#sea monster catalogue

[butterflykittensunshine]

Community characters as emoji

Jeff: 😏🤳

Britta: 😜✊

Abed: 🆒🍿

Troy: 🤯🚔

Shirley: ✝️🤗

Annie: 🥺💯

Pierce: 👻🧪

Chang: 😂🔪

Duncan: 🥴🍷

Dean: 💃🇫🇷

Hickey: 👊🫀

Frankie: 🙂🕊️

Elroy: 🤨💾

Slater: 👩‍🏫💕

Garrett: 😱🧴

Vicky: 🎶👒

Neil: 🔐🍠

Vice dean laybourne: 🌬️💸

Cornelius hawthorne: 🐘🕴️

TO BE CONTINUED RB WITH SUGGESTIONS

[blowjob-horseguy]

Steve opened his eyes and above him was a pale man with long curly hair. It fell like buoyant curtains of ringlets from either side of his head, obscuring their surroundings. The man frowned down at him with a fierceness that made Steve think for a second they had met in a tavern one night and Steve had done something to slight him.

Steve opened his mouth to speak and felt a sharp edge be pushed harder onto his throat. Steve's vocal cords froze. Whatever he did, it was really bad. Steve runs through a quick memory catalogue of all the men he's slighted recently and how, so he could know what to start apologizing profusely for.

Did he sleep with his woman? Did he sleep with his man? Did he win too much money from him? Did he lose too much money to him? None of those seemed right.

He considered briefly that he perhaps slept with the man himself but quickly dismissed the idea. If he had bedded anyone with hair like that and this passionate a disposition, he would not need to search for the memory.

He looked closer at his features. Hair so long it could easily be a maidens, and so dark it was almost blue. Thick, furrowed brows and lips thin and white, pressed tight together, sandwiched by dimpled cheeks. His skin was pale enough to look sickly and almost green in hue. Steve definitely would have remembered this face had he seen it before.

"You are awake" said the man.

His voice dragged like wood over coarse sand: like he wasn't used to speaking outloud. Steve got a glimpse of his teeth, Sharp and thin, unlike any other human teeth he had ever seen.

A chill ran down Steve's spine as he realized why.

This is no man; this is a Merrow!

Steve's mother had told him tales of these creatures.

When Steve answered the call to the sea, his mother warned him; beware of the sea maidens they may seem beautiful on the shore, but when they lure you to their home you see their true colors. Green skin and scaley behinds. Teeth sharp enough to tear through flesh, and claws the same.

The men are said to be even uglier, with the faces of hogs and catfish, and they drag sailors down to their dens to enslave them for eternity.

Steve has always been cautious about these monsters; avoiding the bright red cap that was the telltale sign of a merrow. The others on the ship have always ridiculed him for it, and now here he is in one of theirs's clutches.

and it's not... unattractive. Strangely.

"Speak" The merrow demanded

"Please let me go" Steve spoke, his voice breaking embarrassingly.

"Go where" the merrows eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Back to my ship."

"You will attack me."

"No, I won't I promise. I'm a peaceful man, very peaceful. Couldn't hurt a fly, me. Wouldn't even know where to start."

The jagged thing at Steve's neck pressed into his skin a little harder, Steve tried to lift his chin as far as it could go to get away, but he felt a small sting as the device broke his skin.

"All men lie."

"I'm not lying, I would never lie" Steve lied.

While far from the swashbuckling type, he has never shied away from a fight, especially when it comes to protecting his fellow crewmates. He's only been on the ship a few years, but he has improved his fighting form considerably from the naive nobleman's son he once was.

While he's not going to say it out loud, he probably would attack the thing, if given the opportunity.

The merrow didn't respond, just bored dark pools of black into Steve's soul. Steve silently pleaded back with his own eyes, just wanting to get out of this situation alive.

"Release me, I beg of you. I will cause you no trouble."

"I do not believe you, you will leave this place and call fleets of your men here to hunt me down." The merrow said panic evident in his voice now.

Steve's own panic subsided for a moment and he realized this creature did not seek to kill him for pleasure, but to avoid being killed itself.

Steve took a chance and lifted his hand to touch the pale arm that held the merrow aloft above him in a gesture he hoped conveyed comfort. He did so slowly, as not to startle, and gently so the merrow knew he had no intention to harm. The merrow eyed him wildly and with fear, but it allowed itself to be touched.

It's skin was cool to the touch and droplets fell from its skin as Steve wrapped his hand around its wiry forearm.

Steve tried to reach for his signature charm, the one his father swears he learned from him.

"I promise, I mean you no harm. I have no fleets of men. Half my fellows are so foolish they could not hunt down their own behinds" Steve said.

The merrow stared at him, eyes shifting about, looking him up and down for any hint of deception.

"I will not hurt or attack you, please just remove this device from my neck."

The Merrow seemed to steal it's resolve for a moment. then slowly the pressure was removed from Steve's neck. and the merrow slunk into water.

Steve sat up on the rocky shore. Without the creature's hair blocking out their surroundings, Steve saw he was in some sort of watery cave. Dark grey walls surrounded him as far as he could see, and a vast black lake stretched out in front of him. If only Steve could remember how he got here.

He looked back at the creature and saw the object that had been held to his neck was a jagged, broken shell that hadn't yet been worn smooth by the ocean. The merrow still held it nervously as it bobbed in the water at Steve's feet.

Even with half of it's body submerged, the merrow was nearly eye level with Steve. So either the water is shallow here, or the creature is of substantial size.

"Does this mean I'm free to leave?" Steve asked.

The merrow shook it's head. Black curls shaking out droplets of water with the motion.

"I cannot be sure that you won't return with weapons or more men" it said, "I searched your person while you were asleep, I took the dagger that hung around your middle, and the one on your leg."

How long had Steve been unconscious?

"Did you steal me away from my ship?" he had to ask.

The merrow looked offended at the suggestion.

"Steal you away? You intruded onto my home!" it said as it started rising out of the water. A jet black tail emerging slightly from the grey ocean.

Steve shrunk down and put his hands up in surrender.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know. I have no memory of arriving here."

The merrow was taken aback at that and shrunk down into the water again.

"You don't remember?" it asked

Steve shook his head.

"You washed up onto my shore. No man has ever seen my shore before. Your treasures wash up here when your ships crash in the sea outside, but no man has ever washed up with them before." it said, clearly at unease with the idea.

Steves heart fell. Does this mean his ship crashed? Is he the lone survivor? he doesn't think he can take the thought of being left without the friends he's made on that vessel.

"Did- did anything else wash up with me?" Steve asked.

The merrow shook its head.

"There hasn't been a wreck near here in months."

Steve felt his spirit lift. That could mean his crew mates are alive and well!

But then how did he end up here? Steve tries to remember. His head aches something fierce.

"Why does your face look like that?" The merrow asked.

Rude.

"My head hurts"

The creature cocked its head to one side.

"You creatures are strange and delicate. Have you hurt yourself?"

"Hurt myself? I only just woke up! It's more likely you hurt me, than I hurt myself!"

Steve clutched his head in one hand and gestured at the creature with the other. He feels rather helpless in this situation.

"I did not hurt you! I removed you from the water. You creatures are not supposed to be in there!" The thing pointed towards Steve with its shell, as if illustrating what 'creatures' it was talking about.

"Well then, however I got to be there is how I hurt my head" Steve explained, aggravated by this easily excitable monster he's found himself with.

The creature frowned at him for a moment and then faster than anything it dove under the water. It's tail following behind it in a lithe arc like a sea serpent.

Perhaps it is a sea serpent. A strange shrill sea serpent with very soft skin.

Almost as fast as it left, the thing burst back out of the water.

Steve flinched away from the splash.

"Hold out your hand" the merrow demanded.

Steve held both his hands closer to his body.

"Why?"

The merrow lunged forward and grabbed one of Steve's hands.

Steve yelled, startled, his feet scrambled at the stones beneath him trying to get away from the shockingly strong and clamy hand that held his arm tight, but his leather soles slipped on the wet rock and Steve stayed put.

And then something slimy and oddly coarse fell into his palm.

The merrow shoved Steve's own hand towards his face.

It was seaweed.

"Wh-"

"Eat it."

Steve's eyes shot up to meet the merrow's.

"Raw?!"

"It helps me when my head hurts. It will help you."

Steve grimaced at the yellowish-brown pile in his hand.

"Is it medicinal in some way?"

"It is food."

"Ah."

The merrow starred at him expectingly.

Steve starred right back.

"I'm not going to eat this."

"Then your head will continue to ache."

"I don't think the lack of edible gunk is the cause of my headache, I believe it to be the same thing that's causing my amnesia" Steve said shaking the offending object out of his hand, "I must have hit my head when I was washing up on your shore."

"Like I said; you are strange delicate creatures," the merrow reached out his unoccupied hand towards Steve, "come into the water."

Steve leaned as far away as he could manage.

"So you can drown me?"

The Merrow rolled his eyes. It looked remarkably human in that instance.

"So I can heal you"

He doesn't know if it's delirium or blood loss, but Steve grabbed the pale hand in front of him and slid gently into the water.

The creature wrapped one arm around his waist and pulled him closer to it. Steve felt the scales of it's tale press against his thighs through his trousers as he was held aloft in the freezing water. His feet dangled and he couldn't feel a bottom to the lake, nor to the creatures tail.

The merrow threw the shell that was in it's other hand away somewhere and grabbed a handful of the black water. It brought it's hands up, dripping the water onto Steves head. The cold shock seemed to ease his pain. Steve closed his eyes at the relief.

He felt an even pressure on the top of his head. A tingling sensation washed over him, trickling from the point of pressure down his neck and over his shoulders. It sent Steve's body shivering.

He opened his eyes and was met by two dark eyes staring back at him. The merrow was less than an inch from his face. one of it's hands was firmly planted between his shoulder blades, and the other was atop his head emitting the magical sensation.

"You had a bump on your head."

"Had?"

"I rid you of it."

Steve felt the hand trail down from the top of his head through his hair- still wet from whatever circumstances lead him here- and down his shoulder.

He does not understand why a monster would heal him of a headache, but as he is held steady in its strong arms and feels it's breath against his lips he doesn't think it wise to ask too many questions.

"Thank you." He said.

The merrow let go of him, and Steve pulled himself back up onto the shore.

He heard a wet thunk beside him and turned to see the merrow had joined him on the rock. Its body was facing Steve and it's tail was splayed out in front of it bent at the midpoint as if the thing had knees.

It's tail alone was twice the length of Steve's entire body and it tapered along its length until exploding out into 2 wide tail fins that had the jagged edges of burned parchment.

Suddenly the creature unbent it's tail, laying it across Steve's body and curling the end slightly around his waist. it was surprisingly heavy and the large scales had the texture of smooth river stones against his abdomen.

Steve looked bewildered at the creatures face, who had the same fierce and angry look as when Steve first woke up.

"So you will not run away." it explained.

"how many times do I have to tell you, I will bring no harm to you, even if I escape."

"I cannot take that chance."

"How long will you keep me here then?"

The tail wrapped halfway around Steve's waist constricted slightly, almost causing him lose his balance. The creature beside him leaned in menacingly.

"You will stay here until I can be sure you can be trusted." it said.

"And when will that be, hmm? What could possibly convince you?" Steve asked.

The creature looked down at itself for a moment, seemingly thinking of a solution.

"I- I don't know. I will. I will know it when I know it."

"Oh! You will know it when you know it. Thats fantastic." Steve spat.

"Well you have done nothing to prove your trustworthiness to me thus far" The creature spat back.

"Exactly! I have done nothing! I have not attacked you, I have not tried to escape, I have made no attempts on your life. I have been a model captive! Whereas you, foul creature that you are, have threatened my life, stolen my belongings, and tried to feed me muck from the bottom of the ocean!" Steve had snapped, pushed to far by this infernal creature and it's damp dank lair "And now I find you have no plan for my release. You know, my mother used to tell me tales about you creatures, but she neglected to mention just how stupid you are!"

The creature just looked at him, dumbstruck by his outburst.

It uncurled it's tale from around Steve's waist and moved it back into the water. It slid it's body so it was sitting beside Steve, instead of facing him.

"What is your name?" the merrow asked.

