#but the hollow knight loses the second it cuts the last chain

[seafleece]

it will inevitably be another comic or something but in my head the hollow knight has fought the exact same radiance fight as little ghost. they trained so rigorously not just to gain the power to hold on but because they needed it, because they have been fighting her in their own head for years. they’ve won every time so far, but she can never really lose, either.

#something so shinji train fisheye about a sword fight that lasts for years #fleece.txt #hollow knight #the hollow knight #and like. the knight doesn’t know it #but the hollow knight loses the second it cuts the last chain #and she can finally use their exhausted body to break free and attack

[millenniumdueled]

Wish of Final Effort: part 2

The Other Yugi doesn't let himself look away.

He makes himself watch as the mirror knight forms of his Partner and his best friend are cut down by their legendary counterparts. His eyes meet the hollow, empty stare of the mirrored Yugi.

And he swears he sees his Partner smile, before his form disintegrates in a pixelated cloud of glitter under the knight's sword. As the cards in his hand shake, a single tear slips down his cheek, drips off his chin, onto the Millennium Puzzle that hangs heavy around his neck.

But the Pharaoh rights himself. He grabs the chain of the Puzzle in his free hand and takes a deep breath. As Timaeus and Hermos return to his side, he narrows his eyes on his opponent and the immortal serpent

and ends his turn.

Dartz laughs again. Quiet at first, but slowly growing into a maniacal cachinnation.

"Is that it?" he asks. "You waited 10,000 years to delay your death by one turn?" He narrows his heterochromatic eyes at the Other Yugi with a venomous glare. It costs him 10 cards to order Geh to attack, but the sacrifice is nothing to Dartz.

This is the last turn, after all.

He orders the divine serpent Geh to attack, targeting the knight Timaeus.

But Critias looks over his shoulder, his familiar, intense stare boring into the Other Yugi's eyes. The Pharaoh nods, and the knight raises his sword.

The serpent lunges at its prey.

The Duelists are blinded by two flashes of dazzling white light in quick succession. The first, as a beam shoots from the knight's raised blade. It expands in an instant, taking form in a wide, arced wall of glittering light.

The second as the serpent Geh crashes into it.

It sounds as if a bomb goes off. The powerful shockwave ripples through the temple, knocking both Duelists off their feet and causing the ancient stone walls to shake and crack. As the dust clears, both Dartz and the Other Yugi push themselves to their knees to assesss the outcome.

The three legendary knights stand, tall, strong, and unharmed. The only sign left of the divine serpent Geh, with all its infinite attack points, is a glowing, teal hole in the fabric of reality itself.

For a moment, time stands still, and neither Duelists dares to breathe.

"How..." Dartz gawks.

"The only thing that can destroy infinity, is itself. Your serpent hit a wall and ate its own tail," Critias explains flatly.

"Critias's effect lets him use the power of one trap in my graveyard, and I chose Mirror Force," the Other Yugi explains. "And since you bet all of your Lifepoints on that snake... You lose, Dartz."

Dartz takes a step back as sweat drips down his back. He stares into the glowing rift with wide eyes. "You don't understand--!" he gasps, somewhere between exasperation and frustration. "It's too late! My god only needed one more powerful soul. The Leviathan will still--!!"

It happens in just a blink of an eye.

Dartz is cut off mid sentence as a massive serpent, far bigger than the divine Geh, strikes from the rift in reality. Its mighty jaws close around its loyal servant, and the beast disappears.

The Other Yugi holds his breath. And the seconds tick by.

Finally, the guards relax their stances, first Timaeus, then Hermos and Critias. As they turn to the Pharaoh, he can finally let himself breathe.

"Is it over...?" he asks the knights.

As if on cue, the ocean floor trembles far below the island temple, nearly knocking him off his feet once again. He catches himself, looks up just to see Timaeus shake his head.

"I'm afraid not.... Dartz is defeated, but the Leviathan still rises," the knight explains. "And we can no longer help you from here on. However..."

He looks to the compatriots at his sides, and they both nod. All three lift a hand toward the rift, and in unison, they order the souls of the Chosen Duelists to return to this world.

The Other Yugi's eyes go wide.

Are they really--

He watches in wonder as three golden orbs float from the rift. They seem to struggle at first, as if being pulled back by the teal light that radiates beyond reality, but once free, they drift and bob like bubbles on the wind. One floats past him to sink into Seto Kaiba's chest, another rises and dances its way into a wall that it easily passes through.

The third slowly bobs over to the Other Yugi, where it comes to rest in his hands. It's an odd sensation, holding a soul in his hands. Weightless, without any tangible surface, and yet a definite form in his palms. The golden light it emanates is soft and comforting, warm and familiar.

Like holding sunlight.

The Pharaoh takes a deep, deep breath, failing to hold back his tears as he brings his arms around the light, hugging it into his chest with a smile.

"Welcome home, Partner."

#ooc #plot #LOL I accidentally posted this too early #and then I forgot to post it at all #ANYWAY #WE'RE ALMOST THERE #arc: what the doma?!

[witchcraftingboop]

Ad Infinitum

In the East, the hero was born. It was said that he burns like the sun, blessed by the Gods, and apart from mortality and the ways of man. I was never really one for worship or idolatry, so I admit the words meant little to me then and even less now.

The boy breaking into my domain is said to be that hero, the golden child of the eastern territories, a herald of good triumphing over evil. Kneeling beside the corpse of my knight, it is difficult for me to see him as anything but that which he currently is: an intruder. The order comes easily to my lips, as cold on my tongue as my pledged one’s eyelids beneath my fingertips.

“Kill the hero."

My lips twist sardonically on the last word.

The whelp before me is no hero, and if I must end him to demonstrate as much, then so be it. He will learn his place by my hands, and then we will see whether his Gods’ blessings extend to death’s door.

Their hero is yet underdeveloped from what I can tell, his limbs gangly and ill-fitted to the title thrust upon him. His armor fits well enough, the polished gold burning bright under the sun’s relentless rays. The shine on a more impressive figure would likely inspire admiration, fear, but on this thin child, it makes him look small, insignificant. He is like a babe trying on an adult’s suit, unwilling or unable to admit that the fit isn’t quite right, that it will take yet more time before they are evenly matched.

My gaze falls to the comrade he stole from me.

The woman beside me looks to be around my age, well passed her second naming, and without so much as a braid upon her helmet. She was untried in battle, her sword not yet bled. A low hum crawls up my throat, my mind drifting to others like her, like myself. I had lain on this desert floor before, felt the sand grit against the back of my skull, my ears ringing with the reverberations of the sword hilt that’d hit my temple and my brothers’ noxious laughter.

They had thought themselves heroes too, and back then, I was fool enough to believe them. My elder brothers were invincible in my eyes, true shards of divinity given flesh. Even with a mouth full of blood and a headache ripe to split my skull, I was so fond of them, so full of yearning to be older, closer to them and their level of command over the world.

The hero, sword glaring in the sun’s rays, draws my attention once more.

It is said that this boy killed them.

A cold, wisp of fury rises in my chest. At one point, it had been hot like the flames of Oblivion, raging and untamable, and I had raised my armies and scorched the soil with it, turned villages to scarred lands and rivers to blood banks. Now it is cold, hollow, a figment of a memory that I cannot fully manifest.

My shoulders sag imperceptibly beneath my caped armored shoulders.

People say a lot of things. They say he killed my father, my brothers, and that the grief of their loss drove my mother and I to madness. They say my seer is a crazed man given to promiscuity and blasphemy. They say I am a devil chained within a temptress’ form festering with a heart of Vengence’s own ice.

I look upon their hero, and I feel nothing. It is the same lukewarm nothingness that I have felt for countless turnings. Only now I am older, wiser, and so I know that killing him will not throw my body back into feeling. I will not relish killing their sun, but I doubt the ones who sent him here will see it that way.

The boy is unfaltering in the face of my knights. He meets their swords, and he loses none of his shine. His sweat slicked black hair would look bleak on anyone else, but his bronzed skin warms yet further, his body seeming to illuminate itself with a blinding inner light that would give other men pause. Here, in my private residence, such untested persons cannot exist. He is not the first hero to come to my doorstep, and he will not be the last to be cut down where he stands, his holy blood rendered mere fertilizer for my private garden.

If I were capable of it, I'm sure my heart would bleed with pity for the youth. Perhaps if I were more like my father I would be capable of such emotion, such soul rendering burdensome feelings. As it is, I can only stand and avenge my fallen.

My mind alights upon ghosts.

Beside where this hero stands, my younger brother had choked around a mouthful of arrows, his tongue flayed around the feathered ends. He had not yet been named. He was the last of my father's sons, born after my eldest brothers' final breaths, and the final loss that tore my father from his throne. There, by this intruder's feet, I had felt his heart like a hummingbird flutter, flutter, stutter, and give out. Under my fingertips, clutched in my arms, I felt him return to the meadows and had stared at this hero's exact likeness, born again and again, his eyes like honeyed sunshine, jubilant at killing a toddler.

My vision wavers and clears, reality replacing my memories once more.

This time, the hero is not so joyful. He has tinted, drooping skin under his golden eyes, his hands are easily jolted against the hilt of his sword, his stance not quite as unshakable as it once was. And yet they call him their hero.

Seeing my approach, the knights that had circled around him, toying with his defenses retreat three paces, their swords brandished, patience carved into their half-covered faces like the tracks of water through stone. My hand drifts to my blades' hilt, the enchanted metal pulsing with cool joy at my touch.

"Are you not tired?"

The words leave me before I know I mean to speak them.

I have not talked to a hero in several reincarnations. I have watched him patiently approach time and time again, have looked on as he shattered his bones breaking against the walls of my keep over and over. What rage I once had has been extinguished, what love or laughter or peace wilted and decayed leaving nothing within me. If he does not feel as I do, then it must be because he is made anew each and every time while I am left on this mortal plane, neck deep in sand and death and plagues that his kings hurl at my people without ceasing.

He is not of the Gods. He is simply allowed rest where others are not-- where I am not. Once, that was enough to make me despise him.

