#deep cut of the century. on this tour it was just so so good

[literateleah]

may we never forget rock in rio 2017. as we proceed to a new era new live arrangements whatever i literally just want us to remember. remember a world in which girls talk boys is an opening track for a GLOBAL FESTIVAL. they had those mfers in BLAZERS

#the grudge the sound mixers had on luke was literally so comical #bc the instruments sound so good like the band was banding #but the vocals LMFOSNSKEDODOF #they did not let his ass get one word in it was crickets. he was silenced #but actually each old performance is tinged with a little tragedy i think. in all seriousness knowing whatever was happening at that time #anyway. love these silly little west sydney blokes i will be tuning in for them tomorrow as per schedule #side note. live disconnected just makes me wanna cry i think #deep cut of the century. on this tour it was just so so good

[aboardthescheherazade]

Inspired by @professorcalculusstanaccount's timeline posts, it's Roberto Rastapopoulos through the years! No little Greek boy don't grow up to be a massive shithead--

Rasta is a very difficult character to understand in canon, because so much of his lore is left unknown to the viewer. However, there were little bits and pieces, some in Herge's tertiary studio notes; over time I've wrung some water from that stone, and put together this timeline in my head. I went with a more condensed range than ProfCal (i.e. pre-canon up to canon, rather than into post-canon), since Rob does technically "die"/disappear by the end of the (finished) comics.

Headcanons and details under the cut:

According to speculative official notes, he was born in the 1890s in Leros. It's a beautiful island but also one with a turbulent history, as when little Roberto was born, that part of Greece was under control by the Ottoman Empire. His father was a sponge diver, which was a very viable career at the time. (Decades later, the industry would be ruined when the area's sea sponges were over-harvested by bigger diving operations.) His mother is basically unknown...many official outlets say Rastapopoulos is part American, so I imagine his mother was of Greek-American heritage who either met his father abroad or in America.

There were two real-world figures who influenced my timeline: Aristote Onassis and Aleister Crowley. Onassis was one of Herge's later inspirations when writing Rastapopoulos, and for good reason; much like Rastapopoulos's own immoral dealings, Onassis indiscriminately sold warships during WWII and can easily be considered an arms dealer who profited off of human atrocities. On the other hand, Aleister Crowley was my own connection. All the pseudo-Egyptian mysticism in Cigars of the Pharaoh and the Kih-Oskh Brotherhood seems to be a reference to the very real trend in the early 20th Century where the upper crust of western society became fascinated with esoteric beliefs. (Seances and the Ouija Board were also created during this era.) Crowley rose in infamy during this time, too, as a spoiled debutante who spent his inheritance on journeys through the MENA region to perform rituals and "adapt" Eastern religions for his own belief system. With Rastapopoulos making up an entire pharaoh and emblem for his secret trafficking club, it reminded me very much of Crowley's own endeavours, and the commodification of MENA cultures and iconography during this era.

Child (1897) - Canonically, he has three brothers and two sisters, so l envisioned him as the middle child amidst all that. Little Roberto was spoiled when he was little, but when his youngest brother was born, it left Roberto feeling like the attention had been stolen from him.

15 (1906)- The other siblings hoped Roberto would be just as enthusiastic as they were about the family diving business, but alas, he'd always been more interested in reading prose and classical plays. His favourite play is Gounod's Faust. Some days, he daydreams about what a deal with the devil could get him, thinking he'd be able to outsmart the devil and win his riches for free. Roberto was at a rebellious point in his life, and sadly, he'd come to be ashamed of his background, deciding sponge diving was "peasant work" and that he'd rather tell others he was British or American. Eventually, it became easier for the whole family to just send him to a boarding school. Deep down, Roberto's parents hoped he might become an actor, a writer, or some sort of scholar...but the night before he left, Roberto secretly took down his whole family's banking information.

20s (1910s) - Roberto is now in his "Aleister Crowley's world tour" phase. He throws around mysteriously large quantities of money, often putting it into investments, and taking many journeys through Egypt and India. (I also like to imagine he met the Fakir and Colonel Fuad around this time; maybe Zloty too). Rastapopoulos is an insufferable, preening dandy at this time, trying to carve out his own place among the societal elite. His Greek identity is only flaunted as a way to make him seem more "exotic" to strangers. He tries not to think about the bank accounts he's leeching from.

30s (1920s) - Several of his investments actually flourished. His shares in Arab-Air and Flor Fina yield enough profit to let him buy out the companies, and his decadence only increases as he reaps even more profits. With extra money going around, Rastapopoulos finally decides to foray into the movie industry...as a movie producer. His passion for theatre never died, and if he can't become an actor himself, then why not produce the kinds of stories he wanted to be in? By the time the Great Depression hits, Rastapopoulos has amassed more than enough wealth to stay afloat...and the drug ring he's started with a few good friends sure helps, too. He's more concerned with holding onto every millimetre of his receding hairline.

40s (canon) - By all means, Rastapopoulos could have disbanded the cartel and retired comfortably. Maybe he could have invested more in his own movies, and focused more on Cosmos Pictures's internal operations. And yet, he didn't. Bigger numbers are better, so Rastapopoulos kept amassing his dirty money, thinking he was too big to fall. He got messy and left behind some viable clues, which some Belgian kid happened to stumble across...

50s (1940s-early 50s)- "Roberto Rastapopoulos" may be out on bail and facing decades in prison, but "Marquis Dante di Gorgonzola" is just some mysterious financier with an offshore bank account. Some of the other societal elites recognize him, but they find the alter ego funny and play along; "Oh, here comes "the marquis"...! He's due back in Hong Kong!" He can't make money through drug trafficking anymore, he can't show his face in Hollywood, and he certainly can't go back to Greece. Unfortunately, some of his associates introduce him to a different kind of trafficking, one even more immoral, but just as lucrative... It's the climax of the Rastapopoulos family tragedy: the son of hard-working commoners has ground his family's name into dust thanks to his pursuit of power and decadence; he has now resorted to deceiving those same sorts of commoners, dooming them to unknown fates just so he can buy a boat. Later, he begins resorting to harebrained schemes and petty crime just to maintain that lifestyle. His Greek identity has long been buried in favour of a vague, exotic cultural identity meant to explain away his quirks and twitchiness.

I've long been torn on whether or not Endaddine Akass is Rastapopoulos's final form. Herge's notes do consider him surviving Flight 714 to Sydney by waking up in the tropics with some degree of amnesia...perhaps this is near Jamaica, where he'll meet Ramo Nash under a new identity. It also feels the most theatrical - Rastapopoulos is playing yet another role, and he has a grand finale planned for Tintin's murder. Additionally, the mysticism Akass totes in Alph-Art is inspired by the alternative religion fads of the 1960s-70s; Akass is evocative of some of those many cult leaders, like Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh or Father Yod.

And yet, I almost find it more fitting for Rastapopoulos to survive Flight 714 to Sydney with full amnesia. He only knows himself as some middle-aged vagrant, and he decides he just has to pick himself up, and find some odd jobs to make a living. He gives himself a new name; his family history has been wiped clean. He struggles to make ends meet, much like the family he bankrupted, though he'll never know just how ironic his life has become. The rest of the world knows Rastapopoulos as a bombastic, flashy debutante who died a pitiful death during a police standoff. Tintin feels like he saw him one last time, but it feels like a bad dream he had during a flight layover. The man who always wanted to be the biggest and best died quietly in the sea, his true fate unknown, his body forever missing.

I think that's why I find Rastapopoulos so fascinating as a character! You can either make him into Tintin's greatest scourge who fights to the death to maintain his status, or you can rip all that away and doom him to a humble existence.

#drawings #hc #rastapopoulos

[copiousloverofcopia]

Good afternoon ghesties!

After a much-appreciated break over the holidays I am proud to have ready for you all to enjoy for the next installment of, The Hell Torn Heart featuring Secondo and @ashley-ghuleh OC Marcus!

Thank you so much for letting me bring Marcus to life! Hope you all enjoy!

Commissions are OPEN, please see pinned post for Carrd info!

💗 Special thanks to @gothdaddyissues for the beautiful dividers!

The Hell Torn Heart

After a recurring dream leaves Marcus, a half-demon/half-hellhound, dealing with the ghosts of his troubled past and visions of a place he has never been. He is unexpectedly thrust into an unknown world. Guided by a mysterious couple to the Ministry, surrounded by ghouls and siblings of sin. The once outcast struggles with what haunts him and learning to find himself—until he meets Secondo.

Chapter 3: Coming Home

Also available HERE on AO3! Haven’t started yet? Read from the beginning HERE!

Definitely NSFW below the cut!

Marcus couldn't remember much about the trip. Nothing but a blur of countryside and endless winding roads as the tour bus took them deep into the middle of nowhere. It surprised him at first that the Abbey, which hosted a world-renowned metal band, would be nestled deep into the Italian countryside. Not set in the middle of a posh, affluent city—surrounded by decadence and opulent affairs.    

No that would be too obvious, he thought to himself. It seemed that, by all account, things needed a bit more privacy and discretion than that. Knowing now that the band consisted of Hell spawn such as himself, it was probably for the best that they weren’t as easy to find as an Aldi or an Edeka. That a remote location would afford them the ability to thrive away from prying, righteous eyes. 

It was hours and hours later when Marcus, lost in his own thoughts, realized that they had reached an iron entry gate. Ominous and tall as they loomed over them. It looked as if it were centuries old. Laden with rust and crawling with ivy throughout the frame. 

“Ah…finally home... uh!” Copia sighed before jolting upwards. Thrilled to be home, but less so by the rough and bumpy ride along the gravel drive leading to the front of the Abbey. Marcus stared out of the window, his eyes glazed over in astonishment and his heart pounding away. Barely able to contain the impulses of his anxiety. 

“Ist das echt? Sehe ich das wirklich?” he asked, his glamour glitching out on him as he scattered about in the cabin. Taking in the surroundings as they pulled up to the front door.

“It is Marcus, we’re finally here.” Aether smiled, Cumulus letting out a yawn as she stretched alongside him on the sofa. Tail swaying happily beside her, having realized they arrived at home. 

It was otherworldly and haunting. The grounds, the foliage, the building. All of it as if it were ripped from the elaborate images inside his dream. Marcus rubbed his eyes, smudging the eyeliner along his waterline as he tried to make sure he was really awake. 

“It's—It's uncanny.” he muttered under his breath, Aether standing up and placing a hand on his shoulder. 

“What is?” the ghoul asked him as the others began gathering up a few of the bags from the overhead bins. 

“I—I have seen this before. This place. In my dreams.” Marcus confessed, his eyes never leaving the window. Fixated on the Abbey, just as grand and foreboding as it was in his subconscious. 

“Then it should be clear to you that you are meant to be here with us piccolo, now let’s get off this glorified Sardine can.” Copia laughed as they all started making their way off the bus. 

As they funneled into the front door. The activity inside was in full swing, the siblings and ghouls alike going about their business. Though he was immediately in awe of it, Marcus felt too good to be true. Before now it would have been unfathomable to have ghouls and humans coexisting without the guise of glamours. At the Ministry however this was normalcy—expected. 

No one batted an eye at his glamour. No matter how much it had begun to fade in and out as they walked. A few of the Abbey inhabitants even stopped to welcome Copia and the ghouls back home. Happily smiling away at Marcus without a second thought as they made their way down the main hall.  

Maybe here he would find the solace he so desperately sought throughout his whole life. As travel down the hall, a trek that felt endless, Marcus’s eyes took it all in. The walls were lined in rows of cathedral style-stained glass and paintings, consisting of all manner of Hellish imagery. Their scenes hung carefully between the doors—doors that led to unknown rooms of which Marcus already longed to see. He was especially impressed by the grand staircase, flanked by a statue of Lucifer and Lilith, leading to the Papal offices and the even more decadent—Papal suites. 

As he marveled away at the beautiful architecture and impressive adornments, they reached their destination. A large pair of oak doors facing them as Copia knocked away. Though Marcus had no idea, it was this moment where things for him would take a permanent turn. Beginning with the sound of a stern sounding feminine voice, calling from inside. 

“Come in.” she said. Cardinal Copia, gently opening up the door to a massive office. A woman of later years sat, prim and proper in a large red baroque-style chair. Her hair pulled back tightly into a bun and her desk surrounded by parchment filled shelves and antique tapestries. Perking up her eyebrow at them as they approached her desk.

“Good afternoon, Sister.” Copia began, the woman acknowledging him with a nod. “I apologize we did not tell you sooner that we would be arriving today, but as you can see, we had some unexpected business to attend to.” the Cardinal finished, motioning to Marcus as he stood still in the doorway.

“That I see, a ghoul, is he? Wait no… a spawn of Cerberus. My… it has been quite some time since the Ministry has hosted a Hellhound.”

“Only half.” Marcus interjected; the words just noticeable as Imperator continued on.

 “What is your name child?” She asked, lifting up the glasses that had slipped down her nose. 

“Marcus, Marcus Kohle.” he responded, trying to puff up his chest and control his shifting glamour, which seemed to be getting harder to maintain since he had arrived. 

“Well Marcus, welcome to the Ministry. I am Sister Imperator—I am the Abbess here. You will do well to follow my orders. Is that understood?” she inquired. Marcus was already both impressed and annoyed by her. The woman was clearly in charge for a reason, and it seemed better that he heed her warning then oppose it—at least for now. 

“Understood Sister.” he agreed. The Sister stood up from her desk and walked over to the filing cabinet that sat just to the right of her closet door. Grabbing an black envelope from inside, embossed with a golden Grucifix on its front, and handing it over to Marcus.

“Inside this you will have some introductory information we provide to all the Hell spawn inhabitants. Though you have arrived somewhat unconventional from most, I feel this will still be of some help. Also, Aether, see to it that Mr. Kohle gets acquainted with everyone. I would like it if you can spend the rest of the day showing him around. Help him to familiarize himself with his new home.

Home…I’m home, Marcus thought. Elated to hear the Sister refer to the Abbey as such. Finally, a place where he might find himself. Find out who he was meant to be. 

“Not a problem… hey maybe someday you’ll even get to be in the band.” Aether said, nudging Marcus at his side. The two, taking a moment to chuckle to themselves as Copia and Sister Imperator finished up their ministrations. Aether, excited to take him for the tour of the Abbey.

As they began to leave Imperator’s office, Aether could sense Marcus felt uneasy. He was still trying to get accustomed to it all. Having spent his whole life hiding behind his glamour, it felt weird to be in a place where it wasn’t necessary. A place where his true self could be revealed without prejudice.

“What’s wrong Marcus?”

“It’s just…” Marcus began, his glamour shifting in and out. Aether figured it out, pressing his lips into a soft, understanding smile. 

“It’s alright. You can keep the glamour on as long as you need man. No judgment here. I promise.” The ghoul assured him, a sentiment that seemed to allow Marcus to carry on.

The rest of the afternoon consisted of Aether telling Marcus everything he knew about the Ministry and the ways of the Abbey. It surprised Marcus to learn that Aether was new too, well relatively. Aether explained about the Papas, serving as the dark representatives on Earth for Lucifer himself and how it was the duty of all Hell spawn within the Ministry to be in their service. That more often than not the ghouls were summoned directly by the Papas themselves. 