"What?" Steve replied

"What is your name?"

"Is this some kind of trick?"

"No. You say you have been a model captive; I wish to be a model captor. What is your name?" it looked at him with pleading eyes.

Steve sighed and ran a hand over his face. What has his life come to?

"Steve, my name is Steve." He said.

"And you do not eat seaweed, Steve."

"I-" Steve groaned, "I eat seaweed, of course I do, I live on a ship. I just don't eat it raw and fresh from the bottom of a pit is all."

"So how do you eat it." The creature asked.

"You let it dry and cure, you boil it over a flame. Do you know what flame is?" Steve asked.

The creature rolled its eyes again.

"Yes, I know what flame is. If I build you one will you eat?"

Steve was taken aback. The monster is worried about him eating?

"I- yes, I suppose" Steve stammered, "do you also have a pot to boil water in?"

"A bucket washed up last month, will that do?"

"Why yes that will do greatly" Steve said.

The creature quickly disappeared into the water.

Steve sat back on his hands; confused and... oddly touched by the gesture.

Despite the creature's constant suspicion, Steve hadn't even considered just swimming out of here. Mainly due to the fact that he has no idea where he is, if there is land near here, where his ship is, or even how to find the opening to this cave in such dark conditions.

He is tired and befuddled, his wet clothing is sticking to his skin uncomfortably, he is chilled by the air and sore from the hard rock, and now that he thinks about it, he is near starving. So, he truly does appreciate the Merrow's offer to build him a fire.

The merrow reappeared holding a rusty bucket aloft the water's surface. It handed the bucket to Steve, who found dry wood, flint, and a knife at the bottom of it.

Steve smiled.

"Where did you find all this stuff?" he asked

"Treasures wash up here after shipwrecks, I told you that before," The merrow said pulling itself back onto the rock, "now would you like to build the fire yourself, or shall I?"

.....

Steve started the fire, closer to the cave wall than to the edge of the water, and set the bucket, now full of water, carefully in the middle of the flames. It will take awhile before the water boils, but that just gives Steve time to lay his clothes out to dry.

He rid himself of his trousers first, the wet denim was the greatest offender to his skin, and his white linen shirt came after it. He laid them both flat in front of the fire.

He looked around, the creature was still gathering food. He's grateful, he feels oddly modest about being in the nude in front of the merrow.

Steve was crouched down warming his hands in front of the flames when he heard a telltale splash from behind him. He covered himself with his hands and whipped around to see the merrow had returned with 2 handfuls of seaweed and a small fish caught in its mouth.

It looked Steve up and down from its place in the water and then released the fish from its jaws onto the rock.

"Your clothes are gone," it pointed out.

Steve gestured with his chin to where they lay in front of the fire.

"I'm drying them."

"Ah," it said lifting itself by the elbows up onto the shore, "come take this stuff from me, I can't get over to you, it's difficult to move across land in this form."

Steve walked over to the merrow and grabbed the fish and seaweed from it.

"You say in this form; do you have another?" he asked

The merrow eyed him oddly.

"I thought your mother told you of us?" it asked.

"Well, yes, but she also told me the men of your species have the faces of hogs. As you clearly do not look like a hog, I figured she may have gotten some things wrong."

The edges of the merrows mouth twitched upward. It- it's smiling!

"I have a legged form as well. I could get my cap and join you for dinner?" It said.

So, she was right about the caps too. At least Steve hasn't been paranoid about nothing.

"Thats not necessary." Steve said, though he must admit he was curious.

Steve walked back to the fire and dumped the fish and seaweed into the water that had started to form small bubbles. They still had a while to go.

Steve turned back to the merrow, who was sitting on the rock, splayed out, scales and all, like some kind of ancient stone carving. It looked up at Steve, waiting for him to say something. Steve felt the need to cover himself again, the gaze of this creature is just so insistent, but he thought the act would just draw more attention to the area. Instead, he decided to ask something that had been nagging at him.

"Do you have a name?"

The merrow was taken aback for a moment before it answered.

"I was called Edward once."

"Once?"

"I was banished by my people to this cave, I haven't been called anything since then." it said, eyes going sad for a moment before snapping out of it.

"Edward the Banished" Steve mumbled.

"I suppose," Edward said squirming uncomfortably.

Steve hadn't expected him to hear that.

"I left my home to follow a friend onto a pirate ship that I quickly found was made up of novices who had never seen the inside of a ship before."

Edward raised his eyebrows at that.

"I see. 'can't hunt down their own behinds' indeed."

Steve breathed out a small laugh.

"I wasn't lying."

"Hmm..." the creature's mouth flattened into a thin line once more.

It doesn't believe him, not entirely.

No matter! Steve is just glad that it calmed down enough to allow him food and freedom of movement.

When the food was finished cooking Steve brought the bucket over to where Edward was sitting, or laying... where Edward was beached.

It frowned at him.

"You are sharing with me?"

"You caught it for me," Steve said taking a bit of meat from the fish.

It was saltier than he prefers it, but at least it was food. Which reminds him.

"Did I still have my water when I arrived here?" he asks.

"The bladder you had around your belt?"

Steve nodded.

"Yes, I took it along with your knives, I thought it had potential as a weapon," The merrow said, gnawing on seaweed.

"How long was I unconscious?"

The merrow frowned at his food.

"I'm not sure. The sun was just starting to set when I found you by the mouth of the cave, and it was fully dark when you awoke."

That means it could be as little as 5- 10 minutes.

"Do you need me to bring you your water?" Edward asked still gnawing.

"I would like that yes, but where is it that you go to fetch these things."

Edward looked him in the eye, squinting to see any hint of devious intentions on his face. Steve is getting tired of the scrutiny.

"I'm not going to tell you where your knives are, but I will bring you your water." the creature said slithering away into the depths once again.

Steve sat there, bare as the day he was born, and wondered what it would take to get this thing to trust him enough to let him go.

When the merrow came back with his bladder of water Steve tried not to drink it all in one gulp. It was so refreshing, and he was so thirsty, but he doesn't know how long he will have to be here, so he needs to ration.

"I have decided how you will earn my trust." Edward said out of the blue.

Steve nearly spilt his drink in his excitement. He put his water down and wiped his chin.

"What is it?" he asked.

"You will tell me more about your ship, and I will go out in search of it to see if the stories you tell are true." it said tapping its tale against the stone it sat on in no particular rhythm. it looked nervous about this plan.

"You'll find my ship?" Steve asked, amazed at his own luck.

"You will come with me so I know where you are, and I'm not giving you back your weapons, and I will keep tight hold of you, and if I find your ship and it is not the novices you said it was, I will leave you stranded on a sand bar," it said sternly.

"Okay! what do you want to know first?" Steve asked leaning forward, excited to get the process started.

"Tomorrow, you will tell me about your ship tomorrow. Now it is time to sleep" it said and then swam away.

It is a strange and confusing creature.

Still, Steve curled up on his clothes in front of the fire and eagerly laid down his head to rest. He at last sees hope of escape, and he can't wait until tomorrow.

[orbital-inclination]

🌊 Dadster for MerMay! 🌊

Sans and Papyrus here.

Because the brain rot is deep; trivia under cut.

Gaster is some sort of deep sea monster. He’s not based on any particular species but conglomerate of a Viper fish, bichir, and whatever vibe Subnautic has going on.

He was a good dad, though a workaholic.

Crepuscular: he was most active at dawn and dusk. The rest of the time, it was difficult to catch sight of him.

In his time, Gaster mapped out the entirety of archipelago, and created a comprehensive catalogue of it's many native plants and animals.

Said to be an expert on thermal dynamics and, surprisingly enough the weather. It was also said that W.D Gaster had intimate knowledge of the habits of landlubbers (humans), but if he stored this knowledge anywhere, it's been lost to the sea.

Nowadays, Alphys is considered the foremost expert on humans.

Though those who knew him can confirm Gaster was covered in many scars, the stories behind them have been lost. Some say that before the Great Barrier, Gaster was caught by a human ship. Others say, he got them defending His Majesty. No one knows for sure. Few are bold enough to ask Asgore about it.

[cynthiav06]

With Percy, we know that he hates going to school and his goals don’t really line up with Annabeth’s, but Annabeth is kind of forcing him to do it with her because he can’t say no to her. Say Rick didn’t make Annabeth Percy’s entire personality, what do you think he would’ve done in the mortal world rather than go to university?

I was checking my drafts cause I am trying to catch up on all the asks in my inbox ( as I said in one of my earlier posts I was in middle of a medical situation so I have at least a month of backlog) and found this draft.

The funny thing is I had already written most of the post in the draft version, and this ask wasn't even being displayed in my inbox, so I was very confused as to when it was from.

But it's such a good prompt and a sort of controversial question in the fandom, so I wanted to post it asap.

Percy doesn't like studies, but he knows the importance of it, so I am sure he will finish his initial college, probably either in the science or arts section. We know at one point he got better grades than Annabeth at one point so he certainly isn't quitting studies and doing way better than what people expect. He also wouldn't like just staying at home and doing nothing (I am looking at certain Percabeth stans here), so he definitely would be doing one job or another.

1.

I don't think he would study marine biology like most believe. After a conversation I had with someone who had taken the course, I am convinced Percy wouldn't like it. It's heavily based on chemistry, and we know how much Percy is affected by sea creatures being mistreated or caged, so having to study marine biology wouldn't really be something he would choose.

2.

An interesting twist would be if he chose to be a writer like his mother.

We all know that Percy writes or at least dictates and narrates the first five books, which are written and narrated entirely from his perspective. Moreover, there are books on Percy just narrating his own sarcastic takes on Greek gods and Greek heroes. What if he did actually catalogue his own adventures in those books as a sort of manual for other demigods on how to deal with certain monsters and gods and such.

Through Percy's thoughts, even as 12 years old, we can certainly say he has advanced vocabulary despite being dyslexic and given how much he admires Sally, why wouldn't he be interested in following her footsteps. Sure, he has trouble reading, but that's not to say he wouldn't love expressing his thoughts through humorous retelling of his own adventures which he can pass as fiction to normal readers but actual experiences in demigod world. Who doesn't want to know the exploits of Percy Jackson?

Plus, it's a good money hack. And don't for a second tell me he wouldn't. Sally petrified Gabe, and then they sold his statute to a museum as a sculpture and earned money off of that. So Sally would definitely encourage it, and Percy would even follow through on it just for shits and giggles and the added benefit of helping demigods and earning money.

[I literally want this to happen just for the Godly reactions. I am all for god slander, especially Zeus slander. Poseidon would be half laughing at the book and half worried cause of the sheer catastrophes his son seems to fall into almost on a daily basis.

Apollo would be having a grand time, and Hermes will be half depressed and half impressed throughout. Overall, it would be hilarious all around, and it might finally make the gods feel a bit more accountable . It's literally the Reading Percy Jackson Series trope, and that's always fun.]

3.

One other option is that Percy will get into environmental preservation, specifically the protection of Rivers and Seas from pollution by actively involving himself and others in its cleanliness and purification. He would also run Beach cleanliness programs.

I think he and Grover would become environmental activists and would definitely get into preserving forest areas and other places where nature spirits dwell frequently. I can see them doing it a lot, long-term wise, too.

4.

I think he would kind of like marine explorations, but that might cause his powers to be somewhat exposed, so he might not do that, but it's a possibility.

That's all I can think of. I would like to hear everyone else's opinions on this.

[taliesin-the-bored]

"What's the deal with Taliesin?"

A somewhat lengthy ramble about the most powerful (or most arrogant) character in Arthurian legend

One the one hand, his powers exceed Merlin’s—Merlin describes himself as “second only to Taliesin” (in “Ymddiddan Myrtin a Talyessin”), and Taliesin claims to have profound knowledge of the cosmos dating back to Creation (he says poetic inspiration was created at the same time as fresh milk, dew, and acorns). He knows everything and can shapeshift into pretty much anything, if the catalogues he gives are anything to go by. He survived being swallowed alive, being thrown in the sea ("Ystoria Taliesin"), and (it seems) going on a raid of the Otherworld during which all but seven of Arthur’s many warriors died ("Preiddeu Annwn"). Then or at some other point while he was in Annwn, he pierced 8,000 men with spears he got from Heaven ("Cad Goddeu"). That puts his casualty count above that of anyone else I can think of in Arthurian legend (They fall "by the hundred" to Bedwyr--"Pa Gur"--but by "forty score hundred" to Taliesin). For all we know, he's indestructible; from what he claims, he's omniscient.

