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savelit · 1 year

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GHOSTWEIGHT.

Yoon Ha Lee.

It is not true that the dead cannot be folded. Square becomes kite becomes swan; history becomes rumor becomes song. Even the act of remembrance creases the truth.

What the paper-folding diagrams fail to mention is that each fold enacts itself upon the secret marrow of your ethics, the axioms of your thoughts.

Whether this is the most important thing the diagrams fail to mention is a matter of opinion.

“There’s time for one more hand,” Lisse’s ghost said. It was composed of cinders of color, a cipher of blurred features, and it had a voice like entropy and smoke and sudden death. Quite possibly it was the last ghost on all of ruined Rhaion, conquered Rhaion, Rhaion with its devastated, shadowless cities and dead moons and dimming sun. Sometimes Lisse wondered if the ghost had a scar to match her own, a long, livid line down her arm. But she felt it was impolite to ask.

Around them, in a command spindle sized for fifty, the walls of the war-kite were hung with tatters of black and faded green, even now in the process of reknitting themselves into tapestry displays. Tangled reeds changed into ravens. One perched on a lightning-cloven tree. Another, taking shape amid twisted threads, peered out from a skull’s eye socket.

Lisse didn’t need any deep familiarity with mercenary symbology to understand the warning. Lisse’s people had adopted a saying from the Imperium’s mercenaries: In raven arithmetic, no death is enough.

Lisse had expected pursuit. She had deserted from Base 87 soon after hearing that scouts had found a mercenary war-kite in the ruins of a sacred maze, six years after all the mercenaries vanished: suspicious timing on her part, but she would have no better opportunity for revenge. The ghost had not tried too hard to dissuade her. It had always understood her ambitions.

For a hundred years, despite being frequently outnumbered, the mercenaries in their starfaring kites had cindered cities, destroyed flights of rebel starflyers, shattered stations in the void’s hungry depths. What better weapon than one of their own kites?

What troubled her was how lightly the war-kite had been defended. It had made a strange, thorny silhouette against the lavender sky even from a long way off, like briars gone wild, and with the ghost as scout she had slipped past the few mechanized sentries. The kite’s shadow had been human. She was not sure what to make of that.

The kite had opened to her like a flower. The card game had been the ghost’s idea, a way to reassure the kite that she was its ally: Scorch had been invented by the mercenaries.

Lisse leaned forward and started to scoop the nearest column, the Candle Column, from the black-and-green gameplay rug. The ghost forestalled her with a hand that felt like the dregs of autumn, decay from the inside out. In spite of herself, she flinched from the ghostweight, which had troubled her all her life. Her hand jerked sideways; her fingers spasmed.

“Look,” the ghost said.

Few cadets had played Scorch with Lisse even in the barracks. The ghost left its combinatorial fingerprints in the cards. People drew the unlucky Fallen General’s Hand over and over again, or doubled on nothing but negative values, or inverted the Crown Flower at odds of thousands to one. So Lisse had learned to play the solitaire variant, with jerengjen as counters. You must learn your enemy’s weapons, the ghost had told her, and so, even as a child in the reeducation facility, she had saved her chits for paper to practice folding into cranes, lilies, leaf-shaped boats.

Next to the Candle Column she had folded stormbird, greatfrog, lantern, drake. Where the ghost had interrupted her attempt to clear the pieces, they had landed amid the Sojourner and Mirror Columns, forming a skewed late-game configuration: a minor variant of the Needle Stratagem, missing only its pivot.

“Consider it an omen,” the ghost said. “Even the smallest sliver can kill, as they say.”

There were six ravens on the tapestries now. The latest one had outspread wings, as though it planned to blot out the shrouded sun. She wondered what it said about the mercenaries, that they couched their warnings in pictures rather than drums or gongs.

Lisse rose from her couch. “So they’re coming for us. Where are they?”

She had spoken in the Imperium’s administrative tongue, not one of the mercenaries’ own languages. Nevertheless, a raven flew from one tapestry to join its fellows in the next. The vacant tapestry grayed, then displayed a new scene: a squad of six tanks caparisoned in Imperial blue and bronze, paced by two personnel carriers sheathed in metal mined from withered stars. They advanced upslope, pebbles skittering in their wake.

In the old days, the ghost had told her, no one would have advanced through a sacred maze by straight lines. But the ancient walls, curved and interlocking, were gone now. The ghost had drawn the old designs on her palm with its insubstantial fingers, and she had learned not to shudder at the untouch, had learned to thread the maze in her mind’s eye: one more map to the things she must not forget.

“I’d rather avoid fighting them,” Lisse said. She was looking at the command spindle’s controls. Standard Imperial layout, all of them—it did not occur to her to wonder why the kite had configured itself thus—but she found nothing for the weapons.

“People don’t bring tanks when they want to negotiate,” the ghost said dryly. “And they’ll have alerted their flyers for intercept. You have something they want badly.”

“Then why didn’t they guard it better?” she demanded.

Despite the tanks’ approach, the ghost fell silent. After a while, it said, “Perhaps they didn’t think anyone but a mercenary could fly a kite.”

“They might be right,” Lisse said darkly. She strapped herself into the commander’s seat, then pressed three fingers against the controls and traced the commands she had been taught as a cadet. The kite shuddered, as though caught in a hell-wind from the sky’s fissures. But it did not unfurl itself to fly.

She tried the command gestures again, forcing herself to slow down. A cold keening vibrated through the walls. The kite remained stubbornly landfast.

The squad rounded the bend in the road. All the ravens had gathered in a single tapestry, decorating a half-leafed tree like dire jewels. The rest of the tapestries displayed the squad from different angles: two aerial views and four from the ground.

Lisse studied one of the aerial views and caught sight of two scuttling figures, lean angles and glittering eyes and a balancing tail in black metal. She stiffened. They had the shadows of hounds, all graceful hunting curves. Two jerengjen, true ones, unlike the lifeless shapes that she folded out of paper. The kite must have deployed them when it sensed the tanks’ approach.

Sweating now, despite the autumn temperature inside, she methodically tried every command she had ever learned. The kite remained obdurate. The tapestries’ green threads faded until the ravens and their tree were bleak black splashes against a background of wintry gray.

It was a message. Perhaps a demand. But she did not understand.

The first two tanks slowed into view. Roses, blue with bronze hearts, were engraved to either side of the main guns. The lead tank’s roses flared briefly.

The kite whispered to itself in a language that Lisse did not recognize. Then the largest tapestry cleared of trees and swirling leaves and rubble, and presented her with a commander’s emblem, a pale blue rose pierced by three claws. A man’s voice issued from the tapestry: “Cadet Fai Guen.” This was her registry name. They had not reckoned that she would keep her true name alive in her heart like an ember. “You are in violation of Imperial interdict. Surrender the kite at once.”

He did not offer mercy. The Imperium never did.

Lisse resisted the urge to pound her fists against the interface. She had not survived this long by being impatient. “That’s it, then,” she said to the ghost in defeat.

“Cadet Fai Guen,” the voice said again, after another burst of light, “you have one minute to surrender the kite before we open fire.”

“Lisse,” the ghost said, “the kite’s awake.”

She bit back a retort and looked down. Where the control panel had once been featureless gray, it was now crisp white interrupted by five glyphs, perfectly spaced for her outspread fingers. She resisted the urge to snatch her hand away. “Very well,” she said. “If we can’t fly, at least we can fight.”

She didn’t know the kite’s specific control codes. Triggering the wrong sequence might activate the kite’s internal defenses. But taking tank fire at point-blank range would get her killed, too. She couldn’t imagine that the kite’s armor had improved in the years of its neglect.

On the other hand, it had jerengjen scouts, and the jerengjen looked perfectly functional.

She pressed her thumb to the first glyph. A shadow unfurled briefly but was gone before she could identify it. The second attempt revealed a two-headed dragon’s twisting coils. Long-range missiles, then: thunder in the sky. Working quickly, she ran through the options. It would be ironic if she got the weapons systems to work only to incinerate herself.

“You have ten seconds, Cadet Fai Guen,” said the voice with no particular emotion.

“Lisse,” the ghost said, betraying impatience.

One of the glyphs had shown a wolf running. She remembered that at one point the wolf had been the mercenaries’ emblem. Nevertheless, she felt a dangerous affinity to it. As she hesitated over it, the kite said, in a parched voice, “Soul strike.”

She tapped the glyph, then pressed her palm flat to activate the weapon. The panel felt briefly hot, then cold.

For a second she thought that nothing had happened, that the kite had malfunctioned. The kite was eerily still.

The tanks and personnel carriers were still visible as gray outlines against darker gray, as were the nearby trees and their stifled fruits. She wasn’t sure whether that was an effect of the unnamed weapons or a problem with the tapestries. Had ten seconds passed yet? She couldn’t tell, and the clock of her pulse was unreliable.

Desperate to escape before the tanks spat forth the killing rounds, Lisse raked her hand sideways to dismiss the glyphs. They dispersed in unsettling fragmented shapes resembling half-chewed leaves and corroded handprints. She repeated the gesture for fly.

Lisse choked back a cry as the kite lofted. The tapestry views changed to sky on all sides except the ravens on their tree—birds no longer, but skeletons, price paid in coin of bone.

Only once they had gained some altitude did she instruct the kite to show her what had befallen her hunters. It responded by continuing to accelerate.

The problem was not the tapestries. Rather, the kite’s wolf-strike had ripped all the shadows free of their owners, killing them. Below, across a great swathe of the continent once called Ishuel’s Bridge, was a devastation of light, a hard, glittering splash against the surrounding snow-capped mountains and forests and winding rivers.

Lisse had been an excellent student, not out of academic conscientiousness but because it gave her an opportunity to study her enemy. One of her best subjects had been geography. She and the ghost had spent hours drawing maps in the air or shaping topographies in her blankets; paper would betray them, it had said. As she memorized the streets of the City of Fountains, it had sung her the ballads of its founding. It had told her about the feuding poets and philosophers that the thoroughfares of the City of Prisms had been named after. She knew which mines supplied which bases and how the roads spidered across Ishuel’s Bridge. While the population figures of the bases and settlement camps weren’t exactly announced to cadets, especially those recruited from the reeducation facilities, it didn’t take much to make an educated guess.

The Imperium had built 114 bases on Ishuel’s Bridge. Base complements averaged 20,000 people. Even allowing for the imprecision of her eye, the wolf-strike had taken out—

She shivered as she listed the affected bases, approximately sixty of them.

The settlement camps’ populations were more difficult. The Imperium did not like to release those figures. Imperfectly, she based her estimate on the zone around Base 87, remembering the rows of identical shelters. The only reason they did not outnumber the bases’ personnel was that the mercenaries had been coldly efficient on Jerengjen Day.

Needle Stratagem, Lisse thought blankly. The smallest sliver. She hadn’t expected its manifestation to be quite so literal.

The ghost was looking at her, its dark eyes unusually distinct. “There’s nothing to be done for it now,” it said at last. “Tell the kite where to go before it decides for itself.”

“Ashway 514,” Lisse said, as they had decided before she fled base: scenario after scenario whispered to each other like bedtime stories. She was shaking. The straps did nothing to steady her.

She had one last glimpse of the dead region before they curved into the void: her handprint upon her own birthworld. She had only meant to destroy her hunters.

In her dreams, later, the blast pattern took on the outline of a running wolf.

In the mercenaries’ dominant language, jerengjen originally referred to the art of folding paper. For her part, when Lisse first saw it, she thought of it as snow. She was four years old. It was a fair spring afternoon in the City of Tapestries, slightly humid. She was watching a bird try to catch a bright butterfly when improbable paper shapes began drifting from the sky, foxes and snakes and stormbirds.

Lisse called to her parents, laughing. Her parents knew better. Over her shrieks, they dragged her into the basement and switched off the lights. She tried to bite one of her fathers when he clamped his hand over her mouth. Jerengjen tracked primarily by shadows, not by sound, but you couldn’t be too careful where the mercenaries’ weapons were concerned.

In the streets, jerengjen unfolded prettily, expanding into artillery with dragon-shaped shadows and sleek four-legged assault robots with wolf-shaped shadows. In the skies, jerengjen unfolded into bombers with kestrel-shaped shadows.

This was not the only Rhaioni city where this happened. People crumpled like paper cutouts once their shadows were cut away by the onslaught. Approximately one-third of the world’s population perished in the weeks that followed.

Of the casualty figures, the Imperium said, It is regrettable. And later, The stalled negotiations made the consolidation necessary.

Lisse carried a map of the voidways with her at all times, half in her head and half in the Scorch deck. The ghost had once been a traveler. It had shown her mnemonics for the dark passages and the deep perils that lay between stars. Growing up, she had laid out endless tableaux between her lessons, memorizing travel times and vortices and twists.

Ashway 514 lay in the interstices between two unstable stars and their cacophonous necklace of planets, comets, and asteroids. Lisse felt the kite tilting this way and that as it balanced itself against the stormy voidcurrent. The tapestries shone from one side with ruddy light from the nearer star, 514 Tsi. On the other side, a pale violet-blue planet with a serenade of rings occluded the view.

514 was a useful hiding place. It was off the major tradeways, and since the Battle of Fallen Sun—named after the rebel general’s emblem, a white sun outlined in red, rather than the nearby stars—it had been designated an ashway, where permanent habitation was forbidden.

More important to Lisse, however, was the fact that 514 was the ashway nearest the last mercenary sighting, some five years ago. As a student, she had learned the names and silhouettes of the most prominent war-kites, and set verses of praise in their honor to Imperial anthems. She had written essays on their tactics and memorized the names of their most famous commanders, although there were no statues or portraits, only the occasional unsmiling photograph. The Imperium was fond of statues and portraits.

For a hundred years (administrative calendar), the mercenaries had served their masters unflinchingly and unfailingly. Lisse had assumed that she would have as much time as she needed to plot against them. Instead, they had broken their service, for reasons the Imperium had never released—perhaps they didn’t know, either—and none had been seen since.

“I’m not sure there’s anything to find here,” Lisse said. Surely the Imperium would have scoured the region for clues. The tapestries were empty of ravens. Instead, they diagrammed shifting voidcurrent flows. The approach of enemy starflyers would perturb the current and allow Lisse and the ghost to estimate their intent. Not trusting the kite’s systems—although there was only so far that she could take her distrust, given the circumstances—she had been watching the tapestries for the past several hours. She had, after a brief argument with the ghost, switched on haptics so that the air currents would, however imperfectly, reflect the status of the void around them. Sometimes it was easier to feel a problem through your skin.