"How many more times will you let them resurrect you, Atreus? Must I put you down like a kept dog every lifetime? Are you not tired of being sent to your death time and time again?"

When I speak his name, those eyes, which had been narrowed and guarded, zero in on my face, the pupils contracting until twin pools of molten gold blaze within his haggard face.

"Atreus?" There is a cruelty lingering in the feral edges of the smile he gives me.

I know that his next words will be another attempt to hurt me, to rip a reaction from my hollow chest, but he does not know yet how deeply our lives are entrenched in one another. I let my hand fall away from my weapon, something inside me holding its breath in anticipation, as if his next words hold my very fate, as if they alone will release me from this place.

Come, I want to say, I wait with open arms for Oblivion's embrace. Come and give it to me.

"Do you think you can call me so familiarly? You are a devil, and the luminance of God's will won't touch you even if you were to pray in my name before your idols. You-"

I grant him death with a single pull of my sword.

His eyes and armor and sword blaze in the dust. I lower myself beside his gaping throat, my knees planted in sand that will soon be stained with his loss. I lift him into my hands. His spine is rent apart with a single tug, and I rock back on my heels, my thumbs stroking down his dirt-stained cheeks.

I know what this must be doing to him, can see his wide, wild gaze mutely glaring back at me. I do not care. I wait until that gaze softens, until tears fall like the moon's pearls from his long lashes.

"Atreus," I catch his tears on armored fingers and leave streaks across his skin when I try to wipe them away, "stop coming back. It will not matter how much you struggle or try to break free. They will resurrect you, and they will pollute your mind from birth unto death. Be at peace; I will always be here to put you back to sleep."

My lost, mad love gazes up at me with the world alight in his pupils. I do not recognize the face that stares back at me from within it. She is youthful and radiant, her silver hair like a quicksilver flame, her violet eyes glinting gems upon her face. She does not look like how I know myself to be.

I remember how he used to shake from nightmares when we were children together, and I know that if he could, Atreus would be but a leaf before wind in my arms. His mute lips part and tremble, his wet lashes sticking together in clumps. Below him, his body twitches as if he can compel it to move. I hum a melody now forgotten by time, one I know he's the only one at my side who can recognize now. I shut my eyes against the fear and pain bleeding through his.

"Sh," I place a kiss between his scrunched brows, my stomach twisting around a feeling my senses can no longer recognize. "It is okay. Get some rest now. I will be here."

"Lania."

A hoarse, haunted voice travels up my palms and stabs viciously into my chest. My breath falters, my eyes heating at the sound of my past before me. I have not been called by another in lifetimes. I have been King, Undying Lady, villain, temptress, guest, but never Lania. I had realized a long time ago that no one around me remembered my name and that I had forgotten it some time ago. Here, on his lips and in that unchanging voice, I can only recognize it as another mocking twist of fate that he carries its burden still.

"I am... tired, my love."

It is like my eyes have been sealed shut. As much as I know I must look at him, must see this moment for myself, it is as if my body recognizes instinctively that it is too much. I have seen too much. I have seen too many replicas of him tortured and burned and flayed alive. I cannot gaze upon him with the softness he expects. I cannot weep with compassion for the man who has pushed my territories to ruin time and time again.

"Rest," I tell him instead, my tone chilled, indifferent. "Do not come back. It is unnecessary."

The love of my life, my harbinger of doom. How long has it been since I could think of him with anything but vague familiarity, muted hatred, forgotten yearning. The ties between us have been manipulated and burned and remade over and over and over again, but in his eyes, they have not changed. He is the same on the other side of the meadow, his soul pure and without burden every time it is released.

I do not know how to convey to him that I do not want him any more.

"Rest," I repeat, because there is nothing else I can say.

#boop writes #twas bored on my morning break and made a lil heroxvillain fic #I think it's cute 🥰 #look at them struggle #rough draft #writeblr

[apothecarinomicon]

Spring week 4, part 2

We found the guy staggering down the creek. We heard him before we saw him—he was wading through knee-deep water, half hunched over and groaning in pain. As he got closer, I was able to make out that he wasn’t human but crocodilian, and dressed for fishing. His pants had torn away below the knees, and I could make out bright green vines with vermillion buds snaking up his legs. He was bleeding where they burrowed into his hide. He looked up at us with glassy eyes and weakly called for help, reaching out with both hands. 

Automatically I moved to support him but Calder held me back. He told me he recognized the vines as marshbloom, a particularly nasty plant native to Blastfire Bog. An opportunistic parasite, it latched onto any skin that came into contact with it and fed on its host, growing until they were entirely overtaken and drained of their minerals. Once the marshbloom had fed all it could, the buds would open and spread their spores to find new hosts. 

This guy already looked to have been wandering for a couple of days; we didn’t have much time—probably only about another 24 hours. I told Calder to watch after him and make sure he didn’t wander off. Since Calder didn’t technically have skin, we agreed he might be able to physically restrain the afflicted man as a last resort. Meanwhile, I raced back to the cottage to scour my predecessor’s notes.

I found that her overall knowledge of the bog and its flora were spotty at best, but she did have an entry on the marshbloom. Her notes said that it should be treated like any other virulent parasite, but with extra focus on healing the skin. With the entry wounds closed, she noted, the portions of the plant inside the host’s body would be unable to photosynthesize and would simply die, and the portions outside would lose the necessary minerals and fall away.

With a little more research, I knew what I had to get. I dumped out the remaining breadcrumbs from my pack, had Ailean hop up on my shoulder, and set out for Hero’s Hollow.

 ────⊱⁜⊰──── 

I told the guards at the entrance that I was foraging and expected to be inside for less than an hour. Then I headed in, map in hand, to find some liquid fire.

It’s not quite lava, this substance (lava is molten rock and this is more akin to superheated magic), but it is quite hot. You need special gloves to handle it. It won’t burn you, but it will certainly feel as if it had. It’s great for clearing parasites if you can get it down—like a flash fire fever. I found it fairly easily, flowing right out of the wall (turns out Hero’s Hollow has a lot of natural deposits), and collected it with little issue. It was as I was headed back out, however, that I heard heavy, clanking footsteps sprinting towards me accompanied by a “what ho!”

I turned and looked to find a suit of armor approaching me fast. The visor was flipped up, showing that the helmet was clearly empty. “I, the Baron, challenge you to a duel, brigand!” The voice sounded more like a jester’s than a knight’s—or a baron’s, for that matter. I backed away and tried to tell this Baron that I really didn’t have the time (or the equipment or the skill) for a fight, but as I said so my back bumped up against the wall. The suit of armor ignored what I’d said, unsheathed its sword (the thin kind with a point, rather than the kind with two sharp sides), took on a cartoonish stance, and cried “en garde!”

I stayed very still for a good long while, and so did the armor. Every few seconds it shouted something like “you shan’t best me, scoundrel!” or “your scourge ends here!” Its accent was all rolled ‘r’s and rapidly fluctuating pitch. After about three minutes of this I finally went to try and just walk away, and the suit of armor immediately lunged forward and skewered my thigh.

I cried out, more out of shock than anything. It was a relatively shallow wound (I wrote “skewered” but it was more like “scraped”), but the sudden movement and prick of pain surprised me. The Baron, for its part, seemed delighted. It immediately turned and began to skip away, occasionally clicking its heels in the air and crying “tee-ha! Tee-hee! I, the Baron, have bested thee!” It disappeared around a bend in the corridor, but I could still hear it for a long while after as I bandaged my wound.

What a blighting nuisance. I supposed though, as I limped out of the dungeon, that it could easily have been a lot worse.

 ────⊱⁜⊰──── 

I headed back to Glimmerwood Grove next, to look for wild roses. The hip seeds promote skin health, and I thought they theoretically should be fairly abundant. But, as is my luck, they proved to be frustratingly elusive. I was already pretty annoyed when I ran into Kendre.

Kendre was a satyr, and (as they volunteered immediately upon seeing me) a druid who lived in the forest. Their arms were wiry, the rest of their human torso obscured by what appeared to be a grass-stained burlap sack with arm and neck holes cut out. The fur on their goat legs matched their russet hair. They wore complex jewelry, with earrings and necklaces and adornments to their curled horns all connected by small chains to form one large piece.

I asked how long they’d been living in Glimmerwood and they said just about their entire adult life. They mentioned a shack deep in the heart of the grove where they lived and gardened and kept to themselves. They said they didn’t normally forage this close to town but they were looking for something elusive.

I asked them if they had seen wild roses around and they thought for a moment before saying that roses had been an unusually rare sight this year. They apologized, and offered instead the location of a different plant: the coffee cap. Though unrelated to the bean (it’s actually a mushroom), it does contain about the same amount of caffeine and releases it into the body quicker when consumed. When added to a potion, its only real effect is to sharpen the patient’s senses—not useful for the task at hand. Still, I thanked them and followed their directions to find some—it’s always better to have more and more varied reagents on hand, just in case.

Kendre was the second denizen of Glimmerwood Grove I’d met who seemed to have no connection to the human society in Greenmoor or High Rannoc at large. As I plucked a mushroom and put it in my bag, I wondered if there were any more.

 ────⊱⁜⊰──── 

I didn’t have to wonder for long. After retrieving the coffee cap I headed back towards the path. I took a right that should have led me straight back onto it, but instead I found myself in a beautiful (if dilapidated) courtyard. I must have been caught in some kind of dimensional fold, as I surely would have noticed the high, ornate walls that now surrounded me had they been present before.

The walls themselves were ornate but clearly weathered, dotted with tall thin windows and covered with hanging moss and climbing vines. The floor was made of smooth bricks that must have once been an intense shade of lapis or ultramarine, but that had faded to a (still gorgeous) azure. They were cut and laid in a pattern that was symmetrical but irregular. It took a good bit of staring for me to realize it depicted the phases of the moon, running from right to left across the space’s center. At the corners of the courtyard were raised plant beds that may have once been carefully maintained, but now grew wild. Each had a great tree at the center. Three of them had a least one side that had cracked or buckled, allowing dirt to spill out and their tree’s great roots to spread less impeded. The fourth one, the one in the far left corner, held a smaller tree, mostly obscured by—to my surprise and delight—wild rose bushes!

