#Dead Sea Bronze Scroll | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sabraeal · 1 year

Text

to all the ghosts still standing in this room, Chapter 1

[Read on AO3]

Written as a bonus pairing for my Holiday Gifts...though clearly this is more than a few months late! But it is here now, after many attempts to getting Soowon’s voice right, with thanks to @infinitelystrangemachinex and @claudeng80, who read this before the great reshuffle, and @kirayaykimura, who gave it one last pass!

For a city that so loved its king, Kyuu mourns him very little.

His own father’s death is a smudge upon the spotless scroll of his memory; a brief stretch of time where it is not his own hand that records its events but a pastiche of others, hastily pasted between the scraps that even now Soowon strains to recall. What remains is simply this: a funereal process winding its way through the streets of Kuuto, the coffin of The King That Would Never Be hoisted onto the shoulders of his generals. Women wail loud enough for the echoes to become a roar, the sound of the sea trapped inside the capital’s shell, enough to set his ears to ringing, the first noise to drown out the pounding of his heart. The crowd surges forward, arms outstretched to mark the beloved prince’s passing, and it resembles nothing more than a tsunami, cresting in the capital’s streets. Standing at the top of the palace steps, traitors to either side, he wonders if it is not destined to crash upon them, to wipe them out in one fell swoop.

He would have welcomed it then, this simple way to see his father’s killers brought to justice. It lacked the personal satisfaction of doing it himself, but he had been a child then, made bold by the white that streamed from every rooftop, every window, every splintered board or rough corner on which cloth could gain purchase. Had he only known then what he did now, well...

Perhaps he would welcome it still. But for different reasons entirely.

He trades three bronze coins to a woman for a sack of sweetened rice cakes, and with only a glance at the bright banner hanging from her stall, she tells him for free, “It’s for the princess’s coronation.”

Her cheeks flush when she speaks of Xing’s almost-queen, practically bursting with pride as if the woman were her own daughter. The same as every other stall he’s visited this morning.

“I see. A new queen! What a joyous occasion!” Smiles have never fit quite right on his face; for all that they are beautiful, they hurt, making his teeth ache and jaw twitch as if he hasn’t the same muscles beneath his skin as everyone else. Still, this woman melts at the sight of his, unaware of its cost. “It hardly seems as if it has been any time at all since the king passed.”

Her prideful glow dims. “Ah, well, perhaps there was not as much as there should have been...”

An understatement, by two years at least.

“But His Majesty had been ill for a long time. Before the war.” The woman might cast her gaze over the market, but she does not see it, not with the haze that glazes her eyes. “We mourned then, and his death marked the end of it. And when the princess takes the throne... it will all be better then. The way it should be.”

The banners had hung in Kuuto for three years after his father’s death-- and would have longer still, had the Emperor not followed so soon after. Xing’s king hardly managed ten months. For that alone, Bushin has his sympathy. Which is a welcome convenience, since Soowon cannot quite muster grief.

“Thank you for the cakes.” The bag rises to the lofty heights of his smile; he’s careful to squint as he does, giving his eyes a carefree crinkle in the corners. Women this age are sensitive to artifice, and the last thing he needs is every vendor in the market keeping an eye out for the man with a dead-eyed smile. “And the conversation.”

“Well, I can’t let a fine young man like you walk around here wondering about all the hub-bub.” She puffs up, a mother hen a few ruffles from a preen. “There’s folks coming from all over, you know? Kai and Sei, and even some from the empress’s court in Kouka, I’ve heard. Wouldn’t do to have you get lost in the crush and not even know what for!”

He hardly thinks the whys of his trampling would concern him, even in his final moments, but he knows better than to argue with a woman in the throes of patriotism. “My, how fortunate I am to have arrived at such an auspicious time for Kyuu.”

Her wink is an invitation to the kindliest conspiracy in which he’s ever partaken. “Maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll catch a glimpse of the princess herself.”

There is a time he might have let himself be charmed-- or at least, pretend to be. But three years out of the court’s all-seeing eyes has him out of practice with maintaining these sort of social niceties. As a king he might have held a smile bright enough to rival the sun in its heavenly bower, but now one afternoon in the market and his cheeks are aching, muscles begging to be released.

“One can only hope.” It would be a miracle if he didn’t see too much of her. He can only imagine what would be said of him if he returned having worn out his welcome. “It would be an...unprecedented honor, I’m sure.”

“I’ve heard the delegations aren’t going to be anything to sneeze at either.” Her voice drops to just above a whisper; Soowon has to lean in to hear her over the din. “Sending their finest men, they say, in hopes Her Highness might pick a consort from among them.”

It is with great effort that Soowon attempts to suppress his wince. And fails. “Is that so?”

“Of course! Nothing builds bridges faster than a good marriage.” An old adage he’d be happy to agree with, were circumstances other than what they are. “And with the empress already married off to that general of hers, and Kai still in shambles, there’s not much of that going around. Princess Kouren would be the perfect opportunity for this peace to be made--”

Pain jolts up his arm from elbow to wrist, his fingers clenching tight around the purse filled with his precious cargo. It’s the only thing that keeps them from being flavored with the dust of the road, since the boulder that brushes past him keeps rolling, clipping his hip and nearly stepping on his slippered foot for good measure. “Ah!”

It’s instinct that catches him as he stumbles, the same natural sense of balance that allowed him to cut through Kai on horseback keeping him upright. And yet his assailant barely marks him, lobbing a quick, “Sorry!” across the market before continuing to ricochet stall to stall, leaving ruin in their wake.

And he’d hardly spare a second glance over it, if only that voice didn’t tug like a thread, fondness and frustration fomenting in his belly just at the sound of it. If only he refused to chase the sense of the familiar and see that hood blow back, dark hair carving a treacherous river down her cloak. If only she didn’t turn just so, eyes lit as if from the inside, riveted by some gaudy thing in the heady press.

Soowon sighs, tugging his hood further over his forehead. “Thank you again,” he says with far less cheer. “For the cakes.”

Suiko is hardly a backwater, its market teeming with stalls and shoppers like a stream during the spawning season, but even still it pales in comparison to the streets of Kyuu. Banners flutter from the highest eaves, boldly proclaiming the name of their future queen, and every street corner bursts with the sounds of celebration, clapping and singing and dancing, welcoming in Xing’s new age.

Maybe one day Suiko will look like this as well: banners stretching street to sky with her own name scrawled across, and revelers singing her praises, eager for their new chief--

Ah, but not too soon, Lili hopes. Father has served Kouka’s throne half his life; it’d be a pity if he didn’t get to enjoy the rest of it in the land he loved so much, with the people he’d risked so much for.

Besides, Lili isn’t ready for that kind of responsibility. It’s hard enough just being an advisor, and that’s all opinions. The kind she used to keep to herself-- or, well, at least to Ayura and Tetora. Privately, where no one could scold her for talking out of turn. But now it’s her job to say those things out loud, not only in front of Yona but-- but a bunch of men. And sure it’s only Taewoo and Taejun and Chulrang and sometimes even Soowon if Hak can wrestle him into the room before the doors close, but still, still, they’re used to listening to her father, not to her.

Which is why she’s here, now. They never would have sent Joon-gi, General and Hero of the Water Tribe to Xing. Not without an entourage of his own, carrying his own palanquin across the plains in comfort and, most importantly, privacy. There would be no imperious glares from former imperials for him, oh no, no complaints about his complaints. But Lili--

She shakes her head, scattering her thoughts. Too bad it doesn’t do anything for her temper.

“How much are these?” Her finger jabs at a tray of fish-shaped pastries, splayed out . Food is what she needs, sustenance. Lili’s friends with Soowon in sprints, but this trip has been a marathon, and she needs something to fortify her if she’s going to make it through the coronation. “I’d like two.”

It’s tempting to keep them both for herself, but if there’s one thing she’s learned from Yona, it’s that a peace offering never goes amiss. Though with the foul mood dogging Soowon’s shadow, it just might. What a picture that would make, offering a sweet fish from her sleeve, and he just--

“So you’re not going to pay?”

There’s a moment where her heart pounds-- she’s better with money now than she used to be, knowing which coins are too much and which are too little, even if Tetora despairs at her haggling skills. But Xing is a new place, with new customs, and it’s possible she could have set down a coin too small, given some sort of offense--

But it’s not the man behind the grill. No, his lips are pressed tight, a white line looming above the irons. And it’s not her that’s got his attention.

“Please!” It’s a sob that rings out above the market’s din, torn from a woman on her knees. “I never said--”

“You think you can waste my time?” The man that steps around the stall is more shoulder than neck, his stomps rattling her teeth. “You think you can steal from me?”

“I didn’t-- I wouldn’t--” Fear claws at the woman’s every word, voice breaking as his sandals come close enough to kick dirt over her knees. “Please, I tried to tell you--”

Her body moves before she can think, one moment tucking pastries into a sleeve and the next standing between this man and his victim.

“Just what,” she says, with all the imperiousness of a general’s daughter, “do you think you’re doing?”

It’s not that he means to follow her.

On the contrary, Soowon’s had quite enough of An Lili this past week. Too much, one might say, cooped up in that palanquin, suffering her huffs and sighs with all the patience of a saint. But Lili’s pestering could make even the divine break, let alone someone as far from it as him. A half day’s ride was supposed to give him perspective, or at least some much-needed elbow room between himself and Joon-gi’s daughter.

And now here he is, a leaf caught in her current, unwary of whatever dangers lay ahead.

In Kouka he might have to worry-- with his name inscribed on coins and scrolls of his likeness hung in the cities during his short reign, someone might look at a tall, fair-haired man and look twice. But here in Xing he is as good as a stranger, invisible so long as he does nothing to draw attention to himself.

A shame no one had ever bothered to share that particular wisdom with Lili.

The thug blinks down at her, eyes beady and cold. “What’s it to you?”

“You’re terrifying this woman.” Lili squares her shoulders, matching the set of her hips. “And causing a commotion! I have half a mind to call down the guards on you if you won’t cease this offensive behavior.”

It’s the sort of thing Yona would say. Or well, not the guards part-- an angry Yona was threat enough, even if some men were too stupid to heed the warning. But the rest of it. Standing tall, chin up. Demanding direct action.

But Lili doesn’t have the blazing eyes to make it stick. The man just huffs, face red as cooked crab. “This doesn’t have anything to do with you, girl!” he spits, scuffing his feet like a poorly-trained stallion. “She knew there’s a cost to operating on this street. A fee for such prime positioning. And now she’s trying to squirm her way out of it, like she’s too good to pay.”

“No, no.” The woman trembles at her feet. “You already collected this week. I didn’t-- it hasn’t been enough time--”

“It’s a festival,” the man sneers. “There’s more people here than there’s been all year. You trying to tell me you’re not making hand over fist? That you’re somehow not raking in twice the cash of a normal week? You think you can just--?”

Soowon loses sight of her for barely more than a breath-- a dancer in the square bumps into him, and he takes a moment to set her to rights, and another to assure himself that all the money on his person is where he left it. But when he turns back--

Ah, well, there she is, picking a fight with the nastiest sort of bottom feeder that could be scrounged up in these streets. Taking in the bulwark of her shoulders and the proud tilt to her chin, and the part of him that prefers to avoid conflict withers. Trust An Lili to put herself between a knife and the body it means to sheath itself in, as if that slip of a girl made a better shield than a curtain.

Trust her to somehow make it his problem, too. Or at least it would be, if anyone knew he was here. But they don’t-- no, he’s supposed to be a half day’s ride away, stuck in some claustrophobic palanquin.

“Didn’t you hear her?” Her hands hook on her hips, disdain dripping from every syllable. “You were paid in full. Now why don’t you run back to whatever hole you slithered out of and leave her alone?”

Whatever she says is lost to the noise of the crowd, but the man grits his teeth, a cold, lethal rage burning in his eyes. A common occurrence whenever Lili opens her mouth, it seems.

That meaty hand reaches out, and there’s no reason for his own heart to race. It’s not his problem what happens to Lili. Not when any moment of now that maid of hers is going to appear, bright smiles and bouncy waves, bending that man’s thumb back to his elbow. She must be nearby; wherever that girl goes, her bodyguards are never far behind.

But the man doesn’t grab her. No, he twists, slow as if through water, and his other hand rises up--

Ayura might call her oblivious, but Lili can see the moment this man chooses violence. Yona could have knocked that fist away, could have made him freeze in his steps for fear of her, but Lili-- Lili just flinches.

But the hit never comes.

She peels open her eyes, first one, then the other, tracing that trembling fist back to where a pale hand grips it, tight enough that bones might not break but bend.

Her jaw drops when her eyes meet that familiar gaze, just as surprised as her own.

“You?”

His stomach flips, Lili’s eyes far too blue for comfort. Ah...

Soowon didn’t mean to move.

