#the casting certainly is...weird...scrolling...

[fideidefenswhore]

not being able to reblog any substantial number of edits of elizabeth (howard) boleyn bcus in the past 20+ years she has literally only been given dialogue in one production, is? my villain origin story.

[madhatterbri]

Shakedown | Mafia!HOOK

Summary: The Perry family take you from Tyler with help from the inside.

@99hook @shawtys-things

"Have you heard the news?" Taz asked taking a few puffs from his cigar. He placed the cigar on the ashtray and looked at his son. The smoke caused a haze above their table. He noted his son's silence that he hadn't. "Jack and his family of low life criminals have been spotted around New York,"

Tyler tensed at the news. He had been careless the last few days with taking his girl out. He thought about all the places they visited. All the places Jack and his men could have been hiding. He cursed inwardly at his own foolishness. A glimmer of hope cast over him. Maybe they hadn't been around long.

"How long?"

"The boys are saying three days. Could be more or less. He must have drove from LA this time," Taz answered and leaned back in his chair. He stared at his son noting his worried expression. "Where is your name?"

"At school. Anthony is there like usual," he answered feeling sheepish. HOOK knew he messed up. He didn't need a whole ass lecture about it.

"Make sure you alert Anthony that Jack is back. Maybe have them come here right after class," Taz advised. Right now he needed to make sure Jack wasn't poking around where he shouldn't be.

🖤

You smiled seeing Anthony at the car. He always waited patiently for you no matter how long or short your classes ran. He was scrolling through his phone while he leaned against the car. His normal happy expression shrouded in worry.

"Hey, Anthony. Is everything okay?" You asked.

"Bad news. Boss man is telling me to get you to one of the safe houses. New York got a visitor you don't want to be acquainted with," he broke the news to you. You frowned.

"But St. Marks isn't too far from here. Couldn't we go back home?"

"We don't know if any of his men infiltrated the place yet," he answered while opening the door for you.

"Is Tyler gonna visit us there?" You asked hopefully while throwing your bookbag in the backseat. You slid inside the car.

"That's the plan,"

🖤

Tyler noticed the time and immediately started to worry. He couldn't get a hold of Anthony or his girlfriend. A couple of his men drove around NYU but hadn't seen you. They talked the professor who informed them you left with Anthony hours ago.

"Son, this isn't like Anthony. We may have to accept the fact that-"

"He wouldn't betray me. I told him to come here as soon as he got her. Class ran late or something," he snapped at his father. He rested his head on his hands. His fingers pulled his hair as the stress took over.

"You gotta think with your mind and not your heart. Every second you treating Anthony like he didn't betray you is another second your name could be out there in danger,"

🖤

"We are here," Anthony informed you after the long car ride. You kicked yourself for leaving your phone back home. It was weird. You left in on the nightstand last night and this morning it was gone. Maybe it fell under the bed while you slept.

He stepped out of the car and opened the door for you. You thanked him and walked out seeing the safe house.

The house was made of brick surrounded by tall pine trees. There was no windows and lots of security cameras. Several armored cars were already parked near the house.

"Tyler never mentioned this one to me before," you pointed out. You thought you had visited all the ones his family owned. This one was certainly not as modern as the rest but it seemed cozy.

"Come on. Let's get you inside. It's a little chilly out here," Anthony offered while extending his arm towards the house. You walked towards the door with your stomach tied in knots. Something was off about this situation. None of HOOK's men were outside.

You stopped just before the stairs on to the porch. He stopped right behind you.

"I don't think we are at the right place. I want to go to St. Marks. I-" you stopped once you turned around. Anthony's gun was pointed at you. Your mouth fell open in shock.

"Why?"

"Enough. Get up the stairs and knock on the door. He's been expecting you," he ordered and flicked his gun towards you. You turned around and slowly walked up the stairs. Before you could knock on the door a man answered it.

His brown hair pushed back into a bun. His brown eyes stared down at you. You hadn't seen this man before in your dealings with HOOK.

"You must be your name. I'm Jack and I've been dying to meet you," he greeted.

🖤

"I'm really sorry, Taz. We tried tailing them but he used the traffic to get rid of us. They were going out somewhere Northwest," the driver spoke through the cellphone speaker. HOOK slammed his fist in the table. He breathed heavily and crossed his arms to control himself.

"How did your name look?"

"Like everything was okay. I'm sure Anthony was feeding her some mess. We are gonna keep our eyes open. We got an informant telling us where they went. We will keep you posted," the driver assured and hung up. The twisted pain of betrayal weighed heavily.

"Son, calm down. We are doing everything we can to locate her," Taz promised. Tyler remained motionless until his cell phone rang. He grabbed the phone from his back pocket. The screen lit up the last name he wanted to see.

Anthony

"Where the fuck is she?" Tyler barked into the phone.

🖤

Tyler's voice through the phone sprung tears to your eyes. He sounded so upset and you couldn't be there to help him. You looked at Jack as a tear slid down your cheek.

"Now see you are going to make her cry. Is that what you want?" Jack asked with annoyance over the phone. He stared at you. "Tell him you are fine with his friends Anthony and Jack,"

"I... I'm fine, Ty," you stuttered afraid of what he would do if you hadn't cooperated. For now you were sitting on a couch surrounded by Anthony and several of Jack's men.

"Enough games, Perry. Where is she?" Tyler demanded.

"You weren't any good at hide and seek were you? You know you wasted Anthony as a babysitter for your little girlfriend. He really is a jack of all trades," he complimented the man that betrayed the Senerchia family. "But look it's late. Let me call you in the morning and we can settle this like men then,"

"Tell me where you are now and we can settle it when I get there,"

Jack yawned and rubbed his eyes.

"Patience, young Tyler. Good night,"

🖤

Once Jack ended the call someone called his dad. Tyler hoped it would be information regarding Jack's whereabouts. Sure enough he was in luck. In a matter of minutes he was driving to her location. The GPS said he would be there in a few hours.

"Just hold on, your name," he whispered as the driver sped through New York.

🖤

Jack left you on the couch while he conducted business. Your hands tied in front of your body. He didn't trust you to be alone by the front door. A man stayed with you to watch you. With no windows the thought of escaping seemed small.

Anthony appeared in the room. Ever since he betrayed you he hadn't been able to look at you. The betrayal ate you up and you had one simple question for him.

"Why?" You asked him. Your voice so small and innocent. That was exactly how you felt. None of this revolved around you. You just happened to be dating the son of a very important man. "Why didn't you tell him you didn't want to watch me anymore? Was it something I did?"

He flinched at your words. You weren't going to understand. This was a man's game and you were just a silly little pawn.

"Shut her up," he ordered one of the men in the room.

"Gladly," the man laughed and placed a piece of silver tape over your mouth.

🖤

"He's here," Jack yelled running through the front door. Tires screeched outside signaling HOOK's arrival. Before you could think Jack was dragging you outside. A gun pointed at your back.

The SUVs parked outside in a half circle. Tyler stood in front of them. Their lights showing him brightly.

"No daddy here to protect you? I'm shocked," Jack announced while grabbing your hair and pulling back. You yelped in pain against the tape as he forced you to walk towards Tyler. HOOK's men raised their guns trying to get a clear shot at Jack but he used you as a shield.

"What do you want Jack?" HOOK asked. "Give her to me and it's yours,"

"I want the Senerchia family to be no more. The Perry family will reign Supreme. My dad couldn't do it before he died and now it's my turn," Jack spoke his terms for your safety. You shook your head. You knew how hard his family worked to build their empire.

"Deal. We will pack everything up here and you will have all our point of contacts," Tyler agreed.

"You think I'm stupid? I want you and daddy swimming with the fishes. I want the Senerchia name gone from the mafia history books. When anyone says your name they will think of me and remember my face as the one that brought you down. You and your daddy are noth-," Jack was suddenly silenced once your elbow connected to his stomach. He doubled over in pain allowing you a chance at freedom. You ran towards Tyler. His arms wide open to grab you.

Before they were able to shoot Jack a reinforced car pulled up in front of him. Anthony yelled for him to get in and they drove off in a matter of seconds. Jack escaped but you were safe. That was all HOOK cared about. You buried your face in his chest and cried.

"Let's get you home," he whispered as he untied your hands. You wrapped your arms around his neck as he carried you bridal style to the car.

🖤

"We almost had him!" Jack yelled in the car. "Why did you do that?"

"You think he was going to let you getaway with taking his girl? You were going to be gone and the Perry name left in shambles," Anthony reasoned. "Don't worry. I know all of New York like the back of my hand. You'll get your kingdom and I'll get my revenge,"

Anthony stared off into the distance getting further away from his ex best friend.

[azfellesquire]

Season two isn’t (fully) real, it’s a peaceful, fragile existence

The more I rewatch the show and read different theories, the more convinced I get that S2 is some sort of elaborate dream sequence or a distraction or memory alteration attempt (Neil’s chaotic angsty ineffable husbands fanfic?). But not all of it.

(This gets kind of rambly so if you want my true hook, scroll down to the Michael Sheen Staged gif.)

Let me make this perfectly clear on the outset: I don’t think all of it is a dream, and I certainly don’t think the final 15/kiss is or is going to be discounted (and not only because there would be literal riots in the street, because there absolutely would be, but also I’m putting trust in Neil and the team wholeheartedly). I think that could actually be the domino that brings them out of it. I read somewhere recently something along the lines of “something loved can never be truly forgotten” and I think that fits my theory perfectly. I’m also making no claims (yet) as to what I think is real and what I think is “enhanced”.

Also I apparently am either too far deep or cannot work the tumblr search function with any modicum of usefulness, so please link me to the posts I’m alluding to if you think it’s the right one. I will edit them in and sincerely apologize to the brilliant minds that exist outside the confines of the search function.

Now, On with the show:

You can be in charge of the biscuits

Maggie and Nina: Look, I get that recasts happen, they change the actor playing the character because of scheduling conflicts, etc. But to cast the actor/actress that is immediately recognizable from a prior interaction (whether with the characters or the audience) is not something you see. FFS Maggie DIED in S1, and Nina was pivotal (maybe too strong a word, but enough to be memorable surely) to the storyline. It’s like someone said “Hey, they’ll work, bring em in, no I don’t care that they were in S1. It’ll be a test of how well our facade is working. If they (A&C) notice, then the gig is up and we’ll know it.”

Also why in the world is the owner of a coffee shop offering Eccles cakes to calm down, when camomile tea is right there? (Resists the urge to go off on a tangent on how Eccles cakes were used to celebrate the “Eccles wakes” at the feast of St. Mary (yes that Mary) and how that ties into the second coming plot.) Do Eccles cakes count as biscuits? Ugh another thought for another day I suppose.

It has come to my attention during writing that Shax is the same actress as Madame Tracy. I have less of an affront to this knowledge since I’m 2 months deep and countless rewatches in and only just noticed. But I’m going to pop it in this header anyway. Are you really trying to tell me that a show that apparently has demon entrances happening precisely on the 6s really didn’t think these choices out very deliberately? (Edit 3: https://www.tumblr.com/noneorother/735823422626709504/the-secret-timeline-inside-of-good-omens-season-2 JFC why can I never find the blogs when I want to insert them? It was a breakdown about how all of the demon entrances happen at a 00:00 that ends in a 6.)

Yours very faithfully, Maggie

Text to mail disconnect: There’s been a theory pop up (at the time one writing this at least (edit 2: https://www.tumblr.com/azariah-z-fell/743434274903048192/it-is-extra-weird-because-it-is-on-the-record) that Maggie actually texted Aziraphale her request to talk, and it was magically translated into a physical form, and the spelling error (that so many people are shouting DEMON at) was just an autocorrect typo. But, surely Maggie would know he doesn’t text if she knew him for several years at least. We’ve never seen either of our boys text, only call. Seems like someone doesn’t know how phones work, but wanted to get the message received? See also: currency, below.

You ever think, what’s the point?

Numerous people have pointed out the same obvious background people. There are theories about the guy in the Hawaiian shirt being the second coming or something similar. I wonder if it’s some sort of play on a badly executed attempt to make Wickber Street seem “normal” in an alternate reality, an elaborate distraction, but they have to keep using the same character models because their imagination is just slightly better than Shadwells’ (Oh gfdi how did I miss Mrs. sandwich right there). I’m not saying we haven’t done a “oh oops silly me I forgot something” but that isn’t usually done in the middle of a sidewalk. When Aziraphale is initially talking to Jim with the blanket, there’s a guy just chugging his arms outside the window, not walking. Another one in E3 when Shax show up outside the shop, a guy in an orange sweatshirt passes in the background, then passes again, and not close enough in time/area to just be the continuation of the walk. Especially in the early episodes, there are veritable conveyer belts of people, straight lines, no trying to pass, etc. I’m trying to look at the background in S1 and while there are still tons of people, the background is… livelier. People passing, shoving past, actually going places.

“I’m looking at the statue of Gabriel.” “Oh, good job?”

Aziraphale basically learns fuck-all when he makes the trip to Edinburgh. Granted, I do believe most of that was to make the Bentley “our car”, but so many things are out of character. The no drink, the over-the-top “investigation” (as awkward as he is, Aziraphale knows how to act more normally than that with humans), the background on the drive up there…

All the others were taken (random collective thoughts)

Somehow ALL the businesses on the street are different from Season 1?

A normal person would have moved out of the rain instead of just lolling there letting raid splatter their glasses, yeah? (As a person with glasses I can confirm).

“We have all the hosts of hell searching for him” cue Crowley looking around like then why the fuck are there still demons around me?

The cross disappearing from the Gabriel statue between shots.

“I’m a bit out of miracles” and “that’s not how miracles work” from the guy who got written up for too many frivolous miracles.

I have here a sixpence and a farthing There’s always money in the banana stand

The lack of (accurate?) paid transactions seems like whoever is pulling the strings has no concept of earthly money and how it’s supposed to work, just that it exists. Crowley and Aziraphale talk bluntly about poverty and know that money is needed and used in current society (“Give her the money, Angel”, Rome, Globe Theatre, 1941 magic shop, etc.). Could be a “let’s not get lost in the trivialities” thing but it does strike me as odd. Caveat: Aziraphale forgiving the rent doesn’t quite fit, but cost of the record is obscenely low.

But this does give me hope about the 3rd 1941 flashback, because they were using money accurately there, which hopefully means the flashbacks and memories aren’t being altered, just “present day”.

We’re real people

One of the overarching themes in Season 2 (and S1 now I think of it) is “stop interfering in the lives of other people”. Maggie and Nina, Job, Elspeth, the entire dance party, Warlock, the book of prophecy. It would be a shame if someone were to make sure I failed to be messing about in their own lives.

I had brothers, you don’t scare me

Something happened just before Maggie told them to “Come in here and say that to my face.” Another demonic turn potential here, but also kind of like someone’s saying “FFS get on with the plot”.

The book of love has music in it

This post https://www.tumblr.com/noneorother/731977308306636800/all-the-music-you-didnt-hear-the-good-omens (finally, one I can find!) popped up, and there’s another one that purports to have noticed that there’s music lines missing from the opening sequence (edit 1: Found it!: https://www.tumblr.com/dadesu/726651737165938688/anyone-noticed-the-missing-half-bar-in-good-omens ). Possibly Clueing us in that there’s something that’s missing elsewhere (I mean obviously, that’s the whole point of this season, is it not?).

So where do we go from here?

