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belafujoshisdead · 1 year

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Opaline Dream Fragments

In the time of living gods, when blood poured like wine over the earth and stars fell as petals from the heavens – When corpses rose in unburnt pyramids as dread miracles swept the world plaguelike...

So dawns the history of the world called Tei Ura, where the air seethes with spirits; where the Seven Courts rule from their pillars; and where executions are at once sacred rite and a cornerstone of the entertainment industry. At the center of this world lies the Opaline City, home to the seven spears who dispense mortal justice and the only place on Tei Ura where the executioner's red art is performed.

First among the seven spears of the Opaline City is Virenina II Tauhrelil. World-famous, idolized by millions, descended from two ruling bloodlines, Virenina burns bright even in the Opaline City's garden of stars – the better to blind people to the blood-drenched secret that she shares with her paired spirit, Ai Naa, which even now eats away at her very humanity and leaves something shining and terrible in its place. Virenina has kept that secret for nearly twenty years...but between a mother who scents weaknesses like blood on the water, a father in search of empty revenge, and adoring fans who would do anything to get close, it may not remain secret much longer.

If the story described above interests you, good news – you can read what exists so far on this blog for free! I try to update as often as I can, which is usually about every 1-2 months. List of existing updates under the cut!

Because tumblr tends to hide posts containing links from search results, I won’t be linking these directly. Functional website etc HOWEVER – each story update is tagged with its title, and I’ll be adding titles of new updates to the tags of this post as I umm post! them. Click any title in the tags of this post to find the corresponding story update. Here is your menu:

SEQUENCE 0

Acceptance – How Virenina’s parents came to be married.

SEQUENCE 1

But How Is He Going to Die? – Orialu learns of her father's impending execution, and struggles to process it. Her solution: get into a spear fight.

Aitsulilla and Orineimu – Orialu visits the baths and receives an important reminder – one that leaves her doubting her own fitness to inherit the Throne Refulgent.

Snakesick (newest!) – Orialu and Orineimu have a slumber party.

SEQUENCE 2

Concerning Tauhrelil’s Finery – Asaau’s attempt at convincing Virenina to wear a nicer dress spirals wildly out of control.

The Edge of the World Is a Cold Blue Ring – In which Virenina and Asaau visit the Ring, view the Shattered Lands, and ruin a scientist’s day.

(Please Don’t) Fly Me to the Moon – Asaau takes a short breather before suffering the indignities of spirit-powered air travel.

Revelation – Virenina’s secret, unveiled.

Red Echoes – Virenina tries to give Asaau a breather. Asaau learns more of Ai Naa’s nature, and considers a betrayal.

Regarding Tauhrelil’s Bond – Asaau learns the depths of wrongness between Virenina and Ai Naa, and questions if he can stand to know it.

And lastly – if you read and enjoyed any of these, please consider reblogging, commenting, or just sharing with someone else you think would like it! That said, just taking the time to look means the world to me. If you’ve read this far, thank you! 💖

#writing #science fantasy #fantasy #original fiction #ocs #fantasy writing #tei ura #acceptance #but how is he going to die?#aitsulilla and orineimu #snakesick #concerning tauhrelil's finery #the edge of the world is a cold blue ring #(please don't) fly me to the moon #revelation #red echoes #regarding tauhrelil's bond

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excalisi · 13 days

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it's a fun hc of mine that during dick's robin days, he went through the "omg i wish i had a cool secret language so i can have secret conversations with my friends" phase all kids go through. but one of his closest friends at the time also happened to be the batman, a guy with possibly the most bizarrely diverse arsenal of skills in the world. bruce sees the merit in the entire idea of a coded language to communicate rudimentary information when they can hear but not see each other. so why not make a code built on bird vocalizations? it's pretty much incomprehensible to anyone without a trained ear or comprehensive knowledge of birding and impossible to even passably mimic without proper training, so while the chances of interception are high, the chances of someone understanding it enough to interrupt during the middle of a bird-convo and feed false information are not.

it also, batman and robin come to realize, feed into the "holy fuck our vigilantes are cryptids" idea. bird sounds that come from seemingly no determinable location (ventriloquism) come to mean batman and robin are nearby. to the goons of gotham, bird song becomes inextricably connected to getting your ass kicked by the dynamic duo. the real reason why criminals don't operate during the day is because they get skittish and jumpy about if the sounds of birds chirping are real birds or some masked vigilantes lying in wait to rock your shit, and it's just easier to commit crimes during the night when all the birds are asleep so you know for sure.

