#loyalty is everything

[its-all-down-hill]

[gojuo]

Remember what they're taking from you

Fire and Blood, p. 398:

Fire and Blood, p. 387:

Fire and Blood, p. 390:

Fire and Blood, p. 401:

Fire and Blood, p. 402:

Fire and Blood, p. 409:

Fire and Blood, p. 424:

Fire and Blood, p. 425:

Fire and Blood, p. 437:

Fire and Blood, p. 473:

Fire and Blood, p. 561:

Dangerous Women, The Princess and the Queen, p. 783:

Fire and Blood, p. 506:

Fire and Blood, p. 381:

Fire and Blood, p. 380:

Fire and Blood, p. 533:

Fire and Blood, p. 541:

Fire and Blood, p. 542:

Fire and Blood, p. 550:

[raestoned]

[hinamie]

binding vow

[half-a-life-left]

SO THAT MADNESS COMBAT 12 HUH

[pocketgalaxies]

We want to destroy my mother. (insp by @dadrielle)

[villainsandvictimsalliance]

A reminder that Spinner canonically compares himself to Dabi and feels inferior to the rest of the League of Villains.

Part of the reason he allowed AFO to manipulate him is because he wanted to be reliable, as in he wanted to be stronger to be of use to Tomura. So again, he's canonically kinda jealous not only of Dabi's quirk, but of him as a person.

[mothgirlpanties]

@barbarian-lesbian

To be the royal advisor to the princess as your barbarian army takes the castle...

To be forced to watch as my liegelady is paraded before your conquering army, wearing naught but her crown and jewelry, before coming to kneel before the woman who took her throne. Your legs spread wide, throbbing womanhood glistening with battle-sweat- my princess sways for a moment, overtaken by the scent...

She eventually returns to herself, and hesitantly plants a kiss at the base of your shaft. It is followed by another, then a tentative lick.

Her minstrations are... clumsy at best, and your amusement slowly fades into boredom.

My heart clenches in fear for my lady, and I find within me the resolve to step forward, hands deftly unbuttoning my coat.

Your warriors move to stop me, but hesitate as I toss aside my jacket and begin on my shirt. I stride past them and approach the dais, shucking what remained of my outerwear.

You reach for the battleaxe that rests against what is now your throne, but make no further moves as I kick off my shoes and ascend the steps. I am unashamed in my nudity, for I refuse any dignity that my liegelady is denied. I fall into a low bow, her crest dangling before my chest as I approach the throne.

"Apologies for the intrusion," I simper, "but I am sworn to aid the princess in all her endeavors."

I come to a stop and kneel beside my liegelady; to her right and a half-pace behind, exactly where I belong.

Your scent is intoxicating, even from here, but I have a duty to uphold. I take a moment to gaze into my princess' eyes, musk-drunk and lustful as they are. "I am with you, my lady," I whisper to her. I place a loving hand on the back of her head, and gently push her down onto your cock.

[beaulesbian]

✨ Happy Birthday Roronoa Zoro ⚔️(11.11)

"Until the day I defeat him and become a master swordsman, I'll never be defeated! Got any problem with that, King of the Pirates?!"

[mayasaura]

HANG ON. WAKE WAS SNEAKING AROUND INSIDE HARROW'S HEAD FOR NINE FUCKING MONTHS.

Throw another one into the mix permeating Harrow's soul lads. This little witch can fit so many subliminal influences into her

[crazy-ache]

We are not the same.

Some folks: SJM foreshadowed a blood duel between Azriel and Lucien in the Bonus Chapter to win Elain’s heart/claim his mate.

Me, an intellectual: SJM foreshadowed the blood duel in regard to Lucien because he will use it to save Elain’s life, likely from Beron, because this time he will be powerful enough to stop Jesminda’s fate from repeating itself again.

[seance]

WHAT'D YOU DO WITH HIM? I KNOW HE WOULDN'T HAVE LEFT BY CHOICE. I KNOW YOU THINK YOU UNDERSTAND HIM.

[vengeful-horde-of-angry-ghosts]

I think something to keep in mind regarding Kiriona and John's relationship, especially regarding the content of Kiriona and Ianthe's argument at the tomb, is what happens when they first meet. Yes, Gideon has a parent now! He's God! He gave her a new name connecting her to their culture and a commission in the cohort and made her his heir! Maybe he really is trying (when he's not drunkenly fucking his way through the cohort).

But the first time she meets him (during the Jerry Springer portion of the book), she sees the fight with Mercymorn and Augustine where he admits to lying about the cavaliers having to die. (As a cavalier who died, I think it would be totally reasonable for her to take this one personally.)

More importantly, she's angry with him for hurting Harrow. She straight up tells him, "Go to hell, Pops."

