#that you can in fact corrupt them as you would a spirit

[thebookworm0001]

thinking about how anaris turns elves into demons

it’s not a possession

they become demons

that’s fucking insane

[soft-serve-soymilk]

Actually I’ve come to the conclusion that Cynthia would like Kingdom Hearts for the exact same reason she likes Graces f (the homoerotic tension,,,,,,)

[yavvana]

I can't get over how fucking awful Mythal actually was.

Don't read below this if you haven't finished Veilguard, lmao.

The fact that Solas wore her vallaslin, and somehow still saw her as a friend, and trusted and loved her enough to do everything she asked of him makes me so angry/sad. Friends don't make their friends wear slave markings on their faces. Him being called her lapdog by Elgar'nan makes so much more sense.

And then Solas goes and accepts the blame for decisions that she made, and then manipulated him into agreeing to, and she fucking accepts no fault! If you confront her about the Blight when you meet her in the Crossroads, she basically just says, "not my problem."

And he blames himself for her death because he couldn't convince her to walk away from the Evanuris! But really, sorry Mythal, that's her own fucking fault?! She saw herself as above Solas, so she refused to heed his warnings, and then Elgar'nan killed her because Elgar'nan's a bitch.

And then if you pick the good ending, and Solas sees her again, you cannot tell me that his reaction to her is not one of someone who has been abused being confronted by their abuser. The way he curls around the dagger...Mythal, when I get my hands on you, Mythal...And then she says, "I release you from my service." Bitch. I wanted my Lavellan to punch her ghost with her prosthetic hand so fucking bad, lmao.

Solas was a spirit of wisdom! And she corrupted him from his purpose. If he had stayed a spirit, he would have become a pride demon because of her manipulations.

Cole has a couple of lines in DAI that I can't stop fucking thinking about.

"He didn't want a body, but she asked him to come. He left a scar when he burned her off his face."

And, "He wants to give wisdom, not orders."

Solas gets to be himself in Inquisition. He gets to return to giving wisdom. Regardless of whether or not you're romancing him, if you're not a dick to him, he offers these beautiful stories about the Fade, and GDL does a fucking incredible job of making each of them sound poetic as fuck. And he's so kind to all the companions. Even Vivienne who has so much contempt for him, and he tries to offer her advice when he notices things about her magic that he finds...unsettling, lmao. Like their interaction about her staff's aura and him being like, "Are you sure that's the aura you want your staff to have, I can cleanse it for you?" And she's just like, "Yup." And he just lets it go.

When he leaves the Inquisition, Solas forces himself to be what Mythal made him. Which makes the line, "You are Mythal's creature now!" so distressingly ironic.

People talk about how he hates the Dalish elves, and Qunari, but that's just factually inaccurate. He's frustrated by the Dalish because he spent how many years fighting to free the elves from the influence of the Evanuris, only to wake from uthenera to find that he is the villain in all their tales, and the Evanuris are regarded as gods. And when he tried to tell a clan the truth, they tried to kill him! And he doesn't hate the Qunari, he hates the Qun. He hates that under the Qun, people do not get to make their own decisions.

Iron Bull's biggest fear is becoming a rabid Tal'Vashoth, and he expresses as much to Solas. And if you play as a Qunari, Solas points out in party banter that Inky isn't rabid.

If you have Iron Bull side with the Chargers, Solas checks in on Bull several times in party banter, assuring Bull he won't become like the Tal'Vashoth that he fought in Seheron. Because Bull has the Inquisition, and his friends, and Solas. And then they play mental chess, and if that's not friendship, idk what is.

And his interactions with Sera, who doesn't think she's elfy enough, so she makes fun of elfy things as a defence mechanism, are fucking hilarious. The way he gets her to talk about the Fade by asking her about the Breach, and what she sees when she looks at it, and you kinda see that Sera is a lot more elfy than she realizes. And then when she realizes it and gets mad, he basically tells her it's payback for her filling his bedroll with lizards. And she just fucking giggles and is like, "yeah, fair." (These two are my absolute favorite characters in DAI and I would die for either of them, lmao) But he kinda makes her connect with her heritage even though she doesn't want to, and I think that's good for her.

Solas also gets angry with Blackwall, not for lying about actually being Thom Rainier, but because Blackwall led his men into fights, and to their deaths in many instances, for nothing more than his greed. And then he APOLOGIZES for that interaction. And Blackwall tells him it's fine, that Solas was right, and he deserved it. And then Solas commends him for taking the first step towards redemption by owning his past and his mistakes.

And then there's him and Varric constantly joking about having to clean up messes made by humans, and "Why are an elven apostate and a dwarf here, again?" Their interactions are some of my favorites, and it's why I firmly believe that if there had been one more wolf statuette to find, it would have been his regret over Varric's death.

Solas deserved better than having Mythal as a "friend." She manipulated and corrupted him. And then let him take the fall for things that she did. She regrets NOTHING about what they did to the Titans. Meanwhile, it's one of his biggest regrets.

Anyway, I love the Egg, and I hate Mythal. That is all. I hope Solas and my Lavellan Inky get to have plenty of Fade-ordered therapy. They both fucking need it.

[writerfromthestars]

DP X DC PROMT: JASON IS CHOSEN TO RAISE DANNY

Danny's core was broken, shattered and almost irreparable. The damage would take decades to heal in his teenage body, seeing as it didn't have much room to grow or mutate to adult size. The only option is to de-age him and let him rebuild his ghost core naturally.

The issue with this is that he can't be in the infinite realms while he does so if he wants to conserve his halfa status. Too much ectoplasm at once would overload the kids body and kill him, while to little would ensure that he developed just a little to liminal to be ordinary, but not liminal enough to be considered a halfa.

The obvious solution? Send the kid to a location on earth so steeped in ectoplasm that he will have no problem filtering it form his surroundings, even with a broken core. The issue with this? The only place to match this criteria is either the compound of a psycho assassin demon king, or Gotham city. Obviously, they're not sending Danny to this League of Assassins, leaving Gotham. The issue lies in the fact that Gotham has a huge amount of ectoplasm, but it's been so corrupted over the years that unless a liminal is born there, the sudden overload of rotten ectoplasm is enough to put most limimals down for the count for at least a couple years.

The solution? A halfa guardian. The only issue is finding one. Clockwork refuses to let Vlad take custody of Danny, Dani is too young, and Dan too volatile. Luckily for them, there is a halfa currently residing in Gotham City, specifically, the Red Hood, the Avenger of Spirits, a moniker granted to him by the many people who died in Gotham that he, well, avenged.

He fits all the criteria for a guardian. He can keep the de-aged Danny safe because he's Red Hood, no one in the infinite realms can argue with the placement because he is also a halfa, he is Jason Todd, the son of a billionaire, and can teach Danny how to win people over, not to mention the fact that he is a crime lord, and can teach Danny how to run a, well, not quite a kingdom, but close enough.

Danny is de-aged, losing his memories of anything after about the age of two years. Jason wakes up one morning to a toddler on his doorstep with black hair with a white streak and Lazarus green eyes, tucked into a fluffy red blanket with a stuffed ghost plushie and a letter.

The letter essentially says:

Jason, you are the best option to raise him. His name is Danny.

Jason, quite understandably, freaks out.

[silveryclear]

MOJABI GHOST

Pairing: Miguel O’Hara X Ex Female Reader

CW: NSFW, Cunnilingus, Thigh and Knee Riding, Bilingual Dirty Talk, Penetration, Rough Sex, Needy, Desperate Sex, Mating Press, Cockwarming

Description: Miguel drops by your apartment after he can’t stand the silence of his penthouse. He misses you, and tonight, you’ll see just how much~

Translation done by yours truly~

Song: “MOJABI GHOST” by Tainy, ft. Bad Bunny

Smoking,

Drinking,

Fucking,

Pretending that I don’t think about you.

I don’t who I’m trying to kid,

For this feeling,

Won’t let me sleep.

And I wish,

I wish, that I could dream peacefully,

That I could dream about you.

Another night alone. Another night without you.

Miguel O'Hara looks over view of Nueva York while drinking from his third glass of whiskey on the rocks; rocks that have melted and diluted the drink that has been abandoned for thoughts about you.

The truth is that Miguel has abandoned many things because of his mind— the treacherous bitch does not stop thinking about you.

Who could ever stop thinking about you, is the question that he should be asking. But he doesn't. And he’s well aware why.

Because that would require him to accept the reality that he fucked up the only thing that had given him happiness and warmth after what had happened with his daughter. And once again, it’s something that he doesn’t allow himself to forgive.

At first, you were only a hindrance, an annoyance which he could not get rid of. You were always looking at him with that sweet expression, ready to face the next anomaly with a smile and good attitude. He couldn’t stand you. The fact that you could face every problem and tragedy, a particular characteristic of spiderpeople, without your spirit being corrupted ... he hated it. He hated it to death.

Yet, observe how easy it is for him to lie. Because in reality, he never hated you. How could he hate the one person who received him with such a unique and special warmth and affection— the woman who, one by one, took down each one of his walls, making them crumble to the ground and fall as he did when he fell in love with you. Although, too late.

He lets out a dry laugh. There is no doubt that he is Spider-Man: the people he loves never stay for long.

Isn't that how he ended up here in the first place?

He sighs, exhausted. I don't want to think anymore.

He takes a swig from the whiskey and frowns, letting out a sound of disgust from the watered down drink and decides to get back into the penthouse. He looks around.

And now what?

Fuck this pity party. Miguel may not be in his five senses at the moment, but he doesn’t think twice before activating his nanotech suit and traveling to your dimension. He doesn't know what is the right to do; If you prefer your space, that he never contacts you again. All he knows is that he cannot stand this purgatory; and that your screams and curses are better than the overwhelming silence of his apartment.

As soon as he steps out of the portal into your apartment, you can already sense each other. It is almost impossible to sneak up on a Spider person, that's why he isn’t surprised when he finds you sitting in your living room, staring at him without blinking.

"What are you doing here?" You ask without emotion after several seconds of silence.

"You know what I came for." he says as he removes his mask and approaches your figure. However, your cold look stops him in his tracks.

“I don't care. I want you to say it.” you say while you stare into his eyes sharply. He deserves it. "Be direct for once in your life."

"Hey," he warns, baring his fangs. “Don’t push it.”

You roll your eyes and cross your arms, ignoring his warning. "Then leave. I was clear: don't come back until you tell me how you really feel.”

