#How many snakes will be in the grave and its toxicity will be

[rhyaxxyn]

writeblr resurrection (mind the gap, i'm still filling the grave back in)

about rhyaxxyn…

❂ my name is rhyannyn (ree--uh--nihn), but i go by rhys or rhyn

❂ she/her

❂ 21. last time i was here, i was totally 19 (maybe?)--and now I can do adult things??

❂ infp/infj - t  |   leo sun... i don't know what that means anymore, but i am ambitious to an awful extent, and creative to the point i feel like i'm dragging ideas around by their throats 24/7

❂ of native american and polish ethnicity. unfortunately i didn't grow up very connected to my native american culture so i don't claim it in my books though i do include aspects here and there (just little things i remember my dad telling me as a kid), but a lot of my polish heritage shines through in my writing.

❂ i work customer service and it drains me--but i love all my coworkers and would do anything for them

❂ i'm pretty sure when i wrote my last writeblr intro i said i love mac and cheese. things have changed for the worse and now i'm very allergic to dairy. tragic, i know.

❂ per usual, my little mentally ill bones give my writing inherent spice

❂ i have a partner (everyone clap), and he has thankfully made me realize how toxic some of the relationships i used to write are :D so many of the couples you may have seen if you've been following me for a while are OUT. but you know what's in? my sweet meow-meow boys. just you wait.

what do i write?

❂ many of my works are religiously inspired or have religious themes. yes i used to be catholic. yes it sucked. now i tear down those systems which took advantage of me in my works.

❂ i still don't write yucky relationship dynamics, especially now that i realized that I DID. but, i do write women who stand up for themselves, i write girls who discover that they deserve kind lovers, and i write men who aren't incompetent when it comes to the women they love. and being queer and dating a queer person, i write healthy wlw, mlm, and nonbinary inclusive relationships.

❂ i love complex characters. i love main characters who do awful, terrible things that are justified by the outcome. I love antagonists who fight against the protagonist because they've only seen the terrible means. and i love haunted characters who are stuck in cycles of evil which they see no way out of.

❂ in the regards of genre, i still only write fantasy. in variations, of course, but i'm a beast of habit

here's what you came for; the WORKS IN PROGRESS >:)

In the wake of a god being mysteriously killed, the Nameless War has waged between the gods and humanity for fifty-eight years, killing that which is mortal and immortal, and creating constant battles for territory between the divine Creator military and the human Revolutionists. As hope for future peace between the species wanes, the fate of the war lands in unlikely hands.

Pandora, a goddess, the lost creator, nameless and chained to the Earth because of duty, yet still running from her true power.

Quinn, a god, the skijic and Creator High General, desperate for the memories of a life lost and the familiarity of a purple-eyed goddess.

Natia, a girl, heiress to one of the Republic of Valentulus’s most powerful cities, and slave to the Revolutionist Snake General.

Loyalties whither, fear awakens, and stories collide as the Nameless War reaches its tipping point. It is up to Pandora, Quinn, and Natia, each of them sworn against one another, to challenge the boundaries of their duties—and their pasts. The only thing that might change their opposing fates is the truth, letting the past fly free could very well set the darkness loose.

Infinite Tangents rewrites the definition of divinity, the gods of legends remembered and lost no more than a species without a home. The fight between deities and humanity is made equal, and the fate of the universe unsure.

Billions of years prior to the events of Infinite Tangents, the planet of Kaleis, and the Kaleidoscope Suns' kingdom is in the peak of its power, guarded by her Divine Majesty Heather and her Phantom Suns. However, in the wake of an attack on the Light God's holy temple, they come face to face with the dark, and the reality that the universe will always call for balance.

Now Heather must navigate the dark, the light, and the truth that good, evil, demonic, and divine may not be so easy to define as she led herself to believe.

All empires must fall, but how much of herself must Heather lose in the process?

Aita Hunt is a ruinsome, good for nothing orphan. With no one to rely on in Requiem, one of twelve glass Orbises launched into Earth's orbit in the wake of its enigmatic destruction, Aita suddenly finds herself fallen into a world of politics, deception, and magic which has little to no patience for a girl who is changing the world by mistake. Bound to love the man who abandoned her; bound to kill the woman with enough money to buy Aita's assassination--she must be scrappy, and quick-witted, and foolish enough to take any handouts offered to her.

Even those given by her makeshift god and Teller of the Requiem.

Aita has never known her odds to be fair, never known a kind touch since her mother drifted into her eternal sleep, but even if it is a dangerous, powerful man granting her a chance to survive, she'll take it.

And if she must be more ruinsome than her divine masters can take, Aita will learn to pray for forgiveness.

(applause here)

if you've made it this far and would like to watch me struggle and scream into the void and hopefully finish these projects, i'd really love a reblog/comment/follow so i can reach out and follow back. seeing others write and pursue their passions pushes me to pursue my own. plus, i love having new writer friends who enjoy void-screaming too.

well then friends, that's it... sort of. i have plenty more ideas to spout at you all but these works will be my main focus. unfortunately for those of you who followed me in the ancient days and are now watching me claw out of a grave like a disgruntled corpse, i will have to pull a bit of content for Infinite Tangents and the world of The Natural Orders in general. for good reason though, as i've started researching literary agents in the hopes of publishing the first book! yayyyy :')

all of this is very daunting, and horrifying, and so much as looking at my list of agents makes me feel like i wanna throw up--but i do remember and am so thankful for the support of everyone who i so much as came across on the writeblr community. without y'all i wouldn't even be trying, so thank you.

to anyone who does remember me, welcome back to my page and sorry for the metaphorical dust. things will get clean i promise. and to anyone new, intrigued, or even skeptical about the crazy things i come up with, please feel free to follow or question me. though, i don't promise the answers will make much sense either.

[lo-55]

Tilt The Hourglass Ch. 4

Mustafar was exactly as Maul remembered. 

Sidious had even put him in his old room. One with no way out. No key pad by the door, no latch for the windows, and the vents filled with toxic gas to knock him out if he tried to hard to escape. It was meant to keep even the most powerful of forceful children inside. 

Maul hung from shackles above an anti-grave platform near one wall. He was facing the window now, showing him his own body and the black shorts he’d been left in. 