He learned about the siblings and their roles too. They were also subordinates of the Papas and the Ministry, but unlike the ghouls they arrived at the Abbey of their own accord. Choosing a life of sin, to give their lives over in service of Satan. It was then that Marcus's initial optimistic view of his new “home” began to wane. Wondering to himself the ghouls were more slaves than companions. Aether quickly dispelled the idea, letting Marcus know that they are sent by Lucifer himself to serve and that the ghouls take to the task willingly.

Aether had shown him all the essential spots: the chapel, the grand hall, the refectory, and the Clergy offices. Explaining to Marcus that the ghouls and other infernals as well as the siblings were only allowed inside the offices if requested by the Clergy themselves. All of the explanations and endless coordinators overwhelmed Marcus. Aether must have sensed it when he stopped mid-sentence to inquire how his new friend was feeling.

“And then at the end of the hall here is the—hey you doing ok there?” he asked. Marcus nodded in response, unsure of how to explain. It started to feel like too much and too quick, he felt like it was hard to breathe. To his relief, Aether decided now was as good a time as any to take a bit of reprieve. 

Aether had introduced him to a number of siblings and other ghouls while they took a moment to feel the fresh air on their skin Relaxing on the bench outside in the courtyard while Marcus could catch his metaphorical breath. He could tell Aether was trying to help but being with the others only made Marcus more anxious. Worsened when he overheard one of them call him, catulus. A term of endearment for puppy. Placed on him by the Ghost crew while on the bus, somehow didn’t sit right coming people he hardly knew.   

It was clear to Marcus, though completely untrue, that he wasn’t human enough for the humans and wasn’t feral enough for the ghouls. A precarious position to be in, Marcus thought. Worried that while he had been promised “home”, once again he felt as though he might not fit in. Beginning to wonder if he ever would. The feeling only made worse when Aether showed him how to reach both the sibling’s quarters and the ghoul’s den.  

“...and up here is the ghoul’s den and to the left is the sibling’s quarters. You can decide for yourself which best fits you. Though the ghouls and I would love to have you retain residence in the den. We are a pretty crazy group, but also the best bunch of people you’ll ever know.” Aether smiled. 

“I suppose that will be fine.” Marcus told him, deciding it best to stick with the familiarity of Aether and Cumulus, instead of trying to find new friends right away within the siblings. 

“Well alright then, let's get to the real fun. You haven’t seen the lower level yet.” Aether smirked, a sly, mischievous grin. 

“What’s down there?” 

“Well, the dungeons—you know torture chambers and the summoning room.” he explained as they made their way to the set of stone steps that coiled into the lower level of the Abbey. The walls, unlike the extravagant ones above in the main hall, covered in moss and vine. The moist scent of decay and of smoke thick in their nostrils. While the little hairs on Marcus’s skin stood on edge as they descended the stairs.

“Ah, man that's ripe.” Marcus groaned, covering his sensitive nose.

“You’ll get used to it.” Aether laughed as they reached the torture chambers. They were mostly empty, only the residual of broken chains and the hint of an insidious history were left in them. Marcus was confused. It seemed that a Satanic Abbey would be littered in tortured souls to speak of.  

“So do these not get used or what's the story here?” he asked.

“Well in his hay day Papa Primo used to frequent the torture chambers, only to terrorize those who deserved it mind you. That was long before my time here though and I hear it has been some time since he has been in them—and since they’ve been used in general.” Aether explained before attempting to continue on.

“What does Papa Primo do now?” Marcus inquired, genuinely curious as to what such a supposed evil, sadistic man who took pleasure in the torture of others did since he had abandoned these stomping grounds. 

“Oh Primo, he is the sole Papa in charge of the Gardens. I will take you out there tomorrow when there's more light.” Aether explained, Marcus’s eyes widening in disbelief. Amazing that someone could pivot so vastly from torture to tulips. It was utterly amusing to the both of them as Aether and him laughed at the irony.

The last stop on the tour was the summoning room. For Marcus, this would be the most interesting part. Curious, from the moment he heard of it, to see a summoning in action. Aether was more than delighted to let him know that at that very moment one was in process.

The doors were closed as Marcus and Aether approached. The sounds of snapping and snarling coming from behind them. Red light pouring out over the threshold and into the passageway. Marcus could feel the blood racing through his veins, his pupils dilating as the doors opened—revealing the room to him. 

The floor was covered in glistening obsidian. A pentagram carved into the stone, its shape emanating in a bright red light. The room was circular, unlike any other Marcus had been allowed to see. Flickering torches along the walls, walls lined with hooded figures that Marcus could discern were other ghouls from their scent. 

At its center stood a man. Powerful and statuesque. Wearing robes of black and emerald, green as he chanted something in Latin. Smoke swirling around him and settling along the ground. The knife in his right hand, covered in blood, blood that spilled from the self-inflicted wound on his left.  His face, painted as a skull—dark and mysterious like he was taunting death itself.  

“Who is that?” he whispered to Aether. Marcus, feeling enthralled as he watched the ritual unfold before him. The feral ghoul, rising from the settled smoke that flooded the ground, bowing at the feet of the stoic man before him. 

“That is the second Emeritus son, Papa Secondo.”  

After the dinner, Marcus was left on his own. Copia and the band ghouls called back to Sister Imperator to discuss the next tour. His mind, still flooded with images of the summoning. Of that enigmatic man, calling to the bowels of Hell for the ghouls to rise. Their loyalty, given over to him without question.

The very sight of him had Marcus’s blood pumping, his breathing quickening, noted by the rapid rise and fall of his chest. It wasn’t often that his head was turned, but something about this Papa called to him. As he continued walking, his mind torn between his unease of fitting in, and his lustful thoughts, he heard sounds echoing within the corridor. Their origin, seemingly from beyond the impending corner. 

Marcus slowly approached, peering around to find the Papa he had seen before. The one that had him practically drooling, now leaned against the wall. His chasuble flipped up and over shoulder and his arm, outstretched out and down upon the head of one of the sisters of sin. A sister who had her mouth around his pious cock. The Papa, gagging her as he forced her head down along his shaft. 

Marcus could hardly believe what he was seeing—and hearing. The sister slurping away as he grunted and groaned, face fucking her hard and fast. Marcus had remembered reading in Sister Imperator’s pamphlet that sins were encouraged openly here. Lust, in particular, highly celebrated as long as all those involved were of age and had given enthusiastic consent.

Still, seeing the Papa in that moment, unabashed at his actions, in full view of anyone who might pass with this sister going down on him really sent the message home. It was certainly unexpected, Marcus standing here in silence a moment as his brain caught up with his eyes. Frozen as he watched, in both delight and jealousy, the sister with a mouthful of the clergyman. Swallowing back his endowment however, in Marcus’s humble opinion, with lackluster technique. 

Marcus shook it off the initial shock of it. Deciding to, in true to himself form, make a flippant, wide crack before making his way back to the den. “That's what she calls giving head? Seems to me like you're wasting a good dick on some bad oral." he snarked, his hands held around his mouth to heighten the sound of his voice. Directing it down the hall at them before he quickly scampered away.

When Marcus reached the room Aether had set up, he quickly shut and locked the door behind him. With his mind still on Papa Secondo, Marcus ran his hand through his blue hair and down over his neck. Feeling the heat of the moment rising up inside him. His fingers, traveling down over his black tank top, over his chest and belly, before hovering just above the obvious swell in his jeans. 

He made quick work of his buttons and zipper. Grateful to free his own cock from the confines of his pants. Leaking and throbbing with what he had just seen. Marcus took hold of himself, gently running his thumb over his swollen head. Gathering up some of his precum to lubricate his glide as he fucked upward into his hand.

He had completely lost himself in desire. Clouded in thoughts of Secondo's cock—The looks of it, the taste of it, the feel of it. Pressing his fingers along the underneath of his shaft as he bucked up into his fist. Stroking firm and fast over and over, until he had become slack-jawed and whiny. Coming hard and spilling over his fist.

When it was over Marcus was filled with both relief and regret. How could he have allowed himself to lose control so easily in his lust. Lust for a man he hadn’t really even met. In a place he wasn’t sure was all it was promised to be. He was determined to talk it over with Copia in the morning. Hoping that the kind-hearted man who had reminded him so much of his mother would be able to give him the answers he needed.   

The office was warm and inviting. Unlike Sister Imperator’s, Marcus felt quite at home waiting for Copia the next morning on the sofa just beside his desk. Listening to the crackling fire in the fireplace and the scent of ink filling his senses. The room filled to the brim with books and tomes. Loads of art hung proudly on the walls—it was clear Copia was a man of academia and refinement. 

“I didn’t keep you waiting long, did I?” Copia asked as he managed to sneak in unnoticed by Marcus.

“No Cardinal, not long at all.”

“Good, good. Tell me piccolo…what is it you wanted to see me about?” he asked him, taking a seat beside Marcus on the sofa. Copia’s eyes were filled with concern and compassion. It was clear to Marcus that he had already become somewhat of a parental figure, a guide to him—a Virgil to his Dante. 

“I know that this is not like the rest of the world. Here we are open about our infernal roots, our true selves. Our worship of Lucifer… but I have to say even with all that Cardinal… I still find myself feeling out of place. Like maybe I don’t fit in here as much as you all thought I would. As much as I hoped I would.” Marcus confessed. 

“Marcus… do this for me, si?” Copia began, placing a hand atop his shoulder. 

“What?”

“Lose the smoke and mirrors, be who you are here. I know that Aether told you the glamour was fine, but I think it will help you to show your true self more. Live in your own skin.” Copia explained. Marcus did as asked, his ashen gray skin revealed as the facade slipped away. The markings on his tail, matching the tattoos on his arms. A tail that began whipping around nervously as his eyes turned to glow a deep blue hue.  

“Ah, there you are piccolo.” Copia smiled, giving Marcus a hug. The warmth from his embrace, helping Marcus to relax in his form. Copia slowly pulled back, crossing one leg over the other as he poured a glass of brandy from the side table bar. Handing it over to Marcus before pouring himself one.

“Thank you.” Marcus told him, taking a small sip of the thick brown liquid. The warmth from the alcohol, heating him a bit in his cheeks. 

“Don’t mention it piccolo… but listen, I had a feeling that there may be some struggles on the horizon for you and so I have taken the liberty of trying to find a solution.” Copia explained, taking a swig of the contents of his glass.

“Oh?” Marcus asked, more than a little curious of what to expect next. 

“You see, here we have some very special people here. Ones who have knowledge far beyond myself when it comes to your kind and well I figured it might help for them to be involved in your feeling more at home.” 

“Who? Aether has already been so—” Marcus began, Copia stopping him with the gesturing of his hand as he swallowed back the brandy.

“Of course, of course. Aether is great, but piccolo. You need someone far more experienced than that. Someone who knows not only infernal culture, but who can help guide you on your path of self discovery. I think you—-” Copia explained before a knock at the door stopped him. “Oh that is probably him now. Come in!” 

Marcus was immediately on edge as the door came open. Dying to know just who Copia had held such confidence in. Then with the appearance of a large grucifix ferula, Marcus would get his answer. From outside in the hall came Secondo Emeritus. 

He did his best to hide his nerves. Thanking Lucifer that he had only made an ass of himself to Secondo while in his glamour and not in his own skin. Secondo stepped into the office. His miter held proudly on his head and his stride, that of royalty as he went to take a seat adjacent to them in the office. 

“Papa, thank you for coming.” Copia began, fumbling his words a bit in Secondo’s presence. Clearly, he too was taken back by the sheer power and majesty the Papa possessed. 

“Of course, Cardinal. Is this?” he began before Copia nervously cut in.

“Si, this is Marcus. He is a new half Hellhound recruit that Aether found while in Germany. Seems he’s been a bit lost finding his place and well I figured if anyone could help it would be—”

“Ah, so the catulus needs a guide, eh?” Secondo smirked. All the color, draining from Marcus’s face as he realized Secondo knew EXACTLY who he was.  

“Uh…” Copia began.

“I don’t know, Cardinal. I may not be of use as you see Marcus seemed not to be too lost last evening when he had some rather… constructive words of advice for me and Sister Beatrice.” 

“I—” Marcus began gulping while his face turned a brilliant shade of red. Practically feeling the steam leaving his ears. The poor Cardinal left completely confused by the whole situation. 

“Seems the two of you have already met?” Copia asked. A bit of nervous laughter, leaving him as Secondo continued to stare directly at Marcus. His wickedly handsome face, filled with the satisfaction of what he was about to say.

“That we have. You were right to reach out to me Cardinal. Seems our puppy has much to learn.”

Notes:

Aldi/Edeka- Popular retail stores in Germany

Ist das echt? Sehe ich das wirklich?- Is this real? Am I really seeing this?

Catulus- puppy

#Thank you so much for letting me write for you ghestie! #Secondo x oc #Secondo x hellhound oc #secondo x brother of sin #Secondo x male OC #Secondo #papa ii #papa emeritus ii #ren writes #ghost #the band ghost #ghost fic #ghost fanfic #ghost fanfics #ghost fanfiction #the band ghost fic #the band ghost fanfic #the band ghost fanfiction #commission fic

[tranquilitybasehotelcasino]

hi so i'm going to a fall out boy concert soon and i'm ashamed to say i've only listened to about half their discography. are there any particular albums or songs that i NEED to check out before i go, or are they one of those bands that will just play whatever the fuck songs at the concert and don't favor more popular stuff

HI SORRYYYY I ONLY JUST SAW THIS. i don't know which half of their discography you've listened to but their setlists for this tour seem to be comprised of a lot of the hits + some lesser knowns and the occasional true deep cut, so even if you've only heard the stuff that got radio play you should be fine. i wouldn't worry too much about, like, people thinking you're lame or a poser or whatever for not knowing all the words to every song

"da hits" you'd probably need to know would most likely be chicago is so two years ago + saturday + calm before the storm (take this to your grave), dance, dance + sugar, we're goin' down + a little less sixteen candles, a little more "touch me" (from under the cork tree), this ain't a scene, it's an arms race + thnks fr th mmrs + the take over, the breaks over (infinity on high), disloyal order of water buffaloes + headfirst slide into cooperstown on a bad bet + i don't care (folie a deux), the phoenix + my songs know what you did in the dark + save rock and roll (save rock and roll), centuries + uma thurman + irresistible (american beauty/american psycho), the last of the real ones + young and menace (mania), and love from the other side + hold me like a grudge (so much for stardust)

in terms of what i think you NEED to check out, that's really subjective! my very favorite fall out boy album is folie a deux, which didn't do too amazingly upon release but has been getting a bit of a renaissance, so if you want to get more into the band even outside of your concert experience i'm gonna have to gas it. their newest album that they're on tour to promote (so much for stardust) is really, really good, and the band has been pulling a lot of deep cuts from infinity on high recently (g.i.n.a.s.f.s., the afterlife of the party, golden, bang the doldrums, etc) as well. i think not knowing exactly what they're going to play on any given night is part of the fun; some of the stuff they've played on this tour so far already is stuff that's never been played live at all before, so honestly anything could happen

really i don't think there's any thing you "have" to listen to. jam to what you know, give what you don't a chance, and just enjoy the show! i hope you have fun!

