#next one is the end of this story

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

At your side [End of Season 2]

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[dark-arts-and-crafts-universe]

A Dying Art (Chapter 16)

A Dying Art

Lorcan Verdigris is a time wizard, a misanthrope, and a single father to a household of magically-sentient furniture.

Lorcan Verdigris is not a necromancer. Anymore. But when the leader of the local necro coven comes to him with a request he really, really can’t refuse, past collides with present and he finds himself back in a world he’d tried to leave behind. Someone is trying to steal a powerful magical artifact, one whose destruction could unleash chaos upon the city. Or save it from an even greater danger. Or do nothing at all. Who knows. See, this is exactly why Lorcan stopped messing with the stuff.

Unfortunately, one way or another, Lorcan’s the one stuck dealing with it. He’d like to say this is a challenge that will take all his magic and his ingenuity to overcome, but let’s be real, stopping this threat will take something even more dire: actual effort. At least he’s getting paid this time…

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Chapter 16: No Good Deed Is Commemorated Here

Word count: 4,670

Content warnings: magic violence, allusions to gore and murder, non-explicit references to death by radiation. Once again I must stress that these characters are magic and fictional and you should not assume anything they do with (magical) radioactive things is in any way safe in real life.

-

The trail went cold after eight different storefronts. Vulcan must have run out of breadcrumbs. But judging by the scorch marks that dotted the floor in front of him, Lorcan wasn’t far from where he needed to be.

It made sense that the scenesters had positioned themselves directly in this new mall’s found court. The whole area was encircled by a thick curve of red paint–abandoned, at least for the moment. Graffiti tags dotted the circumference, probably to mark where each scene kid was supposed to stand in whatever ritual they needed to finish this.

The biggest one, in the entryway, read The New Osiris. Their leader, then. The one who’d bought weird name brand shoes to…flex on regular Osiris, or something. He didn’t understand fashion. And he certainly wasn’t calling this kid ‘Osiris’ too. That would just be confusing. The Crown Osiris was a name for an intimidating sort-of stranger who didn’t care about him and didn’t pretend to. Not someone who put a fake smile on his face to stab him in the back…with another smiley face.

Fuck it, Lorcan was just going to call this guy ‘Smiles’.

He’d brought one thin bottle of acetone in his left pants pocket. He didn’t have much space left after he’d packed up, so he could really only justify bringing the most versatile of his time magic tools, the one that bit through almost anything.

Lorcan uncapped the bottle and let the liquid splash onto the paint as he walked towards the fray. There was no time to scour it properly, he was just going to hope that once the fight ended it would slow the winner down.

A nearby trashcan gave him decent cover and a good vantage point. The open court was a lot bigger now, and the food adorning the tables was…aesthetic. Candy but also blood and apples oozing with something slimy. And it looked like every smoothie was pomegranate-flavored.

He was missing the rest of the mall’s desolate solitude already. Truly, the hell dimension was always greener.

The scene mages–were there still eleven? A couple might be dead by now–had scattered throughout the area, probably trying to surround Osiris. The Crown had found a good spot with a buffet at their back, and for the moment at least seemed to be holding their own. They were also holding Vulk.

One scene girl with purple feathered hair stepped out from behind a meat stand, piercing gun in her hand. Lorcan had just enough time to notice the starter stud glint before the spring was released and a screaming phantasm exploded from the ‘barrel’.

Osiris met the attack easily. Their right hand had a glove he’d never seen them wear before, and it took only a theatrical flourish for invisible force to cast the specter through the skylight into an unforgiving void. They gestured behind them. Smoke wafted out of a meat platter on the buffet and shaped itself into a large bull. With a single point of Osiris’s finger it charged the purple piercer, who cursed and started to reload.

The exchange took less time than Lorcan would need for even one spell.

As the piercer fell back, another moved in. One leg of his pants was yellow and the other was black. Which. Why. He stuck a kazoo in his mouth and hummed. Dark, buzzing clouds popped into the air above him. Ah, Lorcan thought. He was summoning bugs.

He had something like that. It let Lorcan conjure a horde of flesh-eating beetles, which he mostly used to scare off the non-magical. Your typical bug summons could be cast very cheaply–individual bugs didn’t really need much life energy, such as that could be quantified–but that also made them easy to snuff out. Plenty of necromancers got their start learning how to kill bugs with their mind. Even Lorcan could do it. If this guy thought an insect swarm could stand up against Osiris, he must have put a lot of oomph into it.

The swarm–hornets, it looked like–murder hornets, probably–moved to surround the Crown on all sides, easily pushing through the buffet. Osiris themselves looked unconcerned.

The Crown shook their shoulders, coronet glimmering, and a mantle of shining light burst from their back. Lorcan could see Vulk’s power cord shiver as the rippling, rainbow wave hung in the air, like a cape caught in an impossible wind. Every wasp within range fell to the floor in the same moment, twitching as they died.

They'd used necromantic energy to ionize the air like an aurora, Lorcan realized. Turned the immediate area into a giant bug zapper. It was…an incredibly inefficient use of power. Smart–a better spell would risk taking long enough to get stung. But the amount of raw energy you had to waste to force a spontaneous localized aurora in the air…it was offensive just how easily they'd done it.

He’d heard stories about the Crown Osiris’s fighting prowess, of course. Between thirteen necromancer souls, they had magic and they had skill. The gestalt that operated their shared body could multitask spellcasting in a way no single necromancer could match. But knowing it and seeing it were very different things.

This was a necromancy fight. This was power.

In one way, that was good. It made being held in Osiris's arm the safest place in the fight. Heck, all that electricity was probably perking Vulk up. For the time being, Lorcan could be confident that nothing was going to hurt his son except Osiris.