He stared at his reflection. At the floating boy outside the window. The one he’d wanted to be for so long. The one that was free.

Free of electric whips and punishments, free of expectation. That boy had no shackles, nor lessons, nor cold, unfeeling droid to raise him. He could fly away into the lava fields if he wanted. 

Maul met that boy’s eyes with his own yellow one. They weren’t tinged with red yet. 

How strange. 

For all he’d spent most of his childhood in this one locked room Maul had no fond memories of it. All of his fond memories were of people, not places. They were the blood, sweat, and tears of a well fought battle. They were his brother at his side and power at his fingertips. They were careful hands of Kilindi and Daleen smearing bacta on his damaged body. 

None featured his master. He had learned that the ‘kindness’ he doled out was nothing more than another way to manipulate Maul and ensure his loyalty. 

 Sidious’ droid paced the room. It held an electro-staff tightly in one hand. Every now and again, without warning, it would strike at him and shatter his chain of thought. Maul snarled at it. He’d tried to crush it on impulse once, but the shackles cut off his connection to the telekinetic powers of the Force. 

At the very least they didn’t keep him from working on his mind. 

Deep in the dark ocean of his memories he was pushing pertinent information down, and down, past the water, past the floor, and into lava that burned at the heart of his very being. He had to keep those parts of him guarded before anything else. 

The droid struck him across the face and Maul spat out one of his eye-teeth. Blood still filled his mouth. All he could taste was copper. All he could feel was pain. Every now and again his muscles would spasm with residual shocks. 

Unbidden, a passage from a medical book flickered through his brain. 

Long term effects of electrocution and electronic torture include, but are not limited to, muscle spasms, memory loss, pain, tingling, numbness, and personality disorders and changes. This makes long term, and high grade electronic torture innefective for gathering information. Instead-

A hiss signalled that the door opened. 

In walked Sidious, his cloak billowing around him dramatically. Inefficiency had never stopped him from shocking people. Maul personally thought he just enjoyed inflicting pain. 

A lightsaber hummed in his hand. 

Sidious came up to him and gripped his chin. Maul snapped at his fingers with sharp teeth, for all the good it did. 

“You’re a fool, Maul, and a failure as a sith. Once you would have made a powerful apprentice. You could have been great at my side. But you chose sentiment. Your future, thrown away for a pair of girls who will never be anything more than ants.” 

He drew the tip of the lightsaber down Maul’s side. It was turned up high enough to burn, but not cut into his ribs. Sidious wouldn’t end things that fast. 

“Better them than you,” Maul spat. “You stole my life-” 

“Silence,” Sidious thundered, slapping him across the face. Maul’s head spun. Had he ever heard the man raise his voice? Maul had truly enraged him. A sliver of satisfaction curled in his chest and Maul bared his bloody, gapped teeth at him in a grin. 

Sidious gathered himself visibly. Maul had never gotten such a rise out of him. The minor, phantom vengeance tastes like blood. 

“You have never pushed me so far,” Sidious said, his voice slow and sickly kind. “I have never had you disobey. I can be persuaded to forgive, if you do as I told you. I have no doubt you can hunt the slave girl and her little pet down again. You could kill her, and come again to my side.” 

Maul wanted to laugh in his face. Did Sidious think it was kindness? Did he think Maul was foolish enough to prostrate himself before the sith Apprentice and bed for a life without future, without fraternity or friendship? 

Of course he did. 

Maul would have once. Sidious knew as much. Once he would not have hesitated to do his bidding. His only disobedience would come from misplaced eagerness and bloodlust. 

Now, Maul spat blood in his face. 

Sidious ripped through his already ragged outer shields once more. He lanced through Maul’s memories of Orsis and picked them apart. Each test, each challenge, and more than that, his time with the girls. 

Kilindi, bumping her shoulder to his. Daleen, carefully stitching a cut upon his brow. Kilindi touching his arm while talking casually. Daleen gripping his elbow and shooting over her shoulder as he led her through their portion of the test course. 

Every brush of skin, every kindness, ever inch of camaraderie between them and each small show of care. Sidious hunted them down like a dog and all Maul could do was give them to him, and spin his hurt around the depth of his being, away from his impossible truth. 

He gave him Kilindi. He gave him Daleen. 

In return, Sidious burned the memories across his skin. Every place he’d felt gentle fingers or joking shoves Sidious struck with the heat of the lightsaber and burned deep into his skin. 

There was only pain. The taste of blood. The scent of burning flesh. 

Darkness swirled across his vision. Maul welcomed it. He focused on his uneven heartbeat under the pain. Maul drew the pain and the anger inside of him and closed it around his heart, first one, then the other. He drew inside, inch by inch, bringing every agony with him. 

The Force swirled through him and Maul forced it to slow, and finally still. His body went limp. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear. He couldn’t feel. 

The taste of blood was gone. The smell of his body burning vanished. 

Only the Force remained. 

It did not like being still. It was a fight for Maul to keep it like that, suspended inside him. Shadow consumed him, and he welcomed it. 

The Force showed him what happened, in the distant, blurry way of visions. 

Maul’s body went limp. He wasn’t breathing. Sidious struck him harshly across the back, where Kilindi had once rested against him with her ankle twisted. He’d carried up a mountain, and still beat the other team there while she shot each challenger who got within range. 

Sidious defiled each of those memories with pain and fire. 

Finally, he stopped. 

Sidious circled the limp body of the boy he had raised. Blood dripped lazily to the ground and his body smoke faintly. 

“I expected more,” Sidious said, frowning at his ‘corpse’. “You always had potential. I raised you to be better. What a waste of time.” 

The shackles were deactivated and Maul’s body crashed to the ground. One ankle twisted wrong and made a terrible snapping sound. The body didn’t move. 

“Dispose of him,” Sidious ordered. 

The spider legged droid that had once raised Maul, now reconstructed for some new purpose, crawled into the room and picked up the child it had brought up from infancy. The body was small and broken in its cold metal hands. Sidious left, and the droid took Maul to the ship that would dispose of waste that day. One hand hand fast to his throat.  

The vision ended with the droid running cold fingers across Maul’s brow and tucking him carefully into the ship's ventilation shafts before it closed up the grate and erased its own memories of ever finding a pulse. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Maul came to to the scent of rot and blood. 

