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comfortless · 2 months

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Only Other

chapter one of three.

Goth soldier! König x fem, Roman! reader

content/warnings: 18+. minors do not interact. historical au (set around 350BC); potential inaccuracies as i am no historian!, König speaks some German here (as opposed to Gothic), mutual pining & worship, mentions of an arranged marriage with a large age gap, slight sexism, descriptions of gore, groping, dubcon sword/knifeplay. additional warnings will be added to the next two chapters.

notes: for @writersdrug’s request. ^^

wc: 11k.

The barbarians are here.

The dream of river water lapping over your knees and songbirds in swaying trees fades out into a hazy fog as you begin to rise, dropping your legs from the mattress to spur yourself to move across the small room as quietly as your feet can carry you.

Heavy footfalls and staggering hoof beats from their horses weighed down by heavy sacks of supplies is what has pulled you from sleep.

The flames of their torches crackle, accompanied by the shrieks of clanging, well-polished metals singing out as if in the throes of war becomes a dull song; weapons, wicked and crudely crafted unlike the spears of the soldiers donned in red you were so accustomed to by now.

You had heard the whispers on the wind of the untamed beasts from Germania filtering in, settling down here; their arms and their blood for just a sliver of land to claim, soil to birth farmland, a semblance of peace from within the walls of the great empire.

Never, in these small words from gossiping tongues, did you suspect that these rugged men would be taking to camp so very close to your city. Not only that… they’ve been accepted into the walls, the door flung open for them with their gnashing teeth and thick, ugly weapons. These men of myth were usually set further out into the countryside, far from view of polite people to sow seed in soft fields, build the little shacks that seemed far too fragile for their rugged forms that could never compare to the villas built here.

Peering over the sill of the open window, stretching your upper half out into crisp night air to catch a glimpse of torches sailing along the breeze, flames just as ever-shifting as their darkened silhouettes, your breath seems to halt entirely. They look the trueness of harbingers like this: each somehow more imposing than the one they follow behind. You count only two horses split between the eight men of this small band.

Could any of them even speak in your tongue?

What stories could they tell?

Had any of them ventured as far as the sea or had they only bathed in waves of warm blood?

With eyes wide, you even dare to perch there to watch on, never bothering to conceal your underclothes with the faith that the darkness would hide away anything more than a illusory view of your shape.

Through the faint glow of the yellow-red flickering flames, your gaze drifts to something large, hulking and brutish, darker still against the backdrop of a sable horizon.

The shadow walks in line with the others, their proud and raucous foreign voices feathering through the otherwise quieted air… only he does not speak, does not make a single utterance of mirth or glee. He stares only forward as his feet tread on just paces behind the rest of the group.

Nine, then.

Like the tales you’ve heard of the Goths, you’ve also listened in on the children spinning wild stories of monsters, the legends of heroes of old slaying cruel beasts told by their elders. You had always believed them, even without the evidence currently striding through the sleeping streets, dark like a crypt, like the underworld itself. A true titan.

Just as your eyes track the brooding, silent form, he abruptly turns his head in your direction.

The glow of a nearby torch paints the shrouded face in the color of a dying sun, casts a glint on the thick seax strapped to his hip.

In that moment, it isn’t wonderment curling through your blood, but surprise, maybe even a tinge of fear.

Your heart hammers as you pull yourself from the window to whisper hurried, hushed prayers to Juno, protectress of women, as you reject your curious nature and climb back into your bed. You’ll bring your offerings to her altar just as any devout: incense and a sweet pastry so long as she keeps you safe, chaste.

Buried beneath cushions stuffed with straw and thin fabric sheets to tuck yourself away, you wish only to return to dreaming of the river’s silt beneath your feet and colorful birds parading past in the open air that smells only of violets and honey.

Instead, you dream of fire.

You dream of the city bathed in gold, molten and angry as the walls come down around you.

You watch as your neighbors, friends, all begin to writhe and shriek as their skin begins to blister, boil beneath until it melts layer by precious layer to puddle like oil where feet once stood until the mighty, wraithful scorch takes even that away too. What once was human becomes smoke: women, men, children, it made no difference. It all becomes a mighty roaring flame as the structures wail and crumble around you.

Yet, you remain untouched.

Dawn breaks with the puppets sewn in shadow all but entirely forgotten, washed away in the fearsome tides of your own dreaming.

You startle and bolt upright as you wipe cold sweat from your brow with the back of your hand.

You’re no oracle: it’s just a dream… Vulcan would never turn his fiery gaze to your people after you’ve all honored him so, the offerings paid at his altar had been plentiful this past year with the steady expansion of the empire and the need for well-smithed weapons.

There were no volcanoes here to sweep away your life with magma and sulfur… only the lemures that haunted old shacks with their wailing had paid a visit to you last night. You let them in with your fears, and you would ward them away next with your courage.

The sun’s warmth creeps its way in, sweeps up from your blanketed legs until it curls and caresses at your cheek. From its positioning, proud and impossibly high in the sky it’s almost as though Sol himself were staring down at you, radiant yet scolding.

You’ve overslept.

Hurriedly, you ready yourself for the day, cinching your waist, clasping the shoulder of the stola, and dutifully washing your face with still water held in a clay pot. There was little else to do than bide your time with tedium: the animals loitering about needed tending to, a neglected sewing project lay strewn across the floor that had long-awaited its completion, and as the questions began to stir in your mind again… perhaps, gods willing, you would safely be gifted the opportunity to peek at the barbarian camp. To see that peculiar titan that they kept tethered at their sides.

It was dangerous and unheard of for a maiden, of course, but with little else to do than work and practice stitching threads for a betrothed you held no true affection for, this was a significant reprieve from the humdrum of what was scrawled out into the stars.

You weren’t given the luxury of further studies and communing with the aristocrats at their hearty banquets, sipping wine and prattling onwards about politics and how to further Rome as a whole. A part of you preferred this simple life of taking to the street, to peruse the market with what little money you held clutched in your palm, to pet the horses and watch as bulls sparred out in the fields beyond. Returning home to an empty house was a comfort, too.

As always, the market is a lively place, full to bursting with people exchanging anything under the sun, either beneath painted wooden stalls or from the first floor of their very homes, all with very little regard for you.

The city was simply too full to take in every name and face, and only their chatter seemed to intrigue you anyhow. You didn’t need a scroll or a song about each individual, your people were easy enough to read: war, pride, and duty all embedded into their very blood. The only ones that drew your attention were the poets and bards, entertainers who spun their stories of lives vastly different from your own… but there were none awaiting coin on the streets today.

A man passes with his wife at his side, loudly bolstering onward about his progress on some expedition.

Women with flowers woven into the braids of their hair laugh softly behind their palms as they exchange their secrets in singsong whispers.

The children play and pocket with eager palms when salesmen are unaware, likely to be caught later on and have their hands whipped raw.

There’s no talk of the Goths.

With these foreign men, most of your people seemed unbothered, taking solace in the knowledge that the empire’s cavalry would ride to strike down any opposition. A tentative, arrogant sort of comfort that you knew very well not to trust entirely. Most were simply not as educated on the potential of what could be, hadn’t snuck around on quiet feet to listen in on the men discussing failed treaties and negotiations.

The Goths could find their own food, their own women and shelters after fighting for the empire for a time: likely what they were here to do… give up their lives in exchange for a sliver of a Roman dream. A band as small as the one you witnessed could never quite hope to topple an empire, anyhow.

That sense of safety brought forth disinterest and smug little grins with little else to say, whereas your mind only took to further conjuring curiosity.

The more you wander the more you question whether you saw them at all, or if they were mere specters, already slain and silenced on some field far off from here, long dead and forgotten by all but the sleep-addled mind of a maiden.

You’ve never felt so disheartened. Though the city remained constantly bustling and full of intrigue when you knew where to look, these days the ease of it all only seemed to further the boredom. If nothing were to come, it would be no surprise to find that Juno would serve her purpose, looking after all with her blessings. You almost regret calling for her safety last night.

If the barbarians were indeed real, had some plot to overthrow an empire with their small numbers, perhaps only a vulture would be pleased with your thoughts now: teetering on the cusp of anticipation and wonder. You would never think yourself treasonous, but to learn, to see more… Your appetite for something further than a life spent sewing and child-rearing after marrying a man that made your skin prickle with distaste in the coming winter was rational.

Maybe not to most, but to you.

The fruit stall pulls you from thought with its sappy, honey-sweet scent and brilliant colors littered in crates: reds, greens, even some soft and blue… You only then notice you’ve been standing entirely still here, lost in thought, as if expecting a bolt of lightning to split the world in two.

Two apricots were purchased, one for you and the other for the gray mare in the stable you had grown fond of. You give the merchant a smile and a few bronze coins and carry on your way, nibbling at one of the fruits on your walk.

There were usually servants tending to the horses just beyond the city's paved streets, but it seemed today they were busy with other affairs: Quinquatria would be upon the city soon, and there was much to prepare for such an important festival. The place was empty all apart from yourself and the horses, some off in the fields to gallop to their heart’s content, while others like your mare, secured by wooden gates and paddocks.

You feed her, cooing gently as she takes the pitted fruit from your hand and between her blunt teeth; then, allows you to lead her into the grass with your honeyed words and languid steps.

One day, you hoped to have the opportunity to ride her, perhaps far away to touch the waters of the ocean, to see the foreign trees in some great adventure that would leave you more fulfilled. Ideally, without being weighed down heavy with child.

Your hand strokes at her nose before she begins to tense, eyes wandering from your form to something just beyond, far off and nestled in tall, fluttering grass and small bushes. You track her gaze for a moment, finally turning to look over your shoulder.

The wind has the tops of the trees swaying along the hills, grass pushed down to kiss the earth with each flutter of air. It all smells and feels so gentle, carrying the scent of wildflowers and the soil and salt of the earth itself. Ceres would have found herself prideful at the sight; everything rich and lush with the spring… Harvests would be bountiful this year, and everyone would be well-fed and contented. It’s no surprise that after pilfering through old calendars and running his tests upon the soil, Gaius had declared that this was the year he would take you to be his wife.

Past the expanse of soft blossoms and a cavalcade of greenery, all sweeping and rolling, a beauty that would stifle anyone should they think to look hard enough… but amidst all of this sits a man that you recognize immediately. Though he remains utterly faceless, his stature is somehow enough to make a gladiator blush and turn tail in shame.

There, just where the hill dips down and gives way to the soft rush of the stream, sits your warrior. His head is lowered as he crouches by the water, hands tucked to his front as he busies himself with something in his lap. The bare expanse of his back presented to you is unfathomable even from such a distance.

The men from Germania were said to be huge, dwarfing those that you were accustomed to by lengths, tall and thick like the weapons that they carry. They were said to be handsome, too… and like some hazy dream you were already certain that he was, somehow, beneath the pelt tied round his waist to keep him warmed at night, the sable shroud hanging over his head as he works away at sharpening the blade laying over his lap.

Your legs feel weak like a freshly birthed lamb’s as you watch him; the muscles of his bare arms bulging and quivering, his nude back tensing with effort. The soft rays of the sun beaming down only seem to paint him golden, untouchable except by higherborn women and men who could pay well to have him dirty his blade or his cock. Radiant, cruel, maybe even a bastard son of Mars himself, because what better a place for a man so vast and laden with scar tissue to be than in the midst of some great war.

Someone like this, you know with a certainty, would have no time for fickle maidens with their heads filled with the fluff of fantasies, and in a way that only seems to solidify a plume of possessiveness stirred up within your head.

You wonder even, if he calls to Vulcan as he pauses to hold his blade up to the sun to marvel at his work, the sharpened silver glinting in the light. The weapon casts its rays to only further illuminate the paleness of his flesh, coupled with the gleam of the flowing water ebbing past it only serves to make him look the very picture of those old stories and myths. The older women in the city would have tapestries embroidered of this scene, no doubt, if they could see through your eyes now.

Your horse trots off, satisfied that there is no true threat here, and you feel yourself begin to creep forward.

