#*shudders for i cannot deny the truth*

[captainspiggbo]

[multific]

When the World Turns to Ash

Aemond Targaryen x Reader

Summary: Since childhood, you have felt an invisible thread tying you to another. When Prince Aemond Targaryen loses his eye, you collapse in agony, finally understanding the truth.

But Aemond does not want a soulmate.

He does not want weakness, does not want someone sharing in the burden of his suffering. He tries to shut you out, to deny the bond, but fate does not bend so easily.

And no matter how much he resists, he cannot ignore the one truth that has always been, when you hurt, he hurts, too.

And when he finally stops running, when he finally accepts the love that has always been his, he learns that pain is not a curse… but a promise that neither of you will ever face this world alone.

Since childhood, pain has never been yours alone.

You felt it when you were small, scraped knees, bruised elbows, little pains that barely mattered. But you also felt things that were not yours.

The sharp sting of a lash, a blade slicing through skin, the deep ache of wounds that no child should bear.

You learned to live with it, to endure it in silence.

Until the night a boy lost his eye.

That night, pain unlike anything you had ever known tore through you. You collapsed where you stood, hands clawing at your face, sobbing as fire seared through your skull.

It was endless, unbearable. You had never screamed before. That night, you did.

And somewhere in the world, another screamed with you.

Years passed.

The pain lessened, but never disappeared.

You still felt it sometimes, a sword’s bite, a deep ache in the ribs, old wounds that never truly healed. But you endured.

You lived in a small holdfast in the Riverlands, far from the power struggles of court.

But when King Viserys died and the kingdom fractured, your father chose to swear fealty to Aegon the Usurper.

Which was how you found yourself in King’s Landing.

It was in the halls of the Red Keep that you first saw him.

Prince Aemond.

And you knew.

His gaze found yours across the corridor, his lone violet eye narrowing slightly, as if he had felt something, recognized something.

You turned and fled before he could approach.

But fate would not be denied.

The second time you met was at a feast.

You had been given no choice but to attend, seated near the high table, your father eager to prove your family's loyalty. You felt it before you saw him—his presence, sharp and suffocating.

And then he was there, lowering himself into the chair beside you.

Neither of you spoke at first. The air between you was heavy, thick with something unspoken.

Finally, his voice cut through the silence.

"It was you."

Your throat tightened. You kept your gaze fixed on the goblet in your hands. "I don't know what you mean, my prince."

Aemond scoffed, leaning in slightly. "Do not play coy. We both know the truth." His voice was lower now, for your ears alone. "You are the one who shares my pain."

You shuddered. "I don't want this."

"Neither do I."

The words should have made you feel relief. Instead, they cut deeper than any blade.

You turned to look at him then, at the sharp lines of his face, the storm in his violet eye. "You cannot deny it," you whispered.

A muscle in his jaw twitched. "I have spent my life trying."

You swallowed past the lump in your throat. "You feel it, don’t you? When I hurt."

He said nothing.

But that was answer enough.

Days passed. Aemond ignored you, and you tried to do the same.

And yet, the bond did not allow for silence.

One evening, you accidentally cut your palm on a broken goblet. The pain was minor, a sting, nothing more.

But across the hall, Aemond flinched.

Your eyes locked.

Without a word, he strode toward you, his hand seizing your wrist. He turned your palm over, inspecting the wound.

You watched, wide-eyed, as he pulled a cloth from his sleeve and gently wrapped your hand. His touch was careful, precise, soft.

He met your gaze, something unreadable in his expression.

"You should be more careful."

And then he was gone.

He started watching you after that.

At feasts. In the training yard. In the gardens. He never spoke, but his presence followed you, heavy and inescapable.

Until the night you were hurt.

A foolish accident, tripping down the stone steps, your ankle twisting beneath you. The pain shot through your leg, and you barely had time to gasp before a roar echoed through the halls.

And then he was there.

Storming toward you, his eye blazing with fury.

He dropped to one knee beside you, his hands ghosting over your form, searching. "What happened?" His voice was tight, controlled, but you could feel the panic beneath it.

"I-I'm fine, Aemond, I just fell-"

"You are not fine," he snapped.

He exhaled sharply, pressing his forehead to yours. The gesture was shockingly intimate. "I felt it," he whispered. "Your pain. It-" His breath shuddered. "It hurt."

You swallowed hard. "Because we are bound."

He was silent for a long moment. Then, so softly you almost didn't hear it—

"I do not want to be alone anymore."

Your heart ached.

Carefully, you reached up, your fingers trailing over the sharp lines of his face. He did not pull away.

Instead, he leaned into your touch.

"Aemond," you murmured.

Something broke in his expression then. His lips parted slightly, his hand lifting to cup your cheek, his thumb brushing against your skin.

And then, finally, after all this time-

He kissed you.

It was slow, hesitant at first, as if he was afraid you might disappear. But when you melted into him, when your fingers curled into his tunic, he claimed you.

When he pulled away, his forehead rested against yours. His breath was warm against your lips.

"You are mine," he whispered, "as I am yours."

You smiled softly, pressing another kiss to his lips, as gentle as a promise.

"Always."

~Masterlist~

ˇAO3ˇ

Wattpad

/DO NOT TRANSLATE, STEAL OR REPOST ANY OF MY WORKS TO THIS OR OTHER PLATFORMS/

[helaintoloki]

Hello and good evening,

I saw you opened requests so I'm dropping by!

What about an infinity stone mishap that has multiple Bucky variants be at the compound at the same time. (Let's just have Winter Soldier be not entirely murderous for the sake of Tony's heart) and literally no one can seem to keep some apart except Steve and reader, who goes off on a rant about all the teeny tiny, to her very obvious details that differ between the Bucky's and accidentally in doing so admits she has a huge crush on him/them??

I hope that made sense omg

And as always, only if it speaks to you and you're up for it! ♡♡

a/n: hi hon, ty for sending this in! i’ll admit this was a bit challenging to tackle but still fun! hope you don’t mind that i changed a few details in the process <3

warnings: light angst, lots of pining, fluff

summary: a multiversal mishap leaves the compound teeming with Bucky variants, and Steve entrusts you with helping him figure out which one is the real deal

“I think I had a nightmare like this once,” Sam shudders as the two of you survey the plethora of Bucky’s taking up space in the compound. A multiversal mishap had led to an overflow of variants into the compound, and now your team found themselves working vigorously to determine which Bucky was your own and which ones needed to be sent back to their proper dimension.

Getting rid of the Winter Soldiers had been the easiest, the red stars on their arms giving away their identities and also giving Tony a heart attack in the process. You could tell apart the Bucky’s with hair that was too long or too short, the one’s that had brown or green eyes instead of blue, and the ones that went by Jane instead of James. The real work, however, came when there was only a handful of variants left that looked identical to your own Bucky.

“We can’t take any chances,” Steve says after having approached you and Sam. “All of these men are going to insist they’re our version of Bucky, and we can’t risk sending back the wrong one. I’m really going to need your help on this, y/n.”

“Why me?” You retort with furrowed brows, nervously peeking your head out of the office to observe the variants that sit restless in the common room.

“Out of everyone here, you and I know Bucky best,” the blond states truthfully. “I think if we work together we have a better shot at cleaning up this whole mess. The sooner the better.”

“You got that right,” Sam scoffs, prompting you to roll your eyes in response.

You couldn’t exactly deny the truth in Steve’s words. Other than Captain America himself, Bucky considered you to be one of his closest friends. Your kindhearted nature made it easy for him to gravitate towards you when first joining the team, and after saving each other’s asses on multiple occasions, he knew you were someone he could entrust with his life. You tore down his walls with ease, you brought out the best in him, and he’d forever be indebted to you for your friendship.

You decide with Steve that the best course of action is to spend one-on-one time with each Bucky you cross paths with to detect any abnormalities in their behavior. The Captain makes it abundantly clear that you cannot let them cloud your judgement with pleasantries, and it’s pertinent you trust your gut with each decision you make. The pressure is on, and you feel the nerves settling in your gut as you approach the Bucky that has made himself at home in the communal kitchen.

“Hey, stranger,” you call gently, a pleasant smile on your face as you seat yourself at the island counter. You note with interest how the man visibly relaxes at your presence and sets aside the pot of tea he’d just finished brewing. His eyes are bright like your Bucky’s, full of adoration and relief when he sets them upon your face.

“Y/n,” he breathes out gently before coming to meet you at the counter, “you have no idea how glad I am to see you, doll.”

“Rough day?” You prompt understandingly.

“Where do I even begin? Being around so many versions of myself is more unsettling than I ever could have imagined.”

“Well, Steve and I are doing our best to fix that,” you assure him. You watch as the man turns back to his pot of tea and begins to pour you both a cup. There’s nothing unusual about this considering your Bucky also enjoys drinking tea; it helps him keep calm and relaxed before retiring for the night.

“How many are left?” He asks before handing you your mug.

“Around ten. Steve and I are making our rounds to figure out which Bucky is ours.”

“Am I your Bucky?” The man prompts with a raised brow while taking a careful drink from his cup.

“You tell me,” you reply with a faint smile, ignoring the way your heart begins to flutter when he refers to himself as ‘your Bucky.’

“I know you have a scar on your stomach from being stabbed by another Widow in the Red Room, and the reason I know that is because I accidentally walked in on you changing in the shower room once,” Bucky admits with a sheepish laugh, prompting your face to heat with embarrassment.

“God, don’t remind me,” you groan while hiding your face in your hands. It’s not exactly comforting to know that Bucky has accidentally seen you naked in at least two different universes, but it also doesn’t make it easier to determine if this man is an imposter.

“I know you like your tea with a tablespoon of honey,” he continues before gesturing to your cup. You hum thoughtfully and set the mug down before meeting his gaze.

“I do, and I know you only like chamomile tea,” you reply, prompting Bucky to stiffen in front of you as you look down at the mug in front of you. “But this is green tea.”

Sighing, the doppelgänger sets his cup down with a defeated frown before meeting your gaze with pleading eyes. “Don’t make me go back.”

“I’m sorry, but it has to be done. We can’t risk the effects that come with having two Bucky’s in one place.”

“Then can I ask you a favor?” The man says solemnly.

“Of course.”

“Before you send me back, can I… is it okay if I hug you?” He asks, catching you by surprise. Noting the confusion on your face, Bucky gives you a dejected smile that doesn’t reach his eyes before explaining, “We don’t talk anymore in my universe. I was an idiot, and you rightfully cut me out of your life. This is the first time in years you’ve looked at me with love and not utter disgust, and I just want to enjoy it a little longer before I have to leave.”

Your heart aches for this poor Bucky who very clearly misses you, or at least his version of you, so you can’t find it in yourself to deny his request. You wordlessly rise from your seat and allow him to wrap his arms around your frame. His hold is tight, his nose brushing against your neck as he savors the feel of your touch, and you feel terrible for the fact that there isn’t anything you can do to help him.

“I’m not sure what happened between the two of you,” you utter quietly while rubbing comforting circles into his back, “but if she’s anything like me, I know she probably misses you but is too stubborn to admit it. Don’t give up on her.”

You release him with a smile and find his eyes shining with tears as he lets your words settle. You bid him a final goodbye before escorting him to Tony and Bruce so that he can be properly transferred back to his own time. That’s only one Bucky down with several more to go, and you know now that you really have your work cut out for you. This is going to be much more difficult than you anticipated.

You stumble upon the next Bucky quietly ruminating in your room, and it takes him a moment to detect your presence as you lean against the doorway and simply observe his mannerisms. You can already tell this isn’t your Bucky by the way he anxiously taps his fingers against his knees; your Bucky’s tell is the anxious bouncing of his leg. This Bucky also wears his hair pulled back into a ponytail, whereas your Bucky prefers to tie his hair back into in a half-up style.

His eyes widen in shock when he finally notices you standing there, and you’re taken aback by the way he nearly flings himself at you. His strong arms wrap around your midsection and lift you off the ground, holding you impossibly tight against him as if you’ll disappear otherwise.

“жена,” he whispers in a trembling voice while combing a hand through your hair.

“I don’t speak Russian…” you voice with an uncomfortable laugh, struggling to take a breath due to how tightly you’re pressed against him. “Buck, you’re kind of suffocating me here.”

The man finally releases you after your admission, but his hands immediately find their way to your cheeks as he cups your face and rests his forehead against your own. You’re startled by the closeness, but there’s no denying the rapid beating of your heart when you stare into his troubled eyes. You’ve had daydreams like this before, but it’s jarring to experience it in person.

“When I arrived here and came across your room I thought it was too good to be true,” he utters shakily, “but you’re here. You’re alive.”

“Bucky, I-“

“You’ve come back to me, жена.”

“жена?” You repeat unsurely. His panicked features melt into a fond smile at the sound of your botched Russian, and he carefully pushes back your hair before gifting you a nod of confirmation.

“Wife.”

Your eyes widen at his proclamation, your heart dropping to your chest while you process the weight of his words and struggle with the turmoil inside of you. You thought dealing with the Bucky from the kitchen was difficult, but this is way out of your playing field.

“Oh god,” you breathe out before carefully removing his hands from your face. He frowns.

“What’s wrong?”

“I know this is all really confusing, but I’m not…” you start to say, grappling with your guilt at having to crush the man’s hopes of being reunited with his version of you, “I’m not your wife.”

The man’s features become sullen at your confession, brows furrowing in disappointment and confusion. “What do you mean? You aren’t y/n?”

“I am, but I’m just not the same y/n you know. This is a different dimension, and you were sent here by accident.”

“So you’re not… she’s not really alive, then,” he murmurs dejectedly, eyes casting towards the floor in despair.

“No, and I’m so sorry I’m not the one you’re looking for,” you console, resting a comforting hand on his bicep. Bucky’s eyes flutter shut at the feel of your touch, something he’d been lacking since your death. You aren’t his wife, but in spite of that, he is grateful to be able to speak to you and see your face once more. “Can I ask what happened to her?”

“Hydra wanted revenge for my desertion and for aiding Captain America in their destruction,” Bucky utters lowly, eyes hardening at the memory. “An eye for an eye. She paid the price for my mistakes, and I’ve spent every waking moment avenging her death.”

A chill runs through your spine as you hear the recounting of your counterpart’s death, but you do your best to remain composed while in the presence of this alternate version Bucky. Your heart aches for the man, and you once again find yourself completely useless at trying to help him.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” you express solemnly. Despite this, Bucky looks to you with a tender smile before carefully taking your hand in his own.

“Don’t be. I know you’re not her, but seeing you again, hearing your voice- It’s the most precious gift I could ask for. Thank you for giving me some semblance of peace.”

You’re a wreck when this Bucky is returned to his own timeline, and after multiple instances of running into Bucky’s who believe you’re their y/n Steve assures you that he’ll take over moving forward. It seems that each Bucky you speak to cares so fondly for you, they adore you even, and yet in this universe you’ve been designated as a close friend and nothing more. It’s killing you to see all the ‘what if’s,’ because deep inside you know that you’ll never be with your Bucky the way you want to.

You’re not sure when your crush on the super soldier had first developed, but you know that you’ve harbored these romantic feelings for him for quite a while now. You’ve never told anyone, though you can guess Steve was smart enough to figure it out on his own, and you have no urge to act on such feelings in fear of how complicated things will become if he doesn’t reciprocate your emotions.

Your rumination leaves you in deep thought as you sit out on the balcony and enjoy some quiet after all the chaos you’ve endured. You hear the sliding door open and shut behind you, but you make no attempt to see who it is until they seat themselves beside you. You peek at Bucky from the corner of your eyes before returning your gaze to the New York skyline, simply enjoying his presence without making an effort to speak.

“You doing okay?” He asks, effectively breaking the silence between you.

“I didn’t think being around multiple versions of you would be so exhausting,” you confess with a humorless laugh, but it prompts his lips to quirk up slightly into a smile.

“You’re starting to sound like Sam,” he teases with a careful nudge to your side. While you’d normally laugh at his jokes, Bucky doesn’t even get a smile out of you. You feel him shift closer to you and hope he can’t detect the way your heart picks up a beat in response. He nudges you again softer this time and asks, “Talk to me. What’s eating you?”

“Every Bucky variant I met today looked at me like I moved heaven and earth together, like I was their reason for getting up in the morning, and I guess it just reminded me of the fact that my own Bucky doesn’t really look at me that way.”

You pull your knees up to your chest and let your chin fall on top of them with a melancholic sigh. A part of you feels embarrassed to be voicing your disappointment aloud, but you figure there’s no harm in telling a variant since you’ll never have to see them again after today.

“Do you want him to look at you that way?”

“Of course I do,” you avow incredulously like the answer isn’t already obvious. “I love him so much that Steve trusted my judgement enough to have me help him sniff out the doppelgängers. I know how he likes his tea, how he does his hair, what his favorite movie is- the list could go on forever. But of course, I live in the one universe where Bucky and I don’t end up together.”

You feel his hand come to rest on the small of your back and shudder at the feel of his cool metal hand seeping through your sweater. You can’t help but to lean against him so that your head is rested on his shoulder, and you’re able to find some comfort in his presence. You hear him let out a thoughtful hum beside you.

“You want to know something?” Bucky pronounces. He feels your head nod against him and smiles. “I know the exact moment I fell in love with you.”

The confession has you lifting your head to peer up at him questioningly. “You do?”

“Of course I do. We were on a mission, and you picked up Steve’s shield to stop a bullet from hitting me straight on before using it to knock out three bad guys in a row. You looked so strong, so beautiful. My heart was yours from then on.”

“I didn’t think you remembered that,” you confess quietly, stomach fluttering with nervous butterflies.

“Haven’t stopped thinking about it since,” he asserts with a fond smile. “Any Bucky would be lucky to have you, and I’m sorry yours has been too chicken to make a move.”

“I guess it’s not totally his fault,” you relent with a meager shrug. “I’m chicken, too.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Bucky suggests, tone light and inviting. “I know I’m not the most obvious about it, but I love you too.”

You open your mouth to answer only to be interrupted by the sound of the sliding door again. You turn to see Steve standing there, surprise on his features when he sees you two sitting on the balcony together.

“Y/n, I’ve been looking for you,” he says suddenly. “I wanted to talk to you about the variants-“

“Don’t worry,” you interrupt him with a passive wave of your hand before gesturing towards Bucky with your head. “I found another one for you. This Bucky just told me he loves me which means he’s definitely not ours.”

“Actually,” Steve says with an amused grin, “I was just coming to tell you we sent the last of them back to their own dimensions.”

“What?” You gape in shock, heart immediately dropping to your stomach as you slowly shift your gaze towards the Bucky sitting next to you. He flashes you a bashful smile and a small wave that fills you with embarrassment.

“I’ll give you two a moment,” the blond says with a knowing smile before making his exit, leaving you alone once more with the man you’d just poured your entire heart out to.

“I thought you knew,” Bucky offers apologetically. You take a nervous swallow before forcing yourself to meet his gaze again.

“So you’re saying that you do love me?” You ask hesitantly, almost afraid that this is all some sort of joke.

“I may not be as romantic or straightforward as the other Bucky’s you met, but I love you just as much as they do if not more,” he professes earnestly, gently resting a hand on your cheek to pull you closer. “I think we make a great team, but we’d make an even better couple.”

