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scribeofmorpheus · 3 years

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Himmeløyne [23/?]

Pairing: Loki Odinson x Reader

Catch Up Here | Masterlist

Warnings: Angst???

A/N: Please check out my original story, The Abstract Dark (previously: Our Lady of Darkness), for some spooks, a little witch-craft under moonlight, and terryfying vampyre-like things! (18+ mature content)

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~Y/N

The armour took the brunt of the impact as soon as the portal blinked out of existence, seizing the world of Verdenspeil in a swirl of oblivion.

A grunt left your throat, then your ears picked up on Baldrick’s noise of discomfort—he had landed on his arm funny, but nothing seemed broken.

“Are you okay?” you helped him to his feet.

The boy nodded, eyes fixed on the fallen dagger a few paces across the room.

There was a pedestal in the centre of the room, a keyhole of a four-pronged star in the centre made for the dagger on the floor—the dagger Sigrid gave you.

You stood up to take a better look at Mímir’s Tomb. The circular room gleamed silver and gold from the armours of giant statuesque figures chained onto open tombs built into the walls. Their design was similar to the Valkyrie armour you now wore, only cruder from warring, from wear and tear. That revelation gave you pause for concern, if there were signs of use, there may be signs of the life that once inhabited the armour.

Baldrick walked over to the dagger, then on his tippy toes, wedged it into the keyhole slot and turned it counter-clockwise. Just as Sköll and Hati chase after the sun and moon in endless circles, the room began to turn like a drum racing downhill.

The spinning was so intense you feared you’d throw up. Baldrick held onto the pedestal and kept his eyes shut. From the ceiling, a contraption lowered a stone platform. As it descended, the room began to stop spinning, and the armoured figures began to stir.

“Baldrick,” you ushered him close to you, shielding him with your arm as he grabbed your cyan blue cloak that swept the floor. The swish and swing of blades being drawn emanated from the sheaths of the armoured figures.

You swallowed, holding your breath. Fingers birthing blue aura in anticipation of a fight. Then, with a loud and deafening thud, the platform locked onto a triangular dip in the floor, a head floating in a curtain of magic and light.

One armoured figure took a step, and as you raised your hand defensively, Baldrick whispered: “No.”

The armoured figure cluttered to the floor, scattering into hundreds of pieces—as did all the others. A helmet rolled to Baldrick’s feet, ornate, a golden set of horns shaped like an elk’s. With childish wonder, fear wiped off his face and he picked up the helmet and put it on, turning to smile with bright teeth at you.

You laughed, unexpectedly and wholeheartedly. It was a rare gift to see pure, unrestrained joy come from nothing. This little boy in front of you carried a connection, his magic made a home in yours, made itself feel like it had been there for years, like it was beyond familiarity. You knew he was manipulating your emotions, perhaps without even realising it, but for some inexplicable reason, you weren’t worried.

The wisps of your magic died down, then the head spoke: “I’d recognise that magic anywhere… You’ve been touched by the Stone of the Ancients.”

You turned to the head, an opal gemstone for one eye, and sky blues like your own for the other. His hair was grey and long, worn with Viking braids and beads knotted on the ends of a few dreaded strands. His beard was thin and braided, tribal tattoos on either side of his temple in the form of roots of the World Tree.

“Mímir,” you said.

“The one and only,” he winked. “Come closer, let me have a better look at you. My eyesight isn’t what it was, being locked away in the cold dark for over a millennia will do that to you.”

You and Baldrick moved closer to Mímir’s line of sight.

“Your eye, it is as mine,” you said.

“A gift from my sister,” he said with a wistful tinge. His focus turned to Baldrick with interest. Recognition. “You, boy, I know you—of you. Your essence is blindingly radiant. So much power for such a small thing. Frightening. World spanning. You—Yes! It is you that I dreamt of all those years ago—you will war with the brother. You will be the Herald of Twilight. Herald of the end!”

Baldrick did not react to the words that he heard, he only blinked slow, lethargic with growing fatigue.

You instinctively wrapped a protective arm around the boy's frame, taking a step back. Mímir turned his sights back on you, squinting. “And you… You are the last of the Himmel Kvinner. Your fate will be that of tragedy and truth. Love and despair. Life and the expanse of space between living and death. You are the Forgotten One.” He quieted in contemplation, sighing deeply with burden. “I see. Yes, I see now. The prince… he sleeps, does he not?”

“H-How do you know that?”

