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demonslayedher · 3 years ago

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"Grandpa Kokushibo" AU

This started as a simple little joke in those Muichiro doodles. And then it was just supposed to be a simple little drabble. A simple little Crack Fic. But next thing you know...

------

“You… you are my descendent…”

“…huh…”

Six flaring eyes loomed over Tokito, the two in the middle etched with writing. Upper Moon… One…

“Those eyes…”

Having been so locked on the demon’s eyes, he didn’t realize at first that it was talking about his own. “…huh…?”

“…They’re red… a sign… a Kakushaku-no-Ko… you have… potential…”

“……huh…..”

“Become… a demon…”

“…huh………. Huh!?”

With little recourse to convince the demon to leave like he might attempt with a bear or a boar, Tokito brought the demon home. “Sweetheart? I, uh… a relative of mine is visiting.”

His wife, whose complexion was lovely even without the luxuries of make-up, smiled up sweetly from where she knelt, with their two young sons asleep on the futon before her. “You still have family? What happy news---”

The demon, Kokushibo, bowed lowly so that he could fit inside the door. “Good evening,” he said.

“…G…Good evening,” she gawked, her soft green eyes wide and locked. “A… a pleasure to meet you.”

“The pleasure… is mine.”

“Uh, so, it seems this is my great-grandfather of sorts. A great many ‘greats.’ A few centuries’ worth of ‘greats.’ What a coincidence that we’ve just run into each other.”

“It’s no… coincidence. I have… always been searching… for Sun Breath users…”

Tokito smiled with his face like puddy. “Sun Breath? What’s that?”

“…to kill them…”

Tokito and his wife shared a “ghh!!” as their throats tightened.

“I did not expect… to find the remains of the Tsugikuni Clan… out here… in this… dump…”

“I, uh, I sort of recall that name being way back in the family. But on the wrong side of the war, you know? We haven’t been a warrior clan since the start of Edo times.”

“A pity… but… no matter… you will have… a greater master to serve…”

“Um! Uh! Would you like to meet your grandsons?”

“Honey, what are you—”

Six eyes widened. “Grandsons?”

“I have twin boys! I’m busy raising them, I don’t have any time for swordsmanship, haha! All I know how to do is swing an ax.”

“Heirs… are important… they’ll do no good… as children… You,” he looked to Tokito’s wife, whose eyes were swirling trying to follow his gaze. “You do it. You raise them. I’ll… train my descendent…”

“Train…?”

“You may have… the ability… to attain the Breath… of the Sun…”

“D---di---di—didn’t you say you were going to kill S-S-Sun Breath users?”

“Why would I… kill my descendent…?”

Tokito was doing his best, but he was hitting his limits for how many more surprises he could take that evening. “Listen, I… I only want what’s best for my family. I want to watch my sons grow up, and teach them how to live a simple life out here in nature. Ancestor or not, we want nothing to do with demons.”

“My dear,” his wife said, some surprised admiration in her tone.

“I have to ask you to leave.”

“I cannot.”

“You will take ‘no’ for an answer!”

“I cannot,” Kokushibo stressed. “The sun is rising. Sunlight… will kill me…”

“…ah… oh. That’s a problem.”

“I’ll remain… here…”

“I’m sorry, I can’t have you do that. You’re a demon, and—”

“Defy me… and I will kill your family.”

“---GHH!” the Tokito couple swallowed harder.

----- The boys woke up to find a demon quietly sitting cross-legged in the corner. Yuichiro cried, Muichiro stared. Tokito didn’t want to scare them, however rightfully they should be, so he smiled and introduced the demon as their grandfather. Kokushibo politely bowed his head. The boys were quickly accepting. In his heart, Tokito cried and begged the forgiveness of his religious parents for not teaching them a proper distaste for evil.

In a battle of will, Tokito would be easily outmatched. But for however many years Kokushibo had on him, he didn’t seem like a quick thinker. Tokito might be able to beat him in a battle of wits. He had an ability that was sure to ward Kokushibo off, if only he could wield it with the right timing.

“If you leave me no choice, Grandfather, then I guess I must learn this Sun Breathing swordsmanship you keep talking about! Maybe you’re right, maybe I do have potential! I’d like to think all my practice cutting down trees makes me adept with a blade,” he smiled, his hands proudly at his hips. “Will you take a look this evening?”

“Yes… I eagerly await… seeing your potential… my descendent…”

Tokito grinned. He couldn’t wait either. In the meantime, Yuichiro and Muichiro spent the daylight hours at either side of the unusual houseguest.

“Grandpa, you have flames on your face. Do those hurt?”

“They do not…”

“You have as many eyes as a bug. Why do you have so many eyes?”

“Because… I am… a demon…”

“It looks gross. With all those eyes, can’t you see it looks gross?”

“I can see… a great many things…”

“Why are there eyes on your sword? Can your sword see?”

“My sword is made with… my blood… its eyes… are my eyes…”

“Is your sword a bug?”

“What’s its name?”

“Kyokokukamusari.”

“Kyokko…”

“Kyokyaku…”

“Kyokyakoku…”

“Kyokukuka…”

“Your tongues… are young.”

When evening fell, Tokito put his plan into action. It took no special effort on his part, all he had to do was trust himself.

“Yahh! Yaahh!” he yelled as he swung his ax. “Yaah! Yar! Yagh! Yuh!! Ya—AHHH!” he spun around and fell down, nearly lopping off his own arm. Perfect!

All of Kokushibo’s eyes, even the ones down his sword were blazing on him, and he waited for Kokushibo’s reaction. There was no fooling those eyes, which made Tokito’s plan all the better.

That demon would know!

“You are very…”

“Yes?”

“Clumsy.”

Precisely! This would chase that pesky demon off, wouldn’t it?

“I can see… it will take… many years… to train you…”

…no.

-----

The centuries had made Kokushibo resilient to setback, and time flowed at a different pace for him. “Become a demon now… and you will have… all the time you need… to attain… Sun Breathing…”

“Now, now wait!” Tokito waved his arms. He had taken the full next day to get his wits rounded back up, while Kokushibo resided indoors again patiently allowing the curious bos to poke the eyes of his sword, proving to them he was too powerful to be harmed by their tiny fingers. Yuichiro contemplated poking Kokushibo in one of the eyes on his face, but he hesitated when all six were focused on him, and he cried and buried his face behind his hands. “Wait. Wait. You can wait, can’t you?”

“Wait… for what?”

“If it’s inevitable that I have to become a demon, can’t you wait for me to be a human longer?”

“What good is there… in being human?”

“I want to watch my boys grow up!”

“I am a demon… I see them… perfectly fine.”

“Well, I mean, but, no, I mean, like, out there, having a normal family life with them. Working in the mountains, coming home, making food.”

“A human body… is weak… and will starve… without food… A waste… of time… to constantly…. work… for… Your body… will grow old… and frail… Become a demon… and these concerns… will vanish…”

“You—you make a compelling argument, Grandfather. But being human is good too!”

“How… is being human… better… than being… a demon?”

“I, well… is… isn’t it weird to learn Sun Breathing if I can’t see the sun?”

The demon’s eyes, every last one of them, went wide. Tokito had him! “You’re… right…” he said, stunned.

“Haha, oh, Grandfather! It’s been so long since you’ve seen it that you must had forgotten about it! All the creatures of this world are meant to be touched by the sun’s rays, it’s the natural way of things. It’s a blessing.”

“Sun Breathing… may require… practice… under the sun…”

“Haha, it may take a while, but I guess I’ll have to do my best on my own.”

“I will… train you… at night… and by day… you will train… under the sun…”

-----

The arrangement seemed to be working a while. Whether Tokito trained during the day or not (he did not), his progress was slow. His wife had come to get accustomed to the situation, knowing she had to make the best of it until the demon hopefully got bored and left. Having the boys so entertained during the day helped her get a lot of extra work done around the house.

“Grandfather,” she addressed him. “We got a great catch for dinner tonight, look at the size of this fish! What part of the fish is your favorite? I’ll serve that part for you.”

“Demons… do not eat… fish…”

“Oh, how rude of us. What would better suit your tastes?”

“Demons… do not consume… human food… we would… vomit it…”

“Ahhh… oh. Well, we can’t have that.”

“Grandpa. Grandpa,” Muichiro tugged at his hakama. “Then what do demons eat?”

“Humans.”

Muichiro stared, and after what felt like a long time in human experience, his face flushed and his eyes welled with tears. Yuichiro pinched his cheek. “Don’t cry, stupid. He’s only teasing you.”

“…oh,” Muichiro, red-faced and cheek still stretched smiled with relief.

Their mother, meanwhile, was blanched white, the fish still flopping around in her stiff hands.

“You’re not… making much… progress… could it be… you’re not… practicing… in daylight…?”

“Ah, ahhhh, yes, I’m afraid not,” Tokito sweated profusely. “That… that’s just part of being human. There’s so much work to do all day and then I have to sleep through so much of the night. I may never learn swordsmanship at this rate, hahaha!”

“Then hurry… and become a dem—”

“S-Sure must had been nice to be in a samurai clan back in your day, huh? Servants to do all the tedious chores and stuff so you could focus and train! May, maybe it’d be nice to hear some stories about when you were growing up! The boys would love to know their family history too, I’m sure!”

“…what chores…?”

“Oh, haha, oh, Grandfather! Did you not even know what chores were? What a charmed life—”

“What chores?” he stressed.

“Uhh---well---chopping trees, mostly.”

“Your ax… hand it to me…”

“Uhh… yes, sir.”

“I will chop your trees… so you… may advance… in your training…”

“Ye… yes, sir.”

-----

They had an excess of very high-quality wood on a regular basis. It sold so well on Tokito’s occasional trips into town that he found himself with more money than he ever had in his life. “Use it… to buy food…” Kokushibo instructed him. “Nourish your family… with it… buy warmer clothes… save your labor…”

Tokito had been raised being told that demons were evil, but he began to question that. They were all part of a world beyond humans, populated by Buddhas and Tengu and foxes, who was to say that their nature was entirely evil?

All at once, one night after months of the demon’s constant presence, he disappeared. Tokito and his wife cried with relief, and Tokito vowed to use the gifts the supernatural ancestor bestowed on them to raise his family well, and to never forget humility in the face of things outside their human experience.

But then he came back the following night.

“G-Grandfather,” he trembled. “Y-y-you’re back.”

“I went out… to feed. Now… continue… your practice…”

Inside, his wife cried on behalf of them both, for Tokito was too scared to anything but obey.

-----

Two years went by. With no choice, Tokito could not help that his swordsmanship improved. “Hhm,” Kokushibo nodded with approval. “Soon… I shall… find you a sword… no longer… a wooden one…”

“Aw, you don’t need to trouble yourself, Grandfather!”

“It is… no trouble… to steal one…”

“Well, what I mean is, I’m still so clumsy! Hahaha! Sure would be a waste of effort to kill myself by accident, wouldn’t it?”

“Hmm… you are right…”

“Hahaha!”

“I will… make you a demon first…”

“No! No, wait! I’ll keep practicing, I’ll keep practicing! Let’s hold off on a real sword until I’m ready!”

“You are… delaying… the inevitable…”

“And you are exceedingly patient, Grandfather!”

“That person… is not… so patient… he watches… and tells me… to hurry… and be done… with you…”

“Ghh!” he gulped as he went pale. He should never had forgotten his humility facing that which was outside human experience.

“Gra-a-a-a-nd-paaaa!” came a voice at the door of the hut. “Come fold origami with us!”

“I would… rather play Go…” the demon answered as he turned around and answered the summons.

“Go is boring!”

“You will… appreciate it when you are older…”

His wits. Tokito had to keep thinking with his wits.

-----

Another year went by. Kokushibo remained outwardly patient, but once again made mention of ‘that person.’

“He has… more tasks for me… than to be here… tonight… I will grant you his blood…”

“Wait! Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!” Tokito raised his voice at him. This was it. He had to enact his next plan. “What are all these ‘tasks’ anyway? You still take plenty of time away to be a hitman, what else could he possibly have you do?”

Kokushibo answered very simply. “Look for… the blue… spider lily.”

“Ha! Spider lilies aren’t blue, everyone knows that,” sneered Yuichiro.

“The spider lilies are all dead,” said Muichiro. “It’s winter.”

If Kokushibo had twelve eyebrows, he would had raised them in their direction. “I… see… winter… of course… they must… be seasonal…”

“Are you senile, Grandpa? Of course they’re seasonal. They only grow in autumn.”

“You see big patches of them all of a sudden!”

“Autumn… of course… how could I… had forgotten…”

“That’s to be expected, don’t be so hard on yourself, Grandfather,” Tokito’s wife sweetly smiled to him. “They’re a daytime flower, it must be so long since you’ve seen them.”

“Daytime… yes… of course… they’re under… the sun… no wonder… it’s been… impossible… for demons… for a thousand… years… that person’s… blood… is swelling… within me… with… frustration…”

With the rising tenseness in Kokushibo’s voice, Tokito’s muscle sprung with their own tension. “N-no wonder! How sad! How sad that demons can’t go under the sun! I hope I never—”

“That person… will give you… more time. For you… must search… in the daytime…”

“Ghh…” he swallowed. “Y… yes, sir.”

“That’s stupid,” said Yuichiro. “You’re not going to find any in winter.”

“Yes… it’s stupid. You will… search next autumn… and train… until then… and…”

“……….and……….?”

“Play… Go… with me. These rascals… have no… appreciation for… Go…”

“It’s boring, Grandpa!”

“I’m trying, I can’t remember all the rules!”

“Let’s play Shogi instead!”

“Fine… lay the board… let’s play Shogi…”

-----

Two more years passed. Tokito had reprieve from his training during the autumns to search for the blue spider lilies, and one untimely fall in those searches gave him a much longer reprieve from training. His leg was badly broken, and he spent most of the winter bedridden.

“Haha… I’m still so clumsy…” he laughed, covering up that he also wanted to cry.

“And now we have to do all your work,” grumbled Yuichiro.

“Are you still in pain, Dear?”

“A… a lot, yes…”

“Become… a demon…”

“N-no! I’m still so clumsy, I haven’t mastered any of the Sun Breath yet!”

“I don’t want Daddy to get hurt anymore,” Muichiro said with tear-stained eyes. “Next autumn, I’ll go look for the flowers instead.”

“Ghh!” Tokito and his wife looked to him, helpless to tell their son to stop.

“Very good… a good child…” Kokushibo patted his head. “You will… be useful… to that person… too…”

It had to stop. Tokito needed to hurry and eliminate this demon, for the sake of his family.

-----

The following autumn, his leg still bothered him. On most days it was fine, but when it rained or when he climbed too stiff of an incline, the pain kept coming back. He could not use it as any excuse to skip his training, though, for Kokushibo would use that as an excuse to rip him from his humanity.

He kept up the training, as well as ventured out through the mountains to search, and ventured down the mountain periodically to sell the wood that Kokushibo cut. On one of those trips into town, he overheard the gossip.

“I heard it was demons.”

He froze to the spot and listened. He knew it wasn’t Kokushibo, for he was careful not to cause any incidents that would inconvenience the Tokito family—a strange thing that Tokito was sorry for being grateful for. But, perhaps if an incident had occurred closer to them, he’d have heard the following gossip sooner.

“The Demon Slayers are sure to catch it.”

“Demon Slayers?”

“Swordsmen with the sun in their blades, they fight with Breaths to take those monsters down.”

Breaths! Like Sun Breathing!

“Um!” he butted in. “How can I find these Demon Slayers?”

“How? We don’t know. Do you have a demon on your hands, Tokito?”

“…Ghh!... N… No…” he bit his lip and rolled his eyes back to avoid looking at them as he lied.

Maybe there was someone out there who could help him. But how would he find them without raising Kokushibo’s suspicion? The stress made it hard for him to sleep and gave him headaches. His could not risk any talk of this at home, but his sweet wife could see how it pained him, and she whispered with a light cough to let her and the boys take care of searching for the blue spider lilies.

-----

His wife fell ill. A common thing, for humans.

“I’m sorry, Grandfather. For now while I’m still human, I still have human responsibilities to my family. I need to find medicine for her. I’ll be back after I go fetch a herb that will help.”

“You know not where… to find… the blue spider lily… but know… the location… of… a little… herb…?”

“Yes. I’ll be right back.”

“It’s… raining…”

“I know exactly where it is.”

“Where… is it…”

“It grows on the side of a cliff near here.”

“You… know… of plants… on a cliff… but not… the blue… spider lilies…? You… wreak… of… a liar…”

Tokito ran cold.

“And… to think… someone… as… clumsy… as you… would… try… in this… weather…? You…”

This was not the time for everything to crash and fail. His wife’s lungs were in a bad state, if Kokushibo were to do something to him now—

“…are… more… idiotic than I thought… stay here… my… stupid descendent. No wonder… you take… so long to progress…”

The demon very soon returned, unbothered by how his clothes and hair left dripping wet pools throughout their home. He did not know which herb it was so he had cleaned the cliffs of them, allowing Tokito to sort through and pick out the ones that would help. Tokito made them into a medicine to treat his wife, and while it eased her coughing over the following day, she was still in a worrisome state. Kokushibo rolled all six eyes before leaving again that night, returning very close to dawn with his hands full of medicines. “Something… in these… ought to do it…”

It took a little careful trial and error, but a few of them turned out to be very effective, and she soon made a complete recovery.

And now, Tokito had a debt to pay.

-----

He made progress in Sun Breathing. Something was breaking through, making sense in his muscles. Kokushibo watched all the more silently with each night. They both had the sense that there was a change coming soon. Tokito was on the last of his wits.

The time Kokushibo spent around his sons, influencing them… it likewise had to end.

“Grandfather,” he asked, his forehead against his thumbs. “Where do we go once I can no longer be in the sun?”

“You can reside here… as long as that person… allows you to… you want… to watch over your sons… do you not…?”

“I don’t know that much about demons. But if I become one, they’ll be in danger, won’t they?”

“…I will make certain… no harm… will come to your family…”

Tokito closed his eyes with a sigh. “Thank you.”

“Of the two of them… Muichiro… may also… be of use… to that person…”

“Ghh!” his whole chest tightened as much as his throat.

He had let this go on too long. How could he find them? How could he find the Demon Slayers? How could he do without ‘that person’ knowing?

----- The sun! Whatever action he took, it had to be under the protection of the sun!

“Tokito, good to see you!”

“It’s been months!”

“You had us worried.”

And humans! There was a strength in humans he couldn’t forget, and must always find himself humbled by. Anything he could ever accomplish on his own was so small, but with the help of more people! “Thank you for keeping us in mind! My wife fell ill a while, but she’s recovered now.”

“Psst. Are you still, you know?”

“You know?” another one asked, biting her lip and rolling her eyes back a second. “You know?”

“Ah… ah!! Yes!”

“Not to worry, lad,” an old man patted his shoulder. “Your family’s fallen on hard times, and that’s a shame. We’ve spread word of your family, and it’ll reach the right ears soon.” With a grin, the old lady next to him pointed to a crow flying overhead.

“Ahhh!” his eyes watered, and he bowed so low his face nearly hit his knees. “Thank you so much!”

“Hold your head up, young man. Do your roots proud!”

Yes. Even if his roots were Kokushibo, he could not allow himself to lose his humanity. There was still hope!

-----

Tokito had to protect his family. This Breath had a power, a power strong enough to make ‘that person’ want to rid the world of anyone who could use it. Maybe it was ungrateful to hone it as a gift to his eventual rescuers, a weapon that they might use.

A weapon they might use against Kokushibo, the ancestor who had spent years teaching it to him.

After a long day of training in the rays of the sun and well into the night, Tokito returned to his home, already dark inside. Muichiro and Yuichiro were wrapped up in their futon and using Kokushibo’s knees for pillows. All six of his eyes opened slowly, focused solely on Tokito. “You’ve… grown much stronger… it’s time soon… for a sword…”

-----

A knock came at the door. “That’s odd,” his wife blinked her big green eyes to it. They were not used to visitors.

“I’ll get it!!” Tokito shouted with a smile and bounded over to it. Their cry for help had been answered! It had to be buff, strong swordsmen, ready to rescue them and eliminate the demon—

He pulled wide the door, and against the light, there was the silhouette of two small children, and a demure lady in a traveling kimono.

No, this was wrong. Something was wrong. There was something special about these people, but they were not the Demon Slayers he waited for. As his breath tightened, the woman searched his face with growing concern. One of the children at her side looked inside the house, starting first on the woman with the big green eyes, and then the two identical children with long hair, staring back at the door while their Go board was illuminated by the outside light, and then to the dark corner of the house, where a demon sat and stared back.

“Ubu… ya… shi… ki?”

-----

(((And then, the author who only wanted to write a short crack fic, put the fic away, scared by the evil she had unleashed.)))

#this all started with a dramatic manga reading #and this was also a delight to read aloud as I edited #no recording this time though #my fics #my art #my nice art #my dumb fics #Kokushibo #tokitou muichirou #tokito muichiro

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corpsentry · 4 years ago

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ao3 mirror

fandom: botw rating: t  pairing: zelda/link  notes: post-canon, getting together, mild descriptions of injury. cooking. dancing. crying. and so on. “Let’s say you’ve been asleep for a hundred years and when you wake up you’ve lost all your memories, but you defeat the big bad monster like you’ve been told to, because a girl told you to, and because you were in love with her. And after defeating the big bad monster she comes back, only she’s not the person she was a hundred years ago. And you’re not the person you were a hundred years ago. And yet every time you look at her, your chest hurts so bad you think you might be dying.” He looks up from his breadstick. “Am I dying?” “No,” Beedle says. “I think you’re stupid.”

All roads lead to hateno.

“I ate the frog.” Is the first thing he says to her in a hundred years, because he can’t stop staring at her hands, and his head isn’t working properly because he can’t stop staring at her hands, and he doesn’t remember what he had been planning on saying before he walked into the castle and killed two versions of evil incarnate in a room with a domed ceiling and a field with a domed sky, but he’s pretty sure. He’s pretty sure it wasn’t this. “I’m sorry,” Zelda says. “You what?” “I, uh.” He takes a step back, and then a step forward. Hyrule castle looms like a corpse behind her, hulking and majestic and dead. It distracts him, though not as much as Zelda herself, pale as winter and glowing behind a halo of sun. “There was a frog you wanted me to eat.” A hundred years ago. “You said it would be for an experiment.” A hundred years ago you told me to eat a frog and that’s all that I remember. That’s what’s kept me going all this time. When things got hard, when the weight of the curse you had given me grew too great, I cooked a frog in a pot over a fire. She stares at him for a moment, her expression unreadable. “You’re more talkative than I remember.” He panics. “Should I stop talking?” “Oh no! No, just— how do I put it—” This probably isn’t what she had in mind for their reunion. He feels the sudden need to apologize. He should have tried harder to hold onto himself while he was sleeping off the blood on his back and the world retreated into a corner to lick at its wounds, but it was hard. He didn’t know what he was doing. He doesn’t remember, actually. He doesn’t remember going to sleep, and he doesn’t remember what he dreamed of. That’s two question marks in one head, and only one answer to go around. There were two shadows on the wall, though they belonged to the same boy. Zelda twists her hands together, almost as if in prayer. Her white dress billows heavily in the wind, covered in wounds from another century. “I’m sorry,” she says to his feet. “Please keep talking.” He nods, though she isn’t looking. After a moment, they make their way across the trampled, dead-looking field to his horse, who’s had half of her mane seared off and looks like she desperately wants a carrot. He hauls himself onto the saddle, then holds out a hand to Zelda, who stares at it like he’s just offered her the rest of his lifespan. Then she takes it, letting him pull her up behind him, and her hand is so warm, and the sky is so blue, and everything is so strange, he almost lets go. Of the girl. Of the reins. Of his grip on reality, this new, unexplored reality, the carcass of the castle slowly growing smaller in the distance. When he walked into the sanctum with a plan to kill Ganon he had been thinking about how the stalhorses on Tabantha Snowfield run faster than the horses near Kakariko, how a bokoblin will choose a freshly roasted chicken over the skin of your teeth, how stables are a metaphor for family. Now all he can think of is angels. She asks him where they’re going a little while later, and it’s only then that he realizes he doesn’t know. It’s a cool, starless night. No moon, no blood. His horse snickers at a boar by the side of the road, and Zelda tightens her grip on his waist. God, what have they been doing for the last hundred years? “Home,” he answers. “We’re going home.”

 The house in Hateno is a small and modest affair. This is probably the only reason Bolson and his construction company were willing to sell it to him at an equally modest price, with modest display stands for his modest weapons, and a modest bed beside which he hung a framed photograph of him and his dead friends. He’s fine with it, though. The only thing that really matters to him is the photograph, though there are now two living people in it instead of one and a half, and if Bolson had not graciously included a bedframe and mattress in his modest homemaker’s package, then Link would have slept on the floor. He says as much to Zelda, who blinks at him sleepily and throws a pillow at his face. “Please don’t do that,” he says. “Sleep in your own bed,” she replies. He peels the pillow off the floor and pats the dust away before replacing it carefully on the bed. “I promised your father I would take care of you.” And Daruk. And Mipha. And Urbosa, who would kill me if she found out I let the princess sleep on the carpet. Like a dog, she would probably say, her voice low, her eyes slanted. How could you treat her like a stray dog? This is the princess we’re talking about. She deserves better. He opens his mouth to say as much, but Zelda gets there first. “My father is dead,” she says, her voice unexpectedly raw. She seems surprised at herself despite her best efforts, and clears her throat in an attempt to hide it. He finds himself overwhelmed with the sudden urge to hug her or blast a hole through the roof with his sword, but can’t decide on one, and ends up wringing his hands together behind his back while Zelda sits on the side of the modest bed in the modest house in Hateno, and presses the folds of her dress into a clump. There should be more he can do for her. What is it? If only Urbosa were here to tell him what it means when Zelda takes your hand like a promise, when Zelda pinches the side of your waist, when Zelda announces that her father is dead, has been dead for a hundred years, died a long time ago. But Urbosa is dead too. The old world is gone, though its survivors have finally emerged from the twilit field. What now? Zelda rubs her eyes. He picks at a cuticle and holds his breath. Despite her best protests, she agrees to the bed-floor arrangement. Zelda will sleep on the bed, because he didn’t think that far when he walked into the castle and defeated evil incarnate, and she doesn’t seem to care. Meanwhile, he will sleep on the floor. Which floor? The first floor, he decides, but when he tries to go downstairs he almost throws up. His heart’s uneasy, of course, but he had underestimated the side-effects of meeting an angel. Over the past few months, he had gotten used to getting mauled by things to the point where it had become part of his daily routine: get up, have a minor crisis about the fact that everyone you know is dead, have a minor crisis about the beautiful voice in your head, get mauled by a bear. Get mauled by a bokoblin who stole your spear. Get mauled by Mount Lanayru, which has a thing for spitting giant snowballs at him when he’s trying to talk to the Koroks in the region, pleading with them through chattering teeth to stop giving him more tiny golden shits and start letting him talk about his feelings. Zelda is not daily routine. Zelda was the girl in the dream, then a face in a photograph, and now Zelda is sleeping in the house in Hateno with her hands pressed up to her cheek, breathing softly. He’s overcome with emotion, though if you asked him to tell it to you, he wouldn’t know how. And as for the matter of her hands, were they always this lovely? Impa didn’t tell him what to do after he saved the girl, though he knows she’ll want to hear about it from him and not the Sheikah warriors she has spread out throughout the kingdom, keeping an eye on their dying gods. Impa wanted him to look forward, which meant knives and teeth and forests full of bodies. She didn’t tell him what he could or couldn’t do in the presence of the sun, and he, having spent his whole life sitting in a dark room, didn’t think to ask. In retrospect, he should have. In retrospect, he should have asked Bolson to build two beds. But the thought didn’t occur to him, just as it didn’t occur to him that his heart might not be the dead thing the world told him it was, and so he never did.

 “I had a dream.” He flips the eggs. “About what?” “About a world where I made it in time.” Zelda peers over his shoulder. “Are they done yet?” “Almost, if you could please—” “—Ah, excuse me—” She dances out of the way of the big cast-iron pan, which he holds in one hand while he reaches for the plates with the other. In her haste to create space she walks into the counter and winces, bending over to touch the side of her foot. “Oh. I stubbed my toe.” She sighs. After breakfast he goes to look for Uma. He finds her sitting under the same old tree beside the bridge, cradling a cup of tea and humming along with the cicadas. Uma is the only person in Hateno who remembers the Calamity as a name with a face, and not a dream. She also had a daughter once, whom she lost in the years after the Calamity, when the rice fields had not yet begun to flourish, and the winters were long and cruel. He asks her quietly about the weather, which she tells him is her favorite kind. Spring’s never felt quite so lovely, she informs him, as she pries open an old dresser and leans forward to peer inside. He holds her cup of tea with both hands, the mellow sweetness of chrysanthemum tickling his nose and making him sneeze. After a moment, she returns with a set of clothes in the signature Hateno blend of oranges, blues, and warm, earthy browns. She places them carefully on his head and then retrieves her tea before he has the chance to drop the cup. “I hope your friend is taking well to Hateno,” she says warmly. I hope I have a friend, he thinks with his heart stuck halfway up his throat. He’s barely keeping himself together, in pretty much every sense of the word, but he thanks her all the same, and means it.

 He did, in fact, eat a frog. Several times. Once on the Great Plateau, after the spirit of the old king had left him to fend for himself with a pickaxe and half an apple, and again while he was in the Hebra mountain range, because it was too cold out to hunt and one had hopped into his pack while he wasn’t looking and died there. Then there was another time, at one of the stables up north, where he met a traveling salesman who offered him a stamina-boosting trick for ten rupees. The first time he obediently closed his eyes, and could only describe the texture in his mouth as ‘soft, with hints of viscosity’. He returned several weeks later, ran away on his horse immediately after making payment, and was mildly alarmed to discover that he had not in fact been presented with a breadstick, but rather a leg. A very long leg. With joints. And skin. And a big, webbed foot. Once, while sitting on a raft headed out to sea, he considered hurling himself into the water. It had been raining for several days by this point, which itself wasn’t a problem as he had come to quite like the sound of rain bashing on the outside of his tent with bloody fists, but this rain was relentless. Like a ghost which tries to kill you and fails, and, in a fit of bitter resentment, resolves to throw rocks at your window each night for the rest of your life, the water got into his boots and it got into his eyes and then it got into his pack, which spoiled all of his carefully-preserved meat and caused the stopper in his bottle of milk to rot. Under the present circumstances, all the game had either gone off to find shelter or been washed away by the floodwaters. There was nothing for him to hunt, and nothing for him to eat. His stomach growled faithlessly. While stumbling along some beach or another, he bumped into Kass, who told him about some treasure further out at sea. He looked blandly in the direction that the parrot pointed out for him, and found his eyes drawn to the island that lay beyond it. “I’m going to go there,” he said. “I hope you find good treasure,” said Kass. “Yeah,” he said. So he hauled himself onto a raft (he was too shy to ask the people in Lurelin for help, and too proud to talk about his circumstances) at the crack of dawn and began to blast a Korok leaf at the sail. And then he got tired. He sat down. He leaned over the edge of the raft. His reflection in the water was gray, because the sky was gray, and the sky was gray because it was raining. He had begun to shiver again, but he had spent most of the week shivering anyway and so didn’t pay it any attention. His hair was matted to his forehead, and there were bags under his eyes. One of his piercings was smarting; it must have gotten infected. “What if I just stopped trying,” he suggested to the sea, which ignored him. What was the point of it all, anyway? All of his friends were dead and the girl in the photograph was stuck in a castle in the sky. He didn’t remember a single thing about the first seventeen years of his life. Only the things that happened in the last three months, only the things that were deemed important, and even those he remembered in fragments. Like what if he had a sister. What if his father had been kind to him, or doting, or an alcoholic. What if he had been in love with someone, and what if he had had a heart, and what if he had cared. It was hard to discern the world’s sympathies for him when he spent most of his time alone. Sometimes, at night, he drew a face on the rock-wall and gave it a name. “I’m tired,” he said. “I’m tired, and I’m hungry, and I feel more dead than alive, even though I’m the only one still breathing.” But the sea continued to ignore him. The wind continued to ignore him. The rain continued to ignore him, pelting at his wet shoulders with wet hands and wet teeth, clawing at the skin on the back of his neck, telling him to go to sleep and stay there. Eventually the raft drifted of its own accord to the shore of the island he had spied in the distance, and then some thousand-year-old mummy stripped him of all his belongings anyway, so it no longer mattered that he had nothing in his pack or his head or his heart, as long as he was able to replace it with something new.

