#preservation of writing

[honourablejester]

Though for a D&D Character Quest/Bond:

D&D 5e specifically, because it’s about deep dragons again. It’s about that regional effect of their lairs:

“Preservation of Knowledge. Books, letters, and any other physical forms of writing within 6 miles of the dragon's lair become magically charged and can't be damaged by nonmagical means.”

Because I love the nightmare fungal librarian dragons, and there’s also … I feel there’s something deeply romantic about that? The preservation of letters. Letters. I had the thought before, what if a particular deep dragon just hoarded love letters, what an incredible historical find that would be, what a beautiful library, all these hopes and dreams preserved by a dragon’s power and choice.

And. How does the dragon get the letters? Who hears rumours of a monstrous fungal nightmare dragon in the deep places of the world, and hears rumours that this dragon prizes love, and goes out to try and find that dragon? And why?

So. She’s a dwarf. An inhabitant of the deep places herself. She’s an older dwarf. She’s a widow. Not … Not tragically, not in the D&D sense, not in the ‘orcs murdered my family’ sense. Just a normal widow, who lost her husband to normal causes. Maybe he was a miner, maybe he had a mining accident. Maybe he died crossing the street. Maybe he just got sick. It wasn’t a grand thing, a heroic thing, a thing of rage and vengeance. It was … it was small, and normal, and devastating. A hole was carved out of her life, and there was nothing notable about it. There was nothing to avenge. It just happened.

She’s a normal dwarf, a woman in sturdy boots with sensible gear and greying hair. She’s not an adventurer searching for glory, she’s not a wounded soul seeking purpose or vengeance. She’s a normal woman. But that does not mean she doesn’t have a quest.

In her pack is a small, very sturdy wooden chest, bound in strong metal, and guarded against fire and most particularly water. She will guard it with her life. She will throw herself atop it to guard it from harm. She will murder anyone who takes it from her. She will claw through gods and demons to get it back if it is lost to her. It is the single most important thing in her possession, and she will kill or die for it without question.

And sometimes, at night, by the campfire, she opens it. And it’s full of …

Letters. Densely packed, neatly and carefully folded, pressed from wall to wall. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of letters, the paper varying from maybe only a few years old to clearly much, much older. Worn, battered. Creased and stained by the loving, repeated touch of fingers. Some of them are so delicate that she cannot touch them any longer, cannot dare. So many letters. So many.

What are they? Why does she carry them? Why does she bring them here, through these tunnels of mud and blood and fire and danger? When they’re clearly so delicate, so precious?

They are … They’re a marriage. They’re a life.

They wrote each other letters, you see. Not just when he was gone, or she was gone, not just when they were apart. They wrote each other letters every day. Well. Maybe not quite every day, there were days here or there where it didn’t happen, but most … most days. It was a ritual. Every evening, warm or cold, war or peace. They would sit down, either end of the dining table, and they would write each other a letter. Every evening, she would leave his by the sideboard, and he would leave hers on the nightstand. Sometimes they’d speak. Sometimes they’d smile. Sometimes they’d fume and snarl and sleep back to back instead of warm inside each other’s arms. But they would write the letters. And the next day, he would tuck her letter inside his coat, and she would tuck his inside her pocket, and they’d carry them with them. At some point in the day, between work and troubles and friendship and duties, they’d read them. All the worries, joys, furies, petty reminders and soppy romances of the night before.

Not all of them survived, obviously. Not all of them are single letters, either. It’s a lot of paper to get through, a letter a day for the length of a dwarven marriage. Some of the parchments and papers in the box are not single letters, but two or three or four, worked onto the backs and the margins and the spare corners of previous letters. Some of them are old and blotched and barely legible. Many, so many, thousands of them, are long gone now. Lost or written over or worn to vanishing. But she has … enough. So many. The most … The most treasured of them. All the way back to the start.

