#named the weirdly of the sky sword cloud

[herospledge]

Confession time nyall

Aluhk's name just means cloud

[h0ped3lusion]

Have some more ideas for Dragon! Edda AU, Modern Day Crack fic and maybe a Winged AU too?

Dragon! Edda may not be able to use her weapons... BUT! She can use lightning and ice magic, and it's a lot stronger now (Theoretically, she can just smack foes with her wings, but that's a bit risky)

In Dragon! Edda AU, she probably scared the everloving daylights out of Angel when they first saw her.

Also I think it would be cute if Edda is still very scared of water, so Aven just awkwardly waits for Edda to try to jump/ glide across a large body of water.

Regarding Modern Day Crack Fic (Need a better name for it), imagine if the very first thing Photographer was greeted with when both Edda and Aven wakes up was... Edda staring at them with sword in hand and Aven restraining her-

Also imagine the duo seeing the beach for the first time... Edda's reaction would be... interesting, to say the least.

The mental image of Edda being VERY CONFUSED with the concept of clothing would be kind of funny... also shoes.

Aven may or may not be very confused as to why those fluffy white things in the sky exist... also that weirdly bright light during the day and that white orb during the night .(Clouds, Sun and Moon respectively)

Imagine if the Photographer has to bring people by their house for an event or something... and have to put Edda and Aven in a random room to prevent anyone from freaking out-

Plus imagine if the Photographer have a pet... Edda and Aven would be very confused at the concept.

Also for Potential Wing AU, I think Edda would have albatross wings, while Aven would have Frigatebird wings (Or I can use Sooty albatross or Black-Footed Albatross)

Also I might start the Worldless Crack fic today.

Dragon!Edda's tail is also really long, she could possibly use it as a huge whip of sorts too perhaps? And undoubtedly her powers would be much stronger now!

The thought of Angel getting startled or scared is something I would never expect but I find absolutely hilarious—😭

Oh oh, imagine like this big big dragon, who acts like a scared cat when coming near to a body of water hah— I can kinda see Aven just chriping on the other side, encouraging her to come across the water

I find that really adorable😭💕

BAHA— the mental image of Aven restraining Edda is absolute gold! I really doubt that Edda would want to get close to the shore of the beach at all– oh god imagine every time the waves hit the shore Edda would kinda jump like a startled cat😭😭

Overall, human concepts and just things on Earth in general would definitely confuse the duo on varying degrees because, of course, their home world isn't like this

I feel like when the Photographer has visitors, the duo might be confused and maybe concerned, and would try to sneak out of the room to see what's going on, cue small bits of chaos of the Photographer trying to tell the two to go back and hide or they'll just attempt to hide them themself—

I actually don't know much about wing types and such, but upon searching them up, I'd say I agree, I can see them with those wings respectively🤔

[sapphyreopal5]

Where and What Exactly Is Cloud Nine?

Hello, my name is Ellie. I'm a psychic whose methods of divination mainly involve a pendulum and printable ABC chart. The information I present in my posts that aren't readily available through physical means such as scholarly texts, books, etc. I obtain through divination in order to elaborate more on my personal observations, beliefs, experiences, etc. In this particular post, I am going to share with you what Cloud Nine really is, where it really is, and also touch on what it is believed to be (and how people use the phrase Cloud Nine).

Cloud Nine in Popular Culture and History of the Phrase "On Cloud Nine"

Cloud Nine is an expression used to describe someone who is in a state of joy or elation. The origins of the expression "on cloud nine" go back to Sir Ralph Abercromby, a Victorian era aristocrat who became fascinated with meteorology when he was in the British army where he served from 1860 to 1869 and was stationed in Quebec, Canada. He is known for his contributions to meteorology, particularly for writing on the nomenclature of clouds in 1896, which starts from cloud 0 to cloud 9. Interestingly enough, type 9 (cumulonimbus clouds) are referred to as "the kings of all clouds" because they rise higher in the sky than any other type of cloud and also are the largest type of cloud that are created. Some earlier phrases stated Cloud Seven is a state of perfect happiness similar to being on Seventh Heaven, as opposed to Cloud Nine.

Cloud Nine... a Psychic Survival Game?

In the last paragraph, I touched onto the worldwide view of the meaning of "being on cloud nine" and its origins. Based on what was described in the last paragraph, you would believe based on reading the head title for this paragraph that Cloud Nine is heaven or is some other kind of paradise. Unfortunately, this actually could not be further from the truth... if you're a target for those who use Cloud Nine.

I learned a little bit about where and what Cloud Seven, Cloud Eight, and Cloud Nine are when it comes to the Astral Planes (and no it's NOT heaven). When I was younger, my siblings and I would travel out of state every so often to go visit relatives. When we'd visit some of my cousins on my dad's side, sometimes one of them would play a "game" with us she called Cloud Nine. Essentially, the person who would "enter" Cloud Seven, Eight or Nine would lay down on their back. My cousin would then make them count backwards from 20 or so until they could "see" themselves in this place. To summarize, the person who is in this place would have to basically fight their way out of this place in order to survive. Cloud Seven was said to be the easiest level and Cloud Nine the hardest.

Some of us did not believe the players or my cousin who put the players under hypnosis that anything was actually happening, so elected to not partake in this game. I myself was one of those skeptical people. However, the last time this game was played by my older brother, which was close to 20 or so years ago, made me change my mind on this. While my brother was playing he was talking about being in the dark and hearing people come at him with what sounds like swords. Something told me to touch his hand and close my eyes. I was surprised (and horrified) that when I closed my eyes I was able to see and hear the same things he was.

I found myself "calling for help" mentally, and then a woman came in the room who the others in the room called "Aliyana Akrina". Not much longer later, my brother "woke up". However, I opened my eyes a little after he did. Before I opened my eyes and after he woke up, I saw a toddler being chased by a double horned monster with red eyes and a good bit of body hair that came out of a random closet with what looked like 2 white louvered doors with some dirty hand prints on it.

When I woke up, I noticed my siblings and cousins looking at me weirdly. The image below is very similar to what the monster looked like (which happens to be artwork depicting a deity who was said to be an ancient Canaanite pagan god of child sacrifice named Moloch). Some variations of this Canaanite deity's name include Molech, Molekh, Molok, Molek, Molock, etc. Their name is actually spelt Malik, and no they aren't into child sacrifice or anything related to such. who is the monster but is instead a demon named Civlon Moloch. This particular demon who is a particularly bloodthirsty fiend has posed as multiple deities including Malik, Baal, and others.

Aftermath of The Last Round of Playing Cloud Nine

This was afterall just a game that happens to be all imaginary and in the head, right? It turns out this belief was completely wrong. It turns out that I summoned my most dominant higher self Hela (I have several higher selves that make up the essence of my soul, which is another topic), whose full name is Hela Aliyana Akrina and is the "head deity of the astral planes". When I asked her what happened that day, she told me about a month ago that I summoned her when I was asking for help. She did tell me that I actually angered my cousin's demon (aka lower self) along with all other surviving demons gathered in Cloud Nine together by summoning Hela to rescue my brother. By the way, the astral body can be killed. If your astral body is killed you die physically. The death of astral bodies (where people's souls aka conscience goes after death of the physical body) is why people with say no history of heart disease will suddenly die of a heart attack, people who don't smoke and generally few or no risk factors develop lung cancer and die, etc. In other words... yes, the soul CAN die along with your astral body.

So, looking back I realized that Cloud Nine is not just an imaginary place, or a game requiring a wild imagination or capability of being put in a state of hypnosis. This last game of Cloud Nine took place in the summer before my twin sister and I were about to start 5th grade and brother 7th grade. Some weird and also bad things started to happen in my and my family member's lives.

Brother's Bone Tumor and Surgery

My brother developed an osteochondroma, which is essentially a type of benign bone tumor that commonly shows up in adolescence. I remember getting into an argument with my brother and punched his arm where this osteochondroma was located. No one knew he had one but when I punched him on the arm, this tumor was broken. He ended up needing to get surgery to remove it. Hela told me recently that this particular osteochondroma was going to eventually become an osteosarcoma, which is a malignant bone tumor and that "you heard me tell you to strike your brother's arm really hard in this exact spot to save his life".

Bathroom Wall Graffiti, Emotional Meltdowns

Several months after this, a now former friend of his decided to suddenly spray paint on the bathroom walls a very cruel thing about my brother. He felt very humiliated by this graffiti in the bathroom and naturally was very upset at this horrific sight. About a year and a half later during school (I was in 6th grade, brother in 8th), I had what I call a random meltdown. I'm not sure what triggered this meltdown or why I had it but the teacher ended up having someone go get my older brother "to calm me down". Somehow, I was NOT made fun of by any classmates of mine and wasn't bullied by anyone despite the fact word got around fast. It is middle school we are talking about afterall, you know how them kids like to gossip.

Peeping Tom, Locker Break-ins, Attempted House Break-in Homecoming Night

In my 7th grade year, boy what an interesting year and not for the better. My family and I moved during the late fall-winter time to a not so great area near our school district's high school while my parents were having a house being built. This school year my best friend at the time told me she found my locker wide open at one point with some of my stuff thrown down the hallway and chose to pick it up and put it all back in.

At one point, I started to get some strange phone calls from someone claiming they are a secret admirer of mine. They admitted during one of the two calls they had watched me get dressed before and said some other bizarre stuff. My brother overheard the second and last phone conversation, picked up another landline phone and cussed this guy out. After this guy admitted he watched me get dressed, I elected to remember to shut the blinds when I am getting dressed. Oh the not so real joys of being naïve in youth and learning things the hard way...

When I was in 8th grade and still living in this house, I felt a strong urge to stay home on the night of the high school Homecoming game. My parents tried to convince me to leave the house to "go to the game and socialize" but I felt an overwhelming urge to stay put and insisted I stay home. My parents went out somewhere to a house get together or a date, can't remember while my siblings went to the Homecoming game. At one point when I was home with the dog, we both heard scratching on the aluminum siding. First thing I wondered was if someone was pretending to be Freddy Kreuger playing a prank.

Eventually, I saw someone with a face mask, toboggan, coat, and what looked like an axe start running towards the window but decided against it when they saw me looking right at them. Follow your gut instincts, I promise they will NOT serve you wrong! I don't remember the rest of this year being much more eventful beyond this. Several months after the Homecoming game the house was finished being built and the weird, bad events stopped happening left and right.

Where Cloud Nine REALLY is (Hint: It's NOT Heaven)

A couple summers on 6/24/2021 I asked what the significance of Helheim and Hell having similar names is and what the difference between them is. The deity Hermes answered when I picked up my pendulum while asking this question: "Really, they are one and the same. Seers see about a mile away from Lucifer's castle an even bigger castle where Hela resides, where she remains a hands off boss. Lucifer, Abbadon, Belial and company are a group of dark faye that work for the Greek and Nordic pantheon". It turns out Earth as a whole is Helheim, which is a whole other topic in itself but this sure does explain the whole "this life is a living hell" phrase, doesn't it?

It turns out that Cloud Nine aka Gehanna (or Gehanna's torture chamber if you will) is located in a room "in the pits of Lucifer's Castle in Hell" that actually needs to be cleared out of these "cowardly demons". In this room is a computer with some access to Divine Blueprints aka Akashic Records. What these cowardly demons and their incarnations do is they put bad things in the Divine Blueprints of good souls to try benefitting their own incarnations. Magic originates in the astral planes; it is Divine Blueprints that also contain "instructions" on making it so certain things happen (or not in the case of tampers made by those in Cloud Nine). Magic simply is the enforcing agent in fulfilling Divine Blueprints that ultimately going back to the Divine Plan.

Ultimately, all these cowards are really doing is delaying the unpleasant "milestone events" (ex. car accidents and other traumatic events, divorces/breakups, losing a job, homelessness, etc.) in their evil incarnations' Divine Plans, and making the more pleasant milestone events occur sooner (ex. becoming wealthier, marriage, job promotion, etc.). Making many good things happen at once does eventually lead to many bad things happening all at once. When it rains, it pours.

I talked about aether incarnations in another post of mine regarding how incarnations work. Demons are actually bloodthirsty monstrous cyborgs created in the astral planes of Earth. This explains why demons are consistently described as being physically stronger than people, are more resilience to pain, tend to be rather indifferent emotionally and seem to only feel anger when they do feel some kind of emotion, move differently than physical beings do, are aggressive, etc.

Surprisingly so, there are actually many demons who are genuinely working to get redemption, which in the spiritual world means they gain a higher self and their conscience goes to an immortal body after their time on Earth is done. Deities and other benevolent beings actually call these demons "bold/brave demons". Not so surprisingly so, others are unable to rise above being selfish, greedy, cruel, etc. as they are "programmed" to do so. Of course, they all want to survive but keep delaying their "judgment day" so they can keep on their evil ways but "I'll eventually get around to doing the right thing", as if all of their "sins" will be forgiven. Deities and other benevolent beings call these particularly evil, selfish demons "cowardly demons".

Invisible Stairs or Ladders and Stairs or Ladders Leading to Nowhere

This is a very important thing to take away from this post of mine. There are some stairs that lead to nowhere with no other structures around them. Some call this an urban legend, with people suggesting it goes back to a Reddit user with the screenname searchandrescuewood who wrote a series of stories or reports regarding these said stairs in the woods possibly just for entertainment purposes. However, many have commented sharing their own experiences with this phenomenon of stairs leading to nowhere. There are some stairs that are remains of former buildings and houses that once remained, others built independent of a building.

Sometimes these stairs and ladders are reported to appear, disappear, and reappear in the same spot (or more eerily so, in different spots). What is consistent with many of these reports is that they all sit in areas with very open energy. Some reports of people who stated they climbed one of these ladders or stairs leading to nowhere state a variety of bizarre things that happened after they climbed them. One man in the Philippines reportedly climbed a ladder and states he felt he was gone for 5 minutes, but apparently turned out he was gone for 5 years. Others state that people have died suddenly from a stroke or other bad things happening after climbing one of these said ladders or stairs.

When it comes to invisible stairs in dreams, I was told by my guides to avoid them at all costs because they lead to Cloud Nine. I learned that if someone finds themselves on invisible stairs they need to get off as soon as possible. It's imperative they make sure to get off these invisible stairs and ladders before they get on the 9th step.

Follow your gut instincts, I promise they will not misguide you even if it turns out to be a false alarm!

For Further Reading https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/on-cloud-nine.html https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/weather-eye-7ftq5tvd2#:~:text=In%20September%2C%201896%2C%20cumulonimbus%2C,serving%20in%20the%20British%20Army. https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Ralph_Abercromby_(meteorologist) https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/review/posters/GOES_clouds/goes-r-cloudsat-front-8x11.pdf https://allthatsinteresting.com/moloch https://orthoinfo.aaos.org/en/diseases--conditions/bone-tumor/#:~:text=Bone%20tumors%20develop%20when%20cells,other%20parts%20of%20the%20body. https://norse-mythology.org/cosmology/the-nine-worlds/helheim/ https://www.tumblr.com/sapphyreopal5/710871665387683840/how-do-incarnations-work?source=share https://travelermagazine.net/stairs-in-the-woods/#:~:text=The%20simple%20explanation%20of%20the,structure%20or%20building%20around%20them.

[atozphantomsquadron]

Chapter 6: Mother's Legacy

January 16th

Nighttime in the desert, particularly in the wintertime, can get deathly cold.  The lack of clouds in the sky means that the land holds in no heat: it’s allowed to dissipate into the atmosphere.  Foliage would probably help this too, but there is nothing that really holds in heat, because everything made to survive in a desert climate is virtually a natural heat sink. 

I hear sometimes about people who freeze to death in the desert.  Before I understood about the cold nights, I asked Mom about it.  She would simply smile, pat me on the shoulder, and tell me not to worry, because our house would always be warm.  Later, I came to appreciate the chill, and how good of a contrast it was to the regular daytime temperatures.

The desert’s chill isn’t the only one I feel now.  I am scared out of my mind.  We have a campsite set up, with a tent erected shortly after midnight, and Michi is tending to my wounded wing.  I wonder how Gabe knew we were going to need so much gauze?

Gabe offers me a cup of coffee.  He’s still drinking the stuff.  No wonder the man never sleeps.  I take the offered cup and sip it gently.  None of us is talking yet about the firecasting in the truck, even though I can see my handiwork clear as day, the melted crater formed in the middle of the driver’s door window. 

Michi tightens the bandage on my wing.  It causes me a little bit of pain, and I wince.  “I think it’s tight enough.”

“Sorry.  I just need to make sure it’ll hold until I can gather enough blood to do a healing spell.”  She sits down next to me and picks up her dinner.  I have to chuckle … it’s a can of spinach.

“Are you going to be okay, Alanna?  I’m sorry to upset you like that …”

I’ve cooled off now, long after the argument in the truck.  “It’s okay.  I got agitated, that’s all.  I’m sorry about your truck …”

Gabe turns and looks at the damaged window.  “Ahh, don’t worry too much about it.  It was New Empire issue, anyway.  Their loss.”

Michi is giggling at that.  It’s contagious, and I have no choice but to join her.  We laugh.  It feels good to laugh, because not a lot has been too funny in the New Empire of America.  Gabe is even laughing, which is surprising to us.

“I find nothing funny about this situation.”

A voice none of us knows, weirdly accented, stops the laughter dead.  We can’t see anyone.  It’s too dark away from the campfire to see anything.  Instantly I’m up, my hand on the Sword.  “Show yourself!”  Gabe and Michi are backing up on either side of me.  I unfurl my wings, wincing as the bandaged one spreads.  It hurts like hell!

“Let me assure you, I mean you no harm.”  Well, the mystery voice sounds friendly enough …

“How do we know you’re not a blueshirt?  You might have followed us!”  Michi is powering a spell … I hope she doesn’t overexert herself.

“Followed you, yes.  A blueshirt, no.  I’ve been sent to help you.”

There’s a heavy breeze that hits all three of us, kicking up dust and leaving us unable to see even in the light.  When the dust settles, there’s a fourth person with us, a dark-skinned, younger man wearing a red sash around his waist.  Under that sash is what appears to be somewhat of a uniform, only it’s accented with pictures of flames.  The face looks almost welcoming, though, as he smiles, spreading the goatee he sports on his chin.

“At last, I’ve found you!  I’ve been searching for days.”

The first thing he does is embrace Michi and kiss her cheeks.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen my best friend blush like that.  He does the same to me and Gabe, making everybody equally self-conscious.  When he releases Gabe, he comes before us and offers a deep bow.

“Forgive my theatrics and overexuberance.  Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Fahaian.”

Gabe raises an eyebrow.  “I thought you looked familiar, young man.”

Michi is still a little stunned, but collects herself enough to ask, “who is he?”

Fahaian takes Michi’s hand, looking around at us.  “You are Gabriel Francis … and you are Alanna Sharpe.  I was tasked by my father to find you, to help you.”  With her hand still in his, he turns to Michi.  “I’m sorry, I haven’t had the pleasure … father did not tell me there would be a third.”

Michi is in shocked silence.  I clear my throat.  “Allow me.  This is Michika Salem.”

Now he’s really turning on the charm.  He brings Michi’s hand up and kisses it.  “A pleasure, Miss Salem … wait a minute …” He drops Michi’s hand and walks away a short distance.  “Your mother wouldn’t happen to be Kitty Lazarus, would she?”

Michi’s got this weird smile across her face.  All she can do is nod.  Upon her confirmation, Fahaian groans.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“My father warned me about Kitty.  Apparently they have … history.”

Michi’s face drops.  “What do you mean, history?  Just what are you implying?”

Fahaian turns around and puts his hands behind his back.  “Twenty-six years ago, my father and your mother were held captive by Azi-Dahaka, a humiliating experience only ended when they rose up against their captors, in conjunction with an attack by your father and Alanna’s parents.”

Michi smirks.  “Yeah, the Jerzaan mission.  Wait … your dad’s King Fahai, isn’t he?”

“The same.”

His dad is the king of Jordan?  Who knew royalty would get involved in this?

Now it’s Michi’s turn to groan.  “You could’a told me that sooner before I let you turn me gooey with your charms!”  Michi storms off into the darkness, and until I hear the rustling of the tent we have set up, I’m not sure where she is.  Gabe, on the other hand, has his hand over his mouth.

“Oh dear.  There’s something there, isn’t there?”

Fahaian nods.  “Indeed.  They did not get along at all in captivity.  My father mentions several instances where he nearly strangled Kitty because he was so annoyed with her.”

Gabe chuckles.  “That certainly sounds like Kitty.”

I’m not quite as concerned about the past.  “Forgive me, Fahaian, but what did you mean when you said your father sent you to find me and Gabe?”

The prince—man, that seems weird—clears his throat and sits down by the fire.  We join him on the ground as he begins.  “Several weeks ago, in our home, we were engaged in our weekly meditation session before our fire censer.  During most times, the fire shows us nothing but clarity, and grants us inner peace to continue with our daily lives.”

I look over at Gabe.  He must understand my confusion.  “Fahaian and his father are Zoroastrian, so they use fire as an icon and as a meditation tool.”

Okay, fire as a chant.  Got it.

“This time, however, the fire was not clear.  It was very cloudy, and there were images appearing before us.  Images of an older man and a younger woman, wandering the desert, fighting unseen forces.  There was a feeling of immense danger, and of dread, not the typical peace that usually comes to us.  It startled us both out of our meditation.

“When I asked my father about the vision, he had a clearer idea of what it meant than I did.  He had seen much more than I had, and told me exactly what to do and where to go.”

Gabe nods.  “So your dad told you to journey to the dead middle of nowhere in New Mexico and find us?”

“Not quite.  He originally told me to go to Wyoming, although he couldn’t exactly pinpoint where.  I flew into Cheyenne, hoping that your energy would guide me to where I needed to be.  When I found your energy, it was here.  I’ve been travelling to get to your side for the last day.”

Okay, now his story is sounding off to me.  “You’ve only been travelling for a day?  It took us four to get here from the Ranch!  How’s that possible?”

Fahaian smiles.  He walks a distance away, back into the darkness.  I can barely see a small pinhole of light as he apparently flicks a lighter on.  The next thing I know, he’s standing right next to me again.  I shriek with the surprise.  He simply smiles.  “I have my ways, Alanna.”

Gabe chuckles.  “I should have told you sooner, Alanna, but Fahaian is what’s called a telepyretic.  He can use fire for many different things, much more than just meditation.”

Okay, fire as power booster.  What the hell.  Once my heart restarts, I find the presence of mind to speak.  “So, Your Majesty …”

“Please, don’t call me that.  I’m simply Fahaian when I am in this country.”

“Okay … Fahaian … why was it so important to your dad that you come and help us?”

The prince’s eyes grow dark.  He starts intently into the campfire.  “My father and myself have devoted our lives to Zoroaster, which means we must serve life at any cost.  My father did so for a long time, in both his younger days and as the ruler of Jordan.”  He takes a cup of coffee offered to him by Gabe, sips, then continues.  “Sixteen years ago, I was but a child when destruction tried to come to our nation’s door.  Armies of evil rose from the river, stormed across the landscape, and left many for dead.  My father knew his place was with his people, and so he stood on the front line.

“The battle was tremendous, both in terms of its scale and its loss of life.  Many on both sides fell.  Wounds were grievous, they would not heal.  My father was among the wounded when he confronted the opposing general, who had taken the ghostly visage of the deceased Azi-Dahaka, and nearly lost the fight.  If it were not for his faith, and for the timely intervention of Zoroaster in the battle, we all would have fallen.”

I curl up my legs in my arms.  “Where were you?”

Fahaian smiles.  “I was very far away.  My father, days before the battle, had sent me to China, where he had friends.  Those friends took me in, kept me safe, and trained me.”

Gabe nods.  “Six years, wasn’t it?”

“Indeed.  They were the first to see my true power, and helped me to harness it, to put it into Zoroaster’s service.”

Something is starting to bug me.  How does Gabe seem to know so much about this mystery prince who just shows up out of the ether?  There are too many mysteries.

“My father’s wounds ended his life as a warrior.  He now spends his days in meditation, when he is not making policy decisions.”  Fahaian has continued without me, so I don’t know how badly his dad was injured.  All the same, though, I feel for him.  Us people with special fathers need to stick together.

Gabe stands up and stretches.  “Well guys, if Fahaian’s coming with us, we’ll need to make space for him in the morning.  Tomorrow, we’re heading back to the Ranch.”

My eyes widen.  “Why?  We did okay today, we got out safe.”

Gabe shakes his head.  “I’m afraid we were just lucky.  Look at the damage, Alanna, you nearly lost three fingers and one wing, and Michika’s downing spinach like there’s no tomorrow to make up the blood loss.  We need to go back and regroup, and you need to train.”

I groan.  “Train?  What for?  The Guardsman takes over when I draw the Sword, I’m basically along for the ride.  It was the Guardsman’s idea to go after the Invader, not mine.”

“Exactly.  You need to bend the power of the Guardsman to your will, otherwise you’re as good as dead.  Whenever the Guardsman is around the Invader, it’s like two polar-opposite magnets.  They attract each other, and have no choice but to fight.  You need to gain control over your power, over your Sword, and learn to resist that temptation.  That’s one of the weapons that the Invader uses to his advantage.”

