#maybe its my poor comprehension skills but

[darabeatha]

/ I say I do not like lb6 yet I have 4 characters that appear in it as muses

[serafilms]

penacony trailblaze mission……. :o you’ve gagged me i fear

[tds-rb]

my eyes copletely skimmed over this im very sorry 💀

one on one, no help allowed (unless we count an extra person for belos to possess. NO TITANS, only just like. a normal fucking guy. maybe a grimwalker.) undyne gets her spears since they're her magic, belos gets his goop and nothing else, this is like after the sigil and before the boop. who wins in a battle to the death?

[melissa-titanium]

i probably look fucking crazy but. "kicked out of the nowhere" ln au .

SERA IF YOU SEE THIS HI MY FRIEND THANKUOU FOR LISTENING TO MY RAMBLE <3

both of them are like. late teenage years in this one. dw im not being weird about it i hate when aus do this shit for the sole purpose of making it romantic/weird. id say 15-16

six ; i think bcos shes taller and shit she couldn't exactly. wear the raincoat anymore. so somewhere along the line she and mono picked it apart and turned it into something else on her outfit -- pants? shirt? i dont know, but that's why her shorts are yellow. she kept her hair short like it is in canon because growing it out is uncomfortable and way too warm for her comfort. also sensory shit from having hair against the back of her neck. after leaving the nowhere she wears a big ass hoodie. it's more efficient than a raincoat because raincoats are LOUD AS HELL.!!!!!!! but still has a similar feeling to her raincoat AND has pockets :) crocs are. well. crocs. if you know me you know. i actually dont think they would be all that efficient when it comes to walking around but . idk. i think she would just carry them around for the purpose of walking around more safely if the ground is hard or something she's just as quiet as she usually is. over the years of living in the nowhere i think six has actually gone on to be the more physically adept of the two. we obviously know she's way faster than him, but his time in canon implies he's got more physical strength in his arms than her. i think this changes over time -- the reason she's so sickly & weak at the start of the game (not even fast enough to catch up to mono really!) is bcos of her lack of confidence and how long she spent in the cabin. the longer she stays with mono honing her skills she goes back to kicking ass. after a while, she can lift hammers with much more ease than mono can and she probably pokes fun at him for it. HOWEVER, he eventually gets that growth spurt which allows him to run faster thsn her (long legs. holy shit hes gangly) and he pokes fun at her for being short.

mono ; longer hair. he's got No Nutrients so his hair grows real slow so hes basically never cut it. he likes it longer bcos . opposite of six! he is Always Cold. like naturally cold but its still uncomfortable. SERA I SAID THIS 2 U ALSO but i think he's a walking relic. his only exposure to people, real people, is people on tvs. considering the sounds and general theme of all the stuff in the pale city/ads and stuff, i think its safe to say he only has reference of the real world from like. western 60's-90's. both him and six i imagine have severely poor language comprehension and grammar but if he DOES talk he probably talks like a kid trying to imitate their businessman father from the 70's. and as such; he dresses like his wardrobe is a time capsule. his outfits r still dark and cover his limbs but he looks like a total dork. fucking overalls and shit LOL. i don't have any ideas for face coverings at the moment but maybe he wears sunglasses & a face mask if he sees it necessary? i very genuinely feel like he'd be fine without face coverings. most people would think he's a cosplayer, seeing as he's kind of sickly looking (basement dweller appearance) with like eye contacts or some shit. idk

also funny thing id like 2 mention. their genders are Strange. when you live in the nowhere, "society" isnt exactly "pushing gender norms" onto you. chat what the fuck is a he/him? i only know Running From Monsters . in my previous notes for what they'd be like in the real world (seen below) i think this would be a very funny thing 2 explore . someone refers to six as maam and she completely ignores them (doesnt know what that means. six internal monologue voice All i am is Six so freaking call me Six) ((they're still little kids at heart i dont think they'd like to swear))

more notes here

[mydearestbeloved]

Hi excuse my poor reading comprehension but I think you mentioned somewhere about the plants that Mc generates in the dungeon purifies mana like they do carbon dioxide right. Do you think if like you follow that line of thinking could the mc’s power basically induces plants to over purify mana and potentially cause like maybe mana suffocation or poisoning to any enemies with the field? I’m sorry if this doesn’t make sense my brain just went plants—> oxygen—> kill? —> oxygen suffocation —> mana?—>??? (I mean plants can’t technically kill you this way but this is fantasy-ish)

Also don’t forget to take breaks and drink water so you don’t burn out

?System¿:

[Ask submitted.

Thank you for sending your ask, Reader!

System will now connect you to 《Author》]

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Thank you for sharing your thoughts! 💞

It's okay, I admit it's a lot to comprehend when we are playing with a mixed concept of science and magic. Your idea about mana suffocation and the broader implications of plant abilities in this fantasy setting is definitely worth exploring further. I���ll keep it in mind as I continue refining the world mechanics. So, let me explain a bit more on Trial Player!Reader's powers as of (27/11/24):

General Enchanted Flower Field

You’re absolutely on to something interesting with the idea of mana purification and its potential effects! I’ll admit I’m not 100% sure I grasp your full idea yet, but here’s what I can explain about how the Enchanted Flower Field works so far:

In Chapter 10, we first see the Enchanted Flower Field in action. Its mechanics are fairly straightforward:

Mana Contamination and Absorption:

Demons and undead release contaminated mana into the air naturally.

Butterflies feed on this contaminated mana but can’t directly use it.

2. Flowers as Purifiers:

The flowers absorb contaminated mana in the air and use the impurities as sustenance.

In turn, the flowers release purified mana through their blooms.

3. Energy Transfer to Butterflies:

Butterflies feed on the clean mana, using it as a substitute energy source (though not as effective as lifeforce) to keep working.

The butterflies also expel contaminated mana from their bodies near the flowers, enabling more purification.

The circumstances in the Demon Castle maximazed this method, because the inhabitants there are near endless and oozing contaminated mana, making a perfect cycle.

Mana Suffocation

Technically, the butterflies already weakens enemies by draining lifeforce. This could be considered a form of “suffocation,” as lifeforce is essential to the enemies’ survival.

However, since mana is a secondary source of energy for the butterflies (and less potent than lifeforce), they cannot drain mana from enemies’ bodies as effectively as lifeforce. This means that the suffocation effect is less pronounced.

Hallucination and Poison

Butterflies

The butterflies <Conversion> skill allows the butterflies to transform excess energy gained from feeding (via <Devour>) into various forms, such as boosts, healing, transferable mana, or other effects, via magic.

Hallucinogen is one such product of that converted energy. Hallucinogenic butterflies can cast <Illusory>, where they release the hallucinogen from their body onto the enemies. The hallucination the enemies experience while cloaked in the butterflies' specially-modified hallucinogen can be tailored to different types (auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, presence, proprioceptive, somatic, command, you named it) via magic by TP!Reader and the butterflies, since they are sentient enough.

While not inherently harmful (for example, when Red use <Auditory Illusory> to speak with Jinwoo), these hallucinations can become lethal depending on their application. For example, enemies trapped in hallucinations might harm themselves or become incapacitated, which could be considered a form of “poisoning", no?

Flowers in the Enchanted Field

In Chapter 19, we see that the flowers in the field can have specialized effects depending on their type. For example, Heather White (symbolizing luck and protection) was used to create a safe transport mechanism for victims of the Japanese island massacre. Luck played a part here too. Because of the situation, victims who managed to escape didn't fully realize that they became survivors because they were close to a patch of Heather White the moment they were attacked by the mutated ant.

This suggests that the field’s effects can be customized. If TP!Reader were to use a flower associated with toxicity (e.g., nightshade or foxglove), the Enchanted Flower Field could potentially release poisonous substances to harm enemies in its range.

Butterflies vs. Enchanted Flower Field

Despite their similarities, the butterflies and the Enchanted Flower Field have distinct strengths and weaknesses:

Area of Effect Range

While both are AOE-based, the butterflies can move to distant targets, whereas the flower field is stationary and confined to a specific area.

Distance Effectiveness

Butterflies grow weaker the farther they are from TP!Reader since they’re tied to her mana flow. The flowers, on the other hand, maintain their strength as they contain condensed mana.

Renewability

Butterflies regenerate naturally as long as TP!Reader is present, making them renewable. The flowers are exhaustible, as their mana depletes over time unless actively recharged.

Summoning

Butterflies can be summoned instantly and at no mana cost since they’re born naturally from TP!Reader’s mana flow. The flower field takes longer to summon and requires TP!Reader to actively focus her mana until the flowers are fully grown and self-sustaining.

Sentience

Butterflies are sentient and capable of handling complex mental tasks (e.g., managing individualized hallucinations). Flowers are less sentient, and their effects are more generalized, producing fixed effects based on their type (e.g., a specific hallucinogen).

_____

Thank you for your thoughtful questions and ideas—they’ve definitely sparked some creative thinking! And don’t worry, I’m staying hydrated and pacing myself to avoid burnout 😊.