Mímir smirked, “My knowledge is infinite. I see all. And I see nothing. That is why the Allfather trapped me here. Once, I could see through the very weavings of time itself. Beyond realms. Beyond the limits of my body. Now I see remembrances of what I once dreamt. I am but a fraction of what I was. But even beheaded, I am still the wise Mímir, the first to drink from the well of knowledge. The first to be granted the vision of the Stone of the Ancients. The last pureblood heir to the House of Bölþorn the Just.” At the invocation of his house and title, Mímir’s skin turned to a proud, Jotun blue and then back to pale.

“Then you know of a way to wake him?”

“I see patience is lost on you. A millennia and my first guests cannot even humour an old man the chance to goad.” The head laughed, bemused by your dismissal of his grand introduction. “Very well. No, I cannot help you, but I keep the one who does.”

“What do you mean by keep?”

“Her reliquaries, your boy here immobilised them just by thinking it.”

“The statues?”

“Yes. Twenty-seven suits of armour for the twenty-seven pieces of my sister that Bor hacked with his axe.”

“Your sister?”

“Bestla.”

“Bor did that to Bestla? I thought they were lovers. Why would he do that his own wife?”

“Wife?” Mímir shouted the word as if it were a preposterous thing. “Ha! Is that the spin the Æsir are using now? Wiping away the blood from their history books, I see. Bestla was never Bor’s wife! Not by choice. She was his peace treaty. His flesh and blood armistice with the Jotuns after the Dark Alliance threatened to end the war; with him on the losing side!” His real eye flashed, lips moving with no sound. A spell had been cast. “I’ll let her speak for herself.”

Torches burst in blue flame. Suddenly, Jotun script burned to life, etching itself into the wall beside the moving tapestries of what could only be living history.

“It has been a long time since I ever saw our histories unfold on these walls,” Mímir sighed, half sadness, half gratitude. “It will be a refreshing change of pace, having someone know of the true story.”

Baldrick, drawn to the magic, began to read aloud, his tongue picking up the Jotun language with fluency. Dust, once housed in the shattered pieces of armour, began to materialise into a cloud. It roped around the room in an orb-like shape, drawn to you like a moth to flame.

Then, after Baldrick read the final inscription aloud, a piercing pain brought you to your knees. The mark of Odin sparking with life, a scream leaving your lips. Somehow the mark was interfering with the spell Baldrick had just unknowingly cast.

“Oh, no-no-no-no!” Mímir panicked. “You were marked. Quick, boy, grab one of the reliquary’s swords and hold it over the flame. Sorry, lass, but this will sting, we have to sever the mark’s connection to Odin’s magic.”

Baldrick rushed to do as Mímir said, his little feet working hurriedly. When he reached you, the sword that was too big for his grip glowed with the heat of the blue flames, threatening to bring a whole new kind of pain

“What will happen to me once the Ægishjalmar is gone?” you squeezed the raw muscle near your mark. Your mind flashed to the battle in the throne room again. To the frostbite of unbridled power.

“I know what you fear. I saw the battle in the throne room. I saw what you became because of Odin’s magic. The power you wield will be your own, I assure you, lass.” Mímir’s cadence was truthful, assured.

“Will it be dangerous?” you asked. “My magic?”

“All magic is dangerous, lass. The sooner you embrace that, the sooner you find balance.”

Baldrick searched your expression, needing to know whether to proceed or not. With a bitter taste in your mouth—partly for not wanting him to have to do something so hard, partly for your own sake—you bit down on a belt strap and nodded.

The burn was subliminal compared to having Odin’s passive magic seared out of you. It was like having a piece of you stolen without ever realising it was there to begin with. When the smell of burning flesh diffused, and the blade dropped to the ground, you felt dizzy, not as sober as before.

The magic that was denied to complete itself before was now free to continue without the resistance of Odin’s magic. The dust from the reliquaries wasn’t dust at all, they were ashes, the vestiges of Bestla.

The ashes coalesced into a physical mimicry of Bestla—and she looked every bit as fierce and beautiful as she had in the book. Tall, strong arms, midnight hair, long and thick to her tailbone. The red of her Jotun eyes was diluted, cloudy. And the tribal markings painted on her face and arms was of a powdered white. She was a vision. Demanding. Anomalistic.

“Ahhh,” Bestla breathed in deep, taking in air till her lungs promised to burst. “It has been ages since I felt the cold. The air. Light.” She laughed in glee. Slightly mad, but she was excused of that twistedness.

“And it is good to see you again, dear sister,” Mímir laughed.

Bestla turned quick on her heels, a stretch to her cheeks from her growing smile, “Mim? I never imagined I’d ever see you again.” She crossed over to his side of the room in two quick strides. Her fingers hovered over the jewel he had in one of his eye cavities. “Who did this to you?”