I began to hurry towards them before the sound of a clearing throat stopped me. I had completely overlooked what was clearly meant to be the courtyard’s central feature: along the far wall was a great, ornate throne. It gleamed golden in the light, its high back intricately molded with dozens of humanoid figures in myriad combinations and contexts—probably recounting the plot of some long-forgotten myth. Seated on the throne, still regal and imposing despite being dwarfed by it, was a man. As I approached him I realized he was much taller than me, or for that matter any human. His skin was extremely pale, his form rake thin, his hair a nearly-white blond. He was dressed in a garb unfamiliar to me, though the dense ornamental fur of his cloak and the rich purple of his tunic and pants communicated his status anyway. He regarded me cooly with orange eyes as I took in the sight. Finally, I noticed his long, pointed ears and it clicked: this prince was an elf.

Belatedly I dropped to one knee and bowed my head. I hoped that was the correct gesture of respect for elven royalty; it had been many years since I took politesse classes in primary school, and I’d never had much use for what I learned from them before.

He chuckled and told me to rise. His voice, though a fairly high tenor, had a commanding sense of depth. He told me it had been far too long since he’d had a visitor, and I should feel welcome to stay as long as I like. I asked for his name, and he raised an eyebrow before telling me I could not have it, but that I could refer to him as His Majesty, the Crown Prince of Sovereign Go’ed-Wigg. I quickly apologized for my careless wording, and told him he could call me ‘F.’ Given the Crown Prince’s care with his own name I figured care of my own was in order. I decided to let it be ambiguous whether this was an initial, a random pseudonymous letter, or if I had chosen “Eff” as a name.

I asked the Crown Prince (as I decided to think of him because that full title was simply too much) if I might have one of his roses, so that I could heal a patient. He thought for a moment then said I could on two conditions: I had to give him a gift in return, and I had to listen to a story. I told him that my patient’s time was limited, but that so long as the story was of a reasonable length (I believe I specified no more than fifteen minutes), and so long as I myself got to choose my gift to him I would be happy to agree to those terms. His expression was unreadable enough that I couldn’t determine whether I’d wiggled my way out of some trick or not, but he conceded my conditions.

As the gift, I gave him the coffee cap I’d just obtained, and explained its uses. He told me he had heard of coffee caps before, but seemed satisfied with the gift anyway. He said with my limitation we wouldn’t have time for the full story, but he’d tell me the first part anyway. I can’t recount the Crown Prince’s exact wording—he spoke for a long time—but I’ll summarize as best I can.

Once (he told me), there were three queens. A queen of spades, who ruled over those things on the earth, a queen of diamonds, who ruled over those things below it, and a queen of clubs, who ruled over those things above. The queen of spades and diamonds neither one had a king, but each had one knight. The queen of clubs had no knight, though she did have a king—but he was perpetually absent.

The realm of the queen of spades was verdant and teeming with life, both plant and animal. The queen of clubs’ domain was bright and open and free, always fresh and always changing. The queen of diamonds, on the other hand, ruled a territory rich with minerals, precious metals, and gems, which all things that lived would eventually join as they decomposed and returned to their base materials.

The queen of diamonds, though, was uncaring of these gifts. She surveyed her realm and saw rot, slimy worms and scuttling insects, and tons and tons of dirt piled so much upon itself that there was barely room for plants or animals at all. She looked over the queendom of spades and the queendom of clubs, and all the light and life and variety and air they had, and she grew jealous. She resolved to take the other queens’ territories for herself.

The queen of diamonds knew that going to war immediately would be foolish. Her two rivals (the queen of spades especially) had dozens of subjects in fighting shape, and she had next to none. So, she worked on expanding her population. She promoted immigration, emphasizing the riches to be found in her domain. With her (previously unmentioned) magical powers, she engineered those denizens she already had over the course of generations into stronger, smarter, better fighters. She was raising an army.

What the queen of diamonds didn’t know was that her knight and the knight of spades were in love. They kept their affair hidden from their respective queens for obvious reasons, but met in secret regularly. Wishing to limit the chance that they might have to meet in battle personally, the knight of diamonds told the knight of spades what the queen was doing.

The knight of spades took this information to his own queen, who thankfully didn’t probe too deeply into how he’d learned it. Instead, she immediately set about raising an army of her own, and passed the information on to the queen of clubs personally.

The queen of clubs, then, faced a rather pressing issue: like the queen of diamonds, she did not have enough subjects in fighting shape to raise an army. Unlike her counterpart, however, she did not have several generations’ notice with which to rectify that weakness—nor did she even have a knight of her own.

So, after obtaining permission from her new ally, she searched far and wide in the domain of the queen of spades to find a champion, one who could inspire their peers to fight their hardest, with the knowledge to select the generals and lieutenants and foot soldiers who would be able to defend her queendom.

And find one she did. The champion was such an effective leader, so adept at rallying people to follow her with true deep-seated conviction for the cause, that she would come to be known as the queen of hearts.

It was at this point that the Crown Prince stopped and gestured to the rose bush. I realized that I’d become so thoroughly engrossed in his story that I’d lost track of time, and I was thankful I’d thought to set a time limit. He sensed this too, and as I went to pluck a rose hip he asked if I was enjoying the story. I asked him in turn where he’d learned it. He said that he was the only one in the world who knew it. I asked if he meant he’d made it up, and he didn’t respond.

Instead, he said I’d have to come back later to hear more of it. I told him I didn’t even know how I’d gotten here in the first place, much less how I’d return, but he insisted that I’d find my way. As I left the courtyard, he turned his attention back to the mushroom I’d given him, turning it over and over in his hands.

 ────⊱⁜⊰──── 

I was just about set to head back to Calder’s stream when I realized something all of a sudden: I couldn’t touch my patient, which meant I wouldn’t be able to force him to swallow the potion—he’d have to do it voluntarily, without spitting it out or spilling any. Liquid fire, one of my major ingredients, was notoriously both very hot and very spicy, making it difficult to stomach. I would need something to cover the taste. I remembered that I had the candy rock back at the cottage, but I was honestly closer to Moonbreaker Mountain. So, I decided to just run over and find some on my own.

I took a path I hadn’t been on before. About halfway up the mountain, I came across Mòrag McKinney, knelt at a shrine. It took her a long time to notice me, but when she did she smiled and bade me sit down next to her. She told me this was a shrine to Cernunnos, the antlered god of nature, hunters, druidry, fertility, and warriors. She said those going on journeys often placed offerings at it hoping for his favor. I asked if she was going on a journey and she said no, she’d just started coming here recently. Something about it called her.

She traced little circles in the dirt with her finger as she told me about Cernunnos, his ability to call animals to him, how wild-growing plants were considered his bounty. I had heard of Cernunnos before, even if I hadn’t studied him closely, but I let her speak. When she was finished, I apologized and told her I was on a deadline. I asked her where I might find the candy rocks. She seemed disappointed to see me go, but directed me a little ways up the path. I hurried off and found a large cluster easily. The rocks (crystals, really) were extremely brittle—I could break off a good-sized chunk with my hand. Once I’d done so, I hurried back to Calder’s river.

 ────⊱⁜⊰──── 

Here is how I made the potion:

First, I crushed the rose hip seeds with my travel mortar and pestle.

Then, I collected some water (Calder was kind enough to let me borrow a bit of his)

Then, I combined it with the seed powder, liquid fire, and candy rock.

Finally, I shook it until it was all combined.

I decided to call the potion Bog’s Bane—a fitting enough name, as it ended up looking like orange mud. My crocodilian patient was staring vaguely off into the distance, so I gave the potion to Calder so he could help get it down. Once he’d finished it, the patient gasped and his eyes unclouded. Already the visible vines crawling up his legs were withering, their yellow buds falling off. I told him he ought to go see Dr. Ardor-Knox in town, and to tell them that he was seriously drained of vitamins and likely anemic. I didn’t know if the doctor had the requisite knowledge of crocodilian physiology to treat him, but I figured sending patients their way might help smooth things over with them. The crocodilian was still a bit out of it but seemed to understand well enough. He paid me for the potion and stumbled off in the direction of Greenmoor.

When he was gone, I turned to Calder to apologize that my work had cut our picnic short. He said to think nothing of it—the man would have stumbled into his creek anyway, so it was good that someone who knew how to treat him was present when he did. Nevertheless, I asked if we could have a do-over soon, and he said he’d like that.

It was far too late by that point for anything further to happen (though if it’s not wishful thinking there was certainly some tension), so I resigned myself to trudging back home. Now that I’ve recounted the day's events, I’m going straight to bed. Here’s hoping that tomorrow isn’t quite so hectic.

⇦●〇●⇨

#writing #writeblr #original writing #fantasy #creative writing #writeblr community #rpg #writers on tumblr #writblr #apothecaria #amwriting #fiction #writers #writerblr #writers of tumblr #original fiction #entry #cernunnos #folk tales #witchblr

[silverstarsheep]

I wrote this drabble to kindof test the waters of having the Hollow Knight as an RP muse. It came out... Decent, so I may as well post the thing.

Context is the “Embrace the Void” ending, and it cuts at the same part of the ending itself. This is just a drabble focusing on Hollow and their first few moments without the Radiance. 

Word Count: 1448

—————————————————–

The Black Egg shuddered, and the constrained body within tensed as a strange feeling washed over it. Stirring within their chains, the Hollow Knight’s cracked shell lifted ever so slightly, the faint glow that filled their empty sockets fading away as an orange liquid leaked from them like tears. When confusion started to fill their mind, they tried to push the feeling away to little avail.

The searing heat of the light that filled their body like a burning furnace waned, escaping their limbs as the orange liquid splattered against the floor beneath them. It turned a dull brown, losing its sun-like glow.

The light began to vanish from their vision, and it felt like the grip that the Radiance held over them was loosening, finger by finger... However it was clear that she wasn’t ready to let go just yet.

