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winterpinetrees · 7 months ago

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Weighing the risks (The Gap Years part 15)

June 24th 2019

Las Vegas, NV

The humans have a much needed conversation and discuss a couple of dangerous plans. These keep getting longer and longer. This is, as always, pure unedited brainrot.

………………

Las Vegas is a monument to the human world. It is a city of electric lights, shaking air conditioners, and carefully manufactured myth. It has towering fountains, but 4 inches of rainfall each year. Billions of dollars are gambled and lost on casino floors and show tickets and the dozens of planes that land every day. Strictly speaking, Las Vegas does not even exist. It’s a patch of dirt called Paradise that was never incorporated into a real town because towns have higher taxes and more to lose. It is a place of mad complexity and beautiful waste, and that is why it is a monument to everything that may soon be lost forever.

Zerada and Marin, old heirs to the elven throne, are off somewhere else. Maybe they’re robbing another casino or maybe they’re speaking in elvish about things that they refuse to share. There’s no way of knowing, so the three human friends sit in their hotel room. It has been nearly two weeks since they set off on their quest. In that time, they have been shot at, cursed and charmed. They’ve learned impossible truths about the universe and nearly died multiple times. This little Vegas stopover is a necessary rest, but it’s also terrifying. Each passing day the world gets closer to ending. They can’t agree if that’s a good thing.

The evening where he learned about the laboratory was not the last time that Brain split off from the group. This morning he met back up with his old friends for breakfast with his blond hair a mess and no concrete answers about where he’d been. (It’s not difficult to guess. Zerada arrived a few minutes later). He dragged them onto this quest and by god if he isn’t going to try and enjoy it. They’ll probably be dead soon anyway, but he has to try. Brian has been brainwashed once to his knowledge. He knows that there’s no visible signs if an enemy does it well. Despite his family history, Brian isn’t good at being at someone else’s mercy.

Sierra types slowly on her battered computer. Her calloused hands twitch from magic and there are moments where her vision goes that horrible blood red. She swears that the curse is trying to possess her, but the one time Zerada tried to fix it left both of them with a killer headache. She says that removing the spell through brute force might have serious consequences, but the elf did what she could. Sierra is a little annoyed to be so out of the loop. She’s always been the one who tinkers with things, but she isn’t much help with magic. Sierra always imagined that she’d be more than just the damsel in distress on a sci-fi adventure. She pours over old forums to find what she already knows. Ten years ago a team of elves destroyed a state of the art physics lab in the desert. She wants to ask Marin, but the prince has been silent. The ruins lie two hours to the northwest.

Clay’s sunburns have healed, but he wears the rifle over one shoulder whenever he can. Every stranger is a possible threat. They are hopelessly outgunned. Clay knows he isn’t a fighter though. Brian is the one who can wrestle, lock arms with a problem and keep fighting until he’s won or bleeding. Clay is a runner and a liar. Sure, he’ll face his father or stare down Marin when he’s being absurd, what can he do against actual soldiers? Someday they’ll be backed into a corner and someone will demand his surrender. Clay wonders what he will do if he lays down his arms and Brian goes down fighting. They did still kill that nobleman, back home in San Francisco. He might not be able to talk his way out of this.

This was supposed to be a fun road trip.

The three gather around the computer at a table covered with hand drawn maps. There’s a laboratory somewhere close, but they know so little. Like, who was the blond elf who shot Sierra as they fled from Vya? They’d yelled something at Marin before fleeing but he hasn’t been clear what. The humans have been piecing a story together from fragments. The archer didn’t kill Sierra when they had the chance, so the elves must want all of them alive, not just Marin. Their wrist computer is a sign of nobility, but the archer isn’t from one of the big enemy houses. Too many elves here are unaffiliated. Brian explained that two nights ago, while still wearing his too-tight suit.

“On earth, coups become cyclical when the common people stop believing that changes in government mean anything”. He’d explained with the advertisements of the city flashing behind him. “That matches what we know about elves. The nobles do their own thing without really affecting the people”.

Clay nodded grimly. He’s seen what happens when human governments leave their people behind. “But now the commoners care. That’s new”.

That fact has been weighing on them for days. They’re all smart enough to know that taking back the throne will be harder than Marin thinks. Clay takes a deep breath and looks up to the ceiling (they’ve meticulously blocked every security camera in the suite and turned off their phones).

“The elves seem decent. We could go talk to the lab techs. We could tell them what’s happening”.

Brian looks up from the papers in shock. “And get them killed? Jesus, Dirtboy! We’ve been living with Marin for two weeks! They’ll behead him! Or worse!”

Sierra spins the wire around her wrists. “How do you get worse than that? Elves don’t seem like the forgiving type either. We’re like dogs to them”.

“We got lucky in Vya. We got lucky when I was charmed and we got-“ Clay keeps talking. He’s keeping his voice very level.

Brian is shouting “And we have Zerada now!”

“The fact that you hooked up with an alien isn’t going to fix everything! This is our world, Sierra’s right, we have to remember the stakes here”.

Brian looks wildly between the two of them. He’s alone and outnumbered. “Remember the stakes? They’re going to enslave the human race, Clay. What do you think their mercy looks like?”

Born in the same six months, the three have been friends for longer than they can remember. They have run across the rooftops and assembled drones and sat in the bleachers of baseball games for eachother. They have cried over relationships, and standardized tests, and the way that the world always, always, seems to be about to end without anyone caring. Their fathers graduated Princeton together as a triumvirate to change the world. The men have no idea that their children hold more power than they ever could. It’s a random Monday night in Las Vegas. They can doom the entire human race by dawn.

Clay grits his teeth. “You dramatic, glory-chasing, idiot. What would a-“

“Boys!” Sierra stands. “We’re not backing out tonight. We’re going to find the lab,” Brian, the handsome action hero, smiles. “And we’re going to see if they’re actually making a plague,” Clay nods as well. “And then we’re going to have another conversation and decide how to run this”.

He slumps over the table and papers rustle. “Brian. Listen to me. We don’t tell them what we discussed tonight”.

He laughs, but his face is grim. “Of course. I’m not an idiot! I’m going to Princeton, remember?”

The three all nervously. Right. They just graduated high school. There’s a whole world out there that used to mean everything. Were they really sitting in math class just last month?

“If we win, we’ll be legends. We can’t just go back to school,” Sierra says.

“That’s the hero’s journey,” Brian replies. “You save the world, but not for you”.

Clay rolls his eyes behind his glasses. “I’d be alright with a different world…”

“No! No you wouldn’t be!”

They’re going to be fighting over this for a while.

The humans don’t see Marin and Zerada until the next day. In spite of everything, the humans know each other well, and they let nothing slip. Reconnaissance has been going well, research has been going well. Nothing suspicious at all! Sierra lays out the papers to propose a plan. The elves will steal them something that can go offroad, and they’ll drive out into the desert to the ruins of Project Excalibur. Worst case scenario, it’s just a dead end, but she knows that a lab with dozens and dozens of workers wouldn’t be operational if work only started with the coup on the 10th. It must have existed, secretly, for months, and the technicians only got the ok to visit Vegas after their faction had control. What better place for radiation-resistant aliens to hide a lab than in nuclear ruins?

Marin thinks for a moment. Creating a plague in the wreckage of the place where humans tried to understand magic seems like something the Mercurali would do. The youngest prince has a name so full of ancient meaning that he doubts they’d be able to turn down that sort of symbolism. So that’s the plan. Marin and Zerada will steal a jeep and meet them at a predetermined parking lot north of the city. Then they’ll do a bit of investigating.

There’s only one catch. Sierra is still cursed. If she turns on them, then everyone is dead.

“You could stay behind?” Marin suggests. She’s not going to do that.

Sierra scowls, “I can handle it”. The spell is spreading, which at least to her implies that it isn’t as dangerous as it could be. The only symptoms have been tremors and the occasional magical flare in her vision. She’s fine.

Zerada doesn’t scowl. She’s far too elegant and composed for that, but her reaction is still skeptical. “Then we’re not giving you a gun”.

“I don’t need one”.

So the elves leave and the humans pack their bags. They have Clay’s concussion rifle, emerald green and capable of hitting like a cannonball. He’s also carrying a human sidearm now, a pistol that he bought a few towns over. Brian is armed with a magical pistol and a baseball bat. Both boys also carry foam earplugs because Sierra has kept tinkering with her siren. It won’t be much help against soldiers anymore, but it could stop lab techs if they get desperate. Sierra has her magic detector, but she’s bought a normal Geiger counter as well. The elves have promised to protect them from radiation using their magic, but she’s skeptical. The Excalibur exclusion zone isn’t as bad as Chernobyl, but it’s still a bit scary to walk into. They’re probably going to die in the next few months, but they certainly don’t want to die of radiation poisoning if they win. As a result, they’ve followed Sierra’s orders and bought new clothes that cover as much skin as possible. They’ll throw it all away afterwards. (Money was never an issue) Sierra and Clay even drove out to a hardware store and bought masks, an act that the elves couldn’t help but roll their eyes at.

They also have snacks. Lots of snacks.

………………………

A world and five hundred miles away, Amedi Kebero meditates in their chambers. The sound of the ocean is still a bit distracting, but they’re getting used to it. (They are a bit woried about rust on their vambrace from the humidity though) The spell they cast on the human girl was a tracker’s mark from the mountains of home. With focus, they can see through their quarry’s eyes, and the spell will spread until it paralyzes the victim completely. Unfortunately, the Adust heir got in the way, and everything is working worse than Amedi would like. They’ve been spending most of their free time trying to get a clear connection, but have only seen flashes.

Luckily, they have something to report when Esther knocks on their door. It’s past midday and the High Council needs to reconvene in the Problem Room. The red-haired human looks at them hopefully. Amedi’s desires are Esther’s desires too. That’s the way a seneschal works, after all. The girl must be happy to hear that Amedi has had some success. They tell the council that the heirs are still in Vegas, and that they are all going to infiltrate the ruins of Project Excalibur within a few days. It causes a stir, mostly from Gullin who’s overseeing the entire operation, but not as much as they expected.

The Apex files a report. Security will be increased on base, but she’s not making offense a priority. Sondaicas and Adusts are as stealthy as she is strong, so the goal is to protect the base, not catch the heirs. So Amedi will stay with the council this time. Amedi is disappointed to not have another chance to fight, but they try not to show it. Ishtar and Ryn keep reminding them that they don’t need to prove themself anymore. They are on the high council, and there is nothing left to conquer. Well, except for the human world, that is.

But Amedi doesn’t know their seneschal as well as they think. Alone again, Esther slides a panel out of the wall of her small room. She didn’t even need to have it built. The network of crawlspaces and catwalks already covers the human quarters within the palace. She kneels behind a filing cabinet and crawls inside. The space within contains a phone and a computer, both of them slow and unreliable because of the magic nearby. Nonetheless, Esther types a memorized phone number into the keypad. If her research is right, and it is always right, then Clay Shepard’s satellite phone is attached to the other side. She can warn them. She can stop them from walking into a trap. Esther has done this little ritual before, and as always, something stops her. If these kids are going to save the human world (no, her world. She is human, and her mother was taken from the wild), then they need to get just a bit further on their own. It won’t do them any good if she gets caught, after all. Esther puts the phone down, slides the panel back into place, and returns to the paperwork of an empire.

……………

no authors notes other than the fact that I wanted to establish that Clay’s nickname is every possible variant of “Dirt” (and occasionally other synonyms for clay) earlier than this.

#by me #the gap years #my ocs #writing that *is*

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reblogthiscrapkay · 1 year ago

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Travel Tips

In talking to people I realize that I have some really specific things I do while traveling that make my life easier that people don’t seem to know about. Here’s a list of those things. Planning: Plug everything into Google Maps beforehand. Whether you’re driving, walking, or taking public transport, when you plan a daily itinerary, always check how long it’s going to take to get from place to place. You may have vastly overestimated how much you can actually do in the time you have. Leave a little space. I’m a habitual overplanner so I frequently have to remind myself that I should make sure that after I have the couple things I really want to do properly fit into the day, I should just leave some wiggle room. This is especially true if you are doing anything involving nature. Maybe you’ll not want to rush off the beach. Maybe you’ll take a little detour on your hike that seems fun. Have backups for weather. Depending on the trip, the weather can really mess with your plans. On a recent Nevada/Utah trip, our plans to see Bryce Canyon full of snow were thwarted by thick fog. Thankfully, we were leaving out of Vegas and we had plenty we could do there instead. Always have an alternative.

Food: Buy a little extra food with breakfast. I suggested to students on my DC trip that when we went to Dunkin’ in the morning they didn’t just think about what they needed right there, but also that they pick up an extra bagel or doughnut for when they need a snack before or after lunch. Apparently this was genius. Act like restaurants will all be closed by 6PM and plan accordingly. I recently messed up on this one and arrived at 8:30PM in a town in Nevada with two restaurants that both close at 8. Needlessly to say, breakfast was incredible. This is less important if you are going to a big city on a day that isn’t Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday but still worth considering. Just bring some bars. Granola, Clif, Luna, whatever. Just bring a few for emergencies. Packing: Don’t overpack!!! Everyone always does but I’m so serious about this. If your trip is 1-3 nights, you just need a backpack. If it’s a week, you can take something more like a duffel. You only need a small suitcase if it’s over a week, and if you crawl into your suitcase you better be going somewhere for over a month. Create a standard packing list. To save myself the stress of creating a new one each time and also to make sure I can cull things or add things with experience, I have one standard list. It has the categories of “toiletries” and “technology” which are universal for any overnight, “cold weather” and “hot weather” depending on the time, and a section called “circumstantial” which has some generic items I may need depending on the trip (like a book, a bathing suit, or feminine hygiene products) and two subcategories of “international” and “car travel” for if I’m going overseas or if I’m road tripping in my own car. Even in confusing situations like Iceland in the summer where I needed both a bathing suit and a rain jacket, it’s super helpful. If road tripping, bring an empty backpack. One of the more brilliant tactics I have came from a four week long road trip across the west and southwest. Obviously I needed a full suitcase for the journey but we were staying at different hotels almost every night. Instead of bringing in the suitcase every day, I could just keep my toiletries, chargers, and PJs in the backpack and add a new outfit every day. Then in the morning, I would put my old clothes in my dirty clothes bag in the suitcase and replace the outfit with tomorrow’s. Do laundry. I don’t even mean pay for laundry services. When I did a Greece and Turkey trip that lasted three weeks I only packed half that amount in clothes and just washed things in the hotel sinks. I got so sweaty every day anyway that I did it almost daily. Travel size shampoo, conditioner, and soap are necessary for international travel. Unless you are staying in nice accommodations (and I often am not), bringing little bottles of these things is really good to have as they are not always provided. I also steal them from nicer hotels I stay at to have a little supply at home.

#i should be packing for morocco right now but I accidentally set a fire and now I'm at the library while the smoke clears #personal #travel #life hacks

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cynwritess · 4 years ago

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My Outlining Technique As A Pantser

I despise outlining with every fiber of my soul. I don’t care how much people persist you need an outline, I will put it off to the very last minute and do it very half-assed. Even in school, its straight to the first draft. Outlining requires a very precise skill of breaking things down as small as possible and my mind simply does not function that way. It’s literally all or nothing. Unfortunately while this may work for writing school essays, it’s not exactly a good idea when it comes to a book. Writing a book requires structure and precision because you need to carefully place information, have an idea where your characters are going, tedious yet necessary things. Fortunately, I’ve come up with a way to outline without completely frying my brain.

Characters.

I almost always start with the characters first and build the world, other characters, and plot around them. If you have a name in mine, perfect! Go ahead and use it! If you don’t have a name, don’t dread scouring through dozens of baby name websites. Give them a place holder name or better yet, give them a role/title. I’m going to use one of my current characters (steal anything about her and I’ll send demons after you). When I first created Selina I only had a vague aesthetic and the idea that I wanted her to somehow be attached to spirits. Her name didn’t come to me until 25k into the story, but I had to refer to her as something so I used a conjunction of a place holder name and calling her “Reaper of Souls”. This way I know exactly who I’m referring to. Also, this helps me know what path my character needs to go down. Reaper of Souls is who she’ll become, but its definitely not who she is when the story begins. It makes me thing: What steps do I need to take to get her there? This is where you can start brainstorming character arcs and give them trauma.

Another essential part of creating characters in my opinion is giving them “role models”. Personally, if this is a brand new character I’m creating off the top of my head its hard to write them because I know nothing about them. I don’t know their sense of humor, who they would and wouldn’t get along with, their inner monologue, etc. Now you have to be careful with this and make sure to mold them into their own unique characters at the end of the day, but you can use other already existing characters to help begin the process. When creating Selina I knew vaguely she needed to be connected to spirits. What characters do I know like that? Jodie from Beyond Two Souls is a good one and Zelie is a bit of a different twist to it but still the same general idea. But wait! Selina’s vibe doesn’t match either of them. So in this case I might look at Jude Duarte for inspiration for her personality. Nitpick all your favorite things about different characters and use that to your advantage! It gives you the jolt you need to really begin to explore who your character is.

Always do the main character first, then follow with the supporting character or villain. In my opinion, the main supporting character and villain should be foils of the main character in order to get the most out of each one, because you’ll be able to see different aspects and different arcs they could’ve/will have. Once you have those three characters you can create the others as you progress with your story.

Setting.

This can either be really simple or your worst fucking nightmare. For me, it’s a mixture of both. If your story is taking place in the real world then this can be relatively simple even if you’re creating your own town/city. If your town has a very specific location like a town square or maybe there’s a river running through it, then just google “towns with a river going through it” for a start. If you have a specific town in mind you can also google the map and start dissecting different aspects of the town and incorporating it into your own. You can even use your own town for inspiration! The town my story takes place in is made up, but my hometown actually resembles it quite a bit so I’ve been using it for references. So far, its been working out pretty good.

Now if you have a high fantasy setting... I wish you the best of luck. I’ve only written one high fantasy story when I was twelve and... well clearly its never seen the light of day for a reason (partially because I deleted it, partially because there was absolutely zero world-building). I’m sorry to say my skills have no improved much since then. I’ve dabbled with the idea of high fantasy worlds and honestly my only advice is to look at other fantasy maps and draw inspiration from that. Narnia, Ravka, the ACOTAR world, the shifting isles of Elfhame, the Avatar universe, Orisha, to name a few. You’ll also have to look at some basic geographical stuff like the climate, but overall you have pretty much free reign over how your world looks. This is the one part I feel like you can’t bullshit if you don’t want your story to seem halfway. Really go in with the details even if its just for you. The more fleshed out your world is, even if its set here in the normal world, the better.

The main issue.

This is pretty much a given but you do need to have some sort of idea who the main antagonist is/what is the big issue your characters are fighting. If you’re writing a series then chances are book one will probably focus on an entirely different issue before the big one is revealed. There’s not really much advice I can give for this because it’ll be tailored specifically to your story. I don’t think your antagonist has to be fully fleshed out if you’re going to be introducing them very late, but do have a general idea who or what it is, their goal, and why your character feels the need to stop them.

Usually you’ll notice the problem in the beginning of the story isn’t the ultimate problem, its just a gateway to it. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a subplot but I guess technically that’s what it is. Think of Percy Jackson. The main issue of book one is him being accused of stealing the lightning bolt, but the ultimate issue was the war with the titans. Or The Cruel Prince. The main issue was Jude feeling helpless and wanting to create a place for herself in the faery world, but the ultimate issue was those attempting overthrowing the entire Greenbriar family from the thrown.

This kind of goes without saying, but there has to be a strong motivation for the character to stop them or it just won’t work. You don’t see characters going after the antagonist because nothing in their life isn’t threatened. There’s always a motivation, something to fuel them even if done so reluctantly. For example, Zelie from Children of Blood and Bone was sick and tired of constantly fighting and being the hero, but she did it anyways because she was the only one who could truly help the maji. Or you can take a slightly antagonistic approach and look at Kaz from Six of Crows who did what he did out of greed for money, power, and revenge. Usually when I begin my stories, I only have a vague idea as to why my main character is joining the fight, which is perfectly fine. As long as you have some sort of idea and begin to build on it as you write, you’ll be probably be fine.

Brainstorm.

I cannot for the life of me sit in front of my computer and write a bland summary of what it is that is going to happen in my book. Sorry, but I am simply not built that way but it also makes writing your books ten times harder as well. I’ve found a bit of a cheat. For one, brainstorm. Get a general idea what some of the main events you want to happen are. Do you want a character death? Does a specific location need to be mentioned? Is there subplots or character arcs you would like to explore? Is there any themes you’d like to explore? Jot them all down, along with your word count goal. You probably won’t be able to incorporate all of them in one book, but at least you’ll have an idea what path you’re going to head down in terms of your story.

And now onto my actual cheat. Because I’m a pantser who hates outlining, I usually jump into my stories without knowing what direction they are going. Recently I’ve discovered that I can outline the first five chapters, write them out, and give myself complete free reign. I’ll explore all sorts of character personalities, different beginnings, different writing styles, different scenarios, different relationships, anything I can realistically include in the first five chapters of my story. Then I’ll go back and edit it. Don’t completely delete anything, always save it in a separate file! I’ll go back and decide which characters are unnecessary at this point, what plot points can be introduced later on, what writing style suits this story, things like that. Then from there, I’ll go back to my outline and make any appropriate changes before proceeding to write the rest of the draft as normal (WITHOUT GOING BACK TO EDIT). The reason why I do this is because I need a solid base to begin my story, otherwise its so easy for me to go off track and begin to tell a completely different story. This way I’ll know exactly what I’m going after, I’ll be able to explore and get to know my characters and setting, and it’s enough chapters that I can even begin to incorporate the main issue at hand.