“Your son,” he said, downcast.

Bestla let out a contemplative hum, not in the least surprised, “So, he turned out just like his father.”

“I tried my best, but he had too much of his father’s pride, too much of that Æsir spirit.”

The giantess turned to you and then the boy, “You have finally come.”

You staggered to your feet, patience fully wilted, “It seems, every portal I jump through, every new world I discover, and every new person I meet, knows of what I am and what I will do before I do. I must admit, it is quite frustrating.”

“I can only imagine. You travelled all this way for hope, for a way to wake the one you love. Love… It has been a while since I felt its aura. It is beautiful on you. And waning. As is the construct of time,” Bestla closed the distance between the two of you, her height seeming doubled from up close. You opened your mouth to speak, but she countered with a raised hand. “Yes, I know of a way to wake him.” She waved her hand and your memories of the throne room battle were pulled from your mind, displayed in illusions of light and shadow. “When Odin cast the incantation, he unleashed your full potential. That potential is as mine was, once.” She waved her hand again and the illusion turned to that of a blue box, slithering with light. The Jotun Artefact that gave you your power. “This is the Stone of the Ancients. One of six. My people guarded it for generations. Its essence was intertwined with the very fabric of Jotunheim, as a heart does to a body, so when the Æsir stole it from our temples to use as a weapon against the Vanir during the First Great War, our planet fell to ruin. Ruin and endless winters.”

The illusion showed the decimation of spring and summer from the unimaginable beauty of a Jotunheim you had never seen before. A Jotunheim of peace and vibrancy that was all wiped away for the frozen tundra you knew all too well.

“You mean… it was Bor that started the war between the Giants and the Asgardians?” you asked.

“Aye, lass, the very same Tyrant King,” Mímir said. “Your dark prince isn’t the heir to a murderous legacy, he is the heir of the wronged. Heir to desolation as long as the Stone of the Ancients is never returned to Jotunheim.”

“Is that why I was lead here? You want me to help you restore Jotunheim?”

Bestla and Mímir shook their heads. You knew that look. It was the look of loss.

“No, dear one, Jotunheim is lost. Forever.” She said. “Fate is a tricky thing. My brother has seen how I meet my end, and I require you to do so. I swore to have my revenge, and I will, with your help.”

“If… If I help you, you will show me how to wake Loki?”

“You already know how to,” Bestla waved her hand and replayed the moment after energy ripped from your body. Then you were gurgling on the ground, hand stretched out to touch Loki’s as he bled on the floor. Breath hitched. Pained. And then you saw something new, the magic took over your body for a moment, and free from Odin’s spell, you spoke an incantation of your own. Slivers of your magic swimming across the marble floors to latch onto Loki’s fingernails and swim up the stream of his veins to rest around his cheeks.

Baldrick’s mouth pried open, a Jotun word leaving his mouth.

Bestla continued speaking as the illusion dissolved to the image of Loki hovering on a gold curtain of light in the healing chamber: “You saved his life. Our magic, our connection to the stone is primal. It is instinct and memory and emotion. That is why I cursed the Stone before I was locked in those reliquaries. I ensured only those who would understand my pain, the depths of my betrayal, would gain the stone’s power—women. And when Odin hid the stone on earth, he never imagined it would infect those on Midgard as it did to my people. But I never imagined he’d use that as a way to experiment on the women, to make them his weapons of destruction against my own kind, all the while making them believe they were chosen. God kissed. But if he never did, then you wouldn’t be here now. Like I said, fate is a tricky thing.

“When you reached for your prince—for Loki—you weren’t simply praying to no-one, you were praying to the stone. And it heard you. So it placed him in a deep slumber as it healed him from within, but the physical was not all that was damaged. Loki is a fraught boy. Torn apart by two halves that will always be at war. And in that throne room, one half finally won, and to him, it was the wrong half. The monster he was taught to hate. The monster all children are taught to fear: the Giant. I know of a spell that will allow you to enter his mind and bring him back, but like all things—”

“It comes with a price,” you weren’t the least bit surprised, but being a pawn in everyone else’s plans was becoming a thorn in your side. “And if I refuse?”

Bestla gave you an apologetic look, “Child, I said fate was tricky, I never said we got to choose.” She waved her hand one last time, and suddenly you were levitating from the floor, vision going black, ears ringing.

“Do not fret, when you awake, the answer will be as familiar to you as walking,” Bestla promised. “For familiar magic tends to want to be understood.”

Then, nothing. Just black and hard floor.

