#HELLFIRE AND DAMNATION UPON ME AND FOR WHY

[paranoidgemsbok]

PHONE JUST BRICKED ITSELF WHILE I SLEPT COOL COOL COOL

[fluffyfaetales]

Damnation is a Small Price

The village of Ebreot was a place where the sky always seemed heavy, as if the very heavens bore witness to the bitterness of its people. Cobblestone streets, slick with rain, wove through buildings that had stood for generations, their inhabitants bound by traditions as unyielding as the stone beneath their feet. Those who conformed found comfort. Those who did not—well, they found something else entirely.

Adventure was one of the latter.

A warforged mercenary, built long ago for service and protection, he had been cast aside like a broken tool. The people of Ebreot saw him not as a being, not even as a person, but as a reminder of their own superiority. They mocked him when he walked through the marketplace, ignored him when he spoke, and yet, when danger came knocking, they would pay for his sword with cold indifference. He fought, bled, and broke for them—though he never received so much as a word of thanks.

Yet, among the unwanted and outcast, Adventure had found something more valuable than acceptance: family.

His companions were the unwanted, the misunderstood—misfits bound together by rejection. There was Cartic, a half-orc paladin who had been denied knighthood for his lineage. There was Vera, a tiefling sorceress cast out for the power that ran through her veins. Garryth, a one-armed rogue, whose past mistakes left him with nothing but debts and scars. And little Cran, a bard whose only crime was being born to a family too poor to matter.

To the rest of the world, they were scoundrels. But to Ebreot’s orphans, the forgotten workers, and the souls who lived in the village’s shadow, they were heroes.

That was why, when the sky turned black and the dead came marching, Adventure and his friends stood between Ebreot and annihilation.

The lich came without mercy. A sorcerer of old, long since rotted away but still clinging to unholy power, he led an army of restless corpses. Their shrieks filled the air as they tore through homes, dragged villagers into the streets, and shattered whatever resistance Ebreot could muster. The town guard fell within minutes.

The people, in their desperation, turned to those they had scorned.

“Please,” they begged. “Save us.”

It would have been easy to walk away. Let them reap what they had sown. Let the dead claim what had never been kind to the living. But Adventure could not do that.

His friends knew the truth—they could not win. The undead outnumbered them a hundred to one, and the lich’s power was vast. If they fought, they would die, and Ebreot would fall anyway.

So Adventure made a choice.

Standing before his companions, he spoke in a voice both calm and resolute. “Get them all out of here. I will buy time.”

Vera eyes burned. “No. We stay together.”

“You won’t survive if you do.” He turned to Caelum, who clenched his fists. “Lead them. Protect them. Live.”

Cran sobbed. “There has to be another way!”

There wasn’t.

As his friends ushered the villagers away, Adventure turned toward the advancing horde. He was outnumbered. Outmatched. His armor was cracked, his blade dulled by years of war. But there was one last gamble to play.

He knelt upon the bloodstained earth and whispered a name forbidden in all realms:

Asmodeus.

The air grew thick with sulfur. A voice, dark as the abyss, curled around him like a serpent.

"You call upon the King of Hell? A mere warforged seeks my favor?"

Adventure did not flinch. “Give me an army. Let the fallen warforged rise once more. In exchange, my soul is yours.”

Asmodeus laughed, a terrible sound that made even the dead hesitate.

"A soul forged, not born? How fascinating. Very well. But I accept under one condition—you will not simply join my ranks. You will lead them."

The earth split open. Fire roared from below, and from the depths of Hell, they rose.

Warforged warriors, clad in armor blackened by the Inferno, their eyes glowing embers of hellfire. Adventure changed—his metal frame searing with runes of the damned, his once-ordinary blade now wreathed in crimson flame.

He turned to face the village one last time.

"Damnation is a small price to pay to save all of you."

Then, he charged.

The battle was like none other. Steel clashed against bone. Hellfire met necrotic frost. Adventure tore through the undead like a storm of vengeance, his newfound power cutting down the abominations that had once been insurmountable. His army of the damned fought with a fury only the forsaken could know, meeting the lich’s forces in an unholy clash of death and retribution.

Finally, Adventure faced the lich himself. Their battle shook the heavens. The lich unleashed spells that could have sundered mountains, but Adventure did not fall. He would not stop. Not until this monster was ended.

Grasping the lich in his burning hands, Adventure uttered his final words: "You will not take them. But I will take you."

And with one final, searing blaze of hellfire, he dragged the lich down into the Abyss.

Ebreot was saved.

But its savior was lost.

In the days that followed, the villagers spoke his name with reverence. They built a statue in the center of the square, honoring the warforged who had given everything for those who had given him nothing. The children laid flowers at its feet. The poor, the forgotten—they all remembered.

His friends never forgot.

Cartic took up the mantle of protector. Vera watched the skies for any sign that he might return. Cran sang his story in every town they visited, ensuring that Adventure’s name would never be lost to time.

And deep in the pits of Hell, Adventure stood—not as a broken slave to Asmodeus, but as something greater.

A warrior.

A legend.

A soul who had chosen his fate—not for power, not for glory, but for those who had needed him, even when they never deserved him.

And for that, even Asmodeus had to respect him.

[lassieposting]

shudderkin for the getting together thingy? (IF you're still doing it ofc!!!)

I’m bored, so. Send me two (or more) characters for a headcanon on how I’d have them get together

Ajdjajdjsjdjamdk god so

This is actually the dead men ship that takes the least amount of time to get together, because larrikin does not fuck around when it comes to getting some dick. He moves fast.

Which is impressive, because by the time he's brought in to replace erskine in 1850, shudder is well known for being a painfully repressed, emotionally stunted closet case. Like, saracen has slept with almost everyone else, but even he's never successfully put the moves on anton. Anton was raised by mortals in a strict religious foundling home, so Catholic Guilt™ is a big thing for him. He's bad at flirting, very vanilla, uncomfortable with casual sex, and just generally kind of socially awkward and unapproachable, which doesn't help.

Larrikin, on the other hand, is what might be politely referred to as A Character. He has zero shame or boundaries, so he tells the dead men on day one that he's dtf with any or all of them. He flirts with everyone, including skulduggery, who's a) his commanding officer and b) dead. He's the sort of person who, upon hearing that someone in the group is not familiar with what a certain kink or sex act is, will promptly act it out, soundtrack included. Shudder is vibrant red in the face like 90% of the time when larrikin is around

So like. when larr sets his sights on anton, saracen pulls out a notepad and quietly sets up a betting pool for how long it'll take for him to either succeed or give up.

It still takes a few months, because larrikin is, by nature, chaotic and annoying, and shudder has a low tolerance for bullshit and shenanigans. His friendship dynamic with larrikin (and skug, actually, for the same reason) is essentially "ily but you are A Lot so i prefer you in small doses". But the Shudder's Birthday mission - the only time anyone can remember shudder smiling in the field - softens him up some, and larrikin is opportunistic by nature. So once they're safely back at camp with the main body of the sanctuary forces and they're celebrating a job well done, he waits until everyone is a couple drinks in and feeling merry and then just sort of. Deposits himself in shudder's lap, and subsequently spends the night in shudder's bed.

They do take a while to get things ironed out, though.

Shudder has a Big Gay Panic the morning after and keeps larr at arms' length for a while, because he's still not 100% trusting of the sorcerer community's more progressive attitude to sexuality, and he's still lowkey expecting the sort of Consequences he was warned about by the church - damnation, hellfire, blah blah blah.

Larrikin is also polyamorous. He eventually agrees to exclusivity with shudder - which is new, but not unpleasant - but initially he has a tendency to wander in and out of everyone's tents as he pleases, which naturally upsets anton and causes a bunch of arguments before he's finally able to get his head out of his ass long enough to express that the reason he's upset is because he wants larrikin to himself.

Larrikin has fantastic communication skills, so anton can be incredibly frustrating for him bc he has None; it's like banging his head against a brick wall. And anton struggles to understand larr's footloose and fancy free approach to the world, devoid of structure and rules. They bicker like an old married couple.

They actually do get married at one point, during the period where larrikin takes skug's place - not too long after the corpse attack. Skug is MIA, presumed dead. Some insane necromancer has signed up with mevolent and keeps massacring sanctuary forces. They've had some bad defeats and everyone needs a morale booster. Saracen complains that it's been ages since they had anything to celebrate, why isn't anyone getting married anymore, a wedding is a great excuse for a party. Larrikin pipes up that that's a great idea, he'll marry anton, everyone can get smashed, morale restored.

"Do I get any say in this?" Anton asks.

"Absolutely," says larrikin, without missing a beat. "Do you want to wear the dress, or shall i?"

It's a big party. Everyone gets horribly drunk. Corrival gets the dubious honour of marrying them, roped in by dexter at the last minute. Larrikin wears the dress - a Sunday Best affair borrowed from one of the soldiers' wives who travel with the encampment, several inches too short for him and incredibly baggy in the chest - because why not. Shudder gets a bit too heartfelt with his vows and starts panic-rambling, ends up agreeing to indulge larrikin in "all those things you ask me for at night, even the weird ones" before corrival intervenes, and saracen laughs so hard he makes himself sick.

They haven't even been "together" that long when they get married, but ultimately it works out for them. Anton keeps his wedding ring on a chain around his neck until the day he dies.

[sasorikigai]

❝You are my sadness and my hope, but mostly you’re my love.❞ ( @Hanzo, any verse of your choosing )

WandaVision Quotes || @sonxflight || accepting 

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 || Everything has its designated time; a time in life when things mean the most. The time when things were pretty, the time when things were desired, the time when it all was beautiful, and the time that is gone and too long away. When everything comes back, crying, meaning, profound; much outside Hanzo Hasashi’s happy place. But now he no longer aches anymore, despite numerous humiliating failures and the throes of unbearable pain and self-condemnation that had plunged the hanyo in the throes of hara-kiri by disembowelment. 

How Ryou Sakai crashed into his life akin to a storm, tearing the half-demon away from almost everything that defined him. Succumbing deeply to ennui, despair and existential pain next to his other sources of power right by the old trauma and new bones; the infernal, magmatic flame that would destroy for the sake of his own searing, torturous pain. How the ōkami uprooted him from where there was no comfort and warmth, but damnation and agony. For he would suffocate on his own saltwater waterfalls, as stinging blaze of his own hellfire would render him convulsing and quivering against the quagmire earth, as jaw-clenching and muscle-tightening pain would siphon the demonic essence, in order for it to be utilized against the humanity at large. 

And he would be forced to be left abandoned in the peril of solitude; addictive in the way how peaceful and calm it is, even as he still sputtered crimson streams as his motionless limbs would only be sprawled beneath the weakened ebb and flow of his heart, a candlelight amidst the typhoon. He would simply throw his conscious up and let his mind and soul dance to the rhythm of his heart, listen to the music that is there desperately yearning to be discovered. The status quo of his being reflecting the literal and metaphorical hopelessness as he would merely become a mangled maceration of a creature at the gate of time, vindictive and grim, as his shallow breathing would become the mournful susurration that would shiver in eradicated self-existence. 

The wind blows through the multitudes of scar tissues; above chiseled definition of Hanzo’s musculature lays latticeworks and topographical impressions of battle-etched and self-inflicted blemishes, even more made visible beneath the shining radiance of the moonlight. Calmness blankets his mind, as he takes in the serene vision that surrounds him. This may be his baptismal tranquility, the dream-reality of his spring. As the silvery lusciousness of the ōkami’s fur cradles and blankets him whole, the cadence of strong thrumming heartbeat beneath him becoming a song hitting a different chord in his heart. Even when life becomes heavy and he finds himself still stuck in the herculean burden of overcoming the voice of emptiness which tempts and lures him, against the desire to fall, Hanzo Hasashi defends himself with gritted stubbornness and impassioned will and fervor for tomorrow. 

“Without it, it would have been exceptionally difficult to muster all my strength on the days it would be easier to run than face. Love reminds myself the motivation is for this cycle to end with me. And you - you grant me your wisdom as I navigate these strange seas of the world. For you give me valid reasons to why I now understand the humanity’s heart, to know to move in this world with compassion, and to know when to give up and let go.” Without spilled pomegranate or entrails, by cleaved like event horizon of stars set on its doomed fate, Ryou Sakai happens to evoke the waters, the well of words never manifested, as to stir the magmatic conflagration of his dwelling destructive fire to be mitigated to magnificent, magnanimous lantern that would guide and direct. 

“Dreams are sweet, but they cannot sustain. It’s not only the mortals who are able to fully feel the wonder of magic, and even amidst the perpetual pain, I am able to believe the zealous power of love. and I will always let out love to become the healing salve against my wounded heart.” 

Hanzo Hasashi’s heart’s desire is carried upon the gentle coaxing of Ryou’s head, as his ardent kiss folds over and over as the ebb and flow of his heart agglomerates, marshaling his power to let his brutal, candor honesty known. ▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 || 

[amidla]

›  @invctus​​  (  adonis  )  sent:  ❛ you will live as you live in any world. with difficulty, & grief. ❜

his  voice  is  full  of  anger,  a  silent  damnation  to  those  who  felt  otherwise,  yet  the  worst  part  about  the  other’s  perdition    —-    his  verbal  hellfire    —-    is  that  his  words  only  ever  mirrored  the  truth.  she  cannot  remember  a  time  prior  to  her  queen  elect  that  she  has  felt  something  other  than  difficulty  &  grief.  that  is  all  the  cosmos  had  flung  at  her,  at  them,  and  it  was  all  her  tender  heart  has  ever  known  yet  her  faith  had  not  faltered.  nascent  sunlight  still  fell  upon  her  skin,  baring  promises  of  a  new  dawn  as  it  kissed  her  cheek.  it  was  that  light  that  made  a  home  within  her,  encouraging  her  to  hold  onto  hope  no  matter  how  frail  it  was  underneath  her  fingertips.  padmé  realises  that,  for  most  people  —-  for  those  who  would  call  themselves  realists  or  pessimists,  hope  is  nothing.  it  was  a  feeling,  a  lie,  a  horribly  written  guide  down  the  wrong  path.  but  to  her,  it  was  everything.    ❝    and  that  is  not  a  world  i  want  to  live  in.    ❞

❝    which  is  why  i  fight:  for  the  people  who  are  left  to  pick  up  the  pieces  of  the  fallout  all  while  being  forgotten  by  the  very  people  who  swore  to  protect  them.  i  only  hope  that  you’re  willing  to  fight  alongside  me,  not  with  me.    ❞

deathless:  not accepting.

[every-last-inch-of-me]

Forgive Me Father || Marginally Catholic

@hellfire-damnation

It might have taken Gaston longer than was strictly necessary to get over his own stubbornness and the insult of it all. He was used to people crawling back to him for forgiveness. Or rather, expected it. And when the priest still hadn’t grovelled at his knees, he found himself wondering why.

Perhaps, he realised upon review of the texts, he’d been a touch insensitive. Regarding, you know, all of the abuse. But, in his defence, he’d been fucking livid and before all of that, he’d really tried to do the right thing. Or... the thing that he’d imagined would get him into heaven.

He’d waited until Mass was over until he squeaked through the tiny door at the front of the church. In part because he couldn’t stand the thought of sitting through it and in part because he’d only been awake for forty-five minutes, and he’d been stark bollock naked for forty-one of them. For a moment, it felt like every old, beady eye in the hall was on him and then, as the door slammed to an echoing close, they all turned back to what they’d been doing.

It wasn’t hard to find Claude through the congregation of stunted bodies and white hair, who shuffled away as he approached. Gaston tucked his hands into his pockets. He wasn’t going apologise. He didn’t do apologies. But he thought he’d pretend that nothing had happened and that was almost the same thing.

“You know, the nugget-” He pressed his lips together and then let out a little cough. “-I mean... fine young gentleman - seems to be doing pretty alright. He’s a hard worker.” Even if he is ugly as shit. “So you can put that on his report card.”

[childofthemoon86]

@francisandtheworldweek Day 4: Demon/Angel au

A Demon’s Pet

Pairing: (pre)FrUk Characters: France, Austria (mentioned), Prussia (mentioned), England, Germany, Russia, North Italy, Sealand (mentioned), Japan, America, Canada. Rating: T for mild suggestive themes Word count: 3209 Cross posted on FF.net Summary: Historically, Demons and Angels have never gotten along, and neither are allowed to cross into the others domain. But for Francis, there’s just something terribly alluring about breaking rules, and no one has to know about his special new pet… But perhaps there’s a reason why some rules mustn’t be broken.

