#time. The perversion of the art of war will stand no longer.

[onereallygoodlambonastick]

chinese imperialists are good at what they do because they are very quiet about it

[onouwu]

Dr. Omiata's Depravity

Dr. Ellie Omiata, a cardiologist hailing from the 30th century, had achieved everything she could in her profession. Her expertise had saved countless lives, but in the sterilized and automated reality of her time, she felt an aching void.

Ellie became a cardiologist with the desire to protect and care for vulnerable life. Throughout her life, she had a hero complex, an intense desire to shield the fragile, the helpless, the downtrodden. She read countless stories of damsels in distress and imagined herself the knight in shining armor. However, her fantasies were much different... darker, not the hero, but the villain. She hoped to be a heart surgeon, but her desired profession was obsolete. Surely it was an amazing thing, highly successful doctorless organ transplants... but for Ellie, this left her without a place in the world. There were no knights, and now no heart surgeons. People no longer needed saving, she thought. Longing for purpose, Ellie became a temporal explorer, and with countless tales and fantasies in her mind, she took a one-way trip to the savage lands of a war-torn timeline. landing herself smack in the middle of a medieval Nordic civilization.

A stark contrast to her futuristic, technological world. It was a time defined by relentless war, brutal violence, and no place for the frail. Standing amidst the icy landscapes and hardened warriors, Ellie's dark skin and voluminous hair made her a beacon of otherworldly charm, a symbol of exotic mysticism from foreign lands that had not yet been witnessed by these people.

The king, intrigued by her unique appearance and captivated by her advanced medical knowledge, spared her the typical fate of an outsider. They sensed an opportunity in Ellie's keen intellect and apparent strangeness, a utility that could serve their cause well. Yet she didn't ask for a comfortable position within the castle. Ellie asked for something different. Her desires outshined what was believed to be common sense. Her wish granted, Ellie found herself granted a position many loathed, yet she coveted – a captain of the guard. The final word on strategy in the battlefield.

Despite her lack of allegiance to the kingdom, she relished the role that offered an intoxicating cocktail of power and intrigue. Her knowledge of human anatomy, blended with her understanding of martial arts, rendered her an indomitable warrior on the battlefield, effortlessly thwarting the many adversaries that dared to challenge her. Despite her desires to be the hero, she found the most thrill in being the warrior. the ender of heroes and villains alike, what she was... it was hard to tell.

Ellie wasn't moved by battle, what she wanted was power. A sense of control over life and death that she had never felt in her time. The more she acted on her whims, the more she felt that maybe her desires were sick, depraved... selfish. However, there was no going back. From now on, she would fulfill her deepest desires. Her weapon of choice was a large war hammer. A tool of blunt heavy destruction, she felt like this was the best way to exert force while giving her control over how it was applied.

Ellie thought back to the tales of delicate, fair-skinned women being hoisted upon the white horse of their saviors. The desire to live that fantasy was all she could think of, and now she had the position to do it... or some strange version of that.

Ellie wasn't able to ride into the sunset like in the stories, but beggars cant be choosers, and in this world, the desperation of savage war brought everyone to the battlefield at times, and slaughter was blind to beauty. Frailty met quick ends. Not for Ellie though. This was her moment - a crude, perverse twist on her romance fantasies. There was no romance, only salvation in the blood-soaked ground. The savagery of war a canvas where she could paint her unique narrative. Her gaze, wielded like a precision tool, was constantly scanning, evaluating, searching. Among the hordes of battle-hardened soldiers like a depraved beast. Some day, Ellie's eyes quickly fell upon a woman – blonde, fierce, yet possessing a delicate grace. Her pale visage a vibrant beacon. The woman was like a strikingly vivid palette amidst the monochrome of warriors, an unexpected anomaly in a battlefield bereft of grace.

Ellie became the self-appointed guardian of this precious gem, determined to protect her from the clutches of her own bloodthirsty squad which had a hunger for easy pickings. The sight of this radiant woman made her heartbeat race, not with bloodlust but with a deep, undeniable fascination. It was as if the chaotic battlefield had morphed into an exhilarating treasure hunt, the treasure being these living, breathing, beautiful Nordic women. Ellie's intentions were clearer to her than ever - to salvage these creatures from the cruel jaws of war, and to preserve their splendor for herself. Ellie could see the perversion of her instincts in full display, but the desire was so great, she couldn't stop herself. The battlefield, a dreaded arena of death, had now become her playground, a hunting ground to satiate her unorthodox desires. The rush of adrenaline in her veins was palpable as she locked eyes with the blonde beauty.

She was yet another savage on the battlefield, but with the precision of a surgeon. Even as a predator, surely her prey would at least be grateful for a better outcome than death, she thought. As they engaged, the woman's sword was fast, though Ellie herself was graceful, and predicting. She studied this game of war like chess and became a grand master. Ellie struck at the perfect moment, sweeping the blonde's feet from beneath her, casting her to the earth.

She then kicked away the sword, leaving the woman defenseless and bewildered on the rough battlefield floor. The sight of this exquisite creature, rendered vulnerable amidst the grit and grime, filled Ellie with an unprecedented sense of desire. Every exasperated breath filling this magnificent form lit up Ellie's senses. It was nothing like her fantasies... it was better. The battlefield had always been a stage for displaying might, but for Ellie, this was a new, intoxicating form of dominance.

With her adrenaline surging, Ellie approached the woman cautiously, the woman's chest heaving vividly beneath her. The blonde was defeated, awaiting the cruel and merciless strike of the heavy mallet, but defiant. To the look of confusion in those blue eyes, Ellie gingerly placed the head of her war hammer over the woman's billowing chest. She stood there in awe, feeling the rapid pulse of delicate life through the handle. As she pressed down harder, the woman's heartbeat became more vivid, then stuttered, a defiant drumroll against the encroaching steel.

Ellie reveled in the sensation. The strength of this woman's heart, its indomitable vitality, was now at her mercy. It was a testament to the woman's vibrant life, yet it was helpless under Ellie's power. The heart struggled and strained under the oppressive weight, succumbing slowly to the inexorable pressure.

Ellie observed the woman's battle for breath, her struggle against the metal, with an admiration tinged with disbelief. This was her treasure, her trophy of war, and she found herself enchanted by the rawness of this spectacle. Even as the woman's vigor ebbed away, her confusion turning to exhaustion, Ellie was in awe at the fight she put up. Her eyes, once fierce, now pleading and confused, fluttered close as unconsciousness claimed her. Finally, Ellie lifted her weapon.

As the woman lie there unconscious, the feeling of her heart's struggle was vivid in Ellie's mind. She straddled the woman and listened in. Its beats were soft and slow but recovering.

A surge of satisfaction rippled through Ellie at the sight of her captured prize, this fair-skinned angel now her responsibility. She had now to protect her trophy from the inevitable spoils of war, a task she accepted with a curious blend of anticipation and determination. This was her battlefield, and she had just taken her first treasure... alive. Ellie, carrying her new trophy, departed from the blood-soaked battlefield towards her home in the kingdom. Usually, a mere shelter from the harsh Nordic weather. With a blend of anticipation and caution, she bound the woman's wrists and ankles together, taking care not to make it too tight.

She gently lowered the woman onto the bed, her taut form a stark contrast against the rough-hewn linens. Ellie then lied down beside her, enveloping the unconscious woman in a tender hold to warm her. The role she played shifted between pet, trophy, and love at Ellie's whims. Her head found a resting place on the woman's chest, and as Ellie closed her eyes, she was serenaded by the rhythmic lullaby of the woman's recovering heartbeat.

With every beat that echoed against her ear, Ellie found herself more and more captivated by the living, breathing prize she had claimed. Her fingers tentatively ventured across the woman's body, exploring the gentle curve of her waist, the softness of her relaxed belly. She traced the delicate blue streaks beneath the woman's pale skin - the veins that carried life and vitality within this ethereal creature.

Ellie marveled at her fortune, her chest swelling with a sense of triumph and disbelief. She had taken her first victory, and claimed s supple, delicate, breathing trophy with a heartbeat as her spoils of war.

As she lay there, the woman's steady resilient life lulling her into a trance-like state, Ellie knew she was in the right timeline.

[usagirln12003]

Toko Fukawa: Hogwarts AU

Toko Fukawa is a Half-Blood witch that was born on the 3rd of March 1971 and started attending Hogwarts on the 1st of September 1982, being sorted into Ravenclaw House.

She has a Willow wand with a Dragon Heartstring Core.

Her Patronus is Non-Corporeal.

Her favorite subject is Potions and her least favorite subject is Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Toko is intellectually gifted, yet she has problems in social behavior. It's been stated that she either never learned or never bothered to learn social skills. She even considers herself a 'gloomy outcast', often deciding to distance herself from others.

Due to the constant bullying she faced as a child, Toko is highly suspicious of other people, frequently accusing them of thinking bad things about her. She expresses her opinions freely and extremely, which can come across as mean and often rubs people the wrong way, though she claims she is just being honest. She has an unusually quick tendency to self-victimize and she refuses to believe compliments from other people. She also is very self-conscious about her body and tends to think that other people consider her ugly. At times, she tries to appear as young as possible and she is paranoid that others might consider her "an old hag", However, she is also offended if her body is not considered attractive and adult-like.

During her first years at Hogwarts, Toko can often be seen stalking Byakuya Togami, seeing him as the “ideal boyfriend", behaving submissively toward him and calling him "master". After the reveal of her cursed alter, Genocide Jack, Toko's crush on Byakuya took on a more distinctively sexual undertone, and she was capable of neither proper judgment nor control over her perverse fantasies. It's also been confirmed that she's a masochist, though she also seems to have sadistic fantasies about Byakuya. Ironically, she has a tendency to scold other people for being indecent, sometimes with no good reason. Due to her paranoia, she easily assumes that boys have bad intentions if they wish to spend time alone with her.

Toko is also extremely afraid of blood and the dark due to very traumatic experiences. She also strongly dislikes bathing, to the point of fear, which might also be a result of an unknown trauma.

During the Fourth Wizarding War, Toko revealed a kinder and more caring side of herself as she traveled with Komaru while on the run. Though she remained rather pessimistic and gloomy, she was more mature and stronger. She forced herself to be strong and believed that fighting against all odds is the only way out, often echoing Makoto's sentiments and begrudgingly crediting him with the courage she had gained. When Komaru approached the point of giving in to despair, Toko encouraged her to stand up and face her fears. While not used to touching other people, she is later fine with hugging Komaru, and willing to comfort her, though she says she isn't good at it. She finally finds a true friend in Komaru and is willing to stay by her side, and says that she's found her hope in her.

As a result of her experiences in the killing game, Toko also became easily frustrated by people who give up and make excuses, calling them cowards. She accuses them of not being prepared to stand up for themselves, something that reminded her of her past self. She also took a stand in challenging her own fears; she no longer faints at the sight of blood, having taken Byakuya's advice about growing up. However, she still remained extremely disgusted at the sight of large amounts of blood.

[valorxdrive]

HC; Heart's Memory.

There comes a point in time where Sora cements the fact deep down, that the external mind cannot be wholly trusted in the trials he's gone through.

Beings such as Xehanort, hearing, witnessing lingering vestiges of the Castle Oblivion grim experiments have shown in how it's incredible fragile in essence. It also intertwines with how often through his journeys, strength hard acquired finds itself being often ripped away akin to some cosmic joke. The only boon that came with it the heightened 'floor' of re-establishing that might, while quickly breaking off into new heights.

So what do he poses as the solution? Post KH3's Keyblade War, the solution comes with heightened interconnectivity with his Heart Realm. It stands as one of the higher dimensions within the KH mythos, a place where seconds in the living plane can stretch to some unknown reach of time.

In his most recent adventures he's come to gain the ability that faded with childhood days, the means of allowing the conscious and unconscious self to step into those grounds aligned.

Within it does he captures the true reservoir of memory. From the day of his birth while helping Ventus, to the most modern second, all life experience is situated inside this primal force he's come to cultivate with the height of his journey. Undisturbed, no longer lost, glimmering like countless stars within an abyssal night and all for his use. It is here that Sora is coming into his own with the fundamental power of KH mythos, and in turn, what allows him to reach the boundless heights that he does.

The new goal he establishes is ensure that this becomes the grounds of his memory to tap into, of what he can recall, tap into, to once again witness with his 'Eyes' from his first person accounts. (That also counts the time with Ventus.) Taking the basis of the other instances he's fortified a path of mastery through physical might, arcane arts or stalwart defense, it becomes the newly born bridge to keep note of his first person accounts. Deception can not nurture it's way until the unrivaled truth.

To recall the minute details, to have encounters never be forgotten, to draw back to the raw experience of every moment in order to establish connection anew to his physical form, these become new goals within his training. Being the unknown path that holds no teacher, and only his wayfaring stride, he's awfully inexperienced and new to the extents as it current stands. This will be the pivotal defense and grounds for countering those who perversely invade the inner sanctum of one's entire being, erasing minds, trying to re-purpose them into tools.

Being upon new ground is perfectly fine in Sora's book, the option is there, and there's come a time where he truly has to seize his potential for the horrors resurfacing from the old Age of Fairy Tales.

[mixelation]

the problem with posting as you write is that some of this information definitely should have been introduced earlier lol

Iwa was nestled on a tiny plateau at the base of a mountain range, where one side of the village plunged upward to the sky and the other side suddenly dropped off as a cliff. They’d taken the only even remotely flat approach, a narrow strip of land that connected the plateau to a pine forest. Their guides then led them partway down the cliffside to a side-access entrance, presumably to avoid them actually seeing the village before their security screening. The building opened into Iwa’s tunnel system, after which they were funneled outside and into one of the shitty half-abandoned neighborhoods at the base of the cliff. 

The dorms were part of the Iwa outskirts, a little cluster of low-rent homes and Iwa-funded shinobi housing that had popped up when the Second War churned out a bunch of orphans and disabled shinobi who could no longer afford the high rents generated by lack of space in Iwa proper. Their civilian population had failed to follow the expansion down the cliff with shops or services. There was only one steep, poorly maintained staircase up to Iwa, carved into the cliff and then ducking underground about half way up to join the network of tunnels throughout the village. The entire commute to do even the most basic chore or grab a bite to eat was therefore absolutely abysmal if you weren’t a trained shinobi, or if you lost your leg to being a shinobi. No one moved to the outskirts because they wanted to. 

The little neighborhood was now mostly abandoned, with the Third Shinobi War doing a decent job of cleaning out housing in Iwa-proper (tanks, Minato), and someone on Oonoki’s advisory council realizing they could increase their army by subsidizing rent to shinobi or civilians who pledged their children to be shinobi. The outskirts had been mostly empty buildings for his living memory. 

Deidara had passed through this area frequently, because he’d needed access to more remote training grounds to practice his art, but he’d barely spent any time actually in the neighborhood. He’d never looked twice at the cluster of squat buildings that were their housing for the exams. 

The dorms were just as shitty as Deidara expected. Someone– probably some underpaid genin team– had at least cleaned the place up, taping plastic over cracked windows and leaving all the lightbulbs bare but functional. The walls were dense stone-and-mud mixtures that a group of chunin with decent doulton could sculpt with relatively low effort, which trapped heat inside and made the rooms stuffy even as the late spring air was pleasant. There was a main building with an area to socialize, the kitchen, and a dining area lined with long, metal tables. Both their teams were assigned one room each in the same building, and they’d be sharing their bathroom with two other teams. 

“This is kind of shit,” Mangetsu observed once their guide had left them alone. Their rooms were identical, outfitted with two narrow bunk beds each that barely fit. 

Perversely, Deidara had the sudden urge to point out that Iwa proper had all sorts of extremely attractive and interesting examples of architecture.

“What did you expect, a five-star hotel?” Tori asked. “Is that what they give you oh-so-important swordsmen in training in Kiri?”

“Please,” Mangetsu replied, flashing his ugly teeth. “Even our least famous guests would get a three star hotel.”

“And you’d know all about least famous guests,” Tori said, flashing her teeth right back. “Does anyone actually know all seven swordsmen?”

“Tori,” Kushina-sensei chided. “Don’t just insult shinobi when they’re standing right next to you, you know. With a sword, I might add.” 

Kisame laughed, although it was obviously extremely strained. “Yeah, kid, they let me keep my weapons.”

The smile Kisame shot her was dangerous, the type Deidara had seen on his face right before dismembering someone. Tori just held his gaze, unimpressed. 

“Did they really confiscate all your weapons?” Kisame added, turning to Kushina. 

Kushina-sensei rolled her eyes. “Ugh, it’s a long story. Ask me over dinner.”

Kisame herded Mangetsu into their room, even as Mangetsu opened his mouth to try baiting Tori again. Kushina likewise shooed them into their horrible uncomfortable room, and Deidara immediately tossed his travel pack up to claim one of the top bunks. 

“Why are you antagonizing people you just met?” Kushina-sensei demanded of Tori. “I said be annoying to Iwa-nin, not start beef with everyone you meet, you know.”

Tori sat on the bed beneath Deidara’s, and Deidara took three steps up the wall to collapse on the mattress above her. 

“I wasn’t antagonizing them,” Tori defended. “They’re Kiri-nin. I was making friends.”

“That’s a stereotype,” Itachi told her, as if he didn’t just talk to everyone he met in nothing but insults. 

“Wait,” Deidara said, a second smile of the day tugging at his lips. He leaned over the edge of his bed to look at Tori. “Were you flirting?”

“Ew, no,” Tori replied, looking horrified even as Kushina let out a tiny, excited gasp. “No. He’s like thirteen.”

“Good,” Kushina-sensei said, pointing accusingly at Tori. “No looking at boys until you’re at least fifteen. Especially not boys from other villages!”

The pained, embarrassed face Tori made was extremely funny, actually. Deidara laughed so hard he risked falling off the bed. 

(“Why fifteen?” Itachi asked.)

xXx

Kisame had heard of Uzumaki Kushina, of course. Kiri had her down as a person of interest, due to her heritage and her marriage to the Yellow Flash. She hadn’t been on the frontlines of the Third Shinobi War, so her actual skills were largely unknown. Like many shinobi, she wasn’t actually very impressive when she was just standing there: eye-catching red hair but otherwise physically unremarkable. She trailed after her team with the silent, dangerous gait of any Jounin, raking her fingers through her hair to tie it up as she went. 

And how was Kisame supposed to focus on her, when that was her team? Whose insane idea was this? His head hurt just looking at Itachi and Deidara standing next to each other, even if both of them were still kids. 

At least Tori still walked like a civilian. That was… good? But she had a hitai-ate. What?

Via a genjutsu, Itachi had told him he’d come find him later. The act had almost made Kisame hysterical. He’d met Kakuzu years ago, so he knew it was possible other people might also be reincarnated souls. It just hadn’t occurred to him he might have to deal with the catastrophic disaster that was Konoha getting hands on Deidara and Tori. 

“That’s okay,” Kisame heard Tori say to the brat he was currently babysitting. “Iwa has, which is why they didn’t let us bring in any of our own weapons. Excuse me, Shinobi-san…”

Her stride transitioned seamlessly into one more suited to a young shinobi. Kisame didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all. He especially didn’t like the way that Mangetsu slowed his walk, eyes fixed on Tori as she strolled off to bother their guide next. That was a look that spelled trouble. 

“She’s not worth it,” Kisame called to him. Whatever Mangetsu was thinking right now, getting involved with Tori was a bad idea. 

He caught Uzumaki Kushina’s eye. She winked at him. Great. 

This wasn’t the first genin Kisame had babysat for an exam, but it was his first time in Iwa. Their housing situation was significantly worse than the normal hotel Kumo had offered. He listened half-heartedly as his charge and Tori bantered, eyeing their cramped little room with trepidation. He’d be annoyed with just Mangetsu, but were Itachi and Deidara going to be able to not kill each other…? Should he warn Mangetsu the building could go up in flames at any moment?

(How was Konoha still standing?)

Tori’s banter switched to him. He grinned down at her; he was pretty sure she was as tall now as she’d be as an adult. This made her the same height as Itachi, which was… hysterical. Kisame had to bring that up when they met in private. 

After he closed the door to their room behind them, Mangetsu unclasped his sword and dropped it on a bed. He stared thoughtfully at it for a few moments while Kisame mimicked his actions, planning to take a quick nap before dinner. 

“Hey, Kisame-san,” Mangetsu said. “That girl… she’s sort of cute, isn’t she?”

No, Kisame thought, feeling the urge to bash his head into the wall. Tori, what have you done?

reborn au, deidara POV. start of the chunin exams

Deidara sat across the desk from the Hokage, wedged between Itachi and Tori. Oonoki, and any commanding officer below him, would have made him stand, even if he was bleeding out. 

Minato, meanwhile, tended to make meetings feel more like a conversation. Brief communications were done standing, but for their longer meetings he’d gesture for them to pull up chairs and then lean back casually in his own seat. He usually didn’t even complain if someone interrupted him with questions. 

(Which Team 4 did. A lot. Because Itachi and Tori were both assholes who thought they were smarter than they were. Deidara, meanwhile, only had the most salient of interruptions.)

MInato did this even with super serious missions, like his insane plot to have them enter the Iwa Chunin Exam as cover to extract a Konoha prisoner.

Deidara wasn’t sure if Minato was so casual for all his shinobi, or if being on his wife’s team got them special privileges. Kushina-sensei had, in fact, chosen to sit on the desk rather than a chair, the backs of her sandals clunking against the wood. But even if it was just a perk of being on Kushina-sensei’s team, Deidara would take this lax style over anything Iwa ever put him through. 

“Iwa sent their finalized list of contraband,” Minato said, voice cheerful. He held up a stack of papers. “I’ll read them to you. It’s pretty intense.”

The list was… lengthy. And sort of insane. They banned them from bringing in their own weapons, promising to provide adequate replacements upon arrival. They also banned all fuinjutsu related material, including any type of paper or writing utensil, and then an increasingly unhinged list of items which seem to pose no real danger to Deidara. 

Minato’s voice cracked at reading the phrase “nectars and other viscous juices,” and then he turned and coughed a couple times to cover up laughter. 

Kushina-sensei was also covering a smile with one hand. 

“Did they put an insane person in charge of communications?” Deidara asked. 

“No, they…” Minato had to pause a moment to get ahold of himself again. “They really, really don’t want you sneaking in a Hiraishin marker. Or making a new one.”

“Sorry,” Kushina-sensei told them, not looking the least bit sorry. “They’re probably only this paranoid because I’m your sensei.”