~Heimdall

When Heimdall and the rest of his companions reached the side of the mountain where the entrance to Mímir’s Tomb was, it was already sunrise the next day.

Moving his hands close to one another in the way of the old ways, he spoke in his native Vanir tongue, using blood to smear his handprint on a circular plate centred on the door.

In short order, the doors pried apart in slow motions, dust and the smell of ancients flooding out of the tomb.

“There is a chance the protection seals are still in place, enter with caution, and with weapons drawn,” he told the others as they disappeared into the maw of the tomb.

Heimdall gasped when he saw the reliquary statues broken to pieces. Whoever had done this possessed strong magic, but it couldn’t have been Y/N’s, she was still weak from the leeching, still new to her power. The pedestal where Mimir’s head had been laid to rest was bare, no sign of the one-eyed prophet anywhere.

“He’s gone,” he said.

“Mímir? How? It’s not like a head can just sprout legs and walk away,” Fandral said. “I must say, I am a little disappointed. Missing the chance to see one of the last living survivors of the Great War, it does sting a little. Imagine all the secrets her held.”

“Could we have trusted them?” Sif said with some restraint, nowhere near as enthusiastic as Fandral. “He was locked away for a reason. Probably because he was dangerous.”

“And now he is gone,” Volstagg said.

“A problem for another day,” Heimdall said.

“Over here!” Hogun shouted from a dark corner of the room, behind the centre pedestal, dagger locked in place. “I found them.”

“Them?” Sif ran in Hogun’s direction and Heimdall followed.

On the floor was Y/N, out cold, but alive. Her essence was changed, almost exonerated of another’s influence, yet not completely alone. There was something else banging around in the softest, more quiet parts of her magic. Something new. He noticed then that her brand was cauterised from her flesh. Next to her was a boy, strange, bearing a hefty presence. He was the wielder of the magic that destroyed the protective seals on the reliquaries. For someone so young, that was unfounded. What was his connection to Y/N, Heimdall wondered.

He picked her off the floor while Hogun carried the boy. With ease creeping into his chest, he said, “Let’s go home.”

#loki #loki x y/n #loki imagine #loki odinson x y/n #tom hiddleston imagine

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milkboydotnet · 4 years

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Kwame Nkrumah on the methods of neo-colonialism (from Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism):

Some of these methods used by neo-colonialists to slip past our guard must now be examined. The first is retention by the departing colonialists of various kinds of privileges which infringe on our sovereignty: that of setting up military bases or stationing troops in former colonies and the supplying of ‘advisers’ of one sort or another. Sometimes a number of ‘rights’ are demanded: land concessions, prospecting rights for minerals and/or oil; the ‘right’ to collect customs, to carry out administration, to issue paper money; to be exempt from customs duties and/or taxes for expatriate enterprises; and, above all, the ‘right’ to provide ‘aid’. Also demanded and granted are privileges in the cultural field; that Western information services be exclusive; and that those from socialist countries be excluded.

Even the cinema stories of fabulous Hollywood are loaded. One has only to listen to the cheers of an African audience as Hollywood’s heroes slaughter red Indians or Asiatics to understand the effectiveness of this weapon. For, in the developing continents, where the colonialist heritage has left a vast majority still illiterate, even the smallest child gets the message contained in the blood and thunder stories emanating from California. And along with murder and the Wild West goes an incessant barrage of anti-socialist propaganda, in which the trade union man, the revolutionary, or the man of dark skin is generally cast as the villain, while the policeman, the gum-shoe, the Federal agent — in a word, the CIA — type spy is ever the hero. Here, truly, is the ideological under-belly of those political murders which so often use local people as their instruments.

While Hollywood takes care of fiction, the enormous monopoly press, together with the outflow of slick, clever, expensive magazines, attends to what it chooses to call ‘news. Within separate countries, one or two news agencies control the news handouts, so that a deadly uniformity is achieved, regardless of the number of separate newspapers or magazines; while internationally, the financial preponderance of the United States is felt more and more through its foreign correspondents and offices abroad, as well as through its influence over inter-national capitalist journalism. Under this guise, a flood of anti-liberation propaganda emanates from the capital cities of the West, directed against China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Ghana and all countries which hack out their own independent path to freedom. Prejudice is rife. For example, wherever there is armed struggle against the forces of reaction, the nationalists are referred to as rebels, terrorists, or frequently ‘communist terrorists'!

Perhaps one of the most insidious methods of the neo-colonialists is evangelism. Following the liberation movement there has been a veritable riptide of religious sects, the overwhelming majority of them American. Typical of these are Jehovah’s Witnesses who recently created trouble in certain developing countries by busily teaching their citizens not to salute the new national flags. ‘Religion’ was too thin to smother the outcry that arose against this activity, and a temporary lull followed. But the number of evangelists continues to grow.