And she’s going to find a dragon for them. Not in vengeance. Not because a dragon killed her husband or anything like that. She’s going to find a deep dragon. And she is going to bow, and she is going to beg, and she is going to offer whatever services that dragon might require, if it will consent to guard … to guard this. To guard her marriage. To guard her husband’s …

In her clan, the goal of every dwarf is create some form of a masterwork, a thing wrought by their hands and their labour and their devotion, that will speak their name long past their deaths, that will bear witness to their … to their efforts and their passion and their life and their soul. And her husband did make such a thing. He left works to be remembered by. But they’re not …

This, she says. Cradling the box in her hands. Us. This was his masterwork. Our masterwork. Nothing had more of his time, nothing had more work of his hands, nothing had more of his love and his devotion and his life. Nothing. These words are … they are all of his soul. They are everything he was. We spoke, wrote, of everything. Every grievance, every joy, every loving thought, every petty concern, every hope and fear and dream and meal we had and every consequence of it. This is his life, this is our life. That we built with our own hands, that we put every passion and joy and labour and longing into. This is him, more than any other thing might be him. And it is paper, it is fragile paper, and I don’t want it to be lost with him. To fade away, as paper fades. I want it to stand for him. To be his masterwork. For him to be known by it for … for however long …

I’m going to find a dragon. I will search all the deepest, darkest, most dangerous places of the world, I will stand before a great creature of dreams and nightmares who may kill me the moment it sees me, just for my trespass, and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if it kills me. As long as it sees this. Reads this. And understands … understands the weight of it.

They protect writing. The deep dragons, the fungal dragons. They understand the … the value of it, the worth a thousand times more than gold. If I can just bring these to one of them. If I can just get it close enough. That. That will be my masterwork. That will be the thing wrought by my hands and my life. That this, this most precious thing, this treasure beyond measure, will go to where it will be safe, and will be remembered.

And if that means she, an oh-so-normal dwarven woman, no hero, no adventurer, possessed of no great or ruinous purpose, must nonetheless brave all that is dark and deep and dangerous of the world? Then so be it.

This, he, was her life. And it, he, is worth her life.

Always and forever.

… Yeah. But. Is there not something so romantic about the preservation … Deep dragons would preserve so much life. So much history. Not even in the grand sense, wars and kings and battles and dates, but just … love letters. Shopping lists. Customer complaints. So much life. And if you knew one existed, if you knew what they could do … what would you choose to give them? What would you want them to preserve?

So. A dwarven widow, in search of a dragon. Not in vengeance, but in memory. For the preservation of love.

[corviiids]

i found a bad post i made months ago in the privacy of my own home and now i need to air it out in public because it's getting mildewy and moths are eating it

[fleursdesmorts]

every year people get angry when ao3 requests donations but honestly in a world where almost all spaces online are slowly being eaten by corporations which censor the content on those sites, having a fan-run fan-sponsored place where people can create gay art without fear is great

[novella-november]

Media Preservation Monday

Yeah, yeah, as of this original post it's actually only Wednesday but hey, take this as a sign to take some initiative, and keep to it each Monday at minimum if you're actively writing!

What's Media Preservation Monday, you may ask?

MPM is your reminder to back up your writing at least three ways at least once a week or whenever you make major changes to your document(s).

Here's some incredibly easy ways to back up your writing:

One your Master Document(s), put a date on the file name, and every day you make changes, "Save As" the Document and change the date. Do this every time or day you make major changes.

Example: You start writing your Novella November Story on November 1st.

You name your master document "Novnov Project 11-01-2024"

The next day, you write some more, and at the end of your writing session, you go to save your document, and instead of simply hitting "Save" you choose "Save As" and save the new copy of the Document as "Novnov Project 11-02-2024".

You now have two copies of your project, and if you keep this up throughout the whole month, you will have a live snapshot of your writing progress.

Each day or after each major writing session, open up the folder containing your document, and back it up. The Easiest and simplest way to do this is to simply email it to yourself, but you can also create multiple backups by:

Save a copy of your dated Master Document(s) to different locations on your Hard-drive, to an external hard-drive, to a thumbdrive, etc.

If you're writing offline on a writing program like Libreoffice, upload a copy of your Master Document(s) to your preffered Cloud-based Writing Program of your choice.

Vice Versa: if you write on a Cloud-based writing program, download it to various offline-based locations.

Download the base document as well as download it as various ebook formats and send them to your ebook library on your phone or kindle or nook or reading app.

Make a personal discord server and upload the document/epub form of your Master Document(s) there [this is also a good way of making a kind of personal journal / diary etc]

Whatever you do, do not be complacent and assume nothing can happen to your writing. Back it up. Preserve it.

Don't have all of your hard work go down the drain because of one tiny unforeseen accident.

When it comes time to clean up your hardrive, always assume you don't have it backed up. Before deleting anything always take the time to copy it over to another physical drive or a cloud drive.