All there was was darkness and for an instant he was back on Lotho Minor, surrounded by garbage and rotten waste. Half a person, he is even less than that, and the blood he tastes is a rat he’d dragged in and a body that the snake creature had fed him. They were both mad, shrieking, and consumed by the world of fire and destruction. He was no one. He was a broken creature of hatred-

His ankle screamed in pain and Maul gasped into awareness. 

He still couldn't see, but he could feel the pain in his ankle. He had his legs still. He was not on Lotho Minor, buried deep in darkness and forgotten. 

He was on the ship that the droid had placed him inside of. His head still swam with his near death. 

It was one of the many things that was in the Sith holocron he’d recovered with Ezra, and one of the only remaining things after its destruction. A suspended animation based in the darkside, it, like all things, took its tole on him. 

Not just his suspension, he realized. It was a fever too. His body was always warm with two hearts, but now it was burning. 

Maul tried to move. It wasn’t just his ankle that hurt, but every burn was festering in spite of cauterization. How long had he been out? He’d been woken by the ship jolting and the Force hissing warnings of danger into him.

Maul drew the pain inside of him and spun it into the steel of strength. Slowly, he crawled through the vents he’d been sheltered inside of. He tried not to think of the TD-D9. He’d tried not to think of him for a long time, after his destruction. It was easier to hate him for the torment he inflicted than to remember the fond friendship between them. He’d mourned him, in his own quiet way, after Deenine was destroyed. He’d done his best to protect Maul from his master, even if he was too young to really understand. 

Maul quietly swore to one day return for his friend. 

I’m getting greedy, he thought. What will I do with three friends? 

The vents were winding and small, but Maul was small too. He made his way to the cockpit, where another familiar face was. The droid pilot that had once dropped him off on Hypori, for his finally test for Sidious. Maul turned his gaze to the window. 

They’d dropped out of hyperspace into the middle of a firefight. Maul recognized some of the ships as belonging to pirates, trying to board, and their ship had been hit in the crossfires. Alarms kept flashing red lights on the console, and the droid was frantically trying to send a distress signal. 

Maul watched the pirates tear away from the ships they’d been foolish enough to go after. 

Why they thought they could take a full assault craft was beyond him. 

Maul’s fuzzy mind couldn’t recognize the design painted on the side, and he barely registered that he spoke the language that came over the communicator. 

The droid squeaked it’s need, and it’s cargo. They had left most of the waste behind, somewhere, and though the ship still stunk of it. Now they hauled back raw materials for building. 

Maul crawled away from the droid, his dizziness increasing when the ship shook with a boarding ramp. He stumbled. He needed to find the emergency med pac that was on the ship. Sidious kept them on all of his craft. It was…

Fuck. 

It was somewhere. 

Maul dragged himself through the shafts, the world getting more and more blurry. His tongue kept poking into the new gap in his teeth. He didn’t think he made a sound, but he must have because someone shouted underneath him and a blaster bolt shot into his shoulder. 

Maul howled in anger and pain and the shaft, with the boy inside, collapsed to the ground. It hit with a crash that jarred every burn and break in his body, and a crack from his ribs was telling. Someone was shouting, but he didn’t register words, only the threat behind them. 

He lunged out of the wrecked vent and tackled his assaulter. His hands found their way around his throat as the body, hard and cold against his bare skin, fell back to the ground. The blaster went skidding across the ground. Maul was shaking. He was angry and cold and everything hurt but he would not allow himself to die now. 

His small hands closed around the throat and he started to squeeze. 

All at once he was flipped onto his back and he screamed. All the lights went out. 

There were hands on his shoulders. 

“Sshhh, ade, there’s no fight here,” the voice was quiet, muffled by a helmet. Maul bit the wrist nearest to him and nearly shattered his upper teeth for his trouble while the lower ones caught on the thick material of a flight suit. He was shaky and weak, the fever and adrenaline warring inside of him. The Force still muddled him with near death. 

Maybe it was Mando’a that made him ease his teeth out of the flight suit on the underside of the vambrace. Maybe it was the hum of the Force, muddled but reinforcing the idea that he wasn’t in danger. 

Back up lights kicked on in the ship, flooding the area in dim red light. It still revealed enough of him to made the mandalorian hiss through his teeth. 

“Who did this, ade?” the anger in his voice was almost enough to make Maul fight him again, but the Force encouraged him not to. There was no danger here. 

“Mas-ter,” he croaked, his voice hoarse and his throat bloody and raw. 

Anger radiated out of the Mandalorian and Maul drank it in, trying to use it to clear his head. His body was having none of that. Now that he wasn’t in danger of dying it was forcing him to stop fighting. To rest. To heal. Or he really would die. 

“There’s no master here, ade. I’m going to pick you up. Don’t go biting me now.” 

Maul did his best to scowl at the mandalorian, but he couldn’t figure out which one to glare at. Four of them blurred in his vision. The hands that picked him up were careful, but there wasn’t anywhere to hold him that wasn’t injured. The festering wounds on his back burst and leaked across the blue painted armor. 

Maul was swept into a fevered sleep by the time they reached the mandalorian ship. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

 Jango sat beside the cot in the medbay while the droid circled the boy he’d brought back from the transport ship. He’d blown the thing up as soon as they were off of it, an impulsive choice he regretted now. 

If he’d kept it, maybe he could have found out who the ‘master’ that had done this was, and where to find him. 

Low rage simmered deep in his chest, and it only mounted the more the droid told him. 

There were the obvious injured that Jango had seen on the transport when the boy had nearly fallen into his lap. The blaster bold that, much to his own shame, Jango had put in his shoulder was nothing compared to the rest of the damage. 

His whole body was covered in injuries. Both plasma and electric burns made a horrific pattern across a body that was already mostly covered in tattoos. There were so many that Jango almost couldn’t tell if he was red with black tattoos or the opposite. 

Most of the burns had half healed, but there were many, especially the ones on his back, that had gotten infected. A fever was burned through his body, keeping the boy unconscious as much as the drip of chemicals attached to his arms. The droid had gone through most of their boosters just trying to purge the infection from his system. 

Jango wished he had a bacta tank to submerge the child in. He couldn't be more than a decade old.  