Which, of course, was the fundamental problem. And he couldn’t exactly deny his own inadequacies while looking straight at the most powerful ‘singular’ necromancer in city limits.

He pulled out his own insect summoning tool, a replica scarab. It was one of two spells from his old stash he’d brought tonight. His insects would be far less hardy than the murder swarm had been, but at least he wasn’t sending them at Osiris.

The horde sprung out of cracks in the decrepit mall around him, going unnoticed in the chaos. When he finished the spell, Lorcan gave them their command, and the army of coleoptera marched towards the combatants.

The scene kids were nowhere near Osiris’s level, but they’d been throwing around enough death energy that most of Lorcan’s summons died instantly. Didn’t even count as a distraction at that point.

Even with the survivors climbing over their brethren’s corpses to reach their targets, there were only a handful that managed to reach flesh. One necromancer hissed in pain and swatted at her neck, but she recovered quick, throwing another hex at Osiris’s maelstrom. The bite hadn’t slowed her down.

That was okay. That wasn’t the plan anyways.

In the heat of the fight, with two different sets of bugs littering the floor, spells in the air and spirits bursting from the walls, no one noticed a few beetles returning with their spoils. A few strands of hair. Drops of blood. An earring torn straight out of the cartilage.

He took out a bandage and set to work.

The hair strands were dyed a bright orange, which was handy; he could pick out exactly which necromancer it had come from all the way across the battlefield. If only all Lorcan’s enemies came color-coded.

The orange-haired necromancer was working on some kind of hand-weaving curse, it looked like. His fingers twisted the knotwork tight, and over by the buffet Osiris’s gloved hand spasmed. That didn’t look good.

Power was one thing. Osiris had so much magic it made Lorcan gag, but as a gestalt entity they still only had one human body. It was a weakness, for all they proclaimed they had none. If the scene kids managed to hammer at it, they just might win.

In a battle Osiris was ready for, they’d have semi-loyal servants watching their back. People like Belial, whose minions could fight the small fry while Osiris took out the leader. Eva, who’d no doubt leap into the fray herself to draw fire if Opal’s body needed a chance to recover. Gravelord’s keen eye dissecting the situation, offering strategies and weak points.

Even the Crown Osiris needed other people. Right now, all they had was Lorcan.

What the knotwork crafter was doing had to be an act of sympathetic magic, linking physical muscle and nerve to yarn so both could be manipulated at once. Lorcan pulled out a small pack of bandages, the other spell he’d brought tonight.

The life-leeching unguent on the bandages was hopefully still functional after ten years. In the hands of a strong necromancer, it could be used to potentially fatal effect. In Lorcan’s out-of-practice ones, it would be a nuisance. But his strength as a necromancer had never been raw power. It was knowing how to get the most of the tools he had.

He looped the orange strands of hair around the middle finger of his right hand, like a ring. Over top, he wrapped one bandage, tight enough to sting. The most Lorcan could do with a spell like this was rob a target of a small bit of life force, in a very localized area. But life force circulated through the body, just like blood. Even a small blockage could do damage if it was in the right place.

Lorcan could feel his finger going numb. The orange-haired crafter, linked to the spell by sympathetic magic, felt it necrotize.

The man screamed, the woven curse unraveling as he thrashed in pain. He could probably still do something even without the one finger, Lorcan knew, but this was an interruption he wouldn’t be able to ignore. And back at the buffet table, Osiris’s hand steadied.

The others kept up their assault, probably assuming the blow had come from the Crown. But one necromancer–the one who had been bit on the neck–turned, looking for other attackers.

Well, he thought, that wouldn’t do.

Lorcan let his one beetle scrape the blood onto a finger. He rubbed it onto his neck where the woman had been bit, then slapped another bandage right on the carotid artery. In the moment her eyes met Lorcan’s, they rolled back into her head as the supply of blood to her brain slowed. She passed out limply onto the ground. (Alive. He wasn’t going to…she was still alive.)

It went like that for a little longer. He managed a few cheap shots, knocking out one more opponent and mildly injuring two, before the leader started making gestures to search him out. And Osiris’s eyes had been scanning the field since he took out the knotwork mage.

Alright then, Lorcan thought. “Hey, assholes!” he yelled, stepping out of cover. The fighting stopped a moment, everyone’s eyes turning to Lorcan as they assessed the new threat.

“You don’t need to shout,” one said, in a normal speaking voice. He scratched at his ear with a wince. “We gave the space non-Euclidean fight acoustics. Makes it easier to banter across the room.”

Lorcan aimed his body right at the guy, cupped his hands around his mouth, and took a deep breath in.

“Well,” Osiris stepped in, with a carefully composed expression. “We have certainly underestimated your resolve, Verdigris.” Damn right they did. “But while your assistance in this matter is appreciated, this fight is far outside your capabilities now that you have removed the element of surprise. You may leave.”

“Gracious. You’re right, I’m not as strong a necromancer as any of you here, but that’s why I came prepared.” He shifted his backpack off his shoulders and reached inside it for the first time that night. “And I’m not here to help you. Or you,” he told the scenesters.

Osiris’s eyes widened. “You…what?”

“I’m unambitious,” Lorcan told them. “I’m not an idiot. I wasn’t dealing with someone like you without a contingency.”

Out of the bag he pulled a twisted iron statue, as big as his entire arm. It looked something like a horseshoe, except that it looped in ways almost like a Mobius strip. The thing glowed in the places it folded in on itself with a sickly green light.

The Crown Osiris gasped, audibly. Thank you, non-Euclidean acoustics.

“Yeah, I thought you’d recognize it. See, Dexter told me all about his little dreams of radioactive destruction back when we were teens. And where he planned to bury the trigger.”

“That was seven years before he actually developed that curse,” Osiris said. Their expression was flat, unreadable. “You assumed he would not select a different location?”