“There’s no indication of derelict kites here,” she added. “Or even kites in use, other than this one.”

“It’s a starting place, that’s all,” the ghost said.

“We’re going to have to risk a station eventually. You might not need to eat, but I do.” She had only been able to sneak a few rations out of base. It was tempting to nibble at one now.

“Perhaps there are stores on the kite.”

“I can’t help but think this place is a trap.”

“You have to eat sooner or later,” the ghost said reasonably. “It’s worth a look, and I don’t want to see you go hungry.” At her hesitation, it added, “I’ll stand watch here. I’m only a breath away.”

This didn’t reassure her as much as it should have, but she was no longer a child in a bunk precisely aligned with the walls, clutching the covers while the ghost told her her people’s stories. She reminded herself of her favorite story, in which a single sentinel kept away the world’s last morning by burning out her eyes, and set out.

Lisse felt the ghostweight’s pull the farther away she walked, but that was old pain, and easily endured. Lights flicked on to accompany her, diffuse despite her unnaturally sharp shadow, then started illuminating passages ahead of her, guiding her footsteps. She wondered what the kite didn’t want her to see.

Rations were in an unmarked storage room. She wouldn’t have been certain about the rations, except that they were, if the packaging was to be believed, field category 72: better than what she had eaten on training exercises, but not by much. No surprise, now that she thought about it: from all accounts, the mercenaries had relied on their masters’ production capacity.

Feeling ridiculous, she grabbed two rations and retraced her steps. The fact that the kite lit her exact path only made her more nervous.

“Anything new?” she asked the ghost. She tapped the ration. “It’s a pity that you can’t taste poison.”

The ghost laughed dryly. “If the kite were going to kill you, it wouldn’t be that subtle. Food is food, Lisse.”

The food was as exactingly mediocre as she had come to expect from military food. At least it was not any worse. She found a receptacle for disposal afterward, then laid out a Scorch tableau, Candle Column to Bone, right to left. Cards rather than jerengjen, because she remembered the scuttling hound-jerengjen with creeping distaste.

From the moment she left Base 87, one timer had started running down. The devastation of Ishuel’s Bridge had begun another, the important one. She wasn’t gambling her survival; she had already sold it. The question was, how many Imperial bases could she extinguish on her way out? And could she hunt down any of the mercenaries that had been the Imperium’s killing sword?

Lisse sorted rapidly through possible targets. For instance, Base 226 Mheng, the Petaled Fortress. She would certainly perish in the attempt, but the only way she could better that accomplishment would be to raze the Imperial firstworld, and she wasn’t that ambitious. There was Bridgepoint 663 Tsi-Kes, with its celebrated Pallid Sentinels, or Aerie 8 Yeneq, which built the Imperium’s greatest flyers, or—

She set the cards down, closed her eyes, and pressed her palms against her face. She was no tactician supreme. Would it make much difference if she picked a card at random?

But of course nothing was truly random in the ghost’s presence.

She laid out the Candle Column again. “Not 8 Yeneq,” she said. “Let’s start with a softer target. Aerie 586 Chiu.”

Lisse looked at the ghost: the habit of seeking its approval had not left her. It nodded. “The safest approach is via the Capillary Ashways. It will test your piloting skills.”

Privately, Lisse thought that the kite would be happy to guide itself. They didn’t dare allow it to, however.

The Capillaries were among the worst of the ashways. Even starlight moved in unnerving ways when faced with ancient networks of voidcurrent gates, unmaintained for generations, or vortices whose behavior changed day by day.

They were fortunate with the first several capillaries. Under other circumstances, Lisse would have gawked at the splendor of lensed galaxies and the jewel-fire of distant clusters. She was starting to manipulate the control interface without hesitating, or flinching as though a wolf’s shadow might cross hers.

At the ninth—

“Patrol,” the ghost said, leaning close.

She nodded jerkily, trying not to show that its proximity pained her. Its mouth crimped in apology.

“It would have been worse if we’d made it all the way to 586 Chiu without a run-in,” Lisse said. That kind of luck always had a price. If she was unready, best to find out now, while there was a chance of fleeing to prepare for a later strike.

The patrol consisted of sixteen flyers: eight Lance 82s and eight Scout 73s. She had flown similar Scouts in simulation.

The flyers did not hesitate. A spread of missiles streaked toward her. Lisse launched antimissile fire.

It was impossible to tell whether they had gone on the attack because the Imperium and the mercenaries had parted on bad terms, or because the authorities had already learned of what had befallen Rhaion. She was certain couriers had gone out within moments of the devastation of Ishuel’s Bridge.

As the missiles exploded, Lisse wrenched the kite toward the nearest vortex. The kite was a larger and sturdier craft. It would be better able to survive the voidcurrent stresses. The tapestries dimmed as they approached. She shut off haptics as wind eddied and swirled in the command spindle. It would only get worse.

One missile barely missed her. She would have to do better. And the vortex was a temporary terrain advantage; she could not lurk there forever.

The second barrage came. Lisse veered deeper into the current. The stars took on peculiar roseate shapes.

“They know the kite’s capabilities,” the ghost reminded her. “Use them. If they’re smart, they’ll already have sent a courier burst to local command.”

The kite suggested jerengjen flyers, harrier class. Lisse conceded its expertise.

The harriers unfolded as they launched, sleek and savage. They maneuvered remarkably well in the turbulence. But there were only ten of them.

“If I fire into that, I’ll hit them,” Lisse said. Her reflexes were good, but not that good, and the harriers apparently liked to soar near their targets.

“You won’t need to fire,” the ghost said.

She glanced at him, disbelieving. Her hand hovered over the controls, playing through possibilities and finding them wanting. For instance, she wasn’t certain that the firebird (explosives) didn’t entail self-immolation, and she was baffled by the stag.

The patrol’s pilots were not incapable. They scorched three of the harriers. They probably realized at the same time that Lisse did that the three had been sacrifices. The other seven flensed them silent.

Lisse edged the kite out of the vortex. She felt an uncomfortable sense of duty to the surviving harriers, but she knew they were one-use, crumpled paper, like all jerengjen. Indeed, they folded themselves flat as she passed them, reducing themselves to battledrift.

“I can’t see how this is an efficient use of resources,” Lisse told the ghost.

“It’s an artifact of the mercenaries’ methods,” it said. “It works. Perhaps that’s all that matters.”

Lisse wanted to ask for details, but her attention was diverted by a crescendo of turbulence. By the time they reached gentler currents, she was too tired to bring it up.

They altered their approach to 586 Chiu twice, favoring stealth over confrontation. If she wanted to char every patrol in the Imperium by herself, she could live a thousand sleepless years and never be done.

For six days they lurked near 586 Chiu, developing a sense for local traffic and likely defenses. Terrain would not be much difficulty. Aeries were built near calm, steady currents.

“It would be easiest if you were willing to take out the associated city,” the ghost said in a neutral voice. They had been discussing whether making a bombing pass on the aerie posed too much of a risk. Lisse had balked at the fact that 586 Chiu Second City was well within blast radius. The people who had furnished the kite’s armaments seemed to have believed in surfeit. “They’d only have a moment to know what was happening.”

“No.”

“Lisse—”

She looked at it mutely, obdurate, although she hated to disappoint it. It hesitated, but did not press its case further.

“This, then,” it said in defeat. “Next best odds: aim the voidcurrent disrupter at the manufactory’s core while jerengjen occupy the defenses.” Aeries held the surrounding current constant to facilitate the calibration of newly built flyers. Under ordinary circumstances, the counterbalancing vortex was leashed at the core. If they could disrupt the core, the vortex would tear at its surroundings.

“That’s what we’ll do, then,” Lisse said. The disrupter had a short range. She did not like the idea of flying in close. But she had objected to the safer alternative.

Aerie 586 Chiu reminded Lisse not of a nest but of a pyre. Flyers and transports were always coming and going, like sparks. The kite swooped in sharp and fast. Falcon-jerengjen raced ahead of them, holding lattice formation for two seconds before scattering toward their chosen marks.

The aerie’s commanders responded commendably. They knew the kite was by far the greater threat. But Lisse met the first flight they threw at her with missiles keen and terrible. The void lit up in a clamor of brilliant colors.

The kite screamed when a flyer salvo hit one of its secondary wings. It bucked briefly while the other wings changed their geometry to compensate. Lisse could not help but think that the scream had not sounded like pain. It had sounded like exultation.

The real test was the gauntlet of Banner 142 artillery emplacements. They were silver-bright and terrible. It seemed wrong that they did not roar like tigers. Lisse bit the inside of her mouth and concentrated on narrowing the parameters for the voidcurrent disrupter. Her hand was a fist on the control panel.

One tapestry depicted the currents: striations within striations of pale blue against black. Despite its shielding, the core was visible as a knot tangled out of all proportion to its size.

“Now,” the ghost said, with inhuman timing.

She didn’t wait to be told twice. She unfisted her hand.

Unlike the wolf-strike, the disrupter made the kite scream again. It lurched and twisted. Lisse wanted to clap her hands over her ears, but there was more incoming fire, and she was occupied with evasive maneuvers. The kite folded in on itself, minimizing its profile. It dizzied her to view it on the secondary tapestry. For a panicked moment, she thought the kite would close itself around her, press her like petals in a book. Then she remembered to breathe.

The disrupter was not visible to human sight, but the kite could read its effect on the current. Like lightning, the disrupter’s blast forked and forked again, zigzagging inexorably toward the minute variations in flux that would lead it toward the core.

She was too busy whipping the kite around to an escape vector to see the moment of convergence between disrupter and core. But she felt the first lashing surge as the vortex spun free of its shielding, expanding into available space. Then she was too busy steadying the kite through the triggered subvortices to pay attention to anything but keeping them alive.

Only later did she remember how much debris there had been, flung in newly unpredictable ways: wings torn from flyers, struts, bulkheads, even an improbable crate with small reddish fruit tumbling from the hole in its side.

Later, too, it would trouble her that she had not been able to keep count of the people in the tumult. Most were dead already: sliced slantwise, bone and viscera exposed, trailing banners of blood; others twisted and torn, faces ripped off and cast aside like unwanted masks, fingers uselessly clutching the wrack of chairs, tables, door frames. A fracture in one wall revealed three people in dark green jackets. They turned their faces toward the widening crack, then clasped hands before a subvortex hurled them apart. The last Lisse saw of them was two hands, still clasped together and severed at the wrist.

Lisse found an escape. Took it.

She didn’t know until later that she had destroyed 40% of the aerie’s structure. Some people survived. They knew how to rebuild.

What she never found out was that the disrupter’s effect was sufficiently long-lasting that some of the survivors died of thirst before supplies could safely be brought in.

In the old days, Lisse’s people took on the ghostweight to comfort the dead and be comforted in return. After a year and a day, the dead unstitched themselves and accepted their rest.

After Jerengjen Day, Lisse’s people struggled to share the sudden increase in ghostweight, to alleviate the flickering terror of the massacred.

Lisse’s parents, unlike the others, stitched a ghost onto a child.

“They saw no choice,” the ghost told her again and again. “You mustn’t blame them.”

The ghost had listened uncomplainingly to her troubles and taught her how to cry quietly so the teachers wouldn’t hear her. It had soothed her to sleep with her people’s legends and histories, described the gardens and promenades so vividly she imagined she could remember them herself. Some nights were more difficult than others, trying to sleep with that strange, stabbing, heartpulse ache. But blame was not what she felt, not usually.

The second target was Base 454 Qo, whose elite flyers were painted with elaborate knotwork, green with bronze-tipped thorns. For reasons that Lisse did not try to understand, the jerengjen dismembered the defensive flight but left the painted panels completely intact.

The third, the fourth, the fifth—she started using Scorch card values to tabulate the reported deaths, however unreliable the figures were in any unencrypted sources. For all its talents, the kite could not pierce military-grade encryption. She spent two days fidgeting over this inconvenience so she wouldn’t have to think about the numbers.

When she did think about the numbers, she refused to round up. She refused to round down.

The nightmares started after the sixth, Bridgepoint 977 Ja-Esh. The station commander had kept silence, as she had come to expect. However, a merchant coalition had broken the interdict to plead for mercy in fourteen languages. She hadn’t destroyed the coalition’s outpost. The station had, in reprimand.

She reminded herself that the merchant would have perished anyway. She had learned to use the firebird to scathing effect. And she was under no illusions that she was only destroying Imperial soldiers and bureaucrats.

In her dreams she heard their pleas in her birth tongue, which the ghost had taught her. The ghost, for its part, started singing her to sleep, as it had when she was little.

The numbers marched higher. When they broke ten million, she plunged out of the command spindle and into the room she had claimed for her own. She pounded the wall until her fists bled. Triumph tasted like salt and venom. It wasn’t supposed to be so easy. In the worst dreams, a wolf roved the tapestries, eating shadows—eating souls. And the void with its tinsel of worlds was nothing but one vast shadow.

Stores began running low after the seventeenth. Lisse and the ghost argued over whether it was worth attempting to resupply through black market traders. Lisse said they didn’t have time to spare, and won. Besides, she had little appetite.

Intercepted communications suggested that someone was hunting them. Rumors and whispers. They kept Lisse awake when she was so tired she wanted to slam the world shut and hide. The Imperium certainly planned reprisal. Maybe others did, too.

If anyone else took advantage of the disruption to move against the Imperium for their own reasons, she didn’t hear about it.

The names of the war-kites, recorded in the Imperium’s administrative language, are varied: Fire Burns the Spider Black. The Siege of the City with Seventeen Faces. Sovereign Geometry. The Glove with Three Fingers.

The names are not, strictly speaking, Imperial. Rather, they are plundered from the greatest accomplishments of the cultures that the mercenaries have defeated on the Imperium’s behalf. Fire Burns the Spider Black was a silk tapestry housed in the dark hall of Meu Danh, ancient of years. The Siege of the City with Seventeen Faces was a saga chanted by the historians of Kwaire. Sovereign Geometry discussed the varying nature of parallel lines. And more: plays, statues, games.

The Imperium’s scholars and artists take great pleasure in reinterpreting these works. Such achievements are meant to be disseminated, they say.

They were three days’ flight from the next target, Base 894 Sao, when the shadow winged across all the tapestries. The void was dark, pricked by starfire and the occasional searing burst of particles. The shadow singed everything darker as it soared to intercept them, as single-minded in its purpose as a bullet. For a second she almost thought it was a collage of wrecked flyers and rusty shrapnel.