Ah Hell. Francis sighs contently as he walks through the fiery halls. He really does miss this place sometimes. Sure he likes the Top World Just as much as the next Demon, and it’s always a pleasure to carry out an assignment from the Hell King himself, but nothing quite measures up to the sweet scent of Hellfire Ash in the morning. Though, Hell may have it’s certain appeals to other Demons, for Francis, there’s something in particular that he misses. Where other Demons come back for the fires, or the songs of anguish souls, or to bathe in the Blood of the Fallen pools, currently none of that holds his interest. Sure he’s seen how Roderich commands the screams, treating the entire Hall of the Damned like one big orchestra, every soul a string to be plucked at just the right time, every cry of pain or despair tuned to perfection. Frankly, it’s mesmerising, and for Demons who such sound is like sweet music, it’s an utter pleasure to experience. He’s even heard tale of the King personally requesting him to… play, as it were. And he knows Gilbert enjoys his free time in the Ever Soldiers Fields, running gruelling sieges full of suffering. Starvation, disease, gun shot wounds, stab wounds, infections, the works. Fran’s even joined him a few times. As far as Demons go, Gil’s one who really knows how to party. But right now, Fran couldn’t care less about all that. Right now, he only has one thing on his mind. After all, if Roddy can have the Damned to play with, and Gil’s got his toy soldiers, then it’s only fair he has a special play thing too. And he does. But, unlike the others, no one else can find out about Fran’s special little pet project. He’d surely be sent to the Coal Pits for the next millennia if his new toy was discovered, and he can’t have that. Despite what humans may think, Demons do have rules, though not many and most can be bent with the right persuasion, but there is one rule that is absolute among Demons. And Fran might be breaking it just a tiny bit. He grins happily as he skips down to the first level of The Works as they’re know. The Works is the low levels of Hell built to contain all the souls sent to them for ‘eternal damnation’, but for most it’s really more like a stint in a crappy hotel for a few decades before they get recycled back into the living world, — out of the thousands upon thousands of souls that end up in Hell, very few ever receive a sentence past the second or third levels — and here at the first level, it’s pretty much just that. Rooms upon rooms stretched out seemingly endlessly before Fran, but he knows there is a limit, just one too far to be seen. He travels on down the hall, growing more excited as he goes. It’s only been a few days, but he can’t wait to see his pet again. Finally he comes to a stop at a door, much the same as all the others, only the number 3049652287 defines it to be the room he’s after. Cautiously checking that no other Demons are around to see him go in, he stealthily slips inside. There, just were he left him, the Angel sits. It is the one Absolute Law of Hell, no Angels allowed, but come on, Demons are notorious for being mischievous rule breakers, they can’t really fault Fran on this, it was bound to happen. Fran’s red eyes shine as he smirks at his pet, ankle still chained to the bedpost, sat moodily upon the wrinkled and stained red satin sheets of the sleazy motel styled bed, dressed in a simple cloud white toga. The Angel glares back, green eyes full of defiance. But Fran’s smirk soon turns to a sour frown as he looks over the Angels wings, tucked tightly behind his back. Stomping over, Francis unceremoniously grabs a wing by the end, and pulls, sharply tugging it out to full view. The Angel winces, but, like always, refuses to show any other sign of weakness. Fran’s dark eyes scan the wing as his mouth twist with a look of distaste. “What did you do?” He demands, “These weren’t like this before.” The wings, previously pristine white before he left only three days ago, now have a distinct grey colour to them, like they’ve lost their sheen. “What’s the matter Frog?” The Angel smirks, pleased to see Fran annoyed for once, “Not good enough for you now? Guess you’ll just have to get rid of me then.” Huffily, Francis gives another sharp tug on the wing, this time electing a small yelp of pain from the force of it. “Your not met to be like this, your supposed to be perfect! Why aren’t you perfect now?” Francis’s eyes flash in anger, his tails swishing at his feet, but the Angel only looks more smug as he sits up more, though he makes no move to pull his wing back. When no other answer is given, Fran growls in frustration, before letting the wing go, where it limply returns to its owners back. He huffs, before something else grabs his attention. Sitting on the bedside cabinet, is the tray of Soul Dews he left for the Angel, completely untouched. Again. He still won’t eat? Is that why his wings have dulled, hunger? Or… or has someone else done this to him… Fran’s tail twists in worried nots around his feet at the thought. If anyone has so much as laid a claw on a single feather, so help him, not even the King will be able to shield them from Francis’s wrath! He huffs a calming breath out his nose. No, no. If someone had been here, he’d surely have been caught by now. It must be something else… Maybe it’s the ash? Though, there isn’t much in the rooms, but perhaps it’s enough to sully the pretty wings? But something tells him a Bloodbath won’t fix this. Shaking his head, Fran returns his glare to the grey wings. Oh how that annoys him, but, if he wants to get the pretty white back, then he needs to figure out why they’ve dulled, which means… He smirks, eyes shining with mischief again as he slinks over to the bed, sitting down beside the Angel. “Well, no matter, we can still have fun, even if you’ve lost some of your shine.” The Angel recoils away, sliding back across the bed until the chain clangs tight, preventing him from escaping any further. Unbothered by the move, Fran simply crawls after him, pushing the Angel to lay back as he straddles over him. “Come on, don’t you want to have some fun? Hell’s all about fun.” He purrs. “Piss off, beast!” The Angel spits, using his unchained foot to kick Francis between the legs, but Fran expects the move, and with a single hand, easily stops him, holding the thin, pale limb in place. “Now now,” Fran grins, sitting back on the Angels bare knees and pinning his legs to the bed, “No need to be like that. Come,” his smile widens as he claps his hands together in glee, “tell me your name.” The Angel struggles to get him off his legs, but soon tires — much faster than last time, Fran notes curiously — choosing to lie slumped beneath him. “No.” He huffs. “Come on, pleeeease?” Francis begs, batting his eyes. The Angel remains silent, only glaring tiredly up at Fran, much to the Demons annoyance. He knows humans see Angels as the ‘favoured race’, all kindness and benevolence, great guardians who steer them from harm and send them on the path of good. But Demons have a much different view of them. To Demons, Angels are arrogant, self entitled, ‘none holier than thou’ type pricks. They lord the humans favour of them over Demons, acting all high and mighty all the damn time, it’s so irritating! And Francis just had to catch the one Angel would couldn’t embody the Demons views better if he tried. No matter what Francis has tried for the past three weeks, the only conversation he’s been able to get out of the Angel is insults. He’s tried being nice, he’s tried alluring, he’s tried trickery, he’s offered souls and blood, himself, but nothing. Not even so much as a name. He leans forward, his dark suit contrasting nicely with the Angel’s white, but, before he can brush a clawed hand over the blond’s cheek, he receives a mental summons. Sighing at the bad timing, he hops back off the bed. “Don’t go anywhere.” He winks, before leaving. What does the King want now? X Francis hurries back to his pet, a grand grin playing across his features. He’s so giddy, he skips most of the way there. A request from the King himself, in person no less. There’s going to be a hunt — they haven’t had one of those in ages — and he’s to pick the prize. The King must know of his knack for acquiring rare items by now, ohh what an honour this is! And he know’s Just what he’s going to choose, but first… “I’m back~” He sings as he walks in, but frowns when he finds the Angel asleep, the sheets bundled up around him. “Hey, wake up.” Fran huffs, setting the fresh tray of Soul Dews down beside the still untouched one. It’s not that late, and he was only gone for a few Hell hours, surely the Angel can’t be tired yet, they still have work to do! He shakes the Angels arm roughly until dazed green eyes slowly blink open. “Urghh…” He groans, curling in on himself. “Hey, what’s wrong with you?” Fran demands, ripping the sheets back. But as soon as he does his eyes widen in shock. The wings… those pretty wings are even duller than before, but what’s worse is dozens of feathers litter the sheets, and more fall free from the wings as Francis stares. “What in Hell?” Panic starts to seep into Fran’s mind. He’d planned on figuring out how to get the Angels wings pristine again to use one of the pretty feathers as the hunt prize, but now… The Angel shivers, and Fran sees that those pretty green eyes aren’t shining with defiance anymore, there not shining at all, now they look more like dull glass balls, staring unseeingly out in a lost haze. He quickly kneels to get a better look at the Angels face, seeing how much paler it is than before, and his breaths come in short, laboured gasps. He touches a hand to the blonds face, his fingers dampening with the sweat droplets beading his brow, and can feel an unnatural heat burning beneath the skin. Fran bites his lip in worry. Forget the wing prize, if he doesn’t do something soon the Angel might not last the night. “Non, Non, non, stop this. Stop it now!” He shouts, eyes flashing, his agitation causing him to unconsciously slip into his Hellian French accent. But no matter how much he shakes the Angel, he doesn’t get any response besides a pitiful groan. “This can’t be happening…” He only wanted to play with him, he doesn’t want to kill him! After such a short time, he can’t lose his pet now! Frantically, he looks around the room for something, anything to fix this, but nothing jumps out. Things can’t end like this! Growling in anger, Francis turns on the chain, snapping it apart with his bare hands, before turning back to slip his arms under the Angels body. “Don’t you dare die on me!” He warns, hurriedly standing and lifting the Angel to him. X Sneaking out of Hell with a dying Angel is a lot harder than you might think, especially one shedding feathers all over the place. But then, you might also think that Angels and Demons hate each other, so why would one care if the other was dying? Francis wonders that too as he knocks out the last guards by the Fire Gates. But before going through, he halts in his tracks. Just where should he go? No human could possibly help them, and no demon would give a damn if the Angel died here. So… He turns to look at the Plains Map. Looking between the map and the dying Angel in his arms, Fran closes his eyes, frowning deeply, before making his choice. Kicking the dial, he switches the Plains selection from the Top World to the High Sphere, otherwise known as, Heaven. The view through the portal swirls and changes from a grassy park to a bright white hallway, and alert blinking across the portal warning of Forbidden Passage to the Un-ascended. Well, he’s gotten this far, might as well do what Demons do best. Disregarding the warning, Fran tightens his hold on the Angel, and steps through. The world twists and warps around them for a moment, before settling in the long — almost painfully bright for Fran — white hall, and the humid heat of Hellfires turns to a cool breeze blowing from air conditioners in the ceiling above. But the second Francis lays a foot inside, a deafening alarm starts to blare, and dozens of Angels come rushing to the alert. “Warning, Unauthorised demonic presence detected in the entrance of Hall Beta. All available Archangels to Hall Beta immediately, this is not a drill. Repeat, All available Archangels to Hall Beta immediately.” Before Francis can even think up of a plan, he’s surrounded. The Archangels, Heaven’s security, are the first to arrive. These Angels, unlike Fran’s delicate pet, are much bigger and bulky looking, armed with swords in their belts, and golden symbols decorating their much larger wings. “What is going on here?” A tall and very muscular blond Archangel demands. “Seems a Demon has gotten himself lost.” Another violet eyed one smiles, but the look makes Fran more uneasy than a Demons grin. It’s then that the blond one looks to the Angel limp in Fran’s arms. “Arthur?” He asks in surprise, quickly striding forward to get a better look, “By Heaven, what have you done to him?” The Archangel gasps at Francis. “Please,” Fran begs, holding the Angel out, “you have to save him.” “Quickly,” The blond calls over to his smiling partner, “take him to the Halo, and hurry.” “Right away.” Violet eyes nods, and Fran puts up no protest when he scoops his pet out off his arms, flying off. “As for you,” the blond glares, drawing his sword and pointing it at Fran’s neck, “your coming with me.” Not having much option otherwise, Fran smirks, bowing mockingly, “Lead the way.” The Archangel huffs in distaste, but before leaving he turns to look down a corridor at one of the other Angels who arrived while Fran was distracted. “Feliciano, go summon the High Council, inform them of what’s happened.” The small brunet Angel jumps at being caught snooping, but quickly recovers, saluting the blond. “Sure thing boss!” But just before he runs off out of sight, the blond calls out again, “And Feli?” “Uh, yeah Luddy?” The blond sighs, “Go tell Peter to come to the Halo too, he’ll want to know.” “Right away!” X It seems Fran’s pet wasn’t the only Angel to despise him. As he’s marched through the Cloud Fields down to the Rain Fall Pits, every Angel he passes sends him a look of contempt. He hears their whispers, and sees how they turn their noses up at him. They all act so high and mighty, as if he wasn’t even worth the clouds they walk on. “Look at that.” “Is that a Demon, here?” “Disgraceful.” “Such a foul beast.” “What’s Hell playing at now?” “The Council will hear of this.” “Be careful, don’t get too close or it might sully your Grace.” “Keep it away from the Souls, who knows what foul things it’s planning.” “Urgh, I feel sick just looking at it.” Growing annoyed by all the whispering, Fran’s lips curl back in a snarl, growling at the next Angel he passes who dares to make a comment on his appearance, smirking when the Angels go scurrying in fear. But his fun ends when they reach the pits, giant wells of fresh Holy Water several hundred of meters deep, with a system of rain constantly falling to keep them from running dry. Fran had heard all about Heaven and it’s weird wonders like this, but never cared for it much. But now he wishes he’d payed a bit more attention to the tales as he’s unceremoniously kicked down into the well. The sides far too high and smooth to climb, Fran’s forced to swim to an inner ledge to stand, treading water up to his waist as he looks up at the Archangel. “You’ll stay here until the council decides what to do with you.” Is all he’s told before he’s left all alone. X Fran’s not sure how long exactly he spent in the well, but long enough for his nice suit to be utterly ruined, that’s for sure. He’s soaked to the bone and uncomfortably cold when the violet eyed Archangel from before peaks over the edge. “Hello again,” he smiles that same unnerving grin, “ready to get out?” “Quite.” Fran huffs, flicking at the water around him, “This Holy Water is terrible for my complexion.” “Are all Demons so funny?” He giggles, spreading his giant wings to fly down and pull Fran out of the well. “Why don’t you go to Hell and find out.” Fran smirks. The Archangel giggles again, dropping Fran from higher than necessary as he remains in the air. Groaning from the landing, Fran quickly picks himself up, huffing at having to look up even more to see the Archangel. “Well, now what?” “Now,” The Archangel drawls, waving a hand signal in the air, “you talk.” Suddenly a small group of Angels and Archangels fly over, they settle into a circle above Fran, before all dropping down together to surround him. “Talk?” Francis parrots, worriedly glancing around. “Perhaps we should explain first,” A short dark haired Angel starts, “It might be easier if we’re all on the same page first.” “Kiku’s right,” another blond with purple eyes nods. “But first, introductions. My name is Ivan,” the violet eyed Archangel starts, “mr muscles over there is Ludwig, and the annoying brat beside him is Alfred.” “Hey!” Alfred cries, but Ivan continues regardless. “We three are Archangels, though you probably new that.” Ivan smiles, gesturing to the smaller Angels next. “This here is Kiku, and the sweet little thing next to him is Matthew.” Fran wonders why he called Matt little when he’s almost the same size as the Archangels, but nods along anyway. “And lastly, the bag of nerves next to Ludwig is Feliciano.” At his name being mentioned, the brunet jumps, shifting closer to Ludwig for protection. “Now tell us,” Alfred cuts in, his wings fluffing up behind him in a display of strength, “what happened with the Hell Gate in Singapore?”

[drakenwriter]

Symphony of Elliandor: A Dream Of Fellinar.

You ask me why I am disturbed tonight? Please then, stay and listen, for I have a confession to make that will reveal to you the reason for my unease this night. A dream I have just suffered was one that I endured long ago, and the current events have brought this nightmare back into reality.

           During a tireless night many ages ago, I was wounded while traveling on the road. Darkness was looming, and I lay on a bed roll --confused and sick-- next to Simothis, my lover of yore. I wept, for you must remember that I had just been reborn not but a month prior as what I now know as a Stravost'Kai. Simothis, in an effort to comfort me, told me in a calm, kind voice: “Vilsindris, my sweet, you are safe, I will protect you.” You see, I was being hunted by assassins sent by my traitorous uncle. Though it was not the assassins or my uncle who scared me, it was a battle of faith and damnation. As I mentioned, I was resurrected; reborn in Vordian’s flames. ‘The Devil’s Daughter’, they now call me, for my sins are laid bare for all of Elliandor to see. Eventually, the fever of my wounds took me, and I fell unconscious. Though what I saw was no dream, I fear, but a vision.

    I climbed a tower, up the spiraling steps along the outer rim. The air was dark and heavy, the black sky alight with hellfire. The steps I ascended were pale sandstone, no, bone, and blood trailed out of their cracks. My bare white feet were soaked in the wine of the fallen. In the shadows, impish creatures feasted off of the tortured souls trapped within spiked cages of wrought iron.

    I continued to climb, listening to the seductive whispers of he who granted my rebirth. Screams of agony filled the night, and cries of the damned roared like a sea of despair. I reached the top of the Tower of Bone, and red lightning forked in the twisted sky. Spikes like horns curled up from the four corners of the tower, on one side down below was a dry sea; a desert stretching for miles unending. There were strange formations in the sand, hills that seemed to make various long serpentine shapes. The other side was a portal: it was circular, swirling like lava in the sky, and glowing hotter than the sun itself.

    He stood there, in humanoid form. Black skin, thousands of diamond-shaped scales, and a crown of horns upon his reptilian head. He had eyes of ice like my own, and slitted draconic pupils that pierced into my soul. He wore no shirt, rather a simple loin cloth of black and gold, glowing from the flames of Fellinar. And his wings: his wings were long and black, batlike in appearance with scales to match his draconic nature. He extended his hand out, holding a spiked crown made of darkened dragon bone. It was made for me, and he would take no refusal, thus I placed it upon my bare head, this gift from Vordian. He bid me look upon the sand once more, and what I saw were legions of reptilian monsters. Twisted black forms with red cracks in their flesh glowing like lava. They marched for the Tower of Bone, and bowed, not before Vordian, but me, their queen.

    Vordian made a devilish smile, speaking no words, instead, he rose his arms into the hot air. The sand below turned to glass as hellfire burst forth from below. Brimstone formed and lava spilled from the cracks like blood. Those shapes that once were hills in the desert were now clear. A great leviathan rose: Massive wings spread from its large scaly body, a tail for miles it seemed, swept aside the flames of Fellinar. Seven draconic heads looked upon me with their fourteen fiery blue eyes. The leviathan bore resemblance to Vordian in his draconic form, though it was not him. Rather, he called it my brother; ‘Kul’Phurax,’ said Vordian in his deep tri-toned voice.

    This beast with its seven heads, rising and falling in a slithery motion, continued to stare at me. It bore no hint of love, no touch of care, only hunger and malice. Then to my fright, it began to devour all below, the souls of the damned, the demons, everything.

    I turned to face Vordian, yet all he could do was smile, bloody tears trickling down his scaly cheeks. He extended his arms and took me under his embrace as a father would. Then the flames of the Leviathan consumed us, yet Vordian’s icy-blue eyes remained in the darkness, and all was cold.

    I awoke from that dream with a terror unlike I had ever felt before. Beads of sweat rolled down my forehead into my eyes. I wept bloody tears, and I remember climbing out from the blankets to kneel in prayer to the Four above. I felt a fleeting grace of love, though it vanished quickly. Instead, I was left with a hellish embrace as I remembered the words Vordian spoke to me long ago before my rebirth: “You should not be so eager to make deals with the devil.” And that was the first time I truly feared for my soul. For that darkness in my heart has never vanished. It has lingered on through the years, sometimes lying dormant, other times it shows through to the surface, and I am reminded of what unfettered evil feels like. For that malice is in my blood, it is the very fiber of my soul. And that is why I am terrified of death.

This short is an offshoot story of my main series: Symphony of Elliandor. It is copyrighted as of April 29th 2022. No one can copy the content within this story or repost it without explicit permission from me, the author.

[ragecandyfics]

Archanea Week Day 3: Loyal/Heart

Characters: Ogma, Caeda, some Samuel Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, torture Word count: ~15K

Ogma is more than willing to put his life on the line for Princess Caeda; she did save him from a terrible fate, after all. But Caeda doesn’t want anyone’s life to be on the line; that’s why she saved his in the first place.

Notes: Due to Tumblr's ridiculous refusal to show posts with links in them in search results, I’m going to paste the whole thing here. Due to Tumblr’s inability to keep my formatting, italics and bold won’t be preserved, and, due to Tumblr mobiles disregard of read mores, mobile users are in for lots of scrolling. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. I’ll put the AO3 link in the notes for those who want to see the fic in its intended format.

Loyal

Ogma wasn’t a reckless fighter by any means. He wasn’t quite so cautious and guarded as many of the younger soldiers, either, but that was only because he had years of experience behind him and could usually judge danger very accurately. Besides, with his skill level, he could afford to throw some caution to the wind now and again. He rarely did, for fear of incurring Princess Caeda’s wrath―but he could, theoretically, afford to.

When he spotted the archer nocking an arrow towards the sky, though, he didn’t stop to think about it. The fear of his lady’s anger; his own instincts he’d honed over the years; the swarms of Macedonian soldiers around him―none of it even registered. Ogma moved. He plowed through their ranks, weaving between hulking suits of ebon armor and flashing lances that nipped at his heels, and the lucky few enemies who reacted quickly enough to step in front of him were only met with the edge of his sword.

By the time the archer heard his fellows’ screams and glanced away from the pegasus he’d been about to shoot down, his head was already toppling off his shoulders.

There. One less archer; one less potential threat.

Only then did Ogma stop to consider the situation. And he quickly came to the conclusion that, having accomplished his goal, he was now essentially trapped behind enemy lines, completely surrounded, and still riding a wave of adrenaline that made his hands shake and his vision go dark around the edges.

‘Princess Caeda is going to kill me,’ he found himself thinking as the Macedonians broke out of their stupor and turned their weapons towards him. ‘Or,’ he amended after a moment, ‘she’ll kill my ghost.’

Physically impossible, but she would find a way.

Then the soldiers fell upon him in a confused flurry of steel, and Ogma could do nothing but drop flat to the ground. One weapon whistled over his head―he couldn’t see it, but it sounded like an axe―and he sent it flying with a deft twist of his sword, clearing up just enough space to get his feet back underneath him.

Seeing little choice, he took three haphazard stabs at the soldiers nearest to him in quick succession, still crouching under the wild singing of various weapons overhead. All three men hit the ground, and he heard a fourth man scream as―Ogma risked a glance to check―the pinwheeling axe from earlier caught him in the shoulder, sending him stumbling into the mage behind him. Ah: a rare stroke of luck. Taking advantage of the brief confusion, Ogma rolled forward, barely evading what would’ve been a fatal stab to the neck, and skewered both the grunt and mage at once.

He allowed himself exactly half a second to marvel at the quality of his newest sword. Not many blades could pierce two bodies in one go, even with Ogma’s considerable strength behind them. Then he sprung back onto his feet, knocking aside a clumsy sword slash, and the fight began in earnest.

After that, he didn’t bother keeping tabs on each individual attack. The way he moved was mostly instinct, combined with some simple on-the-fly assessments―those halberdiers are a real problem; I should take care of those next. This swordmaster has no idea what he’s doing, so it’s probably safe to leave him alive for now. That archer might decide to go after Princess Caeda―there we go. Not anymore, he won’t. It was a tried and tested formula that he’d developed back in the gladiator days, and it had yet to fail him.

(But there was, of course, a first time for everything.)

Ogma couldn’t identify the attack which finally broke through his defenses. That was the nature of being attacked from behind: you either noticed it beforehand or you just wondered where that sudden stabbing pain had come from.

Whatever kind of wound it was, it hurt, and Ogma faltered, letting out a sort of choked growl that fell just short of a shout. Then something jostled inside of his newly-injured shoulder―the weapon hadn’t yet been removed, he supposed―sword? Axe? Too shallow to be a lance; too much movement to be an arrow―

He barely even realized that his own legs had buckled underneath him (the traitors), but that was definitely dirt beneath his knees. And a quick, bleary-eyed glance proved that, as he’d suspected, he was still completely surrounded. A dozen soldiers on their feet versus a wounded mercenary on his knees. It was a fool’s wager.

With one last burst of adrenaline, Ogma buried his sword up to the hilt in the closest target―some poor chump’s thigh―and then the weapon in his back twisted very deliberately and Ogma lost his grip, both palms hitting the ground.

Belatedly, he snarled in pain, fingers gouging into the dirt. The Macedonians tightened around him as if he wasn’t already hemmed in, hastily dragging away the swordsman he’d injured―and, with him, Ogma’s sword, still embedded in his leg. Even if he’d managed to keep his grip on the damn thing, he still would have been done for, but the added helplessness of being disarmed was enough to make his throat constrict in an uncharacteristic moment of panic.

‘Princess Caeda is going to turn to the dark arts,’ he found himself thinking nigh hysterically (and rather incongruously, given the circumstances). ‘Princess Caeda is going to defect, and have Gharnef teach her forbidden magic, and bring me back to life, solely for the purpose of killing me again, but slower.’

Then, as he began to lose coherence, his muddled brain added, somewhat more rationally and much more distressingly:

‘Caeda’s gonna cry.’