She watches Ianthe save him and says, "She got one choice, and not only did she blow it, but she blew it in such a huge fucking spectacular way that you would’ve been impressed had you not hated her for it."

Next sentence she calls John "the guy who had lied to everyone about everything."

Not a great first impression.

So back to Kiriona. She seems loyal enough. She plays the part. But she goes awol to get to New Rho first chance she gets (I don't believe for a second that John actually sent her there, especially considering there was no way to know they'd end up on the ninth. It has to be about Harrow, which Ianthe even asks.). She seems to me to be angry and defensive when she talks about what John has done to her body, her eyes "hard and dead and bright, like something that had been dug up" when previously they had been compared to Nona's eyes.

I feel like her loyalty to John isn't as secure as most people seem to think it is. If Harrow was disappointed by him as God while he still had his shit together, how disappointed must Gideon be to finally have a parent and it's John in his breakdown stage? Even Ianthe is disappointed by him.

I'm reminded of this exchange with Harrow in GtN:

“I need you to trust me.”

“I need you to be trustworthy.”

Given everything she's seen him do, I cannot imagine her finding John trustworthy. I can't imagine that a few months of playing happy families has changed that.

[shiongenkai]

On this night I am thinking about Haru Sagara and how he is consistently putting others' needs in front of his own. And how, though he plays stupid and plays the overbearing captain, when given the choice between self-preservation or saving others he will always, without any question, choose to save others.

It's really sad in a sense to see this trend happening over and over. Like... he's burdened with someone else's debt and he deals with it himself with a fairly reasonable amount of griping. He takes over a park he doesn't know the operation of and teaches himself to do it by himself, because there's nobody else to rely on like general students (and, generally, Towa seems to be a free-spirit, and Haru encourages it!).

He frequently ignores his own health in order to give the anomalous animals the best lives he can in the park too. He remarks about getting bitten a ton, he obviously deals with upset anomalies frequently, he sacrifices AC on the off chance an anomaly may wander into the dorm... I think something that sticks out to me is that, when he wakes up from his tetanus coma, the janitor reprimands him for another ignored injury. And it's true! We see him get injured and subsequently ignore it a Lot! Or we see him put himself in positions to be injured for the sake of other people.

In Princess Oto's castle, he uses his stigma to save Ren and Calimari despite knowing he'd get hurt. And Ren is right to be mad at him about it! But what's worse is that he turns around and almost immediately does it again, this time with the implication that he was ready to lay down his life!! He tells Towa to stay with the MC and Ren because he thought they would have a better chance if he distracted Oto! His final words before Towa breaks the tank is that it's up to Towa now! And I think he knew Towa would most likely pull through, but he was definitely in bad, bad shape beforehand. And what if he didn't have the first aid kit? I don't think it would've changed his actions.

It's just. I want him to take better care of himself. I want him to value himself outside of the joking contexts we always see. Outside of the context of the park and the anomalies in his care. I want him to be able to rely on Ren and Towa more often, because right now he does tend to take the fall for them more often than not. Towa vists the hill so he stays home instead of asking him to return. Ren wants to work at the diner, so Haru lets him rather than forcing him to quit like he originally tried to.

Haru Sagara you will meet me in the pit (the pit is a nice comfortable bed) and I will beat you to death with my hooves (tuck you in goodnight because you wake up at like 4 in the goddamn morning and go to bed at god knows when if you even manage to ever sleep) (and then cook you a meal since you obviously don't eat enough either given that you have to be like oh don't worry i ate some lettuce and bread)

[kurithedweeb]

I know we always talk about Garroth ending up looking exactly like his father, but what about Dante growing up to look eerily like Gene.

When he joins up with Phoenix Drop, he's still young. He's a little on the short side, still a bit too thin from life in the wild and imprisonment, and he's a little anxious and shaky around so many people after having grown unused to living in a village. The smiling faces of the citizens remind you of your old home, of clamoring crowds and standing frozen in the plaza as your brother . . .

Anyway, it's good here. It's easy to fit in. The guards joke around with you and make sure you're healthy. They don't know a thing about dual wielding, but you get plenty of sparring partners out of helping the local baker practice her magick, and you maybe make a friend too. You're not too sure how you feel about the Lord, but she's a kind soul and does her best to make sure you're comfortable here in town, and her kids are great. Babysitting the boys is easily your favorite duty. Yeah, it's good here. For the first time in a long while, you feel like you're doing good.

Then the war comes. The children and non-combatants are sent away. The jovial atmosphere of the guard tower has soured into solemn silence as you make your final preparations. In the morning, you step into the battlefield and you go to war for the first time in your life. You have a horrible feeling in your gut that it won’t be the last.

