#Freeze Thaw Chambers

[newtronic14]

FREEZE THAW CHAMBERS manufacturers india

[bits-and-babs]

⋆ 𝐏𝐎𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐃

Dark!Commander Mills x f!Reader

word count: 3.7K

warnings: 18+ MDNI, Dead Dove Do Not Eat; this fic may be unsettling for some readers. Dark!Mills, Chasing Predator/Prey, fear, tense scenes. DubCon [Non-Con Themes?]. Mentions of body hair, Size Difference/Size Kink. Pussy slapping, unprotected p in v sex, tummy bulge, claiming, cream pie

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Jagged bark digs into the skin of your back through the thin, soft cotton fabric of your shirt. You feel the amber tree sap seep into the canvas, sticking uncomfortably to your back and clinging to you as you try to ease your hyperventilation. The cells of your lungs vibrate with alarm, stinging as you suck in mouthfuls of oxygen.

Get away.

The sunshine thrashes you, your skin slick with the sweat that rolls down your temples. Heat ebbs at the edges of your mind, teasing you with the promise of unconsciousness. Rest. It urges you to let your knees slump, to ease your aching body down to the forest floor and close your eyes for a moment– you can’t. You can’t be certain how far ahead you were or how much of a head-start he had conceded.

It had been freezing when you awoke, the cold biting your skin raw even as it thawed. A low hum deafened your ears, subconscious tears frosting your coarse eyelash hairs together and forcing your lids shut. Panicked, you had pushed the heels of your palms to your eyes in an attempt to melt the frosty glue, feeling something slippy and thick smear across the skin of your cheekbone.

The metal tang to the scent that pierced your nostrils indicated you were bleeding, pain leaping forward in your skull and forcing your eyes open in your discomfort. Like a mallet smashed over your head, the sounds of your surroundings cracked through your ear drums. A deafening siren screamed, blurring your vision with the intensity of its volume. Glass tinkled against the metal shell of the cryogenic chamber as you’d wearily pushed yourself from the leather seat you had called home for an estimated double solar-cycle. Your limbs were stiff, unused and preserved in ice for twenty-four months.

Green flooded your vision as you rose to your feet, a flashing light on the data pad of your chamber indicating your apparent survival following defrost. You’d been thankful to see your vitals displayed across the screen– you had felt so awful upon waking that you were almost certain you had died.

Relief that had flooded your veins curdled into distress when the data pad beeped, a cursor swiping across the pixels to dismiss the notification of your stirring.

You hadn’t given the scene much notice from then, jittery fear shuddering over your skin and forcing your feet forward. The ship that had meant to deliver you to Somaris was nowhere in sight, but debris pieces of the vessel had lay strewn across the forest floor. Orange embers still glowed within the metal of some large slabs of metal.

The realisation had been slow to arrive, the throbbing remnants of a concussion sweeping nausea throughout your body as you stumbled over the fallen trees. The piercing ring of the alarm continues to circle your agitated mind, tormenting you with the sinking reality of your plight. Stranded on a planet far beyond the solar system you had come from, surrounded by alien creatures you hadn’t seen stored in information holo-pads and without a ship to re-enter orbit– all while attempting to avoid the person who you had no doubt was hot on your heels.

Initially, you had assumed that the scaly, lizard-like animals were causing the snapping of the twigs in the thick treeline of the forest. While some were humongous, you noticed some were of a smaller size. Even the creatures that reached your hips posed a significant enough threat for you to avoid them by ducking behind tree trunks and bushes, their sharp teeth dripping with saliva when they caught your scent.

Whipping around at the sound of another ‘crunch’, you’d caught sight of him. Long, ebony hair fell in strands in front of his face; his brows pinched together in a stalker's concentration. His lips set in a grim, thin line, recharge-blaster aimed directly at your calves. The amber sap that had coated your skin from the trees appeared to have drenched his eyes, irises burning a bright honey colour in the brutal sunshine.

You hadn’t stopped running since, chest heaving as the cells of your lungs screamed at the intensity of your pace. The thick fabric of your flight suit, coated in leather around the collar, was heavy to carry, your legs aching as you’d lept over each of the fallen trunks in your way.

Shuddering at the memory of the hours you have spent evading capture, you inhale shakily in an attempt to ease your thumping heart. It threatens to crack your sternum, bludgeoning the bone with its rapid pace. Even though you’d stopped for some time, dread kept your heartbeat thrumming like the wings of the birds on your home planet, your blood rushing in your ears and drowning out the squawks of the flying lizards, their beaks long and sharp, wings leathery with clawed hands at the joint.

A stream trickles nearby, the running water rippling around the surrounding rocks. The breeze is cool against your face, tickling your cheekbones in a soft kiss. Despite the rustling of the leaves, the babble of the small brook, and the distant hiss of the hot spring geysers, it’s utterly quiet.

Foreboding chills you to the bone, wringing you dry.

It feels off, this delicate balance of stillness. Trepidation crawls up the vertebrae of your spine and prickles your skin with goosebumps. There’s an ambience; thick with something sinister. It coats your surroundings and lingers in the air like unsparked lighting, threatening to pounce.

Your hair stands on end, blood freezing along with the beat of your heart when you hear it; the zooming charge of a blaster.

“You can’t run from me forever.” It’s delivered with an alarming deadpan, his even voice ricocheting off the tree line. You can’t tell where he is like this, your neck reeling on its shoulders as you frantically search the area.

Darting your eyes amongst the bushes, you spot him- his footsteps cautious as he picks each footfall carefully. He’s learnt from his previous mistake, ensuring not to reveal his position with a snapping twig.

You swallow back a whimper, skirting around the trunk of the tree. Palm pressed to your nose and mouth; you hear your trembling breaths as you attempt to smother them. It’s terrifying, the level of noise you make. You’re certain your pulse gives away your hiding spot- that the vibration of the very cells of your being is connected to an amplifier and blasting through the woodlands.

In contrast, your pursuer is almost silent, barely making a sound as he picks through the undergrowth. You wonder how it’s possible for such a large man to make so little noise. He’s so careful, so silent that you pause your breath to listen for him better. Where-?

“Sweet Thing…” you hear him coo, a slight taunt to his voice that makes your nails dig into the tree's bark. Your lungs threaten to scream, ankles promising to buckle beneath the suffocating pressure.

Crouching as low as you can onto the balls of your feet, you attempt to shuffle around the trunk's circumference. You’re careful to test each footstep, feeling for fragile foliage beneath the sole of your shoe before setting it on the floor. You swallow thickly, wincing as the dried leaves rustle quietly.

It’s as though time momentarily stops. The rubber of your heel catches on the roots of the tree, slipping down the curved surface and sending your foot crashing through the sun-baked foliage with a sickening ‘crunch.’

Oh.

Tensing up all at once, your muscles pinch with fear. You fail to suppress the heaving breaths that rattle through you now, sucking in mouthfuls of oxygen and wheezing in terror when you exhale.

“Hmm,” a hum sounds to your left, loud to your ears. You bristle, the seams of your person screaming that you need to move, to run. Instead, you stay rooted to the spot, fight or flight bested by the primal instinct to be still. To hide. The atmosphere shifts, the chill of the breeze twisting to an icy disquiet.

Don’t. Don’t move, be still. If you’re still, he won-

They crawl across the curve of your jaw at first, fingertips creeping along the line of the bone before gently grasping your chin. White hot fear holds you perfectly still as his thumb pushes into the soft flesh of your cheek, the scrape of his knuckles biting into your skin as they purse your lips together. With your feeble attempt to shake him, his grip turns solid.

“Got you.”

His gruff voice rasps against the shell of your ear, lips brushing the thin skin and raising goose pimples across your neck and down your spine. Breath caught in your throat, you barely manage a whimper of response– the sound cracks in your vocal cords and sounds more like a startled exhale.