[karalovesallthegirls]

My wife has convinced me that I should create a cohesive archive of all the little ficlets and blurbs I write on here, so I have made Maybe Someday, a collection of stories I may or may not expand on someday. I am slowly adding stories to it as I find them. I have only somewhat recently started tagging my posts so it’ll take some digging to find some of the older ones but I feel like it’s what I should do!

So that’ll update periodically if u even care

[blindmagdalena]

First Time's the Charm

18+ 6.5k homelander x virginal reader. loss of virginity, virginity kink, fingering, mutual masturbation, penetrative sex, cunnilingus, light spanking, blow jobs, praise kink, light breath play, dirty talk. snapshot-style fics of homelander being your first in a variety of acts. AO3. fic directory

You're Homelander's biggest fan, and he's thrilled to take your virginity.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three ( male!reader ver. )

[marlynnofmany]

Note for someone to turn into a story: one way to give the middle generation/s on a generation ship a purpose in life, aside from "raise the children whose children will eventually land on the colony world," could be as creators of art and story. Music too.

Just imagine: you have your whole life ahead of you with all the training and materials of this vast spaceship at your disposal, and all of society plans to revere the creative masterpieces you and your peers come up with.

No pressure.

But yes possibility.

[yes-no-maybe-soo]

I desperately want to be manhandled by Sylus, thrown down atop his bed, his full massive weight pressing down on me, not an inch separating our warm bodies, his big nose buried in the crook of my neck, his hot breaths flush against my sensitive skin, his sonorous growls and grunts hitting my ear as he slowly grinds against me, his lips biting and sucking and then kissing my neck and throat, before moving on to plant kisses all over my face, while he murmurs words of praise desire and worship in his deep sultry voice...

[ao3fujoshevik]

"the Photographer's 'second sight' does not consist in seeing but in being there. and above all, imitating Orpheus, he must not turn back to look at what he is leading -- what he is giving to me!"

link click: bridon arc | excerpts from camera lucida (roland barthes)

[comatosebunny09]

“He would never say that.”

It’s fanfiction.

“He would never do that.”

It’s fanfiction.

“I can’t stand when people write him as—”

Fanfiction.

“Can y’all please stop mischaracterizing—”

Altogether, now: fanfiction.

[ofcrowsanddragons]

In a universe where Lucanis may have slightly held Rook hostage when they first met:

Lucanis climbed up the face of the Lighthouse balcony that overlooked the courtyard. Waited until his instincts told him it was safe, checked again, and vaulted lightly over the railing of the balcony. Allowing himself to blend into the shadow of a pillar, he checked Rook's position again.

The younger Crow was alert, stepping back from where they'd been gripping the balcony railing and moving to put their back closer to the wall. Something eased in his chest as he recognized the caution in the Crow who was, effectively, Lucanis's contract holder. Decent instincts were a good place to start from.

"You can't hesitate like that again," said Lucanis, stepping out from behind the pillar.

He watched Rook's face intently. Crows were expressive, but they often didn't react with their first impulse, and Rook was no exception.

In an instant, Rook's countenance went from battle readiness to relief to annoyance, before Rook smoothed over the expression into a sharp smile. They'd learned that one from Teia.

"Which time was I supposed to blast your head off, Lucanis?" Rook asked. "Do you want to give me a place to start from?"

Make Rook. Understand! shouted Spite from somewhere within Lucanis's own mind, adding to his caution. Spite was too close to the surface.

"Back in the Ossuary," said Lucanis. "You let me get too close."

"In my defense," said Rook, gliding past Lucanis to approach the railing again, "We were looking for you." Rook looked away from him and hopped over the balcony railing to sit perched on it, leaving their legs to dangle over the edge.

Leaving their back exposed to Lucanis. To Spite.

Spite's voice curled in his ear, a whisper saying, Smells different. All Lucanis could see were endless scenarios play out against a mark, pushing them from a balcony or stabbing them neatly in the back, winding a garrote around their neck or throwing a poison dart at their exposed skin.

"And I found you instead," said Lucanis, approaching Rook from behind. He put a hand on the railing next to them and leaned forward until his armor knocked against Rook's casual clothes. "And I could have killed you. Easily."

Lucanis contented himself with the sharp intake of breath from Rook. He knew from his own training that fear carved its lessons deeply.

"Cinnamon and peaches," said Spite, laughing darkly. "Training leather and spice. No. Spite!"

Lucanis tuned out the demon as he desolved into giggles. Evil giggles.

