#they even each have a side story where you play as a traveling scholar trying to unravel the secrets that lie beyond the veil of death

[cheri-translates]

[CN] Gavin’s Reflection of Beauty Date (Eng Translation)

🍒 Warning: Detailed spoilers for a date yet to be released in EN! 🍒

Phone call between Gavin and Mr Keller before the date: here

Candlelit Night Collection: Kiro // Lucien // Victor

Trivia regarding the name of the date: 

This date is called 惊鸿照影来, which is part of a couplet from “Shenyuan”, a poem by Lu You written in the Song Dynasty

Rough translation of the full couplet: Alas, the green water under the forlorn bridge / Once reflected the charming face of my beloved one!

It was inspired by the poet’s own love story, where he was forced to leave his wife because his mother didn’t like her. Even so, their love never ceased. Ten years later, they met again in Shenyuan Garden (which was also the place he first fell in love with her). Lu You inscribed a poem on a stone wall, conveying his anger and sorrow towards their separation. A few days after seeing the poem, she died from depression :’<

“Shenyuan” was written later on as a memorialisation of his undying love. It conveys how revisiting old places makes one remember past lovers and sentiments

-

[ CHAPTER ONE ]

The date begins with MC and Gavin having a rehearsal for the sequel of the “Three Lifetimes” play

The audience had a deep impression of them in “Three Lifetimes”, so Mr Keller wrote them into the sequel as second leads

In the play, the town looks forward to the marriage between Lady Su (the female lead) and Swordsman Bai (Gavin)

But Lady Su is in love with Swordsman Bai’s friend, a scholar (the male lead)

Meanwhile, Swordsman Bai is in love with the character MC is playing (a high-ranking palace maid and a close friend of Lady Su)

After the rehearsal, Mr Keller gives them suggestions on how to improve, and tells Gavin to gaze at MC and hold her hand during a particular scene:

Gavin: ...all right. 

-

[ CHAPTER TWO ]

Once the rehearsal is over, Gavin is a sweetheart as always, bringing water and a few bananas over to MC with this face:

Gavin: If it isn’t enough, I can get a few more? 

MC: There’s enough, there’s enough. 

Su Xuan, the actress playing Lady Su, tells them to change outfits for the photoshoot:

Su Xuan: I’ll help you put on some make-up first, then marry you off beautifully to your Mr Gavin. Come, close your eyes.

Without giving me a chance to explain or argue, she skilfully helps me with my make-up, as though she’s really helping a sister prepare for her wedding. 

Su Xuan: Mm, that’s more like it. 

She pulls me to my feet. After looking me over carefully, she tilts her head and smiles at something behind me.

Su Xuan: What does the groom think? 

Before I have time to react, Su Xuan pushes me lightly, and I fall into familiar arms.

Gavin: Pretty. 

Gavin, who has walked out of the changing room, is also wearing a matching set of red wedding attire.

The colour, which isn’t typically found on him, suits him unexpectedly well.

His easy-going independence has been toned down, replaced with fiery passion.

Gavin: What are you looking at? 

MC: This outfit really suits you.

MC: ...very handsome!

Gavin: [coughs] ...you look very pretty in red too. 

Gavin’s ears have a tinge of redness. He rubs the back of his neck, his eyes containing insuppressible surprise and warmth as he looks at me. 

Su Xuan: All right, you two “newlyweds” can appreciate each other after the shoot! The photographer this time is quite picky.

As she speaks, she pulls our hands together. 

The both of us stop talking, perhaps due to the dry air around us, or the warmth surfacing in our eyes. 

Gavin holds onto my hand tightly.

-

[ CHAPTER TWO: A flashback ]

Location: Outside Lynn’s Kitchen

By the time Minor and Gavin leave the noodle shop, the sky is mostly dark.

Only traces of the sunset glow faintly from behind the tall buildings. 

Minor: It’s so difficult to get tickets this Chinese New Year... I’m always struggling during this part of the year, and spending the New Year’s alone here is too cheerless. Gavin, what are your plans? Eh... why am I even asking - you’re definitely spending it with Boss.

Gavin is the same as always, letting Minor ramble on at his ear. 

Only when he hears the final sentence does a corner of his heart feel a light tug.

Gavin: Mm. I promised to help Mr Keller with her. 

Gavin smiles faintly without even realising it himself.

Minor: Huh? ...even though I find this method a little off, it’s not bad I guess! Boss has been asking everyone in the office what dishes they usually make for New Year’s. It made me curious... so you two are spending New Year’s together!

Minor’s words cause Gavin to recall the few memories of “spending the New Year’s” he has.

New Year’s should be a festival of celebration. There was a time when he looked forward to it.

It’s just that afterwards, this day gradually became no different from a normal one. 

That is, until the girl reappeared in his life, drawing the link between this day and warmth. 

It made him start looking forward to it again.

Minor: Bro Gavin? What are you thinking about? It’s rare to see this look on your face... I got it!

Minor makes an exaggerated expression, predictably receiving Gavin’s neither hard nor soft punch. 

Gavin: Minor, are there places selling New Year goods near her home? 

Minor: Bro Gavin, you want to... buy New Year goods?!

Gavin: What’s wrong with that?

Minor: Nothing nothing nothing...

Gavin: ...your smile is a little nauseating. 

Minor: I’m just happy! Then again, as compared to preparing in advance, there will be more of an atmosphere if you pick them out together!

Gavin: Makes sense. 

Gavin nods, quickening his pace slightly. 

Minor: Bro Gavin, where are you headed to next?

Several images flash across his mind - a warm light in the living room left on for him, a table with the home-cooked dishes he mentioned liking, and the girl waiting for him on the sofa, hugging a pillow. 

Gavin: Home. 

-

[ CHAPTER THREE ]

The photoshoot turns out to be more difficult than MC expected

Photographer: You must imagine - you two are about to elope, so it has to be dynamic! And yet have a tinge of... hesitation and worry! You’ve got to feel it! Change your pose!

MC and Gavin struggle to understand the photographer’s abstract descriptions

MC suggests they pretend to chat while sitting on the grass

MC: ...the weather is getting cold. Does Sparky need to be sent for maintenance? 

Once the words leave my mouth, I’m filled with a sense of regret. This topic is too forced...

Gavin seems to be stunned for a moment, then the corners of his lips lift gently.

Gavin: Mm, I have plans to do so. We can find a day to go together.  

MC: Ah, okay!

Gavin smiles, lifting his hand to tuck stray tendrils of hair behind my ear. 

His amber eyes, which are filled to the brim with smiles, hold my blinking and grinning expression within them.

Photographer: Very good! That’s the right feeling! Could the both of you try lying down? Girl, close your eyes and lift your head slightly.

MC: ...all right. Like this? 

I follow the photographer’s instructions and lie down at Gavin’s side, closing my eyes. 

In the darkness, a familiar warmth encases me tightly, allowing me to have a peace of mind and lean into his arms. 

We are very close to each other. His unique scent entwines with the reed grass that has been dried by the sun, reminding me of the summer we spent together. A breeze brushes past us. 

It makes one want to draw even nearer. 

Photographer: Very good very good. Can the man include some movements to add on to the idea of newlyweds interacting?

Gavin: ...uhm.

I hear Gavin’s breath halt for a moment, as though he’s deep in thought. 

After a while, he seems to have thought of something, and he laughs softly. 

Gavin: MC, don’t move. 

Right after he finishes speaking, I feel a lock of hair near my ear being lifted gently. 

I don’t dare to move a single inch, nor dare to open my eyes. I leave myself entirely to Gavin. 

The frequency of my heartbeat increases, and a numbness travels from the roots of my hair to my spine. My hair seems to be gently held in his palm.

Gavin: ...let me know if it hurts. I’ve never tried this before. 

Even though he says this, his actions are cautious and tender. 

All I can feel are the slight vibrations from my hair, the lock of hair ascending and descending along with his fingers, and then falling by my ear again. 

I purse my lips tightly, frantically trying to control my rapid breathing. I’m afraid that I might accidentally ruin this ambience. 

The shutter continuously sounds. The photographer seems to be saying something again, but I can no longer hear him clearly. 

Next to me, Gavin’s breathing brushes against my forehead and the tips of my hair. The breath, which carries a certain warmth, feels like a light kiss. 

Even though this is just a photoshoot, I wish time would give us this moment for a little while longer.

The words he said during the Qixi Festival last year surge from the depths of my heart, and once again gather in the centre.

I can’t help but feel that even if our destinies entangle and cross, and fate only allows for fleeting meetings, we will ultimately accompany each other at the very end. 

In my ear, the sound of his heartbeat is akin to him giving me a definite answer. One after the other, regular and resolute. 

Photographer:

Gavin: MC, we can get up now. 

I open my eyes slowly. The past few minutes have felt like a small, beautiful dream. 

In Gavin’s hand are locks of our hair tied together with a red string. 

Noticing my gaze, Gavin clear his throat unnaturally. 

Gavin: ...when the idea of “newlyweds” was brought up, I could only think of this. 

[Trivia: In Chinese culture, one’s hair represents one’s self. During a traditional Chinese wedding, the couple would each cut a lock of their hair and tie them together. This is called 结发 (”joining of hair”). It symbolises the couple becoming one flesh and blood, and how they would be connected forever... T^T]

I nod, not daring to meet his eyes. 

His short sentence channels layers of emotions in my heart, converging into unstoppable ripples. 

In a most straightforward way, his unembellished words leave a long and sweet aftertaste in my heart. 

MC: Let’s go over there so the next group can use this place...

Gavin: Hold on...

Without waiting for Gavin to finish, I’ve already sat up. Only when I feel a light tugging sensation do I realise that my hair is still tied to Gavin’s. 

MC: Ah-

Gavin: ...does it hurt? Don’t worry, I’ll untie the knot.

Gavin’s voice, which carries within it concern, is very close to the top of my head. In the next second, the strands of hair that are pulled are immersed in a tender warmth. 

Gavin: ...I might have tied it a little too tightly.

MC: Let me try...

Gavin agrees with a sound, cooperating by bending down slightly to make it easier to untie the red string. 

I try pulling at the end of the string, but the knot refuses to budge.

Gavin: ... 

MC: It does seem a little tight... could it be a dead knot? 

Gavin seems to have leaned in a little closer. Perhaps it’s just my misperception, but he seems even closer than he was during the photoshoot. 

His temperature and breath make my face feel increasingly flushed. I focus on the knot in my hand, hoping he wouldn’t notice my flustered state.

MC: N-next time, don't tie it so tightly! Or else I’ll leave it to you to untie. 

I pretend to be angry, wanting to break the atmosphere that makes my heart go into a frenzy. 

Gavin: All right, I got it. 

When I hear his voice in my ear, I know fully well that my attempts are futile.

When the red string is finally released and falls to the ground, I release a huge sigh, yet feel an inexplicable emptiness in my heart. 

It’s as though my fate with Gavin has become untied. 

They get called back to the rehearsal

MC: We should go over then.

Gavin: ...hold on. 

Gavin pauses, then takes the red string from my hand.

In a slightly clumsy manner, he uses the string to tie a knot at the end of my plait.

Gavin: This is also considered joining of the hair.

Gavin looks at me, his eyes clear, as though he has seen through all my emotions. 

Gavin: Let’s go.

While he speaks, he takes my hand and we leave. 

I hold onto Gavin firmly, the red string on my hair swaying gently along with our footsteps.

We will never miss each other again. 

-

[ CHAPTER FOUR ]

At 8pm, the play finally begins

On stage, MC is supposed to read a letter to Gavin

But when she opens it up, she realises there’s nothing on the letter even though her script is supposed to be on it

Gavin notices that something is amiss, so he steps in to calm her down while pretending everything is normal

MC starts reciting her lines based on memory, but starts panicking in fear of ruining the play

Gavin then takes the letter from her and pretends to read from it, reciting her lines perfectly

The First Act of the play comes to an end, and there’s an intermission

MC decides to thank Gavin properly after the play is over, but Su Xuan suddenly looks for her:

Su Xuan: MC, are you free now? Pass the silk ball to Gavin! I don’t know why, but the prop hasn’t been brought over yet.

MC: Okay! I’ll go now!

Thinking of the little time left, I grab the silk ball and run towards the other end without much thought. 

In the next scene, Gavin and I are supposed to enter the stage from different sides, which is why I have to cross through the entire backstage to reach him.

The silk ball is an indispensable prop in the next scene. Also... I have a “thank you” to say to him in person.

With this in mind, I quicken my pace, and find a familiar figure afar off in the busy backstage.

MC: Gavin! I’m over here!

I stand on my tiptoes and wave at him, thinking of ways to reach him even faster. 

Hearing this, Gavin raises his head. After seeing me, he immediately weaves through the crowd and walks towards me. 

People are moving to and fro. Our eyes only have each other, and we go against the flow of people, walking towards our only focus. 

Staff: Prepare for the second half!

When I’m only a few steps away from him, the countdown for the second half of the play resounds. 

MC: Gavin, this is for you!

In my desperation, I lift my hand. The silk ball flies in a slightly shaky arc, landing steadily in Gavin’s arms. 

[Trivia: In Chinese culture, the silk ball (绣球 - ”xiu qiu”) is used to symbolize love. Giving it to someone reflects the giving of one’s heart. If a woman is in search of a fated life partner, she will toss the ball high into the air in a crowd. The person who catches the silk ball would become the person’s husband]

MC: Gavin, about earlier...

Staff: MC? What are you doing here? Go back, we’re about to start soon. The snatching scene is next, and it’s very important. 

MC: Please wait! I haven’t finished what I wanted to say...

The staff doesn’t give me a chance to continue, and pulls me to the other end. 

I turn my head towards Gavin, and I have no choice but to swallow the words of gratitude I couldn’t say to him in time. 

Gavin: [unintentionally sexy whisper] Wait for me.

Gavin stands in place and looks at me, mouthing those words to me. 

The bell from the venue rings, and the noise from the audience gradually dissipates.

Staff: The Second Act! Begins!

-

[ CHAPTER FOUR: A flashback ]

Location: Gavin’s home

MC: “It’s good, and I doubt the lady would refuse, but...”

Gavin: Are you still looking at your lines?

MC: ...Gavin? Why are you here!

[Note: I have no idea why MC asks this since the backdrop is of his own house LOL]

Gavin walks over with a blanket in his hand. 

MC: The rehearsal is the day after tomorrow, so I’m trying to make use of my time to familiarise myself with the script, especially the scene where I’m reading the letter. Even though I should be able to read straight from the letter on the actual day, I think it’s better to memorise it just in case... Gavin, why don’t you accompany me in going through the lines!

Gavin nods and sits beside me. After covering me with the blanket, he takes the script from my hands. 

Gavin: From here? 

MC: Okay!

Gavin and I go through the dialogue. Places I usually get stuck at become miraculously smooth.

Without realising it, we’ve gone through the entire script.

I flip through the script, marking out places requiring additional attention. 

MC: I feel like Mr Keller has taken reference from the personalities of the actors when writing the lines. I keep thinking that the lines sound like what you would say.

While speaking, I let out a yawn.

Gavin: If you’re tired, rest. We can continue tomorrow. 

As the year draws to a close, there are more things than usual to settle at work. And when I come home, I’d have to familiarise myself with the script. It’s natural that I’d feel fatigued. 

MC: You don’t have anything on tomorrow? 

Gavin: I don’t have work tomorrow, so we can practice our lines.

MC: That’s great!

A warmth gushes out of my heart. I shift closer to Gavin, sharing half the blanket with him. We look at the script together. 

MC: This is so much warmer!

Gavin: ...do you still want to look at it? 

MC: Mm, let’s look through the letter scene again. “If you lack medical knowledge... attach some... scattered silver... I hope to do my best...”

The words in front of me gradually become blurry and distorted. After a certain line, I lean on Gavin’s shoulder in a dazed state, giving up on my fight against sleep.

Gavin: MC? Are you asleep? 

The girl, who loftily said they would look at the script together just a few minutes ago, is now leaning softly against his shoulder, sleeping peacefully. 

Gavin doesn’t wake her up, and simply covers her with a jacket. He flips to the first page of the script, quietly reading the girl’s lines, and memorising them. 

The city is asleep, but the room filled with the breath of two people is still illuminated with a tender light. 

The all-knowing stars in the night sky are silent, and will guard the small world belonging to these two people.

-

[ CHAPTER FIVE ] The curtains are drawn slowly. I once again step onto the stage, following the script. 

In this scene, Gavin will snatch the silk ball, and I will hand it to the male lead so he can bring his beloved home.

For the scene to be more realistic, the actors are allowed to walk around spontaneously. 

As such, I have to run past various settings, weave through the crowd, and finally reach the stipulated spot. 

MC: Swordsman Bai? 

Panting slightly, I stand underneath the embroidery building, looking for Gavin. 

[Trivia: In ancient times, women who were more socially well-to-do would do embroidery in embroidery buildings.]

The sense of deja vu blurs my perception of the boundaries between the play and reality. 

A strong wind arrives as promised. Following the glint of a sword, a path forms in the crowd, interrupting my thoughts.

Gavin is dressed in red. One hand holds onto the silk ball, and the other sheathes his sword. He walks straight towards me. 

Gavin: Trivial matters held me back, and I seek forgiveness from the lady. 

The corners of his lips are curled into an open smile. His eyes are wilful and tender. 

The setting of the blue sky, the red silk in the surroundings, and the startled magpie birds surround Gavin, who is donned in wedding attire. It makes one unable to look away. 

At this moment, he finally stands before me again. 

The crowd and the noise of the world - they no longer have anything to do with me. 

Gavin places the silk ball into my hands steadily. 

Even though I know this is a script, and that it’s part of the plot, I can’t help but feel that the red silk ball in my hands is akin to a solemn promise. 

A greedy thought even flits across my mind - maybe it’d be good if the story ends like this. 

On stage, the silk ball is finally handed to the scholar. The lady takes the silk ball and holds it with her lover.  

Under the embroidery building, Gavin suddenly takes my hand. 

Gavin: Perhaps this may be abrupt. MC, are you willing to marry me and become my wife? 

MC: ?!

Was there such a line in the script? 

I look at Gavin with confusion.

Gavin doesn’t say a word. He stares straight at me without a hint of evasion.

There are so many emotions within that pair of eyes, leaving me unable to make sense of them. I have no idea what to say. 

Off-stage, the audience erupt in thunderous cheers.

I glance to the side. Mr Keller, who has been watching the entire play, nods in my direction, signalling that I should continue in my role. 

My confusion dissipates when I see Gavin’s amber eyes, which are filled with deep, tender emotions and lingering affection. There is even an undercurrent of questioning and anticipation. 

It’s as though the answer I give would be an entrustment of the rest of my life. 

My heart beats loudly in my chest, feeling like it would leap out from my throat in the next second. 

MC: I... I accept. 

I blush and respond, not even sure if my words are loud enough to be heard by the audience off-stage. 

However, every single word is heard by Gavin, who has received my feelings. 

With a gentle laugh, he wraps an arm around my waist and lifts me up. 

Gavin brings me up the embroidery building to stand alongside the male and female leads.

At the end of the play, there is thunderous applause from off-stage. There are even a few audience members who are fully immersed in the story, sending us their blessings. 

In the midst of the applause, I tilt my head and lean towards Gavin’s ear, speaking softly. 

MC: Gavin, just now... I don’t remember seeing such a scene in the script?

Gavin: Mm, it was impromptu. 

MC: Why didn’t you tell me beforehand? I even thought...

Gavin doesn’t respond further, only smiling at me. 

Facing the cheering audience, the four of us bow and thank them for watching, as though worshipping the vast sea of people. 

After the play, everyone involved in the show gathers together to celebrate over dinner

MC: Gavin, thank you so much for today! It’s a good thing you saved the show! Back then... I really didn’t know what to do.

While I speak, I raise the drink in my hand, clinking it lightly against Gavin’s.

Gavin: You were looking for me just now to say this? 

He raises his drink, making up for the delayed clink. 

MC: Yeah. I wanted to thank you properly, but time was so tight that I couldn’t find the chance. Come to think of it, how did you know my lines...

Gavin: When we were rehearsing lines together, I just memorised them as well.

Gavin lowers his head and takes a mouthful of food, maintaining his usual casual attitude. Noticing that I’ve been watching him, he rubs his neck in slight confusion.

Gavin: Um... is there something on my face?

I immediately shake my head. A warm wave of emotions overflow from my heart. Countless words of gratitude are lodged in my throat, but I feel that no matter what I say, it would not be enough.

In the end, I silently fill a bowl of soup for him.

At the table, everyone is eating and drinking merrily, and the atmosphere is warm.

MC: After spending so many days with the crew, thinking of how we might not have the chance to get together like this again makes me feel quite reluctant to part with them.

I lean against Gavin, looking at the lively crew around us. 

MC: Gavin, I suddenly thought about something from my childhood. My dad used to be busy producing programs, and would bring me to the recording site to spend the New Year’s. The site was always busy, but no matter how pressed they were for time, everyone would sit down together and have an especially sumptuous dinner. Once I grew up, I also started spending my New Year’s working. I still remember that the warm ambience back then was the same as right now. 

Gavin: Mm, I can imagine. I used to spend New Year’s with my teammates, and it was very lively. 

MC: Even though it’s not at home, it’s still a different kind of fun!

Gavin: Since we’re on this topic, [coughs]...

Gavin seems to have something very important to say, but he takes another sip of his drink and stops. 

I blink, waiting for him quietly. I can vaguely guess what he wants to say.

In the end, he seems to become determined. He clears his throat and turns his head to look at me with a serious expression. 

Gavin: Over the next few days, if you don’t have anything else planned....

Gavin: Spend the New Year’s with me at home.

His tone is light, but the look in his eyes tells me just how solemn this invitation is. Even the tips of his ears turn an unnatural shade of red. 

I am very certain that, to the both of us, these words are the most precious and serious treasures from the deepest parts of his heart. 

MC: Okay. 

I nod heavily in response. Since a very long time ago, this answer has not changed.

The corners of Gavin’s lips turn up slightly. Those eyes, which always have an undercurrent of emotions, look like a glacier that has melted in spring, tenderly melting into a warm current. 

Gavin: I’ll pick you up then.

MC: Mm!!

The way his lips are curled upwards is as though all the uncertainties in his heart have found a most potent answer. 

I find myself smiling along with him.

MC: I recently learnt how to make a few New Year’s dishes, so we can try them. 

Gavin: All right, I can help. My skills... have improved. 

I freeze for a moment, making a sudden realisation. 

MC: Have you been practicing in secret? Looks like teaching you how to cook was a wise decision.

Gavin: ...I occasionally tried to.

MC: I’ll have to check the results of my teaching this year then!

Gavin: No problem. 

Gavin smiles, nodding his head with some measure of seriousness. He suddenly thinks of something.

Gavin: Oh yes, do we need to buy things like spring couplets?

MC: Mmhmm, we also have to buy the character “福”! It will only feel like New Year’s when we have these things pasted.

[Trivia: During the Chinese New Year, households paste an inverted red coloured square with the character 福 (“fu”, which means auspiciousness, blessing or happiness) on doors, walls, etc. to usher in such tidings]

I continue talking, listing on my fingers the items I want to purchase.

In my memory, my aunties’ fierce interrogations don’t seem that long ago. In just a blink of an eye, a new year has arrived. 

[Note: She’s making reference to the Spring Festival Date!]

This time, we can leave our time to each other. 

In a place belonging only to us, flipping open a new year’s calendar together.

The atmosphere at the dining table is just right. The sound of clinking glasses and celebration comes in waves. No one notices this small corner. 

We clasp each others’ fingers quietly. 

Our pulses, only separated by a layer of skin, call out to each other in the language of warmth.

I’m so lucky to have you by my side. 

#mlqc #mlqc cn #mlqc spoilers #mlqc gavin #SOFT GAVIN #pardon the one billion screenshots of Gavin I included in this

[phyrephoenix]

The StoryBook Legacy Challenge

Each Generation is a new Chapter in the Book of Lives.

Overall Rules and Notes:

Lifespan: Normal

If you choose to make Same Sex Couples, make sure your Heir is set on Get Pregnant and the partner is set on Make Pregnant.

Even though there is Occult Children in this Legacy, they are not part of the Legacy Line. Abduction babies don’t count as eligible for Heir decisions.

Read Story for the next Generation, important for the Heir’s Childhood

Each heir must Practise Writing (PC or writing in journal) till they can write “non-fiction” books.

They must write a book named after their Generation’s title.

All these Book, plus urns must be kept in the heir’s inventory till last generation.

The last Generation’s Heir will have a mausoleum where the books and urns will be displayed.

Books should be written as elders, put all the children and Spouses/ Partners names in description.

If heir dies from accidental of emotional deaths before elder or before they could write the book, one of their children or partner can write it.

Money: You can choose how you want to play the family funds.

If you play this challenge and want to share it with us, go ahead and post with #StoryBookLegacy

The traits are listed as (Child),(Teen),(YA)

Generation 1: The Friendly Doctor

Your Passion is people. To Heal them, to befriend them, to entertain them on the Piano. If you ever fall in love, it will be with a Co-Worker.

Career: Doctor

Traits: Genius, Outgoing, Ambitious

Aspiration Complete: Friend of the World

Skills Maxed: Charisma, Logic, Piano

Goals:

Workaholic till Death.

Focus on work and skilling till end YA

Fall in love with an Adult Co-Worker, while still YA

Get married to Co-Worker after turning Adult. (and Co-Worker is Elder or close to)

Have 1 Pregnancy

Do not retire, but can use vacation days after the Last Days pop-up came.

Rules:

Live in the San Myshuno, can move apartments as you have more money

Have a Party for Every Birthday

Main Sim may not fix broken objects, just replace them. Spouse/Child may fix them.

Join Main Sim at work and work Late most Days, may work normal in Birthdays for Parties

Can only control other Family members when Main Sim is at home

Heir: Only Child/ First born from 1 Pregnancy

Main Packs Needed: Get to Work + City Living

Generation 2: Parenting 101

Growing up, your parents wasn’t very present. Your Father died when you were young and your mom before you became a YA. The only time you and mom spend together was with music, listening to it together or making it: she on the piano, you on the violin. You want to work from home as a Writer and be a Super Parent to a big Family.

Career: Freelance Writer

Traits: Music Lover, Neat, Family-Oriented

Aspirations Complete: Super Parent, Bestselling Author

Skills Maxed: Writing, Parenting, Violin

Goals:

Have 1st Child soon after turning YA

Have at least 3 Pregnancies

Female Heirs may get married or just have children

Male heirs must have GF move in, or get married

Rules:

Move to Newcrest

Must help with Homework/ Projects often

Be friends with ALL your children

Middle Child must be “neglected”, rather help another Child

Try for Multiples

Must have Uneven number of Kids (abduction babies do not count for number)

All children must be in after school activities, Middle child must be in Drama club, the rest in Scouts.

Heir: Middle Child (preferably a Daughter)

Main Packs Needed: Parenthood + Get Famous

Generation 3: A Star is Born

Growing up with a lot of Siblings is tough, you got lost in the crowd. As the Middle Child you rarely got attention, now you want to be in the center of it.

Career: Actress

Traits: Active, Self-Absorbed, Romantic

Aspirations Complete: Bodybuilder, World Famous Celebrity, Master Actress

Skills Maxed: Acting, Fitness, Mixology

Goals:

Have 2 Pregnancies with 2 Different Sims

Keep figure Skinny

Be close with your children

Rules:

Move to Del Sol Valley. Start in cheaper home and move to Celebrity home when 5 stars

Don’t get married (if male heir – GF must move out after birth(s))

Have 1 Pregnancy as YA and 1 Pregnancy as Adult

If 1st Pregnancy is female(s), Carrot/Alternative music method for 2nd Pregnancy (or use MCCC)

Try to never lose stars

Heir: Oldest Male

Main Packs Needed: Get Famous

Generation 4: I Need More Space

Your Parent was/is a Star, you want to Reach the Stars! You want to explore space and maybe even find an Alien Planet and meet some native Aliens! You know there is Aliens living between us now!

Career: Astronaut – Space Ranger

Traits: Perfectionist, Geek, Unflirty

Aspirations Complete: Nerd Brain, StrangerVille Mystery (with Spouse)

Skills Maxed: Rocket Science, Handiness, Video Gaming, Programming

Goals:

Have at least 1 Abduction Pregnancy

Only 1 “Normal” Sim Child

Travel to Sixam

Be friends with all Aliens you meet

Spouse must be in Military Career (they join it after they move in)

Complete Stangerville aspiration with Spouse.

Rules:

Move to Strangerville

Can’t have children with Aliens unless it is through an abduction or After Heir is a Teen

Have at least 1 Child with Non-Alien Sim as YA or Early Adult (Do not try for multiples)

You do not have to marry Non-Alien, just have child and move out

Marry an Alien after Heir is a Teen

Give spouse the StrangerVille Mystery aspiration and Military Career

Heir: Non-Alien Child (oldest in case of multiples)

Main Packs Needed: Get to Work + StrangerVille + City Living

Generation 5: Nature Child

While your Dad’s head was in the Sky, yours was on the ground. You want to be one with Nature. You are also the only (one of few) “Normal” or Non-Alien Sibling, which made you a bit of a Loner.

Career: Gardener – Floral Designer

Traits: Loves Outdoors, Loner, Vegetarian

Aspirations Complete: Outdoor Enthusiast, Freelance Botanist

Skills Maxed: Gardening, Flower Arranging, Herbalism, Wellness

Goals:

Have a big Garden/ Green House,

Try to collect all main plants

Have at least 2 Pregnancies

Getting married is not important, unless it is a male heir

Rules:

Move to Willow Creek

Go to Granite Fall after turning YA and finish Outdoor Enthusiast Aspiration.

Only start Career and family after finishing Asp and starting with Freelance Botanist

Have all Children help with Gardening, they must also all get the Loves Outdoors Trait as a Child

Heir: Youngest Child (Either Gender, but Male more)

Main Packs Needed: Seasons + Outdoor Retreat + Spa Day + City Living

Generation 6: Dirt for Dirt

While your family wanted to make things come out of the Dirt, you wanted to know what was in the Dirt. You wanted to uncover the Dirt!

Career: Secret Agent – Diamond Agent

Traits: Loves Outdoors, Genius, Self-Assured

Aspirations Complete: Jungle Explorer, Archaeology Scholar

Skills Maxed: Archaeology, Salvadorian Culture, Guitar, Logic

Goals:

Main focus is finishing both Jungle Explorer and Archaeology Scholar Aspirations by switching between them

Have at least 2 Pregnancies before turning Adult

Get married to Salvadorian Native

Rules:

Move to Oasis Springs and live in the more desert side

Go to Salvadorada after turning YA

Only start with Career after finishing both Aspirations

May choose any new Aspiration

Don’t have to finish career before death

Get married to a Salvadorian Native you met while visiting Salvadorada

Go back to Salvadorada with Children often

Make sure 1st Pregnancy is female

Heir: Oldest Daughter

Main Packs Needed: Jungle Adventure

Generation 7: Hungry for Knowledge

Growing up your family went on Vacation to Salvadorada a lot. You got to experience all the food there, which made you grow in love with Food. Making it, eating it, learning new meals.