The ghost cursed. Lisse startled, but when she looked at it, its face was composed again.

As Lisse pulled back the displays’ focus to get a better sense of the scale, she thought of snowbirds and stormbirds, winter winds and cutting beaks. “I don’t know what that is,” she said, “but it can’t be natural.” None of the imperial defenses had manifested in such a fashion.

“It’s not,” the ghost said. “That’s another war-kite.”

Lisse cleared the control panel. She veered them into a chancy voidcurrent eddy.

The ghost said, “Wait. You won’t outrun it. As we see its shadow, it sees ours.”

“How does a kite have a shadow in the void in the first place?” she asked. “And why haven’t we ever seen our own shadow?”

“Who can see their own soul?” the ghost said. But it would not meet her eyes.

Lisse would have pressed for more, but the shadow overtook them. It folded itself back like a plumage of knives. She brought the kite about. The control panel suggested possibilities: a two-headed dragon, a falcon, a coiled snake. Next a wolf reared up, but she quickly pulled her hand back.

“Visual contact,” the kite said crisply.

The stranger-kite was the color of a tarnished star. It had tucked all its projections away to present a minimal surface for targeting, but Lisse had no doubt that it could unfold itself faster than she could draw breath. The kite flew a widening helix, beautifully precise.

“A mercenary salute, equal to equal,” the ghost said.

“Are we expected to return it?”

“Are you a mercenary?” the ghost countered.

“Communications incoming,” the kite said before Lisse could make a retort.

“I’ll hear it,” Lisse said over the ghost’s objection. It was the least courtesy she could offer, even to a mercenary.

To Lisse’s surprise, the tapestry’s raven vanished to reveal a woman’s visage, not an emblem. The woman had brown skin, a scar trailing from one temple down to her cheekbone, and dark hair cropped short. She wore gray on gray, in no uniform that Lisse recognized, sharply tailored. Lisse had expected a killer’s eyes, a hunter’s eyes. Instead, the woman merely looked tired.

“Commander Kiriet Dzan of—” She had been speaking in administrative, but the last word was unfamiliar. “You would say Candle.”

“Lisse of Rhaion,” she said. There was no sense in hiding her name.

But the woman wasn’t looking at her. She was looking at the ghost. She said something sharply in that unfamiliar language.

The ghost pressed its hand against Lisse’s. She shuddered, not understanding. “Be strong,” it murmured.

“I see,” Kiriet said, once more speaking in administrative. Her mouth was unsmiling. “Lisse, do you know who you’re traveling with?”

“I don’t believe we’re acquainted,” the ghost said, coldly formal.

“Of course not,” Kiriet said. “But I was the logistical coordinator for the scouring of Rhaion.” She did not say consolidation. “I knew why we were there. Lisse, your ghost’s name is Vron Arien.”

Lisse said, after several seconds, “That’s a mercenary name.”

The ghost said, “So it is. Lisse—” Its hand fell away.

“Tell me what’s going on.”

Its mouth was taut. Then: “Lisse, I—”

“Tell me.”

“He was a deserter, Lisse,” the woman said, carefully, as if she thought the information might fracture her. “For years he eluded Wolf Command. Then we discovered he had gone to ground on Rhaion. Wolf Command determined that, for sheltering him, Rhaion must be brought to heel. The Imperium assented.”

Throughout this Lisse looked at the ghost, silently begging it to deny any of it, all of it. But the ghost said nothing.

Lisse thought of long nights with the ghost leaning by her bedside, reminding her of the dancers, the tame birds, the tangle of frostfruit trees in the city square; things she did not remember herself because she had been too young when the jerengjen came. Even her parents only came to her in snatches: curling up in a mother’s lap, helping a father peel plantains. Had any of the ghost’s stories been real?

She thought, too, of the way the ghost had helped her plan her escape from Base 87, how it had led her cunningly through the maze and to the kite. At the time, it had not occurred to her to wonder at its confidence.

Lisse said, “Then the kite is yours.”

“After a fashion, yes.” The ghost’s eyes were precisely the color of ash after the last ember’s death.

“But my parents—”

Enunciating the words as if they cut it, the ghost said, “We made a bargain, your parents and I.”

She could not help it; she made a stricken sound.

“I offered you my protection,” the ghost said. “After years serving the Imperium, I knew its workings. And I offered your parents vengeance. Don’t think that Rhaion wasn’t my home, too.”

Lisse was wrackingly aware of Kiriet’s regard. “Did my parents truly die in the consolidation?” The euphemism was easier to use.

She could have asked whether Lisse was her real name. She had to assume that it wasn’t.

“I don’t know,” it said. “After you were separated from them, I had no way of finding out. Lisse, I think you had better find out what Kiriet wants. She is not your friend.”

I was the logistical coordinator, Kiriet had said. And her surprise at seeing the ghost—It has a name, Lisse reminded herself—struck Lisse as genuine. Which meant Kiriet had not come here in pursuit of Vron Arien. “Why are you here?” Lisse asked.

“You’re not going to like it. I’m here to destroy your kite, whatever you’ve named it.”

“It doesn’t have a name.” She had been unable to face the act of naming, of claiming ownership.

Kiriet looked at her sideways. “I see.”

“Surely you could have accomplished your goal,” Lisse said, “without talking to me first. I am inexperienced in the ways of kites. You are not.” In truth, she should already have been running. But Kiriet’s revelation meant that Lisse’s purpose, once so clear, was no longer to be relied upon.

“I may not be your friend, but I am not your enemy, either,” Kiriet said. “I have no common purpose with the Imperium, not anymore. But you cannot continue to use the kite.”

Lisse’s eyes narrowed. “It is the weapon I have,” she said. “I would be a fool to relinquish it.”

“I don’t deny its efficacy,” Kiriet said, “but you are Rhaioni. Doesn’t the cost trouble you?”

Cost?

Kiriet said, “So no one told you.” Her anger focused on the ghost.

“A weapon is a weapon,” the ghost said. At Lisse’s indrawn breath, it said, “The kites take their sustenance from the deaths they deal. It was necessary to strengthen ours by letting it feast on smaller targets first. This is the particular craft of my people, as ghostweight was the craft of yours, Lisse.”

Sustenance. “So this is why you want to destroy the kite,” Lisse said to Kiriet.

“Yes.” The other woman’s smile was bitter. “As you might imagine, the Imperium did not approve. It wanted to negotiate another hundred-year contract. I dissented.”

“Were you in a position to dissent?” the ghost asked, in a way that made Lisse think that it was translating some idiom from its native language.

“I challenged my way up the chain of command and unseated the head of Wolf Command,” Kiriet said. “It was not a popular move. I have been destroying kites ever since. If the Imperium is so keen on further conquest, let it dirty its own hands.”

“Yet you wield a kite yourself,” Lisse said.

“Candle is my home. But on the day that every kite is accounted for in words of ash and cinders, I will turn my own hand against it.”

It appealed to Lisse’s sense of irony. All the same, she did not trust Kiriet.

She heard a new voice. Kiriet’s head turned. “Someone’s followed you.” She said a curt phrase in her own language, then: “You’ll want my assistance—”

Lisse shook her head.

“It’s a small flight, as these things go, but it represents a threat to you. Let me—”

“No,” Lisse said, more abruptly than she had meant to. “I’ll handle it myself.”

“If you insist,” Kiriet said, looking even more tired. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Then her face was replaced, for a flicker, with her emblem: a black candle crossed slantwise by an empty sheath.

“The Candle is headed for a vortex, probably for cover,” the ghost said, very softly. “But it can return at any moment.”

Lisse thought that she was all right, and then the reaction set in. She spent several irrecoverable breaths shaking, arms wrapped around herself, before she was able to concentrate on the tapestry data.

At one time, every war-kite displayed a calligraphy scroll in its command spindle. The words are, approximately:

I have only

one candle

Even by the mercenaries’ standards, it is not much of a poem. But the woman who wrote it was a soldier, not a poet.

The mercenaries no longer have a homeland. Even so, they keep certain traditions, and one of them is the Night of Vigils. Each mercenary honors the year’s dead by lighting a candle. They used to do this on the winter solstice of an ancient calendar. Now the Night of Vigils is on the anniversary of the day the first war-kites were launched; the day the mercenaries slaughtered their own people to feed the kites.

The kites fly, the mercenaries’ commandant said. But they do not know how to hunt.

When he was done, they knew how to hunt. Few of the mercenaries forgave him, but it was too late by then.

The poem says: So many people have died, yet I have only one candle for them all.

It is worth noting that “have” is expressed by a particular construction for alienable possession: not only is the having subject to change, it is additionally under threat of being taken away.

Kiriet’s warning had been correct. An Imperial flight in perfect formation had advanced toward them, inhibiting their avenues of escape. They outnumbered her forty-eight to one. The numbers did not concern her, but the Imperium’s resources meant that if she dealt with this flight, there would be twenty more waiting for her, and the numbers would only grow worse. That they had not opened fire already meant they had some trickery in mind.

One of the flyers peeled away, describing an elegant curve and exposing its most vulnerable surface, painted with a rose.

“That one’s not armed,” Lisse said, puzzled.

The ghost’s expression was unreadable. “How very wise of them,” it said.

The forward tapestry flickered. “Accept the communication,” Lisse said.

The emblem that appeared was a trefoil flanked by two roses, one stem-up, one stem-down. Not for the first time, Lisse wondered why people from a culture that lavished attention on miniatures and sculptures were so intent on masking themselves in emblems.

“Commander Fai Guen, this is Envoy Nhai Bara.” A woman’s voice, deep and resonant, with an accent Lisse didn’t recognize.

So I’ve been promoted? Lisse thought sardonically, feeling herself tense up. The Imperium never gave you anything, even a meaningless rank, without expecting something in return.

Softly, she said to the ghost, “They were bound to catch up to us sooner or later.” Then, to the kite: “Communications to Envoy Nhai: I am Lisse of Rhaion. What words between us could possibly be worth exchanging? Your people are not known for mercy.”

“If you will not listen to me,” Nhai said, “perhaps you will listen to the envoy after me, or the one after that. We are patient and we are many. But I am not interested in discussing mercy: that’s something we have in common.”

“I’m listening,” Lisse said, despite the ghost’s chilly stiffness. All her life she had honed herself against the Imperium. It was unbearable to consider that she might have been mistaken. But she had to know what Nhai’s purpose was.

“Commander Lisse,” the envoy said, and it hurt like a stab to hear her name spoken by a voice other than the ghost’s, a voice that was not Rhaioni. Even if she knew, now, that the ghost was not Rhaioni, either. “I have a proposal for you. You have proven your military effectiveness—”

Military effectiveness. She had tallied all the deaths, she had marked each massacre on the walls of her heart, and this faceless envoy collapsed them into two words empty of number.

“—quite thoroughly. We are in need of a strong sword. What is your price for hire, Commander Lisse?”

“What is my—” She stared at the trefoil emblem, and then her face went ashen.

It is not true that the dead cannot be folded. Square becomes kite becomes swan; history becomes rumor becomes song. Even the act of remembrance creases the truth.

But the same can be said of the living.

0 notes

phonkscribes · 2 years

Note

Can you write an imagine for how the mercs react to their s/o (lover) giving them an flower crown. Thought this was cute :))

From the apothecary.

You're a gardener, in charge of Teufort's landscaping, and because of that you're often left to your own devices when your significant mercenary is off doing mercenary things. Flowers are abundant in the unused fields and you're rather crafty.

Scout

Scout isn't used to getting things personally made for him(except if they're from his ma), so when you tell him you've got a gift for him, he's pretty excited about it

You're a bit taller than he is, so you don't need to ask him to bend down when you place it on his head. All the while, he's fidgeting as you remove his cap and headset to put it on.

"What is it, doll? What're ya messin' wit' my head for?", he laughs

You tell him to be patient enough and for the sake of you he complies.

The flowers you chose to weave are red gladiolus, and when you're done you take a step back to admire your work.

Gingerly, Scout reaches up to feel the soft petals and grins

"You're adorable, just as I thought", you muse openly, to which the Boston Batter chuckles and turns as red as his shirt

"Yeah- well, o' course, d'you know who you're datin' Y/N?", he shrugs.

He's so happy that you made something for him, and he's even happier to wear it around like a medal of honor.

If anyone tries to touch it, he gets all defensive and smacks their hands away.

"Back off! Y/N made it for me, and if any one of yous ruins it I'll kick your ass!"

At the end of the day, he does end up accidentally busting it over making such a fuss about it

"Aw geez, I'm real sorry Y/N- I- I didn't mean to it just-"

"You know I can just make you more, right? It's alright, Scout", you soothe his worries with a kiss and send him off into battle. You're just glad he loved it so much.

Soldier

He's always admired your craftsmanship, even if all you do is work with plants and herbs for the most part. It's what you're good at, just like how he's good at war

He likes to tell you about the battles he's been in while you work after a day on the job, to which you've grown rather fond of. He's quite the remarkable soldier and because of that you thought to honor him where the military failed to.

The flowers you chose to weave the crown out of were cosmos because they're able to survive and grow in the harshest conditions, just like your lover.

As he comes to meet you to tell you about his day, you tell him that you've got something for him, naturally he is delighted to receive it.

You ask for him to take off his helmet, of which he shyly obliges to do so. You stand on the tip of your toes to place the crown on his head, and it dawns upon him that you're having trouble reaching him.

"What's this for?", he asks you, that goofy expression you love so much plastered onto his face.

"You were never awarded for your tours even though you did help to fight, so I thought that I would have the honor to do so. Do you like it..?", you ask, studying him as he lets your words sit

You... you would do that, for him? Oh you're a keeper, that's for sure.

He starts to laugh, fits of giggles turning into boisterous laughter as he gives you a crushing hug.

"Like it? I LOVE IT! HEEHEEHAHAHA!!"

He spins you about in his arms, rubbing his cheek against yours before the two of you topple over in the grass, laughing.

"I love ya, cupcake"

"And I love you too, my strong soldier"

Pyro

Today was a bad day for them. You could tell from the way they seemed to slump forward after leaving the locker rooms.

Not long after it had begun to rain, one omen after the other as you had greeted them. Their reaction being nulled thanks to the poor outcome of the last match.

You're not going to let them wallow around like that all day, not in the slightest.

Taking an umbrella and your gear out, you set forth to get the materials needed to cheer up your partner.