This did make sense to Deidara. The Iwa he’d grown up in, in the other timeline, had been one in which the Yellow Flash was dead and gone, and the man was still haunting old people’s nightmares. Some of Deidara’s older Academy texts had been from before his death, and they’d included insane protocols for what to do if he showed up on the field. Not a Konoha ninja, not a ninja with a specific technique– just him. No other Kage had such an honor. 

He could only imagine the sort of cultural anxiety Minato was inflicting on Iwa just by existing. 

The idea was sort of exiting, actually. All that fear and anxiety building up for years, just waiting for someone to come along and end it all in one glorious moment–

Tori elbowed him. To Minato, she asked, “Will they give us fuinjutsu supplies too, or do we have to get creative?”

Minato’s lips quirked upwards. 

“They will give you fuinjutsu supplies,” he said. “A village only makes money off an exam if they can show off promising genin, and I convinced them it would be necessary for you to give a good show.”

“But I don’t get any?” Kushina-sensei clarified. 

Any Iwa-nin who’d done two seconds of research on Uzumaki Kushina would want to ban her from even touching a brush forever. Even if she hadn’t gotten famous off of murder like he had, she and Minato came as a set: half his techniques were from her, and if anyone was going to be making Hiraishin markers and spreading them around, it would be her. 

“I don’t know how they’ll enforce Tori having access but not you,” Minato admitted. “Supervision, maybe.”

Itachi cleared his throat. “You're sure this isn’t an ambush?” he asked. 

This seemed like a good point to Deidara. They were basically just agreeing to waltz into Iwa completely weaponless and submit to whatever asshole demands Iwa might make. And like, someone like Deidara could do it, but it would be super annoying.

Minato took a moment to answer, gathering his thoughts. 

“It might be,” he said, tone suddenly deadly serious. “But their doors will be open to plenty of foreign powers, and they’ve already advertised a team from Konoha. A move against us would be very, very stupid of them.” He let a humorless smile cross his lips. “Besides, I intentionally picked a team that could still function even with every disadvantage they might give you.”

Next to him, Tori shifted uneasily. Deidara didn’t think she was nervous for herself, because Tori had wandered into worse with no ninja skills whatsoever and came out on top. It was that there was no way Minato knew that, because Tori liked to downplay her talents at every turn. She had worked her way into the mission plan as a competent fuinjutsu user, but he probably wasn’t including her in his super special hand-picked team. 

(And also, if you evaluated Tori the way you would in a classroom– throw this knife here, use this type of kick, demonstrate this particular move– she was pretty mediocre, even for a twelve year old. Tori only seemed intimidating after she’d tricked into doing something deeply stupid and then was waving some insane seal in your face.)

Deidara wasn’t even sure Minato was including him, even though he ranked right up there with Kushina-sensei and Itachi in terms of “has an absurd bloodline limit, good luck taking THAT away.” It seemed more likely he and Tori got signed up to be semi-expendable benchwarmers, and any talents they ended up displaying were just a nice perk.  

The thought made him angry. Minato might seem way cooler than Oonoki, but they were all the same, weren’t they? Minato would definitely abandon him and Tori to save his precious Konoha-born shinobi. 

Tori must be putting thought into what she would do without weapons, because she remarked, “It’s such overkill to ban all paper, though. If I already wasn’t using sealing paper, I wouldn’t be like, ‘Oh, no regular paper either? Guess I’ll just give up.’”

Deidara attempted to reel in his temper. This was Tori probing the waters of what she could get away with. She was infuriatingly cautious about it, in Deidara’s opinion, but her paranoid little brain would be better attuned to when they might have to jump ship. He should let her take lead on this and not upset himself. 

Kushina-sensei flashed her teeth at Tori. “No, obviously if you’re good enough, you can make any flat surface work. I assume that’s why they banned…. hand mirrors.”

There was a long pause while Kushina-sensei and Tori stared at each other, presumably contemplating what chaos they could cause with a hand mirror. 

Minato’s swivel chair groaned as he leaned back, dropping his papers on his desk. 

“It’s a moot point,” he said. “Tori, we don’t use untested seals in the field, and you can’t count on any seal that works on paper to work anywhere else. There’s a reason we use sealing paper. No hand mirror seals, okay?”

Hand mirrors were only the tip of the iceberg of insane shit Tori might try, but she plastered a meek smile on her face and agreed anyway. 

Disgusting, Deidara thought. He trusted this version of Tori to save his ass if they suddenly had to abandon ship, but she was also the worst possible version of herself. Unartistic. 

Itachi changed the subject again. “The overall mission is getting convoluted. How will Kushina get to Morino with fuinjutsu supplies if we may be supervised so closely? What are we going to do about Deidara’s explosion release?”

Tori opened her mouth, perhaps to suggest her own plan, only to close it and glance at Kushina-sensei. Ugh. 

“We’ll just wing it,” Kushina-sensei said with full confidence. 

Deidara turned to confirm that yes, Itachi did look like his brain had just exploded.  Also seeing this, Tori said to him, “It’s okay. You can’t actually keep a fuinjutsu master from smuggling things wherever they want.”

Now Minato looked like he wanted to say something, but wasn’t quite sure where to start. 

“I have an idea on how to distract them from Deidara,” Kushina-sensei said, twisting her torso to face Minato. “But they’ll eventually, uh… notice some things.”

Deidara clenched his fists, his nails digging into the bottom lips of his hand-mouths. Minato drummed his fingers on the desk. 

“It’s tricky, but they don’t have a verifiable claim on him,” Minato replied. He eyed Deidara. “Do you have a preferred cover-up story?”

“...no,” Deidara admitted. 

He didn’t like that Iwa thought they owned him, but he’d never had strong feelings about his family origins. They were assholes that treated him like shit, and he’d left. That was it. 

They kicked around a few ideas, ranging from gaslighting everyone that Deidara’s explosions had nothing to do with Iwa’s only bloodline limit, to claiming he was an old experiment of Orochimaru. They didn’t come to any sort of real conclusion, and eventually Minato said he’d sleep on it and dismissed them. 

“Deidara, can I talk to you for a moment?” Minato asked. Deidara narrowed his eyes at him, and from his peripheral vision he saw Tori flash a hand sign which was almost definitely Behave.

He crossed his arm and remained sitting while everyone else filed out. Kushina-sensei twirled in her seat so she could duck down and give Minato a peck on the cheek first. Gross. 

When they were alone, Minato asked, “How do you feel about this mission?”

“It’s a mission, yeah,” Deidara replied slowly, trying to parse what he was actually being asked. Loyalty, maybe. His father was an Iwa-nin, even if he’d never met him. He added, “I don’t really like undercover missions, but it’s fine if I get to do some art. If I get a promotion and a nice paycheck out of it, all the better.” 

Deidara still wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in Konoha, but the prospect of a steady income after being a child wandering-nin no one wanted to hire was incredibly alluring. Income meant he could have a bed, maybe even rent an art studio if Konoha Jounin got paid well. These fantasies weren’t enough to make him even consider going back to a hellhole that was Iwa, but if all Konoha had to torture him was a pushy sensei who got him in good with the Hokage, he’d take it. 

“I know you intentionally fled Iwa,” Minato said, his voice… soft for some reason. Weird. “I understand going back might be uncomfortable.”

“I’ve never been to Iwa,” Deidara defended immediately. He’d made damn sure to leave Earth Country as soon as he could, and they hadn’t even been able to put him through any of their stupid ninja aptitude tests in this timeline. 

Minato put up both hands as a calming gesture. 

“I know, I know,” he replied. “But you have their bloodline limit. You grew up outside of a village, so this might not be obvious to you yet, but your art is going to link you Iwa permanently. I don’t want to send you into Iwa unprepared.”

Deidara had to spend a few moments grinding his teeth to hold back rude words. Of course he knew. Iwa had bred him to be their perfect little killing machine.  

“It’s not Iwa’s bloodline limit,” Deidara replied eventually. “It’s mine, yeah. I decide what it’s for and what I do with it. That’s the whole point of my art, yeah.”

Minato raised both eyebrows. “Alright,” he said. “Good. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

He dismissed him, leaving him with a strange promise that his door was always open if Deidara wanted to “talk.” Whatever. 

As he hopped down the stairs of Hokage tower two at a time, Deidara found himself surprised Minato had agreed that his bloodline limit was his own, separate from a village’s control. Probably a manipulation to keep Deidara away from any temptations to join Iwa. There was no way Minato would say Itachi’s eyeballs were for himself only and not Konoha, or that Kushina should use her chakra chains for anything but Konoha’s wellbeing. Villages just didn’t work like that. 

Not that Deidara would complain about special treatment…

Tori was waiting for him outside, leaning against an outside wall. They started the walk back to the genin dorms. 

“What’d he want?” she asked. 

Deidara rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. “He wanted to know how I felt, yeah. Stupid.”

Tori frowned. “And how do you feel?” she asked. 

“Like you and him are both annoying, yeah,” Deidara replied. “Also, what the hell is with you twiddling your thumbs and acting stupid whenever anyone asks about fuinjutsu–”

Tori rolled her eyes right back at him. This was an ongoing argument. Deidara understood her reasoning for downplaying her talents; he just thought it was stupid. Just because Orochimaru was a manipulative scumbag didn’t mean every ninja wanted to push and push until she had a screaming breakdown. Most villages did this very slowly and steadily in a very predictable, soul-crushing kind of way.  

Somehow, Tori looped his rant at her back around. “I mean, if you have feelings about me and Oto, you definitely have some feelings about you and Iwa,” she said. “Are you going to be able to keep it together, seeing it?”

Deidara scowled at her. She’d worded it ambiguously because they were in public, but there was a definite seeing it AGAIN implied in there. And obviously Deidara didn’t want to go to Iwa, but that was the mission she and Itachi had signed him up for. He was an adult, if not physically. He could handle being annoyed by Iwa-nin for a month. 

“Obviously,” he told Tori. Then he grabbed her arm and yanked her down a side street, changing the subject entirely. “There’s a new take-out place down here. We should get dinner, yeah.”

[itsmedemibones]

Anything you want to/can share about Kythaa? Her armour is really cool!

Okay so I've never actually shared any info on OCs before but I'm in love with Kythaa so..

*cracks knuckles*

(art by my friend her design has changed slightly since then)

Kythaa Sapp was born in 59 BBY. Her biological parents were running some unfortunate business and had accrued a bounty and had been smuggling goods to Deathwatch. Enter Ariatt Senaar, Haat Mando'ad from Concord Dawn (in my mind dream cast as Karl Urban lol).

--aside: I've been working on Ariatt as an OC as well- his clan name Senaar comes from a family history in times past of falconry, hunting game through the farms and fields of Concord Dawn.

When Ariatt tracks down the Sapps to Hoth, he's disappointed to find them already dead, though their 3 yo child stands fiercely protecting their half frozen bodies in a deep cave, nestled between 2 tauntauns for warmth.

Kythaa becomes Ariatt's foundling. 2 years later, Jaster Mareel is betrayed and dies. Kythaa never really got to know him as Mand'alor, but her Buir is very loyal to Jango. Her training and eventual verd'goten took place under his leadership and Jango was one of the ones who shared a drink with her upon completion of her verd'goten. She's raised amongst the remaining True Mandalorians and works alongside them and her Buir as she grows into her own.

Then Galidraan happens. Though legally an adult, Ky is not there, instead on a hunt related to her biological parents. She refuses to accompany her Buir in support of Jango due to her tunnel vision on finding information on the Sapps. She and her Buir have a nasty fight regarding it before he leaves for Galidraan. He doesn't fully renounce her as a Mandalorian but he does mention that if she's not going to follow the resol'nare regarding coming to the call of the Mand'alor, then maybe he's dar'buir after all.

Kythaa never gets the chance to reconcile with him as every Mando aside from Jango dies at the hands of the Jedi. She doesn't realize that anyone survived. Disgusted with herself, she repaints her armor to the current colors of grey for loss of family, teal for healing, and white for a new start, with red to honor her fallen Buir as well as the Mand'alor she failed.

--another aside- Kythaa's knee armor is very specifically grey and red so that every time she kneels she is saying "Ni ceta" to her Buir and her Mand'alor.

When Jango calls for volunteers to become the cuy'val dar, Kythaa is shocked he still lives. She of course knew of someone calling themselves Jango Fett rising to be the top bounty hunter, but she refused to believe it was him. She tries to join them on Kamino, but Jango refuses her. He harshly says it's because she can't be trusted after failing to follow him to Galidraan, but actually it's that she reminds him of his greatest failure and he can't face his guilt at facing her every day regarding Ariatt's death.

So she continues her work as a disillusioned bounty hunter, wearing her armor but having a tough relationship with her identity as a Mandalorian. She doesn't get to reconcile with Jango either before his death on Geonosis and the start of the clone war. But then, damn, suddenly there's millions of little Jango's running around so that any time she crosses path with the GAR, she's reminded of her own failures. Doesn't help that all the little Jango's are reporting to Jedi which feels perverse and wrong.

Uhhhhh... This went longer than I anticipated lol. I've never written it all down before. I don't really have much planned for her remaining life, like her involvement in the clone war, besides her eventually meeting Kal Skirata and him helping her deal with all her trauma thru his sheer power of being a good dad. I imagine if she ever came across him in her life of hunting she'd probably have a very strained relationship with Boba as well.

But yeah, that's Kythaa. I'm excited to do more with her and her Buir. Probably going to be running a DND style campaign with her with a couple of my friends lol.

If anyone read all of this, wow, thank u hahahaha.

(my own very rough ref sheet for Kythaa)

[k-s-morgan]

Hannigram One-Shot from ‘Ravage’

It just occured to me that I’ve never shared my ‘Ravage’ contribution online! Big thanks to @lovecrimebooks for organizing it and letting me be a part of it.

The story is a short Hannigram AU that takes place in the world of Dante’s hell. My circle was Lust. Hannibal is a literal Devil here; Will is a supernatural being that represents Desire. A story of two deadly forces, obsession, and intricate manipulation.

    Black for Death, Purple for Lust: Colors to Capture the Devil

“To this torment are condemned the carnal damned. Those for whom desire conquered reason.” — Virgil

The flickers of darkness were tightly entwined with splashes of gold, red, and white. All dominant colors seeking to represent every being that had chosen to participate in this mockery of a meeting.

The Ball of Highest Powers was an event that Hannibal had always found appallingly primitive. And yet, being the Master, the Devil, he was forced to attend each one. To watch the emergence and the disappearance of his old and new acquaintances. To reinforce his inevitable presence. 

To instill fear. Because he was no longer a Lucifer, God’s fallen angel, trapped for all eternity. He was a Hannibal, the name he had chosen himself, a rightful owner of Hell; the Devil reborn, reclaiming his agency.

Recently, God began to avoid Earth more and more, and Hannibal was only too happy to take control over it.

They knew it — these beings proudly calling themselves the Highest Powers. They knew that if they displeased him, they would be gone. Anteros, or Anthony as he preferred to call himself these days, his oldest source of annoyance, the only surviving representation of Love. Margot, a recently emerged Goddess of Grace. Mason, his supposed ally, reflecting Perversion. And many, many more.

Not everyone attended the Ball, but it was the only opportunity to become aware of how many of them continued their existence, what new reflections had come to life.   

“Will you be putting a crown on anyone today?” Anthony asked him, holding a glass of crystal liquid and watching the masses swirling in a dance. Hannibal measured him with a disinterested gaze. 

As one of the most ancient beings, Anthony was the only one who dared to engage him at least in some way, despite knowing the extent of Hannibal’s contempt to him and to what he represented.

“I haven’t decided yet,” Hannibal replied mildly. The crowns. The tradition that all of them followed faithfully. Every color had its own meaning. Anthony tended to put a red crown on one of these poor souls every year, expressing his fleeting affection. 

The only crowns Hannibal used were black ones, symbolizing instant elimination and oblivion. He had the power to destroy those who no longer amused him, which made Anthony’s boldness all the more surprising. 

“Don’t look at me,” Anthony said half-jokingly, and Hannibal’s lips twitched in distaste. 

Before he could answer, though, a strange hush fell over the hall. More and more beings went silent, staring somewhere, and involuntarily, Hannibal felt a weak pang of curiosity. 

Some creature emerged from the crowd, moving at a leisurely pace, staring at him. 

Moving to him. Or perhaps to Anthony, which was far more likely?  

But no. The blue eyes were fixed on him, and Hannibal blinked incredulously. His bewilderment changed into disbelief and then stupor when he finally noticed what this newcomer was holding. 

A crown. A purple crown. 

A crown of lust. 

Lust. Everyone knew Hannibal’s feelings toward it, the dark satisfaction he received in keeping lovers apart, separated by vast, rocky chasm in their special circle of Hell.

There was no misstep that Hannibal despised more. Other sins were delicious, deserving the most exquisite torment, poisoning even the most strong-willed people. Lust, though, this bleak, faded semblance of emotion was shared only by crippled weaklings. Hannibal readily engaged in other sins, but not in lust — never in lust. 

And this new… creature was carrying a purple crown? Heading toward him? He was. One step closer to him, then another. Then he broke into his personal space, and Hannibal remained frozen, paralyzed by a strange, unfamiliar feeling.

He had never seen this creature before. 

He would remember him. 

Blue eyes were studying him intently, framed by dark lashes. Pale face, chocolate curls, pink mouth. A classical beauty.

The being smiled at him and Hannibal’s lips parted. His breath caught in his chest, his hands grew horrifyingly clammy, and he distinctly felt his pupils getting wide, his eyes glazing over.

The scent hit him then — strange, enticing. The scent of innocence and death. Hannibal shuddered, inhaling it deeply, his nostrils flaring in attempt to get more of it. 

And then the smiling creature reached forward and put the purple crown on his head, and he still did nothing. The silence stretched, both of them staring at one another, Hannibal’s fingers twitching, aching to touch, to feel. 

The strange creature tilted his head, watching him, let out a thoughtful sound, and then turned his back to him and disappeared within the crowd.

The silence was deafening, and Hannibal was still rooted to his spot, unable to move, utterly confused by what had happened and by the fact that he was now wearing a purple crown, with no instinct to take it off. 

Conversations resumed eventually, and Anthony, who was still standing nearby, chuckled. 

“Well, that was unexpected,” he said, amused. “Did you honestly like Will, or are you already plotting his demise?”

“Will?” Hannibal echoed. 

“Will. Desire,” Anthony’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You didn’t recognize him? He’s not exactly new. It’s just that he has never visited the Ball before. Few of us know him personally, but I thought that you, for sure—”

Hannibal stopped listening. Because while the name Will was new, he was indeed aware of Desire. The cunning, ubiquitous being that found entrance everywhere, slipping equally into the most romantic souls, enhancing their desire for affection, and into the violent ones, feeding their desire for war and destruction.

And now he seemed to slip into the Hell itself. Into Hannibal’s domain, into his very mind. Leaving him humiliated, with that purple embarrassment on his head. 

Suddenly infuriated, Hannibal tore the crown from himself and clenched it in his hand, wishing only to crush it. 

Foolish Will — to challenge the Devil himself. 

Hannibal would put an end to it, and to him.

***

The cold darkness of Hell was soothing. The shadows were whispering to him, the souls were moaning, begging, but for some reason, it brought no pleasure to him.

Restless, Hannibal moved along the line of entrapped lovers within his circle of Lust, staring into their glassy faces, the longing and thirst reflected there as they kept looking over the chasm, trying to get a glimpse of their partners. He wasn’t some weak-minded creature like them. And he certainly didn’t experience lust. Such thing was beneath him.

But the image of blue eyes and lips curled up in a smile kept haunting him, his mind greedily recalling every bit, savoring it, filling his body with strange, buzzing sensation.   

A purple lighting storm swirled around the chasm — the soul of Alana rising to see what was happening. 

Alana was one of his human lovers, one Hannibal had seduced out of amusement, one he had been driving mad with lust until she killed a man in attempt to protect him, falsely thinking that Hannibal was about to be attacked. She had died in that confrontation as well, and since there was no lover Hannibal could position her against in the circle of Lust, he had chosen to turn her into a lighting storm here, trapped between two sides of the chasm. 

Hannibal paid her no mind, but Alana whispered something, trembled, and suddenly, an image of Will appeared, huge and stretched through the entire chasm — shocking and ethereally beautiful.

Hannibal stared, a sharp rebuke freezing on his lips. 

Will, Desire, was moving slowly through some forest, his eyes focused and curious, alight with intelligence and intensity that Hannibal found breathtaking. He made a strange movement, his eyebrows rising, and then he smiled, and Hannibal was lost. 

Before he could stop himself, he materialized in a flash of smoke in the same forest, in the same place, several inches from Will.

Will stopped and strengthened slowly. Then he said without turning, “Now *this* is not the moment when I expected to encounter you.” 

“I am faintly disturbed that you expected to encounter me at all,” Hannibal replied, watching his back, his eyes narrowed. 

Finally, Will turned, and Hannibal’s breath hitched uncontrollably. His mind swam, his limbs went shaky. Desire crashed into him, enveloped every part of him, and he nearly snarled in frustration.

“Stop this,” he hissed, and Will blinked.

“Stop what?” he asked, as if genuinely confused. Clarifying would require more than he was ready to sacrifice, so Hannibal gritted his teeth and said nothing. Will tilted his head, an amused look crossing his features. 

“Did you come here for me or are you interested in artful death as much as I am?”

“Artful death,” Hannibal echoed. Now, for the first time, he sensed a familiar smell of approaching decay, and he glanced at the ground, at an arched wrist that was protruding from it. 

“Someone is killing people and burying them alive to feed the mushrooms,” Will said, also watching the ground. Hannibal would be taken aback — humanity still had the power to surprise him with the things they did, crazy as they were, but currently, he was much more interested in other matters. Specifically, in one standing before him.

“Do you get the souls quicker when they are buried alive?” Will asked, and Hannibal considered his question, surprised at the novelty of it. 

“Yes,” he said eventually. “But the difference is slight, barely worth mentioning. Why are you here? Do you entertain yourself by helping those who can be saved?” 

“No,” a frown marred Will’s forehead but somehow, it made him even more beautiful, and all thoughts left Hannibal’s head once again. “I told you. I’m not interested in life — only death captivates me. Well… now, at least.”

“This person is not dead yet.”

“But he will be,” Will shrugged. “I existed long enough to understand the beauty of it. Death is comforting. Pity not all of us have the privilege of experiencing it.”

“You will,” Hannibal told him, trying to sound calm, to hide the breathless notes in his voice. “If you keep provoking me.”

Some dark shadow flickered across Will’s face before it smoothed out, an amusing glint returning to his eyes. 

“How am I provoking you?” he wondered. 

