#hunger as monstrosity. hunger as what turns you into a thing to be hunted

[quietwingsinthesky]

God I wish I had something coherent to say about hunger as one of spn’s core themes but unfortunately my brain just loops back around to “Sam should have eaten more weird supernatural things to see if they also gave him powers.” (Like maybe Lucifer’s blood idk idk)

#it really is Such A Thing #like. the bones of it are laid in episode 2. (in a not great way but still) #hunger as monstrosity. hunger as what turns you into a thing to be hunted #with the demon blood. ​hunger as what makes you strong enough to survive. to protect yourself. to protect others. #it’s selfish. it’s selfless. Sam saves people. Sam is damned for it. #they would not have killed that horseman if Sam didn’t starve for blood. he did that. he saved them. #I mean the show likes suffering. it likes when they martyr themselves on their own despair. and starvation is just another nail #I’m a samgirl my bias is clear but this is obviously a big part of Dean too #he’s the one famine can’t effect. he’s the one who grabs food whenever it’s available #(also the cannibalistic lovers in that episode. I’ve never stopped thinking about this. I can’t) #and it’s not just a Kripke era thing. it’s godstiel eating purgatory. it’s the leviathans eating… everything #Cas eating the grace of other angels!!! angel cannibalism!!! fucking!!! I wish I had coherent thoughts about this!!! #losing himself. keeping himself alive. what is he worth unless he can cannibalize his own kind and make them useful to the winchesters #I’ll stop now but like #my point is that this is a show about eating things. and other people. #I love that for them #spn #supernatural #Sam winchester #samifer #lucifer/sam winchester #fuck it it counts

[desertfangs]

Does Daniel love Armand because he is a vampire and not despite of his monstrosity? I was under the impression that he loved the being inspite of whatever "evil" there is. I saw a post mention just this. That book Daniel only knew the charisma of the "evil" and therefore was so admanant in his want for immortality. But once the reality of violence unfolded after his turning, then came the horror.

I mean—and let’s preface this by saying this is my read only and I’m not telling anyone else how to interpret what we’re told—but in my opinion, it’s pretty obvious Daniel is enamored with Armand as a person and as a vampire.

He’s captivated by his laughter. He indulges his obsessions, his desire to fly all over the place, to spend their nights at shows, movies, boxing matches, art galas. He’s nodding off at shows, exhausted from running around at all hours of the night. I’ve mentioned before that he puts up with a lot, and that is the sort of thing you do if you truly love a person. I don’t get the impression that Daniel loves Armand despite him being a vampire, or even because of it. He loves Armand, period. All of him. The vampire and the curious person who wants to learn everything about the world, who wants to film things and watch movies and put his cigarettes down the garbage disposal. 

What we get in Devil’s Minion is pretty much Daniel’s POV and it is, in my opinion, almost a love letter to Armand. (I mean, maybe Lestat was able to sweet talk Armand into filling some gaps but it’s not like he’d need to, given that Daniel was probably happy to sit with him for three nights straight and recount their story. I imagine Lestat had a hell of a time cutting it down and wouldn’t be looking for more.) 

He loves “snuggling with dead things.” He seems captivated by the idea of Armand wearing the clothes off his victims. He wants to see Armand kill. Clearly he’s romanticized death at the hand of a vampire (and had done so with Louis, when he begged him to turn him!) and now specifically at Armand’s hand. Armand, who is regularly taking little drinks of him and giving Daniel little drinks of blood in return. But I don’t think it’s just because he’s a vampire that Daniel is smitten. 

Yes, he wants immortality. Because he wants to live forever with Armand. “What does it matter if you give it to me and it's wrong! There is no wrong! There is only desperation, and I would have it! I want to live forever with you.” 

As for “the horror” after he was turned, I’m not sure what you're referring to. There was a lot of horror going on, what with Akasha immolating their kind. Or maybe you mean his first experience killing, which happened during the aforementioned purge of immortals. Daniel was turned at the most chaotic moment. His first kill is clumsy. They’re rushing to the concert. There’s no time for Armand to gently ease him into it, no time to make it palatable. He needs blood. Armand does his best. Daniel has to face the reality of taking a life quickly and then move on. And honestly, I think he handles it pretty well all things considered? Not long after he’s asking if Armand likes him as a vampire and is worried with how well he’s vampiring, but he seems more or less okay. I think the reality was always going to be a little jarring and the circumstances made it more so.

But there’s nothing in any of the books that indicates Daniel ever regrets becoming a vampire. Later on Night Island, he’s asking the ancients about history and we learn he likes to let his hunger build, but there’s nothing about him not liking hunting or having issues killing. We know he goes mad later and canon never tells us why. Giving the timing, I always assumed it was due to thinking Armand was dead but your mileage may vary on that. And we know at the end of the series, he’s hunting just fine in Rio, and later with Armand, and then moves into Trinity Gate, none of which speaks to him wishing he hadn’t become immortal or even not wanting to be with Armand even still.

Anyhow, I feel like this is a rambling response and I’m not sure if it’s what you wanted to know or just me spewing thoughts on Tumblr after a long, draining day at work, but I do enjoy spewing thoughts about Daniel! So thank you for the ask, anon! 

#daniel molloy #armand #armand/daniel #vc meta #vc headcanons #vc #vampire chronicles #devil's minion #the devil's minion #anonymous #answers in the desert

[i-did-not-mean-to]

Hi, it's Moonlord, and can it be more than one request? For the trick-or-treating? For example, Finrod became a werewolf, in a Finrod/Celegorm (with or without Curufin) or Finrod/Turgon

Hello dearest!

You didn't say whether you wanted a trick or a treat, so I stayed with the vibe of the previous story!

🎃Trick🎃

Have another ficlet about Finrod, Curufin, Celegorm, AND Turgon.

This is Part II of this idea. (Part I)

Have 600 words of Wolfinrod.

Celegorm frowned as he entered the clearing—as an accomplished hunter, he relied on his instincts unhesitatingly, and the musky scent making his nostrils flare now set his teeth on edge.

Something was here, and it was hungry.

Pushing his younger brother—Curufin, for all the things he might have been to him throughout the ages, would never not be a youngling in need of protection—behind his broad, muscular back, he squared his shoulders and advanced cautiously.

“Cousin,” Turgon looked up sharply, his full, sensual lips contorted into a mocking sneer. “I did not expect thee to come.”

The derision dripping like blood from those white teeth was so maddening that Celegorm almost failed to notice the bright golden eyes—tinged with ocean green and sky blue—that settled on his approaching form voraciously.

“What—” he cried out in alarm as sleek limbs untangled and silver fur rustled in the eerie quietude of the remote meadow—even blinking rapidly did nothing to dispel the nightmare he seemed to have fallen into unwittingly.

In Turgon’s lap lay a wolf. Nay, Celegorm knew dogs and wolves well enough to know that there was nothing natural or legitimate about that overgrown, sharp-fanged monstrosity now rolling to its massive paws and stalking towards them leisurely.

“Don’t toy with them,” Turgon warned softly, but there was no real reprimand in that exhortation.

“What sorcery is this?” Celegorm groaned. His body melted into a defensive stance as he heard Curufin gasp breathlessly behind him, and he patted his hip in search of the purely decorative knife he wore on his belt.

“It is he, this is our cousin Finrod,” Curufin hissed. “The Valar have returned him to us…changed.”

The canine creature, intelligent eyes flickering with something akin to dark humour, paused and settled on his strong haunches as if waiting for the appropriate reaction.

“It cannot be,” Celegorm panted, but his hand extended against his will to touch the soft fur of the mysterious he-wolf.

Yes, Celegorm trusted his instincts, and he had never crossed an animal he had not been able to connect with.

Freed of the necessity of polite words and proper turns of phrase, he could let his raw thoughts and unfiltered emotions flow through the unique, inexplicable bond that could only ever be established between unguarded, feral souls.

On that primal level of hunger and survival, he finally managed to convey his shame and debilitating regret. They were pack animals and letting one of their own face danger and death on his own meant unbearable infamy for those who had stayed behind to usurp a position they had not deserved.

Finally, the creature that was Finrod and yet resembled their ridiculously cheerful, strongminded cousin only vaguely inclined its heavy, lethal head in mute acceptance of their contrition.

Then its ears perked up and it gave a short, commanding yap that brought Turgon to his feet and made Celegorm’s skin tingle with the old-familiar thrill of the hunt.

“Stay here,” the silver-haired savage hissed at his forge-bound brother as the scent of a disoriented deer that had been separated from its herd flooded his awareness. “There will be blood.”

“I am no longer afraid of blood,” Curufin laughed, fey and ferocious, and pulled a thin, deadly blade from the sleeve of his formal tunic. “Let’s go!”

As one, the fallen descendants of righteous Finwë fell into a run, their steps all but inaudible, in pursuit of yet another innocent, clueless victim to satiate their thirst for slaughter that even the grace of the Valar had not erased from their guilty souls.

Ah, this was fun! Thank you so much for your amazing prompts!

-> Masterlist October

#ask #IDNMT answers #Anonymous #cilil #IDNMT writes #fanfiction #writing #tolkien writing #jrrt #FOTFICS october event #FOTFICS trick-or-treat #Trick #Finrod #longing #Part II #Celegorm #regrets #Curufin #Turgon

[bindcurse]

❛ —— ☾ ₊ ⊹ @unsoundnovel | 𝕯𝖔𝖗𝖎𝖆𝖓

𝐁𝐔𝐑𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐇 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐎𝐅 𝐑𝐎𝐓, pursuer stumbles free of clinging viscera. Gore-torn monstrosities stumble after them on newborn legs that will quickly find strength, should they tarry long enough. Astarion does not have the time to think as they are born one after another in terrible succession. To stay and watch this most unholy miracle would mean death. They would be overwhelmed; the gnoll's numbers only swell while theirs wane. Flies upon carrion.

He has not come this far to become another monster's meat.

"By all the hells," he curses at the indifferent moon as loud as he dares, stumbling back from the sight and back into the cover of the trees. It will not be enough. These creatures do not hunt by mere sight alone. Yet he is no ranger with knowledge of how to cover his scent.

Instinct honed by centuries of survival insist that he flee posthaste. Not a precious moment to be wasted, not even to warn the wizard. Dorian is injured, he will be little more than dead weight. The wise thing for Astarion to do would be to cut his losses. Maybe they would believe him back at camp, if he told them that there was nothing he could have done. The animals were already upon Dorian. All Astarion could do was tearfully listen to his last words before he was ripped limb from limb. But oh, how fervently he vowed to pass them onto to next of kin or lover or whatever-such! Drakka might even pity him for the terror he witnessed, if he played at remorse well enough.

Danmingly, Astarion tarries. Orpheus, too, must have known that he condemned himself and beloved even as he turned. Salt-wife, who could not bear but to cast one last glance upon ruin. Astarion lingers, and decides not to let the mage be offering to this forest of teeth tonight.

He veers from the straightforward path, stumbles nearly headlong upon the other man where he lays. No greeting before he is hauling him upward from his exhausted slump. There is a pallor to his brown cheek that Astarion does not like the look of. A flutter of his dark lashes that is too slow, too sedate. The rich scent of his blood flowers pungently from his wounds.

A sweet ambrosia, no doubt, to the gnolls as well as himself. For now, Astarion's hunger is pushed away easily enough. Even if his fangs are sharp pinpricks to his bottom lip, if saliva floods his mouth in preparation for the feast. What fun!, if Dorian were to be victim to Astarion's own appetites before the cackle could ever find him! At least Astarion would bring him a kinder, sweeter death. He would be ever so gentle as he drunk of him to the very last drop. Maybe it would even give him enough strength to fight this battle himself, though that is a gamble at very best.

He chooses, once more, to be elf instead of beast. His quota of kind deeds for the year is quickly being used up. He quickly fumbles a healing potion from a pouch at his hip, unstoppering and pressing it against Dorian's pale lips none-too-gently. Delicacy is better left to those for the luxury for it.

"Apologies, darling. But I do believe that we are quite fucked, " He knows not where the rest of their group may be. It is the only the two of them, and they very well may not survive the night. "And I need you well enough to run. Noble sacrifices are not so beautiful when none will know of them. Let us live, so the poets may pen us a proper tragedy, yes?"

#unsoundnovel #teehee gnoll chase scene perhaps?? #muse / astarion #every time i post something i play around with formatting once more

[rebelcourtesan]

My Recommendation for 'Serious' Anime

Below is a list of anime I love as they aren't just simple 'kids in school' or 'friendship will beat all odds' tropes. The characters are serious and tackle serious problems and themes.

TRIGGER WARNING: All of these anime have blood, violence, and death in them. Some even have sexual assault and torture. I'll mark the ones that do.

Gotta start with this gem. Humanity lives within walls, protected from Titans, giants with a hunger for human flesh. Eren's life is shattered when the walls is broken by the Colossal Titan and his village is overrun by Titans, eating his mother and ruining his childhood. He joins the cadets to learn how to take on these monstrosities to save humanity and uncover startling revelations within and outside of the walls.

I don't want to get into spoiler territory, but things aren't what they seem with the characters. They do come across as tropes with Eren being the hot headed protagonist, Armin the quiet brains, and Mikasa the cool beauty, but they each come into their own person through character development and events that mark their traumas and their response to it.

I do not understand why this anime isn't talked about more. It's an old anime from 1999, but it's themes still hold true today.

Shu is a carefree boy who meets a strange silent girl, Lala-Ru. While befriending her, they are captured by solders from another world and enlisted in their brutal army to fight a pointless war under the leadership of a deranged dictator who wants to use Lala-Ru special power over water for his own ends.

I'm going to go ahead and tell you this anime is brutal. Bad things happen to good people while villains who did atrocious things regret their actions. While I recommend this anime, it is a hard watch for anyone as there as children are forced to becoming soldiers, girls being raped by soldiers to be used as breeders, and torture.

I am more than happy to announce this gem has been rereleased on Netflix in its entirety of 70+ episodes. While this is an investment of time, (being frank here, far shorter than some more popular anime), this anime should be at the top of anyone's psychological thriller list.

Fed up with corrupt hospital politics of favoring celebrity or wealthy patients in emergency situations, Dr. Kenzo Tenma goes against the hospital director's orders and performs emergency brain surgery on a young boy shot in the head. He saves the lad's life, but 10 years later, realizes he made a terrible mistake as the boy has grown up to become a serial killer. On the run for a murder he didn't commit, Dr. Tenma travels across Europe looking for the monster whose life he should never have saved.

This anime mostly takes place in Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall so there are a lot of political situations in this, but most of all it is a fugitive story of Tenma trying to hunt down a killer who is already a step ahead of him and deep conspiracy of his origins. Tough topics are corruption, addiction, and racism is a big thing in this show.

Seriously, one of the best ever written villains, Johann, is so terrifying, I still feel a shudder every time he comes on screen.

Hear me out. While is is technically a 'kids in school' anime, there are scarier things afoot than someone's crush rejecting them.

Koichi has transferred to a new school to class 3-3 and the students receive him with cold and suspicious looks. Also, there's a mysterious girl in his class everyone seems not to see or notice . . .

I can't give away too much without spoiling the plot which has a lot of twists and turns. This is one of my favorite horror anime with a mystery that kept me on the edge of my seat. I seriously wish I could hit my head and forget this anime so I can watch it for the first time again.

Think of someone created an anime version of Salem's Lot and you would get Shiki.

In the peaceful village of Sotoba, an mysterious illness afflicts the citizens. People suffering from a strange form of anemia puzzles the town's doctor. Also, a strange family moves into the village in the dead of night and local girl Megumi disappears only to be found in the woods cold and suffering from blood loss . . .

Another excellent horror anime which doesn't pull it's punches. It sports a large cast of characters from the town doctor, the priest of a village's temple, and the school kids who try to save the town, everyone doesn't come out of this with clean hands. The anime styles of the characters are a little funky and remind me of 60's anime, but in a good way.

Don't let the title card fool you.

Madoka and her best friend Sayaka discover a cat like creature named Kyubey who offers to transform them into Magical Girls to combat Witches who prey on innocent people's emotions. Yet, she's warned by a strange dark hair Magical Girl, Homura, not to accept Kyubey's offer.

This anime completely takes the Magical Girl tropes and flips it on its ear. Definitely worth a watch, if only to experience the shocking revelations this anime presents.

Anime Vikings . . .what more should I say? Currently on Netflix with the second season airing each week.

As a young boy, Thorfinn admired his father, village leader Thors and stowed away on his boat when goes away to war. Alas, his fantasy of adventuring with his father is shattered when Thors is killed in a raid and Thorfinn is taken in by the same Vikings who killed his father. He is taught how to fight and survive in battle, grows up desiring a peaceful land where he doesn't have to fight, Vinland.

It's Vikings, so expect a lot of raiding and violence. Not to mention slavery.

This is a gem that came out of nowhere! I had first thought this was a cash grab from the franchise, but damn, if they didn't give this anime their best.

Set in Night City of Cyberpunk, street kid David tries to stand on his own while appeasing his hard working mother, until a tragedy leaves him on his own with a military grade implant he has installed into his body which gives him faster reflexes in combat. He gets taken in by a group of Edgerunners, mercenaries who take any job for money and falls in love with the cool and aloof Lucy.

This anime hits hard by making you care for characters who die violent deaths, not to mention the devastation of the mental illness Cyperpyschosis. In Night City, it's not how you live that makes you a legend, it's how you die.

I'm talking about the 1997 anime series and the movie trilogy. The animation for the 2016 series isn't that great with terrible animation. So I recommend just the 1997.

Set in a low fantasy medieval world, mercenary Guts joins the Band of the Hawk, a mercenary group of young warriors under the command of the beautiful Griffith whose ambition will lead to the group's downfall.

This is another anime with characters you will fall in love with the loyal Guts, determine Casca, and charismatic Griffith. There is multiple attempts of sexual assault on Casca, so be warned before watching.

Years ago, a group of men killed Angelo's family in cold blood. Seeking revenge, Angelo infiltrates the Vanetti Family and befriends the don's son Nero, one of the men responsible for his family's murder.

This is one of the few anime I will only watch dubbed. While I have nothing against the Japanese VAs, the atmosphere and story is so 1920's Prohibitions, hearing the characters speak Japanese breaks the immersion for me. The English cast does a great job with the Brooklyn accents.

This is a story about revenge and how far someone will go for it. Angelo is cold and determine to take down the killers, including Nero, who is a poor friendly soul who is guilt stricken over his actions that day. Not knowing Angelo's true identity, he takes him under his wing and forms a friendship based on lies and subterfuge. Being a mafia story, there will be blood and crime aplenty so be warn if are easily triggered by violence.

#anime recommendations

[cardiacginger]

daemonium erratus ::

@caelestisdemon Doflamingo relaxed back into his cushioned seat with a glass of scotch in one hand and a burning cigarette in the other. The thrall keeping his real identity from being detectable by all sorts of undesirables was strong as ever, not a single mark at tonight’s halloween festivities sparking any interest within him nor inspire him to collect souls readily.

The quality of the souls drifting in and out of this club were of shit quality compared to those that Doflamingo frequently indulged in. He had hoped that his presence alone would’ve drudged in something of worth but alas, that seemed not to be the case. Lifting the cigarette up to his lips, he puffed out another smoke, releasing it out of his nose leisurely.

