smile. She swung the hand that still held onto his back and forth.

“And to think I wanted to murder you just a month ago!" She laughed a little odd but with obvious relief. Hunter couldn’t help the elated laugh that escaped out his mouth.

The strange feeling of humour after an almost-mental breakdown, made his sound a little weird too. She was right, their relationship was insane. The basilisk that was scared out of her mind when they first met, had called him ‘brother’ only a few days ago.

He was aware that they had a unique kind of bond with their shared experiences in the castle. But he’d never expect to be regarded as family. He wasn’t sure if he deserved it, but it made him feel so happy.

And treating Vee like a little sister made her really happy, even though he couldn’t yet get himself to call her that. She said she enjoyed hugs and hair-ruffles. Apparently teasing, bickering and joking around was also part of it.

He was still new to it all, but it just felt so right.

Luz had been calling him ‘bro’ and ‘hermano’ for a while now. Maybe he was more used to it than he-

“Whatcha doing over here?” Willow suddenly appeared to the right one him.

Saying it startled him was an understatement. Hunter yelped a loud “WAAA-“ before he doubled over and went back to his calming breaths.

Willow, having missed his panic, was looking jolly and unbothered. She cocked an eyebrow at him with an amused smile. But when she saw that Vee didn’t share her sentiment, she got worried.

“Sweet mother of Titan.” The blonde boy heaved out.

“Are you okay?” Willow asked. Looking from Hunter to Vee and back.

“We’re fine.” Vee assures her. Being infinitely more skilled in lying, she quickly fabricated a half-truth. She glared at the statue. "That... thing just makes me really uncomfortable."

“Mmmh, I get it.” Willow nodded with a soft look. Thinking about their past always made her angry. She looked back with a scowl. “I just wanna spray paint all over it.”

"That sounds like a wonderful idea!" Vee smiled creepily. Focusing on Hunter’s feelings had helped her to calm down as well, but now her mood was really improving.

“Guys,” Hunter piped up when he felt grounded once more. “Vandalism is wrong.”

He was met with two deadpan faces. The tips of his ears tinted pink when he looked at Willow. He quickly turned his eyes away.

“But I wouldn’t stop you.” He mumbled.

“Alright!” Vee jumped away, ready to throw rocks at Belos’s image. This was going to be very therapeutic for her.

Willow and Hunter watched her leave. The green-haired girl met up with Luz, said something and started doing exactly as she set out to do. Gus and Amity didn’t take long to join in.

The duo standing in the distance looked at each other, and started giggling.

“Do you wanna join them?” The plant witch asked, really wanting to do so herself.

“Maybe another time…” Hunter looked away. He felt like his legs would refuse to walk back to that thing.

Willow understood, and as much as she felt the vandalism-urge burning in her soul, she wouldn’t leave Hunter behind. She couldn’t even imagine how devastating it must have been to find a statue dedicated to you abuser. Her heart bled for him.

The blonde witch would always be ready to distract her when she needed it. She had no trouble returning the favour.

“Hey, look at this.” She crouched down next to a flower bed on the edge of the park, gently bending a purplish-blue flower towards him. “This is called the balloon flower.”

Hunter was immediately intrigued. He crouched down next to her and inspected the plant. It was a cluster of flowers on one stem, they were star-shaped and had a peculiar looking pistil.

“See how the petals are fused?” Willow ever so carefully glided her thumb over the blue petals, they were indeed stuck to each other. “We don’t have any flowers like this in the Boiling Ilse.”

“Why not?” Hunter was fully captivated.

“I dunno.” Willow shrugged. “Different evolution I guess.”

“Oh.” Hunter laughed. He had expected some profound answer, but that made sense. He touched one of the other flowers to feel the strange petals for himself. “Did you learn about these in that book?”

“Yes! The one from the library.” She was delighted that he remembered she loved that book so much. “Balloon flowers are actually very popular.”

She was also glad he accepted her attempt at distracting him with plant facts. So Willow happily listed all the different names for the different shades of blue present in this species.

