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nayziiz · 9 months ago

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Lost & Found | OP81

Pairing: Oscar Piastri x reader

Author's note: I'm trying something a little bit different with shorter form fics, so please send through any requests or feedback. These one shots will likely not have a second part unless it really speaks to me to continue with it. Thank you!

Masterlist

Oscar thrived on the energy you brought to the paddock during race weekends. Your mere presence seemed to anchor him amidst the whirlwind of anticipation and nerves that often accompanied such high-stakes events. Amidst the chaos of the paddock, your steady presence provided him with a sense of comfort and confidence, acting as a stabilising force in the midst of the adrenaline-fueled atmosphere.

Your support didn't just stop at being physically present; it extended to an unwavering encouragement that boosted his morale and mental fortitude. Knowing that you were there, cheering him on from the sidelines, fueled his determination to perform at his best. Your belief in him mirrored his own, serving as a constant reminder of his capabilities and potential.

But perhaps most significantly, your presence seemed to translate into tangible results on the track. Whenever you were there to celebrate with him, Oscar's performance seemed to reach new heights. It was as if your support had a direct correlation to his success, as if your belief in him propelled him forward, pushing him to push the boundaries of his own abilities.

As the weekend unfolded, Oscar found solace in your company, relishing every moment spent together, from leisurely strolls around the paddock to shared lunches and casual conversations while watching replays in the garage. Your presence brought him a sense of contentment, grounding him amidst the intensity of race weekends.

However, a shadow fell over his contentment when he noticed you chatting with Lando. The sight of you laughing at Lando's jokes, your hand resting casually on his arm, ignited a surge of jealousy within Oscar. He couldn't help but feel a pang of insecurity as he observed the easy rapport between you and his teammate, the way Lando's eyes seemed to light up in response to your laughter.

In that moment, Oscar's contentment gave way to a gnawing sense of unease. He couldn't shake the feeling of being sidelined, of watching from the sidelines as you shared a connection with someone he considered a friend. The laughter that had once brought him joy now rang hollow in his ears, overshadowed by the discomfort of seeing you engage with another driver in such a familiar manner.

Later, as Oscar stumbled upon you engrossed in conversation with Pato, a surge of frustration and hurt bubbled up within him. The sight of you hanging onto Pato's every word, your gaze fixed attentively on him, felt like a blow to Oscar's ego. It seemed as though you were captivated by Pato's presence, absorbing his insights and perspectives with an eagerness that Oscar found difficult to stomach.

For Oscar, this encounter with Pato served as a painful reminder of his own perceived insignificance in your eyes. Throughout the day, he had watched as you effortlessly connected with various people in the paddock, never sparing a moment to seek him out or engage with him in the same way. It was as if he didn't even register on your radar, as if his presence didn't matter to you at all.

As Oscar observed you leaning in closely, preoccupied in conversation with a mechanic as he explained the intricate details of Oscar's car, a wave of possessiveness and protectiveness washed over him. Though outwardly composed, inwardly, Oscar's emotions roiled like a storm ready to break.

The sight of you showing interest in the workings of his car, sharing a moment of camaraderie with another man, ignited a primal instinct within Oscar to defend what he considered his territory. The mechanic's presence, while innocent and professional, suddenly felt like a threat to Oscar's sense of security and connection with you.

Behind his calm exterior, Oscar's mind raced with thoughts of competition and rivalry. He felt an overwhelming urge to assert his dominance, to remind everyone in the paddock that you were his, and his alone. The idea of anyone else encroaching on your attention filled him with a fierce determination to reclaim your focus, to ensure that you remained firmly by his side.

In that moment, Oscar's love for you transformed into a fierce, primal instinct to protect and possess. He would do anything to keep you close, to ensure that no other man could come between you. Though his actions might seem extreme to an outsider, for Oscar, it was a matter of preserving what he held most dear: his connection with you.

Despite the storm of emotions raging within him, Oscar knew better than to confront the situation in public. He understood the importance of maintaining a composed facade amidst the public eye, unwilling to air his grievances or reveal his insecurities in front of others. Instead, he made a silent vow to address the issue with you privately, where he could express his feelings without fear of judgement or scrutiny.

As the day wore on and the activities in the paddock continued, Oscar bided his time, keeping his emotions carefully in check. With each passing hour, his resolve to discuss the matter with you grew stronger, fueled by a mixture of frustration, hurt, and a deep-seated desire to salvage what he perceived as a strained connection between them.

It wasn't until you both returned to the privacy of the hotel that Oscar felt the weight of the day's events press upon him once more. As Oscar and you entered the hushed confines of the hotel lobby, the tension between them crackled like electricity in the air. Oscar's jaw clenched, his gaze fixed on you with a mixture of longing and apprehension. Finally, as the elevator doors closed behind them, sealing them in a cocoon of privacy, Oscar couldn't hold back any longer.

“We need to talk,” he said, his voice taut with emotion. Your eyebrows furrowed, sensing the gravity of his tone.

“What's on your mind?” you asked, trying to keep your voice steady despite the growing sense of unease.

“You know damn well what's on my mind,” Oscar snapped, his frustration bubbling to the surface. “I saw you today, cozying up to Lando, Pato, and that mechanic. It felt like I was invisible to you, like you didn't even bother to look for me.”

Your eyes widened in surprise, but before you could respond, Oscar continued, his words tumbling out in a rush of pent-up emotion. “I can't stand seeing you with other guys, laughing and flirting like I'm not even here. I know I should trust you, but it's driving me insane.”

A flicker of hurt flashed across your face, mingling with empathy as you reached out to touch his arm gently.

“I was just being polite, Osc. I didn’t mean for it to seem like I was flirting with them. I didn't realise it was affecting you like this," you said softly, your voice laced with sincerity. Oscar's shoulders sagged with relief at your understanding, but the fire in his eyes didn't dim.

“I just... I need you to know how much you mean to me,” he admitted, his voice wavering slightly. “I can't stand the thought of losing you.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing I’m with you then, and not one of those stupid boys. Now I can just show you how much I love being yours,” You told him.

Tension hung in the air between them, but as you reached out to envelop him in a comforting embrace, Oscar felt a weight lift from his chest. A tentative smile tugged at the corners of your lips as you met his gaze, a silent reassurance passing between you.

“I'm here, with you, completely and utterly yours,” you continued, your voice filled with conviction.

In that moment, as the weight of the day's tensions melted away, Oscar felt a surge of gratitude for the unwavering love and devotion you offered him. With a renewed sense of purpose, he wrapped his arms around you, pulling you close in a tender embrace.

Together, in the quiet sanctuary of the hotel room, you found solace in each other's arms, reaffirming the bond that held you together amidst the chaos of the racing world. And as you whispered words of love and reassurance into the night, Oscar knew that no matter what challenges lay ahead, as long as he had you by his side, he could weather any storm. And, perhaps learn to be less jealous at times.

#oscar piastri #f1 fanfic #f1 fic #f1 imagine #formula 1 #mclaren #mclaren f1 #f1 x reader #f1 #oscar piastri x reader #oscar piastri x you #oscar piastri imagine #oscar piastri x y/n #oscar piastri x female reader #op81 imagine #op81 x reader #op81 #op81 fic #oscar pastry

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dilatorywriting · 2 years ago

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Monster Mayhem: Donkeys & Dragons [PART 4]

Gender Neutral Reader x Malleus Draconia Word Count: 6.7k

Summary: 'Never tickle a sleeping dragon.'

🌶️Obligatory Warning for Some Descriptions of Violence & Mild Suggestive Content

[PART 1] [PART 2] [PART 3] [PART 4] [EPILOGUE]

As detestable as they were, at the very least your assailants were well organized.

You were plopped neatly at the center of the room, in a very conspicuous location that would have made it difficult for a hypothetical someone to, say, just flat-out torch everything in sight without also catching his very tiny, mortal, companion up in said firestorm.

The group of them split off to tend to their tasks with a frankly shocking level of competence and foresight. Was this how adventurers were actually supposed to work? They didn’t just—I don’t know—saunter into an abandoned castle on a whim and a prayer, with no real end goal in sight and nothing but the perpetual bounding of a singular, shared, braincell to keep them on their toes? There was a plan? What was this madness.

“How much time do you think we have?” one of them called, busy working to set up some sort of wire trap that, in your humble ‘I have faced this legendary dragon and survived’ opinion, looked like it would do exactly diddly squat.

“Enough,” the Elf Wizard shrugged, thin arms crossed tight across his equally gaunt chest. “These vermin don’t have the same concept of time as we do. It may return soon, but we may also be waiting hours.”

Hours? Hours? You fought the urge to groan. And then remembered it hardly mattered if you did or not, because you were still trapped in a bubble of perpetual Silence, and that just made you want to groan louder.

Assumed-Rogue nodded tersely in response and continued constructing his pseudo-trap. The long, red, stripes of his sleeves were odd things—very in-your-face bold for a dude whose job you assumed it was to slip through shadows unseen. But then you noticed that the threads he was spinning were pooling from those slashes of crimson, and alright, that was fairly cool. ‘Your failure of a stealthy design gets a pass this time, good sir.’

“You’re certain this is one of the Briar Beasts, Lord Flamm?” Armored Lady piped in, busy shifting through the various swords strapped at her hip.

“Of course,” he hummed, flicking through his spell tome. “Have I ever led you astray before?”

Armored Dude snorted from his place across the room. “You’re not the issue. I just have trouble believing one of those monsters would still be alive at all after all this time.”

‘Lord Flamm’ snorted. “And why not? They’re like cockroaches—thriving through the worst of the world and gorging themselves on its corruption. This one is no different.”

Your brows twitched irritably.

Thankfully, Silence was not an indefinite spell. And after about ten minutes of muzzled misery, you felt its sticky, gauzy, gunk wash itself out of your throat.

“I’m getting the impression that you’re really not a fan of dragons,” you said, testing your volume.

Lord Flamm stared down at you with a hawk-eyed sort of sneer. His pale, green, glare felt like a tangible thing crawling along your skin.