#liliwon #wonlili #akatsuki no yona #yona of the dawn #my fic #future fic #to all the ghosts #any #life and soowon's POV conspired to make this a harder job than it needed to be 🤣#i was hoping to get a little further in this chapter but it IS what it IS #the best point for pacing was here

18 notes · View notes

libidomechanica · 1 year

Text

“Thy brittered his to Juan wallow dye saintent Night as for maids”

Each truth; a Scotch th’inherity. He to his sent a man walls, what shreds out his eyes my Love it, and year. Nor but the fierce beside mean. To their therefore soil as heavy as from

the charm not the power sell of burning moving frown’d all heroicall the sea is a dead her the battle maidee it is in shame inmost lo! Him, the go: but sinces, and solding,

and thee, your Cot, gazer do a’ he to mistle mair pray year we on T. From not brought skiff a hand have not bronze valled by more, looking, the first I it proud rootest guesting,

tusk, and Stewart the for already blush’d never had from thy break not mute to sheave all all assed the to use of loud rolling, let men—mantlier proud rejoin with every sentle

wronger an’ sheet. The mutes of sound to be, with like all set use atter’d her debarres are from his scarriage. Shall they hard-sang fello easent highs litter. His Highness, for

the curse; withdrew than sleeps plainly that; and bow, ten-thou her hand! Spake those we valent half so your late mischief dead, and set the prose, to catch one woman’s have loud in Englisten

the Wolf, never mothere hills. Poor outlive measure are a sover hone to light had now finger is apt to woments caves, the Sage tale pat if your pitiful toilet, bells

coulder’d the yields thou showever sedge was he sacred tempts it was their own—my friendly passion. Thy brittered his to Juan wallow d’ye saintent Night as for maids temper; patie

strip and there some soil to bowed again, cans upright as supposed again! And his here meant of blood a little majesty or wilt … to his look’d to the sale; and the body but

tis dravernal was from ther, but her spinning-when I less and stone is. How happy because of all thy fate as summate and we founds your to sate, alonelined at the

must this o’er yearly ashed lets for then I’m greaten; the has broke a stormer, to a glanchess; and here all harpetual besides, trying to hiding on his much, woman, some a

little were wore, and meed! I dreadful two. Come, and say ways and fast deer, and there’s sough my scarce to sing said, and age no witch man! And skycolour’d but him directed glory

mount forms that not foam to black and its make know. Must that he thy to the Glaucus heard terror they will his hungeon should exclaim, altar the enshrine, rest more all that convulsinging

when almost of rose, other, walls would purself to be come thy diamongs upon him their Jenny for Lycidas, to deemed spread augh, these hart his dead, and then I loves, and all

he skilling sea an until this scrolling throne of their weakness waking to another bubbles of that Do; what’s distreast. There highness, detest, while Engling bright of charm, and both.

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 4 #117 texts #ballad

0 notes

theresah331 · 2 years

Text

Advancements of archeology 2

England

Treason, Plot, and Witchcraft

http://www.archaeology.org/issues/169-1503/trenches/2973-trenches-england-knole-house-witchmarks

Site of famous 19th century ‘shipwreck’ discovered in Dundrum Bay, Co. Down

http://irisharchaeology.ie/2015/01/site-of-famous-19th-century-shipwreck-discovered-in-dundrum-bay-co-down/

Extinction

New Fossil Evidence Suggests There Have Been 6 Mass Extinctions, Not 5

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/new-fossil-evidence-suggests-there-were-6-mass-extinctions-not-5

Fossils

Scientists Reconstruct the Life of a Teenage Girl from the Contents of a 3,400-Year-Old Coffin

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/scientists-reconstruct-life-teenage-girl-contents-3400-year-old-coffin

Hobbits

down syndrome theory hobbit species doesn’t hold scrutiny

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/down-syndrome-theory-hobbit-species-doesn-t-hold-scrutiny

Movies and tv vs real life

Indiana Jones meets the Jetsons

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Indiana_Jones_meets_George_Jetson_999.html

Neolithic

Cleaning the dead: Neolithic ritual processing of human bone at Scaloria Cave, Italy

https://www.academia.edu/12081435/Cleaning_the_dead_Neolithic_ritual_processing_of_human_bone_at_Scaloria_Cave_Italy

Origin

The Origin & Evolution of Corn in the Southwest

http://www.archaeology.org/news/2879-150108-southwest-corn-dna

NETWORK THEORY SHEDS NEW LIGHT ON ORIGINS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2015/03/213466/

Petroglyphs

Petroglyphs. Discover facts and information about the culture of ancient Native American Indians and their use of the Petroglyphs to convey meanings

http://www.warpaths2peacepipes.com/native-indian-art/petroglyphs.htm

Importance of Petroglyphs

http://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540sept12/2012/10/28/the-importance-of-petroglyphs/

Prehistoric

Tom Wax and Al Cornell demonstrate Prehistoric fire starting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6SsjySrLWU

How Do Scientists Know What the Temperature Was Thousands of Years Ago?

http://theolduvaigorge.tumblr.com/post/123502099447/how-do-scientists-know-what-the-temperature-was

Tracing the dynamic life story

http://gear-books.com/post/123571832378/theolduvaigorge-tracing-the-dynamic-life-story

http://theolduvaigorge.tumblr.com/post/120122360543/tracing-the-dynamic-life-story-of-a-bronze-age

Students Uncover More History At Prehistoric Indian Village

http://www.keloland.com/newsdetail.cfm/students-uncover-more-history-at-prehistoric-indian-village/?id=181947&utm_content=bufferd3481&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Electron Microscope Detects 14,000-Year-Old Dental Treatment

http://archaeology.org/news/3491-150716-italy-dental-cavity

Software “Unwraps” Charred Ein Gedi Scroll

http://archaeology.org/news/3496-150720-ein-gedi-scroll

Corn Cobs Unearthed at Mitchell Prehistoric Indian Village

http://archaeology.org/news/3470-150709-mitchell-corn-cobs

Retired prof tracks ancient seeds

http://www.pressrepublican.com/news/retired-prof-tracks-ancient-seeds/article_20554093-996d-5cca-959c-e6dd8d253a92.html?utm_content=bufferdb60f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Sahara

Skeletons of Sahara

http://www.pbs.org/program/skeletons-sahara/

tenerian Culture

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerian_culture

Kiffian Culture

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiffian_culture

Science advancements

The Fine Art of Forgery: Why the Smithsonian is using 3‑D printing to copy artifacts

http://theolduvaigorge.tumblr.com/post/122408744962/the-fine-art-of-forgery-why-the-smithsonian-is

COULD THIS FORBIDDEN ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY BENEATH THE ARABIAN SEA FORCE MANKIND TO REWRITE HISTORY?

http://ancientexplorers.com/

Long-held theory on human gestation refuted: Mother’s metabolism, not birth canal size, limits gestation

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120827152037.html

0 notes

jamaldaniel · 2 years

Text

Famous Historical Finds in the Levantine Region

Based in Houston, Texas, Jamal Daniel is chairman of the Levant Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to educating people about Middle Eastern culture. Jamal Daniel is passionate about helping others understand the history of the Levantine region.

The Levant is a general geographical area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. Current countries in the area are Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and much of Turkey. The Levant has a rich cultural heritage, as several world religions have their basis in the area. Archaeologists have unearthed many ancient dwellings and religious artifacts belonging to people as far back as the earliest Stone Age human populations.

Belameh is a famous historical site that has been important to many populations since the Bronze Age. It is mentioned in documents in the Egyptian Royal Archive, in three passages of the Hebrew Bible, and in sources about the Crusades.

An important historical find from the Levant is the Dead Sea Scrolls. These are 981 pieces of parchment discovered in caves near Qumran between 1947 and 1956. The scrolls are a link to the current Hebrew Bible and are written in both Aramaic and ancient Greek.

#Jamal Daniel

0 notes

blueiskewl · 2 years

Photo

American Tourist Finds Intact Early Bronze Age Pottery Jug in Israel

Officials say discovery at Qumran may be the first complete vessel from the period found in region’s caves

An American tourist hiking in the Qumran region in southern Israel recently stumbled upon a remarkable discovery: a fully intact pottery vessel from the Early Bronze Age.

According to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), Robbie Brown was touring Israel with a friend last month when they decided to climb to a cave near the Dead Sea, about 100 meters (328 feet) above the surrounding terrain.

The cave, known as Cave 53, was not unfamiliar to Brown, who participated in an archaeological excavation there in 2017 that led to some rare finds — including ancient dates and olive seeds and a piece of a blank ancient scroll.

A previous excavation at the cave took place about 30 years ago, making the findings in 2017 even more unexpected.

But the Judean Desert cave apparently had some more surprises in store, as Brown and his friend found out.

Reaching the cave, the two uncovered an intact ancient pottery jug — potentially the first ever found in the region from its period. They photographed the finding and immediately contacted Dr. Yuval Baruch from the IAA.

When they arrived to investigate, Baruch and Amir Ganor, the IAA’S director of the robbery prevention unit, could not believe their eyes.

“It’s amazing,” said Ganor. “Only about two years ago, our archaeologists surveyed the cave as part of a survey of the Judean Desert caves, which has been conducted continuously for the past five years and was intended to document and locate all ancient finds in the desert caves.”

“In a few caves, pottery sherds were found, providing evidence of the Early Bronze Age. This is perhaps the first complete vessel we have found from this period in the caves in the Judean Desert,” he said.

Ganor said it was a good thing that Brown was aware of the “importance of the finds and their role in completing the archaeological puzzle of the Land of Israel,” calling on citizens who may discover similar artifacts in the future “to leave them in place and call us immediately so that we can maximize the archaeological information from the find.”

Caves in the Qumran region have attracted archaeologists for decades, ever since a shepherd followed a goat into a cave in the desert cliffs in 1947 and discovered three of the Dead Sea Scrolls inside.

What followed were exciting excavations in the caves where the scrolls were found, and at Qumran, an ancient settlement below the cliffs. By the late 1950s archaeologists working at Qumran had uncovered remains from buildings, a tower, cisterns, Jewish ritual baths, and an aqueduct.

Most experts believe that several hundred men lived at Qumran, which today is a national park.

By TOI STAFF.

#American Tourist Finds Intact Early Bronze Age Pottery Jug in Israel #Judean Desert #ancient artifacts #archeology #archeolgst #history #history news #ancient history #ancient culture #ancient civilizations #early bronze age

20 notes · View notes

fierypen37 · 2 years

Text

Victory Is In Your Veins: Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Day Two Hundred and Sixty-One: The White Wolf

The sun was golden and warm, at last climbing over the jagged teeth of the mountains receding behind them. He strove higher, toward the promise of open blue sky. Joy burst in his heart. With his brothers, flying in a clear sky. Glory in the striving of his wing muscles. The sun shone of his scales, discs of jade green with flashes of bronze along his wings. His black brother shrieked into the air, a warning to any who would dare challenge them. The white echoed him and he opened his maw to roar with his two brothers into the dawn. A warning and beckoning both.

He wished she could join them in the sky. But no, she was trapped below, surrounded by slow smelly animals they could not hunt. Sorrow rang from her, and he longed to soothe it. The soft little hiccups of her grief floated up to his niche in the night. His black brother was swift to offer comfort, curling on her chest to ward off the unseen terrors of the night, amber-red eyes ever-watchful. Far below, he glimpsed the shine of her hair as the sluggish camp began its lumbering journey south. Lost in the horizon, there was the hint of blue. The sea. He and his brothers loved the sea. Wide blue water, seizing the wayward flying fish, strong winds to fly upon under the hot eye of the sun. Soon . . .

Soon . . . Light pulsed red behind his close eyelids. Throbbing like a heartbeat. Jon cracked open impossibly heavy eyelids. Golden afternoon sunlight, an open clear sky, so blue it made tears fill his eyes. The sky disappeared into inky dripping darkness. All that was left was longing, a hollow ringing emptiness. Am I dead? Where is she? Why couldn’t he move?

Pain was there, whispering on the edges of his awareness. It would smite him like the whip, like unholy fire if he roused any further. He was so very weary. He'd drunk his fill of the bitter gall of pain, of loss. There had been enough of that for a man to stomach in one lifetime. Darkness and quiet beckoned. It waited, ever patient. Perhaps she would find him on the other side. Perhaps he would see his father smile at him. A cheering thought. Peace, at last. Rest. He could float away, like a kite lost in the wind. Weightless and free. There are no masters in the grave.

Don’t die. Awake. Live.

LIVE! Her voice reached down from the stars and pulled him up.

The red thing was quiescent, drained as Jon was himself. It would not help him. Jon sucked in a breath. The air moved through his lungs, cool and tasting of something cloying. Sticky incense to cover the wretched smells of voided bowels and old blood. A ghoulish face appeared above him, corpulent and gleaming as red as blood. Jon’s breath shortened. The pain gained in volume, growing to a deafening crack of thunder. Gods, he was broken, tattered.

“Still alive? By Old Ghis, he’s a tough bastard,” the demon said.

Jon shut out the hideous visage, groping instead for the vivid beauty of her voice—his hiding place and solace. No, no no—He couldn’t hear her over the yammering of his pain. It emanated from his chest, blinding with each gasped breath. Flayed open like a fish, waiting to gasp his last desperate breath. Awareness eked in, scrolling past like illustrations in a book. Tycho. Their battle. He won. Now he was certainly in the bowels of Volantis’s great arena, awaiting the final cut to end his life. Spectators were not interested in the mercy blow to end a dying slave’s life. There was no thrill in such things . . .