They talked about the book for a bit. He was excited to learn that the human realm had flesh-eating plants too. But then Willow had to break the news to him that they were really tiny. After that, the group called them to leave. Their vandalism-therapy was done.

Hunter found himself walking at the back of the group again, this time with Gus. They had to pass that damned statue again to go home. His effort to resist wasn’t strong enough, he looked up at Caleb’s face one last time.

He felt like a freshly scabbed-over wound was splitting back open. He wouldn’t go into a panic again, but he felt sick to the stomach. And maybe a little dizzy too.

“Hey,” Gus looked at him curiously. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah!” He lied.

“Did the statue make you uncomfortable too?”

“Yeah…”

Hunter knew this was bound to happen. Gus was incredibly observant and smart. More so than anyone, he was the real mom of the group. He cared so much and they had build an amazing friendship, which was exactly why this was so uncomfortable.

Gus, on the other hand, didn’t feel very smart right now. What kind of question was that? Of course he was uncomfortable!

He just wanted to talk about it.

But Hunter clearly didn’t, so he wouldn’t press the issue. He could take a wild guess either way. He knew that Hunter wasn't even looking at Belos's statue. He was looking at his brother.

Caleb Wittebane.

———

Hunter had been staring at his reflection for what felt like an eternity. A wounded sigh eventually escaped his mouth. His shoulders slumped, breaking him out of his frozen state.

His hands moved involuntarily to his face. He rubbed the inside of his eyes. Then he squeezed them shut and opened them wide. He intently studied the colours and the fibres.

He always thought that the way the fibres of an iris weaved was so pretty. Not when he looked at his own, but someone else’s, like Willow. Like an intricate web of beautiful pigment.

He didn’t hate the colour of his eyes, he hated what it represented.

He dragged his hands down to his mouth. His chapped lips had always been a constant and Amity had desperately tried to get him to use lip balm. She was right, she was always right, that’s why she was so annoying. He just forgot.

With one finger he lifted the side of his upper lip, uncovering his fangs. He was still more inclined to call them sharp teeth. That’s what they were after all.

He used to hate those, but his friends all loved them so much. Now he wasn’t sure how to feel. Just neutral maybe?

He then moved his hands up into his hair and hung them on his neck. His hair had grown, falling just past his ears. It looked different, but he could still style it the same way.

It didn’t have to stand out, right? Nobody noticed? He couldn’t bring himself to cut it here.

He had to cut his hair religiously back in the coven. It always had to look perfect. Everything always had to be perfect. The human realm was supposed to be his peaceful escape.

No.

No, stop.

What was he even thinking? They had crashed into this realm in an apocalypse. The end of the world! This was refuge, not an escape. He had to remember the difference.

That still didn’t mean he had to cut his hair.

He moved one hand to his scar, softly pulling the skin up and down. Tracking the edge, like he’d done a million times. It was the only thing entirely his own.

His eyes, his teeth, the rapid growth of his hair. That was all Grimwalker. The colour of that hair, his bone structure, his nose, his eyebrows. That was all Caleb.

“What a shame. Out of all the Grimwalkers, you looked the most like him."

Why couldn't he reject that sentence? Even just as a bold-faced lie. He wanted to utterly deny that is was true, but when he looked at that statue...

It looked so painfully similar.

His scar was the only thing that didn’t belong to either of them. But even that little beacon of uniquely him, didn’t bring any comfort. How could it? It was a deep pink slash across his cheek. His very first scar.

He barely remembered how he got it. Well, it was Belos of course. He just didn’t recall any of the details.

It was the first of many. Every single one of them seemed so clearly malicious in retrospect. How had he ever been so naive?

It is the curse! He didn’t mean to! As if that monster could ever really love him. A lie, that’s all it was.

His arms dropped to his sides. The hundredth sigh of the night escaped his lips. He hated this so much. But he couldn’t move away from that damned mirror. Like plant magic was rooting him to this one spot in the bathroom.

When he looked in that mirror, he didn’t see anything he liked. He didn’t see himself.

