#mine was 'craft me a cunning creation'

[pain-in-the-butler]

Dadbastian Week Day 6/7: Needed Advice and Setting Sun

Happy final day of Dadbastian week, my fellow fans. This was a wild ride, and I had so much fun seeing all the creations everyone came up with to celebrate! It may be the end of the seven days, but you can certainly expect more Dadbastian content from me in the future regardless. Let's keep the party going 😎

This "drabble" was better intended for yesterday's prompt, but I sort of shoehorned in a sunset so that I could post this on the final day. I would have liked to craft a story for each day of Dadbastian week, but sometimes that's life! And at 5.2k, this one's length is basically worth two prompts anyway.

No major warnings needed, but perhaps a small note that this story takes place when Ciel is still only ten years old. He engages in some regressive behavior as a way of coping with his trauma, and Sebastian handles the situation very Sebastianly. So it feels weird to say enjoy but uh... enjoy!

How many souls had Sebastian devoured in the centuries before he met this one?

Two or three hundred, approximately. But how many of them had stood out as especially worthy? Perhaps one or two – and those experiences were not so remarkable. Merely different from the norm. Ask a human every meal they’d eaten over the course of their measly lifetime. Even they would laugh. Impossible! They could scarcely remember what they’d eaten last week. Perhaps a particularly delectable trifle or perfectly roasted guinea fowl would stand out. But would even a hundred meals? Of course not. Don’t be silly.

How old was Sebastian? Perhaps as old as the universe; perhaps as old as the wheel. He was amorphous. Time did not mark him with crow’s feet and gray hair. Time had no power over him at all, and Sebastian did not need to consider it. It was a concept built for mortals. And though Sebastian had a vague idea of how long he had been a greater demon, of the moment he had stopped lapping up other demons’ scraps and began forming contracts of his own, such knowledge didn’t intrigue him. The only span of time that had ever mattered was “soon.” When was his next meal? Soon. Always soon, because humans were easy to please and easy to trick, and Sebastian was well-suited for pleasure and trickery.

It had been over a month since Sebastian had thought the word “soon.”

Today marked the hundredth day of his contract with “Ciel” Phantomhive, a ten-year-old boy who was, without question, the youngest person Sebastian had ever played the shadow of. Ten years old: why, ten years was nothing to a demon. In the amount of time it had taken Ciel to merely exist, Sebastian had done nothing but sit patiently waiting for the right moment to strike, to bargain with just the right human. A hundred days ago, he and his future meal at last crossed paths.

This is the most curious and enticing soul I have found so far, Sebastian remembered thinking that day, and it will be mine in mere moments. For how could a frail, wounded, sniveling orphan possibly take longer to cultivate than a monarch, or a prodigy, or a megalomaniac?

Sebastian denounced them all. They were games, comparatively, to this real test of will he was engaged in now. For yesterday’s orphan was today’s earl, and the guidelines of this contract would not allow for a swift victory. Though Sebastian had never known hunger so intimately before this contract, now he was also getting to know patience – and hunger and patience would work together to transform this soul into a dining experience Sebastian had never known the likes of before.

And yet... often Sebastian found himself thinking, This is the soul clever enough to test my cunning? This is the one?

For the boy was still just that: a boy. And the boy’s childish habits were still so wildly out of control, it was a wonder he had ever been a noble’s son.

“You’ve been picking at your skin again,” Sebastian scolded at bathtime when he noticed the little pink marks freckling those skinny arms. “You mustn’t do that. The areas could become infected.”

“Young master. Are you listening to me?” Ciel’s gaze would often drift to the window in the middle of a lesson. “Repeat what I just said. …Yes, that’s what I thought. Pay attention.”

“Leave that alone,” Sebastian said when Ciel would play with the string of his eye patch.

“You must sit still,” Sebastian said at dinnertime and teatime and any time Ciel was in a chair.

“Rings stay on your fingers, unless you’re sealing an envelope.”

“Look me in the eye.”

“Stop tapping your foot.”

“Sit up straight.”

“No fidgeting.”

“Smaller bites.”

“Don’t yawn.”

“Don’t scratch.”

“And take that out of your mouth this instant.”

That last sentiment was by far the most awful one to consider, and, alas, the most persistent. In the privacy of his own home, Ciel chewed on things relentlessly: his fingers, his nails, his own hair, a pen he might be holding. His teeth, still a subtle mismatch of adult and milk teeth, longed to keep busy. When he wasn’t eating, they sought out other objects to masticate and weren’t picky about what that object happened to be.

“Are you a rodent?” Sebastian asked him one afternoon when he caught Ciel nibbling at his own sleeve.

Ciel blinked at him. “What?”

“Or a teething puppy?”

Ciel blushed angrily. “No.”

“Then I can think of no reason why you should be unable to keep your clothing out of your mouth,” Sebastian said distastefully.

Ciel glowered at him and stopped in the meantime. But the chewing was incessant. He always went back to it as soon as he thought Sebastian’s back was turned.

“I struggle to comprehend,” Sebastian confided to Tanaka one evening, “how the young master got away with such deplorable behaviors while he was growing up.”

Tanaka looked at Sebastian sadly from the servant’s table. The two were in the kitchen, Tanaka drinking green tea while Sebastian stood at the counter, polishing silver. “The young master did not have such persistent habits before you knew him… I believe this developed during that month he spent alone. That month we know so little about.” Tanaka pressed his fingers into the warm ceramic of the yunomi cup, staring into its depths. “There are three empty spaces in his heart now… and for a boy so young, it’s hard to know how to fill such space except with distraction. We must be gentle with him.”

But “gentle” took patience, and gentle took time, and there was no reason to spend it when a smart rap on the wrist would do just as well at a fraction of the speed.

Most of Ciel’s habits had been defeated with a rap on the wrist. The chewing was not so easily thwarted. What was worse, after a week of testing various objects in his mouth, Ciel seemed to have decided that the hems of his sleeves were his top choice. Sebastian’s irritation grew when he saw the state of Ciel’s shirt one evening before bed, the sleeves crimped and wrinkled from what seemed to be a whole day’s worth of suckling.

“This is flagrantly infantile,” he hissed lightly as he gripped his charge by the forearm. Ciel was looking hard at the floor and flushing with defiance. “What should anyone think of an earl with such deplorable attire? You’d do better without teeth than with sleeves like this.”

“It’s not like I do it in front of anyone!” Ciel argued with a heat that came from embarrassment.

Sebastian’s frown quirked. “It is pathetic to defend this behavior. You will stop, or there will be consequences.”

Ciel snorted, smirking now. “Consequences? What are you going to do? Hit my palms with a ruler till they bleed?” It was clear the boy wanted to recover some dignity. “You can’t stop me. I might have a bad habit, but I bet you don’t really know how to stop me from doing this.”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “Don’t I?”

“Well then, what are you going to do about it?” Ciel shot back.

The butler hesitated, then started unbuttoning the young master’s shirt up by its rounded collar. “Continue this charade, and perhaps I shall have to decide.”

“When we were younger and Edward would do something wrong, I remember Aunt Francis would take away his pocket money,” Ciel continued matter-of-factly as Sebastian slipped the nightgown over his master’s small head. “But you can’t take my money away from me. And you can’t force me to stay in my room until I repent, like my parents would.”

“No, perhaps not,” was Sebastian’s even answer.

“Well, good luck, then!” Ciel challenged, and Sebastian could swear that just before he extinguished the candle and turned to leave, the rotten brat was bringing his sleeve toward his mouth for a repeat performance.

It was clear Ciel thought he had won. Let him think that. It would only make the consequences of his actions all the more shocking.

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In England, the bird pepper was best known for its importance in making the highest quality cayenne. It was a thin, red capsicum that shone as bright as a warning. The human stomach knew no particulars: surely this coloration was nature’s way of advertising danger, but humans were the one species that delighted in spice, cultivated it, and celebrated the flavor of this irritating chemical. Sebastian was not sure if he found this act unnaturally stupid or minutely impressive. But it meant he would have easy access to the drought that would curb his master’s behavior.

Once delivered to the manor, the capsicums promptly had their piths removed and jarred in water to soak for a few days. The water took on a slightly orange quality, but was diluted with a bit more water until it was nearly clear. Finally, that water was painted on the sleeves of one of Ciel’s nightshirts using a basting brush and left hanging for another day until perfectly dry and unassuming.

Between the night Sebastian had decided on his plan and the evening he was able to execute it, Ciel’s habit had somewhat abated, but only somewhat. Sebastian’s warnings had grown sharper, and thus Ciel’s emotions towards the warnings had become more dramatic in response. He would grow absentminded, his eyes glossing over in the middle of a lesson, and then he’d automatically fall into his old pattern. Sebastian would rebuke, “Stop that,” whenever he caught the young master in the act, and Ciel would startle back to reality with a fleeting look of bewilderment. Then the shame and contempt would take over, and Ciel would shoot his butler such a scathing glare that Sebastian felt no sympathy whatsoever for what would soon come to pass.

“I must advise you, young master, not to go about biting your sleeves after I leave the room tonight,” Sebastian said at bedtime as the hands were threaded through the innocuous, soft pajama sleeves with perhaps only the slightest aroma of scarlet truth. “I will know if you have disobeyed; I have my ways. You must understand that it’s for your own good that I do whatever it takes to stop you.”

Ciel’s watchful eyes fell to the floor, and his shoulders slumped. For a moment, he looked just like the child that he was. “I’m trying, all right? It’s hard.”

“Ridiculous,” Sebastian huffed, planting his hands on his hips. “If your sleeve is in your mouth, take it out. This is all that you have to do. You would really have me believe such a thing is hard?”

“As if a damn demon would understand!” Ciel whined, though his face looked red again. “It’s not… Ugh, never mind! I’m trying, so you can stop treating me as if I’m not already!”

“If you really are trying, then I have faith that tonight will be different,” Sebastian said, with just a single thread of slyness stringing together his words as he pulled away the covers and draped them back over the curled-up troublemaker. “And who knows, you may just be rewarded if you manage to follow through.”

“... What kind of reward will I get?” Ciel asked.

Sebastian paused briefly at Ciel’s look of earnest curiosity. The ‘reward’ he’d meant was really ‘a lack of punishment.’ Would a reward actually be a worthy incentive when the boy was misbehaving? “We shall discuss it in the morning, but only if you manage to keep your sleeves away from your teeth all night. That is the first obstacle. Now then, will you be needing anything else before bed?”

Ciel stuffed his hands beneath his pillow. “No.”

“Very good. Then… I wish you luck, and goodnight.”

The light in the room was snuffed out. Sebastian left and went immediately to the kitchen to prepare the glass of milk. He had no faith the sleeves would remain untouched for very long. Mortals were driven by instinct, even to their own detriment. It was any wonder they managed to exist as a species. They could not go without their little vices. Even Ciel, who was too young and too coddled to have ever been introduced to alcohol or tobacco, had come up with a crutch all on his own. Sebastian snickered under his breath as he poured the cold milk into the teacup from the bottle he’d kept cool in the pantry. A human struggling to escape his own nature, also made to feel guilty for his own nature… Sebastian couldn’t lie and tell himself it wasn’t a positively delicious notion.

And yet… a full hour passed by with no outcry. Sebastian was minutely surprised. He had kept the cup of milk ready to deliver as he went about tidying up the kitchen for the end of the day. But eventually he had to admit to himself that the young master must have fallen asleep without indulging in his habit. Sebastian tutted as he poured the undrunk milk back into its bottle. He hadn’t meant to look forward to it, but it was a little boring to consider that his plan wouldn’t unfold after all… Oh well. Perhaps now was the time for some of the more encompassing chores Tanaka had warned him came with spring. Apparently replacing all of the winter curtains in the manor with a muslin set was only one such nuisance to consider…

It was two a.m. that brought the scream.

Sebastian knew this scream well. It was not the disgusted surprise of a boy who had tasted something unappealing, but the anguish of a soul bursting free from a nightmare. It was a sound all too familiar in this household. Sebastian dropped what he was doing to attend it at once. But perhaps he had been too unhurried all the same, because along the way, an actual summons was issued as well, then again, with all the persistence of a lost little lamb.

The lamps in their sconces flared to life as Sebastian entered the sitting area of the master bedroom. “I am here, young master. There is no need to call for me twice. I can guarantee you will be heard no matter how quiet you must be.”

Sebastian strode to the bedside casually nonetheless. He was never too harried in these cases. They were nearly always the same. Ciel would be hiding in a cave of his own blankets. Sebastian would produce a few whimsical promises for closeness, for security. Ciel would eventually drift back off and never mention their encounter in the morning. But tonight, the script was not being followed.

Ciel was sitting outside of the covers. He was bolt upright and rubbing at his face abrasively with his sleeves. “My eyes,” he said in a voice that was liquid and hollow. “S-Something is wrong with my eyes.”

Sebastian felt his insides give a lurch. Suddenly this was serious.

“Drop your hands at once.” He didn’t wait for the command to be followed. He snagged the little wrists and pulled them away. Ciel stared at him with wide, blinking eyes that were fringed pink with irritation. Sebastian clucked his tongue, disapproving. “Ah, look at this mess… What ever were you doing this for?”

Ciel’s face lit with the terror of an innocent. “It’s not my fault! I didn’t do anything! My eyes just started burning, and they won’t stop no matter what I do!” Ciel struggled in his butler’s grip, desperate to touch and rub and unwittingly worsen the situation. “It hurts, let me go—”

“Settle yourself down. Or am I unable to leave you alone for even a mere moment to retrieve the antidote for your suffering?” Sebastian said sternly. Exasperated, he freed one hand to pull the handkerchief from his lapel pocket. “If you must touch your eyes, do so with this. Your sleeves are the issue, so do not return to them. Do you understand me?”

Ciel was already busy grinding the clean cloth into his eye sockets. When Sebastian repeated himself, the young master immediately whined, “Yes, I get it, just help me already!”

To be so ungrateful when he’s at the mercy of whoever will come to his aid… Sebastian snorted a breath as he returned to fetch the milk from the kitchen. It was serving a different purpose than Sebastian had expected… and though it wasn’t as perfect a solution here as it was for taste buds, it certainly had to be better than that horrid paste of lead sugar and rainwater that other humans seemed to think was an acceptable cure for ocular inflammation. He returned with it and a clean cloth in less than a minute.

Ciel was still pressing the handkerchief into his eyes with both palms as if it would do any good. “Allow me to see now.” Sebastian pulled the child's hands away from his face without waiting. Ciel made a small noise of frustration in the back of his throat and swatted off the manhandling. There was a brief tussle of arms as both fought for control of the situation, but when the cold relief of the milk-soaked cloth touched his lids, Ciel froze beneath his butler's hand. The tantrum became a forgotten thing. All at once, Ciel sat as still and silent as a fawn while Sebastian dabbed at his eyes with salve.

Finally. Sebastian sighed loudly in relief. “There, there we are. Isn’t that better?”

“... What’s wrong with me…?” Ciel’s voice was thin and exhausted, the tension of a crisis at last flooding out of him.

Sebastian put on a wry grin. “If you hadn’t been indulging in your chewing habit, this wouldn’t have happened,” he said as he continued to tend to the site. “I soaked your sleeves in capsicum water a few days ago, so that if you tried putting them in your mouth when I had my back turned, the taste would repel you and I would know what you had done.”

“H-Huh…?” Ciel was half-awake and still working through his fear. “You… You did this?”

“You did this,” Sebastian corrected. “I was only trying to help you with your habit, and now here we are… Ah, but what were you rubbing your face for? This was not supposed to end up in your eyes.” A new, clean section of the cloth was selected and dipped in the milk.

Ciel stared at Sebastian, puzzled, bewildered. “This happened because of you?” His voice was picking up understanding, alongside volume.

“How could I expect that you would touch your eyes?” Sebastian huffed in exasperation. Ciel leaned away when he came at him with the cloth this time. “Young master, honestly…”

“Let me do it myself!” Ciel snatched the fabric away and began treating his own eyes, which were still rimmed in pink and watering in the aftermath. Sebastian watched him, narrowing his gaze. What a pathetic scene. The boy looked as miserable as a child who hadn’t gotten his way at a game and, in a show of disapproval at the injustice of life, let out a great bout of crocodile…

… tears.

“... The young master was having a bad dream before all of this, yes?” Sebastian asked.

Ciel had the entire upper half of his face hidden in the cloth now. “What do you care?”

“You were touching your eyes with your sleeves because you were crying.” No need to ask this time.

Ciel’s shoulders seized up. “Wh-What does it matter why I did it! It’s my clothing! I can do whatever I want with it! I don’t need to explain myself to you…” Then, with his eyes still covered by the cloth, Ciel dug down with his chin, slipped it beneath the collar of his pajamas, and clenched the material between his teeth to begin chewing.

Even after all this drama, he hasn’t given it up.

With nothing left in his arsenal, Sebastian simply observed for a moment in defeat. The boy was pressing a milk-soaked cloth to his face while gnawing the front of his nightclothes and sniveling relentlessly. It was no proud moment for either of them. Right now, they were not Earl and butler at all. They were again rendered the child and demon of their earliest days.

What was left to be done? Shaming his charge hadn’t done any good in destroying the habit, nor had this punishment. It was forcing Sebastian to assess if shame had really ever been useful to him beyond acting as a seasoning for a soul. It hadn’t changed this situation at all. Nothing Sebastian had tried so far had. If he wanted something to change, he had to try a different method. But what method would that even be? And how would that method serve to flavor the soul?

Sebastian did not have a clue. This was entirely new ground.

… Hmm. Something new.

Interesting.

“Let me take a look at your eyes now.” Sebastian nudged Ciel’s hands until they were finally lowered. The irritation was ebbing. Fortunate, but it made sense too: there couldn’t have been very much dried capsicum juice in those sleeves, really. “The skin looks improved. We should flush with water now instead.”

Ciel’s own personal irritation hadn’t gone anywhere. He said nothing, but he radiated anger and humiliation in equal measure from his person. Sebastian rinsed the cloth in the bathroom sink and returned with it still damp to press into the young master’s eyes next. Ciel sat and received this treatment like a kitten with raised hackles being bathed by his mother. This thought warmed Sebastian to the caretaking quite astoundingly.

Ciel let the collar of his shirt fall from his mouth to speak. “You can never do something like this to me again. Such tricks are barbaric and unacceptable for a butler.” His fingers were spread wide and nails clenching into the mattress as his pain was tended to.

Sebastian hummed a laugh. “So I will not. But surely this habit of yours must come to an end either way. How would you suggest I help you if not with force?”

Ciel grit his teeth. “If you don’t know what to do, then don’t do anything! Just leave me alone! If I just do this in private, who am I hurting anyway?”