Humans, monstrosities of the night? They all came and went through the purposeful lax security at the doorway, lured in by the promise of free drinks and holiday special goodies lined up at the table if not for the poor souls themselves. A night of debauchery as it were and he was the king of it all veiled in shadow. A fallen angel with time to spend before he’d look to spread his influence elsewhere.

He hadn’t even been to hell itself for awhile despite being of such high rank. Perhaps it was for the change of scenery that kept him here or it was by the entertainment he sought not of devils but of the mortal realm that made him linger so long. Whatever it was, he could perhaps make an exception tonight as he pauses in the midst of another glass he hadn’t bothered to keep count (not like the alcohol would do much in the way of turning him drunk but he digressed) the cool glass slipping down his lips as he peered through the lens of his shades around the room for the source drawing his attention.

Hm, maybe devils could be fun to toy with afterall, seeing as this wayward being making it’s way into his field of view looked to have no clue what it was up against. How positively adorable.

Shachi mingled lightly with a few patrons of the crowd, far more to avoid being conspicuous than out of any interest in the individuals he gave a charming smile and a few minutes of attention to. His eyes flicked regularly to his true interest- a hulking man he'd immediately identified as the source that'd attracted him. The demon scanned for every bit of information observation could offer. The man sat comfortable and alone, watching the scenes in front of him but seemingly content to not participate outside of his booth. Voyeuristic or disinterested? He certainly didn't seem the type to be lonely due to a lack of options, especially given the nature of his surroundings. Beyond that, he exuded a power, a status, beyond just the frequency of his soul. Reclining with a drink and cigarette. Donning sunglasses in the dimly-lit club - although Shachi was hardly one to talk on the oddity of that. The man didn't wear as many answers on his sleeve as the night's prior targets. Shachi figured he should've expected as much.

The redhead made his way over to the bar, grabbing a few coins he'd pocketed from the festival, ordering himself a rather cheap drink, and dropping a very generous tip to the bartender along with the payment. His hand hovered over the metal as he gave a small nod in his target's direction.

"What's he been drinking tonight?"

The bartender gave Shachi a strange look alongside an answer, but grabbed his order and the additional glass of scotch at the demon's request. Offering in hand, it was finally time to make a move.

Shachi made his way over. His instincts were shifting like riptides between excitement and unease, the latter of which was being drowned out by single-minded hunger. It was hard not to count the win before he had it. The strength of soul that radiated from the man, especially as their distance closed - the only thing on Shachi's mind was sinking his teeth in.

Of course, though, that wasn't how the dance of the hunt began.

"Odd," Shachi started, walking up to the booth. "I wouldn't have pinned you as the cigarette type. But-" He gave the scotch a small swirl before sliding it onto the table, "I can tell you're a man of taste."

The demon smoothly rolled his own drink into his now free hand, other hand making a quick conjure from his personal stockpile in Hell to produce a high-quality cigar in what could be passed off as a simple sleight of hand. He extended the cigar out with an easy smile, the very picture of a humble request for the other's time.

"I imagine you know quality when you see it, ey? I know I do. I'm Shachi, if this seat isn't taken."

#caelestisdemon :: daemonium erratus. ] #more fun in hell anyway :: demon!au. ] #spooky month 2022. ] #thread. ] #demon shach is way better at this than canon shach #unfortunately #neither are less stupid #this was so much fun to write i cannot wait for this disaster #caelestisdemon

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

Of the Moon and Other Berries

[ID in alt text]

A/N: I have taken to the fairytale-esque style, which, paired with a discussion about eating the moon with the wonderful @euphoniouspandemonium, resulted in this little monstrosity. A short, strange story of the bittersweet type, for those who enjoy such things.

You should also check out this story written by my aforementioned friend, it's a work of genius.

Word count: around 1.6k words

TW&CW: implied character death, food mention, implied ableism (in passing, brief), please tell me if I should add more.

No one has ever eaten the moon – not for any particular reason, they just never thought of it as a thing a person could do. The moon was unreachable, its glow guiding people through the darkest hours. 

Zarja did think of eating the moon. She thought of many things others didn’t bother to, just because someone had to.

She was a quiet child, and then a quiet young woman. She did the things she was asked to and did them well, and so, without much trouble, she got to the point in her life where she was supposed to choose what she’d do for the rest of it. She was asked what she wanted to do many times before, of course, and the answer she gave was always the same: “I want to learn what the world is and why it works the way it does.”

She thought this answer to be clear and sufficient. The others thought it was a display of childish curiosity she was bound to outgrow, and so, when the time came, she was asked again:

“what are you going to do now?”

“I will go see what the world is,” Zarja smiled. The next morning, she was gone, along with a few spare sets of clothing and a loaf of bread.

Zarja walked for three days, not for long but long enough for her to run out of food and learn what hunger was really like, until she reached a big city. The city was the capital of the kingdom, and although it had bread, it also had rules, those rules including that one had to pay for bread. Zarja had no money – she did, however, know how to read, and an announcement saying that the King was looking for a miracle healer for his son in exchange for all the riches they could possibly want was all she needed.

No one can say why a thin girl in an old dress was let into the palace: perhaps they saw something in her calm demeanor and sharp eyes, or perhaps they were simply that desperate. 

The prince had an illness nobody knew how to deal with: since early childhood, he hardly spoke, rarely ate, and sometimes it seemed that the sounds and colors of the world were simply too much for him. No healer and no treatment could make the prince talk normally or enjoy something like a hunt or a banquet.

Zorja did not try to make the prince speak: instead, she watched the way he read and looked at illustrations and offered him to draw, which he did very well, and then write, which took more work but was also much easier than speaking. She observed the rooms he would feel comfortable in and arranged for the rest to be decorated in the same way, and soon, most of the places within the palace were open to the boy who used to only feel at home in a few corners of it. Once the study became accessible, it turned out that unlike banquets and balls, official documents with their dry but clear language came easily to him, and so, for the first time since his birth, the boy began to not only learn about life outside of the palace but also influence it.

It was a miracle how much the prince’s life changed without actually changing in any fundamental way, but the most unbelievable part of the story, the one historians wrote off as legend years later, was that all the girl asked for in return was enough money to buy a few loaves of bread and access to the royal library.

Soon, a healer appeared in the kingdom. She worked with the cases most had deemed untreatable: the pain that didn’t kill but didn’t go away, the people who had trouble understanding the world or being understood by it. She came to the largest of cities and tiniest of villages, taking only as much as she needed to have the next meal and a place to sleep. Years later, when the healer knew as much about the profession as there was to learn, she disappeared. 

In a port city on the very edge of the kingdom, a new shipbuilder began her work: her ships were simple at first, only good enough to stay on water without sinking and travel along the shore, but with time, they grew more and more intricate, the designs unlike anything seen before. When her ships were good enough to sail across continents, the shipbuilder left. 

Stories of a mysterious cartographer on a ship that was so perfect it could practically sail itself reached the port city, and soon after exact maps of places earlier considered unreachable appeared, copies of them free for anyone as per the cartographer’s request. Slowly, blank spots on the maps grew more and more rare. The last map to arrive was of a city in a faraway land, the note that came with it explaining some of its culture and the peculiarities of its language, as well as that it was the center of knowledge, a place where every building that wasn't a library or a university was the house of a scholar or philosopher.

A strange student appeared in the city, first having trouble communicating in the language and reading, but diligently working her way through text after text, until first her writing and then her speech carried only the tiniest traces of a foreign tongue. The student went on to become a teacher, venturing into the far regions of the country in order to spread the knowledge she spent years gathering. Then, there was a philosopher - although not for long, as things that were more words and abstract concepts than actions and numbers seemed to interest her less.

Only a few years after the disappearance of the teacher, a new inventor appeared at the Emperor’s court. She worked on something, nobody was quite sure what, but the Emperor seemed to deem the project important enough to pay for years of research and construction, failed prototypes that took her back to the blackboard, trial and error.

One fine night, when everyone who had any common sense in them was asleep, a bored guard noticed a silhouette covering the moon for a second. It passed as soon as it appeared, and so she didn’t think any more of it. The next day, news spread out of the palace and across the capital that the secretive inventor disappeared, leaving behind a device that the Emperor ordered to lock away, a thing that was either so useless he was ashamed of spending so much money on it, or, perhaps, something that was too dangerous to ever see the light of day.

I know not what happens later: there may have been many more adventures, or there may have been none at all. The fact is that a few years later, a woman, her temples lined with silver and her sharp eyes framed with early wrinkles, arrived at a small village. An old couple, the parents of many and grandparents of more, had a hard time recognising their daughter.

Zarja was bombarded with a myriad of questions: where has she been, why had she left, why is she wearing such strange clothing, did she get married, is she happy, does she need help… There was only one question she answered with anything but a nod or a shake of her head: the one her elderly mother asked.

“Did you find out? What the world is and why it works the way it does?”

“No,” Zarja said, a quiet smile on her face and in her voice, “no, I did not.”

Her mother nodded. 

After things had settled down, Zarja stayed in the village. She built a house for herself, the shape of the roof based on the ones she saw in the city of knowledge, the walls as air-tight as the best of her ships. She taught the local children, took care of the ill, and tended to a small garden. In the garden, there were no flowers and no useful plants, only small, whitish saplings that looked too frail to have any chance of ever growing into trees. 

Zarja became the strange old lady any good village must have, with the most peculiar stories the children loved listening to. Their favorite was that of an inventor who flew to the moon.

“The moon,” the old lady said, a wandering smile on her face, “is as soft as a grape. Tastes about the same. It smells like an orange, though. It’s strange, isn’t it? You’d expect a thing so old and holy-looking would at least be consistent about something like that.” The children laughed, of course, because the story made no sense and wasn’t supposed to, and those are the best kinds of stories.

Time passed by as it always does, not cruel or kind but just a thing that is, and the woman named Zarja became a memory, then a story, then a tale, along with the tales of the healer, and the shipbuilder, and the cartographer, and the teacher, and the inventor.

In a small village, in the garden of an old house, twisted trees grew. They would be cut long ago if it wasn’t for their fruit; round, sweet berries that tasted of grapes and smelled of oranges.

No one has ever eaten the moon – not for any particular reason, they just never thought of it as a thing a person could do. A quiet girl watched her brother stuff his mouth full of white berries and stared up at the sky. She never said what she was thinking.

#oleg's writing #my writing #original writing #writeblr #am writing #fantasy writing #aaand that's enough tags for one day

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

The d’Avenir Treatise on the Essentials of Monster Hunting (Vol I) - Preface and Introduction

The timing of this whole thing with the campaign is pretty amazing, as it turns out. In the middle of absolute work hell and attempts to sort out my general apartment/living situation, a little while ago I entered a fic into the /r/CurseOfStrahd second annual fanfic contest. It was one of my attempts to kind of write out and process the way our own run through the module went, stretch out some poor, suffering, unused writing muscles, and it was also super duper self-indulgent. So I'm very, very proud to say it won first place amidst some really great competition, and super happy to rep my best girl Ez.

Summary: In the aftermath of Strahd's destruction and the not-quite-loss of her mentor, Ezmerelda d'Avenir sets out to tie up loose ends and lay some ghosts to rest, and continues carving out a path for herself in the Domains of Dread.

Word count: 9999, as there was a 10k limit. I had fun.

Rating/Warnings: T, with canon-typical violence, and dealing with death and loss in a general gothic horror setting. Spoilers for the Curse of Strahd module.

---

The d’Avenir Treatise on the Essentials of Monster Hunting (Vol I) - Preface and Introduction

Being a compendium of successes, failures, tricks, and warnings relating to detecting, tracking, fighting, and ultimately destroying undead, fiends, lycanthropes, and assorted monstrosities.

-

1.1. Introductory remarks

Their ride back to town is a quiet one. The silence is broken only once they are sitting, their hunting and travelling gear half-unpacked and strewn about, in the library just above van Richten's herbalist shop.

"Were we in any other profession, this would be a cause for celebration," van Richten's lips twist into a bittersweet wisp of a smile, and he pushes a warm cup of tea into her hands. "A demonstration of pride in an apprentice's first job well done, for all to see and revel in."

Ezmerelda tries to look up at him and meet his gaze properly, but her shoulders, her head, her eyes all feel too heavy. A leaden weight seems to have settled on every bit of her. She is tired, bone-deep, but the very thought of lying down and closing her eyes to attempt to sleep fills her with disgust and no small amount of dread. She knows exactly what she will see. The man, just on the cusp of middle age, entirely unremarkable at first... features quickly twisting into a mask of monstrous hunger, then to wide-eyed horror, and, finally, resorting to desperate pleas for mercy as the stake hits home and his screeching form dissolves to ash. 

It feels like the ash still coats the back of her mouth. The tea smells of strong herbs, with just a whiff of something even stronger that van Richten must have snuck in from the liquor cabinet. Her hands clench around the cup, and a burning need to justify and defend herself drives her to finally speak up.

"I was ready," she insists. "I am ready."

"I know," van Richten replies, softly, sadly.

The tea scalds her tongue, but she drinks it anyway.

---

Getting up from the damp, cold floor of the tomb again feels like an impossibility. She can barely keep her head above the ground, eyes stinging with a mixture of blood and sweat and the glare of pure, magical sunlight. The clawed gashes on her ribcage burn with every weak, hard-won breath, and a metallic taste coats the back of her tongue.

But she is not done yet. She has one last lightning bolt left in her, and Strahd and his dusk elf lackey are so beautifully, perfectly aligned. Ezmerelda can't keep her lips from curling up into a smirk as she raises an arm and mutters her incantation, feeling that familiar tickle of static rising all around her.

She holds on, builds it up as much as she can, teeth grinding together, ears buzzing - until she can hold on no longer, and the energy flies from her, the flash near-blinding, the roar of accompanying thunder ringing in her ears.

She sees it hit home, the first traces of foggy vapour swirling around Strahd's convulsing form, and a beautiful satisfaction fills her. 

Then, she lets herself go.

An instant or an eternity later someone is shaking her into jarring and painful wakefulness, jostling her head against the rough floor. Her mouth is filled with the bitter aftertaste of a potion, and she grimaces as she feels the familiar residue on her lips and chin.

"Fine, fine, old man, relax, I'm up," she manages, slurring the words, struggling to blink her eyes open and into focus. "I'm awake. Stop it."

But it's not him.

It is Ireena, wide-eyed gaze somehow growing wider still at her words. The reason for this becomes abundantly and agonisingly clear as she points to somewhere behind Ezmerelda... to where Rudolph van Richten lies, very pale and very still, a greater and more profound calm upon him than she has ever witnessed.

"No."

She didn't even see him fall.

"Why didn't you help him?" Ezmerelda knocks the empty potion bottle away, and it clatters loudly against the stone, finally finding rest near a streak of dark ashes. "What are you waiting for, what--"

"I tried. It was... it's too late," Ireena whispers, "I'm sorry." 

Ezmerelda feels shame flood her immediately at the misaimed anger. "No. No, I'm sorry. It's not your fault. I'm sorry. I just-- wait." Awareness of just where they are and what they were in the middle of doing suddenly overwhelms her, and she feels panic crawl up her spine. "Is it over? Did you stake that bastard once and for all?"

Ireena nods, mouth curling in visible distaste. "I did, just like you said to. Your last hit - it was enough to force him to turn into mist, and then, when... when he reformed in the coffin, I did it."

The relief Ezmerelda feels at that is so bitter it burns. "I missed it, then," she murmurs, and feels ridiculous immediately afterwards. Ireena shakes her head, and helps her sit up.

She allows herself a few precious moments of rest against the cold, damp wall of the crypt, eyes painfully locked on van Richten's still, still form. As soon as she feels half-capable of moving, she all but drags herself to his side. Feeling for a pulse, a breath, anything at all to help her disbelieve what is plainly before her eyes.

She finds no such thing. He's dead, and it feels like a stake through her own heart. After all her efforts, after getting into Barovia just to get the damned foolish old man off his self-destructive warpath and out, only to lose him now, to fail right at the end...

A pale shimmer falls over the scene before her, like a curtain right before her eyes. Ezmerelda blinks and shakes her head, but can't make it go away. She reaches up, and--

Erasmus all but swoops down to be face to face with her.

It takes her a moment to properly grasp what she is seeing. Erasmus. Somehow still there, his ghostly form hovering over his father's body. Gesturing at her wildly, pointing down at something, and, finally, using his ectoplasmic paint to draw... a circle within a circle, hanging in mid-air.

She follows his wordless instructions to the best of her current ability and, with some painfully suppressed reluctance, looks down at van Richten. And there on his finger is a ring that was certainly not there before.

Erasmus seems insistent and quite unusually agitated, so Ezmerelda takes the ring, trying not to register the coldness of the hand it was on, and puts it on numbly, feeling utterly beyond thought.

Suddenly, cutting through the fog that seems to have descended upon her mind, bubbling up like an idea from her own consciousness, a thought - a voice. A familiar voice.

'Ezmerelda? Ah. I see. Well, that could have gone decidedly better.'

She feels tears welling up in her eyes, an unstoppable burning in her chest. She wants to laugh until she can't breathe, or sob her lungs raw. 

Instead, she sits back against the cool stone wall. As the adrenaline wears off, she becomes more aware of the extent of her injuries: the sting where foul claws raked across her midsection and upwards; the burns of magical fire on her palms. She fishes out the last potion from her pocket, and downs it in one greedy gulp. The relief is near-instant.

Her faculties at least somewhat returned to her, she opts for a laugh as she recognises the ring for what it is. Ireena looks at her with some concern, but Ezmerelda waves it away.

"A ring of mind shielding. Protect the mind, and store the soul, should the worst happen. Of course you of all people would come so prepared."

Ezmerelda twists the ring on her finger, marvels at the detailed engraving.

"Should I... we could... there's ways. To get you back. I mean..." 

She trails off, and there is a brief pause before the voice in her mind pipes up again. 'No. No, I think, at long last, it is time for me to stop. And rest.' 

Even though her entire being wishes to rail against this, to insist on the need for Rudolph van Richten to exist, and protest the injustice (just when she'd gotten him back!), Ezmerelda manages, barely, a soft, "I understand." 

'There is still some work to do before that, though, no? Loose ends for us to take care of before, well...' 

That, she feels far more comfortable with. It almost comes as a relief. "Yes, of course. First order of business, we will sit down, and we will work out a plan. And we will stick to that plan." 

There is a soft chuckle in her mind. 

"What's so funny? You love plans." 

She imagines, in better, happier days, the old man - only slightly less old - shaking his head at her with a long-suffering smile. 

'Thank you for humoring me, is all I'll say. Now, go handle things here properly and finish up, while I think of a list of priorities for us. Miss Kolyana is waiting for you.' 

-

1.2. A brief reflection on personal experience

Ezmerelda is pulled into a room, hand clamped over her mouth. The door slams shut, and she almost stumbles as she is suddenly released.

"What in all the realms are you doing here?" The colourful half-elf carnival master hisses at her in a voice decidedly unlike the one he was just using in the downstairs taproom. Now that they are close, she can see the magical disguise of the Great Rictavio is utterly impeccable, but the eyes... the eyes are unmistakable. 

They are also flooded with the closest thing to panic Ezmerelda has ever seen in them.

"I'm here to help you. You don't stand a chance on your own."

"How did you find me?"