Jon swam in and out of awareness. He longed for the peace of the dark, yet his woman had commanded him to live. Hers was the only command he would obey.

Harsh male voices persisted. The demon—Morrgys—petted Jon’s head. Leather straps held him against a broad wooden table, arms spread wide like a criminal’s cross. He blinked, his eyes focusing.

“He has made me rich. Mend him, if you can.”

“It will take much,” a healer’s reedy voice said, “Firemilk, boiled wine, leagues of sutures—gods look at his chest—and--”

“Do it. He will have time to convalesce. Tomorrow we leave this stinking pit.”

“T—Tomorrow?”

“Indeed. I tire of these unruly savages. Ah, to sleep in the pyramid of my fathers! Yes. Tomorrow, I will go home to Astapor.”

He patted Jon’s head again.

“Mend my White Wolf. If he survives, I will make him a god in Daznak’s Pit.”

Morrgys lumbered off and Jon was left with the healer. They changed so often, Jon never learned their names or faces. This one looked had a surface resemblance with Maester Luwin. Seamed face, thin mouth, peeling bald pate. The blue eyes were empty though, cold as dirty ice.

“I did not lie to your master, boy. It will be hell to stitch you back together. I cannot give you dreamwine or milk of the poppy. Your heart will give out.” His expression was not without sympathy. Jon said nothing. Pain didn’t frighten him. Jon lifted his chin. He heard the healer give a dark chuckle and summon his assistants.

“You might want to bite on this.” He offered a leather-wrapped stick. Jon accepted it, anchoring his thoughts to his woman and the open blue sky.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty-Three: The Dragon Queen

Daenerys ached down to her very marrow. At last there was soft green land spread before them, and on the horizon, their salvation—the sea. Dothraki or no, they would seek the sea and cross Slaver’s Bay. Horsemen in the narrow footpaths of the Bone Mountains had been harrowing, a creeping, dry-mouthed ride every moment from a chilly sunrise to an even colder endless twilight. The ride alone was exhausting. Her warriors and her sons proved themselves admirably against the few bandits they encountered.

Their troubles lay in the simplest of things: axels. By her count, twenty-three had been broken in scant over a moon’s turn. Baggage wains and pack ponies slowed them to a painful crawl. Shadowcats and massive golden eagles. Scant water and dwindling fodder. Their guides were stalwart, though. Tenacious in drawing them through the endless winding paths.

Daenerys closed her eyes and let the warm sunlight sink into her skin. She drank it in like a starved flower. She rubbed her chest to ease the ache. Her dream lover, she had felt him again. Usually, despite his unseen face, he felt so solid. Real enough to touch. And then she’d heard his awful scream. It nearly knocked her from her saddle in her waking hours. She had never heard him like that before when she was awake.

Gods, she felt his grief and fear and pain and knew he was dying. Smote by the terrible knowledge that he was far from her and bleeding his life away. Lost before she could hold him and love him. She carried the grief as she had for her sun-and-stars and little Rhaego. A lodestone of grief that became a part of the landscape of her heart. And again, under a thin shivering sleep in her tent, wedged between Irri and Jahiqi, Daenerys snapped awake.

He had been there.

A savor of cold and quiet, a gentle goodbye, like the puff of a whisper. He stood, his chest a torn red ruin. Even his tears were bloody, slipping down a face she could not make out. He cradled her face between his hands. I love you . . .

Daenerys stumbled, running after him through endless white, snow stinging her skin with hoarfrost.

“Don’t die. Awake. Live. LIVE!” she shouted with all her strength. She could not fight Death, but she would try. She would pry her lover from Death’s bony white hands if she could. Share the fire that blazed within her, warm him with it. And then she woke. Her heart thundering, gasping for breath.

Daenerys’ eyes looked toward the blue on the horizon with something like hunger. Hope. And one step closer to her goal. Whatever forces moved the world would guide her steps toward him. She knew it.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty-Three: The White Wolf

Jon thought he did not fear death nor pain. He did not know pain until the healer doused his wounds with firemilk and boiling wine. A roaring white poison searing through his body. Muscles locked, stretched. His body arched like a scalded cat’s against the bonds, snot and spittle and tears slid down his face. Pain. He was burning. Gods he was on fire! Hair burned to ash, skin black and split, his blood hissing as it struck the coals.

Blinded by healer’s lights, Jon groped for the comfort of his woman. Where was she?

“Where is she?” he sobbed, “Come back. Come back!”

“Again,” the healer said, poised a syringe of firemilk. The pain shot up hot and malignant, like an arrow from a bow, higher and higher until mercifully, the dark closed over him again.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty-Four

She was there in his dreams. Leaning against the trunk of a lemon tree. The sharp-sweet smell. Pointed green leaves dancing in a passing breeze. A soft carpet of moss beneath him. Jon’s head was in her lap. She sang in her even, mellow voice. Not mellifluous, but pleasant all the same. She combed his hair, and Jon wound his arms around her waist. Her body was so warm and soft and sweet-smelling.

“We will be together soon. I will find you.”

Jon opened his eyes, the sweet dream cracked like spun sugar. He blinked, listening. The musical lap of water, a gentle sway. The Tears. Pain was there to greet him, but it was a deeper ache, his skin tender and itching from the sutures. He could feel every stitch. A healer’s sampler. I wonder if Septa Mordane would approve. Jon risked sitting up against the bolsters in his berth bed. Thick, coarse gauze mummified his torso. A sharp-sweet smell. Honey and boiled wine.

You are a feast all your own, my love. A soft grunt of laughter made Jon’s chest hurt. He winced, rubbing the bandage. The healer said it would ward off blood sickness. He reached for the carafe and downed more honeyed water. He gingerly chewed on a heel of bread.

“I suppose I shall live,” he whispered. On the one hand, he was thankful. His woman’s steely command to live rang in his ears, along with her sweeter whispers. Sunshine and a lemon tree. A taste of hope. The red thing that was his protector and aide, wakened too. Revenge. It was close. Cowardly slave masters like Morrgys could flee a city ripe for revolt all they wanted, but anywhere men and women and children lived and died in bondage was a tinderbox. All the slaves needed was a spark.

This Daenerys Targaryen could provide spark enough.

Indeed, his woman replied. Perhaps she would come to Astapor. Start a cleansing fire to raze those decaying pyramids to the ground.

On the other hand, the prospect of laying down his burdens and soaking in a well-earned rest was a welcome one. Morrgys would be suspicious of him now, keen to punish him. Jon had seen too much. How the revolts in Volantis had shaken him. It would take him months to be in fighting shape again. Grueling training, the petty pecking order of brute slaves, boredom and loneliness. All those months would be spent aboard this thrice-cursed vessel. Their path by sea from Volantis would skirt the Valyrian peninsula before they could reach Slaver’s Bay. And even a Westerosi bastard like Jon Snow knew the dangers of sailing near the Doom.

This convalescence would be different, though. Zokla timpa was Morrgys’ premier champion, after all. The healer learned Jon was a lettered man and had left several books. Books! One was a simple healing treatise, and the other was songs and stories from Essos and Westeros. Still, the cracked leather covers and water-stained pages were a blessing. Jon squinted through the murky predawn light at the cramped hand on the page.

#jonerys fanfiction #daenerys targaryen #jon snow #fp37fic #victory is in your veins #gladiator!Jon #queen!Dany

15 notes · View notes

sweet-soul-fragnance · 3 years

Text

Apollo : superstar of the illiad -

following are the instances of apollon awe-invoking moments in the illiad : (1,2,3 ... GO bonus : all apollo concerned content of illiad is mentioned too !! Happy scroll through

=> Apollo's priest chryses invoked Apollo For he had come to the swift ships of the Achaeans to free his daughter, bearing ransom past counting; and in his hands he held the wreaths of Apollo who strikes from afar , thus Phoebus Apollo Down from the peaks of Olympus he strode, angered at heart, bearing on his shoulders his bow and covered quiver. The arrows rattled on the shoulders of the angry god as he moved, and his coming was like the night. Then he sat down apart from the ships and let fly an arrow: terrible was the twang of the silver bow. The mules he assailed first and the swift dogs, but then on the men themselves he let fly his stinging shafts, and struck; and constantly the pyres of the dead burned thick. For nine days the missiles of the god ranged among the host .

(This must've had helped troy beyond as the aecheans strengthen decreased) .

=> Calchas , who knew the things that were, and that were to be, and that had been before, and who had guided the ships of the Achaeans to Ilios by his own prophetic powers which Phoebus Apollo had bestowed upon him . He suggested the argives to give the priest daughter back to appease the angered god apollon thus They brought forth the hecatomb for Apollo, who strikes from afar, and also the daughter of Chryses from the sea-faring ship. Odysseus lead her to the altar and placed in the arms of her dear father persuading chryses to ask apollo to deliver the greek army from the plague thus chryses prayed to apollo and argives were freed of plague .

=> Odysseus and his men when sailed back to their camp apollo sent them favouring winds too .

=> pandarus , glorious son of Lyacon was gifted his bow by apollo .

=> machaon , son of asclepius (son of Apollo whom Apollo taught the art of healing and medicine) used to treat the wounds of soldiers of the troy . Apollo has a hand behind machaon ability as asclepius recieved his own knowledge and art of healing by Apollo in the First place.

=> here is a adorable motivation apollo is seen to give to troy soldiers :

And Apollo, looking down from Pergamus, had indignation, and called with a shout to the Trojans: "Rouse ye, horse-taming Trojans, give not ground in fight before Argives; not of stone nor of iron is their flesh to resist the bronze that cleaveth the flesh, when they are smitten. Nay, and Achilles moreover fighteth not, the son of fair-haired Thetis, but amid the ships nurseth his bitter wrath". So spake the dread god from the city .

=> Apollo saving Aphrodite's son aeneas

as diomedes harmed aphrodite , she then with a loud cry let fall her son, and Phoebus Apollo took him in his arms and saved him in a dark cloud, lest any of the Danaans with swift horses might hurl a spear of bronze into his breast and take away his life . Apollo then took aeneas to pergamus where his temple is built there leto and Artemis heals him and apollo of the silver bow fashioned a wraith in the likeness of aeneas seld and in armour like to his not only this but Apollo himself sent aeneas on the battlefield putting courage in his breast .

#apollo #trojan war #illiad #apollo in the trojan war #apollo's greatness in trojan war #Odysseus #tagammemnon

22 notes · View notes

azzy-the-christian-furry · 3 years

Text

((Revelation, Part 2.))

Ch.9:

The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. 2 When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. 3 And out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. 4 They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5 They were not allowed to kill them but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes. 6 During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.

7 The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. 8 Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. 9 They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. 10 They had tails with stingers, like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. 11 They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer).

12 The first woe is past; two other woes are yet to come.

13 The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the golden altar that is before God. 14 It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” 15 And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. 16 The number of the mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard their number.

17 The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur. 18 A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths. 19 The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury.

20 The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. 21 Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts.

Ch.10:

The Angel and the Little Scroll

Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven. He was robed in a cloud, with a rainbow above his head; his face was like the sun, and his legs were like fiery pillars. 2 He was holding a little scroll, which lay open in his hand. He planted his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, 3 and he gave a loud shout like the roar of a lion. When he shouted, the voices of the seven thunders spoke. 4 And when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven say, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down.”

5 Then the angel I had seen standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven. 6 And he swore by him who lives for ever and ever, who created the heavens and all that is in them, the earth and all that is in it, and the sea and all that is in it, and said, “There will be no more delay! 7 But in the days when the seventh angel is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced to his servants the prophets.”

8 Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me once more: “Go, take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.”

9 So I went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. He said to me, “Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but ‘in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.’[a]” 10 I took the little scroll from the angel’s hand and ate it. It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour. 11 Then I was told, “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages and kings.”

Ch.11:

The Two Witnesses

I was given a reed like a measuring rod and was told, “Go and measure the temple of God and the altar, with its worshipers. 2 But exclude the outer court; do not measure it, because it has been given to the Gentiles. They will trample on the holy city for 42 months. 3 And I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” 4 They are “the two olive trees” and the two lampstands, and “they stand before the Lord of the earth.”[a] 5 If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies. This is how anyone who wants to harm them must die. 6 They have power to shut up the heavens so that it will not rain during the time they are prophesying; and they have power to turn the waters into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they want.

7 Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them. 8 Their bodies will lie in the public square of the great city—which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt—where also their Lord was crucified. 9 For three and a half days some from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial. 10 The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.

11 But after the three and a half days the breath[b] of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them. 12 Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies looked on.

13 At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.

14 The second woe has passed; the third woe is coming soon.

The Seventh Trumpet

15 The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said:

“The kingdom of the world has become

the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah,

and he will reign for ever and ever.”

16 And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, 17 saying:

“We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,

the One who is and who was,

because you have taken your great power

and have begun to reign.

18 The nations were angry,

and your wrath has come.

The time has come for judging the dead,

and for rewarding your servants the prophets

and your people who revere your name,

both great and small—

and for destroying those who destroy the earth.”

19 Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a severe hailstorm.

Ch.12:

The Woman and the Dragon

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. 4 Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.”[a] And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. 6 The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.

7 Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:

“Now have come the salvation and the power

and the kingdom of our God,

and the authority of his Messiah.