Jango rubbed the back of his neck, where little fingers hadn’t been able to close all the way around. There were distinct hand print bruises on his throat. The boy was a fighter, that was undeniable. 

He had been for a while, if what the droid said was to be believed. He had broken an ankle and a few ribs, but there were healed fractures all across his body, some years old. One of his floating ribs was twisted in a way that indicated that it had been damaged before it had even been bone yet. There were scars all across his body.  

The abuse had been going on for a long time. 

It made him sick. 

Jango steepled his fingers and leaned forwards with his elbows on his knees. He was lucky, this boy, if only in that Jango had even answered the distress call of the droid, and hadn’t accidentally put a bolt between his eyes when he’d been in the vents. An escape attempt? 

Jango wouldn’t put it past him. The boy fought like a feral-tooka, and he bit hard enough he’d actually put a dent in beskar. Jango could respect that. 

One thing he couldn’t get out of his head was the way the entire ship had shut down, lights blown and fuses exploded inside walls when the boy had screamed. Jango had an unpleasant history with jetii, and the near miss on Galidraan didn’t help anything. There was no denying that this kid had the Force. Was he jetii ade? Had they managed to misplace one of their own? 

Jango had a lot of questions on the matter. 

None of them had answers yet. Jango finally left the medbay to let the droid finish covering the boy in bacta so he could check the autopilot. They would be landing in Coruscant in another two days. He would ask a few allies if any jetii ade had gone missing, and hopefully get the zabrak some proper medical treatment. 

Then he could meet up with his friend, and current contractor, and get started on a job that he could feel was going to be more complicated than it was on data pad. 

Weren’t they always? 

Jango sent a message to Silas explaining the situation as well, just in case more needed to be done, and so he could look into any reports of a zabrak that matched the description. The rest of Haat’ade were out on similar jobs. Something quick that paid well. They needed to gather their resources and amass more money. 

Galidraan had been close. Closer than Jango would have liked. Even with the warning that their mysterious benefactor that sent them, Jango had decided that it would be best to spring the trap. He’d been smart enough to have the bulk of their forces hidden and waiting, just a brief hyperspace jump away from the planet. They had intended to round up the Kyr’tsad on the planet and put an end to the war, but the jetii had gotten in the way. His forces had gotten out with minimum damage, and only a couple of casualties, and they’d dealt a vicious blow to their enemies. 

Vizla had still gotten away. He’d hidden behind his own men, and then the governor of Galidraan and his jetii allies as well.  

Hut’tuun. 

If Jango could face him in a straight fight it would put an end to everything, but he was slippery. He always managed to find a way out of a fair fight. His hit and run tactics were brutal. He’d be forced to lay low for a while after this, now that his forces had taken such a hard blow, and now that Jango knew he wasn’t above manipulating entire planet’s to get Jango he was vetting jobs more intensely than ever. 

The only reason he’d taken this one without hesitating was because he owed Clat’Ha for getting him off a dustball when they were teenager’s and he’d managed to wreck his already stolen ship. 

Jango leaned his head back on the pilot’s seat and watched hyperspace blow past him. 

Not for the first time did he long for Jaster back. He would have known what to do about the little ade in the medbay. Jango had a good idea, but the jetii aspect complicated things. 

Well. 

If the jetii couldn't keep track of their ade that was hardly his fault, now was it? 

Jango grinned to himself. 

For all his anger that the situation he’d pulled his little guest from, it wasn’t all bad. Once he woke up they could work out what happened next. 

[straightouttaneptune]

Behind closed doors

Pairing: Tony Stark x reader

Warning: Angst. This is just fucked up angsty shit. Do not read if you don’t like dark fics because it’s really just... semi-dark. But for the record, I love Tony. This could’ve been written with any Avenger. No smut though don’t worry.

Summary: Tony lost the love of his life, Y/N Sterling at the hands of ultron. (This is not you, just someone with the same name as you.) He gets obsessed with a new recruit that resembles Y/N Sterling so much that it seems like she came back to life. It’s toxic, it’s dangerous and it doesn’t end well.

A/N: I’m so sorry if it doesn’t make any sense, but I thought it was kind of dark and sad. Not sure if I wrote it right, though. And I swear to you, I love love love Tony with all my heart.

———————————————————————

First encounter Tony had with Y/N Sterling could only be described as love at first sight. She was at one of his great parties, way before Tony had become an Avenger. A new face.

He had watched her the entire evening as she spent her time drinking away at the bar, never dancing or speaking with anyone. He didn’t know what it was that intrigued him, but he was. Usually when women are invited to Tony Stark’s parties, they’d run around the place looking to throw themselves at famous rich men.

He had asked Pepper, who only told him that she was another new assistant, and she wasn’t one for parties. He went over to her to hopefully swoon her, and even though in his drunken state, he remembered her powerful glowing eyes as she flirted back playfully.

It wasn’t long before Y/N and Natalie Rushman revealed themselves as Agents from SHIELD, and the Avengers was formed soon after. Tony and Y/N fell in love, and it was the perfect love story- until Y/N faced a gruesome death at the hands of Ultron.

Three years had passed.

Y/N’s grave wasn’t covered with visible fresh soil anymore but now with green grass, most of her body decomposed already. Posters and flags in her honor were taken down one by one, until the universe started forgetting about her. And the world finally ended their mourning for the fallen hero, but Tony Stark still missed her dearly.

He had many sleepless nights, asking himself on where he went wrong. How he wishes he could have her back in his arms. But none of his wishes were granted, and he was all alone with his tears.

So to say he was surprised when he saw you... would be an understatement of the year. You walked with grace and poise as you strode in the Avengers Compound with your arm linked with Stephen Strange.

You resembled Y/N perfectly. Your hair flowing down to your shoulder blades, swaying with every step, soft doe eyes and the sharp angle of your brows, the plump lips that used to kiss his every night, and the way you held yourself, walked, and laughed at things Stephen had said.

It made him tear up, watching you down there from his office over the protective glass. He couldn’t help but to let tears slip out, all these years of mourning, missing, craving... it made him crazy.

“What the fuck?!” A yell that could only be identified as Natasha’s echoed through the empty open floor of the compound.