Using the body of the vessel, the voice of the Radiance bellowed out in pain, causing their entire body to tense. Their head was thrown back by an unseen force as the bellow quickly escalated into a scream, orange fog pouring out of their body. As the sweet-smelling vapor wafted through the air, it turned a sickly brown and lost its aroma. The fog fell to the ground in sticky splatters.

After a few moments of blind struggling and sending the vessel’s legs and arm flailing about, the deity’s final cry was snuffed out by the void. Their weak body fell still. The egg became pitch black, and for the first time in what felt like a lifetime and a half, the Hollow Knight was surrounded by the dark, and pure, suffocating silence.

The egg shuddered again, then groaned and shook. The chains that bound the vessel broke and shattered, scattering broken bits of metal across the void-like containment. The vessel was sent tumbling to the ground with a mighty thump, their nail clattering onto its side beside them.

Like a tidal wave, the chill of the void embraced Hollow’s body all at once, like the hug of an old, welcome friend. Their body shivered and curled up into a tight ball, however they didn’t balk at the cold. They welcomed it with relief, memories of old flooding back into their shell. They recalled the void, their siblings, a simpler time.

Breathing heavily, the Hollow Knight attempted to push themselves upright, only to crumple into a heap on their left side with a jolt of pain shocking their entire body. Shakily raising themselves to their knees, they weakly reached over to their empty shoulder socket, fingers recoiling when they brushed up against still-warm blisters. They hadn’t realized one of their arms had been lost, replaced with these pulsating things. Gingerly they peeled back their cloak, peering at what used to be filled with a bright orange liquid. The blisters were shrinking, and the substance within faded into a dull brown.

They made quick work of bursting these, ignoring the pain as the decaying liquid slipped over their fingers. Without thinking, they took a tatter of their old cloak and crudely wrapped it over the spot. It wasn’t very tight and slipped around as they moved, but it served the job well enough for now. Perhaps they could find someone to tend to this wound… Maybe within the castle, or in Dirtmouth. If their memory served them, it wasn’t far from the temple.

But they weren’t sure if they were ready to leave the egg, just yet.

The Hollow Knight sat for a moment, their empty sockets staring vacantly into the void that surrounded them. They looked to the left. They looked to the right. They were all alone, and yet somehow the Radiance had left them. Perhaps she had even died, and had stubbornly held what control she had over the vessel to the bitter end.

But how?

A faint feeling of joy slipped its way into the knight’s mind, as well as a tidal wave of relief. Placing their one hand to their horns, Hollow attempted to push the feeling of joy from their mind, reminding themselves to not think, to not feel... Even now, after all was said and done, they couldn’t allow themselves to fall prey to such trivial things.

After all, it’s what had weakened them as a vessel in the first place.

However, this only filled their mind with more feelings, which they had a harder time pushing away. Shame. They couldn’t hold the Radiance as well as they could have. Regret. They didn’t defeat the Radiance themselves, as the Pale King had hoped. Anger. Frustration. Sadness. Loneliness.

Grip tightening on their horn, Hollow gave it a tug. Their father--no, their king, would have been so disappointed. How upset would he have been with them, after such a failure as this? Would he even look them in the eye like he used to? Would he turn his back upon them? As they pulled harder on their horn, there was a loud crack from their shell, and a brief strike of pain that shocked them back to reality.

Hollow lowered their hand, allowing it to lay limp by their side. They recalled their old meditation tactics; calming their mind so they can clear it of the emotions they were never meant to feel. Deep breaths. Counting their fingers (which were much fewer, now). Observing the stitching on their cloak. Running their fingers over the pattern of their nail...

Hand reaching blindly behind them, they eventually located their nail and carefully wrapped their digits around the hilt. Hollow slowly and carefully drew it around themselves, pulling it over their legs.

The nail had cracked with age, and the edges had begun to dull. It was no longer the lethal weapon it once was. All the same, they ran their fingers over the intricate pattern that remained even after so long. It was a soothing motion.

Outside of the egg, they could hear the sound of rustling, footsteps, and the light thump of decaying plants hitting the ground. Something was going on outside of the egg, and they would certainly not discover what it was if they remained sitting here, wallowing in their shame.

Finally, Hollow attempted to rise to their feet again. Leaning against their nail for stability, they stumbled about on their legs briefly before they found their footing. Using the nail like a cane, they shambled their way out of the egg, and towards their freedom.

Stiff movements and uneasy footsteps plagued the Hollow Knight as they shambled their way towards the exit. They grasped the hilt of their nail firmly, digging its dulling point into the ground to keep their footing, determined to finally step out of this cursed imprisonment.

Despite being freed from the ever-present plague of the Radiance, they were feeling more disoriented than ever. The vessel’s power had only decreased as time went on, and without the strength of the Radiance, they were left feeling rather weak…

All the same, they marched on, finding a second wind as the exit became visible. The closer they got, the deeper their nail dug as it found earth to bite into. They felt a flutter in their chest--a feeling they were far from familiar with--as the view of the temple’s interior came into sight.

Standing in the egg’s entrance, the vessel’s shoulders slumped significantly, their posture deteriorating as they found themselves low to the ground. Were they feeling relief as they observed the ceiling of the spacious temple? Were they feeling joy as they took in a breath of fresh air for the first time in ages? They could not tell, however they were quickly pulled from these feelings when their empty sockets fell upon a familiar figure.

Sharp eyes, curved horns, and a red cloak. Memories washed over Hollow as they recalled a young one running about the castle grounds, her brightly colored cloak clashing against the pale walls and tiles like a crimson flag. She was so ready to spread her wings and fly, and yet even when she was young, she was so serious and stern, like that of her mother.

Could it have been… Hornet? She appeared to have grown since last they met. Hollow started blankly, fingers curling tight around their nail’s hilt. 

Hornet sensed someone’s approach, and from within the Black Egg. That could only mean one thing. On guard, her sharp eyes turned towards the vessel’s tall figure, her entire body tensing as she brandished her gleaming needle. Hollow tensed in suit, digging their nail further into the ground. Even in their weakened state, they were ready for a battle, should the weaver be aggressive...

Who was bold enough to make the first strike?

#Hollow Knight #Pure Vessel #The Hollow Knight #Sheep of the Epic Story

[ganymedesclock]

All this talk about the Shade Lord/Blackwyrm being associated with the ocean, and especially hydrothermal vents, makes me wonder if the void is the original source for all the life in Hallownest, honestly.

There’s some good implication in favor of yes, actually!

The Radiance calls Ghost “Ancient enemy” implying she did battle with a void-wielding entity before. However, the only implication of the Blackwyrm during the Pale King’s reign is the White Defender’s journal entry, with Ogrim musing about a singular “Battle of the Blackwyrm”.

As I’ve pointed out in a previous post, Hallownest is also covered in ammonite shells, which are ancient sea creatures. And outside of the King’s artificial void constructs, the moulds, who seem to collapse rapidly when separated from their confining shells, there’s also seemingly natural void creatures. The snails wield, and dissolve into, dark magic- the only void spell you don’t get from them is the Abyssal Shriek, which would ostensibly seem to be born of the vessels- their untapped “voices” yearning for release. (or it could be other entities we have no other evidence of). And the Collector- it looks sort of like a Kingmould, but, it doesn’t seem to be- unlike the moulds, it doesn’t fall apart without any armor holding it together.

The description for the Void Idol, which you only get access to as you’re angling towards “Embrace The Void”, states that according to Lemm, “those ancient bugs” worshiped the darkness below the kingdom. There was once a void god.

The void totems and arcane eggs are considered harmless to the modern age. The Pale King outright has void totems in his palace- possibly as ornamentation. He tampered with the void, took great interest in studying it, shaped his personal guard out of it. That’s a staggering contrast to the salt-and-burn quarantine policies he seems to have taken to the Radiance, who he did consider an enemy.

This suggests something: to the Radiance, the abyss is a dangerous ancient enemy that she is posed to fight against. Through her edicts, as we hear them by dream nailing Myla in her later stages of infection, and by the cut dream nail dialogue of the Hollow Knight, it’s clear that she’s at least a little afraid of Ghost- she despises “the empty one” and calls for her purloined subordinates to “kill it”. There’s cut dialogue from the Moss Prophet spelling out just how awful Radiance and her worshipers consider the vessels:

Emptiness is a hateful thing! A vile thing! Kill the empty ones! Tear them to pieces! Suffer them not to bask in the light of this world!

This would make sense if Radiance isn’t the first god of Hallownest, but the second one. Her anathema to the void would also make sense that seemingly the seat of her power was the Crystal Peak- where her statue remains. She tried to live on the very pinnacle of the world, the furthest point from the Abyss as possible- because that was where her enemy lived. Like the Pale King eventually attempted on her, she usurped and tried to kill her predecessor.

The Blackwyrm, retreating, began to fade. If we assume the Blackwyrm is the huge blinking creature inside the Lifeblood dream in the Abyss, Godseeker never acknowledges them or comments on them the way they do Unn, another fading god. And yet, they appear in Godhome anyway, having crept in seemingly without tuning.... much as Ghost did.

The implication would seem to be the Blackwyrm has been fading for a long time. If this is what we see of them, then, they only appear in dream, and not remotely as robustly as the Radiance does- they cannot be interacted with, only glimpsed, watching Ghost from afar.

(On the other hand, if that is the Blackwyrm, it’d suggest they’re not merely the god of the void, but also the god of lifeblood, which further conflates them with primal life- and suggests that they actually do have a handful of scattered believers- Salubra mentions drinking lifeblood is a taboo, and yet, there’s the Blue Child, Joni, described as a kindly heretic)

But if Radiance drove the Blackwyrm to the kingdom’s fringes, by the time the Pale King came along, they were already fading. He would consider Void something not under his domain- a “power opposed” and possibly the “darkness” he sees himself charged to stand against (that darkness may not be Void, but, may simply be a lack of godhood as he understands it). And yet, he sees no problem monkeying with it basically because it’s useful, and specifically as a way to give himself a leg up on the Radiance.