[mlobsters]

supernatural s9e14 captives (w. robert berens)

right, back to angel politics -_- and sam breaking dean's heart a little bit

sam's in his pjs, are you allergic to getting comfortable to sleep, dean? at least he doesn't have his boots still on i guess. also i appreciate the ghost assisted bunker tour

DEAN Kevin, I'm sorry. You did not choose this life. You busted your ass, you lost everything, everyone you've loved... And your reward? Getting killed... On my watch. If I... It was on me. It was my fault, and... And there's nothing I can do to make that right. I am so sorry.

--

KEVIN No, this is not happening. Didn't spend months struggling to break through the veil just to get stuck listening to Dean Winchester having a self-pity session. Didn't hear enough of those when I was alive.

thank you, kevin! made me smile. the power of dean's pity party guilt made kevin so annoyed he powered right through the veil. i was wondering about that, if closing heaven meant no people going in too, thanks for the clarification, show.

SAM You feel that? I think I felt a chill. DEAN Yeah. It's 'cause it's cold.

*rimshot*

DEAN Crowley, it's Dean. Call me when you get this. SAM Really, Dean? DEAN What? SAM That's your third unanswered voicemail. You ever think maybe he's just not that into you?

i thought y'all weren't brothers anymore, sam. no teasing!

show also circling back to mrs tran, which i didn't have a lot of faith they'd do (i mentioned recently i couldn't remember if they'd confirmed if she'd died or not)

SAM So, what, you want to give him a medal? I mean, Crowley's the one who put them in the cells in the first place. DEAN Yeah, I know. I'm just talking it out. You know, working the case. Businesslike.

laughed at the "working the case", then really laughed at businesslike

castiel, are you going to make good decisions today?

from the wiki: Sam: D. Webster? As in like Daniel Webster? Dean: Well, I know a lame Crowley in-joke when I see one. The storage lockers were rented under the name "D. Webster." "The Devil and Daniel Webster" is a 1937 short story by Stephen Vincent Benét. It is a retelling of the story of Faust in which a farmer sells his soul to the devil and is defended by Daniel Webster. The real Daniel Webster was a famous 19th century orator and senator.

dean understands this reference?? that seems.... obscure.

Shortcut to Happiness is a modernized version set in the publishing world, starring Anthony Hopkins as a publisher named Daniel Webster, Alec Baldwin as a best-selling (via the devil) but terrible author named Jabez Stone, and Jennifer Love Hewitt as a female version of the devil. This version was made in 2001, but was halted before completion, before finally being completed and given a limited release in 2007.

maybe this is why he knows of it? he's mentioned jennifer love hewitt several times before 🤪 early seasons deep cut?

1.10 Asylum Dean: Hey, Sam, who do you think is a hotter psychic: Patricia Arquette, Jennifer Love Hewitt, or you? 2.01 In My Time of Dying Dean (to Sam): Give me some ghost whispering or something! 2.16 Roadkill Dean: Sammy's always getting a little J. Love Hewitt when it comes to this.

BARTHOLOMEW But with you by my side -- the new boss and the ultimate rebel working together -- think of the message that would send to would-be dissidents. They'd finally understand that resistance is futile.

LOL the borg catchphrase. concerned castiel is going to make another epically bad decision but they got a friend to torture and kill to remind him

well that was miserable, sam telling mrs tran.

dude looks like young mark ruffalo at this angle / actual mark ruffalo

those are some spiffy lookin dressy boots for his fed getup. i like those

BARTHOLOMEW You weren't. Not then. But since then, you've slaughtered thousands of angels. You killed Malachi's man for his Grace. CASTIEL Who I was, what I did, that's not who I am.

he's making some points. lol bart let's settle this with fisticuffs. this plotline....

both of their outfits are nice

think about when they used to wear these suits...

s1e13 route 666

KEVIN Can you two... Get over it? Dudes, just 'cause you couldn't see me doesn't mean I couldn't see you. The drama, the fighting... It's stupid. My mom's taking home a ghost. You two... You're both still here. SAM Of course. Promise.

i don't care if it doesn't make sense i am on board with this. yes, make a promise to the dead boy that you'll work it out. and immediately sam walks away, of course haha. they can both go sulk in their rooms

trying to remember how sam handled it when he was trying to earn back dean's trust, i remember dean being an asshole about it though. so far dean doesn't seem to be trying to do anything in particular to earn sam's trust back (i'm not sure how you go about it anyway). but i don't even know because there's too much shit going on at once perpetually. let's get some fencemending focus.

#supernatural #spnwatch #spn 9x14 #robert berens #spn 1x13

[sleepythug]

hi brian, hope you're well. in the mood for some film experiences that really move me. so I was wondering, if you feel comfortable sharing, what are some films (maybe even singular scenes/passages) that have really deeply moved you (going beyond what is intellectually stimulating/aesthetically pleasing), eliciting an experience that you perhaps can't put into words but have left an indelible mark on you as a viewer. like for me, one of the ending scenes of Paris, Texas where Travis records his final message for Hunter on a cassette tape before he leaves and the intercutting between Travis recording, playing back the tape to himself and Hunter listening to it that cuts kinda deep for me. kinda encompasses an absence of closure but also being bound to that loss through a physical tape which makes it so deeply affecting. if this is too personal I understand, I just thought it'd be an interesting ask cause you always have great recs.

sorry to not have answered this days earlier, thought this owed a proper response, since it's a really good (and compelling!) question. these are a few I come back to often, think about most:

one of my favorite, albeit brief, moments in a film is in paris, texas (also) that long tracking shot of travis walking across the overpass, while off-screen you hear someone shouting, eventually travis slowly approaches them, some man clearly emotionally distraught in a bout of mania, and before passing them he puts his hand over the man's back softly as a non-verbal form of empathy, and that always really struck me.

other's include the scene in jacque tati's playtime, where there's these very modern apartments, with four panels of windows (no curtains), and it looks like four different huge television screens, and there's people that come across on a tour bus that pass by, and watch them going through the motions of life (watching tv, having dinner, etc) couldn't explain if i'm solely amused by it, find it melancholy, or what, but it fascinates me a lot.

think my favorite film stretch comes in the last fifteen minutes of thai filmmaker apichatpong weerasethakul's syndromes and a century. a film about loneliness, reincarnation, the changing of human nature over passage of time, and many other things. weerasethakul has mastered the art of making films that have the texture of that headspace right before you fall asleep, where you're no longer in control, and just before you're about to slip out of consciousness...there's a sequence of shots: people in sole white liminal spaces, no natural light, empty spaces in hospitals, all of it really feeling like fleeting memories (haunting), then there's a shot of air being sucked into a vent, the camera slowly pans as the air gets sucked into it (very reminiscent of the monoliths of 2001), then it jumps to a wide shot of a couple at a bench in the park, people riding bikes, old folks dancing, exercising, buddhist monks playing with a drone. the film then ends on a bunch of people doing aerobics set to upbeat music. the contrast is emotionally striking, and makes me feel strangely hopeful, for whatever reason.

#anonymous

[thealmightyemprex]

Not Made In the USA Month: The Fabulous Baron Munchausen

During Not Made In the USA month I shall view the cinema of various countries ,barring the USA

Next up a film from Czechoslovakia following the fantastical adventures of German nobleman Baron Munchasen

The plot of this 1962 film follows 18th century noble Baron Munchausen(Milos Kopecky ) as he gets into a love triangle with Princess Bianca (Jana Brejchova ) and a cosmonaut ,Tonik (Rudolf Jelínek) while also stumbling into fantastical adventures

This is one of the best fantasy films I have ever seen ,as it....Well fantastical.Right from the begining when Tonik lands on the moon and finds characters from the Jules Verne novel From The Earth To the Moon ,as well as Cyrano de Bergerac and Baron Munchausen ,the film tells you what type of film this is and that it is not grounded in reality at all,in fact reality is rejected .It is a love letter to the absurd .The film is directed by Karel Zeman ,whose work continues to impress me and I gotta say this film is such a good fit for him,his whimsy and visual flare is a good fit for a fantasy story .The film is less about the plot then it is the visuals andf there are some amazing ones here ,with the use of color filters adding to the dream like tone ,as well as Zemans signature uses of paper cut outs,puppets and stop motion.In terms of favorite moments my favorite are Munchausen touring the ocean floor which is just pure eye candy ,and his battle against thousands of guards in the dark which is such a gorgeous scene .Finally the Baron himself is such a fun character ,an egotist who does the impossible but a romantic who grows as a character

Yeah the plot is very thin....But this has made me question how important that is . Does a film need complex characters and a deep meaning to be great....I dont think so .WE dont need an explanation for HOW the Baron can live on the moon ,how he can ride a canon ball or survive being eaten by a fish ,you just accept it .There is a magic in simplicity ,and this film is pure magic

I adore this movie ,a beautifully made feast for the eyes that embraces the whimsy and absurdism of fantasy

@ariel-seagull-wings @storytellergirl @metropolitan-mutant-of-ark @marquisedemasque @amalthea9 @filmcityworld1 @the-blue-fairie @princesssarisa @angelixgutz

[chickenleavesandcornerwater]

Plays Plays Plays

Sudden temptation to be a hater. Am I a hatr on tumblr? Maybe it's because I have to be nice on twitter to all my colleagues and the organisations who might pay me to write something at some point. Appeal of the unfamiliar, you know? So just a little hate to get it out of the system. And we'll cut it with a little love. (For Lucy Kirkwood <3) I'm reading a fantasy novel that is doing my head in. There is Deep Textured Immersive worldbuilding and yet everyone talks like suburban American teenagers. This makes no sense. There's a relish in referentiality without the mass media that enables referentiality. There are people describing things as 'A-grade' when they don't sit exams or use latin letters. There are jokes about things being warcrimes or hatecrimes made by characters who are chattel slaves. It doesn't make much sense for them to be arch about the very idea of human rights if they've never had them, or if liberalism was never a movement within their written history. Good job we did and it was in ours, I suppose? The joke lands for us. The joke also flattens the character who makes it. it collapses the universe they occupy, however elaborate, because the author's conspiratorial asides upstage their material.

It's Henry Ford, right? You can have it in any colour as long as it's black. You can go anywhere in the universe but it'll be America. You can rim a lizardtwink in your cabin on a spaceship as long as you make a joke about hecking pupperinos afterwards. I describe this register as teenage because the affect is knowing but it absolves you of actually knowing anything about how people think or feel or talk in any of the places or times you haven't lived. Why bother? They're basically the same as me, right? I don't need a book where characters say 'thwompoob' instead of 'gamut' because their world's equivalent of the greek alphabet's character gamma is the thwompian alphabet's character thwomp and the note we call do or ut they call oob. I don't need self-serious immersion. I like a narrative voice that knows I know what I know - I just prefer that that narrative knowing voice not be sold to me as the voice of a 9th century peasant if it's going to make jokes about pineapple making your cum sweeter. I just need the prevailing mood to not be one of deflationary irony. I need to feel like the book isn't both complacent and defensive, both refusing to dig any deeper than it did and denying that it is possible to dig any deeper than it did. I read sci fi or fantasy for wonder. Wonder is bound up with incomprehension, an encounter with alterity. I like books that dramatise how hard it is to understand things. One of the things I love most about the Hainish cycle is that it's first contact without aliens - it's an extended exploration of how other other humans can be from each other. (Very.) but I don't need every book to be the Hainish cycle. Good job, because not much else lives up to that standard. All I need is for a genre novel to NOT introduce a cool idea and then have the characters blithely handwave it into the category of The Already Understood or The Not Worth Understanding. This is Grand Tour condescension with a veneer of relatability - everything exists for my benefit, and where it doesn't benefit me or interest me I can dismiss it. I didn't expect Rome to be so dirty! 3000 years, you'd think they'd think of street cleaners! There's a twist, which is that sometimes this sneery orientation towards otherness gets laundered as queer resistance, sexy gay chaos with a #subversive sting. It is Good and Progressive for a gay dragonrider to quip his way through a merman's account of some ancient, sacred, boring, rite practised by his people. The xenos' self-seriousness stands in for something deserving of our mocking. The monocultural whiteness of post-Tolkien fantasy or something? Patriarchy? (We get it, jeez, stop mermansplaining.)

Except this kind of snark has very little in common with, say, camp as written about by Isherwood or Sontag (or Mikaella Clements in that piece about dyke camp I like https://theoutline.com/post/4556/notes-on-dyke-camp#:) They describe it as failed seriousness, as a sincerity that is only legible couched as a transparently insincere disavowal. It is legally and socially impossible to say I am a man who likes to be fucked by men. I dress in drag, and that failed artifice - who really thinks I'm a woman singing about her sailor lover coming back to her? - reveals the other failed artifice - who really thinks I don't mean every word I'm saying?

Sneery dragonriders don't have much to do with this. Camp is a queer sensibility because it is a marginal sensibility, a joke the marginalised play on themselves for themselves. It negates the given because the given does them no favours. If it skewers false-seriousness it does so from a serious commitment to doing better. Condescension is a cosmopolitan sensibility. Or maybe metropolitan is the better word. Because really we're talking about the incuriosity of the metropole, the parochiality specific to the centre, the belief that things only matter inasmuch as they're legible to me and mine. I think that's a fair characterisation of this sensibility in genre fiction that wrecks my head. In anglophone genre fiction, as everywhere else, we're mostly talking about writers living in centres of world power writing for people living in centres of world power. So I find this kind of lazy sneer jarring from them, particularly if they're sneery about the presence of potatoes in post-Tolkien medieval European fantasy settings. If we're going to be rigorous about the dietary norms of the 21st century anglosphere, why not its affective norms too? Do we really enjoy smug conspiratorial incuriosity so much that we have to sneak it in somewhere?

On a simpler level: endless banter fucking sucks. It's irritating. I hate reading it. I tell my teenagers that banter takes as much as it gives. It's good for establishing the fact of an intimacy but conceals the contours of that intimacy. We see the relationship but not the people. Woods, trees, all that. Watching people trade zingers tells us something about them, it's true. Literally ANY other reaction to a zinger - taking offence, ignoring it because you really need them to sign the tempory guardianship form - tells us much more about them and their situation and their world. Banter can tolerate backstory, but only middle-distance backstory that the character's have come to terms with. That's because banter's job is to make time go by inoffensively. Which, in real life, you want to do all the time. Which, in writing, is not really the point. Not every conversation has to be high drama, but retaining the possibility for it to teeter into high drama is not a terrible idea. Real conversations are precarious! We say things we don't mean! We are understood ways we don't mean! We hurt people when we didn't mean to! Lucy Kirkwood writes really good, really justified, really considered, banter. It doesn't get away from her. It doesn't devolve into endless cosy asides that ingratiate the writer with the audience at the expense of the scene's integrity or inquiry. She has a gift for dropping genuinely great punchlines into a scene without deforming it. This is why she could write a really good play set in 1759. It's as good as her plays set in the present, and yet it sounds totally different from them. The craft is at the level of dynamics rather than vernacular. These are the first two scenes of the Welkin. There is humour in them. More - there is wit, there is sophistication. Sally Poppy has never drunk champagne, but she is alive to nuances of her world. She can work with details to achieve power over the whole, which is a better working definition of sophisticated than Dresses Fancy or Has A MUBI Subscription. She makes a lot of jokes in this scene but it works, because the jokiness - quippiness even - is rooted in something. It's ostentatious, performed, but she's performing for a reason. She's just killed a child. Compared to the consequences she is now facing, there is little Fred can do that would frighten her. He prepares to beat her - tells her to lift her skirts, put her hands on the wall. General banterousness might seize on the sexual subtext - "Missed me that much, did you?" It's always funnier to bring sex into it somehow, and it's always funnier to imply the sex is a bit kinky! Was that true in the 18th century? Who cares, audiences NOW will laugh! The point being that joke might land, but it doesn't lead us anywhere. Instead we get her contempt for the worst he can do. "Pick one. I can't do both." There's a dark punchline here. She's unafraid. Not because a beating is nothing, but because what comes next is so much worse. She's not stepping outside of the scene, but she is looking beyond it. Her humour has an orientation in time - it moves us forward. It does not collapse into a series of gifable instants. There is no Lucy Kirkwood Out Of Context twitter account. Thank fuck.