Career: Critic – Food Critic & Culinary – Chef

Traits: Cheerful, Foodie, Non-Committal

Aspirations Complete: Master Chef, Renaissance Sim

Skills Maxed: Baking, Cooking, Gourmet Cooking

Goals:

As Teen be a Fast-Food Employee

Start Critic Career as YA, try to reach Food Critic branch before Adult

Switch to Culinary career once Adult and join Chef Branch

Have at least 3 Pregnancies with 2+ partners

Learn all Experimental Food & Food stalls Recipes

Rules:

Move to San Myshuno, start in cheapest apartment and work up to a penthouse

Reach cooking lvl 5 as teen, learn all Salvadorian meals before becoming YA

Go to every Festival and learn all meals

Learn & Photograph all experimental meals

Don’thave to get married, but if you do, as an elder

Buy a cupcake machine and Ice Cream Machine and learn to make (and make) all the recipes

Heir: Youngest Child

Main Packs Needed: Jungle Adventure + City Living + Dine Out + Seasons

Generation 8: Family Pet

Growing up you were used to having a lot of Varieties. A Variety of meals, of siblings and partners for your mother. You want a simple life, one partner to grow old with and lots of pets.

Career: Open a Vet Clinic

Traits: Cat Lover, Dog Lover, Family-Oriented

Aspirations Complete: Soulmate, Friend of the Animals

Skills Maxed: Parenthood, Veterinarian, Pet Training

Goals:

Have at least 1 Cat & 1 Dog via adoption

Have at least 1 Pregnancy and adopt 2+ Children (baby/toddler)

Operate and make money of a Successful Vet Clinic

Rules:

Move to Brindleton Bay

Adopt a Kitten on first day

Spouse must share 1 Trait with Main

Adopt Child before having 1st Pregnancy

Don’t have a “real” job, the Vet Clinic is your full time gig

Can do Odd Jobs for more money

Spend more time with pets

Heir: Biological Child (preferably a daughter)

Main Packs Needed: Cats & Dogs + Parenthood

Generation 9: Something Fishy

Growing up, your parents gave more attention to your adopted Siblings, both human and animal. You do love animals, but is more drawn to the ocean and its creatures. You would love an easy life in a Beach House.

Career: Conservationist – Marine Biologist

Traits: Music Lover, Child of the Ocean, Materialistic

Aspirations Complete: Beach Life & Fabulously Wealthy

Skills Maxed: Fitness, Singing, Wellness

Goals:

Turn into a mermaid before becoming an Adult, but after having a Child

Have 1 Child before becoming a mermaid, more children after becoming one

Do not marry the father of 1st child.

Complete the Fabulously Wealthy asp by starting at the bottom (Rags to Riches style)

Rules:

Spend a lot of time on the Beach as Child (in Brindleton Bay and/or Sulani)

Become pregnant with teen lover’s child on the day they age up to YA

Move to Sulani after confirming pregnancy.

Only switch to Fabulously Wealthy Aspiration after you moved out.

Build a small house on a beach lot and move Sim in with “freerealestate” cheat, move out with only $1,000

Spouse must also be a mermaid, but not the father of 1st pregnancy

Only become mermaid after having at least 1 Biological Child

Heir: Oldest non-mermaid Child

Main Packs Needed: Island Living + Spa Day + City Living

Generation 10: Colour Me Musically

Growing up it was just you and your mother. But then your mom fell in love with a mermaid and became one herself. They had a big mermaid family and you became an afterthought. You became a Clean Canvas, and want to fill it with a lot of Creativity.

Career: Style Influencer - Stylist

Traits: Creative, Music Lover, Clumsy

Aspirations Complete: Musical Genius, Painter Extraordinaire, Best selling Author

Skills Maxed: Guitar, Painting, Piano, Violin, Writing

Goals:

The Focus is Creative skill levelling

Have at least 2 Pregnancies

Sell paintings on street sales

Rules:

Move to Windenburg Island area (Close to bluffs)

Spouse must have Creative Trait.

Sell all Paintings, excellent or higher, on street sales

Must reach lvl 10 on musical instruments before Elder

Work on all Aspirations by switching them

All children must have Creative skill and complete Artistic Prodigy Aspiration

Heir: Oldest Child

Main Packs Needed: City Living + Get Together

Generation 11: Socially Famous

Being Creative was a must while growing up. Your (Main Parent) influence other people’s style, but you want to be an Internet Personality. You also want to do everything you can with the Computer. Maybe you can even become famous? You also want to run some groups.

Career: Social Media – Internet Personality

Traits: Creative, Insider, Outgoing

Aspirations Complete: Leader of the Pack, Friend of the World

Skills Maxed: Media Production, Programming, Video Gaming, Dancing

Goals:

Have at least 2 groups and marry someone from a group

Join at least 1 existing Group

Spouse only have to be in 1 Group (after leaving Singles Group)

Become at least a 3 Star Celebrity

Have at least 3 Pregnancies

Rules:

Move to another neighbourhood in Windenburg

Make a Singles group, which Main & Spouse will leave after getting together

Start another group after leaving Singles group

Make use of the streaming bod

Heir: Youngest Daughter

Main Packs Needed: Get Together + City Living + Get Famous

Generation 12: Capturing Magic

Growing up there was always people around you. Your parents loved being social. You love photography and want to make a career from it, but you also want to know the truth about Magic. You’ve seen a Magical Portal in Glimmerbrook as a Teen and want to explore it more.

Career: Freelance - Fashion Photographer

Traits: Neat, Perfectionist, Art Lover

Aspirations Complete: Spellcraft & Sorcery, Purveyor of Potions

Skills Maxed: Photography, Painting, Charisma

Goals:

Have a successful career as a Photographer

Become a Spellcaster

Have at least 2 Pregnancies with Spouse and 1 Pregnancy with a One-Night Stand

Form a big Spellcaster Family

Rules:

Move to Glimmerbrook

Become a Spellcaster after moving to Glimmerbrook

Marry a spellcaster, all children from marriage must also marry spellcasters (or must turn into Spellcasters).

Have a One-Night Stand with a non-spellcaster after getting married.

Only have One-Night Stand pregnancy after having 2 pregnancies with spouse.

Ask “To be just friends” after getting Pregnant with One-Night Stand

If Illegitimate child is a spellcaster, they must take the Rite of Dissolution as a Teen

Take photographs of everything/everyone and display it.

Heir: Oldest (Only) Child from One-Night Stand

Main Packs Needed: Realm of Magic + Moschino

Generation 12: Who Wants To Live Forever

You were the Black sheep of the Family. A constant reminder of your Mother’s infidelity. Your Step-Father tried to include you, but you could see it pains him, your Biological Father wasn’t part of your life. Your half-siblings mostly ignored you. You just want to go Dark, maybe even live forever!

Career: Criminal – Oracle Branch

Traits: Bookworm, Loner, Gloomy

Aspirations Complete: Chief of Mischief, Master Vampire, Good Vampire

Skills Maxed: Vampiric Lore, Mischief, Programming, Pipe Organ

Goals:

Befriend a Vampire and become a Vampire while still YA

You do not have to have to get married or have children

Legacy Ends when Sim finished both Aspirations, Career and Main skills

Rules:

Move to Forgotten Hollow after turning YA or as a Teen if mother dies

Turn into a Vampire as soon as you can ask a Vampire to turn.

Disliked for CoM Asp must be half-Siblings and /or step-father

Have a mausoleum where the books and urns of the Legacy are displayed.

Heir: No Heir – Legacy Ends

Main Packs Needed: Vampires

#StoryBookLegacy

[retvenkos]

“are you always this chaotic?”

A/N: i have an inquisitive anon in my ask box that deserves the whole world, and i decided their amazing (sometime hilarious) ask deserved better formatting, so here we are. sweet anon, this is for you.

tw: language

@bladesappreciationweek​​ A COLLECTION OF RANDOM HEADCANONS AND MEMES FOR THE INCOMPARABLE BLADES COMPANY...

who reserves the right to say “fuck”?

mal does not deserve the right. 10/10 he would use it every other word just for the effect of it all (scandalizing tyril who is upper class and thinks there are “better, more intellectual insults” and upsetting nia who tries to play it off like it doesn’t bother her, but she doesn’t like it). no rights, we’re censoring mal.

nia deserves the right, but she would never use it. not even in her dreadlord state did she utter it (the dreadlord is also an upper class elitist, fight me) but she argues with mal that she can say it and she would, but scholar vash is watching over her right now and she can’t disgrace him (scholar vash would be vvv proud if she said it, though, don’t even lie). olinda egged her on one night and she whispered it, dissolving into a fit of giggles afterward, but neither of them speak of it afterward.

tyril does not deserve the right. he believes himself too good™ for such a word, so he doesn’t get rights. he says he’s better than banal vernacular, thank you very much, but that’s awfully presumptuous of him and fails to take into account that, at all times he’s 5 seconds away from saying it, now that mal has entered his life. 100%, mal is trying to get tyril to say it by startling him at unnecessary times or just being generally irritating, and he never gets tyril to crack. i imagine tyril does end up saying it, though. aerin turns out to be the bad guy and nia falls into the portal or whatever and tyril is just like “...... fuck.” mal is bitter he wasn’t the one to make it happen, but he doesn’t whine about it until after the dreadlord has been defeated. nia is slightly upset that she was the reason tyril broke his solemn vow, but she also laughed thoroughly at mal’s rendition of the moment and regrets that she wasn’t there to see it.

imtura deserves the right and uses it. imtura curses like a sailor. .....get it? because she’s a— alright, you get it. but yes, imtura gets to the right to say fuck and she says it enough for everyone. if mal ever wants to express himself using the expletive, imtura will gladly say it for him. solidarity. but she’s also sweet, deep down, and she keeps her swearing to a minimum when nia is around. 

olinda deserves the right, 100%. she doesn’t say it often, but when she does, it has such power. mal wishes he had the commanding presence. olinda is generally too intent on finding a solution to the problem to ever dwell on failure, but when she goes into battle and realizes her group is terrible outnumbered? oop, there it is.

kade. oh, my sweet summer child, who swears often enough to rival imtura. 100%, he deserves the say “fuck” because every bard deserves free access to every word they can get their hands on. it’s rather funny that kade has a terrible mouth, since he’s like the golden retriever of the group (barring nia, ofc), but it’s also rather fitting. imtura was taken aback and mal had mad respect after hearing one of his tirades (directed at threep, ofc) and tyril is just like,,,,,, will i ever rEsT? anyway, let kade say fuck.

threep does not, under any circumstance deserve the right. threep will go off if given the right to swear, and it’s terribly annoying. everyone is trying to travel through a small town and then, out of the priestess of light’s travel bag you hear the worst string of curses you’ve ever heard - so many outdated and upper class curses picked up through the millennia and then you hear the most country, farmer swears (thanks, kade). it scandalizes everyone and nia is the poor girl who has to carry threep around. don’t let threep swear, whatever you do. it’s a power far too strong for this world.

what they get a tattoo of...

mal tries desperately to have the ~aesthetic~ so you know he gets something like a compass or a dagger or something equally as wanderlust and vague. it’s hella intricate and it’s probably on his forearm or something. i feel like mal is 100% that guy who has a tattoo for his mom on his chest but is also deeply terrified of commitment so the mere idea of getting a tattoo for someone else paralyzes him with intense fear. i don’t feel like mal is the guy to have writing for tattoos - he’s much more open to drawings than words. he’s all about the imagery. mal probably has a couple of tattoos though - he might be starting a sleeve or something, idk.

nia would deliberate long and hard before getting a tattoo - it’s permanent, after all, so she wants it to be something special. she 100% puts it on her lower back, which she grows to regret because she can’t actually see it? it is probably a flower a drawing of the temple of light, or a light crystal or something. i have a feeling there’s a prayer written in cursive that kind of wraps around the image she has tattooed. mal took her to get her tattoo and he was a proud brother™.

tyril was 100% that emo kid who wrote angsty song lyrics in a notebook, and that has not changed. i 100% guarantee that his first tattoo is a poem or something that he either wrote himself or desperately wishes he had written. he probably has it tattooed on his side or something equally as dramatic. mal wishes he had the flair that tyril just naturally carries. he’s iconic™ without even trying. he probably only has a few tattoos and most of them are small. he was one big tattoo on his back - it’s elaborate and kind of works like a family tree. it’s unique to him - he likes the idea that he carries his ancestors with him, no matter where he goes. nia notices one night that the company is on it, too, and she never says anything, but she’s touched.

imtura gets all the NAUTICAL IMAGERY. she 100% has one of those bands wrapping around her bicep, made of waves. i also imagine that imtura has a lot of ink? it’s what she deserves, and i feel like orcs are really artistic with their tattoos - their tattoos are culturally relevant and she has a story for every single one. mal knows every single story - they get sentimental on night watches. i imagine that imtura also knows how to give tattoos, so i headcanon that she gave olinda one that represents the company. imtura thought it was very sappy, but deep down, she was honored to do it.

olinda. similar to imtura, olinda has a lot of ink. the only difference is that she gets hers later on. there is one (1) person who knows how to tattoo in riverbend, and olinda got a few from them, but once she goes out to see the world? she’s going to the good™ tattoo artists and she’s fulfilling her dreams. i feel like olinda get’s her tattoos in very pointed spots - she definitely has a sleeve and you can “read” it from top to bottom - the story of her life. kade jokes that olinda’s memory is shot and so she has to get tattoos to remember her story, but he also really admires them. olinda has a lot of constellation tattoos, including some of the ones that kade made up. she’s very sappy, tbh.

kade got one (1) tattoo when he and olinda were piss drunk. it’s a matching tattoo with olinda that’s very weird and makes no sense at all. you had to be there, and tbh, even if you were there, it doesn’t make sense. to top it all off, it’s on his bicep so that when he flexes, it wiggles. at the time, olinda and kade thought it was the funniest thing and they died of laughter. does he regret it? kade maintains that he doesn’t. does he know the story behind it? he likes to say he does, but he actually doesn’t. olinda knows, and sometimes she’ll drop vague hints to see if it jogs his memory. kade maintains that he’ll never get another tattoo. once was enough.

modern! au ethnicities

disclaimer that there are a lot of great headcanons out there, and i’m here for most of them, these are just my ideas..

i imagine that mal is indian or pakistani, nia is brazilian or dominican, tyril is japanese or mongolian, imtura is maori or samoan, olinda is latina, and kade is half hispanic, half filipino.

when texting.... (and some handwriting thoughts)...

a modern! au? idk, maybe just an au where they somehow have modern technology? anyway...

mal grossly overuses emojis. his favorites are these: 🤑🔪😎😏. he also never uses proper capitalization and punctuation, and he uses abbreviations far too often. you need a key to figure out some of his texts, but imtura and olinda just know what he means. his philosophy is style and speed over substance. when he writes handwritten notes, though, his handwriting is a very fancy cursive and the care he puts into each letter is amazing. he only ever handwrites love letters to olinda and “i hate you <3″ letters to tyril, though. he did write a heartfelt birthday letter to nia, once. she framed it.

nia is my favorite because she texts like a grandparent, where they format texts like a letter and have perfect punctuation and capitalization. when she got a text from mal, she was very confused by what he was trying to express, but she wanted to know how he got the “cute faces” and mal immediately dropped everything to teach her how to use emojis. she loves them and probably uses a string of emojis at the end of her text as a part of her signature, like: [ the body of the text ] Best, Nia 😇🥰👑💖🌸 but her handwriting! it’s very nice. the temple of light had penmanship classes and nia excelled. ngl, she probably does caligraphy.

tyril uses no capitalization. punctuation only. you can hear the sarcasm through his text. he also hates emojis and memes with a burning passion. he has used this, though: -.-  he did it for nia. she loved it and now every time they text, he ends his texts with his “emoji”. mal teases him because it’s dumb and now it’s a running gag that everyone send the weird emoji to each other. it’s the tyril face! tyril wants to jump off a bridge, but also finds it very sweet? he has people giving him emoji’s? is that like.... friendship? anyway, his handwriting is terrible. glorified chicken scratch. it’s efficient and nearly illegible. perfect.

imtura, on the other hand texts the most “traditionally”. she doesn’t really adhere to capitalization, and she never has the ending period, but you know what she’s saying. it’s decent. she doesn’t like to complicate things, but kade introduced her to memes and now she and him communicate together solely using low resolution memes that no one else likes. it’s very annoying but very endearing. her handwriting is nice - simple and easy to understand. she uses a lot of shorthand and a lot of sailor jargon that goes over some people’s (read: tyril’s) heads, but is smart and to the point.

olinda, actually, is the one to have proper punctuation and capitalization, with little flavor to her texts. occasionally she’ll send an emoji or two, but mostly it’s just... communication. she much prefers calling, and will call you 20 times in a row until you answer. she forces tyril to facetime her and he rolls his eyes but secretly loves it. communication is much more efficient when you can see each others facial expressions, and boy, does context go a long way when talking with tyril. oH! I FORGOT TO MENTION - olinda grew up on a rural farm. olinda chronically says “y’all” and has all of those weird, farm related sayings. kade doesn’t have this problem because he “trained himself in verse” and said that he had to be “worldly” not “farm chic.” anyway, her handwriting is kind of careless in nature - not especially nice, but not especially terrible, either. it’s a hybrid between cursive and print (whatever is fastest is best).

kade texts solely in dank memes and lengthy prose. he is the most chaotic person in the group chat, either bidding the company to draw near by sending them four stanzas of incredibly vague meaning (only tyril and olinda understand) or he’s sending “vroom vroom bitch” memes that mal and imtura adore. the blades book may not have given kade flavor, but on GOD i will give it to him because a bard requires chaotic vibes, even if he has a tragic backstory. you know what? especially because he has a tragic backstory, kade deserves some chaos. give me chaotic kade or give me death. as for handwriting, i like to think that kade has two modes: “drafting” handwriting (chicken scratch to rival tyril) and “final product” handwriting that is purposefully and beautifully penned. he had a lot of time to perfect his writing, being sick, and boy did it pay off.

threep deserves to be in this line up, despite not being able to write. in this chaotic technology au, nia has created an instagram page for threep, and because he’s one of the last living nespers, it goes viral. when olinda and mal stumble upon it they have to laugh because it’s full of really expertly done ~aesthetic~ photos with really sweet captions - things threep wouldn’t say in a million years. the account is only up for a few months and at first the posting is really consistent, and then it suddenly falls apart and the account is deleted soon after. apparently, threep didn’t know the instagram account existed and when he found out, he and nia had legendary fights and wouldn’t speak for like, 2 weeks after. nia made a very shady and slightly vague call out post and it was the first time the company really saw her get petty. the instagram page was the perfect fuel for kade’s scathing and petty remarks at threep, and threep came out hard, making a dig at kade’s writing and his stupid tattoo. threep nearly died at the hands of the two sweetest - kade and nia. it was certainly one for the books.

high school! au

(you are right, anon, a high school au would be iconic™)

mal is 100% a band kid. he has the “i play the guitar to be cool” vibes. and besides, the guitar player in the band is always a little more ~rebellious~ than the other band kids (superseded only by the standing bass kids in orchestra, who had unrivaled chaotic evil energy). plus, mal has a flair for the dramatic, which the band kids have in spades. mal is a little too much of a rule breaker to have been on any teams or anything super structured like that, and while we all know that he’s a heartbreaker, he’s not a popular kid™ because (at least in my school) the popular kids are always rich kids who run in the “right” circles. mal is too cool for that.

nia on the other hand is the smart prep that’s really sweet. like, the girl who’s friends with the cheerleaders and could have been one, too, if she wasn’t so shy™. she’s mostly overlooked in favor of the more glamorous, but everyone knows nia and they’re all like, “yeah! she’s cute! and smart, and nice.” she’s probably in like, robotics club or something equally as estranged but smart. 100%, nia is the gabriella montez archetype. she’s in a few clubs, including choir, where her angelic voice earns her a few solos. people are always trying to give her positions of power in their clubs, but she graciously declines because she’s stretched too thin and stress is a thing.

tyril. i know you all want him to be like, the smart one who’s in debate club and is really charming, but tyril’s social skills are not cut out for that. tyril is like that smart kid who sits at the back of history class and knows all the answers but never raises his hand. he has one (1) popular friend who has been close with him since they were both in diapers, but he doesn’t feel comfortable with their friends so he just kinda sits alone for the most part. he was picked up once by the emo artsy kids, but it didn’t really stick. he likes poetry class and does a metal working class because he can be alone with his headphones and thoughts™. in high school he’s just brooding without the mystery. tyril cringes at his youth. he’s too strong and iconic in his current age, so he had to be cringeworthy in his teen years. perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

imtura was 100% that cool, slightly edgy girl on the volleyball team. she was popular with the students and the teachers - like, this is the student that the school mentions is going places, and yet are also like,,,, “let’s try to guide you over here, imtura. you have such potential! don’t squander it!” and imtura hates nothing more than their incessant pleas for her to be the model student. she just wants to travel the world, maybe join a punk band, and get lost at sea. that’s not too much to ask, right? she’s also on the football team, and she’s team captain. she lives in sweatpants and workout clothes, and they actually really suit her? definitely crush material, this one. she’s probably also throws some killer weekend parties with mal’s input.

olinda was harder to place, but i imagine that she’s one of those hands on kids, taking woodworking, metal working, and auto mechanics classes. maybe she was on the soccer team, one year, but that didn’t really work out. she’s a team player and all, but she likes something with a little more purpose. she met tyril in metalworking, she met mal when helping with sets for the school play (he was annoying the theatre kids, as per usual), she met imtura in gym class because imtura picked her to be on her flag football team (which was a great choice, really), and she met nia when she went to the choir room, looking for kade. she’s not popular, per se, but people know her face and they think she’s pretty cool.

kade on the other hand, is 100% an artsy theatre kid. he’s not the super obnoxious theatre kid, and he’s not the snobby theatre kid either, he’s kind of like the older sibling theatre kid who’s infinitely cooler than you, incredibly talented, but also really down to earth and ready to create an elaborate inside joke with you over the course of the year. he has it all: the tragic backstory that adds flavor and depth to his writing, the kind personality that gets him friends wherever he goes, the amazing vocals that make him a shoe in for every performance..... but he often gets overlooked. why? it’s one of those injustices that just don’t make sense. he’s decently popular among the art nerds, and everyone wonders why he doesn’t get lead roles. a real ryan evans, if we want to go with a hsm reference.

AND FLUFF ENSUES.

-- taglist: @musicallisto​, @missameliep​ // message me if you want to be added!

#playchoices #choices: stories you play #choices #bladesAW #blades #bolas #blades of light and shadow #tyril starfury #tyril starfury headcanons #mal volari #mal volari headcanons #nia ellarious #nia ellarious headcanons #imtura tal kaelen #imtura tal kaelen headcanons #kade #kade of riverbend #kade of riverbend headcanons #kade headcanons #blades mc #blades mc headcanons #mc #mc headcanons #fluff #alright idk what day this falls on since it has literally everyone included #but i decided maybe it would fall under realm of light? or mc and wildcard? idk i'm just posting it now #also i sure do hope none of my followers are sick of blades content because i'm going hard oops #tw language

[barnesandco]

Nikah: November

Story Masterlist

Nikah: noun, Arabic, meaning the contract of marriage.

Bucky marries Peter’s former tutor because her student visa’s about to expire and the government isn’t granting her a green card. Can she find a way to permanent residence by marriage, and if so, will it be at the cost of their hearts?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: None. Please let me know if otherwise. 

A/N: Written under the Arranged/Accidental Marriage trope for @mermaidxatxheart​ ‘s writing challenge. God, this is a big one. Thank you to everyone who reblogs and comments, you help me through life. I hope you enjoy this in return. Final chapter to be posted tomorrow. 

After several weeks of lonely silence and painful longing, Bucky begins to feel that he might be okay. That he can be complete without the missing puzzle piece in the shape of her, the one that has left a vacant hollow inside his heart. Days became weeks, and weeks, eventually, will become years. Thanksgiving is a week away, but Christmas decorations have appeared in certain shop fronts, and these are the ones he lingers by the most, letting the warm haze of distraction take him. Sometimes, he'll allow himself a closer look inside, and this is one of those occasions.

It's a book café, homely and peaceful, fireplace roaring enough to drown out the sound of the singular barista calling out orders. He doesn't go to the counter, makes his way to the nearest bookshelf, inhaling the scent of oak and old paper because it is a different scent. One he does not know, or otherwise, does not remember and must relearn. Running his hands over the spines, he realizes this is a shelf of classic plays, and suppresses the bark of an ironic laugh at how every tree trunk in the forest of his life is marked with an arrow pointing him back to his wife. Will-o'-the-wisp, disappearing the closer he gets, the further he feels.

Deciding that a house of books will do him no good in forgetting a woman who is a literary scholar, he goes to the counter. Asks for a hot chocolate to go, and waits patiently as the young man makes his drink. Everything about this place is warm, defiant in a soft, gentle way. The cafe is nestled amongst a series of big brand coffeehouses and bookstores, the happy medium that refuses to bow to excess, perfectly content in its remarkable mediocrity. Again, much like his wife. He has to stop thinking of her like that - they're married in nothing but name. But that doesn't detract from the truth of his comparison. 

He takes the to-go cup with steady hands, letting the heat seep into him like the comfort of her hand in his, and leaves the café. Maybe it's because he had begun to accept her absence in his life, or maybe it's because he's so lost in his own mind he forgets his surroundings, but he doesn't expect it when it happens. His foot has yet to land on the sidewalk when someone barrels into him like a cannon, dark hair and full force. The hot chocolate goes everywhere, on him, but mostly her, and it's only when the dust settles that he realizes that it's her. Sleek pantsuit under a winter coat, elegant outfit now dripping with not-so-hot cocoa, but it's definitely her. 

He says "Oh, jeez-" at the same time as her "Bucky?" and he knows he must look an outright fool, gaping like she's grown another head but God. She shakes her hair, a droplet of hot chocolate spraying out, and tries to formulate a sentence. If Bucky hadn't been avoiding mirrors since the day she moved out, he'd recognize the longing in the sad curve of her mouth as his own.

"Wow," She says finally, letting out a chuckle, air pluming into clouds in the cold. "That was fun," and Bucky shakes the shock off his system, prays to God that he doesn't stutter, because this conversation might be his last with her. 

"Oh Lord, doll, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," He says, eyebrows furrowing pleadingly. No longer caring how desperate he may look, he just wants another moment. One more minute.

"It's okay, Bucky, I should have watched where I was-"

"No, no, not your fault. My place is two blocks away. I have a change of clothes," He says, sentences firing like bullets and even he cringes internally at how imposing he must sound. 

"No, I-" A nervous laugh this time, short and delivered with eyes pointed to their feet, and the cocoa pooling there. "I shouldn't, I don't want to bother-"

"Darlin’, you live a borough over and you're drippin' chocolate, thanks to me," He reminds her, gently conveying the urgency of the situation. Passers by are starting to slow down around them, and he's sure someone's bound to recognize him if no-one has already. She seems to realize the same thing, looking around at their surroundings. 

"Are you sure?" She asks, her eyes pools of what Bucky can only call hopeful caution, an emotion that he this time does not fail to see reflected in himself. He nods with a smile, one that only falters when her hand grazes his on the way down to the subway.

The train ride goes quicker than he would prefer, and before he knows it, he is forced to remember that he hasn't dusted in a week just as he's opening the door. She walks in like the first man on the moon, like she's stepping onto sacred land that was never hers but she has every right to be on. A set of her clothes is folded in a corner of his dresser and he goes and gives it to her.

"Oh yeah, these were in the washing the day I left," She recalls, heading into the bathroom to change. He heads for the kitchen, putting the kettle on. 

Has a second thought that he swats away like a fly before putting a Billie record on the record player. Doesn't know what he expects from this, and part of him wonders if anything will come of it, but his heart insists that it must. He can't make his mind up about it before she enters the kitchen, and it's déjà vu. Her, standing new as the day he met her, while he dances unsurely under the judgement he knows she will never offer. 

Pulling out a chair, she sits, and Bucky notices the bags beneath her eyes. Another echo of him, a reflection. He pours the tea, and allows the scent of jasmine to infuse itself with the unspoken longing in the air. She sighs, inhaling the tea he saved. The one he drinks when he misses her and her warmth.

"I missed this," She says, and Bucky wonders again if she can read minds, because if not, their minds must know each other better than their hearts do.

"What, tea?" He jokes, trying to alleviate the tension. She laughs lightly, the sound playing along with Billie's music, the way it is meant to. Shaking her head, she answers demurely:

"Being quiet with someone else." Her eyes meet his before darting back down to the cup she's holding.

"How have you been?" She asks after half a second too long for the question to not sound awkward. How do you breathe side-by-side with someone for months without becoming intimately entwined with their well-being?

"Same as always. Missions, sleep, eat, more missions," He says, nonchalant, looking at a spot on the wall behind her shoulder.

"You still can't lie to me, Bucky. You should've left out the sleep part." She tilts her head, a curious bird on a window-sill, helpless to help the person calling for rescue on the inside. He doesn't let her.

"You're one to talk. Nightmares haven't stopped, have they?" 

"Do they ever?" She asks sadly, and Bucky has to admit, he thought, for the few months that she was his pillow, that they did. Another dream shattered. 

"No, not as far as I know." He responds, thinks about how every aspect of his life, conscious, and subconscious, is linked to her. Nothing feels complete, like his heart isn't the only thing missing a piece.

She had wanted to bring him to Pakistan. Had expressed a tentative desire to show him her origins, her home. Never had the chance, but he's here now.

Islamabad, bustling and busy and ever so loud, like nothing he's ever seen. New York is populous, of course, but this - the cars, the lights, the energy - it's all so different. And perhaps it's because of the air of the place, or maybe it's because he's somewhere holy, but he feels so full. Brimming with awe at the pillars towering in the mosque above him, except for the pocket of incurable sadness deep in his stomach.

He has spent a day in Islamabad, one full day, not able to spend a single second without thinking of the woman who's land he is wandering like a lost bird. Every sense of longing is multiplied exponentially here, and although it's beautiful, and he's trying his best to absorb the luxury of travelling, he knows he cannot enjoy it. Not without her, not like this.

"I went to Pakistan, you know," He tells her. Her eyes flick up, and she shields the surprise cleverly, but not quickly enough for him. 

"When?"

"Last week, on a mission near the border. Human trafficking ring targeting Afghan refugees near the border. I decided to linger, went further south to the capital," He says, tracing the rim of his cup. His tea is still piping hot. "I didn't see the Badshahi Mosque but I went to Faisal Mosque." 

"How was it?" She asks, and there she is. His wife, the woman he's spent so many sleepless nights for. 

"Busy. Crowded, but peaceful, and it was so calm," He answers, biting back the last comment. The one that separates honesty from a half-truth. Isn't a half-truth also a half-lie?

"But?" She pries knowingly, and Bucky almost laughs. 

"But it was like there was something missing," He admits, heart jackhammering a sharp beat into his sternum, and he doesn't want to see her response.

"I know what you mean," She replies, and he doesn't know what to do with that. 

"Do you?" 

"I've been going to the Smithsonian every week since we split up. You're everywhere but so far out of reach, and it doesn't make any sense." She says breathlessly, fingers leaving the cup to intertwine amongst themselves, twisting like their thoughts, their relationship. Bucky looks up.

