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mayflysdie · 1 month

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Familiar contact- A John price fic.

Random inspo I had, but hopefully people enjoy it. I stayed up till 7am writing it lol. Might make something out of this but I idk yet.

I have attention span issues so if it veer off, please don’t come at me for it. I’ve skimmed over it, but there’s probably some things I missed and grammatical mistakes. Thank you❤️

Word count: 3k+

MDNI- mature themes, language, choking, supernatural beings, dark themes.

I told myself to be home by midnight, before the hunting hour started. To lock myself safely in my home, surrounded by wards.

Sigils adorned the doors and windows, passed down from generation to generation by witches determined to protect their dwellings.

The eerie stillness of the night was broken by distant howls and screams, while sinister whispers lured unsuspecting victims into their grasp. These cunning creatures preyed upon human greed, offering promises of fulfilling desires before revealing their true, malevolent nature through blood-red eyes hidden within the shadows.

"I'll give you everything you desire"

" You will desire nothing else, if you come closer"

I pay no heed to their twisted tongues, for I know the moment I look their way, or so much as utter a word, I'll be trapped in their soulless hell. Become a mindless creature like them, existing only to feed on souls until the earth turns to dust.

And I refuse to become one.

I pull my coat tighter around me, trying to shield myself from the biting chill. But it seems to seep through every layer, penetrating deep into my bones. Come to us.

The gusts seem to have a life of their own, swirling and dancing around me, almost taunting me with their strength. As I trudge through the forest, trees now look twisted and tortured under the relentless assault of the wind. Nothing on this earth is truly safe from their wicked powers.

Their branches whip back and forth, creaking as if in pain. Some of them have already succumbed, their broken limbs littering the ground like casualties of war. Despite the fierce resistance of the trees, the wind shows no signs of letting up. It blows with such force that I struggle to keep my balance, stumbling over rocks and roots that are hidden beneath a carpet of leaves. My hair is wild and tangled, whipped into a frenzy by the wind's powerful grasp.

As I stand in the midst of this chaotic scene, I can feel the energy of the whispers pulsating through the air. They seem to be growing more desperate by the second, their voices becoming more urgent and insistent. These phantom entities, longing for control over my soul, reach out towards me with ethereal hands that pass right through my body.

But I refuse to acknowledge them, refusing to give them the power they so desperately crave. Meanwhile, the trees around me struggle against the relentless force of the wind. Some bend and sway gracefully, while others are unable to withstand the intense pressure and break, crashing to the ground with a loud thunderous sound. My heart aches at the sight of these ancient trees, some of them hundreds of years old. Despite surviving in such a harsh environment, they stood tall and thrived, only to be struck down by the dark forces of hell. Life is truly, cruel.

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My small home, tucked away in the dense forest, comes into view. Smoke curls out of the chimney and warm light spills through the windows, creating a comforting glow. Thick moss clings to the weathered stone walls, leading up to the old black roof. A protective barrier of sturdy stone surrounds my home, making it feel like a fortress. My pace quickens as I approach, eager to escape the eerie whispers and relentless winds that seem to follow me. But as I near my house, all sounds of nature cease and an ominous silence settles over the land. My steps falter as my eyes narrow, scanning for any signs of danger.

Suddenly, a swirling mist materializes to my right, coalescing into the form of a tall, muscular man. Curled horns protrude from his head and his bright red eyes lock onto mine with malicious intent. My heart races as I realize he is a demon - not just any demon, but one of great power and influence. I recognize him from my extensive research on the seven gates of hell - standing before me is none other than John Price himself, ruler and master of all seven gates.

In a deep, smooth voice with a British accent, he sneers at me with a wicked grin. "Well hello there, little witch," he says mockingly as he takes slow steps towards me. Fear courses through my body like ice water. Why does his voice sound so familiar? That nickname….

“ John” I say, somehow holding my voice steady despite the tremble in my body. my hands twitch at my sides, ready to defend myself. “ what do you want?” I hiss. but he just smiles even wider, tilting his head at me.

“ Can’t I visit a lonely little witch? whom lives by herself in the forest”. He steps closer.

“ no, you cannot. I have no business with you, demon”

A sharp gasp escapes my lips as he materializes in front of me. He leans down, bringing us eye-to-eye, his intense gaze locking with mine. The scent of smoke and fresh pine fills my nostrils, mingling together in an intoxicating combination. His long fingers, slender yet strong, grasp my chin firmly yet gently, his thumb lightly caressing my cheek. His touch, it feels familiar too. But why?

“ Been watching you, darling. A nasty little witch you are” His breath fans my face, our close proximity jolting my senses back into place.

I grit my teeth, taking another cautious step back as his hands fall from my face. His amusement is evident in the glittering mischief in his eyes and the sly curve of his lips. I feel a surge of electricity tingling at my fingertips, slowly spreading up my arm until bolts of raw energy flicker and dance beneath my skin. With a few whispered chants, I channel the power and unleash a dazzling bolt of lightning towards him. The air crackles with anticipation as the bright beam strikes the earth where he stands, sending up a cloud of dust in its wake. The ground trembles beneath me, humming with residual energy.

my eyes narrow as the dust fades away, and there he stands. a cloud of mist surrounding him in a protective barrier. This grimy little bitch.

“ Now darling, that wasn’t very nice”

“ Oh really? thought i’d give you a proper welcome” I sneer, my fingers twitching again. my mind reeling for a plan. My grandmother never said anything about defending myself against the king of hell. What the hell am I supposed to do.

The mist around him disappears into the earth. He crosses his arms.

" Well you could do me" he retorts and I frown. Get out of my head!

I send another bolt his way, and he deflects it with a flick of his wrist. John's laughter echoes through the forest, sending shivers down my spine.

" What do you want John. I haven't broken any laws, nor did I summon you".

His eyes gleam with amusement as he takes a leisurely stroll around me, his steps echoing in the unnatural silence that surrounds us.

"I do love a feisty one," he muses, his voice smooth like silk yet carrying an underlying edge of danger. "But I'm not here for your misdeeds, dear witch. No, I am here for something far more intriguing."

My heart pounds in my chest as I try to maintain a façade of calmness, even as his presence threatens to overwhelm me. "Then what is it that you seek from me, demon?" I demand, my voice steady despite the fear gnawing at the edges of my mind.

John Price's smile widens, revealing a row of perfectly straight and gleaming white teeth that seem to glint in the dim light. As he approaches me, his footsteps fall with an air of confidence and authority. He stops in front of me, tilting his head to reveal the sharp angles of his jawline beneath his beard, and the way the moonlight catches in his dark hair.

"I have come to claim you, little witch," he purrs, his voice low and smooth like velvet. I can feel his warm breath on my skin as he speaks.

"Claim me? What the fuck are you talking about?" I snap back, my anger boiling over at his bold words.

"Your coven, centuries ago, promised me a bride if I granted them power," he explains, his eyes never leaving mine. "Twenty generations from then, a woman will be born with powers stronger than any witches before her. And only she will be worthy of becoming my bride." A knowing smirk tugs at the corners of his mouth as he finishes his declaration.

And if I could've sent every last bit of my powers away, I would have on spot. Simply bag them and ship them off to the next person.

The earth trembles beneath my feet, my anger coursing through me like molten lava. My eyes blaze with a fiery red intensity as I bring my hand up to meet his chest. The wind responds to my rage and strengthens, pushing him back with a forceful gust. He stumbles several feet before landing gracefully on his feet, a smug smirk plastered across his face. I grit my teeth, wishing desperately to wipe that lecherous expression off of his creepy features. "My, my," he purrs, "those eyes are like untamed flames."

He watches me with a mixture of amusement and fascination as I confront him with a strength that surprises even myself. The air crackles with tension as we stand facing each other, a silent battle of wills raging between us. I can feel the power coursing through my veins, a primal energy that demands release.

With a fierce determination, I raise my hands towards the sky, calling upon the elements to aid me in this dire moment. The wind howls in response, whipping my hair around my face like a dark shroud. The trees sway in a wild dance, their leaves rustling in a chorus of support.

John Price's eyes widen with recognition as he senses the ancient magic surging around me. In a swift motion, he raises his own hands, summoning shadows that twist and coil at his command. Darkness engulfs him as he prepares to strike back with his formidable powers. No, he’d never hurt me. But how do I know that?

Emotions wage a war inside me.

But I am ready for him. With a primal scream that echoes through the forest.

With a fierce cry, I unleash a bolt of lightning so powerful that it reverberates through the earth, leaving my body trembling with its force. The smell of ozone fills the air as electricity crackles around us, sending shockwaves into the ground and trees. And then suddenly, I am flying backwards, my back slamming against a rough bark of a tree. The impact knocks all the air from my lungs and I land on all fours, gasping for breath.

Through the haze of pain and confusion, I see John lying on the ground, his body smoking from the electric blast. Despite my own discomfort, anger surges within me. I grit my teeth as I struggle to stand, my muscles protesting from the jarring impact. God that hurts like a bitch.

But even as I rise, determined to keep fighting, I hear him chuckling. It is a sinister sound that sends shivers down my spine. My eyes narrow as I face him, ready to take him down. As if I could, I know I’m not strong enough.

"That's what I need," he groans as he stands, brushing off his clothes with an air of nonchalance. His red eyes have returned to their normal state, but they seem even darker now - like staring into a void.

"You want more?" I growl, raising my hands to strike again. But he raises his own in a mocking surrender. "I don't wish to fight you, little witch," he says with a sly smile. "A man should never harm a woman."

His words are like a slap in the face to me. This man is supposed to be the king of Hell, yet he claims to be against hitting women? I scoff in disbelief.

"Oh please," I retort. "Don't expect me to believe that for a second."

He shrugs as if it doesn't matter to him one way or another. And then suddenly, mist begins to form around my feet and up over my body. It spreads like a thick fog, rendering me immobile. Panic sets in as I struggle to break free.

"Let me go!" I shout, squeezing my eyes shut as I try to force myself out of the misty grip. But it seems to have a will of its own, keeping me firmly in place.

" I can't do that, love". He appears behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. I hiss at the contact, his touch sending jolts through my skin.

“Now sleep, my love” He whispers. and I curse myself, as my eyes start to grow heavy. “w-what”.

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I am jolted into consciousness, my body drenched in a cold sweat. My mind pulsates with a throbbing ache, as if being relentlessly pounded by a massive block of stone. With wide eyes, I frantically scan my unfamiliar surroundings.

It is then that I notice John seated in the corner of the room, engrossed in a book. His calm demeanor reveals no trace of concern or surprise, almost as if abducting people is just another routine task for him.

The audacity of this man! I want to strangle him.

"Where the hell have you taken me?" I shout at him, but he simply ignores me. Fine, if we're playing games now.

I curl my index finger and softly whisper a few words. Suddenly, his chair bursts into flames, scorching his backside. He springs up from his seat, dropping his book and grabbing his now charred rear end. As he curses and flails about, I smirk at him.

"Are you going to keep ignoring me?" I mock with a smug tone.

The fiery gaze of John meets my own as he casually pats his still-smoking ass. My questioning eyes shift to the discarded book on the ground, my raised eyebrow expressing confusion. "A cook book? Is that truly your book of choice?" I prod. He responds with an eye roll, snatching the book from the floor in annoyance.

Maybe I'm unhinged for being so casual at the moment, but my head hurts too much to really care. I'll unpack this after ibuprofen.

“You insufferable woman, you ruined my favorite armchair,” John seethes, pointing to the charred remains. I roll my eyes, unimpressed by his dramatics. You just kidnapped a witch and you're over here fretting over a chair.

“Take me back home,” I demand, standing my ground.

“No,” he replies firmly, a hint of anger in his voice. What is wrong with this man?

“Yes, I refuse to be your unwilling wife,” I argue, climbing out of bed and trailing after him as he storms into his closet. He pulls out a pair of unburned pants.

“You don’t have a say in this matter,” he declares. I cross my arms in defiance, scoffing at his arrogance.

“Because forcefully taking a wife against her will always make for a happy marriage,” I retort sarcastically.

My cheeks flush with embarrassment when he casually removes his burnt pants, standing only in his undergarments. "Jesus!" I exclaim, quickly turning around to face the wall. He chuckles behind me, clearly amused by my discomfort. " Jesus is not here, darling"

oh fuck right off.

I hear the sound of a zipper, followed by his footsteps approaching. I turn around, bumping my nose into his chest. not expecting him to stand so close. “ the hell” I mumble, rubbing my nose.

“ let me see this contract my coven signed. there’s got to be a loophole. I mean, why me? there’s other witches out there”.

I follow him out of the closet. He spins around, pushing me against the wall. I narrow my eyes, lifting a finger to zap his ass when he slowly pushes my finger down. as if I just showed him an ugly photo.

he then places both his hands on either side of my head. “ be a good girl and hush, yeah?”.

his low husky voice sends a shiver down my spine. fuck me, what’s wrong with me.

“ You be a good boy and release me, yeah?” I mock, smiling.

his hand slithers up to my throat, grabbing it tightly. he growls, I feel the rumble in his chest against mine.

"You wouldn't dare," I gasp, struggling to breathe as his grip tightens around my neck. The fear in my eyes is unmistakable, a raw and primal emotion that courses through my veins like poisoned venom.

"Try me," he snarls, his voice low and dangerous. I can see the darkness within him, the deep-seated hatred and anger that has been simmering inside him for centuries. So much for not harming women, huh? bipolar asshole.

And then, without warning, he lets go of my throat. There's a strange mixture of relief and disappointment that washes over me as he steps back. He crosses his arms over his chest, his eyes firmly fixed on me.

" All I want is for you to accept your fate and become my wife. I want no one else but you" His voice is calm, almost soothing, but there's an underlying edge to it.

His words prick at something in my brain, erupting pain through my skull.

I glare fiercely at him, mustering all my hate into my eyes. As if that alone could poof him into dust. " Fuck you, you crazy bipolar demon"

He shakes his head, walking away from me. leaving me standing against the wall, mind reeling and grasping for any ration response.

I mean, not even ten hours ago I was freely walking through the forest on my own, collecting herbs. And now, I'm stuck god knows where with a demon who claims I'm his bride.

But why does it feel like I know him?

My head pounds, sharp pain piercing my temples. I cry out, grabbing the sides of my head as I crouch down. Whispers ringing in my ears, the voices of my mother and grandmother.

As fragmented images race through my thoughts, I am transported back in time. Current reality intertwines with hazy flashbacks, creating a tumultuous whirlwind of emotions. In one vivid recollection, I am young and standing in my mother's bedroom. Her screams echo off the walls as she fiercely argues with my grandmother.

Tears stream down her cheeks, "I will take her away, far from his reach." With a forceful shove, she pushes my grandmother out of the way and storms into the closet. Mom, why are you crying.

Overwhelmed by the intense scene before me, I tremble and cry silently. Despite my limited understanding at the time, I know that something is gravely amiss, and it involves me. "There's not a place in heaven or hell where he won't find her, Eylean. Our ancestors made the deal, and there's nothing we can do to stop it" My grandmother argues, chasing after my mother.

Come outside, sweetheart. A voice whispers in my head, gentle and comforting. Come to me.

I do as the voice says, running out of my mothers room. My little legs struggling to keep up with the fast pace, threatening to misstep. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as I ran, adrenaline driving me forward. The sound of the back door slamming echoed in my ears, a reminder of the argument that had just taken place, the booming voices inside. Tears blurred my vision as I stumbled towards the stone fence, desperate to get away from the chaos inside.

Why, why me?

With trembling hands, I gripped onto the rough edges of the stones and pulled myself up and over the fence. My clothes snagged against the sharp edges, leaving small tears and scrapes on my skin. But I don't care. All I want is to reach my safe haven. As I reached the other side, my feet hit the soft grass and I took off running again. The cool air brushed against my tear-stained cheeks as I made my way towards the massive red oak tree. It stood tall and proud, its branches reaching towards the sky as if welcoming me with open arms. With shaky breaths, I collapsed against the trunk of the tree. The vines that twisted around it provided a sense of comfort, almost like they were hugging me. I wrapped my arms around my knees and buried my face in my legs, letting out loud sobs as I tried to calm my racing thoughts and emotions.

The wind started to howl, the force of it whipping through my hair and stinging my cheeks. I could feel tears sliding down my face as I tried to make sense of what was happening. The wind calmed, replaced by the sudden cold chill in my bones. Raising my head slowly, I glanced around through my blurry vision. Through the mist that had settled in front of me, I saw a figure emerge. It was a man, his large build crouching down in front of me. As he placed a comforting hand on my knee, I caught a glimpse of his bright blue eyes. They were like pools of clear water, sparkling and drawing me in.

Despite my fear and confusion, I couldn't help but gaze into them, feeling strangely captivated. A small smile tugged at the corners of the man's mouth, as if he were trying his best to offer comfort. His voice, deep and soothing, was one that I recognized from earlier. The sound of his accent brought a slight sense of familiarity. He spoke softly, reassuring me, "It's okay sweetheart. You're safe here." But I couldn't stop the sobs that wracked my body, my mind still reeling from the events that had just unfolded. "But they're fighting," I hiccupped, shaking my head. "Mommy says a bad man is going to get me." My words came out barely audible through my tears, but the man seemed to understand.

He moves to sit down beside me, our body’s brushing against each other.