“They are unnatural,” he huffed after a moment. “No creature should walk the planes of this world for such a great span of time. Immortality is a perverse transgression against the sanctities of life and existence.”

“You are literally an Elf,” you replied, incredulous. His face scrunched up like you’d forced a whole lemon into his mouth, and then he dropped another dome of Silence over your head.

Another ten minutes crawled by, and words returned to your tongue.

“Don’t you think you’re being a bit hypocritical?” you hummed, casually testing the arcane restraints binding your limbs. Those seemed to hold themselves in place with a great deal more fortitude than his on-again-off-again Mute Button, which was as frustrating as it was respectable.

“It’s not nearly the same. I was born into my burden,” he sniffed.

You blinked, confused. “I mean, so was Tsunotarou.”

Elf Wizard made a punched-out sort of noise, like you’d decked him right in the spleen.

“You named the beast?” he gawked. “Like a pet?”

“Look, man,” you grouched, offended on your scaly friend’s behalf. “If anyone’s the pet here, it’s me!”

Lord Flamm’s face went white, to red, and then nearly puce.

“Wait,” you spluttered. “That came out wrong—”

And then you were gagged once more.

The next time your muzzle was lifted, Lord Flamm was already pacing along the little, invisible, edge of the spell’s cage. You cleared your throat and he came to a stop a few feet away from where you were bound.

“I can see what’s happened here,” he said, stern, and you arched a brow in disbelief. You didn’t even have any solid idea what the fuck was going on, and you’d been living it for the past few weeks. He cleared his throat and glowered down at you. “You’ve been taken in by the monster’s wiles.”

You spluttered. “Not to just keep repeating myself, but really, if anyone did the ‘accidental seducing’ thing here, it was—”

He waved you off with a puckered grimace. “That hardly matters. At the end of the day, you are still the creature’s prisoner, and it is my duty as a man of integrity to assist you however I can.”

You frowned. Because while this whole thing had technically started as a hostage situation, it hadn’t really felt like one lately. Sure, Tsunotarou still threw tantrums that shook the foundation when you’d tried to put up a makeshift bathroom door, but he also listened to all your stories with the rapt attention of someone genuinely invested in the garbage pouring out of your mouth. He tucked you into your big mattress nest at night with his scaly nose, and endured all your griping with nothing but good humor. He showed you his treasures and told you terrible, dry, jokes that you were sure you only found so funny because he certainly hadn’t meant to be.

You sighed and dipped your head, expression shuttered.

Lord Flamm stepped forward and you felt a thin, gloved, finger tuck itself beneath your chin to tilt you back up to face him.

“I will save you,” he promised, something genuinely sturdy and righteous coating the words. “If you ask it of me.”

You took a deep breath in through your nose.

“There once a man from Trebucket,” you chirped, letting the jaunty tavern melody roll off your tongue like any good Bard ought to.

Lord Flamm arched a thin brow, in equal parts amusement and exasperation.

“Who really only wanted to find the dragon so he could fuck it—”

His face twisted in rage, and to the surprise of literally no one, you were Silenced yet again. Though this one felt the most like a victory so far.

And thus, the cycle repeated itself. Every quarter hour or so, the spell would drop and you’d start babbling some sacrilegious, borderline pornographic, nonsense that had him cursing you all over again. You counted each round of mockery softly in your head. Half to keep time, half to—

Your gaze trailed past the intricate, stone, entryway and caught. Perched atop the overhang were two gargoyles. Which was quite odd, seeing as you’d spent half a month living out of this room now and had never noticed them before (and you certainly would have, what with your host’s propensity for pointing out the gothic carvings each and every time one popped up in the castle’s architecture). Not to mention, they looked an awful lot like the pair of grey monsters which had been guarding the entrance when you’d first slunk in—the very duo that you’d sworn had tracked you and your friends with beady, gemstone, eyes and dug their pointed talons through solid rock.

Ancient buildings always seemed to have a life about them—never quiet, never still. Always settling with strange noises and shifting shadows that danced oddly along surfaces that were forever decaying. And this castle was no different. So it took you really listening, really closing your eyes tight and straining your ears against the perpetual white noise, to make out the low grinding of the Gargoyles as they shifted atop their perch and curled their sharp claws.

You tilted your head at them, curious, and the one on the left seemed to bristle. As much as stone could bristle. The one on the right very softly dipped its chin, almost like a bow. Its purple, glass, eyes flashed in the lowlight.

‘Wait,’ that look said.

And so you did, sitting straighter and at proper attention.

The group of Dragon Slayers was still milling about making preparations. Eventually, one of the two yet-unclassified hench people slunk from the room, and when your gaze slipped back to the gargoyles, the one on the right was gone.

You made eye contact with the remaining carving, and it curled its lip at you like a grumbly hound.

There was a scream from beyond the threshold, and then a great clattering of noise not unlike an earthquake, or the resonating crunch of a building crumbling at its base.

Immediately weapons were drawn, shoulders hunched in panic. Defensive magic swirled through the air like ink in water.

“What’s going on?!—”

With a shrieking roar, the remaining gargoyle lurched forward and collided with one of the armored attackers. The impact was like a crack of thunder, and it rattled around your skull like a gong.

And with that—dragon or no—the battle against the Hunters had officially begun.

With a panicked squawk, you began worming your still very bound self out of the dead center of this tornado of chaos. You flopped across the floor like a particularly determined caterpillar, or someone trussed up a in a sleeping bag with no limbs. You made it almost a solid twenty feet before you were scooped up by the back of your collar and dropped onto your knees.

“Not so fast, you little cretin.”

And then there was a curved knife at your throat and a set of hands trapping your own. You gulped and the blade bobbed against your chin. Stupid rogues with their stupid stealth. You grit your teeth and clenched your fists, willing the meager scraps of magic that twirled in your veins to bob to the surface. You could feel the trace rumblings of a Thunderwave reverberating down your limbs, and it was certainly no Fireball, or Lightning Bolt, but maybe it would be enough to—

There was a spray of red, red, red and the Striped Rogue at your back collapsed in a puddle of gore.

Standing over the corpse of the felled assassin was a boy. Or, well, something that very much looked like a young boy. Or, not young. Just… It was strange. He was small, slight, with a cheerful youthfulness to him. But the mirthful expression lighting his crimson eyes chilled your bones like the seeping cold from a long-forgotten tomb. It was like looking at someone with dozens—hundreds—of faces. A kaleidoscope of lifetimes. It was disorientating.

“Hello, you,” the little demon cooed. He reached out to tap a clawed finger against your forehead and the arcane binds holding your limbs shattered on impact. “Let’s get you out of here, hmm?”

Something tugged at your brain as you gaped at that mess of choppy, black-and-pink, hair, and the glittering irises that matched the blood splattered across his cheeks almost too horribly well.

“Are you… Lilia?” you asked, dazed.

“Well done, little human,” he trilled, lips curling in delight as he hauled you back to your feet. “But there will be time for proper introductions later. Let’s get you somewhere safe first, before my silly ward really does tear this whole castle down.”

“Tsunotarou is here?” you frowned, anxious. “But these people are here to kill him.”

“We’ve done our best to keep him away for as long as possible,” Lilia hummed. “But I doubt he has much more patience for skulking about in the shadows. He never did,” He sighed, long and world weary. “And I loved this old haunt so much too. I hope it survives.”

“You—” you gawked. “You’re talking about the castle?!”

“Of course,” Lilia smiled, perfectly sweet. “Swatting these pests is going to cause more damage than they’re worth to begin with—”

You were yanked out of the path of an encroaching blade, and Lilia sidestepped the pair of you smoothly to safety.

“You’re not going anywhere!” the Paladin thundered, hand whipping out to leash a whirl of vibrating, bright, magic around Lilia’s wrists. “This fight is mine! And you will have no other!”

“Ah,” your savior sighed, looking down at the faint, yellow, glow circling his skin. “Now that is a doozy.”

The great sword came down with a crash, and Lilia ducked away from the destruction with ease. He gave you a light tap on the shoulder, pushing you forward, and you felt the flush of a Haste spell nibbling at your limbs.

“Go on ahead,” he said, with all the nonchalant politeness of someone lamenting that they were going to be late for afternoon tea. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

BOOM went the now glowing sword as it sliced through the air where your savior had been standing not a moment before.

“Do not take me so lightly, wretch,” the Paladin spat, and Lilia’s civil little smile twisted into something that sent shivers racing down your spine.

“If you insist,” he beamed, with a level of enthusiasm that was bordering on sociopathic.

You didn’t stay to see the fallout. Lilia’s orders to flee aside, you knew well enough what a cat looked like before it pounced—that smug, animalistic, satisfaction that came after deciding that it was going to play with its meal for as long as it liked. And the grinding, snapping, howling noises coming from their direction was enough to reinforce that looking back would be a very terrible idea indeed.

You’d only just made it past the threshold and out in the grand hall beyond when there came a whining groan that sounded familiarly enough like the protesting noises the banister would make whenever Tsunotarou dropped too much of his weight on top of it. You peered back into the room, and from the darkness at its rear emerged a long, thin, snout.

The Great, Ebony, Dragon slithered forth from the blackness like a snake through the grass. The sharp drag of his claws against the stone was earsplitting, and when he spread his wings behind him, he seemed to cast the entire cavern into shadow. Faster than you could blink, one, two, three of the Slayers were scooped up by those massive, pointed, teeth and tossed through the air—wherein the pair of gargoyles descended upon them like a set of well-trained attack dogs. Your dragon swiveled to spit black smoke across the rest of the echoing room and its occupants. Between the swirling smog seeping from his throat and the blackness of his wings, the brilliant, green, glow of his eyes were the only source of light in the gloom. It was all horribly eerie, but mesmerizing in a way that reminded you exactly why so many ballads and epics had been written about the terrible might of Dragons.