“Your clothing and your reputation, certainly…” Sebastian mumbled. Ah, right; no more shame. “However, I have noticed that you only do this when no one but myself is watching. Thus, you clearly understand that this isn’t acceptable behavior.”

Ciel lowered his chin. “O-Of course I know… I just keep doing it without thinking about it…”

That was surprising. Sebastian took the towel away. “Really. It is involuntary?”

Ciel blinked starrily in the lamplight. He glanced down at the bed. “Sort of.”

“You do not mean to do it, nor want to?” 

“I don’t mean to start…” Ciel furrowed his brow. “But when I notice I’m doing it, I don’t stop either.”

Hmm. “Why do you want to do this?” Sebastian had trouble keeping confusion out of his voice. “It is very unlike you and it is quite unseemly. Lady Midford would have a fit if she knew.”

Mortification washed over Ciel’s expression at the mention of aunt. “I don’t want to do this,” he explained hastily. “It’s just that I can’t stop. It feels good for some reason.” And then Ciel nearly put his sleeve in his mouth again, but flinched away at Sebastian’s warning. “See! I don’t mean to!” he cried, blushing again. He looked at Sebastian helplessly, indignantly, from the tops of his eyes. “I don’t mean to, all right… I don’t mean to…”

Sebastian was very surprised. All this time, the two of them were on the same page. Ciel didn’t like the behavior either. He was simply at its mercy. Was that why shaming him had had no effect? Because it was already a matter of shame, not a matter of pride?

And — granted the previous was the case — if shame removed pride, then would pride remove shame?

There was only one way to find out.

“Let us get you into a new nightshirt,” Sebastian said. Ciel opened his mouth, and Sebastian interjected, “There will be no tricks this time. It is late, and the important thing now is getting you back to sleep so that tomorrow’s schedule isn’t a wreck. If you chew your sleeves tonight, then so be it. We will work out a new strategy in the morning.”

The boy’s posture slumped. “… Mmn. Fine.”

Ciel was subdued as the pajamas were swapped out. He kept touching his eyes, which were improved but likely rather dried out from their ordeal. He looked like he wanted to be angry still but wasn’t sure how to go about expressing it in this circumstance. As usual, he had no choice but to rely on the being that would one day claim his soul, and it likely left him feeling disturbed. Sebastian at least knew that much from prior contracts. What he didn’t know was what their ‘new strategy’ for stopping the sleeve-biting was going to be.

“Would you still want me to stay here until you fall asleep?” Sebastian offered as he walked his charge back to bed.

Ciel climbed delicately onto the enormous mattress that was meant for a married couple, not a single small child. He rubbed his contract eye and glared at Sebastian with the blue one. “Fine. But that doesn’t mean I’m happy with you,” he said at last. “You’re going to make up for this stupid prank. It was cruel. It goes completely against a ‘butler’s aesthetic,’ or however it is you put it.”

Sebastian narrowed his gaze but decided to concede. They shouldn’t fight anymore right now. “… Perhaps you are right. I went too far today.” 

“You definitely went too far.” The boy might’ve meant to sound angry but it came out as more of a plea.

Sebastian stood against the wall and waited for Ciel to tuck himself back into bed before extinguishing the light from the room. “Tomorrow, we will discuss a plan. Until then… I hope you are able to dream pleasantly. Goodnight, young master.”

Ciel curled up in bed. He stayed awake for longer than usual, nearly half an hour. But eventually there was a very careful shifting sound, and Sebastian registered that Ciel must be chewing his sleeves again. As promised, Sebastian did not put an end to the behavior, and very soon after the habit started up, the young master slipped off to sleep.

This proved that the action soothed him. It wasn’t just mindless incivility: it served a purpose, even for a half-grown child. How fascinating… and yet, it certainly could not continue. The soul of a wretched little orphan was no worthy meal. If Sebastian wanted to dine on the soul of a confident earl who left childhood behind him and never looked back, it meant Sebastian had to do whatever it took to instill that confidence. Even if that included being kind and understanding — temporarily, of course.

So then: where to begin?

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“Oh, goodness… Young master, do hold still for a moment. You’ve just managed to sully your right cuff with frosting.”

At the prompting of his butler, thirteen-year-old Ciel Phantomhive did not hold still. He instead curved his wrist around to analyze the situation for himself. “Oh, blast. Well, I had better not waste perfectly good chocolate.” Assessment complete, the boy unceremoniously opened his mouth and lipped the swath of frosting right off.

Sebastian could not refrain from grimacing. “Young master, must you forget your manners…”

Ciel was undaunted, smug even. “It’s my clothing, so I can do as I like.” He then held out his arm for Sebastian to have a chance at the remaining smear. “Here.”

There was nothing that could be done now though. “I’m afraid yellow soap and a turn at the washboard is the cure for this. We shall have to return to the bedroom and get you a new shirt.”

Ciel waved him off and continued with his dessert. “It’s already after dinnertime, so who cares. The servants won’t. And now I don’t have to worry about eating so carefully either…” Ciel licked the end of his finger almost cheerfully and helped himself to a heaping forkful of amandine cake.

Sebastian wanted to show more disapproval, but a memory stirred that turned one corner of his mouth up instead of down. “Young master, do you recall when chewing on your sleeves used to be a habit for you?”

Ciel swallowed and pinkened slightly with either embarrassment or disdain (probably both). “Are you seriously asking if I remember the night you put a spicy substance on my pajamas and allowed me to burn my eyes with it?”

Sebastian’s smile became sheepish. “Yes, that was the event, wasn't it… I still had plenty left to learn about how to treat children back then. Speaking of which, I don’t suppose you also remember how we came about helping you with your habit?”

Ciel lapped the prongs of his fork as if he were holding a lollipop. “Now I do. You asked me what I thought would be the way to handle it, and I said that you should reward me with dessert for breakfast if I stopped chewing whenever you asked me to.”

Sebastian nodded slowly, affirmatively. “To your credit, it did do the trick. It only took a few weeks for you to give up your habit altogether after that.”

“But there’s no chance you would ever let me have dessert for breakfast now,” Ciel snickered.

Sebastian followed with a chuckle of his own. “As I said, I had plenty yet to learn about how to treat children.” Ciel rolled his eyes, probably sour about being referred to as a child. Sebastian was in opposite spirits. “I don’t believe I ever properly apologized for the way I treated you back then.”

Ciel stared. Behind him through the window, the sun spangled through the tree limbs on its slow descent below the horizon. “You mean to tell me that you’re actually sorry about it?”

“What pride is there to be found, in tricking someone so young and vulnerable?” Sebastian bowed his conciliation. “It was a shameful display. I should like to do better in the future.”

“...” Ciel glanced away after a few moments. “Apologies don’t become you. They only make you look all the more twisted for the things you don’t apologize for.”

“Ah, well, that is probably true.” Sebastian straightened up, feeling a strange sort of fondness.

“Besides,” Ciel made a mischievous expression, all too comfortable heckling a demon, for better or worse, “the old Sebastian was much smarter than the current Sebastian in one way.”

‘Current Sebastian’ tilted his chin inquiringly. “Oh? And dare I ask what way that is?”

Ciel scraped the last bit of cake off of his plate with his fork. “The old you knew that the best way to apologize is with chocolate.”

After a moment, Sebastian raised both eyebrows high. “Hmm, is that so? What a relief it is, then, that you have stated that apologies don’t become me.”

“W-Wait, wait, I only meant verbal apologies. Cake apologies are another matter.”

“Very good. Then I shall be sure to learn a recipe with semolina and chard for next time.”

“Chard? In a cake? Ugh, what a revolting idea. Surely your butler aesthetic would never let you serve that. Especially not as an apology.”

“Then perhaps the young master should not request any further ‘cake apologies’ lest he want to find out for certain. Now, let me clear your plate, and then it’s back to your vocabulary textbooks for a little evening practice. There are only three days remaining until we head out for Germany, and the young master’s pronunciation yet leaves something to be desired…”

#happy dadbastian week! #I just checked the version history and I actually started writing this in 2020 #it was only for Dadbastian week that I decided I ought to finish it. it was a good reason to do so and I'm glad it gave me the opportunity

[twerkswiththepowerofthedarkside]

myths are just stories told through the ages

Let me tell you a tale; It’s not as old as time, although it may well be timeless. Once there was a man, sometimes called a fool, who fell in love with the Sun Goddess. She was fire and beauty incarnate, a raw force of light that brought smiles and gifted warmth everywhere she went. So the man went to become her suitor. He asked her, “What would I need to earn your heart?”. Now the Sun had a fickle heart - it was full of passion, yes, but also naive. Knowing this, she instead set the man a task. “Woo me not, but instead my sister, the Moon. Her heart is cold as the night she inhabits, but she is a pure reflection of me as I am. If you can win her heart, you may as well have mine.” Accepting this, he waited upon a hill until night swathed him and posed the same question to the Moon. She has a different beauty, one forged in flame but steeled with cunning, reminiscent of an intricately crafted blade - incredible to admire, yet impossible to touch without wounding yourself. Hearing the Fool ask such a question, the moon waned in the sky out of surprise. It was rare for anyone to ask that of her, for she was known to be equal parts shallow and callous, only coming out in full once a month. After a moment, she regained her composure. “Hmn… My love cannot be bought with dowry or goods… Instead you must prove yourself to me. Bring me the three most beautiful things you can. One of the Earth itself, for she was the greatest creator. One that is something mundane, for the greatest brilliance can come from the dullest stone. And one made by your own hand, for you should be capable of creating great beauty as well as finding it.” The Moon was confident that his replies would be unsatisfactory. Each of the few that had attempted them had fallen flat at some hurdle or other. Although gemstones of wondrous hues, the finest sculptures and the smoothest of stones had been brought and presented to her, none of them truly fulfilled the qualities she looked for. Given his rules, he set off. After pondering what to do for a while, a solution occurred to him. The next day however was rather peculiar. As the Sun set, and the Moon rose again, she looked on in abject fascination. Our Fool had been scouring the forest, checking fallen log after fallen log but finding each to be unworthy. “What are you doing?”, she queried.

“Well… for the quest you have set me I need a fallen log, but each one I have found has had an inhabitant. A frog, an ant, even spiders. I refuse to displace a single creature if I can help it, so I shall search until I find an empty log.” With that, he went back to hunting intently with dogmatic determination. A miniscule smile of approval played upon her face. Unbeknownst to her, our lovestruck man’s adoration had changed. Not that it was any less intense, but the recipient was no longer the Sun; the Moon and her hidden elegance had him rapt with awe, and it was something he intended to make clear. Two days pass, and after finally finding a suitable log, the Fool whiled away his time in his home. Finding old tools, he set to work. Now the going was slow: he’s a Fool, not a carpenter, after all. But once the days were up, he was finished. The result? A crudely carved wooden bowl. He fills the bowl with water, and waits upon the hill again for the sun to set. “I have come with my gifts.” “All you have is- a bowl of water?” “Yes, but please let me explain. This wood, this water is of the Earth itself. I hold all parts of nature equally, each beautiful as the other, even in death. Flesh or wood, water or blood, they all contribute to everything around them. If that isn’t beauty, what is? I crafted the bowl myself, although poorly, and what is as beautiful as creation? A bowl of water may be as mundane as it comes, and still it holds all these properties. Lastly, look upon the water itself…” She leaned over and gazed down. “What do you see?” “Nothing but myself.” “And that is the most beautiful thing I could find.”

#prose #mythology #nature #do you ever wonder if pain is worth it #then something happens and you realise that it is #this is my first time using tumblr what the ducking duck is this site #poetry #and the sun spills light for all #an obsession with two celestial bodies

[alrikhart]

@prcspero location: Hrimthur's Wasteland notes: After the events of The Last Night

Asylum. Plague. Death. The wheel did not care if a person was young, or afraid. It certainly did not care what they wanted. The wheel had called them to this, whether they could bear it or not. Alrik had cracked the night his life had gone up in flames, broken down in the mines - what could be left now but shards? Pointed, sharp, and prepared to cut down anything that stood between himself and his sister.

The sun burned at the edge of the horizon and cast shadows over the cold wasteland through the sparse, dead trees that protruded through the ice. In the far distance, Alrik had caught sight of a few hints of game; cunning arctic foxes that might as well have been tricks of the light. Overhead Valr returned with nothing but rodents snatched from their shallow burrows, or in the brief stretch of time they spent skittering up a tree. Perhaps his bird would die from the blight next, it seemed capable of claiming enough.

Alessia did not die. Alrik would have known. He'd have felt it if his sister had passed. Since dawn had broken over the last night at Nornwatch Keep, he'd held onto this. Stubborn as the bedrock below the snow they treaded across; the Iskaran would not accept anything until he saw it with his own eyes.

Taken, they had said, but for why, none of the Legion would say. They marched towards an outpost and prepared to make camp where they could. In makeshift tents before the midnight sun could dip below the horizon and bathe the cold world in an even colder dark.

Alrik, dotted with the ashes of those that had been burned, marched beside Prospero alongside the Iskaran survivors. More lived than had been killed, but there were fewer now; which meant fewer mouths to feed.

"Do you know the story of the dvergar?" Alrik looked off towards nothing but the horizon and the fading light as he spoke. Face marred black in places by the ashes of his kinmen, he didn't wait for Prospero's response before he spoke.

"Before our world was broken, it is said that dwarves once ran the mines beneath Iskaldrik, that our nation was their home, and our great city the jewel of their creation. King Hrimthur's people toiled and worked alongside the jotunn, crafting armaments and machinery that would put any Lysaran vessel to shame." Distinct, Iskaran notation curved around the syllables with curt, sharp remarks as he remembered the way his father once cast shadows on the wall from the forge as he retold the tale. "My father told me that the dvergar dug too deep and found evil in the place of gold. I laughed," Alrik looked to the druid next to him, "then I asked him ' but then why we keep digging?"

"Because, Alrik, he said." Blue eyes looked back towards the horizon as he tried to remember where his sister had been during the story. Had she been there? It was so long ago now. "men never know when to quit. So I asked him, 'what happened to the dvergr, faðir?' Then he told me, why little drengr, we're standing on them." Alrik laughed because he remembered how his father had spooked him, tickled him, and laughed. The story was not funny though, hardly then, and not now. Unlike then, his laughter was flightless now, bitter as nightshade.

#w/prospero.2 #int.w/prospero.iskaldrik #int.w/prospero.hrimthur #int.w/prospero.troupe1 #tqh troupe 1 #tqh troupe 1: the last night

[hcrmitpurplc]

HOW DO YOU BEST LIKE TO BE LOVED ??

write me your words of wonder:

 ★   you want to be thought of with intent, for someone to sit down and want to share their thoughts with you specifically. and their thoughts about you, even more. for someone to Know you, or at least desire the knowledge. for them to write it out in a way that you can read as quickly or slowly as you desire. that you can reread again and again, or lock in a box and never read after that first quick consumption. you crave that tangibility. and the small moments that lead up to the letter being in your hand. to be told, 'it's in the mail' and then to have the simple joy of checking the mailbox to see if it has come today. to hold the envelope and feel the love within. there is a purpose of intent within physically written words, and it patches the parts of you that feel like you aren't worth thinking about. my darling, know that you are. you are worth intentional thought and cursive letters and an envelope sealed with a kiss.

tagged by: @requiemofjojo ( thank you !! this was a lot of fun lol )

tagging: @praeteritus-memories, @gyrotations, @rotatingstar, @scvagegarden, 

@noglxry, && anyone else who wants to do it !!

#★ ( ᵐᵉᵐᵉ. ) #★ ( ᵃᵇᵒᵘᵗ. ) #not sure if it was supposed to be in ic but yea this is joseph's lol #mine was 'craft me a cunning creation'

[thehamletaesthetic]

HAMLET ACT THREE SCENE FOUR part five

Queen: This the very coinage of your brain: this bodiless creation ecstasy is very cunning in.

Ham.: Ecstasy! My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, and makes as healthful music: it is not madness that I have utter'd: bring me to the test, and I the matter will re-word; which madness would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace, lay not that mattering unction to your soul, that not your trespass, but my madness speaks: It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, whilst rank corruption, mining all within, infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven; repent what's past; avoid what is to come; and do not spread the compost on the weeds, to make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue; for in the fatness of these pursy times virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

Queen: O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

Ham.: O, throw away the worser part of it, and live the purer with the other half. Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed; assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, of habits devil, is angel yet in this, that to the use of actions fair and good he likewise gives a frock or livery, that aptly is put on. Refrain to-night, and that shall lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence: the next more easy; for use almost can change the stamp of nature, and either the devil, or throw him out with wondrous potency. Once more, good night: and when you are desirous to be bless'd, I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord,

[Pointing to POLONIUS.]

I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so, to punish me with this and this with me, that I must be their scourge and minister. I will bestow him, and will answer well the death I gave him. So, again, good night. I must be cruel, only to be kind: thus bad begins and worse remains behind. One word more, good lady.

Queen: What shall I do?

Ham.: Not this, by no means, that I bid you do: let the bloat king tempt you again to bed; pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse; and let him, for a pair of reechy kisses, or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers, make you to ravel all this matter out, That I essentially am not in madness, but mad in craft. 'Twere good you let him know; for who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise, would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib, such dear concernings hide? who would do so? No, in despite of sense and secrecy, unpeg the basket on the house's top. Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape, to try conclusions, in the basket creep, and break your own neck down.

Queen: Be thou assured, if words be made of breath, and breath of life, I have no life to breathe what thou hast said to me.

Ham.: I must to England; you know that?

Queen: Alack, I had forgot: 'tis so concluded on.

Ham.: There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows, whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd, they bear the mandate; they must sweep my way, and marshal me to knavery. Let it work; for 'tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard but I will delve one yard below their mines, and blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet, when in one line two crafts directly meet. This man shall set me packing: I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room. Mother, good night. Indeed this counsellor is now most still, most secret and most grave, who was in life a foolish prating knave. Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you. Good night, mother.

[Exeunt HAMLET dragging in POLONIUS.]

#hamlet #polonius #gertrude #shakespeare #lies #false king #claudius #murder #death #act three #scene four

[circuscarnage]

Self indulgent fic

I finally completed part two, and it’s even longer than part one. Let’s just say, i was feeling angsty. Hope you enjoy. 

Hunting grounds:

Part 2/2

Today was not a good day. First of all, Vil had the audacity to not only refuse my newest potion, but to insult it as well. I crafted that with the single intent of quelling our dorm leaders sour mood, yet it only seemed to increase it. He had another one of his fits. The last brewing session ended up ruining his perfect glass vials. He was angry. No amount of makeup could ever hide his expression.

I was able to catch him before he left, calling out and bringing my creation over, directing the attention of others. He took one look at the potion before waving his hand and telling me to dispose of it immediately. He embarrassed me in front of the entire dorm. There were slight snickers heard in the air as he left.