On the other hand, he sometimes seems like Sir Kay Xtreme Bard Edition with Extra Arrogance. In The Book of Taliesin, he has a really bitter (one-sided?) feud with other scholars and monks (some variant on "pathetic men of letters” appears many a time), who he accuses of ignorance because they don’t know the answers to various questions he never gives the answers to himself, and he loses or alienates everyone until the only person who visits him is a dude named “Goronwy, from the dales of Edrywy” ("Cad Goddeu"). Not much is known about this Goronwy, though it’s been speculated that he’s the speaker in “Claf Abercuawg”, in which case he’s an ailing societal outcast and probably couldn’t get anyone to talk to him except Taliesin. There’s a strong pathos to this—time, and maybe hubris, came with a fall, leaving him somewhat like a washed-up starlet or a burned-out wunderkind, abandoned now that he’s no longer the shiny new thing.

On the third hand, which I don't have but Taliesin could probably manage if he felt like it, much of this is from his point of view, and we have no way to prove he's telling the truth. When he tells his own origin story, he claims that he was Frankensteined together by enchanters at the dawn of time. This flatly contradicts "Ystoria Taliesin", so either there are multiple canons for his life story, he's talking as the Awen rather than as himself (in which case he's still contradicting himself--he also says it's a creation of the Lord), or he's lying about some of it. Why he would want to is anyone's guess, since he is quite powerful regardless.

If we don't take Taliesin at his word about his ability to kaiju battle giant toad monsters ("Cad Goddeu"), or take it with a grain of salt, then what are his accomplishments apart from self-preservation and repaying a life debt to Elphin? I am by no means an expert on him, but in what I've read, he does almost nothing in anyone else's story. It's almost like, apart from one or two times, he isn't able to find a way to use his powers for anyone else's good.

Then again, what is his primary power? Shapeshifting seems obvious (too obvious). He uses it for self-preservation (which is valid), for the heck of it (maybe), and/or for really dubious ends (see "Angar Kyfundawt" if you really must know, but trust me, you don't want to). Fighting is a less talked about ability of his. He can cause a lot of destruction (according to himself). It's not really clear what he fights for, though the various legendary kings he hangs out with are probably implied. Then, there's...

...the Awen. Inspiration. Poetry. He can do poetry, and he can do it very well. That is what he boasts about the most, and his boasts seem pretty justified. He’s Taliesin Ben Beirdd, Taliesin “Chief of Bards”, not Taliesin “the Shapeshifter” or Taliesin “Best of Warriors”, even though he may be both of those things. Shapeshifting only benefits him, and he's seen the horrors of war more than most people: his close friend Merlin killed his own nephew in a battle. When Taliesin fights, he kills terrifying numbers of people, maybe without full control (whether he's fully cognizant while he's using his powers is an interesting question which I won't get into right now). Perhaps that's why he doesn't interfere with others' adventures much: he is too powerful to do less harm than good for the people around him and for the narrative tension. Or maybe he just doesn't feel like it, or he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or they just don't want him there anymore, or his role as a teller of stories is more important than his role as a person in them. 

[sammykat2hb-blog]

A Whenua headcanon I got after reading Voyage of Fear:

In his flashback sequence about Mavrah, Whenua seems to be a biologist or zoologist. He’s one of only three people studying dinosaurs/sea monsters in an extremely secret project, so he clearly knows his stuff.

But when we meet Whenua later he’s an “archivist” — a broad title, but he seems like more of a librarian. He mentions cataloguing. Toa Lhikan finds him doing what looks like data entry on an exhibit of nondescript mechanical bits.

After Whenua almost died on the job, after the project was scrapped and Mavrah vanished (presumed dead), when all he and Onepu could do was mourn privately and keep their mouths shut…I bet Whenua transferred himself to a different field.

[adarkrainbow]

I cannot encourage people enough to go read fairytale collections country by country. I know that the whole fad currently is to go look up at collections organized by fairytale types or specific characters or even general motif, no matter the actual source ; but trust me, reading specific collections of fairytales and folktales from specific countries and regions is a deeply fascinating experience. Because each culture has its own specificities with fairytales, its own unique things other countries have not - stuff that are not "universal".

For example, I have been reading Anna Angelopoulos' collection of Greek fairytales (she also worked on the specifically Greek version of the "fairytale-type catalogue" if you are ever interested, with Brouskou, "G.A. Mega Katalogos Ellinikon Paramythion"), and the beauty of these fairytales is how we can clearly see the continuity with the mythology of Ancient Greece. With other European fairytales it might be hard to spot, since for example in France the mythology of Gaul is virtually unknown, and with German fairytales Germanic mythology is also pieces of fragments and a lot of hesitant reconstruction - but with Greece, we have the full mythology. And as a result, when the Greeks tell their own versions of Cinderella, and Little Thumbling and Donkey Skin and Snow-White and Rapunzel... You see the mythology.

The hero is often asked to go fetch something out of the Cyclops cave. The fairies that come to bless babies at birth are explicitely called the "Moirai". The embodiment of death/the underworld is always called "Charon". There is a recurring sea-monster in fairytales that is called "The Gorgon" (little to do with the actual gorgons, though). There is a whole slab of fairytales about a child born out of his father's leg, due to a magical item making people pregnant touching the man instead of the woman.

And it is really beautiful because it makes you look back at all these other fairytales across Europe, and you can clearly see how they are just... leftovers, shadows and twisted reflections of the old mythologies.

@somecallmejohn

[deadboyfriendd]

Certain stories are recounted so many times that they become parched of meaning, stories like those concerning the girl and her wolf in the woods, the cinder-smudged princess, the monstrous beauty who vomits pearls with every sob.

Sovereign Creatures

An AU based off of The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw Plague Doctor Frankenstein's Monster-adjacent!Steve Harrington X Sea Creature!Reader

Others, however, are kept from taverns and wine-warmed conversations, catalogued but rarely recited. Complicated stories with no easy ending, stories that remind us karmic debt is a contrivance of despair, that there is nothing fair or sweet about this world.

I. The Triumph of Death

II. Human Frailty

[quotesfrommyreading]

More recently, bioluminescence has evolved from laboratory tool to commercial plaything. The Kickstarter-funded, San Francisco-based Glowing Plant Project offers customers DIY kits they can use to genetically engineer a luminous Arabidopsis plant at home. And Carlsbad, California-based BioPop has released what is essentially an illuminated version of that long beloved novelty pet for kids, Sea-Monkeys (which are not in fact tiny aquatic primates, but rather brine shrimp). They call it Dino Pet: a small, vaguely Apatosaurus-shaped aquarium filled with bioluminescent plankton known as dinoflagellates. During the day, the plankton photosynthesize; at night, if you shut off the lights and give the aquarium a good shake, the dinoflagellates light up turquoise, much like the “fiery sparks” Chinese sailors observed in churning seawater so long ago. But the glow is only good for about three shakes a night, and if you’re too rough, you could damage or kill the plankton.

It’s easy to pity those tiny swimming stars trapped in a plastic bubble. Each night, some titan’s hand engulfs their ocean and churns it into a maelstrom for a few moments of selfish delight. Then the monster puts away their entire universe, easy as shutting the lid on a music box. They are kept alive solely for the purpose of this bedside magic trick.

Perhaps, though, we are the more pathetic members of this relationship—the gods bewitched by a gnat. Bottling bioluminescence gives us a sense of ownership over a presumably rare and otherworldly phenomenon; the reality of the situation is quite different. Bioluminescence is so commonplace on our planet—particularly in the oceans—that scientists estimate the thousands of glowing species they have catalogued so far are just a fraction of the sum. It may well be that the vast majority of deep-sea creatures, which live beyond the Sun’s reach, generate their own light (sometimes with the assistance of microbes). They use these innate glows primarily to communicate: to warn and frighten, hide and hunt, lure and beguile. Bioluminescence is one of the oldest and most prevalent languages on Earth—and one that is largely alien to us. Despite our fantasies and mythologies, the truth is that there’s nothing supernatural about living light; it has been a part of nature for eons. It’s just that we were denied this particular gift.

So, with perhaps too little gratitude, we adapted the incomparable talents of glowing creatures for our own purposes. We borrowed their light and it revealed things about our own biology we might never have discovered otherwise. But that is all we can do—borrow. We cannot be them, so we seek them out, and draw them near us—every bit as mesmerized as when we thought the Sun had impregnated the sea. To this day, we cup them in our hands, collect them in jars, and place them on our nightstand, forever trying to satisfy our Promethean hunger.

  —  The Secret History of Bioluminescence

[communistkenobi]

Hello, about the Dredge post. I also agree that having direct classification of all "otherworldly" fishes in game distracts from the "Lovecraft horror" Feeling the game tries to evoke, but in my opinion there is a part of the game where it's still stands: Leviathans.

Those big creatures that you can't catch, but who will try to catch you. Since the game progression is tied to regions players will have to deal with nearly all of them, and the game never really give you information on what they are. Even more, all creatures you have to avoid (giant anglerfish, squid, eal, phantom shark) are not tied to the "main monster" of the game, which is never explained at all. I think that while some aspects of this writing are not directly intentional (due to the fact that Dredge iis not exactly a story-driven game), those elements still give some "Lovecraft horror" to the game.

re: this post

Oh totally! Like the game does still achieve that unknowable feeling in a lot of ways, both in the environment/storytelling and the mechanics (eg the insanity meter). Again, I really enjoyed the game, and I think it does maintain that lovecraftian atmosphere successfully in many ways.

I think those types of collect-em-all mechanics lend themselves well to what has become a universal metric imposed on all games, which is achievements/trophies. This particular type of mechanic, where you fill out a big catalogue of shit, also seem to be very in-vogue right now (at least in my experience - I don’t remember them being so ubiquitous like a decade ago, although I could be wrong), so I’m sure there are some political economy reasons for that mechanic being in the game to enhance its marketability or whatever.

If anything what I’m saying isn’t a criticism of Dredge specifically, but the form that commercial video games tend to take, which is that there is this persistent logic of data capture, that part of fulfilment in games is collect-em-all mechanics (mechanics that I really like! I 100% completed both breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom lol), and this logic, despite being understood as a purely “ludic” or mechanical part of the game, still influences the way a player approaches knowledge and information in the game. And Dredge is a good example of where I think that actively makes the game’s narrative less coherent, because these types of catalogues are premised on discrete, mutually-exclusive categories that can be sorted along a biological taxonomy of species - the catalogue already ‘knows’ what’s out there at sea because it holds an empty slot open for it, and the player is asked to simply fill it in. This is a positivistic approach to knowledge that positions the player as a citizen-scientist, gathering information about the world that fits neatly into this data structure composed of discrete parts.

One little detail from tears of the kingdom that I really liked (a game with a massive catalogue to fill) is that you can’t add those nightmare hand things that randomly spawn to your catalogue, which I think makes them scarier, particularly because they’re the only enemy in the entire game that can’t be added. They’re positioned as “uncapturable,” they don’t “exist” in the game’s memory or knowledge-system, and yet you can still see them and they can still kill you. And I think that’s exactly the kind of feeling Dredge is trying to evoke, but I think its catalogue-filling mechanic places specific limits on how it achieves that

[butterflykittensunshine]

PIDGEOTTO! JEFF WINGER

[tar-maitime]

found you, I'm not alone

Rating: T Characters: Maedhros | Maitimo, Fingon | Findekano Relationships: Maedhros/Fingon, fem!Maedhros/Fingon Additional: War of Wrath, reunions, angst, making plans for the future WC: 1.3k

Direct follow-up to "if you stay by my side"

Maedhros drifts in and out of consciousness. 

Or maybe they’re dreams. She’s not sure. Some of it definitely can’t be anything but a dream - the moments when she thinks she registers Fingon beside her holding her hand, or talking (or shouting) at someone. That can’t possibly be real, can’t be anything but her mind having finally cracked. He’s dead, he can’t be here. Even if he were alive, he wouldn’t want to be here with her.