Yet even evangelism and the cinema are only two twigs on a much bigger tree. Dating from the end of 1961, the U.S. has actively developed a huge ideological plan for invading the so-called Third World, utilising all its facilities from press and radio to Peace Corps.

During 1962 and 1963 a number of international conferences to this end were held in several places, such as Nicosia in Cyprus, San Jose in Costa Rica, and Lagos in Nigeria. Participants included the CIA, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the Pentagon, the International Development Agency, the Peace Corps and others. Programmes were drawn up which included the systematic use of U.S. citizens abroad in virtual intelligence activities and propaganda work. Methods of recruiting political agents and of forcing ‘alliances’ with the U.S.A. were worked out. At the centre of its programmes lay the demand for an absolute U.S. monopoly in the field of propaganda, as well as for counteracting any independent efforts by developing states in the realm of information.

The United States sought, and still seeks, with considerable success, to co-ordinate on the basis of its own strategy the propaganda activities of all Western countries. In October 1961, a conference of NATO countries was held in Rome to discuss problems of psychological warfare. It appealed for the organisation of combined ideological operations in Afro-Asian countries by all participants.

In May and June 1962 a seminar was convened by the U.S. in Vienna on ideological warfare. It adopted a secret decision to engage in a propaganda offensive against the developing countries along lines laid down by the U.S.A. It was agreed that NATO propaganda agencies would, in practice if not in the public eye, keep in close contact with U.S. Embassies in their respective countries.

Among instruments of such Western psychological warfare are numbered the intelligence agencies of Western countries headed by those of the United States ‘Invisible Government’. But most significant among them all are Moral Re-Armament QARA), the Peace Corps and the United States Information Agency (USIA).

Moral Re-Armament is an organisation founded in 1938 by the American, Frank Buchman. In the last days before the second world war, it advocated the appeasement of Hitler, often extolling Himmler, the Gestapo chief. In Africa, MRA incursions began at the end of World War II. Against the big anti-colonial upsurge that followed victory in 1945, MRA spent millions advocating collaboration between the forces oppressing the African peoples and those same peoples. It is not without significance that Moise Tshombe and Joseph Kasavubu of Congo (Leopoldville) are both MRA supporters. George Seldes, in his book One Thousand Americans, characterised MRA as a fascist organisation ‘subsidised by . . . Fascists, and with a long record of collaboration with Fascists the world over. . . .’ This description is supported by the active participation in MRA of people like General Carpentier, former commander of NATO land forces, and General Ho Ying-chin, one of Chiang Kai-shek’s top generals. To cap this, several newspapers, some of them in the Western ;vorld, have claimed that MRA is actually subsidised by the CIA.

When MRA’s influence began to fail, some new instrument to cover the ideological arena was desired. It came in the establishment of the American Peace Corps in 1961 by President John Kennedy, with Sargent Shriver, Jr., his brother-in-law, in charge. Shriver, a millionaire who made his pile in land speculation in Chicago, was also known as the friend, confidant and co-worker of the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles. These two had worked together in both the Office of Strategic Services, U.S. war-time intelligence agency, and in the CIA.

Shriver’s record makes a mockery of President Kennedy’s alleged instruction to Shriver to ‘keep the CIA out of the Peace Corps’. So does the fact that, although the Peace Corps is advertised as a voluntary organisation, all its members are carefully screened by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Since its creation in 1961, members of the Peace Corps have been exposed and expelled from many African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries for acts of subversion or prejudice. Indonesia, Tanzania, the Philippines, and even pro-West countries like Turkey and Iran, have complained of its activities.

However, perhaps the chief executor of U.S. psychological warfare is the United States Information Agency (USIA). Even for the wealthiest nation on earth, the U.S. lavishes an unusual amount of men, materials and money on this vehicle for its neo-colonial aims.

The USIA is staffed by some 12,000 persons to the tune of more than $130 million a year. It has more than seventy editorial staffs working on publications abroad. Of its network comprising 110 radio stations, 60 are outside the U.S. Programmes are broadcast for Africa by American stations in Morocco, Eritrea, Liberia, Crete, and Barcelona, Spain, as well as from off-shore stations on American ships. In Africa alone, the USIA transmits about thirty territorial and national radio programmes whose content glorifies the U.S. while attempting to discredit countries with an independent foreign policy.

The USIA boasts more than 120 branches in about 100 countries, 50 of which are in Africa alone. It has 250 centres in foreign countries, each of which is usually associated with a library. It employs about 200 cinemas and 8,000 projectors which draw upon its nearly 300 film libraries.