#the welkin #lucy kirkwood #plays #plays plays plays

[sylvanfreckles]

The Walrider: Pt 1 of 5

(For Day 02: Nowhere to Run)

Fandom: Supernatural x Outlast Rating: M Chapter warnings: references to unethical and inhumane psychological practices and experimentation Story warnings: intense violence and gore, eventual body horror, references to torture

Summary: Run, hide, or die.

An investigation brings the Winchesters to Mount Massive Asylum, a supposed research hospital deep in the Colorado mountains. But what they thought was a run-of-the-mill exorcism turns into a terrifying tour of hell on earth as they come face-to-face with the inmates of a place built to feed off of their worst nightmares.

And deep at the heart of it lies something ancient and dark, waiting for its chance to walk the earth again.

...

“You sure it’s up here, Sam?” Dean asked. The Impala’s headlights were doing little to cut through the dust on the mountain road, and with no streetlights and an overcast sky there was little else in the way of light.

Sam was squinting at his phone, though it was good for little more than a flashlight now. “Cell service cut out a couple miles ago, but there haven’t been any side roads. If Charlie’s info is right, it should be right up ahead.”

Dean grunted in reply. “Speaking of that, go over the info again, where we headed?”

“Mount Massive,” Sam explained. He pulled a slim folder out of the glove box and flicked on his flashlight to read the papers. “Used as an asylum for the ‘criminally deranged’ in the nineteen sixties, shut down in the seventies after three staff members were killed by patients. Reopened five years ago by the Murkoff Group, a humanitarian organization claiming to research the ties between mental illness and certain kinds of violent crime.”

“So, what, guy shoots up a convenience store so he must be crazy?”

Sam pulled a face. “Unfortunately, yeah. It seems more like a modern Lombroso theory than any actual psychology here.”

“Lomb what now?”

“Lombroso. In the nineteenth century he theorized that crime was inherited, and you could predict if someone was going to be a criminal by studying their facial features.”

Dean looked at his brother, barely keeping his eyes on the road.

“What?” Sam finally snapped.

“Nothing, he just might have a point. You look like someone who murders all the fun in the room the moment he walks in.”

Sam let out a heavy sigh and straightened the papers in his hands. “Anyway, like I said, Murkoff’s been up there for about five years now, but no research has actually come back out. Patients go in, but nothing comes back. Families have to sign over all rights, can’t even get word if anyone’s still alive up there.”

“Except Charlie’s friend.”

“She thinks it’s her friend. Email was heavily encrypted; all she could pull out of it was something about dream therapy going too deep and finding something inside the mountain. And the video.”

Dean nodded. He didn’t need to see the video again. Three orderlies—dressed more like high-level security guards—flung around a room by an invisible force. It was, unfortunately, a familiar enough sight for someone in their line of work.

“And here we are,” Dean announced as they rounded the corner, and the asylum came into view. “Check it out, Sammy.”

Sam, shoving the papers back into the glovebox, let out a whistle as the building came into sight. Three stories above ground, not including the towers at the corners, the sprawling brick structure crouched under the night sky like a waiting predator. Only a few of the windows were lit up from within, though the front façade was lit from the spotlights off some heavy-duty military trucks. The entire building gave off an aura of something ancient and sinister, even if the reports all stated construction had begun after World War II.

Dean pulled off into the grass beyond the complex’s gates, where the faint light from the guard shack wouldn’t reach them. “They call in the army?”

“Looks like private security.” Sam stuffed his useless phone into his pocket as he stared up at the building. “Don’t see any movement.”

There was something in the building. You didn’t spend most of your life hunting things that went bump in the dark without picking up a sense for things like this. Silently, the brothers crept toward the building, keeping to the shadows and skirting around the illuminated courtyard.

“Sammy,” Dean tugged on his sleeve, gesturing to the side of the building. “Take the side door?”

Sam opened his mouth to answer, then shut it again when he saw where his brother was pointing. Scaffolding had been set up against one of the walls, and at the top a flutter of curtains showed where the window was open. “After you.”

Dean led the way through a half-open, rusted gate that opened onto a smaller garden on the side. The garden looked like it hadn’t been properly tended since the place originally shut down in the seventies. The fountain contained more bracken than water, and the planters were so overgrown they threatened to take over what little remained of the paths.

The scaffolding was new, however. It was an easy climb up to the second floor to an empty office. Furniture was scatter haphazardly and something dark was smeared across a corner of the wall TV.

“All right, so,” Dean began, then the lights cut out as an ear-piercing scream echoed through the building. Wordlessly, the brothers moved to position themselves on either side of the office door, guns drawn. Dean waited for Sam’s signal before opening the door and ducking into the hall, flashing his light up and down the hall before gesturing his brother to join him.

“That sound human to you?” Dean whispered.

Sam swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

“Let’s go.”

The hallway was lit with dim emergency lighting, though there was more shining through the door at the end. There were more smears and stains, too. Dark blood smeared along the wall, leading to a bathroom. Sam held his breath as Dean tested the knob and found it locked, like all the other doors along this hall.

“What are the chances it’s just another demon?” Dean asked as they neared the door at the end of the hall.

“Place like this?” Sam shook his head. “Probably has its share of restless spirits. Gotta be a lot of violent deaths here.”

“Yeah, I was afraid of that.” They’d reached the door at the end of the hall and Dean gave it an experimental jiggle. Locked. He took a step back to study it for a moment, then rammed his shoulder against the door hard enough for it to shake in the frame.

“Dean!” Sam hissed.

“Wanna backtrack and find another way in?” he demanded in return.

Sam met his brother’s eyes and glanced away. It felt like something in the building was watching them, waiting for them. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck had been raised since they’d climbed through the window, and it was only getting worse.

But they’d both heard the scream. It could mean a survivor, and every second they delayed could be the difference between life and death.

Dean turned back to the door and slammed into it again. The door shuddered and groaned, and on the third blow it gave way as the frame splintered out around the lock. Beyond the door was a hall that ran around three sides of the first-floor lobby, the inner wall lined with windows that looked over the open space. A pair of massive chandeliers lit up the space beneath, bright enough to illuminate the hall around them.

“Lobby’s empty,” Sam announced, after risking a peek through one of the windows. As far as he could tell, it was just a security desk. No waiting areas or benches.

“Come on,” Dean nodded toward the elevator and stairs at the back of the building, on the middle section of the u-shaped upper hall. “We can get down there and have a closer look.”

They kept close to the wall, slipping past a couple of rooms with little numbered plaques next to the doors. Looked like the asylum’s executive offices, might be a good place to check for information once they had a better scope of things.

Dean pulled up short with a curse. “Can’t go this way.”

Sam leaned around him to study the debris blocking the hall. “Think it’s a barricade?”

Dean snorted. “No, Sammy. I think someone just chose this spot for its aesthetic appeal.”

“Shut up, Dean.” Sam shrugged past him to study the debris. It wasn’t too bad, mostly a couple of bookcases leaning against a filling cabinet, surrounded by some other heavy stuff. “Hey, I think we can get through here.”

He shoved the bookcases aside a little and squeezed into the empty space. It was close, but he was able to shuffle through to the other side, though not without a few scratches on his hands and neck. “No big deal, see?”

Dean, flashlight out, stared through the fallen bookcases at his brother. “Yeah, well, that’s ‘cause you weight, what, a hundred eighty pounds? Soaking wet?”

Sam huffed. “What, you eat too many pies to squeeze through?”

His brother just grumbled, shoved at the bookcase, tucked his gun into his belt and his flashlight between his head and shoulder and tried to squeeze into the space. Sam grinned and opened his mouth to call encouragement when one of the doors behind Dean was flung open.

“Little pig!”

Sam tried to shout a warning, but it was too late. A massive hand caught Dean by the shoulder and spun him away from the pile of debris.

It was a man…possibly. At least a head taller than Dean and nearly twice his size. Dean tried to grab his gun, but the man planted a hand on his chest and drove him against the window hard enough that the glass shattered. Sam called his brother’s name and tried to go back through the debris, but Dean was already disappearing over the edge of the window, down to the lobby below.

Sam rushed to the window and stared in disbelief at his brother’s body, crumpled on the floor nearly twenty feet below. He had little time to think or plan as the man who’d attacked Dean was tearing at the barrier now in a snarling fury. Sam took a few shots at him, but that didn’t seem to slow him down.

There was no time. The barricade was in splinters and the man who’d attacked Dean was almost through it. Sam turned and ran, ducking down the next hallway and into the darkened maze of Mount Massive Asylum.

#Whumptober2022 #no.2 #nowhere to run #supernatural #outlast #fic #psychological experimentation #(referenced) #dean winchester #sam winchester #chris walker #horror #hurt/comfort #whump #hurt dean winchester #suspense #cliffhanger #it's gonna get worse

[kylekozmikdeluxo]

"Good morning, young master, it's 1882..."

The early years of Paul McCartney's post-Beatles group Wings have been on my mind for the past few weeks, even before the untimely passing of the one Wings member who stuck with Paul and the late Linda McCartney through thick and thin: Denny Laine.

15 years ago... Early 2008...

By March, I was scalp-deep in the solo output of McCartney. I had already went through a Beatle-obsessive phase, now I was onto Paul's stuff. His first two albums and such, the first couple of Wings album, just endlessly fascinated by a lot of it...

One day, I had come across a bootleg of a song called... '1882'...

It was in its home demo form, taped sometime in mid-to-late 1970. Presumably a little after the release of MCCARTNEY... The song, in any form, wouldn't see an official release until 2018...

... and this one fascinated me the *most* out of the unreleased material.

1882 would later be turned into a dreary near 7-minute epic in the studio in 1972, and a similar take was played live throughout the Wings Over Europe tour that took place from July to August of that year. At several points, a live recording from Berlin was to be used on Wings' second album - and Paul's fourth overall - RED ROSE SPEEDWAY, which was released in April 1973 after being cut from a double-LP to a single-disc.

Anyways, where was I? Winter 2008... January-March, precisely... Life was rough. I don't want to get too into it, but my brain was in a very low place... It was small special interests like these that got me through such miserable days, and probably made worse by the bitter winter conditions. New England isn't particularly nice during this time of year, you get some truly bitter days mixed with some inexplicable near-summerish ones. Something something Mark Twain-

And when I heard 1882 for the first time... I felt like, for a moment, after so much going on... It's like I woke up in 1882... Like the opening lyrics of the song... I had such a vivid picture of waking up in a vintage old house in the woods.

At the time, I frequently saw my father on the weekends, when he was living in a city. His house, that he got from his parents, was largely not updated since around the early 1980s I want to say? It still had wood-paneled walls, green shag carpet, '70s wallpaper on a vintage stairwell, and the room I slept in... I might as well have stepped into a bedroom from the 1960s. Like how Thomasin McKenzie's lead character, when she stays in that apartment, in LAST NIGHT IN SOHO.

I honestly miss that house sometimes.

But that all just rammed home the vintage-ness of the song, especially in its home demo form. It sounds like Paul recorded it on his Scottish farm, a bucolic and remote setting far off from Liverpool and London. For sure. I feel that sleepy farm life, a post-Beatles wind-down and restart, is captured so beautifully on MCCARTNEY, RAM, and WILD LIFE, and there's some of it left on RED ROSE SPEEDWAY. (It also helps that two songs on that album are RAM leftovers.)

I also really enjoy the studio and live versions, too, but the home demo fits the time period nicely. It's almost a vivid picture into a mundane, if not grim life in the late 19th century. It really inspired me to write stories set in the late 19th century, British period pieces, stuff like that. Not necessarily Victorian ones, but ones set in the countryside, quaint and relatively uneventful, but very much full of feeling and vibe. Almost like an early Disney film or a Miyazaki film. To this day, I still incorporate those kinds of aesthetics and ideas into what it is I do... It's just endlessly fascinating to me, and I do wonder how a song like this would've been received had it come out when it was supposed to.

And even to this day, sometimes, when all feels like a flurry. An utter tornado, a rush of emotions, happenings, and anxieties... I create a mental black out in my head, and then imagine a character waking up... And it's 1882... Somewhere in the countryside...

(The oil painting is apparently titled A VIEW IN HEREFORDSHIRE, Thomas British, fitting name, made around the 1880s)

#Youtube

[whatdoyouexpectthistime]

Perigee Chapter 2: Antiquated, Patriarchal, and Even Mystical

PART 1

"Three days," she heard him call from behind her, but he didn't pursue, nor was she waylaid by officers as she left the police station without her wallet and keys.

Without thought for any particular destination, she hit the pavement and did not stop, like she could outrun what Ethan hadn't said.

But she'd already filled in the blank, and though she'd never heard him say it, it was her father's  voice she heard repeating it.

Though it didn't seem as if she was followed, Calico didn't stop running until she was on the edge of town and heaving in deep breaths.

"Fuck," she gasped, kicking at the ground, so frustrated she missed the weed she'd been aiming for.

"There's plenty of weeds in here that could use a lesson," a voice intruded, a broad-shouldered frame following his statement through an ivy covered gate.

Glaring, Calico directed her frustration at this interloper, fists balled and eyes flashing.

"Whoa!" he exclaimed, holding up his hands in a defensive gesture. "I was just trying to lighten your obviously dark mood."

"Yeah, well, fuck off," she barked, but as soon as she did, the words seemed to suck the anger right out of her.

She was confused, in no small part afraid, and now, embarrassed.

"If you want," he shrugged, and his apparent willingness to leave her to stew should have felt better, but instead, Calico's discomfort deepened.

"Look," she sighed, "sorry, I'm..."

"Having a bad day?"

"Understatement," she groaned, rolling her eyes. "I didn't mean to be rude, just..."

"Got a lot going on," he nodded, stepping forward and offering his hand. "Dane."

She considered his dirt caked fingernails and calloused palms, rolled-up sleeves and the mud clinging to his heavy duty work boots. He was a far cry from Ethan, but he was definitely a Cleaver werewolf.

"Calico," she reciprocated, accepting his hand and giving it a firm shake.