"Don't you think I want to?!" Miguel shouts, frustrated; Not with you. Never with you. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, controlling his anger. When he opens his eyes, you’re surprised to see actual remorse. "I'm dying to have you in my arms again..."

You can’t help to soften your expression when you caught the frustration in his voice and how difficult it is to express his true emotions at the moment. "Then why the hesitation?" You ask softly, your voice a sweet melody to his ears. Then, a sudden thought makes your blood run cold. “...unless I wasn’t good enough for you.” Your voice trembles and you can't suppress the tears that arise.

Miguel’s face falls and without thinking twice, he runs to you and hugs you tightly, snaking an arm around your waist and his hand behind your neck. He listens as you sob into chest and he brings you even closer, his hand gently stroking your back. "Shh... no, my love, that can’t be further away from the truth." He whispers softly into your ear. "I am the one who’s not good enough for you."

Miguel lets out a dry, incredulous laugh. “I'm the worst… to cause the most wonderful woman in all of the multiverse to think the opposite…” He presses a kiss against your forehead and brings you closer to him. "You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. Please, forgive me for being such a coward.” He murmurs apologetically as he buries his face into your neck and breathes in your scent.

God, how I missed this smell~

He leans back and stares into your eyes, stroking your cheeks and wiping your tears.

"I love you," he declares, more confident than ever. "I don't want to keep loving you from afar. I don’t want to run away, fearing that one day I will lose you if it also keeps you far from my arms.” He presses his forehead against yours, closing his eyes and whispering the last few words full of emotion, "If I still lose you...”

"God, Miguel..." You crumble once again and hug him tightly. "I love you so much," you confess in the midst of tears. "I’m afraid too, we are both spider people, we both risk our lives to prevent Multiverse from collapsing… our job is dangerous and it is painful to think about the great possibility that I could lose you,” You look into his eyes, holding his face in your hands. "But it hurts more to have you so close, and not by my side."

"I know..." He whispers as he leans towards your sweet touch. “I'm such an idiot. I thought I was protecting you from the pain, but in reality, I hurt you even more.” He stares into your eyes, his gaze full of remorse. "You could forgive this fool in love?"

You laugh softly and Miguel swears that his heart skipped a beat. Suddenly, you look at him with a mischievous smile. "Hmm, I don't know..."

Miguel groans and looks at you with desperation, as if he needed to hear that he has been forgiven to be calm. "Love, please..." He whimpers softly against your neck, kissing it sensually.

Your grin becomes wider and playful. You take his chin and make him look into your eyes. "But you sound so nice, Miguelito~” You purr. “Do it again~”

Shit...

Miguel feels how his cheeks redden and he short circuits when he hears your playful and dominant voice. It was a side of you that he had never seen. Or rather, one he never tried to get to know. He was so obsessed with controlling everything that he never realized that he kept you from expressing yourself around him.

Damn ... he definitely deserves to beg to you.

"My love..." He kneels in front of you and takes your hands in his. He looks at you with pleading eyes. "Please, I beg you... Forgive me. Let me show you how sorry I am.”

You feel your cheeks heat up at the sight of the most stoic and stubborn man in the multiverse kneeling in front of you, begging like a dog. Is this a dream? More like a miracle.

"Wow... You really missed me, didn't you, Miguelito~?"

Miguel takes your hand and kisses your palm, staring into your eyes. "You have no idea." He whispers. Your heart skips a beat, blood rushing through your veins at an extreme speed. You feel the love that this man has for you and you cannot avoid the genuine smile that grows in your face.

You place your arms around his neck and you kiss his cheek. "I forgive you. Show me exactly how sorry you are~"

It takes Miguel less than two seconds before he is on top of you, your back on the sofa while his knee separates your legs. It seems as if all your confidence disappears as soon as Miguel touches you, his large hands gripping your waist. You feel tempted to deviate your gaze, but his crimson eyes keep you paralyzed under their intensity, full of lust.

"Oh baby..." he lets out a soft growl as his lips brush against your neck, making you shiver once more. “Eres mía~” (You’re mine~)

His fingers quickly disrobe you, his lips kissing every inch of your soft skin. His breathing quickens, breathing hot and heavy as his mouth latches onto one of your nipples, hand groping the other. He lets out soft grunts and moans of pleasure as he worships your chest, sucking and biting, leaving wet hot marks on your skin.

You grab onto his hair, your back arching off from the couch as he continues his assault. He lets out a particularly long groan when he feels you grind your wet pussy on his knee. He chuckles darkly and presses onto you even harder, making you shiver and moan in delight.

“That’s it mami…” he growls, his breath hot and heavy against your neck. “Grind that needy pussy on me… make yourself feel good.”

A sound of pleasure escapes from your lips. You close your eyes and decide to immerse yourself in the pleasure that both have refused for too long— no longer wanting to deprive your body of what it craves; and your heart from the one you love.

Your arms wrap around his neck, hips bucking against his clothed knee, soaking the nanotech fabric. He can only watch in awe how easy it was to reduce you to a sensitive mess— rubbing and pressing his thigh against your throbbing pussy, gripping your hips tighter as he guides you.

“Oh fuckkkk… Miguel…” The way you so readily give your body to him— it awakens a primal side to him that even he didn’t realize he had. The need to explore how many times he can make you cum without fucking you with his cock had his mind reeling from the possibilities.

Should he finger you now? Should he make you cum on his tongue? Ride his face?

“Miguel… oh Miguel~” you mewl, the squelching sound of your juices on his leg echoing in the room. Small puffs of hot air leave past your lips, your hips bucking so needy and desperate for friction.

However the night ends, what he does know is that he so desperately craves to hear you whine his name like that again.

“Come on, cariño…” he keeps rutting your hips against his thigh, now unclothed as his dick strains against the nanotech clothing that covers his groin. “What do you need~?”

“Need you…” You pant out, chest heaving rapidly. “Need you inside… please Miguel~”

He chuckles darkly. “Already? But baby, we just started~” He teases, slowing down the rubbing against your clit, making you whine in frustration.

“Fuck that! I missed you, maldito!” You growl, making Miguel’s eyes widen when you voice out your frustrations.

This makes Miguel chuckle heartedly, gazing down at you with affection and primal lust. “You missed my cock that much, baby~?”

“Not your cock. You.” This startles Miguel, actually making him blush. His chest fills with so much love and affection for you. God, he needs you so badly.

“Te amo, mi arañita…” (I love you, my little spider…) Miguel murmurs softly before leaning down and claiming your lips softly. A low moans escape from your lips as you feel just how serious he is. “Missed you… missed your touch…” he breathes out against your neck once he pulls away, his lips brushing against your skin. Miguel shivers and groans, loving the way your warm, soft skin feels against his. You can only watch as he worships you, too paralyzed by this feeling to speak. “Missed your smell…” he inhales your scent softly before pressing a kiss on your neck. “Missed your voice… let me hear it please…”

“Ahhhh… Miguel…” you find your voice, breathing out your response as your chest rises and falls rapidly, trembling underneath him.

“Fuck…” he groans from your needy voice. Miguel trails wet kisses down your hot skin, licking away your sweat. His fangs lightly graze your thighs, teasing you with his tongue. He chuckles when you arch your back, whimpering his name, begging to take you— to do something already!

He grins as he kisses the inside of your thigh. “You’ve never been very patient.”

You whine, your hand making it’s way to his hair and tugging him closer to your throbbing pussy. He chuckles and licks a long, agonizing swipe along your glistening folds, making you groan in response. “Good thing I’ve never been very patient either~”

Miguel takes his time, swirling his tongue, lapping up your juices— yet, the way that he grips your thighs, so close to digging his claws into your skin while he groans from your taste— it only makes him look more desperate and feral than when he first begged for you.

You jolt and shiver in delight, the drag of his fat, warm tongue bringing you to heights of pleasure you only had the joy of experiencing with Miguel. The feelings of pleasure were so delicious and excruciating, it makes you buck your hips against his face. You grind your pussy on his face unashamedly, his nose brushing against your clit deliciously.

Watching from below, how your hips arch and you tug harder on his hair is all that Miguel needed to die happily. His groans and harsh breathing muffled by your desperate grinding.

“Mmm… shlppp… mmnh…” His eyes remain trained on your cute expressions, a particularly harsh suck of your clit eliciting a whiny moan from you that had him reeling.

“Fuck… Miguel…! I’m so close!” You whine so pretty and needy. His claws digging dig into your thighs, pressing his face harder against your cunt as he eats you out like an animal.

Miguel moans against your cunt, murmuring for you to cum on his tongue, to do it now. It comes out a wet, muffled mess, but you didn’t care. You were already a moaning mess as you came, spreading your juices all over Miguel’s face. His tongue works on your core like a man dying of thirst, lapping up every drop of your juices and overstimulating the fuck out of you. He never came up for air, submerged between your thighs, delving his tongue deeper, sucking harder. This is where he belongs.

“Mi— Miguel! It’s too much..!” You whine, trying to push his head away but he’s glued to your pussy— and he’s not moving until he’s licked you clean.

After a few more seconds, he gives your pussy one last lick before he comes back up, his tongue hanging out as he smiles smugly. You twitch and writhe underneath him from the overstimulation, gazing at him with a satisfied and dazed expression. He tantalizingly drags his long tongue around his mouth, lips, chin… cleaning up your cum from his face, making sure you watch. “Dios mío, que rico sabes mami~” (My god, you taste delicious mami~)

You whimper, your hole twitching at the erotic display. Miguel watches as your pussy flutters with primal lust, smiling at you like a predator. “You liked that, baby? Do you still want more?”

Before you could respond, Miguel is on top of you, claiming your lips in a hot, sensual kiss. You groan at the taste of yourself on his lips, this only turning you on even further. He grips your ass, bringing your wet core towards his now fully unclothed and erect cock.

“Mmmngh… mmnh… ahhhhh…” You whimper into the kiss as he grinds his cock against your sensitive folds, spreading your juices all over.

“You want this cock, baby? Huh? I can’t hear you. Tell me how badly you want me. Tell me. Tell me how badly you want me to fuck you.” Miguel whispered into your ear as he kept grinding himself against you, teasing you once again. You can only cry out, frustration building up inside of you as you feel your hole squeezing against nothing, craving his thick cock.

“Please… Miguel…”

“Dime lo que quieres preciosa… ¿quieres que te lo meta? ��Sí? ¿Quieres que te coja?” (Tell me what you want, precious… you want me to put it in? Yeah? You want me to fuck you?)