He reared his head back and roared. His bellowing seemed to shake the very foundation of the castle, and the sparks jumping from behind his canines bit through the smoke with harsh little pop-pop-pops. And man oh man, he reallymust have been taking it easy on you and your duo of idiots, because this would have had the three of you shitting your pants on the spot.

From there, the battle more or less became a one-sided massacre. The stone soldiers flew through the air, decimating the opponents as their master demanded. Occasionally there was a flash of pink, and then a cheerful laugh followed inevitably by a noise that was all kinds of unpleasant. And at the center of it all was your newfound friend—picking apart the opposition with all the careful rage of someone determined to sear the consequences of these Hunters’ folly into the memories of their lineages for ages to come.

And then—amidst all the quite frankly epic fighting that you would have to tell Ace and Deuce all about when they came back to visit—you noticed that not far from where you were hiding observing was a familiar, angry, gaunt face. Lord Flamm’s elaborate black and maroon robes swirled around his ankles as he paced, and he was leering at the chaos unfolding not a hundred feet away with an expression that calling murderous would have been kind.

You bristled immediately, limbs lancing through with a tight sort of indignation.

He was just—right there! Standing all the way out here! When the rest of his party was busy being chewed to itty-bitty pieces!

And sure, rationally you knew that Wizards were squishy, glass-canons not meant for close combat more intense than a round of rock-paper-scissors. Sure, when you and your idiots had been facing down a dragon, Ace and Deuce had ordered you and your equally ill-armored self to run for it. Someone had probably hurled the Elf from the room the moment combat began, or demanded he whirl away to safety.

But you wanted to be angry. Because this was the man who had strode, eyes wide open, into a hornet’s nest with the sole intention of crushing the poor bugs beneath his heel. He deserved to bear the brunt of the miserable, stinging, backlash.

It certainly didn’t help that he was glaring down Tsunotarou with near frenzied loathing. The tome in his hands was flipped open to a dense spell that you couldn’t even begin to make sense of, and he was casting. Something tedious, and extravagant, and with enough somatic nonsense to make your head spin. His gloved fingers glowed beneath a growing mote of magic that shone horrible and bright in the natural shadows of the castle. Whatever sort of magic it was, it was strong enough to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end and push frantic adrenaline through your veins. Sigils swam through the air, and you swore you could feel it sapping at your own tiny pool of mana. If this was some kind of spell that would gobble up magic, then a dragon who was nothing but magic—then Tsunotarou—he would—This spell might actually—

You ran at that wretched little bitch with everything you had, and tackled him to the ground just as a bolt of crackling, pale, force magic boomed from between his fingers. The spell shot wide, and you thanked every divine being you could think of for the enduring shittiness of Wizard Muscles.

“I should have known you’d risk your life to save that unholy monster,” he seethed, rolling back to his feet and sending you tumbling off the side.

You stood firm and silent between this awful, garbage, Elf and the Dragon he so hated.

Lord Flamm raised a hand in your direction, incensed, and then you watched as something sharp and frightened slithered its way across his features. No sparks danced along his fingertips, no black miasma curled from his palms. You shoved your hands into your pockets and rocked back and forth on your heels like the most obnoxious piece of shit you could be.

“Wow,” you drawled, low in your throat. “That was impressive. I mean. How many times did you cast all those spells on me earlier? I’m shocked you have anything left.”

The already dark look coloring his face twitched into something truly foul.

“You were doing that on purpose,” he snarled. “You vile, loathsome, bumbling ignoramus of a bard!—"

“Ah, stop, stop!” You beamed, fanning yourself with a limp wrist. “You’re going to make me blush~”

You ducked out the way with a yelp as a mote of fire whizzed past your ear—singeing far too many hairs at it went. Because fuck fuck fuck. Cantrips were still a thing. And he was powerful enough that those simple, little, bits of magic would still probably be more than enough to fry the meat off your bones.

“It’ll be enough to kill you,” he seethed—like he could read your thoughts—teeth tugged into a hideous, gaping, sneer.

Your mind zipped through every possible escape route and settled frantically on the only option that had ever truly seemed to save your ass.

“What white teeth you have?” you tried.

He roared and another shot of brilliant, red, flames careened over your head.

You ducked out of the way with a squawk just in the nick of time, nearly faceplanting into a wall in your haste.

And thus ensued a terrifying but morbidly hilarious Benny Hill chase through pillars, and behind rocks, and into holes. You killed your singular, daily use of Misty Step just trying to get out of one of said holes. And your brief attempt at tossing up a Mirror Image to throw off his groove did little but get you whacked with a Counterspell that made your bones ache.

Just as you’d burned through the last of your meager magic and were genuinely preparing to just try and deck the guy again, black smoke began to curl through the hall—soon followed by the ominous roll of thunderous growls and the heavy grindingof a gigantic beast clawing its way into the room.

You threw yourself at the dragon with more enthusiasm than was probably proper for a situation like this, and he immediately ducked his head to catch you against his snout. He curled himself around you with a rumbling snarl and your vision was drowned in a shifting sea of ebony scales. You squished yourself into his bulk with a shuddering sigh, fingers clutching a bit uselessly at the slippery surface of his natural armor.

A burst of orange flames rolled harmlessly off Tsunotarou’s scaled side and his lips curled unpleasantly over his canines. You could see the licks of emerald fire rolling off his tongue—dancing along his white teeth and lighting the hall in an ominous, sickly, glow.

Before the pair of you, Lord Flamm looked half-mad. If not fully consumed. His party wiped, his hostage freed, and the creature he hated so fiercely baring down on him with no escape.

He let his head fall back with a discordant trill of laughter and grinned at the approaching dragon without a hint of repentance. Fear, perhaps. Panic, certainly. But no remorse. He raised his hands once more, and another dredge of his own fire sparked along his fingers.

“And he shall smite the wicked and plunge them into the fiery pit.”

The Great Briar Beast of Old opened his gigantic, black, maw and choked the hall in a torrent of emerald fire.

And Lord Flamm and his Dragon Slayers were no more.

You stared intently at the singed corridor, as if waiting for one of the piles of ash to jump to its feet and pull a sword. Which you might have excused as paranoid fretting if you hadn’t heard of necrotic magics capable of doing exactly that. But after a long moment of waiting with bated breath and tight fists, the monsters did not rise from their graves, and all seemed to be truly well and over.

You let out a gigantic gust of a breath and collapsed bonelessly against the dragon at your side. After a solid minute or two of just awkwardly trying to find a good way to hug a giant lizard more than a dozen times your size, Tsunotarou slipped out of his scales, and then he was warm and fleshy in your arms once more. Still too big, still earth-shatteringly strong, but human-shapedenough that you could merrily settle into his embrace without the risk of becoming a pancake.

“Tsunotarou!” you chirped past the lingering haze of smoke. “You’re okay!”

“Me?” he gawked at you. It was an awkward angle to make eye contact, seeing as he’d latched himself onto you like a particularly determined koala, but he managed nonetheless. “You were worried about me during all of that?” He blinked those wide, neon, eyes at you like you were some horribly long and tedious math equation that he couldn’t even begin to make sense of. “You were the one who was captured!”

“They were Dragon Slayers,” you entreated, brow furrowed. “They didn’t need me for much of anything. Of course I was worried more about you.”

When the constipated look on his face refused to fade, you prodded him gently in his side.

“Look, I promise if we ever run into Bard Poachers I will be exponentially more cautious.”

He didn’t look particularly convinced—whether because he was trying to suss out of if something like ‘Bard Poachers’ were an actual, factual, threat upon your person, or because you’d just openly hurtled yourself at a clearly overpowered, feral, wizard with no regards to your already shitty constitution to speak of, so a promise to ‘be more cautious’ was about as good as saying that maybe next time you wouldn’t outright flirt with death. Only subtly. A lil’ bit.

You reached up to smoosh your thumb along the sharp slant of his frown and smooth out the harsh edges that were practically digging into his jaw.

“Tsunotarou, if you keep making that face, it’s going to get stuck like that,” you warned.

“Malleus,” he interrupted, firm. You blinked up at him slowly and your hand fell back to rest in the nonexistent space between you.

“A what?”

“Malleus,” he repeated, and you felt the weight of the word dance through the air like sparks. Like an invocation, or a curse. “My true name.”

You waited a moment in shocked silence before slowly repeating your own name back at him. He startled and snorted a laugh into your neck, some of that lingering, terrible, tension finally seeming to seep out of him.

“I am well aware of what you are called, Child of Man.”

“…I know that,” you mumbled, fighting the urge to fidget. Malleus, Malleus, Malleus. The syllables sat heavy on your tongue, like your mouth couldn’t figure out how to push them past your lips. “I thought you said that dragons don’t give out their real names.”

He drew back just enough to cup your cheeks in his ashy palms, brushing a clawed finger back and forth against one of the small cuts littering your jaw.

“There is power in a name,” he said. “It is not a gift readily bestowed.”

Then why—

You swallowed, nervous, and one of his thumbs tracked the movement along the hollow of your throat.

“This way, if you call for me, I will always hear you,” he promised, eyes going flinty and venomous as he gazed at the cinder piles of smoking intruders. “And something like this will never happen again.”

“I—I mean,” you spluttered. “Me being—And this being—I mean—” You cleared your throat. “That hardly seems like a good enough reason to—to—” To put something so important into the hands of someone who literally broke into your house less than a month ago. To give something so precious to someone so human.

“Isn’t it?” he smiled, that sharp anger melting back into something painfully soft. Your poor heart kickstarted itself all over again. He ducked forward to press his nose into your temple, and you could feel the soft puff of his breath as his grin sharpened into a smirk. “Though I would have liked to bestow my titles on you in other ways as well, if this little hero would be amenable.”

You squawked, and the only thing that shook you out of the immediate spiral into ‘did he really just ask me to—am I really going to be stuck in every goddamn bard’s trope existence of—of—' was the merry laughter that bubbled up from somewhere behind you.

“Careful, my Prince,” Lilia hummed from his place perched atop a particularly large heap of rubble. “If you come on too strong, you’ll only scare them away. Humans are flighty like that, I’m afraid.”