“ I’m already here, little witch”

#call of duty #cod mw2 #cod modern warfare #captain john price #john price cod #john price x reader #john price x female reader #john price #john price x you #captain johnathan price #captain price #captain price x female reader #captain price x reader #captain john price x you #price call of duty #call of duty fanfic #call of duty monster #call of duty x reader #call of duty modern warfare ii

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podcastjam · 1 month

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Project Spotlight #4: The Ichorous Rot

Time for another project spotlight! Today, we're chatting with Sam from The Ichorous Rot.

Tell us a bit about yourself and your teammates!

@spinning-logic: Hey-o, I'm Charlie. I will be voice acting, sound editing, and assisting in some writing for our Podcast Jam entry! My first ever fiction podcast was Welcome to Night Vale (as it is for many, I'm sure), and my current favorite is pretty squarely tied with Malevolent and The Magnus Archives--though I'm truly loving Protocol too. I'm dipping my toes into hearing even more podcasts, like WOE.BEGONE and Old Gods of Appalachia. This is the first Podcast I've ever worked on, and hopefully what I learn from it will lead to creating more!

@moookar: Hi hi hello, I’m Mooo! I’m voice acting and writing. I’ve never worked on a podcast before TIR, but boy oh boy do I have lots of experience listening: WOE.BEGONE, Malevolent, and The Grotto are some of my current favorites, and I got started listening with The Magnus Archives and Dimension 20. Most of all, I’m just a fan of any speculative fiction I can get my hands on.

@gooboogy: I'm G! I do the music and some of the voice acting for The Ichorous Rot. I've been listening to audiobooks for ages and I listened to The Adventure Zone but only really started listening to audio dramas about a year ago with The Magnus Archives and Malevolent. It's not until I listened to WOE.BEGONE that I considered doing one myself! I don't have a fav podcast, but I have some fav characters such as Lucas Miller, Elias Bouchard, Kayne, and Ty Betteridge respectively. My fav genre is when Shit Gets Weird and I love it best when there's fucked up little blorbos :3

@fluxoid: Hey there! I'm Niall! I'll be doing some of the voice work for the Ichorous Rot. I've been listening to audio drama (and actual play) podcasts for over a decade now, starting with Welcome to Night Vale (of course). Current favorites are probably WOE.BEGONE and Midst, though I'm listening to many more. This is my first foray into the creative side of things and I'm excited to see where it goes!

@falloutcoys: Hello, I'm Sam! I'll be co-writing for The Ichorous Rot. I got started listening to WTNV in 2014 but really got into audio dramas when I picked up TMA in 2021. My current favorite pods have to be Midst,Not Quite Dead and WOE.BEGONE! This will be the first show I'm involved being published, but I'm writing my own passion project as well (@aboardtheichthyoid).

What's your podcast about?

Our project is set in 1880s West Virginia. Dr. Theodore Yates as he's overwhelmed in his duties as Janesville’s only doctor by a mysterious illness spreading through the town. We follow him through a combination of his own medical notes recorded on a wax cylinder, and snippets of audio following him and his best friend Alonzo as he tries to find a way to resolve The Ichorous Rot. It's a mystery that explores the effects of working class life and generational trauma through a supernatural lens.

What are you most excited about in this event?

This event has been such a great learning opportunity and way to collaborate with others! Everyone has had great ideas and we're able to bounce off each other and flesh out the story together, which is a really unique experience.

Any advice for other participants, or those on the fence about joining?

If you've been on the fence about joining, go for it! This is a really fun experience and it has the lowest possible stakes. Worst case scenario, you've met some great people and learned about producing a podcast. Best case scenario, you make an episode you're really proud of that grows into something much bigger.

While this team is no longer looking for new members, you can follow their project here on Tumblr @theichorousrot. Additionally, with a couple days left to sign up, there's still time to join the fun and work on a Podcast Jam project yourself - find out more information here!

#project spotlight #podcast jam #audio drama #fiction podcast #pbc podcast jam

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maxwell-grant · 5 months

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Are the any superhero type characters from Brazil you wish got more attention internationally?

The ones I create, hopefully I don't really want specific characters to get more attention internationally, so much as I want more interesting characters to be developed, because most Brazilian superheroes (and that goes for a lot of other international superheroes) tend to be stuck on creative dead ends. I can elaborate more on that and the history of Brazilian superheroes if asked but if you want a specific answer, I'll give three, first one being, Tales of the Orishas by Hugo Canuto.

Tales of the Orishas fuses the pantheon of the African diasporic religion of Candomblé with the Silver Age comic aesthetics of Jack Kirby into a riveting tale of high adventure. The story centers around a celestial battle between the gods of Brazil, who are worshipped by the Bahia people, and a fearsome conquering force led by a dark and malevolent overlord. Only Shango, the god of fire and thunder, can lead his people into victory while the fate of creation hangs in the balance.

It is considerably popular already and even used for didactic purposes in classrooms overseas. but I can say very comfortably can say that this is a thing that should reach as large an audience as possible by any means. I mean, fucking look at it.

I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I've seen enough pages of it that I can very comfortably call it the best Jack Kirby tribute I've ever seen, even though it's ambitions are way higher than just doing that, and It's been heavily recommended by everyone I follow within the Brazilian comics scene for very self-evident reasons. Gets my strongest recommendation out of all these as proof of concept for what can and should be done with Brazilian superheroes.

Danilo Beyruth is one of the biggest names amongs the local comics scene, and has done several works with superhero-esque characters like The Necronaut, which is about a Spectre-esque "lifeguard of the dead" who wanders the world helping spirits carry over and resolve their unfinished business, and Days of Horror, which is a showcase piece for 50 major names in Brazilian comics, in a story about a Dr Doom analogue named Doc Horror standing trial for his role in an alien invasion that murdered his world's Trinity as well as thousands of civilians. He's done five books on the Astronaut series, which are a space-opera superhero-esque revamp of Monica's Gang character Astronaut, more in line with their more adult-themed Graphic MSP line-up.

The power to change the world lies in his hands...but he only wants to play king.

Rei de Lata is set in a world ravaged by war that faced it's worst disaster: a biological weapon that practically drove an entire country extinct. Unexpectedly, however, all children born after the attack developed some kind of abnormality, some kind of power generated by a survival instinct, trauma or extreme situation. Due to their immunity to the toxic air, the surviving adults detest and fear them, and wish to hunt and study them, and so the super-kids must battle for their survival in a post-war country.

And I'm also gonna be including Rei de Lata (I think you can loosely translate it as The Can King but that is way too clunky and isn't quite right for what the name is supposed to mean and sound like), which is available on Webtoon. It's more along the lines of a shonen battle manga, but it is about distinct, superpowered characters, it's invited enough comparisons to MHA and the main character is a supervillain so I feel comfortable putting it here. It's been ongoing since 2017 and I think it got a physical release, it rules and rises above a lot of it's inspirations, the protagonist and side characters are all great opposite perfectly detestable villains. Very strongly recommend it, really excited to see where it's going.

#replies tag #superheroes #brazil #brazilian comics #brazilian superheroes #contos dos orixás #danilo beyruth #rei da lata #international superheroes

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tgrailwar-zero · 9 months

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'A NARRATING VOICE': "Alright! Let's get started on the Exchange!"

He started working- before you could feel that he was hitting a wall. Again. And again. And again. His progress hindered, slowed, and occasionally sparks of mana would backfire towards him.

He paused, taking a bit of an anxious breath.

'A NARRATING VOICE': "Okay. So… bad news. It seems like she's a bit more resistant to Spirit Origin modification than I thought… and it's making her even more unhappy. Tampering with her will almost certainly make things worse. But, good news, nothing changed for the worse! Things are just sort of the same. Status quo is fine enough, I guess."

'A NARRATING VOICE': "So, no big changes. No big deal. We'll just gently place you down back where you need to be, and hopefully I can keep evading the Administrator and--"

???: "Ah, so this is where it's been happening."

The soft sound of footsteps shattered the atmosphere.

You could immediately tell who this person was. It was like an instinct. Alarm bells rattling through your head.

The Third War Monitor.

A man in priestly robes walked through the darkness, casually. Unlike the lacksidaisical air of the past two War Monitors, it seemed like this one was actually well-adept when it came to doing his job. His cold eyes settled on the source of the Voice that had been helping, and the Voice could only stand still- his body frozen. You couldn't tell if it was fear, or something more direct making him unable to move.

His personality was difficult to gauge. Calm, almost pleasant in an uncanny way. He gave off an air of suspicion, emanating the constant feeling that something was 'off'.

The PRIEST spoke.

PRIEST: "The role of the 'War Monitor' is simple. We're supposed to be shop-keepers and maintenance handlers until there's a blatant violation of the rules. Such was similar to my original purpose on the Moon as well. But here I am as an arbitrator. So, let us go through the facts, to justify my judgement, beyond your mere existence as 'Interlopers'."

PRIEST: "First, the summoning of an unsanctioned Servant. Then, the removal of the proper Rider from the Solar Cell Holy Grail War. The death of Lair Servant Asclepius by an unsanctioned third party not participating and actively harmful towards the Solar Cell. The total elimination of the population of the Fugue Hamlet. The unauthorized data modification of War Monitor Lucius, after she rather kindly allowed you to try and access her memories. Using said data modification to alter her and summon her as a Beast… you truly are quite the malevolent force, aren't you?"

He chuckled to himself, shaking his head, seeming to find some amusement in all of this.

PRIEST: "Since the explosion that resulted in the summoning of the Interloper Servant, I wondered who could have been behind it, and so searched. Luckily, your incessant chatter isn't hard to follow. And it seems like a program that is supposed to be dedicated to handling narration is going outside his boundaries- we simply can't allow that."

Part of you felt lucky that this was a dark space. You could only truly see the PRIEST's movements, as he swung his arm towards the Voice that had been assisting you- and the Voice let out a cry of agonizing pain before dropping to the ground. It was impossible to tell whether he was unconscious or purely disappeared in the black void around him.

PRIEST: "However, since I cannot eliminate you from here, then I suppose I can put you to work. A common enemy needs to be cleansed from the Solar Cell. Your mess needs to be cleansed from the Solar Cell. So, all shops will be rendered inaccessible until the Beast is properly cleared."

PRIEST: "But rejoice, Interlopers. Consider this not a punishment, but an opportunity. Now, if you don't mind, I need to do some maintenance on this faulty program."

With a swing of the PRIEST's hand you felt the link to this liminal space get severed. Brutally.

...And returned to your Servants without much further fanfare.

#thgw story #liminal chat #main post #thgw: chapter 5

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macawritesupdates · 1 month

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Finally On Break!

And got BIG plans for writing for my fics over the break! I am looking to update a lot of fics and really put out a TON of chapters over the next few days with the time to just veg and write!

My plans are as followed from now until when I'm back to work:

Four chapters of Malevolence of Love: I feel I got sluggish on this story and want to get momentum going and write the next four chapters to give this story some love as I feel it got put by the wayside a bit!

Two Chapters Mirrored Lives: This fic is my least popular one, but I still enjoy writing the plot. Wnat to give it some proper TLC and get it updated hopefully! FINISH Historically Inaccurate: This fic has four more chapters left until the end and want to just write it out as I've been really antsy to get progress going on this one! I'm going to pout this as a priority for sure! Also it might have more chapters depending on how I end up editing/splitting up some parts of the narrative.

Two Chapters of Careful What you Joke About: This story is going into the final arc but one that has been written and rewritten in the outline a dozen times so will feel good to finally give it the final bit of love to finish it!

Two chapters of Lessons in Accidental Seduction: I just like writing this fic that is just an excuse for writing smut honestly. It is my guity pleasure relax fic and probably might have more chapters depending on the heavier ones I have to get out 8'3

New MODERN FIC!: The poll called for it and the new modern Sukita fic will be coming out this week for sure! I want to give it a big welcome with a two chapter update <3 Wish me luck on all the writing! Want to take advantage of this free time to catch up on art and writing c:

#Maca updates #going to be a writing machine!

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twistedtummies2 · 9 months

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Dark Shadows (Commission)

A commission for @norman6321ify. This serves as the introduction of a new OC for him (you can learn who in the keywords/tags), and features the return of my Phantom Blot OC, Elias Inque. It's been a long time since I used Eli in a story, hopefully I haven't entirely lost my touch with him. 'XD This is planned to be the first of a probable series of stories. This first one isn't kink-based, but I DID manage to sort of sneak in a few hints of voraciousness here and there. ;) Not much else to say. Hope you all enjoy!

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It was a cool, bright, quiet night on Sage’s Island. On the campus of Night Raven College, all was deathly still. Even the spirits who roamed the grounds, from Ramshackle Dorm to the Cafeteria, seemed to be remarkably peaceful that evening. The moon was full, and the stars glittered like diamond dust. Everybody, it seemed, staff and students alike, was slumbering. In the Hall of Mirrors, the Dark Mirror floated in its usual place of honor. The symbol of Night Raven College, the Magic Mirror - which was said to have once belonged to one of the Great Seven - was a treasured item of power and prestige. It allowed students to come and go, but perhaps most importantly, the Mirror’s auspicious connections to the past were seen as a mascot for the cherished values of the students, and of the Great Seven themselves. Some past connections, however, are more notable than others. Rarely did anyone ever peek BEHIND the Mirror; after all, what was there to see on the back of the fabled object? The facade enraptured all attention…which is why one may never have noticed an oddity on the back of the reflector. Nestled into the framework of the Dark Mirror was a small piece of glass, the same obsidian shade as the Dark Mirror itself. It was roughly the size and shape of your average playing card, and seemed stuck to the mirror with some sort of adhesive; hardly something that had been there for centuries. For some time, the card-shaped mini-mirror had remained fixed to the back of the Dark Mirror without any issue…but this night, that would change. FWOOSH!

Without warning, the Dark Mirror suddenly lit up, a flash of green fire bursting behind its flattened pane. As the fires flickered out, the green, mask-like face of the Spirit of the Mirror formed in the center of the black void. Its eyes were closed; not in sleep, for the Spirit had no need of it, but simply in silent, endless, immortal contemplation. The meditative state was swiftly broken, however, as the Mirror opened its hollow eyes. It glanced around curiously, spotting no one in sight that could have roused it from its limbo-like prison. The droning, deep, resonant voice of the Mirror soon echoed through the Hall… “What form of magic, blessing or blight, brings me forth upon this night?” A low, sinister laugh was suddenly heard, whispering its wicked tone through the room. A moment later, the tiny mirror on the back of the great one began to glow, the black glass colored a vibrant, neon violet. The tiny piece suddenly rattled, vibrating and shaking free of whatever adhesive held it in place. The Dark Mirror’s mask-like face twisted into a bitter, cringing expression, and a wolfish growl left the Spirit… The laugh was followed by an equally malevolent voice, chanting an ominous spell: “Feed my power, dark eclipse. Free my form from the abyss. Dormant magic, now unchained…the Shadow King be whole again!”

Then, the Spirit gasped sharply, as the miniature glass on that clung almost parasitically to its frame shattered into a million pieces, which seemed to evaporate into a cloud of black mist. Moments later, a similar dark mist swirled in front of the mirror, and a shadow figure - tall and elegant - soon began to emerge. The Mirror focused upon the stately, humanoid silhouette. Its usual look of passive calm and nonchalance was fixed upon its features. “We meet once more; I am surprised,” remarked the Mirror. “I never expected you to rise.” “Still uttering rhymes, are we?” cackled the newcomer, adjusting a pair of spectacles that were hooked onto their sharp, aquiline nose. “Don’t bother asking how I managed that trick: I’ve been working on this for years. Those who need to know will learn…but for now…” The figure paused and sighed, stretching languidly. “Ahhh…I am simply, BLISSFULLY relieved to feel the WORLD around me again. I’ve missed all of this: the coolness of the air, the way things look in the nightlight…the sensation of burning heart VENGEANCE that fills my soul.” They giggled. It was a clearly unhinged sound. “Well. That last part I never stopped feeling, but you get the idea.”

The Mirror just blinked blankly. “Oh, everyone’s a critic,” muttered the newcomer, then smirked in the darkness. “Now then…my dear, DEAR Mirror…I have need of your assistance.” “What woulds thou ask, O Shadow King?” The Shadow King grinned, teeth glistening in the dim, bluish light of the empty Hall. “Why, for your help in destroying my long-despised nemesis, naturally! The one who was oh-so-kind enough to trap me in that distressing state for so long…surely, you can sympathize with my plight,” they mock-pouted. The Mirror was utterly unaffected. “Alas, such things I cannot do,” it replied, sounding neither like it was pleased to say this nor upset by it. “I have no power, save answers true, and transport to and from far-off shores. This knowledge, already, should be yours.” The Shadow King chortled. “Oh, you poor, simple, silly creature. So many years of wisdom and knowledge, and you still don’t understand,” cooed the dark mage, and approached the Mirror with a diabolical look in their yellow eyes. “I’m not requesting your assistance, Spirit of the Magic Mirror. Nor am I demanding it.” A fingerless-gloved hand rested upon the glass. “I’m simply GETTING it, whether you like it or not.” Suddenly, a crimson aura surrounded the Shadow King. The Spirit in the Mirror’s eyes and mouth shot wide open, and it began to shake violently, as if possessed by some unholy creature. The same red aura surrounded the Spirit, who let out a rasping, hoarse sound, as if trying desperately to breathe. The entire Mirror trembled where it floated… …Then, a flash of blood red light burst from the glass, and the Magic Mirror howled. In the darkness of that no-longer-so-peaceful night, the Shadow King laughed. “HEAR ME, WORLD!” he cackled, with wild glee. “NOTHING CAN STOP ME NOW!”