“I assumed he hadn’t changed,” he replied, looking them square in the eye. “Turns out, he didn’t.”

He turned to the scene group, brandishing the thing with all the drama sixteen-year-old goth Lorcan had ever managed, and declared, “This is the death curse of one Dexter Young. A necromancer lord with a talent for radioactive blight. I think you’ve heard of him.”

The scene crew seemed to confer with themselves with a few pointed glances, and Smiles, the leader, stepped forward. “Duh, we know Dexter Young,” he said, while the rest settled into defensive positions around him. His face twisted into a condescending smirk. “We did our research on everyone…important to the current Crown.”

That wasn’t even worth an eyeroll. “Great burn, consider me roasted. Since we’re sharing important details, do you happen to know what this curse does?”

The smile dropped. It appeared he did not.

“Huh,” Lorcan said. ���Because I do. Dex loved having an audience for his fantasies of deadly revenge against his enemies. Let me think…it was something something, wave of magical blight that destroys every cell of organic matter it hits, leaving a radioactive wasteland behind–who here’s made of organic matter? Show of hands,” he asked. Then when no one responded, “Don’t be shy, we’re all not-friends here.”

“Look, Young was powerful, but so are we. We can fight off a death curse,” one sneered at him. “You might have some trouble.”

“That’s funny, I remember Dexter’s enemies being strong, too.” A flinch. Point, Lorcan. “And he really wanted to make sure he finished them off, so he rigged the curse with this cascade effect. Consumes any other magic the blight encounters, then sets itself off again with the obstacle removed. That includes wards, other curses, revivification–but sure. I bet you’d fight it off just fine.” He glanced over to Osiris. “Did I get all that right?”

“An amateurish explanation,” they said, in a petulant tone, “but essentially accurate.”

“So no, it’s a ridiculous overpowered curse and we’re all lucky the murdergame didn’t set it off ages ago. Also this entire mall dimension is basically made of magic, so you could say goodbye to that, too. You think the place looks bad now?” he asked, wry. “Just wait until the curse goes off.”

“But it won’t.” Smiles straightened in place. “Dexter Young isn’t quite dead, and he’ll stay that way so long as the crown stays in one piece. Unless you think you can destroy the current Crown’s symbol of power?”

Ha, Lorcan thought. “In a fight? Obviously not.” It was the only answer he could give, under the circumstances. He was playing with fire enough as it was. “But Dex’s big problem with curses was keeping them stable. One time, at freshman homecoming–” Actually they didn’t need to know about that. “--the point is, exposure to radiation sets them off, too. Now, does anyone want to guess how my time magic works?” he asked.

“It–his magic is radioactive,” Osiris told the others. “His mere proximity triggered a number of Dexter’s curses in our shared youth. But–but you would not dare do so here.” The shock was clear in their voice. “You lack the nerve. With a spell of that curse’s magnitude, the entire city could–”

“I wouldn’t, no,” he agreed easily. “City-killing’s not really my thing. But we’re not in the city, are we?”

He gestured at the space around them. “This mall is a liminal death-space separated from reality by the void of absolute boundary or whatever. That’s got to be great for containment. And considering what you plan to do with it–” He shot a glare to the other necromancers. “--maybe it’s better this space remains an irradiated, unusable husk forever.”

And there, the scenesters started to look nervous.

“Holy shit, dude,” one spoke up. “Don’t you think that’s going a little too far?”

“Too…far?” he repeated, with a purposeful incredulity that made a few of them step back as if in fear. It was probably the deadly radioactive curse he was holding in his offhand that did it.

“As opposed to, what,” Lorcan asked, “just an ordinary, restrained magical firefight in the middle of a liminal death dimension? This is what necromancy does, MCR! It pushes you ‘too far’. Nobody in this goddamn mall is capable of interacting with necromancy in a calm and collected manner. None of us gets to pretend we’re above this!”

A scoff cut through the air.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.” It wasn’t nothing. Smiles shrugged. The easy fluidity of the motion suggested hours in front of the mirror to get the superior air just right. “It’s funny to hear from someone trying to play vigilante.”

“I’m not playing–”

“What, just because we’re killers means your hands are clean? Releasing a death curse is all for the greater good if it means some gullible geek gets to see another anime convention?”

Lorcan didn’t know how to respond to that, because Smiles wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t right, either. He shouldn’t have brought up Kyle if he wanted Lorcan to think so.

These necromancers would need supplies if they were going to seize control of the local covens without provoking a power struggle. ‘Supplies’ was, of course, another necromantic euphemism. And having a giant portal to a hell dimension just about anyone could be lured into would make that easy. Osiris, meanwhile, made no secret about wanting to do many, many murders. The world would, objectively, be better off without any of them.

But was Lorcan the person to make that call? His judgment hadn’t been foolproof lately. Sure, he might be the only necromancer here who hadn’t ever committed homicide before. He was better than them in that respect.

That didn’t mean he was good enough. There were no clean answers.

“I’m a guy standing in a death dimension, wearing a necromancer’s robe and holding about half a Chernobyl of radioactive death in my bare hand,” he said. “If I knew what the greater good was, I wouldn’t be here.”

“What do you want, then?” Smiles asked. His jaw was clenched tight.

Lorcan considered that. “I’d think it was obvious. But I guess you never bothered to study me beyond the best place to ambush me buying eyeliner, did you?”

“I was lying about your wingtips, by the way. They were shit.”

It was an insult for insult’s sake. Lorcan was used to it, hanging out so much with necromancers when he was young. But god, why had he bothered?

“You don’t know me,” he told the other man. “You don’t know anything about me. We’re strangers, and that’s all we’ll ever be.”