"Baby, I-"

"I know, I'm complicating things, and I'm sorry, but seeing you again just unhinged me and I don't know what I'm doing. I never do, and I'm messing it up colossally, so I should go," She says in a hurry, and gets up to leave. Ignores the full cups of tea, their aching hearts, as she pulls on her shoes through eyes glinting with tears she cannot afford to shed. 

"Wait," He protests. 

"No, I'm sorry for making you uncomfortable. Thanks for this," She says, picking up the shopper he gave her to put her clothes in, stuffing her jacket into it as well.

"I think we're making a mistake," He tries. "Doll, I know this sounds nuts but I don't want to stay separated. I don't want this," He says, finally, and she drops the bag. Looks at him with tears and barely-there hope.

"Then what do you want, Bucky?" She asks, voice cracking at the end. Bucky knows he doesn't have the heart to back out now, and he'd curse himself for the rest of his miserable life if he did.

"You. I want you, doll, till' death do us part. You're the greatest happiness to ever happen to me." He steps forward, takes her hand. It trembles, shakes, and he squeezes it. She squeezes back, so he moves closer. They're nose-to-nose, and he counts her eyelashes. "And I'm sorry I wasn't honest with you 'bout that before, but I didn't think you felt the same." She laughs, actually laughs, the tears finally slipping down the slope of her cheeks, as she bends forward and her forehead nudges his chest. She looks at him teary-eyed, talks through the joy. 

"For a super-spy, you're not as good at noticing things as you like to be," She says, and he blinks. Her smile spreads impossibly wider, blinding like sunshine, and tells him: "I love you, Bucky."

The world stops, on its axis, in its orbit, hell, he thinks he's having a heart attack, a physical stagger backwards at the words that his heart has known for longer than his mind. Actions speak louder than words, and she has been loving him with her whole body for as long as he has been blind to her compassion. Miscommunication is a tragedy; it deprived him of this feeling for so long, and now that they have gotten rid of it, he does not know what to do with its absence.

"Then why are you crying?" Is all he can say, reeling from the impact of her confession, raising a hand to cup her cheek, his thumb tracing a tear down it. 

"I just- I can't believe this is happening. They're tears of relief, Bucky," She laughs wetly, an absolute mess, but she's there, and it's real, and she loves him. 

"Is that a yes?" He asks, and she lunges up to meet his starving lips. His arms come up to wrap around her waist like ivy vines around their support wall, and she is there. Rock solid and cotton soft, all her love and all her heat pouring into him like tea from a kettle. Her hands in his hair press, tangle, tug lightly and she murmurs against his mouth: "Yes." Another kiss, this one soft and long-suffering, heated and quiet and oh so sweet, jasmine on her lips and fire in her hands. "God, yes." A murmur, quiet and gentler than mistletoe erupting from snow-decked tree branches, as she settles against his chest, lips rasping together. She tastes of heaven and holy water, a storm in her own right. 

"I love you, too," He says against her lips, and thinks: his heart is whole again.

Taglist: @suz-123​ @mermaidxatxheart​ @buckyreaderrecs​ @shield-agent78​ @corneliabarnes​ @readerandcinephileingeneral​ @stevieboyharrington​ @notsomellowmushroom​ @veganfangirl5​ @mood-pancakes​ @lbuck121​ @starnight-charmer​ @redhairedfeistynerd​ @geeksareunique​ @samingtonwilson​ @alyxkbrl​ @bucky-smiles​ @marvelrose​

#ayesha writes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes angst #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes x desi!reader #desi!reader

[overthinkingkdrama]

Hi! So, I’ve just recently gotten into K-Dramas, and... I have a small issue, and that is though I LOVE them in the beginning, by the end they always disappoint me? Like, they start lighthearted and fun, and then by the end suddenly everyone’s in mortal peril, and I don’t care? Or they start all fantasy, and then it’s all about the romance in the end? So... Could you possibly recommend me ones that are good, or tone consistent, throughout? Please?

Hi! Thanks for dropping by for recs. These are some of my favorite asks. I just love going back through my watch list and finding dramas that fit a given criteria. It gets more fun the more dramas I've seen.

The thing about Kdramas that makes them a uniquely sticky beast is that many of them are live-shot week to week, at least for part of their run, and often the scripts are not fully written before filming begins. Popular Kdramas will also occasionally receive extensions which can cause further pacing and plot issues and (sometimes) cause a story to sputter out entirely. With the increasing prevalence of entirely preproduced dramas there's been an increase in overall drama quality and consistency in past years. That being said, Kdramas are still a decidedly mixed bag in terms of overall production quality. So it pays to either drop things with extreme prejudice if you stop enjoying them and watch widely, or to have a good drama filter friend (like me!) to give you vetted recs. As a genre a lot of the more "classic" feeling dramas have a tendency to start really light hearted and then swing super dramatic in the latter half. That's something I occasionally like, but lucky for you not all dramas are like that!

Your ask doesn't really tell me what genre of Kdrama most appeals to you, so I went through my list and tried to find you wide a variety of dramas that I think of as being well-paced and tonally consistent throughout. I've also tried to limit myself to dramas that I rated highly on MDL, although my primary criteria was "good and tonally consistent" so this list of dramas is kinda all over the map. But then, so are my tastes. Also, I kinda got the impression from your ask that you're not a fan of the uber-melodramatic side of kdramas and you want something a little more restrained and less soapy, so I tried to steer away from those more makjang dramas but did not entirely succeed, lol. I gave a couple sentences of description so you can more readily narrow down what you're interested in, and if you would like a more thorough review of the dramas some of these have full reviews on my blog which I went ahead linked where they exist.

Age of Youth: A well written slice-of-life ensemble drama about a group of 5 college age women who end up boarding together. There are a couple moments of high drama/trauma toward the end of the show that might be a turn off. But other than the finale the tone is consistent. 9/10 

Arang and the Magistrate: A dark fantasy fusion sageuk with a romance. I included this drama because it does a good job of developing the creepy worldbuilding and fantasy throughout. Though at points it can be a bit slow and the special effects are hella cheesy. 8/10

Argon: A tight, journalism driven suspense drama. Not always my genre but I found it very engaging, and at eight episodes it does not overstay its welcome. 8/10

Be Melodramatic: Another female-centric slice-of-life ensemble drama, though with an emphasis on fourth wall breaking comedy and clever dialogue. Very funny and heartfelt.  8.5/10

Cheese in the Trap: Maybe a controversial inclusion, but I very much enjoyed this drama. A slice-of-life college romance with psychological thriller elements. Some critics felt that the drama focused too heavily on the second male lead in the later half of the story, but YMMV. 8.5/10

Coffee Prince: Classic cross-dressing romance and still probably the best of its kind. A wonderfully nuanced and progressive handling of the subject matter, even after 13 years. Deals with serious subjects but doesn't go too melo with it. 8.5/10

Children of Nobody: My best of 2019, a dark psychological thriller about a child psychiatrist and a police detective who have to confront gray morality while attempting to track down a serial killer who only targets unrepentant child abusers. 9.5/10

Ex-Girlfriend Club: On the lighter side, a friends-to-lovers type romantic comedy about the writer of an autobiographical webtoon who has to figure out a way to get along with a group of his ex-girlfriends to make a movie based on his work. Only 12 episodes. 8.5/10

Go Back Couple: Also only 12 episodes (these shorter dramas tend to be better paced I find) a time-slip drama about a divorced couple who get the chance to relive their twenties and end up realizing they still have feelings for each other. This drama is both very funny and it had me bawling on multiple occasions. 9.5/10

Healer: A favorite of a lot of drama fans, this is an action-focused romance about an awkward soft boy with a secret identity as a highly skilled errand boy to criminals and an intrepid tabloid reporter who is his biggest fan. This drama is pretty tropey, but it's fun and the romance is great. 8.5/10

Hello Monster (aka I Remember You): A police procedural with a background love line about a criminal profiler looking for his lost brother and a detective looking for her father's murderer. One of my personal favorites. 10/10

Hit the Top (aka The Best Hit): A time-slip fish-out-of-water comedy about a 90s pop star who winds up in modern day Seoul and ends up befriending his biological son and meets old friends who his disappearance left in the lurch. 9/10

Incomplete Life (aka Misaeng): A realistic office drama that gave me real world work anxiety, focusing on a failed Go player who winds up an intern at a highly competitive shipping company and has to find a way to earn his keep even without the background and college education of his coworkers. Unbelievably well done ensemble drama. 9/10

Just Between Lovers: A romantic melodrama about two people whose lives were irrevocably changed by a tragic mall collapse that nearly killed them as children, meeting again as adults and finding comfort and healing in each other. A rough sit at times, but a wonderful love story with incredible acting. 9/10

Just Dance: High school, slice-of-life, drama about a dance club in a technical high school and a group of working class kids who reluctantly become involved in this club and befriend each other. Only 8 episodes (or 16 thirty minute episodes, depending on how you recon it.) 8.5/10

Life on Mars: Remake of the British show of the same name, this is a surreal time-slip police drama, about a forensics expert who gets shot in the head and wakes up in 1988. Or does he? He could also be dying on an operating table. It's hard to tell. Dark, suspenseful and trippy. 9/10

Matrimonial Chaos: An off-beat comedy about two dysfunctional couples who become inescapably mixed up in each others lives. One that's having a hard time getting divorced and another that's having a hard time getting married, and all the messy weird emotions that go along with that. This is another one of those, makes you laugh/makes you cry throughout dramas I have an affinity for. 9/10

Moment of Eighteen: A heartfelt high school drama about a straightforward but awkward loner who is forced to transfer to a new school, immediately earns the ire of a powerful student and experiences first love. Not my usual thing, but very well written with complex and likeable characters. 8/10

Mother: A cold and socially isolated woman becomes a temporary teacher and upon discovering one of her students is being severely abused and neglected, decides to pose as the child's mother and go on the run with her. Like Children of Nobody, this can be a bit of a rough watch because of the subject matter but it is very well done. 9.5/10

My Mister: A healing, human drama about a structural engineer in his 40s and a debt-ridden young woman in her 20s who end up crossing paths and saving each other from a miserable existence. My current all time favorite drama. Cannot say enough good things about it. Practically perfect in every way. 10/10

One Spring Night: A very restrained and naturalistic slow-burn romance about a woman who is about to get married and suddenly begins to question her relationship and a single father who had given up on love who find themselves irresistibly drawn to one another. 9/10

Prison Playbook: An ensemble slice-of-life drama centered on prisoners and correctional officers in their day to day lives. I find the actual het romances in this drama totally useless, but it's a large and talented cast playing a variety of lovable characters. 8/10

Psychopath Diary: Recent fave. A screwball black comedy about a mild mannered pushover who loses his memory and finds a diary that convinces him he's a psychopathic murderer, which gives him a huge boost of confidence from his new found identity, much to the chagrin of those around him and the actual owner of the diary himself. 8.5/10

Queen In Hyun's Man: A drama about a Joseon scholar who time travels to modern day Seoul and meets an actress who just landed a part playing the queen he served in the past. This one might be on the border line of too dramatic or tonally inconsistent, but it's got one of the most pitch perfect finales in Kdramas and the 45 min episodes keep it a snappy watch that doesn't drag or meander too much. 8/10

Reply 1988: A late 80s nostalgia drama about a group of families who all live off the same alley. Lovely family drama, comedy with a variety of romances. Long ass episodes especially later in the run, but I have rewatched the whole thing and I loved every minute of this show. 9.5/10

Save Me: A dark drama about a young woman who finds herself forced into a dangerous cult by her family, and is desperate to escape, and a group of 4 local young men who try to help her. One of the more unique and well done OCN thrillers. 9/10

School 2013: High school ensemble drama that launched a whole bunch of careers. In general I avoid school dramas (I know there have been three on this list so far, but those are like the only three, lol) but this show got me so invested in all these students and teachers. Also the two male leads are so shippable. 9.5/10

Secret Love Affair: A romantic melodrama about a piano prodigy from an underprivileged background who catches the eye of a married older woman and the two fall into a passionate affair. This drama involves cheating (obviously) but it's beautifully filmed and written and the music is to die for. 9.5/10

Signal: This is a supernatural crime thriller and a perennial favorite in the Kdrama community. An imbittered criminal profiler finds an antique police radio which allows him to speak with a police detective 15 years in the past, and uses this to crack cold cases and try to prevent brutal crimes from ever happening. 9/10

Six Flying Dragons: This one is a bit different from the others on the list, first of all because it's a more traditional historical drama, and secondly because it 50 episodes long. But it is so, so very good. And if you're looking for overall consistency in terms of storytelling and tone this drama has it in spades. 9/10

SKY Castle: A unique melodrama about a group of affluent competitive mothers who will go to any lengths to get they're children into the best medical schools, and a mysterious school coordinator with shady motives who gets brought in as a ringer to give them an edge. This show is kind of hard to sell but very entertaining and watchable. 7.5/10

Stranger (aka Secret Forest): The story of a stalwart prosecutor who, due to a childhood trauma is unable to feel the full spectrum of emotions, works with a bighearted police detective to root out corruption around a series of murders. This one’s rather cerebral and requires your full attention but the leads are amazing and there's a second season coming out this year I'm very much looking forward to! 9/10

The Nokdu Flower: Another sageuk drama about the latter years of the Joseon Dynasty surrounding three people who fall on different sides during the Donghak Peasant rebellion. Incredibly well written and involving historical drama. If you're not sure you're ready to commit to something like Six Flying Dragons, I think this would be another good entry point into the genre. The acting is amazing. 9/10

The Smile Has Left Your Eyes: A romantic melodrama and psychological thriller about a dangerous enigmatic young man on the cusp of becoming either a human being or a monster. He becomes involved in a fraught relationship with the sister of a police detective at the same time her protective older brother begins to focus on him as the prime suspect for a murder. High key moody and tragic if you're into that kind of thing (I am). 9/10

Touch Your Heart: On the complete other end of the drama spectrum, this show is pure unadulterated fluff, which managed to keep me giggling and swooning throughout the run, even though it's typically not my thing. An actress joins a law office as research for a role and falls for the ace attorney she's assisting. 8.5/10

WATCHER: Another OCN thriller about three different people with shady motivations who are connected to the same murder case and become involve in a corruption task force looking into dirty cops. One of those "trust nobody, everyone's a suspect" dramas with lovely complex characters and a fully engaging plot. 8.5/10

Sorry that got so out of hand! This is what happens when you don't give me a little more direction I guess. These are all dramas I quite enjoyed and I believe you will find something in there that will suit your fancy. This is a pretty accurate cross section of my tastes.

Happy watching!

Jona

#asks #answered #kdrama recs #this got stupid long #i got half way through writing my two sentence plugs and was like #omg why did i put so many dramas on this list #lemme just casually throw together a list of 30+ titles that’s what you want right #like wtf #oh well #hope you find something you like anon #i have no idea why i’m this way either

[huntress1024]

The Missing Priestess

Rating: PG-13

Word Count: 1.6k

Pairing: Tyril Starfury x Zamira Nightbloom (f!elfmc)

Summary: Takes place after Ch. 14 as Zamira struggles with the idea that Nia is gone. I stayed up all night writing this, so there’s LOTS of angst, hope you enjoy!! :) Lemme know if you wanna be tagged for future fanfics!

Taglist: @queerbrujas @choicesloversstuff @princessstellaris​

The Whitetower throne room, once pristine and tranquil, is now a rotting space crawling with shadows. I stand in the center of it all, the exact spot where the portal had ripped through the very fabric of time hours earlier, stealing the girl who had become a sister to me as she begged for her friends to help her, and we all watched helplessly, victims to the shadow coils that paralyzed us. Flakes of ash drift down from the obsidian chandelier, scratching the areas of my skin it settles on. Every step I take feels as if the torturous shadows from before are wrapped around my joints, making each movement impossibly slow. I grit my teeth, Nia’s desperate plea of “Find me…” giving me the strength to push through and reach the nearest corridor.

That’s when I hear her screaming.

It is wordless, eternal agony that comes from everywhere and nowhere, but it burns the shadows off me more than any Cleansing Fire could, and my instincts stripped bare from the terror send me hurtling after them as they flood down the hall. The screams lead the shadows and me to the decaying, former Temple of Light, but the scene playing out before me says it is now a Temple of Darkness.

Prince Aerin Valleros, a King of Shadow, holds the blade formed from the Shards to Nia’s throat, a wicked smile splitting his lifeless face. Nia’s hands are clenched into shaking fists, the Light flickering on and off from them. The blade’s shadows writhe against her skin, causing her to unleash another blood-curdling scream. I shriek her name, lunging for her, but the shadows return and slam me against a pillar with a mighty crack, wrapping their freezing hands around my throat to hold me in place.

Aerin grips Nia tightly, forcing her to move to the edge of the crumbling, gaping pit where our party had freed the soon-to-be sacrificed prisoners earlier that day, a lifetime ago. Except this time, the sight of these prisoners makes Nia wail in defeat, flailing in Aerin’s stone-cold arms, trying to use the last of her strength to escape the horrible deed she must commit. An immense rumbling fills the Temple as the floor from the pit slowly rises to the surface, revealing the faces awaiting execution.

Mal. Imtura. Threep. The sight of the final prisoner’s face has me screaming till my lungs give out, and it is Tyril’s sorrowful gaze that is the last thing I see before the shadows consume me.

I lurch up from the bed, heart pounding. My lungs greedily gulp down the air to reassure myself that the choking grip of the shadows was all a bad dream, and my surroundings support the realization. The guest bedroom I was given when we first arrived to Whitetower has not changed, even though everything else has. The moonlight softens the gilded walls and furniture, lightening the room in a way impossible for the world from my nightmare.

That same glow allows me to see the sleeping figure beside me, the moonlight bathing his pale blue skin to show me that he is here, and he is alive.  I bring my shaking fingers to his lips, his cheekbones, his long, dark lashes that always flutter open in the morning to reveal the deep-set ocean gaze underneath, and I feel my racing heart begin to settle.  

Careful not to make a sound, I ease the sheets off and walk over to the window, my slip clinging to my sweat-soaked skin. Standing in the light of the waning crescent, I notice the bruises that travel up my arms, and become aware of the dull ache in my muscles.

And then I remember everything.

Aerin, someone I thought I could count on, dragging Nia through the portal to the gods-damned Shadow Realm. I remember fighting in vain to reach her, the utter panic coursing through my veins. And worst of all, I remember her parting words before she was sucked into the void and stolen from our party.

“Find me…”.

Nia Ellarious, the most pure-hearted, kind, loving soul I have ever known, has been taken to the Shadow Realm. Her piety and strength in the Light caught Aerin’s attention to see if she could be a worthy host for the Dreadlord, the worst of them all.

Another person I love, lost to that wretched world. When Kade was taken, Nia swore to help me save him without hesitation, that very selflessness being the thing I loved instantly about her.

All Kade did was protect me, and I let my immature fantasies of adventure get in the way of doing the same for him. I promised Scholar Vash, on his dying breath, that I would protect Nia and keep her safe during the journey I couldn’t help but feel responsible for.

I have failed them both.

In the tumultuous hours following Nia’s capture, Tyril was able to keep Mal, Imtura, and me levelheaded enough from tearing the palace down, and we were able to explain to King Arlan everything we had witnessed and come to learn about the Shadow Court, and his own son’s treachery. He granted us one last night of stay in his palace and ordered us to use every waking hour we had to search Aerin’s private chambers for any hidden resources detailing a way to access a portal to the Realm of Shadow. Tyril was wary of the idea, and I remember snapping at him that we had no other choice. I remember the hurt on his face and my immediate guilt, for he too felt the loss of Nia like the rest of us, and still deeply felt the loss of Kaya. I showed my regret to him earlier in the night when we returned to my room through hesitant, searching kisses, but he returned them with fervor, and I knew from his gentle touch that all was forgiven.

They were successful distractions, ransacking Aerin’s room and losing myself in Tyril, but here, in the quiet, unforgiving hours of the night, nothing could stop the despair from flooding my heart and causing the room around me to shrink.

The view of the moon from my window consumed me in memories of sitting around a fire, first with Kade, Nia, and Scholar Vash, then just Nia and Mal, and soon the remaining members of our party had joined. It was those memories of her laugh, her attentiveness and encouragement towards everyone who spoke and shared a story, that do me in. I feel my shoulders begin to shake, and my vision grows blurry from the tears threatening to spill. I raise my hand to my mouth, pressing it fiercely against my lips to stifle the cries, but a whimper escapes anyways, and that is my undoing. Great, heaving sobs rack my body, and the only coherent thought I have is I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, until eventually they become a part of the sobs and are no longer silent words. I don’t know how long I say them, how long I weep, before strong arms wrap around me and pull me close. I bury my head in his chest, instantly recognizing the scent and feel of him, and I let him gently caress my hair, whispering my name again and again like one would calm a scared animal. Although I suppose I am not acting too different from one.

Tyril kisses lightly along my jawline, catching my tears as they fall, and I hold onto him tighter. When the sobs finally switch to hiccups, he pulls back and brushes my hair from my face. I meet those eyes lit with a star-kissed storm, and I’m brought back to the reality of the moment, safe in his arms, the moon shining down on us.

I press my face against his neck, the coolness of it a welcoming reprieve to my fevered skin. “I’m sorry I woke you,” I say, the words coming out in a hoarse breath.

“You have absolutely nothing to apologize for, Zamira. Nothing.” He doesn’t have to say what he means.

I stroke the back of his neck with my callused fingers, the fresh pain of it all still lingering when I sigh. “I wish I could believe you.”

He nuzzles his face in my hair, breathing me in deeply. “Do you remember what you told me after we faced the egovore?” I shake my head, sniffling. “You told me there was goodness in hoping, and I should never let anyone take it from me.”

Tyril’s voice cracks with emotion as he breathes, “And in the catacombs, I told you that it is my love for you, and for our friends, that will strengthen me.” He cups my chin in his hand, tipping my face up so I can look him in the eyes. “You taught me that it is fighting for what we love, not against what we hate, that will be the force that ends this.”

He brushes a kiss across my forehead, so soft and full of hope, before continuing. “When the sun comes up, we will leave this palace, and we will continue to fight. Not against the Shadow Court, but for Kade. For Nia.” It is the earnestness with which he says those words, the same faith he has that the stars brought us together all the way from opposing sides of Morella so that we may cross paths, that allows me to believe him.

When his lips meet mine, it is hope that courses through us, stronger and just as tangible as the Light itself.

#tyril starfury #tyril x mc #nia ellarious #blades of light and shadow #choices

[kellyvela]

i love the deranged dany/jon shippers trying to position themselves as some kind of authority on what grrm would and wouldnt do and insist that grrm would! never! hook jon up with his cousin when he actually intended to do that with jon and arya (in a love triangle with tyrion).

Hello Anon, 

Are you serious? There are people who believe GRRM would never hook up cousins?? And the same people ship aunt and nephew??? 

GRRM has no problem at all with incest, in ASOIAF we have siblings incest in Jaime and Cersei; and father daughters incest with Craster an his daughters. And we also have all the Targaryens ffs. 

He also has no problem with cousins getting involved in marriage alliances and romance, no matter if they aren’t Targaryens.  About cousins, we have Tywin and Joanna Lannister, and Rickard and Lyarra Stark. And about uncles and nieces, we have Jonnel and Sansa Stark, and the frustrated union of Cregan and Alys Karstark.  All these unions weren’t considered incest tho…

But GRRM does have a problem with “outlines”.  Let’s talk about “outlines” then:

FEBRUARY 2015

A reddit user spotted a tweet from UK bookseller Waterstones which contained three photos of a 1993 letter GRRM wrote outlining the entire ASOIAF series.

The tweet has since been deleted, but not before the images made it to the internet.

Here is the reddit post.

And here is an article with the three photos of the letter and the transcription.

As you said, GRRM “originally” planned for a Stark cousins romance between Jon Snow and Arya Stark: 

Jon Snow, the bastard, will remain in the far north. He will mature into a ranger of great daring, and ultimately will succeed his uncle as the commander of the Night’s Watch. When Winterfell burns, Catelyn Stark will be forced to flee north with her son Bran and her daughter Arya. Wounded by Lannister riders, they will seek refuge at the Wall, but the men of the Night’s Watch give up their families when they take the black, and Jon and Benjen will not be able to help, to Jon’s anguish. It will lead to a bitter estrangement between Jon and Bran. Arya will be more forgiving … until she realizes, with terror, that she has fallen in love with Jon, who is not only her half-brother but a man of the Night’s Watch, sworn to celibacy. Their passion will continue to torment Jon and Arya throughout the trilogy, until the secret of Jon’s true parentage is finally revealed in the last book.

And a love triangle with Tyrion Lannister: 

Tyrion Lannister will continue to travel, to plot, and to play the game of thrones, finally removing his nephew Joffrey in disgust at the boy king’s brutality. Jaime Lannister will follow Joffrey on the throne of the Seven Kingdoms, by the simple expedient of killing everyone ahead of him in the line of succession and blaming his brother Tyrion for the murders. Exiled, Tyrion will change sides, making common cause with the surviving Starks to bring his brother down, and falling helplessly in love with Arya Stark while he’s at it. His passion is, alas, unreciprocated, but no less intense for that, and it will lead to a deadly rivalry between Tyrion and Jon Snow.

So yeah, GRRM planned for a pseudo incest romance between two major characters of the same House, and a love triangle with a main character of a rival House.  

MAY 2016 - BALTICON 

A bit more than a year after that tweet from Waterstones, GRRM attended the The Maryland Regional Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention - BALTICON. There he was questioned by fans about the Jon and Arya romance:

After the Coffee Talk just outside the room:

My Con Friend asked about Arya and Jon again. This time GRRM gave some very pointed replies:

GRRM finished (in the hallway now) by saying that he “wished some past things weren’t such strong foreshadowing,” and that he, “wished some new things had stronger foreshadowing then.”

Friend: Ok, if you foreshadowed something in the first book, like, really cleverly hidden, would you then follow through on that hint? For sure?.. 

GRRM: “Well, this goes with what I said before, the story changes and expands as I write. I wish I was able to go back and make revised drafts, but that’s not going to happen.”

Here is a transcript of the outline discussion and Jon/Arya portion of the coffee talk:

[question about Jon/Arya]

GRRM: “Alright, you’ve thought about this more than I have. I mean it’s simple, Jon is very fond of Arya. They were the two odd birds in the Stark family nest, here. They didn’t quite fit in with the others, they look like each other, they both had the brown hair, you know, as opposed to the auburn hair of Sansa and Bran and Rickon and Robb. So there was always that closeness between them. And, you know, Arya didn’t mind that Jon was a bastard, and Jon didn’t mind that Arya was a tomboy, so there is that closeness there.”

[question about Jon comparing his lover to his sister]

GRRM: “If he did it, uhm… I began writing these books in 1991, and, uhm, I worked on it in 91 and then I got a tv play, so I put it aside to really work on ‘Doorways’ tv pilot and did a tv show in 92-93. In 94 I returned to it [the books] and worked on it. You know, up till then, in my career as a writer, I’d always written the entire book before I opted for sale. That’s unusual. Most writers do chapters and an outline. They write a few chapters, they outline the rest of the book, give that to the publisher and the publisher says ‘oh okay, I’ll take that’.

“As some of you may have noticed, those who have been paying very, very carefully attention, I’m not good with deadlines. And, uh, and I’m not good with outlines, either. I always hated outlines. So with Fevre Dream and with Armageddon Rag and with Dying of the Light and all my novels, I wrote the entire book. I didn’t do chapters and outline. I sat down, I wrote a whole book, and I sent it to my agent and said ‘Look, here’s a whole book, and it’s finished’. That way I ran into no deadline, it was finished before it even went on the market. And it worked well for me. And my initial thought was to do this the same way, but what happened, you know, was in 1994, uhm, when I returned to it and I’m working on it and I’m very enthused about it and I say ‘I really wanna write these Game of Thrones books as the next part’. But I was still in Hollywood and I’d just lost all this groundwork on ‘Doorways’, I was still in… The studios and networks still wanna work with me, so I’m getting other offers, like ‘We want you to write this movie’, ‘we want you to do another tv pilot’. And, you know, I took a couple of them and was ‘Oh god, I gotta have to put the book away again’. Cause I have no deadline [for the book]. You know, when you think Hollywood, they will give you a deadline, you know, they say ‘here, son, write this movie, we want it in three months’.

“So, I said ‘look, if I wanna get back to being a novelist, I’m gonna have to sell this even though it’s not finished’. So I had my 200 pages of Game of Thrones at that point, but they wanted outline. I said ‘I don’t do outlines. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, I figure it out as I go. And that’s how I always did it.’ No, we had to have an outline. So I wrote two pages, a two-page thing about what I thought would happen. It’ll be a trilogy, it’ll be three books, Game of Thrones, the Dance with Dragons, and Winds of Winter. Those were the three window titles. And, uh, it’ll be three books and this’ll happen, and this’ll happen, and this’ll happen. And I was making up shit.

“And I had thought that those two pages were long forgotten, because, of course, the books did sell. They sold in the United States and in Great Britain, both. They sold for enough money that I didn’t have to take any more Hollywood games. So I was able to say ‘no’ around. I had a few less [?] to wind up in in 94 and 95. Once I had, I said ‘no, I don’t want any more movies or tv shows, I’m going to write these books now’. And I started writing the books. And in the process, I pretty much disregarded the outline. The characters took me off in entirely different directions. So, for 20 years I had forgotten that that two-page thing even existed. And then someone in my British publisher, HarperCollins, they got a new office building, uh, brand new offices, and new conference rooms, big conference rooms that they decorated with books and stuff like that. And they named the conference rooms after the writers, so one of the conference rooms [?], and they put up these plastic display cases, including the outline. The two-page outline, yes. [?], they didn’t ask my permission, they just put it up. And in that two-page outline, Jon and Arya become a romantic item.”

“You know, I don’t think it’s a reference for that [for romance]. It’s a reference to a certain physical type, and  a certain indication of what Jon finds admirable. It’s like someone who reminds you of, you know… Other people might be put off by this, you know, hair that looks like small rodents have been living in there. It doesn’t put him off because he is used to that.””

[someone says they have 5 minutes left]

“You know, I was pretty pissed that that outline got out there. It should not have happened. Outlines and letters like that are meant only for the eyes of the editor. They shouldn’t go on public display. And, uh, they also [?] my papers on [?], all my papers and correspondence. You know, I’ve been sending that stuff there for years, and it’d be, you know, available for future scholars or whatever, just like the papers of many other writers. Somehow, in the back of my head I was like ‘yeah, 20 years after I’m dead some scholar will go in and find them’. They’re going in right now!”   ”

[question if he is still going with the 1991 ending]

“Yes, I mean, I did partly joke when I said I don’t know where I was going. I know the broad strokes, and I’ve known the broad strokes since 1991. I know who’s going to be on the Iron Throne. I know who’s gonna win some of the battles, I know the major characters, who’s gonna die and how they’re gonna die, and who’s gonna get married and all that. The major characters. Of course along the way I made up a lot of minor characters, you know, I, uhm…Did I know in 1991 how Bronn, what was gonna happen to Bronn? No, I didn’t even know there’d be a guy named Bronn. I was inventing him along the way when I was writing, ‘Okay, he gets kidnapped. Let’s see, there are a couple sellswords there, their names are Fred and Bronn’.“It was actually Bronn and Chiggen, and then one of them dies, I flipped a coin ‘okay, who dies? Chiggen dies, cause his name is stupid. Bronn is a better name, so I’ll keep Bronn’. And then Bronn became quite an interesting character and plenty of these characters take on minds of their own. They push to the front till you [?] speech and you think of a cool line and you give it to Bronn because he’s trying to talk, and now Bronn is somebody who says something cool. [?]. That’s how characters grow on you.“So a lot of the minor characters I’m still discovering along the way. But the mains-”

[question if he knows Arya’s and Jon’s fates]

“Tyrion, Arya, Jon, Sansa, you know, all of the Stark kids, and the major Lannisters, yeah.”

