#husk likes his men violent and honest

[huskingthatdust]

"now which of version of angel dust will be the object of your affection?"

Porn version:

Husk: nah

Flirty version:

Husk: nope

Horny version:

Husk: absolutely not.

Covered in blood, holding multiple machine guns with a black eye, and so much confidence:

Husk: HELLO SAILOR

#huskerdust #hazbin hotel #hazbin angel dust #hazbin husk #i hope this makes sense 😂 #i came up with this dumb bit at one in the morning #but you cant tell me thats not what happened #husk likes his men violent and honest #hes so real for that honestly

[kogo-dogo]

TESFest Day 2 - Magic

i.e., my Nerevarine is the worst Nerevarine.

---

“Walk faster.”

The words come out so suddenly that Dasrazel almost doesn’t know what to think of them, aside from the fact that they reek of alcohol. He stands, motionless and bemused, in the middle of the dusty streets of Ald’ruhn, beneath moons that are full and as bright as magelight. Even without his vampiric sight, he’d have been able to see the looks on the faces of the men and mer racing in the opposite direction of his friend, all of them either aghast or intrigued. They're rushing toward the most recent disaster for the sake of having something up their sleeves to keep the gossip mill turning. 

Karsaga looms over them all, head-and-shoulders above the plainly clothed paupers, pushing through them as though braving a rushing river. They bump him, but hardly acknowledge him; he’s an outlander, and that means he doesn’t mean much to many. It’s surprising, considering they all seem to instinctively give Dasrazel himself a wide berth, and he dimly wonders if it’s because they can tell he’s a little… off.

Then, the smell hits him, and he realizes he’s not the only thing peculiar on this night. His nostrils flare and he tilts his head as though it would give him any more information than he already has. It’s strange, acrid, but with a hint of sweetness. Like a hearth, Dasrazel muses, or a–

Oh no.

He turns around in a less-than-graceful motion, made all the worse by a Bosmer who isn’t paying attention. He collides with him, utters an apology, and keeps jogging in the direction of the odor, which he now notices is trapped in a thick, choking haze of black. It spills from the top of the Guild of Mages, from cracks in its ancient husk. The wooden sign sways violently in front of a slung-open door, which spews just as many sorcerers as it does plumes of bitter black. There’s shouting, indistinct voices consumed by the quiet murmur of the gawking locals, but Dasrazel can pick out enough that he can hear blame being thrown around like darts.

It was Edwinna’s fault, cries one, but their reasoning is eaten by nearby gasps as something violently pops inside the guildhall and makes the earth tremble. Or maybe Anarenen, who is presumably an alchemist considering that the next words concern a “thrice-damned calcinator.” Meanwhile, he catches a glimpse of a middle-aged Dunmer woman, wide-eyed and frothing. She is mouthing something and looking around like a half-crazed beast, as if she knows exactly what happened and what she will do once she gets her hands on the culprit. She raises on her toes to see about the crowd, and Dasrazel ducks down instinctively to avoid her gaze.

Beneath his mask, his eyes narrow. A quick glimpse over his shoulder reveals Karsaga has almost vanished into an alleyway, and so he pursues him. Quickly. Perhaps too quickly, judging from the way he is being watched.

“What did you do?” Dasrazel hisses as he closes the gap between them. He hopes nobody hears him as he ducks into the narrow alley and slinks up closer, to the point he’s almost stepping on Karsaga’s twitching tail. The question comes out less angry than he feels like it should, sounding more like a disappointed farmer scolding his dog than an allegation of arson. Karsaga barely takes the time to acknowledge him beyond a quick glance back and a bull-like huff. Soon, he’s off again like a giant, indignant child.

One that is stopped when Dasrazel ducks under his elbow and positions himself in front of him. He cranes his head up to glare at Karsaga, which is an entirely new sensation. As an Altmer, he’s never really had to look up at anyone before, but a Pahmar—even a malnourished runt—is bigger than any high elf he’d ever known.

Broader, too, and likely stronger in some sense, a brute who could shove past him with ease if he decided he didn’t want to deal with him. Yet, Karsaga stops and lets out a sigh, as if the alley had been well and truly blocked by an actual, honest-to-Azura obstacle. He rolls his good eye and angles his head up and away. It seems that looking Dasrazel in the face would be the most excruciating thing in the world.

“I didn’t do anything. Let’s go get drinks.”

Dasrazel doesn’t even have to say anything. He relaxes his posture, crosses his arms, widens his stance, and waits. There is something strangely satisfying about watching Karsaga squirm, the khajiit frantically looking for anything that could hold his interest or spark a conversation. There’s not much in the way of good diversions, though; the only object in the alley with them is an unsealed urn that smells of ash yams. There’s a decent chance both of them can accurately guess why that is, and a better chance that Karsaga knows that a conversation about tubers won't buy him much time.

After a moment, Karsaga sighs. He’s relenting, and Dasrazel can tell even if he doesn’t say it. So, he leans in close, arms still crossed, and practically growls.

“What. Did. You. Do?”

“Nothing!” Karsaga barks. “I went to the Mage’s Guild!”

“And?” “I bought some soul gems.”

“And?”

“I borrowed a very nice copy of Withershins from the priest. Leather bound. First edition. You can practically feel the author’s hand when you pick it up.”

“And you did absolutely nothing else? Nothing like, say, casting a fire spell while drunk? Setting a bed on fire? Shoving an enchanter into a fire pit because they charged too much?”

Again, his tone comes out far calmer than it should, but Karsaga’s eyes widen as though he had been screamed down by Molag Bal himself. His snout wrinkles with feigned indignation as he responds, “Well, I never. You know better than anyone that I am a professional with the utmost respect for my fellow mages.”

“Of course. And that’s why you have already threatened to throw the enchanter into the fire pit, correct? Several times, in fact. Just last week, you--”

“Oh, stop acting like I’m out of line. She’s a price gouger.”

“No, she’s an enchanter. It's a highly specialized craft. You of all people should respect that. You used to do her job in Cheydinhal, correct?”

“Yes, but outside Guild contract. And those bastards shut me down good and hard, what with their thrice-damned monopoly and…” Karsaga trails off, then shoots a quick glance down at Dasrazel. “I’m not helping my case, am I?”

Dasrazel figures that silence is a better response than anything he could ever say. Judging from the stiff, uncomfortable expression painted across Karsaga’s face, he’s correct.

“It was a barrel,” Karsaga finally spits after a long, tense pause. Dasrazel’s eyes narrow.

“A barrel? What do you mean ‘a barrel?’”

“I broke into a storage closet. I may have cast a firestorm spell. It may have actually been several barrels. And some sacks of kresh fiber.”

Dasrazel blinks. His head tilts and he examines Karsaga as if he’s grown a second head. When his brain sputters to a halt, unable to wrap itself around the logic for doing such a thing, he finally whispers, weak and defeated and frustrated, “Why?”

There is not hesitation in the response. Karsaga's mouth curls up in a growl and his fists clench. He leans down almost eye-to-eye with Dasrazel and lets out a low growl that rumbles through his ribs.

“Do you know how much Tanar charged me for these soul gems? They’re not even good quality. Look at them! Blasted things aren’t worth the five-hundred drakes she was charging. They can barely hold the soul of a rat! But, no, she had to charge me a ‘nuisance fee’ because she ‘doesn’t like me’ and I’m a ‘menace.’”

Dasrazel pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. Despite the fact he no longer needs to breathe, he takes a moment to do so anyway. Inhale, exhale, slow and steady and deep. It almost feels like his heart is pumping again, and he can’t tell if it’s the air filling his lifeless lungs or the anxiety creeping up his spine..

“She’s lucky,” Karsaga continues, the dam obviously having burst open. “I’m bound by Imperial law in this incarnation. Do you know what I would have done if this was still the First Era? It wouldn’t be some tiny mage fire in a storage room. I was a warlord, Dasrazel. I razed whole Nord camps when those bastards came to take Resdayn from me and, in my mind, ripping off gods-damned Nerevar Indoril because he is a menace is just as—”

Dasrazel says nothing in response and, in fact, no longer hears it. Instead, he loops around Karsaga, grabs him by the sides, and begins to silently steer him away. Past the alley, past the nearby residences, aimed directly at a gap in the crumbling sandstone wall surrounding the city. The silt strider moans in the distance and something roars behind him, eliciting a gasp from the peasantry that can be heard from the other end of Ald’ruhn.

At the very least, Dasrazel knows a nearby tomb where they can hide before daybreak comes. Hopefully, one that is still as empty as it was the last time he took refuge in its halls. And as Karsaga continues complaining, the odor of greef spilling from his maw, Dasrazel has another hope, too.

He hopes that the guards will forget them in a few months’ time. After all, it would be a pain in the ass to be permanently banned from a second major city in one years’ time.

#tesfest22 #tes #elder scrolls #morrowind #nerevarine #but like if he was the worst #day 2

[faimrpg]

Hello, and welcome to member appreciation time! Every week, I’ll be posting a snippet from everyone’s blogs that I felt was jaw-droppingly fantastic, as both a thanks to you for being here and putting your character on the dashboard, and so other members can appreciate your artistry as well. There is no doubt in my mind that writing is, perhaps, the most grueling fucking hobby in the world. It’s hard to do, difficult to grapple with, and often time consuming, but the fantastic part is that we do it anyways, and everyone else gets the opportunity to read it. I don’t want this blurb to get too long, so I’ll be shutting up shortly, but I’d like say from the bottom of my heart that I am grateful that you’re all here!

AGRIPPINE: Who is this noble who speaks with more authority than Agrippine has in their entire body, who calls them champion yet treats them like a child? It’s hardly an offense to their pride, of which they have so little. Even they can’t deny they have swum too far into the deep end, over their head and out of their league whilst at court. No noble lies awake in the dark, haunted by what they do not remember and what they may never find.

BEAU: It’s against her very nature to step out of the shadows and into the opening, to be so vulnerable. Her heart is racing, at the sight of the ghost in front of them as their footsteps grow closer and closer. Closer than they’ve been in so long, there’s no doubt in her mind now as she catches surprised but so familiar brown eyes.

CECILE: It is still a regular occurrence that Cecile brings flowers to her mother’s grave, and shares a peaceful silence with her final resting place. She still talks to her, sometimes. But these days, more often than not her worries are not things she can say aloud, even in the quiet of the graveyard, for fear of who may be listening.

CYRIL: She wanted out of there. Cyril can still feel the tension she felt back in that room surrounding her, even as she put as much distance between her and that place. She’s used to gilded halls and marble floors, not blood pools growing bigger by the heartbeat. Her bubble had burst and Cyril was afraid.

DEGARE: Degaré knows well that anything whispered over a flagon is tricky, fickle, maybe even downright false. It could be fact, could be fiction—himself, he doesn’t much care. Whether the honest truth or little more than a myth men tell themselves, he knows one party likely to be interested.

GISELE: Surely, the word Lady has never been uttered with such distaste, so jarringly, transparently through gritted teeth in an otherwise lyrical performance, like a pianist striking a discordant note midway through a scale. “Is your nobility nothing more than a hat you don only when convenient and matching your dress? Have you been attending Court only to gawk at your own gowns, as though this were nothing but a showroom for your wares?”

HELENE: She knows what Helene has done, all of the sins and all of the misery exacted on behalf of Celestine, but she could never truly understand that power was merely secondary to order. Order kept her lands green, order kept violent warfare on the streets, and order prevented yet another King of Fools from emerging underneath the rot and filth that seemed to only well up in the streets where the nobles dared to tread.

ISEULT: Names had never been his forte— he’d sooner know her by her blade of choice, in all the places it’d previously clashed with his. As was the Guild and Underworld rapport: the honest sellsword awaited their turn at the billet bank, the successful one poached theirs. No contract passed without protest, and Iseult knew by sound alone he’d had the (mis)fortune of crossing theirs in the field before.

LIANE: Undoubtedly, they take her for a fool, nearly retching on their own tongue in the hopes of cradling Liane’s undivided attention in the palm of their hand like a child who wishes to thieve shining stars from the night sky. She has half a mind to disregard the act, to leave well enough alone, but a trail of vines thorn around her blackened heart as she teeters on the brink of hunger, and as luck would have it, Sidonie Dupont appears to be ripe for the taking.

MATTHIEU: Matthieu gnashes his teeth together. He catches his lip in the press: vice-grip, vice-sanction. He thinks about his friends, now notches in the frame of his bed; crosses and circles, sleeping together with the rest of his kills. He thinks about the weight of Leon’s hand. The way it perched on the back of his neck, the tight sound in his throat when he whispered into his skin. Maybe we’ll go somewhere, you and I. What do you say? After this is over.

PATRICE: The adrenaline had kept his mind far from the stinging feeling of the cut across his bicep, but now, the warmth of blood flowing down his skin, a calm river compared to the pounding of his heart, that made it feel as if his veins were roaring rapids in contrast.

REGIS: Long strides take him past rows and rows of soldiers who have made themselves into the shape of ornamental decorations. They do not blink. They do not breathe. They dare not move. An occasion of some kind has called Alain here today, thus his presence, but Régis is here with other intentions.

SAINTE: Sainte knows that to outsiders, her morals may look skewed. How can one take a man’s head off his body, and still feel wrong telling a lie? Perhaps she’s balancing things however she can. Some things, she feels, have been set out before her by Odeline, so very clearly. Other decisions are hers to make alone, and feel, therefore, much more muddy.

SAVATIER: A wild, young world is often violent; but the bloodshed committed in the name of order has always left Savatier with a strange taste. He’d live freely before the displacement, knowing no rulers nor loyalty aside from that to the earth’s phenomena, and Odeline. Odd, to be asked to pledge similar faith in an Empress who has sacrificed nothing besides familial blood.

SIDONIE: If one looked closely enough, they would notice the fire brimming in their gaze— a stilling anger that they attempted to reel in as they watched her, completely unmoving. They loathed the way the nobles looked upon her as if she were their courtly pet. As if she’d been there for to sole purpose of their entertainment, and not a living, breathing human. They would never know her— never learn her in the way she had, but this Violaine did not mind.

VIOLAINE: If only I could spend a lifetime impressing you, they do not say, because admitting such would turn what was previously palpable, present occasionally in her lingering gaze, or even the hesitation of her whispers, into something tactile, permanently cauterized into the webs of their affections. So soon they would not sully their mind with doubt.

YVON: From within her sleeve a stretch of white is drawn, the watery silk reminiscent of the shucking of milky, pale meat from a sea creature’s gold shell. Yvon extends the square in pinched fingers, pearlescent and thin as it hangs in the air between them. Here, a thing from within my husk.

ZHENYA: Such was the nature of the tenuous push and pull by which they were bound; in her furious suspicion and flaring spite, Gisele burned, and with his chilled apathy and callous disregard, Zhenya only ever stoked the flames.

#faimquotes #long post / #no i will NOT BE PUTTING THIS UNDER A READ MORE

[imaginaryelle]

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 (Thanks, as ever, to @morphia-writes and @miyuki4s for betaing!)

*

The transportation array drops them in a small clearing with a flash of fire at their feet, a few lingering notes from Chenqing, and only slight disorientation. Lan Wangji has read that the use of the teleportation talisman is heavily taxing to the spirit and can often cause physical disruption in the user, but Wei Ying shows no sign of pain or confusion, and nor do Jin Rulan or Liu Weixin, who, if the array’s design can be trusted, also contributed spiritual power to the effort. Jin Rulan even manages to look somewhat bored by the process.

