#Goliath likes to read a lot right?
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ᴅᴜɴɢᴇᴏɴ ᴄʀᴀᴡʟᴇʀ
ꜱᴇx ᴘᴏʟʟᴇɴ/ʙᴜᴋᴀᴋᴋᴇ ➠ ᴍɪɴꜱᴀɴʏᴜɴʜᴡᴀ
pairing: half orc! mingi x elf! reader (fem) x barbarian! san x goliath! yunho x tiefling! seonghwa
genre: fantasy au/dnd vibe, humor, gratuitous smut
summary: you go on a quest with a group of brutish, questionable individuals. anything for some gold and riches, right?
w.c: 6.5k ish…..yeahhhh
the world’s longest list of warnings: alcohol mention/usage, soft/hard! dom party members, brat in the streets baby in the sheets sub! reader, these mfs have a hard-on for social hierarchies esp mingi (he’s a big pervert too hehe), mxm (real homies jerk each other off), monster fucking (mimic box…listen i saw it in a porn one time and its been my dream to recreate it since okay sue meee take me to court!!), five?? some?? idk they made it work somehow, voyeurism/exhibitionism, praise/degradation, pet names, olfactophilia, aphrodisiacs, teasing, vast size differences, size kink, strength kink, manhandling, oral (receiving), overstim, tit play, bulge kink, handjob, blowjob, titjob, all the jobs actually, double penetration made possible with magic incantations <3, creampies, back shots, and facials for everyoneeee !! one for you!! and for youuu~~ also the word cock is mentioned at least 50 times in this one sorry bout that hshjs
a/n: hi ahhhh so this chaotic jumble of insanity is my baby 🥹 and it’s also my very first filth fest fic of the month !!! so yk what that means ;3 go on and strap in for me okay? it’s about to go down frfr <3 this is a sort of sequel to my half orc mingi fic but it can be read on its own! also i’ve never actually played dnd,, i’ve just heard about it from my brother so don’t expect an extremely accurate representation;;; i did do quite a bit of research tho <33 but yeah that being said…. rip reader’s elussy </3
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ᴅɪʀ��ʏ ᴡᴏʀᴋ ʙʏ ꜱᴛᴇᴇʟʏ ᴅᴀɴ
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ᴘʀᴇᴠ | ꜰꜰꜰ ᴍᴀꜱᴛᴇʀʟɪꜱᴛ | ɴᴇxᴛ
“Ladies and gents, now this is a quest that’s not for the faint of heart,” your local guild master announced, leaning his heavy forearms on the crowded bar table below him, stroking his long, bushy beard absentmindedly, the wood furnishing of the bar creaking underneath his weight.
The lively room grew a bit more quiet, some individuals quirking their heads in the seasoned barbarian’s direction, yours included. “With a hefty 1000 gold pieces as your reward, this quest requires you to find and locate the rare lujuria plant, then bring its seeds back to me. Unfortunately for you lot, they’re only found in the abandoned dungeons near Mist Falls. Any takers?”
At the mention of the plant and location, most of the interested individuals turned back to their ale and friends, resuming their loud, enthusiastic conversations. You, however, couldn’t believe how idiotic the other patrons were. You could do quite a lot with 1000 gold pieces, and being a solo adventurer, you wouldn’t even have to share it with anyone. With dollar signs in your eyes and a spring in your step, you headed up to the busy bar, having to get on your tippy toes and wave your hand around past some of the larger patron’s broad shoulders until the guild master noticed your presence.
“Now, don’t tell me a dainty little high elf is interested in the quest I just announced. You gonna scare them off with your shiny hair and sparkly crystals?” the older man gruffed, letting out a hefty laugh, before taking a couple gulps from the oversized mug he held within his large, calloused hands.
When you simply stood there with your hands crossed over your lace-covered chest, the guild master set his mug down, his bushy eyebrows raising upwards. “Oh, you’re serious.” He leaned down to your level, cupping his hand around one side of his face, allowing you to smell the ale on his breath. “Do you know why no one likes to go to Mist Falls, little Miss?”
You shook your head, causing the small jewels that dangled from your silky hair to sway a bit. You cupped a hand around your own face, murmuring, “Why does no one like it, Mister?”
“There’s some strange wildlife that frequent the land there. Otherworldly things…things that an elf like you wouldn’t want to get wrapped up in,” he explained carefully, looking over the lens of his glasses to squint at you. “Unless, you’re into that sort of thing, of course.”
Not understanding what he meant by his vague statement, you shrugged it off, taking his underestimation of your abilities as a challenge you couldn’t bear backing down from. “I’ll take the quest, Mister, and I’ll bring you those seeds.”
The guild master smiled down at you, chuckling a bit, like you weren’t in on the joke that he was so amused by. “Very well, little Miss.” He handed you the rolled-up scroll, his lips still curled into a suspicious smile. “Good luck with your quest.”
Taking the scroll, you nodded your head at him, a smug smile painting your own face, as you turned on your heels to leave, reveling in the fact that your levels of commitment and intelligence were clearly in the upper echelons compared to the rest of the idiots that frequented the crowded guild.
Before you could leave without any issues, a deeply familiar, incredibly cocky-sounding baritone voice interrupted your mental victory dance. “Would you look at that. Gonna handle a dungeon all on your own, eh, princess?”
You quickly turned your head, your eyes landing on the tall, solid beast of a half-man, half-orc standing with one hand resting on his leather-bound hip, his golden eyes slowly studying your body with an almost nauseating amount of interest. “Mingi…” you sighed, the events of your last few meetings flashing through your brain, the tips of your ears turning a faint red. “Oh, you think I can’t handle a stupid quest on my own either, huh?”
He shook his head, his shaggy silver hair falling in his eyes, forcing him to swipe it out of the way with his large ringed fingers. “Nope.” His simple response encouraged his equally large, equally intimidating party members, who were hanging out near him, to laugh and chatter amongst themselves.
Now your hands were on your hips, getting hit by a wave of annoyance, your cheeks burning. “Watch me.”
Mingi took a step towards you, just to show you and anyone nearby just how much he towered over you, his lips quirking up into a shit-eating grin, still peering down at your body like he could already picture what you looked like without the form-fitting lace dress that was wrapped around your curvy body like a pretty present, one that he wanted to open as soon as possible.
“With a petite little body like yours?” He reached down to slip a finger into your hair, playing with one of the crystals that adorned it. “Yeah, so small and delicate, like a pretty little fairy, ain’t ya? Those monsters in that dungeon will swallow you whole.”
You might’ve hated Mingi to an extent, but he was good. Good at making you feel tiny and desirable, and so wet, you were afraid he’d be able to smell it from where he was standing. You closed your thighs together slightly, lowering your closed fists to your sides, leaning forward. “I-i’m not a fairy, you dumb orc! I'm an elf! And I don’t need your help!” Just as you turned around to leave, Mingi cleared his throat, making you turn your head back to glare at him.
He placed his other hand on his hip, letting his weight shift to the opposite side, his head tilting the other way. “Sweetheart, listen, I know you’re very capable of getting what you want,” he mused, chuckling softly at the way your face scrunched up slightly in embarrassment. “But, I’m sure you could use some extra party members to back you up. Me and the boys want to help you. Won’t you let us?”
You gazed at Mingi a little while longer, before your eyes shifted to his friends, first drawn to the most elegant-looking tiefling you’ve ever seen. He had sleek skin that looked like expensive marble, his hair as white as the frost that would cover all the lands during the winter months, his heavy horns ridged and curled into an ‘s’ shape, and black as soot, his thin, pointed tail quietly slithering around in a snake-like motion behind the long black cloak that hung from his pointed shoulders.
“That’s Seonghwa,” Mingi informed, with his arms folded across his wide tattooed chest. “Doesn’t talk much, unless it’s to cast a spell or call me stupid.”
Seonghwa’s pretty lips formed a smirk, wrapping his arms comfortably around his slim, corseted waist, his sharp, milky eyes focused intensely on you, like he was peering through you and straight into your soul.
“Oh, are we introducing ourselves?” someone said excitedly, your eyes following the voice upwards until they landed on the handsome face of the gentle-looking goliath standing besides the tiefling. At roughly seven feet tall, the broad man sported shiny, golden locks, pretty brown eyes, and a tribal tattoo that was plastered on his veiny neck, clad only in a thick pelt that sat comfortably around his solid waist, wearing matching furry cuffs on his thick forearms. “I’m Yunho! I like to get drunk and smash stuff. What do you like to do, elf girl?” The goliath stepped forward to shake your hand, his hand completely encompassing yours, your neck almost hurting from having to look up at him.
“Hi, Yunho,” you replied, smiling softly, feeling a bit dizzy from your vast difference in sizes. Everything about him was just so big, you couldn't help but wonder what else was too. “I’m Y/N. I like to go on quests and collect gold.”
“Don’t tell me we’re actually going to help a high elf,” the last party member interrupted in a low voice, sneering, showing off his large, rounded canines when you looked past Yunho to scoff at him. “And an annoying one, at that. I don’t care if she’s fuckable. This is still a waste of time.”
Yunho put a large, warm hand on your shoulder, covering it completely. “Don’t take San’s words seriously, sweet. He bullies people when he likes them.”
The brooding barbarian folded his arms over the thick, furry pelt that covered his broad upper half, rolling his eyes, a few strands of his wild raven hair falling past his forehead. “Or maybe I just don’t like stuck-up little elven brats, ever think of that, Yunho?” His pronounced eyebrows joined together in a bout of sudden fury. “Huh? Can you even hear me up there, you oversized son of a bitch?”
A faint blush appeared on Yunho’s cheeks, smiling in San’s direction, before looking back down at you. “See? He loves me.”
You returned his smile with a grimace. “He loves being a dickhead too, apparently.”
“Excuse me?!” San growled, about to walk up to the both of you to prove that he only loved moonshine, his trusty club, and himself.
Mingi stepped in front of San, waving his hands around exasperatedly, wishing someone presented a dialogue skip option a long time ago, bored of the introductions. “Alright, alright, so are you coming with us, or not, princess? What’s the verdict?”
You rolled your eyes, opening the large entrance door of the guild, eventually letting out a long sigh, glancing back over your shoulder with a pout. You knew you had a slim chance of surviving without them, but you still had your pride. You let out a small hmph, annoyed when they still all just stood there waiting, encouraging you to stomp your silk shoe down on the ground, grumbling, “Ugh, are you coming, or what?”
Mingi and his friends chuckled amongst themselves and elbowed each other, amused by the amount of fiery zealousness your tiny body possessed, finishing their mugs of ale, eventually following you out of the guild and onto the dirt road.
“Hurry up! I wanna explore this dungeon today, not during the next winter solstice!” you called out to them, already at the forest entrance, tossing your head back in an exaggeratedly annoyed fashion.
The half-orc waved his hand around nonchalantly, despite his large lower canines growing more and more visible the more he began to smile, pulling out a small pair of lace panties that had a familiar design etched into them. “Yeah, yeah, don’t get your little elf panties in a twist,” he chuckled, bringing them up to his face to take a sniff.
Your inquisitive expression melted down into one of horror, then scrunched again, this time pleading him with his eyes. “Mingi…don’t tell me you’ve kept those all this time.”
“Of course I have, princess. In fact, I jerk off with them every chance I can in your honor. I can cum real hard just from knowing I turned a high elf onto orc cock forever. I still remember like it was yesterday,” he sighed dreamily, wiping away a fake tear, like had just said the most romantic sentence even known to orckind.
“I still fuck elves, you twat! I don’t need you or your stupid orc cock!” you argued, turning away so that none of them could see how flushed you had gotten, heading into the forest by yourself.
“That’s a damn lie. You showed up to my hut like three times during the Great Hunt not too long ago,” Mingi explained, following after you, his friends following beside him. “Don’t you remember? I had to carry you home after you passed out from squirting too hard.”
“No!” you shouted from ahead of him, swearing you were going to melt into the floor.
“She’s got elven pride, that one,” Mingi sighed, admiring you from behind. “Anyway, I got her soaked panties to prove it. You want to see them, don’t ya, Hwa?” Mingi elbowed Seonghwa, who just shook his head in disappointment, while he continued smiling truimphantly to himself.
࿏࿏࿏
Your group took on a range of opponents, from skeleton armies to disingenuous slime cubes that you may or may not have fallen into, able to pass through quite a few levels of the dungeon, mostly due to Seonghwa’s spell casting abilities, San’s uncontrollable rage, Yunho’s knack of destroying anything he came in contact with, and Mingi’s axe-wielding skills. Did you want to admit that to yourself? Sure. Out loud? No, of fucking course not.
You picked off bits of pink slime that still clung to your wet form, grumbling under your breath about how sticky you felt, not even noticing that some of the slime had already absorbed into your skin.
“Need a little help there, princess?” Mingi mused, reaching down to your shoulder and wiping off some of the slime for you, his fingers tingling once he had done so.
“I suppose so,” you murmured, standing still so that he could continue helping you, surprisingly not even that bothered when the other members of your newfound party all gathered around you and picked or pulled off the remnants of slime that remained on your body, face, and hair.
As you entered the next room, all five of you noticed how the tinglyness remained, how it spread throughout your bodies like a gentle ripple effect, your bodies now collectively hot to the touch, though no one said anything to each other — at least, not yet, anyway.
“A chest!” you gasped excitedly, putting your dagger back into its respective holder and running up to the large, gold-plated chest that sat at the edge of the room, just waiting for someone to open it up and collect its contents.
“Don’t be stupid, elven brat. Not all chests are filled with treasure. Some of them could be decoys. You know that, right?” San rested the rounded bottom of his ginormous club down onto the dungeon floor, leaning on it, raising an eyebrow at you. “Or do you only familiarize yourself with crystals and orc cock?”
“Shut up!” You held onto the barbarian’s insult, rather than hearing him out. “You’re just saying that because you want the treasure for yourself!” You got on your knees in front of the chest, muttering, “Selfish prick.”
“What’d you say?!” San barked, his hand squeezing around the thick handle of his weapon.
Mingi slung an arm around San’s tense shoulders, smiling as though he was quite pleased with himself. “She’s got a mouth on her, huh?” He met San’s grimace with a shoulder squeeze. “Don’t worry, Sannie. She’s gonna learn the hard way.”
Yunho walked up beside Seonghwa, lowering himself down to sit on the cool stone ground with a thud, wiping a bit of perspiration that had formed on his forehead. “I’ve been feeling weird since we left the slime room, Hwa. Can you cast a healing spell?”
“Yeah, me too, now that you mention it,” Mingi called out, rubbing his sweat-covered neck with his free hand, encouraging San to open his own black furry coat, revealing an expanse of sweaty, tan, tattooed skin underneath it.
Seonghwa nodded his head in agreement, waving his hand around in front of him, manifesting a large glowing violet pentagram into existence, which eventually disappeared after the spell had be casted completely, a faint glow still visible around the edges of your bodies.
“Mm, I don’t really feel any different…” Mingi mumbled, his hot-blooded body even more tingly than before, starting to feel like he could fuck someone into oblivion right at that moment, even more than usual.
Once you had opened up the chest, ignoring the subsequent pounding inside your chest and cunt, you were met by a multitude of shiny, gold coins just waiting for you to take. “Holy shit, I’m rich!”
“You better split that with us, before I split you in half with my cock, stupid elf!” San griped from where he stood, now a bit hunched over, his words slightly slurred, not even fully realizing what he was saying.
“Wh-what?!” you squeaked, your ears bright red, turning your head to look at the barbarian in disbelief, not even noticing when the chest in front of you began to sprout limbs, a long, slimy tongue slipping out past the gold.
“I said, I’ll split you open–” San fully dropped his club, which resulted in a resounding thud inside the small room. He pointed an accusatory finger in your direction, blinking at you through his hazy vision, using his other hand to grab at himself through his furry kilt. “–with my big, barbarian cock!”
Yunho pointed at you as well, wanting you to notice the big monster that was about to have its way with you. “Um, Y/N, you should…”
“Not now, Yunho, I have to tell this idiot barbarian to suck my clit!” you informed angrily, holding your middle finger up at San, which he returned enthusiastically.
“Oh, yeah? Then, get your fucking ass over here and sit on my face, you elf slut,” San barked back, sticking his tongue out at you, still holding onto Mingi, appearing drunker by the second — though it wasn’t alcohol running rampant through his body. It was lust. The rest of them were feeling it too.
“Slut? I’ll show you slut,” you grumbled, about to stand up and give San a piece of your mind, your fist, and possibly your body when the mimic suddenly snatched you up with its long limbs and pinned you to the floor. “Oh my god, what’s happening? What the fuck is that?!”
San simply chuckled, leaning his back against the cold concrete wall of the small room, trying to cool his intensely heated body down. “That’s a mimic, dummy. I’m sure you can handle it though, since you’re so tough.”
Mingi looked to his friends, biting at his lip, noticing that none of them even attempted to assist you, more concerned with finding out what the monster was about to do to you. Even Yunho, who was the only one with any semblance of a conscience out of the entire party, somehow couldn’t bring himself to get up, instead answering to the oversized tent that was forming underneath his pelt.
The mimic pinned your wrists together above your head with one strong hand, using the other to lift one of your legs up into the air, breathing harshly as it studied your slick cunt through your tiny lace panties, eventually licking a long stripe up your body, from your pussy up to your chest, leaving your white garments completely soaked and see-through.
Trying desperately to free your hands from the monster’s unwavering grip, unable to prevent more slick from leaking out of you with your legs being held open, you angled your head back to look at the upside-down versions of your party, crying out, “Are you fuckers just going to sit there and watch?!”
“Yeah…we are, sweetheart,” Mingi sighed out, still leaning on San, a few drops of sweat cascading down his flushed face. He dragged his tongue across his teeth, breathing in the flowery scent of your arousal, inhaling so deeply his bull ring shifted slightly. “I’m sure you got it handled. Just tire it out with that wet fucking cunt of yours, will ya?”
A strong wave of pleasure pulsed through your body at Mingi’s response, looking to each of the members, realizing that they were really just going to observe as you got pleasured by the monster, getting more aroused by the second. What was wrong with you? You would’ve contemplated it more, but any thoughts you had would completely fizzle out once the mimic’s tongue came in contact with your cunt, licking you up and down in a rapid, desperate fashion. Its tongue was so heavy and hot against your pulsing cunt, you couldn’t help but cum within a few minutes, your body going limp. “Fuuuck, oh my god…”
“Came nice and hard, didn’t you?” Mingi continued to share his filthy words with you and his party, all five of you reacting positively to it. “I can fucking smell it, princess…” His smile twisted into a faux pout, his voice dripping with lust. “That tongue isn’t enough for you though, is it? Mm-mm, not nearly enough. You need cock stuffed inside your tight elven pussy, don’t you, darlin’?”
All you could do was let out a long pathetic whine, your flushed, fucked-our face giving Mingi and the boys the answer they needed. Now that you weren’t fighting back, the mimic lifted your lower half up into the air, positioning you so that its tongue could slither inside you, pistoning it in and out of your willing hole, your upper half hanging upside down, your tits bouncing with each of the mimic’s thrusts of its wet appendage, your writhing body on display for your party members’ viewing pleasure. “I’m…going to…kill you all…for watching…” you huffed out in between moans, drool slipping out past your parted lips.
Mingi turned his head to share looks with his friends, all of them now dealing with the same almost painful predicament. “Are you all as hard as I am…?” When they nodded, he felt a little less guilty, reaching down to rub at his leaking cock through his kilt, able to feel how stiff it was even through the thick material. He gazed down at you, biting at his bottom lip, holding onto the thick leather of his body harness, trying not to blow his load too quickly. “It feels good, doesn’t it, princess? I can hear how just how sloppy that mess of a cunt is…Do you like the way it’s fucking you senseless with its tongue? Is it filling you up just right?”
You couldn’t believe just how turned on you were in the moment, hardly about to breathe in between your bouts of pleasure, your body beginning to sieze up when the mimic shoved its tongue as deep as it could go, causing a prominent bulge to form inside your lower stomach. “S-so good, Min, gonna cum again…”
“Cum for us, baby, that’s it…” Mingi sighed, leaning his shoulder against San’s, noticing how he began to play with his cock through his kilt, doing his friend a solid and reaching over to stroke the base of it for him.
Groaning underneath his breath, San reached over to help Mingi out as well, the both of them hyperfixated on the way the mimic drank up your juices as though it needed it to live. Seonghwa and Yunho were in a similar position, but instead of answering to their aching cocks, they simply watched on, the visual stimulation clearly enough for them.
The mimic lifted your limp body upwards so that you were on your knees, with its large, agile tongue fitted in between your trembling thighs, grabbing you by the waist so that it could drag you back and forth along its long, slimy appendage. “Just like that, oh my god, it’s so–fuck–” you gasped, barely able to look at the men that were huddled around you, the new position not allowing you to hide away from their hungry gazes, your body on full display for them.
With his hand now fully hidden underneath San’s kilt, Mingi nodded his head at you in approval. “That’s my naughty little elf girl,” he praised you in a gravelly voice, groaning at the sensation of San tugging at his dripping cock from underneath his own pelt. “Let me see you cum one more time for us, princess. Can you do that?”
“Yes, Mingiii, I’ll cum for you,” you whined obediently, reaching down your shiny, wet body to rub your clit around through your thin, soaked panties, unable to keep your mouth closed anymore from how hard you were breathing.
“What a good listener you are, baby. Look at you playing with your tiny little clit without me having to ask. Such a good elf girl you are,” Mingi continued to praise you, knowing exactly what made you tick, his hand squeezing around San’s throbbing length.
San let out a higher pitched moan, his body beginning to tremble against Mingi’s. “I can’t believe you–unnh–managed to tame her so easily…”
“It wasn’t hard, Sannie…fuck– She may be a brat, but she’s a good girl at heart…” Mingi was beginning to fall apart as well, San’s calloused hand continually rubbing along his cock enhancing the pleasure of watching you willingly playing with yourself while you rode a monster’s tongue, his party’s presence filling him with even more warmth. “Cum for us, sweetheart, show us how pretty you are when you fall apart…”
Mingi’s praise-filled request mixed with the sensation of your puffy clit grinding along the mimic’s slick tongue sent you barreling over the edge, cumming so hard, you saw stars, barely able to grasp at the dagger that still sat inside its holster.
Meanwhile, San and Mingi both began to groan and shudder against the cool dungeon wall, shooting their hot loads onto each other’s hands and the insides of their pelts. Seonghwa and Yunho both coated their own undergarments with white, biting into their bottom lips so hard they just about broke the skin.
They were all so deep in their wells of ecstasy that they hardly even noticed when you let out a war cry and stabbed the mimic with your long dagger, rendering it dead, causing it to fade away in a flurry of sparkly, white dust, leaving a few gold pieces for you to take.
“I told you I could fucking take care of myself,” you grimaced, shoving your items into a small pouch you had hanging from your upper thigh.
Once the post-nut clarity set in, Mingi cleared his dry throat, scratching at his prickly chin. “I mean, you did defeat the mimic on your own, so credit is due when credit is due, princess. You just used your pussy to combat it…which is just as valid as using a real weapon, don’t get me wrong–”
“Shut it!” you simply yelled, your face so hot, it probably rivaled the surface of the sun, stomping past the recovering men and pushing the next door open once it unlocked itself, wasting no time to enter the last floor of the dungeon where the supposed lujuria plant was said to grow.
“Let’s go help her out with that plant. And remember, whatever happens, happens. Just know I’m not fucking any of you.” Mingi patted San’s shoulder, looking over to the other members of his party with a playful smile.
San smacked Mingi’s back playfully, which Mingi returned. “Let’s put that elf brat in her place.”
Mingi nodded. “Yeah, on my cock where she belongs.”
Seonghwa scoffed from beside them. “Could you be anymore crass?”
Yunho patted Mingi’s and Seonghwa’s shoulders, practically dislocating them, smiling goofily, his cheeks and face flush from the energy he exerted. “What happens in the dungeon, stays in the dungeon, boys.”
Seonghwa quietly nodded his head in agreement, until he murmured softly, “Indeed.”
࿏࿏࿏
“Where are you, you stupid fucking plant?” you called out inside the vast, foliage-covered room, swiping at the overgrown leaves and plants that were in your way, almost tripping over a few vines that grew in and out of the broken-up cobblestone floor below your feet.
The rest of your party followed your lead, Mingi and Yunho taking the initiative to cut down the thicker plants and foliage that stood in your way with their axes, almost completely out of breath when you finally came across a large pink plant growing in the middle of the room.