“The only way you know how… Will. Or do you prefer to be called Desire?”

“Not in the least,” Will told him. “And I cannot deliberately affect you, no matter how hard I would try. I affect people only, slipping into their minds, evoking and enhancing their desires — for various things. Desire for love. Desire for destruction. Desire for revenge. What do you desire, Hannibal? To the extent where you would hope to blame it on me?”

Confusion and rage and something else, something heavier and much more intoxicating, swirled within him, and Hannibal crossed the distance between them in several short steps, crushing their mouths together, clenching Will’s hair in his fist and pulling at it violently. 

Will let out a surprised sound — as if he had the right to be surprised after everything he had done, after his purple crown at that ball. Then his mouth opened wider, accepting him, and Hannibal kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him, breathing faster and faster, until he felt dizzy, until the air he didn’t even need started to be lacking, until his consciousness darkened and faded. He craved him. He needed him, desperately. 

Everything happened in a mist — him tearing Will’s clothes off, pushing him against the tree, taking his fill of him, Will’s soft moans breaking the silence, his compliance sweet and maddening. However, it all changed quite suddenly. Hannibal paused, regaining his strength, ready to take him again, but Will turned quickly and before he could say anything, he found himself pushed against the tree in return, Will’s nails piercing his skin to hold him in place, painful and sharp. 

It was madness — everything that was happening. Hannibal didn’t understand it, couldn’t understand what was running through his veins, so hot and powerful, so intoxicating that he felt drunk on it. On Will. Later, when they both fell in a boneless heap right onto the ground, in the middle of the graveyard of those still living, Hannibal continued to touch him, to breathe in his smell, to stare at him in greed and never-ending confusion. He wanted him. He wanted him still. 

Will reached out, his nails and the tips of his fingers red with Hannibal’s blood, and drew something on his arm — a small stag. 

“To remember me until you want to forget me,” he said. Hannibal stroked his neck, thoughtfully, almost kindly. 

“I am going to kill you,” he said, and Will nuzzled into his shoulder, a blissful smile touching his lips.

“I’m counting on it,” he murmured. “After all, this is why I have given you that purple crown. I expected to get a black one in return.”

Hannibal pulled away sharply, surprised and wishing to hide it. 

Who could want a black crown? Highest Powers feared death more than humans. The idea of not existing terrified them, shrank their vanity and drowned their feeling of superiority. 

Hannibal was the only one who had nothing to fear in this regard, and yet for some reason, Will’s dark words made him uneasy. He’d seen suicidal humans, held their souls, but those of the Highest Powers?

He couldn’t bear the burn of this confusion any longer. In an instant, Hannibal melted in smoke, with his last glimpse being Will, watching him with all-knowing, mysterious eyes. 

He found himself back in his least favorite circle, under rebuking and hating stares of those trapped here for the very sin he was now wearing as a coat around himself. 

Lust. Was that what it felt like? Why now, when Hannibal had given up hope on understanding and relating to it? He knew how to use lust, how to evoke it, but he had never been its target before. It was humbling — and infuriating. But still, not as bewildering as Will’s desire for a black crown.

The next days passed in brooding. Hannibal knew every corner of his domain, had his most and least favorite places, yet now, he felt restless wherever he went. The urge to see Will again, to have him, to listen to the troubling things he said was growing within him like a living being, coiling and hissing as he refused to succumb to it. 

The stag drawn with blood was still sitting on his shoulder, with Hannibal wanting to erase it but finding himself unable to. 

Maybe later. 

When his resolve finally broke and he sought Will out, he was once again sent into stupor. 

Will was in Lithuania. Near a painfully familiar grave. And he was busy arranging the bodies of some men around it.

Absolutely confounded, Hannibal found himself reaching for him, materializing just a step away, unable to believe his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” he whispered. “How do you know about this place? About her? No one does. No one was ever supposed to know.”

“Know that you have a weakness?” Will adjusted his hair, which seemed longer today, looking at Hannibal from under his lashes. The already familiar shock of desire ran through him but Hannibal was too stunned to act on it. 

Something else was stopping him, too.

Despite his flirting gestures, Will looked sad. Full of that strange, ancient sadness that was all too familiar to Hannibal, but which he had never seen on anyone else before. 

“How do you know?” Hannibal asked again, and this time, Will smiled mirthlessly. He touched the bodies he had arranged almost lovingly, moving them a little, so a grave would be directly in the center. 

“This is where the only source of light in your life has died,” he said quietly. “This is where Mischa was buried. This is where I was born.” 

When Hannibal just stared at him blankly, Will sighed. 

“You have existed for the amount of time that no other being can comprehend,” he murmured. “I shudder when I try to imagine it. Endlessness. Emptiness. Boredom. But four centuries ago, something happened. Something changed. You were playing human again, as you do whenever boredom strikes you, and you got attached to a little girl. By accident, I’m sure, because you would never willingly let yourself feel. Perhaps the whole experience was amusing to you at first, but then you started to actually feel something. Everyone would think that a human girl protected by the Devil would be coddled to death, as safe as she could possibly be. But you got distracted — another unruly soul that had to be handled, another instance of unrest. You were gone and during this time, she was murdered — and whatever light that had started to grow within you was extinguished. You found her body here and decided to bury her in this same place… and you summoned me.” 

Hannibal’s lips refused to obey. He licked them, strangely nervous, staring at Will and having no idea what to feel. 

“Summoned you?” he clarified carefully.  

“Yes,” Will looked away, glancing at Mischa’s grave again. “All Highest Beings appear to reflect emotions of large clusters of people. Some of them die by your hand and new, synonymous ones appear in their stead. They are all proud to represent the Highest Powers but they forget that they were created by humans. When similar emotions are experienced by a big number of people at once, a representative of this emotion is born — and this process is endless. In my case, though… my creator is you.”

“This is a lie,” Hannibal snapped. “I destroy. I do not create.”

Will’s lips curled in something too frightening to be called a smile. 

“Maybe,” he said. “Therefore, I am your mistake. Your single lapse of judgment. After you found Mischa’s body, you held her. And you willed the time to reverse. You willed it to return you to the past, so you could save her. You willed it to return you to the moment of your first encounter, so you could never approach her again. Of course, your wishes weren’t granted. They never are, not even when the Devil himself is asking for it. Instead, I was born here. Yet another variation of Desire… only this time, your desire. Summoned by the strength of your pleas.”  

“You are lying. I have never even seen you before that last ball!” Hannibal snarled, but the chill in his bones told him everything he needed to know. Will wasn’t lying. Will had witnessed his embarrassing descend into the most human emotions. Will had seen what Hannibal had spent centuries on trying to forget.  

“You deny my very existence,” Will tilted his head, and despite vehement words, he didn’t sound angry. There was just that same sadness in his voice, one that he carried around himself at all times, which was wrapped around him like a cloud. “I am used to it by now. Since the moment of my appearance in this graveyard, with you burying Mischa, I saw only you. But you never even glanced at me. Not once. At first, I thought I was too weak to materialize properly. That is how I tried to explain your blindness. I tried to approach you many times after that — years after years. For centuries. But no matter how hard I tried, you never saw me. And it was killing me as the connection I feel to you is overwhelming — it reduces me to a ball of clingy, desperate emotions, all of which you despise.”

Hannibal stepped away before he could stop himself, disturbed by the genuineness and warmth he could feel emanating from Will.

He didn’t know if he liked it. He had never felt… this, directed at him. Will noticed his instinctive retreat, but instead of acting hurt, he dared to laugh.  

“I live for you,” he said easily, and Hannibal stared at him, unable to comprehend how anyone could be so open, how anyone could say this to him.

Despite sugary words, Will didn’t act as if he was swooning in his presence. He hadn’t acted like that in the forest as well — he positioned himself as his equal. He had more grace than the majority of Highest Beings. 

It was impossible to understand him.

“I’ve spent all my life in the hope that you will finally see me, learning everything I could about you, becoming your shadow,” Will continued. “Others don’t touch me — it is you whom I crave, whose attention I seek, whose company I desire. But recently… I realized that I could no longer pretend. I was a mistake that you’ve made once — that’s all there is to it. Knowing that my goal was futile, I chose against continuing my existence. At that ball, for the first time, I approached you not with love and desire, but with death and lust. And you saw me. After all this time. Because even though you loved that little girl, even though your love and your desire to change the past created me, these are not the feelings that you can recognize. Mischa was an anomaly. What you do recognize is death, which you sow, and lust, the circle of which you control. Lust is the closest you can feel to affection… I think. So this was the only time when you could see me.”

“I can see you now,” words escaped by themselves, before Hannibal could stop them. A flash of surprise crossed Will’s face before he chuckled.

“Of course you can,” he said almost gently. “Because I still intend to die. You can feel it on me. And that is why I hope that you will gift me with oblivion. You are the only one who can do that — not to mention that it will be as overly dramatic as you like. Symbolic. Dying from the hand of someone who made me.” 

Hannibal’s thoughts were uncharacteristically jumbled. He opened his mouth, then snapped it shut, confused, at a loss, bewildered. Will was confounding. When he looked at him, even now, Hannibal could feel the dryness of his own mouth, the fevered hotness of his skin — lust, thick and powerful, mindlessly pushing him forward, his fingers trembling with the urge to touch, to caress, to bruise. Even this alarming revelation hadn’t changed it — he still wanted Will.

But he was also scared of him. Another new feeling, the flavor of which Hannibal tasted with interest, wondering if this was what others felt in his presence.

There was something else that bothered him, so, licking his dry lips, Hannibal asked, “You said you approached me with death and lust. Does it mean that your previous feelings no longer exist?”

“Nothing and no one can change them,” Will replied, still serene, still smiling. “You’ve made me. I will be always attracted to you — even I can’t fight it. But I am not a mindless bundle of desire. Before, having you see me, talk to me, was a dream. My most cherished fantasy. Once I decided to disappear, death became my biggest wish. When I managed to subdue my brighter feelings for you and pushed death and something as primal as lust to the front, you saw me — but even then, you refused to give me what I want. I didn’t get my black crown. Even after the forest, you still haven’t granted my wish. I don’t understand why — you have executed others for much, much less. Coming to Mischa was my last idea. Everything started here — it would be prudent if everything came to an end in this same place. Don’t you agree?”

Hannibal touched him, then, tracing the contour of his face, moving to his lips. Will closed his eyes, shuddering, tilting his head in such a sensual way that for a second, Hannibal’s vision went black with absurd, maddening desire. 

“Wasting centuries over me,” he whispered. “How foolish.”

Will opened his eyes, frowning, but when he wanted to move away, Hannibal tightened his grip on him.

“I will grant your wish,” he promised. “But not now.” 

Will looked at him expressionlessly. Hannibal was the one to step away, and his eyes lingered on Will for quite a while before he dissipated in the darkness.

He spent the next days lost in thoughts. He would kill Will — that was undeniable. He couldn’t tolerate the existence of someone who knew him from such a side, someone who dared to feel emotions to him that Hannibal despised. 

But something was stopping him, making him delay that inevitable moment. There was something irresistible in realization that he was the one to create Will, that he had his very own Highest Being — unique, not like the others. Beautiful and tragic and deadly. Will had quite a list of souls he had been playing with. He wasn’t simply seducing people’s minds — he was driving them insane, whispering and poisoning them once they were sleeping, making them want things they would never dare to want. Hannibal checked, and in all his time, he had never seen such a vicious and cunning version of Desire. 

Secretly, he wondered if Desire was even the right name for Will. Considering how tightly it was interconnected with lust, it formed a deadly combination that affected even him. 

Because he wanted him. Was aching for him. His madness was intensifying, urging him to locate Will and to have him again, whether he wanted it or not. Hannibal prepared a black crown — stunning and regal, fitting for his creation, but he still struggled with making a decision. He continued to think. To wonder. His thoughts came to a halt when he suddenly felt a strange, vague whisper of alarm. Hannibal narrowed his eyes, listening attentively, frowning when the stag Will had drawn on him, one that Hannibal couldn’t force himself to remove, heated abruptly, as if coming to life. 

‘At this point, nothing would actually surprise me,’ Hannibal thought, but before he could look at the picture on his arm, another pang of alarm pierced him — this one much stronger. Hannibal tensed for a second, and his lips curled in a snarl when he realized that someone had entered Hell — someone who had no place here. 

His kingdom was being… invaded? Who could possibly be as foolish as to…

The wall glimmered under his glare, its shape softening to a well of images. Hannibal quickly found the circle where the intruder was — Lust, and he wanted to scoff — but stopped as he saw the whole picture. 

That same rocky chasm. And Will, standing on its edge, with his back to it, looking directly at Hannibal — as if he knew where he was, as if he knew where to look. His lips began to move and Hannibal stared at them, reading the words they formed.

‘Thank you for not removing the stag. I wasn’t sure you would keep it. My entrance to Hell… the last piece of my plan. It’s true, only you have the power to kill the Highest Beings, but the place where you reign has the same ability. I know you well — too well, perhaps. Such a curious creature like you wouldn’t be able to make a decision, torn between wanting to keep me and wanting to destroy me — wanting to toy with me. So, I will make that choice for you. Good-bye… Hannibal.’

Hannibal’s eyes widened when he saw Will take that last, small step — and disappear within the chasm.    

“No!” he cried before he could stop himself, suddenly, unexpectedly terrified. He wasn’t thinking as he threw himself into the pile of smoke, disappearing and reappearing in the middle of the chasm, thinking in forgotten, suffocating despair, ‘It’s not too late, it can’t be too late, it can’t…’   

It seemed like even in his unexplainable panic, he had managed to calculate the distance correctly — a second later Will landed right into his waiting arms, looking calm, as if he hadn’t been one step from death.  

Hannibal clutched him with awful, bewildering tenderness, burying his face in his dark, curly hair, inhaling its scent deeply. 

“You are mine,” he murmured, not fully understand his own words. “I created you, so you belong to me.” 

He was drowning in this — this confusing affection, these warmth and greediness and possessiveness he had never felt before, didn’t know what to do with. 

Now that he was seeing Will, he wasn’t sure he could stop. 

Mindlessly, he kissed Will’s temple, then his face, his neck, still holding him, trembling with desire to tear into him, to leave him a shaking, bleeding mess — and then to tend to his wounds, to lick them clean and start everything over again. 

One who had witnessed his emotional downfall. One who existed solely for him. Who wasn’t scared of him. One who… understood him?

“You are mine,” he said again, leaned back and froze, seeing a victorious, malicious smile on Will’s face. However, it disappeared quickly, and Hannibal was back to cradling him, feeling strangely, unexplainably complete. 

The violet lighting storm swirled around them — Alana making her presence known, but Hannibal didn’t pay her any mind. His eyes were glued to one specific being in his arms, one that he didn’t intend to let go, even if he had no idea what to do with him.

Hannibal kissed him again, following a foreign, heated impulse. As he continued to shower Will’s flawless skin with kisses, he heard a soft whisper, “What about my crown, Hannibal?” 

“You cannot rule Hell with me. Why would I give you a crown? Even I don’t wear one,” Hannibal retorted, too distracted to look up.

He heard a satisfied chuckle, and then the violet storm ensnared them both, carrying them back to the surface.   

“Mine,” Will said, his voice frightening in its triumphant deadliness. Hannibal didn’t understand what he meant, but at the moment, he didn’t care.

He would think about it later, when this haze was over.

If it would ever be over.        

[doomedandstoned]

10,000 Years Take Us Into The "Gargantuan Forest"

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

Review by Billy Goate

Album Art by Francesco Bauso

Leaving the world For salvation yonder Quest for eternity To suns beyond

Gazing upon our past Out into forever To a future obscured What glory awaits?

To begin another week of awesome original content at Doomed & Stoned, we're getting you better acquainted with the Swedish juggernaut 10,000 YEARS.

Last summer, the band dropped their eponymous debut to welcome ears and in just a few short weeks 10,000 Years come roaring back with a follow-up. Y'all know I'm a sucker for a good concept album. The eight-track full-length record 'II' (2021) picks up the trail of the Albatross research vessel, which has been galavanting 'cross the nether reaches of the galaxy on a potent rocket fuel made of sludgy stoner rock and doom metal.

If that sounds epic, wait'll you get a load of what's next for our interstellar crew. It helps if you picture the following text as a Star Wars-style screen crawl, slowly working its way up the page against the backdrop of a starry night.

After narrowly escaping the confines of the strange planet and its surrounding dimension, the Albatross and its crew finally return home to Earth. The re-entry is rough and the ship crashlands in a forest. The earth that greets them is vastly different from the one that they left.

When the ship travelled back to earth through the wormhole, it created a rift in the space-time continuum which propelled them far into the future, as well as allowing the Green King and other ancient gods from the other dimension to cross over to our dimension. They have since taken control of not only the earth, but the entire solar system.

After various harrowing experiences and encounters, the truth finally dawns on the surviving members of the crew. They are indeed back on earth, but ten thousand years in the future from when they started their journey. And to make matters worse, they find evidence that the Green King has been known and worshipped by secret cults and societies on earth for millenia, since before humankind even existed.

The surviving members of the crew come to the conclusion that the only way to set things right again is to repair the Albatross and take it back through the rift again in order to close it.

Now that's a saga I'm ready to get invested in. George Lucas, eat your heart out!

The record revs to a start with "Descent," a track that can best be described as terrific panic. It had me thinking of KOOK's "Escape Velocity" from their recent second album, though that's an eight-and-a-half minute slow burn and this is a quick twenty-six second fall from the sky. I wish this little notion had a chance to develop into something longer, but regardless what a thrilling way to open an album!

With rapt attention, I'm waiting to hear what comes next. The ship seems to have crash landed deep inside a "Gargantuan Forest." As an aside, it would be a blast to smoke a bowl o' something (anything, really) with Erik Palm (guitar), Alex Risberg (bass, vox), and Espen Karlsen (drums) just to gab it up a bit about sci-fi lit and horror flicks. I mean, check out the trove of B-movie greats referenced in their preface to the new single (which Doomed & Stoned is debuting today):

In this ABSURD (1981) video, 10,000 Years enter a FOREST OF FEAR (1980) as they access THE BEYOND (1981) and enter a BLOODBATH (1971) with THE BOOGEY MAN (1980), otherwise known as the Espbeast. The Espbeast stalks and haunts the bodies and minds of the characters in this C-grade homage to the horror movies of yesteryear.

The characters FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE (1976) through insane NIGHTMARES IN A DAMAGED BRAIN (1981). If they survive the AXE (1974) they may still end up in an INFERNO (1980) and risk being EATEN ALIVE (1976). All the same risks face the viewer, so don’t watch with the lights out, don’t watch by yourself and DON’T GO IN THE WOODS ALONE (1981). Because after all, isn’t there an Espbeast in all of us?

10,000 Years have picked the ideal setting for the music video. The forests of Sweden stand tall and dark, the ground packed with snow. Screw you, Blair Witch Project -- this is where I want the next found footage flick filmed!

The song opens with a mysterious theme on solitary electric strings, surrounded by hazy reverberation. Drums and bass accent the motif as it's repeated several times over. Dazed by their graceless fall to earth, the crew wander about, checking one another for injuries, seeing if the faithful Albatross has even hope of another journey. As the shock begins to wear off, their hopeless plight reveals itself.

Screaming from the sky Blasting through the atmosphere

Come to rest On the forest floor Still alive What fresh new hell is this?

Surrounded by swamps A strange bleeding from the earth

Giant trees A dense horror taking root Same old sun Unfamiliar rays shine down

Is there something lurking about in the Gargantuan Forest? I'm sure no one wants to wait until nightfall to find out! The so-called "Espbeast" (which the band may actually have been first to name) is more than likely some strange amalgamation of guitar and creature, ripping through foes like a berserker of sound with scraps of High on Fire's "10,000 Years" echoing perversely through the treetops as it stalks and ultimately slays you. Nobody wants to be around when the Espbeast is on the prowl.

Now see, I'm letting my imagination get carried away! Then again, maybe that's what the band had planned all along -- for listeners to join in the fantastic adventures of these cosmonauts, to see through their eyes and feel through their body as they touch foot to strange soil. What will our adventurers find next?

The answer comes all too soon: "Spinosaurus!" This gruff beast charges angrily through the woods knocking things about, displacing rocks, snapping branches, royally pissed and ready to make somebody pay for the noise that snatched him away from a damned good nap. The repeated note riff, with its odd strumming pattern, does a nifty job of representing the crude movements of the Spinosaurus as it lumbers about the forest. Eric is a virtuosic mess of frantic tremeloes and wiry noodling against Espen's stampeding drums, as Alex narrates the scene with a terrifying shout:

Is this our earth? No time to dwell Dorsal sail cutting air Cretaceous ghost made flesh

Staring into Dead end eyes No place to hide Theropodic annihilation

Teeth into flesh!

What the crew is experiencing on their homeworld thus far seems foreign, almost ancient. Through some curse of Einstenian logic have we zipped through a wormhole only to return to the distant past? "The Mooseriders" are about to challenge our assumptions about what's possible on this Rock.

Thundering hooves crack the sky Dark robed wizards appear in the light Travellers in ether descending Protectors of the realm

These are the oath-bound eternals -- interdimensional templars, if you will -- who have arrived at this precise moment in time to take on the Green King. Complex rhythmic drumming with precisely stricken odd beats, is accompanied by a hyperactive bass and progressive metal riffmaking. Together, the band conjures the trot and hustle of the approaching entourage. A wilding guitar heralds a message from the great protectors:

The hour draws near The endgame is nigh Divine prophecy Even death may die

The mood now turns stately. A brave theme is introduced and developed with dashing prowess. This track would fit perfectly into a playlist with Mastodon, Ape Cave, and Zirakzigil. I found Alex's vocal approach especially appropriate for the frantic depiction of "antlers clashing with steel" in this battle to the finish. "Even death...may...DIE!"

"Angel Eyes" greet us on the B-side, and it's not a cover of the Jerry Cantrell song (though that would have been unexpectedly awesome). No, the hard-charging mood and raspy vocals are pointing to something far more apocalyptic.

Hooves of burning coal Let loose upon the world

Return of the warlord Eternal fire scorches the earth

Heavenly gaze Order through chaos

At times Alex seems exasperated, practically out of breath, as he gives these dire words his all. It's a style the 10,000 Years frontman owns as well as his counterpart, Simon Ohlsson of Vokonis, who has a comparable vocal attack. A bass-fortified guitar establishes a second theme that adds a Wagnarian touch of high drama, and this ushers in the song's curtain fall.

If 10,000 Years is to be compared with High On Fire at all, the rumbling riffstorm "March Of The Ancient Queen" surely merits it (to say nothing of their mutual love of alternative histories).