You, Sir Laurance and Sir Garroth make a good team. It makes you sick. The three of you cross the battlefield at a slow and inevitable pace, cutting down any soldier that dares stray too close, and together you cleave the enemy forces in half, scattering them. The killing comes easy to you. You had hoped that in this peaceful new village, with time, you would become unfamiliar to how easily you were once able to take a life, but right then you’re glad your body never forgot the motions of death. Glad for the blood that stains your hands—how can you be glad?

You can’t remember how long you fought for. Days, weeks? Surely not months, or so you think. Yours is a small force, and though Miss Lucinda is a good healer, she grows tired while the other army’s numbers are replenished time and again. You remember the bags under her eyes as she tipped a potion sip by sip into your mouth the time you were shot through the face.

You remember sneaking into the enemy camp in the dead of night, skirting around the edges of it to the back line where the archers rested. You quietly slit five of their throats before you were noticed, and managed to slash another across the belly before the arrow caught you in the side of the face, in one cheek and out the other. The wood of the shaft cracked when you bit down. It was everything you could do not to scream as you fled. Dale thought you were a fiend when you first stepped out of the shadows, face obscured in blood and cradling your jaw as you cupped a hand beneath your mouth in an effort to catch more blood before it left a trail. Laurance held you while Garroth split the arrowhead from the rest of it with a knife and pulled the shaft out the other side of your face, your jaw gripped tight in one hand to keep you from struggling. It took hours to pull the splinters from your cheeks and tongue before they sent you to wake the healer. The whole ordeal had been excruciating. You might have cried. You remember that a lot more clearly than most other times at war. After a while, it’s hard to tell which side spills more blood when so much is shed that red squishes out of the earth wherever you step.

Every day, you fought dawn to dusk. And then one day you won. By Nicole literally knocking some sense into her father, of all things! You find a quiet corner to throw up in and for a beautiful moment, you think life in this little town you’ve started thinking of as home will go back to being good. Until your Lord tells you to guard the village as she races past the gates, and she doesn’t come back. None who followed her do either.

For days, you stand waiting at the gates. You don’t eat, you don’t sleep. O’khasis is gone, Scaleswind has made a refuge of the plaza, and still there is no sign of your Lord or your brothers-in-arms. You won’t even leave to have your wounds seen to. Nicole has to drag a doctor to the gates to treat you, and the entire time you watch the forest hoping that any moment they will reappear. You only step away when someone brings you news that the ship that took the children away has returned. You should be the one to tell them.

Zoey knows something is wrong the moment she sees you. Levin and Malachi smile and ask where their mother is—they call you ‘uncle’ while they do. You get down on your knees before them, and you gather them close in your arms, and you cry as you tell them their mother has been missing since the day the war ended. You’re still holding them when the exhaustion catches up with you.

Zoey is with you when you wake. She tells you you’ve been out nearly two days. She fusses over you, and you know you’ve worried her because that’s what she does when she’s worried. You’re a mess anyway, so you let her fuss. You drink the broth she makes you, you change into the clothes she provides, you sit still while she cuts the unruly mats of your hair and shaves your face. You used to cut yourself shaving all the time, no one ever taught you how and you were only six or so when Gene was learning to; you don’t remember now how he showed you each step or the laugh in his voice at the face of disgust you made when you slapped a little hand into the lather on his face and left behind a tiny palmprint. Zoey doesn’t cut you once. When she’s done with you, she takes you by the arm and guides you back into civilization, where everyone who remained has decided already on search parties to go out looking for your missing friends.

You head each expedition. Dale brings himself out of retirement to watch over the town while you’re gone, and asks only that you also look for his son. Does he know you used to be a tracker, used to spend days in the woods trailing coyotes and runaways for enough coin to carry you through the cold months? You try for him, but the ground is soft still and every step anyone takes leaves a print, all overlapping and muddled. You keep an eye out as you circle the same stretches of woods for days, but you find nothing. Your group goes further and faster than any other, the first to find and dismantle bandit camps and dens of fiends, but no matter how far you go you find not a sign of anyone who has disappeared that day. It’s as though they vanished into thin air. Every time you return home, Dale looks at you with hopeful eyes, and every time you must take him aside and break his heart a little more. Eventually, he stops asking.

For a year, you search. The area has never been safer. You have never felt so alone as when people start to suggest that a funeral may be in order.

You feel like a monster for the rage in your voice when you denounce these people. You know they aren’t dead—you would have felt such a thing, you know, you would have felt pieces of yourself snapping like wire pulled too taut, you would have felt the sharp edges tangling inside you—it would have felt like it did when the brother you killed rose from the grave to slit your throat and cut your very existence from the memory of Boboros. You hear white noise rumbling in your ears when the first brave soul says Sir Dante, there’s been no sign for a year now, and your blood is boiling when you slap their comforting hand off your shoulder. You spit that you’re not giving up just because everyone else has taken no evidence of life to mean the surety of death, and with their pitying looks burning into your back to return to the woods. You scream into the trees until you can’t anymore. When it doesn’t help, you use your considerable tracking skills to hunt something, anything, until you feel human again.