As much as I’d love to say “Alright so the kiss breaks the spell whoever was put over them because of ✨the power of love✨, the ruse will be revealed, and they’re not talking because they don’t have to”

I don’t know, my thoughts are just the overarching patterns I’ve noticed over many, many rewatches and probably reading a few too many magic trick theories and/or fanfics. I don’t intentionally make my theory posts open-ended, but in the end that’s the fun of it. Nothing has to be mutually exclusive (yes I’m referencing my “Is Crowley already the new Supreme Archangel” post, I think I’m allowed that much). I’m happy to be proven wrong, and probably will be.

Lots of things are wrong right now

But I will leave you with one parting thought: Crowley knows. He knows there’s furniture missing. (That’s why he keeps just tossing things everywhere, because he know it doesn’t matter.)

And he. Does not. Care. For it.

How many theories that I myself hate can I dig into?

I’m a demon, I lied:

[kas-e]

Futility

Resistance isn't futile.

What started with printed propaganda a hundred years ago eventually morphed into programming through tube televisions, then to computers, and now to phones.  The change we've witnessed since the turn of the century is unprecedented, yet ironically hardly noticed.  The globalization of social connectivity has cast a strange cloud over our collective spirit as human beings.  At our core we are the same people born into the world as our great grandparents, but our attention spans are far shorter and are being held hostage by the same corporations that built the modern world.  Our minds are weak in the face of advertising, and the spirits of those who succumb to the new normal are numb - which accounts for a staggering percentage of earth's population.  This is no big conspiracy, this is no new world order plot.  It is simply what happens when people are presented with the shiniest of toys, exhausted from being overworked and underpaid, and brainwashed to the point of complacency.  

I used to smoke a lot of weed.  I remember knowing wake and bakers who used to pull a chalky bong hit the moment they woke up.  Everytime I did it myself, my day was shot.  My mind was fogged, and well, just off.  But the impulse, the idea, and even the need, I deeply understood.  Many humans, myself included, every single day before even getting out of bed reach for the phone and scroll a bit.  Before coffee, before breakfast, we get that hit... and it taints our day, and puts the mind in a place that is sometimes, well, just off.  Everyday when we wake up we have a choice, but it's so easy to reach for the phone.  It's so easy to surrender to the impulse of our new commonly shared addiction.  Nobody would dare relate their phone use to the fentanyl addict bent over on the corner, or the alcoholic at your job, but it's not so different. They both steal your time, mess with your mind, and have negative consequences when abused and misused.  How do you act when you've lost your phone?  That sinking frustration, that paranoid panic, that's a feeling that addicts are all too used to, and now you've had a lick of that lollipop too.  But it's ok, it's normal, no big deal.  We're cyborgs, not junkies...

Our youth is pacified into adulthood now because of these devices.  Social skills are lacking in the face of the past, and are steadily on the decline.  Humanity has been shaken up by this new tool, and the shakedown still has a while to unravel.  

It's certainly not all bad because despite the weirdness and negativity, the silver lining does shine bright.  There is no excuse for an artist not to do their thing because we've been presented with the most powerful creative tool fathomable.  Imagine Mozart with Ableton, Salvador Dali with Photoshop, or Ansel Adams with a Nikon and a laptop.  

When I started shooting photographs, digital photography was just starting to make waves, so I shot film for a year or so.  I paid for every shot and every step in the process - which was slow, tedious, and time consuming. The gear was clunky and heavy and breaking all the time.  Now I can blast off thousands of shots in a day with a reliable camera and glass engineered so well that it's almost incomprehensible.  I can shoot at night without a tripod.  Some photographers hike with their entire kit on their back, throw a card the size of my thumbnail into their laptop, and process as many shots as they want in the matter of minutes in a tent on the summit of a mountain.  Not to mention, now cameras are essentially free since the tech on phones is approaching a quality that will soon rival that of a camera.  I'm already starting to feel like a relic, but I, like many others, live for the process and will continue to do so.  

Now, to resist is to live.  When I'm dealing with my camera I haven't a single thought about my phone.  It pulls me into the moment and makes me present.  When I'm on the road, I use the maps, but that's about it.  In today's world, the only thing that is futile is you, if you can't find the wisdom and value in what it means to resist.  

[hopeymchope]

The impact of "Ch. Yakou: Thank You, My Detective" on Master Detective Archives: Rain Code's story (and any possible sequel?)

The DLC for "Master Detective Archives: Rain Code" is complete. And having now played through all five of the "Substories," I think we can at least say that only ONE of them leaves any major impact on the larger narrative.

I wouldn't say "Ch. Yakou: Thank You, My Detective" is the best of the substories. Not to me, at least. But it certainly ends on a note that strongly suggests a change to the status quo we all understood when the game ended.

MAJOR SPOILERS for both the main-game narrative of "Master Detective Archives: Rain Code" and the DLC "Ch. Yakou: Thank You, My Detective" are under the cut.

At the very start of "Ch. Yakou," we're controlling Yakou Furio from a side-scrolling perspective as he slowly plods and stumbles down a hallway.

His face is in shadow with his hood up, and we occasionally get flashes of his memories... including Yuma pleading "Yes! I'm Yuma! Chief, you understand me?" And if you don't immediately remember when that moment occurred, it'll all be cleared up by the time you complete this trudge down memory lane. Because it all concludes with a memory of his death on the floor of the lab underneath Amaterasu Corporation.

That's right — we're controlling Yakou Furio when he's already a shambling zombie homunculus! That memory of Yuma is even from the final chapter of the game!

These memory flashbacks are really an excuse for us to experience the backstory of how Yakou met the woman who ultimately became his wife — the one who was the driving motivator behind his actions in Chapter 4. (And who sadly isn't even given a name during this chapter in spite of getting backstory and a voice actress. Wtf is that.) But you might be thinking, "We could've seen Yakou thinking about this storyline at any time. Why doesn't this chapter just take place at some vague interval between chapters 1-3, like all the other DLC stories? Why is THIS the one weird outlier?"

Answer: Because of how it ends.

Yakou's march through the corridors comes to an end when he meets... a ghost? A memory? I'm leaning towards her being the former, but I can't be 100% sure. Regardless, some version of his deceased wife is there to leave him with a parting gift.

I'll let her explain it:

Yup, you read that right. We end with DeadWife handed off a small batch of her experimental medication — a means by which Yakou can truly resurrect himself. ... Although she does add that cavet about how it "might be completed if someone takes over my research," which certainly leaves room for doubt about its efficacy at the moment.

In summation: Most of the final DLC chapter takes place in flashback... but it ends with dead zombie Yakou Furio being handed a medication that could potentially restore him to his original living state.

So uh... I guess they just set up the possbility of Yakou Furio showing up alive and well for Master Detective Archives 2, huh? They gave themselves an excuse to have the whole band back together if they so choose.

But...

My Thoughts

Look: I love Yakou, sure, but his death is the emotional high point of the entire game. Furthermore, it's the ONLY loss to our central cast. Unlike in Kodaka's preceding franchise, the core cast of Rain Code manages to stay safe from harm throughout the adventure — with this one exception. The only loss to the group is Yakou, who goes down like an absolute badass via an exceedingly clever plan to exact his own brand of justice against the man who had his wife killed.

It feels wrong to undo that, y'know? It's just such an important moment for him, for the story, and for the group of detectives at its center who become to be so attached to him.

Despite that, will I be happy if he shows up in a sequel? Well... yeah, actually. He's a super-likable character that ultimately proves to be far more clever than those around him ever realized. There's a lot you could do with that.

So I guess I have mixed feelings. I'm surprised by this choice more than anything, but that's not to say that it's not still kind of cool. I definitely didn't expect it.

[greenticklerdreams]

Vex vs. The Ticklelock

Fandom: Critical Role - Vox Machina

Characters (lee/ler): Lee!Vex'ahlia, Ler!OC, Ler!rest of VM

Word Count: 2992 words

Summary: Vex is captured by a very strange villain with an even stranger set of powers. Can she hold out until she's rescued?

“FINALLY!! You FUCKING creep!!” Vex’ahlia shouted, finally free of the Hold Person spell. Her mouth was dry and tasted terrible. Her arms were stretched out to either side, locked at the wrists by padded cuffs. She was sitting up against that backboard, back straighter than when Father tried to drill good posture into her and her twin when they were little. Her legs were propped up on a bench, straight out in front of her, her ankles locked in a wooden stocks. Her bare feet felt clammy with fear, despite the roaring fireplace that was the only source of light in this weird underground laboratory. “What’s the big idea, taking my boots off?!” she snarled. “And ONLY my boots?? Not anything else?? Really?!”

“It’s necessary, my dear,” came a voice from the chair by the fire. Vex perceived the hooded man there, though his face was just obscured by the dancing shadows. This same hooded man had dragged her off after successfully casting the Hold Person spell upon her. Dragged her away from the fight, from her friends battling the giant tentacled creature that had risen from the underground lake in this dank dungeon of his. He’d taken her down hallways, stepping around traps, moving past slavering aberrant creatures waiting in the wings, and bringing her here… It certainly looked like every other mad arcane caster’s lab she’d ever seen, and Vex had seen a few at this point in her adventuring career. A shelf full of scrolls, weird instruments on a nearby table, books… and a rather unusual amount of feather quills. They were quills, right? Most humiliating of all was being completely unable to resist as he forced her into this position, removed her boots and socks, shut her wrists and ankles into their bondage, and spoke a command word that sealed the locks with a magical click. Vex had been terrified at the time, but now that she found herself almost fully clothed and otherwise untouched, she was mostly just nonplussed. And pissed off.

The hooded man stepped into the light. He was pudgy in his brown robes, looking a little like a fat monk. Throwing back his hood, his red-brown hair was revealed to be long and lank, and his beard and mustache needed a trim. His eyes looked just a little too large for his face, and a little too black. “You and your friends have something that my master needs, and he has asked me to get it from you.” He grinned a sleazy grin, those black eyes glinting in the firelight. “I must confess, I hoped you would be the one to fall prey to my spell.”

“You would, wouldn’t you? Get in line,” she spat at him. Damned Arcane Locks, she thought, trying and failing to thrash against her restraints. The hooded man advanced to her, stopping just in front of her stocked feet. “At least ravish me like a proper villain. Freak. Pervert.”

“Like I said, lovely Vex’ahlia,” purred the man, his voice low and honeyed. “What I need is information. I need it quickly. And I am going to get it. Although… I am going to enjoy getting it out of you.” Vex felt his soft, pudgy hands caress the soles of her feet. She shuddered in horror - and worse, it tickled!! - and tried to pull her feet away, but her big toes were tied to an unseen hook on the front of the stocks. “You CREEPY fucker,” she snarled, trying not to let him see her reaction.

The hooded man just smiled. “I also would not deprive my pets of the pleasure,” he said. With a flutter of feathers, a pair of doves descended from atop the scroll case. They were the type noble ladies bred, with big, fluffy feather skirts around their ankles. However, Vex recognized that these were not normal pigeons. Their beaks were just a little too long and sharp, the feathers of their wings a little too large and fluffy, those odd spots of exposed flesh on their chests weren’t normal, and their eyes… were too intelligent. These had to be mage constructs of some type. “Lester, Leelee, get to work,” said the hooded man, and the creatures alighted on Vex’s hapless body. The mage-pigeons walked over up and over her chest - she could feel their sharp little claws hooking into the unarmored parts of her clothes, barely poking her quivering skin - and then they started using their sharp beaks to cut holes around her underarms. “Hey!!! What?! Are you serious?!” she snapped, and she tried to thrash, but she could barely move, and the birds hung on anyway. She felt her armpits exposed to the open air. The hooded man smiled. “Start brushing.”

With uncanny intelligence, the birds looked to their master, and then began brushing Vex’s taut, stretched armpits with their fluffy, feathery wingtips. Vex felt an electric sensation course through her body and choked back a cry. Biting her lip, she grunted with exertion.

[MATT: Make me a Constitution saving throw.]

[LAURA: ……17! HA!]

Releasing her lip, Vex gasped as she convinced herself this wasn’t too bad. “You’re gonna have to do better than that,” she said, blowing air out of her nose with a little “hmph” for emphasis. “What do you wanna know so badly anyway, you freak? Who are you?” The bearded man smiled. “I am Gruvo, a servant of K’nizz Mo’lag, a creature from beyond the stars and beyond your mortal comprehension.” Well, at least he’s easy to persuade to talk, Vex thought through the terrible feathery sensations in her armpits. “His many-feathered wings sweep through the universe and will soon alight in this world. None will be able to withstand him, and your kingdom will be reduced to helpless laughter in his ticklish embrace.”

“Lamest Far Realm patron I’ve ever heard of,” Vex taunted. Gods, it never ends. Oh gods. It tickles. “Did the cool eldritch… beings pi-hick you last at recess? You must be so disappoi-hointed.”

Gruvo looked back into Vex’s defiant eyes and raised his hands, wiggling his fingers in her full view. “Form of Feathers,” he said. Suddenly all ten fingers contorted and transformed into long brown feathers, wiggling at the ends of his palms. His beard changed, too, going from unkempt hair to a mass of reddish-brown feathers that surrounded his lips and covered his chin. His eyes seemed to grow larger and blacker, like an owl’s. He lowered those hands, out of view behind the stocks, and suddenly Vex’ahlia felt ten brushy, whispery feathers gliding all along the soles of her feet. “How do you like this, Lady of Whitestone? Do you still doubt my patron’s power?” A strangled squeal escaped Vex’s lips. Her head thrashed back and forth. “Mmhmmph!! Mmmm!!!” The soles of her feet were tingling like crazy. Her knees spasmed and banged against the bench. Then she felt just the tips of the feather-fingers jittering against her soles, ten little points all at once. They quested for the tips of her toes and the spaces between. They danced on every wrinkle. Gruvo chuckled. “You are already succumbing to our power. Now tell me, Lady Vex’ahlia: where is the Tome of Isolation?”

[MATT: That’s another CON save.] [LAURA: … 19.]

[SAM: LET’S GOOOO!!]

“I’ll… never… tell you… ANYTHING!! Eeheeheeheehee!!! Hmmmph!!” Angry that she had let even a few giggles escape, Vex bit her lip again. Her armpits were twitching, her feet were squirming against the toe-tie, but she resisted with all her might. She resolved herself to scrunching her feet as hard as she could, even as those feathers brushed all over her wrinkled, curled soles. “My friends… hhh-are… haha! They’re… going… to kill you… SO hard! Pfffhaha!”

[LAURA: Seriously, how long does it take to kill a stupid tentacle monster?!?!]

[TRAVIS: Ow!! We’re workin’ on it!!!]

“Maybe… heehee!! Maybe if you tell me… hh-why?!” Through scrunched-up eyes, Vex saw Gruvo’s smile fade. He looked oddly serious as his feather-fingers brushed her feet. “My patron attempted to enter this world and brush his feathery wings over it, but he was thwarted… by a goddess called the Dawnflower. That tome of the Knowing Mistress’s is able to banish a god, am I right? Well, my patron will be able to corrupt that tome to drag a divine being into his realm. There shall we bind her, and K’nizz Mo’lag will tickle your meddling goddess into oblivion.”

Seriously easy to persuade, Vex thought through the sensations flooding her body. Would’ve been more appropriate if he’d grabbed Pike. Not that she would’ve fallen to a lousy - hhooooohhhh gods. Oh gods my feet. Don’t let him get between your toes. Focus. “Stu-stupid plahahannn,” she gasped. “Ahahaha. Heeheehmmmph.” 