ornithologists have boards on their bedrooms dedicated to the bird-bats of gotham. they've written dissertations.

the bird language becomes a bit of a batfamily bonding connection. teaching each other how to do different clicks and whistles, making up slang so bruce and barbara can't complain of clogging up comms with non-mission relevant talk, searching up birds to associate them with different people, psychologically terrorizing the criminal populace of gotham by chirping at them...

how the bird code works is that there's a bird assigned to each one of gotham's major heavy hitter criminals and vigilantes, and a few assigned to heroes out of the city (by which i mean the ones the bats associate with often enough to have a sign to address by). the only birds i've got so far are the robin (for robin. self-explanatory) and the glistening-green tanager (for the joker). i only have one for the joker bc i wanted to reference this hc in one of my fics and so searched up green birds to find the most eye-searingly annoying-to-look-at green bird i could find, and the glistening-green tanager was the closest one to fit the bill.

#dc #dc comics #batman #bruce wayne #dick grayson #dc robin #robin #batfam #batfamily #you're a goon in gotham wondering in terror where the hell those menaces are so that their chirping echoes from everywhere at once #and red robin is just snidely insulting your haircut while red hood laughs at you

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llovelymoonn · 7 months

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my favourite faye wei wei paintings

little blue bird from the pillow flew (2020) \\ first i must clean the keys of the piano with milk (2022) \\ the black bells of a distant new mexico (2023) \\ an echo trapped forever (2023) \\ sweet velvet flower there is no time/ I ask to go back I wish you were mine (2021) \\ two butterfly lovers (2021) \\ untitled (2022) \\ nectar for honey (2021) \\ red i (2022) \\ fountain lies the sun (2017)

support this blog

#art #faye wei wei #little blue bird from the pillow flew #first i must clean the keys of the piano with milk #the black bells of a distant new mexico #an echo trapped forever #two butterfly lovers #sweet velvet flower there is no time/ I ask to go back I wish you were mine #untitled #red i #nectar for honey #fountain lies the sun

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buckypascal · 4 months

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Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock in Echo - 1.01 Chafa

#marveledit #charlie cox #matt murdock #daredevil #maya lopez #alaqua cox #echo spoilers #marvel #mcuchallenge #daredeviledit #echoedit #red m&m #handsome devil #echo

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lyss-butterscotch · 8 months

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T-03-46 : Silent Night

Welcome to Karma Corporation. We're going down another crossover rabbit hole :)

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nchlsdmn · 2 months

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Concept Art of Star Wars: The Bad Batch's first three episodes

#star wars the bad batch #star wars #the bad batch #clone wars #the clone wars #star wars the clone wars #crosshair #hunter #wrecker #echo #omega #tech #palpatine #red guards #scorch

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arthursfuckinghat · 1 month

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Nothing is quite like enjoying the early days of chapter three, then hearing Arthur's first cough to snap you right back to the reality of his fate

#my heart dropped #that first actual cough #not prompted by dust or any other usual thing #it echoes in my brain #and its in a cutscene with dutch #oh man #this game #rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #mick squeaks #arthur morgan #red dead redemption 2 spoilers

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vibrantvetty · 3 months

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no really, what are they looking at??

#myart #fanart #echo #echo vn #echo project #chunter #chase hunter #fvn #furry #furry art #illustration #mixedmedia #rectangular pupils my beloved #read echo if you haven't i promise the wolf in the middle is perfect husband material no underlying issues with that one whatsoever no sir #RED

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seriowan · 1 year

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!! tbb s2e8 spoiler alert !!

ECHO IS CONTINUING WHAT FIVES COULDN'T FINISH.

SOMEBODY SEDATE ME.

I CAN'T STOP CRYING.

#bad batch spoilers #the bad batch spoilers #bad batch s2 spoilers #i am not joking when i say that i SOBBED #my face is so red #and swollen #i can't stop crying #i miss him already #the bad batch #bad batch #the bad batch season 2 #echo

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talesfrommedinastation · 8 months

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My redneck neighbor Doug's interpretations on various 'Bad Batch' characters

So, it turns out my neighbor Doug, who lives next to me, is a MASSIVE Star Wars nerd. Hooray! Found this out earlier during a snow storm. He was thrilled when he found out my kids and I watch this show together, and had some...brilliant...insights on how he interprets the show. I'll be dropping some of the wildest descriptions here from time to time.