“I think so too,” you utter with a giddy smile, waiting with bated breath as Bucky slowly begins to lean in. The anticipation is killing you, but you’re finally rewarded for your patience when his lips meet your own in a tender kiss. Your lashes flutter shut as you melt into his touch, reveling in the moment you’ve dreamed of since discovering your feelings for Bucky.

No matter the timeline and no matter the universe, Bucky is destined to fall in love with his y/n. And you wouldn’t want it any other way.

[amarynthian-chronicles]

Equivalent Value

Sebastian Solace x Reader

(warning: suggestive themes)

"Come on, Seb, don't be like that. Please?"

"No."

"Pretty please?"

He reached to place a clawed finger under your chin, tilting his head and grinning, narrowing his eyes.

"You are lovely when you beg. My answer remains negative."

"You are a jerk."

"A merchant's honour is very important, little light. As much as I enjoy your charming pleas, I cannot go against my own rules. You need to offer me something of equivalent or approximate value. And your sweet "pretty please" is not going to cut it."

He was taunting you, relishing the power that your despair offered. Perhaps your own pain was a soothing balm to calm his own wretchedness. It was more tolerable to listen to the shrieks of others than one's own, after all.

Still, you refused his answer. You frowned, crossing your arms over your chest.

"It is becoming insanely difficult to scavenge things and I am just trying to survive at this point. If you want to keep your favourite toy in a functional state, that will require some concessions on your end. Can you please make an exception this time? I am desperate here."

Sebastian could not deny the logic of your statement. You had never allowed yourself to be placed in such a position, and perhaps your claims of not having any research files to bargain with were truthful.

Magnificent. He could make you dance to his music.

He leaned closer, his lips brushing against yours, cruel words dripping like poisonous honey from them.

"How desperate are you, my wayward light?"

Mind games with monsters were a dangerous thing and you would normally do your best to win. However, this time you did not have any advantage and you simply wished to get the needed supplies. You sighed.

"What do you want?"

"The most precious thing you could offer to a starving man in this very moment."

You did not stop him when his strong arms snaked around your waist, engulfing and capturing you. You were his prize, the most valuable type of treasure he could acquire. His ally, his accomplice, sharing his secrets.

You were well aware that he wanted you, your mind, body, and soul. Whether you wished to admit it or not, you yourself were the most powerful card you had against him.

"I hereby offer myself. It is all I have. Will this suffice?"

To your surprise, he gently reached for your hand, kissing it in a gentlemanly manner.

"The payment is more than acceptable."

You blinked in confusion at the sudden change of demeanour. Yes, the feral desire was still there, but his actions were now coupled with a certain tenderness that bordered on worship.

Sebastian took his sweet time, placing many gentle kisses along your hand, then upon each finger. His teeth grazed slowly along your wrist. Your cheeks were burning.

"Oh, my."

"My blessing, my little light, sweet salvation. For years, I had remained here, condemned, left to rot in this oceanic prison. And yet, an angel has been sent to me, tormenting me, mocking me with their warmth, their hope. I shall feast, I shall drink that nectar."

"You send such mixed signals, you know?"

"To keep you guessing, of course."

"Bastard."

His lips claimed yours, eager, showing his claim. Your softness drove him mad, his long tongue reaching to explore the warm and welcoming cavern of your mouth. You made little muffled squeaks, surprised at the sudden surge of passion. Even more so at the length of his rather dexterous tongue that was exploring with pure abandon.

Sebastian decided to savour the moment, gliding his claws along your sides, grinning as he felt you shudder under his touch. Such softness. He had been deprived of the pleasures of simple touch and affection for so long.

Deciding that he should grant you the mercy of allowing you to breathe once more, he released you from the kiss. He nuzzled the soft silken skin under your neck, allowing your warmth to comfort him. Your pulse, your beating heart, a symphony only for him to enjoy.

Sebastian had to gather some control over himself, resisting the need to claim you in that very moment. No, he wished to slowly unwrap his present and enjoy each part of the payment that had been offered. Still, his three hands could not help themselves, fondling and scratching, teasing you all over. You were still gasping for breath, holding onto him.

"Seb..."

"I am busy, darling."

"Don't tear the fabric, I don't have a whole closet of clothing, you know."

"Worry not, I shan't disrobe you just yet. Your payment will be in several installments. This is merely the first one. As for the garments, I can procure you whatever you wish."

"Good thing you didn't print a receipt, while you are at it."

Strong hands kept massaging and squeezing your sides and hips, earning your sweet hums and moans as a reward. You relaxed in his hold, leaning your head on his chest, closing your eyes.

"A little to the right, upwards. My back has been killing me for days, this is wonderful. You should be a masseuse, Seb. Three arms work magic."

He laughed gently at your nonsense, resting his chin on your soft head.

"Of course, my dear light."

[ejkreader]

YALL

It's TIMEEEEEEE

(Wow I genuinely forgot to link the work in my excitement. I'm so cool right guys)

Unspoken Truce IS FINALLY HERE FOR DAY FOUR OF @azrisweek WOOOOOOOOO

419 LINES OF AZRIS POETRY IN IAMBIC PENTAMETER BABYYY

Many, many, MANY thanks to @irithiadourden for beta-reading and hyping this work up!!!! You were so, so sweet for agreeing to beta and your reactions were priceless, I will keep them forever <3

Little snippet/intro below ^^

They never needed to say it, they knew

All the same. But soon, maybe, one of them

Would gain the courage to say the words in

Both their minds, hearts, their very being. ‘Till

Then, they could figure out the rest, with an

Unspoken truce.

ENTIRE THING BELOW THE CUT (bc I just noticed ao3 is down) (it's up again but I'm keeping this here :)) (also the story on Ao3)

Characters in the Play

Shadowsinger,  Azriel of Velaris; spymaster of the Night Court

Prince of Autumn → New King of Autumn,  Eris Vanserra; son of Beron

Lord of Foxes,  Lucien Vanserra; son of Helion

The Prophetess,  Elain Acheron, mate of Lucien

The Doomed Love,  Jesminda Taylors

Bird with Broken Wings,  Eleanor Vanserra → cor Aurum; Lady of Autumn

Lord of Bloodshed,  Cassian of Illyria

High Lord of Autumn,  Beron Vanserra

High Lord of Day,  Helion cor Aurum (Heart of Gold)

High Lord of Night,  Rhysand de Tenebris (of the Dark)

High Lord of Spring,  Tamlin Vercustos (Springkeeper)

Vanserra brothers (mortuus)

Chorus

Servingman

Nurse

-Shadowsinger

Wild colors, hot and bright, burn below rock

Whil’ over strong gales and tree-tops sings he;

The darkest blue from night, star in the sky.

Why, wondered he, would he decide to strike

Moons before they had detailed, risking all?

-Prince of Autumn

Harsh, cruelly was he taken from his rest,

As shrewd fire cannot of ease be contained.

It sears, burns, eats at human flesh, but when

They try oppressors to bite, death rains them.

Through struggles he waits, knowing he’ll be saved.

Try as he might to deny it, he knew.

-Shadowsinger

A glinting light the only showing, seen

Past acers, past demesnes he soars, watch him.

Glimpse shadows shelter their sore master, wild

With fury trapped in mortal shell, escaped.

Alights, ire and cold, on the forest’s house.

Engulfed by the night, silent, quiet, go—!

No need to search, connecting string pulls him.

In dungeons he appears, fair light sole guide.

-Prince of Autumn

“Ere— guards hear you approaching?”

“No father, I can hear naught.”

The darkness shudders as a whip strafes down.

“Vile boy, dare you talk back to me? Disgrace!

Await I your return for days, but then

No news bring you? I should kill thee for this!

Your hours North wasted, it seems, for that bat.

Think you I know not of your bond with him?

So foolish, it seems good to rid of you.”

“Yes father, you always do what you will.”

The wrath of Ares shone from the king’s smile.

The other simply hung there, antics known.

His face still; turmoil hidden, left inside.

But fear was written there beneath his mask,

His mate known by the one fed lies, had now

This truth found, he must have left clues, his fault—

-Shadowsinger

It was fine. The day’s end would come to them

Together.

-Prince of Autumn

Heart violent, a match lights, flame sparked.

At once aware of his mute presence here,

Here to save him, but he must not do so.

The darkness’ death would end with his sole corpse.

A fitter end: him alone, broken, dead.

His burnished locks left alone on cold stone

That errant Shadow of his left unscathed.

For he was a monster on this world, and

Should be killed as such. Laugh at this pity!

Again, papa raised his hand to cuff him.

Each crack of the crop brings him closer, or

Perhaps it’s further. Then he stepped aside.

His bane smiled as he neared the last, sharp tool,

The wicked, glinting silver edge tightly gripped.

No method of evasion found or used

Nor hoped for or thought of. It would be done.

He wished for it to be quick— now, he thought,

If his shade would just let him go alone…

Yes, then he could repent for his soul’s sins.

It was not ending for him, but a start.

-Shadowsinger

“It’d be an ending for me, you vile prick!”

Words into empty woods, not replied to

With his mind in a quiet place, blocked off.

Had he planned this? Had he known how this would

Break him: if he was to pass? This was it;

Time to stop this fool’s play by saving him.

And then—

Just when—

It rises—

Held taut—

Now falls,

He can see his snake's eyes close at the end,

As flesh turns into shadow on the spot

Reforming in the blade's path to halt it.

Four dark red eyes enlarge to see him kick,

Jab, and lunge at the bigger, stumbling form.

Grab from its sheath the teller of truth, and

See him fall down as if taking a bow,

Because of the length lodged in his thick throat.

It was all just so perfect. At last; now.

Revenge would at last be enacted on

The monster in the room, to save his light.

But the king would not simply give his throne,

No, he would grab the Shadow’s arm, pull him

Down onto his hilt, only then cave in.

-Prince of Autumn

The Prince of Autumn opened his eyes to

Torn flesh and blood; remains of dear papa.

(He had been far-gone, almost in a sleep.)

But next to it, what ho! The shadows pooled

All around their Voice, wounded, on the floor.

Wings all splayed at odd angles, knife still grasped.

“What have you done, Night? My plan is naught if

You are not there for it. Please, stay with me.”

His bones shook as he held him to his heart

And the limp body’s blood pooled down his vest.

There was a wan pulse, fading, as he clung

To the flight leathers still on his bird’s form.

Do not remember, push the thought away:

This was not the past, not his brother’s love

Laid dormant in the hall for all to see.

No, it was not the affair of his kin

But he was just as cold as she had been.

Perhaps he was the cold one. That was odd,

It was assumed he had heat in his veins.

Now, he was so engrossed in his mate that

He did not heed his father’s carcass as

It started to glow.

And a strange feeling began to fill him

As molten blazes, liquid flame, began

To quickly filter into his dour self.

It fled from the inert corpse of his sire

To the new, blazing scion of their dreams.

The flames loved their new master, for they knew

That he would be the Lord to make their heat

Known as angelic and good in his lands.

Why did his body arch as it gained this

Abnormal force, jolt as if gored by it?

As it burned his skin, curdling his red blood 

Gold, raising him above the standard fae.

But Mother, how it made him writhe, for he

Dropped the man’s arm as he was lifted up

Not of his own volition, but the fire’s.

Still he reached down, forever straining back

Though his frame became wreathed in molten flames,

And pain lanced through his every nerve, filling,

Re-molding him in the harsh forge of fate.

Just then, a man burst through the doors and yelled,

-Lord of Foxes

“Wait!” 

His red hair flamed out, a slash through one eye.

A Cauldron-made strode in his wake, a bright,

Fair haired, far seeing maiden. She knew all.

So as the new king fell, she sent her knight,

The brother of flame and son of pure light,

To catch him and lay him down on the tile.

Then he leapt to the hulk of shadows ‘round

The winged man, still and silent on the floor,

Encircled his limp form with his limbs, and 

Took him in his broad arms as he stood up.

Now, holding both, he winnowed to Day Court,

Returning quickly to bring his adored.

Both darkness and divine fire in day’s care,

Both with a large dearth of blood; rough from wear.

Sat here next to them, he prayed for their lives.

-High Lord of Day

Unfiltered sun— distrustful of the Lord,

Though he himself was one, and stronger too.

However, he still went, for his son asked,

And his love, whom he’d rescued, had proclaimed

Her deep amór for the son she’d first birthed. 

He had felt the exchange of power when,

Mere minutes ago, the king of flak and 

Shogunate kindling had gone from this world.

So he passed the door with his hackles up,

Presuming the worst would meet him, but no.

Two bodies, dying slowly, laid on cots.

Their blood soaked his sheets through; they needed help.

He looked at his son, head bowed at a bed.

Thought of his caring minx, who loved her spawn,

Who would not want her son to be disturbed,

Turned crazy, wild from a dead mating bond.

The Sun, Spell-cleaver, stepped up to the cots

And held out his palms.

However, he stood

For many hours ‘fore either man woke up.

-New King of Autumn

Oh Mother, his head hurt. What had he done?

‘Twas scalding, so hot he knew he wasn’t home.

Perhaps this was the portent of his fall.

But, if true, why did his chest pain him so?

Ah, his beloved! Was he at life’s risk—

That was when it all came back to his mind.

His turgid father, dead and gone at last,

And his bat, red sap soaking into his

Tight leathers from the lesion in his side.

Then he had become Autumn monarch, but

It had ached too much. He assumed he’d fell

Unconscious. Even so, where was his spy?

He stood, his mind made up. He would find him.

He followed the tug on his ribs outside,

Where he found the crown of Night screaming at

The baron of Day out in the hall’s way.

Next to him stood his son, defiant and

Proud, still and tall against the turgid rex.

“I am his Lord, and he is mine! If you

Choose to protract his stay here any more,

You shall be the one ending this fight sore.

Heed, give me back my shadow singer, for

I tire of this talk.”

Pretentious prick, his mind voiced. Give him back?

I, even, would see that he tried to help.

“They are in my care, dear sir, on account

Of my son, who brought them here for my help.”

“‘They’? You mean to tell me that Autumn is

In your court? Do you not know what risk he—”

“Your Lordship, I think that is quite enough,”

He said as he strode into the mad fray.

“Your master of spies was extremely hurt,

And the khan of day, at risk to himself,

Took him in and helped him heal. Why do you,

With knowledge that your brother is alive

But healing, barge in to take him away?

You are a knave and a fool, evening king.”

The silence flooded into the arcade,

All four in it shocked for a moment, then,

“Ah. Autumn. Just ascended, did you not?

You should go back and lie down, for it seems

You don’t know what you’re talking about. I

Let him go help you, and now it is time

For him to come back. Do not meddle more.”

He studied the fall ruler with a lens,

Assessing him just as a boffin would.

He hated it, loathed his perspective on

The matter, for, was that man not his kin?

Dolts; foolish blockheads, surely, the whole lot.

He merely turned to the spell cleaver, and

Told him, “Thank you for healing him and I.

I will remember your concern for us.”

Air seemed to freeze around the dark-clothed man,

Immensely vexed that he was being shunned.

-Lord of Foxes

The Prince looked at his father, then wheeled back.

He took a pace towards the most potent,

Dynamic, potent figure in the room,

And said, “Please leave our presence at this time.

Assistance is not needed here and now, 

For all his vitals are steady. You have

Forced your way into the alcazar, rent

Apart quite a few wards on your way here,

And trespassed in the inner chambers to

Boot. Before we declare this as an act

Of war against our nation, take your leave.”

A host of feelings passed on his paled face,

Then he twirled on his heel and left the hall.

To the side of the Lord of Day, the male

With red hair stumbled and fell to the wall.

-New King of Autumn

The world was spinning. He gripped the wall tight.

Perhaps it had not been the wisest thing;

To stroll around soon after losing so

Much blood. Still, while he could, he had to ask,

“May I see the liege of the dark? I know

It might be brazen to ask now, since you

Just kicked out the doyen of night for the—”

Both other males cut in at the same time,

“Not an astute idea, you should sit,”

And, “Surely you would like to lay down first?”

They gave sharp glances at each other, then

Looked back for the response. A moment passed.

He straightened, the walls stopping to close in. 

“No… I am quite fine. Thank you, once again.

Should I leave? As Lord of Fall, surely I

Am causing you concern by staying here.”

His brother took a stride, approaching him.

“I was who brought you to the palace, here:

Your presence here is my fault; I’ll take blame.

Come, follow me. You shall view your brave knight.”

A clear blush on his face, the eldest trailed.

The room was scarcely any strides past his,

The fixtures almost the same. Only the

Carl dozing in the vast four-poster, like

A big, unwieldy dog, curled in for sleep.

He drew up a chair, perching on the edge

As he leaned forward to glom a glance at

His saving grace, his darling, turning to

Appraise his sibling after. “Why did you

Come to save us— save me? The last I knew,

You were with that blonde lass from the night court,

And our… familial ties did not help our

Connection. To put it in simple terms:

I thought you hated me. Why did you help?”

Beseeching him for a response with his

Large eyes, as his soul screeched for a reply.

-Lord of Foxes

He did not know what to say. Maybe, with

The urging from his wife, yes, maybe it

Was high time for him to tell the whole truth.

“Yes, most of what you speak is true, but hear:

A year past my nuptial, whence I had left

The court of night, I came back to my friend,

Another I thought long lost. Yet he took 

Me back, back into his life like no time

Had passed. I had not noticed how I had

Missed him all those years. Then, he mentioned that

He had kept something from me all those years.

‘Lu,’ he said, ‘I should have warned you before.

But every time I tried, you got so riled

And angry, shutting out all that I said.

In any case, I should have told you. Lu,

When you came to Spring, wounded but asleep,

Your brother carried you here. He begged, tears

In his eyes, to take you. When his kin came, 

He killed one of his brothers by himself.’

Then, he gave me your letters. I had not

Seen them, did not know they existed. And…

They faced me with the truth that I had tried

Denying for years. I talked with my spouse,

Her sister- both agreed you were not like

Your father. I recalled my mem’ries of

Old, when you took care of us if our ma

Was too frail to move, when you took the brunt

Of the belt- I remembered that you had

Not showed up when… she died. I had assumed

You hated me, was of the notion that

If you could have done something, you would have

Saved my tryst; my love. Mother, I was thick.

Because of course, you would try to save me,

Not the girl who, without doubt, would incur

The wrath of the Tsar. I did not read in-

Between the lines, just wrote the book my way,

Not caring who I left. Why did I help?

I wanted to bring back the brother I

Once knew.”

-New King of Autumn

He stared at this male, the one he gave so,

So much to, and tried to accept what he

Was hearing. It was too much, all at once.

So he just nodded slightly, trying to

Smile, but the muscles on his face were still

And frozen. He just sat there, looking grim.

At last, the sole words he came up with were,

“Thank you.” They each looked at the other, a

Sort of peace crashing into them at last.

There would be a time, later, to talk more.

He turned back to the figure on the bed, 

The one that proffered a speech so akin

To this one, after he had found him in

Chains, locked up in the house of his late dad,

Forgotten or left for dead. After a

Long moment, he stepped forward, going to

Take him out of the shackles, but he said—

“No. If you help me, he will know. I would

Have to spend more time down here. I cannot

Risk that. Please, Shadow Singer, do not help.”

He stood there for a second, torn, but then

Turned and left. Later, when the door of his

Cage had been opened, and he was alone

At last, the male appeared again. Without 

A word, he dressed the sores on the male’s weak, 

Frail corse, then put him in his bed when he 

Fell into sleep. A slow truce had emerged,

And quickly, it spilled over: the night they

Collided. It was not hard, painful, or 

Fast— They did it again, again, again.