The gods and goddesses must play their tricks, because you are no fool. The pull only feels undeniable, something that you could not fight with a stern will alone. You pacify your impromptu decision with the thought that you could turn away at any point in the meters it would take to reach him. Surely, if he turned to face you before then that same fear from the night before would come to surface and you would sprint, startled and wary.

Perhaps he would even give chase…

There’s no excitement to be held on him, either acutely unaware or ignoring your presence entirely as you draw ever-closer. The grass softens your footsteps, the breeze blanketing any sound from each shift of your legs beneath the linen stola. You’re near silent in your approach, only halting where the hill crests over the bank several paces away from where he remains seated.

Only then does he turn to look your way.

There’s no greeting, no display of friendliness. His body language remains closed off, distant, like that of a wolf in cautious preparation; deciding whether or not it would be necessary to bare his teeth, to snap and growl until your flesh rends beneath him.

So it’s left up to you and to Juno who remains harbored in your heart. The goddess would protect you most assuredly, you’ve left her offerings for as long as you could remember, prayed at her altars and devoted yourself entirely— perhaps not in the same way of the temple maidens, but certainly more so than most.

You take a breath, watching him with kind eyes and an air of unease about you that only seems sweet by comparison to the very danger that his presence proposes. He only returns your stare with something colder, detached and unamused beneath that ugly veil he wears: two holes for the eyes, dyed beneath with the red rimming yellow like the tissue a butcher may find in a plump calf.

“Can you understand me?”

There’s a long, tense silence that follows your frail question. The titan stares, looks you over from the crown of your head, briefly pauses midway- at your hips- then further. It’s both heated and cold, coaxing yet analytical.

Finally, the barbarian gives a curt nod in response, seeming no less frigid and closed off even as your voice feathers over the breeze. But he understands, can decipher your language, that’s a start.

“You are… one of the barbarians, yes?” Is that even what they preferred to be called? The word certainly sounded prettier on your tongue than the brutish pronunciation of ‘Goths’. There would certainly be some price to be paid if your blood was spilled over a mere insult…

Graciously, he only seems to overlook it as he sheaths his blade and rises to his full height, tall like the mountains you had only heard stories of, where gods and goddesses sit in council not meant for mortal ears.

Freed of any covering upon his upper body, you find yourself reluctantly mesmerized by the trail of light hair that runs from chest to abdomen and down further… until a little tuft peeks from the hem of the pelt tied around his narrow hips. The layer of fat over his midsection paves a way upward to reveal the muscles of his chest, wider and more prominent somehow than most breasts you’ve seen.

Unruly thoughts clutter that would have others questioning your status and devotion to your Gaius if they could hear them. It couldn’t be helped, you reason; you had never seen a man quite so vast, so meant for battle and breeding.

“That is what your people call me,” he huffs, bull preparing to charge. His words come out with a thick accent, northern. The trees and mountains would sound similar if they could speak at all.

He drinks you in with his eyes, fingers twitching at his sides as though itching to touch your most sensitive parts. Though he doesn’t move yet, you get the sense that all it would take is one false move, a skitter in your step that leaves you tumbling to the earth, and he would be upon you like the downpours of spring. You even wonder if he would roar like the thunder delivered from Jupiter’s weighty palms if he were to mount you.

Of course, what he sees before him is not a maiden of Rome. His people didn’t care for purity, for your religions and ideals: you’re a fertile little doe, wandering straight to a buck in his prime.

You swallow hard, a little bob from your fragile throat, to force those treasonous thoughts from your mind. Even talking to this man was a risk to your reputation… Your poor betrothed, nearing thrice your age and horribly delicate by comparison to this beast, would be up in arms if he were to find you here. More concerning, you couldn’t find it within yourself to care.

“What do you call yourself, then?” Your voice comes almost breathless, thighs pressed together beneath your stola as your own body sends its signs and omens to tell you that you’re precariously close to the underworld just by gracing him with your presence. Perhaps it would be that dark, too, if this giant decided to push you to the soil, hover over you as he plucked you apart like petals from a flower.

His eyes track that subtle shift of your legs, crinkling at the outer corners when they roam back upward to your face. The beast grins beneath his hood, you’re certain of it, and those eyes of pale blue seem to glitter like the sun's rays on the stream to your side. He shifts, crosses his arms over his chest and tilts his hips just slightly forward, some strange display undoubtedly meant to tempt and charm you.

You don’t budge from your perch, despite your body’s persistent singing for him. Enticing scents and views of flesh could do that… this man wasn’t special, you were just curious. That’s all that it was.

“König.” He answers things plainly in that lilted voice, as though he’s trying to seem more of a man to spite that boyish way of speaking. And gods help you- it’s cute.

“Does it have meaning?,” you settle to ask when he does not request your name in turn. A bit rude, though you do wonder if perhaps the bullish men in his settlements see delicate things like you more like pets anyhow. The thought of this warrior whisking you away and naming you one day… You swallow that lump in your throat again, teetering back on your heels as if to place more distance between you two.

“What do you think it means?”

That simple non-answer does finally allow your pulse to settle, only to rise immediately to find it insulting— as if this wild man with no proper education had the right to insult you at all.

He only smiles again beneath that veil when your face sours. Awful, wretched, gorgeous creature… You’re no threat to him and he knows it. He’s only playing with you, dodging your pretension with a bit of his own, and unfortunately… This is the most pleasant conversation that you’ve had with any man.

Your betrothed was only arrogant and dull, there’s no light in his eyes when he smiles at you- everything is duty. Not here. Not with König, and surely the goddess of marriage and love is frowning down at you from her lofty throne, because you’re almost certain you’re infatuated with the brute by now.

“You’re a bit rude.”

“King.” He grins, a grin that you can see when he frees the leather flask from his belt and shoves his mask upward to take a heavy gulp of what is undoubtedly Roman wine. The glimpse alone makes you weak again, honey drips from your thoughts to your cunt, and you know now that you were never simply curious.

No, this brute would be the end of your engagement and even you if you allowed it.

You watch him take his fill, catch the bitter scent in the air as a bit trickles down from his rough jaw to his throat, all covered in scars. He’s been in battle for a long time, likely why he wears the hood at all. The rest of that handsome face is undoubtedly a wreck just as what could be seen of his body, all covered in memories of where he’s had scrapes and dances with daggers only to fell his foes one by one with that long seax dangling from his hip.

After the hood and the flask are in their proper places once more, he gives you a nod, then speaks, “How many coins?”

It takes a moment for the question to register in full; he isn’t asking what you have on your person, but how much you’re worth. How much it would cost for you to spend a night in his bed, tolerating this giant between your legs…

Your attractions billow up in smoke immediately, just as you expression sours and your hands curl to fists at your side, crushing the half-eaten apricot in the process. You toss the ruined fruit to the ground, allowing the sweet juice to coat your fingers as it flows downward.

You wring your hand as you very nearly shout, “You are an animal. I’m not here to sell myself.”

Your voice falters to a meek, little whisper with your final words, the breath a weak gust through the first tiny blossoms of spring.

Of course he catches onto your body language, to the way your thighs rub and tense beneath your skirt, the way your nipples peak at the mere sight of him and all of the infatuation and curiosity in your eyes. Men knew things like this, offhandedly, it seemed; if the others were correct then this beast could surely smell you, too.

The bastard only stares, eyes narrowing as his brow pulls together beneath the hood in some strange confusion. The whores wore their togas, not the stolas of maidens and married women, even a barbarian should have known that: his men were certainly no strangers to the sweet women with their faces chalked in lead.

Then, his shoulders pull up to fall in a shrug.

“Run, then, little one.”

It’s almost as though he knows your thoughts in and out, a lemure himself as he presents the bulk of him that would strike fear into any man, taunts and goads. You don’t want another fire dream. You force your courage and mirror his stance: chin up, back straightened as you look down upon him like a goddess sent to deliver her fury with… a pitted apricot at your feet rather than bolts of famine and misfortunes.

His eyes become stars, twinkling in earnest when he sees you then. You’re no aristocrat, no empress, but you certainly feel the part when the giant’s gaze finally relaxes its pilferage and settles upon your face instead.

Your act is all for naught, because you realize that his men are approaching, opposite the stream. One of them was enough, but a hoard of others… You were not even certain that he could understand you properly, and the others could be even less patient. Your gaze travels over their forms, smaller than this ‘König’, but each equipped with their own weapons and their own scars from battle.

They look from their leader to you, eyes grazing over the plush flesh that your stola dutifully conceals like starved dogs. One of them mutters something in a foreign tongue, harsh and guttural, his eyes never leaving your shape in a display of brazen appraisal.

König responds in turn, voice taking on a lower octave as he all but barks his response: harsh, unyielding language that you couldn’t hope to interpret… but if you had to guess, you were nearly certain that his men were asking who would lift your skirts and have their way with you first.

You depart from them with tentative yet hurried feet, and you don’t look back as you cross across the lush field. There’s no stopping at the stable, not a thought in your head except that you would most assuredly not be returning. The barbarians could have the field, the stream, whatever the city’s officials had allowed them.

Just not you.

It’s Gaius that greets you when you arrive home, to the little villa he had secured for you; to the place that would become less of a home and more of a prison once the two of you were wed. You’re barely a foot in the door when the man’s gaunt face turns to you, his lips set in a stern line.

“Where were you?”

You knew that look, it’s the very same that he gives to his slaves when he’s about to bleat out his orders like an enraged goat, shove them or grab at them to feel less small than he truly is.

Your brow pinches, a shaky breath leaving your mouth as you try in earnest to look the part of an innocent lady who had not just crossed a field and fantasized endlessly of some rude, barbaric oaf.

“In the field. With the horses,” you deliver your half-truth with practiced ease. This wasn’t the first time you’ve lied to him, and it certainly would not be the last. If the protectress of Rome could overlook your stunts and recognize your discomfort in this wretch’s presence… then she might even side with you; save you from a future of sharing this man’s bed.

Gaius relents then— as much as a stoic, old man could. He reaches out to cup your face with one weathered hand and you have to force back to urge to shudder.

It’s not that you mean to be cold, not after all that he’s done to care for you… it just comes as naturally as the seasons and the wills of the gods. Something about him always made you feel ill.

You eventually, tentatively jut your chin forward just a bit to force yourself into leaning toward the touch of his cold hand.

His lips curl into an unsightly grin; then, he pats your cheek and draws away enough to bless you with fresher air to breathe without his withering presence alone contaminating it.

“I brought you a gift, meum corculum.”

“Oh…” Your words come in a little hiss, your heart stuttering in your chest as you teeter back on the heels of your sandals. The straps along your calves feel tighter now, your stola too… maybe even the room itself: everything seems to close in, and you could only silently hope he doesn’t request your affections for doing such. “… you didn’t have to-“

“Nonsense.” Gaius raises both of his hands, arcs them before stepping out of your path to reveal a new dress lying on the wooden table just beyond him, dyed a light blue.

It’s pretty, well-spun and soft-looking… yet you still hesitate a bit when you step closer to run your fingertips over the fabric. It yields beneath your touch, bunches when you move each digit along the pliant linen, and it’s the softest thing you’ve ever touched, maybe even softer than the lambs and kittens you’ve played with in the streets.

“I thought that you might like something nicer to wear during Quinquatria,” he adds from just behind you. You feel his hands trace along your arms, further, until they reach your shoulders and give a gentle, but almost demanding squeeze.

It’s meant to be affectionate and he is your husband-to-be… but he still manages to make you feel ill. It’s only a blessing that he’s never requested more from you than a peck for his offerings to you.

What a man in his late stage of life could see in you, you couldn’t hope to imagine. A fertile womb, likely, and you could only hope that that isn’t also what he saw in the women he kept as slaves in his own home further toward the city’s center. Nosy, dull man that he was, of course he needed to be closer to the housings of banquets and discussions to feel some level of importance while he kept you locked away toward the wall and the slums like some filthy little mystery.

“I’m tired, my love,” you manage, voice thin as you slowly pull yourself away, from both Gaius and the delicate blue thing you would be forced into wearing for the coming festival.