You could feel Malleus’s pout against your forehead.

“Not my human,” he grouched. His hands dropped from your cheeks to encircle your waist and clutch at your lower back. “And that besides,” he continued testily, “you were the one who only just this morning insisted I take decisive action.”

“That’s true,” Lilia agreed with a gentle bob of his head, resting his pointed chin against his palm. “But perhaps three sentences at least before the proposal?”

Malleus blinked, slow and serpentine, before flicking his neon gaze back to you. “That does seem fair I suppose. What do you think?”

“I think,” you gawked, trying and failing to process any of the words that were coming out of their fanged mouths, “that I am having a stroke.”

“NOT ACCEPTABLE!” boomed a voice from overhead. “YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO FALL ILL AFTER ALL THE EFFORTS WE TOOK TO KEEP YOU SAFE!”

You jolted in shock, and Malleus’s talons flexed reassuringly at your waist as he gently turned you back-to-chest so that you could face your accuser. He nestled his chin into your shoulder, and you could feel his horns bump against your skull as he tried to burrow in as close as possible. Which all would have been thoroughly distracting, but then you noticed that one of the Gargoyles from early had landed directly across from you. Its spiked head was swiveling back and forth as it appraised you like some particularly ruffled cockatoo. And that in itself was bizarre enough to help you focus on something other than the weight along your back and the steadily rising heat in your cheeks.

“Uhm, hello?” you tried.

“WE HAVE ALREADY MET!” It screeched. “THERE IS NO NEED FOR INTRODUCTIONS!”

“It talks,” you blanched.

“OF COURSE I SPEAK, YOU IGNORANT ENTERTAINER!” The Gargoyle thundered. Its yellow eyes flashed in indignation. “HOW COULD I NOT LEARN TO COMMUNICATE IN A RESPECTABLE FASHION WHEN SERVING SOMEONE SO MAJESTIC AS HIS MAJESTY?!”

“I think,” the other Gargoyle said, slipping forward so silently you could hardly believe it was made of such strong stone at all, “that what Sebek is trying to say, is that we are happy to finally be able welcome you into our home, even if it is under less than ideal circumstances. And that we are very pleased to be able to speak with you.”

“THAT IS WHAT I ALREADY SAID, SILVER!” the spiky one snarled. No one else looked particularly bothered by his ceaseless volume, so it was probably normal. He stuck his carved nose into the air with a harumph. “AND I HAVE HEARD OF THE WAYS OF YOU TRAVELING STORY TELLERS! IF YOU BREAK MY MASTER’S HEART, YOU WILL SUFFER AN ETERNITY OF TORMENT AT MY HAND!”

Malleus growled, low and rumbling, from over your shoulder. Instantly his stalwart guardian cowed—head dipping like a kicked a puppy.

“Of course,” it continued, much softer. “I don’t think this human would do that. And—And I think my master has made a very good choice in his mate, and I will be happy to serve you too.”

Lilia sighed a sigh that sounded very much like a doting mother overflowing with parental affection. Like the kind of noise one may hear on a cozy Sunday afternoon while helping prepare dinner, or while sitting on a little, floral, couch and sifting through little paintings of grandchildren. There was still blood splattered all along his cheeks.

“It’s so lovely to have the family all together again,” he cooed. “And I do think that you will make such a marvelous addition.”

“Oh. Well. Thank you,” you nodded jerkily, just as your knees buckled and you collapsed to the floor.

On the first day of the new month, Ace and Deuce made their way back to the forgotten castle nestled in a pool of lava.

“We should never have left them,” Deuce grumbled for what was maybe the ten thousandth time. Ace was sick of hearing it. He was even more sick of the fact that despite being constantly inundated with various versions of ‘oh, we’re such terrible friends,’ the little, twisting, spike of guilt in his gut never grew any duller. Wasn’t that how it was supposed to work? Something-something-repetitive-exposure-therapy, or whatever? This sucked. He wanted a refund on this whole ‘conscience’ thing. Maybe it wasn’t too late to sell his soul and become a Warlock or whatever. Surely that would help.

“We didn’t have a choice,” Ace reminded him. Again. “They’re okay. I know they are. We’re going to show up and they’ll be, I don’t know, lying in a bed of gold being hand fed grapes or something.”

Deuce made a rumbly, whining, kind of noise that made him sound even more pathetic than usual and Ace sighed, determined to instead focus on the rickety rope bridge swinging beneath their feet.

The ancient, looming, monstrosity of a building was just as cold and dark as it had been the first time. If anything, it was more filthy. With walls stained with seeping ash and the charred, skeletal, remains of something that Ace was definitely, absolutely, not going to think about scattered throughout the grime.

The two of them made their way to the heart of the castle until they were standing at the entrance of a grand, cavernous, chamber that may have once been some sort of ballroom.

Ace didn’t know what he was expecting. Slaver’s coils maybe. A chain around your ankles and rags drooping from your shoulders. Or maybe you wouldn’t even be there at all—long since swallowed down as a little, midnight, snack.

He certainly wasn’t expecting to see you lounging contentedly atop a mountainous heap of soft blankets, with the master of this castle—terror-incarnate, death from above, an eldritch beast ripped straight out of legend—curled along the lumpy hills of your grandiose pillow fort, its great head nestled at your back as you reclined against its scales and chattered away. Like the goddamned, rambling, idiot you had always been.

One of the dragon’s large, green, eyes shifted towards the intruders at its door, and Ace froze in place. You paused your chattering to raise your hand with an excited little wave. Your tattered traveler’s clothes had been replaced with something silken and soft enough that it would probably melt in his fingers, and it swayed like mist around you as you made your way to your feet. You were practically dripping in platinum, and diamonds, and emeralds, and—he was going to stop counting them before he gave himself a conniption.

And yeah… it wasn’t exactly a throne of gold and gemstones, but it was almost just as impressive. And immediately indignation swept through Ace with a horrible kind of vengeance. Because how dare you actually be living it up over here when he had been so fucking worried just lying about all that cool stuff to keep Deuce from storming the castle gates?

“You made it!” you chirped, perfectly merry despite the gigantic maw full of sharp teeth hovering at your shoulder.

“Of—Of course we did,” Deuce stuttered, his blue eyes flicking back and forth so quickly from the dragon, to you, to Ace, to the dragon, to you—that Ace genuinely thought he might be having a seizure. “We promised we would.”

You stopped in front of them with a considerate little hum, sharp eyes tracing and cataloguing their varying reactions. After a moment of what was obviously some very smug preening and even smugger ‘I win this round’ silent gloating, you slipped out of the piles of entangled jewels with an exaggerated shrug. With the exception of an intricately carved emerald pendant hanging softly between the hollows of your collarbones, the rest of the infinitely expensive and rare gems fell to the ground with a series of clattering chatter.

“All that shit is so heavy,” you whined. Whined. Like you had any right to complain about anything at all for the rest of your existence. You leaned forward with a wink. “I was just hoping it’d make your thieving, money-hungry ass, jealous.” You smirked, proud. “And it looks like it worked, you goddamn traitors.”

Ace was about to splutter out the most scathing remark his spiteful little brain could come up with, when Deuce ruined everything by rushing forward like the blubbering idiot he was and scooping you up into a bearhug.

“You’re okay! You’re okay!” he wailed. “We missed you so much!”

“Speak for yourself,” Ace huffed, and twinged miserably when it came out sounding far too soft. He cleared his throat and decided to take a different approach. “You know, last time I was sort of joking about the whole ‘bards and dragons’ thing. But it looks like you’ve made yourself real comfortable. And here I thought you were always super opposed to the ‘fucking my way out of my problems’ stereotype.”

However, because the universe seemed determined not to give Ace any kind of win for the rest of his natural existence, instead of getting all embarrassed and mousey, you just huffed and turned up your nose at him.

“Well obviously not as a dragon,” you complained. “Do you know how big he is? How would that even work, huh?” The aforementioned dragon lowered his gigantic head to settle on the ground at your side, and you leaned against him good-naturedly when he grumbled low in his throat. “Yeah, no,” you said to the beast, rolling your eyes. “Nice try, but no.”

Deuce immediately choked and started hacking up a lung, and Ace wanted to die.

“You can talk to it?” the redhead asked instead of keeling over.

You shrugged.

“Not like this. But I’ve learned to interpret most of it.” You wiggled your fingers. “It’s my sixth sense.”

Ace’s nose scrunched. “Yeah, right. If anything, it’s your ‘I’ve been dicked down by a dragon and think that makes me soooo special now’ sense—”

The great, ebony, monster growled and the Fighter’s mouth snapped shut like someone had taken a hammer to his jaw. You snickered goodhumoredly and elbowed your companion gently at the base of one of its long, sharp, horns.

“He’s just joking around,” you said to the winged horror. “You don’t have to get all defensive.”

There was another grumpy sneer, but the dragon simply settled more heavily at your side with a defeated sort of huff. The gust of a sigh sent a wave of scorching heat along Ace’s front, and he fought the urge to cow immediately and beg for his life. Because apparently that wasn’t going to be necessary, because you had—you had—

“Are you in love?” Deuce blurted, because unlike Ace, the Barbarian was pure, and good, and still didn’t fully understand how eggs worked, let alone the concept of Fuck or Die.

And then you surprised him yet again by getting as flustered as he’d expected you to when he’d accused you (rightly) of bending over for a goddamn fucking dragon.

But before you could answer, the dragon lifted its head to press its temple against yours. Or, as well as it could do that when it dwarfed the lot of you the way an elephant might hover over a mouse. Mostly it just ended up being a very, very, delicate head bump. A deep, warbling, purr started from its chest and rolled all the way up and past its sharp, white, canines.

“Uhm,” you tried again. “You guys are invited to the wedding, I guess.”

“The what?!” Deuce howled, before promptly falling to his knees to fan himself like a devasted matron in a church.