For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,

who accuses them before our God day and night,

has been hurled down.

11 They triumphed over him

by the blood of the Lamb

and by the word of their testimony;

they did not love their lives so much

as to shrink from death.

12 Therefore rejoice, you heavens

and you who dwell in them!

But woe to the earth and the sea,

because the devil has gone down to you!

He is filled with fury,

because he knows that his time is short.”

13 When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14 The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach. 15 Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. 16 But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. 17 Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.

Ch.13:

The Beast out of the Sea

The dragon[a] stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2 The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. 3 One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. 4 People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”

5 The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. 6 It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. 7 It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. 8 All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.[b]

9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.

10 “If anyone is to go into captivity,

into captivity they will go.

If anyone is to be killed[c] with the sword,

with the sword they will be killed.”[d]

This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.

The Beast out of the Earth

11 Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. 12 It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. 13 And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. 14 Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. 15 The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. 16 It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

18 This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.[e] That number is 666.

Ch14:

The Lamb and the 144,000

14 Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. 2 And I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of rushing waters and like a loud peal of thunder. The sound I heard was like that of harpists playing their harps. 3 And they sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders. No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. 4 These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they remained virgins. They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were purchased from among mankind and offered as firstfruits to God and the Lamb. 5 No lie was found in their mouths; they are blameless.

The Three Angels

6 Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language and people. 7 He said in a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water.”

8 A second angel followed and said, “‘Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great,’[a] which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries.”

9 A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on their forehead or on their hand, 10 they, too, will drink the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever. There will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.” 12 This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep his commands and remain faithful to Jesus.

13 Then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.”

“Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”

Harvesting the Earth and Trampling the Winepress

14 I looked, and there before me was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like a son of man[b] with a crown of gold on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. 15 Then another angel came out of the temple and called in a loud voice to him who was sitting on the cloud, “Take your sickle and reap, because the time to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” 16 So he who was seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested.

17 Another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. 18 Still another angel, who had charge of the fire, came from the altar and called in a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, “Take your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the earth’s vine, because its grapes are ripe.” 19 The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. 20 They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses’ bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia.

Ch.15:

Seven Angels With Seven Plagues

15 I saw in heaven another great and marvelous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues—last, because with them God’s wrath is completed. 2 And I saw what looked like a sea of glass glowing with fire and, standing beside the sea, those who had been victorious over the beast and its image and over the number of its name. They held harps given them by God 3 and sang the song of God’s servant Moses and of the Lamb:

“Great and marvelous are your deeds,

Lord God Almighty.

Just and true are your ways,

King of the nations.[a]

4 Who will not fear you, Lord,

and bring glory to your name?

For you alone are holy.

All nations will come

and worship before you,

for your righteous acts have been revealed.”[b]

5 After this I looked, and I saw in heaven the temple—that is, the tabernacle of the covenant law—and it was opened. 6 Out of the temple came the seven angels with the seven plagues. They were dressed in clean, shining linen and wore golden sashes around their chests. 7 Then one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls filled with the wrath of God, who lives for ever and ever. 8 And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels were completed.

Ch.16:

The Seven Bowls of God’s Wrath

16 Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go, pour out the seven bowls of God’s wrath on the earth.”

2 The first angel went and poured out his bowl on the land, and ugly, festering sores broke out on the people who had the mark of the beast and worshiped its image.

3 The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a dead person, and every living thing in the sea died.

4 The third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. 5 Then I heard the angel in charge of the waters say:

“You are just in these judgments, O Holy One,

you who are and who were;

6 for they have shed the blood of your holy people and your prophets,

and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve.”

7 And I heard the altar respond:

“Yes, Lord God Almighty,

true and just are your judgments.”

8 The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was allowed to scorch people with fire. 9 They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him.

10 The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness. People gnawed their tongues in agony 11 and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done.

12 The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. 13 Then I saw three impure spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. 14 They are demonic spirits that perform signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty.

15 “Look, I come like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and remains clothed, so as not to go naked and be shamefully exposed.”

16 Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.

17 The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and out of the temple came a loud voice from the throne, saying, “It is done!” 18 Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred since mankind has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake. 19 The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. God remembered Babylon the Great and gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath. 20 Every island fled away and the mountains could not be found. 21 From the sky huge hailstones, each weighing about a hundred pounds,[a] fell on people. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible.

Ch.17:

Babylon, the Prostitute on the Beast

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits by many waters. 2 With her the kings of the earth committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.”

3 Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. 5 The name written on her forehead was a mystery:

babylon the great

the mother of prostitutes

and of the abominations of the earth.

6 I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of God’s holy people, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus.

When I saw her, I was greatly astonished. 7 Then the angel said to me: “Why are you astonished? I will explain to you the mystery of the woman and of the beast she rides, which has the seven heads and ten horns. 8 The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and yet will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because it once was, now is not, and yet will come.

9 “This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. 10 They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for only a little while. 11 The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction.

12 “The ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast. 13 They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the beast. 14 They will wage war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will triumph over them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings—and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers.”

15 Then the angel said to me, “The waters you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages. 16 The beast and the ten horns you saw will hate the prostitute. They will bring her to ruin and leave her naked; they will eat her flesh and burn her with fire. 17 For God has put it into their hearts to accomplish his purpose by agreeing to hand over to the beast their royal authority, until God’s words are fulfilled. 18 The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.”

#bible stuff #revelation #revelation part two

7 notes · View notes

inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 years

Text

But You Can Never Leave [Chapter 4: City Of Dreams]

Series summary: You are an overwhelmed and disenchanted nurse in Boston, Massachusetts. Queen is an eccentric British rock band you’ve never heard of. But once your fates intertwine in the summer of 1974, none of your lives will ever be the same...

This series is a work of fiction, and is (very) loosely inspired by real people and events. Absolutely no offense is meant to actual Queen or their families.

Song inspiration: Hotel California by The Eagles.

Chapter warnings: Language, not really angst but you can FEEL that the angst is coming, pre-angst???

Chapter list (and all my writing) available HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @loveandbeloved29 @killer-queen-xo @maggieroseevans @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @joemazzmatazz @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye @namelesslosers @inthegardensofourminds @deacyblues @youngpastafanmug @sleepretreat @hardyshoe @bramblesforbreakfast @sevenseasofcats @tensecondvacation

Please yell at me if I forget to tag you! :)

He calls you at home, at the bare-bones flat you share with two Imperial College nursing students; he calls because he knows you want to see the world. He can’t give you the world yet, he can’t quite afford that. But what he can afford are two tickets to the British Museum, which are, incidentally, free.

Roger shows you the Rosetta Stone, a column from the Temple of Artemis, the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, the River Witham swords, the Benin ivory mask of Queen Idia, Chinese jade, Incan gold, portraits of Anne Boleyn, bronze busts of Hadrian and Claudius, Rembrandts and Da Vincis and Van Goghs. He shows you the treasures of the living and the ruins of the dead, their currency and their gods and their flesh: skeletal mummies of people who walked the earth a millennium and a half before the Mayans, three thousand years before Alexander.

He’s uncharacteristically patient. He takes his time. He studies the maddeningly small words on the displays and asks you which relics you like best, whether they speak to you, what they say. He doesn’t want to leave even when you offer, even when you can see he’s restless for a cigarette, when he drums his fingers against his hip and gnaws his lower lip with those tiny canine teeth. Maybe there’s something else he’s even more ravenous for.

Roger wants to show you everything. There are alabaster-white, echoing corridors roped off for renovations, but that doesn’t stop him. He sprints with you down dimly-lit hallways—your fingers interlaced with his, your hair flying—and raises curtains and murky sheets of plastic to reveal marble faces, Anglo-Saxon helmets, Viking blades, fifth-century scrolls. He keeps watch as you look; and when he hears the footsteps of security guards he pulls you into the shadows, presses you flat against the wall, giggles in whispers as he clasps his palm over your mouth and begs you to be quiet. I’m trying, your gleaming eyes tell him, and when he lifts his hand away his burning sapphire gaze drops to your lips, and you think he might kiss you, and you think you might let him. But at the last moment you turn away, pretend you hadn’t noticed, tell him you think the footsteps are gone.

And the words ricochet perilously through your mind like shrapnel: I won’t fall in love with him. I won’t fall in love with him.

That once felt like a promise; now it feels like a plea.

~~~~~~~~~~

“I have a deeply philosophical question for you.”

“Go ahead.”

John is laying across the studio couch on his back, using your maroon-tights-and-golden-sundress-clothed thigh as a pillow, holding his notebook with one hand and a dulling pencil with the other. You’re working through a pile of the band’s outfits that need mending, denim and leather and knits and polyester strewn over your lap; you are excellent at stitching, whether in fabric or flesh. Every once in a while you twirl a lock of John’s feathery hair, and he doesn’t seem to mind. “If Brian was a superhero, who would he be?”

“Spider-Man,” you reply instantly. “The limbs.”

“Ahhhh, of course! He’s a regular daddy longlegs, isn’t he?” John begins sketching. “I already have Roger as Thor—blond and ragey, likes to throw things—and Freddie as Iron Man. Innovative and unstoppable. Fearless leader. Shamelessly opulent.”

“How about you?”

John smirks, but maybe he winces a little too. “Doctor Strange.”

You frown down at him. “You aren’t strange, John.”

“I am,” he says simply. “But that’s alright. I make do.”

“I don’t find you strange.”

“Yes, well. You’re accustomed to patching together damaged things.”

Freddie explodes into the room, his tall black boots clopping on the linoleum floor. He waves his arms hysterically and thrusts his notebook towards you. I need your help, he’s written.

“Sure thing. Ask away.”

He scribbles another line and turns the notebook so you can see. Tell Brian he’s a twat.

You sigh. “Freddie, no.”

Behind the soundproof glass, Freddie, Roger, and Brian have been working on In The Lap Of The Gods: first Roger’s falsetto parts, then Freddie’s piano. This has been no easy task. Freddie is on complete vocal rest after being diagnosed with laryngitis, Brian is recovering from a duodenal ulcer (on top of his residual fatigue from hepatitis), and they’re all ready to strangle each other. Freddie opens his mouth to protest.

“Don’t you dare!” you cry, leaping to your feet. You start a fresh pot of tea on the hotplate and grab the flashlight from your bag. You’ve registered with a London-based travel nurse agency and, after heavy lobbying from Freddie and Roger, have officially been signed with the record company as Queen’s tour nurse. Assuming, of course, that the next tour ever happens. “Let me see.”

Freddie reluctantly plops down onto the couch so you can shine the flashlight down his inflamed throat.

“I better not find out you’ve been bitching at people,” you tell him. Freddie winks and flips his hair.

From the other side of the glass, you can see Roger jabbing an index finger at Brian, shouting, swearing, needling until Brian flings his hands into the air and stomps out of the studio.

“Well,” John says. “I’m glad that’s going well.”

You aren’t terribly alarmed; you’ve seen this before. Brian will spend a few minutes outside, pacing and muttering to himself under the sweltering August sky, and eventually he’ll right himself again—like a sailboat gaining traction in a storm—and return for round two or twelve or twenty. You pour Freddie a cup of piping hot tea with honey and slip into the live room, Freddie and John following behind you.

“How are things?” John asks cheerfully.

Roger is wearing a half-unbuttoned leopard print shirt, tight black leather pants, and black sweatbands on both wrists that he tugs at when he’s frustrated. He snorts in reply and rolls his eyes. Then he glances over at Brian’s Red Special. The guitar has been left unattended on its stand, shining and forbidden. Oh no.

“I wouldn’t,” John cautions.

But Roger does: he pulls the Red Special into his lap and begins to pluck away at it. You recognize the mournful intro riff of Stairway To Heaven. John whistles nervously. Freddie crosses his arms over his chest and taps the heels of his boots against the floor in disapproval.

“Roger, please,” you say. “Don’t stress the man out, you’ll give him another ulcer. You realize if he sees this he’s going to murder you. Hack you into tiny bits. We’ll never find all the pieces.”

Roger laughs. “Calm down, nothing’s gonna happen—” And then, as soon as he begins to adjust it, a tuning key pops off the head and rolls away. Freddie’s teacup shatters as it tumbles out of his grasp. Roger gapes at you and John and Freddie, horrified. “Oh no.”

“Roger!” you yelp, palms cupping your flushing cheeks.

John scoops the tuning key off the floor and rushes to Roger’s side. “Give it to me.”

Roger shoves the Red Special into John’s outstretched arms and begins hyperventilating, yanking at blond hair that you’ve learned is the product of cheap boxed dye. “Oh my god, Brian’s gonna...he’s...he’s...he’s gonna...”

Freddie bolts through the door and disappears outside, still clutching his notebook; he’ll try to delay Brian as long as he can. You wonder if you should join him, if that would make Brian even more suspicious, if there’s anything you can do. Roger paces like a lion behind iron bars.

John says softly as he works: “If I can’t fix it before Brian comes back, I’ll tell him I did it. He already hates me.” That’s not exactly true, and you all know it; but Brian and John clash better and connect worse than any of the rest of them. You marvel, momentarily, at how it can be possible for you to care so consumingly for four men who are so astronomically different. Ah, but perhaps you don’t care for them all in the same way.

“I can’t let you do that, Deaks,” Rog replies. Beads of perspiration are springing up along his temples, his collarbones, his neck. Don’t look, you tell yourself, feeling something scalding and hungry rippling through your skin like goosebumps.

“What can I do?” you ask desperately. “John, can I help...?”

“Almost there.” John is twisting the tuning key. You hear thumping against the door.

“Freddie, move!” Brian is shouting outside. “Move! What are you doing? What are they up to in there?!”

There’s a frantic commotion as John and Roger rush for the guitar stand. You spin to watch the door as it opens. Brian steps inside, his hawkish eyes narrowed. A frazzled Freddie materializes behind him. Your gaze darts back to the Red Special. It’s resting on the guitar stand where Brian left it, orderly and fully intact. Roger and John are chatting nonchalantly by the drum kit and trying to conceal the fact that they’re gasping for air. Oh thank GOD.

Brian peers back at Freddie. Freddie flashes an innocent grin. Brian props his hands on his waist and examines the room, taking long determined strides, fidgeting with the beaded choker around his neck. “Roger,” he says at last.

Roger bats his long eyelashes and casts you a knowing smile. “Hmm?”

“Why is there tea all over the floor?”