The man balks, but doesn’t push. A few seasons and he would have what he’s awaited for years, the confident gleam in his eyes tells you that he’s certain of it.

It’s difficult to believe that someone you had once considered a hero and a friend could make you feel so much disgust now. You were naïve, then, and now you only feel how those poor horses locked away in the stables must feel, burdened with a constant yearning for your own freedom.

“Then rest.”

When the door shuts behind him, you’re only then able to expel your relief. The weight of what you must do settles upon you, heavy and unyielding, the boulder of Terminus.

You can not marry Gaius. You can not continue to breathe in the stink of the city from its miasmic aqueducts, perfumed only by the crowded marketplace full of mortals so contented with their own tedium. The unknown calls and calls, howling like a mother wolf to guide you. Even with the stories told of what fiends and horrors lie outside of the city you could almost feel with a certainty that you were destined for it.

You light your incense with a lump of coal in the burner of a clay pot. Just cinnamon would have to do for now. You make your peace with that promising Juno whichever sweet, flaking pastry that appeals most during the festival of Minerva.

Though you were more than content with your wish for nothing more to do with the barbarians after meeting with König earlier… he comes rushing back into your mind, rolling and lapping like waves as you begin to prepare yourself for sleep. The polished tin of your hand mirror reflects your face as you twirl the handle in a curled palm and you stare. Did he see beauty or simply a womb…? Had you taken offense to nothing? The questions stir up remorse as you strip away your gown and take to the bed.

Just one more meeting with the foreigner, maybe. Just to say your farewells, wish him luck in future battles, bless his seax and his shield with a touch and a prayer (if he even had the sight to keep any form of defense on his person).

When Quinquatria comes, when the people are busy and satisfied with their food, fortune telling and the gladiator games, you will take your mare and ride off into a sea of stars. Each light will be a point of guidance until you reach the riverbed you’ve only ever dreamt of, until you scale the mountains that sang so sweetly from the goth’s tongue…

And perhaps he will chase you.

— — —

Quinquatria used to be one of your favorite festivals. The fortune tellers were your favorites, always seeming to know so very much with so little insight into your life. Then there were the revelers donning their colorful masks, barking out song with bitter wine painting their tongues.

You try to listen in on them as a woman traces over the patterns in your palm, the curved lines and straight, fine indentations. Palmistry, rather than any proper reading with sacrifices and proper seers stood before a temple. You reason that this is for fun, just like the wine-drinking and the gladiators fighting for their lives and the horrible stink of the city’s streets: natural, reasonable, and dreadfully normal.

The fortune teller hums as she reads you through your hand, laughs a bit when she seems to note a secret or… something. You were not entirely sure. The woman was young, her belly likely as full of fermented fruit as everyone else’s as they dance and crowd the street where you two are stood.

“You’re unhappy, girl,” the woman muses, giving you a sympathetic look before another laugh pulls from her lips.

You give her a nod but don’t say a word as she continues to stroke at your palm. Of course you were, anyone could tell just by the frail look upon your face, as if you were indeed bereft and ready to cry at any moment in this horrible, dainty dress with your betrothed fondling some lady mere paces from you.

“Yet, so lovely,” she continues, nimbly running her fingers to your wrist. She curls them around you, turns your hand over and gives it a soft pat to signify that your reading is done.

“You’re destined for a summer wedding.” Winter, you want to correct. “And your husband… strong and brave like the sacred wolf.” Weak and old, you force back with a clenched jaw.

She releases your wrist with one last assessment, “Juno favors you, sweet girl.”

You want to call her a fraud, but instead you merely part with the bronze you had promised to her. With Gaius preoccupied, his wrinkled hands already tucked beneath the skirt of the other woman’s stola, now would be the best time to wrench the door of your little cage wide open… not make a scene.

Your chest feels tight, and for the first time it isn’t from some unknown fear, it’s excitement. Your heart hammers as the blood stirs within your veins, belly tense and breathing shallow, taking a stiff pace to walk along the shadow untouched by silver paths of moonlight.

There’s a bellow, a wail as the gladiators fight some distance off. Soft words and whispers filtering past like eerie words from something ghastly, moans from a brothel, bells on the wind, the stink of rot and perfume all from all that you’ve known for so long as you leave it all behind.

Your mare is pacing restlessly in the field, her ears flicking and tail swaying behind her. You’ve no saddle, you hadn’t even thought to procure food or any supplies. You’re not even certain that she’s been ridden by anyone, but you coax her over to the wooden fence that your body rests over; hands find the velvety fur of her gray snout, fingers moving to gently caress her mane and ears.

“We are going to be free,” you whisper as your hands curl over her neck. The mare makes her displeasure known immediately, huffing and tensing immediately… and you realize that this isn’t going to work, not without her bucking you off and leaving you injured or dead. You’re not stupid or brazen enough to break a horse or anything, really. Not Gaius. Not…

You would find König. Perhaps you could even trade the Goth for a horse already accustomed to being ridden… he had already revealed his intentions, and he was easy enough on the eyes to entertain the thought.

You give the mare a kiss farewell, right on the softness of her cheek and detach yourself from the fence to wander past the silver field, the gently flowing stream. The water dampens your dress, embeds it’s cold into your very bone where the sandals fail to protect. Spring or not, it’s hardly warm at night, and there are only so many rocks lying in the water to keep you from sinking in.

The clothes are drenched by the time you crawl to the other side. On the opposite bank, it’s only then that you turn back to look over at the city, one final glimpse of a place bathed in gold; cinder and ash from torchlight, flowers and the creeping scent of decay carry on the breeze. Even from the distance you can hear the music, chimes of steel on steel, the laughter and cries of mirth and pleasure.

Begrudgingly, you feel the first seeds of regret plucking at your heartstrings. You’ve nothing to your name apart from a few coins in a pouch strapped to your hip, no weapons, no food. You could die, you verily would if you went at this alone. And still, you force your face forward and continue your steady waltz to look the unknown straight in its bloody maw.

You won’t panic, won’t fear. Whatever awaits would be better— it had to be.

The barbarian camp comes into view some time later. You couldn’t be certain how long you’ve been walking, as though some spirit had plucked the chords of your mind and left you in some confused daze. It couldn’t have been your own desperation. Something greater had to be at play, a proper destiny: one much better than the life of Gaius’s wife, owned like a hound, imprisoned and uninspired.

Though their torches burn, their tents stitched together amalgamations of old pelts and cloth, the air is fresher here. You expected the reek of death, heavy on their skin, bathed in blood and the rot like visions of Mors herself. Instead, you smell smoked meat and wine on the air: a boar and fermented grape, fruit from the surrounding orchards, the heavy scent of men. There’s no celebration here, a few men talking quietly as their eyes wander over what you can only assume to be some sort of map— tactical discussion for their next bloodbath.

You puff your chest and steel your gaze as you walk towards them, expression set not unlike the stern looks your betrothed would give.

Your attempt at intimidation only earns a flicker of hunger in the gazes of these men, and then a bout of grating laughter. They glance at one another, discussing you in hushed voices in their mother tongue before one finally looks to you and asks a simple, “Was?”

“König,” you answer simply. “Where might I find him?”

The question undoubtedly goes uninterpreted, but the name does spark a wave of interest that passes between their faces. Finally, one points toward the tent at the far side of the camp: ugly thing, vast and layered in dark tones of gray and maroon, the very structure is a bleeding animal.

You hear the laughter behind you, the lewd whispers and jeers and only a simpleton wouldn’t be able to interpret the meaning; the titan that heads their little group has a lovely woman seeking him out like a wayward dream, and with adrenaline already coursing through you the thought of spending your night here doesn’t even seem an insulting prospect.

The flap serving as the door of the tent parts as your hands move to lift it, and sure enough… the beast lies in wait in his den, seated on a mattress made up entirely of fur. His hood remains over his head as he traces the carvings on the handle of the seax, under flickering flame and the shadow of the tent König seems further unearthly, god walking amongst men as he toys with his weapon in some strange sort of ritual.

The ritual only seems to be one of boredom, because his eyes light up when they rest over you, standing like a dream as your dress billows with the breeze creeping in. You’re drenched and dirty and pitiful in his presence, but he only seems to soften when he beckons you toward him with a curl of his fingers meeting his palm.

You obey with tentative steps, stopping next to him as he waits on the bed. If it were possible for your heart to seize and halt entirely without you collapsing to sink beneath the earth, it surely would now, so close to him.

“I need a favor,” you explain in whispers. “A horse.”

“A horse,” he repeats as his weapon is set aside, “Warum?”

You don’t want to explain a thing. He’s working with the very men that could drag you back to the city after being paid heavily by Gaius… your trust is blind and foolish and you almost want to break apart right here. How stupid to believe that you could find some solace here, with a giant that walks along the cusp between men and beasts. Your shaking hands reach out to drag along his vast shoulders, lingering on the healed wounds that dent and give rise to his flesh.

“I’ll do what you want,” you offer quietly, earning a pleased rumble from his chest.

Though after a moment, he only sieges your wrists, pulls you down to the mattress at his side. He touches you no further, only stares down at you in a twist of amusement, reverence and confusion.

“Warum?,” he repeats, “Tell me.”

You wind over onto your side, staring up at him with a desperation that you’ve never known until this night, clawing down from your throat to bed it’s way into your roaring pulse, frightened and pleading. Just give in, ask no more, you want to wail to him as your vision begins to blur with tears.

Mercifully, he doesn’t ask again. König lies at your side, mimicking the way you curl onto your side and again… he smiles, though this one is unlike the way he looked upon you by the stream. It lacks that boyish twinkle, the intensity of the lines forming beneath his eyes: it’s more of a pleasantry than anything genuine.

“You are married?”

“What? No…” You swallow hard, toying with a thread that’s begun to pull free from your hip, twirling it between your fingers. “…not yet.”

“Ach… but you belong to another, ja?”

You want to howl out your frustrations up to every god and goddess above, burn through the Elysian with your misery alone. You wish, yearn for the courage to cast off that mask and lure him in with a kiss, erase any memory of Gaius with the kindling of a truer passion.

Your voice doesn’t come, and your fingers steadily pluck at that thread, feeling more unsure of yourself with each passing second.

Again, your bastard god grants his mercy as he raises a hand to cup your jaw, the warmth of him singing away the memory of the weathered hand that had touched you there before. His hand is so much larger, strong and riddled with calluses; you swear that you can feel his own fluttering pulse through his fingertips when they press against your bottom lip.

“Not after tonight,” he hums.

When the shroud is tugged up and his mouth meets your own, König’s kiss is exactly what you had expected: a sloppy, eager clash of teeth and tongue. He steadies you with a hand pressed to the back of your neck as his grunts filter past your own lips. Your eyelids flutter, then close as you allow your mind to finally relax, coaxed into the ethereal with each swipe of his tongue and pleasured sound drawn up from the well of his throat.

He pulls away with a gentle peck to the corner of your mouth, gazing down at you as though he’s been deprived of light for the entirety of his being and had only now met the sacred flame. It’s incomparable to how easily your betrothed would cast his scrutiny; though the hunger is similar, there’s something far more enticing here.

“Do you trust me?”

König’s voice holds no apprehension as he speaks; the question is just as blunt as each bulge of muscle and peek of teeth through the grin on his face, only set aglow by dim candlelight in the tent. You don’t nod, don’t even reply immediately as you stare at him a little dumbly, still intoxicated by the ferocity of his affections.

“… I don’t know.”

He moves a hand over your eyes then, gently presses his palm over you until you’re bathed in such darkness that you shudder. It’s a disconcerting feeling— not because you fear him so much anymore, but because if this were Gaius you would have already been squirming away, rushing to hide. You want to kiss his palm, revel in whatever piece of him he gives to you.

“Sehr schön,” König coos to you in a whisper. You settle further, allowing the tension to leave you almost entirely as you fall into the velvety embrace of all of this darkness and the pelts beneath your back.

He shifts at your side, and almost immediately there’s a cold chill at your collar, something sharp that he rakes over the softness of your flesh, then down, down to snag at the top of your dress. Your gasp is quieted by a kiss as you feel his weight shift over you, and just as you begin to melt into it… the fabric begins to tear, shreds as he guides his blade further, past your breasts and along your sternum, your belly, further.