You sighed and rubbed at the back of your head, clearly embarrassed. You mumbled something under your breath that sounded a bit like ‘it’s kind of a whole saga, y’know.’ And Ace, in all his infinite good will, decided to take pity on you just this once. And also because you were clearly loaded now, and all good friends know that sharing is caring, right?

“Come on then, Bardy,” he smirked, leaning down to kick Deuce flatter to the floor—half to knock the guy out of his frantic spiraling, half so he could perch on his back like a chair. Because the stone floor looked really uncomfortable, and he had a feeling that trying to slip into that nice nest of blankets of yours would not end well. “Tell us a story.”

[TAG LIST] CLOSED

@marvelous-maxi, @ilikefanfics4, @jackalope08, @crocwork-clockodile, @cosmicobubisi, @buttplugs-stuff, @pomefleur, @decemebercircus, @ailynyan, @genzombie, @meliade-ot, @sunlightocean, @theofficialantitherapist, @hermiona18, @sailorenthusiast, @fantasy-dating-sim-trash, @thefiasco-onyourblock, @insideous-beez, @its-clockwork-princess, @liliasleftpinkytoe

@novaloptr, @imlost-sendhelp, @matcha-berry @preciosayorgullosa @whoretaglia, @kookygirlwholikescookiesandcoke, @nanauedorian, @trixeraptops, @voxnipop, @starkling25, @thedum1, @horcrux-alchemist, @sleepykitty21, @apathicace, @instantregret101, @nekanecorvus, @looney-mori, @re-ducing, @my2phetaliaheadcanons, @naughtybodypillow, @rendy-a, @carmen-404, @candy284, @thealiennamedterry, @their-name-is-fake, @huetolog, @glacticrose, @seraphinariddle, @rabioa, @sn00zl4x, @dreasimping, @jeidoreech, @ai-dev, @galaxyshine24-7, @fatally-incorrect, @juulranch, @camrastuff, @nocteetdie, @stargaryengirl,

#twisted wonderland imagines #twisted wonderland #twst x reader #Malleus Draconia x Reader #Malleus x Reader #Malleus Draconia #Malleus x Yuu #Dragon Malleus #Monster Mayhem #My Writing #Twst Fantasy AU #Sebek Zigvolt #Lilia Vanrouge #Silver Twst #Rollo Flamm #Slight Rollo Flamm x Reader #Ace Trappola #Deuce Spade #Monster Mayhem Malleus Part 4

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bandomchoiceawards · 1 year ago

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Please go support all of the artists listed above, and all the others nominated who didn't make it into the final poll! I got soooooo many different nominations for this one. This category was especially hard to cut down on because I felt awful leaving anyone out. I can't believe how many awesome, talented artists we have!

Artists listed above:

@birdloaf on Tumblr

@ghostiestart on Tumblr

@purusims on Tumblr

@cablehaver on Tumblr

@twinkskeletons on Tumblr

@darbydraws on Tumblr

@/mayathe.psychic on Instagram (@mayathexpsychic on Tumblr)

@strawberryprism on Tumblr

@/piinkfang on Instagram (@piinkfang on Tumblr)

@mychemicalraymance on Tumblr

Artists who were nominated, not listed above:

@cordspaghetti on Tumblr

@puppyboypatrick on Tumblr

@fob4ever on Tumblr

@fadeyouout on Tumblr

@angelsarrm on Tumblr

@/lux_luh on Instagram

@lastmidtownshowmp3 on Tumblr

@/marcoaveryroseart on Instagram

@p4nsy on Tumblr

@/broadchuvch on Twitter

@/the__ria on Instagram

@chemevan on Tumblr

@tangible-fortitude on Tumblr

@wuntrum on Tumblr

@pilotduty on Tumblr

@andpierres on Tumblr

#bandom #fan art #fan artists #polls

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smilesession · 5 months ago

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I don’t want to reblog or repost it to mock it because i know OP’s heart was in the right place but i just saw a post about how to overcome executive dysfunction, basically the point being how to practice discipline and gain mental fortitude and that it’s possible for anyone. nice! but it contained a list of suggested activities that included video games three times, suggested listening to “long form audio content such as podcasts and audiobooks”, and suspiciously entirely omitted things like…reading a book, setting small goals for chores and housekeeping, and anything else that’s actually tangibly beneficial to the stated goal. the post suggested playing picrews and dress up games

i don’t know if im just being callous and out of touch and there’s some demographic of poor souls out there who are both 1. literate, self-critical, and engaging with long form tumblr posts 2. too helpless to the vortex of their own mind to play picrews or video games or listen to audiobooks without being prompted. As someone who has been utterly helpless to the vortex of my own mind, I had “EXECUTIVE DYSFUNCTION” so badly in my youth that I spent entire days not even getting out of bed to drink water, I have to constantly beat the executive dysfunction away with a broom like it’s a bat flying around my house. And the only things that meaningfully chip away at this involve facing it head-on. You can’t cheat your way out of it. You just have to start reading longform books and cleaning your house and exercising. The only way out is through

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unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240 · 1 year ago

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Okay I promise this is the last thing about this for now (bli neder 🧿) but something I haven't seen cross my dash yet is how sometimes "bearing witness" can cross a line from refusing to look away into a kind of self-harm. I think that for a lot of folks who are physically safe for the most part and have so far escaped the situation personally (mostly) unscathed, there's an intense survivor's guilt embedded in our collective mourning. There's also this desperate sense of helplessness that comes from wanting to do something significant and having to simply watch from the sidelines peeking between your fingers and praying with every breath that the people in the field do the right things and that Hashem protects them.

Put together, that survivor's guilt, that helplessness, that desperate unfulfilled desire to help - often devolves into "bearing witness" to atrocities in a way that is on balance maybe helpful, maybe not, but for certain hurts and takes a giant toll. It can be traumatizing, it can literally change your neural pathways if repeated frequently, and ultimately it can act as a kind of self-harm.

And so I think my advice to people like me who are struggling with this (let's see if I can take my own advice, ha) would be to seriously consider who this knowledge actually helps. If there is not a concrete goal that can be tangibly achieved by it, and even if there is, if the expected benefit to the community is significantly outweighed by the harm done to yourself, honestly?

Skip it. Disengage. Look away. Save your sanity and guard your heart for when it really counts — and make no mistake, that day will come and you will want to face it with all the mental fortitude and resilience you can muster.

#nachamu nachamu ami

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le-velo-pour-dru · 11 months ago

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happy valentines day!!!!!! have a ring pop <33

[Image ID: An image of a Ring Pop with a green candy jewel and a pink ring. /end ID]

Awwwwwwwwww thank you so much Javier hehehe!! 😁💖 I will cherish this <3

Happy Valentine's Day, I hope you've been having a great day :) 🫶💖

#dru speaks #i never thought about how perfect a valentine's gift ring pops are :3 💖#you can do a fake little proposal and then hand someone a ring pop. it's awesome X3 💖#hope you've been having a good day javier :3 ❤️ you're awesome #^^ 🫶#asks #tangible-fortitude

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techramonic · 7 months ago

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Speak, Hear, and See No Evil; Embody it.

An Essay Analysis on Religious Trauma and its connection to Nihilism through the Case Study of Vladislav Roslyakov

There is a profound intersection in faith and mentality. To uncover one’s whole being, the aspect of spirituality is well within the equation. While many use their faith as a symbol of fortitude, a steadfast hope that guides their way of living – creating practically a coherent path in a world so inconsistent and unpredictable, others see it as the pinpoint of their internal turmoil. Faith is not for all of us. If one rejects the idea of seeking solace in an institute of collective belief, then they do not believe in such a concept as “being saved”. To them, there is no redemption, only pain.

Some people need a rather tangible and physical form of revelation for an adherence of recognition. It is the ideology: when you look up at the sky and do not see anyone looking back at you, that is when you know it’s not for you. You do not believe in such a thing as self-sacrifice, for you only see the world in a lens of self-slaughter. Often, this strained relationship with faith becomes Religious Trauma.

Psychotherapist Dr. Alyson M. Stone acknowledges a positive link between religion and mental health but notes a lack of studies on spirituality's impact. According to Stone, “Religious trauma is more prevalent than the research suggests and often is a contributing factor to many of the problems that bring people to therapy, including depression, anxiety, and relationship difficulties. For this reason, religious trauma deserves careful attention” (Stone 2013, p. 324). Furthermore, Marlene Winell (2012) coined "religious trauma syndrome" (RTS) to describe the distress from "toxic theology." This refers to authoritarian religious doctrines demanding strict adherence, often equating disobedience to damnation.

In the case of Vlad, his mother was a Jehovah's Witness. This religious sect is banned under Russian law despite an estimated 175,000 followers in the country. In 2017, Russia’s Supreme Court found the organization guilty of inciting religious hatred by "propagating the exclusivity and supremacy" of their beliefs. Subsequent to Russian anti-extremism laws extending to non-violent groups in 2007, placing it into the same category as neo-Nazis and members of al Qaeda.

To understand this, we must first look into Vladik’s childhood leading up to this point. Vlad’s father, a former Russian soldier who served in Afghanistan for several years, sustained brain damage from an assault, making him aggressive toward his family, leading to frequent physical abuse over his wife, parents, and even his son. He was also an alcoholic, where his violence would worsen when intoxicated. By the age of 10, his parents had filed for a divorce and he lived under the custody of his mother in a rundown apartment with poor conditions because they could not afford amenities.

Following this, his mother had renowned her faith. Neighbors described her as a devout follower who spent a lot of time in prayer. They recounted that she had barely any concern for Vlad due to being too focused on her faith, but there were many instances of her controlling nature towards her son’s life. According to Vlad’s profile background, his mother would frequently punish him for disobeying rules of her faith. Although he accompanies her in services, he does not recognize himself as a follower. He publicly expressed his contempt on Jehovah’s Witnesses as, “some kind of fools who dance and sing.” A friend of his had also expressed that the two would often make fun of the community. Despite these differences, Vlad still appeared to care for his mother and understood that she had no other means of coping and did not have a community to interact with since she had no friends or relatives close by. With this, he made sure to spend time with her, yet we can discern that these regulatory rules are merely pushed unto him.