The weapon in his shoulder drove down until his vision went white and his ears rang,  and Ogma screamed, slamming against the ground as his limbs crumpled uselessly underneath him. Blade scraped bone, pushing through flesh long since torn asunder, and a jolt of white-hot agony vibrated through his entire being, tearing another choked gasp from his lips.

He was dead. He was a corpse. His mind was already severed from his body, hovering on a separate plane of existence as he waited for his chance to pass into the afterlife. Waiting to see whether he would be admitted into paradise or consigned to a much less pleasant fate.

Perhaps, he thought, the gods would judge him kindly for his meager years of service to Princess Caeda. Surely, if they even spared a glance at his soul, they would find it sorely wanting for virtue. But perhaps the Princess’ overabundance of virtue would reflect well on him. She may yet manage to save him a third time.

Agony―a sudden burst of it, centered around his shoulder―and Ogma’s mind writhed even as his body remained inert and lifeless. No such luck, then―he’d already been found lacking. Understandably so, perhaps. Caeda’s command had been the best part of his life but, ultimately, the shortest part as well. It wouldn’t hold much weight in the value of his soul, even though it felt as if his life hadn’t truly begun until he’d looked up through bloodied eyelashes and seen a puny girl with deep blue hair standing over him.

Another jolt of pain, followed by the strange sensation of being moved. Ogma wondered why he could still feel his body if his soul had already abandoned ship. An incomprehensible cacophony of unintelligible noises wormed its way into his ears, overpowering the shrill ring that hadn’t yet faded, and he surprised himself by physically squirming. Was this Hell? Did the damned have bodies that they could move? Perhaps his corpse was simply still twitching.

He didn’t notice that the pain in his shoulder had receded somewhat until it came back again full-force. A sharp jab against his chest was all it took to jostle the wound, and he surprised himself again by groaning out loud. If this was Hell, then it wasn’t as bad as he’d expected―yet―but even this was probably enough to merit the title of “damnation”.

Another jab, another groan, and another squirm. Ogma wasn’t sure whether he wanted to know what was prodding him or not. It was too blunt to be a trident like the ones that demons traditionally carried, and, other than that, he didn’t have even a guess. But, when it pressed insistently into his chest, he decided that he probably had no choice―this would continue until he relented and looked.

With monumental effort, Ogma managed to pry his eyes open. He could barely see anyway, the light nearly blinding him, his vision blurry and unstable, but something about the few vague, pulsing colors he could make out gave him pause.

Finally, the world came into a shaky sort of focus. The colors solidified into something more tangible―shapes; figures; wings?―and Ogma wondered if this was an angel coming to spirit him away. Then the image sharpened―blue hair; red clothing; white wings―not on her, but a pegasus―and Ogma thought, ‘Oh, I was half right.’

Princess Caeda―it could be no other―was hovering over him, mounted atop Tempest, but they weren’t airborne. The butt of her wing spear was pressed lightly against his chest, pushing his wound into the ground, which explained why it hurt like hellfire. In her other hand was a blood-crusted axe.

Briefly, Ogma entertained the idea that Caeda had, in fact, resurrected him so that she could kill him herself. Then she tossed the axe aside, urged Tempest into a sharp turn, and thrust out her hand in a desperate grab for his arm. Ogma couldn’t really hear what she was saying, but he definitely saw his name cross her lips as she leaned further out of the saddle, still too far off the ground to reach him.

He wasn’t sure whether to classify the feeling that overtook him as nostalgia or deja vu, but, either way, it was intense enough to drive some of the cotton from his skull. Staring up at Princess Caeda, gritting his teeth against wave after wave of pain, trying to piece together the fact that he wasn’t yet dead as she stretched a hand towards him―it was all very familiar.

Well, his soul might still be forfeit, he mused to himself as comprehension finally dawned on him, but Caeda would get the chance to save him a third time, anyway.

Ogma forced a bit of feeling back into his numb extremities. He wished for all the world that he could just lay there until his shoulder stopped screaming for mercy, but that was no longer an option.

He was still alive.

Caeda had passed her judgment.

Clawing into the deepest chasms of his body, Ogma managed to scrounge up one last scrap of adrenaline. It was just enough for him to stifle the pain and throw out his arm in an inelegant grab for Caeda’s. Luckily, at the same time, Caeda lunged towards him, nearly unseating herself in the process, and they each managed to clumsily wrap a hand around the other’s forearm.

The Princess’ grip was bruising, and Ogma’s shoulder strained when she rocked back into the saddle, tugging him halfway off the ground. Tempest reared―he noticed, only now, that they were still encircled by Macedonian soldiers, albeit far fewer than before―and then Caeda jerked his arm with all the force of a killing blow, pulling his limp body off of the ground entirely.

For a split second, he was airborne. He spent most of that split-second on a strangled but vehement curse that he hoped wasn’t loud enough to sully the Princess’ ears. Despite his pained shout and Tempest’s distressed whinnies, though, the nauseating sound of his shoulder popping out of socket was still audible.

His forehead ricocheted off of Caeda’s pauldron with a clang that sent his head spinning, and the rest of his body made contact an instant later, his torso colliding with hers and his legs ramming up against Tempest’s side. All three yelped on impact, and the two humans immediately clung to each other as the pegasus underneath them reared once again. Ogma thoughtlessly scrambled for a foothold, boots scraping against Tempest’s hide, which only exacerbated the situation.

Caeda didn’t give them time to get situated. As soon as her grip on Ogma was secure enough that she could be reasonably sure he wouldn’t fall, she spurred her panicked pegasus off of the ground, and they took off. The Macedonians shouted, but Tempest was too fast for them to catch, even when she was throwing a fit.

Half-delirious with pain and panic, Ogma clawed for purchase against both Caeda’s armor and Tempest’s side. Already, he was beginning to slide dangerously downward, gravity doing its damnedest to pull him back to the ground, and Tempest’s desperate thrashing wasn’t exactly helping matters.

Before he could fall, Caeda tightened her grasp on his torso―he hissed in pain, but she wisely didn’t relent―and heaved him up, both of them teetering precariously. Through mostly dumb luck, Ogma’s kicking legs hooked over the side of the saddle, and, with a bit of flailing and a few near deaths, Caeda managed to settle him behind her on Tempest’s back.

Without his feet in the stirrups, and with Tempest still bucking and neighing, Ogma had no choice but cling to the Princess for dear life, stifling an agonized cry into her shoulder for lack of anywhere else to stifle it. For a moment, her hand alighted on his, and she turned to say something over her shoulder―Ogma thought he might have heard his name, and perhaps a ‘hang on tight’―before she leaned forward to take Tempest’s reigns in both hands.

A sharp yank had the pegasus whirling around, and Ogma seized the leather strap of Caeda’s breastplate between his teeth rather than letting himself scream. The wind was whistling past them, now, as Tempest picked up speed, and he was becoming progressively surer that Caeda had, in fact, warned him to hang on. It seemed to be sage advice.

The thought of tightening his grip―and therefore pulling at the wound on his back―was enough to make him flinch in breathless anticipation. Neither of his shoulders was in particularly good condition right now―one bleeding profusely, the other dislocated―and trying to ‘hold on’ with his arms injured like this would be... perilous, to say the least.

This was going to hurt, he acknowledged numbly. It was going to hurt far more than that petty little wound he’d gotten earlier. And he was fresh out of adrenaline to drown it out.

‘Rise, Sir Ogma of Talys. From this day forward, you will serve as my personal retainer.’

‘As you wish, Princess Caeda. This body is yours until it breaks.’

With the last of his strength, Ogma clung to Caeda as tightly as he could, instinctively taking two fistfuls of her shirt as his arms locked around her torso. As he’d expected, the motion made his back and shoulder scream like the souls of the damned, and he squeezed his eyes shut with a choked gasp. The more it hurt, the tighter he held. The tighter he held, the more it hurt. If he was even somewhat aware right now, he might worry that his grip would suffocate her.

But he was not, so he just held on, his eyes still tightly screwed shut, his entire body taut and trembling, his breaths coming fast and unsteady.

He maintained his tenuous grasp on consciousness just long enough for Tempest to land. Then, his duty completed, Ogma let his head loll forward against his liege lady's back and surrendered to the encroaching darkness.

Samuel had concocted the plan.

For all the kid’s faults, it was a pretty ingenious idea, and he’d already gathered all the information they would need before he made his proposal. They would slip out after tomorrow’s tournament ended; Samuel would lift the keys from one of the guards after his bout, which would be second-to-last. Once he’d been escorted back to his cell, he would free himself and the others. As always, Ogma would be given the last and toughest opponent; when the guards led him back to his cell, the other gladiators would ambush them and get Ogma unshackled. They would fight their way out to the back entrance, where they would close the gate and sever the ropes used to open it, effectively locking it shut. Once it was “locked”, they were home free―they’d simply split into small groups and vanish into the city.

Other than the obvious, unavoidable issues, such as the high likelihood that they’d stand out from the crowd here in Knorda and quickly be recaptured, it was a very solid plan. Samuel had taken almost everything into account, from the length of the patrol routes to the number of men who could feasibly go unnoticed in a crowd. He’d even managed to pilfer a weapon from the arena: a single iron sword, which, by unanimous vote, would be given to Ogma.

There was only one problem.

Not everyone could make it out.

No one else seemed to notice the fatal flaw in their little scheme―or, if they did, they didn’t point it out. Ogma, however, saw it immediately.

The plan called for Samuel himself to hold back any remaining guards while the others escaped, then quickly slide under the gate just before it could close. And, gods, the kid was good with a sword, but not that good. He was underestimating how quickly the guards would mobilize. One man couldn’t hold the lines on his own; he would be overcome quickly, and then the entire thing would fall apart. But they couldn’t afford for more than one person to stay inside; their plan revolved around as many men as possible making it into the trees before the gate was even shut.

The idea was good on paper, but putting it into practice would probably meet with failure. Sure, one or two people might escape, but the rest would be captured and punished severely for their rebellion―tortured, probably, and then executed for good measure.

But this was the best chance they were ever going to get.

So, as he and his co-conspirators sat in a tight circle, whispering amongst each other as they laid out each and every second of the escape in excruciating detail, Ogma placed a hand on Samuel’s shoulder and muttered, “You should stay with the rest and make sure everything goes smoothly. I’ll hold off the guards.”

He was fully aware that he was unlikely to survive that encounter―and, if he did, he would just find himself in the gallows―but it wasn’t as if he was likely to survive if someone else took up the job, anyway.

Besides, Ogma had only ever been good at one thing―fighting―and his years of nearly non-stop combat in the colosseum had destroyed what little conversational skill he’d had before. Even if he did make it out, he wasn’t sure what he would do with his newfound freedom. Probably just go looking for a fight. Samuel and the others were... different. Most of them were very young―teenagers, even―with some real talents and dreams. They had a whole life’s worth of possibilities ahead of them.

That was something worth dying for, he supposed.

To Samuel’s credit, up until the guards started pouring in, the plan went off without a hitch. After his unsurprising victory in the arena, Ogma allowed himself to be led back to his cell, only for Samuel to leap out from a dark corner and knock the guard out cold. Ogma’s wrists were freed and he took the proffered sword, and then they were off, their fellow gladiators quietly slipping out of their unlocked cells to join them. They encountered only the two patrols they’d expected to encounter, both of whom they dispatched of with ease, and, soon enough, they were working together to hastily raise the back gate. Freedom was just a short sprint away.

Then the first wave of guards surged around the corner.

Samuel cursed―he hadn’t expected anyone to realize they were gone―but Ogma just drew his sword and lunged, lopping off the first guard’s head before he could even raise his lance. “Hurry!” he snarled―as if that wasn’t a given―and the other gladiators frantically cranked the gate further up.

The first group of guards was small and unprepared, and Ogma cut them down effortlessly, like wheat at the harvest, though he quickly realized that the sword he’d been granted was incredibly dull and far too light. That would have been a problem, he suspected, if he was planning on surviving this battle. For his purposes, though, it would do just fine. Even a rusty old iron sword like this could at least last long enough for the others to escape, and, once the gate was jammed shut, Ogma couldn’t care less what became of the sword. He wouldn’t need it where he was going.

As the second wave poured in, followed closely by the third, the gate finally rose far enough for everyone to duck underneath, and Ogma shoved Samuel away when he stepped forward as if to help fend off the guards. “Go,” he urged, his voice deathly calm. Knowing with some certainty that you were about to die was strangely soothing. “Lead the others to safety. You’re the one with the plan.”

Samuel, for some gods-forsaken reason, actually hesitated. “But―but there are so many of them,” he stammered, gesturing to the guards who were almost upon them. “You can’t take them all on at once―you’ll die!”

A sweet sentiment, but ultimately meaningless; Ogma had already concluded that he was only leaving this room in chains or a coffin. Not that a rebel gladiator would be afforded a proper burial. “Go,” he repeated firmly, kicking Samuel one of the dead soldiers’ swords. “I’ll be alright.” A blatant lie. The kid would have to forgive him.

One more moment of hesitation; then, with a resolute nod, Samuel turned and released the mechanism holding the gate up, ducking through the door before it could fall down on his head. Just cut the ropes, Ogma wanted to say, but he doubted the fool would listen; he was still convinced that Ogma would be escaping with the rest. The gravity of the situation hadn’t quite hit him yet.

Ogma just hoped that, when he did figure it out, he wouldn’t make a scene. He preferred to die with as little pointless fanfare as possible.

Then the guards were upon him, and he couldn’t afford to watch any longer. He would just have to hope that Samuel would realize what was happening and cut the cables before he left. Ogma had his own things to cut―mainly throats and tendons―and he couldn’t waste time on the gate.

To their credit, the soldiers that patrolled this place weren’t exactly half-rate. More like... three-quarter-rate. Sure, Ogma sliced through their ranks easily enough, dodging clumsy thrusts of various weapons and aiming for the parts of the body which they foolishly left unprotected, but it wasn’t as effortless as it could’ve been. As the last of the second wave fell at his feet and the third wave crested over them, Ogma even found himself thinking that, under different circumstances, he might be proud to serve alongside men like these.

Circumstance was everything, though, so he still cut them down without hesitation.

It was only part-way through the third wave that Ogma felt himself begin to tire. He hadn’t taken any direct blows, but there had been several scrapes and brushes with various blades and spearheads, and his lungs were beginning to beg for air. It wouldn’t be long before he was overwhelmed and either killed or captured.

Numbly, as he ducked under a clumsy sword swing, Ogma decided that he should double-check to make sure that Samuel had cut the cables before he left. If he ended up pinned and the guards opened up the gates, then this would all be for naught; the others couldn’t outrun an entire arena of soldiers with only a minute-long head start. He would just have to wait for a good opportunity to turn around.

The choice was taken away from him almost immediately. “Ogma!” Samuel cried, way too close to be anywhere near the treeline, and, against his better judgment, Ogma risked a brief glance over his shoulder. Simultaneous waves of fondness and irritation crashed over him when he caught sight of the kid kneeling on the cobblestone, his shoulder braced against the underside of the gate, fists white-knuckled on the bars. He was holding the heavy cast-iron up on his own―keeping it propped open just enough for Ogma to, theoretically, take a running start and slide to freedom.

Of course, theory wasn’t always reality, and, in reality, several soldiers swerved around Ogma, using his distraction to their advantage, and made a beeline for Samuel with lances drawn. The kid hastily let go of the gate with one hand―the extra weight visibly bore down on his shoulder, and he grunted in pain―and unsheathed the sword that Ogma had tossed him. Any fool could see that the sword was useless, though. Half-a-dozen soldiers on their feet versus a burdened gladiator on his knees.

A fool’s wager.

Without pausing to think about it, Ogma knocked a man silly with the hilt of his sword, swept several off of their feet with a swing of his leg, then completely disregarded every ounce of combat instinct ingrained into his mind and threw his sword across the room. It pinwheeled clumsily through the air, not properly weighted as a throwing weapon, but his aim was true enough; the blade hit one of the soldiers across his shoulders, and he stumbled with a pained yelp, his comrades pausing and whirling around to face this new threat.

Ogma met Samuel’s wide, surprised eyes and bellowed, “Drop it!”

Naga be praised, the kid didn’t stop to argue; he let go of the bars and managed to get out just in time, the gate hitting the ground with a clang right as the first soldier’s lance pierced the space where his head had been seconds earlier.

Relief flooded Ogma, and he allowed himself a fleeting moment to be grateful to the gods for letting this crazy, harebrained scheme actually work. Everyone who had intended to escape had already escaped. The gate was closed. In a moment, it would be closed for good. They’d done it. Samuel had seen the plan through.

They were home free.

Then several guards piled on top of him, grabbing him around the neck and under the arms, hands twisting in his ragged clothes―boots kicking at his knees, fingers scrabbling at his throat―and Ogma could do very little but snarl like a caged animal as he was wrestled onto the ground.

Unfortunately, as intelligent as he was, Samuel apparently hadn’t foreseen this, because he gasped, lunging forward and wrapping both hands around the iron bars between them. “Ogma―!”

Gritting his teeth, Ogma braced himself against the floor and managed to throw one of the soldiers off of him, startling the kid into scrambling back. The guards’ lances slipped through the bars, and Samuel danced out of the way, but he didn’t run. Idiot―idiot, idiot, idiot― “Go!” Ogma snapped, even as two more soldiers took the last one’s place, weighing down on him as he struggled to get his feet underneath him.

Samuel, damn him, still hadn’t caught on. “Wh-what―?!” he spluttered, eyes wide and almost affronted; as if Ogma had just asked him to slaughter an infant in the cradle.

“Go!” he repeated without hesitation as another soldier jumped on top of him. Even his strength faltered under that much weight, and his knees banged painfully against the ground. The real agony, however, was watching two more guards rush towards the levers to reopen the gate while Samuel just stood there, staring like an idiot, mouth agape and sword limp at his side.

“But you―” the kid started.

Ogma didn’t give him a chance. “Go without me, you fool!” he practically screamed.

By now, the guards had managed to get him on his stomach, his cheek pressed flat against the cobblestone, but he could still see the shock and denial play across Samuel’s face. Damn it. “This was the plan!” he yelled, hoping that the admission would jar him into action. “I knew I wouldn’t make it out! I never planned to make it out! So stop playing the martyr and go!”

And, yes, Ogma did see the hypocrisy in that statement, but he was already functionally dead, and Samuel still had a fighting chance―a fighting chance that Ogma had essentially died to win for him―a fighting chance that dwindled with each passing second―

“Hurry!”

This damn kid and his bleeding heart―right at the verge of being home-free, yet he hesitated, eying the swarm of guards warily, as if he was sizing them up―as if he had any chance against them―as if saving Ogma was worth forfeiting all of their lives. One guard was working each crank, the ropes straining as the gate began to inch up again, and Ogma’s heart pounded. “Go, damn you!” he bellowed one last time, a rare note of desperation coloring his voice.

(Get out of here, you stupid kid, or else I’ll have died for nothing.)

For a moment, Ogma feared that his words, spoken and unspoken, would fall on deaf ears. Then, in one quick, fluid motion, Samuel unsheathed his sword, slashed the wrists grabbing at him through the gate, and severed both cables, sending the gate crashing back to the ground―this time, for good.

Ogma could just barely hear a quiet “I’m sorry,” over the clang of cast-iron bars hitting cobblestone and the myriad of curses as the wounded guards stumbled back. When the soldiers bent to the ground and frantically tried to lift the gate back up, Samuel was nowhere to be found.

‘Dumb kid,’ Ogma thought privately to himself, even as his shoulders slumped in both relief and resignation. ‘Say ‘thank you’, not ‘sorry’.’

Of course, the guards were trained well enough―they’d managed to overpower Ogma, which was impressive even given their vastly superior numbers―but they were no Samuel. They hadn’t been forced to fight for their lives nearly every day for years, and manually lifting the gate off of the ground was much more difficult than stopping it from closing, anyway. After a few minutes of futile heaving, they gave up.

“No use,” one of them grunted, letting go and clambering back his feet. “That thing’s right stuck.”

His fellows quickly followed his example, wiping the sweat from their foreheads. “Damn lowlives did well to jam it like that,” another admitted begrudgingly. “We’ll have to send scouts to sniff ‘em out.”

The first man snorted derisively. “Gimme a break―those mutts don’t stand a chance out there. Stick out like sore thumbs, they will. And no way they’ve got a plan on what they’re gonna do now. Bet they’ll come crawling right back here once they realize they got no place else to go.”

Ogma had stayed silent until then, but, at that, he couldn’t quite stifle a snort of his own. “Yeah, sure,” he rasped as the guards turned to scowl at him, “I bet they’ll give up a life of freedom and come back here to be beaten, imprisoned, and killed. That’d make sense, wouldn’t it?”