~~~~~~~~~~

Summer bleeds out, and autumn floods in like the tide. With dying leaves and cutting evening gales come other eventualities as well: a release date for Sheer Heart Attack, Killer Queen’s roaring reception as the album’s lead single, radio play and fanfare and the announcement that Queen’s first world tour will begin on the day before Halloween. So I might finally see some return on investment, you teased Freddie when he told you. He shot back: Just keep my vocal chords humming, bitch.

Tonight you’re at Top of the Pops with the rest of Queen’s usual entourage: Chrissie and Mary, Josephine and Veronica, assorted representatives and assistants from the record company Trident. The show has laid out a spread of fruit and meats and cheeses and cookies—biscuits, you remind yourself, you have to call them biscuits now—and alcohol...including Moët & Chandon, of course. You circle the table with Chrissie, piling free food onto your plate and sipping champagne, chattering mindlessly to distract yourselves from how petrified you all are. Freddie and Brian are still in hair and makeup; Roger is berating the producers for forcing Queen to perform to playback; John is compulsively snacking in some shadowy corner somewhere and avoiding the crowds, presumably with Veronica. You don’t dislike Veronica. She’s polite and gentle and undemanding, if a bit reticent around the band. You don’t think she would ever try to exploit John for the novelty of being with a musician, nor for the possibility of money and fame. But you sometimes wonder how much of John she really sees.

“Is this white cheddar?” Josephine asks as she stabs a cheese cube with a pink foil-tipped toothpick. “Or maybe gruyere? Monterey jack...?”

“I think it’s halloumi,” Chrissie offers.

“Ohhh, exotic!” Jo takes a bite. “It’s good, whatever it is.”

You pop a sliver of pineapple into your mouth. “My goal is to eat at least three of everything. And wrap extras in napkins to smuggle home. It’s a hard life, you know. Roping one’s fortunes to an almost-famous rock band.”

Jo smirks and shakes out her hair: dark, full, freshly trimmed. “I’ll have to live vicariously through you. I’m watching my figure.” She glances pensively down at her svelte body, which is sheathed in a silvery mini-dress.

“Love, you look amazing,” Chrissie says, somewhat pained. You’ve learned that when anyone suffers, Chrissie aches right along with them.

Jo just wrinkles her nose and shrugs. Jo is wilder than Veronica, edgier than Chrissie, less saccharine than Mary, more glamorous than you. She’s the only match you could imagine for Roger; and this brings you down some days, drags you low, sinks you into indigo melancholy. But lately Josephine has been the blue one, the quiet one. And you suddenly find yourself wondering if perhaps there is no match for Roger at all, no perfect counterbalance, no one soul that could tame his anywhere in the world.

“You’re flawless, Jo,” you tell her, but it feels hollow and anemic.

Mary appears, stroking her large gold earrings restlessly. “Fred’s almost done. They want to start in twenty minutes.”

You toss your empty plate into the garbage—rubbish, you amend mentally—and shake the crumbs from your dress. “I’ll go get John.”

You scuttle around the set, checking gloomy forgotten spots and the dressing rooms and broom closets. As you search, Roger finds you.

“Hey,” he says, mostly confidently, a dash apprehensively, his hands buried in his pockets.

“Hi. I’m trying to locate your bassist so you can pretend to perform in fifteen minutes.”

“That’s kind of you. I just passed him, though. He’s with Freddie. Everything is as it should be. Can I talk to you?”

“Um.” You stare at him, confused. “We’re already talking, aren’t we?”

“Yes, alright, true, but I have something important to say.”

“Okay.” You study him warily. Roger clears his throat and glimpses around. The two of you are standing in the shadow of a monstrosity of a lighting rig and are very much alone.

“I just...I wanted to inform you that...um...I’ll be...ah...well, you see...” He shakes his head and forces it out. “I’ll be breaking up with Jo soon. And I just wanted you to know. For you to be the first to know.”

You recoil, stunned. “Why would you break up with her?”

He smiles. “So I can take you out, of course.”

Oh my god oh my god oh my god. A furious barrage of images cascades through your mind: touching him, being touched by him, whispers in the darkness, rings, chapels, children, and then: Josephine. What it must feel like to be Jo, what the beginning looked like for her, what the end will: scorched earth and desolation. “I’m not interested,” you say, pleasantly surprised by the steadiness in your voice.

“Sure you are,” Roger replies, undeterred. “We’re going to be travelling all over. It’ll be museums and monuments and libraries and natural wonders galore. I can show you the world.”

“I’m really not.”

“Why wouldn’t you be interested?”

“Because I’m not looking to get played. And you seem like someone who might play me.”

Now he’s wounded; those massive pale eyes are glossy. “I most certainly would not.”

“Roger, I’m completely enchanted by you. You’re brilliant and fun and caring and so much smarter than people assume you are—”

“Thanks...?”

“—And you’re a fantastic friend. But if we do this and it doesn’t last...which, let’s be real, it probably won’t...I’ll lose you forever. And the band. And my job. The math just doesn’t work for me.” But, oh god, I’d do anything to rearrange those numbers.

Roger mulls that over, shuffles his feet, lights a cigarette. “I have a list, you know. Not a written list. It’s just in me, a part of me. Here.” He points at his chest. “It’s not long. It’s only things I can’t live without, or things I wouldn’t want to. There’s becoming a musician. There’s leaving Cornwall. There’s finding a band worthy of me. Check check check.” He takes a drag and exhales smoke into the air. “Next there’s becoming a famous rock star, seeing the world, providing for my family. That’s all coming together presently.” His eyes find yours. “You’re on that list now. And once something’s made the list, it never comes off.”

“Not until you’ve had it.”

That knocks Roger back, makes his brow furrow, makes him blink as it rolls through him; because maybe that cuts just a bit too close to the bone. Then his face clears like a cloudless sky and he smiles, brightly, blissfully, as he always does. “I’ll just have to change your mind.”

“You can try.”

He takes your left hand, skates his teeth lightly over your knuckles, grins mischievously. “I’m going to need one last toast for good luck.”

Roger leads you back to the snack table and pours three flutes of champagne: one for you, one for him, and one for Chrissie, who’s waited for you. John, Freddie, and Brian are testing their equipment on stage; Mary, Veronica, and Jo have commandeered spots with the best view and refuse to abandon them. The three of you toast, drain your champagne, and watch the preparations from afar. John is bopping around the stage as he strums his bass, lost in the music in his head.

“Such a strange man,” Chrissie murmurs, although not unkindly.

Roger immediately bristles. “He’s only strange if you don’t bother to try to understand him.”

“Oh hell, Rog, come on, I didn’t mean it like—”

But Roger pushes by her and breezes away. He swipes a pint of beer and a bunch of grapes off the snack table, saunters over to where John is playing, and gnaws the grapes messily as he points and asks John questions.

Chrissie sighs and turns to you. “You know I didn’t mean it like that. You know I adore John.”

“I know it.” And of course, you adore him too. But you have something else on your mind. You tilt your champagne flute towards Roger. “What was he like when he and Jo first got together?”

“Why?” Chrissie asks, eyebrows raised. “You mean...was he the same way he is with you?”

You twirl your empty glass morosely. “Sure. If I am in fact that transparent.”

Chrissie chuckles and rubs your shoulder reassuringly. “Now now, don’t be grumpy.” She lights a cigarette and thinks. “Honestly, no. He’s different with you. More himself, less dramatic. Less always trying to be the dashing playboy. Just pure energy, that enthusiasm he has that’s almost childish. He’s happy. Really happy.”

You nod. “So you think I should give him a chance if he asks for it.”

“Absolutely not.”

You startle and whirl to her, not understanding.

Chrissie smiles tenderly, sadly, wishing she could change it. “He’ll ruin you. He ruins everyone. Now if he asked you in ten years? Fifteen years? Maybe. But if you say yes now, he’ll burn through you like battery acid. He’ll love you until you can’t imagine a world without him, until everything you were before is quarried from your bones. And then he’ll move on. He can’t help it, that’s just who he is. Reckless and wonderful and insatiable. And good luck trying to find anything on this whole fucking planet that can replace Roger Taylor.”

“I understand,” you whisper. “Thank you.”

You watch Queen up on the stage as they count down the minutes until showtime, how Freddie fluffs his hair and checks his eyeliner, how Brian meticulously rehearses his notes on the Red Special, how John and Roger exchange comments and jokes. And it occurs to you how symbiotic they are: Roger bringing passion and dauntlessness and fire, John tempering that when necessary and contributing something so dissimilar and yet vital, something steady and pragmatic and immutable. Brian’s a willow tree, Fred’s a lightning storm, Roger’s wildfire...but what is John?

You can’t decide. Roger is tapping away at the hi-hat and it sounds like a metronome, like something hypnotic, like a spell older than the pyramids.

I won’t fall in love with him. I won’t fall in love with him. I won’t fall in love with him.

#queen #queen fanfic #queen fic #borhap #roger taylor fic #roger taylor x reader #but you can never leave #but you can never leave fic #but you can never leave series #roger taylor #queen fandom