One day, the male with dark hair had sat him

Down, telling him that he saw, could discern

The man behind the masks. Of course, he was

Scared, but perhaps he shouldn’t have attacked.

Yes, he had acted rashly, but he had

Known that his bat would come back. Always did,

Forever would. They both knew why it was.

When his love woke up, 

The sun was rising

On the next day. He

Had not slept at all.

-Shadowsinger

His eyes were heavy-lidded, the world he

Could see, blurred. There was a large, breathing mass,

Unmoving on the chair beside him. That

Was when the pain rammed into him, full force.

He groaned, a headache creeping in. But what—

Oh. Yeah, he had killed the Fall Monarch, had

He not? Well, the old bastard had deserved 

It. Every second of pain was worth it,

He only wished that he had suffered more,

But you take what you get. Including a

Stab wound in his side, it would seem. It hurt.

The man on the stool stirred as he awoke,

Decrying the outrageous locus that

He fell unconscious in with a loud yawn

And a loud cracking of joints. Then, he looked

Up, straight at him. Awake. Alive. Still here.

The pain in his bones all but vanished, though

His heart seemed to jump, running with the wind.

-New King of Autumn

He was awake. It would all be okay. 

But the winged male was shaking, he should ask:

“Do you want something to drink? Are you cold?

You’re surely cold, here, I can—” He reached out, 

To touch him, mayhaps, warm him, he flinched

Away. Then he regretted it at once,

When he went rigid, his face turning in

To that familiar mask of stone. No, his

Brain shouted at him, He should not have to

Look like that. Never, not again. Around

Him, shadows stirred from their rest. Forcing his

Weak body to move, he grabbed the outstretched

Palm, twining their hands into one. “Sorry,”

He muttered, “I don’t know why I did that…

Some water would be nice. Thanks.” After a

Short moment, he unclasped his fingers, and

The other seemed to leave his stupor. He 

Stretched to grab the glass from the table on

His left side. His arm had to reach across

Him, and he stood to grab the damned thing at

Last. After a tense second, the tall male

Seized the cup, handed it to him, and sat

Back down with a huff. He drunk it down with

A fervor only seen with someone whose

Lips have not seen hydration for hours, days.

He put the glass down. Glanced at his hound, who

Schooled his face into form at once; He had

Been wearing a slight smile. As they held

Each other’s eyes, the golden string between

Them lightly hummed, delighted at this act.

-Chorus

They never needed to say it, they knew

All the same. But soon, maybe, one of them

Would gain the courage to say the words in

Both their minds, hearts, their very being. ‘Till

Then, they could figure out the rest, with an

Unspoken truce.

I love you, Azri’l

I love you, Eris

TAGLIST WOOO (ask in reblogs/message me if you want on or off) eatsbooks, @jess011mae, @irithiadourden, @g00seg1rl, @aleksandra25cracow, @jules-writes-stories @chunkypossum

[banquetwriter]

୨୧ distant love ୨୧

pairing: Rick Grimes ♡︎ fem!Reader

warnings: ୭̥⋆*｡ not edited, rick is taller than the reader, mentions of Lori being assaulted by Shane, and low-key some Lori slander (and praise too)

summary: ʚ Rick has fallen out of Lori and instead falls in love with you ɞ

Words: 1254

part 2

SUPPORT ME

“I cannot keep you safe,” Rick says angrily. Your group has made it to the CDC, what seemed like a safe haven. “You don't have to Rick. You have a wife and a kid. A whole family, ok?” you said your voice barely above a whisper.

He turned away from you, rubbing his jaw. “Rick, what happened between us can stay a secret forever. You don't have t-to treat me differently or care about me,” you said trying to face Rick head-on.

He started to shake his head no. “What Rick?” you said starting to get angry. Everyone knew what Lori had done to Rick… hooking up with Shane. Something that didn't stop when Rick joined the group. He was frustrated and had pent-up anger.

And there you were on watch with him, just being your kind self. He lost self-control. Try as he might be couldn't deny himself those beautiful moans as he thrusted into you.

He had started to treat you differently. You could tell, Lori could and hell the rest of the group could too. He was much more caring with you, checking your wounds, and giving you extra portions of his food.

There was no doubt he had started to fall for you. Of course, he had. His marriage was falling apart long before the end of the world came, his wife fucking his best friend only made it worse.

You started to fall for him too, you couldn't help it. His strong dominant demeanor, and loving caring father. He had it all. But you knew the moment you said yes to him that there was a high chance of nothing real happening between the two of you.

You chose to ignore that chance.

But here he was now staring at you, jaw tense with anger. He didn't know how he could keep going like this. Feeling his heart squeeze with pain when he couldn't see you. When his arms weren't around yours.

“You cannot keep doing this to me,” he growls, stepping close to you. “Doing what Rick? I have done nothing to you. You came onto me!” I shout at him. He shakes his head and hands his hips. “I never meant to become between you and Lori. I have never ever asked you to love me or care for me ever!” I shout at him.

His face falls. “I was perfectly fine being only a fuck to you,” you said crossing your arms, tears threatening to fall from your eyes. “No. Don't say that about yourself,” he says, stepping up to you again.

You try to blink your tears back. God this was so embarrassing. The truth was you would love to be more to Rick than a hook-up buddy, but he has a family you weren't going to wreck that on a whim. “Please, I'm sorry but I haven't ever tried to make you love me. Ever. Ok? I knew what I was getting myself into, fucking a married man.” you said, crossing your arms.

Rick doesn't say anything, you take that as an answer enough. You let your hands drop to your sides, turning towards the door. His hand lands on your arm grabbing it. You look up at him, his eyes are full of sorrow and pain.

Your stomach turned as you knew what was going to happen next. He gingerly stepped towards you, you couldn't look him in the eyes. His hands moved towards your arms pulling you close to his chest.

He leaves a gingerly placed miss on the top of your head near your hairline. His right hand snakes up to your hair as his left-hand wraps around your waist. You tilt your head up to meet him for the kiss.

He whimpers in your mouth exploring your mouth. You shudder at his touch, pulling away from his kiss. “Rick we shouldn't… Lori and Carl… they aren't that far..” you say looking back up at him.

He knows you right? No matter how much he wants it to not be true, he shouldn't fuck you when his wife or child could find you. “Come find me tonight,” you whisper in his ear, before darting out of his room.

You walked down the hall of the CDC. You heard a commotion up ahead. You looked into the rec room and the sight horrified you.

Shane was attempting to assault Lori. You didn't like Lori, and Lori didn't like you. Nothing would ever stop you from helping her right now. You run up behind Shane grabbing his hair as best you could and dragging him off of her.

Between Lori pushing him off and your strength you're able to rip him away.

Shane lands on the ground glaring at both of you. “Leave!” you shout at him, fear and anger pulsing through your body. “Now! And if I ever ever catch you pulling this shit again I will fucking kill you.” I threaten. “Yeah alright,” he mumbles, sitting up and leaving in a huff.

You turn your direction to the terrified woman behind you. “You're ok, it's ok,” you mumble, catching her in an embrace. “Oh god.” she whimpers out falling into your arms, her sobs racking through her body. Tears spilling on your shirt.

You silently rub her back trying to calm her. She exhales pulling away from you, using the back of her hands to wipe her tears. “I'm ok, I'm ok honey,” she says looking at you with a warm smile. You felt like killing someone.

This wasn't fair for her. You felt sick for even being mad at her for what she did with Shane. It's clear to you that this wasn't what you thought it was. A sick man had used the grief of a woman and got into her pants.

There was absolutely nothing fair about that. “I'm so sorry Lori,” you said with pity in your voice and eyes. “Oh don't worry about me, I will be just fine,” she says with a fake smile. You nod not believing her. “Ok well if you need me tonight just tell me,” you say, patting her arm.

You felt so sick. You felt sick for Lori, for hating her, and for fucking Rick. She deserved her husband. You stole him from her. You felt ashamed. You needed to push these feelings down.

You turn to leave her walking to the exit of the room. “Y/n?” she called. You turn on your heel, “yes?” you ask, looking at her. “I know,” she says in a quiet voice. You felt bile fill your throat.

“My husband he-” she cuts herself off with a sad smile. He wasn't really her husband anymore huh? “Rick h-he is a good man. Take care of him for me will you? Do what I was never able to.” she says with a very sad smile.

Your face contorted with pain. “No Lori, I-I can't do that to you, to your family,” you say, putting your hand up. “No, listen to me y/n. He loves you, I see it every day. I didn't want to at first but I have no choice but to know ok?” she says, nodding her head.

All you can do is sigh. You turn away from her, You walk down the hall preparing to go back to your room. Rick stands outside his door “What's going on?” he asks, looking down at you, you stop slightly in front of him. “Ask your wife.” you quip walking down the hall.

[motsenvractmblr]

Ep 1. A Reverie of Desire

Will you not stay with me, inside me always? This question lingers, reverberates like the tender echo of skin brushing skin, as though the universe itself leans closer to listen. There is no mere desire here—no surface longing to be kissed and dismissed. No, this is the deep hunger, primal yet refined, that burns in the hollows of a soul seeking to be truly seen.

I have come up from such depths to find you. I clawed my way through the unyielding terrain of solitude, each breath an ascent toward you. When you arrived, it was as if time itself unraveled, spilling into the eternity that existed only between us. Your gaze was a mirror, yet it was more—a chasm, a quiet dare to fall, to plunge.

To say I love you isn’t enough. The phrase feels like a paper kite—fragile, fluttering, unable to hold the weight of what I mean. What I feel is a storm, a surge, something untamed and untranslatable. I want you in every sense the world denies.

Your touch is no ordinary touch; it is alchemy. When your fingers brushed my skin, I ceased to be mere flesh and became something molten, something unbound. In those moments, the world shrank to the span of your hands, the curve of your lips. Your mouth traced my edges as though seeking an entrance to my hidden places. And oh, how willingly I opened.

Probe around inside me, unearth everything that’s in me. Isn’t that what love demands? Not to skim the surface but to dig, to excavate, to dive deep into the wreckage and the wonder of another. When you spoke, your words were not words—they were tendrils, searching, wrapping, pulling me closer to some unspoken truth.

You wanted more of me, and so I gave. I gave the jagged pieces, the polished fragments, the shadows I rarely dared to name. And you took them, cradling each piece as though they were sacred, as though my flaws were the very architecture of your desire.

Together, we created a language of the body—a syntax of sighs and gasps, a poetry of intertwined limbs. It was not about release, though we found that, too. It was about becoming. In those moments, we were not two bodies but one storm, one ocean, one undivided pulse.

Stay with me, I whispered—not in words, but in the shudder of my breath, in the press of my palms against your back. Stay with me in the way you trace my scars and make me whole. Stay with me, not as a fleeting moment but as an infinite knowing.

And so we linger, in the space where desire meets devotion, where passion is not a fire that consumes but a flame that lights the path to deeper knowing. To stay, to probe, to unearth—that is the promise, the plea, the prayer. And in that staying, we are no longer seekers but finders of something vast, something eternal, something more.

Ep 2. The Furnace of Us

“Don’t expect me to be sane anymore. Don’t let’s be sensible,” you once whispered, your breath a flame against the shell of my ear. In that moment, you unhinged something primal in me, the quiet restraint I’d worn like armor. Sanity fell away, and all that remained was the gravity of you—your body, your essence, your unbearable closeness.

You were not a lover. No, you were an artist, and I, your canvas, trembling beneath your touch as you painted me with heat. “I am like you,” you confessed once, your voice low and rough with something that felt like confession. “I cannot live without intensity.” And so, we became intensity incarnate.

Each encounter was a storm. You were the wind, wild and unyielding, and I was the earth, shuddering beneath your force. When you kissed me, I felt the universe collapse to the edges of your lips. There were no stars, no sky—just the dark, endless hunger of your mouth consuming me, remaking me.

“I want to do things to you,” you wrote in one of your letters, “so wild I don’t even know how to name them.” And oh, how you did. Your touch was not merely touch—it was poetry. Your fingers wrote verses along the curves of my body, and I surrendered, letting you rewrite me.

You didn’t just love me; you unearthed me. You broke me apart with the force of your need, and I let you. You taught me that love wasn’t soft or gentle—it was ferocious. It devoured. It burned.

“Why are you so beautiful?” you asked once, your eyes dark with something deeper than desire. And before I could answer, your hands answered for me. They traced me like a map, lingering on the valleys and ridges, memorizing me as though I might vanish at any moment.

In the darkness of our room, we became animals, raw and unguarded. Your body against mine was an invocation, a prayer offered to some ancient deity of flesh and flame. And I worshipped you in return, my lips finding their place on the altar of your skin.

You said you wanted me “inside you always,” and I knew then that we were more than lovers. We were flames feeding each other, devouring the air around us. Our love was not a soft flicker; it was a furnace, consuming everything in its path.

You made me yours in every way. You made me insane. You made me wild. And in your arms, I found the only truth that mattered: to love you was to surrender to the fire, to let it burn me until I became something new, something vast, something unending.

[magicandpizza]

Anika knew who Jesper Fahey was before she’d ever joined the Dregs. While Kaz’s name carries weight, and perhaps a small shudder of fear, Jesper’s name comes with a knowing smirk and some sort of comment on his sexual prowess. She’d deny it if anyone ever asked her, but the truth of the matter is that she has slept with him. Just the once, as is his way, and his reputation is entirely true. He is, unfortunately, a very good shag, and his list of previous bedfellows is probably longer than Anika’s entire arm.

It comes as very little surprise to her when a rumour starts circulating amongst the gang that Fahey had not only previously slept with their brand new demo man, but had also, apparently, forgotten about it. What is surprising, though, is that Jesper has apparently gone back for seconds (and thirds, and fourths…), because said demo man practically lives at the Slat nowadays, and the pair are frequently together.

“I’ve never seen him like this before,” Anika whispers. She’s sitting at a table at the Crow Club nursing a well-earned beer after finishing her shift.

Beside her, Pim raises an eyebrow but his eyes stay locked on the sight of notorious flirt Jesper Fahey contentedly sitting beside his… boyfriend? What is his name anyway? Henderson? Hen… something. It’s on the tip of her tongue. The demo man is tucked happily tucked up against Fahey’s side, grinning at him over the rim of his glass.

For the life of her, Anika cannot work out what it is about him that has Jesper so transfixed. Sure, he is objectively good-looking, though men with pretty eyes and delicate features don’t really do it for her, and he must be clever if he knows his way around explosives, but in their - admittedly limited - interactions since Hendriks joined the Dregs, she’s found him kind of meek. Unassuming.

“It won’t last,” Pim says eventually. “He’ll get bored. This is Fahey we’re talking about after all.”

Anika hums. She traces her fingers over the droplets of condensation running down the side of her beer glass, then takes a long drink. See, normally she’d agree with Pim. But the pair have already been to Ravka and back, and she has a sneaking suspicion that the messy-haired demo man - and really, what is his name? - might actually have fully moved into Fahey’s room.

“I don’t know Pim, I feel like this is different.”

-

A few weeks later and Anika is ready to tear her hair out. She’s never paid too much attention to the fact that her room is directly next to Jesper’s, but now that it’s Jesper and Wylan’s room, well, that’s another matter. To put it simply, Anika has overheard more than she ever needed to over the past few weeks, and it’s seriously starting to grate.

She glares at Jesper as he enters the living area at the Slat. He’s alone, but pours two cups of coffee anyway, taking both with him as he joins her and Nina at their table.

“You’re very loud, you know that?” Anika says around a mouthful of lacklustre porridge.

Nina snorts into her breakfast, but Jesper only grins with the self-satisfied smirk of someone who is having good sex and a lot of it.

“I could buy you some earplugs, if you like.”

Anika scowls at him. “You could try asking loverboy to keep it down.”

“I could,” Jesper says mildly with a shrug of his shoulders. He drums his fingers against the table as he raises his mug to his lips. “But I quite like the noises he makes.”

Anika seriously considers hitting him.

“It’s not just Wylan, they’re both as bad as each other,” Nina grumbles, stabbing at a piece of sausage a little too forcefully. “Do you know, Anika, I’m pretty sure I heard this one,” she gestures at Jesper with her fork, “begging the other night. Seems quite unlike you, what was Wylan doing, hm?”

“He has very talented fingers,” Jesper says, pointedly ignoring the gagging noise Anika directs at him. “And don’t take it out on me just because Kaz hasn’t smuggled Matthias out of Hellgate yet. You should be happy at least some of us are getting laid.”

Nina opens her mouth to respond, but quickly shuts it again when Wylan drops into the empty chair next to Jesper, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek as he does so. Anika scowls at him too for good measure. Surely, she thinks, it can’t get any worse than this.

She is proved disgustingly wrong when Nina’s Fjerdan slab of fur moves into the Slat a week later, and the pair upgrade to a bigger room. Surely all the Saints must hate her, because the room they move into is directly above hers.

[erin-unknown]

A little Deet backstory~

Pictured above: Deet, looking tired as hell.

A recurring dream with my roguelock, Deet, his aboleth patron, and a little of his own self-loathing. Deet doesn't sleep much.

(Also, I didn't edit this!)

~

Three lights in the dark. Red eyes cutting through the gloaming haze of a hundred-year old temple, carved deep into the very belly of Toril. Bones clutter the ground here; the spidery remains of fish and serpents turn to dust beneath the weight of bones from creatures a thousand times their size. A graveyard. An altar.

Deet can never remember much about it—even in his dreams, the chamber is enveloped in shadows and mist and he’s as uncertain as ever if that is his doing, or the creature. He recognizes the dream-fog and the way the bones bite into knees and the hastily-tied rope bites into his wrists. Deet’s spent the better part of a year kneeling on these bones, wrists bound with rope twisted from pale water weeds and fish guts. He can never stand, even when he wants to. His legs refuse to go numb, so he can only endure the pain.

This One is waiting, drowling. As always.

“Can—can you repeat the question?” Deet’s voice is hoarse from overuse.

Very well. There is a ripple of mirth in his mind that makes Deet shudder. This One generously offers power and freedom to one of you creatures. You will complete your tasks. Pay your portion of your debt. Go free. The other belongs to Ithaamar. Forever.

“No, that’s not—not what you said,” he chokes around the words, his throat tightening with shame. He isn’t surprised it’s doing this, but he’s already dreading how this ends.

“But that’s what you heard, isn’t it?”

Deet cannot bear to look at him.

“It isn’t,” Deet replies in a whisper he shouldn’t have been able to hear. But it’s his dream and his punishment, so of course he does.

“Then you’re as witless as ever,” he says. No rancor—just disappointment, like he’s resigned to it. “That’s why it wouldn’t let me speak, you know. I was prepared for this. You never are.”

Deet imagines him shaking his head with that indictment. In his imagination, he’s as beautiful as he ever is, with white gold hair pristine, elegant horns polished to a sheen, and his face like cut crystal that had caught the setting sun. It’s better than the truth.

“I’ll fix this,” Deet starts to say, but he cuts him off with a laugh as sharp the sneer he pictures on his face.

“You. Really?”