She thought he was there with her on the battlefield, but she must have hallucinated it in the midst of her pain. It’s impossible that he could’ve actually been there.

When she finally comes awake fully, she’s a little surprised. She’d really thought, when she first passed out, that that was it. It wouldn’t have been such a bad way to die.

Ah well. She’ll do whatever’s in front of her. She always does.

As she catalogues her body - the usual aches and pains, dull throbbing where the spear got her, much less of a sleep deficit than usual - she becomes aware that someone is holding her hand.

It’s impossible, but she would know that warm, firm grip anywhere.

She pries her eyes open and lets her head roll to the side, and he’s there. Finno is there. He’s perched on a camp stool next to the cot she’s on, hunched over and with both his hands wrapped around hers. He’s wearing clean clothes, not what she remembers from the battlefield, but he looks like he hasn’t slept in days.

The moment she moves, his focus sharpens on her. “Russë! You’re awake, are you all right?”

“Finno.” That’s all she can manage to say at first.

“Yes.” He’s holding back tears. “It’s me. I’m here.”

“...How?” Maedhros gets out. “How? You died, you were dead--”

“I came back,” Fingon says earnestly, squeezing her hand. “I came back for you. I got out of Mandos just in time to come over the Sea with the new army. I’ve been trying so hard to find you.”

Some of this is starting to sound familiar, like maybe it came up in that encounter on the battlefield that she apparently didn’t imagine, but Maedhros is still unclear on one point. “Why?” she asks. “I...I killed so many people, Finno, I killed people who used to be yours...”

“I know. I saw. I still love you anyway.” He says it like they’ve gone over this before, but Maedhros still doesn’t quite understand.

“How...why...Finn-Fingon, you shouldn’t have to. I’m not - this isn’t like after Thangorodrim, I’m not some broken little thing you can put back together; I’m a murderer. I’m the monster the Sindar tell their children about to make them behave.” She knows this for a fact. She heard some of the stories Elrond and Elros had been told about her, even though Maglor tried to shield her.

But Fingon’s jaw has that familiar determined set to it. “We went over this after Alqualondë, Russë. We’re both killers, and it’s terrible, but we love each other anyway. Do you really think my love for you is so little that this could stop it?”

“That’s not fair to you,” Maedhros murmurs. 

Fingon pauses a moment. “If it had been you who fell in the Nirnaeth,” he says finally, “and I had somehow ended up joining in with your brothers, if I had done all that you have - would you then stop loving me?”

The mere thought is enough to make her recoil. The mental image of Fingon covered in elvish blood is nightmarish, world-rattling, but even so, it is unimaginable that she could ever cease to love him.

He seems to read her thoughts on her face, and gives her a soft smile. “You see,” he says, “it is not unfair at all.”

Maedhros considers arguing, but is too tired and in too much pain to do anything but accept it.

“What’s going to happen, then?” she asks, since now that they’ve established that Fingon’s love for her makes even less sense than it ever did, that seems like the next most important topic. “What happened with the battle? Wait - where are Kano and the children?”

“Maglor should be back soon,” Fingon reassures. “He only stepped out for a few moments, under great persuasion, so I don’t doubt that he’ll return any time now. We sent the twins to get some rest; they insisted on helping the healers who worked on you, and wore themselves out pretty well. And Ereinion hasn’t been by yet today, he’s been nearly run off his feet--”

But Maedhros interrupts, barely daring to believe the unspoken implication. “Gil-galad came?” she asks. She hadn’t meant to include him in “the children”, when he wouldn’t want it.

Fingon’s smile is warm with understanding. “Yes. He’s come to see you at least once every day, more often if he can manage it. There’s been a lot going on - well, actually...” He pauses, like he’s not sure how to phrase it. “The battle we were in ended up making it all the way to Angband. And the Valar showed up. And so did Earendil, they say he fought a winged dragon. And...it’s over, Russë. The war’s over. We won. It’s over now.”

Maedhros can’t blame him for having to take a moment to find the words. She can hardly believe what she’s hearing. War, in one shape or another, has defined her life for centuries. That, and...

“What of the Silmarils?” she finds herself asking, hating herself for it. “Do you know what has, what will become of them?”

Fingon grimaces. “They were recovered from Morgoth’s crown, I will say that much. Who has them now, I will not say, because I want you to stay resting in that bed and not leaping up to go chase after the accursed things. We are working on a plan to deal with them, with the Oath. Once you are stronger, we will bring you into the conspiracy.”

For a moment, Maedhros tries to picture a world, a life without the war and the Oath. She almost can’t. She hasn’t really believed she would live long enough to outlast them both since the Union fell apart around her. The last version of her to actually live in peace died in Angband.

“That’s good,” she says anyway, because it has to be. Then, “What will be done with us, with Kano and me? Uncle Finarfin might have been lenient thus far, but I’m sure Eönwë and the Valar will want to see justice meted out for the kinslayings.”

“They may want to,” Fingon says with a slightly dangerous calm, “but I will not let them. You deserve to rest, Russë, in whatever fashion you wish. We all do.”

“What if the way I wish to rest is in chains, as would be justified, or cast into the Void?” Maedhros asks, half-meaning it, but that’s less than she would have been before.

“Then i will simply have to talk you out of it.” Fingon squeezes her hand. “You would never truly rest in captivity or bonds, love, and you know it.”

He’s frustratingly right. Maedhros sighs. “What, then?” she asks. “Are we to go larking off into the wilds, settle down in some peaceful valley and build a, a little house and live off the land and hope that the ghosts of everyone we’ve killed and failed to save stay away?”

She means it sarcastically, but Fingon nods with full seriousness and says, “If you want to, then yes. Personally, I think it might be fun to try.”

And as much as she wants to, Maedhros can’t bring herself to disagree. She can’t quite picture that warm scene, a home for the two of them and maybe Maglor and the children if they want it. It’s almost entirely impossible. But she’s alive and the war is over and her once-dead husband is sitting here holding her hand and making her believe in things again - so maybe one more impossibility wouldn’t be such a stretch after all.

[saintsofwarding]

WE SHALL BE MONSTERS

Header by @keltii-tea

Chapter 27: A Long, Dark Path

Rose fell through darkness.

On and on and on. Wind tore past her ears. She tumbled, raking out at the dark, but it slipped through her fingers, tatters of writhing shadow. Her scream was lost in the howl of phantom wind around her, the rumbling moan of the megamycete. The gullet of the Black God, plunging endlessly down into the chasm of her own mind.

Miranda's mind.

Both of us, as one.

Were they one and the same? Had she been resurrected as Miranda's clone, her perfect genetic copy, primed to download her consciousness after death? Was she a copy of Miranda's daughter, the fabled little lost Eva? An amalgam of them both, and Eveline, and Ethan and Mia's baby girl, and, and, and...

Her thoughts whirled like the darkness, like the howls and screams and scraps of voices that flew past her over the megamycete's eerie song. Was Donna okay? She remembered her mutation like a nightmare, the snap of her rearranging bones still echoing through her body. She'd busted out of the house, she'd crushed it all around her. Was Donna alive?

Am I still alive?

Frustration mounted, and terror, raw as a sob. She'd fall forever. She'd go mad in here if there wasn't some kind of ground, if there wasn't-

It came up fast.

Without warning, Rose collided with- something. The impact rattled her to the teeth, a crack of white and red through her whole body; she tumbled, wincing, to a halt. The ground writhed and pulsed beneath her, soft-hard, like a muscle. It gave slightly under her palm as she braced it against the...whatever it was she'd fallen onto. Stars burst in her eyes, and Rose slumped again, waiting for the pain and dizziness to fade.

It did. She pushed herself upright, wincing, eyes wide.

Around her was a sea of mold. Iridescent, lightless black, organic and in constant, fluid movement. Liquid and solid all at once. It writhed at her hands, nosing at her skin, webs of mycelium sprouting over her fingers. She pulled her hand away, and it retreated, a ripple like a distant tremor shaking the ground beneath her.

"Donna?" she called. "Angie? Are you in here?"

Her voice echoed on, and on, and on, strangely warped, until the entire space seemed alive with  its eerie reply.

Nothing.

A pause. Rose licked her lips, shifting her weight. Her sword was gone from her back, she realized. Whatever waited for her here, she'd have to face it without weapons.

She took a short breath.

Then-

"Miranda?"

That got a reaction. Another, stronger tremor rippled through the mold, and on its trailing edge, sending a chill to Rose's core-

A cry.

A child's cry. A long wail of anguish in the dark.

"Is that supposed to be Eva?" Rose said.

There was no answer.

"You can't trap me here," Rose called. She pushed to her feet, swaying, staring into the dark. "That's not what you want, anyway, is it? What's the point of taking me if you don't get to make me into your Eva, huh?"

She plunged her hands into the mold in front of her. The cold latched on, spilling through her body as she dug her hands deeper into the wet, pulpy mass; fibrous tendrils scraped at her fingers, but Rose grit her teeth and pushed further, jamming her shoulders into the gap, forcing her way through. It pushed back, resistant, but Rose wasn't giving up that easily, and with a slick crackle, she stumbled in.

She lost her footing almost immediately. A tilting, swooping lurch; there was no up or down here. Her legs pedaled against the mold, then scraped- steps. They formed from the mold under her boots, and she settled down with a huff, her hands lifted in case anything leaped out at her.

Nothing did. The long flight of steps curved down and down, their limits lost in shadow. Points of pale light guttered to either side, picking out the shape of the steps. Candles in niches. Or the ghosts of candles.

She recognized this place, reflected and refracted through the lens of the Black God's catalogued memories. One of the passageways deep beneath the village, a holy place far below the mundane world, leading ever downward to the divine.

Would it now? Or was it simply to the unknown?

Either way, Rose pushed on. She hurried down the steps, picking up speed. Around her- rumbles, ripples, great unfurling blooms of iridescence that filled the mold with strange, entrancing patterns. Fractal-like, she might have watched them forever.

Scraps of voices tugged at her- voices she knew, her own, Heisenberg's, Sam's, Chris's, the Lords', on and on. Others she didn't know, in languages she could only guess at. The echoes of memories trapped in here with her.

Am I a memory, now?

Maybe she was. Maybe she'd always been. Memories locked in flesh. But then again, wasn't everyone?

A tremor pushed at her boots. She stumbled; with a gasp, she tripped. Her hands flew forward and slammed into a solid surface. She breathed hard, braced against wood. Its grain pushed at her fingertips. It felt real enough.

Rose pushed back, onto her feet. An arched doorway, illuminated by a torch in a sconce, set into the mold. Black tendrils wound over the wood, but when Rose pulled the handle, it opened without resistance.

Light poured over her boots.

Beyond was a laboratory. The vaulted ceiling was lost in shadow, the corners dripping with damp. Tables groaned under the weight of countless files, stacks of papers scrawled with notes, piles of ponderous-looking books towering higher than Rose's head. Everywhere: the glow of copper, amber light through antique glass, bottled chemicals and medical equipment and hanging diagrams of mutants and monsters.

In a sepia-toned photo that looked much older than the rest, Rose recognized Moreau, harshly illuminated like a clinical specimen. She recognized Dimitrescu's draconic form amidst photos of zombies and lycans, ghouls and bat-winged women that reminded her of the stolen girls from the long-ago town.

Spores danced in the light, illuminated like stars. The air smelled thickly of mold, but of incense, too, twining up from a burner in a corner, a heady, holy scent.

And somewhere, echoing through the vaults, someone was weeping.

A woman. Rose hesitated, then pushed onward, her step silent through the dust. On the far side of the tables, past the equipment, the chemicals, the specimens pinned out with inner workings on display, a woman huddled over a desk. She sobbed her heart out, her arm pressed over her face, the other hand gripping the material of her black robes.

The rest of her was clad in...ohhh, those weren't rags. They were feathers, multiple black wings furled over her, like a shield against the world. Her blonde hair was loose, and before her, on the desk, lay an old photograph.

Rose could make it out, even from a distance. A woman, and a child. She held the baby to her chest, and her face was serene with joy.