Dad always told me Gabe knew far more about the Guardsman than even the Sharpe Swordbearers did.  I’m seeing evidence of this, but I need to make my point anyway.  “If the Guardsman can’t resist it, then how in the hell am I going to rein the power in?”

“With practice, Alanna, and training.  And I don’t just mean with the Sword, I mean with your mother’s gifts, as well.”

“Oh come on, it was one firecast …”

“Have you ever done it before?”

Damn, he got me there.  “No.  Mom never thought I’d be able to.  The doctors all said that other than my wings I was a normal human, so I thought I wouldn’t.”

Gabe harrumphs.  Fahaian stands up—I’d almost forgotten he was there—and chimes in.  “Excuse me, there’s something involving fire here?  I might be able to assist.”

I raise an eyebrow to him.  “Really?  I don’t think being a telepyretic is going to apply here, it’s biology.”

“Nevertheless, I believe I can help you.”

He’s not going to give up.  I may as well let him.  “Okay, okay, I’ll cave on this.  Both of you can train me.”

[romanticahwi]

Stray Kids as Princes

requested: no

genre: fluff + a bit suggestive

ship: skz x gn!reader

warnings: a bit of suggestiveness of sexual deeds, mentions of swords and fighting, mentions of injuries, lmk if there is more

not proof read! (minors dni)

a/n: we apologize for being so inactive recently! here’s a new work we’ve been working on, we hope it makes up for our long absence.

Bang Chan

    •    Probably one of the sweetest rulers ever

    •    Incredibly approachable

    •    Gives you the best advice you’ve ever heard sometimes whenever you’re having problems

    •    Sometimes you forget he’s royalty because you just feel so comfortable around him

    •    Lots of people swoon over him because honestly how could you not? Especially since he’s so sweet literally 24/7

    •    Nobody has ever seen him unhappy before, and he has certainly never been seen angry - only slightly annoyed but that itself is a rare sight

    •    He has a big soft spot for puppies and just all things cute

    •    He might have once proposed to change the name of his kingdom to something puppy-related (Succeeded in changing the national flag to something that had puppy paws in it)

    •    He enjoys swimming a lot, and there will almost always be a crowd of fans watching him and cheering him on every time! He may get really shy about it, but on the inside, he secretly likes it and it motivates him to do better!

Bang Chan As Your Prince

    •    As a lover, this man treats you like you’re royalty too, even if you aren’t!

    •    He will never allow you to degrade yourself or put yourself down but if that’s your way of coping, he won’t hesitate to give you his full, undivided attention…and then he’ll shower you with love and very kind words (he’s incredible with them - it never fails to blow you away)

    •    His singing voice is lovely, you often ask for him to sing you to sleep which is something he loves to do! He sees it as a way to get in some minutes of practice so he can improve himself

    •    He always wants to better himself and take care of others so much to the point that he’ll ignore his own needs, so he’ll definitely need someone to take care of him

    •    You sometimes can’t believe you’re lucky enough to call him yours, but he feels the same about you too, and he’ll always make it known (You swear your heart melts a little (in the best way possible) whenever he gets shy)

    •    He’s very cuddly, he loves giving you hugs; if there’s a day that goes by where he doesn’t give you one at least once throughout the day, then you know something is wrong

    •    He giggles a lot, and anything can set him off but you find it to be incredibly endearing

    •    He is just so soft…especially in the bedroom, but there are times when things get a little more heated

    •    “In a world that was dark and grey, you came along and painted beautiful, vibrant colors”

Lee Know

 •    He seems unapproachable at first because of his icy stare, but that’s quite the contrary actually (he’s actually an incredibly warm human being)

    •    Loves to crack jokes! Most of them are cat-related, but don’t comment on that or else he’ll probably stare at you weirdly and will continue to do so until you let it go

    •    Don’t tell anyone, but he secretly loves playing with cats in his free time, and sometimes whenever he has to spend a full day tending to his ✨ royal duties ✨ you’ll find him squeezing time in to pet some stray cats or to rescue them

    •    Speaking of rescuing stray cats, he’s incredibly passionate that no cat should be homeless and each should be loved and taken care of

    •    Not just cats, but he believes any stray animal shouldn’t be left without a home or a loving owner (He himself has three cats)

    •    He’s basically the president of the kingdom’s animal rescue team, and he often checks up on the shelter to either play with some of the animals there, or he’ll chose one and spontaneously run around the kingdom to promote how adorable they are in hopes of finding them a home at the end of the day

Lee Know as your Prince

 •    You must be an animal lover like him, because you guys will spend so much time together at the shelter to play with them!

    •    He’s a little awkward when it comes to affection, specifically hugs, but with given time, he’ll warm up to it! Plus, he’s awkward in a cute way

    •    He’s gifted you a cat plushie which you’re unable to sleep without at night, sometimes you’ll catch him stealing it from you because he claims that it’s just too adorable

    •    You guys have ice cream dates a lot, because he seems to have a second stomach for it

    •    Whenever you go with him to get his portrait painted, he loves to pose in funny positions and make funny faces, there are a lot of portraits consisting of him doing so, finding a more serious one is kind of rare but hey…you’re just glad to see his true personality that he’s a bit hesitant to share with the rest of the kingdom

    •    You happened to discover this on accident, but he likes it when you ruffle his hair and look at him fondly, it makes his heart race

    •    He often guards his emotions, but you feel thankful whenever he opens up to you because sometimes you get worried when he bottles them up for a little too long

    •    He can be a bit evil sometimes, and that shows in the bedroom but he makes sure to never do something you’re not comfortable with - your needs come first  

   •    “You are my pride and joy, I feel so lucky to have you”

Changbin

• SUCH A FUN MAN!

• Nicknamed the prince of fun! Only by a few people…everyone else refers to him as the “pig-bunny prince” because he has a big obsession with Dwaekki (he might even be the face of the kingdom…literally. aka the national flag)

• You can trust him with practically anything. But do expect him to playfully tease you most of the time!

• He can be really loud! Even if you’re a few rooms down from whatever room he’s in, there’s no doubt you’ll be able to hear him

• He really loves music, he’s in charge of anything music-related (He’s hosted rap classes before, and a lot of people found them to be a bit on the difficult side because he can rap incredibly fast)

• He’s pretty chill, and kind of like a best friend to everyone - he’s that open to things and he’s incredibly reliable (He’s got everyone’s back, whether you’re close to him or not.)

Changbin As Your Prince

• He’s a very fun lover as well, your love life together is always full of excitement

• Certain activities could possibly cause him to get severely injured, and you always mentally note that you should tell him to stop, but seeing the pure joy on his face…you can’t help but to change your mind. (He’s a little daredevil, it’s kind of rare to see him mellowed-out, and when you do, you should probably be concerned when he isn’t being his loud, hyper self)

• He can be pretty affectionate when he wants to be but he displays his love for you through other actions rather than physical affection

• He too, is very good with his words! He makes you feel like you’re on cloud 9

• That “cool guy” act that he’s got going on? It doesn’t show up as much when he’s with you, because he’s just that comfortable with you. (Plus he thinks that you deserve to see the true Changbin…the man behind the prince that everyone else doesn’t get to see)

• His playfulness shows up in the bedroom too, along with ruthless teasing, like sometimes you’ll have to beg for him to have mercy on you but in his opinion that just makes things more exciting

“What was my life before? Ever since we met, I can’t seem to live without you anymore”

Hyunjin

the softest when it came to serving his kingdom

his gentle voice and soft smile always brought people to ease when they were around him

an equestrian. when not attending to royal duties, he’s always riding a horse or in the stable

as the only child and only son, he must take over the kingdom, no questions asked

throws an annual winter wonderland festival to show his gratitude to his subjects

his kind smile is loved by all

Hyunjin as your Prince

so so so loving oh my

would help you make bracelets for the small children in the kingdom

would press loving kisses to your face with that shy smile of his

would also take you on horse rides! in the morning, middle of the day, at night? you name it!

intimacy between you two was so loving and soft

he would show you how much he loves you with sweet kisses and gentle words

“everyday when I watch the sunset, I realize I’ll get to spend another day with you.”

Han

he gives off the vibe that he wouldn’t want to rule the kingdom after his father.

he wants to pursue music, but the king is against it.

so against it, that Jisung has to do what he loves behind his father’s back

very playful; loves sword fighting and horseback riding

everyone in the kingdom as a slight crush on him

he’s known for being very heroic; he’s saved many people and the protected the kingdom with an iron fist

he may not want to rule in the future, but he still cares about his subjects like family

very giving as well; always there if anyone is in a bad situation, whether it’s big or small.

Han as your Prince

very loving; loves pressing kisses all over your face, and having his hands on your body

very protective. If anyone looks at you with barely even a little interest, it’s all over.

when you two get intimate, I see him being the one to initiate everything

he would take care of you, kissing down your body with soft praises and soft touches

holds your waist gently while doing the do

“ there are many bright stars in the sky, but you’re the brightest out of them all, baby.”

Felix

the sweetest prince ever.

cares so much about his subjects; maybe more than himself

everyone loves him, and are very ready for him to take over the kingdom

hosts monthly bake sales that the entire kingdom can participate in, which also helps feed people in need

dances when he’s not attending to royal duties, and oh my, he’s a beautiful dancer

during the cold winters, he hosts as much shelter for people as he can

being the only son in his family, he needs to find a significant other soon because his father is getting old to keep running the kingdom

Felix as your Prince

no surprise, but he’s the sweetest

he can’t keep his hands off of you when you’re together

hands on your waist, holding your hand, any skinship, he’s doing it.

when you two were intimate, regardless of his roll, his eyes would be filled with so much love.

loves it when you run your hands through his hair, tugging it gently

nonstop kisses. he’s completely addicted to your lips.

“i might be the kingdoms pride and joy, but you are my absolute universe.”

Seungmin

very strategic and well educated. he knows what he’s doing, and knows how to do it well.

extremely brave. he’s saved the country multiple times.

he comes off as cold, but behind closed castle doors, he’s an energetic puppy.

loves to sing in his free time

often gets caught singing in the castle garden, and gosh he sounds beautiful

extremely protective over his family. You hurt them, he hurts you.

Seungmin as your Prince

cold on the outside, warm on the inside

will not go father than keeping his arm out for you to wrap around when you’re in public

but within castle walls? he’s all over you.

kisses kisses kisses galore

smiles brightly only for you :(

sings you to sleep every night

when you two are intimate, he usually wants it soft and slow so he can show you how much he loves you

soft praises and slow, romantic kisses

holds your hand the entire time

“you are more beautiful than the cherry blossom blooms on a sunny day.”

I.N.

playful but caring

he always is holding a smile on his face. there’s never a point and time where people weren’t seeing him smiling.

however he takes his royal duties very seriously. when someone is in trouble, he’ll put the villain in their place.

a fencer. he finds such a thrill in fighting someone with a sword.

since he has an older brother, he doesn’t have to take over the kingdom, and he’s happy about it.

ideally want to live in a forest, surrounded by trees and wonder.

I.N. as your Prince

so so so caring. he cares about no one when it comes to you.

he loves to press gentle kisses all across your face, neck, jaw, etc. he just thinks you’re so beautiful.

would love it when you showed up to his fencing matches. he loved it when you were there to cheer him on.

you two would stay up till the rise of the sun singing and giggling with each other.

would hold you close when you two eventually fell asleep.

this sweetheart would let you take any role when it came to intimacy. he was an absolute fool for you.

“When the sky is filled with sweet, bird songs, I get reminded of you.”

- atalia & arya

[hexavexen]

Vexes: A Guide (updated 10/30/22)

Vexes tend to be a more forgotten mob, tucked away in corners of the game and tied to a rare enemy...but they’re my favorite and I think they’re beyond fascinating. Here’s all the information out there from official publications and the game itself related to a weirdly complicated mob that often goes unnoticed.

(Some bullet points will mention potential headcanons, but the majority of this post pulls from the actual games, official wikis, and some things which are interestingly parallel)

This post is about the vex and its variant, not the allay. After playing MC:D for over a year it’s safe to say I’m confident enough in what I know and have seen to talk about it now lol

BASICS

So there you have it, everyone - Bravery is useless and the Vex is the worst thing to happen to the sky since someone invented seagulls. Enjoy!

The verb vex, of course, means “to frustrate, annoy, worry, or cause distress to someone.” Even down to the name, vexes are supposed to be a problem.

Vexes never appear in game on their own: they must be summoned by an evoker’s spell. The “call” for the vex spell is an eerie horn noise (not the same as a raid horn) and smoke cloud. Three are summoned at a time.

Evokers only spawn naturally in woodland mansions or in the final stages of an illager raid, so these are the only places to encounter vexes. Vexes are not considered illagers.

Evokers can summon vexes multiple times in combat, but they start decaying and will die 30-119 seconds after being summoned.

Nametagging a vex doesn’t do anything actually! They’ll still die.

Vexes are less than a block tall. Their size is comparable to a bee.

Vexes can pass through ANY block, including bedrock, and are unaffected by lava. The only block they cannot pass through is a boat, which they get stuck in.

The sword doesn’t drop when they die.

Vexes cannot be put on a lead. I tried.

APPEARANCE

They’re a dark blue-gray with a white mouth, wings, and eyes. Their hands are also white.

Vexes spawn with small iron swords, but CAN be spawned weaponless with console cheats. They still attack and have a different animation for unarmed combat.

Vexes aren’t affected by lighting very much if at all. They glow in the dark, but don’t emit light.

Their ‘legs’ are actually a single block that waves when they fly, akin to a ghostly tail.

When a vex is “seeking,” it appears blue-gray and wanders around aimlessly. When a vex is actively hostile, the dark cracks in its body and face turn red, it lifts its sword, and charges straight for its target.

In Minecraft Dungeons, vexes have a different appearance! Their standard form is slightly different and when hostile the cracks in their body (face included) seem to show orange flames. (side note: the “seeking flame” ancient vex boss is fire powered, humongous, and keeps with the fire theme)

NOISES

General Vex noises are subtitled as “vex vexes.” When a vex attacks, it shrieks. Most of the time they just giggle evilly. The mobestiary refers to these as “breathy, low screams.”

A vex’s “voice” is actually more than one at once, usually a hiss, a giggle, or shriek overlapping each other. (I personally think a few of their voice clips sound like they’re trying to say words, such as screeching “NO!” when they’re killed, but I’ll leave that up to your ears)

HOSTILITY AND AGGRESSION

Vexes are one of the hardest-hitting mobs in the game, and their tendency to swarm means they’re tough to fight.

Vexes attack at the command of an evoker. Their hostility is the same as an evoker’s hostility because they must be ordered to attack. EVOKER-SUMMONED vexes attack players, villagers, and iron golems on sight. If another mob (like a skeleton) hits an evoker, the vexes will be ordered to attack that mob as well. They wander in the area around the evoker looking for things to attack until they decay and die.

If the evoker is killed, the vexes are no longer commanded to attack villagers, golems, and mobs the evoker didn’t like, so will leave them alone. They still hate player characters though!

If a vex was spawned in by a spawn egg or spawner, it is NOT immediately aggressive to villagers or iron golems. HOWEVER, it will relentlessly pursue player characters because it doesn’t need to be commanded to kill them, it just wants to naturally. Vexes spawned this way are free-roaming and do not decay with time. If a mob hits them, they will retaliate, but are otherwise content to wander around.

Vexes can’t see through blocks, so the best way to break their aggression is getting out of their line of sight. They can still pass through walls, though, meaning they can sneak up on you and stab you from behind.

Vexes can be spawned without a sword with commands. They attack with both hands outstretched (see above)

MINECRAFT MOBESTIARY (10/10/2017) 

“This flying imp delights in causing ill toward explorers and villagers. Its name is appropriate: it is one of the most vexatious mobs one can encounter, and causes much mischief. Several vex  are conjured at once by evokers in woodland mansions. How much control evokers have over their vex is a point of much debate, but it is clear that they are an evil pairing indeed” (78).

This book confirms that the dark marks on a vex are cracks in its skin.

It suggests that vexes are not made of “flesh as we know it” and that their bodies may be made of flames (but it’s just a guess).

Though the book refers to vexes as “flying imps” and “flying devils” it states that it’s unknown if they’re actually demonic and there’s no evidence of vexes in the nether (Note: this was published BEFORE the nether update, and this also implies that the Nether is demonic or has demons. Fun!)

SIDE NOTE: Vex noises can actually be heard in the Soul Sand Valley ambience even if they do not spawn there. 

When vexes die they disappear in “a cloud of noisome fumes” (Which might be a reference to the brimstone scent of hell (sulfur), but that’s just a guess. Either way, when they die, it stinks. That’s what "noisome” means.)

A vex’s presence in a room is referred to as “a haunting.” This is the same as a group of endermen and I don’t know why. Vexes are more literal though since they’re ghosts/supernatural.

The book suggests that vexes are undead, but the game does not consider them to be! 

MINECRAFT DUNGEONS/GUARDIAN VEX (added 10/30/22)

Souls are actually used and visible in this game normally. They are constantly illuminated but do not glow, similar to how vexes are lit.

Minecraft Dungeons’ wiki classifies vexes as ghost mobs along with phantoms, ghasts, and the wisp that became the inspiration for the allay.

MANY soul-powered weapons in the game either make REFERENCE to vexes (Soul Bow: “shimmers with all the beauty and fury of an attacking vex”) or make vex sounds when equipped (Souldancer Robe, which also makes ender sounds when picked up).

The ancient vex is a boss which can be fought during an ancient hunt and is named The Seeking Flame. It’s unique in that it spawns with THREE EVOKERS (typically a miniboss mob) as its minions instead, is massive, and enchanted with fire-related abilities. It is summoned with two “O” runes, which are only found by breaking soul weapons. You fight it in an ancient desert temple as well!

A variant vex is in this game, the guardian vex. It’s pink, looks animalistic, and has a headshape that’s similar to the arch-illager instead of a square. It has four wings and instead of a ghost tail it has separated legs!

The mob is called a seravex in game files which is a potential reference to a seraph, a type of angel known for multiple wings.

It’s also classified as an ender mob. The item used to summon the guardian vexes in groups of three is called the Vexing Chant, or Lost Evocation in game files. It can only be obtained from the game’s true final boss, the Heart of Ender, in the Echoing Void DLC fought in the End. Their noises are more distorted in an ender-like way too. I won’t speculate on that too much, there’s not a lot of information outside of that right now!

Seravex have different hurt noises than vexes entirely which have ender distortion. This is in contrast to the normal vex which has a hurt noise similar to another mob instead....

WILD UPDATE (ADDED 10/30/22)

Vexes aren’t updated here specifically but there are a few things to keep in mind:

Skulk shriekers make noises vaguely similar to vexes and literally show souls as a part of the block.

Illager exploration is hinted at in the ancient city where soul magic most certainly was utilized/studied.

Allays are named opposite of vexes (Vex = worry and Allay = relieve) and seem like a more “alive” or at the very least STABLE counterpart. I haven’t had time to research their deeper connections so I’ll leave that to you. Their noises are very similar in a lot of ways and they have like appearances.

IN CONCLUSION

Minecraft is a sandbox that’s made for creativity and headcanon. The cool thing about vexes is that, like other favorite mobs, they’re up to a lot of interpretation and guessing. Vexes can kind of be whatever you want, even if they’re universally difficult and irritating violent little bastards. As for Hex, I love seeing interpretations of what other people think about the mob and even though I have my own plans and interpretations, I love seeing other ideas. Sure, the Mobestiary says creepers are walking TNT constructs, but do they have to all be like that?? Same for vexes. Are they ghosts? Demons? Murder-fairies? Do they actually exist on their own somewhere? Up to how you see your world!

Y’all keep finding this post so I hope that if you get a chance to look at it after updating that it helps introduce you to the whole mob. Some of my observations have been withheld intentionally just because I’m using them as a plot point for my own character story on this blog and haven’t seen much/any discussion about them at all....but the more I’ve revealed in story, the more I’ve added to this post.

REFERENCES

https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Vex

https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Minecraft_Dungeons:Evoker#Vex

https://www.minecraft.net/es-es/article/meet-vex

https://readminecraft.com/book/minecraft-mobestiary/

(Added a point about skulk shriekers and Minecraft Dungeons on 10/30/21

[youghvaudough]

Here’s a list of random things that tickle my funny bone for no reason in the Kyoshi novels

(as a Mandarin speaker)

am working through the novels currently so light spoilers?

will continue to update as I go 

click 4 sum fun rambles

Horse stance. THIS BITCH DESERVES THE TOP SPOT SO HERE GOES. I somehow did not make this connection until like I’m almost all the way through the book, but 扎马步 (zhā mǎ bù) or if you take the literal meaning of characters “poke horse step” is literally so well known it’s insane. I’m talking one of the first training/fighting stance that comes to a Chinese person’s mind when u mention kung fu/combat training in general well known so I rly dunno how it slipped my mind for an entire book

this particular stance is always a lil funny to me bc of the way it’s phrased in Chinese; with the 扎 “poke”, the intention is to convey a planting & sinking, steadying of the stance that’s just also funny af to me

so imagine sth u find a lil silly & funny fully becoming a flirtatious & romantic code specific to the main characters of the story? hilarity ensued; rip my friend who had to listen to my scream-laughing

Jianzhu, the architect, his name is literally pinyin for building (建筑 jiàn zhù); imagine naming ur kid Building Smith. No wonder he’s such an uptight type A

the name of Jesa’s (Kyoshi’s mom) sky bison, Longyan / 龙眼 (lóng yǎn), while directly translates to “dragon eye”, also happens to be the Chinese word for Longan fruit (which like Lychee, has cloudy, white/clear-ish flesh surrounding a dark, round pit)

Rangi’s name in the Chinese translation of the book is 燃姬 (rán jī), which itself is a basic sound translation, but these characters mean “lady on fire” or “burning lady” this is kinda cute as heck 4 me for some reason????? lil furnace lady Rangi makes me soft

…that brings us to Rangi’s mom Hei-Ran, someone who we know can be cold and calloused in getting sh*t done with some shady days in the academy, & her name may reflect that. her name could be these two characters 黑燃 (hēi rán), which translates to “black burn” or “dark burn”. talk abt obvious characteristic here; nothing more obvious than ur name amirite???

…then again it could also be 黑兰 (hēi lán, “Black Orchid”) which tbh I kinda like better bc it’s more likely to be used as a name; AGAIN, no one wants to name their kid “black burn” it really doesn’t sound as cool as you’d think

SO! After clues from the comments (thank u @taare-writes!) and help I outsourced from TikTok — Hei-Ran’s name actually could be 혜란 in Korean !! also when I put this in the translator I used, the corresponding Mandarin it gave me was 蕙兰 (hùi lán), which is a specific type of orchid (boat orchid I believe?) and SUCH A PRETTY NAME oh my

the term used for the outlaws daofei, is literally just 盗匪 (dào fěi) “thieves/bandits”; this especially tickles my friend (who’s also reading these novels) so I gotta include it for her ;))))

the daofei’s secret gathering spot next to a lake in the mountains, Hujiang, could be 湖江 (hú jiāng) “lake river” or 湖将 (hú jiāng) which if u squint at it could mean “just by the lake”. this is fun bc it’s possible the author just flipped the saying 江湖 (jiāng hú), which while directly translates to “river lake”, has a much broader & meaningful use often in 武侠 (wǔ xiá, if u know u know, but if u don’t you can think of it as samurai or traveling knight but CHINESE) lore: it is used to refer to the world of action, thrills, and adventure walked by these warriors. It’s p cool to me lmao

oh and the Lei Tai the daofei’s fight on? Just 擂台 (lèi tái) “fighting stage”, same thing as the ring in boxing but doesn’t only reference one specific type of fight

Yun’s name is p simple & straight forward, probably just 云 (yún, “cloud”); it’s also an actual last name and I know someone from Highschool with this last name :)))

While Kyoshi obviously has Japanese origins, the kanji corresponding to きょし is 虚子. Japanese kanji have their origins in Chinese characters, and in this case these two kanji can mean “child of the void” (虚 xū “the void / the lack of something” 子 zǐ “child / kid”); pretty fucking metal name if u ask me

Lao Ge, the human alias of the bloodthirsty spirit in Kyoshi’s gang, could just be 老哥 (lǎo gē) “old brother” which is equivalent of just bro

… it’s real name, Tieguai, could be 铁怪 (tiě guài) “iron monster” or 铁拐 (tiě guǎi) “iron crutch”, which both kinda make sense??? given its monstrous tendencies and ancient origins

the green emerald burial sword Tagaka carried with her, jian, literally is just 剑 (jiàn) “sword”. Yes they really went you know what? we gon call it a sword sword

speaking of weapons, the dao broadsword? same thing. 刀 (dāo) literally means “broadsword”. broadsword broadsword hehe

what I find interesting abt this whole weapons naming is that technically when u picture a broadsword, it falls under the umbrella classification of sword (can someone who’s first culture ain’t Chinese confirm this??? thanks); though for Chinese ppl, 剑 (jiàn, “sword”) and 刀 (dāo, “broadsword”) are completely different beasts

basically dao & jian to us r like tigers and wolves when broadswords & swords r like tigers and lions (both in the felidae family)

where this info kinda becomes relevant is bc knives are also translated as 刀 (yeah the one for “broadsword”), and the way ppl know which type of sharp instrument you mean depends on the context. if ur carrying ur dao on ur back (like in the novels) it’s broadsword; if ur looking for a dao to prep dinner with it’s probably a knife unless u really have the urge to chop spinach with a broadsword

the Yellow Scarf’s imprisoned (later freed then dropped) leader, Xu Ping An, has a weirdly ironic name; his name is likely 许平安 (xǔ píng ān), “wish for peace”. 许 (xǔ) can mean “making a wish” & is an actual Chinese last name; 平安 (píng ān) “peace” on the other hand can be & have been used as a name

slight tangent: there’s this Chinese tradition of including undesired characteristics in ur child’s name so they could avoid those things in life I know it’s probably not the tradition mom&dad Xu had in mind when they named him but it did kinda take effect

the design of Govener Te’s mansion complex, the traditional earth kingdom siheyuan design that Rangi mentioned? It’s an actual traditional courtyard’d household design. I’m not the expert on this but if ur interested u can just search siheyuan and read more abt it ! v fascinating

四合院 (sì hé yuàn) roughly translates to “four enclosing yard”, referring to how the structure of this type of housing consists of four sections of single floor housing (each a specific functional space) enclosing an exposed courtyard in the middle. You can still find some of these in Beijing; also these houses go for SO MUCH MONEY on the housing market bc 1. it’s p much a suburb home but in the city 2. CITY LAND 3. homes r just insanely expensive in a city like Beijing. so there’s a running joke that you’d say someone’s well-off by saying their family has a siheyuan

(alright that’s the end of the Rise of Kyoshi!!! Will prolly make another one for the Shadow of Kyoshi; see y’all then)

[agentrouka-blog]

I don't think Sansa would be raped by Ramsay. I don't think grrm will repeat same thing happened to jeyne to Sansa. While Jon death was his lowest point Sansa already had one which is ned death and she is already a bastard. Not only this it will seem that grrm punishing her from escaping her abuser. She is already had little agency and didn't do anything dark to get punished horribly. It will break her when she already had suffered much.