“What does that have to do with–”

“These usurpers may be strangers to you, Verdigris,” Osiris spoke up. “But we are not. And we know if you were to actually use that curse, you would be killing your familiar as well.” Confusion tinged their voice, because Osiris had known him once. “Your child, Verdigris. You must recognize the lamp’s spirit is made of magic as well.”

Lorcan looked at them, and nodded. “I was wondering when someone would bring him up. As it happens, I’m a simple man with simple demands. The only reason I even put this option on the table is that you put my son in danger. Give me my son. And both me and this thing–” He shook the curse. “--go away.”

The purple-haired piercing mage suggested, “Or we could shoot you. Can’t set it off if you’re dead.” She lifted the gun (he noted it wasn’t loaded) and mimed a shot.

“If you knew anything about time magic,” Lorcan told her, “you’d know it’s not entirely under my control. I have been concentrating very hard not to let it leak into this curse. But no matter how fast you kill me, there’ll be a moment where my concentration slips. Try again, MCR.”

“...You already said ‘MCR’.”

“I don’t know any other bands!” he shot back.

“We could get your thing back for you,” Smiles spoke up, with an icy…well. “If you give us that curse–”

“Stopping you right there. This is not a game you can chessmaster your way to victory with. The options are me, with the curse, here. Or me, with the curse, out of your blast radius. And it’s not your call which, unless Osiris–”

“No,” they said loudly. No doubt wanting to snip that dangling thread of potential collusion. “To us, the choice is clear. There is no sense dallying.”

They began to walk, carefully, through the food court. The cape of necromantic light stretched out behind them, a reminder that attempting an ambush now would be very unwise.

“Verdigris has been generous to lay out his terms so plainly, and as it happens it is easy to acquiesce.” They reached Lorcan, and held out his son. The warmth of his bulb as he settled into Lorcan’s free arm was stark against the mall’s natural chill. “It has served its purpose, anyways,” Osiris finished with a tight smirk, and began walking away.

It would serve the smug bastard right if he really did set this curse off right there, Lorcan thought. But Vulk was safe. Everything was going to be okay.

“Can you lead us out of here?” he asked.

Vulk whispered back, “Yeah. There’s a back exit nobody noticed yet.” Lorcan shifted his son in his arms, cataloging all the little twitches and shivers that told him yes, Vulcan was scared but fine.

“That’s it, then?” Smiles asked. “All you want is that stupid familiar?”

And, well. Lorcan never was one to let go of a grudge. “Give me your shoes, too.”

“Wh–my shoes? These are a limited collector’s run,” he protested. “You can’t get them online anymore.”

“Good,” Lorcan said. “Think about that next time you decide to fuck with me and mine. Time’s a-wasting. Tick tock.”

The guy fumed, but took off his chunky brand names and lobbed them over. It was clear from the low, underhanded toss he thought Lorcan might actually try to catch them. That was funny.

The shoes thumped to the floor.

“What do I look like, a jock?” he asked. He wasn’t stupid enough to risk fumbling a catch while holding both his familiar and his leverage. “Thanks though, these’ll look real cool in my basement with all the other junk.”

It was, he realized, a quip too far. He knew that the second his smart tongue pushed it out of his dumb mouth. With people like Osiris, he at least had some idea of how far he could push things. A few fuckups, sure, but a better track record than he had with total strangers.

Smiles was a stranger. He’d been a stranger when they’d met, and he was only stranger now that Lorcan knew the truth. And there was no smile, fake or otherwise, on his face now.

With a strangled growl, he charged directly at Lorcan. Physically. With his fists clenched.

That could have been the end of it. Lorcan froze in place–he didn’t have a backup plan for this. He remembered strange neighbors and fear. Then the metal prongs of Vulk’s power cord scraped against the back of his arm.

Lorcan and his oldest son didn’t always see eye to eye. But there were moments they were perfectly in sync.

He lifted the arm holding Vulk upwards. His fingers curled, as if in an arcane configuration. Behind it, Vulk’s cord stretched out to the air.

If he had still needed proof the Crown Osiris was a fight out of his league, he only needed to look at the aurora they’d made out of magic and will, keyed in directly to their presence. Already, the space in front of Lorcan where they’d been standing was losing its glow, fading to a dull glitter. That was power.

Lorcan jabbed his finger forward, straight at Smiles. Vulk could channel power.

The glitter in the air turned into a dark bolt of lightning that hit the floor a mere foot in front of his opponent. The man stopped. Lorcan could almost see him mentally re-calculating.

He put a look of careful indifference on his own face, like any powerful necromancer would when launching an attack they could totally pull off a second time. “Vulk, the shoes,” he instructed. His son coiled through the laces, lifting the prize into the now-empty backpack.

Lorcan took a few steps backwards, and gestured towards the death curse. “Remember, if any of you feels like a last minute double-cross, my death’ll make this whole thing explode. Otherwise, we’re out.”

The two were too tense to speak on their way out of the food court. Lorcan only knew they were safe once Vulk let out a slight, nervous chuckle. “So. I guess the friend thing’s a bust. But you did do a fashion today,” he added. “Doug’s gonna be happy.”

“They’re not exactly my style,” Lorcan remarked, but the shoes weren’t bad. Mostly black with deep, multicolor accents. A solid trophy. “I suppose Smiles could have worse taste.”

“Is that what you called him in your head?” Vulk asked, sounding almost like their usual banter. “I was calling him Tino.”

“Tino?”

“The New Osiris.” He emphasized each word. “T-N-O.”

Lorcan snorted. “That’s great. Tino Smiles, evil necromancer. I bet he…” He trailed off. The silence hung heavy in the air, and what came out next was: “Good work there, Vulk. With the lightning and–staying alive.”

His son’s voice was almost a whisper when he heard it. “Thanks, Dad.” Lorcan hugged him just a little closer.