Ezmerelda shrugs noncommittally, and doesn't look behind him. "I have my ways."

He shakes his head. "That isn't good enough. If his agents - and there are many, I assure you! - catch even a whiff--"

She finally glances at the ghostly form of Erasmus, just barely visible over Rictavio's shoulder, unable to be perceived by the one man he wishes he could reach out to and reassure. He meets her eyes and holds his finger up to his lips.

"I recognised your horse," she says, at long last. 

"Dear Drusilla? Oh..." Rictavio seems to almost deflate at that, though his nervous pacing doesn't slow. 

Erasmus' visage shows what has to be gratitude, or relief, or both. Then he closes his eyes, seemingly tired, and the shimmering remnants of him disappear from view. 

"Damned stubborn, foolish girl..." Rictavio moves deftly around the small room, securing the shutters on its single window, locking the door from the inside, gaze darting around wildly. Then he reaches up and removes his hat, and Rudolph van Richten, looking more old and more worn than Ezmerelda was perhaps ever prepared to see, stands in his place.

"I had a plan, you know," he sighs, tossing the hat onto the bed. "One that I can now no doubt forget about entirely."

"There's no time for your endless preparation and planning. Any waiting game we try to play is a losing one. There's a young woman who desperately needs our help, a legendary weapon to be found, and there's a monster to hunt, feeding on an entire land. I've been to the castle, scouted out--" 

"You've done what?" 

Ezmerelda doesn't look at him and chooses to pace a small circle around the room herself. "The castle. Ravenloft. Getting in was a breeze - getting out was the hard part." She suppresses a brief shudder at the memory of her invisibility spell running out and Strahd's eyes boring directly into hers, as if he'd known she was there all along. "But, well, I managed. And more importantly, I found a way into his crypt."

Van Richten sits down on the bed, rubbing circles into his forehead.

"Ezmerelda, you can't be here." His voice sounds pained, almost. "You know you are not safe near me. My curse--" 

"Sincerely, fuck your curse," Ezmerelda spits. "After all these years, it can wait a few days before striking. Can't be worse than what will happen to both of us and anyone involved if we can't manage to work together on this. We have to. I tried, by myself, but..." 

She tries not to dwell on the terribly brief confrontation, the bite of the cold, cold grasp that seemed to steal the very life out of her, and her rather desperate escape.

"Ezmerelda," van Richten starts again, then pauses, and just looks at her - a long, heavy look. "Why?"

"There are still people who care about your well-being," she replies simply and softly, "no matter what you may believe." 

Then she straightens her shoulders and allows the steel back into her voice. "So listen to me. We are going to stake that devil in his lair, and we are going to get out of this cursed land. Together."

For once, he doesn't argue.

---

Their lord and master may be gone, but there are plenty of foul things still crawling around Castle Ravenloft - and occasionally crawling out of it as well.

How lucky for the Village of Barovia, then, to have a monster hunter visiting.

"...so I think that should do it for that particular area of the barracks," Ezmerelda flicks a stray bit of zombie gunk off of her bracer, then casts an apologetic look at Ireena. "But who knows what else he has buried under there."

Ireena Kolyana, the girl haunted, hunted, and tormented by the vampire, deciding she's had enough of running, turning on him and wielding a sword of pure sunlight against him. Poetic justice, if Ezmerelda fancied herself a poet.

Ireena Kolyana, looking exhausted in a very different way, now caught up in burgomaster duties, barely finding time in her overstuffed schedule to hear about the results of Ezmerelda's latest expedition to the castle.

"You know," Ezmerelda begins, eyeing the stacks of papers and growing chaos on the desk between them, "if you ever get really tired of this, and miss life on the road..." she nods towards the window, and the wagon just outside it. "I have room for one more. And could always use a deft hand with a sword." 

Ireena smiles, but the sadness underpinning it is palpable. "I can't, not now at least. There is too much to take care of here. And without Ismark..." a shadow falls briefly over her face, then she visibly forces it back. "Some day, maybe. I would honestly love to." 

Ezmerelda nods, then moves to stand up, and holds out a hand expectantly. "Come on, you have time for a walk. A minute to escort me out and say goodbye, at least."

Ireena chuckles quietly and shakes her head, but pushes away from the desk and takes the proffered arm. 

The sunlight is bright, tempered only by a wisp of white cloud here and there. Ezmerelda feels a light pull on her arm as Ireena stops on the threshold of the house for just a fraction of a moment. The hesitation is brief, barely noticeable, but the pause as if needing to catch her breath and the subsequent dawning joy - pure, almost radiant by itself - as the sunlight hits her skin--

Ezmerelda realises she's staring, blinks, and makes herself look away.

Their stroll is indeed brief, and as soon as they turn the corner and reach the parked wagon, Ireena sighs and stands half-ready to hurry back to her office and her duties.

"Hey," Ezmerelda puts what she hopes is a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "I know you can handle all of this. Never doubt that." 

This wins her a sincere smile. "Thank you."

Knowing there's no more point in delaying, Ezmerelda pulls away, moves to arrange her things around the wagon and prepare to leave. 

"The offer stands," she says as she climbs into the driver's seat. "Keep it in mind."

"Maybe next time," Ireena replies with another sad smile. But then she pauses for a moment, almost as if thinking something over. Then she darts in quickly, and kisses Ezmerelda's cheek.

"Don't stay away too long," she says, quietly, then draws away again. Ezmerelda nods her agreement, and takes up the reins of her conjured horses.

Ireena waves her goodbye, and stands, looking on, bathed in sunlight. 

And then the road turns, and she disappears from Ezmerelda's view.

'Well.'

"Shut up." Ezmerelda can feel her face burning. "Absolutely no need to read into things." 

'You know I mean no offense. I only want the best for you.' 

"I am perfectly fine," Ezmerelda grumbles. "Besides, this is the last thing she needs right now." 

'You don't know that. Ask her sometime, perhaps, to tell you herself. Too many people have assumed too much about that young lady, I think. Myself included.' 

"Oh, what do you know..."

There is a distinct sensation of stinging grief, never quite healed, as the voice comes again. 'You seem to forget I was young once. In love once. More... than once. And though it never ended well, like few things in my life did, the only thing I have ever regretted was not acting sooner. And regret is...' 

"... the enemy of progress. I know." Ezmerelda sighs, the old man's oft-repeated saying rattling around in her mind as she snaps the reins and takes them down the road westward. "Maybe next time."

-

1.3. Materials and methods, an overview

Her balance is off still, but the past few weeks have brought incredible improvement. She flicks her rapier upwards, then lunges - back, forth, back, forth, fully and properly bearing weight on her right side in the training yard for the first time in months. The new prosthetic is truly a work of art and a masterful display of craftsmanship. Ezmerelda feels almost giddy at the sensation of ducking and weaving under the wooden limbs of the training dummy, feinting deftly, ignoring the burn in her arm and shoulder. The maneuvers are not yet close to her peak speed and fluidity and elegance, not after the long, arduous recovery she is only now reaching the end of. But it is all so very, very promising.

It also brings to mind - because how could it not, when for the better part of the past half-year she has had more time to think, and remember, and reflect than in her entire life? - van Richten's drills. He was always far more of a theoretician than practitioner of swordfighting, but he was certainly no slouch with a blade. The precision and perfection of form he insisted on instilling in her initially seemed to clash with her more free, improvisational, off-the-cuff approach, but ended up blending with it to great effect in ways that occasionally surprised them both.

She goes through attack patterns he's drilled into her and realises she misses him, the cantankerous old man and all his frustrating ways, and suddenly finds herself fervently wishing she wasn't doing this alone. She spares a moment to imagine the amount of fussing over her he would likely have insisted on, with his overprotective bedside manner that she used to chafe and scoff at whenever one of their hunts went badly for her. She thinks of all the lovely, fleeting drawings Erasmus would have made for her.

Her next step is careless, thoughtless, distracted, and as a result only a little off. The lunge is misaimed, unbalanced, and her knee twists unpleasantly. For the briefest flash of a moment she could swear she can feel the teeth sinking in again, and the horrible tearing.

Ezmerelda winces, fingers clenched around the rapier's handle, knuckles white. Her teeth grit as the wave of pain subsides so very, very slowly, but doesn't quite go away. She remembers, belatedly, that she has an audience.

"Ah, almost there," she calls back to the artisan eagerly awaiting her feedback, voice forcefully kept steady, without turning to face them, and taps her rapier on the metal plating running up from the heel. "We'll need to make another slight adjustment to the ankle joint, I think. But this is definitely and by far the best one yet. Let me get some more practice first, and we can go over the details in the afternoon."

Ezmerelda doesn't wait to see if her words are acknowledged. She hefts the rapier back up.

---

Before she reaches the first crossroads west of Vallaki, she turns the wagon south and into the woods.

"I have some unfinished business of my own to settle first," Ezmerelda states very matter-of-factly, preempting any interrogation from the ring's general direction.

The wagon trail to the top of the hill is easier to navigate than ever, and the camp is abuzz with activity, as it usually is. But this time the feel of it all is a bit different.

Ezmerelda knows it well; the air of a caravan packing up to leave.

Arabelle sees her weaving through the horses, strolling towards the large central tent, and darts towards her immediately, then freezes not three feet away. Ezmerelda can tell plain as the new Barovian day that she is torn between looking dignified and throwing herself at her in a hug.

So she crouches down and opens her arms first, and is almost knocked over when Arabelle rushes in. 

"I want to show you something I've been practicing," Arabelle whispers conspiratorially, "but you'll need to lend me a dagger."

Ezmerelda's eyebrows shoot up in surprise, but she obliges the girl after only a moment's contemplation, still crouched down and one arm around her narrow shoulders.

The dagger is one of the smaller ones she usually keeps concealed, but even so it seems far too large in Arabelle's hands. Nevertheless, in a few surprisingly dextrous motions with only a couple of moments of hesitation, she seems to make it disappear - then produces it again as if out of thin air.

"Huh. Impressive. Did your uncle teach you that little trick?"

Arabelle nods, but her pride is palpable. "Papa was so mad! He says that both him and you are a bad influence and I am far too young to be handling blades."

"There's no such thing," Ezmerelda scoffs, but motions for her dagger back and tucks it away safely. "Where is your father? I wanted to speak with him."

"Luvash is busy," another voice cuts in cooly, and Arrigal steps out of the fading, scarce shadows, somehow slipping under her notice even with the bright streams of sunlight all around. "But you can speak with me."

Ezmerelda stands up slowly, and can see him sizing her up.

"Run along now, Arabelle," Arrigal says in a much warmer tone of voice, but without taking his eyes off Ezmerelda for even a moment.

Arabelle gives her one last look as she turns to leave, and Ezmerelda tries to give her a reassuring smile - but then she realises Arabelle doesn't seem concerned or reluctant or... anything at all. She seems supremely calm, and not seven years old at all.

Arrigal steps forward and, even as uncannily quiet as he always is, it startles her back into the moment. Then, he reaches out a hand.

Ezmerelda meets his gaze, steps forward, and takes it. The handshake is firm, and she smirks. "Looks like you backed the losing side, cousin."

The term of address rolls off her tongue with some bite of irony in it. Arrigal inclines his head in acknowledgement. "You can't say it wasn't a fairly sure bet. A matter of survival, of course. We do what we must to keep our people safe. But," and he draws a bit closer, as if letting her in on a secret. "I'm glad he didn't send me after you."

Ezmerelda nods, and decides she isn't in the mood for a debate. "You know, so am I. I would have hated having to kill you. Instead, here you are, in an excellent position for a little introspection, changing your ways... much better this way, isn't it?"

He shakes his head with a grin, and finally lets go of her hand. "You are a menace. But we follow the traditions, and you have a place here. Where are you going?"

"Borca," she says, and pointedly doesn't elaborate further.

Arrigal laughs. "Off to more of your grim business right away! Well, one has to admire your tenacity. You can stay, of course, and leave with us tomorrow. We will share the road at least part of the way."

So Ezmerelda stays, and exchanges news of recent caravan routes and planned Mist-traversal with Luvash. The fire roars to life as the sun sets. Tales are told, and she contributes some of her own.

"Regale us, cousin," Arrigal says, grinning wolf-sharp, arms open wide as if to encompass the entire camp, "with the story of the fall of the devil Strahd." 

Arabelle is a delight, as always. The truce with Arrigal, if it can be called that, is uneasy, but holds. The ring is quiet.

Arabelle insists on riding with her in the morning ("You did fish her out of that lake... brought her back to us," Luvash grumbles. "I suppose there's no harm... I'll have none of that monster-hunting nonsense, though!"). Her delight at the summoned magical horses is palpable, even as she tries to hide it. Ezmerelda gives her the reins until they need to enter the Mists, and is only slightly surprised to see her managing well, with just a few pointers here and there.

The whole way, Arabelle demands stories of her and van Richten's exploits very matter-of-factly - interrogates, almost, at times. Her eyes are large, intent, focused, as Ezmerelda obliges, for hours. 

"I knew you would win," Arabelle says at one point, breaking a rare longer stretch of silence between them. "Uncle didn't want to listen to me, but I knew."

Ezmerelda looks at her, matches her seriousness. "I hope he will learn to listen, one day soon."

-

1.4. Common pitfalls

Ezmerelda inches back to consciousness more than wakes, and hisses as she almost reflexively tries and fails to sit up. She recognises her own bed in the former guest room above the herbalist shop, but the details of how she got there are fuzzy at best, completely absent at worst. She is, however, very aware of a merciless pounding in her head and that she has most certainly just pulled some fresh stitches.

A swirl of colourful ectoplasm greets her when she next opens her eyes, Erasmus' fleeting but always lovely and cheerful greetings hovering above her.

Well. Ezmerelda forces a pained smile at him, knowing that if he is here, his father cannot be far, and--

Ah. Familiar footsteps on the stairs, and the distinct creak of the second one from the top, as Rudolph van Richten enters the room with uncanny timing. 

He doesn't seem to be surprised to see her awake as he gives her a quick look-over, even as concern and frustration clearly war on his face.

"I thought we had reached an agreement," he begins at last, very deliberately calmly.

Ezmerelda doesn't reply.

"I thought," he continues with that same calm tone, "that we had made a plan. That was my distinct impression of our last conversation."

Ezmerelda clenches her teeth, then grinds out, "I couldn't just stand by and let that beast--"

"You could have voiced your disagreements with the plan and brought your concerns to me, instead of running off on your own in the middle of the night," van Richten is clearly struggling to keep his voice level. "You almost died."

"Fine, I am voicing my disagreements. We know it's a wereboar. Just go at it with our silvered weapons, set up an ambush where we found its lair... why wait? Why give it more chances to hurt people?"

"To be absolutely certain we have all the information. That we have looked at it from every angle, that we have not overlooked a crucial detail. Minimise its chances to hurt us."

"But by then it might have mauled half the village to death, or worse!"

Van Richten's gaze on her is sharp. "And if we get ourselves pointlessly killed, are the villagers any safer for our hasty, brash, ill-thought sacrifice?"

"Hasty, brash, and ill-thought. Fine, if that’s how it is, how you think of me," Ezmerelda throws her hands up, and wishes she could march off, slamming a door shut behind her for good measure, as childish as the thought makes her feel.

Van Richten sighs deeply, and pulls up a chair to sit next to her bed. Ezmerelda recognises it as one from downstairs, and feels a small stab of guilt at the thought of him setting up a vigil at her bedside.

"We can't go rushing in on half-checked information," van Richten begins, after a brief silence, looking down at his hands. "We can't, because... because I have done that, in the past. And people - good, brave, dedicated people who chose to stand against evil, people who trusted me - died as a result."

"I have been wrong," he continues, still not looking up. "I have followed faulty sources without the due diligence of thorough enough vetting. I have overlooked things, and I have lost many. I will not and cannot allow that to happen again. We have to be careful, patient, and vigilant, always."

"I'm not advocating for blindly rushing in," Ezmerelda protests, "I'm merely--"

"I won't have you on my soul as well. I have far too many already."

"And I won't have any more innocents on mine! We had all the relevant information two days ago. Four people could have been alive today if we had acted on time. We were right."

"And what about when you aren't, Ezmerelda? What about when you aren't?"

Ezmerelda looks him right in the eyes, steely. "Then I will make sure I am the one who pays the price for my own mistakes."

"Oh," van Richten smiles sadly, "If only that were possible."

---

The letter arrives just as she is preparing, to her great relief, to leave Port-à-Lucine for good. It is hand-delivered by an ostentatiously dressed man in a stylised fox mask, entirely - and Ezmerelda feels her lips curl in annoyance - unassuming and usual for the land of outrageous pretense that is Dementlieu. The way he seems to disappear in the moment it takes for her to glance down at what he has thrust into her hands is also something Ezmerelda finds hard to marvel at anymore.

Overjoyed to be able to return to the relative privacy and safety of her wagon, she tosses away her old harlequin mask in the sincere hopes of never having to put the damn thing on again. Then she throws herself on the bed and focuses on tearing into the sealed envelope, absorbing its mysterious contents.

After she reaches the end of the letter's brief text, she stays very still for a long while.

'Not a name I thought I would see again, if I am to be honest,' van Richten's voice comes slowly, sounding very wary.

Ezmerelda breathes out a frustrated sigh, an unidentifiable jumble of feelings warring in her chest and burning up her throat. She tries to reply several times, then stops, and closes her eyes. Collects herself, at least somewhat, and decides to focus on the practical. "How do we even know this isn't a forgery, or some sort of trap?"

'We don't. But it is a loose end I, for one, am not prepared to simply overlook.'

"She's tried before, but I never... I don't have time for this right now, I--," she throws the letter and the shredded envelope onto the chest at her bedside, and runs an annoyed hand through her hair, again, and again, and again. Thinking, or at least trying to. 

'We have time. You and I both know it's not time that is the problem.'

They are nearing the end of their planned journey, finishing up their business with Alanik Ray and Arthur Sedgwick's latest investigations and bidding farewell to Dementlieu. And then it was supposed to be on to Mordent, to call in at the Mordentshire shop briefly, and afterwards to Darkon - to Rivalis, and the villages surrounding the old Richten estate. Some ghouls to fight off, wraiths to purge, ghosts to lay to rest, to help the villagers out, before... well. They'll come to that when they do.

Ezmerelda can't deny the detour would only be a brief one.

"A 'loose end'," she huffs. "Really."

'I am just trying to help you. Don't waste years of your life like I have, either bitter or wondering or fleeing. Confront your - our - past, at least this part. Lay it to rest, if you can.'

"The past does not lie behind us. It is part of what we are, and part of what we always will be," Ezmerelda recites, then sighs again. "Old Vistani saying."

A moment of silence. 'Make sure it is a good part, then.'

-

Ezmerelda's memory of her mother feels... not fuzzy, but perhaps a bit tweaked and twisted over the years, more by feelings overtaking it than by any fault of recall. The images of what she remembers and what now stands before her don't match, but have a strange, dissonant overlap, leaving visible in the centre a woman Ezmerelda could almost, almost imagine seeing in the mirror. One she hoped to never see again after that night of wordless parting, many years ago. 