Hi anon!

Sansa has a habit of stumbling from one bad situation into another when trying to escape (Cersei, Littlefinger), and she has a tendency to follow Jeyne’s path (crush on a tourney knight, hysterical about her father’s death, hiding her identity to arrange a marriage and journey North by Littlefinger’s design...) but I don’t think she will copy Jeyne in this. 

Jeyne is the victim of Ramsey and Theon saved her. That story has been told, on the page. It belongs to Jeyne. To repeat it would be redundant. 

While Ramsey may become a threat to Sansa in a different scenario (the evil huntsmen and his hounds), that story only makes sense if there’s a wolf to the rescue. 

Considering Theon’s dream about being hunted through the woods...

The sky was a gloom of cloud, the woods dead and frozen. Roots grabbed at Theon’s feet as he ran, and bare branches lashed his face, leaving thin stripes of blood across his cheeks. He crashed through heedless, breathless, icicles flying to pieces before him. Mercy, he sobbed. From behind came a shuddering howl that curdled his blood. Mercy, mercy. When he glanced back over his shoulder he saw them coming, great wolves the size of horses with the heads of small children. Oh, mercy, mercy. Blood dripped from their mouths black as pitch, burning holes in the snow where it fell. Every stride brought them closer. Theon tried to run faster, but his legs would not obey. The trees all had faces, and they were laughing at him, laughing, and the howl came again. He could smell the hot breath of the beasts behind him, a stink of brimstone and corruption. They’re dead, dead, I saw them killed, he tried to shout, I saw their heads dipped in tar, but when he opened his mouth only a moan emerged, and then something touched him and he whirled, shouting . . .

. . . flailing for the dagger he kept by his bedside and managing only to knock it to the floor. Wex danced away from him. Reek stood behind the mute, his face lit from below by the candle he carried. “What?” Theon cried. Mercy. “What do you want? Why are you in my bedchamber? Why?”

“My lord prince,” said Reek, “your sister has come to Winterfell. You asked to be informed at once if she arrived.” 

(ACOK, Theon V)

and Cat’s interesting Girl-in-Grey-esque Memory:

"Last night I dreamed of that time Lysa and I got lost while riding back from Seagard. Do you remember? That strange fog came up and we fell behind the rest of the party. Everything was grey, and I could not see a foot past the nose of my horse. We lost the road. The branches of the trees were like long skinny arms reaching out to grab us as we passed. Lysa started to cry, and when I shouted the fog seemed to swallow the sound. But Petyr knew where we were, and he rode back and found us . . ."  

(ACOK, Catelyn VII)

Or even Tysha, dark-haired, blue-eyed Tysha of the eyes to drown in and the face to break your heart:

"Jaime and I were riding back from Lannisport when we heard a scream, and she came running out into the road with two men dogging her heels, shouting threats. My brother unsheathed his sword and went after them, while I dismounted to protect the girl. She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired, slender, with a face that would break your heart. It certainly broke mine. Lowborn, half-starved, unwashed … yet lovely. They'd torn the rags she was wearing half off her back, so I wrapped her in my cloak while Jaime chased the men into the woods. By the time he came trotting back, I'd gotten a name out of her, and a story. 

(AGOT, Tyrion VI)

I think that is the scenario we are most likely to encounter. A pseudo Jaime-Brienne rescue scenario where Ghost and Jon form some kind of cooperative duo. I mean, GRRM pulled off the most textbook adventure rescue with Jaime and Brienne, wooden sword and bear and everything. No holds barred, no cynical twist. 

"I am grateful, but . . . you were well away. Why come back?"

A dozen quips came to mind, each crueler than the one before, but Jaime only shrugged. "I dreamed of you," he said. (ASOS, Jaime VI)

The warging episodes are regularly described as wolf dreams.

Plus, that’d also be Jon channeling his mom, rescuing helpless people beset by hypocritical evil on the road. 

I doubt myself sometimes, but my gut instinct is really that there’s little to be won in giving Sansa that level trauma and not remotely enough time to let her emotionally recover from it for the rest of the plot to unfold outside of its shadow. If GRRM leveled that kind of assault on Sansa, it would not positively impact her growth, and it would weirdly imply that the good things she gets are a reward for her suffering, when it’s her already existing qualities that only need more developing that would qualify her to be a queen by the end. 

[wonwoosthetic]

Goddess Of The Underworld | Part Two || Geralt of Rivia

My masterlist is linked in my bio :)

PART ONE is advised to be read before this :)

Jesus guys, I got so much positive feedback from the last part, THANK YOU!! It genuinely made me soooo happy, so I hope that you will enjoy this part just as much! :)

Request: Hiiiiii can I please request a Geralt fic, where the reader is like Yennefer but more powerful

!!A/N!!: I’m thinking about re-naming this series, I’m not too happy about it... just don’t feel like it fits the way that I want to take this story, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know! :) I’m sure, you guys are a LOT more creative than me, when it comes to this!!

Warnings: cursing, slight mention of blood

Word Count: 2.198 words

She was born as Hella, the Gentle, but after that fire, her hair turned black and suddenly she was known as Hel. No one knows why.

Goddess Of The Underworld | Part Two: What’s Lost Is Found

Even though the last day he had spent in the village was fairly warm, the way through the forest was a lot colder than he expected. On his way he came across a few villagers sitting around fires they had built themselves or snuggled up under big furs – it interested him how the temperature could change that quickly, but he was thankful that he couldn’t feel the cold. Day one of his journey was slowly coming to an end, Geralt noticed the colour of the sky changing into a warmer tone. The pathway became harder to see, so the Witcher reached behind him in search for his Cat* potion. He dived his hand deep into the bag, rattling it around hoping to feel the glass bottle but without success. “Fuck”, he breathed out in annoyance, I should have remembered to get another few bottles, just in case, he thought. With the sun slowly setting, he could still find his way around as much as any other human being could, in a forest they had never been to. Roach was getting tired as well, noticeable by the way he held his head and his slow steps, either that or he could feel something coming. After travelling a little further, always making sure to follow the dirty earth-path, Geralt stopped his horse, “Hold on, Roach”, he jumped of its back and went around its frame to come face-to-face, gently running his hand up and down the space between the eyes, “we should take a break, you’re tired, it’s okay. Tomorrow’s another day.” He grabbed the rope he always kept in one of the backs attached to the saddle, made a knot around one of the reins and tied the other end around a big, strong-looking tree, next to a free space where Geralt decided to rest for the night. After giving the horse an apple as a good night snack, the Witcher walked around the spot, that had weirdly no grass growing, to look for something like a wooden log to rest his head on and use as a sort of pillow. Within a few minutes he had found one a couple feet away from Roach. He was walking back when a sound of a bush rustling rushed through his ears – it sounded like something or someone was watching him, he could feel it. The Witcher dropped the piece of wood, reached to his back to grab a hold of his sword... that was supposed to be there... Quickly he patted his back with both of his hands to feel if it maybe had moved, but no, there was no longer a sword attached to him. He turned around as a gush of wind went past him, “Show yourself!”, he shouted in an angry voice. How could he not have felt something taking it from his back?

It had already gotten so dark, he wasn’t even able to see his companion anymore, only suddenly hear him whinnying. The white-haired Witcher was quick on his feet, trusting his instincts to get him back to the place he had left all of his belongings before, but without luck.

Geralt was stood in the middle of nowhere, with no sword, no potions, nothing but him and his armor, and his instincts that he felt like, he couldn’t trust anymore.

Accompanied by another subtle wind, a high singing voice echoed through the woods. He turned his head in all directions, looking left and right as a sense of paranoia spread in his stomach – this was more than just unusual for his kind. As soon as the voice stopped, the wind stopped as well and Geralt was left alone with the thoughts running through his head. He was only able to hear the sound of a few leaves scrunching beneath him while turning around in circles, trying to make things out in the dark.

“Who are you?!”, his voice got a lot deeper. A whimpering sound emerged from behind a bush, “Please, no! I-I just-“ “Just wanted what?! Steal all of my stuff?”, the Witcher interrupted the much smaller creature. “No!”, it stood up straight and with the help of the moonlight, Geralt was able to make out the silhouette of a small-looking boy – he couldn’t have been older than twelve years old.

The older man looked at the kid in confusion, “What are you doing out here? Alone.” “My family is over there”, he pointed somewhere in the dark, “but I wanted to warn you”, there was a slight shake in his voice. “Warn me?”, Geralt wanted to know more. “Yes”, the boy got closer to the Witcher, “You shouldn’t be here... it’s not safe for... your kind.”

“So, you know who I am”, his deep voice sent chills of slight fear over the young boy’s body. “Of course. Everyone does. You’re Geralt of Rivia, THE Witcher. Word travels fast... even for elves.”

The last word made Geralt’s head shot up, “Elves? You’re an elve?” And as quick as the young elve showed up, he was gone again. He got scared and sprinted back to where he came from. “No, wait!”, in annoyance, the Witcher puffed out a big amount of air through his teeth.

Great, his stuff got stolen and all he knew was, that he definitely was not welcome here but why... he didn’t know. Deciding, there was not much else to do, as he was still not able to see much, he got down on the floor right next to Roach and tried falling asleep.

The sound of a singing voice woke him up a few times during the dark night.

Sleeping was hard, Geralt wasn’t able to get a good rest – that explained his even worse mood the next morning. After feeding his horse with a few apples, he got on his back and found a small river just a few minutes into his journey, where they stopped and Geralt filed his water bottle while Roach enjoyed the water right from the creek.

Last night’s encounter with the elf kept the Witcher uneasy – and the fact that he had no potions and no weapons anymore.

After a while on the horse’s back, he decided to walk for a bit after finding interesting “foot”prints on the mudy ground. Geralt had never seen any like that, normal feet but with dark prints, possibly ash, and something that looked like a trail that dragged right behind the footprints. I must be getting closer, he thought. He continued the rest of the journey through the woods on his feet.

As soon as the trees stopped growing, the footprints vanished as well. Geralt’s eyes trailed the path further into the distance, only to come to sight with dead trees and bushes. Not one green growing thing in sight... The ground turned from a muddy brown colour to deep black, raven black. He crouched down to the floor, dipped his fingers into the ground and smelled them right afterwards.

Ash. He was right. He was close.

Whatever was beyond this border of death was not going to be safe for Roach. Therefore, Geralt looked for a big tree and tied the horse’s reins witch the rope around it, said goodbye, and gave him one last apple before continuing the walk on his own.

After a few minutes of walking, the Witcher noticed that he was no longer able to see his own feet, from his knees downwards everything was covered in thick dust. The sky had also turned from its normally blue into a white colour, probably covered in clouds. The dead trees had become less and less, slowly there was absolutely nothing anymore. Suddenly, a cold shiver ran down Geralt’s back. He quickly whipped his head around to see what had caused it, but there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Everything was gone. The path he had been following, the few dead trees – everything.

He turned back around, only to see the exact same emptiness. The only thing he was looking at at that moment, was the colour white.

And there it was again. The singing voice from the night before. It startled Geralt, “What do you want from me?!” But he got no answer. His first instinct was to just run, and so he did. He tried following the voice, but it came from everywhere around him. He ran and ran, his pace quickened but he was going nowhere. There was no point. The singing became louder, slowly and slowly. Geralt ran even faster. The voice followed him. With every step he took, the singing became louder and most importantly higher. The Witcher’s ears started hurting as the voice was almost just an incredibly loud and painful whistle. He had to stop and hold his ears. His knees gave in and he fell to the floor. The voice didn’t stop. Geralt started feeling a warm fluid coming out of his ears as it trickled down his neck. The ringing became louder and his vision darkened.

The first thing he felt were warm hands and something wet on his left ear. The person was very gentle but yet it startled the Witcher. He shot up from his lying position and stood straight with a furious look on his face, “What the fuck are you doing?” “I-I’m sorry, I-I-I swear- I didn’t m- I just wanted to help you.” In front of him, on her knees, next to the bed he had just been lying in, was a young woman, maybe even a girl. She had raven black hair and piercing eyes. Her clothes were just as dark as her hair... this could be... “Who are you?”, he didn’t want to wait. She reached forward to a blanket lying on the bed and handed it to the Witcher because what he didn’t notice was, that he in fact, was butt-ass naked. She contemplated for a short while whether or not to tell him who she really was, “Hella.”

Geralt’s face softened up a slight bit as he looked her up and down, “You? You are Hella?”

Uncomfortably, she crossed her arms in front of her stomach, “So... you’ve... heard of me...” Her eyes drifted everywhere but to the Witcher, who scoffed at her answer, “Yeah, you burnt down an entire village”, he stated in disbelieve. “I didn’t!”, she shouted, startling the man in front of her slightly, “It wasn’t me!”, her breathing quickened and tears threatened to spill out of her eyes, “I swear, I didn’t do it.”

She looked so fragile and lost as Geralt looked closely at her. Her arms, her neck, and even her feet were covered in scars – they looked like burns, terrible burns. Looks can be deceiving, but this girl... no, there was no way.

“How did you find me?”, he wondered, as he realised that there was nothing around him when he passed out. “I was looking for some berries and all of sudden you were laying there”, she calmed down, she didn’t want to cry in front of a Witcher, “You looked dead”, she made the bed and then walked over to the small kitchen, where Geralt was able to lean on the counters, “I couldn’t just leave you out there.”

There it was. Way too kind. Just as he was about to answer, a neighing came from outside. No way. He knew that sound only too well. “Oh yeah, your horse is not-”, Hella wasn’t even able to finish her sentence as the Witcher was quick on his feet and ran through the entrance door outside, holding the blanket around his waist. “Roach”, he breathed as a burden fell off his shoulders. The horse turned his head to where the sound of its owner’s voice came from and bumped his nose with Geralt’s face making him smirk. “I know. Good boy.” His hands went up stroke its neck.

“Why did you leave him alone?” He didn’t notice the young woman following him outside with an apple in her hand to feed Roach. “The path looked too dangerous, I wanted to go alone first”, he explained before turning his full body to her, “how did you find him?” “I didn’t”, she started, “he found me. After finding you, I brought you here and he was just suddenly... also... here. I saw the crest”, she pointed to it, “Witcher.”

“Thank you”, he said and truly meant it.

With a smile, she was about to turn around and go back in, when a thought stopped her, “Wait, you... you said the path looked too dangerous... what did you mean by that?” “Are you serious? There was nothing in sight, everything was dead-“, he stopped as he had just gotten time to look around where he was. Still in the woods. Everything was green, not a dead bush or tree in sight. “Wait a second, how-“, Geralt wasn’t able to process everything fast enough, it didn’t make any sense... There was no possible way of... “Oh no”, the small voice from the young woman next to him brought him back. “What?”, he scrunched his eyebrows as he noticed her shaking form.

“They got you too”, she stated and looked at him in fear. 

------------------------------------------------

Sooo, this was part two, I hope you enjoyed it :), I’m sorry that it took me so long, but I took part at a musical and had the lead, so I had quite a lot of work to do... hihi

TAGLIST is also still open!

Thank you for all of the love you’re showing towards this series! <3

Hope you have a great day/night! :) <3

[myfanfictiongarden]

Storm- Descendants fanfic

The clouds are dark and heavy, a menacing presence over the Isle, the winds throwing the rain manically through the dirty narrow streets. Shops are closing down for the day and the market stands are being deserted, everyone surprised by the force in this recent storm. To have bad weather on the Isle is not unusual, more the norm, having cold winds chill your bones or constant showers of rain drenching your raged cloths. Yet once in a while the winds decide to show no mercy on those who would despise such act anyway and one is only left to creep into any kind of shelter that he considereds home.

Skipping over the slippery rocks along the beach, the steep cliffs already far behind, Uma curses under her breath as heavy rain rolls down her face, her hair already dripping wet, her clothes a mere joke in this weather. A tiny hope arises in her that maybe now at least the rain may finally wash out the everlasting smell of shrimps out of her braids that has caused her such misery throughout the last three years, but this hope is thin as not even stolen Aurodonian soap could do such miracles. In front of her Harry easily aclimbs the last rocky obstacle and she follows him her feet finally having wooden planks under them, the path along the Wharft being uncomfortably slippery too. They had just met up after school at the rocks on the beach, only waiting for Gil to arrive so they could start their “treasure hunt” (as in “stealing”) in the market, but the weather has turned abruptly even before their companion could join them.

She has been following Harry through the rain without even asking where he was leading them, sure he would know some good place to take shelter, which was the reason why she now for the first time stopped realizing where he was taking them and wondering if that was truly their only option.

“This is the best you could cone up with? Isn’t your dad, like, at home or something?” She asks standing one foot on the plank that is leading on the famous Jolly Roger.

“Nah, he is still at the shop by now, and surely won’t consider coming home in this weather.” Harry says just slightly turning in her direction before disappearing through the double doors leading inside the ship, and she is left to simply follow too. Everyone knows the Jolly Roger and her famous captain, and Uma has often been standing at the harbour admiring that mighty ship, impressive still after long past it’s glorious days. To set foot on it was not an option. On the Isle you are usually not friendly with your neighbours, especially if they want to enter your property. Being wet to the bone as she was there was not left much to think about.

Passing through the entrance door she climbs slowly the stairs down to the living quarters, a grin on her face as she has the unexpected honour of entering that ship. Coming down to the first level she scans her surroundings, on the one end having a door leading to the mass with a stow and pans and long table being visible, another door indicating the shared bedroom of Harry’s sisters (the roughly engraved name of Harriet and the more joyful one of CJ declaring it as such) and the stairs behind her leading further down to the quarters of the crew that doesn’t live there anymore and the storage level that only storages dust and rats these days. 

What catches her attention the most though is the open door at the end of the hall at the far end of the ship: the Captain’s quarters. Her curiosity getting the better of her she lets her feet lead her there with a ever broader grin on her face, not noticing that Harry was about to lead her in the opposite direction. Her eyes are firmly fixed on what is in front of her, not ready to let this chance slip. How often can one wander Captain Hook’s ship anyway? The door is quite wide open, good, she would be able to take a look without touching anything. 

As she finally arrives at the doorframe she suddenly stops. The room in front of her is exactly how one would imagine it to be. Great windows on the far end cover the whole back of the ship, fine red curtains that look splendid even with the moth holes, a huge table in the middle with countless maps spread on it, a great piano in one corner and a small stowe to keep the room warm in winter in the other end, a curtain hiding what must be the sleeping place. But this are not the things that made her stop so abruptly. Sitting in a chair by the table is a woman of middle age, dark blond hair falling messy around her face to her shoulders, streaks of grey mixing with the blond, a dirty white blouse and a black and green long skirt being her attire, a round golden earring visible on the left ear. It is the manner in which she sits that makes the scene eerie, the thin hands holding needle and thread and a piece of fabric like about to sew, but all they do is move through the air in small movements, the lips twitching from time to time, the eyes holding a stare lost somewhere in the distance.

Uma didn’t even notice she had been holding her breath, until a gentle touch on her shoulder made her nearly jump, and turning around she can see Harry gesturing with his head she should follow him. Feeling suddenly incredibly awkward she looks down to her feet where a puddle of water has formed by now before silently following him.

He leads her to another door at the other end of the hall she realizes must lead to his bedroom. The door squeaks a bit as he opens it and steps in, not even turning around to see if she had been following him. 

His room is messy and not really big. He takes of his drenched red fake leather jacket (his biggest pride at the moment, he managed to bring a goblin to sell it to him for half the price) his black hoodie under it not looking much better, and ruffles his wet hair with his free hand, water dripping all around. Throwing the jacket over the only chair in the room he lets himself down on the floor under the round window opposite the door, stretching his legs and leaning his head on the wooden planks of the wall. Her hair still dripping (but not too much anymore, and she considers if she should start braiding it all the way around and not just in parts, that way her locks wouldn’t be an complete disaster in rain) she is a bit unsure what to do with herself and crossing her arms she starts to pace the room a bit. 

On the wall right from the door hangs a collection of various pocket watches and clocks, most of them already having a chipped glass, none of them working. She knows Harry likes his weird collection. There is a bookshelf with a bunch of rolled up papers, most of them probably sea maps one can not use on the Isle, and two actual books, one on the history of piracy and the other on sea monsters and myths. Opposite there is no bed but a simple hammock with a pillow and blanket. On the left from the door a chest stands, but judging by the look of it it doesn’t hold any treasures and more like dirty laundry. She can see the sleeve of Harry’s old shirt peaking out, the deep cuts in it telling her some sword fighting didn’t end too well for him. The middle of the room is taken by an table and chair, the chair not looking all too safe to sit on she decides to stroll to the wall where Harry still sits motionless on the floor.

Crossing her legs she lets herself down, lightning striking outside, followed by a deep rumble of thunder not far off. Waves rock the ship as they both sit in silence, she suddenly feeling itchy to talk.

“Was that your mom?” she asks as casually as possible, not sure if he would reply.

“Ay, the one and only one. Didn’t think I had one, right? Thought some dirty glowing fairy raised me, isn’t it?” His laugh, as he says that, seeming weirdly out of place.

“Of course I knew you had one, dumbhead.” She scoffs turning her head away, faking insult while actually still wondering about the sewing woman. On her right stands a wardrobe and the cutting marks tell her the doors must have stood in for quite a few of Harry’s angry outbursts. She can hear his pose shift, like he is reaching out for something on his left and soon enough he punches her arm a bit, a cup in his hand and dice on the other. She smiles slightly at the good idea and they spend the rest of the afternoon playing a game of dice.

Even though none of the clocks in his room work she knows a lot of time has passed, the sound of rain having calmed down, the sound of thunder dying away. Knowing her mom would throw her tentacles after her if she came to late to her shift again, she decides it’s time to face the ever present wrath called mother, and laying down the dice she makes her way about to leave, Harry following her suite. She walks into the hallway, dark and empty, wooden planks squeaking with every movement of the ship. On the far end she can still see the door to the Captain’s quarters being open and her feet stop at the stairs, her head turning slightly in that mysterious direction.

“She gets such fits once in a while.” Harry’s voice is nothing more than a whisper, nearly lost in the howling sound of the wind outside. Without another word he makes his way up and she follows him.

The clouds aren’t that heavy anymore, the evening sky already dark. Her steps are quite quick, yet she can still hear his steps being nearly as quick, him walking only slightly behind her. She isn’t sure why he decided to follow her to the shop, she doesn’t need any protection in the dark (although it does feel better) and it’s not like she has to expect every day to have a bucket of old fish been thrown over her head (she believes it would now happen even less often since she broke that dumb boys nose last week in school). The harbour is nearly deserted when her mom’s shop appears in eyesight and Harry stops to give her arm a slight punch before turning on his heals and starting to head back in the direction they came from. Some barrels standing by the side he decides to make a jump over them, getting hand of some rope hanging down and swinging on it a few feet through the air before landing on his feet again. He’s crazy Uma thinks. 

As she watches his silhouette disappear in the thick evening mist she notices he has neither his jacket nor hook with him.