“I don’t understand why we all have to come look at whatever this is,” he says as soon as Wei Ying lowers his hands and the glow of the array at their feet fades. “Why can’t we just—” he cuts himself off and stares hard at Wen Sizhui, who wears an expression of distinct discomfort. “What?”

Wen Sizhui bites his lips and looks to Wei Ying, who has gone still.

“The buildings were burned down,” Zhou Xiuying reports quietly.

Lan Wangji follows her line of sight and strides quickly through the trees, but he can already smell the smoke in the air, lingering and acrid. He reaches the edge of the forest and sees only ash and rock in the large space where the compound once sat. There are no smoldering embers and no half-burnt husks to mark the structures; only lines of soot and the pattern of paving stones show any indication of the size or use of the space.

Wei Ying grabs his sleeve, and he realizes he’s walked right up to the edge of the ward’s inscription.

“Don’t touch it.” Wei Ying guides him back slightly. “How many people were here?” he asks.

“None.” The guards were dead when he left. Still, Wei Ying obviously has doubts. He raises Chenqing to his lips and plays a low and beguiling melody, coaxing and haunting by turns.

On the other side of the ward, ashes swirl in still air.

Rise.

Drift gently around ghostly faces—two, then three, the four, then more, until seven ghosts are drawing themselves together along the inside of the ward. They ripple as they cross over the etched lines, but seem to suffer no other effects; perhaps it is truly inert now, or deliberately broken.

Wei Ying cocks his head to the side and whistles, sharp and commanding. The ghosts rearrange themselves. There are men and women, some are old, others in the prime of life. Wei Ying turns and looks expectantly at Zhou Xiuying.

“What do you see?”

“They all died violently and without proper funerary rites,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest, her sword gripped tight in her hand. “They can’t move on in peace.”

Wei Ying nods and shifts his attention to Liu Weixin, who presses his lips hard together and squints at the ghosts, as if that will improve his assessment. He sketches a talisman in front of his face and pushes it outward. Each spirit takes on a dull red glow, strongest at one end of the line and diminishing with each ghoul in succession.

“You’ve put them in order by the strength of their resentment,” Liu Weixin determines. Relief spreads over his face as Wei Ying nods again.

Jin Rulan scowls and stares off at the trees instead of meeting Wei Ying’s gaze.

“You wanted to go night hunting,” Wei Ying says, as if this is a familiar impasse.

“This isn’t night hunting,” Jin Rulan protests, waving his arm at the line of ghosts. “There’s no hunting involved.”

Wei Ying waits.

“That one suffered lingchi” Jin Rulan huffs, gesturing at a ghoul who bears innumerable cuts on his face and hands. It’s an unusual and harsh sentence, carried out for only the highest of crimes. Lan Wangji finds looking at the marks difficult; it is too easy to remember waking to the smell of blood and rot. Jin Rulan, he notes, also averts his eyes quickly. “And that one was drowned. Happy now?”

Wei Ying just grins at him and turns to Wen Sizhui.

“These ghosts were probably suppressed when the ward was active, and the fire was built into the design.” He points to three portions of the etched diagrams. “Whoever was here, burning the buildings was always part of their plan.”

“Mn. Make a copy of the ward; it might be useful later.” Wei Ying looks back along the line of ghosts. “Shall we try Inquiry?” he asks, and wheels on his heel to face Lan Wangji.

“I cannot,” Lan Wangji admits. Even if he carried a guqin, the spiritual power required is currently beyond his grasp.

Wei Ying’s face scrunches up. “I don’t suppose you know a transposition for dixi? Or perhaps Zewu-jun has one for xiao?”

There is no such transposition. “Inquiry requires seven strings.”

Wei Ying sighs. “Well, it was worth a try. They’re not too talkative. I think some of them had their tongues cut out.” Wei Ying turns back to Jin Ling. “How do you suggest finding out more about them?”

“Evocation requires a physical medium.” Jin Ling’s nose wrinkles. “Maybe Trace?”

“Could be helpful,” Wei Ying agrees. “Do you all have paper?”

Lan Wangji watches with interest as they produce paper and grind three grades of ink, from a watery gray wash to a thick, rich black.

“One of yours?” he asks, as Wei Ying steps back to watch his disciples work. But Wei Ying shakes his head.

“He Sect. They introduced it at a discussion conference a few years ago, for determining a spirit’s location of birth and death, along with their movements in the week before they died.”

It’s clever. Without a physical medium or sufficient knowledge of the guqin, determining more of a spirit’s history could lend valuable insight to pacification efforts. A spirit’s family or the site of a disturbed grave might be found much more quickly. Lan Wangji nods approval, and Wei Ying smiles lightly.

“Come watch,” he says as Zhou Xiuying and Wen Sizhui quickly settle cross-legged beside their prepared paper and ink. Jin Ling and Liu Weixin are only a few moments behind.

It is an interesting process. The ink blooms over the pages, gradations of definition outlining mountains and forests, roads and lakes and even crisp, dark characters—town names and Sect enclaves. A trail of footprints mark the last few days of a life.

The results are mixed. Only two of the ghouls seem to have died here, a few days’ journey caught between Moling and Gusu—a man bearing a cursemark that covers his neck and torso, and a woman who shows clear signs of death by qi deviation. The lingchi victim’s map shows a death in Yueyang. The drowned ghost met his end in Caiyi. The others record deaths in Tanzhou, and Yingchuan and Qishan.

Jin Ling glares at his papers. “This can’t be right,” he says. “Maybe it didn’t work.”

“It worked,” Zhou Xiuying insists. “Trace doesn’t allow spirits to lie. It’s a physical record of the soul, not a question.”

“Perhaps someone moved them for a night hunt?” Wen Sizhui sounds doubtful, even as he voices the thought.

“Perhaps,” Wei Ying agrees, but his eyes are on Lan Wangji. It is not difficult to follow his suspicions. Liang Feihong was desperate enough to risk two souls for vengeance. Something as simple and commonplace as a planned nighthunt is unlikely to prompt such an act.

“What do we do with them now?” Liu Weixin asks.

Wei Ying’s face twists as he examines the ghouls again. “A few might be pacified by offerings, but the rest are too bound to revenge.”

“So, banishment?” Jin Rulan asks, a talisman already held between two fingers.

Wei Ying considers for a moment. His eyes slide back to Lan Wangji.

“How many spirit bags do we have?” he asks his disciples.

Zhou Xiuying, Liu Weixing and Wen Sizhui between them produce four such bags.

“Build a shrine,” Wei Ying directs his nephew, “We can’t offer burial, but we can do that much. Perhaps some only want to know they’re remembered. We’ll see how many are left afterward.”

Jin Rulan’s shoulders slump, but he does as he’s been told and soon there is a small offering of their combined supply of travel food, a selection of loquats and a few handfuls of paper money to burn.

Wei Ying steps close and stands warm at Lan Wangji’s shoulder as Wen Sizhui starts the fire.

“Does burning paper money work?” he asks, soft enough that their companions won’t hear. “Did you get any?”

“It is not a Lan custom,” Lan Wangji tells him, because it isn’t. He doesn’t elaborate. He does not know how to put into words the vagueness of his thoughts on his own death, the lack of distinct memory combined with the iron-hard certainty that he did die.

“I burned some for you.” Wei Ying is watching the flames dance in the steel bowl Liu Weixin had produced for the purpose. “I—” his mouth snaps shut with a click and he steps away, careful space reinserted between them. Lan Wangji watches as he crosses his arms over his chest, clearly discomfited.

“Thank you.” It is … gratifying, in a way, to know that Wei Ying mourned him.

Wei Ying shrugs the thanks away. “Doesn’t matter much if you didn’t get it.” He coughs. “Looks like we’ll have to take care of a few of these the hard way after all,” he says, nodding at the spirits. Only one, the weakest, has responded to the offering. Lan Wangji lets the change of subject pass without remark.

“The ones who died here might be most useful,” he says instead. “They carry some of the strongest resentment, and likely saw their murderers. Xiongzhang could ask after the focus of their vengeance.”

“And Zewu-jun is too honest to hide their answers,” Wei Ying agrees, nodding. “Will you go to Gusu then?” he asks. “Or can I tempt you to Yiling first? I’ll give you the talismans I have made, of course, but in Yiling we could try other methods, and Wen Qing might know—” he talks faster with every word, like he thinks he has to be convincing.

“Yiling is fine,” Lan Wangji assures him. The curse’s implications eat at his thoughts, and he would like to have more evidence than a selection of angry souls to present to his brother. And of course, Yiling has the benefit of Wei Ying’s presence.

“Oh.” Wei Ying smiles, something tentative in the expression. “Good then.”

“Wei-zongzhu?” Liu Weixin approaches them. “Which spirits should we keep?” he asks, twirling his pair of bags around his fingers.

Collecting four ghouls does not take long—one for each bag, Wei Ying tells his disciples, as these spirits are more likely to tear into each other than not. Then he pairs them off and frees the remaining two ghouls from Chenqing’s control, for suppression and elimination. Jin Rulan in particular takes evident satisfaction in the act; Wen Sizhui, in contrast, is the most efficient in his movements, and Zhou Xiuying’s sword work betrays her He Sect training.

“It’s a shame we couldn’t get anything else,” Wei Ying says as Liu Weixin dispatches the last spirit, a grasping ghost with needle teeth and a hollow in its belly. “Though I suppose we should count ourselves lucky there was anything left at all. If these souls were gathered for a purpose, they should have been dealt with before the fire.” He holds out the collection of spirit bags with a curious quirk of his eyebrow, and Lan Wangji carefully adds them to his qiankun pouch.

“Lianfang-zun has such a clear memory,” Wei Ying sighs, “He hardly writes anything down if it’s not official business. If this really is his doing, it’ll be difficult to prove.”

Lan Wangji nods. Even in his own memories, on occasions when he knew for fact that Jin Guangyao exaggerated a recollection, or misspoke, it had been difficult to sway others’ belief in his words. The position of Chief Cultivator would seem to convey more respect on his shoulders, not less.

“Tomorrow, tomorrow,” Wei Ying says as he turns back to the forest, and the dim but still-glowing transportation array. “Today, we have other worries.”

*

They arrive not in the Mass Graves, as Lan Wangji expected, but in an open, airy courtyard framed on three sides by sturdy buildings and clean-swept boardwalks. The main gate, behind, is closely carved with talismans, and he can sense at least three layers of wards extending outward from his location for several li. To the west lies a lotus pond, and beyond it what looks to be an archery field. It is not Lotus Pier, in any sense, but it is clear that Wei Ying drew from his childhood home in the design of the compound, just as the dark woods and red embellishments recall the halls of Qishan Wen. The crows in flight, carved into latticed windows and screens and embroidered onto hanging curtains, seem unique to Yiling-Wei, and match the small embroidered details at Wei Ying’s collar.

Wen Qionglin is waiting for them, unchanged from the last time Lan Wangji met him but for his clothes, which are of finer fabric and much cleaner. He smiles at Wen Sizhui, and looks curiously between Wei Ying and Lan Wangji.

“Liang Feihong, patient for Wen Qing,” Wei Ying says, twirling Chenqing as he steps out of the array that, here, is etched into the stone and anchored to both the lotus pod and an encompassing iron rim. Zhou Xiuying has hardly stepped onto the boardwalk when a young woman in Wei sect colors comes running to meet her—her wife, Lan Wangji gathers, from the tone of their reunion.

“I’ll show you around in a moment,” Wei Ying tells him, “I just need to see Jin Ling off first.”

“I’m fine,” Jin Ling protests. Lan Wangji tries to focus on other things as what is evidently a long-familiar family argument erupts: Jin Rulan is adamant that he can travel alone, by sword, and that he has enough talismans, and that yes, obviously, he has his Jiang spirit bell and his Jin-embroidered protections and yes, even that charm you gave me, Dajiu, can I go now? Lan Wangji finds the looming menace of the Mass Graves as he examines the roofline, its position indicating that the Sect grounds likely sit just outside the town of Yiling itself, a guarding presence between the common people and a problem the entire cultivation world has been unable to solve for generations.

Wei Ying extracts a promise of a message by Jin butterfly as soon as his nephew reaches Lotus Pier, and then he rejoins Lan Wangji, walking with his hands clasped behind his back and looking pleased with himself.

“I think it’s the eldest sibling thing,” he says, as he draws close. “That, or he’s absorbed all the worst parts of Jiang Cheng and his father at once and there’s no room left for Shijie’s influence. A-Yuan has never been so intractable.”

Wen Yuan is inspecting a quiver of arrows and speaking quietly with Wen Qionglin on the other side of the courtyard. Lan Wangji does not comment on habits Jin Rulan might have learned from a cultivator whose general approach to rules at his age was to rather gleefully break them.

“What do you think?” Wei Ying asks, gesturing at the courtyard, the buildings, and the lotus pond. He grins, mischievous, and waves in the general direction of the Mass Graves. “You were expecting to be back there, weren’t you. In the Demon-Summoning Cave?”

Lying is forbidden, and the thought had, indeed, crossed his mind, even though the young Wei cultivators looked far too hardy to have spent so much of their daily lives among the restless dead.

“It’s still up there,” Wei Ying assures him, as if he might be disappointed if it weren’t. “I can show you later—some of my best experiments are there, still.”

Lan Wangji has no particular interest in revisiting what Wei Ying had termed his ‘blood pool,’ or any experiments of a similar nature.

“You mentioned Wen Qing,” he says.

“How’s that talisman feeling?” Wei Ying asks. “I could show you the library first—we’ve got a library, not as good as Gusu’s of course, but I think you’d like some of the collection—and, oh! We could get you a new horse-tail whisk, if you want one? Or a training sword? Or maybe you’d like to see the sword hall … ” his grin grows wider and wider as he speaks, until his eyes are nearly squeezed shut by his own mirth. “I’ll stop, I’ll stop,” he says. “You know, it’s really amazing. Your face is so different, but the expression is exactly the same.”

Something unfurls in Lan Wangji’s center like a sun-seeking flower. That Wei Ying can recognize him without the soul bond—that Wei Ying remembers him well enough, after so long a time, to make such an observation—soothes a prickle of unease in his thoughts. Small worries he hasn’t put a name to quiet as Wei Ying escorts him through the enclave’s sun-drenched pathways, pointing out lush gardens and chattering about his disciples as if he never sat in a dark, damp cave that smelled of mold and blood and called it his home.

Never wreathed himself in resentment.

Never gave up the sword.

on to part 8

#wangxian #wangxian fic #mo dao zu shi #mdzs fic #turnabout au #alex writes

[racefortheironthrone]

Thoughts on House of X #3

Ah, back to HoX in what feels like the first time in forever.

Death and Memory:

As we might expect for an issue that concerns itself entirely with a special forces mission, the issue starts with an exploration of the psychology of the participants - starting with Scott himself, although the idea of a mission leader who has to overcome his fears and doubts for a higher purpose isn’t particularly novel for the genre. 

Throughout HoX/PoX, there’s a significant part of the fandom that has focused on question of consent - which is something we’ll definitely get into in this and future posts - but it’s noticeable that this discussion doesn’t include this segment, where Scott is very careful to describe the mission as done by “people who accept the mission for what it is” who “understand the stakes and the risk.”