Rose blinked, flinching back. Her boot scuffed on the grimy flagstones. The weeping woman's head snapped up. Black tears streaked down her face, her eyes bright mirror-gold, but Rose knew her. Of course she knew her. She'd never really seen her face before- just icons of it, just its impression through her imperfect memories- but now, as Rose stared at Miranda, something settled inside her. A realization, a confirmation, heavy and cold.

Miranda's face was a reflection of her own. Older, yes, and full of a calm cunning Rose had never seen in her own eyes, but there was no denying it.

"Eva?" Miranda said. Her lips trembled, her eyes shining. "It's...it's really you, isn't it? I found you. I told you I would."

A smile broke over her face, radiant with relief. "I promised you. Didn't I?"

"I'm not Eva," Rose spat. "Eva's dead. And so are you. Now let me the hell out of this place-"

"No." Miranda's voice lashed out, a hissing snarl that struck Rose to the core. Those eight wings rustled, feathers fluttering as they began to unfurl from around her. "Not this time, Eva. I don't care what the world beyond has told you all these years. There's no denying what you are. What you truly are. What I made you into."

Her voice deepened into an animal growl. "You're mine. And this time, there's no one to stop me."

She rose from the desk, wings snapping forth, the backdraft sweeping dust and papers aside. Her hair billowed around her face, pale strands dripping with her tears.

Rose scrambled back, toward the door; she grabbed for the handle, but it juddered, locked tight.

"This time," Miranda cried, "I'm never letting you go."

She launched herself toward Rose on a tide of mold; the lab walls shattered under the weight of vast, twining black roots, bursting forth to lift Miranda, to lash around Rose's legs and arms. With a cry, Rose tore free, but Miranda was on her. Gilded claws sank into the front of her shirt; Miranda yanked her off her feet, lifting her like a child-

"Never, Eva," Miranda said. "Never!"

"How many times?" Rose yelled, right in her face. "I'm. Not. Eva!"

She slammed her boot, hard, into Miranda's chest, right over her amulet of the Black God. It was like kicking a stone wall; Miranda barely flinched, but Rose's shirt- and skin- wasn't nearly so resilient. With her enhanced strength, the kick tore her from Miranda's grip and sent her tumbling backward.

She hit the wall of mold-roots hard, the stuff undulating under her weight. Instantly, tendrils snaked over her skin, burrowing deep into her flesh. Her front was a mess of blood and mold, twin sets of torn-up puncture wounds streaking red down her shirt. Miranda loomed over her, glorious, ghastly. An image from a pagan holy book made real.

No wonder the villagers had viewed her as a sacred being. Like this, backlit by the candlelight, eight wings spread, she looked like nothing more than the Black God's true emissary itself.

But if she was so sure of herself-

If she was truly so glorious-

Why was she weeping?

Rose scrambled backward as Miranda advanced, her clawed hands spread, her hair dancing around her face. She hazarded a look back, through the shattered walls of the lab and into the seething megamycete beyond, then flipped onto her hands and knees and made a wild lunge.

"Eva!" Miranda screamed. "No! No-"

Rose flung herself into the darkness. Claws sang through the air, catching her back; her shirt shredded like paper, but she was free, and plummeting, head-over-heels-

Out of control.

***

Heisenberg dropped as the monster thundered overhead. Its talons scythed past, inches from plucking him from the ground like a rat. He twisted to his feet, watching the vast, dark form ascend in a flurry of wingbeats, its long tentacles trailing behind it. They flared like a splayed hand as those gigantic wings dipped, as the beast hit the apex of the sky and wheeled back round for another pass.

This time, he was ready.

"Come on," he snarled, between his teeth. "Mommy."

As jaws opened, as claws unfurled again, he stayed down, stayed on one knee, hammer lowered. Come on. The monster roared closer; its bellow shook the village foundations. Come on. A little closer. Come and get me.

Come and-

Close enough.

Heisenberg shoved to one side, bringing up his hammer in the same movement. It hit moldy flesh with an impact that would have torn the arms off any lesser man; even so, bolts of white-hot pain stabbed into his shoulder joints, his Cadou keening in anguish, the sound a high whine in the backs of his teeth.

A wave of mold splattered him as the combined forces of his hammer in its flesh and the monster's speed ripped a massive furrow down its neck and side. It peeled away, shaking its great, sharp head as it gained altitude again, underlit by the coming day.

Mold rained from its wound, and judging by the labored way one of its eight wings beat, Heisenberg had got it good, right in the joint. He twirled his hammer, lifting it again for another blow, as the monster's wingbeats faltered, as it wheeled round again, as its claws extended.

Ah, shit. It was gonna land.

Time to get real personal.

The monster settled to earth with the boom of displaced pressure and a roll of wind that ripped the snow from the ground, the needles from the nearby trees. An entire two-story house crunched into a mangled mess under its weight, flattened under one of its vast hind paws. Heisenberg kept hold of his hat, but even with his strength it was all he could do to stay on his feet as the creature reared above him, rising higher, higher, on clawed limbs, triple jaws on display, wings spread, huge enough to blot out the sky.

Magnificent. Foreclaws flexed, great curved talons singing against the wind. Tentacles trailed from its back and flanks, radiating around its head like a dark, glistening mane. Its eyeless head was all sharp juts and beak-like snout, its lower jaw split, each mandible lined with a chaotic snarl of glass-shard teeth.

Those eight wings shadowed Heisenberg, stirring the air, keeping the beast's enormous weight upright; he felt their pressure against the air each time the monster moved.

"Not bad, kid!" Heisenberg called up to it. "Not bad! You make for an excellent mutant!"

A snarl rumbled from the monster's depths. It lifted a foreclaw; mold snaked over its fingers, twining them together, slicing forth into a blade of hardened crystal.

A sword. So this thing really was part Rose.

"I know, I know," Heisenberg called, gesturing to himself. "I'm not mutating, but, uh- I wanted to make this fair, see!"

The monster's next roar filled his head; it struck, faster than he would have thought possible. Heisenberg ducked as its blade sliced overhead, taking off his hat and a few strands of gray hair- shit, that thing was fucking gigantic, if it hit him in earnest it would do more than cut him in half. It would  annihilate him. The blade sheared past, demolishing a row of houses, the monster's momentum pulling its whole body round. Dust billowed; a snarl rippled from the beast as it rose again, swinging back toward Heisenberg.

Oho, that look of sheer, dripping loathing was all Miranda. This monster might not have eyes, but he could still tell it was pissed the fuck off.

A grim smile spread over his face.

Keep fighting, kid.

You can do this.

'Cause if you can't, I really, really don't want to have to kill you, after all.

And as the monster rounded on him, as it let out a shriek that echoed off the mountains, as its wings drove down to launch it into a lunge, Heisenberg lifted his hammer and leapt to meet it.

***

Mold roots whipped at Rose's face; her hip struck something hard, and she bounced to the side with a shriek.

She hit the ground with a wet splack. For a moment she thought she'd gone splat, but as her heartbeat hammered and she eased herself to her hands and knees, she realized it was water.

She'd fallen into dark, murky water, shallow and silty. Blinking, she lifted her head. The mold smoothed out around her, settling into forms. Distinct, this time, the echo of voices distant, nearly lost under the thin keen of wind.

Around Rose spread trees. Dark, wreathed in fog, their branches interlaced above her, a fathomless black sky just visible beyond. The trees grew straight from the water, brackish pools reflecting the canopy, reflecting the ropes of viney mold that swung from limb to limb and cascaded in mossy beards to nearly touch the water's surface.

Rose had seen trees like them before. Mangroves.

And the smell in the air...

Do you think you can run from me, Eva?

Miranda's voice twined from the swamp, from the sky. From the depths of her own mind. Rose jerked to her feet, pulse pounding, and staggered forward a step. Another. Got to find a way out of here, she urged herself.

But Miranda was there. Miranda was always there. This is a gift, she whispered. Don't you understand?

A shape loomed from the fog. A house. It grew straight from the water, too, mangrove roots twining up to its walls. The drone of insects hummed from grass scrub and the rusty remnants of old cars.

Objects hung from the trees. Baby dolls, Rose saw. Some missing limbs, some missing eyes. All of them scabbed in mold.

Things crawled in the edges of her vision as she sloshed through the calf-deep water and climbed a set of rotting steps, up toward the scrubby lawn in front of the house.

Piles of trash and yet more pieces of machinery lay scattered around the lawn, the base of the grass not dirt, but yet more mold. The smell rolled from the abandoned house- mold and heat, something rotting in water, the muggy warmth of the bayou, as endemic to Rose as the blood in her veins. Her breathing was overloud in the hush. Nothing but bayou in all directions. Nowhere else to go but forward.

"This isn't a trap, Miranda," she muttered. "I will find you again."

Nothing replied but the wind, the edge of a laugh fading in the breeze.

She limped ahead, up the steps and onto the porch. Without hesitation, Rose pushed through the battered screen door, into the house beyond.

Grimy darkness enfolded her. The mold was worse in here, vast growths and spills of it bursting from walls and between floorboards. The crooked pictures hung on the walls were all blackened, family portraits ruined with water damage or antiques-shop cross-stitch samplers. Homey things, the decor of a quiet bunch of backwoods folk who'd fallen into a nightmare they never awoke from.

Rose had never been to Dulvey; Heisenberg had never even taken her to Louisiana during all their years of moving house, though Rose, in a particularly-strong preteen vampire phase, had begged him to let her visit New Orleans. But she knew what had transpired here. What had been done here. And the people whose lives had been destroyed here. These weren't Miranda's memories; they weren't even Rose's. These were Eveline's, the part of her that made up Rose, that had begun all of this the moment the Annabelle had crashed in the bayou.

"Rose-mary."

The voice was sing-song, drawing out the two syllables of her name. A child's voice. Eveline? But there was no sign of the other girl, nothing but the murk and the endless hallways of the dilapidated house as Rose picked up speed, grinding her teeth at the ache in her bruised hip.

"Rosemary."

Up ahead, down the hallway-

Was that a glimmer of sunlight?

"Come and play."

The wall exploded. Rose screamed, flinging herself back as a chainsaw chewed planks to splinters, sent plaster erupting outward in a choking white haze- the woman with the chainsaw, her face twisted in monstrous, maniacal glee under a matted spill of dark hair-

That was Mia, oh, fuck, that was her mom-

Her eyes flared gold as she rounded on Rose, her breathing raw and glutinous.

"There you are!" Mia's howl chilled Rose to the bone. She backed up, and up, as Mia advanced. "C'mere, you little bitch, and give your mommy a kiss!"

She lunged with a raw howl, chainsaw revving. Rose flung herself to the side. The chainsaw gashed the wall open where her head had been. Rose scrambled on her hands and knees over the pile of destroyed wall, toward the glimpse of sunlight.

It was gone. The hallway stretched ahead, endless in the gloom.

Where is it?

Where the hell-

"Come back here," Mia screamed. Another roar of the chainsaw echoed behind her; footsteps pounded the floorboards, heavy and stumbling, the air thick with the burn of gasoline. "Don't you fucking run away from me."

"You're not my mother," Rose gasped. She clawed herself to her feet again. "You're...you're not fooling me with that face, Miranda, you're not fooling me with any of this-"

A door handle scraped her hand. She tugged at it. Locked tight. With a half-choked sob, Rose pushed herself onward. Her hands were slick with mold, with her own blood; her claw marks had begun to bleed again, turning her shirt front black. Another door. This one came open, but inside was nothing but a truly disgusting bathroom, toilet vomiting mold-tentacles everywhere.

Shit. Shit. The chainsaw revved; it sounded like it was right behind her. When it caught her, what would happen? When this puppet-version of her possessed mother got to her, when the chainsaw bit into her flesh, would she be Miranda's forever?

Don't think. Only do. That's what Heisenberg would have said. Just keep going, kid. There's always a way out.

Improvise, like me.

Another rev, so close she nearly felt the bite of its teeth in her back. "Got you," Mia crowed, as Rose whirled, as Mia's face split in a feral grin-

Rose dropped. She shoved forward, hard, against Mia's legs. The weight of the chainsaw, her lunge, her own unsteady posture- all of it proved too much. She toppled over Rose, over the threshold to the bathroom and to the ground.

Rose didn't hesitate. She slammed the door shut and took off as Mia's screams filled the air, chasing her down the hallway.