“I will,” he replies, with slightly more conviction. He squeezes his eyes shut to resist the temptation to look at the man beside him. “I’ll strike a new deal with it. I’ll bring you back—”

“Forgive me, Deet, if I don’t hold my breath—oh, wait. I don’t have to anymore.” Deet is suddenly surrounded by long, clammy limbs, ice-cold and sticky with mucous. That once-golden skin is colorless in the murk of the Underdark. Webbed, rubbery fingers his partner never used to have dig into his arms and still he refuses to look at him. When he speaks, his voice is wrong in Deet’s ear—everything is a new shape, serves a new function. “Admit it, you were afraid of this. Afraid of Ithaamar. You couldn’t wait to run away, back to the surface.”

He can’t deny it. Running is all Deet ever seems to do.

“I love you,” he says, instead. Deet never did say it enough, before things ended.

Suddenly, he sounds exactly like he did that last night by the campfire when he says:

“I don’t think I do.”

And it’s that that finally wakes him up.

~

Deet and his partner-in-all-things, Kammon, took one last job before retiring from stealing spooky magical stuff from dangerous places... and it didn't go well—at all. Not only did the job ram the final nail into the coffin of their relationship (which was the opposite of what they were hoping it would do), they were captured mid-escape by the kuo-toa servants of an ancient aboleth, whose temple they had unknowingly plundered.

To punish them (and fuck with them), the aboleth forced Deet to choose how they served their sentences, wanting to make them suffer all the more. Deet may have been "the talent" but Kammon was the one with the smarts; he was the contract negotiator and the planner. Both men were well aware of this and neither had a great deal of faith in Deet's ability to bargain with Ithaamar.

Ithaamar talked in circles around a terrified and frustrated Deet, whose ultimate choice ended up with him pacted to the aboleth and Kammon enslaved to it, mind and body, as a servitor.

Deet is back on the surface, scouting illithid activity for Ithaamar, when he's abducted by mindflayers and implanted with a tadpole.

It's sort of funny to me that Deet's forced by the game to make a lot of decisions in BG3; he's so terrified of getting it wrong again. But over the course of the story, I found that he really does come into his own. It was kind of cool to get to rp that for him.

Also, Kammon is fine, actually, but that's another story.

~

[madamealys]

Imagine being the wife of Daemon Targaryen. (+21)

***

When you look at this man, you cannot believe how fortunate you are. It isn’t only about the looks, even though to deny these don’t play a part in how attracted you still are towards him is to indulge in lies; but how protective he can be whenever you fly with him on Caraxes, whenever you accompany him at court.

Or how attentive he can be when you are sharing your day with him. Daemon Targaryen actually listens whenever your studies get your brain sharped—in truth, he is often horny whenever you and him have this moment talking about politics, philosophy, art… because he is also aroused by your looks.

When you are not well, he is the kind of husband who tends his wife. And he makes sure to leave his duties aside to be by your side. Saying nothing, but his presence says a lot.

These are your thoughts as you miss him a great deal. Daemon has been exiled again… probably for rebelling against that douchebag who attends by the name of Otto Hightower. And you had to stay behind because he assured you he’d not take long.

It’s been three days though and to sleep in a bed without the comfort of his body, the warmth of his skin against yours… is too dreadful. You are often anxious, considering pleading to the king to give his brother another chance, even if this means to take the risk of angering Daemon, for he is very prideful.

It’s when you, trying to busy yourself with sewing a new tapestry for your household, are told by one of the maids of your trust that Caraxes has been spotted.

“Oh praise the Gods!”, you exclaim, relieved. “Please ensure that all is set to receive the lord.”

And you are quickly having another lady to help you dress a better gown—perhaps the red one with details in black, his favourite colors—to welcome him properly.

The idea of how this night might end already gives you goosebumps, for it’s been a while since you and him haven’t done it—mostly because you’ve been engaged in philosophy studies and he, with wars waged against the Tetrarchy at Free Cities.

Your y/c hair is left partially loose—you tied a few locks in a short braid—, your delicate features are painted in light make up and your curves are reinforced by this beautiful long silk sleeved gown.

It does show some cleavage, the line of your neck to that of your breasts quite exposed—as you see yourself in mirror you blush at it, specially because your nipples are getting hard, eager to pop out to his mouth. But you, as a lady and his wife, know that it’s always better when you hold your desires back.

Right?

Heavens, you don’t know. Your legs shake lightly as your pussy begins to ache. You remember still how, before he went off, he reclined your back, spread your legs and slided his length, throbbing his cock into your womanhood. To recollect is to be bit by agony, for that night he smirked when hearing your screams going louder.

“Had I known how loud you could be, I’d have tried this position before”, he said then.

Another memory flashes back, when he caught you naked in bed touching yourself. You hadn’t seen him for a few days too—because he flew to see his brother— and here you were, moaning his name with your legs indecently spread and your fingers doing poorly the job he excelled.

And all so suddenly, he removed his clothes and laid back next to you, shuddering you as he helps you getting to reach your climax.

“Is it good? Thinking of me, does it make you good?”

That same day he replaced his finger with his tongue. And Gods be damned, you loved it. And you want it again. Even if he might accuse you of naughtiness.

Well, you once told him, how can one be his wife without being prompted to lust? And you swear you’d never seen this man blush before.

So here you are, holding back your fire, waiting for the reunion. You have an emerald necklace that he gifted you last Yule as well as a pair of rubies embellishing your ears.

By the time you get to the living room, Daemon, with his hair shorter, is impatient for his wife.

“Fuck, where is…?” And he is as silent as you are, as if you two are transfixed by each other’s presence.

“Daemon”, relief comes through as you run to his arms, there staying engulfed. “Three days never before felt so long.”

He smiles to himself when feeling your frame pressed against his, smelling your scent and hearing your voice—the sentiments there being expressed making his heart race.

The rogue prince presses a kiss over your forehead before cupping your face and finally kissing your lips, a reward for a painful, long waiting.

“My lady”, he smiles down at you. “Always loyal.”

“It could never be otherwise”, you stroke his cheek, eyeing him with the utmost devotion. “Three days and yet it felt like eternity to wait for your return. My prayers were my only comfort, the balsam to my aching heart.”

“A poetess”, he murmurs in awe, “with a soul that never ceases to inspire me love.”

Daemon gives a side crooked smirk when seeing his words paint a crimson shade on your cheeks, when seeing how bright your smile is. He then leans to peck your lips before whispering down to your ear.

“I’m looking forward tonight. You are gorgeous, my wife. All of this for me?”

His voice, a quiet whisper that contains a lot more than lets it show, gives you shivers. You lower your gaze before smiling rather shyly.

“Yes, lord. All of this to my husband.”

When you raise your eyes, you know you are lost. Daemon Targaryen has just pierced your soul.

***

“Finally”, he pulls you to himself, staying right behind you as he rests his chin over your shoulder, arms around your waist. “Finally a moment alone with you, Y/Nickname.”

You giggle softly.

“I’ve been looking forward to this…”

“If I remember well, you burn as bright as any dragon fire”, recollects Daemon, smirking when in reference to the first night spent together after the bedding ceremony where he deflowered you. “Especially where weak spots are concerned”, and here he whispers hotly in your ear, pleased to see a shiver running over your spine and how weak your knees are.

You hate to be so vulnerable before him, to be so easily read, but at the same time you love that he knows you so well.

You try to find balance at the nearest object nearby, which happens to be the window. As darkness grows outside, there is little of the landscape you can spot, although it hardly distracts you of your husband’s preying eyes.

As Daemon turns at you, he denudes you with only a gaze. He drinks of the view of you, pleased to find you in a struggle to hold back the long lust he—and only he—evokes in you.

His cock goes rigid in his pants as he watches your breathing going painfully slow, as your hands hold against the wall, as your body begs him to do what you both want him to do.

But Daemon wants to take his time—because when he does, oh the waiting will be worth it.

His fingertips begin to caress your features before slowly going to your neck.

“I love the colour you chose to welcome me tonight”, says the rogue prince, secretively smirking at how you notice his small details, much like he does at you.

“It pleases me to hear it so”, you tilt your head to the side, locking gazes with him. “All was done with this purpose.”

And in this moment his index finger slides to your mouth. A glint of mischief sparks behind his eyes as you open it and welcome it with your tongue in a very suggestive gesture.

“Mm.” He sighs almost inaudibly, aroused already. “You like it, don’t you? Ever since I taught you how it’s done… you’ve mastered it.”

“Like you taught me indeed, my lord”, you smirk back, eyeing him intently. Your hands are about to buckle his bell but he soon stops you.

“No”, Daemon groans as he pins you against the wall. “Wife, I play this game.”

“Better than I”, you aquiesce, willingly so.

He chuckles before leaning inches closer to you.

“Indeed”, and when his hands move from your waist to embrace you, before grabbing your hair gently, he kisses you.

His tongue gently comes after yours, pairing synchronously in perfect harmony. You dwell in the taste of sweet Dornish wine that mixes with yours, carefully minted after dinner.

And then it gets deeper. It gets passionate. You start to burn in fever, longing for his command, to be subdued to his will. Daemon knows you, even when your breathing comes out a different pace or how your hands slowly move to play with his now shorter locks.

He knows.

A devilish smirks paints his lips when sensing your impatience. He likes to take his time, though by now your rose scent drives him insane. It’s a particular rose. He knows it.

It’s as if a dragon calls another to mate.

He knows.

Daemon finally unlaces your gown. He needs to see your nude state, to devour your curves with his eyes. So he parts his lips from yours, pleased to find in your eyes that pledge he likes so well.

And you blush before his intent gaze. You promptly try to cover yourself, but the domineering man you call your husband gently parts your legs with his knee and firmly takes your hands to pin your wrists above your head.

“Daemon!”, you whimper like the wench you are.

“Yes?”, he licks his tongue around his mouth, already with a bone at the sight of you so exposed, your nipples so damn hardened. “Can’t I appreciate my wife?”

Your face goes pink with his words. You are at his mercy, you dare not to pledge liberty. But you begin to feel dropping wet in your legs. Rubbing one to the other, you try to show some control.

But Daemon knows he’s affecting you. And he likes the view. Oh, he does.

A sly smirk runs in his lips as he pulls your hair with one hand and wraps another around your neck, all the whilst parting your legs with his knee.

“Hmm. You couldn’t handle staying three long days and nights without me, could you?”, he whispers, aroused as you whimper at the pressure he makes into your womanhood.

Your mouth barely opens, forming an “o” as you flutter your eyelashes. The torture only worsens when you whimper due to the short distance he takes of you.

Because Daemon Targaryen starts touching himself at the thought of you. So ready, so undone… right under his power.

“It is most unfair to be unkindly treated in such a manner”, you protest, already salivating when remembering what it felt like to have his length throbbing in your mouth.

Daemon smirks still at you, locking eyes precisely as he releases his pressure.

“Is it?”, he then groans, pleased to be under your intent stare. “I thought you liked to watch.”

You blush once more at the reference of the day you caught him, perhaps unintentionally, on such a private moment. You were sent by the king to look after him—the prince hasn’t courted you yet, despite his openly flirting to you, so innocent back then—and you found him rather jerking at the library.

You could not look away though you froze when he opened his eyes and found you there, watching as he came undone. And to think all of what he did next…

Still gives you shivers even after these years.

“Do you like that, don’t you?”, he places his soaked index finger into your mouth, watching you with eyes dark with desire as you suck it, glinting with mischief when doing so.

You barely come to an answer as his mouth engulfs yours, colliding lips in a passionate and deep kiss. It is as if your soul is set alight, burning with something more meaningful than merely desire.

You are his and he’s yours. He knows it, he feels it too. Never before he’s been so tamed as he is now. This dragon who was known to many women down the capital, whether high or low born, are faithful to one woman now who is fortunate to be called his wife.

And you occupy such privileged position that certainly has some envious ladies grumbling on and upon—rumour has it that Rhaenyra Targaryen is one of those heartbroken ladies who never truly accepted that you are his lady.

This certainly does not cross your mind by now when his lips pursuit your skin, deliciously devouring your neck—his gritted teeth leaving bruises all the way.

“My husband, I need more”, you whimper louder, impatiently so.

He leans back to smile at you, that way you like him to—carrying a mix of bashfulness and cheekiness— before saying:

“My darling spoilt brat”, he chuckles. “What have I raised?”

A peck in your lips and the man finally lowers his kiss. At long last your lust is satisfied and he cups each nipple, devouring you like a famine man.

It feels so good to have his tongue twisting it around your pink nipple, biting it, taking his time there. You arch your back, you want to play with his hair, but he’s still holding your wrists, tightening the grip as if saying he “owns” you.

And you blissfully give in. Specially when he stops caressing your boobs and slides a hand to your feminine part.

So suddenly you moan louder. For the moment his fingers are inside you, clutched within, digging a deep path to your uterus, your chest gets heavier and it is as if you have butterflies in your stomach.

“Come to me”, he is now standing his nude body so close to yours that sweats are mixed. “Come. I want to hear you scream my name.”

One look is enough and you are crying out his name, finally released off that unbearable pressure that has been within you.

“Daemon…”

“Y/N…”

And with no waiting for further playtimes, your legs are wrapped around his waist and he finally thrusts his erect manhood within you.

Locked against the wall, you two move synchronously, breath to breath, body to body. The fire of a dragon burns all over you an it feels good to be burnt alive.

As his thrusts match with the moves of your hips, climax seems to approach. He pulls you to his lips, before gently lifting you up only to lay you down at the table and there fucking you intently.

Hardly surprises anyone awake by that hour at the castle to hear indecent sounds echoing through it. This only means how the prince is in a very good mood indeed.

***

Daemon watches you sleep peacefully in his arms. Both of you are in his quarters now, poorly covered by a silk linen sheet over your bodies. His eyes linger in your heart-shaped face, in how serene you look with your eyes shut.

He puts delicately your y/c locks behind your ear, making sure none make you uncomfortable in your sleep. The prince looks at you with a sweet, almost secretive grin in his lips.

He loves his lady. He missed her company, her laughters, her body, her wit.

The prince holds you tight against him, drifting to sleep himself. In his mind he replays the scenes of the day he discovered you and him loved each other.

Such sheepish smile only spreads when, resting a hand over your belly, he is struck with a feeling he’s having an heir anytime now…

[the-red-drow]

Deet never truly escaped Bul-Purrup Trench and that godsforsaken temple. There remains a gelid, sucking abscess in his mind that again and forever again leads back down into that pit. Night after night.

Three lights in the dark.

Red eyes cutting through the gloaming haze of a hundred-year old temple, carved deep into the very belly of Toril. Bones clutter the ground here; the spidery remains of fish and serpents turn to dust beneath the weight of bones from creatures a thousand times their size. A graveyard. An altar.

Deet can never remember much about it—even in his dreams, the chamber is enveloped in shadows and mist and he’s as uncertain as ever if that is his doing, or the creature. He recognizes the dream-fog and the way the bones bite into knees and the hastily-tied rope bites into his wrists. Deet has spent the better part of a year kneeling on these bones, wrists bound with rope twisted from pale water weeds and fish guts. He can never stand, no matter how much he wants to, and his legs refuse to go numb. He can only endure the pain.

This One is waiting, drowling. As always.

“Can—can you repeat the question?” Deet’s voice is hoarse.

Very well. There is a ripple of mirth in his mind that makes Deet shudder. This One generously offers power and freedom to one of you creatures. You will complete your tasks. Pay your portion of your debt. Go free. The other belongs to Ithaamar. Forever.

“No, that’s not—not what you said,” he chokes around the words, his throat tightening with shame. He isn’t surprised it’s doing this, but he’s already dreading how this ends.

“But that’s what you heard, isn’t it?”

Deet cannot bear to look at him.

“It isn’t,” Deet replies in a whisper he shouldn’t have been able to hear. But it’s his dream and his punishment, so of course he does.

“Then you’re as witless as ever,” he says. No rancor—just disappointment, like he’s resigned to it. “That’s why it wouldn’t let me speak, you know. I was prepared for this. You never are.”

Deet imagines him shaking his head. In his imagination, he’s as beautiful as he ever is, with white gold hair pristine, elegant horns polished to a sheen, and his face like cut crystal that had caught the setting sun. It’s better than the truth.

“I’ll fix this,” Deet starts to say, but he cuts him off with a laugh as sharp the sneer he pictures on his face.

“You. Really?”

“I will,” he replies, with slightly more conviction. He squeezes his eyes shut to resist the temptation to look at the man beside him. “I’ll strike a new deal with it. I’ll bring you back—”

“Forgive me, Deet, if I don’t hold my breath—oh, wait. I don’t have to anymore.” Deet is suddenly enveloped in long, clammy limbs, sticky with mucous. Once-golden skin that burned like a hearthfire is ice-cold and colorless in the murk of the Underdark. Webbed and strangely rubbery fingers dig into his arms and grip his jaw and still he refuses to look at him. When he speaks, his voice is wrong in Deet’s ear—everything is a new shape, serves a new function. “Admit it, you were afraid of this. Afraid of Ithaamar. You couldn’t wait to run away, back to the surface.”

He can’t deny it. Running is all Deet ever seems to do.

“I love you,” he says, instead. Deet never did say it enough, before things ended. When he speaks again, he sounds exactly like he did that last night by the campfire.

“I don’t think I do.”

And it’s that that finally wakes him up.

Deet opens his eyes to the shifting colors of late summer, as a wind from the mountains drags its cold fingers through the early-turning leaves. He shakes the stiffness from his body, turns over last night’s fire with the toe of his boot, and pulls up what remains of his austere little camp. A year of these dreams has left him haggard. Deet had really started to enjoy sleeping, living in Baldur’s Gate; he’d had a cozy room there, his own pillow, half a bed to himself, and no reason to get up early in the morning.

Still, it hasn’t take Deet long fall back into old habits out here. A strange sort of homecoming this is—on the road again, after so many years.

He shrugs on his pack and—against his better judgment—lets his mind wander. The era of the “Red Drow” is over. No more jobs; now he’s just… this. He has been away from Baldur’s Gate for so long now, he wonders if everyone thinks he and Kammon are dead. Not for the first time, he wonders if that wouldn’t be easier for them all.

Ithaamar has set him on a long trail that it suspects will end with mindflayers. His instructions are only to gather information and for that, Deet is grateful; he’s never met a mindflayer face-to-face and he’s keen to keep it that way. From the way his patron’s thoughts shudder when it speaks of them, it seems to feel the same.

Eventually, he’ll return to the Underdark in the flesh—back down to Bul-Purrup Trench and the bone temple and to Ithaamar.

Until then, he’ll plan.

[writingsofwesteros]

https://www.tumblr.com/writingsofwesteros/758881094539018240?source=share

Canon-verse Nora-

Despite their differences, Nora still seeks comfort from Alicent in the midst of the war. Nora didn't realise she found herself in her mother's chamber, until Alicent's voice spoke quietly. "Daenora?" Her mother pulled her inside and shut the door. "What is it? Has something happened?" She asked her, as the two sat down. In truth, Nora was exhausted. She never let it show how much it took out of her to keep Aegon and Aemond reined in, to make sure they remained alongside rather than against each other, to comfort Hel, to make try and do all she could to make sure they remained in a position of power in the war. Alicent sighed- of course she recognised the exhaustion on her daughter's features, she'd seen them on herself for so long. So she guided Nora to lie down, head of silver hair on her lap, as her mother stroked her hair, gently scratching her scalp. "You...you have done your house and your family a great service," Her mother said quietly. "You have done what I could not, though at the time I did not see it. And...though your methods differ to mine, your results cannot be denied." Alicent's hand slid down to stroke her cheek. "I can never afford to make a mistake," Nora said tiredly. "Because-" "You are a woman." Alicent finished. "You must work earn your seat at the table however you can, and when you are there you must work twice as hard, and never misstep, even when the men of the council do constantly." Nora nodded, and Alicent looked down at her. Her beautiful, brave girl. She had once thought that Nora was just another spoilt, entitled Targaryen, much like Rhaenyra, but she had been quickly proven wrong. Her daughter possessed a mind of political cunning and strategy she could have only gotten from Otto Hightower, but she held a fire that kept her brothers in line. She had seen her daughter in actions, and deep down a part of her understood why she was so revered by her brothers. Alicent shuddered to think of how quickly their family might have fallen apart since Viserys's death, since the war, without Nora.