“Yes, Miguel! Just… please!”

As much as he loves teasing you, he needed to nestle his cock inside of you. Right. Now.

“M’gonna bury this cock deep inside you… make sure your pussy remembers the shape of my cock…” He chuckles as he lines himself up with your hole and slowly pushes his cock past that first, tight ring inside your cunt. “Fuck… such a tight fit… bet you didn’t fuck anyone with a dick as big as mine…” he groans and pushes further. “no other cock can stretch you out like mine can…”

“No one… only you…” you breathe out in satisfaction as you finally feel your pussy getting full. “M’so full…”

Miguel lets out a string of curses and groans at the feeling of your tight pussy pulsating around him. “Yeah, that’s right baby… only my cock can fill you up this good.” He smirks as he looks down at you, caged between his arms and large body. “Gonna let me fuck this pussy, huh? Want me to pound you until you can’t think?”

“Yes, Miguel! Yes!”

That’s all the confirmation he needed before he started rutting his hips against yours at a fast pace. No time to start slow, no. This is the type of desperate and primal sex that lovers have after they’ve gone a long time without seeing each other. The type that builds up overtime only to be released in the heated thrust of each other’s hips. The type that has you moaning out gibberish and wrapping your arms and legs around him as Miguel thrusts his hard cock inside, going feral on your pussy.

“Fuck… I missed this… I missed you…” Miguel grunts with every thrust, small puffs of air leaving his lips as he ruts even faster, deeper. His muscles flex with every movement. He presses his hot body against yours, feeling your tits brush against his chest with every thrust.

“M-Miguel… please… harder!” You moan, digging your nails into his broad back.

“Yes…” his voice is so rough, so hungry that it’s almost jarring. Every word he says, every look on his face seems to radiate his intense feelings for you.

He needs you, oh, does he need you.

His arms are like steel on your body, keeping you still within his grasp, and he makes you feel every inch of him, pounding himself into you in a frenzy. This is what he had been looking for, needing. He fills your entire existence for just a moment, completely and utterly enraptured by you.

“Te amo… te amo tanto…” (I love you… I love you so much…) he whispers into your ear, biting and sucking on it. One of his hands makes its way between your legs as he rubs your clit. “Ven conmigo, bebé… I need you to cum with me…” (Come with me, baby…)

“Miguel! Ohh… I’m g- Mmm… Ahhhh~!” Your moans are muffled by his lips against yours. The pounding of his cock, his thumb rubbing your pussy, and this hot, searing kiss was all you needed to finally let go. Squelching hot cum bathes Miguel’s cock and balls as you tremble and writhe in ecstasy.

“That’s it, baby… god, you did so good…” he groans, placing your forehead against his as he ruts his hips faster. Grunting as he chases his own release. Not long after, Miguel is cumming inside your pussy, spurting hot loads of his cum so deep you can feel it in your womb. The moans he lets out sound so raw and desperate, you feel like you’re watching a whole other person.

He sighs in satisfaction, pressing a kiss on your forehead before laying down besides you. He pulls you into his body, his cock twitching as he keeps it nestled deep inside your cunt.

“Fuck… I don’t think I’ve ever come this much…” Miguel lets out a breathy laugh and you look at him in awe. The afterglow of your session makes him look so… ethereal. You blush and involuntarily clench your pussy around his cock.

Miguel chuckles. “I felt that, preciosa~”

You roll your eyes and look away from him, flustered. “Then take it out!”

“Mmm… why should I~? I very much prefer having you close like this.” Miguel inhales in your scent and presses a tender kiss on your neck. The action flusters you further, making you blush at his sweetness and his opposing teasing.

“Te amo, mi vida…” (I love you, my life..) He whispers softly as he closes his eyes, bringing you closer into his embrace.

You smile softly and close your eyes as well, slowly dozing off. Not before you utter the same words back, “Te amo, Miguelito~”

.

.

.

.

A/N: A little fun fact: this fic was originally written in Spanish first because I wanted to practice writing (specifically smut) in my native language. I might end up posting both languages on AO3.

[troublesomesnitch]

The Devil You Know

Aemond x Septa!Reader - Pt. 2

Little follow-up to this, but hopefully works OK on its own! There might be a third and final part also.

Contents: Book!Aemond, filth and depravity. Coercion, manipulation, power imbalance, dubious consent, medieval fuckboy Aemond. Just the tip...

Words: 3200

Full disclosure - possibly a bit unpolished because I wanted to get it done before S2.

-

You left the grand sept just days after your investiture. 

At noon on the first day of the new month, a royal courier came to fetch you, loading your meagre belongings onto a cart to bring both that and yourself to the castle. To your new home and abode: a chamber with one bed, one table and one little chair, one sconce and one seven-pointed star on the wall. Naturally in the servant’s quarters, but on the highest floor, along with the ladies’ maids, far away from the damp cellars and busy kitchens.

The queen’s household is large, and you are somewhere in the middle of the hierarchy; expected to follow orders, but able to give them, too. You are a septa now, a woman grown, and for the first time in all of your life you have no Mother Superior to answer to, no Septon Alester, and no other girls sharing your bedchamber - which is both a blessing and a curse. It is nice and quiet to be by yourself, free of prying eyes and Sister Sybella’s snoring. But no one pays notice when you slip out at night, and if you run into a maid or steward, they naturally assume that you are headed towards Her Grace or Princess Helaena’s chambers. 

Luckily, Prince Aemond’s rooms are in roughly the same direction. 

When others are near, he is perfectly honourable. Really, his performance is quite impressive. Not too eager, not too distant, perfectly measured when he greets you in the halls, or sits with his mother in her solar. But at night, at night he is different. When the hour grows late and the royal family say their goodnights, he will find a chance to strike, to brush past you and squeeze your wrist, or run his fingers over the small of your back to let you know that he wishes to see you. That he wants you to come to him tonight. 

To his chamber, to his bed, to his arms. 

It is a humiliating plight, and you climb the steps of Maegor’s Holdfast with all the enthusiasm of a convict walking to the scaffold. Weighed down by the guilt of your actions, terrified that someone should know. And resentful, of the prince for making you dishonour your vows, and of the gods for cursing you with beauty - had they made you ugly, Prince Aemond would never have spared you a glance, and you would not be in this predicament. You would not be forced to indulge his lusts and endure the liberties he takes with your body. 

But most of all, worst of all, you feel ashamed. Of all the things you do together, and of the fact that you cannot deny it does sometimes bring you pleasure, too. 

You have permitted him to kiss your mouth, your throat, your chest. Wrapped your hands  around his member and stroked it while he fondled your breasts. Let him lie on top of you and rut against you, still fully clothed, pressing hard between your legs until both of you were sweaty and panting. And once, only once, you let him slip his hand up under your skirts and touch you there, and it felt more wonderful than anything else you have ever experienced. So wonderful that you have not allowed him to do it again, for fear that it should corrupt your soul and spirit. That you will always crave it, the warm press of his fingers, and the way your body suddenly shook and tightened with a pleasure so exquisite you could not help but cry out in ecstasy. 

But he has never had you. Never put any part of himself inside you, never even seen your naked body. It is the strangest thing - there are surely many ladies who would give themselves to him, wholly and fully, yet for some reason, he wants only you.

And he does not waste time with any sort of pleasantries. The joys of night are short, and he can only keep you for so long - you must be back in time to rest, and at the very least before the scullions and kitchen maids rise. You have hardly latched the door before he wraps you in his longing arms, laying you on his bed and parting your legs. The sheets are soft against your back, and his leathers are smooth and cool, and you do not protest when he lays on top of you. You have grown used to the feel of his chest against yours, the heaviness of him, and the hard and lean lines of his body, so different from your own. You have grown used to his kisses too. You like it when he pecks gently at your lips, and when he slides his tongue into your mouth and curls it around your own. When he strokes your body in all sorts of ways, to see what darling little noises he can coax from you this time. 

“Have you ever been touched like this before?” he breathes - a silly question, since he knows the answer well enough already. 

“No,” you whisper. “Never.”

“Say it again,” he commands, closing his eye and breathing in deeply, pressing his nose to your sweet-smelling hair. 

“No other man has ever touched me - only you.” 

It arouses him very much, hearing those words, and he groans softly when he takes your hand and guides it down between your bodies. Knowing what he wants you to do, you hike your skirts up, just enough to run your own fingers along the folds of your womanhood and hold them up for him to taste. Which he does with the most fervent passion, sighing as he licks them clean of any trace of you. He has asked many times to be allowed to taste your sweetness from its source, but you have staunchly refused, appalled at the mere suggestion. He should not press his mouth to such a dirty place. He should not lick something that serves only the body’s most revolting and shameful functions. 

Usually, once he has kissed you like this for a while, and pressed and rubbed against you, he will either reach his end from that alone, or he will make you pleasure him with your hands. But not tonight. 

“Let me feel you,” he pants. “Just this once let me put it inside - ”

“It is a sin,” you gasp, mortified, but nonetheless shivering when he pulls at your sleeve, exposing your shoulder to cover it with kisses. 

“As is this,” he whispers. “And this, and this - ”

His mouth is lovely and warm on your skin, and his teeth are gentle when they scrape along your throat, nibbling softly above your neckline, and biting down hard below it. Making your breathing uneven as you struggle to string your words together. 

“But it is different - you know that it is, please don’t make me do it…”

The prince lifts his head to look at you, propped up on his elbow. 

“It is the movements that are the most sinful part of the act - is it not?” he says, cupping your face and stroking your cheek in the tenderest of ways. When you nod, he adds, “and if I were to not perform them, would that not be a lesser sin?”

His tone is innocent enough, but you know that wicked look in his eyes, the self-assured draw of his mouth. He knows that he is right - it is the movements, not the insertion itself that makes the act of coupling so sinful. And if he showed restraint and did not move in any such manner, then you suppose it would be a lesser sin. Although they did not mention such possible circumventions in your training, naturally. And there are other issues, still. 

“But my maidenhead…” you mutter, looking bashfully to the side when the prince touches his nose to yours. 

“I will be gentle,” he breathes. “I will be so very gentle - my angel, my love - let me at least have you this way… ”

It never really is your choice to make. To be alone with the prince is to balance on a precarious ledge - you can deny him some things, but only so long as you can offer something else that might appease him. And though he never makes overt threats, you are painfully aware that displeasing him could have dire consequences. That he could hurt you in a multitude of ways if he so wished. 