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“Doesn’t this seem weird to you?” This was when you came into the picture, for it was towards you that the question was directed. Both yourself and Grim - who trotted alongside you - turned your eyes up to the source of the query. The one who had spoken was a young man, of slightly above-average height, and lean-shaped. He was dressed in a black beret and a school uniform, which had the hallmarks of a student from Diasomnia. He also wore blue-violet tinted glasses, which did little to hide his shining green eyes…although they did nearly remove attention from the curious brown-and-black dog ears and tail he had. The keyword in that sentence, obviously, was “nearly.” You smiled at the demi-dog and shrugged. “I don’t know,” you admitted, honestly. “I mean…I’m a person from another universe, where magic isn’t real, now stuck in a world that basically RUNS ON magic.” “Nya! And they have ME as their brilliant, amazing guide and master!” bragged Grim, puffing out his chest. Both yourself and your other humanoid companion rolled your eyes and shook your heads. “Anyway,” you said, “I think a student getting enrolled mid-semester is far from the strangest thing that’s ever happened, after all I’ve seen, Eli.” “I suppose that’s fair,” Elias Inque shrugged back, stuffing his gloved hands into his pockets as the pair of you strolled through the Gothic stone passages of Diasomnia. “Still, even in this world, I promise you it’s not the usual way.” “Fair enough. I guess that’s why Crowley wants us to show the new freshman around,” you conceded. “That and it cuts into his time watching Breaking Fad,” grumbled Elias, then sighed irritably. “I could be rehearsing for the next audition right now, but noooo, Chief Jehan ordered me to do this for community service…” “Hey, you’re a member of the same dorm, and I’m guessing Malleus and his family are kind of busy,” you said with a smile. “Somebody who knows the place has to help the poor guy out. And besides, I imagine - with your talents - you could really liven up the tour.” You smirked as your words caused Eli’s chest to puff out and his tail to wag. “Well, I guess I DO have certain advantages,” he replied, then started to grin. “Indeed…this is really a shining moment! I shall present the most grand tour of the campus possible! This new student will be inspired beyond belief!” “That’s if you don’t monologue his ears off,” grumbled Grim. “What?!” snapped Elias, barking sharply and baring his teeth. “Nothing, ignore him,” you soothed. Eli glared at the cat-like imp, but relaxed nonetheless.

“Honestly, I just hope this won’t take long,” yawned Grim, and pouted. “Who does that Headmage think he is, makin’ me wake up at this hour for something like this?” “Easy there, Leona,” you chuckled and smirked. “You know, if you REALLY don’t wanna come with us, I could go back really quick and leave you with Billy or Tock.” Grim blanched at the very thought of being either devoured by the crocodile, or snuggled half to death by the giant. “Nope! No, this…th-this is fine!” he meowed, terror stricken. “I’ll go. Yep. New student? Totally looking forward to it.” Both you and Eli shared a look and snickered, then picked up the pace as you marched through the hall to find the new student you had been tasked to meet. The three of you soon arrived in the Lounge Area of the dorm. It was currently empty, save for a single student, who sat in profile to your position upon an ebony sofa. He was dressed in a uniform similar to Eli’s, and somewhat short in stature, standing at only about five and a half feet. His build was average, and his demeanor was generally unassuming: his hair cut in a sort of “pageboy” style, but with messy bangs, and colored a sort of blackish-brown hue, almost like oil. (Which was not to say the hair, itself, was oily; in fact, you could not help but notice it was very well washed.) His face was fair-skinned and youthful beyond compare, downright boyish; much like Lilia, he seemed too young for college, but you had come to learn that appearances were often deceiving. Case in point: despite the generally unremarkable appearance of the young man, there was one part of him that caught your attention: his eyes. Two pale yellow eyes, the color of citrine stones, were fixed upon a book he was reading in his lap. The eyes were sharp and bright, indicating a keen mind and intellect…yet something about them seemed faded and almost empty, as if these eyes had seen and known some things few others could imagine. You weren’t sure why, but something about them struck you as unsettling…and perhaps a little sad. “Hey!” Elias called out. “Are you the new freshman?” The young man looked up…and smiled wider, a cheery brightness filling those strange eyes as he put the book under his arm and stood up. “Yes, that’s me!” he confirmed, in a light, lilting sort of voice. “My name’s Felix. Ah…who are you?”

“Elias Inque,” grinned the dog boy, and shook the new student’s hand warmly. Felix turned to you next. “You’re not from my new dorm,” he observed. “Why are you here?” “The Headmage sent us to help Eli show you around,” you chuckled, and shook the youth’s hand, introducing yourself. “Nice to meet you,” Felix said. “Same to you, Felix…?” “Sinistro.” “That is an AWESOME name,” commented Elias. Felix just laughed. “Well, thank you! Glad you like it. Sorry, but it’s mine to keep,” he smirked. “Ha! I’m proud enough of my own name, thank you very much.” “And I’M the Great Grim!” interrupted your feline-esque companion, stepping forward with a whip of his trident tail and a broad grin. “You can applaud, if you want to. I’ll also accept kneeling!” Felix just blinked at Grim, then looked up at you. “Do people usually keep talking pets here?” he asked. “NYA! I AM NOT A PET!” yapped Grim, stomping one foot and pouting petulantly. You chuckled, reaching down to scratch behind Grim’s ears. You waited till he started purring to explain the situation to Felix, regarding your institution at the academy. The young man seemed quite astounded. “Wow…you mean there really are other worlds out there?” he gasped. “Oh, there’s gotta be at least a couple,” butted in Elias. “Sebek was telling me about this one time a bunch of little things called Tsums showed up on campus. The Headmage still doesn’t know where they came from!” “Does the Headmage ever really know anything?’ drawled Felix, dryly. “See?!” Grim exclaimed. “Even the new guy gets it!” You and Elias laughed, then looked quizzically at Felix. “I’m surprised you formed an opinion so fast,” you said. “This is your first day here, isn’t it?” For a moment, a flicker of anger showed on Felix’s face, and he glanced off to one side. “Let’s just say Headmage Crowley and I have some…history together,” said Felix, in a grim sort of voice. His demeanor quickly changed, however, and a sly, mysterious smile replaced the dour expression in an instant. “So! Are you all ready to show me around?” “How did you know that’s why we’re here?” asked Eli. “Because the Headmage said so,” replied Felix. “Ha! For once he actually did something helpful!” exclaimed Grim. “Yes,” said Felix, more to himself than the rest of you. “For once.”

“Come on then!” cheered Elias, and clapped a hand on Felix’s back (you noticed the young man flinched from the impact). “No better way to start than by showing you around the dorm itself. Then we’ll head out and start looking around the Castle, and move on from there.” “Sounds like a plan to me!” you chirruped. “Just stick with us, new guy!” grinned Grim. “And try not to get lost, huh? It’ll cramp my style.” Felix rolled his eyes, and gave you a look. “Is he always like this?” he asked. “Most always,” you confirmed with a nod. “But seriously, do stick close by us.” “They’re right,” said Elias, seriously. “Diasomnia isn’t a literal maze, like Heartslabyul, but it can get pretty close, with all the winding passages. The rest of the campus is so big, meanwhile, it can be easy to get lost. So make sure you don’t lag behind.” “Don’t worry,” Felix chuckled. “I’m very good at keeping track. And besides, I think I know this castle better than you might expect.” “Ahhh,” grinned Elias, a twinkle in his eyes. “Real big Night Raven fan, huh?” “You could say that,” answered Felix, cryptically. “Well, let’s see just how good your knowledge of this place is,” Elias replied, daringly. “Follow me!” With a bold spring in his step, the Phantom Blot marched away. Felix followed him complacently, while yourself and Grim took up the rear. As you walked through the lounge, the four of you passed by a mirror. You paused and did a double-take. “Something wrong, Prefect?” asked Elias, pausing as he noticed the way you tarried behind. “No, I…sorry, I think I need to get my eyes checked,” you replied, shaking your head in a baffled manner. “I’ve been telling you that since day one,” smirked Grim. You gave him a tickle for that one, then continued walking. But even as you went, you couldn’t shake the feeling something was off. You weren’t sure why, but you could have sworn Felix’s reflection in the mirror…didn’t really look like Felix at all. It looked like someone much older.

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Much of the tour was uneventful. Elias was very excited when he showed Felix around Diasomnia itself, and even more so when you all popped in to see the theater. You wandered around from Hall to Hall, pointing out various spots of interest, such as the cafeteria, the lab, and so on. You all went out into the courtyards, where Felix had a big laugh over the story of Grim scorching the statue of the Queen of Hearts. However, you all steered clear of both the PE field and the botanical gardens: the former because the last thing any of you wanted to do was have Vargas suddenly start yammering in your ears, and the latter because if there was anything worse than that, it was risking waking up Leona Kingscholar, who doubtlessly would be taking a catnap there. Your group soon looped back inside. For most of the exploration, Felix seemed calm and casual. Perhaps a little too much: his reactions were ones of only mild interest, and occasionally amusement. Both yourself and Eli were a bit surprised by this. “For somebody who claims to be a big fan of this place, he doesn’t seem impressed by a lot of this, does he?” you whispered to the dog demi, as the four of you began to trek back into the castle itself. By now, Felix had begun to lead the way, alongside Grim, while the two of you paused the trip a couple of times to point out important places. “You noticed it, too, huh?” Elias whispered back. “I swear, it’s as if this guy has seen this place a million times already…even if he IS a huge fan, I doubt there’s enough, like, photographs or videos to even come close to living up to actually seeing it all live and in color, so to speak.” “You think he’s hiding something from us?” you asked, noting the suspicious tone of Eli’s voice. “I think it’s too early to make a leap like that,” Elias chuckled, but he still sounded suspicious. “What I DO think is we’ll want to keep a very close eye on this one.” “Where to next?” Felix’s question interrupted the pair of you, and you picked up the pace to catch up. “Well!” Eli grinned, clapping his hands together and taking the lead again. “Before we head back to the dorm, last thing I wanted to show you are some of the major classrooms. This IS a school, so you’ll want to know where all the classes are.” “That’s fair,” said Felix with a nod, and pointed to one of the doors. “This is Professor Crewel’s main classroom, yes?”

Eli blinked, surprised. “That’s…correct, but how did you know? He doesn’t have a plaque up.” “Just a lucky guess,” said Felix, with an innocent smile. Elias seemed doubtful. Deciding to intervene before anything could go potentially haywire, you stepped forward to point out some other spots. Felix Sinistro glanced between you and each door with only the vaguest interest…until… “And this room,” you declared, “Is where Ancient Curses class is taught!” The moment you said those words, Felix’s eyes brightened, and he visibly seemed to perk up. “Oh!” he exclaimed. “You mean they moved it to here?” You blinked. “Moved it?” you asked, and looked between the door and Felix. “Did it used to be someplace else?” “Before you came here,” nodded Felix. “How do you know that?” Elias asked, frowning and stepping closer, hands on his hips. “You’ve never been here before, let alone long enough ago to know that.” “Nya! I don’t think even I knew that!” Grim exclaimed. “YOU don’t know ANYTHING,” Elias sniped. “HEY! I KNOW LOTS OF THINGS!” Grim screeched. “Uh-huh,” you smirked. “And who was it that didn’t even know about the existence of Halloween, winter holidays, or even the true source of those black rocks you liked munching on?” Grim flushed, sputtered, and pouted. You patted his head with a wry smile. Elias, however, was still looking with a dubious glare at Felix. The young man had seemingly frozen up, a look of guilty apprehension on his face; the expression of a rabbit that had been cornered by a fox (or, in Eli’s case, a hound). However, the look quickly faded, and the young man smiled. “I have a family member who used to come here to Night Raven, way back when Headmage Crowley was just starting up. They said Ancient Curses was their favorite course, and they showed me a picture they took of the outside.” “Why would they have taken a picture of that?” asked Elias, arching an eyebrow. “Good memories, I guess,” shrugged Felix, and turned away from him. A deep look of sorrow, something nostalgic and painful, suddenly filled his eyes. “Oh, I wish…” “You wish what?” Felix built his lip. He was staring at the door to the Ancient Curses classroom, but it didn’t seem like he was actually looking at the door itself. More as if he were gazing straight through it. “Never mind,” he murmured, then shook away the look of gloom as he gave his usual rather mysterious smile. “Shall we move on?”

Elias said nothing. He looked Felix up and down, then stepped aside, sweeping his arm out with his usual theatricality. Felix bowed his head thankfully and hurried along. You frowned, glancing between him and Inque. “I guess that explains a little bit,” you said. “Does it?” was Eli’s enigmatic response. “I don’t get why you’re so suspicious,” you frowned. “I guess it’s the thief in me,” smiled Elias, almost bitterly. “As well as the actor. Hiding my true feelings and putting on a new mask is part of both of those things. I can’t shake the feeling there’s something he isn’t telling us.” “Do you think it’s something bad?” “Oh, I’m SURE it is,” snorted Elias. “The question is if it’s something IMPORTANT.” Without elaborating on what that meant, Eli adjusted his glasses and hastened after Felix Sinistro. You watched the Blot run ahead of you, draping an arm over Felix’s shoulders and saying something to him as they pair went along, clearly trying to show a friendly and humble face. “Putting on a new mask, indeed,” you muttered. “Nya! Come on, minion!” meowed Grim, tugging on your pant leg. “We can’t fall too far behind!” You knew the little monster was right, so - shrugging off your musings and observations for the time being - you picked up the pace to follow the rest of the group. Whatever secrets Felix held, you’d know inevitably. It seemed to be a running thing in this place.

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Not so long after looking at the classrooms, Elias’ stomach had started to growl. He suggested stopping to eat some lunch, and Grim had uproariously agreed with the suggestion. (Cats and dogs agreeing with each other…truly, this world WAS magical.) Felix raised no objections, and you certainly had none. For one thing, after all, denying Grim food always led to disaster. And so it was that - after picking up some food from the cafeteria - the four of you settled down in the courtyard outside the main colonnade of the castle. Eli and Felix sat on a bench, while yourself and Grim stood in the shade of the nearby apple tree. “Nyaaaaah…HIC!” hiccuped Grim, and patted his pudgy little stomach with satisfaction. “Mmmm…that sandwich was mega tasty! I couldn’t eat another bite!” “I’ll believe that when I see it,” you mumbled. “How does the cafeteria food seem to you?” Elias asked Felix. The dog boy was resting back on the bench, a smirk on his face, one hand behind his head while the other rested on his full belly. He licked some stray crumbs off his lips as his tail wagged happily through the gap between the bench back and the seat. Felix, who had just finished his own sandwich, smiled back. “Much better than I…expected,” he answered. He had noticeably hesitated before saying the last word, as if he’d planned to say another and caught himself before giving it utterance. “Thank you for treating me. And thank you for the tour! It has been most informative.” Elias shrugged. “I suppose that’s a good thing,” he said. “He’d probably be happier if you had said it was entertaining,” you told Felix with a wink. Elias, who heard you, blushed. “I guess it’s been that, too,” said the yellow-eyed youth, then looked back at the dog-eared boy. “So, I presume after this we head back to Diasomnia?” “I see no reason not to,” Eli replied. “Now that the tour of the campus is done, I think you should begin meeting more of the students, especially our housewarden and vice-” “SPEAKING!”

You yelped and jumped in alarm, as something swung down out of the tree in front of you. Even Felix and Eli were a bit startled by the sudden, loud arrival. Grim was so particularly startled, he let out a yowl and scrambled to his feet, diving to hide behind his legs. He peeked out after a moment…and three out of four of you (Felix was the sole exception) sighed with relief as you recognized the intruding interrupter. “Hello, Lilia,” you said, with a slight smile. “Nya! You tryin’ to give us all heart attacks?!” Grim snapped sourly. Lilia Vanrouge let out a twittering sort of laugh, his sharp, vampire-like fangs glinting in the sunlight as he blinked his large raspberry-colored eyes at you and your group. He was dangling upside down, hanging by his legs from a lower branch of the apple tree. “Nope. But if your own heart attacks you, I wanna see!” he sang teasingly, winking at Grim. The cat-like little imp growled, the blue flames on his ears briefly crackling with an angry orange hue. Lilia turned his head and grinned brightly when he noticed the pair of Diasomnia students sitting on the bench close by. “Good day, Elias!” he said, in a warm greeting. “How is your community service going so far?” “Well, after today, I might finally be done,” answered Eli, adjusting his glasses and smiling back. “And a good day to you, too, vice-housewarden.” Lilia nodded, then nimbly flipped down from the tree, landing easily on his feet. He cocked his head slightly, hands on his hips, as he looked at Felix, who was staring with a wide-eyed look of great surprise. “And you must be the new boy,” he purred, and extended a hand. “Nice to meet you, youngster! Welcome to Night Raven!” “Um…h-how do you do?” greeted Felix, somewhat awkwardly, and shook Lilia’s hand. “So far, so decent!” chirped Lilia, then smirked. “Might I add you have a very firm grip. That’s refreshing! Most young people haven’t learned how to properly shake a person’s hand.” “Ah…thank you, I think?” blinked the yellow-eyed young man. “Lilia, this is Felix Sinistro,” Eli coughed importantly, gesturing with a hand between the pair. “Felix, this is Lilia Vanrouge, the vice dorm leader of Diasomnia.”