Years of imprisonment seem to have been surprisingly kind to Madame Irena Radanavich. She has wormed her way into some kind of favour with someone powerful here, no doubt, as has always been her utterly unscrupulous way. The cell is clearly a formality, more of an office than anything, a parlour for receiving agents and lackeys, as well as bosses. There is even a chair - a worn, old wooden frame with faded red upholstery - placed a little ways away from the bars, facing them. Ezmerelda also gets a distinct impression that the guard standing in the corner is not there for any visitor's safety or protection.

The woman in the cell seems to light up the moment she sets eyes on Ezmerelda strolling into the cell space with a pretense of casualness.

"My, how you've grown! My, and yet-- oh, darling," concern seems to flood her face and voice, and - there, a subtle, wry twist - Ezmerelda thinks she catches a false, even mocking undertone to it. A flash, and it’s gone, and perhaps she merely imagined it, or even wanted it to be there, an ache for some semblance of simplicity to box this woman in. "There's both more and less of you than last time I saw you." 

"Really?" Ezmerelda scoffs, and almost wants to laugh. "All those tales I've heard of your vicious, clever, insidious scheming, and that's the best you can come up with?" She crosses her arms, and clicks her metal heel against the floor loudly. "Not an angle you can use against me, I'm afraid. Try again." 

"You wound me!" A dramatic hand placed over her chest. "Treating your own mother like that, who has never had anything but your best interests at heart. Who you've never even come to visit."

Ezmerelda slips the opened letter through the bars, letting it land on the hewn stone on the other side. Then she moves to sit down on the solitary chair.

"I'm only here because I got your letter."

"Oh! Good. My dearest Ezmerelda, I was--"

"I am here to tell you I want you to leave me alone," Ezmerelda continues, acting as if she hasn't heard a word. "For good. Forget I exist, preferably. I want nothing to do with you, and I never will. And the only thing I might want to do with your plotting and scheming is foiling it, so it is in your best interest to leave me out of it all. And van Richten..." 

The saccharine smile dips down, almost into a scowl. "And here I'd heard you'd finally seen sense and parted ways with that old fool." 

"You hear much, I see," Ezmerelda replies, cooly.

"I have my ways. My sources. People loyal to me, who have yet to abandon me."

Ezmerelda feels the swipe like an airy almost-cut of a dagger that just barely misses. "Well, here's something new for you, then. Something your little web-weaving spiders seem to have missed. You'll be happy to hear he's dead." 

"And right away you come back to me! Time to end your silly games, eh, Ezme? Good, good. A start--" 

"You have no right to call me that," Ezmerelda cuts her off, rapidly losing her will to restrain herself.

"Come now, dear. That's no way to talk to your mother, your own flesh and blood. It's about time we set all this nonsense aside, don't you think? Your family--" 

"You're no family of mine." 

"Please," she scoffs loudly. "You sound like an angry child. And... oh, really, what kind of name is 'd'Avenir' even?"

"My name," Ezmerelda replies, perfectly matter-of-fact, and refuses to even entertain further discussion of the matter.

"I wonder how you'll do," Madame Radanavich smiles, but this time the threatening edge is obvious, pretense briefly abandoned, "all alone. Playing your little games of pretend with your make-believe name. You'll come crawling back to me yet." 

Ezmerelda finds herself thinking of Erasmus, and almost believes she can see him, out of the corner of her eye. Tries not to think of what this confrontation might be bringing back for him. Thinks of the Martikovs welcoming her with open arms and offering shelter even in the darkest and dourest and most dangerous of days; thinks of Ireena with the sunsword and an entire wealth of feeling tangled in a tired, relieved smile somehow brighter than the blazing sunlight itself. Of nights around the fire in the camp outside Vallaki, and little Arabelle pulling on her coat, extorting promises of lessons in both swordfighting and divining. Of Arthur Sedgwick and his honest, caring eyes, and his patient instruction in properly using a flintlock, as his husband gleefully offers detailed scientific explanations of the weapon's workings from the side. She twists the ring on her finger.

"I'm not alone," Ezmerelda says simply, and feels resolute steel pouring back. She stops to consider her next words more carefully.

"I watched your actions and your curse destroy a good man's life. But I want you to know that you wanted to take from him, and in the end you took from me, the daughter you profess to care about so much. And now you crow at me about flesh and blood and expect me to, what? Beg you to let me come back? Back to what? A mouldy cell and as short a leash as the current master feels like giving you?"

"Bold words for one given to following an old wretch around like a sad pup, even as he keeps trying to kick you away," Radanavich sneers, then shifts back to sad pity in the blink of an eye. "Oh, yes, my dear, it's so very tragic... I've heard it all. Look at you - you're wasted on him."

"Oh?" Ezmerelda raises an eyebrow cooly, clamps down on the sting to her pride and the deliberate scrape against old wounds, and almost wanting to scream you are the reason he feared that daring to care about someone would be a death sentence for them. "And what would you prefer to be using me for?"

"How dare you! After all I've done for our family, while you throw your lot in with the man who killed your brother and imprisoned your mother!"

Ezmerelda feels suddenly tired, more than anything. "You know he did no such thing. And I've done very well for myself, despite you." 

"Have you, now? What price have you paid for your... profession? What has it cost you already?" 

"Nothing I wouldn't be ready to pay ten times over if it meant ensuring the safety of an innocent, or beating back those such as you. You still don't understand," Ezmerelda just smiles sadly, allowing only the slightest undercurrent of danger. "I'm neither lost, nor settling for anything, nor desperately grasping at a chance, nor tragically misguided. This is what I want. This-- this cause, this fight, this is exactly what I was meant to do. And I am very, very good at it."

"Oh, Ezmerelda, if excitement and adventure and glory is what you are after, I know of much that you could do! So many causes that your... talents... would be an excellent match for. You do have a certain reputation, and I know several highly influential actors who'd know exactly where to put your skills to use, no matter how they were acquired. You could do so well for yourself! Rise right to the top of the ranks in the blink of an eye, become truly great."

Ezmerelda shakes her head, and sighs, and moves to get up from the sad, solitary seat. 

"Ezmerelda--"

She quickly turns towards the bars and leans in, baring her teeth and grinning widely. "I killed the devil Strahd," Ezmerelda smirks at the look of shock she gets in response. "I think your petty schemes are a little below me, don't you?" 

She turns to leave, not waiting for a response. The guard leans back in his corner as she moves away from the bars, waving him off.

"Oh, do feel free to let your masters know," she tosses over her shoulder nonchalantly as she makes her way out. "Though I have to say I haven't really looked into whose lapdog you are nowadays." 

Ezmerelda hears a frustrated growl behind her as the sickeningly sweet, pleasant mask falls for good. As the door slams shut behind her, she doesn't look back.

She lets the noise of the city drown out her thoughts as she slowly makes her way back to her wagon, more than ready to be on her way elsewhere. Until, after a while, a familiar voice comes swimming up through her mind.

'How do you feel?' 

"I don't know," Ezmerelda murmurs, after a long silence. "Ask me tomorrow."

-

1.5. Notes on useful classification and categorisation

As she finishes rattling off the information she's gathered on a series of apparent annis hag encounters that van Richten asked her for, he looks-- well, 'impressed' is the only word Ezmerelda can think of to describe it.

In the ensuing moment of quiet, he takes off his spectacles, fidgets with them briefly, polishes off a smudge with his handkerchief. Then, he looks her right in the eye. "You, girl, are a veritable sponge."

Ezmerelda flashes him a smug smile, then remembers the other matter she wanted to bring to his attention. She clears her throat, and begins, with uncharacteristic hesitance. "I've also been looking into some... other things. Another way I can contribute, I think." 

The only reply is a raised eyebrow, so Ezmerelda steels herself and decides to go forward with her planned demonstration. She quells the nervous fluttering in her stomach, and instead focuses on the points of her own fingers as they trace well-practiced patterns in the air. With a final flick and a quick mutter of the incantation she's quietly recited so, so many nights in her room when she was supposed to be asleep, the very air around her right hand shimmers with heat. A few tense moments later, a small mote of flame appears in her palm.

Ezmerelda bites back an exclamation of joy at the success, tries to keep her expression fairly neutral, and looks to van Richten expectantly.

His eyebrows are, very amusingly, trying to climb into his hairline. "Where in the world did you learn to do that?"

She lets the little flame dance between her hands, casually skip from one to the other, flickering giddily, and feels an odd sense of relief wash over her.

"I saw it in one of your books. Almost by accident, and it... it just made a lot of sense to me, even just skimming over it. So I thought, why not? If I could get a handle on a few of the spells, I could complement your arsenal quite well. Bring more to the fight."

Van Richten nods, but there is a wary undertone to his words. "As long as you aren't making any ill-advised deals and pacts - which, I'll remind you--"

"-- are all of them. I know. Don't worry. I'm only interested in things I can glean by myself."

"Well, I'm not much of an arcane practitioner, though I am quite familiar with a lot of theory. I'm afraid I won't be able to provide any elaborate training or instruction--"

"That's fine," Ezmerelda rushes to say. "I can continue like this. The research, the books - it's..." 

She trails off, not quite knowing how and what to explain. Arcane magic is fascinating, surprisingly enjoyable, and strikes a deeply satisfying balance between being hard-won and feeling like it comes naturally to her. 

It also feels... hers.

"It's very engaging material," she finishes after a little while. She moves to close her fist and extinguish the tiny fire, but something stops her at the very last moment.

"Indeed," van Richten replies simply, and gets up from his seat. "Well, I do need to go tend to the shop, but rest assured we will discuss the tactical applications of this later today." 

Just as he is out the study door and about to start down the stairs, he pauses, and turns back to look at her, a bright and sincere smile on his face. "Very well done, Ezmerelda."

The flame flickers, ready to fly from her fingers, bursting with potential.

"Thank you," she murmurs long after he is gone.

---

It is deep nighttime when Ezmerelda shakes off the last tendrils of the Mists and sets eyes on the cliffs of Mordentshire. The wagon's wheels clatter over rain-slick cobblestones as she navigates the still-familiar streets of the seemingly unchanging harbour town. The cold sea wind makes her tighten her coat around herself, to very little avail. 

She can't say she's missed the weather.

By the time she spies the sign neatly painted with the words Herbalist - Dr. Rudolph van Richten, she feels soaked through and entirely miserable, and spends only a moment giving the place a quick look-over.

The shop is in fine shape - if she didn't know better, Ezmerelda could easily believe its owner closed it up for the night and left just yesterday. The wolfsbane and garlic in the planters underneath each window are flourishing. She makes a mental note to make her first order of business in the morning calling in on the neighbors and discussing further arrangements with Mrs. Polk, in whose capable hands van Richten has been leaving things for years.

In the meantime, she fervently hopes for dry clothes and a workable fireplace.

A quick rummage between two bushy wolfsbane plants - the second and third one on the right - produces a spare key, and Ezmerelda remembers with mild amusement her shock at this mundane weakness in van Richten's usually impeccable and overthought defenses, years ago.

"Keys," he'd looked at her over the rim of his spectacles, "are hardly a problem for things that truly want to harm me."

The little bell chimes as she opens the door. Catching a glimpse of herself in the very precisely placed full-length mirror just opposite the entrance, she wastes no time before going upstairs. The second stair from the top creaks its old, familiar reassurance.

Ezmerelda enters the room that used to be hers, in between harrowing hunting trips and trying adventures, during her years training with van Richten. It doesn't seem to have changed much - nor does it seem to be in use as anything but spare storage space.

She does her best not to think about how empty and quiet the house is, or how she's never truly been alone in it. Instead, she hangs up her coat, rolls up her shirt sleeves, unpacks some of her things, and, by the time she gets a proper fire going, realises sleep is the very last thing she feels like doing. Her eyes alight on the small desk in the corner, and she instead decides to do something she hasn't in a while.

She sits down to write. 

First, Ezmerelda takes off the ring and sets it aside, muttering a quick good night, Doctor under her breath. Then she takes out some of her collection, observations accumulated over the years - jotted down on everything from thick parchment to old wrapping paper. Combining it with the wealth of van Richten's remaining material and into something eventually coherent will no doubt be a challenge, but a challenge is not something Ezmerelda d'Avenir has ever shied away from.

It is just haphazard, quick notes on anything of consequence that comes to mind at first, carried by an odd nervous energy. A more systematic approach will have to come at some later point.

While knowledge is a key weapon in any hunter's arsenal, honing one's body as well as mind is absolutely necessary, she writes, tapping her foot on the wooden floor in a way that often drove van Richten to distraction. Many of the creatures of the night become, in their cursed states, inhumanly strong, and in such instances one must be particularly careful of engaging them in close quarters, for even the greatest strongman would be at a disadvantage.

However, not all of these encounters need be solved by violence. Many ghosts 

She pauses, pen slowly dripping ink onto the half-filled page before her, and sees Erasmus out of the corner of her eye. She turns her head to face him, and for once in their long and unusual life-and-afterlife-spanning acquaintance, she finds she can't quite read him.

Many ghosts are held in their in-between existence due to unfinished business. Tethered to some regret or incomplete task from their mortal lives, they seek resolution and closure. Many hauntings can thus be resolved by investigation, and what I must term a primarily sympathetic approach. Of course, one must also always be wary and on the lookout for deliberately misguiding spectres who seek to play upon one's pity.

The first signs of dawn creep into the room by the time she has moved on from ghosts to wraiths to trying to sort out her notes about creatures that lurk underwater - old notes that have been, to her chagrin, very appropriately and unsalvageably waterlogged.

Ezmerelda manages to light another candle just before her current one sputters out, and rubs at her tired eyes. Then she pauses, gazing idly at the ink stains on her fingers.

She reaches over for a new page, setting her current work aside. There is something else she wants and needs to write, something other than dry facts or hopefully helpful guidelines. The first few sentences come in fits and starts, but soon enough she finds them flowing out of her pen almost of their own accord.

What I would like to make clear is that this is not an inherently bad place. The lands themselves can be beautiful - wondrous, even. Worth living in, and worth fighting for. And the people who live in them do not deserve to live in fear. I, and many others, could simply leave for some better, tamer prospects, yes - but then what? Nothing is gained if we merely surrender an entire world, a collection of lands so fantastically varied and so full of promise, to a cruel, merciless, hungry night. It can't all be abandoned as collateral damage in a great punishment intended for a horrible few. I can't, and won't, allow this to happen.

Maybe the foes are overwhelming, and the fight endless. But a life saved is a life saved. A victory is a victory. One innocent snatched away from a grim fate, one tendril of darkness beaten back - that is enough. But only if we persist at it, day after day after day. And evil may be impossible to ever completely destroy, but it is far weaker and less widespread than it could and doubtlessly wants to be, in at least some small part thanks to our continued efforts.

A dour prospect? Perhaps, for some. Ezmerelda smirks to herself, and gazes down at her veritable manifesto, and thinks back to that cell in Il Aluk. 

What better life is there to lead? None, for her.

I, for one, don't intend to give up anytime soon. I hope that in you, dear reader, I can find one of like mind. And perhaps one day we shall find ourselves standing together.

She lights another candle, and continues.

-

1.6. Conclusions and remarks on future work

She clenches her hands as she steps into the sitting room that morning, decisions made after a long, sleepless night of contemplation. As if fate is conspiring against her, the first thing she sees is Erasmus, hovering over his father's shoulder. He turns to face her as soon as he notices her, a bright smile he saves just for her on his pale, ghostly face. She knows what a struggle it is for him to manifest this way, how much it takes out of him. The thought of his precious few minutes today being this... 

It takes immense effort to speak up, interrupting van Richten's apparent focus on the post strewn about the table in front of him.

"I think... I think it's time for me to go."

"Go? Where?" He blinks, looking up from his papers.

Ezmerelda swallows, but hesitates only for a moment. "I don't know," she answers, chin tilted up, almost proud. "But I know we can't go on like this. I don't want to go on like this."

They butt heads and scrape against each other constantly. Chafe and grate and, and, and. She can't remember the last time they agreed on even the most cursory thing. It has reached a level where she fears his presence will become intolerable, and anything binding the two of them together become irreparably soured and tainted.

She refuses to allow this to happen.

Erasmus has drawn a coin. Two sides. He indulges in a small, semi-teasing pantomime, pointing at the two of them as his shimmering, ectoplasmic drawings hover briefly before vanishing like so much smoke, and Ezmerelda shakes her head sadly.

"I don't want to come to resent you, that is all. I don't think I could bear it if I did."

"If you think it for the best, by all means," van Richten says simply, and leaves it at that. He never turns to fully look at her. There is an undercurrent to his voice Ezmerelda can't quite place - something deeply tired, and far more complicated than plain sadness.

It rains heavily that morning as she sets off, as if the world itself wants her to rethink this. The muddy road squelches almost threateningly under her horse's hooves as she leads him forward.

Van Richten doesn't come out to see her off.

"I'll miss you," she breathes to herself, and half-hopes it somehow reaches both of the companions she is leaving behind. But she has only the rain and her horse's steady trot on the trail for company. 

It is quiet.

---

Finally, the familiar mists of Darkon, and the countryside of Rivalis, lie before them. The inevitable, at a familiar estate fallen into quite a state of disrepair. 

'No, leave it be,' van Richten said, at her hesitantly presented idea of including returning Richten House to at least some of its former glory on their list of unfinished business and loose ends.

Still, this is where he wanted to come. At the end.

Ezmerelda never saw it in its prime. She was a mere child then, kept well away from her family's machinations. Until she was (inevitably, irrevocably) drawn in, her fate forever entangled with that of the van Richten family. But even now, in all its disrepair, rich traces of what the gardens, the orchard, and the house itself used to be permeate the atmosphere, like ghosts themselves.

She walks across the hills of the grounds, all the way around the mansion to the family cemetery. She slows as she moves up to the two most recent graves, so easy to find, and thinks, briefly, of the body van Richten insisted on being burned before they left Barovia, just in case. 

Just in case, she agreed, knowing all he knew about what foul magic and foul intentions could do to physical remains in the wrong hands, and built him a pyre.

The headstones before her are simple but elegant, as is the tidily engraved lettering on them.

Ingrid van Richten

Erasmus van Richten

'Well, here we are.' For a disembodied voice softly projecting into her mind, almost as through a mild haze or over some great distance, it is one of the heaviest things Ezmerelda has ever heard.

'A few words, if I may,' van Richten's request comes, gentle, and she nods, finding herself oddly wordless.

'I am so proud of you,' he begins, and the ferocity of it almost startles her. 'I hope you know this, always. If I have ever made you doubt this, as I pushed you away - I am sorry. I regret many things in my life, as one does, no matter what I like to say - but most of all I regret that I didn't tell you this sooner. 

You are the best of my life. But more than that, you have grown far beyond me, into a finer person than most could dream of being. And I am sorry I wasn't there for you, that you had to do so much of it on your own. But know that when I see you... I couldn't be happier, or more in awe.' 

There is a very brief pause, and then the voice softens again.

'I love you as my own, and am deeply honoured you would consider me, and that I get to consider you, family.' 

Ezmerelda swallows once, twice, struggles, then finally lets her tears fall freely. 

'Look at you. You don't need me anymore. And I can only hope your legend will far surpass anything I have ever done - there is so much ahead of you! Your light stands so very bright against the darkness. But I am glad, so very glad - selfishly, perhaps - that we were there together, at the end.' 

"So am I," she manages a whisper. "Love you too, old man." 

'Now I suppose it is time for me to go.' 