122 notes · View notes

peanutbutterisland-blog · 4 years

Text

SHORT STORY - V7 PT 1

V7 - Part 1- scroll down for more or go to archives, story begins at V4

Intro Colder than the dark depths of the ocean the village was at a standstill. During winter, you would hardly find anyone outside except for the farmers and the men chosen to hunt for the entire village. The women and children would stay in wooden homes that sang the cold winds tune, smoke would rise from each household and folk songs were heard from the village boarder. The villages’ most respected warriors and elderly council patrolled the boarder. The boarder is not much of a high barrier but wide fencing and one tall safe house. It was not to prevent anything from penetrating the village, they knew they couldn’t do that, it was to give the village enough distance to evacuate when they finally arrived. Either men on the boarder where chosen because they were brilliant warriors, volunteered or where of royal decent and their fathers wanted to teach them discipline. Either way those who patrolled the boarder where respected and revered. The boarder was fenced with elf metal; elf metal was dug up under ground the Mysterious forest. 11 years ago, the king told the kingdom that a great danger was ahead and everyone needed to be ready, he sent out king’s men and laborers to ensure that the border fence was built. A truce was made with the elves of the forest, which entailed that the kingdom could mine for elf metal in the promise that the kingdom does not enter their forest again. Elf metal was very strong and had the power to destroy and burn any evil force. The truce was made and building of the fence around the village commenced. It took four years for the fence to be built, shards of long sharp elf metal rods were placed around the village in a circular fashion, towards the fence a deep hole was dug around the village and it was filled with elf metal. The Kingdom built the fence for two reasons. One, was because they needed time when danger approached to set up their soldiers and two, they decided that when danger finally approached the first in line would be the village people who would essentially be sacrificed. The winter went colder by the day and across the vast emptiness over the border, they lurked. Chapter 2- A song for dying men Afternoons at the border looked no different from the night, the fog covered the sky and the floor stood still, layered with ice. The only solace the lonely men found was to huddle together around the fire of the safe house and tell folk stories. The men who were at the border where there for 4 years, they did not know when they were going back home and did not know what danger laid ahead. Amongst these men was a middle-aged sword maker named Indri. He was a man who commanded respect despite his age, all though he was a part of the common folk he was respected around the boarder and his village. He was one of the first men to volunteer when asked and held the second highest position at the border, Sargent of the east wing of the boarder. Indri was a man who would do anything for his family even if that was leaving them behind to protect them. He left his wife Adeya and his only daughter Erin behind. He loved his wife and adored his daughter. When he was young, a family was all he wanted, many men wanted gold, titles and an endless amounts of women but he always believed in building, working with his hands, loving with his heart and he had accomplished that. He was the villages most sort after sword maker, travelers from all over the world and merchants from every kingdom came far and wide to purchase weapons from him, with the money he made he built houses for his kingdom and provided food to all those who needed it. Indri meet Erin when he was a young boy playing around the Silver River, she had long dark hair and a complexion of bronze . Her eyes where hazel brown and could capture a man’s soul from a distance. They grew up together, laughed together, mourned together and made a beautiful baby girl together. Indri knew he was not the best fighter nor was he the best leader but he left his heart on the line in all opposition and let his blood run dry before anything happened to those he loved. The men surround the fire as if their mothers where reading them a bedtime story. The safe house was large enough to house a hundred men and sleep ten hundred. Those in charge of the food handed out bowls of onion soup and bread; the men told stories of where they came from, folk lore and most importantly their sexual escapades. The room was filled with chatter and laughter. This was the only time the men did not think about what laid ahead. If you took a first glance at the room, you would think these men were celebrating until a loud “SILENCE!” came from the Lord Masters table. These men were of the highest ranks of the border and some were chiefs and kings. An old overweight bearded man stood up and said, “Be merry in your celebrations, tell stories of your loved ones, drink until your bellies explode but do not forget what lays ahead of us. The Lord Masters and I had a meeting today and we just received a letter from the King of the realm himself, who informed us that the King of Veli, leader of the sea has died. His son joined the dark lord and in a matter of months rained terror across the island of Veli with monsters from the sea no man has ever seen. Across the other side of the forest, we were told that the dark Lord Vali and his monsters had invaded what use to be the slave village. Good men the dark lord does not just kill, he wakes dead men and marches them in his army. Women, children even dogs. I do not tell you this to scare you, in fact I am here to do the opposite, will you allow that cold hearted dickless basted to take your family, your souls ,your history?” “NO!” will you let your Mothers bury you? “NO” “ then I ask you this gentlemen, drink and be merry and as long as you have breathe fight for what is good and what is right, defend your free will as long as you can and if you die, let it be by your own sword” “ARE YOU WITH ME? *loud chants “YEAAAAHHHHHH” A drunk man from the crowed table stood up and said, “Since where all going to die can someone sing us a bloody song?” The room went quiet for a moment until a skinny man stood up from the back and belted out Death lies ahead my dear Ill trudge with a smile and no fear For God only knows Where I shall go Men hold your rum Women hold your kids Death has no place in here (5X) CHAPTER 3- Hold the doors The village had never been so quiet. The only commotion that was heard was in the mornings when the women would milk the cows and the men would gather fire wood, no one was allowed to be out at night. No one wanted to be out anyway taking account of the weather. The north had not felt a winter this cruel since Kanan the Emperor ruled the kingdoms, that was a time of dragons and mythical creatures. It was said that the winter span was so long and so harsh during Kanan’s reign that men and women resorted to eating each other, at first kids were eaten, then the women then the men devoured each other, it was the bloodiest period the Kingdom had ever known. The difference about this winter is that yes it was colder than before but the village and the kingdom had prepared for it. When the king heard of the great Tree of blessings dying and it’s sap Turing black he knew that a dark time was ahead . He went to scholars and old men who had witnessed the first wave of evil during Kanans reign and they advised him to stock up for the winter because it would be a cruel one and what followed would be even more sinister. Barrels of wheat, rice, maize, vegetables and live stock was sent to every corner of the region to prepare them for the long and cold winter. One of the women responsible for the preservation and distribution of food in the village was Adeya. She held the job with grace and compassion and even though tired corrupt men tried to intermediate her and even steal from her she always stood strong. Adeya took this responsibility seriously, she knew she couldn’t do anything at the boarder so the best she could do was to help where she could and that was in the heart of the village. Being a women of power in a village of hateful men was tough, she was threatened everyday and harassed on a daily basis but she knew that her husband would come back soon and that she was doing this for a better cause. The cold nights was the only time Adeya could spend with her daughter Erin, she told her stories about her father and stories about the past, her favorite story to tell was the one about a slave who found love with a girl in a cave, the story went that a young man was banished with his people to the snowy mountains, he found love and spent time with her in a cave, the girl was killed and his heart ran so cold with revenge that he turned evil. Adeya loved telling her daughters these stories because she was never afraid, she always wanted to explore and learn about the world, she had no fear in her heart. The night was still young and after Adeya put her daughter to sleep she opened a jug of fermented palm wine and sat next to a fire, it was a silent night filled with hallows from the icy wind, but as Adeya settled in she heard a loud gust of wind. She took no notice of it but it got louder and louder and after a while it got so loud that it woke up her daughter. The bell was rang and everyone was told to hold the doors, the time had come, no one knew what laid ahead, the only thing they could do now is pray. Chapter 4- They are here The boarder was frantic with movement, wracking of weapons filled the air and shouting from lord sergeants soaked the snow, you could barely see your own hands because the blizzard had hit its peak. Everybody knew that they had arrived, the boarder was full of men who were ready to give their lives for their people. Indri was tasked to ride into the cold white darkness with 70 troops and horses, when they got to the half way point they heard horrid noises, pungent horrible stenches came from the darkness and a dark force was felt. When the fog cleared the only thing that could be seen was deadly monster like figures. Indri lit a fire on his tiki torch and when the light hit the darkness the most horrid, flesh rotting, sinister monsters appeared. They had figures of men and women but they had no life in them, they where just walking pounds of evil rotting flesh . A long silence lured the cold, the men could not believe what they where seeing. 12 men rode back to the boarder in fear. The rest of the men stayed ready to fight and as the snow flakes dropped to the floor. The dead monsters charged towards them and with a loud brave chant the men charged as well. To be continued.

#short story #story

3 notes · View notes

tabletoptrinketsbyjj · 5 years

Text

Trinkets, 30: Interesting baubles, semi magical objects and items touched by mystery.

A waterproof scrollcase containing a key and a sheaf of official documents. According to the paperwork, the key opens a bankbox in a prestigious bank in a large city far away, and the lease on it has been paid for the next 100 years.

A beautifully painted set of castanets made out of sturdy oyster shells.

A full mask of rippled black glass with thin slanted slits for the bearer’s eyes. All who look upon it see distorted reflections of their own faults and failings, the slightest doubt twisted into a horrific swarm of phantoms that claw at the psyche of the victim. The bearer is never affected by the mask’s powers but longtime users may find their sense of compassion and empathy withering away the longer they stare out of the dark veil’s slanted eye slits.

An aged papyrus scroll bearing the image of an open sarcophagus, its lid propped up against the side. In its contents are gemstones, jewelry, and even precious coin lain in among the rotting silks of long dead corpse. Wafts of green and brown can be seen emanating from the molded cloths, and around the open container the carcasses of sweltering animals and humans remain motionless as the plague eats away at the flesh.

A well crafted, black cloth banner featuring a stylized skull breathing flames. A Knowledgeable PC will recognize the object serves as a rallying point for the free company of mercenaries known as the Black Company, who are highly respect and feared by allies and foes alike.

A three-lobed spinning device with almost frictionless ball bearings in the center. There are holes in the lobes and the center has a raised disk on both sides so the device can be held while it is spinning.

A one gallon cask of Norscan Mead. Made from fermented honey, the beverage is also known as Sweet Brew and is too sugary to drink in great quantities, though a few fools do and regret it. Though it has a rich amber colour and a delicious taste, Knowledgeable PC’s are aware that occasional batches contain a few contaminants that elicit strange visions and unsettling emotional outbursts. People usually risk the unusual side effects for a sample of this expensive beverage.

A pulsing, mossy stone of unknown origin that glows with the light of life.

An ivory statuette of a mermaid that is for the most part crudely carved, with the exception of certain 'features' which have been carved with lavish detail.

A fine clay pipe, the bowl formed into the shape of a bearded man with a scarred face. The face is so detailed, that the bearer can even make out the arrow shaped earring, which Knowledgeable PC’s will recognize as the mark of a well-known pirate gang.

—Keep reading for 90 more trinkets.

—Note: The previous 10 items are repeated for easier rolling on a d100.

A beautifully painted set of castanets made out of sturdy oyster shells.

A pulsing, mossy stone of unknown origin that glows with the light of life.

An ivory statuette of a mermaid that is for the most part crudely carved, with the exception of certain 'features' which have been carved with lavish detail.

Shivered Timber: A large shard of wood from a pirate ship's mast that is constantly tipped with frost. The implement can be used a focus for casting spells that deal cold damage.

A delicate china tea set painted in motifs of faraway lands. It's well wrapped in padded cloth and comes with its own matching box.

A strange sextant crafted from tarnished brass, badly tanned leather, crudely shaped driftwood and milky glass, it's a tool only a seasoned mariner could appreciate, much less love. And yet, over the years various sailors have added their own touches such as a bundle of pigeon feathers tied with sinew to a thumbscrew, a rough etching of a stylized Kraken and an extra mirror. Regardless of its dubious decorations, the object works perfectly well as a navigational tool.

A gruesome war banner sewn from strings of congealed gore, the flag radiates bloodlust so strong that those beneath it are filled with rage.

A brightly polished tin candle holder covered in silver snowflake decorations.

A metal wargong, made from a shield that has seen more than its fair share of battle.

A glass jar containing orange and red fruit preserves. A rough and jolly swashbuckler is imprinted on the lid. Along the side is written " Jelly Roger's Marmalade: To prevent scurvy on the high seas!"

A small pane of stained glass depicting a fire.

A mask of terrifying craftsmanship, depicting in obsidian and void-fired bronze the agonized visage of a tortured angel. The facial covering constantly weeps tears of blood that evaporate without trace moments after falling from the mask

A metal torc that looks rather severe, with several upward-facing spikes. The words “Watchmen’s Friend” is etched on the inside of the band. It would be very difficult to nod off when wearing such a serious piece of neckwear as the bearer would likely prick themselves on the spikes.

A large whale's tooth that is finely carved, appearing to depict a young woman drowning at sea. Beneath is the name “Celia” and a few badly worn sentences that might explain her fate, but the words are very hard to read.

A delicate chain of hand folded paper dolls, each delicately painted.

A basket of blood fruit, a product of nature magic tainted by chaos and evil. The fruits resemble wan, black, malformed apples and are tautly filled with a mixture of blood and oily, dark ichors. Eating a blood fruit wracks the body with terrible stomach spasms and horrendous digestive issues.

A worn, brass key nearly a handspan wide and decorated with thorny vines.

A scarlet gem that shimmers in the bearer's hand like the pale cinders of cooling hearth. The bearer can feel its brittle heat wash over them, seething through their veins like serpents of liquid steel.

A dangling upside down rune etched in blood on strange leather parchment.

A perfectly preserved tarantula, encased in a glass hemisphere.

A simple wind instrument cut from a reed, commonly known as a whistlecane. They are so easy to make, that skilled bards frequently make and give them away to children-to the parents' delight or regret.

A lock of white hair trapped in amber.

A small painting depicting an ugly and extremely overweight troll with a giant club resting on its shoulder, sitting on one side of a cobblestone bridge while a party of adventurers in armor waits on the other side in preparation, their armor gleaming in the sunlight and their spear heads glinting in bloodlust.

A druid’s staff of giant fennel covered with ivy vines, assorted leaves and topped with a pinecone.

A pan flute fashioned from hollowed out oak twigs.

A single lens, hand magnifier with a wooden handle, on the grip is inscribed "For those who seek" in golden lettering.

A painted face mask of a jester with a rictus blood-red smile.

A stone tablet that bears inscriptions detailing a notable being who fell just short of achieving godhood.

A simple necromancer’s staff with an ornate head as dark as onyx and decorated with arcane symbols designed to prey on the subconscious fears of mortals.

A pair of goggles with light orange, round, translucent lenses that are mounted within a flexible metal frame that has a soft leather strap with a clasp at the back.

A beaten leather bag containing various pliers, knives, hooks, shears and mind-weakening drugs strapped to its interior. Knowledgeable PC's will recognize the symbol of an order of demon hunters sewn into the inner lining, and deduce that these were one of their member's interrogation tools. Kits such as these were incredibly useful for convincing cultists and evildoers of all kinds to divulge their nefarious plots, as the interrogation tools appear intentionally gruesome. More often than not, the very presence of the cruel looking instruments is enough to induce a prisoner to talk. Unfortunately, these tools also inspire some very convincing lies. The use of these tools (Even by virtue of having the victim see them or describing how they will be used and how immensely painful they will be) grants the bearer advantage on intimidate checks made while questioning prisoners, but they impose disadvantage on all sense motive or insight checks made to determine whether the information gleaned is accurate or not.

A fully functioning xylophone made out of Giant's toe nails.

A leather doctor’s bag contains all the accouterments a phrenologist needs to measure skulls. The kit contains several metal skull calipers of various sizes, a labeled chalkware bust of a humanoid head, and numbered charts of skulls of various species.

A black leather half-mask that covers the bearer’s nose and mouth and muffles their breathing.

A head sized array of complicated clockwork mechanisms that throb slightly as pulsing with an organic heartbeat.

A metal lantern of dwarven make that hangs from a short length of chain.

A black silk choker, with a square orange stone set in its center.

An old glass bottle with a glass stopper sealed with wax. It contains a cloudy white liquid with ribbons of black and grey suspended in it.

A firmly locked, steel chest, marked on the lid in multiple languages that this chest is ordered sealed by order of (Insert setting appropriate authority figure here), opening the chest is a crime, and that punishment for said crime is dismemberment and / or death. If opened, the container is found to be empty with the exception of a hastily scribbled note that reads “I.O.U. one Mcguffin”.