#creative writing #creativewriters #author #writing inspiration #writing #writers on tumblr #writing prompt #fiction #fantasy #writing tips #storytelling #my writing #character inspiration

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wafflewarriors · 5 years ago

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The Not-So-French Mistake

Chapter 7: Inner Demons

Castiel devoured his cheeseburger like Famine had strolled into town.

As for Sam, he was grinning into a biteful of food as he stabbed another with his fork, and then proceeded to jab a few sweet peppers in amusement. Pasta salads were a rare treat when on the road. Dean usually protested against his healthy habits, but it was no use. Sam preferred naturally sweetened foods over the artificial pounds of meat, grease, and cholesterol Dean usually supported.

He cast his eyes from his meal to his laptop screen for a moment, mapping out Bobby's present location. “His cell is at a warehouse about seven hours from here. It's a long drive. You sure you don't want to stake out at a motel for the night? I mean, we can't search for Bobby if we're sleep deprived.”

“No. Unless you feel it wiser. I'll be alright.” Cas assured and then gestured toward the burger in his hands. “Thank you for this, Sam. I appreciate it.” A frail string of cheese laced onto Castiel's lip as he spoke. He pulled the burger further away, letting the line of softened cheese thin out until it snapped, latching onto the bottom of his chin. Cas made a huff, frowning at his nose in regard to the loose strand of cheddar.

“It's nothing, Cas,” Sam dismissed contentedly, relieved that Castiel was satisfied. His angelic friend had been uncomfortable in the car, whiny snarls resonating from his stomach. Sam disliked watching him hunch into himself, a pinching expression similar to pain decorating his face.

Castiel set his burger down respectfully, adding emphasis to his seriousness. He softly disagreed, shaking his head. “No, Sam. It isn’t ‘nothing’.”

While the added finger-quotes were a tad hysterical in the sincerity of the moment, Sam listened without a crack of a smile breaking along his face. Cas was serious, so he was as well.

“I... understand I am difficult as a human. This was all very sudden, and I am unfortunately slow to adapt. Hunger is foreign… and these, inner emotions of turmoil and guilt… I was capable of feeling as an angel, but this…” he struggled to explain, “Sam, I constantly feel this… panic, and it’s all very compressing within my vessel.” He took a breath. “Every nerve reacts to my being, and they bring overwhelming sensations. How do you cope with such complicated feelings?” Castiel almost looked distraught.

Sam held a soft, understanding gaze. “Cas, you’re anything but difficult. Sure, you’re not used to being human, but you’re our friend. You’re no burden to us. We can teach you.”

Cas looked uncertain. “I am also unsure of the social customs among humans. I had once believed I understood, but there are so many rules. Hidden, unspoken rules which determine your functionality. And the lying… I cannot even begin with how to lie…”

Sam set his fork in his dish, rolling a lone pasta noodle in thought. “It's about the body language. Looking nervous or tense tends to give you away. Hesitating doesn't help. The genuine expressions are what tells a lie from a truth. Not that lying is all that great, but sometimes it's necessary for cases.”

Cas nodded, worn. “Thank you, Sam. You have been very kind to me,” he murmured.

“You're welcome, Cas. Anytime.”

By the time they had finished their meal, the sun was touching the horizon, ambers and ochres illuminating the landscape. The clouds reflected salmon pinks and dusty blues. While the noontime sun had set a nightmare upon the previous town, the sunset was gorgeous. Sam admired the sky as if it were a delicate acrylic painting. Geese flew in an uneven V above the stolen truck, faint honks ringing into the evening air.

Cas fell asleep on the drive, his head lolling onto the window, sometimes jolting forward and startling him awake until he was lulled to sleep once again by the engine's purr and the setting sun's warmth blanketing his skin. It was no Impala, but drive was smooth and the road was velvety.

Sam knew angels shouldn't sleep, and that he should be concerned over Castiel's recent humanity, but all he could manage was guilty contentment. Castiel was rarely so peaceful.

When Dean slept, he either looked like he was ready to stab you in the gut or he was stupidly drooling on a pillow with his morning hedgehog hair at attention. But… that was Dean.

Castiel woke drowsily to silver lines of clouds weaving into the horizon, having furrowed downward into the silhouettes of spindly trees. Looming shadows and blinding streetlamps flickered past as the night defeated the light. He knew that as the sky darkened, so did Sam's thoughts.

Sluggishly, he shifted his head toward Sam, still leaning against the door of the vehicle. “Sam?”

Sam startled a bit, as if snapping out of lost, intense thoughts. “Yeah, Cas?”

“Are you alright?” He needed the truth.

Sam stared at the road, letting the silence envelope the innocent question until he whispered, “No. No, I'm really not.”

Castiel nestled his head between his chair and the window. “I suspected such. You seemed troubled after we left Sydney.”

Sam shifted his hands along the steering wheel. “She just… she dug up a lot of memories that I'd buried, you know? She's struggling… like I was… with the, uh, with the demon blood.”

Castiel shot a soulful look at Sam, sympathy washing over his features.

Sam paused thoughtfully. “You know… I used to really believe that I was a freak. Everyone knew it. Even you knew it. I was titled ‘the boy with the demon blood’ before I could walk. But then, I thought: maybe I can make that part of me my strength. Maybe I can use it to save people. I trusted Ruby, I trusted my powers, and ended up unleashing the one thing I was trying to stop. The one thing that caused me the most pain. The most sacrifice. The one ghost, to this day, that still haunts me.”

“Sam…” Guilt bled into Castiel’s features. “Others led you on that path. It wasn’t your fault.”

“And it’s kind of funny. You’d think I’d be worried about vampires, or demons, or witches. Every monster that I face daily. I’ve lived my whole life hunting the creatures that lurk behind people's shadows. But no, it’s the creature lurking behind my shadow. It’s the devil that haunts my sleep. It’s Satan. Lucifer gives me nightmares.”

“Sam.” Cas pleaded.

“But, it’s not even the nightmares... I’m just… I’m afraid Sydney will fear herself like I did once, and she’ll just wind up inflicting more pain―more suffering. I’m afraid she’s going to unleash her own Satan, you know? I’m terrified that it’ll be something that we can’t fight with bullets or brawn.” Sam’s eyes never left the road, deep-threaded pain shimmering along the whites of his eyes. His fists clenched the steering wheel like a life-source. “I don’t want anyone to go through that, Cas. The guilt I felt…” his voice cracked shamefully. “I don’t want her thinking she’s a freak. I can see it in her eyes. It’s the exact same look I saw in the mirror during the apocalypse.” Tears pooled in his eyes, his lashes dampening, but nothing dropped. “Nobody should ever feel that. Because not only can you not trust the world, but you can’t trust yourself. And that's scary.”

Castiel silenced as Sam’s heavy final words sank in. The thought invaded Castiel’s heart like a worm―a parasite―shimmying into the crevices of his aching soul. Not that Castiel had a soul, only humans had such, but it felt like it. And past Castiel’s brave face and stony appearance, his grace wept for Sam Winchester. He wept for Sam's losses, for his sorrow, for his fear, for his centuries of pain and torture in the Cage. He wept for Sam Winchester because Sam Winchester deserved to be wept for.

Unfortunately, Sam did not see past the hardened facade of Castiel's vessel.

Hours past. Cas frequently volunteered to drive, but Sam insisted he was ‘okay’ and he was ‘fine’. However, after his confession, it was clear he was far from such a claim.

Sam finally shredded the burdened silence with a sigh. “How are you holding up, Cas?”

Cas seemed genuinely flustered. “Me?”

Sam nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. I think we've heard enough of my baggage for one night. Anything been bothering you lately?”

Cas wondered if there wasn't something that bothered him lately, but he replied, “Other than my wings having been reduced to nothing but feather dusters, I am adjusting.” The angel was rather proud of that metaphor (even though he’s stolen it from Dean).

Sam let his brow lower in puzzlement. “How can you still have wings and not be able to fly?”

Castiel was thankful for the questions he could answer. “My grace allows me to bend distances. so I can fly into the next space within the matter of a microsecond. Much like the theory of black holes. Picture taking a string as a representation of two distances, and then folding the string until both ends meet. I allow two places to become one.”

“Interesting.”

Cas continued to explain it simply, “Sigils generally control the bending of space. Whether it be banishing an angel or preventing it from entering warded areas. They hold an aura we cannot break unless disassembled. It targets our platform, if you will.”

“Platform?”

“You could say it's a layer of existence. It is very… complex. Difficult to visualize.

“Our blades, for example, exist in many platforms. Our grace, however, lives on one. Since only a shadow of our grace remains on this platform, normal weapons will not penetrate it. Normal weapons will only harm the vessel, and our grace will work to stitch the wound immediately.” Cas tried to aid Sam in visualizing it in a way he could understand. “There are other platforms, but they are generally irrelevant. Picture them as layers to reality.

“Simply put, a blade can kill grace as long as it exists on the same platform. They cannot penetrate shadows of grace,” he took a heavy breath. “It gets much more complicated when you visualize alternate universes as layers going vertically. Sydney managed to jump those layers when she entered our reality.” He added, “Humans cannot jump horizontal platforms without dying. Such as heaven or hell.”

Sam made a left turn, headlights sweeping across the barren, deserted asphalt. Sam was unsure if grace could apply to physics, but Castiel's description definitely granted him a vague insight on how it worked. “So when your grace drains…”

With the turn, Cas was nudged further into the window as inertia gently pulled him right. “Our vessels rely on human behaviors. Eating, sleeping. Just as human souls do. The less grace, the more human we become. Currently, my grace is very compressed and useless, but present. I believe something within the town was limiting my grace to become completely unavailable to me. I believe now that we have left the town, it is beginning to unravel. I should be able to utilize my grace's abilities very soon.”

Sam looked relieved to hear that. After a minute of thought, he conjured another curious question. “Do platforms apply to dreams?”

Cas nodded into the window. “Yes. That is its own platform. A complicated one. It merges both conscious and unconscious thoughts, depending on your state. It's a platform your soul is in charge of. Hence why those who are soulless do not dream.”

“Demons?”

“Lucifer created them to live amongst their own platform. Your demon knife exists on theirs.” He paused. “I suppose angel blades do as well. The Colt was designed to target their platform, and all other monsters’. There are very few things the Colt can't kill.”

“Witchcraft?”

“Witches discovered they could control platforms with specific spells. They generally target humanity’s.”

They continued the one-sided game of questionnaire until the questions ran dry. Admittedly, they were both thankful for the distraction.

The sun had yet to rise. Pale mountains of clouds had piled along the skyline, their peaks just barely cutting into the sky. Murky darkness had faded into pale, noticeable splotches of cobalt and a modest tone of lime. It was roughly five in the morning, dawn not having broken yet.

Castiel yawned, removing himself from his somewhat suitable pillow for the everlasting night, the window. He stretched, joints cracking and popping as he extended his stiff muscles. “I can understand why most humans abhor mornings.”

Sam parked, squinting at the warehouse that stood three blocks from the hunter. He scanned the windows for movement, and upon finding none, he bundled his gear in preparation for a fight. He squared his shoulders..

“Let’s get Bobby back."

Tags: @queen-bubble, @rosaren2498

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holy-mountaineering · 5 years ago

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This Tarot Spread is for @d33pstat3 Thank you as always!

Here’s the full Qabalistic Tree of Life Spread that I do and here you are. What I’m going to do is go through and briefly explain each card, its position on the Tree, and then I’ll give you a summary/synopsis of the spread as a whole. You know the routine.

Think of this spread as a sort of quantum map, or even the land of a regular map, everything is happening at once, in each place. It’s important to think of yourself as moving “through” the map but you are also simultaneously everywhere at once. For the sake of this specific experiment, think of this as a map. Maybe as a person, the Qabalistic Adam Kadmon.

Where we’re starting the journey from is Kether, the monad, the first sign of creation. We’ll call this your hometown, since it is where you’re from originally. Here we have the 3 of Disks, Work, Works, or Working. In this case, we’ll call it, Working.

Using the simplest formula we enter a new dimension and can accomplish what must be done in the material world.

In Chokmah, which is like your freeway getting you out onto the road out of your hometown is the Ace of Cups, or the Root Powers of Emotion, Intuition, and connectedness to life.

This is the annual Nile flood, wiping away everything not secured to the ground and replenishing the top soil so that the crops might grow amazingly well. This flood of emotions is hard as hell to keep at bay, to instead, clear a wide path and reap the rewards.

In Binah, which is ruled by Saturn and for the sake of this reading we will call the first stop on your roadtrip. You haven’t really arrived anywhere but you’re stopping and getting a chance to repack your car in a more efficient way. Sitting in Binah is the 7 of Disks (the fear of) Failure.

Don’t count your chickens before they hatch but also don’t assume your calves will all be still born. Deal with life as it happens, not as you might suspect it will.

In Chesed which is ruled by Jupiter and again for the sake of this experiment we’ll say involves your influence and benevolence in your current trip is the Ace of Swords or the Root Powers of the Mind, Intelligence, Communication, and Language.

Freedom is a two-edged sword, heavy, sharp, dangerous and useful, at times necessary. A sharp blade can harvest wheat or kill an enemy. It’s your choice how you use your tools at this time. But this fucker just came back from the Knife Sharpening Store and if you’re not careful, you might cut off an important limb and leave yourself disabled and at a disadvantage.

Across the Tree in Geburah, which is Mars Town, where you find your drive and what you’re trying to accomplish/conquer is Prince of Disks, the Airy part of Earth or what you think about what IS.

Like the 2 Aces across the Tree, you have the Prince chasing the 7 of Disks. And Like the previous card, don’t let your tools make the decisions. If you find yourself being drawn to the “worst case scenario” every time, take apart that tool and see if maybe the wheels aren’t fucked up and leaning a certain direction due to wear and tear. Rotate your wheels, grease your bearings, and control your tools, because there is so little we CAN control, we might as well take advantage of what we can and leave the rest to the Fates or Furies.

In Tiphareth, the Sun and center of gravity holding all this in place, the heart pumping the blood through this, your heart is 0 The Fool, speaking of the illusion of control.

The Air here is exhaled with the Logos that spake life into being. Say it and it is so. Your direction could go any which way, it is again, up to you to speak that into existence.

In Netzach, Venus town, where you have the realization about how this is going to change you as a person with a personality is the Princess of Wands, or the Earthy part of Fire, the fuel for the fire, the food that nourishes your actions.

You don’t have to be burning alive to be progressing. Don’t burn yourself out/up because you feel like that is what being “active” or “successful” looks/feels like. You just end up a toasty, crispy husk of your former self and while that IS one way to advance in life, I do not personally find it worth the burning.

In Mercury Town Hod-ville, where all the Universities are and everyone has real intellectual shit going on is the Knight of Cups, the Fiery part of Water or Acting Upon Moving Feelings and Connections. The MFing Graal Seeker and Graal Bearer seeks union with his God through physical contact. Making the Esoteric Real.

Seek, with all your heart that which connects you to Life and the Living. That which motivates you to Beauty and Love. It is all that can save any of us from the Death of the Soul, which the Black Lodge has a vested interest in seeing us be devoured by.

On the Moon in Yesod, the receptive and reflective place that is alot about the feelings that you’re picking up from all this is 10 of Cups Satiety.

This is that very same Nile flood, but with your technology advanced enough to direct the life giving Waters to useful areas reducing the destructive aspects and enhancing the beneficial parts. Surround yourself with folks who feel strongly but not unwantonly.

Down here in Malkuth-istan, the everyday life mundane, waking up pooping, and going to work world is the 7 of Wands Valour.

The current Order has become ill-ordered and could use a bit of shaking up. Throw a little fire on that which only serves the past. Nostalgia, false or real, only serves yesterday, never tomorrow. We’ll never be back at yesterday, but with a bit of luck and planning tomorrow is always approaching.

IN SHORT, Do the simple thing that Works, without attachment to result or to influence people in one way or another, because that will all come out in the wash anyway. And don’t decide that “all” is lost before even “some” has reported its progress. Make your choices with a fresh mind or you might have your choices made for you with a flayed mind. Self driving cars are the future, but sadly here in the present, that isn’t a self-driving car, it’s just an out of control vehicle that could hurt you and others if not controlled.

Speaking of control, don’t use yourself as a torch because you think it might be inconvenient to ask for a light. We can find more flashlights, there’s only one of you. And that one of you that sometimes might want to let go of the wheel and let shit sort itself out, try to remold that fucker into someone who instead only drives to places they want to go and that makes them feel more like themselves.

Surround yourself with people that fill you with Love and Life, because you’re hemorrhaging the stuff and you’ll need that later. You will indeed need that later for the War or revolution inside of yourself where you start fragging the old generals who would keep you making the same old choices that no longer serve your emerging purposes.

Ta Da! Hit me up with any questions, you know the routine!

#tarot spreads #divination #cartomancy #occult #magick

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jmhwritesstuff · 6 years ago

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@missvalerietanner

:) Maybe setting a routine and consistent space for yourself will help you focus more. Sit down to write at the same time every day with the same snack/drink, etc. Also you do need research and world-building. Like desperately. Those two tasks can offer insights you wouldn't normally consider (like how many miles a horse can travel in an average day). Both can inspire you, base your story in reality, and probably flesh out a timeline and scenes that need to exist.

Start with drawing a map of your world for The Divine. I bet you'll be surprised by what is revealed when you have to start filling in villages, forests, mountains, rivers, etc and naming everything. You'll find the spark of inspiration in there too, and you'll have a MUCH better understanding of your world. You think you know it now, but trust me, you don't until you have a map. Google Fantastic Maps / Jonathan Roberts for a starting point.

(Under a cut because this gets long)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I NEVER research or that I don’t need it, and if anything I’ve been trying to implement it a little more over the past year because the stuff I’m trying to write requires it. For instance, I really need to look at castle layouts - in a fantasy story that involves a castle, that’s pretty damn important! And I’m definitely not saying that I know everything there is to know because I clearly don’t. It’d be nice, but I don’t.

What I was trying to say in that weird ranting answer is that I don’t focus on the research because it’s distracting. And because, so far, I haven’t found it as necessary as others seem to. So I tend to focus on smaller things to look up as I go so that I don’t get too overwhelmed or distracted. This has worked for me in the past, but I know it won’t work forever. At the moment I’m just trying to get back in the saddle. Research is the least of my worries. I acknowledge that this is an uncommon approach, and many people have looked at me like I’m crazy while they research and research and research … and never actually write. Not a judgement, just a recurring observation I’ve made over the years.

Vice, as you probably remember, is a story that will most definitely require a shit load of research to actually write. It won’t work without it and I know it :’) which is one of the reasons I’ve left it alone in its WIP folder. Not because I don’t want to do the research, but because I’m not really ready to even write that story yet anyway. When the time comes, so will the research.

But during my time at university, researching content was important for our grades - suffice to say, that stage never ended and a lot of us suffered for it. Because we had it hammered into us that research was SO IMPORTANT that we became doubtful of the creative piece of writing we had to use it for. Which is why I said: the research never seems to stop. Research is hella important and I’ll never say that it’s not - research is fundamental as a writer, it comes with the job. We don’t all love it and we don’t all have to love it. So while I’m writing, I stick to the small stuff and leave a note for the stuff I’m not sure about for later.

I’d also like to correct myself: I didn’t mean to say that no one researches everything before they start writing, because I have met so many people who do. But I’ve also met a lot of people who don’t. Both options are completely valid.

As for world building - I definitely need that xD

Again, I’ve been making an effort to get better at it recently. I don’t know the world in The Divine - I know the main city and the surrounding towns and that’s it, and it’s actually been one of the reasons I’ve hesitated to continue the story. The world isn’t big enough, there’s not a whole lot happening, and it lacks realism and depth. I’m always all in for the characters and their development, but it’s about time I gave them a real world to develop in!

So I will definitely be checking out your suggestion! If you have any other suggestions or advice though, please (for the love of god I beg you) feel free to send them my way at any time! :D

#writing #reply

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iturbide · 7 years ago

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Honestly, bless you and your writing! Quality content fadgsaffsg-- But what if something super bad happened? Like the summoner somehow got captured by maybe Muspell (Surtr?) ovo I'm imagining the reasoning could be something like 'Askr is nothing without their precious summoner. Watch as their mockery of a kingdom falls apart even before I raze it to the ground.' kinda deal? How would Grima (and the whole castle by proxy I suppose) react? :>

quality content I am so flattered okay i’m still screaming about this

but okay you see this

this prompt

this set my brain on fire

so please forgive me for the fact that this monster is literally 6,500 words long and clocks in at a full 18 pages

If you’ve read anything else of mine that exceeds a thousand words, I like to change perspective sometimes. For ease of understanding, asterisks (*) represent a perspective shift, dashes (-) represent a scene shift. The first bit is there as a teaser, the part below the cut is significantly larger, you have been warned.