[lundiivith]

an elaboration upon the stanzas

or; basically, i took pieces of the Song of Pelinal and wrote little scenes based on them, because unfortunately i care a lot about Pelinal Whitestrake, despite all the murder and stuff

this is hopefully the first half, volumes one through four; i’m not sure when i’ll post the second half, but hopefully soon!

also, i excised a bit of the quote from the second volume for... complicated reasons, elements in the original text i’m very critical of because they’re weirdly racist but also i’m not smart enough to articulate my exact thoughts on the situation accurately, all that jazz. yeah (though if i messed up doing so definitely tell me)

anyways, onto the fic (which is also on ao3!)

That he took the name "Pelinal" was passing strange, no matter his later sobriquets, which were many. That was an Elvish name, and Pelinal was a scourge on that race, and not much given to irony.

“Well, I need a name,” the other man laughed, joyous; and the White-Strake felt something at his smile, something he couldn’t recognize, not unlike one of the songs he so disdained being sung in his heart of hearts. He shook his head wordless, breathless and wiped another tear from Huna’s face with his thumb as he kept talking. “You’ve really shed all of them?”

Sunbeams streamed through the sky, blue sky and rare clouds matching the Knight’s attire. “People call me things,” and the White-Strake turned his head just so, as if to say, maybe, that he didn’t know what to make of those names. None registered within him. There was nothing to him yet but the blood he was soaked in, and gore did not give easy baptism.

“Then I’ll call you Pelin-Al,” Huna decided, with the small smile the White-Strake would get to know so well in the coming years, “because — well, I think it’s obvious.” And the White-Strake knew then, because it sung to him like a great bell’s ringing, that it was how he’d want to be known from there-on.

And it would have scared him how fast he’d given away his heart, but he hadn’t known before this that he could even have one. And anyway, it didn’t feel as if he’d given it away. Instead, it felt like Huna had placed a heart in the hollow of his chest, had reached into the cage of his ribs and left a bird as ruby-red as the diamond embedded above them. And the White-Strake did not mind the language from which his name came, for it stopped being violent when shaped by the clumsy lips of his friend.

[and Pelinal] came to Perrif's camp of rebels holding a sword and mace, both encrusted with the smashed viscera of elven faces[...], which were the markings of the Ayleidoon, stuck to the redness that hung from his weapons...

As the advisors and the generals and the soldiers scurried away from the tent, the queen looked back at PELIN-EL which is the Star-Made Knight and she winced at the maggots running through the oldest of the gore, through his boots, from the rampage in the jungle, and she asked him, “...do you want to wash all that off?”

And PELIN-EL which is the Star-Made Knight looked at her, for he knew those who left had left in disgust, to vomit at his callous display (that was not a display but an arrival and a promise), and he did not believe her weak (but none else among them did, for she could plead with reality itself, and PELIN-EL was none but another slave of its ticking and as aware of it as any other). And Perrif had pinched her nose, but she had a steely look in her gaze, for she had seen the promise given and knew the consequences of appealing to the love of the inhuman.

And PELIN-EL which is the Star-Made Knight was not Star-Made when he said, “I’d appreciate a bath.”

Pelinal called out Haromir of Copper and Tea into a duel at the Tor, and ate his neck-veins while screaming praise to Reman, a name that no one knew yet. Gordhaur the Shaper's head was smashed upon the goat-faced altar of Ninendava, and in his wisdom Pelinal said a small plague spell to keep that evil from reforming by welkynd-magic.

“Beloved?”

Restlessly asleep again, thought Huna, hearing no reply. It was dark and so he could not see, but he felt Pelinal twist and turn in his arms and around him. He touched gently his forehead, feeling it burn and drip with sweat, and Huna kissed it gently, for he cared for the man before him. “Pelinal, my love, wake up,” he whispered.

And there was something to be said about the survivors of the Ayleids’ unjust rule, (perhaps they carried it in their hearts), but every god and spirit hurried to change to suit their every whim, and they could shape the land with their will and heart’s desire. And Pelinal woke up in Huna’s arms in the tent that they shared near the battlefield that was his birthplace, and he buried his head in his home, that is to say hid it against his great love’s body, and he breathed hard and fast until he was calm.

“I kept you up.” Pelinal could not say he was sorry, for the closest thing he knew was regret, but nothing as bitter had a space here in the sticky warmth of their night. “I told you—”

“—to wake you up when you get like this, beloved, I know,” replied Huna soothingly. The only noise outside of their hushed voices were the insects outside, buzzing and mating and eating each other in abandon, all caparaces looking to fulfill their life’s purpose; and it was one of those nights where Pelinal knew too much. “Reman again?”

Pelinal made a noise of affirmation and held tighter against Huna, feeling his heart beat like a small animal’s. Could a tiger love a rabbit, could a child love a dandelion? “It’s always Reman. I do not know what happens with the third one, that makes them so — impossible.” He fears the answer will be too satisfactory to Aka and give them his blood’s blessing, to commit great violence across time and not just battered, sharp-toothed space. A father playing favorites. “I’m scaring you again.” And bitterness and shame filled his face, and Pelinal knew regret properly for the air went cold around him.

But it was just Huna, sighing and then lifting their blanket into the air. He wrapped it tightly around their shoulders and sat up, leaving a space between their chests in the walls of their impenetrable fortress for the warm air to be vented, and he said, “Well, since we’re both awake, can you tell me about your magic until I fall asleep on you again?”

And though most of the stars were not visible in the darkness of their tent, Pelinal to Huna was fixed in the firmament when he shifted on the creaking bed and laid his busy head on his chest and said, “Sure.”

...he stood with white hair gone brown with elfblood at the Bridge of Heldon, where Perrif's falconers had sent for the Nords, and they, looking at him, said that Shor had returned, but he spat at their feet for profaning that name.

They wouldn’t have been here without him-them and his-their corpse floated amongst the stars that had forged him. And the tired, tired being, whose weight was none but that of death looked at Vaniri with sunken cheeks and spat something coppery red and white at his feet, and Vaniri who was the leader of a good many men nearly jumped, for he did not expect his recognition to be met with anything but joy.

The wind was the movement of the thin air at the Bridge. There was something empty in those eyes, stained red with elfblood like rubies. His ribcage was a prison, hung above the hollow of his stomach and was it not fitting Death itself was a skeleton?

Vaniri and his children and his children’s children would treasure the lone tooth of an ada that his wisdom and quick eye had earned him until it had been polished away to nothingness, and then it had been lost and it had returned to where its iron once came from, in the distant confines of the stars.

A vestige is not the same as the whole; you would not say a finger is part of you if it’s cut off. An emperor may take a dead man’s child as a tool of his will, but only a dragon would do the same to his own. Disowning divinity is disowning yourself. Is one who is alive to bring death equal to one who is dead to bring life? Fucking no, obviously, absolutely. So why—?

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

me: i don’t have anything to post ughhh also me: has 10 95% finished drafts i could literally take an hour to finish and upload but won’t me: lemme start a new analysis

aaaaaa the mural of mayhem looks so good (source)

tl;dr: bunches of new environment shots. also i wanna time travel So Bad, just so Bad,,, gearbox, please, time travel??? i wanna meet The Man Typhon Deleon just *clenches fist* so bad and slap him for leading to the opening of the first vault. also for some reason tina is the only one of the good guys with the fabric stuff the twins are wearing. be warned. oh, also, there might be some ursa mechs? i saw like 3 robos that look like iron bear but aren’t colored like it so who even knows. oh and we see the scientist (?) dude in color next to Tannis from the MoM. he seems cool evil.

i don’t even know where to begin here so let’s start with the middle and work our way towards literally whatever catches my eye next. i have no method, im a disaster

OwO

nothing too special about our VHs here, they seem to be using the gold gun skins that are offering in either the early adopter pack or the other pack u get i think for signing up to be a VIP. so that’s neat. also shows off the good guys = blue/yellow theme we see throughout the mural.

there is this weird square shape in the sky/clouds above them? idk what it’s supposed to be, though. a logo? a ship? a building? i can’t tell!

i could be wrong/seeing things though lol

zoomer isn’t colored in! probably didn’t want to detract from the main 4 VHs. additionally, Amara’s arms don’t have their patterns across them. 

Moze is also the only VH here with a hint as to what her Action Skill is. IB is elsewhere on the mural, though. We’ll get to him.

the Vault behind them!

moving down below the VHs, we see this ship

I’ve spoken about it before, so i won’t go into it here

bandits? i think! looks like at least one of them is wearing power armor... or just a suit of armor in general. it looks like power armor to me tho lol

another set of silhouettes in the foreground on the right there. can’t tell who/what they’re supposed to be unfortunately, but im going to assume more bandits

interestingly, we see the ruins of helios SUPER close and, even more interestingly, what appears to be a Vault in front of it! Which could very well be the Vault of the Traveler? since the Traveler itself can’t teleport it anymore (cause y’know... it ded.) It has a weird shape at the bottom, idk what that is supposed to be. it looks like a curvy outline of an arrow tbh lol. i wonder if the Vault actually did teleport Rhys and Fiona somewhere. I also wonder if the thing on the bottom is meant to help ‘visitors’ or something idk use/see/extract whatever was in the Vault. there was like some stairs and then a chest..? thing? idek. 

but yeah, looks like the Vault by Helios is doing well. Also, Vaughn apparently knows Rhys is on Promethea (soon) after the end of tales so I wonder if that actually is a portal... either way, i hope this means we’ll get to go visit 👀 We’ve visited the ruins of helios already in commander lilith, so hopefully this isn’t too much of a stretch.

to the right of that we see Lorelei knockin the shit out of a goliath that seems... kinda small compared to her? idk maybe it’s cause he’s lying down (and out).

We also see another instance of Mystery Girl up at the top there, though she’s in the exact same pose as the mask of mayhem which makes me kinda sad. i was hoping to see another angle of her or something. I do hope she’s actually in the game and isn’t just a statue. be wild if tyreen gave her the suck or something to turn her into a statue to preserve her in the hopes that doing the reverse succ/getting the ultimate power would let ty bring her back to life at a later point lmao

below lorelei we can see a crimson raider in the ash cloud! i have no idea why he’s there but he’s lookin baller.

next to to lorelei is a titan (unsure if that’s the official name for these big guys or if the one in the showcase was unique) a skag and clappy! I can’t tell if clappy is holding something in his left arm or not

also the background looks like a city. i think that is promethea? i can’t really tell tbh

next to clappy we see part of a ferris wheel which im pretty sure is part of the circus area we’ve seen in the trailers. the one with the circle emblem thing above the door/entrance.

below clappy/marcus we see what i think is part of Eden-6

the bridge/road has me going like 🤔 but the foliage pretty much confirms it. might be related to that research base looking area. might be related to jakobs manor (maybe they have a bridge to keep bandits out) idk

above that we see marcus looking some cash to a bunch of psychos. I think he has an ECHO skin? i can’t really tell. not really much to say here tbh, is marcs.

behind him we see this landscape which i don’t think we’ve seen before. the tree is screaming Athenas at me but tbh i think we’ve only seen red trees there, haven’t we? also is that the handle of a sword near the bottom there? wtf is that?

maybe a new planet? or a new biome on one of the planets we haven’t seen yet. it looks like a savanna tree to me. you know the ones?

yeah. possible new planet/new biome we haven’t seen yet?? i would ADORE a savanna type area. 

next to that we see a tink and a skag in front of the HBC. I thiiink the tink is holding a flamethrower? not sure, though. maybe a miniboss like midgemong? that’d be neat asf

i can’t tell if this is a suit of power armor/a robot or just part of the environment lol, i can see the helmet up top and a big bulky body. i would love to fight power armored enemies like that, be so cool! maybe these are modified suits of the ursa corps project? or something. idk about the helmet.

above the tink/skag combo we can see more silhouettes in the foreground. i seriously can’t make out who they’re supposed to be :( maybe some maliwan troops? i feel like they’d be more recognizable, though. hmhmhmhm

in the background we see another robo/power armor suit (???? i think????), this one seems to have a flamethrower, which is kinda reinforcing my theory they might be repurposed armor sets. this one doesn’t appear to have a helmet. kinda get the feeling they’re either repurposed or completely different cuz the helmet on the other one is throwing me off a touch. IB doesn’t have a helmet. 

for reference.

above that weirdly confusing collection of entities, we have hammerlock!

my boiii

and finally to the left of hammerlock we get to the big boy of this side of the mural

the god queen herself.

first thing i noticed? her jacket seems to be warping into that weird fabric we see clinging to other baddies throughout the mural and covering her right leg. 

She seems to be holding up a grenade/molotov cocktail/smoke bomb?

pretty sure it’s a molotov cocktail though

i love how the smoke merges into the roses above her. really cool detail. you can also see the recruitment center to the right there! and a crane which makes me double down on the idea that the ‘vault’ we see in the booth thing had been excavated by dahl (considering the main building of the RC is a dahl building)

we also see a fire rakk? ?? i think? be cool if we got badass elemental rakks. i’ve only ever seen normal badass rakks. i wonder if this is a play on the fact there’s a psycho in the MoM with rakk wings and the twins stole lily’s firehawk powers... probably not, right? probably not...

ty’s tattoos are lookin kinda green for me here, might be the close proximity to all those browns and reds, though. it’d be really cool if she could pull an amara and swap her succ elements LMAO

a bunch of psychos! all with wings! which is weird cause the sirens don’t have wings here. weird chunk of symbolism i guess. we can see a tubby on the top there which makes me happy to know they’re coming back. there’s one with 

a glowing nose

and there’s this figure on the very left

who doesn’t appear to be a psycho at all

also, note that all these psychos have a ‘normal’ brown/gray buzzaxe

the one at the bottom here, on ty’s left has a more golden-colored buzzaxe. im p sure that corresponds to rank in cult. i also feel obligated to point out that, while im 90% sure that flame is coming from the flamethrower on the right there, it does kinda look like the bottom psycho is shooting a blast of flames out of his palm. 

moving right along

the whole entourage seems to be laying across a statue of roses, which match the ones at the top of the mural AND the ones on the cover art.

we see a shot of Pandora and Elpis here (I’m pretty sure. the purple light at the top right makes me believe that’s the eridian scar, but.... may not be)

looks very volcanic...

we see one of those lil video game dudes from the demo, forgot their names but they’re Maliwan

below them we see this scene

which is an area i don’t recognize. eden-6 maybe? the buildings seem a bit close together, though.

tbh i thought this was another city at first, maybe it’s Promethea from ye olde days? you know, before Atlas took over and modernized it. Maybe we’ll get to go back in time to stop the first Vault from ever being opened. that’d be pretty cool. man time travel would be wild. i wonder if we’d be able to combine the Vault of the Traveler and the Vault of the Sentinel to do that. now that’d be cool.

but it’s probably eden-6 lmao

quadruple threat here. from top to bottom: Rhys, Zer0, Vaughn, Aurelia? i think. 

her hair seems spikier in the mask bit... maybe that’s not her? she also doesn’t have the earrings. idk who else it could be, though. 🤔

anyway. Vaughn seems to be climbing a cliff or something lol. at least he’s got a cape and his relic of strength on him.

rhys and zer0 are in the same poses as their poses on the Mask of Mayhem, just colored in.

biggg statue of ty. noticeably missing her facial scars. not much else to say, pretty sure this is just a different(ish) angle of her MoM statue during the pan around.

back to the bottom center of the mural, let’s move left

someone with a jetpack! i can’t make out who, though. i thought it was Moze at first but... she needs her digistruct pack for iron bear.

Also a bunch of psychos all fighting each other. over the buzzaxes maybe? if they really are a symbol of rank in the cult. that or they’re just being psychos. 

this area with a waterfall and also a drainage pipe. i think this is also eden-6, but i am not 100% sure. probably an area we haven’t seen yet.

lily!! her right (our left) wing looks really weird to me, idk what it is. it’s a lot redder/yellower than her left one. Also, the tattoos near her wrist look like they’re coming off her arm. 

to the left of lily we see ellie!

holding a whole-ass street sign. insane.

next/behind her is promethea! which we’ve seen before. it looks like one of the buildings in the middle there is getting blasted by something, but idk what. maybe something Maliwan? 

also, on the left there we can see what i thought was iron bear

but now i am second guessing myself due to the other robos/armor suits we saw on the right of the mural. 

maybe they did not color in IB fully like Zoomer? it looks like there is someone/something where the turret mount would be. maybe that is moze standing up there? it would be really interesting to see other Ursa Corps soldiers coming in. I know they mentioned in the Commander Lily ECHO log that Vladof was at war with Tediore, and we know through their advertisements for bl2 that Vladof is also at war with Dahl. It’s possible we’ll see some of their troops in the game! especially since Moze’s echo actually talks about the troop as a whole and not specifically her, unlike the others.

next to the mystery mech or iron bear (you decide) we see Mystery Girl/Little Blue/Nope Girl

and, yeah, starting to think she may not actually fit into the timeline of Steele’s death. she looks older than 12 to me (for reference, in bl2 tina was 13). but we haven’t quite seen enough of her so who knows. im getting ‘way too tall’ vibes. maybe 14-15? maybe mystery MoM girl is her little sister. i would not be surprised if we saw another sibling relationship to juxtapose the twins (considering mystery girl looks like a CoV bandit, they’d be distant at the start and close at the end of the game while the twins are close at the start and distant at the end of the game- we know Danny Homan said their relationship would start to warp). 

below her we see this area

i think that’s a water tank at the bottom there? this looks kinda like a garden/courtyard area to me. Maybe another place on Athenas? i want to say Athenas bc Little Blue is directly above it. may be another new planet/biome/region we haven’t seen yet.

Above L.B we see this car

which is interesting to me bc it appears to have a closed top? I could be wrong though. would be fun to see Vasquez’s car make a return, tho lol (and then everyone gets mad the fuckin car is making an appearance but Gaige isn’t)

above that we see Tina and Mordy (and Talon) making an appearance. Tina appears to be in the same pose as her Mappearancence, including the huge launcher behind her which has me like :O Talon is a girl now in bl3, right? unless their gender changed again after the commander lilith stuff.

Also, I’m hesitant to note that Tina is the only ‘good guy’ character to have the fabric on. Everyone other character with it is either a psycho or one of the twins. I hope that’s just artistic choice and nothing more because :(

also she has bows on her shoes. fucking ace

to their right we see 3 very interesting things so we’ll go in order from the bottom counter clockwise

another mystery dude who seems to match the one we saw by tyreen, and those silhouettes again. It looks like they’re reaching down to save their falling teammates. i hope they’re alright. (unless they’re evil. then, oof, crash and burn)

at the top i can see a bunch of men with guns pointed at what i think is a jabber? but the lower bit i can’t make out. someone’s falling at the very bottom, it looks like a second falling figure has been caught with rope? idk.

above that scene we see

tannis! and the mystery guy to the bottom right. the one we’ve seen standing next to her in the MoM. does he have red eyes for anyone else or is that just me? might just be the lighting. Do I think he’s evil? you know the fuck i do. I trust nobody lol. Since I’m a fan of the “the twins are the product of a weird experiment” theory, it’s possible he is the experimenter. Tannis could’ve been feeding him information. maybe she didn’t even know what was going on- though, knowing her disregard for ethics, maybe she did. 

this guy btw

it looks like tannis is holding an eridian artifact?

maybe?? it looks like she’s holding it horizontally, if it is an artifact.

to her right and our left we see a familiar shot of Promethea. I’ve seen this exact frame before, iirc that building is smoking bc it’s Rhys’s office. actually, that could explain Rhys joining us on Sanc-III! maybe Lorelei, too.

above Tina and Mordy we see Brick

and to the right of him, Moxxi and her bar sign

she has a new megaphone, i wonder if that is hinting we’ll be getting more circles of slaughters/underdomes. It would be nice to have her commentary return, i actually really enjoyed that in the bl1 dlc and I did actually enjoy her dlc. The wave combat was fun. I’d love to have an endless wave version to see how long i could survive.

it also looks like there are a bunch of psychos (?) hanging out around the bar. and this character at the bottom right who i don’t recognize

to the far right of moxxi we see Maya

i think this is a new pose, but tbh i don’t see anything noteworthy here. I do think it’s interesting she’s using pistols instead of smgs, but oh well. might just be for the poses lol

Troy’s statue. one interesting bit i gotta mention is that it looks like the cut on the right side of his face (our left) is visible here! iirc it was not visible on his portraits in the MoM. so that’s new!

the big boy of this side of the mural!

none of the psychos on this side seem to have golden buzzaxes, plus their drapes? wtf are these? they don’t look like robes to me. anyway, they’re darker in color than the ones on Ty’s side. might be artistic direction, might be showing they’re not as high rank as the ones with the god queen (vs the right hand man lol)

i also only see 2 psychos with wings here, the one on the very left and you can see part of a wing on the bottom right. They also don’t appear to be resting/climbing on a statue like Tyreen’s are. There is ALSO a lot less of them. 

some interesting stuff about Troy: his stomach tattoos don’t seem to be around, but that could be because of the detail level required- would probably look like a big ol smudge. it is cool seeing Troy with a gun, is this the first time? i can’t remember, but i know we always saw him with his sword. i find it kinda funny they decided on the gun considering this is supposed to be renaissance, the sword would (kinda) be more fitting in that regard. it is also a giant glowy tech sword, so maybe not.

Also, Ty’s side of the mural is the only one with the roses. idk if that’s to signify something or just to balance out colors, though you’d think the red clouds on troy’s side couldve been easily converted to roses as well. hmmm 🤔

anyway, this is all i’ve got. if i missed something/if you think of something new please tell me! i wanna know 👀

[help-its-a-dot]

Alright so when I took this job they said all I had to do was narrate. You know, just follow this guy around and relay what he’s doing, make it sound interesting, yada yada yada.

Ok now that I say it out loud I realize that I’ve probably looked like a stalker for the past few days.

Fun.

ANYWAYS I was going somewhere with this; I had a point. Right. My point was that I didn’t think I’d end up in the middle of a burned down park, cowering in absolute terror behind some rocks that I really wish were bigger, and longing with all that's left of my heart that I could be one of those people that are, given the situation, naturally sprinting away whilst screaming at the top of their lungs.

Should I run away? I mean, it seems like the more logical option here; If I could get over that bridge, then I’d-

*bridge disintegrates*

Well there goes that.

Looks like I’ll be narrating then! Yippee. So, I should probably warn you, I haven’t exactly been paying attention to my assigned main character, ergo I don't have that much background knowledge. Oh who am I kidding, I have none.

Anyhow, sorry, I know I should be narrating. I’m getting to that. Background knowledge. What do I know?

Uh, actually nothing much happened to this dude. A few weeks ago he found a dead body in his bathtub. Now that I think about it, that’s probably where I should’ve started paying attention….

Ah, fucked this up, didn’t I.

Also, as a side note, I’m gonna be calling this dumbass Jake because my dumbass kind of sort of didn’t ever really at all catch his name.

Alrighty folks! I’m gonna…. Be brave…. And peek out from behind these rocks…. Did I mention how much I wished they were bigger? 

Ahem. *clears throat*. Narrator voice. *nods decisively*. Lets go.

There’s fire everywhere. On the tops of trees like snow at the peaks of mountains (how are there even still trees here) bushes have morphed into bonfires, while patches of grass are practically leaking little flames like a dope game of ‘the floor is lava’.

Jake stands, looking at the devastation with wide eyes. Smoke billows out into the sky, painting the already grey clouds black.

A deafening crash sounds behind him- you know, the kind you get when a boulder squishes a four story building like it’s a three year old’s structure of off brand legos. He’s thrown to the ground, and waits, breathing heavily.

Aw god why did I forgot my flask of vodka today? I freaking need it.

And as if that weren’t enough, a spaceship just blipped into the sky.

Should I run?

I should probably run.

Sorry, sorry, I’m not very good at this narrator thing. In my defense, I didn’t think they were serious! Alright, I’m gonna try that again.

Suddenly, and quite literally out of nowhere, there’s a fatally blinding blue-red light, making everyone in the immediate vicinity-- which isn’t that many people anymore, most have used their last few remaining drops of common sense and fled for their lives --squeeze their eyes shut and hastily bury their heads in whatever was nearest and most convenient to shield themselves from impending blindness, wailing in a mix of surprise and agony. All flames previously terrorizing the verdure are extinguished and the smoke is blown out as a single gust of forceful wind, which also effectively topples the few remaining, yet charred nonetheless, trees, buildings, and people.

Augh, ew, eurgh, I got a mouthful of Martin’s grocery bag. How do I know it’s Martin’s? They have a distinctive taste of mild sadness and resignation. Right, right, the spaceship. 

See, when I say spaceship, I mean cool looking flying saucer thingy appearing like it was plucked right out of a conspiracy theory and given some upgrades. It’s a giant, azure/ultramarine blue, except for the bottom which shines in a weirdly mesmerizing yellowish glow, squished sphere. Oval. Pancake. Sorry, I don't know my shapes. It seems to be practically thrumming with energy, like it drank five red bulls followed by ten extremely caffeinated coffees and finished it all off with a few five hour energy drinks. 

I cannot tell you how much I hope it doesn't do what it looks like it’s gonna do and explode.