"So," he began, releasing her and leaning a little against the shovel he held in his other hand. "People say a problem shared is a problem halved?"

"Yeah, I'm not really..."

"You want a cup of coffee?" he offered, cutting her off, and his smile was warm and honest. "Might help, might not, but I was about to take a break."

He was a stranger, but Calico had no friends in Cleaver, and it was clear the cops were in Ethan's pocket. She had to give the demanding alpha time to cool off and leave the station before she returned for her handbag.

"Yeah, okay," she shrugged, following him as he moved through the gates.

Then she stopped, peering up the manicured grassy slope that was crested by a weathered mausoleum. Though the grounds and gardens were beautifully landscaped, it was clear the tombs and graves were quite old.

"Cemetery," she frowned, and Dane turned and chuckled.

"Not a fan?" he asked, but didn't stop. "Or maybe not what you were expecting?"

"Both," she huffed, glancing around as they went, though most of the stones and structures were old and worn, only a few looked new.

"It's a family thing," he explained, pushing through some more hanging foliage and revealing an open space with a large pond, benches, and tables scattered about. "My family have been caretakers here for centuries. Maybe you'd like a tour with your coffee?"

The suggestion was a surprise, but not a terrible one; she wasn't going anywhere until she retrieved her handbag, and even then...

"Sure," she agreed, following him up to a corrugated iron shed. "I guess I'm not in any rush."

He busied himself with a hotplate and kettle while she hovered awkwardly just inside the door.

"Here you go," he said, finally handing her a steaming mug.

She thanked him and accepted the coffee, which was strangely good considering where it was made.

"Come on," he invited, taking another from the countertop and leading her outside. "I'll show you around."

In the distance, behind the cemetery, she could see the mountains. The view would have been breathtaking at any other time, but all Calico could think about was Ethan Cole and the way he'd looked at her.

"You look a million miles away," Dane remarked, and only then did Calico realise he'd stopped beside a granite cruciform grave marker some ten metres behind her.

"Sorry, I'm listening," she apologised sheepishly.

"I asked where you'd like to start," he repeated, but did not seem irritated by her inattentiveness.

"At the beginning I guess," she shrugged.

Though the day had begun so badly, Calico was grateful for the distraction Dane provided - and he certainly was a font of knowledge. It was fascinating, hearing about the town's history, and although he didn't differentiate between human and werewolf achievements, Calico could make out most of it through names she vaguely remembered her mother mentioning long ago.

Despite her suggestion they start at the beginning, they wound a path from the very outside of the graveyard toward the clearly more elite mausoleums at the very heart.

"Family reunion?" Dane offered, stopping at the locked double gates of the grandest sepulchre of all.

Brows twitching, Calico looked up at the name at the entrance, then back at her guide in question, while beneath her clothing, muscles that had begun to relax clenched tightly once more.

"What?" she questioned, trying to play off her obvious surprise.

Unsuccessfully.

"There isn't a werewolf in Cleaver who can't identify a full moon perigee, even if they haven't ever encountered one," he explained, like Calico didn't know she was the werewolf equivalent of a klaxon. "And I happen to know the only such birth in the last hundred years was Calico Moira McDonough."

"You got me," she admitted, but took a step back.

There was no sense of danger about Dane, but the last guy to focus on her heritage wanted her firmly wedged beneath his boot-heel... and other places.

"What were you running from?" he asked, head tilted a little - such an incongruously innocent gesture for so rugged an individual.

"Oh, come on," she scowled. "You've had all the answers so far."

"Okay," he nodded with a smile, seemingly unflappable. "Ethan Cole came after you frothing at the mouth like a rabid mutt and humping your leg?"

A loud chortle blurted from between Calico's lips, so emphatic she nearly spilled her coffee.

"So close," she quipped, finally regaining her composure.

"I can smell him on you," Dane remarked, his face becoming stormy. "And the term 'alpha' is generally antonymous with respect for others and consent."

"I didn't stick around to get the precise details," Calico exhaled, the usually bitter but pleasant taste of coffee turning to ash on her tongue.

Stalling, because speaking it aloud made it seem so much more inescapable, she looked up to where her family name was written across the mausoleum lintel.

"I knew my dad left Cleaver after Terrance Cole challenged him for alpha," she disclosed, sitting down on the mausoleum steps. "I was three then so, didn't have a clue what was going on, and we didn't talk about any of it growing up. Dad killed himself when I was eight, so shit, I knew I was different, but it wasn't until right before my first shift that Mum got expositive."

Dane didn't say anything, but he sat down beside her and listened.

"You know, she said there were traditions, packs, social hierarchies that regular people were unaware of, but largely glossed over the details because we weren't in a pack, kept to ourselves, and that's how she wanted it," Calico continued, then snorted. "And she was big on how heroically Dad smuggled us out of Cleaver after the challenge, saved our lives, but made out like it was because Terrance Cole was supposed to kill Dad for losing."

"That's the rule," he nodded. "Even in more progressive times, pack run territories adhere to it because of the significant benefits of being alpha."

"But that's the thing," she scowled, throwing up her hands. "Dad lost, fled and that was it. As entitled as Ethan seems to be, I can't help but think his father would have sent Cleaverlaw after Dad."

"And Ethan revealed why that didn't happen," Dane concluded, observing the way Calico's body language changed from tensed and tall to small and withdrawn.

"Do you support him?" she asked, voice now matching her posture.

The glance she cast sideways at him was far more hopeful than it was safe to be, for if his answer was yes, anything she said and everything she did around him would be reported back to Ethan.

"Cleaver's my home," Dane answered, and it sounded like the beginning of a politician's response to a question that if answered truthfully would make him look bad. "My family isn't as old as yours, but it too has invested blood and tears to build up the affluence you see now, so it's not really in my best interests to oppose Alpha Cole."

Though she was expecting it, the last two words were like a punch in the gut.

"Hang on," he said, catching her wrist as she moved to rise.

For this trespass he was lashed with a savage glare and a vicious flash of gold in her eyes.

"Yeah alright, sorry," he rushed, lifting his hold like her skin was white-hot. "But you should let me finish."

Calico stood, but crossed her arms and continued to stare down at him warily.

"BUT," he emphasised. "My lot have never been the cow-towing type. Personal integrity is far more important to me than amassing brownie points with an egocentric megalomaniac."

"I can't imagine Ethan being all that thrilled about outliers," Calico mused.

"You seem to know a fair bit considering your late start," he noted.

"Not enough to save me from serving myself up to Ethan and his ultimatum," she sighed.

"Yet you're not just anyone," he pointed out. "Being full moon perigee isn't just a title or rank, they're coveted as mates for a reason."

"Fuck I hate that word," she spat, wringing her hands. "Like, like women are just breeding tools."

"Understandable," Dane nodded. "But... you know it's more than that, right?"

"Do I?" she growled, rocking to her feet again and pacing away a few strides before spinning back around. "Could I punch a hole in a concrete wall? Probably," she declared, hands now gesturing wildly. "Do I heal like the wind? Sure; but ask me to navigate the antiquated, patriarchal oppression of traditional pack dynamics and mystically unbreakable pacts, and I'm screwed - both figuratively and literally if Ethan has his way."

"You're right," Dane said. "It is antiquated, patriarchal, and even mystical, but it's also part of our nature."

"So you're saying I should go bend over and let Ethan mount me?" she snapped, and the air around her crackled with the energy of her anger.

"No," he answered, and his voice was calm and steady, like a rock in a storm. "I'm saying the first step to overcoming a problem is understanding it."

"I understand it," she grunted. "It's a bunch of horny cavemen with a superiority complex."

"And you're a woman allowing them to give you an inferiority complex," he countered, and though his words were harsh, his tone was not.

"Excuse me?" she blinked.

"The McDonough built Cleaver, from wild forest territory to affluent eco tourism hub, so your family's bloodline is strong," he expounded coolly. "You got cornered by Alpha Cole, and you may have run, but didn't buckle. And no matter what you have or haven't been taught about our kind and your own potential, as a full moon perigee you have the greatest of all our strengths."

"I don't want to have to rip someone's head off just to live my life," she exclaimed, throwing her hands up again.

"That isn't the only power an alpha wields these days," Dane pointed out, maintaining calm. "You've experienced Ethan's influence in the local police department first hand, and his pockets are deep."

"Well shit, I'm a billionaire with a batphone to the President," she muttered rolling her eyes. "But that still isn't going to stop the universe from demanding I fulfill the pact!"

Dane did not respond to that immediately, because he knew her sarcasm came from fear and desperation. Instead, he allowed her to fume, to clench and shake out the pricking hopelessness that needled at her self-control.

Finally, he cleared his throat.

"I'm truly sorry I don't have the answer you're looking for," he admitted, his own body language open. "But I don't agree with Alpha Cole using the pact your father sealed to abuse you."

Calico rolled her shoulders and took a few long breaths to clear the fog of her panic.

"So," she said, the gravity in her voice returned. "What do I do now?"

She didn't know a whole lot about this man; though on face value he seemed genuine about wanting to help her, she did know enough to understand speaking out against a firmly entrenched Alpha was playing with fire.

"Unless you managed to do so before your police station visit, let's find you somewhere safe to stay," he answered. "Ethan has his hand in many businesses in town so you'll want to avoid them."

Calico blinked at that. She hadn't realised she'd be that visible to him.

"Oh," she murmured, but she did feel better knowing someone had her back, even if she had to take everything he said and did with a grain of salt." I have to go back to the police station and get my stuff," she exhaled, rolling her shoulders back and holding the now cold remnants of her coffee out to him.

"You want a ride?" he offered, emptying the mug into the shrubbery. "I don't think you realise just how far you ran."

PART 3

#original fiction #werewolf #werewolf fiction #fiction #perigee #writeblr #dodge that trope!

[thelightningthatjumpsbetween]

Forty Six

RE8 | Wintersberg | Romance, Slow Burn | Action, Sci-Fi

Sequel of Winters and the Beast, a Resident Evil: Village Story

Table Of Contents

Ethan banished himself to the parlor sofa, and had a speech prepared for Karl if the latter came to complain about being alone.  However, Karl never appeared.  As Ethan drifted off to sleep to the sound of rain on the windows, he wondered what the engineer was doing.  With eyes closed, his powers allowed him to easily see into the faraway room; there, seeing simultaneously through reality and the liminal space, he could see Heisenberg sitting at the desk.  The radio was playing the same scratchy, low-toned classical music Heisenberg preferred to listen to at night.  Cigar was in his mouth, tools were in his hands.  

Seeing through the liminal space, where lines blurred and colors glitched, Ethan was also able to see something else for the first time.  As Karl leaned forward on his stool, his face drawn into an uncharacteristically serious yet serene expression, his twin leaned over the desk behind him.  He looked on at Karl’s work as if to encourage him, but also seemed to be learning while watching. 

Jochen’s hair was longer than Karl’s, Ethan noticed.  It was also the same deep auburn Karl’s had been many years earlier.  Without a beard to hide them, his features stood out in the dim oil light–plump lips bent into a frown, square jawline, the most artist-friendly masculine chin in the world.  The bruises and cuts across Jochen’s face were fresh and new, tinged with black blood instead of red.  Ethan figured the twin was probably out of favor with Miranda for the moment.  The father finally dropped into a restless sleep, the image of one brother watching over another burned into his mind.  

—

There were many surprising firsts that next morning.  The journey was mostly painless; road to the train station, then a train to the metro station, then a short metro ride into the heart of Brașov.  It was one of the first cities Ethan visited after moving to Romania.  The first surprise was that the American ended up leading the group; he pointed out the directions of different areas, gave a quick lesson on public transit, handed out cash, and gave everyone their meeting spot and time to return.  

The second surprise was the feeling Ethan got as he watched the group plot and plan how to divide amongst themselves.  Donna, Eva, and Moreau were giddy, speaking their native language rapidly, while Heisenberg and Dimitrescu stood idly by, the true embodiment of “too important to be bothered” Lords, casual and relaxed about the day.  Though Ethan knew from the very painful hug he’d given Heisenberg that morning that the other had carried the retrieved crystal along in his coat, taking no chances.  

Evie and Rose were chasing each other around one of the fountains in the town square while the adults talked amongst themselves.  Ethan felt his heart both swell, and felt a tightness of anxiety around his deep emotion.  He cared about them, he realized–all of them.  What a bizarre, ridiculous twist of fate.  

Not only did he care about them, but out here in the world, away from the quiet solitude of the village’s remains, he realized they were truly capable of living .    That included himself, and the children.  

The future was going to happen around all of them.  The stuck-in-time way of living that Miranda had cultivated around her village for a century was done.  Once she was gone for good, they would continue to rebuild.  For the first time, it felt like he had a future.  Ethan hadn’t missed all of the adverts on the metro for nearby spas, mountain and castle tours, resorts.  He had so many ideas, and they all seemed just as ridiculous and fantastic as the idea that he was a fairytale creature with magic powers…but it was all real .  

He’d had a similar surreal moment while training with Chris, years ago.  Surrounded by agents at the shooting range, getting fitted for a bulletproof vest, filling out paperwork for doctors (the irony, in hindsight, that they worried about his health while undertaking training.)  When Ethan was given the standard issue rifle and signed the paperwork for its care, Redfield had beamed at him.  He remembered his own disbelief-how had he ever moved from systems engineer to that ?  It felt strange, uncertain, but he decided he would make the best of it.  

This feeling was similar.  He would make the best of it.  But unlike his BSAA training and the strangeness and stress of the soldiering world, this world felt…. right.  It felt like the family Ethan had always intended to have.  Maybe not the specific members of the family…maybe not a precisely human family, which was what he’d always thought he’d have, but did all of that matter?  

The mold may have skewed his emotions, but he found himself silently agreeing with Eva’s judgment of the findings.  It enhanced what he felt in his heart.  He wanted a family.  He wanted to open up to these people, build something together.  A life worth living for all of them.  

Alcina begged for Rose’s stroller, which Ethan was happy to oblige her with.  He’d never seen the tall woman look quite as happy as she did pushing the beautiful antique stroller in the overcast sun.  Whether for habit’s sake or style’s sake, she wore a large hat.  After their slow walk took them out of the shade of the metro station, she tilted her face up to the cloudy sky and inhaled.  

It was only a slight surprise that Karl was acting more like an older brother than Moreau; he had no qualms about staying with Moreau, who was nervous about being seen, terrified to speak to others.  The men agreed on a hardware store first, and a store that sold fishing supplies immediately after.  Eva, Alcina, Donna, and Rose had made similar methodical plans, but the stores were instead entire shopping malls.  Ethan was relieved he wouldn’t be expected to tag along, and the women acted insulted when he asked if they really wanted to spend time buying toddler clothing.  

The next surprise was Karl himself; though he refused to change from his arguably intimidating and confusing wardrobe, he garnered plenty of positive stares from others.  He and Alcina had multitudes of admirers from the weekend crowd pouring out of the metro station behind them–some people even took photos, others blushed and whispered.  It had been this way on the train and the metro too.  The pair of them seemed to captivate others.  Karl was completely immune to this attention; Alcina seemed to bask in it.  She even flashed a few dazzling smiles at those bold enough to raise their cameras or phones.  