[steelycunt]

hiii ridi, how are you!! i finished trc last night and i am still not over the fact that gansey didn’t end up actually dead??? like ngl i’m very disappointed, it just robbed us of the emotional impact that his sacrifice was supposed to have, and we spent 4 entire books awaiting his death and for what! ahh. and i say this as a gansey enjoyer! he’s such a little guy, like i truly appreciate him and his anxiety and his need to control the narrative and fix his friends’ lives and ! ugh. i also was just really surprised that he came back to life because nothing on tumblr (like primarily your blog hahah) had me under the impression that he wouldn’t actually die?? i was waiting for the “get him off the road, he’s not an animal” bit because i knew it was coming and then. two pages later. well… anyway yeah, would love to hear your thoughts on all this <333

hi darling im not too bad!! how are you!! agh yes the not-death...to be honest i dont remember it particularly bothering me but i can definitely see it on both sides!! and i dont remember if i knew whether he lived or not when i read it lol..but i can definitely see what you mean like we spend four books structuring the story around this supposed fated ending and he doesnt stay dead for particularly long. i would not have minded if hed died and stayed dead!! as a fellow gansey enjoyer i mean the book ends anyway so its not like as gansey enjoyers we'd be deprived of anything. i suppose from the other side you can look at his obsession with glendower over the series and this quests he feels hes fated to complete and the way he feels his life is owed to answering this question after it was saved and say that the real question of the series is what ganseys life looks like if you remove that element from it. like theres that whole question of what lies on the other side of the glendower quest for him, what happens if he finds him or does not, because it is this thing orchestrating his life and trapping him in this perceived purpose that he literally has to die to get out of and actually maybe that has been the point of his journey all along (cringe way of putting it but its 11.30pm here and im an idiot)...his sense of being caught up in this bigger thing and being duty bound to live out a certain fate as if his life almost does not belong to him. and then he dies and that is that life ending and when he comes back his life is his again....glendower was dead and gansey kind of wanted to live etc...not saying this is a correct reading or one is more right than the other im sure there are people who have given this story more thought than i reading this and shaking their heads at my stupidity and poor comprehension skills...but i read these books a few years ago to be fair to me....but yeah!! both are valid imo i can see why someone would feel a bit cheated by that ending but i can also see how it works : ^ )

[transfemlogan]

There is a special gift that fanders possess and that gift is having a whole fucking plate of a relatively decent explanation on something,,,AND THEN MISSING THE WHOLR POINT.

Janus, at first, he was "introduced" to be villainous and bad, but when an explanation of things on why Janus does the things that he does is given to them, it flew out of every fanders ear and the only thing that stuck was that one minor interaction between him and virgil.

And that was it, that was when he was solidified to exist only for the purpose of shitty virgil angst in which Virgil was some poor pathetic damsel in distress in the hands of Janus and how the other sides (mainly Roman) had to swoop in and rescue him.

And then svs can out and that episode is still such a favourite of mine cause it presented Janus in such an amazing way on what he thinks, what his purpose is, why he does his thing, and above all on how DEEPLY he cares about Thomas to just be happy or at the very least, satisfied.

AND AGAIN THIS GOD FORSAKEN FANDOM BOILED DOWN THE WHOLE EPISODE TO "j,,,ja,nus,,,,manipu,,,late ro,,,roman,,,,🥺🥺"

YEHA NO SHIT! THAT'S HIS PURPOSE! HIS JOB! HIS ROLE! MAYBE IT'S NOT AND IDEAL ROLE BUT SURELY IT'S SOMETHING THAT LETS US KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY OF CHARACTER HE IS AND WHAT HIS MORALS ARE WHEN IT COMES TO THOMAS!

The parallels to pre-aa virgil and janus are so directly there yet everyone in this fandom is the equivalent of when velma losses her glasses and is trying to find then but instead keeps tossing it even further and further away.

Anyways thats my 2 cents

4 REAL . ur point on svs is so real. janus' character being EXPLAINED BY JANUS on why he acts the way he does being tossed out bcuz "well hes mean to roman!" (which is how the fans treat. all the characters. Logan is bad because he's mean to Patton. Patton is bad because he's mean to Remus. Janus is bad because he's mean to Virgil. Like theres no nuance or thought going into anything.)

like for the love of god why do none of you have any sort of comprehension skills. its not even comprehension skills its just LISTENING skills. HE EXPLAINS IT. WHY ARE YOU ALL STILL INSANE.

[rin-and-jade]

How does someone know the difference between being a system or just having a really fluid/unstable personality/identity? like In bpd or in any way

In the eyes of the inexperienced, this really is a tough job to know wether a person is a system, or just having an unstable foundation of self (bpd) but thankfully for you, I know how. As a system myself who is a bpd holder, with another friend i have with bpd itself,, i will give you this comprehensively detailed (but compacted) answer:

Am i a system?:

There are some highlights that shows someone is one by having a plethora amount of dissociative symptoms, constant shift in identity, unexplainable memory gaps, people seeing them as inconsistent within various aspects (likes and dislikes, etc), places felt unfamiliar, caught yourself having different accents and handwritings and even walking, feels like you are not control in your body, alters as voices that are consistent with it’s own opinions and preferences.

Do i have bpd?:

While it looks similar when compared by a system, there are some different features it represents itself by unable to be consistent due to not having any genuine value in preference and etc, constantly influenced by other people, have episodes of identity crisis, needing comfort from people, constantly unhappy with its current self, devalues itself thinking it is unworthy of any kindness, fear connections, have a high degree of distrust, lives up to the motto: “i am the problem”, highly likely being passive aggressive and isolating due to no healthy social skills, black and white thinking, can have episodes of “im the best”. The similarities that it can have from systems can be seen by some form of dissociation and or anger issues to cope as well as negative voices.

Do i have both?!:

You absolutely can and thats the least wanted option i could wish for yet still unlucky enough to draw this lottery.. anyway, this is a bonus answer. Be it a holder (like me, which means no one else is affected and im jealous af) or in the genes (the collective is affected) i doubt it has any difference so from my perspective, it can look as having dissociative symptoms as well as cognitive dissonance, obviously have alters, more likely to split due to the nature of bpd’s constant distress and questioning (yeah its a thing, thats me right there), also a general sense of distrust especially due to severe trauma, obsessive with Favorite Person, tend to always rely on someone in filling their needs or helped due to 0 independence (it might be different for others, maybe the opposite by trying to be super self sufficient), still have identity confusion, poor memory alongside with gaps. Basically overlaps the two as the general idea but i did some examples, its not the whole list because its way too many..

Nonetheless, this might still be helpful to you as i believe,, this is my own view of what is a system and or bpd so im still reccomending you to do extra research, and goodluck in doing so! (Im sorry for not writing the whole thing)

- j

[im-a-chunky-potato]

1 - with siglai bc 1am ramblings are very nikolai imo

Ooh you're so right for this! I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this, the pacing is a bit of a mess, but enjoy!

Sigma sighed and looked around the street they were in. When he was told by Nikolai they were doing a simple mission to gather information, he knew this couldn't end well.

What he didn't expect was that Nikolai would end up being so loud and extravagant that they couldn't go anywhere near their targets without being suspicious.

Nikolai giggled. "Isn't this fun Sigma?"

Sigma glanced at his watch. "It's nearly 1:00! This could've been done hours ago if you would stop and be normal for once. Why did Fyodor even trust you to do this?"

For a moment, it seemed like Nikolai was genuinely hurt by this statement, but maybe he just imagined it. After all, Nikolai immediately put on a wide grin and pretended nothing happened.

"Oh, did I not tell you? Poor Fedya seems to have caught a nasty cold. For a rat he does sure have a poor immune system... And as his best friend I must take on his responsibilities!"

Sigma paused and considered his words. "Nikolai... did he even ask you to do this?"

Nikolai smirked. "Thats irrelevant. He mentioned that this person had valuable information, and I decided that I could help him!"

Sigma gaped his mouth open. "Did I even need to come here in the first place?"

Nikolai smiled. "Yes! Your ability will make this so much easier."

It felt like Sigma had been stabbed in his heart. Of course his ability is the only thing that matters. Of course he's being manipulated. What did he expect?

And yet he wanted to be seen as more than his ability. For once he wanted to be seen as human, even if he's not. Even if he's just manifested from the book.

Somewhere he could hear a clock strike one, but he could barely tell. His mind was like a birdcage, and now he was stuck inside.

Sigma's eyes were soon glazed over and Nikolai realized something was wrong.

It was only then he realized the consequences of his words. His face fell into a small frown, and he seemed like he truly wanted to apologize. But he was fighting against himself. Would he really let his mask slip like that?

Nikolai's eyes glanced carefully at Sigma, like he was afraid that he would shatter at any moment. Suddenly Nikolai got an idea. "Alright, it's time for a quiz!"

Sigma's eyes focused on Nikolai's. He opened his mouth slightly, but it was like he was reaching for words that he couldnt grasp. Nikolai took this as a chance to continue.

"Question 1! What makes you amazing?"

Sigma knew the answer to this. "It's my abilty" He said quietly.

Nikolai sighed. "That is incorrect my dear friend. The answer is everything!"

Sigma widened his eyes. How could that be true?

Nikolai smiled. "Yes, it's true! You're quite admirable and hardworking too. The people are undeserving of you."

A small smile appeared on Sigma's face. He had never heard praise like this before.

Nikolai saw this face, and it was like a switch had been flipped in his head. Immediately his eyes softened and a more genuine look appeared on his face.

"You know, you're like a peacock."

Sigma tilted his head curiously. "Why is that?"

"Well people only look at your feathers. But perhaps they should be appreciating the bird as a whole" Nikolai's face turned a rosy red.

Sigma was shocked by this. He had never seen Nikolai anywhere close to blushing before, and as a matter of fact, Nikolai had never even acted this way! Why was he admitting this like it was a secret, like it was something he held close to his heart?

Nikolai stared at him expectantly before sighing in dissapointment. "Do i really need to spell it out for you? Well I guess you really have the comprehension skills of a 3 year old" He said teasingly.

"You're amazing. As dazzling as a bird who spreads its wings and flies into the sky."

Now it was Sigma's turn to blush. "This is a cruel joke to play if you're messing with me, Nikolai" His heart was beating out of his chest though. He hoped on his life that he meant what he said.

Nikolai stayed silent for a moment before responding. "No, I'm not." He gently took off his eye cover and looked at Sigma. His eyes reflected the moonlight, and were full of affection.

Sigma froze. This couldn't be happening. How on earth could he be looked at like this?

But he wanted to reach out to Nikolai. He wanted to be together. He wanted to see Nikolai under the mask he wears everyday.

So they embraced under the moon, a new world opening up for the both of them. Perhaps they hold the keys to each others cages, perhaps in each other they can soar gloriously into the sky.