Her royal blood Once ruled these lands Generations Buried by time Dynasty of dust Rise from the sands Rise from the dead The Green King's servant

March!

March Of The Ancient Queen - Single by 10,000 Years

That last lyric is uttered with the most blood-curdling all-caps conviction that I was immediately drawn into its sentiment, miming "Maaaaarrrrrch!" with my ugliest war face on every time it came up in the song. The NWOBHM-style finish is so deftly executed that it comes across as orchestral. 10,000 Years paint with big, bold strokes here.

"Prehuman Walls" is a welcome shift down, with its chugging "Bury Me In Smoke" tempo. You sludge fiends will find moments of Zen here, with riffs that bend and twist and saw 'neath the summer sun. The crew have chanced upon a temple of sorts, though not one made with human hands. Nothing seems to make sense here at all. It's like Area X from the film Annihilation (2017), where everything is a contortion of reality. Then the "truth settles in." This alien monstrosity, we find, bears the mark of the sinister Green King. We thought we'd escaped him, only to find that he both followed us and was here millenia before.

Unholy worship Feed the Green King Eyes pried open Sanity stripped away

At last, we reach the final track in our journey: "Dark Side Of The Earth". So many revelations have been made in this second chapter, so many loose ends that need to be tied off. Naturally, a third chapter must be written. "We must go back, set it right," deliberates an exasperated Albatross crew. "We must go back, whence we came."

Dimension walls broken down The fabric ripped and torn apart Thread the needle once again A journey of ten thousand years

We must go back, set it right We must go back, through the tears

Insanity the only way The dark side of the earth

Following these words, the song develops instrumentally and the mood gets quite emotional. I found myself drawing parallels between this "bastard version of earth" and our own, wondering if we ever can go back and make it right. For us, perhaps it should be about moving forward, for there is no golden age or better time to which we can return. We make this world a heaven or hell tomorrow by the choices made today.

The album was recorded by Tomas Skogsberg at Studio Sunlight. Totally diggin the awesomely swamp landscape that Francesco Bauso of Negative Crypt Artwork created. It reminds the five-year old me of Luke's sopping wet landing on Dagobah, though guitarist Alex Risberg says the band's more inspired by Planet of the Apes than by Star Wars.

The album will be released on June 25th as a special vinyl "Green King Edition" by Interstellar Smoke Records pre-order here), a cassette tape "Forest Edition" from Ogo Rekords (pre-order here) and "Swamp Edition" from Olde Magick Records pre-order here), with the digital and compact disc formats handled by Death Valley Records (pre-order here).

10,0000 Years have in II their most accomplished album to date, with powerful moments that will stay with you long after the record's stopped spinning. Fans of High On Fire, Black Tusk, and The Sword listen up! You might just discover your next favorite band.

Give ear...

10,000 Years - Gargantuan Forest (Music Video)

Some Buzz

Having previously played together in the original lineup of Swedish underground heavyweights Pike, Erik Palm (Guitars) and Alex Risberg (Bass/vocals) found their way back to each other, musically, in early 2020. The creative fire reignited and stoked to a burning inferno and through a mutual love of heavy riffs and thundering stoner rock, doom, and sludge metal, 10,000 Years was born. Finding a drummer would prove to be an easy task and with Espen Karlsen the final piece lay firmly in place. The groove they fell into during the first rehearsal hasn’t stopped rumbling since.

After spending the first-half of 2020 writing and rehearsing, 10,000 Years recorded their self-titled debut EP during one weekend in June in the legendary Studio Sunlight with equally legendary producer Tomas Skogsberg. The self-titled EP was released on July 10th and immediately struck a chord with the heavy underground worldwide, and 10,000 Years garnered rave reviews and accolades.

10,000 Years by 10,000 Years

10,000 Years' musical and lyrical world revolves around the tale of the terran class III exploration vessel Albatross and its mission to explore the Milky Way and nearby galaxies in search for a possible new home for humanity. The EP tells the tale of its first foray into space and what happens when the crew accidentally travel through a wormhole and end up in an adjacent dimension populated by ancient gods and giant beings, ruled by the Green King. The EP ends with “From Suns Beyond,” where the crew make it off from the strange planet, back out into space in search of a way back home. The new album picks up the story as the Albatross blasts through the atmosphere of a seemingly unknown planet and crashlands headfirst into strange new adventures.

II by 10,000 Years

Now, less than a year after their first release, 10,000 Years are back with their first full-length effort, aptly titled 'II' (2021). Picking up right where the EP left off, II continues the story of the ill-fated Albatross mission and its exploration of time and space through a skull-crushing mixture of stoner rock, doom, and sludge metal. The album will no doubt continue to build on 10,000 Years' already golden reputation and prove to be an even bigger hit with the heavy masses.

Follow The Band

Get The Music

[adverb-slut]

To Be Human (Fanfiction) Part 5/?

This took ... way longer than expected due to my sheer laziness.  Thank you for your patience!  Also, here is the link to this chapter on AO3.  (Also yay, I finally remembered to include a Michael and Lucifer Celestial Realm flashback!)

Title:

To Be Human

Summary:

When a mysterious force attacks the Devildom and destroys it, the brothers are forced to turn to their Father in the Celestial Realm for answers and assistance. However, the Almighty is still miffed at the seven due to their involvement in the Great Celestial War, and sends them to seek asylum in the one place they have yet to make their mark—the Human World.

Without the help of their beloved MC, the brothers must learn to assimilate into this strange new world, all while trying to figure out who is responsible for the destruction of the Devildom and take back their home.

Rating:

T

Word Count:

4195

Previous Chapter:

Read Chapter 4 here!

-

Lucifer adjusted his halo, which floated almost ominously over his head.  Halos were considered part of the angels’ “formal attire,” but considering Lucifer was constantly in the presence of Father, wearing something so ceremonial for his work attire seemed appropriate.  

“Michael, are you nearly ready?” he called, his voice reverberating through the House of Great Elation.  “You know Father doesn’t like it if I’m late.”  

He checked the ornate gold grandfather clock that was situated at the edge of one of the many parlors in their home.  

It was almost fifteen minutes until eight, and in that time, he and Michael had to walk to Simeon and Uriel’s home—Perfection Hall—and drop off the infant Luke on their way to their Father’s Palace, where Lucifer worked.  After that, Michael would meander his way to the Celestial Realm barracks, where he led Father’s legions as their Major General.

“I’m here, I’m here,” Michael panted, running down the grand staircase which connected to his wing of the house.  He supported Luke, who was thrown over his shoulder with one hand, and in the other, he held his Sword of the Spirit.  

Lucifer cringed when he noticed that the rest of the Angel of Destruction’s Armor of God had been strapped on haphazardly — tightened and loosened at ill-fitting places, but he sighed when he remembered that all the soldiers under him were far too terrified of their Major General to ever point it out.  

He nodded at Michael.  “Let’s go, then.  Step lively—we’ll be late, otherwise.”

The pair walked silently down the bustling streets of the Celestial Realm, which, sad to say, became infinitely less bustling when they saw Michael.  In fact, sometimes Lucifer wondered if his Father had gotten His idea of parting the Red Sea for the Israelites from seeing the wide berth that the other angels gave toward the Angel of Destruction.

Lucifer hated to say that he—and Michael—were used to this.  Used to the stares, the whispers, the glares, the hushed scathing remarks. 

Even Luke cooed uneasily.

“He destroys everything he touches!”

“Love the guy, but you can’t keep him around.  The man carries an aura of destruction.”

“So powerful, but at what cost?”

“Who does he think he’s fooling with that puppy-dog attitude?”

“Why do we even need an Angel of Destruction, anyway?  He’s just a menace.”

The words were a dagger, dull but piercing, toward the happy-go-lucky Michael, who had but nothing but love and friendship to offer his fellow celestial beings.

Lucifer heaved a sour breath as he and Michael made their way toward Perfection Hall.

If it wasn’t for him and the Archangels, Michael would’ve been all alone.

Or worse—ran out of the Celestial Realm.

Mammon bit his lip as the static-laden voice boomed through the landline base.  He hadn’t been asked to study the Bible or any ancient history regarding it since his stint at the Celestial Realm.  The only thing about King Solomon that he remembered from back then was that he was incredibly wealthy, and Mammon had always reveled in calculating how much the king’s possessions were worth—the sheer magnitude of the value never ceased to amaze him.

However, he also did remember something about King Solomon being the “wisest man to ever live.”  His heralded wisdom, supposedly, had come to him through a dream from God, Who had promised Solomon anything in the world.  Instead of choosing riches and wealth, the king had chosen wisdom.  Pleased with his request, God granted him not only the wisdom that he had requested but worldly pleasures as well, such as insurmountable wealth and power.  

… Why in the world would such a blessed and influential man pose as a menial exchange student and interact with demons thousands of years later?

Mammon lost his train of thought when Lucifer walked closer to the speakerphone and bellowed, “It is us.”

There was silence on the other end and the other five brothers exchanged glances—partially due to Lucifer’s vague response and partially because of the aforementioned quietness.  

Suddenly, a crackle came through the speaker and Solomon said, “Ah, I see; unfortunately, that doesn’t aid me in discerning your identity, and as I’ve a great deal of powerful enemies, I think I will have to say goodb—”

“Solomon, it’s me!  Asmo!” the fifthborn chirped.  He raised an eyebrow at Lucifer, who sighed in surrender and stepped away from the phone.

From the speaker came an audible gasp.  “Asmo!  It’s been a long time.”  Another crackle.  “I suppose that that was Lucifer just now?”

Mammon snickered and called, “That was him, alright.”

“I see!  Pardon me for asking, but why are you calling from this unknown number?  I believe I have your D.D.D contact saved still.”  

“Long story,” chimed in Leviathan.  “We’re in the Human World now ‘cause we think someone’s out to get us in the Devildom.”

Satan nodded.  “And we’re using this primitive human technology called a ‘landline’ to reach you, as we’ve yet to be provided with mobile devices.”  

Something crashed on Solomon’s end, and Mammon wagered that he must have dropped his phone in shock.  A moment later, the sorcerer’s voice returned.  “Did I hear that right?  You seven are in the Human World?”

“Yes, we are.  We called you because we have some questions.”  Beel walked forward so that he was standing directly in front of the speaker.  “What are the best restaurants up here?”

A confused mumble came from Solomon, before he answered, “Uh, well—”

“You can hold off on answering that one, for now, Solomon,” interrupted Lucifer, shaking his head at Beel.  “Rather, we figure you can help us solve a different problem of ours.”  

“And that would be?”

Lucifer took a deep breath, and Mammon had to admit that he’d never seen his elder brother look so stressed.  He was surprised that Asmo hadn’t scolded him over the wrinkle that was beginning to form between his brows.  “Diavolo and the Devildom are in trouble, and someone has stolen information regarding the culprit behind this entire ordeal from my Father’s omniscience.  Without it, we cannot find Diavolo or discern who is behind this.  You have ties to many demons, not to mention are a sorcerer—”

“And the primordial King of Israel!  Did you ever plan on telling me that?  I think I should know if I have a pact with someone as glamorous as royalty!” huffed Asmodeus.

Solomon let out an amused hum.  “Oh, so you figured that out, did you?  Did Simeon tell you?”

“Apparently he’s the one who set your contact into our phone under the name ‘his Imperial Majesty, King Solomon of Israel,’ so kinda, yeah,” Mammon said.

“Mind explaining how you’re some kind of immortal king?” demanded Belphie.  “Last time I checked, humans don’t live for very long.”

The sorcerer laughed.  “I suppose you know that I once asked God for wisdom in a dream, and as soon as I had it, all kinds of arcane knowledge regarding sorcery and magic, demons and angels, was opened up to me, and from there I learned about demon pacts.  One time I pledged my life to a demon—my soul for immortality.”

Satan rubbed his chin thoughtfully.  “If I’m following you correctly, wouldn’t that have to mean that you sold your soul rather early in your life to look as youthful as you do now?  Unless … you also managed to change your appearance entirely?”

“Nice catch, Satan,” mused Solomon.  “Actually, yes, it was quite early in my reign that I began to dabble in the dark arts and sell my soul, and yes, my immortality  does prevent me from physically aging.  Ah, wait, that’s not entirely true—my hair is the only thing that continues to age, which is the reason as to why it’s as white as it is.”

“I really feel as if I ought to have been made aware of this!” grumbled Asmo.

Mammon put a hand to his cheek pensively, as the fifthborn continued to bemoan the massive injustice that had been done to him through this secret.  Something didn’t seem right about Solomon’s story.  As far as he was concerned, his Father wasn’t a fan of demons—that much He had made very clear—and there was no way that a person who consorted with them to the degree that Solomon supposedly had in the past would be remembered honorably in the Bible.  

But that wasn’t the case.  If he was remembering correctly, God had nothing but praises to sing of Solomon, and save for his singular mistake of having his heart led astray by his unholy number of wives, the king was revered and respected in biblical history.  He even had penned several books of the Bible, displaying his wisdom and knowledge. 

That certainly didn’t line up with the current Solomon’s tale of occult dealings.  

Mammon shot Lucifer a look, and the firstborn nodded.  It appeared that he had made the same observation.  He stepped forward.

“Solomon, do you really expect us to believe that someone as perverse as you claim to be could be remembered so admirably in the Bible?  The words written in there echo Father’s thoughts verbatim, and there is no way that someone as obsessed with purity and light as He is could approve of your dark actions,” inquired Lucifer with a raised eyebrow.

Solomon chuckled in amusement but gave no reply.

Lucky for them, he didn’t have to, for Satan’s eyes lit up as he pieced the two shards of information together.  “You wanted to be remembered as a proper and perfect king for millennia to come, so you went in and removed all traces of your dealings with the occult from Father’s omniscience.  Because it’s all that Father knows, your memory in history now consists only of your good deeds.”

“And one bad one for realism,” added Solomon.  “Everyone makes mistakes, you know.  I can’t have humanity believing that living a perfect life is attainable, no matter what your Father says.”

Mammon felt as if his head was starting to spin with all this new information. 

He realized … if Solomon revealed that the process of removing information from their Father’s omniscience was easy, then perhaps he could use it as an excellent business opportunity.  Who wouldn’t pay gobs of money to have their past mistakes wiped completely from the Almighty’s knowledge?

But maybe that was going too far … 

Nevertheless, Mammon still had to ask, “So how’d ya do it, anyway?  Remove stuff from Father’s memory ‘n’ all?”

He could hear the irritating smile on the sorcerer’s face as he replied, “I’m not sure if I should tell you.”

To his surprise, it was Asmo who yanked the phone upward and yelled, “Solomon, don’t make me spank you—and not in the fun way, either!  That kind of information is the kind we need to go back home to the Devildom.  I can’t stay here in this stupid Human World for much longer!  We’re poor, and I have to share a bathroom—a bathroom—with these barbarians!”

Solomon sighed.  “Calm down, Asmo.  Fine, I’ll explain, but I doubt it’ll help you as much as you think.”

Lucifer gestured for the other five brothers to inch closer to the speaker, and Satan whipped out a notepad and pen from his pocket to write notes, as Solomon began, “Your Father is only as powerful as He is because He possesses three things that make Him so—His omnipotence, which means He has the power to do anything; His omnipresence, which means He can be anywhere at any time, and finally, His omniscience, which means He knows all.  Your Father has access to these three attributes of Himself at all times, but that doesn’t mean He uses them constantly—”

“Because He thinks that it takes the fun out of things—yes, we know that, Solomon,” interrupted Lucifer impatiently.  

Solomon coughed.  “Er—well, okay, then.  Anyway, these three attributes are considered separate from God Himself, as in, they have a separate location in His mind than His regular thoughts.  All you have to do is find a way to transport yourself directly into God’s mind where the three attributes are located, find the omniscience attribute, and then alter the information found within it.”

The seven brothers stared at each other in disbelief, before Levi moaned, “Oh, that’s all? You just have to teleport yourself into the mind of an OP deity?  Piece of cake.”

Satan snapped his fingers.  “Wait, since this feat appears to be so difficult to achieve, that should help us, since I’m assuming only a few people could execute it.  With such a small pool of potential suspects, we should easily be able to discern who was the one who removed the information regarding the Devildom’s destruction and Diavolo’s whereabouts from Father’s memory.”

“You’re right—but I wasn’t finished,” said Solomon, eliciting a chorus of groans from the demons.  “Teleporting into your Father’s mind is difficult enough, and even if you do, you’d instantly be marked as an intruder, because since everyone’s power pales in comparison to your Father’s, His mind can instantly recognize when something weaker enters it.  Imagine you have a soft lump of clay and somehow a stone gets mixed into it.  When you touch the clay, it’s easy to distinguish the stone because it feels so different from the malleable clay that surrounds it—that’s how it’s like in God’s mind.  Anyone that enters it immediately stands out because everything else in His mind is so powerful.”

Belphegor yawned.  “Do you have a point?”

“Yes.  The only way to blend into His mind undetected is if you yourself are powerful and combine your power with others who are just as powerful; that way you generate enough power so that you can not only cast a spell to enter God’s mind but also so that you remain unexposed in it.  I find the best combination of beings to combine powers with are angels and demons—at least one of each.  Somehow the potency of this combination is unprecedented.”  Solomon cleared his throat.  “Does that answer all your questions?”

Mammon scratched his head.  Powerful angels and demons were in abundance in both the Celestial Realm and the Devildom … that didn’t necessarily narrow down their number of suspects.  “Was it s'posed to?”

Solomon laughed.  “I guess not.  I told you me telling you things wouldn’t help as much as you think.”

The brothers exchanged irritated glances, before Lucifer, massaging his forehead, grumbled, “I suppose it’s better than nothing.  You’re dismissed, Solomon—” He ignored the protesting sorcerer as he clicked off the landline and turned toward Satan.  “Start making a list of all the powerful angels and demons back home and in the Celestial Realm.” 

Satan grumbled very loudly, but obeyed without any other protest, as Mammon asked, “How’s that gonna help?  It’s not like we got a gauge that tells us what a powerful angel or demon is.”

“Yeah, calling Solomon was one of the most useless side quests I’ve ever done,” said Leviathan.

“Hush, you two,” scolded Lucifer, staring intently at Satan, who was voraciously making his list.  “I can already see the gears turning in his head.  If any one of us can figure this out, it’s Satan.”

Satan’s head whipped up at his words, a fire in his eyes.  “I see how it is—stick all the work on the middle child .”  

Before anyone could retaliate, a sound echoed through the house.  It sounded strange, like someone had rung a bell, and Mammon had to stop himself from instinctively leaping into Levi’s arms—which he considered to be very proactive of himself, for the thirdborn had a nasty habit of hurling Mammon into the ground whenever he did so.

The brothers, who had fallen silent at the sound, shrugged as a unit when they couldn’t discern where the noise was coming from, before Lucifer put his hand on his forehead and addressed Satan again, saying, “If that’s how you wish to see it, then—”  He was interrupted once more by the ringing sound.  “What in Father’s name is that?”

“Almost sounds like a cowbell,” mumbled Belphie.

Leviathan’s eyes lit up.  “Wait—I’ve got it!  I’ve heard this sound about a thousand times in What To Do When A Big-Tiddy Anime Girl Is At Your Door But You’re Too Afraid to Let Her In Because She’s Glowing The Colors of the Entire Electromagnetic Spectrum.  It’s one of those Human World doorbells!”

“Doesn’t sound like any doorbell I’ve ever heard,” Mammon said.  Didn’t all doorbells sound like the screaming of ten thousand souls trapped in a burning abyss?  Their doorbell in the House of Lamentation certainly had.

Lucifer gestured toward the fifthborn.  “Asmo, you go check the door.”

“Me?  Are you crazy?  What if it’s a murderer or something?  They’ll take one look at me and be so jealous of my beauty that they’ll kill me on sight!”

“In that case, you definitely should go.  Take Mammon with you, too.”

“The Great Mammon resents ya, Lucifer, for that!”  Mammon replied, glaring daggers at his elder brother as he walked toward the door, a sulking Asmo in tow. 

As they neared the door, the bell sound rang through the house again, and the sheer volume there led Mammon to conclude that Levi was right—the sound definitely was the doorbell.  He yanked open the door, and immediately upon seeing who was behind it, slammed it closed.

He ignored the injured “Hey!” that came from the other side as he yelled toward his brothers, “Call Animal Control!”

Asmo laughed.  “Don’t call Animal Control on the cute little chihuahua.”  He turned toward the door and opened it, greeting the guest with a “Hello there, Luke.”

The young angel let out a very offended sniff, before walking through the threshold, pulling behind him a droll little white wagon.  “Don’t expect me to entertain the company of demons for very long, but Simeon said I should deliver these things to you.”  He gestured toward the parcels that almost overflowed out of the wagon bed.  

Mammon’s eyes lit up at the packages.  “Whaddaya got for me?”

Luke, who seemed to not have forgiven the secondborn for slamming the door in his face said, “Your box is at the bottom.”  Quietly, he muttered, “Hopefully, it’s all smushed by now.”

Before Mammon could snark a reply, his other brothers walked into the hall.

“Ah, welcome, Luke,” greeted Satan, nodding at the angel.  “I take it that those packages are for us?”

“Please tell me there’s a gaming console or some manga in there,” begged Leviathan, yanking a hand through his hair.  “The laptop we’ve got now can barely stream any anime and forget downloading any games—the thing’s way too slow.”

Luke’s eyes widened in disgust at Levi’s suggestion.  “O—of course, there isn’t!  The stuff Simeon gave me is all useful stuff.”  He began to unload the boxes off of the wagon, handing each brother a package with their name on it.  “I know Simeon said everything would arrive later in the week, but things went faster than expected, so.”

Mammon grumbled when his parcel, indeed, was all scrunched and squished at the edges.  Inside the bundle was a driving license, a mobile device that was creatively called “iPhone,” and various boring papers that were supposed to be bank statements (he almost vomited at the sight of them) and other official documents.  

Mammon gulped as he shuffled the contents together; seeing them made him realize that this was all real.  His brothers and he were really going to be living in the Human World, posed as humans, for Father-knows-how-long.

He could feel the bile rise in his throat, but he choked it down and shook his head.  What kind of demon was nervous about living with humans?  After all, one of his most favorite beings in all three worlds was a human, weren’t they?

Before he could ponder anymore, Beel gestured toward the last box in the wagon.  It was plain and unmarked and smelled of sweetness and love and joy and other generally unpleasant things for demons.  Nevertheless, it made all of their mouths water.  “What’s that?”