Erasmus looks at her, bittersweet pouring from him in waves, and he gives a small nod. His form flickers, and then disappears, and Ezmerelda knows she will never see him again.

She knows how the ring works, too. The soul within it can choose to depart whenever it wants to. She knows she doesn't need to do anything - that she couldn't, even if she wanted to. It brings with it a strange sort of peace. 

Ezmerelda inclines her head. "I hope you see them soon." Tell Erasmus I'll miss him, she wishes she could say. 

She spins the now-inert ring around on her finger, a habit she will need to break. She wants to tear it off, and throw it as far away from herself as she can. She wants to never take it off as long as she lives. 

A soft rain starts up, and Ezmerelda feels oddly grateful for the feel of it on her face, even as she knows there is no one here but her.

It is quiet.

---

With gratitude to the notes and tutelage of the esteemed Dr. Rudolph van Richten, whose guidance and wealth of knowledge have proved invaluable on countless occasions, and whose friendship changed the course of my life more than once.

#ezmerelda d'avenir #rudolph van richten #curse of strahd #dnd #dungeons and dragons #fanfiction #my fic #oathkeeper writes things #erasmus van richten #ravenloft #gonna take my horse to the old svalich road #tabletop

[snoodlebeans]

so i made a little fanfic for my gf @squishybellies cause i suddenly got a huge desire to write about our kinnies being gay >:3

(tw for implied violence and some gore)

"Darling, I'm home!~"

The monstrous figure's baritone voice fills the halls as he enters through the front door, having to hunch down in order to keep from destroying its frame. The tips of his horns just barely scrape against the ceiling as he lumbers towards the living room, toothy grin wide and eyes gleaming in delight. He had just returned from a very successful hunting trip, with one hand the size of a human's torso dragging in a blood-soaked bag holding a decent amount of flesh inside. The pungent smell of iron begins to fill the house - a four-course meal to his senses. Once he reached the kitchen he turns his gaze towards the massive cauldron resting in the left corner; dropping the bag besides it, he goes to fetch some water. It would take a few hours for it all to boil and simmer, especially when adding the spices and vegetables - they'd have to soften up, so preparing today's meal had to start early.

Only when his back is turned does the floor directly beneath the now unattended meat turn an inky mix of purplish-black. Wisps of energy seep out into the air as a clawed wing emerges from below, its gold-embedded skin shining in the dying light of the day. It gropes around for a few moments before catching a feel of flesh held inside burlap, after which the upper half of the creature comes forth: fur lavender in hue, ears and horns hidden by a bicolored jester's cap, a body donning a suit of the same pattern... and an expression that goes beyond hunger into pure greed. As soon as the acrid scent hit his nostrils saliva begins to seep from his jaws, and he glances towards the distracted, hulking figure ahead of him before proceeding to tear into the sack, reaching for the treats inside and stuffing a hunk of raw meat into his mouth before he can be seen and have to wait before food is ready-

"Impatient and impulsive as ever, I see."

The jester froze mid-thievery, cheeks stuffed with flesh as his eyes trailed up towards the coy grin staring down upon him. Sure, Marx's shenanigans can get irritating sometimes, especially when Neil is trying to get things done. But there's something about the jester's actions that render them oddly endearing in a way. What's the word he's looking for? Cutely annoying? That sounds about right.

Marx proceeded to gulp the chunk down whole, slowly retracting his grip from today's catch while maintaining eye contact. His pupils were pinpricks , face crimson now that he's been literally caught red-handed.

"I was hungry-"

"You're always hungry, dear."

There was a pop as the gluttonous comic pushed himself free from his shadowy, multidimensional hideaway, licking his talons clean as he hovered in place, watching as his love worked.

"What'd you get? Some poor guy who just happened to come across you and was an easy catch?"

"A hunter, actually. His screams as I ran my claws through his skin were delightful.~"

"Aw, now I wish I coulda heard 'em..."

With the water poured and the fire beneath starting to glow, the gentleman of a beast turns his attention towards the other parts of the stew: carrots, celery, onions, potatoes, a little bit of parsley just to give it that earthy flavor...

It all gets pushed into the water as it begins to boil, adding to the lovely sound of it bubbling with each chopped piece plopping into place. Soon a lovely aroma fills the air, steam wafting through the open window and into the evening sky.

grrrrmble.

"Still hungry, I assume?~"

Neil gives a deep chuckle before heading over to give Marx a soft kiss on his fluffy cheek. He always seemed to taste of cotton candy - not exactly Neil's absolutely favorite flavor, he's always been more of a savory kind of monstrosity, but it's quite pleasant in its own way.

The jester giggles a bit in sheepish joy at such a gesture, which he quickly reciprocates with a smooch back.

Y'know, I can never put my finger on what his flavor is...

... Why don't I just get a better taste?

"C'mere.~"

Marx embraces his love in a tight hug before opening wide, jaws popping out of place audibly as his bloated tongue snakes out to gently coil around the chimeric monster's neck, maw closing around Neil's head as he gives a muffled shout of surprise. The jester then begins to swallow noisily, throat bulging outward with his companion's bulky frame as it slides down his gullet inch by inch.

Oh, right. Gotta taste him.

Saliva-coated tissue flicks against Neil's chest and limbs, flavor molecules hitting the jester's tastebuds as he finishes devouring his boyfriend with a loud GLRK. His clothes rip almost immediately, seams around his burgeoning middle tearing to reveal a few fluffy bits of turgid fat, belly nearly touching the floor. Eh, he needed to get a new suit, anyway; he can just use this one for lounging around the house. He sighs, hunger now satisfied and feeling that perfect sensation of overfullness when his gut is stretched to its near limit, warm to the touch and making it harder to walk in that lovely, bloated way-

"Marx honey, I was working on our dinner for tonight, but it seems I can't do that now..."

"Eh, you needed a break. You've been working pretty hard today, so how about I finish it up for you? You can take a break right inside here.~"

Marx pats his overgrown belly with a smug grin, just to emphasize the mischievous situation his love has gotten into.

"Well, I suppose you could-"

"It's settled, then! Just relax while Chef Marx gets it done.~"

Hoisting up his gut with both arms before letting it flop back forward with a noisy SLORSH, Marx snatches up the soup ladle before beginning to stir. A few moments pass, and he abruptly snaps his claws as realization hits him.

"Oh! I figured out what you taste like, sweetie!"

"... And what exactly is that, dear?"

"Kinda like fish with lemon juice squeezed on top of it!"

#BITING AND CHOMPING #writings #chomps #gorlf kinnies!! #kinnies! #cuddly tums #choob #squishybellies

[maverick-werewolf]

10.) Which patterns keep popping up in your projects/characters?

Thank you so much for asking! 💚

I'll do five, just off the top of my head, because I'm in the mood. I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot and there are probably better examples of common themes/elements in my works, but here are some of the ones I enjoy writing about the most, at least, that I've noticed.

Sorry about how lengthy this got, hah.

1. Questioning what it is to be human/questioning the nature of a soul

Most all of my projects, in some form or another, contemplate the nature of what it is to be human. It can be the differences between man and beast, the differences between man and machine, if mutations can make one no longer human, how other humans can treat one they no longer see as being human - the divide between "man" and "monster."

This has got to be my most consistent - and favorite - theme. I write werewolves, mutants, shapeshifters, soul-eaters, demons and half-demons, people cursed and infected with horrible afflictions that change their body...

But do any of these things change their soul?

The same applies to several of my characters, though certainly not all. Tom, the werewolf, of course lives asking himself these questions, especially knowing he cannot remember what he does and that he gleefully eats the flesh of the noble races like humans, elves, and dwarves. John, who gets experimented upon and begins turning into a mutant human-insectoid monstrosity, begins to wonder if he is still human at all. Caiden, who hungers for the souls of beings mortal and immortal, obviously questions himself a lot given his... desires, to which he does not give in (yet?).

I would say that transformation and exploring those kind of themes ties into this, but it still doesn't strictly apply. Caiden, for instance, never physically changes form. Still, it's also something I write about a lot and enjoy asking questions about.

Either way, I just love themes like that. I always give it different twists and ask many different questions, but the end result is always fairly similar.

2. Partnership

I absolutely love bromance and partnership themes in general. This can apply to romance, as well, for sure, but I have yet to reach the point in many of my works where the romance (if there is one; there isn't always) is going to start becoming an important element.

My favorite is bromance. I have a lot of characters of very wide varieties that start working together, and many didn't expect to like each other. Others fell right into place. I just think duos are super fun to write about and explore - and I have lots of varieties.

Plus, the nature of partnership is a big theme for me. In The Hunt Never Ends, for instance, the partnership between Caiden and Gwen takes center stage, especially as Caiden's secret gets revealed.

I love writing a pair - or several pairs - of characters who, whether they expected this to happen or not, fall together like soulmates - platonic or romantic - and achieve a partnership that helps them both be at their best.

Examples of this in my writing include, but are not limited to: the partnership of Caiden and Gwen as monster hunters; Tom and Victor's friendship as warriors of Illikon; Tom and Kye's eventual brotherhood that becomes as real as blood to them both; Tom and Caiden's unlikely but necessary partnership that reveals both their greatest strengths and weaknesses; and, in the world of sci-fi, John and Henry's strange duo of soldier and scientist who seem capable of solving any problem... even if they bicker like an old married couple the entire time.

3. Mystery and Exploration

This applies very much to both stories and characters. My characters often have some mystery about themselves that needs solving - see #1 - and they discover more along the way, not only about themselves, but about the history and reality of the world in which they live, as well.

I love exploration stories. Not all my stories focus on this at first, and not all focus on it at all, but I enjoy adventure and discovery - adventure is one of my all-time favorite genres, easily; always has been - and I enjoy conveying my worlds to the reader through the eyes of the character(s), as they discover it for themselves.

And my characters, as mentioned, always involve a lot of mystery, be it around their true nature or something that has happened to them. While unraveling this, they unravel so much more...

4. Trust

I enjoy exploring trust. Levels of trust, what it really means to trust someone, what those who truly trust each other can do together (and how they can save each others' lives, physically and spiritually, on so many levels), and something I look forward to exploring is what it is to give someone all of your trust, unconditionally, and to have that utterly betrayed. Recent events in my own life have made me want to explore the last theme more in particular, unfortunately, but I've always wanted to explore betrayal more in my works. I just haven't reached those moments quite yet.

Trust is a big part of all my casts - they need that trust to survive, and when they don't trust each other, they all can fall. Trust is a central theme in my stories that I never really realized until writing this post, actually, but it's definitely something that's hugely important. My stories are almost all about characters who have to work together, instead of any loners. And, even so, sometimes even a loner finds themselves having to have some trust, now and then.

5. Broken Confidence/False Confidence

This is kind of a weird one, but in thinking about it, it's pretty applicable, and it goes with a lot of the other themes I've mentioned here. Several of my characters have broken confidence due to events in their lives or events ongoing in their books - and still others have false confidence, whether they lost it during the story or never really had it in the first place.

Finding true confidence and/or rebuilding confidence in themselves is a pretty consistent element in a lot of my characters. I break them a lot. Sorry, fellas.

#writing #writing asks #fantasy #sci-fi #cyberpunk #wrtblr #characters #themes #thank you again for asking #wow I had fun writing that

[patchies]

Shadows

Pairing: Dream x Reader x ???

Summary: An apocalyptic world where creatures of the night roam all around it. Searching for living beings to satisfy their hunger. Vicious creatures they are. It’s said that one person called upon their wrath in revenge. You awake in this place with another human being at your side. No memories whatsoever of the life you’ve had prior to coming here. In search of a way out, and your memories, you stumble upon multiple people with many personalities. Some can’t wait to meet you. If you take it the friendly or hostile way is up to you, but worry not... Nothing can hurt you. Or can it, now?

Warnings: depictions of gore

Word Count: 1.8+k

Author’s Note: This story is heavily inspired by a dream I had around two months ago and it pushed me into writing it. I haven’t ever thought that I would be writing and publishing a story. Let alone in English since it’s very far from my mother language, but I have to admit I like it way more. As I am pretty proud of it, I’ve decided why not just try? This story is not going to be updated very frequently as I hardly find time and motivation, but I have the whole story mostly planned out and I have plenty of ideas for it! There are 7 chapters written altogether as of now and I will try to update at least once a month. I’ve started writing longer chapters from the 6th and those will take longer to finish, but I sincerely hope you’ll enjoy it!

Wattpad link: here

story masterlist - main masterlist

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Chapter 1: The Awakening

Your eyes are met with complete darkness, unable to perceive your surroundings. The creepy, dusty and smoggy atmosphere isn't making you any less uneasy and confused either. Quite the contrary, actually. An unbelievable sickening feeling takes over your stomach and a great migraine is ever so present. Steering your thoughts to completely different places than they're supposed to. You feel the rapid thumping of your heart and panic floats in your head.

It takes you a few minutes until your dilated pupils get used to the blackness, but when they do, you're able to see the outlines of some demolished furniture. Upon fixating more on your surroundings, you distinctly spot the torn plain green wallpaper and empty broken picture frames hanged up on the wall. The tattered blinds covering the cracked windows tell you it's night and you seem to have gained consciousness in the middle of it.

Though, when you attempt to rethink through your day and previous whereabouts, you come up blank. Something like a heavy fog restrains your memories. A metaphorical lock put around it to secure them away from your conscious mind. As much as you try to concentrate on the past, you're left with nothing. It doesn't only leave you grasping for the forgotten past, but it makes you feel stranded and gasping of any, and very needed, recollection.

A sharp inhale of air makes your head rapidly turn in the direction of the sound and squint your eyes. You can hardly see the body of the person. The dark corner makes it difficult to focus, yet the figure still seems to take notice of you instantly, “Who are you…?”

Speaks up a very groggy voice and you can deduce their voice is coming from the shadows. Utterly hidden by the dark abyss. It sounds masculine, so you leave it at that, not taking too much interest in finding out any more information about the strange human. He seems to be in the same situation as you, but you still decide to be cautious around him. He's only a stranger to you, so you aren't going to blindly trust him. After all, stranger-danger is a rule, right?

You choose to stay guarded for now.

“Why does it matter to you?” You harshly reply. There really isn't anything to go off when it comes to his personality and intentions. As much as you'd like to be happy about seeing another human being, you don't know in what situation you are stuck in and you aren't the stupidest, neither the smartest, in the world. You'd rather stay cautious than die, “I'm surprised you have the audacity to speak to me even though you're obscuring your identity from me.”

“Well, if I tell you my name, will you tell me yours?” The stranger suggests, but you're inclined to not let him get through you.

“It doesn't matter to me. All I want is to get out and find whoever brought me here,” you simply say, “or search for my way home. That, doesn't have to involve you, nor your help.”

You turn your back to his voice, brushing him off with your words. Fixating your sight on the few boxes scattered throughout the room. You're sure he can feel your annoyance, but it's valid. He's making non-significant propositions, which is honestly irritable.

“I could help you. We could have each other's back.”

“What have I just said?” You inquire with an annoyed tint, “You have nothing of value to offer me, and you can't even step out of the shadows.”

With that said you slowly start to stand up from your position and look around for a possible exit. The floorboards creak under your weight as you step from foot to foot. The first thing that comes to your mind is to head straight for the windows for some unknown reason. Upon taking several steps to the blinds, you hear the stranger's footsteps echo. Your feet leisurely continue, but you're tempted to check behind you, therefore you do. Just in case he proves to have any malignant tendency.

There's still no silhouette of the other human, hence why you can't confirm what kind of a movement he's executed. With that done, you turn your head back and concentrate on the task at hand.

Once you get close enough to pull the blinds open, a loud screeching noise travelling throughout the whole street alerts both you and your companion. Blood pumps through your body at faster pace and you begin to be sceptical at heart upon hearing the scream of an unidentified creature.

“What the hell was that sound?” You can hear a slight waver in his voice. Presumably from not being able to decipher the inhuman noise from outside.

It didn't seem to scare you as much as it scared him. Although you did flinch back from the window, your guard has stayed high nonetheless the fright you experienced.

You shrug, but after realising he cannot possibly see you very well, you give him a response, “How am I supposed to know? Do you think I'm a witch?”

“Uh– yes and no?” After those words leave his mouth, your head turns to what you assume is his direction and give him a nasty glare. Offended thoughts swim in your head along with the throbbing pain of a headache.

A relatively loud scoff escapes your mouth and you fixate him with a harsh look.

You're sure he's going to die by either your hands, or he'll serve as sacrifice to the creature.

“You've chosen your destiny now, man.”

The scoff that leaves his mouth this time tells you that he's against the idea or he just plainly thinks you're joking. Either way, he's sold his soul by saying those words.

Cutting the conversation off, you finally get to glance outside the window, and you yell out a curse, which is enough to let the thing outside know of your existence. In the matter of seconds, it flies to your window and starts banging against it. It's long arms slam the panels with surprisingly little force. You fall back and try to scramble to your feet as quickly as you can. Can't go around risking your life even upon seeing the strength of the shadowy figure.

The man, who has chosen to stay anonymous up until now, decides against his better judgement to flee on his own to help you up. It doesn't show much strength, but the window already adores quite a few cracks, so you don't think it'll hold up for long.

“Just hurry up!”

As soon as you're stabilised and on both of your legs, you book it to the door. At first, the handle doesn't let you open them, but after a few sharp tugs it gives out and you fall to the floor again. You let out a curse once more, supporting your body on your forearms and stand up. The stranger only snickers behind you.

You stay silent and get your thoughts and clumsiness together.

“Here! We could hide in one of the other rooms!” He hurriedly tries to tug you to the direction he's talking about, but you don't budge. You can't take any risks when you don't know the house's layout and the person in front of you.

“I don't think it's a good idea,” you ponder over your thoughts, but after you hear glass being shattered, you run to another room and to the closest closet you can find. Completely disregarding the terrified look the man threw your way. You duck to the ground as hastily as you can and cover your mouth just in case. Soon wooden boards start creaking in the hallway and, even though you wished the man would be a sacrifice, you hope he's found a safe place and survives this monstrosity.

A rather loud groan is heard somewhat close to you and you peek through the small gap in the closet doors to see a rather disturbing view. One that you wish you haven't.

The creature has found a dead rat (rather beheaded the poor creature beforehand?) and is holding it to its bloody mouth now. Multiple sharp teeth sink over and over into the freshly killed animal, happily munching on the treat. It's turned sideways to you, so you can very clearly see all the contents of the rodent's body as it eats it. It's guts and blood spilling everywhere on the floor and on the demon itself.

You shudder, avert your eyes, and just look at your curled-up knees. ‘What in the name of hell have I just witnessed?’

It takes less than ten minutes to finish its fiesta and you can see the unidentified creature turn to smoke from your peripheral vision. It stays in that form and floats out of the room and you guess it leaves out the window it broke.

Silent tears start to fall down your eyes and you honestly aren't surprised. The whole encounter was traumatic to say the least. To you, it was as if you were the protagonist in a horror movie, being hunted down by some unknown force. Except this is real life that we're talking about. Your life is currently put at stake and you don't want to die so early. Be at the hands of the creature or some other mythical thing.

This won't be the worst thing to happen to you, Reader.  Or will it, now?

Was that demon chasing somebody before I yelled out?

It had seemed to be occupied by something else before you got startled by its presence on the little roof below the window. You can still remember the soulless holes for eyes staring in your direction vividly.

