Tumgik
#sorry got way too excited there
pippintookish · 7 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Dog who is so so sweet and loves you but pees on the rug and eats the couch and then gives you sorry cuddles. (x) Other examples:
Tumblr media Tumblr media
297 notes · View notes
kiiingsnake · 7 months
Note
may I ask about your thinking process when drawing mecha?? you're amazing at it and that's fascinating
oh yes you absolutely may ask I would love to talk about it
the main thing I consider is detail. it's all detail, really. how and where to put it, and how to not drive myself crazy drawing it, because i like my machines detailed as fuck sometimes.
I first decide on how complex i want my robot to be. the term i'd use for it is greebling- it doesn't have to make too much sense, but it needs to look visually interesting, and its easier to do if I know what I'm aiming for. I find that the key to mechas and robots is a good balance of very detailed, unified, cluttered components and bigger, less intricate plating. take the beetle mecha, for example.
Tumblr media
I wanted this one to be pretty damn complex. very greebled. the areas of black wiring provide dense patches of unified detail, while its carapace is less intricate but utilizes sparse details, layering, and differences in color to keep up the visual interest. its got dimension. its got things to focus on. its got shit going on all over the place but in different ways so that some things stand out more than others. there's also enough variation in these sorts of designs to keep me interested in the drawing process for a long while instead of getting bored or exhausted, which is why I love drawing mechs so much.
There are also these two iterators i drew a while back, which are less complex, but are good examples of how i like to detail plating/shells.
Tumblr media
I really, really enjoy considering how the different pieces will fit together, and how to make sure one singular component doesn't look too flat or too greebled for what I'm going for. my favorite techniques for this are Give That Fucker Some Tubes and Add Some Geometric Lines To That Bad Boy.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
(my warhammer characters are pretty good examples of variations in my greebling techniques.)
in conclusion: oogh.
219 notes · View notes
Text
When they try to make school harder for LGBTQ+ youth...we make it better.
Over the past 2 years, students across the U.S. have used our 50 States 50 Grants funds to...
Build gender-affirming closets and gender-neutral bathrooms at school
Host their school's first Pride fest or Pride conference
Educate parents and teachers
Fund their GSA club
And so many other rad projects to support their queer students!
Apps are open for Season 3 now through April 1, 2024 - if you have an idea for how you'd use up to $10,000 at your own school (or if you know someone in middle or high school who could), reblog and spread the word!
2K notes · View notes
millennium-queen · 8 months
Note
No because I was so surprised at the amount of people who think Peeta would have pressured Katniss into having kids. Like did they not understand his character at all?? If anything the MOST he would have done is ask her over the years of she felt she was ready, and then backed off when she said no. It's more likely that Katniss could tell that he pined for children by watching him interact with the kids in the district, and others (possibly Haymitch) brought the topic up with her. But Peeta forcing her or guiltily her into it? Never!
HONESTLY!! HONESTLY!!
My personal headcannon is maybe a little controversial lmaoo but I actually think that Peeta wouldn’t be in a rush to have a baby post MJ anyway?
Just like how Katniss has her reservations about having kids because of the trauma that the games inflicted on every aspect of her life, (along with a very disjointed relationship with her own mother) Peeta has his own host of things to work through before I think he’d be ready enough to admit he wants to start a family.
Once he does tho I think he’d only bring it up the once, see she wasn’t on the same page, and then he’d leave it because hey!! he never even dreamed they’d get to where they are now!! Safe!! And in love!! He doesn’t need kids to be happy he just needs her!!
So in my head it’s Katniss who starts the first real conversation about having kids once she sees just how sweet and kind he is to the little ones coming into the bakery with their parents and even then I think he’d probably drive her insane just double and triple checking that she actually wants this?? And it’s real?? They can try for a baby??
This whole idea that he would pressure her is just Peeta slander!! plain and simple!! lmaoo
255 notes · View notes
coffinsister · 3 months
Note
May I offer this as a request? The top panel is Ashley, and the bottom panel is Andrew.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Well you didn't specify you wanted a drawing
69 notes · View notes
wylanbsoundcloud · 1 month
Text
Tumblr media
THE WILDBERRY DERPSTER
24 notes · View notes
icarusrex · 4 months
Text
What Guards the Gates (1-6/?)
(Sorry if this is very annoying to everyone who was already reading, but I started posting this story in pieces, then got far enough ahead in edits that it feels more organized to keep everything that's fully-rendered in one place. I kept the "chapter" numbers intact, if you started reading before and want to ctrl+f for what's new.) If you're starting here: this is a slow-burn coldfic (you may not be able to tell the whole time) and kind of a prequel to a little scene I wrote a long time ago called All Teeth, whose characters started as an exercise in playing around with the archetypal D&D party makeup/class-types—like, what are the stereotypical traits of each archetype, how far can individual personalities/histories stretch away from classical depiction while still hitting all the tropes, what could the relationships between party-members look like in practice? So, this is meant to just show more of that/more of them. It was supposed to be a sneeze kink scene/exercise in self-indulgent whumpistry, but it got out of hand and now it's about a lot of things (including: still that).
Content Advisory: fantasy violence, POV character ruminating on alienation/xenophobia in several forms; illness, injury, sneezing, pining. ... | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10
🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕 1.
The first shockwave passed over Ivan like a rising tide. Cool and slick. He staggered against the Earth as it seemed to slip momentarily out of place, but quickly found his footing. The wave flowed through him, indifferently, en route to its actual target.
He was surprised to feel so little from it. Still, as someone who made a living out of always landing on his feet, stumbling remained one of the most disconcerting feelings he could imagine.
–which was perfect. As someone known, too, for being wholly insensitive to magic, if he could feel it, he hoped it would be enough.
A troop of living shadows turned their heads, one by one. Eyeless, faceless. Only the still-human stiffening of shoulders, the tangle of dozens of frantic limbs clamoring for weapons, signaled to Ivan that they were, in fact, seeing him–and seeing him as a threat. Some of the closest among them lifted silhouettes of broadswords, maces, polearms–their exact make and style eclipsed even as their bearers stepped into the shallow torchlight. Forms and shapes familiar enough, singing skyward into the ample headroom of hollow expanse, to inspire Ivan to run and keep running. 
The first encampment was behind him before the wave hit. He leapt over a second, felt the solid shock of stone all the way up his shins upon landing, his every step a fresh scoff from ancient inertia beating back against brittle bone. Some of these immaterial entities remained seated, turning their heads complacently as he passed before drifting right back to their fireside chat, as if he had sailed over their camp benignly as a flock of birds. Others shifted heavy iron pans over the fire, or stood in total stillness, foreheads pressed against the cavern walls, like Ivan and the other intruders were museum guests, unworthy of a single glance in the presence of this masterwork of blank stone. 
The rest scrambled to standing. And pursued him.
A second wave of energy rushed over him then. With it, the biting aroma of overgrown lichen and a rush of earthy humidity like the final sigh of an ancient, rotted-out tree collapsing, at last, in relief. He thought he could see the wave of earth magic this time as it rippled across the stone floor, over the shoulders of every sentient shadow, through his tender little heart, and onward–dipping into every fissure, rerouting the frigid draft that groaned up the hewn staircase from some even vaguer hell, grazing the greedy darkness of the looming vault, until it crashed against an invisible barrier at the far end of the cave, splashing high up the sides like troubled seafoam before dissipating into thin air.
He was still too far from it. A rune circle, gouged into the stone ahead like an angry wound. It pulsed an uneasy crimson in the low light that bent and breathed but never dimmed. Around its perimeter, long, tapered candles spilled wax upon the ragged earth. Even after the second spell struck the unseen wall they lined, they never toppled, never flickered.
At their center sat a man Ivan forced himself to sever all memory of in that moment. He had made it far enough in his mad dash across the cavern to snatch glimpses of man’s features illuminated by each inhale of the circle, but he pushed any thrill of recognition into the most blunted compartment of his brain. He did not know what would happen if he managed to close the gap between them and would not focus his eyes on the man again until or unless that moment arrived.
As he ran, a single hiss cut through the commotion behind him. Then another. Then more. Soon, a chorus filled the cavern with such rattling horror that Ivan risked a look over his shoulder as soon as he cleared the third cluster of guards. Standing at the full height and fury of an unmasked gorgon, Ansa drummed the earth with the butt of her staff, every serpent alive and spitting venom into the vague faces of the sentinels closing in on her. Without touching them, her assailants began to drop, dissolving instantly upon contact with the ground, falling soundless as the whisper of fine sand billowing little circles along the desert. Saplings and creeping vines sprung from each of their remains, tripping and ensnaring their fellows before they reached striking distance. Ansa had been Ivan’s newest acquaintance a few days ago. She was his only foolish hope now.
As this shield of organic matter grew denser, she reared back and threw her shoulder against nothing, as though trying to force entry through a locked door he could not see. A third shockwave coursed across the floor, leaving pale mushrooms and wisps of young ferns curling from every crack in the stone. It struck the barrier without a sound, but Ivan was close enough now to see the spell circle grey for a moment before gasping back to life. That was enough to keep running.