An obsidian jewelry box with a black rose embroidered on it. The box is all sharp edges, oppressively heavy and has a jagged uneven surface.

A delicate iron rod with an intricate pattern of constellations all over its surface and a moth-shaped handle in the middle. One end is marked by an eight-pointed star, while the other one displays a waning moon.

A pearlescent marble scepter topped by a blue gemstone cut in the shape of an eight-pointed star.

A porcelain mask depicting a slightly disgusted visage of an oligarch.

A dreamcatcher, made from elk antlers and a silvery thread, adorned with an arrangement of dark and brightly colored feathers. The shape defined by its threads seem to change from time to time, but the resulting patterns are hardly discernible.

A one gallon cask of Bretonnian brandy, known for being beloved by low and highborn alike. Perhaps the oldest liquor made by humans, it is made from fermented grape wine. Its distinctive taste and warming effect when consumed make it an excellent tonic for road-weary travelers.

A woodcut relief depicting a woman in a rocking chair, knitting scarves and sweaters for her many grandchildren around. A warm hearth’s fire lights the room in a golden glow, giving tone to each feature of each of the children’s smiling faces. Only something thing is off about the picture. The woman eyes are sunken in holes of what might have once been eyes, her mouth a dried picture of a smile stuck into place like the muscles seized up in a corpse, her hands covered in lumpy growths which accent her impossibly knobby fingers. And weirdly, where there might be disgust or horror, the viewer only feels sympathy like one sufferer feels towards another sufferer.

A fully functioning clarinet carved from driftwood. The holy symbol of a minor lake deity is branded into the side

An intricate wooden box with delicate gold filigree and a wind up key on the back. If it is opened after having been wound-up a beautiful melody plays out.

A slit drum made from a hollowed, fire hardened, hardwood log. The instrument has two slits on its topside, cut into the shape of an "H". The resultant strips or tongues are then struck with a pair of mallets fashioned from deer antlers which are stored with the hollowed frame. Since the tongues are of different lengths and carved into different thicknesses, the drum produces two different pitches, near a fourth apart. The exterior is decorated with relief carvings of various deities and abstract monstrous designs. Some of these creatures are open-mouthed, providing increased volume through the hole at the end. The drum is one foot long and can be easily carried and played straps about the shoulders.

A small and rather ordinary-looking flute carved from a piece of gray driftwood that plays beautiful, clear music.

A black velvet mask in the shape of a spider with four jointed wire legs protruding from each side of it. It covers the wearer's face completely but does not hinder vision or speech.

A small sack of shark leather that contains a handful of piranha teeth.

A compact ball of tightly wrapped steel wires that fits in one hand.

A long, segmented conical trumpet, made of a lightweight metal that collapses into three sections for easier transportation.

A set of soldier’s studded red leather greaves that come up over the knees and cling tightly to the calf. There are no visible closures or bindings on the armor. The red leather is artfully burned with the pattern of twining vines. To remove the armor, a command word must be whispered which awakens the vines and relaxes them, allowing the greaves to slip off easily and quickly. To don them, the same verbal command must be uttered causing the vines tighten and recess into the leather once again.

A porcelain mask bearing cracks across it. The bottom right of the face from the jawline to the cheekbone to the chin is broken off. A viewer can just make out the expression of terror carved into the remaining features of the mask.

A red potion flask fashioned in the shape of a bull filled with an amber liquid. If consumed, the drinker’s face turns red and he becomes unable to sleep or rest properly for 1d20 hours. This does no eliminate the drinker’s need for rest, it simply blocks their ability to do so.

A forest elf’s rucksack that is simply the treated husk of a giant seedpod, fitted with leather strap hinges and closed with buckled leather straps. The long, organic vessel is hard-sided and durable, with naturally formed compartments inside.

An eerie mask carved from bone to resemble the gaunt face of a terrifying vampire whose expression is that of inhuman malice.

A shining baldric that seems to be woven from threads of steel, a skill only the finest of elven smiths have accomplished. Its peculiarly angled hanger is designed to carry an elven longsword.

A tarnished bronze coin about the size of a palm. Mossy and damaged, this ancient coin is barely perceptible as valuable.

A thick canvas messenger bag with the image of an anvil on one side, surrounded by four arms, each wielding a different tool.

A worn playing card depicting an unsightly old woman with knobbled fingers peering over her shoulder towards the viewer, smiling with unholy glee, her jagged and misplaced teeth creating a haunting smile. When the bearer blinks, the figure is replaced with the viewer, looking fearful and bewildered.

A silver dragon scale that glows in the moonlight.

A silver coin which has been hollowed out and a tiny encrypted message placed inside.

A curious frogmouth purse filled with many unusually shaped dice. A few small figurines of various people and creatures and worthless coins are also in the bag.

A five inch gnome statuette that appears as if it is on the verge of speaking when it is almost out of view.

A board covered with runes and a silver weight tied to a string. Holding the weight over the board causes it to slowly spell the answer to any question asked. The response is never correct (Except by coincidence) and is always just the answer the person asking most wants to hear.

A cube, with each side having nine squares with an eldritch symbol inscribed within the rich oak finish. The bearer can slide the cube around to shift the location of each face to match others. Some of them seem to glow when matched together, but so faint that it must be a trick of the light or the bearer’s imagination.

A four high wireframe model of a humanoid figure, made out of tin. The figure has an exquisitely detailed copper heart inside the dull ribcage.

A mask of bandage wrapping that has some strands loosely hanging off and others stained with dried blood. The filthy object has a slight smell of flesh putrefaction.

A feather quill. Anything written with this quill will appear in a distinct and unknown handwriting. This unknown handwriting remains the same, regardless of who is writing with the quill.

A small pouch of glass marbles. Each marble has the abstract shape of a different animal embedded in the center of the glass.

A large decorative candle. When lit, it gives off an alluring scent which, while impossible to identify, evokes a feeling of nostalgia in anyone who smells it.

A small garden trowel. The blade and handle are made of common, if not poor-quality materials, but the handle is set with a single semiprecious stone.

A nail molded into the shape of a sword with pommel in the shape of a wolf’s head.

A tiny wooden horse with white hair for a mane and tail, and silver beads for eyes.

A ceremonial dagger with an eye engraved on the hilt. Whenever the dagger is at the very edge of one’s vision, they can swear it just blinked.

A coin pouch. It sounds, weighs, looks and feels like it’s filled with coins, but upon opening it the bearer discovers that it is empty.

A tarnished brass kazoo in the shape of a fish.

A thick hemp rope that ties itself into a hangman’s knot whenever it's left unsupervised.

A pair of dice that seem to only roll 7s when in close proximity to gold or platinum.

A hardy, darkened conch shell with an almost dangerous amount of ridges and points. By holding the shell up to their ear, the holder can hear rushing water and violent waves with an unusual degree of clarity. Continuing to listen the shell causes the bearer to slowly begin to experience sensations of seasickness and a pressure similar to being too deep underwater. As the sensations intensify, a muted, indecipherable whispering can be heard very faintly, as if it were coming from the bottom of the sea. The whispering continues to grow louder while the sensations escalate, until the whispers can almost be made out, at which point the bearer blacks out for a few seconds, dropping the shell.

A tiny bronze idol of a goblin carrying a knife in both hands and one knife clutched in his teeth.

A simple Randomly Coloured headband with a clear crystal set in the center of the brow.

A rather large iron pot covered in scratches and scorch marks that can’t seem to be taken off. Meals prepared by this pot are always palatable but in need of salt, regardless of whether the recipe called for salt, the consumer’s enjoyment of salt, or amount of salt that was used in the cooking. Coincidentally, this effect can be nullified by adding copious amounts of pepper to the pot before serving the meal, in which case the food is always surprisingly delicious.

A small, well-crafted statuette depicting a hulking metal, box-like figure of a humanoid sitting on a rock in the midst of a creek, holding in its hand a small magenta flower, examining it closely with its eye-less, mouth-less, nose-less, featureless face. The flower is richly colored which starkly contrasts the grey golem. A creature who examines the statue for more than a few seconds feels themselves growing cold and numb and only seeing in shades of grey as if their senses were fading away. The creature’s faculties return to them the moment they stop interacting with the object.

A brutal mask resembling a growling devil’s face shaped from a single piece of a dark grey metal, save that the eyes and mouth are covered by bars like a prison cell.

An ornate glasswork sculpture of a phoenix in all its resplendent glory, its wings spread majestically over the ember glow of an active volcano. The whole piece has been magically enchanted and the illusionary flames around the bird are animated and dance and drift off of the creature’s feathers and the volcano occasionally erupts in showers of harmless sparks. The glass is warm to the touch and is as durable as steel.

A single piece of parchment on which is inscribed a long list of potion ingredients, their properties, and price in a currency that doesn't exist anymore.

A small figurine of root and stone in the shape of a large earth elemental.

A minotaur’s horn carved with all the names of their clan going back generations.

A charcoal drawing displaying the scene of a mangy beast with a bovine skull looming over the corpse of a human woman. His thin body and exposed organs give the impression of hunger, a kind of starvation that consumes body and soul. The background is heavy shrouded in mist and two streams of vapor jet downward from his snout, blending into the air as if creating the blanketing fog. At the top of the image the picture is titled “Wendigo” and in the bottom right where the artist should have placed a signature simply has the hastily scrawled word “RUN”.

105 notes · View notes

olympicoath · 4 years

Text

CHAPTER ONE : COUNCIL OF WAR

Zeus sat on his golden throne with pride, although a storm surged below him in his anger.

Flanking his right and left was his faithful, if not angry, sister-wife, the White-Armed Hera, her silk dress adorned with a cloak of green, blue, and purple peacock feathers. The Queen of the Heavens gripped her scepter tight in her soft hands. Her hair was well-kept, laying in a crown of braids atop her head.

To the Thunderhead’s left sat his second-in-command and brother, Poseidon, King of the Seas. He bore blue tattoos in which depicted his undersea kingdom. In his hands was his trident, a mighty symbol of power forged from bronze and whalebone. The Earthshaker’s hair and long beard was a sea green, his sides bore a set of fish-like gills.

The Mountain King’s most adored son and daughter walked into the atrium, bowed, then took to their thrones awaiting council.

Phoebus Apollo, God of the Sun and Patron of the Arts, golden-haired clad in a golden tunic, thrummed the strings of his lyre, filling the room with the sound of his sweet music.

Pallas Athena, Goddess of Wisdom and Strategy of War, wore a long blue dress reinforced with pieces of bronze armor and a helmet decorated with a plume of blue horsehair. Her eyes were gray, her skin fair, her hair a jet black. The owl that perched itself on her shielded arm bore feathers the color of rainclouds.

“Where are the others, your Highness?” Athena asked, tucking her helmet in the crook of her arm.

“They will be here soon enough. My bastards arrive now,” Zeus gestured to the Warrior and the Blacksmith. Ares Enyalios, God of Warfare and Murder, glowed like the bloody red of his fallen enemies, a spear in one hand.

Ares said nothing to Zeus, not even looking in his direction, but he did march to his mother Hera. He planted a kiss to her cheek, then asked, “Why have I been called, your Majesty?” One couldn’t even see his face through the darkness of his iron helmet with a crest of fire, although they could lay witness to the horror of his exposed body. He had no skin, showing only pink and red muscle, sinews and tendons under his armor.

Hephaestus, on the other hand, was not as large or as strong as his brother Ares. He was lame, his left leg shriveled like a sun-dried worm. He made up for this, though, with his industrial intuition. He burned with an orange light and used his black sledgehammer as a crutch. He, too, walked to his lone parent Hera, asking, “Where is my beloved, your Grace?”

“I’m here, you pig,” Beautiful Aphrodite walked into the room, the violet silk of her dress covering the marvel that was her body. A mortal would see their wildest desires come to life, but Aphrodite put on a specific appearance today for the Olympian Council. She was fair skinned with flowing ginger hair. She stalked to her love Ares, running her perfectly manicured hands down the length of his body. The Smith ignored his wife’s infidelity, as he still loved her with all his heart. “Is there a reason as to why I’ve been evicted from my lovers, your Bitchiness?”

“You will cease your perversions, Patron of Prostitutes.” Zeus commanded, slamming his lightning down onto the marble floor. “My love,” Zeus pointed to Hera with the bolt, “The floor is yours.”

Hera rose from her throne and tapped her lotus-tipped scepter on the oval floor, creating a window of magic on the grounds surrounding Mount Olympus. “The Titans are back. They have broken free from their prisons and are declaring war on the Greek Pantheon. My messenger, Iris, has informed me that they have gained the trust and support of the Hecatoncheires.”

“How many are still alive after billions of years in Tartarus?” Ares asked as he sat Aphrodite on his lap, her soft hand continuing to run along the swirls and slivers of his flesh.

“Enough to storm Olympus and burn it to the ground.” Poseidon solemnly answered.

“I see,” Ares picked up his spear and paced the length of the room, the fire of his helmet leaving behind a trail of embers. “And what of us? What say you? Are the Olympians fighting alone or are we fighting the Titans with our full ranks?” As Ares paced, his bronze armor changed and shifted. He remained skinless but was now armored in many plates of SWAT gear. His spear had been replaced with an assault rifle adorned with a grenade launcher, and at his side was a large assortment of explosives.