Your resolve fractures into tiny shards as he uses the grip on your chin to tilt your head backwards. Tension cracks between your shoulder blades at the awkward angle, your muscles straining as he pulls them taut. There’s a tensity at your throat, too, the thew connecting your jaw and neck almost pained by the extreme flex.

Amber. The thin strips of gold lay stark against the pitch black of his dilated pupils, irises merely a slither as the abyss swallows them whole. An eagerness paints his expression, even as his thick, dark brows pinch together in concentration. The hulking frame of your hunter stands above you, neck practically folded over to stare down at your kneeling form. He’s scanning your face, assessing each aspect of your visage and taking in the details. The paw grasping at your face tilts it left and right as he searches for… something.

Again, you wail as you feel his thumbprint dig into the soft flesh of your cheek. It braces against the edge of your molars, prints embedding– branding itself into the skin beneath it.

“Shh-Shh,” He hushes you softly, voice somewhat soothing now as he sweeps his knuckles across your temple and over your cheekbone. “Quite the hunt. Chased you all over, 70652. ”

The five digits of your passenger number ring through your eardrums like the alarms that had alerted you to your crash landing. It flits across his expression, a smug, mocking look as the realisation strikes you between your ribs like a wet blade—the pilot. Commander Mills, you had been told before cryostasis, was a skilled enough aeronaut to deliver you safely to the destination of Somaris. It appeared he had failed his mission.

“I- I don’t-”

“Everyone in the cryo-bay is dead,” he speaks over you, matter-of-fact in his unwavering tone. Your eyelashes flutter closed, confident Mills can feel your pulse pump blood through your veins as he trails his fingertips down your jugular. It tingles, the feather-light touch, adrenaline rushing over your body in surging waves. “It’s just us.”

“Hngg-” you mewl as he crouches behind you, dragging his lips gently across your pulse point as he breathes you in- the scent of your evasion. Soil coats you in an earthy smell, the metallic tang of blood from the scrapes of the thorny undergrowth. Mills groans against your jugular, scraping his sharp incisors over the thrum of your heart while savouring you.

“Aren’t you lucky?” He whispers, gravelly voice barely registering at this volume. Mill’s hand slips down your throat, calloused fingertips tracing down your central points. Your throat, your sternum between your breasts. The deliberate trail has your breath quickening, an underlying threat of danger making the hairs on your arms stand on end. “Lucky that I found you before those creatures did? Hmm?”

The delicate intonation of his question is deceptive. He’s not being kind- he’s mocking you. Still, the enamel of his teeth sinking into the concave connecting your neck and shoulder has you crying out, wetness pooling between your thighs.

“Mhm,” he lathes his tongue over the indents his teeth leave behind, splaying his fingers wide as he trails his palm over your stomach. Need unfurls beneath the weight of his hand, twisting and coating your abdomen when his fingers dip just beneath the waistband of the joggers you had been provided before entering cryostasis. “This... Is thanks enough.”

Heat creeps across the apples of your cheeks as you feel his hand slip further into your pants and wedge beneath your panties. You can do nothing but turn your hot face away from him, squeezing your eyes shut when his fingers brush through the thatch of curls across the curve of your pussy. Mills hums softly, your only warning before he’s sliding the pad of his finger through your slick cunt.

“Shit,” he grunts softly, the tip of his nose trailing up the length of your jugular. “So wet for me already.”

Sinews in your jaw ache at the force with which you clench your jaw, trying desperately to swallow down the moans that threaten to bubble up from your throat. Mills is circling his fingertip just barely over your clit now, the delicate touch coiling a throbbing heat between your thighs.

It’s a subconscious response, one that bypasses your brain and jolts your hips forward onto his hand. You don’t mean to, your fingers sinking into the soil beneath you as your body tenses. It sends a bright, hot arc of pleasure through your body and you wail raggedly, the short-lived friction enough to blur your vision.

Mills leaps.

Ripping his hand from your pants, he grabs ahold of your waist in a bruising grip, flipping you over onto your back harshly. It’s so fast, the world careening sideways. When you land it almost winds you, your spine hitting the ground with a thud. Twigs and rocks dig into your flesh, but Mills gives you no real opportunity to complain when he pins your body down with the hulking weight of his own.

Urgency spurs Mills on, pushing his fingers under the waistband of both your joggers and your panties before yanking them down your thighs. He doesn’t bother to remove them, abandoning them over your shins. They bunch around your ankles, movements restricted by the fabric. Your body is trembling, buzzing with something far from the fear he had originally inspired in you.

Mills is huge. Broad and muscular, when he leans his body over yours he almost blocks your whole line of sight. His muscles shadow through the thin fabric of his shirt, sweat causing the material to cling to his damp flesh. The chase across the forest seemed to have had little effect on his athletic frame, the exhaustion that had afflicted you unapparent when he pushes your knees back against your chest.

“Just look at you. Trembling. Panting. It’s gorgeous.” Subtle cruelty drips from his tongue when he praises you, watching your nipples harden as your folds are exposed to the cool air. Honey irises drag over your sopping cunt, greedily lapping up the view. You shouldn’t be enjoying this, so exposed to a stranger you had been running for in fear of your life just moments before.

“Please,” you beg, pathetic sobs cracking in your throat at the desperation to be touched.

“You’re in no place to be directing me, Sweet Thing.”

Despite his apparent refusal, Mills is pushing the trousers of his flight suit past his hips to expose his cock. Again, he refuses to waste time in removing them entirely, removing just enough to ease himself out of the confines of the material. You only catch a glimpse of his cock before he hoists your thighs over his pelvis, but your heart seizes at the sight– an angry, red tip leaks precum that smears across the inside of your thighs, veins protruding across the large shaft. You can’t fit tha-

God, he pushes the pad of his thumb into your clit and you yelp, seeing stars. A steady, wicked throb of bliss pulses through you as he applies pressure to the bundle of nerves, swiping his print back and forth. It’s overwhelming, and you can’t help the way your hips jolt as you feel him attempt to breach your entrance with the head of his cock.

“Stop moving,” Mills orders, hand wrapped around his dick as he sweeps through your folds. You’re sobbing now, tears welling in your eyes as he continues to abuse your swollen clit. He slips again, dark eyes flicking up to your face when your hips jolt upwards to chase his touch, the build of your impending orgasm catching you off guard with how quickly it seems to blossom. The third time, when the tip of his dick notches the inside of your thigh rather than taking root, his patience snaps.

Mills suddenly draws back from you, removing his hand from your clit before bringing his open palm down on your throbbing cunt with a brutal slap. Pain bows through you, blending seamlessly with your bliss and causes a sharp, high pitched cry of his name to tumble from your lungs. In your shock, your hips momentarily still. Taking advantage of your dazed state, Mills quickly lines his pulsing cock against your cunt and drives home, swiftly ramming into you with an abrupt snap of his hips.

A haggard gasp rips through your throat at the sudden intrusion, the painful stretch of his cock cracking through you and making your eyes roll back. Dirt cakes under your fingernails as you grasp feebly at the damp soil, trying and failing to find any kind of purchase to ground yourself.

“Take it,” Mills orders, his gruff voice impossibly reaching lower octaves as he pushes his length further into you. He sits back slightly, his eyes almost pitch black with how his pupils swallow them up as they settle on your cunt. Fascinated, he watches your lips stretch around his girth and paint his protruding veins with your slick. “Make it fit— Shit!”

His crude growl scrapes your eardrums as he bottoms out inside of you, hips flush with your own. You can’t breathe, feeling as though he’s big enough to settle amongst your lungs. You heave shallow breaths, your head pulsing with mind-numbing dizziness.

Then he’s moving. He drives forward at first, reaching depths inside you that make your abdomen ache before pulling out of you. The stark emptiness he leaves you with is short-lived, thrusting forward and stealing what little oxygen you had swallowed down.