The precious seconds in which he could wear this calamity like a cloak had passed. The soldiers deeper into the cave may have been as surprised as their companions by an ambush this far underground, but, unlike them, had had ample time to orient themselves to the intrusion.
A soldier rushed Ivan straight-on and swung for his head with a heavy sword. Ivan ducked this easily, but failed to notice the subtler blade held low in their other hand. He snapped into a dodge that was more like whiplash, too late, and took a tertiary slash from the short blade across his thigh in the instant before plunging his own knife far deeper. He dragged the dagger upward through the attacker’s abdomen and was met with a puzzling resistance–gritty, identical to stabbing through a sack of animal feed. Like a prank. Sure enough, indistinct granules poured from the wound until the entire soldier gently dissolved like the last grains of sand slipping through an hourglass.
Ivan was bewildered; he had understood this as a side-effect of Ansa’s magic. Why the inanimate steel of his dagger yielded the same result as a druid in symbiosis with the destructive potential of nature was another question he would banish from his mind until an uncertain later. Now, he could only step over the mound of black sand that hunted him seconds ago. He was almost there, but clashing with one shadow had bought time for the nimblest among them to catch up with him from all directions.
Two assailants flanked him, wielding long spears. The dagger he flung with his dominant hand stuck first; he shielded his face with both forearms as the two of them crumbled into a curtain of silt. Suddenly, the brute impact of someone much heavier jumping on his back hit so hard it thumped aloud through the hollow of his chest. He halted immediately, trying to wield this entity’s inertia against itself, but the thick forearm clung tight around his neck, constricting. He feebly reached back and jabbed his knife deep into the attacker’s thigh, a vengeful echo of his own latest wound. The chokehold loosened momentarily, but not enough to slip from. 
Panic began to well.
Mere meters from the spell circle now, Ivan allowed himself to lock eyes with the man inside it. He saw a weariness and worry etched beneath them, and wanted nothing more than to uncurl his fist from the hilt of his dagger and dissolve into them infinitely. In that moment, as they truly saw each other for the first time after days inflamed with wondering, time suspended. If the faceless brawler choked him out, or held him steady for a savvier arrow to pierce any part of him, the sting of making it this far and no further would have been worth it. To see and be seen.
A heavy impact rocked the earth, pelting them both from behind with splinters of stone. The arm around Ivan’s neck released. His every blood cell animated with a rush of pounding fury, Ivan spun around and seized the dagger from his attacker’s leg. They both turned in time to see a gathering phalanx cleaved in half by one wild sweep of a bulky maul drawing a new horizon straight through them. With continuous momentum, its head gathered speed in a graceful arc, up, before driving down through the skull of Ivan’s attacker.
In the wake of the onslaught–the strange, dark sediment settling into the folds of their clothes–a young woman grinned up at Ivan, the tip of her tongue poking through two blunt, protruding fangs. She heaved her hammer from its crater with impossible ease and whipped back around, ruining another trio of attackers in a single rotation–just one twirl of a slick, dark ponytail and they were gone. The rubble rained thick around her. With each devastating blow, an eerie light gathered at the head of her hammer. It was subtle at first, but blazed brighter as each strike connected. Some of the shadows had begun to hesitate as the aura cocooned around her in a humanoid silhouette, twice her height, but aligned perfectly with her every gesture. She snarled aloud, plunging her hammer through the trunk of another soldier. A spectral trail chased the arc of motion, leaving a retinal afterimage that  burned like staring into the sun.
Meanwhile, the cadence of Ansa’s barrage had intensified, too.
The rune circle faltered visibly now. 
Ivan noticed, as he approached its border, 
the shadows stopped following him.
Some of the candles’ wicks had gone dark, delicate plumes of smoke wafting in perfect vertical. The runes themselves appeared blotchy, but still alive enough that he hesitated as the toe of his boot kissed their edge. Skepticism and survival instinct raged eternal within his very bloodstream. 
He stepped inside.
Awestruck by the absolute silence, 
again, he felt nothing. 
Nothing but the poison desperation of wanting to say everything to this person, to pluck him with his bare hands from this reality and drop them both gently into any other. Instead, Ivan fumbled hastily for a set of metal nails, varying in length and width, that hung concealed near his belt at all times. It felt comical, as he studied the simple bindings around the man’s wrists. Maybe crafting the first layer of containment had been so elaborate that his abductors rushed the second. Maybe they deemed it so impossible to bypass that even introducing handcuffs felt excessive. Ivan plucked a short, slender nail from his array and twisted it into the keyhole. Just one. He had been picking locks like this since he was a child. It seemed like a mistake.
The first pin plinked into place. He was negotiating with a second when the front wall of candles blasted apart. Some rolled away into the shadows, others collided with the cave walls and cracked into shards of brittle wax. For a moment, it seemed as though sound itself had been the blunt object to finally breach the altar; the cacophony of shouts and ringing steel burst painfully through the murky quiet inside. A spray of tiny fungi scampered along the circumference, where the candles had been. 
The circle was dark.
What remained of the guards watched. Then, awash with realization, sprinted for the expired circle in unison.
Drained of scoundrel’s arrogance, Ivan’s fingers worked frantically. Flashes like distant lightning lit the cavern walls as his companions attempted to beat them back, but the footfalls of soldiers pounded closer and closer, darkness piling up in his periphery. He clutched his own wrist, squeezing hard to stabilize the trembling in his dominant hand, willing it to outpace the soldiers and the stiffening chill of dripping stone bearing down from all directions.
Even now, he felt a sick satisfaction at the tweak and click of pins; a delicate maze he would never see, but could envision so vividly. As each piece sunk into its holster, he felt a little buzz of ecstasy. O, to die this way? Less satisfying than the last time he tried to settle with the thought.
Then: release. The click and crunch as he jerked the arm of the lock open, flung its components into the dirt. The brief bloom of body heat as their wrists grazed each others’ while he hastily unwound the cables and tossed them, too, into a coiled heap.
Amaranth did something strange. He raised both hands in front of his face, turning them over, and then back over again–with a heavy-lidded focus unbroken by the rallying screams or the rising tempo of bloodlust closing in–as if losing sight of his hands necessitated relearning their topography. As if he’d lost the anchor to this lucid dream. He flexed into a fist and then relaxed. Maybe it was nothing more than lost circulation; Ivan was not sure. Even with the horde upon them now, he felt the space to wonder return. The first groping hands tugged roughly at his limbs; he looked into their faces for something he wouldn't have sought any sooner, but found all emotion in their eyes still lost to the indelible umbra.
All of Amaranth’s rings were gone. Maybe that’s what it was about.
A sickening throb sucked the air pressure from the room, as if everything they had ever known was lost instantly, swallowed dry by one great gulp of the universe. In its place rose a hum so deep and dreadful it ached behind Ivan’s eyes, fell like night between his lungs. He clapped both hands over his ears to try to save them from the barometric crackle, but by then it was too late.
A heavy, violet stormcloud gathered overhead, eclipsing the vault in swelling violence. At the drone’s unbearable crest, it ruptured, destruction rolling like thunder to every corner of the room.
Then, a silence so swift and alien that it whined like tinnitus in the travelers’ ears.
The four of them stood in the ruins of the encampment, looking like children who just snapped out of a game of make-believe, called back to the world outside of the blackened sandbox in which they found themselves standing.
Dark shreds of smoldering ash drifted gently in the updraft.
Finally, Ivan looked at him again. Amaranth sighed into a rueful smile, his posture wilting, as if the return to being simply human were an inside joke between the two of them. The end of his exhale hung visible against the chill of the underground. Ivan approached, unbuckling the sheath at his waist, shedding every sharp object concealed on his body without slowing, treading on thick straps and his own weapons as they fell freely to the stone floor, struck with devotion and kaleidoscopic visions of everything he should do in that moment. Feeling, too, the eyes of his companions burning through his back, Ivan merely slipped his arms around Amaranth, and disappeared into a tight embrace.
Eventually, a voice behind him cut in. “So… are we gonna talk about it…?” she chirped tentatively. Muted, muffled, like she was standing at the edge of the ocean and calling down to the shipwreck of him.
Choking on all the emotion he had chased off during combat, Ivan tipped his forehead against Amaranth’s shoulder. Only this close could he feel Amaranth shivering, persistently. Shaken from his reverie, Ivan detached, and turned to face the others. He felt the knee below his wound threaten to buckle as he did. “No, we need to get out of here.”
Ansa hadn't spoken since strategizing with him in another chamber, an hour or a lifetime ago. At some point after the silt settled, she had replaced the wooden mask that concealed her face whenever she needed to move through civilian life. It was smooth, pale wood with narrow slits suggesting eyes. Pure utility but for the two short antlers curling from the top. Unreadable.
“I can’t take us to the surface now,” her voice was deep and measured, but some of her serpents flexed their jaws in obvious agitation. “We wait. Or we walk.”
It was clear that exhausting her reserve of magic was not an experience she’d repeated in recent memory.
Ivan glanced longingly at the ceiling, as if he could see straight through the layers and layers of elaborate tunnels to their destination. The dread that their mission was not yet successful, or even over, was crushing him as the last dregs of adrenaline drained from his system. Walking had taken days, the first time, and even that they’d cheated some of.