One of the guards gave him a warning kick with a newly-polished boot. “You’d be smart to shut your mouth, prisoner.”

Ogma shot the lot of them his most smug, condescending smirk―he was dead anyway; might as well raise their hackles for the hell of it. “Well,” he drawled, “I never was the brightest―”

“Clearly,” a deep voice cut in, and the soldiers snapped to attention.

Ogma refused to react on principle, but he couldn’t quite help the slight twinge of dread in his gut as the guards scrambled into some semblance of order. Only two stayed down to keep him pinned. It didn’t much matter to Ogma, but he was a bit insulted that they thought two men were enough to hold him―though he wasn’t exactly planning on proving them wrong. No point, really.

Heavy footsteps echoed through the now-silent corridor, and Ogma grit his teeth to keep from growling. “What happened here?” the voice continued in a heavy accent, and the soldiers visibly shrunk back.

After a moment of silence, one of them cleared his throat. “The prisoners mounted an escape attempt, sir!” he said with false certainty, despite the nearly imperceptible quiver in his voice. “They jammed the gate and ran into the forest! Sir!”

“Escape attempt?” The anger dripping from his voice was enough to make even the guards on top of Ogma squirm. “I think you mean ‘successful escape’. Unless you’ve already got them all back in their cells.”

There was a collective cringe from the room as a whole. “S-sir!” one of the guards cried after a moment, snapping to a sharp salute. “Most of the prisoners escaped, but we managed to catch this one, sir!”

At those words, the grunts who’d tackled him each grabbed an arm and hauled him to his feet, eager to prove that they hadn’t failed completely. Ogma grunted quietly, but didn’t bother struggling as they dragged him across the room; he could probably wrench himself free, but it wouldn’t last long. He would just end up on the floor again, this time with even more guards on top of him. Anyway, he’d known that he would lose; might as well take it gracefully.

With a well-placed kick, the guards forced Ogma onto his knees, though they didn’t release their grip on his arms. A boot landed between his jutting shoulder blades, pushing him into a deep bow, and his shoulders strained. Nevertheless, he craned his head back as far as it would go, meeting his captor’s eyes with fierce defiance.

“Oh,” the colosseum’s owner growled from above him. “It’s you.” He drew his thick eyebrows down in a glare, which only made his bulbous eyes seem to pop even further out of his head. “I should have known.”

Ogma grinned up at him like a wild dog and congratulated himself when the craven dastard cringed away, taking a reflexive step back. “Yeah,” he mumbled, “you should’ve known. But you didn’t, didja?” He tilted his head to the side, grin not wavering. “You got any idea how long I’ve been planning this? Months. Months, and you didn’t even notice.” Less than a week, actually, and Ogma had only been let in on the plan maybe thirty hours ago. But the enraged, humiliated look blooming across the owner’s puce-colored face was way too satisfying to pass up.

“You―” His word devolved into a growl, and Ogma had a moment to brace himself before a boot landed directly in his face. His head tried to snap back, but it was already craned as far as it could go, so it just fell forward; his pained grunt sprayed red-tinted saliva onto the ground. Quickly probing around with his tongue, he determined that the worst of the damage was his split lip and the small cut where his teeth had snapped shut around his cheek.

Before he could lift his head again, his owner’s foot pressed down on the back of his skull, pushing down until his already-aching neck strained. “Don’t pretend that you won,” the owner spat, grinding his foot down. “If your plan was so foolproof, then why are you here?”

It was hard to say whether he gave the guards a silent gesture or they were just following his lead, but, either way, a flurry of kicks suddenly rained down on Ogma from both sides, and he locked an elongated snarl behind his teeth. Nonetheless, he couldn’t stop his body from jerking in the soldiers’ hold, and his owner laughed at him, loud and mocking. “Not so clever now, are you?” he gloated, the tread of his boots rough as he leaned a little harder on Ogma’s head. “We foiled your little escape plan, prisoner.”

Ogma managed to crane his neck back just enough to grin at the bastard, blood dribbling sluggishly through his teeth. “Yes, good job,” he slurred; “You captured the decoy.”

A scowl crossed the corpulent man’s face, and he kicked Ogma hard enough that the guards holding him almost lost their grip. Another few seconds of pregnant silence followed as all the soldiers held their breath. Then― “Well, what are you waiting for?! You―alert the other guards! The rest of you, out through the front entrance and after them! Every prisoner that escapes, one of you idiots takes his place in the gallows!”

Immediately, there was a mad scramble to follow his order, the guards pouring out of the room at top speed. Some bent over to scoop up the discarded weapons that their friends had left behind; others just clutched their own weapons to their chests and ran. Within maybe ten or twenty seconds, only the owner, Ogma, and the two guards restraining him remained.

“Sir, what about him?” one of those guards asked tentatively, nudging Ogma with his foot as if it was unclear who he was referring to.

The owner looked down his long nose, curling his lip as if Ogma was something unpleasant on the bottom of his shoe. “Call up a crowd and have him flogged out front,” he said simply after a moment of deliberation. “Hang him when you’re done.”

“How many lashes?”

“As many as it takes.” Neither Ogma nor his owner broke eye contact. “Don’t grant him death until he begs for it.”

To his credit, the guard cringed sympathetically. “And if he doesn’t?”

The owner grinned sickeningly down at Ogma, eyes sharp and borderline gleeful.

“Keep going,” he drawled, “until he does.”

Ogma just smiled grimly, having anticipated such a fate. “Your threats can’t touch me,” he rasped.

His owner―whose name Ogma had never bothered to learn―scowled. “We’ll see about that.” He huffed harshly through his nose, then snapped his fingers and waved the guards away. “Take this maggot out of my sight. I don’t want to see him again until he’s dying or dead.”

“Yes, sir!” the soldiers replied, and they immediately tugged Ogma off of his knees, though not quite all the way onto his feet. As his bare feet scrambled for purchase on the blood-splattered cobblestone floor, his arms were jerkily maneuvered in front of him, one guard holding him still while the other removed a set of iron manacles from his belt.

Cold metal closed around his arms with a clang and a click, and Ogma wasn’t sure whether the sinking feeling in his gut was dread of his impending death or just resigned acceptance at the familiar weight of shackles on his wrists.

Either way, he didn’t put up a struggle as they dragged him away. Might as well face death with what little dignity he had left.

The plan had worked; the others were safe. That was all that mattered.

Neither of the guards spoke a word as they led him through the winding corridors, still full of panicking soldiers trying to get ready for a manhunt. Ogma didn’t really mind. Nothing they could say would change the situation at all, so he was glad to be spared any further mockery―or, worse, meaningless sympathy.

Being dragged outside, however, was... strange. In a way, it was a good feeling―he imagined that, after years spent in dingy cells and death matches, anyone would be relieved to feel the open air on their face again. He was almost tempted to rip himself out of the guards’ hold just so that he could properly enjoy the grass beneath his feet and the wind in his hair, but... well, to be frank, he didn’t want to run and, therefore, seem afraid. No; he wouldn’t give his owner the satisfaction.

Still, Ogma decided as the sun warmed his face, this wasn’t a bad way to g0 at all. Out here, he could die with a lungful of fresh air, and his body would be quickly discarded, rather than being left to decay until the guards couldn’t stand the smell anymore. He had no intention of begging, so he would be whipped until his body gave out, which was significantly less pleasant, but it was better than bleeding to death in the colosseum or rotting alive in his cell.

He had a lot to thank Samuel for, he supposed, even if their plan hadn’t exactly proceeded flawlessly like he’d promised.

A crowd was already gathered around the raised platform used for public beatings and executions, and Ogma marveled at the speed with which they congregated when they were promised something juicy like a flogging. He wondered if any of them cared who he was and what he’d done to warrant this, or if they’d just come running at the word “scourged”. Probably the latter.

Then he was lifted onto the platform, his already tattered shirt roughly torn off of him, knees forced to the floor for the hundredth time today, and Ogma barely even registered the painful scrape of splintered wood against his chest as he was slung over an old, blood-stained block. Rusty chains were hastily hooked to his bound hands, stretching them out before him, and his legs were similarly shackled to the ground, keeping him pressed firmly against the block with his bare back fully exposed.

“This prisoner,” one of the guards announced to the restless crowd, “incited a riot that killed and injured dozens of innocent guards! In retribution, he shall be lashed until he repents for his crimes!”

An excited murmur rippled through the crowd―everyone knew that “lashed until he repents” really just meant “lashed to death”―and, for the first time in this whole ordeal, Ogma felt his stomach turn. At the very least, some of the people watching seemed uncomfortable―he even saw a few leave, curiosity sated―but the majority were visibly enthusiastic.

This was just a show to them. Their weekly entertainment. A bit rarer than fights in the colosseum, and therefore significantly more exciting.

He wondered if any of them recognized him from the tournament that had just ended, less than an hour ago.

He wondered if such recognition would make them more or less excited to witness his last few agonized hours on this miserable earth.

Cold fingers clamped around his face, tugging it up until he was staring directly into the face of his executioner. The man already had a long, nasty-looking whip in one hand, though Ogma was at least relieved to notice that it was not the cat o’ nine tails. He still had some time to prepare himself for that particular torture.

“Any last words, cur?” the executioner asked, sounding distressingly sadistic and almost bored at the same time. As if this was an exciting but utterly mundane occurrence. Yes, a flogging: how fun, yet how truly unspectacular.

Ogma spat out a mouthful of blood. “My life is well-spent,” he croaked, “buying the freedom of my comrades-in-arms.” Then, eyes flickering down to the crowd, he added, “And this was no riot. It was a daring escape. If you plan to kill me, at least do so for the right reasons.”

The executioner released his chin, and his head flopped back down to hang between his bound arms. “The prisoner refuses to repent!” he shouted, and the crowd cheered. “He must be shown the error of his ways!”

Ogma closed his eyes and breathed deep. He’d known that this would happen. He’d chosen this. No sense struggling; these manacles offered very little slack. Besides, there was nothing to hold out for―no reinforcements were coming; no specific number of lashes would be deemed “enough”; there would certainly be no sudden mercy. The quicker he bled out, the better. Until then, he would just have to endure the pain to the best of his ability.

‘Everyone else made it out,’ he reminded himself as the executioner circled around him to loom over his vulnerable back. ‘They have their whole lives ahead of them,’ he reminded himself, even as his instincts bubbled up and his body jerked futilely against the chains keeping him laid out like an invitation.

‘You chose this,’ he reminded himself as the executioner raised the whip over his head, but the words rang hollow.

Then the crack of the whip rang throughout the clearing and Ogma’s body jolted.

‘You chose this.’

Through the first five lashes, each one its own distinct, sharp sting against his back, Ogma remained dead silent, his teeth clamping down tight on his lower lip. The sixth drew a low, stifled grunt from him before he quickly regained his composure and locked another noise deep in his throat.

‘You chose this.’

By the ninth, his silence ended for good; each subsequent lash dragged a sharp gasp from his lips. He grabbed onto his chains in an effort to ground himself, fingers white-knuckled against the cold, corroded metal, but his body still jerked every time the whip fell.

‘You chose this. You chose this. You chose this.’

He lost count at fifteen. They came so quickly and steadily that they were hard to distinguish from one another, each wound layering over the last, criss-crossing over his back from shoulder to shoulder, neck to hip. The endless firings of his nerve endings were beginning to lose coherence. The endless wave of blows was beginning to drown him.

‘You chose this you chose this you chose this you chose this you chose this you―’

He didn’t start screaming until at least lash number thirty.

His body was on fire. His skin was melting away. The fractured bones beneath his skin were shifting; poking up through his flesh like jagged teeth emerging from a beast’s mouth. The boiling blood inside him was solidifying into a sea of tiny needles, pressing out against his veins insistently; trying to destroy him from the inside. His mouth tasted like rust. The chains got tighter every time he thrashed.

He could hear the crowd go wild.

‘It’s almost over,’ he thought to himself, half-delirious with pain. ‘You’re almost dead. You’re almost dead. You can rest soon.’

Or, he acknowledged numbly as another lash landed on his flaming back, perhaps not. After all, if the gods spared even a glance at his soul, surely they would find it sorely wanting for virtue. He couldn’t possibly be worthy of paradise. Which meant he would be consigned to a much worse fate.

Or perhaps such a fate had already befallen him. Perhaps he was already dead and simply had yet to realize, because his eternal punishment would simply continue the punishment he’d been given in life. Whipped over and over, without rest, until he was blinded by the pain; until he couldn’t remember how to do anything with his mouth besides scream.

It would certainly explain why his back was writhing in multiple different layers of agony, as if someone had peeled back his tattered skin to whip his bare tendons, and then peeled back his tendons to whip right down to his bones.

It didn’t really matter, he supposed. If he was dead, then it made no difference. If he was alive, then he wouldn’t be for long. Whether he was still breathing or not, this would be the rest of his pitiable existence. Thrashing in the shackles holding him down, screaming his throat raw, and waiting for an end that would never come.

‘Kid,’ he found himself thinking in one last flicker of lucidity, ‘you’d better be enjoying your freedom, you hear me?’

It took him a long moment to realize that he’d stopped screaming. He’d long since stopped hearing his own voice, the ringing in his ears and the roaring of the crowd overwhelming all other sounds, so he only really noticed when he managed to suck in a deep breath without it hitching. Maybe ten seconds after that―or one second, or three years; he’d lost all grip of time however-long ago―he realized that the crowd wasn’t cheering quite so loudly anymore, and the agony painted all over his back wasn’t growing. There were no more cracks of the whip.

He felt fingers grab him by the hair, and he felt his head be yanked back, but he couldn’t see anything. His eyes were still closed, he realized after a moment, and it took another moment to remember how to open them.

The executioner swam into view. Ogma was cognizant enough to see his lips move, but the sounds jumbled together in his brain until they were unrecognizable, and he just stared blankly. A sharp smack to the cheek jolted him back to relative awareness, and he blinked away stars.

“Beg,” the executioner said gruffly, voice distant and quiet despite the closeness of his face. “Beg, and I’ll give you a quick death.”

Ah―still alive, then? Or just a ruse by the devil to lure him into a false sense of security before starting on another wave of torment?

Either way, his response was the same. Ogma licked his lips and, in absence of his trademark insolent grin, conjured up a pained grimace. “No,” he croaked, lacking the spare breath or brainpower for anything cleverer than that.

His hair was released, and he allowed his head to fall back down, chin bouncing against the edge of the block. “The prisoner refuses to repent!” the executioner said again, and the crowd cheered. Ogma blinked a few times in a futile effort to stabilize his vision, then just closed his eyes again. He could use this brief respite to collect his composure; steel himself for the next wave of lashes.

‘You chose this,’ he reminded himself one last time, breathing slowly.

The whip fell upon his shoulder this time, curling down to stretch down his back, and Ogma grunted, but didn’t scream. Another blow, on the other shoulder, earned a similar reaction. Ah―so his tormenter was switching it up a bit. Whipping him from the front, rather than the back. Flaying him alive vertically, rather than horizontally. Would the next blow land on his face?

The singing of the whip as it whistled through the air. The enthusiastic cheering of the crowd below. The loud clanking of Ogma’s chains as he flinched. The crack of the lash meeting skin.

A soft cry of pain. Not his.

A chorus of gasps and screams.

Ogma barely realized, at first, that the blow had never connected. A minute ago, he wouldn’t have noticed at all, but the brief lull had cleared his mind a bit; he could distinguish between each blow again, and there was no new pain this time. Just the throbbing welts on each shoulder and the absolute inferno that was his back.

Confused enough to be curious, Ogma sluggishly cleared the ringing out of his ears, trying to tune in to the sudden, strange silence around him. The crowd was no longer cheering; the whip was no longer singing; even Ogma’s chains had gone quiet as he held still and tried to listen.

There was a thunk as something hit the floor, followed by a few faint murmurs that were far too quiet for Ogma’s muddled brain to make out. He thought he heard the executioner stammer out, “My―my lady―”

Then the cotton in his ears finally cleared enough for Ogma to make out the soft, trembling breaths, bordering on sobs, right in front of him.

Caught off-guard, Ogma pried his eyes open and tilted his head back, blearily blinking up at the blob of colors standing before him.

There was some deep blue, but it was mostly pink and peach and white, vaguely arranged in the silhouette of a person, and Ogma wondered if this was an angel coming to spirit him away. Then his vision cleared a bit―enough for him to realize that those weren’t wings, merely a fluttery white gown of some sort―and he thought, ‘No, just a noble.’

Of course, that elucidated very little, in the grand scheme of things, so Ogma wearily glanced around for any other clues as to what was happening. The executioner was standing a few feet away, stock-still, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open; the whip was laying on the platform at his feet. Ogma couldn’t really make out the crowd, but they seemed to be similarly frozen, still dead silent.

After a moment, a couple of armored figures shouldered through the crowd and clambered up onto the platform, their movement so jarring in the otherwise still tableau that Ogma’s eyes snapped over to them immediately. “My lady, get away from there!” one of them cried, hurrying towards Ogma, while the other rounded on the executioner with an enraged “How dare you strike Her Highness?!”

The cogs in Ogma’s head turned very slowly. The executioner had... attacked someone else? The noble girl standing in front of him―was that who he had attacked? But why on Earth would he―?

Wait.

Her Highness?

At that moment, the noble girl took a step back from the armored man, putting Ogma’s face inches from her back, and shouted “No!” with such vehemence that everyone froze in place.

Ogma tilted his head up so he could see over her shoulder, his confusion only growing by the second, as the armored guards sputtered, disregarding the executioner entirely. “M-milady,” the woman stammered, “please, don’t be reckless―I know it’s scary, but executions are a necessary part of―”

“No!” the noble girl―the ‘highness’―cried again, and Ogma only then noticed that her arms were extended to either side, as if to shield him from harm. “I won’t move!”

“Princess Caeda―” one of the knights tried again, but the girl―the Princess; Princess Caeda―disregarded him completely, instead twisting around to meet Ogma’s unfocused gaze. He startled, and some instinct urged him to bow his head―not because he’d overheard that she was royalty; there was just something about her demeanor that made him think ‘important person’.

Naga only knew why; in that moment, she looked nothing like a princess and every bit a little girl. Her eyes were wide and misty, her lip quivering, and he even saw a bit of snot leaking from one nostril. Only her elegant pink and white clothing hinted towards her status.

It was then that Ogma saw the angry red welt that marred her otherwise pale skin, staring at her collarbone, slanting across her bare shoulder, and then curving around to trail down her back, where it vanished under her dress.

Finally, his mind pieced the puzzle together. Yet all that came out of his mouth was a faint, slurred, “You’re bleeding.”

That startled a laugh out of the girl―the Princess―Caeda, though she remained teary-eyed. “You’re bleeding more,” she whispered softly, as if it were some great secret.

Ogma stared for a moment, struggling to formulate his thoughts into words. “I’m supposed to bleed,” he eventually settled on.

At that, the Princess―Caeda―scowled. “You’re not,” she said fiercely. “No one is supposed to be hurt. Not ever.”

A pause; then she quietly added, “My blood, at least, is useful for one thing.”

With that, she turned back towards the executioner, her knights, and the crowd, and loudly announced, “I will not be moved until this man is freed!”

The executioner floundered. “Wha―but―Princess Caeda, you can’t―we can’t just... let him go!”

Princess Caeda glared at him until he shrunk back. “Will you disobey your Princess, then?” she demanded. “You can’t hurt him anymore! I won’t let you!” As if to prove her point, she spread her arms wider still, standing on her tiptoes to block his view of Ogma entirely. Their proximity was so close that her gauzy skirt draped across Ogma’s chained arms like a bedsheet, the fabric no doubt soaking up more blood and sweat and grime the longer it touched his absolutely filthy skin.

For a moment, the entire world seemed dumbstruck. Then the guards and knights began to whisper furiously amongst themselves, shooting the Princess uncertain glances every few words. Ogma saw them gesture towards him, and the female knight kept making aborted grabs for her sword, but he couldn’t make out a word they said over the persistent ringing in his ears and the low murmur of the crowd.

Princess Caeda, meanwhile, remained firmly planted before him, chin held high and arms still outstretched, even though he could see her teeter unsteadily on her toes as her wounded shoulder trembled with exertion.

Her dress was stained, now, he realized, and not just where it had come into contact with him; the welt on her collarbone was bleeding sluggishly, crimson trickling down her back to leave dark, ugly blots on her frilly silk collar, and, before he could stop himself, Ogma croaked out an incredulous “Why?”

For all intents and purposes, the question was completely meaningless―too vague to communicate much of anything other than general bafflement. Yet, somehow, Princess Caeda spared him the trouble of trying to articulate when she glanced down at him over her shoulder, her face not hesitant and helpless but sure and resolute.

“What am I supposed to do?” she asked, with the tone of a statement. “Just let you die?”

Ogma had no response.