This agency is directed by a central body which operates in the name of the U.S. President, planning and coordinating its activities in close touch with the Pentagon, CIA and other Cold War agencies, including even armed forces intelligence centres.

In developing countries, the USIA actively tries to prevent expansion of national media of information so as itself to capture the market-place of ideas. It spends huge sums for publication and distribution of about sixty newspapers and magazines in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The American government backs the USIA through direct pressures on developing nations. To ensure its agency a complete monopoly in propaganda, for instance, many agreements for economic co-operation offered by the U.S. include a demand that Americans be granted preferential rights to disseminate information. At the same time, in trying to close the new nations to other sources of information, it employs other pressures. For instance, after agreeing to set up USIA information centres in their countries, both Togo and Congo (Leopoldville) originally hoped to follow a non-aligned path and permit Russian information centres as a balance. But Washington threatened to stop all aid, thereby forcing these two countries to renounce their plan.

Unbiased studies of the USIA by such authorities as Dr R. Holt of Princeton University, Retired Colonel R. Van de Velde, former intelligence agents Murril Dayer, Wilson Dizard and others, have all called attention to the close ties between this agency and U.S. Intelligence. For example, Deputy Director Donald M. Wilson was a political intelligence agent in the U.S. Army. Assistant Director for Europe, Joseph Philips, was a successful espionage agent in several Eastern European countries.

Some USIA duties further expose its nature as a top intelligence arm of the U.S. imperialists. In the first place, it is expected to analyse the situation in each country, making recommendations to its Embassy, thereby to its Government, about changes that can tip the local balance in U.S. favour. Secondly, it organises networks of monitors for radio broadcasts and telephone conversations, while recruiting informers from government offices. It also hires people to distribute U.S. propaganda. Thirdly, it collects secret information with special reference to defence and economy, as a means of eliminating its international military and economic competitors. Fourthly, it buys its way into local publications to influence their policies, of which Latin America furnishes numerous examples. It has been active in bribing public figures, for example in Kenya and Tunisia. Finally, it finances, directs and often supplies with arms all anti-neutralist forces in the developing countries, witness Tshombe in Congo (Leopoldville) and Pak Hung Ji in South Korea. In a word, with virtually unlimited finances, there seems no bounds to its inventiveness in subversion.

One of the most recent developments in neo-colonialist strategy is the suggested establishment of a Businessmen Corps which will, like the Peace Corps, act in developing countries. In an article on ‘U.S. Intelligence and the Monopolies’ in International Affairs (Moscow, January 1965), V. Chernyavsky writes: ‘There can hardly be any doubt that this Corps is a new U.S. intelligence organisation created on the initiative of the American monopolies to use Big Business for espionage. It is by no means unusual for U.S. Intelligence to set up its own business firms which are merely thinly disguised espionage centres. For example, according to Chernyavsky, the C.I.A. has set up a firm in Taiwan known as Western Enterprises Inc. Under this cover it sends spies and saboteurs to South China. The New Asia Trading Company, a CIA firm in India, has also helped to camouflage U.S. intelligence agents operating in South-east Asia.

Such is the catalogue of neo-colonialism’s activities and methods in our time. Upon reading it, the faint-hearted might come to feel that they must give up in despair before such an array of apparent power and seemingly inexhaustible resources.

Fortunately, however, history furnishes innumerable proofs of one of its own major laws; that the budding future is always stronger than the withering past. This has been amply demonstrated during every major revolution throughout history.

#Kwame Nkrumah #imperialism #neocolonialism #colonialism #revolution #quote #US imperialism

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alpaca-writes · 3 years

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Mystics, Chapter 16

When Arch becomes hired on at Mystics by the strange shopkeeper Lyrem Nomadus, everything seems to be going well- in fact, their life nearly becomes perfection. Soon enough, however, Arch realizes that perhaps not everything is as perfect as it seems….

Read Chapters 1-15 and more HERE

Taglist: @myst-in-the-mirror, @livingforthewhump

CW: drowning, assault, walking on broken glass (yeah really), captivity whump, one having total control over another

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN: FORWARD

There was nothing below their feet. That was the first thing they had noticed as they thrashed violently about in the thick liquid. They inhaled something. Akin to sludgy water that smelled rank; old gasoline, grease, and sulphur mixed together with just enough cornstarch to cause Arch to tire out within moments of trying to keep themselves afloat. It must have been they very same that Benji had been coated in as they were brought back to the school yard. They scrambled up to the surface coughing and gagging on the disgusting ooze that threatened to drown them and drag them below forever. How they had gotten there, they didn’t know. Wasn’t Uncle Arty talking to them right before-

HOLY SHIT.