“I can.”
Met with dubious silence.
“I can take us to the surface,” Amaranth repeated, as though the added detail was the issue.
“... really?” Ivan had asked it delicately, trying to stamp out the seed of doubt before he did, but looking now at this man whose visage he’d tried hard to shake from his mind on many nights, he saw a looseness to his limbs that was never there before, like he was spending all his strength fighting the burden of gravity. How much was left for teleportation or confronting what would meet them on the other side of it, Ivan struggled to imagine, seeing the distance in his dark eyes.
“I miss the sun..." Amaranth murmured. "Maybe all of you can live without it for another day, but I am not as tough as you.” Irreverence creased the corners of his eyes, but there was such a mournful note of candor in his voice that, to him, maybe it was the truth.
Ansa watched him closely from behind her mask, saying nothing.
As the humid air grew thicker with the others’ doubts, Amaranth rounded an explanation. “There’s a conduit on the palace grounds.” Still, their skepticism hung heavy in the murky air. Heavy enough, in the end, to squeeze the confession from him. “--I can only take us there, right now." “But some of those guards definitely don’t know us,” truly on the come-down from the chaos preceding, Ivan was losing optimism and beginning to really feel the hot throb of the gash in his leg. “They’ll recognize YOU, but they’re gonna think we’re doing a coup or something if we just… step in. Don’t get me wrong–I like that better than finding out what’s between us and the door on a three-day nature hike, but what are we going to do if they all just attack? Jenny, you’ll do great–” he waved a hand at the young woman, deflating instantly when he noticed the concern in her eyes as they flicked back and forth to each speaker’s face. “–not a good look, wiping out the entire kingsguard, though. And, anyway, I can’t take another fight right now, if it comes to that.” Neither can you. Amaranth waited patiently for him to finish. “I wouldn’t drop you into danger like that, Ivan,” he said softly. “The port I know is hidden in the library. It will be far enough from–” he paused and glanced at Jenny, who had interrupted with a delighted stage-gasp that was not ending, only escalating.
“Oooh~” she jeered. “Maren’s going to be mad at you…”
“Yes," Amaranth’s voice lightened, bubbling with a barely-suppressed chuckle. “He is, most of the time.”
“He’s going to kick your ass one of these days. Like, you can tell he’s about to brawl out soon. Probably today!" She edited quickly, “Today’s the day; I can feel it.”
Amaranth cleared his throat behind the back of his hand. “You think he could?”
“OH yeah,” she waved her hand at him in a grand dismissive gesture. “They can call you the most powerful wizard in the world a million times, but he’s the one they should be worried about. He’s got that twink rage.”
Ivan recoiled, as mortified and intrigued as a parent hearing their child curse for the first time. “What do you know about twink rage..? No, no, NO. No. No--” As she opened her mouth, gleeful for the opportunity to forge on, he rebuffed, rhythmic as a hammer strike of his own, “No. Just do it. I’m not going to die hearing about this right now.” 🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕 2.
A burst of white light from the stained glass window startled the archivist so badly, his pen flew from his grasp and spattered a parabola of black spots from corner-to-corner of his manuscript. He leapt to his feet, unwinding a long string of wooden beads from his wrist with a grip that blanched every knuckle. “Maren. I need to ask you for a favor.”
He hadn’t the chance to even process the traveler’s entrance before the ask. The other three stepped through in a sequence of flashes. Familiarity set in; Maren’s eyebrows dropped in stony recognition.
“Well, two.”
Maren sat back down, slowly. Following the trail of ink, he leaned low, stretching an arm under the smooth, marble desk to retrieve his pen from the floor. He examined the metal nib for a moment before sullenly dropping it into a clear inkwell. Darkness billowed from the tip into little nebulas suspended in the liquid. He folded his hands rigidly on the desk. The two of them stared at each other, sharply, silently. Ivan felt the stubble that had regrown on the back of his head these past few days stand up, watching them.
“Go on.” Maren’s tone clipped curt, exasperated further by being pushed to prod, “What’s the first one?”
“A place to disappear perfectly...” Amaranth mused with a glancing grin. Despite a momentary hoarseness he couldn’t shake, his reply flowed like cool water over tumbled rocks. “A place to stay,” he clarified, clearing his throat behind the back of his hand. “For one night, two at most.”
A flurry of sparrows whirled past the vaulted windows–the only break in the pristine stream of sunlight pouring into the library. Their dappled shadows scattered along the floor like inkblots on a blank page. Then, only the stillness of white marble remained.
Ivan looked to his companions as if they were audience members at a melodrama. When he noticed neither Jenny nor Ansa reacting along with him to the scene unfolding, he schooled his expression back to stoic. By design, he could not see Ansa’s eyes, but the tension with which she watched Amaranth had only intensified since leaving the caves. Ivan realized his worry about this had a louder voice than Maren, who was halfway through answering by the time he realized he wasn't listening:
“–half an hour, maybe even less. How long doesn’t really matter; you just need to show, appease the royals, reassure the populace. You know your blessing would be meaningful to them–” the longer Maren’s list of justifications unfurled, the farther Amaranth tilted his head back, as if this suggestion were a strong gust of wind he was in danger of sailing out the door upon.
“Look–I could try to speak for you instead, but you’re not exactly in the king and queen’s best graces,” Maren leaned forward, his consonants staccato as if he were trying to stamp the final warning of many into stone. “Look repulsed about it, if you must, but I am confident this would invite you far enough back in to justify using their keep as an inn. And save my ass for enabling you to trespass. Without asking. Again.”
Amaranth smiled slyly. “You’ll make me homesick for being tortured by cultists." The room grew cold. The levity he had aimed for crystallized into an icy layer atop the most direct statement anyone had yet to make about the day.
Maren looked at him, then at each of their faces in turn. Studying them in the broadest daylight, as if he were seeing them for the first time. His expression softened, then folded into worry. His hands unclasped and slid from the desk.
“What happened?” 🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕 3.
One month ago, Maren’s name had been stricken from the contract that brought them underground.
Two years before that, Jenny and Ivan were alone. 
Trying to achieve some convalescence between picking up petty bounties, they wandered into an open-air market–one they’d visited a few times in recent weeks. Ordinarily, they found themselves squeezing past throngs of people, shouting over rugged street musicians just to point out which of the lurid fruits heaped in high-stacked crates they recognized, and speculate about what the others might look like on the inside.
Today, the square was quiet. A few townspeople mulled around uneasily; many of the merchants had abandoned their sales personae and circled around to the fronts of their booths, leaning on counters or crates in serious conversation with the sparse passersby, their backs turned symbolically to their wares.
The murmurs throughout the market all carried the same story: a school of promising mages had disappeared overnight. The building where they had studied still stood, proud and geometric atop the grassy hillside to the west of town, but the apprentices were gone, as were their mentors. There was no sign of violence, no message, no trace of them.
Ivan found himself folded into the market gossip with incredible speed; some of the attendees suggested an accident like this was an inevitability of collecting inexperienced magic users, young and old, in one single location. Most insisted the school was struck for what it taught. They talked animatedly about a mysterious anti-magic gang; in some versions, it was an organized crime family determined to neutralize any means their enemies might find to overtake them, starting with the cheapest hires. In others, they were religious zealots, brainwashed in seclusion to believe stripping the world of magic was the only path to a clean, idyllic existence. Still others described less of a gang, more of a pack–supernatural beasts, visible only sometimes, only in the corner of your eye, apathetic to the lives and goals of the mages and simply devouring.
Back on the road, out of polite earshot of the villagers, Ivan and Jenny scoffed hard at their small-town paranoia. 
Ivan understood what they were doing–desperately attempting to reconcile a senseless tragedy, fulfilling their human need to explain the inexplicable. He could sympathize, but had also watched legends about the mages’ disappearance balloon into absurdity overnight. Whatever had happened was strange and terrible, yes, but he wondered what rendered the townsfolk incapable of entertaining the more practical, mundane explanation some of their neighbors had offered: an accident. A meltdown of inexperience; the misstep of someone with no innate talent for it, trying to harness the most volatile forces on earth.
He’d seen this sort of thing happen in his own hometown, many times.
Small-town paranoia was a tale as old as time, he’d told himself. He would continue telling himself that until they heard the same story in the next town. And the one after that.
They hadn’t all been classrooms; they had been a deserted temple, the vandalized homes of local witches, fires burning in enchanted woods.
🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕 4.
“They separated us,” Jenny was the one to say it. “They came out of nowhere and pulled us through the walls. Not like a normal teleportation, either; it didn’t hurt, but it was like… if you can imagine being crushed by boulders in a way that doesn’t hurt, it was like that.”
Maren’s eyebrows peaked, “Who’s ‘they’?”
“Shadows?” she said, one short tusk curling from her lower lip disparagingly. Visibly dissatisfied with the poetry of this answer, she scanned the others’ faces for a better one. Finding none, she added, “that’s what they looked like, I mean. But we could hit them, and they could hit us. Ghosts, maybe?”
“They were not ghosts,” Ansa’s voice reverberated through her mask, low and steady. “Decay would not have touched them, if they were.”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Jenny reached back and tapped the grip of her hammer with a forefinger. “My mum’s the only one I know who can hit a ghost with this, but I was hitting those things the whole time down there.”