"Lucanis," breathed Rook, and Lucanis could hear the smile bleeding into the word, "Are you worried about me?" Rook leaned back into Lucanis, twisting until they could see the man's face, catching their balance partially on the bulwark of his chest. One of Rook's hands left the railing and their knuckles scraped lightly against his armor. "I'm pretty sure I can take whatever you're willing to throw at me."

Lucanis simultaneously wondered what Rook would have done if he had contact poison on his plate, and wondered what it would have felt like if he wasn't wearing armour. He was definitely blaming Teia for this.

He stepped back abruptly. Rook caught their own balance with grace, tilting back safely on the balcony and flipping artfully, coming back to their feet and looking Lucanis in the eye.

He growled. "This isn't a game, Rook!"

"It hasn't been a game for a long time," Rook observed, studying him as intently as he had attempted to do with their expressions. "All right, Lucanis," they said, letting all trace of seduction fall from their tone and stance, "No games. Tell me what you want from me."

His eye was caught by Spite, who had appeared just between them and to the side, head tilted curiously. Lucanis felt boxed in by the wall and the pair of them, so he tore his gaze away and let it drift over the rest of the Lighthouse, beyond Rook's shoulder.

"I'll kill your gods," said Lucanis.

"And...?" asked Rook, their voice an invitation.

"To do that," said Lucanis, "I need you not to get yourself killed. You're a mage—"

"And you're the Demon of Vyrantium," said Rook, sounding like they had come to some sort of an understanding. It seemed unlikely. "Well, I can't promise that I won't be in the thick of things," and here Rook spread their hands wide, giving a mock bow, "But I do trust you to have my back."

And with that, Rook hopped onto the railing, balanced on the ball of one foot, and flipped backwards as they fell into the space below.

Lucanis didn't hear the assassin's landing on the cobblestones below. He leaned heavily on the wall, closing his eyes.

"That's what I'm afraid of."

---

From the same universe as "Knife to Meet You", where Rook and Neve had a slightly more antagonistic first meeting with Lucanis in the Ossuary.

[orcboxer]

If you used to have a southern us accent but got trained out of it, my goal is to deprogram the midwest out of you. We can't let them gentrify dialects. I want to see more scientists out there explaining their research with the twangy accents their parents had. If I have to hear people call my family's accent "ugly" or "unprofessional" one more time I'm gonna fuck

[shoezuki]

There was never a point where Qlipoth was not. No moment of sudden existence, no prelude to His divinity nor a point where matter gathered into Aeonhood. He always Was, and always will Be.

He does not know when life burst into existence or what started it. The specks of life were far beneath His awareness, growing and evolving and developing within the blinks of eons that passed by Qlipoth's notice. Maybe life was always there, maybe it grew from the shattered atoms of the Leviathans Qlipoth smashed to pieces as they krept out of the Nothing behind the foundations of His Wall. Whatever it was, wherever mortal life came from, He was oblivious to it.

It was once life developed to the point of sentience, to feeling, that Aha popped into existence. Qlipoth would spend the rest of His existence wishing he'd been aware of life, so maybe He could squish it out before Aha could become the longest lasting thorn in Qlipoth's side.

Aha was a molecular flash of light, a pop of noise sudden and so small Qlipoth shouldn't have even noticed it. But He did, suddenly so hyperaware of the atomic presence that suddenly manifested in the cosmos with Him. It stilled His hammer, made Him turn a few rare degrees away from His Wall, and lurch forward at the small being of air and light and noise.

Aha couldn't speak, couldn't think, couldn't grasp much of anything. Its form was incomplete, shaky and made up of the barely existing thoughts and feelings of sentient creatures that Qlipoth didn't know existed until this very moment. It could move, barely, flickering between atoms as a divine electron.

It couldn't speak. But it could laugh. It cackled, shrill vibrating sounds that echoed between dark matter and the empty space of the universe. It laughed, and laughed and laughed until it's laughter became it's name-- mere seconds right before Qlipoth swung His hammer and dissolved the Aeon into nothing.

Qlipoth settled back into His isolation and went back to building the Wall.

That should have been it. The molecular Aeon should have ceased to exist.

Mortal life evolved further, from shivering molecules to singular cells, to multicellular organisms and shimmering, immaterial beings of sensations. Qlipoth noted it a bit more now, more out of concern for His Wall or any other strange beings that will crop up, but nothing more.