Heat simmers through you with each shred of the head of his cock against something blinding inside of you. It gives you no room to think, to move, the cruel pace Mills sets. It’s merciless, pummelling into you and driving you up across the forest floor. “Fuuuuck, that’s good,” Mills groans loudly, holding on tight to your hips to prevent you from sliding away from him. You sob brokenly, hitting his chest with the heel of your palm as you struggle against the orgasm that’s practically hurtling towards you. Christ, his dick is so hard, ramming through you and pushing up against your cervix and causing a delightful ache.

The wet sounds of him thrusting into you are obscene, slick and desperate as he begins to pull you down onto the snaps of his hips. Fat tears stream down your cheeks, collecting in your hairline as you sob his name over and over.

“Look at you,” Mills practically snarls, eyes set on the bulge in your lower abdomen and in awe of what he finds there. Fuck fuck fuck. You can see him, see the outline of his cock driving in and out of you through your abdomen. “Mine.”

Through your haze, you feel Mills press his giant palm against your abdomen, feeling himself twitch and thrust inside of you. His forehead drops against your shoulder, hips beginning to stutter as your walls flutter around him.

It’s overwhelming; the intense pace, the brutality of his thrusts, the way your clit brushes against the pubic hairs on his lower pelvis. You sound fucking wrecked, wails spluttering with each devastating rock of his hips.

“Aha-ah- ohfuck,” you babble, eyes rolling back as your body curls inwards. You’re burning, tightening, your orgasm creeping across the pit of your stomach. “I-I’m gonna-“

Mills groans loudly, and your back arches suddenly when he bites into your collarbone. His teeth sink into your flesh, hard enough to draw blood, and the pain shoves you right over the ledge you’d been dancing over. You cum with a scream of his name, clamping down around his cock as ecstasy surges through you from head to toe. Your vision blurs, hearing cuts out.

“Shit,” you hear him spit distantly, despite the close proximity to your ears. Mills’ hips push up deep inside of you, his body lurching and trembling as he cums inside of you. It feels, even in your altered state of consciousness, like it takes forever. Milking him endlessly, his breath shuddering against the wound on your clavicle as he gently grinds into you to ease himself down from the high.

There’s no movement, no sudden release of your body and flopping to the side. Mills stays stuffed within you, your mixed cum dribbling down the inside of your thighs as he squeezes the flesh of your hips with his palms.

Your sobs of his name had been loud, noisy enough to draw in all kinds of lizard creatures, but Mills seems insistent on remaining like this, scraping his teeth across the curve of your shoulder and beginning to rock into your swollen cunt again.

“There’s a few hours before nightfall,” he talks over your garbled string of noises, overstimulated and exhausted from the hours of running and the brutal way he had fucked into you. “You can take me again before then, can’t you, Sweet Thing? Before we head back to the ship?”

Your body resigns to his question, already far too wearied and submissive to argue what feels more like an order than a question— besides, bliss is already pooling in between your thighs when he pinches your clit with the pads of his forefinger and thumb.

“Good Girl.”

END

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[slimeshade]

Alone

Chapter 1 - Dream

(AO3 link)

–colors swirled chaotically in its field of view, gold against white pushing at one another in an endless war – yielding and formless yet never truly blending into one another, never giving in to the opposing tone. The brightness of this clash pressed and coursed through it, pounding, crushing, filling it to the brim with a blazing hot rage and a flooding terror that left it choking, choking, choking-

The pressure was ripped away as colossal walls of darkness rose all around, trapping it into a barrier of deepest black. Only a few little motes of light remained alongside, floating with no aim and flickering out one by one.

Then, the motes and its surroundings screamed.

Everything shook in turn with that mighty, agonizing sound. Uttering a shrill cry that could easily be its own, made audible in the gloom by the sheer strength of long sharp claws ripping, shredding its chest with the desperate hunger of a starving hunter while more clawing joined from its heart, trying to carve a way out like a caged and terrified beast.

Its own claws struggled, longed desperately to join the battlefield in its thorax. Ached to tear everything apart so the frantic beating and the slicing stopped, so it all stilled into the nothingness that should have been, that should have lasted eternal. But they could do no more than tremble and twitch feebly, bound in place by chain, by spell, by faded strength, by a barrier it could not pierce-

Both stopped at once, abruptly, the moment the last of the lights flickered out and plunged it into complete darkness.

The heat, once a constant companion, bled out of the carved hole in its torso, trickling out like the searing hot liquid that had run under its shell until only a heavy chill remained, shaking it down to its core. Dragging it down, down, down under its increasing weight and freezing touch.

It felt a rush then, and realized that it was falling down in this world of black. Its body attempted to brace itself for the fall futilely; wings long cut off tried to spread, limbs numb and weak from disuse tried to move, and the rest of itself was frozen stiff by the deep echoing emptiness in the gap where its heart once was-

Another massive shake, then lights and shapes and textures and pain, pain, all-consuming pain slammed into its entire being at once, blindingly, overwhelming, spreading the coldness further-

Its breathing rattled a discordant note, doing little to dissipate the black curtain that had descended on its eyes and thaw the spikes of ice embedded inside. Yet it latched frantically on the awful sound, onto each stutter and shake as if it would bring salvation. Release. Peace.

So it breathed the strange air, each inhale battling the weight on its back and each exhale giving out under the pressure. Both producing more of the hissing and clattering noises, in a rhythm that repeated itself on the chamber that was its mask, bouncing, echoing there.

As it remained there immobile save for its breathing and unthinking save for the sibilant sound in its head, the ache in its body dulled, little by little, until it was no more than a dull soreness in its limbs and a single touch of ice on the center point of its chest.

Slowly, painfully slowly, the black curtain lifted away to grant it a view of the world as that world began making sense again. Not completely, for it was in the dark – still so, yet not as purely as before – and no lights shone at all. The air was light and clear, as unfamiliar as this dimness, and it-

It was not hanging. There was a hard surface pushing against it. Or rather, it was pressed against this surface, dulling new pains and waking old ones up from their stupor.

It had…

It was on the floor. It…

It had broken from the seals?

It-

The coldness coiled tighter around its thorax, freezing its vents.

Something had happened. Something had just happened. To Her, to it, to-

Her warmth and Her light had ceaselessly filled it, a constant reminder of Her presence in its eternity. Yet this gloom looked nothing like Her endless realm of gold and the forever warmth was gone, gone, gone-

Alarm rose in its head, tearing the tatters of its mind away from the false lull it had fallen into and waking its limp body up, urging it to stir, to move.

It was bound, still. Its limbs fumbled against the tightness of looping chains, pushing feebly – for it was a feeble effort that nonetheless was like dragging boulders – with a single arm barely given space to move a fraction.

Fitting, that it could not break free from something as simple as the chains put in place to prevent that from happening in the first place.

No, no, it could not give up, should not give in to its weakness and stop here. It needed to get up, to see what had happened. To do something- anything more than lie here weak and broken.

The cold spread further, to its limbs in tune with the beats of its frantic heart, a current rushing with the speed of breaths that pulled at the chains to constrict it, to squeeze the air out and imprison it-

It shoved again with all its might, before the chains squeezed the air out of it. One chain snapped, the resulting lash deafeningly loud against the floor. Another snapped in a similar manner, then another one right as the constraints released around it.

Gone, gone, the pressure was gone and it could breathe, could move-

It was dallying, useless. It had to find Her. It had-

Without the chains to restrict its limbs, it slid its heavy legs underneath itself, and with a push of a single arm, it pushed to sit up in the dark. Old pains flared up as it took up a somewhat more familiar upright position, slumping, head lowered and panting. Its surroundings were a brief dance of dark and light not unlike before, where the only thing that barely stood out in the chaos was its pitch black hand.

(Its mind began drifting away, perilous, into what had caused the pulsing pain and the lack of response in its right arm. But no, it could not get lost in such futile musings.

It needed to act fast. And yet here it was, struggling with each movement as if its body was a stiff foreign thing, never used.

It needed-)

The lights receded into the black like a ghost of something it could not parse, and its vision became clear once more. Rather than dwelling on that –useless, futile– it turned to its left, its body protesting the shift of the plating on its right and the heaviness on its neck and back. Sure enough, there was the faint glint of the greatnail planted beside it.