-

“Hello, are- you okay?” You raised a brow in confusion, staring at Natasha Romanoff’s astonished expression. You couldn’t tell wether it was “what the fuck?!” In a good way, or “what the fuck?!” In a bad way.

“Stephen, maybe I shouldn’t be here.” Watching as the Avengers slowly piled in, circling you with equally surprised expressions as Miss Romanoff’s, you got even more confused.

“H-hi? Um, I’m Y/N. I guess, nice to meet you guys. The Avengers! Wow. Is my hair that bad?” You tried to joke, but was only met with silence.

“You’re Y/N?” You heard a deep voice say from behind you. You turned to see the famous Tony Stark in the flesh, standing right behind you.

“Yes! Uh, hi- Mr. Stark. Y/N Y/L/N.”

“Oh. Of course... You’re very beautiful, Y/N.”

Your cheeks heated up almost immediately at his comment, taking no notice in the creases of the Avengers’ foreheads. They knew what was happening.

“Oh my gosh... uh, ah, thank you.” You stumbled over your words, leaning into Stephen in hopes of hiding your burning face. The corner of Tony’s mouth slightly twitched, watching Stephen pull his arm around you.

“So, what’s up Stephen?” Natasha tried to change the subject, clapping her hands together and looking up at the doctor.

“Oh, Y/N here, I think she’d make a great addition to the team. Excellent fighter, cryokinetic powers. Right up the Avengers’ alley.”

“Well, thats’-“

“Are you two close?” Tony intervined.

“Uhhh, depends. I’m just her mentor. Was, anyway. She’ll be fine now.”

With Stephen’s words, Tony set his plan in motion to get your attention. And it worked. For a bright youngster like you, an Avenger newbie, getting noticed by the Tony Stark, you were bound to fall in love. Into his web.

A few of the Avengers had tried to warn her, that Tony was not himself yet- he just cared that your name was Y/N and that you resembled her. But you’d push past all of it, claiming his love was real.

“Baby. Sweetheart.” Tony snaked his arms around your waist from behind, littering soft kisses along your neck. You chucked in reply, turning to face him and his sleepy eyes.

“Hey. I was just gonna head out.” You caressed his side, glad that he was finally getting some sleep since you and him got together.

“Oh yeah? Where you going?” Tony said sleepily, holding your hand up and pecking every knuckle.

“I’m gonna get a haircut.”

You watched as his eyes narrowed, his voice suddenly an octave deeper and the playfulness gone.

“What? No you’re not.”

That’s when you saw it. Something dangerous flashed across his eyes, his hand flying up to grip your shoulders. His other hand caressed your locks gently, and you didn’t miss the little mutter that escaped Tony’s mouth.

“That’s not how you wore it.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Go. I’ll phone the stylist on how to style it.”

He ushered you out of the door, leaving you confused and questioning. But you brushed it off anyway, he probably was a good stylist is all.

Maybe you would’ve let it go if that was it. If that was the end of his... obsession. But it kept on escalating, to the point where others would start to notice.

“Hey, Y/N. I wanted to-“ Natasha’s brows furrowed at the sight of you, she hasn’t seen you in around 2 weeks because of a mission.

“Yes?” Your voice trembled very slightly, scared that Nat would point it out. It seemed that you were always scared these days. Your clothing style had changed drastically, your hair and figure matched Y/N Sterling exactly the same.

Since that time when you entered the compound months ago, you lost quite a few pounds, your eyes lost its sparkle and was replaced with full, grayness. Like a rag doll, built just for his liking.

“Are you... okay? You look different.” Natasha looked genuinely concerned, noticing how your gaze fell to the floor.

“It’s Tony, isn’t it?” She stated, rather than asked. You didn’t know how to respond to that, should you lie to an expert assassin, it was certain that she’d know.

You felt guilty as you nodded, keeping your eyes trained on the ground. Natasha called up Wanda, and they took you away from the floor you and Tony shared.

Two weeks later, and you still haven’t returned to Tony’s floor. Despite Tony’s protests, no one would tell him where you were, and no one would let him enter Wanda’s floor.

Bruce came up to Tony one day, just to tell him that you were moving out for good.

“What? Why?”

“You broke her, Tony.”

Bruce left him in his lab, flashing a sympathetic smile before entering the elevator.

[join-the-joywrite]

Time After Time -- 6

a boy a girl a time turner

when a time turner is shattered in a small fight, it’s up to the unlikely pair to figure out how to survive until the end of the war. it’s their only shot at breaking the loop.

masterpost prev || next

Chapter 6 - When Hermione told Ron

Hermione tore her gaze from the deceased couple. It broke her heart that she couldn't save everyone. She looked up at Fred. "Do you know where he is?"

Fred gestured to the front end of the hallway.

"Thanks," she said softly, stepping around the family to calmly walk down the aisle. By the time she reached, Draco had sent the girl, Ellie, off and turned to face Hermione. "You're still alive, then?"

Draco smiled. "Pity."

Hermione tried to smile back. "It's like I've just realised you could die. If you die too close to dawn . . . If we blow by my time of death, there is no reset. Even if I die, it won't matter as much as knowing that we saved so many more people because of you and you don't even get to live."

"If you die," Draco said, fixing a serious stare on Hermione, "and there is no loop, I'm not staying here."

"You can't do that!" Hermione cried.

"I mean it. I'm not living in a world without the only person that looks at me like I'm a person. I won't do it. I can't do it. You won't die alone."

"Malfoy. . ."

"There's nothing you can say that's going to change my mind, Granger," Draco said, turning away.

"Where are you going?"

Draco gestured around. "Nothing's going to happen for a while. A lot of them need attention." After a moment's pause, Draco held out his hand. "I'll teach you the spells if you want to help."

"Hermione!"

Hermione glanced back to see Ron walking up to her.

"Or maybe you should try talking to Ron about the loop."

"I. . . okay."

Draco smiled. "It's almost dawn, Hermione. Get some rest, yeah?"

Hermione nodded slowly. As she turned to walk to Ron, Draco headed down the aisle in the other direction.

"Wait, let me get this straight," Ron said, frowning. "You broke a Time-Turner a couple of hours ago, and now you're stuck inside a time loop?"

Hermione nodded.

"And Malfoy is stuck inside it with you?"

Hermione nodded again.