Vlad was not allowed to engage in hobby classes, amateur activities, or even watch movies as the faith forbids these activities. According to his VK chats with Liza Panchenko, his favorite movies were Stand by Me, Pulp-Fiction, and Lost Highway. However, he stated, “I didn’t watch any good movies after 2005”. Though this may be a speculation, one of the possible reasons for this is because he was forbidden by his mother. However, despite her warnings, it is clear that he still would go against her.

Vlad became sports-obsessed and developed an interest in weaponry, violence, neo-nazism, war, and killers. Despite occasionally picking up fights and being placed on the “chair of shame” by his college director, Vlad was reserved and withdrawn from others. His friends had described him as a loner, who was quiet and avoided making friends, rather talking about topics of violence, especially about Columbine. He had no intimate relationships or sense of future and practically only attended school because he was forced by his parents. He did not see any future and saw no escape other than death. Even with an interest in violence and guns himself, he expresses a disdain towards joining occupations like the armed forces.

Moving forward, it is crucial to recognize that the psychological distress caused by religious trauma can manifest into Nihilistic ideology. According to Alfred Alder, a psychoanalyst who founded individual psychology, human behavior is motivated by our unique experiences and the perceptions we garner off of these. To him, humans are driven by goals and we aim for superiority by striving for these goals which are molded by our values and aspirations. These in turn develop into a lifestyle that affects us in different aspects of our behavior.

Furthermore, Alder speculated that psychological development occurs when people pursue meaningful goals, though factors can disrupt this process. Exchanging the feeling of self-superiority with inferiority and emptiness. When one lacks any meaningful goal, they are devoid of any means to stay motivated because they have no inherent cause that may allow them to “live”.

From a nihilistic perspective, the absence of inherent meaning in existence can lead individuals to view life as a mere distraction. You exist, yet you do not truly live—merely passing time because life feels more like an obligation than a will. This allows you to fade into a concept and lose touch with your humanity. You become a mere entity in this world so vast that it cannot accompany the hatred you bear for it because you are insignificant. You see yourself as nothing, born out of your lack of purpose, therefore you are nothing.

To tie this into the conversation, trauma and abuse can disrupt the process of finding and garnering purpose, hindering the creation of goals and instead, promoting nihilistic attitudes. This includes religion, which can either be an antidote or a poison.

Religious trauma can be a catalyst for promoting nihilistic thinking. Taking Vlad as an example, when individuals are subjected to oppressive religious doctrines that instill shame, fear, and guilt – it can lead to an inflated sense of despair. This dread of being trapped in a system that dictates your worth and purpose fuels the tendencies to lean into nihilistic ideologies. You are cornered with no escape despite religion itself being a form of solace and escapism made for believers to feel less in despair. Vlad's strict upbringing in a religious environment and controlling mother contributed to his growing resentment towards religion and humanity itself. This lack of free will over his beliefs and choices only amplified this sense of dread over being powerless. Further alienating him from others because he believes that no one will truly help him, not even God.

If God is not there to help and save him and there are no means of a divine intervention in his life, then he will be the intervention himself. He is the destruction the world has insistently brought upon his life in the form of unforeseen circumstances. He is the “judgment” that he has been taught to fear. He is the delusion that he has created because of his fixation over power. He is hatred. He shall not speak of evil, nor hear it, or see it. So, in turn, he is the embodiment of the evil he is taught to not be.

Hatred, just like anger, does not come from evil but mistreatment. Though in this case, it is amplified to a point it becomes visceral. Vlad's constant exposure to religious extremism and the trauma he endured further deepened his nihilistic perspective and in turn, developed his trauma into a projection of an image of hatred over things he cannot control: his life and the people around him. Moreover, the trauma from his father's abuse and his mother’s overbearing nature only developed a deep-rooted cynicism towards conventional structures. In his belief, if he is controlled by anything but himself, it is evil.

To conclude, religion has a profound impact on an individual's psyche. It has the ability to either heal a person or destroy them completely. Vlad’s life is a perfect example of how one’s religious trauma can manifest into a distortion of their worldview, ultimately leading to them seeing no other escape in this miserable existence other than death.

#analysis #vladislav roslyakov #kerch polytechnic #vlad #understandnotcondone

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stabby-pal · 2 months ago

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I’ve gotten so tired of the “Shadow the hedgehog is 50 years old 🤪” jokes because people use it as an excuse to draw porn of him, so I’m swinging violently in the opposite direction and saying there’s more evidence pointing to him being the youngest member of the cast then there is evidence that he’s an adult.

1: to get this out of the way, he was in STASIS for 50 years, so he did not age physically or mentally in that time.

2: in his Sonic Generations dlc we see that when shadow met Maria they both appear to be the same age, this implies that when shadow was “born” he had both his current mental age and his “teenager” type body.

3: Maria does not (at least visually) age between her first meeting with Shadow and when she dies on the Arc.

So with this information in mind Shadows actual age is based solely on how many years he had with Maria, which all things considered could be less than 1. There is a real tangible chance that the reason that he’s so unstable in SA2 isn’t just because he’s still mourning the loss of his best friend/sister but because she’s all he ever knew, he know her since the day he was born fully conscious, then she’s just gone. On top of that his entire world changed, if I lived in an environment with a complete lack of ambient noise and basically nothing but sterile empty halls and was suddenly on a planet with constant noise and bugs and weird smells I’d consider destroying everything, and that’s without the factor of still being in mourning.

Shadow may have the physique and mental fortitude of a 15-16 year old but clearly would not have any experience up to that point. This also explains why in the Shadow the Hedgehog game he’s so easily manipulated and influenced after losing his memory, he’s been set back to square one, he’s basically an infant.

Now this may have spawned as a “fuck you” to people sexualizing a fictional child but this explains so many quirks about him that I’m surprised that I haven’t seen more people talk about this or play into it in fan works, Shadow is basically a toddler in the body of a 9th grader given the power of a god, sure he’s smart enough to make decisions for himself but it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s huge gaps in his knowledge still even after living on earth for as long as he has.

In conclusion, let Shadow be a kid and stop making excuses to be creepy about him.

#stabbytalk #shadow the hedgehog #sonic #sonic the hedgehog #sth #I don’t usually make content for this franchise since it’s not a hyper fixation #so I’m not sure if I’m tagging it right #I’m just really attached to shadow in particular #also with everything said here #I want to make it clear that I’m fine with Shadow shipping with the usual suspects #he may be a weird case but I think it’s fine to ship him with other characters that match his ‘intended age’#he may mostly likely be quite young in experience but he’s got the mental capabilities of a teen so I don’t see a problem #but I can completely understand why some people might find that weird #i mean like #I also headcanon him as aroace so I’m not exactly shipping him with anyone to begin with #also also I want to make it clear I’m not babyfying him #dude has almost killed people on several occasions #he isn’t a owo baby that needs to be protected #he can think for himself and has agency #he may be technically really young but he’s also not an idiot

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bestworstcase · 2 months ago

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Something I can't help but think of is the Great War in RWBY. How Ozpin in one of his past selves had to basically wipe out entire armies of soldiers and people with a single attack from what was likely the Sword of Destruction.

I have to wonder just how many generations of men and women were wiped out. How many settlements of people basically lost their breadwinners or no longer had anyone to protect them from Grimm.

How many years of battle experience and wisdom about the follies of war, just annihilated in an instant. How many lessons that could have been taught to a new generation made lost forever, ensuring that many of the newer generations could not learn from the past except only through a distorted, flawed lens.

I wonder if this loss might have contributed to Atlas' lackluster military capabilities, because anyone from Mantle who could have held the jackasses at the top to account with hardened experience and wisdom JUST. WEREN'T. THERE.

anon i am grabbing u gently by the shoulders

you have fallen for ozma’s propaganda that he is the Main Character of history. and also activated one of my many trap cards (sorry)

the institution of huntsmen is – overtly, albeit not couched in exactly these terms – predicated on the Great Man, the idea that the course of human history is predominately a product of the decisive choices and actions of Heroes, of individuals whose superior intellect and fortitude and so forth elevated them above the common people. this is the fundamental idea undergirding ozpin’s whole thing – his guardians, the maidens, silver-eyed warriors, his “smaller, more honest soul,” the greatness he promises oscar, the way he describes ruby as possessing “something unquantifiable: a spark, that can inspire others even in the darkest of times” – these are his Great Men. the practical short term purpose of the huntsmen academies is to mold children into warriors in order to guard his fortresses, but in the longer term the point of them is to create Great Men.

narratively, this is an idea that rwby does not agree with; the thematic critique leveled against this view of history begins with the inherent contradiction between ozpin’s soaring rhetoric – the stated ideal of everyone standing together as one – and his actual behavior, which (as salem points out, correctly, in her v3 soliloquy) betrays the hollowness and lack of conviction in his professed “faith” in humanity. to believe in Great Men is fundamentally cynical; it is anti-humanistic; it is self-defeating.

we don’t really have time to outline everything in the CFVY novels that leads me to believe that this narrative critique is building inexorably toward bringing the common people into sharp focus as the true engine of history in vacuo – suffice it to say that there are passages in both books which elevate and emphasize the importance of ordinary people working together to achieve greater things than huntsmen can – but the atlas arc already offers a tangible shift in this direction with civilian politics dawning as a central narrative concern in contrast to the insularity of the beacon and mistral arcs.

the point being that the story structure itself is dismantling ozpin’s view of history; civilians are distant, abstracted set dressing within the hermetically sealed artificial reality of beacon academy, and irrelevant in mistral until the instant the lost fable shatters ozpin’s grip on the narrative and then – bam. brunswick farm is a horror-tragedy about subsistence farmers. the kids stay with the cotta-arcs in argus, and it is this connection with ordinary people that gets the kids to atlas, where class tensions between mantle and atlas and a contested council election dominate the plot and ozpin’s Great Man crumbles because he’s still hermetically sealed inside that artificial reality where the common people don’t really matter or exist in any meaningful way.

you see?