The flowers aren't hard to find; yellow roses that you've been growing yourself for a small while now.

When you're through with your mission, Pyro wonders why you're damp and covered in mud. You tell them it's a secret, and the fire starter laughs. A secret they'll uncover! That's for sure. You get the feeling that they will just from the glint in their eyes.

This means that you'll need to work quickly now.

You seek out Engi for help on distracting them until you're done(God bless that man) when you go to find Pyro.

As soon as you open your door, there they are! Muffled words leave their mask, asking if you'll let them in on this little secret now

"Yeah, actually, about that. Do me a favor, will ya?", you ask to which they nod and comply.

The roses are fitted over their gas mask, and you step back to admire your work.

"Okay! You can open 'em now! Tadah, I made you a little flower crown. I know they're your favorite, and I just couldn't help but see y- OOF"

You are glomped by the fire starter. Giggles leaving through their nozzle as they nuzzle you and hug you with a surprising amount of strength.

"Feelin' better, hon?", you ask as you pat their back.

"Mmhm!!", they don't let go of you.

Demoman

Drinking on the job warrants a lot of naps, of which the two of you tend to enjoy beneath your favorite tree!

Tavish lays his head down in your lap as you decide to make a nice surprise for him when he wakes up.

Luckily for you, there are jasmine flowers all around, of which you use to make your flower crown.

You watch him stir a bit while he sleeps, chuckling as you work, Demoman snuggles closer to you.

It's so peaceful like this, far better when there's explosives and you watch your lover fly about in pieces. Little moments together like this is what makes the Earth go round and around.

You're lucky to have met someone like him, even with what comes with the job.

When he wakes up, you've just about finished.

"Did I miss anythin' luv?", he asks with a sleepy smile on his lips.

"Not at all, dear", you assure him as you fix the crown onto his head.

"Ah, now what's this?", he chuckles, going to sit up and take the crown off.

"I made you a little something while you dozed off is all. Put it back on, you look so handsome in it", you guide his hands back up to his head.

He takes the chance to kiss you then as you do so.

"Hah! I guess, I do, but now I've got tae make you one", he chimes

His isn't as nice as yours, but you wear it anyways.

Heavy

Misha likes to watch you work, something about watching you handle the vegetables has always brought him comfort, especially when he's feeling stressed about something.

He helps out too, saying it reminds him of home.

That's how the two of you got together, bonding over something so simple yet so important.

As a token of your love, you started growing sunflowers on behalf of him missing his home in Russia and his mother and sisters.

For the past couple of weeks, you've been urging him away from your garden in preparation for your gift.

Worried that you're upset with him or seeing someone else, he begins to wonder why you haven't been letting him near your little spot. However, he trusts you and that if has done something, he will do whatever he must to right those wrongs.

He approaches the garden, expecting to be pushed away when you step forward to meet him half way.

"Y/N... I would like to talk to you", he states, "Have I done something to make you mad with me?"

"Of course you haven't my love, I've just been preparing something for you is all", and with that, you reveal what you have hidden behind your back.

When he is greeted by the sunflowers, his eyes widen, lips parting in surprise.

"If you had seen it before they finished growing, it would be ruined, that's why I've been shutting you out. I'm sorry to cause you to worry", you tell him before you reach out to put it on his head.

"This is nice", he seems to be at a loss for words, too relieved to know that you were never mad at him and too charmed with the action of growing flowers just for him.

Heavy lowers himself so that you can put it on before pulling you into a hug.

"You mean everything to me, Y/N"

"And you to me, Misha"

Engineer

He's an awful busy man, always tinkering away in his workshop so that he can improve his machinery for the sake of being efficient and doing a better job for the team.

However, he tends to stay in there for quite sometime, which worries you

Dell doesn't like to be bothered when he works, but you know better than the man with 12 PHDS does.

You walk through the workshop, squinting your eyes as the sparks fly from him welding something together.

"Don't you think you've been down here for long enough?", you ask, which spooks him right out of his skin.

"Y/N, darlin', you know what I've said about comin' into the workshop. Nearly scared me half to death"

"Dell. Take a break"

"Right after I'm through with this-" "Dell" "Y'know I'm half way through with fixin' up my sentry here-" "Dell. It'll be here when you come back, just... come with me for a while, 'kay?"

It's that little "'kay?" that manages to win him over, after all, he can't stand arguing with you.

You take his hand in yours, going to lead him out to the backyard where you've already prepared everything.

There's a couple of beers laid out underneath an umbrella and blanket set for the two of you.

"How long have you been waitin' on me, sugar?", he's embarrassed to ask that as he takes a spot right besides you.

"Long enough, Texas", you reach down to pick up the flower crown you've prepared for him made of amaryllis

You're already popping the caps off of your own bottle when he's gazing at you with the fondest look on his face.

"How did I get so lucky to be with ya, Y/N?"

Medic

Medic seeks you out often, since you're well versed in botany. Your medical prowess has led him to being able to make progresses during the field to assist the team.

Aside from professionalism, he likes to hear you talk about the plants you care for. The way you appear as bright as the sun as you talk about your growing herbs.

He's offered to help enhance your crops, but you've declined the doctor each and every time. Something freakish will happen, and you're sure of it.

Nevertheless your closeness has warranted some feelings, of which you cannot fathom to believe, and everyday Medic does well to remind you of your "poor decision"

You wouldn't dream of giving up the doctor for the world, but somehow he thinks that you'll see something in a better man and leave.

While he's working you craft him a symbol of how strong your love is for him, a crown of blue irises.

He's filling out the results of today's reports when you sneak up from behind him and place the crown onto his head.

"My my, vhat is zhis liebling?", he sounds surprised as he turns to give you an over the shoulder look.

"Just... practicing chemistry"

"Between vhat? Zhe flowers? Did you find out something new about them, have you come to share Y/N?"

"Mm, just the bonds made between you and me", you wink as you pull him into a hug.

"Oh!", he's a bit disappointed, but feels his face flush some as he aligns with you

"Zhank you, I appreciate it... vould you like to test vith some of mien compounds then?"

"Ludwig.", you grimace as he laughs.

Sniper

He's a bit reserved, brushing you off to the side even when you began to seek him out. You imagine he was rather lonely by himself in that van, and thought of trying to coax him out of it more.

No matter how many gifts or conversations the two of you share, you get the feeling that he just doesn't like you, which could not have been further from the truth.

You're one of the few people that give a hoot about him and he doesn't want to mess that up by saying the wrong thing or by you seeing what he does inside of the van.

To solidify you wanting to be with him, you've decided to propose the idea with flower crown.

The yellow iris is your flower of choice as you creatively weave them together before sneaking up on the bushman.

However, that was single-handedly the worst decision you could've made in your approach for this.

When you creep up on the sharp shooter, he instantly whips around with his kukri and shouts.

"BLOODY SPY!"

"No no! Mundy it's me"

When you say his name, he relaxes from nearly stabbing you with the machete. Totally fair on his part.

"You out of your bloody mind? I coulda killed you"

"But you didn't"

"Crikey, Y/N...", he laughs

You stand a little taller to give him a kiss on the cheek, "Thanks Sniper"

"Oh... it was, er- I didn't do anythin' ya weirdo"

"Not yet"

"Not yet?"

You swap his hat for the flower crown you've made and he freezes up. No one takes his hat... but... he supposes he'll make an exception this one time. For you.

"Y'know you coulda just handed it to me, yeah? No need to go sneakin' around", he huffs as he tries to fight back a smile

"Where's the fun in that?"

Spy

When he first laid eyes upon you, it was love at first sight. The petals cascaded around you and time seemed to come to crawl.

Your beauty was only heightened by your angelic smile and the way you cared for the delicate plants. It was a wonder why Mann.co had tucked you away like the lone rose that you were.

You found him to be very charming as he waltzed right up to you, and your little bouts were always romantic save for when they were interrupted by Scout or some other event pulling him away from you. He had always promised that he'd return with something nice to bring you.

His gifts were always rather fancy, but a bit much for your tastes. You're a simple person really, and it's just the little things that light up your world.

He had gifted you red roses as symbolic of his love and passion towards you, of which you accepted with open arms. You immediately started picking the bouquet a part as he stared on in wonder of what you might do.

"And what will you make of this, I wonder"

"Something that you will adore, mon cher", you smirk, he loves it when you call him pet names.

You weave a crown, and his eyes widen with amusement, of course he should've known.

"Your talent never ceases to amaze me"

"Come, lower your head love", and he does so as to your request.

When it is fitted over his head, he reaches up to hold your chin, lifting it up at him so that he might gaze into your lovely eyes.

"Am I even more handsome now, Y/N?", he asks jokingly

You grin, the giggling as you lean into his touch.

"Of course not, Spy", he pouts at that, but his expression doesn't sour at all when you kiss him.

368 notes · View notes

bandsilike · 2 years

Text

seth dollar

HOODS

xtra sonic

dude bro

wiggle worm

portal

grizfolk

art school girlfriend

sunn 0)))

milking the goat machine

Hevisaurus

the regrettes

voxtrot

harlequin

the modern lovers

saint saviour

tired radio

au revoir heart

kitchens of distinction

another winter

SNFU

kane strang

grumpster

beau dega

the driver era

the fugees

Rixe

mirror gazer

tower (i just gotta wash my hair)

tower (old band)

toughskins

sea sleeper

the dead elected

the elected

breakup shoes

good guys in black

nate ruess

fishmans

a day to remember

fidlar

spin doctors

scotty sire

slaughter and the dogs

kivimetsän druidi

ignant benches

crisis

great gable

machine men

condor

marathonmann

maroon

terrorizer

thanatos

the agonist

the crown

the dagger

the devastated

the gathering

the man-eating tree

the moaning

the shrine

treblinka

unleashed

unsun

vampires everywhere!

venomous concept

warbringer

winds of plague

zoax

zonaria

massacre (spanish)

massacre (screaming)

hangingskeletons

winston surfshirt

kotipelto

the feaver

the narwhals

charli xcx

kypck

lullacry

amy winehouse

the black dahlia murder

frank ocean

ginuwine

fantasyluv

NIKI

josh wink

awolnation

blind lemon jefferson

leadbelly

kyle sparkman

make friends

danny gonzalez

walk the moon

milky chance

elmore james

passenger

gotye

mercenary

mick gordon

morbid

port noir

stevie t

pyrexia

runemagick

ryker's

sacramentum

samael

sentenced

sindrome

sleeping giant

survive said the prophet

starkill

stick to your guns

tad morose

templeton pek

nocturnal rites

oddland

paradise lost

passenger of shit

poisonblack

teen idles

monsters scare you!

moonspell

3oh!3

seal

KOAN sound

freddie king

bb king

buddy guy

albert king

into the flood

otis rush

charlie christian

benny goodman

django reinhardt

the psychedelic furs

sebastian paul

ramzoid

warzone

violent way

iwrestledabearonce

local h

adrian eagle

the higher

dear seattle

split enz

tavares

unknown mortal orchestra

backini

the backandforths

back number

utg scoopman

back door slam

backend oc

developer 920

developer

city developer

megadeth

anthrax

Judas Priest

pearl jam

run dmc

the strokes

prince

the doors

bad religion

my chemical romance

jawbreaker

inxs

turnover

sebii

22gz

with confidence

godsmack

developers

shinee

pong developers

hristo hristov

christos nikopoulos

doug hream blunt

joseph p hradisky jr

metodi hristov

milo hrnic

HRV.

hreida

24hrs

giovanni bottesini

ca$hrina

H.R.

hrag mikkel

hrtbrkfever

truncate

cub sport

backandtotheleft

backend jmo

reaper

matt maeson

satin jhn

backend bull

k flay

joe's van

cold chisel

the capitali$ts

sleepshaker

andrew clermont

ganga giri

wadhom

axis

lost at last

gondwana

david hudson and friends

benee

fantasy guys

lime cordiale

mako road

summer thieves

vanilla gorilla

gromz

spacey jane

palace

albion place

krooked kings

the delta riggs

senseless hearts

drapht

losing teeth

australian crawl

divinyls

dragon

dynamic hepnotics

crowded house

agelast

crybabycry

paul kelly

ICEHOUSE

the church

flowers

crowded house

sherbet

hunters & collectors

eurogliders

mi-sex

nevado

tripsitter

wither away

death

sister hazel

ocean alley

sticky fingers

pond

the shamblés

for your health

false accusations

jimmy barnes

V.SPY V.SPY

natural selection

frail body

midnight oil

love

dragonforce

jenny morris

machinations

the cruel sea

the angels

noiseworks

models

choirboys

metal as anything

avoid.

vaultry

daddy cool

the giver

jordan moe

asleep

heights

the danger of falling

casteform

deeskee

misterwives

gel roc

movements

robert delong

take van

caving

secret keeper

156/silence

hoodoo gurus

vanishing twin

icon for hire

the fray

keithslettedahl

mewithoutYou

the postal service

ice nine kills

grand funk railroad

lost under heaven

dead sara

shlohmo

louie zong

sleepfirst

mozes and the first...

the amity affliction

interlay

the clarences

fever 333

jutaun

AJ dee

bones uk

bad omens

the red room

oh marceline

PRYKA

jack conman

the tills

weed

YAMANTAKA//SONIC TITAN

gucci mane

greet death

máscaras

battle ruins

ari herstand

chiddy bang

hayley kiyoko

hayley williams

derek sanders

mac miller

the jubalaires

George Clinton

black heat

Jessi Colter

marceline80

Johnny Clegg

ghostwalk

salvatore adamo

the slim kings

Cockney Rebel

Lloyd Cole

lloyd cole and the commotions

steve harley & Cockney Rebel

the jubalaires

lloyd price

whiskeytown

jamie cullum

ryan adam & the cardinals

ryan adams

Cocteau Twins

PREP

los texas wranglers

Terri Clark

Les Compagnons de la chanson

cold fire

silverstein

danny o'connor

the cold fire

Robin Clark

cannonball adderley

Jim Croce

canary conn

steady holiday

auf der maur

Nat "King" Cole

diamondsonmydick

yvncc

lil kawaii

yung god

nada5150

starlight mints

active bird community

charly bliss

maps & atlases

ruler

minor alps

marc almond

david bazan

brandi carlile

hibou

ashton, gardner and dyke

gary clark jr

chris staples

trace adkins

laurindo almeida

ALPHAMEGA

honne

thumper

the andrews sisters

calico (french)

calico (barsuk)

band of skulls

rednex

arcadia

ray anthony

the bama band

dan croll

hayley williams

J.C. Soon

bobby mahoney and the seventh son

tim atlas

alfamega

april wine

stupid november

josh & andy (barsuk)

demon hunter

hoyt axton

benjamin gibbard

nathan-paul & the admirables

dresses

family of the year

audits (barsuk)

hot milk

little brazil

bobby darin

347aidan

beat connection

tim kasher

billy dean

arrow of light

telekinesis (please ask for help)

snail's house

the shabby bastards

andrew belle

Duncan Laurence

asleep at the wheel

skeletal family

i can make a mess

Dem Franchize Boyz

common holly

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octoberheights · 3 years

Text

Monday:

She’s started baking again. The other members of the Syndicate drop by sometimes to taste-test her recipes, and she shows them the progress she’s made in the construction of her underground city. They compliment the flower paths outside the city, the bridges and floating lanterns and the gorgeous high ceilings and furnishings within, the little subterranean forest and the waterfall, the decorations and details that make the cavernous space cozy. They see what she’s built and they praise her for it and it is exhilarating. She’s grown stronger day by day with the Syndicate in her corner; they pull her up to stand on equal footing with them, and when she expresses her concerns, they listen.