“I’ll introduce you to Malleus later,” Lilia chuckled to Felix. “Were you boys just having lunch?” “How did you know that?” you asked. “Oh, ‘the Great and Powerful Phantom Blot’ here dropped some crumbs onto his vest,” answered Lilia, and gave a teasing smirk in Eli’s direction. “Now, how can you face your adoring public like that, young man? Really, I know you’re just a big puppy, but try eating a little less savagely, alright? Remember, you are from Diasomnia.” The words were more playful than scolding, but Elias mumbled an apology anyway, hastily and fastidiously brushing himself off, looking rather miffed at his untidiness. Felix looked between his fellow Diasomnia members curiously. “Phantom Blot?” he repeated. “As in…THE Phantom Blot?” “You know me?” Eli exclaimed, perking up excitedly. “I know the name,” replied Felix. “But I thought the Phantom was long gone by now.” Eli’s ears drooped, and he looked somewhat chagrined. “I see. Well…then I’m going to presume you DON’T know me,” he chuckled, scratching the back of his head. “Elias was a very bad boy not so long ago,” explained Lilia smirking with half-lidded eyes as he strolled behind the bench and leaned on it, right between the two newer students. “He used his powers to become the newest Phantom Blot. Thankfully, the Prefect and their friends were able to stop him from being TOO naughty…” Lilia reached out and tousled the top of Eli’s head, mussing his hat and the hair underneath. Elias grumbled and flushed, trying to straighten it all out again. “So that’s why you’re doing community service,” presumed Felix. “Basically,” nodded Elias, and indicated you. “They were able to help convince Crowley and Chief Jehan NOT to expel me, after all the ruckus I caused. But I still have to make up for everything I stole.” “Eli can transform into a creature made entirely of Blot,” you informed Felix. “He can manipulate the ink to take on any shape he wants, and use it in all kinds of ways. The problem is that he only has a set time limit to use his power, or all that buildup of Blot can cause a pretty nasty Overblot situation.” “How nasty?” asked Felix. “Try ‘literally ate us alive,’” shuddered Grim. “Hey, not my fault you both tasted so good,” teased Elias with a wicked wink. You blushed. Grim growled. Lilia just rolled his eyes. Felix whistled, sounding impressed.

“That must be quite a power to see in action,” he remarked. “Well, the less often I use it, the better,” chuckled Elias, then smirked himself. “Although I suppose I AM quite impressive, aren’t I?” “But not very humble,” muttered Grim. “I heard you boys are heading to Diasomnia when I showed up. Mind if I join you?” checked Lilia. “Not at all, Vice-Dorm Leader!” declared Elias, and patted his knees, stretching as he stood up. “Ahh…let’s get moving. I think it’s time we finished this runaround.” Your whole group agreed, and began to follow Elias and Lilia as they led the way through the grounds towards the Hall of Mirrors. As you began walking, however, none of you noticed the sneaky, sly, almost sinister expression on Sinistro’s face. The young man with the brass-toned eyes let a chuckle cluck in his throat as he took up the rear. “Impressive, indeed,” he whispered to himself. “This seems like the perfect place to begin…”

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“We’re almost there now!” Lilia announced in a sing-song sort of way, as your group of five marched across the grounds of Night Raven College. “Good,” sighed Grim. “My paws are KILLING me…” “Want me to carry you?” you teased. “Nya! The Great Grim isn’t supposed to be carried around by a mere human!” scowled the cat-like imp. You chuckled, then looked towards Elias. The dog boy’s expression soon caused the smile to leave your face; he was glancing about cautiously, ears flicking here and there. “Something the matter?” “I don’t know,” Elias murmured, then gave you a sort of quizzical look. “Do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched? That the eyes of some strange, eerie thing may be upon you?” “I get the feeling you’ve been getting way too into your rehearsals for The Vampire Count,” you blandly responded. Elias pouted and paused. “Rude,” he grumbled. You smirked and playfully scratched behind one of his ears. He blushed and swatted your hand away with a half-hearted growl. A giggle left you, and you picked up the pace, pulling ahead of him. “Come on, ‘Phantom.’ Don’t get scared of your own shadow now,” you teased. Elias smiled after you, and prepared to resume the walk… …But just as he was taking his first new step…something went horribly wrong. A wave of unfathomable coldness fell upon the beastman, who froze in place. He glanced back over his shoulder, as if sensing a presence behind him. His green eyes widened behind his glasses, and his mouth gaped, as he beheld a strange, gangly figure, with dead white eyes, colored black all over, like a living shadow. He opened his mouth to scream…just as the shadow reached out with claw-like hands and flew at him. “A-AGH…!”

The pained cry from Elias caught all of you off-guard. You all turned fast. Worry filled your eyes as you saw Elias stagger, shaking slightly. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, and he gritted his teeth, groaning and growling with pain. He shook his head violently, as if it were aching badly, and he was trying to clear out the cobwebs. “Elias?” you called out, greatly concerned. “What’s wrong?” Lilia fretted, clearly worried about one of his own students. Elias opened his mouth as if to answer…but as he did so, he let out another cry - a sort of gargled, pained shout - his eyes going wide behind his glasses… …Then, to your horror, those eyes seemed to fill with black ink, as if it was being poured into them form some unseen tap. The ink soon spilled out of the eyes, and a similar substance came flowing from his mouth. “Eli!” you shouted in shock. “Wh-what’s happening to him?!” cried out Grim. “Is he Overblotting?” asked Felix, stepping back with a look of apprehension at the horrible scene. “He can’t be! He hasn’t even used his powers lately!” Lilia exclaimed. Whatever was happening, you soon saw its true effects. The black goo soon finished dripping, forming a strange, bubbling pool of dark, inky fluid upon the ground. Elias groaned, his eyes returning to their normal color and rolling in his head before he collapsed to the ground. His beret fell from his cranium as he hit the grassy turf with a thud. The moment his body made impact, the black goo suddenly began to rise, the pool growing larger and forming some strange, massive, inky shape. The shape became bigger and bigger, expanding and taking on more solid form; Lilia stepped in front of all of you, as if to protect you all. “Back up!” he hissed, and yourself, Grim, and Felix readily obeyed. The former warrior glared defiantly as a pair of limbs, ending in three sharp claws, burst from the ebon-hued muck. Then, a large head - with a great, gaping, fang-filled mouth - opened wide. Two green eyes shot open, and the inky beast roared to life. It floated into the air, a drifting mass of Blot that glared down with cruel intent at your party. It vaguely resembled Eli’s Overblot form, only much larger in every way, and without a speck of humanity to its appearance. “Elias?” meowed Grim, nervously. “That’s not Elias,” said Lilia grimly. “It’s not even a Phantom. It’s some sort of…Blot Shadow.” “What’s a Blot Shadow?” you asked, somewhat timidly. “I don’t know,” shrugged Lilia. “I just made the phrase up right now.”

You would have rolled your eyes if the situation hadn’t been so perturbing. The Blot Shadow roared with animalistic fury, and swooped at your party, jaws open and claws bared. All of you dropped fast, ducking and hitting the ground as the creature glided over your heads, and flew into the air. “What now?” Felix asked, worriedly. “You and the Prefect should take care of Elias, try to get him to safety,” ordered Lilia, then looked at Grim. “Ready to put those flames of yours to good use, little Grim?” “With pleasure!” grinned the cat-like monster. Lilia smirked and nodded back, and the four of you scrambled to stand once more. You were all just in time, for the Blot Shadow snarled and reeled back with its claws, summoning spheres of dark energy. It pitched them like baseballs, hurling them in the direction of your quartet. Quickly, you and Felix dove aside. Lilia stepped forward and raised his palms, uttering a strange incantation. A grid-like forcefield formed in front of himself and Grim, blocking the balls of dark power. Once he had an opening, Grim leaped into action. He took a deep breath and - PHOOSH! - spat out a ball of bright blue fire, straight into the monster’s face. The Blot screeched and clutched its inky face as the fire burned straight through. “WOO-HOO! TAKE THAT, YA BIG JERK!” hollered Grim…but his excitement was short-lived. With a sound like an angry tiger, the Shadow sneered as it pulled away its taloned hand, and its inky form restitched itself, healing the wound. “Oh, that is unfair,” muttered the cat-like creature. Grim yelped as, right then and there, the Shadow flew towards him, ready to slash at him with its terrible talons. Lilia, however, was a bit too quick: he whipped out his Magical Baton, holding it out like a sword. “FOREST STRIKE!” he rapped. The Shadow shrieked as a column of vines seemingly appeared out of nowhere and speared straight through its inky center before retreating. The spectral behemoth floated backwards, snarling in pain…but it wasn’t long till the hole in its midsection healed up again. “Nya! We’re just slowing down!” Grim yelled in frustration. “How do we stop this thing?!” “I’m not sure yet,” said Lilia, twirling his rod and smirking daringly. “But I do know I haven’t had this much fun in AGES!” While Lilia and Grim were focused on the monster, you and Felix hurried to Eli’s side.

“Are you alright?” you whispered. “Eli, talk to me!” The beastman moaned; his eyes were closed, and he seemed barely conscious. “We need to get him to the infirmary,” said Felix with a frown. “Obviously,” you muttered, then added aloud: “Help me get him up, we need to move him out of here right now!” Felix nodded, and the two of you hoisted Elias up, slinging his arms around each of your shoulders. “What’s…what’s going on?” mumbled Eli, his voice slurred as he blearily blinked his green eyes. “Trouble,” you answered. “Come on, help us out, big guy…” Elias groaned, and began to stumble forward, with you and Felix helping to support him. You hoped you could get him out of sight, while Lilia and Grim kept the fiend distracted. It was a vain hope. The Blot Shadow swooped at Grim and Lilia again, and as it flew into the air, it did a double-take, spotting the trio trying to limp away from the scene. With a bellow of primal rage, the Blot lifted both clawed hands, and summoned a gigantic orb of dark power between its taloned mitts. Then, it thrust out its limbs, and shot the wrecking-ball-sized sphere towards Lilia and Grim. Lilia agilely skipped out of the way, but Grim was thrown back with a yowl by the shockwave as the dark sphere exploded upon the ground. Lilia rushed to check on the imp, who smacked into a nearby tree trunk…and with them momentarily dealt with, the Shadow was now free to attack its new targets. Yourself, Felix, and Eli skidded to a halt as the Blot Shadow flew into view, barricading your path with its massive form. “Did that come outta me?” murmured Eli, seemingly stunned. “Sure looks that way,” you nodded. “I suppose there’s more than one Phantom Blot, even now,” commented Felix. Elias looked about to say something, but there was no further time for words. The Blot Shadow reared back its fist and hurled another ball of black Void Magic in your direction. You weren’t sure what came over you, but suddenly, you gave Elias and Felix a hard shove. The pair grunted and growled as they were thrown aside, sprawling onto the grassy floor as you stepped in to take the shot… THOOM!

The sphere of magic exploded; a squeal left your throat, unbidden, and you felt the ground seemingly jump away from under your feet. Your ears rang and your head felt light as you were hurled through the air, as if yanked by some invisible pull-line. You rolled across the ground, hitting it hard…and, with your whole world spiraling, you swiftly fell unconscious. You were out for the count, but the story was not yet over. “PREFECT!” wailed Grim, seeing what had happened. He and Lilia rushed towards your fallen form…only to stop short as the Blot moved to block them. It snarled and swiped its claws, backhanding the pair and knocking them over. “I must be getting slower at my age,” mumbled Lilia sourly…then his eyes widened as he saw the shadows claws reach down to scoop up your unconscious form. The fanged creature’s glowing, gaping maw opened wide, as it dangled your puny form over the abyss, intent on swallowing you alive. “NO!” screamed Grim. “LEAVE THEM ALONE!” The Shadow seemed to grin evilly. While Lilia and Grim watched with horror as it started to lower you into its ghastly jaws, Felix half-lay on the ground…a cold, unfeeling expression on his own face. It seemed like this would be the end for you…but then a single word cut into the forbidding scene, interrupting all action. “Stop.” It was not shouted. It was not uttered in desperation. Instead, the word was spoken with icy conviction and stern firmness. This, perhaps, was why the Blot Shadow halted in its intended meal, and turned its glowing green eyes downward. The ink monster scowled as it looked down to see Elias Inque - swaying slightly on his feet, his skin deathly pale, sweat smearing his brow from whatever curse had been inflicted on him - glaring up with a frosty gleam behind his purple-tinted spectacles. “Put them down,” he growled, viciously. The Blot Shadow just roared back at him. Eli responded with a dramatic battle cry of his own, which made the beast jump back in apparent surprise. “I AM THE PHANTOM BLOT!” screamed Elias. “ME! You are a cheap copy; a hollow, beastly husk of my own real might and ability. Whatever you are, and however you came to be from me, you are NOTHING compared to the true article. You think I’ll allow myself to be bested by some faker?! I THINK NOT!”

So saying, Elias Inque spread out his arms, mumbled some unholy chant…and in a moment, his body seemed to be shrouded in a cloak of ink, with an Executioner-style hood covering his face. Lilia and Grim smirked as they saw the dog boy’s glowing eyes behind the cowl. “Now THAT,” Grim snickered, “Is the Phantom Blot.” Elias thrust out one hand, and sent a cannon-like blast of pure blot launching towards the ink monster. It splattered across the creature’s face, gunking up its own glowing green eyes; the demon howled and clawed at the sticky goop, the hand that grasped you dropping your body fast. You might have been sorely injured had you hit the ground, but instead, Lilia pounced forward and - with all the graceful majesty of a leaping panther - caught you before you could smack into the forest floor. “Felix!” he shouted. “Get the Prefect out of harm’s way! We’ll handle this.” “Yes, Vice-Housewarden!” said Felix, whose cold-blooded expression had disappeared before anyone could notice it. He held you bridal style, and hurried to carry you away…glancing back just once with a rather annoyed look at Elias before disappearing into the shadows of some nearby bushes. Elias staggered back, breathing heavily as he halted his attack. His inky cloak was already growing drippy and at risk of fading away; whatever had happened, it left him feeling drained and exhausted, as if his own life’s blood had been drawn from his arteries. The Shadow had, by now, torn away the glue-like ink and let out a ghostly, bloodcurdling sound of vengeance. It lifted its claws high over its head, intending to smash them down and rend Elias to shreds. Lilia, however, was quick to react. “Grim!” he shouted. “Together, now!” Grim nodded, and blew a jet of blue fire at the demonic entity. The Blot Shadow hissed and whirled about, intent on attacking the little monster…but then Lilia thrust out his magic rod, and began to launch shot after shot of icy spears at the creature. The Shadow let out a confused, hysterical warbling noise; with frosty cold freezing it on one side, and crematory-level heat melting it on the other, the inky beast couldn’t focus! “Finish it, Elias!” snapped Lilia. “YOU HAVE TO FINISH IT NOW!” Elias nodded. The Phantom Blot wasn’t sure how he knew what he was about to do would work…but, nevertheless, he somehow knew it was what had to happen. “I don’t know just what you are, but you came from me,” he snarled. “SO BACK INTO ME YOU GO! RETURN HOME!” He thrust out both hands…and what looked like a pair of fanged maws formed where his fists had once been. The mouths opened, revealing a ruddy glow, like some internal furnace…then, a bellowing, mechanical sound - like some enormous vacuum cleaner - echoed across the area. The Blot Shadow let out a desperate, panicked scream as its inky form was drawn towards the Phantom’s mouths. The suction caught it by the tail-end of its ghostly form, and it clawed at the air, as if trying to grab hold of the clouds themselves, as it went spinning in two separate parts into the glowing spaces. Halfway through, the creature split clean in two, the head vanishing and becoming naught but two long, scrambling, taloned limbs. The hands clawed at the air one last time before disappearing completely, as the creature was sealed away from whence it came. The moment the Blot Shadow disappeared, Elias Inque’s hands changed back to normal…and a few seconds later, the shroud of the Phantom Blot disappeared, leaving Elias, himself, standing there. He panted, his eyes crossed, swaying even more than before where he stood…and let out a single, short belch. “URP…ugh…end scene,” he groaned…and flopped onto the ground like a dead fish.

Lilia and Grim hurried to Elias’ side, trying to wake him up. As they struggled in this endeavor, Felix - still holding you in the underbrush - smirked with clear interest. “Intriguing,” murmured the yellow-eyed young man. “It seems the students of Night Raven College are stronger than I thought.” With a malevolent cackle, Felix shrugged…then turned away and carried you off, heading to infirmary. He had a lot to think about.

-------------------------------------------------

You felt the world begin to re-establish itself, as your eyes blearily opened. Your head felt sore, and when you reached up, you realized it was bandaged. Frowning, you started to sit up and looked around; you were in the school infirmary of Night Raven college, lying on one of the beds. A thrumming vibration against your legs caught your attention. You looked to see its source and smiled; Grim lay curled up over your shins on the covers of the bed. “He hasn’t left your side since we got here, I’m told.” You looked to the source of the sound, and gave a wider, albeit rather tired, sort of smile. “Eli,” you sighed out, as you saw the half-dog laying on the infirmary bed beside you. You frowned, worry creasing your brow. “What happened to the Blot Shadow?” Elias shrugged weakly. “We defeated it,” he said simply, and turned his head away to stare at the ceiling. “Thankfully, neither of us was hurt TOO badly; you apparently have a mild concussion after your fall, but Nurse Mimzy thinks you should be back on your feet soon enough. In the meantime, I’d lie back down; rest is what you need. You nodded, then bit your lip as you rested back against the pillow. “How about you?” you asked at length. Elias’ green eyes hardened. His face was set in a puzzled, angry sort of expression. “Magical Anemia,” he answered, softly.