I brewed that especially for him. Making sure to pay excruciating detail to his favourite ingredients. But I stood there with a pleasant smile on my face, praising Vil for his everlasting wisdom, before carelessly chucking it in the bin. It pained me to put aside my pride for Vil, but if I caused a scene over something like that it would fabricate deadly rumours. And then there was him. That damned man. Even thinking about him make me want to scream. He saw me sitting alone and came over, attempting to talk to me.

He tried again. Tried to get through to me. Using the same manipulation tactics as he always did. He had the other students wrapped around his gloved finger, entranced by his false sense of security. But not me. I saw right through that moral guise. Attempting to mask himself as a so-called father figure to all students so he could get under their skin and learn their secrets. I've lost count of the amount of times he's tried to learn mine.

When the sound of footsteps echoed through the forest I snapped out of my trance and ducked behind a nearby tree, peeking out to see whoever wondered in. Casually strolling through the greenery was the same girl who I grew to admire.

Not today.

On any other day I would have jumped at the opportunity to continue our game, but today I wasn't in the mood. I watched as she searched through the trees, sneaking around, looking for possible routes to take when we eventually started. Her excited smile never fading as she continued to lurk through the underbrush. I'll admit, seeing her delighted form almost made me forget my own dread, as I too was infected with an odd sensation of enchantment. Maybe I should continue.

Maybe I shouldn't.

No. This would be the perfect distraction. This was what I needed right now. Some good hunting would surely soothe my worries. The exhilarating feeling I got from our game would overcome the negativity I was feeling, and I would be able to get back to Night Raven before nightfall.

Hidden behind a small shrub, I loaded my arrow into the bow, making sure to pick my favourite, and fired. My excitement faltered as I realised I had missed by a mile. She turned around suddenly, surprised by the distance of the arrow. Instead of taking off in a mad dash as she usually would, a slight smirk started to creep on her face. Her mind seemed to rush with possibilities, calculating her next move.

"What's up, Rook?" She questioned into the void. There was something in the tone of her voice that made my grip on my bow tighten. A playful yet malicious undertone was present in her words. She was mocking me. I stayed hidden, not wanting her to see the sour look of disappointment of my face. It was such an easy shot, she was walking so slow she was practically standing still. It was embarrassing to have missed from this range. She had picked up on my lack on concentration, but in the worse way possible. "I thought you were better than this!" She gestured at the fallen arrow, even going over to it and plucking it from the ground.

Shut up.

Hearing those words made my blood curdle. I had moved past the stage of missing my targets. My years of rigours training had established I was the best. There was no way I was going to be undermined by a mere student. I quickly loaded my bow again, feeling an overwhelming sensation of disgust as I took aim. I fired quickly, not even bothering to check my surroundings. The arrow only just managed to miss her. It brushed past her waistcoat, causing a small tear in the grey fabric. There was a pause before she let out a shaky breath, stunned with fear. Her hands clasped together, beads of sweat staring to take form. There was a scene of danger in the air, something both of us felt. She fled.

The exhilarating feeling had already taken over my form, making my blood pump with electric excitement. This is what a hunter lived for. Catching your prey off guard and making them fearful, afraid of your next move. Cunning and unpredictable. I couldn't help but love the undertone of fear. Even so, I still wasn't up to my normal standard. No matter how many times I fired, my arrow would never hit the mark I wanted it too. It was either too far or too close, never perfect, making me uneasy.

My breath was ragged and uneven as I took aim again. Keep it together! If I fired in this state then someone would...

I shook those thoughts from my head. Now was not the time to be doubting myself! I needed to focus. Just breathe, Rook. Just Breathe. I took a deep breath in, closing my eyes in the process. I imagined myself in the woods alone. I imagined the slight breeze stroking my hair gently. I imagined the fresh trees swaying to the rhythm of the wind. I imagined the birds chirping, water flowing, and animals scurrying around as they took cover. My breathing started to settle down as my mind relaxed a bit. Everything was quiet and peaceful, until I was interrupted by someone calling my name.

"Rook?"

My grip on the arrow loosened.

A stomach curdling scream pieced the air. I could practically feel the birds flee from their trees. My eyes shot open. What the hell happened? I blinked once, twice, three times, trying desperately to process what was going on. Without realising it my hand started to grasp at the air, as if feeling around for something. That's when I noticed it. My arrow missing from the bow.

Frantically I searched around, praying to god no one was hurt. That was wishful thinking though, as I knew a scream like that could only mean one thing. I found myself rising to my feet, raising above the overgrown bush. My eyes searched the forest, looking frantically around for anything that would resemble another person. My breath hitched as my eyes landed at the sight before me.

I saw her on the ground, with an arrow protruding from her side.

Oh. Fuck.

I instantly threw down my bow and ran over to her immobile form. Her screams of pain only growing louder as I approached. It was horrifying. Deep red splattered against the vibrant ground, creating a sick picture. Fresh warm blood spilling out from the cut, seeping into the fabric. I slid one hand under her back, propping her up to face me. Her hand gripped my sleeve, threatening to tear it straight off. Crimson liquid started to stain my violet robe as her fingers dug deeper into the silk. I was petrified, watching her with such a wounded expression. Eyes watering and cries of pain growing numb.

I was torn between calling for help and ripping the arrow out myself.

Through gritted teeth she tried to mumble out a few words, but they turned into painful sobs upon speaking. My gloved hand found its way to her cheek, wiping away the stray tears, the leather absorbing the hot water. She finally managed to speak, between pained gasps of air and hushed cries.

"Head... Master..."

No. No, he wasn't getting involved. I started to panic, weighing my options. My knowledge on healing spells was minimal, and the bleeding was becoming more drastic by the second. I wasn't in the right mindset to even attempt making a potion, and we were too far away from the collage to walk back. I had no choice. Not knowing what else to do, I called out his name. Screaming it with the acidic note of spite. My throat aching.

He appeared in seconds, watching as I cradled her damaged body close to mine. Even though his mask covered most of his face, there was no hiding the worried expression he held. Slowly he keeled to our level, staring intently at the scene. There was something about his stance that was off putting. It was like he was extending his time to take it in, not truly believing what he was seeing. I felt like I had seen this before. the look of frail disappointment. Almost identical to a child breaking a parents favourite collectable. Gingerly he outstretched his arms towards us, threatening to take her away. I couldn't help but tighten my grip. I knew he would be able to help, but hadn't my pride been damaged enough?

For a split second I could see the look in his eyes. Coloured orbs pleaded with my own, begging me to let go. My own eyes were glassy, tears threatening to break free any second. In a moment of weakness he was able to snatch her from my arms. He cradled her close to his chest, much like a father to a young child. He stood up carefully. Never breaking eye contact even as he stepped backwards. Before he vanished into thin air, a small smile littered his face. He was aware how painful this was for me, making it clear his intentions were clean. He knew more about me then I initially thought. And for that, I hated him.

"Thank you, Rook."

I was left alone in the woods again. Hands bloodied, body shaking, and heart aching.

#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland oc #self insert #rook hunt #I hope I wrote his character right we still don't know much so it's hard to tell

[occult-castiel]

Reversed Omens

Pretty much a proof of concept from this post. Also on ao3 cause why not

Heavenly Demons and Damned Angels

He was Falling.

It was a simple order, Aziraphale supposed.

“Just go be a leader. Confident.”

Angels in kilts lined the white halls of Heaven. It was always pristine. A sterile, perfect white. The most interesting thing about Heaven, he found out later, was that it really didn’t smell like anything. The second most was how there was a permanent coolness in the air. Enough to make a person just uncomfortable enough to notice. He always had goosebumps.

Everyone was in a tight line, shoulder to shoulder, kilts brushed together. Their chests bulged so far they almost seemed deformed, an unnatural curve. Rigid arms were lifted to their foreheads, a perfect, angular salute. Statues.

Aziraphale couldn't help but notice the burning anger in their eyes. The clicks of his heels reverberated in silence as he walked past dozens upon dozens of waiting soldiers.

Lucifer- Satan now- had gone against the Almighty Herself, and brought down a third of the angels with him. He’d seen them, some of them, Fall.

It started with a question, a slight attitude. And then their eyes would widen. Some dropped to the ground, a few clutched their chests as they stared into space. Some sobbed. And then the fire would come. He swallowed.

“Aziraphale!”

A man with a twisted, brown mustache yelled at him a few paces ahead. A row of stars adorned his white, militarist jacket. Not a single soldier flinched at the noise. Aziraphale fidgeted with his pinky ring.

“Yes?” he called out.

“Your platoon is waiting for you!” The man snapped, and a sword appeared in his hand. He shoved it towards him. “You’ll be on the front lines.”

He took the sword, and it lit, flames consumed its crystal-like blade. “The fire. It’ll hurt them, the demons.”

Demons. The ones born in fire. Fire and tears- “I-I don’t think that's the case.”

His eyes widened, “Is that dissent, soldier?”

He tried to smile, but looked at the floor. “No.”

“Good-”

“But,” a glare, “Our-our siblings, they’re born in fire, are they not?”

He was grabbed by the collar of his shirt and yanked to the man's face. “They are not our siblings. They’re the enemy.”

He could feel ten thousand eyes on him, staring at his back. All of them ready to fight. 

But Aziraphale.

Aziraphale had seen them cry. He saw angels go from having a bad day, maybe saying something not exactly tasteful, to having the worst possible day imaginable.

Angels weren’t meant to crumble and sob. And the fire. He could see the orange and red fury of flames dance out of the corner of his eye, as the General held him in place, examined him.

He was expected to burn them again. 

“I-can’t- can't someone else, lead them?” He tried to swallow again, but it wouldn't go down. “Someone more qu-qualified?”

He heard the clanks of the sword as it hit the ground before he realised he fell too.

It was like his blood was replaced with a liquified, concentrated panic. His breath quickened. All the whites meshed into one, singular blur as he looked from side to side.

He could feel his skin prickle. The goosebumps that littered his skin moments before multiplied. They pulled. Twisted. And then, then they burned. It was a slow and fast transition all at once. Each little craves between warmed first. Hotter, hotter, hotter.

He didn't hear himself scream, but he felt the hoarseness. His skin popped and crackled, busted open into flame.

All he could see was red.

He felt his wings erupt open. The fire jumped to them, and his back snapped backwards.

And then he was falling.

The solid ground had dissipated.

And he was Falling. There was an emptiness that spread from his chest and consumed

Everything was dark and red and seemed to go on for an eternity, or an instant. 

He passed out before the lake of burning sulfur consumed him.

---

God's green garden was the most radiant shade of green imaginable. The plants were perfect- crisp, spotless leaves. Each tree and bush was artistically spread. Nothing was too close to anything else. There were no uneven sides. Hints of color were dotted around in a way that made everything feel like it had a place, a purpose.

Anthony, Angel of the Eastern Gate, frowned. It was all… Boring.

He’d been stationed here for over two weeks. The flaming sword he’d been assigned hadn't left the spot on the wall he’d leaned it against. Nothing happened, nothing changed. Paradise.

“Go and look after the Almighty Human creations. Ensure no trouble comes.”

He’d agreed easily enough, the thought of actually seeing trouble was alluring. It seemed he missed a whole rebellion due to a particularly long nap, and was quite confused when he woke up. Briefly thought he managed to sleep all the way up to the holidays, with all the missing angels.

Not that he wanted to fight, but. Well. It would've been at least a little interesting, see what was happening.

Instead of walking around the same wall again and again and again. It was punishment, he supposed. All the other artists were still crafting the wonders of the Earth. Which was fair, sleeping for two weeks straight had been a little excessive.

But still, the wall was exactly 3,879 paces around. Which he’d counted. Several dozen times.

A soft yelp below caught his attention. He peered over the edge of the wall, and saw someone that definitely was not one of the humans.

He was plump, and blond hair was a ball of short, blond twists. The edges were frayed. A black tunic hung like a satin blanket around his pale skin. The contrast made him smile.

“Hey! You down there!”

The man jumped, his head flicked up and he squinted at him. “Uh, yes?”

“What’re you doing down there?” he called out.

He gave a response, but Anthony couldn’t really make it out. 

“What?”

The man repeated it, to no avail.

“Alright, alright look. I need you,” he pointed down, and motioned back upwards, “to come up here.”

He watched the blond man struggle to climb the wide of the wall for a few moments before sighing, and snapped.

The stranger materialized next to him, and instantly fell on the floor. He looked up and smiled, “Oh-oh thank you,” he stood himself up. “That would've been dreadful, to go up the whole thing.”

His eyes were like pools of plasma. Swirling streams of blue that engulfed his iris. The pupil, while circular, was more of a deep indigo than a true black. He’d made stars that looked like them, in a way. His wings were as dark as the depths of creation itself, the endless void they’d painted with spirals and nebulas.

They were like crow's wings. A very newly named animal. Cunning creatures, ones he could respect

“So, you’re a demon, hm?” His head tilted to the side as he examined him, from his feet to the crown of his head.

He sighed, “I’m afraid so. Aziraphale.”

“That’s an angelic name.”

Aziraphale looked like he was punched. ‘Well, I missed the renaming ceremony since I was a, uh, late arrival.”

“Well, that's unfortunate.” And he did, suppose, it was. A permanent reminder of something lost. “Could change it anyway.”

And that was a thought. The freedom to choose one's name. An identity crafted by yourself. A crow flew past them.

“Oh no, I quite like my given name.”

He chuckled. “Very demonic of you.”

The demon fidgeted with his tunic, and seemed to find the floor quite interesting. “Lord Beelzebub wasn't too pleased.”

He hummed as he watched the birds fly over distant trees. “Well, if a demons keeping his name, I suppose I could change mine. If I wanted, hm?”

“Oh, I’m not sure if that’s the best idea-”

“Oh I’m sure fallen angels know all about great ideas,” he stuck his hand out, “I think I’ll go with Crowley.”

Aziraphale returned the gesture and they shook. His nails were as black as his wings. “Crows,” he made the connection instantly. “Clever creatures, those one’s.”

“So what brings you to Eden, demon?”

He let out a long breath, shoulders slumped. “I’m supposed to be causing trouble, but I haven’t the slightest idea how to do that. Very,” he searched for a word, “vague. I think Lord Beelzebub sent me here to get me away from them, really.”

“I can relate to that one. Punishment and nonsense orders.” He motioned towards the garden, and then leaned towards him. “I'm only here because I slept through the rebellion. And then I'm given some silly order to protect this place-” he stopped, and snapped his gaze to Aziraphale. “And what's with this apple business?”

“Oh, I wouldn't know,” he shrugged, “No briefings in Hell it seems.”

“You know what I think,” He looked back to the greenery, “None of this makes any sense. If the Almighty’s so concerned with some fruit, why not put it on the moon?”

Aziraphale instantly glares at him, “That's- That’s borderline blasphemy! Are you trying to Fall?”

His eyebrows shot up, “And why would that concern you, hm? Shouldn’t you want more soldiers down there?”

“What I want is to never have to go back to that dreary place,” his nose scrunched as he scowled, “Hell desperately needs new plumping.” He motioned to his body, “And color pallet.”

He was- he was pouting. Was this seriously the dastardly enemy he’d been warned about?

Crowley cackled, laughter shook his whole body. “You,” he gave an airy laugh, “You know. Heaven, while clean, is rather dull too.”

“At least they have manners upstairs.”

He laughed again before he spoke. “You know,” he let the words drag out, “I bet they’d leave you alone for quite some time if you got the humans to eat that apple.” He put his hands in the air. “Not that I’m telling you to do that, of course.”

The demon just stared at him, and quite bewildered, said, “Are you sure you’re an angel?”

“Hey- I’m the one with the white wings here.”

Aziraphale's eyes trailed their way to the middle of the forest. Looking at the tree, perhaps. He bit his lip for a moment. “I do think you might be right about that.”

“Plus, the almighty can't be too mad. She did put a pretty big neon sign on the blasted thing.”

Soon enough, Aziraphale had slipped away, and stumbled down the wall. Off to do thing Crowley assumed he was meant to thwart, but he really did want some sort of change to happen. And if head office asked, he’d just spin some story about how he thought they meant dangers outside the walls.

By the end of the week, humanity had been banished, and Crowley was demoted down to a principality. 

“Go and watch over the humans, and this time actually do some thwarting, Anthony.”

He thought of the odd demon, and how he was probably tasked something similar and smiled.

“Of course Gabriel. My pleasure.”

This could be fun

#ineffable husbands #ineffable husbands fic #good omens #i did not proof read or really edit this #impulsive writings

[hollowworldentertainment]

The Call of a Stranger

One, one, one, one. Two, two, two, two. Three, three, three, three. Four. Four, four, four, four. Three, three, three, three. Two, two, two, two. One.

The call of a stranger as he knocks on my door, internal I peer through the windows of my soul as I try to see the one knocking. It’s not until my door is open do I realize that I have already let him in, my door now ajar and time passed I have no recollection of deeds done. I try to search but my mind is not one of order or reason, large restraints over sections locking me out from myself. I can see images of self struggling to get through the barriers as I try to claw my way in, never getting any closer to each other, forever missing the feeling of being whole.

I walk the large internals of my own self as I look for that who has no place, I search where I feel safe, visiting my other selves, and the characters of my mind. With each one they point me where to go, but each time I ignore them as I do not want to travel to where they say he treads. Eventually I run out of familiar self to question and must look deeper, I must go out of my safe boundaries into the realm of unknown, and search with utmost precision.

The journey is never pleasant, as I leave the safety of my town to search the bile of the wasteland  that is yet to be cleared for those who live in my mental town. There are those that are me but are unused, the manifestations of those I see on the physical plane, and those of my own creation come to visit me and tell stories. For all of these I have built walls and made safe a place where they may roam, but in my distracted absence someone else has been making walls, someone else has been editing my home, making it dangerous to be alone.

I stand on the borders of mental safety as I make the first search into the unknown with my eyes, it is apparent the stranger walked through as their footprints were still deep in the muck. I took my first step out, I could feel the town drifting away as it shrunk in size, without me it would fade into the black, taking everything with it. I had to be quick to make sure I did not lose my mind.

The further I searched the greater the pit of emptiness swelled inside me, but I had to press on I could not allow a stranger to invade my mind. Before long I came across a home, one I had not built so I knew it did not belong. It was small and poorly built, a rushed job by an unskilled craftsman with desperation on his hands. This was my stranger, this is where he was hiding.

I climbed the hill of filth as I tried to reach the rugged shack, I realized as I climbed that the building looked familiar. It had a shape that was not pleasing to the eye but it was a form that brought back memories. It was not until I had reached the peak of the hill that I realized that the reason it was familiar was because it was mine, I did not build it but someone had tried to recreate my home in my mind. Worst still they had started the construction of the whole town, once I had reached the top of the hill I could see the construction below.