Kiran was fairly certain by now that combat would never become familiar. Nothing in their prior life could have prepared them for this, and even with as many fights as they’d seen (and between the conflict with first Embla, now Múspell, and all of the battles waged for practice in the Training Tower or sport in the Arena, they had seen a lot), it never really felt natural or right, sending soldiers – friends – onto the field to fight and bleed and sometimes fall for the Askran cause.

Perhaps it was good that war did not sit well with them. But regardless of their feelings, they had a job to do here, and they intended to do it well. Anything to keep Askr from becoming a mirror of Nifl’s scorched wasteland: the further they traveled, the more wreckage they encountered, empty towns covered in snow that could not hide the burned remains of what had once been thriving communities.

As they continued their trek toward Nifl’s former capital, the Askran forces had run afoul of Múspell soldiers camped in one of the ruined villages. Tagging Ike, they glanced briefly at his health, winced, and instead sent Lissa to heal him before ordering the young mercenary into a green mage’s line of fire. Robin moved to intercept a mounted archer encroaching on their flank, sending a conspiracy of magic ravens tearing through the bowman’s defenses, while overhead a six-winged dragon banked slowly over the battle, awaiting his next command.

“We might need to retreat,” Kiran muttered as enemy reinforcements appeared upfield, well beyond their line of sight but easily tracked by the tactical map piped into their phone. The axe fighter and the red manakete wouldn’t be so bad, with Alphonse and Sharena to intercept them, but the cavalier with the firesweep lance was another matter…

“The situation hardly seems so dire.”

The Summoner looked up at the hooded figure leaning over their shoulder, a wry smile twitching across their face. “When did you take over as the Order’s tactician?”

Grima rolled his eyes, keeping easy pace with the Kiran as they picked their way through the remnants of the village square. Several of the houses beyond remained more or less intact: the narrow streets would afford them a good choke point to deal with additional reinforcements, provided they could keep their ranks in order. Humming thoughtfully to themselves as they climbed the steps of an abandoned home, Kiran drew the Askran fighters one by one across the on-screen grid, casting a quick glance back the way they’d come to see faintly glowing marks on the ground leading into the plaza. They still had no idea what Breidablik had done to their phone, but it had certainly been effective.

“Incoming,” the Summoner noted, listening to the approaching hoofbeats. “You ready?”

The fell dragon grinned, violet flames licking at his boots. “Always,” he chuckled. Though they both knew it wasn’t necessary, Kiran still moved Grima’s icon down the street as he advanced, the great six-winged form overhead descending to attack. More reinforcements had appeared around the square, and the Summoner bit their lip as they sized up the new opposition, attempting to suss out the least risky solution to their predicament. Tapping a few troops experimentally, Kiran gauged their chances…and, satisfied that they could pull off a defensive ploy, moved their allies one by one to engage the newly summoned soldiers, grinning as the blinding glow from Alphonse’s Sol momentarily brightened the overcast afternoon. Grima’s dragon form screeched as an axe fighter filled the position occupied by the now fallen cavalryman, and the Summoner glanced briefly at the screen…only to chuckle at the damage predictor’s single-digit output. Even with two hits, there was no chance they could take down the Wings of Despair. Maybe they had been too hasty, considering retreat–

“Hello, Summoner.”

Kiran froze.

They hadn’t heard movement in the building behind them. Hadn’t even considered that someone might be in there waiting – which was foolish, given the hard lesson they’d learned combatting the Black Knight not so long ago. But they slowly raised their hands in the universal gesture of peaceful submission, taking great care not to disturb the blade pressed to their neck.

“Hello,” the Summoner replied, grateful that their voice did not quake the way the rest of them did. “It’s Laegjarn, right?”

“I’m flattered that you recall my name,” the general chuckled. “Perhaps you also recall my offer.”

“Surrender quietly and you won’t hurt me?”

“Your memory serves you well. What say you?”

Kiran swallowed, feeling the sword’s edge burn their throat. With the fight still raging out of sight in the plaza and Grima’s attention focused on the wyvern rider flying into range, no one had seen the enemy under their noses. No help was coming.

Some tactician they turned out to be.

“I submit.”

“Very good. Please disarm, Summoner.”

The blade at their throat relaxed an inch. Nodding slightly, Kiran removed Breidablik from its place on their hip, kneeling to lay it on the stoop alongside their phone…

…and as they lingered, casting one last pleading look toward the fell dragon, they cranked the volume up to the max. The music barely even reached their own ears over the pounding of their heart, and the general made no remark on it as the Summoner straightened.

“Thank you for being so cooperative,” Laegjarn remarked, taking hold of Kiran’s arm and pulling them into the shadows of the scorched house. The back half had collapsed, blackened beams jutting from the ash; the Múspell general paid the wreckage no mind as she guided them out onto the next road and past a fresh wave of soldiers. “Retreat,” she ordered. “We have what we came for.”

The troops pulled back from the village with shocking speed. The Askran forces remained, perhaps confused by the swift turn of the tides, perhaps elated at their victory. Kiran did not know. They could only wonder what the Heroes would feel when they realized what they’d lost.

***

Grima frowned as the Múspell soldiers withdrew. “Barely a challenge,” he snorted.

Something’s strange.

“I’m inclined to agree, given how fierce these forces are said to be–”

We were outnumbered. There were still reinforcements coming in. Why did they retreat?

He glanced up at the dragon floating lazily overhead.

A wyvern rider tried to stab you in the face. I don’t think the dragon really made much of an impression.

A grin twitched across Grima’s face as he moved back down the icy road. Kiran had left the doorstep; turning into the square, the fell dragon joined the other Heroes that had gathered, submitting without complaint to the fair-haired cleric’s treatment.

“I was worried for a moment there,” the Askran princess giggled. “There were so many of them!”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” Ike muttered, the words clearly at odds with the wounds the healer had yet to mend.

“What troubles me is how quickly the tides turned,” Alphonse said. “Our enemy has shown fearsome skill at predicting our course of action and heading us off…they may seek to lure us into a trap.”

“Where’s Kiran?” Anna asked. “Perhaps they’ll have some insight…”

All eyes turned to Grima.

A sense of disquieting unease crawled down his spine. “I did not see them when the battle ended. I thought they had joined you here.”

But scanning the worried Heroes that turned to look amongst each other, he found no trace of the Summoner.

“They can’t be far…right?” Lissa asked, wringing her staff between her hands.

“Let’s look for them. Perhaps they were sidetracked investigating something,” Robin suggested, the slight tremor in his voice betraying his otherwise calm logic.

The fell dragon retraced his steps as the other members of the Order fanned out through the square, calling to the Summoner to reveal themselves. Approaching the doorstep where he had left them, Grima narrowed his eyes at the open doorway leading into the wreckage. Had it been ajar before? If Kiran intended this to be some prank–

That isn’t like them.

As he drew close, an odd sound snared Grima’s attention: a muffled, melodic hum from somewhere nearby. Tilting his head, he peered up and down the street, toward the scorched eaves, down to the snowy ground…

Oh, gods.

The fell dragon crouched, lifting the Summoner’s magic tile off the step. Free of the ice, the song it sang grew louder, a tense battle hymn that set his nerves on edge. “Kiran,” he called, taking to his feet and striding through the doorway, out through the collapsed rear wall, and across the packed snow left by the enemy’s retreat.

No response.

They won’t hear you.

“Kiran!” Grima snarled, loud enough to echo through the wreckage, distorting beyond recognition.

They can’t hear you.

“KIRAN!!”

The dragon overhead shrieked in unison with him, sending scores of dark birds rushing from the forests on every side. But as the ringing in his ears at last abated, nothing more than silence greeted him.

They’re gone.

—

The Order had searched. They had scoured the woods until the last light left the sky, following the tracks left by the Múspell soldiers in hopes of finding the place where they converged; but even with six eyes overhead peering through the dark, they found no clues to spur their progress.

Nightfall forced their hand. With few options and grave uncertainties of what lay ahead, the Order’s commander called for a retreat back to Askr to resupply and assess the situation. And as little as Grima liked it, he had nothing better to offer.

“We should gather reinforcements,” the Askran prince insisted as they strode through the luminous gateway into the plaza. “The Múspell forces couldn’t have traveled far. If we set off at dawn we may be able to catch up with them–”

“It’s too risky,” the commander replied. “We don’t know how many soldiers they have. Even if we were to take the whole of the Order, we’ve no guarantee of victory – and that could be exactly what they want, leaving Askr’s defenses weak for Surtr’s invasion force. Until we know more, we should wait and prepare.”

“You would abandon them.”

The words echoed through the plaza, leaving silence in their wake. Grima stalked forward, rage fueling the violet tongues of flame that swirled around him; only the warning from the presence in the back of his mind kept him from lifting the red-headed general off the ground by the front of her tunic. The Askrans still retreated, warily touching their weapons as the fell dragon stared down at them.

“We’re not abandoning anyone,” Anna insisted, the tremor in her voice undercutting her patient tone. “Rushing in will only put everyone at risk.”

“Múspell’s general is a formidable strategist, but has treated the people of Nifl fairly even after its fall,” Fjorm offered. “If she has taken the Summoner, we can be assured of their safety until terms are delivered–”

“And if Surtr is responsible then they may be dead already,” Grima snarled.

“…we can’t afford to risk the Order, or the Summoner’s life, by rushing in ill prepared,” the commander repeated. “We will make ready, and when we receive word–”

The fell dragon bared his fangs, feeling the pull of the great form atop the castle and wanting nothing more than to bring the walls crumbling down on the Askrans’ miserable heads…

That won’t help Kiran.

He hated that voice. All the more for the fact that he knew that it spoke true.

Clenching his fists, Grima stormed from the plaza, winding his way through the halls and up to the castle roof where his six-eyed form roosted. The dragon made a small noise of distress, six eyes fixed on the distant horizon while Grima settled against the parapets and struggled to fight down the rage burning its way through him. “Miserable wretched cowardly worms, every one of them–”

They have some sound points.

“They’re leaving Kiran to die, how is that a sound point?”

If Surtr had been involved, we would have known it. He likes to gloat too much. He wouldn’t have retreated with Kiran, he would have made it known immediately what he’d done. Odds are good that it is the general who’s responsible, then, and that gives us time to prepare.

“Prepare for what? Do you really imagine their terms will be anything beyond ‘surrender or we slaughter the Summoner?’”

…unconditional surrender or providing Gunnthrá’s location would be my guess.

Grima sneered, pressing his fists to his forehead. “How reassuring.”

What else can we do, though?

“How should I know? As I recall, you were the genius tactician.”

The presence at the back of his mind had no response for that.

Heaving a heavy sigh, the fell dragon reached into the pocket of his coat, removing the Summoner’s magic tile. The divine weapon they’d left behind had been left in the commander’s care…but Grima had kept the Summoner’s fohn. The surface had gone dark, the eerie music silent now as he held the device in his palm…but as he prodded it experimentally, the screen flashed to light, a series of tiny white dots speckling the bottom of the screen.

He had watched Kiran toy with this blasted thing often enough. Touching the surface, he drew his finger through several of the spots…and with a soft click, the tile’s surface rippled and changed, a faint red cast overtaking the screen. Touching it lightly sent sparks dancing under his fingers…before a map of the Askran kingdom appeared, glowing stones marked with ornate banners scattered across the continent. The Summoner had shown him this once before…tapping one the seals arranged along the bottom of the tile, he frowned at the banners filing down before his eyes. Skills, seals, growth…tapping another made the surface shimmer into a list of even less helpful banners: dueling swords, stamina restoration, barracks expansion…

What are you looking for?

“There must be some way to help them,” the fell dragon muttered. “If this so-called ‘Order of Heroes’ is as grand as the Askrans claim, there must be something…”

Like what?

“If I knew that, would I be searching?” Grima growled, squinting in the tile’s light and touching another symbol, only to find himself back on the map of the kingdom. “Wretched thing…”

Try the last one. On the right.

“I didn’t ask you,” Grima snarled.

…I want them back, too, you know. But I don’t have a body anymore. I can only help if you’ll let me.

Silence settled over the rooftop, broken only by the whisper of the breeze rustling the Askran flags flying high over the towers. And finally, without ire or protest, the fell dragon touched the furthest symbol, scanning the list of banners that scrolled before his eyes.

There. Catalog of Heroes.

Grima touched the words, watching the screen shimmer and change, displaying tiny portraits of the Heroes assembled within the Askran palace. Dragging his fingertip along the edge sent the tiles trailing out of sight, replaced by new ones. Some were familiar: Naga’s young daughter, the Hoshidan archer prince, the Ylissean tacticians…others much less so.

Touch one.

He did without argument. The surface briefly darkened before an image appeared of a fair-haired man in red, a quiver of arrows secured at his side; a scroll emblazoned with a name and epithet hovered over a brief biography…

A strategist.

“How many do you think there are?” Grima asked quietly, touching the scrollwork arrows and browsing through the other Heroes.

If we’re lucky? Enough.

The dragon felt a smile tug at his lips, exposing pale fangs to the moonlight. “Then tell me, tactician: what will we need?”

—

It came as no surprise when the Askran troops made no move. One day passed. Then another. A pall of silence hung over the castle; the Heroes carried on their conversations in hushed voices and terse words, half their attention seeming forever fixed on the gates leading to the lands beyond Askr in hopes that some message would arrive from beyond their borders.

None came.

And for that, Grima was grateful. It would have been far more difficult to lay plans with the Order scrambling to meet Múspell’s demands.

Nightfall cleared the plaza. None of the Heroes seemed interested in idle chatter when one of their own was missing. And it made the task of locating them far easier as he stalked through the quiet barracks, glancing from door to door and knocking one by one on the rooms he and the tactician had so carefully chosen.

Responses were, as expected, mixed. Soren had no interest in helping Grima, with his loyalties so firmly tied to the young mercenary swordsman; Ike, however, needed no encouragement at all to join when he heard the proposal, and in his wake the strategist grudgingly followed. The Ylissean tacticians, meanwhile, were far more open to hearing the fell dragon out, though the rest of their exalted families harbored grave misgivings (and Grima felt a pang from the presence in his mind when Lucina touched her sword).

They assembled in the castle’s grand council chamber, taking their seats at the round table and looking among their number: four Ylissean tacticians in various states of dress and festive attire, one fair-haired Archanean archer, a stoic swordsman and his branded mage companion an Ostian spy with a sly smile and sharp eyes, and one Ylissean thief contemplating the gathering over a lollipop.

“You said this is about Kiran,” Ike said, breaking the uncomfortable silence at last.

“I did,” Grima agreed. “And it is.”

“Have you seen something?” his counterpart ventured, glancing up at the ceiling as though searching for the six-winged form roosting far above.

“No,” the dragon replied. “Which is why I asked you here.”

“…’fraid I don’t follow,” Gaius muttered.

Yes he does. He just wants to hear you say it.

“How ‘bout you spell it out for us?” the thief continued, leaning far enough back in his chair to nearly upend it.

A smile carved its way across Grima’s face. “Why are we all here in this place, fighting this war?”

“We were summoned,” Jeorge replied. “By Kiran, and that strange weapon they hold.”

“I’m still not sure if we’re bound by contract or not,” Robin said, twisting a lock of long white hair around her finger. “We can’t go home unless we’re sent back, but…”

“I don’t…exactly feel obligated to help here,” her twin agreed, adjusting the coat over her bare shoulders. “Not like some of the Heroes we’ve encountered in Veronica’s ranks.

“Why is that?” the fell dragon asked. “Why do you remain here, why do you commit yourself to the Askran cause, if not for a contract?”

“I’m only here because Ike is,” Soren grumbled.

The swordsman paid him no mind, meeting Grima’s eye steadily. “Kiran.”

“Kiran,” the fell dragon repeated, beginning to pace the length of the room. “The Summoner. The one who brought us together, who’s honed our skills, who’s afforded us every chance to better ourselves. Who’s listened to us, and tried to help us find our places in this strange world. Who’s seen us through countless battles and allowed us to be the Heroes we’ve been branded, regardless of our worth.”

You’re waxing poetic.

Kiran brought out a strange side of him. Turning to the assembled Heroes, he leaned his weight against the table. “Who’s now lost behind enemy lines, who’s been abandoned by the leaders of this Order, and who may be in danger.”

“You heard Anna,” the festive tactician noted uncomfortably, folding his mittened hands a few times. “There’s too much of a risk, both to ourselves and to Kiran, to charge back in when we don’t know the full situation.”

A smile tugged at Grima’s lips, exposing the tips of his fangs. “Then perhaps it would behoove us to rectify that.”

“…alright. I’ll bite. How?” Matthew asked, his smile twitching as he fought to keep it in place.

“A covert operation.”

All eyes turned to Grima’s doppelganger. He folded his hands on the table, meeting the fell dragon’s eye steadily. “That’s what you’d propose. Isn’t it?”

“No wonder you need spies and strategists,” the woman seated beside him remarked. “The first to slip into the Múspell camp, assess their forces and potential weak points; the other to take that and devise the plan to strike, extract Kiran, and retreat.”

“I’d expect nothing less from Ylisse’s illustrious tacticians,” the fell dragon murmured, inclining his head in agreement.

“Why, though?” Gaius asked, propping his boots on the edge of the table. “What’s in it for you?”

The assembled Heroes turned their attention back to Grima. He met their stares without flinching, standing tall beside his place at the table. “You imagine I have selfish motivations. And you are not mistaken. Were it another, I would have no qualms about leaving them, whether they were royalty or the Order’s commander. But this is Kiran. They are a weak, wretched, pathetic excuse for a human, unable even to defend themselves in a fight. I want them returned. Nothing more.”

“…I would like to see the Summoner returned safely, myself,” Jeorge remarked, resting his chin on his hands as the other Heroes nodded in agreement. “So, then. Where do we begin?”

—

The council lasted well into the darkest hours of the night. But their plans came together, bit by bit, until at last they parted ways to rest and prepare for the opportune moment. Slipping through the plaza, Grima made his way toward the soft glow of the gates that led beyond the Askran kingdom. If conditions were in their favor, they might be able to set things in motion with the next nightfall–

“Where is Kiran?”

He paused, glancing over his shoulder at Hoshido’s archer prince as he emerged from the shadows of the pillars. “Not here,” the fell dragon replied brusquely.

“Where?” His voice sounded hoarse. Narrowing his eyes, Grima watched the noxious violet fog swirl and eddy around the young man. The possessed one, then.

The volatile one.

“I haven’t seen them since the battle,” the fell dragon said.

“I need to find them,” Takumi insisted. “Where are they?”

“I could not say. But they are not here. Look elsewhere.”

“I’ve looked. Everywhere. Nowhere else to go. I need to find them.”

“…why?” Grima asked.

“It won’t go away.”

The archer pressed a hand to his face, fingers curling into an unsteady fist. “I try. I try to block it out, but…the voice keeps telling me…to kill them, all of them, and I can’t make it stop, I need Kiran to make it stop, I need them, where are they…?”

“Gone.”

Takumi looked up, his expression an unsettling mask of distress and rage. “Where?”

“Captured.”

Are you sure you should be telling him that?

“By who?” the archer growled.

“Múspell,” Grima replied.

“Get them back.”

“The Order intends to do nothing,” the fell dragon sneered. “They will sit on their hands and wait for Surtr’s demands. Or for him to put Kiran’s charred corpse on display. Whichever comes first, I suppose.”

The mist around the prince seethed and roiled, and a thin smile cut across Grima’s face as he watched the bow at Takumi’s side begin to tremble.

You’re doing it on purpose.

“I will go.”

“The Order won’t allow it,” the fell dragon remarked.

“I don’t care. I’ll go. I’ll kill them all for Kiran, I’ll get them back, I’ll…”

“You want Kiran back so badly?” Grima murmured, knowing the answer even before he asked. Takumi nodded, offering no more than a low, guttural noise of assent. “Then collect yourself.”

The singer might be able to help. Azura? Kiran called her in to help before, I think…

The fell dragon gestured for Takumi to follow, making his way back into the halls. Considering their purpose, a performer could prove advantageous, though a songstress ran the risk of betraying their position…

But if you plan to use him, you need a way to keep him together. Besides, a singer doesn’t need room to perform the way a dancer does. Reach out to the one in blue, she’ll have a better chance of blending into the dark.

The fell dragon grinned. Perhaps it truly had been a stroke of luck that he’d been bound to a tactician’s body.

You can thank me any time.

…he might consider it if they succeeded.

***

Laegjarn had been true to her word: following the retreat from the village, the Múspell general had personally escorted the Summoner through the march to the edge of the forest before placing them – under heavy guard, of course – in a private tent near the heart of the camp. While Kiran was grateful for that, it didn’t stop anxiety from gnawing a hole through their gut, leaving them queasy and sleepless through the next few days and nights.

It didn’t help that Surtr was on his way. Laegjarn hadn’t said anything about it, but the Summoner had heard her call for a messenger shortly after they made camp. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess what she was going to send.

Aside from the unbearable waiting, though, it wasn’t as bad as Kiran might have expected. No one bothered them, the general was conscious of their needs, and the conditions were more than fair given their prisoner status.

The Summoner wondered, often, as their nerves twisted their stomach into knots, what would end up happening to them. Laegjarn had vowed that no harm would befall them, but with Surtr on the way, that seemed like a hard promise to keep. Would she be able to convince her father to discuss nonviolent terms? Would the flame king overrule his general and act on whatever violent whims ruled him? Would…

…would the Order somehow find a way to save them?