“They felt like they were made of sand,” Ivan’s voice sounded reedy in his own ear, especially when he found eye contact with Maren, who was looking increasingly haunted himself. “When I stabbed them, Maren, it was like–”
“Oh yeah!” Jenny pointed vigorously at Ivan, “They crumbled!”
Amaranth coughed lightly behind his sleeve. Ivan’s eyes darted to him, then back to Maren, who was now looking everywhere else, as if an explanation might be hidden somewhere in the room–a cipher written along the spines of books.
“You think they were golems?” Maren tried. “You know, some kind of puppet?”
“Without a puppeteer…” Ivan smoothed both hands over his scalp, dejectedly. “If I could’ve found just one mage running the whole thing, it would’ve been a lot easier. Even a few–”  Ivan was too aware of Amaranth coughing, increasingly, in his periphery. Surreptitiously enough that it was unlikely anyone but him would notice, let alone fixate to the point of distraction. “–but there weren’t any. Unless they were great at hiding.”
“So… you entered the cave system together, you were attacked by these entities…” Maren began slowly, trying to stitch a sequence from their patchwork explanation, “...who made a point of splitting you up so that each of you would have to fight them alone…”
“No,” Ivan was still lost in the soothing rasp, stroking the surface of his own skull. “They split us up–” he gestured loosely to himself, Ansa, Jenny, “–and then disappeared, for all we knew.”
Maren’s gaze fell on Amaranth. “And... where were you in all this?”
Ivan didn’t know whether she was suddenly struck with an inverted protectiveness or simply swept away in the thrill of a dangerous mystery, or a bit of both, but Jenny jumped in, swift and frantic, “They put him in an anti-magic bubble. Way farther down.”
Ivan felt a wave of panic wash over him, hearing it. Even though he’d been there. Even though he’d gone in, knowing.
Silence.
The utter blankness of marble, without even the pity of migrating birds to break it.
“...what?” Maren whispered, nearly a hiss of absolute bewilderment.
“Yeah, it was horrible! We were down there looking for days, man! With us, it seemed like they just–” Jenny parted the air with her hands, “–wanted to get us out of the way. We only found them when we found him.”
“Amaranth!” Maren’s voice cut through the air like a flying dagger, severe enough to make everyone but the gorgon jump. Amaranth himself visibly flinched before his expression opened, benign and attentive. “They stripped you of your magic?! How?! For how long?”
Amaranth sighed. Ivan felt the weight of an intense sadness beneath the superficial fatigue of it. “I wish I knew. If Jenny says it was days, then it must have been days.”
Whether deliberate or not, Maren had pivoted away, closed himself off enough to examine Amaranth sidelong, “But you… feel alright now?”
“‘Alright’ is a strong word for how I feel,” Amaranth huffed a shallow laugh, “but, yes, everything that was taken from me was returned when the barrier broke. As far as I know.”
“Yeah, uh, we sent Ivan through BEFORE we finished breaking it because we figured, well–” Jenny offered up a flash of fangs, amusement overlapping the anxiety of what they had done.
Ivan raised both palms, surrendering to the same. “Yeah, I have no magic to lose, so if it had been permanent–” he faltered, not wishing to even give voice to who or what any of them would be if it had. “I mean, it still could’ve peeled all of my skin off the second I touched it, for all we knew, but that’s a sacrifice Jenny is willing to make, right?” “Yeah, if there’s one thing you need to know about me, it’s that I love killing Ivan. Any chance I get.”
Amaranth suppressed another coughing fit, almost. This time, under far more scrutiny, for however hard he had tried to halt the need where it began. He rallied from it with unexpected solemnity; Ivan and Jenny had come to rely on his willingness to stoke the fires of their flippancy. They felt marooned without it. “I understand why you shouldn’t take my word for it,” he ignored them and spoke directly to Maren, “but I am not cursed. I’ll sit quietly under any counterspell you’d like to run, if you can’t believe me.”
“You said it was cultists who did this?”
“I said that, but it was only a guess. It seemed aligned with their favorite pastimes.” Maren slammed open the cover of his notebook, snatching a fresh pen from the corner of his desk. “We have NEVER seen anything like this, do you understand? Not ‘we’ as in the people in this room—I mean in the entirety of recorded history,” at some point he had become flustered enough to stand. He hunched over his desk now, scribbling a flurry of notes on a new page. “Do you have any idea how dangerous this is, if cultists have found some recipe to neutralize any magic user in the world, for any length of time? If anyone has found a way to do that?”
“Of course I do.” Amaranth smiled serenely. “That’s why I came to you about it.” The page filled in a frenzy of ink, Maren tossed his pen aside and tore the paper from its binding with a flourish. He folded it once, twice, and again into a small, tight square. Then, he gripped the high back of his plush desk chair and flung it around to face outward, the empty cushion confronting the group of them. He looked expectantly at Amaranth, who only blinked curiously.
“Sit quietly,” a wry smile curled at the corners of Maren’s mouth for the first time that day. “As you said.”
Amaranth crossed the room and sunk into the seat, the very hem of his cloak curling gracefully upon the floor beneath as he did, marred though it was with black silt and loose threads springing from gashes in fabric that had been silken and whole when they’d left town. He dropped his hands into his lap and peered up at Maren, who stood over him looking oddly flushed.
Maren palmed the tightly-folded paper scrap, letting a few rows of beads fall slack around it before chattering tight against his hand. In a few long strides, he stood before a stained glass window–neighbor to the decoy the travelers had stepped through–tugging what looked to Ivan like a tiny, delicate magnifying glass from his breast pocket by a slender chain. None of them made a sound as they watched him angle it one way, then another, over his open palm, clearly seeking some perfect channel of psychedelic daylight pouring through the colored glass. It took a few minutes, but his fingers steadied, and Ivan could just barely see a sliver of light slowly singe a perfect circle into the center of the folded paper. The circle darkened slowly like a passing eclipse, until its edges curled away, leaving a little well in the middle where sunlight pooled viscous upon contact with his skin. He closed his hand around it and flicked the magnifier a few times in the air, as if extinguishing a stubborn match, before tucking it back into his pocket and sweeping back across the room.
Ivan felt an unanticipated pang of nostalgia. He was certain he was romanticizing it in hindsight, but the brief time they had spent as an intact team felt so much gentler than the present day.
Maren held his closed hand over the top of Amaranth’s head and tipped it deliberately, keeping his thumb and first two fingers tight while the others slowly unfurled. A trickle of white light seemed to drip from them. Ivan felt a fizz at the base of his skull as he watched, pleasant and languid like lying in the midsummer sun after a swim, feeling the droplets evaporate off his skin.
When Maren’s hand closed, the fine line of light cut. He stepped back and bent his knees slightly, hunched and scrutinizing something Ivan could not perceive. Whatever it was, he framed and re-framed it with his empty hand, as though trying to calculate, without tools, the exact point to strike a nail in order to hang a painting level.
“If you cough on me while I am doing this, I will kill you,” Maren mumbled this, but it multiplied preternaturally, as if hundreds of himself, from disparate planes of existence, tessellating immortal, slipped through the boundaries of time and space only to arrive perfectly united in both snideness and neuroses. As if no butterfly could flap its wings hard enough to change these aspects of his nature.
Amaranth smiled at this with a minute nod of recoil, as though he were expecting it, but not from this version of this man. “I’ve come to you as sterile as I ever could,” he said.
Ivan wondered for the rest of the spell what this meant, but a redness crept up from the collar of Maren’s shirt, climbing the sensitive skin from his neck to his earlobes, in a way that suggested he didn’t.
Whatever the thought was, he shed it quickly, finding the alignment he’d been reaching for with his free hand. He raised the other, extending the first two fingers until they were millimeters from Amaranth’s forehead, connecting another filament of white light to him. It flared overbright, rinsing the color from the room in a tight radius around them, bathing the others in a kind of soothing afterglow that felt like the first sincere relief after fighting, running, wondering for days.
The light dimmed and, gradually, the original colors of the space soaked back into it. Maren blinked rapidly a few times as he turned to the spectators, his eyes stark white and pupiless until the afterimage of it fully faded.
“It’s true,” he announced, “Nothing.” He paced back to his desk and unlocked the bottom drawer with a tiny key that dangled like a charm from his string of beads. He dropped the burnt paper into its recesses and relocked it. “No curse, no corruption. No one watching us through his eyes, no imposters, parasites. Nothing.”
Ivan felt himself sneak a glance at Ansa. She nodded incrementally; he hoped this meant she was satisfied. He hoped Maren was right about all of it, in a time when few of their hypotheses turned out to be.
“So. I’ll send word to the palace proper. Your rooms shouldn’t take long to prepare,” Maren tore another sheet from the same notebook and began writing, tamely this time. “Wait maybe ten minutes after I send this, then you can travel to the foyer using my conduit, to avoid the crowds–” He held the paper aloft. It fluttered from sight like a magician’s dove. “–not that you’ve waited for my permission before.”