[missinginaction01]

I can't even tell you what I lost three years ago, my mind, my heart, the ability to pray and seek out guidance. In addition to that, this past campaign year in the US was painful for some reason. I feel as though I cried tears and grieved for the whole country. The aftermath is that my brain feels numb.

My ears don't hear the same, my heart doesn't feel that same, my brain doesn't comprehend in the same way, words don't form in my mouth in the same way, and my body is tired all the time.

Am I sick? Maybe, but I couldn't tell you what's wrong.

It's a compliment when you get the wake up call to stop exploring the depths of your mind and your heart, and be engaged in life, but there is a relearning process to things.

I grew up with a very clear voice of reason. God so to speak. Its a compliment to be able to honor the Sabbath and have a very personal relationship with God like that. To be able to grieve when you need to and articulate your needs when they arise. To be able to pray and seek out the guidance you need.

Maybe its age, I turned 30 years old last year, and it felt like everyone lived they're entire lives over mine during my last year of my 20's. Constant mental chaos, and night terrors, and just a lack of being able to comprehend life with the same quickness I have in the past.

Margret Atwood has some great texts out there that help with all the burning questions that come up about life, and comics are good every now and then too.

But grief stricken is what I've been for a while now.

Its a rude awakening, I think, for any Black American person or person of African American descent to wake one morning and realize that you lack motor skills, and you know you're habits are slipping into a space where you are surrounded by the white noise of everything that you can't say. To be black and illiterate or have poor vision or comprehension puts you in a bad spot. To be a black person who cannot regulate there emotions or someone who is quick anger is bad in my experience. Being anything other than someone who can calmy and correctly respond to any type of controversy or questioning is not ideal. So it's important to make the effort to keep up those good habits even when there's not a dire need for them.

I keep telling myself that one day I'll get my life back on track, but for now I just have to take it a day at time.

[vtori73]

Why do I feel like sooo many people lately have been utilizing poor reading comprehension skills. Like... with some of the media I like, I have felt like people aren't doing actual fair thorough analysis of the entire work of art and either only take in part of the story and judge it by those standards or don't consider the entire work has a specific angle it's going at so judging it by the standards of other art like it doesn't exactly make sense/work out.

I'm being vague but an example of this would be many fans and non-fans (but enjoyers of shonen) of Ju.jutsu Ka.isen. A decent amount have been complaining &/or criticizing it for exhibiting misogyny (like every other shonen) and while I'm not going to say it's the best most feminist thing ever what I WILL say is that at best I believe JJK is more neutral than anything else.

People talk about it for one thing because a decent amount of girls/women have died and while they have a decent amount of male characters too it's not seen as even because there aren't as many girl/woman characters and they tend to be connected to men. My main critique of this is that for 1 thing I do think the genre needs to be taken into consideration and since it's a shonen it just isn't going to have as many woman characters as men because it IS inherently supposed to focus on boys. We can talk about how gender conventions like this are antiquated and such but not only isn't this type of criticism unique to JJK OR even Japan at the end of the day the creator is subject to follow what editors say & want to see so whether or not the amount of woman was intentional we wouldn't know 100% considering mangaka don't actually have 100% control over their work. And one thing that I think helps this argument is that in the 1st episode of season 2 we actually get more screen time/new content of two girl characters during this specific arc and helps establish their characters more versus the manga AND the actual creator of the series helped work on this new season.

Another thing I want to point out is that JJK is one of the few that doesn't actually sexualize its characters compared to other shonen. It's something most shonen fans expect to see because shonen is made for boys (straight boys) in mind so fan service is kind of normal (not saying it okay or something just what is expected) and while maybe one or two characters are sexualized within JJ.K that doesn't exactly take away from it because this happens very rarely and out of 1/2 of the fan service like scenes its more so is used to establish one specific character as more "sexual" then others (what I'm basically saying is it isn't just there to be fan service but to establish some personality/traits of a specific character). And, I shouldn't have to point it out but one instance shouldn't automatically tarnish a piece of media just because of its existence.

My next point is that what people don't take into account is JJ.K isn't a cheery happy go lucky piece of media or shonen that relies on the power of friendship and hope and power alone it's much more realistic in its portrayal of kids being foisted into dangerous positions so it would be... odd and out of place for the woman characters to barely die if there are few to begin with and again, the point of the story IS the tragedy of it all, of what being a sorcerer entails, of what being a kid with cursed energy in this world entails and how much it ends up effecting you into adulthood.

The series also has established that sexism is a THING within its world on more than one occasion and even one of the more major characters has a literal arc dedicated to a woman character who takes revenge on her abusive patriarchal family. Some who watch/read JJ.K dismiss this however as being a one time thing and shouldn't speak for the whole work but I think that does a HUGE disservice and isn't actually fair to do AT ALL. This arc makes it a point to follow a girl character who wanted more from her life than to be in service of the men in her family AND wanted that for her sister and decided to go off on her own to train and become stronger to become the head of the family despite being born a non-sorcerer/lack of cursed energy & continued harassment & meddling of her family who eventually even attempt to MURDER her and her sister and succeed but was saved by her sister who in turn dies instead who makes a promise to her to destroy their clan in which she not only fulfills but fulfills EASILY and ends up becoming on of the most powerful characters in the stories world... and this all happens in a SHONEN, a piece of media that is meant to focus and cater specifically TOO BOYS. The existence of this character and her eventual arc is a big deal regardless of its length because at the end of the day it is treated seriously and as important to the story and characters like this are important for young people, especially boys, to see. Not to mention she also at some point in the story is horribly scarred and these scars don't go away, some could argue against it (extreme violence against women is bad) but I honestly think it refreshing & progressive to see a woman character who ACTUALLY ends up taking damage from a fight and doesn't look "conventionally" attractive anymore, they even make a point of pointing this out with a specific sexist character she was up against who says she no longer has her looks anymore (who she ends up defeating and killing).

There is even a scene in which this character is frustrated because she isn't able to reach her full potential (yet) and is helped by a random sumo wrestler enthusiast who communicates through a sumo match with her about what exactly is going on. To anyone unaware of the culture this doesn't seem like a big deal but traditionally women aren't allowed in the ring so this further shows the story going against and spitting on "tradition," within the culture of having this guy who is big into sumo invite her to a match and afterwards Maki is able to reach her full potential and finally beat the sexist character. I also find this refreshing and think it's kind of a big deal that we see two random sort-of-powerful-but-more-so average men who make it a point to help HER, a teen girl, to become EVEN more powerful, to surpass them, basically, and arent in anyway bothered or emasculated by this. We don't see a lot of men just supporting powerful girls/women characters and help them to become even stronger and I think that's an important thing for boys to see.

I believe I had a bit more arguing to do for this whole thing BUT I spent way too much time on the above and now I can't think of anything else, lol. So, maybe I'll come back to this to argue more but for now this is it. The only thing I do remember that I wanted to add was that again I do see JJ.K as more neutral because I DO have some complaints and mainly that is with one dynamic in the story/specific character because so far we have only gotten two extremely strong woman characters and one of them was killed off and ALSO had very little screen time. I WOULD like to see more powerful women who match the men within the story BUT considering it's almost over (the manga) and that again, it's a shonen, so I doubt that is going to happen BUT despite that I still do have positive feelings for JJ.K as a whole and think it is decent and disagree with people who consider is sexist and especially lump it in with most other major shonen.

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One thing I wanted to add but wasn't sure where, I also think it's... weird/odd that despite all these fans of anime who regularly partake in media that is culturally different and know this and learn a bit from it ALSO don't bother with ever questioning their thought process & critiques on the media. Or basically, I feel westerners don't bother to ever think that MAYBE there is more than one way to view something and that THERE perceptions and what they see/deem as good or progressive isn't going to 100% be the same as what is actually seen as good and progressive there.

[hairtusk]

hiii could you elaborate on your thoughts re Sylvia plath’s poetry and antisemitism? or don’t if you don’t feel like it up to you

Hi anon, thanks for the question. I'll definitely elaborate, because most people blindly read on social media that Plath is some 'rabid antisemite' (I'm quoting directly from a 2020 article written by a university student about 'problematic authors' that doesn't feature a single quotation or source to backup its astonishing claims) and accept it as gospel with no further reading, and I'd like to challenge that conception.

Note: I am both a Jewish woman and an enormous admirer of Plath. This is likely the perspective from which I'll be answering. However, that doesn't mean I can't give criticism where it is due, and also, doesn't mean I can speak for all Jews. I will be talking about my personal feelings towards antisemitism.

The main reason that Plath is often accused on antisemitism is due to the Holocaust imagery found in some of her poems (namely those found in the posthumous collection 'Ariel', like Daddy or Lady Lazarus). The imagery is graphic and gutwrenching. This is, however, not the reason that people take issue with her: she is largely criticised for adopting a Jewish 'I' in her poetry, and appropriating an experience for which she has not, and could never, experience. Because Plath is not Jewish, critics say, her writing is inauthentic, and therefore offensive and antisemetic in nature.

The only people who should be able to write about the Holocaust in this manner, they say, are actual survivors (literary critic George Steiner once noted: 'does any writer, does any human being other than an actual survivor, have the right to put on this death rig?'). The argument at hand here, then, is about the use of the 'I' in poetry; if we should only write from first-hand experience, and avoid writing about topics that we have not oursleves encountered, survived, etc.

However, it is incredibly reductive to view Plath's poetry as appropriating the Jewish identity for herself just because the poem has a Jewish speaker, a Jewish 'I'. While 'Daddy' is often interpreted in online spaces as a poem about paternal abuse, it is also very easy to interpret the poem as a narrative about the relationship between European fascism and its victims, explored through the metaphor of the father/daughter relationship. Similarly, Lady Lazarus can be read as a metaphor for Europe in the 20th century, and particularly in the 1940s. It shows incredibly poor comprehension skills to automatically assume that because a poem has a speaker, that speaker is the poet - and that, therefore, if the identity of the speaker and the poet don't align, the poet is appropriating and causing offence.