Was it me luring it to us? Could there be more people?

You sit there, contemplating the event that has just happened, for what seems to be forever. Blank stare put onto your hands as you cry and your body succumbs to total numbness. That is until the closet door creak open, forcing you to look up.

There stands a man of average height with messy brown hair. You notice just now how he exactly looks upon not having that much time to do so an hour (was it?) ago.

His eyes convey an emotion close to yours, which is utter fear and confusion. He silently offers you his hand and you gladly, albeit shakily, take it. He pulls you out the door and towards another room with a dusty and an almost broken bed, pulls you into his lap and tucks your head into his neck. Letting you quietly cry while he gently runs his hand across your back. You don't even care a stranger has you in his lap. He lets you cry until you have no more tears running down your cheeks.

Your guarded feelings towards the man begin to crack amidst the comfort you crave right now.

When you're done, you both can't get yourselves to break the silence. You’ve distanced yourself from him, but you both are too afraid to even utter a word and accidentally lure the creature back in. Although, he decides to break it with a small whisper and with an attempt of a comforting smile.

“Do you mind sharing your name with me now?”

#technoblade #dream #sapnap #apocalypse au #reader insert #mcyt x reader #mcyt #techno #dream team #dream x reader #dreamwastaken #l'manburg #shadows #??? x reader

[rallamajoop]

...and the unironic joys of better living through chemistry

How do I love Venom: The Hunger, let me count the ways…

It’s by far the shippiest Venom/Eddie story to come out of the character’s heyday. It’s the only story of the era to treat Venom’s violent wild-animal instincts not as an immutable fact, but as something that can be managed. It pulls off an aesthetic like nothing else that was being done at the time.

And then there’s the way it says, Does the world around you seem sinister and foreboding? Do you lie awake at night contemplating metaphorical oceans of despair? Well shit, son – have you considered you may be suffering from a mundane neurochemical imbalance, and a round of the right meds could clear that right up for you?

It does all this without breaking the atmosphere, without a whiff that our story has been interrupted for a Very Special Message about mental health.

In the near-decade since I was first prescribed anti-depressants, I don’t think I’ve read another story that lands the message “Sometimes, it’s not you, it’s just your brain chemistry,” so well.

Fair warning: if you have not read The Hunger, I am about to spoil every major plot point. If you have, well, maybe I can still give you a new appreciation for a few details you might have missed.

It’s a strange book, whatever else you take from it. It’s almost the only thing either author or artist contributed to the Venom canon, and it’s so different stylistically and tonally from the 90′s Venom norm that it feels like a tale from some noir-elseworlds setting instead of 616 canon. When you take risks that big with a property, you leave yourself precious little landing space between 'unmitigated triumph’ and ‘abject failure’: if this book hadn’t absolutely nailed it, I’d be dismissing it as edgy, OOC dreck. Fortunately, if The Hunger is nothing else, it is a story that $&#@ing commits – to basically everything it does.

Now, I'm not going to tell you Venom: The Hunger is a story about overcoming depression, because I don't know whether author Len Kaminski even thought about it that way while working on it. There's always space for other readings, and this one take is not gospel. That said: holy shit is this thing unsubtle with its metaphors. And with that in mind, let’s start by talking a little about Kaminski’s take on Eddie himself.

As I may have mentioned before, I like to divide 90′s Eddie into two broad personas: the Meathead, and the Hobo.

Kaminski’s Eddie nominally belongs in the angsty, long-haired Hobo incarnation, but that’s a bit of a simplification: this version certainly has plenty of angst and plenty of hair to his name – but nowhere, not even at his lowest ebb, does he doubt that he and his Other are meant for each other, which is usually Hobo!Eddie’s primary existential quandary.

He’s also taken up narrating his own life like a hardboiled PI.

So that’s... novel.

The only other time Eddie’s sounded like this is, er, in that one other Venom one-shot Kaminski penned (Seed of Darkness, a prequel that sadly isn’t in The Hunger’s league), so I think we can safely file it under authorial ticks.

Then again, Hobo!Eddie’s always been one melodramatic SOB, so maybe this is just how he’d sound after learning to channel his angst into his poetry. You can’t argue it fits the aesthetic, anyway.

We’d also be remiss not to mention Ed Halsted’s art, which I can only describe as gothic-meets-noir-meets-H.R.-Giger. Never before or since has the alien symbiote looked this alien: twisted with Xenompoph-like ridges and veins.

But Halsted doesn’t treat Venom to all that extra detail in every panel. Instead, the distortion tends to appear when the symbiote is separated from Eddie or out of control – and I doubt you need me to walk you through the symbolic importance of that creative decision. More importantly, Halsted’s art provides exactly the class of visuals that Kaminski’s story needs.

Did I mention this is a horror story? You might be surprised how few Venom stories really fit that genre, but if all those adjectives about Halsted’s style above didn’t clue you in, this is one of them.

Anyway, with that much context covered, let’s get into the main narrative of this thing.

As our first issue opens, Eddie’s world has become a dark and foreboding place. He’s not sleeping, though he mostly brushes this off. (Fun fact: trouble sleeping is one of those under-appreciated symptoms of depression. Additional fun fact: the first doctor ever to suggest I might be suffering from depression was actually a sleep specialist. You can guess how that appointment was going.)

Just to set our scene, here’s all of page 1.

Eddie’s narration has plenty of (ha) venom for his surroundings, but the visuals are here to back him up: panels from Eddie’s POV are edged in twisted, fleshy borders and drained of colour, the people rendered as creepy, goblin-like creatures. A couple of later scenes go even further to contrast Eddie-vision with what everyone else is seeing:

As depictions of depression go this is a little on the nose, but then, you don’t read a comic about a brain-eating alien parasite looking for subtlety, do you?

Eddie  doesn’t see himself as depressed, of course. As far as he’s concerned, he’s seeing the world’s true face: it’s everyone else who’s deluding themselves. He’s still got his symbiote, so he’s happy. He’s yet to hit that all-important breaking point where something he can’t brush off goes irrevocably wrong.

But he’s also starting to experience these weird... cravings.

He just can’t put a name to exactly what he’s craving until a routine bar fight with a couple of thugs takes a turn for the horrific.

(I include this panel partly to point out even in The Hunger, the goriest of all 90′s Venom titles, you’re still not going to see brains getting eaten in any graphic detail. We don’t need to to get the horror of the moment across. The 90′s were a more innocent time.)

Eddie himself is horrified when he comes back to himself and realises what he’s done.

Or rather, what his symbiote’s just made him do.

Kaminski doesn’t keep us in suspense about why, though. Eddie may have just done something horrific, but there’s a reason, and it’s as mundane as a vitamin deficiency. He’s bonded to an alien creature, after all, and his symbiote is craving a nutrient which just happens to be found in human brains. And if Eddie can’t or won’t help it meet that need, it’ll do so alone. 

Now, giving us that explanation so quickly is an interesting creative decision: this is a horror story, and horror lives in what we don’t know. Wouldn’t it be all the more horrifying had the symbiote been unable to explain what’s going on, leaving Eddie without the first real clue as to where this monstrous new hunger had come from?

The Hunger doesn’t take that route though, and I love it. Eddie isn’t a monster, this isn’t his fault: he has a fucking condition, and wallowing in his own moral failings is going to get him nowhere. You might as well try to cure scurvy or rickets with positive thinking. Just like depression can make you feel like an utter failure at the most basic parts of being human, and all the affirmations in the world won’t fix it when it’s fundamentally your brain chemistry that’s the problem. Or like addicts aren’t weak-willed for struggling not to relapse, they’re dealing with genuine chemical dependency – or even like how someone who’s trans isn’t at fault for being unable to reconcile themselves to the bodies and the hormones they were born with by pure force of trying. Free will is more than an illusion, but we’re all messy, biological organisms underneath, and your own brain and biochemistry can and will fuck you over in a hundred wildly different ways for as many wildly different reasons and it’s not your fault.

We aren’t monsters. But if we do, sometimes, find ourselves identifying with the monster, there might be a reason for that.

(Ahem)

I’m just saying, that’s fucking powerful, and we need more stories that say it.

Anyway, in case you missed it during that tangent, issue #1 closes with the symbiote having torn Eddie’s heart in two itself free to go hunting brains without him.

I’m trying not to get too sidetracked at this point talking about Kaminski’s take on the symbiote itself. Suffice to say there are broadly two schools of thought on how it ought to function while separated from its host: the traditional ambulatory-slime-puddle version, and the more recently popular alternative where anything-you-can-do-with-a-host-you-can-also-do-without-one. I’m not much of a fan of the latter, personally: if your symbiote doesn’t actually need a host, I feel you’ve sort of missed the point. (The movie takes the route of saying symbiotes can’t even process Earth’s atmosphere without a host, which is a great new idea that appears nowhere in the comics, and I love it. Hosts or GTFO, baby!)

Kaminski has his own take, and I can only wish it had caught on. Without Eddie, the symbiote becomes an ever-shifting insectoid-tentacle-snake-monstrosity, driven by an animalistic hunger. It’s many things, but it’s never humanoid.

If you absolutely must have your symbiote operating minus a host, I feel this is the way to do it: semi-feral, shapeless and completely alien (uncontrollable violence and cravings for brains to be added to taste).

Issue #2 comes to us primarily through the perspective of the mild-mannered Dr. Thaddeus Paine of the Innsmouth Hills Sanitarium (yes, really).

Yeah, he’s not fooling anyone. Meet our official villain! He joins our story after Eddie is picked up by the police and handed off to the nearest available institution, on account of how completely sane and rational he’s been acting.

Naturally, Dr. Paine soon has copious notes on Eddie’s ‘crazy’ story about his psychic link to a brain-eating alien monster. Fortunately for Eddie, Paine also runs some tests and makes an interesting discovery. 

Congratulations, Venom: the ‘vitamin’ you were missing officially has a name!

Finding the right meds isn’t always this easy. I got lucky – the first ones my psych put me on worked pretty well – but I have plenty of friends who weren't so lucky. In fact, the treatment for Eddie's problems is so straightforward it arguably has more in common with, say, endocrine disorders like thyroid conditions or Addison’s disease, which differ from clinical depression but present many similar symptoms (but can sadly be just as much of a bitch to get correctly diagnosed – please do read author Maggie Stiefvater’s account of the latter when you get the chance, because forget Venom, that is a horror story).

‘True’ depression remains much less well understood by medicine, either in its causes or how to effectively treat it. But simply having a name for what was wrong with me made so much difference, and that’s an experience I imagine anyone who’s dealt with any long undiagnosed medical condition could relate to. It put my life in context in a way nothing else had in years.

(I can’t speak to the accuracy of the way phenethylamine is portrayed in this comic – a quick google suggests there may be some real debate that phenethylamine deficiencies have been overlooked as a contributor to clinical depression, but having no medical background, that one’s well beyond me. Either way, scientific accuracy really doesn’t matter in this context – it’s how it works in-universe for story purposes that we should pay attention to.)

Since this issue is mostly from Paine’s POV, we don’t get Eddie’s reaction to having a healthy amount of phenethylamine sloshing around in his brain again, just the assurance that treatment appears to be ‘completely successful’.

He’s still a paranoid, hostile bastard though. Meds can turn your life around, but they won’t make you not you.

But even if Eddie’s feeling better, he’s still psychically linked to someone who isn’t. Symbiote-vision still comes through drained of colour and edged in viscera.

That’s the thing about meds: they won’t solve all your problems overnight. If you’ve been depressed for a while, there are good odds you have problems stacking up. But working meds can be a godsend when it comes to getting you into a space where you can deal with your problems again, whether said problems are doing-your-laundry or all the way into not-giving-up-completely-and-just-accepting-you’ll-die-alone-on-the-street.

For Eddie, ‘dealing with his problems’ begins with stealing a keycard and busting out of the asylum.

Of course, that’s the easy part. How do you solve a problem like a feral symbiote? Like any good 90′s comic book protagonist, Eddie tackles it by putting on his big-boy camouflage pants and kitting himself out with weapons and pouches while quoting “If you live something, set it free. If it doesn’t come back, hunt it down.”

We can add this to the list of things I love about this comic. Even if The Hunger is a weirdly-stylistic tract about depression at heart, it’s also still a goddamn 90′s Venom comic, and not ashamed to be.

We’re into issue #3 now, and back to hearing the story from Eddie’s POV.

Eddie is very much aware that his symbiote has murdered innocent people while they’ve been separated. Even if this is the result of extreme circumstances, there’s a good case to be made that the symbiote is too dangerous to be allowed to live. Plenty of heroes would treat it like a rabid dog at this point.

But Eddie isn’t a hero, he’s a mess of a character and an anti-hero at best, so we don’t have to hold him to the same standard. He’s well aware his symbiote may be too far gone to save, that he may have to put it down – but that’s only his backup plan. He wants to help it. He wants it back. He’s down in that sewer with screamers and a flamethrower because he knows all his symbiote’s weaknesses, but he’s also carrying a large jar of black-market synthesised phenethylamine, because if he can just get close enough...

Depression can’t make you a literal monster, but it can make you an asshole. Miserable to be around, lacking even the energy to care who else you’re hurting. The depression doesn’t excuse that, but it makes everything harder, and it’s that much easier to sink back into your spiral when everyone around you has given up. It can make you think everyone around has given up even if that isn’t true.

So to have Eddie here say, in effect, I don’t care how many people you’ve eaten, I know it wasn’t your fault. I still love you. You’re still worth fighting for – god, does that get me right in the id.

There’s still a whole issue left at this point – we’ve still got to deal with our real villain, Dr. Paine, who we’ve just learned is into eating brains himself and torturing his patients recreationally, and who wants to capture the symbiote for his own purposes. There’s the scene where Eddie and his symbiote finally bond again, and Venom beats up all Paine’s goons while singing David Bowie because like I said, this is still a 90′s superhero comic and this is what Venom does.

But for our purposes, I'm going to skip to the penultimate page of the story, because the way it mirrors our opening page is really lovely.

Remember that shot of Eddie dealing with a beggar back at the beginning of the story, thinking about how these people would 'get their despair all over you'? Here he is again, cheerfully forking over the last dollar in his pocket to the next man to ask him for change. For all the gothic atmosphere and gore, it’s moments like this that make The Hunger easily one of the most positive, uplifting Venom stories ever written. Funny, that. (I could probably write a whole other essay on sympathy for the homeless as a recurring motif in Venom stories, but that... well, whole other essay and all that.)

What’s Eddie learned from this experience? Don’t take your symbiote for granted. Is ‘symbiote’ a metaphor for mental health here, is paying attention to its needs an allegory for paying attention to your own? I still don’t know how literally Kaminski meant us to take this, but it’s a lovely note to end on no matter how you parse it.

At the end of the day, The Hunger isn’t flawless. The conflict with Paine ends on a thematic but slightly unsatisfying note. Eddie makes much of his symbiote's loneliness and desire for union, but when the two of them are finally reunited, the only reaction comes from Eddie's side. In fact, the symbiote seems to have no response to being able to return to Eddie at all, and that’s an omission that bugs me.

But Kaminski is more interested than any other writer of the era in the truly alien nature of the symbiote, in its relationship with Eddie from Eddie’s side, and though plenty of others talk about the symbiote's love/hate relationship with Spider-man, no-one else had the guts to portray their relationship this much like a romance.

And Venom: The Hunger is no less interesting in the context of Len Kaminski’s other work. You don't have to look far into his Marvel and DC credits to pick up that the guy has a real thing for monsters. (“All of my favourite characters are outlaws, misfits, anti-heroes,” he says, in one of the very few interviews I could find with him, “I wouldn't know what to do with Superman.”) He's written for vampires, werewolves, victims of mad science, and all of three at once, littering his work with biochemistry-themed technobabble, melodramatic monologues, gratuitous pop-culture references, and protagonists who must learn to embrace their inner demons. So The Hunger represents more than a few of his favourite running themes.

For our context, his more notable other work includes Children of the Beast, in which a werewolf must make peace between his human and animalistic sides, and The Creeper, in which a journalist must make peace with the crazy super-powered alter-ego sharing his body. In fact, The Creeper and The Hunger share so much DNA (including an evil doctor posing as a respected psychiatrist who uses hypnosis on our hero while he's trapped in a mental institution) that it’s quite the achievement that they still feel like such very distinct entities beyond that point.

The human alter-egos of both werewolf and Creeper even use prescription meds while wrestling with their respective dark sides. The difference, in both cases, is that these are stories where meds play their traditional fictional role – and that's a role that could be as easily filled by illegal drugs or alcohol without making any substantive difference. You see, if a protagonist is using them, it's a sign of unwillingness to tackle their 'real' problems. Even among work by the same author in the same genre, The Hunger represents an outlier. And that's just a little disappointing – at least to me.

In real life, of course, prescription meds are no magical cure-all elixir. Depression meds that work for one person may not work for another, or may not keep working in the longer term. Everyone has heard stories about quack doctors who prescribe them to the wrong patients for the wrong reasons, about lives ruined by addictions to prescription painkillers, or the supposedly-damning statistics about how poorly SSRI's perform in rigorous clinical trials. The proper way to treat depression is obviously with lifestyle and therapy. People will still airily dismiss medications that we all know previous generations got along just fine without, or suggest that figures like Van Gogh would never have created great art if they hadn't been mad enough to slice off an ear. I mean, the fact you think you need those bogus mediations is probably the best possible sign of just how broken you are, right? Who do you think you’re kidding?

Our popular fiction loves stories about manly men who bury their trauma under a gruff, anti-social exterior and come back swinging at the world that broke them, bravely refusing even painkillers that might dull their manly reflexes. Other genres make space for broken people confronting their demons in grand moments of catharsis, finally breaking down into tears when someone gets through to make them face their problems. "I could barely make it out of bed in the mornings until I found a doctor who started me on this new prescription" is not only wildly counter to the accepted social narrative, it's a hard thing to know how to dramatise.

 Even other Venom comics have been guilty of this.

Believe me, I recognise all of this, and just how much progress we've made in the last few decades. But I haven't the slightest doubt that for so many vulnerable people, the stigma against prescription medications does infinitely more harm than those same meds could ever do. And just having the right to externalise my problems into it's not you, it's your brain chemistry, may have helped me more than the meds themselves.

(And again, no, being prescribed SSRI's didn't fix me overnight, but I honestly don't know if all the talk therapy and tearful conversations with family members in the world could've got me as far as I've come without them.)

I love Venom: The Hunger. It's no-one's idea of high art, but it doesn’t need to be. There is a whole other post’s worth of things I love about it that I’ve already cut out this one as pointless tangents, and that may actually be it’s biggest drawback as a go-to example: I fully recognise that I would not be making this post if The Hunger hadn't also also grabbed me as a great bit of Venom canon, being the massive fan and shipper that I am. Other people who are just as desperate as me for more stories with the same core theme, but not into weird 90's comics about needy goo aliens, probably won't get nearly as much out of it as I have.

But if it sounds anything like your jam, maybe you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

If nothing else, it proves that you can make a viscerally satisfying story out of a message that shockingly unconventional. And you may even have people still discovering it and falling in love with it 25 years after the fact.

