#rezny

[rezny]

On this week’s episode of “New hair, who dis?”

[fireworkwitch]

Yeses, I've finally drawn The Korol Rezni

[zoyalaisobachka]

Nikolai: If I go through with this, I die. If I don't go through with this, we all die. Genya: I'm worried about how quickly you are to sacrifice your life. Nikolai: That's how legends are made. Zoya: No, that's how being stupid is made.

[imafuckinggrimreaper]

Calling my boy "bastard" because I love my bastards, iykwim

[savethegrishaverse]

For our next twitter party, we want to explore the mysteries surrounding Nikolai Lantsov, the Darkling, and the demons that haunt them both! Join us with the hashtag #KorolRezni! Come prepared with your best tweets, questions, comments, gifs, memes, and more. Let's make some noise! 🗣️

#SaveShadowAndBone and #SixOfCrowsSpinoff TWEETING PARTY 3/13 at 1PM! Come check it out here!

Remember to:

Only use three hashtags.

Enjoy and be engaging with your tweets! Keep sharing! Timezones under read more.

If you cannot attend, you can always schedule tweets ahead of time on desktop in order to help out still!

ALL TIMEZONES: Wednesday, Mar 13: 9am PST 10am MST 11am CST 1pm EST 2pm -03 5pm GMT 6pm CET 8pm MSK 9pm +04 10:30pm IST

Thursday, Mar 14: 1am CST 2am JST 4am AEST 6am NZST

[ravkanfoxprince]

Staying up all night grants you with views like this.

[lollipop-1103]

I don’t really post on here myself but here’s some Nikolai fan art I made

[fivemournersonefuneral]

David: Nikolai, did you take my thesaurus?

Nikolai: I'm shocked you would even think that.

Nikolai: Not just shocked, stunned, aghast, stupefied, astounded, dismayed, astonished, flabberghasted.

[ricardian-werewolf]

Chapter 3: Take my Hand, I'll drown you with me.

Ao3 Link Summary: The Darkling besieges the Spinning Wheel, chaos rages, and all the best plans are laid to waste. It is up to the team to regroup as best they can, and for the Too-clever Fox to begin to grapple with something inside him. Tws: The Darkling is his own Trigger Warning, violence, gore, the work of the Nichevo'ya.

Pre/Post Notes:

This is a long chapter, so strap in! I might eventually split the two up, but that depends. Enjoy! This chapter's title is taken from the song So Human of You.

Chapter snippet below the cut

Shall I show you what I see, Little Saint?

Alina’s vision went white, and she watched with horrified eyes what the Darkling saw from his birds-eye view, where he hovered above the Spinning wheel. Held aloft by his Nichevo’ya, he was an angel of Darkness, and it suited him, she had to admit. 

The Nichevo'ya, with their screeches and nightmarish claws, were throwing themselves against the glass windows, which were spider webbing with cracks. Not even Zoya and Nadia could throw them back. Where one fell, another three took its place. Harshaw’s inferni powers burned through one, but he shrieked in rage as another’s claws tore through his shoulder blade.

Adrik fell headlong, and he got his arm ripped clean off. His screams filled the air, and all through the hell, as the cries of the Grisha children filled the air, the Darkling laughed. 

See, Alina. This is what defiance is. Now, imagine this all over Ravka. I will make you bend the knee, Little Saint. You will live nowhere but in my court. Oh, I will make you suffer. Your little rebellion is burning around you. And, even better, you cannot even summon!

The view she was witnessing changed, and she nearly vomited all over the floor at the sudden shift in perspective and direction. She found herself back at Nikolai’s side, except she was seeing it through the eyes of a hulking Nichevo’ya at the other end of the hallway . Dominik’s bullets did nothing, nor did Nikolai’s.

She watched his fingers reach for the gold epaulets on his shoulders, and she heard an audible crunch as something happened. Whatever remained of the epaulet was shoved down the barrel of his pistol, and Alina felt the Nichevo’ya’s cry in her bones as the bullet rang true.

This one burned.

The lights around them flickered erratically. The pipes groaned in their casings. Somewhere, Alina smelled burning. She’d no idea if it was flesh or fuel. Gunfire rang out, screams accompanying it. Colonel Nevsky and the 22nd were going to be slaughtered.

“Stop this!” Alina screamed.