Additionally, even if Plath were directly and overtly taking on the identity of a Holocaust survivor in her poems (which I would say she isn't), I don't believe that that in itself is antisemetic. Plath's poetry was interested in the central political concern of her generation: that of nuclear war. The idea of a mass-murder of millions of citizens in one fell swoop has obvious links to the Holocaust: Elie Weisel, a Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor, wrote of the topic that '...once upon a time it happened to my people, and now it happens to all people. And suddenly I said to myself, maybe the whole world, strangely, has turned Jewish.' Plath's poem 'Mary's Song', also widely criticised, makes this direct comparison between the European Holocaust, and potential nuclear Holocaust. Personally, I think this is a very apt connection, and I do not think at all that connecting the two in literature should brand a person as an antisemite.

One could present the argument, as Cynthia Ozick did, that 'Jews are not metaphors - not for poets, not for novelists...' and I certainly believe that this is a genuine concern. However, it doesn't take into account the link between history and subjectivity - i.e., which events enter the public conscience on a mass scale. Where Plath's poems mention the Holocaust (which is, might I add, infrequently) the graphic nature, I believe, allows a contemporary reader to cut through the doublespeak and the softened language that is often used to describe the Holocaust in a way that does not disgust, OR arouse anger. While Plath is vivid in her descriptions, she does so in a way that provokes anger in the reader towards the Nazi regime. It is, in many ways, incredibly sympathtic to Holocaust victims, despite the stark nature of the images. The 'Jewish metaphor' allows space to accurately describe the horrors of the Holocaust, and to incorporate other political fears. It is impossible to 'own' history in a way that makes even the mention of it by the Other forbidden. Writing off topics in literature in this way is limiting in the upmost degree.

I could write reams and reams more on this topic, but I think I've said enough for now (I need to get back to actually doing my uni work on this topic). You're free to disagree with me, but I think, for the reasons I've mentioned above and more, that calling Sylvia Plath antisemetic to be genuinely digusting and anti-intellectual.

[nanowrimo]

Contentedly Creating Comprehensive Characters

We all get stuck on our characters eventually, but maybe all we need is a fresh reminder on how to make those iconic characters. Luckily, writer Cyra Blue has a guide for how to create in-depth characters:

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you have a story (and by extension, some characters) mucking about in your brain. But how to make your forgotten prince stand out from among the many, many others of his kind, shape your villain into something more than a cardboard cutout of Jafar, or give that side character a personality other than “quirky alchemist”? I’ll give you a hint: it’s going to take some planning.

Put away your pitchforks, impulse writers. As a “pantser” myself, I know the urge to spit out your story without really thinking is great, but often comes at the cost of poor storytelling, confusing plot points, and bland characters. A bit of planning will help with that (and might even end up being fun!).

So, characters. Step one is to figure out what the character is doing in the story. Stop styling their spiky black emo hair for a second and pay attention, this is the most important part. In Plato’s Poetics (which is an excellent guide to writing tragedy, by the way), he emphasizes that the plot is the most important part of the story, and characters are intertwined in that, meant to carry the plot to its completion. Therefore, your characters must have a place somewhere in the plot, otherwise, well… they don’t matter. In creating characters for a story, ask yourself: 

“What impact does this character have on this story, and how do they help move it along?” 

If your adorable kitty girl doesn’t really do much for the gritty fantasy murder you’re writing, it’s time to make some cuts.

Now that you know what your character is doing with their life, you need to give them a personality. The easiest way to go about it is to pick up your cousin and drop them into the story without warning. Seriously. In my experience, I find the character creation process becomes much simpler if you have a good base to start off of. I can’t tell you how many times my brother has made it into my stories, whether he’s the main character or some weirdo walking down the street. The trick is, though, you don’t want to put the person in exactly as they are, especially if they’re going to be reading your story. Rather, you should take them as a base, stripping away all the identifying features until you get to their bones… that is, their personality. From there, you can add details until your new character is fully formed.

Think of it like casting roles in a play: you want the best possible person to play each part. For example, say your best friend is usually cheerful, but works hard to achieve their goals and is motivated to be better by their failures. You can very easily turn that personality into a character just by adding the necessary details, and all of a sudden you have the perfect character type for that extremely important old woman who raises the definitely-not-prince.

Alright, now we get to the part everybody likes: the details. My favorite way to do this is to fill out a character sheet, a myriad of which you can find with a simple Google search. There, you can finally give them their emo hair and favorite food, as well as a backstory, a family, goals, weaknesses, epic karate skills, and whatever else you desire. Looking for more help with their personality? Take a Myers-Briggs personality test as your character to get a feel for how their mind works.

And that’s it! If you follow these steps, you should end up with a good idea of who your character is and what role they play. Now, get out there and try it for yourself. Best of luck to all of you! 

Cyra Blue is currently a student at Thomas Aquinas College, where she is pursuing a degree in the Liberal Arts, which should explain the Plato reference. She does not have any currently published works, but is simultaneously working on an anthology detective series and a fantasy novel that may or may not involve a cat girl. In her free time, she enjoys acting in musicals, fooling around with art supplies, and keeping up with way too many cartoons. You can follow her on Instagram @ceruleancyra.

Top Photo by Alice Dietrich on Unsplash  

[arcticdementor]

The University of California system is getting rid of its SAT/ACT requirement. More will follow.

There’s a lot to say. First, we must distinguish between two types of tests, or really two types of testing. When people say “standardized tests,” they think of the SAT, but they also think of state-mandated exams (usually bought, at great taxpayer expense, from Pearson and other for-profit companies) that are designed to serve as assessments of public K-12 schools, of aggregates and averages of students. The SAT, ACT, GRE, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT, and similar tests are oriented towards individual ability or aptitude; they exist to show prerequisite skills to admissions officers. (And, in one of the most essential purposes of college admissions, to employers, who are restricted in the types of testing they can perform thanks to Griggs v Duke Power Co.) Sure, sometimes researchers will use SAT data to reflect on, for example, the fact that there’s no underlying educational justification for higher graduation rates1, but SATs are really about the individual. State K-12 testing is about cities and districts, and exists to provide (typically dubious) justification for changes to education policy2. SATs and similar help admissions officers sort students for spots in undergraduate and graduate programs. This post is about those predictive entrance tests like the SAT.

Liberals repeat several types of myths about the SAT/ACT with such utter confidence and repetition that they’ve become a kind of holy writ. But myths they are.

1. SATs/ACTs don’t predict college success. They do, indeed. This one is clung to so desperately by liberals that you’d think there was some sort of compelling empirical basis to believe this. There isn’t. There never has been. They’re making it up. They want it to be true, and so they believe it to be true.

…

2. The SATs only tell you how well a student takes the SAT. This is perhaps a corollary to 1., and is equally wrong. They tell us what they were designed to tell us: how well students are likely to perform in college. But the SATs tell us about much more than college success. Let me run this graphic again.

…

3. SATs just replicate the income distribution. No. Again, asserted with utter confidence by liberals despite overwhelming evidence that this is not true. I believe that this research represents the largest publicly-available sample of SAT scores and income information, with an n of almost 150,000, and the observed correlation between family income and SAT score is .25. This is not nothing. It is a meaningful predictor. But it means that the large majority of the variance in SAT scores is not explainable by income information. A correlation of .25 means that there are vast numbers of lower-income students outperforming higher-income students. Other analyses find similar correlations. If SAT critics wanted to say that “there is a relatively small but meaningful correlation between family income and SAT scores and we should talk about that,” fair game. But that’s not how they talk. The routinely make far stronger claims than that in an effort to dismiss these tests all together, such as here by Yale’s Paul Bloom. (Whose work I generally like.) It’s just not that hard to correlate two variables together, guys. I don’t know why you wouldn’t ever ask yourselves “is this thing I constantly assert as absolute fact actually true?” Well, maybe I do.

In general, progressive and left types routinely overstate the power of the relationship between family wealth and academic performance on all manner of educational outcomes. The political logic is obvious: if you generally want to redistribute money (as I do) then the claim that educational problems are really economic problems provides ammo for your position. But the fact that there is a generic socioeconomic effect does not mean that giving people money will improve their educational outcomes very much, particularly if richer people are actually mildly but consistently better at school than poorer for sorting reasons that are not the direct product of differences in income. That is, what correlation does exist between SES and academic indicators might simply be the metrics accurately measuring the constructs they were designed to measure.

And throwing money at our educational problems, while noble in intent, hasn’t worked. (People react violently to this, but for example poorer and Blacker public schools receive significantly higher per-pupil funding than richer and whiter schools, which should not be a surprise given that the policy apparatus has been shoveling money at the racial performance gap for 40 years.) All manner of major interventions in student socioeconomic status, including adoption into dramatically different home and family conditions, have failed to produce the benefits you’d expect if academic outcomes were a simple function of money. I believe in redistribution as a way to ameliorate the consequences of poor academic performance. There is no reason to think that redistribution will ameliorate poor academic performance itself.

5. SATs are easily gamed with expensive tutoring. They are not. This one is perhaps less empirically certain than the prior two and on which I’m most amenable to counterargument, but the preponderance of the evidence seems clear to me in saying that the benefits of tutoring/coaching for these tests are vastly overstated. Again, a simplistic proffered explanation for a troublesome set of facts that then implies simplistic solutions that would not work.

6. Going test optional increases racial diversity. This one, I think, must be called scientifically unsettled. However both Sweitzer, Blalock, and Sharma and Belasco, Rosinger, and Hearn find no appreciable increase in racial diversity after universities go test-optional. “Holistic” application criteria like admissions essays almost certainly benefit richer students anyway. What’s more, we have to ask ourselves what “diversity” really means in this context. Private colleges and universities keep the relevant data close to the vest, for obvious reasons, but it’s widely believed that many elite schools satisfy their internal diversity goals for Black students by aggressively pursuing wealthy Kenyan and Nigerian international students, whose parents have the means to be the kind of reliable donors that such schools rely on so heavily. I’m not aware of a really comprehensive study that examines this issue, and it would be hard to pull off, but the relevant question is “do various policies intended to improve diversity on campus actually increase the enrollment of American-born descendants of African slaves?” I can’t say, but you can guess where my suspicions lie.