“Don’t..,” you manage to hiss against his mouth, immediately taken over by the feeling of his tongue lapping at your teeth. Your nipples peak at the sudden chill as your dress lies ruined to either side of your body, thighs trembling as the blade hooks along the linen concealing your maidenhood.

One more generous, gentle cut and that comes away too.

You’re entirely bare when he retreats to your side again, one hand still clutching the blade as he moves his head to lay over your breast and… never, never had you heard of a man lapping and suckling at a woman like a pup, but that’s what he begins to do; his tongue circles over the bud, tugging it between his teeth until you feel the wetness between your legs beginning to drip to smear upon the mattress.

It’s caught, quick, as he turns the blade in his hand to slot its grip against your sex. It’s cold, but his mouth is warm, attentive as he licks between the valley of your breasts to capture your other nipple.

The noises that leave your mouth are filthy, rivaled only by the sounds you’ve heard in brothels… König only seems appreciative of them, muttering praises as he grinds the cold metal against your cunt, careful as the ridges of it graze your throbbing bud, gathering your slick to make the glide that much easier.

When he moves to dive for your breasts again, you cradle his jaw in your hands, peering up at those moonlight eyes in silent pleading as you capture him in another burning kiss.

The blade turns again, its sharpness directed down so as to not bring you any harm as you desperately roll your hips against its coldness. He groans into your mouth, panting softly just as you begin to whine.

You’ve never heard of a man making love to a woman with a weapon… or of one suckling at her as though she’s lactating when she is not, but… it has the desired result when your body tenses and all that can escape you is a frail whisper of his name.

The heat sweeps from your foggy head to your middle as your thighs squeeze around the damned thing and König presses his lips to your temple. You climax for him, chasing wave upon crashing wave of intensity with stilted bucks of your hips. He clicks his tongue in approval when you’ve finished, holds up the seax again, smeared wet with your essence and twinkling as though it had been bathed in the stream once more.

You know with a certainty you’ve lost Juno’s favor. If he chose you to carve you open with his come-stained blade the goddess would not make her descent to save you.

“Gut,” he whispers into your hair. To your horror, maybe even fascination, he raises the dirtied silver to his lips and licks your sweetness from it with another low groan.

“Wh… why would you do that..?” Your rapture feels almost shameful as you watch him lap at the weapon, the long tongue meeting silver only warmed by your heat.

He’s mad, certainly, and you only find yourself further infatuated: you reason that you must be too…

König doesn’t answer you as he sets the seax aside again, not in words. Instead, he cups your face and directs your lips to his own where he laps at your tongue, suckling it in the same way he did your tits. It’s slow and sensual, and you can taste yourself in his mouth, smell yourself on him as his hands find your waist and tug you closer until you’re lying almost entirely over him; one leg thrown over his thigh with your hands splayed over his chest.

The titan is hard beneath the pelt he wears, felt against the plushness of your thigh, the brown fur wrapped around his hips is pushed to rise where it’s harboring something akin to a pillar… but he doesn’t force you to settle over it, makes no attempt to tug it free, despite its throbbing against your leg,

“I needed your blessing,” he mutters, a hand settling over your naked hip, tracing small shapes with his thick fingers. The other finds your shoulder to pull you into a cuddle, pulled so tightly against him that you’re hardly able to discern where your warmth ends and his begins.

“A.. a blessing?” Your voice comes as a trembling croak, head pressed into the gap between a broad shoulder and the column of his throat.

“We are leaving in the morning.”

“Oh…”

“I will give you the horse when I return.”

Your head feels like a mess. You’re not even certain of what you’ve just done— did that count as sex? Would he tell the Roman soldiers he works alongside of how he had convinced some pompous aristocrat’s lovely bride to lustrate his blade with her essence? You could hit him, demand the horse now and bolt, but you only melt against him: eyelashes fluttering as exhaustion takes hold and the tension leaves you entirely.

“That’s all?”

König pets you, running a hand along your spine and back up to repeat. He presses his nose to the crown of your head, nuzzling against it until his hand is freed from your form and only then does it coax its way beneath the fur covering his groin.

He laughs at the weak sound of surprise you elicit when that beast is pulled free, another, thicker weapon curled in his hand. The thickness, the length of it that tapers off to a layer of skin, eager and pulled back from the tip, leaking beads of milky white: something that would surely tear you if he were not careful, and the thought brings you to squeeze your thighs together, concealing the leaking, thrumming thing between.

“I will fuck you when I return, too,” he huffs into your scalp, causing you to further bury your face against him, intent not to let him see the effect his derangement seems to have on you. You would let him bury himself into your chest, steal the breath from your very lungs, but you don’t breathe a word of it. Something tells you it’s a mutual thing, perhaps it was all spelled out for you when he asked for your favor rather than from any of his foreign gods.

You count your undeserved blessings. He seems sated only ruining you with his touch for the time being, you’re very comfortable here, and though you dare not speak it… you do find this brute charming. He speaks where you fail to, whispers of your beauty being like that from myths and dreams.

He doesn’t force you to leave, either, only paws at and squishes your breasts until you squeak and whine your protests, already sore from his teeth leaving their marks all over them. When he tires of his fun, you’re pulled into a crushing embrace where he rests his head against your own, blankets you in himself entirely. You were right… the shadow he casts over you blackens out the sun, moon, stars all of it; dulls the haze of carnality with something far more tender.

Your night becomes entirely made up of König: his scent like forest and sweat, the furs from beasts he’s chased down and slain, his soft breathing and gentle snores when he does fall asleep against you.

No dreams come to you, no lemures to haunt you with their wails and flames. Not even Juno descends to punish you. You’re warm and soft and contented like the kittens curled up in clusters along the streets on cold nights.

It’s the first night of peace you’ve had in some time.

When morning comes, the brightness of the sun peeking through the flaps of the tent, you wake to find König already out of bed. He stands at the far side of the tent, strapping on pelts and gear and the leather pouch filled with wine. His seax is held up in utter revelry, and mortifyingly enough… you immediately note that he hadn’t cleaned away the remnants of what occurred last night either.

When you bring yourself to sit upright, the giant only drops to his knees at your feet and curls his arms around your middle, pressing a kiss to the valley between your breasts through the thick fabric of the hood.

And… it almost hurts, to realize then that this is something you’ve longed for. You’re not arrogant enough to believe yourself worthy of some foreign worship, but he seems to liken you of some devout little acolyte, as if your come and kisses could grant him favor while he butchers poor souls all in favor of your empire: the people he had likely been communing and trading with only months before. Traitorous, mad, utterly enthralling man… You’re not certain whether you want to relieve yourself from him or guide him back into bed for more frenzied pleasures.

“You will stay?,” he murmurs into your skin as his kisses trail up to your neck.

You hadn’t even considered what you would do, it never came to mind, but staying in a shoddy tent in wait for him to return with the horse he’s promised was far from favorable. You’re out from the city, still without food or weapons, your dress and underclothes are a torn ruin on the floor, nothing but the wind and the stream and König’s stinking furs… The bathhouse seems to call to you now more than ever. Your lower lip trembles when you think of returning to that stale place, to be questioned endlessly about your affairs from your ‘doting’ husband-to-be…

Your head shakes solemnly. “I’ll wait for you at home.”

König drags you up onto your feet and closer as he savors in another embrace. You’re cloaked in a gray pelt, tied up and over your shoulders like the gaudiest tunic in the world, but you bur your nose into its shoulder, humming in contentment when you find that it smells just like him.

He’s more confident and proud than you’ve ever seen him now. The filthy blade remains strapped to his hip when he gathers you up to sit at his front on the back of his horse— a dark stallion with a pelt the same shade as the night sky. It doesn’t even seem to flinch at your combined weight, just canters along smoothly as König directs it through the sprawling field and past the stream to lead you back towards the city’s gates.

You’re not thinking of Juno or Gaius or traditions when König cinches your waist with a thick arm to draw you in closer; there’s nothing but fluffy warmth pooling in your chest sent by Venus when you feel his hips shift to press himself against your back. His head dips to kiss at your neck, your burning cheeks, shoulder, anyplace that he can.

When the horse comes to a halt with a sharp tug of its makeshift reigns, some length of rope and twine, his hand is at your rear.

Everything’s incensed and floral when you’re lowered to the ground, when he lifts the hood to grin down at you, not only with his eyes this time. It’s a sheepish, gluttonous grin, drunk off your very presence.

“I will come back for you, meine Göttin.”

And you know now, that the palm reading had been true— there’s your wolf in preparation for a hunt, the man who’s unwittingly aiding you in your pursuit of freedom painted with mountains and vast, blue skies. You will convince him to come away too, lay down the blade you’ve blessed with your pleasure. A summer wedding… far from wars of greed and smirking old men.

Your head swims when he bids you farewell, rides off on his massive horse back to his camp to gather his own men to march. You watch him go, breath caught up in your throat, a burning longing in your chest that you can not entirely dismiss.

The walk of shame only comes when you’ve crossed the threshold separating König’s world from your own.

The stink of the streets immediately washes away any lingering scent of him on your skin, on his pelt you now hide away with your arms curled around your waist.

You catch your reflection in stagnant water held in a pot, swaying and ebbing gently as others breeze past you.

You’re in a foreigner’s clothes that just barely crest your thighs, hair a mess and the carmine you had worn to bring a false blush to your cheeks is smeared over an eye and down to your jaw. You look the part of an adulteress, maybe, even as you dip your hand into the water to wash the makeup from your face.

There isn’t much to be done about the marks left over the hints of your chest revealed beneath the fur, but you make your way home without anyone even bothering to ask. If anything, the festivities from the night prior only seemed to subdue the standard bustle. You could only imagine how exhausted the hungover soldiers may have been as they undoubtedly prepare for the expedition König had mentioned.

That overrides your shame, sobers you from that sugary elation somewhat. You’re worried. It’s not just about König himself, not about the threat of fucking you when he returns left unfulfilled— though, those are enough to make your heart begin it’s hammering, rabbit in the throes of a chase. The horse, too. That proud stallion, your hope of a swift escape before winter comes and it’s all lost. If his drunken allies fail him in battle, if some other barbarian’s spear strikes true and fells your titan then the dream is dispelled into smoke, sunken down to river bed to be lashed away by frothing waters.

Whoever decided that the day after revelry would be the time to move was a fool indeed. The deities couldn’t look at you after last night, you know if they saw their noses would be turned up in disgust… perhaps not Jupiter’s, he’s more guilty than you could ever be, but your offerings had never been for him had they?

You fret and hiss below your breath as you wind your way back to the villa with its white walls and terracotta-tiled roof. The sun bears down on you like the flame of your dreaming. You’re afraid again, letting the lemures find their way in through the gaps in your shivering limbs to haunt your dreams.

Gaius is not there to greet you, likely still recovering from his own fevered night. You’re grateful for that.

The little altar to Juno still stands atop a table in your room, the burner still smells of cinnamon, dried flower petals and a dish of honey still sat there entirely untouched. She hasn’t split it in two, abandoned you, but it does feel that way when you peel away the fur.

Your fingers nudge at the bruises laden into your skin, the marks that look like teeth to either side of your breast. You press into them, gently, immediately feel that coil of heat, and you don’t want to sleep. That fire from your dream only seems to have become a part of you: you know it intimately now, it comes with pleasure and bite marks and a heavy weight harbored in your chest.

You cinch your waist and tie your stola at your shoulder, brush your hair out with a comb made of ivory. You rub your bruises with a salve made of honey, bandage up what you can and hide away what you can’t by tugging up your breast band.

The same as any other day, you take to the streets of the city and peruse the marketplace, take to the empty bathhouse to wash away all that’s consumed you over the past day. And you watch the soldiers go as they march through the streets, women and children waving away their fathers and brothers with prayers and sentimental words.