Meanwhile, Jake has picked up… a sword. Well shit. Medieval, much? Not a gun? No? Personally, I think a gun would be extraordinarily effective against the horde of what looks like blobs but are probably extravagantly dangerous aliens filing in a weirdly orderly single file line out of the saucer and immediately beginning to lomp closer and closer and closer crap did I mention they were getting closer?

Should I run?

I should probably run.

Hold up, no, that reminds me, I’m supposed to be narrating. God, I’m atrocious at this, aren’t I.

He feels sweat break out on his brow. The sword is heavy in his hands, and he can barely lift it, let alone decapitate a blob, but he’s in too deep to let his weariness show. He’s gotta be strong and save what’s left of these people, this city, or die trying. Which is probably what’ll happen in a few minutes. But ah, well, he’ll die fighting for Americanos , which can’t be all that bad.

Technically, if you think about it, he’s suicidal, because his colossal ego will not, quite literally, for the life of him, allow him to take a smart route, like getting into that convenient truck and bowling over all the blobs, or snatching up a gun from that store across the street, or even just alerting someone who is actually capable at dealing with an event like this like the authorities.

But what can he do, he is American, after all. It's simply unavoidable; part of the culture description. *white people i swear

He watches morbidly as Martin’s grocery bags blow past from the ruins before him, and glances up as the spaceship above him gives one final thrum and blips away, probably back to wherever it came from, leaving him alone with an army of blobs bouncing threateningly towards him.

In truth, he didn’t know what they were. All he knew was that if they kept destroying everything at this rate, there won't be a single McDonalds left in America, and he couldn’t have that. Of course, by then there wouldn’t even be an America, and everyone would have to go to the McDonalds’ in Russia. Russia has McDonalds, right? Oh, he simply could not do that to his fellow citizens! 

He pondered this, along with whether or not Australia exists, all the while counting down the seconds (...7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… dammit 3, 2, 1… 3, 2, 1… 3, 2-- he’d get it eventually) until his doom and willing his arms not to shake with the incredible weight of the sword in his hands. Whose idea was it to make swords out of metal, anyways? It’s incredibly stupid-- nowadays 90% of America wouldn’t even be able to muster the courage to touch one, let alone the strength to lift one. 

Ugh, he knew he should’ve gone with that plastic light saber he’d seen at the mall. At least then he could’ve gone down with style.

As if on cue, there’s another, at this point expected, crash resounding behind him, and he turns to watch in despair as said mall tumbles almost comically to the ground. 

There goes the light saber.

And another McDonalds.

Ohh, things were getting bad.

The park, if you could still call it a park, is deserted now save for the occasional Martin’s grocery bag skittering about, and he can’t help but give in to the desire to reflect upon his life. He wasted it, playing video games and other shit like that all day, every day. This is the first time he’s been outside in a long time. He now knows with absolute certainty that if he were ever granted such an opportunity he’d go back and redo it all. He’d try harder to beat that level, he’d get the better controller, he’d stay up later working on his technique. But all that was a distant dream now, something he could not hope to accomplish now.

He wished that maybe, just maybe, heaven would have a nice game console for him.

When he’d gotten selflessly sucked into this adventure, he never thought he’d actually die, never expected anything to really happen- If he had, he of course would never have turned the power of his last 8 braincells away from a computer screen and into the real world to start investigating.

Ah fuck, sorry for interrupting, I think I twisted my wrist or some shit while trying to get a better vantage point on these still too small rocks. 

Should I run?

I should probably run.

On a different note: I’m really sorry guys. When you take a narrator job they never tell you anything about your person. Had I known he was American, I would have immediately sabotaged this entire thing; I could never in good conscience have subjected you guys to.. well.. this.

But alas, now I’m stuck narrating an American who is going to get me killed.

Unless… Unless there’s a loophole. My parents were lawyers, so I excel at finding those.

The rules are, you have to stay with your hero and narrate their adventure. How an American turned out to be one of the heroes, I know not, it must be a glitch in the system. But I’ll be fucking damned if this glitch gets me killed. Literally. So! Once the hero, inevitably, dies, you’re free to go. There’s nothing much left to narrate afterwards. And since Jake is closer to the horde of blobs coming our way than I am, as soon as he’s bowled over I’ll sprint. To the side, like a smart immigrant would do. Not straight back, because then the blobs’d just follow me and kill me, so the only logical conclusion is to circle around them and see if my apartment is still intact. I didn’t finish my cream puffs and I really don't want them to melt.

They’re getting closer. He can hear their squelching, and the chicken nuggets in his stomach churn unpleasantly. There’s bits of goo flying off them in all directions, and when said goo makes contact with something it immediately disintegrates that unfortunate something, leaving nothing behind. Is this really the fate that’ll befall him? Is this how the world ends?

Well, death by disintegration it is then. Oh, he can’t wait to brag to his boys about this.

Oh, wait, no, that’s not right. He’ll be dead.

And, in the last few moments before the blobs reach him, he reconsiders. There’s still so much this cruel world has to offer, and he never took advantage of any of it. Nor was he ever grateful for much of it. 

He suddenly feels a new feeling. Determination. He will destroy every single one of these vile creatures, and he WILL come out of it intact. He has to. 

With new resolve he scrapes together the last of his strength and raises his trusty sword over his head, every nonexistent muscle tense, ready. They’re getting closer. Closer. 50 yards. 30 yards. 20. 10. Just a few feet.

He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes dramatically. Swings his sword.

And is immediately squashed with the most sickening squelch there could ever be.

Ew.

Should I run?

I should probably run.

Yeah, I’m gonna run.

[darkdevasofdestruction]

could you write something for kirishima with a crush on a girl with an empath quirk that influences others emotions around her, so she has a hard time telling when people truly like her or if its just her quirk? love your writing!!!

What an adorable request for the boy with the cutest face

Being an empath myself, I can only imagine how difficult an actual empath quirk would actually be, but it sounds great and I hope you’ll like this!

Having an Empath Quirk has never been easy for Y/N. I mean sure, you can understand how others feel, right? Well, with a Quirk like hers, it’s a bit of a jumble of mixed feelings everywhere!So much of a jumble that sometimes not even she realised what she feels.

“Am I the angry one? Or is it just Bukugo?”“Is it Deku who’s feeling sad? Or am I the one feeling sad, and my own Quirk is passively affecting him without even realising?”“Does Kiri actually like being around me? Or is it just me liking him and I feel these warm emotions reflected right back because of my own Quirk?”

And so, despite the many advantages, this emotional Quirk sure acts like a double-edged sword and sometimes it gets so confusing, not even understanding what is real and what is not, that it makes the poor girl so confused sometimes if the ones that she hold dear to her heart actually return those feelings as well.

But then again…If they didn’t like her, why would they still stand around her? Of course they like her!Or…Maybe it’s just the class trying to be united and them being just nice people.

“Stop thinking so negatively! You’d have noticed by now if they didn’t like you!”“Maybe you’re right…But my heart tells me otherwise.”“That’s not your heart, you idiot! That’s just your Quirk acting up again and your mind is just overthinking as usual.”“Then…Kirishima still likes me…?”“Ask and find out, you, coward!”“Uh…Goodnight, brain!”“No, wai-”

And that’s how a usual day of her life would go by, focusing on her Hero schoolwork, and when not, staying at home, comfortable, on the bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure herself out.It wasn’t the easiest thing, especially since every night she’d come up with a completely different hypothesis.

That all changed, however, on the festival day that took place the day before the Summer Holiday began, and for some reason, seeing everyone make plans with their friends, she could only stare at the class, feeling a shadow of doubt and sorrow wash over her.

“Maybe I was actually right, after all. Otherwise, they would have invited me too, right? … Hell, they are even inviting Mineta, and not me!”

Sighing, she prepared to leave the festivity early and go through a relaxing stroll through the park while listening to music and looking at the white fluffy clouds on the bright blue sky, absent-minded and trying to find different shapes of them.

Being so out of this world and completely trapped in her own, she obviously missed one of her classmates vehemently shouting her name, trying to catch her attention, but with no avail.With a huff, the classmate runs in front of her and grips her shoulders gently, grinning at her.

“Heyy, Y/N! I guess your music was too loud to hear me, huh?”“K-Kiri…? What are you doing here?”“Kiri? That’s a cute nickname! Well, you left before we could tell you our plans for this Summer, so I figured you might…You know, want to join us.”“Y-You guys want me to join you?”“What’s with that question? Of course we do! You are our friend!”“O-Oh…Y-Yeah, you’re right, silly me! Thank you for telling me, Kiri!”“Ah…Haha, actually, I wanted to tell you something else, uh…A bit more important, but I guess I wasn’t manly enough to ask you yet and…Lately, you’ve been looking pretty sad and I wanted to check on you. Is everything okay, Y/N-chan?”“I-I…Yes, I am fine, thanks for asking! I was actually just having a weird moment, but I’m completely over it, I promise!”

The girl was grinning so widely, glee taking over her, seeing her crush care for her so much as to get out of his way to make sure that she’s okay that she could barely hold back her tears of happiness and relief. The red-head, on the other hand, was a bit of an awkward, blushing mess for some reason, so to make sure he, too, is okay, she put her hand on his forehead, then on his cheeks, trying to see if he had a fever or not.

Weirdly enough, the boy only freaked out, letting his face become 50 shades redder than his own hair.

“Wh-What is it, Y/N-chan?”“Are you sure you’re not sick or something? You look feverish.”“Yes, no, well, yes I am fine, just okay, I promise. Um…Yes, okay, okay, I just wanted to ask you now since a wave of manliness took over me so uhm…I don’t actually know how to say this but uhm…”“It’s okay, don’t be afraid. You can tell me anything, Kiri!”“I know, I know. it’s just…I’ve been having this weird feeling whenever I’d see you sad o-or like, I’d get very happy whenever I’d see you genuinely happy, like nobody’s watching and…I mean, I know you said before that it might just be your Quirk’s passive action, but I…I think…Actually no, I KNOW that I…I really have feelings for you, Y/N. I…I love you.”

The girl’s jaw dropped in shock, gasping at the unexpected love confession from the one and only person she, too, had feelings for, but believed to be unrequited, so instead of saying anything, her body acted on its own and she jump-hugged the blushy boy, kissing his cheek over and over again.

“I love you too, Kiri! I’m really happy that it wasn’t just my Quirk being silly!”“This one feeling I’m 100% sure is my own, so there’s no need to worry about that, at least!”

[shipaholic]

Omens Universe, Chapter 17 Part 1

So. What’s everyone else been up to?

Link to next part at the end.

(From the beginning)

(last part)

(chrono)

---

Chapter 17

Saturday

Armageddon dawned, with minimal fuss, in the village of Tadfield, England. Things wouldn’t properly kick off for a few hours still, so there was time for a lie-in.

Warlock Young, son of Deirdre and Arthur Young, was in his bedroom. He sat, bleary-eyed, in the morning light coming through the window. He normally refused to achieve consciousness before noon on Saturdays, but he had woken up early[1] thanks to the piping voices of other children in the street, so he had dragged himself up to glare at them.

Warlock was not Warlock’s actual name. It was certainly not what his parents called him. They called him young man - pun not intended. Mr. Young had never intended a pun in his life.

Tadfield had been, at one point, a wonderful place for a child to grow up, but that was before Warlock’s time. In the late aughts, a dual carriageway had barrelled into town like a runaway lawnmower through an outdoor chess garden. It had bisected the bucolic village, taking out the village green and the historic church. The shell-shocked remains now huddled for warmth by the side of the road. Motorists usually mistook them for a rest stop junction.

Warlock didn’t care about any of this. The only effect it had on him was that his dad wouldn’t stop banging on about air quality, of which he took daily measurements with a little metre thing that clipped onto the fridge.

Warlock hated Tadfield. Warlock hated most things. He especially hated the kids who had woken him up, ambling by outside his bedroom window. They were chattering, like always. A girl in a stripy top with red wellington boots, a boy covered in dirt, and a small bespectacled boy who looked like dirt wouldn’t dare to come anywhere near him.

They were in his class, and they thought they were a gang. Not a proper gang like the ones that smoked and threw bricks at each other. A stupid kid gang. Except, after they all sat through that earnest school assembly about knife crime, they started lowering their voices whenever they mentioned the word gang. Which was stupid, because no-one in their right mind would have thought of them as a real gang to begin with. All they did was hang out and eat ice cream and pretend to play with swords and cloaks and lightsabers. It was dumb, and Warlock did not want to be friends with them.

They were probably heading to the local park. If you could call it a park. It had nothing in it like grass or trees or equipment that wasn’t broken. Warlock’s mum always told him not to go there in case there were needles lying around. He rolled his eyes whenever she said that. He wouldn’t go there anyway, because Warlock didn’t like to go outside.

The girl stopped by the Youngs’ front garden wall to retie her ponytail. Warlock ducked to the side of the window in case she looked up and saw him.

“Come on, Pepper,” the boy with the grimy face said. What was he always so cheerful about?

She followed the other two past Warlock’s window and out of sight. Warlock watched them go with narrowed eyes.

He went downstairs. Maybe he’d visit the park. For unrelated reasons.

His mum had the news on. The newsreader was saying something boring Warlock didn’t listen to. His mum looked worried, though.

His dad was sticking his head through the kitchen window. “Funny weather outside, Deirdre,” he called back in.

Where else would the weather be? Warlock had the most embarrassing dad in the world. Although the light outside was a bit weird. He had paid little attention before, but the sky out of his window had been full of strange, metallic-coloured clouds.

Warlock snuck his faux leather jacket from the coat hook on his way out of the front. His mum called out something to him, but he shut the front door before he could take in what it was.

The wind tore into him like a knife. He almost forgot about the park and fled back indoors. Then he thought of the three kids and Pepper’s red wellington boots and glared. He shrugged into his jacket, wrapped his arms around his torso and stomped up the road, teeth chattering.

Everything looked a weird colour. He’d been right about the sky. There was a sort of swirling pattern on the ground, too, from the clouds.

Maybe Greasy would know what was up with the weather. He watched nature documentaries sometimes. Greasy Johnson was Warlock’s sort of friend. They bonded over liking to sit in their rooms looking up stuff on the internet that their parents wouldn’t approve of and hating all the other kids in their class. Greasy had prize-winning tropical fish. When he first went over to Greasy’s house for tea, aged six, Warlock almost made fun of the tropical fish, but decided not to, as even back then Greasy was already four times Warlock’s size and could definitely put him in a headlock. Warlock was glad now that he hadn’t said anything, because he thought the fish were pretty cool.

Warlock was called Warlock because he’d once played a warlock in the game he and Greasy had made up together that was not Dungeons and Dragons, it was way cooler, although it did feature heavily both dungeons and dragons. Warlock felt a bit bad that they hadn’t come up with a cool nickname for Greasy that would actually stick. Greasy had been Greasy since nursery, and there was no shifting it now.

The three kids in the park - the Them - and Greasy were kind-of rivals, which was another reason Warlock was happy to agree they were rubbish. Greasy, technically, started it by being, technically, a bully. Warlock didn’t hold this against him. He didn’t bully Warlock, and Warlock would probably turn to bullying himself if it didn’t require him to interact with other children.

He had arrived. The wind moaned in his face. He hoped it wasn’t messing his hair up too badly. He was growing it long, but he suspected some of it was already sticking up weirdly. He self-consciously tried to pat it flat.

The three Them were sitting in the broken cage thing. All children’s playgrounds had one of these. A climbing frame shaped like an egg, part-buried in the ground. It looked like a cage with a little door in the front. The Them were huddled inside it, faces screwed up against the cold. Warlock felt satisfaction at the knowledge that someone else was concluding they would have been better off staying home.

He skulked round the edge of the park. He kept the three Them in the corner of his eye.

Pepper looked over her shoulder when he wandered round the back of the egg-cage-thing. His heartbeat picked up for a second. She frowned, suspicious, and turned back.

Warlock casually, in a series of loops and doubling-back, sauntered towards the cage.

He stepped onto a rung one step off the ground and gripped with his hands near the top. Slightly elevated, he looked down on the backs of the heads of the Them.

Pepper and the boy with the dirty face glared up at him. The small boy glanced up, turned red and looked away.

“What?” said Pepper.

Warlock gave a shrug. “Nothing.”

He might have practised the careworn shrug and the bored ‘nothing’ in his bedroom mirror a few times. Ennui was a difficult thing to convey.

Pepper narrowed her eyes. Warlock tried not to be nervous. Pepper talked a lot in class about feminism and anti-war stuff and someone called Maya Angelou. Warlock didn’t take all of it in, but it was pretty impressive -

No. Scary -

Wait. Uh.

“What are you looking at, stupid?”

Oh no. He didn’t say that, did he?

No. Pepper just said it to him. Warlock blinked a few times, trying his hardest not to blush. This was spinning out of control. He was going to have to insult someone.

“Your dungarees make you look like Pippi Longstocking,” he sneered.

Pepper stared at him with contempt. Warlock cringed. That had been deeply, wincingly unfortunate.

“Who’s Pippin Longbottom?” the grimy kid asked.

“I think she’s Swedish?” the un-grimy kid said.

Pepper rolled her eyes. “She’s a literary heroine, and she’s got super strength and she can fly. So that’s not actually much of an insult. Not that I’ve read those books.” She turned slightly red herself. “It was on TV once. It was ok. My little sister liked it.”

The sneer in her voice hit home. This was going terribly. All the practicing Warlock did in front of the mirror wasn’t helping at all.

He rallied. “Well. Did you know you’re not a real gang?”

“’Course. Real gangs aren’t allowed. Because of the knives,” the small boy said, promptly.

Pepper gave Warlock a weary sort of look. “Why don’t you hang out with Greasy Johnson? Speaking of a gang. If you can call two people a gang.”

“I don’t just hang out with Greasy all the time. I know lots of people.” Warlock was aware this was largely a lie.

Pepper crossed her arms. “Oh yeah? What are our names?”

The other two looked up.

Warlock almost rolled his eyes. Of course he knew their names. They were in his class. He just enjoyed thinking of them as nameless because they were annoying.

He pointed at the two boys. “Billy-bob. Red Leicester.” He pointed at Pepper and grinned. “And Pippin Galadriel Moonchild -”

She was almost upon him before he could get to the end. He sprinted towards the gate and made it three steps before a whirlwind of eleven-year-old fury tackled him from behind and brought him crashing to the ground.

Warlock coughed and squirmed under Pepper’s knees wedged into his back. He hoped he wasn’t lying on any needles.

“Say that again -”

Warlock tried to throw her off and came up comically short. Pepper punched him in the back of the shoulder. He tried not to cry.

Pepper sat back up. He could hear the grim smile in her voice.

“Oh, look. Super strength, and I can fly.”

Something splatted on the ground nearby. Warlock hardly noticed.

The polite voice of the dirt-repellent boy drifted to them across the playground. “Er. Pepper?”

A couple more splats sounded. Pepper didn’t comment on them, so nor did Warlock.

“You’re ruining my jacket,” he said.

“Say sorry, then. Maybe I’ll let you up.”

Splat. Splat.

“Oh, wow, that’s weird,” the dirt-attracting boy said.

Pepper’s weight on top of Warlock suddenly went slack. Warlock still couldn’t push her off, but it was as if she’d got distracted from trying to wrestle him down. He wriggled for all he was worth. Eventually he got lucky, or she lost interest, and he tipped her off and scrambled up again, nursing a scraped elbow.

Warlock took in the slimy things lying all around the playground. They were piling up, everywhere. More of them were falling, landing in squishy heaps.

The other three stared into the sky, agog. Warlock joined them.

It was raining fish…

~*~

A fish landed on Crowley’s head as he rounded a corner on Regent’s Park. He tossed it aside. Nothing that disgusting would normally dare land on him, which confirmed the fish rain was the doing of the Antichrist, as if that had been in any doubt.

The cultural attaché’s residence came into view. Crowley felt like he hadn’t been back there in decades, while also feeling like he was slinking back into work in the same clothes after a dirty weekend. Which was about accurate, come to think of it.

The sky flickered and churned overhead. He was getting a bit sick of the Hollywood special effects. That’s what happened when you let Americans raise the Antichrist. He reached the gates. He looked round upon hearing the sounds of a motorbike and a woman screaming.

A pink scooter flew down the street. Two humans were upon it, both wearing day-glo cycle helmets. Both of their mouths were stretched in rictus gurns of terror. Only one of them was actually screaming. The man(?) at the back appeared so disturbed, despite the contortions his face was making, that his throat produced no noise. The woman driving was giving it a full-throated yell. Despite being eight feet off the ground and zooming towards Crowley at seventy miles per hour, the scooter was otherwise studiously obeying the laws of traffic. That was Crowley’s first clue that Aziraphale was involved. He looked closer at the woman and saw something he recognised in her.

The scooter slowed in mid-air and touched down with a degree of consideration for its passengers.

The man stayed where he was, clutching his heart and also a giant, lethal, trumpety-looking thing. The woman looked green.

She looked up, and something shifted in her face. In a familiar, beloved voice, she said, “Crowley!”

She unhooked the day-glo helmet and clambered off the scooter. She tripped towards him, moving as if slightly uncertain how to walk in heels.

Crowley sauntered to meet her in the middle.[2] “Hi, Aziraphale. Nice dress. Suits you.”

The woman Aziraphale had possessed had red hair, even though it was clearly from a bottle. Crowley decided to feel like he’d been given a compliment.

Concern gripped him. If Aziraphale had had to possess a human, that meant -

“Angel, where’s your gem?”

Aziraphale’s unhappiness shone out of a stranger’s face. “In Heaven, I’m afraid.”

Crowley hissed in a breath. His mind supplied him with images of Aziraphale’s gem passing through Gabriel’s large, indifferent hands. Being thrown in a vault or bubbled.

“They had hellfire. They were going to use it on me.”

Crowley swore. There had been a few times in his long life when reality had thrown him a curve-ball even worse than whatever he had already been thinking.

“They wouldn’t melt your gem?”

“Michael was interrogating me before I escaped. I imagine she already has.”

Crowley stared at the small, middle-aged woman in jewel tones and bold makeup, staring up at him with Aziraphale’s expression. He tried to process that this was the form the love of his life was stuck in, potentially forever.

A different person bubbled up and overlaid Aziraphale. She coughed.

“Don’t mean to disturb you gents when you’re having a catch-up, but if you don’t mind, can I just help the Sergeant down off the scooter?”

Crowley looked at the man with the big trumpet. He was clinging to the back of the moped like a seasickness victim too scared to disembark down the plank. When the woman threatened to help him, he glowered and inched sideways off the scooter until he was almost at a ninety-degree angle to the ground. He staggered off in a series of hops, hefted the trumpet, and barked:

“Ay, Mister Crowley. It’s been a while. Ay didnae know you were involved in this Antichrist job. Glad tae be of service.” He gave a nasty cough. “P’rhaps we can sort out payment later? The lads… ye ken how it is…”

Crowley stared blankly. It had been years since he’d spoken to his contact in the Witchfinder Army, but his mind supplied an angry, nicotine-coloured Scotsman. The years had already been unkind to him when they’d last met, and they appeared to have ganged up on him a few more times since then.

“Oh, yeah… hi there.” His eyes drifted to the trumpet. Its purpose still eluded him.

“Sergeant Shadwell is providing us with ammunition,” Aziraphale volunteered. “As you can see, he is armed.”

“Oh.” Crowley’s face cleared. He was still a bit lost, but the trumpet being a weapon of some kind made a bit of sense. It was smart of Aziraphale to think to bring it. Satan knew they were under-equipped. Crowley had tried to sneak a hellhound out with him, but almost lost an arm.

“And I’m Madame Tracy. Medium,” the woman said, brightly.

Shadwell gave a cough that sounded like “Hoor of Babylon”.

All right, then. This was the team Crowley was facing down the apocalypse with. He gave a grim nod.

“Er. Madame Tracy, was it?”

“Yes, dearie?”

This was going to be awkward. Crowley tried not to show it. “Sorry to ask, but - permission to hug Aziraphale?”

Her eyes went huge. She giggled and blushed.

“All right, just this once. You two!”

Her face shifted, and Aziraphale moved back to the surface. There was still a trace of the blush on his face.

He stepped into Crowley’s arms and buried his face in his jacket. Crowley held the smaller, perfumed, colourful frame that contained Aziraphale. Behind him, Shadwell’s glower grew more pronounced.

This wasn’t permanent. The angels could do whatever they wanted to Aziraphale’s gem. Today, either everything ended, or everything would be saved, the two of them included.

“Right then,” he said with grim determination. “Let’s go speak to the boy who controls reality.”

---

[1] 11:42.

[2] Moving as if uncertain how to walk, full stop.

(Link to next part)

[dansphlevels]

A Sword, A Little Bit Of Magic, And A Whole Lot Of Pizza

This story was made in part of the @phandomreversebang, based on these art posts by @myawfod, and edited by @smiles-are-toxic! Make sure to check out the art before reading!

Summary: When Dan and Phil are following strange dark creatures that appeared out of nowhere in London, things go wrong and they end up being sucked into an alternate dimension, where magic exists and they must find a way to use it in order to contain the creatures before they completely overrun this new world. Warning: contains the use of ‘spork’ as an insult, the destruction of a perfectly good library book, and questionable pizza physics. 