Impossible as it seemed, that was the thought that gave them the most heart. Heroes swooping in to the rescue, defeating the Múspell soldiers…

A flurry of activity on the third night made their heart seize up. Kiran heard Laegjarn calmly directing the soldiers as she strode past the Summoner’s tent…and as she passed, someone entered: not the eldest princess of Múspell, but her sister, her face an expressionless mask and her eyes far colder than her heritage would have implied.

“Is something going on?” Kiran asked, feigning calm.

“You will come with me,” Laevatein ordered.

The Summoner heard no room for argument. And they weren’t exactly in a position to protest, either. Rising to their feet, Kiran approached the young general, submitting without protest as she took hold of their arm and led them out of the tent.

The frantic bustle of activity set their nerves on edge as they moved toward the lanterns lighting the front of the camp. “Your sister seems pretty great,” they noted quietly, watching soldiers scrambling from one corner of the camp to another. Kiran swore they saw the ghost of a smile cross Laevatein’s face at that, though she made no reply. “I’d like to thank her, if I could. Sometime. Y’know. I really appreciate everything she’s done…”

Anything else they might have wanted to say died on their tongue as they approached the edge of camp. The lights they had seen were not lanterns at all: they were naked flames, writhing in the air and nearly choking the Summoner with their heat alone. And at their heart stood the Ruler of Flame himself, his dark eyes staring down at them through the rippling haze.

“I present the Askran Summoner,” Laegjarn said, gesturing to Kiran as Laevatein released their arm.

A wicked sneer sliced across Surtr’s face, and any breath the Summoner might have salvaged to speak abandoned them. “Pathetic,” he chuckled, a sound so low it seemed to shake the ground. “This wretched thing is what’s given them such nerve? They look like they would lose to a mere ember.”

Kiran had to admit that they probably would. But the words would not come out, even if they’d wanted to speak.

The man’s smile grew, exposing teeth and gums alike. “I wonder how well they will burn.”

He raised a hand, and the Summoner stared at the flames licking his fingers, sparking across his nails and crackling in his palm. They could not speak. They could not move. Try as they might, all they could do was watch in growing horror as his hand stretched toward them, the heat baking their skin and singing the edges of their hood and oh gods this was how they would die, they would burn to death here and they couldn’t even cry as they stood rooted in terror beneath the burning gaze of Múspell’s king–

A hand closed on their arm, pulling them back a step.

Kiran stumbled, gasping into their sleeve as Laegjarn placed herself between the Summoner and her father. “I gave my oath that no harm would befall them,” she said, her voice perfectly composed. “The Summoner is a valuable bargaining chip. We can deliver terms of surrender to Askr in exchange for their safe return and end this war tomorrow, but only if we have the Summoner to offer–”

“You should not have made such a hasty oath,” Surtr growled. “Stand aside, or the flames may feast twice this night.”

Kiran’s knees threatened to give way beneath them as Múspell’s king brushed his daughter aside, leaving her armor scorched from even so light a touch. Another step and he loomed over them, the flames making him seem still larger as they flared around him, and the Summoner could not be sure whether it was the haze of heat around him or the adrenaline coursing through them that made his silhouette waver and blur–

And in a flash, chaos erupted all around them.

Horses shrieked and bolted with glowing green wolves snapping at their heels, blue-black ravens descended on the archers reaching for their bows, and wyvern riders taking to the skies fell to a hail of arrows. Kiran scrambled blindly out of the way of the scattering soldiers–

Someone gripped their arm. The Summoner yelped, whirling in a panic…

“Stop sniveling, Summoner.”

Their breath caught.

“…Grima!?”

***

The weather held throughout the day and after the fall of night. Thick clouds obscured the moon and stars from sight as the band of Heroes made their way through the dark: two mages, two dagger wielders, two archers, a swordsman, and a songstress with an ornate axe. Not a brigade for sustained combat, but they had all agreed it would suffice for a strategic strike.

They found the Múspell camp with little difficulty. Gaius and Matthew slipped from the cover of the trees, darting across the icy ground to the pillars of ice that sheltered the enemy tents. They would need time to assess the situation and return to brief the rest of the company…

A sound overhead drew his attention. Glancing up at the heavy clouds, Grima narrowed his eyes at the winged silhouette moving against the sky. He scanned their small force, catching Takumi’s eye and gesturing up to the enemy on patrol; the archer followed his gaze, raising his bow and taking careful aim before loosing a bolt of black energy into the air. The fell dragon saw the wyvern jerk and list in its flight an instant before its wings crumpled…

A sharp hiss drew his attention back. He frowned, watching Takumi shudder while the aura pulsed and coiled around his neck. Nodding briefly to the dark-clad singer, he focused once more on encampment glowing against the blue-white ice while a soft song filled their ears. Even from this distance, he could see soldiers moving hastily through the lines of tents, seething and swarming like ants disturbed from their mound. Something was going on, that much was clear…

He heard, rather than saw, the return of the spies from their patrol, the faint crunch of pine needles and snow under soft boots betraying their presence. “We gotta move fast,” Gaius muttered as he slunk up to Grima’s side. “Bad news just walked in.”

The fell dragon growled low in his throat. That would explain the activity. “Then we had best make haste.”

He moved swiftly, hearing the others following his lead. They moved swiftly, dark shadows against the pale ice, taking shelter behind the icy stones that littered the plain. As they drew close, he saw Surtr speaking with one of the two Múspell generals, watched him brush the woman aside, his hand reaching for…

Kiran.

“Now,” he hissed.

They did not hesitate. The tacticians leapt into action, their spells descending on the encampment and throwing its soldiers into disarray. Jeorge and Takumi took aim at the wyvern riders, arresting their attempted flight while Grima cleared the remaining distance, his attention fixed on the Summoner’s gilt robes amid the chaos. Taking hold of their arm–

Kiran whimpered, rounding on the fell dragon and raising their free hand to shield their face. He could feel them trembling beneath his touch. Typical. And yet, the fell dragon felt a smile curve across his lips, a soft rumble of laughter rising in his chest. “Stop sniveling, Summoner.”

Kiran stilled, turning their face up to look at him. And in spite of himself, he could not hide his grin.

“…Grima!?”

“Who else would it be?” he asked, turning back the way he’d come. “Quickly, now–”

“Hold.”

The fell dragon stopped, moving the Summoner carefully behind him as Surtr towered over them. “Stand aside,” Grima commanded. Even at his full height, the fell dragon was forced to tilt his head up to look the Ruler of Flame in his scarred face. But he felt no fear, even as the man lifted his axe, tongues of fire licking the glowing blade.

Surtr sneered. “Or what? What can a puny thing like you do?”

Grima’s smile widened, exposing his fangs. “I will devour you,” he replied. He raised his hand, gesturing to Múspell’s king as the man uttered a booming, mirthless laugh…

The clouds above roiled and parted for the six-eyed dragon, its maw gaping wide as it descended toward the camp. Surtr paused, watching the dragon’s descent with a vaguely amused smirk. “Keep close,” Grima muttered, sheltering the Summoner with one outstretched arm as the dragon overhead breathed a cloud of violet smoke over the encampment…

“Foolish wretch – you will learn the meaning of fear,” Surtr laughed.

Sparks danced through the veil of haze. The king of Múspell raised his axe high, flames coalescing into a ball that rivaled the sun – and as he swung his weapon, it soared high, striking the dragon squarely in the jaw.

The fell beast shrieked in rage and agony, expelling another cloud of noxious fog across the enemy’s forces. He felt Kiran’s hand grip his sleeve, and without hesitation he retreated through the dark, away from the Múspell forces and onto the snowy wastes beyond. He saw the others ahead, pulling back with equal speed, cutting swiftly across the ice and into the shelter of the trees beyond; with the songstress speeding them along their way, they continued without pause until at last the light and sound of the battlefield had faded from a ringing in their ears to utter silence.

And then, at last, their breathless troop stopped, collapsing beneath the shelter of the Nifl pines. Grima glanced across the battered force, an odd sense of relief settling over him as he found them all accounted for. They had done well.

And moreover, they had succeeded.

The fell dragon turned to the Summoner beside him, looking them over carefully as their breath at last grew steady. They appeared unharmed, if slightly singed… “Are you alright?” he asked.

Kiran drew in a shaky breath. And when they looked up at him, their wide eyes were full of tears.

Before he could speak, the Summoner flung themselves at him, pressing close and clutching his coat in their trembling hands. “He was gonna kill me,” they whimpered. “Gods…g-gods, I could’ve died, he was gonna burn me alive, and I couldn’t d-do anything – I froze up, I just stood there, like s-some dumb…I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t even run away, I was gonna die th-there…”

Grima hesitantly coiled one arm across Kiran’s shoulders, the other awkwardly patting the peak of their hood. “What did you expect?” he asked quietly. “You do not fight. That is not your role.”

“I could’ve…a-at least run away, i-instead of dying like…like some c-coward,” the Summoner sniffled into his increasingly damp shirt.

“There is no cowardice in what you did,” the fell dragon murmured. “Brave words can mask a coward, but his actions will betray him. You showed great courage. You held firm in the face of fear. You faced a foe that even Heroes fear. You should take pride.”

“I’m no Hero,” Kiran mumbled.

“No,” Grima agreed. “You are not. You are a Summoner. But what makes us Heroes is not our presence in Askr. It is not our histories, nor our titles, nor our lineages….it is you. You are the one who makes us Heroes. Your belief in us. Your faith. You are not a Hero, Summoner…but we are not Heroes without you.”

You’re waxing poetic again.

It seemed effective, though. Kiran’s sniffling abated, and they turned their gaze once more up to look at his face. “…do you really think so?” they whispered.

“I think any here would agree,” he nodded. The Summoner drew back slightly, mustering up a shaky smile as they dried their eyes and turned to scan the assembled Heroes…

“Holy shit, what happened to Takumi!?”

Kiran broke away, hurrying over to where the archer sat. His head came up, bloody lips curving into a relieved smile as the Summoner settled beside him. “You’re back,” he mumbled, the shifting aura around him beginning to disperse.

“Of course I am,” they chuckled. “You guys can’t get rid of me that easy. Don’t suppose a healer joined the party…?”

“No,” Grima confirmed, moving to stand beside them. “But Askr is only a brief warp away, and there are clerics enough there.”

“We should probably get going, then,” they said, helping Takumi to his feet. Nodding in agreement, Grima turned–

Something tugged on his sleeve. Looking back, he found the Summoner’s hand on his arm, a familiar smile taking its place once more on their face. “Thanks, Grima,” they murmured. “For saving me. And…for everything else, too.”

The fell dragon inclined his head slightly, concealing his smile beneath his raised hood as he turned to join the tacticians in seeing to the preparations for their return. The commander would likely have harsh words for them all, but…he would bear them without complaint or apology. The risk had been well worth the reward.

#fire emblem: heroes #fanfiction #fallen robin #grima #kiran #answered #anonymous #holy fuck i hope this was worth the wait #it was so much fun to write okay #i've been living it up for the past few days working on this #it's two in the morning and i don't care i'm on cloud nine because i did the thing #forgive me if it's not super polished though #it got no proofing through last basically 4k words #might go back and make tweaks tomorrow but i did the thing #i did the thing i'm so happy #controlled chaos #snippets

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sirpoley · 7 years ago

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On Towns in RPGs, Part 5: Building a Playable City

In the first article in this series, I embarked on an ill-defined quest to figure out what, if anything, a town map is actually for in tabletop play.

In the second, I took a look at the common metaphor comparing towns to dungeons—unfavourably.

In the third, I proposed an alternate metaphor: that cities are more like forests than dungeons.

In the fourth, I looked at how forests are used in D&D to see what we could use when thinking about cities.

Now, we're going to get to the nuts and bolts of designing cities for use in D&D.

Think In Terms of Districts, not Distance

No player is ever going to remember, or care about, the actual distance between their current location and the tavern they're trying to get to. Similarly, they won't remember, or care about, the roads they have to cross to get there.

The absolute most you can hope for is that they'll remember and care about some of (but not all of) the neighbourhoods they have to go through. In Terry Pratchet's Ankh-Morpork, the Shades is an extremely memorable and dangerous area. Like Pratchett's characters, players are going to avoid it wherever possible and yet always find that they have to go through it. Planescape: Torment's Hive and Fallout: New Vegas's Freeside have similar qualities. If you grimly tell the players: "the quickest way to the princess is through—oh, dear—the Shades," they'll have a reaction to it.

Don't overdo it with districts; keep the number small enough for them to be memorable. I'd recommend seven as an absolute maximum, but as few as three is perfectly acceptable. Lantzberg, from City of Eternal Rain, only used three (one each for lower, middle, and upper class—end elevation). A district can be as big as you like; feel free to simply scale them up for larger cities.

Forget Thee Not House Hufflepuff

It's no secret that in JK Rowling's Harry Potter series, only two of the four houses matter at all. If you're not Gryffindor or Slytherin, you're lucky to get any screentime at all. However, if they were simply cut from the series, then Hogwarts would feel terribly small, as if it were built solely for Harry to gallivant around in, and not part of a living, breathing world. Your city can't just have people to tell your players who to kill and people to be killed, it needs someone to clean up the mess after, also. From a narrative standpoint, these people don't matter, and will rarely be mentioned, but they can be used to pad your world out. When dividing up your map into districts, include a few that, as far as you're concerned, will never see an adventure, and give it maybe one or two notable characteristics. These are areas that are primarily residential, or involve industries not relevant to adventure (i.e., anyone other than an alchemist, blacksmith, or arcane university). Feel free to leave these places utterly devoid of points of interest.

In the adventure written for Lantzberg, for instance, there's little to no reason to ever visit the castle at the peak of the hill. It's there for verisimilitude (someone has to be in charge) and for the GM to hook later adventures to (which I'll elaborate on in my next point), but mainly it's just there to make the city seem larger. Similarly, most of the buildings in Castleview are manors of rich and important citizens, each one of which might have any number of use for a band of adventurers, but only a handful are actually fleshed out. After all, it would hardly feel like a living, breathing city if every single building was tied into a single adventure, would it?

Gaming is full of Hufflepuff Houses: the 996 Space Marine chapters that aren't lucky enough to be Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, or Space Wolves; D&D fiends that are neither lawful nor chaotic, Morrowind's Houses Dres and Indoril, and any of Homeworld's Kushan other than Kiith S'jet. This isn't laziness; they're there for a reason: they make the world feel larger.

Leave Room to Grow

Try to design a city large enough, and versatile enough, that once the current quest is wrapped up, you can inject some more content into it without serious retconning. This is part of where your Hufflepuff-tier-neighbourhoods come in—maybe one of them has been under the heel of a violent gang the whole time, but the party never found out because they never went there. Once the players have started to clear out your adventure ideas and points of interest, there's still plenty of room to pump some more in without the city bursting like an over-inflated balloon.

The map I posted earlier probably represents the upper limit of how detailed you should make your city. A GM could run a few more adventures out of Lantzberg, but a long-running campaign would probably benefit from a bit more room to breathe.

A Few Key Details

What are the kinds of things a DM really needs to know about a city? D&D3.5 had little statblocks for cities and settlements that broke down the demographics of different areas, but that's probably more granular than is actually necessary. Remember—every bit of detail that you include has the potential to distract the GM from finding the fact they actually need. It isn't for instance, particularly important to know that 12.5% of a neighbourhood's population are halflings while 54% are elves, but it might be useful to know that a neighbourhood has a notably large elf population and an often-overlooked halfling minority.

Who are the Watchmen that the Watchers Watch?

One infamously common thing that comes up in D&D is the city watch. It's shadow looms large over every action the party, and your villains, will take, so it's worth thinking about them a little bit. Its best to err on the side of making them too weak rather than too strong, as a powerful, well-organized law enforcement group can really put a damper on the opportunities for adventure. The counter-argument is that if the city watch isn't strong enough to threaten the party, then the party effectively has the run of the city; my preferred answer to this problem is to give the local lord a powerful knight or champion who can be used as a beat-stick against major threats to law and order (like the PCs) if need be, but can plausibly be busy enough with other problems to leave some for the party to handle.

When deciding who the local authorities are, almost anything you can come up with is more interesting (and historically plausible) than a centralized, professional police force. Here's a few examples:

A militia organized by local guilds

A local gang that provides protection in exchange for money and doesn't want outsiders muscling in on their turf

A semi-legitimate religious militant order

A mercenary group funded by a coalition of wealthy merchants (who just so happen to overlook their own crimes and corruption)

Don't get too bogged down in their stats; just pick a low-level NPC from the back of the Monster Manual and write down who they work for. Different neighbourhoods can share the same organization, but try to prevent a single organization from policing the entire city.

By breaking up law enforcement by district, you also prevent the entire city dogpiling on the party when they break a law, like you see in video games. If the party robs a house in the Ironworker's District, they can lay low in the Lists, where the Ironworkers' Patrol has no jurisdiction, until the heat dies down.

Points of Interest!

All those numbers you see scattered over D&D cities? Now's the time to add them. Each one should correspond to a description in a document somewhere. These descriptions can be as long or as short as you wish. For example, on the short end, #1 from Lantzberg just has this to say:

However, and I won't get into too much detail for fear of spoilers, some of those numbers are elaborate, multi-page dungeons.

While you should endeavour to keep the number of districts low, there is no ceiling to how many points of interest you should put into the city. Don't burn yourself out. If you can come up with six, put in six. If you can come up with fifty, put in fifty.

A point of interest can be anything from a scenic overlook to a toll bridge to an elaborate sewer system packed with kobolds and giant rats and treasure. They can be as fleshed out or as minimal as you are comfortable with. There's a sweet spot that varies from GM to GM, as if you include too much detail you suffer from information overload as the party approaches the point of interest (sixteen pages of description, for instance, for a single shop is less than helpful), while too little information might lead to you having to do too much on the fly. I like maybe one to three sentences per point of interest, or per room in a point of interest if it is important enough to warrant its own map (I typically only map dungeons).

Random Encounters

I'll write a series on handling random encounters later, but for now, breaking up encounters by district is a convenient way to do it. More dangerous districts, for instance, might have muggers or even monsters that attack (especially at night). If you're going to use random encounters in your campaign, creating a table for each district lets you use your local colour to affect actual game mechanics. Castleview, for instance, is very safe due to constant patrols by the Lady-Mayor's Watch, while the flooded Lists are full of man-eating fungi, ghouls, criminals, and who knows what. This lets you follow the age-old advice to "show, don't tell." You don't have to say "this area is full of crime," you can show the players this by throwing some criminals at them.

This post has already gone on way longer than intended. Next time, we'll use what we've learned to answer the original question and make better town maps.

#D&D #RPGs #D&D5e #OnTownsinRPGs

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salamoonder · 6 years ago

Text

Dark Side | [ch. 3]

New life, new school, new Virgil, right? Right?

Wrong.

Wordcount: 2.9k

Warnings: Nausea, anxiety

A/N: I have been blown away so far by the support and positive comments I’ve received on this work- and this is only chapter three! Y’all really know how to make someone feel loved <3. As always, please heed the warnings; this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as how dark this fic is gonna get. Please proceed with caution and take care of yourself.

|| Read on AO3 ||

“Virgil, honey, do we need to stop for a while? This is the third time and we're not even halfway there.”

Virgil spits into the dirt. His stomach’s stopped heaving but he feels like crap. It's way too hot. “Please don't call me that.”

Patton is leaning against the car and frowning so deep it’s distorting his face. “Sorry. But do we need to stop though?”

Virgil shakes his head; hiccups. “I'm...okay. Just anxious. Stopping isn't going to help. This isn't carsickness.”

“If you say so,” says Patton, still frowning. “I wish you'd eat something, though.”

“Patton, I just ate.”

Patton doesn't say anything. Just glares. Well, as much as Patton is capable of glaring.

“Fine. Fine. I'll eat.”

“Good. I would've had to fight you otherwise.”

Virgil rolls his eyes once Patton's back is turned. Patton couldn't fight an over excited squirrel. He’s too much of a softie.

He washes his mouth out, spits in the dirt again, and climbs back into the car. It's his car, but Patton had insisted on driving and for once Virgil hadn't argued. He doesn't trust himself to be on a highway right now. His road rage would be through the roof. Patton hands him a cliff bar and he chews on it as slowly as he can manage. It tastes like stale chocolate and thawed blueberries.

Once he's sure Virgil has at least somewhat recovered Patton immediately goes back to playing I spy.

“Is it...a road sign?”

“Nope!” Patton says cheerily.

“That car?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Patton, I swear to God if this is ‘the sky’ again…”

“Aw, you got it!” Patton squeals. “You're so good at this, Virge.”

Virgil lets out a low growl. “Are we there yet?”

“Not quite,” says Patton, still far too cheerful.

Virgil leans around to the backseat and starts digging through the boxes. “What’re you doing?” Patton asks curiously.

“Finding a book,” Virgil grumbles.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince lasts him a long time, even though he’s read it so often that it seems to get shorter every readthrough. They turn off the highway and into their first town before he finishes it.

They stop for actual, proper breakfast (not granola bars) at a dilapidated looking waffle house. Most of the employees are leaning on the counter and texting or lost deep in conversation with each other. It’s completely empty.

