#residuum residue

[clover-the-awesomest]

Was gonna analyze the hell outta those medical documents when I realized they in a completely different language 😫

Part 15 of Arc II (Part 41)

these boys be lyin' lmao

⇇ | ⇽ | index | ⇾

[autumnhortsnort]

Hello coauthor! A Residuum reader here. One thing I really like about your comic is how the consequences of the characters' actions feel so plausible, but what stands out to me the most is the pacing in how they're presented throughout the story. Do you have any tips for structuring a plot? Every time I try to outline mine, it feels a bit incoherent, and the scenes don’t seem to flow well together. I’d appreciate any advice 🐢

best advice? Write the whole outline down as much and as far as you can, doesn't matter if it makes sense, that's for editing you to figure out. Then edit the ever-loving daylights out of it, add in connecting actions, and take out things that don't work. Residuum has had Five different drafts, with major tweaking as we go. The outline is not set in stone.

Also don’t share it outside of friends, that can make you feel pressured to stick to (the previous plot) even when it doesn’t work for how your story has progressed. There’s a reason we didn’t share any of the potential endings when we were still trying to figure out where the story was going. When the first arc was being posted we had an idea of the plot til about halfway through arc 4, but we didn’t actually have a concrete ending.

how we structure a plot (and do pacing)

Write out your main plot points and then write what the characters need to do to make that event happen. We basically do the plot mountain structure, but for each arc (there are 4 of them) we tend to make the climax of each arc into turning points or decisions that the main characters have to make that they cannot undo. here's a good article to read about structuring plots. (Note! This is for the broad spanning major plot beats, each update actually gets written as needed, they aren't written into the outline.)

When it comes to character decisions it’s more about, “what would make the character do this?” rather than, “would the character do this?” You can make characters do things they normally wouldn’t if you give them the right incentive.

For the pacing with residuum, because it’s serialized, we try to have something progress with each update. Either you learn something new, the plot has progressed (aka the status quo has changed), or there's set up/foreshadowing for later, most updates actually have all three. When writing in a serialized format (each chapter getting its own release) it’s a good idea to treat each update as a complete chunk. Try asking yourself: what is the goal for this part? are you using this update for anything actually important? are you conveying anything new and/or important to the plot? Is this something you want to focus on? Are you writing this to meet audience expectations or because you want to? There are parts where residuum gets almost no interaction but, importantly, those parts still meet our individual update rules. If you're writing for audience engagement you are going to get discouraged from writing long spanning plots very quickly. The audience doesn’t know whats coming, so they won’t interact with anything that doesn’t have their current blorbo™, even if it’s plot important.

for how we make the consequences make sense

Make things make logical sense? honestly i don't what to tell you.

We read. a. lot. I used to read 400 books over a school year, beaze has read about 13.6K fanfics on Ao3 over the course of 4 years. plus a ton of manhwa and manga, and that doesn’t include nonfiction, stuff from sites outside of Ao3, course assigned books, reddit fiction, royal road. Most of how we understand and structure plots is instinctual because we fire hosed our brains with them for years.

I'd recommend watching watching Overly Sarcastic Production’s Trope Talks, and reading stuff that's not rise related, as well as researching nonfiction stuff that's relevant to what you want to write we are at a place where we aren’t writing the outline anymore, just editing it if needed. We use the outline structure to make each update because it gives us a objective for the update, and gives us a road map for when to place the set up for future updates. But if you struggle to use outlines you can just… not use them. Garden writing is a valid writing strategy, I use it for one shot AU’s of residuum.

For long spanning stories written garden style the first draft can be your outline. Just edit and flesh it out once you’ve written it.

[fetznerdeathrecords]

Faecalized - Craniopagus Parasiticus

Brutal Death Metal/Goregrind from Santiago, Chile

1. Bilateral Craniophagous Excerebration 01:49 2. Neurocranial Exudate Regurgitation 00:56 3. Foetoscopic Separation of Cephalic Cpnglutination 00:26 4. Intracranial Suppuration of the Parasitic Remains 01:19 5. Dysmorphic Biparietal Maceration 00:34 6. Spontaneous Skull-Embedded Twin Fission 00:49 7. Cystic Bifurcation of the Cranium-Host Axis 01:24 8. Parasitic Cephalotruncal Tissue Agglutination 00:44 9. Perinatal Craniotomy Induced By Fetal Necropsy 00:37 10. Asymmetric Cerebral Hematoid Fusion Syndrome 00:48 11. Osteodermal Convergence in Parasitic Gestation 00:49 12. Postmortem Cranial Inclusion of Residual Fetus 02:50 13. Subarachnoid Congestion by Twin Necrotic Abscess 01:37 14. Calcified Intrafetal Parasitism Disorder 00:09 15. Anatomical Residuum of Cephalopagus Retention 00:52 16. Malformed Cerebrocranial Protuberance Engorgement 01:09 17. Craniopagus Parasiticus 03:55

Release date: June 11th, 2025

@faecalized

[clover-the-awesomest]

The… The face… Donnie’s face… His face is… It’s gone… Gone gone face gone…

ģ̶͎̙̻̠̭̖̪͎̎̀̃͂̃̋̔̕͘̕ͅĚ̺͎͎͈͈͒̆̅͋̉͋̂͐͞T̟̫̙̩̠̝͉̥̃̀̾͌͛̎͘̚ͅ O̫̳̘̦͖̝̱̤̺͂́̈́̅̐͘͟͞͝͞ŭ̧̦̟̘̦̓̍̏̂̑̆͒T̛̤̟̲͓̟̯̝̣͔̔͗́͑

Have I mentioned lately that I love @rottmnt-residuum?

Here's another panel redraw where I took things into my own hands again lol. Friggin love how Residuum depicted the Ninpo scene, it's so ethereal and almost unsettling, with the stark contrast and bright colors.

[maxksx]

4 │ Toward a philosophy of pass-through reality

The world is no longer represented but re-routed. To be “real” is to be compilable, to survive successive transcodings without fatal loss of executable detail. Authenticity is measured as pipeline robustness, not optical fidelity.

Thesis: The post-photographic Real is a transfer function.

Whatever persists across keying, grading, up-rezzing, prompt-based re-rendering—that residuum is our new ontological bedrock.

This flips the classical worry—“Can we still trust images?”—into a machinic pragmatics: “Which sequences of operations can this data endure?” Truth becomes durability under procedural stress. The dangerous residues of the old index—war atrocity photos, biometric traces—are potent precisely because they survive the gauntlet; they remain unerasable bugs in the pipeline.

[occidentalavian]

Aaahh there’s so many concepts about magic in Exandria that are so close to connecting, and probably are connected in some way, but haven’t been explicitly stated as such! Pardon my rambling as I try to piece this all together.

So ether is pure magical energy, that Avalir in the Age of Arcanum was able to collect and use to fuel things like spells and magic items, and distributed it back to the land during the Replenishment.

Ley lines are invisible flows of magical energy that cross Exandria. When it’s visible, such as one time when Keyleth cast Commune with Nature, it appeared misty blue energy. Avalir traveled along ley lines, so that’s probably where the city collected its ether right? Ether is the magic energy that travels in ley lines?