“I’m assuming that’s it,” you said mostly to yourself, slowly walking up to the plant, impressed by its intricate petals and inviting flowery scent. “It’s not as scary as I thought it’d be. It’s almost…pretty…”
Just as you reached out to touch it, Seonghwa opened his mouth to warn, “Wait, don’t–”
As soon as your slender fingers came in contact with one of the flower petals, the plant sent out a puff of dusty pink pollen directly into your face and the air around your party, before folding in on itself and growing comically large spikes to protect its core which contained the golden glowing seeds you needed to complete your quest.
You began choking and coughing along with the others, reaching out blindly through the thick pollen, finding solace in Seonghwa’s arms, who began reciting a spell to lessen the effects of the plant’s attempt at self defense, but it was too late. Mind-altering desire had already set in. “Can’t breathe…can’t think…” you whispered, grabbing at Seonghwa’s chest, unbuckling his top and revealing his smooth, marble skin, henna-like tattoos decorating his jewelry-adorned collar bone.
Seonghwa clutched your shoulders, breathing just as profusely as you were, murmuring, “Don’t think, then, silly elf,” before pressing his mouth onto yours with haste, his long, snake-like tongue slipping inside your mouth to explore it.
Strong, solid hands grabbed at your hips from behind, Mingi pulling them back so that he could grind his cock into your ass, his lips already ghosting along your neck. His deep, gravelly voice made you let out a weak moan into Seonghwa’s mouth when he sighed, “Gonna fill your cunt full of my cum, sweetheart. So fucking full.”
“Then, I get to fill her slutty elf cunt with my tongue first,” San interrupted, already on his knees, positioning himself in between you and Seonghwa, not hesitating to tear your skirt and panties apart to access your rapidly dripping cunt. “So pink, so pretty…” He attached his drooling mouth onto your clit, sucking so roughly, your knees almost buckled underneath you, about to completely collapse when he plugged your hole up with his hot tongue.
Seonghwa pulled away slightly, finally letting you breathe without having his tongue down your throat, instead completely shredding the front of your dress with his talons, just in time for Mingi to groan and cup your tits, squeezing and moving them around, saliva leaking past his plump lips. “I always know exactly what your idiotic orc brain is thinking,” he sighed at Mingi, bringing his own hands up to tweak and pinch at your nipples, making you cry out.
“Oh, yeah? Can you read my mind right now, Hwa? Can you tell that I’m about to stretch this elf’s little fuckhole wide open with my fat fuckin’ cock?” he said near your twitching, elongated ear, his hard length slipping in between your thighs to rub along the underside of your cunt, his dark eyes settled on Seonghwa’s before returning to your slick body, their hands moving in tandem to play with your tits, each getting a chance to squeeze your squishy flesh and tease your increasingly puffy nipples.
Yunho, who was hard beyond measure and feeling a little left out, walked up to the side of you and reached down to show off his enormous cock, the slick , oversized tip an angry shade of red. He pouted down at you, letting out a small whimper. “Can you please help me out, sweet? I’m so hard, it hurts…”
Unable to resist his puppy-dog eyes, you nodded, licking your lips, collecting his vast amounts of pre-cum at the rounded tip with your fingers, eventually using it to slick up the rest of his cock, doing your best to jerk him off with your small hands. “Does that feel good, Yunho?”
“So good, doll,” he gasped, leaning his head back, not registering when he began to thrust his hips forward into your hands, using them like a fleshlight.
You’re so big, Yunho, fuck– I can hardly wrap my hands around it…” you sighed out, opening your mouth to lick at the tip of his cock each time he thrusted into your hands. Your mind went blank, until you suddenly remembered that San was in between your squeezing thighs, devouring your cunt like it was his last meal, his tongue and lips wreaking havoc on your clit, his thick fingers shoved inside your pulsing hole.
“Like the way I’m eating this cunt of yours, eh, elf girl?” San mumbled in between slurps, gulping your juices down, a few dribbles of it cascading down his veined throat. “You don’t even need to answer, love. I can tell you do just from the way you’re fuckin’ squeezin’ my fingers.” San groaned deeply, watching the way you dripped for him as he continually went knuckles-deep inside you, biting his bottom lip, growling, “Cum for me. Cum all over my face, you brat. Fuckin’ do it.”
You unraveled almost instantaneously, getting your creaminess sucked off of your slit by the desperate barbarian, not even noticing that he had been jerking himself off so roughly, he had already made himself cum before you did.
“Goddamn it, since when did high elf squirt taste so fuckin’ good?” San mumbled drunkenly to himself, licking at his swollen lips, prior to sucking your cum from his fingers noisily.
“You’ve had your fun, Sannie boy. It’s time for this little elf girl to experience the pleasure of getting broken in by real men. Hwa, you know what to do,” Mingi announced hastily, already bringing you down to the floor so that you were about to slowly take the half-orc’s cock in your cunt from behind, Seonghwa supporting your front, the tip of his tail already brushing back and forth over your swollen clit, rubbing his large, ridged cockhead on your puffy lips to slick them up with his pre-cum, his own plump lips moving at a quick pace, expertly reciting an incantation that would allow you to physically take two obscenely large cocks at once, all well as increasing your natural lubricant and allowing you access to heightened physical sensations.
“Fuck, look at you…What a good little elf girl you are, taking us both inside you like this,” Mingi sighed into your ear, reaching around your body to lazily rub your wetness into your sensitive clit. “Almost like you were made to take monster cock, huh? Not made for little elven peckers, it seems.” He pressed his hand into your lower abdomen, able to feel the pronounced outline of his friend’s abnormally large length. “Mm, that’s right. You loved being stuffed full of monster cock, don’t you, sweetheart?”
“Love it, Min, so much,” you choked out, your mind going positively blank, the only thing on your mind being the insanely pleasurable stretch you felt inside your core, knowing you were quite literally filled to the brim. “Feels so good, I can’t think.”
“Why think when you can just feel good, princess?” he chuckled, rubbing your tummy in an up and down motion, feeling the outline of Seonghwa’s thick, ridged length with his calloused fingers, shuddering from the sensation of their slippery cocks rubbing along one another inside your tight, slick walls . He nuzzled your neck and the side of your face with his prickly cheek, whispering onto your skin, “M’ so proud of you, sweetheart. I broke you in before and now here you are, taking big tielfing cock in your pussy while an orc’s stuffing you just as full. What a pretty sight you are. Wish I could take a picture.”
“Oh my god, Mingi, please, it’s so–” you could hardly verbalize, your eyes just about rolling into your skull, your body pulsing with so much pleasure, you could barely keep up with what was happening around you.
Mingi routinely filled your elongated ears with more filthy words, Seonghwa gazing deeply at you, your willing hole continuing to clench around their thrusting cocks, getting stretched so pleasurably, you almost passed out from that sensation alone.
All the while, San positioned himself in from of your tits, squeezing them together and driving his cock back and forth between them, grunting and groaning each time.
Yunho gently grabbed your chin, coaxing your mouth open as wide as it would go, whispering, “That’s it, my sweet, just a little wider…” He began to feed you his cock, stuffing your mouth full and instinctively fucking your throat, your jaw already beginning to ache from the obscene girth. “You’re so tiny…can barely take it…huh?” Moaning breathily, Yunho eventually settled for fucking the inside of your gummy cheek, afraid that he would suffocate you if he continued to throat fuck you.
It seemed that this quartet had been in this exact position before. That was clear to you now. You couldn't have been more wet and willing if you tried. Getting used by two filthy men while two more watched and desperately tried to get off using your body in any way they could filled you with a sense of purpose you didn’t realize you had always sought after.
“You want our cum in your pretty elf cunt, princess?” Mingi huffed, in between harsh, deliberate thrusts, his hands cemented on the reappearing bulge in your stomach. “Huh? You want us to make a mess of you, aye? Want to be fucked so full of our seed, you’ll give us pretty elven offspring?”
Once Yunho freed your saliva-streaked mouth from his suffocating length and resorted to jerking himself off, you were able to reply in a fucked-out, slurred voice, “Yeah–yeah–yeah– fill me up, wan’ it all. All your cum, in me, on me, I need it, pleaseee.”
Your willing party members’ highs all crescendoed in succession, Mingi resorting to sloppy, rough thrusts inside your tight hole until he spilled most of his load into you, his cum splashing onto Seonghwa’s cock, dripping along their lengths to form a milky rim. “Oh, fuck, that’s it…but I’m not done yet, princess…I gotta–nngh–leave my mark on my favorite elf…” He slowly pulled out with lewd pop, coaxing a few more cum shots out of his cock with a large, closed fist, watching the large milky droplets slide along your smooth skin and torn sections of your dress onto the curve of your exposed ass, his eyes creasing with clear adoration. “That’s more like it…”
“W-was that necessary…?” you murmured, trying not to cum just from the sensation of getting stuffed full of cum, sensing that Seonghwa was next in line to come undone inside you.
“Oh, my gods, I…see heaven,” Seonghwa gasped sharply, the whites of his boundless eyes glowing brightly, his lips parting to allow a shaky moan to escape. Seonghwa gripped your hips so tightly, he was bound to leave handprints, relying on slow, deliberate strokes, using your contracting cunt to milk the cum from his cock, unable to resist leaving a few drops on your clit and mound when he pulled out.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, gonna cum all over these tits, you little elven slut, take itttt,” San gritted his teeth, his jaw tightening, only having to pump himself between your slick, pre-cum covered tits once more before he was able to leave thick spurts of white all over the bottom of your heated face and lips, leaving most of his load on your messy tits.
“O-oh, godddd…!” Yunho came last, and the most, closing his hands around his reddened tip, whining profusely, unable to keep himself from completely unloading all over your pretty face and hair, practically drenching you in his cum.
Mingi reached down to cup your chin, tilting your head back so that he could get a good look at you, admiring the way their collective seed dripped off and out of you, swearing he could shed a tear from such a beautiful sight. “Look at you. My pretty princess.”
You gently nuzzled his large hand, smiling contentedly, tasting the salt of someone’s load on your lips when you licked at them. “Your pretty princess…”
It took a while for all of you to come down and catch your breath, the effects of the pollen still practically running through your veins, but you managed to wobble your way over to the main plant and slowly pull your trusty dagger out of its holder, slashing the plant until its precious seeds dropped into your open palm. You looked down at the golden, glowing seeds, your fingers still splattered with milky liquid, reminding you of the trials you conquered to get to your ultimate goal. As you wiped your sticky face with your sleeve, you looked around at your panting, much more docile party members, wondering if it was all worth it.
Mingi brushed some of his sweaty hair out of his eyes, noticing the way you were looking up at him, sending a cocky smile your way. “So, you’re 200 gold pieces richer, princess. How does it feel?”
“Huh?” you questioned immediately, your fingers closing around the pouch that contained the precious lujuria seeds. “It was 1000 gold pieces. Did fucking me stupid render you stupid instead?”
“I’m sorry, darlin’, but with each party member fee, it rounds out at 200 a person,” he corrected you, bringing you in to give you a gentle hug and a pat on the ass, chuckling delightedly to himself, his friends joining in on the amusement. “That’s still quite a bit. You can buy yourself a pretty new dress since yours is all torn and drenched in our cum, ya’ know?” He leaned his head in your direction, twiddling his large thumbs, his smile growing more lewd. "That means I can have the one you're wearing right now, yeah?"
You grimaced, your blood boiling over, already stomping your way out of the last dungeon floor, your voice still growing louder and louder the further you walked away, swearing to yourself, “This is the last time I do anything with you, Mingi! Never again. Never! EVER!”
Mingi simply waved off at his friend’s questioning gazes, holding the seeds that you had taken from the plant inside his own hand, admiring their shimmering edges. “Don’t worry. She always comes back.”
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Finally Getting Help (prt 7)
Masterpost
Danny was very happy to be dragged around by Damian being introduced to all of his pets, first outside to the barn to meet Bat Cow and his ducks, and the giant weird dragon creature which was so cute!! It was all over Danny too, obviously liked him. Danny had a feeling if he woke up from nightmares or couldn’t sleep he would end up finding his way back to the barn to cuddle up with these animals. At this time of year it would probably be a bit cold and night but the cold never really bothered him and Goliath was warm.
Then back into the house to meet all of the pets, the dogs, and snakes, and Alfred the cat, and finally a second cat and her kittens.
“This one is just a foster,” Damian said, sitting on the bed with his legs crossed in a half lotus as Danny sat on the floor next to the box the mama cat was in with her four little ones. Danny felt like he might cry, it was so cute! The mama was a little wary of him but he was easing her way into her trust and good graces.
“Mhm?” Danny sounded, he was listening but he was scared to move since the mama cat was sniffling his fingers.
“I found her while she was heavily pregnant, feral cats usually have kittens in spring, at this time of year they would have been too vulnerable outside. I’ll rehome them when they’re old enough,” Damian explained. “I was glad I got her to trust me enough that I could be present and make sure nothing went wrong while she had the babies.”
Danny held his breath as he tried to pet the cat. The quiet stretching between them until he felt ready to talk without scaring the cat. “Am I your next pregnant stray,” Danny joked.
Damian gave him a guarded look over. “... I have been told humans don’t like being compared to animals,” He said bluntly, and Danny laughed.
“Ya most don’t. But you take very good care of your animals, when you’re making this comparison, I’m guessing what you’re trying to say is that you’ll do what you can do be here for me and make sure I have what I need for me and the babies to be healthy and safe?” Danny said, giving Damian a fond smile.
“Yes,” Damian said stiffly. This was why he usually preferred animals, they could read his intentions and didn’t require him to say such embarrassingly vulnerable things. At least Danny was saying them for him so he just had to agree.
Danny finished petting the cat and moved to sit next to Damian on the bed. “It’s okay Damian, I really appreciate that. I know handling these emotions can be hard, they feel too big for our bodies and they’re hard to express. I’ll let you in on a secret though, they’re more easy to express physically, and I’m not made of glass just because I’m pregnant. We should spar later.”
“Are you formally trained?” Damian asked stiffly.
“My mother was an expert martial artist and she taught me, but I’m very strong too. I promise you won’t hurt me Damian,” He promised, bumping his shoulder against the kid’s and giving him a smile.
“Alright, I will go easy on you.” Damian promised, just as stiffly.
“Until I prove you can’t afford to,” Danny joked and Damian scoffed and shoved Danny’s shoulder. “But really, thank you Damian. It means a lot that you and your family are willing to stick your necks out for me like this.” He sighed, if he didn’t know better he might have wished his parents had been the ones to protect and support him like this, but wishes were dangerous things.
“This family is made entirely of strays, tragedy is a prerequisite. You’ll fit right in,” Damian promised before getting up from the bed, apparently that was enough emotion. “Do you want to train now?” he asked looking back at Danny.
“Sure, I assume this being the home of the bats and birds there’s some sort of training space?” Danny asked getting up from the bed.
“Yes. This way,” Damian agreed and trotted out of the room with Danny on his heels, making sure to close the door behind him so none of the kittens could wander out.
--------
Jason took off his helmet and dropped it on the couch with a sigh of relief before wandering back into the kitchen to grab a drink. So what if he was technically still too young for it? He’d done a lot worse just in the last 24 hours then half a glass of scotch. He had been off grid for a couple of days on a mission and had just gotten home. He was exhausted and half of him wanted to have his drink and go to bed, leaving his phone off for another day so he could get a proper rest.
But he had responsibilities, both to his gang, his turf, and more recently even to his family, so he turned it back on and grimaced when more than a dozen notifications popped up in a row. Damn, something big must have happened while he was gone. Why could there never be just a quiet day around here?!
He opened the most recent message from Bruce that just said; ‘can you call me when you have the chance?’ which made him sigh. But at the same time, it wasn’t urgent, it was ‘when he had a chance’ not immediately or anger about him not answering sooner. So knowing that he scrolled back down to the oldest message so he could get a feel of what was going on.
Cas, 28 hours ago: New brother! 🤗
Oh, well that was a very good start to the context, it seemed that Bruce was in the process of adopting some other poor schmuck. Well, hopefully they’d do better by it then Jason had. And explained why Bruce wanted him to call, he always worried now how Jason would react to new siblings, as if he wasn’t well over that. He’d only been mad about Tim at first but he wasn’t even Really mad at Tim anymore! Ya he felt the urge to attack him regularly, but only the same way Jason did with everyone else in the family now.
Tim 22 hours ago: I’ve got a favour to ask, or maybe a tip for you depending on how much you want to kill someone right now. Vlad Masters brought a pregnant 16 year old to the gala last night. Apparently he’s the baby daddy.
Oh that had Jason seeing green, his lips pulling back in a silent snarl. That man was good as dead, especially when Jason paused to google him and saw someone who must have been old enough to be the kids Father, if not even grandfather judging by the gray hair!
Tim 19 hours ago: Don’t rush in! Turns out he’s got superpowers of the magical variety. You’re going to have to prepare for this one, and talk to Danny.
Danny must be the new kid then, the pregnant 16 year old Bruce was no doubt making quick steps to at least foster. Where were the kid’s parents in this?
Tana 16 hours ago: Please make sure your wards are set up and you have that anti-possession charm we gave you. There is a situation still developing.
Huh, well, good to know both that she was involved and what sort of powers they might be dealing with.
Tim 8 hours ago: We have the parents in custody but didn’t have the resources to hold Masters. Danny and his sister are staying at the manor for now. You’ll like her, tough-as-nails red head.
Jason rolled his eyes, he dated one amazon and now everyone thinks the only people he’s into are tough ladies! He likes tough boys too god damn it! Why doesn’t no one get after Dickie about this?! (He knows they do.)
The last text from the family before Bruce’s was one from Damian, which was rare.
Damian: Hello Todd, you should know before you meet him that Danny has also previously died and come back. I believe you and he are quite similar and I do not know if that will mean you get along well or if you will repel one another. You should know that if you hurt him there will be consequences.
Well wasn’t that just the cutest! Demon brat didn’t usually get attached to new people so soon.
He texted Bruce back: No I will Not call you. But I can be bribed to come for dinner tomorrow if Alfred makes lasagna.
He checked the messages he had from his lieutenants about business and replied to the ones that needed it. Then the ones from his friends. He was just about to turn his phone off again when he got a text back from Bruce.
Bruce: Done, we’ll see you tomorrow. I’m sorry Jay.
Well that was ominous. Jason sighed and turned off his phone, setting it down on the coffee table and heading to bed. He needed to fucking sleep. Whatever the hell Bruce was sorry for could wait until tomorrow.
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Bruce had asked Jasmine for a copy of her slideshow, and Tim for a copy of his notes and updated the files on Danny, Jasmin, Damian, and Jason. He always felt a bit odd about the files he had on his own children, but they were important! Both because his memory wasn’t infallible and he needed to remember all this, and because if he needed to tell someone about his children quickly it was good to have all that already typed out and ready.
Not he was just sitting at the Bat-Computer, staring at the cover picture of the slide show. All of them were so young, and all dead or irrevocably changed by the actions of adults around them. His goal, all their goals, had always been to make a safer world for children, and everyone but especially children. And every time he was confronted with the abject failure to protect a child it tore at his heart. If he found who had blocked them from contacting the JL he was going to have very strong words with them.
“You can’t save every child Master Bruce,” Alfred said making Bruce jump. He must have been staring at the computer for longer then he realized, to not notice the butler’s approach. “There are billions of people on the planet, you cannot catch every single one, especially the clever ones who hide it well. They’re responsible for the harm they cause, not you for not being able to stop it.”
They’d had this conversation before when Bruce got too hanged up on the people he’d failed. He knew that wallowing didn’t do any good, and depression got in the way of action, but he couldn’t always help it. As hyper-logical as he tried to be to compensate, he was still human, and seeing these things would always hurt.
“It’s not just Danny and Jazz,” Bruce said, rubbing his face. “It’s Jason too, I’m trying to figure out how… how what Jazz said about liminals and ghost changes how I feel about him. She says they can look like their immoral but it’s always amoral, following their obsession. I feel like I failed him that this is how he came back. And I blamed him so much, and put him down so much. She said their obsessions have to be supported, if they don’t indulge in their obsessions they die.
“No wonder he’s reacted so negatively every time I talked to him about this revenge quest, this thing that he’s doing. Now that I know I wonder if we can compromise, if we can’t then what? I don’t know if I can blame him at all for what he’s doing, but I know what he’s doing is wrong. I don’t know what to do Alfred.” Bruce said, rubbing his face hard.
“Well, it sounds to me you’re putting the cart before the horse Master Bruce. You haven’t even spoken to him about it yet, and you haven’t slept in more than 24 hours. Sleep, then talk to him, then you’ll know how worried to actually be,” Alfred advised.
“You’re right, as usual,” Bruce chuckled and got up, shutting down the bat computer. “What would I do without you,” He chuckled, patting Alfred’s shoulder affectionately.
“I’m sure you’d be just fine,” Alfred said, in a tone that made it clear he was just being polite and a playful twinkle in his eyes that made Bruce laugh.
“Thank you Alfie. Let’s all get some rest.”
Next
#alfred pennyworth#bruce wayne#danny phantom#jasmine fenton#dc x dp#fanfiction#finally getting help au#trans!danny#Danny is pregnant#damian wayne#casandra cain#implied sa#the fentons are bad parents#jason todd#eventual dead on main
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Who's THE Devil?
You know, from, like, The Bible?
One of the things the various takes on Hell more or less agree on is that there is one demon among the legions of Hell who more or less reigns supreme - The Devil with a capital The. What they rarely agree on, however, is which devil that is. So, for funsies, let's look at all the candidates for The Devil, shall we?
Belial
The concept of demons arguably predates Abrahamic religions, at least if we take it at its most nebulous definition of "supernatural people from an Other world who are somewhat antagonistic toward humanity." But the more specific and probably more familiar version of them began with The Book of Enoch, one of many texts that were deemed non-canonical by Christians yet still holds a great deal of influence on Christianity as a whole. It's an extended account of the Noah story, positing that a group of angels rebelled against heaven because they wanted to sleep with mortal women, and created a race of giant half-human half-angel offspring called the Nephilim (Goliath, of David and Goliath fame, was one of the nephilim). God wasn't happy with this, and sent the rebel angels to a fiery pit before killing most of the nephilim with the big ol' flood (though Goliath's lineage survived somehow I guess).
It's not quite how most people picture the War in Heaven and rebellion of the angels, but it's nonetheless where that story started, and that makes it important. This is the first take on what would become the classic origin story for demons and Hell itself. And who is the leader of the rebel angels in this story? Why our good friend Belial, of course. Belial would remain a prominent demon from hereafter, but despite having the earliest claim for the crown of The Devil, Belial has not remained the frontrunner in the race, and is generally demoted to just being a high ranking demon, rather than the Highest ranking one.
2. Beelzebub
I've talked about Beelzebub before and I don't want to spend too much time rehashing that post, so brief recap: Beelzebub began as a mean nickname for a god from a rival religion to Judaism who was named Baal Zebul, which means Lord of the Heavenly Place. Baal Zebub, by contrast, means "Lord of the Flies." Eventually Baalzebub becomes Beelzebub and, divorced from the original context of its creation, becomes a character in his own right, being a prominent demon. And because Beelzebub appeared in a lot of texts, many of them very old as demonology go, he became a major competitor for the title of The Devil, and remains so to this day. I think it's partly because the name "Beelzebub" is really fun to say, but the sheer history and volume of demonology texts portraying him as a big, powerful devil also help. In the rare stories where Beelzebub appears but does not get to be The Devil, he's still portrayed as fairly high ranking, with both Milton's Paradise Lost and Marlowe's Faust making him The Devil's right hand demon, second in command of Hell. So even when he loses the crown, Beelzebub takes home a good silver medal
3. Asmodeus
Asmodeus is another of our "predates Christianity" demons, right up there with Beelzebub and Belial, and as far as I can tell from what I've read he was originally intended to be The Devil rather than just a devil. It's kind of right there in the name - "deus" means god, so Asmodeus having that name marks him as a demon who thinks himself equal to God.
(well, ok, there's some debate about the full origin of his name, with some arguing the "deus" part was originally a play on "deva," which in turn is loosely translated as... demon. The fact that Asmodeus's name is pronounced/spelled differently to a preposterous degree is part of why the water is so muddy - Asmoday, Asmodai, Asmodee, Osmodeus, it goes on and on)
One of his better claims to the crown comes from the story of Solomon - you know, the wise king who told people to cut babies in half. Solomon's less canonical feats include enslaving a shitload of demons to build a temple for him by way of the rite of exorcism, using a magic ring and the power of Christ to compel the damned to do manual labor for him. Asmodeus is specifically stated to be the strongest demon he summons in part because he is the King of all Demons, i.e. The Devil - and the other demons weep at the sight of their king being reduced to a slave by mortal hands.