This report appears in the following sources:

fattest leech of ice and fire blog [Source 1] 

asoiaf.westeros.org [Source 2]  

westeros.org [Source 3]

As you can see Anon, according GRRM the “original outline” was “a two-page thing about what [he] thought would happen”… “And [he] was making up shit.”  

He also said that: “[he] pretty much disregarded the outline. The characters took [him] off in entirely different directions. So, for 20 years [he] had forgotten that that two-page thing even existed”.

But then he clarified that: 

“I did partly joke when I said I don’t know where I was going. I know the broad strokes, and I’ve known the broad strokes since 1991. I know who’s going to be on the Iron Throne. I know who’s gonna win some of the battles, I know the major characters, who’s gonna die and how they’re gonna die, and who’s gonna get married and all that. The major characters”.

From all this information, I think that the romance between Jon and Arya was discarded: 

[He] “wished some past things weren’t such strong foreshadowing,” and that he, “wished some new things had stronger foreshadowing then.”

The story changes and expands as I write. I wish I was able to go back and make revised drafts, but that’s not going to happen.”

But the romance between two major characters of the same House (Stark cousins) is still there.

But a romance between two major characters of the same House could also happen between aunt and nephew, and if we follow the Show, this was the new route GRRM took.  

We just have to wait to certainly know if GRRM will give us the Stark cousins romance that was promised or if he has already changed his original plan.  

#grrm #asoiaf #jon snow #arya stark #tyrion lannister

[buttered-ghost-toast]

OC background story//Secondary Characters

1: i’m aware they’re sorta boring in a sense (literally all 3/4 profile busts lol) but I couldn’t be bothered to get super detailed about them yet. I was trying to work out a look, and this is the quickest way lol. Lots of mistakes here, don’t focus on that. Just...jive with me.

2: idk that anyone is going to be interested, but i’m happy with my little babies! :) This kept me busy lol. 

Long post ahead!

Okay, so the band, Adria was formed sort of by accident. None of the members thought they were really going to get anywhere and were mostly just learning to play instruments and jamming to escape the pressures of adolescent life. 

Niri--her parents were very strict and proper. “Yes, sir. No, ma’am.” type people who do what they can to keep up appearances. Her father is a police detective and her mother was a homemaker after the birth of her children, but was once an attorney. They expected the same level of success from their children, having picked out career paths before the kids were even a speck in the womb. When Niri and her older brother showed excellence in academics, they moved to a new city, enrolling them in an academy that was known for churning out high level success stories--Politicians, Judges, CEO’s of major corporations...you get the drill. They were happy to practically go into debt forever if it meant their kids would be successful. 

Year 1...Enter KOU. 

Kou’s dad was always business first. He expected his son to be the same. So much so that the day after the birth, he went out and bought a whole building to keep for his son, the future doctor, to house his practice. Being from an old money family, there was never a shortage of opportunities to rub elbows and make a way for this kid to be a success no matter what. Through years of primary education, he was a quiet kid, but there was something under the surface that loved to go against the flow of where his life was forced to travel. His mother passed when he was very young, but she was the reason he was able to have few moments of peace and fun. He and Niri were school rivals, fighting for the top spot on the scholar’s board, but...they wound up giving up the struggle when they realized they had a lot in common and neither really cared to pursue their parents’ dreams. They stopped attending after school programs and chose to graffiti and vandalize the building Kou’s dad bought while it was still empty. When they weren’t tagging, they were listening to “inappropriate music” and that soon became them teaching themselves to play the songs on instruments they bought...with Kou’s dad’s credit card. They didn’t sound bad after a while! 

One day, the pair skipped school altogether to avoid an exam they had not studied for. On their way out of the academy, they were tailed by someone they never expected would keep their secret so well...

KRISS

Kriss and Kou are cousins. Their mothers were twins, so the two share a few features, but their personalities couldn’t be any more opposite. Where Kou is a grounded, sensible person, Kriss is carefree and...kind of an idiot. His mother raised him on her own and as a very open, artistic soul, she taught Kriss to always follow his heart and his dreams. He’s basically never been told “No” in his entire life. He was a very energetic kid, so his mother urged him to try out the drums (maybe it would tire him out enough for a nap) which he ended up falling in love with. It’s one of the few things he ever really kept an interest in despite being pretty flighty with his pursuits otherwise. Once he realized what his cousin was up to, he set up a drum kit within a few hours and was glued to their side ever since. 

Kriss’s mom is the only person who really believed in the band from the start. She would be a big help through their early years and to this day has a reserved spot to watch them play shows whenever she wants (usually stage right). 

Did I mention Kriss was part of the percussion section of the academy band? Well, it was more of an orchestra, but still. He felt there was something lacking in their sound during jam sessions so after a few weeks, he called up a few friends. 

Vash

Vash is a complete wildcard. He’s the sweetest person you’ll ever meet, but it takes a while to realize that because his personality is quite...Sharp. He has no problem speaking his mind, never has, and he’s not afraid to call anyone on their BS. Does an expert job of providing entertainment with his outbursts. His first words when he dropped by the “clubhouse” were “so you expect me to play in this shit hole?” His mouth usually got him in trouble at school so he was somewhat happy to have something to occupy his mind so his mouth wouldn’t run so often. He’d been playing music for many many years, his parents both being famous musicians themselves, so he has mastered quite a few instruments and often provides backup vocals because “none of the rest of you dingbats can be trusted to stay on key.”

He is the glue that holds everything together and his honesty keeps everyone grounded. He expects everything to run smoothly and on time, so he was made leader of the band within the first hour. It’s effortless and he keeps his cool pretty well under pressure, but the one person who manages to make him snippy is Eri.  

ERI

Eri is a mess of a human being in the most endearing way. He’s a walking contradiction and he loves to push buttons. He and Vash have been neighbors and best friends since they were born. They’re the Yin to each other’s Yang and act like an old married couple, always  disagreeing on the most basic things. It has never been an issue and the others love to watch a match go down. Where Vash is hands-on and always on track, Eri is laid back and couldn’t care less if something goes wrong. That’s not to say he’s not passionate about their dream, he’s just more of a “Things will happen as they happen, just go with the flow” type. His easygoing nature lends him a very grounded and rhythmic personality...perfect for a bassist. His favorite thing is spending time with friends and being able to just do what his soul calls him to do. He does, however, absolutely hate attention. It makes him feel pressured to act a certain way or do a certain thing and it just clashes with his entire vibe. He broke out in a rash when they got their first major gig and had to do a meet and greet. He loves his fans, but...can they not want pictures all the time? “I look awkward when I smile.” He really does. The boy doesn’t smile, it’s always a grimace. 

Eri’s dad owns a very successful restaurant and often got the band small gigs like birthdays and weddings that he was hired to cater for. He doesn’t understand what they’re hoping to do, but hey, the kids play some mean covers of songs he grew up on. Besides, if his son is happy, that’s good enough for him. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For the first few years, they snuck around and the others lied for Niri and Kou when their parents had questions. They couldn’t say they weren’t all hanging out together, so once things got real, they moved their practices to Vash’s house since his parents had all the equipment they needed and didn’t really care one way or another about what was going on, too busy with tours and things.

Once they graduated, it was harder to cover. Niri came clean to her father, her mother having found out shortly before but promising to keep it quiet if she just quit and focused on school. Her father was furious and demanded she cut ties with her “hooligan friends” immediately as she was set to go to college and become a lawyer like her mother. Niri refused and was kicked out of her home after being called a failure of a child. This only fueled her fire to pursue her dream. She called Vash, mostly to cry in frustration, but he met her at the front of her neighborhood saying “I just felt something was up with your dumb self so I came by to check. Good thing I did. Let’s go, you’re moving in with me til we figure all this out.” The two soon became three when they got an apartment with Eri two months later. 

Kou had a similar experience once he told his father he didn’t want to be a doctor and had no plans to attend his father’s alma mater (which he only got into after his father wrote a very generous check being Kou’s grades had slipped to an abysmal level) he was removed from the premises by security, cut off financially, and removed from the will within 2 hours. The only thing he managed to keep (for a while anyway) was his car, so he hopped in and drove over to his aunt’s house and lived there for a while with her and Kriss. 

During this time, they still had small shows coming left and right. One night after a few years of a rough grind with no money and shitty daytime jobs, while playing a local club (that didn’t even pay them by the end of the set), they met a small time producer who liked their sound and asked them to record a demo. The producer played the demo to a group of friends that called a separate group of friends and eventually their little song made it to the ears of a real band who had an unexpected opening in their roster for an upcoming festival tour. Adria got the call and had to scramble to get their set list ready. It wasn’t anything big, just a side stage gig, but the more stops they played, the bigger the crowds they drew. 

When they made it home after several stops, they were met by the producer who found them, asked to record a whole album and from there they filmed a very low budget MV and soon after their first single was playing on the radio. They were asked to appear on small time local talk shows. They spread like wildfire once their second single dropped, played on stations nationwide. More MVs and a headlining tour followed with a second album set to drop. Kriss and Niri were asked to be part of a 6 episode arc on a popular TV drama and a second tour.  It was a tough climb, but they’ve been at it for 15 years. Niri and Kou did go back home at one point and faced their parents, attempting to make amends and build a bridge. Kou and his dad are in a much better place now, the old building they used to play around in was transferred into Kou’s name and they now use it as their recording studio/ band headquarters. 

Niri’s family reunion was a little less of a happy ending, in fact, it’s still a work in progress. Her mother apologized and they cried a little over the years missed, but her dad is a very tough man to get through to. He acknowledged he was harsh in his actions but still feels justified in what he did. He says if it weren’t for his tough love, Niri wouldn’t have felt the need to work so hard to get to this place in her life. He did at least say thank you when Niri handed him a check to cover the hit her parents’ savings took when her brother went to medical school. She has weekly calls and video chats with her mom and her brother often makes it out to shows and sends her snaps when he sees her on TV or hears the band on the radio. Her dad sometimes texts her “Heard your new song. It’s loud.” That’s his way of saying he's giving it a chance and doesn’t exactly hate it.

#butter's OCs #the band Adria #OC backstory

[megareviews]

Octopath Traveler Combat Review

Hello whoever’s reading this, I’m here to talk about Octopath Traveler’s combat system, and how it sucks. Now you might be wondering, why am I writing about this now, isn’t that game kind of old at this point? Yes, it is, but I only “finished” playing recently since I was working off of a borrowed copy and it’s more the level of disappointment I felt while playing it has stuck with me much more than many other games I’ve played. Since I want to go into game design and development, I thought that it would be good practice to do a deep dive on game mechanics, and it’s easier to write about something that I have strong feelings about to start with. While I have many issues with Octopath, the combat system is what the player is dealing with the most (which in itself is an issue), so the fact that it was lackluster dropped the enjoyability of the game more than if it were better balanced with story and exploration. I’ll try to hit everything that I had a gripe with, from minor things I personally would want changed, to what I view as major flaws that lower the enjoyment for everyone. I will be talking about the post-game boss, because a lot of my issues come into focus during it, so spoiler warning.

For reference, I’ll be talking about the game the way I played it, so I’ll give my main character loadouts in relation to the final boss. Team 1: Hunter Therion, Cleric Alfyn, Sorceror Cyrus, and Thief Olberic; Team 2: Warlord H’annit, Scholar Ophelia, Apothecary Primrose, and Runelord Tressa.

Now the big overarching problem with this game is its simplicity. Making a game simple can be a good thing, and definitely makes it more accessible, but there are a plethora of sub issues that I will be going into throughout this caused by how oversimplified many systems are in this game. For starters there is the lack of skill diversity, as in, there just isn’t very much that characters and enemies do over the course of the game. The offensive skills have 12 possible damage types, 6 weapons (Phys) and 6 elemental (Elem) and there’s only really 4 different ways these are implemented: single hit, multi hit, wide (hits all enemies) hit, and wide multi hit. Multi hits are generally just better due to the break system and damage limits, and wide hits are better the more enemies there are. Those of you good with numbers might have already multiplied those to get 48 ways of hitting an enemy, and I’ll add two, since the Merchant has an single hit untyped skill and the Starseer has a wide untyped skill, for a grand total of 50 that I can remember. Looking at that number I actually don’t know if that looks like a lot for somebody who hasn’t played the game, but the damage types only really matter in the break mechanic of the game and which stat is used for calculating damage. No particular type of damage is better for damage or accuracy skill wise, and the elem skills will do the exact same thing no matter which element is used since they’re only based on the user’s Mag stat. Phys attacks are a bit different since each one is affected by the weapon the user has equipped for that type, but they’re generally all +Str and then +Mag / +Acc / +Crit / +Spd / +Eva. Some Phys skills also have side effects that help differentiate between them, but the basic attacks are the same when the weapons are similar.

Since I brought it up, let’s talk about the two main mechanics of combat that this game has, the break and boost systems. Overall, these systems are pretty good on their own, and most of my issues are rather small here. First up is the break system: hit the opponent with their weaknesses a number of times, and they lose any remaining moves they have this turn, any they would take on the next turn, and all attacks against them deal more damage, though on the turn after the next, they are guaranteed to move first. This is where most of the fun of the game is, figuring out the enemy’s weaknesses, as they are hidden when you first encounter an enemy, only revealed when the weakness is hit, or with the Analyze skill, and then timing the breaks to be the most beneficial to your team. Many enemies belonged to groups with similar weaknesses, so it’s interesting to learn like winged creatures are generally weak to wind and / or spear attacks. The main problem I have with the break system is that once an enemy is broken, all damage types have the same effectiveness. Before being broken, an enemy that is weak to fire will take extra damage than if it’s hit with an ice attack, but while broken these attacks will do the same damage. Any accuracy bonuses don’t matter, since you can’t miss an attack on a broken enemy and speed bonuses only really matter if the order in which skills are cast is important, which there are some cases, usually with buffing allies. Then a bit smaller is how the weakness bar is always ordered, so some damage types are more useful to figure out all of the weaknesses. For example, if a weakness to staves is the leftmost weakness to be found, the player knows that there are no other physical weaknesses and to just start trying elemental ones. There were also some interesting extra mechanics that were only used a few times, such as shuffling weaknesses after a break, or, one mechanic used exactly once in phase 1 of the final boss, rotating through weaknesses when being attacked.

Then we get to the boost system, which complements the break system very well, with only minor annoyances. It makes the player decide between spending power against an unbroken opponent to break them faster, save up to deal massive damage to an opponent once they break, or how frequently turns need to be spent to cast buffs or debuffs. One issue that I have here is that magic users get the short end of the stick again, as basic attacks are the only moves (besides Bewildering Dance, the RNG move) that boosting will cause more instances of the move to occur. Boosting three times on somebody that will basic attack an enemy can cause them to lose 4 shields, while doing the same on a fire skill will just cause it to do more damage, which is objectively better to do when the enemy is broken. This usually isn’t an issue, as the BP can be spent on status effects and healing which will always be helpful, so besides Cyrus (laugh at him, he’s a nerd) there’s always something to spend BP on, thought your personal playstyle might dictate otherwise. Something that’s more personally annoying is how the limit is 5 BP max per character, since the most you can use is 3 per turn. What would be really nice and satisfying would be to break an opponent, have everybody spend 3 BP for full boosted whatever on the break turn, and then have everybody spend another 3 BP on fully boosted whatever else on the second break turn.

Next is another facet of the simple problem, is that there is significantly less character variability than the game wants you to think, and that’s not much in the first place. There are only 96 total skills for player characters, as there are 12 jobs with 8 skills each, and each character has their default job and may also equip a secondary job, letting each character go into battle with 16 skills, ignoring the path actions that grant others conditionally. The 8 base jobs can be simplified into 2 categories, DPS and Utility, 3 if you want to split the utilities into physical and elemental which I see as reasonable, or if you want to stretch it and split the 2 DPSs in the same way. I’ll stick with 3 since I can show how to best simplify them this way, watch. DPS: multiple damage type skills; Phys Utility: one weapon type set of skills, one single target elem skill, and a couple (de)buffs; Elem Utility: a single target elem skill, a wide elem skill, and a bunch of buffs. The advanced classes are even simpler, three of them being every attack type in either weapons or elements and then the remaining one being a bunch of buffs with one multi element skill so that every element had 5 related skills. I’m debating going into each individual job, but there are two that I will be getting into later for sure, Thief and Starseer, for opposite reasons.

Related to the lack of damage types and skills, is a lack of feeling of progression throughout the game. You gain access to 66% of the skills you will ever have by the end of the first quarter of the game, and the last 33% you won’t get until about the last quarter of the game. While the beginning of the a game it makes sense to give the players a bunch of tools rapidly, especially given the whole theme of versatility of the 8 different starting characters the game is based around, skills just scale up with the player’s stats, given through levels and equipment, otherwise they stay the same. While the middle half of the game can be used to mix and match secondary jobs on characters, it’s all just variations on the familiar. While this lack of progression just makes the game a bit boring until you start finding the advanced jobs, the actual issue is how SP scales through the game. The game ends up getting significantly easier as you progress further into the game since the SP costs become a smaller percentage of each character’s SP pools, and most forms of SP regeneration are percentage based, so characters get back SP easier too. For example, I had Ophelia with Second Wind (which I will get to in detail later) and a bunch of SP equipment, which by mid-game meant she could cast most spells and heal back more SP than they cost, and late-game everything was free outside of revive, which took two turns to fully heal. This is contrast to the beginning of the game, where a single skill cast could deplete a character’s entire SP pool, especially the physical jobs, as they usually came with smaller SP pools in the first place.

But where the runaway scaling is the worst, is actually on the thief job. Thief is a physical utility class, so it comes with dagger skills, the mandatory single hit fire skill, phys str and def debuffs, and some slightly more interesting abilities that falloff as the game goes on and you don’t need items or SP as much. All three dagger skills have special qualities, the divine skill uses the characters spd in the damage calculation, but HP Thief and Steal SP are the really broken ones. They both function the same way, hit twice with the dagger, then recover some percentage of the damage dealt to the stat in the name, 50% to HP or 5% to SP. The cost is also the same for each, 6 SP. There seemed to be a bit of a decrease in accuracy for each compared to just basic attacking with a dagger, so early on it was a bit of a risk to use it on enemies, especially if they were unbroken and not weak to daggers, as you would be losing SP to gain 30 health, or getting two dagger hits without boosting. But then, once the total damage of both hits reached 120, or even if you wanted to be safer, the damage of either hit, you start having a move that is free to use and hits more times than a basic attack without using BP, while also being able to heal yourself in a pinch. Now, the max damage you can deal in one hit without the Surpassing Power is 9,999, and you can very clearly see that a thief becomes an invincible slaughterer, as one can either heal themself for 9,999 HP, which is the max, or 999 SP, which is also the max, per turn. Now this might take a bit of set up, such as decreasing the enemy’s physical defense, which I remember mentioning is an ability that the thief job has, or increasing the thief’s physical strength, and there are a few ways to do that, but what I’m saying is it’s pretty much just all lined up for you to do way too easily with next to no drawbacks.

I’ve mentioned two support skills by now, so I should probably talk about them and the issues that they have. There’s 4 for every job, so 48 total, and each character has 4 slots that they can have support skills assigned to with no job related restrictions. This theoretically is about 200000 combinations, but since many support skills don’t synergize well with either the other ones or with the character or just are worse than others, there’s actually a lot less. The first way the options are culled are through support skills that are basically required. First on that list of required ones is that everybody needs Saving Grace, full stop. It changes the equipped character’s max HP from what is listed to 9,999, though if their HP is above their listed max, they can’t be healed any further until they have returned to a normal HP level. This gets very important for many late game bosses, and I feel like every paragraph is opening another two or more topics to go to, as most character’s 2k~3k isn’t enough. After that is some form of SP assistance, as the support skills are the ones with all the fancy %SP recovery. There’s 4 options to choose from: % max heal, heal % basic attack damage done, halve all SP costs, and heal % damage taken. Your magic casters will generally get the % max heal, since they have large mana pools to take advantage of that, and your DPSs will have the basic damage one, with much smaller mana pools and higher physical attack damage. Anyone with the Thief class can skip this, since as I’ve said, they will never run out of mana anyways. The % damage taken isn’t particularly useful as it’s such a small percentage and much less reliable than the others given it’s based on the enemy’s actions and targeting rather than yours. The Halve SP costs skill is situational, as some classes have higher SP costs, but losing the ability to actually regenerate SP makes the longer (and usually harder) fights more dangerous as you still run the risk of running out of mana. I used it on Tressa, since I played her as a caster and her mana pool is a bit lower than the other main casters, plus her Rest ability allows her to regain SP on her own. Third is either of the stat buff skills, once again the choice is based on how the character will be dealing damage. There’s Physical Prowess for Phys attack and defense or Elemental Edge for Elem attack and defense, and instead of being a stat boost like other similar skills from base jobs is that they permanently grant the combat buff to those stats, which means you don’t need to spend time casting the skills that do that AND that they can’t be dispelled by the enemy. What you do with the last slot (or two for thieves) is more open and is going to be where you can have ideas about different builds.

For me though, that last slot went to Surpassing Power on most characters, because by late game, most of my characters were hitting the damage limit pretty easily. Now the damage limit is just the fact that no single attack can deal more than 9,999 damage, because the developers said so. The support skill Surpassing Power, similar to Saving Grace, ignores that, and instead makes the max 99,999, though have fun trying to reach that before your character’s stats max out. Octopath unfortunately has a lot of these kind of arbitrary limits which only seem to exist to highlight an ability that can get around it, like purple treasure chests and Therion’s job ability. By the time I got to the post game boss 5 of my characters were consistently hitting the damage limit, and due to the sometimes absurd amounts of health that opponents had, Surpassing Power just made most of those fights so much faster.

Now a bit of time talking about enemies, because the difficulty scaling of the game is pretty boring, once again due to how simple the game is. This is really an issue among a lot of this type of RPG, since the game is just a numbers game and bigger numbers = harder fights. There’s two points specifically that make Octopath particularly bad with this, the lack of weaknesses on player characters, and enemy health. Since the player characters don’t have any weaknesses like enemies do, you really don’t have to pay attention to what specifically the opponent is doing, at most you can pay attention to whether you are taking physical or elemental damage, but the types are completely irrelevant. There’s a slight exception since there are accessories that reduce specific types of elemental damage, but as far as I could tell it was just better to use accessories that gave stat bonuses. Some enemies had abilities that could inflict status ailments, or had secondary abilities similar to player skills, but they were so few and far between that once again it doesn’t really contribute much. The other issue is with enemy’s health, in that they generally have way too much and causes the game to become so much slower. Fighting basic enemies is almost never a danger to your team assuming you are properly equipped, but the fights can still drag on for 5~10 minutes just whittling down their health. This even applies to fighting enemies that are much lower level than your own team, mostly due to the defensive bonuses that an enemy that hasn’t been broken has. This culminates to a final boss with about 700,000 HP, ignoring all the summons that it has and that it can’t take damage while the summons exist. Again remember that the maximum damage per hit is 9,999 in most cases and 99,999 in the other (which I’ve never gotten close to even with max offensive stats). Then also add in that you probably won’t be anywhere near that first max damage unless the boss is broken too, and you can see why the fights just take so long.

Ok, time to talk about the other job that particularly stood out to me, the Starseer. It’s a healing support job mostly focused around manipulating the party’s BP. Or at least the good skills it has are focused around BP. The divine skill is a wide untyped elemental attack dealing damage based around the whole team’s BP stock, and one of its utility skills also increases damage when the user uses BP, which you have to for divine skills. Another skill it has increases the BP gain of an ally to two per turn, rather than one. Unfortunately we’re already starting to get into the ok skill territory, as due to the way BP is gained, it is only useful for about half of the duration. After a character uses BP, they don’t gain any for the next turn, and since the max is 5 BP, there can only ever be two turns in a row where you benefit from this, and depending on support skills, the maximum benefit a character can get from this ability is an additional 4 – 6 BP. Now there is a Merchant skill that can give another character 4 BP instantly for the exact same cost. The rest of the skills range from decent but situational to worse versions of other job skills, and remember, Starseer is a secret job, meaning you don’t start with access to it, all the abilities are relatively expensive, and you have to fight a boss to unlock it. Continuing to a decent but situational skill is one that can target either enemies or allies, and prevents all stat buffs from being able to be applied to an enemy or prevents all stat debuffs from being able to be applied to an ally. If you know the enemy is a type to be able to apply either, this can be helpful if you can time it properly. The other skills of the job are mostly more expensive and / or worse versions of skills that other jobs have. From dealing multiple types of damage (worse than just 1 in 95% of cases) to healing over time (enemy’s damage considerably outpaces the healing it provides) to a counter that doesn’t prevent the damage like its counterpart, pretty much every active skill they have is disappointing.

I ran out of steam on that last paragraph, and stopped writing this for about 3 months, so I’ll just get one last point in. There are actually a lot of mechanics in the game that are kind of complicated, but since this game is about oversimplification, much of the most important nuance that the game actually has is hidden from the player. There are a ton of little bits of information that would make decision making in the game so much easier, but because the game refuses to display them, there’s a lot of guesswork. In some cases, this hidden information is obfuscating mechanics that subvert player expectations, so what they thought was an easy decision should actually be harder. The following is a non-comprehensive list of some of the worst offenders of hiding information in my opinion. The stat nuts, which raise character stats permanently, give different amounts of their stat depending on which character eats it. Moves that hit a random amount of times ignore all bonuses and penalties to accuracy and evasion. Items that reduce damage or recover HP/SP don’t say by how much, or whether it is percentage or a flat number. Healing skills scale with the caster’s elemental defense. What makes these and similar mechanics the most annoying is that there are some skills that do list exact numbers or percentages for their effects, so it is inconsistent too.

I will end this now and hopefully I covered everything I meant to. A lot of this was thought up while mowing the lawn or laying in bed trying to get to sleep so if something was lost in the recesses of my mind that’s unfortunate. I hope whoever made it all the way down here enjoyed reading, or at least thought it was interesting, and feel free to reach out to me if you’d like to hear more.

#Octopath Traveler #game mechanics

[rollzerox]

Can you do a JaeYona fanfiction prompt for me? I want a story where Yona's problem with not eating for long periods of time when she gets really stressed resurfaces? I noticed that Yona had that problem mentioned a couple times in the series, but it never really gets brought up again, and I could see Jae Ha and some of the others getting really concerned over it. I hope this isn't too sudden, but I'm surprised that there aren't more fanfictions that bring it up and I'd like if somebody wrote one

Thanks so much for the prompt anon! I’m sorry this took me so long I’m working on my backlog of prompt immediately during current events hope you like this take for my Castle AU series where Yona is queen of Kouka

“Daddy! Daddy!” tiny voices could be heard running across the hallways of the palace as King Jae-ha turned to see his twin children rushing towards him. He was currently sitting with his cane watching Hak, Ura, Hawke and Shiro practice, Lina bouncing her 6-year-old Krystal in her lap and giggling at her silly siblings. The child squealed when she’d feel her unborn sibling kick at her, considering Lina was 6 months pregnant with her next child. Sitting next to her was her second daughter, Jin-ae, who was named after the first Queen of Kouka, Hiryuu’s wife.

 “Here comes Aki and Mido, Uncle Jae-ha.” Hinto, Shin-ah’s 10-year-old son chuckled as he at saw them coming with his dragon’s eye.

 “Aka-dori? Mido-ka? What is it?” Jae-ha asked once the two children arrived. They were 5 years old, the girl with long raven hair and the boy with short ginger hair.  The girl had clear blue eyes and the boy had green.

 “Mommy won’t eat!” Aki cried, whimpering. “The cooks don’t know what to do she didn’t eat breakfast and now she says she doesn’t want lunch.”

 Hak stopped his practice run and sighed, shaking his head. “… She’s still upset over…” he glanced to Zeno who nodded.

 “We all miss former Seiryuu and Hakuryuu.” The Yellow Dragon answered. “It didn’t help they passed only a year apart. Not to mention former Ryokuryuu lately has…”

 “Oh please, I’m just fine.” Jae-ha waved him off. “I mean seriously Lina’s 22 now, I honestly thought I would have long kicked the bucket by now.”

 “Yeah and you fell down the stairs the other day again, Droopy Eyes.” Hak growled. “You gave her a heart attack.”

 “Hak come on, you have enough on your plate.” Jae-ha looked at him sadly, after all Valerie had just passed away in childbirth a year ago. “No point in me bothering you all the time to get around.”

 “But I can help you uncle!” Shiro, the current 12-year-old Hakuryuu said while extending his arm.

 “Precious child.” Jae-ha hummed, petting the boy on the head. He sure had his father’s enthusiasm.

 Tetora smiled as she hugged her son from behind. “You’re always so eager to help.”

 “Really guys I’ll tend to my wife, lead the way treasures.” Jae-ha hummed, Aki and Mido eagerly rushed back in. “But don’t run or you’ll…”

 “GAH!” Gigan, Jae-ha’s middle daughter growled as the twins nearly plowed her over when they ran past her, the 16-year-old looking rather annoyed. “Aki! Mido! Watch where you’re going!” she growled as she almost dropped the books she was holding.

 “Done with your lesson already Gigi?” Hawke called out to his older sister.

 “Yes which you skipped!” Gigan snapped at him, her eyebrow twitching at the nickname. “What kind of prince are you when all you want to do is run off and learn fighting with our Uncle Hak? Seriously you can’t solve everything with your muscles idiot.”

 “Not everyone enjoys lessons like you do Gigan.” Lina giggled.

 Jae-ha laughed, petting Gigan on the head. “My smart little treasure. You’re going to make a fine queen someday you know.”

 That made the raven-haired girl blush. “F-father really I mean I would be honored if mother were to choose me but I’m not the oldest…”

 “You really think Lina wants the throne?” Jae-ha snorted.

 “Hell no, I’m traveling with Ura after the kids are grown.” Lina rolled her eyes and took her husband’s hand. “I’m a Ryokuryuu my job is to protect our mother and eventually I’ll protect the future king and queen. Which could be you and Shiro when you get married.” She teased.

 Shiro practically choked as he turned red at that. “I-I-I… T-that’s n-not funny Lina!”

 “LINA!” Gigan’s face turned into a fireball. “I’m not you I don’t go around marrying our cousins!”