This was months ago, but damn it, it was so wild how this chubby Cajun Boomer described the show. I'm going to drop some of his best gems that he's texted me since January:

Crosshair: "So that there's Daddy Warcrimes. All you need to know is he lives on beer and Slim Jims, has more guns then Jesus got faith, and that he does your mom on the weekends, and then you thank him for his service."

Hunter: "Aw man, we got Rambo up in this place. Daddy Rambo. He looks like he's got some hot wife with a huge butt who makes amazing biscuits, but he only showers on the weekends for reasons he won't tell you."

Wrecker: "I know, I KNOW, he's got some cool Star Wars name, but in my head, he's Julio. He looks like a Julio, ya know? Every Julio's been the nicest guy with a truck and a million friends. I swear. I bet he's a contractor and lays pipe like you wouldn't believe." ::winks::

Tech: "Hm, yeah, I know him. That's Ryan-from-Accounting, somebody's hipster dad. You know, everyone knows a Ryan who works in accounting, he's quiet, only drinks IPAs, and has a bitch wife named Laura who drives a Kia and is always yelling at him. Poor man. I hope Julio saves him from his bitch wife Laura."*

Echo: "Eh, Toaster Strudel. Homeboy looks like his daddy had an affair with a convection oven on shore leave and forgot to pay child support."

Omega: "Little Orphan Blondie. I hope she gets real parents or something besides those freaky alien things running the mall on the ocean."**

Admiral Rampart: "I hate this smarmy jack-ass already. He looks like my asshole nephew who got some fancy degree but can't keep a job in corporate because he's such a little ass, he talks down to the janitors and always leaves at 2 pm 'to beat traffic'. He's MBA-Rob."

*=I can't emphasize the vitriol Doug had in his voice when describing 'bitch wife named Laura'. I am so deeply concerned for Ryan-from-Accounting, wherever he is.

**= 'The mall on the ocean' describing Tipoca City sent me. That is how I refer to it now.

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belafujoshisdead · 1 year

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Red Echoes

Virenina tries to give Asaau a breather. Asaau learns more of Ai Naa's nature, and considers a betrayal.

The whole thing was madness, yet Virenina's words made a certain sort of sense. Which was harder to accept: that she had some sort of freak anomaly for a paired spirit, or that the thing paired to her was no spirit at all? What else could it be?

God, some part of him whispered. But no. No. The time of living gods was long past. If a god had clawed its way from the grave, surely the world would have felt it.

"Seket?"

Asaau knew he should say something. He should at least look up at Virenina. He could not manage to so much as shift his eyes.

"I'm going to take the lenses off you. You don't need them anymore. Alright?"

He did want them off, Asaau realized, but he couldn't even nod to show he'd heard.

Virenina waited a few seconds, then went ahead and lifted the lenses from Asaau's face. She did it slowly, carefully, gripping the lenses between her thumb and forefinger while keeping the others curled away into fists. That struck him as odd. Why –

Oh.

He was still on the ground, at her feet, paralyzed like frozen prey. The fear must have been pouring from him in waves.

She was trying not to touch him.

"I'm going to sit down beside you," she informed him. "A few feet away. Sit up when you're…when you can."

When he could at last sit up and raise his head, Asaau found her looking at him.

For a while, they simply regarded one another across the distance between them, in a near-silence broken only by the faint hissing of distant sea and breeze-riffled leaves. At last Virenina opened her mouth to say something. Asaau braced himself to hear whatever it might be, but instead she looked at him silently a moment longer, then closed her mouth and dropped her gaze. That felt wrong enough to reach Asaau even through the fog of his own fear.

He noticed then, too, that there was no blade hovering behind her head. She'd left the spear behind. Relief welled up in him, and gratitude – and a stranger, half-painful feeling that lay beyond his ability to name.

She left the spear. It was considerate. It was as if she'd cut off her own arm and nailed it down before going to him. It fit, somehow, with the rest of what she'd done. Left the spear. Tried not to touch me. Warned me of her movements…

There was something tying her actions together, something that ran deeper than mere consideration. If he could only –

"Do I disgust you now?" Virenina asked him quietly, and all at once Asaau understood.

"No," he said, immediately, truthfully. "No."

It did not feel like enough, yet he could not think what else to say. His eyes kept finding the emptiness at Virenina's shoulder. She looked so strangely alone without the spear at her back.

"How…do you feel?" Virenina asked, then hesitated for the barest second before continuing: "Other than – afraid. I know what I – "

She is about to cut herself with her own tongue, I can sense it. Somehow, the idea was more than Asaau could stand.