What had Ethan missed in the first place?  Clearly, he wasn’t affected by charisma, or strange fashion.  It was likely the whole ‘missing daughter’ fiasco took his attention from the Lords in the moment.  He still found himself annoyed at the attention the siblings drew from tourists and townsfolk.  He wished, stubbornly, that he had a ring to wrestle onto Heisenberg’s finger if anybody had any question about his status-which would have been pointless, as the engineer wore his electrical gloves even here.  

Eva nodded at the black-haired child, who was still giddy with excitement.  “Should she come with us?” 

“I made an ice cream promise,” Ethan reminded her, and checked his watch.  “It’s pretty early.  What if I go pick up the phones and computer, and then meet you guys at Emma La Dulce at one?” 

Alcina tsked.  “You really think we will take only two hours to go through the first shopping center?”

“What if we split up, and I bring Evie to you, Ethan?” Donna offered.  

“Works for me.  Work for you?” Ethan asked the child directly.  She was bouncing on the balls of her feet.  “Okay!” 

And just like any other large, somewhat normal family, they dispersed at the town center.  Ethan made his way down the stone street alone, feeling strange about the entire emotional roller coaster of the past two days.  He felt strange, but satisfied.  

This feeling continued when he was able to stutter in some limited Romanian upon his arrival to the computer store.  He purchased a laptop and put a desktop on order for pickup.  Ethan felt strangely at home as he navigated the walls of accessories and monitors.  The shopkeeper was thrilled with talking tech to the American, and so Ethan’s spirits were further lifted after he left the store.  

He looked at his watch again.  He’d finished more quickly than anticipated, and still had over an hour before it would be time to double back toward the main streets.  The blond sauntered down the cobblestone walk, contemplating shopping for clothing, when a tall shadow fell into step next to him.  Just as he turned, he felt a strong hand grip his bicep. 

“Shut up, don’t say anything, follow me.  And don’t yell,” the last part was added almost jokingly.  Ethan was stumbling, frozen, his feet trying to keep up with the taller, black-clad man.  He knew the voice but couldn’t bring himself to believe it, until he finally caught a glimpse of the other’s face. 

“Chris?!”

#karl heisenberg #ethan winters #chris redfield

[therkildsenbjerre7]

hermes mini kelly 17

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[alj4890]

All Through The Night

A Choices: The Royal Romance Dark AU fanfiction. 

A/N Other than my few Bloodbound shorts, I’ve never written anything with supernatural overtones before. After receiving requests to see Liam and Riley’s story if he was a vampire, this storyline was born. Since it is set in one of my favorite books from Pixelberry, I had to include as many of the main and supporting characters as I could. The following chapters will explain more where they and what our main characters are. Not going to lie, I am very anxious to step out of my comfort zone for this, but I’m also super excited to see how it goes. Along with The Royal Romance, I will be referencing and altering both The Crown and The Flame and The Royal Masquerade.

@gkittylove99​​ @krsnlove​ @kingliam2019​ @texaskitten30​ @yourmajesty09​ @mom2000aggie​ @ofpixelsandscribbles​ @twinkleallnight​ @lodberg​ @twinkleallnight​ @amandablink​ @neotericthemis​  @mm2305​ @sfb123​ @iufilms​​ ​ ​

Masterlist

Prologue

Once upon a time...

"Father!" Zenobia rushed down the stairwell. "Kenna is at the gates!"

King Luthor's frown deepened as he studied the places his troops had been destroyed. His hope to unite the five kingdoms and wipe off the abomination was for naught.

Kenna would not stop until he and his surviving offspring's heads were on pikes.

...until their blood filled the crystal goblets of the Dark Queen.

"What do we do?" His son, Diavolos, asked.

Luthor knew it was only himself Kenna wanted. After he had killed her mother, hoping to stop the monsters once and for all, Kenna would have her revenge.

If only he had known that she was a vampire...just like her mother.

"Listen carefully." His voice trembled at this possibly being the last time he was able to speak to his son and daughter. "A Nevarkis must always be ready to fight the creatures that prey on the weak and vulnerable."

"But..." Zenobia sniffed. "How? How can we possibly kill the unkillable?"

"She can be killed just like her mother before her." Luthor snapped. "Sunlight. A dagger to the heart. Cutting the head off." His features hardened with resolve. "Know that those are our true allies. Continue your training with daggers. Never stop being vigilant. Educate your children. And remember: where there's one vampire, many more lie in wait in the shadows."

Diavolos stepped forward and gripped his father's shoulder. "We will fight for you."

"No." Luthor corrected. "Fight for our people. The innocent. Fight for a chance to live without fear of monsters."

He cleared his throat. "If I should die--"

"Don't say that!" Zenobia screeched. "We'll be--"

"Kenna is coming for me." Luthor interrupted. "I know I must face the consequences of my actions."

"But--" Divalos lowered his head. "What are we to do?"

"Kill her." Luthor ordered. "Let your emotion be your strength." He took their hands. "And remember that a vampire is nature's evil incarnate. They will do whatever they want and kill anyone who they think is in their way." His voice turned to pleading. "Kill Kenna before she has a chance to kill you."

Zenobia nodded in a jerky manner. Diavolos swallowed with tears in his eyes.

"Good. Now prepare yourselves." Luthor pulled his sword from its sheath. "The devil herself is here."

*****************

Two years later...

Kenna cuddled her infant son, humming a lullaby.

Dom came in, a soft smile gracing his lips at the sight of his family.

"How are we this evening?" He asked, placing a kiss first on her lips then one on his son's forehead.

"A little fussy." Kenna explained. "But otherwise perfect."

"Good." Dom stretched then went to stoke the fire. "I will be going out later tonight."

Kenna's head jerked up. "Why? Are there more rumors?"

He nodded, a determined frown formed on his lips. "The Nevarkis brats refuse to let us live in peace." He moved to stand before the window that looked out toward the kingdom he had once lived in.

High in the mountains, the couple and those like them had found sanctuary. They built a kingdom, one of darkness and shadow that allowed them to live freely. He and Kenna were crowned the rulers, chosen by their people...those that were cursed as monsters.

"Si and I will be standing guard." He explained. "I will not risk you or our child."

"Dom..." Kenna pulled him close, capturing his lips in a long tender kiss. "This must end. I was foolish to let my need for revenge take over." Tears sparkled in her eyes. "Luthor might have left us alone if I had given him a chance."

Dom's face contorted into furious hatred. "A Nevarkis can never be trusted!" He gripped her waist, hands heating as he lost his temper. "He would have plunged a dagger into your heart the first chance he had."

"Dom." She said softly when he singed her clothes.

He wrenched his hands from her with a grimace. "I didn't burn you, did I?"

She shook her head. "I'm fine." She tried to lighten the mood. "Just a little overheated."

He took deep breaths to get himself under control. "Stay here where it is safe." His eyes searched hers. "Have you fed recently?"

"No, but I should be fine until you return." Kenna lifted a bottle with blood for their son. "I can call on one of the servants to help me if I need to."

"Promise me you won't go outside." He pleaded.

"Only if you promise to come back to me." She responded.

His lips quirked in that cocky smile she has always adored.

"Always, my queen." He kissed her once more, then slipped out the door to search out their enemies.

******************

Present Day New York...

"Cordonia...land of both beauty and mystery." Riley wrinkled her nose. "Boring."

"No, it isn't." Hana argued. "I think that is the perfect beginning."

"Look at the comments from our last video." Riley swiveled her laptop so her friend could see. "People love our walkthroughs and all but hate my narration."

"Well..." Hana's brow furrowed. "Maybe we should try to add more to it than just narration." She pulled out some sketches. "We could add some animation of the history before showing our footage of the country."

"That might work." Riley mumbled, tapping her pen against her notebook.

The two set to work planning their next project.

After years of trying, they had finally achieved their dream of traveling for a living. The two college friends had taken every class they could on how to make their hopes into a reality. With Riley's love of history and business and Hana's talent with art and fashion, the pair had created a successful travel channel that showcased rarely visited countries and cities around the world.

Hana took care of all the shopping and dining found at their chosen destinations. Her "day trips" were hailed as must see for anyone planning a vacation. Riley took over for what could be found at night. Myths and legends blended in with what could be discovered once the sun set. A place's nightlife was thoroughly researched and reached a wide variety of their audience, causing many to plan a vacation just on her recommendations alone.

"Did your mom suggest where we should go first?" Riley asked, after skimming the same few articles about the elusive country.

"Not really." Hana hedged.

Riley glanced up. "Is she giving you a hard time again?"

"Yes." Hana slumped in her chair. "She told me to call when I was done playing tour guide."

"Geez." Riley grumbled. "Does she not realize that we have created a legit business?"

"Ladies shouldn't be involved in anything that does not pertain to their husband and family." Hana quoted. "I was supposed to have my debut to Cordonian society last year." Angry tears filled her eyes. "She still hasn't forgiven me for missing out on the Masquerade Ball."

Riley wrapped her in a comforting hug. "I'm sorry."

Hana patted her back. "Don't be. I finally feel like I can accomplish anything."

"That's because you can." Riley sat back with a grin. "Especially with planning out what we should focus on first."

Hana giggled as she went to search out some of her old books she had inherited from her grandparents. "These might help you with your part."

Riley's eyebrows lifted over the titles. "The Crown, the Flame, and The Night Queen."

"That is the earliest recorded story of vampires and monsters in Cordonia." Hana explained. "Queen Kenna Rhys and King Luthor Nevarkis both fought over uniting the kingdoms that make up Cordonia." She shook her head in disbelief. "There is a legend that Queen Kenna was a vampire that married a man who could transform into a dragon."

"For real?" Riley eagerly opened the book. "What happened?"

"Luthor died." Hana reached for another history book. "Some say it was a sword fight while others say she ripped his throat out with her fangs."

"Whoa. Either way, she sounds pretty epic."

"His son got revenge though." Hana flipped to another chapter. "He sneaked in one day and supposedly dragged Kenna into the sunlight. Before her husband could save her, she burned to ash."

"Brutal." Riley shivered. "What did the dragon do?"

Hana shrugged. "Supposedly he left with their child to protect him." She pointed at some drawings rendered from the Dark Ages. "Kenna's son came back to extract revenge. He eliminated one entire side of the Nevarkis family tree."

"And let me guess," Riley picked up another book. "The remaining Nevarkis's struck back?"

"It's supposedly been a feud for centuries between the Nevarkis and the Rhys' families." Hana pulled up an image on her phone. "Though one is currently ruling Cordonia."

Riley studied the image. "Queen Olivia Nevarkis. Looks like the Rhys lost the throne."

Hana shrugged. "There's a myth that they still rule Cordonia from the shadows."

"Mythical royal vampires, huh?" Riley laughed at the thought. "I hope I bump into one just so I can figure out who's really in charge."

Hana giggled at the thought. "You would be the only person to ask a logical, government question instead of the usual, whoa you're a real live vampire!"

Riley threw a pillow at her. "Hey! I can be calm and collected when faced with the unknown."

Hana threw the pillow back. "Tell that to the supposed haunted house we visited on our last trip." She broke out into laughter with Riley's defense that squeaking doors were the true villains. "On that note, I'm going to start packing. Our flight leaves first thing in the morning."

"I'll be ready." Riley promised.

Once alone, she flipped to a more current timeline of the supposed Dark Kingdom.

King Constantine Rhys the Third rules over what is his rightful kingdom. Rumors swirl that he is simply biding his time until he can eliminate the usurper, Queen Olivia Nevarkis, First of Her Name. The people know that one day, a Rhys will sit upon the throne, uniting the Dark Kingdom and Cordonia once and for all.

****************

Cordonia's Royal Palace, 2 a.m.

"Heeeerah! Olivia threw her daggers as hard as she could while doing a roundhouse kick.

The blades struck into the chest, head, and groin of the makeshift dummy.

She brushed the few strands of red hair that had escaped her hair clip out of her eyes. With a great deal of scrutiny, she studied her dagger placement.

"The one to the head needs to go deeper."

She spun around with a start at that all too familiar voice.

"You're late." She folded her arms and tapped her foot.

Liam rubbed the back of his neck. "Sorry. Had to stop off for a quick bite."

Olivia rolled her eyes. "That's not funny."

"Not that kind of bite." He teased, holding up a styrofoam box.

"Oh." She blinked in surprise. "I forget that you enjoy normal food too."

He chuckled at that. "There are certain foods that I don't think any man could ever give up."

Olivia decided to ignore that as she wiped the sweat from her face and neck. "Now that you're here, let's get the formalities over with."

"Very well." Liam gestured toward her. "You may go first."

She sat down on a bench lining one side of the palace gym. She motioned for him to join her.

"Not you!" She hissed when she saw his all too familiar guard.

Drake Walker bristled at her tone. His brown eyes clashed with her green.

"Give us a moment, please." Liam asked him.

"Don't let your guard down." Drake warned. "Remember, she's a Nevarkis."

Olivia tensed. "Perhaps you should remember what happened the last time you said something like that."

She quirked one eyebrow at the man and felt a sense of glee when he winced in memory.

His hand automatically drifted to his side where one of her daggers had once struck true.

With a quick bow to Liam, Drake stepped back out into the hallway.

Liam shook his head. "Are you two ever going to get along?"

"Stop talking stupid." Olivia snapped. "Now then, as you know...I must have my revenge."

"I know." Liam folded his arms and leaned casually against a column.

She eyed him for any sign of hatred.

It drove her crazy how unvampiric he could be.

He seemed almost human.

He seemed...kind.

A vampire is nature's evil incarnate. You can never trust a Rhys.

Those words had been drummed into her skull by her parents and then her aunt after their deaths by Constantine's hand.

And yet...Liam had done the unthinkable.

He had actually been a friend to Olivia.

*************

The night after her parents' funeral, five year old Olivia had been sitting alone before the fireplace, weeping over them.

Her aunt had left her to deal with her own grief and to plan the next attack upon Constantine.

As she searched for a tissue, Olivia jumped back with a shriek at the little blonde haired boy that held the Kleenex box.

His eyes were filled with unshed tears as he handed her a tissue.

"Who are you?" She asked, remembering that a Nevarkis must always be brave.

"I'm Liam." He explained. "I wanted to...I wanted to tell you I'm sorry about your parents." He sniffed and took a tissue for himself. "My mom died too."

Olivia blinked and took a cautious step forward. "Are you...are you a vampire?!"

He nodded.

She whipped out the dagger her mother had given her and rushed at him.

Liam moved faster than she could comprehend, gently keeping her hand above her head.

"Let go of me, monster!" She ordered. "You're why I'm all alone!"

"I didn't do anything." He told her, anguish taking over his handsome features. "I don't want to hurt you or anyone."

"Liar!" She snapped. "That's what you do. Lie and kill." Her tears ran faster down her cheeks. "And now you'll kill me."

"I won't." He promised. "I swear I won't hurt you." He ignored his own tears trickling down his cheeks. His blue eyes burned with resolve. "My mother made me promise never to hurt a human."

Olivia shook her head. It had to be lies. Isn't that what vampires and monsters do? Lull you into letting your guard down so that they could have an easy kill.

"Your father will pay for what he did." She said, hoping to see his true, evil nature. "He must die!"