Residuum is the leftover residue of magical energy, which takes the form of green crystal. Lots of residuum was left in the whitestone of the Alabaster Sierras during a major battle between the gods during the Calamity, but since suude is made from residuum and was invented back in the Age of Arcanum, it can probably be found elsewhere, right?

Also, in the Astral Plane there is this “aether”, which may or may not be just another spelling for the same ether as before, that the Somnovem wanted to tap into to bend reality, and is the stuff in the air that Lucien and the Mighty Nein, particularly Caleb, used to manipulate their environment in the campaign finale.

Is any of this going anywhere? I don’t know.

[hotwraithbones]

My latest full-length book, In Residuum, arrives February 20th from Kith Books! 💜 For those who like discounts, pre-orders are open RIGHT NOW! Meow ⬅️ (preorder link)

In Residuum is a collection of texts built from the frantically gathered residue of thoughts, drafts, literature, lost family history, the darkness and emptiness that tend to replace suppressed memories, and incomplete experiences. Together, these are all cultivated as a way of drawing the metaphysical and abstract from a number of writings, and letting the rest -- a faded mass -- slowly fall away. In this are truths -- some personal, some general -- otherwise invisible to the naked human eye. Moreover, in its visual elements and weaving of metatext, shadowtext, and blatant lack of regard for chronology or order, this is a book that can be read differently by each person no matter how many times they read it through.

{FEATURED POEM "[im]mortal decline" 1st Published in warning lines magazine Volume 04: OTHERWORLDS

An examination of colonization, classic, Renaissance, and medieval European texts, the role of ancient languages (Sanskrit and Pankrit) in religion, prayer, family, and modern poetics, C-PTSD, psychosis, mental illness, sexual, domestic, emotional, mental, and physical abuse trauma, intergenerational trauma, sexuality, gender, patriarchy, culture, ancestry, and 4D spaces, In Residuum is an encapsulation of countless items and ideas forged together in an attempt to create something greater and stronger -- something honest and potentially hopeful. The pieces are all fractured and mismatched, just as mine are, but all the same, even in all the ways they grind and splinter against each other, this messiness and chaos works together among, within, between, and around itself to form something somewhat whole. In other words, this book is my humble attempt at the portrait of a survivor. In it, I use my rawest, most vulnerable, most sabotaged, and most slaughtered self for reference.

"Specializing in badass hybrid work and subversion of western literary expectations, Ami J. Sanghvi continues to utilize language as an artistic medium with In Residuum. Technological word processors may "insist all [their] words are wrong, but there is always something invigorating about Sanghvi’s work that Microsoft Word could never possibly hope to understand, as well as a perpetually unerring sense of both aesthetics and poetics."

— nat raum, eic of fifth wheel press and author of the fine line + you stupid slut

___

Snag your copy while supplies last!

[clover-the-awesomest]

THIS.

This is EVERYTHING to me.

Please give this analysis a read and reblog because it is one of the best I've seen, especially for how short it is! I know nobody's a fan of really really reeeeeeeeally long text analysis stuff like what I usually reblog, so take this as a nice little refresher.

Besides we all love WOY angst don't we fellas?

So I was rewatching WOY again, and I realized something during The Ball episode (S1 Ep13b).

There’s probably a post somewhere years ago pointing this out, but idc—I want to, "put that passion on the paper!"

Spoilers btw!

We all know why Wander helps, “The helper seeks to help because he knows what it is like to be helpless” (The Wanders, S2 Ep4a). He went through something so life-changing—most likely traumatic—that it ironically helped him become the Wander we know and love.

Now during The Ball episode (S1 Ep13b) after Beeza explains how this doomsday is basically routine at this point and before they all board the ship, Wander gives a speech:

“Y'all have put so much work into this pretty little planet. Don't you want to try and save it? I know you're scared of Buster, but if you keep running, that's all you're ever gonna be doing! You have a chance to change that. You just have to turn and face your problems head-on!”

“…but if you keep running, that's all you're ever gonna be doing! You have a chance to change that.”

He says that while looking at his hat longingly as if this situation reminded him of a bad memory.

I genuinely believe Wander started out as fearful.

I believe he ran away and hid at the first sign of danger when he was much younger, immature and inexperienced because he didn’t have a chance to save or defend what he had. He lost something very dear and precious to him—whether that be his family or his home-planet (or both), we may never know.

However, how he reacted to those bouncing phantom mimes in The Heebie Jeebies episode (S2 Ep19b) proves my point. Wander’s first instinct when encountering danger or something scary is to scream, run away and/or hide—and at times freeze in place.

Usually he’s able to override that stress response throughout the show if there’s someone needing help, “When I see someone who’s a-needin’, I just gotta help!” (The Fugitives, S1 Ep2b). Take the episode The Pet (S1 Ep4) as an example of this.

Wander nervously searches the ship for anyone alive only to encounter an arachnomorph he lovingly christened Captain Tim. His first reaction is to scream, and it doesn’t sound like an excited scream either.

Only after he gets tackled does he collect himself and switches gears from being afraid to being ready to help because he changed how he looked at the creature.

At first, he saw Captain Time as this terrifying monster (he even admits to Sylvia that he knew Captain Tim is dangerous later in the episode, twice) before almost immediately doing a 180 degree and choosing to see Captain Tim as an abandoned pet that needs tender love and care.

It's not just this episode either. The Greatest (S1 Ep1a) shows how scared he is of Lord Hater when they first officially meet until he chooses to—not only help the planet's residences—but to also learn more about Hater so he can help him later down the line.

The Search for Captain Tim (S2 Ep19a) is another example when he shows up with a wanted flyer knowing full well that the creature is carnivorous and remembering what Captain Tim tried to do to him.

He's able to get through his fear if it means helping someone in the process.

We also know that Wander seems obsessed with the idea of helping others to an alarming and unhealthy degree. Being unable to not help someone in need gives him anxiety that builds up over a short amount of time until he can’t take it anymore and gives into his immense desire to help (The Fugitives, S1 Ep2b).

Even when he was sick during The Sick Day (S2 Ep20a), he still tries to help when it impedes on his own health and well-being.

Since he’s over 1000 years old, he most likely lost that chance to rewrite or make amends with what he originally went through that made him feel helpless in the first place—and I wouldn’t doubt it if he regrets it deep down or thinks bringing up his past is unimportant since nothing can be done anymore.

Heck, Sylvia calls him, “a man of mystery,” in The Waste of Time (S2 Ep17b) which later when they both successfully end the time loop it erases that interaction from existence. Wander doesn't disclose what exactly happened to him to be helpless in The Wanders (S2 Ep4a).

He chooses not to go into detail about his past.

Going back to The Ball (S1 13b) episode, he doesn’t just give a speech and tries to help because that's the right thing to do. He tries to help because he sees how the Ballzarians were choosing to lose their chance by willfully fleeing from their home-planets because of Buster, and Wander could not accept that.

"Whew! I wouldn't want someone else to go through what I went through" (The Wanders, S2 Ep4a).

He needed to help them because he himself was not helped.