In short- he knows she hates it, and finds that useful in his war against her, but appears to have only interacted with the Blackwyrm once, likely far from their true power, if that affair was over and done with in a single battle that Ogrim seems to remember as a glorious occasion, which would hardly imply it was a devastating massacre. It’d further encourage the Pale King to believe the void was under his control- that he could fetter and confine it. For the Blackwyrm, it may have been their last gasp, or a reactionary lashing out at the second light being that settled so close to it- the Pale King built his palace not in the Abyss itself, but very close, in the Ancient Basin.

Sensible- he doesn’t love the stuff, but it is a subject of great fascination to him, and vital to the construction of much of his instruments and soldiers.

But this makes time interestingly circular here- because this would suggest that the timeline of Hollow Knight both begins and ends with a void god. And it creates some very interesting thoughts on the Blackwyrm, and their relationship with Ghost. Again, if the Abyss Creature is the Blackwyrm, we only see them watching Ghost from afar.

Even if the King sealed the Abyss, several Vessels somehow escaped. And Ghost’s terribly useful late-game power up, the Shade Cloak, appears to have been given to them: they get it from a fountain in the shape of a large dead bug that seems to be offering the bowl of bubbling void to them. And that bug clearly was someone, once- they have dream nail dialogue that changes before and after the Void Heart.

So who were they? And why would they wait down there at the bottom of the world, seemingly dying to wait for Ghost, so that they could give this to Ghost right when they needed it?

Perhaps, in that singular battle, losing not just against the Pale King but against his mortal Great Knights, the Blackwyrm realized they were never recovering from what the Radiance did to them.

So perhaps, instead, they gathered a few key remnants and followers and plunged deeper into dreams, into darkness, and waited. The void became a compliant substance for the Pale King to hew as he pleased.

And eventually, something he shaped decided to shuck its chains- had the will and resolve to fight its way to that empty throne.

Because Ghost is conflated with an awful lot of royal imagery- but they’re also contrasted against the Pure Vessel, who seems much more akin to the Pale King. In a way, both of the game’s Hollow Knights are princes- but one is a prince of light.

(Even the crack that appears on the Pale King’s face when Ghost strikes down his body matches the crack in the Pure Vessel’s face)

But Ghost? Ghost, who tacitly declares themselves Hallownest’s King to get to the void in the first place? Ghost is no heir of the Pale King’s.

Ghost is someone else’s heir.

And they just may have been patiently facilitating Ghost’s ascension in bits and pieces from the shadows. The lifeblood cocoons. Joni’s blessing. The ancient void totems. The ability to bypass the dark gates, and simply flit through obstacles. Even the transformation of the Void Heart.

Someone, who, if Ghost pokes around enough, they can see peaking out of the distant shadows of a dream, watching them progress.

These ideas- that Ghost is either the Blackwyrm’s heir or the Blackwyrm reborn- might not be mutually exclusive, either; after all, Grimm shows us that there are definitely gods that kill themselves to advance a successor that ultimately takes up the mantle of the original, furthering that relationship Bardoon cites between death and transformation for gods.

This might suggest that post Ghost’s ascension, the Blackwyrm might fade away entirely- give up the last of their essence to feed the new-growing void god.

#Hollow Knight #Ghost #blackwyrm #readmore #Anonymous

[empressxmachina]

by Imperial-Radiance (that’s me :D) | On DeviantArt  | Also On Wattpad 

   Time was passing, and Madi felt like her chances of being found were slowly declining with it. 

    She was sure that it was now too late for any normal N.U. patron to just walk around. But she also knew that anyone on the losing team itself, especially the coaches, had pretty much free reign to enter whenever, and whether the K.U. teams’ visiting reservations had expired already was unknown. 

    The facility was so grandiose, and the doors in the locker room to the halls were soundproofing as far as she knew. She assumed the latter since no one came in and called out her team’s antics in there before the game, despite them being absolutely loud and proud, and she could only wonder how they were after winning. So, there was no way for her to know whether someone was coming or if people were, possibly still, fighting outside.

    Madi didn’t think of Jake as an idiot or anything; however, she didn’t believe that he or any of the team was clever enough to pack a non-K.U.-affiliated set of clothes to walk and talk around inconspicuously like she did for Cari. Thus, if any Nashers were just as heated now as they were before and approached him, then there was a high probability of him getting caught in a brawl of his own. Madi prayed that that wasn’t the case for him so he could find her. Meanwhile, she hoped it wasn’t so calm that any passersby would think nothing of the locker room and lock its doors and trap her in. 

    She had enough reasons to be generally anxious about, well, everything, and she didn’t need this to be more of a horror story. 

    In a move to keep her mind off such awful ideas, including the recently cyclical and grossly petty thought of a Knight finding her and holding her for threat-laced ransom, she decided to tiredly trek across the gummy floor, re-collect her scattered things together, huddle in the corner of a leg of a bench, and play some music on her phone with its battery coming in clutch. 

    Although her size was now alien, the music allowed her to keep some semblances of humanity and happiness since the only thing that changed about it was its volume. Yet, that wasn’t a concern, either. Despite her phone being as diminished as she was, its earbuds had kept their snug fit and crisp sound. Though, she was positive that if she removed them from their audio jack, then their sounds would carry through the room as much as her voice did, aka not at all.

    Nevertheless, Madi kept her cool as well as she could, jamming out until a song that she had remembered being chill suddenly had a budding interjection of bass, sort of like a drum solo. It went well with the beat, but the last thing she needed at the moment was to be shaken by surprise from big vibrations. She looked at her phone to see if she had accidentally downloaded a remix, and she hadn’t. It wasn't until more bass came through that Madi was influenced to remove the buds and realized what was happening.

    The song was inaudible, yet the resonations stayed, encompassing her. Someone had finally entered the locker room.

    Aside from the distant, echoing squeaks of sneakers entering and the door closing behind them, the room was quiet. Yet, Madi would’ve bet that one would’ve been able to hear a pin drop before her voice if she spoke. It was too risky to just speak out or run into the light again. So, she waited for identification, and she found herself on a lucky streak.

    “Madi?” the familiar but magnified voice of Jake asked with resonance. “Are you in here?”

    “Y-Yes!” she cried in reply, leaning out into the open with her phone in hand and earbuds dragging across the tacky tiles behind her. “I’m here!”

    In her attempt to be rescued, the cup-sized cheerleader verified how powerless she was. Her voice didn't even bounce off the nearest locker or reverberate in the hollow underside of the bench. That, or too much was in her way of him to reach him. Either way, it was unsurprising when Jake called out for her again.

    “Mads?” he tried a second time, scurrying down the section of the locker room opposite and most distant from Madi to search. “Come on, now. Where are you, girl?” Madi could hear him jogging through the rows of lockers, getting further and further away from her and groaning along the way. “This is not the time for hide-and-seek. Give me something to work with.”

    “I-I am, damn it! I'm not even close to playing a game right now!” Madi understood his frustrations, but hers were much worse. 

    To try marching to the end of her row to get closer to him, Madi started by detaching herself from the gross ground. The farther she went down the lane, the more she could hear her friend coming back up toward the intersection of lockers where the entrance stood. When she finally reached the end of the locker chain, Jake simultaneously arrived back at the beginning of his. Although he wasn’t in open view, back in front of the door, she was still finally able to see a semblance of his immense form, now on a godly level. 

    His facial features were too far away for Madi to perceive in a good resolution, but she could make out the top of a hat peeking over the tops of the lockers without Jake stretching. Meanwhile, Madi could barely reach the lower groove of one of their doors with her arms raised. But she didn't stop trying to get his attention, now flailing around like a marionette. At one point, she could tell that Jake had turned his head in her direction, and Madi's heart nearly exploded from hope and over-inflation.

    “Does… Does he finally see me… or hear me, even?” she wondered, thirsting for release from this hell. 

    He lingered toward her side of the room for a lengthy amount of time, pulling at her heartstrings as he appeared to pull various poses of confusion in the chilled air above her. However, her hopes dropped when his eyes didn’t lock on hers and he began going toward the exit.

    “Madeline Yu,” Jake started with a dark undertone, glancing down the first few rows on Madi’s side, barely being able to view further than the third pair of lockers on each and not even caring about it, “I swear to God if you are not in that last locker room, then I’m having your ass!” 

    Usually, Madi only heard Jake get heated like that in a late-night bedroom. But being out in the open and at such a small size, even if he didn’t know it, made him appear even more intimidating, almost hell-bent on punishing her. 

    “My cred on the field tonight is not going to save me from being fucking benched or some shit!” he continued. “Do you even know what I had to say for them to even let me come out here!?”

    Madi hadn’t wanted Jake to lie, but she hoped that he didn't tell anyone anything too ridiculous. Yet, no matter what he said, it could never compare to the reality that was her shrunken self. Still, Jake was obviously angered, and if he stayed true to his tendencies, then it wouldn't be long before he stormed off. So, Madi had to figure something out quickly. 

    “For fuck’s sake, Jake!” she huffed, having to turn around and run to the other side of the aisle to even see him now. “Of all the times I’ve asked you to be a little bitch for me, you save your cue for right now!?” 

    As Madi ran along the lockers' sides, she could hear slams on metal, assumed to be Jake going back, doing a final once-over, rushing said search, and gripping on the corners of lockers to peek around them. If they both kept up their paces, then it wouldn't be too long before their sights intersected. However, just as she hoped wouldn't happen, the clanging stopped, and an echoing, exasperated sigh signaled Jake's forfeit. 

    “I'm not doing this!” he announced, throwing his hands up in defeat and disappointment and re-approaching the door. “There is nothing you could do that’s worth me making a fucking fool of myself!”  

    “No, no, Jake! Please!” Madi shrilled as she heard his footfalls begin to retreat away from her. Her pace back the other way hastened to fight his much longer strides but not without consequence. 

    That quickened pace resulted in her encountering the minefield that was the sea of spilled soda much faster than she would've hypothesized. With all her focus on getting to her now more humongous friend, it had been of little priority, despite a few millimeters of it probably being enough to down her outside and drown her inside. If she wasn't careful, then that was what it was going to do, as the itty-bitty beauty suddenly lost her balance and slipped, with her foot and ankle getting stuck on a particularly tacky but invisible spot. 