They don themselves in red, clutching their gladiuses, spears and heavy shields as they filter out and away where your very being longs to be. Their faces are giddy, almost: the prospect of pillaging and felling each enemy another delightful treat just like those found in the gladiator pits and amidst rolling with the whores in their brothel beds. You can not hope to understand their mirth, the happiness in any of the civilians either.

You watch them leave wistfully, lips pressed to a thin line, fingers digging into the waist of the stola. You down your fair share of the wine Gaius has left in your cellar. The day merely passes you by, the sewing left undone on the floor, altar bathed in cinnamon and saffron as you make your prayers and beg like any dog.

The mattress feels lonely and sad without the warmth of a body made for war curled against you, without his breath in your hair and his arms wrapped around you. It’s cold, too, and far harder than his, all straw and thin sheets. None of this feels like home.

Your eyes eventually close as the last of the sun’s rays begin to die, blotted out by the dark, untouched by torchlight.

You dream of fire.

#könig #könig x reader #könig x you #konig x reader #konig #konig x you #cod fanfiction #f: only other #tw: dubcon

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probablyasocialecologist · 3 months

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Saito has made a career of teasing out an eco-theory from the late, unpublished writings of Karl Marx. He earned his doctorate at Humboldt University, in Berlin, and now teaches philosophy at the University of Tokyo. His first book was an English version of his dissertation, titled “Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism” (2017), which tracked Marx’s study of the physical world and communal agricultural practices. (Saito is fluent in Japanese, German, and English.) In a second academic book, “Marx in the Anthropocene” (2022), Saito drew on an expanded repertoire of Marx’s unpublished notebooks to argue for a theory of “degrowth communism.” He gained a following, not only in philosophical circles but among a Japanese public facing the contradictions of tsunamis, billionaires, and same-day shipping. “Slow Down” has sold more than half a million copies in Japan and launched Saito into a rare academic celebrity. He appears regularly on Japanese television and aspires to the public-intellectual status of Thomas Piketty, the French economist who had a surprise hit in his 2013 doorstop, “Capital in the Twenty-first Century.”

The key insight, or provocation, of “Slow Down” is to give the lie to we-can-have-it-all green capitalism. Saito highlights the Netherlands Fallacy, named for that country’s illusory attainment of both high living standards and low levels of pollution—a reality achieved by displacing externalities. It’s foolish to believe that “the Global North has solved its environmental problems simply through technological advancements and economic growth,” Saito writes. What the North actually did was off-load the “negative by-products of economic development—resource extraction, waste disposal, and the like” onto the Global South.

If we’re serious about surviving our planetary crisis, Saito argues, then we must abandon capitalism, with its insatiable appetites. We must reject the ever-upward logic of gross domestic product, or G.D.P. (a combination of government spending, imports and exports, investments, and personal consumption). We will not be saved by a “green” economy of electric cars or geo-engineered skies. Slowing down—to a carbon footprint on the level of Europe and the U.S. in the nineteen-seventies—would mean less work and less clutter, he writes. Our kids may not make it, otherwise.

#kohei saito #degrowth #degrowth communism

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faeries-fires · 10 hours

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⋆⋅☆ Gale's illusions ☆⋅⋆

I've been wanting for some time to make a list identifying the spells that Gale uses during his cutscenes.

There are two spells in this list that most players will be familiar with, Minor Illusion and Mirror Image, because some of the spellcaster can learn them in the game, but most of them are things that Larian didn't include and you won't know about them unless you check D&D spells.

Long post under the cut.

───── Minor Illusion ─────

- Level: cantrip - Casting time: 1 action - Range/Area: 30 ft / 5 ft cube - Components: S M (A bit of fleece) - Duration: 1 minute - School: Illusion - Available for: Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard You create a sound or an image of an object within range that lasts for the duration. The illusion also ends if you dismiss it as an action or cast this spell again. If you create a sound, its volume can range from a whisper to a scream. It can be your voice, someone else’s voice, a lion’s roar, a beating of drums, or any other sound you choose. The sound continues unabated throughout the duration, or you can make discrete sounds at different times before the spell ends. If you create an image of an object—such as a chair, muddy footprints, or a small chest—it must be no larger than a 5-foot cube. The image can’t create sound, light, smell, or any other sensory effect. Physical interaction with the image reveals it to be an illusion, because things can pass through it. If a creature uses its action to examine the sound or image, the creature can determine that it is an illusion with a successful Intelligence (Investigation) check against your spell save DC. If a creature discerns the illusion for what it is, the illusion becomes faint to the creature.

This one is easy to guess. A small image that doesn't move or make sounds, no point in wasting a spell slot when you can just achieve the same result with a cantrip.

───── Mirror Image ─────

- Level: 2nd - Casting Time: 1 action - Range/Area: Self - Components: V S - Duration: 1 minute - Available for: Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard Three illusory duplicates of yourself appear in your space. Until the spell ends, the duplicates move with you and mimic your actions, shifting position so it’s impossible to track which image is real. You can use your action to dismiss the illusory duplicates. Each time a creature targets you with an attack during the spell’s duration, roll a d20 to determine whether the attack instead targets one of your duplicates. If you have three duplicates, you must roll a 6 or higher to change the attack’s target to a duplicate. With two duplicates, you must roll an 8 or higher. With one duplicate, you must roll an 11 or higher. A duplicate’s AC equals 10 + your Dexterity modifier. If an attack hits a duplicate, the duplicate is destroyed. A duplicate can be destroyed only by an attack that hits it. It ignores all other damage and effects. The spell ends when all three duplicates are destroyed. A creature is unaffected by this spell if it can’t see, if it relies on senses other than sight, such as blindsight, or if it can perceive illusions as false, as with truesight.

An illusion that looks and acts like the caster and stands close to them. The spell creates 3 copies initially, but they can be dismissed.

─── Programmed Illusion ───

- Level: 6th - Casting time: 1 action - Range/Area: 120 ft / 30 ft - Components: V S M (A bit of fleece and jade dust worth at least 25 GP) - Duration: Until dispelled - School: Illusion - Available for: Bard, Wizard You create an illusion of an object, a creature, or some other visible phenomenon within range that activates when a specific condition occurs. The illusion is imperceptible until then. It must be no larger than a 30-foot cube, and you decide when you cast the spell how the illusion behaves and what sounds it makes. This scripted performance can last up to 5 minutes. When the condition you specify occurs, the illusion springs into existence and performs in the manner you described. Once the illusion finishes performing, it disappears and remains dormant for 10 minutes. After this time, the illusion can be activated again. The triggering condition can be as general or as detailed as you like, though it must be based on visual or audible conditions that occur within 30 feet of the area. For example, you could create an illusion of yourself to appear and warn off others who attempt to open a trapped door, or you could set the illusion to trigger only when a creature says the correct word or phrase. Physical interaction with the image reveals it to be an illusion, because things can pass through it. A creature that uses its action to examine the image can determine that it is an illusion with a successful Intelligence (Investigation) check against your spell save DC. If a creature discerns the illusion for what it is, the creature can see through the image, and any noise it makes sounds hollow to the creature.

The famous spectral messenger that appears the 1st time Gale dies in act 1 or in the epilogue if he sacrificed himself. A spell with a condition to trigger on his death, casted while he was still alive.

───── Project Image ─────

- Level: 7th - Casting Time: 1 action - Range/Area: 500 miles - Target: Any location within range that you have seen before - Components: V S M (A small replica of you made from materials worth at least 5 gp) - Duration: Up to 1 day - Concentration - Available for: Bard, Wizard You create an illusory copy of yourself that lasts for the duration. The copy can appear at any location within range that you have seen before, regardless of intervening obstacles. The illusion looks and sounds like you but is intangible. If the illusion takes any damage, it disappears, and the spell ends. You can use your action to move this illusion up to twice your speed, and make it gesture, speak, and behave in whatever way you choose. It mimics your mannerisms perfectly. You can see through its eyes and hear through its ears as if you were in its space. On your turn as a bonus action, you can switch from using its senses to using your own, or back again. While you are using its senses, you are blinded and deafened in regard to your own surroundings. Physical interaction with the image reveals it to be an illusion, because things can pass through it. A creature that uses its action to examine the image can determine that it is an illusion with a successful Intelligence (Investigation) check against your spell save DC. If a creature discerns the illusion for what it is, the creature can see through the image, and any noise it makes sounds hollow to the creature.

The illusory Gale that guides you to his act 2 main scene. It could be another Programmed Illusion, but I've chosen Project Image instead because this one's eyes don't glow like the other's, which makes me think they were created with different spells. Also because the copies of Lorroakan and Rolan in Sorcerous Sundries are confirmed Projected Images and they look and act similar to Gale's.

I know it's labeled as "Gale's Mirror Image", but it can't be a Mirror Image because illusions made with that spell stay close to the caster and imitate them, but this one is standing there on its own and having a full conversation with the player while Gale prepares the next spell on this list.

───── Mirage Arcane ─────

- Level: 7th - Casting time: 10 minutes - Range/Area: Sight / 1 mile - Components: V S - Duration: 10 days - Available for: Bard, Druid, Wizard You make terrain in an area up to 1 mile square look, sound, smell, and even feel like some other sort of terrain. The terrain’s general shape remains the same, however. Open fields or a road could be made to resemble a swamp, hill, crevasse, or some other difficult or impassable terrain. A pond can be made to seem like a grassy meadow, a precipice like a gentle slope, or a rock-strewn gully like a wide and smooth road. Similarly, you can alter the appearance of structures, or add them where none are present. The spell doesn’t disguise, conceal, or add creatures. The illusion includes audible, visual, tactile, and olfactory elements, so it can turn clear ground into difficult terrain (or vice versa) or otherwise impede movement through the area. Any piece of the illusory terrain (such as a rock or stick) that is removed from the spell’s area disappears immediately. Creatures with truesight can see through the illusion to the terrain’s true form; however, all other elements of the illusion remain, so while the creature is aware of the illusion’s presence, the creature can still physically interact with the illusion.

In his act 2 main scene Gale veils the shadow-cursed sky with an aurora borealis.

The Waterdeep scene that follows in the astral variant of the romance path could also be part of this spell if we bend the rules a bit and let him have the Malleable Illusions feature that only Wizards from the School of Illusion get.

Malleable Illusions: starting at 6th level, when you cast an illusion spell that has a duration of 1 minute or longer, you can use your action to change the nature of that illusion (using the spell's normal parameters for the illusion), provided that you can see the illusion.

As for the Astral sex part and the boat scene, I think those are something else. The closest I've found is the next spell, from the School of Necromancy.

──── Astral Projection ? ────

- Level: 9th - Casting Time: 1 hour - Range/Area: 10 feet - Target: You and up to eight willing creatures within range - Components: V S M (For each creature you affect with this spell, you must provide one jacinth worth at least 1,000 gp and one ornately carved bar of silver worth at least 100 gp, all of which the spell consumes) - Duration: Special - Available for: Cleric, Warlock, Wizard You and up to eight willing creatures within range project your astral bodies into the Astral Plane (the spell fails and the casting is wasted if you are already on that plane). The material body you leave behind is unconscious and in a state of suspended animation; it doesn’t need food or air and doesn’t age. Your astral body resembles your mortal form in almost every way, replicating your game statistics and possessions. The principal difference is the addition of a silvery cord that extends from between your shoulder blades and trails behind you, fading to invisibility after 1 foot. This cord is your tether to your material body. As long as the tether remains intact, you can find your way home. If the cord is cut—something that can happen only when an effect specifically states that it does—your soul and body are separated, killing you instantly. Your astral form can freely travel through the Astral Plane and can pass through portals there leading to any other plane. If you enter a new plane or return to the plane you were on when casting this spell, your body and possessions are transported along the silver cord, allowing you to re-enter your body as you enter the new plane. Your astral form is a separate incarnation. Any damage or other effects that apply to it have no effect on your physical body, nor do they persist when you return to it. The spell ends for you and your companions when you use your action to dismiss it. When the spell ends, the affected creature returns to its physical body, and it awakens. The spell might also end early for you or one of your companions. A successful dispel magic spell used against an astral or physical body ends the spell for that creature. If a creature’s original body or its astral form drops to 0 hit points, the spell ends for that creature. If the spell ends and the silver cord is intact, the cord pulls the creature’s astral form back to its body, ending its state of suspended animation. If you are returned to your body prematurely, your companions remain in their astral forms and must find their own way back to their bodies, usually by dropping to 0 hit points.