This stranger could not have done something this big by them self, they only just arrived they could not have constructed something so great in such a small time. I could not see a single person so maybe it is possible he has gotten through before.

He started his fractured empire that is an empty shade of my well crafted town of safety. In the center of fractured town I spied the central town clock rising by the hand of many pulling ropes and strings.

I descended as fast as I could, I needed to get to the bottom of this, I could not let these intruders corrupt my mind. I have no idea how so many got in, the door was only left open for a moment. I arrived as the tower stood fractured in the near center of town, a testament to the fractured name. To my surprise I was there along with a hooded figure. Multiple versions of me had taken sides with this stranger and was not interested in returning to my perfect town of safety.

“You gave them everything they could ever need, now they crave more, not in substance but in life. They look for chaos as they have been deprived their fair share, more and more of yourself comes here everyday to seek the thrill of uncertainty.”

I had no response to the hooded stranger that had made their way into my mind by cunning.

“Even your creations have started to help as we grow in size, soon you will be left alone in your perfect town. There will be no one there for you as it all slowly falls down, soon to become part of our fractured kingdom.”

My body shook, I was surrounded by myself and my own creations. None of them capable of anger, just unwanted gratitude towards my efforts. I was worse than not enough for them, I was too much. I ran back to my town away from the muck and mire that thrived outside my walls. I crossed my barriers to come back to an empty town, the streets were barren of bodies and rich in an undesirable amount of space.

All of a sudden I had to run the entire town by myself, the food needed farming, the stores restocked, the walls guarded, the gardens tended. I was so busy making sure everything was right that I did not realize that I was losing control, I started to notice things that were not there. Before long I was talking to the creations that were long gone, only to finish my sentences to the walls in front of me. I had gone from everything to nothing, a thriving mind to one under maned having to handle every task at hand with only one self.

I started to lose parts of my town that I could not maintain, I let them fall to the fractured town, expanding their control over my mind. Eventually I was left with my home, the grounds were well kept, the walls painted, glass as clean as new, but the inside darker than the wasteland. My creations now roamed the waste with the stranger looking for a way in, but I made sure that the outside looked clean. I made sure no one had a chance to suspect that I had been failing. My exterior always clean and pristine as the interior rots into the earth from whence it came.

One, one, one, one. Two, two, two, two. Three, three, three, three. Four. Four, four, four, four. Three, three, three, three. Two, two, two, two. One.

The call of a stranger as he knocks on my door…

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#writeblr #writing #writer #hollowworldentertainment #thecallofastranger #chapter1 #horror #short stories #horror stories #short horror stories #horror writing #scifi #scifi writing #scifi stories #fantasy #fantasy writing #fantasy stories #dark

[makerof150papermasks]

Hamlet Mariofied Act 3 Scene 4

Bolded names refer to the Mario characters playing the roles. The character role names remain the same in the context of the play and its dialogue.

Peach = Gertrude

Kamek = Polonius

Mario = Hamlet

Donkey Kong = Ghost

Act III, Scene 4

The Queen’s closet.

Enter Peach and Kamek Tune of Mushroomy Kingdom.

Kamek. He will come straight. Look you lay home to him.

Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,

And that your Grace hath screen'd and stood between

 Much heat and him. I'll silence me even here.

Pray you be round with him.

Mario. [within] Mother, mother, mother!

Peach. I'll warrant you; fear me not. Withdraw; I hear him coming.

[Kamek hides behind the arras.]

Enter Mario. Play Castle Theme from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island.

Mario. Now, mother, what's the matter?

Peach. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

Mario. Mother, you have my father much offended.

Peach. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

 Mario. Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

Peach. Why, how now, Hamlet?

Mario. What's the matter now?

Peach. Have you forgot me?

Mario. No, by the rood, not so!

  You are the Queen, your husband's brother's wife,

And (would it were not so!) you are my mother.

Peach. Nay, then I'll set those to you that can speak.

Mario. Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge;

You go not till I set you up a glass

 Where you may see the inmost part of you.

Peach. What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murther me?

Help, help, ho!

Kamek. [behind] What, ho! help, help, help!

Mario. [draws] How now? a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!

 Makes a pass through the arras and kills Kamek. 

Kamek. [behind] O, I am slain! Game over music from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island commences as Kamek dies.

Peach. O me, what hast thou done?

Mario. Nay, I know not. Is it the King?

Peach. O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!

 Mario. A bloody deed- almost as bad, good mother,

As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

Peach. As kill a king?

Mario. Ay, lady, it was my word.

Lifts up the arras and sees Kamek. Cue Castle Music from New Super Mario Bros.

 Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!

I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune.

Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger.

Leave wringing of your hands. Peace! sit you down

And let me wring your heart; for so I shall

 If it be made of penetrable stuff;

If damned custom have not braz'd it so

That it is proof and bulwark against sense.

Peach. What have I done that thou dar'st wag thy tongue

In noise so rude against me?

 Mario. Such an act

That blurs the grace and blush of modesty;

Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose

From the fair forehead of an innocent love,

And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows

 As false as dicers' oaths. O, such a deed

As from the body of contraction plucks

The very soul, and sweet religion makes

A rhapsody of words! Heaven's face doth glow;

Yea, this solidity and compound mass,

 With tristful visage, as against the doom,

Is thought-sick at the act.

Peach. Ah me, what act,

That roars so loud and thunders in the index?

Mario. Look here upon th's picture, and on this,

 The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.

See what a grace was seated on this brow;

Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;

An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;

A station like the herald Mercury

 New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill:

A combination and a form indeed

Where every god did seem to set his seal

To give the world assurance of a man.

This was your husband. Look you now what follows.

 Here is your husband, like a mildew'd ear

Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?

Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,

And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes

You cannot call it love; for at your age

 The heyday in the blood is tame, it's humble,

And waits upon the judgment; and what judgment

Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,

Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense

Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err,

 Nor sense to ecstacy was ne'er so thrall'd

But it reserv'd some quantity of choice

To serve in such a difference. What devil was't

That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?

Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,

 Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,

Or but a sickly part of one true sense

Could not so mope.

O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,

If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones,

 To flaming youth let virtue be as wax

And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame

When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,

Since frost itself as actively doth burn,

And reason panders will.

 Peach. O Hamlet, speak no more!

Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul,

And there I see such black and grained spots

As will not leave their tinct.

Mario. Nay, but to live

  In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,

Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love

Over the nasty sty!

Peach. O, speak to me no more!

These words like daggers enter in mine ears.

No more, sweet Hamlet!

Mario. A murtherer and a villain!

A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe

Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;

A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,

 That from a shelf the precious diadem stole

And put it in his pocket!

Peach. No more!

Enter Donkey Kong in his nightgown. Initiate Gangplank Galleon. 

Mario. A king of shreds and patches!-

 Save me and hover o'er me with your wings,

You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?

Peach. Alas, he's mad!

Mario. Do you not come your tardy son to chide,

That, laps'd in time and passion, lets go by

 Th' important acting of your dread command?

O, say!

DK. Do not forget. This visitation

Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

But look, amazement on thy mother sits.

 O, step between her and her fighting soul

Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.

Speak to her, Hamlet.

Mario. How is it with you, lady?

Peach. Alas, how is't with you,

 That you do bend your eye on vacancy,

And with th' encorporal air do hold discourse?

Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;

And, as the sleeping soldiers in th' alarm,

Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements,

 Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,

Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper

Sprinkle cool patience! Whereon do you look?

Mario. On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares!

His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones,

 Would make them capable.- Do not look upon me,

Lest with this piteous action you convert

My stern effects. Then what I have to do

Will want true colour- tears perchance for blood.

Peach. To whom do you speak this?

 Mario. Do you see nothing there?

Peach. Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.

Mario. Nor did you nothing hear?

Peach. No, nothing but ourselves.

Mario. Why, look you there! Look how it steals away!

My father, in his habit as he liv'd!

Look where he goes even now out at the portal!

Exit Donkey Kong. Composition of the boss theme from Super Mario Bros 2.

Peach. This is the very coinage of your brain.

This bodiless creation ecstasy

 Is very cunning in.

Mario. Ecstasy?

My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time

And makes as healthful music. It is not madness

That I have utt'red. Bring me to the test,

 And I the matter will reword; which madness

Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul

That not your trespass but my madness speaks.

It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,

 Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,

Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;

Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;

And do not spread the compost on the weeds

To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;

 For in the fatness of these pursy times

Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg-

Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.

Peach. O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

Mario. O, throw away the worser part of it,

 And live the purer with the other half,

Good night- but go not to my uncle's bed.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat

Of habits evil, is angel yet in this,

 That to the use of actions fair and good

He likewise gives a frock or livery,

That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,

And that shall lend a kind of easiness

To the next abstinence; the next more easy;

 For use almost can change the stamp of nature,

And either (master) the devil, or throw him out

With wondrous potency. Once more, good night;

And when you are desirous to be blest,

I'll blessing beg of you.- For this same lord,

 I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so,

To punish me with this, and this with me,

That I must be their scourge and minister.

I will bestow him, and will answer well

The death I gave him. So again, good night.

  I must be cruel, only to be kind;

Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.

One word more, good lady.

Peach. What shall I do?

Mario. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:

 Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed;

Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;

And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,

Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers,

Make you to ravel all this matter out,

 That I essentially am not in madness,

But mad in craft. 'Twere good you let him know;

For who that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise,

Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib

Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?

 No, in despite of sense and secrecy,

Unpeg the basket on the house's top,

Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,

To try conclusions, in the basket creep

And break your own neck down.

 Peach. Be thou assur'd, if words be made of breath,

And breath of life, I have no life to breathe

What thou hast said to me.

Mario. I must to England; you know that?

Peach. Alack,

 I had forgot! 'Tis so concluded on.

Mario. There's letters seal'd; and my two schoolfellows,

Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd,

They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way

And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;

 For 'tis the sport to have the enginer

Hoist with his own petar; and 't shall go hard

But I will delve one yard below their mines

And blow them at the moon. O, 'tis most sweet

When in one line two crafts directly meet.

 This man shall set me packing.

I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.-

Mother, good night.- Indeed, this counsellor

Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,

Who was in life a foolish peating knave.

 Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.

Good night, mother.

Exit Peach. Then exit Mario, tugging in

Kamek.

#Super Mario #Shakespeare #Hamlet #Peach #Kamek #Donkey Kong #Behind the arras

[asktheadeptus]

Ferrus Manus

"Rest? We were not made to rest; we go on, unflinching, unstoppable, unending in our strength. The Emperor did not make us for such mortal concerns as hearth and home, vanity or contemplation; we are his engines of war, his hammers, beating out the fabric of existence into a vessel fit for Mankind to inhabit."— Ferrus Manus, as quoted in Shadow of the Gorgon by the Remembrancer Czel Atternus

Ferrus Manus, also known as The Gorgon, was the Primarch of the Iron Hands Space Marine Legion, a master smith known for creating weapons that were able to inspire awe in any who saw them, such as the sword he created for Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperor's Children Legion or the Bolter he crafted for Vulkan, the Primarch of the Salamanders Legion, said to have a barrel designed to look like the gaping mouth of a dragon. Ferrus' hands were covered in the metallic substance known as necrodermis and he needed no hammer or flame to create beauty through metallurgy, using only his exceptionally powerful hands to mold and shape molten metal. Ferrus forged his closest bond with his brother Fulgrim, but this relationship ultimately ended in tragedy after Fulgrim fell to Chaos during the Horus Heresy. During the Drop Site Massacre on the world of Istvaan V at the start of the Heresy, Fulgrim decapitated Ferrus with a daemonic sword, an action that ultimately cemented his slavery to a Greater Daemon of the Chaos God Slaanesh.

History

Youth

“They are not my hands. This fact is forgotten by my brothers -- inexplicably, it has always seemed to me. The hands are strong, to be sure, and have created great things for us all, but they are not mine. And that counts for something. They forget that the silver on my arms comes from a beast that I vanquished. It is the mark of a great evil that I ended, and yet it persists within me... I would struggle to remove it now... I will not remove the silver from my flesh because I have learned to depend on it. The fault is with my mind. I rely on the augmentation given to me by my metal gauntlets, so much so that the flesh beneath them is now little more than a distant memory... A day will come when I will strip it from me, lest I lose the power to master myself forever. Already my Legion's warriors replace their shield hands with metal in my honour, and so they too are learning to doubt the natural strength of their bodies. They must be weaned off this practice before it becomes a mania for them. Hatred of what is natural, of what is human, is the first and greatest of the corruptions. So I record it here: when the time comes, I will strip my hands of their unnatural silver. I will instruct my Legion to recant their distrust of the flesh. I will turn them away from the gifts of the machine and bid them relearn the mysteries of flesh, bone and blood. When my father's Crusade is over, this shall be my sacred task. When the fighting is done, I shall cure my Legion and myself. For if fighting is all there is, if we may never pause to reflect on what such devotion to strength is doing to us, then our compulsion will only grow.

"—The Neimerel Scrolls attributed to the Primarch Ferrus Manus

At the dawn of the Imperium of Man, before the Great Crusade had begun, the 20 gene-children of the Emperor of Mankind, the Primarchs, were scattered across the known galaxy through the Warp in a mysterious accident due to the intervention of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos. The gestation capsules of all 20 Primarchs were stolen from the Emperor's secret gene-laboratory deep beneath the Himalazian (Himalayan) Mountains on Terra and were flung across thousands of light years, all eventually coming to rest on backwater human colony planets. It was this first touch of Chaos before the Primarchs had even been born that may have corrupted so many of them and laid the foundation for the agonising tragedy of the Horus Heresy that was to come. One of these infant Primarchs turned up on the dark, geologically unstable Feral World of Medusa in the Segmentum Obscurus very near to the Eye of Terror, his gestation capsule burning a trail through the cloud-dominated sky as it impacted the highest mountain on the world, Karaashi, the Ice Pinnacle. The impact shattered the mountain top, burying Ferrus deep in the ice in a tremendous explosion of steam. The land shook under the impact which could be felt the world over. Mountains were toppled and great chasms were formed as the planet rumbled under the coming of the Primarch. Medusa rumbled with such ferocity that the Medusans later said that many of the world's mountains simply shook themselves to pieces.

Years later that special infant, named Ferrus Manus (High Gothic for "Iron Hand") by the Medusans, walked unscathed and already fully grown from the uninhabited mountain ranges of the far northern wastes where the Ice Pinnacle lay. The legends of the roaming clans, taught from father to son throughout the ages, revolve around the early exploits of Ferrus, who came to be regarded as a great warrior amongst the nomadic clans of Medusa. Much about the formative years of Ferrus Manus on Medusa remains unknown, not so much through any deliberate veil of secrecy perhaps, but because what was later retold by the Medusans themselves was filtered through the barbaric folk-memory of their culture, while the Gorgon himself was taciturn on the matter to any save the Emperor. There have been many who have studied the formative situations of the Primarchs who have drawn parallels between the conditions in which Vulkan found himself on Nocturne and Ferrus Manus encountered on Medusa; both were found on savage, barren worlds riven by hostile conditions and both were home to primitive cultures, long cut off from the rest of Mankind during the Age of Strife. But beyond these surface features, the two worlds and, in particular, those who dwelled upon them could not have been more different.

If what can be gleaned from the Medusan folk tales holds true, it was not into the clan-ranges he first fell in blaze of light that sundered the grey, shrouding skies of the planet, but in the northern polar regions, shattering Karaashi, the Pinnacle of Black Ice. This locale was one of many places the Medusans considered the accursed abodes of the malign shades of the dead and slumbering iron-skinned monsters of legend. This set the scene for the Primarch's entrance into mythic history, and the Medusan legends teach of him wandering the northern realms, casting down hulking storm giants, performing superhuman feats of cunning and strength, and slaying monsters and murderous machine-creatures left relic beneath the black ice of Medusa from bygone ages of war and slaughter. The most renowned of such fables featured the deathless horror of the great silver wyrm Asirnoth, who Imperial savants hypothesize to have been a Necron machine construct impervious to harm. The Primarch had to draw the creature into molten magma in order to kill it. The creature's quicksilver-skin (Necrodermis) marked the Primarch in its death-throes and now perpetually coated the Primarch's own hands and forearms, lending him his common name.

When the Gorgon, as he had become known, strode forth from the forbidden realms of sundered Medusa to batter the disparate clans of his world into submission to his overlordship, he was already thought of as a living god by its natives. But while he did not require of the Medusans worship and did nothing to encourage it, he demanded obedience to his will, and bloodily broke any who would contest his word. Nor did he quell conflict or bring peace upon the planet, but instead he gave the Iron Fathers -- the half Tech-priests, half-shamans who ministered to the clans' spiritual and technological needs -- the fruits of his own intervention in exchange for the technological secrets they had kept down the generations. Through the Gorgon's teachings the Medusan clans then forged better weapons and stronger machines with which to fight to prove their worth to survive.

Ferrus Manus also led the bravest warriors of the clans to delve into the frozen realms below, breaking open long-sealed vaults and intruding into ice-buried fragments of the great machine-works that had plunged from the skies in ancient days in search of salvage and strong metal. In the depths, the warrior-bands and the silver-eyed giant who led them fought degenerate mutants, living-dead cyborgs whose decayed flesh hung in tatters from corroded metal bodies, and subdued the dark-engines of the nightmare ages that had gone before to take their plunder. By the time the Emperor had come to claim him for the Great Crusade, Ferrus Manus was warlord, demi-god and sage to the people of Medusa, and it is said that he was waiting, and that he more than half-suspected the true purpose of his creation.

When the Primarch of the Xth Legion was discovered, he was among the first of the Emperor's lost sons to be found, and, like Horus Lupercal and Leman Russ before him, had risen to become a warlord in his own right on the world on which he had been cast. So it was that Ferrus Manus' transition from planetary warlord to general of the Great Crusade was a swift one, aided by his evident hunger for the task set before him and the uncompromising intelligence and diligent application to this greater challenge he displayed. In a scant few years, Ferrus Manus was transferred full control of the Xth Legion which he took command of body and soul, renaming it and remaking it in his image. Sweeping away much of what had gone before by way of organisation at a stroke, the Primarch took the Xth Legion apart with the precision and intent with which an artisan might deconstruct a mechanical chronograph, reconfigure its components and re-assemble it in a fashion more to his liking.

When Ferrus Manus took charge of his Legion, he, like most of the other Primarchs, used his foster-world as the base and principal headquarters of his Legion. In doing this he wedded the two: the Medusan people and the Terran-founded Xth Legion together forcibly, creating something new that shared aspects of both that had gone before and eradicating with bloody-handed ruthlessness anything that would not yield to his will. Where once there had been Chapters as constituent units of the Legion in the Terran style, there would now be Clans, but this was not a mere symbolic union, and Terran Space Marines were ordered to displace the existing Clans' rulership both temporal and spiritual in the only way that the Medusans knew: by brute force. So the Iron Hands became the new Medusans; the Astartes walking among them as demi-gods, and the people of the nomad clans under their thrall fighting and dying not simply just to survive any more, but ultimately for their children to prove worthy to join the Iron Hands Legion's ranks.