(-its nail.

It needed its nail.)

A heavy swing of its arm, and its hand reached the cold metal, the blade blunt against its fingers. It turned the rest of itself around to kneel while facing the nail and slide its hand up to grab the handle. The nail seemed stable planted there, so tightening its grasp on the hilt, it pushed itself up to stand with a great heave, one leg first, then the other. Immediately, they threatened to give out, knees and ankles nearly bucking under its weight.

It could not stop, should not stop-

Keeping its grip on the nail gave it a semblance of balance and strength, the pale ore far sturdier than its wielder.

It had to look at its steps as it nearly tripped over the rusting links of chains that had hung from the chamber ceiling, laced once with shining white lines of power, now dull and worthless as they lay strewn across the floor.

(The void ached to run, to act, to do more than shamble around like a dying thing.)

Darkness surrounded it in the outer chamber, just as foreign. A light from the exit served as its lone guide to the outside, beckoning it with every slow and stiff step it took.

Dark, dark, too dark and wrong, so wrong-

Lights from somewhere above assaulted its sight the moment it crossed the threshold of the chamber. But it could not wince, could not cower the way a part of it weakly pushed for. Instead, it looked up directly at the source.

Sources, it quickly realized, as they came from multiple glows scattered on the black ceiling like motes. Only brighter, far brighter, like…

These… was this Her light?

Was this…

No, focus. It had to find Her, that these were there could be a sign of Her presence or could mean absolutely nothing.

Tearing its sight away from the pale lights, it resumed its search.

Nothing since it woke up on the floor of the chamber made sense. Why was it cold? Why could it not sense Her like it always did? Why-

Alone.

Was it alone, now?

It…

It soon enough found that it was not alone in the Temple; a shadowy figure stood ahead and over the surrounding light, small and indistinct in the distance, with only a wash of color preventing it from blending with the dark of the floor and walls or the pale blue from above.

A memory prodded at its mind, one it kept away from – it could not stop to ponder the new figure. Not when the world had shifted greatly, when it had turned into a sharp, alarming opposite of Her realm and Her siftings though its memories, permanently tinged in Her warm gold tones.

As it approached with dragging steps, the figure became clearer against the veil of light, turning to-

It stilled.

The figure- no, this was no regular figure. This- the Princess. It was the Princess who stood across from it in the passageway. The protector of what was once a glorious kingdom, a kingdom that now lay crumbled to dust and irreparable pieces.

It tensed under her steely gaze, limbs stony under the faint glint of her needle and of her silk on the lights from the lanterns.

(Under Her light? Were these specks above Her eyes too?

It did not know. It did not know and it was being foolish in seeking Her glow when-)

Why was she here? Why?

Why-

She should not be here. Not here, not in the Temple of all places, where she was especially vulnerable to Her influence. It tried to hiss at her in a warning, in something that would have been a sign of everything that was wrong with this place. But no sound other than a frantic, stuttering wheeze from its vents came out, too low to be truly threatening.

Even with everything else shattered into a million pieces, it was still without a voice.

(One of the last shreds of loyalty to Him, clinging stubbornly in disgraceful mockery of the knight it had made itself to be.)

One leg gave out under the strain, shaking it at the impact of its knee against the floor. Its nail held planted steady between the stones, its hold turned crushing on the handle to prevent it from falling down on its front. That did not prevent its body from drooping under the weight of its own armor, of its horns and the freezing pain coursing through as its void writhed and thrashed underneath.

(Would this not be a right position? To kneel to the members of the royalty as a greeting?

She was not to be here, not her, not here.)

The Princess Knight took a slow step closer, claws tapping at the cobblestones as she took another and then another. Cautious, eyes never leaving it and tense like her taut thread of silk, which glowed visibly with each movement.

It raised its head to hiss at her again before she got too close, the effort draining what little strength was left too fast, rushing out of its neck like cut strings and letting its heavy head droop pathetically. Making the hiss too inaudible to deter her too, utterly worthless without a mouth to display the danger she was unknowingly walking into.

All because...

Because it was too willful. It was too alive to be what she surely would desire of it, too broken to be of any further use.

It was not the Hollow Knight, and it was not the Pure Vessel that she might have once known before. It was only a warped and traitorous thing, a failed monstrosity that no amount of time and effort would fix.

Even with all of its many lies, its many other failures, it had no voice to scream at her this time. No way to warn her, no way to tell her to leave.

Leave.

Leave, Child. Leave for your own safety.

Leave, or draw your needle and slain the monster.

There was no value in its cracked mask and broken mind, no dignity left in its tarnished nail and its deceitful existence. Nothing to deem worth salvaging, for it was completely unsalvageable.

But the Princess was unaware of its silent pleas, or perhaps unwilling to heed them; she was getting closer still, practically next to it, muttering faint intelligible words as her hand-

It recoiled from the hovering hand, a jerk of its head that made its mask bump against the blade of its nail with a quiet clack.

“Sibling?” was her voice, so oddly low, quiet and almost… gentle? “It’s alright; I’m not here to fight you.”

It was not alright. Nothing was alright and her presence here made everything worse, nearly as much as its own presence was doing.

(It was not her sibling, regardless. The bug that would have been was dead before it was even born.)

The hand –her hand– had retreated back into the pleats of her cloak. “Let go of your nail, if…”

No, it would not. Must not. Must be able to stand again.

So it attempted that, pulling itself up with its lone responsive arm. But it was not enough; its legs twitched, slid, yet its claws could not find purchase on the rough floor. The arm gave up, and the weight of its armor and its existence dragged it down once more, mask almost touching the stone below, its vision filling with grays and blacks.

(Its complete disobedience was further proof of its damnation.)

The Princess- her voice, just her voice, rang muffled between the obscenely loud hissing of its pants for thinned air. “Here,” she continued, shuffling noises following closely. “Let me help.”

It winced at her voice, retreating from that and from the meaning of the words that almost brushed at its cursed shell.

Why would it need help? This was not her battle, but its and its alone. This was solely its role, its existence, and she had no role of her own to play in this all.

(Even through it had lost resoundingly, had lost Her and-)

Leave, leave.

“I won't hurt you, it's alright.”

No. that was a lie. It was not alright, nothing was alright to begin with.

(If it was revenge or a punishment that she had come to impart, it would have walked right into her needle. But this? This help, this tentative offer for an aid better given to a properly living being?

Undeserved. It could not, should not let itself fall into her arms-)

It once again tried to push its limp and numbing legs under itself, for it had to stand up, must stand up. The shell protested every shift and every movement along with its arm as it reassessed the grip on the handle and on the floor.

The Princess-

She had stepped away from it, keeping a wary distance as it finally managed to stand on its feet without succumbing again. Her eyes, dark and glinting, remained strictly on its shaky form and her white mask gave a faint glow under the lights above both.

White mask, white glow.

White, white.

Every part of it tensed under that glow, as realization crashed upon its head like the clash of steel against steel.

She had always manifested as a sun, always trying to bathe it in Her soft, gentle touch, or scorching it under Her mighty, wrathful glare. Sometimes doing both at once, if provoked enough.

It was a fool for believing that She was dead, for believing She had escaped into reality when this was just another of Her conjurations.

Another slip, another mistake. It had failed again and the dawn would sooner break, would soon be freed-

“Sibling?” her voice – or Hers? – drew it back. It did not look at the Princess, did not look at the brightness of the sun, weakened as that currently appeared to be.

It would not. It would only endure Her, for as long as necessary.

Stay still.

Do not react.

Do not give Her anything.

Do not let Her light out.

Why would She dream Her own death? Why create a vision of Her own end, when She strove so strongly to live, to break free from Her constraints with or without it?

That did not make any sense. She would not have done that, not like this or-

She loathed the dark. Found it repulsive enough to have tried, more than once, to separate it from the dreadful black sky in an effort to save it, as well as Herself.