Having to watch someone else go through the same experience was devastating for him. That's why he took control of the ship and crashed landed it on Buster.

Unlike the Ballzarians, I believe he did not have anyone in his life to help him when he was helpless, nor provide the opportunity to make a change in his circumstances.

He had to become his own helper.

In The Wanders episode (S2 Ep4a) when Sylvia finds the last Wander to complete himself again, the little Wander is terrified and cowering in the corner. He doesn't trust her until she reassures him, "It's okay, I won't hurt you." Wander was used to not receiving help. Sylvia was the first person who—not only reciprocated that same love and care he tends to show towards everyone—but also the first person to stay by his side afterwards. She became his new home.

With all this said, I believe he started out as a coward, then became a stereotypical hero, until finally being transformed into the wandering helpy helperson we know and love today.

Or I'm reading waaaaaaay too much into a silly little cartoon about helping others and self-improvement from a decade ago idk tHat’S jUst a tHeoRY lmao

Anyways, thank y’all for coming to my TedTalk—expect more WOY art in the near future! 👋🧡

[mysticalspiders]

Magic in Exandria

My own take on magic in Exandria, building off of @occidentalavian’s post trying to connect together magic in Exandria and using the absolutely fantastic new wiki Encyclopedia Exandria.

Ether is pure, raw, magical energy/power; magical potential held within beings, magical objects, etc; roughly equivalent to the concept of spell slots. Avalir traded, gathered, and bartered for ether that is stored in the “etheric net” and that ether is released back into the continent of Domunus during the replenishment. It is implied that at least some of the ether collected is from magical objects (that Avalir traded for) that were broken down to extract the ether contained within them. Some of the ether collected also went to the Tree of Names. Ether also seems to be an idea and term from the Age of Arcanum as it is only mentioned in Calamity. It could be this is a magical scientific progression and idea that was lost during the calamity and an idea that is not part of modern Exandrian magical theory. Maybe magical energy is thought of differently in modern day Exandria, with different languages and theories and models of magic. Maybe the function of ether fundamentally changed during the calamity to make it a concept that does not apply to modern Exandria. 

Aether is something that was in the astral sea and Cognoza that allowed Lucien and the Mighty Nien to change the environment through imagination, and seems to have something to do with potential and manifestation as it is referred to as “the aether of potential” and “manifestation enhancing aether.” Whether it is the same thing as or related to the Ether of Exandria is unclear but both seem to be potential magical energy but their functions and uses are different. Aether was crackling in the air of Cognoza while in the astral plane while ether seems to be found in objects and people. Maybe ether functions differently on different planes. 

Ley Lines are invisible lines of arcane ley energy that flow around Exandria in a network. They affect the environment and the planes especially where they converge. Ley Lines move and change shape based on the seasons, years, and celestial alignments (winter’s crest, celestial solstice, apogee solstice, etc). How exactly ley energy and ether are related, if at all, is unclear. Avalir traveled along ley lines and the astral leywright that Laerryn created was attempting to create a new ley line that would go to other planes. Interestingly ley energy was able to be extracted using siphons during the Age of Arcanum to craft powerful magical items like the Vestiges. “They were used as a means "of transferring extremely powerful - raw, magical powers. They were placed strategically throughout the world's crust at these various nexus points as a means of creating extremely powerful relics.” “Raw, magical powers” is very close to the way ether was described as “raw, magical energy.” This supports the idea that the ley lines are full of ether and that ley energy is the same as the magical energy that is ether. However, this one line is the only instance I can find that connects the two and its from campaign one when the world building of Exandria was less fleshed out. I don’t think that Avalir is collecting ether from the ley lines themselves since it is mentioned that they barter for the ether and that items are broken down to extract it. It holds that it is extreamly difficult to extract the (possible) ether from the ley lines which is why the siphons were used to craft only the most powerful magical items, perhaps by the Gods themselves. 

Residuum is the leftover residue of magical energy and can be used to enhance magic in a variety of ways. In modern day Exandria, the primary source of residuum is Whitestone due to the residue of magical energy left there after a violent battle between Pelor and Tharizdun. How residuum relates to ley energy and/or ether is unclear but given that Whitestone is also on the convergence of two ley lines and that residuum is residue of magical energy while ether is potential magical energy it seems likely there is a relationship to one or both. Sudde can be refined from residuum or azuremite but was first refined from residuum during the Age of Arcanum. Presumably there were other sources of residuum during the Age of Arcanum since the battle that created Whitestone and the residuum deposit there was yet to have happened. Perhaps battles from the Schism created other sources of residuum or were more common given the Prime Deities still waked Exandria (or even just from the large amount of arcane magic that was being used and created during the age). Given the fact that residuum was around during the Age of Arcanum seems to imply that it was some relationship to either ley energy or ether or both. To try to pull all the forms of magic together: if ether is potential magical energy residuum is the opposite, what is left after that magical energy has been used. 

To summarize:

Ether is magical potential and residuum is magical residue. Aether could also be described as magical potential but it seems to at the very least function differently on the astral plane. It is possible that the ley energy of the ley lines is also ether but that connection is far from confirmed. 

[heavenlyhorses]

describing consciousness and linear time existence as a "residuum" of the material is interesting but I don't entirely agree with the phrasing, one might describe it as an abstraction perhaps but it's not a residue at all. It IS the same thing as the material. This is where I think it would be interesting to compare this to the explanations for consciousness as found in Biocentrism by Dr. Lanza

[autumnhortsnort]

I am sorry if this question has been answered before will draxum show/have any significant role in the future?

His past actions will be super important for the events coming up

Him in particular?

Hes super dead

[eligalilei]

Looking at the Latin cases again though, for real... don't they have an inner sense of continuity? Maybe that's just kind of knowing Latin and stuff.

It's just stems and fewer type differentiators than declensions.

We should be able to refit the class type by moving their edges to fit the differentiators, then you've probably got a vestigial word class system just chillin that would have existed as a secondary sense used for word-formation in Roman times at least, and would have been systematized with the Greek.

Nb: this has likely been done with the declensions to a degree, I forget, but it would be foggy or neologistic, if not conlangy.

Tbh, there's probably a few systems here, the first one is still in use, even in English.

One might consider 'residue, residuum, ...reside', but it's not productive.

edit -- we obviously use them in physics, if faintly, and another bastard of a set in medicine. -us, a, um is the only surviving set in English, though the analogies don't fully carry for all, since we don't apparently use declensions.

God the Latin declensions suck shit, outside of accusative/neuter -m there's no fucking rhyme or reason to any of this. I guess all the silly cases have -ibus.

[raspberry-starship]

Start reading the series here.

Masterlist for this book is here.

Read by scrolling up the tag here.

• PART EIGHT: RESIDUUM •

Residuum (noun) ~

1. A residual product 2. A remaining group or portion

FIVE DAYS AFTER THE EXTERMINATION LEBANON, KANSAS 00:00 AM/PM

Life was not going well for the three remaining characters in Chuck’s story. When he told them that he no longer wanted the brothers to fight each other to the death, they were left with no purpose at all—good or nefarious. They were three ghosts living in a Bunker; side-by-side but completely isolated within themselves.