I like how the responses from Cyclops’ superiors not only emphasize the themes of the series but also the character of the speakers: Xavier’s response is (a bit too?) intimate, talking about Scott’s thoughts with the first-hand knowledge of a lifelong mentor who is also a telepath, emphasizing the concept of “family” which we’ll see bandied about through House of X #6, and most crucially promising him that “you’re not going to die. I won’t allow it.” As we learn later, Xavier is being quite literal.

By contrast, Magneto’s speech is all high politics, emphasizing the righteousness of the mission, the Achillean route to immortality “by their mighty works,” and the role that national myth plays in turning real people into icons that live on after their death. We’ll see quite a few Krakoan Founding Fathers as the series goes on, from the Five to the Quiet Council. Given the existential nature of the threat that Cyclops’ team are facing down, it’s not surprising that they’re treated with a bit of Nathan Hale hero-worship. 

So let’s talk about the team composition. As people have noted, while some of them make a lot of sense (you need psychics, you need teleporters, you need sneakers and fighters), others are a bit odd. Archangel’s an odd inclusion, given the restrictions the mission will place on flying, although to be honest we don’t know what his or Husk’s role was supposed to be, because they never get to do anything. 

Focusing more on the broader parameters of the mission: Cyclops is quite up-front about Mother Mold as the proximate danger and Nimrod as the ultimate danger, as well as the no “taking Krakoan fauna with us.” I would agree that Mystique’s body language and dialogue wrt to maybe breaking that rule are quite suspicious here, but if there is any significance to this plot thread, it’ll have to wait for Powers of X #6 and/or Dawn of X.

Incidentally, I don’t buy at all arguments from some elements of the fandom that the X-Men are being mind-controlled or are pod people - we see Archangel and Husk disagreeing with Monet, Cyclops clashing with Mystique...and between Wolverine and Marvel Girl. Prefiguring her role in establishing the Second Law of Krakoa, Jean Grey argues for sparing the “human crew” as non-combatants (”they’re not soldiers in the war...they’re just scientists”), whereas Logan argues that the Orchis crew are constructing “machines to exterminate a species,” making them war criminals as well as military personnel. 

Incidentally, I really like the Krakoan flower on the Blue Area of the Moon being used to boost the X-Men’s space capabilities. It’s a lovely sci-fi touch, and one that shows Krakoa as both innovative and outward-facing but also expansionist if not outright colonialist. 

Machines Infographic:

It’s really hard to discuss Sentinels without thinking about Hickman’s other infographics about ascending hierarchies of machine intelligences.

It’s highly significant that the Alpha Sentinels are set aside from those above them as non-sentient and non-replicating...hence why they are referred to as “drones,” which suggests an insect metaphor. (Incidentally, the original Alpha sentinels seemed to have some awareness, so there’s clearly some retconning going on.)

the Master Mold is replicating, adaptive, and self-aware, all higher functions that we associate with...well, human beings (and maybe AIs?). And yet the Master Mold is clearly lesser than the Mother Mold, because it “is incpabale of improving beyond its ultimate Sentinel state” - in other words, because it lacks the full range of cognition and imagination.

Mother Molds can not only produce Master Molds, but it can also produce Nano-Sentinels who have no limits to their abilities - it’s all very similar to how Hickman conceptualizes Omega mutants vs. the rank-and-file.

While much of HoX/PoX have focused on the threat that Nimrod poses, I’m surprised we haven’t seen as much discussion about what the way that Hickman describes the Omega Sentinels tells us about Karima Shapandar’s role. 

Most importantly, however, we get an info-dump about what Moira learned in her 9th Life (which also shows how Moira continues to exert influence on the plot from behind the scenes): it turns out that “while emergent A.Is are unavoidable, an anti-mutant Nimrod is not.” We don’t know why that’s the case, and I’m really curious whether part of the plan has something to do with creating a mutant or mutant-friendly emergent A.I, possibly through the Cerebro database. 

It’s particularly ominous that we haven’t seen any follow-up on what the “incomplete” Nimrod origin files might mean - did the X-Men miss a backup or a failsafe? Did they get the ordering of Mother Mold and Nimrod wrong? Or is it just a dropped plot thread?

One thing that I like is that Sleeping Giant, Moira’s new plan, involves essentially an Orchis protocol for the Orchis protocol, looking for humans reaching “technological thresholds” at the same time that Orchis is looking for mutants reaching their own thresholds. 

Project Achilles Infographic:

I’m not surprised that much of the fandom have focused on the nature of the Krakoan legal system, but I am surprised we’ve seen so little focus on the “Project Achilles” legal system. 

To begin with, it’s not a good sign that someone who committed crimes in New York City is being tried in a super-max prison somewhere in the snowy mountains. Even more troubling is the discussion of “extra-constitutional requirements” of running this prison.

Finally, while it might be a bit pedantic, there’s osmething really really weird about the Department of State, the branch of government that’s supposed to be involved with foreign policy and diplomacy, running a domestic federal prison. The Federal Bureau of Prisons is a real thing, and there’s a good reason that it falls under the Department of Justice. Again, all this should be troubling.

 A Fair Trial?

Things don’t get much better when we get inside the courthouse, where we see an armed judge chatting with an armed and armored Attorney General, whereas the defense is a clearly intimidated civilian. 

The facade of justice begins to slip even more when the judge says “we’re charging your client” (judges don’t charge defendants, prosecutors do), and then brings up a “twelve-strike rule” that seems to follow the logic of “felony murder” in that the “intent” of the accused no longer matters.

For his part, Sabertooth is clearly enjoying playing the role of the outlaw, establishing his position that as far as he’s concerned, his physical strength places him above judgement or punishment. Something to keep in mind when we get to the question of assessing Krakoan law. 

With her scent if not her reputation greatly preceeding her, Emma Frost arrives on the scene in a characteristic burst of high style and ominous undertones. The Cuckoos’ casual anti-human bigotry, equating humans with “monkeys...using tools...playing at civilization” suggests a poisonous reflection of the old Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon analogy. On the other hand, the White Queen and her “daughters” struggling with the new paradigm of mutant names > human names suggests that building a new, separate, mutant culture is more of a struggle than Magneto would like to admit.

As someone who’s very much interested in the nation-building side of the House of X story, the idea that the nascent nation-state of Krakoa would have negotiated for extra-territoriality is quite fascinating. At one and the same time, we’re shown the need for it - everyone from the judge to the prosecutor to the bailiffs are instantly drawing guns on un-armed defendant counsel and making it very clear that the judge had concluded that “that...thing is a killer” before the trial started - but we can’t ignore the long history of extra-territoriality as an expression of imperialism, either. 

Then again, I wonder how much of the reaction of Western readers is due to the fact that we’re not used to seeing the U.S on the receiving end of demands for extra-territoriality. I wonder how people from countries that were formally colonized or made to sign “unequal” treaties feel about this storyline? 

In the face of knee-jerk violent responses, Emma gets very personal about her diplomacy. She doesn’t use mind control to get her way, because the State Department has already given her all the leverage she needs by granting diplomatic immunity to “all Krakoans on United States soil.” That being said, as much as Emma is here to make a political point that “mutants won’t be judged in human courts,” she isn’t afraid to push back on Tolliver by threatening to make very clear how little the gun matters in “equalizing power dynamics.”

Omega Cycle Infographic:

This infographic is something of a sleeper - I haven’t seen much if any discussion with regards to Karima Shapandar’s role in either X^1 or X^2 timelines. However, it establishes quite clearly that the process of creating Omega Sentinels is a horrific violation of consent, where a person’s “host systems and organs” are replaced well before the “human host becomes aware of the combine consciousness.” Note the explicit comparison to “recovering from trauma.”

I’ve seen it asserted repeatedly that  Karima Shapandar sided with Orchis (or later on with the Man-Machine Ascendancy) because she was excluded from Krakoa, without much evidence cited. This infographic suggests another reason - by proceeding from Union to Adaptation, Karima’s consciousness may have been altered, changing her allegiances along the way. 

There are also implications for Ascension in the X^3 timeline - is “integration of host and machine” a process of cultural exchange and preservation or a hostile process of “infection”?

Crossing the Heller-Faust Line:

Before the action kicks off, we get an interesting thesis: “self-preservation is entirely rational...it’s the panic it produces where errors get introduced.” Throughout the next two issues, we see both sides acting in the name of self-preservation, but also constantly making decisions that ratchet up the body-count.

The initial context has a lot to do with Hickman’s fixation on the mechanical singularity and trans-humanism: continuing her X^2 interest in preserving humanity-qua-humanity, Omega Sentinel’s fear is that an out-of-control Mother Mold will result in the grey goo scenario, if the Sentinels’ drive to wipe out mutants leads them to wipe out humans as the source of mutation. It’s certainly easier than fighting the sun.

Indeed, throughout the next two issues, we will see humans wrestle with their fears of their own mechanical creations: Sol’s Forge is set up with failsafes to jettison Mother Mold into the sun, Dr. Gregor doesn’t initially want to wake up Mother Mold until the A.I has passed a test for sociopathy. We’ve seen what it looks like when A.Is fail this test, and it’s not pretty.

 At this point, the X-Men arrive and what proceeds is a back-and-forth volley of both sides trying and failing to outflank the other. Both Krakoa and Orchis were “expecting to be fully online before we got their attention” and find themselves thrown into a fight before they were fully ready, and their improvizations make things more violent: first up, Orchis calls in the “drones from Mercury” (again with the terra-forming) who will kill Marvel Girl, all in the name of “a little fight for the survival of their people.”

Next, Kurt teleports onto the station to double-check their information and runs into Omega Sentinel - at this point, both sides are willing to talk, Omega Sentinel recognizes her opponent as a person and seeks to understand the X-Men’s psychology.

By contrast, Gregor and Erasmus under-estimate their foe with “a linear plan for a non-linear foe,” allowing the mutants to bypass the hanger bottleneck. Erasmus responds with the assymetric response of a suicide bomb, but I think there’s a fundamental ambiguity as to whether he’s doing this in the name of “whatever it takes to build a better world” or whether he’s doing it in the name of “don’t let them win.”

And so the X-Men lose their ride home, in what turns out to be only the first of many fake-outs.

#xmen #xmen meta #house of x #hoxpox

[kitcatkandy]

the devil you know 6

Rating: Explicit (nothing much here)

Title: the devil you know

Chapter: 6: so if love is nothing more than just a waste of your time

Relationship(s): Aomine Daiki/Kagami Taiga, Kise Ryouta/Kuroko Tetsuya

Summary:

“Kagami wants to tell him no, tell him to fuck off, because there is no way in hell he’s jumping back into bed with the man who broke his heart, but suddenly, he stops, and thinks. He feels Aomine’s hot breath against his neck, feels the undeniable attraction that exists between them, and suddenly he’s tired of holding back, of trying to stop himself and repress his sexual desires just so - just so what?”

Kagami hasn't seen Aomine for a long while, not since he walked in on Aomine cheating on him with a girl, and he has no desire to renew their acquaintance any time soon. But when he's forced into going for a reunion with the GoM by Akashi, sparks fly again, and he does something he very much regrets.

Notes: First published on AO3.

Find more works here

Index

<<- First <-Previous

“Thanks for agreeing to have this interview with us, Kagami; we know how busy you are.”

Kagami shrugs and smiles at Wakamatsu, doing his absolute best to avoid Aomine’s stare. He’s currently sitting in one of the interview rooms in the Tokyo Fire Station, across from the two officers, watching as Wakamatsu shuffles through his notes.

He’s cut his hair shorter, and his new spectacles fit him well. It’s easy to remember now that he’s older than both Kagami and Aomine.

Wakamatsu finds the report he’s looking for, and puts it on top of his pile. He returns his gaze to Kagami.

“We’ve already spoken to Captain Matsuyama and Kirishima, the first one on the scene, and we just wanted to see if there’s anything we missed out on, since you were the first one to enter the house to rescue the boy. And, from what Matsuyama-san said, you also took the Practical Fire Investigation course at TUS last year, right?”

Kagami nods. He’s been looking to increase his range of expertise at the station for a while, and the course at the Tokyo University of Science had seemed interesting. While it far from qualified him to work as an arson investigator, it had been a start towards something he’d thought of pursuing for a long time. And it had made him far more aware of certain aspects whenever he was called onto the scene of a fire, such as –

“Did you notice any signs of forced entry when you entered the preschool, or any other unusual signs?”

Thinking about it for a second, Kagami rubs his chin and shakes his head. “I entered through the back door, which was unlocked. But I did hear one of the teachers mention that since Bright Hearts is in a relatively-safer area, they usually leave the back door open for their cat to get in and out, so the perp could’ve probably just strolled in.” A nod from Wakamatsu confirms for him that they’ve already interviewed the teachers at the school, and heard that tidbit.

“As for unusual signs – there was definitely a strong gasoline smell when I first entered, and I could see gasoline trails leading from some of the rooms on the first floor. When I was putting out one of the fires on the second floor, there was quite a violent response – sparks and flames. An accelerant was definitely used, and it was gasoline. I mean,” Kagami feels his eyes darken as he thinks back to the scene, “everyone saw the gasoline cans lying around the back door. The preschool didn’t have many vehicles, so I don’t think those empty cans were for any school vehicles.”

Wakamatsu nods again, and makes a few notes on his papers. It looks like he’s about to stand up and end the interview, when suddenly, Aomine leans closer, and speaks for the first time.

“Did you notice anyone unusual? Or any unusual vehicles leaving the site when you were heading to the scene?” His eyes have always been intense, especially when turned upon Kagami – always full of that queer fire and vivid interest he lacked when his attention was elsewhere. It makes Kagami’s skin burn hot and irritated, and he makes sure the gaze he returns is as steady and calm as before.

He thinks about it for a while, then answers. “I didn’t notice anyone in particular, sorry. No vehicles leaving the scene as well.” Aomine turns away, clearly disappointed, but also as if he’d expected it all along. No surprise there – this is a tough case to crack, with the perp clearly very careful not to leave any evidence of who he is. He doesn’t seem to care if the police know if it’s arson or not – that part of the case will be easy to prove – but pointing a finger at him will be a much more difficult task.

Wakamatsu nods gravely, and shuffles the papers in his hands one more time before he deems them sufficiently organised, and stands up. He thrusts out his hand.

“Thanks very much for making time for us today, Kagami. Really appreciate it.”

“No worries,” Kagami replies, shaking his proffered hand. “Sorry I couldn’t help more. I really hope you catch the son of a bitch. Let me know if you need anything else.” He’s turning to go, when Aomine leans, lightning-quick, across the table, and catches his arm.

“I need the toilet – will you wait for me,” he says. Kagami is tempted to wrench his arm away, but the way Aomine’s voice had husked a little on the last word stays his hand.

“…Alright,” he concedes reluctantly. “I’ll wait for you outside.” He gives Aomine directions to the mens’ rooms, and strides outside to wait with Wakamatsu.

“He’s been acting weird,” is the first thing Wakamatsu says, when Aomine’s footsteps disappear round the corner. He turns to Kagami, his eyebrows furrowed, and mouth scrunched up. “He’s been less of an asshole, which, until recently, I would’ve said was practically impossible for him.”

Kagami makes a non-committal sound, pretending not to be interested, but Wakamatsu barrels on.