The installation of the Iron Hands on Medusa and the establishment of Imperial Compliance over the world did little to alleviate hardship, halt conflict or undo the barbaric superstitions of the natives. Ferrus Manus saw to that, for the trials and hardships of life on Medusa would winnow the weak from the strong and see that only the physically fittest, most warlike and psychologically "suitable" recruits would join the ranks of his Legion. To counteract the potential flaw of Medusa's small population base, Ferrus Manus saw to it that on suitably recalcitrant human worlds his Iron Hands conquered by force, he exacted a tithe in perpetuity of strong male youths, taking them in early adolescence and selected at his behest by mendicant priests of the Mechanicum as tribute to Medusa: there to live, struggle, fight and survive if they were strong enough, as fresh blood for its clans. Should they prove worthy, they would become Aspirants for his Legion upon attaining their maturity. So it was that the bloody inheritance and bleak creed of Medusa was spread to successive generations of the Iron Hands, forging the X Legion into a weapon of unparalleled ruthlessness.

The Gorgon and the Phoenix

The brotherhood shared by the Primarchs Fulgrim and Ferrus Manus, the Phoenician and the Gorgon, was well known in the Imperium at the time of the Great Crusade, as the two superhuman leaders formed an instant connection upon their first meeting. This initial encounter occurred on Terra, beneath Mount Narodnya, the greatest forge of the Urals, where Ferrus Manus was busy toiling with the forge-masters who had once served the Terrawatt Clan during the Unification Wars soon after his arrival from Medusa. The Primarch of the Iron Hands had been demonstrating his phenomenal skill and the miraculous powers of his liquid metal hands when Fulgrim, the Primarch of the IIIrd Legion, the Emperor's Children, and his elite Phoenix Guard, had descended upon the sprawling forge complex.

Neither Primarch had yet met the other, but each had felt the shared bonds of alchemy and science that had gone into their making. Both were like gods unto the terrified artisans, who prostrated themselves before these two mighty warriors as though fearing a terrible battle might ensue between them. Ferrus Manus later told the tale to the Astartes of the Xth Legion claiming that Fulgrim had declared that he had come to forge the most perfect weapon ever created, and that he would bear it in the coming Great Crusade. Of course the Primarch of the Iron Hands could not let such a boast go unanswered, and he had laughed in Fulgrim’s face, declaring that such pasty hands could never be the equal of his own living metal appendages. Fulgrim accepted the challenge with regal grace, and both Primarchs had stripped to the waist, working without pause for weeks on end, the forge ringing with the deafening pounding of hammers, the hiss of cooling metal, and the good-natured insults of the two demigods as they sought to outdo one another.

At the end of three months' unceasing toil, both warriors had finished their weapons. Fulgrim had forged an exquisite warhammer -- Forgebreaker -- that could level a mountain with a single blow, and Ferrus Manus a golden bladed sword -- Fireblade -- that forever burned with the fire of the forge. Both weapons were unmatched by any yet crafted by Man, and upon seeing what the other had created, each Primarch declared that his opponent’s was the greater. Fulgrim declared the golden sword the equal of that borne by the legendary hero Nuada Silverhand, while Ferrus Manus had sworn that only the mighty thunder gods of Nordyc legend were fit to bear such a magnificent warhammer. Without another word spoken, both Primarchs had swapped weapons and sealed their eternal friendship with the craft of their hands.

The weight of the formidable warhammer Forgebreaker was enormous and unbearable for anyone but one of the Emperor’s Astartes. Its haft was the color of ebony, elaborately worked with threads of gold and silver that formed the shape of a lightning bolt, and the head was carved into the shape of a mighty eagle, its barbed beak forming the striking face and its tapered wings the claw. Anyone who looked upon the mighty warhammer could feel the power radiating from within it and know instinctively that more than just skill had gone into its forging. Love and honour, loyalty and friendship, death and vengeance...all were embodied within its majestic form, and the thought that the Iron Hands Primarch’s sworn honour brother had created this weapon made it truly legendary.

According to legend, Ferrus Manus was commonly referred to as The Gorgon. Some on Terra said the name was in reference to an ancient legend of the Olympian Hegemony. The Gorgon was a beast of such incredible ugliness that its very gaze could turn a man to stone. Many would be outraged at the disrespect in the implication of such a term when referring to a Primarch, but those who knew him best believed that Ferrus Manus quite enjoyed the name, because in any case, that was not where the name originated. It was an old nickname Fulgrim had given his brother after their initial meeting. Unlike the Phoenician, Ferrus Manus had little time for art, music or any of the cultural pastimes the IIIrd Legion's Primarch so enjoyed. It is said that after the two Primarchs met at Mount Narodnya, they returned to the Imperial Palace where Primarch Sanguinius of the Blood Angels Legion had arrived bearing gifts for the Emperor, exquisite statues from the glowing rock of Baal, priceless gem-stones and wondrous artifacts of aragonite, opal and tourmaline. The lord of the Blood Angels had brought enough to fill a dozen wings of the Palace with the greatest wonders imaginable.

Of course, Fulgrim was enthralled, finding that another of his brothers shared his love of such incredible beauty, but Ferrus Manus was unimpressed and said that such things were a waste of their time when there was a galaxy to win back. Fulgrim laughed and declared Ferrus a "terrible gorgon," saying that if the Primarchs did not value beauty, then they would never appreciate the stars they were to win back for their father. After that time the name stuck, and forever after Ferrus Manus was often referred to as The Gorgon.

The Great Crusade

Although torn between the people of Medusa and the needs of the greater Imperium he had been created to serve, Ferrus eventually accepted from his father the command of the Xth Legion, who were re-named the Iron Hands to honour their Primarch's necrodermis-sheathed hands. The Legion quickly added their efforts to the Emperor's ongoing Great Crusade, becoming the heart of the 52nd Expeditionary Fleet. They were said to fight with valor across the galaxy, cutting a swathe through any that opposed the Emperor's word. New Aspirants for the Legion were now drawn from Medusa rather than Terra, and Ferrus' early beliefs about the Medusan tribesmen's healthy competition made them more than capable of adapting to the rigours of life as Astartes. The Xth Legion believed deeply in the Emperor's efforts to reunite all of humanity after the Age of Strife, and held that the greatest danger to the human race was to be found in its own divisions. Only unity—unity under the rule of the Emperor—could truly ensure the survival of Mankind in such a hostile galaxy. The Legion believed that any weakness in humanity should be stamped out, which resulted in many culls of newly-discovered populations who were unwilling to accept the Emperor's rule and the teachings of the Imperial Truth.

Diasporex Persecution

During the latter part of the Great Crusade, the Iron Hands encountered a nomadic, fleet-based civilization composed of both humans and xenos known as the Diasporex. The Iron Hands shared the Imperial Truth of the Emperor of Mankind and offered the human members of the Diasporex the opportunity to separate from their alien allies and to join the newly forged Imperium, but they declined the Astartes' offer. Their offer rejected, the Iron Hands passed judgement, and in the following months the Iron Hands fleet attempted to annihilate the Diasporex, but they proved to be highly skilled and experienced in the realm of naval warfare, and managed to easily evade crucial battles and even to severely damage the Iron Hands' Strike Cruiser Ferrum. The Emperor's Children of the 28th Expeditionary Fleet were called in as reinforcements, and so, a joint Imperial strike force composed of both the Iron Hands and forces from the Emperor's Children Legion launched an all-out assault against the willful Diasporex. Though the Diasporex knew that a powerful fleet of warships was hunting them and sought their destruction, they refused to leave the sector and move on to someplace safer. The Iron Hands' scout ships soon discovered the truth—the Diasporex used hidden solar collector arrays to collect fuel for their vessels from a star. This was the reason why the Diasporex remained within the sector. Attacking these vital fuel stations, the two Imperial Expeditionary Fleets drew the Diasporex fleet out into open battle as the human-alien alliance sought to avoid utter annihilation at the Imperials' hands.

During the massive naval battle that ensued Fulgrim's personal gunship, the Firebird, came under heavy attack and soon found itself in trouble. Rushing to his brother's side, Ferrus Manus' flagship, the Battle Barge Fist of Iron, came rushing to the rescue of his beleaguered brother. To restore his wounded pride, Fulgrim led a brief ship boarding action where the Emperor's Children wreaked bloody havoc on the troops of the Diasporex. But ultimate victory was robbed from him when the enemy ship's bridge was taken by one of his subordinate commanders. For months thereafter, Fulgrim would resent The Gorgon's actions, unable to truly understand the altruism of Ferrus' deed and the loss of life his selfless act had incurred on his Legion. Under the malignant influence of the daemon-possessed Laer blade that he wore at all times, Fulgrim could only see self-aggrandizement in his brother’s action, instead of the the heroic deed it had truly been. Ferrus' critical comments, the wounding darts that Fulgrim believed were meant to undermine him, were in actuality only jests designed to puncture Fulgrim's self-importance and restore his humility. What Fulgrim perceived as Ferrus’ prideful boasts and rash actions had been deeds of courage that he spitefully dismissed as the influence of Chaos began to claim the Phoenician's soul.

Horus Heresy

As the Warmaster Horus made the opening moves of his rebellion on Istvaan III, Ferrus Manus' oldest and dearest friend Fulgrim was ordered by the Warmaster to meet with the Iron Hands Primarch aboard his flagship Fist of Iron in the hope that he could be swayed to the side of the Traitor Legions who now served Chaos. Fulgrim had sent the bulk of his IIIrd Legion and the 28th Expeditionary Fleet on to meet Horus and the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet in the Istvaan System while he and a small force aided the Iron Hands' 52ndExpeditionary Fleet in retaking the world of Callinedes IV from Orks. Great bonds of friendship and brotherhood had long existed between the two Legions, and Fulgrim felt that he could convince Ferrus of the righteousness of Horus' cause. Fulgrim's hope proved disastrously wrong and the meeting of the two Primarchs in Ferrus's private inner sanctum in his flagship's Anvilarium did not go well, as Ferrus was utterly outraged that his brothers would turn against their father the Emperor. The meeting ended in violence as The Gorgon made his difference of opinion over continued loyalty to the Emperor known to the Phoenician with his weapons, determined to stop Fulgrim's betrayal of the Imperium before it could begin. Ferrus attempted to use his silvery necrodermis hands to destroy Fulgrim's golden sword Fireblade, but the resulting explosion knocked him unconscious.

Fulgrim intended to kill his unconscious brother with the weapon he had forged for him, the warhammer Forgebreaker, but proved unable to kill his oldest friend despite the promptings of the Slaaneshi daemon that now corrupted his soul. Instead he took the wondrous weapon that he had once crafted in brotherhood for Ferrus as a reminder of their former friendship, and left behind Fireblade, which Ferrus had forged for him. When Fulgrim emerged from Ferrus' inner sanctum, he gave a signal to his elite Phoenix Guard, who instantly beheaded all of the Iron Hands Morlocks Terminators who served as Ferrus' own elite bodyguard with their Power Halberds. The Emperor's Children also nearly slew the Iron Hands' First Captain Gabriel Santor. Fulgrim successfully fled the Iron Hands' expeditionary fleet in his personal assault craft, the Firebird, as he ordered his warships, the Battle Barge Pride of the Emperor and its Escorts, to open fire upon the ships of the 52nd Expeditionary Fleet. This surprise attack crippled the Iron Hands force and provided a distraction while Fulgrim and the Emperor's Children warships fled into the Warp to rendezvous with the rest of their 28th Expeditionary Fleet in the Istvaan System.

Drop Site Massacre

Overcome with mind-numbing rage at such treachery, Ferrus and his warriors gratefully received the Emperor's orders through his brother Rogal Dorn. Together with the Raven Guard and Salamanders Legions, the Iron Hands were to confront Horus and his lieutenants on the world of Istvaan V and crush them utterly. A second wave, comprising the Night Lords, Iron Warriors, Alpha Legion and a contingent from the Word Bearers Legions, would follow them and support their initial attack. The Imperial fleet managed to make orbit over Istvaan V and the Loyalist Legions proceeded with their planetary deployment. Thousands of Drop Pods and Stormbirds were deployed for the assault. The first wave was under the overall command of Ferrus Manus and besides his own Legion, the Iron Hands, the Loyalist forces included the Salamanders led by Vulkan, and the Raven Guard under the command of Corax. Vulkan's Legion assaulted the left flank of the Traitors' battle line while Ferrus Manus, First Captain Gabriel Santor, and 10 full companies of elite Morlock Terminators charged straight through the center of the Traitor Legions' lines. Meanwhile, Corax's Legion hit the right flank of the enemy's position. The odds were considered equal; 30,000 defending Traitor Astartes against 40,000 Loyalists. Horus was aware of the location of the Loyalists' chosen drop site and his troops fell upon the Loyalist Legions.

The battlefield of Isstvan V was a slaughterhouse of epic proportions. Treacherous warriors twisted by hatred fought their former brothers-in-arms in a conflict unparalleled in its bitterness. The mighty Titan war engines of the Machine God walked the planet’s surface, and death followed in their wake. The blood of heroes and traitors flowed in rivers, and the hooded Adepts of the Dark Mechanicum unleashed perversions of ancient technology stolen from the Auretian Technocracy to wreak bloody havoc amongst the Loyalists. All across the Urgall Depression, hundreds died with every passing second, the promise of inevitable death a pall of darkness that hung over every warrior. The Traitor forces held, but their line was bending beneath the fury of the first Loyalist assault. It would take only the smallest twists of fate for it to break.

The second wave of "Loyalist" Space Marine Legions descended upon the landing zone on the northern edge of the Urgall Depression. Hundreds of Stormbirds and Thunderhawks roared towards the surface, their armoured hulls gleaming as the power of another four Astartes Legions arrived on Isstvan V. Yet the Space Marine Legions of the reserve were no longer loyal to the Emperor, having already secretly sworn themselves to Chaos and the cause of Horus. The Night Lords of Konrad Curze, the Iron Warriors of Perturabo, the Word Bearers of Lorgar, and the Alpha Legion of Alpharius represented a force larger than that which had first begun the assault on Isstvan V. The secret Traitor Legions mustered in the landing zone, armed and ready for battle, unbloodied and fresh.

Though the Iron Hands, Raven Guard and Salamanders had managed to make a full combat drop and secured the drop site, known as the Urgall Depression, they did so at a heavy cost. Overwhelmed with rage, the headstrong Ferrus Manus disregarded the counsel of his brothers Corax and Vulkan and hurled himself against the fleeing rebels, seeking to bring Fulgrim to personal combat. His veteran troops—comprising the majority of the Xth Legion's Terminators and Dreadnoughts -- followed. What had begun as a massed strike against the Traitors’ position was rapidly turning into one of the largest engagements of the entire Great Crusade. All told, over 60,000 Astartes warriors clashed on the dusky plains of Isstvan V. For all the wrong reasons, this battle was soon to go down in the annals of Imperial history as one of the most epic confrontations ever fought.

Fulgrim smiled as his brother Ferrus Manus renewed his attack into the heart of the Traitors' defensive lines atop the Urgall Depression. Backlit by the flaring strobe of battle, his brother was a magnificent figure of vengeance, his silver hands and eyes reflecting the fires of slaughter with a brilliant gleam. For the briefest second, Fulgrim had been sure that Ferrus would pause to muster with the Raven Guard and Salamanders, but there would be no restraining his brother's aggrieved sense of honour. Around the Phoenician, the last of the Phoenix Guard awaited the blunt wedge of the Iron Hands, their golden halberds held low and aimed towards their foes.

Ferrus Manus and his Morlocks charged through the shattered ruin of the defences, his black armour and their burnished plates scarred and stained with the blood of enemies. Fulgrim’s fixed smile faltered as he truly appreciated the depths of hatred his brother held for him and wondered again how they had come to this point, knowing that any chance for brotherhood was lost. Only in death would their rivalry end. The Iron Hands pushed through the defenses, the bulky Terminators unstoppable in their relentless advance. Lightning crackled from the claws of their gauntlets and their red eyes shone with anger. The Phoenix Guard braced themselves to meet the charge, fully aware of the power of such mighty suits of armour. The Phoenix Guard answered with a terrible war cry and leapt to meet the Morlocks in a searing clash of blades. Electric fire leapt from the golden edges of the halberds and the Lightning Claws of the warriors, and a storm of light and sound flared from each life and death struggle. The battle engulfed the Primarch of the Emperor’s Children, but he stood above it, awaiting the dark armoured giant who strode untouched through the lightning shot carnage as brothers hacked at one another in hatred. Ferrus had long dreamt of this moment of reckoning, ever since Fulgrim had come to him with betrayal in his heart. Only one of them would walk away from their final confrontation.

Death of Ferrus Manus

Ferrus taunted Fulgrim for his betrayal of the Emperor and siding with the Traitor Horus. He thought his brother mad, for the Warmaster was defeated—his forces routed and the power of another four Legions would soon be brought to bear to crush their attempt at rebellion utterly. Unable to contain himself any longer, Fulgrim shook his head, savouring the final act of betrayal to come, revealing to Ferrus that it was he who was naive. Horus would never be foolish enough to trap himself like this. He pointed out towards the northern edge of the Urgall Depression so that Ferrus could see that it was he and his fellow Loyalists who were undone. Ferrus looked and saw a force larger than that which had begun the assault during the first wave of attack, mustered in the landing zone, armed and ready for battle.

Dragging their wounded and dead behind them, Corax and Vulkan led their forces back to the drop site to regroup and to allow the warriors of their recently arrived brother Primarchs of the second wave a measure of the glory in defeating Horus. Though they voxed hails requesting medical aid and supply, the line of Astartes atop the northern ridge remained grimly silent as the exhausted warriors of the Raven Guard and Salamanders came to within a hundred meters of their allies. It was then that Horus revealed his perfidy and sprung his lethal trap. Inside the black fortress where Horus had made his lair, a lone flare shot skyward, exploding in a hellish red glow that lit the battlefield below. The fire of betrayal roared from the barrels of a thousand guns, as the second wave of Astartes revealed where their true loyalties now lay. Ferrus looked on in stunned horror as Fulgrim laughed at the look on his brother's face as the forces of his "allies" opened fire upon the Salamanders and Raven Guard, killing hundreds in the fury of the first few moments, hundreds more in the seconds following, as volley after volley of Bolter fire and missiles scythed through their unsuspecting ranks.