You squirm under his gaze, riddled with so many conflicting emotions; fearful of his intentions, yet blushing at the terms of endearment. Who would not want to hear such lovely words from a prince?

“Just this once,” he whispers, his voice soft and amorous. Just this once…

All you give him is the faintest nod, a slight incline of your head, and his hands are already pushing at your skirts, bunching them up over your parted knees. His breath hitches at the sight of your womanhood, your most intimate parts that you have never bared to him before; wet and inviting, framed by soft curls. Lovelier than he had ever even imagined, that rosy colour of your innermost lips, that little pearl you will not let him touch. And most of all your maidenhead, the delicate tissue that partially covers your entrance, and that he will earnestly try not to damage beyond what is necessary. 

For reasons he could not say, you have quite enchanted him. So much so that he has lavished more patience and tenderness on you than ever before on a woman, and that despite seeing so little return on the investment. For weeks he has contented himself with just your hand and your reluctant kisses, the mere feel of your body beneath him. Many times, he could have taken you by force, and many times he wanted to, yet somehow he could not bring himself to do it, could not bear the thought that you should hate him for it. That your delicate limbs should be hurt in trying to fight him off. 

He has waited long for this, and he does not want to give you time to change your mind, so he only quickly shrugs off his doublet and unbuttons his breeches to free his manhood. Which is painfully hard and in dire need of relief.

It still looks so strange to you, that unholy appendage, with its swollen shaft and its fat, fleshy head. Like the poisonous mushrooms that grow in the Kingswood, though you always keep that thought to yourself - you doubt the prince would appreciate such a childish comparison. He strokes it slowly while his other hand disappears between your legs, brushing over your womanhood and spreading your folds to reveal your little opening. Untried, uncharted by anything or anyone. 

You grit your teeth when the tips of his fingers are replaced by - something else. 

Slowly, steadily, he begins to ease himself inside of you, and you feel your muscles instantly and unwittingly tensing up, startled at the sensation. At the pressure, and at the sound the prince makes when the tip of his member is enveloped by your body, the tight rim of your entrance squeezing its sensitive head. The rest of him will not fit, but he spits into his palm and strokes it along his shaft, and that makes things glide a little better, as do your slow, deliberate breaths. 

It hurts, it really does, only not in the way you expected. You do not so much feel like anything is being torn or ripped - rather, you feel stretched, forcibly split apart and opened far beyond what should be possible. Your insides burn from it, and you wince with pain when he adjusts his position, spreading your thighs wider and driving his hips forward. Pressing in until he is fully seated. 

And he moans from how perfect you feel around him. So soft, so tight. His seeing eye closes and his breathing is hoarse, strained from how badly he needs to move, needs to thrust; his arms trembling by the sides of your head as he struggles to hold himself still. It is a bizarre thing to do, you think, just laying together like this, one on top of the other, completely motionless. Your legs raised over his hips, his chin resting against your forehead. His manhood swelling within you, throbbing with need. You can only hope it means that he will finish quickly and release you from this chore, from the searing pain that scorches your core, and the feeling of being so trapped, so tethered. Much like one of the many-legged creatures on Princess Helaena’s wall; splayed out and nailed down, held in place by a foreign object piercing your body. 

But the prince likes it. You have never heard such heavy sighs from him as just now, never seen such utter bliss on his face. His forehead is damp with sweat, his brows drawn together, his upper lip subtly twitching. One of his hands trails up the back of your naked thigh, lifting your leg to curl it around his back, and he moans from that too, as the slight shift gives him a brief feeling of movement. It is not at all comfortable for you, but you are distracted when he seeks your lips, claiming your mouth with slow, deep kisses. His tongue rolls over yours, pulling back to lick along your lip before plunging into your mouth again, over and over, in a strangely repetitive way. A rhythmic way. As if he is making love to your mouth, since he cannot make love to your body. 

It feels lovely, so lovely that it makes your insides twitch. Which in turn makes the prince curse, and a violent shudder run through his body. 

“Do it again,” he moans, and like always you do your best to please him. Clenching your muscles, squeezing tight around him, then releasing again. Very slowly, and each time feeling his breathy gasp against your face, and the thrum of a heartbeat inside of you - whether his or yours, you cannot say. It is painful with your already sore muscles, and it must be a poor excuse for what it is supposed to mimic, but it is still better than nothing, judging by how the prince moans. How he bites his lip and furrows his brow as your insides twitch and contract, so tight and slick and warm. 

How strange to think that now you have become one. Now you are as close as two people can ever be. Closer still when the prince slithers his arm underneath your body, pressing you hard against him and cradling your head. Your fingers are clenched in the damp material of his shirt, and he unfurls them gently to wrap your arms around his neck, around his shoulders; wanting you to hold him, to embrace him as a woman should her lover. 

It makes your discomfort somewhat more bearable, having something to cling and anchor yourself to. The closeness, and the intimacy of it, how his face is right above yours, your noses touching and breaths mingling. He drags his mouth against your own, from side to side, his lips brushing over yours, then over the rest of your face; your chin, your cheekbones, your temples. So, so gently, and like often before, you are stunned that he can be both so cruel and so tender with you. So selfish, and so soft. 

He has had countless chances to force himself on you, yet he never did. Even now he is keeping his promise, holding back, fighting hard to not succumb to that most powerful and natural instinct of a man, this urge to thrust, to copulate. You can feel that he is shivering with the force of his need, gritting his teeth, unable to keep completely still - there is a gentle, almost imperceptible swaying of his body that he cannot help, an impossibly slow rocking with each of his ragged breaths. 

He really is beautiful, you think, with his striking eyes and thick, silvery hair; pink lips parted in a breathy sigh. You could not say what possessed you to be so bold, but you find yourself reaching up to place a wet, lingering kiss underneath his jaw, right on top of the constellation of freckles that adorns his neck, swiping your tongue across it and tasting the sweat of his skin. To an almost immediate effect - at the feeling of your timid caresses, the prince curses loudly, clenching his fingers in the sheets, arching his back - 

“No!” you exclaim, “not inside me, not inside - ”

But it is too late; he has already shuddered once, and his manhood is already pulsing and spurting when he manages to withdraw from you. So stiff that it flops up against his stomach, a grotesque thing to look upon, the way it just hangs there, squirting out semen as he groans and gasps. At the very end of his rapture he grasps it with one hand, stroking it hard all the way from the base to the tip, as though wanting to squeeze out every last bit of fluid. And once he is spent, he rolls off of you and onto his back, completely unceremoniously. Leaving you raw and hurting inside, and with the sticky feeling of his semen trickling out between your thighs. 

“If it catches,” you whisper, afraid to even speak the words. “If I should be with child…”

The prince runs a hand over his face, panting and still too lightheaded to be thinking clearly, because he stupidly tells you that needn’t worry, he will have a tea brought to you -

“No! please no,” you shriek, panicked. “They would know I broke my vows - ”

“Then I will bring it myself,” he snaps, but rather than reassure you, his harsh tone only makes you tear up.

At the sigh of your quivering mouth, his face softens, and he reaches out to pull you into his arms, hold you against his chest, stroke your hair and rock you gently. Say forgive me, forgive me, I quite forgot myself, you mustn’t cry, my love -

“Why must you torment me,” you sob. “Sooner or later someone will know, they will shame me and ruin me - “

“They wouldn’t dare,” he says. “I would not let them - I will cut off any hand that hurts you - “

You press your ear to his chest to drown out the sound of his voice, for he has said these same words many times before, and with the same fervour and poignancy. He adores you, he reveres you, he will cut off any hand that hurts you, any eye that ogles you, any tongue that slanders your name. 

You haven’t the courage to tell him - the only hand that hurts you is his own. 

Please feel free to come into my asks or DMs with critique of my fics! Constructive is preferred, but not required.

Tags. @ladythornofrivia, @blackswxnn, @hightpwer, @toodlesxcuddles, @arcielee

@targaryen-madness, @qyburnsghost

And thank you @aemondsbabygirl for being a great one-woman focus group!

[gurggggleburgle]

I would like to make the joke that this winter you could sacriligously call Shen Yuan a Jesus figure who deserves a spot on your mantle and tree.

And why would we say that?

1) Father Son and Holy Spirit

Okay so we acknowledge the very real fact that Airplane is God of this world and what is the system if not an abstraction of the holy spirit? And I know what you're thinking how does this apply to Shen Yuan? What is his transmigration into Shen Qingqiu if not a Virgin Birth into a son of Airplane's writing who in PIDW is the narrative justification for all of Binghe's hate and also the eventual release of Binghe's trauma and corruption. Both a sacrificial lamb if you will.

2) resurrection

OK so while his deaths (for the sake of comedy accept big dick death) are all for binghe's sake in the end could one not argue strongly that these deaths carry the symbolic nature of self sacrifice, revival, and of course stigmata. The first death is of course the one that starts the novel where the humble Shen Yuan asks for absolution for the characters and the world of PIDW with his astute words of "dumbfuck novel dumbfuck author" in which he notes the fault of Lord Father Airplane and is born so he may die at the hands of his disciple who will ultimately betray them. His second death comes 3 years later and is the process once makes a statement of absolution towards his betrayer and to once again spare his fellow eleven other peak lords and and binghe who you can read as the 12 apostles. He then dies again in order to save both the world and in the process and absolve guilt and sin in the name of love and forgiveness.

3) stigmata

Much like our favorite anime protagonist from Saint Young Men our boy Shen Yuan experiences multiple cases of gaining stigmata. Stigmata in this instant referring to multiple injuries that Shen Yuan receives in one particular hand and visually in the animated adaptation appears to be the palm. Shen Yuan's hand which was used to read the sacred PIDW text and give head pats to his disciples was injured in saving Luo Binghe multiple times. In first gaining a deadly poison that seals his fate, then in being infected with a disease that ravaged the meek and innocent, third he gets plant spores that need to he repeatedly burned out of his flesh. These stigmata are symbols of his devotion and faith.

4) kindness to snakes and the less fortunate

In showing kindness to a snake Shen Yuan is able to restore Zhuzhi-Lang back to a more desired state much like the way Jesus cured disease. His efforts also resorted in saving the life of Liu Qingge who is restored much like Lazurus. These miracles act as proof of Shizun’s miracles. Proof of his acts as savior

5) god why have you forsaken me

Multiple times throughout the novel Shen Qingqiu can be seen raging against the system as well as Airplane which as we've discussed are both aspects of God. Jesus himself raged against God when forced to confront his own death and spoke of feeling betrayed and forsaken. The same can be said for the way Shen Yuan feels towards both his fate or and for the state of PIDW and Airplanes shitty writing.