…

All of that is prologue to the bigger point: the controversy over college entrance examinations stems not from the examinations themselves, but from the fact that they reveal profound differences in human capital that make progressives uncomfortable. The SATs don’t create inequality. They reveal inequality.

…

The racial achievement/performance gap is a curious thing even in the context of an American political discourse that seems to get more bizarre by the day. That the gap exists is, on balance, not controversial. Gaps in performance are observed on essentially every measured academic metric, though the size of the effects vary from context to context, and the general distribution is Asian American students at the top, white students next, then Hispanic, then Black. The Black-white gap in particular has shrunk from the era of (explicitly) segregated schools but progress has not been consistent or linear. Most people in academia and politics admit it exists: prominent Black politicians like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris reference it, every major think tank and foundation operating in the educational space identifies it as a major priority, and the NAACP used to address if often, though their Education and Education Strategy pages have recently disappeared so it’s hard to know where they stand now. These things are faddish but once upon a time every other dissertation written by someone getting a PhD in Education was about the gap. We can observe it even outside of reference to controversial tests, such as noting that the white high school graduation rate is 10% higher than that for Black students. The achievement gap is a thing.

And yet I also find a rapidly-congealing social prohibition against talking about these gaps in progressive spaces. If you refer to a racial achievement gap in a lot of liberal or left contexts now, you’ll find that people clam up fast and get visibly uncomfortable, even if you take pains to point out that an academic achievement gap does not imply an academic potential gap. People just don’t want to acknowledge that gaps exist at all; our racial discourse appears to have become such a blunt instrument that the acknowledgement of racial difference is controversial even when you preface discussion with the belief (that I hold) that the gap is the product of innumerable environmental and sociocultural factors rather than genetics or other inherent differences. Simply saying “Black students consistently score lower on tests like the SATs, have lower average GPAs, and have worse metrics on ancillary concerns like truancy” - again, Barack Obama’s position, Kamala Harris’s position, Cory Booker’s position - is enough for people to start launching into harangues about the inherent violence of those comparisons. People just do not want to talk about this stuff.

…

Those concerns with group differences, at least, have some sort of basic political logic and are amenable to complaints that they are the product of systemic inequality. (They are, but not the inequalities that people think, and again the SAT gap is a result of systemic inequality, not a cause of systemic inequality.) More disturbing to me is the rise of resistance within academia to the notion of inequalities between individuals. When I was in grad school more than a half-decade ago, I observed with some considerable unhappiness that it had become increasingly socially unacceptable to speak of some students as simply better students than others, as being more talented, harder working, or more prepared. All of this was seen as inegalitarian and, eventually, as “white supremacist” even if every student being compared in a given context was white. There were many instructors back then who bragged about giving all students As, etc., and I must assume this practice has only grown over time. In the humanities and social sciences especially there is a growing movement to reject assessment, including grading - the means through which we sort better students from worse - as the hand of illegitimate power that “does violence” to the students who voluntarily attend college.

…

Of course, that complicity in the neoliberal machine is not some recent injustice; it is the very reason that colleges and universities are funded by our society at all. If this trend continues, not just eliminating SAT requirements or increasingly refusing to hierarchize students with grades but in rejecting the entire sorting function of the university, academia will collapse. Wealthy parents aren’t paying Harvard to enrich their children in the humanistic sense. They’re paying Harvard to act as a marker of their child’s superiority in the labor market and the social hierarchy. Employers value college because it provides at least some meaningful information about who will succeed as a worker; remove that function and the financial justification for a hideously expensive system dies. I would love if education dropped its association with meritocracy, but that cannot occur within our current system. The professors who self-aggrandize through their rejection of their hierarchizing function, if successful, would cause the doom of the modern university. (These tenured radicals, of course, never are so moved by the inherent inequities of academia that they quit the profession.)

Today, it is somehow controversial to say “some people are smarter than others,” a reflection of one of the simple brute realities of human life and something that has been accepted as true for thousands of years.

Here is the essence of it: hierarchies of relative academic performance are remarkably stable throughout life, due to differences in inherent or intrinsic academic ability of whatever origin, and the SATs and similar mechanisms reveal those differences in a way that liberal America is increasingly unable to accept. This is the source of all of this angst, not the technical details of whether a test is fair or valid or just, but a liberal intelligentsia that is incapable of honestly confronting the fact that different human beings have fundamentally different intrinsic abilities. I believe in political equality, social equality, equality of rights, equality of dignity, equality of protection under the law. But the notion that all people are equally talented, in academics or anything else, is an absurdity, and as much as people will rush to deny intrinsic difference, I suspect that pretty much everybody knows that they are real. When you were a child you casually assumed that some of your classmates were naturally better at school than others, and you did because it was true.

This is the conversation that I tried, and failed, to force with my book: left-of-center political movements, from center-left to radically socialist, cannot achieve the goal of the greater good for everyone, including greater political and economic equality, while pretending that we believe in equality of human ability. The only way to intelligently address various social, economic, and political equalities related to differences in human potential is to acknowledge that those differences exist. The current rending of garments regarding inequalities within our education system has led to certifiably bizarre situations like the movement, currently gathering steam, to teach math as if it is as subjective as literature or art. But this won’t make Black kids or poor kids or girls or anyone else actually better at math. And if the universities really give up their function of creating an academic hierarchy for political reasons, employers will find new systems that do that, or a lot of people will get hired and quickly fired for not being competent. This is not an intelligent policy approach. Getting rid of the SATs won’t make unprepared kids prepared. It won’t make naturally untalented students naturally talented. It won’t make kids who aren’t smart into smart kids. All it will do is hide the reality of those unpleasant inequalities.

[paper-cloud]

i. the crushing weight of what happens next

part of "(there will be a) tomorrow"

fandom: prospect (2018) characters: ezra, cee rating: T words count: ~3K context: post-canon general warnings/tags: see series masterlist warnings/tags for this chapter: ezra's pov. angst. not graphic descriptions of wounds, blood and amputated limbs. mentions of minor characters' death. (probably very) inaccurate but anyways vague descriptions of medical treatments and post-anesthesia symptoms. taglist: @ravensmutty @buttercup--bee @thegreenkid (again, thank you all for your interest and encouragement! :3) @krissology @ezrasarm @bonktime (please forgive my nerve, i won't tag you in the next chapters unless you'll explicitly ask me to! just thought about someone else who might be interested and you guys are AMAZINGLY talented and inspiring "prospect"/ezra writers. it's not my intention to waste precious moments of your time! 🤡

[SERIES MASTERLIST] [MAIN MASTERLIST]

He'd have thought it was almost ironic – opening his eyes to the light only to see nothing. To feel pain.

He'd have laughed about it, most likely. A bit later, he'd have acknowledged it was a reasonably fair compromise; for him and any other wretch that'd ever dared play dice with darkness and miraculously made it out alive.

And in the very end he'd come to laugh at himself, too.

He knows the drill. Someone who trades their own life with the contract of the highest bidder doesn't see the universe in black and white, let alone is in a position to draw the hypothetical line between the two of them.

Must be an even more wicked universe than he's ever cared about, then.

At least, that's where the struggle of opening his eyes made him stumble upon; when a blade of light thrust through that hint of a gap he'd pushed himself to create in the middle, resonating through the dark coils of unconsciousness like a harsh, unforgiving bell.

A skilled mariner over silky rivers of natural redundancy and rapids of professional edges, Ezra is a man who can appreciate a sharp wit when he recognizes one.

That was too much even for him.

Floundering in between a blinding whiteness and a black hole that wasn't even completely black, but permeated by a thick, suffocating haze that filled every ghost haunting his mind with its stench. With the color of diabolically lush leaves.

Forest— spores— poison— death.

It hadn't been enough to let him dangle in apnea above a roaring vortex of lifeless emerald; take him away from the grey flow whose elusiveness he'd come to appreciate more than he'd ever hated to endure its chaos— from the bubble built on the routine series of one last jobs that, in the end, never really were.

There'd been a moment when, from the higher parts of the room, his pupils tumbled down, tripping over a patch of green discreetly lurking in a corner.

He almost threw up.

It had taken him a while to clear out the misty grit clotted in his corneas— focus on white walls, light wood paneling... a harmless seedling in a pot.

He'd breathed heavily, deeply. He sure hadn't got much relief from it. Still, he'd been able to hear its sound, louder than he'd ever heard it before, the musical, cooling mesh of oxygen particles in and out of his lungs almost begging his fingers to be touched.

Oxygen.

Fresh air.

Had he been less sore – less convinced it was just the residual effects of anesthesia pulling pranks on him –, he would have burst out laughing. Even more so if some poor soul of the medical staff nearby would have called for reinforcements from the other side of the space station before storming into his room.

He'd be laughing now, too. The best he can manage is sitting on his bed, leaning his back on the headboard – which is what he's struggling to do right now— and well, sometimes the room lighting still slightly bothers him. Of course, with all the painkillers and antibiotics they've given him, he wouldn't feel like the wound on his stomach is swallowing the entire arsenal of stitches and bandages.

He just wouldn't like her to get the wrong idea.

He blinks several times, like a man who no longer trusts his eyes. How can he, when they're burning like that, in such a different fire from the one from days before – damp and flickering? For reasons he can imagine, she seems to be faltering. Totally beyond his comprehension, he could swear she's smiling at him. Something inside his ribcage creaks oddly, while the curve of his chest arches upward.

"Birdie."

It's just a huff of breath, weak and hoarse, yet scratches his throat all the same, in a way that its walls feel studded with rock spurs. Actually, Ezra doesn't remember talking since they left the Green behind – which, being him, is saying something – and it's like an eternity has passed since their pod docked up there.