“You know, he even asked how I was the other day when I was down with the flu! He stopped by my desk and threw a bottle of pills at me, and he had this awful constipated expression on his face when he asked me if I was fine. And he hasn’t been purposefully tripping me the last few days I’ve gone for my lunch break! Chief even asked him if he was sick yesterday. That’s how odd he’s been acting. Jesus.”

“Oh?” Kagami says, casually. “That doesn’t sound like him.”

Wakamatsu clenches his fists. “I know he’s still the same old asshole he’s always been. He’s plotting something, and I’m going to find out what. I’ll prove it somehow, just you all watch and see,” he says, and the tone of determination in his voice makes Kagami crack a sardonic grin.

“Yeah,” he says softly, so softly that Wakamatsu doesn’t seem to hear him, “we’ll see.”

Deeply, desperately, he wants it to be true – wants it to be true that Aomine’s trying his best to change. That somehow, against all odds, he’s finally trying to be a better person. But Aomine’s character doesn’t exactly lend itself to confidence, and Kagami’s doubts outnumber his faith in Aomine.

While the two of them had always been likened to each other by their peers – two lights, they had been labelled, one of shadow, one of sunlight, both burning hot and fast and bright – Kagami knew better. He had come to understand Aomine more profoundly over the short months that they’d been dating, and while he’d thought Aomine a basketball simpleton at first, he’d soon realised that he was more complex than he’d initially seemed.

“Aomine-kun is an iceberg, cliché as it may sound,” Kuroko had once told him, and Kagami had realised it to be true. “You can see little of his depths, and what goes on in his mind. He’s really a very fragile creature, you know.”

Ironic, Kagami thinks bitterly, that it had been Kagami who’d ended up broken in the end.

Aomine comes up to them, wiping his hands on his trousers and leaving wet handprints on the well-pressed fabric. Wakamatsu stops his tirade abruptly.

“Well,” he says briskly, “I’ll leave you two alone. Hurry up, Aomine, or I’ll leave you behind. Kagami’s a busy man too, you know.”

“Yeah, okay,” Aomine says in reply, waving his hand vaguely as if to shoo Wakamatsu off. Wakamatsu bristles, but then evidently decides the blatant lack of respect isn’t worth a public showdown, and decides instead to beat a huffy retreat back to the station reception.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” Kagami says. Short and to the point.

Aomine stuff his hands in his pocket, and if Kagami didn’t know better, he’d say Aomine was almost… embarrassed.

“I wanted to ask you out, for another meeting,” he mumbles, his voice rasping. “I – I want to see you again. As friends, of course,” he adds hastily. “I know you said not to talk to you unless you did, but I really…”

Kagami waits, arms crossed, for him to continue.

“I really wanted to see you,” he ends lamely, and his voice is small. “You can get Kuroko and Kise to come, hell, you can even get that brother of yours to come, and I’d be fine with it. I just… I just want to see you again. As friends.”

“…Fine,” Kagami says, after some deliberation. Suddenly, the vision of Aomine’s face, distraught but somehow raw and open, flashes in front of him – the vision of Aomine as he had been that day in Tradizioni.

I want to be honest with you, he had said.

“It’s fine for it to be the both of us,” he says, and Aomine’s head jerks upwards from where it had been directed towards the floor. Kagami rubs the back of his neck self-consciously. “But I want it to be in a public place. Meet me at the Maji Burger near the station on Saturday.”

“Yes,” Aomine says, and then he casts his eyes away. “I’ll see you there.”

***

Saturday rolls around, and it’s a bright sunny afternoon on which Kagami makes his way to Maji Burger. Surprisingly, Aomine is already there, sitting at one of the booths and staring pensively out of the window. When Kagami sits down, he jumps, as if startled, and lets his hands fall nervously into his lap. Kagami notices the sheen of saliva on his nails.

An awkward moment as they both avoid each others’ gaze. Then Aomine jerks his head towards the counter in an abortive movement.

“Shall we order?” he says, and Kagami nods shortly. They stand in line at the counter, and Kagami watches a bead of sweat trail down Aomine’s neck. He wants to lick it off.

“How was work?” Aomine asks, without turning around. A flush creeps up his neck, and Kagami’s fingers itch.

“Good,” he murmurs in reply, and tries to think of something else to say. “You?”

“Yeah. Things are good.” Another awkward pause, then Aomine exhales, and they reach the counter. There’s no need for Kagami to place his order – even the part-timer cashiers know him all too well – and Aomine gets three teriyaki burgers and a banana milkshake.

His usual, Kagami thinks, and somehow the thought doesn’t anger him as much as it once had.

He only realises he’s said the first part out loud when the cashier suppresses a snicker, and Aomine’s cheek flush a dull red. He rubs the back of his neck self-consciously, and shoots a half-hearted glare under his lashes at Kagami.

“So what if I like banana milk,” he mutters petulantly, and Kagami feels the edge of his mouth tip up in the beginnings of an unwilling smile.

They stand off to the side as they wait for their food to be passed to them. Idly, Kagami toys with the string bracelet on his wrist one of the other firemen had given to him the previous year, for his birthday.

“So, how’s Tatsuya? Your brother?” Aomine asks, and Kagami is surprised at hearing Himuro’s name pass Aomine’s lips. He’d always referred to Himuro as “that brother of yours” or even just “that guy”, always with the same disinterested, slightly derisive tone. But this time, there’s no sign of that inflection in the cadence of his voice, and as Kagami lifts his eyes to meet Aomine’s, there’s a determined blaze in his eyes, and Kagami finds he has to admire his tenacity, if anything.

“He’s good, thanks. Works with Murasakibara at his patisserie now. They got married a year ago, in the US,” Kagami answers, and just like the other day, it’s as if a floodgate has been opened. Aomine is openly curious and interested in anything Kagami has to say, asking questions about Murasakibara’s patisserie and Kuroko’s students and even Kagami’s course at the Tokyo University of Science. When they sit back down at their booth, the conversation is flowing – not nice or easy, but it’s flowing. Aomine had never been much of a conversationalist, at the best of times, and neither is Kagami, and somehow they’d never had to say much to each other back then, to be on the same page. It’s different now, obviously, but still, it’s clear the both of them are trying – god, and how they’re trying. They scarf down their burgers and drinks, and somehow time elapses more quickly than Kagami realises.

“I should head back,” Kagami says, looking at his watch, and noticing with a start almost two hours have passed since they first began eating. There’s a twinge of something in his chest. He wouldn’t say it’s reluctance, per se, but it’s still a twinge of something. Deep under there is that same uneasy itch, the part of him that wants to rage at the normality and banality of it all, but somehow it’s muted, as if he’s hearing it from very far away.

There’s certainly reluctance in Aomine’s eyes as he nods and rises from the table, carrying his tray, but he makes no object. They return their trays and walk out of Maji Burger. Kagami stuffs his hands into his pockets and shivers at the cold; Aomine’s breath makes smoke out of the air, and suddenly Kagami’s reminded of the night they first met again.

“I thought you smoked?” he asks. “Haven’t seen you take a pull since… well, you know.”

Aomine shrugs. “Been trying to kick the habit. It’s a filthy habit. I was never really into it anyway, but one of my exes sort of… hooked me on it for a while.”

Kagami nods noncommittedly, still unsure as to what to say whenever Aomine mentions any of his exes. He freely admits that he’s dying to know about them – if he’d been Aomine’s first and last gay experiment, if the women had big boobs and long hair and curvy figures, all the things Kagami didn’t have – but at the same time a voice that sounds suspiciously like Kuroko tells him, you don’t want to know.

“Wanna play ball for a while?” Aomine’s words are like a siren song from the past, and Kagami looks at where he’s pointing.

A pause, as Kagami looks between the streetball court, with its lone basketball perching dolefully beside the fence, and Aomine’s bright, burning gaze. His breath comes faster, unbidden, and without thinking, he finds himself nodding, slowly at first, then faster.

“You’re on,” he says, and a glimmer of teeth as he bares his teeth in the first proper genuine smile he’s shown that day. “Bring it on.”

They warm up slowly, dribbling the ball and passing to each other with practised motions. Aomine makes a few cursory attempts at shooting, and as expected, the ball sinks through the net every time. Kagami doesn’t need to show off, and takes his time.

“Shall we begin?” Aomine asks, and without waiting for a response, he’s off. He streaks past Kagami and fades away, his signature move, almost unblockable –

Almost, being the imperative word. He’s forgotten that, even after five years, Kagami can still read him like a book. Kagami leaps in time, and as the ball leaves Aomine’s hand, Kagami continues soaring, his arms outstretched, and the ball hits concrete, thudding away with a hard bounce that echoes the sounds of their harsh breaths punctuating the air.

“Oh, Kagami,” Aomine breathes, and his voice is reverent.

Kagami wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and he grins. It makes Aomine throw his head back and bark out a delighted laugh.

“Still the same fire, Kagami,” he snarls, brilliant and fierce and his eyes blazing like a supernova, “still the same drive. I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Yeah?” Kagami says, feeling his smile split his face, his world narrowing down to Aomine with the ball spinning on the end of his forefinger. “Show me what you’ve got, Aomine. You’ve gone soft these past few years, haven’t you?”

“Fuck you,” Aomine replies, almost amicably, then he’s off again. He’s not yet in the zone, but that hardly matters, since Aomine without the zone is still formidable. It takes all Kagami has to keep up with him, as they leap and zigzag across the court, head-to-head - Aomine scores, then Kagami does, then Aomine blocks him and steals the ball – then Kagami leaps in and snatches the ball out of his hands. They’re evenly matched, just as before, just as they’ve always been, molten electricity sparking between their skin every time they touch. They taunt each other as they spin and pivot, trading barbs as cheerfully as they trade moves, and the points steadily build.

Kagami slides in front of Aomine, reaching out – his hand contacts the ball, and Aomine skids to a stop, nowhere to go. Somehow, Kagami’s hands fail to yank the ball from Aomine’s, and abruptly he finds them standing face to face, holding the ball, his fingers pressed hot against Aomine’s. They breathe into each other’s mouths, in-out, in-out, in-out, and Kagami feels his heart thump to the same rhythm.

Aomine’s eyes are cast downwards, his lashes sweeping over the curve of his cheekbones. He’s flushed, and sweaty, and Kagami can smell the musk emanating off his body – dark, woodsy, spicy.

Kagami has never wanted anyone more in his life.

Then Aomine turns away, his eyes squeezed shut, a strange look on his face, a look of great pain. He lets go of the ball, and his arms go limp.

When he turns back, his face is wiped clean, expressionless, as if nothing had happened. Kagami does not know what face he himself is making.

“Well?” Aomine says, and he smiles, but somehow it looks ugly and wrong and makes Kagami’s chest twinge. “What are you waiting for? Let’s play ball.”

“Aomine,” Kagami says, and later, when he’s had time to think back and curse himself and regret, he blames his next words on Aomine’s smile. “I missed your basketball.”

“Yeah?” Aomine replies, and his voice is hard. “I missed you too. What a bloody fool I was.” He turns away, dribbling the ball, and the loud ‘thunk’ of the ball returns Kagami to his senses.

“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”Kagami says, and the sharpness of his voice cuts crisp through the air. He reaches out and swipes the ball from Aomine’s hand, almost spitefully, and it jars him, how Aomine just lets the ball fall from his grasp. It rolls to a stop and hits the pole.

There’s a silence for a moment, then Aomine exhales, and passes a hand over his face.

“I’m sorry, Kagami,” he says, and turns to look at Kagami. “That was uncalled for.”

Kagami doesn’t know what to say in response. He’s too shell-shocked by the sudden admission of fault on Aomine’s part, that he can’t even open his mouth to speak.

“I am a fool,” Aomine continues, his gaze moving searchingly over Kagami’s face. “A fool who can’t appreciate what he has.” He turns away and walks over to the post, where he bends and retrieves the ball. When he stands up and faces Kagami again, he’s wearing that familiar smile.

“Well?” he says, eyes bright. “What are you waiting for?”

Unbidden, that old phrase now elicits a snort of amusement from Kagami, and it’s as if the moment has passed, and the tension eased. He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, and there’s volumes unspoken between them still, but the siren song of basketball calls to them again, the language they both speak so fluently - and he can no longer resist.

“Yeah?” he counters, and flicks the hair out of his face with a shake of his head. “I wasn’t the one losing fifty-two to fifty-four just now, was I?”

“That’s a fucking lie, and you know it,”Aomine says, and his teeth flash in the waning sunlight.

“Yeah? You wanna prove it?”

The sound of the ball hitting the court is all the warning he gets, and then they’re off again, as if nothing had happened – Aomine sprinting to the net, and Kagami in hot pursuit, nipping at his ankles. He leaps, dunks, and their hands meet in the middle – Kagami pushes – and Aomine forces the ball in with sheer strength. They both land, hard, and Kagami feels his knee buckle.

But he refuses to give in. Not when there’s so much more unsaid between them, so much more – that can only be said through basketball.

In the end, they play till the sun sets, and more, until Kagami’s knee decides to make its dissatisfactions more plainly known. He’s about to call it off, when Aomine pauses mid-dribble and chucks the ball back towards the fence, where they’d first found it.

“I’m tired,” is all he says, abruptly, when Kagami cuts a questioning glare towards him. “Haven’t gone so hard in a while – I guess I’m not used to it.”

They say – well, it’s mostly Kuroko who says so, followed by a tittering Kise who backs him up – they say Kagami’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, but any fool would be able to detect the faint blush on Aomine’s cheeks as he turns away, wiping the sweat off his cheeks with his shirt. Kagami remembers the way Aomine’s eyes had flashed to his knee, as Kagami had almost fucked up his last jump, and he feels something warm in his chest.

“You’re an old man, now,” puffs Kagami, and he lets him keep his pride.

They hobble to the bench and plop down. Aomine’s breathing hard, and Kagami tries not to let his eyes linger too long on the curve of his neck as Aomine tosses his head carelessly to the side and stares aimlessly into the now-empty court.

What can he say – he’s still human, isn’t he? A human with a very active libido, and that’s not doing him any favours. By pure force of will, Kagami tears his eyes away from the corded muscle in Aomine’s forearm, slung so casually over the back of the bench. Instead, he looks down at his own hands, turns them this way and that, and even in the dim light cast by the lone streetlamp next to the court, he can see the raised ridges of calluses on the tips of his fingers and the flesh of his palms.

“What happened to your basketball career?” he finds himself asking, suddenly, and Aomine’s not the only one surprised by the question.

He almost thinks Aomine won’t answer him, the silence stretches on so long – then Aomine sighs, and he turns his palms upwards, mirroring Kagami. The red patches on their skin, rubbed almost raw by the intensity of their basketball, dimly reflect the light from the streetlamp.

“It got boring, without you around,” he confesses quietly, and although to many it sounds like a brag, Kagami knows the feeling he’s talking about – that feeling of wanting to give up, because you inspire not hope, but hopelessness, in the people around you. He’s never felt it for himself – never felt that urge to give in to others’ expectations of him – but he’d seen for himself how Aomine had been swayed, all those years ago in high school. Aomine is fragile, vulnerable to the opinions of others, and his overblown ego is a reflection of his own insecurity.

“Ahomine,” he says, and the insult is almost affectionate. “You never change, do you?”

He’s not expecting how quickly Aomine turns to him, nor how fiercely his eyes are burning.