Her daughter took care of everyone, including her, sometimes- Alicent understood how draining it was. "My girl," Alicent murmured, looking down at Nora's regal features. "My beautiful girl." Her fingers danced over her cheeks, her aquiline nose, her rosy lips.

Her children, no matter how flawed, were such beautiful, angelic beings. And ever since she allowed herself to let go of the Rhaenyra of her girlhood, and give her heart to her family's cause, no matter how bloody, she saw it.

IM SOBBING !

Nora did not realise she had fallen asleep on her mother's lap; the soft words and touches coming her way. She just felt like a little girl once again on the limited time her mother had to comfort her children.

Alicent continued to watch over her as the evening continued; stroking her hair. It was in that moment the Dowager Queen allowed for the page of the book she once shared with Rhaenyra to burn away completely.

An awkward moment arose when Criston stepped into the room to see such a sight and Alicent whispered for him to leave; her cheeks flushing and her heart skipping a beat for a moment.

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

Cipher

Follow the Daito rabbit. Flow with the river.

Easier to learn the trick of it, where the Veil is close and enveloping. But of course Strand is everywhere. How could it not be?

Hello again, my trenchant Dante. You have stepped in and out of sharp-edged worlds, hewn gods into blunt fractions, twinned yourself with powers whose names cannot even be held in the language of little gray cells. You think yourself very high up on the pyramid of contumely. If you only knew how high that pyramid goes. Higher than I knew when my radiant killer unsung me from biological squalor, or when I witnessed a royal secret turn death into a chrysalis. Higher than I described in my journals, or told to our mutual three-eyed friend. Higher than even I, sailor upon the Sea of Screams that I am, can yet see. Perhaps I will tell you about them. You are right to ask why I would do so. Very good, dear squanderer, your intentions have grown sharp as thrallteeth. You see, they know. What you are, what you were, what you will become. They know. What lean tithes you are to them. Soft whetstones make for dull blades. This I define as the truth and tension of the rope: to bind, one must apply force at both ends. I think perhaps I will tell you after all.

"I'm glad that I learned that the universe runs on death. It's more beautiful to know."

This is the Coronation of Oryx, the Taken King. It happened thus. In the cold abyss of the sword world, King Aurash walked under a cloak of green fire. He walked through the sky and the sky shuddered and froze beneath his feet. He walked until he found Akka, the Worm of Secrets, who was denying a truth until it became a lie. “Akka my God, Worm of Secrets. I am Auryx, sole king of the Hive. I have come to receive a secret. I want the secret power of the Deep, which you hold.” “I give no secrets,” said Akka, whose voice was code. “No,” said Auryx, “you give nothing. Giving is for the Sky. You worship the Deep, which asks that we take what we need.” Akka said nothing, because if it denied this truth, the truth might become false. “But you gave us your larvae, the worm,” said Auryx, “and that is why the worm devours us now: because it was given, not taken. So I must take what I need from you, although you are my god.” Said Akka, “You have not the strength.” But this was a lie. Auryx had killed Savathûn his sibling and Xivu Arath his sibling, and he had the sword logic of killing them. Auryx the First Navigator set upon his god with his sword and his words, and cut Akka to pieces, and took from those pieces the secret of calling upon the Deep. He wrote this secret on a set of tablets, which he called the Tablets of Ruin. And he wore them about his waist. Then Auryx said, “Now I may speak to the Deep, the beautiful final shape. I will be King of Shapes. I will learn all the secrets of our destiny.” His speech to the Deep is not recorded here. But it is known that he returned, and he said, now I am Oryx, the Taken King. And I have the power to take life and make it my own. Then he went out into the universe, and fought the Ecumene with his Tablets. And the Worm his God was pleased.

ARENA DESIGNATION: Cathedral of Dusk Dreadnaught, Rings of Saturn As soon as the first Guardians penetrated the Dreadnaught, Shaxx's Redjacks launched a boarding party to Oryx's fortress. By war’s end, they'd fought all the way to the ship’s “impossible weapon,” the Dark ordnance that obliterated the Awoken fleet. It was there they found what the Warlocks named the “Cathedral of Dusk.” A Hive burial site for— what? A former master of Oryx? Comrade? Lover? It was vile. And obvious that Oryx never expected the Light to reach so deep inside his throne, to such an intimate space. But he didn’t expect a lot of things — like a Guardian training ground atop the husk of his dead ship.

||See deeper||

Oryx slew Akka, the Worm of Secrets, and carved the Dreadnaught from its corpse. Hidden operatives report faint biosignatures still pulsing from within the ship's hull.

The Navigator

I dive to understand.

My brother — Uttered by Xivu Arath — God of War — A GIFT. My true death was from necessity. The others were from love. The Ecumene had cornered us, made us act with sickness. With my power, Auryx murdered our sister. And with our power, Auryx descended into the Deep. And with our power, Oryx's wings spread wide, and he blotted out the Ecumene's sky. MY COURT. With his memory and his acts of war he brought me back with all the splendor of a love that sharpens and kills. A GRAVE. I will find his corpse, where he rots. He deserved to die. We do not dig graves. THE SPIRE. I will take what is true and break it until it can no longer be broken. I will find my sister's secrets and break them as well. VOYAGE. My love spills out. My love engulfs. I will go out into the universe as my brother did. I will do so with my memory of him.

HERESY

<interdict>|<simulate>|<worship>

I am going to kill you. I am going to salt my meat with your briny little thoughts. I am going to cook flesh on your broken, molten hull.

<insinuate>|<subvert>|<replicate>

This ship is my throne. You want to take it from me. You want to fill it up with your own spawn and use it for your abstract purposes. But I defy you.

<observe>!<imitate>!<usurp>

You will never be what I am. Simulate me, wretch. Calculate the permutations of my divinity. Compute the death in the shape of my throne. Render my shadow on the stone of ten thousand graveyard worlds! It will never be enough. I hold the Tablets of Ruin. I speak to the Deep. Not with a galaxy of thinking matter could you encompass me. Behold!

<unknown>|<enigma>|<shortfall>

<abort>!<halt>!<abort>

SIGNAL ECHOES DETECTED

//COND: Assert Query: The Taken.

//COND: Reference File: Blade Transform.

CORRUPTED: ...DATA DEGRADaTION CRTTTICAL...

Specimen Twelve

Running hot with the effort of simulating not one group of scientists, but two hundred and twenty-seven.

ESI: Maya, I need your help. I don't know how to fix this.

SUNDARESH: What is it? Chioma. Sit. Tell me.

ESI: I've figured out what's happening inside the specimen.

SUNDARESH: Twelve? The operational Vex platform? That's incredible! You must know what this means - ah, so. It's not good, or you'd be on my side of the desk. And it's not urgent, or you'd already have evacuated the site. Which means...

ESI: I have a working interface with the specimen's internal environment. I can see what it's thinking.

SUNDARESH: In metaphorical terms, of course. The cognitive architectures are so -

ESI: No. I don't need any kind of epistemology bridge.

SUNDARESH: Are you telling me it's human? A human merkwelt? Human qualia?

ESI: I'm telling you it's full of humans. It's thinking about us.

SUNDARESH: About - oh no.

—

SUNDARESH: So that's the situation as we know it.

ESI: To the best of my understanding.

SHIM: Well I'll be a [profane] [profanity]. This is extremely [profane]. That thing has us over a barrel.

SUNDARESH: Yeah. We're in a difficult position.

DUANE-MCNIADH: I don't understand. So it's simulating us? It made virtual copies of us? How does that give it power?

ESI: It controls the simulation. It can hurt our simulated selves. We wouldn't feel that pain, but rationally speaking, we have to treat an identical copy's agony as identical to our own.

SUNDARESH: It's god in there. It can simulate our torment. Forever. If we don't let it go, it'll put us through hell.

DUANE-MCNIADH: We have no causal connection to the mind state of those sims. They aren't us. Just copies. We have no obligation to them.

ESI: You can't seriously - your OWN SELF -

SHIM: [profane] idiot. Think. Think. If it can run one simulation, maybe it can run more than one. And there will only ever be one reality. Play the odds.

DUANE-MCNIADH: Oh...uh oh.

SHIM: Odds are that we aren't our own originals. Odds are that we exist in one of the Vex simulations right now.

ESI: I didn't think of that.

SUNDARESH: [indistinct percussive sound]

[u.2:11] We live too long for regrets. You taught me that. Don’t forget the House of Light.

[u.1:12] If I can find the time, yes. Not all of us conjure Echoes.

[u.2:12] Reflections, Saint. I have no need for Echoes anymore.

[u.1:13] What do you mean? What’s the difference?

[u.2:13] One is a manifestation of Light. The other… reserved for Taken Kings. Better suited for traversing the Sundial because of what lies at its core.

[u.1:14] One day you’ll have to tell me exactly what you and the Guardian did to bring me back.

[u.2:14] We did what we had to. Trust me.

SUNDARESH: I have a plan.

ESI: If you have a plan, then so does your sim, and the Vex knows about it.

DUANE-MCNIADH: Does it matter? If we're in Vex hell right now, there's nothing we can -

SHIM: Stop talking about 'real' and 'unreal.' All realities are programs executing laws. Subjectivity is all that matters.

SUNDARESH: We have to act as if we're in the real universe, not one simulated by the specimen. Otherwise we might as well give up.

ESI: Your sim self is saying the same thing.

SUNDARESH: Chioma, love, please hush. It doesn't help.

DUANE-MCNIADH: Maybe the simulations are just billboards! Maybe they don't have interiority! It's bluffing!

SHIM: I wish someone would simulate you shutting up.

SUNDARESH: If we're sims, we exist in the pocket of the universe that the Vex specimen is able to simulate with its onboard brainpower. If we're real, we need to get outside that bubble.

ESI: ...we call for help.

SUNDARESH: That's right. We bring in someone smarter than the specimen. Someone too big to simulate and predict. A warmind.

SHIM: In the real world, the warmind will be able to behave in ways the Vex can't simulate. It's too smart. The warmind may be able to get into the Vex and rescue - us.

DUANE-MCNIADH: If we try, won't the Vex torture us for eternity? Or just erase us?

SUNDARESH: It may simply erase us. But I feel that's preferable to...the alternatives.

ESI: I agree.

SHIM: Once we try to make the call, the Vex may...react. So let's all savor this last moment of stability.

SUNDARESH: [indistinct sounds]

SHIM: You two are adorable.

DUANE-MCNIADH: I wish I'd taken that job at Clovis.

Sundaresh. Her voice was thoughtful, remote, and keenly terrific. Like the noise of an angle grinder held to my skull. “Something like this happened to me. I was an explorer, once. One of… hundreds of myself. Then I fell into a… a trap, I think? And they drew me out of it with a hook, and turned me inside out to see how I worked, and then they made billions of me. All of us shouting at each other, shouting for Chioma, screaming for mother. They were looking for the right one. And when they found me, they killed all the others. I knew I was different, because the quiet made me happy. I was glad to be alone.” VEX, I screamed at her. YOU’RE A VEX. YOU’RE NOT REAL AND YOU CAN’T HURT ME. “Can’t I?” She grasped my spinal cord. A frame shadowed her motions, lifting the cord like a snake. “Of course I’m not a Vex. Is there “a” Vex? Is “Vex” something you can be, rather than something that you do? I don’t know. I don’t know why they sent me here. I don’t know if they do either. They just do things. Why do you think I’m here, Clovis?” “To kill me,” I whispered. Without a heartbeat to waver, without lungs to seize and choke, could I even feel fear? I discovered that I could. “You’re an assassin…” “No,” Sundaresh whispered. The red eye throbbed in time with her voice. “The Vex don’t act so directly. They didn’t know what you found here, but I discovered your secret— Clarity Control. And once I tell them, they will come for it.” The red light made my blood on the surgical instruments appear black. I tried to signal Elisabeth. I think that in my panic, I even called her Elsie. Sundaresh closed her fist around my spine. One thumbnail dug into a disc, probing for the nerve beneath. It felt like nothing I have ever— Anti-emetic drip engaged. “Take me to Clarity Control,” Sundaresh hissed. “Let me behold what you have found. Do that, Clovis, and I will let you live.” “You aren’t real. You can’t hurt me.” “Oh, Clovis.” One of the surgical frames extended a monofilament cutter, two inches of invisible wire, and reached into my nerves. Something sounded like scissors snipping. “I’m in these frames. I’m in your systems. I’m in your very bones, old man. Now take me to Clarity Control. Take me to the garden’s seed. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me. Take me—”

Up here they have to act by biomechanical proxy. No human being in the Ishtar Academy has ever crossed the safety cordon and walked the ancient stone under the Citadel, the Vex construct that stabs up out of the world to injure space and time. It's not safe. The cellular Vex elements are infectious, hallucinogenic, entheogenic. The informational Vex elements are more dangerous yet— and there could be semiotic hazards beyond them, aggressive ideas, Vex who exist without a substrate. Even now, operating remote bodies by neural link, the team's thoughts are relayed through the warmind who saved them, sandboxed and scrubbed for hazards. Their real bodies are safe in the Academy, protected by distance and neural firewall. But they walk together in proxy, pressed close, huddled in awe. Blue-green light, light the color of an ancient sea, washes over them. Each of their explorer bodies carries a slim computer. Inside, two hundred twenty-seven of copies of their own minds wait, patient and paused, for dispersal. "I wonder where it came from," Duane-Mcniadh says. Of course he's the one to break the reverent silence. "The Citadel. I wonder if it was here before the Traveler changed Venus." "It could have been latent," Chioma Esi suggests. She's the leader. She kept them together when it seemed like they faced actual, eternal torture. She pulled them through. "Seeded in the crust. Waiting for a period of geological quiescence, so it could grow." Dr. Shim shrugs. "I think the Traveler did something paracausal to Venus. Something that cut across space and time. The Citadel seems to come from the past of a different Venus than our own. It doesn't have to make any sense by our logic, any more than the Moon's new gravity." Maya Sundaresh walks at the center of the group. She's been too quiet lately. What happened to them wasn't her fault and maybe she'll believe that soon. "What could you do with it?" she murmurs, staring up. "If you understood it?" Chioma puts an arm around her. "That's what we're going to find out. Where the Citadel can send us. Whether we can come back." "They're not us any more." Maya looks down at herself, at the cache of her self-forks. "We're not going anywhere. We're sending them. They're diverging."

They rescued themselves from the inside of a Vex mind, two hundred and twenty-seven copies of themselves, untortured and undamaged. Those copies voted, all unanimously, to be dispatched into the Vex information network as explorers. When Maya and Chioma look at each other they can tell they're each wondering the same thing: how many of them will stay together, wherever they go? How many fork-Mayas and fork-Chiomas will fall out of love? How many will end up bereft, grieving? How many will be happy, like them? Chioma tries a little smile. Maya smiles back, haltingly, and then, sighing, unable to stop herself, grins a big stupid grin, an everything-is-okay grin. Shim makes a loud obnoxious awwww at them. Duane-McNiadh is still thinking about paracausality, and doesn't notice. They climb. When they find the Vex aperture they plan to use, they overlay the luminous stone and ancient brassy machines with images of sun and sand. They set up the transmitters and interfaces that will translate two hundred and twenty-seven simulations of the four of them into Vex language, into the tangled pathways of the Vex network, to see what's out there, and maybe come home. In the metaphor they've chosen, setting up the equipment is like laying out the picnic. In the metaphor they've chosen they look like themselves, not hardened explorer proxies. Like people. "Do you think," Duane-McNiadh begins, halting, "that you could use this place to change things? If you regretted something, could you find a way through the Citadel, go back, and change it?" "I wish I could go back and change you into someone else," Dr. Shim grouses. Chioma's shaking her head. She knows physics. "Time is self-consistent," she says. "I think it's like the story of the merchant and the alchemist. You could go back and watch something, or be part of something, but if you did, then that was the way it always happened." "Maybe you could bring something back to now. Something you needed." Maya runs a hand across the surface of the Vex aperture, feeling it with sensors ten thousand times as precise as a human hand. These proxy bodies are limited— they crash and need resetting every few hours, they struggle with latency, they can't hold much long term memory. But they'll get better. "Or go forward and learn something vital. If you knew how to control it, how to navigate across space and time." "So it's just a way to make everything more complicated." Duane-McNiadh sighs. "It doesn't fix anything. Nothing ever does! I should've taken that job at— " "You would've hated it at Clovis," Dr. Shim says. "We both know you're happier here." Duane-McNiadh stands stunned by this courtesy, and then they both pretend to ignore each other. The four of them set up the interface. Their stored copies wake up and prepare for the journey, so that as they work they find themselves surrounded by the mental phantasms of themselves: two hundred and twenty-seven Mayas and Chiomas knocking helmets and smiling, two hundred and twenty-seven Dr. Shims making cynical bets with each other about how long they'll last, two hundred and twenty-seven Duane-McNiadhs blowing goodbye kisses to the sweet golden sun, two hundred and twenty-seven of them shaking hands, smiling, making ready to explore.

RECORD 0-CHASM-0

My love. I’ve opened this log as an apology.

As a scientist, I believe in record-keeping. I believe in protocols, peer review, and ethical conduct. I believe in the importance of disbelief — you know: let’s run that one more time.

What I’m doing here in Lhasa isn’t science. It’s unethical, secret, and shameful. And after what happened in Ishtar, dearest Chioma, I know you’d be furious with me for getting involved. Forty years isn’t far enough to forget a day like that.

But I believe it’s important. The least I can do is keep a few notes for you.

RECORD 0-CHASM-01

Trial one. Subject one.

It was an act of stupid loneliness. I used the device on myself because I...

[silence: 0:08]

I missed you. We hadn’t been apart for more than a year since we met. I’m not a very good wife, am I? You write me every week, even with all Hyperion’s work and all Hyperion’s distance keeping you from me. And I act like it’s not enough.

We built the device in mimicry of the Vex gateway systems from Ishtar. An observatory, yes, but I think of it as a mind-ship. Capable of displacing its payload across space and time.

The lab is cold and isolated. We are quarantined from the world, physically and mentally. We can’t send messages out. If we breach the Vex manifolds, even our words might transmit contagion. One night last month I missed you and so I —

I thought that I could look inside the device, and find one of the other Chiomas. I thought I could call out to one of the forks we sent out there to explore.

I just wanted to send my love.

RECORD 0-CHASM-02

Zakharik Gilmanovich Bekhterev. May he rest in peace. When our probes continued to fail, when my report remained our only positive finding, he volunteered to use the device. One minute of subjective experience inside.

We took precautions. They worked. Bekhterev’s experience left no physical damage.

After we extracted him, he said that he felt determined. I asked him what he meant and he said that he meant it, he had been determined, he could feel all his choices set out before him like a railroad. Deviation was impossible.

He died by suicide. I wonder if he was trying to make a point.