He was telling the truth.

Uncle Arty was Uncle Arty!

It shouldn’t have been so shocking, but in the euphoria of the revelation, Arch cried out their name, hoping they would be there to rescue them- then terrified that he had been taken underneath the tide, never to be seen or heard from again.

They hadn’t opened their eyes. They were closed the moment the darkness had enveloped them, and somehow Arch knew that if they dared to open them now, the burn from the solution they were swimming in would be unbearable. So, they couldn’t find the shore, much less know if they were alone.

Kicking, writhing, helplessly choking back the urge to breathe at the wrong times and exhausted, Arch spit up the last rancid bit of liquid that had sneaked its way between their lips and onto their tongue.

They groaned, because what else was their to do when you were dropped into a pit full of whatever it was that Venom was made out of? At least, that is what Arch imagined it to be. They hadn’t opened their eyes- it may have been the colour of Pepto.

The curled-up hairs that were only recently styled into the short updo, were pulled taut by a hand that seemed impatiently waiting for them to figure their own way out. Arch reached their hands up to the forearm of the person pulling them up. While it was uncomfortably painful, there was still a tentative breath of relief escaping from their lungs in form of a cough. Then, as they felt the world solid beneath their knees once again, the hand released.

The clinking of glass, like broken glass, filled their ears the moment Arch could hear again. They leaned over the ground, palms down against it, and coughed up the remaining sludge as much as they could. It was arid, wherever they were, and there wasn’t a breeze to be felt in the dry heat. The romper weighed heavy on them, sinking them lower, little bit by little bit as it aired itself out. With a shaky hand, Arch attempted their best to wipe off the excess ooze from their eyes. They mostly just smeared it away to another portion of their face.

“Depths of despair.”

Paimon. Of course.

“How do you like it?” he inquired innocently.

Arch sniffed, hearing his voice without seeing his face.

“Still better than Buckley’s,” Arch said, through a wave of dizzying nausea. They heard Paimon give out a light chuckle.

“You are very funny,” he said lightly. “I can see why Lyrem chose you.”

A sudden reminder that Uncle Arty was out for Lyrem’s blood caused Arch to falter with a crushing guilt.

“Shit.”

Paimon raised a brow, though Arch didn’t care to notice it by looking up.

“He’ll be fine,” Paimon assured none to comfortingly. He then added. “Your little Uncle Arty will likely die by his hand anyway. In fact, I am sort of counting on it. He’s a rather annoying little pissant, isn’t he?”

Paimon shuddered, thinking about his use of the Abysmal Flame that ushered from the earthly realm so unceremoniously. Hades would certainly pay for that eventually.

There was the sound of broken glass again, and then Arch noticed it was because of how they had moved their feet in the effort to stand. The ground was coated in a black shining and sparkling material. They had taken a little bit of geology back in the day. Volcanic glass, is what they were willing to bet it was. They had kicked their heels off somewhere in the Depths of Despair. The first shard slid cleanly into their big toe on their left foot as they stood with great effort and seethed. Arch saw only an expansive wasteland. Paimon stood behind them, watching curiously.

“Wh-where are we? Where did you take me?”

Surprised by the questions, Paimon’s replied unhelpfully and condescending at best.

“Guess for me.”

The sky was a mixture of grey and orange. The air smelled of a raging forest fire, but there was no fire to be seen- not columns of smoke to indicate the direction it was coming from. Arch turned around, their eyes laying upon Paimon for the first time since arriving and they froze.

He was different.

Very different. No longer sporting the hat and coat or the cane, and what was more was that his head of black hair was nothing compared to the crown of opaque black antlers that seemed to be growing even now and morphing on their own as he tilted his head at them. His chest was nearly bare, with only a soft silk robe to cover the rest of himself with. He smiled, his teeth shone bright through the beard that was still long, black, and wiry.

Arch blinked a couple times, trying to back away, but the glass prevented them from moving on too quickly. Their feet sprang up with bloody cuts already. They didn’t want to create any more.

“Hell?” they answered hesitantly, “this is hell, isn’t it?”

“Hell?” he mocked. “Hell only exists on earth, try again.”

After a moment of thought, Arch guessed again.

“The Labyrinth then? Is that why I can remember people? Uncle Arty? … My mom?”

Paimon gave a sympathetic nod. Arch had never seen the inside of the Labyrinth before, so it was a reasonable assumption for them to make.