“I do. I do change. Or – I will change,” he amends, the last few words quiet but no less vehement. “I know I’m an asshole, I know I have my faults, but please believe me when I say I’m – I’m working on it. That’s all,” he ends lamely.

Kagami stares up into the night sky, the few stars twinkling up above, the moon peeking quietly out from behind the clouds. He used to think Aomine would never grow up – that he would stay the same, spoilt child he’d always been – and before they’d broken up, that side of him had appealed to Kagami, as if to say, while other things might change, Aomine would always remain a constant.

When Aomine had cheated on him, things had turned the other way. That eternal childish precociousness of his had become a reminder that Aomine had not been ready for an adult relationship, where commitment and communication and other adult things needed to preside over their individual desires. Hell, Kagami’d been a teen at that time too, but he’d certainly never had the desire to fucking cheat on Aomine. No, that had taken a special kind of ignorance and self-centredness that was Aomine’s alone.

And now… well, he’s still the same arrogant, selfish asshole he’s always been, but now there’s something hopeful in the air, something that seems like – change.

“Yeah, it got boring without you, you know? No one else could quite compare to me,” continues Aomine, his usual bravado overblown, as if in attempt to overcome the sudden tension between them. Kagami finds his fingers itching to cuff him for his smugness, but no – they’re not at that level of intimacy.

Then Aomine turns to him, eyes bright and mouth curved in a mischievous smirk, as if he knows perfectly well what Kagami’s restraining himself from doing, and Kagami finds himself thinking –

Yet. They’re not at that level of intimacy yet.

Perhaps they will never get there, but somehow, Kagami still finds himself hoping.

#kitcat writes #aokaga #aomine daiki #kagami taiga #knb #kuroko no basuke #kagaao #knb fanfiction

[everything-withered]

Iron & Ash, a Tony Stark fic

For the “these violent delights” series. 

Tony remembers the taste of ash and iron; it hits the back of his throat on every swallow the way the alcohol used to when he was nothing more than a genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist with daddy issues and a myriad of untreated addictions.

Ash and iron become the only thing he remembers.

After Afghanistan, and Yinsen; after the wormhole, and the Tesseract; after the Bunker, and the Avengers.

Ash and iron are all he lets himself know, all he lets himself taste.

It’s for the best.

Every time he’s tasted something else: the buzz of victory and ozone on his tongue that makes him want to shout in exhilaration, the too sweet nectar in the few kisses he’d pepper on his loved ones, the residual static of creating, the blossoming violence of hope; he’s been disappointed because the ash and iron always come back, they always find a way.

After the Iron Man suit fell from the sky; after everyone has walked away; after Ultron, and Jarvis; after space, and how he’d still looked to it – wondering and wanting.

Ash and iron.

Its ironic in some ways.

Tony’s always known the taste of iron. Despite Howard’s declaration to the contrary in the wake of Tony’s many disappointments in his father’s eyes; Tony is a Stark, and Stark men know nothing but iron.

Iron will, iron drive, iron grit.

So, what if it tastes like blood?

His family has shed plenty. He’s done the same. And if the Universe wants its piece, so be it; Tony will bleed, and if iron is all he’ll ever know, becoming Iron Man seemed a fitting thing to do.

Not that the Merchant of Death was wrongfully given.

With the way everything in his life has found a way to burn to the ground, he isn’t surprised the way ash clings to him so readily. The ash is a warning, a reminder: Nothing you hold dear will ever last, but you’ll always have me.

He’d hoped, morbidly and despite himself, that the ash and iron would one day be washed clean from his palate; replaced by dust and earth and decay. If he’s being honest, he isn’t picky. There doesn’t need to be a body. He doesn’t need a burial.

Let him crumble. Let him sink.

God, just let him go.

When the Soul Stone hums, Tony knows what it wants.

From the day Strange gave up the Time Stone for him; from the day the Mind Stone gravitated for its purpose in Vision; from the day Tony was exposed to the power of the Tesseract; he knew.

The Power Stone and the Reality Stone were mere formalities.

Tony always did have the ability to take down every human legion on their green earth, a consequence of having violence so firmly in his veins, thrumming like a never-ending heartbeat when he donned the suit to make it right, to find peace, to make war with his own two hands.  In contrast; bending reality to his will, to reshape the world, to create; had always been child’s play.

A thousand outcomes, a thousand ways…

Tony had hoped though – against his own better judgment and the souring in his mouth that it wouldn’t –

Ash and iron.

It’s you.

He doesn’t know exactly where he goes when he pays the cost of the Infinity Stones’ admission, only that people reappear in his place.

Tony thinks with a vague sense of sadness that he doesn’t even get to say good-bye.

There’s nothing but a single droplet of a tear to mark his place on Earth before the sky above him burns:  

The plane of the Soul Stone is empty except for him, and he knows, instinctively, from the bottom of his heart to the first and last cell to generate in his husk of a body that this is it: This is what Strange meant, this is what the Universe wanted; this was always meant to be.

A thousand outcomes, a thousand ways…

His life for all of theirs.

It’s always you.

He remembers the taste of ash and iron; it’s all he’ll ever know now.

#tony stark fic #deathless tony au #these violent delights

[theentiredsm]

Finally done processing the Charlottesville fallout...

Haven’t been on Tumblr for years; never had a consistent posting schedule; never had any kind of readership. Whatever: there are not words to express how exhausted I am of President Trump. Here’s what i have to say to anyone out there who’s continuing to defend him in the wake of the controversy:

Yes, the media is focusing quite a bit more on the White House's response to Charlottesville than on the events themselves. For a newspaper to denounce this violence--which all I've read have done--takes only a few paragraphs. For a newspaper to elucidate, however, the infinite and unquantifiably significant reasons that President Trump's strategy in managing this entire scenario was disastrous, may take thousands of words. It'll certainly take me a few here.

These self-proclaimed (let me repeat: SELF. PROCLAIMED) violent white nationalists, white supremacists, and Nazis are compulsively evil, pathologically anti-humanitarian scourges on all that is good. These bacterially-comprised facsimiles of human beings would sooner call for an accomplished black or Jewish man to literally burn than for a white man to be punished for carrying that scene out himself. They are deceivers, dividers--infinitesimal husks of Homo sapiens that employ gold medal-quality mental gymnastics and raw deception to justify the mindless hatred that feeds their sense of power. 

These are people who gleefully reminisce of an era when black men were castrated for merely expressing interest in white women--who invoke the images of that era with torches and robes and endeavor to bring it to life at their own expense. The descendants of the KKK and the Nazis, with their "neo" prefixes and their clever, covert monikers, whose birthright is a black hole where a soul should be. Dear reader, I presume you like to think of yourself as a "decent person." Even if you are politically conservative, or stand for the protection of Confederate monuments, could you truthfully walk by the sides of people who would likely have ended your life at that very moment if your skin were darker? 

I'll say it plainly: any person who willfully walked alongside these Whatever-Name-You-Wants last night, whatever their views of relationship with that ideology, has committed a grave, symbolic sin against the spirit of humanity itself. For to be in the presence of evil and make no attempt to quell it, to even divest yourself from it, is as heinous as full participation. I cannot imagine a world in which someone who joined in camaraderie with bloodthirsty bigots could the next day wake up with the honest expectation of being called "decent." 

And who but the President of this great nation, a symbol of uncompromising morality across the world, an example for our children to follow and for our allies to emulate, decided to call them so? Who but the First Citizen of this country chose to proclaim, with vigor and vitriol in his veins, that these people and those who opposed them were equal in blame?

That exact phrase has been repeated a dozen times in the media, and I expect you're weary of it, as I am. But I defy you to tell me that the question does not raise the most uncomfortable of answers and images. I was not quiet, during President Trump's campaign, about my best assessment of his character based on what information was available. In the months following the election, I've done my best to give him the fair chance I would hope for from anyone that doubted me, and so have been largely silent. 

But I've run out of incredulity, and he's run out of chances. Throughout the campaign, I called Trump a bigot, a racist, a loose-lipped fool, tactless, uninformed, and about a thousand other names. I wanted dearly to feel compelled, at the end of four years, to apologize for that characterization. Perhaps one day I will, but in the meantime, our President has given me every reason to maintain it.

This is a man who fundamentally misunderstands proper behavior, discernment, and the difference between right and wrong. He is a disgrace to this nation, to justice, and to world history, and one day will be properly recognized as such. Trump's atmosphere promoted the formation, yesterday and today, of the clouds that feed these septic pools. How long until were done swimming?

#charlottesville #trump #sickofthisshit #politics

[how2to18]

IN THE WORLD of Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s We Cast a Shadow, an expensive cosmetic surgery is increasingly popular — one that promises to remove all markers of Blackness from the patient — to whiten the skin, whittle the nose, and thin the lips. Like the plastic surgery of our world, the early adopters are celebrities. The narrator tells us that the poster child of the procedure, a ubiquitous pop star, “had been a black girl from Baltimore. Now she looked more or less like a Greek woman.”

The novel’s setting is the American Deep South in the near future — an America that has become even more unsafe for people of color. The “de-melanization procedure” is just one of the hydra-headed manifestations of racism in this future, and it becomes the narrator’s dream for his biracial son. The narrator becomes obsessed with his son’s birthmark, “his stain.” As his son grows, the narrator watches in terror as “the birthmark colored from wheat to sienna to umber, the hard hue of my own husk, as if a shard of myself were emerging from him.”

The narrator fears, above all, that his son will be seen as a Black man, just like him, in a world he knows to be “a centrifuge that patiently waits to separate my Nigel from his basic human dignity.” This riotous novel details the farcical lengths this father will go to in order to afford the surgery and save his son from the fate of Blackness while simultaneously hiding his mission from his wife. The novel straddles many modes of storytelling — adventure story, family drama, political satire — but it shines because of the jocular voice of the narrator, a man who, Ruffin says, became his unlikely “tour guide in American history.”

¤

JOSELYN TAKACS: What was the seed of the novel, and where did it come from?

MAURICE CARLOS RUFFIN: I think any writer is trying to decipher the code of what is happening in our society. So certainly for me, it was seeing racialized incidents in America — events like the death of Michael Brown, and later Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Rekia Boyd, Tamir Rice, and so many other people. I was trying to figure out why these things keep happening, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Once I figured out who this character was and what he cared about most, the rest fell into place.

When did the birthmark come into play? 

I believe a lot of things exist subconsciously as you’re writing. In an earlier draft of the novel, the son had a sickness that wasn’t a birthmark. But just before I started writing the novel, I had taken a literature course, American literature from the 1860s, and I was reminded of this story I’d read, “The Birth-Mark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This, in turn, reminded me of Toni Morrison’s Sula — Morrison has a lot of symbolism attached to Sula’s own birthmark in the novel. I saw that this child would have something similar to that, and it would become a center of the plot and of the book.

It becomes such a compelling allegory for how people of color are treated in America.

Yeah. For people of color, and especially Black folks, oftentimes just existing is criminalized, pathologized. I think you can see in the novel, the various characters, including the secondary characters, have different attitudes about how they pathologize “Otherness.” I think the birthmark is just a way of making this succinct and direct.

You can tell that you’re having some fun as you’re writing this. I wrote down some lines that I just thought were hilarious. Like, “In my thinking, the entire south beyond my hometown was just one sprawling countryside of ectoplasmic Colonel Sanderses on horseback chasing runaway spirits until the Rapture. Hardly my idea of a refreshing getaway.” 

Oh yeah. And it’s the narrator. He definitely deals with a lot of his pain through humor. Sometimes it’s sarcastic. Sometimes it’s direct humor. But I think that that’s his honest way of observing what’s going on without letting it destroy him. Some parts of the book can get very heavy, and he sort of leans away from it.

I also think it’s so significant how you portray generational responses, or strategies, for coping with racial inequity. The narrator’s parents were activists, but the narrator wants to assimilate. The narrator’s grandfather had his own mode of moving through the world.

I think that made sense to me naturally because in my own life I’ve had the pleasure of watching different generations of people respond to oppression. We’ve all had to respond to America as it existed at a given time. In the grandfather’s voice, you can hear the frustration of spending 99 years of his life, and he hasn’t seen enough change. It’s really hurt him, you know?

I feel like my parents’ generation as well as young folks now have very specific ideas about the necessity of direct action, mobilizing, going out and protesting to get attention paid to what was going on. My generation was one that was more laid back, thinking, “We’re making progress. We’re just gonna push in these strategic areas to improve things.”

I will say that I admire people now in their 20s and their teens even because they have this mentality, for the most part, of self-love, and not allowing yourself to be destroyed by these stereotypical ideas. The narrator’s son, Nigel, is fortunate to have this mindset, his mom has this mindset, and it’s the idea that people had in the 1960s, in the Black Power movement that “Black is Beautiful.” You know, “Don’t let anybody tell you just because you have dark skin and a broad nose and thick lips that you’re not one of God’s beautiful creations.”

Speaking of the Black Panther movement, there is an activist group, ADZE, who start out organizing for the benefit of the community, only to be labeled as terrorists by the government. I recognize some similarities between them and the Black Panthers. What role do they play in the novel?

The narrator really wants to avoid the fight as much as he can, so there had to be somebody in his reality who was fighting directly — going on the offense. There is a great history of nonviolent resistance in America, but there’s also a history of violent resistance as well. I think it was important to represent the idea that sometimes you’ve got to go out and fight. Literally go out and fight to protect yourself. Early in the book, as one of the characters points out, ADZE never does anything to hurt anybody. It’s just their presence that creates a panic. Where people were frightened, they run away, and in the process, people get hurt. I think Blackness can be so frightening based on ideas provided by the media. And sometimes the government has not been very judicious in how they react to what they see as instigators.

As I was doing research for the book, I was reading about farming techniques on the African continent, and one of the things I came across was this tool called an adze, which was used for thousands of years throughout Africa, the Near East, and the Middle East. When I saw that, it sort of clicked. I thought, “There is gonna be this group that is opposing what’s going on —tilling the soil to make a better crop, so to speak.” Then I thought, “That’s a good name for it.” Meanwhile, here in New Orleans, I kept seeing graffiti tags saying that same word. I can’t remember if I saw the tags first or read about the tool first, but I kept thinking about resistance, and for some people, graffiti is a type of resistance.

The women, like the narrator’s wife and mother, seem like a moral center of the book. Were you conscious of this while writing?

The women in this book, especially Mama, play a huge role in tipping us off on where the narrator has lost his way. Maybe it’s difficult to portray what’s historically a stereotype of the strong Black woman character, but I will tell you that as a man raised by a wonderful mother and a grandmother — you know, I had my father in the picture as well — that the strength of those women and my Aunties and others in my life was real. I see it so much.

The father in the novel, however, is not in the picture. He has been locked away in a prison called Liberia. I wondered if the prison had some relation to Angola Prison in Louisiana? 

In terms of the naming conventions, I wanted the place names in the novel to have multiple levels of resonance. We have Angola Prison here in Louisiana. Until very recently, we were the most incarcerated state in the nation — we’re number two right now, which is still not that great. The prison complex within this state just gobbles up young Black men and women.

The history of Liberia as a country, for whatever reason, is not taught all that much to people in America, Black or white. Liberia was founded as a nation for Black folks to free themselves. The premise was, “If you want to escape this racism, go to Liberia and live as a person with complete self-hood.” And the idea to have a prison named after this place that’s designed to be free — there’s a clear irony to it.