He wanted to punch that mirror and-

The sounds of very familiar slithering passed in the hallway, violently ripping his attention away from the mirror. He heard the slithering in the kitchen and then a crunching noise.

Vee.

More like his guardian angel. The kitchen was very appealing, stronger even than the mirror’s pull.

That was good right? He had to escape this depressing pit he created. Joining Vee would do definitely force him away from his own mind. Or maybe misery just loved company.

He deliberately kept his head down, looking at the mirror would root him back in place. He hoped he left the sink neat enough.

Hunter entered the kitchen and saw his basilisk sister elbow-deep into a cereal box. She was looking off in the distance while munching, until she noticed him. She froze and they looked at each other for a solid 10 seconds.

“Hey.” Vee said blankly, breaking the awkward silence.

“Hey.” He returned in the same passive way.

She continued to crunch on her midnight snack and tilted the box towards him. He shuffled over and leaned on the counter, grabbing a fistful of the cereal.

Usually he’d be a bit upset about eating from the box, but he was just so tired that he didn’t care anymore. He felt a little empty right now.

“Insomnia?” Vee asked, blinking slowly and sideways.

“Nightmare.” Hunter answered between crunching. “You?”

“The other one.”

“That sucks.”

“Sure does,” She snickered. “Nightmares aren’t much better. Are you okay?”

“Yeah I’m fine.” Now that he actually had company for his misery, he didn’t want to get into it.

Vee knew he was lying, naturally, but she was leaving it be. She didn’t really have the energy for a heart-to-heart right now either. They just kept eating their cereal in comfortable silence.

Then Luz walked in.

Both basilisk and grimwalker froze again in the middle of their munching. Their human sibling stood just past the doorway and looked at them surprised.

“Hey.” They said at the same time, in the exact same way as before.

“Hey,” Luz laughed and bounced over to grab her own helping of cereal. She hopped onto the counter and ruffled both of their hair. Calling them both ‘hermanitos’.

Vee glowed at the nickname, and Hunter smiled. A small, growing feeling of light was forming somewhere, almost within reach.

“Di’ya have a nightma’?” Vee asked through a mouth full. Hunter didn’t even have enough energy to lecture her about proper eating etiquette. Eating from a box kind of defeats the purpose anyways.

“No, I couldn’t sleep.” The human answered. “I feel like I went in and out of sleep at least 6 times already.”

“Insomnia.” Hunter hummed knowingly.

“Yeah…” Luz sighed. She was well aware of her insomnia-household. This wasn’t the first time that the three of them had gathered in the kitchen, at the most ungodly hours of the night. “So I came down here for some water, but this is way better.”

She threw a piece of cereal in the air and caught it with her mouth. Hunter moved wordlessly to the cupboard and filled three glasses with water. The girls both looked at him with shit-eating grins. Hunter rolled his eyes, he could never just do something nice without them turning it into a big deal.

“Awww you big softy.” They cooed. Hunter looked at them annoyed, then snatched the cereal box from Vee’s hands.

“Just for that, I’m eating the last of this.”

“NO!” The sisters gasped and leapt to save their snack, but he was too fast and too tall.

Hunter tipped the thing over and the last of the cereal, which was only 5 pieces at most, was gone.

“How could you!” Luz called out with a dramatic look of betrayal. Hunter and Vee both shushed her, trying to hold in their laughter.

“How could you?” Luz whispered this time, giggling along with them.

“Ya know… we have another box.” The sly basilisk suggested, showing off the inside of the pantry.

“Vee, we can’t eat two boxes of cereal in the middle of the night!” Hunter whisper-yelled, slapping their greedy hands away and closing the cabinet door. “What about the others? What about breakfast?”

“Yeah Vee, think about breakfast!” Luz teased like she hadn’t just been reaching for that box as well. Vee stuck her tongue out.

“What time is it anyway?” She asked and Luz pulled her phone from her back pocket.

The blue screen lit up the room, but she completely forgot to check the time when she noticed a sudden shine.

“Wow….” Luz marvelled at the teens standing in front of her. “Cat eyes.”