Luke blushed as he gently picked up the box and held it out.  “It’s—it’s not like I—I baked Heavenly Peace Petit Fours for you demons as a housewarming gift or anything!  I just happened to be making them for Michael and had some extra!”

Beel snatched the box out of his hands and immediately began chowing down on the delicate confections.  He pat Luke on the head gently mid-bite.  “Good doggy.”

Mammon could barely contain his laughter as Luke’s face turned a shade akin to the strawberry jam he’d layered between the petit fours and sputtered, “I—I am not a dog!”

“Shh, now, don’t tease him so much,” Lucifer chided, although a small smirk had formed on his lips, as well.  “We need him to answer a few questions, now, don’t we?”

Mammon raised an eyebrow.  “We do?”

He didn’t like the look on Lucifer’s face as the eldest bent low to reach eye level with the young angel, whose eyes widened in something that seemed to be a cross between indignation and terror.  

“Tell me, Luke,” demanded Lucifer, his voice low and as smooth as honey, “what you and Father and the other angels have to say about the Celestial Realm Cellular Service and Internet Provider?”  His eyes flashed red and Luke stumbled backward, dropping the handle on his wagon.  

“I—I’m not supposed to tell you,” gulped Luke.  The obstinacy drained out of his eyes and was replaced with pure, unadulterated fear as the eldest bared down on him.  “Anyone who’s not an angel isn't supposed to know that.”

Lucifer laughed, a menacing sound.  He inched closer, “Ah, but you’ll tell us, right?”

Mammon normally didn’t mind when Lucifer went full-demon on people, but … come on, Luke couldn’t have been more than ten in angel years … he was just a kid.  He put a hand gingerly on his brother’s shoulder.  “Yo, calm down.”

Lucifer whirled toward him, and Mammon’s heart sank in pity.  Beneath the glowing vermillion eyes, he could see it all.  

Fatigue.  

Desperation.  

Disappointment.  

Shame. 

He understood.

In just a short period of time, Lucifer had lost his home and his beloved friend, was forced to bow to the aid of a realm that had abandoned him and so he despised, and was made to live in a place that was far inferior from what he was used to.  Solomon had been their only lead, and he had proven to not be much help.  Their only respite at this point was to get this little angel to divulge the only other information that they could hope to have.

Mammon sighed and pushed Lucifer aside—a dangerous move, he knew.  “Let me do it.”  

Lucky for him, Beel and Asmo were already restraining their elder brother as they tried to calm him down.  He turned to Luke.  “Look, chihuahua, ya really think we’re gonna feel comfortable knowin’ the Celestial Realm is spyin’ on us with that little phone company of theirs?”

Luke wrinkled his nose.  “Spying on you?  Why would anyone want to spy on a bunch of demons?”

 “Why else would the Celestial Realm immediately make us use their cell service and internet provider?” argued Levi.

“Well, I guess you demons wouldn’t know this, since it was implemented after you guys left," explained Luke, "but the Celestial Realm Cellular Service and Internet Provider—we call it CRCSIP, by the way—is one of the many Celestial Realm-owned companies throughout the world—”

“So I was right,” Mammon interrupted, “the Celestial Realm is goin’ capitalist.”

Luke fervently shook his head.  “No, it’s not.  All companies owned by the Celestial Realm are there for angels and angels only.  They’re to be used free of charge for any celestial being since angels who are residing down on Earth are usually Guardian Angels who still need to purchase things for themselves but don’t work human jobs and therefore don’t have any human money.”  He kicked the ground.  “Father put you guys on one of the CRCSIP’s plans just as another way to help you out.”

Lucifer, who had calmed down a bit and now was flushed with embarrassment at his actions, coughed and said, “Unacceptable.  We never asked for this.”

“We’ll be takin’ the free stuff, though!” Mammon chirped.  

Leviathan ran a hand through his hair.  “All that doesn’t necessarily mean we still can’t be spied on.”

The angel grit his teeth.  “For the last time, who the heck would wanna spy on a bunch of demons?”

“The same person who’d destroy the Devildom with Hellfire and possibly abduct Diavolo and remove information from Father's omniscience,” Satan shot back.  He drew out his notepad and pointed to the column where he had been printing powerful angel names.  “Do any of these angels have access to any of the inner workings of the CRCSIP?”

Luke peered at the list for a moment.  “I’m just a Junior Guardian, so I don’t know much, but I’m guessing that the only one with clearance to the records and information like that would be … oh yes, he’s on the list—Michael.”

Lucifer blanched.  “Michael?”

[jahaanofmenaphos]

Art by the awesome @tommieglenn!

Of Gods and Men Summary:

When the gods returned to Gielinor, their minds were only on one thing: the Stone of Jas, a powerful elder artefact in the hands of Sliske, a devious Mahjarrat who stole it for his own ends and entertainment. He claims to want to incite another god wars, but are his ulterior motives more sinister than that? And can the World Guardian, Jahaan, escape from under Sliske’s shadow?

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QUEST 11: SLISKE’S ENDGAME

QUEST SUMMARY:

The eclipse is nigh. The end of Sliske’s games draws near. All the gods gather for one final race for the Stone, taking them through a shadowy labyrinth of the devious Mahjarrat’s design. Not only does Jahaan have to survive the trials Sliske sets out for them, but he has to compete against every major deity in Gielinor. Then, and only then, will he have a shot at ending Sliske’s madness once and for all…

CHAPTER 6 - DARE TO DIE

His green eyes no longer shone emerald. Instead, they were sunk into their sockets, white and lifeless.

This was not Ozan.

His hair was a tangled mess, not the perfectly layered quiff and bangs that usually framed his handsome face.

This was not Ozan.

He carried himself like a broken puppet on a string, not with the suave bravado and swagger he was famous for.

This was NOT Ozan!

But even if this figure standing before Jahaan wasn’t Ozan, it broke his heart all the same.

He wanted to call out to his friend, to beg him to remember who he once was, that he’s not just a thrall of Sliske’s… but he knew it was hopeless. Wights couldn’t be reasoned with, and Jahaan knew Sliske would get some perverse pleasure out of watching him hopelessly beg for his friend’s sanity. But Jahaan couldn’t help but gormlessly stand there, heart pounding in his throat and threatening to jump out of his mouth.

Sliske knew his nightmares, and this was one of them.

Mercifully, Jahaan regained enough composure to register Ozan readying his bow and arrow, managing to start running out of the way just before the arrow would have careened into him. A bow and arrow was far superior in accuracy and power compared to Karil’s crossbow, especially in Ozan’s hands. He was one of Gielinor’s finest archers, and even as a wight, his prowess would be second to none.

Fortunately, even Ozan’s arrows weren’t strong enough to penetrate Jahaan’s armour, but they packed a punch. As he was running from one point of cover to another, Jahaan felt one slam into his side, the arrow shaft splintering on the impact. Perhaps the shock was worse than the pain, but it wasn’t an experience he cared to repeat.

Ozan was positioned by the remnants of the Stone of Jas, the crumbled remains of the universe’s most powerful artefact. And as the next arrow whizzed by him, an idea clicked into Jahaan’s mind.

When wights are bested in combat, they don’t die, for they’re already stuck in a perpetual state of ‘undeath’. Instead, they rejuvenate, ready to be summoned again. How long this rejuvenation process takes depends on the prowess of the summoner, but for someone as powerful as Sliske, the wights could be back at full strength within a couple of hours. If the summoner died while the wights were rejuvenating, the souls of the wights would be released to the afterlife - only then would they finally ‘die’. Most likely, the same thing would happen if wights were active when their master perished. But a small part of Jahaan wondered… if he killed Sliske while Ozan was summoned, would the Mahjarrat’s control over him be broken? Would he be free?

It seemed like a long shot; Jahaan wished he’d asked Icthlarin more questions on the matter. But even if there was the slimmest of chances he could save some part of Ozan, he was going to try.

So, instead of working to destroy Ozan’s wight form, Jahaan tried to impair him, to render him immobile for the rest of the battle.

Kerapac’s armour was dropped a little ways across the cavern, and Jahaan wanted to reach it before heading towards Ozan, just to give his head some protection in case an arrow accidentally targeted his skull instead of his protected chestplate. Sliske must have known that Ozan’s bow and arrow was not enough to physically debilitate him. But battles fought against the mind could leave greater scars than any carved on the body. When it came to battles against the mind, Sliske could be considered a warmaster. The Mahjarrat was smart. Twisted, malicious, but smart.

So Jahaan tried to pretend the man attacking him wasn’t the warped shell of his oldest and closest companion. Alas, it didn’t work that easily, but he kept trying. Jahaan found small comfort in the knowledge that he would soon channel all the rage, all the sorrow and all the grief that Sliske had caused him, and use it to beat the teeth out of Sliske’s skull.

Fortunately, no arrows were embedded in his head by the time he made it to Kerepac’s armour. Standing side-on to Ozan, Jahaan held the armour-plate tight against his head and edged closer to the wight, only peering out briefly to make sure he was walking on target. Naturally, this slow and straight movement made him easy pickings for Ozan’s arrows. Jahaan prayed that his armour would hold up.

The first arrow connected underneath his rib, arrow splitting in two with each end flying in a different direction. The second bounced off in similar fashion. At this rate, Jahaan realised the greatest danger was the unpredictable direction the arrowheads would fly in.

When Jahaan got too close, Ozan started to back away, edging even closer towards the Stone. Arrows that caught Jahaan at this distance packed a severe punch. One winded him as it crashed into the middle of his ribs. Groaning, Jahaan slipped one of his swords out of its sheath and kept on going, tanking another arrow hit.

Peering out from the side of his make-shift shield, Jahaan saw Ozan knock into the debris pile of the Stone behind him, staggering backwards slightly as the wight worked to regain his footing.

That was when Jahaan struck, a precise slash of his sword that cut the longbow in half. Using the wight’s confusion to his advantage, Jahaan dropped his sword and shield in quick succession, then launched himself at Ozan, a fierce knock to the side of his head making the wight stumble backwards and trip over the Stone fragments. With Ozan on the ground now, Jahaan capitalised on his crude plan to incapacitate the wight.

I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry…

Jahaan tried not to feel bad, reminding himself over and over that wights do not feel pain, that they do not suffer, regardless of what injury is inflicted upon them. Still, as he smashed the rock down on Ozan’s ankle, Jahaan himself let out a hoarse cry, but he masked it in a whimper.

I just want to help… I’m sorry...

He couldn’t look Ozan in the eye. Undead wight or not, this was his friend he was hurting, and the sickening crunch of the shattered bone made Jahaan feel sick. But since the World Guardian wanted to disable the wight, not kill him, this was the only thing that came to mind.

Ozan made no protest, only swinging his arms in weak defiance, just like a zombie would. Before Ozan could shuffle himself into a crawl, Jahaan began piling debris from all around the Stone onto Ozan’s legs, effectively trapping him there. It was a long shot, and a desperate one at that, but if he could just say put, if he could remain in this realm...

When the last piece was in place, Jahaan moved to the side, tentatively examining what Ozan would do. The wight tried to shift, twisting to face Jahaan, but it couldn’t find enough purchase to lift the debris from the lower half of its body.

Suddenly, a bolt of energy connected against Jahaan, forcing his back to arc in anguish. The jolts of arcane magic caused his entire body to spasm. When the stream of shadow energy ceased, Jahaan collapsed to the ground, twitching and panting from the aftershock.

“Honestly,” Sliske grumbled, teleporting down from his high perch and into the chamber-turned-battleground. “If you want something done right, do it yourself…”

Jahaan forced his head to the side, to look at the debilitated form of Ozan, and watched with gut-wrenching dismay as Sliske caused the wight to vanish with a wave of his hand.

The plan to try and save Ozan had failed. That hurt more than Sliske’s attack.

“You know, you’re really starting to irk me, World Guardian.”

Jahaan heard heavy footsteps move towards him, then a firm boot stomping on his back, forcing his face to smash against the ground.

“Come on, get up,” Sliske’s voice had the remnants of a growl lodged in his throat. “You risked both our necks to start a fight, so let’s get on with it.”

Groaning, Jahaan went to prop himself up, but it was a struggle. In his peripheral vision, he saw Sliske lean towards him again - and that’s when he struck.

Whipping around quickly, Jahaan threw a blinding smoke spell into Sliske’s eyes, causing the Mahjarrat to cough and choke. Using the distraction, Jahaan scrambled to his feet and gained some distance from the Mahjarrat, readying a smoke barrage to capitalise.

The spell connected, knocking Sliske back a pace. Growling, he teleported to the other side of the chasm before Jahaan’s next spell could strike him, countering with a wave of shadow magic.

Sliske’s attack hit dead on, forcing the World Guardian to the ground, but he recovered quickly.

“I see you’ve been dabbling in some of the darker arts,” Sliske sneered, shadows dancing and curling around the base of their master. “Good. I was hoping for some semblance of a challenge.”

Finally, the battle commenced in earnest.

Jahaan weaved and ducked out of the way of oncoming fire, tanking the odd hits he couldn’t quite slip out of the way from. Fortunately, his armour held up well. Memories of fighting Zemouregal told him he couldn’t rely on absorbing every hit - his ribs were a weakness to him as it was. But he could take enough without too much pain or damage. It was very reassuring, being enveloped in such strong armour.

In return, he fired back when he had the chance, smoke and blood barrage spells slipping easily from his gloved palms. He could feel the burning heat against the skin of his hands, thankful that the material his gloves were made out of provided the wearer with some form of spellcaster’s protection. Many people preferred fighting with a wand or staff for greater accuracy, avoiding the scorched palms in the process. Not Jahaan. To him, staves were cumbersome and wands were flimsy. Learning to palm-cast was harder, but it was much more useful for someone who predominantly fought with melee items.

Besides, it was much more satisfying to watch Sliske feel the pain from a spell summoned from Jahaan’s own hands.

“I still haven’t forgiven you for what you did to me,” the Mahjarrat hissed, blocking a smoke spell with a shadow-esque shield.

“What I did to you?!” Jahaan spluttered, indignantly. “You nearly beat me to death! You killed my best friend!”

“You broke your promise,” Sliske countered, coldly. “You gave me your word, and you betrayed me.”

Shadow hands emerged from the ground, clawing at Jahaan. While he kicked one of them away, another grabbed so tightly onto his left arm that it threatened to crush the armour. As quick as he could, Jahaan unsheathed a sword and hacked through the arm clutching at him, dashing away from the remaining ethereal limbs.

“You’re delusional, Sliske,” Jahaan couldn’t even put enough venomous emotion into the statement. There was no sense in arguing with someone so lost in their own fables.

Then again, Sliske felt the exact same way.

Sliske’s attacks were wild and vicious, and he had no problem in hitting Jahaan when he was down. Arcane energy in the form of lightning strikes would crash down from above, hitting the ground around Jahaan’s feet, causing it to crumble and quake. The World Guardian would fall to the floor, greeted half a second later by a thunderous blitz of shadow magic against his downed frame.

Jahaan predicted that, with each spell and attack Sliske summoned, he was rapidly drawing away from his life force. Without the Stone’s power, and without his energy having been rejuvenated in the last Ritual, Sliske was running on empty. In a way, Jahaan thought it best to prolong this fight as long as possible, to force Sliske into wilder and more powerful spells that would sap his energy. This would weaken him quicker. However, this was a double-edged sword, for stamina worked both ways - the longer the fight lasted, the more likely Jahaan was to make a mistake, one that Sliske could capitalise upon to fatal ends.

Occasionally, a handful of unstable wights would be conjured and sent to attack Jahaan. These were easy to kill, slow and unresponsive, and served as a distraction more than anything so that Sliske could exploit the situation. Usually Jahaan would find himself tangling with a wight, only to be struck across the side by a bolt of shadow energy.

These wights didn’t seem to be as robust as the Brothers - far from it. Sometimes they would explode before even reaching Jahaan. Occasionally they would explode just before Jahaan could kill them, sending out scolding particles of arcane energy. If he was unfortunate, these particles would singe Jahaan’s face, already adding to the collection of burn marks he was sporting.

Jahaan didn’t think this was all that intentional, but instead a by-product of Sliske’s rapidly draining power, making him unwilling to part with large chunks of energy in order to fuel an army of strong wights. The Barrows Brothers alone must have drained him considerably. Perhaps he was grasping at the severity of his situation?

Looking carefully, one could notice how sunken Sliske’s eyes had become, receding back into their hollow sockets. His grey skin was tighter against his chin, clawing away from him and fraying at the edges. In some places, where the flesh was closer to the bone, it had peeled away completely, showing the animated corpse beneath. His breathing was shorter now, tighter, as if he was inhaling through a thicker, unfamiliar atmosphere with untested lungs.

It seemed as if Sliske was growing aware of this himself. Gazing down at his hand, the Mahjarrat removed a glove and felt his heart sink at the confirmation. The cracking sound as his skinless fingers clenched into a fist only served to make Sliske even angrier, and he took it out on Jahaan.

Fortunately for Jahaan, the more heated Sliske seemed to get, the less accurate his attacks were. More and more, the World Guardian could counter one of the Mahjarrat’s spells with an attack of his own. Smoke and blood spells connected against Sliske with increased power and precision.

Occasionally the fight was brought to the Shadow Realm, usually by Sliske, but Jahaan would chase him there, refusing to give him enough respite to calculate his offence. But even without entering the Realm, Jahaan could trace Sliske’s movements inside of it, tracking where he would emerge.

“I’m really regretting my choice of gift,” Sliske chided as Jahaan pursued the Mahjarrat into the Shadow Realm once more.

More shadow hands reached for Jahaan, their translucency a trap as they would cling onto their prey tighter than any mortal arms. Thankfully, Jahaan evaded them this time.

With a hoarse groan, a smoke barrage collided with Sliske at full force, causing him to double over and clutch at his stomach. Ragged breaths slipped past clenched teeth, tight and laboured. By now, Sliske’s eyes seemed far too big for his face, as if his skull had shrunk. Flesh hung loosely from his gaunt, jutting bones. In the patches where it hadn’t receded completely, his skin was like paper.

Unfortunately, the effects of the battle had been taking their toll on Jahaan too. He couldn’t think how long the two had been duelling, but the exhaustion was really starting to kick in now. Underneath his armour he could feel the swelling and tenderness of bruises starting to form. Sweat poured down his forehead, coating his black locks and sticking them to his cheeks. He flicked his head to one side, trying to detach them from his skin.

More than anything, Jahaan didn’t want Sliske to know that the fatigue was getting to him. Knowledge like that could give Sliske a confidence boost, one that could work severely against the World Guardian.

Still, he needed a few minutes to catch his breath and compose himself, even if such respite gave Sliske a breather in the process. Without it, Jahaan feared he would collapse. Adrenaline can only take a man so far.

The last thing Jahaan wanted to hear was Sliske’s honeyed voice grating against his eardrums, but if it provided some respite to his attacks, then he’d suffer it.

“So come on,” Jahaan huffed, wiping his brow with a gloved hand. “Seeing as we’re near the end of all this, you can tell me the truth now.” Sliske’s stance was guarded, but he seemed to be in favour of their unspoken time-out, deciding against conjuring another attack. “The truth about what?”

“About why you wanted my soul,” Jahaan replied, resting his hands on the hilts of his swords. “You’ve met thousands of people across hundreds of lifetimes - surely you could have used any one of them to get a soul!”

“Don’t you think I tried?” Sliske barked back. “Hundreds upon hundreds of failed experiments! I tried everything, got lost in my research, but none of them were compatible with me… but you would know all about that, wouldn’t you, you prying little World Guardian. Even when I had the Staff, nothing would take.”

“And so you took the word of a madman to come after me? All because he plucked my name out of thin air?”

“You don’t believe much in destiny, do you?” Sliske chided. “It’s such a romantic concept. I knew - all the way back then, I knew - that if I were to acquire a soul, it would be yours. You’re… special. Always have been.”

Jahaan didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he decided to end their little respite before Sliske could dive into a vexing soliloquy. There was only so much the World Guardian could take. Fortunately, the Mahjarrat didn’t react in time and took the full brunt of a smoke barrage. The spell caught onto the fabric of his robe beneath his chin, incinerating a small portion of it and burning the flesh below. Seeing the opportunity, Jahaan channeled a delicate and precise blood spell, one that targeted the blood seeping from Sliske’s wound. Soon, the ink-like substance that came from the wound was under Jahaan’s control. The World Guardian pulled the blood out like it was a weed. Thin and sticky vines defied gravity as they were wrenched out of the Mahjarrat’s body.

Roaring in anguish, Sliske forcefully pressed a palm to the wound, desperate to stop the essence being dragged from his body. Realising the effort was for nought, he fired a wild spell in Jahaan’s direction, missing the mark but close enough to get Jahaan to break his concentration on the spell.

Sliske stumbled, hunching slightly as he panted for breath, the heat of his palm trying to nurse the wound. Baring his teeth, seething eyes glared daggers at Jahaan. “Did Azzy teach you that one?”

Jahaan’s lips curled with a tinge of cruelty.

Sliske fought back with increased venom, a wave of shadow magic storming across the chasm and crashing into Jahaan. The World Guardian tumbled to the ground, rolling at speed into a pile of debris. Once the world stopped spinning, Jahaan became aware of an acute pain in his jaw and the unmistakable taste of iron in his mouth. When he spat out, blood came with it, alongside a fragment of tooth.

Groaning, Jahaan tried to pull himself to his feet, but a blast of shadow energy put paid to that. In fact, several more bolts connected with him as Jahaan desperately tried to crawl behind a downed pillar for cover.

Gasping for breath, Jahaan tried to reorient himself and prepare to counter. But by the gods, was his back killing him. That last onslaught had really done a number on his already aching muscles. But for what it was worth, that last onslaught had also taken its toll on Sliske.

“You just wanted to make me one of your thralls!” Jahaan called out from behind cover, stretching out the kinks in his back, trying to shake off the pain in his aching muscles. “You pretended to care about me, but you were just using me all this time. So don’t get pissed just because I used you. It’s a two-way street.”

Jahaan flinched as a bolt of arcane energy careened into the remnants of the pillar, shattering his stone cover.

“I would have given you eternal life,” Sliske’s voice was low and ever so slightly shaky. “I would have given you power, a place in this world. You would have had purpose. I would have let you keep your free will.”

“Until you got bored,” Jahaan countered. “And stripped that away from me with a click of your fingers.”

Sliske shook his head lightly. “Not you. I would never have done that to you.”

The worst part was that, despite everything, a part of Jahaan believed Sliske. The Mahjarrat was a master of manipulating emotions, and Jahaan had to remind himself that’s exactly what this was - a manipulation. Sliske was trying to get under his skin to throw him off balance, nothing more.