"I know." Liam slowly released her and took a step back.

Olivia watched in surprise as he sat down before her fireplace and pulled out a silk blue ribbon from his pocket.

He motioned for her to join him.

She slowly lowered herself down, dagger poised in her little fist in case he made a move.

"May I have your hand, please?" He asked.

He patiently waited on her to decide whether or not to give it to him.

She tentatively placed her hand in his.

His lips turned up into a relieved smile as he wrapped the ribbon over their joined hands.

"What are you doing?" She asked, lowering her dagger.

"Making a bond." He explained. "I, Liam Rhys, Crown Prince of the Dark Kingdom, promise to never seek out revenge and to end all vendettas against the Nevarkis family." His blue eyes held her green. "Just as my mother, Queen Eleanor wanted me to."

Oliva's lips parted. "You mean it?"

"I do." Liam's voice held a great deal of sincerity. "I would rather walk into the sun than not do as she asked."

"Oh." Olivia sniffed. She could understand that kind of devotion.

"Do you," Liam's cheeks colored. "Do you think we can be allies?"

"A Nevarkis will never be friends with a monster." She repeated the rhetoric that she knew by heart.

"But," Liam's shoulders slumped. "We're not all bad."

"All monsters are bad at heart."

"I'm not." He pouted. "I don't want to be."

"You're so weird." She muttered.

"Am not." Liam grumbled. "I hope I'm not."

Olivia looked down at their hands still bound together. "I guess since you promised something, I should too."

He didn't bother to hide his surprise.

She stuck her tongue out at him. "I, Olivia Nevarkis, The Crown Princess of Cordonia, swear that after I kill Constantine Rhys, I will lay down my weapons." Her brow furrowed. "I'll pick them back up though if you or any other monster tries anything."

Liam's smile grew. Before she could react, he tugged her into a quick hug.

"Now we can be friends!" He cheered.

"Friends?" She shook her head. "I'm a Nevarkis and you're a Rhys. We can't be friends."

"We will be." He vowed, jumping to his feet. "I have to go before Father finds out I've sneaked out. I'll try to come back in a few nights."

Olivia didn't have a chance to tell him whether or not she wanted him to. In the blink of an eye, he had jumped from her balcony and was already out the palace gates.

*****************

That had been the beginning of Liam's visits. Through the years, he had remained true to his promise. He did all he could to befriend her and never tried to sway her from seeking vengeance.

Olivia had once asked him how he could take her threat against his father so easily.

He had merely shrugged, explaining that he knew it was the way of things. His father had killed both her parents, while he had only lost one. He hoped she didn't since he did not wish to see his father or her dead.

Olivia had then told him again how weird he was, bringing another smile to his lips.

And now here he was again, calmly taking her promised vengeance well.

"So what business brings you here tonight?" She asked.

"Father thinks it is time I chose a wife." Liam responded. "I thought you should know that I will be spending more time in your kingdom to find one."

Olivia shot up off the bench. "What? But you promised to never hurt a human!"

"And I will keep true to that." He explained.

"But..." Olivia's brow furrowed. "You'll turn her into a vampire."

"Only if she wishes it." Liam explained. "I won't force her to make such a decision."

"I see." She began to pace while thinking. "You'll have vampire children."

"Only if she's a vampire." He reminded her. "Remember my brother."

Olivia paused. She had forgotten about Leo Rhys, The Great Disappointment of the Dark Kingdom. His mother had begged Constantine not to turn her. It had never been asked before, and in his mercy he had agreed. That was when they all discovered that a monster and a human could only produce a human child. In order for the heir to the Dark Kingdom to be a vampire, both parents had to be the same being.

"And you'll be fine having human children?" She asked. "If you're chosen bride refuses the Vampire's Kiss?"

"Of course." He responded.

"Lord, you're so weird." She muttered.

His smirk flashed. "Let's hope the woman I choose doesn't think so."

"Are there no women in your kingdom you can choose from?" She asked.

"I've looked." He shook his head. "It's hard to explain, but if one doesn't have an arranged marriage, then we must search until we see the one meant for us."

"And you somehow got weirder." She brushed her hands down her pants and held one out to him. "Good luck, I suppose."

"Thank you." He grasped her hand and lifted it to his lips. "I'll keep you updated on my progress."

"There's no need."

"Of course there is." He winked at her on his way out. "We're friends."

Her lips parted to once again remind him that they couldn't be. For some reason, she decided not to say it.

Liam had somehow wormed his way into her life and had become the closest friend she had ever had.

********************

The Lee Residence, Shanghai, China...

Lorelei paled as she reread the report. 

It can’t be. Not Now!

Of all the times for this to happen, it would be when her stubborn, foolish daughter decided to visit. 

Given the nature of her relationship with Hana, she knew that there was no way she could convince her to postpone her trip to Cordonia. 

There was only one course of action left to take. She would have to call the one man who was capable of protecting her daughter. She would promise hiim anything as long as he kept Hana out of Liam’s clutches. As much as wanted her to give up this ridiculous hobby she called a job and settled down with the right sort of man, she would never put her in the path of becoming the next vampire queen. 

Setting down the packet of information from one of her informants, she checked to make certain no servant was out in the hallway and then searched for the needed phone number.

Taking a deep breath, she placed the call.

Her trepidation grew when he didn’t immediately answer.

"Hello."

"Lord Beaumont?" 

"Yes." She could hear a door closing in the background. "Who is this?"

"Lorelei Lee." She replied.

"Lady Lorelei." He responded with a recognition. "How can I help you?"

"My daughter and her friend have got it in their heads to come visit Cordonia." She began. "I'm not certain how long they intend to stay, but I was hoping that I could retain your services."

"For what exactly?" Lord Beaumont asked.

"Protection." She replied. "I have heard through certain channels that the dark prince is beginning to search for a bride." She took a deep breath. "We do NOT want our daughter anywhere near that vile creature."

"I understand." He replied. "I usually don't do personal security. With my brother, Bertrand, retired," he hesitated, "it is left up to me to help protect Cordonia's borders."

"My husband and I would be in your debt if you could watch over her in the evenings." Lorelei cajoled. "I've heard that your brother is planning on extending his vineyards. We would be more than happy to invest in the production and distribution of his sparkling wine. Perhaps even let it be the only sparkling wine we serve in our hotels."

"Send me her information and picture. Call her and tell her that since our family is an old friend of yours, that I've volunteered to show them around. Find out where she's staying and when she plans on arriving."

"Oh thank you, my lord. We--"

"I'll also need a contract prepared and signed for all that you offered." He added.

"Yes of course. I'll get everything to you at once." She promised.

Once he ended the call, she sank back down onto her chair. 

She bowed her head and began to pray that her daughter came to no harm these next few weeks. To lose Hana to one of the many creatures that roamed the night in Cordonia was too horrible to even contemplate.

If anyone could keep her daughter safe then it was none other than Lord Maxwell Beaumont.

#liam x riley #choices the royal romance #hana x rashad #leo x madeleine #maxwell x oc #olivia nevrakis #drake walker #trr dark au #vampire au

[tchallasbabymama]

Troubled Waters Prologue

Hey y’all! Some of you may have seen this already, but I took it down and reworked it a little bit. Check out my masterlist to read my other stories, and let me know if you want to be tagged in anything. Enjoy!

Word count: 1,723

Aziza [a-zee-za] noun: A benevolent magical species with moderate stature, pointed ears, colorful wings, and deep brown skin that always has a slight glow. They enjoy music, dancing, and frolicking with human children. They also have a propensity for plant magic and hunting and tend to dwell in or around the rainforest.

Long before humans ever stepped foot in Wakanda, the aziza were appointed guardians of the land by the panther goddess, Bast. Aziza lived in harmony with the other magical beings, with a few exceptions, and the queen of the aziza ruled over all of Wakanda. That is until these strange, magicless creatures stumbled into the forest one day and were immediately accosted by some of the more malevolent beings that inhabited the land. Several aziza sprang into action to protect the newcomers and were able to stop the evil obambo from possessing them and driving them mad. When the heroic team of aziza brought the defenseless humans to the queen, she welcomed them into her kingdom with open arms and gave them their own plot of land that was locked between her forest and a dangerous mountain range.

When left to their own devices, the humans began to fight with each other over resources and the right to rule. Queen Ani grew tired of the fighting and called on Bast to help end the constant wars. The goddess instructed her to find a man named Bashenga and bring him to her garden. Apparently, her favorite flower had a strange effect on humans. To all the other beings under her rule, the flower simply acted as an ointment of sorts, but it made humans powerful. Queen Ani followed Bast’s instructions and ground up the petals for Bashenga to consume. She buried him in the rich soil, and when he emerged minutes later, he was a new man. He was a leader, a champion, a king.

Humans and magical beings lived in harmony in isolation from the outside world for centuries until a strange thing started happening on the continent. People were disappearing from the western coast, and when the queen of the aziza heard about it, she brought it to the human king’s attention. King Amir refused to help out of fear of exposing his kingdom to the world, and Queen Onara became incensed. She couldn’t believe he was turning his back on his own kind. The queen wanted nothing more to do with him and his cowardly people, so she called on Bast again. The goddess made another realm within Wakanda for the magical creatures to live in. Onara assumed it would be difficult to get the other species on board, but, as it turned out, most of them were eager to get away from the humans. It seemed the only ones that actually liked them were the aziza, but that quickly changed upon hearing of their negligence. A few even chose to travel to the new world in disguise to help the humans that had been taken. The aziza operatives did their best to help them, but there were just too many for them to save. Their numbers were few, but they were able to perform small acts of magic to help where they could.

Over the years, magical creatures became a thing of the past to the Wakandans. They became bedtime stories and folk tales, but nobody truly believed in their existence anymore except for the children the aziza would occasionally visit when they felt like being playful.

————

One sunny afternoon, a little aziza was playing down by the river when she sneezed, and her surroundings changed. Everything looked almost the same but slightly less vibrant despite the bold greens and blues around her. She turned around and couldn’t see her village in the distance, but instead, she saw a boy about her age splashing in the water.

She emerged from behind the bushes and called out to him, “Sawubona!”

The boy looked up, and his eyebrows furrowed. He was sure he had been alone.

“Um, mholweni...ungubani?”

“I’m Nia. Who are you?”

“You speak Xhosa?”

“I speak a bunch of languages,” she giggled. “You speak Zulu?”

“Yeah. I bet I speak more languages than you,” he challenged her.

Nia’s face scrunched up as she counted up all the languages she knew.

“I speak thirteen so far, but I’m only eight,” she shrugged.

“Wow, thirteen?! I can only speak five.” He looked dejected, and she hated seeing the look on his face, so she quickly changed the subject.

“Can I swim with you?”

“Sure, but...where did you come from?” the boy asked as he looked around. “You just sort of came out of nowhere.”

Nia was young, but she knew she was in the human realm. She had visited plenty of times with her ubaba and knew it well. She just wasn’t sure how she got there this time. However, she knew not to tell him exactly what she was, so the little aziza tucked her ears under her colorful headband as she stepped closer and tried to think of a good explanation.

“My ubaba says I’m sneaky like that,” she shrugged. “Want to play tag?”

“You’re it!” he yelled as he splashed her and swam away as fast as he could. She cut her eyes at him and wiggled out of her clothes before jumping in after him. She quickly caught up to him, much to his surprise, but he stopped when it was his turn to chase her. The boy noticed something strange on her back as she swam away, and he grew concerned.

“What happened?”

Nia quickly turned around, confused by the tone of his voice, “To what?”

“To you. The scars,” he pointed to her back.

“Oh,” Nia had to think fast again. “It’s just a really big birthmark.”

“Really? That’s so cool! It looks like two wings,” he mused before his eyes lit up and he gasped loudly. “What if you can fly?”

“I wish,” she said with a certain sadness to her voice that confused him. He noticed the heaviness in her eyes and decided to lighten to mood a little by splashing her in her face. It worked, and they were off again.

The two of them spent the afternoon splashing away in the river, laughs echoing loudly as they played until a deep voice called out, and the boy froze.

“T’Challa!”

“Coming, baba!” he yelled back before turning to his new friend, who had just figured out that she had been playing with the Crown Prince of Wakanda this whole time. “I have to go. I’m not supposed to be out here.”

Nia’s face deflated until she looked at the shadows and realized too much time had passed since she left home. She nodded solemnly, and they swam to shore. They begrudgingly got dressed in silence until T’Challa spoke up.

“Can I see you again? I had fun today… I don’t get to have fun often,” he looked at the ground, and she hugged him tight to make him smile.

“I can come back tomorrow,” Nia said, making his face light up.

“Deal!”

The two kids said their goodbyes, and Nia watched as T’Challa ran through the trees towards the disembodied voice. She turned around to leave the same way she came and jumped at the sight of her father.

“Did you have fun?” he asked with a mischievous glint in his eye.

Nia nodded enthusiastically, “I made a friend!”

“I saw,” he chuckled. “How’d you get over on this side?”

“I sneezed,” Nia shrugged as she grabbed her ubaba’s hand, and they shimmered back over to the magic realm. That night, he began to teach her how to clear her mind and travel between the realms intentionally. Nia took to it quickly, and she was excited to explore the human realm, her mother’s realm, more than ever before.

Amare, an aziza, and Celeste, a human, met and fell in love while he was stationed in New York for his first tour as a secret operative. When Amare heard about what the human Wakandans had allowed to happen to their kin, he jumped at the chance to make a difference. It was a dangerous job, dealing with humans and the occasional fae, but he loved it. Almost immediately, he met and fell in love with Celeste, a vivacious and opinionated brown-skinned beauty from Harlem. They lived together for two blissful years before they found out they were expecting a child. Celeste was over the moon, but Amare couldn’t help but worry. There had been very few half-human, half aziza babies over the years, but they always took a massive toll on human mothers. Amare knew then that he might have to say goodbye to the love of his life. Sadly, he was right. The baby’s higher need for energy to fuel her growing magic drained her mother dry, and Celeste was even too weak to push. She didn’t survive the cesarean.

Amare brought his baby girl back home to Wakanda, and they lived in a small home near the rainforest on the outskirts of the Border province that he had enchanted to straddle both realms. He raised Nia the same as any other aziza child, but they often traveled to the human realm so she could be among her people. Before popping over to the other side, he’d always cast a glamour spell to hide his wings, making them lay flush against his back so that they looked like intricate tattoos. Nia was always jealous of her dad’s bright orange wings since she never got hers, just the giant wing-shaped scars that covered her back. She always felt a little broken, like she wasn’t as good as the other aziza kids, so when she met T’Challa she was excited to have her first human friend. Or so she thought.

Nia went back to the river the next day and waited for T’Challa. She waited and waited, but he was nowhere to be found. She tried again every day for a week, but he never showed. His absence started to weigh on her, and Amare hated to see his little girl look so sad. After day seven, he put a stop to it and Nia eventually gave up on her so-called friend. However, the pain of his abandonment never really went away.