 A few weeks later she’s standing in the kitchen and staring at the vegetables in the pot, humming to herself, while Link rearranges the condiments on the table. She’s swaying from side to side, holding up the ladle like a sword. She seems happy. He leans back in his chair until he can just about see the top of her head. “What song is that?” he asks, casual as a house on fire. A pause. Something clatters to the floor. Picture two figures in a forest full of thorns and teeth. Picture the knight carving a path through the trees, the princess stumbling behind him, his clammy hand tight around her wrist, their feet bruised and dirty. It’s raining, of course, because it’s always raining in the dream. They’re being chased by mechanical monsters with knives for eyes. And they’re tired, both of them, so tired they could hurl themselves into a pond and drown there, but instead she walks into a tree. The bark scrapes the length of her forearm like a kiss, tearing at her skin and pouring blood down the back of her hand. Something clatters to the floor. Something breaks. Picture the old dream, the one he knows like a memory, the reason he’s less afraid of bears than people. He whirls the chair around to the sight of Zelda’s hand in the fire, her posture rigid, her face hidden by a curtain of hair. “I’m sorry,” she says, crestfallen. “It’s just—” He’s on his feet and halfway across the room before she can finish her sentence, pulling her away from the counter, reaching for the faucet with his other hand. “—It’s the first time you’ve asked me a question since you found me,” she says quietly. The skin on the back of her hand is bright red. If Urbosa were here, she would tie his arms and legs to four horses and then ask them to run in four different directions, and he would die in such a memorable way, it would eclipse even the deaths of all his old dead friends, who were trapped in machines with voices for a hundred years while their bodies turned into dust. If Urbosa were here then he likely wouldn’t be, would be in the next room, his ear pressed to the door, his heart pressed to the roof of his mouth. It’s a good thing, then, that she isn’t.

 It’s spring, so the water from the faucet is cold enough to cut yourself on. The water from the faucet is cold, so it should sting on skin as red as this, but Zelda doesn’t say anything as he holds her hand under the stream of water, his thumbs resting on the curve of her wrist, his eyes searching her blank expression for. A sign? A reason? Why the ladle on the floor; why the hand in the fire? “It’s fine,” she finally says, brushing her hair behind her ear with her unhurt hand. “No,” he says before he can stop himself, bristling a little, feeling slightly outrageous. “It’s not.” Zelda looks somber for a moment. Then she hiccups a laugh. “We’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we?” Yeah, I remember when you [the path that leads to Hateno is wet and winding] and I [your hand on the back of my head was cold and dying], he wants to say. But he would be lying if he did, because he doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember anything except the sixteen stories she left him, sixteen shards of a seventeen-year-old life. If she’s referring to something funny, then he’s missed an opportunity to make her laugh. If she’s referring to something important, then it’s no wonder he can’t seem to bridge the gap between the frog and the girl, no wonder his head hurts like someone stabbed it with a pitchfork and forgot to take it out, no wonder Hyrule still feels so far away, even as he milks the chickens and he chases the cows and he collects the eggs from the bears. He turns this thought over in his head as he goes for the medicine cabinet, which he had not asked for and Bolson had installed as a courtesy. Despite his best efforts, the blood on his back never quite washed away. She’s gone by the time he closes the cabinet, and he begins to feel that telltale sickness in his stomach, the sudden urge to throw up. He walks briskly out of the house in Hateno, salve and bandages tied to his wrist, his heartbeat ringing in his ears. The moon is a crescent tonight. Hateno rises and falls with each breath, pressing flowers into the palm of his hand. He folds each one unevenly in half. Zelda’s halfway up the ladder when he finds her. He waits for her to get onto the roof before he starts heading up, and is surprised all the same when he reaches the top of the ladder, and finds her face inches away from his. “I didn’t know you had a ladder,” she says pleasantly. “Why did you follow me up here?” She smells like Goron spice and sun. He is three seconds away from plummeting to his death. This is nothing he is used to, and a part of him thinks that if he knows what’s good for him then he will never get used to any of it. Not the silent, dead castle, not the long black shadow of the future, not the girl. She leans back after a moment. He breathes out. Half an inch of space will not keep either of them safe. Zelda watches him retie his ponytail expectantly. “So?” The ladder is from the Great Plateau. He found it at the back of the Temple of Time days after the old king asked him to climb to the top of the ruined structure and revealed to him that he was, yeah, the old king, and that all of his friends were dead, and that he would have to get the girl out of the castle before she could even think to save him, and by association, the rest of the world. At that point he was still naive enough to think defeating Ganon would take a stick and an apple and a really fast horse. He had also not yet learned of the myriad ways in which he had failed everyone he had ever cared for, and so spent his days wandering from place to place, pointing at bugs in the leaves and laughing. The ladder pissed him off. Who put it there? Why didn’t the old king tell him about its existence? What was the point of leaving a ladder behind the statue of Hylia when you could’ve put it in front, so stupid soulless people like him could use it to reach the end of the story faster? He returned to it much later, after he had purchased the house in Hateno, and yanked the whole thing down. Hacking it into four sections with a pickaxe he stole from a bokoblin (it had probably belonged to him first anyway), he piled all of them on his horse and then walked through Hyrule field, past Fort Hateno, all the way back to Bolson, who stared at him like he’d just asked him to kill a man. What do you mean you want me to fix this ladder, he asked. I mean I want you to fix this ladder, he replied. So Bolson did. Zelda laughs so hard she almost falls off the roof. She gets right up to the edge of it, leaning over the side with her face in her hands while he scrambles to keep her from toppling over. She only let him wrap up her arm because he was talking, because according to Zelda he never did much talking, but maybe he’s said too much. He’s embarrassed. Defeated, he lies down. There’s a star, just above the crown of trees at the other end of the village. He reaches out idly, trying to pinch it between his thumb and forefinger, but his fingers brush against skin instead of sky. Zelda, half-goddess, half-miracle, turns her face into the palm of his hand for the briefest of moments, like a butterfly alighting on the surface of a pond. The cicadas sing ballads. His breath stops in his lungs and dies there. “I like the ladder.” “Oh.” “Please keep it.” “Oh.” “You know,” she says, still leaning over him, close enough that if he gave her hand a tug, she might fall right out of heaven. Her head is tilted, her hair falling into her eyes, splaying across the tiles on the roof like a satiny strip of sun. “What?” he asks hoarsely. She smiles at him like a secret. “I—”

 He used to be in love with her. As each piece of his sixteen-part past was returned to him and the last day of his life emerged slowly into the light, it dawned on him like a horse falling out of the sky that he had been very lucky to be her knight, that he would have willingly given his life for her, and that he did. Only his final, heroic act of sacrifice failed to accomplish anything meaningful in spite of his best efforts. He had died with her hand cradling the back of his head, his tunic wet with blood and tears, believing that the ending could be salvaged still. Maybe this is what it takes to reach happiness, he thought dizzily. Maybe you have to be pushed to the end of the line, before you can start walking back towards the center. But when he opened his eyes, it was to a world which had not moved an inch from the precipice. His back was covered in scars, water streaming down his skin like blood, and his head was so light, he worried for a moment that if he stood up too fast it would float right off of his shoulders. The only thing that remained was old skin, the thin aftertaste of fear, and a bone-deep anxiety that wouldn’t come off no matter how many times he threw himself into the river. The only thing that remained was a voice in his head, calling his name through the dream, reminding him that there was still something that could be salvaged from the fire. He used to be in love with her, though it took him a while to admit it, because being in love with her meant admitting that he had failed not only on a prophetic level, but on a personal level that cut to the wound at the center of his chest. It was a matter of survival in those first few months. Him, or a kingdom. His selfish and worthless pride, or the world. Naturally, he chose the world.

 “Let’s say you’ve been asleep for a hundred years and when you wake up you’ve lost all your memories, but you chase after fairies and you dig up shrines and you defeat the big bad monster like you’ve been told to, because a girl told you to, and because you were in love with her. And after defeating the big bad monster she comes back, and you take her back to your house, and you fry eggs for her. But she’s not the person she was a hundred years ago, because she spent a hundred years in a dream. And you’re not the person you were a hundred years ago, because you forgot everything you could possibly forget, and then you got mauled by a bear. And yet when you look at her, every time you look at her, your chest hurts so bad you think you might be dying.” He looks up from his breadstick. “Am I dying?” “No,” Beedle says very seriously. “I think you’re stupid.” Beedle retrieves a string of petrified armored beetles from one of the pockets on his back, and holds it abruptly in his face. “You can fall in love with someone twice, you know.” Link wrinkles his nose. “How do you know?” Beedle sticks the lower half of a beetle in his mouth. “I’m five hundred years old.” He bites down. “I know things.” Chews thoughtfully. “I’ve eaten things, too. Things you’ve never even dreamed of. “Point is, Link, you’re being stupid. Get it together. The world’s not ending anymore.” “Oh,” says Link. He watches Beedle eat the rest of the beetles. There are five in total. He doesn’t have to chew very hard, which is weird. He turns Beedle’s words over in his head. Beedle has a point. The world isn’t ending anymore. The world isn’t hanging on by a thread, waiting for the boy in the story to haul it back up the side of the cliff. They hauled it back up, him and Zelda and their old dead friends. They hauled it out of the well. And now look at the flowers.

 Once, while sitting on a raft headed out to sea, he considered hurling himself into the water, but here’s the other half of the story. He had recently been into the castle again, up to the princess’ room, where he found, among other things, a moblin, a bow, and a single Silent Princess, growing at the end of the hallway. He also found a diary, which he really shouldn’t have read. He shouldn’t have read the diary. It’s common courtesy. It’s the mark of human decency, respect of personal privacy, respect for the dead, et cetera. But he did. So he hauled himself up to that tower in the sky, and he mistimed several guardian laser parries before finally getting one right and yelling in triumph and getting a beam to his ass for his efforts, and then he cried, standing over that tattered old book while a cold wind blew in through the man-sized hole in the wall. He had spent so long working towards the abstract idea of salvation, he had forgotten that salvation was also, inextricably, a person. A girl with the hands of Hylia, praying in a castle in the sky, stuck in a hundred year cycle from hell. She had thrown away everything so he would float back out of the water with his face to the sky, and he couldn’t even remember how to shoot a bear without getting his face clawed off. What had he ever done to deserve this? What had he done for her? The answer was he couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember anything. The conversation they had about skin-deep secrets, the day it was raining and she told him about the hypothetical nature of failure, the morning of her seventeenth birthday, as she slid the gold cuffs onto her wrists and strode grimly out of the castle, her shadow clinging to the wall like it could keep her from leaving if it did. Did he even say happy birthday? Did anyone bring her candles? Did she make a wish, and if so, for what? He felt suddenly angry, and disappointed, and lonely. The fireplace was full of rubble and the table was covered in dust. The bed frame had collapsed, probably at the very beginning of this whole mess, and the mattress was sunken in like a face with no flesh, the sheets torn, the gold trim reduced to tatters. This place used to be a sanctuary. Now it wanted him dead. He wiped his eyes furiously, though there was no one there to point at him and laugh. He wiped his eyes with the back of his clumsy, scarred hand, pulled the diary shut, and walked back out, into heaven’s line of fire.

 He takes her to the Kochi dye shop on her request, but Sayge gives them a name and an address and herds them out of his store, and so they find themselves in Tarrey Town again, exchanging nods with the people he tricked into leaving their old lives behind while Zelda describes her old outfit to Rhondson, who takes notes on her husband’s arm in erasable ink. Several days later, a new set of clothes arrives in Hateno by donkey. He helps her do her hair, by which he means he holds a mirror behind her back and she does her hair, occasionally instructing him to tilt it several degrees in one direction or another, but it’s the most useful he’s felt in weeks, and when she’s pulled on her gloves and done up the buckles on her boots, she stands up and does a little twirl. It’s a perfect replica. She’s glowing. Rhondson is god. “I feel like I could defeat Ganon,” Zelda tells him. I already did that, he thinks. He nods. “You probably could.”

 “So, are you going to do something?” Beedle retrieves a string of soft-shell crabs from his pack. “Do I have to?” Beedle waggles his finger at him disapprovingly. “The question is, do you want to?”

 He has a dream where she falls from Shatterback Point. He runs as fast as he can down the side of the mountain, cutting his palms on coral and bruising his knees on the wet rocky path, but when he gets to the bottom, no one’s there. You were too late, Muzu tells him, stroking his beard somberly. You tried to reach her, but you let go, and then you were too late. The water in the lake is bright as blood. The sky crackles silently above Muzu’s vacant eyes. A voice emerges from the lake. You let me die, the voice says. I saved the world for you, and you let me die. He wakes up sweating. He curls up on his side, bracing for the cold, hard floor against his cheek, but Zelda’s slipped one of her pillows under his head while he was sleeping. She’s murmuring in her sleep, something about fruit halves and grams of sugar, her hand dangling over the side of the bed clenching and unclenching itself earnestly, kneading imaginary dough, cutting imaginary apples. “Zelda?” Too soft. He won’t call again. He refuses to. In a moment of weakness, he reaches for the side of the bed, but stops just shy of her hand. Beedle’s bright, angular nose appears before him, carrying with it the wisdom of his ancestors. What do you want to do, Link, Beedle’s Nose asks him. What do you want? I want to pull her out of the burning house, he thinks. Is that too much to ask for? Moonlight trickles down her throat and vanishes under the collar of her tunic. His chest implodes and his heart bursts into a thousand tiny pieces, as he wonders how it is that planets were made before people. Beedle’s Nose is indifferent. What burning house, it asks. Where’s the smoke coming from? Look around you, Link. There’s smoke, and fire, and windows with broken glass. But who’s still inside?

 Uma’s hundred-and-ninth birthday arrives on the coattails of fall. On her insistence, they keep the decorations sparse and the cake disarmingly large. Streamers are put up and butterflies corralled into glass menageries. A traveling band with a bit of a reputation further west is invited. There are three musicians with ocarinas and one with a cowbell, and all of them are wearing pink overalls and big yellow sun hats which hurt to look at for too long, unless you work for a construction company, in which case you want to look at them forever. After Bolson has finished taking down all of their contact information on his forearm (they prefer to be called for via messenger pigeon, but if you don’t have one then a snail is fine as well), Zelda drifts across the grass to stand in his place. She’s wearing a white dress, borrowed from Uma, who said it would complement her eyes. Uma was right. The dress is made from a thin, glittery fabric that billows around her ankles and makes her look like she’s floating. Like a fairy in a forest clearing. Like a cat perched at the top of a clocktower. Their conversation lasts for several minutes. She says something, and the others laugh. The guy with the cowbell pretends to look embarrassed. Everyone else at the party is dancing, including Uma, who is holding hands with a small child in a green frog-suit and swaying like a palm tree in the wind. While Zelda keeps the ocarina ensemble preoccupied, one of the adults in the village has gone and retrieved a guitar. He begins to play a warm, meandering tune that reminds Link, distantly, of grassy fields and white skies. “Are you not going to dance?” He looks down. Nebb tugs at the edge of his tunic with one hand, pulling him in the direction of the crowd. He squats down. “I don’t have anyone to dance with.” “You can dance with me. Duh.” “I don’t know how to dance.” Nebb looks at him like he’s stupid. “Then learn.” “What if I don’t want to?” “What if you meet someone who does, and you like them too much to say no?” He squints suspiciously at Nebb. Nebb’s atrocious bowl cut hasn’t grown any less atrocious with time, though it does have the effect of making him look far less menacing than he would be if he were bald or sporting a mohawk. The boy knows too much for someone so small. This cannot do. If this goes on, he will reveal a secret to the gods, and then they will kill him for his hubris. “Shhh,” Link says to him, holding a finger up to his lips. He digs around in his pockets until he finds a piece of honey candy, wrapped in a palm leaf and tied together with twine. “Take this, and go dance with someone else.” Nebb gives him the Stare of Judgment, but takes the candy. “You’re terrible, Link.” He sticks out his tongue. “Bye.” Then it’s back to demolishing the cake, which he’s still not convinced Uma didn’t order expressly so that he would have something to do with himself during the course of the evening, as the dancing progresses from cheerful to insane and a small group of guests begins to construct a spaceship out of empty wine glasses. No one else has gone for thirds, though a handful have gone for seconds. There’s a big fondant chicken perched on the highest layer. He sucks on his fork thoughtfully. He wants it. Last week they went up north, in search of forgiveness. Despite their best efforts and the gift of crabs and crocuses they brought along, their reception in Zora’s domain was cold and gray. It reminded him of the way they had received him when he first stepped out of the rain and into the blue glow of the domain’s hallways, armed with only the knowledge that he had been sent to prevent a tragedy that had already happened. He didn’t yet know that Mipha was dead. He thought he could still save her. They called him failure and fool and living reminder of Hyrule’s downfall, laughing at him in a language called mourning. He had thought they had forgiven the Hylians and their king for letting their Champion die, especially after he walked out of Vah Ruta with a black eye and a bloody nose to show for it, especially now that the evil had been defeated. Apparently the knight by himself was tolerable. The knight and the princess, together, made things too raw. Too immediate. “Mipha’s dead,” they said. It was a Tuesday. “I’m sorry,” Zelda replied. Tomorrow they’re headed for Goron City. He closes his eyes and wills away the taste of sweet cream and berries, tries to picture the winding path up Death Mountain, the grooves hammered into the ground, the rubies in their metal caskets. Flame-resistant armor is a given, so it’s a good thing he bought two sets on accident last winter. He wants to trap a few fire lizards in a bottle and bring them back for a friend. As for what he will say to Zelda before he hands her off to the city’s protectors, their hands half an inch apart but not touching, never touching, there isn’t much. Goron City will be better, he thinks. He licks the cream off his fork. It’s sweet. “What are you thinking?” He opens his eyes. Zelda looks at his plate, then the cake, then his plate again. She points at the chicken. He shrugs. “I was thinking that I hope Uma lives forever.” Someone has invited the dog onto the dance floor. He isn’t trying very hard to keep to the beat of the guitarist, who has been joined by two of the ocarina players with brown hair and blue eyes, but he doesn’t have to. Spinning very fast in a circle is actually the smartest dance move of them all. There’s no beginning, so there’s no end. Zelda plucks a berry from his plate. “It’s not very fun, to be honest,” she says, chewing thoughtfully. “Living for that long.” He watches the dog chase its own tail and she watches him watch the dog, though neither is aware this is happening. “Sorry, I didn’t know. I was asleep.” The dog is easily the best dancer in the crowd. He experiences neither shame nor hubris, and is thus freed from the stresses and seasonal anxieties of being known by others who might fear him or like him. He also runs very fast. Zelda punches his shoulder weakly, her hand lingering, her eyes soft. “That’s a terrible joke, Link.” He pinches the inside of his wrist. “I’m trying my best.” “So am I.” After a beat, the dog who has been invited to the party to spin in tight circles on the dance floor and be a nuisance to the other guests goes careening into the rotisserie chicken. In a wondrous, gravity-defying moment, the chicken sails not away from the dog, but towards him, flying in a swooping arc over his head at a height of several hundred feet above the ground. The plate clatters to the floor before the chicken can find its bearings and, awoken by its war cry, people scramble into action, evacuating themselves to the other side of the buffet table or under the veranda with their legs between their tails, until Uma is standing alone on the grass, still swaying to a song only she can hear, still smiling. The chicken reaches the highest point in the sky, pauses for a heartbeat, then pitches downwards. She catches it. The crowd goes wild. And then Zelda is tugging on his sleeve, like Negg, but not like Negg, because Zelda walked out of the mouth of the monster, because Zelda left her hand in the fire, because Zelda looked at the miserable, vulnerable world that he had yelled at until his voice was hoarse and dying and even the pigeons were something fiercer than him, that he had tended to with clumsy, scarred hands in spite of all the dead things on the ground, and decided to stay. “God,” she says, her eyes bright. “Link, look. In the sky.”

 Picture two figures in a forest full of night. Picture the princess carving a path through the trees, the knight stumbling after her, her hand tight around his wrist, their feet fast and flying. The sky is clear, of course, because someone pulled the mourning veil off its head and threw it in the river. They’re chasing after a column of light, poured by the hand of Hylia from the heavens. And they’re tired, both of them, so tired they could hurl themselves into bed and lie there, half an inch apart, watching each other in the dark with waiting on their tongues, but instead he trips on a branch and goes down, face-first, into the dirt. She doesn’t realize he’s let go until he lets go, but when she turns around he’s already pushed himself off the ground. Hands and knees and boots digging into the grass. The woods outside of Hateno are still teething. The princess gives him her hand, and he stares at it for a moment like she’s just offered him the rest of her lifespan, and then takes it. He’s fine; of course he is. It would take much more than this to kill him. It would take another hundred year cycle of pain. She points at the column of light. It’s still there. Still glowing. So they keep going, picking their way through the undergrowth, climbing over branches and pushing boulders out of harm’s way, doing what ghost children like them do best, which is pointing at something in the distance, and then chasing it. Chasing hope. Following it back to the center. And when they reach the place where the sky has spat out the blood in its mouth, the knight gets punched in the face with nostalgia. He caught a falling star once, when he was all alone and the world was grim and unknowable. Then he gave it to a fairy, in exchange for less blood on his tunic, in exchange for stronger teeth. He approached heaven from afar once, a solitary figure burning darkly against the pale yellow water, but there was no way for him to go home when all was said and done, so he pinched the inside of his wrist and kept walking.

 The thing is you can’t go from swinging a sword around and dreaming about dead people to waking up and frying eggs and searching for ways to heal the cracked earth beneath your feet. Not that fast. Not that goddamn fast. You can’t just flip a switch and not be scared anymore, not wake up sweating anymore, not wake up wanting to hold her hand. Fear is a country and you’ve lived in it all your life. There’s a reason kingdoms keep such a close eye on their borders. You’re either in, or you’re out. Make up your mind. Pick up your sword. Save yourself.

 The star fragment is stuck in a tree. Zelda wants to climb it and he wants her to stop; naturally, she wins. She hauls herself up the trunk while he circles the bottom like a hawk with an anxiety problem, waiting to catch the star, or the girl, or both. But neither comes pitching out of the sky. The dream stays just out of sight. “So that’s what star fragments look like,” she says later, her voice muffled by the sound of crickets. She turns it over in her hands, running her fingers along each point and indent. “They’re warm.” Smells it curiously, then wrinkles her nose. “No smell.” Tries to break off one especially thin-looking point with little success. “Sturdy.” She spends ten minutes staring at the star. He spends ten minutes staring at her. She gets bored, puts the fragment on the ground, and looks up. He looks away. “The party’s probably over now, huh.” He nods to his left. A sigh, very small, very lovely. Like a firefly under a bridge. “I didn’t get the chance to dance with anyone.” Beedle’s Nose is staring at him from a gap in the trees like the red eye of the devil. It’s singing a nursery rhyme he doesn’t remember learning. What do you want/what do you want/what do you want. Link! Link! Open your eyes! He has to break every bone in his body just to turn his head three inches to the right, but for the first time in this life, this new life, this second chance at everything, he gets it right. Zelda’s knees are drawn to her chest, her head pillowed on her arms, her gaze heavy on his face. He sucks in a breath. “Do you still want to?”

 Dancing without music sounds reasonable in theory, but generally requires one party to be exceptionally good at keeping count while the other has to be in possession of at least a rudimentary grasp of the steps. This is, of course, assuming that there are redeemable qualities to both parties. For example, if one is the knight from the fairy tale who has spent his whole life swinging sharp objects at people, and the other is the princess from the fairytale who has spent her whole life praying sharp objects find their way to the right people, then there may not in fact be anything redeemable between them. Her counting is off, his hands are clammy. Her voice is wavering, his feet are too slow. It’s disaster after disaster after disaster, first the champions in their divine beasts, then the castle, then the king on the Great Plateau, a knife through the heart, et cetera. Dancing without music sounds reasonable in theory unless you’ve spent the last three months of your life chasing angry moose down mountains, so it’s a good thing no one’s here to laugh at them. It’s a good thing they’re alone, surrounded by starlight, half an hour by foot from Hateno, village of lights and wonder. Spring has come and gone without them. The night is young and the air is cool and the forest is sweetly indifferent to his tendency to crash into inanimate objects. This would be embarrassing if he left himself think about it, but more importantly it’s unfair, how neither of them knows what they’re doing but Zelda can smile her way out of a clumsy turn, how he has to keep his hand on her waist but hers is doing an elaborate dance on his shoulder, how every time she leans in and her hair parts down her back, a sliver of neck peeks out and steals the lungs right out of his chest. He is going to die trying to keep his hands to himself or they are going to fall off the edge of the forest and into a ravine with no bottom. There is no option to walk away. “You’re a terrible dancer,” she says, smiling up at him from under her lashes. He chews on his lip. “I’m sorry.” “That’s fine.” He twirls her and her dress floats up past her ankles like a cloud of tiny stars. “I like you anyway.” He walks into a tree. Decides that’s not enough. Slaps himself generously across the face, hard enough to leave a mark. Decides that’s not enough. Kneels on the grass, letting go of her hand, to look for a stick that might help him end things faster. “Link?” It is too much and too little all at once, and therefore unbearable. He is going to fall off the edge of the forest right now. He tries to stand up just as she begins to bend down, reaching for his shoulder. They fall off the edge of the forest together. Oh god. Oh fuck. Oh no. They’ve fallen off the edge of the universe together. Her face is in the crook of his neck and her hair is stuck to his clothes. His skin is on fire and his butt is sore and he’s dying. Hylia, can you hear him? There’s a name for the place children go after they leave this world. He’d like to know what it’s called now. “Hey,” comes the small, muffled voice. Her arms are on either side of his waist, and they’re trembling. “Can you say something?” He looks up. Always up, always forward, towards knives and teeth and forests full of bodies. Always past the blurry face in the dream, to the nightmare that follows after. Someone will tell you when to breathe. Someone will tell you when to swing your sword. Someone will tell you when it’s all right to stop being scared of everything, and start looking for angels. Like right now. Like right-right-now. Your heartbeat fluttering in your throat. Your throat an ocean of knives. Eight weeks and three days after he walks into the castle and defeats two incarnations of evil, first in a room with a domed ceiling, then in a field with a domed sky, he steps out of the burning house, and finds himself face to face with the sun. He presses his cheek against her hair. “Do you want me to?” “Yes,” she sighs. “Yes, I do.”

 He tells her about the way the world looks from atop the back of a bear and the gray of the ocean from a raft and the conversation he had with her dead father about how cooked apples taste sweeter. He tells her about the first time he shot an arrow at a bomb barrel and the second time he shield-surfed down a hill and how Urbosa made him promise to take care of her, even in death, even after it. He tells her about being so lonely it hurt to breathe and being so bad at breathing he passed out in a river, and being so hurt he had to be saved by a stranger on the road, tied to the back of their donkey like a piece of merchandise and carried to the nearest stable to be burnt back to life. He tells her how no one believed he was the boy in the story, even when he pulled out the sword, even when he showed them the blood on his back. He tells her about how the stalhorses on Tabantha Snowfield run faster than the horses near Kakariko, how a bokoblin will choose a freshly roasted chicken over the skin of your teeth, how a sword is a metaphor for forgiveness. He tells her how a hundred years ago she told him to eat a frog, and he never forgot about it. Not once, not ever. Walking through the Breach of Demise, looking for Koroks in Fort Hateno, praying for her heart at the Spring of Wisdom, he never stopped thinking about the damn frog, and by extension, the girl. The first thing she says is why didn’t you tell me all of this earlier? The second thing she says is why the hell didn’t I ask? She presses a hand to his forehead, pushing his bangs out of his eyes and glaring at him. The third thing she says is that she really wants to see a stalhorse, and the fourth thing he says is he’ll take her there one day, and the fifth thing she does is cry. Big, heaving sobs. Arms tight around his shoulders, tears smearing the front of his shirt, while he pretends he isn’t half as insane, gives up, and resolves to hide his face in her hair forever. And it’s dramatic as hell, it’s an ancient tapestry on a wall in Kakariko, but hasn’t it always been that way? Haven’t they been through enough shit to justify the heartfelt reunion, the face full of tears? If the conversation they had in the field outside the castle was a blueprint for what it looks like to meet someone you wanted a hundred years ago, then this is the aftermath of that war. Do you remember me? Of course I do. Do you love me? Of course I do. Ask me a question, any question. Crack my chest open. “To make things very, very clear,” Zelda says, wiping her eyes furiously. She’s pushed him flat onto his back and the light’s not hitting her face so he can’t make out her expression, but he can imagine the pinched brow, the bitten lip. “I didn’t fall in love with you because you were conveniently there, like, I don’t know, an armchair when you’re tired, or a glass of water when you’re thirsty.” Her hands on his chest are very beautiful, even in the moon-lit dark. “I didn’t take one look at the prophecy and think to myself, well, if I’m going to tie my happiness to someone then it might as well be him.” Now he’s the one who’s embarrassed. He brings a hand up to cover his face but she tugs it away. Takes a deep breath. Counts to ten, probably, maybe fifteen, maybe a hundred. “I fell in love with you,” she says, softly, each word falling from her lips like a star, each star plucked from the highest point in the heavens. “I don’t even know why I fell in love with you.” She fists her hands loosely in his shirt. “It just happens, you know? One day you look at the boy with the stupid pretty hair, and you think to yourself, oh no.” His head is spinning so fast he feels like the dog at the party. Maybe he is the dog. Maybe he finished eating the cake and shoved the fondant chicken in his mouth and then he passed out, and had to be carried back to his house, and had to be laid gently on the unmade covers. He gathers his thoughts. “I’m not a very good person,” he says quietly. “But if you would have me, I would gladly give you my life.” “You’ve already done that once, Link,” Zelda says, laughing with the sun in her mouth. “Do something else.” What do you want, Link? Open your eyes. Save yourself. “Okay, then. Can I kiss you?”

 His name is Link, and he died once when he was seventeen. It was pretty traumatizing. He got slashed several times across the back with some very sharp weapons, and then he got mauled by a forest full of screaming metal, and then he collapsed, right in front of the person he was supposed to protect, who ended up protecting his dead body by the skin of her teeth. Because he died. Somewhere between the laser on his chest and her hand pressed against the seal of the sky, his body made one last stand against the stark inequalities of the world, and he died. The only reason he knew his name was Link when he woke up was because it was the first word she said to him. “Link,” she said. “Wake up.” He concluded through logical reasoning that “he” must be “Link” and that “Link” had to “wake up”. So he did. He went traipsing around Hyrule with a ladle and a pot lid, seeking out places from a photograph and trying to find ways to bring every four-legged animal in the land to a stable, but he never really felt like “Link”. He felt like a corpse that had received a very shiny, very thick coat of paint. Half-here, half-there. Half-me, half-something-else. What else? A bird, maybe. A horse. One day Link got bored and decided that he was going to defeat all the forces of evil. He fought his way into the castle, where the guardians shot lasers at his earrings, and he fought his way past the lynels, who hissed fire and called him rude words, and he fought his way into the sanctum, where he met the asshole who had put him through all this shit in the first place. And he kicked his ass. And he kicked his other ass. And the asshole died. His name was Ganon. Ganon dying brought Zelda back to life, because the law of equivalent exchange governs half of the children in this world, while the devil gets the rest. The devil got to him: his life will always carry the weight of hundreds of thousands, he will always feel like lead for the first three seconds after he wakes up. But it didn’t get to Zelda. Zelda got the other bargain, the one where your dead father dies but you get your knight back. One or the other, left or right. In the end, you always have to choose. And he’s still pretty traumatized. And dying at the age of seventeen with a sword still stuck in your hand is pretty traumatizing. And the Zora are still mourning and the Gorons are still eating rocks and the Gerudo still think he’s just a really short girl, which he can live with, which he doesn’t particularly mind, but the trauma has a place on the shelf now. And the shelf is in his house. And the house is a modest one, with modest display stands for his modest weapons, and a modest bed beside which he’s hung a framed photograph of his friends. But some things are different, even if the foundations stay the same. No more rafts on gray seas. No more sleeping on the floor. No more standing in the burning building, and wondering why the shadows aren’t moving. No more shrines full of dead monks. No more monsters full of dead bodies. No more waiting for someone to tell you when to breathe, when to stop, when to get mauled by a bear. Pick up your sword, boy. Now put it down. Now pick it up. Now put it down. You’re going to be doing this until the day that you die. Are you all right with that? Are you all right with your god? [Thank you for helping my sister.][They say the leviathans died thousands of years ago.][Get me a horse. A big, strong horse. Any horse.][BROTHER. THE ROCKS ARE READY.][Find me someone whose name ends with ‘-son’.][I’ll sell you rushrooms for diamonds. Fifty-five for one.][Have you heard of the story of the bird on the mountain?][Do you already have someone special in your heart?][They say if two people visit this pond, they’ll be together forever.][Do you believe in miracles?][Do you believe in magic?][Do you believe in me?] [I believed I would see you again.]