The mall dimension’s exit was, somewhat predictably, inside a hidden Hot Topic. That’s not what stopped Lorcan in his tracks. No, that was the pretzel stand right in front of it.

He checked inside the machines–yup. Same stand. Same pretzels. A last-ditch effort to keep him and Vulk from leaving.

“I don’t want those pretzels,” Vulk told him solemnly. Which, good. Good.

Maybe Lorcan was feeling introspective in the wake of metaphorically selling his soul to dark magic, but this just felt sad the second deathtrap around. A dead mall’s kiosk, plaintively offering treats to passers-by. Still, it didn’t have to be so repulsive about it. It was like the place wanted…

He paused. It was like it wanted to push people away.

Fuck, he was empathizing, wasn’t he? He was. For all he knew the place wanted to murder him, Lorcan did get it. If you spent enough time being lonely, it was easy to forget you’d ever wanted anything different. Forget how to reach out. People could be mean and also lonely.

And maybe he might want to change that.

It was a scary thought; Lorcan had his sharp edges for a reason. They wouldn’t smooth out all at once. But he could try, once he got out of here. He might have to–he couldn’t keep doing this alone.

A classic-style mall goth leaned casually against the register in the store, flipping through a magazine and blowing a large gum bubble. How were they–the store wouldn’t have even been open when the rest of this shit went down. Fucking Hot Topic, nobody understood it.

“You know there’s a bunch of necromancers having a death match just outside, right?” he asked the employee. (He said he would try after he got out.) “And also the entire mall has been turned into a hell dimension.”

“Yeah, yeah,” they said, not even looking up. “You gonna buy a shirt, or what?”

Lorcan bought the damned shirt.

[royaltea000]

I love Bai Long Ma he truly don’t gaf

[captain-astors]

The Crown Prince

[introspectivememories]

tim mentioning what they did to him in his torture session: so yeah they had this thick chain out that they'd hit me with

bear who's brain has literally been rewired from the cult: huh ,they had u on they easy stuff . god i remember my first time. they started with the barbed whip and then they pulled out the brass knuckles! but im glad u only got the easy stuff baby

tim, horrified, head turning like he's in a horror movie: ..... they did what to you?

[toxooz]

🍔 borgir 🍔

[puppyeared]

I can teach you how to be just like me

crying all night, sleeping till three

[danny-chase]

Things every Dick vs Tim Red Robin fallout gets wrong no matter who's side they take

1. They still loved each other

2. Dick went after Tim after Tim stormed out of the cave. He didn't just leave it at that

3. They didn't have 0 contact, Dick called Tim back to Gotham for Blackest Night. They weren't talking because Tim didn't want to talk

4. Alfred gave Damian the Robin costume initially without Dick's knowledge, and his first mission as Robin was saving Tim's life after he got beat up by Jason (again). He apparently left this mess for Dick to clean up, and I don't think anyone ever told Tim that's how Damian ended up with the mantle

5. Dick helped in the process of bringing Bruce back to the current time, Tim presented his evidence when he got home, and Dick checked it out and solved the time puzzle in Bruce's ancestral home. Tim didn't magically pop back with Bruce after doing everything by himself, it was a coordinated effort that involved the Justice League

6. Tim and Damian started to get along. Not during Red Robin, but during Batman: Gates of Gotham

7. They were both grieving, Dick just masked it better

8. Tim didn't feel like he could ask for help because he knew sounded insane (and was feeling/acting insane). He was doing one of those 'i push away everyone i love because i hate myself' things, which he also did to Steph (who he fired as Spoiler under god knows who's authority) and Cassie. Dick wasn't special in this treatment, and he can't force Tim to stay, so he trusted Tim's judgement and let him leave. It is a "Tim's a sad boy" comic, but he's also very much a part of causing his own problems

9. They still loved each other. They never stopped loving each other. They never hated one another. Both in this era asked the other "Do you trust me?" And the other replied "Yes" and did the thing they asked. *shakes everyone who's ever written about this* that's the whole point, it's about miscommunication, and being in a bad place, but having what you need where you started waiting for you the whole time

[littlestkoi-n]

the rage I feel when reading Blood of Olympus chapters 45-56 is almost equivalent in magnitude to the absolute joy I experience when reading The Last Olympian chapters 1-23.

remember when percabeth was good? when they meant the world to each other but had other people they cared about (nico, for one. both of them. so much), other worries and other storylines aside from their romantic plot? and when nico's completed arc wasn't repeated for no reason other than to dump more trauma on the youngest character in the series? when background characters were included in the story not for all the unnecessary last minute romantic subplots but because they were fun and fascinating to learn more about? and were actually friends with main characters? remember when grover was percy and annabeth's best friend forever? and antagonists were actually interesting and intimidating and had compelling goals? and the story revolved around friendship and family and loyalty? and death was definite and loss was palpable and battles were thrilling?

yeah. good times.

[c6jpg]

Hunters fight not for fame, but to aid the people whenever they are summoned.

[pucksandpower]

I hope this is coming off as unbiased as I mean for it to … but I would be very surprised if Red Bull Racing ends up signing Carlos for 2025.

Not because Carlos isn’t a great driver (he is) or because he doesn’t deserve a seat on a competitive team (he does), but because Red Bull is a team that performs best with an obvious first driver and second driver … and I don’t think Carlos will be content with that.

The incident (insert inchident joke here) between Carlos and Charles during the sprint cost Ferrari precious points and all but gave Checo the podium. That’s not something I see Red Bull or Max being particularly drawn to as they look to continue their domination next season.

I think Checo has come to understand his role as second driver on the team, which allows Red Bull and each of their drivers to maximize both individual as well as team performances. I would be very surprised if they decide to jeopardize that.