"More than anything," he cut in, "I feel…I feel lost." More than anything was barely even a lie; by now the fear had gone from an all-consuming feeling to something that registered more like background radiation. "I've seen," he went on, "but I don't understand. How did you…?"

"Ai Naa," Virenina said. Her voice was half bitter curse, half lover's sigh. "My paired spirit. My other half. I didn't lie about that, at least. Everything else…" She ran one hand through her hair and gave a short dead laugh.

"That's – " Impossible, Asaau nearly said, and caught himself only just in time. Whose soul is it tethered to, Seket, yours or hers? " – Difficult," he said instead. "A difficult idea to – to take in. I believe you," he hastened to add, "but…"

"But you can't accept that a spirit could do that. Your mind rejects it, even after you saw it yourself."

Asaau could only nod.

"I know how it looks," Virenina said to him. "I do. But what else can it be?" She tapped off joint after joint on her fingers, counting. "He found me seven days into my seventh year. We made contact at a pale spire. He's bound to an anchor, the anchor is part of me. We share my life between us." She brought her hand down, clasped it around her other wrist. "If it's not a pairing, it looks enough like one to fool everyone I've met. To fool you. Fool me."

Her gaze fell to the ground again.

"The forms fit," she said. Almost pleaded. "Of what we are. It's just the scale that's wrong."

God, some part of him whispered. But no. No. The time of living gods was long past. If a god had clawed its way from the grave, surely the world would have felt it.

"You've always told others that Ai Naa is unawakened," Asaau began, "but if that was part of the lie…"

"Oh, he's awake." Virenina said, and grinned sickly. "Awakened. That's what you really want to know, isn't it." Her shoulders shook, as if with laughter, though she voiced none. "What woke him. What called to him in the dreamsea."

Again, Asaau could only nod.

The unseen world of spirits shadowed all of Tei Ura – layered upon it, saturating it to the core, the animating soul to Tei Ura's anchoring body. Each world bled into the other, colored it, shaped it, fed it. One such bleeding was the dreamsea: a shadow dreamed upon the unseen world by humanity, pooled together from the uncountable liquid fragments of their thoughts and fears, their dreams and desires. An awakened spirit was one that had fixated on a handful of fragments from the dreamsea and then accreted a sense of self around them, layer by pearllike layer. To know those fragments was to know – or at least glimpse – an awakened spirit's nature.

"Red hunger," Virenina said at last.

Horror froze Asaau's heart in his chest. No, he wanted to say. A fragment that old, shared across myriad minds, fed for so many thousands of years by humanity's bloodiest dreams… No, that can't be, mustn't, it runs too deep. He wanted, needed, to deny it, but his breath had stilled in his lungs.

And Virenina was still talking.

"Sacrifice upon the Court," she was saying. "Throats torn open under fangs. Flesh devoured on the pyre. As long as it tastes of blood." Another laugh fell like a dead thing from her lips. "But it's funny. He never knew that taste until me. Until he had my tongue to learn from. It's kind of an honor, really." She was trying to grin again. "If you think about it. Thousands of years dreaming in red, but I gave him his first taste, I…he…"

One hand rose slowly to her face. Pressed itself over the black patch that covered what had once been her left eye.

Asaau wanted to say – to do – something – but seeing Virenina like this left him feeling as unsteady as the sea that hissed and swelled below them. Should he offer sympathy? He could try – but Virenina might well taste it as pity and spit it back in his face. Comfort her? But being comforted had always made Virenina squirm and snap, even as a child. Why should that change now? Perhaps he should simply ask her to keep going – but the way she kept trailing off made him hesitate. What if even the slightest push was too much?

Yet as worried as Asaau was about saying the wrong thing, the fixed and distant look in Virenina's lone eye worried him even more. And her face…her face had gone terribly still in a way that made Asaau think of Vene. Vene, consumed by his own red work, too entranced to eat or sleep. Vene, wandering forth from the Tauhrelil family crypt, drained half to death by a days-long neural dive into his ancestors' secrets. Vene, who had tried to stop for Asaau, tried to keep himself tethered…and in return, Asaau had failed him, let him slip away, and Vene had disappeared from Asaau's world entirely.

Not his daughter, too. Asaau looked at Virenina sitting in hollow silence and felt something like a rusted fishhook catching between his ribs. Why else had Au Melai drawn this thread between them, if not for a chance at restitution?