Aha's burst into existence was bigger, more prevalant, just as sudden and overwhelming to Qlipoth's infinite senses as before. He never noticed the fragments of Aha, scattered between atoms, nor how they suddenly snapped altogether once more into a being more developed than before. Aha had a form now, mismatched swirls of varying limbs and claws and tentacles much like the immature physical forms of the mortal life Aha spawned from. Aha was made up of colours that didn't exist yet, sounds that had no place in Qlipoth's quiet galaxies.

The new Aeon was just as small to Qlipoth, but was still so much more than the first time it popped up those thousands of years ago. It instantly started to laugh, but it couldn't do much more than that, it's attempts at speech cheery garbled nonexistent words.

For the first time in Qlipoth's endless existence, He felt something, an emotion breaching the divinity -- annoyance.

Aha cackled and tried to speak up at Him, undulating limbs vibrating and thrown around in something like cheer. Qlipoth's reaction was near instant, a pivot from His Wall and a swing of His hammer. But Aha knew better then, no doubt remembering the scattering of it's being as it zipped across the universe and narrowly avoided being dissolved once more. Aha gigglees in a way that shakes stars and Qlipoth simmered with new feelings that burned across His gargantuan form. The miniscule Aeons gargled non-speech tempted Him to strike again, but Qlipoth just barely resisted and returned to His Wall.

Aha hovered around Qlipoth for an indescribable amount of time. It challenged Him, toeing closer and closer to the Wall, seeing how close it could get before Qlipoth snapped and swung at it. Sometimes Aha gets scattered again, not dodging quick enough, only taking a few centuries to reform, only for Aha to return to testing Qlipoth's patience. It's only fitting that the very first game is entirely built on bothering the much larger Aeon.

Annoyance, frustration, and rage were all becoming familiar feelings to Qlipoth. It's all fixated on Aha, the sole fixation of His emotions. The cause of it, Qlipoth eventually realized; when Aha is scattered or it's flickering attention pulled elsewhere, Qlipoth's entire existence returned to the unfeeling need to protect, to build, to close off the universe from the Nothing. The moments and decades between the Elation being shattered and reforming feel like intermissions, waiting for Aha to return.

Qlipoth at some point realized He welcomed the strange, small Aeon and the range of feeling it instilled in Him. Qlipoth stopped shattering the Aeon so much, only when Aha decided to be truly bothersome and started picking away at the Wall. It seems like the other Aeon can't be destroyed anyways, and maybe He doesn't always want it gone anymore.

There's other Aeons. They creep into existence, ascending to divinity. Qlipoth paid them no mind, not caring where or when or how they begin. Long seemed to simply always exist, perhaps having been outside of Qlipoth's notice this whole time. HooH appeared a few times to judge the Wall, their twin gazes seeming to find the structure satisfactory every time they appeared while Qlipoth continued to build unbothered. The Voracity is pummeled and nearly destroyed when they consume a segment of the Wall, Qlipoth leaving them to scamper back into the Nothing and lick their wounds. Oroboros lays low for centuries after that but does not tempt Qlipoth's ire again.

Qlipoth wouldn't care much about them, wouldn't know anything about the other Aeons or anything kept within His Wall really, if Aha wasn't constantly blabbering to Him.

"Aha likes this Trailblaze guy," it hummed, sitting on empty space up by Qlipoth's shoulder, kicking it's legs back and forth. Aha is larger now, no longer a molecule in comparison to His size but more of a pebble, a bug. It's form is made up of strange manmade objects, grinning masks and musical instruments and toys and ribbons. "They're funny! And much less standoffish than you are, you hunk of rocks."

Aha giggled at Qlipoth's rumbling reply, the sound of tectonic plates shifting and meteors crackling apart. Aha's voice was a symphony of many, hundreds of different tones and words spoken in hundreds of different accents and languages. Verbal speech isn't necessary, something Qlipoth always made abundantly clear in His otherworldly responses. Aha never listened, just laughed Qlipoth off and waved one of many gloved hands. It always was one for theatrics.

"Hey! It's not Aha's fault your a stick in the mud." There was the sound of a slow landslide, debris and gravel scraping over a slanted rockface. "It means you're boring, old, and not cool at all. Which you aren't! At least Akivili knows how to cut loose. They got some big ideas, something about trains and space faring or whatever. Aha is excited to see where that goes!"

A harsh sound of stone snapping, and Aha paused, leaning forward and holding up their grinning mask face with a twitching hand. Qlipoth refused to acknowledge them. "If Aha wanted to hang out with Akivili, it would be with them now." His grumble was a slow collision of planets. "My dear Qlipoth, are you jealous?"