[doublxpresso]

「To this pitiful me」

page 31 - 32 (end)

beginning << page 29 - 30

cover illustrations

[trensu]

Some more of stasis in darkness. you have no idea how many times i've written this scene. i discarded three or four different versions of it before i came up with this one. i feel like this version worked best for the characters. or at least i hope they feel in character.

It was the ninth night.

Steve took his usual spot before the shrine. He greeted his god as he had before but decided tonight was going to be a quiet night. He didn’t have much to say so he’d simply let his faith burn bright in his silent vigil.

Hours passed, and again the strange man didn’t show up as he had been the nights prior. This time, Steve didn’t bother putting it off. He decided to do a perimeter check. As he stood, however, a cacophony of squeaks and beating wings filled the air.

A massive colony of bats burst into the clearing. They moved shockingly fast as they neared Steve and the shrine. Steve ducked his head under his arms but let the bats come. He ignored the little Robin in his head yelling about rabies. He couldn’t risk hurting one of his god’s favored creatures. 

There were so many of them, more than Steve had ever seen in his life. They flew round and round dropping altitude until they coalesced at the foot of the shrine. The din stopped as abruptly as it had started. When Steve could no longer hear a single squeak or feel wings zipping overhead, he lowered his arms. Cautiously, he lifted his head, eyes drawn immediately to the shrine to check for any damage. 

Not a single bat remained. Instead, the strange man sat, cross legged, at the statue’s feet. He wore a dark cloak comprised of deep navies, bruising purples, and an inky black. Each color slowly, gracefully shifted and melted one into another, again and again before Steve’s eyes. Flecks of light littered it in familiar formations. The clasp that secured it around the man was a bright silvery white. It was shaped exactly the same as the waning moon above. 

“Ta-da!” the man said, fluttering his hands in a showman’s gesture.

Steve took in the man's appearance. The ratty travel clothes, the cloak of constellations and its clasp…Steve leapt back in shock. Everything suddenly clicked into place very quickly to paint a very unflattering picture of himself. He whirled around. He couldn't face the shrine. 

"Shit," Steve's voice was loud with a stunned sort of panic as he remembered the events of the past week. He paced anxiously. "Shit, shit. It was y–the whole time, you were–FUCK. How did I miss–and even if you weren't you, you were still a traveler in the night and I treated you like–I'm a fucking idiot. I'm the stupidest man alive, how–"

"Probably from getting dropped on the head so much, huh?" the man asked with that same annoyingly self-satisfied voice he'd been using every night. The annoying stranger with his annoying questions and his stupid smug tone.

Mindlessly, Steve turned on his heel to glare at the man. He jabbed an accusatory finger in his direction, frustration flaring.

"Oh, you can fuck right off, man," Steve replied reflexively. "I am having a crisis!"

A split second later, he felt his stomach drop to his feet. This wasn't just a stranger talking. He backpedaled hard.

"Oh, ohhhh no, I didn't mean that, Lord, I-I wasn't thinking."

The man exploded into raucous laughter. It shook his whole body until he doubled over from the strength of it. He continued to laugh when he toppled off the side of his perch and landed with a thunk on the ground. The man sat up, wheezing and wiping at his face, mirth clearly keeping him in a choke-hold. 

"Oh, far be it for me to interrupt your crisis," the Lord of Night forced out amidst the laughter. He flapped a hand at him. "Please, continue."

The god attempted to regain composure but all that did was turn his full bellied guffaws into snorting giggles. Steve waited, his anxiety fading in the face of the god’s genuine good humor. It took another couple of minutes before the god calmed enough to pop back to his feet and climb back onto the plinth. The man made himself comfortable at the foot of his own statue as he had before.

"So how goes the crisis?" he asked mischievously.

"On hold," Steve said evenly, fighting back the start of a smile. The man said nothing but still radiated amusement. Steve crossed his arms over his chest. "Are you really the Lord of Night?"

"The one and only!"

“And you’ve been here the whole time?”

“Yep!”

“So why didn’t you say anything? I mean, I talked to you every night! I don’t get it.” Steve paused as a thought occurred to him. “Was this a test?”

“Uh…yes? Yes.”

Steve narrowed his eyes. The god shifted in his seated position. It reminded Steve of the time Dustin shattered a jar of his most expensive hair product and tried to hide it. Dustin had squirmed guiltily under Steve’s expectant gaze until he confessed to his dastardly crime. Apparently, the method worked on gods as well.

“Okay, it started more as an attempt to get you to leave me alone,” the Lord of Night admitted. 

“Oh.” It came out blankly, which Steve was grateful for, because he felt like he’d been kicked in the chest by a mule. “You don’t want me.”

Steve wasn't sure why he was surprised. This was a classic Steve problem. He tamped down the old familiar sting of rejection. Steve knew going in that this had been a possibility. It was a god’s right to reject an offering.

“I never wanted any holy warriors,” the Lord of Night corrected. “Hence the attempt to make you leave.” 

Steve supposed that lessened the blow a little. It was an impersonal rejection. That was better, right? 

"If you didn't want me as your holy warrior you could've just said," Steve said ruefully.

“You seemed pretty determined to come back, though.”

“Only because I thought you’d want to, like, use me for something. If you’d asked me to, I would’ve stopped bothering you. I could’ve gotten someone else who could worship you better,” Steve said, trying to keep his voice light and unaffected.

"Yeah, I really don’t think you could have,” the Lord of Night said in a strained tone. 

“No, I mean it,” Steve insisted. “I told you, Robin and Dustin wanted to come along. They would make sure you’re not alone again. You would like them. They pick up on stuff faster than me. They’d be good worshipers.”

“That’s not what I meant. Your worship was, uh, it was…no, nevermind, forget that. The thing is, the more you came back the more I…” 

The Lord of Night trailed off. He tugged his dark starry cloak around him tighter. When he spoke again, he seemed to have switched tracks entirely. 