The teens in question, being completely lost, looked at her confused.

“I didn’t know you guys have that!” She was awestruck.

“Have what?” Vee felt stumped and wanted an explanation quickly.

“You know when cats are at a certain angle to a light and their eyes glow?” Luz was met with a couple of dumbfounded faces. “Because of their night vision? You guys have reflective eyes… like cats?”

“Reflective eyes?!” Hunter reacted suddenly. The realisation had snuck up on him, as if thinking about it earlier had doomed it to come true again.

“What? Nooooo hahahahaha-“ He laughed nervously, backing up until the edge of the kitchen island dug into his back. His voice trailed off and he took a deep breath. “No.”

“Hunter?” Luz’s voice was uneasy and she reached out a hand to him, but it faltered. Vee looked wary and uncertain.

His heart sank. It had barely gotten the chance to climb out and it sank all the way back down.

“No…” His voice broke.

He hugged himself tight. His arms were tired, his legs were tired, his everything was tired. He slid down against the island.

“Hunter?” Vee asked with the tinniest voice. She eyed Luz and they shared a look of extreme worry.

“Noooooo…” Hunter buried his face in his hands and groaned. “Whyyyyy?!”

Did the Titan hate him? Was he cursed? This night just kept getting worse! And just when he thought he escaped those feelings, those thoughts. Leave them in the dark bathroom and never look back. He really was naive.

Luz and Vee shared a final look and joined him on the floor. They sat down on either side of him, leaning against him as a silent show of comfort.

Hunter felt tears stream over his face and by the way his shoulders shook, his sisters could tell. Luz put a hand on his back and the older boy let out a shaky breath. He let go of his legs and slowly sat back up, dropping his arms on the ground.

Nobody said anything.

Vee wrapped her tail around his ankles and let head head fall on his shoulder. Her cheek smushed and her fuzzy hair tickled his neck. Luz hugged him tight, resting her head against his arm.

Hunter just let the tears fall.

He felt a confusing mix of distress, comfort, exhaustion, gratitude, fear and love. He really hated today, it was such a long, draining day.

But he felt so happy to have these two consider him family. They let him bawl his eyes out without question, sharing this moment of pain just to make it easier for him.

Eventually they would let each other go. Vee would spend the night watching YouTube videos. Luz would read Azura books until sunrise. And Hunter would rest his tired eyes, for once sleeping dreamless and peaceful.

But for now, they would stay like this. Together.

[why-bless-your-heart]

Fun new kind of Dumb Protestant Question!

ie one asked for a friend who has no grounding in any Christian tradition and wants to not be disrespectful to Catholics or the Virgin Mary and fully expected very Protestant me to know the answer to her question!

But it is rather like the one I asked you about writing ficitonal miracles, and something like the one I asked about inventing ficitonal saints/orders so... here goes. My friend is writing a sicence fantasy book about an alternate history where, instead of a heavy Greek/gnostic influence on the early church there was a far, far greater Norst influence on the early church. Also there are plenty of fey/semi-supernatural beings about, and a pocket diminsion that is wrecking general havvoc. The church has a different name and such and having followed a different timeline. So in this alternate history there is an order of nuns, she is not quite setteld on their charter, but it is something like a focus on moral education. Imbuing the people around them with the concepts of forgiveness, hope, chairity ect, with the goal of guiding their souls heavenward. She is concerned about how she envisions the founding of this order. In the mythos of this world a (in universe very real) semi-supernatural being Freya is confronted (and redemed) by an apperation of the Virgin Mary. Freya then repents of claiming to be a god and focuses on leading souls to heaven, becoming the patron saint of the order of nuns in question. My friend is concerned that this set up might be...heretical? Blasphmous? Whatever the word is for an outsider meddling with holy ideas.

Anyway, as this kind of thing is essentially what the northern monks of the single digit centuries IRL did quite a bit, and there doing that is the reason we even have records of most of the Celtic and a lot of the Nordic myths, I didn't think it would be too terrible a transgression...but as I said, dumb protestant here. Care to drop in your two bits?