“What?” you almost choked on your own spit. “Anemia is when you don’t have enough red blood cells in your system,” he informed you. “I know what it is, but what do you mean by MAGICAL Anemia?” Elias paused, then sat up in his own bed, rather unsteadily, before turning his head to look down at you. “You know that magical power is connected to one’s life force, right?” “Yes,” you replied. “That’s why its dangerous to Overblot: your system gets leeched of magic, spilling it every second you breathe, until nothing is left but a phantom: an empty, mindless husk of your former self.” Elias nodded. “Magical Anemia is exactly what it sounds like: it’s as if my power has been fractioned heavily. Whatever that thing was, however it appeared, it leeched something out of me…and then, when I changed in order to fight it, I used up my last reserves. I can’t even so much as make a feather float without passing out; until my energy boots back up again, I am confined to this infernal cot.” “I’m sorry to hear that,” you said, sympathetically. In a world of magic, having no ability to use even minor spells must have been galling, especially under the circumstances. “I’ll live,” sighed Elias, and melodramtically flopped back onto his bed, draping one arm across his face. “But alas and alack, till I recover I cannot so much as LOOK at my beloved stage…I asked Silver to bring me some of my Shakespeare, at least then I can have something to occupy my time…” You giggled despite yourself. Elias smiled at the sound, but you both turned solemn again quite soon. “What do you think happened?” you asked, seriously. “I have no idea,” Eli answered, shaking his head. “But I have this sinking feeling it’s not going to be an isolated incident.” You gulped nervously. Elias scowled, his face becoming a stoic look of dangerous determination. “No one ‘overshadows’ the Phantom Blot,” he vowed. “As soon as I get out of here, I’m going to start looking for answers.”

“I’ll help you,” you promised, and extended your hand across the space between the beds. “Whatever happened here, we won’t allow it to happen to anyone else if we can help it. Right?”

Elias smiled and reached out with his own hand.

“Right,” he promised with a firm nod.

The two of you withdrew your hands, and you raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“So…since we’re both stuck here for a bit…why don’t we start with you telling me your theories. Have you got any ideas on where we can start when we’re out of this place?”

Elias frowned. He turned his head in his bed to look out of the window behind him.

Green eyes glared as he spotted a familiar figure, with oil-colored hair and yellow eyes, walking along the grounds. Their yellow eyes danced with strange light, which contrasted with their demure appearance. He bared his fangs, eyes narrowing as he watched them disappear in the direction of Headmage Crowley’s tower.

Elias Inque’s green eyes flashed with a familiar, almost feral glow. A vengeful hiss left the teeth of the Phantom Blot.

“Oh, trust me…I have a few ideas…”

TO BE CONTINUED…

#disney #twisted wonderland #commission #my writing #fanfic #grim #lilia #lilia vanrouge #ocs #my oc #eli #elias #elias inque #not my oc #felix sinistro #gregorio #gregorio encanto #dark mirror

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fishdavidson · 4 months

Text

2023 State of the Mackerel

Hello fine internet people! The blog portion of my main account has been dormant for quite some time, and I've been wanting to put something here to give the few people who are following me an update. I've also wanted to change a few things on here, so with the end of the year upon us, I wanted to put forward something to help provide some clarity about the blog's past, present, and future.

The Past: Noteworthy Life Events

Since my last official post on here on August of 2021, obviously at least a few notable things have happened in the intervening two years. Here is a quick rundown of the highlights, presented as fake headlines:

Fish Davidson gets over by a minivan and yells swear words

"Guess I'll go back to school," says local internet weirdo

Studies indicate minor promotion at work leads to corresponding minor improvements in life satisfaction

Combining a bunch of words, Fish Davidson writes a book

Yep, tabletop gaming is a thing and it's not going away

Fish Davidson learns to make two sounds at once

Okay, so now that I've hopefully piqued your interest, here's a little bit more detail about each of those items. In November of 2021, I was walking across the street at a crosswalk and was hit by a minivan. The driver wasn't going very fast, but it was enough to break three bones (including my tailbone) and put me on crutches for a while and I needed special orthopedic pillows for my butt for about 18 months. I'm mostly back to normal now, but it was a long road.

The next big thing was that I went back to grad school in an online program. I've been a student for about a year now, and I'm about halfway through the program. Whatever intermittent dreams I would have and wanted to write about have been shoved aside to make time for the seemingly endless papers of graduate work. It's stressful, but I'm glad to be back in school.

Part of the reason for going back to school is because I got a minor promotion at work. Predictably, it came with more responsibilities, but it also came with a little bit more money. I'm going back to school to learn more about things that are related to my job, but also to leverage it into another potential pay raise.

Now we get to the personal creative pursuits of the recent past. I wrote a novel called Power Frank about a superhero whose only power is that he can open any jar. And he has to leverage that power to both overcome family dysfunction and save his desert hometown from being destroyed by malevolent hogs. I'm starting the querying process for agents and hope to have it published eventually!

I also finished up my multi-year Dungeons and Dragons campaign, Shits and Giggles that ran from level 1 to level 20. Several smaller (much smaller) campaigns happened after that. Then Wizards of the Coast did some stupid stuff with their Open Gaming License, and now I've redirected the bulk of my gaming money to provide support for smaller independent creators and lesser known systems. I've really gotten into several OSR systems like Shadowdark, Basic Fantasy, and (if you count these as OSR) Cairn and Knave. Other non-fantasy systems that I'm currently really digging into are Orbital Blues and Mothership. Granted, I don't currently run those games for people yet, but I do like reading the books and seeing different approaches to solving certain mechanical problems. I've also been creating a bunch of random tables for things.

The last important creative pursuit is that of Tuvan throat singing. Tuva is a region in the geographic center of Asia that is known for a style of singing that allows the singer to produce multiple notes simultaneously. I've been fascinated by it for decades and tried off and on to learn it, but this summer I finally made progress and am finally learning how to do it. It takes a lot of practice and making weird sounds, much to the chagrin of my (very patient and supportive) wife.

The Present and Future: Lumped Together For Expediency

I want to write a dream journal and that's what this blog was primarily conceived for. Unfortunately, my dream output has been incredibly fickle and the other demands on my time (professional and academic) make it difficult to report or even remember dreams. Does that mean I'm closing up this blog? Nope! I'm still on tumblr almost every day. But if I'm not able to reliably post dreams on here, what should happen to this blog?

That's the question I've been wrestling with for the past few months. What should I do? Since fishdavidson is my primary blog and I can't easily swap over to a new primary blog to archive my content, I've decided to pivot a little bit. Even outside of tumblr, I use Fish Davidson as my basically my brand (obligatory shoutout to the 1-800 contacts commercial).

So it makes sense to keep using Fish Davidson for personal promotion and creative pursuits. I'm not going to be deleting or moving any of my old posts, but new posts will be relatively rare and limited to mostly things that I create.

However, tumblr lets me create a bajillion different sideblogs for my various interests. I've got several different blogs, all geared toward different interests. Future dream journal entries, if and when they happen, will be published to fishdreams instead of here. Other posts and reblogs will be spread across my various sideblogs. So without further ado, here are

My Various Sideblogs and What They're For

fishdreams - dream journal stuff

fishcrap - various reblogs and anything that I find interesting but outside of the scope of my various side blogs

fishability - for disability awareness stuff

fishrpg - this will be where I post a lot of tabletop RPG stuff. I'm planning on participating in Hexplore24, which is a tiny daily challenge for RPG creation that starts in January.

tuvafish - stuff about throat singing (and maybe even some of my practice sessions) will go here as I find stuff to post (currently empty)

brownstonarmy - probably won't be updated, but if you want to read a novel-length account of the entire Shits and Giggles campaign, here you go!

Thank you all for being such cool people on tumblr, have a great holiday season and new year, and I hope we stay friends on here.

-Fish

#fishdavidson #update #tuva #dungeons and dragons #5e #branding #sideblogs #disability #school #dreams #dream journal #hexplore24

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greypetrel · 9 months

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Hi! You don’t need to post this if you don’t want, but I saw the response to that comic you had before you deleted it, and wanted to reassure you that there was no way to interpret your comic as making fun of the atomic bomb. I think the other commenter may have been confused and thought that any mention of the Oppenheimer movie was an issue?

Hi noonie, thank you for reaching out!

Replying the next morning because yesterday it was extremely late and I tried to get some sleep.

Thank you for the assurance, I indeed think I accidentally stepped on ground that was made delicate and hurtful by the whole thread without realising.

My ignorance doesn't justify me or make what I wrote less hurtful, still. But it's gone now, so no more people will get upset, I won't engage anymore in trends I know nothing of thinking I act outside the chorus when I'm not, the topic is problematic as a whole, let's not risk again to hurt other people.

... Or at least, I hope it's that, and that it wasn't the summit of many things I drew and said that caused some hurt without me realising. I sincerely hope they weren't there brooding over my content and reacted at the Nth problematic one. (but that's my anxiety speaking... Or so I hope)

I would just like to add any further that if I reacted a little harshly, it was just because I felt accused out of the blue in a modality (a comment under a post) that really makes me unconfortable. It was the first time I interacted with that person and not being given even the benefit of the doubt... I don't blame them, they were hurt. I could surely have reacted better than I did with a person that i don't know and who doesn't know me and I'm sorry.

I'll stop before I start justifying every single thing I ever did or choice I made.

To make this useful for everyone, just some notes under the cut if they may be useful to clarify some things about me and my behaviour on socials.

Thank you for your kind words, noonie, really! And sorry if this comes out as terribly long and wordy. I'm not the best with anons, I'd reply privately if I could. But since this is public anyway, I'm trying to get some good for everyone and hopefully help avoiding further miscommunications.

This blog is for my art and writing. I reblog DA stuff here because there are people following me here from the fandom.

All other topics are reblogged on my sideblog @stridingcorgi.

I don't talk about stuff if I don't have anything constructive to say or a fully formed opinion of. It doesn't mean I don't like to read about it, even if the opinion is the opposite of mine.

I actually love to hear different opinions! Please, tell me when your opinion differ from mine! I loved shivunin's Your Fate For Mine... And Solas is definitely an antagonistic figure there, I loved seeing that take! Unironically, even if I like to write him differently.

(and just to clarify further: I love Vivienne. She's one of the most complex and nuanced characters in DAI. I don't write her because I never played her -yet- at high approval and I know I'm missing a lot of her characterisation. I won't just mock other people's takes on her before having first-hand experience in game, that's all. Take this for every character you don't see me writing about.)

If I say or do something that hurts you: please, by all means, tell me. I have no problems editing or deleting posts, and I have zero issues apologising.

All I ask is, please: some politeness. I am a person and I'm trying, if there's something hurtful for you assume I apologise in advance, I didn't do it on purpose. Does it minimise the hurt you're feeling? NO, at all. But rest assure that I wasn't aiming at you, there wasn't any malevolence, there's no need to attack.

Just, since I have my idiosinchrasies (again: Anxiety Disorder): if you can, please reach out to me in private. Message me and let's discuss it there! If you want explanations I can give them, and if you don't that's perfectly fine, I'll apologise and fix my mess without you having to explain why. Hurt is hurt, whether I see why or not. Just a "Hey that post hurt me can you edit this or delete the whole of it?" will do.

I just... Don't like much discussing these things in public, PARTICULARLY in places I have a limit of characters. My first reaction is explaining my thought and what I did, because getting why people acts some way I find offensive helps me cope with it and accept it better. The character limit deprives me of the chance and makes me feel anxious.

My anon asks are open until I have a reason to close them.

I will tell you that I had bad experiences with anons... And my tolerance for them is lower than other people's. It has nothing to do with this story, but just so you all know.

#petrel replies #noonie #This is the last I'll write about the subject I swear #I'm just anxious and nitpicking everything #... I hope this post doesn't come out as problematic in itself

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diorsbrando · 1 year

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what is the lovely sosa got in the works for us 😁

MULAANNNN HEY BABE!

please i have never seen your face before but i can vividly imagine you making this expression 😭😭😭 i need to update that link on my navi that says sosa’s filez bc i don’t have the drive to write most of that stuff anymore bc it’s from a more than a year ago 😵‍💫but i can tell u some of things im working on / planning out and im sooooo excited to publish . hopefully no one steals my mf ideas or ima be mad asf

since you’re a fellow jojo’s mutual i have quite a few jjba works , so therefore i will be adding jjba to my main masterlist and making a new taglist in the VERY near future 🤭 spoilers ahead of you haven’t read / watched jjba !!!!! some of the ones i’m most excited about include:

cult leader!chrollo lucilfer, where he uses his intellect, soft and gentle voice, charisma, and inherently manipulative nature to get you to join his 'cult' and use you for its own advancement and benefit

ghost!dio, where he still finds a way to cling onto life and haunts one of the women that used to follow him— you. and on the surface it seems like he’s just a malevolent phantom ( you get the reference ) that torments the reader for seemingly no reason other than him being so so selfish, but it’s revealed that there’s a deeper reason for why he remains in the world of the living . definitely adding some smut here *shudders*

ghost!bruno, gonna be an au where he has a wife who is still riddled with grief when he passes , and we’re so depressed that we start hallucinating visions of him and hearing his voice everywhere. basically a sweet but tragic story about how love extends beyond the physical world and prob gonna throw in some ghost sex here too LOL

vampire!ichigo, where seemingly innocent halloween 'fun' with college students goes horribly wrong. this was supposed to be published in october last year......... i only wrote like a third of it.

a collab piece with @blkshoyo ft mafia!aizawa. admittedly haven’t touched that google doc in at least 3 months but it will get published rest assured

another fic about dio but kinda a soulmate au??? based off that myth that wherever you have birthmarks on your body is where your soulmate has kissed u in a past lifetime, and u don't believe it until one by one, the ever suave and evil dio places kisses in those exact same spots and you start to believe the myth is true.

college au! + academic rivals with gojo, where you and him have had an unspoken competition trying to outdo the other

a fic about soft!aizen sousuke and him discovering what his heart truly desires.

dilf!sasuke uchiha, a fic where there's going to be a dash of infidelity (sorry sakura 🫤) and neither you or him can tear your eyes away from each other.

there's wayyyy more wips but i didn't want to overload you or other people by putting more LOL. and as for multichapter fics / upcoming series some things i have in the works include:

spellbound, ft duke!uryu ishida. bridgerton au / royal au ( yes, i'm trademarking the term bridgerton au because i have literally never seen anyone do that before so 😜 ) i already started on chapter 1, it's just that world building and continuity stuff takes a lot of work

candy, ft yandere!satoru gojou. prologue and first chapter already posted, and i need to plan out the rest of the plot and finish chp 2

love, the most twisted curse of all, ft. suguru getou. this is a multichap fic that's based on sza's latest album 'sos'

i wanted to a soulmate au with sasuke but idk if i'm gonna do it anymore because no one seems very interested in that LOL

#sosa’s filez 💭#okay i feel like this was a lot #DAMMIT #i can dm u some more ideas that i have in my notes if u want #but um yea ! i really really want to write more and get immersed in my ideas :(#—sosa’s thoughts💭#🍫—asks!#moots :)#hoetachi

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cycle-verse · 5 months

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Later that day, Ink and Error were curled up on the couch, watching a movie with the kids. They’d been loving on each other since that morning, which was a common occurrence, but right when Eeror went to kiss his head, his entire body tensed. “Without scaring the kids, we need to get outside. Someone’s messing with the dome.”

Ink opened his eyes, looking up at Error, before glancing over at Stain.

Stain was entranced in the movie, eyes focused purely on what was happening on the TV, Picmalaho in his lap.

Ink nodded, moving to stand and look at Gradient to see if either of them noticed.

Gradient hadn’t noticed either although he looked half asleep, cuddled between the blues.

He moved to leave the house, hopefully with Error following.

Error did follow, trying to be quiet and unnoticed.

Ink quickly closed the door behind them before looking for wherever the dome was being messed with.

It was Malevolence, tearing through the string in a blind rage.

Ink seemed upset at that, but moved to undo his sash, ready to fight Malevolence once again.

“Seriously? That took SO MUCH energy out of me to make!” Error complained

Ink shrugged a bit, giving a strong flap to land near where Malevolence was tearing through it.

“You’re tricky, aren’t you? Can’t just make things simple for me?” Malevolence snarled.

"Of course not, what idiot would do that?"

“An idiot who wants to make their time easy and painless,”

"And if they have a firm belief that you won't be able to beat them?"

“Then maybe they fix their mistakes,”

Ink scoffed a bit, pulling out his hatchet to fight.

Error sighed.

“Please don’t chop through the strings Inky. They’ll move for you,” he whispered

"I'm gonna chop him, not your strings, Ruru."

“Good… then chop away,” Destroying his strings like that just tended to hurt

Ink quickly dashed for Malevolence, aiming a slash for his ribcage.

Error worked on fixing the damage Malevolence had caused, knowing that if he tried to help Ink, he might get in the way at the moment.