“No,” he said sadistically, “Sweet thing, I gave you those memories back for a very good reason.”

Arch threw up their hands at let them crash against their sides. Great, he gave them their memories back. How kind.

“I don’t know then,” Arch started, making it clear for Paimon that they were becoming disgruntled. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”

Paimon stepped forward and the clinking of glass was louder than expected. Arch looked down, expecting shoes, but seeing hooves instead.

Wincing, they stepped back once. Fucking, hooves.

“This is my home,” Paimon answered. “My… land.”

He had a calming air about him. That was frightening, since Arch was no longer certain about what they should expect from their new… boss.

The earth groaned and shook, knocking Arch off balance with a sudden jolt. They landed into the glassy ground, cutting up their arms in the process. The ground was changing before them, raising a tall mound with a gaping mouth of a cave entrance to welcome them in.

Arch shuffled back- searing slices into their skin be damned, they were not going in willingly. They forced themselves to their feet, ripping their romper until a piece of thin chiffon trailed behind them, and grimaced and gasped as the ran off into the… into the… horizon?

But they were suddenly running toward Paimon now.

He was simply standing there at waiting for them to return with his knuckles on his hips. The world had turned, without Arch’s permission and left them outside the cave mouth again, beside the Depths of Despair, which did not look quite as murky as Arch remembered. They groaned, and lifted a bloody foot. With a quick breath, they pulled out a large jagged piece of volcanized glass carefully set it back down. The left foot had more thin slices. It would take several hours of careful plucking to remove all he pieces that had been lodged in there.

Paimon approached them, amused by their futile attempt to escape and shook his head.

“I forget that you humans are so easily torn. You could have simply asked me for a pair of shoes.”

Without a moment more to lose, Arch felt Paimon grip them just above their elbow as he decided dragged them along to the mouth of the cave where the walls were lit with incandescent yellow bulbs draped along by chains.

An unmistakable murmur echoed up to them. Suffering. Arch tugged away, despite knowing there was nothing they could do to prevent what ever was coming next.

“I-I signed under duress!”

Paimon looked down at Arch, then up to the ceiling in the effort to hold his tongue.

“I signed under duress, so I can’t be beholden to the agreement.” Arch repeated like they almost believe they’d be let go on a technicality. “You threatened a friend and forced me to sign. It wasn’t of my own free will- free will matters, doesn’t”-

The way down was riddled with bumps and rolling hills in the lava rock. Paimon pushed Arch ahead, making sure that they smacked into the wall before crumpling into a heap around the corner. He sniffed, and tightened his robe.

“So, you do have an off button.”

Reaching a hand up, Arch supported themself up against the wall, groaning. Thankfully, their left forearm took the worst of the hit, but was scraped even further than it had been before from the glass. It was a miracle they had any skin left there at all.

“Forward.”

They heard the command and immediately stood again. Arch continued down the cave hall until they heard the next one.

“Stop.”

They stopped.

Paimon stepped around them, ignoring the echoing cries from elsewhere in his humble space, and chose to look at Arch more thoroughly. He lifted their arm, the torn up one, and stared at the marks briefly, and then tossed it down.

“Shake your head.” He commanded.

Arch shook their head, obeying without question- without the slightest hesitation and unfortunately as well, without any ability to refuse Paimon’s command.

“Nod.”

Arch nodded.

“Stand on your right foot.”

And they did.

“Stop nodding.”

And they stopped. Tears danced in their eyes as they realized what was happening. Paimon smiled as he was content with Ms. Bornath’s impeccable work.

“Forward.”

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whatisonthemoonarchive · 4 years

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Kwame Nkrumah on the methods of neo-colonialism (from Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism):

Moral Re-Armament is an organisation founded in 1938 by the American, Frank Buchman. In the last days before the second world war, it advocated the appeasement of Hitler, often extolling Himmler, the Gestapo chief. In Africa, MRA incursions began at the end of World War II. Against the big anti-colonial upsurge that followed victory in 1945, MRA spent millions advocating collaboration between the forces oppressing the African peoples and those same peoples. It is not without significance that Moise Tshombe and Joseph Kasavubu of Congo (Leopoldville) are both MRA supporters. George Seldes, in his book One Thousand Americans, characterised MRA as a fascist organisation ‘subsidised by … Fascists, and with a long record of collaboration with Fascists the world over… .’ This description is supported by the active participation in MRA of people like General Carpentier, former commander of NATO land forces, and General Ho Ying-chin, one of Chiang Kai-shek’s top generals. To cap this, several newspapers, some of them in the Western ;vorld, have claimed that MRA is actually subsidised by the CIA.

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