There are days, however, when she can’t bring herself to bake; on those days the heat of the furnace crawls uncomfortably against her skin and the knife block rattles in the corner with each item she sets down on the countertop. On those days she’ll climb. Buildings, mountains, trees—anything that’ll get her to a height where her lungs strain from lack of oxygen and the ringing in her head eases. She jumps, sometimes. They don’t know she does this. They don’t need to know; she’s strong enough to deal with that herself.

Yesterday was their leader’s birthday, and she’d left the party with leftover cake and cookies and brioche. Today is a good day; maybe she’ll share the cookies with Jack.

—

Tuesday:

He’s called the harbinger, the omen, the angel of death. Crows perform at his bidding and the great, lumbering bears of the north shake the ground as he directs them. He emerges from impossible battles with nary a scratch on his body. People across the earth have speculated that he’s a demon, or contracted with a demon, or one of the acolytes of the Blood God like the Blade. He likes to collect these epithets and rumors; when his crows perch on his shoulder to recount the news of the land or messages from his allies they update him on the tales they tell of the angel. They’re all wrong, in the end. Death herself graced him with her favor long ago to act as her representative on the mortal plane.

She’s been dormant recently; her absences had never affected him so strongly before, but ever since he’s entered this land, he’s felt weaker, more fragile. He watched his son destroy the country he founded with a haze across his vision, and then he killed his own son, and the act of it didn’t register until days later. Months fly by in a blur and the only person who can enforce any sort of focus is the Blade and so that simmering anger became his own and it fed into his own pain. There was something rotting in the land and it killed his son and he felt it his duty to purge it with the same TNT that destroyed his wings. He doesn’t regret it.

Today, he finds some measure of peace in building his training room. His son is back and everything is not-quite-broken and his body still aches.

—

Wednesday:

There are too many variables, too many uncertainties. He’s placed his fingerprints on too many projects and lives, and the guilt of his cooperation and his associations claws at his lungs. Dream, neutrality in the midst of war, Dream and his prison and the damned prison rules, Quackity, Las Nevadas. He doesn’t know what he considers his worst fuck-up: Tommy’s death, the torture he’d permitted in his collaboration with Las Nevadas, his betrayal of Ponk’s love and trust, or his inability to save anyone during the banquet.

The hotel stands as a testament to his failure to protect the youngest resident of the land. He plans detours around that plot whenever he travels between the bank and the prison; the little robot stationed by the hotel tells him the boy doesn’t come by anymore, and he knows automatons don’t feel emotions, but he grieves for it anyway. He sees his valentine walking along the wooden pathways and his heart aches to see the damage he had caused. He checks the prison’s security footage and he tells himself guilt has no place in his heart for what happened. He’s surprised the captain and the god and all the rest of the banquet victims still talk to him. But they do, and it gives him hope. His friends are back and free and even though one of them is trying to start a little scuffle with a god, today he’s having fun throwing weednip around and sliding down the pyramid with his closest friends.

The present’s a gift, and he intends on cherishing this moment.

—

Thursday:

He’s building a pub because Wilbur owes him a pint. He knows that man can’t be completely trusted, not now. Not since he died by his crossbow. But it feels good to be acknowledged as someone worth an apology, someone important. He has been abandoned and pushed aside and pushed into lava pits and into hell all within the span of a few months. No one cared. He hates it, he hates the way he’s been made irrelevant and a shadow of his friends’ stories. Even his plans for revenge had been inconsequential, unfruitful: the boy had lived and his accomplice had left him to brood in his own anger.

He’s held his grudges close to his heart and he’s let them fester and he won’t admit he’s tired of it all. If he lets go, then it all disappears and he’s really, truly dead, and if this is his afterlife, if all he can do is lag after the people he cares for, then it’s a fucking shit deal. So today, he’s continuing his work on the pub because he burned down his own home and because the hotel feels too sterile and empty, because he wants to have a space built with his own two hands where he can speak and someone will finally, finally listen. It’s not quite moving on. He’ll take it anyway.

—

Friday:

She tries to live by the code of kindness and reciprocity; that’s how she lived on the high seas of her youth, or so she suspects, based on the journal she found at the site of the shipwreck. Since the day she joined this land, she has made friends and found love and taken the young residents under her wing and vowed to fight against evil. She gives stacks of items to those who need them and she fixes up the holes in the road and offers therapy on difficult days.

The world isn’t as kind as she is. A country was erased from the map for grudges she still doesn’t understand, and no one will tell her the why discs, of all things, are so important. Two boys would have lost their lives to a monster she housed, had it not been for the money Tommy paid a mercenary for his aid. She mourned the loss of Tommy’s life as she fought to keep the hotel in his name, and when he requested therapy upon his resurrection, she was horrified at the effects of trauma he’d exhibited. The friends she’d tried to pull out of the Egg’s influence celebrated a young boy’s death and killed her son. And now this man has taken her friend’s turtle hostage for no reason she can comprehend.

She’s tired. She’s breaking; they’d presumed her kindness was a weakness and maybe it is. Today, she plans on destroying the red menace on the edge of her son’s land. It’s her turn.

—

Saturday:

He’s not sure how many sandstone blocks he’s carved out of the desert at this point, nor how many quartz chips and gold nuggets he’s pulled out of the Netherworld. The villagers know him by name and chat with him when he stops by to trade for emeralds and other goods. His hands bleed gold ichor from the opened blisters dotting his hands, and burns line the edges of his fingertips. Lately, his whole world is rushing by in colors of beige and yellow, green and white and blue. The color red started it, the scramble to build more and more—and it stopped it too, if only for a little while. Ponk asked him for permission to build on his land, told him it was a gift: a peace offering and an apology and a new beginning. It’s a silly build and it doesn’t match the aesthetic of the rest of his summer home, but it warmed his heart, to see the giant red refrigerator rising up from the top of the sand dunes for the first time. Ponk built it just for him. Quackity told him he was alone, and that he didn’t matter if he didn’t assert his powers like he did in the past, and he was wrong. Ponk stays, loves him for who he is now and not for the destruction he wrought.

He doesn’t know what to do now; his father destroyed the build for some grudge she holds against his friend, and he’s exhausted. He’s tired of being pulled into conflict. A vacation from all the tension occurring on his land would not be unwarranted, at this point—a few days, a week. It sounds relaxing—and he’ll do it, he’ll take a vacation, and he’ll tell Ponk that he’s in charge of the summer home later today. He has some packing to do.

—

Sunday:

He likes to splash around the pools and fountains in Las Nevadas when he has to visit. Sometimes he’ll climb up the needle and lean on the bannisters to feel the fresh air ruffling his hair and he thinks about jumping—the air turns hot and stale and the ground burbles up in orange and red—but his brother pulls him out of it, usually. Otherwise the place is boring. He’s not allowed in the gambling den or the club, so he hovers around the forests away from Las Nevadas when Wilbur and Quackity want to speak alone.

Today is one of those days. It’s fine by him; dealing with the two of them together makes him uncomfortable, with the way they push and pull him to their sides. The cigarette smoke lingering on their breaths remind him of the ravine, the explosions from the first war-second -Logstedshire-doomsday-nukes-prison. He’s escaped, for now. The air of the forest is crisp; he can spot flowers in the meadow ahead and he plucks them to form a careless bouquet. Alliums, lilies-of-the-valley, daisies; poppies and cornflowers and dandelions. He threads them together to form crowns and rings, places one on his head and cradles the rest to his chest to stash at home. It’s been a while since he’s made them; before he moved to this land he’d make them for his brother and his brother’s father, the dogs and cows and sheep around the farm. He feels like a child again and his lips twist at the bittersweetness. He’s found himself a bubble and soon Wilbur will barge his way in to speak of his loyalties and Dream and whatever the fuck he’s stormed up with Quackity, but for now, he’ll pick flowers and make chains and chains and chains that, for once, won’t drag him down.

—

Monday’s child is fair of face.

Tuesday’s child is full of grace.

Wednesday’s child is full of woe.

Thursday’s child has far to go.

Fridays’ child is loving and giving.

Saturday’s child works hard for a living.

And the child born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe, good and gay.

#again not accurate to the cc's story i just wanted to write something #based on the nursery rhyme but with twists #dsmp #nihachu #philza #awesamdude #jack manifold #captain puffy #foolish gamers #tommyinnit

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petulant-poet · 3 years

Note

Tell me about ur ocs

Okay okay I have been WAITING for someone to ask me this. I hope you’re ready for an onslaught anon!

okay so since you didn’t ask for a specific set or certain oc, imma tell you about my main oc’s, the prime 16!

the prime 16 are a class of super-powered individuals living in a post-apocalypse, and under the gaze of the institute they live in. that is, until they run away and make lives of their own! Their main goal is to regroup in Boston, but many decide to take the scenic route around the broken country. Here they are, from oldest to youngest and in order of class:

Class Alpha: the first class to emerge, they are the strongest and most skilled with their abilities. They’ve been in the clutches of the institute longer than any of the others, and their need for escape lets them find freedom.

1: Marlon, the soul scholar. He is the oldest and was the one to devise the escape plan in the first place. He escaped and went straight to Boston, using his power of elemental construction to research into soul power, making him a useful asset to anyone. However, his need for knowledge doesn’t stop there. He goes searching and looking where no one has or should, and finds himself deep into something he never should have disturbed.

2: Charlie, the shadow spy. She is the second-in-command to Marlon, but prefers to stay out of the limelight. She finds herself in the holographic city of Chicago, and finds that the best places for her are in the dark corners of the streets. She uses her ability intuition to become a valuable spy and mercenary, able to take out or find anything she is hired to find. She finds though that the shadows she saw as her ally can hold more secrets than she could ever want to know.

3: Colby, the glam American. Colby is a lot more easygoing than most of the others in his class, and is able to mutate his genes however he likes. He uses this skill to join a rock band and become a roving sensation across the ruined country. He finds that not everyone just wants to listen though, and that there will be people who may just want to use him for themselves.

4: Lydia, the lucky bullet. She’s the most energetic of class Alpha and has herself a cartoon physiology, making life around her a living cartoon. She moves off to the west to become a famed cowboy, and is beloved by the people around her. However, all cartoons have their run, and Lydia is terrified of when she will run out of luck.

Class Beta: the second best, the afterthought, whatever you call them, class Beta has heard it before. They have powers that are less useful in battle and more with other people, or in life. They are constantly played as Alpha’s little siblings (which they are) to an insane degree, leading them to often resent or idolize the higher class.

5: Kit, the lonesome nomad. He was one of the kids headed for Boston, until a tragic accident landed him on the road. His only goal is to try and make it to Boston with his brothers and sisters in one piece, and he will betray and manipulate anyone with his empath abilities to get there. He is cold and untrusting, but soon finds that self-isolation is an even colder fate.

6: Georgina, the traveling psychic. She has the power of divination, and can see the future. But it’s not the most reliable very often, only showing flashes and bits of voices. However, she manages to use her powers to go from some local psychic of a small town to a traveling performer, telling peoples’ futures far and wide.

7: Samuel, the bloodthirsty knight. He is the second most resentful of class Alpha, mostly stemming from his own inferiority complex from his power, action link. Meaning he can’t be a powerhouse on his own. However, when he escapes, he is let out into a war zone. He works his way up and becomes a soldier, soon earning his title through the bloodshed at one of his most famed battles. But his winning streak can only last so long, and he’ll have to find that out the hard way.

8: Sarah, the starry oceanographer. She is the most resentful of class Alpha, and ironically the first to reach Boston. She becomes an acclaimed sailor with her navigational intuition, and with her help ships stop disappearing into the shifting oceans forever. However, she soon finds out the hard way that there are depths too deep for even her to reach.

Class Gamma: the less put-together class, they escaped at a younger age and have less of a kinship with each other. The only thing that unites them in the slightest is their common childhood trauma.

9: Jordan, the reaper’s seeker. He is young and impressionable, but his path was set for him the moment the accidentally used his power, intuitive aptitude, to find a hidden tumor in his adoptive mother. From there he is seen as an omen of evil to many, but is used as a tool to find the issues in many for others. He wants it to end so badly, but in what way is up to him.

10: Robin, the false herald. Robin finds herself sent to a religious academy for her safekeeping, but in the process uses her power of possession to accidentally call down their god through her. She is revered as a saint and is given special treatment, but due to her identity as the herald, she never gets to find an identity of her own, which is what she wants more than anything.

11: Archie, the human pandemic. Archie’s goal was to try and reunite with his family, but the moment he first contracted the first viruses, he knew that would be impossible. He has the power of invincibility, meaning that the viruses in his body won’t hurt him, but they will hurt anyone else who comes in contact with him. He now wanders the woods alone, hoping that someone will come along and help him. But in the meantime, he has friendship with the other things living on him.

12: Adrianna, the nether queen. After separation from the rest of the prime 16, she finds herself running from raiders and police, until she comes across the entrance to an underground realm full of people that soon forcibly crowns her as queen of the underground after she kills the last one on arrival. However, Adrianna wants nothing to do with the affairs of the underground and longs for escape, and with her indomitable will, she’ll make sure of it.

Class Delta: the youngest of the prime 16, they have little to no memory of the institute. Because of this, they have no practice with their powers and have had their fates completely thrown to the wind, making them the hardest to find of the group.