Luckily, the Princess didn’t prod him for one, and they both waited wordlessly for the guards and knights to come to an agreement, Caeda keeping rapt vigil over Ogma in case anyone worked up the nerve to attack him again. An eternity of heavy, pregnant silence seemed to pass before, at last, the executioner threw his hands in the air and gestured to the other soldiers, setting his weapon aside.

As the guards approached, the Princess moved with them, trying to keep her petite frame between them and Ogma. In the end, her knights ushered her aside, mollifying her with a whisper he couldn’t hear, but the gesture was enough to make his throat thicken with―something. Gratitude, perhaps, for the girl who’d tried to save his life. More than even that, respect―for the girl who’d faced down a squadron of trained soldiers unflinchingly, even after she’d gotten her first taste of the whip.

‘It would take balls of titanium to disobey a Princess like that,’ Ogma found himself thinking. Yet, somehow, he still managed to be surprised when the guards knelt, unhooked his arms from the block, cut his legs free, and heaved him to his feet.

The rough handling hurt like all hell, reigniting the agony etched into his back, and he let out a strangled cry without really meaning to. The reaction was immediate. “Stop! Be careful, or you’ll hurt him more!” the Princess snapped, and the guards hastened to comply, taking most of Ogma’s weight without jostling his wounded back. “And unchain him at once―all the way!”

Oh―he hadn’t even noticed that his wrists were still shackled before him, like usual. Clearly, this had been a conscious decision on the guards’ part, because they sputtered once again under her demands. “B-but―Your Highness, we can’t―”

“You can and will,” she interrupted before they could even try to make their case, a note of authority in her impossibly young voice. “I will hear no arguments. He has been pardoned, so he shall be freed.”

One of the knights―a tall, well-built woman with a wicked-looking scimitar at her hip―placed a cautious hand on Caeda’s shoulder. “Milady, it’s not that simple,” she said, not unkindly. “He was already a gladiator before he did any crime. The pardon of every princess in Archanea wouldn’t change that.” To the knight’s credit, Ogma detected a hint of righteous anger when she continued, “Pardon him, and he goes back to being property. And you can’t seize private property without a lawful reason.”

Ah. So that was the catch. He would return to the colosseum, the Princess would be appeased, and, in her absence, he would simply be dragged back to the block, once enough time had elapsed for this novel occurrence to fade from the public consciousness. As soon as he’d regained his relative anonymity, he would end up right back here again. Or, perhaps, he would simply be pitted up against opponents that he could not beat so that his death could be claimed “accidental”. With his back injured so heavily, it wouldn’t be difficult to find a foe who could best him.

‘Or,’ Ogma found himself thinking, ‘maybe I’ll survive. Live to die another day. Help some more people escape―maybe even manage to escape, myself.’

It was one hell of a long shot, but something about the gutted, distressed look on Princess Caeda’s face made him want to believe that her fears were unfounded. More than anything else, he wanted to reassure her; at the very least, she’d delayed his death significantly―but, somehow, he doubted she’d be happy to hear as much. It felt... wrong, though, to not even attempt to console her, after she’d given him some concrete hope to cling to in his dying breaths―not just hope for himself, but hope for the world to which Samuel and the others had escaped.

(Talys couldn’t be too bad with an heir apparent like this.)

Apparently, though, the heiress in question was perfectly capable of generating her own hope, because the despair in her eyes was short-lived. “Let’s say, then, that I don’t pardon him,” she said, her voice beginning to wear thin, unused to maintaining an air of importance for so long. “Instead, I find him guilty and sentence him to a lifetime of community service. This would not be considered seizing property, just claiming my natural right to...”

She glanced at the other knight―a short, burly man in heavy armor wielding an imposing polearm―for assistance, and he cleared his throat. “To ‘render the supreme judgment of the crown’, my lady,” he tentatively filled in, “but I’m afraid that criminals charged with murder and violence cannot be given community service.”

“Exactly!” the executioner cut in from the side, stepping forward with unwarranted confidence, only to immediately quail when both knights and their liege leveled him with icy glares. “I-it’s... that is to say... it’s just public safety, Your Highness. A mongrel like him could get somebody killed―somebody innocent.”

It was a perfectly reasonable argument, and it would have been perfectly reasonable for Princess Caeda to subside and send Ogma away to whatever gruesome fate awaited him―to save herself the trouble, if nothing else. At this point, though, Ogma was hardly surprised when she stood her ground without ceding a single inch. “But the... the reasoning is sound, yes?” she pressed, eyes darting back over to the burly knight. “I don’t have to pardon him, I can just... change his sentence?”

The burly knight considered this. “There is precedent for such a thing,” he said slowly, “but, in extreme cases such as this, the only appropriate sentence would be jail time, and he would still be considered property of the colosseum’s owner upon release. Unless you gave him a life sentence―”

Before he could finish that thought, the other knight pulled Princess Caeda a bit closer and stooped over, bending low to murmur in her ear, “Do you think life in prison would be a kindness, milady?”

The Princess visibly started, as if this question was a new and alarming thought that hadn’t occurred to her, and her eyes flickered over to Ogma, who couldn’t quite contain his own startled jolt. Watching the three interact, he’d almost forgotten that they were talking about him. Now, under the full weight of the Princess’ regard, he found himself wondering the same thing―which would be better: life as a gladiator with a probable execution incoming, or life as a prisoner with no end in sight until he eventually wasted away?

To her credit, Princess Caeda was only struck silent for the briefest of moments before she wiped the shock off of her face. “Very well,” she said, the slight tremor in her voice belying her stoic countenance. “What... what is your name, good sir?”

A strange question, if she was going to ask one, but he wasn’t complaining. “Ogma,” he answered simply, his voice rough with under- and overuse.

The Princess nodded her understanding. “And what are your charges, Ogma?”

Ah―a much more reasonable question. And, unfortunately, one with an answer that didn’t paint him in the best of lights. The correct response was “Inciting a riot”, but Ogma threw caution to the wind and instead replied, “I helped my fellow gladiators escape the arena. I was a diversion.” Then, because he might as well be completely honest if he was going to tell the truth: “I killed the guards to keep them from recapturing everyone.”

One of the guards made a triumphant noise. “You see―he admits it!” he tried, but immediately fell silent when the female knight shot him a warning look.

Princess Caeda didn’t react to either Ogma’s explanation or the soldier’s words; she just continued to stare at Ogma with such intense scrutiny that it was almost enough to make him squirm. After a long while that felt even longer, she nodded again, acknowledging his words as truth. “For these charges,” she began, her voice tender in sharp contrast to the hardness of her eyes, “what do you feel to be a fitting sentence?”

Shouts of protest arose from the guards and crowd alike, but the Princess quelled them with a wave of her hand and a responding brandish of her knights’ weapons. “I will hear his plea, then render my judgment,” she said firmly, leaving no room for complaint or compromise. With that, she returned her piercing gaze to Ogma. “Well?”

For a moment, he could summon no words. He had to remind himself to swallow, rather than letting the spit pool up in his mouth, and his stiff muscles strained against his throat.

Finally, he managed to string the syllables together as coherently as he could. “I had resigned myself to death when I decided to help the others escape,” he said simply. “Any other fate is preferable, but I’m not scared to face the block. If you want me to die, then I’ll die now, without regrets.”

Surprise flickered across the Princess’ face for only a moment before she hastily swallowed it down. She searched his face again, and, whatever she was looking for, she must have found it.

“What if...” Her tongue swiped across her lip, and she began again, her voice steadier this time. “What if I want you to live?”

She’d struck him speechless before with such frequency and in such quick succession that, this time, Ogma wasn’t even surprised so much as he was bemused. Still, he didn’t speak for a good long moment, taking the opportunity to scan her face as thoroughly as she’d scanned his.

Caeda’s eyes were fierce and unwavering, her posture impeccable and her shoulders thrown back, but there was a gentleness there; not naivete or clinical pity, but a genuine empathy that was rare to see in nobles―much less nobles with that kind of fire in their eyes.

He made his decision.

With some difficulty, Ogma wrested himself from the guards’ grip. The crowd gasped, and the Princess’ knights drew their weapons, but he didn’t lunge; he merely lowered himself slowly, his back screaming in protest, until one trembling, bruised knee was pressed against the floor. Then, breathing through the pain, he raised his head to meet Caeda’s wide eyes.

She looked even younger now, and Ogma allowed himself a moment to marvel at how strange it was―that this was the first person he’d willingly bent his knee to in years.

He swallowed a mouthful of dirt and blood and said, as clearly as he could, “Then I’ll live for as long as you want me to, if I can.”

(He was always thinking about how he needed a reason to live―a reason to fight―more than anything. And, well, she’d spared his life, anyway―it practically belonged to her, now.)

This time, there was no sudden determination that broke across Caeda’s face to cover her surprise; she remained wide-eyed and open-mouthed, even as she gulped and shakily nodded her understanding. “I see,” she said faintly. Then her eyebrows drew down and her lips thinned, though the rest of her expression remained guileless and stricken.

“Dame Aiveen.” Her voice no longer trembled. “Your sword, please.”

For all that he’d come to understand Caeda in the brief interactions they’d shared, Ogma still considered for a moment that maybe she’d decided to remove his head, after all. Then she accepted the sword her knight offered and nearly dropped it to the ground immediately, arms quivering under its weight as she struggled to lift it without losing her balance, and he felt like a fool for thinking, even for a moment, that she had a cruel bone in her body.

The sword wavered noticeably as Caeda raised it with both hands, shakily holding it before her, with the tip less than a foot from Ogma’s face. “In repentance for his crimes,” she declared, loud enough for all to hear, “Ogma shall serve the Crown of Talys until his dying breath.” She met his eyes. Her confident stare, which he had already come to think of as her “true” expression, was finally back. “He shall swear his fealty as my vassal and pledge eternal loyalty to me and me only.”

Ah. So that was her game. Swearing himself as a vassal to the crown would rid him of his status as ‘private property’ permanently. Vassals, after all, could own land, and you couldn’t own property if you, yourself, were ‘property’. What a simple solution. A truly elementary idea.

Ogma was certain that he was supposed to respond with some specific line, but he had no clue as to what such a line might entail, so he simply bowed his head and said, “Yes.”

No one seemed particularly concerned with the informality of his words―or, at the very least, no one stopped her from leaning forward and touching the flat of the sword to Ogma’s shoulder. It landed with a thunk as she failed to manage its weight, but he was able to completely smother his hiss of pain, so it was of no consequence. When it moved over to his opposite shoulder, though, it was much gentler, the blade’s quivers intensifying as Caeda struggled not to put too much of its weight on him, so she must have noticed his pain, anyway. Naga only knew how.

The sword withdrew from his shoulder, and Ogma raised his head on instinct, meeting his new liege’s eyes. Her expression was mostly blank, save for the certainty and confidence that she exuded as a default, but that was fine. Ogma couldn’t even wager a guess as to what his own face looked like right now, anyway, so he was in no position to judge.

Caeda took a deep breath and lowered the sword to the ground, placing both hands atop its pommel. “Rise, Sir Ogma of Talys.” Her voice rang loud and clear and certain, like a church bell’s toll. “From this day forward, you will serve as my personal retainer.”

Lacking the strength to stand on his own, Ogma just bowed again, even as the tattered skin on his back strained. “As you wish, Princess Caeda,” he replied, dead serious despite the near-giddy glee welling up in his chest. “This body is yours until it breaks.”

Without warning, her hand shot out and clamped down on his shoulder, nowhere near the welts but still tight enough to elicit a flinch. He looked up to find a teary glare bearing down on him.

“It best not break any time soon,” Caeda said, her tone threatening despite the thick emotion dripping from each word, “because breaking my heart is against your vows. Understand?”

Despite himself, Ogma let a small, sincere smile slip onto his face―and, against all odds, when he softly replied, “I understand,” he was telling the truth.

He awoke to a dry throat, a bone-deep grogginess that he couldn’t quite shake off, a faint but insistent pain in his back, and the familiar sounds of soft humming and metal scraping against stone.

Over the years, he’d grown to recognize the medical tent almost immediately by scent alone, and, by the time he’d managed to pry open his eyes, he already had a decent idea of what was happening. The sensation of a wound completely healed by magic, leaving huge patches of too-new skin that twitched and tingled at the slightest touch, was easy to recognize when you’d had so many wounds fixed in such a manner. A thin sleeping pad, damp with sweat but much cleaner than his usual cot; light sheets draped across his body, and a thick duvet on top, rather than his thin woolen blanket; bandages squeezing his torso, but only his trousers covering him otherwise.

He must have been badly injured, and the clerics must have narrowly saved him.

Once he reached that conclusion, his memories came rushing back to him. The archer; the Macedonians; the unseen injury; Princess Caeda’s intervention; the perilous flight back through enemy lines; losing consciousness just as they arrived.

It appeared that Princess Caeda, as always, had gone for the most daring save imaginable, and, as always, her harebrained scheme had succeeded.

Torn between a fond smile and a pained grimace as his freshly-fixed injury tingled uncomfortably, Ogma settled for a soft groan, slowly blinking his eyes open. Sure enough, the tan canvas of the medical tent swam into view, although it was far less crowded than it tended to be directly after a battle. He must’ve been out for a while, then. It made sense, he supposed; his wound had been bad enough to temporarily convince him that he was dead, so it must’ve taken a while for his body to recover. In that time, the rest of the wounded had evidently healed and returned to their own tents, leaving him seemingly alone in the middle of the tent.

That also meant that he’d either suffered the most grievous injury out of the Archanean troops, or else those who’d suffered worse injuries had passed away before he could wake. Given the sheer number of troops they’d faced, the latter seemed more likely, but Lord Marth was a cautious commander and the thought of his allies dying because he hadn’t been there to protect him made his stomach roll, so Ogma optimistically chose to believe the former.

Breathing out heavily through his nose, he experimentally rolled his shoulders, feeling his new scar tissue strain with the movement. Lena, Wrys, and/or Maria had done an admirable job; other than the obvious stiffness and aches, the pain was almost nonexistent. With a week or so of rest, it would likely fade entirely. He would have to remember to thank whoever had fixed him up at the first opportunity.

With that thought in mind, he breathed deep through his nose and slowly began to sit up, using his good arm to support himself and trying not to strain his injured back or shoulder too much.

“Ahem.”

Ogma startled, accidentally jostling his wound, and whirled around. Sitting a few feet behind him, with her back against the canvas tent wall and her legs crossed daintily beneath her, was Princess Caeda, wearing only her undershirt and an old pair of trousers, yet somehow twice as intimidating as a Macedonian soldier in full armor.

As he stared, instinctively shifting his legs underneath him so that he didn’t have to twist over his injured shoulder, she slowly looked up from the wing spear in her lap, which she appeared to be in the middle of sharpening. Or perhaps she’d been sharpening her eyes, instead, because the cold look on her face pierced Ogma with the ease of a ballista shot and the force of a rampaging wyvern.

“You’re awake,” she observed icily, and Ogma wondered how likely it was that she’d gone to the trouble of saving his life a third time just so she’d have the satisfaction of killing him herself.

That was a ridiculous thought only born of apprehension, though, so, rather than frantically try to explain himself, he just swallowed and warily responded, “So I am.”

Caeda made a noise that acknowledged she’d heard his words but imparted no other information about her thoughts or current level of anger. Slowly, she set her whetstone aside, though her grip on the wing spear didn’t falter as she leaned forward.

“How is your injury?” she asked, her voice still perfectly impassive, though the question seemed genuine, not just a way to fill time.

Ogma gratefully accepted the transition into a much easier conversational topic. “Much better,” he said, turning to face her fully so he could demonstrate his improved range of motion without letting on how strange and tight his skin felt. “Whoever healed me did a da―a good job.”

Caeda caught his cut-off curse and rolled her eyes, but didn’t comment. “Let me see,” she said instead, shuffling forward without waiting for a response. She sidled into his blind spot with complete nonchalance, and he allowed her to quickly and carefully unwind his bandages to get a better look at the afflicted area.

Of course, observant as Caeda was, there was no chance of her catching something that the healers had somehow missed, but he knew that it eased her fears to see the scar tissue with her own eyes, and who was he to deny her that paltry comfort?

After a brief moment, she hummed again and carefully redressed his wound, though Ogma seriously doubted that it was necessary at this point, since it was nearly completely healed. “Looks fine,” she said neutrally, without her usual relieved ‘I’m so glad you’re alright’ or ‘We should both count ourselves lucky’.

Right. It was easy to forget that she wasn’t pleased with him when he couldn’t see the clear signs of thinly-veiled anger in her body language. Clearing his throat, Ogma turned himself around once again to face her. “Yeah,” he began, “it doesn’t hurt any―”

Then he saw the bandages wrapped around her right shoulder, nearly blending in against her pale skin, and abruptly forgot what he was saying.

“Princess,” he interrupted himself, the urgency in his voice enough to make her look up at him immediately, “your arm―”

Understanding crossed her face, and she raised a hand to silence him―it didn’t escape his notice that she raised her left hand, rather than her dominant right, which stayed limp in her lap. “Peace―it’s already mostly healed.”

“Mostly?” With the extensive healing magic they had at their disposal, only grievous wounds like his would be only ‘mostly’ healed this long after the fact―and, even though she had to have used both hands to sharpen her spear or untie the bandages, Ogma couldn’t help but think, irrationally, that he hadn’t seen her right arm move yet.

Caeda simply shrugged, reaching up subconsciously to wrap her left hand around the bandaged area. “Arrow wound,” she explained. “Didn’t hit Tempest, thank the gods. Lena and Wrys got me patched up, but I wouldn’t let them waste their magic on such a minor injury―a vulnerary each morning for a week without strenuous activity, and I’ll be fine.”

Ogma had no good reason to feel like the breath had been knocked out of his lungs by those words, but, well. Here he was. ‘An arrow wound.’ Clearly, his efforts in clearing the battlefield of archers hadn’t been enough. Of course they hadn’t―one man alone couldn’t protect the Princess from harm when she often found herself on the front lines in the middle of a war―but some irrational part of him was still shocked that something had slipped past him.

Caeda snapped her fingers, and he startled back to attention. She frowned at him. “What’s the matter?”

Ogma opened his mouth, then closed it with a snap. He didn’t think it prudent to mention that the entire reason he’d nearly died in the first place was that he’d rushed into the middle of an enemy platoon just to take out a single archer. Nor had he ever admitted that he always targeted archers first, even when they weren’t currently taking aim at her.

Unfortunately for him, Caeda seemed to glean all of these things without being told. “Ogma,” she said dryly after a moment, her face frosting over again, “this may surprise you, but you are not physically capable of incapacitating every archer in Macedonia, no matter how many times you charge into a huge group of enemies without backup. Actually, as your liege lady, I’m afraid I’ll have to forbid you from doing so again, since this incident alone has already removed a good three years from my lifespan.”

Ogma winced. The rebuke hurt all the more for its accuracy―worrying aside, his recklessness had very nearly gotten his Princess killed. If Tempest had bucked just a bit harder while Caeda had both hands off of the reigns, busy trying to get Ogma situated, then they both would’ve fallen. And, if the impact hadn’t killed them, the Macedonians would have. Either way, these reckless charges had to stop.

“Of course, my lady,” was all he could say, bowing his head slightly, both in apology and recognition of her orders. “I’m sorry.”

For a moment, Caeda didn’t reply. When she did, it was uncharacteristically soft―a quiet, uncertain mutter of “As long as you don’t do it again.”

“I won’t,” Ogma responded immediately, less as a conscious thought and more because he couldn’t stand to hear his liege sound like that. Raising his head, he tried to impart some of his sincerity through his eyes, but she wasn’t looking at him.

He hesitated for a moment, then gestured to her bandaged shoulder. “May I?”

She nodded her affirmative, brushing her hair back with her left hand, and he reached forward to undo the bandages as carefully as he could, just in case she’d exaggerated how much she’d already healed. Fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case: all that was left to indicate she’d been wounded was a dark scab. It must not have been a very deep injury, he supposed.

“Like I said, it wasn’t even worth the magic,” Caeda murmured after a moment, and Ogma quietly hummed his agreement, glancing over to see if she was still refusing to meet his gaze. Halfway there, though, his eyes caught on her collarbone, and his whole body stilled.

By this point, the scar had become faint with age, even harder to pick out against her naturally pale skin. It curved around from her collarbone to her back, thicker and bolder along the top of her shoulder where the whip had struck hardest, but thin enough in the back that it was almost difficult to see if you didn’t know what you were looking for. Mainly, though, it wasn’t the color that set it apart, but the slight puffiness of the scar tissue; the marks that the welt had left behind blatantly raised from the rest of her smooth skin.

Ogma swallowed thickly.

He still remembered how she’d refused to allow the clerics to attend her first. ‘Sir Ogma is hurt far worse,’ she’d said, stomping her feet petulantly even as she exerted her authority over the royal attendants with ease. ‘You can’t heal me until you heal him! That’s an order!’