It’s a cruel, unforgiving world. People die and don’t come back. But you did. Now get up. Someone’s waiting for you.

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the-last-teabender · 4 years ago

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FANFIC: Oxventure - Duel Destinies

RATING: G

WORDS: Just under 7k

SUMMARY: Corazón gets hit on the head.

A/N: This isn’t my first time writing fanfic, but it’s my first time in literal decades writing something that a) isn’t going into a charity anthology and b) isn’t single-sentence goofs in my Gchat window with @randomthunk. So I actually am a little nervous to just yeet my work out into the world without an editor/publisher frontline protecting me from looking foolish. I do have plans to fic more tho.

I approached this as though I was writing an official tie-in because that’s my comfort zone (and occasionally my job). Which was a little challenging because there’s a lot that’s not part of the story but is part of the viewing experience. I have not mastered it in one story but the attempt was fun. Also I haven’t smashed alt-codes this obsessively while writing since I wrote about Señor 105.

Thanks aforementioned Ginger for being my beta reader and basically sitting on me to post this instead of hide it in my writing folder.

Anyway, if you like what I’m throwing out here, I have actually a lot of stuff in print and even more coming.

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“Right,” Dob said, pacing the length of the deck, “before we go, let’s review. Prudence, what happened yesterday?”

“We found a bad man killing off local slimes to make slime booze.”

“Good. Corazón, what happened yesterday?”

“I began my awesome new career as a detective and threw someone out a window.”

“All right. Merilwen?”

“Mow.”

“Excellent. Egbert?”

“I set a tavern on fire and got my seal very drunk on slime gin.”

“All right, that’s us caught up.”

That wasn’t the entire catch-up, but all of them knew the events of the day before well enough. The forest outside the town of Esterwell was in turmoil, according to the wizard Binbag after he tumbled unexpectedly out of a pantry. It was suddenly bereft of slimes — the cute little blobby creatures generally used for target practice by up-and-coming adventurers. As it happened, slimes had other uses. Serving as the base for a delightful high-end alcoholic brew, for one. Serving as the base of the entire local food chain, for another. If the slime population continued to plummet, eventually the other animal populations would follow suit.

An investigation of the local slime hunters (led by DCI Jeff Crimestopper, a pseudonym Corazón was becoming increasingly attached to) turned up that they were all in the employ of the same man: one Alonzo Horgan, owner of the Horgan Distillery. One especially talkative young hunter revealed that Horgan intended to “wring all the slimes out of Esterwell Forest” before upping sticks to his next hunting ground.

The goal was, in short, to stop Horgan’s machinations before he destabilized the entire local ecosystem and went on to do the same to others. Somewhere along the way, Dob had got it into his head that the goal was to start a brewery of their own and hold a cider-making contest in the Esterwell town square… an idea the group at large now referred to as “Plan C.”

Plan A, currently underway, was to continue the detective lark and either talk sense into Horgan or (more likely) run him out of town. Plan B was burning down the distillery.

“I’m still very much in favor of bumping Plan B up to Plan A,” said Prudence, wiggling her fingers as the group made their way back into Esterwell.

“Mrow,” Merilwen the cat grumbled from Dob’s shoulder, which translated to something like, “But that doesn’t actually solve the problem of making him stop.”

“Oh, fine,” Prudence huffed. “Detectives it is.”

Corazón pumped a fist low and (he thought) out of sight. “DCI Jeff Crimestopper back on the case, bay-bee.”

They arrived at the home of Alonzo Horgan — a palatial manor in a town that really wasn’t the sort to have palatial manors. At least half a dozen residences would have to have been knocked down to make way for the place, which stood half again as high as the buildings around it that had survived.

Merilwen hopped lightly from Dob’s shoulder, turning back into an elf again, as the half-orc tapped politely on the door.

“No, no.” Egbert shoved past him, balling up one scaly fist. “You’ve gotta really punch it.” He slammed his fist against the door several times, making it bow slightly under the pressure.

“Open up!” Corazón shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. “We have a warrant!”

“Don’t just say we have a warrant!” Merilwen hissed.

The door was opened mere moments later by a tall, rail-thin man with an upturned nose and a downturned moustache. “Mmcan I help you?”

Corazón pushed past the man. “Yeah, you can take us to Alonzo Horgan. We’re taking him down to the station for questioning.”

“I’m afraid Mr. Horgan is not—” But the man was cut off as the rest of the group piled past and into the house.

“Where is he, then? Upstairs?” Corazón pointed up the stairwell, one foot on the steps.

The man at the door, to his credit, did his best to maintain his decorum. “Mr. Horgan is not taking visitors.”

“We’re not visitors,” Dob said gruffly, looming over the man, “we’re detectives.”

“Is that so? Well, I do hope you meant what you said about having a warrant. Otherwise I may have to take you to the authorities.”

Alonzo Horgan’s voice silenced the group, but had it not, his presence would have. Fully six-foot-four, a stocky mix of fat and muscle generally only seen on back alley brawlers, stuffed into a fancy suit. His glare was imperious; his moustache was excellent.

Corazón swiveled and approached the master of the house. “Alonzo Horgan?”

“Yes, I’m… not sure who else I would be.” Horgan seemed put out for a moment, but recovered himself. “May I ask what business you have here?”

“DCI Jeff Crimestopper.” Corazón pulled a piece of paper from his coat, flashed it briefly, and put it away again. “This is my DI, Dob Tyler.”

Dob grinned toothily; had it not been Dob, it might have looked threatening. “Here to make sure my loose cannon superior does things by the book.”

Corazón gestured to the rest of the party. “DS Prudence, DC Merilwen. And, er, PC Egbert, he mostly makes the tea.”

“It’s really good tea,” Egbert piped up.

“No offense, sir…” Horgan gestured to Corazón. “But you look more like a pirate than a detective.”

“Deep cover, obviously. I wouldn’t expect a civilian to understand.”

Horgan waved a hand dismissively. “Even if I were to entertain the idea that you’re who you claim to be, I feel I’ve done nothing to warrant an investigation.”

Merilwen narrowed her eyes. “Nothing, Mr. Horgan?” Her voice was tense, hitting that slightly higher octave that her friends knew meant violence was quickly becoming an option. “Killing off an entire species for your own benefit is ‘nothing’? Allowing the local wildlife to starve is ‘nothing’?”

“Oh, it’s about the distillery, is it? I promise you, my dear, I’ve heard it all before.”

Dob gritted his teeth, giving Horgan a highly dramatic, highly knowing look. “I’d be careful if I was you, sir. DC Merilwen has a license to… er. Bear.”

Still, none of this seemed to faze Horgan. “If you think complaining about my methods is going to have any effect… let me assure you, it hasn’t yet. Now, unless you have any actual business with me…”

Prudence stepped up. “All right, look. Fine. We’re not actually detectives.”

“You don’t say,” Horgan deadpanned.

“That said… the whole slime issue is a real thing, and we really do need you to stop hunting them out completely. Or at least cut back.” Prudence looked back at Merilwen. “Cut back? Would that be good enough?”

“I prefer the idea of him stopping completely,” Merilwen seethed.

Prudence gestured to Merilwen. “Yeah, what she said. But I mean, it affects you, too. Do you like, uh… wild boar? I guess? Rabbit? Pheasant? I don’t know.” She spread her hands in an exaggerated shrug. “Screw up the food chain and you don’t get any of those.”

Horgan looked them all over, one by one. “You come into my home. You pretend to be something you’re not. And then you make demands of me that would effectively shut down my business. Give me one reason why I should even listen to what you have to say.”

Egbert had mostly detached from the scene in front of him, his eyes scanning his surroundings in search of something entertaining. They lighted on a pair of crossed swords on the wall, with a bronze plaque underneath: Esterwell Annual Fencing Championship, Second Place. Without thinking, he blurted out, “A duel.”

“I beg your pardon?” Horgan asked. The rest of the party fixed Egbert with confused looks.

“A duel,” the dragonborn repeated, with a little more confidence this time — confidence filled in a lot of blanks, in his experience. “If one of us bests you in a duel, you have to at least give us a proper audience.”

Much to the group’s surprise — including Egbert’s, truth be told — Horgan seemed to consider it. “Hmm. Well. I suppose it makes more sense than… whatever we’ve been doing.” He gestured at the room in general, then turned to Corazón. “On the condition that I fight this one.”

Corazón grinned. “Hell yeah. I’ll fight you. Prepare to have your whole scene wrecked by Corazón de Ballena.”

“I thought you said your name was Jeff Crimestopper.”

“I told you. Deep cover.”

Horgan sighed wearily and turned to his doorman. “See them out. Tomorrow at sunrise on the lawn. Come alone, whatever your name is. And pray you do not lose. I have no patience for time-wasters.”

The five were ushered out without another word.

“Not sure it’s wise to challenge a prizewinning fighter to a duel,” Merilwen noted when they were outside town again. “That sort of seems like the main thing he’ll be ready for.”

Egbert waved a hand. “Pff, it’s fine. The plaque on his wall said he was only second place. That means there’s at least one person better than him in town.”

“Still… What’s going to happen if Corazón if he loses?”

Corazón laughed. “Pff. Hah. Nothing. Because Corazón won’t lose.” He unsheathed his rapier and stopped to take a few jabs at a nearby tree. A heavy branch, near to breaking, creaked overhead. “You know what my crew used to call me?”

“Yes,” said Prudence, “you’ve complained about it several times.”

“I mean in battle. You know, when we captured ships. My swordsmanship is second to none. They used to call me Corazón the—”

There was a crash, and silence.

Egbert stopped walking, waiting for the punchline. “Corazón the what?”

“Er.” Merilwen pointed back toward the tree hesitantly. “Corazón the unconscious, apparently.”

Prudence turned and lifted away the branch, wincing at the sight of the pirate splayed out on the ground. “Oh, dear…” Then she looked up at the group. “So does this mean I’m captain now?”

---

The general consensus had been to let Corazón be once he’d been carried back to the Joyful Damnation and bundled into bed. He would likely be full of opinions and complaints as soon as he woke up. That, and he’d need his rest before dueling Horgan the next morning.

There was no bleeding as far as they could tell. Just a big bruise that would get bruisier over the next few days. Egbert dropped a quick bit of healing on Corazón which, while it would likely be helpful in the long run, did nothing to wake him. Eventually, Dob took up a seat by the enormous bed in the captain’s quarters, keeping an eye on the patient and picking out a few chords to pass the time. Just as he was getting a good riff worked out...

“Ow.”

“Ow?” Dob leaned over the bed. “Did you say ow?”

“Yes, I said ow. Because I’m in pain.”

Dob jumped up from his seat and threw the door open. “Guys! Guys! He’s awake!”

Prudence was the first to run in. “Is he okay?”

“Sounds like it.”

Egbert followed, with Merilwen bringing up the rear. They crowded around Corazón’s bed, realized at the same time that that would probably look weird from his vantage point, and backed off a bit.

“Corazón?” Dob leaned in slightly. “How’s your head?”

He squinted up at Dob. “What did you call me?”

“Oh, right.” Dob laughed. “Silly me. How’s your head, DCI Crimestopper?”

This just seemed to confuse him more. “Who… what are you talking about?” Then he pulled himself up to sitting, perhaps a little more quickly than he ought, and pressed a hand to the top of his head, looking around. “I feel like I’ve been beaned with an entire tree. Where the hell am I?”

“Your room,” Prudence offered. “We figured you’d want a nap after the bludgeoning.”

He shook his head, still sounding a bit dazed. “No… this isn’t my room. My room is bigger. And it doesn’t rock and creak. Are we… are we on a ship?” He looked up at the others again, as though seeing them for the first time.

“... who the hell are all of you?”

There was an awkward silence.

“He’s messing about, right?” Egbert grinned nervously at the others.

“It’s Corazón,” Prudence said quickly, “of course he’s messing about. Just humor him, he’ll be on to something new when he’s tired of it.”

Dob was already on board at humor him. He pressed a hand to his forehead. “Oh, no! Corazón! All our precious memories, lost forever! Please say it isn’t so, old friend!”

If Corazón was acting, he was really leaning into the deadpan delivery. “Is this some sort of prank? It’s not a very good one, if…” His gaze wandered down to his hands resting on the bed sheet, his sleeves wrinkled back somewhat. His eyes went wide, and he made a sort of choking, stammering sound.

Then, again far more quickly than he probably should have, he threw himself out of bed, shoving past Egbert on the way to the largest of his mirrors. Carefully, he pulled his collar aside. And gasped.

“Oh, my God, I’ve been tattooed in my sleep!”

“Gosh,” Egbert said with an admiring smile, “he’s really devoting himself to the bit, isn’t he?”

Merilwen shook her head slightly. “I… don’t… know if it’s a bit.”

“Which one of you did this to me?!” Corazón pointed at the tentacle tattoo emerging from under his collar. “Why would you do that? Why… what happened to my hair!? How long have I been asleep!?” He grabbed the nearest person — Egbert — by the collar. “Are you trying to change my identity!? Am I going to be sold off to the highest bidder!? What’s your plan!? You have to tell me!”

Dob grabbed for his lute, a nervous grin plastered on his face. “Ooooh! Oh, dear! Looks like someone could use a nice lullaby.”

Merilwen held out a warning hand to Dob. “No? No. One second.” She waved a hand to Corazón, the way one might a skittish fox. “Hey, over here.”

“What!? What do you want now!?”

“Just. Okay. Calm down for a second. Calm…” Merilwen inhaled and exhaled slowly, guiding the breathing with her hands. Corazón, surprisingly did the same. That in itself was a sign that something was off.

“Okay, just keep your eyes on me, all right?”

“Sure.” Corazón’s voice was strained.

Merilwen rooted around in the pocket of one of Corazón’s jackets, folded neatly over a nearby chair. She found what she was looking for — a little leather pouch of gold coins — and poured the contents out into her hand. She showed them to Corazón, as though setting up a magic trick. He watched and nodded tensely, his jaw set.

“Dob,” she said with a sweet smile, opening the cabin window. “Would you do the honors?”

“Would I?” Without hesitation, he took the little handful of coins from Merilwen, slid over to the window, and chucked them out into the sea, one by one.

All eyes turned toward Corazón.

“Yes, and?” The nervousness was tinged with irritation. “What?”

Another awkward silence, this one longer. And awkwarder. As they all, in their own time, came to terms with the fact that Corazón was not, in fact, acting.

Prudence tapped him experimentally on the shoulder. He flinched away, balling his hands into fists and holding them in front of his face.

“Hey, hey, whoa! No, no, we’re your friends! It’s us!” Prudence smiled, gesturing around the room. “You know. The Oxventurers! Can’t you recognize us?”

Corazón lowered his fists. “If you mean could I pick you out of a lineup, then yes, I certainly could.”

“Corazón…”

“Hff… and stop calling me that! It’s weird!” He brushed off his sleeve where Prudence had tapped him. “If you’re my kidnappers, then I would hope you already know who I am.”

“Y-Yeah.... Sorry.” Prudence frowned, then smiled. “Percy?”

“Thank you. That’s more like it.” And Corazón made a break for the deck.

---

“All I’m saying,” said the half-orc with the large hammer and the very nice hair, “is that we could be having a cider-making contest in the town square right now.”

“Or burning things,” said the tiefling, as a pair of ancient tomes played around her heels like rowdy puppies. “We could also be burning things right now.”

If this was a kidnapping, it was a very civilized one. Percy hadn’t had any practical experience with being kidnapped, to be fair. His father had suggested that it might happen once or twice in his youth, because that was just how life was for the children of rich and influential people. But after making it to adulthood without ever waking up in a dingy cellar surrounded by leering mercenaries, he’d just put it to the side.

He’d also been a bit disappointed, as escaping from said mercenaries could have been fun. But in retrospect, he might not have done as well at that as he liked to pretend.

He wasn’t tied up, or locked up. At worst, he had been prevented from leaping off the ship by all four of his kidnappers (and a seal, he was still contending with that information) piling themselves on top of him. They’d bundled him back into the captain’s quarters while they consulted with each other. Percy took the time to shave — the itch from his stubble was frazzling his already-frazzled brain — and change into a shirt that still had functional buttons.

The change had gotten a slight stare of disbelief from his captors, as though he’d gone and swapped heads, but no actual comments were made. And now, the dragonborn was sitting by him on the deck and handing him a cup of tea, and it smelled suspiciously like what he drank at home, and yes, this was absolutely one of his teacups.

“So!” the dragonborn said with a toothy grin. “Cora-... er, Percival. Percy? Mr. Milquetoast? Sorry, not sure what to call you now.” He had a cup of his own, but rather than sipping from it, he opened his long snout and splashed the contents inside. Judging by the reaction that followed, the tea was still very hot.

“Just, er… whichever? I guess?” Why was he sitting on a ship drinking tea with his kidnappers while they asked what to call him? Why had his father not been mentioned yet? Was that still incoming? His teacup rattled against the saucer.

“Mmmm… Percy. I’ve always thought you looked like a Percy.”

“Always?” Percy put his teacup down shakily on its saucer. “Then you’ve been spying on me? For how long?”

“No!” The dragonborn waved a hand frantically in front of himself. “No, no, I mean… we’re not…” He looked behind him, where the other three were peering at the scene thoughtfully. “Um, guys, I’m not doing great. Someone else try.”

The elf stepped in and tapped him on the shoulder, as though relieving him from duty. Good. As far as Percy could tell, she was the most logical of the group. She wasn’t panicking… not that he could see, at least.

“So you’re Good Cop, then?” Percy eyed her warily.

“No…” The elf sighed, a sort of long-suffering sigh that made him feel like this was not the first long-suffering sigh she’d issued him. “We’re your friends, really. And we’re just trying to figure out how to help you.”

Percy narrowed his eyes. “My friends.”

“Yes.”

“Not magical kidnappers looking for a piece of the Milquetoast fortune.”

“No. Not magical kidnappers looking for a piece of the family fortune. I promise.”

“I mean, I have friends at home. I can just go home to my actual friends, and not whatever you guys are pretending to be.”

The elf’s face settled into an expression that somehow managed to be both neutral and confrontational, her lips pressed into a line. “Name four friends you have at home.”

Damn. “Uh, th-there’s, uh… there’s Steve… F-Friendsman.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s, a-um, Roger… M’buddy.”

The elf pressed a hand to her face. “Please, at least let us try to help you.”

She seemed absolutely genuine. It was making his head hurt. This was not how criminals acted. As far as he knew. “Fine, help me, or whatever it is you want to do.”

“All right, so…” The elf clasped her hands together. “It’s probably just a matter of jogging your memory. You got a little bop on the head, it shook things up, but we can help you connect things up again. Right?”

“Sure,” Percy said hesitantly, now with the added wrinkle of wondering when and how he’d been hit over the head. He considered asking, but he could already hear the answer. No, we didn’t hit you over the head intentionally. It was a love tap. Something like that.

The elf smiled. It didn’t seem like a kidnapper’s smile. But again, he had nothing to go on. Maybe kidnappers had really nice smiles. “Okay, good. So let’s just rattle out a few of the high points, and see what your brain latches onto.”

Percy nodded, taking a sip from the teacup he still held in a death grip.

“Okay. Spicy rat?” She paused, and he wasn’t sure what for. After a short silence, she picked up again. “No? Okay, that was a while ago, admittedly. Uh… baby-making watch?”

“Babies don’t come from watches,” Percy scoffed. “They come from under cabbage leaves.”

The elf ground to a halt in her questioning, but picked up again with a shake of the head. “What about the party? The one where you went dressed as a sexy nurse and made a teenage girl cry.”

Percy scowled. “I would never do that!”

The half-orc chuckled. “Oh, you very much did.”

“I will not allow you to paint me with the same brush as you, you… s-scoundrels!” Percy felt a chill down the back of his neck. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? You’re trying to convince me I’m one of you and whisk me away to do unspeakable crimes, is that it?”

“Hasn’t taken much trying so far, mate,” Merilwen grumbled.

“Waaaait wait wait wait.” The tiefling squeezed up next to the elf. “We’re coming at this from the wrong angle. He’s clearly forgotten stuff from before we met him, too, right? What we need to do is remind him of why he became a pirate.”

Percy looked around the ship. Then down at the clothes he’d woken up in. And the tattoo on his wrist. “I’m a pirate?”

“Yep, you are a pirate.”

“So… this really is my ship?”

“Er, our ship, yes.” The tiefling seemed to take a lot of pride in saying that. Well, being co-owner of a ship was something to be proud of… if it was true, he’d probably let himself feel a bit proud, too. “So, maybe if you can summon up the feelings that made you want to run away from home and be a pirate, the rest will follow. So, tell us about your dad.”

“He’s… dumb?” Percy shrugged. “He’s annoying? I don’t know, it’s a lot of effort to run away from him for being dumb and annoying. I’ve got nothing.”

The tiefling leaned in conspiratorially. “Nothing about what a bad dad he is? How he has ridiculous expectations of you? Doesn’t want you to have fun and live your own life?” She paused. “How he’s got a stupid wig and he’s all stuffy and bossy?”

Percy leaned away from her. “You seem to have plenty against him already.”

“Oh, no, no. I don’t hate him. You do.”

“No, it really does sound like it’s you.”

The tiefling laughed, waving a hand. “Oh, no, that’s just because he bothers you. It’s a support thing. I’d totally love to live in his big ol’ house.”

“So you’re telling me you don’t like my father, but you do like his money, and that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

The tiefling’s face twisted into a confused frown. “Oh, man. Yeah, we do kinda sound like we kidnapped you for ransom, don’t we?”

Percy flinched away, nearly dropping his teacup. Oddly, the tiefling was once again trying to reassure him. “Which we didn’t?? Which we didn’t. I’m just saying.” She sighed. “I guess he forgot whatever happened that made him want to run away, too. How about you, Egbert? Got any paladin magic for him?”

“I’ve got something better!”

All eyes, Percy’s included, turned to the dragonborn — who was now swinging a mace from one clawed hand.

“So, you know how in all the stories, right? Someone gets knocked on the head and gets amnesia, but then they get hit in the same spot and all their memories come back. Let’s just do that!”

The dragonborn strode over to Percy, winding up the mace. Percy stumbled backwards, his teacup falling and shattering on the deck. “Don’t you dare!”

“Egbert, not that mace!” the elf shouted.

“Oh, it’s fiiiine. I had to hit whatsisname loads of times before he actually turned into a seal.”

Percy looked at the seal. The seal looked back.

“Eg.”

The dragonborn raised his mace over his head. Percy stumbled backwards towards the door to the captain’s quarters, eyes locked on the cursed weapon. He reached behind him for the doorknob and twisted frantically. The door wouldn’t give way.

The elf flung herself at the dragonborn, turning into an octopus in midair. The two hit the deck, the mace rolling harmlessly across the deck as the octopus held the would-be attacker in place. Percy finally managed to yank the door open, racing into the captain’s quarters and slamming the door behind him.

“I meant a spell!” Percy heard the tiefling yell from the other side of the door. “You’ve got more healing spells, don’t you?”

“Oh, riiiight…”

There was a gentle tap at the door. Percy eyed it nervously.

“Heeey, buddy. You okay?” It was the half-orc. “Can I come in?”

“No, you absolutely cannot come in. You’re all insane and there’s a seal man out there saying egg.”

“That’s cool, that’s cool. I’ll just sit out here, how’s that?”

Percy heard a gentle thump against the other side of the door. “So… you really don’t remember anything, do you? About us, or your pirate crew, or any of that?”

“Last thing I remember is going to bed at Milquetoast Manor and thinking tomorrow night’s party was going to be very boring. Then I woke up in bed on a strange boat, with all of you standing over me looking ready to dissect me or something.” Percy sat down, leaning on the other side of the door. His head still felt foggy. “So? Which one of you blackjacked me?”

“You blackjacked yourself with a tree.”

Percy frowned. “Is that the sort of thing I’m likely to do?”

“Oh, yes,” the half-orc said cheerfully. “Merilwen had a stack of tree puns ready to go, but under the circumstances it seemed, uh… bit tasteless.”

“Merilwen?”

“The elf. Don’t worry, you can hear them later. You know, when your head’s right again.” A pause. “Oh! Haha. Of course. I’m Dob, by the way. The tiefling is Prudence, and the big dragon man is Egbert. And we’re all your friends, and we all do super cool things together.”

Percy nodded, still not completely convinced. Then he realized Dob wouldn’t be able to see him on the other side of the door. “If you say so.”

“Gosh. Introducing myself to you. That brings back memories.” Dob stopped himself, fumbling, as if he’d just said something extremely offensive. “I mean… you know…”

Against his better judgment, Percy got up and opened the door. Dob, leaning heavily on it, tumbled backwards… but turned the tumble into a backwards somersault and landed lightly on his feet. He gave a little bow, and Percy felt he ought to clap. Just considering the effort.

“You ready to come out and talk to the others?”

Percy leaned to one side and looked out onto the deck. Egbert was on his feet again, with Merilwen (now an elf) still clinging to his back, as though uncertain whether the dragonborn could be trusted on his own yet. Prudence wore a friendly smile that seemed to say “I’m not going to sacrifice you to my eldritch god, but I’m also not not going to sacrifice you to my eldritch god.” His trusted friends. Apparently.

Before Percy could answer, Dob slapped him on the back and walked him out onto the deck. “All right. We’ve all had a little breather, a little think, and I think… and this is just me… we should back-burner the memory loss issue and focus on the bigger problem.”

“There’s a bigger problem?” Percy looked at Dob incredulously.

The group at large winced. “Yeah…” Dob continued to speak for the group, and no one seemed to mind being relieved of that duty for the moment. “See, Percy. Percival. Friend. Our good friend of so long…”

“Just tell me what’s going to happen to me.”

“You have to duel someone tomorrow morning.”

Percy extracted himself from Dob’s friendly side-arm. “What? Why? Why would I do that?”

“Again,” said Dob, “if it makes you feel better, it is extremely on brand.”

“Hsfd… it doesn’t make me feel better! I have to fight someone tomorrow and I’m not me! I mean, I am me, but I’m not this other me who went and did a thing I didn’t do!”

Amongst them, Percy’s friends(?) laid out the entire situation. All he managed to retain were slimes, collapse of the natural world, very large man, and imminent swordfight. The rest was a sort of blur, and one he was in no mood to attempt to figure out.

“I can’t do this.” It was a statement of fact. “Maybe this Corazón guy can do this, but I can’t. Horgan’s going to be expecting some jerk pirate who can swordfight.”

“We can try another refresher,” suggested Merilwen.

Egbert reached for his mace. “I could try—-”

“No,” said everyone, possibly even the seal.

“Look,” Dob said gently, “we’ll have puh-lenty of time to work on the memory thing, right? All we have to do is get through tomorrow, and if it hasn’t cleared up by then, we’ll find someone to help you, no problem.”

“How can you be so sure?” Percy asked, the fretting feeling coming back even stronger than before.

Egbert shrugged. “It’ll happen. That’s how it tends to go. A problem comes up, and then a couple days later someone comes along with a quest that’ll fix it. It’s really handy.”

“Okay, that’s great for after tomorrow morning. But what about me, tomorrow morning, with swords? What’s my guarantee I get past that alive? Because I’ve never actually stabbed a man.”

“Yes you have,” Prudence pointed out.

“Like a lot,” Merilwen added.

“Apparently you kicked a man to death once,” said Egbert. “I mean, I found out later, but I believe it.”

“But I don’t remember that!” Percy flailed an arm helplessly. “It’s… hds… that’s some future guy and I’m not the future guy, I’m the me guy. How is the me guy going to survive?”

The group fell silent.

“... did I actually kick a man to death?”

They all nodded.

“Oh…”

“And see? That’s why we believe in you, Cor… er, Percy.” Dob threw an arm around Percy’s shoulders again. “We know what you’re capable of. We know it’s in here.” He jabbed at Percy’s chest with one finger. “And in here.” At his head.

“Ow!”

“The head, Dob,” Merilwen hissed, “watch the head.”

“Right, right. Look. We’ve got tonight to train you up into a believable Corazón de Ballena. You’ve already got the look, you’ve already got the voice. That’s more than most people start with.”

Percy let out a weak groan.

“Hey! No, this is good! We can do this! And maybe, somewhere along the way, something will trigger the ol’ bean and the memories will just come flooding back. Right, guys?”

The rest of the team seemed to believe it about as much as Percy did. Which wasn’t much.

“Are you sure we can’t just…” Percy motioned to the anchor rope. “Leave?”

“No,” Merilwen said firmly. But her expression was still hesitant. “No, we have to stop Horgan. More than anything else, that has to happen.”

She was insistent. This was important to her. Percy groaned again.

“Come on, buddy.” Dob lifted his arm from Percy’s shoulders, grabbing him by both arms and staring him in the eyes. “Look me in the eye.”

“Yeah. Looking.”

“Now. Are you a Thieves Cant, or a Thieves Can?”

Merilwen, at least, seemed to appreciate what Dob was going for.

---

Plan B no longer stood for Burning. Plan B, as indicated by a wild-shaped Merilwen taking up a spot behind the topiaries on Horgan’s lawn, now stood for Bear. And possibly Bomb, and Blast, and Bard Casts Thunder Wave, depending on who got trigger-happy first.

No amount of swordfighting or storytelling brought Corazón’s memory back. Nor did any amount of actually insisting on calling him Corazón. Their last ditch hope — that he’d wake up the next morning acting like nothing had happened — didn’t pan out, either. Dob gave pep talk after pep talk as Corazón fretted uncharacteristically, the latter eventually wrapping the uneaten bacon sandwich he’d made for himself in a piece of paper and stowing it in a jacket pocket. Finally, though, they’d all had to take up their positions and leave the rest to luck.

Corazón was left to make the walk up the lawn alone, but the other four had formed a perimeter: Merilwen in the topiary, Dob in a nearby tree, Prudence behind a fence, and Egbert peering over a hedge. Dob promised to shoot Corazón an occasional prompt if things got hairy; but, by and large, it was all him.

As the sun began to rise, Corazón walked up the paved path to the appointed spot. He’d not quite gotten his own swagger down, instead walking slow, measured steps with his hands stuffed in his pockets.

Try to look like you’re too cool for the room! Dob thought; Corazón looked up and around, surprised, then seemed to remember what Dob had said about sending mental messages. He stopped where he was, pulled his hands out of his pockets, squared his shoulders, and walked even more awkwardly up the path.

Fine. It’d have to do.

Just as the light of sunrise hit its best and most aesthetic hue, Alonzo Horgan and his servant walked out. The former wore a rapier at his belt.

“Corazón de Ballena,” Horgan said broadly, his voice dripping with fake friendliness. “Or are we going by something new today?”

“No, er, that’s me.”

Dob thought another swift message.

“I mean… that’s right! That’s me, Corazón. The mighty pirate. Here to run you through like a tasty kebab and grill… grill you on the fires of justice? What the hell does that mean?”

Just go with it, Dob thought irritably, but the moment had passed. Shame. He was rather proud of that one.

Horgan eyed Corazón with amusement. “I can wait if you need a moment.”

“No, no. Erm. Yes, that’s me.” Corazón’s hand hovered over the hilt of his rapier. He was tense. He was ready. He might have been about to faint. It was hard to tell.

Horgan’s retainer’s voice was soft. None of them could hear it from their respective points along the perimeter. Corazón didn’t look especially surprised by any of it, which hopefully meant there was nothing odd about the rules of the duel.

From their spots, separated though each of them was, they all had the same thought at the same time: what would it take? What hadn’t they done? Would they need a spell? Some sort of quest? A skilled healer? Would another bop on the head really have done it?