The way you describe it, this all sounds pretty fun and inoffensive.

Actually offensive would be 1. Attributing anything evil or imperfect to God, mocking or misrepresenting Him, 2. Setting Mary up as contrary to God or portraying her as sinful, 3. Misrepresenting/misusing the Eucharist or any of the other sacraments (see: the Catholic distress r.e. Brom Stoker’s abuse of consecrated hosts in Dracula), 4. Misrepresenting actual Catholic history, persons, and/or orders, mostly due to the black legends & anti-catholic sentiment that we have to deal with outside the realm of fiction already.

Having a semi-supernatural being who repents of her past sins and sets out in service to God is actually a very cool and pretty darn Christian idea. And given that this is already an alternate world/history story from the get-go, I’d say it sounds safe.

[alexanderlightweight]

Wednesday prompt - Dark!Malec?

Magnus, makes Alec immortal using a ritual that calls for the blood of x number of people/creatures -as in he has to kill them. maybe one of each shadow world faction, or a combination of something similar, maybe more than the ones more talked about like the unseelies, sirens-

Alec uses the institute and its resources and his Shadowhunters to lead them away from Magnus while Magnus leaves a trail pointing to someone else -someone he like hates and is very much happy to set up, this someone does deserve it-

Later, when everyone realizes that Alec is immortal they both either find a way to explain it or go like oops! Who knows?!

I'm also thinking, what if the people they choose to kill for the ritual were like bad ones, and so everyone starts to think is a shadow world vigilante kind of thing but really is part of the cover up?

here we go! i hope you enjoy where i went with this. i really enjoyed your prompt and had a lot of of fun writing this!

lumine

-

“Any rumors?” Magnus asks as he paints red arrays over Alexander’s naked torso.  His boy’s chest is bare of hair and while Magnus does miss being able to drag his fingers through it, it’s a necessary sacrifice.

“No,” Alexander rasps, struggling to stay still when even just Magnus’ touch is enough to ignite passion in his veins. “You’ve been smart, crossing realms and continents. They’ll notice soon, but by then, we’ll have covered our tracks too thoroughly.”

Magnus hums in pleasure and drags his fingers through the last of the blood congealing in his olive wood bowl. He paints Alexander’s lips last, waiting for his boy to stick out his tongue and then he drags his fingers over the muscles, making sure not a single drop is wasted.

As much as Magnus wants to kiss him, he can’t, not until the blood has settled and absorbed into Alexander and Magnus can’t risk stealing a single drop of the unseelie blood he’s painted his beloved with.

“There, perfect.” Magnus murmurs and sits back on his heels, it’s been torture, being unable to touch Alexander sexually for the last two months. They still share intimacy, but they both are hungry for each other, the gnawing ache of carnal need growing with every murder committed, every sacrifice shared.

Magnus makes the kills, consecrates the blood with his magic and then paints Alexander with more arrays and runes than Alexander’s body should be able to bear.

His boy takes it all, with only devotion in his gaze as Magnus defiles him and desecrates him with a magic so old and grotesque that it’s been purposefully lost to time. 

Magnus kisses Alexander’s hair and wonders, darkly, if he can speed the timeline up.

—

“Magnus—” Cat sighs and rubs her forehead, “we agreed that you would take a year for this.  Even that is pushing it. Despite being across the world, it’ll be noticeable. You need to kill daily for this to work and that’s already risky. You’ll have to double it, if you want to be quick about this.”

Magnus shrugs across from her, a hungry, covetous gleam to his eyes and Cat sighs, already knowing that she’s at a loss for any way to convince him otherwise.

“I’ll see about contacting you if any patients I can’t save come my way?” She offers but Magnus, ever considerate for her, shakes his head.

“I have to hunt them, Cat. I have to stalk them until their heart nearly bursts with fear, to torment them without injuring them. To kill them with a single blow that doesn’t disturb the flow of their blood until I drain it.  To take their still beating hearts, filled with the terror of me, and feed them to Alexander bit by bit. As generous as your offer is, I fear it could hinder the process and I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be willing to wait.”