It was the dark, it was not to be saved for anything or anyone else, for it was the grave specifically tailored for Her.

(And yet it was not fit-)

“Hollow Knig-”

The words, steely cold words that drove nails into its heart, remained unfinished as it lunged towards their source, void boiling and pushing and pressing to tear, to claw and smother the title that should have never been placed upon it-

The red and white blur was faster, of course she would be, and so she – She, she, that was the sun disguised in the Princess’ form – avoided the mindless swipe of its claws, and remained out of the way as the floor greeted its body with a deep embrace that crashed and shook its armor, its mask, its shell until the world was nothing but a great wall of white, flaring pain consuming it entirely.

(Shell melting, inflamed flesh pushing, nerves scalding, liquid sunlight pouring and flowing and burning, burning, burning it all-)

The blankness receded in uneven patches across its sight, giving way to blacks and blues and then to indistinct shapes and forms. One quickly stood out, pushing it to lunge and crawl away at once. Opposing forces, clashing in its core and leaving it trapped in a storm of its own making.

(Why was it even doubting? This was Her, She was back and this was not a new trick.

This was its chance to set things right, to drag Her back into the chamber and into its seals and never let Her out.

And yet, and yet-)

All it managed was to lift its head. Even that single movement proved to be a struggle; wobbly, neck stiff and threatening to bend down, it watched Her – or her? – fall from a restless motion and into a silent, seemingly calculating pause that captured it, pinning it down.

(-it could not act, soaked in a thick, cloying layer of dread.

Dread of…

Of…)

The pause stretched on and on then, catching it in a frozen moment unperturbed by anything as the world thinned out at the edges of its sight until-

She turned away, sharply snapping the stillness, and threw her needle with more strength than it deemed necessary, before then disappearing with a yank of silk into the white from the outside. A clear and perfect imitation of what it had only seen through Her peeks into the world beyond.

She…

She was gone.

It was alone again.

(No, not really. It never had been.)

The void retreated in a great rush, its strength rapidly blotting away, draining out of a neck that could no longer hold the weight of its head. It let its trembling form lie down on the cool floor, too weary to do anything else. It did not need to; it was over, she was gone, gone, and it-

... wait.

Cool?

Its ragged awareness, forced into a halt by the sensation, turned solely towards the cobbled path underneath. With a jerking motion, it turned its hand palm down to run it over the rough surface, ignoring the pain that simple movement caused in its wrist. The pads of its fingers and the tips of its claws felt the vibrating roughness of the bumps, the depth of the cracks and the dents in the stone that did not burn or even warm it.

The floor was, indeed, cold. Almost pleasantly so.

This... this was new.

She had never liked the cold. Everything around Her was in varying degrees of warm, often suffocating and inescapable, only becoming gentle in the moments when She tried to be kind to it.

The sun did not exude coldness, ever. Why was then...

First Her demise, now Her lack of warmth.

Was this a new trick of the light? Or...

Its heart lurched.

Was this-

No, no, this had to be a dream. This had to be a new twisted creation of its mind, a new weakness She had found, ready to exploit any moment.

(If it was not, it had then driven the Princess away due to its faults, exercised its will over hers, tried to hurt her for wrongs that were only its own.

That was for the best. That was for her own good, her own salvation.

She would not come back. That was better, she was better off without it-)

It took a deep breath, enough to put pressure on the plates of its thorax, to set the wounds scoring it ablaze. The coolness below was no longer a curious thing. That was a taunt, was another attempt to break it and it was falling, falling into Her trap.

So it-

It remained there. Not as a surrender, no, but instead as an act of resistance.

It could not be impassive, not anymore - it was too damaged to do that. But it could resist Her, could still give Her nothing, until the true nothingness of death claimed both at last.

(That admission had hurt, once in the past, and doubling as the final proof of everything that was wrong with it.

Now? Now that realization gave it strength; it might be too alive to be truly bring about Her death, yet they both had been buried together in a larger grave. She belonged to it to keep here, until both their lives turned to dust and their cores were completely emptied.)

It ignored the cold, the multiple lights, the muted hiss of its slowing breathing, and waited. For the darkness to come – the true darkness, the one only real death would bring.

The darkness that, it briefly hoped, came for it in a blanket that clouded its senses and shrouded it into black.

[pizzatowerepisodes]

Season 3 episode 12: Peppino to the future (sorry I ain't good at doing episode titles like this)

the episode starts with Peppino receiving an order from a customer, when he goes to make a pizza he notices he's out of sausage! so he goes to the freezer to get some more but forgets that the door hasa habit of closing on its own and gets locked in. Peppino hears the freezer door shut and rushes to it, pulling and tugging on the handle to try and get it open but to no avail. Soon he freezes into an ice cube, we cut to outside and we watch time fly by all the way to the future! the pizzeria has been converted into a high tech lab and he's in the middle of being thawed out. When he wakes up he's in a chamber filled with white, a robot comes in and welcomes him to the year 2998, Peppino thinks this is all just some prank set up by The Noise or something, but when he walks outside he sees a futuristic utopia and screams his EEEYAAAAOOOOO type scream and is terrified. Not knowing where Gustavo or Brick are he runs around the city looking for them, he bumps into what he thinks is Gustavo but it was just a robot that looked similar to him, it says its name is GU5-TAV0 and it introduces its companion, BR1-CK. The Italian chef, now accompanied by his new found mechanical friends looks for the other bosses of the tower, only to find more robots in their places. Devastated, starts crying and wishes he could go back in time, GU5-TAV0 tries comforting him but fails, since it is a robot that doesn't have human emotions. Peppino suddenly runs off again sobbing, he trips, hits his head and wakes up in his room. it turns out that whole thing was a nightmare, he remembers he watched a movie with the exact same plot and swears to never watch sci-fi movies ever again and the episode ends. (I TRIED MY BEST HERE SORRY)

.

[luna-redamancy]

Fires of the Heart Part Three - Thorin x F! Reader

A/N: I was working on part four and I was zooming around my Tumblr trying to find part three and this whole time I realized that this was sitting in my drafts and never posted, ohmygoodness you guys. I’m so sorry! I hope you all enjoy this, and I plan to get part four finished up later this week! 

Part One, Part Two, Part Three (Here!), Part Four 

“The winter clouds are the only thing keeping her from the view of the council, the only way she is safe.” Balin thought out loud, eyes glancing toward Thorin before back to the fluffy thick clouds. Even he could feel the chill as he stood at the edge of Thorin’s bedding chamber, the stone floor ending right at the tip of his boot and the open abyss of the night sky would be frightening to anyone other than a god. 

There was another reason for the Council wishing for heat to be returned, their own chills in the deep night that yearned to be soothed and forgotten. Not even they were spared from the biting frost.

“Safe?” Thorin raised a brow, how could this be keeping you safe?

“Thorin, do you really think the Council would have let her live this long if they could find her?” Balin’s words struck a chord with Thorin, his face freezing as he realized how right Balin was. 

They would have never let her live in peace, humans were a liability in their line of work. If he truly did re-light the hearth and let the warmth of his efforts thaw the frosts below, then how long would you have? Hours? Days? Months? Or barely minutes?

And how long until he found your burial site? If they even had the respect to give you one and to not let you rot where they slayed you.

Shaking his head to dispel those thoughts, Thorin took a deep inhale through his nose. It was the only way.  “The quickest way to find her would be by lifting the storm and using–”

“And get her killed before we even arrive?” Balin scoffed, shaking his head, “Thorin, I don’t think you understand the constant surveillance that’s been placed on the storm.” 

Balin beckoned him over with a wave of the hand, gesturing down to the clouds where several guards stood in a circle- lying in wait. 

“The minute that those clouds go away, that the task force can enter the world undetected, their search would begin. We would be behind them, and inevitably they would find her before us,” Balin shook his head. “No, we need to find another way.”

“I’ve never realized…” Thorin felt disbelief course through his system as he crouched down, now sitting at the edge of his chambers, feet dangling into the atmosphere. 