A shrill whistle blew. Each of them was shaken out of their thoughts to see that the duel had begun, and Corazón was already flagging quickly. It was less of a duel and more of a chase, the enormous Horgan lumbering across the lawn after his smaller opponent. Corazón, for his part, was holding his ground… though “his ground” was constantly moving backwards across the lawn in zigzags.

His heel came dangerously close to a stray root, nearly hidden by the grass.

“Look out!” Egbert shouted. Merilwen, Dob, and Prudence shushed him. Horgan looked up and around for the source of the voice. Corazón, on the other hand, missed the warning entirely. His heel caught on the root, and he windmilled backwards, landing flat on his back.

Merilwen hesitated behind the topiary, one huge, clawed paw creeping around the side of the greenery. Was it go time? The others were in the same state of indecision, poised to attack but waiting to see what happened.

Corazón lifted his head slightly. The massive form of Horgan hovering over him, blade raised threatening, blocked out the faint light of sunrise. The sword hung there for a moment… then was flung across the lawn, accompanied by a disgusted sigh from Horgan.

“How very disappointing.”

The group shot each other quick glances. The message was clear. Well, clear-ish. “Stop Horgan before he can leave” was clear enough, but what would be done with him once apprehended was likely still up in the air. Corazón, unaware of any of this, propped himself up on his elbows.

“Where are you going?” he asked weakly. “We’re not done here.”

“I rather think we are.” Horgan shook his head in… amusement? Disappointment? It was hard to tell. “What a shame. You were so full of piss and vinegar yesterday, and today you’ve got no real fight in you.”

“I’ve got fight… I’ve got plenty of… hhhh.” Corazón put a hand to his head.

“Serves me right, thinking I’d get a good fight out of some puffed-up fake pirate.”

“... what did you say?” Corazón’s voice was suddenly oddly sharp and cold.

Horgan chuckled. “You heard me. You’re less convincing than the chap I hired for my niece’s seventh birthday party.” He waved a hand to his servant. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve not had breakfast yet and I’m peckish. Think I might go to the kitchen and have a bit of a graze.”

On his next step, Horgan’s booted foot slid forward, sending him falling backwards into a puddle of grease that had absolutely not been there moments ago. Now it was his turn to look up at a looming silhouette: Corazón de Ballena, sword pointing down threateningly in one hand, bacon sandwich in the other.

“How appropriate. You fight like a cow.”

Horgan spluttered, eyes bulging. “You… what nonsense is this!?”

“It’s called the power of grease, that’s what nonsense this is. Now get up and fight me so we can have our little talk. Or would you rather we just go ahead and burn your whole scene down?”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“Yeah, you’re right, I wouldn’t. I think Prudence might, though.” Corazón shouted toward the fence. “Prudence! Plan B for burn?”

Prudence threw her hands in the air. “Plan B for buuuurn!”

Horgan had managed to pull himself up to one knee, the grease still dangerously slick beneath him. “I said to come alone!”

“Yeah, well, pirate. Don’t know what you expected.” Corazón stepped back, taking a bite of his sandwich. “So, I’m calling this a win for Team Oxventure. Which means it’s time for some negotiations concerning your, er, current business model.”

“But…” Horgan looked in the direction of his servant. He was long gone. Whether he’d run off, or whether the large bear standing where he’d stood had disposed of him, Horgan couldn’t tell.

“Oh, yes. That’s our sustainability advisor, Merilwen. She’ll be taking over from here.”

Merilwen growled.

---

“So what you’re saying,” said Egbert, “is that my plan was the best and would have worked.”

“Hff… no! Absolutely not.” Corazón was rubbing a hand over his chin, displeased with the lack of facial hair. “A one-in-six chance of being turned into an animal is not a best plan. Why did you let me shave? I hate it.”

“It’ll grow back.” Prudence poured out a mug of slime beer… the last remaining barrel, which they’d taken with them as a gratuity after aggressively convincing Horgan to discontinue his fermented slime line. She offered the mug to Merilwen, who waved a hand in front of herself emphatically.

“No, I don’t want to drink the poor baby slimes…” The rest became too high-pitched and tearful to translate.

“I’ll drink the poor baby slimes.” Dob grabbed the mug and necked half of it, much to Merilwen’s chagrin. “Anyway, what snapped you out of it? Was it hitting your head again?”

Corazón wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “Don’t know. I know I got really mad when whatsisname called me a fake pirate, and I wasn’t having that.”

Prudence’s eyes lit up. “Ohh, spite! Literally the one thing we didn’t think to try!”

“Well,” said Dob, passing Corazón his mended teacup topped off with beer, “I think we’ve all had a chance to learn something about friendship and patience and being true to ourselves.”

Egbert poured himself a pint. “I haven’t learned anything.”

“I have.”

Everyone looked at Corazón. “Have you?” Dob asked.

“Yep.” Corazón took a sip of beer from the teacup. “We are absolutely terrifying.”

Merilwen nodded sagely.

“Yeah,” Prudence said dreamily. “It’s good.”

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to my room, and I’m not coming out again until my good facial hair is back.” The door to the captain’s quarters slammed behind Corazón.

And that is the story of how the Oxventurers brought down a corrupt businessman with a breakfast sandwich.

#oxventure #outside xbox #i'm supposed to be writing other things but i won't tell if you won't #anyway yes i write stories a lot i do them for a living #please read them #i love approval from strangers

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lordsofthemanor · 3 years ago

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The Green Knight review

I’m going to kick this off my saying first that this will absolutely contain spoilers and second that I am not the biggest Arthurian mythos fanatic there is. I’ve read many of the stories once but generally enjoy reading history more. I am not an expert in these stories but am familiar with symbolism in the Middle Ages. I also watched the film while feeding a baby dinner so some details may have escaped my notice. Having said that, I feel like the movie captures the beats of an Arthurian adventure and the symbolism perfectly. The story does stray from the “original” in some ways but this in no way inhibits the beauty of the film not my enjoyment of it. Instead, the changes excited me to wonder what else might be different in this retelling of the story.

What the movie represents

The story of Gawain itself is a complex one of seeking to become good. The opening makes it clear that Gawain is a wastrel. He insists he is not a knight throughout the film but, “will become one soon.” In his conversation with Bertilak he expects to become good as a result of his journey to the Green Chapel, because it is what Arthur and the knights expect will happen to him. He craves the public recognition being brave will gain him although he seems unable to attain it on his own. As he rides and walks he does slowly begin to act less selflessly after his near encounter with death at the hands of the thieves. He helps St. Winnifred retrieve her head. He knows he should not bed Lady Bertilak but still engages in lawful intercourse with her and attempts to cheat the game. Once in the chapel, he considers running but has a vision of what his life will be if he does not keep his honor. In the end, he removes his girdle and accepts the blow (we are left to assume.) Ultimately, the climax is that Gawain, weeping, chooses to do the right thing although it means dying alone in a chapel in the woods. 10/10

The Symbolism

A hit or a miss. At times it was incredibly eloquent. The girdle being pulled from his belt while making the sound of his entrails was a particularly fine moment. The color palette changing from green (a color of life) to red (blood) on Gawain’s approach to the chapel. Lord Bertilak killing a boar and then stealing Gawain’s masculinity by forcing(?) a kiss on him could not have been done better. Although it felt a bit ham-fisted, Lady Bertilak’s monologue on all the many ways green as a color is seen my the medievals was a fantastic explanatory piece and a nicely haunting scene that deconstructed Gawain’s ambitions to make them seem like follies.

Where things fell flat for me is the portrayed decrepitude of Arthur and his realm. It felt like a forced depiction of the “modern” Christian world as dying and destructive juxtaposed with the possible vibrancy of the older “natural” world. Arthur’s court feels tepid and stale on Christmas, one of the two great feasts. The decision to try to downplay the vivacity of Christianity in such an intensely Christian story is puzzling. Yet the alternative to Arthur’s court, nature, doesn’t feel particularly vibrant. The first “chapel” Gawain visits and the other forests are devoid of life. There are no birds calling or insect humming. So both nature and mankind are depicted as these still spaces where nothing would occur were it not for the necessity of showing Gawain his own selfishness. Maybe the point was that when mankind is gone and dead like the sickly Arthur we see, the world will be at peace like the Green Knight sitting in his chapel. This feels like a second overall plot that really doesn’t belong in the story. While I enjoy minimalist movies (the soundtrack of this one was DIVINE) the rejection of the vibrancy of mankind and nature that we find in the Middle Ages felt surreal in a way that could have been avoided. It bears repeating that I did still enjoy this interpretation; the primary message of the story, to be forthright and good still holds through to the end. 7/10 How’s the history?

It was the middle ages but people wore lots of colors and weren’t covered in shit for no reason. 10/10

#movie #the green knight #knight #knights #i know a lot of people who got mad at the movie for making morgan the fey gawain's mom #but like #who the fuck cares have you seen the lighting in this film it was the first piece of ART as a mvoie i've seen in years

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bellamyblake · 4 years ago

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The ugly knitted red hat

That’s just some domestic Bellarke in the post season 4 verse where they have their own camp and are cute and sweet and all of that, basically fluff lol

After all these years, despite the peace, he still likes getting up early.

There’s some pleasure in it for him as much as Clarke hates it, to sneak out of the warm cacoon of their bed and put on his socks, then his pants and tie his boots.

He even tugs on the ugly red hat that she knitted for him a month ago when the weather was starting to get cold because she just hated running her fingers through his curls and touching the cold tips of his ears.

The hat was funny, had a weird shape, longer on the back and shorter on the front, she had attempted to make some funny criss cross pattern that O had tried teaching her when they had their “sister bonding time” by the camp fire but Clarke had proven to be a disaster in that as much as she was in the kitchen.

Still, it brought her peace, as she told him one night when he was pulling her head to his chest and kissing the top of her hair. It calmed her anxious hands, helped the tidal waves that thretened to consume her, quiet down.

And he had been proud of her for doing that, he had encouraged it and praised all her attempts-the ugly red hat, the bright green sweater she made for his birthday that had a longer left than right sleeve and barely any collar, the blue and red scarf she made him to keep his throat warm while he was standing guard at night but that barely wrapped once around him.

He loved the imperfection of it all because that’s what they’ve always been-imperfect yet beautiful.

And just like she loved his poor carpenting attempts and kept the three legged chair by the fire place or the sharp-edge chest by the bedside even though they only-half used them, so did he wear his hat and sweater and scarf with pride.

(Miller had the most fun out of it. But even he knew he had to stop teasing his friend when Clarke came by and brought them hot tea or soup before their nightshift at the gates).

So now he tucks on his uneven red hat and throws his jacket on, grabbing his axe from the place by the door and heading outside.

Technically, he knows that he should’ve chopped more woods for the fire a few days ago-fall was progressing and fast, bringing rain and an orange-red leaved path of prettiness to the door of their cabin but with it came harsher winds and colder nights.

Clarke had been pressing herself closer and closer to him every night at first, then started wearing not one but two of his shirts to bed and when last night she shoved her freezing fingers in between his legs, he had yelped, got up and said “That’s it! I’m starting the fire!”

They had been postponing it because there were such warm days that they spend them in the back yard taking care of the last of their tomatoes and beans with nothing but shirts and pants on, even barefoot here and there.

The house and it’s wooden boards would warm up and stay so through the night but yesterday had been the tipping point and though Clarke complained and tried to drag him back down to bed, she had simply melted away once he started the fire yet despite it all she still stole the blanket and left his back bare and somewhat cold.

Which is why maybe now that he picks up his axe and swings at the tree he has figured he’d chop off, he feels his back creak desperately and tug at him, making him hurt.

He ignores it of course as he’s used to the pain.

They’ve had so many injuries in just the past year since they settled down in their eighty acres-he broke a knee just a few months ago, Clarke split her head open last spring, then caught a bad cold with a lasting cough, after which he was stupid enough to go after an angry boar that practically ripped his entire right side apart and left him drowning in a pool of blood.

But every pain dulled, he found out, no matter if physical or emotional.

It took time, it took many tears and many heart breaks and many trembling hands holding each other at night when you woke up screaming and your voice got raw with terror and you could taste death but it passed...and it got duller.

It still hurt.

But it became a part of you, like a bone, like a scar or a bruise that never really faded and kept aching now and then with the changing of the weather.

He gets lost in his thoughts as he puts all his strenght in cutting off the tree-sweat thickles down his back and he throws away his jacket despite the harsh morning wind and the lack of sun.

Clarke would kill him if she saw him, he thinks. It’s a good thing she’s home then, sleeping under the covers.

He stops to catch his breath, leans on his tired knees and the axe-damn, there may be some truth to all of Clarke’s jokes-he was indeed getting older.

He closes his eyes and lets the sharp morning air fill his lungs so hard it stung his cheeks, made the hair on his back rise, his toes curl up-he liked the cold much more than the summer and he was glad it was finally back.

Once his heart goes back to normal he looks up at the sky for just a minute and thinks of his mother for some reason, wonders if she’d like that weather and decides that she will-she was used to the cold of their small living quarters and welcomed it like an old friend she got to say hello to every morning.

He picks up his axe and goes on with his work, using the time to go over the list of friends they’ve lost and asking himself that same question-would they like it out here? In the forest? In their new camp? In the gloomy fall day?

Jasper, he settles, wouldn’t be a big fan of it, he was too skinny so he’d be too cold and Bellamy would probably use Clarke’s ugly scarf to throw over his wanky shoulders.

Maya would enjoy it. She’d never spend much time out so he thinks she’d like the sharpness of the cold as much as he does.

Lincoln may prefer the summer, he thinks, he often did like going around without shirts or shoes, just feeling the earth under him so the chilliness may not be to his taste but he’d probably enjoy the camp fire and even volunteer to help Bellamy with the wood chopping.

They could’ve talked like brothers, Bellamy could’ve exchanged a mythology story for a grounder one and then they’d be stupid boys and compete about who’d carry more wood back home just to be idiots about something and get scolded by Octavia and Clarke.

He sighs, rubs his back that’s now completely wet and keeps on his work, going through his list-Atom, Charlotte, Roma and on and on, names he knew by heart now that he repeated in times of quiet peacefullness like this.

Finally the tree falls and he kneels on his bad leg resting his hand on top and whispering a quiet I’m sorry like he always did when he cut off a tree or killed an animal these days.

He still smiled sadly and rubbed his hand over the creasy bark.

“I knew you’d have taken it off, you stubborn old man!” he hears her angry yet still somewhat sleepy voice coming from behind him interrupting his apology.

He turns with a half smirk, knowing full well that a big one would piss her off even more.

She’s in her oversized home-worn sweat pants that were once upon a time his, a shirt and a sweater knitted by his sister with the picture of a two headed deer.

Her hair is in a messy bun, she has just one glove on her left hand and two cups of something in the other, her cheeks are red from the mix of cold and sleep and her eyes are that deep celurian blue like the ocean that he still hasn’t gotten to see yet but dreams of at least once a week.

And he has this sudden urge to kiss her.

So he drops his axe and strides to her while she keeps on with her speech.

“Do you know how cold it is, Bellamy? Let me tell you, it’s effing keep-your-jacket-on-cold especially when you’re chopping a goddamn tree and sweating your ass off and you go out there and you dare take it off when you know full damn well how sick you can get if you-”

But she doesn’t end her beautiful rant that he knows is provoked by simple love-she loves him and she cares and this is just another way of her saying it like he did when he massaged her feet after a long day in medbay or made her tea every night before bed or helped her braid her hair when she was annoyed but had too much patients to take care of.

All of it was love.

They were love.

He kisses her with all that he has and for a moment he thinks she’ll just pull away and keep scolding him but it must be too much for her to resist because she simply kisses him back and melts into him.

He smells her-in all her sleepy Clarke glory-her lavender shampoo, the pinecone soap, the bearness of sleep on her lips and cheeks.

Her fingers wrap around his neck, tuck at his curls, he smiles a little, groans somewhat but then picks her up which he knows is what she’s been wanting all along and carries them to the fallen tree where he carefully sits them down.

Finally, she pulls away and rests her forehead on his.

“If you think this will work as a distraction you’re goddamn wrong!”

He chuckles and she can’t help but smile too.

“I am a little right.”

“No, you’re not.” she huffs and pulls away, cupping his cheek and moving his sweaty curls from his forehead under his red hat. “You took off your jacket but kept this on?”

He wraps his hand around her wrist and pulls it to his lips, kissing the inside of it with gentleness she still gets surprised by sometimes.

“I’ll always keep it on.”

And she knows he doesn’t mean just the hat.

He means her love in his heart, her hand on his cheek, her lips pressed to his.

“Well you’re still an idiot-” she huffs and puts the cups by their feet before reaching for his jacket “Put this on before your ass froze.”

“What’s that?” he nods at the metalic cups while she settles down next to him and leans on his side, reaching down to pick them back up and hand one of them to his freezing fingers.

“A drink.” she says with a smile “I think we deserve one, wouldn’t you agree?”

He smells the familiar scent of Monty’s moonshine before he even brings it closer to his nose and laughs at her mishivious expression.

Then he reaches and covers her hand with his over his tired fucked up knee.

“We do, princess.” he rubs his thumb over her bony cold fingers desperate to wamr them up “We truly do.”

#bellarke fanfiction #bellarke #bellamy blake #clarke griffin #the 100 #fluff #domestic #canon divergence #my writing

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second-chance-stray · 3 years ago

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RP Log: Riylli is worried about Cravs.

Riylli Aliapoh knocks on the door to Cravs room, having grabbed some emergency drinks beforehand just in case. "...Cravs? You in there?" She called out, shuffling her feet awkwardly. "I was thinkin' we could talk a little? About the whole... plan, thingy..."

Cravendy Hound is right about to tuck into a pastry roll when Riylli knocks on the door. Panicking, she grabs the plate and hides it unceremoniously on the ground behind the bar. She then clears her throat and shouts to welcome the miqo'te in. "AH YEAH. I'm 'ere! To talk."

Riylli Aliapoh enters the room, drinks in hand, and gives it a look over. "...Huh. This place is a lot... Cozier than I expected." She muses, stepping further inside. "I was kinda expectin' it to just be a hammock. That's how you folks sleep in Limsa, right?" She asked, moving to take a seat by Cravs' minibar, realizing her grabbing drinks from upstairs may have been a little pointless

Cravendy Hound rolls her eyes. "Did ye expect my room to be an empty space with a hammock in the middle, then? Haha, yer right about 'em being common in Limsa, but mostly cause they're cheap and fit on boats." Behind her is an assortment of bottles, most half empty. She sets out two glasses and pours Riylli a bit of rum.

Cravendy Hound: "So, mind pourin' me a bit of what ye brought?" She eyes the drinks that Riylli has with her.

Riylli Aliapoh watches Cravs pour her a drink, then looks towards her own. "O-Oh, uh, this is just some stuff I grabbed upstairs... Sorry, I only remembered last minute you're supposed to bring gifts to peoples homes..." Riylli mumbled, rubbing the back of her neck. Still, she picked up one of the bottles and pours Cravs out a shot. "It's just some mead. I didn't know what you liked but you brought that bottle yesterday so..."

Cravendy Hound chuckles, but accepts the mead anyway. "Word of advice. If yer regiftin' someone somethin' ye got for free, it's best to not let 'em know. I don't care, but a fancier fella like Mivo would."

Riylli Aliapoh 's cheeks coloured a bit at the gentle scolding. "...Sorry. I don't exactly care what that pompous shitehead thinks, but I'll make sure to bring you a proper housewarmin' gift next time!" She declares with a nod, taking the first sip of her drink. A strained expression on her face makes it obvious she is clearly struggling with it, but she manages to get it all down thankfully. "It's... good." She fibs

Cravendy Hound: "Yesterday I learned the guy ain't a thoroughbred, though 'e might talk like one. But anyway, enough about 'im. Look, Riylli, I literally don't expect anythin' of the sort. I'm not the type to get wound up over 'ousewarmin' gifts or proper etiquette." She gestures over to the pile of dirty dishes stacked on top of a barrel behind her to drive home the point.

Cravendy Hound picks up on Riylli's struggle and grins. "......well, if ye like it so much, 'ow about a refill?"

Riylli Aliapoh hesitates, but nods. "S...Sure." She says, trying her hardest to be a good houseguest. "And, I still wanna get you somethin'! I don't suppose you'd accept an animal pelt or something along those lines? That's usually what we Miqo'te gift when visiting other clans. Can use it as a rug!"

Cravendy Hound: "Could use a rug. Yeah, why don't ye bring me one?" Cravs grabs the bottle of rum and empties what little remains into Riylli's glass. She thinks for a second. "...would 'ave to be pretty big to be used as a rug. Ye 'untin' bears out there?"

Riylli Aliapoh: "Usually antelope and boars, but those won't do as a gift. I could totally get you a bear if that's what you want!" She says with a grin, picking up her glass and holding it for a moment. "Though... Might take a bit. I doubt Ava will let me use one I don't catch myself." She pauses to take a deep breath before once again downing her drink, trying to swallow it before she can taste it and making another face when that plan failed. "...Speaking of. I talked to her like I said, and she seems to agree that goin' about things the legal way is probably the best path... But... I sorta... I don't know." She shuffled in place awkwardly, before closing her eyes and taking another deep breath. "I... Don't think it's a good idea to go through those... 'friends' of yours..."

Cravendy Hound: "Well, be careful? Bears are no joke, and 'onestly...ye'll 'ave the Elementals to worry about too. Stupid forest ghosts sent a buncha bees after me, even though it was just a misunderstandin' on my part." Cravs twitches and looks around herself. "They can't 'ear me in 'ere, can they? Shit. I mean, the blessed, all-mighty Elementals."

Cravendy Hound leans back and focuses on the bits of dust caught on the edge of her glass, the topic change putting her a bit on edge. She sighs. "Well, what do ye suggest then? Go diggin' for a different crime to catch Mindred with?"

Riylli Aliapoh shrunk a bit, feeling the change in the atmosphere. Though Cravs could not see from behind the bar, her tail had ended up in her lap and she was nervously fiddling with it. "I... Don't know. I don't think I have any suggestions really... I just... Don't like the idea of you getting close to them again." She mumbles, deciding the nearby plant had become rather interesting and keeping her eyes on it instead of Cravs. "But... I'm sure we can think of something, right?"

Cravendy Hound raised a brow. Was Riylli...worried? Or jealous? Both, neither, something else altogether? Either way, Cravs was having trouble reading Riylli's reaction. "Eh? Oh, uh, they're really not that bad. I'm sure if ye met 'em ye'd change yer mind. And it's not like I'm plannin' on goin' back to piratin' full time anyhow, I've got responsibilities 'ere now."

Riylli Aliapoh raised an eyebrow, not in disbelief but in curiosity. "They... Aint? But I thought..." She hesitates, not really sure how to put her words together. "Um... Tell me about them then? If they really aint bad, then we can go through them. Just... I don't want you going back to... Y'know..." She mumbled, hoping the implication was enough for her to avoid mentioning anything specific.

Cravendy Hound: "A bandit's a bandit until ye get to know 'em. Not sayin' they ain't crass, violent, or dumb as 'ell sometimes, but at the end of the day, they're just people who value....freedom," Cravs tries, as she attempts to present them in the best light possible. "Don't go lookin' for 'em yerself though. Seriously."

Cravendy Hound tilts her head as she tries to complete Riylli's thought. "...don't know if I can make any promises. I'm naturally....well, I'm not particularly good at bein' good."

Riylli Aliapoh makes a face. "Violent is what I'm worried about... There are plenty of Miqo'te clans and tribes that aren't afraid to kill if someone trespasses or goes against their laws, but... They don't go lookin' for trouble like bandit groups do." She says, before Cravs speaks again. Her frown returns, "That aint true! I know you're a good person! That's why you helped build Dirtpatch back up, and that's why you're helpin' keep Baldur safe to begin with!" She insisted, something about the Roegadyns words seeming to strike a nerve. "Your past don't matter to me, but... I can't let you go back to being bad. So... Please, if working with those people might push you back on that path, can't we just find another way..?" The anger in her voice wavered near the end as she made her plea, a hint of fear in her eyes

Cravendy Hound is silent for a moment. She downs her mead and holds her glass upside down in her hand as she looks away. This isn't the first time she's heard something like this, and every time her gut reaction is disbelief. She can't shake the feeling that she's fooling everyone. Pretending. It'd be easier if no one put their trust in her, let her flail about without pressure.

Cravendy Hound: "I am...already...that's." She shakes her head. "Okay. If we can find another way. But if we can't, well. Then I wouldn't be opposed to bringin' ye along, if yer up for meetin' some unsavory saltfolk."

Riylli Aliapoh's eyes light up. "...Really?" She hops to her feet suddenly, leaning against the bar counter excitedly and absolutely not standing on her toes to do so. "Yeah! We'll come up with a great plan! And, if not, then I'll be there with you when we meet 'em to keep you safe!" She declares, grinning wide enough to show off her fangs. "Rising can help us come up with somethin' clever I bet, I always hear those folk up in Idyllshire are supposed to be smart after all, so maybe some of that rubbed off on her!"

Cravendy Hound lets out a well-meaning laugh at the thought of Riylli and Rising keeping her safe. "Wha? Pf, if I bring ye two to meet 'em, I'll be the one on babysittin' duty! I'm worried one of ye'll rub one of 'em the wrong way!"

Cravendy Hound: "Does it work that way? Don't think I ever get any smarter from talkin' with Lin..."

Riylli Aliapoh: "Course it does! You've learned stuff about earth magic from hangin' around me, haven't you?" She asked, a question that clearly only had one safe answer. "If anythin' bad happens with them, Rising and I can handle ourselves! I aint scared of wannabe bandits, no way they can live up to what we got in the shroud! But... Anyroad. As long as they don't try to pull you back into their mess, I won't start nothing. Even if I really want to."

Cravendy Hound shakes her head with a grin. "Ayyye, I'm really startin' to regret agreein' to this...it's like take yer kid to work day. Ye'll, uhh. Ah," She pauses and a slight blush crosses over her face. "I've got a reputation to uphold in that group, okay? Ye guys see a real soft side to me, but they don't, so don't say anythin' embarassin' and leave most of the talkin' to me when it 'appens!"

Cravendy Hound: "Oi, I've done a lot of watchin', but not a lot of learnin'. And tossin' a rock with my 'ands doesn't count as earth magic!"

Riylli Aliapoh 's cheek colour. "I-I aint a kid! It'll be fine dammit!" She huffed, Cravs striking a nerve. "Though, I aint gonna let them try to say bad things about you, reputation be damned. That's why I'm goin' really, to make sure you remember that you aint that person anymore. Er... But we won't go! We'll come up with a better plan, remember? Solve it the 'lawful' way!" She said with another nod. "Or... At least a way not involvin' them."

Cravendy Hound: "Haha, yeah, that's right. Let's 'ope for the best then," Cravs answers. She doesn't want to get her hopes up, but Riylli makes that hard. "....Wait. Are ye actually a kid? I don't remember if I ever asked yer age."

Cravendy Hound: "Always thought ye were 22 or 24. But maybe...Gods, don't tell me yer actually...older than me..." Cravs trails off, pale as a sheet.

Riylli Aliapoh crosses her arms, giving Cravs a glare. "I said I aint! I'm an adult dammit, this is my twentieth summer." She mutters, daring Cravs to try and say something further about it. "Just because I'm shorter than you doesn't make me a kid. Everyones shorter than you!"

Cravendy Hound lets out a sigh of relief. Then: "Risin' ain't shorter than me."

Riylli Aliapoh: "She aint?" Riylli has to pause to think about it for a moment, it was rather hard to tell from her perspective. "Well, everyone not a Roegadyn then. My point still stands! Don't treat me like a kid just because I'm a Miqo'te, it's not my fault I wasn't born a giant like you!"

Cravendy Hound: "I think she's a little taller than me. Or maybe I'm gettin' mixed up with 'er lance. Eh." She shrugs. "I ain't treatin' ye like a kid! It'd just feel weird if ye were older than me is all!"

Riylli Aliapoh keeps her arms crossed, eyeing Cravs suspiciously for a few moments more before finally nodding. "...Good. We Miqo'te get looked down on all the time, but even if you're my friend I aint gonna let you do it too! It's gettin' late for you though, yeah? Should we make plans to meet up with Rising later to brainstorm? Can get drinks at the same time!" She said, flashing Cravs another bright grin

Cravendy Hound: "'ow else can I look at ye? Yer all the way down there!" Cravs teases, shooting Riylli a smug wink. "Hah, sounds like a plan. Best ideas come while drunk!"

Riylli Aliapoh glares back at Cravs. "Very funny. We'll meet up later then." She says, turning to leave. She opens the door only to pause for a moment, then turning to flash Cravs one final grin. "Enjoy your pastry!" She says, sending Cravs a smug wink of her own as she taps her nose and quickly disappears out the door.

Cravendy Hound 's eyes go wide and her mouth opens to shout something back, but Riylli is gone before she can get anything out. Damnit, how long did she know?! Cravs groans.