"Blimey, Hermione. How many times?"

"What?"

"How many times have you died?"

Hermione scrunched up her nose as she stared at the crumbling ceiling. "Seventy-five," she said slowly, turning to look at Ron again, "that I recall."

"That you recall?"

"Malfoy says he tried to save me about ten times before the Time-Turner broke. That would make it eighty-five deaths."

"Blimey," Ron said again. "Does anyone else know?"

Hermione laughed. "Who would I tell, Ron? It's a war. Everyone is fighting for their lives. I can't--" Hermione broke off, shaking her head.

Ron was silent for a moment. "Have you ever. . ."

"Have I ever what?"

"Have you ever killed yourself on purpose? To do it over again?"

"Oh, yeah. Loads of times. It was a bit strange and frightening the first time, but I guess I just forgot that death is permanent for everyone else. I got so used to waking up in the same place every time I died, I forgot that there might come a point where I'll die and that'll be it."

Ron didn't want to know what Hermione meant by that. "What made you realise?"

Hermione sniffed, suddenly realising that she was crying. Angrily, she wiped at her eyes. "Um, Malfoy, he -- he saved Fred from a falling wall. But he died under it instead. We were down at the boathouse and I felt this -- this crushing pain. When I got to the hall, your family was waiting for me there. Where he was. Fred told me that he kept saying my name. He said -- he said he was sorry."

Hermione tried for a laugh, resulting in some kind of choked sob. "He was just laying there and -- and you know his hands see normally cold, but it was like ice when I held it and -- and -- and I just realised that he could've died and never woken up."

"So you reset," Ron said. It wasn't a question, he knew he was right. Obviously. Draco was still there.

Hermione nodded. "Yeah."

"What's it feel like?"

Hermione shook her head, glancing at the stones on the steps below her. "Nothing. It just -- it just happens. I die and then immediately, I wake up in the cottage. I don't-- there's nothing in between. Nothing."

"Is there anything I can do?"

Hermione looked at him sadly. "I don't think so, Ron," she whispered.

Ron leaned towards her, dropping his head. "I'll tell you one thing, Hermione, I think he loves you."

"What? Ron, that's--"

"Just as much as you love him. Maybe more."

Hermione fiddled with a stone for a moment before raising her gaze back to Ron. "Is it that obvious?"

Ron shrugged. "Do me a favour, though. If you happen to reset again, tell me about it again?"

"I will. Thank you, Ron."

Ron nudged her lightly. "Anything for my best friend," he said, smiling. "Have you kissed him yet?"

"I did, the first time I reset after he saved Fred. I was just so happy to see him alive and he'd still saved Fred. I just. . ."

"Why'd you reset again?"

"Oh, I panicked. You and Harry were coming over and well, it's not like I'd told you about the loop."

Ron stared at Hermione. "You're right. You really have forgotten the weight of death. Honestly, Hermione, just five minutes. That's all it would've taken to explain."

"Ugh, you sound exactly like Draco."

"Ew."

Hermione smiled. Then she laughed. Ron smiled with her. "You love him a lot, don't you? Far more than I can tell."

Hermione shrugged. "I mean, he's not that bad."

Ron shrugged as well. "I guess rewinding time around ten times to try and save you is a good enough reason without the loop."

"Shut up," Hermione said, giving Ron a light shove. But she was smiling.

She turned around when she felt someone's eyes on her. "Harry."

The two of them stood up as Harry approached.

"Where have you been?" Hermione asked.

"We thought you might've gone to the Forest," Ron said.

"I'm going now."

The pair erupted into shouts of protest.

"I have to!" Harry shouted over them. "It's meant to be."

"What is it?" Hermione asked softly.

"There's a reason I can hear them -- the Horcruxes. I think I've known why for a while now. I think you have too."

Hermione's face fell. "No. I'll come with you. I--"

"Let him leave."

The trio turned as Draco stepped out from behind half a remaining pillar, eyes downcast.

"He has to do this alone."

"No," Hermione said, "I'm not letting you to him alone. You -- you could die! I can't--"

"Hermione," Draco said firmly, staring at her. "Let him leave."

Harry studied Draco. "Do you know? Who told you?"

"Doesn't matter. We'll get the snake, all right?"

"Nagini? How do you know about her?"

Draco raised his eyebrows at Harry. "Are you seriously asking me that?"

Though Hermione knew Draco had already lived the war no less than ten times, she found it amusing that Harry would forget who housed Voldemort for a year. Her amusement did not last long.

"Let me go with," she began.

Draco sent her a fierce look and her voice died in her throat. He turned back to Harry. "The Elder Wand cannot fully harm its true owner. We'll be here when you get back."

Harry nodded. Before he could leave, Ron attacked him with a hug that threatened to suffocate Harry.

Draco slowly walked up to the pair. Absently, Hermione laced her fingers with his. "Be careful, Harry. We'll be waiting, okay?"

Harry nodded. He'd gone down a few steps when Draco's voice stopped him as he called his name.

"Yeah?"

"Good luck, mate."

Harry nodded. "Thanks . . . Draco."

///////////////

Hermione pushed a little boy's hair from his eyes. She offered him a bright smile. "There we go, did you even feel it?"

The child, whose name she didn't even know, smiled back. He shook his head. "Thank you!"

Hermione's smile remained as she helped him off the table and watched him walk off, sans his earlier limp.

"You have a wonderful bedside manner," Draco said as he stood up. "He'd have never sat still for me like that."

Hermione's smile stretched as Draco joined her on the bench in front of the table. "Yeah?"

"Oh, yeah. Absolutely. When this is all over, you should come with me to St. Mungo's. You'd be my official assistant Healer."

"Assistant Healer?"

"You know, like those Muggle whatcha-call-ems. Nurses."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Really? A nurse?"

"Why not? You've already demonstrated supreme bedside manner with kids and with people your own age! Even a few professors and Order members! You'd make a great nurse."

"Uh-huh. And why do I get to be your assistant Healer?"

"Because we make a great team," Draco said, putting his hand over hers and holding tight. "And if we work together, then there's just more time that I get to spend with you."

Neither brought up the fact that they weren't sure if Hermione would even live past 5:45 am.