The nurse who let her into his room has just left and Cee sinks her hands into the pockets of her sweatpants. She's still smiling— just the faded shadow of a smile, now that he takes a better look at her.

"How's your wound?"

It sounds a lot less plain than he expected.

She hasn't moved towards him any further, and for now she's not showing any hints at wanting to. In her irises, Ezra recognizes thumping stars and cerulean clouds, all clustered in the black circle cut by the large porthole next to his bed. All before catching the thin mist veiling them. As if she did want to reach those stars, let herself get carried away by those streams of bluish dust, but she had no idea how or what to do there.

He looks down, the borders of the bandages over his abdomen slightly raised under his black short-sleeved tee. He clears his throat.

"S'healin' nicely", he says, with a deliberate lightheartedness that costs him a sharp, bizarre inflection in his voice. He closes his eyes soon after, tilting his head condescendingly. "That's how the nurse feels about it, anyway... S'not like I can feel much more right now."

This reminds him of those vacuous moments between brief, chaotic waking states and delirious dreams. When he'd managed to reconnect some essential key points scattered around in the talks of surgeons and nurses; the weariness he felt from simply gathering he was on a space station due to enter the orbit of Mesos in three cycles and something standard hours. All while his only solid reference point – the only indisputable proof he was still alive – was the sequence of beeps chirped by the medical monitor perched nearby. Constant, not monotonous. Friendly, even. Sometimes, he actually comes to miss it.

"A trust fall to the extreme, I'd guess", he snorts, a sly laugh as weak and heavy as the words trudging out of his mouth. As the whole rest of him.

Whatever answer she's considering, Cee freezes it in a quick purse of her lips – maybe a nod, but for his own good he'd rather be doubtful. Then she starts looking around.

There's a chair under the board firmly anchored to the opposite wall – probably a desk or something he's never needed to test, whatsoever. She grabs it and puts it next to his bed. She sits down, bringing her legs to her chest, squeezing them in her arms.

Waiting for what, Ezra has no idea, and he's afraid she doesn't have any, either.

He doesn't speak, though, nor does he encourage her to do the same. Her pearly gaze roams steadily but unhurriedly from him to somewhere beyond him, her nose buried in the gap between her knees. He studies her carefully, two purple crescents above her cheeks, a few hair strands swinging down her face without her wiping them out. The nights she's slept through haven't been any more peaceful than his.

Trust, he recalls in the meantime.

It sure brings an odd taste to his mouth. Something close to sweaty spacesuits, grimy paths and gone-off ration bars. A single word for two human beings forced to share the same air filter for days; that, and the image of a dead body left to rot miles behind and the desperate commitment not to end up in the same way.

His gaze just happens to trip over his right side, taking in the deflated sleeve over the emptiness that saved his life. When he lifts it back to the girl, meeting her eyes just before they can flutter away, he realizes they were both looking at the same spot. And he realizes something else— something he's already understood, yet not quite.

There is no tube binding them now.

"Why d'you do it?", he mumbles a split second later, almost like somehow the thread of his question has immediately knotted to the one of his previous thought.

He huffs. He shouldn't even have asked her, in all honesty. Seeing her like this, at least he should have put it in another way, danced around it, it's not like he’s never been good at stalling, after all—

"Comin' back", Ezra says instead, and when he swallows, he mainly does it to send his heart back down his throat. If he'd died without being given the last chance to be this straightforward on this matter, he would have probably kicked his ass all the way to the other side. 

This time, Cee doesn't avoid his gaze. He shouldn't be surprised by how collected she looks, given the calmness she handled his infected arm with and then told him about when she used to slip into Jata Bhalu carcasses. But he can't help it when he thinks she can't be much older now than what she was then.

He watches her breathing in, wobbling her pupils here and there, seemingly considering his words. She's not afraid, not any more than what she seemed to be when she walked into his room. Maybe she's just better than him at playing pretend – but this, he can't tell whether it's more of a good than a bad thing. Especially for her.

One thing he can tell is that she's not the same girl who pointed a trembling gun at him before running away into the woods. He knows she's not afraid.

He knows...

So is it the hunter's instinct he has to blame if he feels she is?

"Guess I've seen too much death on that forsaken moon to just... turn my back on one I can help– one I can do something about."

If he was standing in front of an entire mountain crumbling down into the ocean, he wouldn't hear its sound. ‘Wouldn't even be the worst he deserves. She did hesitate before adding the last few words, but Ezra refuses to believe she did that because she was afraid of hurting him. He may be a wretch, but not a fool.

Kevva, for a man who's always managed to untwist himself from far tougher situations with the tangles of his tongue alone, he's sure having a deal of trouble – and he wishes he could put all the blame on his current physical condition.

There is no word he doesn't have to weigh carefully now, to prevent it from taking too sharp edges once out of his lips. He may float around it forever. But once he's let her go without saying anything, he'll hardly find the courage to look within himself again, more than after any other job that hardened his hands with calluses and tarnished his eyes with blood.

He doesn't know for sure. In fact, everything he was sure to know – about the turning direction of the universe and the one of the wheels in his head – has already collapsed in front of him, tracing a flaming tail. An unforgiving meteor following a trajectory far beyond his grasp.

He just knows silence scares him, in a way that a wrong word will never do again. It terrifies him. More than as a talkative person, as a castaway on a hostile moon for too many cycles to keep their count – with the only company of a mute. Silence is green; the green of the most poisonous pollen, lethal in his brain just like toxic spores enveloped in his lungs. The green of snake scales ready to stand and scratch his flesh until liquid crimson pours out of it.

And at the end of the day, this is the only fucking thing he can tell himself to know without having his guts churning and chest heaving a beat later.

"Stop looking at me like that."

It's more of an exhausted prayer than an annoyed remark. Ezra blinks, stunned by the sudden return from the shapeless stream of his thoughts.

"Like what?"

"Like you're looking for the words to thank me", Cee settles back into her chair and this time she lets one leg touch the floor, "Tell me you owe me, and you– you're sorry about what you did."

Ezra sniffles. "Would it be bad?" 

"No, it—". She closes her eyes for a moment, clenching her jaw. "Just no good", she breathes out, calmer.

And the discordant note in those words conjures up ghosts not yet vague enough for Ezra to be able to tolerate them without something twinging inside him— like a violent flutter of wings. Voices groping their way up ravels of compromises. Damon, deep in the forest. Himself, with the mercenaries in the Queen's Lair. Cee, days before that. After he—

She's right— those words she hasn't said yet, but whose shadow he feels looming every time he catches her wetting her lips.

Some things just can't be split evenly.

"This is not the Green", she states, suddenly more confident but no less exhausted. "If you're going to hang around just because you need to, once we reach Mesos¹ you'd better be on your way."

Ezra doesn't interrupt her. A faded echo starts making its way into his ears. A former prospecting partner, many years ago. An easy job on a forgettable Fringe moon.

Gems don't have an expiration date. Deals do. Strike 'em if you need to, get rid of them as soon as you can. Unless you care to dig a quicker way to your grave.

He didn't pay attention to it, then. He'd thought it was just the empty rhetoric prospectors drop absentmindedly to fill the time between an unrewarding digging and the next. All the more so under the rickety advice of a couple too many.

His eyes still wide open, hands shaky, he merely reciprocated the awkward bottle lift of his partner, whom he didn't know more than the meanders of that quarry. A toast to a faceless future – a nothingness still more reassuring than what was all around and behind them. Not to the darkness of the cave, basically unbreakable if only for the red halo thrown by the twinkles of sharp, sinister Prystines². Not even to the two poor bastards that had set out with them, ending up skewered a few hundred paces behind – one by mistake, the other to return the favor of saving him from the clutches of a furious Aiu³.

Like an idiot.

Several contracts later preventing him from missing a beat in front of similar hiccups, the logic of that statement no longer sounds so absurd to Ezra. Luckily for him, Cee understood it long before him.

"I was just lookin' for the words to tell ya you'll be better off without me—"

Half a truth. Half a heartbeat. After all, she isn't the only one of them who knows how to sell it.

He leans his head back against the headboard, eyes half-closed, a sly grin baring a couple of his upper teeth. It would almost be intimidating, except that the glint hitting them doesn't quite match the dying one in his eyes.

"—But you beat me to it", he finishes, and he sounds like he's about to fall asleep.

He slowly turns his head away, looks through the porthole. His gaze clutches to the passing asteroids outside, distant nebulae spraying the sidereal black with hues of purple, blue, red— then green, again. A climbing plant squeezing him from the inside, discomfort starts creeping on him an inch of his body – what's left of it – at a time.

He doesn't want her to think he's angry at her, and it's the only concrete foothold emerging from the fluid, magmatic chaos in his mind.

How could he be, when she came back to get him?

She didn't have to.

She doesn't have to be here, either...

"I'm sorry", she suddenly blurts out.

He meets her eyes again, a mix of bewilderment and disapproval shading his own. He shakes his head.

"Don't."

"I just—". She starts fiddling with the extra fabric created by the folds of her sweatpants. Then she sighs deeply. "I have no idea what I'm gonna do now."

He snorts. "Not that it's s'pposed to make you feel any better, but... neither do I."

He doesn't have a hazy helmet choking the glimmer in his eyes, an air filter breaking some frequencies in his voice— maybe just those making him sound sincere, while saving those trapping him into the swamp of self-loathing.

He was nothing but honest when he told her the rules of the game on the Green. When he openly admitted he was a killer, and when he assured her he wouldn't trade her for the Sater's Aurelac. And she's always seemed to believe him, maybe for that kind of desperate inertia that washes over people when they need something to cling to. Whatever the case, Ezra can only hope she wants to believe him now. But she doesn't speak, and for a moment his fear of not saying enough overcomes that of crossing her boundaries.

"But w—", he immediately bites his tongue, "—you still have three cycles to figure things out. Someone up here will be able to help you. Even so, please know you'll always have my most sincere gratitude."