“Magnus, you aren’t considering—” and Cat trails off, eyes wide as she realizes what Magnus is planning to do. “How will you even accomplish that?”

“Several portals from Edom are about to mysteriously appear, an attempt of my father or Lilith, undoubtedly.  Attempting to gain access once again to this realm.” Magnus grins, dark and sharp and his teeth gleaming in a malicious smile. “What will terrify someone more than being swallowed by a rift and hunted by the king of Edom?”

They’ve all carefully concealed Magnus’ status and not a single person beyond Magnus, Cat and Alec know the truth of what happened in Edom.

Of what Magnus became, of what he’s turning Alec into.

However, Cat has no intention of stopping him and she just nods, reaching out to press her palm to Magnus’ cheek.

“When you need me, I’m always here.” She promises him, because she will be, whenever he needs her.

[indigochromatic]

I sent this ask to someone else but I'd like to ask more systems - may I ask what your opinion is on subjective reality within systems? Systems that don't have consistency in the headspace, or a consistent timeline, consistent memories...that sort of thing. I'm struggling a bit with that now and it's really freaking me out :( so I'd love to hear your take, if you'd be willing

Hey there! Yeah for sure, we'll take a crack at this. First, though: Content warning for discussions of reality, subjective reality, unreality, etc. If too much that stuff makes your brain unhappy, maybe skim or skip this one.

I'm sorry to hear you're struggling a bit rn, Anon. It's not fun to feel like you don't have "solid ground to stand on", and having to deal with not having a consensus about your autobiographical narrative can be really frustrating and scary.

Lemme try to come at this from a couple angles. First off, I'll say something about how we think of big-picture philosophy, which is that everyone has a subjective reality to some extent. There's a reason it's called "consensus reality" not "objective reality", and that's because no two people on earth are having the exact same experience. Perception is biased, memories slowly alter every time they're recalled, interpretation differs wildly depending on context. The human brain isn't an accurate recording device, it's a pile of synapses telling stories to itself in the dark.

So what do we do with that? Philosophically, that's a big question, and I'm not gonna pretend I have all that figured out. Learn to yourselves stories that give your life meaning and purpose. Practically speaking, though? That'll depend on what you're struggling with specifically, and what you're hoping to change.

For example, let's take memory consistency. The two of us have generally pretty consistent memories (e.g. we agree on what events happened rather than having conflicting memories about it), but we also have a shit memory overall--we've described it like we're living in a sliding window of 2-8 days, and everything else is kind of a mess since around 2019-2020. We also have ADHD, so that doesn't help either. What do we do? Honestly, just super basic stuff like "keep a calendar notebook that we write stuff down in to keep track of it, and don't worry if it's not perfect or fully complete", "set alarm reminders for non-routine things we don't want to miss, like medical appointments or phone calls with friends", and "check in with each other when we can, to ask if we're missing anything (and just to say hey)". We also know our memory is affected by our overall dissociation levels, so just generally trying to take care of ourselves and slowly improve our life situation is pretty likely to help, too.

On headspace consistency, though--I'm actually a little confused by what you're asking. Are you worried because your headspace isn't static and changes a lot? Anon, with love, that shit is so common, I wouldn't be worried about it in the slightest. Our headspace is a whole mess, for instance--not only is it different based on whether you're in "my mind" vs "L's mind", even the small handful of semi-consistent places and/or 'themes' change around all the time, not just day-to-day like the weather but also evolving over time, especially as we learn more and process more stuff and experience more things. Hell, my exomemories don't even all have a consistent continuity. And even the "semi-consistent" aspects of our headspace basically exists in a sort of...Schrodinger's Headspace superposition, most of the time? For example, there's a whole, like, Hades/The Spirit Realm in there--except when it doesn't exist, or when it's wrapped into some other part of headspace, or retroactively never existed, or was all just symbolic anyways, or is personified in one of my facets instead, or...well, you get the idea. If you're looking to create a bit more solidity in your headspace, it's usually possible to develop more 'concrete' headspace locations by practicing visualization over time--this can be guided meditation stuff, writing about it, collecting a moodboard of images, constructing a model of it in minecraft or another "virtual space-builder" game/program/whatever, etc. Don't be discouraged if it doesn't happen overnight, this stuff can take a bit of practice to solidify.

