#shadows and a touch of magic

[samwellwinchesterthebrave]

Are you looking for a spooky read? Do you like urban fantasy or monster stories? Do you like stories about queer ladies dealing with monsters and getting into (and out of) shenanigans? Check out Shadows and a Touch of Magic.

From shadows that can be savior or destroyer to the creation of the first mermaids, Shadows and a Touch of Magic is a collection of monster stories and urban legends featuring women who love women full of fear, of love, of the strange, and of the whimsical.

Read on for a snippet from each short story 💜

"As she moved to the center of the room, trying to imagine her furniture here and herself living here, a cold breeze ghosted across the back of her neck. It raised the small hairs on the back of her neck and goosebumps down her arms." - Widow's Walk

"They were there again. The shadows that seemed to dip, sway and follow after her. Nijah Khoury glanced back as the edge of one shadow seemed to reach out towards her." - Shadowdancers

"“So, you want to be healed,” Amrita said after another sip of the wine. “What will you offer in return?”

“Anything,” Machi begged. “Anything I have. Please.”

“I heal you, you give me your first child. Fair’s fair, right?”" - Promises, Promises

"Thrilled that she was still alive, Cecily twisted in the water to study herself. Her tail was longer than her legs had been. She could feel power coiled in the muscles and ached to stretch her new body out." - To Become The Sea

"It called to her, stretched out lovely fingers and tempted her in. A small smile tugged at Haley’s lips as she listened. It sounded like the melody was coming from the opposite way of the lake again." - Feast of Sorrowed Breath

"She could clearly remember the last time she’d been swimming, the sun shining down on the blue water like it was today. That was years ago, however. No matter how many times she came to this pier, she never dared the water." - Trapped

"Have you ever heard of the smile maidens? I’d never heard of them before my travels and, at the beginning, I’d scoffed at the idea of them. It seemed such a silly name for a supernatural force that killed people or stole their souls." - The Smile Maidens

[whumpypepsigal]

Shadow and Bone s02e08: “He's putting up a good fight… Like something's holding him on the other side.”

[necromycologist]

i think i say this like all the time but it is a TRAVESTY that we dont do more with came back wrong nick. ohhh he died from being possessed by the destroyer and sat in the river for a while and got brought back to life by an immensely powerful but also untrustworthy free magic creature? and hes Normal Human? stop lying to me man i know theres something wrong with him

[cloaksandcapes]

Shadow-touched Plate

Armor (plate), very rare

“This plate mail was suffused with magic from the Shadowfell. It exudes a dark mist that eats away at the light and shrouds objects it surrounds in darkness.”

The magical nature of this heavy armor removes any noise that it makes while moving, you do not suffer disadvantage on stealth checks. In addition, you have advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks made to hide in dim light or darkness, and Wisdom (Perception) checks made to spot you while in darkness are done at disadvantage.

Touch of Darkness. If you are hit by an attack and bloodied, you may use your reaction to cast the darkness spell. Once you use this property you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest. Mastercraft Armor. You gain a bonus to your AC score equal to half of your proficiency bonus (rounded down.)

If you enjoy our content, please support our team of four on Patreon. Get access to over 700+ Magic Items, monsters, tokens, subclasses and more.

[offrozenmemoirs]

Thinking about Makoto's desire for intimacy being pushed down by his feelings of not deserving to be loved, how he's slowly coming around to being cared for and learning how to take his pain and sorrow to focus it on protecting others. Thinking about how he sometimes softly touches his party members and catches himself staring at them.

Love thinking about Makoto being a giant cat and affectionately wrapping himself around Maisie or Orchidus or putting his wings and tail around them.

[acourtofquestions]

credit: Alice Maria Power

[drowningkeyborad]

Working on my old Bianca Di Angelo pjo fanfic and accidentally made her & Alabaster the perfect couple??

[antaripirate]

spent a lot of time climbing paleo-glaciers today but i also made this :)

[hasmashdoneanythingwrong]

If bond points remaining consistent between summoned instances of a Servant are a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation, explain this.