Sam was trying to keep him himself going by doing research, but he often had to pause to go to his room and cry. Everything was so overwhelming and complicated. Everything was wrong. How was he supposed to fix any of this? What could some old books have in them about killing God? But, then again, what else was there he could do but look through the massive archives in the Bunker? And so, inevitably, he would return to the library, to sit in solitude and read. If he let himself give up completely, then he would be giving Chuck a good show, and more than anything, he wanted to piss that asshole off. He would never stop, just to spite Chuck. When Chuck had made him lose hope, Sam had felt useless and weak. He refused to let Chuck do that to him again, even if it took his whole life to find the answers he needed.

He tried to keep himself from thinking about Sadie, but it never worked. The image of her and Ian’s house, with the food still on the table but all the rooms empty, haunted him. In his dreams every night, he saw re-plays of the things Chuck had shown him. Sam, a demon, killing Dean, Dean shooting Sam in the head, the both of them dying monsters at the hands of Jody and Bobby, impaled on spikes, taken over by madness—name a bad scenario and Sam had dreamt it.

Sometimes he would see Sadie in his dreams. She would appear, and then disappear, like something in his periphery. When she did show up, even just for a second, his first moments after waking up were spent on her—on thinking about what it would be like if things were different.

When he let himself, he would imagine the life they’d have together. He’d move in to her house and they’d go hunting on the weekends. Every night he’d be able to fall asleep with her beside him. What could he say? He was a simple man with simple wants. Though, now that God was the one retaining her from him, any fantasy, even one as simple as that, felt far-fetched.

He mused then, idly, that he had never missed sharing a bed with such a rough sleeper so much as he missed her. What he wouldn’t give to have her flop onto him in the middle of the night, completely unaware of her body. It was funny, but after a little while of sharing a bed, she had begun getting better about staying still.

He was unsure of how he was supposed to occupy a world where she no longer existed. Even when she’d been away, he’d taken comfort in knowing she was somewhere and now where was she? She was nowhere—she was gone. She, and everyone she’d cared about were gone—everyone except him, Jack, and Dean.

Sam was unsure why she even cared about him anyways when all he did was get people killed. It seemed that Chuck only put someone in his path to rip the rug out from under him, right when he’d least suspect it. Sam wondered if this was on purpose. He wondered if he lived only to suffer for Chuck’s amusement.

Sam knew with his whole being that Chuck had not manufactured his feelings for her. He may have placed her in front of him, and he may have done it to twist the knife like this, later, but the ache Sam felt in his stomach did not lie. He was furious that he had waited song—that he’d let fear drive him. He had wasted so much time, and only gotten to be with her for what amounted to a blink in his existence. And every night, he fell asleep thinking about how he’d failed her, and his brother, and his kid, and his friends, and himself.

Dean would sometimes be in the library with Sam too, however, the only company he offered came from the sound of his snores. His liver probably despised him at this point (even more than it had already), but he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was wallow. What did it all mean? What was the point? How had he failed so terribly? Where were all the people they’d lost?

After about a week of mulling it over, he came to his conclusion to that final question. He was sitting in bed with a cheap bottle of whiskey resting on his thigh and drying tears on his cheeks. All of those people were not in heaven.

And during all of that time he spent wasted with silent tears rolling down his cheeks, he began to hate himself more. He hated himself because he wanted to care about the whole world of people he’d just allowed to die, but every time he thought about how upset he was, his mind would meander back to Cas.

I cared about the whole world, because of you.

Just re-playing the words he had said to Dean never failed to send him into a spiral. It didn’t matter which line of the speech he thought of, either. At a certain point, any thought of Cas or of Dean’s memories of him would send him tumbling down into a dark hole. He had to wear shoes in his room all the time now, for fear of stepping on a wayward piece of glass—leftovers from the many times he tried to get rid of his feelings through violence and destruction. Left alone to drown in the mess that was his head, he came to realize that he was not only anger—he was mostly sadness. Regret. Guilt.

At this point, when looking back on his life thus far, he regretted nearly all of it, and felt guilty about his mere existence, but especially, he couldn’t stop going over and over the things he’d said to Cas after Mary’s death. Dean could not stop thinking about how he had repaid Cas for years of loyalty with all of his anger. It didn’t matter that he’d apologized, and it didn’t matter that Cas had forgiven him, because he was gone now. Dean had wasted so much time that he could’ve been using to really examine his feelings, and instead he had shoved them down deep, where he didn’t have to think about them. He had always felt like there would be more time—he would figure himself out later, after they defeated Chuck—but there wasn’t. They had failed, and he had lost everything.

The last thing Cas did was sacrifice himself for Dean, who was left only to wonder what he had done to deserve such a… such a profound bond. Dean thought over and over that Cas deserved better—he deserved better than to fall in love with him. Him? Really? Dean Winchester? That was what Cas loved the most—that was what made him feel the purest happiness? How could Dean have possibly been good enough for Cas? He was useless.

Dean couldn’t suck it up and fight his brother to the death in order to save the whole world, and now all he did everyday was try to miss all of them, only to end up just missing Castiel. He hated himself for it. He hated himself, because he felt selfish, and there was nothing he could do to fix it. He knew now, after many years, that talking about things made them easier to deal with but he couldn’t form any words to explain any of it to anyone, let alone to the two people who were probably missing Cas almost as much as he was.

And then there was Jack. He described himself as feeling fine whenever Sam asked him how he was doing. It was a lie, of course. What he really felt was… empty. That seemed like the best word to describe what he was going through, but it wasn’t always just emptiness that he felt. In times of solitude, sadness would creep up on him like the waves of a slowly rising tide. He knew that Dean and Sam didn’t really know how to deal with their grief and still guide him through his own, and he didn’t fault them for it. Though, this kindness he extended to them meant that Jack was alone in the world.

He walked the halls at night, stuck with living every moment completely aware—completely cognizant of his failure. His naïveté. Every day, when he started feeling particularly interested in feeling something—anything at all—he would go to the garage and sit in Castiel’s truck. He would sit at the steering wheel sometimes, but usually he sat in the passenger side. Sitting there, he would be perfectly still, waiting to hear the sounds the car made—a creak every once in a while as it settled under the dust it was accumulating; an odd, subtle squeak of the shocks beneath the truck bed. Dean used to play music all the time. Jack really missed that. Now, there was just silence. Jack felt like a ghost in that maze of underground tunnels.

At night, he would stop by bunk 25. Silence haunted him everywhere he went—it was his only constant companion. He would sit at Ren’s desk for a long while some nights, just staring at all the things that had been left out on it. A couple pens near the lamp that she hadn’t put back in the jar yet; the small stack of three sketchbooks with that one, overly-stuffed journal at the bottom; her big sketchpad open at the center of the table; her powered-off laptop sitting at the corner of the desk, still plugged into the speaker on her bookcase; and her glasses sitting to the left, untouched since the day he’d brought them home.