Length: 15k words 

Themes: alternate universe (literally), magic, alternate dimension, prophecy, two dorks trying to survive in an alternate dimension, fluff, light pining

 In the corner booth of the pizza parlour sat two boys. College-aged, maybe a bit older. They talked quietly over an already half-eaten pizza. They blended in just fine with the other customers in the shop, save for the fact that they smelled a little off. But they knew that they didn’t quite belong. These boys weren’t from this city, or even this country. In fact… these boys weren’t even from this dimension.

 And this is where our story begins. Two boys, in a pizza shop, with hardly an idea how they got here and no idea how to get home, but some idea of why they’re here. But I suppose, in order to understand fully what’s going on, we have to start at the beginning.

---

“Come on Phil,” Dan muttered quietly, crouching as he crept along. “I think I saw another one.”

“Dan, are you sure? I'm not sure if…”

“Shh! Phil, look!”

They peered over a large tank of something, careful where they stepped. The warehouse was a mess, with pipes and tools scattered aimlessly. One wrong move would knock something over, and the creatures not thirty meters away would spot them.

Phil rested his hands on the tank, which hummed underneath him. The factory, however disorganized, was active.

“What do you think they are?” He whispered.

Dan narrowed his eyes, trying to make out the dark figures in the minimal light. They were as black as shadows, from what he could tell, so that they blended in with the shadows of the surrounding machines. But through a large hole in the ceiling, the moonlight shone through and gave them some form.

Shadowy, scaly limbs, tendrils of darkness swirling up towards the light. Their eyes were gold, huge and reflective. They were truly creatures of pure terror.

“They look like the guy in Death Note,” Phil suggested helpfully. “What's his name? Rick?”

“It's Ryuk, you spork. And he was a death god; these are clearly monsters of some kind.”

Phil scowled, pouting. “I think they look like Rick.”

“Ryuk!”

One of the creatures growled gutturally, whipping around in their direction. The two boys ducked, breathing shallowly.

They waited in silence for a few seconds. “You think he saw us?”

“Oh my gosh Phil, stop assigning gender to this creature just because it's scary! For all you know, it's a ‘she’, and you just hurt her feelings!”

The monster growled in anguish as if to emphasize the point.

“See? Rebecca’s upset!”

Phil peaked over the tank, finding Rebecca in the darkness. “I think she's more of a Becky.”

Becky’s glowing eyes locked on Phil, and she let out a horrible wail, causing Phil to stumble back in surprise. “She's calling for backup!” Dan stage-whispered, horrified.

“Um, Dan?”

“How many of them do you think there are? I see at least five, but it's hard to make them out!”

“Dan!”

Dan spun around, “What?”

Phil gestured to the contraption behind them: a mass of tubes, all connecting to one central control panel in the center. All the lights on the panel were glowing.

Dan's eyes widened. “Phil…”

“I didn't mean to! I just… tripped!”

“You klutz! How many did you press?”

Phil chewed on his lower lip. An alarm started going off, whirring loudly in warning.

“Phil!”

“Most of them!” He confessed. “Not all of them! But most! Dan, we need to get out of here!”

The monsters wailed in agony at the noise, writhing in agitation. A pipe burst, spraying them with some sort of watery substance.

“Dan, come on!”

Dan held up one hand silently. “Wait. Watch what's happening.”

Another pipe burst, and then a third, showering the creatures in blue foam and brown sewage. “That's disgusting!”

Becky let out a wail that tore through the entire factory, causing the foundation to shudder. She stomped, and a thin tube burst, mixing with the chemicals already on the floor and exploding in a blast of white light, throwing Dan and Phil backward.

Phil landed on the floor roughly, sliding back to hit his back against a machine. “Dan!”

“Over here!”

Ignoring whatever was going on at the site of the explosion- clearly, the monsters had more important things to focus on than two puny humans- Phil ran over to the site of Dan's voice. He'd landed in a mass of broken piping. “Are you okay?”

Dan brought his hand to his head, touching carefully. His fingers came back reddened. “I hit my head. But it's not that bad, Phil- look.”

Phil turned around, looking where Dan was pointing. There was a gaping hole with a mass of swirling blues and purples where the monsters had just been.

All the monsters had been sucked in, all except Becky. She whined, backing up against the machines.

“A portal,” Phil whispered.

Cracks spider-webbed across the floor. The entire building was shaking with the power of the portal, the winds from it almost too strong.

“Come on Dan, we have to go!” Phil tried to pull Dan up, but the boy wasn’t thinking about escape.

“Phil… we don't know where that portal is going. The monsters…”

“Dan, come on, we need to leave!”

Dan cast one last glance at the portal- wistful, almost? —and stood. “Okay. Let's go.”

They turned, and the floor crumbled beneath them. They shouted in surprise as the portal engulfed them.

---

They landed on grass that looked soft but was as hard as pavement upon impact. Phil groaned. “Ow.”

He looked up, just in time to spot the last of the dark creatures disappear into the shadows.

Dan grunted. “Well, that was fun. Where-” he sat up and stopped mid-sentence.

They weren't in London, that much was obvious. In fact, it looked like they weren't even on Earth anymore.

“It’s…erm…” Dan mumbled. Phil could only nod, awestruck as he took everything in. They were in a park, in a big city, bigger than London even. Skyscrapers reached up, trying to grab the misty clouds that floated by in the lilac-pink sky. Huge serpentine creatures seemed to swim in the sky, writhing gracefully like eels in the ocean.

“It's like New York,” Dan realized aloud. “But... on drugs.”

He wasn't looking at the sky. Slowly, Phil allowed his gaze to lower, taking in the brick and glass apartment buildings, then the trees, which were green, yet seemed to glow a faint blue, like they were radioactive. Lower still were the sidewalks where people- and Phil used that term lightly- walked. They'd been to New York before, and if you didn't look too closely, this place didn't look much different. People in New York dressed weirdly sometimes, but this... was a little different. Phil spotted pointy witch hats, top hats, hats with strangely lifelike horns protruding from them. Cats walked freely through the throngs of people, most of them with stark black fur. A woman and man kissed on the corner, and the woman dropped her purse. Instead of falling, it stopped, levitating in the air patiently.

Phil swallowed hard. “I don't... think we're on Earth anymore.”

 ---

It took about three days for them to adjust to the new world. They slept in alleys and ate out of trash cans, until the second day when Dan went out for a little while and returned with a cluster of wallets. “Pizza money,” he explained with a devious smile.

 There were libraries, and banks, and cars and busses. There were pizza parlors and tall buildings that reached for the sky. They were significantly lower than the skyscrapers in New York, Phil decided, but with a similar structure. He and Dan could go about their business under the radar. The people and creatures that lived in this world were all so strange that no one bothered to question the two boys, even if they were a little unkempt.

 The world was strange. Besides the humans that milled around just about everywhere, there were a lot of creatures that they'd never seen before. Lots of cats- many of which seemed obsessed with Dan, following him everywhere- and almost all were black. They sometimes appeared seemly out of nowhere. Many women walked around wearing all black, with large, pointed hats on their heads and hefty purses. Sometimes the cats appeared from under their skirts, scurrying out and running to catch mice.

 There were also lizards- or something like lizards. They were the shape and size of lizards, except they had rubbery bats wings, barely large enough to support their body weight in the air. They ate small bugs and pieces of human food and were eaten by moths the size of baseball hats.

 Dan didn't like the moths. Out of all his courage, his bravery that had led them to this world in the first place, he was terrified of moths. Go figure.

 A few times, they saw the dark creatures that had led them to this world. Maybe ‘saw’ wasn't the right word- they saw places where shadows were darker, dark swirls of black in the distance knocking over trash cans or eating cats. The creatures had a strange quality to them like they had a different filter on them than the rest of the world. One thing was clear- they didn't belong here.

 But what were Dan and Phil to do? They didn’t even belong here.

---

 "The tourist’s guide isn't very helpful," Dan noted. "I think it's in Chinese."  Phil was only half listening, skimming his fingers along the spines of the books that lined the library shelves. The shelves were packed impressively tight, like there were twice as many books as there was space, which was ridiculous, as the library seemed to go on endlessly. "Mm-hmm," he mumbled. He pulled over a book at random, the books immediately slamming together, closing the gap where it had been. Phil eyed the books suspiciously, but didn't question it. "'Chapter One: Feeding and Watering Your.... Manta Jay?'" He read from the book.  "It must say 'manta ray,'" Dan corrected, still looking through the illegible tourist book. He sniffed it longingly, sighing in delight. "It has that new book smell. God, I love that smell."  Phil chose to ignore Dan's weird sniffing. Ignoring Dan was actually one of Phil's most impressive talents. "No, 'manta jay'. Is that a manta ray, like a sea pancake, but... it has wings and eats berries?"  "Or maybe it's a bird, that has through weird flappy swimmy things," he suggested. "Like, a blue jay with no feathers, just skin."  Phil cringed. "It says here to feed your manta jay 'assorted fish and nuts. Trail mix and salmon is higher recommended.'"  "Too weird," Dan decided. "New book."  Phil went to put the book back, but with a quick look at the shelf, it was clear that wouldn't be an easy task. Instead, he set it on top, patting it slightly awkwardly, and going to get another one.  He trailed his fingers along the spines again, waiting to find one that stuck out to him. His fingers had just closed around one when behind him, a book practically jumped out, knocking him in the back of the head with a WHAP!

 Phil yipped, collapsing to the ground, his hands covering his head protectively. "What was that?!"  "It was a book," Dan walked over, eyes wide. He picked up the book, trying to open it, but it didn't let him. "It's stuck!"  "Let me." Now standing (and blushing), Phil reached for the book and opened it easily. He glanced at Dan.  "Don't you say a thing," Dan warned, his cheeks warming up as well. "I may not be very strong, but I can open a freaking book." His cheeks just grew redder as Phil didn't respond. "Well? What does it say?"  "It's... a guide to magic." Phil read quickly, his shoulders tensing. "'Only some people have the capacity to use magic, and everyone's abilities are different. You may be able to use potions, but not cast spells, or vice versa. And of course, you may not have an aptitude for either. You can find out online with our immediate magic aptitude test for a small fee of 29.99....'" He trailed off, skipping ahead a few pages. “Oh look, this is inspirational. ‘The first step to being a good magic user is believing in yourself. The rest comes after.’”

 “That’s nice,” Dan commented, bored. “Does the book have anything else besides inspirational quotes and online surveys?”

 Phil flipped ahead a couple dozen pages, stopping at random. “Here’s a recipe for a potion. ‘The Cure of Desperamos is a potion made for making invisible or hardly visible creatures visible.’”

 Now Dan was interested. He moved over, peering over Phil's shoulder. "Where do you see that? The page is blank."  "Huh?" Phil looked up, looking confused. "No it's not. Look: 'The Desperamos potion is made for making...'" He read the line again, this time underlining it with his finger. "See?"  Dan shook his head. "I don't. It just looks like a blank page."  "Guess we need to make the potion so you can see the words," Phil joked. "All we need is.... ‘4 oz of Jupiter's Solvent, a chopped source of tears, and a pinch of gourd, and tine and nage and stoke’.” He blinked, reading it again, this time the full recipe. It said:

For this potion you will need: 4 oz of Jupiter's Solvent a chopped source of tears a pinch of gourd, and tine, and nage and stoke Mix them together until they croak. Chop them up with which berries and kale dance. Use 10^-2 meter wavelengths to turn it balmy And then screw it all, for the powder palmy

"Yeah, okay, I think it might be more difficult than that. I don't know what any of those ingredients are. Or how to make it.” Phil glanced around, checking for librarians before quickly tearing the page out, shoving it in his pocket.  "Phil!" Dan accused.  "It's cool!" Phil defended. "And who knows? Maybe we can find... whatever the heck a 'Jupiter's solvent' is. It could be useful." He nudged Dan playfully. "Maybe we could use the potion to find your self-esteem."  "Or my dignity," Dan added dryly. "Still...." he shrugged, letting it go. Phil went to put the book away, but Dan quickly stopped him. "Wait! I wanna sniff it!"  "You're so weird!"  "I don't care!" Dan ripped the book from his hands, inhaling through his nose deeply. "Oh yeah. Old book smell. Almost as good as new book smell, but dustier. Here, sniff it."  He all but shoved the book in Phil's face. He sniffed quickly. "It smells- ac-hoo!" He sneezed, and Dan yelped. "Sorry! Bless me!"  "The book!" Dan was saying. Phil wanted to roll his eyes, when he looked over and realized that the book was burning in Dan's hands. He dropped it, stomping on it.  "How'd it catch on fire?" Phil looked around rapidly, but there wasn't a candle or lighter anywhere around.  "It's because you sneezed!" Dan accused, stomping out the flames.  "What?!"  "I don't know how, but as soon as you sneezed it set on fire-"  A librarian walked over, and stopped when she saw the commotion. Phil, looking a little nasally, and Dan, stomping on a book. She went to step forwards, the shook her head, turning and leaving.  "She must think we're crazy."  "Well, you. You're assaulting a book. So mean Dan, what did that book ever do to you?"  "Hey you're the one who set it on fire!"  "Am not!"  "Are too!"  "Am n- achoo!" He sneezed again, even more forcefully than last time.  They looked around worriedly. No fire. "See?" Phil defended. "It's not-"  A few feet away, the carpet sparked and caught ablaze.  They put out the fire, and hurried out of the library with only the page from earlier. Phil felt horribly guilty about setting the book on fire, but he also didn't want to go to some weird magic prison, so they booked it out of the building.  As they sped walked along the streets, Phil sneezed a few more times, lighting more fires along the way. "Stop it, will you?" Dan warned, grabbing Phil's hand to pull him along. Phil almost jumped at the contact, his cheeks going red once more.  "I can't!" He defended. "I think I inhaled a bunch of that dust into my lungs!"  "It's magic," Dan decided. "It must be. You heard what that book said, some people can do it. I guess you're one of the people who can."  "What about you?"  Dan stopped walking suddenly. "Well... maybe I can."  "Maybe yours is stronger," Phil agreed. "Don't sneeze. You'll cause a nuclear explosion."  Dan snorted, and they kept walking. Their hands shifted, so they were holding hands more naturally, less forced. Phil wondering if Dan had forgotten. He certainly hadn't- would Dan notice his sweaty palms? He hoped not.  But Dan's thoughts were elsewhere. They turned a corner, with no particular direction in mind besides away from the library they'd vandalized. "You think you can do more than just sneeze and set thousand year old books on fire?"  Phil shrugged. "Maybe. Like what?"  They looked around. Finally, Dan pointed. "Do that."  Phil looked to where he was gesturing, at a couple kissing. Phil felt his heart jump around a little. "You want me to... kiss you?"  "What? No, look behind them. At the broom. See? It's sweeping the sidewalk, but there's no one there. It's moving on its own."  "Or there is a person behind it, but they're just invisible," Phil argued. "Hey, we could use the potion!" He looked at Dan, who was looking at him with an annoyed but somehow still sweet expression, like 'that was so stupid but actually kind of could be true, oh my God you're so ridiculous I love you'. But that might have just been how Phil saw it.  Phil shook his head. "Okay. Right. Let me try. Wait, I need a broom."  "Just try to make something move. That paper cup, on the grass? Try throwing it away."  Phil stared at the cup. He narrowed his gaze, trying to focus solely on it.  Dan brushed against his side casually. Phil wanted to whimper. It was so embarrassing, whenever he was around Dan his heart just seemed to beat faster and his palms were all sweaty and he always blushed and-  "Well?" Dan asked expectantly. "Do you think it'll work?"  Phil'd forgotten he was supposed to be trying to move the cup. But now he was too distracted.  He shook his head, standing up fully. "No. I guess I can't do it."  Dan sighed. "Well, sneeze-fires are still cool. Maybe you can tone it, make it so you can set things on fire without having to sneeze first." —-

 They were making camp for the night when it happened.

 “Final Fantasy is definitely better,” Phil argued, absentmindedly drawing in the gravel floor of the alley. “You can’t even say that Mar-”

 Before he could finish his sentence, Dan had grabbed him, covering his mouth with his hand. Phil made a noise of surprise, and then one of protest, and Dan shushed him quickly. “Look!” His whispered.

 Only a dozen meters away, a swirling mass of shadows lurked, tendrils black as night floating around like the feelers on an ant. Dan and Phil watched in horror as someone walked past, a woman with a black pointed witches hat and dark purple cloak, and before they could call out, the creature struck. The woman was absorbed into the black seamlessly, and the creature slinked away. All that was left was her purple cloak, discarded on the ground.

 Dan let go off his hold on Phil, but he didn’t bother stepping away, too in shock. “You don’t think-”

 “It consumed her,” Dan agreed, his mouth open in horror. “That was one of those creatures, wasn’t it? Phil, we have to do something! We have to find a way to get rid of these monsters, before…”

 “Woah woah woah, slow down.” Phil stepped away, turning so he could look Dan in the eyes. “I agree that we have to do something, but what can we do?”

 Dan was about to respond when his eyes caught onto something. “What’s…?” He stepped forwards, around Phil, and went over to the discarded cloak. He pushed it aside, revealing something metallic and shiny.

 Phil walked over to see what it was. As he got closer, his eyes widened.

 The stared at it in silence for a few moments. Then finally, Dan spoke up. “It’s a sword.”

 It was. But not in the typical way. It was a little less than a meter long, and curved slightly, with one sharp side, not two. Phil reached over to pick it up, but as soon as his fingers made contact, he lurched back. “Ow! It’s burning hot!”

 Dan seemed to be in a sort of daze, as if his reality was replaced by a daydream. He leaned forwards and trailed his fingertips along the metal, picking it up by the grip. It fit into his hand perfectly. “It’s not even warm,” he mused.

 Dan took a few steps forward and swung the sword. It was a perfect weight, and when swung created a deadly silver arc.

 “You couldn’t read the magic book,” Phil realized. “And I can’t touch the sword… it’s like we’re being pulled in different directions. Magic, and…”

 “...and combat,” Dan finished, eyes following the sword with utter fascination. “This sword must be used for killing the creatures. It has to be, it can’t be a coincidence.”

 “Um, Dan?”

 “What?”

 Phil had gone over to the cloak, and picked it up fully, checking the pockets. He pulled out a slip of paper, reading it uncomfortably. “‘This Katana is to be used in the banishment of creatures from a world where they do not belong. To work most effectively, make a clean cut in between the eyes. Works best when creatures whole forms are visible. Warning: not to be used on humans.’”

 Dan blinked. “Is that all it says?”

 Phil hesitated. “‘Dry clean only,’” he continued. “‘Made in China.’”

Dan swung the sword experimentally, cutting through the air. “I knew we were here for a reason. I need to… to use this sword to banish the creatures back where they came from, before they can… consume too many people, I guess.”

 Phil gulped, looking back at the cape on the ground. The witch had had a sword, and she’d been consumed like it was nothing. “And me?”

 Dan’s eyes lit up as the puzzle pieces connected in his mind. “You need to use the potion,” he realized, eyes widening. “From the library! It’s used to make things visible!”

 “It could be used to make the creatures visible, so you could banish them.” Phil realized. “We can actually do this.”

---

 They were walking around the next morning when Dan almost tripped over a rock. Except, it wasn't a rock.

The thing- whatever it was- looked up at Dan lazily. It was bright blue with the body and face of a turtle, with a rough shell and sagging eye bags. Sharp spines trailed from its neck to its tail, and its feet were like dolphin flippers.

 “Mooooooo,” it whined mournfully.

 “That's the ugliest-”

 “That's the coolest thing I've ever seen!” Phil interrupted, hurrying over to pat the turtle-creature's head. “What do you think it is?”

 “A mistake?” Dan suggested. He eyed it wearily, watching as its head bopped happily with Phil's petting. “Just be careful, it might bite yo-”

 Phil scratched below the creature's head, and it moaned out another moo. “I think it likes me!” The turtle opened it’s mouth, licking Phil’s hand affectionately with a long, purple tongue.

 Dan rolled his eyes but smiled. “Come on. We have to keep moving, every minute we wait the more creatures are getting it on, which means more babies for us to deal with.”

 Phil pouted. “Can't we take him with us?”

 “Him? First of all, stop assigning gender, oh my God Phil-”

 “It's a boy! I'm sure of it.” Phil scratched behind the turtle's ear holes. “I can feel it.”

 Dan cringed. “You can… feel it? Come on Phil, let's just go. We can't take him with us, he'll be too slow.” Dan stood, pulling Phil up with him, holding onto his upper arm. “Let's just go.”

 Phil pouted again but nodded. “Okay.”

 They started walked away from the turtle. “Mooooo….”

 “Don't look back. Just keep walking.”

 “Moooo!”

 A loud clopping noise sounded behind them, and they both jumped, spinning around.

 The turtle stared at them sadly. He was almost a full meter closer.

 “Moooo!” Pushing off of all four dolphin flippers, the turtle hurled itself forwards, flopping on the ground and doing it again. Clop. Clop.

 Phil grinned. “Good boy! Good Bessie!”

 Sighing loudly, Dan facepalmed. “I- Bessie is a girl’s name- I just- ugh.” He sighed again. “Phil, can we please just-”

 “Yeah, we can go now! Bye, Bessie!” He waved, and Bessie lowered her head to the ground sadly but didn't try to follow them as they hurried along. “Well, that was cool.”

 “That was… just… great.” Dan tried for a smile. “What next?”

 “Well, I need to get the other things for the potion. The Jupiter's Solvent and ‘source of tears’, whatever that means.”

 Dan nodded. “Let's focus on the source of tears.” He clicked his tongue a few times, thinking. “Tears like crying? Should Should we find some John Green books to add to the potion?”

 Phil snorted. “Maybe. I… I might have an idea, but I’m not really sure? What about… an onion?”

---

Phil lay on the bed, his head supported by his hands. After their adventure searching for an onion in the grocery story, which had resulted in them being chased by shadow creatures and topple a display display of maple syrup, they'd decided to crack open their funds funds and funds and shell out for a real room, where they could both take a much needed shower. There was only one bed, but it was just big enough for both him and Dan to lay on.

 Dan walked out of the shower, a towel draped around his waist. Phil watched him, doing his best to keep his eyes on Dan's face and not any lower. “Hey, Hobbit.”

 “I've got a sword,” Dan warned, the threat empty. “Call me a hobbit again and you'll be diced and shish-kababed before you can say abra-”

 “-Cadabra?”

 Dan grabbed his sword from where it leaned up against the dresser, spinning around dramatically- and accidentally knocking over a lamp. Phil laughed as it collapsed to the ground, the light bulb shattering. “Nice Dan. Oh yeah, you showed me.”

 “Shish-kababed,” Dan reiterated, smiling lightly despite the light blush across his cheeks. He pulled up the towel around his waist, holding it up with one hand. “You better watch out. I'm getting pretty good with this.”

 “Yeah, I'm really scared, Dan. If any lamps come to get you, they'd better watch out!”

 “Hey, you never know. One of these days it may happen, and then you'll eat your words!” He swung the sword around a bit to emphasize the point, letting go of his towel for a moment to swing the sword like a baseball bat- when his towel fell to the ground. “Oops.”

 In synch, the two boys looked down, then looked at each other. Phil rolled onto his stomach, covering his eyes to give Dan some privacy. “My innocence.”

 “Drama queen.”

—-

"Are you sure this is the right place?" Dan whispered, keeping his body flush against the wall.  Phil shrugged. "Not really. But the lady at the potions shop said that Lady Ember might have it, so we might as well check."  "Why do we have to sneak in? Why can’t we just ask Lady Amber-"  "Lady Ember," Phil corrected. “Like fire.”   “That’s comforting. Why can’t we just ask Lady Ember if she has the herbs?"  Phil hesitated. "Well... she’s a witch. I don’t know what witches are like in this world, but I don’t know why she’d want to help us. She might not even have the stuff we need. Better just peek in and see."  "You mean break in." Dan blinked hard, looking to Phil. "You want to break into a potentially evil witches house, look for some drugs-"  "Herbs."  "Look for some herbs.... and hope that everything just goes well? What if we get caught? Could we be sent to magic jail?"  Phil shrugged. "Maybe. Look, she’s leaving."  Sure enough, a little ways down the street an old woman appeared from her front door, closing and locking it behind her. On her head was a large pointed hat the shade of raisins, and in her hand she carried a large purse.  “They know their way better than anything else does,” Lady Ember said, talking into her phone. “They are a little shadowy, but I like them. They’re the only beings you can rely on to always follow through on their destiny.”