 “Please, Kija and I weren’t exactly blood brothers just dragon brothers.” Jae-ha hummed. “Otherwise Shiro & Hinto would be Lina’s brothers with their dragon connection. Besides look how happy Ura and Lina are you know I sure won’t complain…”

 “FATHER THAT’S NOT FUNNY!” Gigan shouted, looking ready to explode. “GAH! Why am I the only normal one in this crazy family?!”

 Jae-ha laughed how his daughter would always have a meltdown over things like this. The rest of his children got his carefree attitude and Gigan was more like her namesake it made me smile. “Anyway where’s your mother? I hear she’s being stubborn again.”

 “In the library.” Gigan answered after she settled down. “One of the scholars just dropped off a new scroll with her and she said she was putting it away…. She was forcing a smile so I was going to bring her a new specimen from Kai that my instructor brought.” She held up an orange colored orchid. “Give it to her father, you know new flowers for her garden always cheers her up.”

 Jae-ha nodded, smiling as he took the flower. “I will my dear. Try to not let your siblings drive you insane.”

 Gigan looked at him deadpan. “Don’t ask for the impossible, father.”

 Jae-ha snorted, then kissed her forehead and headed on for the library. His twins ran so far ahead of him he shook his head as they found their mother first, her back to them and not even noticing they entered as she was looking over a scroll.

 Tears floated down Yona’s cheeks as it was a new illustration of her and her Four Dragons surrounding her, along with many of the tales the scholars sat her down and made her recall because they wanted to make a full record of the second incarnation of King Hiryuu. Shin-ah’s funeral was only a few weeks ago and she still wasn’t over the loss of both Kija and Valerie. She sobbed to herself as she clutched the parchment close, hating the fact her family was slowly being torn apart but at the same time blessed she had so many happy years with them…

 “Mommy!” Aki and Mido were suddenly hugging her ankles, snapping her out of her trance. “Mommy! We brought you something!” the twins bounced on their toes as they pulled back.

 “Oh what is it you two? Don’t tell me you’re trying to butter me up because you set the garden on fire again.” Yona sighed, bending down to her kids to pet them on the head.

 “No mommy that was an accident we swear!” Aki whimpered.

 “Even though it happened three times.” Mido squirmed.

 Jae-ha chuckled as he walked in. “They’re just worried about you my lovely, here. A gift from Gigan.” He handed her the flower, bringing a small smile the queen’s face.

 “It’s lovely.” Yona said, joining him in standing. “But you should be resting.” She scolded her husband.

 “I’m behaving.” Jae-ha hummed, leaning on his cane for support. He tried to hide the fact he was trying to catch his breath from the walk over, lately just getting out of bed was a chore for the aging dragon.

 Yona brushed her fingers over his bangs, noting the sweat on his forehead as she chided him. “You can’t hide from me, husband. Sit down.” She pushed him into a nearby chair that the twins helped bring closer. “Or else I’ll let our terror twins tie you down again.”

 “Can we mommy?!” Aki cried, excitement dancing in her eyes.

 Jae-ha snorted. “Now you’re using the kids against me, that’s not fair love.”

 “You use them against me so it’s only fair.” Yona giggled, kissing him playfully as she pulled away. “Aki, Mido, go get something from the chefs for daddy along with his medicine from Grandma Yoon ok?”

 “Ok mommy!” Mido darted off, Aki rushing after him.

 “I’ll only eat if you do.” Jae-ha said in a sing-song voice.

 Yona made a face. “I’m not hungry.”

 The Ryokuryuu sighed, grabbing her hands. “… Love… Come on it’s not your fault. You know Shin-ah and Kija wouldn’t want you to feel guilty.”

 “But…” Yona choked, tears in her eyes as her hands trembled. “If only I wasn’t… And one day the same will happen to our own daughter and then… I was so absorbed in worrying about you I never thought that they would…”

 Jae-ha pulled her into his lap, giving her a long kiss full of love while caressing her back. “Shhhh, it’s ok love. It’s only natural, my successor was born first after all everyone even Zeno expected me to die by now. It’s a strange miracle I’ve lasted this long. Guess Ik-su wasn’t kidding when he said our child is twice blessed and I wouldn’t die as soon as I thought.” He kissed away her tears as he brushed her crimson hair. “But that doesn’t change the fact that they both loved you and wouldn’t want you upset. They lived wonderful lives here by your side and found their beautiful wives. Their children are safe here and we’ve basically broken the curse of Ryokuryuu and Seiryuu villages as their lines will continue here where they are celebrated not hated. We might even mix dragon blood with the way Gigan and Shiro are crushing on each other.”

 Yona rolled her eyes. “Stop playing match maker with our children.”

 “It worked with Lina didn’t it?” Jae-ha hummed, kissing her cheek. “… Please love, you’ve barely ate anything all week or do I have to pop another treasure inside you to make you take care of yourself?” he offered, fluttering his eyelashes at her.

 Yona turned bright red at that, squirming in his lap. “… I-I… I can’t do that, they might never meet their…” she sadly brushed his cheek.

 “Think of it as me leaving you a treasure behind my love.” Jae-ha hummed, pressing his forehead against hers. “Besides we know they won’t be lonely with as many siblings as they’ll have. Just think about it love.” He gave her another kiss. “After all I don’t seem to have the stamina I used to in my prime.”

 “What a crime.” Yona giggled slightly, smiling warmly at her husband. “… Thank you Jae-ha… You and all the dragons helped me find the greatest happiness in my life. I just…. Hate the thought of waking up without you by my side.” She choked.

 Jae-ha looked at her sadly. “… I know, I feel the same. But the kingdom and our family need you love. Besides… You know I’ll be waiting for you on the other side.”

 “Jae-ha….” Yona sobbed, her eyes threatening to let out another waterfall of tears until she heard the sounds of her twins rushing back into the room.

 “We got food mommy! You gotta eat too!” Mido said, holding up a tray that was bigger than he was of food as Aki was holding Jae-ha’s medicine.

 Yoon stood in the doorway as he came behind them, holding a second tray. “Yona how many times have I told you that you can’t skip meals like this?”

 Yona pursed her lips as she crawled out of her husband’s lap. “… I told you kids just to get your father’s medicine not tell on me.”

 Aki giggled. “But Grandma Yoon is your advisor and he can advise you to eat!”

 “Not like she ever takes my advice when it’s about her health lately she’s as bad as her husband.” Yoon rolled his eyes, looking over Jae-ha and handing him a powder. “Now take that or else you’re on bedrest the rest of the week.”

 “Thank you mother.” Jae-ha teased, though the boy genius was so used to it that didn’t even faze him anymore.

 “We just don’t want you to get sick mommy please?” Aki bat her eyes at Yona, looking ready to cry. “Daddy gets sick enough and you take care of him so who’s going to take care of you if you feel bad?”

 “Me probably.” Yoon mumbled under his breath.

 Yona groaned as she took a seat, her twins at her legs immediately trying to force her something to eat as she sighed and grabbed a bread roll. “Fine, I’m eating are you guys happy now?” she then had the kids put the tray down on the table full of books as she lifted them into her arms, kissing their cheeks. “You two are too precious, so worried about me and your silly daddy.”

 “Because daddy makes you cry when he gets hurt!” Mido whimpered. “You’ll make daddy cry if you get sick.”

 Jae-ha hummed. “That’s right dear, don’t you know it’s a crime to make the king cry?” he tried to tease.

 “Don’t you start.” Yona snapped. “It’s not my fault I was tired last week and you insisted on trying to carrying me to my room like a stubborn fool.”

 Yoon groaned. “Don’t remind me. I’m the one the kids got when they found you two at the bottom of the stairs.”

 “So I can’t land as gracefully as I used to…” Jae-ha rubbed his cheek in embarrassment as he chuckled, then grabbed something off the tray for himself to get the bitter taste of the medicine out of his mouth.

 Yona sighed at that. “Sorry. I guess I have been worrying you guys just…”

 “Well all miss them.” Yoon gave her a hug. “… Just know that you aren’t alone, ok? And we can’t lose you too. This idiot will probably jump off a cliff to join you if you die on him.” He jabbed a thumb at Jae-ha.

 “Yoon not in front of the little ears.” Jae-ha groaned, not exactly denying it.

 “No die mommy!” Aki and Mido clung to their mother tightly. “You can’t leave us!”

 Yona wilted at that, hugging her twins tightly. “… You’re right. I’m not leaving you kids anytime soon I swear.” She kissed each of their foreheads. “And now go tell daddy he can’t leave you either so he has to stay stubborn for at least a few more years.” She smirked, letting them go as they rushed to their father.

 “Daddy! Daddy! You too!” Aki cried, clinging to his legs as Mido tugged on his robes.

 “Oh you little darlings I wouldn’t dare leave you just yet, I have to keep seeing all the trouble you get into come here!” Jae-ha smirked, lifting the kids into his lap and smothering them with kisses. “My precious little treasures.”

 Yona smiled at the sight, hoping that her precious family could stay together just a bit while longer…

[sinsbymanka]

Update: Girl with the Arrow Tattoo Chapter 35!

Maria Cadash finds both a home and a title. She’s not a fan of the latter. Varric deals with his actions and their consequences.

Full story at AO3!

Maria stared, breathless, across the stone bridge her hand conjured out of nowhere. The fortress bled into existence, made of nothing but snow and clouds. Glittering magic pulled walls from both mountain and thin air. The stone rearranged itself with a laughing song nobody else but her seemed able to hear. 

Well, Nanna always said the stone sang to the dwarves if they listened. Maria never believed her, but now… 

As she watched, the great gate at the other side of the bridge rose, iron chains clanking and echoing as it lifted slowly. It seemed like a warm, gentle invitation to come inside. To stay. To  rest. She could almost feel curled fingers reaching out to her. 

“Great.” Varric muttered under his breath. “Haunted castle in the middle of nowhere. We’re going in there, aren’t we? Fantastic.” 

“Where’s your sense of adventure, Varric?” She asked, daring a smile at him. It felt like the first time she’d smiled in days. A weight lifted from her chest, leaving her lightheaded and almost giddy. She took one trembling, hopeful step onto the bridge, swirling her still bare fingers over the stone walls. She had to be imagining it, but it seemed to greet her with the same joyful anticipation she felt, vibrating under her fingers like a cat who  finally  found someone to feed it. 

“In Kirkwall. With my common sense and good winter coat.” Varric surely meant to sound more grumpy, but he barely contained his own smile in return. It warmed her from the inside out like a cup of coffee. Made her think of his arms holding her, his voice conjuring stories out of thin air. 

She tucked that smile away inside her and tried to ignore the greedy clamoring inside her for more.

“There is magic here.” Cassandra’s lanky form melded to Maria’s side, staring up at the glimmering towers in the sun. “More magic than I have ever felt in one place. A building such as this…” 

“It reminds me of the Vyrantium Enchanter’s University.” Dorian, at least, seemed just as eager as she was to explore. “The place had seen so much magic, sometimes it did rather odd things. I knew a Magister who swore up and down she once got lost in the cellar for six months because the hallways kept changing.” 

“Preposterous.” Vivienne sniffed from beside him. “We would never let our circles become so unruly here.” 

“She wants to meet you.” Cole’s slender, bare fingers traced the stone near Maria’s with a tentative, small smile. “She missed the sun. It’s been so long.” 

“She?” Maria questioned, flipping her eyes up to Cole’s. His were nearly hidden under his jagged blonde hair, but warmth danced within them and he smiled sweetly. 

“Skyhold.” He answered. “She was lost, like you.” 

The wind kicked up and stole bits of her hair from the bun she’d knotted it in. She swore she heard something like a giggle hidden within it, vanishing quickly across the bridge, shaking the leaves from the trees outside the walls. 

That left nothing to do but follow the invisible yearning she’d been using as a compass since Solas told her to strike out north. She let her fingers trace the stones, holding her breath as she strode forward. 

Hello, she thought silently.  Hello, I’m here. I’m listening. 

She felt silly for a moment and silently hoped the blush on her face could be taken for nothing but the cold. Then the wind kissed her cheeks again, a touch as simple and uncomplicated as Bea’s lips on her skin. 

She reminded herself, more sternly, it was her imagination run amok. It had to be. But the stone seemed to tremble under her fingers with the same joyful greeting. Maria thought she could almost hear it.

Hello. Welcome home. 

They stepped under the ancient gate and Maria’s eyes landed on the first tree rising just inside it, leaves still unfurling, ripples of magic lacing the air as flowers became fruit, reddened before her very eyes, growing full and heavy in the branches. 

Apples, just like the ones Nanna and Bea cut up to make into pies and dumplings. A quick, hard pang of hunger laced her, mouth watering. Protein bars were fine, she guessed, if the other option was starving, but these… 

They were her favorite. She had no idea how Vivienne could waltz right underneath them without even looking up. 

One of them fell with a gentle plop, rolling on the cobblestones directly to her feet like an offering. Maria crouched, cautiously picking it up and turning the bright red flesh in her hands. She could smell it, the bruised flesh releasing a sweet, tart smell. 

“Do not eat that.” Cassandra directed immediately. Maria frowned and waved the enticing fruit under the human’s nose as she straightened. 

“Seeker, it’s an apple. It smells  wonderful.” 

“There’s a fairy story that starts this way.” Dorian remarked idyly. “Enchanted fruit. Endless sleep. Who, pray tell, will play our prince charming if you poison yourself?” 

“Do I get to choose?” Maria asked, only half paying attention, examining the apple more closely. It certainly  looked fine. It looked like a normal apple she’d buy from the store. 

“She made it for you because you like them.” Cole insisted quietly. “It’s good.” 

“Oh, and who would you choose?” Dorian asked, the words loaded with hidden meaning. Maria very pointedly didn’t look away from the apple in her hands, the skin so shiny she could almost see herself reflected in it. 

“You, of course.” She answered with feigned nonchalance. Dorian huffed, pleased in spite of himself. It wasn’t the truth, though, and she feared the witch knew it. If Maria got to choose who’d be kissing her… well, the man who slept chastely beside her to warm her frozen, battered body  certainly  deserved a reward. Varric Tethras, for all his complaining, had been a solid rock since they’d started moving north. Never far from her side, always easily located in a crowd. They were two moons spinning around each other, caught in their own gravity. 

What was it he said? I’m sick of near misses? Maybe he’d gotten it right. Maybe she… maybe she’d been incorrect. If he wanted her, if he really wanted… 

“Well, I am the obvious… fasta vass!” As he spoke, Maria brought the fruit to her lips and bit into it thoughtfully. Flavor exploded on her tongue, enough to make her moan in sweet, satisfaction. It was by far the best damn apple she’d ever had, made all the sweeter by her diet of cardboard-like rations for the last three days. Juice dribbled down her chin and she hurried to wipe it away, meeting Dorian and Cassandra’s horrified expressions with a wicked, mischievous grin while she chewed and swallowed. She held the bitten fruit up to them. “Just an apple.” 

Cassandra rolled her eyes skyward with a blatant noise of disapproval. 

“If you die, it is completely your fault and I want you to know I will undoubtedly be here saying I told you so.” Dorian crossed his arms and glared down at her, but she could see his lips twitching under his mustache. “Survives time travel, a dragon, an avalanche, dies because she ate a blighted apple.” 

“Would you like one?” She asked sweetly, fluttering her lashes. 

“If you are not dead in thirty minutes, perhaps.” Dorian shook his head and strode off after Vivienne, peering around with a scholar’s delighted gaze. 

She laughed and brought the apple back to her lips, tearing off another chunk of the sweet, white flesh and closing her eyes. It tasted like summer, like innocence, warmth, and safety. It tasted like Nanna’s kitchen and  home. 

She opened them again and found that Cassandra too had moved past her into the massive courtyard. Instead of witch or Seeker at her elbow, she was looking into the darkened amber eyes of an author fixed on her lips like he was taking notes. 

She chewed the apple slowly and held the fruit out to Varric instead with an arched eyebrow. He cleared his throat and shook his head, pulled a smirk back to his face. “Sparkler’s right. If you’re still alive in an hour, I’ll give it a shot.” 

“Kind of you all to let me be the test case.” Maria chirped, content enough with the situation. If she died now, at least, it would be with  real food in her stomach. 

“Hey, you’re the one who couldn’t wait.” Varric pointed out, letting his eyes roam the walls around them. He didn’t leave her side, even as Cassandra, Dorian, and Vivienne vanished further into the great space, examining what looked to be some sort of stable house. 

Varric ripped his eyes from the walls and back to her, his smile broadening as he caught her examining him. “See something you like, Princess?” He teased smoothly. 

He wanted her body, that much was obvious, but if that was it… if that was all, why did he stay here beside her? Why didn’t he stay back with the others where he wouldn’t have to plunge through snow up to both their asses? 

He wants more, a younger, softer part of her supplied. He  cares  about you. 

No he doesn’t, a harsher voice scolded. He  pities  you. He’s just here for a story. 

“Trying to decide if I can outrun you when the haunted castle decides it doesn’t like us poking it.” Maria reasoned lightly. “I like my odds, frankly.” 

Solas chuckled from behind them, but it was Cole that broke in, concerned. “No! She’s happy we’re here.” 

Varric frowned. “You know, for a haunted castle in the middle of nowhere, this kind of reminds me of that first Swords and Shields book. The stable right there could be a dead ringer for the one I described in the city keep.”  

He was right. She blinked, taken aback, squinting at it more closely while she chewed another bite of apple. 

“If Miss Cadash read your book, perhaps the magic in this place is rearranging itself to show her what she wishes.” Solas placed his own palm on the apple tree, looking up into its branches sadly. “This is an old place. It has missed the footsteps of people, their laughter as they lived their lives.” 

“I’m sorry.” Maria nearly choked on the mouthful of apple she was chewing. “You’re saying  I  made this.” 

“No. She did. For you.” Cole stated like it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

“This place has a mind of its own, Miss Cadash. You are the one who awakened it, it is  you it wishes to please. Whether it is pulling Varric’s… literature as an inspiration to do so, however, I cannot say for sure.” Solas wrinkled his nose when he said the word literature. It was a testament, she thought, to how shocked both her and Varric were that neither of them objected. 

“How?” Maria asked incredulously.

“For Andraste’s sake,  why?” Varric asked instead, abjectly horrified. 

“The mark.” Solas said gently, pointing to the stone high up above them. Maria twirled to follow his pointing finger, eyes landing on the emblazoned sigil of the sun high above their heads, carved into the walls. It matched her hand exactly. “It recognizes your magic.” 

“Oh.” Cole breathed softly, looking up, smiling widely. “Yes. You need to see.” 

“See what?” Maria asked. She barely got the last word out before Cole wrenched her forward, eager as a puppy, grin broad. 

“It’s perfect.” Cole beamed. “A place to keep the darkness out. The nightmares can’t catch you here.” 

Maria sputtered in protest, but Cole didn’t listen. He dragged her up the nearest stone stairs, the apple falling uselessly from Maria’s hand while he tugged her into the body of the castle. She paused, momentarily awestruck, to take in the soaring ceilings, the sun etched within the stained glass. Cole let her gawk for only a second before pulling her further in. She caught sight of both Varric and Solas following them. 

“There’s an awful lot of stairs here.” Varric huffed as Cole threw open the next door, revealing a plain, shadowy staircase spiraling upwards. 

“Yes.” Cole nodded as they piled into the shadowy stairwell. “The stone touches the sky like she does. Like they both do.”

“The stone is quite fine with being on the ground, thank you very…” Varric barely got his foot onto the step behind them before the door slammed shut like an exclamation point. They all turned to stare at it, shocked and in Varric’s case, more than a little dismayed. 

“Great.” He said immediately. “We’re all gonna die here.” 

“I believe that is unlikely.” Solas didn’t quite laugh again, but his lips carried a hint of amusement. “Perhaps the castle does not take kindly to criticism.” 

“She didn’t make it for you.” Cole blurted, shaking his head at Varric pointedly. “It’s for Maria.” 

“What’s for Maria?” She asked, redirecting Cole to whatever it was he wanted to show her. 

Cole beamed in the dim light, hauling her back up the steps with renewed vigor. When they got to the top he dropped her arm and turned to see her face, beaming at her. “This.” 

This. 

Tears came unbidden to her eyes and Maria swallowed them, blinking hard. The room was beautiful, carved of rough hewn stone, covered with sparkling wide windows looking out onto the mountains, stained glass casting bits of jewel-like color all over the floor. A crackling fireplace warmed the whole area, a plush red rug looked soft enough to sleep on. 

An armchair, overstuffed and slightly weathered, sat just beside the fireplace. It was almost  identical  to the one from Hercinia, the one she picked out in the thrift shop and helped Fynn carry down the street, laughing the whole time, dizzy with happiness and  so full of hope for their future. A quilt was slung over the arm of it, just like the one from Nanna’s house before it grew too old and careworn for use, the one Bea used to wrap herself up in as a child. 

The comforter on the low, dwarven bed was the same color blue as the one in her childhood bedroom. A desk in the corner had a neat stack of books with familiar covers, the Hard in Hightown series. Varric scoffed and made his way over to them, picking one up and examining it critically.

Maria couldn’t focus on him though, because to her left, next to the stairwell banister, a piano sat proudly. It looked like a piano that could sit in most schools, neglected by all but enthusiastic music instructors. It was in much better shape than the one she’d bought used in Hercinia, though, all gleaming mahogany and elegant lines. The bench was tucked neatly underneath it, the cover closed, hiding the keys. Maria exhaled a shaky breath when she approached it, half convinced she was dreaming. 

There was an arrow. An arrow inscribed on the cover, a match for the one on her wrist. It had her initials on the top and Fynn’s…

One hand grabbed the necklace under her shirt, but the other swept trembling fingers over the carving. From beneath the cover, she swore she heard one trembling note, a key pressed with uncertainty, a question hovering in the air. 

Is this okay? Do you like it? 

“Why?” She gasped, turning to Solas, wiping her hand across her eyes to hide the tears. She couldn’t conceal her bewilderment. “Why is it like this? Why…” 

“Because you have brought it back to life.” Solas smiled weakly. “I suspect it is grateful. Perhaps a bit exuberantly so.” 

“She saw you.” Cole answered simply. “And she knows what you are. What you can be.” 

 xx

They couldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Or in this case, a gift castle. 

Skyhold threw it’s gates open like it had been waiting for Maria Cadash all her life and it seemed determined to furnish nearly everything they could possibly need. The castle sprouted an infirmary for the sick with rudimentary medical supplies. Food appeared hidden deep beneath the quaint, medieval kitchen, haunches of smoked bacon, frozen beef and chicken, flour, eggs, even barrels of cider. Enough to feed a small army, although cooking it in the great fireplace initially proved an adventure. Cots and beds lined formerly empty rooms, complete with blankets and small plush animals for even smaller hands. Fires lit themselves. Banners featuring Andraste’s flaming eye appeared with no warning. They found clean clothes in armoires and chests, soap in closets. Anything they needed or wanted just… appeared. Like magic.  

But, perhaps the most fascinating thing, was that Skyhold  learned.

The first night was so dark, even with flickering torches studding the walls, that Varric spent most of the second day helping to set up the portable generator they carried out of Haven. It was enough to power some flood lights in the courtyard and prevent them all from falling down the damnable steps to their doom at night. Particularly with all the kids they had running around. Although, mysteriously, there hadn’t been so much as a scraped knee with any of the children. 

Varric  never  thought Skyhold would look at their flimsy generator, scoff, and decide it could do better. He nearly pissed himself when he woke up the next morning to find the whole castle wired from top to bottom, lights in every room. Cullen damn near lost his mind when that happened. Varric spent most of the third day following Curly through the bowels of the castle as the man swore up and down he’d find the castle’s power source. 

Curly would be sorely disappointed. Whatever secrets Skyhold kept, it wasn’t sharing. But the more they settled, the more alive it seemed to be. Varric swore new rooms popped up daily. The more complicated, nuanced, and scarce medical supplies they’d brought seemed to replace themselves. Flowers sprung up in the courtyard and the weather, although it couldn’t be called warm, never grew bitterly cold inside the walls. The kitchen managed to spring some nearly modern appliances, although they still looked more at home in a dated restaurant than a place that had to serve two hundred people, and plumbing showed up immediately after Maria wished for it longingly.

But it was Maria Cadash that blossomed more than anything else.

She danced through Skyhold in a blur of crimson and gold. She sparkled in the winter sun and their universe revolved around her. Everything glowed under her tender care, from the injured soldiers to the children stumbling through the courtyard, coming alive, reaching towards her sunlight. 

And when she smiled…  Andraste  when she smiled. 

He wondered how close he’d come to never seeing it again. He wanted nothing more than to spend some solid hours basking in it. See if Skyhold couldn’t conjure up a pack of cards, take her off to some shadowy corner, and reassure himself that she  really  was as okay as she looked. 

But that was just his flimsy excuse and he knew it. What he wanted, what he desired more than anything, wasn’t to lure her into a friendly game of cards. Fuck, it wasn’t even to sweet talk her into the nearest bed so he could finish what he’d started now that they weren’t currently in danger of dying in a dragon’s throat. 

He wanted something altogether more precious. He wanted her the way she’d been in the tent the night she stumbled back into his arms. He wanted her without all that armor she carried, soft and sweet in his arms. He wanted her lashes fluttering against her cheekbones as she failed miserably to stay awake listening to, frankly, one of his most shitty stories. He carried that memory of her sleep warmed, sharp edges smoothed by exhaustion, clutched it to his chest jealousy. 

He wanted to press his lips surreptitiously to her cheek one more time and whisper his apologies into her ear. He wanted to hear her ask him to stay again. Wanted that sharp lance of vulnerability, the one that broke right through all his defenses and left him more naked that he’d ever been. 

Stay.

Ancestors, if she’d ask  anything  in that tone of voice, he’d do it. He stayed even after she’d fallen back asleep. His palm over the small of his back, her body curled against his, her marked hand on his chest where she hadn’t even realized it had fallen. He counted the freckles on her nose, her cheeks. Memorized the sweep of her lashes and the gentle rise and fall of her breath. He stayed until Bea stirred and asked if she’d woken, but tearing himself away… shit, it’d been harder than it should have been. 

But it wasn’t real. She’d been broken, bleeding, battered. Confused and addled. Exhausted to her very bones from attempting to slay an  actual  dragon. She’d have asked anyone to stay. He wasn’t special. Not to her. How could he be? 

She was the sun, after all, and she shined on everyone equally. It hurt to admit it, but Varric could handle painful truths. Maker knew he had practice. When she didn’t seek him out, when she poured her energy into Skyhold, he fell back, easy and casual, and watched her. 

He still had a place here, after all. Once they knew the truth… well. He may have to live outside her orbit. But at least she was alive. At least he had that memory of her sleeping in his arms. That was enough. It  had to be. 

Of course, he was assuming he’d figured out  how  to get them connected back to the civilized world long enough to reveal his own secrets. Between Maria’s magic hand, a score of witches, and the damn castle itself the magical interference was mind boggling. He  needed to call Hawke, needed her help, but reaching her… it seemed impossible.  

“I think that concludes the distribution of sleeping quarters for the civilians and refugees.” Josephine clucked, pulling him from his daydreams. “Was there any other business?”

“One, yeah?” Sera yawned and glared at the other woman. “Why do we all gotta keep coming to these meetings?” 

Varric stifled his amused laugh into his palm. Sera did about as well as anticipated during these meetings. Meaning, of course, that she’d already drawn some rather colorful pornography all over Bull’s muscled arm after Maria stopped her from carving it into the stone rather emphatically. 

Their group sat in an airy room around a massive table that looked to be made of one solid piece of wood. This, Varric thought with no small degree of amusement, was the best of the Inquisition.They ranged from a Tevinter exile to a raving spirit turned boy. Grey Warden to exotic dancer. The Inquisition’s inner circle. A mad little bunch of religious and distinctly irreligious figures. Who’d have thought? If the late Divine could see them now, she’d probably lose her exuberant hat when her head exploded. 

In the window seat, Bea made a muted noise of agreement. Maria had her hands in her sister’s hair and smirked while she shook her head in playful exasperation. Bea’s curls looked sleek and shiny again, makeup perfectly applied. Skyhold must have been supplying that shit too. 

He couldn’t complain, though. He’d opened a cupboard their second day here and had a razor chucked at his face. Maria, of course, said he was exaggerating about the velocity. But he knew what happened and so did the damn castle. 

“There is… one other matter we need to address.” Cassandra straightened from where she bent over the table, sweeping her gaze across the room. “We do not have a leader.” 

“Wait.” Maria stopped and pierced Cassandra with her gaze, then looked past her to Cullen, Leliana, and Josephine. “I thought you four  were the leaders.”

“We need  a leader.” Leliana insisted smoothly. “One person who wields the ultimate authority in precarious situations. An Inquisitor for our Inquisition.” 

“How do you propose choosing this leader?” Blackwall asked gruffly. “Should we collect resumes? Interview the candidates?” 

“A vote.” Bull suggested, far too casually, flexing the arm Sera was drawing on. It made the mermaid she’d drawn look like her tits were bouncing. “Nice and democratic.” 

“From everyone?” Vivienne asked pointedly. “My dear, some of the refugees are so frightened they barely know their own names. Let alone ours.” 

“Pft, nobody is votin’ for you.” Sera grumbled. “Little people don’t like shite like you. They know the good names.” 

They knew one name, at least. All those refugees knew one name  very  well. 

“So we vote?” Maria asked skeptically, tearing him from his overwhelming feeling of dread. “For everyone?” 

“We’ll ask the people if they accept it.” Cullen fingered his gun thoughtfully, peering at Maria with a tight frown like his thoughts had gone the same way as Varric’s. “If they say no - we devise another plan.” 

“Alright then.” Maria sighed. Bea was beginning to look a bit nervous, shifting to eye her sister from the corner of her eye. 

“I don’t want to vote.” Bea said quickly, shying away. “I don’t actually do anything.” 

“That’s most untrue.” Josephine reproved, looking up and frowning. “You have been…” 

“I’m not voting.” Bea's tone brooked no argument. Josephine frowned, opened her mouth as if to insist, but Leliana cut in. 

“One abstention, then. It will go with the majority, if that is alright Beatrix?” 

“That’s fine.” Bea curled her knees up to her chest and frowned. 

In the heavy silence, Varric reached for the battered journal in his pocket. The Lovers stuck out like a bookmark and he flipped past it without thinking too hard, grabbing three sheets and ripping them out. He began to tear them into tiny slips. “Anyone got a pen?”

Sera ceased detailing the engorged male genitalia on Bull’s bicep and lifted her pen with a sharp grin. Cassandra plucked it from her hand and Varric passed around the papers. Everyone took only a second to dash a name on their slip, folding it in half and tossing it onto the great table. 

“What is with you?” Maria asked as Bea brought her manicured nails to her lips like she’d start chewing them at any second.

Maria, it seemed, was blissfully unaware of where this was going. Bea, of course, was not. Bea heard the way people talked about Maria, knew what they said. And Bea couldn’t vote  against  her sister, but she couldn’t vote  for  her either. 

The pen came to him and Varric scrawled one word on it before tossing it to Blackwall. Bea couldn’t force herself to do it, but Varric had to. 

Princess.

Maria may never forgive him, but it  had  to be her. She was  sane, she was  brave. More than all of that, however, she was so overwhelmingly  kind. If it wasn’t her, if it came to someone else… Maker forbid, the Seeker… 

Maria’s vote joined the others and they all stared, at a loss for what to do next. It was Cullen that reached forward and picked up the first one. He unfolded it and cleared his throat before reading it into the silence. “M Cadash.” 