The server is nice enough when they step up to the counter, though. A little bored maybe. They order, grab their drinks, and take a booth by the window. Virgil still doesn’t feel like eating, but he chokes down a few forkfuls of egg and a couple pieces of bacon for Patton’s sake. If Virgil doesn’t eat, Patton will alternate between staring at Virgil and his own food and refuse to do anything about either. It’s not deliberate, Virgil knows--but it still bothers him.

The stop only takes them about fifteen minutes. As they clear the table, Virgil ventures, “Patton, do you think I could drive the rest of the way?”

Patton eyes him suspiciously. “You feeling okay?”

“Fine. Good. Never been better.” Virgil clamps his mouth shut. “Um.”

Patton doesn’t seem entirely sure but he tosses Virgil the keys. “Don’t crash. Please.”

“Sure,” says Virgil, finally exhaling.

Driving really does calm him down, now that they’re in a small, mostly empty town early in the morning. He does tell Patton to shut up probably a few more times than necessary, though. He likes quiet when he’s on the road. Anything louder than other cars passing him is too much.

“There! Right there,” Patton yelps. Virgil swerves down the next street on the right; he’d almost missed it. The sign is kind of tiny, just the usual green ones printed in reflective white that you see at the edge of a highway. Riverpoint University. Five miles.

Nerves ball up in Virgil’s chest and for the first time since Patton handed him the keys he actually starts considering pulling over so Patton can drive. Patton must sense something, because he reaches over and lightly wraps his fingers over Virgil’s on the wheel.

“You okay?”

“Fine.” He’s determined to drive there by himself. It’s his car. His college. He’s going to have to belong here, isn’t he? Might as well start now.

Apparently, though, he’s set Patton off, because he starts babbling about his schedule and doesn’t stop, and Virgil doesn’t have the heart anymore to tell him to be quiet again. He’s talking about how he wishes he could take more science classes, and he’s really glad that he and Virgil are both taking oceanography and he hopes there will be fish tanks in the classroom, and Virgil can’t help but smile. He’s a bit distracted but he still can’t imagine how he was so annoyed at Patton before.

And then the campus is right in front of him.

Virgil pulls into the left lane and swallows hard.

“Turn signal,” Patton reminds him cheerfully, and he flips it on. Even from down here (all the buildings are on top of a massive hill) he can tell that it’s crawling with people. And cars. And more people.

Suddenly he has a very strong urge to make a U turn and just drive straight back home, taking Patton with him. Nice road trip. Fun. Nice experiment. Amusing to image he’d ever be anywhere near okay at university. Now let’s go home.

“I think I might actually be sick again,” he mumbles, soft enough that Patton can’t hear.

“What’d you say?”

“Nothing,” says Virgil, louder. He turns into the long driveway, trying to ignore the open iron wrought gates closing off the campus from the rest of the world. They make him feel like he’s in a cage.

He slows to a crawl of about five miles per hour, eyes darting frantically as he watches for people. He’s forgotten how much he hates college drivers. His parents did manage to make him tour one campus and he remembers thoroughly despising the experience. Everyone’s going too fast and none of the pedestrians are watching where they’re going. The talking and laughing and yelling is loud enough that he can hear it inside the car, and there are plenty of people carrying boxes in front of their faces who look completely unaware that they’re even walking on a road.

Virgil’s jaw is clenched so hard he thinks his teeth might grind each other flat.

“Virge, seriously now; do you need me to get out and drive?”

“If you think I’m not going to drive the last fifty feet, you’re crazy.”

“Fair enough,” says Patton quietly, and Virgil wonders if he’s finally hurt his feelings. He tries to tuck that in the back of his mind for now.

“Which building are we going to again?” he asks instead.

Patton smooths the map of campus that he has in his lap.

“That one.” He’s pointing somewhere in the distance. Virgil squints. “Where?”

“Just keep going straight. Wait, no, actually, turn right.”

Virgil’s jaw aches, but he does as he’s told. All the buildings are huge and brownstone and majestic; it feels a bit like a corporate Hogwarts. Patton directs him slowly through each curve of the road until they come to a giant circular parking lot.

Virgil gets out almost before the car’s come to a complete stop, fighting the ridiculous urge to laugh. Shit. This is worse than he thought. He’s getting...hysterical. Hysterical is not good. Hysterical means excessive talking and unpredictable panic attacks. He slams the car door, then opens it, then slams it again, just to get a feel for something solid.

Patton’s come around the front of the car and is standing in front of him nervously.

“Which one is it?” Virgil asks. “That one?” He’s pointing to the nearest building.

“No...that’s the math building. I think. And other stuff.”

“That one?”

Patton shakes his head. “Human resources, admissions, and the dean’s office.”

“Well, where the hell is it?” Virgil asks. It comes out more of a snap than he means it to. “Sorry. Are we in the right parking lot?”

Patton glances down at the map again. “Yeah, this is definitely the right parking lot. Why?”

“Because...where’s our dorm, Patton?”

Patton squints for a moment, spins in a full 360, then circles back around halfway. “There,” he says, pointing down the hill.

Virgil squints with him. “What the fuck?”

There’s a low brownstone building like a younger cousin of the others, all the way at the bottom of the hill down a winding cobbled path. And right next to the building, carving through the bottom of the valley between the hill that they’re standing on and the next, is a river.

“What the fuck what?” Patton asks, confused.

“There’s...a river here?” Virgil asks, feeling exceedingly dumb. Patton’s eyes widen. “Virgil, did you not do any research like...at all? I thought you said you really wanted to go here!”

“I didn’t do any research...on...the grounds…” Virgil mumbles guiltily. “I only recently got my housing assignment back. I think it was late since we requested each other, and they had to...process it differently...or something,”

Patton gives him an odd look. “Okay. Well. Let’s go check out the dorm, hm? Say hello to people? Meet the suitmates?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Patton assures him that they don’t have to start unpacking quite yet and it’ll probably be less stressful to check everything out first and then come get their stuff, but Virgil feels more secure with his hands holding onto something, and so he brings his entire box of books.

He’s regretting it before they’re even halfway down the hill. The box is heavy as all hell, and he can’t see where he’s going. But Patton is chirping at him to hurry up and he figures he’s going to have to bring the books at some point and it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to haul it all the way uphill. So the box stays.

There are more people swarming around the dorm but here it feels up close and personal, like the difference between looking at an anthill and accidentally stomping on one and having the ants attack you. Virgil feels very attacked right now, and no one’s so much as looked at him.

Patton is waving at everyone and trying to start small talk, pushing his glasses up his nose a lot the way he does when he’s excited. They climb up the stairs and step into the dorm, and Virgil almost collapses in relief. The air conditioner hits him like a cold shower, and he can smell pizza.

They’re in a wide, modern lounge with huge bay windows and a multitude of bean bag chairs. A couple of people have set up a Wii and there’s already a fierce game of Smash Bros going. Virgil has an intense desire to find wherever the pizza smell is coming from, grab a slice, and nestle into a secluded corner to watch them play from a distance.

But Patton’s already tugging him down the hall.

They pass what must be a community kitchen before getting to the actual dorms. Each door has a whiteboard stuck to it, and the names of the inhabitants of the room are written in curly, bouncy cursive, Virgil assumes by one of the RAs.

“Which room are we?” he asks Patton. “I’m dying to put this down.”

“Uhh...122, I think.”

The 20s are all the way down at the end of the hallway. Virgil gets there first, sets his box down with a huff, looks up at the door-- and then freezes.

Patton and Remy, the script reads, red and utterly optimistic. Virgil immediately wants to throw up again. He can’t do this. He can’t, he can’t.

“Patton?” he says, and his voice is trembling. “This is a mistake right?”

Patton’s come up behind him and is studying the writing on the door. “I’m not sure. We should find an RA,” he says, voice carefully flat.

Virgil grips the side of his box again, not wanting to leave it alone. Patton’s already run off. He stands there, shaking, trying not to think too much. Then the door of their--no, Patton’s--room flies open. He yelps.

“Oh, sorry,” says a bright, decidedly estrogen based voice. Virgil looks up in confusion. A girl with a mouse brown pixie cut and shockingly blue eyeshadow is peeking out from behind the open door. Virgil knows the eyeshadow is incredibly blue because he can see it through her sunglasses, which she is for some reason wearing inside. She sticks a hand out. “Hi, I’m Remy. Are you Patton?”

“I...what? No,” says Virgil, trying to ignore her hand. “I’m...Virgil. His…” he’s about to say roommate but the words catch in his throat. “...friend.” Great, she probably thinks they’re dating now.

“Huh. You look like him,” says Remy, and puts her hand down. Virgil’s about to ask how she knows what Patton looks like when Patton runs up with an older girl who he assumes is an RA.

“How come there’s a girl in your room?” Virgil demands. Remy swirls a straw through her iced coffee.

“Demigirl, actually? But she/her is fine.”

“Um...alright,” says Virgil, taking it in but still not processing that this isn’t his room. “But why is there a demigirl…?”

“I opted into gender neutral housing, Vrige, didn’t you?”

“No! I...I didn’t think about it, it didn’t even occur to me, I thought I was going to be with you!” He turns to the RA, who looks bored but kind and vaguely hipsterish. “Please tell me this is a mistake? I’m with Patton, right?”

The girl consults a scuffed up clipboard. “No...looks like you’re down the hall a few doors. 126.”

“But...you don’t understand. I requested Patton. We requested each other.”

The girl bites her lip and tugs at her beanie. “I’m really sorry, but the request must’ve gotten lost at some point. Or sent in too late. I’d go to housing and ask them to look into it. Or the disability office. They might be able to help you. Were there any special accommodations you needed?”

Virgil shakes his head, gripping the flap of his box and doing his utmost not to cry.

“Okay. Well, you might just have to stick it out then, at least until housing can do something about the situation. Drop by my room and I’ll get you a key card?”

Virgil nods, not trusting himself to speak to her. “Watch my box,” he mumbles to Patton, who nods back.

“I’m Valerie, by the way. Could be my terrible memory but I don’t think I saw you at orientation.”

“I wasn’t there,” Virgil says, as low as he can manage.

“Ah. That explains it. Well, if you need anything, I’m right here.” She swipes her keycard and pushes open the door to a room close to the lounge. “And Clay is upstairs if I’m out. I’ll point him out to you if I get the chance.”

Virgil nods again dumbly. She’s going through a box full of clear plastic dividers and credit card looking things. “Ah. Here it is.”

She hands Virgil one of the credit card things. It has his room number on it but other than that and a black stripe along the side, it’s blank.

“Do I have a roommate…?” Virgil asks, dreading the answer.

“Everyone has a roommate, kid. Unless you absolutely can’t have one. Yours is probably already in your room.”

“Okay,” says Virgil. “Thank you.” He starts to slink out, but Valerie has stood up. “Hey. Seriously if you need anything? I’m here. All freshman are practically as helpless as baby birds and, like, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. You need a quick sugar fix? I’ve got candy. I also have bandaids and Uber codes and mints and...a whole lot of other stuff. I really want you to feel welcome here. That’s why I agreed to be RA. Okay?”

Virgil hesitates to speak (he’s still shaking) but nods. “Thanks,” he mumbles, and walks out.

When he gets back to Patton’s room, he’s deep in conversation with his roommate--Remy, Virgil corrects himself. She’s gesturing with her coffee cup so animatedly Virgil is surprised it hasn’t spilled yet. When Virgil creeps back up to his box, Patton starts somewhat guiltily.

“Remy, hold on. Virge-? I’m sorry, it’s going to be okay--it’s--it’s not the end of the world, y’know.”

Virgil lets out a heavy sigh. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Pat. I just have to...get over it.”

He hesitates for a moment--he wants to stay just so he can be near Patton, but he doesn’t want Patton to see how upset he is and he certainly doesn’t want Remy to know, so he picks up his box and stalks off around the corner to find room 126. As he leaves he can hear Remy murmuring, “Is he okay?” to Patton, and then Patton replying, “He’ll be fine. He’s just disappointed.”

Disappointed. Ha. Virgil wishes he was just disappointed. So far every moment on campus has just reinforced his feeling that he should turn around and drive straight back home.

He comes to a sudden stop in front of room 126, thumping his box down on the soft carpet. He goes to swipe his keycard, but the door is already open.

His roommate is here.

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #virgil #logan #roman #patton #college au #tw: anxiety #tw: nausea

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mischiefiswritten · 7 years ago

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Book Club

A shared book is a shared experience. For Sgt. Barnes and a member of the Women's Army Corps, a connection over a good book may be the path to something more.

Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe; set during The First Avenger

Pairings: Bucky Barnes x OC (Carolyn Warren)

Genre: Fluff, Romance (tiny bit of angst at the end)

Word Count: 3800+

It was The Great Gatsby first. Then Anna Karenina, Don Quixote, Little Women, and Lord of the Flies. Every time he laid eyes on her, she had a book in her hands. Any time she wasn’t working, that is.

She was a hard worker if ever he’d seen one. It was enough that a young woman like her – or like he imagined she was – would give up an indefinite length of her life to come overseas, closer to the war than she had any necessity to be, to live on an army base surrounded by strange men. She was always bustling here and there, delivering orders, relaying information, maintaining the accuracy in maps, the list went on and on.

He could only imagine what she was like because as of yet, he hadn’t figured out just how to talk to her. Even now she was typing furiously at a typewriter, keys clacking loudly enough to reach his ears across several yards of space. They said she had a college degree, and that she was an officer in the Women’s Army Corps.

So she was smart, dedicated, and had a sense of duty. Normally he wouldn’t be intimidated by a girl like that. No. No, no, no, he wasn’t intimidated. That wouldn’t make any sense, of course not. He’d spoken to her, but… He cringed at the memory.

He’d only been on base four days when he saw her, reddish hair rolled prettily and lips slightly pursed in concentration. And since he was Bucky Barnes, he saw her, liked her, and walked right up to introduce himself.

“Now what’s a dame like you doing here?” he’d said, trying out one of his best friendly-but-not-too-friendly smiles.

She looked up from the telegrams in her hand, blinking at him as if she was surprised he’d actually said that to her. When the confusion faded from her eyes, the blue took on a sharpness, and he realized his mistake.

�� “Trying to win a war. What are you doing here?” Her tone wasn’t quite mirroring the sharpness in her eyes, but it was clearly mirroring the wit and self-assurance she was thinking he meant to patronize. This was a young woman who knew what she was about, and right now – she was certainly not about James Buchanan Barnes.

He’d stepped on her toes, and he couldn’t backtrack quickly enough.

“I’m Sergeant Barnes – ,” he’d said, “James.”

James? Who the hell is James? Your name is Bucky.

“I’m Second Lieutenant Warren.” No first name, he’d noted. “Do you need something, Sergeant? We’re not all awaiting orders; some of us have them already.” She gestured to the papers and maps surrounding her. The crisp lines of her uniform made her obvious lack of amusement even starker. “Uh…” Bucky had trailed off. Where was his usual charm? He was usually so much quicker on his feet. “I don’t… No, I suppose I don’t.”

Wave that white flag, Barnes.

“It was nice to meet you, Sergeant James Barnes,” Miss Warren had said, actually giving him a smile. It was genuine and pleasant, despite Bucky’s distinct impression that she was lying. He’d repeated the sentiment back to her and beat a hasty retreat.

The moment he’d escaped out of her sight he visibly cringed, raking a hand through his hair. What an utter disaster.

And he’d been haunted by that disaster ever since. And that was why, three weeks later, he was diving back into that particular battlefield. He straightened his spine and his uniform and trotted across the gravel roadway, preparing himself to be back under fire.

Clackclackclackclackclackclack – ding! The typewriter whirred as she moved to the next line. She was working in a tent, open to the air but kept cool by the shade. This time, he waited respectfully at what he considered closest to being a door, but she seemed too engrossed in her work to notice. That is, until a gust of wind sent an unweighted stack of her work scattering in every direction.

With a little noise of distress, Second Lieutenant Warren gave chase. At the same time, Bucky dashed forward, managing to snag one page out of the air. The pair of them gathered papers from the grass and dirt until they crouched down to retrieve the same one and their knees bumped together. As she noticed him for the first time, he got to see the same faint surprise in her eyes as at their first meeting, but this time up close. The sweet, cornflower blue – and perhaps the prior humiliation made fresh – made him forget how to speak for a moment.

“Sergeant… Barnes, isn’t it?” she ventured, rising in near synchronization with Bucky.

He nodded. “James.” AGAIN.

She cleared her throat and diverted her gaze awkwardly to the ground, even though all the scattered papers had been collected.

“I…” he sighed heavily, glancing down at the correspondence he held in his hands. He shuffled them until the edges aligned. “Look, Lieutenant, I wanted to apologize for that previous conversation. It was never my intention to patronize you, and I have no idea why I said what I said.”

She met his eyes again, almost cautiously. He laughed a quiet, self-deprecating chuckle and rubbed one hand through his hair. “I really don’t know why I thought that was a good idea.”

The barest beginnings of a smile started to tug at her lips. “I don’t know why either.”

He couldn’t keep himself from grinning briefly when she didn’t immediately let him off the hook. “I’m usually smarter than that, I promise. Or, I hope so anyway. Regardless, I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. I respect what you’re doing here, serving your country.”

When she treated him to a smile, it was thoughtful and maybe, he thought, a tad bashful. “If I’m here, doing this, that’s one more of our boys freed up to fight. And hopefully,” she said, “it’s just that much sooner that this war ends and everybody gets to come home.”

Another gust of wind stirred her hair, and for a moment, everything else was quiet.

They smiled at each other in silence until it stretched on just a little too long. Bucky coughed. “So, uh, do you have a paperweight or something for these?”

“Oh! Yes, I’ll get something.” She started to turn back toward her desk, then twisted back around to Bucky. “Actually, could you hold onto these while I do?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered easily, adding her stack to his and following behind her as she went to her desk, pulling out a drawer and searching through it. He noticed a copy of Emma lying just a ways from the typewriter. A bookmark protruded from the pages, less than a quarter of the way from the end. “Is this a good one?” he asked, tapping the cover.

Having retrieved the paperweight, she glanced over to see what he was talking about. She said, “I’ve enjoyed it so far, but a lot depends on the ending.”

“I don’t know. A bad ending doesn’t always have to spoil a good story, does it?”

She twisted her lips to the side while she considered it. “I suppose not, though you’ll always remember the sadness you felt when it ended the way it did.”

“That’s when I just start the story over, personally,” he said as she tucked her work safely under the weight.

"Good point. Thank you… James.” She added the name as an afterthought, and the fact that absolutely no one actually called him that made him smile wryly.

One mistake at a time, he thought. “You’re welcome. Have a good day, Second Lieutenant Warren.”

He’d already stepped out of the shade of the tent and back into the England sun when he heard her call out from behind him, “It’s Carolyn. Second Lieutenant Carolyn Warren.”

He grinned over his shoulder as he replied, “Have a good day, Carolyn.”

From that day onward, Carolyn acknowledged him every time they saw each other. She would wave across the camp to him, or say a bright, “Good morning, James,” when they passed. If he managed to catch her eye during morning drill, he would give her smile. Their gazes would linger on one another just longer than necessary, longer than mere acquaintances. They both wanted a reason to talk more to one another and something to talk about beyond the one time he’d stopped to tell her to call him Bucky. Perhaps it was the fact that the extent of their relationship included one blunder and one reconciliation – their second conversation had felt like a resolution.

Like an ending.

As that thought crossed his mind for the hundredth time, it finally clicked. It was an ending that he didn’t like.

So he would restart the story.

And when he saw her come back from town with a new copy of Moby Dick in her hand, he knew exactly how to do it. He must have asked three dozen men in his regiment before he found one who had a copy of the same book, and then he stayed up half the night reading, hoping to catch up to whatever progress Carolyn must have made.

It was after dinner one day when they were both free for the rest of the evening that he happened upon her, seated on a low retaining wall with her nose in the pages of Herman Melville’s prose. (He’d “happened” upon her, fortuitously having his copy with him, after roaming the base for several minutes hoping for just that.)

“Call me Ishmael,” he said as he approached.

There was no surprise on her face this time, only a luminous smile. He pretended not to be pleased at how immediately she recognized his voice.

“First you can’t decide whether you want me to call you James or Bucky, and now you want to be called Ishmael?” She smirked “You really ought to make up your mind.”

“Indecision is one of my few flaws. I’ve learned to live with it,” he said and settled beside her. He held his book on his lap so she could see.

“You’re reading Moby Dick too? How many pages in are you?”

“Only about ninety. I just started.”

“Me too! Are you liking it so far?” Truth be told, he wasn’t liking it any more now than he had in Ms. Ledbeddor’s high school English class, but he nodded anyway. As a matter of fact, he didn’t think he’d read all that much of it back then, so perhaps he would actually enjoy it. They talked about everything they’d read so far – the good, the bad, the ugly. Carolyn wove a beautiful fabric of thought out of complex themes and philosophical ideas, and Bucky found himself utterly trapped in it. He listened more intently than he’d ever listened to a lecture in school.

Their conversation had diverted to numerous other novels by the time they realized it was completely dark out. They were ensconced in a cone of yellowy fluorescent light from the streetlight under which they were seated. A comfortable silence draped itself around the pair, and once again, it seemed as though the world quieted itself just for them.