 They waited until she had walked a little ways and turned a corner to move. Then they hurried down the street, trying to run and tiptoe at the same time. "We should’ve just acted casual!" Dan whisper yelled.  "Too late now!" They got to the door, and Phil tried the knob. "It’s locked!"  "You don’t have a plan for getting in?"  "Well I’m sorry this is my first time breaking in somewhere!" Phil whisper yelled back. "Why don’t you try, mister 'bad boy'."  Dan gave him a look, and pulled out his sword. "Watch out. I’m going to break the door in."  Phil stepped back, and Dan reared his sword back, swinging it like a baseball bat. It clanged against the door, not even sticking.  "Amazing," Phil complimented. "You should do this professionally, you’re so-"  "There’s some sort of barrier!" Dan defended, still swinging the sword, it bouncing back every time. "I think it’s magic!"  "Magic? Oh, I can do magic." Phil imagined a ball of fire, making motions with his hands like he always saw in movies, as if he were forming a ball of flames straight from the air. He thrust his imaginary ball at the door, not expecting anything to happen, when they door exploded backwards.  Dan looked at him with wide eyes. "How’d you do that?"  Phil blinked. He hadn’t thought that it’d actually work, he was just joking! But it /had/ worked.  He shrugged. "I told you. I know magic." He stepped through the doorway, trying to avoid the splintered wood.  "Yeah right. More like you were pretending, and got lucky."  "I’ll look for the 'gourd' and 'tine', you look for the 'nage' and 'stoke," Phil delegated, happily ignoring Dan's correct assumption. He knew him too well. "What do you think 'gourd' looks like?"  Dan grunted, stepping into the apartment too. They were in the living room, it seemed, with two flowery couches around a coffee table, and soft pastel wallpaper. It didn’t seem like a place where you’d expect a witch to live. It was more of a place Phil's grandma might have lived.  The peeked around the living room, but didn’t find anything that looked right. Phil almost thought he’d found it when he found a basket under one of the couches, but it was filled with knitting needles and yarn, not 'gourd'. Unless, of course, gourd was something you’d use to make a scarf. But Phil doubted it.   Meanwhile, Dan peered around the bookshelf set up across from the front door. He sniffed the books, pulling one out in particular. "This one's called 'Retiring From Magic Gracefully.' What if she's retired, and got rid of all her magic stuff?"  Phil chewed on his lip. "Well... let’s just hope that’s not the case. Anyways, if you were a witch, would you ever want to stop?"  He had a point. "Let’s go downstairs," Dan decided, nodding to some stairs in the corner of the room. "Maybe she has a kitchen or something. Think you could use 'nage' in a pie?" —-  You should not use nage in a pie.  They descended the stairs. At the bottom, they opened up to a large room crowded with shelves, counters, and in the center, a large black cauldron. Cooking books crowded the shelves, packed almost as tightly as the books in the library had been. A bag of flour had been knocked over on the floor, and little paw prints lead out of it.  "A cat?" Dan asked, looking at the prints.  Phil squatted, looking closer. "They look a little too big for a cat. Maybe a dog?"  "That’s the only thing that would make this quest worthwhile." Dan scanned a drying rack of herbs, smiling when his eyes caught on one. "Hey, good news. I found nage."  Phil walked over, looking at what Dan pointed at. It was a little green stalk with black leaves, or maybe flowers...  Phil's stomach turned as he looked closer, and the image clicked into place. "They’re.... leeches."  Sure enough, the leaves moved. They were slimy, sucky, squiggly, leeches.  "Ew! You get them Phil, I don’t want to touch them!"  "You get the nage and stoke, I get the gourd and time," Phil reminded. "Look around, maybe there’s a bag or something you can use."  Dan made a disgusted face, but managed to get a cloth bag and stuff a few stalks of the leeches in it, closing it by pulling the drawstring tightly. "You have to carry it though. You’re the magic guy, I only play with a sword."  "Fine." Phil took the bag. "Just don’t play with your sword when I’m around, please."  Dan wrinkled his nose in disgust. "That sounds really bad."  Phil could feel his face heat up. "What? I just meant-"  "Yeah, I know what you meant, but it still sounds really nasty."  "I found the gourd!" Phil announced, trying to change the subject. "It looks like dirt. But it's not alive, see? Only two more to go."  They managed to find the other two ingredients with only a few setbacks and bad innuendoes. In fact, they almost managed to make it out of the place scot free, when Dan turned around a little too fast, and knocked a large wine bottle containing bright orange liquid over. It fell to the ground and shattered, one of the pieces of glass hardly missing him.  "Dan?"  "Fine," Dan called back, leaning over to look at the stuff. "Phil, look at this. It’s bubbling."  "That doesn’t sound good." Phil came over, peering over Dan's head so he could see. Unfortunately, at that same moment Dan stood. He accidentally head butted Phil, and in Dan’s attempt to grab him before he fell, they both toppled forwards into the potion.  Phil opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out. He blinked hard. Everything seemed so much bigger than before. He was laying on the ground, yes, but it was as if everything in the room had grown to be three times the size.  "Just so you know," Dan said a little bit away. "I completely blame you."  Phil pulled himself to his feet, but he hardly went up at all. What was going on? Had he shrunk?  Phil looked down, and almost passed out. He /had/ shrunk.... sort of.  A brown calico cat stood up, eye level with Phil. "Did everything just get really big, or-"  Phil looked down. Where his hands had been were now orange, fluffy, adorable.... paws.  Dan screamed, but it was more of an angry MREOW!  "Do you realize what just happened? We’re.... we’re..."  "Cats!" Phil finished for him, testing out all four of his feet. He’d never felt so balanced. "I don’t know whether this is a good thing, or...."  "Um, excuse me?" The brown calico- that would be Dan- turned and looked at Phil indignantly. "How is this fair? How come you get to be the orange tabby?"  Phil strolled over to a nearby mirror, checking himself out. He was lean, with short orange fur and subtle stripes. He flicked his tail, trying it out. It was as natural as moving his arm. "I’m a handsome cat," he decided. "And I guess I’m a ginger because that’s my natural hair color. Normally, I wouldn’t go for it but... what do you think? Does it suit me?" He struck a pose, but Dan seemed to be focusing on something else.  "Um? Phil, we’re.... we're freaking cats!" He looked in the mirror, so in shock he could hardly move. His fur was covered in brown and black splotches, save for a white stomach. His brown eyes were wide with shock.  Phil looked back at himself. His own eyes looked back at him, still as blue as they had been when he was human. Slung across his shoulder was a little sash, like the type scouts wear to display their badges. On it were miniature versions of the items he’d been holding, or carrying in his pockets, including the newfound ingredients, and the scrap of paper with the recipe on it, wrapped up tightly like a scroll.

Unfortunately, Phil did not have more time to look at himself in the mirror. Because that’s when they heard the dog.  They were on their feet and across the room before Phil could say Puppy!   "Why am I running away?" Dan asked, still running. "I want to see the doggo!"  They sped through an open doorway, into a more conventional kitchen. Leaping onto the table gracefully, they backed up, watching with worry.  "I bet it’s our feline instincts," Phil guessed. "Did you know that kittens don’t open their eyes until they’re a week old?"  "Fascinating! How do we get out of here?"  Phil didn’t have time to respond, because that’s that’s when the dog barreled around the corner. It was the cutest, most malicious corgi they’d ever seen.  It barked loudly, running up to the table and jumping. It made it almost high enough to see Dan and Phil, but not nearly high enough to get /on/ the table.  "That’s right!" Dan mocked over the edge of the table. "That’s what you get for having stubby legs!"  The corgi jumped again, snarling and biting, almost getting Dan. He howled, jumping backwards.  "Did he get you?" Phil asked with worry.  "No! But he almost did!"  Dan had made such a noise of protest and pain, one would think he’d been mortally wounded. Mocking? Overreacting? Dan was acting more and more like a cat every moment.  The corgi backed up, like he was going to take a running start. Then, he sprinted forwards, golden fur flowing and black eyes glistening, and he leaned onto a chair and then directly onto the table.  Phil practically hurled himself off the ledge. His instincts kicked in, and just like that he was on the ground, on his feet, and running at full force to get away. He leapt onto a stool, but overshot, instead hurling himself over it like the most graceful and most stupid Olympic hurdler.  He looked around, hoping Dan hadn’t noticed. Luckily, he was too busy running for his life, the corgi snarling and snapping at him, right on his tail.  Phil looked around for an escape. His eyes caught on an open window, right by the table. Why hadn’t he noticed it before?  "Dan! The window!"  "A window? Phil, we’re in a basement!"  He was right, but at the same time, that window was there. Outside, he could see the pink sky go lavender, meaning the sun was setting. "It’s a window! And it’s open, come on Dan!"  "Um, I’m kind of busy!" Dan leapt onto the table, but couldn’t turn to get to the window, not with the corgi nipping at his heels.  "I’ll distract him!" Phil decided. "You jump! We should be on the first floor, and cats always land on their feet anyways!"  Phil launched himself forwards, colliding with the corgi. He jumped to his feet and ran in the opposite direction, the corgi immediately getting up and chasing after him. The dog was a little dizzy from running the other direction, and ended up sliding into the closed dishwasher, but he was back on his heels in no time.  Meanwhile, Dan just stood in front of the window, frozen in place. "Jump! I can’t do this all day!" Phil called, feeling his legs stumble beneath him.  "I can’t!" Dan cried back.  "Why not?"  "It’s so far Phil! And I’m... and I'm..."  "You’re what?"  "I’m afraid of heights!" Dan admitted, his voice breaking at the end of his sentence.  Phil almost slammed into the wall. "You’ve gotta be kitten me! Since when?"  "Since the Japan trip!" Dan admitted shamefully. "The tower! It scared the shit out of me!"  "Good time to have a litter box," Phil thought out loud. "Just go a little closer Dan, maybe it’ll make you less nervous!"  Dan scooted closer. "Like this?"  "Closer!" Phil was getting tired fast. The corgi snapping at him, far too close for comfort.  Dan scooted closer to the edge. "This good?"  "Purr-fect!" Phil kicked the dog the jaw, leant up on the table, and tackled Dan, right over the windowsill.   —-

 “I’m never going to forgive you,” Dan sniffled, pawing at some scraps of cloth, trying to form something that resembled a bed. “Never, ever, ever.”

 “I saved your life,” Phil reminded him, licking his paws. “The least you could do is thank me.”

 Yep- they were still cats. And even as they argued and Dan complained, Dan refused to look at Phil- mostly because he was incredibly adorable, and who could be mad at that face?

 “I will not thank you for throwing me off a window ledge,” Dan decided. “Especially not after you found out about my deathly fear of heights. Where was the consent?”

 “I’m sorry for not asking your consent before saving your life,” Phil said, giving in.

 Dan sniffed, better now that he’d gotten an apology. He was such a princess.

 “Are you feline better now?” Phil stretched out, extending and retracting his claws comfortably.

 “Please, no more cat puns.”

 “Well, you can say them too. What, cat’s got your tongue?”

 “Phil…”

 “Now feel free to paws and think about it a bit.”

 “Phil.”

 “If you need to, you can tail me later.”

 Dan squeezed his eyes closed. He was either trying not to laugh, or trying not to cry. “You done?”

 “You tail me.”

 Dan slumped to the ground in defeat, giving in. He should’ve known there was no way they could be turned into cats without at least half a dozen puns.

—

 The next morning, they woke up back to normal. Phil stretched out his normal human arms and normal human legs, checking to make sure he didn’t have a tail anymore. He sat up, looked over at Dan still curled up on the too small blankets, and smiled.

—

 Phil crept along, his feet sloshing in the layer of water on the ground. The sewage leaked into his trainers, making a gross squishing sound. Eew. Phil hoped it was just water.

 Hovering above his palms was a swirling blue orb that gave him enough light to see down the dark tunnel. He'd gotten better at this type of simple energy magic, but he could still feel the pull of it, draining his own energy reserves faster than normal. He needed to start bringing granola bars with him or something.

 Phil looked back uncomfortably. He'd had his reserves about wandering down into the sewers, but it was so much worse now that he was actually here. The orb of magical light made him feel a little better- he wasn't completely defenseless. Out of the two of them, Dan was the fighter, but now that Phil had magic he felt a little more… powerful. Granted, when Stephen King’s IT popped out and tried to eat Phil alive, he'd probably still cower.

 The thought made him cringe.

 There was a quiet pattering behind him, and Phil tried not to crawl out of his skin. Please don't be a clown, please don't be a clown…

 He turned around, holding up the orb and trying to pretend not to be scared.

 Nothing.

 Phil turned back around, and shrieked, practically launching himself backward. His orb of light bounced like a basketball, slamming into the wall and splattering into a shiny, blue light puddle. Phil scrambled to his knees, his entire butt and back drenched.

 “Mreow.”

 A black cat sat in front of him, seeming to smile at how he'd made Phil jump. The cat sat on top of the water- literally, on top of the water- and stretched, not getting at all wet.

 “Stupid Jesus cat,” Phil muttered, pushing himself to a standing position. “That was rude.”

 The glow on the wall, no longer attached to a power source, began to fade. “Better make another orb,” Phil decided, raising his hands and concentrating. “What color should this one be? Checkered, perhaps?”

 He swirled his hands around the orb of light that was beginning to form, magical lines reaching around and twisting together in a magical ball of yarn. The cat watched with uncanny interest.

 Now… checkered.

 The ball exploded with the sound of a broken kazoo, and Phil was plunged into darkness.

 Well… not complete darkness. The cat- which Phil was deciding to name Sooki- actually faintly glowed in the dark.

 Phil quickly formed another blue ball- he had a lot of those these days- and kept walking, Sooki following alongside him.

 After at least another half kilometer of walking, Sooki stopped and pawed at the wall. Phil stepped closer, reading the words that were faintly ingrained in the stone.

 Does thou art seek the cure of the Desperamos?

 “Yes,” Phil answered loudly, his voice echoing through the sewer.

 The cat meowed, gesturing with his head at the stone. Looking closer, Phil saw that there was something more written, and he rubbed away the dirty concealing it.

 Check yes or no.

 Phil dragged his finger along the dirtied stone, a blue check made of light burning into the stone next to yes.

 A few steps further, another message appeared.

 Does thou art consider thyself worthy of the spell? Is thou art well trained in magic?

 Then, smaller, it wrote: Does thou art even lift bro?

 “I don't have time for this,” Phil decided. He tried to move his feet, but the walls shifted, trapping him in his place.

  Is thou art too good for a little riddle?

 “Let go of me!” Phil whined. His light had dissolved, but the entire section of wall had begun glowing.

 Thou art is selfish. Thou art doesn't have time for a nice, tax-paying wall like mineself.

 “You pay taxes?”

  Thou mother is a tax! Thyself is a good wall, whom only wants to support mine family! I haveth nine children and a wife!

 “How… is that even possible?”

 Now listen here, thou insolent maggot. Thou needs to collect the solvent of Jupiter to complete the potion, correcteth?

 “Correcteth. I mean… correct.”

 Then thy must solve this riddle: What is black and red and white all over?

 Phil blinked. “What?”

 Are thine daft? What is black and red and white all over?

 “I don't know, what?”

 Thine mum! Ha!

 Phil growled, trying to pull his feet out of the rocks to no avail. “Hurry, I need to get this ‘Jupiter solvent’ fast! Dan's waiting!

  Oh, so there IS someone else. Who is this ‘Dan’ anyways?

 “He's my friend, and if I don't hurry, he'll start to worry about me.”

 Don't lieth! There is something special about this Dan, I senseth.

 “I'm an English Lit graduate, and I'm very sure you're not even speaking Shakespearean. You're just saying ‘thou’ and adding ‘th’ noises to random words.”

 Shutteth up, thy insolent Cracker Jack! I bite my thumb at thee! Now, tell me, who is this Dan boy to you anyways?

 Phil bit his lip. He did need to go, soon, before Dan started to worry. “He's my friend. He's… I want to be more than friends, but he isn't really… like that… so, we’re just kind of, friends, you know?”

 The wall took a few moments to create a response, the stone bubbling as it tried to form words. Finally, words emerged; Thou art is a pussy.

 “Hey!”

 The Jupiter’s Solvent is the sewage at your feet. American city sewage is one of the most radioactive things on this planet. Now go, and seek out this Dan. Tell him how you feel, blah blah. Letuth me know how it goes.

 The wall returned to its original form, the only trace of the conversation being the slight glow coming from it. Phil’s feet were released and he stepped away.

 “Ok, um… thanks.” Scooping up some of the sewage in his flask, he turned and hurried back the way he'd come.

 Sooki the cat sat on top of the water for a moment, staring at the wall. After a few moments, a new message appeared.

I totally shipeth it.

---

 “Dan, I found the-”

 “Shh!” Dan was crouched by the side of a large brick building, peering around the corner. “Look at this!”

 Phil hurried over, trying to be quiet. His shoes squished with the sewage, leaving wet footprints in his wake. “What is it?”

 “Babies.” Dan narrowed his eyes. “Evil babies.”

 Phil peered around the corner, trying to get a good view of- whatever it was they were looking at.

 Dan looked at him. “You see them too, right?”

 Actually, Phil had been more preoccupied with the fact that their shoulders were touching. “Hmm?”

 “The… the things! The… eggs!” Dan gestured frantically around the corner. “They're reproducing rapidly. Haven't you noticed there's been a lot more creatures than what came here with us? Within a month, they'll overrun the city!” He stopped for air, but before Phil could say anything Dan was speaking again. “You got the solvent?”

 Phil nodded. “Yeah. And um, speaking of which, there was this wall…”

 Dan shushed him, flattening against the wall. A few creatures came out from the alley, starting out small but growing to full size quickly. They didn't notice the two boys, instead slipping away and dissolving into shadow.

 Dan looked around for more. “We can't stay in an alley again. Maybe another motel? I'll have to do more pickpocketing…” he trailed off, thinking.

 “We could go on one of the rooftops?” Phil offered. “Maybe we could see the creatures from above. See how many there really are.” He'd wanted to tell Dan about what the wall had said, but now that he was right here, he couldn't do it. Dan was his best friend in the whole world, and to Phil’s knowledge, he was straight. Phil couldn't handle his rejection.

 But Dan didn't know what Phil was thinking. He looked up to the top of the buildings, and shuddered. For a moment, Phil saw what Dan had looked like as a cat again: the twitchy ears and wide brown eyes. Dan knew he wouldn't get hurt by the fall, but still he wasn’t willing to jump until it was almost too late.

 Dan quickly regained his confident stance. “Yeah, sure.” His voice only shook shook a little.

 “We don't have to-”

 “No.” Dan tried for a confident smile. “I think you're right. It's our best option. We can get ready, you can make the potion or at least prepare to, and then tomorrow we can figure out the best way to kill the creatures. This is our best chance.”

----

 It was midnight. No, it must have been later. It was two, three in the morning, so late that Phil could hardly keep his eyes open but he knew he had to, had to stay awake.

 They'd climbed onto the top of a building- they used the fire escape of course, so it wasn't that difficult- and now they prepared for the following days underneath the stars.

 Dan didn't seem too fazed by the lateness of it all. They were both night owls, but sometimes Dan scared Phil with how late he'd stay up. At that moment, he was sitting on the edge of the roof, sharpening his sword against the stone edge with a horrible scraping noise.

 Phil finished getting his things together. He measured out the Jupiter solvent, crumpled up the mismatch of herbs he'd gotten from the witch, and had Dan come over. His sword was made specifically for ‘banishing souls back to their realms’, but apparently, it also worked well as a kitchen knife, mincing up the onion as if it was as soft as butter. Phil gathered the different materials in separate containers. He'd read and reread the recipe for the potion, but still didn't understand most of the lines, especially not the ones describing how to mix them together.

Chop them up with which berries and kale dance.

Use 10-2 meter wavelengths to turn it balmy

And then screw it all, for the powder palmy

 What was that even supposed to mean? Where did berries and kale dance? Wasn't kale that vegetable? Why was it dancing? And what was ‘balmy’?

 “That's it,” Dan decided, breaking Phil’s concentration. “I'm done. I can't do this anymore.” Phil looked at him in confusion. “It's late Phil, and I'm tired. We can finish getting ready in the morning.”

 Phil sighed in relief. “Yeah. We need our sleep. Tomorrow, we can get everything together and make a plan, then I'll make the potion so we can get rid of the creatures already.”

 Dan stumbled over to him, dumping his sword on the ground and practically collapsing next to it. “Yeah,” he mumbled dreamily. “Then we can go home.”

 Phil bit his lip. Home. A few days ago, that was the goal. It still was… right? “Yeah. Home.” His voice betrayed him, and for a second, Phil was worried that Dan had heard the doubt in his voice. But when Phil looked over, Dan was already fast asleep.

---

 Phil did not snore. He did not kick in his sleep, or thrash, or move around or sleepwalk or anything. He did not. But when he opened his eyes, low and behold, he found his back pressed against Dan's chest and almost wanted to cry in exasperation. After everything he'd done, all the emotions he'd repressed, he still couldn't control his subconscious.

 Phil sat up quickly, hoping to move away before Dan woke up. Cheeks red, he looked around, trying to discern what was happening as everything came into focus much too slowly.

 The roof. The morning sky, a dark lilac- it must have been early. The sky was more of a light pink at midday and turned darker and more purple in the evening and morning. So it was… what, six, seven in the morning? The concrete of the roof seemed to glow a light tan, it’s aura more visible the longer Phil stared, as most things in this dimension were. A few feet away, a transparent black mass of shadows pawed at Dan's sword, struggling to pick it up.

 “Ahh!” Phil shrieked screamed, his voice nothing less of manly. Before he could process what was happening, he'd picked up the backpack beside him- the one with the extremely important potion ingredients in it- and chucked it at the beast. The backpack sailed through it, the creature's black eyes following it as it passed through its body. The backpack landed a few feet away, right on the edge of the roof.

 The creature snorted. If shadows could grin, this creature did. It smirked and snatched up Dan's sword in its maw, screeching with joy as it scurried over to the side of the roof and threw itself off.

 “Wait!” Phil got up and lunged to the side of the roof, staring down in horror. The creature landed with hardly a bump and scurried away. “Dan! Get up!”

 Dan groaned, rolling over. “Muuuuuuuuuummmmmmm….”

 “Dan!”

 Dan sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Phil? Wha…?”

 Before Phil could warn him, a shadow descended on Dan, knocking him forwards. With a mighty screech, the creature trampled him, sprinting across the roof and leaping past Phil, off the edge.

 Dan sat up, much more awake. “What's going on?!”

 “I don't know!” Phil looked down, hoping to see the creature splat at the bottom of the drop. Instead, it stumbled slightly and began sprinting away in the direction of the other one.

 Phil looked closer. On the ground, shadows morphed and shifted, changing forms from creature to darkness seamlessly. They all shot across the ground, all headed in the same direction.

 Something brushed against Phil, and he almost jumped- which would have been very, very bad, what with him leaning over the edge of the building. But it was just Dan, already having woken up and rushed over to see the chaos. “What are they-”

 “Dan!” Phil jumped Dan, and they toppled to the ground as another figure passed by them, so close it almost hit them.

 Dan looked up. His eyes went wide, and he grabbed Phil's shoulders, rolling them away as another creature swooped down. “Where are they all coming from?”

 “The eggs in the alley!” Phil remembered. “I just didn't think they'd hatch so fast!”

 “Stupid blobs!” Dan shouted up at the sky, shaking his fist. “Let me sleep!”

 “Dan!” Phil grabbed him, pushing him to the ground as another creature leaped over. For a moment, everything was in slow motion. Phil pressed Dan into the ground, his hands on his friend’s shoulders. The creature was so close that Phil could feel his hair move in the wind it created.

 Then it was gone, and Phil was stuck in place, just trying to catch his breath.

 His cheeks were very pink, there was no doubt about that. Phil focused on breathing, not bothering to move for a moment until he looked down and saw Dan trying not to laugh beneath him, and Phil rolled to the side.

 “Wow,” Dan said, clearly making fun of him. “What a hero.”

 “It was flying right at you!” Phil defended.

 Dan looked like he wanted to press the matter further, maybe make a few more jokes, but more and more creatures were appearing every second. It was hard to see where they were as they changed form, turning from black swirls that seemed almost solid to forms that seemed completely made of gas. Another creature appeared on the roof- who knows where from- and solidified into the shape of a water buffalo, black eyes glowing against its stark black fur as it stampeded do forwards. One of its hooves hit Phil's backpack and it skidding across the roof with impressive force, thudding against the ledge. Phil cringed. If the recipe was torn, or one of the containers broke….

 Dan ran a hand through his hair. He looked more awake as if just realizing what all was happening. “They're going to a central force. Something's…. something's calling them.”

 Phil’s throat was made of chalk. “Something's calling them?”

 “They didn't attack us,” Dan observed. “They were too busy running towards that thing.”

 “Or away from something else,” Phil realized. “Do you think… do you think they're being chased?”

 They looked to the horizon, to where all of the creatures were coming from. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for the shifting in shadows. It was hard to see where the creatures were unless they were practically on top of you, and even then, distinguishing their bodies in any way was near impossible. That's why we need the potion, Phil realized. So we can see them.

 Another creature formed from shadows, bursting past them in a gust of wind. Yet it paid practically no attention to them at all, as if they were beneath the creatures notice.

“I guess it has priorities,” Phil realized. “And we’re just low on the list.”

 “Sounds about right. We're here in this world for one reason- to destroy them- and we're beneath their notice. Great. We’re still irrelevant.”

 Phil turned, the truth sinking in. “We have to find where they're going.” Another one rushed past them, making Phil stumble forwards. “Dan- we need to get out here!”

 Dan didn't question him, just swallowed, nodding. “Okay. Okay. Where do we- do we climb down the fire escape? It'd be slow, and I… I still don't like heights, but-”

 Phil shook his head. “No. Too slow.” He looked at the sky. “Dan?”