Why is this a strong claim? Because the story of Solomon in turn inspired The Lesser Key of Solomon, a text about using the rite of exorcism to summon and use demons to do your bidding. The Lesser Key of Solomon includes the Ars Goetia, which is basically a big ol' bestiary of demons, and where many of your favorite pop culture demons - like, say, Stolas the owl guy - come from. Being the King of all demons in the story that inspired one of the more thorough and exhaustive lists of demons and their hierarchies should count for a lot.
There's one other great claim to fame Asmodeus has in his favor. While not directly named in Dante's The Divine Comedy, the description Dante gives of Satan's physical appearance matches with the most popular descriptions of Asmodeus - in particular, his three heads, one of which is yellow, one red, and one black. Granted, it'd be more of a smoking gun if one of those heads was a bull and the other a goat, but they're all very ogre-like, so I still think it stands. Dante's Devil is, more likely than not, Asmodeus, and that's a BIG point in Asmodeus's favor.
4. Hades/Pluto
Ok, so, a great deal of the Old Testament was originally written in Greek, and the New Testament was written in Latin, both of which happened when belief in the Olympian Gods was pretty strong. As such, the word "Hades" appears in the Bible a lot when talking about the place where dead people go, though it probably wasn't meant to literally be the same underworld as that in Greco-Roman mythology. Probably.
But because Christianity was spread primarily by the Roman empire once they converted to Christianity, and because Europe ended up getting a centuries-long case of stockholm syndrome for the Roman Empire that involved many people in power declaring that Greco-Roman mythology was super important literature and Latin was the language of God Himself, there is a good chunk of Biblical apocrypha that treats the use of Hades as, well, a literal crossover of sorts. Which is to say that Hades the god is sometimes treated as, like, a figure in Christianity, generally a demon specifically. And because he's, you know, Hades, from, like, The Odyssey, people feel he needs to be prominent. I mean, Hades RULED the underworld in Greek mythology, so if we're stealing him for Christian folklore, he should at least be in upper management, right?
The strongest case for Hades being The Devil comes from The Book of Revelation, one of the few books in the Bible that actually contributes to demonology (despite what people tell you, demons really don't show up in the Bible that much - most of what we think of as iconic demon lore come from non-canonical works). You know the four horsemen of the apocalypse? War, Famine, Plague, and Death, right? HA, WRONG! It's Conquest, War, Famine, and Pestilence & Death, you fake horseman fan. Well, anyway the line that introduces Death/Pestilence & Death ends with "And Hell followed with him." Except, no, not really, because the specific word used is... Hades. "And Hades followed with him." Which, depending on how you want to interpret the line, could very well mean a literal, King of the Underworld Hades.
Of course, the problem with using Revelation as proof is that Revelation itself is pretty unclear on who's leading the forces of evil. Is it the Seven-Headed dragon who's cast out of Heaven at the beginning of the end of the world? Is it the seven headed leopard monster that the dragon gives his crown to? Is it the monster who crawls out of the ground to speak for the seven-headed leopard with the voice of a dragon? Is it Hades? Is it God, the one who's allowing all this violent shit to happen and frequently sending his angels to make it way fucking worse? Who can say.
So, while it's not super common, there are more than a few works where The Devil is none other than Hades himself. Disney... might not have been completely off the mark, I guess?
While I think Hades's claim is pretty weak, I should note that one of the works that puts a LOT of Greek mythology into Hell is none other than Dante's The Divine Comedy. 70% of the demons in Dante's Hell are just Greek monsters, with the remaining few being Asmodeus and some OC demons he made up with portmanteu names a la Pokemon. Notably, Hades is one of those demonized Greek figures - presented as the Judge who decides where in Hell sinners end up based on their crimes. He's not The Devil, though, so while Dante kind of helps Hades's case, he also kind of ends up making a counter argument to it.
5. Abaddon/Apollyon
Ok, so, the word "abaddon" is used in some texts to refer to Hell, and sometimes it's personified as well. It literally means "ruin." Well, in time, Abaddon is personified and become a demon, which should feel like a familiar story to you by this point. And because Abaddon can also literally be Hell itself, it's only natural that some stories posit Abaddon the demon as the rule of Hell, much as Hades is the ruler of Hades in Greek mythology. This is Abaddon's big claim, and it's not bad, but it's not super strong. Nonetheless, it was enough for at least one prominent Christian text, Pilgrim's Progress, to make Abaddon (under one of his synonym names, Apollyon) to be The Devil, so we can give him that too.
6. Sheol
The sections of the Bible that are written in Hebrew use the word "Sheol" to refer to the underworld/afterlife rather than Hades. Now, Judaism doesn't have the same Hell as Christianity, or the same concept of Heaven either for that matter, and Sheol is less a place of torment for the damned and more of a waiting room for the dead to hang out in until the Messiah comes.
Nonetheless, Sheol did get personified like Abaddon and Hades, and that personification (which, in some versions, is a batty old lady, which is fun) later became a demon in its own right, and thus, for the same reasons as Abaddon and Hades, has a claim to being The Devil by dint of also being, you know, Hell itself. Not the strongest, most popular claim, no, but a claim nonetheless.
7. Satan
Feels rather obvious, doesn't it? Ok, so, in The Bible, one of the characters who was retconned into being The Devil is the angel in the Book of Job who takes on the title of Satan. In the original context of the story, "Satan" is not a name, but, again, a title - a job title, really, roughly akin to "prosecuting attorney." The Satan in the Book of Job isn't a rebel angel, but an angel whose job is to argue for the opposing view point to make sure everyone is doing the right thing. Less "The Devil" and more "the devil's advocate."
But! Christians fucking LOVE the devil, and they want more devil in their Bible, so many translations treat (the) Satan not as the hard-working servant of God he was originally written as, but as, you know, The Devil, arch-enemy of God and justice. And so Satan becomes synonymous with The Devil, and over time more and more appearances of The Devil give him the name Satan.
I can see an argument for this being the strongest claim, because the sheer amount of works where "Satan" is treated as The name of The Devil is enormous. But I think it's important to note that many of those works actually treat it as a name for the devil, which is to say, not the only name. I guess a lot of modern works think the name is so commonly used that it lacks its punch, and so they have The Devil pull the "I have many names" schtick to sound more imposing.
8. Lucifer
So there's a part of the Bible that talks about a star falling out of Heaven as a sort of metaphor for how people can fall from grace. Well, good ol' King James translated this as not just a falling star, but specifically The Devil himself, giving him the name Lucifer, which means "light-bringer." The King James translation of the Bible is bad in that it's immensely inaccurate, but good in that it's a beautiful piece of poetry in its own right, and since it had the authority of a goddamn king behind it, it quickly became a prominent Christian text and is still the preferred translation of many Christian sects to this day.
So, you know, that's pretty fucking big as claims go. There is one incredibly prominent (if woefully inaccurate) translation of the Bible where Lucifer is The Devil. Kind of hard to fight that one.
But it doesn't end there! I would argue that the most influential origin story for Christian devils, the one that has become ingrained in the cultural consciousness as THE story of the War in Heaven, is Milton's poem Paradise Lost. That's where most of the tropes we associate with The Devil and demons and Hell really come together to form the great devil mythology - well, it and Dante's The Divine Comedy, anyway. You know which name Milton chose for The Devil?
Lucifer.
Well, ok, he also calls Lucifer "Satan" with about equal frequency, but still - Lucifer is The Devil of Paradise Lost. And because of the sheer weight that both Paradise Lost and the King James Bible have in culture, Lucifer has ended up being used as The Devil in countless works since! Not bad for a translation error, right?
While the sheer number and notability of literature that uses Lucifer as The Devil is kind of argument enough for him having the best claim, I'd like to add one more argument in his favor: dramatic irony. I think what draws people to Lucifer is the meaning of his name - "the light-bringer" - and how it contrasts with his role as the king of a pit of darkness and misery. "Light-bringer" is a heroic name, the name of a character who brings hope and joy, which makes it so delicious when it turns out our "light-bringer" is an utter bastard. It's just irresistible, isn't it?
9. Mephistopheles
A good number of demon stories - arguably the majority of them - focus on mortals who make deals with demons and end up damned to Hell for doing it. We call these stories "faustian pacts," and we do that because the most famous story of this kind is the story of Faust, a scientist/alchemist who makes a deal with a devil named Mephistopheles to learn the secrets of the universe and ends up doing a lot of sinning in the process. Since Faust is such a famous and influential story, it only follows that its main devil is frequently viewed as The Devil.
...except
In most versions of Faust, Mephistopheles is not presented as The Devil within the narrative. He's a henchman, a flunkie, with one of the bigger names like Lucifer or Beelzebub pulling the strings. So while there are a number of stories (including a few versions of Faust itself) where Mephistopheles gets to be The Devil, it's far more common for him to be a devil - perhaps a prominent devil, maybe even one of the strongest and a close member of The Devil's inner circle, but rarely the one in charge.
10. Baphomet
Baphomet is a god whose name and appearance was repurposed as a demon by The Church of Satan, and so while I have to admit that is a claim to the crown, I don't think it's a great one. First, nothing about the Church of Satan's belief system is meant to be taken genuinely, with them admitting that they view Satan/Baphomet as a symbol rather than a literal supernatural being they believe in. Second, by rights Baphomet should be allowed to be Baphomet instead of being literally demonized. I honestly think it's better for Baphomet to lose this race than to win it.
11. Iblis
Demons in Islam work differently from demons in Christianity. Rather than being fallen angels, demons are wicked Djinn - a race of people made from fire and smoke rather than ash and dirt like humans. Djinn aren't quite as powerful as angels in Islam, but do have significant supernatural powers that humans lack. Like humans, Djinn have free will and can choose whether to be good or evil - and those that choose to be evil reside in Islam's version of Hell, where they are ruled by Iblis, the first Djinn to choose the wicked path and the ruler of Islam's Hell.
Unlike Christianity, there isn't really any debate on this. Iblis is, for all intents and purposes, the CANONICAL ruler of Hell, The Devil of Islam, and thus has the strongest and really ONLY claim to be The Devil of that religion.
...but, at the same time, Iblis can't really be the Christian devil, because Christianity doesn't have Djinn, and all the iconic parts of Christian demonology kind of hinge on the idea of demons as rebel angels, which demonic djinn very much aren't. So while Iblis's claim in Islam is irefutable, he doesn't have one in Christianity. Ain't that wacky?
I think it should be noted that there are more-or-less canonical texts where Iblis isn't treated as purely evil, either, including one where he actively asks for help in repenting and is turned down because, well, evil has to exist, and someone has to rule over it, and like it or not, that's Iblis's job now. It ends with Iblis wailing that he has become the greatest martyr of Islam. Which is so fucking hardcore, I love it. In Christianity, the texts where we humanized demons are non-canonical at best and deemed heresy at worst, but Islam allowed it to be more-or-less canon. They saw the coolest takes on the Devil and said "yeah we can allow that" - so much more rad than what Christianity did with them.
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So, who do YOU think is The Devil? You know, from, like, The Bible?
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LAST KNIGHT IN SOHO | Steven Grant/Marc Spector x Reader [6]
description: Summoning a council with the gods sound easy enough, right? Except the man on trial knows the dark secret she has yet to tell Marc.
word count: 14.5k
trigger warnings: gore/violence (as per) blood, nakedness? Fear of drowning. I have said this before, Dove has a dark past with themes that include abuse in a relationship (torment, manipulation, prostitution etc) drug use, please do not read this if this is not okay with you. Inspired by Last Night in Soho (dir. Edgar Wright) which is rated 18.
main masterlist | series masterlist
“So? What about the other gods?” Marc asked, witholding a heavy sigh as he looked over at Khonshu, Dove still nestled into his chest. The vibrations of his words rattled against her forehead, and she wished that for just a single second she could get a fucking break from the life she lived, from the virus that seemed to spread to every area of her life, from knowing the only denominator that linked every awful thing brought upon herself was her.
If it wasn’t her every waking moment spent pining after any scrap of kindness Marc could give her, then it was wishing Steven was here to talk to. He always knew how to make it better. How to cheer her up. He was a lot like Grace in that sense, that he knew exactly which part of her brain was troubling her and managed to weasel his way into the darkness, draw out the sickness and replace it with only good. And if it wasn’t wishing Layla would understand she was not a home-wrecking mistress, then it was her dreams being riddled by Grace, the one sore spot in her heart that seemed to never heal.
She was starting to forget what Grace looked like, she’d realised with a numbing pain. Started to forget where her freckles were, the way she smelled, the shades of honeycomb blonde in her soft locks. She was forgetting, an ailment no amount of healing armour could eradicate.
She’d rather be ripped to shreds all over again if she could see her in the flesh just one more time. Even as a ghost, even as a mirage, she’d take it all again.
“Are they just gonna stand by and allow someone to unleash Ammit?” Marc asked his keeper, his large hand still resting on her crown with a warm softness. She sniffed, pulling away from him with a troubled frown.
“To signal for an audience with the gods is to risk their wrath,” Khonshu explained, resting his goliath form in an oddly casual sprawl on an abandoned car.
“What’s the worst they could do?” Dove asked emptily, her tired eyes catching sight of the dead bodies for a split second before she quickly looked away, pretending her stomach didn’t lurch at the puddle of red sap that pooled beneath them.
“Anger them enough and they’ll imprison Seth and I in stone,” That had her head shooting up to the bird-like god, brain whirring at the golden ticket out of this whole mess.
“What?” She asked, stepping towards him, “You mean they can do that? They can relieve us of duty as your avatars?”
“See how you fair against Harrow without the protection of healing armour, little mutt,” Khonshu snapped, and the girl deflated on the spot. That was something she hadn’t thought of. Even if she were no longer Seth’s avatar, Harrow would still be planning on eradicating innocent lives. It was too late for taking back that duty now, she was in far too deep to bury her head in the sand now, no matter how much she’d wanted to.
How many moles had Grace had? Four, in a horizontal line from her ribs to her spine, or was it five? Fuck, what colour were her eyes? Blue, she knew, but what colour exactly, what shade, what hue?
“Alright, so what?” Marc bit back, throwing his hands up in defeat. He, too, had had the fleeting jump in his chest at the idea of being free from his servitude. “You got any good ideas?”
The god thought for a moment, his skeletal chest taking a deep, weighted breath behind its linen robes. A sigh of dismay.
“I have a bad one,” He said, and with a small movement he disappeared into the cool breeze passing over the two of them, as if he were nothing more than a pile of ash, or a thought thrown to the ether.
The two of them spared a glance at one another, Dove’s demeanour still shaken when Marc surveyed her with a soft, cocoa gaze. The wind picked up around them before either of them could speak, Dove’s hair whipping around her sticky face, catching on her cheekbones, the need to peel and scratch and gnaw at her skin overwhelming her with the texture, anything to get the damned blood off.
“What is he doing?” She asked, her hand subconsciously reaching out for Marc’s when the world around her began to darken. But not just for herself, she realised, but because the sun was disappearing.
No, that couldn’t be right. Throwing a squinted, pained look at the clear blue sky, the smell of the metallic tang on her skin slapping her in the face. Her eyes locked on the white orb in the sky that was indeed being devoured by a slightly smaller black circle moving in front of it, the moon. Khonshu was creating a solar eclipse. Switching the light out on an entire section of the world, drawing far too much attention to himself than would be allowed by the gods.
“Sending the gods a signal they can’t ignore,” His deep voice echoed around the clearing, the wind carrying the sound to their sensitive ears.
She felt Marc take her hand as darkness swept over them, unnaturally fast for any solar eclipse, tugging her back towards the town where cries of startled citizens were beginning to meet her ears.
“Come on,” He murmured, his warmth grounding her astonished mind, her eyes quickly adjusting to the shadow that swallowed the sands.
“I don’t know whether to applaud him for the guts or curse him for putting you in danger,” She mumbled, not missing the way their hands seemed to gum together from the equal amount of ichor on them. She didn’t miss the way Marc’s knuckles were blown open, the flesh around them sore and sliced from his fist fight with the mercenaries. She made a note to fix them later.
“That tends to be the way with Khonshu,” Marc replied sourly, the two of them taking a long set of old sandstone steps back down to the city.
She huffed, more agitated than he had ever seen her with a solid frown on her normally gentle forehead.
“Well maybe when all of this is over, we find a way to get rid of them both together?” She proposed, and he couldn’t help but lurch at the fact she saw a together for the two of them after all of this. Not together in love, he chided himself, but Layla had been the only other person to ever see him as worth sticking around for. It was nice to have Dove too.
Flashing her a barely there smile, he squoze her hand lightly. It fell the second he caught sight of the bird headed god and his jackal like companion waiting for them at the bottom of the steps as if they heard their devious little plan.
“That was abit over the top, don’t you think?” Marc sassed, keeping hold of Dove’s hand and steering her away from Seth’s looming gaze, even if to hold off his intruding presence for a second longer than necessary.
“Hurry, they’re gathering their avatars now,” Khonshu demanded, the two of the goliath gods trailing behind their own minions.
“Aren’t they scattered all over the world?” Marc asked, and Dove was glad he was here with her at least, she was sure by the way her stomach was twisting so painfully she would have retched her breakfast by now. She was going to have to meet more gods? Not just any but the Ennead, the effective high council of Egyptian Deities and plead their case to the ancient beings? The current track record set by the Gods she had met had caused nothing but misery for her short life, so the idea of introducing eight more to that mix sent her chest pounding.
“Yes, but for a meeting with the Ennead, a portal presents itself anywhere,” Seth cut in, halting the two humans in their step. His face, his presence, was not one that they simply could get used to. A chill ran down both their arms, and she felt him tug her just a bit closer to him.
“Okay, so where’s ours?” Marc asked, and as if to summon the portal in question, a low rumble only they seemed to notice rocked the earth beneath their feet, though it seemed too delicate to be an earthquake, too harsh to be oncoming footsteps. It was then that bricks in the nearby building began peeling away, crumbling in on themselves to form a long archway corridor. The walls were lined with hieroglyphs she was certain wasn’t part of that building, more likely wherever it was the portal led to.
“Last time I spoke to the gods, they banished me,” Khonshu spoke solemnly as the two of them stepped towards the doorway. A faint, amber light flickered against the symbols etched into the stone walls, illuminating them with a golden glow that reminded her of Seth’s staff.
“Join the club,” Seth growled with a bitter chuckle, and Dove fought the urge to point out the sheer amount of times he had slaughtered his own brother for power that had led to his banishment, but she thought better of it than to be the one receiving his wrath. “Our case against Harrow must be indisputable,”
The two of them hesitantly stepped forward, Marc subconsciously moving in front of her as if to want to head in there first, check if it was safe. But there was no time for heroics, and he didn’t doubt Seth wouldn’t have her defend herself if things started to go south. Hearing the two gods retreating behind them, Dove whipped around to see the beasts slinking off through a nearby street.
“Aren’t you coming?” It was perhaps the only time she would ever want the God of Death there to support her case. Though, upon thinking about it, she guessed Osiris seeing his killer may not go down well considering the god’s reputation.
He snickered darkly, throwing a glance to her over his muscled shoulder that rippled with corded tendons with every movement.
“You know I love a family reunion.
Dove’s jaw slacked, her eyebrows shooting up into her hairline. They were so fucked.
Marc huffed, and the two of them stood looking down the long corridor with a shared hesitance. Once they went in, they were going in blind. Into a space where there were beings even more powerful than the gods they were bound to. Who knows what the Ennead were capable of, whether they were known to hold grudges around two exiled gods and the humans they deemed worthy of their service. Would they see right through her? Right through this innocent little marionette she played every single second. Would they see her for exactly who she was, would they see the chaos festering in her heart? The rot eating away at her bones?
“Ready?” Marc whispered, the sound barely meeting her ears. He looked over at her gently, eyes wide and anxious, though he seemed more worried about her than himself. Her eyes were glazed over, tired. Her hand was cold in his palm, yet she gripped onto him tightly as if he were the only thing she had to ground herself. She looked back at him, though he could tell she was far away, she wasn’t here with him, the same as this morning in the room, when her smile had cracked for just a single second and he saw the sadness behind her eyes that rarely appeared. He hated it.
She didn’t speak, just nodded and it was enough for him to draw her even closer, hold her hand even tighter.
The two stepped into the tunnel, their footsteps echoing down the long chamber, engulfed in a cloak of darkness from the lack of sunlight. It certainly wasn’t a new building they were entering judging by the erosion on the crumbling walls, though the hieroglyphs were surprisingly well preserved. A light flickered at the end of the passage, the only thing giving them any idea where to go as they clung towards one another. A large figure of a head came into view, starting small but the closer they got it became clear the figurine was actually huge, large enough to tower over both of them ten times over. She guessed by the head piece and the jewellery they were royalty, or at least the spouse of a pharaoh, well respected. Revered. A tomb for an esteemed member of Ancient Egyptian society.
She remembered Steven showing her a special edition guide to Egyptian myths they had in stock just three weeks ago, how he’d been waiting for them to get the shipment in for months since it was so low stocked everywhere else. He’d nudged her every chance he could get when they finally got to take their lunch break, turning his new prize to her to show her every diagram or photo or excerpt he could, telling her more facts that he’d read in other books, talking her ear off the entire train ride home too. She thought him the smartest man she’d ever met; thought his intellect, his sheer excitement to share his interest with her was the sweetest and most attractive thing she’d ever seen. He certainly didn’t make it easy for her to not kiss him silly right there on the spot.
Two more figures came into view, two behemoth statues flanking each side of the head, one a falcon, a distinctive crown atop his stone head, the other a woman with two large ostrich wings as her arms, curled around herself.
“I can’t believe it,” Marc’s head whipped to the side, Steven’s face reflecting in the polished golden engravings on the stone walls, his chocolate eyes lit up in wonder like a boy on christmas. His hands clasped together in front of him nervously, though his mouth was pulled into a gobsmacked smile, his gaze flicking around the enormous expanse of the room as if to take it all in at once. “Oh- my days. We’re inside- we’re inside the Great Pyramid of Giza,”
Marc’s head flicked to the room that opened up into a colossal square, unmistakably a pyramid built for the worthiest of pharaohs.
“Steven said we’re in-” Marc started, his voice low, gentle as if to not alert whatever it was waiting for them at the end of the corridor, only for her to cut him off with an equally hushed tone.
“Great Pyramid, yeah” She nodded, her eyes stunned and overwhelmed. Nodding towards the Falcon statue, she pointed with their joined hands, “That’s Horus wearing the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt.”
“God of Healing and Protection?” Marc asked, recalling the few things he knew about the other gods. She nodded, her eyes never ripping away from the expanse of priceless relics in front of them.
“As a man, yes. Horus as a Falcon represents Kingship,” She explained, watching his eyes trail over her face with a strange look, softening just a touch more if it were even possible. Turning back to nod towards the other statue, “The woman with the ostrich wings is Ma’at, judge of the hearts of the dead. She represents justice and order, balance and morality. This was a Pharaoh who wanted the greatest of respects and fortune in his afterlife,”
Marc’s jaw slackened at her brain, practically seeing the cogs turning in her bright eyes, the flame from the torches dotted around the tomb giving her face a beautifully warm glow. She looked divine, as if it should be her with statues erected in her honour, as if she were the one who deserved a wonder of the world in her name.
“I think I’m in love,” Steven’s besotted voice came from the reflection behind him, feeling the alter’s eyes enraptured with her face just as much as he was. Marc nodded once, ripping his gaze away from her to focus on the unfamiliar territory ahead.
Now was not the time for childish feelings, he chided himself, though Steven’s words had cut him deep, confirming for Marc something he already knew. It wasn’t just a little crush he was in the way of - Steven was in love with this woman. And he was wrecking it, he was simply a wall in between two gentle creatures that deserve nothing else but each other.
He always knew he ruined everything.
A frown settled on his face, avoiding her gaze with a sneer as they ventured forward into the tomb.
“Come on,” He murmured, unclasping her hand and quietly stepping into the cold catacomb.
“One evening,” He had said, waving his finger in her face at the door like a master scolding its pup, “You girls can have one evening out,”
It was probably because the neighbours had started getting suspicious about the two girls that would sit in the window but would never leave, or perhaps it was a treat for being such good little victims and remaining complacent. They didn’t know. At first Grace had said it was a test, a test of loyalty. It wouldn’t be unlike him to give them a sick game to test if they really were faithful to his command. But perhaps it was a treat? After the two years they had remained in that house, remained together, this was the first time they were allowed outside that wasn’t the garden.