Timeline consistency: yeah. That one can be especially hard to avoid when you have between-system-member amnesia in general, and/or multiple periods over your life where there were different main fronters. We're not experts on this front, but a lot of it, as far as we can tell, tends to come down to just...trusting each other, as a system. You've all got pieces of the puzzle, and some folks' pieces are written in map coordinates while other folks have cryptic, symbolic riddles--they're all important pieces, even when they conflict. And sometimes you have to kinda let go of trying to ever Perfectly Reconstruct Exactly What Happened, and focus more on what you want your life to look like now and moving forward. Not sure if that system member's exomemories are 'purely symbolic/emotional' or have some basis in physical events? Ask them how they want to deal with it, and what support they want. Sometimes the narrative is more important than the events, because the events themselves are gone. They're over. What we carry with us--everyone, systems and singlets--is the narrative we've told ourselves about the events, and that's the part that grows and changes with us throughout our lives.

Anyways, that's my take on it. Hopefully this gets at a bit of what you were asking about, Anon? Feel free to toss us followup questions if you want, thanks for the opportunity to talk about all this a little. -S

[honeybewrites]

WIP Questionnaire Tag

Thank you @kaylinalexanderbooks for the tag and @willtheweaver for the tag!!

What’s the first part of your WIP that you created?

I guess the characters and world. I created EoWC so long ago it's kind of hard to remember what came first, but I do remember obsessively looking for a name for my main OC. It's actually the only name that hasn't changed in the series.

If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/intro be?

I haven't ever actually looked into finding a theme song for it, but now I'm curious if I could...

What are your favorite characters that you made? Why?

703 is one of my favorites. She's been one of the most consistent characters since the beginning. Rage and Healer Asurr are also some of my favorites. They're both really fun to write despite their stark opposites. One of them is a lovely Dad Vibes character and the other is a deranged mad scientist obsessed with creating the perfect species.

What other pieces of media do you think your fanbase would share?

Oof. That's a hard one. Um, maybe something with a lot of gore/fighting/supernatural? Like the Netflix Witcher series or SPN maybe? Found family is also a pretty big theme so maybe some other media with that. I'm not really sure what other lovers to enemies media is out there, but I imagine that would also be shared.

What has been your biggest struggle with your WIP?

Plotting. I know how the story plays out, but getting it down into a useable outline is by far my biggest struggle. That and organizing the dozens of scenes I've written into a coherent timeline.

Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them!

Lots of animals! Some from our world and a lot created specifically for EoWC's world. But the main animal/species talked about is dragons. Their culture, subspecies, abilities. They are by far the most fleshed out species.

How do your characters travel/get around?

There's a lot of different ways. Ships are common, as they can fly places quickly and travel through Bridges to other Realms. Ground transports are used, mostly only in cities. There are smaller ones, like cars, and bigger ones, like trains to get across a Realm easier. But for smaller cities, walking is most common. Even in the larger cities, walking is still a common way to get around.

What part of your WIP are you working on right now?

Right now I'm trying to organize everything. I'm trying to get all the things I've written laid out to an outline and given an appropriate place in the series. Then I'll actually be able to see what scenes I still need to write and hopefully get a cohesive draft together.

What aspects (tropes, maybe?) will you think draw your audience in?

Um, dragons? I love books with dragons, maybe a little too much. But in all reality, I think the lovers to enemies is what will probably draw people in. I'd also like to hope my world building draws in a few people because I love it.

What are your hopes for your WIP?

I would like to get it published. Self published, just because I think that would be more fun. But really, if I could just finish it, publish it or not, and have one person who loved it, that would be enough for me.

Tagging @the-golden-comet @anaisbebe @fractured-shield @halfbakedspuds @diabolical-blue and anyone else that wants to hop on!!