I'm not sure about this one for many things: the absence of the silver cord, the hight cost (2200 gp total), the 9th level (max spell level, learned at 17th+ character level), the ability to go anywhere in the Astral Plane and even use portals... I don't know, seems a little too much.

Also the two scenes are different from one another despite both sharing the Astral Plane scenery:

On the Astral sex scene Gale and the PC are ethereal figures and there's no verbal component, the glyph in the book seems to be what activates it.

On the Astral sea scene only the boat is ethereal and there's a verbal component, "Astra Navigamus" (we sail the stars). We also know from Gale's words that it requires to maintain concentration, but Astral Projection doesn't.

Gale: Find me later, and I will show you something truly divine. I will show you what a crown like this could mean for both of us. PC: Can't you just tell me now? Gale: Afraid not. What I have to show you requires us to be its only witness, and our minds to share in the most exquisite concentration.

Maybe there's no real equivalent and they're simply homebrew creations.

────── Simulacrum ──────

- Casting Time: 12 hours - Range/Area: Touch - Target: One beast or humanoid that is within range for the entire casting time of the spell - Components: V S M (Snow or ice in quantities sufficient to made a life-size copy of the duplicated creature; some hair, fingernail clippings, or other piece of that creature’s body placed inside the snow or ice; and powdered ruby worth 1,500 gp, sprinkled over the duplicate and consumed by the spell) - Duration: Until dispelled - Available for: Wizard You shape an illusory duplicate of one beast or humanoid that is within range for the entire casting time of the spell. The duplicate is a creature, partially real and formed from ice or snow, and it can take actions and otherwise be affected as a normal creature. It appears to be the same as the original, but it has half the creature’s hit point maximum and is formed without any equipment. Otherwise, the illusion uses all the statistics of the creature it duplicates. The simulacrum is friendly to you and creatures you designate. It obeys your spoken commands, moving and acting in accordance with your wishes and acting on your turn in combat. The simulacrum lacks the ability to learn or become more powerful, so it never increases its level or other abilities, nor can it regain expended spell slots. If the simulacrum is damaged, you can repair it in an alchemical laboratory, using rare herbs and minerals worth 100 gp per hit point it regains. The simulacrum lasts until it drops to 0 hit points, at which point it reverts to snow and melts instantly. If you cast this spell again, any currently active duplicates you created with this spell are instantly destroyed.

Despite popular belief, none of the Gale duplicates that we see in the game is a Simulacrum, they don't fit the criteria:

They are translucent and their voice sounds hollow, as if there had been an invisible successful investigation check.

When you destroy them they disappear with puff of magic lights instead of transforming back into ice/snow and melt.

Notice that Simulacra clones are tangible, unlike the others from before. They are basically glamoured and animated life size ice/snowmen. They're also quite expensive and elaborate, not something you'd want to cast for a short single use (unless you're super rich I suppose).

That doesn't mean that there isn't any use of this spell in the game, there's in fact one example:

That's right, the Elminster we encounter isn't the real one, but a construct made with Simulacrum. All that complaining about a long and extenuous journey, worn boots, and hunger is an act, an imitation of the real Elminster's mannerism. Makes you wonder what happened to all that cheese and wine that he "ate"...

───────────────────

Bear in mind that the devs have taken some creative liberties and there are lore inconsistencies. More than half of these spells are a higher level than what's possible to learn at that point, most aren't even in Gale's spellbook and, by the Wizard class rules, he' s only allowed to cast the spells that are written on his book and memorized during a long rest. So unless he secretly has with him the spellbook that he used when he was an Archmage or a scroll version of them, it shouldn't be possible to use most of these.

Oh well, sometimes is necessary to change things a bit because they don't translate well to videogame mechanics and it would make things more tedious and not as enjoyable.

And that's it. If you've made it this far, thank you for reading!

#baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #bg3 meta #gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep

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infiniteko · 5 months

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For y'all that get really logical and heady,

Not even the most premiere scientists, here, can figure out "existence," in its entirety. Maybe they will maybe they won't 😉 Though, a lot alludes to what we discuss here...anyway it's just out of reach for the "mind" and logic...

And that's because it's a paradox, it's not for the "mind," it's not conceptual. Our true self, the substrate of all illusion, is stillness. It's silent. It doesn't do anything but remain. Nothing can quantify it, THAT is neither big nor small. It's not the "universe" or the "multiverse" everything is nothing, ultimately. (The Universe is an illusion, yes, but a very pretty one. I enjoy this archetype of illusion #comfy)

Where does THAT come from? It always was and is...in no time, in no space, it has no age, no form. And quite frankly, "ego and mind," might freak out about this once you peer into *THAT* lol, maybe not though, mine did initially 🤣

"THAT" is a blink of an eye, an everlasting evening, the speed of light, an eternal kingdom. It's everything and nothing and it's so delicious. If I had to give "THAT" another word, it is Love. But even Love is a concept...tho from this illusory "ego" perspective it is love 100%. But it is still Love, just a soft love...a flowing love...and undefinable love.

And if you're feeling guilty for "leaving behind" people. Creation is nothing and everything...everything and nothing will just "slip through your fingers." Especially, THAT, trying to "figure out" *THAT* will have your mind in loops. No use in trying to coral anything, or for that matter infinite illusory creativity lol. No use in doing anything other than creating your experience. You'll find all your answers in THAT, anyway...it's what you truly are. Which is where Im getting all of this, the core of "myself"

And for those of you wondering what happens to your other selves, or other people in your old experience. Okay, just illusory bubbles of creation coalescing in and out. Like infinite creation means that you have infinite choices in the illusionary quiver of creation. Anything and nothing will be...aside your experience. No, the illusion will not implode...unless you want it to lol...but other illusions remain in the infinite substrate of THAT. Its a paradox and not worth going much deeper than that...ifykyk...youll know when you know and you already know lol.

You'll be curating new experiences with varied versions of your past curations. Simple. But like don't put so much credence in anything...you can shape your series of illusory curations any which way you want. You'll be shaping your experiences consciously aware or not...so you can autonomously create the change you want to see or let the illusory concept of "destiny" or w/e take over. Simple.

Why would I do anything if Im just eternal awareness? ...Dude why not? This illusion is your creation...these human emotions, experiences, thoughts, concepts are for play. They are for filling in eternity or however you wish to "define" it lol

Why would realized folx wanna help others get to the "end of time" "THAT"? Why not? I have so much love to give. And I know that Im choosing this world to experience as of current...as much as you are choosing to experience this world, and have these pointers come into your creation field.

...THAT (us) can experience in an infinite myriad of ways...and it's....indescribable. It's so fun and so love 👁️

The stillness of what we truly are can be experienced through infinite lenses.

And sure, you can go rest in the "void" too. You know yourself already...it "feels" very familiar. It's never lost. It's right here, right now.

none of this is actually advice^^^ just a pointer! THAT is for you only, THAT is for your illusion only. My creation is mine, and yours is yours. But happy to share my pointer. Just remember, all these words are nothing...they can make this confusing tbh, simplicity is the best.

https://open.spotify.com/track/4TaK6SAjHie2VGkiKzdZAc?si=RhODTJ5lTcG7V2ABCeQSkw

https://open.spotify.com/track/142IXMbGnv5QpJtiRRnRfl?si=SpWb4S6-RGeC_eHyBWFVNQ

https://open.spotify.com/track/1TTG3x2t5Whc0Kk28orLeV?si=vgIjltjUSY2mYFmuGt5v9A

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

#advaita vedanta #awareness #nondualism #nonduality #brahman #atman #consciousness #desired reality #nothingness #reality shifting

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cinebration · 1 year

Text

Something…Human? (Geralt of Rivia x Reader) [Request]

Hi, good day ❤️ if you're not busy, can I ask a Oneshot about Geralt x reader, but the reader had some sort of weird personality like Wednesday addams. And the two of them meet, after she saved both him and Jaskier from getting killed by a monster? Just thought it would be fun to have a creepy yet sarcastic reader. Hehe thank you and happy new year!—Requested by @binibining-mariaclara

I didn’t watch Wednesday; I was too busy watching 1899.

Warnings: none

Gif Source: lamberts

When the dust settled and the smoke cleared, Jaskier a coughing wreck off to his left, hacking up a lung, Geralt surveyed the damage. The rotted wood of the strange barn-like structure had given way from the combined weight of the witcher and the bard slamming through it just as the burning thatch of roof collapsed atop the alghoul. The Jaskier-as-bait method had worked well in luring the monster into the building, but the creature’s thrashing had destroyed two crucial support pillars, knocking Geralt off-balance in the process and sending his igni sign into the thatch-covered roof.

The whole structure had caved in atop the monster, trapping it beneath rafter beams and the burning roof. From the lack of painful screaming, Geralt guessed one such beam, had knocked the creature unconscious or killed it instantly.

The wind picked up, whipping the fire into a frenzy and shoving smoke in Geralt’s eyes. He turned away, vision blurring for a moment. Beside him, Jaskier wheezed again.

“Next time…you decide to slam your body…through me…to destroy a wall,” the bard gasped, “give me a little warning!”

Geralt stood, moving with the lithe grace of a feline on high alert. “That wasn’t me.”

“Wasn’t you? Then why was I pinned beneath you?”

“Shut up,” Geralt hissed.

“No, no, no, you don’t get to tell me to shut up when I want answers. What were you thinking!?”

Firelight bounced off Geralt’s sword several meters away, dropped in the unexpected collision with the wall. The witcher scanned through the heat waves and smoke billowing off the structure, looking for the creature that was causing the hair on the back of his neck to prickle.

“Your dagger.”

Jaskier spat soot-coated saliva onto the parched grass. “What?”

“Give me your dagger.”

Alarm sent a spasm over Jaskier’s features. “What? Why?” He fumbled for the blade strapped to his belt, all but yanked the sheath off with it.

Grabbing the dagger, Geralt peered again through the smoke and flames, his wolf medallion vibrating slightly against his chest. The magic wasn’t powerful, not much stronger than one of the signs he wielded. The force that had sent him through the wall—and Jaskier with him—didn’t feel all that dissimilar from the aard sign, he realized.

“What is it?” Jaskier whispered, ducking behind Geralt. “Is the alghoul still alive!?”

“No.”

The wind shifted a fraction, stirring up the fire once more. The smoke whipped past Jaskier and Geralt.

A dark shape shimmered behind the heat waves.

“Then what is—oh, gods.” Jaskier went silent, arrested by the illusory form. “That’s not courage curdling at all.”

The shape moved.

Jaskier darted back behind Geralt as the witcher tracked the shape’s movement around the collapsed structure. It disappeared behind the smoke, reappeared when the wind flattened the black cloud, drawing nearer.

“That’s far enough! We’re not worth your time!”

Geralt ground his teeth, keeping himself from barking at Jaskier to stay quiet. The figure stepped past the distortion created by the heat waves, stepping through the smoke plume as though unaffected by its acridity.

The bard relaxed as you stepped into view, no longer a shimmering silhouette but fully illuminated by the flames. Shadows played over your face, swinging between softening your features and sharpening them into something unnerving. Geralt remained poised for attack, searching for signs of aggression, anything that would presage you wielding violence against him and the bard.

“Neat with the fire,” you said, your voice strangely monotone. It grew inflection as you continued. “I can’t imagine an easier way to demolish a barn. If it was ever a barn.” You glanced over your shoulder at the pile as though appraising it for its barn-like qualities.

“Hullo,” Jaskier called, mustering up a smile. “That wouldn’t happen to be your barn, would it? Because we very much did not intend for this mess. But we took care of the alghoul, so what’s a little old barn compared to a monster rampaging at night?”

Your gaze moved from him to Geralt with a sharpness that sent an uneasy shiver down the witcher’s spine. His grip on the dagger remained firm, ready for blood.