13: Archie, the calamity child. He has lived his life jumping from one adoptive family to another, and tragedy seems to follow him no matter where he goes. From hurricanes to tornadoes and flash floods, Archie has always been the only one to remain with his botanical abomination power. He has ended up getting bad rep, with people blaming his power for his bad luck. He ends up becoming disconnected from other kids and mistrustful of adults, but just wants a family of his own.

14: Maya, the gateway girl. She was raised in the complexes of downtown New York, and with her friends is constantly braving the dangers of the uptown ruins. Maya’s own power, domain, is only known between her and her own friends. Not even her ‘parents’ know about it. However, she’s forced to face herself and confront her past when she finds how similar her power is to to the monsters living uptown, and finds some shocking truths.

15: Xavier, the griefer king. He was found by the real king as a baby, and after finding out about his power, animalistic abomination, he wholeheartedly adopts the boy as his own. Xavier is raised among the other griefers as one of them, but is abruptly put in charge when the king must go on a journey to expand west. He becomes a ruthless leaver, unafraid to go to violent measures, and finds himself reveling in the hunting of unknowing travelers on the highway. But Xavier soon needs to find the balance of human and animal, lest he finds himself going off the deep end.

16: Adeline, the sacrifice. The youngest and rumored to be the most powerful, Adeline lived her life peacefully without her power ever awakening. However, the truth came to her abruptly and soon uprooted her whole life, and was told that she must become a vessel to save the world. In the stress of everything moving and her whole life crumbling in front of her though, her power awakens, and everyone finds what makes her the most powerful of them all…

and that is the prime 16! Hope you like them, and don’t be afraid to send questions if you want!

#The prime 16 #ocean’s rambling

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grigori77 · 4 years

Text

2019 In TV - My Top 10 Shows

This past year may have sucked balls in a lot of ways, but we certainly never got short-changed when it came to our TV. There was an absolute WEALTH of truly cracking TV around, both on regular networks and on the various on-demand platforms, and so here is my pick of the best, my absolute favourites of 2019.

10. WATCHMEN

Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof brings us a blinding sequel to comic book legend Alan Moore’s legendary graphic novel with a delightfully trippy, ruthlessly efficient rug-puller that seems pretty tailor-made for HBO. Old faces return in interesting ways, while there are some cracking new “masks” on offer, particularly Regina King’s Sister Night and the always-brilliant Tim Blake Nelson as morally complex antihero Looking Glass (in some ways very much the show’s own answer to Rorschach). It never goes where you expect it to go, and refuses to give easy answers to the questions it raises, effortlessly paving the way for more next year ...

9. THE BOYS

Amazon offers up its own edgy, thoroughly adult superhero property with this darkly funny antiheroic gem based on the cult Garth Ennis comic, expertly adapted by Supernatural creator Eric Kripke. Karl Urban dominates as Billy Butcher, the foul-mouthed, morally bankrupt “leader” of a makeshift crew of mercenaries, hitmen and psycho killers devoted to “taking care of” superheroes when they inevitably go bad. Season 1 ultimately serves as an origin story, showing how the team come together, laying quality groundwork for the incoming sophomore tour that promises to open the already fascinating world out significantly.

8. PREACHER (SEASON 4)

More Garth Ennis, namely this blinder of a closing season for AMC’s consistently impressive adaptation of his best known series for Vertigo comics. Surprisingly epic, deliciously subversive and constantly, darkly hilarious, this thoroughly non-PC series from showrunners Sam Catlin, Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen (yes! I Know!) certainly went out on a high note, providing its loyal followers with perfectly-pitched bow-outs and sometimes heartbreaking goodbyes for all its players, especially its dynamite leads, Dominic Cooper, Ruth Negga and, in particular, Joe Gilgun as unapologetic bad boy vampire Cassidy. A worthy end to one of my all-time favourite TV shows.

7. THE WITCHER

While it’s clearly taken its look from the wildly successful video games, Netflix’s second most ambitious long-form offering of the year takes its lead from the fantasy book series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski that started it all. With its somewhat episodic set-up and decidedly twisted narrative timelines, it take a few chapters to get the hang of it, but there’s plenty to draw you in, from the exotic world-building to the frenetic action and compelling collection of richly crafted characters. Henry Cavill is the titular hero, lovably grouchy mutant monster-hunter Geralt of Rivia, but the real scene-stealer is co-star Anya Chalotra as roguishly self-serving mage Yennefer of Vengenberg.

6. CARNIVAL ROW

One of the year’s two big sleeper hit TV surprises for me was this inventively offbeat allegorical Amazon fantasy series from The 4400 creator René Echevarria and screenwriter Travis Beacham. Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevigne are the star-crossed lovers at the heart of this intriguingly dark and dirty murder mystery thriller set in Victorian London-esque city-state the Burgue, in which humans struggle to co-exist alongside a struggling disenfranchised underclass of fae (fairies, fawns, centaurs and the like). The racial turmoil undertones are writ large throughout, but this is far more well-written and lavishly appointed than you might expect on first glance, and almost ridiculously addictive viewing.

5. LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS

My other big TV surprise was this wonderfully bizarre sci-fi anthology series of animated shorts from Netflix, mostly adapted from an eclectic selection of short stories from a wide range of top-notch literary talent including Peter F. Hamilton, John Scalzi, Marko Kloos and Alastair Reynolds (a particular favourite of mine). As you’d expect from the brainchild of Deadpool director Tim Miller and producer David Fincher, this is edgy, leftfield stuff, frequently ultra-violent and decidedly adult, and the wildly varied nature of the material on offer makes for a decidedly uneven tone, but there are some absolute gems on offer here, my favourite being Suits, an enjoyably simple tale of salt-of-the-earth farmers on an alien world utilising clunky mech suits to protect their settlement from rampaging giant xeno-bugs.

4. THE DARK CRYSTAL: AGE OF RESISTANCE

The show with the biggest cinematic wow factor in 2019 had to be this long-awaited prequel series to Jim Henson’s classic fantasy movie masterpiece, created for Netflix by, of all people, Louis Leterrier (yes, the director of The Transporter, Now You See Me and Clash of the Titans, if you can believe it). The technology may have evolved in leaps and bounds, but there’s a wonderfully old school vibe in the delightfully physical puppet effects used to bring the fantastical world of Thra and its denizens to life, so that it truly does feel like it’s based in the same world as the film. This was EASILY the most visually arresting show of 2019, packed with exquisite character, creature and set design that perfectly complements the awesome work done by Henson and Brian Froud on the original, while the writers have created a darkly rich narrative tapestry that makes Thra seem a more dangerous place than ever.

3. THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY

I was a HUGE fan of My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way’s magnificently oddball alternative superhero comic, so when I learned that Netflix were adapting it I was a little wary because I knew how spectacularly hard it would be for ANY showrunners to get right. Thankfully Steve Blackman (Fargo season 2) and Jeremy Slater (The Exorcist TV series) were the right choice, because this perfectly captured the outsider nature of the characters and their endearingly dysfunctional family dynamic. Ellen Page, Tom Hopper (Black Sails, Merlin), David Castañeda and Emmy Raver-Lampman are all excellent as the more “functional” Hargreeves siblings, but the show is roundly stolen by Misfits star Robert Sheehan and Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn’s Aidan Gallagher as nihilistic clairvoyant Klaus and the old-man-in-a-child’s-body sociopath known only as Number Five. Consistently surprising and brilliantly bonkers, this was definitely the year’s most wonderfully WEIRD show.

2. STRANGER THINGS (SEASON 3)

Writer-director duo the Duffer Brothers’ ultra-nostalgic 80s-set coming-of-age sci-fi horror series remains the undisputed jewel in Netflix’s long-form crown with this consistently top-drawer third season expertly maintaining the blockbuster-level standards we’ve come to expect. This year the cross-dimensional shenanigans have largely been jettisoned, replaced by a gleefully nasty through-line of icky body horror that would make major influences like David Cronenberg and Stuart Gordon proud, as perennial teenage bad boy Billy Hargrove (the fantastically menacing Dacre Montgomery) becomes the leader of an army of psychic slaves under the control of the Upside Down’s monstrous Mind Flayer. The kids are all brilliant as always, Winona Ryder and David Harbour really get to build on their strong-yet-spiky chemistry, and the show is almost effortlessly stolen by Joe Keery as one-time golden boy Steve Harrington and series-newcomer Maya Hawke as his nerdy new foil Robin Buckley, who were very nearly the cutest couple on TV in 2019. Another gold standard season for a true gold standard show.

1. GOOD OMENS

Sadly, legendary author Terry Pratchett died before he could see the adaptation of one of his most beloved novels (and one of my all-time literary favourites too) see the light of day, but at least his co-author Neil Gaiman was around to bring it to fruition with the aid of seasoned TV director David Mckinnon (Jekyll, Doctor Who, Sherlock), and the end result sure did him proud, perfectly capturing the deeply satirical voice and winningly anarchic, gleefully offbeat and gently subversive humour of the original novel. David Tennant and Michael Sheen could both have been born to play Crowley and Aziraphale, the angel and demon nominally charged with watching over the young Antichrist in preparation for his role in the End Times, even though they would both much rather the world just went on quite happily the way it is, thanks very much. This is about as perfect an adaptation as you can get, the six hour-long episodes giving the surprisingly complex story time to breathe and grow organically, and the result is the most fun I spent in front of my TV this year.

#best TV 2019 #watchmen #the boys #preacher #the witcher #carnival row #love death + robots #love death & robots #the dark crystal age of resistance #The Umbrella Academy #stranger things 3 #good omens

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floraobsidian · 3 years

Text

Fic / Taglist Masterpost

Fics (by fandom)

Critical Role a trust slowly gained -- oneshot AU in which Bren Aldric Ermendrud, Scourger of the Empire, joins the Mighty Nein under the alias Caleb Widogast to spy on them [read on AO3]

here, at the end -- oneshot, SPOILERS for Campaign 2 epilogue [read on AO3]

Dragon Age Crown of Laurels -- slowburn enemies to friends to lovers, Nathaniel Howe/Aedan Cousland/Morrigan. Begins during Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening and continues into the years of aftermath. [read on AO3] [blog tag]

Spearmaid of Alamarr -- DA:I, Revas Lavellan dies in the Fade. The woman who remembers being Revas Lavellan walks out. [read on AO3] [blog tag]

The Precipice of Change -- affectionately titled Inquisitwors and a collab with thedivinewhitetail. A Vashoth mercenary and a Dalish spy hear rumors of something gone wrong at the Conclave and go to investigate. Then they wake up, marked with strange magic. What are a couple of non-Andrastians to do when everyone is suddenly looking to them to fix things? [read on AO3] [blog tag] [sideblog for the fic]

Doctor Who when she needs me -- oneshot, the Thirteenth Doctor and Jack Harkness and a much-needed moment of comfort. [read on AO3]

in darkness we see starlight -- oneshot, AU, Thirteenth Doctor/River Song. The Doctor regenerates. River is with her. [read on AO3]

Truce in Time -- oneshot, a Christmas gift for one of my housemates, featuring his Rory-as-the-Master and the Thirteenth Doctor. [read on AO3]

An Awful Lot of Running To Do -- on hiatus, a series in which I present the changes to canon if the Doctor had stayed around on Messaline for a few extra hours after the death of his daughter, Jenny. currently sitting at two whole chapters, but the outline extends well into Capaldi’s time and a little bit into Whittaker’s. [read on AO3] [blog tag]

home is where your hearts are -- two-part series, a fiftieth anniversary AU in which Gallifrey rebuilds, the Eleventh Doctor goes searching for home, and the Master is adopted by some refugee children. Featuring: the Moment as the deus ex machina it deserved to be, Romana, the Doctor’s mother, and Susan Foreman, along with a few other cameos. [read on AO3] [blog tag]

Good Omens when this is blown over -- oneshot, episode 6 missing scene. Aziraphale and Crowley and the night after the last day of the world, and some much needed rest. [read on AO3]

Star Wars the found families ‘verse -- on hiatus, series, my heart and soul went into this and then Disney killed my inspiration but by god I’m going to write the rest of it one day. Rey is a Skywalker, raised by the ghost of her grandfather on Jakku. Many things are different. Many things are the same. Queerplatonic Jedistormpilot, stormtrooper rebellions, Force ghosts in abundance, Mara Jade, and much much more. [read on AO3] [blog tag]

Welcome to Night Vale chill radio host times -- on hiatus, a series AU set sometime after the events of Triptych, featuring Kevin in Night Vale, angels, and the act of finding one’s self again. [read on AO3]

Misc Tags

flora rambles (for nonspecific writing posts), flora writes (maintag for writing excerpts and fic updates)

#masterpost

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verumking · 5 years

Note

❛ I won’t give anything less than my all. ❜

⚔️ *:･ﾟ✧┆soul calibur sentence starters. ❪ @blazingtides ❫

It was a tragic juxtaposition of BEAUTY and DESTRUCTION— a destroyed civilisation, CROWNED by the amber of the SETTING SUN. The evening wept fading RAYS of LIGHT over the desert city, DECIMATED by creatures unfamiliar to both the CYBORG and his FRIEND.

The monsters possessed not the STEEL of the Gigas, nor the GELATINOUS FLESH of the Heartless. These were omens of DEATH INCARNATE– celestial rage manifested in DEMONIC FORM. The creatures were ABHORRENT in both appearance and actions— SLAUGHTERING the entire populace within MINUTES of annexing the PLAZA.

Such a gruesome sight would usually incite FEAR in such a young heart. Yet the KEYBLADE WIELDER did nought but REITERATE her BRAVERY, floral weapon blooming in a lissom palm.

I won’t give anything less than my all.

Pale lips curled into the tiniest of SMILES. ❛ Good. ❜ Yozora nodded, flicking his own BLADE into activation, plasma SCORCHING as crimson as the BLOOD splashed upon sandstone walls.

Was it FOOLISH, to place his complete trust in a mere CHILD? Perhaps so. But KAIRI was so much more than that. She was an ENTIRE ARMY encapsulated in a young girl. She was RELENTLESS as the oceans, UNWAVERING as steel. She was the LEGEND of ATLAS retold– holding up the world single-handedly with both BENEVOLENCE and strong will. Such ADVERSITY would not faze her.