They were ecstatic.
Don’t be fooled, he was sure to collar the two of them before they could step foot out the door, his fingers squeezing just the slightest bit to tell them exactly what would be waiting if they were to run or go for help. Don’t be stupid, now girls, he reminded with a low grumble. And they were gone.
It had started with a brisk walk down the street, past the abandoned hotel that sat opposite their bedroom window, its welcome sign springing to life every evening even after its years out of business. The girls had a prance in their steps, truly with no idea where they were headed since they couldn’t see past a certain point from their spot in the window. Once the road turned into a long slope down, the houses getting bigger, the yards getting greener, the road getting quieter, was when it settled in that they were outside again.
“I don’t fucking believe it,” Grace whispered, her head tipped to the heavens, the crease on her brow ironed out. She took a deep breath, her mouth pulling out into the biggest smile she had ever mustered, Dove swore she could count every single one of her teeth. “We’re fucking OUTSIDE!” She yelled, no doubt waking up the neighbours. It was dangerous, drawing attention to themselves, but Grace couldn’t care. The Summer breeze filled her lungs, the seven o’clock sun fell over her face in full force, the feeling seeming to be extra warm than what she was used to. Because there was no window there. Because they were free.
Until eleven, in four short hours, but they were free nonetheless. The birds had never sounded louder, the air never tasted so sweet.
She couldn’t help but join Grace in taking a long, deep breath, a laugh bubbling out her throat, loud and joyful. Perhaps the happiest she’d felt in years. Like slipping out of a cage, a bird with its wings spread. She rose her arms to her sides, feeling the wind whip entirely around her middle, and suddenly the two of them were running. The street was empty, save for the two sets of footsteps slapping against the concrete as they sprinted down the descending hill, their fingers brushing against each others every now and then before Grace reached over and clasped her hand tightly against hers.
They were free.
It wasn’t long before they’d reached the beach, the one mother showed her as a child, the one she’d been to when the boys were little. It was nothing spectacular, nothing like they’d see in a foreign country. The sea was cold as anything since it was still England after all, the sand was mostly rocks, but the sound of the waves rolling in on their little slice of heaven.
The two lay on the hard sand, shoes kicked off and fingers buried into the course grain, just feeling. The sea was far from lapping at their feet; though ice cold, they wouldn’t find it in themselves to care anyway. The freezing water would barely even scrape the surface of the elation they felt now, there truly wasn’t anything that could simmer the way their hearts pounded in their ears.
“Three hours left,” She reminded, only to have Grace tut her and swat at her arm.
“We won’t be late, stop worrying,” The blonde chided, sand sticking to the side of her cheek as she turned her head in the sand to see her companion, “Just breathe,”
She knew she’d meant ‘breathe it all in’, the day, the feeling of their cage door being blown open, but she couldn’t help but do as Grace had commanded and take a deep salty breath in.
The sun warmed her as the shore breeze cooled her. A balance. An equilibrium. Her mind was blank for the first time in a long time. The waves may as well have been the thoughts ebbing and flowing from her mind.
“In some other universe, this is our life every single day,” She finally muttered, as if too scared to speak it into existence and risk waking up from whatever dream they were having. Grace snickered, their fingers meeting once more. Grounding. Warm.
“Do you think so?” Grace asked, her cornflour eyes squinting in the sun, watching the way her friend’s eyes remained closed, soaking up the entire thing. “You think we’re together in other universes too?”
“I hope so,” She responded, her toes sinking into the warm sand just a touch more, clinging to the back of her bare calves. “I hope I’m with you in all of them,”
Grace smiled, and her eyes opened then, meeting the sky with a tired blink before she turned to where Grace was staring at her. The two simply looked at one another, as if looking in a mirror of themselves though their shell was entirely different. Like their souls had met an equal in their gaze.
“I don’t care which one I’m in as long as I have you,” Grace whispered, clenching onto her hand with a soft desperation. She sighed, turning back to stare at the sky, a new openness at the difference the vast blueness held from her bedroom ceiling.
“I hate that house.” She confessed, though Grace already knew she did. “I feel like I’m-” She welled up, and Grace shifted to rest her forehead on her shoulder, “I feel like I’m in a coffin. Like I’m in a tomb. Like I’m screaming and banging on the door but everyone assumes I’m dead already,” Her brothers. They never responded to her letters, texting was too risky. But the envelope with the money made it to them once a month, she always sent it with the hope they would understand, understand she hadn’t left, that she wasn’t gone. But perhaps she was. She felt already gone. Felt like a corpse walking. “Maybe I already am dead,”
“I would never let that happen to you,” Grace whispered, nuzzling her face into her bare shoulder, “Me and you in every universe, right?” She asked, nudging her arm against hers to make her point, “Cage, house. Beach, tomb. I’m with you in every one of them,”
Dove’s breath was caught in her chest when she saw the sheer size of the pyramid. They didn’t call it the Great Pyramid for no reason, she supposed, but the sculptures alone were some of the biggest pieces of art she had ever seen, larger than any relics they had at work.
Marc took a slight lead, heading towards the centre of the room, where the floor lowered into a pit-like square, the floor a cold stone and undisturbed. Nine smaller, seated statues lined the steps down to the trench, one for each of the Ennead they guessed quickly. Eight doorways, similar to the one they had just exited from, dotted the remaining walls. A slight flash of light came from two of them, where a young woman stepped through the door to the close right.
She was beautiful, Dove noted immediately. Her sepia skin glowed in the dark lamp light, her midnight black hair silk over her shoulders. She was effortlessly graceful, beautiful gold jewellery winding over her wrists and neck, her eyes fox like yet gentle as she peered at the two newcomers.
“Khonshu’s antics are unparalleled.” She said with an accent Dove couldn’t place other than the melody it spelled over her every word. “You must be his avatar,” She said with a glint in her eye Dove knew was not just from the fire light. She was only a single pace behind Marc by the time he reached the bottom of the steps, yet she felt entirely lost, as though she were just floating her way down to where the woman met them, her legs jelly and wobbling.
“And who are you?” Marc asked politely, though she could sense the wariness in his tone. Untrusting. Ready to make a run for it if it came to it. She saw how his shoulders held the tension he rarely seemed to displace, she wished she could simply shove her face in between his shoulder blades, hug him like she had in the room. Feel him relax under her touch. She wished they were anywhere else but here. Anywhere but where the walls seemed inevitable, seemed to seal in around her, their very purpose to keep the dead inside.
“I’m Yatzil, Avatar of Hathor,” The woman announced, nearing the pair with a smile. Friendly, Dove noted, but she saw the way Marc tensed even further as she reached them, a look of plain fear flashing over his expression, as if she were about to be snatched away from him by the relatively kind looking woman. “Goddess of Music and Love? Surely Khonshu mentioned her,”
Marc shook his head slightly, a grimace on his battered face, “The gods aren’t exactly his favourite topic,”
“Not even when they are old friends?” Yatzil pushed, and Dove straightened up when she saw the playful way the avatar studied Marc with. Something boiled in her chest, something hot and sour, like her lungs were trying to choke her from the inside out. She didn’t like the way she was looking at Marc. To say he was hers only to look at drew even more tumultuous feelings in the pit of her stomach, but unlike Layla, who could barely stand the sight of him without steam blowing out her ears, she was interested. She was flirty.
She wanted out of this sinking ship already before she did something she would regret.
The woman looked over Marc’s shoulder then, only just noticing the shadow that seemed to peak from behind him, her eyes wide yet calculating, a vast contrast to Marc’s furrowed brow that glared at everything.
“And who might you be?” Yatzil’s voice was mellow as she took in the new figure, her gentle gaze never wavering. Perhaps she wasn’t so much flirting as she had guessed, and she wanted to chide herself for getting so worked up so quickly. Maybe she was just overly friendly to everyone, being the Goddess of Love and all that.
She was almost embarrassed with how quickly she had become possessive over Marc. It was hard not to when she was accompanied by an extremely attractive man that seemed to draw eyes everywhere he went. She thought she had enough trouble with Steven and Dylan, let alone a Goddess.
Chancing a look at Marc, the two of them agreeing solely with a single silent exchange, she told Yatzil her name.
“I’m Avatar of Seth,” She confessed, not missing Yatzil’s face tightening, her smile becoming a tad more forced. Her once gentle eyes became intrigued, looking the girl head to toe, before turning back to Marc.
There it was. The turn. The moment she realised she was not to be trusted. That she was rotten to her marrow.
“I did not know Seth had a new avatar,” She said, all traces of warmth gone as she surveyed the younger woman with a new suspicion, “How did this happen?”
“It’s a long story,” Marc cut in, sensing Dove’s anxiety by the way she fidgeted with her fingers, grabbing her hand back into his own to stop her from picking at the skin around her thumb. He hated it when she did that, saw how sore it made her digits, how she would bring band aids with her in her bag in case any of the scabs broke skin, “It’s not why Khonshu called this meeting,”
“Yatzil,” A voice called down to them, and it was then that the pair realised the rest of the avatars had made it, standing behind each of their podiums that represented their gods. They looked like regular people, though she supposed so did she and Marc. That was the point of them. It made Dove wonder if there were hundreds of them out there, if she had walked past them in the street before, thinking nothing of them.
Yatzil gave them a strained smile, leading them towards where the four other avatars stood, waiting to pass conviction on the two of them. She couldn’t help but feel like a lamb being led to slaughter after that stilted introduction, as though they were heading to a chopping block with cuffs and a bag over their head, the avatars facing them all judge, jury and executioners.
Her trial was over before she had opened her mouth. Just the very sound of Seth’s name had set Hathor on edge, let alone when she faced the god Seth had repeatedly assassinated. His own brother, Osiris. Or even his sister, Isis.
“Have they told you how this works?” Yatzil asked calmly, heading to the steps towards her own podium, where Hathor’s proud statue watched them approach, a pair of long cow horns straddling a large sun disk signalling her seat.
“Not really,” Marc answered for the two of them as Dove naturally fell behind his shoulder, gaze flicking to the new sets of eyes that peered down on their lowered figures. She hated the way they picked her apart with their unfriendly glares, vultures circling a carcass waiting to dive in and clean her off to the bone. They would have her for breakfast any second now. “Is there somethin’ we should know?”
No, they wouldn’t. Marc would never let that happen. Marc would protect her. She trusted him with every fibre of her being, trusted him as much as she trusted Steven. He would protect her.
“I try not to fight it, it’s a strange sensation but you’ll get used to it,” Yatzil said vaguely, bunching her rust coloured dress in her hands to ascend the ancient steps, her satin-like hair rolling down her back as she turned away from them. Her head flicked back jarringly, Hathor’s spirit consuming her body smoothly, as did the other avatars, the humanity flickering from their harsh stares and swirling into a bright white, the gods taking place in their vessels.
“In attendance,” Yatzil’s voice was still the same, though it held a new level of power, a confidence that only an other worldly being could carry, the clarity of a creature that had seen the earth for thousands of years, “Horus, Isis, Tefnut, Osiris, and Hathor. To hear the accounts of Khonshu and Seth,
A cold spread down her spine, minimal compared to the other few times Seth had taken her body as his own, gentle almost. A soft whoosh of power flooded through her vertebrae, spreading up her neck and through her throat, releasing through her lips as a small sigh. It was benign, as though there was simply a hand stroking down her back compared to the leg numbing force he usually took her with, the kind that made her head dark and fuzzy, the force of being locked out her own body, this felt nothing like that. Perhaps Seth was on his best behaviour in front of his older brother who they both knew could exile the God of Death to stone.
Tormenting and breaking a young girl's mind did not send the message of urgency the four of them needed the Ennead to understand.
She felt Marc’s hand twitch in her own, causing him to drop her palm once more, and she guessed Khonshu had also taken his place inside his avatar. Yatzil would have had a heart attack had she been put through what Seth had tormented her with if she thought this was a ‘strange sensation’.
The weight of Osiris’ glare fell upon her shoulders, and it became clear there was no love lost from the God as she looked upon his frown.
“Brother,” The growl emitted from the human man’s throat, a sneer tugging at his lips, “I trust this is your doing, you and your newfound play thing,” He eyed Dove’s cowering body with disgust, a calculating scowl on his relatively young face. The man couldn’t have been older than thirty five, dressed in a smart business suit and a face that not a single laugh line marred, as though he hadn’t smiled a day in his life. Fitting, she thought snidely, for a god so serious.
Yet those thoughts felt like Seth’s. And with it brought a new wave of peril, unlike the one that came after she would black out. Could he hear her thoughts? Had he buried herself into her head, her only place of solitude? Or maybe was her brain just that cruel all on her own?
“You should be on your knees thanking me, brother,” The words spewed from her chest unprompted, and it took everything in her not to clasp her hand over her mouth to stop it. It felt like someone had reached into her lungs and dragged the accusation up her oesophagus. It was a clap of thunder that echoed around the enclosed chamber, a dark cry that met her ears, leaving her gobsmacked that that was her voice.
“And why is that, brother?” A woman to Osiris’ right, his sister-wife Isis, snarled. Dove wanted to sink to the floor and beg for forgiveness from the two deities that looked at her with a disdain that tainted her skin. She wanted to plead for them to send her home, send her away from all of this mess, just please stop, stop looking at me like that. But instead what came out was the voice, his voice, ripping from her throat with a ferocity that was nothing like hers.
“Were it not for me, dearest sister, and Khonshu, we would not be here meeting to discuss a matter that threatens us all,” Seth’s growl seemed unnatural coming from such a small creature, her eyes wide and afraid as she cursed at the gods with his tongue. Whether it were Seth speaking or not, she was the one they looked to with hatred.
A slender, dark-haired man flanking the other side of Osiris, undoubtedly their son Horus, snorted bitterly, his eagle eyes gazing down the steps to the woman whose head snapped to him.
“You threaten us all, Set. You and your chaos. Your need for vengeance.” He spoke with an Irish lilt, his mouth sneering just as well as his father’s, “It is clear by your actions there is no end to the darkness and turmoil you wish to cause mankind, as well as to your own kind.”
Osiris raised a hand to his son, taking over the brunt of the reprimanding. Dove didn’t doubt this had been what it was like for centuries, she knew the pain of being the oldest and having to mother her own brothers. Though, exiling them to a stone for all eternity for endangering lives was a new concept even for her.
The eyes narrowed in on her as Osiris puffed out his chest to speak, his voice a calm command that rattled her bones.
“It is our job in these vessels to remain unseen, to keep the peace between our world and the humans,” He was rather quiet despite the petrifying effect he held over Dove, the way his and every other god sized her up as she quivered in her place. “Do you not hear how they cry out? That is fear. You scare them, brother, for your own personal enjoyment. We have long since understood you love the taste of their horror. Imagine the hatred they would feel if they saw what lay beneath that young flesh.”
Dove’s eyes lined with tears. She knew the insults were directed at her counterpart that could hear them just as well as she could, that she felt bristling uncomfortably in the back of her mind at the sound of the offence, yet the darkened eyes and sneers they accounted her with churned her stomach in guilt as if this were her own trial. Her own sentencing.
They would fear her if they knew who she really was. What she really was. And the sick part of her knew the darkness had laid under her skin long before any of this. She choked on the words Seth tried to force out of her, gritted her teeth for him to keep quiet, to just let the onslaught end. Let her sentence be carried out, let her be hung, drawn and quartered under their resentful gaze even if to let the pain end, just let it end, just let me go, release me from this life-
“Alright now-” Marc’s voice was fuzzy behind her, the slightest step he took forward towards the gods was stopped by Osiris’ angered voice, a firm look snapping to the new culprit.
“And you. You’ve been banished once for nearly exposing us Khonshu,” Just like that, their attention had been stolen from the pitiful girl that shook in her spot as if no more than a street dog, mangy and yet guilty looking. “And you know we despise your garishness,” He continued, Marc stopping in his place to hear what the high immortal had to say, “Your showy masks and weapons. But manipulate the sky again, and we will imprison you in stone.”
“Spare me your self-righteous threats,” Marc’s voice was a strained call of anger. Clearly Khonshu had a lot to say to the council, Dove mused to herself behind a weakened expression, “I was banished for not abandoning humanity, unlike the rest of you,”
“We have not abandoned humanity,” Horus chimed in, a pinched glower on his young face, “They abandoned us. We simply trust our avatars to carry out our services without calling undue attention to ourselves,” His eyes shifted back to the young woman who gulped under his fire. “Is this why you’ve resurrected the one who caused them so much pain? In the name of aiding the humans? Look at the bloodshed that has already been drawn under her hand,”
He nodded to the state Dove was in, the gummy redness that stuck to her arms, that buried under her nails, that smeared across her face. There was no denying that she had caused such a massacre. There was no running, no hiding from their judging eyes.
“Avatars are not enough! We need the might of gods. Return from the opulence of the Overvoid before you lose this realm. Seth has been the only one brave enough to unleash his strength on those who deserve it,” Marc jolted back as Khonshu left his body, a deep draw of breath expanding his lungs. Dove’s eyes flicked to him in sorrow, seeing the toll the god was taking on him, even if just for a second, the urge to bury her face into his arm and ask to go home overwhelmed her.
“The avatars that remain here are simply meant to observe. We decided long ago we did not wish to meddle in the affairs of man,” Osiris spoke calmly, though the order was clear. The two of them were to submit, to yield under their commands.
“We will decide our best course of action,” Tefnut cut in, under the guise of a glamorous earth-brown woman, her shirt a pop of reds and oranges that brought out her hooded dark eyes even in the lowlight of the tomb. Her gaze was just as intimidating as the others, though she looked at Dove with something more akin to understanding than the rest. The eyes of an elder, who had seen more than the others. A wisdom that only came with thousands of years on the earth they deemed unworthy of their protection. “Speak your purpose,”
“We call for judgement against Arthur Harrow,” Her own voice constricted at the rage that had now overcome Seth’s words, the vitriol that settled under her skin, that boiled her blood for a fight that was not hers.
“The charges?” Came Isis, in the form of a placid, moonlight woman, her doe-like, hazelnut stare serene yet piercing when accompanied with the disappointed purse on her cherry blossom lips.
“Conspiracy to release Ammit,” Khonshu’s exclaim ripped its way through Marc’s chest as a single tear dropped down the man’s tawny cheek from the effort in which the god tore at his psyche.
“That is a heavy accusation, Khonshu,” Osiris said seriously, bringing his hands together as if to search himself for guidance. The man took a deep breath, a silence settling over the room for a moment, the five avatars awaiting to hear their superior's judgement.
She practically felt Marc’s heart pounding in his bones, heard the way the deep breaths rattled his lungs, how his chest burned with effort. She was glad for them at least that Seth had listened to her plea to hold his, her, tongue, allowing Marc to take the brunt of the conversation. She knew the recklessness of the god would only dig them their own grave, that they would be left with little to no hope of taking on Harrow without his help.
Osiris sighed, looking to one of the smaller doorways burrowed into the side of the pyramid. “Let us summon the accused,” He ordered, an orange flicker of light emerging from the catacomb. Dove felt her chest seize at the whoosh of fresh air that came through the doorway, hearing two weary footsteps making their way towards them, scraping against the sand that dusted the hard, stone floor.
And with them, Arthur Harrow appeared.
Handsome for a man of his age, yet his eyes were soulless blue pits, little to no remorse for his schemes behind them. Instead, he seemed to be excited, jumping for the chase, the cat and mouse game the three of them had going. He seemed almost animated to see their newest intervention to halt his plans as he stepped into the tomb, a fake look of bewilderment on his older face.
His hair was greying wisps around his jaw, his suit a plain mahogany two piece that dragged against his espadrilles. He slowly stepped towards them with a cold stare, his jaw clenched in a hidden smirk as he sought the attention of the Ennead.
“So I see from Khonshu’s current makeshift avatar, the purpose for this meeting must be nefarious,” He said plainly, the false innocence in his expression causing a hot anger to wash over Dove’s face.
This time it was her own. Seth was still there, dormant behind her cranium, still seething from his reprimanding from his older brother, twisted with hate at the sight of Harrow, but the overwhelming feeling of outrage was hers.
“Not to mention this poor little soul Seth has taken as his own,” His blue pools of nothing slid to her, the dare to retaliate set and matched in his eyes, “The young one knows nothing of the trouble she’s causing, this is business well beyond her understanding,”
A threat. A call for a challenge. A taunt for her to show what she hid from the world, what festered inside her this whole time. What he had seen with a single touch of her wrist the first day they’d met in the museum.
There is a darkness in you.
And then it was that night all over again. It was the screaming, it was the pure, visceral hatred she had felt for him, for the man that had put her there. It was knowing she was never going home, that she was never going to see her sweet niece grow up to run rings around her teachers. It was knowing her brothers wished for nothing to do with her. It was knowing every one of her letters went unanswered.
And chaos, oh there is chaos,
It was remembering Grace’s laugh through a sob and the fact she would never hear it again. It was the way the light from the abandoned hotel sign next door lit up her room with red, something she had always hated, she could never sleep for the brightness of it. Then again, she struggled to sleep anyway. It was the red of the shoes the girls wore, the other girls, the others from the club. The emerald room, the way they watched her dance like a puppet on a string before things truly went wrong.
Something wicked this way comes.
It was knowing her brothers couldn’t stand the sight of her because of him, because of the choices she’d made for him. For love. She wanted to scoff. It was the men that came at night, the ones that she saw in her dreams even now, the ringleader of them all being the one to tell her what a good little lapdog she’d been for him. The one she’d called boyfriend.
It was the knife, it was the blood. It was the body that burned as she’d torched the house in her escape.
And I see you are truly something wicked.
“You know exactly why we are here,” Khonshu cried from behind her, though Harrow took no notice of the call, his mouth twitching to fight off a smirk as he saw the way her chest deflated at the sight of him, knowing he knew her. He knew her, the way Seth knew her.
The way she was terrified even now that Marc and Steven would someday know her.
“Rip his tongue out,” Seth hissed into her ear, chomping at the bit to be let out from the slight control she had over him in front of the Ennead.
“I must admit I do not miss the sound of that voice.” Harrow turned solemnly to the gods, the nervousness falling over his face like a performance. “But speak, old master, to the point,”
“Do you not seek to release Ammit from her tomb?” Khonshu accused, Marc’s body being seized by the god’s might. Dove grabbed his wrist in her own when she saw his chest heaving heavier by the moment. The man looked as if he might throw up any second from the weight of it.
“I was in the desert, but if visiting the sands were a crime, the line of sinners would be longer than the nile” Harrow said calmly, his hands weaving together in front of him to solidify the guiltless ploy he was giving, “Khonshu has searched for Ammit’s tomb since he ensnared be into his service. His vision is obscured by jealousy, paranoia and his-”
“COWARD,” Seth struck her chest with a lightning bolt of fury, the growl drawling from her throat in a volume that made her jump, Marc glancing her way when he felt her fingers clutch him ruthlessly, “Filthy, conniving CRAVEN,”
“Do not trust the word of shamed gods,” Harrow countered, turning to glare at the pair that looked at him helplessly, their chests pounding with the strain of a deity overtaking their vocal chords, “These two are unhinged, as willing as one another to cause destruction in the human world. And as for their avatars themselves,” Harrow huffed, though a smarmy smile shadowed his face as he looked between the two of them, “Well, they are about as unwell as the gods they serve,”
“How do you mean?” Hathor asked, a small frown scrunching her gentle almond eyes.
Harrow considered the two of them, his piercing gaze falling on the young woman first, a hint of malice flicking over his face as he watched her squirm under his ruthless stare, as if waiting for the killing blow, waiting for him to run a sword clean through her sternum. Get it over with, her eyes pleaded, let this be done, shoot me between the eyes and set me free.
“This girl,” He began, her breath catching in her lungs, “She seems innocent enough, what with the crocodile tears and the deer in headlights look about her,” Harrow gave her one last sneer, before turning back to face the gods with a faux woeful look plastered on his face, “But this fawn is in fact the hunter with a loaded rifle. I have seen what she is capable of, the anger and vengeance the tortured soul wishes to unleash on those who stand in her way, the corruption in her heart- it’s no wonder Seth found her suitable for his needs,”
Her mouth had gone dry, she realised as she swallowed roughly, tears burning behind her eyes, she felt Marc staring at her. Fuck. He saw her, he saw right through her. And if he saw her, then what would Marc think of her? What would he see if he were to crack open her muddled little mind and peer in? He would hate her. And oh god, Steven-
Her throat bobbed with a silenced sob, her chin wobbling pitifully.