Gruvo’s face grew uglier. “This is taking too long. I think it’s time we changed it up.” He raised his hands and Vex saw his fingers and beard go back to normal. “Lester. Leelee. The belly.” He walked over to his shelf, but Vex was too busy watching the pigeons walk down her ribs - damn those little claws - so they could start snipping off the middle of her shirt. “Come on! Really? Not my look, you freak. Though I’ve got better abs than you!” It was a lame taunt, but Vex felt woozy from resisting the tickles. 

The chubby warlock walked back over with a bottle in his hands. He uncorked it, poured the glistening yellow contents into one hand, and rubbed them together. It had to be oil of some kind. He then started rubbing it into her feet. Vex gasped. Just rubbing the oil on tickled her poor feathered feet so badly. Suddenly all of his fingers slid between all of her toes to rub it in. “YEEE-hee-heek!!” she squealed, throwing her head back. When she looked at her captor again, he was grinning. The birds had fully exposed her belly by now. Gruvo walked around to where she sat, poured more oil into his hands, and then rubbed down Vex’s pale, quivering belly. Vex smothered another squeal and squirmed for all she was worth. “You do have nice abs,” he murmured, looking her full in the face. “Does it tickle, Lady Vex’ahlia?” 

Vex shook her head violently. “Nuh-uh. Fuck you.” Gruvo just smiled back. “I think our tough ranger has a ticklish tummy…” He curled his fingers and squeezed Vex’s slick midriff. “Mm-hm!! Hmmmm!!” came the strangled cry. The warlock chuckled softly as he rubbed more oil into her armpits. Suddenly his fingers were digging in! “YA-HA! Heeheehmm!!” Vex heard Gruvo chuckle as he walked away, back down to her feet. The oil wasn’t making her cold - if anything, it was too warm. And her sensitive skin was tingling like crazy. Gruvo raised his hands again. “Form of Nodules,” he said. It was hard to see in the firelight, but Vex perceived his palms and fingers sprouting weird, rubbery-looking little nodules, like painful-looking boils, darker-colored than his sallow skin. “Oh, what the fuck,” she said. “Lester! Leelee! Tentacalus!” One of the pigeons hopped up to Vex’s chest while the other perched just above her belly. Their heads reeled back… and two fleshy tentacles emerged from those odd bare spots on their chests, squirming like giant earthworms. “Ohhh WHAT THE FUCK!!” Vex screamed in horror. “Now,” said Gruvo, voice low and dangerous. “We’re going to try this again.”

Suddenly Vex’s feet were being scrubbed, rubbery nodules bouncing and sliding all over her oil-slick soles. The pigeons’ tentacles were in her right armpit and slithering all over her belly, the tips finding purchase in her soft, slippery skin. One tentacle slid into her belly button and vibrated around while the other prodded one side, then the other. “Where is the Tome?” Gruvo called in a raised voice.

[MATT: Make another CON save, this time with disadvantage.] [LAURA: Aw WHAT?!] 

[MATT: It’s magic oil.]

[LAURA: …… 4.]

[the table groans and laughs]

[MATT: There it is! First failure.]

“BAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!! AHAHAHAHAAAA!!!” The laughs Vex’ahlia had been holding back suddenly exploded forth, like a burst dam. She felt herself give in to the sensations as her back arched and stiffened, head hitting the backboard, as tingly fire filled her body. She had taken lightning damage before. This was worse. Her feet were being tortured with endless electric shocks as the nodules scrubbed her arches. That tentacle in her belly button had to be like Percy sticking one finger of his Diplomacy gauntlet in and turning it on. “NOHO!! NOOO!!! WE ALREADY HAVE IIIIIITTT!!! WE HAVE IT!! WE HAVE IIIT!!! AAAAA-HAHAHAHAAAA!!!”

“You see?!” Vex could hear the glee in Gruvo’s voice rising above her laughter, oily as his hands. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Poor Vex here can’t handle the tickles… she’s such a ticklish girl… all will fall before our master.”

[LAURA: Will you hurry the fuck up?!?!]

[LIAM: We’re almost there, we’re almost there! Geez!]

“You're doing so well, my lady,” purred Gruvo. “You like this form better, don’t you? Now you’re going to have to tell me…” He grabbed her left foot, nodules helping him to grip despite the oil. He raised his other hand, showing her his knobby fingers, wiggling them slightly. “Where did you put the tome? Which one of you has it? You will tell me.” He lowered his hand and Vex felt those fingers, noduled on three sides, force their way between her toes and start sawing back and forth.

[MATT: That’s another CON save. With disadvantage.]

[LAURA: I KNOW!! ……… There is a thud as her head hits the table.]

[TRAVIS: barks with laughter]

[LIAM: Yeah, that’s a natural 1.]

[MATT: Hmm. I think that’s Vex’ahlia’s worst spot.]

[the entire table cracks up]

[LIAM: That’s canon now, motherfuckers!!!]

[SAM: Go update the wiki!! Hurry!!]

Vex shrieked as the nodules raked her sensitive toes, her normally sultry voice going full soprano. “NYYAAAAHOOO!!!! NOHO!!! AHA!!! AHA!!! HAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!!”

“Tell me, Vex’ahlia!!” Gruvo bellowed triumphantly, and through the horrific tickling on her belly and armpit - the pigeon had switched to her left - she felt that hand grip her toes and bend them back. “NO!!! NO!! NONONONO!!!” Vex cried, but it didn’t matter. Gruvo took one noduled index finger and scrubbed back and forth across the top of the ball of her foot and under her toes. “AAAAAAAGH!!! IT’S SCANLAN!!! SCANLAAAAANN!!! AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!!”

“The little gnome, you say? Then he will be next on our list. My shrieking, laughing beauty, I will drive you mad!!!” howled Gruvo as he continued to saw under her toes.

Just then, the door slammed open from a mighty kick. Gruvo stopped what he was doing and rose with a start. Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III planted his front foot and leveled his pistols at the astonished warlock.

[TALIESIN: Natural 20. 23. And another natural 20.]

[the table cheers as Matt shakes his head ruefully]

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Gruvo’s chest exploded, then his shoulder, then his face. Even as he started to fall backwards, Vax’ildan swept past Percy into the room, swift as a shadow. Dagger, dagger, dagger! One pigeon shot off Vex’s chest, transfixed by a knife, then the other fell upon her belly and slid off. The third dagger buried itself in Gruvo’s ruined chest as he collapsed to the floor. The warlock was stone dead in a matter of seconds.

“Well. That was easy,” said Percy, checking his guns for damage. “I guess the tentacle monster was the real threat… darling! What in heaven’s name happened to you?! Did he hurt you?”

However, Vex’ahlia was not looking at her betrothed. She was glaring daggers right past him at her twin brother. Percy looked to Vax and saw he was wearing his most teasing smirk. 

“Don’t just STAND there!!” yelled Vex, out of breath, sweat coating her brow, braid half undone from thrashing about. “Let me out, ya asshole!!”

“Oh, dear sister,” Vax said smarmily. “What an interesting predicament we find ourselves in.” “WE?!?! Get me out of here, you shi-”

“Percy.” Vax clapped his hand on the human’s shoulder. “Did you know my sister is terribly ticklish?”

“So’re you, ya fucker!!” screamed Vex as Percy blushed scarlet.

“Yes, I am. She always won tickle fights when we were growing up.” Vax’s face was all mock sorrow. “I can’t help but see a golden opportunity… to get even.”

“YOU WOULDN’T!! YOU CAN’T!!”

“Her feet were really bad, the couple times I got them,” Vax said to Percy. “I think there was this one time I got right under her toes, and she shrieked-” 

“NO!! DON’T YOU DARE!! DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE!!!”

The rest of the team started filing in behind Vax and Percy, coming to see what all the commotion was. A slow grin was creeping across Percy’s face, a grin Vex’ahlia did not like to see at all.

“I’ll tell you what, Vax. I see this as a great opportunity for some team bonding. I think everyone should get in on this.”

“WHAT?!?!?!”

“Come on, everyone!” Percy waved all of Vox Machina into the room. Scanlan was already rubbing his hands together as he walked to her stocked feet. Grog started guffawing as he walked behind the backboard and started to reach over for her armpits. Keyleth hung back, watching with wide eyes as Pike joined Vax at Vex’s tummy.

“All right,” declared Percy in his most noble voice, “on my signal. Keyleth, get over here, everyone participates. I get a foot, Scanlan, you don’t get both to yourself. Ready?” “NO!!! FUCK NO!!! FUCK YOU ALL!!!”

“One… two… and begin!”

They would eventually let Vex’ahlia out, far sooner than Gruvo the warlock would have. Until that time, however, the air rang with laughter, and only a few swears - because, as Vex would have to admit to herself later, being tickled by friends was actually pretty special. Or at least better than being held captive by a creep with “nodule” hands.

[sarcasmismydefaultmode]

My MCM London Experience

So my Comic-Con experience certainly had its ups and downs...somehow, I always seem to end up catching a bug like COVID a few weeks before an event I've been looking forward to for months, and then I'm left with a chronic cough and feeling like death even once I stop testing positive. I had so many plans to meet up with friends and catch up over drinks, and I ended up going to bed in my hotel room by 6pm...

But........

There were certainly some highs. Meeting and chatting with @wifeofsyril & @karnpuffs in the queue for the photo ops with Denise on Saturday, talking all things Star Wars, Andor, and Dedra (which frankly I don't get to do enough of, it's criminal)...

Meeting up and getting to play with my old saber training group, Silver Sabres, and spend half the day surrounded by fellow saber nerds...

The utter chaos that was the Witcher 3 panel. It felt a little...strange, like it was vaguely linked to it being ten years since the Witcher 3 came out, but it all felt quite loosely connected to the fact. It was more fun watching Denise slowly lose her mind over having to draw anything 😄 (I felt that, Denise. As a fellow artistically-challenged-person, I felt that. Pictionary is my idea of hell) and the conversations the cast were having about their characters. An interesting snippet from Denise was about her decision to pitch Yennefer a little lower than her natural speaking voice, to project authority and power, and I felt you can hear that in Dedra's voice too.

The lighting wasn't great so this was pretty the only picture I took during the panel which didn't turn weird...

Nearly had a heart attack when they started mentioning fanfiction. Admittedly, it was Witcher fanfiction, not Star Wars or Andor, but now I can't get the image of Denise scrolling the Dedra Meero tag on Ao3 out of my head 🤣🤣. Denise and Doug, the guy she's sat next to who voiced Geralt, and some of the other cast, also spoke about the importance of fandom and the escape it offers as they've been told by fans over the years, which I fully concur with. Fantasy has always been my escape when the world gets a little too much.

And finally, what probably had to be the highlight of the weekend:

I debated about covering my face but I'm posting this on the clock app too since I post cosplay shit over there. You should've seen the way Denise's eyes lit up when I offered her the lightsaber. Don't get me wrong, I love that Andor doesn't rely on the Sith-Jedi-lightsaber stuff at all beyond occasional references to ol' Palpy, but I think it should be written into every Star Wars actor's contract that they get to play with a lightsaber at least once. This is also my Inquisitor Dedra cosplay's debut, got some really great comments walking around MCM, and when I took the photo for Denise to autograph, she basically said she wants a black uniform like mine. Now, to work on my photoshoot skills so next time, you can actually see more than just my cloak, one boot, and one gauntleted arm 🤣😅

[criticalrolo]

who wants to read how Kestrel and Willow first met. @actionsurges this one's for you

ethical methodology, 3.7k words

“Shut the door behind you,” General Tidon says, not looking up from the mess of scrolls and maps spread across his desk.

Willow already knows that this assignment will be different from the others – there had been no need for secrecy when she’d been summoned to the fort before. She turns her back to close the door and whispers the incantation to detect Tidon’s thoughts, keeping the hand motions subtle and concealed beneath the folds of her purple traveling cloak.

Tidon’s surface level thoughts open up to her like a book. The usual frustrations are there, as they always are when she gets called in for a difficult case. However, he is also unusually excited, a bright spark of energy flaring to the top of his mind in a manner that seems almost… giddy.

She takes a seat opposite the general. “Your message said this was urgent. What happened?” 

He looks up, and detecting his thoughts confirms that yes, it is a flash of discomfort and unease that dashes across his face when he makes eye contact with her for the first time. Not enough to bury the odd mixture of irritation and anticipation he’s projecting, but enough for her to notice. 

“Nearly two weeks ago, a squadron patrolling the western border of our territory captured one of the enemy’s war mages. The boys brought him back in for questioning, and it would have been a standard enough process, except one of them recognized the little bastard.”

Willow has been called in to work on a few of the enemy’s Birds in the past, each of them with well constructed mental wards that had taken a few tries to unravel. They’re challenging, but not unbreakable or incredibly exciting. Not enough to explain the urgency with which she was called upon or the way Tidon is practically vibrating in his chair.

Tidon slides a few sheets of parchment towards her: intel about their newest prisoner. She picks it up and starts flipping through the pages. 

“This one’s calling himself Kestrel. We can’t find any other name he goes by, so we don’t have any leads for family or outside connections to mess with. My boys swear they recognized him as the mage that cast the temporal magic we’ve had hell trying to deal with in the past month.”

Willow looks up sharply from the intelligence file. “You believe he’s a chronurgist?”

“Quara thinks he’s the chronurgist, actually. First person to actually manage it on his own outside a lab.”

The mention of Tidon’s blood monk doesn’t fill her with confidence, but it certainly has Tidon worked up. He’s even moved past his initial discomfort at seeing her enter the room. Willow’s fingers linger on Kestrel’s file. He’s apparently only 22 years old. 

“I take it she’s been working him over downstairs to no avail.”

“Questioning hasn’t proven very fruitful, despite Quara’s more colorful attempts. The problem for her is we need a fully intact mind to explain the details of chronurgy, and she’s had issues with the preservation of mental faculties in the past.”

“You’re saying you need a scalpel instead of your usual sledgehammer for this particular venture.”

Tidon visibly twitches when she says the word scalpel. Gods, she’s weird, he thinks. Out loud: “It will be double your usual commission fee, as well as access to any and all of the army’s resources that you’ll require, in exchange for the complete extraction.”

The offer of a blank check doesn’t completely disguise the strange sting of confusion that runs through her when she hears herself in Tidon’s thoughts as “weird.” Her face betrays nothing as she stands up from the table. “For something this important, it will likely take a few days of work. Maybe a full week.”

“Take your time to make sure it’s flawless, and you’ll have everything you need from us. I’m sure you remember the way below ground? I want you to get started right away.” Tidon stands as well, gesturing for her to follow him out of the room.

Wind howls outside the stone walls as Tidon leads her through the hallways and to the large oaken door at the entrance to the dungeon. There must be some sort of silence spell cast on it, because as soon as he pulls it open, Willow can hear a distant screech that sounds…ongoing. 

Tidon goes to light a torch, but Willow pulls out her scalpel and creates a ball of purple light to guide them both down the stairs. He gives her a nod of appreciation, but that tinge of discomfort at the sight of her scalpel is still there. 

The stairs are cold, even with Willow’s light and the torches blazing with blue fire ensconced on the walls. Willow exhales, and can see her breath in front of her. Trembling from the cold will be a major problem while attempting brain surgery in a cellar.

As she goes to ask Tidon to provide her operating room with some sort of heating apparatus, her detect thoughts spell picks up on the low murmur coming from inside the cell at the base of the stairs. Whoever is inside has heard their footsteps, and is desperately begging the Gods that they will pass him by. Willow closes her mouth and doesn’t speak, although she’s not exactly sure why.