The effort of lining up all those words and so few pauses to catch his breath casts a thick fog over his ears. His eyes suddenly hurt again and he finds himself squinting.

What happens next, he just records it, hardly managing to follow each cause-effect relationship. A series of events softly raining on him without making a noise, while he can quite imagine them to be way more prolonged in time. Cee leaning towards the lighting panel on the wall, sliding her finger counterclockwise, and the white coating the walls turning less painfully bright; her getting up, walking away, dwelling just before the door. "I'll come to check on you tomorrow", she says, sniffling.

She tilts her head, holding his gaze in her watery one for an agonizingly slow while – Please, don't ask me why.

He blinks once – Of course.

Then, the automatic door is once again engulfed by the wall, closing behind her with a metallic rustle.

Tomorrow.

His heart is taken by a spiraling jolt that leaves an empty cave behind. When it falls back into place, Ezra finds something has tripped in there, shapeless and quivering like the nucleus of a newborn star.

Hope, terror and everything that lies in between. 

___________________

NOTES:

1) Mesos — Invented planet. Its only raison d'être is that "mésos" in Greek means "middle" and my intent was to frame this story in a moment of transition (after those of movies) for both Ezra and Cee. 2) Prystines — Invented kind of crystals. They're implied to be huge, red and very sharp, thus endangering the path through the cave. 3) Aiu — Invented predator, ideally a big feline.

A/N:

Yeah, uhm... at this point, if someone was ever to give me any kind of feedback, constructive criticism or random thought, I think I'd just melt into a puddle for the attention alone. And to all those who came all the way down here, your bravery shall not be forgotten. ♥️✨

In my defense, it's (almost) all P**** P*****'s fault & of his habit of taking orphans under his wing from one planet to another.

I know people in the fandom generally tend to make Ezra and Cee go along straight away after the movie, so this will be a slightly different take on things, I guess... But even if I don't know if I'll keep this series going atm (life & maturity exam suck), a final reconciliation is definitely on the way. ;)

Oh, and any beta reader that should feel like helping me out for when I'll have the next chapters ready is warmly welcomed! My DMs are always open and I swear I don't bite! :3

[alittlewhump]

Unbidden - Act 1, chapter 4

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Content warnings: fantasy violence, death mention, fantasy religion

They had travelled for another half a day before reaching the remains of the little town. It had been thoroughly sacked, most of the buildings now just burned out husks. Blaise was staring down at the body of what had presumably been one of the inhabitants. Morgan could tell she was distressed, and she was also sending signals of anger. It was becoming apparent that anger was a standard underpinning of most of her other emotions. Her hands were balled into fists at her sides.

"He was just a kid."

Morgan didn't know how to respond. The boy had been prepubescent, the small size of his body accentuated by the large and ungainly prosthetic leg still partially attached under one knee. The forces of darkness did not discriminate, equitable in their ruthlessness. That would not be the correct thing to say right now. He ventured a soft "Yes," to which Blaise did not respond. He raised a hand, thinking to lay it on her shoulder in a gesture of sympathy he'd seen many times, but then let it fall back to his side. She would likely only take offense, not comfort, from that action. He didn't particularly like touching other people anyway, if it could be avoided.

Morgan squinted instead toward the ruined town, looking more with his mind than with his eyes. There were more like the boy, all adults but recently deceased, their bones partially scattered above the ground. It was most often undead that left their victims this way, torn asunder carelessly. They were slow enemies whose movements were easy to predict. Should be simple enough. Hopefully the scholar they sought had been fast enough to hide himself away or make an escape.

Morgan's skeletons turned in unison, raising their swords in challenge. He often relied on their perception to fill in the gaps where he wasn't paying attention. There was a yelp, and a small red demon scampered out from behind a ruined building. It didn't make it far. Before the skeletons had a chance to charge, Blaise had planted an arrow between its shoulders. Its dying cry echoed through the remnants of the town, prompting a rush of activity. It seemed a number of demons had settled in. The undead had simply been scavenging, then. That could complicate things.

Morgan urged his skeletons forward, taking a step back as he started on a clay golem. He'd managed to get the time down to about thirty seconds, but it was evident that wouldn't be fast enough for most combat situations. He would have to keep working at it.

Blaise was proving to be an extremely skilled archer. Her shots were both quick and accurate, devastating to the smaller demons. It wasn't just the imps, though; there was a group of larger demons as well, goatlike bipeds wielding wicked-looking glaives. They moved to flank the invading humans, but Morgan spotted the maneuver and commanded his minions to intercept the closest ones. Their awareness was reasonably comprehensive, but his own let him down. If the goatman behind him hadn't bleated as it raised its weapon to strike, it could easily have finished him with a single blow.

He twisted sideways, narrowly avoiding the strike. Drawing his sword was easier from the far hip after all. He plunged it blindly into the demon's middle before it had a chance to raise its weapon a second time. Accuracy wasn't paramount at the moment, just so long as he got the point far enough in and wrenched to the side with sufficient strength. He jumped back, avoiding the spray of viscera that followed his blade as the demon fell.

He should have been checking for other threats instead; if he had, he might have noticed the small one creeping up behind him, emboldened by the presence of the stronger demons. It swung its blade with a battle cry, slicing into the flesh of Morgan's thigh. He cried out in surprise and pain, lashing out with his shield to gain some distance. The demon was already backing off, its fit of courage fading. It was watching him so intently that it didn't notice the skeleton behind it. A single well-aimed thrust saw it fall with a gurgle.

Morgan pressed a hand to the cut on his leg. The blade hadn't severed anything crucial, but the pain would hamper his mobility and the wound was deep enough to warrant treatment. He ordered the skeleton closer as he felt around in the pouch on his belt, fingers seeking a familiar shape - there. He uncorked the small bottle with his teeth and downed its contents. The taste of the potion lingered on his tongue, but it was mildly sweet and herbaceous, not at all unpleasant. It would only be a few minutes before the injury was fully healed. It already felt a little better.

The few remaining demons had incapacitated the other skeleton but they were fleeing now, not that it was doing them much good in the face of Blaise's arrows. She was merciless and efficient. Morgan could see why Kashya had chosen her for the task. Something was amiss, though. He couldn't quite put his finger on it. He looked around again, and his eyes fell on one of the deceased civilians. That was it - the body showed signs of undead interference, but they had slain only demons. The two types of creatures often coexisted peacefully, so it wasn't likely that one group had driven out the other.

"That's the last of them," Blaise announced, lowering her bow. "Now let's hope we can find this guy quickly so we can leave. I don't like this place."

"It looked like there would be undead, so be - oh, look there-" Something was stirring, far enough away that Morgan couldn't make out exactly what it was, but the movement wasn't promising. He pointed with his sword, his minions already on their way to investigate. Blaise nocked another arrow and raised her bow.

An enormous zombie staggered toward them. Had it been... hiding? Or just somehow unaware of the skirmish? It was surprisingly fast for its size. It was also unexpectedly strong, Morgan realized as it shattered the skeleton's skull with a single powerful strike. Blaise was on the retreat, peppering it with arrows that didn't seem to be having much effect. The clay golem made it stumble with a blow to its side, but it struck out in retaliation with such force that the construct crumbled to pieces. Morgan weighed his options quickly. It was too fast for another golem. A new skeleton might be fast enough, but it would only be able to serve as a momentary distraction. With his injured leg he wouldn't even be able to outrun this one if he fled, never mind what that might mean for Blaise. He had to find a way to separate the head from the body, or destroy the brain. Not ideal, given his limited physical capacity, but then again neither was dying.

Blaise called out, "Some support would be nice!" Yes, it - oh, she meant from him. The zombie was focused on her as the only aggressor. He did have the weaponry better suited to dispatch it, if only he could reach its head. He struck the hilt of his sword against his buckler and shouted, hoping the noise would get its attention. It did not. If it was going to ignore him, maybe he could use that to his advantage.

Morgan darted in, intending to strike at the zombie's knees. Joints were always vulnerable, good targets for incapacitating an enemy. He was too slow - it finally turned toward him with a fierce swing of its arm. He managed to get his shield up in time, but the blow still lifted him off his feet. The uneven terrain and his injury made for a poor landing but an idea sparked as he stumbled, falling into a crouch with one hand braced on the ground.

He sent a tendril of magic shooting forth through the soil, just a small one for the sake of speed. If this didn't work, he might not have the time for a second try. The earth in front of the zombie rose up and curled back to cover its feet. It was not coordinated enough to avoid the crude trap. Morgan picked himself up as the undead fell to its knees, finally bringing its weak point within range. He quickly positioned the tip of his sword at the base of its skull and gave it a hard thrust, pushing with the force of both hands. There was a snap as the spine gave way, and the body collapsed.

That had felt a little too close for comfort. Morgan summoned another skeleton and sent it to scout for any more undead. Another surprise like that would be disastrous. If he kept a steady trickle of magic flowing between himself and the skeleton, he would be able to tell immediately if it had been damaged or destroyed.

"All right, now let's look for your man Deckard. Carefully. There had better not be any more of these big fuckers lurking around." Blaise nudged the body gingerly with her foot.

They moved through the town warily at first, growing more relaxed as it became apparent that they had fully cleared out its new inhabitants. A few of the buildings had cellars dug out beneath them, but they had all been empty. It was starting to look like there had been no survivors at all when Blaise spotted something.

"Wait, is that him?"

Morgan followed her gaze to a crudely constructed cage leaning up against a building. He had assumed the prone figure inside it, half hidden by rags, had been another body. But when he reached out, first with his mind alone and then with an extended arm to better direct the magic, there was no response - no bones he could use, unlike the rest of the unfortunate townsfolk.

"That one's not dead," he said, moving in closer. The pale figure was unconscious, yes, but still living. It looked like it might be an old man.

"How do you - ugh, I don't want to know, never mind." Blaise made it to him first, reaching through the bars of the cage to check for a pulse at the old man's throat. She must have found one, since her next move was to shake his shoulder gently.