“And as for him- This is a man who literally does not know his own name.” Harrow continued his onslaught, making Marc clear his throat uncomfortably at the fact his biggest wound was bared open for the taking, the scar that wouldn’t close having salt poured into the crevice. “He has a marriage certificate under the name Marc Spector-”
“LIAR!” Khonshu’s agitated attempt at regaining composure was thwarted by the glisten in Marc’s lost, cocoa eyes that seemed to do nothing but watch as his chest was pried open.
“Employment records under the name Steven Grant,”
“Stop,” This time it was Marc speaking for himself. His voice hoarse from Khonshu’s yelling, yet it was more of a wounded yelp, a plea for mercy from the man who knew everything about him, knew all of his darkest corners, and threw it out in the open for them all to see.
“I have seen him speak to himself-”
“Shut up,” Marc yawped, an animal in a cage yowling for release.
Dove felt the anger begin to rev under her skin once more. Marc had been immovable since the moment she knew him, the moment she saw him in her bedroom stiff as a rock as she’d hugged him. Had rarely shown anything but a cold indifference, if not the occasional smile. He had been the only thing keeping her sane between the entire situation, the one person she trusted to quite literally drag her back from the depths of death a thousand times over. Because, while he was a moody sod most days, it was Marc. And Marc would fight tooth and nail for her.
“I have no idea how many personalities he must possess,” She felt Marc weaken under the hold she had on his wrist, “The man is clearly insane,”
It was happening in slow motion. Just as Marc crumbled into a disheartened sigh, the frustrated tears welling in his eyes, the final chord holding together her growing temper snapped. She felt her vision blacken for a moment, as if she had taken a long blink, which she wished she had in hindsight, she’d read on the internet closing your eyes and taking a deep sigh temporarily relieves stress. Something about giving the synapses a moment to process information. But she hadn’t. And neither did she feel the imposter crawling up her spine the way she did when Seth wanted her body as his own. No this was her, this was her entirely alone.
By the time she had come to, she had taken two quick steps towards the snide man, fingers outstretched for a sharp slap across his high cheekbones when she felt five metal claws hugging her fingertips, the razor edge of each enough to take a sizeable chunk out of his face had she made contact.
But she didn’t. Because no sooner had she gotten an inch away from doing so, her hand was stopped by a cerulean ring cuffing her hand mid air, preventing her from moving in the slightest.
Osiris. His hand held the same bluish-grey energy between his two fingers as he seethed down at his younger brother’s avatar.
“We will not tolerate violence in this chamber,” He bit, forcing the girl to her knees to face him, her head hung to the floor. She felt Marc’s eyes burn the back of her skull, his legs itching to approach, to wrap her up in his embrace, if only to protect her from Osiris’ hate. She chewed her cheek in guilt, when a thought quickly struck her as she looked to her knees ashamed.
Her suit, the one Seth usually donned her in. She was in her suit. She had never summoned her suit before, had steered clear from the fact entirely actually, yet the material was stretched comfortably over her skin as it was all the other times Seth shoved her consciousness aside to make room for his own deeds.
But she had summoned it herself.
“It brings me no pleasure to tell you these are two deeply troubled individuals. Khonshu is taking advantage of him the same way he abused me, the same way he aspires to abuse this court. As Seth is preying on a chaos-filled, young woman whose only goal is nemesis. Take action before it is too late,”
Dove tuned him out, her own internal crisis weighing far heavier than the insults Harrow was hurling to her. She had brought out the Hellhound herself. Not as Seth’s puppet or as his doll for toying with but as herself. As a reflection of what she wanted to do to Harrow.
For the first time in almost a decade, her body felt like it was almost her own again.
“Let us speak to Marc Spector. He seems the more reasonable of the two,” Horus ordered, and Marc almost scoffed at them had he not been so hurt by Harrow’s words, not been so defeated by the doubtful looks the Ennead had in their once cold glares now that his illness had been revealed. “Are you unwell?”
It was direct. Inescapable. And yet he didn’t care for their judgement anymore, just the fact she seemed uncomfortable being forced to her knees so harshly, a mongrel forced to sit quietly for a bone.
“I am.” He breathed hoarsely, “I am unwell. I need help. But that doesn’t change the fact that this man is-” Marc could barely finish his sentence without trailing off in angered tears as he glowered at the floor, knowing there was very little he could say to change their minds, “Would you just let her go? Please?”
“This is a safe space for you to tell us if you feel exploited by Khonshu-”
“This is not about my feelings, I am not the one on trial here, nor is she. It is him,” Marc seethed at Hathor, Yatzil, who’s pitiful eyes bore into his skin, flaring his anger, god would he just let go of her, look how her head hung low, how her knees pressed painfully into the cold floor, how she was forced to submit, “This is about how dangerous he is if you would just listen for a second,”
“He has committed no offence,” Osiris ruled coldly, tired, as if the situation bored him completely. “This matter is concluded.”
And that was it. The bonds that held Dove into low obedience were ripped away from her, her hands finding the floor gently as she stayed there, her head dipped to glare at the stone, the anger ebbing and flowing at her hot face like the banks of the Nile.
“And brother?” Dove’s head perked the slightest amount, though it was not her, but Seth responding to his counterpart on his behalf. She looked up at the god through broken, reddened eyes, a tear glistening on her cheek that she let fall to the ground with no fight. “Cause chaos like this again and you’ll be begging for a ushabti when I’m finished with you,”
With that, the avatars were returned to their bodies with moonlight white eyes, a jolt in every one of their spines, before they began heading back to their portals with not a single word uttered between them. As if Marc and Doves lives hadn’t just been raked out for all to see, all to judge. All to sentence.
Walking past the girl still crumpled in defeat on the floor, her heart too heavy to lift herself, Harrow watched Marc’s angered eyes carefully, a final sneer on his shit-eating expression.
“I’d leash that bitch of yours before she hurts anyone else, Spector,” He murmured, loud enough for the two of them to hear, not loud enough to cause a scene.
Like a dam breaking, her shoulders sank in on themselves, Marc quickly rushing to meet her on his knee, a warm hug wrapping around her where he could, just as she expected.
“Hey come on, we need to go, princess,” Marc whispered to her, and she could do nothing but give a sad nod, avoiding his eyes at all cost.
“I’m sorry,” She whispered, a sob crawling up her throat that felt even more present when she saw her clawed fingertips staring back up at her, “I’m sorry I tried, I tried to push him down, I-”
“Shhh,” Marc soothed, nosing her hairline, “It’s alright, it wasn’t your fault,” He murmured, hands going under her arms to lift her off the ground carefully. She stood, not without clutching onto him, gently of course since her suit and weapons made it difficult to not hurt him, and the entire idea that she had conjured it herself seemed tainted by the way they had looked at her. The way anyone would look at her if they knew.
“Marc,” A voice whispered, but Dove was too lost in her own self pity to take note. She felt as if she was back on that beach, her eyes lost in a canopy of blue, the wind cold on her skin. Lost in the world, yet seen, too seen, by those gods, by Harrow. Too trapped in her past, in what she’d done, knowing there was nothing stopping what Seth wanted her to do. Feeling for the first time, with the suit around her that she had summoned, she had ownership over herself, feeling as if she entirely wanted nothing to do with it.
Release me, release me from this wretched body, release me from this head, take me from this pain with a quick death.
Yet.
Keep me here, grant me control, let me greet my own demise.
An equilibrium yet to settle. A scale tipping to and fro, a puzzle with no solution. A set of coordinates with no longitude. Continuing. Unanswering. A person missing half their soul.
She, impossibly so, felt worse than she had when she woke up.
She found herself again laying back on the hotel bed, staring at the white, plaster ceiling. After Marc had spoken with Yatzil about a possible solution to finding Ammit before Harrow and his followers, the pair of them had headed back to the hotel in silence. Well, Marc had attempted to make conversation as he led her to the taxi, but it was clear from her lack of response, only broken by the occasional sniff or nod of her head, that she was in no mood to talk.
Taking a deep sigh from her place on the cot, she lifted her hand to run over her tired face when she was stopped by a crusted sap rolled up between her fingers at the touch, and she let out a clear gasp, jumping up from the sheets.
In the daze of it all, she’d forgotten she was covered in blood under her suit that she coaxed into disappearing before the taxi pulled up. Her face, hands, legs, all smeared with the sticky substance that now stained the white duvet.
“Fuck, oh fuck, for bloody fuck sake, fucking shit-” She swore violently, bunching her fingers into fists at the sight, Marc ducking into the room from the small balcony faster than she could let out another curse.
“What’s going on?” He took one look at her sad eyes, the way the redness smattered over her face, guilt flashing in her expression as he saw the mess on the sheets.
“I’m sor-”
“I’ll have my guy tip the cleaners, it’s no biggie,” He brushed off, taking a step towards her, attempting to uncurl her fists manually with his much larger hands that had just as much blood on them. Though, it was mostly his from where his wounded knuckles were now weeping. “You should probably take a shower though, we’ll raise too many questions looking like this,”
She barely nodded, eyes glazing over as she understood what he was saying. Clean yourself up, you’re scaring the locals.
“They only have a bath,” She murmured quietly, avoiding his eyes, scratching at the blood that quickly dried on her arms, picking at it like the glue that stuck to your skin as a kid making crafts, coming away in thin, onion peel layers.
“I’m sorry if it’s not the nicest hotel around, but my guy did his best-” Marc snipped slightly, watching her face scrunch up in frustration.
“No, no, not that, it's lovely, I’m just-” She took a deep breath in, her lungs rattling, her throat constricting with the secret she’d never had to tell. He’d think she was ridiculous, a woman of her grown age. “I can’t take a bath,”
“Of course you can, I’ll go run it for you now,” Marc headed for the bathroom, sick of this back and forth. He just needed her clean, needed to get that shit off of her, get rid of that guilty look in her eyes, needed to fix everything-
“No, wait,” She stopped behind him as he turned the brass tap, hot water gushing into the luxurious, square bathtub that had been built into the nude marble, stacks of ‘freebies’ and candles lining the edge. This was definitely meant for a honeymooning couple wanting a sexy week away under the Cairo sun, banging in every room, not two people who were barely friends possessed by gods and racing to stop the end of human lives. “Wait, Marc,”
“What?” He barked, turning back to face her with the first annoyed glare he’d given her all day. She knew the pair of them were at the end of their tethers, and that he was trying to care for her in the way Marc always did, the kind that only half the time involved actual any affection. “Look, I know it’s full of rose petals and shit, but I’m trying, princess,-
“It’s not that it’s-”
“I know it’s shit but it’s the best we’ve got, and I know Steven would have gotten you somewhere better-”
“I’m scared of water, Marc,” He shut up at the sight of her deflated expression looking at him through embarrassment, shut up at the sight of her squirming on the spot at his irritated rant.
“Huh?” He hissed, utterly thrown off by her words, feeling as if he hadn’t heard her correctly, “You’re fine with water, you’ve showered at Steven’s before. Is it me? I can go if you want privacy-”
“No, Marc just stop, please,” She mewled, turning her head to her hands ashamed, picking at the skin that had come loose, no matter if it pained her so. “It’s not you, I- I can’t be underwater, like under under water, not like showering when it’s only there for a second, it’s more drowning than anything, so baths are just a no go,”
But she sounded far away. Because the realisation for Marc had set in, the understanding of being scared to be held down, to feel the water rising up your legs, past your knees, up into your lungs. And then he was back in that cave again, he was feeling the water trickle in, he was screaming for RoRo to talk to him, to take his hand, he was hearing his brother’s little body splashing, hearing the water crowd his throat, drown out his cries for help. He was climbing out of that wretched cave soaked and running back home to tell his parents what had happened.
Taking a laboured breath to remind himself he was in the bathroom, with her picking at her nails, the tap running being the only sound between them for a moment. Sighing heavily, he fought the tears that burned behind his nose, forcing them to be swallowed down in the interest of helping her.
“What if I stayed?” He asked, her head shooting up to look at him in shock, mortified he was being so brazen. Rolling his eyes at her naïveté, he continued, “I’ll turn around and just sit on the toilet seat, but I’ll stay. Make sure nothing bad happens,”
She went quiet for a moment. She needed to get clean, get this forsaken muck off her, it was driving her insane. The smell of it alone, fermenting under the hot sun, was turning her stomach, not including the fact she felt rotten every time she thought about where it came from. Those bodies, that boy.
She nodded, the hot water steaming up the window by the time she’d decided.
“Okay, yeah. I suppose that would be okay,” She murmured to herself, fidgeting nervously. “You’ll just sit right there?”
He nodded gently, his hands coming to pull her fingers from mauling themselves, “Absolutely. Right there.”
“And you won’t look?” She asked shyly, eyes batting up at him through tired lids, to which he smiled slightly.
“Not a peak, now come on, bath’s almost full,” He ducked out of the bathroom to allow her to get undressed, not missing the way her fingers seemed to cling to his hand for as long as possible before he left. “Call me when I can come in,”
“Okay,” She replied through the thickness of the door. Taking a deep breath, she tucked her clothes into a neat pile under the sink, despite the fact they were wrecked with the same red gunk she was going to have to scrub off her skin. Switching the taps off gently with two squeaky turns, she held onto the bath edge with a deathly tight grip. It was only a foot of water, and Marc was right there. He wasn’t here anymore. Bath’s had once been her favourite part of the day. She loved a bath, had never felt so relaxed. She wanted to scream at the way her chest locked up as she stood in the water.
It was piping hot, scalding her skin, and maybe it was the punishment she deserved for all the blood she’d shed. Maybe it was the toll she had to pay to get clean.
Sinking to her bottom, she couldn’t help but clench onto the side of the bath for support, eyes locked on the way the water swayed towards her. It was just a bath, she’d had one millions of times before him, he wasn’t here to-
“You can come in,” She called, conscious of the way her back was to the door, swishing some of the french lavender bubble bath in to make the water milky, obscuring any sight of her body he would have caught a glimpse of.
Not that he would try. Marc was much too respectful for that.
He came in wordlessly, shutting the door behind him to keep the warm air in the bathroom. Plonking himself down on the toilet seat, he saw her hair spill over the lip of the tub edge in his peripheral vision, but little more.
For a moment they were both silent, uneasy at the new atmosphere created. The humid air was thick in their throats, the excuse they gave themselves as to why they weren’t talking. Marc inhaled the sweet vanilla and floral notes of the bubble bath, cursing himself when his mind ventured as to that being what she would smell like all evening.
“I’m sorry the room is so…” Marc trailed off. What was he to say, so clearly meant for two people on a nonestop fuck-a-thon? Aside from the fact the minifridge was stacked with whipped cream and chocolate spread, not for breakfast he’d had to explain to her, the bedside table full of condoms, the bathtub filled with rose petals, it was very obvious they stuck out like two sore thumbs with their rare and short affections in a place like this.
“What? Straight out a porno?” She quipped, earning a short laugh from him, symphonying the splash that came as she began scrubbing at her arms finally.
“A high end porno atleast,” He corrected, the tension in his shoulders loosening when he heard her giggle.
“Right,” She drawled, leaning over to grab the chamomile scented soap, “No one’s getting stuck bent over a tumble drier any time soon in a place like this,”
Maybe it was the fact she couldn’t see him, or it was the least shitty thing that had happened all day, but Marc couldn’t help the way a laugh, a real, chest tightening laugh, spilled out his throat. It was completely out of character for his glacial demeanour, usually the best she’d get is a smirk he’d try to hide or a huff through his nose. But it was a true, amused laugh. She smiled, despite the water coming away pink in her fingers as she scrubbed.
A brief moment passed over them where the only sound came from her hand dipping in and out of the water. This wasn’t so bad, she supposed, if she ignored the way her stomach rolled with bile every time she felt herself slipping further into the water. The milky pool itself wasn’t what scared her, it was the waiting to be pushed under, held under despite her clawing and scratching at his arm. It was his way of keeping her in check, reminding her even in the bathroom she was not permitted to privacy, to her own thoughts. She still felt his hand weaving its way into her hair, shoving her down until the water rushed up her nose, the gasp she’d let out choking on the exotic scented liquid. It was all just another one of his little games, and when she’d resurface, spluttering and clamouring out of the tub, he’d simply laugh and tell her to stop locking the door.
She hated the smell of that soap anyway. Too rich, too perfumed, too fake.
“I used to bath my brothers when I was younger,” She said after a while. She didn’t know why, or what had made her think about it, or why Marc needed to know, but she said it anyway.
“Yeah?” He replied, sounding distant as he picked at the blood under his own fingernails. “How many?”
“Four, all younger,” He blew air out of his cheeks solemnly, “We didn’t have much money, it was just my dad and he could never keep a job to save his life. I tried getting a job but turns out minimum wage for thirteen year olds is pennies,”
Marc stayed quiet, chewing at his lip. He had yet to ever hear her talk about brothers, or parents, or anything other than Steven and how much she wished he was here. That and of course why James Bond is a chauvinist, though he knew the first one was much dearer to her.
“Sounds rough,” He bit out, feeling the need to remind her he was still listening. He saw her shrug from behind the curtain of hair that fell behind her, obscuring his view.
“We got by. I was hungry some nights, but we were happy. They were happy. That’s all I cared about,” Marc felt a guilt gnawing at him. Sure, after RoRo passed his mother became a beast that had yet to release him from her claws, but they had never worried about money. Their house was easily three stories high, he had a meal three times a day, Elias always took him out to buy a new toy when Wendy had been particularly cruel. Birthdays, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, he always had whatever he wanted. Anything, except his mother’s love, but that couldn’t be bought, could never be earned back for what he’d done.
He felt disgusted with himself for being so self piteous about his childhood when Dove had barely afforded to eat at risk of her siblings going hungry.
“I used to get Matty in there first, he was the oldest. Only a couple years between us but he loved when I would give him his toys the others weren’t allowed to play with. We used to have to share everything, clothes, toys, school books, so having his own boat in the tub made him feel special.” A smile, achy but good, passed over her face, a warmth blossoming in her chest at the thought of the life she hadn’t had in so long. “He knew he had to be quick because there was only one tub of water to last all five of us, so we used to play ten rounds of I-spy and then he’d have to get out. Eventually he’d pick the most difficult thing to spy so I’d never guess and he’d get to stay in longer.”
Marc stopped then, watching the back of her head with a silent stare, quickly understanding she was in her own world entirely. “Then it was Sam’s turn, he was a year younger than Matt. He hated getting shampoo in his eyes so insisted I washed his hair for him, even though he made me swear to never tell his friends because it would damage his street cred,” She chuckled to herself, sounding far away from where Marc cracked a small smile, “Kid was seven years old and thinking he was tough enough to take on the world.”
“The other two?” Marc prompted with an ache, a need to know more. More about the little Dove that tended to her hatchlings, to her nest, whose voice sang with something he had never heard from her, a sad kind of happiness he never thought possible.
“Joey was next. He’d start to complain that the bath water was getting cold by this point so I’d sneak some water in from the kettle. He was a little younger than us, I think mom and dad had thought three was it for them. But two years after Sammy, out popped Joey. Fattest baby you’ve ever seen. Refused to speak until he was three, and then suddenly he was blurting out full sentences.” She smirked, eyes glazed over as the pink swirled into the water, beginning to run out of where it dried in clumps in her hair. She would need to wash properly, she realised. Wetting a flannel, she held it behind her, careful not to get any droplets on Marc’s leg. “Marc?”
He snapped out of the reverie he felt he shared with her, his head filled with the image of four little boys, a mirror of her. Maybe their noses were a little bigger, their jaws sharper, but their hair would fall over their shoulders the same way, unless she’d trimmed it for them. He pictured her running ragged after them, reminding them to floss, to tidy their rooms, to do their homework.
“Yeah?” He asked, taking the cloth from her hand.
“Would you be able to get the…” Blood. Blood. Blood. “Stuff out my hair please? I can’t get my head under but it’ll dry soon if I don’t get it now.”
“S-sure,” He said softly, almost caught off guard that she was inviting him to get even closer to her nude form. Setting a towel on the floor, he turned the small bin over to give himself a seat as he gently ran the wet cloth over her locks. He would need to use shampoo probably, there was some on the side of the sink but he refused to push her. “What about the youngest?”
“Micheal,” She said, her voice pure with sweetness. “He was definitely a surprise. Came three months early, came out kicking and squealing like he had a vendetta against the world.” She chuckled to herself. “He was so tiny I could get away with washing him in the kitchen sink. Matty would say we could peel him and put him in a stew with the rest of the potatoes. But he was so good, he would follow me around when I got home from work, even when he turned into a teenager he would never leave for school without hugging me and making sure I had lunch. I never did, but I would lie because otherwise he would worry too much about me,”
The crimson seeped out of her hair with every brush of Marc’s hand against the locks, but he didn’t care. He was too caught up hearing her bliss. She was different like this. Yes, she was usually happy, bar the few times she had gotten teary over the blood and gore, but speaking about her brothers made her glow with something new. A bliss he hadn’t seen in her yet. One he wished he could cling onto with everything he had, keep her wrapped in like a bubble of her happiest memories.
“By the time I got in the bath it was cold, like fully cold. And the water was dirty, I tell you three boys and a baby get into so much mess than I’d give them credit for,” She continued, her eyes fluttering closed at the way he gently stroked her head, stopping every once in a while to re dampen the flannel in the water. There was no way he could see anything since the soap had made it so cloudy, but she didn’t think she could find herself to fully care with how loose her body felt, floating under the heat. She found herself trusting him enough to lean back into his hold, relax under his touch instead of flinch. Because it was just Marc. And Marc would never do that.
She tipped her head back to give him an easier access to her scalp, sighing when his fingers seemed to pick at a clump, removing it manually when it wouldn’t release with the cloth alone. Her stomach flipped as to a guess as to what it could have been.
Flesh? Brain matter? You tore those men to pieces like the savage you are, it’s no wonder Osiris said the people were scared of you, you’re beastly, disgusting loathsome creature who deserves every bit of pain Seth gives you-
“Four brothers and a father? You and your mother must have been ripping your hair out in testosterone,” He said, gently smoothing the tangles out of her tresses, continuing to wipe at the tangles until the water ran clear.
“Just me. Mom ditched when Mikey was born,” She said calmly, though she felt his hands stutter as she did. “It’s fine. She believed that giving her son’s biblical names meant god couldn’t see her drug benders. I think she forgot her kids could though,”
Marc hesitated. Words, some that he couldn’t fathom putting together, caught in his throat. He hated the pity people would give him whenever he were to divulge his own secrets he kept hidden in the dark rooms of his mind even Steven had no access to.
“Please say anything except I’m sorry, otherwise I may have to give you a big wet slap across the mouth,” She quipped, relieved when she heard a small snigger, finally. She’d hate to lose that calm, carefree version of Marc she’d had this evening. Hate to scare him off like the spooked rabbit he was, send him racing down into his dark burrow again. “But yeah, it was grisly being the only girl until Billie was born,”
“Billie as in another brother?” Marc asked with a confused frown.
“Billie as in my niece,” She replied, making a gentle start to clean the gummy resin off her face, “She was named after Billy Joel when Matty lasted all of one week being sixteen and got a girl pregnant. Girl bailed on the kid as soon as she was born, Matty felt like he could do a better job of it than our dad could, and Billie was family. Although she somehow got it in her head that she was only allowed to listen to Billy Joel since that’s where her name came from,” She snickered, remembering the countless mornings she chased the naked toddler as she screamed ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’.
“How old is she?” Marc asked, the water running mostly clean now, yet his gentle pawing at her hair had yet to stop, more for his own state of mind now than her own. She was so soft, soft everywhere. Even the way she sighed into his touch, the few times his fingertip had met her neck, met the top of her spine. Soft, warm; inviting, addicting. Clean, good, pure, god she was heaven on earth. Fixed, he could fix it, fix her hurts.
“She’s…” Dove quickly counted in her head, coming up with a thick throat when she figured the answer. “Nine. She’ll be nine now,”
Nine. She’d missed so much of her little life, she’d barely been at school when she’d left home. Missed her losing her first teeth, missed her learning to ride a bike, missed moving to bigger school.
She’s better off without me. Dove chided sourly, though tears built in her eyes.
“You see her much?” He prompted, letting the short bout of silence settle over them as she rinsed her face carefully.