A dark hallway stretches before them. Occasional whimpers are audible behind solid locked doors, although whoever was screaming earlier seems to have stopped. Tidon ushers her along briskly, and not a single thought of his strays towards the people locked away down here. 

He stops in front of a cell with blue light streaming out from underneath the door and unlocks it with a heavy iron key. The door creaks open. He sticks his head inside and says, “Quara, your reinforcements are here.”

“Very well – I was just finishing up.”

Tidon jerks his head at Willow, motioning her inside. She steps through the doorway with her purple light and immediately begins detecting two new sets of thoughts: the nearly meditative thrum of the albino woman in brown robes whose hands are coated in a few layers of congealed blood, and the sharp spike of frazzled panic from the battered red haired wizard tied to a table in front of her.

“A pleasure to see you again,” Quara says, giving Willow a serene smile. Her thoughts betray her – the woman is livid that Willow has arrived to take over. “I was just speaking with Kestrel here about the importance of honesty and the healing power of blood and truth spilled before the light of the Gods.” 

Quara’s interior dedication to her god of blood is blazing and nearly overwhelming. If Willow didn’t dislike her so intensely she might have found her fascinating. Instead, she takes a moment to look over her new subject. Kestrel’s red hair hangs limp around his pale face, and she can see the odd angle of his left knee as well as the blood soaking through his torn shirt. He stares back at her, vivid purple eyes meeting her dark red ones. She hears the rapid-fire string of questions that shoot through his mind well before he coughs and asks in a thin voice, tight with pain, “Who are you?”

“My name is Dr. Willow Amaryllis. I am a brain surgeon and neurology researcher at the nearby university.”

“What…” He has to pause to cough and tries to inhale. His thoughts scatter at the influx of pain shooting through broken ribs before he can gather himself again. “What sort of brain surgeon ends up working for the army?”

“One who doesn’t wish to cause you any more pain.” Willow nudges Quara out of the way so she can sit down in front of Kestrel. “I know you doubt that, but it is the truth.”

“We won’t have to get Dr. Willow here involved if you just tell us what we want to know,” Tidon says from the doorway.

Kestrel’s eyes widen. “What does that mean?”

“I have developed safe methods of information extraction, directly from a patient’s mind, which are painless and seamless. If you do not wish to give up the information willingly, then I will remove it from the source myself.”

The frantic thoughts racing through Kestrel’s mind are a bit distracting, although Willow is attempting to be reassuring. “The process is painless. Your consciousness will be kept safe for the duration of the procedure.”

“No, you can’t –” 

Quara comes up from behind Willow and drives a fist into Kestrel’s face so quickly Willow can hear his neck snap to the side. “It is not up for debate. Tell us your methods, or Willow will tell us for you.”

“Be careful, Quara,” Tidon snarls. “We need that brain whole and undamaged.”

Kestrel pants and spits a globule of blood out onto Willow’s hand. “Fuck you. You won’t learn anything from me.”

“Very well.” Willow raises her scalpel and begins to cut her first spell into the air. “I will be placing wards in your mind to bind your consciousness far away from here. As long as you remain in that place, no harm will come to you.”

Kestrel attempts to say something else, but his scattered mind capitulates to her spell quite quickly, and his eyes roll back into his head. Willow mentally tugs on the magical tether created between her mind, his, and their physical bodies. Everything seems to be in place.

“I’m getting started,” she says. “Bring down some food, water, and probably a blanket or two. We’ll be down here for a while.”

“Careful with that one.” Tidon gives her a nod and heads out of the room.

“I think I’ll stay,” Quora says. “I find meditating in these halls clears the mind like nothing else.”

“As long as you do nothing to distract me. This is a delicate process, and any interference could be disastrous for me and for him.”

Quora says nothing, but gives her a disquieting smile before kneeling in the corner of the room and closing her eyes. Willow resists the urge to roll her eyes and turns her focus back to her subject. She’ll only have to make one small cut for her spell to gain access to the inner workings of his mind. She carefully parts the center of his hair and makes an incision behind his hairline, so there won’t be any visible scarring he’ll have to deal with.

A drop of blood runs down Kestrel’s face. Willow touches his forehead, raises her scalpel, and begins.

The sensation of switching from the vividness of the real world to the fractal patterns and jumbled biological projections of a mental landscape has always been soothing to Willow. She is in a place where physical reality is secondary to intentions and will. Here, she can reach out with her magic and use the natural flow of her thoughts to guide along neural pathways to whatever information she seeks. Kestrel’s mind is complicated and restless beneath her fingers as she starts to prod the network for information about his chronurgy and where it comes from. 

The cells twist and jerk, rejecting her search, but she knows the way these building blocks function, and how to be as unobtrusive as possible. She molds her shape in this place to resemble a curious internal seeker, and not a threat, before reaching out with her scalpel again. This time she can tug on a mental thread and follow it where it leads, as though she is simply another thought racing through Kestrel’s head. After sifting through what feels like hundreds of mental threads, her guiding impulse comes to an abrupt stop.

She examines the neuron her scalpel has settled on. Nothing extraordinary jumps out at an immediate glance, other than the barest trace of the temporal distortion magic she’s on the hunt for. She carefully peels back the myelin sheath to get a better look at the axon. There’s no magic in this neuron in particular, but it certainly passed through this way. It’s a start, at least.

As she thinks this, she feels Kestrel’s consciousness start to press against her own from far, far away. 

Be still, she projects. I have a scalpel inside your head. Unexpected movement will cause you damage and pain.

Instead of quieting down, Kestrel’s mind starts to thrash wildly. The landscape around her begins to shudder and recoil from her touch. He comes alarmingly close to breaking through the barrier between the real world and the deeper world he should be sedated within when Willow severs the link and blinks open her physical eyes.

“I said,” she says, placing her hands on both sides of his face to hold him steady, “be still.”

“Did you find it?” Quara asks from her position on the floor. 

Willow doesn’t bother giving her an answer, and instead adjusts Kestrel’s head on the table. “Throwing yourself about while I have a knife in your head will only cause you problems. I have no desire to cause you pain or brain trauma, and the only mind you will be damaging is your own.”

Kestrel locks eyes with her, says nothing in response to her words of caution. She thinks she sees a glint of… something strange, wavering in his expression. Her detect thoughts spell has worn off, so she’s not exactly sure what he’s thinking, and she doesn’t want to cause him excessive pain by prodding the sore area she’d just ripped them both away from. 

End of day one, she notes to herself. No further progress.

Day two, no further progress.

Day three, no further progress.

“What are you doing?”

Quara has stuck her hands two knuckles deep in a cut slashed into Kestrel’s abdomen. She turns around to give Willow a wan smile even as Kestrel writhes on the bloodstained table.

“Your methods have been taking too long. I thought I’d encourage him by reminding him of our other strategies for extraction.” Her smile is yellow against the sickly pale white of her skin. “Besides, my god has been lacking for tribute this past week.” 

“Step away from him,” Willow says harshly. “He’s under my care now, not yours.”

Quara contritely pulls her hands away, raising them in surrender. Kestrel makes a choking sound as blood spills out of his stomach. 

Willow waits for Quara to step away from the table, then hurries forward to press her hands against the gash. It’s shallow and non-life threatening, but the edges are clearly red and irritated. Kestrel jerks beneath the pressure.

“Don’t worry,” Willow says calmly. “I have plenty of experience with stitches and wound sterilization to prevent infection.”

Kestrel gazes up at the ceiling with glassy eyes. “Oh, I’m sure you do.”

Willow sighs, keeping one hand pressed to his chest while digging through her tool bag for her suturing kit. “This sort of cruelty is unnecessary. My methods of information retrieval are much more humane.”

Kestrel lets out a sharp bark of hoarse laughter. “My god, you really believe that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. Cutting apart flesh to force someone into divulging information is barbaric when there are much safer direct options.”

He sighs, twitching when she starts sewing the first stitch, and lets his head fall back with a thud against the reddened wood. “Hardly seems any different to me.”

Day four, no further progress.

Day five. Day six. No further progress.

“There has to be something you can do to speed this up,” Tidon grouches, crossing his arms and leaning against the cold stone walls.

“You could always let me do some of the work,” Quara says. She is kneeling quietly in the corner, far away from the table in the center of the room. 

Willow stops her scalpel mid casting. Kestrel’s mind hovers in a halfway space, partially concealed behind the protective barrier. “Your work is questionable at best in this case, Quora. Trying to find information when half of his neurons are flooded with pain signals makes my job exponentially more difficult.”

“Quora won’t be touching him again, not after last time,” Tidon says wearily. “But in the meantime, isn’t there anything you could do that would give you a bit more direction?”

Willow hesitates, scalpel still hovering in the air. “I suppose… if we allowed his consciousness a little bit more freedom, his automatic thoughts would be more likely to direct me to the source of his power. However, any degree of consciousness during a surgical procedure runs the risk of causing him pain or trauma.”

“Do I seem like someone all that concerned about causing pain to a prisoner?” Tidon says, raising an eyebrow.

Something twinges deep inside Willow’s heart, but she ignores the feeling. “You must understand: trauma and pain can warp memories and recollection. It could damage the thoughts I am attempting to extract. And you wanted this procedure to be flawless.”

“I also wanted the procedure finished days ago. The benefits we stand to gain from even some information on actual chronurgy are worth the risk.” Tidon’s voice is harsh and decisive. “You have new instructions, Dr. Amaryllis. Use the partial consciousness method and get us those notes.”

For a split second, Willow considers refusing. Kestrel’s mind is already hanging in limbo between the real world and the subconscious, poised on the edge of a knife for her decision. 

Finally, she nods. “Very well. I will do my best to keep this as clean as possible.”

“I don’t care about clean, I care about results.” Tidon’s imperious stance relaxes. “You may proceed.”

Willow takes hold of the magical tethers connecting their minds to their bodies. They feel different this time, now that she’s keeping Kestrel a bit more grounded in his physical form. While constructing the magical barrier keeping his mind safe, she factors in windows for him to see through. Not nearly enough for him to escape from without wreaking massive havoc on his mind, but enough that his consciousness should be able to provide her with impulses and directions on her search.

Descending into his mind feels clumsier than usual. The natural pathways she is used to traversing without effort shift and sway and change direction abruptly, as though they can’t decide what to focus on. However, there is a heightened awareness to the landscape that she instantly knows she can direct. 

Where is the source of your magic? She asks.

Almost instantly she can feel an automatic response from Kestrel’s mind. The surge of an electrical impulse shoots off through the neural pathways, and she follows, heading deeper and deeper into the recesses of his mind. He’s done a decent job hiding behind barriers and wards, but chasing the automatic nature of his thoughts is childishly easy. 

A bright light made up of scattered golds and blues and purples glows in the center of a mess of neurons. 

There you are, she thinks. 

And then, Kestrel decides to wreak havoc.

Before she can react, Kestrel’s conscious mind flings itself forward at the barrier, shattering it and sending sprays of untamed psychic magic flying everywhere.

Stop – you’ll hurt yourself! Willow shouts wildly, trying to reign in the surge of magic.

I know, a grim thought answers back. 

Willow understands his plan the moment he throws himself forward onto her scalpel, impaling his mind on her blade. She reels back, trying to untangle herself from the web of neurons before Kestrel’s mind goes into meltdown. Distantly, she can hear someone screaming as Kestrel cuts his source of power to ribbons and tears himself in half.

She severs the tethers between them, rocketing back to her physical body right before Kestrel explodes in a surge of white hot energy. She only has time to think oh fuck – 

A high pitched ringing in her ears is the first thing she’s aware of. Her cheek is pressed against stone that is frigidly cold, almost like it has been coated in ice. When she blearily opens her eyes, she can only make out the blur of the cell floor and a figure trying to free itself from the table it’s tied to.

She blinks away the blood trickling down into her eyes, and the world lurches into a bit more focus.

The figure on the table – it looks like Kestrel, but she instantly knows that something is severely wrong with him. Invisible wind whips around someone who looks to be made of shadows, a half figure stradling this world and the next. He turns his head towards her, and his eyes have been replaced by shining cold lights. A jagged fissure splits his forehead down the middle, spilling blue light across the bloodied table. 

As she watches silently, the figure pants and gasps before coming to a shuddering halt. He freezes, takes in one deep breath, and exhales slowly. The shadows melt away, and Kestrel reappears on the table. Blood is spurting from his nose and ears, but he is focused completely on stretching his fingers towards the bloodied scalpel lodged in the wood of the table. After a few seconds of straining, he catches it and yanks it free, slashing through the ropes and tumbling awkwardly free to the ground.

Willow remains slumped against the wall, watching him through half-lidded eyes as he drags himself over to Tidon’s body and feels around for his ring of keys. He pulls it off the general’s belt with a gasp of triumph, then turns to look at her.

His wild purple eyes lock with her own. She blinks at him slowly. She can’t think of anything to say. 

Kestrel tosses the scalpel towards her like it’s burning him. It clatters to the ground. She wants to reach out for it, but she can’t find the energy to move her arms just yet. The floor is coated in ice and blood. 

As Kestrel stumbles his way towards the door and begins fumbling for the right key, she closes her eyes. There’s nothing she wants to do more than simply let herself drift back to sleep and not think about what she’s just done. The door creaks open behind her, and Kestrel’s staggering footsteps run away. 

[oisin-hakinvar]

Do you think you could teach me magnificent mansion sometime? I’ve been wanting to learn that spell really bad for a while now. I can teach you any divination spell you want in return.

- Adaine

Certainly! We can meet up to go over it, but my trick with high level Conjuration is a sneaky one, and imagine the spell as an abjuration. That might sound strange, but if Banishment is abjuration and Demiplane is conjuration, there's some wiggle room when it comes to interaction with demiplanes. As such, attempting not to manifest (conjure) the door to the mansion, and instead banishing the portion of the material plane you're going to replace with the door to the mansion tends to work for me. Might be a weird quirk of my casting, but it might help others. I'd love to learn Borrowed Knowledge if you're familliar with it, It's on my list of want to learn spells but I haven't actually been able to track down a scroll.

[lowlevelkoboldadventures]

Do you have any advice for kobolds seeking to become spellcasters, be it tapping into their own inherent magic or trying to learn something more structured like a wizard or trying to tap into the divine?

Absolutely!!! Here's a quick list of things to try! ✨🙌✨

(Summary:)

Try seeing if you have latent draconic powers

Try the typical sorcery route (or be a mage like me!)

Get bestowed powers by a dragon

Worship a god (highly suggest the draconic pantheon, see below!)