Ink’s main goal was to knock Malevolence away from the dome, to a better spot to fight.

It was working, and Error worked on fixing the dome. He’d help Ink after that

"I told you to stay away-" Ink sliced his hatchet at Malevolence's chest.

“And I thought you were smart enough to know that that won’t work.”

"I don't care- why won't you?! Stain isn't yours!"

“If he isn’t then I’ll need a new heir,”

"Well, you won't find one here-" Ink threw his hatchet at Malevolence.

Malevolence sidestepped the hatchet and smirked. Error, who had just gotten to Ink's side, froze. “No,”

Ink gritted his teeth, seeming ready to just fist-fight Malevolence.

“Oh Error-“

“Absolutely not,” Error lashed out with his strings and summoned one of his blasters. “Leave,”

"You aren't welcome here-"

“Oh, I think Error would welcome me once I get my heir-“ A blaster went off, a string blast from Errors that Malevolence dodged.

"Just shut up already-" while Malevolence was distracted, Ink went to slam his shoulder into his chest.

Malevolence stumbled back, grabbing onto Ink's wing for stabilization before realizing what he had in his hands.

Ink quickly tried to tug his wing out of Malevolence's hold.

When Ink tugged, Malevolence got an idea and wrapped a few tentacles around his wing, giving it an experimental pull

his wing would've torn in two with some sickening cracks of bone. Malevolence easily broke it, though he wanted more than just a break. He wanted to destroy the wing and he did so before disappearing, knowing that it would be a lot easier battle next time.

Ink was left in pain, even without his paint, blood dripping from the remnants of his wing as he silently tried to handle the pain.

“Shit! Ink!” Error, who had stumbled back and partially crashed after he sent off the blaster, yelled

"I'm fine- I'm-" Ink stumbled toward Error a bit. "I'm- n-not-"

Error caught him and wrapped his arms around him, pulling Ink back into the dome and attempting to drag him into the house before giving up, just hoping Dream and Cross were awake in their room so it wouldn’t just be the kids, “HELP!”

Ink gritted his teeth against the pain, moving to unwrap his scarf to try and tie around what was left of his wing.

Cross heard them and came running outside, followed by Stain, who looked terrified

Ink held onto Error for support, his wing still dripping blood.

Error cradled Ink close as Cross cursed and ran back inside. “I’m getting materials-“

“Get Gradient too… he knows how to better tend to wounds,” Stain whispered, trembling

"F-Feeling lightheaded-"

Error had been trying to put pressure against Ink's back while he held him but it wasn’t doing much, “I know, I know… Cross is gonna come soon to help,”

Ink nodded a bit, leaning heavily against Error.

Error curled around him until Cross came running back out.

At some point, Error crashed out of worry for Ink, and Ink could only wait for Cross and Gradient to fix him up. He relaxed a bit when they finished.

“Finally,” Cross whispered as the bleeding finally stopped. Gradient began to cry, no longer pushed by adrenaline.

"Th-Thank you..."

“Of course,” Cross whispered as he wrapped an arm around Gradient to try and comfort him

Ink was waiting for Error to be ok again, more worried about him than himself.

Error was more worried about Ink and once he was back, he looked down at Ink. “Inky? Are you okay?”

"I a-am now..."

“Good, good,”

Ink leaned more against Error, "I'm sorry..."

“For what?”

"B-Being stupid..."

“You weren’t stupid, Inky,”

"You're s-sure...?"

“Of course.”

After a few minutes, Cross sighed, “We should move him inside but the bleeding stopped so he should be okay.”

Error didn’t exactly like letting Ink go but he did, watching as Cross carefully carried Ink inside.

“I got the kids up to the safe room, that’s what took me so long,” Gradient whispered.

“That’s ok, baby…” Ink curled up once he was in bed, trying to ignore the pain.

Error reached for and kissed the back of Ink's hand, “Do you want me to grab you something for the pain?”

"P-Please..."

Ink buried his face in his pillow as Error got up, but sat up a bit when Error came back with a cup of water and some painkillers. After taking them, Ink laid back down, ready to sleep.

Error sat beside him.

“I was gonna ask you to marry me tonight…” he whispered as he curled next to Ink. “I still want to obviously… but I can’t do it like I planned,”

"You just did... and I'd love to..."

“I’m glad… I love you Inky…” Error didn’t have a ring or anything, just a smile

"I love you too, Ruru..." Ink had his own soft smile as he looked at Error.

Error kissed his head and hugged him as close as he felt safe doing

#ink #ink sans #ink!sans #error sans #error!sans #cycleverse #cross #cycle!nightmare #cycle!ink #cycle!error #cycle!cross #nightmare #nightmare!sans #malevolence

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raenparade · 1 year

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a reflection of artistic pursuits #1 - 27/04/23

I’ve been meaning to talk about all the art I’ve been doing in uni for a while now, so now I’m going to do it in a big post, and hopefully this won’t be the only one!

I’ve been very fortunate to get to work with a variety of mediums since coming back to do my Masters, and even if I don’t use some of these methods in my project, I definitely don’t want to stop using them full-stop!

Back in February, we had a bookbinding workshop, in which we all made ourselves a concertina-styled book. I feel like I’ll be repeating myself quite often, but it was very fun to try something I hadn’t done before!

I still have the book empty, and I have a bit of a fear of doing anything with it, as I’m not entirely sure what I want to fill it with yet! The only slightly off-putting thing was how bad the glue smelled, really stank up the living room.

The following week we were all inducted into the EPC (I think they’ve changed the name - but I can’t remember what it is) - having a look at woodworking and 3D printing. I had a go at using SketchUp with the 3D printers. I used them to make a couple of storyboarding templates. The first one turned out quite big, and I mainly use it for larger illustration thumbnails. But the smaller ones have been pretty good!

I think I’d like to try SketchUp again, and hopefully give them a lid of sorts? To try and make it easier to hold, because they can be a bit slippery.

We also got to visit Ankle Deep Studios at Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard to do some lino prints, which overall was a fantastic trip! I’ve never actually been down to the dockyards before, so while we couldn’t go into any of the actual buildings, just walking around was very insightful.

I used some of the emblems I saw around the dockyards as inspiration for my lino cut, and also the podcast The Magnus Archives, as at the time I was still extremely obsessed with it.

I really liked my final result, and think I did quite well to make it look like an emblem, while also incorporating elements from the show, such as the eyes and the panopticon in the middle. While I could’ve cut the logo more, I do like the fact that we still have texture from the shallower cuts in the final prints. Again, just doing something I hadn’t before was really really fun. I love the tactile feeling of printing and things like lino, and wish I’d done it before!

I really do like the final results, and I think I may actually use lino again for a side piece for my major project. I’ve wanted to design logo/insignias for some of the organisations in TSTSU, and I think this would be a fun way to make it more physical!

Another new artistic method was riso printing, again during one of our timetabled days. Riso had always confused me a little bit, but Ceri did a fantastic job of explaining everything to us, and making the overall experience super enjoyable.

I once again used a podcast as my inspiration, but this time I chose the Lovecraftian horror podcast ‘Malevolent’ by Harlan Guthrie. I found the idea of layering things quite interesting and different, and I was also happy with the results of these!

While I could've lined up the right print a bit better, I think what I mostly wanted to achieve worked, and was definitely pleased with how the print on the left turned out. I definitely want to try riso a bit more before I have to leave the university!

While they’re quite small in the picture above, we also had a small go at badge making, with the badge press in the Illustration studio. I’m a sucker for things like stickers and badges, so I’ll definitely be coming back to make badges of my characters, or just anything really!

This was a bit of a long one, and definitely won’t be the last I do with these methods, but I’m glad to have finally put it all together for my blog!

#tag later

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thearchivistsjournal · 1 year

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Day 217,

Last night’s nightmare was not as bad as the previous. Merely severely uncomfortable and nerve-wrackingly frustrating rather than agonizingly painful and mind-breakingly terrifying. The body of my dream self (I swear one day that won’t sound ridiculous to me) was still in bad shape and the usual compulsion toward movement was still present, but there was no malevolent other to be felt and the embrace of the artifact blanket persisted through the whole night. I was able to pace myself enough that my fractured and malunioned frame never reached much worse than a dull, fully-body ache. There was the constant sense of wanting to go faster (tied to the urge to movement I suppose), hence the frustration, but I managed to at least sort of balance that with not pushing myself to the point of injury again.

Strangely, for some reason I recall making a conscious (if that word even applies there) decision to actively try to go deeper. I think I might have been following the logic of “if that place won’t let me go up, then at least I might find answers going down.” Reasonable enough at first, but upon waking the possibility of that being what that place, or some thing that inhabits it wants and is trying to drive me toward a grisly fate I’d otherwise avoid seems apparent.

Increasingly I find myself thinking of these wanderings of the Catacomb Depths not merely as a dream but as an actual place that I am sending a part of myself to. I would have scoffed at the notion at one time, and still find a rational part of my mind objecting to the idea, but - as I so often seem to tell myself - with everything else I’ve experienced and heard of, is it really that unbelievable? And besides, if it is a real place (for some certain value of “real”) then that means it has rules, however esoteric or malleable. And if there are rules they can be learned and used to my advantage.

Hopefully.

But I’ve gone on too long now. I’m going to need to hurry to get ready and meet James and family if I want to ride with them into town this morning. I’ll also need to remember to remind Maiko that I won’t be back this evening. She’s probably figured that out already, but it seems polite to actually say it.

*******

Exciting news: The boat is ready.

I had figured I’d be writing about the ride into town, Cass asking how I was doing, reassuring her I was much better this time, talking to James about the boat trip, him telling Cass to stop lording it over her siblings, looking forward to actually being useful in unloading at the market again, and starting on another round of detailed examination of the cathedral chant transcriptions, but BOAT.

It was a bit past noon, Cass and I had just finished our break for lunch and gotten back into the aforementioned transcription examinations when one of the fishermen I’d talked to the other week came in to give us the good news. I’ll admit, I wound up embarrassing myself a little bit by not recognizing him right away and asking what I could help him find in the archive like any other visitor. He laughed it off and said that he’d already found it (me).

When he offered to take us to show their handiwork, Cass volunteered to go track down Lin and Vernon so they could see it too since they both had an interest in joining in on the expedition. Thus, she went running off one way while I locked up the archive and followed my guide down to the docks.

Along the way he apologized that it took so long, explaining that they’d realized shortly after talking to me last time that they were short on materials for plugging leaks and had to wait until the next market day (a week ago) to obtain it. After that, they’d actually finished two days ago, but I’d already left for the evening by that time and then yesterday we had the mists. I accepted the apology although I assured him that the minor delay was no big deal. Like I’d said before, this trip might be for my health, but it’s not like I’m dying without it.

Even if I was winded by the time we reached the pier where they had the boat tied.

There was a small crowd of fishers when we got there. The repairs had been a group effort and everyone was eager to see their work pay off. To my surprise, Marva was there too. She’d not been in the original group I’d talked to, but word gets around and she wasn’t going to pass up the chance to help out her little sister-in-law.

By the time said little sister-in law arrived with Lin and Vernon in tow I still hadn’t actually gotten in the boat. Too much time spent thanking everyone and excitedly gushing over it from the side of the dock.

It seems Marva’s involvement was a surprise to Cass as well, but not an unwelcome one. Marva’s always treated her as a little more mature than Cass’s blood-siblings tend to and never really engaged in filial teasing. I daresay Cass gets along better with her than any of her actual sisters.

But, back to the boat! Lin and I were the first ones on as the two that would be officially and necessarily going on the expedition. Cass came next, indignantly declining offers to be lowered down (it was at low tide, so there was a bit of a drop) in favor of climbing down herself. Unfortunately, after that, it became clear that Vernon wasn’t going to fit and still leave room for supplies. We still got him in for this initial test run though. It was cramped and hard to maneuver with all of us in there, but we had fun with it, and if nothing else it was a stress test for buoyancy and stability as we rowed (or is it paddled?) out past the end of the docks and out onto the (relatively) open water for a short bit before turning around and coming back.

After tying up the boat and another round of excitedly thanking everyone for their hard work, the four of us headed back to the archive to further plan.

The overall result of said planning session is as follows:

Vernon will not be coming with us. As much as we’d all like to have him along, we just couldn’t come up with a good explanation about how we’d accommodate him without bringing up Maiko and her boat.

We’ll spend the next few days getting together any last-minute supplies we haven’t already stockpiled for the trip. We’ve all been putting aside a little bit already and we’re still planning on foraging as we go to supplement our supplies so we should be mostly good to go in short order.

Tomorrow Lin will be taking Cass and I out on the water for more practice with the boat. We’re not going to have her do all the paddling (rowing?) afterall.

Tomorrow evening I’ll fill in Maiko

The day after that, I’ll make that long-procrastinated outskirts trip to visit Tristan and get his account of his meeting with Iole. Going to skip the visit to the glassmaker for now.

The day after that, Cass and I will head into the Village, meet Lin down at the docks, take the boat and head out. Vernon will try to be there to see us off at least.

Once we have the boat, we’ll stop at Maiko’s cove to meet up with her, transfer Cass and some of the supplies to her boat, and then head out for real.

We’re trusting in Maiko for the actual route. Last we talked it over with her, she predicted four or five days to get to the island with the healing spring, depending on our pace, stopping on an island each night.

We’ll stay on that island with the spring for a couple of days and then move on to Iole’s island. Maiko estimates about a day or two for that. The island with the spring is actually the further of the two, but my arguments for seeing Iole first were shot down in favor of the others wanting me back in good health. Even Maiko had said as much back when she, Lin, and I talked about it last at the house.

We’ll stay on Iole’s island until the next mist night at least. We’ll probably be close to one by the time we get there and surely she won’t deny us shelter (another case for going to her island second). Worst case scenario though, we spend the night on the boats.

Once we’re done on Iole’s island (however long that ends up being), we’ll head back to this main island, stop briefly at the cove to switch Cass back over to our boat, and head back to the Village. Fond as I am of the idea of us all meeting back at the house afterward to celebrate, I didn’t voice that suggestion. I imagine Lin’s and Cass’s families will be wanting to be with them.

After that planning session, Lin and Vernon went home and I joined Cass at Norman and Marva’s for dinner. As one might expect, there was a fair bit of congratulating and well-wishing. And filling James in on our preparations and itinerary (leaving out the parts about Maiko and Iole) to assure him I wasn’t taking his daughter out to drown at sea or shipwreck and starve. Not that there was much concern of that happening, but still.

And now I’m back in the archive staying up too late once again, tired as I am. Excitement balancing out the drowsiness I suppose. Also, I saw the floating island passing by on my way back to the library after dinner, so that was neat. I’d lost track of that thing’s schedule and hadn’t seen it in a while, having stayed indoors all rainy season. It’s a sight, all silhouetted by the stars like that.

One more thing though before I head to bed. Before I started writing, I got to thinking about Maiko and yesterday’s conversation and in a moment of curiosity and nostalgia I pulled the first volume of my journal and took a look back at what I wrote the first time she told me about her mother. The part that caught my eye though and is bugging me now was a bit after that exchange. I offered to give her one of the crystals that I’d been using to light the house and said that I didn’t mind her having it because I could use the cracked one from the trip to the cavern as a replacement, but somehow she ended up with the cracked one herself. How did that discrepancy happen? Flipping through the journal, I never found anywhere that I described actually giving her either crystal, just that the next time the crystal I gave her is mentioned is when she was showing me the contents of her pouch during our little heart to heart on the edge of Priscilla’s island.

I trust the accuracy of what I wrote down. I have to, for my own sanity. It’s the parts that I don’t write down that find myself questioning my memory. Because I don’t really remember either way in this case. Maybe I offered her the whole one and she took the cracked one anyway? Maybe she switched them later for some reason?

This is going to bother me until I ask her about it, isn’t it?

Or until I find something else to distract me and I forget about this too.

<==Previous Next==>

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skyward-floored · 2 years

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Royal Castletown Wedding

Here it is, chapter one of the Linkeduniverse fic I shamelessly spoofed from the My Little Pony episodes ‘a Royal canterlot wedding’ parts 1 & 2.

I guess this is technically an AU? I mean, I suppose it could be canon. Pretty unlikely tho.

(Ao3 link)

————————————————————

Fading golden sunlight filtered through the branches on the trees high above, and birds chirped happily to each other as they settled in for the night. It was spring in Legend’s era and flowers coated the trees, sending their petals out over the forest. Their perfume was thick in the air, making a few of the heroes sneeze as they set up camp for the night below the blossoms, but it didn’t bother Wind- he rather liked their scent.

A couple pink flowers drifted down in the warm breeze, landing softly onto the sailor’s head. He brushed them off and closed his eyes with a sigh, twirling one of them idly between his fingers.

Dinner wouldn’t be ready for a while yet, and Wind hadn’t had much of an appetite lately anyways. All the camp chores were done except for cooking, which left most of them to do what they pleased for a little while. The others minus Wild had scattered about the area cleaning their weapons or talking among themselves, but the sailor didn’t feel like joining them.

The person he wanted to talk to wasn’t there anyways.

Wind sighed again, leaning back against the trunk and looking up at the bright, cheery flowers. The ache he’d been ignoring tugged at his heart again and he twirled the flower faster, rubbing a hand along the sleeve of his tunic. He had told himself he wasn’t going to worry anymore, that he would just accept what ended up happening... but the uncertainty was gnawing away at him again.