And it was this very COURAGE that Yozora felt himself lean on throughout their TRAVELS. The worry of PROTECTING Kairi never once crossed his THOUGHT. He was not her knight, but her COMRADE. She was dependable partner, in both BATTLE and on uncharted roads. And yet, the mercenary could not help but LOOK OUT for her, even if the girl did not visibly NEED IT. Yozora did not know the TRUE MEANING of the word, but Kairi had become like FAMILY to him.

And it was something he was DETERMINED to treasure.

❛ If one of us falls… we both fall. Remember that. ❜

#blazingtides #⚔️ *:･ﾟ✧┆a heart’s relapse. ❪ queue ❫#⚔️ *:･ﾟ✧┆he was the monster you created. ❪ replies ❫#⚔️ *:･ﾟ✧┆he will continue to fight; thy kingdom come. ❪ vs: kingdom hearts / crossover ❫#⚔️ *:･ﾟ✧┆sister of light; bond as perpetual as the rolling tide. ❪ rs: starsfated ❫

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chalabrun · 6 years

Text

the case for nyx & noctis (theory)

Alrighty, so as I’ve peddled through the material, I have a theory: that Nyx and Noctis are much closer than what was insinuated in-game. Granted, while we never really see mention of Nyx beyond a few easter eggs, there’s little proofs I’ve picked up on I think allude to them being closer than what we initially believe.

Regardless of whether you like the idea of Nyx and Noctis being bros in arms, Nyx being a big brother figure, or you were among the bewildered shippers who fell into Nyxnoct hell like I did big time shhh but have no real substance for them knowing each other beyond the mutually superficial belief it’s their status as XV’s protagonists that unites them, here’s something I hope might open your eyes and make you see otherwise.

As usual, due to length I’m going to split this up into parts as it’s going to get wordy:

Parting Ways: The only canon Nyx & Noctis interaction we have (and why it’s substantial)

The prologue: "Drautos, he’s in your hands!”

Did they train together?

Nyx is never mentioned in-game (but why it doesn’t invalidate him)

FFXV: Comrades (the PC, Libertus and Noctis)

Lastly...

Parting Ways: The only canon Nyx & Noctis interaction we have (and why it’s substantial)

If you’re wondering what Parting Ways is, it’s a background script detailing the Chocobros and their interactions with others as they’re getting ready to leave Insomnia and embark on their road trip across Lucis before they finally leave for Altissia where he gets engaged and weds Luna, and the rest is history. However, you’re probably wondering: what was their interaction? Parting Ways is, admittedly, not common fandom knowledge. I, personally, didn’t know about it until very recently.

In the notable section I’m speaking about, Nyx picks Noctis up in the Star of Lucis and ferries him from the Citadel to his apartment so he can begin packing with the others. At first glance, this doesn’t look like anything much. Libertus even bemoans how it’s like they’re expected be to baby-sitters now. Except, this has much more leverage than it appears.

In what world would a mere Kingsglaive be allowed this level of clearance? Regardless of this being a fantasy game or not, even games such as these acknowledge a hierarchy of some sort, especially where royalty is concerned. Even if Noctis would rather have people treat him otherwise, he’s still the Crown Prince. As crown prince, no ordinary person can be entrusted with the task of being chauffeur to royalty. Why might this be?

I think, knowing the nature of Regis’ character and the charge he gave Nyx in a life or death situation, that the king trusts Nyx on a deeply personal level. Despite his many flaws, considering how this was before the turmoil of the invasion, it was under rather peaceful circumstances. Knowing Regis, it’s extremely likely that Noctis and Nyx have known each other. Considering Nyx himself said Regis took him in like one of his own twelve years ago, and sees him as a father figure, this could allude to IC closeness between the two. To an extent that Regis would entrust the task of driving his son on such short notice to Nyx, which would’ve made sense for a Crownsguard to do, but a Glaive? Unthinkable.

Remember: the Crownsguard is the personal guardsmen of the royal family. The Kingsglaive are not. They’re something like a mercenary/soldier unit, but not fit to do something of the likes the should’ve been designated to someone like Ignis or Gladio.

Well, unless Nyx actually knew Noctis beyond this one occurrence. That there was a bond of trust that existed beyond king and glaive. That Noctis himself trusted Nyx enough to be around him, let alone driving his car (Drautos makes a note of this in Kingsglaive).

Remember, Nyx joined the Kingsglaive at the time it was founded twelve years ago; at around the time Tenebrae fell and Noctis was disabled by a Maralith attack. For Regis to think Nyx could get along with his heavily traumatized son doesn’t sound too inane, I think. For them to have fostered a friendship, even.

However, their relationship could stem beyond even that. Though, more on that, later.

The prologue: "Drautos, he’s in your hands!”

Alright, this probably seems extremely insubstantial. It’s just Noctis casually waving his father off one final time, passing the responsibility of his father on to one of his generals. There’s really nothing more to it, right?

Well, kind of. In Kingsglaive, prior to his flagrant betrayal, Drautos is seen with Nyx in Noctis’ car. This suggests another degree of connectivity between Noctis and the Kingsglaive, and by extension, the idea that Noctis likely bore some degree of familiarity with the Kingsglaive beyond them copping use of one of his cars when it was convenient. Granted, it might not look to be much more than that, but remember the above: using the prince’s personal possession, likely a car that was recognizable (that was a “gift” from Audi in the real world for Noct’s 20th birthday), means it would’ve just been more than Regis’ leniency, but likely Noctis’ own familiarity with the Kingsglaive and being alright with them using his personal possessions before.

Again, it might be reading into this too deeply, but remember: the Kingsglaive is the equivalent of Lucis’ standing army, while the Crownsguard is the personal guard. The KG being temporarily reassigned to guard Insomnia during the peace treaty signing isn’t enough to evoke this level of trust. It had to have come from somewhere, that thing likely being Noctis having known not only Drautos, but Nyx as well.

Specifically Nyx, though that comes next.

Omen: Noctis & Nyx’s kukris

What’s like the strongest piece of evidence to my theory is in the Omen trailer. From what we know, it is confirmed that the kukris Noctis is seen using are, in fact, Nyx’s. So, that begs the questions: how did he attain them? Omen, at its root, is simply what would’ve happened if Noctis had left the Crown City on his own. Where the novella of parting ways would’ve been altered. Likely, it might’ve been stripped of the Chocobros’ involvement outside of good-byes, but it’s significant because it makes me wonder where Noctis got Nyx’s kukris at all.

Which leaves me with two theories: Nyx either entrusted his beloved weapons to Noctis--which would make sense since he’d be embarking on his own--or, which would be supported by the fact that Kingsglaive’s production began around 2013...when the transition trailer for Versus to be converted into XV was released that same year. Again, why is this significant? This trailer shows gameplay of Noctis in Insomnia, presumably when the invasion is taking place. Earlier Versus trailers continue to support this as Noctis, in his earliest scenes with Stella, show him in Insomnia as well some footage of he and team-members in the same treaty room where it was to be ratified.

This gives credence to the idea that Nyx and Noctis could’ve met during the invasion, fought together, and saw Nyx give his kukris to Noctis.

Again, the old script changing is a moot point. Where Nyx is concerned, there have been leaks released of a Stella model in Kingsglaive, as well as some concept art and fully-rendered scene.

It takes years for pure CGI to be rendered, even for something as short as the Omen trailer likely took awhile. That a studio outside of Square’s own production was in charge of this likely meant Omen’s production and release fell within the timeline of an older version of the script; an older version where Nyx and Noctis fought side-by-side.

Again, consider this render:

Sure, it might just be for the sake of promotion between both of XV’s protagonists, but this is clearly staged after the invasion of Insomnia. Noctis is wielding one of Nyx’s kukris. Considering it’s confirmed officially the ones in Omen are Nyx’s, again--the likelihood of Omen Noctis having encountered Nyx before or after the invasion and being the inheritor of his iconic kukris seems extremely likely to me.

And what would’ve been required beforehand? Why, for them to have known each other, of course.

Did they train together?

I honestly believe so. Why? Remember: none of the other Chocobros can warp. This ability is unique to line of Lucis and the Kingsglaive, and they’re the only ones we see doing it. The only time we see them do so is a special Chain Link when they embattle the Adamantoise, but otherwise, only Ignis is seen doing so when he puts on the Ring of the Lucii that grants him access to the king’s magic (he even says so when donning it Verse 2 with Ardyn; how he might not be of royal blood, but if a Glaive (Nyx) can--why can’t he? Which alludes to the idea that Ignis can’t warp and like otherwise).

Also, consider these gifs:

This...

...compared to this:

Or even this tactic--

...compared to this:

It’s evident in XV how the Chocobros all have fairly good synergy when fighting one another, what with them having those link strikes and moves that all meld pretty well with each other.

However, I think Noctis having know-how on how to use Nyx’s kukris and emulate his fighting style is inherent, even outside of Omen. Why? When you find Nyx’s kukris in Chapter 14, Noctis already knows how to use them. This isn’t simply a case of his diverse familiarity with a wide range of weapons, but possibly because he’s familiar with them. He trained with all those weapons, so--what if he trained with Nyx’s, too? With the glaive himself? Remember, Omen was merely canon divergent from the time of his departure on. For him to have trained with Nyx before makes perfect sense.

Let’s recap with this:

None of the Chocobros but Noctis can warp outside of unique and limited circumstances.

Therefore, he had to receive his warping training from someone, and given his familiarity with Drautos (who isn’t shown being able to warp in KG) and Nyx, this likely fell to Nyx (also considering Drautos’ duties as both Captain and General Glauca, he likely was too busy to).

Nyx demonstrates many times in KG where Regis places implicit trust not only with the fate of Insomnia, Luna, but even his own son in something as mundane as being driven back to his apartment to pack up. It’s mundane, but given how close Regis was with Nyx, entrusting his son’s training to him makes sense, also.

In short, I think Noctis having received training from Nyx makes the most sense from what I’ve gathered so far.

Nyx is never mentioned in-game (but why it doesn’t invalidate him)

This is much shorter, but you have to wonder: how can this be if Nyx is never mentioned in-game? Thing is, this doesn’t really mean much. Because someone else tremendously important in-game doesn’t mention Nyx, either.

Think of the only person in KG who lived on after Nyx’s sacrifice, who was by his side the entire time, who also was a major character in-game.

Lunafreya Nox Fleuret.

As shown here, even though she never once mentions Nyx even by name, she still wore the hair clip he gave her by proxy of Crowe. Meaning? He still had a monumental place in her heart, that she wore it right until she died, and even in the afterlife beyond. So, for Nyx to have had a similarly lasting impression on him isn’t unthinkable.

More proof?

Remember this? From left to right, the corpses are Iedolas, Regis, Luna....and Nyx.

Thing is, why Nyx? Ardyn specifically conjured this with the intention of rattling Noctis. In the wiki, on Nyx’s page it says Nyx’s hanging cadaver was meant to discourage Noctis. Why discourage?

Now, I could understand if Ardyn had a personal fascination with Nyx. However, unlike Luna or Regis, Ardyn never met Nyx in person. He witnessed the destruction of Insomnia, likely heard tale or even saw some of Nyx’s heroism after he donned the ring. So, a personal fascination could make sense in that context.

However, these corpses weren’t chosen for Ardyn’s gratification. They were specifically selected to taunt Noctis. This was an illusion sustained on Ardyn’s magic, after all. Why would he keep them manifested for ten years except on the night of the fateful battle to encourage despair?

Remember: Iedolas was the figurehead of Niflheim, likely a target of Noctis’ hatred. Ardyn hanging him likely could be symbolic of the futility of facing himself, as an all-powerful enemy brought down by Ardyn’s whim would rattle even the most lionhearted hero.

Regis and Luna are no-brainers. Regardless of how you feel about Regis’ actions or Noctluna in general, Noctis loved them implicitly. Regis was his father, and Luna was his fiance. He says he loves them in a monologue and flashbacks before he deals that final blow and the Lucii spear him through.

However...Nyx. The wiki says he was strung up there, too, to discourage Noctis. Again, Iedolas, Regis, and Luna make sense. But for Nyx to be up there, too, can mean only one thing:

That Noctis was close to Nyx in some way, shape, or form. Close in a way the game never reveals, but close nonetheless.

FFXV: Comrades (Libertus and Noctis)

Let’s consider Comrades here, too. Love it or hate it, Comrades is still a part of canon. Now, I believe it’s AU, yes, but like Verse 2 of Episode Ignis it’s still a canon divergence.

Now, the scene I want to draw the most attention to is actually the epilogue.

The interaction I think is the most substantial to this post, in particular, is that of Libertus and Noctis’ interaction. While it may have been brief, what with Noctis exchanging only a few words, it was monumental for Libertus to have been there--to go so far as someone branded a traitor and fight alongside the PC to redeem themselves.

How so? Remember, Libertus was among those glaives who betrayed Regis. I think it’s credible to think, that while Lib’s redemption didn’t happen within KG proper, it was there that it begun--the second he rammed Glauca with that SUV. When he helped Nyx and Luna in fighting him, in getting Luna to safety while Nyx fought in that final battle.

So, for Libertus’ loyalty to have carried that far, feels like direct parallelism between Noctis and Nyx: how their actions changed hearts and mind, and how their sacrifices enabled the world to be saved. As without Nyx, without Noctis, many more people would’ve died. I think Libertus was aware of this, knowing the parallels between Nyx and Noctis and where their actions led them for the sake of the greater good.

It’s even apparent in that secret scene at Hammerhead where Noct and the bros reflect on the glaives’ sacrifice--redeemed traitors or no--and how this likely extended to Nyx’s, as well. For Libertus’ sacrifice, his being there to an awakening Noctis, likely would’ve never happened if not for Nyx.

Lastly...

Do you see the chair Nyx is seated on here? Feel like you’ve seen it before? Look again:

It’s almost identical to the one Noctis sits in here, which brings me to my last, final parallel between them.

That’s because they’re both sitting on a nearly identical throne.

Nyx and Noctis were both kings for a night.

Like how Ignis was able to repeat what Regis had told him as a boy about standing tall, so too did Noctis share the same sentiment of not wanting to have people sacrifice their lives for his sake (in Nyx saying to Regis, “Is this the way of our king? Sacrificing Lucian sons to save his own?” Noctis said something to the same effect in the Lucii’s tomb to Cor).