[SPOILERS, read below]

Try seeing if you have latent draconic powers Some kobolds carry something inside them that taps into the inherent magic of dragon lineage! This is probably the easiest way to start casting spells, though not all kobolds have this, and such raw ancient power can be hard to control, especially when you're only 2 feet tall... 💥😅💥 (If that doesn't work, or if draconic magic is just too much to handle, there are plenty of other opportunities! Keep reading!) Try the typical sorcery route (or be a mage like me!) I personally am a mage, but that is really rare amongst kobolds, as most tend to go the sorcerer route and don't tend to be too big a fan of studying dusty tomes and scrolls and such. If sorcery sounds like the method for you, try going to places of magical power, consuming certain ingredients or potions, meditating, tracking dreams, and other such things that help you connect to the magic in the world around you and passing through you! If you're interested in being a mage like me, feel free to check out a book from the archives and get reading!!! 📖😋📚 (Also, if you're trying sorcery, don't be afraid to get weird with it!!! Just find what works for you! ✨☝️✨) Get bestowed powers by a dragon If you're still struggling and are still set on casting cool spells (or just don't have the time), my next recommendation would be to go to a dragon for help! Dragons will often bestow power of some kind to their followers or people they find an interest in, including magical abilities! I didn't recommend this first because I know working for a dragon isn't everyone's idea of a good time, but it is how I'm able to cast such powerful magic at such a low level! Worship a god If no dragons are immediately available, you still might get bestowed the powers you're craving by gods you worship! I highly suggest the dragon pantheon, though non-draconic pantheons would be very lucky to have you too! I personally prefer to serve my dragons in person, but the idea of pledging to the most powerful and noteworthy of all dragons ever is certainly also appealing in its own way!!! Here's this encyclopedia on the Outer Planes System's dragon pantheon, and I think Kereska especially might be who you're looking for! 😉 Pact If you've come this far and still don't have what you're looking for, maybe have you tried being a bard?? Or maybe a chef!!! Inventors are cool, right??? Who needs magic anyways, pshhh, totallly overhyped... Y-You're still here? Well, I guess... technically, there's still one last thing you could try, but I Super Highly Very Strongly advise that you reaaaaaally consider if it's worth it on this one.... You could, theoretically, make a pact for it. I'm not saying that all beings who make pacts are bad, but it's as easy as trading basalt with a hatchling to get screwed over in a way that will permanently remove the words "I'm ok" from your vocabulary. Demons, eldritch, and even some dragons may make this offer to you if you're desperate enough for it, just be really really really careful alright? 👉👈

Hopefully this helps, thank you so much for the ask!!! 🙏🥹 And again, you're free to check out any of the mage books in the collection here if you're interested! I'll even lend you my personal annotated copies if you ask nicely~ ✨;)✨

[koneko-pi]

Silver Season

Chapter Three: Bad Banter

Dungeons are mysterious.

It's well known by magic knights, and even the citizens, that the Dungeons were magical tomb-like spaces left behind by a previous civilization. Traps and magical creatures could be found within, and at its deepest parts would be the "Treasure Room". Here all the rewards and riches of the dungeon could be found; and these items ranged from Magical tools, to scrolls, to books, to gold or a large collection of all those things.

The dungeons were usually maze-like but always held some kind of building-esque structure to them; like hallways, ceilings, water ways. Signs that they had been definitely built with human hands. Or something close to humans. The traps too, magical or physical, gave way to the fact that some kind of intelligent entity was behind the architecture.

But now, entering this place, the air was moist and cold. Like a cave, the occasional sound of water dripping further emphasized the thought, and it was pitch black. Nozel couldn't even see the squad mates around him. His eyes were struggling to adjust as he squinted into a void.

"No one has fire magic," Curtis' voice came somewhere from Nozel's right. "Anyone have a tool?"

"Why would we have brought a tool for light?" Nils snapped in the darkness. "We were investigating a village not dungeon diving!"

"Because some of us could have been prepared." Someone else said.

"Prepared for what!? How could you have possibly known-"

Their bickering only escalated until a glow began to fill the room and everyone could now see each other.

Curtis was the farthest away and was pointing angrily at a wall. Another eagle, Rob, was looking at no one. And Nils, the unfortunate man, had been yelling the loudest right in front of Nozel. He visibly shrank under the glare of his captain.

"Sorry sir…"

"You're nobles." The man bitterly responded. "Act like it." He then turned to where the light source had come from.

He wasn't surprised by the fact Briar had been the one to find the light source, she was just weird that way. What did surprise him was that the light was coming from her dagger; which, after now getting a proper look at it, didn't actually look like a dagger.

It looked like a tooth.

The "blade" was a foot in length, fang shaped and was a pearlescent color, glowing yellow and red with flecks of blue reflecting within it occasionally as Briar moved around. The handle was wrapped in leather as a form of grip, and the scholar held it up like a torch as she scanned the area around them.

"It's a cave." Curtis said bluntly.

It certainly was. Rarely did Nozel come across a Dungeon that didn't come across as man made. This one looked like the inside of an ant Hill. Which, when he considered that day's events, made perfect sense. They stood in a large center room with massive holes dug out all around them, from the floor to the walls and ceiling, they were surrounded in entryways.

"Wait-"

He spun around for a moment to see Briar was already giving the whole room a walk around. Her hand was dragging along the wall as she looked up and down; occasionally she stopped at the holes to stare down them, even if her makeshift lamp couldn't light all the way down.

"This doesn't make sense…"

Curtis, along with the others, had gathered around a table of stone he had conjured. The spell he had cast was one many earthen mages had; to pull in mana around them to create a model of the area around them. Mages used it all the time in Dungeons to get a better layout of who was where and make a map so they knew where to go. But the surface of the table was writhing like sand, like something was interfering with the spell itself so it could recreate their surroundings. Curtis could barely hold an image of the room they currently stood in before the whole spell completely collapsed in on itself.

"What happened?" He said mostly to himself but…

The mages all glanced to one another, then to their captain. Nozel stared back at them, he wished he could give them an answer but even he had not been in a dungeon quite like this before. So he eventually turned, begrudgingly, to the woman who seemed to have an inkling of what was going on.

Before he had the chance to yell out "woman!" Briar was already at his side. Almost like she sensed that noble assholery he had developed anytime he had to talk to her.

"Map making magic and tracking spells won't work here." She quickly said. "The Mana around you is canceling it out."

"What?" The eagles looked confused as they leaned in a little closer, expecting an explanation.

Rather than outright tell them like she had been, Briar instead turned to Nozel. "You're the strongest here aren't you? Try and cast yourself out, to sense things."

Nozel's response was to simply raise an eyebrow and Briar sighed.

She wondered what kind of training the knights went through to not know these little tips and tricks. Well… if she thought about it long enough she figured it was simply because nobles were confident in their Magic, and thus learned how to cast powerful spells to gain explosive magic. Very few actually trained to hone their mana sensitivity and how to exist with it. And she did have to give them some credit, it had been working for many years now. The Clover kingdom was in fact thriving.

And she knew of some mages naturally born with sensitive mana sensing, but still. Some things could only be learned with practice.

And they did come in handy in moments like this.

"You can use Mana Zone right?"

"Of course I can." He responded.

Briar moved her hand to gesture to their surrounding area. "Try using it. But rather than use it to CONTROL the space you're in, focus on your senses within your zone instead. Like it's an extension of yourself."

Nozel gave her a suspicious look but inevitably would give it a try. As much as he wanted to tell the woman to shove off he would admit her knowledge of things was becoming useful. So he closed his eyes and everyone around would feel the burst and heavy feeling of Nozel's mana expanding out from his body. It felt like a tight blanket had wrapped around them, squeezing them so they couldn't breath as easily.

Mana Zone was an extension of a Mage's ability. Anyone who wanted to be a decent mage would have to learn it, it was essentially a requirement if you wanted to gain higher ranks or even skill. The most common use of Mana zone was to take your own Mana and assert it over what was around you, be it people or the natural Mana in the air. Really skilled mages could even take that natural mana and add it to their own to make Mana Zone more potent. Once the Mana Zone was established a Mage could then apply a spell to it, creating an A.O.E. concept, or, Area Of Affect.

This means a simple spell that could fire off one spear, using Nozel as the example, could be amplified to create an entire room of spears. This was the most common application of Mana Zone within the Magic Knights. There was however a less interesting use of it that most people never bothered to learn, probably because they never thought it would be useful. The last person Briar had even heard of using this method was a blind man, which made sense.

Rather than put a spell into the Mana Zone one simply had to put their Focus into it. Using the ability to extend their senses out rather than their power and magic. From Briar's own experience she would think it was similar to how a bat would see things with its sonar, but a little more detailed.

It would take Nozel a couple of tries but he managed to finally get an idea of what Briar had been trying to show him. With eyes closed he could tell how many cave systems were around them and which ones would lead into immediate dead ends. Like a mental map was slowly forming, but he wasn't seeing it he was feeling it. He could feel the heart beats of something alive scurrying through some of the passageways, their bodies had very little mana so no shapes came to mind, but he assumed it was more insects. Extending his Mana Zone father he felt a larger space full of small flickers of mana, and beyond that-

Suddenly it felt like something hit Nozel across the head, his eyes flew open as his head jerked to the side. Nothing had actually hit him, but a feedback of mana had hit his own so hard it created a painful recoil. A headache resonated in his skull along with the sound of a vicious screech of defiance. It was so loud he didn't hear his squad mates call his name in concern. His vision was blurry as his hand came to cup his aching head. He hadn't seen anything, but the feeling he got deep within the cave created an image in his head: a massive creature easily the size of a manor, with glaring eyes watching him intently.

"It knows we're here." He hissed.

Briar brought her light lower to her leg so it didn't disturb him too much. "You saw it?"

"Sir?" The eagles looked at their Captain with increasing concern but he waved them off and straightened himself up.

"The Queen?" He asked Briar.

His squad all looked stunned.

"Yes. This entire dungeon is her domain, the mana around us is her Mana Zone."

"Since when can monsters manipulate Mana!" Nils cried out.

"That's one of the things we need to find out." Nozel straightened himself. "And that means exploring, we find Nebra and we find the treasure room…"

No one looked eager for this mission, every step they took towards finishing it just raised more questions and concerns. But nobody said anything against him.

"Do you know the way?" Briar asked.

Nozel glanced at her before walking off down one of the paths. "This way… generally…"

The others, albeit nervous, followed.

Briar joined Nozel at the front, as the holder of light.

The paths really were like a twisting maze. Different passageways leading up, down left or right. The deeper they went the colder it got. Sometimes they found slime on the walls. Or would be forced to make detours because a pathway may have caved in.

Sometimes Briar would hold her glowing blade up to some of the smaller caves and eyes would be staring back at her before quickly skittering away in a panic.

"What is that?"

She glanced towards Nozel. He wasn't looking at her as he walked but it wasn't hard to understand what prompted his question.

"A dragon's tooth." She responded simply.

"How did you get something that valuable?" He looked to her hand, his lavender colored eyes once again scanning over the blade carefully.

"In a dungeon." She responded curtly. "The Golden Dawn had brought in tools for us to check over a couple of years ago. I asked Julius if I could use it, and he thought that would be a better fate for it rather than sitting in some storage room or on a noble's mantle."

"Did he let you have it because you have no spells?"

She glanced at him for his attempts to prod into her secrets. "Perhaps. I'm rather adept with weapons." To prove her point she flipped it several times in her hand, the blade whipping through the air-

"Please stop that…"

-and creating a strobe effect that none of the mages liked in such a dark space.

"Pardon me." She stopped and once again held it up like a torch. "I don't like daggers though. I'm better with larger weapons, but I can't exactly carry an ax around."

"And how did the likes of you become so skilled…" Was he insulting her? She would admit she didn't look the part of some seasoned veteran mage, not that he could see anyway.

"With experience…" Was her only response.

"Experience?"

He was oddly nosy now, wasn't he…

"Contrary to popular belief, there are quite a few of us scholars that get out into the field." She tilted her blade so the light cast ominous shadows across both their faces. "Who do you think usually finds your dungeons, discovers new medicines and monster species."

They watched each other, neither daring to look away in a show of weakness.

Curtis slowly leaned into the mage beside him. "They have an odd tension between them." He whispered.

"I agree." The man responded. "I can't wait till this mission is over with and she's gone."

"What's that up ahead?" Nils pointed beyond them, ahead of his leaders and to where he could see the mouth of another cave.

Briar frowned and slowly she sheathed her weapon. Nozel held a hand out in front of him.

"I can still see."

"There's light ahead?" Curtis asked.

The squad moved forward swiftly, rushing out of their current passageway and coming to a halt at what looked like a cliff's edge.

"Dear god…" Nils spoke for all of them.

It was a cavern, long and cylindrical, with more holes dug out into its walls with no particular pattern. But this time stone bridges connected them together, making it easier to traverse through the colony.

"Is that what I think it is?" Curtis asked as he pointed up.

What had drawn his attention was at the roof of the cavern. A massive crystal was hanging from the ceiling, they couldn't accurately tell how large it was, but it was in fact massive. It was flickered with dim color, gray with faint blue, an indication of what magnificence it must have once held. Even with its lack-luster light it managed to provide them with visibility, and with that they could see the hoard of busybody ants flying quickly between the holes.

"A magic crystal." Nozel was wide eyed, he had never seen one so large before. He was aware of the Diamond kingdom mining and harvesting such minerals for their own, unethical, uses. And had only ever seen the stones while embedded within their mages. He had no idea they grew to such a size.

"It's dying." Briar said as she squinted up at the crystal. She took a slow step forward and almost like a warning the earth began to shake.

The massive cavern shook as a tremor rocked it, the insects going mad as the light above flickered with failing light. Boulders fell and all the mages stumbled back into their hiding space as a crack, with an echoing crunch, shot up one of the walls.

They all clung to what they could, the walls or each other, as they waited for the shaking to stop.

"What the hell was that?" A mage asked with shaky breath.

"The dungeon is collapsing." Briar was wide eyed and panicked. "That's why all the monsters have been appearing outside. They're trying to run away!"

"What!?" Nozel's head snapped to her. "That shouldn't be happening until the treasure room has at least been opened!"

"Well obviously this dungeon isn't like the rest!" It actually concerned him how worried she looked about the situation. "The place is more like a monster's den than it is someone's long lost tomb! We won't have time to explore like we wanted, we have to get in and get out."

Nozel gave an irritated click of his tongue. Another mild shake of the walls made him second guess arguing with her. "How much time is left?"

Briar leaned out of their hiding place to look up at the crystal again, its light even more dim than it was before. "An hour, at least."

The Silva cursed under his breath. They'd be forced to split up if they still intended to at least find the treasure room.

"I'll find Nebra."

His eyes shot up to the woman. She was watching him with intent, probably following the exact same thought process. "At the very least we have to kill the queen or trap them inside."

"With the dungeon collapsing like this all the creatures inside have been smart enough to know to make a run for it." Curtis said while looking horrified. "They're going to swarm for the exit once their power source finally runs out."

"And then we'll have a lot more of those things to deal with…"

Everyone glanced at each other as they remembered the swarm they had already attempted to deal with outside. God only knew how many were living in this huge colony.

"Nebra's not going to be with the queen." Briar urged. "Likely they've put her in a brooding room with the rest of their food source."

"How would you know that?" He hissed

"Basic animal behavior!" She hissed back, irritated with his question. "They have babies to feed, don't they!?"

A pit fell in Nozel's chest at the realization of what she was saying. Even with their house falling around them they would prioritize the young first.

"Do you know where she is?" He demanded with a hard expression.

Briar nodded. "The brooding room is on this level. But the queen is lower at the core." She nodded to the edge of the cliff. "You'll find her down there. She controls all the soldiers. It's likely if she screams for help, they will come running."

A plan was slowly formulating in Nozel's mind on how he was going to deal with the matriarch.

"And the exit?"

"It's at the top." Briar pointed up. "You can probably use Mana Sensing to find it better once the queen is dealt with and her Mana Zone isn't interfering with your spells."

This was the worst plan, thrown together so quickly but another tremor of the walls around them pushed Nozel over the edge.

"Nils, Rob!"

"Sir!" The mages stood at Salute for their captain.

"You're going with the Researcher Woman. Everyone else will follow me into the depths."

"Yes sir!"

He turned to Briar who had pulled her dragon's tooth out once more. "Bring Nebra back quickly. Or I'll make sure your basement friends suffer from your mistake."

"Have more faith." She said to him before she jerked her head and rushed out into the open, running along the cliff's edge. Nils and Rob briefly looked to their captain as they followed after her.