    Once again, she found herself wading in a bubbly batch, re-soaking her previously hardened cheerleading wear.

    Gritting her teeth through the sprain in her ankle, she pushed up from the ground with one hand sunken in the Gak-like goop. Her other hand gripped her phone with its lengthy earbuds dangling behind it, now sticky and wet yet still playing barely audible tunes. Looking down at them gave her a one-shot-one-opportunity idea that was just insane enough to possibly work. Jake couldn’t hear her, but he could probably hear her phone.

    “For the love of all things good,” Madi begged, clasping both hands over her heart, “please let those two semesters of Physics have some clout at this moment.” 

    Madi stared down her target in the distance: the stagnant slice of her carcinogen of a soda can. Its pop-top faced her and its cut that separated the two halves and flooded the floor. Channeling the spirits of both the football team and the baseball team, she yanked her headphones out of their jack, focused on the skateboard-sized sipping hole, and threw her now music-blasting phone toward it in a spin and at a speed that any coach of any sport would've been proud of. 

    Its flight through the air even impressed Madi, only having dealt with balls of a sporting nature on occasion. However, when the phone went right through its goal as she wanted, she couldn’t immediately celebrate with a touchdown dance. 

    Music was no longer playing. She didn’t think she had paused her playlist, and she didn’t hear the phone break on impact, but all she got back was silence. Not even an ad. 

    Quiet was her only companion, and thus her entire act of technical prowess was marked useless, making her wonder why she didn’t just try calling Jake again since that had obviously worked. With a presence lost in the wind and hopes shattered, there wasn’t anything else she could do. As the footsteps of her only chance of liberation grew further and further away to meet the creaking of an opening door, Madi dropped down to her knees and flopped back into the puddle of pop, her falling tears muffled by face-shadowing hands yet harmonizing with the retreating bass. 

    But just before the final boom of a door closing should’ve come, drowning out Madi’s minuscule whimpers, something else broke through the relative silence. Bouncing off the aluminum and inner plastic of the slashed cylinder, finally, after faulty buffering, the sound waves of a song from way-back-when rang.

    The melody didn’t even have to finish its introduction to be instantly recognizable, and Jake, due to karaoke at orientation years ago, matched it right to a certain someone. 

    “Oh. So, you want me to find you, now?” he laughed, reclosing the cracked door and backing back into the room. “You know I can’t resist a sweet throwback, even one as poppy as this.” 

    Re-facing the expanse and the unseen music performance, he crossed his arms over his chest and began a new exploration, scanning the area for where the music was coming from or, more importantly, any sight of Madi. Through his refined searching, it was proving true, to his surprise, that the sound wasn’t emanating from any speaker Nash had, and his friend still wasn’t visible. 

    If her face wasn’t dripping in carbonated cola, causing her to really feel like the after-party garbage she thought she was, Madi would’ve laughed at his playful comments. Nonetheless, she praised the heavens for her luck ex machina. Now realizing that the chances of him finding her increased tenfold, she jumped to shake off excess brownness from her upper half, let adrenaline and hope distract her from her sprain, and trudge toward her phone to be more noticeable. Since the can had magnified the phone’s volume, she was confident it could magnify hers as well.

    The question now was if she could even reach its opening and get to it.

    “This can’t go on for too much longer, Mads,” Jake sighed, continuing the hunt. “If the cheerleaders left behind one of their own, then my team can easily do the same to me.” 

    As true as his remarks were and the vexation in his voice was apparent, Jake still had his friend’s safety as number one. She was here, or he was being played like a fiddle, and he wasn’t going to leave until he found out which was the truth. 

    With the cheerful tunes of younger years as a signal or a siren’s song, he pressed on, passing rows one-by-one, curiosity as high as he was tall. “Where in the hell are you?” 

    As Jake traversed deeper into the locker room, the music grew louder, dampening his footfalls, much to his liking. However, when it seemed to be coming from right next to him – right in front of him, once he turned to face it – no electronic appliance was visible, and neither was Madi. All that he was met with was a soda can’s suicide. 

    The husk of its metal body was split in two as its syrup blood spread in all directions. Yet, the music was apparent, somehow calling out to him by his feet. Despite how unusual it was, logic was pulling Jake only one way. So, that’s where he went, squatting with his heels down toward the sound.

    The volume of the song increased as he did so, and moving some hair out the way of his ears only raised it more. With the new level of stimuli, however, what Jake didn’t expect to see was where it was coming from. 

    Through a withdrawn squint, he made out a small box making music and ripples in a tiny crater of liquid within the top half of the can. It was obviously more than just a box, but its size couldn’t have been larger than his fingernail or the now-closed piercing he thought was a good idea to get in high school. He rationalized the idea of the sounds bouncing off the can’s insides, yet the technological marvel still shouldn’t have been as loud as it was. 

    Jake began to reach and pinch it up for further inspection, partially fearful that he’d crush it upon contact, but he paused when he got distracted by another unexpected sight: some sort of tiny tendril flopping around through the can’s drinking opening. 

    The jock sat in awe of the tiny tentacle of sorts wiggling back and forth – a stamen of a flower with no stem in sight. While its narrowness resembled that of a sewing pin, its fluidity was like ribbon. Yet, there was something corporeal about it as it seemed driven to grab something, and the bitty box just in front of it looked like that thing. He considered pushing the box closer to the flailing feeler but thought against it in the end. The box had to be Madi’s, whatever it was, and until he found her, it was his. 

    All the while, Jake didn’t miss how the wee waver also appeared to be intentionally avoiding the hole’s surrounding edges as if it didn’t want to hurt itself, exemplifying some inner intelligence and keeping his eyes glued to it. Such an anomaly the animate vine was, intriguing enough for him to want to save its image and research it another day. But before capturing it on his phone’s camera came to mind, a new sight caught his eye. There was more to the flapping frond that just its calculated wiggles. 

    Despite it being soda-coated, Jake, somehow, made out a golden hue across its surface, one a bit too comparable to that of the pullover he was wearing.

    More curious than ever now, Jake had to see this thing up close. Yet, he was too cautious to not make a move for it. After all, he wasn’t sure what it was. If it became necessary, then he could’ve easily used any of his lanky appendages to swipe, kick, or crush the minute limb or whatever being it was connected to. Though, he truly hoped it wouldn’t ever have to come to that. His broad, bulky stature told one story, but Jake was mostly a gentle soul, only ever bouncing back on a person if they bounced on him first in every sense of the term. With this thing, however, the odds of an attack appeared to be on his side, and he gambled on that confidence by leaning forward to get a better view, looking past the rim of its surrounding can to see what he was dealing with.

    What he got was the last thing he ever expected, but it made Madi’s mania all the more valid. 

    A bantam hip of fallow hue with a sliver of an onyx etching down it peeked out from under a regal violet and gold covering. An intricately stitched and detailed piece of fabric that wrapped around and fully shielded a pair of taut glutes except for in a slit on the side that had been turned too far. Their crests fittingly marked the apex and start of two sculpted legs, complete with socks and shoes. Up from the hip, a sea of ebony, chocolate-streaked waves connected at a crown where two other tiny appendages popped out: arms, of which one of them whipped and wound like the snakelike creature Jake had thought it was.

    It just seemed too bizarre to be real – everything about the night had been like a dream – but this didn’t feel like a fantasy. He knew that figure anywhere, yet it was akin to a figurine now, one able to hide behind any of his fingers. Even so, he couldn’t mistake that ass. 

    The varsity co-ed uniform, even in its stained state, was recognizable enough, but with the long, flowing hair, the music, and those cakes, it just screamed ‘Madeline’. All the nicknames he’d given her regarding their previously just-slightly-more-than-a-ruler’s-length height difference had a whole, new meaning now if his eyes weren’t deceiving him. However, there was only one way to find out for sure, and he hoped, thinking about how her body should be working, he wouldn’t make her go deaf… if he already hadn’t. 

     “Madi?”

#g/t #my writing #sideline #sw #giant male #college #university #they're totally fwb's if you couldn't tell

[asktheguardians]

Ch.8 Volcanic Burst!

Years pass due to the volcano losing it’s magma energy and Kens recovery from the first day. Phoenix came to his room to bring him lunch but he wasn’t in bed again. Outside of the village Ken pull a vine like rope which release boulders from the hill to roll down towards him as he unsheathe his now sword made by the villagers. It’s heavier than his last sword but this raw material made from the molten boulder from the first day is stronger and more durable meaning it won’t be easy to shatter. He swing it full force colliding with the rock turning it to pebbles with the sword ringing giving some pain to Ken arms from the vibration. 

Phoenix: You know doing that too much will turn your bones to dusts...

Ken: It’s not a problem. I would say Ace and Shadow must of handle it well with their weapons too. This is only just a tiny vibration so it doesn’t bother me.

Distracted from the conversation the last boulder was about to collide behind his back. Phoenix in a blink of an eye pull her sword out quick cutting the boulder in half as both side fall with Ken eyes shocked. 

Phoenix: You should pay attention...If you lose focus you might get stab in the back... Also it’s lunch time so lets get going!

Ken: Um...ok I guess i could eat something now...And Phoenix um...

Phoenix: Yes Ken...

Ken: I never ask this but... can you probably teach me?

She stop for a second till she turn around and pull her sword out and come at him with a strike which both their blades clash and sparks are coming from Ken blade. She did the same technique once again to Ken which he backs off and try blocking each strike which became faster each on every hit. He then try to mimic her move but from the weight of his sword shown that it was little too slow to do the technique. The more swing he does the more it overheat his body which he stop and breath for air with Phoenix putting her sword back. 

Ken: I don’t... get how,, you do that? It looks like something from a movie or something like you treat it like one of those kung fu sticks.

Phoenix: With more practices and training than you can do it too but I bet you’re having trouble with the weight am I right?

Ken: Yeah...just yours look heavy too I don’t get it?

Phoenix: Well to tell you it’s not about the strength like flexing or using drugs. The way I do this I use the gravity and the weight. Yes it does feel heavy but once you get use to the weight of it you’ll see that it’s not heavy.