6) throwing the money lenders from the temple

Honestly this is just an excuse to make a joke about Huan Hua palace and killing the old palace master.

7) knowing his own betrayal

A large element is that Judas's betrayal is not a surprise to Jesus. It is an inevitability he sees coming in much the same way that Shen Yuan sees Luo Binghe trying to kill him in revenge coming. There is an acceptance of an inevitable betrayal that both figures share

7) Gay

Much like Jesus our boy is gay and problematic

[lillotte17]

Mythal thoughts this morning:

Morrigan said that the "closest" word for the kind of spirit Mythal came from was 'Benevolence' and my immediate reaction was:

Because even her idea that 'when kindness is denied it becomes retribution' doesn't really hold water. That's...not really how kindness works. I would think that a spirit formed around the idea of benevolence would have the same sort of path as Compassion if it became corrupted. Something more like Desperation or Despair.

To me, the idea that seems to fit her is Protection.

Protection is good! It's a feeling and impulse born from kindness and a desire to take care of others! It is also one of the oldest and most primary emotions people have. Desire and Fear came into being, and then Protection must have followed soon after. Because what else can you feel when someone you love is afraid? And a universal symbol for that feeling is a mother guarding her children, which is what Mythal always touted herself as being. "She was the Mother, protective and fierce." The Caretaker calls her 'the protector'. And the name of Solas' regret that you have to fight about her is called 'Fall of the Protector.'

But protection pushed too far becomes overbearing and oppressive. Controlling. 'Just do what I say, this is for your own good.' The cat who eats her kittens so they don't starve. The mother who breaks a precious golden mirror to teach her daughter a lesson.

Solas was Wisdom. He wanted to learn and to teach and to reflect, but even as a spirit, I think he wanted to give his knowledge purpose, and it suits him that he would be drawn to an embodiment of Protection. He could share what he knows and she could use it to keep others safe, and they will both find fulfillment in the exchange. It was mutually beneficial for them, and it was helping other people. A kind of symbiosis and even dependency, to some extent.

And then Elgar'nan makes a body. And he convinces Mythal to do so as well. And it's all downhill from there.

But you can see the thread of how Protection could convince Solas as that kind of spirit, not only as his friend, but because of what she embodies. For example, “it’s not wrong to build bodies from the titans, it gives us strength to protect ourselves and others” and “it’s not wrong to sever the titans' dreams, we’re protecting our people by ending the war” and “it’s not wrong to become a god, because the people need someone to watch over them.” Every bad step she asks him to take with her still echoes with the purpose of her original being, even though it is being pushed to harsh and terrible extremes.

Solas being Wisdom sees how she is wrong, but also doubts his convictions because protection is her nature. They have had a mutually beneficial partnership for thousands of years. He relies on her for fulfillment of his nature just as much as he believes she still relies on him for hers. And he loves her. And he trusts her. And for so many thousands of years, she has wanted to do nothing but good, so what she wants can’t be THAT bad, right?

Narrator Voice: It was, in fact, Much Worse.

And everything spins outward. He is Wisdom and he is a spirit, and spirits don't handle sudden change well, and Wisdom does not handle being wrong well, and the more things fall apart, the more he has to try and fix them. The more he has to justify the choices he made as being right. The more he has to defend the idea and the memory of Mythal being Inherently Good. Because if she wasn't good, then he put his trust in the wrong place. He was not Wise. He has lost not only Mythal, but himself and his true nature in allowing her to lead him to horrible places even when he knew better. He has to make the world the way she wanted it not only to soothe his conscience about what happened to the elves after the Veil, but because he is still clinging to the base of his initial partnership with Mythal. Mythal wanted the world this way because she was Good, and I was helping her which made me Good, and anything I have to do to achieve this goal is Acceptable because the results are Good. He can do what they have always done together. He will give his Wisdom for what she wanted to achieve, and the people will be Protected. Their contract and their natures will be fulfilled. And maybe everything else he did can be justified, even if it cannot be forgiven.

[sammylkcho]

May I have some some twisted glisten fluff please? :)

Warnings/Notes: fluff, this can be read like romantic or platonic, autophobia, it's short srry..

"Shh… It’s okay, I’m not going anywhere, okay?" You retied the pink cloth around his wrists. He always wore it to keep himself from making sudden movements whenever the ichor made him "lose control" sometimes. You managed to keep it under control, so you trusted that tying the ribbon around his wrists could serve as a makeshift accessory.

He always loved to show off even the smallest thing.

A slow smile tugged at your lips as you remembered how he used to be before the ichor turned him into a bundle of nerves, filled with fears, especially a fear of loneliness. He’d grow terribly paranoid if you moved even a few inches away from him; the idea that you might leave him never left his mind.

At first, it scared you to be with him after he became what he is now, but you decided to give him a chance to control himself and not hurt you. Some toons disagreed, especially Dandy, but you made both a physical and mental effort to reassure them that you’d both be fine—that it would be like caring for a sick Glisten.

Besides, you were lucky that only on very rare occasions did other twisteds wander onto the same floor where you both stayed.

"I don’t want to be alone…"

His small, barely coherent whisper brought you back to reality, grounding you in the fact that you still held his wrists in your hands. You gently rubbed them, a faint attempt to soothe him when his fears took over.

“You’re not alone, I’m here with you. I always will be; I won’t leave your side.” You continued offering small reassurances, a smile on your face.

You could see a noticeable hesitation in his gaze, as if he were searching for the slightest hint of fear or deceit from you. You said nothing about it, simply waiting in silence for his response.

“Thanks.. It’s terrifying to be like this. I don’t want to be left alone, much less push you away because of my condition…” he said, his tone wavering, perhaps from the ichor or simply from the act of confessing something even the most prideful Glisten would never admit, especially to you.

These types of comments reminded you of how, before his corruption, Glisten rarely shared his insecurities, making moments like these surprising. He’d always been confident, never hesitating.

You gave his hands a small squeeze.

“You could never push me away, Glisten. In fact, I should be the one saying thank you, for staying by my side too.” You told him, never letting go of his hands. As cold as his touch felt, it was also comforting.

A faint, weak squeeze was returned to you.

You looked at him more closely and noticed that his eyes weren’t as red as they sometimes were. You felt relieved that the ichor hadn’t completely overtaken him and that he was strong enough, both mentally and physically, to control himself. You hoped that one day he could go back to being the toon he once was, but for now, it was your duty to care for him.

“Let’s see if we can find something we can both wear to match!” you offered, hoping to lift his spirits with something he enjoyed.

No matter how long it took for all your friends to return to how they once were, as long as you had Glisten by your side, with his mind still intact, everything would be okay.

You had each other.

[bet-on-me-13]

Ghost Cores are Dionesium

So! I while ago, I saw a Post about Danny and the Court of Owls, and one suggestion in the comments basically said, "What if Dionesium, the stuff they use to bring back the dead, is just Ghost Cores?"

And that got me thinking. Lazarus Pits are just Dionesium Infused Water, so how would they be created if Dionesium is a Ghosts Core? Well they way I see it, Lazarus Pits can only be formed in 2 Ways.

The first way is for a large number of Ghosts to be Ended at the same time, with their shattered Cores piling up and dissolving into Water.

The other way, if for an Ancient to Die. The Ancients are practically God's, and as such their Cores are immense in Power. When an Ancient dies, and their Core is left to dissolve in the Human Realm, it forms a Lazarus Pit in the exact same way it would take hundreds of normal Cores to do so.

Where am I going with this?

Well, isn't there a Giant Lazarus Pit under Gotham? The Batcave even has one, doesn't it?

The reason Gotham is so cursed isn't because Lady Gotham likes to collect Curses, or because her Ectoplasm is corrupted, it's because she isn't there to stop them anymore.

Lady Gotham is Dead.

Her Core sank deep into the Earth, forming a Lazarus Pit under the entire City, but thankfully far away from her People. She died, and only the fact that she is a Conceptual spirit saved a piece of her Consciousness. She represents a City, she can only fully be killed if the entire City is leveled. That doesn't mean she is still alive however, just that the barest sliver of her mind is hanging on by a Thread.

This is how Gotham possessed Batman that one time, it was her base instincts saving one of her precious children.

If you want her to be a little more cognizant, maybe she is just severely Injured? Her Core is cracked to the edge of shattering and she desperately needs help.

She she calls out to whoever could save her, and a certain Ghost Boy hears her cry for help?

[torgawl]

started thinking about "the pale princess and the six pygmies" again and realised the five unloyal pygmies match the sinners of khaenri'ah pretty well.

when the pale princess from the moonlight forest and the prince from the kingdom of light enter the kingdom of pygmies, one pygmy (deformed pygmy) asks her help to save his five brothers who were trapped under different circumstances in exchange for their loyalty to her. and so starts the journey of saving each of the five pygmies.

after saving all the pygmies, she took them to the kingdom of light as part of her people and the pygmies started serving both the princess and the prince. "but they were still heinous creatures from the land of night, and corruption flowed in their veins. as the days traveling to the kingdom of light grew long and dangerous, the root of evil would again blossom in their hearts". the pygmies then started plotting revenge and ended up poisoning the prince.

one of the pygmies though (deformed pygmy), was still loyal to the princess and felt guilty for the plan and so he spirited the prince's body away from his wicked brethren and took it to where the princess was staying. what he didn't know was that the night mother had already found the princess, who she emprisoned. before collapsing, transforming into a pile of sludge and worms, and leaving the pygmy to grieve, she proclaimed one prophecy: "in thousands of years time, my greatest foe will descend. he wields a sword that heralds the dawn and wears armor that can reflect the shining sunlight. he shall destroy my kingdom and bring the prince back to life. the princess will then be free from her eternal torment. until then, i fear not a single soul in the land of might, for nothing will bring an end to my kingdom except for the catastrophe foretold by the prophecy. as for you, the treacherous slave that poisoned his master… fate shall see that you get what you deserve". at last, the pygmy hid the body in a tree hole and walked off alone into the night, into a self-imposed exile.

what specifically caught my attention was the motives each of the five unloyal pygmies gave to betray the prince, which seem to mirror the five sinners of khaenri'ah. and i guess it's also relevant to add that alberich in "the ring of the nibelung" was, in fact, ruler of the dwarves. in this case, pygmies as an allegorical parallel could very well make sense to refer to the people of khaenri'ah.