Maria snorted in disbelief. Cullen picked up the second one and read it aloud as well. “Maria.” 

Maria’s amusement dropped like a ton of bricks by the time Cullen read the fourth. When Cullen stumbled on the word Princess, cheeks flushing, the lights above them flickered menacingly. Varric couldn’t meet her eyes, even though he felt them searing into him. 

In the end, every single vote said Maria except one, solitary piece of paper that had Leliana’s name dashed across it. The silence felt miserably heavy and in the window seat Bea finally sighed her sister’s name. “Ria…” 

“Fuck  all of you.” Maria snapped, folding her arms across her chest. A snarky part of him almost said that he’d heard worse plans. Almost. 

“Interesting diplomatic strategy.” Bull leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest to match her posture and waited. Maria’s sparking eyes turned to him. 

“Fuck  you  in particular.” Maria seethed with a rather ferocious glare. To his credit, Bull did not immediately burst into flames. Lesser men probably would have. Varric felt his chest hair curling and smoking just being in the general vicinity.  

“You’ve been calling the shots since you stepped out of the vortex and all these people know it, Boss.” Bull rumbled with an easy shrug. 

“I’m not qualified.” Maria spat out.

“Where does one get qualifications to fight pure evil and save the world?” Dorian asked, stroking his mustache. “I  certainly  never saw it listed as a major.” 

“Enough.” Cassandra glared at Dorian and turned her attention to Maria. “The Inquisition needs an Inquisitor. It is  your  choices that have gotten us to this point. There is no better person to take the mantle.” 

“We’re in a magic castle in the middle of nowhere and  nobody  knows we’re alive.” Maria hissed. “Is this really the track record you want?” 

“We’re alive.” Cullen stated in a rather matter-of-fact tone, but he wasn’t brave enough to meet Maria’s eyes. “And we should not be. That, in and of itself, is enough reason to trust you.” 

“I can’t do this.” Maria insisted. Varric watched her right hand trace her left wrist, finally recognizing the gesture for what it was, a way to soothe panic. The realization hit him like a punch in the gut. 

“You can.” Leliana said softly. “We will help.” 

“We need to ask  everyone  to vote.” Maria lifted her chin defiantly.

“That’s… going to go the same exact way.” Bea whispered from the window seat, staring despondently at the papers. Maria whirled on her sister and pointed at the table like Bea could offer more of an explanation. 

“What do you think of this?” Maria demanded. 

“Ria…” Bea sighed, rubbing her face with her hand briskly. 

“The glass throws rainbows over my skin. The walls. I giggle. Nanna’s fingers lift it high, stands on tiptoes to put it on the shelf. ‘This is where we put precious things, chi shugra. Up high so nobody breaks them.’  Safe. Safe where he can’t touch her ever again.” Cole mumbled. 

“Balls.” Bea groaned. 

Maria’s expression slammed shut beneath a veneer of ice worse than the flickering flames of her fury. She drew her shoulders back and glared at Bea before twisting away. She nearly shoved Cullen over to get past him to the door, but it swung open before she even reached it. The moment she passed through the threshold, the castle slammed it shut behind her back. 

“Balls.” Bea mumbled again, hiding her face in her hands. “For  fucks sake Cole.” 

“She wanted to know. You wouldn’t tell her.” Cole frowned down at his hands. 

“For a damn good reason!” Bea exploded. 

“She  needed  to know.” Cole insisted. “Or it would’ve been a knot.” 

Bea couldn’t pass up the opportunity to keep Maria safe. Bea couldn’t shove her sister’s name forward for a job that seemed impossible. Varric got it, he really did. 

He wished there was someone else to choose. Anyone else. But there wasn’t. Ancestors forgive them for doing this to her, because it would probably kill her. Like it nearly killed Hawke. 

“Does anyone want to take bets on whether the castle just locked us in here?” He asked wearily instead. It seemed easier than facing his own guilt. 

xx 

Soft, gentle fingers smoothed Maria’s hair back, a simple repetitive motion as a clear, bright voice sang beside her. The melody ached inside Maria’s chest as the fingers continued their patient stroking. “Down in the mines, the mines so low. Hang your head over, hear the song low. Hear the song low, dear, hear the song low…” 

“I can’t do this.” Maria whispered, tucking her chin in and looking over her shoulder at the woman peering down at her with such gentle, honest affection. Gray eyes and honey brown hair, a woman with Bea’s elegant features. 

“You’ve already come so far, my darling.” She smiled, resting her palm on Maria’s cheek. “It will be okay. I’m here now.” 

“You’re gone.” Maria barely remembered her, but this serene image of her pulled from old photographs looked right. “Mom’s gone.” 

“Yes.” The woman tapped her fingertips against Maria’s nose, bright and playful, eyes sparkling with mischievous humor. “But I am not. You are mine and I am yours, darling.” 

 Maria awoke to a gentle breeze on her face, invisible fingers playing in her hair. She lifted her head off the pillow and paused, momentarily disoriented, pleasantly dazed. It took a moment to remember where she was every time she awoke, usually at the crack of dawn.  Skyhold. 

Safe. She’d been plagued with nightmares after Haven, but here, they ceased. Here…

Well, nothing was easy. She still wore her fear like a collar around her neck. Sometimes, the scent of a fire in the hearth was enough to choke her with panic. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes at night, she pictured Redcliffe crawling with monsters, the behemoth crushing Bea beneath it or Varric bleeding at her feet. 

But it was nicer to live with when she woke in the beautiful room at the top of the tower wrapped in an old quilt that smelled like home, somehow. The terror felt more manageable here. 

She noted the sun wasn’t coming in the windows right for dawn, but rather the light faded with dusk. Drool and bits of hair stuck to her cheeks. Tears, she thought ruefully. She wondered how fucking awful she looked. A mess, she was sure. 

“Cadash?” Cassandra’s brisk voice called from the bottom of her stairs. “Cadash, are you up there?” 

“Where the fuck else would I be?” Maria called back down the steps, quickly scrubbing her eyes with the back of her fist. Flakes of eyeliner came off on the back of her palm and she swore, irritated. 

“May I come upstairs?” Cassandra yelled again, cautious and wary. Maria paused, discarding the quilt from over her shoulders and flying into the adjoining room. The taps had changed again, she noted distantly. This was the one part of her room that kept changing like Skyhold hadn’t quite determined what kind of bathroom she wanted. At first, it held one ornate washbasin. Then, thank the Stone, it implemented plumbing. The sink was granite today, a matching tub behind her. She turned the warm water on and scrubbed at her ruined makeup. 

“If you insist.” Maria grumbled, hopefully loud enough to be heard. She examined her reflection in the mirror with a tight, tense frown. 

Inquisitor. 

Not if she had anything to say about it. 

She brushed a towel across her face and stepped back out into her bedroom to find Cassandra standing, uncertain, by the stairwell. The Seeker’s eyes never stopped roaming, always looking for threats. Once she’d inspected every nook and cranny and found them free of danger, she turned to Maria. 

“We attempted to visit you earlier.” 

“Who’s we?” Maria asked nonchalantly, sitting on the edge of her bed and folding her arms under her chest, examining her booted feet. 

“All of us in turn. The door would not open.” Cassandra made a small noise of dismay. “Solas says there is a… spirit guardian of this place. It answers to you.”��

“No it doesn’t.” Maria scoffed and rolled her eyes. “If it did - you’d still be locked out.” 

“If it answers to you, even slightly, then that is all the more reason for you to bear the title of Inquisitor. We have the walls to put up a fight if we are attacked again, a place to grow our forces, and Cullen is adamant there would be no retreat. This… war with Corypheus is not the fight we anticipated.” 

“It’s not one I bleeding signed up for.” Maria reminded her pointedly. She hadn’t signed up for  any  of this. She was supposed to close the vortex and leave, free and clear, Bea and Cole in tow. 

Cassandra sighed and shook her head. “I know. You… you have asked for none of this. The power inside you… it allowed you to survive the destruction of the conclave. It is something this Corypheus wished to have, and whether or not it is divine providence that you have it now…” 

Maria scoffed again and Cassandra met her skeptical gaze. “It matters not to you, I know. The most important thing is that Haven  cannot  happen again. The most important thing is that we keep this power from him.” 

“He said he couldn’t take it. It’s useless to him, so I need to die.” Maria pointed out bluntly. “That’s it. My magic hand doesn’t qualify me to be in charge.” 

“Your mark has power.” Cassandra lowered her shoulders and eyed Maria with a certain mix of apprehension and… respect. “But it is not why you are still standing here.”

She was standing here because of a mine shaft and an unbelievable stroke of luck, but before she could say that, Cassandra plowed on. “Your decisions helped us heal the rift in the world. Your  determination  led us out of Haven. You are the only one to rival this demon because  you  are the only one who has faced him and shown the bravery and sacrifice needed to save us. To save us all.” 

“I didn’t…” Maria protested. 

“I was there.” Cassandra snapped before Maria could finish, running fingers through her short hair. “I know what I saw when I left you. I saw one woman wreathed in flames standing against the darkness and chaos. I saw  you.  We all did.” 

A dismayed bubble of laughter jumped to her throat. “Ancestors, Cassandra. That’s fucking good. Don’t repeat it around Varric, he’ll steal it for his next book.” 

Cassandra’s disgusted noise rang across the room, but she jerked her head to the balcony. “Word has leaked that you were asked to lead. I suspect Vivienne, although I have no proof. The people are outside, waiting to congratulate you.” 

“Tell them I said no.” Maria commanded weakly. “Tell them everything you said about me at the beginning. I’m a smuggler, I’m a criminal, I’m…” 

“Stop.” Cassandra pleaded. “I… I would not say those things about you.” 

“They’re true.” Maria argued. “You’ve said them before, just go out there…” 

“I should not have!” Cassandra exploded, curling her hands into fists. “If I had known, if I had trusted in the Maker that he would not… but I didn’t. And I was cruel. I will never be able to make amends for it.” 

The silence stretched between them. Maria stared at the woman, confused, a bit alarmed. “Cassandra, just tell them I don’t want it. Do that and we’re square, promise.” 

“I can.” Cassandra clenched her jaw tightly. “I will, if that is truly what you wish. But I have a better proposition.” 

“If this is about faith…” Maria began to roll her eyes skyward. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t listen to Cassandra preach about Andraste or the Maker. If she started, Maria swore...

“My faith.” Cassandra admitted. “Which is not yours. What is yours… What could be yours is a force that would change the world. People are hungry, homeless…” 

“You’re making a great case for the world being a piece of shit, Cass. Preaching to the choir.” Maria mumbled, dropping her eyes back to her boots. “Nobody is going to follow me. You’re all…” 

“Those people owe their lives to you. They would follow you to the gates of the black city.” Cassandra declared proudly. “If you do not believe me you need only go and peer out. They are  thrilled that you would be their Inquisitor.” 

“And you?” Maria challenged, glaring at Cassandra. “You  really  think this is a good idea?” 

“It terrifies me.” Cassandra admitted quietly, voice soft and startlingly vulnerable. “To hand over such power to one person. But I have faith in what I have seen you do. If it must be anyone, it  must  be you.” 

Maria pulled her eyes from Cassandra’s again and stared at her domed ceiling, blinking back tears. Cassandra let the silence weigh heavily between them before she sighed. “If I could not convince you with that, I was supposed to add in one more thing. On your sister’s behalf.” 

“Great.” Maria huffed. “Wonderful. What does Bea  possibly have to add?” 

Cassandra waited until Maria looked at her again, then held Maria’s gaze unflinchingly and said the words that shot a bullet right through Maria’s heart. “I was supposed to ask what Fynn Dunhark would have you do.” 

Fynn.  Fynn. Earnest and brilliant, his shirtsleeves rolled up, elbow on their kitchen table. Expounding on the flaws of capitalism, railing against injustice, pouring his father’s money into charities and whispering against her skin how someone like  her  should be the one taking the lead, that  she’d  get things done because  she  was terrifying and  adorable  when she was angry and  Ancestors he loved her…  

He loved her. He loved her and it got him killed. Maria nearly fell back, grief like a sucker punch in her stomach.  It should have been Fynn. He could have done this, he could have carried this  well. Her father could have. Anyone  except  her. 

“I’m going to fuck this up.” Maria admitted. “I’ve always fucked everything up, Cassandra.” 

Every single thing. From not taking her father’s downward spiral seriously, to her failure to save their grandmother, running away with Fynn. From losing Varric in Redcliffe to  nearly  losing everyone in Haven. Maria rubbed her face with her hands briskly again, the marked one prickling uncomfortably. 

“Well.” The Seeker chewed her words for a moment before she gave Maria a weary half smile. “If we truly do awfully, we will all be dead regardless. Cold comfort, perhaps, but at least we won’t have to live with it.” 

The humor surprised her and a broken laugh slipped past Maria’s lips. “Ancestors, that’s morbid.” 

“I will be with you.” Cassandra swore like some overzealous knight in a fairy tale. The Seeker thrust her hand forward, fiercely determined. “You will not do this alone.” 

Maria ran her thumb up and down her left wrist, tracing the arrow there. She promised. She  promised  Fynn when they left Ostwick together that she’d stay on the straight and narrow, that she’d do better. She’d be better. She’d be the woman he thought she could be. No more darkness, no more shadows, no more lying or stealing or… 

“I’m not the Herald of Andraste.” Maria blurted. “I’m  not  and we can’t  say  I am. If that’s why you want me to be the Inquisitor…” 

“Some people will say it, regardless.” Cassandra frowned. “But we do not have to do so here, if that is your caveat.” 

Maria nodded, stopped stroking her tattoo and looked down into her palm. The sun emblazoned there flickered gently. 

“The motto of the old Inquisition was ‘Into darkness, unafraid’, Cadash.” Cassandra supplied. “Perhaps you could keep it. Perhaps you could make your own.” 

No more darkness, not anymore. She held the sun in her hand, after all. Maria took a deep breath and stood, grasping Cassandra’s hand securely within her own. 

The taller woman relaxed immediately, sighing deeply. “They are waiting. Outside. If you can…” 

“Now?” She asked, running a hand through her frazzled hair. She looked like shit, although she supposed she had looked worse half dead and frozen. 

“Before you reconsider.” Cassandra stated firmly. “Persuading people to do difficult things is… not my strong suit.” 

Fair enough. Maria nodded and jerked her chin to the stairs. “After you then, Cass.” 

Cassandra nodded and marched down the stairs. Maria took one last deep breath and followed, trailing her hand across the piano’s cover as she passed it. Tears pricked her eyes and she stopped, choking them down. She splayed her palm over top Fynn’s initials and pressed until she felt her marked palm ache, until bits of light shimmered between the gaps of her fingers. 

“I’ll try.” She promised to the silence. For Fynn. For Nanna and her father, Bea and Bull. For Cole, Varric, Dorian, Cassandra… 

Underneath the cover, the keys trembled again, a half note like a whispered answer. 

That’s enough.

 xx

Varric's thoughts drifted, again, to Bianca. He’d give his weight in gold to have her staring down this problem. Somehow, he suspected, it would have been solved days ago. Instead, Varric kept banging his head against the issue, quickly losing patience.

Skyhold could give them anything they wanted, apparently, except the fucking internet or a phone signal. No matter how he tried, a connection to the outside world remained out of reach. He almost suspected the castle was doing it just because  he was the one asking for it. He even stooped to asking Cole to try and convey what they wanted because the kid seemed to be able to communicate with the damned place, but all it had done was confuse them both and give Varric a raging migraine. 

Bianca would have known what to do. She’d laugh, shake her head at his elementary attempts, and…

“Alright Varric, what’s the issue?” 

Cue the wave of guilt, although which woman was the wronged party, Varric couldn’t say. He’d as much as told Bianca it was over right before they marched into Redcliffe, before trying to jump Maria’s bones, so… 

Yes, he reminded himself acidly, because he’d never said goodbye to Bianca before. 

“Well, your Inquisitorialness.” He lapsed into smooth bravado, rocking back on his heels and studiously not meeting the gray eyes he could feel searing into the back of his skull. “Your castle doesn’t believe in wireless connections, wireless networks, or 5g no matter how much I try and talk it up. So, I guess maybe we should consider carrier pigeons.” 

“I never cared for birds much.” The wind whistling through the ancient battlement muffled her footsteps, so he was shocked when she dropped down beside him to examine the mess of salvaged guts he had spilled out in front of him. Bits of radios. A battered old laptop. “What do you need?”

“The modern world.” Varric grumbled, trying not to inhale her scent too greedily. He realized with a start they were  alone  on this far corner of Skyhold’s walls. It was the first time he’d been alone with her since… 

“Varric.” She chided softly. He sighed in irritation and tore his hand through his own hair, glaring down at the parts on the ground. 

“A receiving dish for the satellite.” Varric rubbed at his stubble and stood, turning his back on the mess behind him and offering his hand to Maria. She took it and pulled herself up, staring up into his face with a tiny frown. 

Her eyes were the same color as the sky above them, a soft gray right before snow fell. Her freckles stood out starkly over her cheeks, wisps of red hair tickling her jaw. She still slouched when she stood, hands shoved deep in her coat pockets, eyes blazing forward. If the mantle she’d adopted at their insistence felt too heavy to bear, she didn’t show it. 

“A receiving dish?” She questioned. “Does it look like a satellite, but down here?” 

“You’ve got it, Princess.” He tipped his lips into a smile for her. “To catch the signal and amplify it.” 

“What are they made of?” She asked. “How big does it have to be?” 

He shot her a skeptical glance and shrugged ruefully. “Metal, usually something lightweight. I’d want it hooked up to the power grid here, if we could swing it. Boost our signal a bit more. As to how big… in this case, bigger is better. About the size of a pickup truck.” 

“You’re not asking for much.” Maria’s lips twitched. Varric fought the urge to touch the corner of them, trace their shape with his thumb. 

“What can I say?” Varric grinned, trying to maintain his tenuous control. “I’m a man of simple tastes. Now, of course, if I could get a phone call out, I’d order you the perfect one. Just right for someone of Inquisitorial standing. Have it delivered and installed free of charge.” 

Maria sighed and looked out over the mountains. Something in his chest squeezed uncomfortably. “Hey.” He soothed softly, dropping the playfulness for comfort immediately. “It’s gonna be alright. We’ll figure it out.”

When she didn’t look back at him, his arm acted on it’s own accord. He gently placed his palm over her shoulder and squeezed. Varric lowered his voice to a gentle whisper. “Now that we have a minute to breathe…” 

“Varric, listen…” She began, tensing under his palm. 

“How are you holding up?” He finished. Whatever she’d been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that. Her eyes flicked to his, stunned, before they quickly swivelled back out into the mountains. Not before Varric saw the shine of emotions in them, the fear, the panic. 

“Well.” She managed to sound breezy in spite of all of it. “I’m heading a human religious organization, retrofitting a fairy tale castle, trying to figure out how to kill a demon and his pet dragon  before  he kills us, and we all almost died this week. Twice.”  

She controlled the emotions in her eyes and turned a weak smile back up to him. “I don’t have any idea what I’m doing.” 

Her admission, quiet and soft, felt precious. He hadn’t heard her complain since she’d waltzed out past them, a queen before her subjects, to receive their acclamation. The praise came easily. “Well, whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it really well. Nobody could manage it better.” 

She scoffed and looked down at her scuffed boots, shrugging his hand from her shoulder. “We haven’t been alone, Varric.  Really alone. Not since…” 

Not since she fell into his arms. Not since he carried her up the stairs, not since he undressed her and prepared to worship at the altar of her body. It hadn’t been that long ago. Less than a week, really, but it felt like a lifetime ago. 

He’d seen an enemy he unleashed rise again. Heard Maria’s agonized screams, watched the mountain bury her and tried to live in a world she no longer inhabited. He’d seen her rise from the ashes like a phoenix, inexplicable and miraculous. He felt… he felt like it had changed him. Somehow. He wasn’t sure if it was for the better. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been this frightened before. Never faced anything so daunting. Corypheus. The Inquisition. Maria’s shining eyes and compassionate heart sacrificed for expediency’s sake. 

Things had been simpler, before. Maria watched his face closely, frowning at whatever she saw there. When she opened her mouth again, the words that fell from her lips stung bitterly. “It was just a couple kisses, we can forget about it... if that’s what you want.” 

No he couldn’t. Never. Not in a hundred years. He’d take the feel of her body under his to his grave, the last desperate meeting of lips in Haven to the stone itself. It wouldn’t matter if that’s what he  actually  wanted, because he’d never be able to do it. She was beneath his skin now, regardless, and what he wanted… 

Maria’s right hand traced the tattoo under her left sleeve and Varric nearly choked on a surge of blinding, unreasonable jealousy. Fynn Dunhark was  dead, Maria Cadash was  alive. And Varric…

Varric didn’t deserve her. Other people did. Better people. People who didn’t trade in secrets and lies. People whose friends didn’t destroy entire cities. People who didn’t let monsters out into the world to kill hundreds. People who didn’t put  her in danger. 

But…

“Hey.” Varric murmured, fought the urge to run his thumb over her cheek. He had to try. He  had  to, or he’d never forgive himself. “I’ll be whatever you need, Princess. Whatever gets you through this.” 

Whatever keeps you safe. Whatever makes you happy. Whatever you need. Varric, of course,  wanted her to need him. Wanted it so desperately he could hardly breath around it. 

Maria looked away again, back to the mountains. He saw them shining, brilliant and white, in her eyes. He watched something slam shut inside them, watched her throw away a key. His heart sank to the bottom of his stomach. “You’ve been a good friend, Varric. I don’t want to lose that.” 

She wouldn’t be his, then. Another woman just beyond his reach, too good for him, too brilliant. Varric burned his fingers on the sun, again. But that wasn’t Maria’s fault. She, at least, wasn’t asking him to play second fiddle to someone else. She owed him nothing, anyway, and he… he owed her so much more. “You won’t. Promise.” 

He could grab her, crowd her against the castle wall, kiss her until she didn’t know up or down. He could chase all those thoughts out of her head. He could contrive… But it wouldn’t be real. It wouldn’t be what he wanted. 

The tension still simmered between them, but it would get better with time. It had to, anyway. He turned from the mountains, bracing himself to make some excuse about returning to work. The words shriveled and died on his tongue as he looked at what had appeared on the tower above them. 

A satellite receiver as large as a Maker-damned pickup truck made of the shiniest metal he’d ever seen, looking like it had been there for ages. It almost seemed like the castle’s middle finger aimed squarely in his direction. 

“Holy shit.” He muttered, half laughing in shock. “Look at that.” 

“Maybe she just needed you to be a little clearer about what you wanted.” Maria advised, voice cold, the tone completely unfamiliar to him. “Will this get our communications up and running?” 

Varric wondered if she’d already begun the process of becoming two different people. The same way he’d watched Hawke become the Champion when the world demanded it. Varric distinctly felt like the pale eyes watching him didn’t belong to  his  Princess any longer, but a woman isolated on top of a burning pyre. 

But then again, she wasn’t his. No part of her was. He wondered how many times he’d have to remind himself before it sunk in. 

“Yes.” The word felt like a nail in a coffin. Ending their precious moment of intimacy, extinguishing any chance to plead his case. “I promise. Can I borrow your phone, Inquisitor? It’ll go quicker, yours is the only other one with enough processing power…” 

She produced it with razor sharp efficiency, dropping it into his hand. “I’ve got to go check on the wounded. Let me know if you need anything else.” 

You, he thought wildly. The thought was barely formed before she was already halfway down the battlements, red hair vanishing down a set of steps. The wind blew sharper, colder without her and Varric shivered. 

He stared down at the phone in his hand and retrieved his own, placing them both in his pocket. He needed to climb up that damn tower to get a closer look at that dish, and he had a sneaky suspicion he was going to have to figure out some way to adjust it’s trajectory, but… it would work. It would work, and he could call Hawke and…

Fuck.  Fuck. 

He knew what he had to do. Knew what he needed to do. He couldn’t live with himself if anything happened to Maria, couldn’t stomach the guilt. They  needed Hawke. Hawke, who’d given so much already and gotten so little in return. Just like Maria would, someday. He could already see the writing on the wall. 

Anything they could do to protect her. Anything  he  could do. 

“Bianca.” Varric muttered. 

“I am already experiencing a weak link with the satellite, but more stable than we have experienced in days. My estimate is the receiving dish needs adjusted to approximately a ninety-five degree angle...” 

Excellent. He’d be climbing out a window trying not to fall to his death for sure. “Great. While I’m trying to manage that, I need you to airdrop a copy of your program onto Maria Cadash’s phone.” 

“Inadvisable.” Bianca argued immediately, joyful tone vanishing. “Every additional user is a security risk. Maria Cadash has an extensive criminal history and you have only been acquainted…” 

Varric laughed. “I know. I want you to do it anyway, baby.”

Varric could almost hear the muted rebellion in his earpiece. “Should I make a note to inform Bianca Davri of the additional user?” 

“Absolutely not.” The real Bianca never checked the AI’s permissions. Only used her, really, when she needed the extra processing power. Otherwise, they just got in each other’s way. “Give Cadash the same permissions Hawke has.” 

“Hawke has permissions just short of a system administrator…” 

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.” Varric shoved the door to the tower open and looked up at all the stairs, dismayed.

“File transfer started.” Bianca finally responded, voice clipped and tone short. “Is there anything else?” 

“Let me know the second I’ve got a strong enough signal to make a call.” Varric sighed. “There’s one I probably should have made a long time ago.” 

 xx

In the fade, Solas found that Skyhold hadn’t changed at all from the palace he remembered. Gone were the Inquisitor’s sturdy stone walls, replaced with graceful, smooth marble. The hallways framed courtyards overflowing with vines and flowers. Magic orbs lit the courtyards and gleaming precious stones shimmered in mosaics and portraits. 

In the fade, perhaps, he could still call Skyhold the name  he  had given it long ago. Tarasyl'an Te'las, the place where the sky was held back. He paused in the flowering courtyard and inhaled the blooms that faded so long ago. 

“On dhea'lam.” A soft voice called from behind him. “It has been a long time, hasn’t it?” 

“Longer than I wished.” Solas admitted, turning to face the spirit who’d sought him out. She wore another face, one he didn’t know, but one he recognized regardless. The woman shared the Inquisitor’s striking eyes, her sister’s brown hair. The crooked tip of her lips that both women wore so well. 

“Her mother?” He guessed softly. 

“Yes.” The spirit paused, tipped her head to the side as if listening to a whisper in the wind. “She left this world some time ago. This is how she is remembered.” 

“It is not the form you took for me when I was a young man.” He would not be jealous, however. Not when Maria Cadash had so few comforts on her hard journey. If the face of her mother was one… 

“When you were a young man, you left me to start a revolution.” The spirit chided. Solas shut his eyes and turned his face to the warm sun. 

“Did you find what you wished, da fenlin?” The spirit asked. “When my little wolf grew teeth and claws, did the whole world tremble?” 

“I am surprised you recognized me.” Solas didn’t wish to look into those stunning gray eyes, even if they were not framed by the Inquisitor’s red hair. He kept his own firmly closed. 

“I did not. Not at first. I only knew your magic, I only knew it was no longer a part of you. I could see nothing past her when she arrived.” The spirit smiled, gentle and proud. “Da’lath’in. What is it you call her again? I do not understand it.” 

“Inquisitor.” Solas explained. “It is what the shemlen call her, the title that gives her power.” 

“Da’lath’in suits her better.” The spirit protested. 

Da’lath’in. Little heart. Yes, Solas could see that. A woman who carried her heart on her sleeve, who showed compassion for the smallest and most helpless. 

“You have seen inside her soul, yes?” Solas asked. He feared the answer, but he had to know. “Was she… has the magic changed her?” 

“You wish to know her secrets when you will not give her yours?” The spirit asked, incredulous. 

“Yes.” He answered with conviction. “I must.” 

The spirit sighed, her breath rustling the blooms and trees. “Yes. And no. Your magic will give her strength and courage, but she has her ancestors’ spirit. She comes from warriors, she comes from the Earth. She has always been a soul that would bleed for others. It is in her nature. You know this.” 

He did. He felt the oft-broken bones under her skin and allowed his magic to probe the shattered, raw pieces of her soul. He watched her feed the hungry, clothe the poor. He saw her rise from the ashes. 

“If she is true, you are wrong.” The spirit murmured. 

“Perhaps.” He admitted. 

“Will you harm her? Or will you help her?” The spirit asked. 

Solas opened his eyes and looked down into the spirit’s open, grave face. 

“You would stop me.” He marveled. 

“She is mine and I am hers.” The spirit’s eyes crackled with bright energy. “As you know, Fen’Harel.” 

“I do not know if Fen’Harel exists any longer.” Solas sighed. “This is not his world.” 

The spirit softened. A small hand rested on his elbow, just as it had so often in times long past. Solas ached with the pain of it. His friend, his home, sleeping just as he had. Alone in the darkness, watching as time left them both behind. 

“Fen’Harel lit the world on fire.” The spirit said softly. “Perhaps it is Solas who must try to find beauty in the ashes.” 

“Is there any beauty left in the world of metal and machines?” Solas asked, unable to keep the bitter venom from rising to the surface. 

“How could you ask that?” The spirit tightened her grip on him, voice imploring. “Have you not seen them? Heard the laughter of their children? Listened to their prayers? How can you be so blind?” 

The silence over both of them was not as comfortable as it once had been, but it still felt more like home than it had a right to. 

“Will you tell her?” Solas finally asked. “My secrets, old friend. Will you confide them to the Inquisitor?” 

The spirit sighed once more. “No, da fenlin. I will not. She would not understand, and I know you wish to right this mistake of yours. But you  must not harm her.” 

“I will not.” Solas swore.

Not if he could help it.

#girl with the arrow tattoo #modern thedas #varric tethras #inquisitor x varric #inquisitor cadash #dragon age inquisition #dragon age #maria cadash #varric romance

[witchfall]

thread

summary: They say she invented the harpsichord. The melody of birds.

(He won't remember this when he is born again.)

(And he is born again.)

---

Also on AO3

SPOILERS FOR SHADOWBRINGERS WITHIN.

{inspired by Tales from the Shadows, the new Keane album, and my general instinct to go absolutely ape shit over past lives/memories. beyond that i have no fuckin idea where this came from lmao. except some wild conjecture @vaniccio and I have about What It Could All Mean re: the future of the FFXIV MSQ.

WoL x Exarch and the strange friendship of Emet-Selch and an unnamed member of the Convocation...}

---

You are eight years old when you first realize the world is not the way it is supposed to be.

You don't understand the shattering incongruence of your thoughts as you watch the water run down the shower wall, but you suddenly know the world is different now. You see its crushing dullness. What is the point? Why do the people in this world even try to live? It is beautiful, but it is wrong. Like when a baby chocobo spooks and your friend falls and skids their elbows horribly bloody. You can't stop looking.

You stumble out of the shower and grab your towel, for you are big enough to do this on your own, and you run to the living room. Your wet feet slap the metal floors of the airship; in the distance you can hear Ma singing. Your hands feel hot. You squeeze them in and out of fists. Maybe this is what Ma means, when she sings about heartbreak. You feel shattered.