"Look, I don't know exactly how the holy warrior thing works, but you guys do quests for your gods, right?"

"Well, yeah, that's the whole point. We're your boots on the ground. We do acts in your service to spread your faith. Like priests but less boring." 

The god snorted which made Steve grin.

"Priests are so boring," the Lord of Night agreed. 

Things went quiet again. The cloak of constellations made it hard to see his god, but Steve got the impression that the Lord of Night was fidgeting. Steve remembered the conversation from a few nights before, about nervousness and not knowing what to do. Steve fell back on his social graces, his good old Harrington charm, and carefully picked something that would encourage the god to speak.

"I can't believe I didn’t see it,” Steve said, with a self-deprecating shake of his head. “Like, I know I'm not the smartest guy around but I didn't think I was that slow."

"Don't worry about it,” the god replied instantly, breaking out of his internal reverie. “That's not on you. I didn't want you to notice, so you didn't."

"Oh."

"Yep. And, it's not like I have a face to remember, so, y'know. You're good."

"I guess that does make me feel bet–wait. What do you mean you don’t have a face?” Steve squinted at the Lord of Night.

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I lost my name,” the Lord of Night said with a hint of irony. “No name, no face.”

“But I saw it,” Steve insisted.

“Did you?” the Lord of Night asked, amused. He slid off the plinth and walked up to Steve until he was only three feet away. The god lowered his hood without any flourish. “What do I look like?”

Steve squinted at him studiously. The god was pale as moonlight and had hair as dark as the night itself; as for the rest of him…it was the strangest thing. Steve knew there was a pair of eyes under a brow. There was a nose above a mouth. He knew the right features were in the right places. However, he couldn’t tell if the eyes were dark or pale. He couldn’t say whether the nose was large or small. The mouth could be thin or it could be full. 

“I don’t know,” Steve relented. The Lord of Night nodded.

“Yeah, me neither.”

“Is…is that the quest? To find your name?” Steve asked, dread pooling in his belly. That quest would involve a lot of reading and…he didn’t even know. Language things? General research, for sure. None of which Steve was particularly good at.

“That’s a bit presumptuous of you,” the Lord of Night smirked. He didn't give Steve a chance to apologize. “But yeah, there’s something important that needs to be done. I’m not strong enough to do it myself and I’m running out of time to do it.”

“I can do it,” Steve responded. “I’ll do it for you, my Lord.”

“You don’t even know what the quest is,” the god said wistfully.

“But I know you wouldn’t ask me to do anything cruel or unfair.”

“You’re unbelievable,” the Lord of Night muttered under his breath. Steve didn’t think he was supposed to hear that so he kept quiet. In a louder voice, the god resumed. “Okay, are you sure you wanna do this? Be a holy warrior? Because you could be literally anything else. You told me you liked cooking during one of your prayer sessions. You could open up a restaurant! Restaurant owners don’t usually die in the line of duty or whatever.”

Steve resisted the urge to roll his eyes. This is what Steve trained for, what he was good at, and he wanted to put those skills to use.

“You said you needed help to do something important. I want to be the one that helps you. I want to be your warrior. I can do it, I know I can. I won’t let you down.” Steve bit his lip uncertainly as a thought struck him. "If you don't think I'm worthy–"

“It’s not about worthiness!" The god cut in. "Do you know what it would mean to be my holy warrior? The weight of the night sky, with all the stars and the moon, will be on your shoulders for as long as you walk the land. I don’t know much about holy warriors but I remember this: there’s no take-backs. You can’t just quit and go off to become something else later.”

“Yes, I know. We covered this in lectures at school. It wasn’t all swordplay," Steve said impatiently. "I did think about it once I finished training and I decided if I could find a god to pledge myself to, I didn't want to be anything else. Then I found you."

“...Okay. If you're sure, then okay,” the Lord of Night said decisively. “So what do I have to do? How do I make you mine?”

“Um, I think it’s different from god to god?” Steve stuttered, heart thumping at the god’s words. “But I guess we can do our own thing? I’m pretty sure it’s the intent that matters most.”

"I can work with that." The Lord of Night gestured downward. "Kneel, kneel. I have an idea of what to say.

"Should I close my eyes or something?" Steve asked once he’d gotten to his knees.

"Nah, this is good," Lord Night said. 

The god squared his shoulders and straightened his spine. Then, something miraculous happened. The Lord of Night spoke his name aloud.

“Steve Harrington.”

It was the first time his god ever said his name; it was stunning in a way Steve couldn’t begin to comprehend. A bolt of lightning down his spine. A roaring forge in his chest. A whirlwind in his lungs. It felt like all of that simultaneously, yet nothing like that at all. How could pitiful human speech hope to encompass the intensity of a god’s undivided attention; his god’s specific acknowledgement of a primitive life such as his? 

Tears sprang unbidden in Steve’s eyes. He became aware how lowly and frail his own body was, and how utterly insignificant his existence was in the vastness of the stars in the sky. He curled forward, hiding his face and making himself as small as he could. He could not bear his god seeing his mortal failings and imperfections. It would invite an exquisite, holy agony Steve surely wouldn’t survive. 

“Oh,” the Lord of Night breathed. “I forgot how that could feel to a human. I’ll try not to do it again.”

“No,” the word tore out of Steve’s throat without any conscious thought. “No, please. Please, my Lord.”

Steve didn’t even know what he was begging for because the singular attention of a god was agony but the thought of his god leaving him filled him with terror. He shattered, left with no purchase save his god’s words. Then there were arms around him, pulling him close, and enveloping him in constellations. Steve’s vision blurred. Great, heaving sobs overcame him as though ripped from his very soul. The Lord of Night murmured comfortingly.

“Alright, there we go,” he said softly. “I’m here, Steve. I see you in the night, every night. The stars shine for you, Steve. The moon turns its face for you. I’m with you, Steve.”