“Why should I?” The tether snapped, and Alina hit the ground with a sickening thud.

[beanslushee]

sturmhond

sobachka

korol rezni

the demon king

the king of ravka

prince perfect

the too-clever fox

nikolai lanstov, the man that you are. i love you.

[zoyalaisobachka]

Nikolai, hands on his hips, standing at the lakeshore watching the bubbles on the surface from his latest experiment crashing into the lake: Hmm not my best work...what if i tell people it was supposed to go under water?

And thus, the submarine plans were born.

[the-witch-of-woods-beyond]

“Brave in battle, smart as a whip. An excellent dancer. Oh, and an even better shot.”

- nikolai lantsov, the demon king: ruin and rising, ch. five

[smolandweirdwriter]

if a nikolina plot line occurs and usurps zoyalai I WILL be fighting netflix with my bARE FUCKING HANDS they already cut out so much of zoya being spiteful and i hATE IT GIVE ME ZOYA BEING MORE THAN AN ALINA PLOT DEVICE OR GIVE ME DEATH

[swiftievolturra]

Nikolai's face when he realizes being a king is mostly paperwork: "And they said ruling would be glamorous. I didn’t sign up for this. Where's my throne of snacks?"

[thatfangirlofsb]

A/N: Here comes the fanfic that I "promised" after posting that little fact (you can read it here).

T/W: Grishaverse spoilers, until the third book.

Like a sankta

The stream of air wasn't enough. Zoya didn't know if the king, during his long hours as a monster, had eaten any sheeps or goats he'd found around; the only thing that was clear to her was how her grisha powers couldn't keep him in the air anymore. The exhaustion after the battle had also helped.

She watched, in slow motion, as he fallen to the ground. She had no other choice, it was try to catch him with her arms or wait quietly for him to fall and, because of that, die and Ravka getting into some problems when still hadn't gotten out of others. She stepped forward and stretched out her arms, trying to calculate the area in which one that blond boy would fall. From that height it could be deadly.

And she sighed with relief when she felt that weight on her arms, but quickly that sigh turned into a groan of pain as she felt her legs tremble and she fell backwards, taking the stunned king with her.

"Saints, do you know how much money you're going to spend from Ravka's coffers if they have to make you new outfits?" Zoya's voice rose into the air, though she quickly silenced herself as she watched the young king stare at her. He was too close, and he looked extremely handsome to have been a creepy monster minutes before. "I could get used to this."

"Am I dead?"

The squaller couldn't help but let out a small laugh, it seemed that the king wasn't only crazy; but also had a great sense of humor. He was earning more and more points.

"No, but you weigh like one." However, Zoya didn't mind that so much, although in some moments she felt a bit uncomfortable with that weight on her.

"I'm dead." The blue-eyed grisha looked at him confused, had he lost his hearing when he returned to his human form? "Don't lie to me, it's impossible for you to be alive."

"What?" Now the beauty of that young king had passed into the background. Had he hit his head at some point during his adventure? She didn't know, although it seemed that he did. That, or he liked to annoy the people who save his life. Poor guards and commanders that will have to look after him.

"You are a sankta." And between the desesperación and dead, she laughed. Some people had called her so many names to flatter her, and also to insult her, but no one had ever said that. "And I have died, so you have come to receive me."

"If that were true, I would have better things to do than welcome a fallen king." She rolled her eyes, that boy was different from what the squaller expected. Another mad king for daring to shoot the Darkling, but different at the same time. "So rise up and claim your throne, your majesty. We haven't lost that many lives for nothing. When you do, I can plan a little reception."

"No, I'm not falling for that. I want the truth." And then he returned with slight anger in his tone of voice. He was acting like a little child, and Zoya was changing more and more her opinion about him. "You are too beautiful to be alive."

"Thanks?"

"What sankta are you?"

"I am not a sankta."

"What sankta are you?"

If he wasn't crowned yet... would his murder still be considered regicide? The temptation was too big to wait and look for her answer in the law books.

"I am not..."

"Don't lie to me." Zoya rolled her eyes again, and hoped that the king had realized that was better to stop. But not. "I stopped keeping the light on in my room at fourteen, I'm not a little boy anymore. You can tell me the truth, and also if they created long elegies in my honor. It'll be difficult to find so many synonyms for handsome, but I know they can. " And he was going to be their king? Thanks all the saints, if anyone was really listening, she wouldn't have to put up with it. Zoya felt sorry for the person who was going to took over as general after Kirigan, but not too badly because she forget about it. "I had thought of beautiful, dazzling, spring flower, rose..."