Ken a little confuse but look back to his new sword just thinking about what she is saying. Phoenix pat his back and bring him back to the village for lunch. Night fly by and Ken is back at the same area where his sword is stab to the ground and boulder are rolling down at him again but decided to move through the tight spots to dodge the boulders. He’s doing perfectly fine but later get more difficult as he got scratches from the boulders and almost got rolled over. He walk down to the lake breathing and splashing the cold water to his face. He grab his sword and try to do Phoenix technique but each swing he did is almost his death wish as the blade also cut his body and limbs. He try to use the weight but it feel so off and just not his style of using it. He just think that Shadow would do something like this but it just feel weird to him. He try one more time and it’s going good as the weight feels more lighter and suddenly faster. The blade is about to collide his waist but as it’s about to come right at him he suddenly jump with his rocket and did an overhead smash to the water causing a huge splash which villages can see the huge splash from the far distance. He breaths heavily with his head feel light and dizzy form a huge surprise that he can do that. From that he shoot his rocket and let out a huge excitement “ALRIGHT!!!” that echo the valley.

Months pass more and Ken been training with her each day trying to perfect his technique over and over. Till on the final day...

Phoenix: You seem to getting use of this are you? I never seen someone do this well a long time. I was usually the only one to use a technique in my army.

Ken: Really? I thought there would be like alot of train soldiers who can do something like this?

Phoenix: Well yeah but they use spears which I just kind of train with them just to improve my skills which surprises the general alot he made me second in command.

Ken: That’s really good!

He than notice the two rings that are on each of her finger which are wedding rings. He look back at her and thinking that maybe Phoenix and the general were a wedding couple. He stop and about ask her an important question. But that was stop when the volcano shake the ground and then exploded once again. Flint appeared once again as he let out a huge roar like battle cry meaning he’s ready to began the test one again with his spirit lifted making him excited.

Flint: I HOPE YOUR READY KEN CAUSE THIS TIME WILL BE YOUR FINAL AND LAST HOPE TO RETURN HOME! AND I HOPE YOU’RE READY CAUSE I WILL MAKE YOU FEEL THE FIRE OF HELL ITSELF!!!

The eruption blast out the lava boulders that crashes to the ground from the sky. Phoenix clenches the handle of her sword and began to run ahead of Ken faster than the first day they first met. Ken grab his sword too and run behind as she is long far head but boulders are rolling down. He remember his training and began dodging and hot striking the boulders which more came and became more difficult along the path. The heat grew more making it harder to breath but Ken just keep going with the help of his rocket to help him push him further and go faster. The test seems to be easy so far in his thoughts but he felt like something is off till he finally got to the top of the mountain seeing Phoenix and Flint together.

Ken: Phoenix what you waiting for you gonna kill him?

Phoenix: You know for my next generation you got good skills and tricks too. But if you think I will kill this guy right here then that would be a problem too.

Ken: What you talking abou-

Before he finish asking his question Flint threw his chains right at him tying him up as it burning his body from the heat of the metal.

Flint: Guess you didn’t know a thing about us do you? Guess the princess forgot to tell you that I was too part of the Guardians too with Phoenix here.

Ken: W-what...but you’re a demon how are you the Guardian!?

Phoenix: That is cause of me...turns out if I hunt about twelve demons I’m then curse with the last open I kill will join my body making my half demon. Which This bead I have here only have about eleven beads to prevent that from happening. Which he’s now like my partner over the year...but aside from that you still have to test your skills with me...

She unsheathe her sword which then her eye turn from white to black with the sword glow with flames out of the sword. Ken break out of the chain from Phoenix with Flint cut him out the chain as he pull his sword out and began to collide with her with their sword clash and sparking. She pushes him back and swing the blade to his chest but he dodge last second which only cut the clothes. She comes at him more faster which became more difficult so much. Each swing is cutting his skin and clothes alot which is difficult to block or reflect the strike. The lose of blood with heat rising higher temperature making it harder to breath and concentrate which Ken felt tired from all of that which is like his body will shut down any moment.

Phoenix/Flint: You think you can beat Lord Metal like this after all that training we just did? You’re having trouble with us more then that tin can. So slow and so weak right now. I’m proud that you can master my technique but you still can’t face me still...so Ken...you..have fail my test...

She stab her sword to his chest which leak out blood which sizzle on the surface of the volcanic heat. He shocked and look down as he grab the blade trying to pull it out but he felt weak to pull it out. She move him to the volcano lava pool which he hang on the sword still and try to get out. He then felt nothing which he then close his eyes with his arm now fall from the blade. She lay her sword down with his body slide off her blade and drop into the lava as his body sunken into it.

Ken: I...I can’t..die..n-not y-yet...I..I still got to....beat her...

As he try to struggle he heard a voice that is nice and calm. A light shine bright showing a women with long black hair and a white dress floating above him.

???: Tell me young knight...why are you accepting your life here...

Ken: ... I fail my test...Too be honest I never known why I was chosen as a Guardian. If I stop here then I fail everyone...

???: Then why you think you have fail?

Ken: Don’t you see I’m in the lava probably disintegrating here. I’m no match for her and Flint...They’re too strong and fast... I was the wrong person to be chosen...

The women in black hair came close to hug him relaxing his soul. 

???: You’re not ready to go yet young warrior...You still gotta beat her test if you’re gonna save everyone outside of this realm! Never give up and never think of failure too! Ok?

She smile happily with a giggle at him with his face confused but shake it off making a game face meaning he’s ready for round two. But one thing catch his mind is that she said “my wife”  but as he about to ask her she disappeared and is back to life in the lava. But it feels different the lava now felt cold and feels like water too? On the surface Flint think that maybe Phoenix probably went too far but she doesn’t care as she let her arm out to retrieved her gem back but it’s not coming back? The lava pool is bubbling up like boiling water now which is confusing both Flint and Phoenix which they back away from the lava which is about to explode. The eruption splashes out lava on the side and the eruption has lower down and stop shaking but the dark smoky cloud are still out. They run back to the top and they see the lava is all gone and it’s now a hollow like arena. But in the middle of the arena is a fire lime figure wielding the sword which the flames blown away and reveal that Ken has return from the dead with his face that showing him that he’s filled with determination. 

Ken: I am here for my rematch! For I am ready!

Phoenix surprised with a smile on her face and Flint feel so pump up which he enter in Phoenix body which make her more stronger as she enter the arena.

Phoenix: Thought you be burning alive in the lava this whole time but I guess I was wrong. I’ll just finish you here right now...but tell me...what spark the fire in you to keep going...

Ken has no answer to that question neither not knowing why he still alive and why he keep coming back.

Ken: I never knew why I came back...I never knew why I was chosen in the first place but...all I know that I must keep going no matter what or how high the obstacle is I must get back and help my friends to defeat Lord Metal! And That’s is what I’m Gonna Do!!!

He let out his limit break but instead he’s letting out even more which doing more can damage the body badly which can cause high risk of death but he just letting it all out more harder. The fire rocket on his back shoot out from bis back which burns the ground too and his gem glowing brighter too. One last cry out of his lung let him unleashed a new power that he now unlock. Phoenix is more surprises that she began clashing him with her sword over and over but he use his sword to which he clashes back faster. It seems so different right now then before but Ken now is going all out onto Phoenix. She then shoot the flames out from her blade which Ken rocket jump out of the range attack. He pull his sword to his back and he comes in full force spinning fast to Phoenix which she’s gonna block the attack but the impact of the sword causes her sword to shatter in half and cause a huge explosion when collided to the ground. The dust of ashes flow in the winds and Phoenix on her knee to the ground with blood leaking out on her right side of her body.

Phoenix: H-hehe...you finally pass the test....you’re skills have improve and...you finally think something other than strength itself...go now young man...beat that son of a bitch to hell...

When she finish she reveal the bright light which is the exit door to bring him back. Ken walk away thanking her but as he turn back he then see the same white black hair women holding Phoenix hand as they both kiss. Ken left the realm and back to his world stretching and letting out air as he feel the cold breeze to his face.

Ken: where is everybody?

Aura: He just flew off without us like at the speed of light. Sarah just hanging around and I told Ace to find a lake to wash himself off...and coming from you...meh you’re fine...nevermind go to the lake...

Ch. 9.2  Consume by Darkness

#vol 2 #story #The Guardians

[johnmkenney]

Game of the Year 2017

You’ve likely heard it everywhere, but 2017 sure was a fantastic year for video games.  Nintendo released their latest system, Microsoft put their upgraded revision of their console out on the market, and an Early Access title took the world by storm.  All while this was happening, fantastic games were coming out at an unprecedented pace. Three of the games in my top 10 last came out within 10 days of each other early in the year, and two others came out on the same exact day later in the year.  There’s something to be said about years ending in 7 having good games, and this decade provided yet another stellar showing.

This was a year where almost the entirety of the top 10 could have ranked even higher in previous years.  That’s how good games were this year.  I also spent a lot of time ordering my top 3 when I put this together last weekend, as the line is so razor thin that any of them could have won it.  The end moral: what a year for games.

As always, the rules for inclusion are as follows:    

The game must have its final retail release in 2017.  Thus, anything in an alpha/beta state or Steam Early Access does not qualify.  Based on the way games are being developed, this will likely be the last year this rule is in place.

In the case of episodic games, they must have their final episode delivered in 2017 to make the list.

While this list is comprehensive, I haven’t played everything.  Games like A Night in the Woods, Hollow Knight, What Remains of Edith Finch, and Divinity: Original Sin 2 all seem great but are unfortunately all still on my backlog.

Most importantly: the game has to be really good.  No-brainer there.