Wielding the power of the Ring, summoning the Old Wall, Nyx did what no non-Lucian king has done before--maybe not originally since its first designation. For Nyx to have summoned the old wall alongside the magic and powers he wielded--compared to Glauca’s magitek-enhanced own--is spellbinding. In doing this, Nyx became a king for a night. He achieved the highest respect from Regis, who saw him as a worthy inheritor of the Lucii’s power second only to Noctis, the True King. Compared those previously, even Ignis wasn’t able to summon this much power, even if he was able to stop Ardyn in his tracks and facilitate Noctis surviving (if you go by Verse 2), Nyx gave himself selflessly. He perished by the dawn’s first light.

In exactly the same way Noctis does.

Both men wore the ring for selfless reasons, and gave their lives so the people of Eos could live to see the dawn breaking. Between them, the weight of their sacrifices is unquantifiable. What they did for Lucis cannot hope to be replicated after, that much I am certain as even canon shows.

And it is for this reason that I believe Noctis and Nyx knew each other, and why their connection cannot be overlooked by anyone.

#nyx ulric #noctis lucis caelum #nyxnoct #nyx x noctis #my headcanon

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stephanythedramaqueen · 7 years

Text

So I’m nasty. Sue me.

Did somebody ask for AraNoct smut? *looks around* No? WELL HAVE SOME ANYWAY!

@ffxvrarepairsweek

Title: Never Meant To Be Pairing: Aranea x Noctis = AraNoct Rating: NSFW, I repeat, Not Safe For Weenies! NC-17! R! Mature! Day 4 Prompt: comforting/omen!Character

*double finger guns*

Kill the Lucii prince on sight. That were Aranea’s orders the moment she was dispatched from Gralea months ago.

Killing him wasn’t exactly what she was doing when she let the crown prince – now king of Lucis push her face first against the nearest wall, ripping off her armor piece by piece.

Something was wrong with him. This wasn’t the description they gave of Noctis Lucis Caelum when she was debriefed. He sounded like a young fool at the time, one who was exceptionally trained in all manners of weaponry yes, but a fool all the same. Who would optimistically put it in his head to go against Niflheim. Him and his three friends. The four of them against the entire force of Niflheim’s army.

But that naiveté has died over the months.

When she met Noctis alone for the second time however, nothing of that light of hope was anywhere visible on him.

“Where are your friends?” The Commodore asked him with that typical air of imperiousness in her tone, when she had her lance pinned against the delicate skin of his neck.

“Dead.” He replied, unfazed of where her weapon was. “A long time ago. One by one.”

“A shame.” Aranea was anything but remorseful. “I really liked the bespectacled one.”

She expected him to flinch, but his reaction was much more severe than that. He warped so fast, bringing her along with him. Her world blazed out of orientation, her vision dizzy, when he had her against a wall with him behind her, twisting her arm back to the point where it hurts, but not enough to cause unrelenting pain. He pushed himself against her, making her cheek scratch roughly on the brick wall in front of her.

“Somebody got a soft spot.” She tried to wiggle some leeway from his grip so she could kick him, but he held her tighter, his body pushing on hers.

And then she felt the length of his erection press between her ass cheeks. She froze.

“Don’t ever speak of them again.” Noctis growled against the back of her ear.

There was real anger in his voice, she could hear it. She felt him pulsing through their layers of clothes and Aranea didn’t know whether to be scared or turned on right now.

It wasn’t in her nature to show fear, not even in the face of danger. She collected daemons, worked with creepy lifeless MT’s, stood in the presence of the slimy Verstael… some horny little runaway prince wasn’t going to daunt her.

“Did I hit a nerve there?” She smirked, despite him twisting her arm a tad bit further. “Sad that your friends are gone and leaving you with no one to play with at night?”

The implication wasn’t lost on him and the press of his body against her backside elevated. He let go of her, only to cut her off by crushing her windpipe.

“You want me to play?” His unoccupied hand traveled from the center of her chest to her hip, tracing the line of her pants.

Up until this point, Aranea suspected he was just confused, mourning and angry at the world for having lost his brothers in arms. They were high in the sky when Biggs caught a major daemon activity nearby. A very rare daemon was caught up in a chase, and upon closer inspection, Aranea saw that no one else than the future king of Lucis was swapping strikes, by himself, with a Cerberus, of all daemons.

He was slaying the daemon amidst an abandoned farm, and as soon as the black particles of the daemon joined the rest of its scourge, Aranea pinned him down a moment later.

In hindsight, the position that she landed on him wasn’t probably the best.

Or maybe it was. He smiled, one such smile she had never seen on him before. It never reached his eyes. “Kiss me or kill me.” He told her coldly when she had her lance against his throat, his hands itching towards her hips.

“What makes you think I want to kiss you?”

The grin that grew on his face was uncharacteristic of him, and she should have been alarmed by that, but Aranea has always been a thrill seeker. She sought adventure since the days that she was a young girl and running in the wrong crowd easily got her into wet work. Lots of cash, rush of adrenaline, laughing in the face of danger…

The same kind of danger that proposes itself at the idea of disobeying Niflheim. Her orders were to kill him, not kiss him.

Noctis decided for her. Ignoring the weapon at his throat, he came forward, pulling her face closer to claim her lips.

The kiss wasn’t gentle and it wasn’t sweet, and his fingers were harsh in her hair.

But the wrongness of it all thrilled her, like it wasn’t supposed to. She wasn’t supposed to leave him alive for this long or kiss him or enjoy the way he gripped her. She wasn’t supposed to suck on his tongue nor roll her hips against his.

The action made the prince groan under her and he bit her lip, right as Aranea pulled away from him. As nice as this was, something was amiss with him and she asked where his friends were. And now she was pressed face first against a brick wall of an old farm house. His hands tight on her, pushing his hips against her ass, finding ways to get her pants off of her.

She should have known better than to play with her prey and now she was at the mercy of this stranger with the face of Prince Caelum.

And yet the thrill, the gross excitement that she could kill him when he least expected it made her want this. The mercenary in her knew when she wanted strike and see her victory on his face as the life seeped out of him.

And while his hands yanked down her pants, a sword appeared between them so he could cut it right down the middle, leaving her naked with pieces of her leather pants stuck to her legs and her heeled boots digging into the earth.

Would she let him fuck her? She wanted him to. She wouldn’t have entertained this for so long if she didn’t.

His fingers were cold and rough on her breast, hastily unclipping pieces of her top armor until everything fell away, scattered to the ground. Like icicles, his fingers stung the tips if her tits, contrasting the warmth of his hips between her legs.

She bit her lips, wanting to hiss at him when he stepped away from her for just half a heartbeat and came back pressing the length of him into her ass. “You don’t waste any time, do you?” She started to chuckle, that turned into a moan when slid his cock up and down the folds of her pussy. “I’m supposed to kill you.” She sighed with her eyes closed, feeling herself getting wetter on him.

“You will.” Noctis told her between thrusts and wetness dripped down from where they were joined. “One day you’ll manage to kill me. After I’ve returned the favor.”

He whispered the last part that she couldn’t hear and she didn’t care to ask when he moved. Slowly at first, building up a steady rhythm and going fast and faster after each beat. His hands held her hips in place, not allowing her to find her own gratification as she pushed back into him whenever he came forward. His nails dented into her skin and she loved it, arching her back when she couldn’t do anything else.

She wanted him, she wanted to chase that orgasm that escaped her while he hammered into her and the moment he finds his euphoria, she’d kill him.

Blood and jizz. A feast for an adrenaline addict like her.

“You should enjoy this while you can,” Her voice trembled when he stopped as she spoke. “We won’t be able to do this again.” Because you will be dead.

A stream of wetness ran down her leg when he pulled out of her, and she finally turned around. His face was apathetic when she expected to see him blushing, at the very least, at what they were doing. He looked stoically at her, and Aranea didn’t bother to ask him what’s wrong with him, when she was already reaching to rip off the rest of his messy shirt full of holes off his body, letting her hands roam over the muscles of his stomach she never guessed he’d have.

This was the opportune moment to consider her actions and not let this go any further than things already had. They semi-fucked. Which was nice for the time it lasted, but this was wrong on so many levels. And yet she didn’t stop. She didn’t leave when she pulled him closer instead. She didn’t fight when she wanted to screw him instead. She didn’t run when she jumped on his waist and bound her legs around him.

He smirked at her, both the most unsettling and yet sexiest thing she’s ever seen and sank down on his dick once again.

“Yes…” She hissed, legs tightening around him. He may be young and a fool, but he felt hot and tremendous and heavy.

He twitched inside of her and they both cried out. He pulled out and then rammed back in, and they both trembled. He nailed her into the wall and her breasts bounced.

Fuck me, she begged. Fuck me so I can kill you.

Her dagger was the heel of her boot, and it was so close. She could kill him, she will kill him. The pleasure was spiking up her womb, through her spine, making her toes curl. She was so close and her fingers were so close on the hilt of her dagger and his hips slammed into her own.

Just a little more.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move. A movement and then a low rumble of a quiet growl that kept her from completing her task.

Over Noctis’s shoulder, a giant Cerberus was nearing, one of its three heads growling in their direction, but didn’t come any closer to them but for a few meters.

“A daemon.” Aranea breather right in Noct’s ear where his head was buried between the junction of her neck and shoulder, but he didn’t seem to care. His fucking was relentless, his only concern in the world.

As soon as she said that to him however, two others came from between the buildings of the farm to join the first one, all three Cerberuses standing before them, not moving, not attacking, not doing anything but stare.

It was extremely rare for a Cerberus to appear – Aranea would know, she was once ordered to retrieve every kind of daemon samples by Niflheim – but three of the same kind at once was unheard of.

They didn’t attack. They just stood there. Nine heads of monstrous hounds staring at the two of them rutting against the wall like animals.

She needed to stop this. She wasn’t entirely sure if she wanted to stop this. Noctis was making her feel good, the Six save her, and she was as ever addicted to the danger the situation presented itself; gamble with her life or her orgasm.

“Daemons,” She said between gasps. “We have to slay them, we have to–”

She couldn’t finish her sentence when one of Noctis’s hands slithered from her legs, fingering her nipple, and then proceeded to crush her windpipe.

She gasped and clawed at his hands to release her, but she heard him laugh in her ear. He didn’t stop, he never stopped jerking inside of her, his cock slippery and dripping and filling her up again and again and again.

He squeezed her throat and she clenched around him.

She couldn’t believe herself. Everything was wrong, everything was insane. He was choking her and fucking her and this is all so sick and twisted.

Just reach for your dagger.

Noctis looked at her, grinning unlike ever before, laughing at her. The sound was evil compared to the constant noises of flesh slapping against flesh. His other hand joined the first around her neck, and she was only kept pinned to the wall by his dick.

Kill him and slay the daemons.

The three Cerberuses were the most curious of all for they only sat there, like dogs waiting for their owner to call them forth. Fire leaked from their snouts, their growls in tandem with Noctis pants every time he hit it deeper.

And then the daemons eyes glowed.

It was an unnatural phenomenon, unlike anything she has ever seen before. They howled and two more Cerberuses appeared out of nowhere, eyes a sickly unnatural yellow. Five pairs there were of them now standing around the two humans in a half circle, as if admiring the way the prince was blowing her back out.

“Noctis!” She tried to warn him in earnest this time at the behavior of the daemons, her voice thin through the way he was choking her.

He didn’t seem to notice, but a particular sharp flick of his hips had her moaning. She could barely breathe, she was about to die by a herd of daemons, but the pleasure was too much to deny. Her nails cut in his arms and her legs pulled him in closer, ever closer.

She could feel it building, washing over her wave after wave that emptied her brain and made scream through her constricted throat, eyes rolling through the back of her head.

And when she dared to open her eyes again, she wished she hadn’t.

Noctis’s eyes were the same sickly yellow as the daemons behind him and the smirk on his face was positively demonic.

And he still didn’t stop fucking her.

“W-what are you?!” She accused, between breaths, but Noctis only pulled her in closer, fucked her deeper.

Fear. She felt it. For the first time in what felt a lifetime, fear coursed its way through her blood.

Grab your dagger.

He didn’t say anything, he didn’t have to. Fear and pleasure mixing together, his hands squeezed her neck, her cunt throbbing.

Grab it now!

She could feel his cock twitching inside of her. The smile on his face stretching. She was scared. Pleasure. Pleasure conquering fear. He’s choking her, drilling into her, her orgasm so close.

And then you kill him.

What kind of disgusting fantasy was she living in? Just kill him.

But he was reaching into the deepest part of her, finding the sweetest point and kept screwing her there over and over until she was leaking all over him, daemonic Noctis and Cerberuses be damned.

She could feel herself come. She couldn’t breathe, she was scared, she was oversensitive, she could feel herself about to orgasm on his cock, she couldn’t believe it. Was she getting off by the way he is choking her? The way his eyes glowed golden? The way he is threatening her life while jackhammering into her? Was this some kind of kink she was developing? She could feel that she was coming all over him.

Stop enjoying this, Highwind. Stab him. Stab! him!

She was coming, she was coming, she wascomingcomingcoming

She could have screamed if she was able to through her strangled through, her fingers pulling at his hair, clenching in his biceps like her pussy was around his cock and the frantic thrusting of his hips showed how much he enjoyed that.

He licked the sweat from between her tits when she felt him fill her and his release ran down between her ass, sticky and thick.

She couldn’t believe herself, what she just did, what she just allowed.

As he was panting against her boobs, she realized that it was now or never. No need to question what he is, what kind of daemon spawn he was becoming when he was going to die anyway.

“Who knew the Lucii prince just did that.” Aranea smirked by way of distracting him. His eyes were dark; not blue, not yellow, but filled with darkness. She slowly reached for the dagger of her boot.

Noctis took a step away from her. A dog appeared by his side. Its fur ashen black, pupils aglow. Freakishly. Evil.

Noctis’s pants hung off his ass and he was still naked. With his cock dripping with their cum, he pet his dog like it was the most normal thing in the world.

The Cerberuses daemons behind them mewled.

Aranea didn’t know what to do. Frozen with fear, she opted to give him at least his last kiss before she took his life, but she never got to.

“This was my gift for you.” The prince told the Commodore, still petting his daemon dog. “For you to remember me by when I see you in hell.”

“What?”

Before she moved, dagger in hand, his face turned white, his lips black with ooze, his eyes glowing death.

Fear. It froze her when she saw him, what he really was, what she just had filling her pussy up till the brim and then some, was this abomination.

Noctis pulled up a weapon and looked at her. “This was never meant to happen.” In his hand was the Trident of the Oracle. “I’m sorry.”

And he stabbed her through the stomach.

#final fantasy xv #aranea highwind #noctis lucis caelum #ffxvrarepairsweek

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