Qlipoth didn't respond, which was definitely the worst choice He'd made. Aha giggled, then snorted, then cackled and vibrated as it shifted the surrounding stars around it's glee. Aha finally settled down and controlled itself after a few years, sitting down on Qlipoth's shoulder with a sigh. Qlipoth halfhearted swatted at the other Aeon, who dodged effortlessly after eons of practice.

"Ahhh, that's funny. You're funny sometimes, y'know that?" Aha exhaled, wiping at diamond tears from its eyes. "Aha takes back the 'stick in the mud' thing. Really, though, you're a good friend." A hummed sound of a mountain forming, earth's crust cracking. "It means Aha likes being around you and likes your company. It's a mortal concept-- Aha knows, it knows! That's very below you, oh majestic Amber Lord you, but. Aha likes it."

There was silence. Qlipoth, as always, had nothing to say, but Aha's lack of constant stammering and babbling is notable. It was almost a bit unnerving, until Aha sucked in a sharp, unnecessary breath. "Aaaaaanyways, what was Aha saying? Oh! Yeah, Akivili is interesting, but this other guy-- the Propagation? They've got a name but it's way too long and boring-- is kinda concerning. They are just gross and they have no personality! Seriously, they're becoming a bit of a problem. Just a massive bug hivemind... Aha tried talkin' to some of them, but they don't understand Aha's jokes. No class, I say. Oh, and Aha hasn't seen HooH in a while, because they tried to organize Aha into two categories last time. Aha blew up a planet of their worshippers after that but they didn't care. Hey, have you seen Oroboros around anywhere? Aha has been wondering what would happen if they try and swallow Aha, but..."

Qlipoth didn't like how Ena the Order looked at Aha.

Aha was a force of chaos, as unpredictable and uncontained as the growing mortal populations the Elation seems to love so dearly. It ran around the vast universe constantly, always on the move and causing problems. Aha returned to Qlipoth fairly regularly but still sparodically, sometimes centuries between visits at the Wall, and sometimes thousands of years before it returned to pester Him. Regardless, Aha always brought emotions back to Qlipoth's awareness, the capacities for frustration, annoyance, interest, irritation, and maybe contentment. Aha brought first hand accounts of the chaos it caused, too; planets destroyed or warped into strange shapes, galaxies rearranged so that their gravity sang a sweeter tune, populations of sentient creatures made to dance and weep and scream. Aha tipped the universe out of balance, danced on the edge of the Nothing and along all other Paths, all for entertainment.

Qlipoth did not like how Ena watched the Elation. Qlipoth did not watch any other Aeon like He did Ena; the Order crossed Paths with the Elation often, tidying up Aha's messes and rearranging the chaos Aha created. Even the kinder things Aha did, planets moved to spin at a calmer rate and starforms turned beautiful arrays of colour, were all fixed with Ena's mechanical, methodical hands.

Ena looked at Aha's uncertainty and rampant emotional chaos like She wanted to solve it, fix it, be rid of it.

The Propagation was expanding outside of Qlipoth's notice, His knowledge of it only due to Aha's complaining. Ena confronted him with a proposition, a deal. Spoken in vibrations, constant tones. The Propagation needed to be exterminated. Qlipoth did not care.

The Propagation was killing thousands of mortals, was overtaking the universe. Qlipoth gathered and spawned more minerals for the Wall. The Propagation could kill Aha, the Elation, along with the universe. The mention of Aha sparked enough sentience to make Qlipoth rumble with a mockery of a laugh.

Ena's hands crackled, porcelain and gold joints crackling. Ena's eye swirled and landed on Qlipoth, fierce with threat. Qlipoth finally paused and looked at the other Aeon, and accepted the proposition.

The Order is absorbed before Qlipoth confronts Tayzzyronth, Xipe the Harmony overcoming Order and standing alongside the Aeons as Qlipoth fractures the Propagation with His hammer. Aha watched with interest, cheering and screaming and celebrating far too loudly as Qlipoth seals the remnants of Tayzzyronth in amber. Xipe watched Aha's pluming sparkles and confetti, his raoucous chaos and disorder, and their giggle sounds like a symphony.

Qlipoth found himself content with Xipe. Ena held up Her side of the deal well.

Aha started adding to the Wall.