Hermione sighed. "When I was younger -- much younger -- I thought I was going to grow up and become a doctor. I never imagined that I'd be here."

"No one ever does, Hermione."

"I used to think I'd be sewing up stab wounds and reversing toxicities and all of that, not throwing violent spells and mixing poisons."

"Do you miss it?"

"What?"

"Ignorance."

Hermione pursed her lips. "I don't know. I'd like to not be part of a war but . . . this is where I'm meant to be, you know? I feel at home surrounded by all this magic and -- and I'm kind of okay with the ways I died. If any one of those had been my last moments, I would have died doing something to save someone else, to help end the war."

Draco sighed as Hermione leaned her head on his shoulder.

"If I die after the sun comes up, will you plant flowers at my grave? Daisies and marigolds. Will you visit every day?"

"You know I won't," Draco murmured.

"Maybe I won't even have to take the knife. Everyone's seen how you've fought for Hogwarts, how you've helped here with all the injured. Maybe they'll protect you from harm the way they did for Harry against Pansy."

"Maybe," Draco said softly.

"Eugh, just because I'm okay with the relationship, doesn't mean you can get all mushy in front of me."

Both looked up and gave Ron a smile.

"Come on. Everyone's heading out. They say Voldemort's army is approaching."

Draco stood up very suddenly. His grip on Hermione's hand was almost painful and his expression had never been more serious. "Promise me, no matter what happens, you stay put."

"What's going to happen, mate?"

"Both of you. Don't even think about-- Oh, shit, Ginny!"

"Malfoy!" Ron yelled as Draco let go of Hermione's hand and broke into a sprint.

He and Hermione shared a glance before sprinting after Draco. They broke into the light of the rising sun as the army drew nearer. Hagrid was with them. He took slow, exhausted steps.

"What's he carrying?" Ginny's voice broke the silence.

Draco was pushing through the students, accidentally shoving some down to the ground. Hermione and Ron followed.

Ginny realised that it wasn't a what that Hagrid carried, but rather a who. Hermione froze as she saw Harry's body cradled in Hagrid's large hands. "No. . ."

Hermione's soft whisper was echoed in Ginny's cry. She broke from the crowd, prepared to cross the expanse between the two sides. Draco reached her just as she'd taken her first step and pulled her back, tripping over his own feet and stumbling to the ground. He did not let go of Ginny.

"It's not real," he whispered to her.

Ginny stopped fighting Draco. He let go of her and left her to Hermione as Ron offered him an arm up.

"What do you mean?" Ginny demanded from the safety of Hermione's arms.

Draco held a finger to his lips. Though his expression was stoic, there was a small twinkle in his gray eyes. Hermione couldn't fight her smile.

Harry Potter was still alive.

prev || next

[internetmadrasa-blog]

How many snakes will be in the grave and its toxicity will be |কবরে কয়টি...

[dulcetmusings]

Amp awoke feeling filthy. She had just slept uneasily on that disgusting floor in the same clothes that she had been sweating in yesterday. She didn’t know how it hadn’t hit her yet that there wouldn’t be a change of clothes once she arrived in the arena. All that would be available were these sweat-stained bloody rags.

Before getting up from her hiding spot, Amp pored over the small amount of possessions she had taken from the cabinet. Morphine, vinegar, that ricin-looking stuff. She had to remind herself that it probably wasn’t actual ricin, that providing a toxic gas to a tribute wouldn’t exactly be the best show.

Something was jabbing into her thigh, so she reached down and pulled out the fingernail brush. Perfect. The lack of restful sleep and the realization of just how much dirt and dust and shit had probably been on this floor was beginning to sink in and Amp took one breath. Two. She stood, tapping her finger against the tub once. Twice. She needed to clean her nails out. There wasn’t any visible blood left but there had to be some gunk built up from the night. She picked up the bottles and brought them with her to the sink, wanting to see if she could mix them with water to do anything useful.

The tap was still flowing softly, and she sipped slowly, making sure to keep hydrated. Brush. One swipe under her left forefinger nail. Two. The next finger once. Twice. Each finger cleaned meticulously. Scrub. Raw. Fast.

Creak.

Oh no. Ampere lifted her head and spun around to see a figure in the doorway wielding a long, pointed edifice that glowed red on its tip.

Aurelia, the girl tribute from District Two, had clearly ditched her cloak early on and made necessary adjustments to her tribute uniform. Her shirt had been unbuttoned at the bottom and tied into a knot to reveal her muscular torso and she was sporting a bright purple bruise on the left side of her jaw. And she seemed to be quite happy to find the girl that had bested her in training scores.

OCD Freak.

Amp knew the words that were going to come out of her mouth before Aurelia even spoke. She’d heard it all too many times back home. Which is why she needed to stand her ground and bring this girl to her grave. It was a matter of pride more than anything. 

But Ampere’s stomach sunk to the floor when she reached for the crossbow and nothing was there. She had left it behind the tub. What a fucking amateur mistake.

The poker that Aurelia was wielding, red hot and fresh from the fireplace downstairs, came down on Ampere before she could fully process her current lack of weapon. Shit. Shit. She stepped out of the way before it could do major damage, but the end of the weapon smashed into Ampere’s forearm, leaving behind the scent of burning flesh.

Amp grit her teeth, not allowing the Career the satisfaction of hearing her scream in pain. Her hand reached frantically for something, anything to help her defend herself while she figured out a way to get to her hidden weapon. Aurelia hadn’t seemed to notice the crossbow behind the tub yet. Amp’s hand found the bottle with the ricin stuff and grabbed it, smashing the end against the counter and using the neck of the bottle to keep it steady in her hand. When the other girl’s poker came falling on top of her again, Amp dove in instead of away, jamming the broken glass into Aurelia’s stomach. She shrieked in pain, but didn’t slow down. This time the poker landed in Ampere’s side and a sickening crack could be heard. A rib. This time Amp allowed herself a small, pained groan.

Oh hell no. 

The poker was long, Amp figured. It would get caught. It was clumsy, would smash against things if Amp could maneuver into a tighter space. Her eyes flickered towards the toilet, which was situated in its own niche, and dove towards it before she could get hit again. 

Aurelia turned, fire in her eyes as she was finally doing what she had been trained to do. The poker came swinging again, but as Ampere had calculated, the metal crashed on top of the porcelain toilet lid, breaking the piece of the appliance in half. 