#Venom: The Hunger #Venom #depression #SSRIs #Symbrock #Venom meta #meta #Venom comics #Len Kaminski

[radiant-flutterbun]

Just Evan

Previously: Mason’s Brightside

Content warning: Homophobia mention

Evan flew over the scarred land. He felt a chill as if the desolate land made the air colder. Suddenly he felt something land on his back and something prick his neck. Panicked, He stopped in mid flight and met the ground with a sickening crunch.

Evan felt no pain but he winced at the sight of his leg. He was pretty sure his knee wasn’t supposed to bend that way.

“Disgusting!” Evan jumped at the voice. There was a small dragon on his back. He turned his head and saw blood dripping down his neck. The smallest nocturne he’d ever seen, it was about the size of a fae, was on his back with blood dribbling from its mouth.

“I’ve never tasted anything as disgusting as your blood!” The little nocturne hissed.

“I’m… Sorry?”

“You should be! You’re the first meal I’ve seen in ages and you taste horrible!”

Evan touched the blood running down his neck and traced it to the two puncture wounds. His skin felt numb. The blood was blue, like the Selcouthian gods’.

“What the fuck are you?”

Evan shrugged “I don’t know,” He had once been human, but then he died and became trapped in a rotting body and hungered for blood. Then he was revived as a god, and then later still as a dragon with god blood, numb nerves, and the same old hunger for that red delicious blood. “I guess I’m just Evan.”

The nocturne’s eyes widened at the sight of Evan’s fangs “Oh that explains a lot. No wonder you tasted rotten. Serves me right for trying to eat my own kind,” the nocturne laughed “Well, you best to leave. This hellhole has nothing to offer you.” The tiny dragon took off, leaving Evan alone.

***

Evan returned to the clan with his knee still bent funny. Alaria said it was dislocated and that it was going to hurt to put it back in place. Evan didn’t feel a thing, but he did hear a sickening crack as the bone was put back into its socket. He was told to keep weight off of the knee for the next few weeks and was given a set of crutches to help him get around. By the end of the day he was walking around as normal, not because the knee was healed, but because he felt no pain and forgot he was injured in the first place.

Evan walked around the clan’s lobby suddenly realizing he was alone now that Mason was gone, and Muerto was still in Selcouth. Sepulchral and Sonder were also off somewhere else.

“Hey Evan!” Tonatiuh a purple and pink coatl waved him over. He was sitting at one of the tables with Neith, another coatl, who was currently focused on a paper. “Come sit with us!”

Baffled, Evan obeyed.

“Us coatls gotta, stick together, ya know?” Tona cheerfully said.

Evan smiled “Yeah. Thanks. Even though I’m not really a coatl.”

Tona waved him off “Yeah, yeah we know you're an alien, but here you’re a coatl, so you’re a coatl.”

Neith growled to herself across the table “I cannot believe how much this will fuck over the hunting patrols!”

“She’s complaining about the Emperor,” Tona explained to Evan.

“This time of year is when the Celestial antelopes are supposed to migrate up to our hunting grounds, but that damn beast is blocking their path!”

“That’s where Mason went,” Evan said.

Neith looked up “Huh?”

“He went to kill the Emperor.”

“You’re joking.”

“No. I’m not.”

“The one time I got that boy onto one of my hunting patrols and I caught him freeing a mouse from a trap. Then he got all teary eyed when I caught it and killed it.”

Evan smiled “Yeah, that sounds like Mace alright. He’s a huge animal lover. I know it’s hard to believe based on his grumpy exterior, but he’s a big softy deep down inside.”

“And you’re telling me he plans to kill a giant undead monstrosity that even the Eleven struggle to deal with?”

“Yeah it surprised me too, but he seems pretty set on it. These dragons spoke to him in his dreams. They wanted his help. I don’t know why, but if that’s what Mace wants to do, it’s not like I can stop him.”

“You miss him,” Tona noted.

Evan sighed “Yeah. I guess I do,” he shifted his leg and felt a jolt of pain “We… we go way back. I’ve known him since… I think I was eleven and he was thirteen? Yeah that sounds right. He’d just moved into my hometown and started to go to my school.”

Tona nodded “Neith and I are childhood friends too.”

“But we weren't friends back then. We hardly saw one another since he was two years ahead of me. But then in high school… Well he hated my guts.” Evan smiled, lost in thought.

“He did? Why?” Tona asked.

Evan chuckled “Because his girlfriend at the time dumped him for me.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, but it’s not like it mattered in the end since I died pretty soon after we started dating. Thinking back on it, I don’t think it would have worked out, her and me… It’s kinda funny actually. Mason and I only really became friends after we both died. One hundred years in the Underworld is a long time to get to know a person.”

“I’d imagine so!”

“It’s a long time to think about yourself too…” Evan sighed “But you don’t want to hear about all of that.”

“I would like to hear, Evan.” Tona said.

Evan blinked “Oh really? Well… It may be hard to explain since well,” Evan took a deep breath “Tona you have a boyfriend right?”

Tonatiuh smiled and pulled a picture out from his messenger bag. He showed it to Evan. The picture was a magically created photograph of a tundra. The tundra had a jaguar pattern on his fur and was white and purple in color.

“His name is Glacier!” Tona said. He carefully tucked the picture bag into his bag.

“Yeah I’ve heard you talk about him before. He travels all over the place right? And he has other boyfriends too?”

Tona nodded “Yep! I’ve never met his other boyfriends, but they seem like good guys and make Glacier happy, and if he’s happy I’m happy so it works out.”

Evan nodded “And Neith, what about you?”

She seemed surprised to be dragged back into the conversation “Me? Don’t look at me when it comes to this stuff. I’m aroace. Never been interested in those sorts of relationships and never will be.”

“See this is exactly what I’m getting at! Here it doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter if you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a datefriend or no significant other! You dragons don’t judge one another based on that stuff. You guys are just like whatever works! As long as y’all are happy that’s all you guys care about and that’s how it should be in my world but it’s not!”

“I’m not sure if I’m following,” Tona said.

“Ok see in my world, people there are idiots who think only boys and girls can date and if it’s a boy dating a boy or a girl dating a girl or gasp someone who doesn’t want to date anyone well these people - these dumbasses, they think there’s something wrong with you!”

Tona frowned “That’s so stupid.”

“I know right?!” Evan slammed a fist into the table making Neith look up from her paper to glare at him “And Mason, well I always admired him because he was one of the first kids in my high school to come out as anything that wasn’t straight. And I’m sure it wasn’t easy for him, but he always seemed so sure of his identity, so sure of himself, so proud to say he was bi. I don’t think I realized how brave he was at the time, being one of the few non white kids in my school, and then being openingly queer on top of it? He must have had to put up with so much shit that I can’t even imagine…”

“I thought you wanted to say something about yourself?” Tona asked.

“I did! Like I said, spending one hundred years in the Underworld, being dead to all your friends and family, only having Mason and gods and dead people to talk to… Well it leaves a lot of time for self reflection…” Evan looked away from Tonatiuh “And sometimes you realize you’ve had biases you didn’t even know about until you realize something about yourself that contradicts them. See I admired Mason for being Mason, but I was also relieved that I didn’t have to worry about the shit he had to put up with. I was glad that I was white, and a cis guy, and straight, because in my world that meant I didn’t have to deal with any of the dumb bigotry that came with being anything different than what I was. But I think sometime in the past hundred years I started to realize not all of that was true about myself. I think I started to notice guys a little differently and realize I never felt that way towards girls. I think I started to see Mason differently.” Evan took a deep breath and looked back up at Tonatiuh “I think I’m in love with Mason. I think I’m gay.”

Tona placed his paw over Evan’s “That sounds like something you had to get off your chest. I don’t think I can fully understand, but I can understand that this was something hard for you to talk about.”

Evan’s feathered crest flattened “I’m sorry… This was stupid to talk about…”

“No no! It’s not stupid, and I want you to know you can always talk to me about anything troubling you, ok? Think of me as the cool bi dragon uncle you’ve never had, ok?”

“You really mean that?”

“Yes, of course!”

“Wow… Thank you Tonatiuh. I wanted to talk to Mason about this but… I was afraid to bring it up with him. I’m afraid he would have taken it the wrong way. I love him, but I don’t think he and me would work out like that. He’s only two years older than me, but I died at sixteen, he died at twenty. The dead don’t age. A teenager and an adult… That would be weird right? Besides I don’t think he sees me the same way, even if he knew I was well... gay.”

“I’m sure there’s someone out there for you Evan. It took me a while to find my Glacier, but it was so worth the wait!”

Evan nodded “Thanks again for listening,” his stomach rumbled and he stood up “Well, I’m gonna grab a bite and head to bed. Night Tona, night Neith.”

The two coatls wished Evan a goodnight and as Evan was heading into the kitchen he accidentally stumbled into a pearlcatcher turning the corner. This pearlcatcher was holding a stack of books that towered over his head, so it was doubtful he saw Evan coming. The two dragons fell over on another and the books scattered all over the floor.

“Oh shit I’m sorry!” Evan began to help the pearlcatcher pick up the books “Are you ok?”

The pearlcatcher nodded and got to his feet “I’m sorry too. I  wasn’t watching where I was going…”

Evan handed him the books he picked up. 

“Oh hey! You’re Isra’s apprentice aren't you? Fallen, right?”

The pearlcatcher nodded “Yeah that’s me! And you’re Evan, one of the aliens, right?”

Evan laughed “Ha yeah, but just Evan works too. That’s a lot of books you’re carrying, I hope Isra doesn’t expect you to read all that!”

“Well…” Fallen said “He does but uh… Most of these were supposed to be read ages ago. I kinda procrastinated…”

“Oh man, I remember what it was like to be in school. I was the king of procrastination!” 

Fallen laughed “Yeah well, I’m trying not to make it a habit but…”

“There’s just so much more you’d rather be doing right?”

“Right! I actually like to read, but there’s just something about being forced to that sucks all the fun out. Many of these books have such interesting things in them too!”

Evan nodded “Well, good luck with your studies, Fallen!”

Fallen smiled “Thanks! I guess I’ll see you around!”

Evan waved as Fallen disappeared up a staircase. After the pearlcatcher left, Evan was surprised to find himself feeling giddy.

Fallen is really cute. The thought popped in Evan’s head.

Maybe pursuing a relationship with Mason was a bad idea, but Fallen? Fallen was a teenager. Fallen might work out.

I just need to get to know him more…

Glacier belongs to @dire-vulture

#about the content warning: #dw it's not directed at anyone Evan just establishes it as a thing that exists in the world he's from #tcotg #clan ton theon #clan lampsi #yes that's Dracula who Evan encounters in the beginning

[flying-elliska]

Shadow and Bone Season 1 Review

Ok so I got distracted by a need to watch all of Ben Barnes' filmography (lmao) but here is my review : It was really fun to watch and it was clearly made with love which is already the main thing with YA fantasy, which is often turned into a soulless moneygrab when put on screen. The actors were GREAT. I did think that the Crows suffered from being mashed up with the Shadow and Bone story, but they were still a highlight. I also think it was a bit rushed, esp. when it came to Alina's training. The costumes were beautiful, I want a kefta now. Plus the crossover fanfic interactions btw the SaB characters and the Crows were just pure joy. Also Milo, obviously <3 I'm in hyperfixation mode so here, have an essay :

The "Shadow and Bone" Characters :

- Jessie Mei Li !!!!!! She really made me like Alina so much more than in the books, she absolutely is the 'human embodiment of literal sunshine' and she was a joy to watch. Her character's arc is cliché but her acting is so expressive and endearing, I really felt for her all the way through. (maybe I'm biased bc Jessie talking about her ADHD and seeing her thrive at the same time is like!!! i love them they deserve all the best.) I like that they made Alina more proactive - even though she does make some stupid decisions... but I just don't understand people who put that down as bad writing, like ??? have you ever met a real person who only makes wise, good decisions ?? a character like that would either be at the end of their story or just in the background because that makes them static. The things with the maps in the beginning does a good job of illustrating how she is just this one girl making rash, erratic decisions out of fear and loyalty and doesn't have a sense of the bigger picture, caught in the tide of bigger events. It works for her character. When it comes to the choice of making her half-Shu, I do think it really makes sense re: her character feeling like an outsider but I do understand the criticisms that the microaggressions felt too relentless and one-note. I am really looking forward to them introducing Tamar and Tolya and hopefully connecting to them over her heritage in a more positive way.

- Mal in the books was one of the most annoying YA characters I've ever come across, so I really liked that they made him much more of a loyal, devoted friend. I found his relationship with Alina cute, it really gives us the sense that these are two orphans who found a home in each other, childhood best friends (and potential sweethearts) separated by war, two army grunts and ordinary people caught up in the wheels of power and war that usually crushes people like them, it's a great way to introduce the dynamics of their world and it's a trope that always makes me emo. It felt a bit too one note to me, though, and too heavily on the nose, like Mal's only personality was his attachment to Alina (and his resentment towards the Grisha) and too much of her emotional arc also relied on him. Them hitting us over the head with the meadow scenes felt like pure telling instead of showing and it ended up being super repetitive and kind of annoying. I am willing to like this pairing, but I wanted more scenes of them just having conversations about things and really understanding why they like each other beyond the whole childhood friends bond that we're asked to accept exists at the beginning. So I hope there's more depth there in next seasons.

- Ben Barnes!!!! Just jksdfhgkdjghdf. I'm not a big villain stan usually and I hated the Darkling in the books but DAMN his performance is just amazing. They managed to make him more sympathetic and human while at the same time making clear the stuff he does is deeply horrible. There's the Magneto-aspect of 'well clearly his methods are fucked up but he's addressing a terrible injustice nobody is doing anything about' that makes it very tempting to root for him ; and again, well, like, Ben Barnes is so hot and charismatic it feels uncomfortable (which I guess is part of the point lol). His loss of humanity is, up to a point, understandable, brought about by despair, loneliness, grief and a sense of powerlessness - living so long he starts to see other people as disposable, losing so many people he stops caring, seeing over and over how hate never seems to stop, etc. It's a logical explanation for going insane.

But the hunger for power is also very much present as a motivation and this ambiguity is there constantly. Does he maybe come to genuinely care for Alina or is it totally bullshit ? I think he does, he's just so fucked up that it comes out as possessiveness and a need to control her. He wants Alina to be his equal but he's incapable of treating her that way. It's tragic, in a sense, but the show doesn't excuse his actions either. Like his monstrosity is a product of this world full of injustice, yes, and that warrants some compassion, monsters are always a symptom of their environment in some ways and dehumanizing them completely is an excuse ; but at the same time, he sabotaged his own cause anyway the moment he started to treat other people like things, as he does with Alina, because that just perpetuates the cycle of violence and hate. At some point he started feeling like he was the only solution and he was owed power for his sacrifices, and he's using his cause as an excuse. When Alina came to him, there was a possibility for redemption, taking down the Fold, and it's a test because there is finally someone on his level of power. But instead of seeking to remedy the power imbalance between them, he made it worse, by lying to her, manipulating her, etc, and the antler collar is the ultimate sign of this.

I love those scenes towards the end (the antler-based body horror has big Hannibal vibes, so messed up). I like Alina telling him they could have had this, that she had compassion for him and his cause, that they could have worked together, and he's the one responsible for screwing it up and this time his claim that he's the misunderstood victim ("Make me your villain") appears delusional and self-serving instead of somewhat justified. The almost-lovers to enemies vibes, the sense of lost potential, and the angst of the whole 'oh you could finally have been loved by people, too bad you fucked it up !', very juicy. There is this fundamental idea that power/respect/love is not something you are owed no matter how good your intentions are or because you're strong or you have suffered or you're willing to commit horrible drastic actions, you have to keep proving you deserve it, and trying to claim power without responsibility of care turns you into a monster. The thing with the stag was an excellent metaphor of the fact that there's things you can't take, they have to be given to you, and the wonderful power there is in understanding that is what allows Alina to harness the stag amplifier's power. This is really when she escapes his grim utilitarian outlook and a different way forward and owns her own power fully on her own terms.

Anyway I hope Alina gets to beat the shit out of him at some point that would be very sexy but I'm also looking forward to see how their arcs parallel and diverge from each other as Alina starts to grapple more with the implications of her power and the harsh dilemmas of war and her own dark side. I want to see him become scared of her, and I feel it will be more visible than in the books where he just has this cold aggressive facade all the time. This one feels a lot more openly emotional which is just a lot more interesting.

- As for the other characters ; Zoya mostly made me sad. The actress has the perfect vibes but I'm not sure I love their take on her character so far, it does make sense in terms of the later books - that she has internalized prejudice regarding her mixed-race heritage, that she is jealous of Alina because of how hard she's fought to get where she is and Alina kind of takes it away from her, etc. But I would have liked to see a bit more of her being badass and sharp-tongued in a clever (even if mean) way instead of spending most of her time being rejected by men and being racist towards Alina. I did like the ending though, of her actually seeing the monstrosity of the Darkling in action and the mention of her aunt. And her brief bonding with Inej was great, just because it was badass but also maybe because it could be a part of Zoya learning to accept her Suli heritage in turn, maybe not right away but in time, when thinking of that part of herself, she won't only think of her parents' ruined marriage and all the pain it caused, but also of that badass and brave acrobat girl who went toe to toe with these really scary monsters without even having any powers and !!!!!

- Also Leigh's cameo was so cute and as an aspiring writer this is just such wish fulfillment

- I honestly think that having the Crows there actually made the S&B story better ? Not only in terms of the much needed levity breaks but also in terms of themes. For instance, Matthias and Nina's story gave us a really raw and visceral view of how the Grisha are hunted. And Inej's relationship to Alina really gave us a sense of what Alina actually means to people who believe in the Saints in a way that doesn't feel just like 'ugh those superstitious people' because we know that Inej's faith is part of what makes her who she is and a person with morals, and something that saw her through the worst moments of her life. It feels so special that she got to meet Alina and given a sign that maybe the world is not completely shitty. And Alina's kindness towards Inej really gives you a sense that she might be, or become worthy of that belief in time, or at least that she wants to, that she's figuring out her power to really touch people's lives might be a good thing, and that she's starting to accept this responsibility more fully. And her arming Inej is a nice parallel to that. I'm very emotional about this scene, because one of the first things we see of young Alina is her taking out a knife to defend Mal from the bullies, because she's protective and brave, but she's also aware the world is a shitty place, and so her giving that knife to Inej is a sort of spiritual transmission and recognition of sorts, that she trusts Inej with that fighting power, that she'll use this knife to defend herself and her loved ones and not abuse it. It's so interesting. And a counter point to the Darkling's fucked up relationship to power that Alina might at some point get afraid she'll replicate. That you could see Alina trying to gather followers and using people's admiration for her like he did but instead she sets them free and empowers them. It's great. And I feel that when Inej takes to the seas, she'll think about Alina. (I do hope somebody tells her Alina's not dead at some point though god). Girls giving each other knives is my spirituality, honestly.

- And I also noticed an interesting parallel between Kaz and the Darkling in terms of being two emo dudes who like to wear black, are prone to violence and have a thing for two very powerful women they think are special and want to have at their side, but of course, they go about it in very different ways. The Darkling comes at it from a place of power while Kaz comes from a place of utter powerlessness, first of all, and he understands why it's important to set Inej free. Him spending the entire season trying to earn enough money to pay off Inej's indenture is the opposite to the Darkling putting that collar on Alina and while I do have issues with how the show portrays him, I do love that. Love is about setting the person you love free !!!! And that confrontation scene was so powerful, when Kaz tells the Darkling Alina was tired of being a captive ! Drag him !