Ma is speaking animatedly about something. "But don't you think the chord progression is off?" she says. Da, sitting in a nearby chair with a tome in his lap, lifts his hands in assent, or perhaps the act of giving in.

"I've only ever been a scholar to your ear, my darling," he says, in the tone you know means he loves her even when she can be frustrating. You know that because he's used that tone on you many times.

"Oh, you're no -- " Ma starts, but then she sees you. She stops talking at once. She is by your side in three steps and tightens your towel cape at your collarbone. She kneels by you. She smells like Gramma's cookie spices. "You forgot your clothes, silly boy," she says softly, smiling warmly upon you, and it makes your eyes well up.

When you tell Ma about the thoughts and the weirdness -- Does it all matter? Is the world actually bad? -- she pulls you into her arms. She is warm and her skin squishes under your fingers and you sink your tears into her shoulder.

"Some things feel very big in our hearts," Ma says. Her voice reminds you of birds, sometimes, which makes you laugh and want to cry more. You don't know why. "Some things are hard for our souls to let go."

"My soul," you say, working through the bigness of that.

She smiles. She pushes your hair from your eyes and teases you about a haircut and tickles your ears and smothers your face in embarrassing kisses until you laugh and the thing around your heart relaxes just enough.

Ma rises to her feet. "I’m gonna go get your clothes, okay?" You nod.

Da has been standing there the whole time, watching. But then Da levels with you. Da's eyes are red like the pretty earrings Ma wears sometimes. Very red. Like you could fall into them forever.

"Souls are very strange," he says. He lays his hands on your shoulders. "I believe some of them even have memories."

You find this interesting. Your ears flick. "Was I thinking about a soul memory?"

Da makes the face you and Ma call the Old Man Sad Face. His eyes go out of focus and his mouth tilts into a smile with no mirth. He leans in, whispering a secret: "Maybe. What do you think?"

You aren't sure what Da wants you to say. You just shrug.

---

You love nothing in the world more than listening to Ma sing. You like it best when you are playing in the airship’s many halls and you hear it echoing from a lower floor, bubbling through the metal like steam. When no one is around to look, you’ll lay your head against the floor and feel transported very far away. You imagine the strangest things: lights that climb the sky. Buildings that shadow everything. A million, thousand stars. People cheering in auditoriums you have never seen...

“When did you first know you’d get married?” you like to ask Da. This time you ask while looking out over Aunt Lyna’s garden. The wind tosses your hair about and the air smells of roses.

“The first time she sang,” Da says.

Ma laughs every time at this. I was just 19. We were children. But Da always smiles. It’s alright. It’s always taken you a little bit to catch up to me. And then she whacks him with a spoon or something.

But you like to ask because it feels right, when he says that. Ma always tells the story of how Da reached through time and space to save her, and it is the best story of all time because it not only has travel through time and space but also Ma being awesome and killing monsters and bringing the night sky back. Then, then! She somehow reaches back through time and space to free Da from a tower, like a prince in a story. And then they get married and you’re born. It’s amazing.

“Your Da saved me so many times,” she says, when she tells you this story. You are sitting together, watching Da tell a frustrated Aunt Lyna how to plant a cabbage. “He’ll never admit it. But I think he is the more interesting character in that story.”

She says that, of course, and you nod. But you can’t help but think: If Ma’d been silent -- if Ma had never sang to Da, just the once -- there would be no world. You never would have been born.

---

You don't know much, but you know that Ma and Da are complicated.

One time when you were supposed to be sleeping you heard Ma talking about Da like he was once made of crystal. Sometimes I wonder if I'll wake and I'll still lose you to it, she said. Like it knows somehow that its supposed to take you back. The tower. I'll wake up and you'll be all crystalline and silent.

Oh no, Da said. We’re over. I left it at the first chance to find you again, love. I don't think it wants me like that anymore.

...you make it sound jealous.

Maybe it is.

They muttered together quietly until they started kissing, you're pretty sure, so you ran away immediately.

But this was very strange. Da is squishy and warm and has two blood red eyes and a tattoo on his arm and his neck and is not at all a man of crystal. You ask about this tattoo. He says it was from his time at school. You squint at this. You hope school does not make you get a tattoo, too. Everyone says you look like Da, except Da, who says you look like Ma, but they both have reddish hair and pale skin so it doesn't make a lot of difference to you. You even have one each of their eyes: one red and one seaglass green.

Ma has more wrinkles around her eyes and deep scratches on her face. She has a ragged, old gash on her shoulder. A few old burn marks here and there. Strange gold lines on her wrists where her veins should be. It makes you feel weird. Whenever you see them, you feel outside your own body with fascination and fury at whoever did this to Ma.

Not long after you overhear that, you get a terrible scratch by meddling with something in the engine room. So you decide to ask after her scars. Usually, she just laughs and tells you a big story about fighting a monster.

This time, Ma frowns. She touches your cheek and meets your gaze. Maybe it’s because she was talking about Da being a crystal man. Maybe she is just feeling sad. You don’t know.

"I fought in a lot of wars," she says. "I had to protect a lot of people. Because I was strong. And that's what strong people do."

You nod seriously. That's right. That's what all the heroes in all the tales do.

"I had to kill many people, too," she says.

You frown. "They were bad, though." Who would fight Ma, except people who were bad? Anyone that tried to hurt Ma deserved to die. You feel only a little guilt, thinking that.

Ma places her hand between your ears. Her eyes are dark and serious. "Not all of them, baby. Most of them were just...on the wrong side. Most of them thought that they were good."

Your heart speeds up. Your throat feels dry. "But they had to be bad," you say. "You're not bad, Ma."

She smiles down at you, but there's something broken about it. She rubs your ear. She says nothing for a long time, and guilt weighs on you in a thousand ways you do not understand. You think to run or squeeze her in a hug until she can't breathe but you are pinned by her gaze and so you do nothing. She says: "All we can do is try, my sweet pie."

And then she leans in very close, smiling as if she hadn't said anything at all. "Want to find the cookies I think your Da is hiding from us?"

You smile back, heart flying, and then she squeezes you in a hug instead. You feel forgiven and forgiveness in turn. Maybe you'll never know why.

---

They say she invented the harpsichord.

(He won't remember this when he is born again.)

The melody of birds.

(Maybe he doesn't deserve to be born again. Maybe that is his punishment.)

He still listens for it.

(But perhaps the weight of freedom would be most damning. The proof he had been wrong all along.)

---

You wake up and run to Da. As usual, he is already awake as if waiting for you to come to him, sitting on the observation deck of the airship and staring at the stars through great, rounded glass. The ship does not fly at night.

He turns toward the sound of your footsteps and beckons you to join him. You scramble onto his lap, suddenly feeling too cold to sit by him with dignity.

Da reminds you of the tales about mages in ancient cities that were swallowed up by water. Mages that knew everything there was to know. The gods smote them for knowing too many things. You hope very much that they do not turn their eyes upon Da.

"Trouble sleeping, my dear one?"

You nod into his chest. He wraps his warm arms around you and hums softly for a few moments, stroking your hair.

"Da," you say. "Where do people go when they die?"

Da takes a big breath and you move as his chest rises. His humming stops but he continues to stroke your hair. "Thinking deep thoughts tonight?" he asks, voice warm.

You 'hmph' against his chest.

"They go to the Lifestream. Though there is still much we do not know and may never know..."

"Do people know each other there?"

Da's hand falls still on your back. If this were Ma, she would begin asking why you want to know this so bad, but Da never does that. He answers your questions plainly. "We don't know. You live in a...much changed world, from when I was small."

You are unsure what to make of that.

"But that means there’s so many more worlds for you to know,” he says. “For you to explore. You know how we sometimes have to be very careful and sit still in our chairs? How the world around our airship goes Purple Wavy?"

You nod. "When we go between the worlds."

"Yes. We couldn't always do that, you know. Before you were born...it was all very complicated but the worlds were all closed. Now we can do Purple Wavy and get there. And maybe one day that will include the Lifestream."

"And then I will find you and Ma and Gramma and then it'll be fine," you say, explaining this anxiety before you can even name it.

Da holds you tightly to him. "I have no doubts," he says, deep and warm. You don't look to see, but Da is looking up at the ceiling, trying not to cry. You are feeling sleepy again so you don't notice.

"When are we getting to Uncle Alphinaud? And Alisaie?" you ask.

"After you sleep tonight, love. One more sleep left."

"One more sleep until more books," you say, and that's all you remember before you drift off. When you wake up, you're tucked back in your bed. You think of the birds singing just outside your little window.

---

They say she invented the heart of music.

She wrote the tragedy about painters and light; it ends with a father giving in to the river of time. She wrote the comedy where three people marry in an explosion of color so beautiful that people in the audience sobbed. ("It is still, technically, a comedy," she would say when pressed.) She wrote music like velvet against the skin, heavy and sumptuous. She would pick your gaze apart in silence, distill you into notes that sung so high you'd see violet. The Convocation respected beauty, once -- respected creation that reached inside you and tore your heart from your ribs so you could examine it better.

This girl is not her.

This girl sings dirges and arias and poorly-paced limericks, yes, but her soul doesn't pull apart with each new composition. The world shifts around her, certainly, but the air no longer shimmers when she works. This girl doesn't sob over coffee because a boor called her latest draft "uninspired." This girl isn't her.

(Perhaps that is one subtle gift of the sundering. The world ends each day in little ways but they still believe in the promise of tomorrow.)

"Fond of her, are you?"

The Exarch had deigned him with silence, then, but Hades knows the truth. Even in this life, the souls around her are pulled toward her suffering brightness. In these last moments of his life, aether seeping from the gash in his body, he realizes they would have perished before her original glory.

He wishes for that. To be scalded, even a little bit, by her grace.

He fades into the light, and can only hope.

---

Your world is many places crossing the great sky. Your world is here in the airship with Ma and Da and maybe a sister soon, or so Ma keeps saying. You press your hands against the glass and hope you'll remember this always -- the way the world looks, perfect and green, as you fly over it like birds.

"What are you thinkin’ about so hard, cutie?"

Ma tousles your hair. Your love for her feels like it will eat the whole world.

"Nothin," you say. You look up at her and grin. "Just stories."

#ffxiv #ffxiv writing #crystal exarch x wol #crystal exarch #emet-selch #shadowbringers #shadowbringers spoilers #otp: upon an eternal wind #kathryn writes

[cloudofdarkness]

Getting To Know You

a sort of sequel to my last drabble because I get too weak for my dumb cat boy and...I was talked into this. forgive me. more CT content, bois!

You can also find it here1 >>> Fanfic Ao3 DA

As the moon raised itself ever higher into the Eorzean sky, Azalea could feel the fear in her chest grow ever deeper. For though she no longer had to fear traveling into the unknown alone, she now worried for how long it was they were taking with creating a means to do so. It’d been a few hours now since their encounter in the Crystal Tower, and she could feel that not only herself was stirred by it. That much had shown as soon as Cid had brainstormed an idea...G’raha had practically been nipping at his ankles for an answer since the two of them had returned to camp, and as she turned her attention away from the horizon, she noticed it was still to be true. Perhaps she should intervene...she really was the only other one he seemed to follow around.

“Cid, has anything new come up in your planning?” She was quick to jump in, allowing the inventor to easily push aside the attention-demanding scholar, who simply sighed as his attempts to get anything out of him were sidetracked.

“Well, it won’t be a pretty job, but I’m sure we can get something up and running by the morning. We want to ensure a safe trip there and back for you, and these kinds of things are...sensitive, to say the least. I just hope our companions can wait that long…” the last bit of his explanation was hesitant, almost as if he’d meant for it to have been simply a concern stuck inside his head. But this didn’t phase him much, for he still met the warrior with a smile.

“If I were you, I’d take the time to catch some rest. We’ve all had a tough couple of days, but if some of us can sleep on it, we should. Which means you probably should too, boy.” He continued, turning to the ever attentive seeker who merely pointed to himself in confusion.

“Me? I’m in no mood for sleeping tonight, old m-“

“Cid’s right, G’raha. Even if we don’t feel like sleeping, we should try.” Azalea cut in, trying to avoid another verbal skirmish before gently taking his arm.

“Let’s leave the old men to their work. The sooner we do that, the sooner we have a way to get our friends back.” She assured him, a confident glimmer in her lilac eyes as she led him back to the tents. He couldn't argue with that honestly, as much as he wanted to jump back into the dark right away, he also understood perfectionism, and this had to be perfect. Still, he was almost jealous at how good she’d gotten at getting him to give in. He gave a small, huffy sigh, watching her shake her head in response.

“It...won’t be that long, honestly. Cid always works quickly~” she spoke again, slipping herself into one of the tents and watching him follow curiously. She looked to where he sat himself, noticing a small pile of books stacked neatly on each side of his supposed resting area.

“Are those for study? Even while on the job, you’re still learning?”

G’raha turned to meet her gaze, actually rather surprised at her question.

“Why of course~ ‘tis what I do to pass the time. If I’ve time to worry, I’ve time to learn~ and when better to do so than now, when I need all the knowledge I can acquire to aid our friends?” He inquired, fingering through the pages of the topmost book in search for what Azalea could only assume was a bookmarked spot. She simply shook her head, watching him rather hastily turn away from the conversation, as she hadn’t quite seen him do before. Her ear flickered curiously with a question.

“You haven’t had many friends, have you?”

The noise the scholar made was one of slight offense, a huffy pout following as he set the book in his lap.

“How does taking a liking to study equate to a lack of friendship? I get along with people just fine~!” He was quick to defend, watching the warrior roll her eyes, a small smile tugging at her lips.

“I meant no offense, I’m sorry~ it’s just...I’m the same way. I’m only social because I need to be, however. I was never a very talkative kit. Growing up, my peers were quite cruel, as children can be.” She shrugged, leaning over curiously to see what exactly it was that he was reading. He seemed to calm slightly at her examination, ears lowering as he let his guard down and moved the book so that she could see as well.

“Oh do I understand...try growing up and being referred to as the Tia with the demon eye. Not exactly a name you want following you around.” 

Azalea simply huffed at this, waving such a notion off as she met his gaze. She could see why people would say that...but she always thought it to be rather interesting when others had unique eyes.

“Anyone would be foolish to actually be scared of one’s gaze. Besides, I rather like your eyes~ one resembles the stormy coast of Aleport...and the other...well, it’s like the Ul’dahn sky during sunrise! For such fools to resort to name calling like that...they must be quite the idiots~” she made an attempt to assure him, her tail flickering curiously at his lack of response. It was only a matter of seeing his shy smile to realize he was probably a bit flustered by her comment. She quickly cleared her throat, a hand coming up to rub the back of her neck.

“Regardless, I...suppose I know what you mean. I wasn’t exactly allowed to show my eyes to anyone growing up…”

G’raha managed to stir himself from his small moment of pause, his gaze growing curious once more as he watched her eyes slowly drift across the long, winding paragraphs of his book. It was almost as if she was was waiting for him to change the subject again.

“Oh? Why would that be?”

“Because…” He watched as her eyes stopped scanning, squinting as if she were processing something, before jumping slightly as she leaned in rather close to him, a devious glare clear in her eyes.

“You’re doing that thing again where you pry information out of me as sweetly as you possibly can, but you won’t be so successful this time, G’raha Tia~”

Quickly averting his gaze, G’raha tried his best to play off the fact that he’d just been caught prodding into the Warrior of Light’s history. Could she blame him though? She quite often talked about it. Almost as if she wanted to share! So how come she was always so hesitant? Had she yet to trust him?

“Mayhap I was, but you very much seem to like talking for someone who claims to be a shut-in. I would know, apparently.” He teased, watching her playful glare grow ever stronger, before she turned to locate something in the satchel resting beside her. He could hear her mumbling softly under her breath, before pulling out what looked to be a stack of cards.

“By chance, have you ever played Triple Triad?” She inquired, the playful glare in her eyes shining ever brighter as she began to shuffle the cards. 

“I can’t say I have. Why?” Was the exact answer she was looking for, and she fanned the cards out in front of him with a grin.

“Pick five.” She ordered, watching him do so with slight confusion in his eyes. Looking them over curiously. She then nodded, looking her own over with satisfaction.

“Each card has four numbers on it, the goal is to place a card next to mine with a higher number value so that you can claim my card. If you have more claimed cards than I do, you win! There’s a lot of ways to play but...how about, for each card one of us claims, we ask the other a question they have to answer.” She proposed, watching his tail flicker in interest, before giving a quick nod. 

“I’m in.”

Azalea laid her first card down, watching him look over his deck for a moment. It didn’t take him long to place a card above the one in the center, claiming it with a cheerful grin.

“Alright, tell me about your eyes. Why did you have to hide them as a child?”

Azalea sighed, a tired grin shining behind her cards as she set her deck in her lap.

“You’re really getting right into it, huh? Well...I was the only seeker in a family of keepers. They had high status in the Black Shroud and my mother didn’t want anyone finding out about her daughter that wasn’t really hers...so they blinded me in public and told everyone I lost my sight as a child. Told me that it was something our family did to save ourselves for marriage...what a load of shit.” She scoffed, setting a card down next to his with a smile. She thought for a moment, before a question came to mind.

“What’s your favorite kind of instrument?”

Of course, G’raha already had the answer for this, but he was still thinking over her casually told story...to be shunned so much at a young age, he understood that much himself but...blinded while out in public? No one was curious enough to see what had been under that blindfold? No one thought to question the poor child? 

“...I suppose it’s the voice that I favor. For no instrument could have such a different range varying from person to person. Singing has always intrigued me, and it brings joy to many, which I happen to like doing.” He affirmed, trying to find a place to set his next card, before placing one under hers, and smiling softly.

“So...you had to have removed it eventually. What happened when you did?”

Azalea once again thought over her answer, tapping her cards against her chin before shrugging.

“Well...my mother was furious, to say the least. I was essentially booted from my home...and my brother who was having the same luck as I that night came with me. We were on our own for awhile but...a few years after that, we found the Scions, and now I’m here. I’ll be honest, traveling even to Gridania scares me at the worst of times still…” she explained, before pausing as a hand was placed atop her arm in assurance, meeting the other’s mismatched gaze with a warm smile. He was always so kind..

“I’m alright now, of course. My brother is all the family I could ever need. And the Scions are also close to me in that sense. So my life is fine for the time being.”

She placed another card down, her nose scrunching up in distaste as it didn’t claim any cards. Too low on the remaining side to cause any kind of win. Was he...beating her at her own game??? Quick learner…he was very determined to get his questions in.

She remained silent now, watching him happily place his last card down, confirming his win with a satisfied tail flicker.

“So...if I’m not treading too far...you were brought in as a child, yes? You’ve no idea of your origin?”

Azalea shook her head, a small shrug following. She never knew her original family, no. But she was never really one to care about it that much. If she was given up, it was for a reason, and she didn’t care to spend time searching when she had a family of her making. Of people who stayed.

“I don’t, but I’ve got more important things to be concerned about that are much more exciting. And like I said, I’ve a family of my own. That boy Alphinaud is growing on me more and more every day...I might have to face the fact that I’ve become an elder sister.” She giggled at the thought, knowing if she ever admitted that to the young elezen, he might faint out of appreciation. The amount of care he’d placed in her was almost Saffron’s amount of ridiculous. 

She then moved to shuffle the cards, letting him pick five once more and nodding.

“I take it you want another round? Plenty of questions dancing in your head now?”

With a smile in his eyes, G’raha nodded, and they began again.

—

Azalea yawned as they’d concluded their fifth round, and perhaps the fifth one G’raha had beaten her at. She’d stopped keeping track of their scoring after the third round, her fatigue finally settling in. He seemed pretty satisfied at this point with his new knowledge of her, and she was glad he was, for some reason...perhaps she’d wanted to talk about herself finally...perhaps they both just needed a friend to confide in.

“Alright, I’m calling it. I’m too tired to go on~” She croaked, shuffling her cards back together and tying them together with the stray ribbons sitting atop her satchel.

“I’m sure you’ve got plenty of story-telling material to work with now, huh?” 

The scholar smiled, nodding in satisfaction as he grabbed for one of his books again, this time satisfied that he could. 

“Perhaps for someday~ for now, I’m just glad I got to know my first proper friend.” He chimed, watching her tuck away her cards and casually shake off her jacket, before curling up atop her sleeping space. She was quiet for a moment, presumably in thought, before turning on her side towards him, looking up to him sleepily.

“...can you promise me something?”

“I believe I owe you one after all the information I drained from you.”

Azalea smiled tiredly, her tail wrapping around her middle as she could feel sleep finally coming to take her.

“Now that you know these things...now that I can call you my friend...you no longer have to think of me as the warrior of light. Not some flawless and powerful hero with the Echo...just...Azalea. If you could...well, it would be a nice change for once…” 

The scholar’s gaze grew gentle at her proposal, and he nodded proudly, causing a wave of relief to wash over her. At least one person could understand…

“Azalea...my first friend. My inspiration. You know, I like that much better than simply the Warrior of Light! Gives it a personal spin~” he laughed, hearing her tired one accompany his as he opened his book once more, still too active-minded to consider sleep at this point.

“Yes, I think I’ll keep that title~ I- oh!” He paused, hearing the faint snoring of the other and finding it rather humorous how quickly she’d fallen asleep. 

Well, it had been a long day, but it was to be over soon.

—

Run from it all you desire, but the Cloud will swallow you eventually. It is the air that you breathe, what constantly surrounds you, fills your lungs. Deny it, and it will simply drown out your doubt. You can feel it, can’t you, Warrior? Those past regrets pulling at your limbs, tugging at your heartstrings? It yearns for you, and soon you will rejoin her…

Azalea gasped for air as she woke, her claws dug deep into the fabric of her jacket she’d been clinging onto in her sleep. What in the seven hells was that? More nightmares to mock her? She wasn’t scared of her journey any longer. She didn’t need these...false messages scaring her. She was far too tired for this…

“Azalea? Are you alright?” 

Her ears flickered back curiously, noticing the other was still quite awake, still browsing through his books as if he hadn't a care in the world. Did he ever sleep, she wondered? Perhaps not everyone could. She’s certainly wasn’t. And yet…she found herself to be beyond tired. If only there was a way to stay asleep so that she was set for the next morning…

Sighing softly, she barely gave a shrug, scooting herself over to him and lazily leaning her head against his arm. She could feel him freeze up for a moment, presumably not used to such an action. Though he just as quickly settled, probably figuring she was just sleep deprived.

“Are you comfortable with reading aloud? Stories usually help, and I rather like listening to your voice explaining things when you’re not cocky about it~” She teased, her tail wrapping around her middle again. This was better. This was calm.

G’raha on the other hand, was trying to keep his cool, feeling rather taken aback at the other’s actions, even if she was sleepy. He’d honestly never been so close to someone else before...but with how casual she’d been about it, it was almost easier to come down from his shock. He nodded, trying to fight the warmth in his cheeks as she closed her eyes, and he noticed how her tail wrapped itself firmly around her, almost like it was...hugging her. Gods that was...quite adorable. Did that comfort her somehow? She’d mentioned during one of his questions that her brother was rather affectionate. Perhaps she was used to him doing the same thing. Perhaps...if he did the same, it might help her?

“I-I suppose I could~ though do forgive me if I grow too dramatic at times~ I rather like a good tall tale.” 

It was quiet for a moment, and G’raha could feel his tail flickering hesitantly in contemplation of his next move. Was there really that much thought needing to go into this? 

“But before I do...I’ve one more question. I know we’re no longer playing, but I promise it’s...it’s an important one.”

Azalea opened a single eye at this, an ear lazily raising itself in question as she barely felt the other’s scarlet tail wrap around her own. She could honestly only focus on so much.

“Ask away~”

“...do you like sandwiches? And, if you do...what kind is your favorite?”

With as much energy as she could muster, Azalea raised an eyebrow, a tired laugh leaving her as her tail subconsciously wrapped around his.

“I love all food, silly~ sandwiches included. Why? Are you perhaps making me breakfast~? Because I’m quite fond of Apple jelly..oh gods, am I hungry? No. No...that’s just the sleepiness…but really, why do you ask?”

“Just noting something for the future, I suppose. Like you’ve been doing.” He shrugged, earning another giggle as Azalea closed her eyes again. 

“Anyhow, to the stories, yes? You might know this one. It originated in Gridania. The tale of the weeping sylph~”

The sleepy warrior barely nodded now, giving him all the confirmation he needed to begin, but before he did, she mumbled softly.

“Thank you, Raha…g’night…”

Raha…

Surely she’d just slurred her words in fatigue but...for some reason his heart still skipped a beat hearing her say it. Raha…and it sounded lovely, even if it was barely mumbled. 

But now wasn’t the time to linger on those kinds of things. He now had a story to tell.

And he read until he could read no longer.

#eden writes #ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #g'raha tia #warrior of light #me dummy for them? me dummy #TWO BROOOSSS #SITTING IN A PITCH TENTTT #LESS THAN FIVE FEET APART CAUSE THEYRE GAY

[loretranscripts]

Lore Episode 3: The Beast Within (Transcript) - 6th April 2015

tw: murder, rape, death of children, bodily mutilation, cannibalism, graphic descriptions of violence, ableist language, disease, werewolves

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

Ask anyone in the mental health profession about full moons and you’ll get a surprising answer. They’ll respond with something that sounds incredibly like folklore and myth. The full moon has the power to bring out the crazy in people. We’ve believed this for a long time. We refer to unstable people as “lunatics”, a word that is Latin. It’s built from the root word luna, which means “moon”. And for centuries, has operated under the conviction that changes in the luna cycle can cause people to lose touch with reality. Just ask the parents of a young child and they’ll tell you tales of wild behaviour and out-of-the-ordinary disobedience at certain times of the month. Science tells us that just as the moon’s pull on the ocean creates tides that rise and fall in severity, so too does our planet’s first satellite tug on the water inside our bodies, changing our behaviour. As modern people, when we talk about the full moon we tend to joke about this insane, extraordinary behaviour. But maybe we joke to avoid the deeper truth, an idea that we are both frightened and embarrassed that we even entertain. For most of us, you see, the full moon conjures up an image that is altogether unnatural and unbelievable. That large, glowing, perfect circle in the night sky makes us think of just one thing: werewolves. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

Science has tried many times over the years to explain our obsession with the werewolf. One theory is a disease known as hypertrichosis, sometimes known as “wolfitis”. It’s a condition of excessive, unusual body hair growth, oftentimes covering the person’s entire face. Think Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf. Psychologists actually have an official diagnosis in the DSM IV handbook known as “clinical lycanthropy”. It’s defined as a delusional syndrome where the patient believes they can transform into an animal, but the changes only take place in their mind, of course. Delusions, though, have to start somewhere. Patients who believe that they are Napoleon Bonaparte have some previous knowledge of who he was. I think it’s fair to assume that those who suffer from clinical lycanthropy have heard of werewolves before. It’s actually pretty easy to bump into the myth, thanks to modern popular culture. Werewolves have been featured in, or at least appeared in, close to 100 films in Hollywood since 1913.

One of the earliest mentions of something even resembling the modern werewolf can actually be found in the 2000-year-old writings of the Roman poet Vergil. In his Eclogue 9, written about 40BCE, he described a man named Moeris, who could transform himself into a wolf using herbs and poisons. About 50 years later, Gaius Petronius wrote a satirical novel called, appropriately, Satyricon, which I think is basically the equivalent of Stephen King writing a horror novel called “Frighticon”. In it, he tells the tale of a man named Niceros. In the story, Niceros was travelling with a friend, and when that friend suddenly took off his clothes, urinated in a circle and transformed into a wolf right before his eyes, before running off toward a large field of sheep. The next day, Niceros was told by the sheep-owner that one of the shepherds stabbed a wolf in the neck with a pitch fork. Later that day, Niceros noticed that his friend, now returned to the house, had a similar wound on his neck.

In the Greek myth of the god Zeus and an Arcadian king named Lycaon, Zeus took on the form of a human traveller. At one point in his journey he visited Arcadia, and during his time in that country, he visited the royal court. The king of the land, Lycaon, somehow recognised Zeus for who he truly was and tried, in true Greek form, of course, to kill him by serving him a meal of human flesh. But Zeus was a smart guy, after all, and he caught Lycaon in the act, throwing the mythological equivalent of a temper tantrum. He destroyed the palace, killed all 50 of the king’s sons with lightning bolts, and then of course cursed King Lycaon himself. The punishment? Lycaon would be doomed to spend the rest of his life as a wolf, presumably because wolves were known for attacking and eating humans, and he tried to serve human flesh. Most scholars believe that this legend is what gives birth to the term lycanthropy: lukos being the Greek word for wolf, and anthropos, the word for man.

Werewolves aren’t just a Greco-Roman thing. In the 13th century, the Norse recorded their mythological origins in something called the Völsunga saga. Despite their culture being separated from the Greeks by thousands of miles and many centuries, there are in fact tales of werewolves present in their histories. One of the stories in the Völsunga saga involves a father and son pair: Sigmund and Sinfjotli. During their travels, the two men came across a hut in the woods where they found two enchanted wolf skins. These skins had the power to change the wearer into a wolf, giving them all the characteristics that the beast was known for: power, speed, and cunning. The catch, according to the saga, was that once put on, the wolf pelt could only be taken off every 10 days. Undeterred, the father son duo each put on one of the wolf skins, and transform into the beasts. They decided to split up and go hunting in their new forms, but they made an arrangement that if either of them encountered a party of men over the certain size of seven, then they were supposed to howl for the other to come join them in the hunt. Sigmund’s son, however, broke his promise, killing off a hunting party of 11 men. When Sigmund discovered this, he fatally injured his son. After the god Odin intervened and healed him, both men took off the pelts and burned them. You see, from the very beginning, werewolves were a supernatural thing, a curse, a change in the very nature of humanity. They were ruled by cycles of time and feared by those around them.

Things get interesting when we go to Germany. In 1582, the country of Germany was being pulled apart by a war between Catholics and Protestants, and one of the towns that played host to both sides was the small town of Bedburg. Keep in mind that there were also still outbreaks of the Black Death, so this was an age of conflict and violence. People understood loss – they had become numb to it, and it would take something incredibly extraordinary to surprise them. First, there were cattle mutilations: farmers from the area surrounding Bedburg would find dead cattle in their fields. It started of infrequent, but grew to become a daily occurrence, something that went on for weeks. Cows that had been sent out to pasture were found torn apart. It was as if a wild animal had attacked them. Naturally, the farmers assumed it was wolves, but it didn’t stop there. Children began to go missing. Young women vanished from the main roads around Bedburg. In some cases their bodies were never found, but those that were had been mauled by something horribly violent. Finding your cattle disembowelled is one thing, but when it’s your daughter or your wife, well, it can cause panic, and fear, and so the community spiralled into hysteria.

Now, we think of historical European paranoia and we often think of witchcraft. The 15th and 16th centuries were filled with witch hunts: burnings, hangings, and an overwhelming hysteria that even spread across the Atlantic to the British colonies, where it destroyed more lives. The Witch Trails of Salem, Massachusetts are the most famous of those examples, but at the same time, Europe was also on fire with fear of werewolves. Some historians think that in France alone, some 30,000 people were accused of being werewolves, and some (hundreds, they say) were even executed for it, either by hanging or being burnt at the stake. You see, the fear of werewolves was real, and for the town of Bedburg, it was very real.