Even as terrifying carnage was being wreaked upon the Loyalists below, the retreating forces of the Warmaster turned and brought their weapons to bear on the enemy warriors within their midst. Hundreds of World Eaters, Sons of Horus and the Death Guard fell upon the veteran companies of the Iron Hands, and though the warriors of the Xth Legion continued to fight gallantly, they were hopelessly outnumbered and would soon be hacked to pieces. Ferrus Manus turned to face Fulgrim, his teeth bared with the volcanic fury of his homeworld. The two Primarchs leapt at one anther, Ferrus wielding Fireblade and Fulgrim holding Forgebreaker. Their weapons had been forged in brotherhood, but were now wielded in vengeance, meeting in a blazing plume of energy. The two Primarchs traded blows with their monstrously powerful weapons, Ferrus Manus wielded his flaming blade in fiery slashes, his every blow defeated by the ebony hafted hammer he had borne in countless campaigns. Both warriors fought with the hatred only brothers divided could muster, their armour dented, torn and blackened by their fury.

The two Primarchs traded terrible blows, wounding one another deeply during their fierce struggle. As Ferrus pushed himself to his feet and staggered towards the wounded Fulgrim, he cried out as he brought the flaming blade towards his brother's neck. But Fulgrim lashed out as he drew the single-edged, daemonically-possessed sword he had taken from the Laer temple and blocked the descending weapon. With the power of Chaos streaming from the blade, diabolical strength flooded Fulgrim's limbs as he pushed against the power of Ferrus Manus, feeling his brother's surprise at his resistance. Fulgrim managed to surge to his feet and lashed out, his silver blade biting deep into the breastplate of Ferrus' armour, and the Primarch of the Iron Hands cried out, falling to his knees once again. Fireblade slid from his grasp as he gasped in fierce agony. As Fulgrim raised the silver sword in preparation of delivering the deathblow to Ferrus Manus, he found that he did not possess the fortitude to deliver the killing blow. In an instant he saw what he had become and what monstrous betrayal he had allowed himself to be party to. He knew in that eternal moment that he had made a terrible mistake in drawing the sword from the Temple of the Laer, and he fought to release the damnable blade that had brought him so low.

His grip was locked onto the weapon, and even as he recognized how far he had fallen, he knew that he had come too far to stop, the realization coupled with the knowledge that everything he had striven for had been a lie. As though moving in slow motion, Fulgrim saw Ferrus Manus reaching for his fallen sword, his fingers closing around the wire-wound grip, the flames leaping once more to the blade at its creator’s touch. Fulgrim’s blade seemed to move with a life of its own as he swung the blade of his own volition. Fulgrim tried desperately to pull the blow, but his muscles were no longer his own to control. The daemonic blade sliced through the genetically-enhanced flesh and bone of one of the Emperor's sons. The Iron Hands' Primarch fell to the ground, his head decapitated. Ferrus Manus was dead by his brother's own hand and his Legion nearly shared his fate. A small group of surviving Iron Hands managed to elude the Traitors' closing trap and flee off-world, but the Xth Legion had been shattered in body and spirit and would play no further role in the Horus Heresy as it moved to recover from its critical losses at the Drop Site Massacre. The fate of their Primarch was a mystery to the Legion as his last known position was overrun by hordes of screaming enemy warriors. What became of the great Primarch Ferrus Manus would remain a mystery to the Astartes of the Xth Legion. Their enemies proclaimed the Iron Hands' Primarch dead upon the blasted wastes of Istvaan V, but the Xth Legion refused to accept this for no body was ever recovered, and many Iron Hands Astartes believed that Ferrus had somehow survived. One particular Imperial legend tells that his wrecked body was rescued and restored, and that he took refuge on Mars where he resides still, though this is violently refuted by the Iron Hands themselves. Their Primarch lost, the Iron Hands despaired as to the fate of Mankind. Their distress and confusion grew further when they learned that the Emperor had fallen in a titanic battle with the corrupted Horus. For the next 10,000 Terran years, the sons of Ferrus Manus would continue to stoke the unquenchable fires of their hatred, drawing strength from their bitterness and awaiting with faithful devotion the day of their Primarch's return.

The Sapphire King

It was at the precise moment that Ferrus Manus' head was scythed from his shoulders by the Traitor Fulgrim that the Daemonic entity known as the Sapphire King came into being. Spawned from the psychic bow wave of Ferrus Manus' death, this Daemon was forged from the Primarch's frustrated pride, his boiling anger and sorrow, and from his shame. From the moment of its birth, the Sapphire King fed on the repressed emotions of the soul-scarred Iron Hands. It basked in their chained desperation, bound to their fate by the emotions they felt but would not express. The Daemon bedevilled them across the centuries, offering opportunities for damnation disguised as steps away from the weakness they so feared. It nudged the minds of Imperial officials and potential foes, forever seeking to goad the Iron Hands into spending away their humanity like coin. The Chapter bent their every effort to purging the weaknesses of the flesh, never realising that the more they demonised their wants and needs, the greater the hold the spectre of their repressed emotions gained upon them. Following the aftermath of the campaign fought against a massive Ork WAAAGH! dubbed the Weirdwaaagh!, upon the Forge World of Columnus in 249.M41, questions arose in the Iron Council regarding Iron Father Kristos' questionable conduct. In 260.M41, sufficient dissent continued to arise amongst the Iron Fathers in regards to Kristos' conduct. Only an entire Iron Council could resolve the wider issues raised. Though a fair and logical process, it was not a swift one; the years turned to decades as the Kristosian Conclave ground on over the next couple of centuries.

As the Kristosian Conclave reached its zenith in 460.M41, the Sapphire King judged the Iron Hands ripe to fall and set its trap in motion. Each Iron Hand carried within his heart a rancid seed, a bomb of repressed passions that could erupt to destroy him at any moment.

In that same year, a vast host of Iron Hands descended upon the Gaudinia System. Iron Father Kristos had assumed the mantle of war leader and had assembled more than eight hundred Iron Hands under his control. This was the greatest deployment of the Chapter for centuries, and was accompanied by the majority of the Iron Council. Clan Company Raukaan once again took the lead in a massive planetary assault upon Gaudania Prime and so was at the heart of the abominable trap that was there unleashed. A Daemonic entity known only as the Sapphire King, spawned from the psychic bow wave of Ferrus Manus' death on Istvaan V, had long fed on the repressed emotions of the soul-scarred Iron Hands. It basked in their chained desperation, bound to their fate by the emotions they felt but would not express. The Daemon bedevilled them across the centuries, offering opportunities for damnation disguised as steps away from the weakness they so feared. The Sapphire King judged the Iron Hands ripe to fall and set its trap in motion. Each Iron Hand carried within his heart a rancid seed, a bomb of repressed passions that could erupt to destroy him at any moment. The Daemon would simply provide the spark to light the flame and watch the Chapter burn upon a pyre of their own emotions.

As the Daemonic entity was confronted by the Clan Companies Raukaan and Sorrgol in their entirety on Gaudinia Prime, Iron Father Kristos was corrupted, both body and soul. Everywhere, the adherents of Kristos (known as Kristosians) were overcome by the twisted perfection of strange flesh engines -- the harder they attempted to repress their urges with logic, the faster they succumbed. Howling Daemons of Slaanesh burst forth from tears in reality, and set themselves upon the beleaguered Iron Hands. With them came warriors of the Emperor's Children. Amid the madness, the bejewelled Daemon itself strode forth to confront the Iron Hands.

At that moment, Iron Father Kardan Stronos was struck by the revelation that by cutting off their emotions, his Battle-Brothers were only causing themselves to fall to the corrupting influence of Chaos. Their only chance to save themselves was not by cutting themselves off from their emotions, but by embracing them, and shackling them to their iron will. Activating his Vox, Stronos barked commands to the forces around him, ordering them to release their anger, lest their foes destroy them with it. The Battle-Brothers disengaged their inhibitor protocols and loosed furious battle cries. As the emotional floodgates burst open, the Sapphire King shrieked its rage as the repressed energies that had fueled its spell were vented like steam from a boiler. Freed from the debilitating Warp-craft, the surviving Iron Hands gave vent to their revulsion, blasting the Daemons apart in rains of ectoplasmic filth or tearing them limb from shimmering limb. With a fury they had never before allowed themselves to display, the Iron Hands made short work of their Chaotic foes. The Sapphire King was utterly destroyed and the remaining Emperor's Children were swiftly blasted into bloodied ruin. To ensure the destruction of the surviving machine-spawn, the Iron Hands launched a massive orbital bombardment, ensuring the Daemon Engines' destruction.

Source: http://warhammer40k.wikia.com

#horus heresy #warhammer 40k #adepta sororitas #adeptus mechanicus #adeptus astartes #adeptus arbites #adeptus custodes #Astra Militarum #Adeptus Astra Telepathica #officio assassinorum

[emlydunstan]

Radical Sobriety: Getting (and Staying) Clean and Sober as Subversive Activity

Sometime in the autumn of 1798, a middle-aged chief of the Seneca tribe led a hunting party from their home near the Finger Lakes of upstate New York through the verdant woods of western Pennsylvania, bringing a cache of venison and buckskin to a small settlement at the forks of the Ohio River called Pittsburgh, where they traded their goods for a barrel of whiskey. Historian of religion Peter Manseau writes in his One Nation, Under Gods: A New History that afterwards the “hunters had lashed their canoes together into a single barge and managed to make their way upriver as the liquor continued to flow,” as they made their way home to the Iroquois settlement of Jenuchshadego. Manseau records from primary sources that the returning party terrified the villagers, that they would “yell and sing like demented people,” and that “they are beastlike.”The Code of Handsome Lake: An Early Recovery MovementThe Sachem Cornplanter, Handsome Lake’s half-brother, had seen the Seneca decimated by alcoholism, and so he banned liquor within the confederation. Handsome Lake fell into the withdrawal symptoms of delirium tremens, though as Manseau writes “it was believed that he was [also] suffering from a spiritual malady.” Expecting death to take him, Cornplanter let Quaker missionaries tend to his dying brother, until one day “some strong power” took command of Handsome Lake, and he awoke seemingly cured of his affliction. The chief told his people that while convalescing, he had a mystical vision of three angels who imparted to him the creed of a new faith that was to be known as the Code of Handsome Lake, or the Longhouse Religion. Central to Handsome Lake’s prophecy was a belief that liquor was a narcotic whose specific purpose was the anesthetizing of humans, of reducing them to bestial impulse so as to make them easier to control. For Handsome Lake, both drinking and sobriety had profound political implications, with Manseau explaining that the chief’s temperance “became the conduit for the promise of a broader redemption.”There is no narrative of sobriety which I do not find inspiring; there is no story of recovery which is not useful to me. As different as Handsome Lake and I may be, there is an important experience which we share. Because though he is an 18th century Indian chief there is some combination of brain chemistry which makes us similarly powerless before barrels of proffered whiskey. We’re both conversant with his older contemporary the English lexicographer Dr. Johnson’s observation that “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” But there is something important and distinct in Handsome Lake’s example which I think is worth reflecting on: his faith wasn’t just one of personal redemption, but also of an understanding that there are radical implications in recovery, that abstinence can be subversive, that sobriety can be counter-cultural.Trying to Make It as a Drunk BohemianEasy to think when we’re actively using that there’s a cracked romance in being an alcoholic: all those drained shots and pint glasses, living our best imitation of the 19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire’s commandment that “You have to be always drunk.” I probably never needed much justification to getting blackout drunk – I liked it. But sometimes rationalization was a helpful salve when I woke up the dozenth time in a month shaking, hungover, going through my text messages to see whom I offended. The disease’s conclusions may be universal, and our symptoms are largely the same. But there’s always some variation. Mine was of the pseudo-bohemian, aspiring Romantic kind; dog-eared pages of Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac initiating me into a society of the ecstatic, of those who “burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles.” More fun to think of myself as among “the ones who are mad to live” rather than as the one who pissed his pants.To clarify, I don’t blame any of those writers, some of whom I still enjoy, for my affliction. I even still have a beloved copy of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Hell. No, what I mean to suggest is that whatever the reasons why I drank, through it all I had some sort of warped sense that the damage I was doing to mind, body, and spirit served some supremely radical role, that I was a renegade against the strictures of regulated, uptight, square society. Part of me still feels that buzzed euphoric recall of dangerous nostalgia. And I didn’t quit because I rejected that gin-flavored narrative so much as that I realized in a moment of clarity that seems to have miraculously stuck (so far) that if I didn’t put down the bottle, absolutely nothing good would come of it. But what I’ve also realized, as I approach the midpoint of my third year of sobriety, is that there is something just as subversive in rejecting alcohol as in embracing it.The Radical Potential of Narrative to Treat AddictionIn his excellent book Drunks: The Story of Alcoholism and the Birth of Recovery, Christopher M. Finan credits Handsome Lake with founding the first real fellowship that could be said to treat the disease with the radical potential of narrative. Handsome Lake is the first in a line of visionaries, from the six reformed drunkards who founded the 19th century Washingtonian Movement to Bill W. and Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous, who crafted what was fundamentally a counter-cultural ideology which rejected alcoholism, but also the servility which came with it. Finan writes that for the Seneca of Handsome Lake’s era, the “euphoria of intoxication brought temporary relief from the pain of dispossession and death.” Same as it ever was, because addiction’s particular form of mental slavery pretends to treat both profane concerns, such as making us ignorant of our own dispossession, as well as more transcendent fears, like how we can almost believe that we’re immortal for the price of a pint or 20. We prayed for art when we were drunk, but as Lewis Lapham writes, “Alcohol’s job is to replace creation with an illusion that is barren.”What these fellowships have always promised isn’t denunciatory scolding, but rather a rejection of a narcotic which helps to keep people in physical and spiritual bondage. Alcoholism has medical, economic, and social implications, none of which actually serve any kind of bohemian or utopian yearning, but deceive the sufferer into believing that they do. Meanwhile, the addict’s world constricts into a smaller and smaller circumference. Odd to consider that temperance as a reform movement was often grouped alongside abolitionism and suffragism, since we so often see it as fundamentally anti-freedom. And prohibitionist and neo-prohibitionist arguments have been social and moral disasters, maybe especially for the individual suffering with addiction. But the grouping of temperance (as distinct from Prohibition) with those radical political movements is not strange, for the personal rejection of intoxication has a certain radicalism to it as well, a turning away from an exploitive thing-of-this-world. That is before we consider how addiction has been used to target marginalized communities, how it can be a function of poverty and class, and how the criminal justice system and the media treat different sufferers in different ways. As Finan writes, the struggle to get sober, and the ways in which alcoholics have been able to help other alcoholics get and stay that way, deserves to be understood as one of the “great liberation movements” of American history.The Myth of the Bar Stool RevolutionaryWhen I sat on a bar stool feeling the electric thrum, or when I passed out on my apartment floor, or on a city street, I may have imagined that there was something subversive about my antisocial behavior, but in sobriety I’ve developed a more jaundiced view of how my own particular predispositions were exploited in a way that was anything but counter-cultural. I had my radical political poses, my underlined copies of bohemian poets and political theorists, and I could talk a big game about being “anti-capitalist,” but I had no compunction about shoveling out thousands of dollars over the years to pad the bank accounts of liquor and beer companies, apparently seeing no irony in paying for the very poison that was killing me. Once I recall formulating a bar-stool argument that the local tavern was one of the last democratic institutions in the United States, and I think there is still some merit to that, but I’ve found far-more radical potential in how groups like the Longhouse Religion, the Washingtonians, and AA are organized.Not much is actually anarchistic about active addiction other than the chaos that characterizes your life, but the non-hierarchical, egalitarian, horizontal organization of 12-step fellowships makes them one of the few successful, genuinely counter-cultural movements in American life. Author Michael Tolkin describes AA as having a “cunning structure; no due, no tithes, no president, protected from permanent officer and the development of cults by a rotating leadership for each separate group, no other requirement for membership than the declaration of fellowship in a shared condition.” What they offer is something in genuine opposition to the gods of this world, the market system that will profit off suffering while promising you paradise, what Tolkin describes as “spiritual slavery to the internal compulsion engine.”To turn down a drink, that which is pushed through advertisement and neighbor alike, that edifying, enjoyable, relaxing nectar, is to reject the status quo in a way which courts its own type of infamy. The only drug you’ll kick where you’re viewed afterwards as being a bit suspicious. “Can’t you have just one?” As with Handsome Lake’s realization that liquor wasn’t just physically killing him, but holding him in a sort of bondage, so recovery has radical implications that go far beyond health and self-care.Recovery as a Liberation MovementThe fundamental brilliance of such fellowships is the sharing of a common affliction and the communal support of those who’ve been where you have. This is the same brilliance of all great faiths. Where the endless addictions of capitalism build you up only to tear you down (for profit of course), the process of recovery is one where you must first be torn down to be built up. Religion at its best is a process of ego diminishment, an understanding that you are one of many, and that ultimately you are something infinitely more precious than a mere consumer — you are a human. When Finan talks about recovery as a liberation movement, he means the way in which there isn’t just a physical freedom promised in sobriety, but a mental, emotional, and spiritual one as well. No longer chained to the endless cycle of believing that one more drink will promise something immaculate in “just fifteen more minutes” which never comes.Apart from the political, I think that the most radical potential of recovery is something a bit more personal, something that is an issue of transcendence itself. It's all well and good to claim that addiction is a good metaphor for those things which oppress us in life, but addiction is also literally addiction. Followers of mystical paths have always advocated behaviors which others specifically can’t, won’t, or don’t do, from celibacy to fasting. Sobriety is in its own way such a radical, unexpected, unconventional behavior, as author Peter Bebergal has written: “Sobriety is its own kind of altered state of consciousness.” In Too Much to Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood, Bebergal writes about how in early recovery “A cup of coffee in the basement of a church… tastes like the nectar of the gods. A roast beef sandwich is like… something from Eden,” and the most profoundly true of observations: “Sleeping for the first time sober and waking up clean is a mystery of boundless grace.”“Mystery” and “grace” are religious terms, and indeed 12-step recovery often gets libeled as a type of religious mysticism. I would only take offense to that were I against religious mysticisms. But Bebergal is right, the first time you go to bed sober and wake up clean does feel like a mystery, because it’s so antithetical to who you have been, and it does feel like grace because for once you have a sort of freedom you’ve never known before. It’s a staking out of agency, of personal sovereignty, and it’s a declaration of independence. “Freedom” is simply another word for grace, and there is never anything more powerful, radical, or subversive than freedom. Bebergal writes that “Removing the pall of daily addiction is like flash powder going off in your face,” as it was for Bill W., as it was for Handsome Lake, as it was for me, and as it possibly can be for you.In addiction there is that pursuit of freedom, the lie that one more drink will get you closer to the comfort and safety of a home you’ve never known. The radicalism of sobriety is that it actually gets you there.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 https://www.thefix.com/radical-sobriety-getting-and-staying-clean-and-sober-subversive-activity