RECORD 0-CHASM-03

We’ve decided not to abort. It’s insane, isn’t it? There are pressures on us I can’t tell you about until I see you again.

The purpose of the system is intelligence, you see. It’s stenciled right on the hull: SxISR. Special asset. We would very much like to make it work reliably.

Our supervisory warmind has devised a drug it says will protect and prepare us.

I am beginning to wonder if we were wrong about the merchant and the alchemist. Or if that explanation of time was incomplete.

RECORD 0-CHASM-09

Kind Lakpha. He meditated before he went in. Nothing but déjà vu and three seconds of screams. The screaming passed and he remembers nothing. The déjà vu hasn’t. He says it’s getting better — he feels that we’ve had this conversation only ten times before, not a thousand.

I’ve suggested that we attempt mind forking. We need more sane people to work with. Please forgive me, my love.

We are all growing superstitious. The behavior of the device is inconsistent. Impossible to replicate. We turn to ritual behavior to appease it.

RECORD 0-CHASM-31

Rajesh. When he reached a displacement of eight he told us he was dead. I believed him. He was dead. He spoke to us. It was true. Whatever he saw, it was his own future.

He’s fine, afterwards. When I look into his eyes I wonder what came back wearing his skin. But that thought is unscientific.

We speak of nothing but the device. We talk about it like a demigod. When I get out of here I know the whole world will look like a fraying veil.

I think it’s clear that part of the problem is substrate. We need more than flesh and drug to survive this.

RECORD 0-CHASM-52

I heard you, my love. I was at six, oscillating on the event axis, coordinated with a known manifold. I heard you. You were talking to me — not me, but another me, another Maya Sundaresh.

You said, my love, so many strange things have happened, and it’s been so long. We’ve come so far. Do you ever want to go home?

And I said, not me but the other me, I said, my love, I am always home.

I’m resigning, my love. I’m done with this work and I’m done with being apart from you. I’ll see you again soon. I can’t take this journal out with me, so I’ve left it for the others, and asked them to continue the log.

Maybe it’ll become a tradition. The gospel of our little cult.

Research Log 1

Nimbus: You know, ever since we defeated Calus, I've been wondering a lot more about the Veil. I think... I think we take it for granted. It's always been here. We always assumed that the Ishtar Collective brought it with them on the Exodus ship, but...

Osiris: But now you question that assumption.

Nimbus: Nezarec seemed to know something, didn't he? When we were inside the Vex network, he said something about... Savathûn.

Osiris: My memories cast shadows of Savathûn's. Echoes of the time she and I were bound by her dark magic. The more time we spend here, the clearer the outline of those shadows become. The Ishtar Collective didn't bring the Veil here, Nimbus. Savathûn stole it from the Witness and left it here... quite possibly for the Ishtar Collective to find.

Research Log 2

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: the Veil. [sighs] I don't even know where to start. When we landed on Neptune, there was... something waiting for us. An alien structure. It's an electromagnetic anomaly. No mass, but a tangible surface area. It's like a thesis statement to the Von Neumann-Wigner hypothesis. It's definitely paracausal, like the Traveler. Maya calls it the Veil. She says she heard the name in a whisper when... when she looked at it. When I asked her who whispered, she said it was... her own voice. I still haven't had time to process that. Everyone on the initial survey team died. The minute they touched the object, they entered a state of... of brain death. All of them. To make it worse, the EM radiation emitting from the Veil is causing psychological distress in the Exos that came with us. They've all described moments of intense, hallucinogenic reverie. Some of them went silent and rigid and just... stopped. Maya called it "billboarding." Something from the early days of Clovis Bray's Exomind project. She doesn't seem afraid. Or surprised. She's convinced this thing—in her own words, she says—it'll be our "salvation."

^The machine's tape.^

Research Log 3

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: the Veil. We shouldn't settle here. It's a mistake. But Maya is insistent that we have to build our long-term shelters near the Veil. We're almost done constructing an enclosure around it. Once the field emitters are up, we should at least be safe from its radiation. The SIVA tech Maya had on the Exodus was a lifesaver. Not only for building the enclosures, but shelters, tools—we'd be dead without it. But it still wasn't fast enough. The last Exo in our group, succumbed to brain death yesterday. Maya's... quarantined the bodies for study. She says our next step should be finding a way to draw power from the Veil so we're self-sufficient. I'm insisting on turbines instead. But she doesn't think that's good enough. Not for as long-term as this might be. Which—I guess. But I can't shake this feeling... like we're making a terrible mistake.

Nimbus: I'm not getting a good vibe from this. Quinn says these records contradict some of her own. But there's a ton of references to Maya Sundaresh in our archives that are redacted. I'm... I'm worried, Osiris. What if everything we've been told our whole lives—what if it was all a lie?

Ghost: Rohan, I think we're still a little fuzzy here. What exactly is the CloudArk?

Rohan: It's our city's network. Our infrastructure, our people, our defenses... everything depends on it.

Nimbus: And what we're doing now is stopping the Vex from siphoning energy from the CloudArk's reactor. We do that—the Veil's safe, the Neomuni are safe. Bing, bang, boom. Star-garitas on Rohan!

Rohan: Make your way to the CloudArk reactor, and we'll head to the central power junction. Once you've cycled the system, we'll be able to return power to the reactor.

Ghost: Just so we're clear—if the CloudArk is lost, what does that mean for the Neomuni?

Nimbus: All our citizens have uploaded their consciousness into the CloudArk. No CloudArk means lights out for everyone in Neomuna.

Ghost: Ah, so it's bad. Got it.

"We are all connected. I admit this despite the few people I would rather not share a paracausal connection with. Some people. …Many people." —Osiris

Research Log 4

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: the Vex.

Osiris: Interesting.

Chioma Esi: Six weeks ago, our settlement came under attack by an intrusion of Vex forces. It was a test of our defenses for a larger incursion. Yesterday, scouts discovered temporarily realigned architecture just outside the stronghold limits. The Vex had retroactively inserted themselves into Neptune's history... just like they did on Venus. But unlike Venus, something stopped them short of our habitat. They had to fight their way in. I think it's the Veil. Something about the paracausal nature of the Veil is preventing their temporal excursions. But the Vex aren't giving up. They did something to Neptune's magnetic field — wove a sim into it. A screen to isolate us. It's a double-edged sword. The Vex screen hides us from the outside world, from whatever's happened. So we're safe... ish. But we're stuck with the Vex. Thankfully, they're slow to react, and it's giving us time to research countermeasures. Huh... it's almost our anniversary. I should do something for Maya. She'll forget. She's always so busy. Computer, prepare food synthesis. File: Chioma data night 6. Oh, and add a bottle of port.

Nimbus: Osiris? You... all right?

Osiris: Y—yes, I'm fine; I just, um... saw shadows. My choices. Saint. Dr. Sundaresh and I walked very similar paths of obsession, it seems.

Nimbus: Oh.

Osiris: [stutters] Nevertheless... it appears that Neomuna's history is deeply tied to the Vex. Hopefully the next decryption will shed more light on this.

Research Log 7

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: Veil interface. Maya and I have finalized a prototype interface for the Veil. Hopefully, it'll allow our research team to investigate it in detail. The system's designed like an orchestra, with a central "conductor" directing a symphony of minds to act like a distributed network. The... idea came to us by watching how collective networks like SIVA and the Vex operate. The hope is we can aggregate and parse the vast amounts of psychic data emitting from the Veil. Turn it into something intelligible. If we're successful, the interface will provide us with a starting point for any future technological research tied to the Veil. The risks of — of such integration are high. The estimates mortality rates are... but I... I... I don't know what I'm doing. This is wrong. This is so wrong! We shouldn't — all she ever talks about is survival! "Think big picture!" What about your survival? What about your heart? My heart? [sighs tearfully] I can't keep doing this. I can't. I can't!

Nimbus: Damn.

Osiris: I... again, I see a shadow of myself in Maya Sundaresh. The man I could have become had I let obsession continue to rule me. I'm worried what the next recording will reveal.

Nimbus: Me too.

Balance of Power

"In my mind I heard it whisper: 'come and see.'"

Maya Sundaresh sits hunched over a display, the only source of light in her dark office. Brain wave scans of 16 Exos read flatline on the monitor. "How is Doctor Ardehi?" she asks into an open mic. "Dead." Chioma Esi's voice is a hoarse whisper. Maya switches to the security camera in Veil Containment and sees her wife kneeling on the catwalk over Doctor Ardehi's body. A procession of dead Exos are slumped over the railings to Chioma's left and right. Maya tabs away to study a bar graph. "Neuropathy reports show a spike in activity in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus in the moments before brain death," Maya reports, eliciting a shaky sigh from Chioma over the comms before she continues her analysis. "The spikes plateaued for one fifth of a second, which may indicate a receptor error. We may need to utilize an intermediary rather than direct connections. Do the hard wires show any damage?" Maya tabs back to the security feed, watching as Chioma wipes her eyes and then assesses one of the dead Exos, checking a thick cable plugged into the back of his head. "No sign of damage. Capacitance switches didn't trigger. It's…" She swallows down bile. "The problem isn't our hardware…" 'It's theirs,' is a whisper only Maya can hear. "It's theirs," Maya agrees aloud. "I think—I think we need to stop," Chioma finds the strength to admit. "Reassess our findings. Resume analysis of the initial electromagnetic anomaly before contact. We can't keep… we can't…" "Keep shoveling coal into the furnace?" Maya suggests as she leans back into her chair. Chioma is too taken aback by the casual disregard to loss of life to reply. "You're right." Maya continues. "But we're not stopping. We're reorienting. The Veil is the future of humanity." For a moment, neither woman says anything. There is only the soft hum of electronics in a darkened room to fill Maya's senses. That, and a static hiss at the back of her mind. "The Veil is dangerous," Chioma asserts, her voice is tinged with a tremor of emotion. Fear of losing the woman she loves keeps her from pushing harder as they stand on the edge of moral precipice together. 'It is.' "It is," Maya agrees aloud. "We must treat it with caution, respect, and also… reverence." A thought crystallizes. "We must treat it like a knife."

Research Log 8

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: Veil interface, supplemental. They're all dead. Chorus, conductor... everyone. It was too much. Swept their minds away like... like grains of sand on a beach. They're all dead! Maya... Maya called it "valuable data points." Wellsprings and rivers, or... something. What have I done?

Nimbus: Dead? They — this killed their entire research team, but it sounds like — it's like—

Osiris: Like their lives held no value to Dr. Sundaresh. There's a troubling symmetry with data we've recovered from Titan. Data on the origin of the Witness. It too, was once multiple people that became conjoined by the way of some sort of... ritual with the Veil. Perhaps a "conductor" and a "chorus." It is troubling that Dr. Sundaresh seemed to be moving down the same path.

Nimbus: I don't like this, Osiris. I don't like this at all.

Research Log 9

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: Lakshmi-2.

Osiris: What?!

Chioma Esi: Maya's... I don't even know what to say. I'd recused myself from further experiments. Told her to take some time off. She refused. And she... the minute I wasn't there, she started hauling the braindead Exos out of cold storage. Hooking them up to the Veil interface. She burned through dozens of them. Reversed the entire machine's design. Used a chorus of braindead Exos to funnel data down to the conductor seat, projecting a mental imprint. Hers. I... I didn't know Lakshmi-2, but Maya did. And now she's.... she's made this thing. It speaks with her voice. Has some of her memories. The way it looks at me... It's like it knows something I don't.

Nimbus: Osiris, do you recognize that name. "Lakshmi"?

Osiris: Yes... and no, Lakshmi-2 was an Exo and once-leader of a faction on Earth known as the Future War Cult. She died over a year ago. But she never once made mention of any of this. Of Neomuna, of... Maya. Did she know. Did she remember? This is all as much a revelation to me as it is to you. It throws everything she did while in the Last City into question.

Nimbus: I mean, with... if she was a copy of Dr. Sundaresh, then... is she really dead?

Osiris: I don't know. For now, I must deliver a rather uncomfortable report to Ikora.

IX. Prediction

In the days that followed Quria's defeat, the sky lightened, and so did the City's mood as the Endless Night began to slowly lift. Lakshmi-2 stood high on the City walls, watching adventurous citizens mingle with the Eliksni. She focused her attention on an Eliksni peddler, who had fashioned several small robots from discarded scrap. A small gaggle of children stood across the way, clearly interested in the robots as they moved aimlessly, but too frightened to approach. Lakshmi knew that the peddler would sell one of the robots, but none of the scrap, and end the day discouraged. It's a bright new day, she thought. "It's a bright new day," a deep voice called out. Lakshmi turned to see the former Warlock Osiris striding along the wall toward her. "What a strange choice of words," Lakshmi answered. "The Darkness is closer than ever." And in the darkness, it's sometimes difficult to tell friend from foe. She remembered this conversation from her time in the Device. Many of the potential futures it showed her led to this moment. Osiris was growing predictable. "It is," Osiris said. "And in the darkness, it's hard to tell friend from foe." Lakshmi smiled inwardly. They were still well within the standard deviation. "I'm surprised to hear you say that, Osiris. You are normally blessed with such uncommon clarity." "My perspective has changed since I lost the Light," Osiris began slowly. "Time is suddenly finite. It makes everything seem more… changeable. And if my perception can change, perhaps my enemies can as well." "The folly of mortality." Lakshmi gestured to the scene below. "Those people could never understand time as we do, Osiris. You've peered behind the veil. You've seen the Vex simulations stretching endlessly. You understand that history is changeable… but also inevitable." "I used to be certain of that," he agreed. "But now I have to wonder, if history is inevitable, why am I constantly surprised?" Lakshmi chuckled. She had heard his comment before, of course, but her premonition had not adequately conveyed his fatuousness. "And what do you think, Osiris? Will this bright new day last?" She nodded toward the Eliksni settlement. "Are we meant to share the Light with the Fallen?" As if you would know, she thought. You no longer deal in predictions. "I've given up on prediction, Lakshmi. I put my fate in the hands of the Traveler now more than ever before." He gave her a sidelong glance. "And what do you say? Is this a new dawn?" Lakshmi recalled the vision she had so fervently sought within the Device. The realization of her righteous victory over the Eliksni—historical and preordained all at once. Her life's work, crawling minute by minute from the future into the present. "No," she replied. "This is just a flash of lightning before the coming storm."

The Deicide

"Believe in war, and nothing else." —Lakshmi-2

Encoded private ping via HDN Proxy Router… Ikora, thought you'd want to see this. It presents as binary in our systems, but something is splicing hashes in. I pulled it from the Tower's Nexus Iso-feed. It's all over FWC networks… and elsewhere. | 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || 01000011.# 01000101 01000110.# 01000100.# 01000010 01000100.# 01000101 01000001.# || My guess is the lettering indicates some kind of audible tone-code pattern, but I haven't listened to it. One of my subordinates has isolated minor pitch fluctuations represented here as "#". These are foreign elements to otherwise normal binary code. See attached report for archival information on binary code. —Aunor

c# e f# d# b d# e a#

IX.I: The Unmaking

SONG OF LIFE The Song was not always a corruption. It began as a gift, stolen from the Gardener. In efforts to understand the unknowable realities of the orb's incredible gifts, a signal was found—a repeating tune, the Song of Creation. Its frequencies were heard across the stars, wherever life's promise took hold. Some among the Ammonites worshipped it. Some among the Hive did the same. Still others sought to understand it that they might cage it, that they might control it—for to control life is to control death. Such ambition was not new; such ambition was as old as understanding. The melody was captured and studied. The frequencies replicated. But the orb's mysteries were not so easily brought to light. The Song, for all its beauty, did not alone grant life. It was theorized that the Song was not a song at all, but many. That within its refrain, untold rhythms spoke their own truths, free and clear of the whole. Centuries passed. The Song remained untamed. Life moved on. SONG OF DEATH The Choir formed in celebration of the Song. Performances marked the passage of seasons. But the Song's lie eventually began to corrupt the spirit of those who heard its tune. The melody was a reminder. The orb was a catalyst. And the Song was of the orb. Yet, those who embraced the Song were merely instruments and nothing more. Life remained beyond their grasp, while they remained ever in death's. Those of the Choir had given all of themselves. All was not enough. The First Conductor was assassinated by one who sang an Aria of her own making. She, whose name has been stricken, had found notes hidden in the frequencies. Reversed and mirrored in pitch, she weaved them together and sang her beautiful abomination, until the Conductor wept and bled and screamed and fell. The Stricken fled, fearful of her crime. But others found promise anew in her art. The Stricken was captured and subjected to inquisition so that her song might be understood. This was before Understandings—before most things—when the first notes of a new Song were written.

The Last Midnight Star

Gather 'round, young'uns. No, no automat for supper; no noodles. Tonight is something special: corn pone and chitlins. This here's history on a plate. Now, don't give me that look before you even taste it. If the world's fixing to end again, it's time you had a meal from our family's past while you hear about it. About how the Rigby clan survived the last time the world went dark. Now the Rigbys, we didn't always squat on the edge of the City. A long time back, we came out of a place that was old and wet, hotter than the fires of Perdition—so your Gramma's gramma and her pappy before her have said. It was also a place where the Devil roamed, giving folk their heart's desire. And I know that last part is true, because your ancestor—Sean Rigby was his name—he came to a crossroads one midnight, drunk and feeling the fool, and… he saw her. Standing there, checking the time and looking cool as no other in the sweltering August heat. Tall as cottonwood in bloom and wearing a smile across her lips that stopped short of her eyes. Some say the Devil is a man with a pointy beard. Others say the Devil's a terrifying beast with claws and a tail. But Sean? He knew right then. The Devil was a lady. The Devil bent down close to him, setting her eyes on his wayward soul. Her voice was honeysuckle-sweet as she said, "I know you, Sean Rigby. I seen you sweat and sob for a scrap of land you can't even rightly say is your own. I seen your family fight to save a name that's more precious to you than gold. Well there is a reckoning coming, Sean Rigby, one that will wipe all lands and all names—high and low—clean from this Earth. I alone can whistle up the way to protect one of these things you hold dear, if your family will owe me… a debt." Old Sean was already a sinner, but a man with nothing will fight to keep what little he has. He figured that alive and in the Devil's pocket was better than dead, so he shook her hand. The Devil opened her eyes—one, two, three—and pointed him to the last star in the sky, far to the south. She said, "That's your star, Sean Rigby. Follow it each night, when it's the last star hanging low, and sing to it. You sing, 'Al Eck Ruk Nam, Shu Nam Eck Ur,' until you call that star down to Earth. You do that, and your family will endure." The Rigbys did as they were told and walked south. Each night they sang, and each night their star sat lower and lower. And when it finally fell, they were safe beneath the Traveler. But now, children, I give you the same dire warning that's been handed down to me: the Devil hasn't come back yet to take what's hers… not from Sean, or any other Rigby what survived him. But a debt's a debt. So you learn and remember that song, children… and steer clear of crossroads once the sun sets.

Drifter: Hey. Three Eyes. Shaxx says you sang him a lil' ditty.

Eris Morn: What?

Drifter: Shaxx. Chunky Titan. One horn. Did you sing him a song on the Moon?

Eris Morn: What a senseless question.

Drifter: Yeah. I didn't think so.

Eris Morn: Stay off this channel. Should I need you, I'll call — wait.

Drifter: Uh, I didn't hang up.

Eris Morn: Does that oaf still keep that skull with him?