After they both rose, telling each other they’d better say goodnight, Bucky couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Carolyn, I’ve got to tell you – the way you talk about literature is special. You’re so passionate and thoughtful that you make me feel passionate about it. And I was not the best English student.”

Her blush, captured even by the harsh artificial light, made his own cheeks heat up. He hadn’t meant to say that, but judging by her bashful smile, it hadn’t been a mistake.

“Thank you. I’ve had a really good time, so… if you ever want to hear me ramble more, I’d be more than happy to oblige. We have to keep up with each other’s progress through Moby Dick, after all.”

“Like a book club.”

Her face lit up even more, outshining the wattage of the streetlamp overhead.

“Exactly like a book club,” she said, “So – I’ll see you at the next meeting then.”

And she did. They met three more times before they’d finished Moby Dick, and then they promptly started A Tale of Two Cities. They made quick work of The Call of the Wild, but reading Gone with the Wind demanded that Bucky take her out to a theater two towns over that was showing the film. Soon they started scheduling book club meetings during dinner, and conversation expanded to much more than just books. They talked about their homes, their friends, their families, what led to them enlisting, life on an army base. Everything under the sun.

Their every get-together was comfortable. It was effortless and free in a way Bucky couldn’t remember any girl’s company being before. He hoped she felt the same about him.

They sat side by side, heads bent together over one copy as they discussed a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories they’d just begun, throwing out theories about the solution to the caper. Their shoulders brushed ever so slightly, and their knees bumped together now and again. Carolyn glanced up at him after they did, peering sideways through her lashes and giving him a sweet, natural smile before she looked back to the pages. Bucky slid his foot to the left until it was pressed against the side of hers.

She pressed back. But her eyes stayed fixed on the book in front of her. Her smile betrayed her, even as she visibly fought it – to say nothing of the girlish pink tinting her cheeks. His own gaze was locked on her face. He couldn’t have looked away if it would’ve saved his life.

He opened his mouth to speak, having no idea what he was going to say. And in that same moment another member of the Women’s Army Corps walked up and tapped Carolyn on the shoulder. Neither of them had noticed the woman approaching – they’d been too wrapped up in each other.

In that flirtation that had seemed so much like a question and an answer.

The woman passed a large manila envelope to Carolyn, who opened it at a careful angle to ensure Bucky was unable to read the contents. She looked it over quietly before nodding to the woman, and the woman left as Carolyn thoughtfully slid the papers back into the envelope and sealed it up again.

“Something you need to take care of?”

“Not right away, no,” she said with a touch of something unidentifiable in her voice. It was probably conceited of him to guess she was as disappointed with the way their spell had be unceremoniously broken.

Damn the war for interfering.

”Another one of those secrets, huh?” It wasn’t the first time she’d received some clandestine communication in his presence, and on a number of occasions when he’d approached her as she was working, she’d covered a map or telegram or two. Once she’d even caught him on his way into the office where she was working and made him wait at the door until she’d hidden away whatever was classified beyond his paygrade – which left a wide realm of possibilities.

Her witty, sweet blue eyes were alight, but they betrayed nothing.

He leaned in close and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial volume. “You’re not one of those code girls, are you?” His eyes twinkled with his joke as he smiled.

She pressed lips together as she suppressed her own smile. “You know I couldn’t tell you if I were. So perhaps,” she thumped him once on the chest with the book which had been all but forgotten, “you ought to leave the intrigue to the professionals, Detective Barnes.”

That made him laugh, and before he caught himself, he was already thinking how much better this all would be once the war ended. No orders, no secrets, easier schedules, no gloom of death and tragedy hanging over them. They would be at home in their own country, in real towns rather than an army base. No one would call on him to leave and perhaps never come back. And he would be an even happier man.

But the picture he painted had her in it. And he realized, feeling rather foolish, that the war was the only thing keeping them in the same place. They didn’t even live in the same state back home. When the war ended, there would be no more book club.

And that wouldn’t be an ending he liked.

This had been easy; this had been fun. But they’d need something more than a novel in common to bind them together, so he said, “Why don’t you come out with me tomorrow night? To the Juniper?”

Carolyn seemed taken aback. The Juniper was a club in the closest village that had surprisingly good jazz and swing bands and a steady stream of soldiers as patrons. “That’s… a little bit loud for book club.”

“That’s true, but it’s the perfect volume for dancing.”

Since their disastrous first meeting, he’d strictly prohibited all intentional charm on his part. He’d never tried another line on her, and he hadn’t suggested anything that was so clearly a date. He couldn’t blame her for testing the waters – she probably wasn’t sure he still felt any interest.

He held his breath until she asked, “What time?”

- - -

And he felt like he was still holding his breath when he saw her. The color of her dress made the color of her eyes so striking it was as though her gaze was a physical touch. There was a big band playing on the stage, but the music disappeared the second she walked into the dimly lit room. The world, as usual, grew quiet while he fell a little more in love with her.

He hardly felt his own footsteps as he drifted through the other patrons to join her. When was the last time he’d seen a woman – seen anything – so beautiful?

The moment she said his name, he knew the answer was never.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, tapping the earpiece of a phantom headset, “There was an important message that came in just as I meant to be leaving.”

“Don’t worry about it, doll. You’re well worth the wait.”

She took his hand when he offered it, and they talked over drinks at the bar until the band started up a big swing number that had both of them looking toward the dance floor. Carolyn pulled Bucky from his seat with both hands, saying, “Come on, soldier. I believe you mentioned dancing when you invited me here.”

They danced to song after song, finding their skills to be a good match for the other’s. Other couples eddied on and off of the dance floor, but they stayed caught in each other’s currents. From one side of the floor to the other, the tide created by the music, the motion, and the sunny feeling between them kept them trapped. Neither had any idea how much time had passed by the time they collapsed at a table, breathless and with aching feet.

They were sitting close to each other, enough that one of Bucky’s feet was between hers and his hand nearly brushed her shoulder as he rested his arm across the back of her chair. Her cheeks were flushed, and the club’s lights cast her in an almost ethereal glow. They drifted together until their breath shared the same space.

“You’re not buzzed or anything, are you?” Bucky murmured.

“What?” She twitched back in surprise. “No, why would – “

“Good,” he interrupted, placing a hand on the nape of her neck. In the next second, his lips were on hers. Intent, patient, sweet.

There was a heartbeat’s length of time in which she was still – and he was terrified – but when she began to return the kiss, it was as purposeful as every word she’d ever spoken to him.

They pulled away enough to take in each other’s expressions, both feeling a little giddy, like anyone experiencing new love should be. “I, um…,” she cleared her throat, looking slightly bashful, “I might be a little bit now.”

Bucky only managed to keep from asking her to go steady with him for a week. She said yes, and sometime later, when his regiment had received their marching orders, she was there, tucking into his uniform pocket his favorite photos from the photo booth at the fair. And he was stealing last kisses, and joking that they’d finish their current read more quickly without the other around to distract them. He beamed over his shoulder at her after their final farewell, thinking of how much he’d fallen in love with her.

And I’ll tell her as soon as I get back.

- - -

Her heart was heavy with the number of letters she’d typed beginning with, ‘I regret to inform you…’ They were so overrun with casualties to report that the usual staff couldn’t keep up with all the families that needed to be informed. List after list came in from the front.

Name after name. Son after son who wouldn’t see another Christmas or birthday.

“Carolyn, there’s a fresh stack of notices here. The 107th, out of Austria.” Another aide bustled by, dropping the abhorrently thick sheaf near Carolyn’s typewriter. At first, she was so absorbed in the macabre task before her that she hardly even heard, but when it hit her, it sucked the air from her lungs and stilled her heart in her chest.

Sergeant Barnes of the 107th. The man whose picture was keeping her place in Jane Eyre.

She murmured an excuse to no one in particular, saying she’d be right back before taking the casualty records from the typing pool and going outside. The less stagnant air did nothing to ease the painful tightness in her chest. Her pulse roared in her ears, even over the din of typewriter keys – like gunfire – in the background.

Her field of vision narrowed to only the pages in front of her as she scanned desperately for his name – something made more difficult by the trembling of her hands. Nausea rolled like sea billows in her gut.

For some reason, with every name she passed, every soldier dead, accounted for, or lost, a book title came to mind. Something she’d read with Bucky, some experience they’d shared.

The Call of the Wild. Gone with the Wind. The Hounds of the Baskervilles. A Study in Scarlet. A Tale of Two Cities. Moby Dick……

Sargent James Buchanan Barnes – missing in action.

Presumed dead.

#marvel fanfiction #fanfic #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky x oc #bucky barnes x oc #marvel ff #my writing #mischiefiswritten

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lizabethstucker · 4 years ago

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Some of the Best from Tor.com 2019 Edition

This was a free collection on Amazon at the time that I stumbled across it while browsing science fiction selections. While I’ve always liked both Tor and Baen publications, I was amazed by how very much I enjoyed almost every short story and novella in this collection. Such high quality, and some authors that have been added to my TBR list. 4.5 out of 5.

CURRENTLY FREE ON AMAZON AS OF THE DATE OF THIS POSTING!

“Deriving Life” by Elizabeth Bear

Marq Tames is contemplating suicide or becoming a Host, unable to cope with being alone again after their spouse dies. Tenants bring many benefits, including being pain-free, living a bit longer, making better decisions for themselves. Unfortunately the Tenants ultimately consume their Hosts. Unlike most potential Hosts, Marq is healthy. Wow. A really detailed look at grief, cancer, loneliness, and the choices we might make for happiness. Intense. Could be triggering for some who are themselves dealing with grief. 4.5 out of 5.

“For He Can Creep” by Siobhan Carroll

The Great Jeoffry the Cat helps keep the demons away from the humans in the madhouse. His favorite is the Poet who is trying to finish the most important Poem for God. If only his creditors would leave him alone, stop pushing for the satiric content he once wrote. Then Satan himself comes to speak with Jeoffry. Satan deems the Poem to be out of favor style-wise, and not very good. He wishes to have the Poet write him a poem, one that will drive religion out of the minds of the masses. To do that, he needs to speak with the Poet without Jeoffry’s interference. It is, as they say, a devil’s bargain. Jeoffry may, for the first time since kittenhood, lose. He must consider and consult. The fact that this is based on a real poem written by Christopher Smart, who was incarcerated in St. Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics, circa 1763, adds an extra layer of interest and curiosity to the story. Needless to say, I spent the evening researching the poet online. 3.5 out of 5.

“Beyond the El” by John Chu

Connor struggles to recreate his late mother's dumplings, never quite reaching that bit of perfection. He really doesn't need the stress of his cold abusive sister back in his life. Although maybe he does. Very low key. The relationship between Nick and Connor was more interesting to me. As to the use of magic to prepare foods, was it really necessary? 3 out of 5.

“Zeitgeber” by Greg Egan

Sam is searching for why his daughter Emma's sleep patterns are suddenly and radically off phase. It isn't long until this issue with sleep cycles begin spreading throughout the world. At first it was just puzzling and annoying. Now there are more and more accidents and deaths. Life moves on, people adjusting as best it can, with cures both fake and possible appearing.

Truly fantastic tale. Scary as well, especially considering how we are waiting for a cure for COVID-19 with trepidation and distrust of the very organizations, such as the CDC and FDA, that are supposed to protect us. Add on top the discussion of just how much conformity society demands of us. 4 out of 5.

“One/Zero” by Kathleen Ann Gorrnan

The war made its way to Vida Zilan's home in Kurdistan, ending with her parents, aunt, and grandmother dead. Now Vida is on the run with her three year old brother, traveling with other terrified and displaced children. Mai Davidson has retired in Washington D.C. after years of helping with various issues through the agency she had given her life to, until her husband died and she began to look for something different. Her life is becoming increasingly regulated as the AIs begin taking control of medicine and senior care and transportation, among other things. Or are the SIs, the rumored super intelligent computers now moving out into the world? Be careful what you wish for has always been what is said in regards to those who can grant wishes. Perhaps with the right teachers, the right guides, the SIs can help fix the world for the children, with the assistance of the children. If only, if only. Magnificent look at how Hal might not be the villain of the piece. After all, he just wanted to save both himself and his astronaut charges. 4.5 out of 5.

“Skinner Box” by Carole Johnstone

A trip to Jupiter and back, scientists caught up in their personal cycle of pain and hatred, an engineer who brings some comfort and support. And a Skinner box filled with nanites. There are layers upon layers upon layers in this intense story of experimentation and conditioning, the cost of freedom and, ultimately, love. In essence, there are three reveals. The first was expected almost from the start. The second was almost suspected after we met Boris. But it was the third that, for me, saved the story from the coldness. 3.5 out of 5.

“The Song” by Erinn L. Kemper

The world is moving from beef to whale meat, expensive as it is, taking abandoned oil rigs and converting them to whale meat processing centers. As the ecowarriors grow increasingly violent, killing those involved in killing the whales, the people on SeaRanch 18 are stranded without relief personnel. One of the last new scientists to arrive is Suzanne who is staying the changes in communication patterns among the whales. She tells Dan, a deep sea diver and welder, of attacks by the whales, how humpbacks and blues were congregating for the first time ever seen and apparently communicating. Whales and dolphins are so very intelligent, yet humans think they can do whatever they want to them. I don’t understand. Needless to say, I was primed for this story. I thought I was prepared, even hopeful. But the ending was beyond tragic. 4 out of 5.

“Articulated Restraint” by Mary Robinette Kowal

(Lady Astronaut 1.5) After an accident leads to a lunar rocket slammed into a space station and the airlock jammed, the moon’s astronauts must figure out how to rescue them before their air runs out. First, they’ll need a plan of action and see if the plan can work on their mockup rocket. They need a way to get them more oxygen and a way to get a life raft to the vehicle. Complicating procedures is Ruby’s nasty ankle sprain, especially after she needs the foot restraint which requires her to twist her feet to get into position. Something snaps, but she perseveres, unwilling to let her injury prevent the rescue of her friends. In some ways this reminds me of old time science fiction, a neat adventure with threads of backstories I want to know more about, such as the Meteor and what’s going on back on Earth. Luckily I discovered that this is part of a series, so there is a possibility of learning more. Although I have a few other of Kowal’s works in my TBR pile (freebies back in the day), I hadn’t as yet read any of her works. Definitely want to read more based on what I found here. 4.5 out of 5.

“Painless” by Rich Larson

Mars is a child when he is first found by the men who have been searching for someone like him, a genetic mutation who cannot feel pain. There’s an organism put inside his body, that can make him stronger and able to repair himself, even grow body parts back. He is trained to be a soldier, a mercenary, a killer. He yearns for freedom and someone to be his friend and family. The story jumps a bit from present to past and back again. It took me a while to get into the author’s rhythm, but once I did it was well worth it. I can see so many countries and organizations who would kill to have someone like Mars under their control. Good read. 3.5 out of 5.

“Seonag and the Seawolves” by M. Evan MacGriogair

Seonag was considered strange almost from the moment she was born, but she still loved her homeland. So much so that she hides when her parents make plans to sail to Canada, unable to afford the croft rent. Once they leave her behind, Seonag goes to the town bard for help and advice. She is told about the wolves that were driven out of Ireland. He tells her to swim west until she can hear the wolves. The advice is cruel, certain suicide. Knowing all that, Seonag still decides to do so. An old style story, a myth, a fable, a fairy tale. A story about those who only want to belong, yet are different enough to be pushed to the sidelines. Mystical and magical. 4 out of 5.

“Any Way the Wind Blows” by Seanan McGuire

The Cartography Corps explore and map the parallel universes in order to determine if any ever go missing at a future date. In this Manhattan, they find an intact Flatiron building, but no killer pigeons in this universe, so win-win. Then a group of locals ask to meet the Captain. This should be a television series! I’d watch each and every episode and cackle at the crew’s adventures. The only thing I was disappointed by was the length. It was too short. 4.5 out of 5.

“Blue Morphos in the Garden” by Lis Mitchell

Vivian does love Dash and Lily, their daughter, but she continues to refuse to marry him, unable to deal with what his family goes through upon death. If she officially marries into the family, she will become a Karner in all ways. When it appears that Viv may be dying, she will need to make a decision sooner than she had hoped. Stay, but remain a terminal. Marry and, once she dies, become something else. Leave, with or without Dash and Lily. There's a beauty to having one's death transform into something useful or beautiful or both. Frankly, I don't understand Vivian's concerns about that. 4 out of 5.

“His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light” by Mimi Mondal

Love comes in many forms, some never spoken out loud. Binu had found a home and a job with the Majestic Oriental Circus. He became a trapeze master, soon heading his own team. He also continued playing Alladin in Shehzad Marid’s illusionist act. He was happy and content. Until he helped the wrong person. There is so much hinted at and more left unsaid. But it will always be known that Binu was a good man and a loyal friend. Bittersweet, yet in that time and place, perhaps the happiest ending(?) one could hope for. 4 out of 5.

“Old Media” by Annalee Newitz

John was as free as he had ever been under his latest Master, a lady scientist who provided him franchise papers that granted him full rights within the city before she went into hiding. Med, a fan of John's journal on Memeland, becomes his friend and roommate. She is also a robot and professor, as well as the lady scientist's research partner in the project that caused the woman to flee. John and Med try to navigate the idiosyncrasies of living among humans, both clueless and bigoted. 3.5 out of 5.

“More Real Than Him” by Silvia Park

Morgan Ito is working on her own robot, one that resembles her favorite actor who is currently doing his two years of military service. This is the first story in the collection that I struggled with. Frankly, it read like bad fanfiction, and I'm a fanfiction reader and writer. I didn't like any characters except Stephen, but he was barely in the story. I finally gave up, not caring what would happen to pretty much anyone. DNF

“The Hundredth House Had No Walls” by Laurie Penny

The King of the country of Myth and Shadow is incredibly bored after five hundred years on the throne. He does what any ruler does in his situation, he decides to travel incognito to the imaginary land of New York City. There he runs into the Princess of Everywhere and Nowhere.

I had a hard time at first dealing with random phrases, words, and letters made bold. This was a strange story. Once I got past the random bolds, I quite liked it. Feminist overtones with a message about freedom and allowing each individual to write their own story. 3.5 out of 5.

“The Touches” by Brenda Peynado

Life is separated into clean and dirty. Clean was living virtually, locked into a tiny cubicle from birth, cared for by an assigned robot, and hooked up to an all-encompassing system for hours at a time. Dirty is the real world, filled with plagues and viruses and what the narrator calls filth. Things get more complicated as robots glitch, an accident puts the narrator into quarantine, and a phone number leads to something scary. There's a layer of disconnection due to a lack of physical contact that cannot be fulfilled by robot hugs and virtual touches. Add to that the narrator's extreme fear of the dirty world. She actually has counted the number of real physical touches in her life. Very intense, more so during our current Pandemic and the separation of friends and family. Also extremely weird. I don't know what to say about this one, but I suspect it will linger in my memory for quite a while. 3.5 out of 5.

“Knowledgeable Creatures” by Christopher Rowe

Investigative dog Connolly Marsh is hired by human Professor Thomasina Swallow after she kills a coworker who was threatening blackmail. Things become increasingly screwy. The body is missing, the learned mouse who is also Sparrow's adopted father believes historical research into the history of knowledgeable creatures and humans shouldn't be forbidden, and Marsh can't make himself leave the case alone. Huh. Another strange story with a lot of dangling threads left behind and even more questions. Yet this isn't a set-up for a longer story or even a series. It is complete within itself, with a somewhat sad ending for one character. Intriguing, almost a noir type of story. Fantasy with just a touch of science fiction. 3 out of 5.

“Blood is Another Word for Hunger” by Rivers Solomon

Anger boiled in the heart of fifteen year old slave, Sully. When she heard that her master had been killed during a battle, she drugged all five of his family members, slicing their throats. Her actions cause a rift in the etherworld, drawing Ziza to her. Sully is a product of her life, the cruelty of her upbringing. She may also hark back to a creature from the country of her ancestors. Sully shouldn’t be a sympathetic character, but she is. I wanted her to find, if not happiness, at least a form of peach. And maybe she will with her revenants, especially Ziza. Be aware that this isn’t an easy read by any means, but I found it surprisingly satisfying. 4.5 out of 5.

“The Last Voyage of Shidbladnir” by Karin Tidbeck

Saga learns the ship she serves on is a living creature who is outgrowing her shell of a high-rise building. Saga and Novik, the engineer, are determined to save Skidbladnir from being sold for meat. She needs a new shell, so they'll find her a new shell. This gripped me the moment I realized Skidbladnir was alive. I'm a sucker for stories like this. So enchanting. I wish it had been longer or had a sequel, but that is just me being greedy and not wanting to leave Saga, Novik, and Skidbladnir behind. Lovely from start to finish. 4.5 out of 5.