 “What?”

 “You trust me, right? Because you're not going to like this.”

 All the color drained from Dan’s face. “I'm not going to jump. Phil, those creatures-”

 “I'm not asking you to jump!” Phil tapped his hands against his leg, looking in the clouds for one to appear. “Just to trust me.”

 “I trust you,” he said, though his voice shook. “Phil?”

 “I wasn't supposed to use magic last night because of the light,” Phil remembered. Dan grabbed his hand, pulling him away as another creature roared past. The wind assaulted them, making their clothes whip against their skin. “Because the creatures are like moths, they're drawn to light! It's still dark, it could…”

“Phil?”

 “Close your eyes!”

 Dan squeezed his eyes shut, cringing into himself as more creatures stormed past them, the hissing of laughter and thunder of hooves shaking their whole bodies. “They're closed! Phil, what are-”

 “Trust me!” More creatures were appearing, whipping past them. But Phil had to ignore them. He closed his eyes, raising his hands in front of him and summoning an orb of light. This time, however, it wasn't a light blue-glowing orb- this time, it was a ball of white hot fire, so bright it hurt Phil’s eyes even as they were closed.

---

 It took longer than it should have.

 The wind whipped around them, tearing at their clothes. Dan hugged himself tightly, just trying to keep his eyes shut and keep from flying off the building. And Phil- well, Phil concentrated.

 He was in a white room. It was empty except for him. His clothes- which in real life, were filthy- were washed and clean, and stark white. He wasn't in the wind, with monsters shooting past him. He was in a clean room, with nothing to worry about and nothing to fear.

 Phil willed the fluorescent lights of the room to turn on. Slowly, they did, until the natural lighting was replaced with the factory made whiteness. Phil willed them to get brighter. It had to be bright, so bright that the being Phil was looking for could see it, so bright that it would hurt to look at unless you were a creature of the sun.

 He could feel his energy drain, being sucked into the orb of light he created. Already, he was becoming weak, and he hadn’t even made the potion yet! How would he have the energy to make it when the time came?

The light dimmed slightly. No, Phil thought, willing it to return to its prior luminescence. No self-doubt. He couldn’t afford for this not to work.

 The wind seemed to hit harder, and more randomly. Phil tried to ignore it until he realized.

 "Dan!"

 "What!"

 "Keep your eyes closed!"

 "Okay!" Dan’s voice was slightly unsure, but his words weren’t. I trust you.

 Now Phil just had to hope that his plan was worth trusting in.

 He held a hand over his eyes, and slowly, allowed himself to open them again. Even with his hand covering the worst of the brightness, the intense light made him squint and blink.

 Phil turned to his left and almost forgot how to breathe.

 The beast was huge, with a serpentine body glistening in shades of emerald and lime. It had landed on the roof, it’s snakelike body curled slightly, it’s tail with small fins flapping in discomfort. It didn’t like being on land, and it made sense; this was a creature of the sky.

 Tied around its midsection was a little pink balloon with a smiley face drawn on it. Phil decided not to question it.

 It’s huge mocha eyes were trained on the orb of light, almost in a trance. But it wasn’t going to stay long, nor could Phil keep up the magic for long.

 "Dan, I’m going to lead you over to something, and you’re going to have to sit on it. Hold on tightly, no matter what. I’ll tell you when you can open your eyes, okay?"

 Dan was sweating, from the heat from the intense light, or from nerves, Phil didn’t know. But he did know that his light was dimming and that the serpent wasn’t going to stick around for long.

 He led Dan over, helping him to straddle the neck of the serpent, and find good gripes. Dan clutched on desperately, his chest held tightly against the serpent’s back. Phil hoped desperately that his plan would work. Otherwise.... well, otherwise they were toast. It was a long way down.

 Phil hefted the backpack over his shoulders. "Okay... Marsha. Yeah, you look like a Marsha. You think you could help us o-"

 As if flipping a switch, the orb dissolved into the air without a trace. Marsha puffed out some pink flames in agitation, hiccuping aggressively and taking off.

 "Wait!" Phil ran and jumped, just barely grabbing onto the end of Marsha's tail as she shot into the sky.

—-

It turns out, the sky serpents were not made to be ridden. Phil wished he’d realized that earlier, but it was a little too late now.

 They shot through the sky as if propelled by rockets, much faster than reasonable. Phil jostled around aggressively, barely managing to hold on to the slippery scales of the monster. It didn’t help that Dan was screaming at the top of his lungs. Phil would’ve given him more warning, but he didn’t realize how fast Marsha was.

 "Phil Lester! When I get my hands on you-"

 "Don’t worry Dan, we’re fine! You can open your eyes now!"

 Dan was quiet for a few moments. Then he began screaming again, somehow even louder than before.

 "Ahhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Ahhh-hhh-hhh-wwww!"

 The shot through a thick layer of clouds, and slowed suddenly, making Phil’s head hurt.

 They floated gracefully above the clouds, the serpent's body seeming to swim through the sky gracefully. Hanging onto the tail wasn’t the best method of transport, but it was far better now that they’d slowed.

 The morning sky was a lovely shade of pink. Below them, clouds tinted a much lighter shade of pink swirled gracefully. It was beautiful.

 "Lester!"

 Dan was still holding onto the serpent's body tightly, clutching onto it like a koala. "I’m going to freaking end you! You know I’m afraid of heights!"

 Phil rolled his eyes, just glad to be alive. "We have to get to wherever the creatures are going, and this was the fastest way."

 "We could have taken the freaking subway!"

 Phil's face fell. "Oh. Yeah, I guess that would've worked too."

 "Phil! How are we getting off of this thing?"

 They were swimming gracefully through the pink sky, and as far as Phil could tell, they were going in the right direction. The swam to the edge of the cloud bank and were able to look down at the city below them. "Wow," Phil exhaled. "What a view."

 "We’re going to die!"

 Marsha didn’t seem to like Dan’s yelling. She flapped her tail agitatedly, and Phil realized what it was a moment too late.

 Marsha hiccuped, the violent convulsion making her entire body spasm, especially at her neck. Dan was launched up, just enough to lose his grip, and he was falling.

 "Dan!" Phil screamed.

 Dan let loose a bloodcurdling scream, grabbing onto the serpent's body desperately for a hold, and then he was hanging, by one hand.

 "Dan! Hold on!"

 "You don't think that’s what I’m trying to do?" His voice shook from fear, eyes squeezed so tight his entire face scrunched up as he tried desperately to get a better grip. "Get your magic ready, I’m going to fall!"

 "Hold on!"

 "Get your magic ready, dammit!"

 Phil watched his friends dangling body helplessly. He didn’t know how to make someone fly, he’d never tried something like he, he’d probably need a spell or-

 His eyes, previously trained on Dan, lowered to the city below them. A mass of darkness had surrounded a large warehouse, pouring in. "The creatures!" Phil realized. "Marsha, to that building!"

 "You named the freaking-"

 Phil blocked out his friend's words, closing his eyes and imagining once more. He would have enough energy, he would be able to use the magic, he would save them.

  The first step to being a good magic user is believing in yourself. The rest comes after.

 Phil believed. He believed in himself. He believed in his magic. And right now, he believed with all his heart that when he opened his eyes, the roof of that building would be lit up like a disco ball.

 Marsha hiccuped in delight and dived.

 —

 There was a huge hole in the roof. They didn’t know what was below it, but hopefully whatever it was was softer than the hard asphalt of the top of the building.

 They jumped, Phil taking all the power that was going into making the roof shiny and imaging a huge snowbank in the building below. A nice, soft landing, so they could land as snow angels instead of pancakes.

 And then- the impact. It was jarring and made Phil’s legs ache something horrible, but they weren’t pancakes.

 Dan groaned in pain. “We have to stop jumping into holes when we don’t know what’s at the bottom. What is this stuff?”

 Phil opened his eyes, blinking in the change of lighting. They were in…. a bowl of some kind, huge and metallic. Underneath them was a light tan sticky substance...

 ...And a thin layer of frost. Phil smiled proudly. He’d managed a soft snow landing after all. One centimeter of it, but it was something.

 “Is this…” Dan scooped up some of the brown stuff, sniffing it. He considered, then popped a little bit in his mouth.

 “Dan!” Phil warned.

 Dan’s eyes went wide. “It’s pizza dough! That means… we must be in that giant pizza factory!”

 “No!”

 “Yes! Look at this bowl, it’s huge. And that’s pizza dough, I know it. If I have one skill in life, it’s identifying pizza.”

 “Someone call Britain’s Got Talent,” Phil remarked dryly, trying to stand up. “What do the creatures want in a pizza factory?”

 Dan shrugged. “Dunno. A snack?”

 From outside their bowl, a loud wail bellowed through the factory.

 “Becky!” They said in unison, looking at each other with worry. Struggling to climb over the mushy dough, they made their way over to the rim of the bowl and peered over.

 The creatures were everywhere. Dark shadows with only glowing gold eyes to distinguish their bodies, swirling around in such a way that it was impossible to tell which way they were looking, what they were doing; where one ended and another began.

 “Get your potion read,” Dan commanded, his voice low. “I can’t fight these without seeing them.”

 Phil bit his lip. The potion remained a mismatch of ingredients in his bag, which, while he was lucky he still had it, were useless unless he figured out how to combine them. But, for the moment, he ignored that, choosing to focus on a different issue. “You need to kill them a specific way?”

 “Not kill,” Dan corrected. “Banish back to their realm. They don’t belong here, and if they keep breeding, they’ll overrun this entire world.”

 “Yeah, but you need to do some certain way? With your sword?”

 “Yeah.” Dan didn’t seem to realize what Phil was getting at, still focused on the creatures around the bowl. They snarled and played with each other, from what Phil could tell, while others sniffed around, clearly looking for something.

  They know their way better than anything else does, the old woman had said on the phone. They’re the only beings you can rely on to always follow through on their destiny.

 Had she been talking about the creatures? Before, Phil wouldn’t have been so sure, but now seeing them all in this one place, looking for something…

 Phil didn’t have time for those thoughts. “Dan, to kill the creatures you have to use your sword to cut in between their eyes, right?”

 “Yeah?”

 “So how do you plan to do that with no sword?”

 Dan turned around, looking at Phil like he was crazy. “Come again?”

 “On the roof? One of the creatures took the sword.”

 Dan’s eyes were getting increasingly wide. “You mean-”

 “Yeah. One of these creatures probably has it. Also, I don’t have the potion. I don5 know if you realized this or not, but I still don’t know what the heck ‘Chop them up with which berries and kale dance’ means.”

 Dan put his face in his hands. For a moment, Phil thought he had given up. Then he said something.

 “What?” Phil asked, having not heard him.

 “Goddamnit,” Dan muttered. “Phil, you use kale and berries to make smoothies. You put it in a blender, and it chops it up.”

 Phil blinked. “Oh.”

 “Yeah, oh is right you-”

 “What about the other lines? The ‘use 10-2 meter wavelengths to turn it balmy’ and stuff?”

 “Wavelengths? Like, Gamma Rays?”

 Phil snorted. “Mic-ro-wave.”

 Dan looked at him like he was a genius. “Phil… I think that might actually be it! Okay, so you blend it, microwave it, and then… I don’t know. But there must be a break room somewhere in this building, you could go and see-”

 One of the creatures shrieked shrilly. They were getting more agitated.

 Phil nodded quickly. “But what will you do?”

 Dan’s expression was grim. “Get my sword. Do me a favor, do you think you could light a fire?”

—

  There was no blender.

 Phil didn’t know how well Dan was doing, just that there were a lot of shrieks coming from outside the break room. He thought most of them sounded like they came from the creatures, but a few…

 Phil decided to ignore it.

 He found a microwave and a mini-fridge in the break room. Phil tore through the cabinets, searching desperately for a blender when suddenly…

 “Aha! Got you!” Phil held up his prize proudly- a blender at least three years old, with a sticky note labeling it ‘Karen’s Kale Smoothie Maker’- and set it on the counter.

 Outside, in the main warehouse came a loud crash. Phil winced. He hoped Dan was alright.

 Dan had scooped up a fistful of pizza dough and had Phil light it ablaze, using the little magic he had left. The idea was that maybe the creatures would be so mesmerized by the light, they’d let him just take his sword back. If not, he could try burning them. Phil desperately wanted the former to work, but based on all the noise coming from the other side of the wall, the latter was more likely.

 He poured all of the precious ingredients into the blender; the Jupiter’s solvent, from the sewer; the ‘chopped source of tears’, aka an onion from the local supermarket; and the herbs from the witch’s basement apartment. It didn’t say how long to microwave it for, so he made his best guess. In the end, it bubbles and turned a nice lime green, the consistency of pudding.

 He stepped out of the room and immediately wanted to turn around and go back.

 The creatures surrounded Dan, who wielding the ball of burning dough in one hand, and his sword in the other. The creatures snapped at him, trying to steal the sword back, but so far they hadn’t had any success. When one got close enough, Dan swiped at it with the blade. Most of the time he missed and the creature retreated, seeming completely unaware of the blade that had just passed through it. But every few moments he’d hit it just right, and the monster would shriek and dissolve into a small puddle of sparkly black goop.

 He was doing well so far, but there were too many creatures, and only one Dan. He wouldn’t last long.

 Dan noticed Phil out of the corner of his eyes. “Did it work?!”

 A creature snapped at him and he slashed his sword upwards, hardly bothering it. It snapped again, and Dan repeated the process, this getting lucky and destroying it.

 “It worked!” Phil called back. “I think.”

“Then use it!”

 “How?”

 Dan cursed under his breath, waving the burning dough- which had turned to half-baked bread- around himself threateningly. “Figure it out! And hurry, I can't kill them without knowing where to swing at!”

 Phil looked at the lime green gel. “Um… take that!” He threw it, it flying through the air until it hit one of the creatures- and sailed right through.

 The creature screeched in annoyance.

 “Phil! You just violated Becky!”

 “How do you know that one's Becky?”

 Dan started to respond when a creature leapt at his back. They toppled, grappling and fighting against each other, the creature violently thrashing against him. Dan tried to get up, but it jumped him again, scratching and pawing at him.

 Dan thrashed, trying to swing at it, but his sword went right through it, not getting the right angle. “Oh- God- fu- dam-” the creature dragged him over to a corner, throwing him against the ground like a rag doll and pouncing once more. The only consolation was that as Dan failed to harm the creature, it seemed to struggle just as much. Its shadowy teeth couldn't penetrate his skin, it's blackened claws unable to mark any marks. Dan laughed in triumph, realizing this, only to result in the creature pulling his head forwards and slamming it into the ground.

 “Goddam- fuck it! Fuck it!” Dan kicked out, slamming his feet against a big red button on the wall. Above him, a bowl rotated, ready to pour.

 “Watch out!” Phil called out in warning, finally getting his voice back. “It could be boiling hot!”

 Dan gave him such an annoyed expression, Phil took a physical step back. His friend sent him a quick middle finger, as the bowl tipped over.

 But it wasn't a boiling hot mixture. Instead, it was perfect white flour- and it poured out directly onto Dan and the creature.

 Everyone held their breath- both Phil and the creatures waiting to see what happened. Phil slouched against the guardrail, his magic and energy depleted.

 One of the creatures sniffed at the green pudding on the ground; the potion that was supposed to make them visible so they could be defeated. After a few moments of considering it, it swallowed the potion whole, shuddering and retreating, but still completely dark.

 Finally, the creature shot out of the flour pile, yelping indignantly, colored completely powdery white. It's body, for once, was completely recognizable: it was a blob of white that shifted and morphed, forming and unforming legs. Its eyes shone emerald green. But most importantly, it was clear to see where the top of its head was, and exactly where the sword needed to slice.

 Dan dragged himself from the flour, gripping onto his sword tightly. He coughed horribly, letting out little puffs of white, before standing and facing the creature.

 It didn't stand a chance. With Dan's new ability to see where he needed to attack, the creature was a puddle on the floor in no time at all.

 He wiped his brow, panting with exertion. Dan’s nose was bleeding, and he was covered from head to toe in flour and speckles of monster goop. Despite all this, he grinned. “Phil… is palm flour a thing?”

 The room was beginning to spin for Phil. He clutched the railing, desperately trying to keep last night's dinner down. “Maybe? I think so.”

 “‘And screw it all for the powdery palm,’” Dan recited. “It was the key all along. Palm flour.”

 He didn't have much time to revel in his discovery, however, because by then the creatures’ shock had worn off. They jumped him, and Dan was lost in a dog pile of shadows.

 “Dan,” Phil mumbled, his vision going patchy. He'd have lasted longer if he had had breakfast, or if he'd have time to rest in between such big spells, but alas, he'd had neither. In one last desperate attempt to save his friend, Phil summoned up all his remaining energy and prepared to shoot it at the creatures. Would it even work? What if it didn’t? It may pass straight through the monsters and hit Dan instead, but he couldn't just be idle as his friend was attacked…

 Phil felt himself drop to the ground. He had no power left. Dan was going to lose this battle, and there wasn't anything Phil could do.

  You can do it, a voice whispered. Phil groaned, he must be hallucinating. You can do it.

 Across the room, Sooki the cat watched him, waiting for him to move.

 He pulled together all his strength and aimed again. His aim drifted up slightly, and he shot a blast of white-hot power into the pile of flour.

 Phil rolled onto his back, the corners of his vision going black. The last thing he saw was a snow of white powder, and then everything went black.

-----

 “Phil. Phil, come on. Wake up.”

 Phil curled his toes. Why was it so dark?

  You have to open your eyes, silly.

 “Phil, please wake up. Phil, please!”

 Phil smiled dreamily. He was so, so silly. He just needed to open his eyes! Ha, ha. Wait- how did he do that again?

 Phil heard a weird noise, some sort of weird breathing. Like…. nose breathing? Sniffling, his brain supplied.

 “You should get a tissue,” he mumbled, head lolling against the ground. “You might have a cold.”

 “Phil! Oh my g- you're okay!”

 Phil opened his eyes. It was very bright, very very bright. Dan leaned over him. As Phil’s vision came into focus, he realized Dan was a mess. “What happened to you? You look like you just fought the Pillsbury doughboy.” Phil coughed, the motion painful. His lungs felt like they'd been filled with sand.

 Dan laughed, too happy to speak. Phil didn't understand why. He was truly a mess- white flour was smeared across his whole body, making his hair stick up wildly. The bottom of his nose was caked with dried blood, and the side of his right eye was turning red with bruising.

 He looked really funny all covered in flour. It made his face look paler than normal, all except for a few streaks down his cheeks, where water had apparently washed away the powder. His eyes were a little red, but he laughed with relief.

 Dan helped Phil sit up, feeding him tomato sauce from a coffee mug. He told him about the battle; “...attacked me, swinging and swiping, but I was swinging my sword just as fast…”; and about the prophecy; “...I can't believe that it all came down to pizza flour! All that searching, for the stupid ingredients…”. Phil sat and listened without commenting, allowing Dan to feed him the tomato sauce obediently. Dan told him of his actions too; “...I knew I'd have to cover them in flour somehow, but I had no idea how. Then they jumped me…. if you hadn't completely baby powdered them, I would've been screwed.” He tilted his head to the side, a little off balanced. Flour floated from his hair like dandruff. “Even so, I think I have a concussion, and my nose bled a lot. And my ears have been ringing for a while. I ended up passing out too after I killed them all. Sorry about that.” He shrugged apologetically, though he hadn't stopped smiling since Phil woke up.

 With some food in him, Phil managed to stand with only a little help from Dan. Slowly, they descended the stairs down to the main area, where Dan had been fighting. They were almost at the bottom when Dan stumbled, his legs giving way underneath him, and he collapsed down the stairs, bumping his head against the ground. He rubbed it, smiling comically, but it was clear he was in pain.

 Phil helped him up, and they walked leaning against each other, Dan needed Phil’s support as much as Phil needed Dan’s.

 They retrieved Dan’s sword from the ground, next to an alarming puddle of blood.

 “So what do we do-” Phil started speaking, when Dan's eyes went wide. He shoved Phil to the ground and leapt- intercepting the glowing green creature midair. Becky exploded with a horrible wail, and Dan landed on the ground roughly, sliding a few meters.

 Phil could feel his heartbeat in his temple, his vision going out of focus for a moment before returning. Dan was on his knees, coughing up his lungs. He had done a good job hiding it, but if Dan didn't get medical help soon…

 Phil managed to get to his feet, stumbling over to Dan. “I'm fine,” Dan insisted, standing up too quickly. He collapsed backward against a huge control panel on the wall, unintentionally pressing most of the buttons.

 They watched in horror as many things happened at once that wasn't supposed to happen at once; a large mixing bowl was lifted into the air, a vat of sauce was dumped onto the ground, and a machine line started dropping toppings with nothing to catch them. They watched in horror as an alarm went off, and a huge sack of flour was brought across the ceiling and slammed into a mass of pipes. The pipes exploded, chemicals falling to the floor, where they mixed with the glowing green remains of Becky.

 They watched in horror as the chemicals popped and fizzed, mixing together into a glowing blue portal.

 “We can go home,” Dan whispered in amazement.

 Phil’s throat felt it was filled with cotton balls. “Yeah. I… guess we can.”

 Dan's eyes were bright. “Back to London. Earth London, with no creatures or potions or heights or serpents named Marsha-” he looked at Phil, only then noticing his expression. “You do want to go home, right?”

 Phil felt his face go red. “Well, yeah, I mean…. obviously, I just….” he looked back at Dan and lost the ability to speak. Dan, with his hair covered in flour. Dan, with his new found fear of heights. Dan, swinging the magic sword like he'd been born to do just that. He couldn't lie to him. “I want to stay,” he admitted. “This… adventure has been hard, but I feel like I was meant to be here. I want to learn how to use my powers. Actually use them, and not pass out after two spells.” He snorted, looking at his feet. “And I understand if you want to go home.”

 He didn't look up at Dan. He'd made his choice- now it was was time for Dan to make his.

“I want to go home,” Dan admitted.

They were silent for a few moments. Phil nodded slowly. “Then I guess we should… say goodbye?”

“Fuck.”

Phil looked up at Dan in surprise.

“Fuck!” Dan said again, more angrily. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fu-”

“What's wrong?” Dan looked like he was in serious pain, his eyes squeezed shut, leaning heavily against the controls. “Dan, what's-”

Before he could finish his sentence, Dan had grabbed his shirt collar and yanked him forwards, smashing their lips together in a forceful kiss. Closed mouth, nothing too invasive, but a kiss nonetheless. Angry. No, not angry- frustrated. Then Dan pushed him away.

“I'm sorry,” he was saying immediately. “I had to do that. I couldn't leave without-”

Phil stepped forwards, shutting him up with another kiss. This one was less innocent, now that they both knew they wanted it. Phil pushed him against the control panel, cupping his face in his hands as they kissed deeply, refusing to break apart. Dan's hands wrapped around his waist, only pulling him closer.

They kissed for too long. Dan needed to go, but neither wanted to break apart. Finally, Phil remembered and pulled away sharply, gasping for air.

“You have to go, the portal will-” he turned and stopped. The portal was gone.

“-close,” Dan finished for him. “I know. I saw it close. Phil… I'm staying right here.”

Phil didn't have time to process his words, because right at that moment, the factory doors burst open.

----

At first, they refused to be loaded into separate ambulances, but then Dan fainted and Phil decided he'd rather Dan be taken care of than stay with him. Still, it was hard letting go. Now that he had Dan, he didn't want to ever leave him.

In his ambulance, they gave him some medicine that made everything fuzzy. When it wore off, a day had passed, and he was in a hospital bed in a hospital gown assumably in a hospital.

He had more questions than the nurses had answers, and they chided him for using his voice, which was brittle from disuse and raw as a side effect of the medication. But Dan was fine, they promised, already awake and aware. Phil was taking longer to heal, as his injuries were a result of overextending his magic. The nurse suggested making sure to eat a hearty breakfast, and keeping some protein bars on hand.

“Now please rest. You can see Dan a little bit later, after you're both feeling better.”

“But-”

“You need to give your voice a rest. I can answer more questions later.”

Phil nodded but had one more question to ask.

“How did the ambulance know to come and get us?”

She furrowed her brows.

“You didn't call? It was from an anonymous number inside the factory. I suppose someone saw that you needed help.”

“But-”

It was just then that Phil noticed they weren't alone in the room. Behind the nurse, on a small table sat a black cat.

Sooki had always seemed smarter than most cats. Always hanging around them, helping find clues and other things they wouldn't have otherwise noticed. She always seemed to have their best interests in mind.

Thank you, Phil mouthed.

Sooki blinked. Then she dipped her head down, like a little nod.

In case you skipped over the note at the beginning, this story was made for the @phandomrevrsebang, with the artist @myawfod and beta @smiles-are-toxic. That basically means that @myawfod came up with the idea, and created art to base the story around (art can be found here), along with helping me figure out the story plot and stuff. Then, @smiles-are-toxic helped me come up with ideas, edit, and generally survive the mental breakdown that came with loosing a bunch of writing and having to re-write it. Make sure to check out the art if you haven’t, and keep an eye out for othr phandomreversebang stuff coming out in the next month!

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