“No, I uh-” She cleared her throat, her head tilting down to play with her fingers, picking with her thumb nail under the rest, “My brother’s don’t speak to me anymore,”
Marc froze. This, unlike the other time he’d been ready to apologise, felt like dangerous territory. While her mother walking out had felt like passing news to her, this felt like a rope unwinding thread by thread, getting ready to snap in his face at any point.
“Oh,” He eventually came up with, stuck between wanting to ask more and wanting to keep his distance. A tug of war between himself and wondering what she wanted him to do. What Steven would do. “How come?”
“Just you know, life got in the way. We all said some things, did some things,” She sniffed, her eyes closing as she skirted around the truth, “Truthfully I don’t deserve their forgiveness even if they did want to talk,”
“Come on now,” Marc reasoned, his eyes filling with a softness only she saw, his fingertips caressing her scalp with a gentleness he didn’t know his battered hands could muster. “I’m sure that’s not true,”
“It is,” She cut him off definitively, “I think, sometimes, maybe I was just born wrong. Like I just came out the womb rotten. Like I deserve the way the gods looked at me today, like I’m every bit as revolting as Harrow says I am,”
“Hey,” Her head flicked over her shoulder at the anger in his tone. She hadn’t meant to spill, hadn’t meant to overflow her brain like that, have the words jump right out her throat. Maybe she was too relaxed here. She expected judgement, or disgust, or pity. But no, Marc just looked pissed. “That is not true, do you hear me? Everything he said about you is wrong,”
“But if he’s wrong, then why does all this happen to me? Why does it happen if I don’t deserve the badness?” She asked him quietly, because Marc knew all the answers. Marc knew everything, always knew what to say even if he didn’t realise it.
He took in her damp, clean face that stared up at him in naive grace. Her eyes gazed right up at him into his soul, seeing past every defence he had tried to throw up against her, everything unintimate between them gone as she soaked away the blood.
“Sometimes these things just happen to people. Sometimes there is no deserve,” Marc said after a moment to chew on his words. His hands cupped her face gently, her eyebrows furrowing as his thumb wiped the wetness from her cheek that rolled down in a couple glistening bubbles. “You are amazing, do you hear?”
She was silent.
Marc, in what was possibly the most tender thing he’d done since he’d first met Layla, slowly leaned forward, his lips coming to rest on her forehead. Her eyes fluttered closed, a held breath exhaling on his clavicle, cold unlike the warmth of her cheeks.
He drew back, the scent of french lavender and vanilla invading his lips, tasting sweet on his tongue.
And yet the pit of guilt only sank in Dove’s heart at the gesture. The pit that devoured her every second of every day. She didn’t deserve his kindness, his sweet words or his saccharine kisses. Marc would hate her if he found out what she was, who she was. If he knew the reason she left home, left her brothers.
If he knew she was a murderer.
MCU
@blackcat420---69
KNIGHT IN SOHO TAGLIST
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#marc spector x reader#steven grant x reader#marc spector fanfiction#marc spector imagine#moon knight x reader#moonknight imagine#moonknight x reader#steven grant fanfiction#steven grant imagine#jake lockely fanfiction
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Hello! I've been a fan of you for some time now, and I've grown to be interested in writing an interactive novel myself! Problem is, I have no idea how to start. How did you get into writing interactive fiction and how is the process different than writing a regular novel? What do you like most about it? Thanks and have a great day!
Hello!! I got into Interactive Fiction when I first read Choice of the Dragon and Heroes Rise all those years back. From there, I read more and more games and, eventually, found the Cog forum full of WIPS— at the time, Tumblr IF culture didn't exist.
The big game changers, however, were Choice of Rebels and Zombie Exodus: Safe Heaven. When I read those games, I was blasted with the full potential of this medium. Like a great, blazing wind hitting me in the face, I understood we can create worlds, weave narratives, and write characters as layered as the ones we read about in a traditional book.
Plus, you get a say in what happens!
I can't say exactly how different it is to write traditional novels because I never wrote a full book. Before the Rose, I wrote a lot of short stories. But, IF is extremely different from traditional writing because, most of all, the protagonist doesn't belong to you. The characters, even, don't belong to you. It's a two-way street of creating a story with strangers you'll never meet.
So, you must consider, always, the reader. Whether in traditional writing, my advice is that you shouldn't. Write for yourself, yes, but in IF, you can't do it 100%. Writing is a dialogue between myself and this metaphorical, all-encompassing reader.
The best thing is that in collaborative writing you'll come up with phrases, situations, and even characters you never planned. Beka, the Goliath, and even, to some degree, Lance, are all characters that would have been tiny footnotes if not for this internal reader that demanded: "Wait, but I want to know more about this person."
It's a lot of work. Right now, I'm in a bit of a slog where I have to write different conversations and, even, different start of scenes based on previous choices. It has made me slow down my writing speed considerably. Is it fun to go over a scene two, three, sometimes even four times? No. It's tedious. IF writing will have a lot of times where you'll just have to do something even when you don't particularly enjoy it.
But, when you do get to the parts you enjoy? When the text comes alive and the protagonist goes from this vague, silhouette-like blob in your mind to a fully-formed, distinct person? When the MC turned into Romanus and a city I saw on the map into Tarragona, or a bard who is secretly a spy deepened into one of my favorite characters I've ever written? Those moments make all the tedious ones worth it.
You gotta love it, that's my advice. If you don't, you'll never finish the project. No matter how many likes, asks, and fanart you get.
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Happy Friday! Here’s the Smiling Critters (minus one unfortunately) as the Fruits of the Spirit! These little guys have been around on my FYP for a while, and reading more into their personalities, they kinda reminded me as the FOTS! Read more on my headcanons for thee designs below and why they were assigned a certain fruit!
Bobby Bearhug: She’s a pretty obvious one, love! Her little pendant in on a bracelet, as she is very into fashion and making them for her besties!
Dogday: Joy, for his happy demeanor! Bobby made him a collar to match his dog theme. He is brothers with Catnap, and is very close friends with Crafty Corn.
Picky Piggy: She is forbearance, aka self control. It takes a lot of self control to make the right food choices, so I assigned that to her. She is close friends with Hoppy, although all of the girls are very close knit, as are the boys! Bobby made her a bib to match her food theme!
Crafty Corn: Kindness I thought really suited her. She’s closest with Dogday, although she likes hanging out with her girlies too! Bobby made her an earring with all of the Critters’ colors on it to signify her close relationships with her friends!
Catnap: Peace is a pretty obvious one, as he is always chill. He is brothers (not blood) with Dogday. Bobby made him a necklace, although he just puts it around his tail most of the time.
Hoppy Hopscotch: Faithfulness because of her character description! It says that she goes and faces danger, no matter how big it is, and always gets back up no matter how bad she got beaten. Much like most Christians in their faith! She’s closest with Picky, and likes playing soccer. Bobby made her an anklet, although when she plays, must take it off to avoid injury.
Bubba Bubbafent: Goodness is for him because of him trying to push his friends it the best direction. He has a necklace from Bobby, and even though is seen as a nerd, is quite good at sports, surprisingly.
(I didn’t include him because there wasn’t enough fruits, but if I had to pick a trait for Kickin Chicken, it would be courage! I would relate him to David from David and Goliath. I will draw him soon I swear).
#smiling critters#Dogday#catnap#kickinchicken#picky piggy#bobby bearhug#bubba bubbaphant#hoppy hopscotch#craftycorn#christian blog#christians#christian faith#christianity#poppy playtime#poppy playtime chapter 3#bible scripture#bible verse
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What if Jaune was a Xiao-Long? Does he either inherit Tai’s puns but are actually good, or Summer’s obsession with weapons, specifically swords.
Well, let's talk about the changes that would come with Jaune being born a Xiao Long. I'm assuming that he's Raven and Tai's son and Yang's twin brother, since him being Ruby's twin would potentially give him silver eyes and take away Ruby's role as the innocent and pure soul that she is, since she'd have to share the big hero spotlight.
As a Xiao-Long Branwen, Jaune's eyes would be red, blue, or purple, which is a choice of colors I love. Like, Yang isn't red like her mothers or blue like her fathers, but a lovely mix of purple to show she is both her mother's and her father's child. So Jaune also being born with these would be nice, though him having either Tai's or Raven's colored eyes would be a nice contrast to Yang. Also, fourth option, just putting it on the table so it's there, Jaune being heterochromatic with red and blue eyes. But to be honest, that feels a little too OC for me. Honestly, I'm leaning to Tai eyes since it would give Raven more reason to not stick around.
Jaune would grow up with Yang and help raise Ruby, but I could see him acting more like a brother than a father with her. He plays video games and reads comic books with her, while Yang is acting more as a mother-figure, filling in the space Summer left. I can also see Jaune having a Luigi dynamic to Yang's Mario, with him being the more timid and cautious twin of the two. Like, I'm imagining the three leaving to look for Summer with Jaune making constant whines like "Yaaang, we should go back!"
Now, with Jaune's weapon, let's address the goliath in the room. Crocea Mors? Not a thing. There's no family heirloom for him to take from the wall to attend Beacon. Instead, since he'd attend Signal and Beacon with his sisters, he'd make his own weapons. What weapons? Ooh... That's... Oof... If you're familiar with my Ru-Ja-Gun-Con series, you know that there are A LOT of weapons Jaune could choose and be inspired by. I even hinted at one being a solid choice for me if I had my way, BUT that was Jaune in canon. This is an entirely different Jaune. However, since this Jaune is still, essentially, Jaune, I would still like to keep the Jaune Arc style, so I'll let him keep the sword and shield and say he was inspired by the fairy tale stories he would read to Ruby, and yes, it is the Rusted Knight. However, I'd also like to borrow from the Joan of Arc inspiration and give Jaune something from her arsenal. I'm thinking a sword and shield/sheath that can be turned into a crossbow! But wait, there's more! Since both Ruby and Yang use theirs for combat AND mobility, I'd like to suggest Jaune has a rappelling line/bolt that he can slide on. Neat, right? Now we just need a name... How about... Juniper Rose, named after his favorite character from his favorite fairy tale.
"But what about his semblance?!" The voice in my head cries, mimicking what I think is what you're asking. Well, since he is heading off to Signal and Beacon with his sisters, it would only make sense to have Jaune unlock his aura and his semblance, but instead of coming up with something wild like Juniper Rose, I'd suggest keeping Aura Amp as his semblance BUT obviously have it unlocked sooner. I'm imagining a scenario during training where Ruby or Yang got really hurt, so he rushes over to help them and uses his semblance to quickly heal them.
But yeah, there's my Jaune Xiao-Long for you.
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SO WHAT'S THE REAL DEAL WITH ISRAEL? A history of a nation, a people, and a whole lot of conflict.
There is a LOT of misinformation going around in relations to the history of Israel and Palestine. I’m going to do my best to provide you with a comprehensive overview of this land and what’s going on.
Is it going to be perfect? No. But it’s going to be a lot better than the crap I came across today of an infograph that was filled with wrong information set to fuel the desire that people seem to have to ‘be on the right side’ of a war.
This is going to be LONG. But I’m going to try to make it interesting. I hope that at least one person that enjoys history gets something out of this. And please, feel free to ask questions!
And I do mean questions and not just hate screaming out ‘facts’ that you read once from someone with no sources on a badly photoshopped image of two women talking about how Israel isn’t a real place.
I’m not here to spread hate. I’m here to give you the facts so that hopefully things can be understood a little better and maybe we can start choosing to help and not simply fuel the fire of hate.
I’m going to use a lot of Wiki links because I would like to encourage people to go read the articles and do a little wiki deep dive for themselves. It’s fascinating, and hey, you might learn a few random cool things on the way. I'd also encourage further reading if you are really interested or have questions. Wiki can only get you so far.
I’m also going to avoid talking about religious history in depth and simply stick to the people.
SO! Let’s get into it! Let's actually LEARN something for once!
We start with 14 tribes in the Bronze age 1175-900 BCE
We get into some sketchy history that dates back to King David. Early records are rough because of all the war and destruction from back then...also that it was 1175-900 BCE and record keeping was often difficult at best when it wasn't being burned down.
Essentially, the 14 tribes did what everyone did back then (and arguably still do) and they fought. A lot.
King David (1005 BCE - 968 BCE) is credited as the one who gathered up a group of people that had been fighting with another group of people and kicking the ever loving shit out of these people with slingshots (a standard weapon used by shepherds to fight off thieves and LIONS) and the use of a nice newly created metal called Iron (welcome to the Iron Age!)
He got mythicised a bit and the whole David vs Goliath became the story. It's where record keeping got a bit off... But there is proof of this man existing.
After the war, he united the split up tribes and became King of Judah and created the capital of Jerusalem ((hey look! They got their name because they were from Judah. They were the Judes. The Jews. The Jewish People. See how language evolves over time?).
The next king, one you may have heard of, was King Solomon (968BCE-928BCE). He is credited as being in charge of the building of the first Temple.
The first temple was an incredibly sacred place and where a lot of the things that defined and made the Jewish culture were kept.
After he died, there was no clear succession line and the kingdom split into two. The Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.
Let's head on over to Wiki and see what they have to say about this piece of land.
"The earliest known reference to "Israel" as a people or tribal confederation is in the Merneptah Stele, an inscription from ancient Egypt that dates to about 1208 BCE, but the people group may be older."
So yeah, we got Israel mentions that date back to 1208 BCE. Before the splitting of the religions and people.
But WAIT. What's that strip of land to the west called the Philistine states???
It isn't what you think it is.
The Philistines were a group of people who lived in Canaan during the Iron Age, roughly 1175 BCE.
They often had tiffs with their neighbors over land and identity, which often left their relations with Jerusalem not the best.
Now, during this time, many of the settlements throughout what is now Israel was sparsely populated and the original inhabitants (the Canaan people) were dwindling and fading out. It wasn't uncommon during this time to come across completely abandoned settlements and ruins.
Most of the population was centered around Jerusalem.
You see, back in the late Bronze age, Egypt called all the shots. Take a look at the map down below. Look at all that Egypt territory!
(keep an eye on that purple bit. It’s about to get important).
Egypt had final authority on all land disputes in this area. They considered the whole area to be a part of their domain. Their records were a little....outdated. They still listed everything as being run by the Canaanites! In fact, it wasn't uncommon for the lingering Canaanites to run to Egypt any time they had issues with the other tribes and demand that it be settled in their courts. When we start to see mention of Israel in Egyptian records, it is referring to a people (think ethnicity) and NOT a state! And the Egyptians were starting to see them as a problem.
So what happened to the Canaanites? They got absorbed by the tribes that were taking over the land: Philistines, Phoenicians (Hey, I know that word from middle school history!), and the Israelites.
In 539 BCE, a little nation called Neo-Assyrian Empire took the northern part of Israel. Then they slowly expanded into the Assyrian Empire.
Wait a moment. Zoom in. Enhance. Look at Jerusalem hanging out all alone over there as an unconquered little square surrounded by orange.
You see, Jerusalem was built as a fortress. A fully walled in city surrounded by unforgiving hill country, and land that worked in their favor.
And then, Babylon happened. They were having a pretty good run and getting a pretty good reputation as being a HUGE thorn in the side of the rising empires.
You see that bright purple bit on the other map up there? Yeah, it’s about to get a LOT bigger.
(This is a VERY simplified map. Because this is early Neo-Babylon and it absolutely expanded further than this over time. )
They expanded around 911-505 BCE and wiped the Philistine people out. POOF. GONE. These people most likely were killed off and taken as slaves by Babylon and then assimilated into the Babylonian people.
What's interesting is that the Hebrew Bible (which is a record of the Jewish People, their history, and their story of survival as well as laws) is the primary source of the mention of the Philistines due to the conflict with them. (It’s also mentioned in the Quran.)
So what happened?
In-fighting. Lots and lots of in-fighting. But that's over simplifying it. If you are Jewish, you know what I'm talking about (this is why there is a rule about how "A Jew is a Jew is a Jew". Division is what leads to weakening of a people and leads to what happens next). The fracturing of the kingdom and disputes over rulers and laws caused them to divide their loyalties and left them open to bad things. Very bad things.
Remember Babylon? And how they wiped out the Philistines?
They didn't exactly avoid Israel on their voyage to wipe out the Philistines.
720 BCE, The Kingdom of Israel fell to the newly forming Babylonian Empire.
King Nebuchadnezzar II grew tired of Jewish revolts against the new empire (see the unconquerable city of Jerusalem) and well...
They attacked Jerusalem. This is called "The Fall of the 1st Temple" in Jewish history (589–586 BCE).
Jerusalem fell and the Jewish People were exiled (taken as slaves) to Babylon. This is recorded history!
It was during this that the Israelite religion really started to form and come together.
You see, when the temple was wiped out, it was a blatant attempt to destroy not just a people, but a record of a people and erase them and all mentions of them from the face of the earth (See the Philistine people who pretty much only exist because of a few Jewish records about their disputes).
But the people retained their stories in exile and really got together and formed the corner stone for the way the world's first Monotheistic religion worked: Judaism. (People of Judah. Get it? It's based on a people from a place!)
The exile lasted for a long....long time. Exile not just as slaves, but with strict laws that forbid the Jewish people from setting foot in their old land.
What happened next? King Cyrus! (At this point, Persia existed 550 BCE).
I'm not going to get into the history of Persia (though it is FASCINATING and I recommend you look at it if you want to know the history of the middle east.)
Now good king Cyrus told the Jews that they were all free to go in 538 BCE. So naturally the Jewish people packed up and made a run for Judah.
This was called "The Return to Zion".
What does that mean?
"Zion is a placename in the Hebrew Bible, often used as a synonym for Jerusalem as well as for the Land of Israel as a whole."
So that’s where that word originated from!
OH. You know what else is called Zion? Mount Zion. A mountain located to the south... It has SIGNIFICANT biblical meaning, as well as the location of strongholds and other things. Look it up.
So, the Jews were allowed to return to Judah, but it still fell under Persian rule. They were just considered a 'Self-governing Jewish Province".
Some returned. Some stayed. They'd lived in Babylon so long that they figured they had made a home there. I’m also willing to bet that there was reluctance to leave due to 1. The great distance they had to travel (like some sort of…exodus?) and 2. Fear of it being a trick and getting captured again. Hmmmm…. Sounds like a familiar story?
You may be asking yourself about Egypt right about now. What's this exodus and ten commandment thing and the plagues and all that fun business I heard about in the bible/torah/Quran. (Hi Moses! in Hebrew his name is Moshe. In the Quran it's Musa! But in Muslim, it's a different story and not exactly the familiar one against Pharaoh!)
Well, I'm not going to get too deeply into the religious stories for a lot of reasons, but a lot of the original Bible (old testament)/Torah was based off of stories told while the Jewish people were in exile in Babylon! They told these stories as a way to keep their faith, traditions, and cultural identities alive while being forced to assimilate. (The story of Noah and the flood mimics a Babylonian flood myth: Gilgamesh Flood! It's a fascinating read).
But that isn't to say that Judea didn't have complicated and often nasty relations with Egypt.
But, as the Jewish people slowly started to return to Judah, a more distinctive Jewish identity, culture, and religion started to form.
And it was at this time that the Second temple was built.
This is where things are going to start getting complicated.
Second temple period! (520 BCE-70 CE)
Because of what happened in Babylon, it became more important than ever to revise how they did things.
The second temple became a bigger deal and the way the city was run changed.
Hey look, Persia has a new king! And he's not liking what he's seeing in Judea. These guys are starting to get a little too big for their britches.
BUT WAIT! Look over there! It's Alexander the Great! And he's conquered Phoenicia and Gaza!
The Greek Syrian empire is starting to spread out. But there's a small truce with Judea. They’ll protect them from Persia and the Jews can keep doing their thing as long as they aren't a problem.
However, the Seleucid Empire is starting to push into Judea and take control. The Seleucid empire was a Greek power during the Hellenistic period (312 BCE) founded by the Macedonian Empire...Ruled by Alexander the Great. And they are big into worshiping other gods and forcing people to worship their gods and rulers. This is a big no no for the Jewish people and kingdom of Judea.
They start to send envoys to Greek trying to get the rulers there to listen to them. It’s not long before their envoys start coming back with bad news….and then stop coming back.
The Jewish people have seen this before.
And guess what? Jerusalem has become a problem. They aren't liking all the Hellenistic influence happening in Judea or the fact that the empire is starting to put a stranglehold on them.
Alright, all my Jewish people? It's time to revolt with the Maccabees! (167-140 BCE) Jerusalem was under siege and the walls are breached! The city is taken and the temple has been captured by the enemy.
Remember about the hostile countryside I mentioned earlier?
Time for some Guerrilla warfare! The Maccabees retake the city and spend 8 days fixing up the temple after it was desecrated and all they got is just a little oil that stretches out way longer than it should have lasted (Hanukkah cliff note story version).
But, there are other powers that are threatening them. Egypt has fallen and the Seleucid Empire is pretty pissed at them.
We get revolt after revolt. Judea wants the Greeks gone and Rome is the power to do it.
140 BCE - 63 BCE. The Hasmonean dynasty takes control of Judea. They expand outward.
The Hasmonean dynasty was a ruling dynasty of Judea that is WAY more complicated than I'm willing to get into because I barely understand it. But here it is if anyone wants to take a crack at it.
Basically, with the Seleucid Empire falling apart, Judea gained autonomy and expanded into neighboring regions (Perea, Samaria, Idumea, Galilee, and Iturea).
The Roman Republic stepped in at some point and it became a "client state" of Rome.
Now, those of you that know your Greek/Roman history know that some big power changes are starting to happen.
Enter King Herod (37 BCE) (And all the Christians in the room say BOOO.)
Now SOME of you may be paying attention to the dates. We stopped going down and started going back up.
All the Christian’s here know what that means. A certain Jewish man has been born, caused problems for the Romans, and then was killed by the Romans for causing problems.
We now have the birth of Christianity. At this point it’s just seen as a division of Judaism and not a real separate entity.
We got Julius Caesar and Pompey and Mark Antony and Augustus happening over there in Rome and Judea is doing its best to stay alive and independent. They need protection from the other places that are trying to take them out and they know Rome is the key. So they make deals with one ruler only for that ruler to be killed and replaced by other rulers. It's getting hard for them to keep up.
6 CE Rome is their ally. 44 CE Rome sends someone to preside over them and Judea is considered a "Minor province."
Powers are changing hands so fast that no one knows who is in charge anymore.
The Hasmonean Kingdom eventually falls, but the Jewish desire for independence continues. Only now, they are at war with Rome.
This whole time period is a cluster of problems and it’s honestly hard to keep up with who was allies and in charge and ruling and expanding and fighting. Just know that Caesar wasn’t the only one getting knifed in the back and by the time a face was stamped on a coin there was a new face in charge. It was rough.
The important thing to know is that in the year 70 CE, Rome besieged Jerusalem.
Emperor Titus was done with the Jewish issue.
They held out as long as they could. And then the walls fell.
The city was burned and the temple was looted and burned. The majority of the population that wasn't killed in the fighting was outright massacred and the rest were taken as slaves.
The Jews that managed to make it out of the city ran for the countryside and hillside. Many were hunted down and killed by waiting soldiers. The Jewish population was sold and scattered across the roman empire.
The loot taken from the temple was paraded through Rome with the slaves. They even made a monument for it!
Arch of Titus, which still stands in Rome today. You can see them carrying the holy Menorah through the streets.
There is plenty of Archeological evidence that supports what happened at the destruction of Jerusalem.
Massive stone collapses from the Temple Mount's walls were discovered laying over the Herodian street that runs along the Western Wall.
It's theorized that 1.1 Million people, the majority of the Jewish people, were killed during the siege.
I can't convey enough just how big this event was.
All Jewish people were forbidden from setting foot in Judea.
We now come to 73 CE, Christianity is considered its own distinct religion.
So what happened to the land?
All the Jews were gone. Banished, enslaved, or dead. So who got the land?
Well... Firstly, the city of Jerusalem was gone. When Rome wanted something gone, they made it gone.
There was rubble and not much else.
Know what else they did? The forest was burned down. The land was razed to a point where even today, it is still struggling to recover.
Jewish areas around Jerusalem were systematically destroyed one by one. There were still uprisings here and there, but they were quickly put down.
The Roman emperor Hadrian decided that he'd had enough of revolts and set out to destroy Judea once and for all. And while he did kick it in the teeth, he never succeeded in destroying the people. (They got real good at surviving and real stubborn about not getting eradicated). Small Jewish areas did survive in various outlier areas and small farming places that were otherwise overlooked. But life was certainly not made easy for them.