“Circus Girl, the Hunter, and Mirror Boy” by JY Yang

Lynette first saw Mirror Boy the night she was almost killed after fighting off a rapist when she was barely 16 years old. After she survived, Lynette found a friend to unload her pain, her disappointments, and her dreams to the boy who appeared in place of her own reflection. Once she left the circus she had grown up in and worked for, Lynette had never seen him again. Until now. The boy is worried that a serial killer is after her. A perfect story for the month of October, with a wraith, a witch, and a supernatural hunter who made assumptions that led to so many innocent deaths. An ending that, while I guess it might be coming, was also so satisfying. 4 out of 5

“Water: A History by K. J. Kabza

The surveyors badly judged how compatible the colony of Isla would be for the humans who left Earth on a one-way trip there. The colonists adjusted, but being outside too long led to cancer deaths during the early years. Marie, in her 50s, is now the last person who has direct memories of Earth. She has been extraordinarily lucky in that her frequent trips outside hadn’t led to an early death. A younger colonist, born on Isla, longs to go outside as well. She wants to smell the planet’s dirt and feel the breeze on her face. Lian finds a friend and support in Marie. But no one can expect the good times will last forever. Deeply emotional and tragic, yet somewhat hopeful as well. Yet the story needed more depth, more content. Good, but not as good as many of the others in this collection, in my opinion. 3 out of 5.

“As the Last I May Know” by S. L. Huang

Nyma was just ten years old when she was selected to be the Carrier. In order to impress the consequences of using seres on another country, the Order choses to hide the codes in the body of a child. To obtain access, the President must personally kill the child Carrier and rip her heart open. AS the enemy forces draw ever deeper into the country, Nyma waits. Oh, this one was gut-wrenching. Seriously gut-wrenching. And yet, the logic behind the Order's idea was extremely logical. Force the President to basically live with the child he must kill to get access to the seres that will kill millions, make it real. And Otto Han is disgusted by the Order, but it is what it is. Again, the idea makes sense, but that doesn't mean that it isn't horrifying. Not to mention torturous for the child who must live with the idea that they can be killed at almost anytime in order to kill millions of other people. 4.5 out of 5.

“The Time Invariance of Snow” by E. Lily Yu

When the Devil's mirror splinters, it enters the hearts and minds of mankind, spreading hate and violence despair and depression. G and K are in love, but G is wary of the violence of men. When K makes a comment on how he would kill her, she protests his cruelty. He leaves. Despite knowing how the story will end, G goes on a quest to save him from the Snow Queen.

A subversion of fairy tales and a treatise on both them and the treatment of women. I have to admit that I was annoyed by the use of footnotes in this fictional short story. I barely tolerate them in non-fiction books. That said, as I struggled on, once G and K came onto the scene it became an easier read. I think I would've enjoyed this more if it had been expanded. My least favorite in the collection, but still worth reading. 3 out of 5.

#book review #Some of the Best from Tor.com 2019 Edition #science fiction #fantasy #collection

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destiny-islanders · 7 years ago

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FFXV x KH Headcanons That I Have But Probably Won’t Doodle Part 3

Part 1 | Part 2

Sora is something else when he’s behind the wheel of a car because he is either at one end of the emotional extreme or the other.

He is the kind of driver who makes sure to thank other drivers on the road for their consideration. If someone lets him switch lanes and get in front of them, he sticks his hand up and waves to them. He also mutters, “Thank you,” even though there’s absolutely no way for the other driver to hear or even see his lips forming the words aw hon

He is also the kind of driver who shows off a very… colorful… vocabulary when he’s dealing with bad drivers. He never drives aggressively– especially not behind the wheel of someone else’s car! But he swears up a storm that even makes Gladio a little uncomfortable. (Don’t tell them to put a rusty tire iron there, Sora…)

While we’re on the subject of Sora in the car, he sits between Noct and Gladio in the backseat

With Sora in the party, Ignis now has TWO stubborn and sleepy boys to drag out of bed each morning

Sora’s Keyblade ex Machina becomes a Thing

No more having to worry about accidentally locking the keys in the car because there’s a boy in the party with the universe’s biggest and dumbest-looking master key

Noctis politely accepting the dungeon key from Ezma even though there is absolutely no need for it with Sora “Yes-by-it-works-on-any-lock-I-MEAN-it-works-on-any-lock.”

Yes this results in the boys facing off against a monster they are nowhere near equipped to handle

Yes Gladio has to drag Sora’s and Prompto’s unconscious bodies all the way back up to the dungeon’s entrance

Yes they go back for revenge once they’ve collectively toughened up

Imagine Sora getting captured by Niffs only to create increasing frustration in their ranks because they literally cannot keep this kid locked in a room

Sora looks forward to getting to meet Lunafreya! :D

Noctis gets frustrated that he can’t talk to Luna more often. Sora suggests he write her a message, stick it in a bottle, and cast it out to sea.

He’s only half joking

Sora getting! So excited! When Noct assures him that of course he can come to the wedding! Sora’s never been to a wedding before! :D :D :D

As their friendship grows stronger, Noct decides to make Sora one of his groomsmen!!!!!

Imagine the bachelor party omfg

Real talk: SORA WOULD CRY AT A WEDDING. HE LOVES TO SEE PEOPLE HAPPY AND IN LOVE!!!!!

The chocobros fearing Sora’s power more than ever when they realize that his hair naturally stands up like that. No hair gel necessary. His hair is just Too Powerful

Prompto is so jealous

Sora sometimes gets really quiet when they’re on the beach at Galdin Quay or Cape Caeum. He sort of spaces out. Just stares out at the horizon with the waves lapping up around his ankles.

Angst under the cut. :O

The Return of the Angst Corner:

In the first year of the long night, Sora tries a number of methods to get in touch with his friends

He tries to summon old friends and encourage them to let Donald, Goofy, etc. know that he’s okay– just stranded in Eos. Genie, Mushu, Peter Pan, all of them. The only way they’ll be able to send the message is if they visit their home worlds, though– not a very good chance of that happening. Still, it’s worth a shot.

He sends a message in a bottle every time he’s near the ocean. He is nearly killed in the waters of Galdin Quay by a Ronin during one of these attempts. He’d been too caught up in making sure the waves carried off the bottle. Careless.

Eventually… he gives up.

It’s worth noting that even when things are at their bleakest, Sora doesn’t lose his kindness or optimism. He is gentle and patient with wary survivors and is usually the one who convinces people hesitant to leave their homes behind to seek refuge in Lestallum.

It’s easy to forget how horrible things are when you’re sitting by the fire with Sora, whose smiles and laughter are infectious. He’s such a good storyteller– great at getting your mind off of the actual apocalypse happening in the world beyond

This boy is Great With Kids

He knows Noctis will come back, and they’ll bring back the light

It’s only a matter of time

Sora takes shifts with other hunters to stand watch at the city limits of Lestallum

Whenever a daemon gets too close, he is usually the first to reach them– he launches himself off, sometimes boosted by magic, and usually takes it down before it sees him coming

Sora isn’t quite sure of the exact moment he was infected with the Starscourge

But if he had to guess

While on a supply run with Prompto, he is ambushed by a gargoyle that manages to latch onto his left arm… with its teeth

Prompto’s killed the thing before Sora has a chance to scream– puts a bullet in its head.

Its head explodes. Sora’s covered in its blood– it’s on his face, in his hair, in his mouth… and it’s all over his left arm, too

Sora remembers reading up on the Starscourge a little bit after hearing Luna talking about it on the radio once… something about “photophilic organisms” infecting a host and leeching off of them like a parasite until

Until…

It really could have been something else. Maybe the world’s darkness was just finally getting to Sora. Maybe Ardyn did something to him. Or maybe he was infected by daemon’s blood in an open wound.

Don’t tell Prompto.

Sora keeps it a secret at first. The thin black tendrils curling beneath the skin of the underside of his left forearm are easy enough to hide with sleeves.

It takes a couple of weeks before it starts to hurt

It’s a throbbing, pulsating pain. It matches his heartbeat a little too well.

The marks spread quickly. More quickly than Sora remembers reading it did. Why is it spreading so damned fast?!

Sora is doing inventory in the stockroom with Nayvth when he experiences an intense palpitation that takes his breath away. He gets so dizzy that he slips off of a ladder while counting the ethers

He’s too woozy to stop a couple of well-meaning bystanders from carrying him to the infirmary– the town had fashioned the restaurant by the kebab stand into one during the long night

He’s able to pull himself together enough to fight off the nurse who tries to examine him. He’s fine. Just tired. Just hungry.

He lies to the nurse, but he decides he can’t lie to his friends. He decides this after checking in the mirror to find that the infection has spread up his arm, across his shoulder, towards his heart.

Prompto sobs

Once everyone knows, they are determined to find a cure

Ignis, having had nine years to grow accustomed to his blindness, being met with frustration he hasn’t felt in years when he realizes that most of the relevant books in Lestallum’s local library are not in braille

Prompto staying up late with Ignis, reading passages to him about the Starscourge, the Oracles’ effort through generations to contain it, and beyond

The infection spreads to Sora’s neck, and now he’s stuck wearing turtlenecks and carefully-pinned scarves to hide it.

He is absolutely not a turtleneck guy. It’s so constricting and uncomfortable at first! He can’t stand it.

The Scourge spreads to his face

It spreads to his left eye

The people of Lestallum don’t need to worry about isolating Sora. He isolates himself.

People who’d once heralded Sora a hero, cooked him meals, played checkers with him– they’re too afraid to come close

Sora gets it. He really does. Nothing is known about the disease. How infectious is it? Is it transmittable in the air? Will they get the Scourge too if Sora sneezes too close to them?

Sora doesn’t know. But he wears gloves when he’s around Ignis, Gladio, Prompto, and the handful of others who refuse to let his condition stop them from being at his side

It takes a while before the disease begins to affect his mind

Lapses in his memory. He’d come back to his senses and have no idea how he got to wherever he is

He gets irritable. Very.

He lashes out at the slightest provocation. With Gladio especially

He gets downright scary in battle at times.

He keeps hacking away at a Salpinx’s body even though it’s already dead. He’ll never forget the look on Prompto’s face when he finally regains himself

He has a violent coughing fit one night. He pulls his hand away, and there’s black ooze in his palm

It’s cold

“P-Prompto…?”

He still accepts hunts and stands watch and takes care of daemons that get too close to the city

He takes on the biggest fucking Snaga he’s ever seen in his life and is overwhelmed

It kicks his ass

He would have for sure died if not for Ardyn

His brain screams at him to stay awake, to get up, to finally get back at this piece of shit for everything he’s done to Noctis, to Prompto, to all of his friends– but he’s in too much pain and he’s short of breath and his heart is fluttering and stuttering and everything hurts. He passes out.

He wakes up at camp with Ardyn. Ardyn’s cooking something for them to eat.

Ardyn tells him about his past life– how he’d not only been a Lucian king, but also a healer. He can’t cure the Starscourge. Those powers were lost to him long ago. But he can treat it.

Sora has no way of knowing if this is true or not.

But based on what Ardyn said, it sounds like Ardyn treated the Scourge by drawing it out of the host– and absorbing it himself

Does that mean healing Sora will make Ardyn stronger?

No way he can risk that. This freak is powerful enough already. He’d rather die than make it harder for his friends to save the world.

Ardyn doesn’t give him a choice

After Ardyn draws out most of the Scourge, he’s gone

Sora finds a map that helps him get back to Lestallum. It’s not far.

He does feel a lot better. He didn’t realize what an effort breathing had been for him lately until now– it’s so much easier. The air tastes so much cleaner.

He doesn’t know how much time he has left, now that Ardyn’s interfered with the hands of the clock. He just has to hope that Noctis gets back soon. Because he wants to be there when they finally take Ardyn down.

#final fantasy xv #kingdom hearts #sora #ffxv x kh #headcanons #ff #ffxv #I got CARRIED AWAY with this one #too much angst for one post #bullet points are so much easier to write than an actual fic aren't they #way to go english major #way to go #starscourge sora

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acradaunt · 7 years ago

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Wanted to gab about Monster Hunter World for a while. It's probably going to be really rambly and sound overly negative, but hey. I tend to be like that. Super negative. It's easier to pinpoint and hammer on a weakness than a strong point.

I guess let's start at the very, very beginning. While it doesn't bother me even slightly, the concept of Capcom pouring all this money and focus onto Monster Hunter, but then not even remotely trying any sort of lip-syncing for the very first cutscene was... jarring. I don't really get complaints about it being too hand-holdy, though. You're fighting Jagras by the third quest and maybe an hour and ten minutes, compared to like three for Jaggi/Jaggi/Maccao in the previous games. Yeah, that first hour is like 105% cutscenes and scripted as heck, but that's them trying to be 'cinematic'. It's not great, but it's better than kicking you back and forth between town and the plains level for ten missions of gather honey/bones/ore/Aptonoth. NPCs tend to feel kind of like completely worthless human beings, but that's just a global videogame issue. Of course nobody else could actually show up and fight something. I guess not showing up at all is better than the Huntsman/Field Leader/Ace Cadet getting bodied time and again.

While yeah, no loading zones are nice, and most of maps are absolutely stellar (though Forest has that confounding middle floors region and Coral Highlands has waaay too many huge pointless regions), I think weapon and quality of life changes are what matters the most. While I think I prefer Gen's (Guild style for both) SnS (World's feels a touch too spammy, and the backleap suuuucks now; Gen's SnS required some finesse) and Greatsword (in spite of the fact that MHWorld's GS is designed around my 'stay in there' playstyle and not running away like everyone else does), almost every other weapon feels at its best. I've found love for Dual Blades, Gunlance, Bowguns, the Bow itself, and even slightly the Katana in this one. Still hate Insect Glaive, but at least they fixed the bugs. I like the LBG and Dual Blades enough to break them into regular usage. Hammer is just so pure and powerful that it kinda makes the Greatsword's damage feel woefully inept. Lance is amazing with guard being worth a damn and being more mobile than ever. Switch Axe makes actual use of both switching and axing. All shields are good. Blocking Nergigante's dive with a SnS shield like it's no huge deal is glorious and refreshing, because that would NEVER have flown before.

Seeing the weapon tree is great, even if what's on the tree is a bit barren. Like, really, I'm not even gonna whine about the boring weapon designs; why are old designs like the Rathian Switch Axe and Dual Blades missing? Poor things don't even GET poison without Awakening. Lots of weapons have huge holes without Awakening. The clear winner is armour skills. It's just so simple and intuitive, it's honestly baffling they didn't do this ages ago. My only quibbles are that you might possibly get TOO many skills now. You're packing more goods than an endgame G-Rank character in 4U. Also, sometimes some Alpha pieces feel exceptionally dumb. Like, is anyone ever going to take the version with, like, freaking Entomologist on it over a free socket? I do think I'd have preferred seeing more Set Skills to scale things down slightly so you had to get a few subpar pieces to get a better, prominent skill, but hey. Set Skills only needing typically 3 makes them a lot more palatable to me.

I might be in the minority here, but I like the switching of decorations and charms. Getting that one good charm completely changed your armour sets, and the 5000 others you got until then were wholly worthless. With decorations, you can equip multiple at a time, sometimes nearly a dozen. You can actually get lots of use out of 'okay' ones. The weekly gold tickets for free gems is really fair. And kinda necessary for upgrading charms. A couple skills really stand out, which I guess isn't anything new. Health Boost went from wholly worthless to the single best skill, allowing for 200 HP, Fire Res stops fire's constant burn damage and near global usage (especially with Bazel and Rathalos' interruptions), and Stun Res is more useful than ever, with Stun taking thrice as long to recover from. I'm sure the 'metagame' is still herp derp handicraft and crit boost or whatever, but I prefer not dying. Ever. I can run all that stuff handily and still get a pricier skill like Elemental Crit or some serious Guard points and not look like complete clownshoes, so that's always a huge plus. Oh, however. Female armour design is at its all-time low. One of the plusses of switching primary genders every game is that I dodged that bullet. Course, in Gen, I knew going in that I wanted Tigrex for Hearing and Eating, so I could use the name Amber quite fittingly. Two armour styles helps sometimes, but. Just. Stop. Making. Everything. Be metal thighhighs and have random-ass patches of bare skin.

A lot of the new monsters are mostly just rehashes. Which is... reasonable, really. There's only so many moves and so many ways to do stuff. Legiana is a less threatening ice Rathalos. Anjanath is a more aggressive, less burly Deviljho. Even Paolumu is Kecha Wacha with a few low-grade Kush attacks. Bazelgeuse certainly stands out among the crowd, because his moves are wholly unique, and he's actually a threatening party-crasher, unlike Deviljho. The fact he's mostly about area of effect makes him incredibly dangerous (and/or helpful) when you're preoccupied, but when the focus is on him, he crumples surprisingly easily. I think most people have a love/hate relationship with him and the 3-monsters in the field. It does spice things up, but it also sometimes turns into an absolute fustercluck.

What's less thrilling is the near universal amount presence of fire. It's one thing that ALL the old guys are fire (minus Diablos, Kushala, and Kirin), but the fact that several of the new monsters (Anjanath, Bazelgeuse, Xeno'jiiva) are fire too is just pouring gasoline on the, well, fire. Kirin, Paolumu, and Vaal Hazak are the only three weak to it, I think, while each weapon gets two-four trees for fire. The free DLC doesn't change matters, with both Lunastra and maybe Alatreon doing fire too. I don't actually remember if Alatreon can light you up. For the other elements, Thunder and Ice get two (plus Oroshi, later). Water has just Jyuratodus and nobody even does Dragonblight. This means if you want elemental weapons, you'll be killing a shitton of Jyuratodus, Tobi-Kodachi, and Legiana. It also makes Fire Res probably the second best general-purpose skill, but I've already been there.

One thing I really did like is how HR just opened up pretty completely. It was fun seeing if you could immediately tackle Rathain or whoever to get some solid HR armour right away. The only shortcoming was the sad, sad excuse at 'oh no, monsters are invading other envir-- Anjie and Pukei are the in desert. That's it. It would've been a nice change of pace to see different guys different places, not to mention it could better use certain otherwise barren rooms and cause 'party chambers' to sometimes be more or less dangerous. Because I've never once fought Dodogama without in the main crystal room without it being a four-way. Lavasioth won't go there, but the three others are mighty fond of the room, too. On this thought, why the hell doesn't Nergigante show in the desert? They had his AI working there for the beta, and you first find traces of him in the swamp. :|

Investigations, Expeditions, and Bounties are all nice enough ideas, but I really think it would've worked better if they reworked how they functioned. Expeditions are kinda... pointless? Other than stupid gather-y bullshit like the ultra-rare endemic life and tempered tracks only show up there. Bounties are an alright way to guide your hand to specific quests, but it's flow breaking early on, and once you don't need armour spheres, you can just forget all about it. Investigations giving bonus rewards with stricter demands is genuinely nice, although there's always the issue of running a quest dry before you have enough Jyuratodus Fins or whatever. I'd more prefer these be like sliders that you can play with to set it to be as hard and rewarding as you can handle, but hey. I'll take it any day over 4U's Guild Quests.

It's kinda a half-baked idea, but I could sort of see a revision of these ideas into one bigger thing. Like, you'd choose a set of three or so investigations at once (like bounties), and when you go to a viable locale, those goals slot themselves in. If it's 30 minutes for Rathian and 50 for Barroth, she'll leave at 30 minutes and Barroth will stay for 50. Or once room opens and Diablos shows, Diablos' timer starts. I'm not sure how death would work. Take ten minutes away? It's not perfect, but it would flow a lot better than having to reload the same map twice every ten minutes when something dies.

Tempereds are just the stupidest attempt at harder monsters yet. Frenzy wasn't great either, as they gave nothing better compared to their normal counterpart, but at least there was a mechanic beyond 'hits harder'. And I seriously think half the G-Rank monsters don't have non-frenzied quests, so it's not much of an option. Hyper was never explained at all, but its heads above the other two. Specific stronger attacks with weaker weak points. Further, with Hypers, you still needed to fight the appropriate monster to get their parts (with some more variety for semi-generic parts like Hyper Horns). With Tempereds, your goal isn't to get parts, but horrifically rare drops, so there's no reason to do anybody but the easiest guy of that tier. You gain nothing more from fighting Radobaan versus Jagras. While I can live with never getting those amazing decorations, streamstones and augmenting are just awful to be linked to luck. Yeah, it's post-postgame, but that junk alone makes me feel I'd rather see a new game that refines World's new ideas rather than it get a G-Rank expansion. Generations was content to have the end be the end, not involving any roulette crap. ...Double Cross might've done some wacky random-luck bullshit. I don't know, come to think of it.

I feel like I had other, nicer, things to say, but this is already waay too damn long and sounds bit too bitter, so I think I'll just stop. Oh yeah, and needing a subscription to play online sucks, so I haven't even attempted to enter or use an SOS out of curiosity. But from what I hear about it only having two scales, one for one player, and one for four, is really stupid. It reeaallly favours single player, which, hey, is working for me, but might've missed the point of the series. See? I can't even end this without sounding negative. :|

#Monster Hunter World

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jeanvaljean24601 · 4 years ago

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The Best Open Worlds in Video Games

Video Games offer their players boundless escapism, and while that’s sometimes in the form of a really compelling linear story, there’s a special place in our hearts for a big open world you can easily get lost in. To that end, we’ve put together a list of our favorite open worlds in gaming. It’s worth noting that this isn’t a list of IGN’s Best Open-World Games™, but rather our favorite worlds in and of themselves - whether they’re made up of miles of untamed wilderness, countless blocks of urban sprawl or fall somewhere in-between, these are the top 10 video game open worlds.

You can check out the video above, click through the gallery below or scroll down the page for the full list. Let us know in the comments what was on your list that didn't make ours!