Many things that happen in the book are echoes of things that have happened in the past. In the novel, there’s the Dreadlock Ordinance, where they cut off Black men’s hair when they go to prison, which is directly related to the ordinance in the 1800s to forcibly cut the queue of Chinese people, which was a sign of personal respect in their culture to have that hair. They would say, “Well, you’re Chinese, obviously you’re dirty, we’re going to cut this off.” This sort of cruelty that has existed throughout US history toward people who are “Othered.” It became a part of the way that I use words in the novel.

In the future world in the novel, American society is sliding backward, becoming more racist. You describe a process gaining popularity among people of color: de-melanization, or “a scrub.” Where did that come from? 

If you’re a person of color in America, you pretty quickly realize how heartbreaking it will be for you. And so, a lot of people of color have different strategies for how to defy that danger, whether it’s standing up and protesting, or writing about it, like I do. And I think that for some people throughout history, there have been different ways to assimilate. I hadn’t really noticed, for example, that many Black performers in the 20th century, men in particular, straightened their hair. I’m thinking of Nat King Cole and Little Richard, but I could go on and on. We see celebrities like Michael Jackson who’ve had their skin lightened. We’re getting to the point where, with CRISPR, we can change genes. There’s this film Gattaca starring Ethan Hawke where, in the future, if you’re not this genetically perfect person, you don’t have any rights in that society. Those ideas were colliding in my mind.

I should say that there’s a thread of Black American literature from satire to straight literary fiction that encompasses this. There’s George Schuyler’s Black No More and Charles Chesnutt’s short stories and many other pieces by Black authors that have touched on this idea of fitting in however you can, whether it be through technology or magic, or whatever.

Yeah, I’m thinking of Nella Larsen’s Passing too.

Yes, totally.

Why set the novel in the American Deep South in the future and call it “the City”?

I thought that, when the setting is very specific, you can discount it. Like, “Oh this is set in rural Alabama? Well, obviously, that’s just how they are there.” Even outing myself, you know, because I’m from the South. [Laughs.] I’ve had this idea throughout my own life that the South is clearly so much worse when it comes to racial justice, but by thinking that, I was ignoring the works of people like Richard Wright, who would say, “Look, in the South Side of Chicago, it was just as bad.” Maybe there wasn’t hunched-up slaves, but you can see how, through housing policy, and the way people were treated economically, these systems were designed to disenfranchise people of color.

From sea to shining sea, or in the Deep South — as you’re reading, you can imagine this happening in your own neighborhood. 

What was hard for you when you were writing this? Were any sections of the book that were particularly challenging to write?

I saved the backstory of the book — the narrator’s father’s story and the racial history of this alternate reality — for last because it was painful to write about. And then there is a period in the narrator’s past, which is almost our present, when there were riots going on. People have asked me, “Did you predict this would happen?” I wrote this before the 2016 election. Since then, we’ve had Charlottesville and these guys with their tiki torches, and Mother Emanuel Church where nine African Americans were shot. My response was, “No, I didn’t know. But I do know, based on our history, that they tend to happen.” It’s baked into our American cake. These events will come back until we’ve finally addressed them in a real way. And we haven’t done that.

To ask, then, an impossible question — how do we reckon with this as a society?

I’ve said this many times recently because I think it’s important to state. I love America. I love our ideals. The more that I think about my own ancestors who were activists and protestors, who fought for their rights, it makes me proud that in this country we’re not being shot for our ability to state our case. I think one of the great failings of the country is in education. We don’t teach our kids detailed and difficult history. In Germany, those kids learn about the Nazi era, and they made a decision as a culture to avoid repeating those mistakes by making sure those kids know exactly what happened and why it was wrong to best avoid repeating that. In America, the story often is, we had slavery and then we fixed it. Obviously, when you see the things that have happened in recent years, you go, “Well, if we fixed it, how are these things happening now?” The answer is we haven’t fixed it, and we haven’t addressed racial injustice.

What I’d like to happen is for readers, after reading this book, to be at least curious to acquire knowledge they don’t have now. I don’t care what side of the blue-red spectrum you’re on. I don’t care what news shows you watch. But I do hope that you take a moment and go out and find a book by an author you wouldn’t normally read about race in America and about American history.

I wonder what you learned about yourself or about Blackness or about the world at large. Did you feel a change as you were writing, or when you were finished?

No one has asked me that. Now I’ve heard other African Americans say — and I’ve heard Africans from the African continent say the exact same thing — if you grow up in a community where most of the people in your life are Black, you experience a lot less racism than you would in other circumstances. I grew up in New Orleans East, which is pretty much an all Black and Vietnamese community. It’s a huge area, like 30 percent of the land mass of the city. I went to Black schools, Black restaurants, Black hospitals, and so for a lot of my early life, I really didn’t see a lot of the ugliness that people see in big cities for example.

By the time I got to this book, this narrator became a tour guide of American history for me, as well as the present-day responses to racism — either creating it or fighting it. I can honestly say that by making this character, communicating with him, coming to understand him very deeply, I learned a lot of things that I wouldn’t have learned about. For example, I read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, which I probably wouldn’t have read without this narrator. She’s talking about mass incarceration. At the time, this was a niche idea that a lot of people weren’t very clear on, aside from a few people who were playing close attention. I’m one of those folks now as a result of my narrator.

You know, sometimes hanging with this narrator would be depressing, so it was important that he had this sense of humor. I feel like he gave me tools and strategies for dealing with what I’ve seen in America today.

¤

Joselyn Takacs is a writer, teacher, and PhD candidate at University of Southern California.

The post De-Melanization Procedure: A Conversation with Maurice Carlos Ruffin appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[talesfromtheuniverse]

My Name is Mari

Loud, throbbing music stopped. Previously dim lights were now blinding. Bodies dancing on the floor were gone as if they’d gained some secret knowledge. It took Mari a moment to realize all that had occurred; she didn’t like it when someone knew more than she did. er job was information and she was damn good at her job. What she liked even less than being one-upped at her job was the moment she  realized that the old man was a Faith Demon. An ancient one. She hadn’t dealt with many born of Faith, but she could  certainly spot one when she saw one. From the top of his dapper trilby to soles of his sparkling black shoes, the man screamed worship me as a God.

Mari sat back in her office chair, one slender leg hooked over the other at the knee pushing the fabric of her dress up her thighs, and she watched the man through the one-way glass. She smoothed her hands on the skirt of her dress as she pondered the man. He glanced around the space, his hat doing little to hide his eyes, and he took nonchalant steps, shoes clicking as he walked, he didn’t seem to care that she was making him wait. Her lips pursed, bothered, at this conclusion. His two bodyguards waiting, flanking the front entrance, watching him idly, as if distracted.  Mari turned in her chair and looked to Bezar as he stood in front of the door to her office. Unmoving, Bezar held the line like good muscle should.

She decided that the old man had waited enough. Mari stood and made her way down the winding stairwell, graceful step after graceful step, a well-manicured hand gliding down the bannister. She prepared to meet the Faith Demon, who had without invitation and most discourteously, entered her temple.

Mari gently tapped Bezar on the shoulder. He tensed for a brief moment, then stepped aside to allow her to pass. He was whispering to himself again. Bezar rocked on his heels and whispered the way he always did when he worried. Holocaust demons were like that, agitated and on edge, worried about what was to come next. Always afraid, but, always ready to fight.

The man in the trilby was old, not old like a God, but his body was ancient. Mari could see a worn and weathered face, but it belied the Faith that bred him. His eyes were young and bright. Mari could see that a normal Demon might cower before him and bow down to his greater authority.

With a flick of her bejewelled wrist, Mari adjusted a chair before the man and sat down, weaving her tail around her stomach. She leaned back in the seat, crossing her legs at the knee, the dress once more sliding along her thighs. She set an arm on the backrest, fingers pushing into the hair at the base of her neck. She  eyed the man, lashes fluttering slowly as she regarded him, her other hand relaxed in her lap. Mari raised her chin and surveyed him beneath half-closed eyes. She made sure he saw she was more - much more - than a normal Demon.

“You’re as beautiful as they say,” he said with a smile.

Mari looked past him, through him, to the men guarding the door.Mortals. Humans. They weren’t Demons or Devils. Mari considered them for a moment longer. Why in the Barren Plains would Humans be serving a Faith Demon? All their false idols laid bare and naked before them in the Plains...and why would the Guard allow it?

Mari gifted her attention back to the man who sat before her. "What do you want?”

His smile deepened, “No pleasantries?”

“You interrupted business. I do not appreciate interruptions.”

The man laughed, a simple, honest laugh like the laugh you’d expect from an old relative who was glad to see you. It was a practiced laugh that didn’t fool Mari.

Mari adjusted in her seat, the hand leaving her hair as her arms crossed over her chest, the cone-shaped tip of her tail twitching on her stomach, “That was no joke”

“No, dear, no you weren’t joking. I’m here for a story,” he chuckled as he leaned forward and cocked his head to the side, smile still on his face. “Your story.”

Mari frowned, “My story is not your concern”

“It is, though! You just don't know it yet. You...you are so much stronger than you appear. So much smarter. How long did it take you to get here? Four years? Five? Quite a feat for a Longing Demon from the wrong side of Dis, the one and only true city of The Barren Plains.” He touched the brim of the trilby at that, as if tipping his hat to her. She did not appreciate that the hat remained on his head while inside her temple. She bit the inside of her lip at the lack of respect.

Mari’s eyes narrowed, “Hard work.”

He laughed again and gestured to the men blocking her front door. Goons is what they were. One approached their table and stopped behind his master. Mari could hear Bezar move toward them, but she brought a hand up to him, to indicate that he was to stay where he was. His mutterings were loud enough for her to make out his dislike for the man.

The goon behind the man leaned forward and Mari recoiled from his approach. His eyes were gone, dead and hollow, his sockets crusted with dried blood. His jaw hung at an odd angle;the sinew that held it together must have begun to rot away. The man had been dead for several days, yet under the power of the Faith Demon he still walked. Still served. He was no soul. He was an animated husk.

The old man in the hat chuckled again, smile still on his face “Now then, dear, I’d like to hear your story. You can skip the boring parts. I’m only interested in how you’ve become what you are now.”

Mari’s voice caught in her throat as she looked at the old man, the Demon before her, “Who...who are you?”

The man considered this for a long time, fingers coming up to tap lightly against the side of his hat. He finally answered, “I have many names. Too many to count. But you, dear, may call me ‘Apollyon’.”

“Why do you want my story?” Mari asked, eyes flicking toward the shambling corpse behind Apollyon. She was sure that the rotting cords of sinew at his jaw were going to give way at any moment.

Apollyon glanced toward the decaying husk and shooed it away with a subtle rise of his clean-shaven chin, “I’m seeking a kindred spirit. Someone who knows that this world needs to be cleansed of its corruption with fire.”

Mari shifted in her seat, willing herself to relax, to bring back the calm cool that had accompanied her when she had walked down the winding stairwell from her office to the dancefloor. She willed herself  to fill the room with her presence, a presence brought forth by affinity and efforts, and a presence that she believed had the ability to push this...Elder God away. Or so she hoped. She took a steady breath and began, “My father used to beat me -- “

Apollyon cut her off, tisking as he wagged a finger at her as one would do to a fibbing child, “No, he didn’t. In fact, you didn’t have a father.” His smile broadened, “Please don’t lie to me again, dear. I already know what’s true - and what isn’t - about you, but I’d like to hear it from your own mouth, pretty as it is. I want to see what lies beneath the surface of glamour and beauty.”

Mari swallowed, feeling her presence weaken in his company, then licked her lips. She began again.

* * *

“I never planned to become as I am. It wasn’t what I wanted,” Mari adjusted her skirt, suddenly aware of it’s length. “This wasn’t what my mother wanted for me, either. I worked for a cleansing house, as a secretary. I recorded the sessions that the Devils held with their patients. A respectable job for a Demon. The Human souls were usually cooperative, they saw that there was a purpose to the pain. Death did that to them, gave them perspective. Once they saw that the wounds repaired so quickly, under the ministrations of a healer, they became docile in their pain. Usually anyway. But sometimes, they didn’t. Sometimes they’d struggle and fight against their bonds as the Devils applied their treatments. It was my job to record all the goings-on as accurately and honestly as was possible. The goal was to help the Devils find what needed to be done to save the mortal souls.

“I worked with a Devil named Garisheim more often than any other Devil. He...he was kind to me. He was younger than many of the other Devils. Only a few hundred years old. He had only recently exited The Circle with a focus on purifying the soul. He was adept with his blade. Most Humans only felt pain for a short time before their soul began to heal itself. He could cut out the darkest tumor, the most rotted piece of hatred. With Garisheim the darkness would always leave them with enough treatments.

“Garisheim was handsome, far more handsome I think than any bookish man deserved to be. Two beautiful curved horns sprouted from his head and a tail with a gentle curl spread from beneath his coat. He had red eyes, dark and smokey beneath black hair he wore close cut to his scalp. He smiled easily, even with the darkness he saw every day he smiled.” Mari tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, a small smile creeping onto her lips as she spoke.

“Garisheim was one of my mother’s best customers. He had convinced the cleansing house to buy flowers every few days so the mortal souls would feel more...at peace. Bault fought him on that though. He was a cruel and violent Devil and didn’t care at all for the souls he cleansed. Fat, with sagging skin and crooked teeth, Bault was everything that Garisheim wasn’t. He was old and rotten, he could barely heal the mortals that lay before him, but he came from a powerful family.”

Mari watched Apollyon’s face, the old man’s head was tilted t to the side just a bit, just enough to show his interest, and he smiled. His old eyes twinkled at the way she spoke of her past. She held him rapt at attention with just her words. Mari drew herself up straighter and put weight into her words, her manner commanded attention. Her eyes narrowed on Apollyon’s face and she angled her head toward him. The story was hers and she would make it his as well.

“One time Bault cornered me. He pushed me into a rarely-traveled hall - few people ever walked down that hall - but Garisheim saw the whole thing, and he pulled Bault off of me. I...I don’t know what Bault had planned, but I was thankful that Garisheim had seen him, that he had been there. The cleansing house was small, not like  one of the large facilities off the main road, but it was well respected. It was carved of the same stone most of Dis was, the dark red of the nearby mountains.  It was clean and polished inside, the way that a place of such importance should be. It housed several wings, each one dedicated to souls of a particular infection. The least tainted lived on the bottom floor and came and went at their leisure. They treated Demons well enough there, they knew that the job we did had value. Few Devils would stoop to cleaning floors and dusting, so those in charge showed us a decency rarely seen by the rest of the Devils. Aside from Bault, of course.

“My mother...she wasn’t my mother, of course. No Demon has a parent. But she adopted me and raised me. She was a Love Demon and she sold the flowers that she grew in our little garden, yard really. That yard was the only reason we stayed where we lived after I found my job. My mother had searched so long for a place to grow those flowers, and once she had found a place with enough space she had worked that soil and every ounce of her heart. The flowers were a mixture of seeds from Earth and The Plains. They were beautiful and whenever I saw them, I knew how much my mother had sacrificed for me. She could have had so much more, she could have had a chance to go to Earth, to live in a sun that set and a world that grew more than bedraggled castoffs and what she could scavenge from traders. She gave that up for me,” Mari glanced at Apollyon as she spoke, stifling the choke in her voice as she allowed a few tears trickle down her cheek,  just enough of her tears to be sincere.