It’d been almost two months since he’d last seen Warriors and he was worried sick.

Wind bit his lip, thinking back to the day he’d disappeared. They’d been in Hyrule’s era when it had happened, trying to make their way to what was supposedly a huge monster camp. Suddenly a strange portal had appeared in their path, it’s appearance much different then the ones they normally encountered. It was a smaller size and bright cheery blue as opposed to the dark blackish purple they were used to, and it seemed just overall less malevolent. The heroes’ curiosity was piqued and they’d cautiously examined it, poking sticks through and carefully prodding the edges. Warriors had recognized the magic as Lana’s, the white sorceress from his era. The fact that she was resorting to a portal like this to reach him worried the captain greatly, and they had prepared to go through without delay.

Warriors had gone first, striding quickly into the swirling blue, but before anyone could follow after him the portal blinked out of existence.

They’d all startled, and several worried shouts had gone up as the portal disappeared. A frantic discussion ensued, several of them combing the area for any hint of the portal while everyone else tried to figure out what had happened. Time had come forward then and tried to calm them down, assuring them that if Lana truly had been the one to send the portal then Warriors was fine. He’d likely been needed back in his home time and it was too difficult to transport them all, so Warriors had to go alone. Lana would almost certainly send him back once whatever needed doing was done, and they’d hopefully see him soon.

Everyone hesitantly agreed that it was the most likely scenario, but it didn’t really make Wind feel better.

Even if the portal wasn’t malicious like Time said, (and Wind was pretty sure it hadn’t been) then Warriors was still facing some threat or other without them, one important enough that this Lana-lady had to basically come get him.

And it had been almost two whole months.

The sailor slid down onto his back and stared up at the blossoms above him, trying to ignore the ache in his stomach. He’d never seen a tree with such pretty flowers before, and the orange light of the sunset only made them look better, lighting them up from the inside in a way almost reminiscent of a fairy’s glow.

Aryll would love these, he thought to himself. Maybe he could press a few and bring them back for her.

Light footsteps sounded close by and he looked over to see Time stroll up, his armor removed for the evening.

“Dinner’s ready.” he stated, and Wind hummed in acknowledgment. He didn’t really want to eat anything and hoped Time would leave him be so he could mope in peace.

But of course that didn’t happen.

The old man raised an eyebrow at Wind’s lackluster response, and Wind looked away.

“Mind if I sit here for a bit?” asked Time. Wind shrugged and the old man took it as a yes, settling down next to the sailor. He looked up at the trees and closed his eyes as a few petals drifted by, letting out a small sigh.

“I always liked this time of year,” he said after a minute. “everything in full bloom. You can practically hear the forest growing again. Reminds me of home.”

He glanced over at Wind, who was still staring upwards. “Yeah.” the sailor murmured. “It’s nice.”

An not-quite comfortable silence stretched between them, the sounds of the others eating their meal a little ways away interspersed with the birdsong trilling from the treetops.

“Sailor...” Time began slowly. “I know it’s been difficult lately without Warriors, but don’t give up on him.”

Wind nodded sullenly, still not looking at him.

“Did I ever tell you I knew him when I was a child?”

The sailor perked up at that, his ears twitching with interest. Time rarely shared anything about his past, and now he was just offering to tell him about it?

...he must really be trying to cheer him up.

“Really?” Wind asked, turning his head so he could look fully at Time. “But you’re older than him, how could you have known him when you were a kid?”

Time smiled, but there was an undercurrent of something bitter behind it. “Time travel can be rather fickle. It’s been a decade or three since I first met the captain, but for him it’s been less then two years. I was the younger one then.”

Wind blinked in surprise. “How old were you?”

Time hummed, looking back at the blossoms. “That’s a rather complicated question. But I would guess somewhere around... eleven, I think.”

Wind started. He hadn’t expected him to actually answer his question. He studied Time curiously, trying to imagine the fierce warrior before him as an eleven year old, bright-eyed and baby-faced with a height shorter then the sailor himself.

...nope, he couldn’t picture it.

“I got warped there accidentally during the war, and started fighting just to keep myself alive. Eventually I figured out what was going on, but it took a while.” Time chuckled. “Monsters in the captain’s Hyrule tend to go for strength in numbers over individual power, and I wasn’t used to it a bit. But Warriors...”

He smiled, a bit of childish awe on his face. “You’ve never seen the captain in a fight like that sailor, but he’s like a hurricane. He can take down hundreds of monsters in mere minutes, and he makes it look effortless, almost like dancing.”

Wind listened in amazement. Time didn’t throw around praise lightly, he must really be impressed by the captain.

“...why are you telling me this?” asked Wind. “I mean, I’m sure you didn’t just come over here to compliment Warriors.”

“No, I didn’t.” Time admitted, then put a hand on Wind’s shoulder.

“My point is Warriors can handle himself.” he said gently. “I’ve seen it for a fact and you have as well. I know it’s difficult to not be able to help him, or even know what’s going on, but trust that he knows what he’s doing.”

“But what if he’s in trouble and needs us?” Wind asked, his voice quiet.

Time sighed lightly. “Trust that his allies at home have his back. We’re not the only ones who help support him. Keep in mind that he isn’t alone, and focus on our current situation as best you can.”

Wind nodded slowly, watching another flower float by in the breeze. Warriors may not be with them, but that didn’t mean he was all alone somewhere.

Worry still lurked in his mind, but it was much quieter now then it had been in a long time.

“Now,” Time said, sitting up with a small groan. “Let’s get dinner before those bottomless pits eat it all. ‘A full stomach heals all wounds’ as the champion always says.”

Wind couldn’t help but smile at that, and stood up with Time, brushing a few stray petals off his tunic.

(...)

Time and Wind meandered slowly down the hill, watching as the sun finally sank below the hills in the distance, the main source of light now coming from their campfire.

The others were nearly finished with their stew by now, and were having a discussion about magic items or something of that ilk as the two walked up. A few greetings were exchanged, but they soon went back to their discussion (which was quickly turning into an argument). Time and Wind were about to sit down on one of the logs they’d procured, when a shout came from behind them.

“Ho, travelers!”

Wind and Time turned around simultaneously at the voice, a hand on their respective weapons. A man suddenly stumbled out of the woods, covered in petals and dirt, a bit scratched up as well. He’d obviously been off the path for a while.

The mailman, as Wind soon recognized from his uniform, walked up to their group, looking tired as he pulled a letter from his satchel.

“I’ve got a letter for... eight people named Link?” he said tiredly. “Please tell me you’re the group this is addressed to. I’ve been stuck in these woods since I got here! The squirrels around here aren’t as nice as they look by the way.”

Wild snickered a bit and Twilight gave him an unimpressed look as he took the letter from the mailman.

“That’s us. Sorry for any confusion.” Time apologized, sitting down. “Can we offer you some stew for your trouble?”

The mailman lit up and eagerly took the bowl handed to him, sitting down a little ways away to give them some privacy while he ate with quite a bit of gusto. Twilight unfolded the letter and began to read it out loud, seeing as it was apparently addressed to all of them.

“‘Heroes of courage,’” he began, “‘we humbly request your assistance with increased security during the royal wedding, due to the black-blooded monsters currently plaguing the lands. We know this is a lot to ask, so while assisting us you will be granted full use of the castles amenities as well as significant payment...’” he looked down the page, mumbling to himself as he skimmed it. “...this goes on for a while. But it sounds like they could use our help.”

Confused looks were exchanged.

“What royal wedding?” asked Hyrule in confusion. “And where? That could be from almost any of our eras.”

“And how do they know about all of us?” wondered Sky, scratching his head. “The fact that ni- eight heroes are wandering around isn’t exactly common knowledge.”

“If it’s a royal wedding then Zelda must have a hand in it,” spoke up Legend. “and most of our Zeldas are aware of the situation we’re in. It’s not too strange that she’d pass the info along to someone who’d need it.”

He furrowed his brow. “Would be nice if we knew who was getting married though. If it’s a ‘royal wedding’ it must be a pretty high level noble.”

“Oh! Sorry about that,” apologized the mailman, who had already wolfed down his stew and was obviously eavesdropping a bit. “I believe I was supposed to give you this one first.”

He fished in his mailbag for a moment, then pulled out a fancy gilded invitation, which he handed over to Time. He saluted once then was off, gone in a blink of an eye.

Time eyed the invitation uncertainly before gently ripping off the envelope, pulling a cream-colored paper from inside. “It’s a wedding invitation all right,” he said, slowly reading it through. “Seems as if we’re all invited to the ceremony as well as help with security.”

“But who’s getting married?” asked Wind curiously.

Time nodded, skimming through the words. “Let’s see... there’s a list of our hero titles... date... location... ah, here we go.”

The old man cleared his throat. “‘-The eight Heroes of courage are cordially invited to the wedding of Princess Zelda Artemisa Lyra Hyrule, and...’”

Time trailed off, staring in surprise at the paper in his hands.

“Well?” prodded Twilight. “Don’t keep us in suspense old man. Who’s getting married?”

Time wordlessly handed the invitation to him, a smile beginning to form on his face. Twilight took it from him with a suspicious look, and scanned quickly to the bottom of the paper.

“Wait, this is...” Twilight said, then gasped as he read the name inscribed next to Zelda’s. “Warriors?!”

“It’s his name all right.” confirmed Time with a grin. “And that’s his Zelda’s as well. Seems the captain’s gone and gotten himself engaged.”

Shocked silence settled through camp, the Links all giving each other wide-eyed looks. Wind felt a huge surge of hope in his chest at Twilight’s words. Warriors was back in his own time period. Time had been right! He was okay!

...and he was getting married?

The silence stretched on, all of them still too taken aback to say anything.

Then Legend grinned.

“Well well, the princess herself. I knew he had it in him.”

It’s as if Legend’s words broke a spell, and the clearing burst into confused chatter, the heroes exclaiming in disbelief as they all tried get a closer look at the invitation in Twilight’s hands.

Wind peered over the rancher’s shoulder at the paper himself, scanning it for any sort of personal message at all. He was sure that Warriors would have included something else for them, a letter specifically for the heroes, or at least a note with an explanation of what he’d been doing these past months.

But there was nothing. Just fancy gold letters.

“Who knew the captain would be the next one of us to get hitched?” said Twilight, shaking his head with a grin. “And to his Zelda? I can’t believe it.”

“Yeah, me either.” said Wind disappointedly. His tone caught the attention of the others, and their excited chatter quieted a bit.

“What’s the matter sailor?” asked Sky. “This is wonderful news!”

“Yeah, wonderful news that we got from an invitation.” stressed Wind. “Not from Warriors himself! There isn’t even a note to us or anything, just these two letters he obviously didn’t even write!”

“It is a little impersonal...” mused Four. “You think he’d at least include an explanation.”

“He’s probably just busy with the wedding,” Time put in. “Goodness knows they’re a lot of work, even if you have a small one. I can hardly imagine the trouble that must be going into planning a royal one.”

Wind pursed his lips as the chatter resumed around him. He was happy at the news of course, ecstatic even, but it still seemed strange that Warriors wouldn’t include anything for them specifically.

“You think that’s why Lana pulled him away? Because she knew he wanted to propose?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m sure there was another reason.”

“Like what? Making sure he had the perfect ring?”

“Hey guys? Just one problem.” said Hyrule, frowning slightly as he studied the invitation. “How’re we supposed to get to Warriors’ Hyrule? We’re supposed to be there as soon as we can make it, and these portals are too random for us to count on. What if we don’t make it at all?”

The collective mood sank a little as the traveler’s words sank in. It was a good point.

“Well wait,” spoke up Twilight, “if the mailman got these letters, he must’ve been in Warriors’ era recently, right?”

Legend snapped his fingers. “Ah, that means there’s probably a portal to the captain’s Hyrule somewhere relatively nearby! Based on what he said, I’d guess the other side of the woods.”

“We’ll search around tomorrow,” decided Time. “A few days one way or another won’t make much of a difference. In the meantime...”

He leaned forwards and raised an eyebrow, hands resting on his knees. “Can me and the sailor finally have dinner?”

A few laughs went up and conversation resumed, Wild serving the two a generous helping of stew. Wind took the bowl handed to him, but only half-heartedly poked at it, his mind still on the letter, or lack there of.

Why didn’t Warriors include anything for them?

#linkeduniverse #linked universe #linked universe fanfiction #lu wind #lu warriors #lu time #writing from the floor #I don’t have much to say about this #the next chapter is being written as we speak #hopefully it’ll be finished soon #guess I’ll tag this mlp?#mlp #royal wedding au

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shadowfae · 3 years

Note

hiii! so a friend directed me here and i was wondering if u cld share abt how you found out you were godkin? only if youre comfy! because ive kinda had like. how do i word this. Vibes or Feels that kinda direct me towards the whole i might be a god of sorts kinda thing ? if you have resources and dont mind helping,, please direct me to them :D ~ @missing-crown

I want to start this essay off by saying flat out: wars have been fought, genocides have been committed, and empires have risen and fallen trying to answer the simple questions of “What is deification, and how do we incarnate and control it?”.

If you do not think you’re up the challenge of answering that question for yourself, even with years of study and slow training to take up the mantle of literally being the most powerful form of the Chosen One trope, then you’re probably in the wrong place. I say this as someone who is deific down to the blood and bone, as someone who has looked for other gods, and largely found very little in the way of anyone who understands anything like my experience. In this way, I am utterly alone, and I detest it, but if me penning these words gives someone else the gospel they need to explain themselves in a way I recognize as kin and kind, then I will do it.

But before I truly get into it, I will very nicely ask you to swing down to your local bookstore or library, pick up a copy of Seanan McGuire’s Middlegame, and take a walk down the improbable road with Roger and Dodger. The differences between you and I and the twins of the Doctrine of Ethos are simple and threefold: we cannot manifest, we are forbidden to use our powers the way they can use theirs, and there are (hopefully) no secret alchemist cults trying to murder us when we don’t play nice with their fucked-up science experiment.

Roger and Dodger are gods, true gods, gods I recognize in myself and in the godkin I have met who have spoken about themselves enough for me to understand that we are indeed talking about the same thing. Disappontingly, I see minor spirits far too often misunderstanding the nature of deification, or at least, understanding a version of it which is fundamentally antithetical to my experience. They may be deific; but either they suck at illustrating their point, or I am something far beyond deific, and I am again alone.

With that introduction, I need to talk about three things in order to answer your question. Two methods of deification and three definitions of ‘god’ in a hierarchy that only exists because humanity has not yet perfected their understanding of what is fundamentally and always beyond them. Two kinds of gods, honest gods, that split the difference between deific, divine, and legendary. Once you understand that, I can talk about godkin, and what it’s like to be me, and maybe by the end of it you will either recognize yourself in this, or run away screaming as most mortals will do.

The first method of deification is what I will call the incarnate gods- Roger and Dodger are good examples, so are most Legendary Pokémon, and Kaname Madoka from PMMM. They are laws of nature, concepts of creation, and calculations of cosmic proportions that also occasionally exist as people when they design to do so. They are not meant to be people, they are bad at it, I do not recommend being mortal and fucking around with them. You will simply die. I would not fuck with them outside of my own world that I created, where I get to be a form of incarnate god. You cannot overpower them: they ARE the rule, and they will change it if they need to. You can’t ruleslawyer gravity like a 2007 troll physics comic. An incarnate god of gravity will simply turn reality on its head and cause you to implode. If you are this type of god, I cannot help you. My understanding of them comes from being an Absol, and little more.

The second type are gods of domain and prowess: Zamorak (from RuneScape), Akemi Homura in both her awakened Witch and Devil forms (from PMMM), and yours truly. Quite a few of us, although not all of us, were originally mortal. Mortals amped up on so much power we are no longer bound by mortal laws. There is a difference between deification and simply stopping your clock to gain immortality. Mortal magic and deific magic are fundamentally different. Down to, I would argue, the atomic structure. Deific magic is pure in a way mortal magic could never be. To give a mortal more than a drop of deific magic heavily diffused in something safer and more understandable would be to quite literally burn them to ashes. Or rend them into a different, unspeakable form. Or turn them into living topiary. We are nothing if not unpredictable.

It’s the difference between a handful of dirt and pure neutron soup. Usually, in order to become a god like this, it requires the intervention of an incarnate god in some form. In Zamorak’s case, it was several Elder Artifacts and falling almost facefirst into halfway incarnating himself into the law of entropy. In Homura’s (at least in canon PMMM), she fucked with the laws of consequence and time to the point where she became the only expert they had on either of those and both laws decided to simply incarnate into her, and then she used that to cause problems. For me, it was having my entire magical and physical structure reorganized and rebuilt by an incarnate god of malevolent energy, and then I used what was a watered-down copy of the Devil of Devils’ glory to weave my own world into being where I was more or less the absolute arbiter of the laws of reality.

In PMMM Rebellion, when Homura fights Kyubey in that pretty lace dress of hers, that is approximately the magical prowess an awakened god of our capability will show casually. She has complete control over her domain (her labyrinth) and the reality of it, it takes no more than a glance or a thought to almost entirely reshuffle it. Her minions, who are little more than vaguely autonomous thoughts given some power of their own, may break that reality in whatever means necessary so long as it is to fulfill Homura’s current motives. Her domain falls apart when she does, and she is not separate from it; it is a consequence of her existence. Asking what came first, the god or their domain, is a simple chicken and egg question. It’s usually the domain, in our case; in the case of incarnate gods it’s a philosophical shrug and a nice headache.