[dragongodryss]

Queve

Re-Vamping my whump story

Common Content for him: Non-human Whumpee, Conditioned Whumpee, Magical Whump, Exhaustion Whump, Injury Whump, Touch starved Whumpee,

Queve is a younger drow from the Braeryn, the most neglected part of Menzoberranzan.

As the son of a disgraced drow priestess and an escaped moon elf slave, Queve lives with the constant fear that his parentage will be revealed. His father fled as soon as he could, leaving his mother in the Braeryn alone. She believes that Queve and his father ruined her life. As such, she constantly reminded Queve that he is an abomination against Lolth, the goddess of the drow, as well as being physically abusive until her death when he was about 11. With her dying breath, she cursed him to have his very heart turn against him. It took effect immediately, the magic in the air being set off by his grief, anger and pain and causing an explosion that almost killed him.

He was found by a cursed drow named Istyl, who nursed him back to health while trying to teach him to manage his curse. He is weirdly insistent on having Queve leave as soon as possible. Queve tries to join a low-ranking house as a servant, but is kicked out after his magic starts to manifest when he is beaten. He moves in and out of Istyl's shack while he tries to find jobs and housing. Eventually, Istyl kicks him out once and for all.

That's when he manages to find work at the Zurkhwood Shadow.

Queve is a people-pleaser of nervous disposition. He is used to suppressing his emotions to prevent his magic from acting up. He believes he deserves nothing good due to being half moon elf. Despite that, he does his utmost to keep his secret.

Name: Quev (charmed, docile, friend) + e (servant, slave, vassal)

Real name: Quev (see above) + yraen (heretic, reel, riot, void)

Avoids using his real name for obvious reasons.

Age: 39 (Actual), 44 (Physical), Early/Mid-Twenties (Appearance)

Height: 152cm (5'0)

Sorcerer (Cursed): Level 4

[samwellwinchesterthebrave]

Corvus Quill Press has unfortunately closed. Because of this, I have re-published Shadows and a Touch of Magic myself. It’s available in both ebook and paperback formats. Check it out here 😊💜

amazon . com/dp/B07JMHGQWQ

[author-main]

Twi can be a little messed up and hungry for dark magic... as a treat

[blujayonthewing]

Gimmiiiieee secret for one of those funky gnomes?

secret: What's one secret your OC never wants anyone to know about them?

After her friend and mentor, the circus' escape artist, died in a suspicious water escape accident, Idri's had an intense fear of deep water and of drowning. She doesn't want anyone to know about it partly because she finds it embarrassing, and partly just because it's connected to something painful that she's trying to 'cope with' by just simply Never Thinking About It Ever. She ALSO, more recently, has a more serious but less personal secret, which is that it turns out said mentor was not actually killed in that incident, but that his death was faked by a friend who knew he was being targeted for murder, and secretly took his place... he still has enemies, and fears that if word gets out that he's not actually dead, it might put more of his friends and colleagues in danger. Idri takes his trusting her with this information very seriously, and is determined to never tell a soul.

Melliwyk honestly fucking hates secrets at this point in the adventure, lmao. No more secrets! No fucking secrets forever!! They only ever cause problems she's so sick of things being kept secret for ~good reasons~ that always just make everything worse for no reason!! I mean she probably has some personal things that are private or embarrassing that she wouldn't want people to know about, obviously, who doesn't, but even a lot of those things are either widely known even if not necessarily by her friends (the incident with her former roommate), or things she's told them by now (the fact that her 'hood' is a novelty nightcap enchanted to give the wearer pleasant dreams, and she wears it all the time because she's nightmare-prone, especially when she unexpectedly falls asleep)

Felix went missing for awhile. He has no idea what happened during most of that time, but the last thing he remembers was witnessing a caravan camped just off the road being attacked by.... something. Huge, looming humanoid shapes of pure darkness, seemingly draining the life essence of the people in the caravan. He was spotted before he had a chance to do anything, and a creature grabbed his arm, but a voice called for it to leave him alone... After he woke up, he found his skin had turned completely grey where the creature touched him; it doesn't hurt or feel different in any way, and the mark hasn't spread, although the hand was so big that its print takes up most of his arm. He's been trying to learn literally anything about what he saw and what happened to him, but he hasn't told anybody, and he keeps his arm covered at all times.