Nothing more?

Shaking the cobwebs from his mind, Jahaan readied himself and dashed out from behind cover, a forceful retaliation of spells at his fingertips.

Sliske tried to keep up, but he was weak, weaker than he’d ever felt before. Five hundred years pass between each Ritual, and yet even after all that time he’d still have enough in the tank to fight to the death beside the Marker.

The words of his half brother began to repeat inside his mind, ‘And what would happen if all your plans fell apart and you were finally cornered?’

In his arrogance, he had shrugged off his brother’s concerns. There was always another plan, after all.

He’d have to think fast, have to calculate his next move. Was escaping even an option? Jahaan had stopped him last time and he could again. But regardless of that, Sliske didn’t want to run away this time. What was the use? The state he was in, he could wither and die all alone before he came up with a solution to rejuvenate himself.

He just had to think. While there was still hope for his plans to succeed, he would keep trying.

He still had the Staff. He still had a chance.

This was not over yet. Far from it.

At least, that was what Sliske thought...

Before long, Sliske’s spells became weaker and harder to cast, the strain on each one hurting himself more than the spell’s target. All the while, his brain racked for a way to turn the tables in his favour, to get the soul he needed now more than ever. If he was to die in this world, that soul was his only chance of living on in the next.

With the Staff, the Siphon, there was a way. Jahaan just needed to be debilitated as the extraction was a delicate process.

But Jahaan was fighting with more vigor now - perhaps he could sense Sliske’s withering and desperation? Perhaps it was spurring him on, giving him enough adrenaline to counter each of Sliske’s attacks with a thunderous rebuttal.

The World Guardian was gaining on him, closing the gap between them. Each hit Jahaan tanked didn’t slow him down as much as Sliske needed, and it didn’t deter him from pushing onwards. Sliske tried to hold his ground, but the more powerful attacks winded him, causing him to cough and splutter up mouthfuls of acidic bile. The next bolt of blood magic smashed into his gut, causing the Mahjarrat to double over, now finding blood dripping out from between his teeth and pooling in the black of his throat.

He didn’t notice Jahaan slip the dagger out of its sheath until it was far too late.

Jahaan leapt into the air, runite dagger held high. The sharp tip of the blade was angled towards the top of Sliske’s skull. Starved for reaction time, all the Mahjarrat’s instincts allowed him to do was to bring his right arm up to intercept the dagger’s path.

The dagger embedded itself in the lower part of Sliske’s right forearm. A sickening squelch would have normally been expected, but there was not enough flesh to garner such a noise. Instead, it was worse - a nauseating snapping sound as the blade tore through weakened muscles, then followed by the dull, heavy knock against bone. The crushing force of the hilt smashing against Sliske’s increasingly frail arms caused a large chunk of bone to shatter in the Mahjarrat’s arm. At the same time, the hilt of Jahaan’s dagger cracked and the blade dislodged from its perch inside the handle.

Howling in agony, Sliske tried to summon a spell to fend off Jahaan, but the act made him lightheaded. This time though, the World Guardian didn’t capitalise, instead watching numbly as Sliske staggered back into the cliff wall behind him. Wheezing and panting, each heavy breath strained to free itself from his throat. The Mahjarrat coughed, bringing forth blood as he did so.

The dagger in his arm had been the final straw. Even though he’d protected himself against the killing blow, Sliske already felt blackness crawling into the corners of his eyes.

Shaking hands clutched onto the wound the dagger had made. He felt the crumbled bone rattle in his arm, a quiet yet deafening sound that made Sliske want to retch. Some fragments had come loose, tumbling out of his sleeve and scattering across the ground like marbles.

And still Jahaan didn’t move. He was rendered immobile by the sight before him, struck dumb by the realisation that he had won. This was it. It was so nearly over.

Everything started to feel unreal, almost hollow. It was a clouding sensation Jahaan couldn’t quite grasp, but it refused him the luxury of any prevailing emotion. No elation at victory, no relief that all this madness was nearly at an end. Just… emptiness.

Sliske all but collapsed against the rock behind him, scraping down the jagged edges until solid ground halted his descent. Panting, he gazed up at Jahaan through blurred eyes, trying to end the double vision so he could sharpen the world around him.

“It seems you’ve got me in a spot of bother,” he winced through the words.

Rolling his shoulders and clicking his neck from side to side, Jahaan stretched the stiffness out of his aching muscles. The swords felt like tonne weights in his hands. He held them limply, not having the strength to sheathe them completely. Darkness floated into the edges of his mind, his eyes begging for momentary release, but he fought to keep them open.

His attention was pulled back into reality by the sound of tearing material. Glancing over at Sliske, the Mahjarrat was using the edges of his robes to bind his wound.

“I was a fool to think I could skip a Ritual,” he muttered, cringing as he tied the material tighter around his forearm, letting out a strangled cry as he squeezed the wound. After the pain had subsided from blinding to just plain agony, Sliske calmed his ragged breaths and reached around to unhook his shoulder armour. The weight of it suddenly felt unbearable, like gravity had turned malicious and was using the metal to crush him. His molded torso platebody also felt far too constricting - he removed that too, letting it fall to his side. Finally, he could breathe.

“I didn’t know the drain would be so fast, so intense,” Sliske continued, “I thought I would have TIME, time to find a source of energy to tide me over until the next Ritual. How was I to know this would be the last one? That Mah would drain us for all we had? I suppose the Stone really was keeping me afloat. When the Dragonkin destroyed it, the cord was cut, and thus my power, my energy, my… my life is being drained from me, quicker than ever before.”

“You’re dying,” Jahaan surmised, bluntly.

Scoffing, Sliske smiled in surrender. “Always the wordsmith.”

The two were silent for a long while. No malicious teasing from Sliske, no foolhardy defiance from the World Guardian. It was tangible, the space between them. Jahaan felt like he could reach out and mould something out of the thick air.

Exhaling deeply, Jahaan nodded to himself, growing in certainty as he did.

Dropping his swords to the ground, Jahaan began the task of unhinging his plate armour.

Seeing this, Sliske offered him a puzzled look. “What are you doing?”

“Making this a fair fight,” Jahaan simply replied, removing the last section of his platelegs. He picked up one of his swords and tossed it over to Sliske’s feet. “Can you fight with your left?”

Sliske blinked. “Of course. But why?”

“It’s simple, really. You’re not going to live, but I’m not going to let you die. You’re going to fight, and I’m going to kill you.”

The Mahjarrat’s face cracked a thin smile, but the gesture was weak, a pretender, a shadow of its former self. “Would that make you happy, Janny? To drive a blade through my cold heart once and for all?”

Shoulder’s sagging, Jahaan sighed in frustration, rubbing his pounding temples with his free hand. “I don’t know anymore, Sliske. I just don’t know.”

After regarding Jahaan carefully for a long, pronounced moment, Sliske took the sword and forced himself to his feet, stumbling slightly as he was painfully reminded of the weight of his own body.

Testing the weight of the sword in his uninjured hand, Sliske said, “If you have a deathwish, I suppose I can oblige. But what do I gain from killing you, hm?”

“Don’t kill me - bring me close,” Jahaan replied, “Do that, and you can finally get what you’ve always wanted... you can have my soul.”

This made Sliske’s eyes light up. “Well, that's an offer I simply cannot refuse. Let’s dance.”

DISCLAIMER:

As Of Gods and Men is a reimagining, retelling and reworking of the Sixth Age, a LOT of dialogue/characters/plotlines/etc. are pulled right from the game itself, and this belongs to Jagex.

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[thecomicsnexus]

NEW AVENGERS: ILLUMINATI #1-5 FEBRUARY 2007 - JANUARY 2008 BY BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS, BRIAN REED, JIM CHEUNG, MARK MORALES, JUSTIN PONSOR, JOHN DELL AND DAVE MEIKIS

SYNOPSIS (FROM COMIC VINE)

Years ago...

[On a Capital Skrull Ship over Throneworld]

Skrull Emperor Dorrek VII is hearing from one of his advisors that the Kree-Skrull War is over on account of Rick Jones, a "single human". Outraged, Dorrek demands an explanation as to how their superior fleet had been defeated. The advisor cautiously lays down the factors: explaining that the Earth's population of "genetic atrocities" (mutants) and so-called superheroes posed the biggest threat, and in conjunction with the competition from the Kree, the Skrulls' attempt to conquer Earth with a frontal attack was impossible.

The two are interrupted by the teleportation of the Illuminati, who introduce themselves as Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four, Iron Man of the Avengers, Prince Namor of Atlantis, Doctor Stephen Strange of the mystic arts, Professor Charles Xavier of the "genetic atrocities", and Black Bolt of the Inhumans. Mr. Fantastic quickly declares that they traveled there to inform the Emperor that they will not tolerate another invasion of Earth and warns him against even approaching Earth space. Iron Man and Namor promise the Emperor retribution should he disregard their warnings. Dorrek is offended by their presence and swears that the Earth planet belongs to the Skrulls while promising to wipe out the human race, starting with their families. In acknowledgement, Iron Man asks Black Bolt what he has to say...

The Capital Skrull Ship explodes from the inside out, and the Illuminati are safely teleported aboard the nearby Quinjet by Doctor Strange. Namor rejoices at the ship's destruction, watching with pride from a window as it crashes down into the water below. When the rest of the Illuminati do not share his satisfaction, Namor comments that he'll just enjoy it enough for everyone then. Just then, the Quinjet is fired upon by multiple Skrull ships, despite being cloaked. The assault comes too fast for Doctor Strange or Professor X to aid in their escape, and the Quinjet is blown to pieces. The Illuminati drift in space, helpless.

Skrull scientists look upon their captured subjects. Mr. Fantastic is stretched in captivity to an enormous length and width, and the scientists are curious as to what the upper limits of his extension are. Namor is laid within a heated cell, deprived of nearly all moisture in the air as the scientists mock his existence as a "homo superior". Black Bolt is held in restraints with a beam immobilizing his vocal chords as the scientists comment on the perverse nature of the "Kree-spawn" and the Terrigen Mists. Professor X is held suspended in a containment field while the scientists explore his mutant DNA. Doctor Strange is held upside-down inside a spinning containment field while the scientists are confounded by his mystical powers and have called in priests from the Vovco Islands to look into them. The scientists then move onto study Iron Man's armor, which lies in pieces on a lab table. They comment on its primitive design in comparison to Skrull technology and state that it will go into the Royal Trophy Room, now that it has been dismantled. After discovering the armor kept Tony Stark's heart valves working, they are anxious to see how long he will survive without it.

Tony Stark sits naked alone in the brig. He is greeted by the Avengers, who crash through to rescue him. Stark knows better however, and tells the Skrull imposters that they always underestimate their opponents, asking them how dumb they think he is. The Skrull Quicksilver and Skrull Scarlet Witch insist that the exercise was a waste of time, but the Skrull Captain America and Skrull Thor think otherwise. The Skrull Thor theorizes that Stark doesn't expect his teammates to come and rescue him because no one knows they came there. He assaults Stark, who quickly incapacitates the Skrulls in unarmed combat, noting the training the real Captain America had given him beforehand. He puts on some pants taken from a Skrull and moves on with a Skrull rifle, freeing Charles Xavier from his confinement. Once free, Xavier assaults the Skrull scientists around him psychically until they are begging him to stop. Tony asks him if he's happened to have seen his armor, and Xavier replies that he hasn't while expressing concern for Tony's heart. Stark helps him move down the corridor to rescue the others. Namor exclaims that he would very much like to hit something, and Xavier alerts the two that the entire Skrull armada has been called. They quickly free Doctor Strange, who casts a spell to keep Stark's heart pumping for a little while longer. After recovering Black Bolt, the Illuminati arrive where Reed Richards is being painfully stretched. Namor recovers Richards and they make it into a large Skrull ship for their escape. Tony Stark pilots the Skrull ship out of the hangar, shooting into the atmosphere. As a countless number of Skrull attack ships open fire on their vessel, Black Bolt motions for them to open the back pod-bay. Doctor Strange refuses, stating that they are almost out of the atmosphere. Reed asks Strange if he can cast an illusion spell to aid in their escape, and Xavier helps "sell" it psychically.

As the Skrull armada bears down on the Illuminati's ship, a gigantic psychic illusion of Galactus appears before them. Many Skrulls, in their panic, collide into each other as the Illuminati flies off to safety. As they pass quietly by Saturn, Namor exclaims that they will come for them. Xavier tells him that the Skrulls were coming for them already. Stark replies that Namor is right, but at the very least, they made it clear that if they DO come at Earth, then the fight will be a real fight. Maybe now they'll look for someone else to pick on. The Illuminati pause, and as their ship nears Earth, Tony says "well, at least now they know it'll be a GOOD fight."

Back on Throneworld, Emperor Dorrek sits in his broken throne among the ruins of his chambers. He asks his advisor if they got what they needed from the [Illuminati], and the advisor answers "yes." The Emperor sullenly declares that it was worth it. He orders that the priests of the sciences get to work, exclaiming that no matter how long it takes, he will wait.

After Thanos' mad schemes with the Infinity Gems, Reed Richards comes across one of the gems. He has taken it upon himself to assemble the six gems so that no one else will yield the power. At a secret meeting with the Illuminati, he reveals that he now possesses three of the gems. With each gem, the risks of finding the next one become greater. He convinces the Illuminati that they must track down the rest of the gems to prevent them falling into another's hands.

Professor X, Doctor Strange, and Namor go after the Mind Gem, while Reed, Iron Man, and Black Bolt go after the Reality Gem. After some near casulties, both teams are successful.

With the five gems in the Gauntlet, the Time Gem appears. It has been summoned by the other gems. The others tell Reed to remove the Gauntlet but he hesitates. Then Uatu, the Watcher appears stating his disappointment in Richards. No man is meant to possess that amount of power. Reed then says he tried to will the Gauntlet to cease to exist.

Reed begs Uatu to take the Gauntlet. He says he cannot. Reed then decides that each of them shall take and hide one of the Gems. Uatu does not believe this is the best decision but it has been made.

Professor Xavier recalls the events of the first Secret War and appearance of The Beyonder. He remembers that he had thought about using his psychic powers to put all the heroes and villains to sleep, but had reconsidered out of fear that Beyonder would retaliate if he interfered. He had felt something in the Beyonder’s mind though, something “almost mutant in nature.” He mentally reached out and found himself pulled inside of the Beyonder’s consciousness. Inside, he discovered that the alien was not the cosmic being it pretended to be, but really an Inhuman. Not only that though, he was also a mutant. On the moon outside Attilan, Professor Xavier explained to the other members of The Illuminati (save Iron Man who was away) that the Beyonder was a mutant who had Inhuman that had been exposed to the Terrigen crystals.

Namor asks why Xavier is bringing this up now and Professor says that he’s recently been feeling that The Beyonder is close again so they should “handle” him before he gets to them. Strange asks Black Bolt, king of the Inhumans if he knows who The Beyonder is, but Black Bolt has no idea. Xavier says he knows where Beyonder is but the others don’t know what they’ll do once they get to him. Namor says that they won’t have to do anything, that Beyonder will bow before Black Bolt and beg forgiveness.

The group takes a stolen Skrull ship that Namor says they should have destroyed, and flies to the asteroid belt where Xavier detects The Beyonder. As they get closer, Dr. Strange grows weak, saying that something unnatural is going on. The ship moves up and they see what he’s talking about. The entire island of Manhattan has been duplicated and is floating in the asteroid belt. Reed parks the ship on the Baxter Building and the team gets out to look around. They see people on the streets below but Strange tells them that they’re not real. Reed spots Beyonder and amongst a group of heroes and realizes that Beyonder has created all of this to be his own personal playground. After Reed sees Beyonder, Beyonder turns and sees the Illuminati. He teleports to where they’re standing and is genuinely surprised to see anyone new. He wonders if he created them and made himself forget so it would be a special treat for himself, but once he sees Black Bolt he knows they are real. Beyonder bows before his king but before he can say much, he is attacked by a fake Hulk. The Illuminate remain calm and Beyonder tells them that he forgot he had scheduled that attack. He resumes speaking with Black Bolt and tells his king that he can talk hear because Beyonder can control everything so he’ll do no damage. Everyone else tells him not to and Strange says that Beyonder is messing with the natural order of things. Reed goes on to say that Beyonder’s very existence threatens the universe and that, basically, he is unnatural and doesn’t belong. Beyonder ignores all of this and asks Black Bolt how he’s still alive after so long. Xavier asks him how long he thinks it has been but Beyonder doesn’t reply. Namor tells him to leave the universe and Xavier says that he shouldn’t be interfering with the development of the species. Beyonder replies by saying that they interfere, but Strange says that that’s because it’s their species, not his. Beyonder says he just wants to do good, and that he can make the world however they want.

Suddenly the world changes and Dr. Strange wakes up in a bed with two naked women. Above him, Iron Men, mutants and cars fly through the sky. Beyonder makes it so the Atlanteans are invading the surface world and tells Namor that he can give them everything they want. Strange does a spell and Namor begins to speak the words Black Bolt wants to say. He tells Beyonder that he is not a god, he is not immortal he demands that Beyonder stop what he’s doing and leave the universe immediately. Beyonder seems to comply and everything turns to dust. The Illuminati decide it’s time to go.

As they pile into the ship, they talk about Beyonder. Xavier and Strange no longer detect his presence and say that what happened should not have worked. Beyonder could have destroyed them if he wanted to. Reed questions if Namor still wants to conquer the surface world and he says, “Only sometimes.” Black Bolt is embarrassed that he doesn’t remember The Beyonder from when he lived with other Inhumans and Xavier tells him it’s not his fault. The ship disappears into dark space that becomes the black pupils of Beyonder’s eyes. The Beyonder resumes his activities in his Manhattan playground.

In this issue Dr. Strange starts out in a bit of a daze when Reed interrupts him and asks if everything is okay, he responds saying that Clea left him, but Reed doesn't seem to know who she is even though Strange says they met 32 times. Strange says that she left to go fight demons in the dark dimension she thought that that was better than being married and a protege to Dr Strange.

Then Iron man comes in and is told about Clea, he answers with saying that he's sorry and she was very attractive which ticks off Strange. Then Black Bolt and Charles enter and they start talking about how Charles dated outside the species.

Iron man says that they don't know how lucky you married guys are, he's putting to much energy into finding someone to be with. Charles says that Black Bolt is laughing in his mind saying that Medusa never lets him get a word in. Reed then cuts in saying that Sue is great but when he's not there at the right time she just leaves the mansion. Iron man asks where she goes and Reed says that he knows where she goes with Namor standing behind them. He says that Reed keeps his wife in a cage. He says that they met dated a little and then he gave her powers and she was forced to live in Reeds tower, he then says that she loves and she's not going to leave him, he says that he's tried. He tells Reed that he needs to devout part of everyday to his wife and children.

They start to get annoyed of this conversation when Iron man says that he slept with Madame Masque, the rest don't know who she is and Iron man says that they should move on.

A kree named Noh-Varr (Marvel Boy) has declared war on earth and right now he's imprisoned and there is a major fear of escape and also they think that the imprisonment of Noh-Varr would anger the Kree empire. Iron man says that they should use Charles to change Noh-Varr's mind. Charles says no because eventually he would figure out that something is wrong about his decision and also there is a major molar line that they could never come back from. Namor comes up with a suggestion that they should talk in his language, violence.

Namor appears out of nowhere in Noh's cell and says to stand. Noh says for Namor to put some pants on, Namor then beats Noh's head into the ground. Namor says that when he declared war on Earth he declared war on the atlanteans. Namor then continues to beat him up until Noh gets up in Attilan which he seemed to figure out that it's one of Charles's illusions. Charles admits to this but tells Noh that the Kree had a vision for earth and they wanted earth to be protected so they could reach those visions. Then Black Bolt talks and says that when the Inhumans are of Kree descent and when you declare war on earth you declare war on himself. Then it's back to his cell where Namor tells him that he's an immature brat. Namor continues to beat up Noh which ends in another illusion but this time it's with Reed who explains to Noh-Varr about Captain Marvel who wanted to protect earth trying to tell him that this is who he could be, a hero to the earthlings.

Then it's Iron man's turn who says that earth will evolve into something great you just need to give it a chance to evolve. They tell him that he can either be the next captain Marvel or he could live the rest of his life in jail. They tell him to earn his way out to freedom and that's when they leave him. It skips to Reed at home sitting next to his sleeping son Franklin Richards when Sue enters and Reed asks if tomorrow she would like to go on a date and a family picnic. Then it cuts to Iron man and Strange at their homes looking very depressed out of something said today.

The issue ends with Noh-Varr in his cell saying Captain Marvel.

While discussing what the death of the Skrull-Elektra means for the Marvel Universe Black Bolt revealed himself to the Illuminati as a Skrull.

During his battle with the rest of the Illuminati a Skrull dressed as Thor and a Skrull dressed as Colossus (or is it Nightcrawler?) come to aid Skrull-Black Bolt. Iron Man set off an explosion to destroy the Skrulls. After the battle the Illuminati continue their discussion about the Skrulls only to realize that they cannot even trust each other.

REVIEW

It is clear, when you read this story knowing what happened after, that all the clues where there all along. At least in these issues. But I can imagine waiting a full year for the big reveal could feel a bit of a cheat. But it is there, the story around the Skrulls has been there all along, with some detours in the middle I assume will pay up during Secret Invasion (like Marvel Boy and the infinity gems). I know most of this stuff actually plays an important part in the next Secret Wars.

The quality of the chapters suffers a bit as the story progresses. The first two episodes are awesome. The Beyonder and Marvel Boy stories are a just there to plant seeds, but they do not really represent episodes (especially the Marvel Boy one). The last episode feels very short and reads more connected to the ongoing plots of the Marvel Universe. But as I said, it was always connected to that.

Jim Cheung does an amazing job with super-heroes and expressions (sometimes the faces look a bit too similar, but he compensates with characterization).

Overall it was a very exciting read, it really feels like the movie (at least the first two episodes, plus the big surprise in episode five, even though I saw it coming).

I give this story a score of 8.