Jack dared not move a thing in either place. Not the air freshener hanging from the rearview window in his father’s car, nor the map he had left laying out on the middle seat, nor the loose bobber left in the cupholder. Jack didn’t touch a single one of the crumpled pieces of paper that sat beside Ren’s trash bin, or the glass of water on her bedside table that had evaporated a long while ago. No, when he went to that car or to bunk 25, he was going to live in the past. It was as close as he would get to them now, and it was all he had—he wouldn’t dare mess it up. No, the only change he made outside of returning her glasses was to put Sean Toivonen’s knife where she had always kept it—laying on the back of her desk, up against the wall.

With him, when he was alone and not in either of those places, he carried the keys to the car in his pocket. He spent his days watching movies until his eyes could no longer bare to look at a screen. From all that he’d gathered in his time on Earth, he knew that keys were a strange thing to remember someone by, but his father had been a soldier—material possessions were few and far between, limiting Jack’s choices. The Bunker ran on its own energy, powered by the nearby river and a whole mess of backup generators, so they never had to worry about their laptops or phones dying and never turning back on. Jack was thankful for that everyday, because all the photos he had were digital ones, and if he couldn’t have gotten on his phone, there would be no photos of him and Cas together or any of Ren at all.

Sometimes, when the quiet got to his head too much, he would start to sing. His soft, tenor could be heard outside his door, and every time Sam leaned in to listen, Jack was singing a sad song. In his chest, Sam would feel guilty about this too—he couldn’t even help the two people that he still did have. It all seemed so hopeless to the three of them.

* * *

FIVE DAYS AFTER THE EXTERMINATION SOMEWHERE IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN 01:26 PM

The sun was beating down on the empty sea. Below the water’s surface, in the coming days, the ocean plants would be thriving; coral reefs would soon be regaining their color, and strands of kelp would reach all the way up to the tippy-top of the water. And at the center of it all, floated a dirty, old, white-and-red buoy that had fallen off a fisherman’s ship many years ago. Draped over it was a figure in a tan, pleather jacket—a figure that shouldn’t still be alive.

The strands of light chestnut hair that were not dipped in the water were stiff with salt as they dried under the sun. The slimy, algae-covered rope that accompanied the buoy was tied around her waist, so as to make sure it didn’t go anywhere as she got some rest. Her mouth was open and dry to the bone. She was going to die from dehydration, of all things, and she fell asleep that day with that as the last thought in her head.

Dreams were always foggy and dark to her—it had been that way for a long time now. She liked to think it was her body choosing not to remember them, but she didn’t really know what it was. She had always appreciated this development, which had happened in her teenage years, because when she was young, she’d been plagued with the most horribly-vivid nightmares almost every night. Now, she wished desperately that this sleep would produce an imaginary world for her—somewhere she could get lost, instead of living in the slow agony of her current reality.

For a long while, she was not transported, and then, out of the darkness, a forest began to take shape in front of her. This was far different from any dream she’d ever had before. She could feel her whole body—the roots under her shoes, the beat of her heart, the gentle whisper of a breeze against her skin, and her mouth no longer felt dry. It was night in these woods, and as she continued, she began to feel like she recognized the place.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” A velvety voice said behind her.

Ren spun on her heel to see a woman standing there. She had long, brown hair and wore a beautiful, floor-length black gown that seemed to float around her, almost like the edges of it were made of a dark, thick fog, not cloth. Her hands were folded in front of her, and there was a smile in her eyes as she looked at Ren.

“It’s from your memories.” The woman continued, taking slow steps forwards towards Ren. “The woods beside your old high school. This was the first night you tapped into that power you could never quite seem to explain to anyone else.”

Ren blinked, shrinking back slightly in surprise. “How… how do you know about that?”

“My brother showed me.” The woman smiled, stopping about a yard in front of Ren. “Because those powers came from me, Renna.”

Ren’s lips parted, and all she could do was stare incredulously at this stranger. The woman began to wander away, running her fingers over the rough bark of a tree near them.

Ren glanced around the forest with a frown. She turned back to the woman, saying, “This is some kind of hallucination or something…” But she didn’t seem too sure.

“It’s true, this is a dream,” The woman said, “but I am real. I’ve just been forced to communicate with you this way.” The woman rolled her eyes, like this was a minor inconvenience, but bothersome nonetheless.

Ren let out a little disbelieving chuckle, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand—”

“—My name,” The woman’s voice was firm but not aggressive as she interrupted, “is Amara.”

Ren’s eyes widened.

“You may know me as ‘the Darkness’.” She clicked her tongue disdainfully, “My brother is so good at branding.”

“You mean to tell me that you aren’t the embodiment of absence and solitude and death?” Ren asked seriously.

“No more than he is the bringer of light, the salvation, and the savior of mankind.” Amara replied evenly, un-offended by Ren’s question.

“Pfft!” Ren let out a more confident humorless laugh. “Fair point.”

Amara gave a cautious smile, then walked over to stand right in front of Ren. She was not much taller than Ren, maybe by three or four inches, but still Ren felt small beside her.

Amara raised her hands to cup Ren’s cheeks, “Let me take a look at you.”

Ren stayed completely still as Amara studied her, afraid of even taking too sharp of a breath. After a moment, she saw Amara begin to smile.

“I have seen much about you, Renna James Toivonen.” She began, lowering her hands to either side of her, “Come. Walk with me.”

“But I—” Ren began to worry about sleeping the world outside—she ought to cover herself before she got even more sunburned than she already was.

“Don’t worry,” Amara said knowingly, “this won’t take long.”

They walked in silence for a little while, until they came to the edge of the wood, where there was a marble bench sitting right at the edge of a cliff. The sky above them was crystal clear, and absolutely full to the brim with stars—more than Ren had ever seen before. Far below them, the ocean crashed into the cliffside. This was not in New Haven, but, then again, neither were they, so Ren accepted the variation in this dreamscape without further question.

“This is where I come when I want to pretend I am somewhere else.” Amara sat on the bench, staring out at the horizon.

Ren slowly lowered herself down too, studying Amara’s profile.

“In the real world, I am trapped.” She met Ren’s stare, “My brother tricked me into letting him absorb my being.”

“Chuck?”

“Yes.” Amara nodded, “I’ve been trapped—once more—for a while now. I wish I had never trusted him again.”

Ren looked down at her hands in her lap. She wondered if her being upset with Chuck meant that Amara wanted to destroy the world like before, but then the Darkness spoke again.

“When I was trapped in that place below the universe for all those millennia, I spent a long time thinking.” Amara began, staring out at the full moon as it peeked over the horizon. “See, back then, the only things in creation were myself, the Shadow, my brother, and his archangels. My brother always wanted to create—he was never satisfied with just being, like I was. In a moment of insecurity and weakness—the kind that only comes out when it’s family you’re dealing with—I made a threat to destroy everything he created, just to spite him.” Amara shook her head slowly, muttering to herself, “Foolish.”

“And he locked you away for that?” Ren asked carefully, still staring up at Amara’s face, her gaze unwavering.

“Well, first he waged war against me over it, then I defended myself, then yes.” Amara nodded idly. “To destroy all of his creations was always my first and favorite plan for revenge, but after a while, I began to wonder if I would ever get out of that prison, as opposed to keeping the fire inside me alive by telling myself ‘when I get out, I will do, such and such a thing.’” Amara glanced down at Ren then looked back to the ocean. “You know, for all his talk of creation, I think my brother only really likes one thing.”