10. Sunset City (Sunset Overdrive)

In a world turned upside-down - or, maybe in some cases it’s more accurate to say inside out - by an energy drink apocalypse, the unique urban landscape of Sunset Overdrive was keen on changing the rules for what it meant to traverse a giant metropolis. Rather than relying on running or driving, it's over-the-top means of traversal sets Sunset Overdrive apart from other open worlds. By enabling rail grinding, wall-running, and comically huge bouncing on nearly every surface, Sunset Overdrive's city became a zany fun house that was a blast to get around in and also perfectly mirrored the game's off-the-wall sense of humor. Add that to some wonderfully designed setpieces, like a medieval-themed roller coaster and towering skyscrapers wrapped in rail lines, and Sunset City quickly became the perfect place to blow up hordes of mutated goons with unparalleled flair. x96 tv box

9. The New World (Horizon: Zero Dawn)

Horizon: Zero Dawn’s world is a gorgeous sandbox of dramatic locales peppered through with huge, dinosaur-like machines intent on murdering you; it’s much more fun than it sounds. Snowy mountains beg you to climb them, dense forest-land house unseen horrors and calcified skyscrapers now serve as platforms to get from A to B. There’s still a thrill seeing an enormous Thunderjaw stomping round in the distance - this is as close to a proper dinosaur game as we’ve had in the last 10 years, and the threat it houses at its core is wonderfully tempered by the gorgeous trappings that surround it.

8. Kyrat (Far Cry 4)

Even though the most recent entry in the series added some additional vehicular mayhem, Far Cry 4’s Kyrat offers some of the most spectacular sandbox action that gaming has to offer. The lush forests, snowy mountains, and farmlands of this fictional Himalayan country are densely packed with open-ended activities, dangerous wildlife, and plenty of nooks and crannies to explore for secrets. Add in the fact that you can roam the wilds with a friend in online co-op and you’ve got a tasty recipe for an insanely good time.

7. San Francisco Bay Area (Watch Dogs 2)

Watch Dogs 2’s version of the Bay Area is slightly more condensed than its real-life counterpart, but if you can’t physically travel to San Francisco, this is definitely the next best thing. From the Painted Ladies to the Golden Gate Bridge, all of SF’s biggest landmarks are here, and the city’s melting pot of cultures is pretty well represented across the varied neighborhoods.

Full of interesting side activities and secrets to uncover, Watch Dogs 2 is virtual tourism at it’s best - even if its traffic is unbelievably light and the game’s story about our descent into a high-tech corporate dystopia somehow manages to be less depressing than the real thing. android tv box

6. The Caribbean (Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag)

While plenty of Assassin’s Creed games offer hyper-detailed recreations of historical cities across the globe, few offer as satisfying a blend of worthwhile exploration and diverse gameplay as the crystal blue waters of Assassin’s Creed IV’s Caribbean setting. Okay, and the Atlantic coastline a couple of times.

Point is, whether you were skulking about the streets of Nassau, diving for treasure in old wrecks, hunting sea monsters or sinking ship after ship after ship, Black Flag’s nautical playground may not be the biggest world the series has ever seen, but it still remains the best it has to offer, and hands-down the ultimate simulator for those of us wishing to become the scourge of the high seas.

5. Skyrim (The Elder Scrolls V)

Despite being the fifth entry in a beloved franchise full of historic characters and moments, the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim provides the perfect introduction to the massive Elder Scrolls universe. Featuring a wide variety of biomes from ice-capped mountains to grassy farmland and medieval strongholds, the beauty of Skyrim is in its interwoven connection between nature and civilization.

Each town is ripe with personality and factions that introduce you to story and gameplay options you may have not considered. Been roaming around the tundra’s of Whiterun with nothing but a sword and board? A quick stint in the Dark Brotherhood just West of Falkreath will have you hooked on the life as an assassin. Skyrim’s world facilitates exploration in a literal sense; traversing the landscape step by step, but also an exploration of its mechanics through the environment and citizens of the province. It’s a world so well-detailed that we know we’ll see Todd Howard put it on PS5 and the Series X, and we probably won’t even be mad.

4. The Continent (The Witcher 3)

From the fields of White Orchard to the mountains of Ard Skellig and the cobbled streets of Novigrad, the world of The Witcher 3’s is endlessly fascinating to explore. Not content to design just one of the most visually impressive fantasy landscapes in recent memory, CD Projekt Red packed every corner of its massive world with engaging content.

Whether it’s something as simple as clearing a bandit camp or discovering a hidden chest at the bottom of a lake, or kicking off an elaborate hunt for new witcher gear or to stop a monstrous beast from terrorizing a remote village, Geralt’s adventures across The Continent offer players one of the most fully-realized sandboxes ever. Coupled with some of the best-written side quests in modern games, The Witcher 3’s vast and varied world is one players can easily lose themselves in for dozens, if not hundreds, of hours.

3. America, 1899 (Red Dead Redemption 2)

No matter where you are in the massive world of Red Dead Redemption 2, be it the muddy livestock town of Valentine, with its wooden buildings and rustic charm, or the grimy and growing metropolis of Saint Denis, or from snowy peaks to gator-infested swamps to thick forests or flat deserts, the sheer assortment of ecosystems and environments seamlessly stitched together to make up Red Dead 2’s simply magnificent world is almost as astounding as the wild level of bespoke detail injected into every single nook and cranny of the map. Few open worlds are quite as uncompromisingly hand-crafted as the edge of America’s final frontier as depicted in Red Dead Redemption 2.

2. Hyrule (TLoZ: Breath of the Wild)

Few video game landscapes evoke the sort of wonder and mystery that Hyrule manages in Breath of the Wild. From the moment you step out onto the Great Plateau, you're met with sweeping vistas in all directions, and it's no secret why your adventure begins on top of a towering plateau: you're broadly encouraged to glide down and begin exploring in any direction you choose. Hyrule never tries to box you in or control your desire to explore the unknown, and despite overwhelming danger in certain areas, Breath of the Wild smartly ensures you have all the necessary tools to access every part of its gigantic map.x96q tv box

Perhaps most important of all is its reliance on hiding just secrets behind every corner: another eye-catching locale to investigate, another shrine nestled away to be completed, or another mysterious spot where a Kork is almost certainly waiting for you to find them.

1. Los Santos/Blaine County (GTA 5 / GTA Online)

The layers upon layers of utterly bonkers granular detail across Grand Theft Auto V’s world is second to none, even seven years after its original release. No corner of its immense world is untouched by Rockstars designers, from the cramped vestibule of an isolated rural bar to the pockmarked surfaces of Los Santos’ decaying freeways. Just walk a block or two and take note of the individual storefronts or the unique graffiti as grass sways and trash flutters by.

No part of this world, whether in single-player or in GTA Online, feels or looks like another. Besides, name another open world where you can ride a rollercoaster by the beach, base jump off a mountain or skyscraper, then hop in a monster truck or weaponized big rig for a mad-max-style vehicular deathmatch. It simply can’t be done.For more game-ranking goodness, why not check out our picks for the top 10 modern RPGs or the best PS2 games of all time.

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embklitzke · 7 years ago

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Just a little taste (reblog from Patreon)

Just to give everyone a little taste of what I do as a writer and what people can expect out of me at various levels of patronage, I thought I'd provide some examples from a couple of works in progress from a couple different universes.

As a general rule, I write speculative fiction--urban fantasy, science fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, space operas, traditional sword and sorcery fantasy, and supernatural stories, all of which are sometimes layered in with other genres such as horror, thriller, and romance.

My website has a little breakdown of things people might like that's based on my publishedwork, but around here, what you'll be able to catch a glimpse of as a patron is unpublished work--or pre-publication work, as the case may often be. I won't replicate that here unless someone tells me that it's necessary--in which case you'll see an update to that effect.

Below are examples of a scene and a chapter, both of which are available to patrons at different levels of monthly patronage. In the future, these will only be viewable by patrons, but these examples are free for the sake of demonstration.

Scene from UNSETIC Files: Lost and Found - urban fantasy

The location Ezecaius said he needed to get to was just south of the Loop, near enough to Columbia College’s campus that Dr. Ford had asked me to drop him off well before I got Ezecaius to the address—as if Adam knew that I was planning on going to headquarters after I dropped his friend off at his destination. Ezecaius, for his part, stared quietly out of the window, a strange, not quite disconcerting smile on his face.

It was a few minutes of sitting in traffic after dropping off Dr. Ford before I finally asked, “So what do you teach, again?” I tacked on the “again” as an afterthought, struggling to remember if Adam had actually told me in the first place what Ezecaius’s specialization was. It had already been a long morning on top of a long last 72 hours.

“Oh, a few different things,” he said, almost airily. “International law, human rights, foreign policy—all of that and a few more besides.” He smirked, finally looking sidelong at me. “Why, are you thinking about a change in profession, Dr. McConaway?”

“No, no,” I said quickly, fingers tightening on the steering wheel as I swallowed a sudden attack of nerves. God knew that I was doing more than a little diplomacy these days whenever Kate and I went across, but I sure as hell didn’t have much of a desire to change my specialization at this point. “I was just curious, that’s all. I sometimes like to know who I’m driving.”

“And Adam has unusual friends.”

The grin was in his voice as he spoke.

“That too,” I agreed, smiling myself. I found myself wanting to like him, this eccentric man my friend and mentor had saddled me with. “How did you two meet, anyway?” Ezecaius had at least a decade or more on Ford and clearly hadn’t been one of his professors, since as far as I knew, all of Ford’s work—undergraduate and graduate—had been in anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics, not anything to do with foreign relations or international law.

“Ah. It was during his brief stint at State.”

It took a second for me to realize what he meant. “Wait, the State Department? I didn’t know that he worked for the State Department.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, shooting me another crooked smile. “His tenure was rather short-lived and that was probably a good thing. He’d been brought in as an expert to help prepare an ambassador for an upcoming assignment—cultural briefings, map reviews, historical briefs, language training, that sort of mess. He and the ambassador didn’t exactly hit it off and honestly, I could see that from the second they shook hands. I was the one doing the political and intelligence briefs and if I’d had my choice, that particular ambassador wouldn’t have been going where they were going to send him in the first place.”

“Let me guess,” I said as I steered the car around a corner, freeing us from the glut of traffic that was already clogging Michigan Avenue. “Adam had a knock-down, drag-out with the ambassador in question and told someone to shove his State Department credentials where the sun doesn’t shine.”

Ezecaius laughed. “You know him well.”

“Just a bit.” I was grinning now. “Am I right?”

“He would have if I hadn’t stopped him. I reminded him that he might need State someday and convinced him to finish out the job, which he did, though he was very sure he was going to resort to violence by the end of it.”

“But he didn’t?”

“No, he didn’t.” Ezecaius smiled faintly and shook his head. “He finished it off, wrote an assessment of his experience with the ambassador, and turned that assessment in with his resignation.”

“And then what?”

“Well, I imagine you know the rest. He did a few semesters of teaching here and there out East, did a few digs under the auspices of his alma mater and a few other institutions, and then finally landed here in Chicago in time to run into a rather promising young graduate student he was blessed to take under his wing even as he was learning to fly.”

My cheeks got warm. “You’re not—”

“Adam thinks quite highly of you, Dr. McConaway. I don’t think you realize how highly.”

“Maybe not,” I admitted, then exhaled in a sigh. “Honestly, it never really crossed my mind.”

“Perhaps it’s a thing you should give some thought to.” He looked away from me and out the window. “Ah. This should be close enough.”

I blinked, glancing at the row of buildings to the left and right of the car. “Are you sure?” I asked. “You’ll still need to—”

“To walk a little way, I know. It’s all right. I’ll manage.” He smiled at me. “Thank you for the ride, Dr. McConaway. Perhaps you’ll join Adam and Marie and I for dinner tonight?”

“Probably not,” I said as I pulled over and shifted the car into neutral. “But thank you for the offer.”

“Of course.” He didn’t wait for me to get out to open the door for him, just checked the street for oncoming traffic and then got out of the car. He opened the rear passenger door to pull out his overnight bag, slinging it over his shoulder with more grace and practiced ease than I admittedly expected from him.

“Professor?”

He tilted his head, peering at me through the open door. “Yes?”

“The ambassador,” I said. “Did they end up sending him anyway?”

Ezecaius laughed. “No. No, they didn’t, much to Adam’s relief. Mine, too.” He closed the door, still smiling. “Good luck, Doctor.”

He winked at me and then turned away. He took a pair of steps before vanishing from sight.

“Fuck me,” I whispered, staring at the spot where he’d just been. There was no sense of magic in the air, but I knew damned well that magic wasn’t the only game in town.

“Adam really does have interesting friends,” I whispered to no one.

I waited a few minutes more, just to see if perhaps Ezecaius would reappear. He didn’t, and I gave up on waiting. I shifted the car into gear, trying not to worry too much about what had just happened.

Maybe I should have agreed to dinner.

Too late now.

Chapter from The General's Lady - science fiction/romance

“That’s three,” Graden rumbled. “Your father should be more than a little pleased, I hope.”

The promenade of Argossa II’s capital, Triskelle, was littered with the remnants of battle, haunted by its ghosts. It stank of death and fear. He was accustomed to both but enjoyed neither.

“In record time, too,” Arlan murmured, keeping a wary eye on their surroundings. The city had surrendered and been reported secure by the second infantry division, but one could never be too careful, as they’d both learned the hard way time and again. “More costly than anticipated, though.”

Graden shook his head. “Your father wanted haste and damn the consequences. He got what he wanted.” At the cost of a ship and seven hundred dead or wounded on our side alone. Three additional ships damaged. Bastard doesn’t think of the human cost of war sometimes. Star-Lord Camden hadn’t been on the battlefield for two generations, though. He’d forgotten what war was like. “At least he has so far. We’ll need to resupply and lick our wounds before we can hit Talrena.”

Arlan shook his head. “He won’t be happy to hear that, but I’ll make him understand.” He rubbed his temple. “Of course, it’s going to mean another twelve rounds over when I’m going to give up soldiering.”

“Fine, I’ll tell him, then. We’ll have a shouting match and he’ll try to demote me, then I’ll remind him that he can’t because our men won’t follow anyone else.” Graden smiled wryly. “Except for maybe you, but that would just end with a few more rounds, wouldn’t it?”

Two soldiers snapped to attention as they passed through the gates to the governor’s mansion, set on a hill above the sprawling city. The place was silent as a tomb. Graden waved the men back to their duties as he and Arlan continued on.

“Has he bothered to name succession?” Graden asked suddenly. “Your father. He’s getting on, isn’t he?”

“He’d like to,” Arlan said, brow creasing and lips thinning. “But he said that he won’t do it until he knows he won’t have to meddle with it again. ‘Once and never again,’ he told me when we discussed it last.” Arlan blew out a breath between his teeth and shook his head. “He won’t name succession until I’ve given up soldiering and I won’t give up service until there’s peace enough in the galaxy that we’re not fighting new battles every day. Once our borders are secure, I think maybe I could give it up. Of course, we’ll have to convince him that the borders are secure at some point.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s a vicious, never-ending cycle, Mike. He wants me to give up the fight but at the same time he keeps throwing us back into the fray.”

“It’s not as if House Harper can do the fighting for us out here,” Graden said. “Though I think we may have to ask for their assistance if Star-Lord Camden wants us to move immediately on our next target.”

“Johnathan Harper won’t agree to it.”

“Your father will just have to put his diplomatic skills to good use and damned fast, then, because I don’t know that we can take Talrena with our division in the shape it’s in.” We might pull it off, but not without getting thoroughly bloodied in the doing. It won’t be pretty, for us or the people of Talrena. “We’ll have to see. Maybe if I lay things out using small words and a lot of pictures, Star-Lord Camden will understand what I’m trying to tell him about the disposition of our troops.” Graden pushed open the doors to the grand entry hall to the governor’s palace and paused for a moment on the threshold. Banners hung tattered from the rafters and blood smeared the floor in some places.

“Damn,” Graden muttered. “I didn’t realize there was fighting in here, too.”

“It was everywhere,” Arlan said quietly, gaze scything across the scraped marble floors and ripped tapestries, toppled statuary. “There wasn’t a safe place to be found, not even here.”

Graden felt a brief tightness in his chest. “The governor here, did he have a wife? Children?”

“He surrendered before any harm came to them,” Arlan said quietly. “I’m sure Star-Lord Camden will allow them to retire somewhere sufficiently out of the way, I hope."

One can only hope. Graden nodded slowly.

Arlan clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s not all bad news, Mike. Some good came of all this death and destruction.”

“You mean beyond your father gaining three more worlds?” Graden asked, voice dripping with sarcasm. Our borders may be vaguely more secure with the taking of the trio, but can we maintain our grip in the long run? I’m not so sure. “Tell me what it is, Ar, because I sure as hell don’t see it.”

Arlan reached into a pocket and passed him a data stick. “Remember that derelict courier we came across on the edge of the system? I cracked the encryptions.”

Graden shook his head, taking the stick. “And you thought you’d never use that training ever again. What’d you find out?”

“Well, she was coming back from the Arm when she got chewed up, for one thing. Data’s about two years out of date.”

He stopped in mid-stride. “We don’t have anything from the Scandian Arm dating back to that period of the war.”

“No sir, not until we found that courier.”

That was a military courier. It would have been carrying information back to Command—and failing Command, it would have brought that information to the highest-ranking survivor of the Star Corps. Troop disposition, status reports, requests for aid, classified information—a goddamned treasure-trove for anyone that came across it. We’re lucky that the crew didn’t have time to wipe their drives before they died. Graden found himself short of breath, light-headed. His voice came as a hoarse whisper. “Did it…did it have anything about…?”

“I didn’t read much of anything, just enough to know what we were looking at.” Arlan gave him a long, hard look, then continued. “But I ran it through some search algorithms and flagged everything I could find about the Eagles, Mike. It was the least I could do. Other than, you know, finish up all the formalities so you can take a few hours to have a look at what’s on there.”

Graden had to take a few breaths before he could answer. “Thanks, Ar.”

“Anytime.” He squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “I hope it’s good news.”

So do I. Graden nodded, staring at the stick, then turned and walked away.

• • •

Fifty-second Battalion, designated Eagles, attacked on Talrena…estimate only ten to thirty survived assault…no word on disposition of those who escaped…list of dead appended…

Graden closed his eyes as tears blurred his vision. He felt a momentary flash of gratitude to Arlan for taking over today but at the same time felt anger begin to bubble up. It was irrational. His XO didn’t know exactly what was on the stick, just that there was information on the Eagles—on Laney.

He couldn’t have known. Graden pressed his fist to his brow, teeth grinding. “Damn. Damn!”

He suppressed the urge to fling the tablet across the room, though barely. Instead he pounded a fist against the edge of the table, splitting a knuckle. He growled quietly and slumped back in his chair, staring out the window. This room overlooked the gardens in the governor’s palace, brown and dead at the trailing edge of winter.

“I always thought she was probably dead,” he muttered to nobody. “But there was always just this little part of me that dared to hope that she wasn’t.” He pounded his fist against the table again.

Maybe there’s something about them escaping in a later report. That wasn’t the last file flagged, was it? He forced his attention back to the tablet. His hands felt like leaden weights as he scrolled through the files. It felt like an eternity before he found the next file Arlan had flagged for him.

Graden closed his eyes as he tapped the file open, heart feeling like a ball of ice in his chest. The Arm was supposed to be a fucking safe assignment. All the fighting was going on elsewhere. I got her that assignment. I should have taken it myself.

Why? So she could stay at Mialos and die with everyone else?

He barely stopped himself from punching the table again.

Words glowed at him on the tablet’s screen as he opened his eyes. His hands squeezed into fists, blood flowing freely from his split knuckle. He ignored it.

--have not located the bodies of twenty-three members of the fifty-second Eagles, including commanding officer Maj. E. E. Harris. Unconfirmed reports have at least twelve, including Harris, were captured by rogue officer Maj. Travis Delmarco and transported elsewhere in the Arm. We are working to confirm these reports and will advise ASAP.

“Bastards.” The word hissed out before he was conscious of saying it. Damn them all. Damn them.

He started searching for the next file. The news didn’t get any better from there.

Command, be advised we have confirmed that the following eighteen members of the fifty-second Eagles have been captured by the rebellious House Delmarco and are presumed deceased en route to Corvaris.

Her name was at the top of the list.

This time, he did throw the tablet against the wall.

He left it in shards on the floor as he stormed out of the room, down the corridor and the stairs, bellowing at the top of his lungs. “Commander Byers!”

Three shouts later, Arlan materialized, looking slightly overwrought himself. “General?”

“How long before we’re refueled?” Graden demanded.

Arlan rocked back against his heels, blinking rapidly. “I—what?”

“How long before we’re refueled?” Graden asked again, the words grating through a set jaw and gritted teeth. “When can we ship out for Talrena?”

“I was just explaining to Star-Lord Camden tha—”

“Forget it,” Graden snapped. “We leave as soon as we’re fueled. Recall everyone. Leave the wounded and a skeleton garrison here. They can catch up with us once the Star-Lord’s occupation forces arrive.” He started walking, heading toward the doors out of the godforsaken manse and into the weak winter sunshine. Arlan had to scramble to keep up.

“Mike, what’s wrong?”

“They killed her, Ar. That’s what’s wrong. Now they have to pay.”

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