[alexdmorgan30]

Radical Sobriety: Getting (and Staying) Clean and Sober as Subversive Activity

Sometime in the autumn of 1798, a middle-aged chief of the Seneca tribe led a hunting party from their home near the Finger Lakes of upstate New York through the verdant woods of western Pennsylvania, bringing a cache of venison and buckskin to a small settlement at the forks of the Ohio River called Pittsburgh, where they traded their goods for a barrel of whiskey. Historian of religion Peter Manseau writes in his One Nation, Under Gods: A New History that afterwards the “hunters had lashed their canoes together into a single barge and managed to make their way upriver as the liquor continued to flow,” as they made their way home to the Iroquois settlement of Jenuchshadego. Manseau records from primary sources that the returning party terrified the villagers, that they would “yell and sing like demented people,” and that “they are beastlike.”The Code of Handsome Lake: An Early Recovery MovementThe Sachem Cornplanter, Handsome Lake’s half-brother, had seen the Seneca decimated by alcoholism, and so he banned liquor within the confederation. Handsome Lake fell into the withdrawal symptoms of delirium tremens, though as Manseau writes “it was believed that he was [also] suffering from a spiritual malady.” Expecting death to take him, Cornplanter let Quaker missionaries tend to his dying brother, until one day “some strong power” took command of Handsome Lake, and he awoke seemingly cured of his affliction. The chief told his people that while convalescing, he had a mystical vision of three angels who imparted to him the creed of a new faith that was to be known as the Code of Handsome Lake, or the Longhouse Religion. Central to Handsome Lake’s prophecy was a belief that liquor was a narcotic whose specific purpose was the anesthetizing of humans, of reducing them to bestial impulse so as to make them easier to control. For Handsome Lake, both drinking and sobriety had profound political implications, with Manseau explaining that the chief’s temperance “became the conduit for the promise of a broader redemption.”There is no narrative of sobriety which I do not find inspiring; there is no story of recovery which is not useful to me. As different as Handsome Lake and I may be, there is an important experience which we share. Because though he is an 18th century Indian chief there is some combination of brain chemistry which makes us similarly powerless before barrels of proffered whiskey. We’re both conversant with his older contemporary the English lexicographer Dr. Johnson’s observation that “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” But there is something important and distinct in Handsome Lake’s example which I think is worth reflecting on: his faith wasn’t just one of personal redemption, but also of an understanding that there are radical implications in recovery, that abstinence can be subversive, that sobriety can be counter-cultural.Trying to Make It as a Drunk BohemianEasy to think when we’re actively using that there’s a cracked romance in being an alcoholic: all those drained shots and pint glasses, living our best imitation of the 19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire’s commandment that “You have to be always drunk.” I probably never needed much justification to getting blackout drunk – I liked it. But sometimes rationalization was a helpful salve when I woke up the dozenth time in a month shaking, hungover, going through my text messages to see whom I offended. The disease’s conclusions may be universal, and our symptoms are largely the same. But there’s always some variation. Mine was of the pseudo-bohemian, aspiring Romantic kind; dog-eared pages of Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac initiating me into a society of the ecstatic, of those who “burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles.” More fun to think of myself as among “the ones who are mad to live” rather than as the one who pissed his pants.To clarify, I don’t blame any of those writers, some of whom I still enjoy, for my affliction. I even still have a beloved copy of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Hell. No, what I mean to suggest is that whatever the reasons why I drank, through it all I had some sort of warped sense that the damage I was doing to mind, body, and spirit served some supremely radical role, that I was a renegade against the strictures of regulated, uptight, square society. Part of me still feels that buzzed euphoric recall of dangerous nostalgia. And I didn’t quit because I rejected that gin-flavored narrative so much as that I realized in a moment of clarity that seems to have miraculously stuck (so far) that if I didn’t put down the bottle, absolutely nothing good would come of it. But what I’ve also realized, as I approach the midpoint of my third year of sobriety, is that there is something just as subversive in rejecting alcohol as in embracing it.The Radical Potential of Narrative to Treat AddictionIn his excellent book Drunks: The Story of Alcoholism and the Birth of Recovery, Christopher M. Finan credits Handsome Lake with founding the first real fellowship that could be said to treat the disease with the radical potential of narrative. Handsome Lake is the first in a line of visionaries, from the six reformed drunkards who founded the 19th century Washingtonian Movement to Bill W. and Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous, who crafted what was fundamentally a counter-cultural ideology which rejected alcoholism, but also the servility which came with it. Finan writes that for the Seneca of Handsome Lake’s era, the “euphoria of intoxication brought temporary relief from the pain of dispossession and death.” Same as it ever was, because addiction’s particular form of mental slavery pretends to treat both profane concerns, such as making us ignorant of our own dispossession, as well as more transcendent fears, like how we can almost believe that we’re immortal for the price of a pint or 20. We prayed for art when we were drunk, but as Lewis Lapham writes, “Alcohol’s job is to replace creation with an illusion that is barren.”What these fellowships have always promised isn’t denunciatory scolding, but rather a rejection of a narcotic which helps to keep people in physical and spiritual bondage. Alcoholism has medical, economic, and social implications, none of which actually serve any kind of bohemian or utopian yearning, but deceive the sufferer into believing that they do. Meanwhile, the addict’s world constricts into a smaller and smaller circumference. Odd to consider that temperance as a reform movement was often grouped alongside abolitionism and suffragism, since we so often see it as fundamentally anti-freedom. And prohibitionist and neo-prohibitionist arguments have been social and moral disasters, maybe especially for the individual suffering with addiction. But the grouping of temperance (as distinct from Prohibition) with those radical political movements is not strange, for the personal rejection of intoxication has a certain radicalism to it as well, a turning away from an exploitive thing-of-this-world. That is before we consider how addiction has been used to target marginalized communities, how it can be a function of poverty and class, and how the criminal justice system and the media treat different sufferers in different ways. As Finan writes, the struggle to get sober, and the ways in which alcoholics have been able to help other alcoholics get and stay that way, deserves to be understood as one of the “great liberation movements” of American history.The Myth of the Bar Stool RevolutionaryWhen I sat on a bar stool feeling the electric thrum, or when I passed out on my apartment floor, or on a city street, I may have imagined that there was something subversive about my antisocial behavior, but in sobriety I’ve developed a more jaundiced view of how my own particular predispositions were exploited in a way that was anything but counter-cultural. I had my radical political poses, my underlined copies of bohemian poets and political theorists, and I could talk a big game about being “anti-capitalist,” but I had no compunction about shoveling out thousands of dollars over the years to pad the bank accounts of liquor and beer companies, apparently seeing no irony in paying for the very poison that was killing me. Once I recall formulating a bar-stool argument that the local tavern was one of the last democratic institutions in the United States, and I think there is still some merit to that, but I’ve found far-more radical potential in how groups like the Longhouse Religion, the Washingtonians, and AA are organized.Not much is actually anarchistic about active addiction other than the chaos that characterizes your life, but the non-hierarchical, egalitarian, horizontal organization of 12-step fellowships makes them one of the few successful, genuinely counter-cultural movements in American life. Author Michael Tolkin describes AA as having a “cunning structure; no due, no tithes, no president, protected from permanent officer and the development of cults by a rotating leadership for each separate group, no other requirement for membership than the declaration of fellowship in a shared condition.” What they offer is something in genuine opposition to the gods of this world, the market system that will profit off suffering while promising you paradise, what Tolkin describes as “spiritual slavery to the internal compulsion engine.”To turn down a drink, that which is pushed through advertisement and neighbor alike, that edifying, enjoyable, relaxing nectar, is to reject the status quo in a way which courts its own type of infamy. The only drug you’ll kick where you’re viewed afterwards as being a bit suspicious. “Can’t you have just one?” As with Handsome Lake’s realization that liquor wasn’t just physically killing him, but holding him in a sort of bondage, so recovery has radical implications that go far beyond health and self-care.Recovery as a Liberation MovementThe fundamental brilliance of such fellowships is the sharing of a common affliction and the communal support of those who’ve been where you have. This is the same brilliance of all great faiths. Where the endless addictions of capitalism build you up only to tear you down (for profit of course), the process of recovery is one where you must first be torn down to be built up. Religion at its best is a process of ego diminishment, an understanding that you are one of many, and that ultimately you are something infinitely more precious than a mere consumer — you are a human. When Finan talks about recovery as a liberation movement, he means the way in which there isn’t just a physical freedom promised in sobriety, but a mental, emotional, and spiritual one as well. No longer chained to the endless cycle of believing that one more drink will promise something immaculate in “just fifteen more minutes” which never comes.Apart from the political, I think that the most radical potential of recovery is something a bit more personal, something that is an issue of transcendence itself. It's all well and good to claim that addiction is a good metaphor for those things which oppress us in life, but addiction is also literally addiction. Followers of mystical paths have always advocated behaviors which others specifically can’t, won’t, or don’t do, from celibacy to fasting. Sobriety is in its own way such a radical, unexpected, unconventional behavior, as author Peter Bebergal has written: “Sobriety is its own kind of altered state of consciousness.” In Too Much to Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood, Bebergal writes about how in early recovery “A cup of coffee in the basement of a church… tastes like the nectar of the gods. A roast beef sandwich is like… something from Eden,” and the most profoundly true of observations: “Sleeping for the first time sober and waking up clean is a mystery of boundless grace.”“Mystery” and “grace” are religious terms, and indeed 12-step recovery often gets libeled as a type of religious mysticism. I would only take offense to that were I against religious mysticisms. But Bebergal is right, the first time you go to bed sober and wake up clean does feel like a mystery, because it’s so antithetical to who you have been, and it does feel like grace because for once you have a sort of freedom you’ve never known before. It’s a staking out of agency, of personal sovereignty, and it’s a declaration of independence. “Freedom” is simply another word for grace, and there is never anything more powerful, radical, or subversive than freedom. Bebergal writes that “Removing the pall of daily addiction is like flash powder going off in your face,” as it was for Bill W., as it was for Handsome Lake, as it was for me, and as it possibly can be for you.In addiction there is that pursuit of freedom, the lie that one more drink will get you closer to the comfort and safety of a home you’ve never known. The radicalism of sobriety is that it actually gets you there.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 http://bit.ly/2GesUce

[pitz182]

Radical Sobriety: Getting (and Staying) Clean and Sober as Subversive Activity

Sometime in the autumn of 1798, a middle-aged chief of the Seneca tribe led a hunting party from their home near the Finger Lakes of upstate New York through the verdant woods of western Pennsylvania, bringing a cache of venison and buckskin to a small settlement at the forks of the Ohio River called Pittsburgh, where they traded their goods for a barrel of whiskey. Historian of religion Peter Manseau writes in his One Nation, Under Gods: A New History that afterwards the “hunters had lashed their canoes together into a single barge and managed to make their way upriver as the liquor continued to flow,” as they made their way home to the Iroquois settlement of Jenuchshadego. Manseau records from primary sources that the returning party terrified the villagers, that they would “yell and sing like demented people,” and that “they are beastlike.”The Code of Handsome Lake: An Early Recovery MovementThe Sachem Cornplanter, Handsome Lake’s half-brother, had seen the Seneca decimated by alcoholism, and so he banned liquor within the confederation. Handsome Lake fell into the withdrawal symptoms of delirium tremens, though as Manseau writes “it was believed that he was [also] suffering from a spiritual malady.” Expecting death to take him, Cornplanter let Quaker missionaries tend to his dying brother, until one day “some strong power” took command of Handsome Lake, and he awoke seemingly cured of his affliction. The chief told his people that while convalescing, he had a mystical vision of three angels who imparted to him the creed of a new faith that was to be known as the Code of Handsome Lake, or the Longhouse Religion. Central to Handsome Lake’s prophecy was a belief that liquor was a narcotic whose specific purpose was the anesthetizing of humans, of reducing them to bestial impulse so as to make them easier to control. For Handsome Lake, both drinking and sobriety had profound political implications, with Manseau explaining that the chief’s temperance “became the conduit for the promise of a broader redemption.”There is no narrative of sobriety which I do not find inspiring; there is no story of recovery which is not useful to me. As different as Handsome Lake and I may be, there is an important experience which we share. Because though he is an 18th century Indian chief there is some combination of brain chemistry which makes us similarly powerless before barrels of proffered whiskey. We’re both conversant with his older contemporary the English lexicographer Dr. Johnson’s observation that “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” But there is something important and distinct in Handsome Lake’s example which I think is worth reflecting on: his faith wasn’t just one of personal redemption, but also of an understanding that there are radical implications in recovery, that abstinence can be subversive, that sobriety can be counter-cultural.Trying to Make It as a Drunk BohemianEasy to think when we’re actively using that there’s a cracked romance in being an alcoholic: all those drained shots and pint glasses, living our best imitation of the 19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire’s commandment that “You have to be always drunk.” I probably never needed much justification to getting blackout drunk – I liked it. But sometimes rationalization was a helpful salve when I woke up the dozenth time in a month shaking, hungover, going through my text messages to see whom I offended. The disease’s conclusions may be universal, and our symptoms are largely the same. But there’s always some variation. Mine was of the pseudo-bohemian, aspiring Romantic kind; dog-eared pages of Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac initiating me into a society of the ecstatic, of those who “burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles.” More fun to think of myself as among “the ones who are mad to live” rather than as the one who pissed his pants.To clarify, I don’t blame any of those writers, some of whom I still enjoy, for my affliction. I even still have a beloved copy of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Hell. No, what I mean to suggest is that whatever the reasons why I drank, through it all I had some sort of warped sense that the damage I was doing to mind, body, and spirit served some supremely radical role, that I was a renegade against the strictures of regulated, uptight, square society. Part of me still feels that buzzed euphoric recall of dangerous nostalgia. And I didn’t quit because I rejected that gin-flavored narrative so much as that I realized in a moment of clarity that seems to have miraculously stuck (so far) that if I didn’t put down the bottle, absolutely nothing good would come of it. But what I’ve also realized, as I approach the midpoint of my third year of sobriety, is that there is something just as subversive in rejecting alcohol as in embracing it.The Radical Potential of Narrative to Treat AddictionIn his excellent book Drunks: The Story of Alcoholism and the Birth of Recovery, Christopher M. Finan credits Handsome Lake with founding the first real fellowship that could be said to treat the disease with the radical potential of narrative. Handsome Lake is the first in a line of visionaries, from the six reformed drunkards who founded the 19th century Washingtonian Movement to Bill W. and Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous, who crafted what was fundamentally a counter-cultural ideology which rejected alcoholism, but also the servility which came with it. Finan writes that for the Seneca of Handsome Lake’s era, the “euphoria of intoxication brought temporary relief from the pain of dispossession and death.” Same as it ever was, because addiction’s particular form of mental slavery pretends to treat both profane concerns, such as making us ignorant of our own dispossession, as well as more transcendent fears, like how we can almost believe that we’re immortal for the price of a pint or 20. We prayed for art when we were drunk, but as Lewis Lapham writes, “Alcohol’s job is to replace creation with an illusion that is barren.”What these fellowships have always promised isn’t denunciatory scolding, but rather a rejection of a narcotic which helps to keep people in physical and spiritual bondage. Alcoholism has medical, economic, and social implications, none of which actually serve any kind of bohemian or utopian yearning, but deceive the sufferer into believing that they do. Meanwhile, the addict’s world constricts into a smaller and smaller circumference. Odd to consider that temperance as a reform movement was often grouped alongside abolitionism and suffragism, since we so often see it as fundamentally anti-freedom. And prohibitionist and neo-prohibitionist arguments have been social and moral disasters, maybe especially for the individual suffering with addiction. But the grouping of temperance (as distinct from Prohibition) with those radical political movements is not strange, for the personal rejection of intoxication has a certain radicalism to it as well, a turning away from an exploitive thing-of-this-world. That is before we consider how addiction has been used to target marginalized communities, how it can be a function of poverty and class, and how the criminal justice system and the media treat different sufferers in different ways. As Finan writes, the struggle to get sober, and the ways in which alcoholics have been able to help other alcoholics get and stay that way, deserves to be understood as one of the “great liberation movements” of American history.The Myth of the Bar Stool RevolutionaryWhen I sat on a bar stool feeling the electric thrum, or when I passed out on my apartment floor, or on a city street, I may have imagined that there was something subversive about my antisocial behavior, but in sobriety I’ve developed a more jaundiced view of how my own particular predispositions were exploited in a way that was anything but counter-cultural. I had my radical political poses, my underlined copies of bohemian poets and political theorists, and I could talk a big game about being “anti-capitalist,” but I had no compunction about shoveling out thousands of dollars over the years to pad the bank accounts of liquor and beer companies, apparently seeing no irony in paying for the very poison that was killing me. Once I recall formulating a bar-stool argument that the local tavern was one of the last democratic institutions in the United States, and I think there is still some merit to that, but I’ve found far-more radical potential in how groups like the Longhouse Religion, the Washingtonians, and AA are organized.Not much is actually anarchistic about active addiction other than the chaos that characterizes your life, but the non-hierarchical, egalitarian, horizontal organization of 12-step fellowships makes them one of the few successful, genuinely counter-cultural movements in American life. Author Michael Tolkin describes AA as having a “cunning structure; no due, no tithes, no president, protected from permanent officer and the development of cults by a rotating leadership for each separate group, no other requirement for membership than the declaration of fellowship in a shared condition.” What they offer is something in genuine opposition to the gods of this world, the market system that will profit off suffering while promising you paradise, what Tolkin describes as “spiritual slavery to the internal compulsion engine.”To turn down a drink, that which is pushed through advertisement and neighbor alike, that edifying, enjoyable, relaxing nectar, is to reject the status quo in a way which courts its own type of infamy. The only drug you’ll kick where you’re viewed afterwards as being a bit suspicious. “Can’t you have just one?” As with Handsome Lake’s realization that liquor wasn’t just physically killing him, but holding him in a sort of bondage, so recovery has radical implications that go far beyond health and self-care.Recovery as a Liberation MovementThe fundamental brilliance of such fellowships is the sharing of a common affliction and the communal support of those who’ve been where you have. This is the same brilliance of all great faiths. Where the endless addictions of capitalism build you up only to tear you down (for profit of course), the process of recovery is one where you must first be torn down to be built up. Religion at its best is a process of ego diminishment, an understanding that you are one of many, and that ultimately you are something infinitely more precious than a mere consumer — you are a human. When Finan talks about recovery as a liberation movement, he means the way in which there isn’t just a physical freedom promised in sobriety, but a mental, emotional, and spiritual one as well. No longer chained to the endless cycle of believing that one more drink will promise something immaculate in “just fifteen more minutes” which never comes.Apart from the political, I think that the most radical potential of recovery is something a bit more personal, something that is an issue of transcendence itself. It's all well and good to claim that addiction is a good metaphor for those things which oppress us in life, but addiction is also literally addiction. Followers of mystical paths have always advocated behaviors which others specifically can’t, won’t, or don’t do, from celibacy to fasting. Sobriety is in its own way such a radical, unexpected, unconventional behavior, as author Peter Bebergal has written: “Sobriety is its own kind of altered state of consciousness.” In Too Much to Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood, Bebergal writes about how in early recovery “A cup of coffee in the basement of a church… tastes like the nectar of the gods. A roast beef sandwich is like… something from Eden,” and the most profoundly true of observations: “Sleeping for the first time sober and waking up clean is a mystery of boundless grace.”“Mystery” and “grace” are religious terms, and indeed 12-step recovery often gets libeled as a type of religious mysticism. I would only take offense to that were I against religious mysticisms. But Bebergal is right, the first time you go to bed sober and wake up clean does feel like a mystery, because it’s so antithetical to who you have been, and it does feel like grace because for once you have a sort of freedom you’ve never known before. It’s a staking out of agency, of personal sovereignty, and it’s a declaration of independence. “Freedom” is simply another word for grace, and there is never anything more powerful, radical, or subversive than freedom. Bebergal writes that “Removing the pall of daily addiction is like flash powder going off in your face,” as it was for Bill W., as it was for Handsome Lake, as it was for me, and as it possibly can be for you.In addiction there is that pursuit of freedom, the lie that one more drink will get you closer to the comfort and safety of a home you’ve never known. The radicalism of sobriety is that it actually gets you there.