“What’s that?” Ren’s voice was barely louder than a whisper.

“Taking.” Amara replied, “He ‘gives life,’ and brings ‘peace’, but it’s only ever temporary. Because he just wants to take it all back. He wants to take everything down to your last shred of hope, until there is nothing left. And I spent a long time wondering why, but I believe I’ve come to understand now.”

Ren swallowed nervously, “Why?”

“Because my brother wants to be in control.” She glanced down at her lap. “The ultimate sign of power is taking someone’s hope.”

Realization dawned on Ren’s face. “Because that’s the only thing only you can give to him.”

Amara nodded, “The only way to completely own someone is to beat them down so much that they give up—they give up everything. The final thing you have left to give up is hope. He can give and take anything else, as he pleases, but hope he has to work for. It’s a challenge every time but if he really puts his mind to it… well, I don’t think there’s ever been a person who’s been able to hold onto it. He always gets you to give it up to him. And that’s what he did to me.”

Ren’s brows furrowed sympathetically.

“Just before I did lose all hope, though, I felt a surge of anger—the last surge of emotion I would feel in that place until the day I realized the door was open—and all of it was directed at him.” She glanced down at Ren’s sad face, “I followed a simple line of logic: if he could not kill me because the universe needed balance, that meant my ‘darkness’ still effected the world he created, even though I did not directly.”

Ren nodded, eyes downcast as she mulled this over, “That makes sense.”

Amara smirked at her proudly, then continued. “In that moment of rage, I used all of my willpower to wish for something.” She paused, waiting until Ren looked back up into her eyes again before continuing. “I wished to corrupt his perfect creations by giving some of my power to one of them. I wanted to open up a tiny wound in his side that would never close up. It would bother him to no end, knowing that there was a piece on the board that he could not control.”

Ren’s lips parted in surprise. She lifted a finger and pointed to herself. “…Me?” She whispered.

“As it turns out.” Amara smiled.

Ren faced forwards, a bit overcome all of the sudden. Forcing herself to swallow, she asked a follow-up question. “What—what does that mean, Amara?”

“I’m glad you asked.” Amara smiled, “You see, I had no idea that my wish came true, which was part of the reason why I ended up losing hope after all. When I was describing in my mind’s eye what I wanted to create, I wanted it to be the most annoying thing for him—something that he would despise but could never, himself, destroy.” She sighed, “I never knew that you were real, Renna. I didn’t think I could do anything but destroy—I didn’t think I was anything but the monster my brother made me out to be: driven by hate and anger and fueled by desolation.

But then, months ago, when he showed you to me, I suddenly realized that wasn’t true at all.” Her voice cracked a little, but it was a joyful surge that threatened to overtake her, not a sad one. She settled down and then continued. “Before that, we had reconciled, and then I had grown to understand his reverence for the Earth. Of course, I don’t love it like he does, but I understand its… better qualities. So, I agreed to make something new with him, and it turned out to be a trap—of course.

My brother likes to talk about how everything in the universe is effected by the yin and yang, or whatever, but he never thinks about us that way.” She sighed, “It’s his arrogance, or his ego—I don’t know which—that tells him we, him and I, are pure beings, but that’s not true. As shown by history, the same as he has the capacity to create, he has the capacity to destroy. So, then I can do both, too.”

Ren smiled at Amara, listening intently.

“And don’t get me wrong,” Amara grew a bit more terse for a moment, “I don’t like it nearly as much as he does—I don’t have that kind of imagination—but I know now that I am not a purely destructive thing. I’m not one thing or the other.” Her voice softened again, and she turned to Ren, “You showed me that much.”

Ren felt the urge to take her hand and reassure her that she was right, but she was also terrified of invading the personal space of a primordial being, even if it was just in a dream.

“Though, I should be clear,” Amara sobered up a bit, “you were already going to be when I came up with this idea. You were already born powerful, and strong, and resilient, but of all the people, in all the worlds, you were the one who deserved the gift I was willing to give the most.

I didn’t know it would be you—in fact, I didn’t know that humans existed until I was freed from my prison. I assumed it would be an angel who received my gift—but if I had been trying my damndest to ‘sully’ his greatest work, it makes sense that it was you. The angels were no longer his favorites, and I wanted you to be the most annoying thing to him in the universe. And besides, it couldn’t be given to a being that drew power from him and his creations, like the angels do.” She glanced over at Ren, “I want you to know that I am sorry you had to get caught up in this petty argument between me and my brother, but I am forever grateful that you exist. You are the key to putting him in his place.”

Ren shrunk back slightly in surprise. “What?”

“The universe strives for balance, Renna. So when there is an imbalance of the two strongest forces in the universe, random series of events will transpire to correct it. That, combined with the power of my emotional state, created you: the tiny black hole at the center of his universe.”

Ren swallowed hard at that—she knew it was meant to be a compliment, but black holes were very terrifying to her.

“I don’t know exactly all of what I gave you, but from what I’ve gleaned from my brother’s mind, both when he showed me and more recently, while he’s been a bit lax about keeping me locked down, I know a few things.” She took Ren’s hand, turning it over in her palms to study it. “Not God, nor his angels can hurt you with their divine powers. You can be beaten physically, but they can never use any of their many gifts on you. No mind-reading, no telekinetic moving, nothing.”

Ren looked down, considering this. Her head jerked up, “Is that why nothing happened when Jack tried to move me that one time?”

“Mm, yes I saw that.” Amara nodded, still examining Ren’s hand, “You’re right, it could be true that this gift I gave you blocked his power, but it could also be a representation of his self-restraint. It could go either way with that one—the good in that boy runs deep, and there is always a limit for people like that beyond which they cannot go, soul or not.”

“Oh.” Ren looked down at her hand now too.

“Mm.” Amara nodded absently.

“Anyways, continue.” Ren quickly added.

“You also have, from me, a vast reserve for stored energy, meaning you can use your powers a lot more than most other people with your gifts. Also, like me, you consume much less energy when using your gifts than is typical.” Amara calmly set Ren’s hand down on Ren’s thigh, then folded her hands in her lap. “You are also invisible to him.”

“To Chuck?” She balked at the thought of that.

“Mm.” Amara nodded, looking out at the moon again, “It seems that he can only see you when he lets you see him.”

“So…” Ren frowned, “…he’s never been able to see me? That doesn’t make sense.”

“His way around it has often been to hide in the world while he watches from afar.”

“So he just like stands behind a tree and watches me?” Ren looked disgusted. “Why? Why can’t he see me unless he’s visible to humans?”

“My brother is—what do you always say? King voyeur?” Amara glanced down at Ren, “He wants to be a spectator, alone, exempt from playing his part in the story. But you, exist outside of the narrative—outside of his narrative. You cannot be watched by him without knowing he’s there, because you are separate from his creation. So, you are invisible to him.”

“Unless I can see him too.” Ren nodded absently, her mind racing.

“Mm.” Amara nodded before adding nonchalantly, “And also, he cannot cause your death.”