“I would dream of a time when we could leave Dis and move to Earth. Leave all this hate behind. But Demons weren’t allowed to leave often, only a handful each year. I remember when we were finally told we could leave this place. The Devil who came to us was nothing more than a bureaucrat, but when he -- "

“You were never given a pass. Don’t make this tale more tragic than it needs to be. I don’t need embellishments,” Apollyon waved his hand. “Continue, please.”

Mari frowned, lips pursing. It wasn’t often that a Demon could see through her truth when she pushed all her power into her words, even a powerful one. Behind her she could hear Bezar shuffling back and forth as he muttered to himself. Her ever vigilant protector and defender. It had taken her months to convince Bezar to crawl out of the hole he had dug in the side of a mountain near the city. Rumor of a Holocaust Demon of immense power had reached her ears. Normally she wouldn’t have given it much thought, but around him swirled the story that even Devils on the council couldn’t approach him without breaking down in tears.

Mari found Bezar when one of the mountain guides had dropped to his knees and taken a knife to his throat, threatening to slit it open from ear to ear. She had convinced him of  the folly and turned the Demon away. Mari had felt the weight of Bezar’s power, but a little something like abject misery couldn’t temper her hate.

Mari bit her lip hard as she stared at Apollyon, and she tasted copper as black blood broke the skin. Apollyon did not acknowledge her pause. She found him unsettling. Something about him reminded Mari of Bezar. There was a hate there, a power, but it wasn’t tempered by misery. It took coaxing, but Bezar finally accepted her offering of food that day. After speaking at him for what seemed like hours he had stopped wailing, and when she returned she found that the Demon seemed to be waiting for her. Eventually he trusted her enough to crawl out of the hole and follow her back to her home.

The stories she told Bezar were true enough, it wouldn’t do to have a Demon like that angry at her. Mari painted beautiful pictures with her words, pictures of days when Demons like Bezar would be all but extinct. She gave him a home and eventually hope. In return, he rarely let her out of his sight and if someone crossed her, they didn’t live for long. That was the power of her stories.

Mari’s stories had always been there, usually simple ones that she pushed into the air around her. A word here, a phrase there, something to turn a head away or gain a feeling of goodwill from someone. Her stories were how she had risen to power, if you sat in a room long enough Mari’s hold grew. Mari could have a Demon believe that they could trust her with anything, but Apollyon seemed immune. Even though she had already begun to weave a falsehood into her story he could still see some of her truth.

Apollyon’s head shifted and his brows raised just a little, prompting her story forward. So Mari continued to speak as if  her life depended on it, because it did. “I remember the day she was murdered. I had come home from work to our little one bedroom home and waited for her. I cooked dinner for us like I did every night since I was young. It was a stew that night. A stew of greens, the way it often was. Our home was sparsely furnished, we had a bed and some cushions on the floor, a table with two small stools, and a clock.

“My mother had decorated our home with clippings of photos and papers brought to The Plains by traders and smugglers. She would sit and look at the flowers in those pictures, flowers that went on as far as the image could show. When I was a child she would tell me about those images, she would invent stories of the people who planted those flowers. Stories of love and heartbreak, of lives lived in the sun and of crisp, cold nights around flame. Earth was the story she told herself to find the strength to live,” Mari pushed her shoulders back and straightened her skirt again. Apollyon smiled at her story now and her words swirled around him.

Mari steeled herself and continued, “I remember glancing at the clock and thinking that she was running late. That’s when the knock at the door came. I didn’t answer immediately. I wasn’t sure who it was. We rarely had visitors. After cracking the door open just a bit I saw they were Guards. They asked to come in and I asked to see their writs. After they showed them to me, I held the door tighter, barring them from entry. I started to shake, I don’t know why, but I just started to shake with such a fear.” Mari could feel Bezar draw closer to her, but with the slightest move of her hand he stopped, and she continued weaving her words into the story’s web.

“I finally let them in and they told me that my mother was dead. Found cut into pieces in an alley nearby. I remember that I kept drifting in and out of the conversation. I kept telling myself that she was helping them solve a crime, that she was alive and left me in The Plains while she traveled to Earth to grow her flowers. I told myself that she was anything but dead.

“There...was a buzz as they spoke. A hum in my ears that drowned out everything else. When they finally left I finished cooking the stew. I even made a second bowl. It wasn’t until the next day when I saw that cold stew sitting on our bare table that I really understood. Wave after wave seemed to swallow me whole, pulling me down until I couldn’t even move. That was when I cried.”

Mari suddenly realized she had been staring at her clasped hands while she spoke and she looked up to meet Apollyon’s face. Mari willed only a single tear to fall, a weakness she let very few experience, but a part of her story all the same. Behind her Bezar shuffled back and forth as he wondered if he should do anything for her, but there was nothing to do. It was an ancient story that she had left buried until the man before her dredged it so rudely from her lips.

“Is that enough?” Mari asked the man who was no longer smiling, but sat frowning at her story. At the injustice she experienced.

Apollyon  looked at her for a moment, then frowned, “Tell me about Julius.”

Mari’s heart froze in her chest, or maybe it began to beat so fast that she didn’t even feel its movement anymore. No one knew about Julius. How could they? He was her secret. Something that she loved and hated all at once. Julius was hers.

She pooled every ounce of her strength together and she pushed truth into her words, “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Mari answered in a simple and dismissive tone.

Apollyon smiled. “Now, dear, if I’ve showed you what I know. Why do you continue to try to turn me away?”

Mari’s face set in stone, each word dropping from her mouth like a boulder, “He was no one.”

The weight seemed to trickle on Apollyon like a drip of water on a stalagmite, “Then tell me about no one.”

Mari considered her options. Apollyon was a true Elder God, that much was obvious. He was probably as old as The Devils, maybe older. Maybe even to the time before the War of Will. There was no way she could beat him, that was obvious to her. Her guile wouldn’t save her, neither would her strength. A concentrated attack might slow him down, but not even combined with the power that Bezar held did she stand a chance. It was clear he wasn’t going to leave until she finished her story

Mari shifted in her seat and watched the man, her eyes drifted toward the two corpses behind him standing at the door. She adjusted her skirt and slowly uncrossed her leg, before settling back into her chair. Apollyon watched all this, but never looked away from her eyes. The ancient thing’s eyes bored into her. With a deep breath, Mari spoke again.

“For weeks after my mother died I went to the main Guard station of Dis, in the central square across from the looming tower that the King of The Plains resided. Each time I went I filled out a report. Each time I crossed that glittering facade of pure white marble, mined from where the Devils fell, I entered their massive hall and made myself heard. Each time I crossed the hall of Guards and stood before their crier I demanded to speak to the Honor Guard. And every time I stood before them defiantly, my chest out and my eyes high they ignored me.

“I became a joke to them, someone to be mocked and laughed at. But I never gave up. Week after week I spoke to them. Week after week I told them I wasn’t going to go away. Each time I was told in condescending voice that they were working the case, but I knew they were lying. Demons aren’t worth anything here. Devils call us their ‘charges’ and their ‘children’, but we’re nothing to them. We disappear so quickly from their lives that they treat us like pets. We’re something to be cooed over when we’re present, but they don’t mourn us for long when we’re gone. Why would they? We have no soul to cure of hate. No absolution to be had.

��Even the Demons in the Guard don’t care about us. Why should they? The Devils who pay them don’t. They’re all corrupt and cancerous things that need to be slit from the throat of society,” the hate in Mari’s voice was clear as it seeped between her teeth like tar. To this, Mari noted, Apollyon seemed to give his first genuine smile of approval. It was her hate he wanted? She could give him hate. Hate was easy for her now, so easy. “But I didn’t give up. I kept trying, over and over again. I had started to give up until Julius appeared.

“It was another night when there was a knock at the door, and again it was a Guard. But this one seemed different. He was young and had short, but unkempt light brown hair and two sharp horns on his forehead. His uniform was big on his slim frame, but he was strong. I could see that in an instant. I didn’t open the door for him, I just asked him what he wanted. He told me he was working my mother’s case, trying to help. He wanted to speak to me. Julius’s eyes were what convinced me to let him in, they were honest in a way I don’t think I had ever seen. They weren’t naive, they were eyes that had seen the dark for what it was, but they were also eyes that could see what the world could be.

“When I opened the door he waited outside for an invitation, he didn’t push me to let him in, it was on my terms. He told me that he had seen me at the Guard house and that he started to look into the murder, but needed my help. Julius asked me for my mother’s records, something the other Guard hadn't even bothered to look at. He was convinced that the murder knew my mother and her schedule, so that meant they were someone close to her. He had ruled out potential suspects in our building, so his thoughts came to my mother’s customers. I agreed, but only if I could help him search. He refused at first, but I promised to stay behind when it was dangerous,” Mari paused her and frowned, biting her lip just enough to feel the pain. Even then her stories were things to be believed when she wanted to be trusted, even then  she could sell what she had to get reach her goal.

Mari shook her head and continued, “Julius was a Frustration Demon, but instead of trying to find a quick jolt of happiness like so many of his kind he focused on his work. He sought satisfaction in justice. The fact that so few Demons at the Guard seemed to care drove him to even more dogged lengths.” Mari smiled at the thought of Julius, she became so fond of him so quickly. Julius fit into her life like he had always belonged there, the fact that she only had him for such a short time and for such a horrible reason still weighed on her. Privately Mari had begun to think of herself as cursed, anything she loved would die and because of this she kept everything at arm's length now. But this is something she would never speak out loud, especially to Apollyon.

Apollyon stared at Mari, his eyes boring into her. It was clear her lapses of silence had begun to gather his attention. So when Mari began to speak again, she slipped by her time with Julius. She glossed over the night he spent with her after the first week of searching. The first week of dinners, the first week of friendship and the possibility of something more. These were things that belonged to her, no one else. Julius was hers, maybe more so in death than he ever was while he lived. When her story began again, she was focused.

“We hadn’t had much luck the first few days. Julius and I had run down several leads, but nothing promising, all the while it seemed that fewer and fewer Guardsmen seemed to care. They even reassigned Julius, but he kept working after hours. Julius never said it, but I realized that they were trying to get him off the trail, to distract him and keep him too busy to help me. But he never gave up, he searched for one final connection that would bring us to the person who had killed my mother. But it wasn’t Julius who found the connection, it was me.

“We hadn’t focused on where I worked very much, it seemed unlikely that a cleansing house would house the killer. No mortal soul could have overcome her and the rest of the staff ignored her when she came with her deliveries. It made so much more sense it was someone else, someone who had noticed her on the street, or in our building. The area we lived in was hard, angry, very little good happened near our home. The cleansing house seemed so unlikely, but one day I, probably from a lack of sleep, or just inattentiveness, I didn’t take a copy of the notes I made to the filing room, so I needed to get them from the Devil I had served that day, Bault.

“I waited until Bault had left for the night and slipped into his office, as I scoured his desk for my handwriting I bumped into a picture frame. I almost didn’t give it a second thought, but then I realized that it wasn’t a photo, no, it was a pressed flower mounted in glass. It was one of my mother’s, I knew it. Many of the flowers she grew didn’t grow anywhere else in The Plains, not naturally. I remember knowing with every fiber of my heart that he was the killer.  I hated him so much, but I needed something else to bring to Julius. I didn’t want to look like a fool. I needed proof.

“I had to jimmy open a drawer in Bault’s filing cabinet, but when I did I found a small wooden box filled with petals. He must have been taking some from every delivery my mother brought, hid them away. I left a soon as I could and I told Julius. At first he tried to find another excuse, another reason. Bault was a Devil from a rich family, and it was rare for any Devil to kill a Demon, but finally Julius agreed that we needed to find out more.”

Mari paused her for a moment, her teeth ground together and she could feel it in her head. Everything had started to blur together, the lie and truth. Her story and her life. Apollyon must have known what she had changed, the shift, but he didn’t make any indication that he had. Apollyon stared at her for a moment, he hat tilted just so on his head. The Faith Demon finally gestured for her to continue, one brow cocked.

Mari stared back into his eyes, refusing to look away, but eventually she continued. “The Guard refused to give him a writ, though. They told him to drop it. They said that a Devil wouldn’t bother killing a Demon. That Bault wasn’t the killer, why would he? Each Devil inherited the possessions and finances of their last incarnation. Most were reborn with wealth the likes of which a Demon could never understand. Julius hated how they spoke to him, the look of revulsion on his face when he came back and told me what they had said made that evident. I never saw him so angry, his nature overflowed and his whole body shook. So we went to search his home ourselves, we didn’t notify the guard.

“I called out sick for the day and went with Julius to Bault’s house, they thought it was odd, but considering I hadn’t taken a single day off the entire I time I worked they they didn’t question me too much. I think they just decided I had finally started to mourn my mother.

“Bault’s house was a few blocks from the main square, in a housing district that ran along the outer walls of the royal tower. I remember feeling so out of place there, I knew I didn’t belong. I was positive we wouldn’t even make it down the street before a Guard stopped us, but we did. Julius told me to walk like I lived there, so I did. We found his home easy enough, his family name was written on the red-block outerwall. His courtyard wasn’t as large as I expected, but then, why would it be? Few Devils did anything with the outdoor space they had, why not fill it with more home?

“It didn’t take much to pick the lock on the giant, metal and wood double doors. Devils don’t worry about people breaking into their homes. Why would they? They hardly worry about anything. But as the doors swung silently inward I was in awe. The home of a Devil like Bault was a palace compared to the one bedroom nothing I grew up in. The three stories of his home were connected by a winding staircase carved from obsidian. The floor was a polished white marble and every petty plaything in it could buy me comfort for a month. As we walked into the entryway and closed the door I could a viewing-glass in every room and games of various skill littered his tables. It was clear the Devil wanted for very little.

“Julius hadn’t worn his uniform. He wasn’t a Guard for this break-in, but he carried his stun-stick on his hip, with a crack it would jolt to life and the magic in it would flurry out in a bolt of power that could bring down even the biggest foe. Guards weren’t given anything truly lethal, most of them were Demons. Why would you arm your servants? But we both thought his stun-stick would be enough. Only the Royal Arms Bearers carried lethal weapons, blades and bolt-throwers hardened with magic to drop the toughest of foes. And only Devils were consecrated as Arms Bearers, low caste Devils, but Devils all the same.

“We crept through the home, searching for anything that might tie Bault to my mother’s murder. Neither of us knew what we were looking for, Julius said that he probably had a memento from my mother, or from other people he may have hurt. So we searched each room one at a time and moved higher was we went. We had finally reached the third floor when we heard the front door close below and the distant sounds of footsteps moving cautiously around the entryway. Julius grabbed my arm and pulled me Julius grabbed me and pulled me toward a window overlooking the street below, but it was too high up to jump and there was nothing to land on but the unyielding rock streets below.

“I could hear the sound of Bault’s expensive shoes climbing the stairs one-by-one. He was whistling now, pretending that he wasn’t suspicious. My heart raced at this, I didn’t understand why I did, but I do know. He was crafting his own story, one of calm, deliberiate movements and a driving fear. I willed myself to breath and I looked to Julius for an answer.”

Mari hesitated here and thought of the events that followed, the blood, the hate, the anger. She could feel her nails digging into her hands, leaving red marks like tiny daggers. Mari didn’t want to continue, but she knew Apollyon wouldn't be satisfied yet. That much was obvious to her now, the way the man sat and watched her, waiting for what came next. What he already knew but wanted her to say out loud.