(and of course, professor oobleck, the exception who proves the rule: there is no one still living in the hollowed out ruins of mountain glenn, but that mini-arc is the one time in the beacon arc where the existence of ordinary people feels real and tangible and important, and it is because the history teacher says when i look at these ruins i see lives that were lost. i see a failure that must never be repeated. i see lives, past and future, and this is why i am a teacher, because history is more important than heroism.)

ok. so

the great war.

in qrow’s account of the great war, ozma – the king of vale – is the Great Man. the story of this sprawling, worldwide conflict is that the king of vale tried and failed to avert it, and for ten years the war raged on without an end in sight, until at last the king of vale took to the field of battle himself and single-handedly ended it by the sword; everyone bowed to him in surrender, but he lifted up the world by the hand and established a new world order.

no one else – not a single other participant in this conflict aside from the king of vale and (qrow hints ominously, and completely without evidence) salem – has a drop of agency or even a meaningful presence in the great war as qrow, received from ozpin, would tell it. and i do not think that is supposed to be taken at face value whatsoever; none of the other WOR spots are objective. these are character studies as much as they are worldbuilding shorts.

rwby is a narrative that has rejected this kind of simplicity over and over and over again. the great war was more complicated than that. some big chickens will be coming home to roost in the vacuo arc.

so with all that being said.

the historical exemplar that rwby’s great war seems to be modeled after is the first world war. (in brief: fought 80-90 years ago; the conflict was preceded by decades of increasing tensions driven by imperialist expansion and economic competition between rapidly-industrializing great powers; the war itself famously exploded from a single gunshot – although rwby eschews the political assassination angle perhaps because there were only three extant states in the world; the ending of the war resulted in massive redistribution of imperial territories and the formation of multiple new states. i know the usamerican tendency is to forget WWI happened and that ozma ‘nuking’ the battlefield with the sword to decisively end the war is likely to evoke the atomic bomb in the mind of the average viewer, but here i will remind everyone that the united states massacred nearly a quarter of a million civilians and that figure does not include deaths from cancer or long-term radiation exposure. because we dropped those bombs on cities. in contrast WWI was decided on the battlefield with the hundred days offensive.)

the real great war lasted from the summer of 1914 to the autumn of 1918. four years, three months. do you know how many people died?

an estimated 9 to 11 million military deaths, and 23 million more wounded. 7-8 million of those deaths were combat-related. upwards of 6 million civilians died. one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and aside from WWII (in which as many as two thirds of fatalities were civilians and genocide and war-related famine killed millions and millions of people, so many of these deaths were not combat-related), the only two conflicts in history that killed more people than WWI lasted 14 years, and 47. again, WWI lasted just four years.

ok. the reason WWI was so deadly, and the reason almost all of those military fatalities were combat-related is because of when and how this conflict was fought. in 1914 when the war began, the world was just coming out of the second industrial revolution. that was a period when railroads really began to proliferate, mass-manufacture of steel became possible, rise of production lines, automobiles, the telegraph, that kind of thing.

cannons, and things, had existed for a relatively long time at this point, but the second industrial revolution heralded the dawn of modern artillery weapons, and warfare, cultural conceptions of how wars are fought, had not caught up yet to the sheer scale of destruction that were now possible because of this new technology. which meant that WWI was the last conflict where war meant lining up troops on the battlefield and smashing the armies together, except everyone had things like rapid-firing heavy artillery, and explosive shells, and machine guns, and barbed wire, and chlorine gas.

this is what led to horrible, bloody stalemate of trench warfare and the unprecedented scale of casualties and the idea of “no man’s land” – it’s why the cultural image of what a battlefield looks like in the popular conscious for decades and decades after this war has been and often still is just a barren, muddy, completely obliterated wasteland strewn with debris. WWI was the transition between pre-industrial and modern warfare where industrialization had led to the development of military technology that rendered the old way of doing war obsolete. suicidal.

in the WOR spot, those are exactly the the conditions surrounding the great war except more lopsided because one side has a massive technological advantage. vacuo wasn’t even a state, it had no formal government of its own and it was under mistrali occupation when the vacuans rebelled. not an industrialized nation. vale was had probably industrialized to some degree (the artwork in the WOR spot doesn’t reflect this, but “no one knows who shot first” and vale/vacuan forces were reliant on dust munitions – everyone had guns) but mantle was significantly ahead of the curve.

so.

you have ten years of trench warfare – more than double the length of our own great war. you have the grimm, who are drawn to all negative feelings but especially to violence. you have huge swaths of territory that are just annihilated and never reclaimed. qrow mentions food rationing, so there were probably widespread famines caused by the loss and destruction of farmland. and this was happening all over the world, on every continent, including the unnamed continent that is now literally uninhabited – it wasn’t always, there used to be settlements there, they’re shown in i think WOR: vale – for a decade. right

ozma brought the sword of destruction onto the battlefield to break what was either a brutal stalemate or a slow grind of brutal attrition depending how lopsided the technological advantage was – after ten years of what had to be every military commander and every leader trying everything they could think of to force a surrender because nobody wants this – in the single bloodiest battle of the war, which, yes, means he personally killed an unfathomable number of people because trench warfare is a uniquely deadly form of warfare –

but the vast, vast vast majority of people who died in the great war were not killed in that one battle. remnant’s population is a lot smaller than ours – millions, not billions – so it’s unlikely that millions of people died. but proportionally this war probably killed hundreds of thousands of people and i would not be surprised if at some point a character drops a figure like “almost a million” or even “over a million” – like just. in raw terms, thinking about this as remnant’s great war – the historical exemplar is really not. subtle – that lasted for a decade, this is a conflict that wiped out a significant percentage of the global population.

all that said,

the military tacticians and strategists largely would have survived and military historians would have been all over this conflict. lessons learned. the infantry poured into the trenches were not gaining any battle experience other than “this is actual, literal hell” while they endured hours of artillery barrage. the only wisdom that can be imparted by trench warfare is that it must be avoided at any cost because the only way to win is for the other side to run out of men or ammunition or popular resolve first. pure attrition. that’s the only takeaway. never let this happen again.

i think this is why the atlas military immediately pivoted to, like, robotic soldiers and armored mechs and the warships. that is “we cannot do trench warfare again. we cannot do trench warfare again.”

(in combination with radically changing the way you deploy troops, tanks and aircraft is indeed how you never do trench warfare again – there were tanks and light aircraft during WWI but none of them were good enough to break the stalemate.)

the problem, largely, for the atlas military – in terms of tactical innovation – is that in the eighty years since the great war, there’s only been one large-scale conflict and the faunus revolution was an insurgency, which – had to have been a protracted war waged by some phenomenally tactically ingenious faunus because the insurgents won – and that is a completely different kind of ballgame.

strategic doctrine and military tactics are developed and tested through practice. we did not jump from WWI straight to modern warfare, there have been many many regional wars and smaller conflicts between then and now. after a war, win or lose, you can theorize all you want but until there’s another war that puts your new technology or new tactics to the test, there’s not really a way to know if you’ve learned the right lessons and corrected successfully from whatever errors you made in the previous war.

in a world like remnant, where there are only five states in the entire world and there is so much pressure against open warfare, military innovation is going to be really slow. glacial even. stagnant. the horrifying scale of the great war is not something anyone wanted to ever repeat, and you can see that in the development of atlas’ military technology since then. but, as we can see when salem begins her assault on atlas:

the doctrine has not changed significantly. we have unmanned robotic light infantry arrayed in formation support the atlesian equivalent of tanks, with heavy artillery mounted on the warships in formation above. and, in the back, trenches for the human shock infantry and huntsmen. this is still very much warfare in the pre-industrial mode.

the calculation that the atlas military made here is quite clear – pursue aerial superiority to control the skies so you can eliminate ground-based enemy artillery, mass-manufacture lightweight disposable robotic infantry to feed into the meat grinder, deploy soldiers in heavily-armored mechs supported by those disposable infantry bots into the no man’s land to lead the advance and clear a path for the human rear infantry (<- those mechs would be excellent for cutting rapidly through barbed wire, a major advantage over tanks in another WWI-style conflict).

this is a military that reacted to trench warfare by investing in armored ground vehicles and heavy aircraft (✅ tanks and bombers), and by substituting disposable drones for human shock infantry instead of the shift toward evasive maneuvering and detection avoidance that undergirds modern warfare. which is not unreasonable! if in 1918 it had seemed remotely possible to anyone to replace human troops with little war machines, people would have tried! and in a world where a) the technology to do that proves viable and b) the great war is followed by an 80-year period in which the only major conflict is an insurgency, it’s inevitable that the doctrine stagnates there because it’s untested.

no matter how many drills and VR scenarios and war games you do, you can’t know how this new approach works in a real war until you fight another war. the iterative process of improvement is stalled.

and the terrifying thing about salem is she knows what the fuck she’s doing. it is clear that one of the lessons ozpin took away from the great war is that the general public cannot be entrusted to know that war is on the horizon – he’s furious with ironwood for bringing warships to vale because (aside from risking a bona fide diplomatic incident that could inflame tensions between vale and atlas should the vale council take issue with the uninvited presence of a foreign state’s air force in their kingdom!) he’s concerned that it will make people tense.

you know, like how people were tense when mistral occupied eastern vale and ozma tried to avert war by appeasement, and then there was a deadly riot that exploded into a decade of trench warfare. like how things were probably pretty goddamned tense before the faunus revolution broke out in response to humans being – as oobleck very delicately put it – “quite, quite adamant about centralizing the faunus population in menagerie.”