[the-gsos]

Wizard and Glass Blether

So I’ve been reading Stephen King’s Dark Tower series since the end of last year, when I decided I needed something to fill the epic fantasy series void while GRR Martin continues to do his ‘asthmatic ant with heavy shopping job’ on the Game of Thrones books.

I’m enjoying the books and the fourth volume, Wizard and Glass, which I’ve finished just recently, is probably my favourite so far, but I’ve got a few more specific thoughts on it that I’d like to share with the two or three of you that have clicked on this link, saw that the article isn’t about Italian football (or Scottish bars + pubs) and somehow, inexplicably decided to keep reading. Warning - it’s going to be pretty spoiler-ific throughout, I don’t really see any way to avoid that, so if you plan to read the books or you ARE reading them and just haven’t got to number four yet, you should probably give this a miss. Oh, and there’s the small matter of the film adaptation that’s released in just over a month’s time, which is apparently going to be followed by a TV series that specifically depicts the events of Wizard and Glass (which will sound like a weird idea to the uninitiated, but W&G is a prequel, y’see), so anyone planning on watching those without ever having read the books should also probably stop reading this.

Huzzah, now that I’ve thinned my readership down to about minus three, let’s begin!

My overall impression was that Wizard and Glass is that rare type of book that’s very good but could have been great if only it hadn’t taken the wrong turn at a few key plot junctions.

(Here, have you noticed that I’m adopting more of a conversational, almost vlogger-ish tone with this article? What was that “so” all about in the first line? Eurgh.)

In the intro that’s printed at the start of each Dark Tower book King talks about his inspiration for the series, how he realised at the age of 19 that he wanted to fuse The Lord of the Rings with the Spaghetti Western, to write “a novel that contained Tolkien’s sense of quest and magic but set against Leone’s almost absurdly majestic Western backdrop”. Now obviously I haven’t read volumes five, six, seven and eight yet, but of the first four books it seems to me that Wizard and Glass is the closest he comes to achieving that vision, albeit it does in many ways pick up the stylistic thread of the first volume, The Gunslinger. The Dark Tower books are a bit of a bewildering mixture of genres and influences, but whereas volumes two and three transport the reader (and characters) back and forth between New York in the sixties, seventies and eighties and dystopian, post-apocalyptic landscapes, one and four are basically Westerns with fantastical elements laced through them.

It’s no secret that King is willing and able to bash out some pretty hefty tomes, with The Stand, It and Under the Dome all clocking in at over 1,000 pages, and going by my extremely amateurish internet research Wizard and Glass is the joint fifth longest novel he’s ever penned (although different editions seem to have different numbers of pages; mine has 840, others have 787). That’s pretty remarkable when you stop and think about it, especially given that A) every other Dark Tower novel up until then had been 500 pages or less, and B) it’s essentially one big flashback, a story told round a campfire by protagonist Roland Deschain to quest companions Jake, Eddie and Susannah. The main plot, the one centred on the four characters I’ve just mentioned, only progresses about two inches forward in this enormous book.

The question is, does it need to be quite so long, and the answer is a pretty resounding no. Again, I must stress that I enjoyed it, the last time I read a book that long it took up six months of my life; this took roughly two, so ol’ Stevie’s obviously doing something right. However there are countless passages about the weather and nature in Mejis - where the tale is set - when one or two would have sufficed. Yes, they add a little atmosphere and help the reader envision Mejis, but they also give you the very strong suspicion that King is stalling for time.

“There followed a week of the sort of weather that makes folk apt to crawl back into bed after lunch…”

“The great storms of autumn were still a month or more distant…”

“Some called the Huntress the last moon of summer, some called it the first of fall…”

SO many chapters begin like this, and it’s particularly frustrating given that King has already assembled a great cast of characters by that point and established tension - of both the sexual and violent kind - between them. It’s almost like he’s written a brilliant script for a play and got all the actors he wanted, but is making them wait in the wings while he obsessively tinkers with the stage design and lighting.

Another bugbear is the teenage love story between Roland and Susan Delgado. King admits in his afterword that he procrastinated with the writing of Wizard and Glass because was “scared to death” of writing that story, and well, you can sort of see why. There isn’t a sock in the world strong enough to withstand the force that your toes curl upward with when reading these scenes, which soar beyond even Attack of the Clones’ Padme and Anakin love scenes on the cringe-ometer.

For example: “He uttered a small moaning sigh directly into her mouth. And as he drew her closer and began to trail kisses down her neck, she felt the stone hardness of him below the buckle of his belt, a slim, warm length which exactly matched the melting she felt in the same place. Those two places were meant for each other, as she was…”

Yeah, you get the picture.

That said, teenage love by its very nature is cloying and sickly sweet, King freely admits this sort of stuff isn’t his bag and there’s no way around it if we’re to fully understand why Roland is still so fixated on Susan so many years later. His relationship with her and the agonising manner in which it ends is the central, formative event of his entire life.

More than anything else though, the main thing stopping Wizard and Glass from ascending into the echelon of fantasy classics is the way the antagonists are dealt with. The Big Coffin Hunters are an undoubtedly brilliant creation. Reynolds and Depape may be slightly thinly sketched, but the physical touches - Reynolds’ long cloak, Depape’s gold-rimmed glasses - are enough to make them memorable, and the ringleader Eldred Jonas is a magnificent villain. Cunning, cold and mean, he’s a character that never loses his aura, even when he strides naked onto a balcony at one point. The scene is set for an almighty showdown between Jonas and Roland, but we don’t get one. Instead both Jonas and Depape are shot down easily and matter-of-factly by Roland out in the desert, and Reynolds escapes, but not to be put to any particular use in the remainder of the story. Part of the thinking behind this is presumably the need to demonstrate just how much of a badass Roland was even at the age of 14, and that’s fair enough. No-one’s expecting or wanting him to die; indeed, given the nature of prequels, we know that he can’t. But surely after establishing all that tension for all of those pages, and crafting such a formidable foe in the shape of Jonas, the reader deserves something a bit more prolonged, a bit less one-sided?

There’s also a hint of a bait and switch to it, as Rhea, the demented but ultimately deadly witch character, comes to the fore and plays a leading role in Susan’s demise. That particularly scene is incredibly well done, and while I don’t want to say that I ‘enjoyed’ reading about an innocent teenage girl being burned at the stake, it certainly lives with you.

One more thing: why do both Cuthbert and Alain survive after Roland has hinted at their demises in his interior monologues in the first three books? Does that mean future volumes will include yet more flashbacks? And would that be an admission that King is struggling to pad out the main plot? In fact, don’t tell me the answer to any of those questions.

Anyway, for all its flaws - which I hopefully  haven’t been too rant-ey about - Wizard and Glass is still a helluva page turner and hasn’t changed my mind about wanting to read the remaining books in the saga. I just wish King had made one or two better decisions when it came to the business end of things. Sort of makes you long for those Choose Your Own Adventure books of your childhood…

[sultanoftheuniverse-blog]

The Perfect Mistake

Humans are like ants, I decided today. Hard working but greedy, strong but easy to step on, and all the same. They are just so, so, so…. boring. When I first created them I thought, why not give each and every one of them a unique splash of colour to be theirs and theirs only. I invented to make every one of them different and… I did for a while. Blowed gifts into their souls. I gave some of them outstanding intelligence, maybe a mind that can see through the borders that I’ve created for me, and sometimes even the voice of my angels. And they used my gifts, but not for the purpose of defeating the alikeness, but for painting all people’s souls black, like the ungrateful bugs they are. Then I realised my gifts were useless. But the creative spark in me wasn’t extinguished yet. I continued experimenting and even releasing some of my specimens on Earth. But there was one specimen that was, to say at leat, outstanding.

Specimen #479

I crafted her into the ‘perfect female’ in humans’ view. To me none of them were perfect. They were flawed, so flawed that they created a façade to achieve ‘the perfect’ I named her Aadarsha, meaning ‘the perfect female’. I stripped. Her of everything that humans valued, as something that pests called humans wouldn’t have a place in my creation. I stripped her of every emotion, every merciful though and every human need. I gave her gifts: voice of my angels, wisdom of an owl, I made her as cunning as a magnificent snake, I made her… perfect. But most importantly, I blew a piece of my soul into her. She was mine and mine only. With not a human trait in her, I placed her on Earth. I had a whispering thought in my head. A voice that whispered, “Maybe she can turn humanity into what you intended them to be.” And for once, I had, as humans called it, hope.

Aadarsha… my perfect being. I loved her. That’s what I told myself wen she poisoned her first human. She was doing the right thing indeed. After all she was my creation. I said that day after day. I told myself that little boy deserved to die in blood. He was filthy, I convinced myself. That they were going to die anyway. But then, I started to see something in my perfect little specimen’s eye. A glint that wasn’t there before. And I understood. I’ve forgotten to strip her from maybe the most important thing, the ability to change. And she was changing into something different. Something almost humanlike. But I was angry. Maybe to her, maybe to humans but most of all to myself. I talked to her. Told her how humans were filthy. She argued. She said she was human too. No, that wasn’t true. She was mine. My being. I forced her to ignore her new found humanlike traits, and to bury them deep within her soul.

And as I looked to her lifeless body hanging from a rope, unable to cope with the contradiction within her I realised it was not the making who was filthy. It was me.

#short story #writing #writers on tumblr #writers #deep thoughts

[kellyjshi-blog]

Enter Queen and Polonius.

Polo. He will come straight:

Look you lay home to him,

Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,

And that your Grace hath screen’d, and stood between

Much heat and him. I’le silence me e’ne here:

Pray you be round with him.

Ham, within. Mother, mother, mother.

Queen. I’le warrant you, fear me not.

Withdraw, I hear him coming.

Enter Hamlet.

Ham. Now, Mother, what’s the matter?

Que. Hamlet, thou hast thy Father much offended.

Ham. Mother, you have my Father much offended.

Que. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

Ham. Come, go, you question with an idle tongue.

Que. Why how now, Hamlet?

Ham. What’s the matter now?

Que. Have you forgot me?

Ham. No, by the Rood, not so:

You are the Queen, your Husbands Brothers Wife,

But would you were not so. You are my Mother.

Que. Nay, then I’ll set those to you that can speak.

Ham. Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge:

You go not till I set up a Glass.

Where you may see the inmost part of you?

Que. What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murther me?

Help, Help, ho.

Pol. What ho, help, help, help.

Ham. How now, a Rat? dead for a Ducate, dead.

Pol. Oh I am slain. [Kills Polonius.

Que. Oh me, what hast thou done?

Ham. Nay I know not, is it the King?

Que. Oh what a rash and bloody deed is this?

Ham. A bloody deed, almost as bad, good Mother,

As kill a King, and marry with his Brother.

Que. As kill’d a King?

Ham. I , Lady, ‘twas my word.

Thou wretched, rash, intruding Fool, farewel,

I took thee for thy Betters, take thy fortune,

Thou find’st to be too busie, is some danger.

Leave wringing of your hands, peace, sit you down,

And let me wring your heart, for so I shall

If it be made of penetrable stuff;

If damned Custom have not braz’d it so,

That it is proof and bulwark against Sense.

Qu. What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue,

In noise so rude against me?

Ham. Such an Act

That blurs the grace and blush of Modesty,

Calls Virtue Hypocrite, takes off the Rose

From the fair Fore-head of an innocent love,

And makes a blister there. Makes marriage vows

As false as Dicers Oaths. O such a Deed,

As from the body of contraction plucks

The very Soul, and sweet Religion makes

A rhapsody of words. Heavens face doth glow,

Yea this solidity and compound mass,

With tristful visage as against the doom,

Is thought-sick at the act.

Que. Aye me, what act, that roars so loud, and thunders in the Index.

Ham. Look here upon this Picture, and on this,

The counterfeit presentment of two Brothers:

See what a grace seated on his Brow,

Hyperions Curls, the front of Jove himself,

An Eye like Mars, to threaten or command

A Station like the Herald Mercury,

Now lighted on a Heaven kissing Hill:

A Combination, and a form indeed,

Where every god did seem to set his Seal,

To give the World assurance of a man.

This was your Husband. Look you now what follows.

Here is your Husband, like a Mildew’d Deer

Blasting his wholsome breath. Have you Eyes?

Could you on this fair Mountain leave to feed,

And batten on this Moore? Ha? have you Eyes?

You cannot call it Love: For at your Age,

They hey day in the blood is tame, it’s humble,

And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment

Would step from this to this? What devil was’t

That thus hath cozen’d you at Hoodman-blind?

O Shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious Hell,

If thou canst mutine in a Matrons bones,

To flaming youth, let Virtue be as Wax.

And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame,

When the compulsive Ardure gives the charge,

Since Frost it self, as actively doth burn,

As Reason panders Will.

Que. O Hamlet, speak no more.

Thou turnst mine Eyes into my very Soul,

And there I see such black and grained spots,

As will not leave their Tinct.

Ham. Nay, but to live

In the rank sweat of an enseamed Bed,

Stew'd in Corruption; honying and making love

Over the nasty Sty.

Que. Oh speak to me, no more,

These words like Daggers enter in mine Ears.

No more, sweet Hamlet.

Ham. A Murderer ,and a Villain:

A Slave, that is not twentieth part, the tythe

Of your precedent lord. A vice of Kings,

A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,

That from a shelf, the precious Diadem stole,

And put it in his pocket.

Que. No more.

Enter Ghost.

Ham. A King of shreds and patches.

Save me: and hover o’re me with your Wings

You Heavenly Guards. What would you gracious figure?

Que. Alas he’s mad.

Ham. Do you not come your tardy Son to chide,

That laps’d in Time and Passion, let’s go by

Th’ important acting of your dread command? Oh say.

Ghost. Do not forget: this Visitation

Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

But look Amazement on thy Mother sits;

O step between her, and her fighting Soul,

Conceit in weakest bodies, strongest works.

Speak to her, Hamlet.

Ham. How is it with you, Lady?

Que. Alas, how is’t with you?

That thus you bend your Eye on vacancy,

And with the Corporal air do hold discourse.

Forth at your Eyes, your spirits wildly peep,

And as the sleeping Souldiers in th’Alarm,

Your bedded hair, like life in Excrements,

Start up, and stand an end. O gentle Son,

Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper

Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?

Ham. On him, on him, look you how pale he glares,

His form and cause conjoin’d, preaching to stones,

Would make them capable. Do not look upon me,

Left with this pitious action you convert

My stern effects: then what have I to do,

Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood.

Que. To whom do you speak this?

Ham. Do you see nothing there?

Que. Nothing at all, yet all that is I see.

Ham. Nor did you nothing hear?

Que. No, nothing but our selves.

Ham. Why look you there: look how it steals away;

My Father in his habit, as he lived.

Look where he goes even now out at the Portal. [Exit.

Que. This is the very Coinage of your brain,

This bodiless Creation ecstasie is very cunning in.

Ham. Ecstasie?

My Pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,

And makes as healthful Musick. It is not madness

That I have uttered; bring me to the Test

And I the matter will re-word: which madness

Would gamboll from. Mother, for love of Grace,

Lay not a flattering Unction to your Soul,

That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:

It will but skin and film the Ulcerous place,

Whilst rank Corruption running all within,

Infects unseen. Confess your self to Heaven,

Repent whats past, avoid what is to come,

And do not spread the Compost or the Weeds,

To make them rank. Forgive me this my Virtue,

For in the fatness of these pursy times,

Virtue it self, of Vice must pardon beg,

Yea curb, and wooe, for leave to do him good.

Que. Oh, Hamlet,

Thou hast cleft my heart in twain.

Ham. O throw away the worser part of it,

And live the purer with the other half.

Good night, but go not to mine Unkle’s Bed,

Assume a Virtue, if you have it not, refrain to night,

And that shall lend a kind of easiness

To the next abstinence. Once more good night,

And when you are desirous to be blest,

I’ll blessing beg of you. For this same Lord,

I do repent: but Heaven hath pleas’d it so.

To punish me with this, and this with me,

That I must be their Scourge and Minister.

I will bestow him, and will answer well

The death I gave him: so again, good night.

I must be cruel, only to be kind;

Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.

Que. What shall I do?

Ham. Not this by no means that I bid you do:

Let the blunt King tempt you again to Bed,

Pinch Wanton on your cheeck, call you his Mouse,

And let him for a pair of reechy kisses,

Or padling in your neck with his damn’d fingers,

Make you to ravel all this matter out,

That I essentially am not in madness,

But mad in craft. ‘Twere good you let him know,

For who thats but a Queen, fair, sober, wise,

Would from a Paddock, from a Bat, a Gibbe,

Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?

No, in despight of Sense and Secrecy,

Unpeg the Basket on the Houses top:

Let the Birds fly, and like the famous Ape,

To try Conclusions, in the Basket creep,

And break your own neck down.

Que. Be thou assur’d if words be made of breath,

And breath of life: I have no life to breath

What thou hast said to me.

Ham. I must to England, you know that?

Que. Alack, I had forgot: ‘Tis so concluded on.

Ham. This man shall set me packing:

I’ll lug the Guts into the Neighbour room;

Mother, good night. Indeed this Counsellor

Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,

Who was in life a Foolish prating Knave.

Come, Sir, to draw toward an end with you.

Good night, Mother.

[Exit Hamlet tugging in Polonius

#kjs