It branched; she took the left-hand turn. Another branch. This place was endless, unnaturally-huge, a real house cut-up and copied and pasted back together ad infinitum. Rose pelted up staircases, down narrow basement halls, through pools of dirty water and mold and rust. Mia was somewhere- she wouldn't have stayed long in the bathroom- and Rose heard her screams and howls echoing to her from off in the distance.

"Come on," Rose muttered. "Come on. Where are you?" She searched the dark, turned another corner, searched again.

Something crashed. The chainsaw screeched through wood. She's coming.

"Please," Rose said. Her vision blurred, her throat tight as she ran. "Please, help me."

Another corner.

There it was. A glimmer of sunlight. A child's voice. "This way, Rosemary!"

Rose sprinted for it as Mia's laughter filled the hall, lunging through as the laughs became sobs, became Miranda's voice again, calling Eva's name.

She burst from the darkness of the Baker guest house and into sunlight.

It fell across her in a heavy swathe, dense and golden; the sky arched overhead, the rich, cloudless blue of a perfect summer afternoon. Mountains ringed the field around her, a rustling sea of tall grass. From the far distance Rose heard the peal of church bells, smelled the smoke from a cookfire.

Her heartbeat slowed. She looked back, but the doorway of mold was crumpling like a discarded photograph. It dissolved into nothingness.

"Hello, Rosemary."

She whirled round. A little girl stood before her. She wore a pinafore dress, blue embroidered with birds. Her blonde hair was in two mussed braids, and she held a clump of wildflowers in one hand as she squinted up at Rose through the sunlight.

"What..." Rose panted. She looked back again. "Where...is this? Am I still in the megamycete?"

"Yep."

"Then-"

"Lemme show you." The little girl lifted her free hand. "C'mon. Follow me."

Rose hesitated, then took the girl's hand. She tugged her, off with such speed Rose stumbled. They waded through the deep grass, insects rising before them in a glimmering cloud. The air was so pure Rose thought she could drink it, live off it forever. She glimpsed roofs past a copse of trees below, the high spires of a castle.

"Is that the village?" she said.

"Yup! That's home." Another tug, up a rise in the meadow; they ascended it, and stood at its pinnacle, overlooking the valley, the village, Castle Dimitrescu, even a trace of a lake that must have been the reservoir, far away.

This place, it looked...different. Cleaner, brighter. This was the village as it must have once been. Before Miranda, before the Four Lords, before everything.

"Is this the past?" Rose murmured.

The little girl nodded. "A long, long time ago."

"It's...it's beautiful."

"Mm-hm. Look," the girl said, pointing down the hill.

Bathed in that melting butter light, three figures sat together on a blanket spread over the grass.

It took Rose a moment to recognize Miranda. She was...she was human. Her blonde hair was a darker, dishwater shade, her face rounder, less severe.

And she looked happy. Not the agonizing relief Rose had seen back in the lab, not a narrow smirk of cruel satisfaction, but truly happy. She burst out with a snorting laugh, her blouse sleeves rolled up, her skirt rucked to her knees, so she might better sun her bare legs. They were tucked up against the side of a young man with curly dark hair and spectacles, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his face earnest as he spoke.

Rose couldn't hear what he was saying, and mourned it. She wouldn't have minded hearing Salvatore Moreau's original voice.

Listening to him, her small face shining and rapt, was a little girl. The same girl now at Rose's side, watching the trio like she watched them.

Rose let out her breath.

"You're Eva," she said. "Aren't you?"

The girl nodded.

"This was it," she said. "The last time we were all happy. It's the memory my mama holds onto hardest of all. She's held on for so long. It does things to you, being alive for so many years. You think every thought a person can have, and they go around and around and get all muddled inside. And you get so, so tired."

Rose watched the three people below. She thought of the glimpses of memory she'd seen in the Beneviento house. Miranda's weeping in her lab.

She doesn't deserve this, she told herself. This memory. The things she did to the people you love...to so many others...

But when she spoke, her voice was soft.

"Is she tired now?" she asked.

"Yes. But she's not gonna stop. She's so close. The closest she's been for a long time." Eva's expression sombered. "It'll never be real. But that doesn't matter to her."

"If Miranda succeeds, you'll be with her again. Isn't that enough for you? Why are you helping me?"

Eva looked up.

"Because she'll never rest," she said. "She'll never be able to, not like this. Not really." A quiet breath; her hands curled into fists at her sides. "She's my mother. She loved me so much. I can't let her keep doing this. I can't let her keep hurting people. I can't let her keep hurting."

"You know what I'm here to do."

"Yes."

A cold wind rippled the grass. The sky darkened, as if a cloud had passed before the sun. On the horizon, the edges of this beautiful dream, darkness twined in.

Eva's eyes traced it.

"She's coming," she said. "She's looking for you. She's so sad, and she's so dangerous. Don't forget that."

"I won't." Rose knelt before her. "Thank you." She took the little girl's hands and gave them a squeeze. "Thank you, Eva. When this is done...I'll save you, too."

"No." Eva shook her head. "I'm a part of you, now. It's your turn to live, Rosemary. I'm sorry you had to take this gift."

Rose smiled at her. "Don't be sorry. I do understand, now. It is a gift."

She straightened and stood back. Eva didn't move. She stood with her arms at her sides, watching Rose as she lifted her hand, as she brought it slashing down. Darkness trailed behind it, as if her hand was a knife slitting the matter of reality. The darkness widened, edges shimmering, peeling back. A cleft into the dark, just wide enough for Rose.

And with a last look at Eva, she stepped through.

***

The monster's backhanded blow caught Heisenberg full in the chest. He spun off his feet and crashed through wood, shattering it, collapsing at last into a dark, dingy space so hard he blacked out. He came to in seconds, mouth full of blood.

Still in one piece? He thought so.

The beast loomed above, its great neck curving down, its tentacle-mane coiling and uncoiling against the sky. It pawed through the destroyed houses, searching for him; each rake of its claws sent rumbles through the ground. Heisenberg kicked his way free. Something was bleeding. He ignored it. Business as usual.

"Miranda!" he yelled as he emerged through the remains of the broken house, back into the dawn. Snow swirled down, catching in his hair. The monster's answering roar shook the blizzard, set it to dancing. "Mir...Miranda!"

His hammer stuck from a heap of garbage. He grabbed it; white heat sliced through his side as he hefted its weight. Don't look. It's not so bad if you don't look. The monster's head swung, sunlight glimmering through its thicket of teeth. Its wings fanned wide as it turned its entire body, ponderous-slow, its long tail tentacles sweeping aside the rubble from the crushed village.

Its jaws parted. It lifted its head to the sky and let out a shriek.

Heisenberg breathed hard. It felt like breathing through liquid. Had he punctured a lung? Ah, fuck it.

"Miranda," he ground out.

He lifted his hammer in front of him. His blood dripped onto the street as he advanced, leaving a streak of crimson and black behind him.

"I...I know now," he said. "Better, anyway. What you did to me. What you did to all of us. We were children, you monster bitch. We...we trusted you. Like Eva did."

Heisenberg let out a snarl of laughter.

"And you failed her, too," he said. "You failed her by...by fuckin' destroying your world. You could've been...everything to us. A kind god. A benevolent god. We believed in you. These poor schmucks in the village believed in you."

He considered. "...Well, 'cause you screwed with their heads, but...you didn't have to."

One great clawed foot slammed down, dragging the entire great bulk of the monster after it. Another footfall. Dust and snow swirled before it, driven ahead by its sheer mass. Its blade lifted. The sunlight glimmered down its length.

"'Cause I did," Heisenberg pressed on. "Love you. At first. After you slaughtered my real mother and my entire family and scrubbed those memories out of my skull, of course. After that, I couldn't help but love you. My body wasn't mine anymore; not even my own mind belonged to me. I didn't have anything else to love but you. What you did to me...you destroyed me. You remade me. You turned me into this. And, heh, I can't hate you for that. Not all the way." He flourished his hand toward himself. "I mean, how could I? Look at me."

A bitter laugh rasped from him. "Guess that makes us alike, huh? A taste of power, and then we can't help but cling onto it, desperate for more. And yeah, Miranda. You gave me power."

He let out his breath as the monster's shadow fell over him, as the wind off its feathers raked past him, fanning his coat around him, ruffling his hair back from his face. Mold, and clean air, and something else. Another sunrise in this place. Another new day.

Good. However this ended, it would be his last day in the village. His last sunrise here. An ending, a beginning.

"And now that power's gone," Heisenberg said. He stopped, staring up at the monster looming over him. He spread his arms. "And all you get is me, Miranda. Your favorite child. Now, don't say you didn't miss me."

He side-stepped the first blow, a raking swipe of those massive claws. The next, too, the monster rising to whirl in a mass of whipping tentacles, sending its tail lashing toward him whip-crack fast. Heisenberg swung his hammer as the thing's head dipped, jaws agape, mouthparts glistening in the back of its throat.

Vast teeth clashed together, shockwave aching in his bones. The hammer sparked off the plate of hardened mold covering the front of its head; a crack spanned from the impact point. The monster reared with a shriek, whipping its head back and forth as black liquid spurted from its wound. It crashed back down on all fours, head lowered, hiding the wound behind the sweep of one wing. Heisenberg searched its body for another weak point- yeah, get it while it's distracted- if he could weaken it enough, annoy it enough, maybe Rose would be able to rise up inside and take over.

Come on, kid. You gotta help me out, now.

There. That bundle of tentacles. Behind it glistened the thing's arm joint, a fold of smooth membrane unprotected by keratin or cartilage. Through the translucent membrane, he made out the pulsation of the thing's inner workings, a mesmerizing ripple of muscle and organ.

Perfect.

Before the monster could turn, he shoved off a chunk of broken brick wall, launching himself in a desperate leap toward the soft spot.

The monster snarled; had it noticed him? Oh, yeah, it had noticed him, it was turning, whirling, wings lifting, but he had time, he could get it, he could do this, he could end it-

Cold rammed through him, sudden as a blow.

An instant of silence, of realization. Heisenberg blinked. Why wasn't he holding his hammer anymore? Why were his hands not working? They hung off him like the arms of a deactivated soldat, useless lumps of flesh and bone. Why was the ground red?

The monster's sharp, bladed tentacle impaled him through the chest. Through the Cadou. He felt it writhing in agony, but the pain hadn't reached him quite yet. All he felt was the pressure, the cold.

You're in shock, dumbass.

He had to get it out, get the Cadou's healing factor jump-started...if he could get to his workshop in the factory, get some accelerant...

Factory's gone, idiot.

Oh, yeah.

Well, shit.

The monster- Miranda- rammed the tentacle deeper. He felt it crackle through him, breaking his ribs one by one. He choked. Blood spattered the snow at his feet.

"You..." he managed. "You...think that's...enough, Mother? Let me show you...let me show you what I can really...what I can..."

A low, undulating snarl. Like a laugh.

Bitch, Heisenberg thought.

Miranda ripped the blade out. Heisenberg fell to his knees, all at once. One of Donna's puppets with its strings cut. Shadow swathed him again. He squinted up as Miranda's enormous beaked head swung to his level, as it seemed to stare at him down the length of its sharp, eyeless snout.

Her voice echoed from the monster, from the air, carried on a hissing snarl that surrounded him in its hum and tremor.

"I never loved you, little Karl," she told him, softly, the way she used to sing him to sleep when he was just a child.

"Hm." Heisenberg nodded. His vision began to spider on the edges, dark creeping in. Something crackled; his skin chilled, sudden as a fall into an icy river. He glanced down as crystal began to vein its way from the puncture wound, eating up his living skin inch by inch.

His Cadou was failing. He didn't have long.

"Guess not," he managed, to Miranda. "But you gotta give it to me, just now- I sure was distracting."

She didn't have the chance to respond. An explosion went off along her flank- a blast of artillery fire.

Mia. So she'd gotten to the big gun after all. Nice one, buttercup. Heisenberg tried to hold her face in his head, tried to hold onto hope as a second blast of flames filled the sky, but it slipped away. Even Rose's face slipped from him, gone into the dark.

The crystal spread. He couldn't hold on anymore.

Sorry, kid.

The cold overtook him, and the dark, and when it reached his heart-

He let go.

***

Rose drifted.