At first it was to annoy Qlipoth, grabbing meteors and debris and strange starforms and shoving them into the Wall without care. But the first time made Him vibrate and rumble with approval, sounding of the pop of plants rising from earth and stones being weathered down smooth. That had made Aha freeze deadly still more than any annoyed retort or swing of His hammer had before, made the Elation stare at Him strangely. Being met with even Qlipoth's stony gratitude rather than being the brunt of frustration seemed to make Aha glitch.

Aha, of course, proceeded to plunge it's hands into the Wall and rearrange the physical matter, not even bothering to run when Qlipoth slammed His hammer down on the Aeon. Aha's particles shattered against the Wall.

Aha reformed some time later, cursing Qlipoth out in every language possible, but Aha kept adding to the Wall. It was always strange, unnecessary things; sparkling gems, debris from shipwrecks, the fossilized remains of extinct animals, manmade creations that stuck out awkwardly. Aha shifted the Wall and created statues in the Elation's likeness, hundreds of thousands of Aha figures jutting from the Wall. But it never broke the Wall or interferred with its integrity every again. Aha's additions to the Wall barely made a difference, were barely noticeable. But Qlipoth found Himself humming with contentment each time Aha added another knicknack to it.

Qlipoth watched on as Aha waltzed along the Wall, nearly tripping into the Nothing as it danced and sang, recreated plays and theatre performances it stole from humans. Qlipoth could only feel when Aha was around, but it had taken Him until those moments to really feel some appreciation for a Path other than His own.

Other Aeons came into existence.

Yaoshi sprung to life from twisted plantmatter, intertwining into something greater. Aha first found interest in this, then grew bored of the single-minded desire to grow for the sake of growth itself. "You'd think growing and eternal life and all that would lead to more fun," Aha once lamented, "but Yaoshi makes those mortals so... dull. They become numb and wither away. Where's the fun in that?"

Lan rose in response to Yaoshi, a being of pure rage and a thirst for blood. Aha poked and prodded and mocked until arrows rained across the cosmos, green strikes of lightning briming with rage as Aha laughed and danced around them. Sometimes he hid behind Qlipoth who never even flinched as the arrows striked His back, and rarely did Lan hit his mark. Nous made Aha uncomfortable in contrast, but intrigued him in a strange way. "That bucket of metal wants to dissect Aha," the Elation would shiver, faces crying in exagerated unison, "wants to pin Aha to a board in her library. You should kill Nous." Aha wept further at the sound of stars crumbling with Qlipoth's refusal.

Qlipoth had turned towards Nanook when Aha regaled tales of being threatened, but thankfully found that the Destruction was unimpressed with the smallest Aeon, easily fooled by Aha's childishness. Fuli showed clear disdain for Aha as it stole human memories for itself, but unlike Ena at least they showed enough restraint to ignore Aha.

IX was a challenge to the Elation. Mythus was hilarious, and Terminus couldn't take a joke.

Aeons fell, too.

Idrila ceased to be and Aha quickly masqueraded as the Beauty, sending Knights of Beauty and wild journeys. Long fragmented eons ago, outside of Qlipoth's notice.

The arrows Lan sent racing towards Aha rarely hit their mark, but sometimes they did. Piercing rays of rage, hot-white anger would send Aha scattering in a burst of laughter. Aha would always, always reform.

Aha had always had an interest in mortals. In the smaller aspects of the universe. So often when rambling to Qlipoth it spoke of legions of starhopping amphibians, movies or plays it'd plucked from mortal memory and kept to itself, the overly intricate ships humans made to traverse galaxies, the strange games and music and drinks they created through their small existences.

"Have you ever left this Wall, Qlipoth?" Aha once asked, placing jewelry and gems on the Wall, "ever even like, turned around and looked at what you're preserving?" There's an echo of thunder, of earthquakes settling. "Yes yes, Aha gets it! It's all beneath you, it doesn't matter, blah blah. You old bastard."

There was a stitled moment of silence, save for Aha's constant humming, before it whined again. "But, really! You Aeons are all so high and mighty and stuck up sometimes. Have you ever even tried to eat some food? Like, something those mortals cooked up? Wait. Do you even have a mouth."

Qlipoth's minerals clattered against each other in response. Aha huffed, crossed it's dozens of arms, masks swirling upside down. "... Y'know, Akivili hangs out with mortals. And Akivili has a mouth."

He didn't respond, but the next swing of His hammer crushed a fleet of surveying IPC ships. Aha applauded.