#ff14 rp logs #Cravendy Hound #Riylli Aliapoh #the idea of putting food on the floor will always amuse me #that and food in your pockets

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sebastianshaw · 4 years ago

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I'M HERE TO YELL ABOUT THE WEREMOLES AGAIN THEY'RE REALLY AMAZING AND INTERESTING AND UNIQUE AND I LOVE THEM

-While a lot of the other Changing Breeds all dislike each other for one reason or another, or at best just don't interact, the moldwarps actually had it in their laws to aid their cousins in their respective duties for which Gaia created each of them, but -- "Killing Sceatha with the Garou, allowing Ratkin to travel to Run’s End, or showing the Moldwarp Burrows to other Breeds’ Kinfolk all fall outside of the realms of acceptable aid." CLEARLY THE RATKIN DID SOMETHING LIKE I HAVE NO DOUBT THERE IS GOOD REASON FOR THAT RULE (the wererats are chaos incarnate and I love them) -k so there is basically a trinity of spirits in this setting, the Triat---the Wyld, the Weaver, the Wyrm. Generally speaking, everyone is fighting the Wyrm and sometimes also the Weaver. But the moldwarps seek true balance between all three. And there's a small group of them called Apes Redeemers who want to basically exorcise the Weaver AND Wyrm out of human beings--- "Redeemers take humans in direct service to the Weaver, or with strong behavioural traits in its favour, and attempt to cleanse them through a mixture of psychological abuse, isolation, and repurposed rites. Freethinking Moldwarps shun this Hill’s ideals as quite beyond the pale, but Redeemers hold up examples of humans who have been forced into bestial states of primitive regression, the Weaver’s hold utterly stripped away, as evidence that their methods are in fact effective." (The Weaver is like...organization, society, technology, tools, etc. Normal humans are very much Weaver creatures.) - AW BUT THERE ARE ALSO PLAGUE DOCTOR MOLDWARPS WHO GO TO DISEASE RIDDEN AREAS TO TREAT PEOPLE - In addition to being the jailers of Gaia, they are also the undertakers, burying the dead of other creatures - There are different “Warrens” or types of weremole, based on their role in weremole society and the jobs they have. Most notable to me are the Cleansers and the Wardens. Cleansers “strive to emulate the motherly aspect of Gaia in all that they do. Calm and considerate, their lot is to cure the fallen, correcting their spiritual bearing and keeping them healthy during their stay in the Den. Sadly, despite their caring natures, Cleansers make for arguably the worst weremoles to act as the face of a Sett while interacting with other Fera. Speaking of tainted beings as patients needing treatment wins few friends in the wider shapeshifter community, and Cleansers find it difficult to adjust to the more punitive mindset broadly shared by most Fera.” “ They act as their communities’ confidants and carers, conduits for the worries, stresses, and strains which would otherwise hinder important work” “ Passionate and creative both in conflict and at peace, Cleansers tend to the Burrows’ feeding, nursing, and childrearing tasks outside of their main duties” “ Most Cleansers adopt a calm and measured persona following their Vision Crawl, and are incredibly difficult to infuriate.” Whereas the Wardens are “the closest thing a Burrow has to a standing force of warriors” and “the least empathic of all Warrens. Where Cleansers are the good cops, the Wardens are their counterparts, expected to keep Sceatha in line by any means necessary for them to be successfully rehabilitated. They embody force, conviction, and authority, and are granted Gifts which reflect such qualities in order to contain and recover the corrupted.” “ these Moles are tough, courageous, and stoic. These qualities are much called upon, for it is their burden to contain, monitor, and protect Sceatha held in captivity” “ Wardens embody intimidation, conviction, and authority in every action they take. This can sometimes be expressed with the exciting encouragement of an elder sibling, the sternness of a loving parent, or the detached professional attitudes of their human namesakes.” There are others, like Trackers and Diggers and Architects, but those are more concerned with burrowing tunnels or simply finding/retrieving Sceatha (Wyrm-tainted or otherwise corrupt creatures in need of healing/rehabilitation) rather than actually guarding and treating them, so they’re of less interest to me. The Diggers do also make tunnels in the Umbra, which is the spirit world, which is a pretty cool concept. - Their Homid (human) forms are as wonderfully unglamorous as moles themselves-- “ usually naturally heavy, with excessive body hair and poor eyesight. Their hands and feet are often disproportionately large compared to their small stature and otherwise short limbs, but for these physical shortfalls they make up with greater levels of strength, health, smell, hearing, and directional coordination” A far cry from the ridiculously sexy werewolf boyfriends of paranormal romance fiction. Love it. They also typically have jobs in sanitation or rehabilitation-- “ These individuals find employment as city planners, prison guards and wardens, subway and sewer maintenance operatives, and similar jobs focused around organisation, rehabilitation, and the conservation of resources both material and human. It’s a rare occurrence that an up-and-coming track athlete or singer enters the Vision Crawl.” Again, love it. - Their Crinos form (the hybrid form or “war form”) is HORRIFYING-- “ a large amalgamation of mole and human standing at 7 feet tall and over 80 stone in weight, a hunched monster which could never exist in the natural order of the surface world [. . .] twisted faces and sightless eyes [. . .] Knife-like teeth protrude along the length of their muzzles and shovelling claws grow from each clubbed hand” - Most wereanimals are weak to silver. Some varieties are weak to gold. But weremoles are weak to obsidian and other black gems. - Unlike most wereanimals, moldwarps can become vampires, and these unfortunate creatures are called The Baogane, also known as Bugbears. They are the saddest things I have ever heard of. “ The existence of a Baogane poses burning questions to her Sett. Should she receive an honourable Final Death and be given over to Gaia? Should she be put through arduous cleansing in the small hope it works? Or, more dubiously, should she be allowed to serve the Burrow eternally? Setts who are unfortunate enough to lose one of their own to a Leech make their own decisions on what to do with their fallen kin.” “ Baoganes look similar to how they did in life, save for their fangs being unnaturally long even for vampires. In Crinos form, these fangs splay out either side of their face to resemble the curved tusks of a boar, and sometimes punch through the flesh of their gums and lips. The fur of all forms - even Homid hair - becomes permanently sharp, coarse, and patchy, again similar to that of a boar.” “ Soil does not merely cling to the fur and skin of a Bugbear as it would to any other subterranean creature, but latches on with supernatural power, reflecting the earth’s desire to see such a monster dead and buried. Over the space of but a few nights, the Moldwarp may become so covered in filth and earthen debris that her size and shape cannot be discerned.” “ Baoganes often spend their unlives trapped within cleansing chambers, awaiting rehabilitation that may never come without their much-sought-after destruction. Many are granted the Thing of Salvation, though some willing penitents are denied even that.” The “Thing of Salvation” of course, is final death. The weremoles call very important ceremonies or celebrations, Things. Thing of Deliverance, Thing of the Hill, etc. - I honestly can’t overstate how new and crazy it is they wish to rehabilitate the Wyrm-tainted and save the Wyrm itself. For DECADES the entire point of this game has been FUCK UP THE WYRM’S SHIT. The Wyrm has always been the ultimate evil, even more so than the Weaver who is technically the one at fault for it going crazy, and EVERY wereanimal has had “destroy the Wyrm’s servants” in their own laws. And yet in the weremole’s laws, you’re NOT allowed to kill Sceatha unless your own life is threatened---” Sceatha are not of sound mind and so do not deserve unnecessary harm, irrespective of their most vile actions; only once they are cured are they to be judged as independent beings by the rest of the world. If that judgment is death, then they must be returned to Gaia without delay. Destroying befouled artefacts out of hand, meanwhile, is wasteful and disrespectful of their already-violated spirits.” Like this is just...so out of line from EVERY OTHER WERECREATURE it’s WILD, and it’s no wonder all the other critters are distrustful of them AT BEST. - So, Run’s End, that place they don’t ever let the Ratkin go? It sounds AMAZING, like so beautiful and spooky. It’s this realm “where death and decay occur, but peacefully and purely. This peace, however, is maintained only by the avid cleansing of its space by high-ranking Moldwarps, making it a nigh-impenetrable refuge of solemn deathliness suspended between zones of total corruption. Only by travelling along the Run, or traversing the turbulent dimensions held up by Run’s End to eventually find a border between worlds, may a being enter this place of pure, tranquil death. All is not quite as it should be, of course, for vicious battles constantly rage at the borders of Run’s End” “ The geography of Run’s End is reminiscent of an ancient Mayan jungle, at the heart of which stands a colossal obsidian temple to the Balance Wyrm, the structure in which the Lord of the Run resides beside his High Scrivein, Sanctus, and Thegn. This temple, the Body of Death, plays host to any great debate waged by high-Ranking Moldwarps, including each and every Althing. Around the Body of Death stretches the Fungal Forest, with mycelial growths a hundred metres tall stretching as far as the eye can see, generating natural luminescences of deep purple, dark red, and ochre green. From the unseen roof of the realm slowly descend all manner of remains - of humans, animals, plants, and even concepts, hopes, and dreams long forgotten - like snowflakes, landing gently atop the fungal canopy to be slowly digested. A fine film of red, brown, and green covers the undergrowth, having seeped down from the mushroom caps high above. Amongst these fungi are found equally decomposed but animate carrion beasts of all varieties lapping up the rotting fluids: insects, corvids, and Consumer Worms as long and thick as oak trunks winding amongst the mushroom stumps, soaking in the decay Despite its dire aspect, the fear of death for any being present in the Fungal Forest is simply absent; the fact that death comes for all is readily apparent, but comes as a comfort. Though not part of the Underworld proper, the Forest is a manifestation of final rest. From the gentle dripping of corpse-fluid to the slow undulation of the Consumer Worms, there is no violation or undue destruction in this Forest, only the equalising end of all things. Indeed, all beings who enter Run’s End begin decaying almost immediately; only those with some form of supernatural regeneration, or whose protection has been specifically petitioned for, may withstand it. Equally, the Body of Death allows only full-blooded Moldwarps to enter, with instant death and rapid decomposition coming to all others. At the Obsidian Reach, young and old Moldwarps alike dig to find something that they believe will bring them renown and acclaim, with no actual promise that anything lies beneath. The Obsidian Reach was actually discovered by the Gazers of the Deep during their very first visit. The Reach is infinitely high and wide and consists of solid obsidian, which naturally is almost unbreakable by Moldwarp standards. The stone itself bears the scratch marks and gouges of generations of claws trying to breach its shell. Beyond the stone’s infinite blackness, it has been told, are beings swept up in a storm mocking those who try to reach them, lands of shining cyclopean architecture, and even the resting bodies of mighty but unborn giants. Such claims are overlooked by all but the Gazers, but this does not prevent adventurers from ceaselessly trying to breach this inky vault.” LIKE THIS IS SO EERIE AND UNNERVING AND YET STRANGELY LOVELY AND SOOTHING TO ME? I AM REALLY LOVING MOLDWARP LORE

#owod #werewolf the apocalypse #wta #world of darkness #moldwarps #weremoles #out of shirt #this has basically become a wod fanblog on the side

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castellankurze · 4 years ago

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B’aiken Shishido, What’s in a Name

I haven’t written anything in awhile, let alone for B’aiken, but an idea I should have had long ago came to mind the other night and so I ended up banging out...four thousand words, holy crap.

Takes place around 4.1-4.2 of Stormblood. Some blood. More of me rambling about sunseeker miqo’te gender politics.

It wasn't sake, but this western beer wasn't bad as long as you paid Baderon the extra coin for his top-shelf stuff.

It was a typical day in Limsa Lominsa - the sun shone through a scattered veil of clouds, light glinting from the waves whipped up by the wind that came down from the mountains of Vylbrand. Hawker's Alley bustled with a thousand voices raised to haggle for wares. The docks were filled with the shouts of sailors and longshoremen as they struggled to make sense of the bewildering array of merchantmen and privateers that sought space. The customs office with the rustle and hustle of a throng of foreigners attempting to move any number of goods.

Above the chaos, the Drowning Wench was a low-key port in the storm of humanity. It was midday, too early for the place to fill up with workers leaving shift to find respite in a mug. So it was that another visitor to Lominsa had a table all to herself as she nursed one beer after another, having little else to do in the pirate town while she waited for a particular ship. Though she sported the ears and tail of a miqo'te, her garb was unmistakably that of the eastern nation of Hingashi, as was the sheathed sword which she had unbelted and leaned against the edge of the table beside her seat.

B'aiken Shishido was no longer quite the disheveled wreck she'd been when X'shasi Kilntreader had found her in the back corner of a Kugane hostelry. Travelling throughout the Far East and to Eorzea had reduced the time for lounging in bars and waiting for employment. Her hair had been pulled into an only semi-anarchic mess at the back of her head, but for a set of bangs which fell over the left side of her face to veil the scars that crept out from behind the patch that hid her blinded eye. And she had changed her clothes.

She sat in her chair almost carelessly, her chin propped on her remaining hand as she contemplated the mug in front of her, studiously ignoring the occasional curious glance shot her way. The miqo'te woman was comely enough, with a square-chinned handsomeness and a full figure, but the dour expression that ever rested upon her features discouraged any from plucking up their courage and crossing over to inquire of her availability.

So it was that she sat and drank alone, until a set of footsteps drew near and a male voice asked, "are you the woman called Be-Aiken Shihshih-do?"

He'd mangled her name, first and last alike, but in a foreign land one learned to expect such things. B'aiken looked up and assessed the newcomer quickly. A miqo'te male, a head taller than her, and she was not a short woman for her race. Forty years of age, perhaps. He wore a shirt and skirt of interlocking metal mesh, his arms and legs covered by leather armor. An axe of the type favored by Limsan marauders was strapped to his back. His eyes were a bright green, his hair a dull and greying red. His broad face was marked by scars...and by inked designs which decorated his lower cheeks and jaw. They suggested, to her mind, a set of tusks that had swept forwards from within his hair to end with their tips just beneath the corners of his mouth.

Dangerous.

For her part, the samurai nodded in response to the question. "I am," she replied.

The miqo'te lifted a hand to the back of the seat opposite hers on the table and pulled it out, dropping himself into it. Everything about his movement and posture was coarse in a deliberate way - a practiced brute. As he sat, B'aiken noted behind his shoulder a pair of miqo'te women standing some fulms off, one of them armed with a blade and wearing a half-mask that shadowed her eyes and hair.

Very dangerous.

When the man had sat he looked across the table at B'aiken and asked, with no preamble, "why is that your name?"

This was not a question she had expected. Normally armed men came to her for one reason - gold for another blade. Not to inquire about her name. So she shrugged her shoulders and took up her mug, answering simply "my mother gave it to me," before sipping.

The miqo'te kept his gaze fixed to hers, but at her response he canted his jaw first left, then right, as if he were worrying at his tattooed tusks. It should have looked absurd, but the bluntness of the man drained away what silliness might have been found in the mannerism. "Who was your mother?" he asked after a moment's silence.

B'aiken was momentarily spared from answering the rude question as one of Baderon's waitresses came up, spying a seated figure with no justification for his presence, and the miqo'te waved her off with a curt 'mead.' Once she had retreated, the samurai narrowed her ruby eye and responded, in lieu of an answer, "who asks this question?"

The man worked his jaw once more, and then sat back in his seat and took a breath. B'aiken recognized the stance of one reigning in one's more hasty impulses. "My name is Be-Hahn Nunh," he said. He frowned slightly and added after a moment, "as an Easterner, do you know what that means?"

B'aiken nodded slowly and sipped the last remnants of her drink. Her parents' teachings about the western world were but a dim memory of her childhood years, but since coming to Eorzea she had learned at more length from M'naago Rahz about the tribal structure of miqo'te in these western lands - the twenty-six major tribes with their distinctive division between rank and file Tia males and the elevated Nunh. In some tribes the Nunh held great power, whilst in others they were but figureheads of the female leadership, but there was one commonality - the right to father children.

B'hahn Nunh settled his arms atop the table, one hand covering a loose fist. "Who were your parents?" he questioned again.

B'aiken set the mug down atop the table. "My mother's name was Grayne," she said. "My father's name was Cossen."

B'hahn leaned back in his seat as the waitress delivered a drink B'aiken was certain he had no intention of touching. As he did so his gaze finally wavered, dropping down to the tabletop as he once more worried at his tusks. "Cossen and Grayne," he said softly. His eyes came back up. "We had long wondered what became of them. Are they still in the Far East?"

"Buy me another drink," B'aiken replied. Without hesitation the Nunh pushed his mead across the table to her. She drank. It was too sweet. "They worked in the service of a Hingan lord. My mother was slain by assassins who meant to kill his child. My father took revenge upon their employer, but it killed him. This was when I was six years of age."

The Nunh closed his eyes for a moment. "Did they teach you the meaning of your name?" he asked when he had opened them once more.

B'aiken's stone face cracked slightly, her full lips tugging upwards into a smile. "In the tongue of Hingashi, 'bai ken' with the correct context means 'boisterous plum.' My mother said she chose it because I came out of her screaming and giving her trouble and refused to stop."

B'hahn Nunh did not seem to share her humor. Instead he frowned, his lips pressed tight. "But did they teach you the meaning of the 'Be'?" he asked.

B'aiken sipped her too-sweet mead. "Why does this so concern you?" she asked.

She saw his tongue press against the inside of his cheek as he once more rolled his jaw side to side. "Cossen and Grayne fled from these lands to the Far East to escape judgment from the Boar Tribe," he said. "Cossen was of no standing to pursue a woman as openly as he did. Both flouted our laws and ran when they were discovered. Now I am Nunh, and word comes to me of a woman not known to our tribe calling herself Be-Aiken-"

B'aiken had already begun to bristle at his assessment of her parents, but she had contented herself to let that slide - it seemed factual enough. But when he butchered her name a second time her patience snapped. "B'aiken," she interrupted, pressing her lips together and blowing out a pop of air to emphasize the 'B' sound.

He stopped, blinking. "What?"

"I say my name B'aiken. Not Be-Aiken," she emphasized with a shake of her head.

B'hahn Nunh frowned. "When the written word comes to us of the Scions and their exploits, your name is printed with a B, then an apostrophe, and then the remainder of your name," he said.

B'aiken nodded. "That part is correct. It was how my mother told me it would be spelled in the land of our foremothers."

"No," B'hahn Nunh growled, bristling suddenly. "That is not acceptable. The Boar honorific is the symbol of our tribe. It was not an exile's to grant a child born in foreign land. Her transgression, not yours," he added, perhaps an attempt to offer an olive branch as a scowl grew upon her face. "But nevertheless it cannot continue, unless you choose to rejoin the Boar Tribe."

Heads turned as a short, sharp laugh cracked in the air of the Drowning Wench, but even as it left her lips B'aiken's features faded once more into stony obstinance. "I am ronin, B'hahn Nunh. I have no interest in throwing myself into the ranks of some strange clan, simply because I bear some accident of kinship," she said.

"You might be welcomed," he pressed. "We have heard of your skill with a blade. It would be honored."

She pressed her lips together and shook her head. "No."

He worried his tusks. "Then your name must change," he said stolidly. "Call yourself 'Baiken' if you will, or 'Aiken' if that would hold meaning, but the use of the Boar honorific must cease."

"Hey," a new voice interjected. "Is something going on over here?"

"Just bring us another round, for Twelve's sake," the Nunh growled, pushing several coins into the waitress' hand. She departed, carrying a suspicious look and B'aiken's last mug.

B'aiken was grateful for the momentary distraction as her rage burned suddenly hot within her breast. She forced herself to sit back slightly and distract herself with a sip of the too-sweet mead. As she had learned from her near-violent confrontation with M'naago, it was not reasonable to expect these westerners to know that 'aiken' in the Hingan tongue meant dog. That part, her mother certainly could have thought about a bit more. Then a thought occurred to her and she lowered her cup to glower over the rim of it. "B'hahn Nunh," she said. "That means you have offspring."

He blinked, perhaps thrown by the sudden shift in the current, but nodded.

A sneer worked itself across B'aiken's features. "And if I did give myself to your tribe, would you have me for your bed, Nunh?"

He frowned slightly, but there was little hesitation. "Not unwillingly."

She snorted, but decided the response seemed earnest enough that she could let the sudden suspicion drop. "No," she said again. "I do not belong in your tribe simply because my mother and father once did. They were faithful to one another," she suddenly diverted once more. "To the best of what I learned from their cohorts as I grew, theirs was an enviable love. They lived and died for each other." She took a moment to breathe. "And so my answer is no, B'hahn Nunh. Neither will I join your tribe, nor will I renounce my name as my parents gave it to me."

His frown deepened, but he glanced over his shoulder and made a beckoning gesture. The two miqo'te females that had been standing off and watching with increasingly poor attempts to disguise their interest came walking over. The one that was armed moved with a grace that suggested skill with the blade she carried, while the other's was a more normal tread. "Kinrah," the Nunh demanded. "She refused both offers."

The unarmed woman - B'kinrah - blinked a pair of pale pink eyes and snatched up a book she carried, flipping it open to a marked page and hurriedly scribbling with a quill. For his part, B'hahn looked back across the table, his face stone. "B'aiken...Sh..." He hesitated.

"Shishido," she supplied the proper pronunciation.

"B'aiken Shishido, on the honor of the Boar Tribe I summon you to a duel. We cannot countenance your use of our tribe's honorific and if you refuse to relinquish it, you must defend it with your blade." The Nunh delivered the words slowly and deliberately, his voice unwavering as B'kinrah copied down his challenge.

B'aiken spared a moment to consider, finishing off the mead the Nunh had given her in exchange for the information by which he now hung her out to dry. "I am ronin, Nunh," she said for the second time that day. "I have no honor. But my name...that does have meaning for me. I accept your challenge," she said, setting down her cup and reaching out to close her fingers around the sheath of her sword, thumping it against the table. "Now, if you'd have it."

"You're drunk," he said, working his tusks.

She laughed. "Afraid I'll throw up on you?" She flexed her legs and stood, and the Nunh hastened to match her as she belted her katana. "Your girl there has my words in her book," she said with an ironic smile for B'kinrah, whose face colored as she met the samurai's ruby eye and held the book up a bit higher. "If I didn't stand by my drunken words, then I would have none at all."

"Hoy! HOY!" a voice shouted across the room. The gathered sunseeker miqo'te turned as one to see Baderon leaning over his bar and frantically waving a finger at them. "Whatever yer doin' yer not doin' it 'ere," he scolded. "If it's t'be drawn steel then go out past the Aftcastle."

B'hahn Nunh nodded. "Aye, Baderon," he said in acknowledgement.

The waitress who'd been bringing the next pair of drinks stopped a few steps short and huffed. "You're still short seven gil," she said, cross.

B'aiken reached into her belt for one of the solid gold koban from Kugane she still had banging around and thumbed it onto the table. Then she reached out and plucked one of the proffered mugs from the girl's hand and threw it back. Her throat didn't work; no audible gulps or gasps emanated from the samurai, but instead she only tipped the mug further and further back until it emptied and she slammed it down atop the table, the corners of her mouth wet with the excess.

"Let's go," she growled.

The quartet left the bar at a walk, heading south to where the bridges of Limsa Lominsa connected to the isle of Vylbrand. The wind made B'aiken's long robe flutter, as well as the empty sleeve that dangled from her right shoulder. She stayed a double arms' length from B'hahn, both of them careful to stay abreast of one another despite looking determinedly forward.

"Um, excuse me," a soft voice said at her shoulder. She turned her head slightly to see the scribe doing her best to keep up with the taller miqo'te's longer stride. "If it's not too much to ask, how did you get the name Shishido?" B'kinrah questioned, blinking her pale eyes through her dark hair, quill poised above her open book.

B'aiken considered her response for several steps. How to describe her apprenticeship under the legendary samurai? Her sensei had taken her under his wing for many hard years of training that had defined the course of her life right up to this very moment. But on reflection, the woman didn't want to hear her life story. Just the basic information. "He taught me how to use the blade," she said simply, and B'kinrah bobbed acceptance and fell back as she scribbled down the response.

They passed over the stones of the Aftcastle and proceeded down the connecting bridge to the island, under dirt rather than dressed stone slapped underfoot. A quartet of Limsan Yellowjackets manned the entry, and one of them must have seen the way B'aiken and B'hahn drifted apart as they left the bridge behind, their posture increasingly wary of one another. The roegadyn came forward, eyeing first one and then the other. "A duel?" he asked. He received an assortment of nodding heads in return, and with a sigh he lifted his hand to point. "No deaths, and off the road," he instructed.

The pair obeyed, stepping into the grass and walking a short distance from the side of the road. "What, then?" B'aiken asked. "First blood?"

B'hahn Nunh shook his head as he unstrapped his axe and threaded it behind his back, bending his elbows around the haft to limber up. "A full surrender," he replied.

B'aiken considered this for a moment and then nodded. She lifted her hand to the metal shoulderguard that she wore on her right shoulder and pushed, sliding it laterally so that it took her garment with it, baring the stump of her right arm where it ended abruptly halfway down her biceps. She heard a gasp from the road and glanced aside briefly as she tied the sleeve into her belts, seeing Kinrah holding her book up to her face. The other woman, the one that had been silent all this time, showed no reaction.

B'aiken did much the same with the left side of her robe, tying the sleeve into her belt so that it would not interfere with her movement. Her remaining arm was muscled, as was the miqo'te's stomach, her breasts concealed by the wrappings she wore beneath her garb. Her hand dropped down to the handle of her katana and levered it forward slightly, swinging the sheath behind her legs as she bent her knees and stood flank-on towards the Nunh. She could feel the tingle in her fingertips as she readied herself, her ki - what Eorzeans called aether - already flowing between her body and the sheathed blade, making it tremble. "Come forth, then," she said.

B'hahn Nunh had taken the intervening moments to swing his axe a time or two, flexing his legs to ready himself. At B'aiken's invitation he took in a slow breath and exhaled. Then, in the space of half a heartbeat, he was suddenly roaring and charging forward like his tribal namesake, his eyes a ferocious glowing red.

He crossed the space between them in an eyeblink, his axe swinging hard, and B'aiken was forced to hurriedly drop back before he took her remaining arm. Her katana leapt from its sheath with a rasp of steel and she swung for his leg, but the Nunh was fast and sidestepped so that the tip of her blade passed through empty space. He swung again, a shorter chop this time that allowed him to follow up with a quick reverse blow. B'aiken managed to turn it aside, and aether crackled in the air as the samurai's blade encountered the berserker's axe.

He was good. He was very good. He couldn't sustain such a pace for very long, surely, but the sheer ferocity of his assault had no doubt served him well in unmanning his opponents in the past. Nor did he fight with the axe alone- he took his hand from the weapon to swing at her with a leather-clad fist and she ducked aside. She didn't miss his stomping boots, either - the Hingan-born miqo'te wore a set of open-toed zori, and one good smash from the Nunh would break her foot. But B'aiken had fought a number of opponents like him - taller than her, stronger than her, more lustful than her. She threatened him with her blade as she ducked in and out of his range, the air humming and her aether-clad katana whipped past him, roaring whenever the two weapons deflected off one another.

There came a whistle from the direction of the bridge. Presumably the Yellowjackets had come off their station to watch the show. B'aiken didn't have time to look. She whirled, stepping past B'hahn even as his axe whirled past her so that the pair of them reversed positions. With a quick filling of her lungs the samurai cocked her sword back and swung it underhand, sweeping the flow of aether from the land and sending it thundering forth from her blade in a blood-red halo that struck the Nunh full-on and forced him back, sheltering behind his axe. In the moment he was thus distracted, B'aiken brought her sword back down and laid open his forearm, his leather bracer snapping beneath the sword's edge.

B'hahn roared and surged forward at her, seemingly heedless of his wound, and he leapt high enough to nearly clear the level of her head as he brought his axe down in a fiery smash that she was just quick enough to avoid. B'aiken felt the heat of the moment set her nerves alight, her skin pricking as her hair seemed to stand on end. The Nunh

will come at me with a rising swing and there will be a moment that his leg is unprotected

came at her with a rising swing and with reflexes sharper than the blade she wielded, the miqo'te dodged to one side and lashed out with her blade, letting it be sheathed in energy that extended past the tip, a cut longer than she could have made with the blade alone. The toughened leather of the Nunh's boot split open just beneath his armored skirt as she sliced through the meat of his thigh, and he stumbled as his leg went out from under him. He caught himself on his good leg, but it was to no avail as the tip of the samurai's sword came up beneath his chin and hovered at his neck.

B'aiken's chest heaved for breath as her head throbbed in the wake of the sudden insight, her musculature gleaming with the first signs of sweat from the short but explosive fight. "Surrender to me," she demanded.

B'hahn Nunh worried his tusks for a moment, his face torn between emotions, but after a breath to think, he nodded slightly. "You win."

B'aiken stepped away to the sound of clapping from the Yellowjackets, and the sound of boots on the grass and B'kinrah came forward to crouch beside the Nunh, lifting a hand that glowed to hover near his wounds. For her own part, B'aiken lifted the handle of her sword to her teeth and fished in her belt for a cleaning cloth, wiping away the blood before she returned the weapon to its sheath.

"Well?" she asked as the Nunh stood. His arm would bear a new scar, it seemed, as Kinrah's magic was sufficient to close the wound but not erase it from his flesh. B'aiken did not resist the urge to wallow momentarily in pleasure at the sight, though she kept it from her face.

He nodded. "You may keep your name, B'aiken Shishido," he said, pronouncing it in the same manner she had done.

"Is our business then concluded, B'hahn Nunh? You will mark that I am not one of your tribe's women, nor will you attempt to take my name from me a second time?" she asked, keeping her gaze pinned to his.

He paused and worked his jaw once more before answering. "It is concluded. There will be no second challenge."

B'aiken shrugged and began the process of unknotting her sleeves from her belt so that she could put her robe back to rights, while the Nunh gingerly walked himself back towards the road with B'kinrah in tow. At the same time a set of footsteps came towards her, and B'aiken looked up to see the blade-bearing miqo'te coming to a stop a few fulms from her. She lifted up her hands to remove her mask, and B'aiken was struck by an odd sense of familiarity as the woman revealed bright purple eyes and near-black violet hair. The stranger offered a slight smile to the samurai before she spoke.

"My name is B'sayyda Eskil," she said. "My mother's name is B'lotte Zinba, and she was full sister to B'grayne Zinba."

B'aiken paused in the midst of shrugging her arm back into its sleeve. She blinked her eye as she looked upon the other woman, near as tall as she, broad in shoulder and hip like herself, close to her in age. "So then...we are cousins?" she asked as she finished donning her clothes.

B'sayyda pursed her lips briefly. "In blood if naught else. In spirit if you wish. In arms...only if you were to rejoin the tribe," she said with sudden formality, which she promptly dropped as she went on. "My mother spoke from time to time of missing her sister. I'm sure she'll be sad to learn of her passing, but perhaps the knowing will give her comfort." The swordswoman shrugged and smiled a bit once more. "Especially to hear that Grayne and Cossen stayed together until the end. If it's alright with you I'd like to tell her about all this. Let her know Grayne had a child. It would mean something to her."

B'aiken considered this. She reached out with her hand to squeeze B'sayyda's shoulder. "Tell all, then," she said. "Be well, B'sayyda Eskil."

"And you, B'aiken Shishido," said the violet-haired woman, returning the gesture with a squeeze of B'aiken's shoulder. Then she turned and pulled her mask back into place, following after her kinsman and woman.

Left behind, B'aiken stretched out her arm and turned her face up towards the sun, letting the wind wash over her.

It felt free.

#FFXIV #miqo'te #seekers of the sun #B'aiken Shishido #kurze writes

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anubislover · 5 years ago

Text

Welcome to the Heart Pirates, Nami-ya chapter 16: Salvage

As much as Nami would have loved to set out right away to get the antivenom, she knew there was no choice but to wait at least two hours until the tide was low enough to safely explore the shipwreck. From what she could observe through the binoculars, it was securely lodged into the rocks and reef that surrounded the island, but much of it was only really accessible when the tide was out.

So, with no other choice but to play the waiting game, she found herself perusing a zoology book to pass the time.

“Huh. Apparently, snow leopards can’t roar—however, their tails are super mobile and are often used to send ‘messages’ during social encounters. They’re ambush attackers who generally pounce down on their prey from above, which is easy since they’re excellent climbers and can jump up to seven times their body length. They’re also known as the ‘Ghosts of the Mountains’ in some places because they’re so shy and solitary,” she prattled, skimming over the description before looking up at Law, who huffed in annoyance as his tail irritably flicked back and forth.

Clearly, the transformed captain was antsy. He’d been told in no uncertain terms that he was not allowed to join his companions on their salvaging mission. Naturally, he’d thrown a fit, hissing and growling and making all sorts of angry sounds—including what she now assumed was his failed attempt to roar—but the pair of navigators stood firm. It was only when Nami pointed out that, Devil Fruit powers or not, he didn’t know how to swim in his current form which made him a potential liability, that he reluctantly acquiesced.

Of course, since he couldn’t help and would be forced to stay on the ship alone, he needed something to keep him occupied so he wouldn’t pace around the infirmary, speeding up the poison’s journey through his bloodstream. Unfortunately, he was having a harder time distracting himself than Nami, as his furry paws made it impossible enjoy a book past a couple pages. Reading aloud to him was the only real option and keeping him informed of his current form’s capabilities at least seemed useful. However, it appeared that there wasn’t a lot of information on snow leopards due to their reclusive nature.

As if human Law isn’t mysterious enough, she thought, skipping to another section. “Ok, what do you want to hear about next; pandas or binturongs? Or should we switch to birds?” she asked, indicating another book by Dr. Monroe. Bepo had been nice enough to lug over the man’s entire encyclopedia series, which ranged from reptiles to mammals to birds from all four Blues.

Yellow eyes rolled heavenwards as Law grumbled under his breath. Bepo wasn’t around at the moment to translate, but Nami could pretty easily deduce that he was displeased with both options.

“Well, sorry Law, but I already told you that I’m not reading any of your creepy-ass medical texts! If you don’t want me to read to you, we’ll find you a ball of yarn or something,” she snapped, slamming the book closed.

Spotted ears flattened back as he gave a brief flash of his fangs before calming down, looking away with a huff. Yet despite his haughty expression, she could see the tension in his shoulders and the way his claws flexed in and out.

He was trying to hide it, but Nami could tell Law was quietly freaking out.

She sighed as she reached out to stroke his brow soothingly. “Sorry. Guess we’re both a bit tense, huh?”

He grunted in affirmation but didn’t pull away, instead leaning into her touch.

Deciding that petting him would be a much better distraction than reading for both of them, she began scratching behind his ears with gusto as she said, “Look, I get that this must suck for you, especially considering how used to being in control you are. I’m sure I wouldn’t be much happier if I were turned into a cat. But I promise Bepo and I will be fine. It’s just a quick salvage mission; we get the antivenom, plus the supplies that guy needs, and then head straight back to the Tang. Easy-peasy. You’ll be back on your feet by dawn, and human again by breakfast.”

He gave her a disbelieving side-eye before arching his neck back, silently indicating that she should direct her attentions there.

Nami rolled her eyes but followed his instruction, fingers firmly scratching under his chin. After all, when else would she get the chance to cuddle a snow leopard like a friendly housecat? That, and he seemed less inclined to argue with her when he was getting so much physical attention. “You must know you’ve got a capable crew, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t have sailed this far with them. Sure, there are plenty of things that only you can do, but delegation of duties is an essential leadership skill. When this is all over, I want to you to start trusting your nakama more, got it?” she scolded, even as she carded her fingers along his broad chest, her hands practically disappearing into the luxuriously thick fur.

She had to admit, she did kind of like him like this. He was gloriously fluffy, she could ignore his snide comments and innuendos, and petting him was oddly enjoyable. Not that she wanted Law to stay like this forever, as she would miss their verbal sparring and occasional intelligent conversations, but she found herself wondering if, just maybe, when he turned back, he could…keep the ears and tail? He’d be so cute with them!