You crawl back home the day before the funeral with your cape stained with blood; they held it back so you could attend. You polish your armor and swords until they shine, and the warped reflection of your own face makes you feel sick the way waging war did. You stand at attention the entire ceremony without moving a muscle. When Dale reads the names of the deceased at the end, offering their souls into the embrace of the Matron, you salute, and the clatter of your armor silences the crowd.

Everyone who fought in the war salutes with you. So do your Lord’s sons. You’re too tired to cry. You hold your salute long after everyone else has left.

The remaining forces of Scaleswind return home. One by one, family by family, the streets of your home empty. Without your Lord, without your guard, the citizens trickle out the front gates and never turn back. Some apologize to you as they say their goodbyes, and some of them you actually believe. You close the gate behind each of them until all that remains is you, Zoey, and your Lord’s sons. Then Zoey tells you she’s taking the boys to the Yggdrasil Forest. She holds you tight for too long and kisses your brow when you show them to the gate for the last time.

You can’t believe you ever thought you knew what loneliness was before this.

For five years, you are completely and utterly alone. You search and you patrol and you do your best to maintain the village. You don’t believe in Irene, but every day before dawn you stand before her statue and look down down down over the cliff’s edge and pray that this won’t be the rest of your life. That you haven’t deluded yourself into believing a fantasy, that you haven’t made such an incredible fool of yourself that people can’t bear to be around you, that you haven’t been forgotten. For five years, you pray that someone, somewhere, remembers that you exist. You look down down down over the cliff’s edge and have the terrible thought that you don’t know what you’d do if you were forgotten again.

The gate is falling apart. You don’t know how to repair the damage the weather’s done to it, you tried to patch the cracks but it never holds. With each year, you’ve been pushed further and further outtowards the coast. The only places you have the energy to maintain anymore are the guard tower and your Lord’s home. You blockaded the gates when the mechanism broke, you check it on occasion to be sure no bandits get in, and one day you hear voices from the other side. Familiar voices. You scramble up the wall and look over the other side at a boy you don’t recognize looking back up at you. He says, Is that Uncle Dante? and you climb down as fast as you can to embrace Malachi.

He’s nearly the age you were when you first met his mother. He’s grown tall, and strong enough to carry his brother on his back. Levin is fevered when you first see him, flush and hurting even as he dozes, and Malachi tells you he can’t walk from how bad he hurts. You remember how Zoey fretted over him when he was young, how sometimes he’d scream for seemingly no reason, and once you show them to their mother’s home Malachi refuses to leave his bedside.

You sit with them and ask where Zoey is. Malachi tells you of her obsession, and the relief that you are not alone in the belief that those who disappeared are alive feels like a hint of betrayal. You’re relieved that she’s driving herself into a downward spiral because of what? Because it makes you feel like you were reasonable to fight not to let their souls be put to rest?

You wait for her at the gates deep into the night and take her to her boys when she bursts from the woods, frantic that she’d lost them, and safe if your Lord’s home she holds you so tight your ribs hurt from the force of her grip. After so long, you’re not alone anymore.

You wake before dawn and strap your swords to your back. For the first time in a long time, you feel safe enough to go without your armor. You hike up the steep cliff to the Irene statue. You kneel before her to offer your thanks. You look into the pool at her feet and fear grips you by the throat.

Your brother’s face looks back at you.

You wear your swords the way he did. Your hair falls like his, dark in the shadow of Irene. Your face is gaunt and pale from old habits, eating only enough to sustain yourself so rations will stretch long enough for you to find more—do you remember how they starved Gene before they killed him? How they weakened him so he wouldn’t have the energy to fight? How pale and gaunt he was, dirt streaking over the side of his face, blood and grime drying in his hair, shaking and sweaty with how hard he fought back? Do you remember the scar that twisted around his throat when he returned from the dead to get his vengeance? Your collar is open over the scar he left twisting across your own, and it matches his own so very well. In the shadows of your eyes, you see his own staring back.

You think of the war. You think of how easy the killing was. You think of how easily Gene cut through the guards, the Lord, the memories of Boboros. The rage in his voice when he denounced you as his brother, the twist of his smile when he told you he would leave you to rot, Dante. No one will ever remember you. You can see that twist in the corners of your own smile, pushed into shape by the deep scars on your cheeks. You and your brother are the same.

You’re shaking too much to stand. You never go without your armor again.

[abelladanger-1]