"Aha made a puppet," the Elation reported to Qlipoth much, much later. It had been an extensive amount of time since Aha visited Him last, but Qlipoth would never let Aha know he kept track. "Aha put the puppet on one of Akivili's Astral Expresses. It was a lot of fun, but it wasn't Aha. So Aha blew it up! You should've seen Akivili's face!" Aha cackled, kicking it's feet and tumbling far too close into the Nothing. The Elation didn't even seem to notice how Qlipoth pulled it back behind His Wall, too busy rejoicing in what it did.

Akivili fell not long after.

When Aha visited next, Qlipoth didn't need to say a thing to have the other Aeon huffing, it's hackles raising and millions of bells furiously ringing. "Aha had nothing to do with that, you heap of rocks! To accuse your dearest friend, Aha, of that! For shame." Qlipoth's garguantuan body grinds against itself as He tilts his head, riling it up further. "Don't give Aha that bullshit! You were thinking it! Aha could hear the thought clattering 'round that pebble mind of yours. Really, it blows up one Astral Express and suddenly Aha is the Akivili killer. Ridiculous!"

Qlipoth just tuned out Aha's rambling, turning back to the wall and not noticing when Aha enters an unsettling silence.

Something changed in Aha ever since its stint on the Express.

Aha had always been a being of pure energy, flighty and erratic as it sought out thrills across the universe. Even the moments it spent on Qlipoth's Wall were full of energy, rambling about nothing and bouncing atop and across the Wall.

But the Elation had become quiet. It's journeys and chaotic jokes across the galaxies never stilled, but it became quiet in His shadow. There wasn't any rambling gossip, complaints about the other 'stuck up' Aeons or stories of the Elation Aha had created. It became pensive, a pensiveness overtaking it's constantly anxious energy. It was strange, and uncanny. Qlipoth found Aha's restless melancholy contagious. Qlipoth tried not to wonder, not to care.

"Aha has decided," Aha hummed out a single note, a voice of low cords, "to make itself mortal."

Aha was always reckless and idiotic, never one to think anything through. It's actions were always spur of the moments, never planned or deliberated over. It had never told Qlipoth what it wanted to do before. This wasn't the Aeon asking for advice let alone permission, more like it musing aloud, but Qlipoth still responded.

The sound of planets colliding, the slow and agonizing growth of the edge the universe. Stars crackling and burning themselves into extinction, intercepting galaxies leaving only destruction. Qlipoth's disgust and disapproval made the Nothing quiver. Aha was unaffected.

"Aha talked to Nous," it continued, laying back on one of the many meteors that make up His body. The Elation felt like a smoldering jubilation against His rocky surface. "She said it's impossible and got way too interesting, but Aha is gonna do it anyways."

There's never a point in arguing with Aha, not that Qlipoth ever bothered to before. He doesn't then either, doesn't say anything as Aha zips away without a word, leaving sounds of soft revelry in its wake.

Qlipoth found what remained of Aha later. Aha never returned after that last visit, and all that was left of it was butchered remains, the Elation flayed and left in scattered limbs and objects beside the Nothing. Whatever was left of Aha wasn't there, not among it's still living dismembered corpse.

The remains of Aha wasn't enough to spark any feeling in Qlipoth. As He built the Wall He only paused a moment with recognition, no feelings of melancholy, rage, annoyance. Qlipoth did not care.

But, as the eternally growing Wall approached the remains of Aha, Qlipoth moved it, shifted the Celestial Wall to encase Aha, wrapping around it in a cocoon of amber.

[multiversal-pudding]

I still wonder…

Like. Seb’s document said he broke out while he was being transported

where was he being transported *to?*

Were they just changing where he was contained in the Blacksite? Doubtful given he was still given free enough reign to work on equipment during that time- he probably could’ve just moved himself, maybe with guards

Was he going to another site entirely? It’s implied Urbanshade has multiple sites even if Hadal is one of the main ones-

Were they going to sell him off? I mean- Urbanshade has a history of putting anomalies up for auction, both the Limited Time Imaginary Friend document and the Abstract Art files mention them selling off anomalies they don’t have a use for that aren’t something worth Neutralizing (or the other way around, too useless to sell), we know there’s other companies out there who’d probably have Use for a giant mutant- likely things that wouldn’t be good for him either like some kind of military use/Rich Weirdo Collector type stuff also

Did he even know? He waited 10 years to enact his plan- was it just the first chance he got, or did something happen?

[dividedskiesrp]

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[whumpster-dumpster]

"I'm not afraid to die."

"You should be. You might live longer."