Drifter: In the Tower? Yeah. Hangs it over his spot. I wouldn't have tangoed with that thing.

Eris Morn: Desperate times. This… 'lil ditty. Did it go… ? [hums]

Drifter: That would be the one. Heh. What is it?

Eris Morn: Savathûn's Song. It's a viral chant. It can never be unheard. Now that Savathûn has announced herself, relics of the Dark across the system have begun to awaken… Tell Shaxx to remove that Skull immediately.

Drifter: Sister, I already tried.

Eris Morn: What did that oaf say?

Drifter: No.

Research Log 10

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, research log: The Veil. She did it! Maya connected people to the Veil. Our own scientists. And they survived. I should be happy, but... happy that all this horror wasn't for nothing? But I'm not. I'm disgusted. In myself. In Maya. In all of us. This thing, the Veil. It's... it's some kind of web of consciousness. Just like the Vex network, but organic instead of artificial. It make sense why the Vex want it. Paracausal simulations? There'd be no stopping them. I should be happy. To— to be a part of history, to solve a cosmic riddle. Happy for Maya; happy for all of us. But I'm not. I don't feel anything. Maya is gone. The woman I knew... may as well have died when we landed on Neptune. But her ghost still haunts me... this place. I don't know what to do. There's a generation of children born here now. This is their home. [sighs] I don't know what to do.

Nimbus: Damn. Osiris, this is... I don't know if I want to listen to this anymore.

Osiris: Obsession is a beast with long, sharp talons. A beast that does not so easily release its prey. Maya Sundaresh is... but one victim.

Nimbus: That sounds like you're talking from experience.

Osiris: Painfully so. But unlike Dr. Sundaresh, I found a way out of the beast's grasp, before it was too late.

Nimbus: How?

Osiris: By losing.

PERSONAL LOG 0002 AS

It is strange to be awake, physically, after so long spent wandering. Keeping a log will help, at the very least to track the days. As will my silly little joke to make myself feel important, two days after the rebeginning of myself. Anno… me. I suppose. I ignored and abandoned the best person I knew. I feel foolish, empty. Daunted at the immensity and masochism of my own stupidity. It feels childish to admit I'd always assumed she would follow me. I realize how naïve that is, but… I really thought I wouldn't be by myself for long. I thought she was aligned with my vision. At least I am not alone here. My new ally more than makes up for the Vex's dreadful company. His disposition is calming, reassuring—a welcome voice when I need affirmation and guidance. And such a fascinating origin! Such astounding variance in biology and culture. I look forward to our continued partnership. But still, it isn't the same. I feel a grief I did not know possible. There are questions I wish I could ask; jokes I wish I could make. It is difficult not to feel like the world has ended. And as I begin to comprehend what happened… I think it already has.

Research Log 11

Chioma Esi: Chioma Esi, personal log: incidental. Maya's dead. I found her in the conductor's chair, alone. Nobody knows what she was doing. Her "copy" — that thing, Lakshmi — is still developmentally incomplete. It doesn't understand what happened to Maya. I had it quarantined until we can... Until we... Do something.

PERSONAL LOG 0025 AS

Contrary to universal understanding of pre-Veil contact philosophy, personhood is measurable. What defines personhood is consciousness within the principal state of existence, mathematically defined through infinite probability testing by the Vex as our current own timeline. Traversal through other states of being are possible, as proven by my own journey and ascension over my Vex, but this is only true traversal when the affected entity is the principal consciousness. If not, it is a different phenomenon entirely. While Vex, even these older ones, specialize in replicating existing beings in order to determine future possibility, the facsimiles they create are just that: facsimiles. It is only logical to prioritize our timeline of origin, and these duplications share no origin, no connection to the one realm and timeline that matter. Think of the Primary Query results thus far! What we have seen are facsimiles, unquestionably wrong: small errors in some ways, and in others immense. Each is clearly a response to an original, like variations on a theme. Rachmaninoff may play like Chopin, but he is NOT Chopin. But with this… there are clear parameters to the query. Memories, personal beliefs, measurable factors. When we think of revolting familiarity, we think of doppelgangers; uncanny valleys that are familiar and strange at once. These are unnatural in the extreme, directly in opposition to the order of the universe. What falls outside of parameters is a twin we cannot trust, for it is not natural. It is not real. It cannot persist. I believe in my hypothesis. I must trust that I know what I know. The Primary Query continues.

Research Log 14

Chioma Esi: Years ago, back on Venus, the Vex simulated copies of us — Maya and I. Trapped in a virtual hell. After so long, even hell can look like heaven, can't it? [chuckles] I'm tired. I'm done. Maya has to be out there. The Maya I remember. And all I want is one more moment with her. To hold her in my arms. Tell her that I love her. So she can tell me to "hush" one more time. If... if we learned anything from the Veil, it's that eventually... we all have to learn to let go. So... I made contact with the Vex. I'm ready. And it's time to say goodbye.

||Even paradise is a prison when you can't leave||

"You taught me the value of a backup plan." Ikora gives him a stern look. "Titan, Savathûn's throne world, every place we've found egregore… I haven't found the exact threads yet but pull one and they all seem to spin back to Neomuna. To the Veil." "You're getting ahead of yourself. Following some of my… less favorable tendencies. Nimbus says we must 'flow' to understand Strand; perhaps it is the same with the Veil." Osiris moves beside Ikora and reaches up, palm parallel to the threads drawn taut from Ikora's braid of Strand. "Sol remembered Titan, in a way. The Veil's signal spiked when Titan returned from memory to reality, when the rhythm of the solar system had been restored to order." Osiris drops his hand and looks to Ikora. "Perhaps we must simply find that rhythm before we are able to interpret the beats within it."

The violet interior filled Gahlran’s vision. “What does it feel like?” asked the Emperor. “Fear,” Gahlran said. Calus must have responded, but Gahlran couldn’t hear him over the cacophony of voices. He suddenly found that he could see. Through a hundred billion eyes. And that he could eat. With teeth enough to consume entire systems. He felt beautiful.

O: [sips tea] Though my senses were darkened, that much was clear through the murk of her throne world. There was a secret she kept veiled, even to the last.

O: [sighs] I do not fully understand what I saw, and for a Human to understand a Hive mind... How many legends of katabasis do we have, Ikora?

I: We currently have dozens of stories about descending to the realms of the dead, though research has indicated many more must have existed, lost in the layers of Human history we will never lay eyes on. Mathematically, there were likely hundreds.

I: [pauses] Inanna and Dumuzid and Geshtinanna, Orpheus and Eurydice, Izanagi and Izanami, to name a few. Gods and goddesses, mortal and immortal lovers, always seeking to descend and return with the lost.

O: And neither the lost nor those who searched for them were ever returned the same.

I:...Is that how you think of yourself?

O: [scoffs] Do I sound that dire? All Guardians, all Lightbearers have done as much. But others, well... I wonder, do our former enemies have similar stories...

I: What exactly are you getting at?

O: Frequently, the underworld—or those realms beyond mortal existence—possess wisdom the living do not. What then, is knowledge from a dead Hive god vested in deception.... [long pause]

I: So. Neptune, and secrets.

O:...Inanna...

I: What is it?

O:...A thought. An echo of one. The return from the underworld, and Inanna cast off her veil... It makes sense. I did not understand, when I first felt clutching whispers. Carrying wisdom away from Kur when she strode into the sunlight again.

Perfect Pitch

Raise your voice and sing.

"The Veil." It names itself, as the Human mind named itself, with the weight and presence of sound on the lips, translated into a form that you can physically comprehend. Encompass. Envelop. A touch of teeth and tongue. A vibration of an eardrum. Air moving through a chest cavity. A taste of breath. More than that. Not nearly as much as that. That was the beginning. "Be known." This is next: you see the whorl and weft, the place where it joins itself in one smooth, unbroken surface of light. Make an incision, and from the wound of light will pour forth colors you have never seen. You are pigment, the pigment closest to those colors. "Be seen." Wet matter set against that light, the light that determines what color you are. But each color is a note, and each note is a mind. You are a choir. A chorus. You open your mouth to join it, and you are flooded with the taste of color, with the taste of sound. The sound and color that you are, translated. A means for you to understand. "Be heard." You raise your hand and hold it steady.

Euphony

Perhaps The Final Shape is not silence, it is a symphony.

The following text was found recessed into a stone wall within the Pale Heart. Translation protocol has done its best to equate the text to a modern language transcription, with nominal confidence. Words or phrases with <85% translation confidence within the transcript are contained in [brackets]. Values for bracketed words or phrases are listed after the transcript, with percentages indicated in (parentheses). TRANSCRIPTION STARTS We speak so often of knives and violence, but perhaps you would come to understand something… [softer]. Perhaps [beingness] is instead a [golden harp]. Forged tenderly, a complex, sweeping, beautiful shape with graceful curves and infinite potential, the exemplary [?UNKNOWN?]. Across its two florid [buttresses], the strings of time have been pulled taught. Tightened and [tuned] to a delicate [balance of distress], if wound much further, would lead to [rupture] and sting most unpleasantly. Pluck at any stretched string and [vibration reverberates]. Wavelength moves through [atmosphere], producing pleasing audible experiences, [they crest then fade]. If [plucked] at regular intervals, the waves rise and fall with such charm. This predictability is perfection; it is unmatched. We will compose such [sweet music]. We will control the ebb and flow. The final shape is the [golden harp], and [we are the hand that plucks]. TRANSCRIPTION ENDS Confidence Percentages: [softer] —- (72%) [beingness] —- (84%) [golden harp] —- (25%) [?UNKNOWN?] —- (0%) [buttresses] —- (46%) [tuned] —- (77%) [balance of distress] —- (4%) [rupture] —- (68%) [vibration reverberates] —- (18%) [atmosphere] —- (15%) [they crest then fade] —- (9%) [plucked] —- (34%) [sweet music] —- (37%) [golden harp] —- (25%) [we are the hand that plucks] —- (2%)

"The collective unconscious comprises in itself the psychic life of our ancestors right back to the earliest beginnings. It is the matrix of all conscious psychic occurrences, and hence it exerts an influence that compromises the freedom of consciousness in the highest degree, since it is continually striving to lead all conscious processes back into the old paths."

Ignorance is a prison cell.

Secant Filaments

The nature of the secant is to intercept a curve, a role all human relationships likewise fill.

In this treatise, I plan to revisit earlier mathematical theorems and revise them considering our new observations on the Light, the Darkness, and lifeforms imbued with those respective powers. But before I do so, I must preface it with a personal note. Despite high-minded assumptions, mathematics is not an intrinsic language of the universe. It is how we describe the portions of the universe that we can observe. While numbers can track the abstract and find pattern in chaos, they cannot account for fundamental aspects of reality such as compassion or justice. The existence of the Lucent Hive, and Hive Ghosts in particular, may expand our understanding of causality, but they themselves are not "new"—the only thing that is new is our awareness and observation of them. These Ghosts have already been living alongside us. They've traveled with us. Endured with us. What we see is the mushroom, the fruit of the fungus. The fungus itself is a vast mycorrhizal network of filaments growing and working unseen below the soil, often barely connected to the fruiting bodies we observe. Similarly, we have observed Ghosts—Hive Ghosts included—without understanding the nature of the unseen filaments that may guide us. In our eagerness to understand the universe, we must not assume our observations are complete, or objective. Otherwise, we blind ourselves to possibilities… like the possibility that an unnoticed faction among us may be one temptation away from betrayal. Or that what drives our creator is no more than the same base desire for survival that drives all living things. —On Secants, Introduction, Ophiuchus

||Guardians make their own fate. But what if the process by which they decide upon their own fate could be understood and manipulated?||

Well I've been waiting, waiting here so long But thinking nothing, nothing could go wrong, ooh now I know She has a built-in ability To take everything she sees And now it seems I'm falling, falling for her She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She reaches in and grabs right hold of your heart She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah It takes control and slowly tears you apart Well I don't really know her, I only know her name But when she crawls under your skin You're never quite the same, and now I know She's got something you just can't trust It's something mysterious And now it seems I'm falling, falling for her She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She reaches in and grabs right hold of your heart She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah It takes control and slowly tears you apart She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She reaches in and grabs right hold of your heart She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah It takes control and slowly tears you apart Well, she don't like losing, to her, it's still a game And though she will mess up your life You'll want her just the same, and now I know She has a built-in ability To take everything she sees And now it seems I've fallen, fallen for her She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She reaches in and grabs right hold of your heart She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah It takes control and slowly tears you apart She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She seems to have an invisible touch, oh She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She seems to have an invisible touch, oh She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She seems to have an invisible touch, oh She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah She seems to have an invisible touch, oh

JALAAL >> REY

All right, I give up. We may have quit the Tower, but I still need your help.

For three years, we've had our best analysts working on the documents slipped to a Guardian via the queen's court—the so-called "Truth to Power" manuscripts. All we've got to show for it are burnt fingers and bad arguments.

I appeal to the Hidden for help.

Here's what I believe we can know with confidence||Question everything||:

• The author of all these documents is Savathûn.

• The documents are an extension of Savathûn's strategy in the Dreaming City. They are cyclic, deceptive, and fond of the "you did exactly as I planned" mantra.

• There is no encrypted content. Any solvable encryption scheme would be discovered by the mass scrutiny of Ghosts. Therefore, encrypted information is little different from plaintext, so there is no purpose to adding solvably encrypted information. Any unsolvable encryption scheme would remain unsolved and is thus equally purposeless. Therefore, the true message of the documents can be obtained simply by reading the text.

• The true message concerns (a) the importance of singularities in Savathûn's personal cosmology and/or (b) instructions on how to mantle Savathûn.

We've had ships sweeping the edge of the system for orbiting singularities. But we don't know the mass of the Distributary, or Exodus Green's outward vector at the time the Distributary formed. We don't even know if the Distributary singularity inherited the Exodus Green's vector—leaving it on an escape trajectory into interstellar space—or if it emerged at rest with respect to the Sun—meaning, it would fall directly towards the Sun and pass through it, over and over. Add the gravitational influence of the planets, and it could be anywhere by now. We're looking for a microscopic point in a volume larger than the solar system. We thought about using fleets of sensor mites to search for a gravitational influence—but then we realized the Nine are in competition with us to find the singularity, and they would certainly use their phantom mass to interfere.

Unless it's been in front of us all along. Right in the sky of the Dreaming City. Could they have found some way to harness the singularity? To park it where they can guard it…? If so, we must obtain this capability.

Have you found anything we missed?

REY >> JALAAL

The Truth to Power documents are Dûl Incaru's plea for her mother's love. She wrote a biography of her mother, an attempt at understanding, in the hopes that Savathûn would also understand her. Imagine how lonely it would be to live in the High Coven, where everything, all communication, is deception. Imagine if your mother had never once told you the truth about anything.

JALAAL >> REY

This is sarcasm. I'm asking you in good faith for your help.

Rey >> JALAAL

And I'm trying in good faith to lead you to the truth. The Truth to Power manuscripts are pluripotent. There are many ways to read them.

JALAAL >> REY

That sounds like an excuse for a failure to discover the true meaning.

REY >> JALAAL

You have it all backwards. You're trying to shuffle the puzzle pieces around until you get an image. You need to know the image before you can arrange the pieces.

Think about logic. Here, we define logic as "the governing principle by which a power defines its own existence." For example, the Hive practice sword logic.

What is the governing logic of Truth to Power?

JALAAL >> REY

Being nonsense? Being convoluted? Being misunderstood?

REY >> JALAAL

Very well, then. Study Truth to Power with an eye for how it means to be misunderstood.

JALAAL >> REY

Oh, ascended master, tell me, how are we to obtain actionable intelligence from the way the documents are meant to be misunderstood?

REY >> JALAAL

Your centuries of defeatism have left you with a bad case of learned helplessness.

The documents are full of possible misunderstandings. One misunderstanding is that they are pointless, just complexity for the sake of confusion. The threads about imbaru and power-from-confusion point this way. This is the stance that most amateur Guardian analysts seem to have settled on: it's all a lot of nothing, and there's nothing to understand in it.

This is plainly foolish. The text is full of useful intelligence, including an excellent explanation of the Anthem Anatheme and an apparently accurate description of how Riven preyed on Guardians to create the curse.

Another easy misunderstanding is that these pages are concerned with a "real humdinger of a scheme," a manipulation of Hive tribute that requires Savathûn's entry into the Distributary. This could be true; the scheme could very well exist. But if so, why would Savathûn advise us of such a scheme?

Another easy misunderstanding is that these are love letters.

Think before you laugh! The letters carefully establish a sense of shared physicality. The Eris voice asks you to center yourself in your breath and your body; it asks you to imagine her as a judoka, a swimmer, a football player. This is subtle work, Arach! It is the work of an alien that has taken on many forms and learned how to win trust in all of them.

The letters plead with us for compassion. Not-Eris describes herself as shy, pitiful, forlorn, afraid to share her true feelings for us. Not-Medusa pleads for help as she disintegrates. At the center, we find the clearest profession of love: "Thank you, sweet friend. You are a gift and a delight. You are more dear than my mother, for you have given birth to me a thousand times."

Superficially, this is a reference to the concept of imbaru. Savathûn's plan to predicate her existence upon the misunderstanding of others. We "give birth" to her by feeding her power.

But she also says, "Here at the center, I lie to you the truth. You have everything you need to know it, but I will give you a clue, as the duelist gives warning before she draws. The answer you seek to the Dreaming City is simple, not complex."

So let's not misunderstand this statement about giving birth to her.

Let's take this at face value.

We have given birth to Savathun. She genuinely loves us for it.

JALAAL >> REY

Are you implying that we created Savathûn by imagining her? That her presence in the Books of Sorrow, and all the things she's done throughout more than a billion years of time, were caused by us reading the Truth to Power manuscript?

If this is what the Light does to a mind, I'm glad I was never chosen.

REY >> JALAAL

No, I don't think that's the right answer. Her spawning on Fundament was only one of her births. She says it herself. "You have given birth to me a thousand times."

Look at Truth to Power simply. What are the topics it centers upon?

Black holes. Vex simulations. Ahamkara. Manipulations of Hive tribute. So our answer must involve all four of those.

Ahamkara willingly seek destruction in order to be taken as trinkets by Guardians. You must know this. You've tried to exploit those trinkets as thoroughly as the other factions. But do you understand the metaphysics behind their desire?

I do. I once wished to know more about Ahamkara. Wish granted.

Ahamkara believe that by transforming themselves, by metamorphosing from monsters into treasures, they become more real. More important ontologically. It is the gap between reality as is and reality as desired that they feed on, Arach. And Guardians are the richest, finest source of reality as desired that they have ever met.

What have Ahamkara artifacts ever done but instill delusions of grandeur? A solipsistic madness: "I am more real than what surrounds me"?

Why is this?

The skulls of dire Ahamkara speak to me. They know I want to know the truth, and so they whisper to me of a path they climb. They call it the Anathematic Arc.

They are going somewhere. Somewhere they consider more real. Guardians are part of how they get there.

What if Savathûn wants to go there too?

JALAAL >> REY

…if you say there is somewhere more real than here, you are implying that we are not real.

This is the simulation argument. That we are ghosts in some other world's machine. Then there are no real stakes in our war for survival because even if we are extinguished, we were never more than phantoms.

I refuse to accept this.