"Then stop thinking." The squaller pushed him away, causing his body to roll to the side and land on the sand. "Poor Alina, she's going to have to put up with a lot. I don't envy her." She got up carefully, smoothing her kefta before putting her arms on her hips and looking down at him. The hazel-eyed gaze of the king was still surprised, and she was already getting tired of it. "Come on, I have to take you somewhere."

"I knew it! You're a…"

"If you dare to repeat sankta again, you are going to meet one. And this time for real."

[ricardian-werewolf]

1. Before - Don't Let the stars get in your eyes.

Ao3 Link

@lordbettany

Summary:

"Just our hands clasped so tight, waiting for the hint of a spark. If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied Illuminate the "no"s on their vacancy signs If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks Then I'll follow you into the dark" - Death Cab for Cutie. **** 1929. Four years have passed since the end of Ruin and Rising. In that time, Nikolai and Alina have become Ravka's Tsar and Tsaritsa-Consort. Discontent with the rampant corruption and issues of Ravkan society, they've moved towards industrialization. However, in their hunger for modernization and competition with the larger nation states around them, looms the threat of loosing their souls to the grindstone. For war and societal changes looms large in the minds of many Europeans, and the darkness that waits just in the background is worse than even the Fold. **** An AU of King of Scars that works around the plot for some great Nikolina moments and changes the ending, with some noticeable changes also along the way.

Tws: None.

Chapter below the cut.

Before

The Little Prince and Saint had settled down. 

Time, four years of it, had been kind to them. In that time, however, war rumbled in the distance. The West and East were building towards a great conflict. The maps of their little garden of Eden that had been their world were redrawn hastily. The Little Saint helped much in that effort. But, even she couldn’t keep up with the changing countries names and identities. The maps expanded further when the Little Prince - now the Little Tsar - told the little Saint of a land beyond even the Atlantic sea. A strange and wonderful place for them, but a place full of evils older than Ravka’s own. Yet this evil was not of some creation, but human in origin. Ravka had it too, but it wasn’t spoken of. 

Around them, as Europe grappled with a roaring decade of jazz, alcohol and scandalous dancing, its evils also began to come to the front. Germany was simmering in the shadows with an evil even darker than anything the Starless Saint pinned on the Lantsovs. Soviet Russia, too, grappled with its own evils. However, no one was told of it. The brutality of a war simply referred to only as “The Great War,” destroyed men’s minds and the coffers of great states. Countries could do only so much to help their destroyed soldiers. The Little Tsar did more than many of these countries, spearheading ways forward for Ravka that ensured her neutrality. She had fought in enough wars, and now the country needed time to heal. But, healing would not come easily. 

West Ravka was in the midst of desiring to secede, coaxed out by the Kerch. Fjerda, ruled now by the Little Tsar’s sister, was experiencing growing pains of her own - a sect of traditionalists, headed by Jarl Brum of the old Drüskelle, hungered to bring war to Ravka. But the Little Tsar and Saint would stand strong. In that strength, however, came a realization. They would have to modernize. So, with puffs of steam and the groaning of machinery, modernity came crashing down like waves on a shoreline. Suddenly, where horses had once plowed the fields, machines of metal and gears did it for them. The Serfs were freed from their yokes at long last, and the Grisha no longer pressed into the Second Army. Ravka was moving towards possible futures not yet realized in the Little Tsar’s ancestors' lifetimes.

But the Little Tsar - The Korol Rezni - was grappling with his own evils. While the Starless Saint’s demon had receded within himself. It promised no evil toward its king, yet Ravka’s ministers were loath to support Korol Rezni’s dramatic and sweeping reforms. Behind gloved hands, they spoke of a demjinn king, Tsar of shadows and lies, who had been seduced to the bedchamber of the Sol Koroleva by dark arts. The Little Tsar did what he could to ignore their barbs, but those thorn-woods, sacred as they were, sunk deep within him. 