Judaea was changed to Syria Palaestina.
Sound familiar? Two empires that were enemies to the Jewish people. Remember when I said the Greek records were really out of date and still listed the Canaanites as in charge of the area? Well… They also still called the area Palestina. You see, Hadrian got the name "Palaestina" from Herodotus' Histories from nearly 500 years before. But Herodotus only called the strip of land along the coast "Palaistine" after the Philistines. He wasn't referring to all of Judaea. And the reason Herodotus called that strip of coastline "Palaistine" was because the Philistines were Mycenaean Greeks, so he was recognizing a (long since dead) former settlement of Greeks. (When Rome wants you gone, they want you GONE and to suffer).
Rome built a colony on the ruins of Jerusalem, Aelia Capitolina. Eventually, former Judea became a Christian pilgrimage and was settled by Christians. The land became known as Palestine.
Not what you were expecting, huh? Bet you didn’t think the Christians would get involved in this Jewish vs Muslim issue.
So 900 BCE to 70 CE, it belonged to the Jewish people (with the brief exception to the period of exile to Babylon).
Then the Christians took over from Rome when Christianity took over and mass conversions started to sweep the world.
Eventually, the population became a mixed bag of Romans and migrants from nearby provinces.
361-363 CE - The Roman Emperor says the Jewish people can return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. In fact, he encourages it! He’s excited about it and starts to fund it and gathers up all the leaders, who are confused but cautiously optimistic.
The Emperor is assassinated before anything gets underway and the Jewish people are banished from the holy land again.
438 CE - Jews are now allowed to visit the Temple site. Note how it's visit, not live. A few times a year they are let into the city to visit where the Temple once stood so they can pray, then they are forced to leave again.
Oops! Back up a it! What’s happening over there during all this? It’s the 7th Century and Islam has now become a major religion! Any Jews hanging out in the Arabian Peninsula? Convert or get out. They’re going to keep their eye on what’s been happening with Rome, the Jews, and the Christians in regards to ‘Palestine’.
After all, Islam is a cousin to Judaism and they do share similarities to the holy sites.
And there have been MANY wars over the holy sites. Sieges, betrayals, false alliances, and an overall repeated attempt to eradicate and massacre people over the land.
Now, we all know the Roman Empire eventually fell. But the Jewish people? Still banished. They became the Diaspora. Attempting to settle in place after place until they are either massacred, converted, or kicked out. They have no home. Just a place to sit for a bit until the next massacre forces them to flee.
That's not even getting into the Crusades of the Christians against Islam in Palestine 1095-1291!!
So... Skipping over a LOT of history and massacres and terrible things....
Oh boy oh boy. I'm going to skip a LOT. Because the crusades are a mess of WTFery and I'm not writing a thesis here (right?).
But... 1917, enter Britain. Because of course Britain has to get involved at some point. You wouldn't be telling a world history tragedy story without Britain somehow getting involved.
They take control of Palestine from the Turks. Basically, WWI just ended and the Ottoman Empire lost big time. Their punishment? Britain now rules their land (I’ll get to that in a bit).
A decree is issued establishing Palestine as a national home for Jewish People, so long as nothing is done to cause prejudice or remove the civil rights or religious rights of the existing people that live there (Non-Jewish communities).
Many Jewish people interpret this to mean that ALL of Palestine is now a Jewish State.
1921: Britain changes their mind. All of Palestine east of the Jordan River is closed to Jewish settlement, but not to Arab settlement.
Oh boy.
1923: Britain says Arabs can immigrate but NOT Jewish people to Syria and Lebanon.
What? What are you doing Britain?
Remember that Western Wall rubble that was found in Jerusalem? The last remains of the Temple? By 1929: Muslims and Jews have been fighting over that wall for ages. Riots break out in Palestine and Jewish people are massacred.
Annnnnnd that takes us to 1933 when Hitler rises to power. Jewish people everywhere attempt to start to emigrate and flee to what they hope are safe countries.
1939: British government limits Jewish immigrants to 10,000 a year. Jewish people are trapped and the Holocaust catches up.
1945-1948: Post Holocaust refugees try to find the only place that they may call home: Palestine. The British government detains them and prevents their entry.
1946-1948: Things start to get violent in Palestine and British rule is unsure if they want Jews there or not.
1947: the UN approves the creation of the Jewish State and an Arab State in British ruled Palestine.
1948: Israel declares independence as a Jewish State and opens up to all Jewish people trying to find a safe place to live after the Holocaust. Essentially, it becomes a refugee state and if you are Jewish in any manner of the word, you are now a citizen and have a country to escape to when the massacres happen.
A Jewish Exodus from Arab and Muslim lands results as they flee or are expelled.
Egypt invades and Israel holds fast, expanding its borders as a result.
Egypt continues to attack and threaten Israel until the Six Day War in 1967 when Israel captured the West Bank
(Pictured here)
The West Bank is considered the heart of Palestinians. This is known as the Gaza Strip.
Many Israelis see this area as their ancestral Homeland. Many Israeli settlements are starting to push into this area in a ruthless attempt to take it back. I DO say ruthless because they have been using violence against those living there and farming there.
There is international law that states that this area is off limits to Israelis.
"1890: The term "Zionism" is coined by an Austrian Jewish publicist Nathan Birnbaum in his journal "Self Emancipation" and is defined as the National movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish Sovereignty in the Land of Israel. "
Now, the term Zionism has taken on different roles and meanings over the years. I mentioned above what the word means and comes from. But it was later claimed by right wing Israelis who want the Arab nations out of Israel. It was later taken back again to being used as a simple declaration of nationalism for the right for Jews to have a place to call their own.
It's...complicated. I think Zionism can only really be defined by those who claim they are Zionists. Which ideology they follow may vary and much like any notion of nationalism, there are problems and dangers.
Is it wrong to be a Zionist? Depends. But the answer is not a straightforward yes or no.
The Jewish people deserve to exist in a state. But so do the Palestinians.
Let's talk about Palestine!
Historically, you got nothing until Judea is destroyed and the people are taken as slaves and killed in 70 CE.
Then you have a bunch of Christians wandering around it declaring all the historical sites to be theirs. Which, since Christianity comes from Judaism, they happen to share a lot of the same spiritual and historical sites.
But so does Islam.
There are repeated revolts, wars, disputes, and claims to the area by MANY different factions.
Many times the Jewish people attempted to retake the area only to be put down again and again.
In the late 6th Century, Islam was founded. They conquered Palestine in 636. Unlike previous rulers, they allowed Jews and Christians the freedom to practice their religion in peace.... but they had to pay a special tax and be submissive to Muslims. But, they did lift the centuries long ban on Jews being banished from Jerusalem.
Guess who wasn't a fan of all this?
Time for Crusades to 'liberate' Jerusalem from the Muslims.
European Christians campaigned against Muslims to reconquer the 'Holy Land' of Palestine.
Hey look! The Ottomon Empire (1466 CE) decided to show up!
As I mentioned above, the Ottoman Empire had sided with the Germans and lost. They were driven from Palestine and British rule took over.
Remember how I mentioned that the British government declared Palestine to be a Jewish State in 1916? Well it turns out that just one year earlier, in 1915, it had been declared an Arab State in which the UK agreed to recognize Arab independence. BOTH declarations were seen as giving full control to either the Jewish People or the Arabs.
Good job Britain. Way to do what you always do and cock it up.
Here’s the biggest problem with saying that you side fully with Palestine. Internationally recognized terrorists political movement of: Hamas.
Hamas is an Acronym that translates to 'Islamic Resistance Movement'.
It's a political military movement that governs parts of the Gaza Strip.
They have taken charge and governed the Gaza Strip since 2006 and have periodically attacked Israel. They promote Palestinian Nationalism in a strictly Islamic context.
In fact, they propose that Israel NOT be recognized as a state and that a strictly Palestinian State be formed.
All the truces they offer to Israel over the years? Incredibly Antisemitic. They have carried out numerous terrorist attacks against the citizens of Israel and continue to 'advocate' for the return of Palestine without Jews.
They tend to be the 'dominant political force' in Palestine because of their anti-israel stance. They pretend to want a two state solution, but will repeatedly reject talks and demand "From the River to the Sea". Their end goal is to remove ALL of Israel and return the entire region to Palestine, thus making it an Islamic State.
It’s important to know that this is a radical group that unfortunately has a lot of control and uses its own people to terrorize and hide behind in an effort to bring about fear and hate and death. The actual Palestinian people do not deserve that.
It’s also important to know that the Israeli people do not all support their own government or leaders who have decided to take up an extremist approach to attempting to eradicate the terrorist movement.
MANY Israeli and Palestinian people believe in trying to find a negotiation that will benefit both sides and share a land that in a long lengthy way does represent three major religions.
It is important to know what Charities are supporting. Where the money is going, and who is only furthering violence on both sides.
It’s also important to know your history.
When I was little, If you said someone was Jewish, I imagined a white European man. Why is that the common image of a Jewish person? How is it possible to be a colonizer if your people come from that country in the first place?
So I'm going to ask you a question, and I REALLY want you to think about this.
If someone owns land and comes from a land, they are forcibly removed from the land for a LONG amount of time, someone else comes in and makes a home of this land and lives there for a long time, and then the first people want that land back.... Do they become colonizers? Are they wrong? Do they not deserve their land back?
If you think the answer is yes, you need to go have a conversation with the Native Americans.
BUT, as we all know... What do you do about the people that currently own and live on that land that was stolen from the first people? Maybe you didn't do the stealing, but you acquired stolen property and if you give it back then now you have nowhere else to go.... What sort of conversation needs to happen now? How do you solve this problem?
If you made it to the end, I thank you so much for taking the time to be curious about history and how it impacts current events. If you have questions, please let me know.
#History#Palestine#Israel#Stop letting tik tok tell you what to think#Antisemitism isn't the answer#Long post#Taking a risk here but it's worth it#Jewish history#jumblr#Over simplification of events but still useful I hope#Please read#please at least skim it
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Some Cassandra Cain headcanon
Here some headcanon of Cass, it's around her life in Gotham and the bat siblings . Please respect
She can learn every kind of dance, she and Dick are the Just Dance champions in the house, Damian follows them on the score. And whenever Dick takes them to the arcade the score always ends up like this Dick/Cass and Damian right after them
Cass enjoy musicals, to the point of learning the dance steps to her favorite songs
She's the silent type, but really enjoys company, so a lot of the time she just sits nearby while someone is working, she loves hearing the sound of the keyboard while Babs, Bruce and Tim are working, the smell of Alfred's cooking, the music circus song that Dick always whistles while he is concentrating, the sound of the pages of the book that Jason is reading, the sound that the brush makes when Damian combs the batcow and Goliath, the sound of the pen writing on the paper while Duke studies. She loves all of this
Since Jason returned from the league his taste buds have become accustomed to the food there, so it's not an unusual occurrence for Cass to find him at a Chinese restaurant. And sometimes they go together
Cass really enjoys Damian's pet adoption addiction, it means the house will always have comfortable companions for when she feels overwhelmed (she has stolen Alfred the Cat and Titus more than once)
Cass, as the rest of the house, doesn't have a clue about what Goliath really is and why Bruce allows Damian to have him, but she really wants to lead him into the skies of Gotham one of these days. She almost asked Damian if she could twice, but the boy is always zooming around or missing, so she never ask for it
She plans to ask him for this on her birthday, as a gift
Even though she enjoys company, she can still feel overwhelmed in large crowds and very noisy places if she stays there for too long. What makes her look for the safest and calmest place near her immediately
Once Commissioner Gordon found her standing in his kitchen, he was startled when he turned on the lights. Cassandra apologized for this and nowadays Jim has a mug in his house especially for Cass to use when she comes over
Steph understands that sometimes Cass needs the silence around her, so the blonde just sits nearby and they sits quietly together keeping each other company. Cass truly cherishes these moments with all her heart
Cass likes to sit in the library while Duke and Steph are studying, she really likes it when Dick,Babs or Jason come to help the study group as it is always nice to hear their voices (and sometimes she sses Damian sit near them too)
Cass also likes to hear Alfred's stories but not him tastes in tea (but she will never brings it up, she would never broke Alfred heart like that)
During the summer Cass likes to sit on the grass in the mansion's garden and feel the breeze, Duke and Damian also enjoy this so the three of them sit in silence enjoying the wind, Steph usually joins them, but she always ends up sleeping due to the silence comfortable that lies between them
On these days Alfred always makes sure this fantastic four has sunscreen, juice and fresh fruit on hand
Dick calls these moments "they're doing photosynthesis" but he also joins them sometimes
She, Jason and Damian taught Duke to speak Chinese. It's always fun when they go out to eat and Duke orders something in perfect Chinese from the servers
She likes the sound of rain, so it's easy to find her at the window when it rains
She dreams of performing in the Russian ballet one day, she wonders if she will have time due to her job as a vigilant
Whenever Cass finds a movie that she finds interesting, she waits for Steph to watch it together. The same goes for series. They can both really fight each other if one watches an episode without the other
Sometimes Cass doesn't think a joke in the movie/series/cartoon is funny, but just the fact that her friends are laughing alongside her at the joke is enough to make her smile
Her mother, Lady Shiva, collects several newspapers and reposts about Black Bat/Orphan, no matter the size of the photo or news. Lady Shiva subscribes to the Gotham newspaper just for this purpose
Some batkid headcanon: Damian || Duke || Cassandra || Stephanie || Tim || Jason || Dick
#cassandra cain#dc comics#batfamily#dick grayson#damian wayne#jason todd#tim drake#bruce wayne#stephanie brown#batfam headcanons#batfamily headcanons
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Hey! I love your art so much 💖 I wanted to ask what program you use for 3D modelling?
aw thank you!! :3
and to answer your question i’m going to warn you this is going to be kinda long because i’m gonna use this post as an excuse to show my 3D models that aren’t awful (sorry lol).
i actually use two different programs, both for different purposes, but you don’t need to get both, it really depends on which kind of modeling you want to do.
1) the first is called Nomad Sculpt on the iPad, you do have to pay for it unfortunately but it’s definitely one of the best modeling apps for the iPad. i know Blender is free but my computer is really old and doesn’t run the program very well, and at this point i’ve already gotten used to nomad sculpt.
anyway tho, i use it for art-related things like the obvious 3D models, but recently i’ve been playing around with just making scenes to use as references for my drawings. they’re not anything impressive, most of the time i actually use it to make little figurines to print and turn into earrings/little friends that sit in my room just for fun.
i’m gonna show this first bc they look cooler once they’re printed and colored (also you can tell i printed mini crowley and aziraphale when my sonadow hyperfixation started bc i never actually painted crowley) (he’s just kinda sitting there oops).
the little red guys are actually my favorite bugs (goliath beetles), i made them about a year ago but i still wear them like every day.
and here’s what they look like in the app, it’s a little intimidating but once you get used to it it’s actually kinda fun just playing around and seeing what you can do.
2) the second program i use is Shapr3D (also for the iPad, but i think they made an update where you can run it on windows/mac). you also have to pay for this as a subscription which sucks, i’m only able to use it since the engineering program i’m in pays for it.
Shapr3D is one of the many CAD software programs out there, but it’s nice bc it’s very beginner friendly and very easy to use. CAD is mainly for architecture/engineering but i honestly think more 3D artists should give it a try. it’s really nice once you get the hang of it and (i’m probably biased bc i’m a student) i honestly prefer it over just normal modeling software because i feel like you can be a lot more creative with it.
right now for my engineering class, our semester final is to design and present something that’s functional, and we can either explain the math behind it or just 3D print it and demonstrate how it works, and i’m making a functional mini model of “the rack” trap from Saw III (i’m not psychotic i swear i’ve just had a Saw hyperfixation for 5 years).
i’m definitely gonna post it when it’s finished just bc i’m already excited with how it’s turning out, but for now here’s a couple at-home projects i’ve done:
(above) i have a bunch of wet liners and i designed a stackable holder thingy with bolts between the shelves and a little cute star screw to fasten it at the top.
(above) i also made a few rotating brush holders at home (bc the ones that actually rotate are like $40 for some reason) by buying a set of small sphere bearings at home depot for like $5 (that’s what those little metal things are inside the third one, i took it apart bc i don’t know how to put a video and a picture in the same post) (just pretend they’re spinning rn).
anyway that’s all!! if you actually read this whole thing i love you so much bc engineering and design is one of my special interests so thanks for letting me tell you about the silly things i’ve made :3
#asks#3d art#3d model#engineering#infodump#special interest#ermmmmm not sure what else to tag#this was just a really long post lol#bugs#good omens#autism creature
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okay
let's talk about alchemical readings and rwby.
as the resident crank it would be remiss of me not to begin this little jaunt with a very important disclaimer: like all esoteric lenses, alchemical philosophy is an analytical framework that relies quite heavily on symbolism, and because of that it is really important to be mindful of how you're engaging with the text. symbolism services narrative, not the other way around, and you should always let the narrative guide your understanding of its symbolism. if that doesn't make sense to you, don't worry, because there will be lots of examples to illustrate what i mean.
before getting into the weeds, we're going to lay out some basic alchemical concepts.
in simple terms, the core philosophical idea of alchemy is a gradual process of transformation from base material into the sublime; conceptually the transmutation of lead into gold is also the perfection of human body and soul. alchemy is about change, refinement, rebirth, wholeness.
the prima materia—first matter—is the perfect and formless primordial matter of which all forms of matter are derived. if you're familiar with certain other alchemical readings of rwby you'll have seen it defined as the "raw material" that is transformed into the philosopher's stone through the alchemical process; that is not inaccurate but it must be stressed that the idea here is that ordinary matter comes from the prima materia and the philosopher's stone IS the prima materia, made perfect and whole again through the great work.
<- rwby directly invokes this idea in 'all things must die' ("all bonds dissolve/infinite matter/will always evolve").
yliaster is another name (coined by paracelsus) for the prima materia, which he described as "completely healed human being who has burned away all the dross of his lower being and is free to fly as the phoenix."
the great work is the actual process of alchemy. it is classically broken down into four (or three) stages, each represented by a color:
nigredo, black, involves putrefaction and charring—symbolically, death. decay. rot.
albedo, white, involves purification and separation. the undifferentiated mass of the nigredo stage is clarified and divided into two opposing principles.
citrinitas, yellow, is the "dawn" or reawakening.
rubedo, red, involves coagulation and recombination after the separation undergone in albedo.
citrinitas is not always treated as a discrete stage, instead sometimes being combined into a single stage with rubedo or understood as the transition between albedo and rubedo. hence "four (or three)." there are also a great variety of other stages, mostly given in sets of seven or twelve and listed in myriad sequences, but for our purpose this four-or three-stage model is the most useful.
now!
ordinarily with an alchemical reading, we would begin by finding a narrative pattern of symbolic death and rebirth, but for rwby we first need to interrogate the goliath in the room, namely:
YES, IT'S ABOUT SALEM.
there is a tendency in alchemical readings of rwby to interpret salem's immortality as a lifeless unchanging stasis, and thus to read her as an embodiment of the anti-theme, and surprising absolutely no one i find this to be… well, just not right at all.
rwby initially sets up the pattern through the mantra pyrrha recites when she awakens jaune's aura: "for it is in passing that we achieve immortality. through this we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all, infinite in distance and unbound by death. i release your soul, and by my shoulder protect thee." 'rising' explicitly calls back to this ("we are paragons of virtue and glory/death can't bind our endless story/infinite and unbound") and 'indomitable' reiterates the idea ("when we strive, we transcend/even death cannot end our climb"); this is important to note because the repetition correlates with revelations about salem's story.
the key thing to understand here is that 'the lost fable' is narratively structured around salem's deaths:
first, the god of light bites her and she's drowned in the fountain of life (notice her last breath leaving her mouth; she chokes for air and her eyes rolls back as she loses consciousness, sinking into the depths)…
…and then the god of darkness brings the moon down on her head and she wanders in a haze until finding her way back to the pool of grimm, where she seeks her own destruction and is created anew.
the brothers cast salem into the fountain of life, which pools under the roots of a tree and appears to be infinitely deep. she drowns as she sinks into its darkness��then abruptly reawakens hitting the water again, now only a reflecting pool, and the water-light of aura shimmers over her hands as she rises.
"for it is in passing that we achieve immortality…" the reprisal of "infinite and unbound" in 'rising' draws a line from pyrrha's mantra to the lost fable for a reason; it's to help us understand the truth behind the story jinn is telling. it is not even subtext—it is text. especially after volume nine, which clarifies the symbolic meaning of the tree growing above the waters.
through death, salem became immortal—infinite—and the infinite waters of life and creation became finite.
that water was the prima materia of the brothers' world; it combined with salem—the prima materia changes itself and combined with all imperfect bodies that it touches—and thus she herself became yliaster, "the perfectly healed human being who has burned away all the dross of his lower being and is free to fly as the phoenix."
the dross in her case being the brothers and their divine order, she rebels against them, and they destroy their world. she is all that remains. they leave salem behind in the end of all things and, phoenix-like, she rises out of the ashes of her destruction. yliaster is the prima materia; it contains everything, is everything, and everything is released when it is broken apart.
"this force of pure destruction could not destroy a being of infinite life, so it created a being of infinite life with a desire for pure destruction." destruction exists within creation exists within destruction: salem embraces death, throwing herself into the "blackened pools of annihilation" in the land of darkness. nigredo.
she's torn apart and reborn, and remnant is born with her, a pure-white being clambering into a revitalized new world she cannot touch; after a long separation, her partner returns to her and she experiences love, connection, freedom for the first time in years, until she learns that he seeks the destruction of this world and a return to the old and they burn each other alive in a violent parting. albedo.
salem's arrival in atlas literally at dawn incites the struggle between herself and cinder, which culminates in salem beginning to relinquish control and as her true feelings come to the surface. citrinitas.
thus, what remains of her story is rubedo: reconciliation with cinder, reunion with ozma, peace between humans and grimm (<- unity of opposites), and finally symbolic transcendence over death by convincing the god of light to ascend, with "death" being specifically the threat of annihilation represented by the divine mandate.
ozma's arc, of course, mirrors hers very closely: the god of light breaks him apart, the god of darkness burns him (nigredo)—his reincarnation divides him very literally into two, and symbolically divides him between duty and desire (albedo)—he awakens with the dawn, reconciles with oscar, and begins to face the truth in atlas (citrinitas).
as alchemical readings go, this one is not difficult or arcane or remotely ambiguous. it isn't even symbolic; the deaths and resurrection are explicitly literal and occur onscreen with the accompaniment of helpful explanatory notes. the goliath in the room is making aggressive eye contact.
but we are not done here yet, because i never do anything by halves and we have symbolism to talk about.
THE GREAT WORK.
salem, you will recall, is yliaster, the prima materia of remnant. you will also recall that the prima materia is the formless primordial matter from which all other matter is formed, and thus it is both the raw material of the great work and the philosopher's stone. yes? good. rwby interrogates this contradiction through the idea of balance, which the god of light conceives of as an inviolate order that must be designed and enforced. but, as the blacksmith explains, his understanding is a limited falsehood:
"balance is not two forces locked in never-ending battle. balance is an ecosystem, an organism, a living, breathing thing; thus balance cannot be restored by force or calculation. it only requires love and the patience to see things through to the end."
here is where i think a lot of the fandom—not people doing alchemical readings necessarily, but in general—miss the mark by interpreting this to mean that opposition and balance are antithetical to each other, that a system with two opposing forces is inherently out of balance. rwby's metaphysics are grounded in hellenistic philosophy, plato in particular (<- neoplatonism had a significant influence on the western european alchemical tradition), and the philosophical ideas undergirding the ever after follows herclitus.