Next Chapter

Taglist: @maddeningmayhem, @theblulife, @motheroffae, @love-mesome-me, @toni9, @bribrisback, @impremenior, @ljstraightnochaser

#cecewritessometimes #black panther au #black panther fanfiction #t'challa x oc #black!oc #troubled waters

[lazarettta]

Misthios IV

Characters (Spartan!Reader x Mother Miranda)

Rating (T)

Word Count (3.4k)

Warnings (none I don't think)

You're up roaming around the castle and run into Miranda and Alcina.

It's been an exhausting but thrilling six months since you've gained the eye of this region's reigning ruler. Their Queen was ruthless as she was beautiful and you were quickly learning that she had a particular taste for blood that you haven't seen since your days in Sparta. Creative and cunning as she was, especially when it came to acts of revenge, but she took care of her kingdom and her people so long as they were loyal to her and her alone.

It was that last rule that forced you to discover just how cruel and destructive the mountains of Norway could be because you were tasked with chasing down a group of runaway slaves—as a punishment. This was different from your 'normal' punishments.

There was nothing special about these fucking slaves, they were just stupid enough to think it wise to steal from their Queen and then dare escape. It angered you so much that she'd send you on this quest when a small squadron of low ranked knights would've done fine.

It had taken you a week and two villages to finally catch up with them into the mountains. The conditions were harsher than what you were prepared for and you had to abandon half your gear and continue on foot. The cold was too much for your horse to handle, but he was old and you were sure to put him out of his misery before continuing on your hunt.

You'd caught them asleep in a cave a few miles away from a village that was tucked away into the mountain side. You purchased food and another horse, costing you all the silver you carried but it made your hunt easier and quicker. You hadn't been looking for the cave but a small fire through the thick of the trees caught your attention. Tying your new mare a distance away, you crept towards them, sticking to the tall grass and the shadows.

They'd all been sleeping so peacefully, even their so-called 'watcher'. It was almost too easy to just go and kill them quietly one by one...but Miranda had specific instructions for you to follow if you wanted her forgiveness. She wanted to hear them scream while she slept and that was exactly what you intended to deliver. You unsheathed one of your twin blades and with practiced ease, you swung right as the watcher’s eyes snapped open.

You were startled awake by a scream that you weren't sure if it was from your dream or if it was a real one. You sat up half way in the bed of the guest room you were put up in, leaning on your elbow ready to spring from beneath the sheets but nothing ever came. After another full five minutes of sitting and waiting with no result, you let yourself fall back onto the soft pillows and threw an arm over your eyes as they began to leak tears.

Nothing of sadness or the sort, you were simply exhausted—you were still in your clothing with your parka not too far away just in case you had to use the window for a quick escape. You even kept your boots on, even though it was too warm for you but you'd deal with it as you've been through more uncomfortable situations that couldn't even compare to simply being hot. Of course if you take off a few layers you'd be fine, but paranoia hasn't exactly been very kind to you in the past years...with good reason too. You hadn't died in over ten years and you planned to keep that streak going.

But even as those thoughts comforted you a bit, sleep evaded you—no longer finding you worthy of its pleasures and you just laid there sprawled out and tangled within the soft white linen sheets that were probably now dirty thanks to you. You didn't care. They probably had more somewhere.

Resigned to the fact that you'd probably never be able to go back to sleep, at least not any time soon, so pushed aside the heavy duvet and slipped out of the bed quietly. You moved towards the window but the only thing you could see was the few trees below and a land covered in blankets of undisturbed snow. A little further beyond the tree line, you saw smoke coming from the chimneys of the factory before you turned away from the view and left your room. You looked left and right of the hallway but there wasn't a sign of life to be found, not even that little maiden Alcina practically made your shadow. It was probably later than it actually felt and she was probably asleep...everyone probably was.

Checking your watch— ah, right. Miranda even took that. She took everything you could use as a weapon and it tickled you more than it annoyed you. Unsupervised, you can now take your time to feel your way around. You didn't get a chance to get a good look at everything before but now you did, and it was an opportunity to get to know the Lady of the castle. You'd long dismissed the thought that anything in this village was normal, it had more secrets and shadows than a horror book you guessed.

Walking through the halls of the second floor felt like a trip down memory lane—no particular region as most all castles were the same. Large and filled with fancy portraits and trinkets that could house and feed five families at a time. Carpet so plush and soft that you could feel it through your boots with each step. It absorbed your weight like a welcome home hug. Clearly Lady Alcina was a woman of finer things in life and that extended far outside of her wardrobe and preferred wines.

It just unnerved you how quiet everything was, a castle thing large and prosperous had to have staff minding it twenty four seven. Nonetheless, you finally came to the door that you recognized during your brief tour as the 'wine room'. Like everything else you'd come across, the door was finely made from dark red oak with gold trimmings—just like Alcina's stagecoach.

Without a second thought about it, you opened the door—simply with the intent of getting a better look at the wine collection the maiden mentioned during your tour. But that thought was cut short because the room wasn't as empty as the silence in the hallway led you to believe as you'd walked into a full conversation by two people; one you were hoping to avoid for a few days and the other you thought was asleep...or well away from your location. You were wrong on both accounts.

“Heisenberg is a blundering fool leading a pack of fleabags, Miranda. He is going to fail again!”

“And we don't have time to stress other options, especially that one! We're out of time already and—”

“Exactly we're out of time so just ask her—” you pushed the door open a little more and it creaked quietly.

They both turned to you and you stood frozen in the doorway, unsure of what to make of the scene in front of you or what you just overheard. Miranda and Alcina were sitting at the small table, well Miranda was, Alcina was sitting in one of her custom chairs a little further away and both women had two glasses filled with dark red wine. Alcina wasn't in her white dress anymore, instead she'd changed into a pair of dark slacks and deep red turtle neck and she was barefoot. A far cry from the regal dress she wore earlier but she still carried herself in the same manner.

You did your best not to think about how good Miranda looked without that damn mask on her face...even in those robes she still wore, Miranda was beautiful. Beautiful as the day you first met. You forced yourself to keep your attention on Alcina and not Miranda, who was now staring a hole into the side of your face like she was trying to will you into looking at her.

“Oh. Shit, I didn't know this room was occupied.”

Alcina glanced at Miranda briefly from behind her wine glass, her expression unreadable when she settled her eyes on you again, “Of course not, dear. Is everything alright?”

You cleared your throat, fighting the urge to look at Miranda because you could feel her trying to will your eyes in her direction, “No, actually I—”

You were interrupted by an ear piercing scream and high pitched laughter right behind her, on the verge of being hysterical. Lady Dimitrescu sighed heavily behind you and finished her wine before setting her glass down and rising to her full height.

“Please excuse me, it seems that my daughters are teasing the poor maids again.”

You started to comment that it didn't sound like it was teasing but you kept your mouth shut, knowing better than to stick your nose in the wrong place too soon—it never really turned out very well for you the first time. It would never cease to amaze you how fast and quiet Alcina moved despite her size, but it still baffled you that she hasn't ever gotten the doors to her own castle fixed to fit for her . But those thoughts were pushed to the far corners of your mind when the door clicked shut—leaving you alone in the room with Miranda, forcing you to acknowledge her now. You shoved your hands in your pockets and sighed, you weren't expecting to see her again so soon.

You still hadn't had time to get your shit together after the last time you two spoke, or more like argued back and forth. Easily falling into a pattern as if you hadn't been centuries apart. You still weren't sure how you were supposed to feel about that.

“Take a seat, (Y/n). Would you like a glass of wine?” Miranda broke the silence but she didn't break eye contact with you once she caught you eye, holding you as if she physically had her hands on your face. “We don't have to talk if you don't want to, (Y/n).”

“Oh, so now we're suddenly interested in what I want to do?”

“Yes, of course. Wine?”

You scoffed, rolling her eyes at her typical answer and you wanted to say no, you opened your mouth to do so but instead you were getting closer to the table she was sitting at. She poured you a glass of wine, and handed it to you. You raised an eyebrow, she couldn't have set it down for you? She insisted on handing it to you and the way Miranda was holding the glass left you no choice to place your hands over hers to take it from her. Those gold claw rings were ice cold against your skin and the edge of one nicked your skin but not deep enough to draw blood.

You had no idea what you wanted to say to Miranda, you weren't ready to talk about what you two needed to talk about but you weren't sure if you could sit here and do small talk with her over wine. It was so easy for you to get up and leave, maybe go back to your guest room and lock the door. So what was stopping you? Why was it difficult?

Miranda, who had been watching you intently, interrupted your rapid thoughts, “You always were a loud thinker, (Y/n).”

“Nothing interesting, trust me.”

“Oh I beg to differ,” Miranda chuckled, shifting in her chair slightly to angle herself towards you a little more. You sort of hated yourself for thinking how well she was pulling off the priestess look, “I could always tell what you were thinking even from a mile away. You were always quite the unique distraction.”

“You never complained before.”

“No,” she agreed, her voice dropping an octave or two lower, “though I doubt I ever will.”

You looked up, she didn't look away and you didn't know what to think. And for once, even if it was just for a moment, you saw a hint of uncertainty in her eyes.

“Miranda, what do you want? Why are you keeping me here?”

“Because we need to talk, (Y/n), to...clear the air as they say, I guess.”

“Yeah, okay, I got that part earlier,” you licked your suddenly dry lips, your nerves starting to buzz a little, “But that's not a good enough reason anymore.”

Miranda scoffed, actually rolling her eyes at you, “Why not? Closure heals the past. Doesn't it?”

“But what do you expect after that?”

“What do you?” she threw the ball back in your court as she refilled her own wine glass from a different bottle than what she used for your own, the wine she was using was a little darker and thicker. It didn't surprise you that the question was thrown back at you, she always did that when she was trying to keep the upper hand or get it.

But it didn't mean that the question wasn't a good one because what did you want after this? Would it even matter after all of this time? Have you ever forgiven her, really and truly moved on? Did she even care back then, did she care for you...or what you could do for her?

Miranda was watching you the entire time become lost in your thoughts, a trait you still carried with you. She picked up her wine glass and took a sip, her clear eyes taking you in while you were distracted enough to not notice her doing it so blatantly. You still looked the same as the last time she saw you, minus the murderous rage that had twisted your beautiful features that evening.

The modern world has touched many parts of you but your eyes still hold so much more than they did centuries ago. Being a warrior was now outdated and something of an historical myth but you still carried yourself as one, and Miranda could see new scars on your brown skin on the exposed skin she saw earlier on your neck and arms.

She'd been watching you for days before finally making herself known to you after going back and forth with herself during those agonizing days. Being far more irritable than she normally was and Miranda was positive that Lords Heisenberg and Moreau were quite sore with her at the moment. Well, Karl certainly would be. Seeing you made her angry...at first. Angry for the grief you left her with, the shatters you left her to pick up on her own.

Years of pent up thoughts and plans of revenge she'd enact when she got her hands on you came down to a single moment when she finally did get her hands on you and she couldn't do it. Miranda eyed your neck, where you should've still been bruised. She had you right where she needed you with one hand wrapped around your neck because you were so unsuspecting. It would've been so easy but she couldn't...so she knocked you out and threw you in a cell where she could keep a better eye on you. And perhaps no longer be so distracted from her work.

“Look who's thinking loud now.” you mumbled around the edge of your wine glass, finally taking a sip of the damn thing. Miranda wouldn't hesitate to bet that you assumed it was somehow poisoned even though you watched her open the bottle. “Good thoughts, I hope.”

Miranda hummed softly, “Do you really wish to know?”

You chuckled, and Miranda's eyes were drawn to the way your jaw clenched and unclenched when the wine hit your taste buds again, “With the way you were staring at my neck...it's not that hard to guess, Miranda.”

“You're only half right, my dear.” At your raised eyebrows, Miranda's smirk only widened, “My hands were wrapped around that strong neck again, but breaking it is far from my mind now .”

Your snort turned into a chuckle that was clearly infectious as Miranda joined you. Nothing was remotely that funny, if it was funny at all, but you were tired and the situation brought forth too many emotions for you, either of you to really process, and all you could was just...laugh.

Miranda was the first to sober up a bit though the smile never completely left her features. “Ah, and well... you know, it wouldn't do to try and kill the only other person on this wretched rock who knows me. Will it?”

You're very well the only person in this wretched world that will ever know the real me and still love me for it. Quite a miserable thought, isn't it?

You jumped when the door opened behind you and Alcina stepped into the room—you'd almost forgot where you were for a moment. Almost. Alcina took one look at the two of you, curious to find you actually still in the room much less sitting at the table sharing a glass of wine with Miranda. Especially with what she overheard earlier and how much tension you two create together.

Alcina knew that she interrupted something, probably something she had no business to but that did not stop her from sitting back down in her chair in her goddamn castle. And whatever drama that was happening within her territory was now her drama and she was going to get a front row seat. Alcina lit up another one of her cigarillos and pulled heavy before she released it in your direction.

“Running a business is quite the headache when no one else understands your vision, I swear. Don't have kids, (Y/n). They're messy and nothing but trouble.”

“Noted.” you forced a chuckle, not taking her bait but now you were trying to finish your wine as quickly as possible without seeming like you were trying to run.

“Well, how about it then, (Y/n)? Tell us a story, you couldn't have been a mercenary your entire life. Or have you?” You glanced at Miranda and saw that she was glaring at Alcina but the taller woman wasn't paying her any mind. And really, the only reason Miranda hasn't verbally intervened is because she was interested in your answer as well. Even if Alcina was asking just to poke at the situation for her own amusement.

“I've put away my shield and sword a long time ago,” you didn't bother to mention that you did keep them both in pristine condition just in case, “I've been enjoying the little things life has to offer.” lame. And a lie.

“Oh come now,” Alcina scoffed, not accepting your answer—it wasn't a very good one anyway, “That's—”

“Actually,” When it was clear that Miranda wasn't going to save you from this woman's nosiness (why would she?) You quickly drank the rest of the wine, it was really too sour for you, and rose from the chair. “I think I'll try to get some more sleep. Thanks for the wine and...yeah.” Could you be any more awkward?

Alcina was howling by the time the door slammed shut behind you and she took another pull from her cigarette stick, still paying no heed to Miranda's heated glare. “Oh, you're going to have to tie that one down if you want her to talk to you.”

“I will have your head if you stick your nose in my business again, Dimitrescu.”

“Then don't store your business in my castle.” Alcina shot back, meeting Miranda's glare head on but immediately conceded when she felt Miranda's growling through the vibrations of her glass in her hand that was still resting on the table. “Alright, alright...but you're always welcome to use my dungeons. Use chains though those biceps of hers could probably break through the ropes.”

“Alcina, that is enough!”

The Lady of the castle just laughed lightly until it tapered off into a pleasant hum around her famous Sanguis Virginis wine while watching Miranda readjust her face mask. Her eyes brighter than they have been the last few hours., Alcina pushed for one more question—deciding to risk Miranda's wrath, “How'd you ever let such a handsome creature slip between your fingers?”

Miranda sighed heavily, no pause in her strut to the door, “Egos and misunderstandings.” she was gone before the lock clicked into place.

I'm so sorry for being hella lazy, lol, I'll add the other chapters of this story today 😭😭😭😭

#resident evil 8 #mother miranda x reader #mother miranda #resident evil #resident evil village #lady alcina x reader #lady alcina #alcina dimitrescu #dis tew much #assassin's creed odyssey #simpin for these bishes