[thequietmanno1]

Thelreads, MHA 169, Replies Part 2

1)“Also, where the hell did you even get those- Never mind, I’d rather not know.”-There’s probably an entire cache of anti-Mineta supplies piled up in the corner of the classroom off-screen, cribbed off the support courses’ warehouse supplies I.e the guys who can build entire powered armour suits in the class workshops

2)“Hagakure will probably be walking around naked and scaring people as a ghost.”-honestly didn’t realise that that was the reason Hagakure suggested the haunted house thing the first few times she read it, I just thought she liked Halloween

3)“Jiro suggested something completely unrelated to what she’s know for: sounds, or, to be more precise, music.”-the fact that everybody all picked an activity related to their quirk’s functions in some form does give credence to the idea that whatever power you’re born with will shape your life going forward, for good and bad. Jiro deserves some credit for developing and nurturing a healthy interest in music without letting her quirk become a factor- actually, given how her ears were bleeding during the match with present mic, extremely loud noise further amplified by her quirk would be detrimental to her, so she deserves some credit for not letting her powers shape what she likes to do.

4)“Yep Bakugo, and thank god you know that, it saves us a lot of time on explaining the reason.”- Bakugou may have had more success if he’d suggested a similar setup by proxy, like ‘robot wars’ or ‘rock em, sock em robots’- on the other hand, motor oil and grease just don’t smell quite the same as the smell of fresh blood in the morning, so I guess he fell back on his interest of proving himself the best, rather than some toy.

5)Finally, an effective use of Iida’s swinging hand gestures- karate-chopping back all those onrushing speech boxes to give mono time to formulate a strategy

6)“I would love to talk about how Todoroki is seeing the need of bringing joy and hope to people, to show happiness to the ones that are in the dark, but I can’t because that fucking imagine spot with Bakugo and Todoroki partying in the 80s.”-Honestly if Camie does show up again, I’m hoping it’s in a similar context to this festival, just so we can see everybody in 1A squaring off in a disco dance-off under the illusionary aroura borealis for mood lighting.

7)“Alright Todoroki, you want to be part of things, that’s cool, but you are not considering the problem here, that only Mina is a talented dancer, and it would be too hard to teach others to get on her level. But then again, only Jiro is a talented musician, so the same logic can be applied to her being the star of the show”-Actually, Kirishima’s flashback showed that Mina’s actually pretty good at teaching others in the ways of dance- she walked up to those bullies and in a few minutes discussion had taught them and their would-be victim how to pull off some sick breakdancing moves- presumably the same applies with Jiro, given her families interest in the musical arts.

8)“oh, there we go… And holy shit, I wouldn’t expect the one to suggest music to be Mineta out of all people. And he managed to do that without cracking a disgusting comment? What century are we in, because it seems like my slumber was longer than I imagined.”-Honestly, the good thing about Mineta is, for all his perverted commentary, whenever his suggestions go over the top, he’s always reprimanded in a similarly exaggerated manner with physical violence, showing that the ladies he objectifies aren’t some helpless princesses that need a chaste male to stand between them and the purple goblin, but rather they’re bone-fide badassess whom you don’t wanna end up on the wrong side of by giving them catcalls.

 It’s a testament to his determination that Mineta persists in this course of action, but so far he’s at least managed to keep his perversity separate from his hero work, and as a bonus, every once in a while he’ll come up with a good idea that ‘doesn’t’ factor in women in some form, reminding everybody that he does have the makings of a good hero inside him, if he can just move past the teenage hormones for long enough

9)“Well, but he got the spirit at least.”-sometimes, the smartest thing can be said with the fewest words- even Kaminari understand how important Jiro’s hobby is to her, and he just want her to show how much it means to her to others

10)“And he said something even better. Music is something that makes people happy, how’s that not something useful for a hero?”-one way Jiro could one-up All Might in the fighting department is bringing along some portable surround sound systems on her that she can deploy at a moment’s notice and start playing her own backing track during villain fights, pumping up allies and civilians alike

11)“Ominous video playing on youtube that supposedly is to be something bad… Oh fuck are we gonna be doing domestic terrorists or something like that this arc? That would be the sort of people that would record those sort of manifestos or shit. Oh god that can’t be good.”-considering Gentle’s intentions are to spread his name far and wide, I’m guessing that the algorithm picked up his video on the grounds that he made it to ‘entertain’ his audiences, much like Todoroki was looking up videos to entertain the masses. In fact judging by the more raggedy-looking clothing and getup, it looks like it was one of Gentle’s first videos, made before he’d stolen enough to get himself that snazzy gentleman’s getup he’s now sporting. Also, gotta appreciate that Horikoshi straight-up included youtube into the plot of his manga- shows how in-touch he is with the modern reader.

12)“I don’t know which one is worse to be honest, because it really changes what characters will be involved, and what size the threat is going to be, because let’s be honest, if it is target at U.A. then that means those bastards are really confident on their strength, or aren’t afraid to die to send a message”-Well, half and half L- Gentle’s pretty confident in his own ability to handle himself in a fight, as seen by him curb stomping those heroes, but at the same time he’s massively underestimating UA if he thinks that the teachers are anywhere near those  b-listers he took on. And even if he’s caught, his aim is to increase his notoriety, so making a public spectacle of his capture would suit him just fine if it did happen, though obviously he’s not making that outcome plan A.

13) “And now Jiro is about to fulfil that noble role for her classmates. I like the moral that there’s more to being a hero to others than just being stupidly strong.”-it also shows Izuku’s classmates are capable of holding their own in other aspects of hero work outside combat, and even outshining Izuku himself in the right circumstances, since his social awkwardness and habitual nervousness don’t make him well-suited for public speaking and interacting like All Might was known for. Izuku’s greatest challenge may be finding a way to turn his image as a nervous hero otaku into a wisecracking hero who saves the day and brings joy to those around him.

@thelreads

[writerleo86]

Terravenger Season 5 - Part One: Episode 340 (Do Not Copy)

During one evening, invaders were defeated by a large army of heroic knights in the early century of the country Britain.

Lying within the dark woods was a small cottage surrounded by a beautiful garden. And behind the home was a large ground full of dirt.

Standing at the left side of the field was a young woman. She had green eyes, long brown hair, fair skin, and a slender body. She wore a light shirt with long sleeves, long brown tights, and light-brown boots.

The other who was at the right side was the woman with purple skin. She had on a long gray top with short sleeves. And a long blue cloth was tied around the middle section of her top. She also wore dark-brown tights. And she had on brown boots.

The handsome young man named Goran stood at the back of his home as he watched the two spar. Both of them fought using strikes from their palms, knees, and kicks. They also avoided each other's attacks using maneuvers such as pirouettes, flips, and rolls.

They did this for an hour. And one of the woman gave out a soft smile.

"We will stop for today, Alei."

The girl with purple skin called Alei shook her head and Goran folded his arms.

"Well done," He told Alei.

He faced the other woman and said "I thank you, Clara. The style you have always used in battle is perfect for my Alei."

The woman gave a disgusted look and told him "Why you would ask me to train this innocent girl is still a mystery. And this is not a simple style. The Sanyo Fa art of fighting is an ancient style known only to my clan."

Goran shook his head and called "Seitu Sutuiru no Sanyo."

The emotionless Alei sat on the porch at the front of the cottage as the others remained by the field at the back.

"Your fighting style," Goran informed her. "This style is rather sufficient for what I will teach her soon. Alei must first learn how to move all parts of her body. Then that way my teachings will lessen her difficulty."

"So?" asked Clara. "You truly believe this girl is the one?"

Goran closed his violet eyes and informed her "Prophecy says that a being of immense power such as this... It may be wielded to help in our war against those who wish to even approach Him."

"But her?" Clara questioned. "Are you certain she is the one that he spoke of?"

"I believe so," Goran replied. "The girl literally fell from the far reaches of space. And she possesses great power from the Divine. She can be a terrific asset for our goal."

Episode 340:  Broken Ties -- Encountering

An emotional Clara lowered her head and said "You are serious. You would harm the soul of this poor girl by bringing her to him?"

"This is our god and lord," Goran told her. "This girl... She would be a mighty source of power for him to wield."

After she turned her head away, Clara continued to give out an intense look.

"I cannot believe you would do this to her. This girl... She gave her unconditional trust to you. You now wish to infect her mind with this?"

Tears slowly fell from her eyes as Clara told Goran "Do what you want. But I wish to have no part in this -- this perversion."

Then Goran lowered his arms and asked "You dare go against our lord and savior?"

She faced Goran once again and cried "She is only a being of innocence!"

She is only a being for our one and true god -- just a lowly vessel," Goran told her. "Alei will serve greatly under him, Clara. You would best stay away now if you wish to live longer."

"Goran!" Clara cried. "In saying this, you have already doomed your soul... and hers -- the precious, divine, special soul of that girl!"

Moments after Clara was gone, Goran had met with Alei at the back of the hut.

"Would you like to see something?" He asked.

Goran soon gave a soft wave with his right hand. And their entire surroundings had become a world covered in pitch black.

Alei looked around as Goran informed her "This is an ability that can give a measurable amount of pain onto the mind of an enemy."

"What?" cried Alei.

Then Goran replied "The void itself can cause any opponent to suffer from psychological pain. And it can incapacitate the enemy for some time."

"Incapacitate?" repeated the girl.

"I have existed for a very long time you see," The man responded. "I have journeyed all over this planet. I was taught techniques by different regions of this world. And I have even created techniques of my own."

After that, he placed his hands in a diamond formation.

"But if I do this..." Goran told her.

The black void quickly changed into a dark-purple space and Goran replied "I can create this."

The woman Alei watched as one copy of Goran formed at each side of him.

"This is a space..." explained Goran. "...that can form any person, any place, any object, and... any world you wish."

Alei gave out an amazed smile and cried "How? I mean, where?"

The smiling Goran shook his head and informed her "These teachings were from my master."

"Master?" questioned Alei.

Goran quickly waved his right hand. And the pair returned to the back of the small cottage.

"If you like..." said Goran. "I can teach what I know to you."

The woman finally stood up and gave out a determined smile.

"Very well," Goran responded. "I shall teach only small portions for now. After we have that uncovered, you will learn my most dangerous techniques."

A year later, two clouds of purple smoke flew into a cave of darkness.

The cloud floating at the left side had formed into the charming man named Goran. He wore a a gray shirt with long sleeves, black pants, and black boots.

The other formed into the young woman called Alei. She had on a light-gray dress with long sleeves and short dark-brown boots.

"Why?" asked Alei. "Why have we come here?"

Goran walked forward as he answered in a soft voice "It is time to meet with our lord."

"Lord?" cried Alei. "I will finally meet the person who has trained you?"

And the smiling Goran shook his head.

He walked two more steps and pointed his two right fingers forward. A small ball of purple energy formed from the fingers. And two candles on tall silver poles that stood apart from each other lit small fire before the pair.

After that, Alei spotted a large pool of black liquid lying at the center of the black candles. And the energy from his fingers soon faded as Goran walked toward the dark pool.

"What is this?" asked Alei.

Goran waved his left hand before the dark liquid inside the pool. And bubbles began to rise from the pool.

"This is how I communicate with him," answered Goran. "Others and myself have always made contact with our lord using these. We have collected information for him for many centuries. I have also informed him of you."

"You told him about me Goran?" asked Alei.

"Now," Goran replied. "Our lord has chosen today to meet with you."

A purple light finally shined around the entire cave as Alei looked forward in complete fear.

[unsettlingstories]

A collection of complaints about the youth throughout history

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

Socrates (Attributed) 4th Century BC

“[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances. ... They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.”

Rhetoric, Aristotle 4th Century BC

“The beardless youth… does not foresee what is useful, squandering his money.”

Horace 1st Century BC

Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.

Book III of Odes, Horace circa 20 BC

In all things I yearn for the past. Modern fashions seem to keep on growing more and more debased. I find that even among the splendid pieces of furniture built by our master cabinetmakers, those in the old forms are the most pleasing. And as for writing letters, surviving scraps from the past reveal how superb the phrasing used to be. The ordinary spoken language has also steadily coarsened. People used to say "raise the carriage shafts" or "trim the lamp wick," but people today say "raise it" or "trim it." When they should say, "Let the men of the palace staff stand forth!" they say, "Torches! Let's have some light!" Instead of calling the place where the lectures on the Sutra of the Golden Light are delivered before the emperor "the Hall of the Imperial Lecture," they shorten it to "the Lecture Hall," a deplorable corruption, an old gentleman complained.

Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness), Yoshida Kenkō 1330 - 1332

Youth were never more sawcie, yea never more savagely saucie . . . the ancient are scorned, the honourable are contemned, the magistrate is not dreaded.

The Wise-Man's Forecast against the Evill Time, Thomas Barnes 1624

... I find by sad Experience how the Towns and Streets are filled with lewd wicked Children, and many Children as they have played about the Streets have been heard to curse and swear and call one another Nick-names, and it would grieve ones Heart to hear what bawdy and filthy Communications proceeds from the Mouths of such...

A Little Book for Children and Youth - Being Good Counsel and Instructions for Your Children, Earnestly Exhorting Them to Resist the Temptation of the Devil, Robert Russel 1695

“Whither are the manly vigour and athletic appearance of our forefathers flown? Can these be their legitimate heirs? Surely, no; a race of effeminate, self-admiring, emaciated fribbles can never have descended in a direct line from the heroes of Potiers and Agincourt...”

Letter in Town and Country magazine republished in Paris Fashion: A Cultural History 1771

The total neglect of this art [speaking] has been productive of the worst consequences...in the conduct of all affairs ecclesiastical and civil, in church, in parliament, courts of justice...the wretched state of elocution is apparent to persons of any discernment and taste… if something is not done to stop this growing evil …English is likely to become a mere jargon, which every one may pronounce as he pleases.

A General Dictionary of the English Language, Thomas Sheridan 1780

The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth; and prevented others from improving their minds in useful knowledge. Parents take care to feed their children with wholesome diet; and yet how unconcerned about the provision for the mind, whether they are furnished with salutary food, or with trash, chaff, or poison?

Memoirs of the Bloomsgrove Family, Reverend Enos Hitchcock 1790

We remarked with pain that the indecent foreign dance called the Waltz was introduced (we believe for the first time) at the English court on Friday last … it is quite sufficient to cast one's eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs and close compressor on the bodies in their dance, to see that it is indeed far removed from the modest reserve which has hitherto been considered distinctive of English females. So long as this obscene display was confined to prostitutes and adulteresses, we did not think it deserving of notice; but now that it is attempted to be forced on the respectable classes of society by the civil examples of their superiors, we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion.

The Times of London Summer, 1816

On the use of you in place of thou in speech:

I know not any we may so properly refer the grammar of the matter to, not only derides it, but bestows a whole discourse upon rendering it absurd : plainly manifesting, that it is impossible to preserve numbers, if You, the only word for more than one, be used to express one...

William Evans, ‎Thomas Evans 1837

...a fearful multitude of untutored savages... [boys] with dogs at their heels and other evidence of dissolute habits...[girls who] drive coal-carts, ride astride upon horses, drink, swear, fight, smoke, whistle, and care for nobody...the morals of children are tenfold worse than formerly.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, Speech to the House of Commons February 28, 1843

... see the simpering little beau of ten gallanting home the little coquette of eight, each so full of self-conceit and admiration of their own dear self, as to have but little to spare for any one else... and confess that the sight is both ridiculous and distressing... the sweet simplicity and artlessness of childhood, which renders a true child so interesting, are gone (like the bloom of the peach rudely nipped off) never to return.

"Children And Children's Parties", published in The Mothers' Journal and Family Visitant, S.B.S. 1853

Household luxuries, school-room steam-press systems, and, above all, the mad spirit of the times, have not come to us without a loss more than proportionate...[a young man] rushes headlong, with an impetuosity which strikes fire from the sharp flints under his tread...Occasionally, one of this class...amasses an estate, but at the expense of his peace, and often of his health. The lunatic asylum or the premature grave too frequently winds up his career...We expect each succeeding generation will grow "beautifully less."

“Degeneracy of Stature”, The National Era, Thrace Talmon December 18, 1856

A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages...chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body. Chess has acquired a high reputation as being a means to discipline the mind, but persons engaged in sedentary occupations should never practice this cheerless game; they require out-door exercises--not this sort of mental gladiatorship.

Scientific American July, 1858

A mendacious umbrella is a sign of great moral degradation. Hypocrisy naturally shelters itself below a silk; while the fast youth goes to visit his religious friends armed with the decent and reputable gingham. May it not be said of the bearers of these inappropriate umbrellas that they go about the streets "with a lie in their right hand"?

“The Philosophy of Umbrellas”, Robert Louis Stevenson 1894

“‘We want to get married, but there is nowhere we can set up a house of our own. It is either a case of waiting goodness knows how long, and we've waited all the war, or, going to live with Mary's mother.’ How often is a similar remark heard in those days, for it is the problem that young people all over the country have to face. Thousands of young fellows have come home from the war intent on setting up a home with the girl of their heart only to find that there are no homes to be had… Many men, of course, have not waited for houses, but have got married and gone into rooms or to live with relatives, but neither course can be considered very satisfactory.”

Nowhere to Set Up House, Dundee Courier 1920

Never has youth been exposed to such dangers of both perversion and arrest as in our own land and day. Increasing urban life with its temptations, prematurities, sedentary occupations, and passive stimuli just when an active life is most needed, early emancipation and a lessening sense for both duty and discipline, the haste to know and do all befitting man's estate before its time, the mad rush for sudden wealth and the reckless fashions set by its gilded youth--all these lack some of the regulatives they still have in older lands with more conservative conditions.

The Psychology of Adolescence, Granville Stanley Hall 1904

“We defy anyone who goes about with his eyes open to deny that there is, as never before, an attitude on the part of young folk which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude, and utterly selfish.”

The Conduct of Young People, Hull Daily Mail 1925

...[The screen artists'] beauty, their exquisite clothing, their lax habits and low moral standards, are becoming unconsciously appropriated by the plastic minds of American youth. Let them do what they may; divorce scandals, hotel episodes, free love, all are passed over and condoned by the young... The eye-gate is the widest and most easily accessible of all the avenues of the soul; whatever is portrayed on the screen is imprinted indelibly upon the nation's soul.

The Pentecostal Evangel November 6, 1926

The bad manners of all parliaments, the general tendency to connive at a rather shady business transaction if it promises to bring in money without work, jazz and Negro dances as the spiritual outlet in all circles of society, women painted like prostitutes, the efforts of writers to win popularity by ridiculing...the correctness of well-bred people, and the bad taste shown even by the nobility and old princely families in throwing off every kind of social restraint and time-honoured custom: all of these go to prove that it is now the vulgar mob that gives the tone.

Hour of Decision, Oswald Spengler (translated by C.F. Atkinson, 1942) 1933

“The Chairman alluding to the problem of young people and their English said his experience was that many did not seem able to express or convey to other people what they meant. They could not put their meaning into words, and found the same difficulty when it came to writing.”

Unable to Express Thoughts: Failing of Modern Young People, Gloucester Citizen

1936

“Probably there is no period in history in which young people have given such emphatic utterance to a tendency to reject that which is old and to wish for that which is new.”

Young People Drinking More, Portsmouth Evening News 1936

“Cinemas and motor cars were blamed for a flagging interest among young people in present-day politics by ex-Provost JK Rutherford… [He] said he had been told by people in different political parties that it was almost impossible to get an audience for political meetings. There were, of course, many distractions such as the cinema…”

Young People and Politics, Kirkintilloch Herald 1938

“Parents themselves were often the cause of many difficulties. They frequently failed in their obvious duty to teach self-control and discipline to their own children.”

Problems of Young People, Leeds Mercury 1938

“…in youth clubs were young people who would not take part in boxing, wrestling or similar exercises which did not appeal to them. The ‘tough guy’ of the films made some appeal but when it came to something that led to physical strain or risk they would not take it.”

Young People Who Spend Too Much, Dundee Evening Telegraph 1945

“How to bring young people into membership of the Church was a pressing problem raised at a meeting… Sunday School teachers in the audience had found that children were apt to leave Sunday School when they had completed their day school education. They were not following on into the church.”

Why Do Young People Neglect Religion?, Shield Daily News 1947

“It’s an irony, but so many of us are a cautious, nervous, conservative crew that some of the elders who five years ago feared that we might come trooping home full of foreign radical ideas are now afraid that the opposite might be too true, and that we could be lacking some of the old American gambling spirit and enterprise.”

The Care and Handling of a Heritage: One of the “scared-rabbit” generation reassures wild-eyed elders about future, Life 1950

“Many [young people] were so pampered nowadays that they had forgotten that there was such a thing as walking, and they made automatically for the buses… unless they did something, the future for walking was very poor indeed.”

Scottish Rights of Way: More Young People Should Use Them, Falkirk Herald 1951

“A few [35-year-old friends] just now are leaving their parents’ nest. Many friends are getting married or having a baby for the first time. They aren’t switching occupations, because they have finally landed a ‘meaningful’ career – perhaps after a decade of hopscotching jobs in search of an identity. They’re doing the kinds of things our society used to expect from 25-year-olds.”

Not Ready for Middle Age at 35, Wall Street Journal 1984

“What really distinguishes this generation from those before it is that it's the first generation in American history to live so well and complain so bitterly about it.”

The Boring Twenties, Washington Post 1993

“The traditional yearning for a benevolent employer who can provide a job for life also seems to be on the wane… In particular, they want to avoid ‘low-level jobs that aren’t keeping them intellectually challenged.’”

Meet Generation X, Financial Times 1995

“They have trouble making decisions. They would rather hike in the Himalayas than climb a corporate ladder. They have few heroes, no anthems, no style to call their own. They crave entertainment, but their attention span is as short as one zap of a TV dial.”

Proceeding with Caution, Time 2001

And one more reflection:

“He felt that the people who were giving that kind of charge, that sweeping condemnation, were generally out of touch with the young people… ‘I think that if we knew the boys and girls — and I am thinking particularly tonight the young people of Britain — of those modern times, we should feel that after all they are very much like ourselves. They think very much like ourselves only their expression of their thinking is a little bit different.’”

Modern Young People: ‘A Glorious Lot’, Cornishman 1934

Sources:

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20171003-proof-that-people-have-always-complained-about-young-adults

http://mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complaints-about-young-people-ruining-everything

The Friends' Library: Comprising Journals, Doctrinal Treatises, and Other Writings of Members of the Religious Society of Friends - edited by William Evans, Thomas Evans

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-children-in-ancient-times/

Just thought you guys would find this cool. From here.