“It’s all just a game to them,” Thorin frowned. “Our livelihoods, our duties to the humans, our... Emotions. It’s all just a sick game,”

“You weren’t the only one to have their fated one taken from them, Thorin,” Balin sighed, sitting beside the younger god as they stared at the task force.

“Is that why you wish to help me?” Thorin asked, side-eyeing the older god, eyeing the scarred mark on his arm. Balin never spoke of how his mark got so marred, how his flesh was damaged beyond its supernatural healing abilities, his soulmate mark nearly impossible to make out. But now, as the two sat, Thorin felt sorrow etch into his heart as he realized the reason was much darker than he ever could’ve imagined.

“Aye…You deserve a chance, lad. A chance I will help you fight for.” 

The two fell into silence as they pondered their plan, ways to distract the guards, and how to find you before the task force could.

“Curse this damn wretched storm,” Your teeth were chattering as you jolted out of bed, racing towards the window that blew open. The latch somehow came loose, the two doors of the large window now pushed open, the breeze pulling whatever warmth you had out of your bedroom. Pulling it shut, you grabbed your robe belt to tie the handles so it couldn’t open again even if the latch failed again. 

Sighing, you looked out on the streets as the snow got pushed around by the harsh winds, spiraling up before dispersing as another large gust swept it away. 

“The gods will forgive if we repent,” You muttered, recalling the clergymen from the Townsquare the other day. 

“Repent for what, existing?” You scoffed, feeling another shudder run through you as you slunk back to bed, desperate to try and get an ounce of warmth back on your skin. 

Burrowing under two blankets and three quilts, you mentally prayed for sleep to fall upon you again and take you to the fantastical dreams of being with your warm beloved in halls of stone.

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[mareenavee]

A vaguely similar ask to yours, but with a twist. You are in charge of designing a new TES V location. What will it be? Imagine that resources, models, and modding capabilities/skills are no impediment. What do you feel is missing world-wise in the game, and what sort of place would you make? Feel free to adapt as a writing prompt as well =)

Hello friend!! Thank you for this!! It's fun and definitely took a bit of thought. So without further ado...

I'm thinking of a settlement, maybe high up in the WInterhold mountain range. The bones of something ancient. Forgotten at this point, abandoned since times out of mind, but still made of sturdy stone, so the foundations and some crumbling ruins would still be here. But these are not Nordic ruins... there is no entrance, no grand burial chambers. Nothing underground. All sits in the light, on the surface, surrounded by fresh fallen snow. The architecture feels more or less like it's been inspired by the grand structures of the Chantry of Auri-El.

Things feel smaller in scale here, not just from the decay, but as if it was simply an average town, once, built around a shrine. The houses were hewn from stone too, masterfully -- but not quite to the extent the Dwemer would have taken this craft. Things had been carved in smoother arches, not quite as angular, nor inlaid with as much metal. Any metal that remains is traditional moonstone, gleaming even now in the sunlight that washes over this place.

There are strange markings on some of the stones in a language that seems only vaguely familiar, as well. Maybe it was seen this in a few books before, ones Urag gro-Shub had paid handsomely for. This, then, must once have been a settlement held by the Snow Elves of ages long gone. A place they would have called home.

The center of the village is marked by a shrine least effected by the passage of time. Two walls still stand. What tiles of the floor remain visible are cracked from the rime of ice thawing and freezing again in seasonal cycles, the pigment all but gone from them now. The moonstone shrine has been carved into an image of perhaps the sun, or a swirl of magic, or the shifting of time itself -- the untarnished symbol of Auri-el, same as what Gelebor protected in the Forgotten Vale. Even its marble pillar shows only the barest signs of weathering -- inevitable in the biting wind of these mountains, perhaps. Or it could be that time is slowed around the thing by the will of a God.

Concentric from the shrine are avenues between crumbling buildings. Partial white stone walls still stand, halfway buried in snow. Clear signs fireplaces. Of civilization. In each of these houses, bits of pure white pottery can be found if one digs into the season's fresh snowfall into the gravel below. These, too, are marked with the language of the Snow Elves in ash grey paint.

Climbing to the top of one of these broken buildings via a veritable hillock of snow, and looking down, the placement of these houses cause negative space for paths that mimic the symbol of Auri-El. As far as can be surveyed, considering the weather and the ice, there are no elven remains here, not in this place. A long time ago, they who had called this village or town home ventured deep underground to save themselves. They would not return here again.

[warmothered]

❝ you're not alone . you'll never be alone . not as long as i'm here . ❞ - trynd

» — >  ⌜ PROMPTS & IC ASKS⌟ , always accepting

— @windchaser

The ice is not pain; it is surrender. She repeats the words that stuck with her as a mantra while making the trek back to her village until they are meaningless. If they run, they will survive — the boy's voice, pained as it sounded, elicited in her only rage. The anger had been fuel, however; it kept her warm and it kept her going until... until...

There is no village in the place she once called home. There are remnants, smoldering pieces of burning buildings, the wreckage that survived a fight, if haphazardly arranged pieces of wood and stone could be said to have survived anything. There are bodies, too — people she had known her entire life. Hati, who would braid her hair while telling stories of her mother's youth. Sigurd and his daughter, Brina, a girl less than half her age who saw in Ashe something to aspire to be, despite not being Iceborn herself. She loses count. The familiar faces grow hard to bear, but the unrecognizable ones are no better; still she explores every nook and cranny in a last, desperate hope someone will have survived. Someone had to — she couldn't be the only one.

The ice that lodges in her chest and freezes her gut is worse than any winter. She thinks it will never thaw, that she might as well sit in the snow and become one with it, a corpse in waiting to accompany the already fallen. 

When she opens her eyes again, she's alone. Even the remains of her tribe are gone, as if they never existed but as a figment of her imagination. She is the only one who remembers them. Her mother had a reputation, but all others... they live on only in her memory. Why is she alive when they are not? How can she withstand the Ice Sea without another soul to accompany her? She hunts alone, when hunger gnaws at her, and fails without the support of her pack. She sleeps alone, and the cold gets to her like never before. The worst part remains the cold within her. It will never be summer again, she is certain; not to her, not even as the seasons change. To be alone is eternal winter, icy and unforgiving.

The dream — the memory — startles her awake. With a jolt, she sits up, and slowly readjusts to reality: the softness of the furs that keep her warm, the shelter against weather her home provides — the sound of her husband's breathing, as he wakes after having his sleep disturbed. Ashe should feel sorry, but she is grateful. Not all fire in the world could thaw the icy stab of loneliness that remains with her; no flame would be enough, but Tryndamere is.

He becomes the lifeline she holds on to; the one Ashe wishes she had, in the dark, unforgiving cold of complete loneliness she had faced once before. In the candlelit penumbra of their chambers, she thinks, not for the first time, nothing could be worse than that feeling — one she had not had to experience in years, except for the dreams and memories that did not let her forget. So she lays down again, arms tightly wrapped against her husband's larger form, holding on as if Tryndamere is indeed all that stands between her and that sensation.

The warmth of his body gives her solace, the sound of his heartbeat soothing the relentless ache within her own heart. He knows what this is about. The dreams are not frequent, not really, but they bother her from time to time; Ashe doesn't need to explain it again for him to know (he does not need to hear it to know what she needs to hear, either).

❝ Promise me, ❞ Quietly requested more than demanded, her face buried in his chest. It's foolish to even ask, she knows; what promise could he offer that would matter more than an oath sworn and sealed with blood? They belong to each other, now and always; and yet, she needs to hear it. ❝ Promise me you won't ever leave. Promise me nothing will take you from my side. ❞

[autumnalwalker]

Heads Up 7 Up

Thank you for the tag, @druidx (albeit under the guise of @nine-blessed-hero).

Passing the tag to @blind-the-winds, @ceph-the-ghost-writer, @papercutsunset, @nightshadetheghost, @cljordan-imperium, @alesseia, @writernopal, and an open tag for anyone else who wishes to participate.