“What?!” Ren raised her voice for the first time in this interaction. Amara closed her eyes for a long moment, then turned to give Ren a long, disapproving look. Ren shrunk a bit, sheepishly adding, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.”

Amara sighed contentedly—she couldn’t seem to stay mad at her. “You exist outside of his narrative—outside of his control. He cannot decide your fate in any way, much like he can’t seem to control those Winchesters. Since this is the case, he is also unable to use his powers to kill you. It hasn’t stopped him from trying to use monsters and other humans to do it for him, but he cannot be the cause of your death. He will never be able to see what you will do next, so it’s absolutely hopeless for him to keep trying over and over.”

“Huh.” Was all Ren could think to say in reply.

“It was smart of him to send you to the ocean—he moved the Earth beneath you, so you fell through the portal, and then, on the other side, you would die from natural causes, like anyone else.” Amara sighed, “He sure is a tricky bastard, isn’t he?”

Ren nodded absently, still absorbing all the information.

“And yet…” Amara smiled a little, “…you, a human, are still alive after five days without water or food.”

Ren frowned, considering this.

“Just because he moved the Earth beneath you, doesn’t mean he outsmarted my rule.” Amara said, “He is still trying to decide your fate.”

Ren looked up, “When I was with Michael, from the other world, and he burned my wrists—”

Amara nodded, “—Yes, that was an idea my brother put into the archangel’s head. It was the same with the Prince of Hell—my brother put it into her head that she ought to go towards you, leading her to ‘discover’ you.”

Ren faced forward again, a bit overcome. He really had been meddling with her for so long—she wondered what else he might’ve had a hand in that they didn’t know about.

“And even after all he put you through,” Amara said, “he couldn’t get you to give up your hope.”

Ren blinked, pondering with a bemused expression on her face. After a moment, a very important question occurred to her.

“Am I…” Ren looked up at Amara, “…am I powerful enough to kill him?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Amara shook her head, “But I know the nephilim is. You, are the component they need to form a plan. My brother cannot look into your mind the way he can with them. There is no guessing how powerful you will become, but he can only be subdued by a balance of light and dark, yin and yang, absence and creation, good and bad. Humans are the embodiment of that—your capacity for both darkness and light runs the gamut, just like he and I.

The difference between you humans and him, though you were created in his image, is that you are also able to feel guilt. Real guilt. That’s what tames the bad in the best people—the knowledge that they did wrong and the need to prove that they are better than their mistakes. To prove that to themselves. That’s what humanity has shown me.” Amara smiled wryly, “Who knew a bunch of goofy, meaty little apes would have taught a primordial being so much.”

Ren smiled weakly at that, still a bit overcome. Suddenly, Amara’s hands cupped her face again.

“Do not let him take your hope.” She insisted, voice soft, “You have the ability to overcome. You have the ability to save yourself.” Amara let her go, smiling once more, though it seemed much more sad now—their time must almost be up. “You have all the power inside of you. You’ll know when you’ve reached your full potential, but, Renna, you aren’t even halfway there yet. You will be, but first, you have to push yourself. And you have to get back to the Winchesters. You have to help them, and you will.”

Amara used the words of a benevolent mentor, but her tone was always just barely warm enough to let Ren know that she was trying to be reassuring and kind. A primordial being who spent millennia trapped in solitude and was told all of her life that she personified the lack of anything would take a long while to understand more complex emotions, and Ren understood that. She could be patient with this being, just the same as she was patient with an angel she knew of.

Her eyes flickered back and forth between Amara’s for a long moment, then she threw her hands up and pulled the Darkness into a hug. Amara blinked, surprised by this. Ren’s grip tightened on her, and Amara’s expression soured a bit. She was not used to this—she did not know how to react—but after a moment, the urge to push all feelings away subsided, and she realized that she did want to be shown some affection sometimes. Carefully, she put one hand on Ren’s back, patting her a couple times. Ren chuckled a little at the awkwardness of it, and pulled away to look at Amara again.

“Sorry if I took you by surprise.” Ren sniffed, wiping her nose with her sleeve. “I just… I don’t know. I guess I’m just really sorry that you went through all of that—that he tormented you like that.”

Amara smiled sadly, then lifted a hand to tuck some hair behind Ren’s ear. “I think you and I have both been tormented by the same megalomaniac. Our lives have been too much shaped to his liking—we have been pushed and pulled and trapped by him in many of the same ways. We will make it different now.”

Ren nodded, serious again.

“You have to go, now, Renna.” Amara looked down at her hands in her lap.

“What about you?”

Amara blinked and turned to look at her, seemingly surprised by Ren’s concern. “I’m trapped inside of my brother’s mind, but I will stay here a little longer,” She returned her gaze to the view, “maybe watch the sunrise.”

Ren nodded solemnly, sorry that she couldn’t free Amara right then and there.

“Renna,” Amara’s voice called her eyes back up to the goddess’ profile, “for the first time in a long while, I have hope, even though I’m trapped.”

A hand covered hers. Amara looked up from her lap to see Ren smiling at her. “Don’t let him take it again.”

Amara smiled tentatively, surprised at the immense power those words had when they were said to her by someone else. She wouldn’t forget that feeling.

“Go now.” Amara forced herself to focus before she got too attached, “Go and do what I know you can.”

Ren nodded eagerly, then stood. Amara never told her how to leave this place, she just seemed to know where to go. Her feet led her to the edge of the cliff. With arms outstretched, she let herself fall.

She jerked awake, wincing as she pulled her sticky face off the buoy. A cloud was moving out of the way of the sun above her. She squinted up at it, then decided to wait a while before she decided on a direction to go—she needed to see it move to know which was east and which was west.

As she waited, she thought about all that Amara had told her. It was almost too much to process all at once, but one part stuck out to her in particular. “I followed a simple line of logic” was what she had said. In all of Ren’s years (admittedly, they were few), she had always had a problem simplifying things like that. The first time she was ever really exposed to that kind of straight-line thinking in a way that actually penetrated her thick skull was all that time ago, when Jack had been trying to figure out her powers.

“I mean, you move things with your mind, right? And a lot of things are made up of smaller things, so why wouldn’t you be able to move those specific, smaller things and make something explode?”

She smiled at the memory of that—his fascination with her ability to blow things up never ceased to bring her amusement. She shifted her position on the buoy, then took another look at the sun. It had been an hour now, and it was a little closer to her left. A shaky breath tumbled out of her, and she turned to face the direction she now knew for sure was the west.

Swimming, however, proved to be not something she could sustain for very long. She had no pencil or paper to draw herself a boat, and she was going to soon pass out from all this exertion without drinking any water. After about only fifteen minutes, she had to take a break. The buoy helped keep her afloat somewhat, but she was going to have to start taking off her clothes to lighten the load.

She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against the buoy. It was beginning to feel hopeless, but she had told Amara that she would not lose hope. She then thought about the day before, in the woods, when she had felt Chuck appear behind her before she saw him. She scoffed aloud at herself for even entertaining the foolish idea she had next. Then she remembered something else Amara had said to her.

“You will know when you’ve reached your most powerful, but Renna, you aren’t even halfway there yet. You will be, but first, you have to push yourself.”

