stranded-cryptid

[stranded-cryptid]

when i say i like hiking, i don’t mean “eight mile backpacking trip with special gear and an emergency beacon” sort of hiking, i mean a three mile loop to go look at pretty things and then a huge brunch after.

[stranded-cryptid]

every time I think of Aiglamene gently touching Kirona's cheek and them both flinching I feel so unwell. and then I think of Aiglamene saying "they killed you", turning to Harrow-Nona in anger and I feel even worse. and this moment is so important because their entire lives Aiglamene prioritized Harrow as the Reverend Daughter, but she wanted Gideon to be free, to escape the Ninth. but Gideon is dead and Harrow failed her, Aiglamene failed her. and so she turns to Harrow in anger. the girl she raised and taught and kept her distance from, is back and she is dead

[stranded-cryptid]

there's like 10,0000,0 accounts with names like "Best Heritage Posts" and "Tumblr Hall Of Fame Posts" and "So Funny Hellsite Posts" but where's the shitty posts accounts. where's the hall of fail accounts. i want to see the worst of the worst

[stranded-cryptid]

[stranded-cryptid]

[stranded-cryptid]

couldn't get this au out of my head, like do you see the vision??

[stranded-cryptid]

The way necromancy works is this: Everything in your body — meat, bones, skin, blood — has something like a memory. They remember, in their own way, what it’s like to be alive. Skin remembers the sun. Bones remember what shape they’re supposed to be in. Muscle memory is more than just an idiom.

The way necromancy works is that the caster puts a little bit of their willpower into a corpse to order it to remember how it functioned in life and obey. This is easiest to do with bones, which are easy to trick, and becomes increasingly difficult the more of the original body remains.

To reanimate a full body to your command, you have to have a lot of willpower.

The necromancer checked the map. She checked the map again. She squinted up at the stars, lips moving silently. Then, taking the lantern off its hook, she peered over the side of the little sailboat.

There wasn't much to see. The sea was dark and still as glass, except where the lanternlight turned a patch of seawater a yellowish-green. A tiny fish flitted into the gleam, attracted to the light, and then vanished into the murk again.

The necromancer chewed the inside of her cheek. She sat down again, the boat bobbing gently with the movement, and checked the map one more time. Then she opened the little wooden case on the floor of the boat, which unfolded into a neat arrangement of drawers.

There were. Things. In the drawers. Some wriggled. Others twitched little beetly legs into the night air. A few of them made noises, which ran together into a squeaky, wheezy squeal of horror.

The necromancer twiddled her fingers over the display as she considered her options. Then she grabbed a few of the twitching, wriggling things, held them in her palm and squeezed her hand into a fist as tightly as she could with a squelching noise.

She opened her hand to inspect her work. She breathed the spell into it, and then, holding her hand over the edge of the boat, dropped the spell into the sea.

And that seemed to be it. She sat back in the boat and closed the little wooden case. After a moment she started looking over the map again.

There were a lot of handwritten notes on the map. Each one was connected to a mark and some coordinates; some of them said, "Storm 1457," or "Struck a rock 1483." Others said "Total failure," or “Completely dissolved.”

The note the necromancer seemed most interested in was the one that read, “Battle of Salzstein, 1501.”

The necromancer checked the map. She checked the map again. She squinted up at the stars, lips moving silently, and then she was suddenly thrown down to the floor of the boat as though a giant, invisible hand had crushed her.

Her mouth opened in a noiseless scream.

Two minds were fighting for control of the corpse; on one side was the mind of the caster, and on the other was the memories of bones, of flesh, of skin, trying to drive the caster out.

The weight of that mind was incredible.

Sweat poured off the necromancer’s brow; darkness whorled across her vision. Then slowly, every movement a bone-breaking agony, she pushed herself onto her hands and knees, lungs straining.

The trick was that this mind knew how to obey.

The necromancer stood, wobbled, steadied herself and poured her willpower into the sea. She tried to make hers the full willpower the thing had obeyed in life, the will of the wind, of the sea, of the rigging and the wheel.

Because of course it had been alive. In a sense, they were all alive. Sailors talked of them like they were alive, gave them names, called them “she.”

Sailors knew they were alive.

It was the cessation of that life that interested her.

The necromancer reached out with her power, seized the mind in her hands and pulled, blood and foam flecking out the corners of her mouth as she ground her teeth together with the titanic effort and ordered it to obey.

The sea roiled, hundreds of tons of water moving fast as something deep below boiled to the surface.

A bowsprit sprouted from the water. Then a wood-rotted figurehead of a mermaid. Then inch by inch, yard by yard, the huge barnacle-encrusted bulk of silt-stained timber rose out of the deep, seawater streaming out of every gunport.

For a moment the warship hung in the air like a monstrous fish held by the gills of a colossal fisherman. It dropped into the sea with a sound like a depth charge; the little rowboat lurched in its wake.

The necromancer released the spell. Then she threw up, and passed out.

———

Later, once she had woken, gathered together the tackle box, the lantern, and the map and had scrabbled aboard, the necromancer inspected the undead ship.

There was a hole in the hull where a magazine charge had exploded. This was, admittedly, fine. Undead men could walk with a hole in their bellies; an undead ship could sail with one as well.

Really, she thought, despite the discomfort the spell had worked masterfully.

It was a perfect start.

She unfolded the map on the soggy floor of the quarterdeck, sucked the end of a pen, and next to the last marker wrote “Total success.” Then her finger began to trace down the page to the next.

And the undead ship — unbidden and obedient — shifted its sails and began to move south.

[stranded-cryptid]

new femme-only 7-11 opened on my street

[stranded-cryptid]

I take a two year break from tumblr and when I get back all blogs are deleted and there's just one post from staff that says CROATOAN

[stranded-cryptid]

Afaik it's either those or Aldi parking lot.

ive never heard of places can you tell me more

[stranded-cryptid]

why do we even have legal genders anyway. maybe we should not have those

[stranded-cryptid]

i forgot to post this but which one of you lame ass nerds works at my dentists old office

[stranded-cryptid]

You gotta respec Ianthe's dedication to being a nasty little freak. Shows up to one of the biggest events of her life looking like a wet rag, creepily crawls around in her sister's shadow the whole time they are there, she eats a guy and does not even wipe her face after that, accidentally "breaks up" with her sister, she gets into a fight, loses, meets god and his polycule, does a diy lobotomy, walks around with an arm that's not hers for months before forcing Harrow to give her an upgrade, enthusiasticly talks about the size of her butthole to Gideon in the middle of a fight, saves John and gets fuck all in return, makes friendship bracelets with a corpse, has a romantic reunion with her sister, gets into another fight, loses, talks some more shit, gets into a fight, gets shot...

I wish I could create this much drama

[stranded-cryptid]

You ever hear that old chestnut about how most people neglect the part of the story of Icarus where he also had to avoid flying too low, lest the spray of the sea soak his feathers and cause him to fall and drown? You ever think about how different the world would be if Icarus died that way instead? If the idiom was to Fly To Close To The Sea? A warning against playing it far too safe, about not stretching your wings and soaring properly? You ever think about how Icarus died because he was happy?

[stranded-cryptid]

playing hard to want

[stranded-cryptid]

[stranded-cryptid]

I have a nice placeholder for Alecto on my locked tomb shelf. For now, it's this Barbie movie