As she scratched his chin, a smug smirk curled her lips. “You know, maybe we should keep you like this for a little while longer. It’ll teach you to rely on your crew a bit more, and I gotta say, I wouldn’t mind having my own pet snow leopard,” she teased.

Law’s eyes narrowed at the statement before a wide smirk of his own spread across his muzzle, a hungry glint shining in the gold irises. It was an expression Nami could only describe as “deviously seductive” and she was certain that if he were in his human form, she’d be pinned to the nearest flat surface.

He gave a low, almost purring growl, and she immediately inferred it to mean “enjoy it while you can, because the second I’m me again, you are in so much trouble.” The message was further punctuated by the way he leaned in and inhaled against her neck, his whiskers tickling her chin.

Do not be aroused by a cat. Do not be aroused by a cat, Nami chanted in her head, blushing as her imagination was filled with Law in his human form, yet sporting those ears and tail she’d found so cute. Only, it wasn’t quite so adorable when paired with a feral smile and graceful, prowling movements as he caged her against a wall.

Realizing exactly where her thoughts were straying, she immediately sought to distract both Law and herself by reaching up to scratch behind his ears, earning her a series of very happy sounds from the big cat. It was hard to be seductive when you were getting petted like a big, fluffy kitty, after all.

Leaning hard into her touch, he let out a few deep meows, eyes shutting tightly in pleasure as she hit a particularly good spot.

“Umm, he just said ‘If the trade fails, your job for the rest of the year is doing this. Constantly’,” Bepo explained as he poked his head into the room. He carefully made his way to the bed, his hands occupied by a large bowl of water and a massive tray of raw meat while Kikoku was tucked awkwardly under his arm.

It hadn’t dawned on any of them until Law’s stomach had started growling that he hadn’t eaten anything since the pocky game, so the bear had offered to get him some food from the galley. Despite his captain’s current form, Nami had expected his order to be along the lines of onigiri, though she could now see that had been a bit optimistic.

“Are you sure this is what you’re hungry for, Law?” Bepo asked, looking down at the meat dubiously. “It’d really be no trouble to cook it up for you.”

Law’s eyes lit up at the sight of the bloody steaks and gave a few yowls in reply, pulling away from Nami’s hands to eagerly sit up.

The Mink blanched at his response. “Ew, Law! That’d technically be cannibalism!”

“What would?” Nami asked, horrified.

“Eating the boar that attacked us, since it used to be a human like him.” Bepo shuddered before handing him the food. “Here. They’re a little cold, but they were the only non-frozen meat I could find.”

The leopard didn’t seem to mind, literally tearing into one of the raw steaks with a barely-contained hunger. His table manners weren’t exactly great as a human, but Nami found watching him devour his dinner like this was far worse.

Any half-hearted plans of keeping him as a leopard were immediately scrapped. If this is what feeding time would look like, it was not worth it.

Averting her eyes for the sake of not emptying her own stomach, she turned her focus to Bepo, who had leaned Kikoku against the cot. “Why’d you get that? It’s not like he can use it,” she asked, wiggling her fingers meaningfully.

“He knows that, but I think it makes him feel better having it around,” he whispered in her ear.

“Like a security blanket?”

“Yeah.”

She stifled a giggle with her hand. “Got it. How’s the tide looking?”

“Almost fully out. I think it’s about time to go.”

“Sounds good. Think Law will be ok without us for a few hours?”

They turned to find Law on his back, batting at Kikoku’s dangling tassels. Feeling their amused gazes on him, he glared and let out a growl.

“Law says, ‘If you tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you’.”

This time, Nami didn’t bother to hide her laughter.

XXX

The trip over to the wreck had been fairly smooth—the weather was calm, the nearly-full moon provided plenty of light to see by, and their small motorboat managed to navigate the sharp rocks that poked out of the water. They’d grabbed a few empty backpacks to carry their loot, along with her lock picks and a lantern to light the way inside. Nami hoped they wouldn’t need much more than that; their boat was designed for speed and maneuverability, not weight, so they couldn’t afford to bring more than necessary.

As they pulled up alongside the ship, she was amazed at how well-preserved it was. Sure, it was definitely never going to sail again, but it was still in one piece; far better off than the ship that had fallen from Skypia that she’d made the boys salvage back what felt like a lifetime ago. Barnacles encased nearly every inch of the hull, and there were noticeable holes in the side that looked like damage from canon fire. If she had to guess, the pirates had been escaping a battle and gotten caught up in a storm, leading them to be shipwrecked on the cove. Her theory of a storm was confirmed when she got a good look at the mast—it was charred and splintered, clearly damaged by a lightning strike, and the sails were burned to black tatters.

From what she could tell, there were three levels, much like the Thousand Sunny. Given her experience infiltrating and robbing pirate ships in the past, she figured they’d find the galley, sick bay, and crew’s living quarters on the main deck level. The captain’s quarters and treasure room would take up most of the top level. Below deck would be additional living quarters, storage space, and brig.

She didn’t have high hopes for the lower level—it spent the most time underwater compared to the others, so it’d likely have little to offer. Still, her time as a thief had taught her not to completely rule out a secret treasure room or safe hidden deep in the bowls of the ship, as some of the smarter crews had learned not to keep the best stuff in the obvious places.

“Ok, here’s the plan,” she said to Bepo as they climbed up onto the deck. The wood was slippery with kelp and algae, and she could already see several large holes where the wood had rotted through. “We need to locate the antivenom first—the sick bay’s our best bet. Next, we’ll get the stuff we need for the trade. Depending on the shape the ship is in, though, you might need to hang back if the floors are too rotted.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

She carefully stepped over a broken railing—the whole ship listed slightly to the left, so keeping their balance was tricky. “We need to be careful; Law’s already all pissy because he couldn’t come with us. If we come back with so much as a scratch, he’s going to bitch about how he should have been there. This is your chance to prove to him that he can trust other people and that he doesn’t need to be such a control freak.”

“I’m sorry. We don’t want to rely on him so much,” Bepo said sadly as he reached out a paw for her to take, helping her climb over some debris, “but if we don’t let him get his way, he does it behind our backs, and sometimes he gets hurt because of it. At least when we let him be in charge, he’ll let us go along as backup.”

“Well, not this time,” she reaffirmed, eyes narrowed seriously. “You need to stand up for yourself more, just like you did back in the infirmary. Doing that probably saved his life!”

“I know,” he replied as they reached the entrance to the main deck. “It’s just…Shachi, Penguin and I have followed him since we were kids. The three of us were lost in a big world and desperate for a leader. And sure, we’re all grown up now, but he’s still the one with the plans and ambitions and power…”

“Yeah, he’s powerful,” she agreed, gingerly testing out the floor. When it proved solid enough, she motioned for Bepo to follow her inside. She knew they had to step lightly, though—even if the rooms only got halfway submerged at high tide, it was still enough to cause significant structural damage. “That doesn’t mean he’s all-powerful. You guys have your strengths, too. He can’t navigate, right?”

“Well, no…”

“Can he shoot a rifle like Shachi?”

“He can fire a gun, but he’s no sharpshooter.”

“Can he fix the engine like Ikkaku?”

“Absolutely not! Law specifically hired her because none of us could figure out the engine!”

“See? Everyone’s got their strengths and weaknesses. Yes, there are certain things only Law can do, but he can’t do it all. He’s already pulling double-duty as the captain and doctor; you guys need to step in when he starts making too much work for himself.”

“We stepped in on the beach,” he defended as he pointed out a room at the end of the hall with a little red cross over it.

Taking the hint, Nami carefully made her way towards it, indicting to him the spots that obviously couldn’t take the polar bear’s weight. “It shouldn’t have taken that long, though! He spent a week not sleeping, running himself into the ground—”

“Law only listens to us when things are really bad!” Bepo shouted, stamping his foot in frustration. Unfortunately, the force combined with the unstable wood sent his leg crashing through the floor.

“Whoa!” Nami cried, grabbing his arm to stabilize him while he pulled the limb out. Though that particular spot wasn’t rotted, it had been flanked by splintered sections that hadn’t offered much support. “Ok, you know what? Maybe this isn’t the best time to talk about this,” she said as nervous sweat dripped down her neck. She was so used to Bepo being meek and apologetic, she’d forgotten that he was a super-strong Mink. Him losing his temper was dangerous, especially here.

He nodded quickly, paws trembling the slightest bit. “Agreed,” he whimpered, his round ears drooping with shame. “I’m sorry.”

She immediately felt guilty. It was one thing to give a guy a much-needed lecture, but she’d been so far up on her high horse she hadn’t considered that they had significantly more important things to focus on. “It’s fine. I did say you needed more backbone, didn’t I?” Steadying herself, she helped him to his feet. “Let’s just hold off on the subject until we’re back on the Tang.”

“Ok,” he whimpered, head still hanging in contrition.

Nami made a mental note to keep an eye on the poor guy. He’d clearly been taking this whole fiasco harder than she’d thought. His captain was powerless and poisoned, his crew was missing, they had to trudge around a dangerous, rotting ship to appease a crazy old man, and Nami was basically telling him that it was his fault for not better controlling his stubborn captain.

Once this was over, she’d make it up to him. Maybe get him another giant salmon or something on the next island. Or more ear scratches. He’d seemed to like those, and it didn’t cost her money.

That in mind, she cautiously opened the door to the sick bay, wincing at the moaning creak the rusty hinges gave out. The room itself was fairly standard for a pirate ship—an examination table, sick bed, desk, skeleton display (which Nami hoped was fake and for reference purposes, and not some poor soul who’d been picked clean by the fishes), small cages for lab animals, and what were probably the sodden remains of the physician’s texts and notes. However, the state of the place would give Chopper a conniption fit; seaweed and algae clung to nearly every surface, the padding on the chair and cot had been ripped apart, glass from broken bottles was all over the floor, and the place reeked of decomposing wood and salt.

Of course, none of that mattered to Nami as her attention was quickly drawn to the large safe in the back of the room. It was made of stainless steel, so while barnacles and rockweed had attached themselves to the surface, there was blessedly minimal rust.

“Think that’s where we’ll find our antivenom?” she asked rhetorically, already examining the lock to see if it needed to be picked. It was a fairly simple one—it needed a key as opposed to a combination—and Nami immediately pulled out her lockpicks, carefully jimmying the tumblers into place.

The tiny click was easily heard by both navigators, who’d unconsciously held the breaths. They both exhaled a soft “whoa” as the door swung open, revealing stacks of trays filled with carefully labeled vials. Many of them were the antivenom they sought, but there were also shelves full of the venom itself; mostly coral snake, though there were notably a few others like king cobra, black mamba, and pit viper.

“That’s a lot of snake venom,” Nami said with a shudder, imagining the number of snakes it must have taken to get that much stock. And they’d kept them on the ship? That sounded like a recipe for disaster.

“The old man did say those pirates dealt in it.” Bepo peered at the assortment of antivenom before selecting a vial. “Here’s the coral snake. Should we take any of the others?”

“Hell, take it all. It’s not doing any good here, and I’m sure after this fiasco Law would want to have extra antivenom on hand just in case. Anything he doesn’t want, we can sell.”

“Law will like that. Antivenom goes for big money at hospitals, since it’s not always easy to get access to. But the venom itself we should dump—I don’t like the idea of anyone getting a hold of this much poison.”

Nami couldn’t agree more. There was only one reason she could think of for why anyone would want snake venom in large quantities—murder. And whether the Navy, pirates, or Revolutionaries were the buyers made no difference.

As Bepo carefully loaded up the backpack with the antivenom, she fished out the deadly vials and began flinging them out the broken window. She could hear some crash against the rocks while others plopped into the sea, hopefully lost forever. So long, and good riddance, she thought, taking a bit of pleasure in imagining she was flinging away the snake that had bitten Law. She wondered if coral snakes could swim, or if the snake had drowned when she’d blasted it away into the water. She hoped it was the latter.

When she was done, Nami assessed the rest of the room. “Should we take anything else?” There were syringes, a microscope, stethoscopes, scalpels, and several other assorted medical apparatuses, though none of it was in particularly great shape.

Glancing at the waterlogged infirmary, Bepo wrinkled his nose in disdain. “No way. This equipment’s nothing compared to the Tang’s, and I doubt the sanitation of most of it after months exposed to the elements. It’s not even worth selling.”

Mouth twisting in disgust as she found herself agreeing with his assessment, Nami eyed the knapsack on his back. He’d loaded the trays that kept the vials upright, but they didn’t completely protect them when he moved. “Are those going to be safe like that?”

“I’ve stacked them as best I could, but we should try to find cloth to wrap them in for extra protection so they’re not just banging against each other,” he replied, shifting nervously. Even with that small motion, Nami could swear she heard a gentle clink of glass hitting glass.

It was tempting to suggest they put the bag in the motorboat for safekeeping, but it was too risky; an errant wave could capsize the boat and dump their precious cargo into the ocean, and it all would have been for nothing. They’d just have to be careful.

“Maybe we can find some rags or something to use as padding,” Nami suggested, leading them back into the hallway. Until then, they’d absolutely have to watch their step; another crash through the floor like earlier, and they risked a backpack full of unusable liquid and broken test tubes.

Their next stop was the galley, and immediately they knew they’d find little of use there. The cooking utensils were rusted through, as were the pots and pans, and there was nothing that could convince them that opening the refrigerator would result in anything less than a biohazard. Nami braved a trip to the pantry; there was some tinned food that looked to still be in decent condition, though she decided to pass on the can opener—it was guaranteed to give someone tetanus.

I sure hope we have better luck with the rest of the ship, she thought gloomily as they decided to take a chance on the upper deck, otherwise we won’t have much to trade for the crew.

“Should we go upstairs to the captain’s quarters, or the other side of the ship for the crew’s?” Bepo asked, pointing at the ceiling.

After dropping the canned goods into her own sack, Nami considered the question. Given its position high above the ocean and rocks, it likely had sustained the least amount of damage, making it the safest to check out. It also likely had the most usable goods, meaning that if they could find what they needed there, they wouldn’t have to bother with the other rooms.

“Captain’s room. If anyone on this ship owned a pair of good, hearty boots, it’d be them.”

The stairs to the top deck creaked and groaned with every step, but thankfully they held together well enough, even under Bepo’s weight.

The top deck held only one door, which was probably ornate before the wreck—now, the red and gold paint was chipped and faded while the etched handle was rusted over. Nami carefully tested the knob, only to find it jammed. “Bepo, would you be a dear and get the door?” she asked sweetly, moving to the side.

The bear stepped forward, taking a minute to futilely try to turn the knob himself. Nami sighed and stopped him before miming what she meant for him to do.

“Oh. Sorry,” he replied before kicking in the door, the force of the blow sending it clear across the room.

“Guess you’re not used to breaking and entering, huh?” she joked. A thought came to her. “By the way, how’d you get into Law’s room earlier? You know, to get Kikoku? It was locked when I checked.”

Bepo’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Why were you trying to get into his room?”

She froze. Shit. She needed a good explanation, or else he’d surely say something to Law, and any hope she’d have of getting in there would be ruined. “Oh! Uh, I wanted to see if he’d returned to the sub!” she lied, putting on an innocent smile. “You know, it would have been silly for us to search the island for him when he’d been in his room the whole time!”

He scratched his head guiltily. “Oh. That makes sense. Sorry I didn’t think of that.” Gingerly stepping into the room to ensure the floor was stable, he explained, “I have a key to his room for emergencies. I mean, he rarely has to worry about locking himself out, what with his powers and all, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

It felt wrong to take advantage of Bepo’s trust and innocence, but Nami knew this was her chance to get into Law’s room. “Do you carry it on you most of the time, or do you keep it in your room for safekeeping?”

“Oh, I usually leave it in my top desk drawer so it doesn’t get lost.”

“See? You’re responsible! Further proof that Law’s stupid for not trusting you more,” she chirped, lightly hopping over a hole in the floor. Standing in the center of the captain’s quarters, she took in what had probably been fairly luxurious accommodations before the wreck.

While the elements hadn’t too severely affected the room since it managed to stay above water, two months of rain, wind, and waves coming through the broken windows had clearly taken its toll. The velvet curtains were tattered and coated with a layer of salt and seaweed. There was a leather chair that had seen better days, a fancy wardrobe sporting clear water damage, and the decorative cutlass displayed over the bed looked like it could dissolve if touched, it was so rusted and tarnished. The cherrywood desk had become home to crabs and starfish, and there was a massive bird’s nest in the center of the king-sized bed. Oddly, though, there wasn’t much by way of bird crap over the floor. Yet something clearly lived there, as it looked like some kind of massive bird had decided to rip apart the mounted snow leopard head with its beak and talons.

It was the polar opposite of any room Luffy would ever want, even looking past the obvious deterioration. Her captain had always preferred sleeping with his crew, roughing it in a hammock or bunk bed. He’d never even mentioned a desire for his own cabin, despite a captain having every right to one. Heck, even back in the days of the Going Merry, the second room had been given to Nami and treated as the women’s quarters, despite them at the time not knowing if there would even be any other girls.

I wonder why? Nami thought to herself. Did he just not see any reason for having a room to himself, or did he genuinely dislike sleeping alone? Maybe he and Ace always shared a room, so he slept better with company?

It drove home just how little she really knew about Luffy’s past. When they were reunited, she’d have to sit him down and get his whole life story; why Shanks had given him his hat, whether Garp and the Revolutionary Dragon were his only living relatives, tales about growing up with Ace…

Shaking herself out of questions about the past and plans for the future, she focused on the present. “Check the wardrobe for the boots and blankets—I’ll see if the desk drawers are watertight enough to keep any books from getting destroyed.”

Bepo nodded, shuffling over to the far side of the room while Nami set to work picking the locks of the desk drawers. Most contained sodden papers, leaking pens, a few animal claws on a string, and a waterlogged pocket watch, but nothing of real value or use.

However, inside the top left drawer was a metal box. Nami’s eyes lit up with belli signs as she imagined this could be where the captain had stashed his spare cash or prized pieces of treasure. Nimbly picking the padlock, she was disappointed to find just a few belli notes and a leather-bound journal. She stuffed the money in her bra for safekeeping and cracked open the log, hoping that it would at least tell her where the crew might have kept their treasure.

Captain’s Log: February 22nd Just made lucrative a deal with a stinking-rick noblewoman who wants a whole coat made of snow leopard fur, plus a pet baby snow leopard she can show off, but it’s not exactly easy to find those damn cats, especially outside the North Blue. Luckily, there’s a winter island not far from here with some conservationists studying them; maybe if we make nice, they’ll lead us to a few.

Captain’s Log: April 4th We may have found our ultimate meal ticket. Why search the Grand Line for exotic animals when you have a Devil Fruit user who can MAKE them? One of the conservationists can actually turn people into animals—he’s been using it to transform his fellow scientists so they can get close to the animals they’re studying. He’s an older man. Weak. Idealistic. Shouldn’t be hard to break him in.

Captain’s Log: April 10th Doc says he can’t really choose what to turn people into, but I think it’s bullshit. Yesterday, he turned the cabin boy into a calf, probably so he’ll think he’s useless. Joke’s on him, though—that veal was damn tasty. Good to know we’ll always have a supply of meat on a long voyage. Hell, maybe we could open a butcher shop on the side.

Captain’s Log: April 18th You know, I used to just put a bullet in an animal’s brain to kill it before skinning, but that always was such a bitch to clean up, plus it risked damaging the rest of the coat. But then Akio came up with a great idea—kill them with snake venom! It’s a lot less messy, depending on what you use, and I can save my bullets.

On top of that, Doc’s still trying to rebel by turning prisoners into useless animals like mice and hamsters. Except now we’ve got ourselves some excellent lab rats for making antivenom. Lemons and lemonade, right?

Captain’s Log: June 12th Doc’s “training” is coming along nicely. Sure, he still begs and pleads for us not to make him use his powers, but it doesn’t take much for him to give up anymore, and he’s finally giving us the animals we want. It helps that Haru was able to rig up one of the pullies to his cage so if he doesn’t comply, he gets a nice long dunk in the ocean to cool his head. Devil Fruit, am I right? I used to want one myself, but I’m starting to think it’s not worth the price.

Captain’s Log: June 18th Had to retrain Doc today. Thought he could get one over on me by turning a prisoner into a cobra. Too bad for him I was quick enough to shield my arm with Armament Haki. I think a long seawater bath will set him straight. Maybe break his leg, too, as a long-term reminder.

Doc really should be more grateful; it’s a win-win situation. We’re not killing or selling wild animals anymore, so his conservation work continues. And with all the fur, meat, and product we get out of it, we’re quickly getting filthy rich!

Captain’s Log: August 3rd Today was a huge score! We came across a lifeboat full of refugees. They were just floating there, helpless, packed in like sardines. Apparently, they’d been out there for days after their ship was attacked by a Sea King. We brought them aboard and promised we’d take them to the next island and provide food and shelter. They were so fucking grateful to be rescued they didn’t even care that we were pirates. Of course, their tunes changed once we started shoving them in cages!

We set Doc to work right away. The weakling whimpered a bit, especially when it came to the kids, but hey, it’s not like we’re breaking our promise; they’ll get to the next island. Maybe not in one piece, and definitely not human, but hey, them’s the breaks, right? It’s not like anyone will miss them, anyway.

Stomach churning with disgust, Nami couldn’t bring herself to do more than skim the later entries. Going by the dates, the captain had been making a massive profit off of selling exotic animal pelts, meat, venom, and pets for nearly two years. And he’d been forcing a man who’d devoted himself to protecting animals to do it.

No wonder the old man hated pirates. Had instinctively turned the Hearts into animals; he’d probably been scared out of his mind that they’d be just like the rest, ready to abuse and exploit him again. She could certainly relate.

“Nami?” Bepo’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts. “Are you ok? You’re whiter than I am!”

Shaking her head, she tried to give a reassuring smile. “Yeah, I’m fine. Any luck on the boots?”

He held up a pair of what were once very fancy snakeskin boots, except they were clearly falling apart in his paws. “Sorry; even if they were wearable, they’re a size eight. But that book’s in good shape! Think it’s something we can give the old man?” he asked excitedly.

Swallowing hard, Nami stared at the leather journal. “No. I don’t think he’d want to read this.” If Arlong had ever kept a journal detailing all the awful things he’d done to exploit her, she’d much rather see it burn.

The Mink’s ears drooped at her answer. “Nami, what are we going to do if we can’t get the supplies we need for the trade?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? They needed those things to free the crew and get them turned back into humans. But everything on board was garbage at best. They needed some kind of solution, otherwise Law and the rest of the Hearts could give up any dreams of sailing the Grand Line, much less finding the One Piece.

What would Luffy do in this kind of situation?

The answer was so obvious, she nearly laughed.

“We’ll give him supplies from the Tang.”

Bepo’s black, button-like eyes widened as his jaw dropped in disbelief. “What?!”

“He’s not asking much; just basic amenities. We can get some pots and pans from the galley. Law wears a size ten—we’ll give him a pair of his boots. There’s gotta be spare blankets, and the library has tons of books we can give him. Hell, according to this,” she said, holding up the journal, “he was a conservationist; maybe he’d like that encyclopedia set by Dr. Monroe.”

Twiddling his claws nervously, Bepo cautioned, “Law’s not going to like giving the guy who turned him into a leopard any of our stuff.”

“Well, if Law wants to be human again, he’ll have to deal with it. We’ve got plenty of cash to replace them. Hell, if antivenom goes for as much as you say, we’ll be making a profit from this trip, so it evens out. We’re not giving him anything we can’t easily replace on Atifakuto.”

He blinked, surprised at her determination. “You know, I always heard you were greedy and didn’t like spending even a single belli on anyone but yourself. But you’re being surprisingly generous.”

A deep, melancholy frown marred her beautiful face as she stared down at the journal. “That old man…he was a prisoner. His powers—his passion—was exploited by pirates for years. He was abused, tortured, forced to turn innocent people into animals to be sold or slaughtered…” A knot formed in her throat, but she stubbornly swallowed it down. “If all he wants is a few pots and pans and to live out his life alone, I’m willing to spend a few belli on that.”

A large paw gently patted her shoulder. “Ok. I understand,” Bepo replied sympathetically. “Should we go back to the ship?”

That would be a good idea, wouldn’t it? They didn’t need to linger. They could head right back to the Tang and start administering the antivenom.

Still, she didn’t want to risk anything happening to the glass vials if the ride back got bumpy. She didn’t want to use the blanket on the captain’s bed, though; it would disturb the bird’s nest, and enough animals had suffered aboard this ship. “We’ll check the crew’s quarters for those rags, then head back. But I think we can leave the lower level alone.”

“Ok, Nami,” Bepo said, giving a reassuring smile. “Should we leave the journal?”

She hadn’t realized she’d been holding the leather-bound book in a white-knuckled grip. She took a deep, steadying breath as she pried her fingers off the diary’s spine, tucking it into her knapsack. “No. We’ll give it to the old man—it’ll make good kindling.”

Knowing what kind of bastard lived in that room, Nami was more than happy to march out of the captain’s quarters onto the main deck. That man was a monster. She hoped he drowned in the storm, or got turned into something truly horrible, like a centipede, or dung beetle, or—

The sound of heavy flapping caught her attention, and Nami only just managed to duck out of the way as a pair of sharp talons attempted to rake across her face.

“Eeeek!” she cried, crossing her arms across her face defensively. She could feel heavy gusts of wind beat against her as the bird missed, swooping past to land on the deck with a heavy thump.

“Nami!” Bepo cried as he ran out, growling at the enormous black vulture that glared at them both. Its head was dark and bald, and the hazel eyes were so hatefully human there was no question that it was another transformed pirate.

“Stay out of our way,” Bepo said to it, taking a fighting stance. He wobbled slightly, the wood beneath him creaking and the slant not helping his balance, but his expression remained firm.

The vulture gave a drawn-out, hateful hissing sound as it spread its massive wings, indicating the ship.

“So you’re the captain, huh?” Bepo replied. “Well, your ship’s gross!”

Nami wanted to sigh at her friend’s terrible attempt at trash-talk, but she decided it was better to lead by example. “So, the old man turned you into a vulture, huh?” she asked, getting up and assembling her Clima-Tact. “Guess it’s fitting for a scavenger like you!”

The captain let out another hiss before taking off into the air, catching the wind and soaring above them, circling the ship as it formulated a plan.

Nami, however, wasn’t going to let that happen. “Cyclone Tempo!” she shouted, swinging her staff and launching a gust of wind at the bird. It did the trick of knocking it off-course, sending it further into the sky, but it also blasted Nami backwards with enough force to send her crashing through a rotten part of the deck floor.

She screamed as the wood splintered around her and she tumbled through the air. Luckily it wasn’t a long drop, and instead of landing on the floor she splashed into water, which was just deep enough to keep her from sustaining any major harm.

Sputtering, she stood up. The seawater reached her waist, and there were enough holes in the ceiling to let the moonlight in so she could see.

She wished she couldn’t.

Nami’s stomach turned as she took in the large room. There were cages everywhere. Many of them were broken and covered in barnacles after two months being submerged in salt water, but a few were still in decent enough shape that there was no doubt that the ship’s lower level had basically been a prison. To her left was a huge workbench covered in bone saws, knives for skinning, whips, chains, collars, and all sorts of other contraptions she didn’t care to identify.

Pirates like these reminded her why she didn’t believe people like Luffy existed for so long. They beat and tortured an old man, who just wanted to protect wildlife, for the sake of exploiting his powers. Then, they forced him to turn innocent people into animals so they could be sold as pets, skinned, or otherwise extorted.

This wasn’t right. Nami had no problem with animals being used for food or domesticated, but this was completely different, even if they hadn’t been humans first. Those pirates had gone out of their way to be cruel if the whips and chains on the wall were anything to go by.

“I’m beginning to think the old man’s inability to swim wasn’t the only reason he didn’t want to come back here,” she whispered to herself.

“Nami! Are you ok?!” Bepo called down, poking his head into the hole she’d fallen through. His eyes widened as he took in the cages, rusted saws, and chains. She could imagine that, even after two months being washed away by the brine, he could still smell lingering traces of blood and animal flesh.

When he bared his teeth in anger, Nami knew he’d managed to connect the dots of what exactly had occurred on the ship.

“I’m ok!” she assured, looking for the exit. “I’ll be right with you.”

“I’ll come down and get you!”

“Don’t risk it!” she cried, already wading towards the stairs. She could feel the rotten wood giving way beneath her with every step. “The floor can barely hold my weight, much less yours. Keep a lookout for that vulture, though!”

“Ok—” his response was cut off by a roar of pain, and through the gap between Bepo’s head and the edge of the hole Nami could see sharp talons grasping at his neck.

“Bepo!” she screamed, wading as fast as she could towards the stairs, stumbling over debris and holes and possibly even bones. She forced herself not to think about that—what mattered was getting upstairs and helping her friend!

Finally, she was able to pull herself out of the water, and the stairs cracked and broke beneath her feet as she ran up, but she didn’t care. When she got to the door at the top, she slammed her thin shoulder against it, fighting the rusty lock and hinges as they tried to keep her from the outside world. Not to be deterred, she braced herself against the corner of the stairway and unleashed another Cyclone Tempo to break them open.

The doors went flying, and Nami dashed outside in time to see the vulture take off, Bepo’s knapsack in its talons.

“No!” she screamed, futilely diving for the bird, but it was out of her reach. She was tempted to blast it down with a lightning bolt, but that would most certainly destroy the vials kept inside the bag. Another blast of wind would just push it further away, and her other attacks were useless.

As it flew towards the island, the vulture turned its bald head and gave a menacing hiss.

“What did it say?” Nami asked as she rushed to Bepo’s side. His neck and shoulders were scratched up, but his thick fur and skin had prevented them from going too deep.

“He said…he said ‘if you want the antivenom, bring us the doctor’,” he whimpered, looking confused. “But why would they want Law?”

“They don’t,” Nami replied sadly, staring at the island. “They want the old man.”

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compassroseproductions · 4 years ago

Photo

Everyone Dice: Session 002 - Sewer Surfin’

Art by @darkthare

[Image Description: The party of Everyone Dice is in or near a river after their foray into the sewers. Foremost and leftmost, Alois is talking to fish and feeding them from her trail rations. She is human, nude, and freckled, with long black hair that protects her modesty. In the center foreground, just to the right of Alois, Cordelia is rinsing her hair and watching Alois curiously. She is a half elf, and also nude and freckled, and her right arm bears an intricate sleeve tattoo that resembles an eye with patterns and music notes around it. In the midground and at the rightmost edge, Shay is tying her hair back into a ponytail. She is a half elf, with long black hair, and she is wading in her crop top and pants. She has intricate tattoos on her wrists. In the far background, framed in the space between Cordelia and Shay, Zaala and Burnie are sitting close to each other on the shore, conversing quietly.

End Image Description.]

Everyone Dice: Session 002 – Sewer Surfin’

“Welcome back everyone to the second session of Everyone Dice.”

The session opened with a discussion about the Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality which offered over 1000 games for a minimum price of $5 with all proceeds split between the NAACP and the Community Bail Fund. We also talked about Black Hole Entertainment Comics who featured Lynn in their first edition of Lift Off!

(The Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality ended with over $8 million raised!)

Kacey then quickly recaps the events of session one finishing with the party above the sewer grate.

“Who is going down the ladder first?”

Scottie: “Me!”

Erin: “Alois.”

May: “Cordelia is definitely last.”

The Party decides on their order as: Zaala, Alois, Shay, Cordelia and Burnie. As soon as Zaala’s feet touch the stone, she hears a gasp and sees a figure in tattered clothes flee into the sewers. Everyone is quickly distracted by who does and doesn’t have Darkvision (only Alois, Cordelia and Burnie do).

Scottie: “I’m a goliath, goliaths don’t have Darkvision, what do you want from me?”

Erin: “A likely story…”

Scottie: “I get to be harder to kill.”

Alois and Shay, halfway down the ladder, also see this figure and the three take off in quick pursuit. Cordelia and Burnie follow from a distance. Alois wild shapes into a boar to match Shay’s speed of 40 feet. Shay closes the distance between herself and the figure using step of the wind to push off of the walls. A gap in the path covered by rickety planks proves no trouble for everyone except for Cordelia and Burnie who slip into the muck beneath. Zaala stops to help them even when it means giving up the chase.