“Crowds?” Ivan inquired. They’d spent enough time in this town before the ill-fated spelunk to know that it trended quiet this early in the afternoon. While it came alive on summer nights, lately a hush had descended over the nightlife in synchrony with the first falling leaves.
“You haven’t done your history homework?” Maren smiled with his eyes, no sardonic bite in the way he addressed Ivan. Still, the subject of uneducation tugged hard enough at Ivan's subconscious to bar him from admitting anything about how actively he hadn’t been listening earlier, or how much homework he may or may not have done in his life. “The end of the war coincided almost perfectly with the Harvest Moon Festival, so they’re sort of rolled into one holiday now. Though, most people skip the peace ceremony that kicks it off, unless they’re rich or blackmailed into attending by me, just now,” he laughed, airy and melodic. In the seconds since he’d named the moon festival, Jenny’s enthusiasm escalated from tugging at the hem of Ivan’s vest, to slapping his back and shoulder, alternately, as if beating a drum fanfare to accompany the announcement. Ivan swatted the air, trying to wave her off like an insect, eventually managing to evade her with an elbow and a sidestep. “So, the fun part doesn’t really start until sundown. Anyway, they’ve been setting up for the last few days; that’s the crowd I mean. I guess you have been out of town, so you wouldn’t have seen…” Maren’s demeanor had shifted entirely–whether effervescent from proximity to Jenny’s unchecked giddiness, or the palpable relief of confirming, with his own eyes, their safe and uncorrupted return. Ivan was struck in that moment by how lyrical his voice was when he allowed himself to relax–though that seemed like an unfair condition to place on it. Maybe he always sounded that way, and Ivan was only able to hear it now that the danger had lifted, and Maren’s absence from their party could be felt fondly. “As far as… the rest of this…” Maren pursed his lips, uncertainly. “I will look into it. That was the second favor, right?” he asked, rhetorically. “There is always the possibility this was a random event. I’ve heard all kinds of horror stories come out of those caves. I don’t want to get your hopes up, that it’s not about you, but there’s not much to be done about it until we know more. Certainly not in the state you’re in.” He shrugged, halfway. Defeated, but good-naturedly. “I won’t make myself hard to find, if you think of anything else, but until then? For gods’ sakes, feed yourselves. Relax. Have fun at the festival, if you’re feeling up to that sort of thing. You have a few nights–” he had already turned his back to them, stooping to pull the knob of a boundless-looking drawer of catalog cards. “Hell, just try to let yourselves enjoy something, alright? It sounds like that could be as important as any of this.”
Ivan was touched. When he first met Maren, it had been mere assignment. His first impression: absolute dread at the idea of needing to remain polite to the over-educated, under-humbled, second son of high-elf nobility, who earned nothing but had everything. Over time, he found Maren to be all of those things, but before any of it: a frustrated genius in his own right with a universal compassion for all living things that was certainly not part of his inheritance.
Of course there was a limit to how much work any of them could do, especially run ragged by the horrors of the past few days, but for someone so pathologically diligent to prescribe fun in the midst of trying to solve a potentially world-ending puzzle felt significant.
🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔 5.
Ivan did not know what to do at this party.
He was accustomed to never being alone. Thrived, even, on the coursing energy of crowds, most of the time. Here, he felt a strangeness in his limbs, like there was a constant, indecipherable etiquette he broke every time he moved a muscle. There was a way the other guests looked him up and down from afar, then nearly fell over themselves in relief when someone unlike him pulled them in to talk.
He sat down on the ledge of an opulent indoor fountain. 
Ansa had returned to her sisters in the swamplands after debriefing in the library, more honest than himself about her disinterest in playing at diplomacy. There was a terseness to her nature that he both admired and found difficult to engage with, but the fact remained that escorting their party back to town had been well outside the bounds of her contract. She had chosen to stay with them until their safety was a certainty, unable or unwilling to allow the same thing that had happened to her home happen to theirs.
This wasn’t home to any of them, but still. The gesture was selfless, and Ivan appreciated it almost as deeply as he envied her capacity to fuck right off in the face of any pressure to make a good impression on the kinds of people who gathered to celebrate the six-year anniversary of the day they decided to stop killing each other, for now.
Jenny, he had turned loose on the festival grounds, not that he’d had much choice. He could feel two identical wooden tokens stamped with a row of royal seals burning a hole in his pocket—unique talismans, magically inert, but functioning as their tickets through the castle gates. Finding her, as the only one among them who had declined to rest in the hours before the festival began, was a task Ivan now had to fret about. He had yet to see another half-orc in Tetria to date, but found it effortless to imagine the average nightwatchman feigning ignorance in the face of her, should she return keyless and alone, no matter how clear a physical description he provided each and every one.
She was well beyond old enough to go out on her own now–however impervious his vision of her was to the passage of time–and, frankly, more of a danger to the world than it was to her, at least physically. Still, as he peered down through the bubbling depths at a blanket of coins lining the bottom of the pool—palace tourists’ every last sunken wish—Ivan wondered at what point in Jenny’s accidental wardhood he had developed this nigh-parental background-anxiety over not knowing exactly where she was, and through how many more stages of their respective lives it would carry.
Far above Ivan's head, tealights in glass orbs danced close to the high ceiling, bobbing like cheerful sprites over a midnight marsh. Behind him, a brass deer stood sentinel, clear water trickling gently from every tip of its antlers–an impossible array of a hundred prongs fanning high enough to pull some of the fairy lights into orbit.
Amaranth was here somewhere. As was always the case in settings like this, his attention was in high demand. Wondering who might have it now burned ulcerative in the deepest pit of Ivan’s stomach in a way he did not want to own or even name.
At the opposite end of the grand hall, over the guests’ own esteemed heads, loomed a map of the entire continent, embossed in metal and stone. In a playful way of co-signing the commitment to peace they were called to celebrate, the magic users in attendance had been casting little decorative charms over it all evening. One left periwinkle clouds swirling the peaks of the western mountains, another animated a flare of scarlet leaves perpetually falling from an ancient tree. Every so often, a herd of spectral antelope bounded across the equator of the entire world.
Ivan caught a glimpse of Amaranth then, speaking to the local prince. The prince was the easier one to spot; he stood out from the crowd for his stark white suit that arced in crisp, sharp angles–smooth but for the texture of pearl accents dotted like scales along his shoulders and collar. To Ivan’s eye, however, standing beside the sterile, constructed precision of the prince’s finery, Amaranth appeared all the more vibrant–swathed in robes of a deep violet and crimson, their visceral richness so dark, the colors and winding patterns of intricate flora could only be seen when he moved and light flowed over them in a certain direction. His hair fell loose in great, dark waves, leonine in effortless elegance. The ease with which he held himself rang like arrogance when the light hit it a certain way, too–to appear so empty of anxiety in the face of a person every generation before and including him had been raised from birth to revere. To speak to everyone so gently, so much of the time, but with a sly spark of recognition that never left his eyes–of the parts of them that were afraid. Ivan watched his lips move, syllables spilling out with inimitable ease. He wondered: if Amaranth was so eloquent when the two of them spoke, who was he in his mother tongue?
The prince clasped his hands together, to the extent that he was able without abandoning the long-stemmed crystal goblet now balanced expertly between manicured fingers–a tense gesture of gratitude. Amaranth waved this off with a rakish grin, before folding his arms inside the billow of his draping sleeves. The prince’s eyebrows knit, heartfelt; he reached forward and gripped Amaranth’s shoulder momentarily. The conversation punctuated, the prince peeled away, scanning the crowd for his next. He tipped his glass in acknowledgement when he spotted Ivan, and began strutting briskly in his direction–much to Ivan’s shock. He had forgotten for a moment that anyone could see him.
“There he is! The clever rogue who is going to save the kingdom, I know it!” The prince sauntered merrily towards the edge of the fountain. He had impeccable posture, Ivan noticed–the schooled, aligned skeleton of a young man who had been taught all his life to hold his bones a certain way, who may never know back pain, even when his youth leaves him. Briefly, Ivan caught Amaranth’s eye over the prince’s shoulder and felt the earth invert. “I’m so glad you decided to celebrate with us, Ivan,” the prince continued, his voice ringing out with the volume and clarity of an orator. Amaranth winked, before turning away to acknowledge a tap on his shoulder.
As the prince closed the gap between them, Ivan rose from his seat. The prince shook his head modestly at this gesture, but Ivan hadn’t stood out of respect so much as to preempt being quite literally looked down upon by a member of the royal family. The prince halted before him; still standing almost a full head taller, as many men did.
“You have a good memory!” Ivan found the most polite alternative to ‘you remembered my name, but I don’t remember yours’ or ‘I know your parents’ names because they’ve been paying me, but not quite enough to remember anything about you’.
The prince laughed, more heartily than the moment called for. “Ah, well. I have to be good at something for them to keep me around, right?”
Untrue.
Maren had sent a cleric’s apprentice to Ivan’s temporary room, after they’d parted. Perhaps as a side-effect of the rejuvenation spell, Ivan felt a worrying rush of vitality now that made him wish he’d hung onto that damage until his trip into high society was done.
“I was just talking to your sorcerer friend over there and, you know, we can’t all have your talent for adventure,” the prince raised his goblet to his lips. Ivan wondered what this man was trying to transact.