"Let's go." Nozel opened his book and a bird made of silver formed at the edge of the opening. He climbed onto its back, and with permission so did his squad mates. With a flourish of silver feathers it took off and then dived down into the darkness.

The bottom of the pit was nearly suffocating. The walls were surprisingly smooth, save for the few cracks, from the digging the ants must have done, and the chill in the air almost captured his bones in a rigid embrace. The lower they went the stronger the mana felt, to the point that Nozel didn't even need to try and sense anything. It very much made its presence known… he felt disgusted by it, the queens mana had the strangest allure to it, it was probably what kept her minions in line and allowed her to communicate.

But for it to have such an effect on humans as well…

He glanced at his men to see their body's trembling as they too felt the overwhelming sensation of orders.

Dig. Kill. Eat. Survive.

How a monster was able to give off such potent magical power in the form of orders, he was unsure. Who knew what it would be like if a creature like this could even comprehend spells. After all, all she was doing was asserting authority. But even with all this pressured mana around him, lower they still went.

The bottom was not as dark as Nozel had been expecting. Smaller, still dimly lit, crystals dotted the floor and walls of the cavern, letting him see just what exactly he had to face.

Smaller soldier ants circled her, but compared to their queen, their size was miniscule.

The queen's body was massive, she easily could have devoured a couple of towns by herself, and he was almost worried she already had. Nozel had no idea how many of her minions still lurked outside beyond the area they had investigated.

Her body was a sleek white color, which made her more visible in the darkness with the light bouncing off her. Her legs appeared to have pointed blades on the end, pincers on the front of her head that could crush a house and massive eyes that seemed to be looking everywhere. All but directly above at least, a small blind spot right behind her, up in the air.

"How do we kill that…" Curtis looked frightened, now faced with the reality of needing to keep this thing from escaping.

Nozel was wondering just that. He was not going to underestimate the beast simply because it was an animal. Its underlings had already proven to be a challenge; so he suspected her exoskeleton would be incredibly hard…

"No matter." He muttered to himself as he finally decided on what he would do. "I will deal with the Queen personally. The rest of you will be dealing with the rabble that shows up to try and defend her."

While his squad looked nervous to be facing such a foe, they nodded their heads.

"Then let's begin."

The Silver Eagles leapt from their Captain's magical ride and fluttered down to the ground. Landing with no issue, but heavy grunts.

A slow groaning filled the cavern as the Queen Ant lifted her head, and slowly turned it to see what had disturbed her nest. The men up close and personal could see the blade-like teeth hiding within her maw, and the strings of fluid to indicate how hungry she was.

Nozel's grimoire fluttered to life as he held a hand up in the air.

"Double-" Two poles of Mercury appeared on either side of his mount, quickly shaping into large spears. "-Silver Shining Regal Spear!"

With a booming burst of air, the spears shot down to the ground. With such speed it would have been impossible, even with her Mana permeating the air, for the Queen to notice. So she didn't even look up as they came down-

A heavy crunch was followed by the boom of the earth cracking and bursting from Nozel's strike. The spears had collided with the Queen's first two legs, right at her joints where the exoskeleton could not fully protect her, and severed them completely from her body. Along with the dust and debris created by massive limbs falling to the floor, green, foul smelling fluid exploded from the gaping wounds.

The Queen, now realizing she was under attack, registered the pain in her limbs and reared her body back, nearly knocking Nozel from the sky. Her pincers opened and the room, and mana, vibrated with her shrill cry for help.

Nozel and the others had to cover their ears from the sheer volume of the beasts scream. It rattled his bones and he too suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to stop this assault, as she poured her mana out into the colony.

Her plea echoed back, both naturally and in the form of her children coming to her aid. And with her call heard, her head turned to Nozel.

"Your pitiful scream wont work on me." He spat down at her, glaring at her from his space in the sky atop his silver eagle. "Your reign ends her."

-

The closer they got to the brooding room the more the air began to stink. A fog had started low to the ground, covering up their ankles, and thick slime had caked the walls so much you couldn't see the stone underneath it anymore.

The stuffy atmosphere reminded Briar of another dungeon she had spent far too much time in. Although this one lacked any of the soft greenery that one had held. There were no trees or softer wildlife. No grass under foot. This was all just a dark suffocating space that created an uncomfortable feeling deep within her body. She was pretty sure her Coworkers called that feeling "claustrophobia". But for her, there was a lot more to it than just being trapped in an enclosed space.

"How much farther…" Nils gagged. "I feel like I'm being swallowed by something."

That wasn't an inaccurate feeling. Everything around them was akin to being inside a creature's body, even the Mana still lingering in the air felt like it pulsed, similar to a heart beat.

Briar gently put a hand to the sticky wall and felt the outward flow of mana in short bursts, not just to stimulate insides but to also push back unwanted visitors like them.

"This really is an annoying beast." She muttered angrily to herself. She was a little upset that she couldn't see the Queen before her demise, she wanted to get a good look at her to hopefully satisfy a burning curiosity inside her. But Nebra was her priority, she wasn't one to abandon siblings. Hers or someone else's.

Her thoughts would be halted by a sound. Quickly she flipped her blade back into its sheath, promptly surrounding them in darkness. Then her arm snapped back as she grabbed hold of the mage behind her and shoved them both as far against the wall as she could.

"Guh-!" Nils squirmed in disgust, feeling the moist wall soak into his cloak. "What are you doing-"

His sentence was cut off by an angry "SH!" and Rob, their other eagle, quickly joined them in hiding.

There was an angry pulse of Mana, one that had their eyes rolling, and caused Briar to grit her teeth.

'To me!'

It was like the words were echoing around her skull. A call from the Queen, which means Nozel had already started his assault.

Not moments later they were surrounded by the sounds of skittering, heavy, bodies. Ants of all sizes flew down the passageway like a torrent of water, crawling over ground and ceiling, even the Mages bodies, as if they too were just part of the walls.

Nils eyes were snapped tightly closed, daring not to move even as his body tried to recoil in disgust with small feet clinging and then letting go in rapid succession.

He wasn't sure what was worse. The sensation of insects crawling all over you, or the fact it was happening while he was completely blind.

They didn't move, even after the sounds of the scuttling insects had turned into echoes then complete silence. They all were taking a breath as it really began to settle in: the danger they were in. Had any of those ants stopped to realize what they were, and how close they were to their brood, they would have died. No mage could handle a hoard that large in such a small space.

Briar slowly let out the breath she had been holding as she slowly relaxed.

"Disgusting…"

The scholar had pulled her knife out from her sheath again to provide light, and turned just in time to watch Nils pull away from the wall, and all the strings of gunk and slime that were still attached to him.

"I'll just burn this cloak." He grimaced as he tugged it to the side to look at the damage. "The captain will understand…"

Briar could only shake her head. 'Nobles.' She thought sadly, only a noble would worry about his expensive clothing in such a situation.

'How did knights become like this?' She sighed sadly.

Onwards she would walk; now with less fear knowing most, if not all, of the guards had rushed off to assist their queen. She was incredibly relieved to find the chamber was empty of the ants. She held her dagger up as high as she could, and channeled more mana into it, till the tooth was blazing white and heat began to radiate from it.

It illuminated the whole cave which, just like the passageway they had just walked down, was thickly covered in yellow slime and fluid. Attached to the floors and walls were, at first glance, watermelons. Getting closer though and crouching down to see, while her company branched out in the room, Briar rubbed a hand across one.

It was soft and malleable, with a slightly transparent yellow-green colored skin. Inside she could see the squirm still dormant form of an insect larva. Once again she looked up and around, 'there could easily be thousands.' Briar thought to herself.

She had to take one with her. The crew back at the research lab would already be demanding live specimens of Julius, she had no doubt. Many of them enjoyed oddities like this, and it warmed her heart just a little bit.

Briar glanced over to Rob and Nils, both of which were shouting across to one another.

"I've got a man over here!"

"I found a couple of kids!"

"It's the villagers!"

It's just as she thought. While many had probably lost their lives or ran for it, many more had been captured and dragged down here to be the new colony's first meal. They should still be alive, to be as fresh as possible, and now it was just a matter of getting them all out…

Briar looked once more to make sure the other mages were still occupied pulling civilians from the gunk prison before she flicked her wrist. A small rose bud had appeared in her hand. She aimed its base carefully towards the egg. One… two… another swift movement and the bud was embedded in the sloft, leather like shell. It glowed faintly then bloomed, a vibrant red rose, a root like system grew out from the bud to surround the egg in a kind of tight net, or cage. And once it was fully encased the rose shifted from red to Blue.

"Perfect." Briar dug her hands into the ground to yank the unborn creature out of its nest. "Shouldn't be able to hatch now."

"What are you doing!"

Turning around Briar watched Nils, while glaring at her, yank a farmer out from a gross cocoon of mystery slime.

"We have a lot of people to get out of here you know, and we still haven't found Nebra-" he halted in his scolding when he noticed what she held in her hands. What are you doing with that?!"

"Taking it with us." Briar suddenly tossed it over to him. Nils dropped the farmer and scrambled to catch the heavy egg with a less than manly scream.

"What!?" He looked disgusted as he held it at arms length. "Why?! And what's with the flower?"

"You ask a lot of questions." She grumbled in irritation. She could lie and say it was a magical tool.

Something in the back of her mind clicked a little too late, like a spark suddenly crossing the back of her neck. With wide eyes Briar spun around, whipped her blade down but a heavy blow landed against her side before she could properly block. Pain bloomed across her ribs and hip as she went tumbling to the side, crushing some of the eggs and landing in a heap against the wall. Her blade had gone spinning to the side, but luckily stayed lit.

She coughed and gagged as she tried to intake air after it had all been forced from her body. Blurry, tear filled eyes looked up to see the image of a black hulking figure coming towards her.

An armored ant, one that most likely stayed behind to defend the eggs, despite the queen's call. It was larger than the others, with thicker limbs and a heavier tank-like body.

"Shit-" she cursed to herself, one arm wrapped around her side as the ant let out a deep bellow at her. The mages behind it were stunned into statues, one holding the egg and the other had two people draped over his shoulders, intending to carry them away.

Right… they still had to evacuate everyone…

Briar pulled herself to her feet, one hand propping herself against the sticky wall. Luckily the ant had chosen her as its intended target and completely ignored the other two men behind it. Of course she'd be stuck playing distraction.

It seemed Nils and Rob had thought the same thing, as they quickly returned to their task of grabbing people. Briar wasn't sure how to feel about that, honestly. She couldn't see them being smart enough to read her and understand that was the plan.

Which means they just intended to use her as a Martyr, because they only saw her as the Scholar. "Nobles." She muttered with an eye roll. She could not dwell on the emotions for long though as the Ant charged forward.

The woman ducked to the side quickly, avoiding being crushed between its hard head and the wall. She tumbled to the side, snatching her knife as she did and leaping to her feet. She landed in a battle ready stance as the Ant pulled back with a groan. Its armored joints creaked under its own weight as it turned to face her with its glowing compound eyes.

Briar flipped her blade once, to make sure she had a proper grip on it, before using it to make a "come on" gesture.

"Let's go."

She really was bad with banter.

[caliburnabsolute]

Inverse Awakening: Henry

It's everyone's favorite boy! And certainly one of my favorites, for that matter. Henry in this AU is simultaneously much different from how you'll remember him, and still the same old Henry, crows and all.

Henry ends up joining the army much sooner than in canon. For some reason there's a character slot between Sumia and Lon'qu's recruitment? It isn't for Donnel—his slot comes after Lon'qu, the way I have this arranged—but I don't recall anyone else that you can recruit between those two? Bit weird, but whatever. Either way, with his earlier recruitment, I had to think of a way to justify him showing up at the Ylisse-Ferox border, and between that and my reintroduction of the magic triangle (as I mentioned in Aversa's post), I had an idea...

The beats of Henry's backstory in this AU are largely similar, though it starts to diverge early on. Rather than being sent to a boarding school or orphanage as a boy, Henry was dumped off at a monastery on the border of Plegia and Ylisse, where he was taught the tenets of the Nagaite faith. His experiences were exactly as miserable as they were in his canon backstory, but that didn't stop him from being sworn in as a preacher in the name of the divine dragon. Of course, Henry being Henry, he was rather... eccentric in the way he practiced and taught his faith. Outright radical, even. With his sermons proving more macabre and borderline sacrilegious over time, the papacy deemed him unfit to continue serving the church, and he was cast out.

Now, Henry travels across Ylisse as a simple vagabond, continuing to share his unique apocrypha to any who will listen, always with a murder of crows at his beck and call. He still dresses in the robes he had as a clergyman, though they're tattered and worn after years of travel. With such a directionless way of life, it's not hard to sway him into joining the Shepherds—excommunication be damned (hah), they'll take any help they can get.

Rather than being a Dark Mage, or even a Priest, Henry's a Light Mage now. To differentiate it from anima and dark magic, light magic would provide its wielders a variety of minor stat boosts, like Hoshidan scrolls in Fates. Upon promotion, he can become a staff-wielding Bishop, as all Light Mages can, or he could become an Exorcist and take up dark magic, like his canon self. Every non-lord character gets their own alternate promotion for their base class, in addition to the default promotion path. Henry's Second Seal classes, meanwhile, include Thief and Priest.

[never-surrender]

He pauses. One. Two. Three. Four seconds pass, and Astarion is still staring as he thinks it through. No, he most certainly did not cast a scroll of animal speak. Was this animal magical? It had to be, right? That was the only explanation?

"A talking ... thing. Fantastic! As if things in my life weren't already weird enough," comes his complaint, sighing before he decides to crouch down, placing his arms on his knees so that his hands dangle freely from his wrists. "But no, to answer your question, I would do much the same. I won't apologize, however... you are an animal."

He has to nip back the chuckle bubbling in his throat. Though the taste of this man is curious though… Nothing like he's ever bitten before, that's for certain. But he didn't draw a weapon upon the nip despite his obvious disdain, so that must mean he's half decent. Restraint is a pleasant trait to have!

Airin's tail draws over his paws. Despite this man's wavering kindness, there's still more ways to mess with him. " Don't tell me you wouldn't do the same if someone put their hand in your face? " Comes his lowly purr. " I do apologize though. One can never be too sure if a stranger is malicious. "

[endpoem]

Stuff I liked in 2022

‘Saul’ good (and other TV)

It’s not easy to say goodbye to Better Call Saul, the supposed end of Vince Gilligan’s Albuquerque cycle. I bought my dad the complete Breaking Bad on DVD for Christmas in 2014, and we watched the entire thing together, back before I had kids or a real full-time career. Jesse Pinkman, Nacho, Jimmy and Kim—these characters have meant the world to me for the better part of a decade, and Saul was absolutely the pinnacle.

El Camino, Saul season five, and the two halves of season six have been such a gift of flawless storytelling these last few years; sometimes they were the thing that got me out of bed in the morning. Logging into work on a Monday ain’t so bad when you’ve got more of Kim and Jimmy’s mischief to look forward to. Peter Gould, Gilligan, and company stuck the landing. If one of your favorite characters must die, you can’t ask for a more beautiful sendoff than “Rock and Hard Place.”

Bob Odenkirk’s book, Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama: A Memoir, was a great way to spend a weekend, as well, deepening my appreciation for an actor who’d already won my heart in the first couple seasons of Saul. (I’ll admit it: The character was never my favorite part of Breaking Bad. It took the Jimmy dimension to win me over and sell me on the idea of a spinoff. Mission accomplished, I guess.)