to make a few of the connections i made between the sinners and the pygmies, i went into speculation and theory territory, so take what i'm saying with a grain of salt. but going into each of them:

hroptatyr means 'sage' in old norse and was one of the many names that odin went by. the one entity in khaenri'ah, who happens to parallel odin and a sage, simultaneously, and who also made use of power from beyond beyond the skies is non other than king irmin. he became "indisposed" during the cataclysm and didn't defend his kingdom, which led to anfortas taking his place as regent. this description of events very much matches what dainsleif told us about the sinners not fullfiling their role and being unable to protect the kingdom. it also adds some context as to why the only justification for why irmin wasn't able to rule at the time of the cataclysm was because he was "indisposed". king irmin is also known to only have one eye so his respective pygmy being "blind" is very fitting.

dain also refers to himself and the sinners as "the six of us". if the loyal pygmy from the book represents dain, this would make a lot of sense. i forgot to add before but the line about corruption flowing through the pygmies veins caught my eye as well as we know the sinners shared this sinful power between them and in "a drunkard's tale", wine is used as a metaphor for the abyss. the sinners are what led to the creation of the abyss order.

from the very little we know about vedrfolnir, he's able to foresee the future. the foolish pygmy envies the smart. pierro is one of theorised identities for "the visionary". besides his title being "the jester" which is pretty much another variation for fool, he has an interesting quote in the 'pale flame' set: "since my level of learning could not compare with the sages, i failed to earn the favor of the previous ruler". it implies he used to crave knowledge, like the pygmy, and it mentions irmin, who he served while he was still in khaenri'ah. pierro is also the one behind the fatui's plans, he seems to always plan ahead and all his goals end up being fullfiled even after many complications. he also possesses great historical knowledge, both abouth the future and past, as he seems to know about arlecchino's history despite being part of the later eclipse dynasty.

surtalogi "the foul" is the one behind "foul's legacy", a combat technique used by childe. he has ties to the abyss and much like childe's combat-hungry spirit, the timid pygmy desired to battle the prince.

the shrunken pygmy is the most straightforward one. rhinedottir is a practitioner of the art of khemia, probably the most proefficient one too. like the pygmy, her focus is on creating life through alchemy.

as for rerir's connection to the carefree pygmy, i placed him by process of elimination. we know nothing about them so i don't think it's possible to make a very factual connection but the pygmy's sentiment of wanting to avenge his situation seems silimar to the feeling behind title "avenger of solnari". despite solnari not having a very clear origin, it either stems from: 'solari', related to the sun; or 'solunar', pertaining to the rising and setting times of the sun and moon, phases of the moon, eclipses, etc. the princess and the prince in the book represent the moon and sun, respectively. and there's also the ties to the eclipse dynasty in khaenri'ah.

another parallel between the sinners is the primordial one and the four shades. but rather than representing each other, they work as counterparts: hroptatyr vs primordial one, vedrfolnir vs istaroth, rhinedottir vs the shade of life, rerir vs the shade of death (?) and surtalogi vs the shade of void (?).

not sure if there's a connection between each of the sumeru akademiya's cardinal sins and the pygmies since they're also six but they seem like sins commited by khaenri'ah either way:

"revering gods without acts of devotion" caught my attention because khaenri'ah is supposed to be a godless nation yet we see hilichurls around the thousand wind temple while also having banners with istaroth's symbol in their camps, as if they followed istaroth somehow. i have my thoughts about some of the other sins (like the human evolution one), istaroth being connected to khaenri'ah, her theorised identity as a moon sister and her possible ties to this book as the pale princess but i think i'll leave that to another day. i'm very sure other people made the connection between the pygmies and the sinners too, i am probably very late to the party but i just wanted to add my two cents on it and make a post with my current ideas on the identities of hroptatyr and vderfolnir. don't trust me, though!! the pygmy isn't the only fool, i'm just having fun thinking these possibilities. thanks for reading, if you did ahah

edit (23/08/24): i never came back to this post but i realised the identities can be easier to infer without speculation, since the names are clearly the opposite of their desires. the pygmy who wanted to see makes sense to be vedrfolnir, the visionary - blind pygmy. the foolish pygmy, the one who wanted to become smart is obviously hroptatyr (and here pierro makes a lot more sense, i know some people theorised pierro to be hroptatyr). the pygmy who wanted courage makes sense to be the timid pygmy, possibly rerir. rhinedottir is without doubt the shrunken pygmy which leaves us with surtalogi being the carefree pygmy. the carefree pygmy much like the deformed pygmy don't really have any desires, but the title "the foul" contrasts carefree really well. wanted to reiterate this since people keep relogging this post. i didn't really go to deep into the sinners either though i will leave here that the name khaenri'ah is possibly derived from an arabic phrase meaning "betrayer of winds" (خائن رياح) and the pygmies betrayed the pale princess and the light prince (represents the sun and gold - end goal of magnum opus) in the book. which leads us to istaroth, "the thousand winds of time". i said i wasn't going to go into it but i cannot stop myself from saying this because i wasn't clear earlier and i feel like this is cool. okay, bye!!

[yes-these-obsessions-are-healthy]

It’s been discussed before yes yes yes but the fact that in Trespasser Solas declines your Lavellan from joining him because he doesn’t her want to see what he will become.

a) All Lavellan knows is the moral, ethical, and principled Solas, the Solas who acts defensively and practically. Solas has and will act/order others to act in such a way that would break many Geneva conventions if it means succeeding, and he doesn’t want to test Lavellan’s love for him by making her bear witness to that, to choose him when she has no idea the true cost of what she is demanding, not only of herself, but of the world that will be ravaged by all of the terrorism and political maneuverings meant to destabilize and destroy the only world she has ever known. There is nothing more heart-breaking than someone you love forsaking you, to reach that limit one has for another. But equally so, Solas does not want to be in the position where he may be left with the choice between choosing Lavellan or his mission. What he will become may just be a man that would sacrifice her for his plans. He will not let her potentially put her heart on the line like that.

b) He doesn’t want to make her a monster that participates or allows such things, because part of the reason he fell in love with her was because of her goodness. It wouldn’t be difficult to groom her into evil if love was added to the mix. Love can compel you to do terrible things for the sake of a loved one, and Solas does not want to take advantage of her in that way, does not even want to have that temptation or that possibility involved. He is distancing himself to avoid accidentally corrupting the nature of what he believes to be a good, pure spirit. Evil inevitably poisons goodness. The Evil he wields is utilitarian and remorseful and necessary but evil all the same because it will do harm to thousands via the removal of the Veil. The man is planning what is potential omnicide. You cannot participate in that and not have something about you change irrevocably to allow it to happen. Solas, again, thinks of Lavellan as a good spirit. He wants to keep as many “good-spirited people” (kind, good people) intact as possible before he executes his plan. Why, I do not know, but I suppose because he believes that possessing a good spirit means your life will be happier. To be good is to exist well, and as Solas explains, to be good of heart means you will attract good spirits in the Fade and thus your experience in the Fade will be more pleasant, so by this logic he believes that, ideally (strictly ideally, he knows how much reality does not reflect ideals), goodness begets goodness begets peace.

Solas needs to be a monster because truly effective warfare is conducted when principles and ethics are thrown out the window. He does not want Lavellan to witness that and be confirmed in how much of a monster he was, is, and is willing to be. He wants her to remember him as a civilian, as Solas the humble apostate, not Fen’Harel the shadowed and conniving guerrilla war general. Selfishly, he wants her to only love a part of him, the best parts of him, because he is afraid of the whole of him being rejected, because who he is in totality is so storied and convoluted and repugnant that it would require the most extreme cognitive dissonance to be able to love him, and if there is anything Solas hates, it’s people who ignore reality in favor of their own self-serving fantasies. Lavellan would be right to disavow him, and by the same token it would be so terribly selfish of them both if she forgave him of his crimes and he accepted that forgiveness, because his sins cannot be absolved with a single individual’s love. That is the tragedy of their love, because love cannot overcome all that has happened. It cannot redeem or wipe away what he has done, not unless he kills a significant part of who he is, the Ancient Elf, the Rebel, the Failure, the Veil Maker, the Doomer of the World.

[nebbyy]

Hi! I'm not sure if you are currently taking requests, so feel free to ignore mine if you aren't! If you are taking them, however, would you please write something for King Baldwin IV overhearing reader sing and falling further in love with her because of her soft and sweet voice? Upon realizing that he's there, she becomes extremely flustered and apologizes for disrupting his peace and quiet. Thank you!

King Baldwin IV x reader - Sweetest of melodies

A/N: omg it’s been so long since I’ve received a request! I can’t lie, Baldwin is my supreme comfort character, I think I’ll never stop writing fro him because it gives me sooo much joy😩😩😩 I personally like to think of this piece as taking place a few months after Baldwin’s and reader’s wedding, so it could be considered a sequel for my first fic ever. Also, the song mentioned in this piece is a real song from the 12th century called "Can vei la lauzeta" (in English,"When I see the lark") by Bernart de Ventadorn, and the painting is "Lovers in a garden" by Charles Edward Perugini!!

Oh btw!! I’m working on a long ass series about him, based off of a prompt by @phantomsghoulette  which I absolutely LOVED. Sooo all the KoH fans stay tuned for future updates🤭

Warning: nothing really, just pure fluff. Maybe you could say that religious innuendos could be something triggering for some people but I don’t know. There might be ONE, SLIGHTLY spicy mention but only if you squint really really hard. Also, keep in mind that the historical accuracy in my fics is rather relative, I try to add some details here and there but I don’t have the knowledge (nor the skills) to write a piece 100% accurate to the real history. Also, reader’s gender is female and uses she/her pronouns!!

Word count: 2918

Someone would say Baldwin's patience could already be put to test by only his illness, which she ruthlessly does not grant him a moment's respite, the eternal enemy of his body and his spirit. But no, to this perpetual torment of his had to be added the perilous duties of a king. And it was certainly not governing his people and lands that sucked what little energy he had left; this duty of his, given by his father and willed by divine design, he had long since embraced.

It was the nobles, the leeches who had drained him of his lifeblood lately. It was their endless demands, the insidious words that hissed behind his back, the languid bows and sleazy gifts designed only to gain some favor from him. Looking around him, he seemed to see only vices and sinners, power-hungry beasts just waiting for his moment of weakness so they could feed on what Baldwin had under his power.