The prince punctuated his sip with a terse hum, like he had just remembered something. “How has that been going? Your investigation.”
Ivan hesitated for a moment before finding a diagonal truth, “We met with your royal archivist this afternoon, who agreed to help with some research. I don’t want to say too much about it, you understand…”
“Ah, I understand completely. It is wise to keep these things classified while they’re still under investigation, but tell me–” the prince leaned in close, lowering his voice, “–do you think this cult stuff is really catching on? In the sense of active recruitment?”
Ivan frowned. “I couldn’t tell you how many members there are now, but… yes, people are definitely still joining. How many, how often…? I dunno.”
The prince’s face fell. “I just don’t understand the angle. Who would want to live in a world without magic? Less convenient, less safe…”
“Apparently more people than you or I know…” Ivan mumbled, glancing up at the vast, teeming map of the continent again, wondering exactly how many of them walked it at this very moment. His eyes drifted compulsively to the familiar shape of his hometown, squashed and nondescript at the bottom of the map. The Midlands stretched so disproportionately wide that they might snap, all of their landmarks tagged and fully illustrated. Amaranth’s point of origin would have fallen somewhere behind a regal dais far to the right of the map, had they chosen to render the rest of the world. Ivan wondered what sorts of plants and animals he might have decorated it with during the event, if it had been on the map at all, and felt a penetrating heartache at the thought.
The prince followed Ivan’s line of sight. “May I ask you a question? If you’ll forgive my ignorance on this…”
Ivan said nothing and braced himself, rifling through a mental list of all the questions that could possibly chase that disclaimer.
“I have seen other people from the Southern Wilds wear those,” the prince gestured to his own earlobes. From Ivan’s, three polished fish hooks dangled: one sunk into the cartilage of his left ear, two in the right. He had been overjoyed that afternoon when pushing them through without resistance; in his line of work, opportunities to wear anything that could be pulled or snagged were few and far between. He thought the holes had closed up by now, for sure.
“I’ve always wondered if they mean something,” the prince finished.
Ivan felt an unjust sort of embarrassment, mulling over what level of detail this man deserved from him. It only took a split second to follow a dozen spiteful fantasies in which he asked the prince if his white suit meant anything, if his white teeth meant anything. If he erased his pores by choice or by cultural imperative.
“Uh, kind of. They do. I mean, a lot of things have changed over the years–” Ivan opened his mouth before deciding how much to say. Saved by another stroke of strange luck, he never had to.
As difficult to sneak up on as he was to unbalance, even Ivan’s reflexes were outpaced by the sudden surge of light and color, the swooping feeling as both energy and arms grasped him without warning around the waist.
Scraps of dark residue smoldered, lingering in the air above the spot where he just stood. Soon those, too, vanished as if they never were.
A few nearby guests felt their ears pop and turned, startled, in time to see the dumbstruck prince, clutching his goblet with stiff, bejeweled knuckles, staring blankly at the open air.
🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔 6. Ivan found his footing, awash in a new coolness. He bumped an opulent-looking floor vase with his shin and dropped hastily to one knee just in time to steady it. Amaranth had pushed off from him the moment they rematerialized and staggered several paces into the gloom. His back was turned, but Ivan could see tension shudder up the length of it, dire enough to drive him to his feet. Amaranth continued walking away from him, drawing ragged, incomplete breaths.
“What’s wrong?” Ivan gave chase for about a half-step, then halted, lowering his hands.
“huh–ihhD’SCHHHiuh…!”
Amaranth sneezed heavily against his forearm, though just barely. Gripped immediately by it again, his posture inflated with a stilted gasp, then collapsed into a choiceless heave of shoulders.
“--nN’DSCHhiuhh…! uh–EHD'ISSHHHUH!”
Twice more with rising urgency. Amaranth ducked deeper into the crook of his arm each time, the last and most terrible sneeze nearly smothered in the bend of his elbow. Still, it escaped with enough violence for an echo to cling momentarily to this new, empty space. As it faded, he straightened up, and sniffled unevenly a few times but did not turn around.
It wasn’t satisfied and had not let him go, but released him from the brink for the moment.
Ivan had taken a step back, not for himself. Now, he felt himself reject a thrill of heat that struck like lightning against his better nature, leaning instead into the starkness of silence that followed. He looked around the room, if only to spare Amaranth the indignity of being scrutinized as he collected himself.
In the last gasp of daylight leaking in from just one small window at the far end of the room, Ivan noticed shadows pooling beneath the heavy brushstrokes of an expansive oil painting in front of Amaranth. A life-sized marble statue of a nymph grinned wickedly beside that, swathed on either side by crushed velvet curtains. Closer, the waist-high urn he’d nearly shattered was stamped with a winding story, unfolding in a spiral from base to lip. At the bottom, a little mythical hero ran. By the next rung up, his forehead was kissed by the moon goddess. The full height of the vase was all it took for him to acquire a divine glow, surrounded by genuflecting devotees and enthralled animals, following him from far and wide, all the way around the rim. Ivan wasn’t up to date on his global mythology, as Maren had correctly pointed out, but he knew this story was relevant to the celebration unfolding outside. What was it doing here, gathering dust and shadows?
Amaranth caught his composure with a rueful sigh and faced Ivan at last. 
“Forgive me, Ivan. I couldn’t hold myself together any longer—” with one hand, he swept the hair that had fallen loose over his eyes back into place. “—or live with myself if I left you alone down there.”
Ivan’s eyes had adjusted enough to the low light to see him clearly, but not to read him.
“If you were having a good time, I couldn’t tell, but we are only two floors directly up if you’d like to return,” he added. “Oh, you’re leaving?” Ivan huffed an incredulous laugh, shoulders sagging in fond relief. “You could’ve just told me that.”
Amaranth glanced at the ceiling, as though calculating the possibility. “I didn’t have much time to decide,” he admitted with a sheepishness so rare, Ivan felt it like a second lightning strike. “There are many people in that room who have waited a long time to catch me stumbling, or are comforted by nothing other than their belief that I never do…”
Ivan watched him, puzzled. Amaranth was beyond fluent in the common tongue–to a degree that embarrassed Ivan regularly, to be outpaced in his own first language–but sometimes his explanations came laced with a lyrical indirectness that not even crossing the sea dozens of times had washed out. Ivan, raised by sailors’ bluntness, felt as though he’d been asked to read tea leaves during such moments, and in the presence of one of the only people he’d ever truly longed to impress, felt stupid asking for clarity. Perhaps they had traveled together long enough now that Amaranth had learned to divine this from the look on Ivan’s face, because he added, unprompted: “I feel like I’m coming down with something terrible. I’d like to do it in private.” He smiled facetiously. “Maybe that is some great solipsism.”
“What? Are you sick?” What he’d witnessed spoke for itself, but somehow it was still hard to believe.
“I’d hoped not,” Amaranth sighed. “But I can’t hide it anymore. From them or from myself.”
“Well, I’m sure they’d understand if you just told them you weren’t up for entertaining tonight. I don’t think even the royals would kick us out for that.”
“It’s not that,” Amaranth’s expression darkened. “Someone wants something from me. This, we know.”
He was sidling up to the lingering dread that had stayed with Ivan long after their return to the surface. He had witnessed the ritual himself and Maren’s inner eye was keen and meticulous. Still, Amaranth was right. Someone had wanted something and let go of him a little too easily if they hadn’t gotten it.
“You think someone would try something if they knew you were…?” Feeling treacherous to his own nature, he couldn’t quite say it. In their time together, and in the tales he’d heard long before they met, Ivan had never once witnessed even a hairline crack in Amaranth’s composure. They’d fought alongside each other for the turn of two seasons now; rarely had he walked away with even superficial injuries, let alone fatigued. Never like this. Not once.
“Maybe,” Amaranth thumbed the side of his nose absently. Friction against transparent discomfort. “Either way, diplomats talk. I’d… rather they talk about something other than this.”
Ivan chewed the corner of his cuticle as an excuse to hide his mouth. He was too endeared not to smile at this version of Amaranth, who seemed to find the risk of his enemies taking advantage of his weakened state as threatening as suffering one second of gossip at his own expense. Luckily, Amaranth missed his reaction, having twisted fully away to cough sharply into the crook of his elbow.
Ivan’s eyebrows creased at the center. “Is this–? Whatever happened in the caves…” a few versions tumbled out of him before he distilled them into the purest and most agitated: “Are you okay?”
This earned a luminous chuckle from Amaranth, that cracked with the first static of congestion.
“Yes,” Amaranth cleared his throat behind a curled fist, wincing minutely as he did, “It’s sweet of you to say, but even I am not so dramatic to call this a curse. Just too much time in the dark and damp–” the last few words wavered and snagged on a shivering gasp, as if the mere mention of it forced him to feel it again. Hastily, he turned aside and pinched the bridge of his nose in time to suppress another volley of sneezes. He flinched once, twice, three times in succession. The ghost of a vocal moan slipped out on the heels of the deep exhale that followed. Annoyance, or the release of unspent pressure that wouldn’t have built had he permitted himself to sneeze fully. “I am a sunflower, after all,” he joked hazily from behind his hand. “I always find a way to take some part of it with me.” Finally trusting that it was over for another moment, he let his hand fall to his side and refocused to find Ivan’s sternness unmoved. He added, more soberly, “Send another cleric, if it helps. Just, please—not one longing for a life of politics.”