One report from this event tells of two men and a woman, who were travelling just outside the city walls. They heard a voice call out to them for help from within the trees beside the road, and one of the men stepped into the trees to give assistance. When he didn’t return, the second man entered the woods to find him, and he also didn’t return. The woman caught on, attempted to run, but something exited the woods and attacked her. The bodies of the men were later found, mangled and torn apart, but the woman’s never was. Later, villagers found severed limbs in the fields near Bedburg, limbs from the people who were missing. It was clear that something horrible was hunting them.

Another report tells of a group of children playing in a field near the cattle. As they played, something ran into the field and grabbed a small girl by the neck before trying to tear her throat out. Thankfully the high collar on her dress actually saved her life, and she managed to scream. Now, cows don’t like screaming apparently, and they began to stampede. Frightened by the cattle, the attacker let go of the girl and ran for the forest, and this was the last straw for the people of Bedburg. They took the hunt to the beast.

According to a pamphlet from 1589, the men of the town hunted for the creature for days. Accompanied by dogs and armed for killing, these brave men ventured into the forest and, finally, found it. In the end, it was the dogs that cornered the beast. Dogs are fast and they beat the men to their prey. When the hunters finally did arrive, they found the creature cornered. According to the pamphlet, the wolf transformed into a man right before their eyes. While the wolf had been just another beast, the man was someone they recognised. It was a wealthy, well-respected farmer from town named Peter Stubbe, sometimes recorded as Stumpp. Stubbe confessed to it all, and his story seemed to confirm their darkest fears. He told them that he had made a pact with the devil at the age of 12. The deal? In exchange for his soul, the devil would give him a plethora of worldly pleasures, but like most stories, a greedy heart is difficult to satisfy. Stubbe admitted to being a, and I quote,  “wicked fiend, with the desire for wrong and destruction”, that he was “inclined to blood and cruelty”. Now, to sate that thirst, the devil had given him a magical belt of wolf skin. Putting it on, he claimed, would transform him into the monstrous shape of a wolf. Sound familiar?

He told the men that had captured him that he had taken off the belt in the forest, and some were sent back to retrieve it, but it was never found. Still, superstition and fear drove them to torture and interrogate the man, who confessed to decades of horrible, unspeakable crimes. Well-known around the town, Stubbe told his captors that he would often walk through Bedburg and wave to the families and friends of those he had killed. It delighted him, he said, that none of them suspected that he was the killer. Sometimes he would use these walks to pick out future victims, planning how he would get them outside the city walls, where he could, and I quote, “ravish and cruelly murder them”. Stubbe even admitted to going on killing sprees simply because he took pleasure in the bloodshed. He would kill lambs and goats and eat their raw flesh. He even claimed to have eaten unborn children, ripped straight from their mothers’ wombs.

The human mind is always solving problems, even when we’re asleep and unaware of it. The world is full of things that don’t always sit right with us, and in our attempt to deal with life we… rationalise. In more superstitious times it was easy to lean on old fears and legends. The Tuberculosis outbreaks of the 1800s led people to truly believe that the dead were sucking the life out of the living. The stories that gave birth to the vampire mythology also provided people with a way to process Tuberculosis and its horrible symptoms. Perhaps the story of the werewolf shows us that same phenomenon, but in reverse. Rather than creating stories to explain the mysteries of death, perhaps we created the story of the werewolf to help justify the horrors of life and human nature. The tale of Peter Stubbe sounds terrible, but when you hold it up to modern day serial killers, such as Jeffery Dahmer or Richard Trenton Chase, it’s par for the course. The difference between them and Stubbe is simply 400 years of modernisation. With the advent of electrical lights pushing away the darkness and global exploration exposing much of the world’s fears to be just myth, it’s become more and more difficult to blame our flaws on monsters. The beast, it turns out, has been inside us the whole time.

And Peter Stubbe? Well, the people of Bedburg executed him for his crimes. On October 31st, 1589, (Halloween, mind you) he was given what was thought to be a fair and just punishment. He was strapped, spread eagle and naked, to a large, wooden wheel, and then his skin was pealed off with red hot pinchers. They broke his arms and legs with the blunt end of an axe before finally turning the blade over, and chopping off his head. His body was burnt at the stake in front of the entire town, and then his torture wheel was mounted on a tall pole, topped with the statue of a wolf. On top of that, they placed his severed head. Justice, or just one more example of the cruelty of mankind? Perhaps in the end, we’re all really monsters, aren’t we?

Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mahnke. You can find a transcript of the show, as well as links to source material, at lorepodcast.com. Lore is a bi-weekly podcast, so be sure to check back in for a new episode every two weeks. And if you enjoy scary stories, I happen to write them. You can find a full list of my supernatural thrillers, available in paperback and ebook format, at aaronmahnke.com/novels. Thanks for listening.

#lore podcast #podcasts #aaron mahnke #werewolves #peter stubbe #germany #peter stumpp #vergil #eclogues #serial killer #folklore #transcripts #3

[emritcheson]

Is Mortimer Beckett and The Book of Gold Really That Bad?

(Full disclosure: this post contains mild spoilers for discussion’s sake.)

So I am a big fan of the Delicious series and the many spin-offs that have launched from its universe, now formally known as GameHouse Original Stories.  Yes, they sometimes seem like they’re hyper-marketed at that Hallmark Channel crowd, but they are the cream of the crop of modern casual games, I promise.  That said, not every game that comes out of GameHouse Studios is a masterpiece.  But just because it’s not a masterpiece doesn’t mean there isn’t good to be found or fun to be had.

Enter Mortimer Beckett and The Book of Gold, released in 2017.  For those unaware, Mortimer Beckett was not originally a GameHouse IP, instead starring in his own series of hidden object games developed by Paprikari from 2007 to 2012.  I played the first in the series, Secrets of Spooky Manor, and dabbled with others, but I am by no means an aficionado on Mortimer Beckett lore.  Actually, I’m not big into the hidden object genre period.  I can tell you, though, that this game feels very different to the traditional Mortimer Beckett series.  Paprikari still worked as the developer for Book of Gold, but the overall style and flavor is extremely influenced by GameHouse.

I can only assume GameHouse acquired permission to use Mortimer’s character around the same time they acquired Sally from GamesCafe’s Sally’s Salon series.  These were two fairly well-known faces in casual gaming for many years, and for those characters to suddenly be picked up by a new company and breathed new life was a strange move to witness.

Not to say it was a bad one.  I was an am a dedicated Sally fan and Sally’s Salon - Beauty Secrets blew my expectations out of the water.

Book of Gold on the other hand...well, that’s why we’re here.

Before I even played the game, the first things I noticed were the consistently negative ratings it received across distributing websites.  Now all things considered, I wasn’t expecting perfection, but these scores were abysmally low.  I thought, “it can’t be as bad as that, right?”

And after playing through the whole thing in one night, I will proudly go on record to say that this game does not deserve these low ratings.

Buuut it’s not perfect, either.

So let’s talk.

First, the elephant in the room - the gameplay itself.  As previously stated, Mortimer Beckett is a hidden object series.  GameHouse is best known for their time management games that occasionally have hidden object mini games sprinkled through the levels.  Mini games and main gameplay mechanics are two very different things, mind you.

That said, I think the translation of the gameplay went very well.  Better than I was expecting, at least.  You’re given a scene in which you must find pieces of different objects that will help you in your current situation.  Then, once those pieces are put together, you can use those objects in the scene to complete small puzzles.  Even with my limited hidden object experience, I can tell that this style of finding pieces of things is quite unique.  

In fact, this was my biggest complaint back in Secrets of Spooky Manor: the pieces that some objects broke into seemed arbitrary and unnatural, making it harder to find what I was looking for.  In Book of Gold, the objects are broken up where they naturally have different “sections” (for example, if you’re looking for a screwdriver, it would be in two separate pieces: the handle and the bit) and gameplay is smoother as a result.

There are also three different kinds of challenge levels throughout the game in which you have to complete certain tasks within a time limit.  These provide a nice sprinkle of adrenaline rush as the main levels have no time limit and you’re welcome to stare at and contemplate them as long as you wish.  So all in all, the gameplay is pretty solid.

Let’s discuss the plot.  Mortimer Beckett moves to Snuggford after inheriting a museum from his Uncle Jerome (a staple character of the series until now, I understand).  In his last letter, Uncle Jerome mentions something called the Book of Gold which apparently possesses mystical qualities, and warns Mortimer to keep it safe.

Even as someone with very little preexisting attachment to this character, I found Mortimer very charming and enjoyable, in that “I don’t really know what I’m doing but I’m going to make the best of it anyway, and probably embarrass myself in the process” kind of way.  It was also refreshing simply to play as a guy, as GameHouse Original Stories pretty much exclusively feature women protagonists.

Speaking of which, while this is happening, Kate O’Malley (Delicious Emily’s sister-in-law) is having something of a life crisis and desperately looking for some kind of adventure to get her out of her “boring” hometown.

This is good for two reasons.  One: Kate is a character seen very little of in the Delicious series.  Other than she’s Patrick’s sister and she used to work as a perfume salesgirl, we didn’t know much about her until Book of Gold.  The writers really gave her some agency this time around, where previously she felt kind of cardboard.  And two: Snuggford is often viewed as a very idyllic small town with emphasis on supporting local businesses and fostering community with others.  It’s oddly refreshing to see a protagonist character have a negative view of this place.

Anyway, the two run into each other, shenanigans ensue, and an adventure does indeed begin.

Now if GameHouse is known for anything besides time management gameplay, it’s their heterosexual romantic subplots.  And as much as I was hoping for a platonic partnership this time around, I have to say I ended up liking Kate and Mortimer more than I expected.  It is a bit tropey and shoved down your throat at times, but I think their personalities play off each other quite nicely - Mortimer the somewhat bumbling scholar and Kate the confident risk-taker.  In the end I was genuinely rooting for them.

The story itself as a whole is...fine.  Not amazing, not terrible, but fine.  It has good intentions but, as I said, falls into tropes and shenanigans rather than raising the stakes.  And when the stakes are raised, it fails to explain why and generally lacks urgency.

The best parts of the story in my opinion are the more character-driven scenes.  Stemming from Kate’s desire for adventure, there is an underlying emotional theme about whether or not you’re satisfied with your life and where you are in it.  I think this is handled better than the immediate plot, but could still use some tweaks.  Overall, the writing has the same wonkiness I would expect from any story that hasn’t truly found its groove yet, but it does enough to keep you intrigued.

I absolutely cannot knock GameHouse for trying to do something new, especially in this cash cow of a universe they’ve built for themselves.  They’ve been using basically the same formula for the past ten years or so, and it makes sense that they would want to branch out into other things while still attracting their core audience.

Unfortunately, this game has some very apparent growing pains.

My biggest issue without a doubt is the art.  It’s inconsistent, there’s no other word for it.  Some sprites are completely 2-D, others are completely rendered in 3-D.  Sometimes it’s 2.5-D.  Sometimes it’s 2-D heads stitched onto 3-D bodies.  Some characters look very disproportionate when standing next to others.  Not to mention a lot of reused assets from other games.  I can’t show it for spoiler reasons, but there is a scene near the very end of the game where the character cutting-and-pasting is so painfully obvious and so sloppily done that I almost had to close my computer and take a lap around the house to compose myself.

Also, this game has far less music than I expected.  Despite a swingin’ noir-style theme song written by Adam Gubman, most cutscenes carry out with only generic background white noise for company.  And let me tell you, when a dramatic scene is going down and the only thing you can hear is the muffled voice of an airport intercom?  It feels wrong.  And also lends to that lack of urgency I mentioned earlier.

And as much as I hate to, we have to talk about the “exotic” themes.

For the most part, I would describe GameHouse as having “lukewarm sensitivity” to cultures that are not North American or European.  They have good intentions and for the most part their characters are pretty well rounded, but their research still leaves a little bit to be desired.  I think the Inuit tribe from Delicious - Emily’s Hopes and Fears is the best example of what I’m talking about.

However, I would not put Book of Gold in that same sensitivity tier.  During the third chapter, Mortimer and Kate travel to South America (it’s never specifically stated but since Machu Picchu is clearly visible in one of the scenes, it’s pretty safe to say they’re in Peru) and end up getting lost in the jungle.  Kate is more or less kidnapped by a group of natives, whose leader speaks what can only be described as “cave man English” and invites her to join his harem.  When she refuses, he threatens to kill her if she doesn’t complete the puzzles set before her.  Then, when Kate manages to escape, the tribe leader leans over to one of his guards and says, “Those tourists are so gullible,” indicated that it was all an act.  I still have no idea what to think about this entire section.

There’s also a great deal of Arabian influence in the second half of the game, as the main villain claims to be a sheikh, but I would say that it’s more there for visual interest than anything else.  The side characters you meet in this arc aren’t particularly memorable, and aside from avoiding a sandstorm and racing camels at one point, the desert setting is just kind of...there.  It’s not as bad as it could have been, but it certainly wasn’t doing the game as a whole many favors, either.

To wrap this up with a bow, if you disliked this game simply because it was different and not the “signature GameHouse experience” you’ve come to expect, I feel sorry for you.  If you disliked this game because it doesn’t feel as polished as it could have been and the graphics are a bit of a train wreck?  Yeah, I get you.  But I still found this game enjoyable despite its flaws.  And if you’ve been avoiding this game because the bad ratings scared you off, pull on your big girl panties and manage your expectations.

I really hope that GameHouse sees Book of Gold as a learning experience and not a failure, because I think there’s some genuine potential here.  With some tweaks and polish (and clearer art direction), I would happily accept another game like this.

#mortimer beckett #gamehouse #gamehouse original stories #hidden object games #game review #original article

[vino-and-doggos]

Duality, chapter 2

Read on AO3

Chapter Length: 3623 (full length so far: 7467)

Rated: E

Status: Incomplete (2/?)

Summary: Roy Mustang is a young man, dealing with his burgeoning sexuality, a difficulty alchemy teacher and his hard-set daughter, and a good-looking cadet that also likes quiche.

@flourchildwrites is the best beta in all of existence, sorry everyone else

Chapter 2: The Miss and the Master

Roy’s joints protested as he stood up from his seat on the train. Stretching and shaking the tiredness out of his limbs, he retrieved his suitcase from the overhead luggage rack.

The new scholar eagerly made his way down the narrow corridor of the train, carelessly knocking the worn, leather suitcase against the equally worn, red, upholstered seats as he passed. However, he stopped short of utterly leaping onto the platform. Roy remembered that he was there to prove himself, so he stepped down cautiously. He was a scholar, an alchemist, and no matter how anxious he was to get started, he forced himself to appear calm and polite.

The East City train station was completely different than Roy had anticipated. Growing up in Central meant that Roy was accustomed to hustle and bustle around the train station. As he stepped off the platform and looked around, he realized that it was...quiet.

Not much going on today, huh? he thought. The whole city seemed sleepy, despite it being well in to the afternoon, almost the evening. Maybe it’s more appropriate to call it a town, rather than a city, Roy pondered. By definition of its name, it was a city. But seeing it definitely made him think of something smaller, something closer.

Continuing to look around, he saw that the streets were structured similarly to Central, but the further out from the train station one went, the farther apart the houses were spaced. To the right, set back into the green hills, was the military base. Significantly smaller than the one that was housed in Central, yet still impressive, Roy almost couldn’t believe that this was the home of the best offensive forces in the military. Turning to his left, he could see the river shining in the early evening sunlight between the houses.

Looking at the paper in his hand with his new master’s address, he started to the right when he heard a voice ask, “Roy Mustang?”

Roy spun around and saw a girl with bright blonde hair cut in a very close crop with a fringe across her forehead. She’s cute, he thought. She looked like the quintessential tomboy next door, although the concept was something still vague to Roy, seeing as his room was next to Anna’s in the private quarters of the Madam’s bar. When he looked into her brown eyes, though, he saw someone who was wise beyond her years. “Yes?”

“I’m Riza Hawkeye. I’ve been sent to collect you from the station and bring you to the house.” Roy caught himself before he commented on her language being so sophisticated for her age. He didn’t realize that his master had a daughter, but if the rumors about how tough he were on his students were true, that would most likely explain her vocabulary, too.

“Oh! Hello, Miss Hawkeye, it’s so nice to meet you. You didn’t have to do that, though, I could have found my way.”

She looked at him, her face emotionless. “While I don’t doubt you, Mr. Mustang, the house is this way,” she pronounced, pointing to the left.

Roy smiled sheepishly and ruffled the back of his hair. “As I said, I would have found my way… eventually.”

Miss Hawkeye rolled her eyes and scoffed quietly. “Follow me,” she directed. “The house is just on the other side of the river, about a 20 minute walk.” She turned and started in that direction.

Definitely wise beyond her years, thought Roy as he checked once more for all his belongings. He hurried to catch up with the blonde.

After what felt like forever, but in reality was only a few moments of silence, Roy spoke. I should get to know her if we’re going to be living together - plus I wonder if she can give me any information on her father.

“Have you lived here your whole life?”

“Yes, I have,” she responded shortly.

The measured vowels and crisp enunciations of the young girl’s voice were strikingly dissimilar from the lazier Eastern accent that Roy expected to hear in these parts. He slipped that particular tidbit of information into a folder in his mind tentatively labeled “Master Hawkeye’s Daughter.”

After a few moments, Miss Hawkeye sighed, sounding annoyed by the prospect of small talk. “And you? Where were you born and raised?”

“Central. Not in the same house my whole life, but still in Central nonetheless.”

“Oh? Have you moved around a lot?” Miss Hawkeye questioned. She immediately looked like she was cross with herself for engaging Roy with questions.

“No, only once,” said Roy. Quickly, he decided to elaborate a bit while he still had her talking. “When my parents died, I moved in with my aunt. I was pretty young, though, so I don’t remember moving.”

“I’m sorry,” Miss Hawkeye murmured, eyes cast to the ground.

“It’s okay,” Roy shrugged. “I told you, I was really young. I wish I had gotten to know them better, but I am really lucky to have my Aunt Chris.”

Miss Hawkeye nodded her head as they started over the bridge spanning the river. Very quietly, she added, “My mother died when I was younger, too. Perhaps not as young as you, though.”

“I’m sorry,” said Roy plainly, but sincerely. “At least you still have your father?”

At this, her face turned stony. “My father isn’t quite the parenting type. I’m taken care of - I have shelter, I’m fed, I have clothes, but affection isn’t his strong suit.”

Roy frowned. “Hm. Well, as long as I’m here, I think I’d like to be your friend, Miss Hawkeye.”

The aspiring alchemist slipped on his most disarming smile like a pair of old gloves. He threw the tried and true expression in Miss Hawkeye’s direction, expecting her friendship and trust in return. The young blonde was not so easily persuaded.

She glanced sideways at him as he continued to walk beside her. “My father doesn’t take kindly to his apprentices attempting to...befriend...me,” Miss Hawkeye said coldly, her eyes returning to the packed dirt street in front of her.

“O-oh...okay…” Roy stuttered, slightly deflated. “I mean… I just thought… Well. It’s up to you. I’m not here to make enemies. If you don’t want to be friends, that’s okay, but I’m not going to bite.”

Miss Hawkeye looked over at him again. “We’ll see. Most of father’s apprentices don’t last very long, anyway.” An uncomfortable silence hung between the two as they continued walking, Roy lagging behind his master’s daughter.

As the young man wound his way down the dingy dirt path, he mulled over everything that he found out from Miss Hawkeye. She just seems so… standoffish, thought Roy. He wondered if she really didn’t want to get to know him or if there was something else at play. His thoughts shifted to her father. His new master.

She says that he’s cold, that he doesn’t show her affection. But then she says that he’s overprotective of her if one of his apprentices tries to befriend her? I can’t get a read on him...or her. Roy continued pondering over what he thought was in store for him until the blonde in front of him stopped abruptly.

“Here we are.” Miss Hawkeye gestured to her right. Roy’s mouth dropped open. Though Miss Hawkeye had dismissed the family home as just a house, Roy thought it was more accurately described as a mansion.

“This is where you live??” Roy said, dumbstruck.

“Yes?” Miss Hawkeye questioned. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing! It’s huge!!” Roy exclaimed.

“It’s not that impressive. Certainly you’ve seen better housing in Central?” she asked cooly.

“Not like this,” Roy said, an air of wonder seeping into his voice. He looked at the two-story - wait, three-story? - white stone house that seemed to loom over the landscape. The yard was impeccably maintained and surrounded by a wrought-iron fence with a large gate in the front. Red brick made up the corners of the house and outlined the chimneys on each side. Beyond the fenced-in backyard, Roy could see the base of the hills, lined with trees.

The squeaking of the gate opening pulled Roy out of his thoughts.

“Are you coming in?” Miss Hawkeye asked as she smirked. It was then that the boy realized that she might have been taking him for a ride.

“Definitely,” Roy smiled back.

They traveled up the path together, and as they approached the front door, it began to open. A figure stood in the doorway. The shadow seemed imposing, despite the slight frame of the individual. A voice sounded from the darkness.

“Welcome, Roy Mustang. I am Berthold Hawkeye, and I will be your new alchemy teacher.”

Roy gulped at the deep, rough voice. But then he steeled his nerves and bowed low.

“Nice to meet you, Master Hawkeye. I am greatly humbled by your offer and will work hard to not disappoint you,” Roy intoned slowly and deliberately, making sure to use his most polite and obedient voice.

As the new student straightened his back, he noticed Hawkeye had stepped into the light and was looking down his nose at him. To his surprise, his master chuckled.

“Ease up, son. I expect a lot out of my apprentices, but you don’t have to be like...that.”

Roy’s eyes slightly widened as he took in the master’s appearance. Master Hawkeye, at first glance, was dressed smartly in a deep brown lounging robe. Around his neck was a matching red ascot that stood out against his white shirt. Upon closer inspection, however, Roy noticed that the clothes were faded and worn around the edges. His master was slim and slightly withered, which surprised the protégé, considering how striking the man’s shadow was. His long, sandy hair hung lank around his sallow face. As Roy was taking in his appearance, Hawkeye continued speaking.

“Yes, I want your respect; no, I don’t want you to bend over backwards to try to please me. You are going to live here until I see that you are no longer fit to study with me. I expect you to study and work hard, but I also expect you to make this house your home. Are you ready to begin?”

Roy took a deep breath. He smiled. “Yes, sir, I am.”

“Good,” replied Hawkeye. “Then why don’t you come in?” He turned and walked into the house, Miss Hawkeye following behind him. Roy stood on the doorstep, the whiplash of his expectations versus the actual conversation left him reeling for a moment. Shaking his head minutely, Roy stepped over the threshold.

Compared to the warmth outside, the house was cool. The inside was not nearly as extravagant as the outside appeared, and, in fact, it felt rather cozy. From where Roy was standing, he could see the hardwood floors extend into the rooms on each side of the entryway. To his left was a sitting room with a coordinated set of furniture; the armchairs looked like they had seen better days, but were still in decent shape. To his right was a study with a large desk.

Rich built-in mahogany bookshelves covered the walls of Master Hawkeye’s study from floor to ceiling. Straight ahead on the right side of the hallway, the steps on the ornate staircase were partially obscured by carpeting that was slightly worn in the middle. The hardwood floors continued down the left side of the hallway and traversed all the way to the back of the house. There, Roy could see another doorway on the left of the house and what he assumed was a kitchen at the end of the hallway.

Hawkeye fluidly and confidently took a right into the study and motioned for Roy to follow him. Leaving his things in the entryway, Roy stepped through the doorway and pulled the pocket door behind him closed, hopefully walking as confidently as his master. The younger alchemist’s legs, however, wobbled under him - partially from nerves, partially from excitement.

He sat down gingerly in the chair across from Master Hawkeye, almost scared to make a noise.

“How much do you know about alchemy?” Hawkeye asked Roy over his steepled fingers.

“I know the basics,” Roy started. “I know the law of equivalent exchange… some basic transmutation circles… I know the periodic table of elements!” he finished enthusiastically.

“That’s a decent foundation. Let’s hope you were taught correctly, hm?”

Roy faltered. He didn’t even think that what he had learned could be faulty information. Or even that the basis of how he started to learn could be incorrect.

Master Hawkeye leaned forward in his chair, still eyeing the new student sitting in front of him, seeming to sense the sudden apprehension in his the young alchemist. Quietly, he spoke.

“Alchemy is a science, first and foremost. However, alchemy is also an art, something that must be crafted. Any hack in the kitchen can scramble an egg; it might not be the best-tasting scrambled egg that you’ve ever had, but it’s serviceable food. Similarly, any mediocre alchemist can fix a broken vase or destroy a sidewalk to make some rubble to throw at an opponent. I am not here to teach you that.”

Roy hung on every word that his master articulated with rapt attention. The man in front of him did not need a production or to make a fuss to get someone to pay attention. No, Berthold Hawkeye spoke quietly, with passion and intensity in his voice.

“I am here to teach you the finer points of alchemy. I want you to know the theory behind the alchemy you’re using, the inner workings, and the way of thinking that comes with knowing what you’re doing on an elemental level. Alchemy is comprehension. Alchemy is deconstruction. And alchemy is reconstruction. If a student doesn’t understand all of these individual details, they will not continue to study with me.”

The apprentice closed his mouth when he realized it was hanging open slightly. Hawkeye nodded and sat back in his chair again. The tone of his voice was significantly more lighthearted as he continued.

“Have you started on any of the books that I named in my letter?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Roy.

“And?” prompted Hawkeye.

“What would you like to know, sir?” Roy said hesitantly.

“Wait, you’ve read all of the books?”

Roy nodded.

“I didn’t mean for you to get through all of them by the time you got here,” he voiced, surprised. “I figured you would get through one, maybe two… All of them? And you understood them?”

Roy nodded again, this time slowly. “There were a few things that I had to look up because I didn’t quite understand them,” he explained, “but I got the concepts eventually.”

Hawkeye’s face lit up in a strange, crooked half smile. “Then you, my boy, are greatly underestimating your alchemic abilities.”

Roy’s thoughts began to race. What is this man comparing me to, his previous students? Or himself? Am I in over my head here? What if I didn’t study something well enough? How can I make sure I actually retained everything I read?

Before his thoughts could spiral further down a rabbit hole, Roy heard his master continue to talk and realized that he should probably be paying more attention.

“I expect you to be in this office by 8 o’clock every morning for the next few weeks. I won’t keep you extraordinarily long - it doesn’t do the mind or the body good to be cooped up. After a while, we may extend the hours that we spend together.”

“Yes, sir.” At the very moment Roy began to wonder what they would be covering during his lessons, Master Hawkeye continued.

“At first, we will mainly be discussing the topics in the books that you have read. Practical progress will begin soon after I ensure that you understand the theory.”

Roy swallowed slowly. Audibly. He incredulously started to wonder if there was a form of alchemy that could allow one to read the minds of unsuspecting subordinates. It was extremely unsettling and truly made Roy think about how many students before him had also received this speech.

“You have no poker face, do you? Calm down.” Master Hawkeye’s eyes and tone shimmered with mirth. It did nothing other than confuse - and maybe intimidate - Roy even more.

“If you don’t understand something, I’ll explain it to you. Most of my former pupils didn’t make it through the second book on the list. So we’ll go through them one by one and discuss the literature. But for now? Now, it’s time to rest. I’m sure you’re tired from your journey. Have you eaten?”

“Yes sir,” Roy said, still not quite following his new master’s train of thought. “I ate on the train.”

“Fine. Go and rest. Your room is upstairs. If you need anything tonight, or throughout your entire time here, find either Riza or myself.” Master Hawkeye stood from his chair and walked around the desk, motioning for Roy to stand. Hawkeye clapped a hand on his shoulder and guided him to the door, opening it with the other hand.

A slight shudder went down Roy’s back as he realized that Master Hawkeye felt more like a skeleton than the imposing figure that he presented in the doorway. There seemed to be a disconnect between quite a few things regarding Berthold Hawkeye, now that Roy thought about it.

His own daughter called him cold and distant, but the young man didn’t see any of that during this meeting. In fact, he found Master Hawkeye rather approachable. Even more confusing was the alchemist’s reaction to Roy reading all of the books. In one breath, he seemed excited by the prospect of having a student that might be worth a damn, but in the next, he sounded doubtful that this student would work out any better than the others.

There were far too many intricacies in Berthold Hawkeye’s personality for Roy to unpack on the first night, but each of these thoughts went into a new mental file: Master Hawkeye.

“Get a good night’s rest, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

Roy spun around in the doorway to bid Hawkeye good night but found the pocket door halfway closed. He dazedly went to pick up his belongings and saw they were no longer in the entryway where he left them. Roy glanced up the staircase, only then realizing that Hawkeye said that his room was “upstairs.” His new master hadn’t bothered to specify which room Roy was expected to occupy, and in a house this size, he’d be lucky to locate his belongings before nightfall.

He started up the stairs, taking in the ornate detail of the banister as he walked. When he reached the top step, he noticed that there were quite a few doors upstairs, but only two were open. As he approached the first ajar door, he found a bathroom, and, conveniently enough, the door after it on the opposite side of the hallway had a large four-poster bed with a matching dresser and nightstand. On the bed was Roy’s suitcase.

“Thank you,” Roy said quietly to the deserted hallway of closed doors. He hoped his message made it to the person who brought his things to his room. He hadn’t seen hide nor hair of a butler or a servant, but that was the mark of a good one, wasn’t it?

As he unpacked his belongings and changed his clothes, it dawned on him that it most likely wasn’t a servant that brought his things to his room. No… it was more likely that it was Miss Hawkeye. Riza.

The sun had finally begun to set, brilliant oranges and reds filling his new room, and Roy collapsed into his bed, physically and mentally exhausted. Thoughts spun in his head.

Master Hawkeye doesn’t seem too bad, he thought. Sure, he seems a bit rough around the edges, but… well, I was kind of expecting worse. Between his reputation as an alchemy master and then what Miss Hawkeye told me as we walked to the house… I’m still not really sure what to think. And he doesn’t quite look healthy, but he gets around okay and doesn’t sound like he’s knocking on death’s door.

As the sun faded, so did Roy. He lay in bed fast asleep, minutes after his head hit the pillow. If he hadn’t fallen succumbed to his exhaustion so quickly, he would have noticed the young blonde resident of the house peeking into the room through the barely-closed door.

Riza had seen many apprentices come and go under her father’s tutelage, but for some reason, this one seemed different. And she wasn’t sure why. But when it came right down to it, why make the effort to find out how he was different? Why expect him to stay when they all left her lonelier than they’d found her?

When the first rays of moonlight began to dance across his almond-shaped eyes, she backed out of the doorway slowly, making sure the lights were extinguished and the door was securely closed. With a huff and a wary sideways glance at the room that housed her father’s newest apprentice, she continued to her room, half dreading breaking this one in.

Riza wasn’t quite sure that she would be able to convince her father that life was worth living, if this boy left, too. Every apprentice under Berthold Hawkeye’s tutelage had let him down, and one more devastating disappointment could meant that he never got up again.

As Riza closed her door and started her evening routine, she took a cleansing breath. Tomorrow began a new adventure.

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