- As for Genya, I liked the actress and her chemistry with Alina, but I'm not sure they did a great job of making her arc very clear, for instance what it means for her to get that red kefta, her relationship with the other Grisha, etc. Her and David are already very cute though. Also very much looking forward to see where that goes.

So yeah I think they did a great job with this bit actually, I enjoyed a lot more than I think I would and even though it is a very tropey story, there's plenty of depth there too.

The Crows :

- I'm a bit more nitpicky about this because I care about these characters so much. I think overall the problem is that the SaB story in the books happens on this massive scale with enormous stakes, and that next to that the Crows' issues feel less important ; it's like their impact is distorted by the gravity of the much larger story. Like for instance, Kaz in the books is very much at the center of everything, this larger than life trickster figure who knows and controls almost everything by sheer cleverness, and he has this sense of allure and mystique that can't happen here, and so his aura just shrinks. On top of that they're not on their home turf. Being introduced to these characters before they've reached their full levels of badass is weird - there is a reason why prequels generally happen after the main stuff, because they count on the love you have for these characters at their full potential to make you interested in their story when they were less badass and interesting. So I had several moments where I was like 'oh this feels wrong'. Tbh the idea that they would even volunteer to kidnap Alina in the first place, what with Inej's backstory, feels kind of wrong, esp since they had no idea of what would happen to her if they succeeded.

- But I still enjoyed a lot of it though, especially the fact that they were this force of chaos in the midst of this bigger narrative that's a lot more self-serious. The bits with the train, or the circus acts were very clever. A lot of the best moments in the show happen when they come to disturb the other plot in unexpected ways. I'm still dead over the whole 'Alina jumps into their carriage' scene, that was fucking gold. The team up at the end !!!! Alina and Kaz making a deal ! Inej stabbing the Darkling !!!! Them stealing the Darkling's carriage !!! They don't give a shit that the story is supposed to be super dramatic it's great.

- Jesper is the one character they completely nailed from start to finish and he's probably my favorite part of the whole show. He's very funny without being reduced to the role of comic relief ; he's just so! damn! cool!!!!!!! I honestly feel this is a thing they actually did even better than in the books, or at least Six of Crows where I felt Jasper kind of disappeared behind Kaz and they insist a lot on his flaws and issues. So before we dig more into those problems I love that they gave him time to be this ultra badass who saves the day several times ; while at the same time, hinting at further developments like his powers or his gambling issues. Kit Young is just perfect, confident without being arrogant, a bit cold when it comes to crime while at the same time being so obviously caring with Inej - I loved their friendship, that was so sweet. My main criticism is that they should have made it clearer he was bi because there are already people calling him gay and that's very annoying. I know some people had a problem with his hookup and like...I can see it's a bit of a cliché...the charming badass bisexual adventurer....it's a trope I kind of love though lmao and the scene itself felt kind of cute and fun. He's not the only person who is shown to have an active sexuality and he's also not the only queer person around and we know he's going to have a more substantial romantic arc later so eh. On a larger note I loved the little casual hints of completely normalized queerness - Nadia thirsting over Zoya, Fedyor and Ivan, Poppy, etc. Having grown up with fantasy where queerness was either completely erased or very tormented and problematic, this was refreshing as hell.

- Inej and Kaz...my faves... They have a kind of relationship which feels so rare and unique in terms of what exists on TV and while I don't feel they entirely replicated it, the core is still there - the mutual respect and building of trust, the longing, the repression, the trauma, etc. One thing I really like is their arc around faith - in the books, Kaz is dismissive of Inej's faith in ways that often feel really shitty and I like that he learns to be more respectful of it. It's very much linked to hope/survival ; Inej keeps this token from her parents and she hopes to find them again ; Kaz tells her it's no use and she'll survive better if she gives up. He believes Alina is a fake, while Inej wants to believe that myths can come true and there is hope for good things in the world. Kaz comes to accept that Alina is the real deal and, out of respect for Inej's faith, to stop pursuing her. I loved the bit about Inej struggling to kill as well - it's the dilemma of what her survival and that of the people she really cares about are worth in such a shitty world - her compassion is a good part of her but so is her survival instinct, and that's the part Kaz represents - that even after she's been through hell, broken in unfathomable ways, even if she gave up all hope and faith in the world, even she becomes dangerous and ruthless to survive, she will still deserve dignity, and to be treated better. And meanwhile she is willing to break her principles, which she holds so dearly, to save him, when he's never had anyone who cared for him like that - enough to keep him alive. That bit in the church !!!!! God !!!!!! Bye !!!!!!! And then him basically calling her his own version of a Saint, that he doesn't believe in miracles but he does believe in her !!! It's very emblematic of their whole arc ; he empowers her to survive in a ruthless world and loves her at her most dangerous ; but he loves her laugh too, he finds her a ship and her parents, he honors her capacity for love and hope even when he can't share it. And she sees that he's capable of doing better, that he's worth caring for. This whole thing kills me honestly and I can't wait to see where they take this next. I'm not mad they're a bit more soft and obvious than in the books, Kaz would just have come across as an an asshole otherwise.

- That said, there are bits of how they introduced their backstories I don't like. I get that making it so Inej was still tied to the Menagerie gave them a very powerful reason to want to kidnap Alina beyond greed so that they wouldn't look like very shitty people. But in the books Inej is terrified by the idea of simply seeing Heleen or the Menagerie and the way they have her interact with her feels weirdly casual and dismissive of her trauma. Also, in the books, the fact that Kaz had to convince Per Haskell to buy Inej's contract through a lot of effort, that he wasn't the one holding that above her head either, made the power dynamics more palatable. I especially disliked the scene where Kaz says he won't free other girls because just Inej is special, it makes him look like he has the power but he's just too much of a callous asshole to do it, and that he just freed Inej because he liked her which is absolutely not what their relationship is about at the start, it's a lot more about seeing Inej's dangerous side behind a facade of powerlessness and relating to her, in a sense, and this scene made it all feel cheap.

- Also, what was that about Inej having a brother ? Not a fan of that either. I'm afraid they're going to make her story all about finding what happened to him, and that's 1) too on the nose similar to Kaz's story and 2) it kind of cheapens her own arc, a female character realizing that what was done to her was wrong, reclaiming her own power and dignity and then making sure it doesn't happen to anybody else, harnessing her personal experience to save strangers, that's so powerful - making it about a family member at first, especially if it's about revenge, it's so much more simplistic and unoriginal and the perspective really annoys me.

- Also not a fan of Per Haskell not being there because he's a very important part of Kaz's evolution, so I hope he shows up eventually - and the way they introduced Pekka Rollins was kind of like...weird and out of place. I just found the Crows' introduction scenes stilted and not as cool as they should have been - well, Jesper and Inej were very cool, but we needed to see Kaz in action first, we needed to see why he's such a menace before we see him flounder later, and I just...I don't know exactly but it didn't work for me. Also this is a very petty thing but I wasn't crazy about the Ketterdam sets, I know this is probably a budget thing but in my head it looked like this incredible mix of Amsterdam and Venice - specific locations in the book directly remind me of parts of Amsterdam I know very well - and instead what we got felt like this very generic London-ish fantasy setting....so boring. Also a lot of scenes that felt to exposition-y. I don't mind that Kaz was a bit softer than in the books, like many people have said some things work in books and don't work on a screen, and you need to make the character's inner dynamics more explicit. But I do agree that, at the same time, he should have been more ruthless towards people outside of his group. Loved that scene where he faces the Inferni though, and how well they illustrated his disability and aversion to touch.

- I don't have that much to say about Nina and Matthias ; I'm still not super sold on the whole 'haha misogyny!' thing and I dislike that so much of Matthias' change of heart relies on the fact that he finds Nina hot. But I did think that the actors had enough chemistry to make their scenes together interesting and cute ; I loved the waffle scene. Even though it's disappointing that they didn't find an actress who was more clearly plus size for Nina, I still think Danielle does a good job bringing her bold, unapologetic energy. I'm really looking forward to seeing the Crows as a whole team.

So yeah, even though the season didn't feel like a perfect, coherent whole, it was just a lot of fun and I really hope they get renewed. In particular I feel like tying the first trilogy to the Crows' story could create such interesting parallels in terms of themes, about power, the cost of survival, hope, trauma, etc etc

#shadow and bone #shadow and bone netflix #grishaverse #six of crows #leigh bardugo

[sanepiano]

Silence, a world filled with

massacred corpses, hungered

cannibals, and such

delirious monsters swarming

around.  Betrayal to everyone,

even to their own loved ones,

such barbaric government

and actions becoming

the cause of such numerous

genocides. 

All becoming the headlines of

every news — that is, if

there were still any stations

and stable buildings

in such a place. 

Lies all promised with this

imaginary cure to those infected,

making them become

their slaves in clearing out

those monstrosities. 

A man was one of them. 

An infected human who could

turn into the monster

people fear of or rather

the cause of all this catastrophe. 

Currently roaming around

to hunt those monsters,

he was on his inhuman form,

snarling low and quiet.  Soon

spotting one he jumps onto it, slashing

it with his long powerful claws,

thus the targeted monster

soon died in just a span of a

few minutes with such a

goring sight it had left. 

Throat open, blood splattered

all over the shattered road. 

A tough job he had,

where are the cherished

moments he needed now?

“ Ah, goosebumps.”

Such mistakes were made,

simply by mere mundane

that had such titles beside

their names. Building up life,

just to let it down. Skyscrapers

that used to come sprawling

out in sight of the eyes beautifully.

Now turned out to be one of

the worse that could kill lives

in just a flick and one step to

fall off.

It's survival of the fittest, greedy

against the good.

At the end of the day,

it's a human trait after all.

At this point, no one is even afraid

of those so-called gods

from above but instead is

afraid of mankind and those

that were feared ever since in

childhood now occupying amongst them-

Monsters.

Humans had always been animals.

But with far less grace. Questions would

be asked.  Who pays the

wages for the hours of my living?,

is life just gonna waste

living ones like this?, Why do such

gruesome people ever cease to exist?

Is this punishment?

For living life too long or

too short?

Too right?

or too wrong.

Some say turning into

one another is not okay

it's gruesome, grueling,

cruel. But look at it now.

Seems like people have already

varied it. But nobody gave

a clap, yet everybody gave

a knife in the back.

Regardless, they smile it out

after they have eaten.

Their bellies are now filled

with sins and disgust.

But for what?

For living.

There's always such thing as wanting to die.

But there's also such thing as wanting to live.

They're throat letting out

words but all lies, they're heart

beating fast but feeling

dead inside.

Is this even earth? Isn't it home

for everyone? are you certain about that?

cause some felt left out thats for sure.

Why aren't the government trying

to help anymore?

Is it because of fear and

selfishness? Perhaps it is.

Money was taken for granted.

Her feet were tired,

two ankles were bruised,

no prize patches were given on this.

She ran and ran,

She wasn't afraid to die

but rather she was afraid

that she didn't live that long.

Heavy pants came out of

her pale pinkish pillow lips,

sweat ran down her clear pale

milky white skin. Her hair

was pure red, waving like a

flag, not for winning,

nor for being defeated

but rather for still wanting to hang on to life.

She stopped for a moment

her dull wide magenta eyes

gazing up at the long stairs

as her ears hears the vigor

growling and largened alarming

footsteps rapidly coming from

behind her.

In a hasty second

she skipped 3 steps

on the stairs and then

continued to run and run

high up, as if like doing drugs

wasnt even enough till she

reached that light green

door that led to the rooftop.

Wow if only it was the door

that led to a new haven.

other than world war |||.

Once she had, barged

the door open and quickly

closed it, and ran towards

the rooftop's edge which

made her stumble and stop.

Soon looking down her heart

burning with the desire for rest.

She scoffs and lets out a

breathless chuckle to herself.

as if thinking your the only survivor

wasnt enough.

“ Suck it up, Buttercup.”

The angel then took that

blank step as she then fell.

#short story #story time #dark stories #amwriting #writer #creative writing

[romeulusroy]

Skin Crawler (Geralt of Rivia Oneshot)

Character/s: Geralt

Word Count: 1,342

Inspired By: going bonkers in quarantine :)

Tag List: @dontdowhatisayandnobodygetshurt @myriadimagines @lilyswritings @encounterthepast @biscottibitch @randomfandomimagine @fangirlsarah16

A/N: Writers block hit ya gurl like train recently. I've had so many ideas, but everything I write and continue to write feels wrong. Tonight though, I made it my mission to finish this fic! It turned out better than I expected, but I'm still really unsure.... Been stressed with family and about getting my results back from a school I wanna transfer to and it's gotten in the way of all writing and creativity, not just for fics. Gotta work through it and try my best, even if I'm unsure about the end result, right? Anyways, I hope you like it my loves!!! Feedback is always appreciated 💜💖💜

FIC MASTERLIST PART ONE. / PART TWO.

WANNA BE ADDED TO THE TAG LIST?

A myth. A legend. A story sewn through the years, from the mouths of babes, their toothless tales warping, drooling over the past, becoming mutilated with every new generation. The image of this creature, this beast, torn to shreds. Pulled apart limb by limb, tendon by tendon, strings of veins delicately plucked and knotted back together. It all depended on the family, the area, the one who told it's history. The creative freedom genetic, hereditary. The personal fears of the speaker embedded in the body of the beast. Big eyes. Six limbs. Sharp teeth. Claws. Eventually, it became truth. Fights, wars even, broke out when some dare utter it's name in public, drunkenly letting it slip past their lips. There was only one thing the masses could agteen on: it always came with a bloodlust. A hunger for bone, a want for flesh, something that could never be hushed. Across lands, even the most isolated places, feared this thing chewing them up and spitting them out.

A cursed thing. Hundreds of years pass by, and yet they still cower at the name. Children brought up to fear these things, warned that a death wish rest in the woods if they ever went alone when the sun went down. Deep within, that's where they lay. They used to be countless. Infinite. In packs all over the world. There was strength in numbers. Was. People of the past, they grew tired of being scared. Exhausted of fear, of terror, wanting something better for their children, for the future. They wanted the light to shine again. Sending their best, their biggest, to fight, to kill, to put an end to the terror. Some came back. Some didn't. Those that did carried skins of their backs of scales, of fur, whatever it was those things looked like. Massive. Night after night, a kiss on the cheek, a promise to come back safe, sending them off into the uninown. It wasn't immediate. It wasn't easy. It was a long, hard war, but they never stopped. Not until there was only one left. Going into hiding. Receeding, shying away for as long as it could, for as long as they were willing to hunt.

This time it was the one that was afraid. Unsure if it would live another night.

It would, though. Lived in hiding. Watching, one by one, the hunters grow grey, their kin grow up, grow old. Waiting long enough for them to trade their weapons for words. Creeping out of its prison, spotted in the night. Screams for help, for safety, looking for someone to put an end to the nightmares permanently. That's where he came in. Something of a beast himself. Split between the two worlds. They hoped he could think like it, see what makes it tick. Track it down and kill it. A poor people, putting whatever they had together as payment. Do whatever it takes to get rid of it. For too long they'd been haunted by ghosts, too long they went without a happy ending. He was that. He would be the golden eyed knight in shining armor risking his life to save them, his image stitched along the rest of the story, bringing it to an end.

He'd always had a fascination for it. A life as long as ten mens, an image created by weary eyes and infinite imagination. He'd seen more creatures than he could count, than he could name, but this was something special. Finally, something worth fighting for. It could have had the face of a million things created by man, compared to every living beast that ever wept under the sun. Beautiful and delicate, or broad, strong. As soft as a cub or razor sharp as a blade. This unfamiliar feeling settling in his gut, putting him off ale for the first time he could remember. It woke him from his sleep, filling his dreams with terror. Unlike the very thing he would slay in a few short hours, this had a name. This was familiar. This was doubt. This was uncertainty.

Geralt dressed at dusk. Nocturnal, they said. He begged to differ. He'd lived as both man and monstrosity. Sometimes it was safer to use the night as a cloak of protection, of invisibility. Whatever it was, it was smart. It wasn't new to survival. Part of him pitied it. The last of its name, like him. What a lonely world it must be. He made his way through the trails, going where no man dared, the grass that had been kicked up and trudged through growing thicker the further he went. Left his horse behind with a final goodbye. This was his own battle. One, he realized, he might not come back from. Everything too often ended in death. He could only hope it would not be his own.

You watched him, caught sight of his moonlit hair through the thick of the woods. Angry, determined, but there was something else in his footsteps, something greater: panic. His racing heartbeat like a drum, faster and faster, frantic with every step closer. Lived in the caves, beyond what the eye of man could see. He believed them, he trusted them, and now he had to trust you. Sword in hand, shiny, glittering, aching to tear the world in two. You huddled against the walls, crouching in the dark. He wasn't like them, you realized. Those men, those brutes, slaughtering mindlessly, praying on the weak, celebrating death. You'd watched them carry the skins of your friends on their backs, mourning their own and cheering on bloodshed all in the same breath. He came alone, taking the weight of it all on his own broken shoulders.

Reaching the mouth of the cave, the den that cradled you all these years, he sighed. The light ending, sending him into the abyss. You couldn't let him hurt you. You couldn't let him believe these ancient lies any longer. He had to know the truth. You had to show him the truth. Letting out a whimper, leaving him something to follow. Cautious, he stepped, his knees weak. What would he find? What would he finally come face to face with after all? His hand free hand outstretched, his other raised with the sword. You stuck your face out, eye to with him, bracing for the sharp edge of something sweet to slice through your neck in seconds, readying for your fate. Geralt dropped his weapon, his breath catching in his throat. Realization sinking in, flooding his body with relief, with guilt, with an overwhelming urge to cry. He'd been prepared to see anything. A dozen legs. None rows of teeth. The howl of a thousand screeching sirens. His worst nightmare, even. But not this.

Not your eyes. Not the very thing he fell in love with centuries ago.

They were right, after all. A curse. An unlucky bunch. One after the other, stumbling in the woods alone when the moon was full and the stars were alive. You never saw her coming. Blinded, dragged, no use in fighting. Thrown in the middle of their den. Screeching, crying, these creatures wailing. Not out of anger, but terror. Escaping the light of the lantern, avoiding the eyes of a woman. Beneath her cloak she became hysterical, throwing it in their faces, watching them wail. She found comedy within their pain. Each backing away, pawing at the rocky walls. You hadn't realized it until it was too late. They were just like you. And now, you would be like them. A kiss, soft, sad, an apology before she got to work, did what she'd intended to do. A witch, as close to one as you'd ever come. Your body torn apart, bones broken, blood vessels bursting, reborn into something new. Something bigger. Less human, more monster. She threw what you used to be in the trails, warning folks away. They didn't understand, though. Reading the messages all wrong.

Those beasts, they weren't feeding off those people. They were those people.

#writing #geralt #geralt drabble #geralt oneshot #geralt of rivia #geralt of rivia drabble #geralt of rivia oneshot #the witcher #the witcher drabble #the witcher oneshot #geralt of rivia x reader #geralt x reader #x reader #geralt of rivia fic #geralt fic #the witcher fic #drabble #oneshot #gender neutral #gender neutral reader #x gender neutral reader