“I believe you,” Ivan said. Ultimately, he did, even though the small-town paranoia was getting harder to shake.
A stout, stringed instrument carved from a hearty gourd sat on a pedestal to Ivan’s right, near enough to his urn that he could’ve easily taken both out with that misstep. A creature’s horns formed the fretboard, delicate strings tautly framing either side of its face. It stuck a long, forked tongue out at him as he met its ruby eyes. “How did you know this room would be empty?”
“Just a guess,” Amaranth sniffled. “I’d guess most of these rooms are. Kings always keep beautiful objects in empty rooms for no one to see.” “You’re worried about what the people at that party will say if they so much as see you sneeze once,” Ivan plucked one whimsical note on the little monster, then silenced the string with his thumb, “but not about what you just did?” “No.” An impish grin flickered across his face. “Are you? It’s not as if they don’t talk about us anyway.”
Ivan discovered himself fiddling nervously with the leather joinings along his vest and plunged his hands into his pockets instead. “So, I really don’t want to go back down there—“ in pursuit of a reason to stay here instead, he felt the shape of two wooden tokens rattling between his fingers and launched into a string of curses so loud and sudden that Amaranth raised his eyebrows, startled and amused.
Ivan scrubbed his face with his palms so hard his features distorted momentarily into a mask of sheer melodrama. “I still have to go find your little sisterrrrr,” he groaned. She wasn’t that, but it had become a recurring joke for him to re-assign her kinship whenever she did something he didn’t like.
He marched all the way across the gallery to the little window and discovered he was peering down from a significant height at a lively pulse of bright colors: the rippling awnings of an alleyway of booths, the billow of slim flags thrust skyward, and throngs of people just as effervescent in dress and spirit.
Ivan yanked the curtain closed dourly. He was putting on a show, but it was a caricature of the truth. He spun to face Amaranth, whose features cut stark and somber against the only sliver of light now spilling in from the hallway behind him.
“Do you need anything before I go?” Ivan tried, tentatively.
Amaranth only smiled, sweet and utterly opaque. “You don’t need to worry about me, Ivan. You should let yourself have some fun, while you’re out there.” There was that wording again; a perfect echo of the way Maren had phrased it: “let yourself”, like he had been willfully denying himself something that both of them could see. Ivan lingered, staring into the faint glimmer of Amaranth’s eyes in the semidark for a moment before sighing, resigned, and brushing past him to the door. “Wouldn’t be the same...” he grumbled. He paused on the threshold. “I hope you feel better,” he said with as much tenderness as he could throw over his shoulder. “Please get some rest.”
🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔
Next ->
#sorry to cut you off just as we get to the parts you actually came here for#the truth is: I needed to find a place to put a pin in it because I'm fiending out. I'm having too much fun.#the POV guy in this is more personal to me than probably anyone else in any fiction I've posted publicly kink or no kink#his hyperfixating tendencies are mine and while I have loved getting way too invested in this story#I have some bullshit I need to do instead of lore-building for a little while!! can you believe that?#I don't like it but that's the real reason I'm compiling#i know what's going to happen and i'm very excited about it but it's gonna be a minute#anyway i got really into this idea that all of the magic users in this world have a semi-unique fingerprint#like even when they do the same thing from a practical perspective it manifests completely differently in mood and appearance#i had so much fun with that shit. i fuck so hard with magic you guys :\ i don't know what to tell you#also the thing about favoring the “never gets sick” character is like... you only get one chance or the trope doesn't hold up right?#i know this is our world and we can bend the rules#but like i said felling the infallible is my no. 1 impulse in a kink context :\#whoever is the most overpowered character in any given universe#just absolutely terrifying in terms of power and/or talent but also flippant or playing around most of the time?#a laser beam shoots from my kink eye directly at that one#anyway enough. thanks for reading!!#we've made it far enough in that i'll actually tag#sneeze kink#sickfic#but not any of the others. we are taking things slow.#what guards the gates#spake:
28 notes · View notes
thedankestfaerie · 25 days
Note
I don't believe that Roberta retired to work at the Scrollery? Sorceress who helped save Neopia? No way. Tor as a knight I could see but Roberta???
yeah I find that interesting. Her whole character arc in TDF was wanting to become a Sorceress, she just kinda dips after the game like okie. I have some ideas on why so I apologize if its a HUGE infodump.
Maybe Hagan, for her safety, wanted her to run it? He knows that she's very very gifted in sorcery and having her run the scrollery would keep her in touch with her magic, while also keeping her safe in Brightvale. He may have given up trying to have Roberta be a royal diplomat since she probably argued with him constantly about it and this was the best compromise he could come up with. Also the last time she went on a diplomatic inquiry she got chased by an evil faerie and almost broke her neck falling from Faerieland. She is the heir to the Brightvale throne (according to the Tarot Card Booklet) so maybe he did this as a way to keep her safe and away from any harm/trouble.
He probably would have been a little more open to her actually pursuing Sorcery if she had Tor escorting her (kinda like Link and Zelda in BOTW/TOTK) but since he's got other duties in another kingdom, Hagan decided against it. He did put a lot of trust in him to "take good care of her" in the game, so he probably still harbors that trust after they save Altador/Neopia from TDF. (Im a huge Torta shipper so its just a silly lil idea yippee)
I like to think that she writes to Jerdana to keep in touch, and I'm sure Jerdana visits from time to time, giving her lessons when the time allows it. As long as it all stays in Brightvale, it will keep Hagan happy.
12 notes · View notes
martyrbat · 8 months
Text
Tumblr media
hm hm hm i feel like this will be really interesting to read with the knowledge of korra and how that effected her instead.... because korra (from my limited knowledge so i could be talking out my ass here) knew she was the avatar at an early age and DID get that community. she had katara and her parents, she had her mentors, she was isolated from the real world during so and perfected the elements other than air (which i kinda recall her struggling with and how its the opposite element of earth so im excited to see if those kinda play out :3) and she was more eager to be the avatar and the excitement and significance it brought (which was a bit clouded by her being sheltered but also would have been expected more before the war impacted things)
i also remember matty saying kyoshi struggled with earth bending (which im super excited to get to and see/see her journey and how it will differ) but!!! i just think its really fun how theyre kinda off the bat setting up this expectation and new grounding for readers who have a past grasp of the avatar universe. even as someone who isnt super familiar with the lore, i know enough to recognize that oh! thats something new!! so just kudos to the writer(s?) for just setting this up to be something very different and in a natural way :3
35 notes · View notes
pelipper · 2 months
Text
Tumblr media
I'VE BEEN WAITING YEARS FOR THIS MOMENT. TODAY IS OFFICIALLY THE BEST DAY EVER.
let it be known that on feburary 6th, 2024 it was bidoof day.
14 notes · View notes
mossmurdock · 3 months
Note
mosss!!!!! do you have any songs that remind you of knight!sugu??? or maybe just knights overall?? i'm so curious heheheh
- @softgirlgonehaywire
oh my god mickey the can of worms uve just opened,,,this is such a goood question!!! ive had knight suguru in mind specifically for these along with butcher!reader in mind
divine loser by clem turner
tongue & teeth by the crane wives
sane by haley heynderickx
weak for your love by thee sacred souls
how i get myself killed by indigo de souza
i now realize nearly all of these are very angsty songs but i promise the fic itself wont be so awful!! (so far...) this is a very short list atm, but i am for sure going to update it eventually this was so fun to think about i cannot believe i hadnt before!
i didnt just want to list these so here r some specific lyrics that particularly hit for me while thinking about the au. (its taking everything in me not to include all the lyrics rn LMAO)
Tumblr media
first up is divine loser by clem turner!!
dear god this song guys. this song. it is so suguru geto, it has his name written all over it!! i really do overuse it in any writing i have for him because this guy is so truly a divine loser. a wet ball of eurgh but in an almost religious way i hate him (lie)
here are some of the lyrics:
My bad habits don't heal They wear a different dress I'm coming down with something I lost my own respect
I bit my fingernails Until I tasted bone So my body remains But my purpose just stopped
DEAR GOD DO YOU GUYS SEE THE VISION??? he's so..he's so....i cant anymore yall. (spolier!! this is also such an amazing song for preist!suguru I MEAN COME ONNNN)
Tumblr media
anyway next is tongue & teeth by the crane wives!
this one is angsty<33
And I know that you mean so well But I am not a vessel for your good intent
You gotta know that this won't last Desperation will erase the fact
I will only wring you dry of everything But if you're fine with that If you're fine with that
there are so many more lyrics i have in mind here but these are the ones that make me go "HURRAY HUZAH!!" for this one specifically, im seeing it as from the pov of the reader and addressed to suguru (i hope this doesnt spoil much LMAO)
Tumblr media
next is sane by haley heynderickx!
another one where i had the reader in mind, though it was a bit more difficult somehow. im not sure how to explain it, but the significance of this one is a little more complex? hopefully that makes sense
Why am I frightened if it's all just a game But the look in your eyes Oh the look in your eyes Oh the look in your eyes kept me sane
Why am I childish, oh why can't I make sense If everything's certain, well I'm certainly offended
(this lyric in particular has me thinking of both of them!! themes of struggling to understand the world around you. DO YALL GET IT!??!)