The gods may rise from their graves if you think it over much longer, just say something – !

"Virenina?"

He hadn't meant to use her given name unasked, but he could beg forgiveness for that impropriety later. At least now she was looking at him. Asaau scrambled in his head for something to say next – anything, anything, just get it out before she drifts away again – and came up, finally, against the reason that had brought them here to begin with.

"You would have taken this secret to your pyre if you could," Asaau said. "Am I wrong?"

Virenina shook her head slowly, shallowly.

"Perhaps there's another world where you've managed to do just that," he went on. "But in ours, they're still rebuilding the trial chamber – " At that, Virenina's lone eye filled with silent hurt. "For which I do not blame you," Asaau said quickly. "Not remotely. You did what the chamber was designed to make you do, nothing more – in fact, now that I've seen what you're…what you're capable of…I'm amazed that nothing worse happened."

They'd placed someone paired with a spirit grown on red hunger in the trial chamber. Now that he knew… Oh my dear dead gods, it could have been so much worse. The column of killing light flashed again in his mind. She could have…we could all have been…

"I could've killed everyone," Virenina said in a low, choked voice. "I shouldn't…I should never have…"

Part of Asaau agreed with her, but to say so now would have been too cruel. And the selection cycle – the final act is so close at hand. To abandon your candidate this late in the campaign would be suicide. What else can you do now but help her see it through?

Well – he could betray her. Tell someone else the truth of what Virenina was paired with, of what she could do. A doctor, a channeler, a scientist, a seer – someone who could help…yet even as the notion surfaced, Asaau was already discarding it. Finding someone who'd believe him would be a trial all its own, and that someone might tell another in turn; if word got out, even a twice-royal pedigree might not be enough to save Virenina from being made a research subject. Whatever she was, whatever she was paired with, it was beyond a rarity. Should they learn of it, even some of her own Tauhrelil relations might find scientific curiosity outweighing blood affinity; if not them, then someone, somewhere, was bound to be mad or greedy or foolish enough to try.

Then Virenina would of course attempt to escape. Asaau could see no way for that to end but in slaughter. Another laboratory piled with corpses, painted in red, and again it would be his fault –

No. The only way he could bear to go was forward.

"You've told me before," he said at last, "that you were made to be a Spear. That you can't see a life as anything else. Is that still true?"

"Yeah." Though Virenina's voice shook slightly, she answered almost at once.

"And I am your instructor," Asaau said. "Your sponsor in this campaign, here to help you succeed. Yes? So don't…" His hands twisted themselves together in his lap. Words usually came to him as easily as silk to a spider, but right now all the threads felt so hopelessly snarled. "That is – you're already forcing yourself by telling me anything at all – I don't wish to make this harder for you than it is already…"

He almost wished Virenina would interrupt him, but she only watched and waited. Asaau pulled his hands apart and refolded them on his lap, straightened his spine, breathed inward.

"You told me about – about your partner – for the sake of your career," he started again. "Whatever you still need to tell me…perhaps doing so would be easier if you thought of in that way. If I were to ask you, How does this affect your campaign…?"

A shift in Virenina's lone eye told him she'd gone from merely watching to thinking. Now it was Asaau's turn to wait and listen.

"That's…easier," she admitted. "Yeah. I can answer that. But first I – "

And then her face and body fell into sudden stillness as a strange movement seized her flesh – a kind of flinching underskin ripple that passed down the length of her, gone almost as soon as it began. Asaau wondered how violently Virenina would have let herself shudder if he hadn't been watching.

"Need to go back," she said, with a ragged edge to her voice that hadn't been there a moment ago. She paused a moment, swallowed sharply; when she spoke again, it was gone. "The spear."

Asaau's heart lurched; he'd been so focused on Virenina that he'd all but forgotten about her partner's anchor.

"I can't leave it any longer. I'm sorry."

"Don't be, it's part of you," Asaau said automatically, and started to get up.

"You don't have to come with me," said Virenina. "You'd see the aftermath of that – " She pointed skyward – "if you did. I can get it alone. You saw enough already, I don't want to make you…I can get it alone," she said again. "Or call it back to me from here."

He could wait alone in the dark for a second time. He could sit in place as a hungry blade came flying at him through the night.

Or he could go with Virenina, and see.

#writing #fiction #original fiction #fantasy #science fantasy #ocs #tei ura #virenina ii tauhrelil #asaau iv seket #ai naa #red echoes #my writing

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