They’d warned her, as they set to the nigh-impossible task of mending his back, that it was likely to scar quite noticeably if she didn’t allow them to see it at once. If anything, though, she’d taken that as a challenge. In the end, by the time she finally gave in and let the medics approach, at her knights’ and Ogma’s behest, it was too late to avert or even lessen the scarring.

She’d never seemed particularly ashamed of the scar, which Ogma was endlessly grateful for―it wasn’t something she should be ashamed of, by any means. If anything, it was a badge of honor that displayed her courage and sense of justice for all to see, and she was right to wear it as proudly as she did. Naga knew he held more respect for anyone who’d felt the whip before.

Still, every time he saw it, he couldn’t help the vague guilt that collected at the back of his throat.

Without thinking, he reached forward and touched the scar with the tips of his fingers. Caeda didn’t react, and he hastily yanked his hand back once he realized what he’d done, but there was no way she hadn’t noticed, and he coughed awkwardly into his fist. “Erm, sorry, Princess,” he muttered gruffly. “I wasn’t thinking.”

No response. After a moment, Caeda reached up herself and wrapped her hand around the mark, rubbing it like an old wound that still ached. Like Ogma sometimes caught himself rubbing his own shoulders, because he couldn’t reach far enough to rub his back in a useless attempt to sooth the scars that lay there, hidden under his shirt.

Ducking his head, Ogma deftly did up the Princess’ bandages again, carefully working around the slim fingers wrapped around her shoulder. When he moved to knot it off, though, Caeda’s hand suddenly slid down to cover his, grip tight enough to make him jump.

He glanced up, but she was still facing away from him, the small visible portion of her face unreadable. Shifting uneasily, he kept his hand carefully still underneath hers, even as he fumbled with the bandages. “Princess Caeda?”

“Do you remember what I told you that day?” she asked suddenly, voice not betraying her emotions.

Ogma couldn’t help but huff out a half-chuckle at that. “You’ll have to be a little more specific, Princess,” he replied, not unkindly, although he was reasonably certain that he remembered just about every sentence that left her mouth that fateful day―if not by word, then certainly in spirit.

The silence was fleeting. “I told you not to break your body,” Caeda elaborated after a moment, “because that would break my heart―”

“―and breaking your heart meant breaking my vows,” Ogma finished for her, matching her quiet, solemn tone. His eyes flickered down for a moment, and he ran his tongue over his bottom lip. “...Yeah. I remember, Princess.”

Abruptly, Caeda twisted to look over her shoulder, her eyes meeting his with a vehemence that was, at once, startling in its ferocity, completely incongruous with the mood in the room, and so typical of her that it was hardly surprising at all.

“Then act like it,” she ordered, her voice firm despite the unmistakable quiver of thick emotion.

At that, despite himself, Ogma really did laugh, his eyes squeezing shut and his free hand automatically rising to cover his mouth. When he regained himself and looked back, Caeda’s gaze hadn’t wavered, though her expression had softened considerably. She didn’t relinquish her hold on his hand.

Well, what was there to say? He couldn’t stay somber and downtrodden in the face of the girl he’d sworn his life to.

“As my lady commands,” Ogma said with a grin, and carefully knotted the bandage into place without wresting his hand from Caeda’s grip.

[vincentcheungteam]

One objection from those who oppose the biblical doctrine of election is that it encourages licentiousness. This poses no threat to the doctrine, but it does tell us something about how they think. It never occurred to some of us that we would sin without restraint even if the doctrine of election implies that we can sin with impunity. Why would we want to? Once converted by his grace, do we not love God and wish to obey him?

But it is as if these people think that if salvation is entirely up to God's sovereign choice, then they would sin without restraint. They seem to think that only if it is entirely up to the human individual to both attain and retain salvation by his own effort would he then want to live a pure and holy life before God. Thus even when we are referring to believers, a sincere love for God is a myth to these people. They speak as if there could never be obedience without the constant threat of damnation, and assurance of salvation is also the enemy of sanctification.

Likewise, there is something sinister in the common objection, "If God has predetermined everything, then why should I pray?" I am suspicious of a person who would even ask such a question. Is this the way he thinks? He implies that unless he has a determinative role in the outcome, and that unless what God does is dictated by this person's prayer, he can find no reason to pray, no reason at all.

It is insufficient for this person that God has commanded him to pray, and to express his needs and desires through humble petitions. His position is that unless his prayer makes a decisive difference, even to the point of directing the divine agenda, he sees no reason to petition God. Surely this is the height of arrogance and wickedness. The very question reeks of defiance and self-importance.

We should despise all such objections, and be suspicious of all those who raise them. On the other hand, for those of us who have even a little reverence for God, the bare permission to approach the throne of grace so that we may address the Father is itself something that we are eager to thank him about in prayer, and certainly not something that we want to complain about.

Then, there is the objection that says if the doctrine of election is true, there would be no point in evangelism. Those who raise this objection might present themselves as champions for gospel preaching, but what I hear is that, unless their disobedience will send people straight to everlasting hellfire, God's command means nothing to them and they see no reason to preach the gospel. That is, unless they are so important that other people's very souls depend on them instead of on God's sovereign decree, then they would find evangelism pointless. Their motivation for preaching the gospel rests on how important they are to the salvation of souls and not on God's command. With an evil attitude like this, perhaps we are all better off if they would stay home and let us preach the gospel instead.

Those objections claiming that divine sovereignty eliminates moral responsibility and renders our actions meaningless do not logically follow from the doctrine of election, but they come from depraved minds that are constantly disposed to sin, wretched souls that are motivated solely by a sense of self-importance, and from the anti-biblical assumption that God's grace entails mere pardon without transforming the people that it saves.

Peter writes that God's people are chosen, and they are chosen to live under the "sanctifying work of the Spirit." God the Father issues the eternal decree, and the Holy Spirit carries out this decree as he works in the lives and the hearts of those whom God has chosen. He works powerfully upon each chosen individual even from the beginning of their Christian life.

It is he who resurrects and awakens the spirits of those who would believe. He convicts them of their sins, and calls them to come forth from their unbelief and wickedness into a life of faith and obedience. This call overcomes all resistance, not by forcing the human will, but much more powerfully than that, by directly changing the will so that it eagerly repents and believes.

This corrects a misunderstanding that is common on both sides of the issue. Those who oppose the biblical doctrine protest that God does not force the will, and those who claim to affirm the biblical doctrine tend to offer unbiblical, incoherent, and misleading explanations on how the elect still somehow come "freely" without being forced. But the answer is not to say that God never forces the will, as if not to be forced is to be free, nor is it to say that man comes freely, as if not to be free is to be forced.

In our context, for someone to be forced implies that the person being forced exhibits a reluctance to comply. However, this in turn implies that God is calling the individual without exercising a direct control over the person's very willingness, but God never needs to "force" that which he directly controls. Man is not forced not because he has some freedom, but he is not forced because he has none at all, so that "to force" does not even apply. He is so totally controlled by divine power that any reluctance is turned on and off at God's will, so that there is nothing left to be forced.

If a little turtle is heading toward one direction and I want it to head toward the opposite direction, I have at least two options. If for any reason I wish to experience a little resistance, I can push against its head with my finger so that it slides backward. Or, I can just pick it up and turn it around. But it is too slow, so I follow this up by pushing it from behind. Now it is heading full speed and face first toward the direction that I want it to go. Am I forcing it? No, there is no forcing to speak of because there is no resistance at all. But the turtle is far from having any freedom.

Of course, this is an analogy about two creatures (man and turtle), and so it has its flaws even at its beginning. God's control over his creatures is infinitely greater than the limited control that a man can exercise over a turtle. In the analogy, I have not created the turtle and I do not sustain its life. I do not control and energize even its smallest motions. Although I can move it by pushing it or picking it up, it still possesses a relative freedom from me, and it can move by itself apart from my control when left alone. Like me, its power and motion come from God.

So I cannot play God even in an analogy, but it is sufficient to show that when I am not forcing the turtle against its original direction, I am in fact exercising greater control over the turtle. This happens when, instead of pushing against it, I pick up the entire turtle and turn it around. The more power I use to control it, the less it is forced; the more power I exercise, the less opportunity it has to exhibit any resistance. Likewise, God does not force the will – he exercises far greater control over the creature than this. He directly changes the will, and no resistance remains. This being the case, the creature is hardly free in any meaningful sense.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Vincent Cheung. Commentary on First Peter (2006), p. 16-18.

[natsumi-no-hotaru]

Altair #19: More of Fondo than Cielo

[Previously: At least episode 18 was decently animated. Allow me to throw in this little extra, too, in honour of what could have been.]

Life kinda hit the rock bottom with this episode. I’m somewhat surprised that I didn’t have much of an issue with this episode before, during my first time watching it. I suppose watching to catch up to episode 22 (latest episode at the time) creates a kind of blind spot, compared to watching one episode at one time. Technically speaking, most of the key events and dialogues are present in this episode, including Mah-kun’s attack on the supply train and Chielo’s entrapment of the Imperial army (well, a couple of divisions) in a sea of fire. The episode even has a good set-up to the future predicament of Chielo with the pre-opening-credits scene of citizens from surrendered states, robbed of their food by the Imperial Army. coming to seek refuge at Chielo, the soon-to-be frontier of the Alliance’s stand against the Empire. In terms of the narrative and story-telling, the story line has a symmetrical structure, one that begins with the play introducing the concepts of Fondo and Cielo, stand-ins for damnation and salvation, and ends with the literal hellfire judgement bestowed upon the invaders. So far so good, right? 

I wish it were so. While there was little to complain about the content itself, the slipshod animation and lackadaisical figure drawings negated most that was good. The episode is rife with expressionless faces, misshaped or out-of-proportion figures and stilted movements that really make one ponder the meaning of animation. In the end, the production of this episode added nothing to, if not to say completely dulled out, the genius of Kotono-sensei. While there may exist excuses for storytelling mishaps and oversights in anime, there’s truly none for an anime that does not look pretty, pleasing to the eye or visually arresting.   

Here are some illustrations to prove my point: 

... No one looks like anyone here.

Why the looooong face? 

Shall we call him Giant hand Khalil now?

There’s nothing technically wrong with this shot, I think. But man, can they make a boring shot? It looks like some snapshot from an old game or something.

Yeah, this is how Mah-kun would look if I was to draw him. Not how I expect him to look in the anime. 

They just don’t get poor Pino/Pineau. Like he’s supposed to look stoic, grim and commanding but not too frightening. Instead, he just looks ridiculously stupid (like this shot) or plain right weird most of the time in the anime.

I mean I could go on but those are among the worst offenders. At this point, I am too drained and disappointed to try and find something redeeming in this episode to speak of. I’ll leave you with snapshots of the less painful moments in “The Cage of Paradise”. I’m not sure if this is the intention of those who made this episode but it f***ing felt like hell watching it.

The key definitely got lost somewhere in this episode for sure.

*sigh* You do look the part here, Director Carbajal but I’m really not sure how I feel about his voice actor. Like sometimes it was not bad, like with the play scene at the beginning  but then when he talked to Mah-kun and Erbach.... I’m not so sure. Anyway, I was not sold.

They do NOT look OLD at all. They look like 2 guys wearing Santa Claus’s beard, instead of seasoned military leaders.

Okay, Khalil was sweet and nice, like the way he’s supposed to be. 

Cassandra. Her role will be further expanded in the 23rd episode, which i’m both happy to see but as usual, also feel conflicted about. More on that later.

Frentzen! I love that Toshiyuki Toyonaga voices him! He makes Johan sound a bit like a less grumpier Irie Shoichi (Shou-chan), which is lovely.

The one shot where everyone looks decent.

Mmhmm... before the next episode happens. 

They could have made use of this monstery imagery for the Imperial army much earlier. 

Awkward drawing aside, the spikes of the gate does recall the monster trap that Carbajal talked of earlier.

Carbajal did sound a little regretful here - which is great. I like that Carbajal is not depicted as a saint.

I suppose Mah-kun was reminded of Phoinike. 

LOL. 

He almost looked disapproving, with the weird moustache shadow. 

Until the 20th episode then, minna-san!

[authorsofparadiseroleplay]

James and Wynter: Knock-Knock-Knocking on Perdition��s Door

Thread transfer for @lxvingdeadgxrl

James

“I don’t believe any being is inherently evil, Wynter,” James said. “The choices we make determine our fate.”

___________________________________

Wynter

  She ran her finger around the lip of her glass, pale eyes focused on some random spot on the table. “I’ve been telling myself that for years, you know…Tried to believe it, but I think some of us are damned regardless.”

___________________________________

James

Nursing his glass of bourbon, he watched her for a moment, noting the far-off look in her eyes that veiled a wound that had long ago taken root. “Tell me.” The words were softly spoken, an invitation rather than a command.

___________________________________

Wynter

  Tell him? Christ, where to even start…

   She lifted her glass, taking a slow, thoughtful sip. “Have you ever had a nightmare so vivid, so real, and it happens so often that you can’t help but know that it’s not actually a dream, but a vision?” she asked him simply.

___________________________________

James

Dragons as a species, as well as hybrids like James, were tapped deeply into the web of reality, and had varying degrees of prescience. Some were more attuned than others and served as augers who Saw into the complicated weave of potential and probable futures. James himself had never had much talent for prescience, but even so, when events loomed that shaped fate on a global scale, his dreams would dip into that stream and send back echoes that lingered relentlessly until fate either anchored to that potential or shifted to a different branch altogether.

“At times. Not often.” He studied her. “What do you see in these dreams?”

___________________________________

Wynter

See, at least he had insight like that. Wyn on the other hand, she didn’t have that. People like her? They weren’t exactly keen on sharing tips or tricks, and didn’t really live or stay sane long enough to pass on their information. There was no manual, no nifty little instructional booklet…

  “Hell.” she replied rather frankly. “Damnation…eternal agony, call it what you want.”

___________________________________

James

“I see.” He was quiet for a minute, sipping his drink while he thought. The Christian concept of Hell was quite modern, all things considered, and was only one cosmological model in a vast history of mythologies and cultural beliefs– however, that didn’t mean it wasn’t real. He had seen reality bend and shift and fold in upon itself, layer after layer of potential pasts, presents, and futures swirling together like a kaleidoscope, and a seemingly static world that appeared to be set in stone could be swept away in an instant, replaced by something new, with very few noticing.

Some noticed, he had found. Entire internet forums were dedicated to what had been termed Mandela Effects and Glitches in the Matrix, where bewildered humans swapped stories of their worlds inexplicably changing in the blink of an eye.

He couldn’t write anything off as altogether impossible, and wouldn’t show Wynter the disrespect of dismissing her fears and visions. “And do you see in your visions what brings you to that place? Why are you there? What are the circumstances surrounding these images?”

___________________________________

Wynter

It was as real as any realm if existence, and Wynter knew that there were many of them. She’d seen too many things, experienced far too much throughout her life to be silly enough to believe that there was only one.

  The young woman let out a short, bitter laugh. What brought her there? Why she was there? Wasn’t it obvious?

  “Unclean souls go to Hell, James. What is a necromancer if not an unclean soul?” she asked. “Doesn’t matter what I do with it, or how much of myself I wall up and block from the world, the vision never changes.”

___________________________________

James

“Now, hold up a minute,” James interjected, raising a hand. “I mean no offense, but that is a steaming pile of bullshit.” He well knew how one’s beliefs could color perception, and if she believed she was damned already simply because of some mistakes she had made in her past, because of her natural proclivities, seeing visions of a place that seemed hellish would serve only to support that belief. Confirmation bias was a bitch sometimes. That wasn’t to say it wasn’t the mythical Hell, but the amount of cultural baggage attached to that particular belief could twist anyone’s view on the matter.

He turned on his barstool to look at her directly, and reached out to touch her hand. “Wynter, listen to me. You do not deserve that fate. Whatever you may have seen. Whatever other people may have told you. You are not unclean, and damn anyone who says different to the very Hellfire they wish to condemn you to.” That wasn’t to say she would never encounter such a place in her future– he knew better than to dismiss any possibility in this world– but resigning herself to it with the idea that it was somehow just or right would serve only to defeat her before she even got started.

One thing was for certain, if she did find herself in that place, he would move heaven, earth, and the underworld to get her out. No friend of his would be bound to eternal torment while he was still alive to do something about it.

___________________________________

Wynter

Oh…Well, shit, she hadn’t expected an outburst like that from him.

 Her expression betrayed her surprise, pale eyes widened ever so slightly. He…He said that it was bullshit, but that was exactly what she’d been led to believe for the duration of her life. Sure, she’d fought it, did what she could to prove herself more than her abilities, but it just never seemed to help things.

  The nightmares and visions remained the same.

 He kept her gaze, his hand resting upon her own as he spoke once more, insisted that she was mistaken in her thinking. He told her that she wasn’t damned, that she was destined for more than that hellfire, but it certainly felt as if she was.

 “Just because I don’t deserve it, doesn’t mean that it won’t happen. I…I-I’d love to say that there was a way to change that, but again, what more can I do?” she asked him seriously. “How do you win redemption when you haven’t intentionally done anything wrong?”

[musingsinamericanslang]

Dear Me, I Love You

*Disclaimer (but perhaps obvious from the title): this is written for me, but I figured if anyone else can find hope in it, that it’s worth being available for others*

I have spent my entire life afraid of myself. I grew up in a little bit of a weirdly juxtaposed world, in between a hyper-religious upbringing and a rural “macho-man” expectation in high school and somewhat beyond. The former, while set forth with every well-intention and combined with a proclivity toward anxiety, frequently left me in states of anger toward myself. I was terrified to make a mistake because I thought God might revoke my salvation if it was bad enough, and if I didn’t repent fast or hard enough -- if I didn’t mentally beat myself into submission over it. As odd as that may sound, it literally consumed my life. There was a juncture in high school when this fear was so severe, it was damn near debilitating. 

The latter, the sort of booze-swilling, womanizing, book-hating masculine caricature that permeated my junior high and high school (and undergrad to some extent) years obviously did not mesh well with anxiety about bizarre religious beliefs. But additionally, it didn’t mesh super well with my inherent and authentic self. I’ve always been academically inclined, I’ve always been sensitive (I am very empathetic and cry more easily than is generally thought to be acceptable for a man), and I have never been super aggressive or prone to aggression (wasn’t the best football player haha). Certainly, this isn’t to say I’ve been a loner my whole life, because I am generally well-liked, but it’s more to say that I have always had a lot easier time making friends with females than with males. 

And this inevitably lead to more anxiety because I wanted that male camaraderie, but didn’t want hellfire and eternal damnation. 

So what does this guy do in college? Well turns himself into a party bro of course! Now I feel like I finally have this masculine camaraderie! Get a keg of Keystone somewhere, and every 18-22 year old male in a two mile radius will be at the door! And at the time (and for quite sometime thereafter), it felt great to have people who “really liked and accepted” me. Until the very next morning when I would wake up foggy with a pounding head, and a very angry Man in the Sky chastising me. It was very bizarre from going from the absolute highest of highs, to literally looking in the mirror with pure disgust and self-loathing. But I was too scared to lose what I had so long desired (or thought I did), so the cycle continued and continued.

And that really sucked. But what sucked worse would be the times when my acute sensitivity to emotion coupled with a) booze and b) anxiety spiraled into very, very dark places. AND THEN: wake up foggy with a pounding head, and God has now sent the fucking Grim Reaper to the door (this somewhat subsided as my spiritual beliefs evolved, but the anxiety sure didn’t). I would not wish that extreme dread or distress upon anyone. 

So that’s the backstory; here’s where the juicy turn takes place:

At the beginning of every new year, I gather inspiration from somewhere and name the year as, “the year of something.” 2016 was the year of new beginnings, which it was in a lot of ways. 2017 was declared to be the year of fierce authenticity. 

At some point around March, I decided enough was enough. I was tired of this cycle, I was tired of feeling bad about myself, and wanted to make some positive change that felt good. So I changed my diet, exercised more, lost some weight, and tried to be more mindful of my day-to-day. But as much as I wanted to stop being the party bro from 2011, I was still terrified of losing friendships which almost exclusively centered around drinking (which is the topic of a separate blog posts, “Booze in Academia,” and “Why Do Practically All Country Songs Revolve Around Drinking/Drinking Whilst Driving?”). So the cycle, while not as extensive as it once was, persisted. 

And, I have a blow up. And another one. And another one. Each one with greater severity, and greater post-event anger and loathing.   

I’ve spent the last little bit contemplating what is going on, and why I can’t (or couldn’t, and subsequently move to a new stage of my life, where I suspect my wife is) seem to solve this problem. And then it hit me -- I obviously hate myself. Why would any person subject themselves to the extreme and frightening level of distress unless they hated themselves? 