He startled awake, eyes wide. "Back! Back, foul demons!" he cried out.

"Whoa, hey there, it's okay. Don't worry, my name is Blaise and I'm here to help you. The demons are gone. Are you all right? You hurt at all?" Her voice was reassuring, soothing. Her features had softened into an expression of genuine concern.

"You... oh, thank heavens! It's so good to see a friendly face. No, my dear, I'm a little worse for the wear but I'm not injured. I don't suppose you might have some water to share, would you? I'm absolutely parched."

Morgan had reached the cage by that time, and passed his waterskin through the bars. Blaise moved to examine the lock on the cage, giving it a very brief examination before fishing out two slender metal tools from her pack. "I'll have you out of there in no time," she reassured him as she began working at the lock.

The scouting skeleton hadn't encountered anything of note, but the earlier surprise was still troubling Morgan. He decided to raise another golem to join the perimeter guard, just to be on the safer side. To his surprise, the old man brightened as the shape began to take form.

"Ah, geomancy! It's been a rather long time since I've seen that particular school of magic. And so sombre, too - would I be right in guessing you to be followers of Rathma?" The old man pulled himself upright, leaning on the cage bars for support as the lock cracked open in Blaise's hands.

"Just me."

"Just him."

Blaise seemed surprised by their response in unison, but it didn't appear to faze the other man at all. "Well," he said, "whatever your origins, I'm grateful for the rescue. My name is Deckard Cain." That was excellent news. A stroke of luck that the sole survivor was the man they had been looking for. He kept talking as he stepped out of the cage. "When the demons descended, I was sure I was not long for this world. I can't imagine what possessed them to lock me up in there, but it certainly saved me from sharing a fate with everyone else here." He looked sadly at one of the human bodies, a woman who appeared to have died in the street, reaching toward the door of a house. "I only wish there was something I could have done to prevent this tragedy. These were good people. They didn't deserve this."

"I could give them their final rites," Morgan suggested. Nothing could undo what had happened, but at least the dead could be laid to rest properly. It might give some measure of comfort to the old man as well. All things considered, it felt like an acceptable delay.

Cain laid a hand on Morgan's shoulder. He flinched only slightly at the unexpected contact. "Thank you, friend. It is kind of you to offer, and I can think of no one better than a priest of Rathma to lay these people to rest."

Blaise coughed. "Are you sure about that? You... you know what they do with skeletons, right?"

"My dear, I assure you there are none more suited to care for the dead. I visited a temple of Rathma once for several months in my younger days, far to the southeast..."

Morgan half listened as he stowed his shield. It was a simple enough line to draw, though it seemed unlikely that Blaise would be interested in the particulars: bodies that had been consecrated, no matter the particulars of the faith that informed the process, felt different than ones that had not received that treatment. They were easy to sense and avoid, and besides that, they were considerably harder to raise. Powerful practitioners were capable of such feats, but despite their reputation, priests of their Order gave the dead every courtesy they would afford the living. It wasn't uncommon to meet resistance even in the dead that had passed on unremarked; in these cases, a necromancer could either leave the spirit be or pass it through the veil as they deemed appropriate. Morgan preferred the option of assisting with the passing on, though he hadn't ever personally had the opportunity. It felt like it would be better than just leaving them to linger.

The first stages of preparation for this particular ceremony didn't require much concentration, just some physical effort to collect and lay out the deceased. Including the boy from the outskirts of the town, there were six bodies to inter. There was a good spot near the central part of the town, likely once a market of some sort. It seemed unlikely that anyone would be rushing to rebuild the town any time soon, he reasoned.

"Excuse me, young man." Morgan stopped to look at Cain, who was wearing an apologetic smile. "I hate to be a bother, but..." He gestured toward the remains of the enormous zombie. "This gentleman is... or was, rather... Griswold, the town blacksmith. Stone deaf but a heart of gold in him. He did great things, in life. Is there any way you could include him as well?"

"Yes, of course." Morgan considered the body for a moment before calling his golem back over from where it had been patrolling the area. Even with its help, it was difficult to maneuver the corpse over to the others. But they managed eventually, making him the seventh in the line. Cain chattered on to Blaise the entire time, but clearly he was also paying some attention to Morgan.

"That's everyone," he confirmed before Morgan had even opened his mouth to ask. "It saddens me to see this lively town reduced to so little. Rest well, my friends."

That was a recognizable cue. Morgan began by consecrating the zombie, drawing a small phial of oil from his chest pocket and anointing its head and hands. The oil glowed faintly as he said a brief incantation, an ancient prayer. The first step completed, he switched to a different oil and drew a simple sigil on the forehead of each of the deceased. This anointment was to help guide the spirits up to Anu. As he recited the liturgy, he was surprised to hear Cain's voice joining his own during the repeated segments. He filed that away to consider later. Right now he needed to concentrate.

Seven was a lot of bodies to inter, but if he let the constructs fall and paced himself he could probably manage. He knelt by Griswold and touched the earth. Carefully, slowly, it parted beneath the giant of a man. Once the body was several feet deep, the dirt filled in on top of him, leaving a small mound on the surface. The effort left him slightly winded. It had been a good idea to start with the largest. The next two were easier, but the cumulative strain was growing faster than he'd anticipated. Sweat was beginning to bead on his forehead and he'd lost his breath again. Better to pause now than to have to stop in the middle of an interment, he decided.

He took a small bottle from his belt, uncorked it and tossed back the bitter bluish liquid in one motion, kneeling again before the dizziness set in. The familiar buzz of magical energy crackled through him. It itched under his skin. He would have preferred to rest instead of taking the potion, but interrupting the ceremony was not an option. The whole point was to respectfully lay them to rest; stopping for a break would have felt disrespectful. He had to press on.

Despite his measured approach, Morgan was trembling with exhaustion by the time the last body was safely entombed. Seven had turned out to be too many. The potion had helped, but its borrowed energy left as suddenly as it came, and the body shakes it left in its wake were uncomfortable. He fell into a cross-legged position, elbows braced on his knees, head hanging as his chest heaved. Meditation wasn't going to cut it after this. He was going to need real sleep. Still, it was satisfying to feel he'd done a good job of the burial ceremony. He was also grateful that Blaise had elected to keep watch during the proceedings. He'd been forced to abandon his minions to save energy. Had he been alone, safety would have been a serious concern.

Blaise cleared her throat. "Not to kill the moment or anything, but we need to start going before it gets dark. It's a long way back to the Sisterhood."

"Perhaps I can help with that," Cain said. Morgan raised his head to see him produce a small scroll from the pockets of his robe. "This is a scroll of town portal. Have you ever used one before?" Blaise shook her head. "Oh, it's very simple. You just need to picture a place in your head as you read it, and it will open a portal to that place. It only works for human settlements, and the place has to be within a certain distance. But if your description is accurate, as I'm sure it is, the Sisterhood of the Sightless Eye should meet those requirements." He held the scroll out for Blaise to take. "I must admit I've never visited, so I can't use this to get to our destination."

Blaise took the scroll and opened it, peering at its contents. Nothing happened. She turned it sideways, then upside down. No portal materialized. She looked up at Cain. "Am I missing something here? I thought this was supposed to be easy."

He frowned. "It should be. Let me look - no, no, the scroll is in order. It should work for you if you're following the instructions. Unless - well, there are a few reasons it might not be working. It could be a matter of lineage, for instance. Were your parents both human?"

Blaise stared at him as though he'd just grown another head. "What else would they be?"

"I've used those scrolls before," Morgan said, rising unsteadily to his feet. He had used the portals fairly regularly, running errands during his training. A throbbing ache was building behind his eyes, and he wanted very much to rest. He was seriously considering curling up in one of the ruined buildings at this point. But that wouldn't take the other people into consideration. Assuming the portal scroll worked, it would be the best course of action to take.

Blaise held it at arm's length. "If you can make it work, go ahead. But if not, we start walking."

Morgan took the scroll, scanning the familiar runes. It wasn't reading, exactly, but they started to glow all the same. He thought about the rogue encampment, focusing on the spot just outside the gates where he'd first waited for Blaise. A shimmering blue circle materialized in front of him, the image of the camp faintly distinguishable in its centre. It stretched until it was big enough to walk through. No problem with the scroll, then.

"Magnificent!" Cain clasped his hands together. "It will be wonderful to be amongst people again. Please, after you."

Morgan would have preferred not to be the first one out of the portal, but Blaise wasn't moving to enter and he didn't have the energy to try to sway her. He stepped into the portal. It was like walking down a short hallway, the distance to the destination collapsed into a few steps. As he stepped out of the portal, he found a sword pointed at his face. His hands came up automatically in a gesture of surrender. Of course the rogues would be suspicious if they weren't accustomed to using this type of magic. That was precisely why he hadn't wanted to lead.

"Oh, it's you." Kashya lowered her sword. "Where's Blaise? Did you find Deckard Cain?"

"They are following," he said, letting his hands fall as he stepped to the side of the portal. He hoped they were following. He was too tired to explain if they weren't.

Sure enough, Cain emerged a few seconds later, peering around. "So this is the Sisterhood of the Sightless Eye! I've heard much about you. I wonder if you would indulge an old man's curiosity. I have some questions for you..." He had honed in on Akara without hesitation, taking her by the arm. She appeared surprisingly amenable; something about him seemed to put people at ease.

Blaise came through shortly after, straightening when she spotted Kashya. "Ma'am."

"Give me a full report."

The commander turned on her heel, going back into the encampment, and Blaise followed her. Good. That meant nobody wanted to talk to Morgan, and he could get some rest. He tore the scroll in half, disrupting the magic holding the portal open. Only living humans could use these portals, but it still felt safer to close it behind him. Unlike the others, he did not enter the encampment. Now was not the time to solicit an invitation. He'd noted a large, sturdy willow tree outside the northern corner of the rogues' camp. He dragged his weary body over to it, nestled in against its trunk, and promptly lost consciousness.