A change, therefore, was always in need. With that need came the desire for adoption of foreign courts’s methods of government and a desire for self representation. The Duma was given strength and legislative power, the likes of which had not been seen in its lifetime. The Little Tsar implemented many plans of civic building, assisting in the creation of great dams and reforming the roads for easier transport. Strange motor-carriages puffed smoke as they rattled from Os Alta to Os Kervo. Ships built not of wood, but steel, carried loads of wheat, spices and precious stones from East Ravka to lands far beyond Novi Zem. The Little Tsar hoped for trains, but the war machine ground down what few Vlacki remained in the state coffers. With the usage of the Tsar’s beloved Nolniki, the steel of the ships was hardened for battle-ships and slender creatures that cut through the oceans below. On land, steel became weapons of destruction the Fjerdans had perfected mere years before. But the Nolniki stole from every court from Tokyo to Washington, and brought back plans to their Tsar that promised horrors no man could fathom.

Some of those plans were used. With the mass market of industry, came goods replicated at cheaper prices for the average Ravkan to buy not with lines of credit from duplicitous creditors, but hard gold. Shortly, those steam-puffing carriages became common-household items. Speaking devices, allowing citizens of Os Alta to call family or soldiers in the far northern wastes, became present. Items as simple as a mere thing an American dignitary called a “Typewriter,” filled every office building and household from Chernast to Caryeva. 

Life once more filled the Great Palace, and with it, the patter of little feet on the ancient marble steps. Two children, a little girl with blonde hair like her father’s. The other, a boy, was her twin. He carried his mother’s dark hair, and both shared their father’s hazel eyes and his smile. Doted on by nannies and tutors alike, the two children had been born on the summer solstice, at midnight exactly. The girl was named Ana, for a former nanny, orphanage matron, and mentor. The boy, named for the Tsar’s father, and in a strange sense, the Starless Saint. Rumors followed the child wherever he went, but as Tsarevich, his strong health was a constant source of pride for both parents. He and his sister were inseparable, spoiled rotten, but equally loved. When they would age further, the kefta-clad Grisha would come with their strange potions and boxes. If the children were like their parents, then they would be educated at the palace across the lake in whatever small science their body called for. 

But now, they lived a life of relative peace, quiet, and safety. Their playmates were many, from palace servants' children to the children of ambassadors and royals. Unlike their father, who had been raised with only Dominik Vertov as his childhood playmate, Ana and Alexi were surrounded by fellows their own age. Alexi was tsarevich, yes, but Ana did not begrudge him. She was being trained in warfare and mapmaking, her skills honed to be a princess who led the armies her husband would command as well, if not better, than him. 

The crows, still six in their number, had settled into life in Ketterdam with royal marks of service in their hands, hearts lightened with love. Sturmhond, the notorious privateer that he was, had made good work of their skills many times. He brought gifts of blasting powders for the merchling, new pistols for the sharpshooter, a Fjerdan marriage certificate for the Drüskelle whose sword was always sharp, and a new ship for the Wraith. For the boy with the crow headed cane came gifts of bonds and stakes in markets from New York to Auckland. Bored with merely managing the monsters of the Barrel, Dirtyhands turned to playing the stock markets of Old Europe with a veracity that frightened generals of the old wars. Time would tell if those efforts bore fruit. For the Corpse-witch, Sturmhond gave bone-blades and a kefta of ruby red adorned with blood-red embroidery of the veins of the living. Rot tinged the red, signifying the power that she wielded as a result of parem. 

But the Little Tsar also worked to form a proper army, one that would defend her borders from threats within and without. With the Little Saint as his general of the Grisha and Dominik the Bold as General of the Otkaztat’sya, the three put their minds to the task. Their tireless work created a force that utilized the First, Second and Zeroes to create a Third Army capable of moving as both a single and disparate armies that worked across lines. Not content with merely using the nolniki for covert operations, the Little Tsar set to work creating a spy network headed by the elder Batarr twin that would put all other Military Intelligence systems to shame. With their agents versed in multiple languages and spread across courts and governments, the information they tracked and sent back to Ravka was invaluable. 

The Saints had been kind to the Lantsov lineage. Ravka had been remade by a prince and cartographer who had taken the banner of their country, and steered her to brighter shores. Yet, the darkness crept in at the corners of their pristine map, and threatened to undo it all. 

Only time could tell if they would survive united, or if their house would divide and crumble.

End of prelude.