Honorable mentions:

This was the hardest year yet to limit the list to ten games, but here are the last five cuts I made:

Destiny 2 - Bungie managed to take the positive momentum of the later years of the original Destiny to make a great experience in Destiny 2, but there are definitely still some aspects to be cleaned up. Sonic Mania - It’s the first truly great Sonic game in decades as Christian Whitehead nailed the essence of the Genesis-era games. Persona 5 - A fantastic entry in the series that provides another strong cast of characters, stellar RPG gameplay, and a wonderful soundtrack. Nioh - While often labeled a Souls-clone, the mission based structure and smart take on combat stances make this a unique experience. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice - This is definitely an important title for exploring mental health, and the true shining star here is the audio design.  Definitely play this with headphones.

And now, here are my top 10 games of 2017:

10. Typeshift (Zach Gage - Mobile)

While many successful games this year focused on large, sweeping adventures, the one game I found myself launching daily was this clever word game.  TypeShift gives you a simple task: shift columns of letters vertically to make words until you’ve used every letter at least once.  While this sounds simple at first, the variety of different modes, including crossword-style clue challenges, help keep you coming back for puzzle after puzzle.  There’s also a free daily puzzle every day, so the replayability is infinite here.  This is the type of game that will stay installed on my phone for a long time to come, as it’s not something I see myself tiring of anytime soon.

9. The Sexy Brutale (Tequila Works - PC, PS4, XBO)

One of 2017’s most unique games: The Sexy Brutale is a Groundhog Day-esque murder mystery adventure.  Stuck in an infinite time loop, the player needs to witness party-goers at a mansion party get killed throughout the night.  Using the knowledge you’ve received as well as the ability to reset time by a few hours, you’re able to foil the attempts at their lives and slowly piece together the story and motives.  This isometric puzzler presents you with a simple objective but continues to use it in clever ways throughout the story to fill in all of the missing pieces in this adventure.  Figuring out how to save each character is a joy, and the setting and soundtrack help make this something that won’t soon be forgotten.

8. Horizon: Zero Dawn (Guerrilla Games - PS4)

After over a decade of developing Killzone games, Guerilla Games delivered a fresh and intriguing new world with Horizon.  In the developer’s self-described “post-post-apocalypse”, you’re given a beautiful open world filled with the remnants of civilization that went nearly extinct thousands of years prior.  Horizon does a good job painting a picture of new class structures and struggles as humans redevelop their societies, but the true spectacle comes within slowly learning more about what caused the downfall of humanity in the first place.  It’s a well-told tale that helps sets the table for more adventures to come in this universe in the future.  Combat and discovering the weaknesses of beasts in battle is a great hook, and the strong gameplay gives you reasons to stick with Aloy for dozens of hours.

7. Pyre (Supergiant Games - PC, PS4)

With its third entry, Supergiant created another enthralling universe to get lose within.  Pyre’s gameplay hook of “RPG meets NBA Jam” is a great way to get people into the door, but what’s more important here is the story that is told.  Half the game presents itself as a visual novel of sorts, where you spend time talking to various members of your party (as well as your opponents) to build a bigger sense of what being trapped in this underground is truly like.  Winning your matches is important, but if you lose, the game continues, as your loss hindered the team and is part of the story.  There are no do-overs in this world, and you must soldier on even if your failure caused members of your team their freedom.  This is one of the strongest aspects of the game, and the relationships you build with the multiple well developed characters in this game make you want to earn their freedom, even if it means you lose them for future matches.  The battles are fun every time, but the true reason to stick around this world is the characters.

6. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (Machine Games - PC, PS4, XBO)

Wolfenstein II is probably the game that features the worst gameplay on this list.  Why mention that and even put it on this list?  Well, that’s because tearing through this world and seeing the adventures of B.J. Blazkowicz and his resistance team is a sight to behold.  Set in an alternate reality a few decades after the Nazis won World War II, there isn’t much hope left in the world for those fighting back, and this is a story about starting a revolutions.  Words cannot even describe the twists and turns this story takes, as there are enough clever moments and setpieces that could fill a whole series instead of just a single game.  I found myself putting down the controller several times out of shock with a “did they really just do that?” thought throughout the adventure.  It’s quite alright to throw the settings to easy and tear through this adventure, as it isn’t something to be missed.

5. Cuphead (StudioMDHR - PC, XBO)

There’s one thing painfully obvious about Cuphead right off the bat: this 1930s cartoon inspired run-and-gun platformer is one of the most beautiful games you’ll see in motion.  The game is so faithful to its source material, straight down to the occasional tears in the film and garbled voice audio from some characters.  StudioMDHR went for an aesthetic, and they nailed it.  However, looks aren’t what make a game, and Cuphead’s true strength comes within its stellar gameplay and boss design.  It feels like you are playing a modern-day Gunstar Heroes while you tear through dragons, genies, haunted roller coasters, and so many more diverse villains.  While everything may look cute, this game provides a challenge that is not for the weak of heart, but it’s certainly worth surmounting.  The boss battles a true delight, and something as simple as a progress meter that shows how far you got during your failed attempt is a great touch to make you want to immediately hop back in to try to redeem your loss.  

4. Super Mario Odyssey (Nintendo EPD - Switch)

While Super Mario Galaxy 2 may be my favorite 3D Mario, there’s something to be said about Nintendo wanting to go back to the world-exploring approach seen in Super Mario 64.  What resulted is a fantastic journey through a dozen worlds with clever platforming and environments that reward you for searching every nook and cranny.  Almost every level brings fresh ideas and challenges that help present one of the most fun Mario adventures yet.  All of that being said, I haven’t even touched on the capture mechanic, which helped breath new life into this story.  Using Mario’s new hat companion, Cappy, you are able to possess a majority of enemies you come across to gain their abilities.  The foes you can overtake range from classics like Bullet Bills and Chain Chomps to new foes such as a giant T-Rex.  These traits help you look at your surroundings like you couldn’t before and uncover new secrets and objectives, leading to an absolute sense of wonder for the player.  From the New Donk City Festival to the Darker Side, the moments in this game will keep a smile on your face throughout.

3. NieR: Automata (Platinum Games - PC, PS4)

NieR took me a very long time to finally get through, as there were a few separate occasions early on where I fell off the game.  I decided to stick with it, and shortly after I came to a moment that I immediately intrigued me to keep pushing.  After finishing the game (aka Route A), I enjoyed it enough to see what the alternative routes would show me.  Immediately upon starting the second playthrough, I was hooked and the game wouldn’t let go until I saw the credits no less than six more times.  The twists and turns the story takes in NieR are unprecedented, and the beauty of is it in the way that the story itself is told. This is one of those experiences that wouldn’t have the same effect if shown in another type of medium. The answers are in front of you the whole time, but seeing the way that the game handles subjects such as loyalty, the human essence, and society as a whole are fascinating.  Characters are built so incredibly strong in this world that you want to see what happens to each one of them, even if the outcome isn’t usually the happiest.  It’s to the point where even the end credits have a moment that left me with a “wow, I can’t believe they did that” feeling.  It’s a hard game to discuss without spoiling some of the genius found within, so if you’re at all interested, it’s worth a look.  It’s been weeks since I’ve finished NieR, and I still can’t stop thinking about some of its themes and story.

2. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo EPD - Switch, Wii U)

The crown jewel of Nintendo’s new platform is Link’s latest adventure.  It’s hard to think of an open-world created that is as stunning and provides the freedom to explore as the world found here.  2013’s handheld Zelda, A Link Between Worlds, toyed around with the idea of giving the player access to most abilities immediately and setting them loose in the world. Breath of the Wild took that concept and ran with it, as you spent the first few hours on a seperate plateau learning the mechanics and receiving all of the items that give Link his abilities in the game.  Once you have that, you’re turned free to go anywhere you want in the world.  I spent dozens of hours just exploring mountains, lakes, and deserts before even approaching the first story milestone of the game, as there was just so much to do by wandering.  Something as simple as giving Link the ability to climb instead of gating with invisible terrain presents the player with the ability to explore so much so quickly, and the world seems so vast thanks to it.  

Nintendo’s decisions to add challenge shrines, which were all mostly unique, in place of the typical heart piece search granted a new reason to try to uncover everything there was in the world.  The in-game physics also lead to so many moments of creating unique solutions to obstacles and combat that you won’t believe what you can pull off.  The newest Zelda also used one of the series core strengths, its music, in a novel way, as the world is more silent and songs are used more as ambiance to accompany Link in key moments, and it works.  It’s a world you’ll never want to leave, and the fact that Nintendo provided a Zelda adventure that can give you 100 hours a playtime if you choose is something truly special.  The one piece that was the deciding factor of keeping Breath of the Wild out of my top spot was the dungeons, as the focus on letting the player have access to all abilities led to all the dungeons and their bosses seemed sub-par compared to everything else.  Still, this is not an experience to be missed.

1. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG Corporation - PC, XBO)

As with most people, if you would have told me I would have been hooked by a full game version of one of those Battle Royale mods in 2017, I would have called you crazy.  However, here we are.  Very early in the year, I found myself watching a few PUBG streams on Twitch and decided to pick it up about two weeks after it launched in Early Access.  I mentioned at the start of this list how I consistently played TypeShift throughout the year, but 2017 was also the year that I was constantly drawn back into PUBG week after week.

The concept is simple: you and 99 other people are dropped onto an island with nothing.  The goal: be the last person standing.  This isn’t the first time this has been attempted, as I mentioned earlier how mods and other games have attempted this same idea.  However, this is the first time where it’s been streamlined in a way that makes it super easy to hop in and play.  There’s nothing overly complicated about it: as all you need to do is run around and loot weapons and recovery items to better prepare you for battles you’ll have on a fairly large map.  In one of the ways that makes PUBG so accessible, there’s always a circle slowly encroaching onto players to ensure games move quickly and that you cannot just hide in one spot.  Sure, you can hide in a bathtub and hope to get lucky with circle positioning, but it’s probably not going to happen.

No two games of PUBG are exactly alike, and there’s nothing that compares the heart-pounding experience of being one of the last 10 people alive, knowing your next move could win you the game or expose you to be easily killed by another opponent.  It’s a game that has already inspired developers to start working on adding similar concepts to their games, and this could very well be looked back at as a seminal title years down the line.  It’s been a fantastic year for video games, but nothing could compete with the thrill of trying to earn a chicken dinner in PUBG in 2017.