There was no ground, and yet she walked, her boots meeting a slight resistance with each step. She was deep in the megamycete, now. The rippling mold was gone, and all that surrounded her was a gusting dark, the faint outlines of trees visible, like a forest in a pitch-black night.

Over vine, under branch, into the forest deep...

Miranda was here. She felt her, felt the essential nature of her, as familiar as the feeling of her own skin, that sting of meeting her own eyes in a mirror.

"I'm here," Rose called. "You ready to talk about this?"

"You were so small."

Miranda stepped from the dark trees, radiant in her black and gold regalia. Crows encircled her, clattering toward the skies. Her wings enfolded her like a penitent's cloak; a glimmer of golden eyes shone from beneath its feathery cowl, the only color in the world.

"Just a little thing," she went on. "Asleep in my arms. Do you know what I thought, the first time I looked into your face?"

Rose shook her head.

"Miraculous," Miranda breathed. "I thought...all this had been worth it. So many years of pain, so many years of destruction. My own body, resurrected, remade. Even my mind, given to divine service, no longer my own. None of it mattered, because I had found you again. And there you were. A precious thing. My special child. My Eva."

"I'm not Eva," Rose told her. "I'm Rosemary Winters. I'm the girl you stole from my parents. Nothing you do, no matter how you change me, can ever make that any different."

"That doesn't matter, either. Eva...understand what it is I'm offering you." She lifted her face to the canopy overhead. "What it is to be one. The world beyond...there's nothing in it but hatred, and pain. Long, weary life."

She lifted a fine blonde brow. "You will live one, darling girl. Years, and years, and years of loneliness. One day, all that you know will be gone. All that you love will be dust, whether by your hand or another's. All your dreams will become...thin. Paper and shadows. Except one."

She faced Rose, a dark Madonna swathed in shifting feathers.

"To be together again," she said. "To be one with the Black God again. To be one with me. Your true mother. I will never abandon you, Eva. I never did. All I have done, all I have hurt...and I never abandoned you. What is the world in comparison?"

Rose stood and listened. Her throat was tight. The forest groaned and creaked around her. She imagined she could smell snow, and gusting night.

The wolves are here, child.

How many times had she yearned for place, for purpose? For something beyond herself, for some phantom something bigger than her, bigger than anything, a longing so great it threatened to consume her?

It could, here and now. It could, with Miranda. On, and on, and on forever, in her endless dream.

"I have family-" Rose began.

Miranda laughed. "That machinating mechanic, Heisenberg? My other false children? Darling. They've lied to you. Hurt you. Stolen your memories. I have never done that."

"Bullshit. You stole me."

Her face twisted- a flash of a snarl. Not rage at Rose, she understood. Rage at herself, at being unable to make her understand. Her wings burst forth; in a racket of beats, she was gone.

Rose gasped, flinching back as feathers brushed her face, leaving behind smears of mold like ash.

"You are mine, Eva!" Miranda's voice echoed from the dark. "Nothing you do, no arguments you make, will change that." "And nothing can change who you are," Rose called.

Rushing darkness swept past her; she twisted out of the way as claws lashed the air. The rush was gone again, gone into the trees; heart pounding, Rose backed off, her step unsteady, the pain in her hip like fire.

"Can it?" Rose searched the darkness. "You could never move on, could you? All the things you did, all the incredible secrets you found, and none of them meant anything because...because there was nothing for you but the past. The Lords and their devotion. The villagers and their fear. None of it mattered to you. You could have been anything, Miranda, and you chose to be-"

Another rush. Rose jerked away. Too slow. Claws raked over her shoulder, snagging her face. She cried out, pitching over as blood burst in her mouth.

"They will always fail you," Miranda's voice echoed. "They will always disappoint you."

Another slash of pain. This one bit deep, bit into muscle and sinew. Rose's scream burst from her. The forest whirled, trees creaking, shadows rising like the monsters in a fairy tale, claws and teeth and gnashing jaws.

"And in the end," Miranda said, "you will end them, or they will end you. Is that what you want? Is that what you long for? To see all things become ash? To see yourself become ash along with them?"

"That's not the way it is," Rose murmured, thick through bloody lips. "And that's definitely not the way it has to be."

And when Miranda rushed for her next, she was ready.

A whirl of darkness, of feathers. Rose was rising; she sprang upward, boot bracing forward, her fingers closing into a fist- just the way Heisenberg had taught her, just the way she knew would get the job done. She glimpsed Miranda's eyes widen the instant before she flung her fist forward and cracked it, with all her strength, with all her will, into Miranda's face.

Bone crackled under her hand. Miranda snapped backward; the darkness was blasted aside as her wings spread, as she flung out her arms, black mold gushing from her broken nose. Rose let out a shriek as the ground rippled, as she tipped forward, after Miranda, into the yawning abyss at their feet.

Wings beat at the air. Rose grabbed out, her fingers snagging Miranda's wrist. Claws slashed at her, but Rose dug her fingers in, holding on, even as Miranda's ragged wingbeats carried them higher, higher.

Branches whipped and tore at them, tattering Miranda's regalia even further, tearing at Rose's hair and ruined shirt. Another hiss of claws through wind; they sank into her flesh again, digging so deep into Rose's torso she no longer felt them, just the pressure and the hammer of adrenaline through her system.

"I saw your memories, Miranda," she yelled, over the scream of wind, the rumble of the megamycete. The Black God's hymn. "All of them. All the way to the beginning. I saw your life, every last moment of it. I saw what happened to your mother, what happened to Eva, what you did to Sal. Your friend. He loved you, and you murdered him-"

"He failed me!" Her voice rose to a raw shriek. "He killed my Eva-"

"The sickness killed her, not Moreau. You can't blame him for everything. You can't blame your own creations for what you did to them."

She wound her fists deep into the robes around Miranda's waist. This wind would tear her off; it was all she could do to keep hanging on.

"Eva's gone," Rose cried. "You loved her, and she died, and I'm sorry. But she's gone."

"It's-" For an instant, Rose thought Miranda would make another excuse, another play at grandeur. Her mask, unshakable.

But it cracked, just a little, on the edge. "It's not fair."

"I know. None of this is fair. But it's time for it to be over, Miranda. It's time for you to be done."

"Let go," Miranda growled.

"Never," Rose spat back at her.

It was excruciating, agonizing, like moving against an impossible weight, but Rose managed to bring up her hand. It slipped between them, slick with blood, shaking. In a monumental heave of effort, she pressed it, hard, to Miranda's cheek.

"You're coming with me," she whispered.

And with a single stab of will, a sword thrust to the heart, she drove her mind into Miranda's, and then they were both falling.

Dizzying. A spiral forever, a spiral through darkness. Through memory. Miranda's, again. Her rule over the village. Her life. Photographs in the rain. Their colors bled away, shadow and dust, images projected on a distant wall. Mold twined through them, veins of darkness, eating them away. And then they were nothing, and they had reached the bottom, and, together, they crashed into a heap of broken feathers, and tangled limbs, and blood.

By the time Rose opened her eyes, her hands were empty, and she lay curled alone.

The floor reflected her hollow-eyed face. A mirror, she thought, running her palm over its frictionless surface.

Light glinted in the distance. She lifted her head.

She wasn't alone.

A little girl sat in a small wooden bed, knees to chest, facing away. A window silhouetted her head. Through it, Rose made out stars.

She climbed to her feet and approached, step silent on the dark mirror below.

The girl couldn't be older than eleven or twelve. She wore a nightgown embroidered with flowers, woolen slippers. Her hair fell in braids down her shoulders. She clutched a carved wooden goat to her heart as she hummed under her breath.

"Hello," Rose said. "Miranda."

The girl's gaze was distant, set on the starry sky. Her humming faded, and the hush crept in. "Don't you hear them?" she whispered. "The wolves?"

"No."

"I do." She paused. "Have they come for me?"

"Yes."

Miranda tilted her head, her eyes bright in the starlight.

"You brought them back together," she said. "The others. I felt them...every single one, alive again. When I made them, each time, I hoped I'd get it right. I didn't. All four of them were never enough. But you would have been."

Rose sat by her side on the narrow bed. Miranda's thin shoulder shivered as she set her hand to it.

"I know," she said. "But don't you see now, Miranda? It doesn't matter anymore. We survived beyond all you touched."

"No..." the little girl said.

"We are alive despite all the ways you hurt us. We're together, despite all the ways you split us apart."

"No." She shook her head, burying her face in her arms with her wooden goat, tears shining on her cheeks. "No-"

Rose took her hands. Miranda's face lifted, her eyes wide.  

"Do you have a story?" Rose asked. She couldn't help but speak gently. "One that helps you sleep at night?"

"You were my story," Miranda said, just as gently.

"All stories end."

"Not you," Miranda told her. "You never will."

Rose smiled, just a little. "And isn't that what children are supposed to do? To grow beyond their parents?"

"I'm frightened." Her hands trembled in Rose's. "It's...it's been such a long, long time."

"It's all right. I'm here."

Miranda's eyes became brighter, reflections of the stars. Blue-gray, like Rose's own. "Don't leave me, Eva," she whispered.

"You lost, Miranda," Rose told her, as she pulled her into her arms, as they held each other in the dark. "Mother. Sweet girl. It's all right. You can rest now."

The starlight glimmered. It faded.

And when it was gone, so was Miranda.

Rose's breathing echoed in her head. She slumped to the ground, weightless, numb. She didn't fight when the darkness flowed to claim her. She let it close over her, cold and familiar, and bear her down.

***

A flutter of ice wind.

The sunlight, breaking over a mountain peak.

Rose opened her eyes.

The mountain pass spread before her. Dawn had just broken, and the world filled with its reaching light, pale gold and clear, herding all shadow to the edges of the world, all the darker for its density.

Each inhale hurt, but it was thanks to the pure, freezing air, not Rose's wounds. She no longer felt them as she lay there, curled on her side, as she watched the sun rise, as she watched the silhouette, standing against it, approach.

He stood over her, then knelt. His face was kind, worn, rusted with old blood. A stranger's face, and yet she knew it. She knew it like a warm glow, a last whisper, a kiss pressed to her infant cheek. He smoothed his bandaged, three-fingered hand over her hair, slow, soft, and lulling.

"Rosemary," he murmured, to her. "I'm so proud of you."

She made herself speak. "Dad?"

Ethan smiled. "It's all right, Rose. It's all going to be okay now."

"I...I don't know, dad, I..." She blinked. Tears pushed at her eyes, hot against her skin. "I think she got me..."

"No, Rose."

"I can't..." She was so tired. She just wanted to close her eyes, to stay with him forever. To be held under his gentle regard.

But that was Miranda, wasn't it? And that would be a shadow, a dream.

Her dad kept stroking her hair.

"I don't want you to go," Rose whispered.

He laughed softly. "I'm not going anywhere."

"I'm not really...Rose. I'm not..." Her throat tightened. She took a hitching breath. "I'm not really your daughter. I'm...her, I'm..."

She stopped, unable to go on. Ethan didn't release her, didn't pull away.

"Let me go," she whispered. "You didn't save Rose."

"I saved you. Isn't that enough?" She sensed his smile. "Don't say I did all that for nothing."

"Never."

"Day's coming," he told her. "Time to go back."

"I don't know if I'm strong enough."

But he was there, slipping his maimed hands under her arms, pulling her to her knees, against him. He held her there for a moment, his cheek pressed to the crown of her head.

"You have to go back," he told her. He gave her a little shake. "You have to live. Will you do that for me?"

Rose nodded. She couldn't speak.

"Good. Then you'd better get to it."

She found her voice. "I love you, dad."

"I love you too. Always." He kissed the crown of her head. "Goodbye, Rosemary."

***

That wasn't the dawn breaking over the mountains. It was the dawn breaking through dissolving mold.

Rose gasped for air as the megamycete crumbled around her, sluicing down over her shoulders, cascading away from her with a rumble. She lay curled, fetal, in a bath of liquid mold; it soaked her to the skin, plastered her hair to her cheeks.

She'd emerged from a kind of cocoon, reconstituted from her mutant form's heart. Its remnants disintegrated as she pushed herself onto one elbow to see what the hell was going on.