(i recommend perusing the category pages for λόγος, justice and strife, the harmony of opposites, φύσις, ψυχή, cosmology, fire, water/the river, life/death, and waking/sleeping—i know that sounds like a lot of reading, but it isn't, as what we have of heraclitus is only fragments and the summaries provided are brief and accessible.)
the two key ideas we're interested in here are flux and strife. the world exists at rest in a continual state of change; a river is always the same river, but its flowing waters change from moment to moment. this conception of the world—"changing, it rests"—is flux. strife incites change through the tension between opposing forces. strife is not discordant but rather harmonious: "men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. it is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre." (B51) just as a bow could not fire and a lyre could not sing without tension on the strings, so the world could not be without strife.
this is what the blacksmith means by balance. true balance is not war; it is strife. not two forces locked in never-ending conflict, but opposite tensions in harmony with each other. destruction and creation are opposing forces, but each exists within the other and they are both interdependent and inseparable.
salem embodies this theme. through death, she became life, and by destruction she was created. human and grimm, light and darkness, creation and destruction. she seeks to tear down the huntsmen academies and incite revolution in pursuit of a new world. she is balance—and the god of light inflicted his punishment upon her not because she failed to understand the importance of life and death, but because her dedication to change challenged his false and hollow conception of what balance means.
this guides the alchemical reading of the wider narrative in significant ways. salem is the prima materia of remnant—yliaster, broken apart to release everything contained within—and thus both the subject and the aspiration of the great work. when we examine other characters through this lens, it is in relation to her.
we'll begin by discussing the narrative's big symbols: the rose, the broken moon, the tree, grimm, silver eyes, and fire.
traditionally, the rose symbolizes rubedo. in most alchemical readings of rwby, ruby rose is accordingly presumed to represent this stage for obvious reasons—however, if we pay attention to how the narrative itself symbolically identifies the rose:
ruby's emblem, which she inherited from her mother, is a burning rose.
our first sighting of it is on summer rose's grave, above an epitaph—"thus kindly i scatter"—taken from a poem which uses the death of a rose as a metaphor for the speaker's loneliness and despair.
"red like roses fills my dreams and brings me to the place you rest," and "red like roses fills my head with dreams and finds me always closer to the emptiness and sadness that has come to take the place of you"
adam's emblem is a withered rose.
"the moon will sadly watch the roses die"
"maybe red's like roses? maybe it's the pool of blood the innocents will lay in when in the end you fail to save them"
"the rose will grow to be a seed, from every life another leads" (<- evokes an image of deterioration, rot; the rose going to seed)
"some roses will never bloom, some dreams will rot on the vine"
in rwby, the rose represents death. it burns, it withers, it dies, it is scattered, it never blooms; thus, it does not symbolize rubedo but rather the death and decomposition of nigredo. why then is ruby's primary color red? we'll get to that in a little while.
the moon traditionally symbolizes albedo, which is a process of separation, reflection, and illumination. the god of darkness shattered the moon as he departed after slaughtering humanity, and:
"the moon will sadly watch the roses die"
"the sky is turning black, light is fading fast, but we don't surrender; shattering the night, radiant and bright, armored in splendor, shining forever […] we're rising like the moon"
salem falls into and through the reflection of the broken moon when she casts herself into the pool of grimm
the broken moon symbolizes the death and resurrection of humankind, which—as noted—is the beginning of the albedo stage in salem's story.
so in rwby the broken moon does indeed represent albedo.
the tree, obviously, represents the whole circle of life-death-rebirth, with its symbolic meaning on remnant following its actual function in the ever after, where it is the cosmic tree, the river, and the ever-living fire. thus cinder and salem falling into pools of water at the base of a tree are symbolic (and in salem's case, also literal) rebirths.
grimm are "manifestations of anonymity," "the darkness," hates and feared as soulless monsters, destruction incarnate, thought to have no purpose other than to exist as "mankind's greatest foe." rwby is consistent in using the grimm to symbolize ostracism, persecution, fear of the other or the unknown, and salem's exile is justified (in ozma's mind) by her grimmness. which is to say, the grimm represent the separation undergone during albedo; they are the darkness to humanity's light. (hence, the narrative building toward coexistence between humans and grimm, exemplified by the faunus.)
silver eyes are described in opposition to the grimm and likewise represent the separation of albedo; the light to grimmkind's darkness. salem's experimentation with combining them into one being is a faunus for good reason, and i do not think it is coincidental that cinder has become less vulnerable to the glare as she finds balance with the grimm arm. and speaking of her:
the phoenix is another traditional symbol for rubedo, which naturally calls to mind associations with fire. citrinitas, similarly, is represented by the dawn or the "solar light," overtaking the moonlight of albedo, which again connotes fire. in rwby, fire is used to symbolize hope and wrath, which are thematically intertwined (hope ignites fire -> loss of hope incites wrath -> wrath ignites fire, and is thus a form of hope):
"even the smallest spark of hope is enough to ignite change […] nature's wrath in hand, man lit their way through the darkness"
"a simple spark can ignite hope, breathe fire into the hearts of the weary…" becoming "i can't wait to watch you burn"—salem seeks to smother ozma's hope, and thus rekindle her own.
"the light of hope is taken and discontent is the contagion; the blinding eyes that burn a yellow flame, the embers that remain will light the fuse of condemnation"
"we were destined to light the flame of revolution; consider this the spark" + "i think father may have just provided the spark that's going to set this kingdom on fire"
flame imagery used in relation to cinder and salem in the volume eight opening and jaune throughout volume nine.
cinder being… a spark…
as i noted, the paradigm shift between salem and cinder in atlas represents the transition from albedo to rubedo through the dawn. in rwby, the kindling spark symbolizes citrinitas and the changing flame that follows is rubedo. the role cinder will play in reigniting salem's hope is obvious, and the symbolic use of fire to reawaken first jaune and then neo in volume nine only underscores this meaning. in combination with the dust and ashes motif going on with salem and the grimm, the fire becomes specifically phoenix imagery.
now!
why, if the rose is nigredo, is ruby red?
in order to explain this, we first need to examine team STRQ, because the answer is that the great work is cyclical.
in team STRQ, we have:
summer rose, whose red-and-gold interior is masked by her white exterior
taiyang xiao long, who is all yellow
raven branwen, who is an amalgam of red and black
qrow branwen, who is mostly white except for his red cape
the branwen twins also transform into corvids, traditional symbols for the nigredo stage; qrow's scythe harbinger and raven's allusions to the morrígan underscore their symbolic association with death.
if we consider these color associations through an alchemical lens, the pattern that emerges is—by design—muddled and strange, but not actually that convoluted:
raven "tried to leave," but couldn't. she became the spring maiden by mercy-killing a girl whom she loved as her own family, and never having dealt with that grief or guilt, is trapped in nigredo whilst projecting a hollow image of rubedo—her pretense of strength. she runs away from her feelings, rather than challenging or examining them; what she needs instead is to separate and reflect honestly on herself.
summer did leave. her white outer shell—the phantom she left behind—suggests albedo, but her true colors are what she wears beneath the cloak: red trimmed with gold. she found salem, listened to her and awoke to the truth of this world, and then joined her. but in order to do that, she had to separate from her own family, joining salem exile; thus her individual rubedo brings her into alignment with the grimm in salem's albedo.
qrow, shattered by the dissolution of his team, is undergoing his own albedo. like his sister, he wears the trappings of rubedo—he is the one left standing, ozpin's most trusted agent—but this is a false projection which crumbles once it challenged by the revelations of ozma's deceit. his drinking and reluctance to be around people for fear of bringing them to harm make it impossible for him to move forward until he finds new hope and decides to try again. like his onetime mentor, he experiences citrinitas in atlas and the beginning of his transition into rubedo is marked by the introduction of maroon (desaturated red) and tan (desaturated yellow) into his atlas fit.
tai, lastly, is interesting because in one sense, he is citrinitas in isolation, a dawn with nothing to illuminate because his team left him behind, but in another sense, tai mediates the generational transition between team STRQ (albedo) and team RWBY (rubedo). he is yang and ruby's father and—crucially—he raises both in idealized casts of their mothers. ruby feels compelled to live up to the fairytale idea of summer rose; tai tells yang that he sees all of raven's good qualities in her and warns her to be wary of being too much like her mother, in almost the same breath.
ruby's red and yang's yellow represent the culmination of what tai wishes could have been; the summer rose who returned whole and alive, the raven branwen who chose reflection and reawakening instead of running away. but both colors are only things projected onto them—false images.
in truth, ruby represents nigredo. her scythe and the burning rose both connect her to death; her semblance disassembles her into a swirling formless mass of rose petals; her own identity is lost beneath the idea of summer rose and the first nine volumes of the story are devoted to the long, slow journey to her symbolic death at the roots of the tree.
only with her ascension has she begun to undergo albedo (notice the greater emphasis on her silver eyes and the flaring white light as she comes out of the tree; also, "otherside, did you mean to leave me half or whole? will i ever be complete? when will i become all of me?" and "what is left? i know it's you and i when i look inside"—she is beginning to separate herself from the imaginary paragon.
weiss represents albedo—her story is fundamentally about separation from her family, leading to self-reflection and growth, and in the process she has become an emotionally intelligent, insightful person who consistently helps others draw out and clarify their hidden emotions. her mirror motif and her knight summon further represent this: the self and the reflection.
blake represents citrinitas—her golden eyes, her association with the black king, her identity as a faunus, all support this reading. her time with the white fang was her albedo (she lost herself, gradually began to see herself in a new light, and finally separated herself from everything adam represented) and her personal moment of citrinitas is the removal of the bow and meeting with sun after she reveals herself as a faunus, after which she begins her journey of rediscovering herself and reintegrating with her faunus heritage.
finally, yang represents rubedo—her fire, her red eyes, "scathing eyes ask that we be symmetrical, one-sided and easily processed, yet every misshapen spark's unseen beauty is greater than its would-be judgment," "feel like i'm finally unbroken, feel like i'm back from the dead," the whole thematic conceit of bumbleby being the catalyst and the flame, the dawn and the sun, and so forth, two-in-one, "we're protecting each other."
the team collectively represents rubedo in relation to salem, in that they will be the ones primarily negotiating with her and this will obviously not begin to happen until ruby has her personal moment of citrinitas, which is to say not until ruby meets the real summer rose.
as a final point of interest, the four qualities (and relics) of destruction, creation, knowledge, choice map neatly onto the four-or-three alchemical stages—destruction as nigredo, creation as albedo, knowledge-then-choice as citrinitas-then-rubedo—and given the parallelism between yang and cinder, blake and raven, and weiss and penny+winter, it is probably a safe bet that the summer maiden is a) not summer rose, and b) a character foil to ruby, which i think adds some weight to the gillian theory.
anyways.
the philosopher's stone is ozlem.
#to be clear i think the alchemy thing is more convergent evolution from plato than deliberate use of alchemical structure#but neoplatonism did significantly influence western european alchemical philosophy so there is a lot to work with#and putting it in alchemical terms can be a clarifying analytical shorthand#as long as you don't. ignore everything the narrative spells out wrt salem#ANYWAY. HERE. TAKE IT.
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What’s Next?
Musing on what the future holds
I hate to start a rumour but here goes? Stick with me and check this out:
It’s evident a lot of work goes into each “Bluey” episode.
It seems like we are now at a turning point / crossroads with “Bluey”, we finally have season 3 wrapping up after a very dragged-out timeline, and no real word on a season four, except for some talk a while back of a hiatus to give the team a break.
The bottleneck may well be Joe Brumm and his commitment & attention-to-detail acknowledged in the Bloomberg article. This care and attention is clear… but the impact on timeline (pushing out finished episodes) must be a cause of concern for management at the BBC and Disney. But right now Brumm (and his animation company) appears to be very much in control.
This David-and-Goliath situation reminds me of another animated show where a lot of effort was put into a singular vision for the world building and the design characters by a creative one-person-show… the show was immensely popular… and then that creator was pushed out and lost control of their creation to a much-more-powerful management entity, and then that creation was re-imagined (dumbed down/ simplified in various ways) and now is very different.
Specifically Lauren Faust and MLP:FIM (G4) vs what became of My Little Pony characters in G5.
BBC and Disney must be somewhat desperate for “Bluey” content… to the point they’re now re-recording famous names reading existing Bluey stories. They must be thinking of how to speed up production…
I suspect what will happen in the near future is that the “The Sign” wedding special episode will signal the end of Bluey “classic” and “Bluey” will relaunch (in about a year?) with a makeover — redesigned simpler animation, less detail in the backgrounds and more emphasis on the other kids. This will also allow for voice actors to probably change too for the kid characters.
(Probably more emphasis on being loud and in-your-face too, lots of hamming it up!)
Because the target audience of very young kids are always turning over, the next cohort of kids won’t notice the difference/change - they’ll just get the new variant of “Bluey”. It won’t matter to them that the old version is better, it will be “Bluey is Bluey”
It will probably be called something slightly different like “Bluey and Friends”
It will probably look like the style of these recent Bluey books that have just come out in Australia. Note the easier-to-animate big mouths and general simplification of scenery and how the characters are placed. This will feel more like mid-2000s Flash animation.
Hoping I’m wrong but who knows…
#let me know your thoughts#Bluey ch-ch-ch-changes#Peppa-Pig-ification of Bluey#Bluey#Bluey rumor mill
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Pikelan with the "gestures that gets me on my knees" prompts? If you want a specific one of the bunch, maybe the "you want that, love? I want cuddles tho'", but any of them are fine :]
[Of course! Set in TLOVM, because Makin' My Way happened over the course of a few days - surely some stuff happened over that time, right? Didn't get to smoochies tho, sorry the vibes were not quite that.]
It’s… wait, he needs to count.
Okay, it’s three days into their trek down the mountain. Scanlan’s feet hurt bad and his back hurts worse, because Pike was stabbed and like hell he’s letting her haul Grog’s scrawny ass around. Even puny like this, he’s still a goliath.
Unfortunately, without those big muscles, there isn’t really much warmth to be found when they dare not light a fire. Like tonight, when they spied some bandits parked on the road they finally found. Maybe they’ll just - dunno - use the river to make more progress tomorrow.
Man. He’d really kill for Trinket right now. Bear stank, but at least he had one good use.
Grog passed out within, probably, a few minutes of scarfing down what Pike was able to fish from the river. So it’s just the gnomes, now, against the dark, against the cold.
And - and maybe Scanlan’s a little delirious from hunger, because Grog ate half his serving before he could get to it, and it really should be repeated that it’s been a long fucking few days -
But? Pike might be coming on to him?
He’d usually cut out the might, because let’s be real, Scanlan Shorthalt is irresistable, and when he is resistible a wink and a song usually get the girls and gents to change their tune. Pike is a whole other beast, though - beyond the fact she could squash him like a bug (wow), she plays him like a fiddle, somehow, and he gets tongue-tied in a decidedly unsexy way. So he really doesn’t blame her for not taking him seriously. Honestly!
So he really has no fucking clue why her hand is on his thigh, and she’s laughing at what he’s singing and listening to what he’s saying, and not the other way around.
He’s had cause to thank the gods (the Everlight specifically, lately. No reason.) for his darkvision before. Lots of good cause, really, from sneaking out before dawn to - well.
Scanlan’s pretty sure he mouths a prayer, because this can’t be real. She can’t be real, white hair blue with shadow and gold with moonlight and subtly the richest thing he’s ever seen.
How are her eyes so fucking pretty? They’re grey. His are grey. No one writes ballads about grey eyes. He’d fix that, right now, except he can’t string words together in his head. He’s still talking, though, but no clue what he’s actually saying.
Better shut up. He does. With a gulp.
“C’mon, Scanlan,” Pike prompts. From beneath her lashes - fuck’s sake, that’s sinful. That has to be sinful, looking like that. And he knows sin.
(He’s not a man his mother would be proud of.)
Apparently he’s gone catatonic, because Pike nudges him. “The rest of the story? The boat, and the fleece? What happens next?”
He has no fucking clue. Scanlan swallows. “I - let’s head to bed,” he says. “It’s late.”
“Yeah,” Pike replies, not looking the least bit tired. “Let’s.”
And she doesn’t move.
Or she does, but it’s not away, to curl up under one of Grog’s arms, as far from his armpit and as close to his body heat as she can manage.
It’s into him.
Silver is too weak a word, platinum to cheap, for what he sees in her eyes.
“Scanlan,” she says.
He gulps. Really appropriate comedic timing. “Yeah?”
“What happens next?”
Maybe, now - just maybe - he can… they can… scratch that might? He’s reading this right - right?
So he gives it a shot: he leans in.
Pike rests her forehead against his and his stupid little heart might give out there.
And then.
She fucking.
Winks.
“You want me so bad it makes you look stupid.”
Scanlan sputters. “I - Pike - you -”
“Oh, I don’t mind.” She grins, cheeky little - “It’s a good look on you.”
He reads something he shouldn’t, then. That earnest devotion she has in prayer, and how she shutters herself off from talking about it too much around their party of godless friends. And Vax, now, especially, and whatever the fuck he has going on. A fire blazing, banked low.
Yeah. He gets scared.
“It’s late,” he repeats. And, because he can’t resist trying his shitty luck: “we might need to cuddle for warmth, though.”
Pike snuggles into his side. He definitely feels warmer, already. And she looks at him a little coyly, and he doesn’t need a fire anymore. “Can I be the big spoon?”
He feigns indignity. Which is, let’s be clear, really fucking hard around the huge grin he has.
Mildly spicy prompt game! Ft. ships I want to write more of <3
#critical role#tlovm#the legend of vox machina#scanlan shorthalt#pike trickfoot#pikelan#tlovm spoilers#critical role fic#cr fanfic#ask game#prompt game#my writing
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Ok, so, I've sat on Evangelion 3.0+1.01 Trice upon a time overnight. I think I can talk about it.
First of all, much better than 3.33. As much as I love Kaworu and would watch all the content in the world of him, 3.33 is just convoluted rather than complex and almost relentlessly pessimistic.
Second of all, it's actually like 2 movies.
The first movie is "I'm so glad that Anno got to hang out with Miyazaki and recover from his depressive episode." (And make Shin Godzilla and generally just have a good time.)
Apparently Ghibli DID come in and actually animate a lot of the village scenes, which is great. I wasn't expecting a "a simple life with community and nature is worth living, even in the face of environmental calamity" theme in Eva, but damn, it worked for me.
Then you get to the second movie, which is "and now we have to actually end Eva." And it's...a bit of a mess at times. And it's a mess because it keeps switching between the highly metaphysical, metaphorical story and a Gurren Lagann style "shouting sci fi and Bible words" rule of cool story. One where everything is very symbolic and one where trying to read symbolism into anything is a migraine.
Like-
This? I understand this. That you can't reconcile with an emotionally distant and domineering father through violence. That just becoming a mirror of the parent who hurt you doesn't end the hurt? I get this. It went full Blazing Saddles finale and I loved it.
"And now we will turn the spine of the ship into ANOTHER secret Spear of Gaius and send it into the shadow realm of all creation and the tablet of nebekenezer and goliath and the arc of adams or something!" <- what. Does. That. Mean. What does any of that mean? When this stuff happens in Gurren Lagann, I can just sit back and be like "woooooah cool." And vibe and accept that sometimes giant robots just do giant robot stuff. But 10 seconds ago, all the crazy robot stuff was like, a metaphor. And now I have no idea what any of this should mean and it might mean nothing.
I can do both, but asking me to switching between them over and over what making me feel like I had simultaneously done too many drugs and not enough drugs.
As a side note- it's hilarious to me that in some ways this movie did the best job with the female characters of any Eva property. Asuka and Mari getting the best action scenes, and "Miss Lookalikes" farm arc? So good. But on the other hand, they made the ENTIRE CREW wear the fucking plug suits? And all the shots that are just right between their Betty Spaghetty thigh gaps? Pffffft.
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I just really really really want to the Black Adam family and the Al Ghul family to become friends, especially after reading Damian and Adam interactions in Injustice. I don’t know why, but I just feel like you can do a lot with that concept?
First of all you have the patriarch of the family, Black Adam and Ra’s al Ghul, both originally starting off as kind helpless humans living horribly under a dictator who took advantage of them thousands of years ago before they gained new power that made them immortal and basically go rogue, which allowed them to rule their own nation/organization (Khandaq + LOS), but despite all of their crimes, they both (when written right) deeply care about their families and even though it doesn’t justify all of the blood they shed, their actions and ideologies over the centuries did have some positive results (Khandaq prospering as a nation and Ra’s saving countless creatures from extinction)
Then you have the heart of the family, Talia and Isis, who already look like they could be sisters tbh. They both might support the patriarch’s goals, but they believe that there are better ways to achieve those goals without needless bloodsheds (granted Isis was more successful in changing her husband to the better than Talia with her father) and are the de facto 2nd-in-command after them. They’re also fierce mothers/mother-figures who are driven by the desire to protect their son/younger brother, again, when written right.
And of course those sons are Damian and Osiris, two very passionate and eager-to-please young boys who idolize their father/brother-in-law and hope to follow in their footsteps as rulers of their respective kingdoms (or city in Bruce’s case). They are also huge animal-lovers and have a giant animal companion as their best friend (Goliath & Sobek) and while they might not have as much in common as the other pairs at first glance, when you think about Amon’s journey from a kind, empathetic and ambitious superhero to a cold-hearted and arrogant killer, it could almost be considered the reverse of Damian’s own journey.
Also both of these families are the only two mainstream Arab families in the DCU, that’s alone is enough for them to regularly visit each other castles and to have Talia and Adrianna drinking tea on one table with Ra’s and Black Adam playing chess on the table next to them while Damian and Amon are playing with their pets on the floor.
#the more I think about it the more it makes sense#I really need to read more BA comics#Teth Adam#ra's al ghul#Talia al Ghul#Damian Wayne#Adrianna tomaz#Amon Tomaz#Black Adam
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Xena Reactions S2Ep15! (I think this is one of my faves so far XD)
The awakening. And dudes being annoying
OH NO GABRIELLE!
Shdhdhs she just sloshed water on her to wake her
I love Xena fighting with a frying pan
NOOO GABRIELLE
shdhdvd "Xena, this is our only frying pan!"
"Can we cook with your juices?"
Gabrielle is not having a good day
Shfhdhd she knocked him out again
Oof, they're having a rough day
"You pinch him I ask the questions >:)"
"Heads, we take on the giant"
"Does your village have a shop that sells frying pans?" Please XD I completely understand Gabrielle tho
Are they playing guess who
"Were you killed by a certain warrior princess?" "Yes." "Well that narrows it down..."
XENA IS HUNGYYY
"You know, a frying pan would come in handy right about now" XDD
She caught her gf an eel sjdhd
PLS XENA LIKES THROWING FISH AT HER GF (ngl Vastra definitely did that)
"Another one's fallen for you" "AGAIN?"
"No I think [chainmail] would just attract a kinkier group." sjdhdhdbd
GABRIELLE USING THE SHAKRAM FOR CUTTING
"I've learned that she works in mysterious ways" She doesn't have plan
XENA USED HER SCROLLS AS TOILET PAPER 😭
Pls...
BOOB GRAB
Hmmm... No people
Uhhhh... Is this a fangirl
"And I can read" 😂
She has no strategy yet
O_O THEY'RE BATHING TOGETHER
Gabrielle lovingly washing Xena's hair
XENA SCRUBBING GABRIELLE'S BACK
"Because I do the sensitive chats"
"I'm less competitive than you are"
"Are you sitting on the soap?"
AWWW THEY'RE SPLASHINGGG
"HEY. Say goodbye to Minya" like a dog
"Wanna trade?"
CALLISTO KILLED THEODORUS "She was in my body"
There is a lot of tension here...
"You're a genius" "No"
Gareth? I think I've heard that name before
Awww, Gabrielle giving Minya her stuff to read
OH. The one who killed Goliath's family
"How are we going to get lightning bolts?" Oh, a kite
"Maybe if I run with it" she did not hear a WORD Gabrielle just said... 😂
"Have faith, Gabrielle" NOOOO SHE GOT HIT BY THE KITE
Yay it fliessss
AAAAAAH, THE STRING. My poor Gabrielle
"I think you're denying your feelings" fuck offfff...
GABRIELLE WANTED TO JUMP HER
Damn grab her boob armour
"I just gave her some advice about handling men"
I'm still a hater of the Goliath episode... Goliath loves
Xena bored? 😂
"Cut him some slack, he's just stomped an entire army"
Him just screaming at her, and she's just like :3
MINYA
"looked so good in leather?" PLEASE 😭
They're both like ...Wat
"Don't let them die on a lost cause"
AWWW THEY COMMUNICATE (*looks at the Victorian wives who could use some communication*)
JESUS HE'S BIG
She stepped on his toes after tying the kite to his belt
"Come on, handsome" djfhdsh
I love the way they utilise perspective. They definitely had two different size bones for this.
"Goliath says Hello" AND ZAPPPPPP
Oop he's proper torched
"That bunch up there looks like a big dipper" THEY STARGAZE. OR STARGAYS!?
CUUUUTE
Bwahaha Gabrielle thonked her nose 😭😂
AWWWW, SHE KISSED IT BETTER
They're so married ajdhdhfhd I love them
#v watches xena#delightful#I made Paternoster Gang art about this#xena warrior princess#xena and gabrielle#xena#gabrielle
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