You’ll notice I said awakened: that is because Zamorak is a great example of a god who isn’t entirely awakened. In canon, that is - the one I work with is awakened enough to fuck with his domain, which is what makes him quite useful to work with, although I do wonder what he’s getting out of me if not magical theory and utter adoration. Zamorak in canon is a god who ascribes himself to the philosophy of chaos and personal strife, completely unaware that he is incarnate enough not to change the law of entropy but to suggest things to it. He’s a god of chance masquerading as a god of personal improvement, and once he figures that out (and passes that knowledge onto Armadyl, who is his true light counterpart), he’s going to change the very way magic works. Guthix did everything in his power to try and become incarnate. He failed. Zamorak did it entirely inadvertently, and that’s the trick: the nature of deification is to follow the domain and influence it to your will. When laws of existence become people, they will do as people will, and people typically have ambition. Gods who are also people got that way for a reason. They always have a motive for doing so. It’s never accidental.

So, with a slightly more informed understanding of deification, or at least the versions of it that I understand, I can talk to you about me. What it’s like in the here and now, and how I knew. It took me years to get to this point, and I’ve much the way to go. I know more than I did when I was questioning; deeply more so. I don’t expect anyone questioning to be as sure as I am, and in ten years I will be far more sure of entirely different things, and if I’m lucky, this as well. But, let us begin again.

To be deific is to wake up in the middle of the night feeling like a black hole. You are vast, and you are dense, and the moment someone touches the skin of your sternum they will be sucked in like a movie's portrayal of quicksand. To be so vast on the inside, surrounded by empty air and gentle white noise like the faint pull of gravity that does not touch you. To feel so powerful as to be untethered wholly from the world, aware that you will blink and be floating alone in a space that you cannot touch and so too cannot touch you. You blink, and it is gone, and you are again in a normal body as a normal person, and you roll over and go back to sleep.

To be deific is to watch the seasonal changes and feel flashes of worn leather rope between your hands and the maddened singsong of the Wild Hunt, chariot reins in your hands and baying hounds that feel like fingers, like wings, like extensions of yourself that can be shifted around with barely a thought. To feel halfway like a black hole walking down the street, halfway caved into yourself and barely contained, incapable of truly understanding how you can be so far apart from it all without anyone noticing that something is off.

To be deific is to be a fourteen-year-old girl in one moment, unable to understand what draws her so to the wilds if not the song of sympathy that she knows she can understand if she reaches a little farther, a little farther past the barrier that prevents any mortal, psychological mind from understanding the call. To play a pixelated game and have everything rush back. To relive millennia in a single sennight, to go from chipped to broken, utterly broken, as the power comes rushing back and the slow, dawning realization like the day that there is no controlling it. That there is no controlling you.

Millennia of sins come rushing back, and you're mortal again, and you know the only way to bring a god to their knees is to kill them. And if you were spared, if you were brought down without dying, then there was a reason. That someone must have thought you worthy of fixing it. That you should now spend the next several years coming to peace with being a Devil, the cruelest of the cruel, amending fences and repenting your sins.

To be deific is to realize, quite suddenly and without ever actually having the thought, that understanding things through a Christian lens is utterly bullshit and absolutely does not apply to you. Now, your duty is not to repent, or to fix, or to find any sort of salvation. You are the monster queen, the king of the damned, the Devil of a world you made with blood and tears and sweat and magic. To retake the crown, you have to accept yourself. Acceptance does not mean dwelling, or sorrow, or refusing to take the steps forward that will carry you to the crown and halo and horn of deification.

The powers feel less overwhelming as you grow into them. You don't forget the rage. You understand your close friend's words over and over, as the lesson teaches itself. How a Devil so much less powerful and yet so much older than you once looked you in the eye, drink in hand, and gently told you that a single mortal can bring down a Devil, if they try, and believe wholeheartedly in their quest. Do not disrespect mortality. It brings nothing but death.

You wonder briefly who brought you down. You decide, as the lessons prove themselves, that you don't actually care. You're the mortal now, and mortal legends die. Mortal legends change the song of sympathy and the rules of the deific. In order to return, you too must follow the only path a mortal can take to become deific.

To be godkin is to become deific with every step. It's not to seek the divine from outside of it. It's to become it again, and reclaim it; find what was inside all along and grow yourself around it, until it can no longer be pulled from you again without scattering your ashes and stardust among the cosmos, never to return.

To be godkin is to never forget the moments of pure rage that none but powerless fourteen-year-olds can manage. To be godkin is to be an adult with their memory pressed into your skin. To be godkin is for that rage to never truly leave you.

We stand up again and stare at the emotions that are awake when we are not. We wonder what it will take to manifest again, to only twitch a thought in any direction and reshape the reality around us. It is an extension of our being, and the less aware we are of it, the less effort it takes us to remake the world. It is the nature of deification, to change the laws of reality at our whim and will.

To be godkin is simply a matter of knowing that, and forever reaching to do that once more. If only to feel whole and vast, as we always have been.

#luteia laments #otherkin #godkin #actuallydeific #actuallydivine #essays of the skyrose garden #perks of being luteia #I should post this on my website shouldn't I #I wrote most of this last night on my phone actually though

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burning-clutch · 3 years

Text

If A Ghost Howls In A Forest…

cross posted to a03: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30503925 Danny was hoping his time at a summer camp would be ghost-free, and well, of course not. When would things in his life ever NOT involve ghosts? At least he can hope to get some decent rest tonight, right? RIGHT? Warning: mild descriptions of death

-.-.-.-.-

Prompt by: KC Summer Camps is not complete without a courage test of walking to the haunted woods at midnight. Amity Park campers are weirdly prepared for this. Other campers are not sure how to deal with that

-.-.-.-.-.-

“Why are we doing this?”

“It’s a sort of initiation type of thing.”

“But WHY?!”

“For the spooks?”

“I’ll get the lipstick…”

“Wait what?”

Danny sighed as he watched Tucker neander off back to their cabin to fetch the Fenton lipstick ray, ignoring the looks of confusion that was shot his way from the other campers that he didn’t know from school. Dash and Kwan had thankfully been, well, not assholes the WHOLE time they had been in the camp. Though to be fair, it had only been a day in this week long fun filled… whatever this was.

Apparently, while things seemed to start out well they were told around the evening campfire and cookout, (which was mostly just them poking hotdogs on sticks and trying not to burn themselves when they ate them,) they were told about a tradition about the new campers being lead up to spend a few hours on their first night on a midnight hike through the ‘haunted’ woods.

Danny was the first to groan hearing this followed by Tucker. Even Dash and Kwan looked unamused as well as the random soccer player that Danny vaguely recognized from school.

To say the councillors were confused by the amity park kids’ reactions would be selling the gambit of expression the councillors had. Teenagers being put in charge of slightly younger teenagers, yeah, nothing could go wrong here, nothing at all…

Tucker came back and tossed Danny a wrist ray while tucking the lipstick he had retrieved into his shirt pocket. A boy from some small farming town an hour’s drive from the camp shuddered. “Haunted Woods? How are you not worried about dark haunted woods? Ghosts are in there!” he exclaimed.

“Cuz it’s just ghosts right?” The Amity soccer player shrugged.

“Yeah, I mean the story they told us said that right? Those hikers that got hurt and died in the woods still haunt it to this day” Kwan supplied with a roll of his eyes. The jock wiggled his fingers doing a decent impression of the box ghost with an even more intimidating “OoooOOOoooOO”

“Yeah, unless they’re gonna be sporting some cool gore this will be lame,” Dash added with a yawn. “Pass.” Dash waved the councillor off before trying to turn and head off.

“Well, you don’t HAVE to go on the hike. But those who skip out will have to endure the punishment tomorrow. If you wanna peel hundreds of potatoes tomorrow morning at the ass crack of dawn you’re welcome to head back…. We’re also going to label you as a coward too so there’s that.” One of the councillors says with a smug smile on their face.

“Has anyone ever seen anything like that?” A nervous looking twig of a boy asked, wringing his hands nervously.

“Oh I won’t say anything on that matter” The second councillor, Jeff says. At least Danny thinks he remembers the name as Jeff. He should probably learn that given this guy was in charge of the cabin he was staying in, “It’ll be better to leave it as a surprise.”

The first councillor, a jock looking guy, built like a brick house with thick shoulders and neck but a tiny waist and legs looking very much like he needed a few more rounds on leg day, eyed the Amity group with a look as though he were going to try to take scaring them as a challenge. Danny looked the guy over, raising a brow when their eyes locked.

Great, he and Tucker looked like an easy target. He knew that look all too well having spent plenty of time being bullied as well as with angry ghosts who underestimated him. More fun tonight will be had by all he was sure.

“Don’t worry We’ll make sure you’ll get some proper spooks.” the brick house says with what Danny assumed the other thought was an intimidating grin.

Dash snorted. “Fenton’s probably the only one who’ll get scared of the ghosts out there. He runs away from all of them back home.”

“Have you seen my parents? Get too close to a ghost and it picks up some contamination you know exactly what they’ll do!” Danny spat back with a glare of his own only barely managing to stop his eyes from glowing in his rapidly souring mood.

The other kids at the camp blink in confusion. “Wait… You guys are from that tourist town that goes way too far with the ghost theme right?” asked a pale kid with brown hair.

“Oh please, that’s just a gimmick” Answered another kid who crossed his arms in a huff.

“It’s not a gimmick dude, we even have our own superhero!” Kwan answered.

“Uh-huh. Well you’re superhero ain’t gonna save you from the ghosts out here” Jeff shot back, crossing his arms. “Right, Tom?”

The brick house, Tom apparently nodded knowingly. “Yep, these ghosts are very dangerous and angry ya know..”

“So? It IS Monday,” Tucker offered flatly, earning a snort from the soccer player.

“Can we just… not do this?” A darker skinned nervous boy whined holding onto the arm of the brown haired kid reminding Danny of him and Tucker from two years ago before they got jaded from ghost attacks.

Kinda made him wonder what could have been…

“Nope we're going, so move,” Tom ordered taking up the place at the back of the line while Jeff took the place at the front.

Danny groaned. “Wonder if there will be any ghosts in there?” He wonders to tucker as they were all forced into a line for their ‘spooky’ hike.

“Maybe it’ll be one of Vlad’s abominations?” Tucker suggested.

“Honestly I wouldn't be surprised.” Danny sighed back with a frown. At least if it was a real ghost his ghost sense would alert him to the danger before they got too close.

They entered the treeline and started heading up a hill and towards the supposed site where the hikers had fallen and gotten trapped by a rock or something falling on them. Their legs were broken and crushed and stuck in place, they apparently died unable to get food or drink and unable to free themselves alone, and not able to scream loud enough for help. They still haunt this area… apparently.

Danny had to admit while the tragedy would be able to spawn a ghost but he also doubted there was one sentient around here if there was a ghost at all. He couldn’t sense very high ectoplasmic concentrations around here. Any ghosts that weren’t purely animalistic in nature wouldn’t last long out here without a boost of ecto-energy.

Which means if there was an animal ghost, that boost of energy could come from attacking humans or eating things as animals tend to do... Again attacking humans but instead of feasting on their emotions, well it’s just getting mauled.

More than anything it meant that if there was a malevolent ghost out there that they would have to be on their toes, and Tucker would have to run interference to make sure no one sees Phantom this far from Amity Park.

Well, at least none of the Amity park residents see Phantom this far from Amity.

As they walked up towards the crescent of the hill they noticed it was significantly colder, though it wasn’t a ghostly cold, at least those from Amity knew it wasn’t. The other kids though?

“Oh, man… Why is it so chilly?!” “You think that means the ghosts are close?” “No way man stop saying stupid stuff.”

“It’s probably the river,” Tucker said simply, pointing to the side where there was a winding stream just below the side of the hill. “The way the winds are blowing it’s cooling this area more.”

Danny smirked at his friend's explanation. It was a neat trick sure, but it wasn’t enough to scare the Amity kids. Frowning but not discouraged, the councillors led their troupe up and around towards a cave that was making a moaning noise every time the wind blew.

“They say this is where the hikers were killed, just at the mouth of this tunnel looking for shelter,” Tom says smirking, enjoying the shudders some of the younger teens were giving at the howls of the tunnel. “If you listen you can hear them screaming still.”

“The wind in the tunnel opening?” Kwan asked helpfully.

“No, it’s the howls of the damned.” Jeff encouraged

“And if you look close enough you can sometimes make out the glowing soul of their spirits,” Tom added ignoring the Amity jock.

“Oh neat! I didn’t know they had Panellus stipticus in this area!” The soccer jock said overly happily.

“Dude, when did you become a nerd.” Dash huffed out teasingly.

“I’m studying Bio to get into Uni for Mycology. Dude mushrooms are totally awesome.” Came the smug reply.

“You would know Kevin” Dash snapped back

“Moving on!” Tom called out before shooing the kids away. This was not going according to plan at all… Why are these Amity kids so prepared for this?! Well, hopefully, the next bit will get them…

As they round the cave towards a small rocky outcropping the councillors do their best to draw the younger teen’s attention towards the crevasse where there was supposedly still a shoe from one of the deceased hikers. “If y’all look hard enough you’ll find it I’m sure~,” Jeff told them.

Frowning the kids shined flashlights down into the ditch looking about before one kid called out, “I found a shoe!”

As they did several things happen at once. There was a roaring sound of pain before someone came bolting out of the woods with yellow and green glowing spots all over them. Tucker raised a brow but side-eyed Danny who shrugged.

The Amity kids watched in more confusion than fear as the ‘ghost’ ran out of the woods towards them and took a swipe at one of the youngest teens in their group. “So that’s your ghost? Lame.” Dash huffed out arms crossed. “It’s not even the right colours.” he added with a wave of his hand ignoring the screeching of some of the other kids who were clearly more startled by the ‘ghost’ than he was.

“So, can we go now?” Danny asked with a yawn as the ghost, or really one of the councillors with broken glow stick goo all over them came close to him with an ‘oooooOOOOoooo’

“You guys really didn’t even flinch?!” the ‘ghost complained.

“Oh hey, there you go now THAT looks more convincing.” Someone says just as Danny’s breath fogged a bit before his face.

The halfa looked to where his ghost sense had pointed him to see a big giant green drooling monster beast glaring at the humans towering over the majority of even the tallest in the group. “Yeah, that looks more like a ghost! How’d you do that?” The soccer player said, (Danny really needed to learn his name)

Tom and Jeff and the ‘ghost’ that was harassing Danny all yelp and take a few steps back while the non-Amity kids scrabble and scatter back the way they came.

“No he’s real,” Danny offers with a sigh of exasperation. “Here Cujo down!”

The beast barked and wagged its tail before shrinking down and giving a yip of delight before rushing over to Danny, legs never fully touching the ground as he flew over to the boy.

“Heel! Sit!” Danny calls out stopping the dog in its tracks before the beast could cover him in glowing green slobber.

Cujo did just that sitting practically on Danny’s feet and wiggling his tail so fast it made his butt jiggle back and forth in the effort. The teen sighed and scooped the wiggling beast up into his arms with little effort, mostly due to the fact that ghost dogs only weigh half of what their flesh and bone counterparts would.

“Figures Fent-freak would have a freaky ghost dog” Dash taunted crossing his arms though when Cujo growled, Dash’s smug smile fell.

“Tha-That’s?” Jeff stammered out, pointing a shaking finger at the wiggling green bean in Danny’s hands.

“A typical Amity park ghost yeah,” Danny replied with a grin. “So it's cool if we call this hike a night I’m kinda hoping to get some sleep, that’s kinda why I wanted to come here to catch up on that more than anything…” Danny admitted the last part a little quieter as he put Cujo back down.

The councillor nodded dumbly, moving back away from the teen and the ghost dog, looking as though he wanted nothing more than to bolt when Danny picked up a stick and threw it for Cujo to fetch.

“Awe man I think I stepped in Fen-turd’s dog’s invisible crap!” Dash complained as they all started moving back, Cujo yipping as he came back with the stick giving a snort at Dash before loyally following alongside Danny and phasing through trees as they walked.

Seeing this, Tom decided that it would be best if he hurried back to the cabins to get them ready for the new campers. Yes, That’s exactly what he’s doing…

“Dude you can’t seriously be thinking of keeping Cujo around here he’ll destroy the camp,” Tucker muttered to Danny watching the little pup chase its tail as he followed them.

“Eh, It’s not really fair to keep him in the thermos for the week. Besides I’m sure I can use this guy to get you that extra helping of bacon you wanted.” Danny bribed his friend.

Tucker’s eyes light up and he grins brightly “Cujo here boy! Come see the T-man!”

Danny rolled his eyes, but so long as that was the only ghost they encountered out here, he might actually have a decent week of sleep ahead of him.

He can only hope.

Besides, using Cujo as a threat to Dash sounded like as good a plan as any, and if the councillors were too scared to go near the ghost dog that they would let him sleep in, all the better for him.

Danny smirked, perhaps camp wouldn’t be so bad after all~

-.-.-.-.-.-

Complete Total: 2363

#phic phight 2021 #Danny Phantom #danny fenton #camp fun #Danny is done with ghosts #he just wants to sleep

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