The words crashed into him with the unrelenting force of ocean waves. They swept his footing from underneath him and sent him spinning endlessly, endlessly. They lifted him upwards and sent him plummeting down until he was deep below the surface where the currents finally slowed. Surrounded by eternally burning stars, he was left weightless and suspended in an unearthly calm. The words rang in his skull with the surety and strength only a celestial being could claim.

Somewhere between an eternity and no time at all, Steve came back to himself feeling overexerted, though he hadn’t moved from where he knelt. Steve’s heart and soul had been scraped out of his chest, put between a pestle and mortar before getting unceremoniously dumped back in his weak flesh, but in a weirdly good way. His sobs subsided. His breathing came in and out slowly.

Eventually the cloak of constellations released him as well. He blinked his eyes open gradually to see his god kneeling before him at arm's length, palms resting on Steve's shoulders. Steve felt a stab of shame at having brought his god down low to a mortal's level. 

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” Steve croaked. “Do you still–? Can I still be–?”

“No, yeah,” the Lord of Night said straight away. “That was on me. Not your fault at all. I’m out of practice interacting with mortals."

The god’s words lost the gravitas from before in a way that would've been jarring if it weren't such a relief. He finally broke his hold on Steve. He got to his feet, somewhat gracelessly. 

"Let’s try that again?” the Lord of Night asked.

Steve cleared his throat. He straightened up where he knelt and kept himself still. He nodded to show he was ready.

“Steve Harrington,” the god said. This time hearing his name on his god’s lips was exhilarating but at a level a human could bear. “Do you swear to spread my values in the minds and hearts of mortals, through action and word?”

“I swear.”

“Then will you, Steve Harrington, do me the honor of being my sword and shield? Will you carry my crest through all your agonies and all your joys?”

“Yes.”

For a breathless moment, their words hung in the air, resonating through the night with finality. The Lord of Night reached out and gently traced something on Steve's forehead. Steve assumed it was his god's sigil, though neither Robin or Dustin could find any images of it so he couldn't be sure. It felt like an incomplete circle with a squiggle running through it. The god stepped back to observe him when he was done.

The stillness that followed, ironically, rattled Steve’s bones with relief and joy that it was done. His god had accepted him. Then the Lord of Night shuffled his feet in an awkward, shy manner.

“Cool,” said the Lord of Night.

The heaviness and tension brought down by the gravity of their oath ruptured with that single world, and Steve could do nothing but dissolve in helpless, giddy giggles.

[ashleander]

Pizzatober 2024

Day 27 and 28: Maurice Maniac and XMAS Break

We’re almost there! Just a few more!

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[neunhofferart]

Howdy, Heidi! You said that some fans picked up things that were done on accident… Were there more scenes like that? Also, were there scenes that you guys made on purpose but fans didn’t pick up / were aware of them? In shipping terms (hihi) and in general terms. Thanks!

I think in every type of media you will inevitably see versions of 'authorial' intent vs audience interpretation that overlap and differ from each other in many ways. (Authorial intent in quotes because in collaborative mediums like film and animation every single person on the pipeline who touches the work probably has a slightly different personal interpretation they're contributing to the final work, even under someone like a showrunner or a director).

Humans are smart and it's in our nature to look for connections and find explainations to questions, so most of the time if someone is putting something down, someone is going to pick it up, so to speak, and a lot of things ARE on purpose.

But this same phenomenon can also lead to us seeing connections in places that even the 'authors' might not have originally thought of while creating the work, and I think that can be pretty neat actually! I don't necessarily think reading alternate interpretations of works is wrong-- it can be very healthy to explore multiple reads of a narrative or a character/character dynamic. On Chaos Theory there were definitely times when we were like 'fans are probably gonna ship this even if it's not the text' haha. Sometimes fans latch onto headcanons you really have no control over. Sometimes things were animated slightly differently from how they were conceived (which is also a natural part of things).

But yes, sometimes I have seen a few other things that were interpreted in slightly different ways from how they were directed or written verbally, but I'm personally of the opinion that it's more fun to leave some things visual and open to a little interpretation rather than beating the words over the audience's head and having the characters constantly announcing 'I'm feeling this because of this!' And going 'this is the only way to interpret the show and the characters and if you don't you're wrong!'

It's usually not a huge deal. I think even as we were working sometimes I'd make connections to myself that weren't necessarily spelled out to us and go 'oh, this is a throughline for this character actually!'

Like for example- if I remember correctly, the original direction behind how Kenji reacted to Ben's apparent death was that it was supposed to the first time he'd ever seen someone he really KNEW seemingly die right front of him, and being unable to do anything about it deeply affected him. Ben is a very important turning point in his character development regardless of which way you read it.

And I think this is actually something that just continued to stack onto his character throughout both shows whenever any of his friends lives are seriously in danger. In Camp when he's still unable to do anything but comfort Sammy while she's poisoned, to deciding it's too dangerous not to trade Wu's laptop for Brooklynn, to eventually throwing himself between the spinosaurus his dad is about to kill Darius with and choosing his friends over his own father and being willing to die with/for them... and then in Chaos Theory it kind of reboots all over again with Brooklynn dying and then his dad dying right in front of him, and his complex of not wanting to be useless and trying to do whatever he can at the expense of even himself to keep the loved ones he has left safe is kicked into overdrive.

I think there are a lot of things like that where the intent is not always verbally spelled out, but the more important thing is that it's still (hopefully) making you feel something.

[yamanoskk]

The real mastermind, the unpredictable subordinate, and the 'spies'

My fanarts of the new casts in Touhou 19!

Overall, I do enjoy the game! Really adore all of the new casts, the new music are cool and the story is interesting! Really nice to see more of the old casts come back in here too!