Around her was a landscape of complete and total devastation. Vast, broken wings sprawled from collapsing shoulder-joints, decomposing back into slimy mold as Rose watched; the whole creature lay like a beached whale, half-dissolved already. Great ribs jutted toward the sky. Tentacles as thick as telephone poles and tipped with calcified blades snaked away, crushing houses under their weight.

The village was entirely leveled, as if a tornado had swept through, nothing left but shattered wood, remnants of scaffolding and chunks of calcified mold-roots, solitary chimneys sticking resolutely from the ruin. Rose blinked, brows raised. Shit, had she done that? She and Miranda, she supposed, but...this monster, this body...she'd mutated into it. Now she was shedding the excess biomass, sloughing it off like a snakeskin.

She lifted her hands, slick with mold. Could she do it again, if she wanted to?

Holy shit.

Movement caught her eye: a flutter of gray, gleaming in the dawn light.

All thoughts froze in her head.

No.

No.

Please, no.

Heisenberg lay slumped against one of her fallen tentacles. His hat was gone, his head tipped forward at a sharp angle. A massive, crystallized hole gaped in his chest. The calcification spread from it, over his dirty clothes, his trench coat, his arms, creeping up the side of his face.

"H...Heisenberg?" Rose managed. Was he-

No. His hand curled at the sound of her voice. He winced, lifting his head to meet her gaze. One eye was a sphere of cloudy crystal, but the other was still all right, green-gray, focused on her. With a grinding crackle, one of his arms lifted. He dragged himself the last few inches to the side of her cocoon, slumping again over its lip, facing her.

"Hey, kid," he said.

Rose's face crumpled. She scrambled from the bath of mold, reaching for his face, turning it toward hers. "You..." she managed. A sob choked her words. "You came after me?"

"Told you I'd fight for you no matter what." He gave a little shiver as the crystal crept further over his face; a faint haze of glittering dust rose from him. "Heh. You got her."

"Shut up. Just stop talking for once." She couldn't stop her tears; they were warm on her face, quivering in her voice. "She's gone."

"Good." A contented smile touched the side of his mouth unaffected by the crystal. "You did it, kid."

The look in his eye brightened. "Rose. I..."

"Hush." She brushed her palm over the back of his head, over his face, over the wound in his chest. In his heart. In its depths, she made out the faint, dying wriggle of his Cadou. "I know."

She pressed her hand to the wound.

Warmth pulsed from her. From the depths of her power. Around her, the remains of her sloughed-off mutant form writhed; mold-roots twined from the earth, into her, slicking over her skin, filling her sclerae with black. Rose closed her eyes, her brow furrowed. A connection. To all things, to this place, to all people the Black God had touched. I can do this.

The warmth strengthened; it flowed through the roots, through the endless, fractal connections of the mycelium link. A rush, a chorus of voices, a flare of feathers, drifting in the breeze. And when she opened her eyes, it was done.

The skin under her palm, on Heisenberg's chest, was unbroken. The crystal retracted as he stared with a look of shock. He lifted his hands and turned them over, watching the last of the glimmer fade from his skin.

He looked up at Rose.

"You saved me," he said.

Her face split in a grin. "I think we saved each other."

And then it was inevitable- her arms around his neck, his gathering her to him, gently holding the back of her head, like a fine and precious thing. Rose buried her face in the crook of his neck. It was all right. She let it enfold her, miraculous: he was alive. They were, both of them, alive.

Footsteps scuffled through the ruin around them. Rose made herself look up as someone called her name across distance.

Donna. She and Angie picked their way through the destruction, Donna's eyes wide as she took in the destroyed village, the monster corpse sprawled atop it.

"Over here!" Rose waved her arms. Dimitrescu approached, too, striding with considerably more ease from the direction of the castle. Moreau, too, shambling behind Donna, gnawing on a long bone that looked a bit too much like a human femur.

He dropped it as he caught sight of Rose and Heisenberg, picking up speed into a kind of limping jog.

"You're alive!" he gasped as he and the others joined them, as the three Lords stood like a gallery audience before the decaying monster. "Ohhh, Rosemary, Karl...I thought you'd gotten eaten...I thought Mother had murdered you..."

"We could only be so lucky," Dimitrescu muttered, hand on her hip. But the corner of her mouth quirked up into an indulgent smile. "Very nice, child. You're far stronger than I gave you credit for."

"Uh," Rose said. "Thanks?"

Donna took her hand, and Heisenberg's, drawing them both to their feet. Wordless, she touched Heisenberg's scarred cheek. He winked at her.

"Is she..." Donna whispered, to Rose.

"Yeah. Laid to rest." She squeezed Donna's hand. "You don't have to be afraid of her anymore."

"Dear, dear," Dimitrescu drawled, staring out toward the town square below. "We have a visitor."

Rose shook mold from her hands, joining Dimitrescu on the overlook. The echo of horses' hooves rang through the dawn. Its pale light filled the town square, illuminating the remains of the Ouroboros camp, the Maiden of War with her blade resolutely aloft, the single figure on horseback charging through the destruction toward them.

Chris.

He reined his horse around in a slew of grit; in the same movement, he unslung the rifle from his shoulder and vaulted from the horse's back, landing with rifle cocked and leveled.

Not for Dimitrescu, standing like a marble statue of a destroying goddess in the dawn's glow,  crimson smile poised on her face.

Not for Moreau, lips drawn back from snaggleteeth, Cadou tendrils twining free from his tumorous hunchback to whip and snap at the wind.

Not for Donna, her pale face set like a mask, a wild light burning in her single dark eye, a grind of sinister laughter hissing from Angie in her arms.

And not for Heisenberg, who limped to Rose's side, who splayed his hand and, with a guffaw, summoned his hammer and a cloud of shrapnel to swirl around him in a glittering halo.

No. Chris Redfield's next bullet, his next anti-mutant round, was aimed straight for Rose.

She lifted her chin. The wind stirred her hair, brushed her skin, veined with dark mold. She didn't send it down to claim him. She met his eyes, his fervent gaze, bright and steady and set on her. His finger was tense on the trigger. One shot would do. Straight to the heart.

A moment of silence, of wind, of Chris's hesitation.

Then-

He lowered the rifle.

It fell to his side as he straightened and stood back, still holding her gaze. Rose lifted her arms. The ground rumbled- something massive rushing to the surface. It shook the rubble, the Maiden of War on her plinth. Mold erupted from the ground in a seething wave. It twisted toward the sky, twining over Rose and the Four Lords at her side.

The wall of mold closed between her and Chris Redfield, and he was gone from Rose's sight as the first true light of day filled the valley.

[holynightmareco]

Hey, random question but what monster would be good for hypothetically disposing of a really weird large ship that looks like it has a face on the front?

This is PURELY hypothetical…

Personally I would advise the use of a Kracko. Both sea-faring and air-faring ships have difficulty managing tumultuous weather. Kracko is capable of generating a large storm cloud and sending down precise lightning strikes that can target individual personnel aboard the ship. It's available through our catalogue for a very reasonable price.

[alphascorpiixx]

Various ideas for my FFXIV/KH crossover AU:

Fray is a Heartless

Voidsent are not Heartless. The Source and its reflections exist within the Realm of Light except for the Thirteenth, which has fallen extremely close to the Realm of Darkness

Unless I get further information the terminus monsters that attacked Amaurot are Heartless

Heartless invasion pre-KH1 coincides with the Seventh Umbral Calamity. The stars star disappear from the sky as Dalamud falls and even the Ascians are concerned about that

Either Luxu or the Master of Masters told the Ancients how to create a will for the star (also depending on if i get further info about how Zodiark was created. im only in shb)

Luxu definitely infiltrated the Ascians at some point and critiqued their black robe style

recompleted Lauriam and Elrena end up on the Source for some reason. They still use their Nobody names as aliases and become wanted criminals in Sharlayan. And also meet the Lemures. Later a Zenos vs Lauriam reaper fight

the Scions need to ally with the RG apprentices for Some Reason and get their help deciphering Allagan artifacts. The group goes to some Azys Lla-type place but get ambushed by imperial soldiers. Even gives some speech about how dull he finds this world and how using this great technology for war is so boring. The imperials could be researching the mysteries of the heart and—oh is that human experimentation research?? 👀 👀 "Make a catalogue of this, Ienzo, this is fascinating." The Scions start to question their choice of ally

Discussions on what would happen if a Heartless stole the heart of a sin eater

Discussions on what would happen if a sin eater corrupted a Nobody

Discussions on whether or not Xehanort counts as an Ascian

Way too many discussions on what Thancred's Nobody name would be. "He didn't even lose his heart, he just got possessed." "Naxtrehd." "You forgot a letter." "Fuck."

Hildibrand adventures with Donald and Goofy. Goofy is the Smart One. Donald oneshots Bahamut with Zettaflare. Sideplot where Gilgamesh tries to take a Keyblade but it won't stay summoned in his hand

Additional plot with Donald and Goofy where they mentioned that they still can't find Sora and are considering talking to Hades. Cue Scions' extreme confusion and subsequent miscommunication about which Hades they're talking about

Y'shtola casts flow again and this time the Fairy Godmother pops over to the Final World to bring her back. She insists that the Scions repeat "bippity boppity boo" with her for it to work

A Scalan keyblade wielder complains about how pretentious and inaccurate the name "the Source" is for a minor world. "Scala ad Caelum should rightfully be called the Source because it is the nexus from which all worlds spring." Emet-Selch has to go sit down to process this for a moment

Sea salt trio in Amaurot: "oh this kind of looks like The World that Never Was." Scions: "The World that what." "The World that Never Was. Home to the Castle that Never Was and Nobodies that don't exist—" "Okay now you are just making that up." "We did say they don't exist." "Please stop."

Minfilia inherited the Princess of Heart powers during KH3 (ARR time) and passed them onto the Oracles of Light and eventually Ryne

Ryne bonding with Naminé and Xion over being a copy of someone else and eventually asserting their own identity

Gaius and Ansem villain monologue contest

Sora gets the Bahamut summoned he deserved to have in KH1

Sora also has multiple versions of the Ultima Weapon keychain in his back pocket and nearly gives everyone in the vicinity a heart attack when he casually mentions that

Scrooge McDuck vs the Monetarists

Chicken Little summon

[thehauntologicalsociety]

Paperhouse is a 1988 British dark fantasy film directed by Bernard Rose. It was based on the 1958 novel Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr. The film stars Ben Cross, Glenne Headly and Gemma Jones. The original novel was the basis of a six-episode British TV series for children in the early 1970s which was titled Escape Into Night.

While suffering from glandular fever, 11-year-old Anna Madden draws a house. When she falls asleep, she has disturbing dreams in which she finds herself inside the house she has drawn. After she draws a face at the window, in her next dream she finds Marc, a boy who suffers with muscular dystrophy, living in the house. She learns from her doctor that Marc is a real person.

Anna sketches her father into the drawing so that he can help carry Marc away, but she inadvertently gives him an angry expression which she then crosses out, and the father (who has been away a lot and has a drinking problem, putting a strain on his marriage) appears in the dream as a furious, blinded ogre. Anna and Marc defeat the monster and shortly afterward Anna recovers, although the doctor reveals that Marc's condition is deteriorating.

Anna's father returns home and both parents seem determined to get over their marital difficulties. The family goes on holiday by the sea, where Anna finds an epilogue to her dream.

Charlotte Burke - Anna Madden, Ben Cross - Dad, Glenne Headly - Kate Madden, Elliott Spiers - Marc, Gemma Jones - Dr. Sarah Nichols, Jane Bertish - Miss Vanstone, Samantha Cahill - Sharon, Sarah Newbold - Karen.

Marianne Dreams is a children's fantasy novel by Catherine Storr. It was illustrated with drawings by Marjorie-Ann Watts and published by Faber and Faber in 1958. The first paperback edition, from Puffin Books in 1964, is catalogued by the Library of Congress as revised.

Marianne is a young girl who is bedridden with a long-term illness. She draws a picture to fill her time and finds that she spends her dreams within the picture she has drawn. As time goes by, she becomes sicker, and starts to spend more and more time trapped within her fantasy world, and her attempts to make things better by adding to and crossing out things in the drawing make things progressively worse. Her only companion in her dreamworld is a boy called Mark, who is also a long-term invalid in the real world.