“Julius took my hand again and lead me to a room as quietly as he could, it wasn’t until our eyes adjusted to the gloom that we realized we must have entered Bault’s bedroom. Julius hesitated and I could see the realization creep across his face, he turned around and tried to pull me back out into the hall, but Bault had reached the second floor and his whistling grew louder. Julius pushed me into a small closet and then hid under the bed.

“I willed my heart to slow as I took deep, silent breaths. I backed deeper into the closet to escape the happy noise of a murder, of a monster. I told myself that Julius could handle him, that his stun-stick was enough. That we would be okay and we would stop Bault and the Guard would be forced to listen to us. To me. I moved backwards, pressing myself deeper into the closet, away from the door, away from the sound of Bault opening the door to the room we were hiding in, I breathed through my nose and begged the Gods to keep me safe. To keep me alive.

Mari stopped, suddenly aware of her tears, she wondered how long they had been flowing. They were foreign on her cheeks now, something she hadn’t felt in years, she curled her fingers around the hem of he dress and pulled it straight again. Behind her Bezar moved a fraction of an inch closer, all the affection he ever showed, to come closer when she needed him. Mari took a deep breath and looked Apollyon in the eye, "There, in that closet, was where my hand brushed a flower.

“I didn’t realize what it was at first. The understanding crept up my spine making me shiver all the way. I turned around as best as I could in the little space and looked to where I now smelled the subtle perfume of my mother’s flowers. I couldn’t see it clearly in the dark, but in the dull from the door I could make out glass and vases. My heart started to beat in my throat and sound seemed to drown out. When Bault finally pushed open the door and let the light from the hall flood in…” Mari trailed off and stared into Apollyon’s eyes, they seemed to twinkle beneath his brow. When Mari didn’t continue he gestured at her. The wave of his hand was enough for her to understand. Finish what was started. Finish the story. Paint the picture with her words.

“The light caught the framed images of my mother and the pressed flowers that lined the room. The photos were from all different times and locations, but most of them were at the cleansing house. I shuddered as my eyes drifted from one picture to the next. Dozens of them lined the closet. I could see myself in some of them, but I wasn’t the focus, I was just the means to an end. I don’t remember what I thought then, but I know what I did. I grabbed a vase and pushed open the door. Bault turned toward me, confusion etched in his eyes, but then he smiled at me and spread his arms out, inviting me, calling to me.

“I screamed and rushed at Bault, the vase held high over my head. I swung at him, but he knocked me back with a pulse of light. The concussive wave that sprawled me to the ground, knocked the vase out of my hands, it smashed on the hard rock floors and splashed sickly green water and dead flowers across the floor. I pushed myself up, disoriented. The blast had scattered loose clothes and papers into the air. I stared up at him as Bault stalked toward me, smiling. I never knew he could use energy. In all the time I worked with him I had never seen him do it. To bend that power to your will is such a rare thing, a thing that takes so much discipline. I would never have guessed that Bault could harness that kind of power. But he could.

“His hands glowed in a blue and white fire, the light played off his face and a manic smile curved his lips. He stalked closer, he said something, but I couldn’t hear him. There was a ringing in my ears from the blast. I screamed at him, angry and afraid, but I wouldn’t let myself die without some kind of defiance. The flames in Bault’s hand faded and he stooped down, smiling at me as he reached out to wrap his hands around my throat.

“But Julius had frantically pulled himself from under the bed and cracked Bault in the back of the head with his stun-stick. The energy rippled through Bault’s body and he jerked back.  Bault cried out as he body convulsed and he dropped to his knees. But it wasn’t enough, Bault shook the electrical damage off and turned around. With a roar Bault grabbed the stick from Julius and snapped it like a dry twig as he kicked Julius across the room. Julius smashed into the wall above the bed, the wall cracked under the impact and he smashed down onto the mattress, the stone frame shuddered with his weight, but didn’t buckle.

“Bault stared at Julius’s unmoving form for a moment, then turned to me again, his smile darker, eyes harder. Behind Bault I could see Julius stir and push himself up again, he stumbled off the bed and grabbed his side, his ribs must have been broken from the kick, but he wasn’t going to give up. Julius threw himself from the bed and tackled Bault from behind, wrapping his arms around the Devil’s neck and pulling him backwards. Julius shouted at me to run, I hesitated and tried to think of a way to help, a way to stop Bault, but when Julius screamed at me a second time I realized that there was nothing I could do. So I ran.

“Behind me I heard the crackle of energy and shouts of rage. But I ran. I ran and I ran until I found a Guard. I tried to explain what had happened, that Julius needed my help, but the man frowned at me and told me he needed to find his superior, to ask permission to enter a Devil’s residence. He turned to write in his speaking-paper and I grabbed his arm, I told him that Julius was a Guard and that if we didn’t help him he would die. The other guard brushed me away and told me that we would get there soon enough.

“But it wasn’t soon enough. By the time we returned to Bault’s home, he had beaten Julius to death. The Guard found Bault sitting on the bottom of the stairs waiting, blood still dripped from his knuckles. Julius’s body was mangled, clearly abused long after he had died. Bault just smiled as the Guard bound his arms in shackles and lead him from the house.”

“And what did they do to him? To your ‘Bault’,” Apollyon asked, but Mari knew the Elder God already knew the answer.

Mari’s lip sneered, “They told me that Devils were a special case and that the Guard wouldn’t decide judgment, that it was for the Council to make a ruling. The value of Bault’s life was measured in centuries, not the fleeting decades of my mother. Or Julius.”

“That was when you decide that you weren’t going to be a part of their laws anymore, didn’t you? How long did it take you to build your network? Months? Years?” Apollyon was leaning forward now, eager. His eyes were bright and excited as he stared at Mari.

“Less time than you’d think,” was Mari’s simple answer as she smoothed her skirt once more.

“Of course it wouldn’t take long with your power. The stories you tell, the ability to bend the truth, flood the senses of even the most hardened Devil and turn them to your will. Make them trust you, give you things, information,” Apollyon’s speech grew quick, excited. “I haven’t found a power like yours in centuries of looking, and now you're here. I want your power, Mari. I want you.”

Mari could feel Bezar tense beside her, but she willed him to calm down. Mari pulled herself up, this was a negotiation she could not lose. The Elder God had stacked the deck against her, but her destiny was her own and she would not give it up without a fight, “I’m not looking for a new faith, Elder God. I have what I want and before my life is over I’ll gain more power. More influence. If there’s any justice I’ll make this world change through the force of my will. I will make it better.”

“Oh, but my dear, that is such a narrow hope. A thin, weak change that will erode before a single generation of Devils has passed. I can offer you a new world all before your life ends. And it starts with this,” Apollyon drew a small vial from his coat pocket. The liquid inside was black and thick, Mari eyed it with distrust. “This is a gift from my master to me. And now I offer it to you. A show of good faith to you and your whispering friend. Drink this and your power will become limitless. You will be a God in your own right.”

"And why should I trust you?”

“Because I brought you another gift my dear. I know what you left out, I know the part of the story that you didn’t want to tell me,” Apollyon raised his hand and gestured. Behind him there was shuffling and the door opened again. More of his undead shambled in, this time dragging a battered man with a hood pulled down over his head. “I know it wasn’t Bault that killed your mother and Julius.”

Mari tensed as the corpses threw the figure to the ground beside where Apollyon sat. One of the dead whipped the hood from the man’s head and Mari could see that it was a Devil now. Her heart beat as she looked at him and, though he was bloody, she could see make out the handsome lines of Garisheim’s face.

“Your story was all true, save for one thing. Bault was a rogue, yes, but he was no murderer. When you told me the story you chose to omit that Garisheim was the one who murdered your mother, battered your dear Julius to death,” Apollyon sat back and steepled his fingers, “because if you admitted that then you would admit so much more. That you enjoyed Garisheim’s company on a much more personal level. You gave into him, laid with him, fell in love with him and he viewed you as little more than a rag to be thrown away. He used you to be near your mother. Once he had what he needed he took her away from you forever,” Apollyon smiled as he spoke and pushed the vial closer to Mari. His eyes locked onto her face.

But Mari could only stare at Garisheim, her whole body shook. She told herself that she didn’t love him, that she only lusted for him once. To hear Apollyon say that she loved Garisheim made her stomach cold. Maybe she did love him, but now he was just a reminder of the child she left behind. Garisheim taught her a lesson when he took everything from her: Justice didn’t mean the same thing for everyone. The rich, the powerful, those born with the right blood...they were all beyond justice.

But now Garisheim was here, a bloody gift to her from an Elder God so strong that he could bring a Devil to her like it was a trifle. A Faith Demon so powerful that the laws of Devils didn’t even seem to apply.

“He’s the first of your gifts, Mari. The vial and the Devil are yours, as long as you stand beside me in the coming storm,” Apollyon leaned back in his chair and watched Mari now, she could feel him sizing her up.

“What do you need from me?” Mari asked, her eyes didn’t leave Garisheim. She didn’t want to look away, a fear gripped her as she looked at Apollyon, Garisheim might disappear. The Council of Devils meant to hold him until Mari’s life and memory had faded, then Garisheim would be free to live out the rest of his long and rich life.

Apollyon waited for a moment to answer, “I need a story. The right story.”

“Anyone can tell a story,” Mari said sharply.

“This is true, but I need a story to end all stories. I need a voice to spread my tale from one end of the Earth to the other. I need a story of faith,” Apollyon told her.

Mari turned from her gift still collapsed at her feet, caught by a realization, the request was so absurd that Mari instantly knew she could never do it, “You want your faith spread again, don’t you? You want to regain your old power. Your followers. It wouldn’t work, it might create a new Faith Demon, a new you, but you could never be what you were.”

The old man started to laugh his happy, honest laugh, “Oh, my dear, no. I know my faith’s time has come and gone, I am merely assembling a vanguard.”

“For?”

“A new world, dear. A world free of haves and have-nots. A world free of punishment and injustice. A new world of purity and equality.”

Mari’s lip curled, “Get to the point.”

"I need a Gospel for Death,” Apollyon said, his head tilting.

Mari watched Apollyon for what seemed like an eternity. The man met her eyes and within them she could see the depths of his conviction. The depths of his belief. If she followed him her life would be forfeit, extinguished like a candle in the wind. But her story would light the fuse that would end the world. That’s what he offered her, equality. Death did not discriminate. Death did not care if you were rich or powerful.

Mari took the vial and opened it, her hand shook as she looked at the Vial, beside her Bezar had quieted for the first time since she had found him so many years ago. The liquid inside didn’t seem to have a scent, but all the same it stirred something inside of her. A consuming hunger rose in her heart.

Garisheim’s face slowly tilted up to meet her and what he did sealed Mari’s resolve. He told her without a word that the only way to save the wretched and unjust world she had been born into was with a purging flame. In that single gesture Mari knew she would do anything to burn the world and everything in it to ash.

Garisheim smiled at her.

/END

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Wings Unseen Blog Tour and $25 Amazon Giveaway!

Wings Unseen

by Rebecca Gomez Farrell

Published by: Meerkat Press

Publication date: August 22, 2017

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult

To end a civil war, Lansera's King Turyn reliquished a quarter of his kingdom to create Medua, exiling all who would honor greed over valor to this new realm on the other side of the mountains. The Meduans and Lanserim have maintained an uneasy truce for two generations, but their ways of life are as comparable as oil and water. 

When Vesperi, a Meduan noblewoman, kills a Lanserim spy with a lick of her silver flame, she hopes the powerful display of magic will convince her father to name her as his heir. She doesn't know the act will draw the eye of the tyrannical Guj, Medua's leader, or that the spy was the brother of Serrafina Gavenstone, the fiancè pf Turyn's grandson, Prince Janto. As Janto sets out for an annual competition on the mysterious island of Braven, Serra accepts an invitation to study with the religious Brotherhood, hoping for somewhere to grieve her brother's murder in peace. What she finds instead is a horror that threatens both countries, devouring all living things and leaving husks of skin in its wake.

To defeat it, Janto and Serra must learn to work together with the only person who possesses the magic that can: the beautiful Vesperi, whom no one knows murdered Serra's brother. An ultimate rejection plunges Vesperi forward toward their shared destiny, with the powerful Guj on her heels and the menacing beating of unseen wings all about.

Readers of all ages will enjoy Wings Unseen, Rebecca Gomez Ferrell's first full-length novel. It is a fully-imagined epic fantasy with an unforgettable cast of characters. 

Author Links

http://ift.tt/1KC4Qt0 http://ift.tt/2x7EilP https://twitter.com/thegourmez?lang=en http://ift.tt/2vH6Dfj

Available for Purchase

           Review

I've been watching a lot of Game of Thrones, and I assume the author does as well (or has read the books, which I, regrettably, have not done yet). A couple of the names are similar (i.e. Braven/Bravos and Lanisters/Lanserim). The author might have been inspired by GoT, but this book was definitely much different than GoT. You can tell that there was some inspiration, from a few names and places, and some of the settings in the book sound similar. In fact, since I just recently binge watched the entire GoT series to get caught up for the new episodes in season 7, there were several places in this book where I thought something entirely different (and usually much worse) was going to happen, because that is something that would have happened in GoT, but the author took it a totally different direction. So, whether you love GoT, hate GoT, or you've never even heard of or seen/read GoT, I still recommend this book! Basically, a civil war between people who value greed and power and those who value honor broke out. To stop the fighting and bloodshed, they signed a truce, giving the Meduans the land over the mountains, and the King rule over the rest of Lansera. The Meduans were the cruel, greedy people, of at least the men among them who strive for power were. They treated women like shit, even their wives and daughters. All women were considered just a way to fulfill urges and have children. Wives typically weren't even allowed to live in the same house with wealthy men and their children, and poor men weren't allows to marry. Most women lived in a separate part of town that men only entered when they have "urges." Across the mountains, a kind king rules with honor and compassion. The king married for love, and the prince is engaged to marry his childhood sweetheart. The two peoples couldn't be any more different. I ♥ed Prince Janto, but my favorite character was Vesperi! I ♥ed her personality and spunk! Even though the way she acts is a product of growing up in such a cruel and violent environment, she doesn't take any crap from anyone, regardless of the consequences. I want to say more and explain a couple of my favorite Vesperi moments, but I don't want to give away any spoilers... You'll just have to read the book! ☺ This book was AWESOME! The author did an excellent job at world building and character development. She really let the reader travel into Lanserim and Medua, in order to be able to understand their worlds and culture. I absolutely ♥ ♥ ♥ this book!!! I even loved the romantic aspect in it, which if you've read pretty much any of my other reviews, you know that I am very critical of. This was not cookie cutter love triangle or stupid crush, though. The author did an excellent job at fitting the love story in in a unique manner, without taking focus away from the rest of the story, and especially without taking focus away from the amazing characters or making them turn into idiots around their silly crushes, like in way too many YA books nowadays. I definitely recommend this book to everyone! The only problem I had with it was that it ended too early, and I wanted to keep reading more! I would love to read a sequel! I loved the ending, but I'm not sure if the author intended to leave an option for or intends to write a sequel. I ♥ed this book and am super impressed with Rebecca Gomez Farrell and will definitely be looking for future books by her! I received a copy of this book for free from Xpresso Book Tours in exchange for an honest review. 

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