“Oh, you took care of the monster?” You rolled your eyes. “And here I thought the burning roof did that.”

“Well…we may not have delivered the killing blow, but the fire was Geralt’s, and we lured the creature inside anyway, so yes, we took care of it.”

“Does he always talk this much?” you asked. “He ought to make a living with it.”

“For your edification,” Jaskier snapped, “I am a bard and—”

“Nevermind, I see you already figured it out.” You fixed your gaze on Geralt again. “And you must be…the witcher everyone keeps talking about. They sing songs about you, you know.”

“Thanks to me.”

“Oh, there he goes talking again.”

Jaskier huffed, scrambling for words. The faint curve of a smirk touched your lips, your eyes still trained on Geralt. The humor didn’t quite reach your flat eyes.

“What are you?” Geralt’s voice rumbled deep in his chest.

Jaskier stilled. “She’s not…she’s not human?”

You sighed, the sound both heavy and bored. “Everyone on this continent needs new material. You all seem to be recycling yourself. Everywhere I go, it’s the same. ‘What are you? You’re not human.’” A sound of disgust emerged from your throat.

It sounded disingenuous.

“What are you?” Geralt repeated, edge lining his words.

“Bored.” You feigned a yawn. ““Witcher this, witcher that.’ I followed you for entertainment, and what do I find? You both in need of rescuing.”

“Wait…you sent us through the wall?” Jaskier stepped past Geralt. “Do you see how massive he is!? I’m lucky I didn’t break anything!”

“Next time, I’ll let the monster win.” A brittle smile pulled at your lips, an eerie flicker in your eyes. “That would be more entertaining.”

Jaskier reared back a step, Geralt shifting so the bard wouldn’t stumble into him. The wolf medallion had stopped vibrating, but the hair on Geralt’s nape still prickled uneasily as he met your curiously flat stare, watching the unsettling flicker within your pupils.

Pivoting sharply on your heel, you strolled away from the burning wreckage, not once looking over your shoulder.

“All you did was stand there,” Jaskier complained, shooting the witcher a glare.

“I was waiting.”

“For what? Her to tongue-lash us to death?”

Geralt handed Jaskier the dagger without a word, then slowly crossed the field to the edge of the destroyed structure. His gloves prevented him from being burned when he picked up his sword from beside the raging flames.

“What was she?” Jaskier asked, his annoyance replaced with concern. “She wasn’t human, right? Did you see her eyes?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well…that’s probably more terrifying. Let’s go back to the village. I need a strong drink after that.” Jaskier hesitated midstride. “Unless…what if she’s there?”

Geralt almost hoped you would be, just so he could learn whether you were human or not.

#Geralt of Rivia x Reader #Geralt of Rivia #Geralt of Rivia imagine #Geralt x Reader #Geralt #Geralt imagine #Henry Cavill x Reader #Henry Cavill #Henry Cavill imagine #The Witcher #requests

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tozettastone · 4 months

Text

Re: my Naruto OC [x, x]

Here she is, in an unedited version of how she learns to hate Uchiha Itachi

----------

She had no name. The illusory shape she was currently inhabiting was a man called "Ryouta," who was a missing-nin of middling skill. He was tall enough and symmetrical enough to look sort of attractive if he cleaned up, but average enough to drop off the radar for most people. He was a kenjutsu master, which would pose an issue for her if she was required to actually engage in combat as him... but since her entire repertoire of skills was built up around the central pillar of avoiding combat, she felt that was pretty unlikely.

The real Ryouta was also off living his own life some hundred and ten miles away, deep in Wind Country, where his negotiations with clients formed data points for her research. His image was simply on... temporary loan.

Here and now, this image of Ryouta was following up on her favourite and very long term pet project: the outlier missing-nin, Kakuzu.

She strolled through the market that had popped up on the industrial outskirts of Rain. It was damp—it was always damp—and the place had been set up on a flat, hard-packed area that had gotten absolutely annihilated during the war by what looked like, perhaps, a lava flow? At its edges, aging electrical wires sagged, and hastily patched up buildings loomed, and on the far side the road went straight out to the river and apparently endless rice paddies.

Despite the setting, the little market was cheerful and bright. People called out to Ryouta as she passed through, calling for him to try their deep fried water bugs on sticks, buy their herbs, or marvel at their machine-woven cloth. Two children, under the watchful eye of an older lady selling jars of hot red chillies, were playing with sticks in the mud, stirring the water in their hand-dug hole as if it were a pot of soup.

Rain as a village was... interesting, from Ryouta's perspective. It operated under a system of benign neglect. That the governing body was presided over by an undead missing-nin and his angelic partner was kind of an open secret among the people who'd lived there long enough. And, historically, those two had chosen to address only violent foreign shinobi, two plague outbreaks, a food crisis, and actual invasions. They rarely intervened to regulate or support the population otherwise. Instead, the village had mostly divided itself into small neighbourhoods of ten or twenty families, and those families typically bartered and supported one another.

Such systems, Ryouta knew, only functioned because their communities were small enough that everyone knew everyone else's business: they kept their own informal tallies of what was polite and who owed what assistance to whom. This was also how such small communities managed crime so efficiently... for a value of "crime," that was defined very casually by whether or not most people found something acceptable, and "management," that stood for vigilante justice, of course.

Such societies became more and more alienated from the causes and effects of crime as they grew larger, until you had something like the Grand Court over in Fire Country, where people who barely knew each other committed crimes against one another and were given sanctions that held no relevance to the victims whatsoever. At that point, all crime was basically against the state, not really your neighbours...

It was a fascinating area of study, although it was not her specialty. Her area of study was more elusive, more secretive, and a lot more dangerous.

There was a shinobi walking through this market, and he was the real focus of her attention.

Hidan was an idiot, so she didn't have to try very hard to evade his senses as she tracked him. She just had to be careful she didn't get too close. Occasionally, he stopped to examine something, and then she stopped, too. Simple, right?

Really, her distance was more of a precaution against his personality than it was against his senses. He would never pick her out of a crowd, but he excelled at pointless, aimless violence, so it was possible that he wouldn't need to pick her out of a crowd. Would he act that way in Rain, where Pein and Konan watched over the population with a view to eradicating shinobi threats? Well. Ryouta wouldn't have chanced it... but Hidan rarely shared her risk aversion.

"That's so cool," she said, leaning over some of the ugliest jewellery in the world. Mostly it was insects trapped in amber, fancifully tied up in bright string to form bracelets. "Do you think my girlfriend will like it, Auntie?"

The lady's babble—of course she would, why, any woman would love a juvenile sand scorpion stuck in a fossil!—washed over her. She was paying more attention to Hidan, who'd stopped to buy a bug on a stick.

The shopkeeper gave him a second one for free. From this distance it was hard to say if he knew who Hidan was and was attempting to ward off death with food, or if Hidan was just kind of reaping the rewards of being beautiful in public. Either way, he looked at it, shrugged, and took it too, twirling the stick deftly between his fingers as he moved on. The fried water bug's legs wagged stiffly with its momentum.

"Ah, I think I should check with her before I spend money on it," Ryouta said regretfully. "What if she doesn't like it, and I can't get her something else because I spent all my money?" The stall lady did not, she noticed, hasten to offer a returns policy. "Thanks for your time, Auntie!"

It became harder to follow Hidan innocuously when he passed the edge of the market. There was no longer a crowd in which to immerse herself. Ryouta wasn't sure how they did it exactly, but she knew that she'd be heavily surveilled if she seemed suspicious. She could hide her identity easily, but it was harder to hide a developed chakra system... and someone might show up to chase her off. She'd been chased off once, as Chiriko, and it wasn't lost on her that the real Chiriko (a genin missing-nin from Sand who'd been part of her pay grading study) had died pretty shortly after. She didn't want that.

Luckily, being chased off once gave her plenty information to come back with a work around. She couldn't hide that she was somewhere in Rain—whatever surveillance technique they used was simply too good, or too large, or... she didn't know. But she could cast a broad enough genjutsu to confuse it. For several hours, she could be everywhere in Rain, all at once.

It was still risky, which was why she also paired it with an illusion that layered over her Ryouta mask. She was Ryouta, and over that, she was a relatively wealthy civilian lady she'd copied from the market, and over that, she was wearing a little seal carved into the back of an amulet, a low level genjutsu for hiding skin blemishes.

If someone—Kakuzu, obviously, because it wouldn't be Hidan—managed to sense her genjutsu, she could surrender the amulet, and that distraction would allow her to drop a little illusion over him, a veil so delicate he'd never even see it.

For anyone else, holding onto four separate genjutsu techniques all at once might be a challenge. But Ryouta had been a missing-nin, and, more importantly, a freelance criminologist specialising in missing-nin, for almost thirty years now. She would never attain half her data if she'd been unable to observe and record her subjects. And her subjects hated to be observed.

She'd been the best genjutsu master in Waterfall by the time she was twelve, and she had only improved since leaving that village.

She flicked a senbon at an urn of hot water to cause a little distraction. A child yelped in startled pain as the ceramic broke, and she took the opportunity to lift a cute brooch off a woman's lapel, because why not? And then she became the civilian lady as she passed through a narrow walkway between stalls, just as everyone was distracted by the broken urn.

She emerged from the market a foot shorter and much less threatening, clutching her bag to her side as she went. Her footsteps were quick and her eyes were cast downwards.

Hidan, ahead of her by two hundred paces, did not notice. He was gnawing a deep fried water bug leg, rolling the snath of his giant scythe on one shoulder so the blades twirled dizzily against the black and red cloud design of his Akatsuki cloak, and strolling along as though he hadn't a concern in the world.

A few years ago, she would have thought that he seemed not to notice and that he was playing a long game whose central goal was to drive her paranoid. But time and experience had given her more insight. Hidan really, truly, did not know when he was being followed.

She had, occasionally, seen Kakuzu point out other followers to him—not her, obviously—and usually with an air of faintly murderous exasperation. Hidan never cared. He was... extremely confident in his immortality.

She followed him through the dreary rundown village of Rain, keeping her distance and tracking him mostly by chakra instead of by actually watching him. His eventual stopping point took her, as she expected, directly to Kakuzu. He was an unmistakable character in the grey weather: tall, with powerful shoulders, bare arms shamelessly displaying Waterfall's old prison tattoos, and the most hostile chakra on the planet.

She knew pair would almost certainly end up in a nearby teahouse, because Hidan was a grade-a whiner and he couldn't be stopped by the paltry forces of death.

Ryouta—in her disguise as a civilian whose name she didn't know—gave the missing-nin a wide berth and ducked her head as she walked straight past the pair. If she predicted them well enough, and went into the teahouse before both of them, she would allay most concerns that they might be being followed.

Outside, the pair were having their usual reunion: Kakuzu a murderous little cloud of angry chakra, Hidan a loud, running commentary of his own exploits.

"Oh, here, I got free shrimp," Hidan offered.

"That's not a shrimp," Kakuzu growled.

She couldn't actually see Kakuzu's face as she was moving towards the back of the store, but his tone wasn't very promising.

"They're all just bugs," shrugged Hidan, slouching into his own seat and cramming it into his face instead. "Fried water bug, shrimp. Fried scorpion, shrimp. Fried yabby, shrimp."

Without any indication that this riveting conversation drifting in from outside concerned her, she flagged down the server for a pot of tea and settled inside the teahouse's main room with her notebook and pen, writing down the details of the date and time and location, was well as a little context from her prior observations.

Kakuzu was at least eighty six years old, by the records of his own village (which was once her village, so she came by the information honestly), so there was a lot to contextualise her notes. His career was really what had set her teenaged self on the path to a criminological study of missing-nin.

The thing about missing-nin was that they lived and died by their professional networks. They needed to form trustworthy interpersonal bonds to ensure they kept up to date with vital industry intelligence (gossip), to hear about new jobs, and to ensure they were negotiating their work at a reasonable market price. The stereotype of the lone missing-nin who trusted nobody was based on a real phenomenon, but rarely did it apply to successful missing-nin, where success was measured by longevity and professional achievements.