Pulling this from the next chapter (15) of Empty Names. Doing 7 paragraphs instead of 7 sentences, so hiding this one under a "Keep reading" line.

“Where does all the ice come from?” Ashan asks as the testing chambers close, leaving said ice to safely melt into the chamber’s cleaning system.

Lacuna tilts her head to the side.  “What do you mean?  It’s an enchanted ice spear; it freezes things and makes ice.  Well, maybe more like it manifests the idea of freezing things?  In theory, based on the simulation results it should be able to totally encase someone and just put them in stasis to be thawed out later no worse for the wear, unlike normal ice.  Haven’t figured out an ethical way to actually test that though, so probably best not to try it.”

“But where is the water for all that ice coming from?”

Lacuna shrugs.  “I don’t know, same place as your barriers and fire?”

“My conjurations are all simply energy manipulation,” Ashan corrects that terrifying answer.  “The barriers are pure impartations of kinetic friction onto an area of space with no material component.  The fire is the controlled ignition of the oxygen in the air.  The frost and mist that often forms around me is merely a side effect of rapidly lowering the ambient temperature to fuel those other processes causing the same changes on humidity the same as any mundane overnight cold front would.  What it is not is a violation of the conservation of mass.  Or at least, not beyond the limits of an anchor world’s ability to stretch.”

“Ooohhh, so that’s the difference between conjuring and summoning,” Lacuna says.  “Fascinating.  I’ll need to go take a look at some of the source rituals the program drew from for the enchantment sequence later.”

Ashan dearly hopes that whatever that spear is doing is only a variation of summoning.  But even then, where is that water being summoned from?  An elemental plane?  The nearest ocean?  A random comet orbiting the solar system?  For all any of them know it could be ripping the bodily fluids from some unknown, distant victim, killing someone every time the spear’s magic is used.  That last one is highly unlikely with the Autogenesis Principle in play, but the point is that Lacuna is casually experimenting with magic that would normally take experienced mages and enchanters decades to master without even knowing the answers to such basic questions about how it works.  When Ashan asked her several days ago what such complex, high-output rituals use as a power source for their casting without a strong ambient aether field, ley lines, or other such element lacking from an anchor world (even a pocket dimension with loosened anchoring such as this), she had given the frankly horrifying answer that the power generation issue had been solved before she joined the project and she had never gotten around to reviewing that part of the legacy code so she just took it as a given that it worked safely and stably.

[newtronic14]

FREEZE THAW CHAMBERS manufacturers india

[invisibleraven]

22. A and B watch the winter constellations appear in the night sky for Rulie?

Reggie blinks his eyes awake, feeling groggy and cold, the reanimation process still thawing him out. His pod finally opens, but his legs are coltish, so he stumbles more than exits gracefully, but everyone in this chamber is in the same situation, so there's no embarrassment to be had.

He nods to those around them, letting his eyes adjust to the ship's fluorescent lighting, trying so hard to mimic sunlight but falling short. He didn't think he'd miss the sun this much honestly. But he knew what he was signing up for.

When the first transport vessels to start a new colony millions of light years away first started popping up, Reggie thought they were a hoax. But more and more people started going through the process to board these new arks. To escape their dying planet, and hopefully start off anew in a different galaxy.

Reggie had finally given in, putting his name down, never thinking he'd qualify. But he had no life here, no one to leave behind, so why not start a new adventure? He'd been accepted, gone through the training, and endured the uncomfortable cryosleep process. Now here he was, a lifetime away from everything comfortable and familiar.

"Reggie!"

Well, not everything.

He and Julie had met during the training process, becoming fast friends as they bonded over the terrible freeze dried food, the itchy uniforms, and the prospect of going to space. Most all her friends and family had gone through the process already, and she was excited to see them once more. Yet she still was running toward Reggie as the ship docked.

"We're here, can you believe it?" she asked.

"Not really, still feels like a dream," he chortled, glancing back at his pod, like he expected to see his body still there, still dreaming. "You off to find your family?'

"In a bit, we have to endure intake first," Julie replied with a groan and a roll of her eyes. "They're in Europa quadrant, so that's where I'm putting down as my homebase. What about you?"

Reggie shrugged. He didn't really know anyone else in the program, nor did he have someone special waiting for him in the colony. "Maybe I'll just leave it up to chance. See where I land."

"No way, you put down Europa too! You can meet my family, and then it'll be easier for us to hang out after we do our assigned labours," Julie insisted, linking arms with him. "Now, let's go try not to fall back to sleep during intake."

They did end up living in the same quadrant. Julie with her family, and Reggie in a nearby bachelor suite, but was told that should he find a lifemate, he would be assigned to reside in their domicile. That suited him fine, he had quite enough of living alone back on Earth, though he wasn't sure how dating worked out here in space.

He and Julie met up every evening before meal times, catching up on their days. Julie was working in the gardens, helping to grow Earthen foods so that the colony could be self sustaining. Reggie worked in the school, helping the younglings learn mathematics and writing.

"Are you busy tonight?" Julie asked one day.

"Am I ever?"

Julie scowled at him. "Well you seem to be bonding with the music teacher, Luke, and the dance teacher Alex, I figured maybe you three would have friendly plans."

"Luke's mate Bobby is ill, so he has to attend to him tonight. Alex has a date with Willie, the art teacher. I'm all yours," Reggie replied.

"I like the sound of that," Julie purred, making Reggie blush. Since they landed, Julie had been subtly flirting, but never took it further, so neither did Reggie. Maybe he should go about changing that, and agreed to meet Julie there in a few hours.

It never really got dark in the colony, there was always the hum of the artificial lights, even as they dimmed for evening time. Enough to see, so Reggie didn't trip as Julie pulled him towards the gardens that night. Past the blooming trees, laden with fruit, past the rows of sprouting carrots and onions.

They stopped at a little alcove, it was pitch black aside from a faint beam of light from the hallway they travelled down, and Julie pushed Reggie to sit. Then flicked a button, and the metal wall before them seemed to open, showing off the sprawling night sky before them. "Wow," Reggie said in a hushed whisper. "I've never seen so many stars."

"They're so different from the ones back home, but still beautiful," Julie said, leaning her head against his shoulder. "We'll just have to make up new constellations I suppose."

Reggie pointed to a cluster of stars to their right, "That one is Dahlia, after your favourite flower."

Julie grinned up at him and pointed to another, "That one is Solo, after your hero."

"He does deserve his own space in the heavens," Reggie admitted. They kept naming constellations, breathless with laughter as the reasoning grew sillier and sillier.

Julie giggled, then turned her face up towards his, a faint trace of heat radiating from her skin. Reggie gently tucked a curl behind her ear. "They're beautiful Julie, thank you for sharing them with me. But... you're still the brightest star in the whole galaxy."

Julie's only response was to pull him down for a kiss, sweet and glorious, and Reggie didn't care much for the view beside him after that, all he needed were the stars reflecting in Julie's eyes.

[poptimus-prime]

🌻

When I was in high school I got a full-ride to a summer university thing where I took a microscopy class (basically we looked at REALLY small particles and tried to synthesize tiny particles ourselves. I made a minor discovery in that one method of gold nanoparticle synthesis can be performed by freezing the solution and then thawing it rather than heating it on a hot plate. But that is NOT The Point of this ramble.

The university we were at had a 2 million USD transmission electron microscope (TEM.) Part of how it works is there is a vacuum chamber where the sample is held, and if anything is dropped in it, the microscope has to be shut down for weeks and it cost like, tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to clean.

Our professor looked all of us square in the face and she said “if you break it, I’ll kill you. If you break it AND you don’t tell me…I’ll kill you slowly.”

Needless to say all of us asked a lab tech to put our samples in LMAO.