That night Amara had referenced at the beginning of the vision—the night Ren pulled the demon from the dark without looking—played in Ren’s mind again. She decided she would entertain the preposterous idea she’d just come up with.

Ren glanced all around her, and saw nothing but blue still. She faced her buoy again with a little huff of nervous breath coming out of her mouth. She closed her eyes and forced her lungs to expand slowly. Under her eyelids, her eyes darted around. Her brows furrowed, her nose wrinkling along with it. She gripped the buoy tighter, her body practically vibrating with all the energy she was using.

The breath she’d been holding tumbled out of her all at once. She turned to her right, and raised a hand out of the water. For a moment it moved slowly through the air like a radar scanner. Then it stopped, as if it were a strong magnet catching ahold of something metal. A pulse-like noise echoed once over the silent ocean, making her eyes open. Her fingers curled slightly, hand still anchored to the same spot in the air. She began glowering at the horizon there.

For a long moment, nothing happened, and then, an antenna appeared. She let out a breathless laugh of disbelief, then re-focused.

“Come here.” She muttered under her breath.

The antenna was attached to a modest fishing boat that was painted red, white, and green. A wicked smirk curled Ren’s lips, and she commanded it to come to her faster. It broke through the small waves easily, barreling towards her until it slowed to gently bump into her palm. She was gaping at where her hand was touching the boat. Pulling it away, she stared at her palm, aghast.

She forced herself to focus again—there was still the problem of actually getting onto the boat. She lifted her other hand to touch the boat this time, closing her eyes and focusing on sensing what was above her.

“Ladder, ladder, ladder…” She muttered to herself, trying to figure out what everything was—this was still very new to her, not to mention there were a lot of objects on that boat. It was confusing and somewhat overwhelming, so she had to stop.

She paddled around to the side of the boat, looking for a little opening in the siding that would signal where the ladder might drop down from. After a moment of squinting, she figured out where it was. She lifted her hand straight up into the air this time, closing her eyes and willing the ladder to drop down to her.

A round bar of wood dropped into her open palm. She gasped and opened her eyes to look when another hit her in the head with a bonk!

“Ow!” She said indignantly to the inanimate object—it was just been a lower rung on the ladder that had bonked her.

She shook her head, clearing it, then looked up at the ladder. It was a ways to climb, and it would be very wobbly, if movies gave any kind of correct indication. It was really high up. She was about to get frustrated with herself when she remembered that she had just fallen who knows how high out of the sky a couple days before and hadn’t broken a bone—what the hell could a twenty-foot fall into water do to her? She didn’t know if that was above or below the point at which water tension makes the surface solid as concrete, but she shoved that thought away.

The first ten rungs were hard—the water on her became heavy as soon as it was separated from the larger mass. The ladder did twist around a lot, but whenever it did, she would just freeze, and hold on tight. It took her about five minutes in total to get to the top, and getting off the ladder was definitely the hardest part. Finally, she flopped down onto her back on the boat’s deck. Breathing heavily, she stared up into the sky, and let out a breathy laugh. It turned into a raucous, rumbling laughter. She had done it—she was going to get there. She would do it.

She shot up to her feet and let out a scream of joy—or as close to it as her desert of a mouth could get—her fists in the air. Then all the blood rushed to her head from getting up too fast and she winced, bending over a bit. She remembered then that she needed to get some water and went into the cabin.

Part of her wanted to feel freaked out by the emptiness of it, but she was too preoccupied. There was a mini fridge in the cabin, and she hoped that there was still something salvageable in it. There was a giant jug of water sitting there, ripe for the taking.

Ren knew that fishermen pause all the time when working, shutting off the engine to save gas and make less noise. She figured that since the gas tank was still a bit over halfway full that Chuck’s snap had happened while the engine was off. Taking a deep breath, she turned the key, and then felt the engine blow hum to life. She grinned, giving another whoop of excitement, less parched now. There was also a compass on the boat, of course. With all this at her fingertips, Ren began to feel a rush of something—something new and overwhelming in the best way possible.

[thattrashcanofthrownoutscripts]

Behold, the vocabulary sheet for the s e c o u n d prologue, because Vicky Hugo was paid by the word and wanted to make sure you knew it 

Again, things italicised and marked with an * are translations from the internet, so take with a grain of salt. And again if anyone has any questions just let me know c:

 Part I 

Mercifully Nothing

Part II

Simper - To smile in a silly, affected, or pleasing manner

Teratological - Abnormal growth or structure

Antithesis - Direct opposite

Debased - to lower in status, esteem, quality, or character; To reduce in value

Turenne - Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne - French General

Retrogression - Return to a former and less complete development

Counterpoise - State pf Balance

Effacing - To eliminate or make indistinct

Part III

Voluptuousness - suggesting sensual pleasure by fullness and beauty of form

Seraglio - Palace of a Sultan

Antechamber - Small outer room that leads to another room; Often used as a waiting room

Bossuet - Jacques-Bénigne Lignel Bossuet - French Orator

Part IV

Stud - A group of animals primarily kept for breeding

Iniquitous - Unjust or wicked

*Instrumentum Regni - Instrument of the Monarchy

Refractory - Resistant to treatment or unresponsive to stimulus

Iron Mask - Was actually a specific french prisoner, his real name is unknown

Tumblers -  Acrobat

Racine - Jean Racine - French Dramatist

Countenance - Look or Expression / Face

Stupefying - To make stupid, groggy, or insensable

Immemorial - Extending since beyond Memory, record or Tradition

Aerostation - Hot Air Balloon ?

Betimes - In good / short time

Part V

Merry-andrew - Person who clown publicly

Coiner - Person who makes coins  (or could be slang for builder?)

Residuum - Residue or residual product

Harlequin - Varied pattern, combination of patches

Caprice - Sudden, impulsive and seemingly unmotivated notion or action

Part VI

*Homo errands fero errante pejor - Literally ‘A wandering bear roaming worse’

*Loi des suspects -  Law of suspects

Battue - Hunt where one beats the woods and bushes to flush out the game

Lees - Sediment of liquor

Epoch - An instant of time selected as a pint of reference

Comitate - Company escort, association, or county

Misprison - Concealment of treason by uninvolved party

Tumbrel - Vehicle carrying condemned prisoners 

[clover-the-awesomest]

This AU is actually one of my favorites. I just never reblogged anything abt it because... Uh... It kinda fell out of my radar and disappeared in my likes for... Many many months. BUT I REDISCOVERED THIS AND NOW I AM GONNA REBLOG AS MUCH AS I CAN OVER THE COURSE OF A FEW DAYS. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-

Also fyi, I'll have a new specific featured tag for this AU as well. It's #residuum residue! (without the exclamation mark lol) So if you're looking for this specific AU in my tags, then here you go!

part 1

(don-trauma obviously inspired by this btw)

welcome welcome, please read the content warnings (lll￢▽￢) ahahahhaaa

index | → (tw: kidnapping, needles, guns)

Ao3 version

[phrasalcards]

They came into English from Latin: ⠀ vacuum = a space continuum = a continuous sequence residuum = a chemical residue