In fact, not without reason in the past the young monarch had attempted to abdicate the throne and leave it in the hands of one of his sisters, rid himself of this burden and devote the rest of his short life taking care of his declining health and to nurture his mind away from so much corruption. At times he dreamed of retiring to France, experiencing for the first time that cold climate and verdant landscape of which his preceptors and advisors told him so much.

In fact, not without reason in the past the young monarch had attempted to abdicate the throne and leave it in the hands of one of his sisters, rid himself of this burden and devote the rest of his short life taking care of his declining health and to nurture his mind away from so much corruption. At times he dreamed of retiring to France, to experience for the first time that cold climate and verdant landscape of which his preceptors and advisors told him so much.

And he dreamed of taking you with him, imagined how sweet his life would be if his only concerns were taking care of his health and you, faithful wife, sole blessing in his life battered by such burdens. How he would wish that his days would revolve around you, that his first thought in the morning would be riding by your side through the flourishing meadows, and his last thought in the evening would be caressing your face as you lie slumbering in his arms.

It would have been a blissful fate his, if only Sybilla's husband had not died at the very moment when he would have needed him most. If only his mother had not convinced him that Guido de Lusignan was a good fit for his sister and had continued to seek a new consort for her, perhaps that fate would not have been snatched from him so early. Too late to repent now, for Baldwin would have preferred to die agonizingly on his throne rather than leave power in the hands of that bumptious and arrogant lord, who was noble only in title.

And so he found himself in this sort of hellish limbo, forced into a position that should never be required of a man in his condition, but prevented by his morality from abandoning his reign, impelled by faith in God's greater plan, that his suffering should not be in vain.

And his faith always seemed to strengthen when he had a way to escape the stifling air that characterized the throne room, always packed with knights and crusaders and nobles, when he had a way to retreat to the palace gardens, one of the few verdant places in all of Jerusalem.

With slow, swaying steps, Baldwin strolled slowly among the local palm trees and flower beds from the faraway lands, those where men speak Italian and the more distant ones, those from which his fathers came. Exotic fruits mingled with those more congenial to the French, who out of nostalgia for their lands and fields did what they could to bring the seeds of these plants with them to overseas.

His mind seemed to go out, shifting his attention from the constant buzz of court demands and duties to the chirping of birds perched on the roof, to the eviction of the soft branches that shielded him from the scorching sun. He enjoyed the refreshing air that reigned in that small oasis of greens, which was able to infiltrate the fabric of his white robes, crossing the bandages that covered much of his body and finally reaching his skin, numbed by leprosy. 

To tell the truth, of that refreshing sensation little reached his damaged nerves, if not for those few points that had been spared by the merciless disease, from which departed that unusual shiver that caused him a delicate smile of relief, enjoying the refreshing breeze. Then he closed his eyes and breathed in, discovering with satisfied surprise that that light gust was also a harbinger of an intoxicating perfume, a mixture of exotic and familiar.

How funny to think of the concept of "exotic", for an Angevin born and raised in the unknown lands of the east. For him it was exotic French fruit, exotic were the green plains and heavy clothing that brought his allies from the northwest, and equally alien to the snowy mountains and forest beasts that he saw drawn in detail in his childhood books. It was these changes of perspective that stimulated his mind in a myriad of thoughts and reflections, but in a pleasurable way for him, not as exhausting as his daily duties.

His reflections on exotic and local made his mind travel, wandering until he came to a subject very close to him: Muslims and Jews, reflecting well on the landscape in front of him, recognized that he could share with them the same concepts of what is foreign and what they can claim the original belonging. And he could not but reflect on how it must have been for the first inhabitants of Jerusalem to observe the Franks who came as conquerors, and filled their gardens with such foreign plants as those pale warriors who had taken possession of their dwelling... But after all, the French soldiers who were emissaries of God’s will needed something familiar to stabilize them as they fought to reclaim the Promised Land, ut Deus voluit.

But all his brooding over these matters of conquest and submission ended up in the background in his mind, when a colorful scarlet sphere caught his attention. An exquisitely red apple seemed to tempt him from a branch just above his head, beckoning him to be picked and savored by the king, that he might lose himself in the juicy sweetness of that fruit with origins so far removed from the Holy Land. But the king's modesty prevented him from yielding to that temptation, wanting to avoid exposing the advanced state of deterioration in which his mouth was.

And in fact if that temptation had been alive it would have pale in front of something much more captivating, a sound that echoed in the most melodious distance of the song of any nightingale. Baldwin was surprised to think that he had not realized before the melody that inibriated the atmosphere around him, so taken by the tribulations of his mind that he almost missed such an intoxicating song. He did not know what he felt once he arrived in Heaven, if he had ever arrived in spite of the unjust fate in Hell that the evil Saracens wished him. He didn’t know it, but if one ever had to imagine what Heaven sounded like, that song would come to mind.

When I see the lark beating 

Its wings in joy against the rays of the sun 

That it forgets itself and lets itself fall 

Because of the sweetness that comes to its heart

She sang in Occitan, the beautiful one in the distance. The voice of his people, of his lineage, that few in the palace can pronounce after so many years of distance from their homeland in Provence. Paying more attention to the echoing song, he would not even have had to approach it to give a face to that melodic voice: he knew how to recognize his wife’s voice.

Yet it was a new context in which he saw you, new facets of you that he had not yet had a chance to observe. Your voice, sweet as honey, venerable like all your other traits, he had never heard it except in speech, when you were proclaiming orders before your subjects with the authority fit for a queen, or when you laughed at the poems and performances of the court singers, or when you whispered in Baldwin’s ears sweet words, while you lay with bodies merged between the soft silk sheets. Always spoken, but never sung.

Alas! Such great envy then overwhelms me 

Of all those whom I see rejoicing,

But though he didn’t need to approach you to recognize you, the desire to see your face exceeded any of his other needs. As if mesmerized by the sound of a siren, Baldwin was advancing towards you, with steps so slow that it seemed a hunter about to catch a deer in the woods. He wanted nothing more than to hear you sing again, that you continue to bless him with that angelic melody. What worse sin would there be than to interrupt your song, more sacred than a prayer?

His stomach filled with butterflies and turned upside down like the beasts' jugglers, his breath seemed to stop in his throat, depriving him of the breath he no longer needed, as long as he could hear you sing a moment more. And her cheeks warmed, when finally she saw you among the white lilies, more beautiful than divine salvation.

I wonder that my heart, at that moment, 

Does not melt from desire.

Baldwin wondered if you sang with him in mind, if those words of love reflected your own emotional turmoil. 

Oh, if only it were so, and your singing equalled his own words inscribed in the sonnets and poems he composed in your honor, which he himself commissioned from your favorite singers to perform at banquets, only to steal an embarrassed smile and to see the blush of your cheeks, along with the glint in your eyes.

Whether it was or not, the outcome remained the same since he was at that moment in your proximity, in the same state mixed with adoration, love and wonder at the bold gesture. But if only he had confirmation from your words...

Alas! How much I thought I knew 

About love, and how little I know, 

Because I cannot keep myself from loving 

The one from whom I will gain nothing.

"My angel, your voice sounds like heaven but your words are false." Baldwin practically saw you blow up from your session, completely taken aback by his sudden appearance, unaware that your husband has been acting as a secret public all this time. Your initial surprise quickly turns into a laugh to mask your embarrassment for being caught in a moment like this, when you thought you were alone to be able to run the streets of music with your voice.

"I beg your pardon, I thought I was alone in the gardens," your eyes met his own only for a moment, before you turned your face to try and hide the blush of your face, "it was just a silly song I heard singing to the Provençal knights. I hope I did not disrupt your walk, my love..”

He laughed softly, trying to hide his amusement from having caught you off guard. He approached you more quickly than when he did just a few moments before, but with the same phlegm that managed to inspire a feeling of safeness in you. Sitting by your side on the bare rock, he raised his bandaged hand to gently cup your face and make you turn your eyes towards him. It was only then, when you had no choice but to look at Baldwin in the face that you noticed how his eyes, the only part of his face exposed to the outside world, formed two half-moons, and you came to find that it was because of how widely he was smiling, as you lowered the veil from his face. 

He was making fun of you, you realized. With that swagger in his manner, you understood that his amusement came from your embarrassment at that silly misunderstanding. Laughing softly, he gently shook his head before bringing both hands to your face, holding it as if it were the most sacred of relics. "As much as I would love to hear you sing of your affection for me, just to hear your voice echoing in the air is the sweetest of gifts. How could you deprive me of this blessing thus far, my dear?"

You could do nothing but giggle at his sweet words, bringing your hands to his wrists to feel him closer to you. "You flatter me, my king. My voice boasts nothing more than those sweet melodies that the singers in the palace sing. Mine is only a dabble."

His gaze softened, his playful spirit addicted to your presence. He took the floor again, in a tone as soft as cotton, "At least this once, my queen, allow me to disagree with your words. My life may be short and my reality small, but never have I heard such an angelic voice, singing such sweet melodies. And God may not yet have granted me the ability to predict the future, but in my heart I know well that never will any singer be able to hold a candle to your beautiful voice, never will any song be able to express the same feeling of ecstasy.

"You, my angel, have managed to make a simple ballad an absolute work of art through your voice. I think I should take you with me into battle next time, for with your mere voice you could addict Saladin and his entire army.

"And seeing you here, angelic and perfect like the lilies that surround you, singing so softly that it would make any bird jealous, that I realize that whatever toil, whatever challenges God has stored up for me, and all those that still await me in my life, are worth it, if at the end of each of them there is you, voice of an angel, to hold a place for me in your arms of heaven." 

You were sure you were on the verge of crying a flood of tears, the result of pure emotion at his sweet words. It was not new to you that Baldwin worshipped you as much as the God to whom his kingdom was consecrated, from the first moment he got to hear your voice and admire your face, and you knew at once that he had become yours, body and soul. But it was new to you to see him like that, completely entranced by your simple being-it was something new. A wonderful newness that made you feel like the most desired of women on this earth.

Taken by a rush of boldness, you practically jumped into his arms, wrapping your arms around his neck; you ended up on top of him, with his hands around your hips. You both laughed, like two little boys frolicking in the gardens. And you left a kiss on his left cheek, then on the bridge of his nose. A kiss again on his forehead, and then down on the side of his lips. When you were about to give him another kiss, just where he most yearned for your lips, against his, you stopped a few inches away, with a wide smile, before speaking again, "If so little is enough to make your happiness, then I will sing to you every day, whenever you ask. Let me be your nightingale, your morning song and your lullaby all at once!"