This realization was frankly mind-blowing. And I had to, and continue to sit with it. But then I recollect a 15 year old Austin, the one who felt like an outsider and oddball in a community his father had been part of for so long, the one who felt like connecting with fellow men was really hard. And I feel a deep, deep compassion and Love for that Self. And somewhere in the cosmic consciousness, I feel a different version of myself feeling that same compassion and love for me now.    

Here’s my turning point: if we are to Love our neighbors AS OUR-FREAKING-SELVES, then that implies self-love is a prerequisite. I have spent so much of my life trying to be something I simply am not. And as a result, have put myself in dangerous states of mind completely unnecessarily. 

But here’s the thing: while I may not be the type of person than can fit into that mold (which is more expansive than just a “rural dude” umbrella term), I love myself too much to keep fucking trying and then getting upset when I don’t. 

I love that I am compassionate, empathetic, and sensitive. 

I love that I can be moved to action by emotion, but can be mindful enough to keep it in balance.

I love that I love to learn, and learn about people and ways of being, and thinking, and doing, and creating. 

I love that I am thoughtful with my diet, that I enjoy blessing my body. 

I love that I am self-aware, and am not afraid of challenging old ways of thinking.

I love that I can be moved to tears by art, music, and words. 

I love that small things have huge meaning to me. 

And like the beautifully peaceful trees reaching up toward the sky, I love that my simple act of authentic, fierce existing blesses the Universe in innumerable ways. 

I let go of ideas that have hidden my authenticity, and choose to walk through this life in love. Will this change some friendships? Perhaps it will. But I love myself way too much to try to be anything than the true me. 

And if you have read through all of this, it is my sincerest hope that you will walk this loving journey with me. 

Namaste my brothers and sisters. 

[my-dear-anonym]

Basking in Firelight-Jamilton Sequel-Part Six

Masterpost

Part One

Part Seven: Passing Time

AN

I just had to say- I AM SO UPSET WITH TURN: WASHINGTON’S SPIES OMG SUPER UPSET RIGHT NOW DONT GET ME STARTED.

Now, where were we, oh yeah, prison.

—-

Warnings below

—-

Question of the hour, or day, or week, Hamilton didn’t know, question of the time then, How do you pass time in prison? But that’s not all, how do you pass time in prison with someone you couldn’t care less about that couldn’t move due to a gunshot wound received when they were kidnapped by the government’s lapdogs?

Talking. That’s basically all you could do. Sometimes Hamilton couldn’t even do that, Jefferson wasn’t always able to. He slept a lot, trying to recover from his blood loss. Those soldiers really did a number on him. Hamilton realized he’d been the one to get off lucky. Even if he couldn’t really use one arm, he could still walk and move around. Jefferson was pretty much constrained to the floor.

He didn’t know how many days had passed, but surely it had been at least a week or two since they had been dragged out and interrogated. Food came irregularly, so there was no telling by that. At least food came.

***

Jefferson was finally moving around again, which was good, that meant they could work on their escape plan.

There wasn’t much of one.

They didn’t have anything to form one off of. They didn’t have anything to turn into a weapon, they didn’t have a pattern to work around, they had nothing. Just the clothes on their backs. Perhaps they choke their prison guard to death, or maybe hold him hostage. That wouldn’t get them very far though.

“Hey Jefferson,” Hamilton said suddenly, breaking the silence that had descended on them.

“What?”

“What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get out of here?”

“Eat a shit ton of macaroni. You?”

“Coffee.”

“Coffee?”

“Yeah, coffee.” A pause. “Then what?”

“After my macaroni? Rain hellfire and damnation upon every government bastard that locked me in here.”

“I like it. Seems kinda extreme for you though. You’ve always seemed strictly political.”

Jefferson shrugged, “Things change.”

Hamilton nodded and returned to silence.

***

The door clanged open startling Hamilton and Jefferson from their slumber. 

“Oh goody, visitors,” Jefferson drawled.

“Have you come to beat us up again?” Hamilton asked, blinking blindly against the light that suddenly flooded the room from the doorway.

“Mr. Hamilton! Mr. Jefferson! You’re still alive! Thank God!” The man turned and shouted over his shoulder, “Yo! Freddie! Gabe! I found them!”

“Who are you?” Hamilton asked, getting to his feet.

“Rebels, sir,” the man responded, “Name’s Jimmy Matthews, we took the base in a fight knowing you were here. This is your rescue mission.”

Jefferson got slowly to his feet, “Jimmy Matthews you say? Lovely to meet you. How long have you been with the rebel army?”

“About a year or so. Mr. Hamilton, to whom am I to send a dispatch to, to spread news of your release?”

Jefferson cut in, placing a hand on Hamilton’s should and tapping his fingers, “In a minute Mr. Matthews, let’s take a walk and inspect to the base you’ve taken. Thank the men for their daring rescue.”

“Sure thing!” Matthews said, stepping out of the way of the door. His comrades, Freddie and Gabe rounded the corner. “Freddie, Gabe, we’re taking Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Hamilton on a tour. They wish to bestow their thanks to the men.”

Hamilton’s focus was mainly on Jefferson’s tapping fingers.

Trap. Information gathering. Probably too guarded to escape. Attempt anyway?

Hamilton had to figure out how to tap back, he laid his hand on top of Jefferson’s that rested on Hamilton’s shoulder. I have one arm and you can barely walk and you’re thinking about taking on an entire fort of military trained soldiers? Hamilton dropped his hand so Jefferson could tap back.

Dedication and determination as you always say.

Hamilton tapped his response, Patience and diligence as you always say.

We’ll see how it goes. Jefferson’s hand dropped. Jimmy Matthews led them around the compound, introduced Jefferson and Hamilton to a few men before taking them into a cafeteria and giving them some food. Matthews sat down, pulled out a piece of paper, and asked, “Now who was I am sending this to?”

“General Sam Brenton,” Jefferson replied, “Make sure to send him my regards as well.”

Hamilton studied Jefferson. Clever. Matthews looked at Jefferson for a moment, “But sir, isn’t General Brenton a Governmental Officer?”

“Oh, I’m sorry Matthews, I thought you knew,” Hamilton jumped in, “General Brenton is a Rebel spy planted in the ranks of the Government. How do you think the revolution has managed to last so long?”

“Oh right, of course, sir,” Matthews studdered as he scribbled down the note and had it sent away immediately. Clever clever Jefferson.

“Would you be kind Matthews and get me a map of this compound?” Jefferson asked.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have one,” Matthews replied nonchalantly.

“Well then go find one,” Hamilton commanded, throwing authority into his voice. Startled, Matthews went to find one.

Hamilton leaned over to Jefferson and whispered quietly, “How’d you know?”

“I memorized a list of every person fighting in the rebel army. There is no Jimmy Matthews.”

“You mean to tell me you memorized every name in the rebel army because you could?”

Jefferson shrugged, “I had a night off.”

Hamilton laughed, “Clever to make them think that one of their best generals in now a rebel spy.”

“Always use circumstances to your advantage. Not only did we manage that, but now we’ve got a basic layout of the base. I bet you that if went down that hallway, took two lefts and a right, we’d be outside.”

“Then why don’t we go?”

“Armed guards at cafeteria doors. Matthews wouldn’t be so stupid to leave us unsupervised.”

“Well right now everyone thinks we believe their ruse, so let’s walk around like we own the place,” Hamilton said, standing. Jefferson followed suit and they made for the door. The soldier by the door went to stop them but hesitated, unsure if he should keep them in the room or allow them out. Jefferson and Hamilton walked out the door before he could make up his mind. 

Only to run into Matthews and an entire regiment of armed guards.

Matthews smirked, “Back to your cells gentlemen, play time is over.”

Jefferson glanced at Hamilton before turning to Matthews, “What is this? I demand answers! Insubordination!”

“Nothing of the sort, sir. You see, there was never a battle and the fort was never taken. I’m a loyal Governmental, as is everyone else here. We thank you for your cooperation though and letting us know about General Brenton. Now back to your cells.”

“How dare you, you piece of shit!” Hamilton screamed, launching at Matthews, only to be punched and thrown to the ground.

Jefferson and Hamilton were marched back to their cell.

—-

Warnings: Cussing mostly

[setepenre-set]

New Plan (part 2)

Megamind/Roxanne

M rating, pre-movie AU

Since Megamind made Roxanne miss her appointment to get her hair trimmed, it’s his fault that her hair keeps falling in her face. And since her hands are tied, it’s not like she can pin her hair back herself. So obviously, as she points out, it’s Megamind’s responsibility to do it for her...which would be a dream come true, if he could just. figure out. how to work a bobby pin...

AO3  |  FFN

Megamind draws his de-gun as he slips silently down the roof stairs and down one of the ladders to the lower floor. Minion and the brainbots are in position for the scheduled attack, half-way across town, and Megamind hasn’t even called Metro Man out yet, so there’s no reason for anyone to be in the Lair. Probably it’s just a brainbot, back home against orders, or maybe Minion sent one to check what’s taking Megamind so long with the Cumulus Accumulator.

The new communicator watches should be working, but it’s possible they’re malfunctioning, in which case, Minion might have sent a bot—

Megamind springs out from behind the bulk of an old battlesuit, de-gun at the ready, and finds—

“What are you doing here?” he blurts out.

Metro Man whirls dramatically.

“You!” he says.

Megamind gives him an unimpressed look and keeps the de-gun trained on him (it won’t actually do anything if he shoots Metro Man with it, but he finds it reassuring anyway).

“Yeah, me,” he says sarcastically. “Wow. What a shock. I live here; what are you doing here?”

Metro Man looks shifty for a moment, and then his expression firms up into one of his looks of Heroic Determination.

“Stopping you!”

Megamind thinks fast.

(shit; the Cumulus Accumulator isn’t even close to ready; this evil plot is going nowhere; he’s going to get arrested with nothing to show for it, and it’s going to be embarrassing—)

“…stopping me from doing what?” Megamind says.

Metro Man hesitates.

“…evil,” he says, but for once, it lacks conviction.

(wait, is this lie actually working?)

“I thought we agreed,” Megamind says with a glare, “that, in exchange for me giving you fair warning for my attacks, you wouldn’t come into the Lair except during evil plots. What are you doing in my house? Wayne.” he adds, viciously, and Metro Man flinches at the use of his name.

“Okay, okay, okay!” he says, throwing his hands up, “I was bored and I heard Roxy’s voice coming from here, all right? So I’m early for the Evil Plot, I guess! You don’t have to make a big deal out of it.”

“There isn’t any evil plot,” Megamind says quickly.

(really, the Cumulus Accumulator plan is a bust, but hopefully he can get through this without getting sent to jail)

Metro Man blinks at him, then narrows his eyes suspiciously.

“What’s Roxy doing here, then?” he asks.

(shit)

“She’s not,” Megamind says.

He holsters the de-gun, attempting nonchalance.

Metro Man’s eyes narrow further.

“I heard her voice,” he insists.

“I don’t know what you think you heard,” Megamind says. “But Miss Ritchi is not here.”

Metro Man looks at him hard for a long moment.

Megamind stares back.

For a second, Megamind thinks that his poker stare will work well enough to get rid of Metro Man. But—

“I know what I heard,” Metro Man says.

He shoves Megamind aside; Megamind stumbles a little, almost falling.

(damn; should he try to escape, or gamble on Metro Man forgetting the roof?)

“Don’t panic, Roxy! I’m here to save you!”

Hellfire and damnation. Well; there’s no way Roxanne hasn’t heard the moron bellowing for her. Megamind resigns himself to another trip to prison. She’ll shout back to Metro Man in a moment, and the gig will be up.

“Roxy! Roxy, can you hear me? Roxy, where are you?”

Megamind blinks, tips his head in confusion, then moves to follow after Metro Man.

Okay, that’s weird; why isn’t Roxanne answering? She has to have heard the hero calling for her.

(is she—she can’t be hurt and unable to answer, can she? He left her less than two minutes ago and she was fine, surely she can’t have gotten seriously injured in that short an amount of time—)

“What have you done to her?” Metro Man demands, turning on Megamind.

(I pushed her hair out of her face and made her laugh, Megamind thinks.)

“Nothing,” he says. “I haven’t done anything to her. Notice how she’s not here.”

Metro Man stops in the middle of the (clearly Miss-Ritchi-less) Lair, an expression of confusion on his face.

(yes, yes; good—)

“The roof!”

(damn it)

Megamind glances at the exit; it’s reasonably close; he might be able to make it if he bolts suddenly—

Metro Man seizes his arm in a tight grip, then yanks him off his feet as they fly up the staircase to the roof. Megamind tries to twist away, to absolutely no avail.

God damn it; he came so close to getting away with—

“—Roxy?” Metro Man says.

Megamind looks around the roof, blinking in confusion.

There’s the Cumulus Accumulator, and his tools, and there’s Roxanne’s chair. But Roxanne is nowhere to be seen.

“Where is she?” Metro Man says.

“—how am I supposed to know? I told you she’s not here!”

He tries to pull his arm away again; this time it works. Megamind glares at Metro Man and straightens the high points of his collar.

“…oh,” says Metro Man.

He looks at the Cumulus Accumulator, and again an expression of suspicion comes over his face.

“What’s that?” he asks.

Megamind’s lip curls.

“Broken,” he says. “I brought it up here to fix it because it’s a nice day and I wanted to enjoy the weather. Is that all right with you, hero?”

“…oh,” says Metro Man again.

There’s a long awkward silence. Megamind uses it to think furiously about where Roxanne might be.

(she must have escaped while he was gone, then slipped down the stairs and out of the Lair while he was talking to Metro Man. odd that she didn’t wait for her boyfriend to rescue her, but…maybe she’s annoyed with him? that comment she made about ‘what boyfriend’; maybe they’re fighting?)

“…I really thought I heard her voice,” Metro Man says sheepishly.

“Uh-huh,” Megamind says, “Yeah. You mentioned.”

Another awkward silence ensues.

“So, uh,” Metro Man says, “where’s Minion and your little robots?”

“Minion took the brainbots out for some exercise,” Megamind lies smoothly. “They get bored without anything to do.”

Metro Man laughs in a would-be chummy way.

“Ha, ha; yeah��I’ve been really bored, lately, too, you know, and—”

“—and so you decided to harass me for entertainment,” Megamind says, voice caustic. “Tell me, have you ever thought about getting a hobby?”

Metro Man opens his mouth, probably to protest, then closes it again, looking thoughtful.

“A hobby,” he says, eyes suddenly far away. “I could—I could get a hobby. That could be—fun. Right? That could be fun! What kind of hobby?”

(I don’t actually care? Megamind refrains from saying. Why would I care?)

“Take up golf,” he suggests at random, “Start a stamp collection. Learn an instrument. Please go away.”

“—an instrument,” Metro Man says, eyes lighting up. “I did always want to learn to play the guitar—”

“Fantastic,” Megamind says. “That’s great. Start right away. Go. Go now.”

“Yeah—yeah! Hey, thanks, buddy!” Metro Man says, grinning happily, “I owe you one!”

“…yes,” Megamind agrees, “yes, you do. And also you owe me for breaking our agreed-upon rules and breaking into the Lair during a non-evil-plot time, so that’s two more Get Out of Jail Free cards or equivalent favors that you owe me now, yeah, okay, ciao!”

Metro Man flies off at last and Megamind sags with relief.

The moron didn’t notice the ropes Roxanne left behind with her chair. Or—

Megamind bends and picks up the bobby pin from the rooftop.

So that’s where it landed.

He twirls the little piece of metal between his thumb and forefinger and sighs, rubbing his other hand over his face.

Well. Today is definitely a loss.

He shouldn’t be so completely disappointed that Roxanne has disappeared; there’s a silver lining to this: Metro Man owes him two favors now, and he didn’t have to go to jail! But—

His mouth twists and he curls his fingers over the pin. Stupid. Just because she happened to let him touch her without screaming, his idiotic brain thought they were having a nice time together.

As though she could ever be having a nice time, with him around. Of course she took the first opportunity to escape.

He glares at the Cumulus Accumulator as though it’s to blame for his ridiculous feelings. He’s done trying to fix the damn thing, he decides. He’ll take it apart for scraps; he doesn’t need it. He’s got plenty of smoke machines, and he can come up with a different way to produce homemade lightning.

Megamind moves down the stairs, then climbs down the ladder into the empty Lair, Roxanne’s pin still in his hand. He sighs again, then jumps as the watch on his wrist crackles to life.

“Sir?” Minion’s voice comes through loud and clear. (At least something he built works, Megamind thinks bitterly.) “Is everything going all right? The brainbots are getting a little antsy—”

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to cancel the Evil Plot for today, Minion,” Megamind says, “The Cumulus Accumulator is completely nonfunctional.”

“—oh, no. I’m sorry, Sir,” Minion says. “I can hold the brainbots a little longer if you want to try to fix it—”

“No, no,” Megamind says, walking towards his bedroom, “no point. Miss Ritchi already escaped and then Metro Man showed up.” He opens his bedroom door.

“You already fought Metro Man?” Minion says, sounding concerned.

“No,” Megamind says, closing the bedroom door behind himself and pulling off his cape and shoulder guards. “No, I put him off. I pretended that there wasn’t any evil plan for today. And since Miss Ritchi had already disappeared, he believed me.”

“—Sir, Miss Ritchi—”

“—knows the location of the Lair now, yes,” Megamind says. “Unfortunately.”

“We’re going to have to move, aren’t we?”

Megamind grimaces.

“Possibly not,” he says. “There’s a chance I may be able to—strike a bargain with her. Certain no-kidnapping-allowed days in exchange for her silence about the location of Evil Lair, something like that…she is always complaining about the disturbances to her schedule, so that might be sufficient—I’ll approach her about it tomorrow.”

“The brainbots and I will head home, Sir,” Minion says.

“No,” Megamind says, remembering his lie, “I told Metro Man that you took them out for exercise; there’s a chance he’ll be checking up on that—take them to the old strip mine and let them play. And you—you relax too, Minion. You deserve a break.”

“What are you going to do, Sir?”

Megamind puts Roxanne’s hair pin down on the bedside table and rubs a hand over his face again.

“—I think I might take a nap,” he says tiredly.

“Really, Sir?” Minion sounds far too excited about this. “That’s good; I told you this morning, you haven’t been sleeping enough—”

“—which is probably why the Cumulus Accumulator wound up a piece of useless junk,” Megamind says. “Yes, yes, I know. I’ll take a nap. You take care of the brainbots.”

“You got it, Sir!”

Megamind breaks the connection, then turns the communicator off entirely. He unstraps it from his wrist and tosses it down on the bedside table, next to—

Roxanne’s pin.

Damn it. Damn his stupid heart.

(a full sense memory of what it felt like, touching her hair, sweeps through him, making his entire body flush hot.)

He takes his de-gun from its holster and puts it on the bedside table, too, then sits on the edge of his bed and pulls off his boots, tosses them into the corner. Twisting his arms behind his back, he unzips his shirt, and peels it off.

He isn’t wearing his protective undersuit today; he was running late this morning and forgot it. He almost forgot his boots, too, actually, and he nearly poked his own eye out, trying to apply his eyeliner in a hurry; that was what prompted Minion’s comment about his sleep schedule.

Definitely a good thing he got rid of Metro Man without a fight today. And he really should sleep…

He tosses his shirt onto the floor and lies back on the mattress, fingers trailing idly up and down his own torso.

—Roxanne’s face, tilted up to his, laughter in her eyes and that beautiful, fascinating curve to her mouth as she smiled—the texture of her skin beneath his fingertips and the silkiness of her hair as he brushed it aside—like he—like would have done if he’d been about to lean down to kiss her—

…maaaybe he doesn’t need to sleep right away.

The motion of his fingertips brushing over his own abdomen slows. He bites his lip, torn between guilt and wanting.

He’ll—he might sleep better anyway, if he—

“Hey, Megamind, sorry but—”

Megamind screams and launches himself out of the bed; trips over his own feet and lands hard in a sprawl on the floor at Roxanne’s feet.

Roxanne, who is here. Roxanne who is in his bedroom. Roxanne who is standing with her hand still on the handle of the closet door, half in and half out of the closet still, looking down at him.

“—uh,” she says.

Megamind makes an extremely undignified noise, a sort of strangled screech.

“WHAT?! YOU—WHAT?!” he manages.

Roxanne stares at him for a long moment, neither of them moving—and then she claps a hand over her mouth as she breaks into a peal of laughter.

“Oh—oh my god—” she says. “Oh my god; I’m so sorry—”

“—what!—what—are you—what are you doing in my bedroom?!”

“Well, I…got lost,” Roxanne says, waving a hand, “after I got out of the ropes, and I heard you talking to Metro Man, so I hid.”