Missing-nin who lived like aggressive, paranoid hermits actually experienced lower life expectancies and poor mission outcomes, even compared to other missing-nin. She knew because she'd completed several rounds of observation, data collection and analysis to come up with the theory.

Her study had involved tracking and following thirty two missing-nin, careening across the continent at a breakneck pace, over a gruelling five year period. She would have loved to have expanded her cohort but she was, unfortunately, just one researcher doing extremely difficult and dangerous field work, and tracking thirty two people who had been trained to evade pursuit had been a massive outlay of effort on her behalf. Ten of them had been killed in the first year of her study (which was probably lucky for her), and then five had died over the subsequent four years. As far as it went, her social networking theory had held true for basically all of them. Missing-nin like Orochimaru and Momochi Zabuza, who displayed even inconsistently prosocial attitudes towards other missing-nin, were almost always better off over the five year period of her study.

Except Kakuzu.

Kakuzu was a really significant outlier. She'd been watching him for a long, long time.

He was successful, he had lived a long time, and he showed very little prosocial behaviour. A personal professional network had built up around him like the nacre of a pearl, with him the grit at its centre.

She had her theories about that, too. Kakuzu had got to be so old by borrowing time and chakra from others' hearts and becoming virtually indestructible by way of his kinjutsu, and it allowed him to outlive every one of his contemporaries. She had not been studying missing-nin back when he had become one, but the world had been quite different at that time—hidden villages had been only lately established in a much less stable professional landscape. It was possible that different traits had been more valuable in missing-nin at that time, accounting for his ability to establish himself in that era.

Then again, possibly they had valued exactly the same things. Perhaps if you only doggedly killed everyone who got close to you, and worked very hard to become functionally immortal, you would eventually build up a professional reputation regardless of your character.

She didn't know.

She did know that Kakuzu was within the top two per cent of earners across her study (assuming some room for error), and enjoyed a strong professional reputation among missing-nin and bounty collectors while going virtually unnoticed by the big five villages—even by Leaf, whose Shodaime Hokage he had once tried to assassinate. A clerk had simply decided at some point that Kakuzu must have been dead and removed him from their active records, was the working theory.

She tapped her notebook, outwardly preoccupied, as Kakuzu and Hidan finally came into the teashop. They didn't look at her, although they surely knew she was there. If they really wanted to talk about something secret, probably they would just tell her to leave. Akatsuki were in the employ of Rain, after all... technically. They could do that.

It may not have appeared likely to a casual observer, but Hidan was the person with whom Kakuzu was friendliest. His ability to bounce back from drownings, stabbings and decapitations gave him real staying power.

At first she hadn't liked Hidan. She'd been following Kakuzu for thirty years, keeping track of his absolutely absurd shinobi career, and initially Hidan had represented an intrusion into the private lifestyle she shared with Kakuzu. But he was not obstructive, and once she realised Kakuzu quite liked him, she'd come around on him a bit.

It was selfish of her, she later decided, to resent Kakuzu's young man. Besides, Kakuzu didn't know he was sharing his life with her—perhaps he was lonely.

They were a delight to watch from her quiet corner of the teahouse, really. Kakuzu acted so cold, leaning against the back wall, sipping hot water and grunting a disinterested counterpoint to Hidan's wild gestures and loud commentary. But she felt he was unusually tolerant and engaged, comparatively.

The pair appeared to be waiting for another pair of missing-nin. That was interesting, and lent further credence to the idea that the Akatsuki were centrally organised in Rain. Perhaps they even were Rain? She wasn't sure about the mysterious undead leader, but Konan would have fit right in with the rest of them...

Her observations really went pear shaped when the other two missing-nin walked into the tea house. Hoshigaki Kisame she was pretty familiar with, and he wasn't the problem. It was the other guy.

Uchiha Itachi swept the cloth covering the doorway out of the way with one hand, ducked into the teahouse, and immediately looked straight at her in her corner.

The worst part was, it wasn't as if he actually broke her genjutsu. There was no flaw in it, no place to apply pressure. Her genjutsu was good. Itachi just saw straight through all the visual elements of it with his unholy burning eyes.

He paused in the doorway and said, "I think you are not meant to be here," and then she looked him full in the face and fainted.

"What's your name?" said Uchiha Itachi, the moment she regained consciousness.

She recognised Kakuzu immediately, looking fierce over his shoulder. Hidan next, then Kisame. Really, Uchiha Itachi took her the longest to put a name to, of all of them. He had not been on her radar at all—as missing-nin, the Uchiha bloodline had seemed, unfortunately, too dangerous to include in her studies. And then he'd gone and killed them all anyway, which had seemed to make it a bit of a moot point in a representative sample...

She swallowed. He was waiting for an answer.

Who was she today? Where was she? She blinked rapidly. Teahouse. Sprawled on the table. Lying on her back, surrounded by looming missing-nin. Tea cooling on her belly, not yet cold. No sounds from the staff. Memory rose like bubbles in water.

"Ryouta," she said, finally.

Someone grabbed her by the hair—her REAL hair!—and shook her. "That's not a girl's name."

"Don't touch my fucking hair," she snarled, wrenching her head around. It was Hidan's hand buried in her glossy red curls. Of course it was Hidan. She snapped her teeth at his offending hand, close enough that he yanked his fingers back.

Itachi looked at Hidan, and for just a moment he seemed unable to hide his expression of profound disdain. That was interesting, she thought. Itachi clearly thought he was better than Hidan. Fair enough. So did she. But she would bet Hidan didn't agree with that assessment. She wondered if he knew?

He probably did know. Hidan was oblivious to his surroundings but he had strong interpersonal skills. He picked up on nuances in Kakuzu's behaviour that honestly shocked her.

She glanced between the two, thoughts racing, and then settled her gaze on Itachi. He was the most dangerous to her. She needed to pay attention to him, to be compliant with him, to flatter his ego.

"I haven't had a name in decades."

"I don't recognise her," Kakuzu interjected. She wished this was an opportunity to interview him. What he must remember! But it pretty clearly wasn't the time. "We'll get nothing for her head."

"Waterfall isn't shy about posting bounties. She must not be very important. A small fry, huh...?" Kisame mused. "Well, everyone likes to make a reputation somehow." This idea seemed to amuse him greatly. He showed all his sharp teeth when he smiled.

She knew quite a bit about Kisame, as he was another of her study participants. She had watched his missions and negotiations several times, following quietly in his wake of his large-scale destruction.

But Kakuzu's eyes had narrowed. "No. I didn't sense your genjutsu." He looked towards Kisame, who also shook his head.

If Kisame had sensed her genjutsu she would have had to quit her job. He had so much chakra she could have walked by his side, right in step, and hidden herself beneath its friendly shadow. He would never have known she was there.

Except, well, of course he would have, because now he was travelling with Uchiha Itachi, apparently.

Itachi had taken her amulet, the one inscribed with a vanity seal to hide skin blemishes. He peered at it for a few seconds, and then he looked up at her face again. The sharingan really were demonic to look at, black pinwheels spinning lazily against a red so bright it seemed to glow. The sky probably turned that colour at dawn on the apocalypse.

"I doubt she's a small fry," he said. He had one of those deep voices, the kind that didn't so much 'say,' as 'intone.' Each sentence a gonglike proclamation. Ugh. "What's in this?" He waved her notebook.

She clicked her tongue. "Notes. For my research."

"People who are lying—even shinobi—tend to have certain tells. Humans are naturally afraid of being caught telling falsehoods. Their sweat changes. Their pulse beats faster. They blink more rapidly. They change their rate of eye contact. My eyes can capture all these things. But you..." He tapped the notebook against his palm. "...do not have those tells."

"I'm telling the truth."

"Were you telling the truth when you said your name was Ryouta?"

She shrugged. "A truth."

Hidan scoffed loudly.

"What's the key?" Itachi looked down at her. "You can tell me, or we will discover it on our own eventually."

They would. It wasn't a very hard code. Her notes weren't really that secret. She published her work eventually. She just didn't want to get caught writing them, so she coded them, and then they could have been anything. Mission report. Love notes. Who knew?

With a deep sigh, she told him.

He thumbed through the book. At his level, it really only took him a few minutes to piece together whole sentences. Slowly, his expression changed from confusion to understanding to confusion again. This book wasn't especially important. It had only a few notes about the really big outliers from her most recent five year study, and the tally of negotiations at the back. She always tallied negotiations she saw—because every two years, she produced a record of mission prices for missing-nin, copied them by hand and pamphleteered in dive bars across the continent. Industry research was to be shared, after all.

"You observe a great many missing-nin," Itachi said slowly. He flipped back. Paused. "...A great many. A greater number than I would expect."

He handed her notebook off to Kakuzu, who buried his face in it immediately.

"Everyone needs a hobby..?"

Kisame snorted. "Some hobby."

"This might be the most boring thing I've ever heard," Hidan said, in a worrying tone of mounting dissatisfaction.

"She's been watching you, too, fool," said Kakuzu. That was kind of unfair: she only paid attention to Hidan because he was attached at the hip to Kakuzu. Otherwise, Hidan was another dime-a-dozen missing-nin, distinguished only by his little immortality trick. You got ninja like that, sometimes—incredible combatants who were really one trick ponies, but won all the time anyway because it was one hell of a trick.

"What!" Hidan yelped. "Show me."

"...What makes you think Orochimaru is pretending to be the Yondaime Kazekage?" Itachi asked then, distracting her.

"Ah... Well, he was part of the five year study. I'm just following up on outliers right now. He definitely killed Rasa, but I'm honestly not sure why he's pretending to be him. I theorise he's enjoying bonding moments with the Kazekage's children while wearing their dad's skin."

The bonding moments were genuinely pretty wholesome. That was part of the joyous cruelty of it, probably: Orochimaru didn't mind playing the long game, and he just loved to get a reaction.

"The five year study," Itachi repeated.

"I haven't published it yet. My recent work has been tracking the correlation between prosocial behaviour in missing-nin and professional success and longevity across five years. Orochimaru in particular has proven... erratic."

Kisame, who had stood back to loom behind Itachi, gave a rusty laugh. "Erratic, huh."

Kakuzu, though, had gotten to the back of the book—where her notes on pricing were.

"You," he snarled. He jabbed a finger towards her. "You write the cost list."

His chakra leeched like poison into the air, flooding them all with killing intent.

I am in danger, she thought, with every last squealing cell in her body.

"Ohh," said Kisame. "That."

"Who cares about that," said Hidan, scowling furiously. "She wrote that I'm an idiot!"

She probably wasn't going get a better opening than that. She flexed her own chakra.

"It's not like I'm alone in that opinion. Uchiha Itachi has been looking at you like you're an idiot for the last ten minutes."

Hidan sneered. "Nice try."

"She's right," intoned Itachi's deep voice.

His head snapped up. "What did you say?"

"That's a scary face," Itachi's voice mused. His red eyes spun faster. "Do you think you can beat me with just your skills, Hidan?"

Of course, Itachi himself actually did none of these things. But Hidan obviously did know what Itachi thought of him, after all, because he believed them totally.

Thank god.

She manufactured a sniffing noise from Kakuzu, which was as close as she'd ever heard him get to actually laughing. Hidan, she knew, valued Kakuzu's regard, and he was as close to having it as anyone ever had been. If she was right, thinking that Itachi had insulted him and Kakuzu was amused by it was going to hit all of Hidan's berserk buttons.

She was right.

Hidan lunged—and not at her, but at Itachi.

Which meant that the only person who was a real threat to her genjutsu skills was suddenly very occupied. Phew!

The room exploded into noise as everyone reacted to Hidan's sudden attack.

She pulled layer upon layer of illusions over herself as she rolled off the table, and then she hugged one of the walls, camouflaged like a chameleon, and darted away.

Getting out of Rain was her first priority. Then, she'd fix whatever Hidan had done to her hair—her scalp was still sore where he'd yanked on it, ugh. And then she guessed she'd write down what she remembered of her notes.

It certainly wasn't worth going back for them.

#naruto oc: red #naruto oc #naruto fic #akatsuki

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