"I couldn't wish for anything else, my dear. Now, however, I beg you, sing one more melody for me, before my duties drag me back to the palace, and I shall consider myself a blessed man."

"With great pleasure, my love." Your voice was now little more than a whisper. With a languid movement, Baldwin moved his body to rest his head on your lap, and you eagerly greeted him. After slightly moving the hood that veiled his head, so that you could play with his golden locks, you began to sing a new melody, one that this time spoke of reciprocated love, of the joy of being able to hold your loved one in your arms. But the words you sang barely reached Baldwin before his sky-colored eyes closed softly, his mind giving him at least a moment's despite from his perilous life. You continued to sing, caressing his face, which from day to day appeared more and more mutilated by his disease, singing the sweetest of melodies so as to prolong this idyll in which you and your husband found yourselves in. 

For with you Baldwin had a way of putting the crown aside, and being nothing more than a foolish young man in love, whose only duty was to love you, to love you with all the love that an angel like you deserved.

@sweetworkoffiction hope you like it <3

[ace-shenanigans]

What are Xiu Ya thoughts in the PIDW after Shen Jiu gets the punishment?

And what is his reaction when he seed Xuan Su shards?

SPADE ANON •°♧°•

Greenie had me cacklin with how quickly they shut this down in my dms XD they said, quote: "Idc if XY has to fuck the protag to save SQQ it’s not happening"

We did decide to humor you though, so heres your bad end under the read more~

If things did somehow go toward a pidw-esc route, xy wouldnt be allowed down in the water prison so even though hes aware of whats going on with sqq, hes under xin mo and luo bingge's constant supervision. Thats not to say he didnt go down without a fight though! The sect put up a solid resistance against his assault but in the end, the protag halo overwhelms all else.

Realistically Ibg would probably carry him around or hang him up like a trophy, putting seals on him to keep xy from wandering too far from him (since xy in this au has a tendency to wander Imao) and using his protag halo to find some way to sever his soul bond w/ sqq (bingge's not gonna risk his prize shattering if his old shizun kicks the bucket). On the off chance xy does find a way to get past them and get down to the water prison, hed already be far too late to stop the human stick process. He cant remain without getting caught and he refuses to leave sqq there to rot, so he occasionally sneaks down to try and ease some of his old master's pain and comfort him.

Bingge isnt a fool though, he knows exactly what xy is doing, and so he feels little remorse when he eventually catches them together in the water prison. In fact, hes glad that xy is there so he can reveal his latest victory to them both, and Xin mo cruel smile is ignored by both sqq and xy as the shards of xuan su are tossed at their feet. Sqq and xy are both distraught: sqq because he'd hoped that fool yqy would leave him to save his own skin, and xy because xuan su was his oldest and dearest friend. The lifeless shards in front of them are a confirmation of their worst fears, and xiu ya finally snaps. Driven by desperation and loss, he finally becomes corrupted and decides to wreak as much havoc as he can before bingge can stop him. Xy's final act of mercy is to slit sqq's throat, silently wishing his master a better life in his next reincarnation.

Now bingge owns the one weapon that can and will kill him if he tries to wield it, a sword thats powerful enough to rival even the fearsome xin mo... at the cost of the one spirit who had tried to protect him during his childhood

[plutonium-sky]

AIGHT HERE WE GO.

So! About the revelation I mentioned with WL and Eden statues- I’m going to give some context first. Me and @halcyon-xxy-art were discussing some Sky DND stuff, and then had an interesting idea- what if there was light corruption, alongside dark corruption?

We immediately establish dark corruption as the crystalized bodies, with the soul (light) trapped inside. The thing is, we wanted to make it so that there wasn’t any weakening of their light- it’s just that there is more darkness. After that got put out, we started thinking about what light corruption would look like, and Aria basically perfectly described a Winged Light. That’s when I had my revelation. What if Winged Lights are sky kids who got light overflow?

I’ll elaborate on that in a bit when I establish another fact we put out right after. Skykid DO have darkness inside them. It’s just hidden in a way no one would expect- it’s right in front of us. A skykid’s darkness would be their physical Body. And, if we go by that logic, their light would be everything else that the body holds- their light and Soul.

And then we added more to the corruption parts. Darkness corruption would work that the soul is trapped inside the body- and cannot return to Megabird (it would slowly weaken inside, losing its power bit by bit as the overbearing darkness drains it.) Light corruption was easy to figure out from there as well. The soul doesn’t have a body to guide it back to the cycle (it had burnt it away, and now the soul is horribly exposed, frozen in time, until a new, temporary vessel guides it back to freedom.)

The skykid’s body needs to walk alongside a delicate balance of light and dark, lest things go to SHIT for them. Too much light will result in being corrupted and overloaded by it, and the body will burn and flake away and the soul be frozen in time and space without the body to guide it back to the cycle. Too much darkness will slow them down, overtake them, eventually turning the skykid into an immovable statue, the soul covered on all sides, and it’s now trapped in a cage of its own making.

Also, absorbing WL (the lost souls of someone else) benefits us instead of harming us because all the overloaded light is still being taken by the other’s soul, not yours. Of course, a little still leaks through- and that’s why it makes flying easier. It’s a sort of…. symbiotic relationship, where the sky kid gives the soul a temporary vessel for it to rest in, while the soul helps the vessel, benefitting it as safely as it can. It takes more WL the longer you have to fly for safety concerns- if they keep on sharing the same amount of energy, the light corruption will happen once more, to a new victim, and now there will be two souls trapped beside each other.

Also, the body and soul theory is further supported by sky kids extinguishing. NORMALLY, we don’t grow crystals. By normally I mean stuff like rain and non-shard crabs. That would be a “normal” death- we aren’t corrupted, the soul and body are still in balance. There’s the pity WL too- you can still be saved. For lore reasons, I’m going to partially ignore the fact that you would still get a pity WL if you lost all of yours to a krill, shard, or shard crabs, because let’s be honest- it’s just ingame things. And, if my memory serves my right (I can’t play sky at the moment to check properly), you would grow crystals for all of those deaths- corrupted by darkness.

There’s then Eden. We run around, giving WL to the lost to darkness bodies of sky kids- or perhaps spirits. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. But, what matters is that somehow, this works in freeing them. My theory for how is that the light corrupted and overloaded soul helps balance out the dark corrupted body, sharing its light with the trapped soul inside. By the point we find the eden bodies, though, the souls are so weakened that they’re barely there- my explanation as to why we don’t see double the winged lights in orbit. They need time to recover.

The last nail in the coffin for this theory, to me, is the cutscene in eden that happens when we finally lose all of our winged light and become a statue ourselves. Where we fall in darkness, as a dark figure, then land. The light and dark of our being in a limbo meet. The light (soul) is sitting there, unmoving, trapped. Meanwhile, us, as the darkness (body) moves, going back to the light, to guide them back. This supports my “the light and soul cannot be guided without the darkness of their body” talk- because it IS the body guiding the soul here. It frees us.

TLDR? Skykids aren’t only light- they are also darkness. The light is their soul and the dark is their body. Without a body, lost because of various reasons (the one I gave is being overloaded/corrupted by light), the soul is trapped and we see this ingame as Winged Light. This creates a delicate balance where there can’t be too much light or too much dark in the soul and body. When you are corrupted by darkness, the soul gets trapped but it is still there. A normal death for a sky kid is when no crystals grow on their body. Eden statues are helped with WL because the overloaded darkness and the overloaded light balance each other out.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk, hope it lived up to your expectations.

[softringing]

Its now basically confirmed Sampo is from planet Kalevala according to the new textmap leaks for his upcoming event :)

Ok I think our theories of him being forged by SOMEONE or some aeon is slowly becoming true BUT the question is who?

It could be the HSR alternate of Illumiren that crafted sampo or even the Preservation. Why do I think that? Well simply put, preservation is trying to preserve anything it can possibly do-- and additionally, qiloph has a giant hammer, it would make sense for them to "make" sampo, not only for the sake of Belebog but also Kalevala who is in a similar situation as them.

The poem Sampo singing in these leaks literally talk about HIMSELF and I'm pretty sure the word "Sampo" is going to be highlighted in yellow/red during the game BC of these odd "RUBY" text around it, just to emphasise something about SAMPO.

Sampo happily singing about himself or his supposed "purpose" makes me think he's a mix of 3 paths (as in he believes in them or he embodies them in some way):

The Preservation-- he has been consistently running around belebog behind the scenes, even as far as going to penacony to get his mask back from sparkle. He's obviously trying to *preserve* belebog and save it from destruction

Elation-- this is pretty obvious. Sampo braking the 4th wall, his mask, his talk with Giovanni and scamming people. But something that doesn't add up I think is him not having his mask during the belebog quest. I think the reason why he didn't have his mask was not only BC he was retired as many people mentioned but ALSO the fact that the masks that the fools carry can corrupt them. If U watch Sparkle's myriad celestia trailer, U can tell she's being possessed by someone else like an evil spirit and how her mask has half red, half white parts. But then I think ABT Giovanni who has the same feature on his mask but doesn't seem possessed like sparkle herself. He seems very similar to Sampo, calm and rational which explains why SAMPO'S friends with him in the first place. But even then sampo seems to refuse sharing his beliefs until someone asks him and I think that shows his reluctance to return to elation

Nihilty-- this is SAMPO'S ingame path and I didn't only choose it BC it was his ingame path. You see elation and Nihility are practically the same thing. Both believe that life is nothing/joke but the only thing that sets them apart is that nihility just does nothing and awaits for that meaningless end, while the elation is just like "if everything is meaningless than I might just have fun". I feel like Sampo does fall under this category and his backstory will have elements linking to the nihility but that's just my speculation.

I also suspect that sampo was hired by Elio like sparkle BC how else does he know the future? I thought that since sampo may be the emanator of elation, it might relate to that but if he did know the future, during the penacony masquerade duet quest, why did he make a surprised expression when sparkle said she wouldn't give his mask back as a joke? Shouldn't he have known that sparkle was joking if he knew the future? I don't think he was acting here

so I'm thinking that perhaps, Sampo was also hired by Elio. There isn't much to prove this, but if you have a look at firefly's trailer, you can see the stelleron hunters walking on a bridge located in belebog

Also, I think a person on twitter found a note in rivet town from blade saying "you will never get away from me" (dan Heng I pity U).

Since the stelleron hunters didn't take the stelleron from belebog, and let tb do the work, why were they even there to begin with? To give sampo the script methinks.

Anyway, what do you guys think?