She shrugs dismissively, as if hiding in a supervillain’s bedroom closet is an entirely reasonable thing to do.

Megamind makes a small, choked noise and attempts locate his shirt.

(Roxanne! is in his bedroom! and he’s half naked and he wants to die oh god oh god)

“Now you know how it feels when people break into your house and jump out at you, Megamind,” Roxanne says, amusement in her voice.

Megamind, struggling to turn his shirt right-side out, looks up at her in outrage and then promptly forgets how to speak.

(Roxanne is in his bedroom and he’s shirtless and and there’s too much of his skin on display she’s looking at him like that and smiling and how is he supposed to function?)

“—I have—never jumped out of your bedroom closet at you, Miss Ritchi!” he manages to say, after his mouth opens and closes a few times like he’s a non-sentient fish. “That was—just—uncalled for!”

Roxanne laughs again, her eyes still on him, and ah, yes, this is it; this is how he dies.

“I see now why you’re always trying to get me to scream,” she says, smirking at him. “That was fun.”

Megamind feels his face go hot so fast he ends up dizzy. Oh god; he’s blushing all the way down his entire torso; he can feel it.

“Yes, yes,” he mutters, still desperately attempting to sort out his shirt, “I screamed. That’s what—we mere mortals tend to do when someone leaps out at us from our bedroom closet without warning; we can’t all have nerves of steel like you!”

“My my, Megamind,” Roxanne drawls in a voice like sex and honey. “Did you just call me a goddess?”

He looks up at her, eyes wide, breath caught in his throat. She’s still smirking at him, but there’s a wicked edge to it now that he’s never seen before and—

“—‘mere mortals’,” she says, raising her eyebrows and shit, oh shit, he did say that, didn’t he?

He makes a small, terrified sound in the back of his throat and scrabbles blindly for the sleeves of his shirt, unable to look away from Roxanne, from her looking down on him, and suddenly he’s terribly conscious of the fact that he’s on his knees in front of her.

“Maybe you should leave it,” Roxanne says, her eyes fixed on his.

“Wh—what—?”

“The shirt,” Roxanne says, still not breaking his gaze. “You seem to be struggling an awful lot with it; maybe you should leave it off.”

Megamind’s jaw drops.

Did—did she seriously just suggest—?

The shirt falls from his suddenly numb fingers.

Roxanne takes a sharp little breath when the fabric slithers to the floor, and for a moment they just stay like that, perfectly still, Megamind on his knees staring up at Roxanne; Roxanne looking down at him.

“Did you mean it, when you said that I was pretty, Megamind?” Roxanne asks softly.

Megamind’s heart jumps in his chest like lightning.

“—beautiful,” he says, voice shaking. “Didn’t—say pretty. I—said beautiful.”

Roxanne’s lips curve slowly upwards, eyes going warm with something that looks like pleasure.

“And did you mean it?” she asks.

Megamind swallows. His skin feels like it’s on fire and he couldn’t look away from Roxanne now if he tried.

(he doesn’t want to try. he never wants to look away from her. he never wants to see anything else.)

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I meant it.”

Roxanne’s expression goes gloriously triumphant; in the half-second it takes her to cross the distance between them, Megamind thinks disjointedly that he’s never seen her look more like an evil queen.

The pin he put in her hair glints in the light and then her hands are on his face and she’s leaning down and—

His first thought is that he’s dreaming.

Well—actually—his second thought is that he’s dreaming. His first thought, as Roxanne presses her lips to his, is a hot, chaotic surge of yes/please/more.

His third thought is that he can’t possibly be dreaming because no matter how magnificent his brain is, it could never come up with anything even close to this.

He brings his hands up to Roxanne’s shoulders and clings to her and tries desperately to respond, to give her what she wants, whatever she wants, if only she’ll just keep kissing him a little longer.

Incredibly, she does, her mouth sweet and slick and hot over his. She pulls him to his feet, still kissing him, her hand beneath his chin as she parts his lips with her tongue and licks into his mouth and Megamind’s knees are so weak that he can barely stand. Roxanne presses forward, pushing him, and he steps backwards in response. The backs of his knees hit the foot of the bed and Roxanne pushes him.

He tumbles backwards onto the bed, sprawled out in front of her, looking up at her in shock.

Her mouth is red and she licks her lips, eyes raking up his body and Megamind can’t stop himself from whimpering.

She moves forward again, onto the bed, knees on the mattress between his legs and Megamind scrabbles back automatically because oh god oh god—

“Ah-ah-ah,” she says, pushing him down on the bed, catching his wrists in her hands and pinning them to the mattress above his head. “Stay.”

“Oh god,” Megamind gasps, and this must be the response Roxanne was looking for, because her lips curl up into that predatory smirk again, the one that twists his insides up and makes his spine feel like it’s turned to liquid.

Roxanne looks at him for a moment, hands holding his wrists in place, and he could break her grasp easily, but—oh god Roxanne telling him stay in that tone; he can’t—

She lets go of his wrists and sits up, looking incredibly pleased with herself, and Megamind shivers and leaves his arms over his head, his hands where she pressed them to the bed.

“Good boy,” she says, and Megamind gulps, feeling his skin flush even hotter than before.

Roxanne looks him up and down and he has to press his wrists hard to the mattress to keep himself from squirming on the bed, to keep himself from turning away from her gaze.

God—oh god—he’s never been—looked at, before, like this; it’s hard to bear, really, having Roxanne look at him when he’s—this aroused.

He can feel his heartbeat throbbing between his legs; the sensitive skin of his throat and shoulders feels hot and achy with how much he wants Roxanne to touch him there. His ears are on fire, his heartbeat throbbing there as well, and his nipples are hard and straining, which feels horribly embarrassing.

Roxanne reaches down and rolls one between her fingers.

Megamind hears himself make an inhuman sound; his hips jerk up and his back arches.

Roxanne makes a noise of satisfaction and bends down to press her lips to his chest and Megamind makes another of those alien sounds; a whirring in the back of his throat.

She kisses her way down his chest, open-mouthed kisses that make him pant—god, the heat of her mouth; he feels like he’s melting on her tongue. She kisses his hipbone, then slides the tip of her tongue along the edge of it and Megamind cries out, pushing his wrists hard into the mattress to stop himself from reaching for her because she told him to stay—

“—w-wait,” he manages to gasp out.

Roxanne looks up at him, an inquiring expression on her face.

(god, what is he doing, stopping her; is he insane? he’s wanted this, wanted her, for years. but—)

“—it’s not that I’m not sincerely appreciative of—um—but I really think you need to take a moment to consider what you’re doing right now, Miss Ritchi, because if you don’t I suspect you’re really going to regret it and I’d much prefer that you—”

Roxanne frowns.

“What are you talking about?” she asks.

Megamind squeezes his eyes shut momentarily for strength.

“I mean, I’m assuming based on the comment you made about—Metro Man—earlier, and the fact that you hid from him after escaping, that you’re maybe a little annoyed with him at the moment, but—he is—your boyfriend, Miss Ritchi, and—”

Roxanne sits up, frown deepening.

“Wait, hold on—” she says. “You still think…?”

“—I—I just don’t want you to hate me,” Megamind says in a small voice, “m-more than you already do, I mean—”

“Hate you?” Roxanne says, sounding baffled. “Megamind, what—and—and didn’t we—didn’t we already have the whole—boyfriend conversation?”

“…boyfriend? conversation?” Megamind says.

“Yeah, when you said something about my ‘boyfriend’ and I said ‘what boyfriend’, because I…don’t have…a boyfriend? Oh my god,” she says, “Did—did you really not get that?”

(she’s not dating…?)

“—okay, but the concern about you regretting this still stands if you’re doing it to get back at him after a break up,” Megamind spits out, the words like poison in his mouth, but he can’t let her—he doesn’t want to be something Roxanne is going to regret.

“Oh, no,” Roxanne says, passing a hand over her face for a moment, “oh—Megamind, no. You are—entirely off base with the—Wayne and I didn’t break up, okay? We were never dating in the first place.”

Megamind stares at her.

“What,” he says flatly.

“I—I thought— You didn’t…? I thought you at least suspected,” Roxanne says, gesturing a little wildly. “All of the sarcastic remarks about him being my ‘boyfriend’, and—”

“What.”

“Oh god, no wonder I could never get you to make a move, no matter how hard I flirted!” Roxanne says.

Megamind feels like his eyes are going to fall out of his head, they’re so wide.

“…how hard you flirted?” he croaks.

“Uh, yeah,” Roxanne says, “did—did you not notice the flirting?!”

“—I mean, I always figured it was an assertion of dominance thing,” Megamind says, stunned. “That’s—usually what it is, when people pretend to flirt with me. That, or they’re trying to get something from me…”

“Oh my god,” Roxanne says. “Pretending to flirt? Megamind—I have never pretended to flirt with you.” Her eyes go round with horror. “Oh, no—is—is that what you were doing? Pretending—the—assertion of dominance—”

“No!” Megamind blurts out. “No, I—no. I never—I never pretended, either,” he says, heart beating hard against his ribs.

Roxanne looks at him, face still uncertain.

“I told you,” he says, “I—I meant it.”

Roxanne bites her lip and Megamind feels his face heat again. He glances away awkwardly.

“…I was really going for the whole smooth seduction thing, here, but I think I missed,” Roxanne says.

Megamind looks at her once more; she’s smiling crookedly, a blush on her cheekbones, too. It’s unreasonably gorgeous.

“I’m not—um—not averse—” Megamind gulps, “—to—b-being seduced.”

Roxanne’s smile goes shy and surprised—oh—oh; she’s too—she’s too beautiful—

“I’m just—not really sure why you’re doing this?” Megamind says, and then wants to bite his own tongue off.

(why is he asking questions; Roxanne is in his bedroom, in his bed, offering to seduce him and Megamind has to start asking questions like an idiot)

“Didn’t we—? I told you,” Roxanne says, frowning a little, “I’ve wanted to for a long time.”

(and that doesn’t make sense, but he needs to stop asking questions before she changes her—)

“Yes, but why?” Megamind asks, unable to stop his voice from rising in his complete and utter bafflement. “You don’t like me!”

Roxanne stares at him, looking taken aback.

(and there it went; he’s ruined it, she’s—)

“I don’t flirt with people I don’t like, Megamind,” she says slowly. “I—don’t you get—?”

Megamind, still on his back looking up at her, shakes his head wildly in denial of what he is hearing.

“…okay,” she says, “okay, um—let’s just shelve the question of—seduction for a minute and—”

Megamind flinches.

“Could you just—come here? Please?” Roxanne says.

He sits up slowly, carefully, watching Roxanne warily. She bites her lip and reaches out to take both of his hands in hers. Megamind’s hands jerk involuntarily at the unexpected contact and Roxanne laces their fingers together. She looks down at their joined hands and takes a breath, then looks up at him.

“I really like you, Megamind,” she says, looking nervous but determined. “I have for a long time. You’re—fun to be around and you’re smart and you’re so genuinely sweet and you’re absolutely gorgeous and you’re—staring at me and this is probably really weird and out of nowhere for you; I should have thought this out better, but god, I’ve wanted to kiss you for ages and you said you thought I was pretty and so I just—”

“—beautiful.”

“—what?”

“I told you,” Megamind says, scarcely aware of what he’s saying, “I didn’t say pretty. I said beautiful.”

Roxanne’s eyes go wide; she looks more than nervous, now; she actually looks almost afraid.

“—I really want to date you,” she blurts out.

...to be continued.

[faithful-steward]

OEP Peace Sunday Worship Resources

“Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”  - 2 Peter 3:13 (8-15), King James Version

Call to Worship - Cindy Weber-Han, Board Member

One: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way (Charles Dickens, “Tale of Two Cities, 1859). 

Congregation: This sounds like our world today, that’s why we are waiting for the promised Child of God who will bring us justice and peace.

One: Then prepare the way and ready the Human Race.  We are called to have courageous conversations with one another even when difficult.

C: God IS calling to us.  We are to be midwives of the birth of a New Way for all of humankind.  

O: Yes, we are called!  We are calling on God’s Wisdom, Guidance and Hope for this New World.

ALL:  “But what we await are new heavens and a new earth where, according to the promise, God’s justice will reside”  (2 Peter 3.13).

Lighting the Candle of Peace - Gail Erisman-Valeta, Board Co-Chair

Invitation to sing: While We Are Waiting, Come - Supplement #1032 Vs 1

One: While we are waiting, come.

All: But we’ve waited so long.  And the nights are long.  It’s so hard to wait!

One: While we are waiting, we wait for a promise.

All: What are we waiting for?

One: The promise of new heavens and a new earth!

All: We wait for the promise of Peace! Where righteousness is at home!

One: We light the Candle of Peace.  We need the light of peace to shine upon our path. The journey is long, and we grow tired.  May this candlelight shine upon us, revealing a pathway to the peace that only Christ brings. Amen.

Children’s Story - Marie Benner-Rhoades, Youth and Young Adult Peace Formation Director

Begin by setting a timer for five minutes (vary the time depending on how talkative your children tend to be and how much time you have for the story time). If possible, use an old kitchen timer that clicks the whole time.  Make a big deal about setting the timer, say something like, “Let’s get the timer started.”

Sit quietly for the first 15-30 seconds letting the timer tick away.

Ask children to share some things they are really looking forward to.  Likely, responses will focus around Christmas- invite children to share specific things about Christmas that they are looking forward to (eating cookies, presents, family gathering, snow, etc.).  When ideas run out, let the timer run quietly for another 15 seconds or so.

Ask the children what it’s like listening to the timer.  Waiting for something to happen.  Is it easy or hard?  Does it feel like a long time or short?  Is waiting exciting or frustrating?  If kids aren’t particularly talkative you can ask them to raise their hands- who thinks it is easy to wait? Who thinks it is hard?

Wait quietly for another 15 seconds or so.

Ask what are some things you do while you’re waiting for something? Some may connect with the things they are waiting for (make the cookies, wrap presents, etc.)  Other ideas may be silly- singing songs, playing games, etc.  If the timer is still ticking, try one or two ideas out.

When the timer goes off, connect with the scripture verse from 2 Peter.  In scripture, we read about people waiting for a new heaven and new earth.  And the waiting doesn’t have a timer that they can check.  While waiting, we are asked to look for ways that God is acting now, glimpses of heaven, and we are called to work for peace.  

Pray: God, help us while we wait to look for You and to work for peace.  Amen.

Prayer - Barbara Avent, Board Member

Today we are gratefully giving THANKS for God Almighty, the Holiest of the Holy, Jesus Christ, Holy, Holy, Holy, Son of God, Holy Counselor that Imbues the Holy Spirit, which is the Holy Trinity now.  On this Peace Sunday, we are praying for the “Peace that Passeth Understanding”, that can dwell within our hearts, minds, bodies and Spirits. This Peace that we are receiving brings us more Joy, Abundance, Justice, Beauty, Righteousness and Wisdom that is available to each woman, man, boy and girl within our communities, in the United States  and throughout the world.

As Disciples of Christ, we speak words of Peace and love, living a life of harmony, compassion each day and seeing the goodness of Jesus in each person we meet. This day we pray for the protection, peace, and love for our immediate families, extended families and the family of humanity.  We surrender our little will to the Big Will of God/Jesus/Holy Spirit now.  We give thanks for God’s protection, blessings, guidance and direction.  We accept the life lessons that are presented to us as we walk our path of purpose and destiny.  For we know that Our God and Jesus is able to provide for us  and make a mighty way out of no way, as long as we have Faith that is only  the size of a mustard seed.  Thank you God each day that we can pray and witness to the Goodness of Jesus Christ as we live transparent and authentic lives. Knowing and expressing the greatest Power and Force of Jesus, LOVE, we express more Peace.  We ask these blessings in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Scripture Reflection - Lamar Gibson, Development Director

2 Peter is no laughing matter. From a surface reading, it sounds like a warning of the hellfire and damnation we later see in Revelations. Just beneath that, it’s yet another unwelcome reminder to our instant satisfaction-seeking and selfie generation that not everything will come when we want it. God’s answers and timing aren’t synced with our Amazon Prime subscriptions and they don’t arrive through next-day delivery via FedEx.

The passage opens with the casual assertion that for God, one day is like a thousand years. Paul was writing to a church that faced grave external threats while also being in turmoil internally and his suggestion was to be patient! Many of us today might see ourselves and our churches in the same way. Patience is the last thing we want to be reminded of when the pressures around us seem so great. Patience seems like avoidance and ignoring what’s right in front of us.

I remember, as a child, my frustration with understanding God’s timing. In my southern church upbringing between Holiness and Pentecostal churches, I often heard the phrase, “Wait on the Lord!” Old saints would use it when young people were venting about some injustice in the church. Subscribers to prosperity gospel would share it as encouragement with one another to reaffirm that the material blessings they sought were on the way. Preachers would center a week’s worth of revival sermons around the theme and the promise was always the same: God would show up when God was ready and nothing we did could change that. Wait, wait, and wait.

These lessons of my formative years shaped my early view of God as a kind of unreliable construction site foreman who may or may not be around when you needed your work approved. I remember periods of extreme dedication to my Christian practice during my youth in which I would wait earnestly to hear God’s voice of approval for my work. That approval, at least in the form I was seeking it, never came. “How could God be so busy when the world is in such desperate need?” I wondered.

I wouldn’t find an answer to my questions until I took a Quaker Theology class as a college student. I was shocked to discover that the Quakers believe, that because Jesus walked among us, that the kingdom (kin-dom) is now. They believe that the responsibility of the followers of Christ is to create the kingdom and its conditions here, inspired by the example of Jesus. This discovery shook me to my core as it flew in the face of everything I had been taught about God and how I should approach my work as a follower. How could I give up the belief that Earth was some forsaken place doomed to be burned up? How could I shift my childish view of heaven as the site of the world’s greatest family reunion to a place that I had a role in building and creating? Peter’s inquiry into what kind of people we ought to be helps shine some light on possible answers to these questions. From the King James Version of the Bible, verse 13 of the passage reads, “Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”

This idea of looking or searching for new heavens and a new earth provides an exciting new lens to approach our frustration with waiting. It has the potential to shift us from passive onlookers to active participants in the development of the kingdom. It suggests that we have a role to play like the words in Luke 4:18 that proclaim,  “The spirit of the Lord is upon me and I have been anointed to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, sight for the blind, and to set the oppressed free.”

As we look for and seek out the new kingdom, we become models of it as we are transformed through the process. We realize that we can and must stand up for justice with the same fervor in which we seek to build peace. We come to see ourselves as fellow citizens in the household of God (Ephesians 2:19) and in doing so, we welcome the foreign-born stranger and we acknowledge the truths shared by people of color about their experiences around the world. We let go of the fear of loss if we speak up. We realize that we are equipped for the process by the teachings and life of Jesus and that when we begin our journeys of looking for, seeking, and creating, we are not alone.

As I close this reflection for On Earth Peace Sunday (and Peace Sunday in Advent), I want to invite us to wrestle with the scripture reading. Most translations of this passage use the words, “wait for” instead of “look for” (KJV) in verse 13. How do we as believers hold these two seemingly opposite ideas (waiting versus searching) together? How do our beliefs about the world’s future determine whether or not we wait or search? Are the two things closer than they appear? What do we have to give up and what can we gain if we go out and begin seeking rather than waiting?

Peace.

Moment in Mission - Bill Scheurer, Executive Director

In this time of Advent, arrival, approach, we note how the Spirit of Christmas--a holiday season where the sacred and secular uniquely merge--fills the air.

The hope, anticipation, comfort, goodwill, and joy are tangible--in sights and sounds, tastes and smells, feelings and memories--as heaven and earth draw near.

From On Earth Peace, we come bearing gifts.

We bring you questions: Are we prayerfully waiting, or actively building and looking, for the change to come; and how are these both, different and the same?

We bring you challenges: A vision of Beloved Community, the Kin-dom of Heaven, both in the making and at hand; and values as stake-posts for that big tent.

We bring you invitations: For celebration and participation in programs and practices where we all raise that big tent--peacefully, simply, together.

We bring you worship: Gathering under that big tent to wait and watch, work and pray, for that new heaven and new earth which is both promised and delivered in this time.

We often note that at On Earth Peace it is Christmas and Advent all year long. It is in our name, which is also our mission and message, and in our work and ministry.

And we have congregations and disciples like you to thank.

Because your gifts for this ministry are what make it possible all year long for the On Earth Peace community to keep “look[ing] for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness”--justice and peace--both, in the church and beyond.

Benediction - Cindy Weber-Han, Board Member

O:  As we leave our worship, let us take the inspiration we have felt today into our week and know that God is with us in all of our conversations.

C:  We will use courage in heartfelt listening to engage one another to become compassionate midwives for God’s peace and justice in the world.  Partnering with God, we assist the birth of “New Heavens and a New Earth.”