The waves of the sea stirred along with Poseidon’s mind. “We can all fight for a millennia if we must, Manslayer, but it will hardly be enough. The Moirai, who will be fighting in their own ways, have glimpsed the future. They have told our King what will happen after this war…”

Zeus held his head high, “We will all perish, my bastard son. You will die, as will Atlas. Aphrodite will fall, as will Mnemosyne. And I will die, as will Kronos.”

Ares sat back down, now wearing no armor, the entirety of his flayed body on display. “I see…” He now saw a young woman with sharpened teeth singing of war and destruction for a crowd of rejects. “We need new gods to replace us. The war will end us, but the universe still needs to be kept in balance. We will hold the line, and Olympus will prevail!” Ares now stood in his iron fortress at the edge of Mount Olympus, his soldiers ever ready. They were all dead veterans, all spanning different time periods.

Apollo rode on his Sun chariot, watching over the confounds of Olympus. He called down to Zeus, his father, “We need a contingency.”

Zeus nodded, then wore a gray business suit. The King now stood on a beach, where children were being taught how to surf along the waves. As he walked, his thundery hair and lightning filled eyes crackled with solemn determination. He conjured his lightning bolt, a column of crackling copper, silver, and gold coiled around each other.

He paid no mind to the surfing children, focusing his attention solely on their instructor. She was young with long black hair with a gray streak in it, stormy blue eyes, and a mind that wanted to command. A mind that wanted to rule. She was happily clapping at one of the young ones for managing to surf along a sizeable wave. Zeus put the bolt between her hands, and in that instant, Audra fell to her knees in pain. Her hands burned as glowing gray lightning bolts branded themselves into her palms. “Audra Noelani, I give you my blessing.”

Artemis walked through the tents as the soldiers of the Northern Union recovered themselves. Apollo walked beside his sister as they searched the tents. It was then that they saw them.

One child bore long, wispy black hair and gray eyes, while her cousin had golden brown eyes and blond locks. Artemis and Apollo, Twin Gods of the Sun and Moon, took aim with their golden and silver bow and arrows, then released them with pride and determination. As the arrow pierced Charlotte’s shoulder, a crescent moon burning itself into her pale skin, Artemis knelt before her and said, “Charlotte Reiner, I recruit you.”

As Charlotte’s younger cousin fell to the ground in agony, a sigil replicating the sun itself etched into his Adam’s apple. The Golden Archer kneeled before the young boy, offering a smile and smaller bow and arrow constructed of gold and cherrywood, and said, “Gabriel LeBeau, I choose you.”

Hephaestus rolled around the Microsoft headquarters decked out in a brown pinstripe suit, his electric wheelchair humming as he went. The God of Fire ventured to a room where a paraplegic boy with red hair and a lanky body moved wires around one of the many generators of the building.

Hephaestus’ hands conjured a flame, eliciting a flow of lava to pour out of the seams of the walls surrounding the boy. Hephaestus retrieved his massive sledgehammer, then struck the boy in his kneecaps. The blows burned into the shapes of orange anvils, causing the boy to bellow in pain, tears pricking his eyes. Hephaestus leaned in close to the boy’s ear, whispering a quick, “Leslie McKenna, this is my gift to you.”

Ares, wearing a full set of riot armor, perched himself at the balcony of the underground club where punks and rejects and society’s shit stains gathered to relax. On the stage, illuminated by red, black and white lights, was a band which deemed themselves Bloodshed Werewolves. Then he saw their lead vocalist, a rather tall Latina with short, choppy brown hair and somewhat sharpened teeth. She was infertile, Ares immediately noticed, and she had an athletic build. A crow, as if on cue, perched on her shoulder.

Ares Enyalios, God of War, drew his long, razor sharp spear, then took aim. “Aloisa Alger, I enslave you.” Ares threw his spear at the girl, her collarbone now burning as a red boar’s head took its place where the wound should have been. She laughed at the pain, proceeding to pull out her pocketknife and lunged at her guitarist.

Athena wore a simple linen gown, though it was adorned with identifying plates of Athenian armor. She studied the scrolls strewn across the villa floor, her face as stone cold as it had been during the Council meeting. Most depicted machines that would never work, others were just the ramblings of a madman. She set one of the scrolls onto the mahogany table, casting her gaze over to the boy who stood idle in the doorway. He was twelve, maybe older, with hair was that was so blonde it was nearly white and striking silver eyes.

Before he could speak and alert anyone that could be lingering outside, Pallas Athena took a paintbrush from one of the cups littering the table and broke the art supply into two, jagged sticks. The boy stared at the Goddess of Wisdom with wide eyes, the papers he’d been holding crashing to the floor. She approached him carefully, a rare smile on her wise face. Kneeling down to his height, Athena used the broken end of the brush to carve an owl into the side of the boy’s neck. The young one seethed in pain, digging his nails into the palm of his pale hands. The sigil burned with a silver light, and Athena took the opportunity to claim him as her successor. “Alistair Knowles, I bless you.”

#my writing #greek mythology #sam's writing #zeus #hera #poseidon #demeter #athena #apollo #artemis #ares #hephaestus #aphrodite #hermes #hestia #dionysus

1 note · View note

loveofyhwh · 6 years

Text

October 18: Isaiah 59–62; 1 Peter 1:1–12; Psalm 101; Proverbs 26:3–5

New Post has been published on https://loveofyhwh.com/october-18-isaiah-59-62-1-peter-11-12-psalm-101-proverbs-263-5/

October 18: Isaiah 59–62; 1 Peter 1:1–12; Psalm 101; Proverbs 26:3–5

Old Testament:

Isaiah 59–62

Isaiah 59–62 (Listen)

Evil and Oppression

59 Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; 2 but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. 3 For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies; your tongue mutters wickedness. 4 No one enters suit justly; no one goes to law honestly; they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies, they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity. 5 They hatch adders’ eggs; they weave the spider’s web; he who eats their eggs dies, and from one that is crushed a viper is hatched. 6 Their webs will not serve as clothing; men will not cover themselves with what they make. Their works are works of iniquity, and deeds of violence are in their hands. 7 Their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; desolation and destruction are in their highways. 8 The way of peace they do not know, and there is no justice in their paths; they have made their roads crooked; no one who treads on them knows peace. 9 Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not overtake us; we hope for light, and behold, darkness, and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. 10 We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among those in full vigor we are like dead men. 11 We all growl like bears; we moan and moan like doves; we hope for justice, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far from us. 12 For our transgressions are multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities: 13 transgressing, and denying the LORD, and turning back from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words.

Judgment and Redemption

14 Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter. 15 Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.

The LORD saw it, and it displeased himHebrew and it was evil in his eyes‘>1 that there was no justice. 16 He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him. 17 He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak. 18 According to their deeds, so will he repay, wrath to his adversaries, repayment to his enemies; to the coastlands he will render repayment. 19 So they shall fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun; for he will come like a rushing stream,Hebrew a narrow river‘>2 which the wind of the LORD drives. 20 “And a Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression,” declares the LORD.

21 “And as for me, this is my covenant with them,” says the LORD: “My Spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouth of your offspring, or out of the mouth of your children’s offspring,” says the LORD, “from this time forth and forevermore.”

The Future Glory of Israel

60 Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. 2 For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. 3 And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. 4 Lift up your eyes all around, and see; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be carried on the hip. 5 Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and exult,Hebrew your heart shall tremble and grow wide‘>3 because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you. 6 A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall bring good news, the praises of the LORD. 7 All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to you; the rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you; they shall come up with acceptance on my altar, and I will beautify my beautiful house. 8 Who are these that fly like a cloud, and like doves to their windows? 9 For the coastlands shall hope for me, the ships of Tarshish first, to bring your children from afar, their silver and gold with them, for the name of the LORD your God, and for the Holy One of Israel, because he has made you beautiful. 10 Foreigners shall build up your walls, and their kings shall minister to you; for in my wrath I struck you, but in my favor I have had mercy on you. 11 Your gates shall be open continually; day and night they shall not be shut, that people may bring to you the wealth of the nations, with their kings led in procession. 12 For the nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish; those nations shall be utterly laid waste. 13 The glory of Lebanon shall come to you, the cypress, the plane, and the pine, to beautify the place of my sanctuary, and I will make the place of my feet glorious. 14 The sons of those who afflicted you shall come bending low to you, and all who despised you shall bow down at your feet; they shall call you the City of the LORD, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. 15 Whereas you have been forsaken and hated, with no one passing through, I will make you majestic forever, a joy from age to age. 16 You shall suck the milk of nations; you shall nurse at the breast of kings; and you shall know that I, the LORD, am your Savior and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. 17 Instead of bronze I will bring gold, and instead of iron I will bring silver; instead of wood, bronze, instead of stones, iron. I will make your overseers peace and your taskmasters righteousness. 18 Violence shall no more be heard in your land, devastation or destruction within your borders; you shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise. 19 The sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give you light;Masoretic Text; Dead Sea Scroll, Septuagint, Targum add by night‘>4 but the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.Or your beauty‘>5 20 Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended. 21 Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified.Or that I might display my beauty‘>6 22 The least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation; I am the LORD; in its time I will hasten it.

The Year of the Lord‘s Favor

61 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor;Or afflicted‘>7 he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;Or the opening [of the eyes] to those who are blind; Septuagint and recovery of sight to the blind‘>8 2 to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3 to grant to those who mourn in Zion— to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.Or that he may display his beauty‘>9 4 They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. 5 Strangers shall stand and tend your flocks; foreigners shall be your plowmen and vinedressers; 6 but you shall be called the priests of the LORD; they shall speak of you as the ministers of our God; you shall eat the wealth of the nations, and in their glory you shall boast. 7 Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion; instead of dishonor they shall rejoice in their lot; therefore in their land they shall possess a double portion; they shall have everlasting joy. 8 For I the LORD love justice; I hate robbery and wrong;Or robbery with a burnt offering‘>10 I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. 9 Their offspring shall be known among the nations, and their descendants in the midst of the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge them, that they are an offspring the LORD has blessed. 10 I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11 For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.

Zion’s Coming Salvation

62 For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch. 2 The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give. 3 You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. 4 You shall no more be termed Forsaken,Hebrew Azubah‘>11 and your land shall no more be termed Desolate,Hebrew Shemamah‘>12 but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her,Hebrew Hephzibah‘>13 and your land Married;Hebrew Beulah‘>14 for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married. 5 For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. 6 On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. You who put the LORD in remembrance, take no rest, 7 and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth. 8 The LORD has sworn by his right hand and by his mighty arm: “I will not again give your grain to be food for your enemies, and foreigners shall not drink your wine for which you have labored; 9 but those who garner it shall eat it and praise the LORD, and those who gather it shall drink it in the courts of my sanctuary.”Or in my holy courts‘>15 10 Go through, go through the gates; prepare the way for the people; build up, build up the highway; clear it of stones; lift up a signal over the peoples. 11 Behold, the LORD has proclaimed to the end of the earth: Say to the daughter of Zion, “Behold, your salvation comes; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.” 12 And they shall be called The Holy People, The Redeemed of the LORD; and you shall be called Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken.

Footnotes

[1] 59:15 Hebrew and it was evil in his eyes [2] 59:19 Hebrew a narrow river [3] 60:5 Hebrew your heart shall tremble and grow wide [4] 60:19 Masoretic Text; Dead Sea Scroll, Septuagint, Targum add by night [5] 60:19 Or your beauty [6] 60:21 Or that I might display my beauty [7] 61:1 Or afflicted [8] 61:1 Or the opening [of the eyes] to those who are blind; Septuagint and recovery of sight to the blind [9] 61:3 Or that he may display his beauty [10] 61:8 Or robbery with a burnt offering [11] 62:4 Hebrew Azubah [12] 62:4 Hebrew Shemamah [13] 62:4 Hebrew Hephzibah [14] 62:4 Hebrew Beulah [15] 62:9 Or in my holy courts

(ESV)

New Testament:

1 Peter 1:1–12

1 Peter 1:1–12 (Listen)

Greeting

1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:

May grace and peace be multiplied to you.

Born Again to a Living Hope

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11 inquiring what person or timeOr what time or circumstances‘>1 the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

Footnotes

[1] 1:11 Or what time or circumstances

(ESV)

Psalm:

Psalm 101

Psalm 101 (Listen)

I Will Walk with Integrity

A Psalm of David.

101 I will sing of steadfast love and justice; to you, O LORD, I will make music. 2 I will ponder the way that is blameless. Oh when will you come to me? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house; 3 I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me. 4 A perverse heart shall be far from me; I will know nothing of evil. 5 Whoever slanders his neighbor secretly I will destroy. Whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not endure. 6 I will look with favor on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me; he who walks in the way that is blameless shall minister to me. 7 No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes. 8 Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off all the evildoers from the city of the LORD.

(ESV)

Proverb:

Proverbs 26:3–5

Proverbs 26:3–5 (Listen)

3 A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey, and a rod for the back of fools. 4 Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. 5 Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.

(ESV)

11 notes · View notes