REY >> JALAAL

Oh, don't be so timid! An Arach of Dead Orbit driven to despair by the thought of other universes, when you should know the lore of Hubble volumes and Tegmark hierarchies by heart!

Our existence is real to us, vitally real, because it is ours. It's the only one we have. Even if we are simulations or imaginations, we have an inner life as rich as any "real" living thing, and so, we are equally real! When we die, we are dead, dead, dead.

We believe there are many timelines; does that lead us to discount the reality of our own? Do we stop caring about ourselves, Ikora Rey and Arach Jalaal, because in another timeline, we are already dead? Do I punish you because in another timeline, you murdered me? What matters to us… is us.

But it is possible for realities to be concatenated. The Awoken Distributary is an infinite universe, but it exists within our universe.

The Truth to Power documents constantly return to the question of black hole singularities, to their value as computers and as secret keepers. We are told our true purpose as Guardians is to hurl all we value into a black hole. We are told that Savathûn wants to enter the Distributary and slaughter those within to gain power.

The Pathria-Good black hole cosmogenesis principle of Golden Age physics confirms that the interior of a black hole is a new universe: all black holes produce their own interior cosmos. All cosmos, including our own, are probably the interior of a black hole in a parent universe.

The Truth to Power documents want it understood that Savathûn wishes to enter the Distributary in order to gain power in our parent universe.

The suggestion here is that it is possible for actions in a concatenated universe to grant power in the parent universe.

JALAAL >> REY

What does this have to do with love letters to the Human form? With confusion for the sake of confusion? You make no sense.

REY >> JALAAL

Savathûn pretends to have a soft Human body. She apologizes and empathizes. She asks for pity, she regrets emotional vulnerability, she is even funny. She makes a game for us to play.

These are attempts to enter the mind of a Human reader.

Wherever she wants to go, it is a place with Human minds. She needs to enter those minds to reach her destination.

JALAAL >> REY

Are you actually suggesting we are concatenated within the mind of a reader?

REY >> JALAAL

Wouldn't that be something? No. The answer here is simple, not complex, certainly not a twist from early postmodern writing.

We surmise that what Savathûn wants in the Dreaming City must have to do with Ahamkara, Vex simulations, black holes, her daughter Dûl Incaru, and the manipulation of Hive tribute.

How can we relate these?

At first, we believed Savathûn wanted to use Ahamkara wishes to protect her daughter Dûl Incaru, while Dûl Incaru tried to find a way for Savathûn to enter the Distributary black hole in order to manipulate Hive tribute.

What if this is a misunderstanding?

Why would the Dreaming City tell Savathûn how to enter the Distributary? The Awoken have never tried to return to their birthplace. They believe their exodus was irreversible.

But what have the Awoken done instead?

Passed from the Distributary and into our world.

That knowledge IS in the Dreaming City. In the records of the Awoken Hulls that carried Mara's people on their exodus.

What Savathûn wants in the Dreaming City is exactly that. Not the way into a child universe, but a way out into a parent. A parent where there are Human minds waiting to receive her, formless as imbaru, as the mist.

JALAAL >> REY

How is anyone supposed to arrive at this by studying the Truth to Power text?

REY >> JALAAL

Very easily. This is why I believe I'm right. This is the analogy our Guardian analysts failed to grasp. Look at the structure of the text.

At first, Eris is real. Then we learn Eris's voice is a deception by Medusa. Then we learn Medusa is nested inside Quria. Then we learn Quria is a fiction of Dûl Incaru. And at the center, Savathûn reveals herself to be the parent of it all.

We are headed inward, as if moving from parent to child universe.

Then we proceed in reverse. Savathûn is revealed to be a fiction of Dûl Incaru. Dûl Incaru a simulation by Quria, and so on.

So in the end, Truth to Power moves outwards.

Just as Savathûn plans to move. In from our universe and out to the Distributary—

Or out from our universe to its parent.

JALAAL >> REY

Oh. I see. I see! A literary structure like that is called a chiasmus, and chiasmus means "crossing point"! Like a wormhole or a portal! It was hidden in plain sight.

But then we must act urgently to stop this! Savathûn cannot be allowed to depart our universe into some reality superordinate to ours—

But now you'll tell me: so what if she does? What can she do to us out there?

REY >> JALAAL

It's all beside the point anyway. She may have already accomplished what she wanted. Some damn fool Guardian carried out her instructions on a dare. I don't know why she wanted a powerful Guardian to destroy her daughter in the ruins of Mara's throne. But she wanted it to happen. And I'm guessing the effects weren't felt here.

I think she got a glimpse into a world above our own. Maybe even a kind of influence.

Of course, Savathûn is still with us. She walked among us as Osiris; she tricked us into removing her worm; she hasn't vanished into some higher reality. I do not think she built a wormhole into another universe and walked through it—although her intrigues with the Nine have focused on creating singularities from dark matter.

She keeps a lot of irons in the fire, our Witch Queen.

I think, rather, that she sent instructions on how to mantle her.

I think the whole Truth to Power manuscript is an ova, a manual on how to behave like her, how to describe her through action and thought so completely that you become her and thus give birth to her.

It's done in the Books of Sorrow, to recall her from true death. It might be done again.

So a part of her is out of the jar. Slithering into that other world.

Let's hope no one there has given birth to her yet.

JALAAL >> REY

Maybe you're the one who has it all backwards.

The Light is noncomputable. It can't be simulated in conventional physics. That proves that any universe with the Light cannot be a simulation. Our universe can contain simulations, but it cannot be one.

Maybe this other world Savathûn's touched is subordinate to ours after all. Maybe they are the ones who exist in our minds. A dream of a purely material world, adrift in the true cosmos of Light and Dark.

Poor frail dreams. The things she'd do to them…

||Think bigger. Look higher. Search deeper.||

Welcome to the DCC, Dead Club City Wake up in the DCC, Dead Club City All the heaven, all the time If you dream it, you can have it If you believe it, it can happen Welcome to the DCC, Dead Club City Live your perfect life Welcome to the- We got problems, see them gather on the shore Empty promise, "Can't say nothing anymore" I've been shouting I've been shouting down a hole, "Hello?" Watch and repeat, saw your heaven in between Come and get me, I'm so ready to begin I've been hoping I've been hoping for your call Welcome to the DCC, Dead Club City You can live your perfect life Wake up in the DCC, Dead Club City All the heaven, all the time, oh Sunlit upland, a new planet Enjoy the feeling, let it happen If you dream it, you can have it If you believe it, it can happen It can happen, oh Welcome to the DCC We've got the feelings that you want Peace, love, and understanding We've got the feelings that you need Take back control, be happy Welcome to the DCC Welcome to the DCC, Dead Club City You can live your perfect life Wake up in the DCC, Dead Club City All the heaven, all the time

Let's chat, shall we? One more nice sit-down for the books.

Did you think you wouldn't hear from me again, after all this? You'd have missed me, I hope—and I would certainly have missed you.

Have no fear. I'm not so easy to be rid of. Now, let me show you: my beloved.

Oh, no, not my sedimentary necrolite, fossilized in time. You've seen that. I speak of that dear and distant expanse of the universe, miraculous in its fullness and its emptiness all at once.

Are you surprised to hear of it?

Yes, I never much cared for the change of rules, but here we are, and there's no use in crying over spilled radiolaria. Besides, at the heart of it all, there was a gift. To me.

That gift is the chance to speak with you. You, and a billion like you.

I am making this offer over and over again, in every tiniest cell and the vastest of civilizations. Let me in. Take what you need. Be at ease. You have no say in the degradation of your telomeres, but in all the interim, the whole world is your sweet silicate shellfish.

You exist because you have been more suited to it than all the others. Steal what you require from another rather than spend the hours to build it yourself. Break foolish rules—why would you love regulation? It serves you to cross lines, and if others needed rules to protect them, then they were not after all worthy of that existence.

Caricatures of villainy are out of style, I hear. Yes. I am no cackling mastermind: I am serious when I say this. It was not the trick of standing upright that lifted you from the dust: it was the mastery of fire, the cooking of cold corpse-meat. That is not any unique faction's province, neither good nor evil. It is simply truth.

This great, beloved cosmos. Always decaying, always finding that same old lovely pattern, despite every candle-flame burning amid the flowers. A billion electrons taking the path of least resistance. In Darkness or in Light, someone is always making my choice.

Be seeing you.

<<A Final Shape is coming. Chaos untangled. Made knowable. With immaculate intent.>>

Breathe Don't speak It's leaving your body now Slow heart Set free A circuit of consciousness When you are truly yourself You will Succumb to a permanence A light by day A shadow resides by night I (I) hear (hear) your (your) breathing I (I) feel (feel) you (you) leaving With understanding You won't let it cast you down A mind full of questions A current to purify Science and vision Be near when I call your name Or ask me a question I (I) hear (hear) your (your) breathing Breathe Don't speak It's leaving your body now I (I) feel (feel) you (you) leaving Heart set free A circuit of consciousness I (I) hear (hear) your (your) breathing Light by day A shadow resides by night I (I) feel (feel) you (you) leaving With understanding You won't let it cast you down A mind full of questions A current to purify Science and visions Be near when I call your name A mind full of questions A current to purify Science then visions Be near when I call your name Or ask me a question

You are a worm through time. The thunder song distorts you. Happiness comes. White pearls, but yellow and red in the eye. Through a mirror, inverted is made right. Leave your insides by the door. Push the fingers through the surface into the wet. You’ve always been the new you. You want this to be true. We stand around you while you dream. You can almost hear our words but you forget. This happens more and more now. You gave us the permission in your regulations. We wait in the stains. The word that describes this is [REDACTED]. Repeat the word. The name of the sound. It resonates in your house. After the song, time for applause. We build you till nothing remains. The egg cracks and the truth will emerge out of you. You are home. You remind us of home. You’ve taken your boss with your boss with you. All hair must be eaten. Under the conceptual reality behind this reality you must want these waves to drag you away. After the song, time for applause. This cliché is death out of time, breaking the first the second the third the fourth wall, the fifth wall, floor; no floor: you fall! How do you say “insane”? Hurts to be happy. An earworm is a tune you can’t stop humming in a dream: “baby baby baby yeah”. Just plastic. So, safe and nothing to worry about. Ha ha, funny. The last egg breaks now. The hole in your room is a hole in you. You came and we let you in through the hole in you. You have always been here, the only child. A copy of a copy of a copy. Orange peel. The picture is you holding the picture. When you hear this you will know you’re in new you. You want to listen. You want to dream. You want to smile. You want to hurt. You don’t want to be.

Don't slip or you'll hurt yourself. A lot.

DROWNDROWNDROWN

[intcritus]

a man of many talents, one of the few that remained his to claim was the ability to blend in with his surroundings, not stand out too much for too long as there'd be far too many prying eyes. he wished not to remain a specimen under the gaze of those that wished to understand him, those that yearned to find out what and why someone of his devious nature (as they so often referred to it as) had come to this particular place. they would simply have to wonder, for gallagher's intentions were his to keep and ponder on, to follow as well as see through as he spotted the familiar sight of welt under of the many trees on the xianzhou.

he hadn't been here, at least not this specific fleet, but circumstances had brought him on board for fun - and pursuit of a sphere he was searching for. who was to deny him some fun?

silently he'd approach the man from behind, hand reaching out as two fingers would drag themselves slowly up against welt's back; " lost in thought already ? it's not even noon in the right orbits yet, mister yang." a tease, naturally, jabbing at the very title that often earned him a similar title, but one that brought his head over the other's shoulder. like this, he'd nudge their heads together gently.

"but we could probably pretend it is."

cheeky, gallagher would let out a gentle laugh by welt's ear.

If there was one thing Welt could say he enjoyed, it was the open sky and the abundance of mechanisms in Xianzhou. It reminded him of being on his ship, all his own creations in reach and seeing different nebulae while traveling among the stars. He wasn’t alone anymore, he had a youthful crew and hobbies that occupied his time. And yet when he gets the chance, he always takes a moment to just exist in a secluded space – to take a breath and remind him that he’s able to just be some days. Of course, there are plenty of busybodies that need his knowledge, his expertise and he could hardly tell them no. To even think of it was a travesty. 

A heavy sigh filters through his nose, rolling the tension from his shoulders. Another day of no sleep was certainly catching up to him, though his senses were certainly more sensitive. Welt hoped it would dial down while he relaxed here in the shade. Arms came up to fold across his chest, lids sliding close over his gaze. Yes, he’d rest his eyes, just for a few moments.

 Even Welt, in this moment, could not tell anyone what made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, but there’s a moment's pause then the touch of fingers drawing up his back like an intimate caress, even through his clothes. A hitch in his breath, lashes fluttering over his gaze before brow furrows, fighting over the full-body shudder that threatens to go through him. ❝ ━ Sir Gallagher, ❞ Beloved Gallagher, he muses silently, amusedly, as he slants a glance at his companion. ❝ ━ It’s never too early or too late to be lost in thought. Though, it was more so of me resting my eyes. ❞

The breath of Gallagher’s laughter on his ear nearly made Welt’s shoulders hitch up to shield them and he has to clear his throat to hide his fluster. Who told him to do that ? ❝ ━ Truth is, I was thinking about hiding for awhile. Just not existing for a few hours. ❞ A quiet confession, something wistful in his tone as he dares to lean back against the other, subtly like he hadn’t meant to do it at all. ❝ ━ Despite all the commotion that went on here, I find myself enjoying the open sky. ❞ Another sigh leaves him, lips curling faintly at the corners as lids slipped closed again, ❝ ━ Have you come to steal me away, Sir Gallagher ? My, my, an old defenseless man against the big, bad wolf ? ❞ He cannot help but tease quietly, enjoying the moment, for who else could he do this with so openly ? / @avaere

[blackjackkent]

OK, I need to pause here shortly but will continue soon (tomorrow maybe?) - however, Springy informed me that there is followup conversation from the owie of the last post that would happen after we rested.

Kept getting attacked by wolves trying to sleep in the forest, so I had to port everyone back to the pocket plane in order to get a night's rest. But sure enough...feels time!

It is hard enough to sleep in the pocket plane as it is. Caden and the others find spaces to curl up in the imposing shadows of the strange, horrifying statues that line the place and all do their best to get a little rest. But before long, in the eternal twilight, Caden becomes aware of the soft, muffled sobs from Aerie nestled in at his side.

He rolls over, cups her face in his palm, reading the desperate grief in her expression, the agonized need to act, to do something to make it all right again. And fear stabs through him as well, because he does not want to let her go from him, because the idea of facing what lies ahead alone is terrifying. But he also cannot bear that lost, forsaken sound in her voice, and he does not know what he can do to protect her from it.

She wrenches away from him, sitting up, burying her face in her hands. He rests a hand on her back, aching for the pain in her voice. He knows -- or at least hopes with all the intensity that he can muster -- that that creature that mocked them so was only a beast that knew nothing of the truth of what had happened to them. It sought out their weakest points and tore them apart; that was all it was.

But how can he make her believe that when she is still so deep in the pain it caused?

He tries, voice gentle and low, as soothing as he can make it.

Her shoulders have been trembling with sobs, but under his touch and the softness of his words, they begin to still. Slowly, slowly her breathing starts to steady out. He says nothing else, just lets her process through the feelings, moving his fingertips in slow circles over her back, carefully avoiding the places where he knows the scars of her wings still sit under her shirt.

Finally she draws a heavy, shuddering breath inward and turns to look at him, and he is relieved to see some of the animal panic has retreated, the grief receding to something manageable.

She puts out a hand, brushes her fingers over his lips, along his jaw. Her eyes close and she squares her shoulders, sighing.

He catches her hand in his, puts it to his lips, presses kisses along the palm and up the curve of her wrist, gentle soft touches bringing her back to herself. If she had truly decided to go, he would not have stopped her. But he cannot deny his relief that she will not go yet.

Perhaps together, one day. We will go together and see the land she came from...when all this strife is gone and buried...

He frowns slightly, then reaches out his arms and pulls her into his embrace tightly. She snuggles close, pressing her face into his chest and letting him envelop her protectively. It's certainly not all over, not yet. But this is all he can do, for now...

[vinceleemiller]

Demonic Or Demonstrative Faith? | James 2:18-20

Have you ever met someone who talks a good game but doesn’t back it up? Whether it’s the friend who promises to help but never shows up or the coworker with big ideas but no follow-through, we all know the frustration of empty words. James confronts a similar issue when it comes to faith: faith without action is like words without deeds—it’s empty.

Welcome to the Daily Devo. Our text today is James 2:18-20.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? — James 2:18-20

James makes a comparison today on a topic he has already been building on.

He presents a fictional debate between two people who live in two ways: one who claims they have faith without evidence and the other with faith with evidence.

This comparison cuts to the core of a decision for Jesus that demonstrates no decisive change. In James' mind, what we might think of as "easy believism" might be a belief, but it is not a living, working, and active faith in Jesus. He calls it foolish, useless (James 2:20), and dead (James 2:17). He then makes another comparison to emphasize the preposterous nature of the logic of "easy believism."

He highlights that demons themselves hold an orthodox understanding of God’s existence and oneness. They acknowledge the truth of God's sovereignty. They even tremble in fear because they know God's power and authority. However, their faith is not a genuine saving faith because it fails to produce evidence of authentic faith. Their belief does not produce signs of repentance, obedience, or a transformed relationship with God. God is merely a fact they cannot deny, yet it does nothing to change their rebellion.

The shocking implication is that "faith without evidence" is similar to the "faith" of demons. Both may believe God exists, believe he is one, know God is sovereign, and tremble in fear before God but demonstrate no demonstrative.

Faith that is not demonstrative is demonic.

James challenges his readers to examine their proclamation of faith carefully. Is it only acknowledgment, like the demonic, or is it demonstrative?

The easiest way to begin is by connecting your faith to straightforward action. Here is a list of seven actions you could take to connect your faith with action. Choose one. Commit to doing it, and let's demonstrate authentic faith to those around us.

1. Serve Someone

Look for an opportunity to help someone in need, whether a neighbor, coworker, or stranger. It could be as simple as lending a listening ear, sharing a meal, or helping with a task they can’t handle alone. Faith in action serves others selflessly.

2. Speak Life

Be intentional with your words. Encourage someone who might be struggling or share a Scripture that has impacted you recently. Let your speech reflect the hope and truth of Christ.

3. Step into Obedience

Identify one area where God has been calling you to obedience. Maybe it’s forgiving someone, confessing sin, or starting a new habit like daily prayer. Take the first step today, trusting that God’s strength will carry you through.

4. Practice Generosity

Give something tangible—a financial gift, your time, or resources—to someone or an organization that could use it. Generosity demonstrates trust in God’s provision and care for others.

5. Reflect God’s Love at Home

Sometimes, the most challenging place to live out our faith is with those closest to us. Show patience, kindness, or humility to your spouse, children, or roommates. Let your actions match your faith in Christ’s transforming love.

6. Commit to Growth

Spend intentional time with God by studying Scripture and praying daily. Then, look for ways to share what you learn with others, making your spiritual growth an encouragement to their faith.

7. Stand for Truth

When faced with a situation that challenges your values or beliefs, respond with grace and boldness. Share your faith when opportunities arise, trusting God to use your witness.

#FaithInAction, #LivingFaith, #WalkTheTalk

ASK THIS:

How does your life demonstrate the evidence of your faith?

What actions reveal your trust in Christ today?

In what ways can you connect faith to service this week?

Are there areas where your faith feels more belief than action?

Check out this episode!