It’s a nice treat to see Odenkirk back in his home country of comedy, and it made for a good excuse to watch Mr. Show season one while I was waiting for Better Call Saul to come back from its mid-season break. Bob and I have a shocking number of things in common: five-nine, Irish-Catholic, Illinois guys, a cynicism born of trauma, severe impostor syndrome, et cetera. Anyway, I can’t wait to see what he does next.

I loved Atlanta season three; “New Jazz” was my favorite episode by far, probably because it focuses on Al (Paper Boi) and is weird even by Atlanta standards. I also enjoyed Stranger Things season four, which was a definite high for that series—Joseph Quinn was brilliant. And as a Halo fan going all the way back to 2001, I mostly dug the TV adaptation’s first season, though the finale was a bummer.

I’m a couple seasons into a Mad Men rewatch, trying to fill the void left by the Gilliverse, and it’s a different show now that I’m a father with two kids and more of a career. Unbelievably good.

‘The Rings of Power,’ classic Tolkien, and other fantasies

This was the year I got really into epic fantasy outside of, say, the Elder Scrolls games. The Rings of Power came along just in time to cure my post-Saul blues, and it certainly did the trick. It’s a gorgeous (and expensive) spectacle, with a rich, expansive world, mythic stakes, and some really great performances. And have you seen how beautiful that cast is? I’ve been known to develop the occasional TV or movie crush, Your Honor, but Morfydd Clark’s Galadriel is in a league of her own. My God. She’s great in Saint Maud, too.

After Rings of Power, I rewatched the extended cuts of the movie trilogy and bought a stack of books for good measure—The Hobbit, Rings, The Silmarillion, The Fall of Númenor, Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I just finished Fellowship of the Ring, which is exquisite, and I’ve been reading The Hobbit aloud to my daughter. We’re about three-fourths of the way through that one.

I finally saw the original Willow and Legend (1985) earlier this year, and thought both were excellent. (The Legend Blu-ray from Arrow Video looks stunning.) House of the Dragon was pretty fantastic—as good as Game of Thrones in its earlier seasons, only more focused. And the Disney Plus Willow series is probably my second-favorite fantasy work of 2022; it’s playing around with the same kind of Lovecraftian terror as John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, and I can’t help but see it as a riff on the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

‘Andor’ and more

There was some good star stuff on the tube this year. “The Tribes of Tatooine,” the second episode of Book of Boba, elevated that series above the disposable feel of Mandalorian season two (“The Believer” notwithstanding). And Deborah Chow’s Obi-Wan Kenobi gave those of us who grew up on the prequels a magnificent bookend to the Obi-and-Ani relationship.

Light & Magic, the six-part docuseries on ILM, offered a phenomenal overview of special-effects history beginning with the inception of Star Wars and ending with the biggest breakthroughs of the CGI era. You could easily do a second season on the last couple decades of blockbusters and stuff like StageCraft, but maybe that’s a series for down the road.

But of course no Star Wars discussion this year could pass without addressing the main event, Andor, which can safely be called the best Star Wars story since 1983. Tony Gilroy is a masterful writer and showrunner, responsible for much of what people loved in Rogue One, and he brings all his intelligence and rage and love to Andor. He and his crew ought to be very proud. Who knew that all Star Wars needed was more Andy Serkis and Diego Luna? Gilroy, evidently.

Shadow of the Sith, a 496-page novel by Adam Christopher, was another Star Wars highlight in 2022. If you’re looking for a good Luke Skywalker book, or a good Lando Calrissian book—or some spooky Sith magic—you’ll find all of that and more in this moving Rise of Skywalker tie-in. For those curious about Rey’s parents, this is largely their story, as well, and it’s beautifully done. My favorite Star Wars book in years.

Always gamin’

I’m not a full-time games journalist anymore, so my gaming habits are a lot more relaxed than they used to be. Which is to say I play to have fun, now, and I can’t recommend it enough. I buy far fewer new games these days, for one, though I did love Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, and several games I’ve started but not yet finished.

One of my biggest games this year was Final Fantasy VII Remake, which I finally finished on the PS5. Hell of a game—if any video game can be called a masterpiece, that one comfortably belongs in the category. I also rolled credits on Mass Effect 2 and 3, and thought the latter was far superior to the middle chapter in spite of the general consensus. Regardless of how you feel about the very end, that game is quite an achievement for BioWare, and I hope Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is even half as engrossing.

I spent a lot of time playing Fortnite and Call of Duty online this year—something I plan to do a lot less of in 2023—but had plenty of fun doing it. I replayed a lot of familiar favorites: Skyrim, Halo Infinite, Fallout: New Vegas, Miles Morales. Most of my hours on the Nintendo Switch were spent with KotOR and KotOR II, and I’m currently struggling through an attempt to replay Morrowind on the Xbox, which is both painful and rewarding. I’m rediscovering a lot of the reasons why I fell in love with it twenty years ago.

At the movies

I didn’t go to the theater much this year, but I did watch 209 movies—most of them at home on my 65-inch TCL 5-Series. My top ten films of 2022 were The Fabelmans, Top Gun: Maverick, Elvis, del Toro’s Pinocchio, Watcher, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Pearl, The Batman, Nope, and Hellraiser. Fabelmans and Top Gun in particular made my heart soar; it’s nice to see both Spielberg and Cruise still delivering career-best work a full two decades after Minority Report, which was my favorite movie for a long time.

Outside of those ten, I also loved Kimi, Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Revealer, and Confess, Fletch.

As far as new-to-me classics, I had a very fulfilling year working my way through the gaps in my Carpenter and Mann viewing, if nothing else—They Live, Prince of Darkness, Elvis ’79, Big Trouble in Little China, In the Mouth of Madness, Cigarette Burns, Ali, The Insider, The Keep… I spent a lot of time studying my favorite Carpenter flicks last year as I wrote the treatment for a horror script that’s lived in my head for a while, but I didn’t want to watch Prince of Darkness till after I’d finished a detailed outline of the story. In 2022, I logged fifteen Carpenter films and seven from Mann.

I saw Citizen Kane, F for Fake, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Godfather, Part II, Solaris (2002), The Meyerowitz Stories (every bit as good as Marriage Story), Twin Peaks season two and The Missing Pieces, Killing Them Softly, Jaws, Your Name, The Gambler (the one with James Caan, not Marky Mark), Bonnie and Clyde, Near Dark, The Hidden, Silent Running, the original 3:10 to Yuma, Joe Kidd.

It’s been a hard, stressful, scary, transformative year. But I’m grateful for the strides I made, both personal and professional, and for the media and stories that inspired me along the way.

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[arhvste]

❝ kuroo tetsurō - tetsuhoe ❞

in which kuroo is confused by the ‘playboy’ image pinned onto him after a practice match at fukurodani much to you, his long term girlfriends, amusement

tetsu week masterlist

“did you see the captains for nekoma’s team yesterday?”

“oh their tall middle blocker with the bed hair? he was something else!”

“i just know he’s got girls crawling all over him back at nekoma. i think i’m gonna transfer schools!”

your eyebrow raised in amusement towards the girls nearby who were mindlessly babbling on about a particular rooster headed captain you were familiar with.

the high praise he was recovering in your classroom would certainly give him an ego boost, realistically though, these girls couldn’t have been further from the truth; you were partially thankful for that.

akaashi took notice of your entertained expression as he took his seat beside you in the unsupervised classroom.

“ah,” he clicked his tongue gesturing towards the squealing girls. “they’re talking about kuroo-san when they had the practice match here yesterday.”

you nodded towards your own school teams setter and smiled. “listen to them.” you hummed as akaashi leaned a little further on his desk facing towards the small group of girls nearby.

“what was his name again?”

“i’m not sure, i never got the chance to go down and talk to him!”

“whatever his name is i know it’s one i want to scream”

“you’re so bad!”

akaashi cringed at the rawness of these girls vocabulary. so they thought kuroo was hot? why they couldn’t just word it like that and leave it at that, akaashi would never know. he turned to face you as you pulled your phone out to discreetly record the girls fussing over your boyfriend.

“y/n, isn’t that a little... intrusive?” akaashi quirked an eyebrow towards your smug expression.

“this isn’t an act of jealousy but rather amusement. besides, aren’t they being a little intrusive speaking about my boyfriend like this? tetsu’s gonna shit himself when he hears this, they’ve mischaracterised him completely.”

akaashi nodded before casting his gaze back over to the girls before looking back towards you while you were texting the very boy the girls in your classroom were raving about.

“aren’t you bothered by it?”

you laughed and shook your head firmly.

“no no! not at all, i can’t blame them for being head over heels for him i mean, i fell for him too didn’t i?”

“by some miracle.” akaashi shot back to which you scoffed before turning your attention back down to the device in your hands.

you made quick work of sending the video to your boyfriend and captioning ‘can i tell the girls your name? they want to know for when you have them scream it’ before shutting your phone off and going back to casual conversation with akaashi before the teacher entered and the class simmered down for work.

back at nekoma, kuroo was currently scrolling through the multiple automated notifications piling up on his phone until your name caught his eye. quickly tapping the screen to open snapchat, kuroo smiled softly at the sight of the little purple square under ‘pretty one <3’.

he wasted no time in pressing down on the video to watch whatever it was you had sent him. turning up the volume, kuroo’s eyes widened a little at the caption you had typed out to go along with the video.

“scream it?” he muttered quietly to himself but not quietly enough to miss kenma’s ears.

“what are you watching?” the bleached haired setter asked bordly.

“y/n’s sent me a video but i don’t really understand.” he mumbled pressing down on the outlines square to get the video to replay once more for kenma to see what he was talking about.

kenma’s face twisted into one of disgust as he feigned a gag to kuroo’s offence.

“is it that unbelievable others find me attractive?”

“it’s not even believable y/n finds you attractive yet alone other girls.”

“you wound me.”

“not physically so you can’t complain.”

kuroo snickered before sending back a picture of himself with a puzzled expression and a grossed out looking kenma with the caption ‘kenma didn’t appreciate the honest content, glad to know the girls at your school have working eyes though?’.

he frowned after shutting his phone off as kenma took a seat besides him on the bench besides the court.

“that was weird, i don’t come across as that type of boy do i?”

kenma shrugged and pulled his own phone out, his attention now divided between his bestfriend and his devices.

“not here you don’t. the girls at fukurōdani just sound annoying and superficial minus y/n obviously.”

kenma muttered, his fingers tapping across his own screen.

“well then, i don’t suppose it’s matters too much then. i hope y/n isn’t too bothered by it though, as much as i love the praise, i don’t want it from anyone but her in that sense.”

“whipped.” kenma tutted quietly as kuroo smiled.

“that, i am.”

a week had passed and the two of you had forgotton about the fuss that the girls in your class had made over kuroo. there was no practice match to attend, but bokuto had insisted yourself, kuroo, kenma and akaashi all come over for dinner by the request of his mother and sisters who had complained how they hadn’t seen the four of you for a while together.

kuroo and kenma (kenma begrudgingly however), agreed to meet the three of you outside the entrance of fukurōdani to join you on your journey back to the bokuto residence.

kenma was reluctant to stand out in what obviously wasn’t a fukurōdani school uniform, but kuroo didn’t mind. it wasn’t rare for students from neighbouring schools to wait for other students after school hours as friendship groups outside of schools obviously existed.

kenma was leaning against the wall of the school gates and kuroo was stood beside him texting the group chat that the two of them had arrived and were waiting for them outside. his attention on his phone and not to those around him, kuroo failed to noticed the high pitched shrills of excitement ringing through the air at the sight of him.

“it’s him! the nekoma captain!”

“i’m gonna talk to him this time, do i look okay?”

“you look fine but i’m the one who’s gonna get his number so don’t get in my way.”

“you can’t say that! it’s whoever he picks!”

by now, kenma had picked up on the bickering of the girls which he considered impressive because usually he’d be able to block out anything outside of his psp.

“annoying.” he muttered coldly before doing his best to turn his attention back to his game.

“hi!”

kuroos head snapped up and he was met with a small group of girls that seemed to be growing with each student that left the gates of the school.

“um... hi?”

his face twisted in confusion as he silently begged yourself, bokuto or even akaashi to come out the gates and rescue him.

“so, you played here the other day didn’t you? you were really good.” one girl praised, her index finger twirling around the front strands of her hair.

“obviously he is. we go to a powerhouse school.” kenma muttered sharply more to himself than anything but it didn’t fail to garner a few dirty looks from the girls. not that kenma could’ve cared less anyway.

“uh thanks. you guys are kinda blocking up the path, you might wanna uh, go home?” kuroo suggested his concern growing at the same rate the group of girls were.

other students were beginning to take notice and while some girls added themselves to the group, other student shot kuroo an apologetic glance to which he half smiled back to.

“this is our territory, we’ll go home when we get your number.” one girl boldly stated to which other girls agreed.

“my girlfriend wouldn’t appreciate it.” he stated matter-o-factly.

the girls faces pulled in disgust and others humour while the ‘leader’ of the group scoffed.

“you don’t have a girlfriend. boys like you don’t settle so just give a few of us your number and eventually you’ll fall for one of us, although it’s more than likely going to be me.”

“actually, i’ve fallen for a girl already and i’ve fallen in deep. there’s no pulling me out so you might aswell run along no? are your parents not worried as to why you’re coming home so late?”

kuroo was growing more irritated than amused by now and he wanted nothing more than your hand in his at that very moment.

“stop lying and just give it to us. why do you treat the nekoma girls differently from us?”

“kuroo-san treats all girls other than y/n, his girlfriend of over a year differently. you’re not deprived so i suggest taking your leave before you cause any more disruption to anyone else.”

“akaashi!” kuroo smiled thankfully to which akaashi only nodded curtly before allowing you to walk by him wide smile drawn across your face.

“tetsu! kenma! i’m so glad to see you both!” you shoved past the shocked girls as you pulled yourself into kuroo’s arms as he happily accepted the gesture.

“i’m relieved to see you kitten.” he replied, the nickname stirring loss over the rest of the girls.

“whatever, you weren’t that hot anyway.” the main girl huffed purely out of embarrassment because not only had she been outdone by yourself, been rejected in public, but she’d also been told off by akaashi and his cold and flat tone did nothing to sugar coat the scolding.

“lying is a bad habit you know!” bokuto added earning a soft laugh from you.

if the girls weren’t embarrassed before, they certainly were now seeing as their own schools captain was now joining in.

“let’s just go.”

the girls filed down the street, embarrassment and regret written across their faces.

“why did you take so long?” kuroo whined as he pulled away to look at you.

“well, if there wasn’t a group of girls rushing through the halls to go see the ‘hot captain from before’ blocking the hallways, i would’ve been faster coming out.”

“i’m just glad you’re here now.” he smiled as the four of you began to walk down the street towards bokuto’s house.

“we’ve never had another captain stir so much commotion before, you must’ve really caught their short minded attention.” akaashi commented as kuroo told you all about the comments about him not having a girlfriend were made.

“yeah tetsuhoe.”

“what did you just call me?”

you snickered as you squeezed his hand.

“you heard me womaniser.”

kuroo groaned as kenma smirked at your teasing.

“you’re the only woman i want.” he sighed as bokuto awed at the two of you.