Scottie: “Given who Zaala is, she would be more interested in helping Burnie... and then also Cordelia.”

With a natural twenty, Shay closes the gap and tackles the target to the ground. Close behind, Alois piles on top of the figure and Shay. The party is now able to see that the figure is a short individual in dark tattered clothes that haven’t seen a wash in days or even weeks. Pockmarks and sweat cover his face.

Lynn tries to argue her case of using mending to remove the stains from Burnie’s skirt. “What if I cut the skirt where the stains are and then use mending, would that work?”

In a soft form of torture, Alois (still as a boar) begins blowing into the man’s ears while Shay questions him. He claims to have just been doing maintenance, but our insight reveals he’s obviously lying. He’s not wearing a uniform or insignia and tried to say he had not seen the zombies around him.

Alois manages to find an iron key in the man’s pockets. Shay ties him up and finds out his name (as far as he knows) is Tristan. Burnie tries to talk calmly to him, while everyone else offers help through intimidation. Tristan reveals he is in the sewers on a job, “to make that bastard Ulrich pay” but doesn’t really know the specifics of why. He was hired by Abigail Ulrich, the lord’s sister and in return she will cure his gravely ill sister.

Burnie suggests the party take him before the lord and Cordelia questions the point, but eventually agrees when Alois claims to have a secret plan. Zaala tosses the bound Tristan over her shoulder and leads the group back to the town square. A small crowd has gathered there, and a guard questions the party. After Alois siphons “an unnatural amount” of blood from Tristan and it follows the party in a fine mist. He is handed over to the guards.

Burnie: “Question, sir, do you know if there’s perhaps a launderer of sorts open…this late?” Guard: “A launderer…. This isn’t the capital missy. We’ve got a place where you can wash your clothes. No one’s gonna do it for you.”

Cordelia dumps her shoes in the sewer and the party decides to clean in the nearby river. Zaala rests on the bank. Alois and Cordelia are completely naked which draws curious glances from passers-by. Burnie and Shay are still dressed to some degree but are washing in the water.

Burnie: “Hello Shay, how goes the cleaning?”

Shay: “Um…. It’s going…”

The two discuss Shay’s homeland of Urtu. Shay calls it boring and dislikes the rules about how people can live. That is the reason she left, to be able to live the way she wants too (though exactly what that means is left vague). The bond over their shared travels and the new experiences they’ve had along the way. Shay is impressed by the prevalence and variety of magic outside of Urtu.

Alois uses talk to animals to converse with the small silver fish in the river. She easily befriends them with food. The noises of this conversation sound like soft waves and bubbling brooks, which captivates Cordelia. The fish tell Alois about the ‘rotten ones’ they’ve seen travelling nearby, coming from the west. They make a deal: Alois brings more food if the fish find out more information.

Burnie: “I am endlessly fascinated by your magic Alois”

Alois: “Oh neat.”

Zaala attempts to discuss Alois’ shape-changing abilities but finds the conversation difficult to progress. In Zaala’s tribe children are not gendered and are able to choose their own later in life.

Out-of-character the party gets distracted by how many secrets we’re all keeping.

Erin: “Session 49: We find out all of Alois’ secrets. Then Session 50 Cordelia betrays us.”

Scottie: “I thought session 50 we find out Cordelia’s secrets, not that she betrays us.”

Erin: “It’s both, it’s both. The secret is that she’s going to betray us.”

Back on track, dressed, and clean, the party walks back to the Lord’s manor. Roderic opens the door, surprised to see them so late, but lets them into the meeting room. A minute later Lord Ulrich joins them. Alois explains her plan. Using the siphoned blood, she can track Tristan and suggests they let him escape and follow him to Abigail’s base of operations. Lord Ulrich is unsure whether to trust the party over this plan and first wants to gather as much information as possible from Tristan. Burnie requests the Lord find Tristan’s sister so something may be done to help her illness, and he agrees. The conversation over, Lord Ulrich leaves and the party notices he is no longer carrying the walking cane with him.

A brief mid-session break happens.

The party heads back to the Blue Willow Inn and finds a table for dinner. Cordelia begins playing a soft tune under the party’s conversation. Alois calls Thana over and asks for “a bunch of kale soaked in saltwater”. Despite her confusion Thana agrees to have it ready in the morning. Alois then asks for a dinner recommendation as she’s “in the mood for anything”, they settle on six chicken pot pies which she’s never had before. Burnie orders 1 pot pie for herself and Thana offers to just bring a tray of pies for the group. Cordelia is not hungry but amused by the situation and insists on “all the pot pies you have”.

Thana: “All of them?”

Cordelia: “All the pot pies!”

Zaala: “Are you going to pay for that Cordelia?”

Thana: “That was going to be my next question”

Cordelia: “That depends how many ‘all of the pot pies’ is”.

Eventually they land on 13 pot pies for the table and some venison for the homesick Zaala (it’s not moose but it’s close). The ale is disappointingly weak for Alois as she’s used to Bralian moonshine. Zaala tries Burnie’s fruity wine.

Zaala: “It’s not…the worst alcohol I’ve tried.”

Burnie raises the cup in cheers “Well, to not the worst!”

Alois enjoys her pies and shovels them down. Burnie tries to make conversation while avoiding the day's events as they’re not “dinner appropriate conversation”. Shay mentions tackling Tristan earlier and she and Zaala begin discussing the combat training they both undertook. Shay was not allowed to officially ‘train’ in her homeland but watched others and taught herself. Shay says she wouldn’t be upset to go home but doesn’t really see the need, for the moment her place is the road. Burnie is listening to Cordelia play.

Burnie: “I’m curious Cordelia, do you draw your magic from the music you play?

Cordelia: “Yes, to some degree. Though it’s more that the music is the magic.”

Burnie: “I think I’ve heard of that before, but I’ve never met one such as yourself, or such as Alois. Honestly, I’ve never met any people like any of you before”.

Zaala: “It is my understanding that what I do is, not unheard of necessarily, but rare”.

Cordelia: “I am the only one like me, so I’m not surprised”.

Lynn, very suspicious: “The only one…hmm”

May: “Stop being suspicious of me!”

Lynn: “You say suspicious shit all the time”

AJ: “Now you know how I feel!”

Alois gets the party back on track and in character by asking “So, what’s with all those…clothes, Bunny?” Burnie was simply raised to dress that way ‘like a proper lady’. Cordelia laughs at this response.

Alois: “Why though?”

Burnie: “I’m afraid I don’t understand the question, it was just the way I was raised.”

Alois: “Yeah, but why?”

Cordelia: “She never learnt to question that.”

Burnie: “I’ve learned to question it, it’s just the way that things are done”

Zaala: “I think it looks quite nice!”

Cordelia (mockingly): “Like a proper lady”.

The conversation shifts to the different ways of dressing people are used too. Alois is not used to people like Burnie. Zaala’s people mostly dress like her as the cold doesn’t bother them. Shay dresses similarly but is used to a warmer climate. Zaala also says the raven feathers in her ears come from her mothers’ companion, as the raven is her family’s symbol. Alois proudly shares the wolf-pelt she’s wearing is her first trophy. Shay is surprised but impressed by this.

Alois shows off her bear trap: “You should have seen it, I caught it with one of these initially but it broke free. Now that I had some of its blood, I could track it and it was so fun! Took a few days but I got it!”

Shay: “I mean…yeah it sounds like fun. Camping? I bet it was like camping but you know, tracking an animal.”

Burnie inquires if blood-magic is common where Alois is from. Alois just repeats that she doesn’t understand the questions until Burnie gives up. Alois asks Cordelia what sort of music she plays, to which she responds, “All music”. Alois wants a demonstration.

Cordelia: “You want me to play you all of the songs?”

Alois: “Well you said you knew all of the songs.”

Cordelia: “Alright! I will do all of the songs, at once, for you.

Cordelia stands up and using both the lyre and her voice performs a cacophony of sound. It is unpleasant but after the initial shock, a melody forms within releasing a uniquely beautiful sound. Alois: “I’m sure it’s going to sound even better when I hear all of them separately”.

On the topic of music Zaala reveals she has a flute but cannot play it very well. It was beautifully carved from bone by Zaala’s sibling, Veleo. Their brother, Nakein, was the musician in the family, not Zaala. Her people find what they are good at and do it, for her that is protecting people and weaving. “Weaving is a good reminder that my hands are useful for more than just hurting those that would hurt mine.”

The party finishes dinner and eventually retire to their rooms for the night. Before heading to bed, Burnie says a prayer in privacy (Zaala takes a walk). She retrieves a collection of bones from and lays them out before her. The ceremony ends but she keeps her head bowed and softly speaks.

Burnie: “I hope you had a good day today. I hope you’re doing alright. I noticed earlier that you were with me when I healed shay in combat. Do you know her?

Fingers brush against her arm in response.

Burnie: “Do you trust her?”

A soft chuckle accompanies the bones as they shift to indicate “yes.”

Burnie: “Do I have something to be jealous of?”

More laughter, the bones return to their place.

Burnie: “Alright I understand. I love you”

A soft kiss is placed on her forehead and she finishes up for the night.

As Cordelia lays in bed, she falls into sleep enveloped by darkness on all sides. After a few moments it parts but she finds herself in a darker version of her room. Pulled outside, she rises and opens the door, only to step into the town square. The sounds of activity swirl around her but she is alone there. At its centre, in front of the beacon, a metal musical stand has grown from the ground itself. She approaches and with each step the sounds grow louder until a deafening peak. An invisible conductor taps against the stand, stopping the chorus and calling coloured lights to erupt in the distance. A large book of music appears on the stand, its pages blown over by the wind. A strange voice, constructed with a thousand other sounds speaks to her, saying simply “the chorus calls”. Cordelia takes the book, lands on a tune titled The Minuet of Mending. She begins to play but upon the first note, wakes up again in her bed.

The party awakes in the morning to the knock of a guard, called to talk with Lord Ulrich as soon as possible. They get dressed and ready before heading off to meet him. He greets them at the door, carrying his walking cane once again. Tristan was killed in the night by Roderic, who has now fled to The Geist lands west of town. He had a noose tied to his neck and was strangled. The party agrees to chase Roderic west. Ulrich offers a wagon of supplies to help them and asks for haste. Burnie asks if Tristan could have become a ghost, but the barrier of the beacon prevents undead being created within the town. Alois and Burnie decide to conduct an autopsy on Tristan’s body and leave town in the afternoon.

Session two ends here.

#everyone dice #dnd art #dnd #dnd livestream #dungeons & dragons #dungeons & dragons livestream #everyone dice recap #compass rose productions

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tired-writeblr · 6 years ago

Text

My first chapter

Sup dudes!

Some of you seem interested in my current wip, so I thought ‘what the heck, let them read some of it.’ Please bear in mind that it is the very first draft, and is by no means even near perfect, but I think it has some moments that shine through, and I hope you enjoy!

It was a relatively average night for a country village. There was a spot of rain, but the kind of rain that struggles to make a person even slightly damp, rain so light it’s almost as if it apologises for each little drop that hits. “Oops, I’m awfully sorry” the rain might say “I really hope I didn’t make a mark.” It’s awfully polite rain. The village, though small, had everything a person could need (as long as that person was a medieval peasant). It had some stalls to purchase goods, farms to work, a Blacksmith's shop, and the two most important buildings, that would remain a vital necessity for every Christian town, city and village for centuries; a place to worship, and a place to get drunk afterwards.

Candle light could be seen glowing in the church, even though it was in fact completely empty. The tavern, on the other hand, was packed. Of course, this shouldn’t be a surprise; drinking is a lot more fun than praying, even the priest and monks agreed. Hell, at a time when even drinking the water would probably kill you, getting drunk was one of the few pleasures people had. And since the water was likely to give you a minor case of death, it was much safer to drink wine and mead, and so getting drunk was just a daily fact of life. The tavern was quite large, with plenty of wooden stools and wooden tables, most of which were occupied by drunken men and women (and some drunken children). The owner, a large bald man with a crooked nose, light brown skin, and a very welcoming smile, was behind the counter serving people drinks, whilst his two daughters, Camilla and Magdalena, were running about carrying food and collecting the tankards. Camilla was a large woman, with her father's smile, a broad nose, long black hair in a bun, and brown eyes. Magdalena was thin, and had her father's crooked nose, but unlike her sister had brown hair in a long plait. Both were beautiful in their own way, and both were often the victim of unwanted advances from some of the non-local male patrons, which often didn't end well as Magdalena had a hell of a right hook, and Camilla often used it as an opportunity to pick the man's pocket.

The tavern was often a noisy place. That night was no exception. And one table a drunken coachman was telling tales no sober person would believe, but the men and women at his table were not sober and took him at his word. At the bar itself sat a large drunken monk with a big walrus moustache. He was one of those people that would be incredibly forgettable if it weren't for one single feature. For this monk it was his moustache. It was so memorable that people simply called him Friar Moustache, which he believed to be a term of endearment, but was in fact because not a soul in the village knew his actual name, not even the priest (who was at this point sat next to Friar Moustache resting his head on the bar, drunkenly mumbling incoherently). Friar Moustache was leading a choir of drunken men singing a popular drinking song. There were a lot of harrumph's and ho's, and a great deal of crude language and descriptions of various lewd acts. The only one more enthusiastic about the song than Friar Moustache was an old man, possibly in his early to mid sixties, known to the villagers as Ser Malcolm the White. He looked a bit like a mid-sized bear. Well more accurately, a mid-sized, shaved, pink, alcoholic bear wearing an almost shoulder length curly white wig, with a scruffy white goatee, a wrinkled face, and tired eyes. His accent was surprisingly similar to the modern Glaswegian accent. He had once been a knight who fought for glory and honour and place in the history books, but he never won any of those things. All he did achieve was reaching a ripe old age, and now the only fight he had was the one to get out of bed each morning, which was getting harder every day.

On a table near the back of the tavern sat a young man just holding a tankard. His skin was pale, his eyes were wide, and tired looking. He gazed ahead of him as if he were staring into the abyss itself. This young man was an unfortunate peasant by the name of Glenn, and earlier that day he had died, which, as it usually does for most people, was causing him a great deal of distress. Now, many may think ‘well, he doesn’t seem that dead, he seems pretty alive.’ And those who do think that would be correct. He was in fact very much alive.

***

“Don’t worry, I got this this” Glenn had said to the huntsman, as the boar began charging and he attempted to pull back the drawstring on his longbow. He most certainly did not. You see, longbows require a great deal of upper body strength, which weedy, little Glenn didn’t actually possess. Why he had been given a bow by his father, it’s hard to tell. Perhaps his father hated him, which actually seems quite likely; he did have several more capable siblings. He managed to pull the bowstring back only a little before releasing, causing the arrow to travel only a couple of feet in a downward arch until it landed on the ground in front of him, seconds before the boar collided with him, knocking him to the ground. It would have actually been a little funny if he weren’t about to die. The huntsman tried to stab the beast with, but he missed, and the boar itself narrowly missed him. He immediately decided the best course of action was to run away before he was killed horribly. The beast chased him off a little before turning back towards Glenn. By this point he had managed to get to his feet, but his head was still spinning, and he was very unsteady on his feet.

The boar looked more like a monster than anything else now. It looked almost the size of a cow, with huge sword length tusks either side of its incredibly large snout. Of course, it was not in fact that size, or even especially monstrous. It was an average boar, but in his panicked, and dizzy state, his imagination had gone mad. It didn't help that he had never actually seen a living boar this close before, so he had no memory to compare it to. He attempted to stagger away, with little success. He stumbled just as the beast charged at him again, and this time was immediately gored by the creature’s tusks. It was a rather unpleasant sight, huge gashes into the poor man’s flesh from the beast’s tusks. Spaghetti sauce or blood gushed out of the wound, covering his shirt. It was probably blood. Either way, it would stain. The world around him began to dim, and the last thing he saw was the bloody beast wandering off back into the forest.

Okay, so it wasn’t the last thing he saw. Not long after, he awoke to find himself still in the forest, and caught a glimpse of the beast’s backside as it wandered off. For a second he froze and held his breath, but when he was sure the boar wasn’t going to charge again, he sat up, and touched him side. He found two large, deep gashes from the boar's tusks on his right hand side that should have killed him as far as he was aware, but there was no blood. He stood up, and looked back to where he had been lying. His eye widened.

“Holy mother of god!” he screamed, on the edge of tears. Lying there, at his feet, was him. Well, more accurately, his body. Even more accurately, his very bloody body, with the exact same wounds he had. He stood there, staring at his own corpse for a while, sobbing in a very gross, ugly fashion.

He was disturbed from his silent mourning by the sounds of loud slurping. He turned to see a skeleton in a large black hooded cloak, and bright blue fluffy bunny slippers, drinking something from a ceramic mug covered in little colourful fish. The being was reading a newspaper (of course, Glenn had no idea what a newspaper was, as they wouldn’t be a thing for a few more centuries, he was also mostly illiterate, so it just looked like a piece of paper with squiggles one – which is all any newspaper or book is really) and hadn’t noticed him. He coughed a little to get the being’s attention, with no success. Whatever they were reading in the paper, they were engrossed in it. The being took another large, loud sip from his fish mug, and spoke. “Hmm, four down, five letters, unpleasantly bitter” said the being in an almost ethereal, other worldly voice. The being reached to put their mug down on a table that wasn’t there. The mug fell to the ground, and smashed. The being looked up from his paper, and down at the broken mug, then looked at Glenn, then back at the mug, then back to Glenn.

Now, without an actual face the being couldn’t really provide any facial expression that would suggest just how annoyed they were, but they were incredibly annoyed, and would have scowled at Glenn if possible, which it wasn't (no eyebrows). They were so annoyed that they gave off this feeling of deep, intense annoyance, that even the dimmest of people could pick up.

“Oh great” said the being sarcastically “another dead mortal, just what I wanted.” Glenn shuffled awkwardly and didn’t say anything. He tried to avoid making eye contact. He didn’t want to make the skeletal being even angrier by saying something stupid. It did not work.

“I was happily doing my crossword, drinking my coffee, but you just had to die, didn’t you?” continued the being, slowly becoming less sarcastic, and more openly angry about having been disturbed “bloody mortals, I hate this damned job.” At this, Glenn was confused.

“What job?” he inquired

“Oh for goodness sake, are you really that dim? Must I explain everything?” replied the being

Glenn shrugged and nodded awkwardly.

"It might help a bit" he said.

The being groaned at this and would have grimaced if they could have.

“Very well. I am Death, claimer of souls, destroyer of worlds, and you died” said Death reluctantly “I’m here for your soul blah, blah blah, take you to the afterlife and all that crap so you can be judged by some jumped up little prick” Glenn just stood there, slightly stunned by the fact that he was talking to death, but also a little underwhelmed. He expected more from Death, though he couldn’t tell you exactly he expected. He definitely would have preferred someone nicer.

“That it?” he said after a few moments of silence.

“I’ve been doing this for a while buddy, and honestly I can’t be arsed with this” replied Death tiredly. They stood in silence for a few minutes. Glenn wasn’t sure what to say to an immortal cosmic entity. Death was beginning to think they should have listened to their mother and become a butcher (though in a way, being the grim reaper isn’t all that much different to being a butcher, at least, that was what they had said to her).

“So, mister Death, sir” began Glenn ending the awkward silence.

“Now listen here mate” said Death, interrupting the recently dead person “I am a skeletal cosmic freaking entity that exists outside of space and time, I really do not have the time for the restrictive genders of you mortals”

“Oh, right, sorry” responded the recently deceased Glenn “you could be a bit nicer about it though, I have just died!.” He gestured to his still warm body, that was lying in a pool of his own blood (or spaghetti sauce, though probably blood), and was being pecked at by a bird that looked a bit like a raven, though since Glenn knew nothing about birds, especially ravens, he wasn’t entirely certain.

“Mate, shut up” said Death “damned mortals!”

“But what now though?” asked Glenn, ignoring Death, “do I go with you? Or am I stuck here?”

“Honestly, I don’t care mate, do what you want” replied Death exasperatedly “I just want to go back to my crossword, but now I have to deal with all the sodding paper work!”

“Could you just let me go back to being alive?”

“Not likely, I mean look” Death said as he pointed at the corpse being pecked at what may or may not have been a raven “you are pretty obviously dead.”

“Oh, right” responded Glenn gloomily “I understand.”

“Although” began Death craftily

“Although what?”

“You could just be mostly dead”

“How can I be mostly dead?” asked Glenn confused by the whole situation

“Well, you personally are obviously properly dead, but sometimes people are a little bit alive, and in those circumstances, I can let them go back to being alive”

“Okay!” responded Glenn excitedly.

“And thankfully there is no paperwork because you were alive” continued Death happily, using his skeletal fingers to do air quotes around the word alive “plus I don’t have to deal with you anymore, so go on back.” Glenn nodded and followed Death’s orders. He lay down on top of his body, and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, and then winced in pain. His eyes shot open, and he sat up, covered in his own blood, shirt ruined, glad about not having to be dead, but understandably still rather shaken by the whole experiences.

“Oh, by the way, don’t die again anytime soon, because if you do I’ll make you regret it” said Death threateningly before grabbing his newspaper and disappearing.

***

"Helloo, anyone home" said a woman's voice startling Glenn a bit, causing him to drop him his empty tankard. It was Camilla.

"Ah bollocks" exclaimed Glenn

"Watch your language Glenn" responded Camilla feigning offence

"Sorry, I was someplace else" explained Glenn

"No worries sweetie" she said reassuringly "is everything okay? You look like death." Glenn reached for his side. His shirt was still a little damp with his spaghetti sauce, I mean, blood. It was probably some sort of health and safety violation for him to be in the tavern, but they didn't have health and safety, which explains a great many things about the period, like why there were so many things that could end your life prematurely.

"Its...err...I'm fine?" he replied, though it came out as if he were asking a question.

"Oh, that's great sweetie" said Camilla, completely uninterested, she wasn't really paying attention. The tavern was busy and Glenn was one of those people who you could easily forget about. She grabbed his tankard and got back to work.

The singing had all but come to an end, even Ser Malcolm had stopped. The only one still singing, if you could call slurring most of the words and forgetting the other ones singing, was Friar Moustache. He was swaying a little one his stool and swinging his arm about, seemingly forgetting he was still holding a half full mug of mead. His big finish came, and he leant back on his stool and toppled over, flinging his mug into the air, which quickly came crashing down onto the head of another drunken patron.

"oi, Wheresh me drink gone?" slurred Friar Moustache "were in me han!"

He struggled to get back up onto his feet. Camilla walked quickly over to see what the commotion, and bent down. "Let me help you Friar" said Camilla. He smiled at her a great big stupid drunken grin.

"Yur a riight goodun" he replied taking her hand and letting her pull him up.

"You need to go home Friar" said the owner in a thick Lancashire accent from behind the counter "You've had a bit much mate."

“Iamsickofyourshit,” Moustache said, his words tumbling from his mouth in a rush of barely distinguishable syllables. The owner nodded to his daughter, and a couple of his larger, more sober patrons, who grabbed the drunken holy man, and tried to escort him calmly out.

“Gerroff me!” he said as he wobbled “I’m ash sober ash ‘m gonna git. And there nuffink - wait wait wait - nuffink you can do ‘boutit.” He shook free of their grasp, and ambled back to the bar without so much as hiccup in their direction. The owner was much less polite after the first attempt.

"Just carry him out" he ordered a couple of patrons.

"Gerroff! I'm a man o cloth" objected Friar Moustache "I'ma have words with god if ya don't gerroff." They ignored him, and carried him through the tavern, whilst the other patrons simply ignored what was pretty average for a Sunday evening.

They carried him through the door and dropped him on the ground. "Sorry Friar" said one of the men who had been carrying him. The friar rolled over and struggled to get up, but refused to any offer of help from those who had just chucked him out.

"Itsh fine, gerroff" he said "I can do it meself." The men looked at one another, shrugged and went back inside. The friar climbed back onto his feet and stumbled forward. He grabbed a wooden hitching post for support. He clung there, slack-jawed and slumped over, for a long time before he began staggering away from the tavern towards the church. He was planning to have a bit of holy wine before heading to bed. It was dark, and the polite rain had become proper rain. He was drunkenly mumbling angrily to himself about having been thrown out of the tavern. He was insistent that he wasn't that drunk, even though he was barely able to stand, or string a sentence together.

As he approached the midway point between the tavern and the church he noticed a very bright, almost blinding light out of the corner of his eye. He turned¸ squinted, and walked towards the light.

"Whasis? Whas goin on?" he exclaimed, though still slurring his words "Lord is tha you?"

Friar Moustache walked into the light, and fell backwards with a loud 'oof'

"Watch where you're going, drunk prick!" yelled a feminine voice, coming from the light, as it seemed to float round the friar and wandered towards the edge of the village. Moustache sat there for a minute, his mouth agape, shocked. After a few minutes of watching the light float away, he drunkenly climbed up onto his feet, looked towards the church, then at the tavern, then at the church again, made the sign of the cross, then staggered back towards the tavern.

#my wip #long post #writing #comedic fantasy #fantasy #indecentpause #wip

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mostfacinorous · 7 years ago

Note

Loki being "trained" by Thanos, pre-invasion (LT verse) ?

No Little Talks update today, but hey, how about a sort-of AU prequel? I could do a lot more of this, but it was getting long as it was, and I’m running out of steam for this tone atm. So…. Ta daaa~

The time he spent at Thanos’s side was odd– like a single conversation, circular, undulating, interrupted but unending.

Oh, he knew he was unimportant, but with Thanos’s attention on him, he could not help but feel that he was.

And it seemed that Thanos’s attention was on him always, more omnipresent and possessive than Heimdall’s gaze, the weight of his presence heavier for the power behind it.

Loki felt like a leech, feeding from that power, attempting to absorb some of it, to grow, once more in the shadow of a greater man than himself, but this time was different, this time– Thanos liked him, pitied him– wanted to help him. And all Loki had to do was accept that help.

So he did; over and over. And again and again he found himself bound, the chair he was on floating, as much of this world did; bits and pieces of long since ruined grandeur drifting across the landscape. Ghosts of the home that Thanos had crushed in his fist. And in Loki’s mind, he could picture Asgard much the same.

The deep pit that had once been his heart now held a spark of something dark and brilliant, an ugly burning thing that held no gentleness, no love of home nor person.

And with each test, that flame was fanned a little higher.

Someday soon, he would look inward and be able to see the bottom of that void, the one within him a reflection of the one he’d fallen through to get here.

And he wasn’t certain he’d like what he would see.

And when Thanos saw, when He burrowed as deeply into Loki’s veins as possible, if He judged Loki to be unworthy…

Loki had no illusions about what would become of him then.

“Loki!” Frigga called, rushing forward, Thor by her side and Odin watching dispassionately from his place on Hlidskjalf. “My son, you’ve returned!”

He reached towards her and the pleased smile slid from her face. He’d never seen so vicious an expression there before, but he recognized it well enough; he’d worn it more than once.

“You should not have.” She informed him coolly.

And then Thor launched himself at him. He tore Loki’s arm from his socket, and Loki could feel ripples of that pain everywhere– more than he should have. He snarled and regained his feet, launching himself forward with a knife in his one hand and teeth bared, despite the blood flow.

Thor swung at him with his own arm, and he would have laughed had he been less focused on Odin, on the way his expression hadn’t wavered or changed.

Loki managed to charge up the steps of the dias, his blade out, and when Odin swung Gungnir down, Loki continued forward, impaling himself on it and approaching still, the spear emerging beside his spine and feeling like burning, like poison, the torn skin nothing next to the acid that was eating away at him now from inside. The polished round of the shaft that followed, cool and smooth, was almost a relief in its wake. But despite the noise of the hall around him– the screams of the people of Asgard, the rush of boots and armor, when Odin spoke, his soft words rang in Loki’s ears and ripped the very breath from his lungs.

“No, Loki. you’re not worthy of such a death.”

And like that, it ended. He was ripped from the dream, the world– the test. His arm was where it belonged, though he still felt the pain as if it had been real, and the hole he’d made in himself– he could feel the edges of it bleeding, though he knew if he looked, the skin would be unmarred.

“You were slow. And weak. Try again.” Thanos said, and Loki pulled at his chains, the reaction one of an animal, without a thinking mind attached, but then The Other’s hands lowered over his face and Loki screamed and then he was–

–falling.

He landed, face first, in the jungles outside of the capital of Vanaheim. He had spent many warm seasons here as a young man- knew these wilds well. Knew how unlikely he was to meet any others.

“Loki!” Thor called, and Loki winced, preparing himself for the pain of a hammer or his hands on him, preparing for a fight. But the fight did not come.

“Brother, come! Sif has tracked a boar. We dine well this night!”

Thor waved his arm and charged away, and Loki was left confused.

What was he meant to be doing? Heading to the capital? Was he meant to take Vanaheim for his Master? Was he meant to– but all of that felt like a dream now, growing more hazy the longer he stood. And when Fandral clapped him on the shoulder as he ran past, Loki immediately moved to follow him.

“If we don’t hurry, Volstagg will have eaten it all before we’ve a chance to so much as build a fire!”

Loki laughed at that, speeding along, and when he reached them he stopped, dead in his tracks.

Sif and Thor, between them, carried a strong sapling, upon which dangled, trussed, naked and bleeding, Odin Allfather.

“I did say she’d tracked a bore, did I not? And the greatest of them at that!” Thor said, laughing. Loki’s stomach flipped.

“And you mean to… eat him? Your father?”

“Our father!” Thor protested, though he sounded playful. “Do not forget who raised you to be as you are now.”

Loki’s nostrils flared as he smelled smoke, and saw the fire that Hogun had built, with Volstagg and Fandral erecting poles to support the spit with.

Odin stared, his good eye unfocused and blood dripping from his head, misshapen by Thor’s hammer. He didn’t seem to know what was happening, and even if he did… he was gagged, what Loki had originally taken for rope instead his own entrails, streaming from his stomach and wrapped around his head.

Sif looked at Loki, viciously proud and as smug as he had ever seen her.

“What, have you developed a weakness for the poor thing?” She asked, snide mockery dripping from her lips.

This was wrong, Loki realized. He’d been here before– they’d had this conversation, but about a real boar.

And now, just as then, he was too much a coward to stop them slinging the spit over the fire.

Odin’s beard caught near immediately and burned away, his panicked cries the first sound he made. A sound Loki had never heard his father make.

“Odin Borsson, you were a worthy hunt.” Thor told him seriously.

This he’d done once, to try and make the death of the creature easier on Loki. It had been his first hunt, and he knew what came next.

“Let me.” he found his tongue and stepped forward, hand outstretched for the blade. “I did not get to track him, let me slit his throat.”

This had not been part of it before, but Loki remembered now who was watching. Knew what he was meant to be doing.

Thor pressed the knife into his hand and clapped him on the shoulder, proud of his younger brother, proud to let Loki take this honor, as undeserving of it as he was. Unworthy.

Loki stood, considering Odin as he burned, an with no hesitation turned and slit Thor’s throat instead, leaving the dagger where it lay, embedded in his neck, and reversed, pulling Sif’s sword from where it hung, sheathed in the inside of her shield. With two quick motions, he brought it up and through her, twisting to free it as he pulled away an rounded to face the Warriors Three.

Hogun crouched still, and Fandral looked shocked, but Volstagg merely laughed.

“I never thought you had it in you, little prince!”

“What?” Loki asked, confused by this, too.

Volstagg gestured.

“End his misery now, and Asgard is yours. My King.” He knelt, and Loki looked back to the fire, where Odin’s skin had begun to bubble and peel, the sounds of his shrieks an cries ragged and raspy, no longer as loud. Loki didn’t know when he had ceased to hear them.

He raised his sword, drew it across Odin’s throat–

And felt as Fandral’s rapier bit into him, as Volstagg crushed his throat in his large hands until he was dead, lifeless. And even still he stared from behind his eyes, felt as he was tossed into the fire, one more log to serve as Odin’s pyre.

“Long live the King,” Hogun murmured, and as Loki’s mind writhed in the agony of the flames, he listened as the warriors three laughed and drank, speaking of nothing of consequence until the fire devoured his every sense, and he jolted back to wakefulness, again under the hands of The Other and the watchful eye of his Master.

“Too trusting. Still so weak. Come, walk with me for a time.”