Indigo would hate if the truth got out about what happened to their eye, where they now have an obviously false golden one. It's not, like, actually a big deal, but they give a different answer every time anyone asks, so if people knew the truth it would ruin the bit. Indigo lies recreationally so there are a lot of things about their personal life and backstory that they keep dead secret for no other particular reason than that it's fun for them. The only thing cooler than having been mentored by an ancient dragon is casually never ever mentioning it, you know?

ask about my characters! :3c

[katierosefun]

ugh i love you stories about people who aren’t entirely sure whether something is real or not i love you stories about people who slip through the cracks and aren’t entirely sure how they got there ugh i love you stories about people who think that they’re pretty normal outside of that one interesting quirk they have and then they realize that they’re all abuzz in this strange new world where nothing makes sense but everything suddenly makes sense i love you stories that are about magic but also about real life i love you stories about the creepy-crawly things that tell you not to turn around for some reason, you know that feeling you get when you’re told you shouldn’t turn around, close the closet door, don’t open your bedroom door, don’t you dare turn around you know that feeling you get when you feel as though you’ve been somewhere before you know that feeling you get when you aren’t sure if you’re sleepwalking or not but your head feels detached from the rest of your body i love you stories that try to explain that specific feeling i love you stories about how the world is so much crazier and scarier and more beautiful than you could ever imagine but also more horrifying than you could ever imagine i love you stories where the ultimate conclusion is that the world is horrific and beautiful and you belong right into its disastrous, nonsensical fold

[a-world-in-grey]

Do you think that, hypothetically, it would be possible for the oracle line to do similar to the the LC where they share their magic? Or do you think it is something that is specifically just an LC thing because of the different things the LC magic can do?

Honestly, I have no idea.

My hc is that Bahamut's Blessing is Light, Life, War, and Steel. Unlike the other Astrals, Bahamut split his Blessing into two separate ones. So the LCs predominantly get the War and Steel while the Oracles get the Light and Life. Not that there isn't some crossover - I hc that both lines have armigers, and that the LCs ability to make potions and other curatives are a watered down form of Oracle healing. And in the end, the base for the armiger and warping is all based on Bahamut's domain of Light.

LCs share magic by creating a bond between them and the person they are sharing their magic with. A link between souls, in other words.

That said, Bahamut's domain has nothing to do with souls.

Which begs the question of why Lucis Caelums can share their magic.

The two theories I'm juggling are that a) the Crystal is what enables Lucis Caelums to link their souls, which then begs the question of how the Crystal does that and if enables the ability for all Lucis Caelums or only those that grow up in close enough proximity or some other mechanism, but means that only Lucis Caelums can share their magic, or b) it's magic itself that allows people to create such bonds, and it's only the Lucis Caelums that know how to do it in the current day/have the magic to do so, which would enable the Oracles to share their magic so long as they know how to do so.

@secret-engima any thoughts on this?

[aesthetic-solar-space]

The Umbra King by Jamie Applegate Hunter, 385pages, published September 20th 2022 - 🌟🌟🌟🌟 This book caused me a solid reading slump after I finished it, I was so invested and wanted nothing more that to read more. I went into the book thinking book one and two were out thanks to Kindle and how it was formatted, so I was even more disappointed when I finished and found out the second one was in fact not ready to read. All of that said I want to make it very clear that I recommend this book a thousand times over and think anyone who needs another morally gray female in their lives should devour this book ASAP (especially seeing as it is available on Kindle Unlimited). Below is some of what you can expect to find if you read this amazing book by @jah.hdj.books -enemies to lovers -dark fantasy -shadow manipulation 😉 -alphahole king with a painful past -touch her and you die -who did this to you? -revenge plot found family -female serial killer -fated lovers/mates -beauty and the beast

With all of that said I can't wait for y'all to read this book so we can both be obsessed with Caius and Aurora (Rory).