“yeah? good to know, glad i’m special enough for your attention.” you teased further as the others slowly began to join in much to kuroo’s dismay.

feigning annoyance was hard to do around you, but kuroo was just glad you weren’t bitter over the whole situation. he knew you knew you were the one for him.

playboy reputation or not, kuroo was happy just knowing you were confident in your postion in his heart.

and he’d be sure to remind you the next time he got you alone.

dt - @aislastetsu

general taglist → @atsumuwoah @bloody-bella @bbymilkbread @miracleboy420 @doggonudez @tsumue @peteunderoos @tsukkisbean @saturnfarie @toffees-main @zumisace @boosyboo9206 @totorosleaff @27kei @dai-tsukki-desu @angrylittleriri @tsukkaria @kuxredere @warakou @mattsuny @lovinnoya @sophiashortcake

ALL CONTENT BELONGS TO @KUROOSKULT ON TUMBLR 2020 PLEASE DO NOT REPOST, CHANGE OR PLAGIARISE

[whoacanada]

Zimmerbro AU

Summary: Andrew Phillip Rowe could skate before he could walk, and it wasn’t until he was almost twenty and well on his way to becoming a Las Vegas Ace before he knew why.

a/n: that’s right we’ve got a secret zimmermann brother au based on the fact that Bob was an active pro athlete for almost 15 years before Jack was born and almost definitely had relationships before Alicia. This particular one resulted in a secret love child.

When the call finally went out that year —  a request for players willing to billet the incoming draftees —  Andrew had been the first in line.

His already sparsely decorated guest room had been primed for a new tenant since he’d learned Las Vegas’ abysmal season had earned them the first pick of the 2009 draft. In his mind, Andrew had envisioned a tearful confession. A family reunion nineteen years in the making where he’d finally get a chance to connect with a half-brother he’d grown up learning about through news articles and stats pages.

He wasn’t ready for Jack to pull out of the draft days before the ceremony; wasn’t ready for the claims of an overdose or speculation about suicide attempts. He certainly wasn’t expecting to have to open his home to a young man with limp blonde hair and deep circles under his eyes with the same enthusiasm he’d promised he’d offer to a son of Bob Zimmermann.

Andrew was hoping for a little brother. 

He got Kent Parson instead.

______

“You remind me of my boyfriend.” Kent slurs one night, completely gone on Johnny Walker Blue borrowed from Andrew’s wet bar. “It’s your . . . face.”

“Shouldn’t talk about things like that,” Andrew cautions gently, covering his own surprise. “Never know who might be listening.”

“Who fucking cares? He won’t talk to me,” Kent continues, ignoring him and sniffing like he’s on the verge of sobbing or puking, both options equally unwanted. “They wouldn’t tell me if he was even alive.”

Another unwanted puzzle piece locks into place.

“Jack?” Andrew suggests softly, and Kent begins to cry.

“You won’t tell right?”

Andrew shakes his head no, long enough for Kent’s bleary eyes to focus on the gesture and take it seriously.

Things are different, after that conversation. Not worse, or better, just different.

________

“He’s my brother.”

Andrew admits this one night, for no reason other than that he can.

Kent is across the room, backlit by lights from the Strip, his legs dangling off the arm of his favorite couch as he scrolls through his phone looking for distractions. Parse hasn’t lived with Andrew for almost two seasons, but he still turns up like a bad penny whenever he needs to commiserate with someone who knows his more lascivious secrets. Truthfully, Andrew’s grateful for the company. He’s a pretty genial guy, but he’s always kept his distance, a personality trait he likes to think he shares with an unassuming sibling, but there’s no way to know for sure. The farther Andrew gets from the 2009 Draft, the less faith he has in a reunion that won’t just bring crippling sorrow to everyone involved.

A secret Zimmermann son who actually made it in the NHL. Who has his name on the Stanley Cup, not once, but twice, largely thanks to the spitfire forward lounging in Andrew’s living room.

“Who’s your brother?” Kent asks, not looking up from his phone.

“Jack Zimmermann.”

Kent barks a laugh and rolls his head lazily to smirk at Andrew.

“That’s funny. I guess you kinda have the same chin. Was Marky digging for chirps?”

Andrew has no idea what that means, but he sets down his tablet and says, “No, he’s actually my half-brother. My mom dated Bad Bob in ’84 and got pregnant.”

The lackadaisical smile on Kent’s face falters as his gaze sharpens, like he’s actually looking at Andrew for the first time. Andrew responds by gesturing at himself lamely.

“That’s not funny.”

“No.” Andrew agrees. “It isn’t.”

Kent swings his feet down off the couch and braces himself against the overstuffed leather. He doesn’t look mad, but there’s something too close to disbelief for Andrew to convince himself everything’s okay. It takes a moment, but Kent must find what he’s looking for on Andrew’s face.

“Does Bob know?” Kent asks with that familiar overfamiliarity, as if they both still have some personal relationship with the living legend.

“Yeah. When Mom got pregnant she told him she didn’t want the attention since it was only a fling — ”

“Who the fuck doesn’t lock down Bob Zimmermann?” Kent breathes. “Also, why the fuck did she tell you that?”

“No shit, right? She got him to sign away parental rights, set up a trust, never spoke to him again as far as I know. I didn’t find out until after I signed with the Aces. She didn’t want me to get blindsided if it all came out, but the story never broke.”

“I mean, does Bob know who you are?” Kent questions. “Does Jack?”

Andrew shakes his head no, because he doesn’t think so, and Kent flops back against the cushions, face slack with disbelief; it doesn’t take long for his features to shift to anger.

“You knew this whole time and you didn’t tell me? Even after I told you —“

“Okay, there’s a whole-ass difference between you fucking dudes and and me being ‘Bad Bob’s bastard’,” Andrew bites, curtailing Kent’s imminent hissy fit. Appropriately, Kent closes his mouth, almost pouting.

“Fine. But that’s fucked.” Kent says after a loaded moment of silence. “I’m sorry you’re . . . you.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry you’re you, too.”

“You know Jack’s signing with the Falconers, right?” Kent offers like the worst kind of olive branch, unintentionally telling Andrew exactly what he was up to during that stretch of time between New England games a few months prior. “It’s not public but it’s happening. Ink’s dry.”

“I know. That’s why I told you. It’s gonna be weird,” Andrew swallows, thinking about playing Providence in the coming months.

“Fucking right it’s weird.”

_________

For the most part, the Las Vegas Aces are decent, stand up guys. Even with the accusations of gambling debts and mob connections with the ownership group, Andrew’s never been asked to hit a certain player a little too hard, or to take a dive so the other team gets a shot at a power play. A lot of talk, a lot of conspiracies, ‘Typical Aces hockey’, but there’s no malice. Not really.

Andrew thinks it’s hilarious he plays the game a lot like his estranged father, but he’s not a legend in the making, hell, at this point he’s barely regarded as more than a mid-level, reliable center that can bring home 40 points a season.

Carly whips behind Zimmermann’s back to clip his skate with a stick, dropping a ill advised chirp that sets every player in earshot on edge. Parse is close enough to catch the quiet slur, stiffening like he’s been hit, and Andrew watches Zimmermann recover quickly, steely and resolute. 

Jack has his mother’s eyes — not the warm brown Andrew catches every time he looks in the mirror.

“He’s a fucking goon,” Andrew breathes, gliding up to Jack’s shoulder in lieu of an apology. Zimmermann doesn’t miss a beat, his gaze flicking to Andrew with the quiet rage of ‘who gives a fuck’. Andrew admires his commitment to the game. Coming back after so much, after so long, to willingly subject himself to the same kind of treatment that Andrew knows likely led to his original fall from grace.

“Hey,” Kent ducks his head as he slides up a little while later, mouthguard clenched between his teeth, and asks, “You see his twink?”

At Andrew’s obvious confusion, Kent jerks his head toward the glass behind the Falconers’ bench, to a raucous group of fans all sporting fresh Zimmermann jerseys. Andrew’s gaze drifts along the row of faces, lingering longer on the familiar, handsome couple beside the blonde young man. He may be imagining things — the stadium lights catching a bad angle —  but for the briefest moment, Andrew holds eye contact with his father.

“He’s cute, right?” Kent says bitterly, like he doesn’t have a partner of his own back home.

“Yeah, he is. You gonna do anything about the slurs, Captain?” Andrew counters, earning a stern look from Parson.

“I’ll deal with Carly.”

“Oh, you will? Because I’ve never seen you shut him down before.”

“I’ll handle it.”

Kent’s expression goes stormy, and he gives Andrew a hard shove before skating off to set up for the next shift. To his credit, he does grab Carly by the arm and tell him something that earns a look of displeasure from the larger man, but Andrew knows a verbal warning won’t curtail someone as dead-set in his conservatism as Carly.

The next play, Carly flashes Andrew a toothy smile over the lineman’s shoulder, as if they’re in on the same joke, and his vision goes red.

__________

__________

“Bad Bob’s outside,” Scraps rasps, like whatever brief interaction he’s just had has physically winded him. “He wants to talk to Flip.”

Andrew blinks up from the water bottle in his hands, previously concerned with the pink-stained gauze wrapped around his knuckles. A few of the guys start chirping, but most of them remain silent, still processing the fact that Andrew assaulted one of their own without clear motivation, in defense of an opponent.

“That’s what this was all about? You gunning for a trade?” Sorenson spits from his stall. “Needed to impress Bad Bob by beating the snot out of Carly?”

“Maybe I am,” Andrew sighs, pushing himself to his feet, wincing at the way his jaw aches from the few good hits Carly had managed to squeeze in before he went down. “What the fuck are you gonna do about it.”

_______

Andrew’s grateful he kept his skates on. He needs the boost of confidence that comes with the added height, especially when he finds Bob Zimmermann waiting patiently in the corridor like he’s just another staff member and not the second most recognizable figure in modern hockey.

“Hey kid,” Bob greets, casting an approving, overly-familiar eye over Andrew’s padded bulk and sweat-slick hair. “You can throw a hell of a punch. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a guy beat the piss out of a teammate before. Off ice, sure, but never during a game.”

His accent is just as thick in private as every interview Andrew’s ever caught live — but his tone is unexpectedly warm, even grateful — when Bob laughs at his own recounting of Andrew’s assault attempt, the sound is light and joyous like nothing in the world comes easier to this titan of a man.

Andrew wonders if Bob can recognize the chin they share beneath a his playoff beard; if there’s any resemblance left in a nose that’s been reset a half-dozen times.

Andrew grew up loved and never wanted for anything. His step-fathers, both of them, had been good men who never left him looking for a father figure. It wasn’t until his twenties that Andrew even realized there was hole where his bio-dad should have been, and not just a regular hole, a yawning sinkhole threatening to devour his entire sense of self, because his biological father turned out to be a man he grew up idolizing as a personal hero.

He’s not mad at his mother, but when Andrew struggles to find his voice — which is bullshit seeing as he’s almost thirty-five and a god-damned professional athlete — he can’t stop himself from feeling like a misplaced child.

“Do you,” Andrew swallows, looking over Bob’s shoulder to see if anyone’s watching them. Finding they’re alone, he rallies quietly, “Do you know who I am?”

Bob’s jovial expression softens into something remorseful, but unfathomably kind. “I do, buddy,” he acknowledges, somehow squeezing three decades of affection into one term of endearment. “I’ve known for some time, now. The whole time, actually.”

That hurts more than expected.

“Does your wife? Does Jack?”

Bob shakes his head, but it isn’t a hard no.

“Alicia knows, and Jack has some idea he’s got a half-brother, but it’s all in the abstract. No specifics. Definitely doesn’t know you play. I wanted to respect your privacy and your mother’s wishes. She let me know she’d told you the truth a few years back and I wanted to give you the space you needed if you decided to reach out. When you didn’t, well, a man makes assumptions.”

Andrew looks down at the concrete beneath his skates and sniffs hard, fighting nasal drip from the smelling salts he’d needed in the third period; or, at least, that’s what he tells himself. “I had a plan, back when — ” he stops himself, looking down at his skates. Bob’s eyebrows lift in curiosity, leaving room for Andrew to gather his thoughts, but he doesn’t take the bait, unable to bring up what could have been just yet. Bob seems to grasp the context after the moment.

“2009,” he acknowledges softly. “Hell of a year.”

“Yeah. It was. Is he okay?”

“What, Jack? He’s leagues ahead of where he was then —”

“No, I mean, tonight. Carly clipped him pretty hard before I got in there.”

“Oh, a little bruised up, but he’ll live. Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Okay.”

Andrew looks down at his bandaged fist and realizes he’s completely forgotten how gnarly his face must look.

“Trainer says I’m alright, but I’m gonna get leveled with a wicked fine, I know it.”

“Was it worth it?” There’s a look of guilty pride on Bob’s face, like the man’s enjoying himself a little too much when he leans in and whispers, “You just did something I’ve wanted to do since Jack was in mites. Fucking lay out one of those fuckers that’s got nothing better to do than bitch because they can’t play,” there’s a moment of hesitation, as if he’s worried about pushing a boundary, before he adds, “How’d it feel to look out for your little brother?”

Pride, it turns out, in contagious, and Andrew feels like he could go back on the ice and do it all over again. “Pretty fucking great,” Andrew can’t help a smile, wincing when the gesture pulls at his split lip.

Bob slaps a hand on Andrew’s shoulder pads, then gets a grip on the back of his head, heedless of his sweaty hair.

“Crisse, you’re a fuckin’ beaut, kid. I’ve wanted to tell you that for years.”

Andrew can’t blame the smelling salts anymore.

__________

Jack clearly doesn’t see his father standing there with red-rimmed eyes, or Andrew in an equally unkempt state, and has no reason to think anything untoward has happened when he offers a handshake and pulls Andrew into a hug, bouncing his free fist off the back of Andrew’s pads. “I owe you a drink,” Jack says decisively when he pulls back, shooting a grin between his father and Andrew. “Can’t believe you did that.”

“More than a drink, I think,” the blonde guy Andrew saw behind the bench pipes up. Jack’s ‘twink’. Boyfriend. Whatever. “Dinner at least.”

“A pie,” Bob suggests tightly, keeping his voice even as he turns to quickly scrub his fist over his eyes. Andrew recognizes the statuesque woman who strides up beside Bob, and one quick look tells him she definitely knows who he is.

“Hello, Andrew,” Alicia greets softly, genuinely. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

“You, too.” he says, the tightness in his throat coming out as gruffness rather than emotion. “This is great, but I should go shower and, uh, it was nice meeting you all.”

Bob’s hand whips out and fists the sleeve of Andrew’s sweater, keeping him in place.

“You have plans tonight?”

Andrew debates lying, because he doesn’t know how to move forward from this point, but they’re all looking at him. Waiting. Expectant. There’s too much at stake, and yet somehow — A sharp whistle drags Andrew’s attention back to the locker room. Kent is peeking his head out, and god knows how long he’s been eavesdropping.

“Yo, Zimmermanns. Bittle.”

“Parson.” The blonde says curtly, earning a wry smirk from Kent.

“Flip, we got a presser if you feel like putting a bow on the evening,” Kent’s gaze drifts to Bob’s flushed face, and he adds, “Or, you can shower and slip out the loading bay while I cover for your aggro ass because this is not going to be fun. Your call.”

Andrew looks at the small family surrounding him, his family, and says, “I don’t want to explain.” Kent shrugs and ducks back inside while Bob’s brow furrows in confusion. “I can do dinner, but I don’t want to,” Andrew holds his hands out in front of him, trying to gesture what he means, and Bob snaps his fingers in understanding.

“Ah, ha, I got you, kid.”

“Neat. I’m gonna go shower.”

“We will be here when you’re ready,” Alicia offers. “Take your time.”

“Oh, I will,” Andrew replies before he can stop himself, cringing the second his back is turned because what the fuck could he be any more awkward?

Time will tell.

_____________

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