(that’s code for, at best, systematic persecution intended to make living outside menagerie so untenable that faunus would leave en masse; mass deportations and genocide at worst. in case that isn’t clear.)

i doubt ozma was remotely as obsessed with absolute secrecy such that the common people don’t even know there’s anything unusual happening prior to the great war and the faunus revolution. ozpin is a trauma reaction to those conflicts, deeply and profoundly shaped by them and terrified to the point of irrationality of allowing the “energy” that preceded the outbreak of those wars to happen again.

salem hits beacon with three separate and extremely public terroristic attacks all on the same night – she planned for four, but one fired early – all of which were broadcast internationally, live. she spent eighty years observing how oz reacted to the great war and then struck at him in a manner he would never be able to conceal, and (if he’d survived) would have gotten him stripped of power and cast out of his fortress in disgrace. i think her calculation here is that ozpin would either be dead for at least a few years or self-immolate out of panic.

haven, of course, she had lionheart in her pocket and planned a covert operation. low risk, quick and quiet.

but then, when her plans shuffled and brought her to atlas – a military power that has spent eighty years preparing for war between industrialized states, trying to claw its way ahead of the curve so it won’t be trapped in a trench stalemate again – salem made an inexhaustible force of grimm and delivered a an old-school siege, because a post-industrial military that has focused for eight decades on the problem of avoiding trench stalemate is not prepared to handle an enemy force that is effectively immune to artillery fire.

i think the atlas military would have done a lot better in a round two of the great war. but that’s not the war it got. it got a premodern siege by the eldritch roman legion with instant and infinite respawns so artillery barrages just don’t matter. it’s not about overpowering the enemy! it’s about taking away what power they have!

(this, plus the atlesian military’s development of devices that provoke massive grimm swarms as per arrowfell, makes it emphatically clear that the atlas military does not exist for the purpose of grimm extirpation. it’s an institution that has been built from the ground up for open warfare with other states.)

#sorry for rwbyposting about military history it will happen again #every time i get on this topic inevitably some bozo is like ''it’s not that deep crwby are just incompetents who don’t understand warrr''#so to head that off: i literally do not care #it does not fucking matter if the writers have enough basic working knowledge of military theory to do this on purpose #or just intuitively sketched this stuff in a way that was smart and held up to this kind of examination #it is there in the text regardless. please for the love of GOD learn what ‘death of the author’ actually entails.

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ihavetoomanyocsdealwithit · 3 months ago

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Stone Heart AU: Scar pt IV

The spell itself isn’t difficult. It’s ensuring whoever breaks out doesn’t let loose havoc and will remain inside Ramshackle. Professor Taka says that he’s really not really concerned, being 7 petrified statues gives you a lot of time to talk together, and Ramshackle is the only place where the old magic is stable enough to hold their forms. He’s little more than a ghost once he steps past the gate.

“The Headmaster at the time acquired our statues around 200 years ago. Plenty of time to get to know somebody.” He says, lounging back on one of the porch chairs and flipping through a book. “But if you want my advice for your training, I would go with Mary next. She would add a good balance.”

“Mary?”

“Queen of Hearts. Mary Elizabeth Heart.” he states, glancing up. He knows that it probably should have started with her. Mary had softened considerably in her time, seeing her children grow and their children, and so on, until Riddle Rosehearts came about and went and made the same mistakes. She had bemoaned and wept when he walked through main street red eyed and shaking from his Overblot. The very thing that had led to not just her ‘death’ but the loss of her husband years previous.

She would have treated Yuu more like a daughter, being more compassionate in sessions and probably more patient. She was good at that sort of thing, so long as you followed the rules and weren’t a complete ass. He did enjoy poking at her until she exploded though. He had to entertain himself somehow!

Perhaps though, the cub needed him first. Somebody who was firm and deliberate, but yielding. He pushed to the limits of what she had and then some, but the way she thrived under the smallest praise...well, it was concerning and rewarding. When he could see her get past the fear and hesitation and breathe through it to accomplish the step or visualize the spell, that's where she shined like the sunrise over Pride Rock.

And after all the shit that she had been put through, she needed rewards and praise. She had the drive to do better, the ambition, the fortitude. She had everything she needed to be a warrior. She just needed somebody who treated her exactly what she was.

A cub. A child. Somebody who still needed guidance and not to be tossed about in danger or left to deal with it alone with other children.

“Professor, you ok? Your face looks pinched. Tense? Tense.”

“Just an irritating thought, don’t mind it.” He waved a hand, “Breaks over, sunshine. Go through your stances again, get your knees higher. Your power comes from the thrust of your hips, the more leverage the better. And land on the balls of your feet, you’ll land softer and help with future spells. Take it slow if you must, but do it correctly.”

“Yes sir!”

She never complained about a single task, even if she asked him to explain in a different way, or if it took her a few days to get it right. He could see her get tired, limbs shaking with exertion, and still say nothing.

Grimhilde might be the one to teach her how to speak for herself. Maybe her instead? But her magical core is too much for her to support right now.

Although...perhaps if they were able to bring in the familiars? Less magic to support, same mindset, easier on her core, natural support. He would discuss as much with the others tonight, while she slept.

Sometimes he wished that Shenzi and her husbands had been considered familiars. But they weren’t subservient to him nor soul bonded, not like Diaval or Crovis or even Iago. He would not wish them to be. But it was something that him and Ursula had bonded over, their love and pain of their long lost friends.

When he assured himself that she was asleep, he left the Ramshackle. It was a strange feeling still. Inside Ramshackle, he was tangible. He was able to touch objects, move her hands into the correct position and so on. Once he stepped out though, he was as faded as the damn smoke that trailed behind him, not even able to move the leaves on the ground he walked on. A ghost perhaps? Closest thing perhaps. It didn’t matter as much, as he had never encountered any beings, not even Malleus. The dragon may actually be able to see him with his core.

He agreed with Maleficent though. The patterns were obvious enough. The children that corresponded the closest with themselves were the ones overblotting. He would bet his last coin that Malleus would Overblot at some point, it was only a matter of when.

He steps onto Mainstreet and slides down the base of his statue, and closes his eyes.

He had sunk into this spot so often that the vaccum of magic feels like a comfort now. It existed, but it didn’t. Accessible but only when all were in true agreement. There was a reason that it had taken them years upon years to try and break free, and even then, the little monster was not considred a resounding success.

“How fairs the child?” Grimhilde asks. All of their forms slip and morph in this space, but for now, she looks in her prime. Tall, regal and vaguely haughty.

“She fairs well. Her lessons are successful and she’s a diligent student. I hold concern for her food and sleep, but until I can hold any sort of solid form to address the damn headmage myself, we are at a loss there. I hunt when she is at school at least, though it is sparing. We can’t attract too much attention.”

“She seems invigorated. Tired, but she’s got a brighter look in her eyes. Floyd, precious little thing, he’s getting curious,” Ursula praises, also taken to her prime form. “But you didn’t come just to give a progress report. What’s the deal?”

He huffs, “Oh, I can’t miss my dear friends?”

“Oh on with it kitty kitty,” Hades, damn the crawler, though at least he has taken an older form. “You’ve got some idea; you settle in somewhere about as well as snakeskin does.”

There's a hiss beside him, a snifting of scales. Ah, seems that Jamil did something to unsettle him again. They were far to alike in history and personality, especially at this age.

“We all know it will take years for her to be ready to take on those of us with stronger magical cores at this rate. I’m not saying speed up the process and put her in danger,” he pointedly says to Mary, who opens her mouth, “But perhaps something like microdosing. For those who still have their familiars, it would be much easier to manage them, as opposed to the originals.”

There’s a pulse, ripples above that show there is thought, emotion, activity, but whos and where are completely lost. Only intensity.

“And for those of us that don’t?” Mary asks, fanning herself. She was like himself and Ursula, no familar.

“Items of Imbuement I think. I don’t know what each of you have, nor the enchantments upon them. I think she could be ready for simple Grimoire’s in half a years' time, maybe a bit less.” He sighs, waving a hand between Ursula, Jafar and Grimhilde. “I am more concerned with getting a safer means for the precognition dreams. The mirror works well, but she can’t control what it shows or where it goes. There is a guardian inside, but whatever the damn thing is, it is a being of Light. I can’t tell you who or what it is.”

“Has it been lending the visions to her?” Jafar mumbles, the sound of pages ruffling.

“I can’t be sure. It hasn’t hurt her, and she tells me that it speaks rarely. High pitched voice, but some sort of beastman she thinks. Large round ears on the top of his head is the only real distinguishing mark on him.”

“We will have to continue this another time,” Malifient annouces, “Morning is drawing near for you. We will speak to our familars and see who would be prepared to part, and what materials. Is there room in the dorm to hold them?”

“Plenty.” Scar stands, leaning heavily on his staff. “The place is decrepit, but the east wing at least stands strong and insulated. Around 12 rooms, give or take. Mine faces the sunrise.” He purrs, knowing he got the best room in the place.

They make their remarks, some of the usual banter, but truly, it’s only three that would be able to lend any familiars, the rest would be enchanted items. It’s rough, but doable.

The sun peeks out just as he stumbles on his staff trying to rise. The smoke evaporates in the warmth of the sun and his vision becomes spotty. Far past time, he might not make it back before students start-

He blinks, facing the graveyard. He’s in his room, plopped onto the plush chair. Solid again too, the fabric indented with his claws. Huh. Well, that’s interesting, isn’t it?

“Professor Taka?” Yuu is already awake of course, tying the silk into a proper tie. “Did you fall asleep in your chair? I know you like looking at the stars but it’s not good for your back, you know.”

He smiles, rising from it. “Worried about me? How cute. I suppose I could be more cautious in the future." He feels vaguely weak when he rises, but not too bad. "Go finish getting ready, I’ll make breakfast.”

“Are you actually going to cook it though? The meat was still bleeding last time.”

“Little runt.” he clips, tugging on a lock of hair, “Yes, I’ll cook it through, and it will lose all the flavoring because your little herbivore stomach can’t handle anything delicious.”

They banter about seasoning and recipes, gives a sneaky pet to Grim behind the ears as he blearily eats, and they rush out the door, leaving him in the blissful quiet.

Finally. He needs a nap.

#twst #twst wonderland #twisted wonderland #disney twst #stone heart AU #twst great 7 #twst the great 7 #twst scar

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