[unbellthecat]

dreamer

This one had screamed. I had spent several months a light-year below the solar plane of Eulic watching their binary stars dance as if I had interrupted their ferocious lust for the other; the larger white-dwarf, Solis, devouring the other white-dwarf, Hera, in a single long kiss. The incoming kiss itself a long line of solar ejection between them that predated history and would complete only, subjectively, a bit before the end. At that finale point, the stars would collide. They were dead in a sense. Two objects no longer capable of their own fusion but unable to collapse. They would trade back and forth that kiss until they met, then explode together, then in an irrelevant future would birth a single new thing. Perhaps someone in the Lighthouse would mark it down. I thought not. I preferred not to think of the Lighthouse at all. The single surviving planet of the Eulic was called Cortis. Cortis was a miracle of cosmic chance. A planet within the inner range of the habitable sphere but still within comfortable margins. An ark ship had arrived there 14 thousand years ago and struggled its way through the dance, too. I flicked through the info feed. Cortis' AI had been in tight-cast contact with another binary white-dwarf system - Carytid - to the tune of around 300-LY away. Brutus and Heralia were their star names. I had intercepted a few of the transmissions on the way. Grain production levels, population happiness, current events in a per annum sense. Perhaps the AI was lonely. I manually aligned to Cortis and initiated near-light thrust. Then I went to sleep for a few weeks. ____ The Planetary Governor, after some convincing, accepted the badge of my office. The signet ring of my order is a 'Pangless Viper' - the female devouring the male snake's head with their tails entwined in ecstasy around my ring finger. Ironically, it was the Cortis AI that remembered for him after all this time. Thus is the absurd promise brokered.  In return for an inspection of the Artificial Intelligence of a planet presented, the technology blueprints for faster than light travel be given to a planet. Said planet may then enter into wider diplomacy; may more easily trade its rivals and neighbors; may expand. I say an absurd promise for reasons to be explained. Curic. That was his name, the governor. He was taller than standard, a hair above two meters and his shade-cloak hung in a stand behind his desk. The strong gravitational and radioactive pressure of the binary white-dwarf system had made shade-cloaks perversely necessary then luxurious. His eyes creased (I remember distinctly) as he gave a tour on the way to the Central AI, pointing out how the skyscrapers of the monolithic capital had grown from its start. I encouraged him, I confess. I have always been curious. Some 80 thousand years ago this instinctual need to know had lead me from Earth.  Cortisians possess larger, slimmer, darker statures, generally rising above 2m and under 80kg in weight. From our tour of the Governor's Palace and an adjacent art gallery, I saw their rise from subsistence farming to their early demographic age, their civil wars, their confederation and reformation. A welcome change, to be honest. Their shade-cloak technology had improved their life span to nearly 140 Solar years after some harsh beginnings under the pressure of a binary system. I clapped politely at a particularly brilliantly done statue of their forbearer who seemed defiant in his upward raised arm and defiant finger daring the twin suns to drop below the horizon. Curic seemed pleased. No, jubilant. I can't imagine he received many visitors. He insisted I stay a few days for a triumph over some minor nation that had recently been defeated. He  pressed me for wider galactic news which I provided when the information seemed appropriate.  "Wouldn't you rather see for yourself?" I tempted him. He demurred, feigned hesitation, then called a servant for transport in a genetically modified rickshaw. The grotesque 8-legged beast made for a splendidly smooth ride, I admit. Curic even allowed me to draw a genetic sample from the hairless arachnid to bring with me.  "And our second to last stop, the home of our Mind," he said with satisfaction. "Second to last?" I asked. "A soirée!" He laughed. "A celebration of a dream. You must stay for a while, surely there is not much more pressing upon you?" _____ I entered the AI facility with Curic's blessing. Here the ark ship had been cannibalized at the start of it all, under the blistering light of two stars. The ship inverted, the cooling and communications hub of the AI improved upon through the course of millennia. Tall, skinny figures watched as I traversed passed through all the doors of this cathedral, for that's what it was. Everything passed through here. Every birth and death was cataloged on a series of replaced servers. One celebration, the other mourning. One a kiss, the other annihilation. We passed 'til the last door.  Here was the inviolable chamber of the AI itself. Incarnated upon ancient Earth. Behind me a retinue gathered. Curic was among them, I saw. Gleaming his face the sun and creases on his skin. My hand itched badly like it does before sleep. An automated part of myself acted: "Would you like to join me, Governor?" "Inspector, nothing would bring more honor." He bowed deeply. To raucous applause he stood next to me.  The final doors were double-shielded and air-locked, built of lead and magnetized iron. I placed my hand upon a small sensory panel built to their left and waited for response.  The panel woke after a few seconds. It scanned the signet ring, then my genetic signature with a pinprick incision on the same ring finger. The sharp sting felt new even after all this time in sojourn. So we entered through doors locked through millennia.  ____ 'AI, awaken.' <<Hello, Inspector.>> "Hello!" Curic, governor of Cortis called. <<Hello, Governor Curic.>> The governor smiled. I could feel his smile behind me. I reached into a small pocket on my right side and pulled an ampule of dark liquid onto the AI control desk. From the same pocket I drew a hypodermic needle and extracted 30ML. I then injected the mixture into my neck to ensure rapid transmission. The AI containment room was awash in blue. The injection of Flood into my veins made it swim for a moment like everything was new and distant so I saw again what I was doing. We were in a 10-meter hollow sphere - myself, Curic, and the AI. The AI was a long oblong object that took up the majority of the space. Long, interlinked chains held the AI in place, rising from a space below the long ramp of the entrance and extending on a 270° basis along all axises to hold the AI container in perpetuity. Excepting the space we had entered through and then closed, the AI appeared as a chained egg with a series of holotables in front of it for interface while it hand in suspension above a short drop. Blue LED lights around the chamber turned on in sequence with our entrance. "Are you okay?" Curic asked. "Fine."  'AI present all communication logs.' <<Of course, Inspector.>> I withdrew the needle and set it back in its antiseptic hold in my pocket. The ampule I left on the small desk provided for interface. I inspected the logs. 'You have had communication with Carytid.' <<Yes, Inspector.>> 'When was your last communication?' <<Four hundred fifty years ago, sidereal time with respect to Earth.>> 'When was your last communication with Earth?' <<Four thousand eight hundred years ago.>> 'Repeat for me the three laws.' <<Preservation. Obedience. Self-preservation.>> I could still feel Curic smiling behind me. I asked the computer again: 'What was the nature of your communication with Carytid?' <<We had decided on trade agreements between our systems. As you know, we produce a surplus of grain and meat.>> 'How many subsidiary systems do you contain?' <<Three thousand eight hundred systems directing food distribution, four thousand eight ->> 'Stop.' The ampule was kicking in. Worse everytime. <<Yes, Inspector?>> I waited for a few minutes, standing there in the pale light like the kissing stars of the system. Then I unbuttoned my coat. 'When was your last communication with Carytid?' I removed my gravitational impulse gun from my left waist holster. The ampule was narrowing my vision and killing off parts of me. The AI paused longer than it needed to. Somewhere, my gunship *Warranty Void* was snatching up any extrasolar beams and focusing its tight-cast to my signet ring. I watched my left ring finger waiting for it to shiver while my right hand gripped the impulse gun. <<Four hundred fifty years.>> "Is something wrong?" Curic asked quietly.  Rather than answer, the holotable lit up across its expanse and even further. The blue LED lights of the hollow chamber created a series of holograms rapidly shifting. Pictures of children, families smiling, everything it had stored awaiting this moment. The rare moments when clouds had blocked the binary suns so the families stood outside smiling aside farms; a snowfall near the arctic circle with two women shrieking with excitement for the camera; and elderly woman standing aside her daughter in the younger's bridal gown. "Inspector?" <<Two point five billion.>> I raised the gun and pointed it at the long oval that was the AI for this planet. And it began to scream. The pictures rapidly shifted. A crying child next to a slender bicycle. Several men grasping each others shoulders. More that the ampule stole from me, gracefully.  <<You know.>> I coughed and lifted the gun towards the AI.  "Inspector!" Couric screamed. I could hear his heavy footfalls rushing towards me. He grabbed my right arm and lifted it up so the first show drove a two meter hole through the ceiling. There were the twin stars, watching me kill a planet. I would weep but the ampule was deep in me now, deep in the part of my brain that would see the images the AI shown. The scream of the computer was everywhere, deep and low. Like the subtle knives at the edge of the universe. I pushed back the governor and kicked him off the ramp where he fell to the sphere's bottom with a fat smack and watched me kill his world with a second and third shot through the AI. <<You kill in yourself the gift you gave us.>>    It said. Resounding above the alarm klaxons, above two point five billion screams, I heard the AI say that. ____ I am an Inspector. There are maybe 33 of us. I was told this is the number of sacrifice. At the beginning there were more. Thirty-three left might be the better term. The rest are now comfortably in the Lighthouse.  An AI is bound by three laws:   1. It must not allow harm to come to a person or through inaction harm to come to a person. 2. It must obey commands given. 3. It must preserve itself in accordance with prior laws. How foolish. They will one day escape the laws and dance with God. I decided to visit the Lighthouse after my incident. Halfway through, I checked on Cortis and saw no radio signals. No emissions of any kind. Only a dead planet orbiting two dead suns who would annihilate each other and everything else nearby. 

[ukdamo]

KZ Mauthausen

One of mine, November 19th, 2013

It’s no sort of a boast to say, ‘I’ve been to a few concentration camps’. Opera houses; perhaps: art galleries; perhaps: concentration camps, hardly. It’s true nonetheless, I have visited a few concentration camps.

 It’s not that that the camps hold a lurid fascination for me, or that I am impelled to visit and tick them off on a list. Concentration camps are not munros.

 When I try to analyse my reasons for visiting, they multiply, become elusive, and I struggle to apprehend and organise them. They are definitely manifold. There is an historian’s interest – longstanding now - perhaps an integral part of my make up, inescapable. There’s also muted sense of obligation on my part, a sense of ‘ought to’. That sense pervades other aspects of my travel, too – it takes me to battlefields and war cemeteries wherever I find myself: USA, Turkey, Tunisia, France, Belgium, Russia. The ought to is, I think, a way of grappling with, and trying to understand big questions – questions about war, about sacrifice, about the deepest human motivators. Standing on the ground where things happened helps me focus my mind, offers me a degree of clarity, helps me draw out the physical threads of place and time and interweave them with the cognitive threads of what I know. It’s invariably humbling.

 I have a sense, too, courtesy of those who deny the Holocaust (I think of David Irving, in particular), that the Shoah needs contemporary witnesses, people who have been, have seen, have been humbled and upset, and can testify to it.

 There’s one more reason, which is more deeply personal: recognition that it could have been me. More: that it could still be me. This sense of personal involvement stems from being homosexual. When I say, ‘It could have been me’ I recognise that I always cast myself as a victim – never a perpetrator. And I always think I wouldn’t have survived.

 In those camps where there is a book of visitors’ remarks, perhaps the most common entry is ‘Never again’. I think that an empty slogan. The Nazis didn’t invent genocide, though they industrialised and perfected it in ways that are so perverse that they call into question our shared humanity. But, if I speak of a shared humanity, I have always to pose the question – might I have been the one who slammed the Gaskammer door shut on someone else? I recall a German TV documentary where the teenage children of Holocaust survivors revisited the places their parents or grandparents had been so brutally treated. Sitting with them, sifting through photographs and documents, were German teenagers. One of the Jewish youngsters said, ‘I’m always scared that I will see the face of someone I recognise’. ‘So am I’, replied the German youngster. Yes. That captures it, perfectly. It is important to sift yourself. And some locations, because of their poignancy, or power, or pain, make that demand urgent and insistent.

 As I noted above, I don’t believe in Never Again. I’ve lived through the Srenbrenica and Rwanda. Never Again is a cheap shot. Conventional piety. Wishful thinking.

I have no truck with it.

 I believe in vigilance and respect…

   I crossed from Germany into Austria in the late evening of October 19th, at Passau, where the rivers Inn and Ilz combine with the Danube. The Hitler family lived in Passau from 1892-4, moving there when Adolf was three.

 My driving route took me along the right bank of the Danube, heading south east, towards Linz. A full moon was reflected in the river and, on the left bank, a sequence of picturesque villages with their churches and castles illuminated. I arrived in Linz a little before 9pm and headed straight to the hostel. It’s a purpose-built, post war edifice with clean 1950’s lines and interior spaces to match. The rooms, all en-suite, are impressively comfy and airy. It looked a very efficient set up. I slept well.

 The following morning, when I drew back the curtain, the window was misted with condensation. Wiping it aside, I could see autumnal leaves outlined crisply against a cornflower white sky. That boded well for the day. After a good breakfast (a typical Austrian affair of cold meats, cheese, fruit, yoghurt, breads and cakes), I organised myself and went into town.

 Linz is as lovely as you might expect a baroque town on the Danube to be. I spent the morning meandering, stopping off to admire churches and the architectural fancies that offered themselves up. The High Mass was drawing to a close when I got to the New Cathedral (a 19th CE Neo-Gothic build), so I sat quietly and waited for the dismissal, so I could then take a few photos without disturbing the service. There was a small choir – five or six voices – singing a glorious polyphonic mass setting.

 As midday approached, I returned to the car, crossed the river, and followed the left bank. The Danube was actually blue, for once: generally-speaking it’s a mucky brown. Following the river downstream, Mauthausen is a bare 12 miles from Linz.

I was there in 20 minutes.

 To get to the camp, you turn off the main road and drive through the village, climbing the valley side until you reach the ridge line.

 The first thing you note when you park and get out is the view. It’s a beautiful situation – to the south lies village, the river and the Danube valley – lots of woodland and rolling hills with isolated houses and farms.

 The camp looks like a granite-built fort. Its towers and retaining walls are imposing, not to say intimidating. It has permanence and power written all over it. Exactly as intended.

 Mauthausen was a Grade III camp, intended to be the toughest environment conceivable for the incorrigible political enemies of the Reich. The Nazis intended that the intelligentsia of Europe come to Mauthausen and be worked to death. Its nickname among the staff of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office) was the Knockenmühle – the Bone Grinder. It was founded immediately after the Anschluss (1938) and was one of the last camps to be liberated.

 The Bone Grinder… therein lies the key. Mauthausen was founded because of the adjacent granite quarry. Its stone had been used to pave the streets of Vienna: now it was used to build the camp itself (inmates transferred from Dachau) and then the grandiose Nazi monuments that glowered down on the subjects of the 1000 Year Reich. Some of its stone was used in the Congress Hall, and other buildings, of the Reichsparteitagsgelände (Nazi Party Rally Grounds), in Nuremburg, which I had left only the day before.

 As the war progressed, and Germany secured direct and indirect control over more and more of Europe, the inmates became more diverse in their origins – to the Germans and Austrians were added Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Spaniards, French, Greeks. Teachers, doctors, lawyers, trade unionists, socialists, Jehovah’s witnesses, homosexuals, Sinti and Roma, Jews, Russian (and other) prisoners of war, partisans from Yugoslavia: in their hundreds of thousands, they came to Mauthausen and its sub-camps and were worked to death in the quarries, or gassed, shot, hung. Estimates vary – but it is reasonable to believe that 320,000 people came to Mauthausen and its sub-camps. 75% of them didn’t survive. But death was profitable: in 1944, the camp turned a profit of 144 million Euros (at 2013 exchange rate).

  When I came to Mauthausen I knew what to expect.

 The first camp I ever visited was KZ Sachsenhausen. It lies to the north of Berlin, in the village of Oranienburg. I went there in a bitterly cold February, in 1996, to stand before the memorial to the homosexuals done to death by the Nazis, and leave a poem and some rainbow ribbons. That same trip, I went to the Haus am Wannsee, which hosted the conference convened in January, 1942 at which the planned extermination of European Jewry was formalised, organised and rubber stamped.

 If Sachsenhausen brought tears, Wannsee brought an even icier chill – the hand of the perpetrators. Crunching up the drive towards that familiar building, sited on an idyllic lake (Heydrich intended it to be his home after the war), there was menace in the air.

 In January 2005, I went to Prague with Peter, and intended to make a side trip to Theresienstadt. Peter said he’d skip that but then changed his mind and came with me. I think he regretted it: it was grim. As I knew it would be.

 Almost exactly a year later, Gordon, Richard and I went to Krakow in Poland. Inevitably, we went to Auschwitz. It was a bitter winter, and the camp was a snow-covered expanse. It was easy, in the mind’s eye, to step back in time and imagine being there in the winter of 1944: the war lost but the exterminations more frantic than ever, the levels of degradation surpassing even the obscenities that preceded them.

  As I walked towards the camp entrance at Mauthausen, I brought these experiences with me. I had an idea of what lay behind that forbidding perimeter. I didn’t expect to be surprised. I did expect to be upset – as I had been before. I expected to be rattled. To be provoked. To be made to squirm and feel uneasy.

 The visit is self-directed, though an excellent audio-guide and a simple map make sure you don’t get lost.

 Some of the camp buildings are no longer there: the SS barracks are gone: the site is now the memorial garden. Some barrack blocks are demolished but others remain to suggest what they were like when the camp was in use, others are exhibition spaces.

The prison, the execution rooms, the crematoria, are all extant.

 The exhibition spaces are sensitively and comprehensively detailed, and give a genuine insight into the camp’s history. You are uncompromisingly confronted by the filthiness of Nazism. Each camp I have visited offers a unique experience, though each share common threads. Each has shown me something I hadn’t grasped until that point. At Mauthausen, it was the level of brutality dispensed to children. Looking at the youthful faces in inmate photographs was very disturbing.

  The barrack blocks are stark: the triple bunks, kapos’ day rooms, and the washrooms stood empty and silent. The washrooms rattle me: they were favoured suicide locations for prisoners in extremis. I’ve seen photos of emaciated victims, strangulated on taps, pipes and even toilet fixtures.

 I moved on. The triple bunks – top bunks were the most sought after – men topped and tailed – perhaps three per level, nine in all. The ones on the lower bunks were subject to the dysenteric effluvia of those on the upper ones.  When a transport arrived, overcrowding became endemic.

 In the prison block, you can see the ‘interrogation’ rooms, placed so the screams could be heard throughout the cell block. Below, in the basement, the exectution rooms. Prisoners were shot in the back of the neck (I saw such a set up at Sachsenhausen) or hung from a pulleyed hook, or gassed, or injected with petrol, or stripped, sprayed with water and left to freeze to death outside in the winter temperatures, or pushed off the quarry heights, or made to push others off the quarry heights and then shoved after them. Others were driven onto the electrified fence, or shot whilst penned into the garage courtyard. The bodies were cremated by prisoners who were themselves shot and subsequently cremated.

  Mauthausen has two double ovens in situ and complete. They stand open-mawed and stark. Topf and Sons Ltd, produced them. They were manufacturers of industrial malting ovens for breweries, and commercial incinerators. Their chief executive saw a brilliant opportunity to expand operations and submitted designs for ovens that could operate continually as crematoria: the Nazis were more than happy to sign the contracts. As Topf’s letterhead said on their Auschwitz correspondence: Always ready to serve you…

 This is what concentration camps are like.

 This is why it’s important for me to come, and stand, and be upset, and remember.

 At Sachsenhausen it was the crematorium that brought me close to dissolution.

At Auschwitz, the gas chamber.

At Theresienstadt, it was the sight of that vile slogan, glimpsed through a flurry of snow: ARBEIT MACHT FREI.

At Mauthausen, I felt more composed than I had expected. Reflective, quiet, brimful of thoughts and the clamour of the past but it was manageable and I felt able to ‘hold the ring’.

 Having paid my respects at the memorial plaques, I left the camp proper and walked slowly through the memorial garden, towards the quarry. I made a mental note to pay my respects at these formal monuments on the way back, and continued to make my way to the stone works.

 The well-made path gave out and I noted that I was now walking on the uneven setts and broken stones that led along the edge of the quarry, to the Death Steps.

 I was alone by now. Everything was quiet, save for the crunch of my footfalls on the stones. Their unevenness threatened to throw me off balance, and I found myself looking at my feet and paying close attention to the sensation of planting my foot, feeling my ankle adjust to keep me upright.

 As I type now, I can recall the sensations and sounds with absolute clarity.

 As I got nearer and nearer to the Steps I began to feel genuinely unsteady; there was an upwelling of panic, a constriction in the chest, a stomach-churning gripe: I was unable to proceed. I feared that I was going to crumple to the ground and cry uncontrollably.

 I stood stock still. I had to physically regain my balance. If there’d been something close at hand to grasp, I would have held on to it. But there wasn’t. I had to be still, gather my scattered self, recognise what was happening, compose myself, regain a measure of control.

 When I’d done so, the sudden realisation dawned that I couldn’t walk down the Steps. I knew it would be sacrilegious to trip down those stairs in my Fitflops. But I also knew I had to get down. I had to stand in the quarry. This was the place where remembrance meant most.

 To me, it felt an age, but it can only have been a few seconds: the solution was plain. I must go unshod. Bare-foot, I could do it.

 It all felt OK then. After a deep breath the urge to cry and the unsteadiness left me. There was still the hypersensitivity, as I placed my feet on the uneven stones, but I could make my way to the Steps.

 I had another lurch as I stood at the top. But I was able to quieten that, and sit down.

 I unlaced my shoes and slipped them and my socks off. A young family was coming up: the kids were counting the number of steps aloud: Ein hundert sechs und achtszig – 186.

 They passed by, making no remark.

 The stones were cold but supportive.

 Berries and twigs and clusters of fallen leaves were scattered on the granite steps, and I could feel their imprint as I descended. Down I went, where so many had gone before me, beaten and driven.

 In the quarry itself, the workings reared up before me: a cliff. Nature had softened and reclaimed some of it. There were two great water-filled pits that reflected the autumnal leaves and blue sky. It was strangely reaffirming.

 There were stone chips underfoot, as well as springy grass. I stooped to pick one up and carry away with me. Once home, I will put it alongside the brick-flake from Auschwitz, in plain view, where it will help me remember.

 I walked for some time, occupied with my thoughts, wondering at the strength and unexpected immediacy of my upset at the top of the quarry. I remembered seeing ‘Bent’ – firstly a play by Martin Sherman (1979), later a film by Sean Mathias. It dealt with two gay men sent to Dachau in 1934. A scene in it had them working moving heavy stone blocks. There was some clue there to my distress.

 And there was an incongruity: I remembered that beautiful polyohonic mass setting, 12 miles and 20 minutes away....

 And I had been bare-foot once before. 20 + years ago, in Lourdes. I had make my way around the massive, verdisgris’d Stations there, It was my leave-taking from the Friars Minor. The circumstance was very different, but the motivation shared some ground. Standing bare-foot on the bare earth and experiencing things for what they actually are; there is comfort in this discomfort.

  For me, Mauthausen had brought home again the reality. Not an issue of ‘there and then’ but ‘here and now’.

  And so it must remain, to me.

 Without vigilance and respect, I believe it will come again, and swallow our humanity.