Tumblr media
next is weak for your love by thee sacred souls!
oh this one is so sweet, it is wonderful and warm and i love the sound of it i highly recommend it. the repetitiveness of the lyrics really get to me here because repetition is such a love struck thing isn't it? and that's a huge part of the beginnings of their relationship (at least what i have in my head so far<3)
Pretty lady, you have me so weak Pretty lady, you have me so weak
You have my heart inside your hands (you have my heart) Baby, be careful what you do with me (be careful, baby) You have control of all the strings (ooh) Baby, be careful what you do with me, me (be careful)
Oh, baby, I go crazy for your love Oh, baby, I go crazy for your love
TEARS THIS SONG APART LOVINGLY RAGGGHHHHHHH MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH CRUNCH SNAP TEAR
Tumblr media
here comes the very last one!! how i get myself killed by indigo de souza
oh and we r back to angst :'0 ++also this is by one of my very favorite artists pls check them out!!
on another note! this is a song i also used for my fic "more than living" which again, seems very redundant, but i can't help myself. reduce, reuse, recycle is my very best motto.
This is probably how I get myself killed This is probably how I get myself killed This is probably how I get myself killed This is probably how I get myself killed (more important repetition are we seeing a pattern here? LOL)
Oh, come when you're called If this all we've got to work with, then it's all we've got to blame
I'm lovin' your skin darlin', I'm lovin' this hot morning I need to be kicked, maybe fucked, maybe told I'm in the way
the initial meaning of this song, if im correct, is based on a very toxic relationship. which still somewhat applies to this au, but ive sort of expanded on it another way. i had suguru's responsibilities and duties as a knight on the mind! the beckoning!! come dog, and heel while you're at it! <- that sort of thing if yall catch my draft and ofc the reader picks up on this,,,and is maybe a little mean about it :o
Tumblr media
anyway WE ARE FINALLY AT THE END LETS GOOOO!!! this was soo much fun! thank you so much for the ask darling i loved it<33
BUT IM VERY CURIOUS NOW!! ur such an inspiration do have any fic playlists of your own, or any stray songs floating around reminding you of certain fics or characters or even interactions?? I WILL TAKE ANYTHING AND PLEASE DO TALK ABOUT IT (if u have the time ofc)
i unfortunately have yet to get through much of your longer writing but i would absolutely love to have something to listen to when i can!
12 notes · View notes
bookdragon1811 · 7 months
Text
23 notes · View notes
emblazons · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
BYLER WEEK 2022: Day 4: Song Lyrics
I was the best man in a size too small. You were my best friend, going at it all.
"Size Too Small," by Sufjan Stevens
96 notes · View notes
enypneon · 3 months
Text
the emperor is WHOOOOAHSHDHA????
Tumblr media
9 notes · View notes
anch-vaviel · 6 months
Text
The absolute worst feeling for me is when you're moving a villager's house and they're like "Yeah, I'm totes excited for a new island view! Being on a different part of the island sound SOOO exciting!!" But you're literally just moving them a step to the right
16 notes · View notes
sneez · 1 year
Audio
since i started testosterone in february i have been reading a stanza of andrew marvell’s poem ‘the garden’ every month to track the way my voice has changed. today i finished it :-)
#my voice#does it belong in that tag given that i am speaking and not singing. ah well in it goes#andrew marvell#it is exciting to finally be able to post this! given the nature of the project i've been working on it for a while#i can't remember if i was initially intending to post it but i think it's neat so you guys can see it too :-) a questionable gift unto ye#it's one of my favourite ever poems which is why i picked it. partly because it's a cracking poem but also because the garden in#question is very likely fairfax's garden given that marvell wrote it whilst he was living at his house to tutor his daughter :-)#i love the line about melons. i love the idea that fairfax was growing melons. his melonship#also 'the luscious clusters of the vine upon my mouth do crush their wine' is such incredible imagery i think about it all the time#stopping myself now before i start explaining all my favourite parts of the poem because then i would just be reciting the whole poem#sorry the audio quality changes quite a bit by the way i kept changing where i recorded#oh also i skipped a month because my voice hadn't changed at all (between the first and second stanzas i think) which is why the#number of months doesn't quite match up to the number of stanzas#i do wish i had recorded a stanza when i was one month on T given that my voice barely changes in the last few verses. ah well#anyway i hope you enjoy it my dear friends :-) holding you all in my arms#also as usual i have a few messages and things to answer so i will do that soon! i have been enjoying being active again after so long :-)#ive got a song to post soon too. he he ho ho ho. hum hum hum
86 notes · View notes
petalstem · 5 months
Text
Thoughts on the new graphic novel excerpt!
This is the first time in years that I have been GENUINELY excited about something relating to canon WC. Genuinely. Like, the past few graphic novels WERE good, I'm a big fan of Winds of Change, but like. I wasn't HYPED over them. I still pirated them (I did buy Winds of Change after I pirated it though, it was on sale).
I ADORE what we've seen of the art so far, the character designs are really cute and seem very in-line both with the characters, as well as just... being good! I love Rustys little striped tail and his brown ears especially. The expressions and movement is really good as well, I love the characterization we're seeing already with Rusty and Graypaws expressions.
I LOVE the inclusion of Princess! This is great for several reasons, firstly, it shows they are willing and able to make changes, something I'll elaborate on in a bit, and it also helps with the cohesion between Into the Wild and Fire and Ice. Fireheart randomly remembering he has a sister he's never mentioned or thought about ever in the middle of Fire and Ice was just... weird. Especially given how Princess is ALSO an outdoor cat who lives nearby, it's clear that he just. Wasn't written with a sister in mind. Having Princess show up as an established character BEFORE she's relevant is a subtle change I really like.
Now. To elaborate on changes. I am desperately, DESPERATELY hoping they change some stuff from the original books. While I think arc 1 is still worth reading, and still solid books, so much of it has aged HORRIBLY, namely, all of the constant horrific ableism that goes unaddressed and unchallenged. In an ideal world, they would
1. Introduce Snowkit before his death. Preferably establishing that the idea he 'can't learn' is unfounded (It is, IN THE TEXT ITSELF, shown that he IS capable of learning, given how Dappletail communicates with him through gesture. He is ABSOLUTELY capable of learning and it's ableist of the series to continue to shove the idea that he can't).
2. Have Fireheart either not make constant comments about Cinderpaw having a miserable life for being disabled (Despite the fact she's literally happy as a medicine cat), or have someone actively challenge him on this. This might not even be that big of an issue in the graphic novel if they don't let Fireheart's thoughts show up as often as they do in the books, as it's mainly him THINKING about how 'miserable' Cinderpaw is and not outright SAYING it, but I just found him incredibly tiring with HOW often he'd sulk about Cinderpaw during scenes when she was literally acting happy and healthy.
3. Give Brightheart more agency. One of the most shockingly ableist moments in all of arc 1 is when Firestar tells Cloudtail that he has to take Brightheart as an apprentice, that she'll never be a true warrior, and that she's entirely his responsibility now. While Brightheart is sitting with them. Firestar quite literally talks to her BOYFRIEND as if she's a small child who needs to be looked after and not like the fully grown adult woman she actually is. This scene could very easily be fixed, by just having Brightheart being the one talking to Firestar, and to get rid of the comparison to her being Cloudtail's apprentice. Brightheart going "Hey Firestar, I'm ready to be a warrior again and Cloudtail and I have some ideas on how I can best hunt" solves basically 90% of the problem. Also, remove the scene of Firestar saying how Brightheart being moved to the elders den was because she was going to have to be an elder. That's literally not even true, she was moved to the elders den explicitly because the elders liked having her around, and because they needed room in the medicine den, but Brightheart still needed time to heal. Firestar's literally objectively wrong there
4. This one isn't about ableism, so it's less important, but get rid of Princess's bizarre dialogue about how she "wants to decide Cloudkits destiny" and how Fireheart needs to "make him a hero just like him". It's baffling and it's really uncomfortable, why does Princess think she "deserves" to choose her kits "destiny" because he's her firstborn.
5. Also not about ableism, but I feel this is also incredibly important, don't fucking include the lines about StarClan being the reason Clan cats are moral. It's disgusting on so many levels how BloodClan is said to not care for the young, sick, or elderly ENTIRELY because they don't believe in StarClan. This childrens series should not have the fucking moral of "religion is what makes us moral", that's revolting. Just change it to its their lack of community, not their lack of religion
Ultimately, I think things are really looking up for the graphic novel. I'm certainly buying a copy, and I'm really excited to see how it turns out. I have some hope of them changing some of the worst parts of the first arc, namely, the limited ability to see Fireheart thoughts as often as the books do will most likely cut down on how often he's able to be ableist towards his Clanmate, but ultimately, even if they don't change the worst parts, I'd guess that the art alone would still warrant a purchase!
15 notes · View notes