Thanos gestured and his daughters sprung forward to free Loki from his bounds.

He stretched, rolled his head on his neck, and stood, unable to trust his knees to bear his weight.

Thanos seemed not to notice, or at least didn’t comment, for which Loki was grateful.

“I want to believe in you,” Thanos told him. “You have such potential, such ambition. But you have been allowed to be soft, to grow these fears that hold you back. You realize that in order to be worthy of leading, I have to undo those bad learnings, don’t you?”

He glanced back and down, where Loki struggled to keep pace with him.

“Yes, of course.” Loki answered. “I had a different purpose before, it only makes sense that I need to learn how to properly… fit. In my new place.”

Thanos nodded, smiling, and Loki smiled back, glad that he had said something right.

“Good. We will continue your training. And you will grow stronger, more sure of yourself. You will cease to hesitate, cease to be confused. You will know what to do and when to do it, and then… then I will outfit you with a weapon beyond your wildest dreams. The better version of the ridiculous mallet that brother of yours swings around. Something more powerful, more precise. Better suited to you. When you’re ready.”

Loki nodded, and didn’t ask or try to guess when that would be. They both knew he had a lot of work to do before then.

At first, it was always Asgard, his own family who he was sent to kill. Or, at least, the family that raised him.

Slowly, they branched outwards. Jotunheim. Musphelheim. One by one, each of the realms were turned into a test, over and over until he could kill regardless of who stood before him. He lost count of the number of times he watched the light fade from Thor’s eyes, or heard the last breath as it escaped from Frigga’s lips.

He did not examine too closely his tendency to reserve the cruelest of deaths for Odin; he knew where the blame for him lay. And then he grew worse; conquering without killing them, instead forcing them to watch as he twisted everything they loved and built it in his image.

Thor especially– when Loki was first sent to Midgard, he made good on every threat he’d made, fighting Thor on the bifrost, and then some.

Wicked, cruel things that he had never thought himself capable of, he did without so much as blinking.

And that was when Thanos decided to raise the stakes.

“You never truly forget where you are, do you?” He asked one day, the two of them sitting and watching his daughters spar.

Loki was glad not to have been asked to join them; the two were ruthless, his favorites always pitted against one another, since either could and would kill any of the rest.

The little blue one always lost, and the next time Loki saw her, a bit more of her was gone, replaced with stronger stuff– metal, mostly, though of a make that Loki had never seen, and grafted to bone and skin in a way that could only be painful.

She reminded him of himself, though he’d never put voice to it. Day after day, the longer he was here, the more he could feel pieces of himself being chipped away.

“I never forget whom I serve, if that’s what you mean.” Loki answered, the words smooth and easy.

“But you never fully believe yourself to be in the world we place you in, either. You remember too well. It seems too much like a game, that way– not real enough.”

Loki shivered, the pain he experienced always more than real enough, often compounding and being allowed to build upon itself for days or weeks on end.

He didn’t say that, though.

“I will take it more seriously. How can I prove myself?” He asked instead.

“Just throw yourself in. Let my creature deeper into your mind. Do not seek to hide from me; you know you cannot, anyway. Let us shape you into something better– something worthy of ruling.”

“I will.” He promised, bowing his head and resolving to give him what he wanted, whatever the price.

What Loki gave could not be taken from him, and he had learned that lesson well.

When he lashed out, no longer waiting to tell if it was a dream or a memory or a test, when he lashed out whether he was waking or resting, tied to the chair or approached by one of Thanos’s people… when he had to be chained down with stronger chains and more of them, then, finally, he was given the sceptre. It was everything Thanos had promised, and Loki could feel its power singing through him the moment his fingertips touched the Uru of its shaft. He stared into the swirling blue glow of its stone, and thought he had never seen anything so beautiful.

And what he could do with it…

He made Thor kneel to him, forced him to lead his army. He used it to make a puppet of Asgard’s king, to make him admit his wrongs and praise Loki’s worth, his abilities.

Thanos allowed this, the playacting that he did, with the same amusement as a parent watching a child with a new mount, or some new toy. He thought this was the end of it– that he was ready. That now he would be sent forth to conquer.

But then the real work began.

He conquered Vanaheim, enslaving eighty thousand minds in the process. The people cheered his name, but the celebration was cut short when his eyes were yanked open and his mind stuffed back into his body. It felt like he’d been assembled wrong, an energy buzzing through him that felt like one of Thor’s stray lightning bolts.

“Brute force is your brother’s trick. I expect you to learn elegance and precision. Lean how to topple the keystones to make everything else fall into place at your feet. Rely on the sceptre less nd on your mind more.”

He was sent to Asgard, and he bound Frigga to his side with the force of the sceptre, but somehow Odin stopped him still, and the pain of that failure stayed with him through the next ten realms he was sent to.

His mind felt like it was fracturing under the strain, and he no longer went for walks with Thanos, watched games with Thanos. No longer slept or ate or recovered.

They sent him to Musphelheim, dropped him into an endless field of flame, where he was forced to ensorcel his boots lest the melt to become part of the ground he stood on, and take his feet with them. He wandered, becoming familiar with the landscape in a way that he would never have thought possible before– perhaps this one was real?

The directions in the worlds he was sent to often worked as they did in dreams, a turn and there would be a wall before him, turn back again and it would be gone.

But things here stayed steady, and he thought… he thought for once he tasted freedom. A distance from Thanos’s control.

He didn’t explain, really, what He wanted, what He expected, but Loki know. Destroy what he had to, take what he needed. Conquer, as he must.

Loki bound a group of the largest, most brutish fire demons he could find to his side, despite the effects that had on his body, the blistering and dehydration that resulted in him heaving. But his stomach had been empty for so long now, there was nothing for it to produce.

He won, that time, somehow, and was immediately tossed into the next scenario.

He found himself on Midgard, instantly recognizable for the ugliness of his surroundings, manufactured and clean but plain. As soon as he gained his bearings, he attacked, firing at the man who presented himself as their leader.

The others began to fire at him as he attacked the foot soldiers, and he could not tell if their weapons were useless (he doubted it; Thanos made everything hurt more than it should) or if he’d perhaps finally stopped being able to feel pain (more likely, he thought.)

He took out everyone around, then caught the best of the fighters and tied him to himself with the scepter. So many bodies, so many more dead, but what did it matter? This was like every other time, and when he failed or succeeded, it would end, and the next would start.

So he took his time, tried to be smart about it, like Thanos wanted him to.

Those left standing, he bound to him, until he felt the pull of something– the tesseract– he was supposed to recover it, and any other item of power he came across.

Gifts for Thanos. Tools. He wanted them, needed them, and so Loki did too.

“Please don’t.” Loki said. “I still need that.”

And he took what He needed.

His soldiers, scepter-bound, proved instantly more helpful here than they had ever before, more capable of independent thought, and as they ran from the explosion, Loki stumbled, his eyes widening.

He’d held pain in his body, so much pain, and never had it affected his performance, his abilities. But this…

This time was different.

He clung to their transport vehicle and watched the destruction that they left in their wake.

This was real. His war had begun.

#Loki #MCU #Thanos #Little Talks fic #that writing thing I do #kinda gorey #ok so AU where...

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chojimaru · 7 years ago

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@officer--dimples

First thing first. Making a new post because of how insanely long the other one is. I apologize for not replying sooner. I will attempt to be civil with you here because you obviously put a lot of work writing this.I also won’t reply to every single topic but I will try to cover what the main points are.

First we must define Assault Rifle. An Assault rifle is capable of automatic fire, uses detachable magazines, uses an intermediate cartridge, and is used in the act of assault. Assault is a verb. A comb can be an assault comb if you attack someone with it. Intermediate cartridges are rather low powered. The rounds themselves are pretty bad at killing Human sized animals because of this. The M16 when first used in the Vietnam was hated by soldiers because it would poke holes in the enemy while the M14(which used a much stronger, heavier bullet) would kill a man in 1 or 2 shots(more on this later). Automatic weapons are extremely regulated in America. More regulated than all guns in Australia and Britain and most countries you are likely to see cited for their gun crime rates. Unpaid parking tickets, unpaid child support, a pending trial, a divorce, and even being put on trial and found innocent are all possible ways to be kept from owning an Automatic weapon. Many things can result in your weapon being taken away. You must always have the physical license from the ATF with the gun at all times. You can’t have it in the car in the parking lot when you are at the gun range. The ATF can inspect your house and take it away for no reason. You must have an approved gun dealer in your will who will take possession and usually destroy the gun when you die. You must destroy the gun under certain circumstances. An AR 15 is not an assault rifle. An M4 or M16 used in combat is.

Let me explain why the AR 15 is one of the best guns for self defense.

This is 5.45 bullet that has been cut in half. It’s not the bullet commonly used in AR 15s but it operates in the same manner. It has a hollow cavity in the tip. The basic function is that this bullet travels very quickly and the tip breaks as soon as it makes contact with anything. Whether it be a wall, an animal, a human, or a tree branch that tip caves in when it makes contact and the bullets flips like a kicked American football. This decreases the energy of the projectile by a lot. This means that a 5.56 or 5.45 are the best rounds to use in neighborhoods, apartment buildings, or in homes with children around. This bullet will hit drywall and be less deadly. A 9mm pistol bullet can go through an entire house. a .30-30 bullet commonly used to hunt deer can go through multiple apartments. You could hit a home intruder and a shotgun slug can go through him and into the neighbors house.

On the topic of hunting. AR 15s chambered in .300 Blackout are the premier way to dispatch our wild boar invasion in farm lands. Pigs can destroy millions of dollars in property, crops, and livestock damage. They are an enormous problem. AR15s are needed because they are light, quick, and not too bulky so a farmer can have one in his truck and use it as soon as he sees boars. AR15s in 5.56 are great for hunting other animals like skunks, raccoons, wolves, coyotes, and rabbits to name a few.

Moving on to the topic of fear. Fear is an emotion and is therefore relative. Right now I am feeling cold. If someone in a colder area like Alaska or Norway is standing in front of a warm fire place covered in thick blankets while a blizzard rages outside does it mean it is warmer in Alaska than in Texas? Of course not, it just means I need to put some socks on. You feel safe, good for you. I do too, good for me. I am not living in fear, I am hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. I have canned goods because I once went with limited food for weeks during and after a hurricane. I drive a car with lots of safety features because I know people who died in car crashes. I brush my teeth because I know people in their 30s with dentures. I have a gun because my people were unarmed when they were murdered by their government. It’s one of the reasons my family came to this country and it’s one of the reasons those problems did not.

Regulations are great. I used the regulation that says food products need to be labeled with expiration dates today. I would have had some bad milk and been sick for hours without that. I don’t mind a government, but I do mind a lot of government. The police do not prevent crime, they arrest criminals after they have committed crimes. Look up what the average length of time it takes for police to arrive on scene in your area. The answer, no matter, what is too long. In the time it takes you for to pull out your phone, dial, the operator to respond, and the police to drive is less than it takes for a human to be beaten, kidnapped, murdered. 5 minutes may be ok if you call them because someone was spray painting a wall, but that is not ok if your friend is bleeding out. Literally in this recent case that no doubt inspired OPs post, an armed policeman stood outside of the school mere feet from the shooter and did nothing as people died. Your government does not care about you and they do not protect you. They try, but they fail too.

“Please educate me, if I get this wrong: you want to defend yourself with a gun. Why is that? Because you fear that one could attack you with the gun they are allowed to carry, right? You want a gun bc others have a gun”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUk3HEqjf8c

This is Dutch MMA fighter Alistair Overeem. He is 6′3 and in his prime was 3% body fat and weighed 280 pounds. He is famous for his ability to get knocked out in devastating fashion. He’s a good fighter despite this, but hitting him in the right spot just puts him to sleep. Him and his brother(a less skilled, less fit mma fighter who has more knockout losses than some UFC champs have fights) once beat the living shit out 5 security guards armed with clubs. The five guards needed emergency care, Allistair hurt his hand because he punched a guy in the face and cut himself with his victims teeth. In a different incident he pushed a lady and with one hand sent her flying and she was injured after hitting some poles. Would you fight this man? I know it’s a extreme, he’s bigger and more well trained than 99.99% of the world but a guy even half as big and half as skilled and with twice the ability to make a punch would you say with confidence you could fight him off? Let’s think of someone else. Do you have an elderly person in your life or a very young person? A 5 year old nephew, a 70 year old grandparent? Not to mention any disabled people in your life. Maybe even people who are currently sick with the common cold or have a stubbed toe or pregnant or dealing with period cramps right now. Do you think you could beat Allistair Overeem in a 1 to 1 fight? Do you think every single person you care about could beat him at any given moment? If a man that big and even a fraction as skilled came into your home would you be ok? Would the police respond in time? The answer is no because even if you managed to call the police before he was face to face with you he has choked people until they fainted or knocked them out in less than a minute despite them being his size, strength, nearly his level of skill, and fully prepared to fight him. On the opposite end of the spectrum, do you think you, barring any personal thoughts and restraints could stop him if he attacked you and you had a weapon whether it be a gun or a taser or pepper spray? Which would you pick? Should training martial arts, taking steroids, and lifting weights become illegal?

“Let me tell you a secret: if the other isn’t allowed to own a gun, you don’t need a gun” Allowed is the keyword. Allowed is very different than has or owns or uses. In America we are a free people. My government doesn’t allow me to do things. We allow the government to do things. We allow the government to tax us, we allow the government to operate, and we allow the government to arrest and punish people who do certain actions. You have defined what freedom means to you. That is not freedom but you are free to think that way and to desire your life be that way.

On the topic of race and countries of origin and all that let me just go on a little tangent here. My Dad’s side is white, Norwegian mostly but I have a great grandma who’s ancestors were in the original US Navy under the great John Paul Jones. The cannons on said ship were privately owned as were all the small arms. They even had a gun that shot multiple bullets in a row. It wasn’t as advanced as an M60 machine gun but it was considerably faster than a musket. These people knew inventions were coming that would do things more effectively. Whether it be better ships, better guns, or better way of communication. You believe the change of technology should effect the right to bear arms. Do you believe the government should restrict speech? Do you believe people should be incarcerate for speech? If so, what kind of speech? Do you think it would be ok if in 20 years you holding that opinion became illegal and that put you in jail?

Finally let’s talk about guns and swimming pools and cars. Swimming is a recreational activity, exercise, sport, and therapy. Cars are transportation, sport, and hobbies. Guns are also used in sports, hobbies, exercise, recreational activities, and therapy. Earlier this month a friend told me a child in her neighborhood(a three year old) fell into a swimming pool and drowned. Last year a guy in a truck ran over and killed a lot of people in London. Last week a guy with a gun killed a lot of students at a school and at that same event a policeman with a gun stood outside without confronting him. Should we attach floaties to every child? Should we outlaw trucks? Should we outlaw guns? Sorry for any spelling errors.

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hecvenslight-blog · 7 years ago

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thrýlos (legend)

i. ATALANTA was an Arkadian heroine--a huntress and a favourite of the goddess Artemis. She was exposed by her father at birth in the wilds but was suckled by a she-bear and afterwards found and raised by hunters.

ii. Atalanta swore to defend her virginity and when two Kentauroi (Centaurs) burst into her grove, she slew them with arrows. She later took part in the voyage of the Argonauts and defeated the hero Peleus in wrestling at the funeral games of King Pelias.

iii. When King Oineus (Oeneus) summoned heroes to destroy the Kalydonian (Calydonian) Boar, Atalanta answered the call and was the first to draw blood. Meleagros (Meleager) awarded her the prize of the skin but his uncles protested and tried to take it from her by force. The hero slew them for the affront.

iv. Atalanta was eventually reunited with her father Skhoineus (Schoeneus) who insisted that she wed. The heroine reluctantly agreed insisting that a suitor must defeat her in a race and that the losers be put to death. Melanion--or Hippomenes--however, sought the help of the goddess Aphrodite who provided him with three golden apples to cast before the girl in the race. When Atalanta stooped to retrieve these, she was slowed enough to allow the hero to emerge victorious. Their marriage was a short-lived one, for Hippomenes neglected to pay Aphrodite her dues. She cursed him and he was compelled to lie with his wife in the sacred precinct of Zeus, Rhea or Artemis where an offended deity transformed them into lions.

v. Atalanta's name was derived from the Greek word atalantos meaning "equal in weight"--perhaps a reference to her success in various contests with men.

source for atalante’s lore.

i. Maria was born and raised onboard the Space Colony ARK. Before she could visit earth, however, she contracted Neuro-Immuno Deficiency Synfrome, an incurable and inevitably fatal disease. Due of her illness, which left her frail and weak, Maria needed constant attention, so she could not leave the ARK's hospital, leaving her confined in space. Despite getting medical help though, Maria only grew weaker over time. While looking down at the earth from the ARK, Maria developed an interest in it and longed to go there.

ii. Onboard the ARK, Maria was looked after and cared for by her grandfather, Gerald Robotnik. Maria came to mean everything to Gerald, and the two of them would work and live together onboard the ARK. Maria also befriended a young Commander, whom she would play with.

iii.In an attempt to save Maria's life, Gerald agreed to work on Project Shadow, a medical project for creating an immortal life form, in hopes that he could make a cure for Maria's illness with the creature they sought to make. Gerald's research eventually led to the creation of Shadow the Hedgehog, who Maria befriended and grew very close to. While raised together, Maria remained by Shadow's side and they would spend their time together gazing down upon the earth, wondering what it was like and wishing to go there.

iv. When the Artificial Chaos went on a rampage onboard the Space Colony ARK, Maria sought out Shadow to help save the ARK. Shadow complied to Maria's wishes and the Artificial Chaos crisis was soon after averted. At some point, Maria joined Gerald when he was making a contingency video for Shadow to tell him about how he was meant to defeat the Black Arms, where Maria promised to help Shadow protect the world alongside him.

v. Some time after the completion of Project Shadow, Maria's peaceful existence was shattered when GUN attacked the ARK to eliminate everything and everyone related to the project, as they had come to believe that Project Shadow was too dangerous. Meeting up with her grandfather during the attack, Maria was entrusted with Shadow by Gerald, who told her to escape the ARK with Shadow. While Gerald distracted GUN, Maria and Shadow tried to escape the raid, but Maria was unwilling to leave the other researchers in the captivity of GUN and pleaded Shadow to help them. After Shadow had made his decision, they continued onward, but were attacked by a Heavy Dog which Shadow defeated.

vi. Eventually, Maria and Shadow got to the ARK's escape pods. There, Maria saved Shadow by initiating his escape pod's launch with him in it, but was mortally wounded by a GUN Soldier's gunshot in the process. With her last strength, Maria pleaded to Shadow to protect the world for her sake and give everyone a chance to be happy, just as he was jettisoned from the ARK. As Maria perished, her parting words were "Bring hope to humanity."

vii. Maria's death was an event that deeply struck those close to her and would have a strong influence in several conflicts that would determine the fate of the world. Shadow, who witnessed Maria's death first-handed, was traumatized by this sight and came to loathe humanity for what they did. The Commander also suffered a deep loss which made him develop a life-long grudge at both Gerald and Shadow for inadvertently killing her. However, none was more affected by Maria's death than her grandfather, Gerald, who went mad with grief and made a plan to destroy the world to avenge her. Before he went insane though, Gerald made Maria's last words the keywords that would activate Emerl's free-willed emotions-based AI.

viii. Maria's last request for Shadow to protect the world and its people would be a driving force in the hedgehog's life, which Shadow made the promise to keep despite his loathing of humanity. When Shadow was reawaken nearly fifty years later though, his subsequent actions were motivated by avenging Maria's death (due to Gerald manipulating his memories) by destroying the human race. It was not until the eleventh hour that Shadow remembered Maria's dying wish, and he aided Sonic the Hedgehog and his allies in stopping the very plan he had set into motion, seemingly sacrificing his life in the process. Shadow survived his ordeal only to lose his memories, with the exception of a disturbing image of Maria being shot. When the Black Arms invaded and set Shadow out to rediscover his purpose, Black Doom would use Maria's demise at the hands of the humans to sway Shadow to his side. Fortunately, Shadow learned of his true purpose from a final video message from Maria and Gerald, which gave him the motivation needed to obliterate the Black Arms.

source for maria robotnik’s lore.

#( ◇ ) || ooc

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bubblesthemonsterartist · 7 years ago

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Dead Men Tell No Tales, Part I

The Squire and the Apprentice

“Match!”

Mitsuhide doubles over, gasping. Overhead, the sun bears down through a clear winter sky, his sweat-soaked clothes clinging to him.

A stinging hand claps the center of his back, sending him into a coughing fit.

“Not too bad, boy.”

He gasps, dragging freezing air violently back into his lungs. “Ow.”

“Stand upright,” Sir Yasou instructs, tugging at the collar of his shirt. “Just because the battle is over doesn’t mean the danger has passed.”

Mitsuhide huffs, licking his dry lips, and looks up. “But this!” he pants. “This is practice.”

Bushy grey eyebrows raise, amusement crinkling the lines on his face. “Is it?”

He opens his mouth to respond just as the wood of a practice sword sweeps the back of his knees. The world tilts and his teeth chatter as he lands flat on his back, knocking his precious wind out of him. Heaving, he winces when the dull edge of a wooden blade presses against the soft of his throat.

“You called match,” he complains, wheezing, but puts his hands above his head in surrender.

With a chuckle, Sir Yasou pulls away. “Come on. Get up before I change my mind about you being ready for a real sword.”

~ ~ ~

Obi sighs, looking down from the rooftop and towards the practice yard. “Why are we doing this again?” he asks, twirling his knife in lazy loops through the air. He misses his catch and the blade hits the tiles with a soft clank.

Muunokhoi frowns from his perch. “Why are we doing what?”

Reaching for his blade, he nods towards the knight and squire leaving the yard. “This,” he replies. “What did he do?”

Metal whistles, whipping through the air and the tile shatters where his blade lay. Obi flexes his hand, alarm making him double check to ensure his fingers are still in one piece, before he follows the chain of the kusari-fundo to the face of the older boy.

Muunokhoi’s eyes are black and cold.

“Don’t ever question our Master like that again.”

~ ~ ~

Sir Yasou loves ceremony. And he loves teaching. Tonight he gets to do both.

The lecture goes on for at least two hours. There’s a difference in the weight and therefore a difference in proper hold. He must relearn how to move as if the blade it is part of his body; how to sit and how to stand with it attached to his hip; how to salute nobility and royalty properly; how to lay it to bed at night as one would a beloved.

Mitsuhide tries to give his Master his full attention—he does! But all he can focus on it the way the waves of folded steel catch in the light, its sharp edges slicing the air cleanly in two. When he moves his body in tandem with the blade, the leather grip soft under his palm, it sings a song all its own.

“You should give it a name,” the old man comments.

Mitsuhide blinks, distracted. “Hmm?”

Sir Yasou chuckles. “A name. You should think of one and keep it secret between the two of you. If only you know it, your sword can never be turned against you.”

He frowns, pensive, and stares back at the blade. Hmm…

~ ~ ~

Obi folds his arms, hugging himself tight, and bouncing his legs anxiously. Muunokhoi sits close, breathing fogged air into his fingerless gloves. The evening is cold and getting colder. He hates winter. He hates Sereg more. At least back where he came from the winter was dry.

“Let me go,” he mutters into his scarf. “I’ll be in and out before you know it.”

His mentor glances at him sideways. “We go together.”

“I’ve done this kind of thing before,” he snaps, but he feels… strange. Unsettled. Like there is something in the wind.

A hand, all bark and no bite, thwacks him upside the head. Obi glares. “Killing someone who is trying to kill you and killing someone to put coin in your purse are two different things,” Muunokhoi claps back. “We go together.”

~ ~ ~

After the circumstance comes the pomp and now he sits at a table among men, taking an enthusiastic bite of a drumstick. Grease stains his fingers, running down his chin, and a full pint of beer warms his belly. His sword leans against his chair at his side.

“How are you feeling, young squire?” Sir Kvirin says, refilling his drink with a twinkle in his eye. Sir Yasou gives the other man a withering look. “Not every day a Master gifts his student with a sword.”

Mitsuhide’s chest puffs up, his clean hand palming the hilt. “It’s amazing,” he replies, and a few fond chuckles echo across the table. “It doesn’t feel real.”

“Oh, it’s real alright,” Sir Yasou says wryly. “Cost few coins, too.”

“I’ll be sure to use it to protect you, Master,” he grins, taking a gulp of his ale.

The table erupts with laughter.

Sir Yasou smiles, ruffling his hair. “It would be better used protecting the Throne.”

~ ~ ~

Obi watches the sky slowly stain black, stars coming out one by one. Working his fingers so they don’t grow stiff with cold, he is suddenly struck, remembering the stories they told him as a boy. Idly, he wonders if his spirit will be permitted to join them after tonight.

Idly, he wonders if his soul was ever that pure.

A gust of wind comes from the north, sweeping down the rooftops and carrying away his thoughts.

In the silence, his stomach growls. Loudly.

Muunokhoi grins, all teeth, before raising his cowl to cover his face. “They said we’ll get more rations when we get back tonight.”

Obi perks up. “Who told you that?”

“Master. The others,” the other boy shrugs. “They always do when you come back from a job. If we’re lucky, they’ll even share their booze.”

It’s like the cold and the hunger no longer even exist. “Let’s go!”

~ ~ ~

He’s warm. And happy. He leans hard against a solid form that guides him through the torch lit hallways, an arm over his shoulder to keep him upright and his sword tucked under his arm.

“You should never leave Kvirin in charge of your cup,” Master grouses.

“He said it was ceremony!” Mitsuhide’s voice cracks. “Said a swordsman should also be able to hold his ale.”

Sir Yasou snorts, turning him towards the door to his room. “We’ll see how well you hold your drink tomorrow when I put you through your paces.”

He groans. “But Master!”

“To bed with you,” he smiles. “I’ll see you at sun up.”

~ ~ ~

He slips the slender pin between the wooden panes of the window, working it slowly until he feels the soft click of the lock lifting. Feeling a short burst of pride, Obi turns the handle, opening the window to the room. He grins back at Muunohkoi who rolls his eyes.

Pssh. Jealous.

Muunokhoi hooks his hand on his shoulder, pulling him back so he can slip into the room ahead of him. Obi pulls a face, annoyed, and follows.

It’s like a slap in the face, the room is so warm, and pinpricks dance across the exposed skin of his face and hands as his body attempts to catch up. He clenches and unclenches his fists, rolling his joints so the discomfort passes quickly. It had been so long since he’d been in a room this comfortable, it was almost a shame that they couldn’t stay longer.

A loud, rolling noise starts the both of them, their heads snapping towards the heap of blankets in the corner. Heart in his throat and blade in his hands, he watches as the pile grows smaller before the noise comes again. The air pours out of him.

The old man’s snoring.

He glances over at Muunokhoi, who has already forgotten about their target in lieu of the rings and golden chains on the writing desk. His eyes flicker up, catching Obi’s stare, and he gestures with his chin towards the old man. Obi’s eyes widen while the other boy turns back towards the table, sweeping the jewelry silently into his pouch. He glares meaningfully when he glances back and sees that Obi hasn’t moved.

Go, he mouths.

Obi swallows, his stomach turning sour, and looks towards the sleeping man.

He had been talking himself up about this for weeks, insisting that he was ready, and Master finally relented, saying he would give him something easy.

And this was easy.

Silently, he adjusts his grip on his blade and approaches the bed.

The knife is sharp. He always makes sure it stays that way, but now he worries that perhaps he hadn’t sharpened it enough. The man is larger than any game that he’s had to clean, but he’s pretty sure that all he needs to do is draw the edge of the dagger over the knights throat with just a bit more effort than he would use for a downed deer or boar.

He stills at the bedside, the must of clean linen and age filling his nose. Even with the deep groves on his face, the man looks… childlike. Innocent. Sleep gentles his features, making him seem like a painting that lines the walls of the holy places in this country.

Memories of the man sparring with his disciple flash through his memory and Obi’s stomach tightens to the point of pain.

Adjusting his stance, he lifts his blade, coming to a stop right before the sharp tip can touch skin. His hands start to shake so he grips the blade more firmly. Taking a deep breath, he bends his body forward, moving to strike, and-

And-

Muunokhoi was right.

“What are you doing?” a voice hisses in the dark.

Obi shakes himself. Where would he go? What would he do? He would be cast out at the very least, if not killed himself if he couldn’t even do this right.

The pain in his stomach has moved up to his chest.

Dragging another deep breath into ever tightening lungs, he moves in to strike again.

His body locks up.

“Goddammit Obi, just slit the pig’s throat.”

The old man shifts, groaning, and Obi freezes as clear blue eyes open groggily and focus on him.

He can hear Muunokhoi surging forward and he panics. Muscles unlock and drive down, a spray of blood hitting him in the face as knife separates flesh and he sputters, turning his head.

Weathered hands grip his wrists and Obi screams.

~ ~ ~

Mitsuhide’s eyes snap open. That was—

Scrambling out of bed, the floor tilts under his feet as he reaches for his sword and stumbles towards the door. Loud crashes echo through the hall and he rushes, pushing the door to his Masters chambers open wide.

Wood cracks against the wall and suddenly there are eyes upon him.

One black clad figure moves away from his Master’s bed, squaring him up and releasing a chain so it rattles against the ground.

There is blood… everywhere.

Mitsuhide charges with a roar, untested blade raised high and his heart pounding in his chest.

The assassin is quick, moving in and out of shadows, and his sword chases it down. Light glints, the chained weapon sparking against his blade like flint. Out of the darkness, it flies, the weighted tip landing on his arm with a sickening snap.

Mitsuhide screams, falling to one knee.

“Finish the job!”

A child-like whimper comes from the corner of the room. His gaze snaps over to the bed, arm cradled against his chest as the wet squelch of flesh parting and a gurgling choke echoes in the room.

Master…

The room tints in red and he snarls, surging forward. The chain wielding assassin moves in, getting in between him and the figure at the bed.

It’s a stupid move.

Mitsuhide’s eyes widen as his blade rams it clean through. This close, he can see the endless black of its eye, wide and shocked, staring into his.

He freezes, brain stuttering.

“I- I’m sorry,” he mutters.

Numbly, he pulls the blade out. The assassin stares, hands pressed to its chest and wobbling, and he wonders if it’s eyes are real or a manifestation of the black spot that now rests on his soul. Moments pass, before it lurches, it sways, and finally... it crumples onto the floor.

Mitsuhide remains rooted where he stands.

It shouldn’t be that easy.

Noise shuffles in the dark and Mitsuhide turns on his heels, swaying, the tip of his sword dragging against stone. His Master’s body lays alone on the bed. Dazed, he scans the darkness around him. There is the sound of motion, like the scurrying of a very large rat, and— there.

Right there.

He can barely make out the shape crouched in the shadows. Stumbling towards it, he braces his blade against his knee to push it upright once more.

“Come out,” he breathes.

The scrawny figure scrambles back, slipping in the mess they’ve both made, its eyes glinting in the dark. Something tickles the edge of his senses and Mitsuhide pauses, brow furrowing, and he shakes himself to clear the drunkenness from his vision. Looking into the shadows again, the shock sobers him.

It’s just a kid.

Slowly, he approaches, blood dripping off the virgin blade.

It's gaze, wild like an animals, flicker towards the window.

“Get out of here.”

The waif in the corner stares at him, breath fast and panicked, clenching it’s own blades between its fingers like claws.

“Do you understand me?” he slurs, and this time he sweeps his sword towards the window forcefully. “Get out of here!”

The kid flinches, moving backwards like some creeping thing of the deep forest. When it gets to the window, enough light shines on it that he can see the blood sprayed across its face, coating its hands like they were dipped in oil.

His fingers grip the hilt of his sword tightly, vision blurring. That was his Masters—

No.

“Blood has been paid with blood,” he grounds out, and his face feels hot. “If you have any honor in you, leave and don’t come back.”

From here, he can see the way it trembles. With a soft, lyrical muttering of syllables, it pushes itself shakily up and tumbles backwards out of the window and into the night.

And then Mitsuhide is alone, staring at his feet, bare in a pool of clotting blood.

As the thud of boots against breaking roof tiles fades into the distance, he thinks how ironic it is that both bleed red.

#bubbleswrites #akagami no shirayukihime #blood #death #introduction and killing off of OC's #first kill #gen #mitsuhide #obi #mitsuhide is about 13-14 here #obi is about 10-11

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