[teachingmycattoread]

Things We’ve Yelled About This Episode #3.6

Hamlet, William Shakespeare

The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien

Hamlet (1996) - Kenneth Branagh

Kenneth Branagh (imdb)

Hamlet (2009) - David Tennant

David Tennant (imdb)

Hamlet (2016) - RSC, Paapa Essiedu

Paapa Essiedu (imdb)

Othello, William Shakespeare

The Lion King (1994)

Withnail and I (1987)

Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard

Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead (1990)

Gary Oldman (imdb)

Lewis (2006-2015)

Hamlet (2018) - Andrew Scott (youtube)

Andrew Scott (imdb)

Minecraft

Sparknotes

The Trolley Problem (wiki)

Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare

Much Ado About Nothing (2011) -  David Tennant and Catherine Tate

Catherine Tate (imdb)

Illyria (wiki)

Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare

Kronborg castle (wiki)

The Minack Theatre (website)

Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir

Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus (wiki)

The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole

Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand

Peredur (wiki)

Richard III (wiki)

The Princes in the Tower (wiki)

This tumblr post about confession

To Be Or Not To Be, Ryan North

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! Hamlet, Act I Scene 2

Parks and Rec (2009-2015)

Leonardo Dicaprio (imdb)

But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part

And each particular hair to stand on end,

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine - Hamlet, Act I Scene 5

I have of late, but

wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth - Hamlet, Act II Scene 2

This post

To thine own self be true - Hamlet, Act I Scene 3

Malvolio - Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare

Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them. - Twelfth Night, Act II Scene 5

The difference between comedy and tragedy is listening to the women - this post

King Lear, William Shakespeare

The Muppets

Statler and Waldorf

Gonzo and Rizzo

Ian McKellen (imdb)

Patrick Stewart (imdb)

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! - Hamlet, Act V Scene 2

House of Finwe (wiki)

Metaverse

The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, Becky Chambers

Would that be fucked up or what? (meme)

Manic pixie dream girl (trope)

Queer Lit, Manchester (website)

The Mandalorian (2019 -)

The Cat Rating

5/10

What Else Are We Reading?

The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien

Snowcrash, (1992)

Notes From A Crocodile,

Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir

Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir

What Abigail Did Last Summer, Ben Aaronvitch

The Last of Us (2023 -)

Next Time On Teaching My Cat To Read

The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie

[caterva]

@warpaiint || plotted starter

“Shit, shit-!”       Boots beating against the cold floor, Bill sprinted as fast as he could from the wave of figures behind. Strangers and coworkers mingled together, making the most horrible noises as they washed after him like a flood. Zombies, it turned out, were far worse than those old films and books could have prepared him for.       And I thought fuckin’ biofuel converting killer robots was gonna be th’ worst thing this year!       “Fuck off!” He turned halfway on his heel, chucking his empty rifle into the crowd; wasn’t like he’d find any bullets in here, and he didn’t need the extra weight.        Wasting no time in stopping, he let his momentum slam him right into the door at the end of the hall, his hand scrambling for the panel that would let him inside.       “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon-” He fumbled the passcode in and slammed his palm against the reader. The door seemed to take an eternity to open and every second, the horde grew closer. He squeezed inside the room the second the opening was wide enough and tore the curved blade from the loop on his belt.        “Close, damnit-” he jammed the door’s controls and exhaled shakily in relief as it slid back shut. Scant heartbeats later, he heard the sound of bodies thudding into the door.       He stumbled back, staring at the door. It held... for now.       Looking around the lab, he weighed his options.        Option One) Wait for the horde to break in, be ripped to shreds, probably still get eaten by Faro’s plague.       Option Two) The horde gets bored or can’t get in. Faro’s plague does instead. Still get eaten by the damn plague.       Option Three) Wait and die.       Yeah... he didn’t like any of those.        He cast his eyes upon the cryogenic tube- the only working one the lab had... working in theory- and groaned. He’d never believed in this project, not really, but the pay had been good. Now, it was looking like it was his only option: Four) Jump in the tube and freeze to death.        It wasn’t the worst death he could imagine... peaceful, in it’s way.         Numb, he punched in the commands to the Tube with practiced detachment. It hissed open and the chill clawed it’s way into the room. He started to climb inside, then hesitated. What if that Zero Dawn project, whatever it was, worked? What if this stupid cryogenics chamber worked? What if there was something after the Faro plague? Someone to let him out?       He swore to himself and closed his eyes. If there was something after, did he want it? Well- on the big off chance that all of those ifs turn into something... I can make my choice then, he decided, putting additional commands into the console.         As he began to climb inside, he paused one last time before activating his Focus. He scrolled rapidly through his audio library, knowing exactly what he was looking for.         Finally reclining into the Tube, the first notes of Styx’s Renegade began playing in his ears. He’d had stupid fantasies about the apocalypse and listening to it as the world faded away. He just never thought..

-- Consciousness came back slowly, easing it’s way into icy cracks, spreading as slow and thick as molasses. The first thing he was fully aware of was being damn cold. Every cell of him felt like it had been frozen, smashed with a hammer, left to thaw, then frozen again for good measure.         He began to shiver and, with great effort, curled his fingers, then raised his hands to rub at his arms. He licked cracked lips as his breath trembled. A rush of air washed over him, agitating the chill that still clung to his body, and instinctively he pushed himself... less up, more forward.         He stumbled, leg catching on something, and tumbled to the floor where he retched, shivering like a wet dog fresh from a bath.

[thelokiexperiment]

Freezing the wall has inflicted no structural damage. It heats up and thaws after a while. Still the mist continues, so he toys with the abilities he has been allowed. It snows inside the chamber, a more delicate casting than the ice. He thinks, given time, he might be able to make sculptures. Why he would do so under the scrutiny of these unseen people is another matter.

Loki settles for building a snowman. He breaks the previously overturned chair and sticks two of its legs into the snowman’s sides for arms. The ripped seat cushion he uses for a scarf. He has nothing he can use to give it a face. It will have to be faceless.

“I dub thee ‘Frosti’,” he murmurs.

[empiresbane]

Vader’s Shrine

@harkenhope​ liked this for a starter.

Leia stood alone in the cavernous room, its darkness lit only by the glow of lava moving over the barren plains and chasms outside. Light and shadow flickered across her face like the roiling feelings that were concealed behind her stoic diplomat’s mask.

In front of her, the slab of carbonite slowly thawed.

When the Rebels had first entered this chamber that would have been a throne room in any other palace -- but throne rooms needed subjects, and aside from his droids Vader had seemed to live (if such a word could be applied to a twisted monstrosity such as he) in this grim, cavernous castle alone -- they had thought the heavy slab hanging on the wall at the far end like an altar had been a statue. It was only when Leia, more familiar with carbonite freezing than most sentients, came in on the heels of the initial scouting team that she had realized what she was looking at: a woman, frozen in time.

And not just any woman. The late and famed Padmé Amidala, former queen and senator of Naboo in the last days before the Empire. An old friend and colleague of Leia’s father. Leia would have recognized the woman anywhere -- even in carbonite -- from her parents’ holos, as well as her own studies of galactic politics and history. The flowers in her long hair, the faint air of sorrow on her stone-coated face, the intricate folds of her robes...Leia knew this woman. She even knew this gown, those flowers, from the holos she’d seen of Padmé’s funeral and the tomb they had built for her on Naboo.

Only apparently Padmé Amidala had never made it into that tomb. Instead she had been frozen in carbonite and spirited away here, to Darth Vader’s castle where she had spent more than two decades hanging like a shrine on his wall while the galaxy presumed her dead. And now she was thawing.

The last of the carbonite melted away from the pale face of the not-so-dead woman within and Amidala crumpled, but Leia stepped forward and caught her before she could hit the hard stone floor. “It’s all right,” Leia said, keeping her voice low and as gentle as she could manage under the fraught circumstances of being inside Vader’s castle. She lowered them both to the ground, folding the thermal blanket she had taken from one of their emergency kits around Amidala’s shoulders and helping her sit up. “You’re safe now, Padmé.”