Before Amp could blink, both she and Aurelia screamed in shock as a long, terrifying creature shot out of the toilet bowl and wrapped itself around Amp’s leg while snapping at Aurelia. Amp looked back; the crossbow wasn’t too far from where she sat entangled in the snake. If she could wiggle just a few more feet-

A sudden tug pulled Amp forward as Aurelia struck the snake with the poker and, in return, received a bite to the leg. The Career screamed in pain but stood her ground.

Snakes. Amp knew nothing about snakes. That Nine in training was doing absolutely nothing for her right now. And the harder she tried to pull away, the tighter her leg became wrapped.

Things quieted as the two tributes remained stuck in a standstill with the mutt. Aurelia had locked her eyes on it, and was slowly positioning the poker in a way that would stab it through its mouth and into its brain. It would work, no doubt. But in a way, this snake was the only thing keeping the defenseless Ampere from having her skull caved in by this girl. As soon as it was dead, she was a sitting duck. 

She knew the necessary steps, but Amp would have only seconds. And she needed to trust the precision she had practiced so thoroughly in training. 

Breathe in. Out. Once. Twice. One small shift backwards. Two. Casually.

A pin drop could be heard in this bathroom. Amp swallowed as she saw Aurelia lock her poker into position, and the girl from Five tensed, ready to make her move.

Not half a second after Amp readied herself, Aurelia sent her burning poker through the skull of the reptile, sizzling the flesh and blood of the hostile mutt and pulling it out as the thing went limp. As soon as the tail relaxed, Amp scurried over and grabbed the crossbow and fumbled her hand into the bag, loading a bolt into the weapon. Aurelia noticed immediately what she was doing, and rage spread on her face as she lifted the poker back up over her head to bring it down on the girl from Five. 

It did come down, but it came down clattering to the floor along with the Career, a crossbow bolt jutting out of her forehead. Amp had managed to send the bolt flying just in time, and she let the crossbow drop into her lap as her body relaxed. She was safe for now. 

A cannon sound could be heard. On top of the screams of this scuffle, that was more than enough of a signal to the other tributes that something had gone down in here. Amp needed to leave, which was unfortunate. For all she knew, the bathroom was the only supply of water in the house. 

She pulled open the cabinet with the two remaining bottles left- the laudanum and powdered coca leaves- and emptied them both out into the sink, washing them out and then filling them up with water before corking them back up. The four bottles she had on hand would have to help her out at some point, she figured. 

Ampere exited the bathroom and entered the first door to her right, surprised by the look of what seemed to be a nursery. It was mildly creepy, but it took more than a general feeling of unease to set Amp off her balance. At least, that was what she told herself as she walked towards the table stacked with blankets. At least her new location was comfortable.

Had she remembered to turn off the sink in the bathroom?

[the-empires-weapon]

Between Panes of Glass

Behind my back, they whisper about the monster I’ve become.

Lord Aerial, Last of her Clan, they hiss to one another, Corruptor of Jedi and Slayer of her Master. They whisper these things like they’re secrets. They’re not. My title is of no mystery, and my heritage beneath Manda’lore is clear. Those I had turned to the dark side spoke openly, else cursed me from their graves. And charred into ash, the body of Darth Baras floats on the wind, suffocated on toxic gas smothered through Quesh air.

These whispers, so obvious to all, don’t so much as phase me anymore. I hear them on any Imperial planet, from Dromund Kaas to Korriban. I move between both often, openly, unaffected. My chin stays lifted, and my gait never falters. Yet, the rumors spiral.

Stay away from that Lord. She’s eaten the very souls of her enemies, and the soul of her own lover.

Yes - so fitting it would be, for them to know of my abilities, to know how I tread the Force in such a manner, for my eyes are ghoulish, and my corruption razes my skin like porcelain chipped and cracked from brutal beating of dollish skin against brick wall. My red eyes and red lips hold no secrets; the splatters of blood constant over the my skin, the intricate tattoos of the ancient Sith, they adorn me openly, and they make clear my every intent. Even on the wrist, spiraling up, I keep constant tally.

Three lieutenants. Two majors, two colonels, a general. Scores and scores of corporals, a swath of ensigns. And too many privates worth measuring in individual tally marks on my skin.

Only the significant worms get the pleasure of keeping bunk within my mind.

Your madness shows with every breath you take-

Murderer! Killer! Tyrant, thief, madwoman!

You think your family didn’t deserve their deaths? So clearly they did for breeding such a monster as yourself-

My lord, ignore them. They have no knowledge of your past, and no knowledge of your . . . standing. You are better off casting them to the winds of Hoth, my lord. That, or allow me the pleasure of silencing them for you.

It was like being pressed on all sides by panes of glass, and wondering which would shatter first. Would the glass buckle against my body and fracture? Or would my flimsy ceramic body bend first? So many nights I spent clutching at my head in null attempts to silence the noises within. So many nights I spent fighting for control over my own vessel, and rooting out the poison so many souls had wrought into my blood. It makes me, a Sith Lord, pale and delicate-looking, with bloody red eyes clasped in irises and whites. Though not a Chiss and hardly human any longer, I look unreal and alien.

And yet, nobody knows what power I truly hold. What I truly deserve.

I’d lost consciousness, and I’m in front of an office in the Korriban Academy.

The circumstance was no longer bizarre. With such fights I held daily beneath my own flesh, the act of falling within myself was as simple as breathing, but to find myself completely apart from my surroundings was stranger still. Last I had remembered, I was on Balmorra. When had I retreated? How had I arrived to this office in Korriban? The door is closed before me, but I feel I must have knocked. My awareness is uneasy, and I can’t help but find confusion in my head, a sort of isolation from myself and my own perception.

When the door opens, my eyes go wide, taking in the woman before me.

Darth Arsono.

Certainly we weren’t friendly - no, me? Friendly with a member of the Council? No, only Vowrawn had been my ally once, and only with a common cause. To think I would intrude on a council woman, much less one with such a fragile grasp on her own reality, is astonishing. My own rational was questioned, but hers? Half of Kaas City wondered how she kept her own seat.

If I was alien, she was eldritch.

She looks down at me with red, glinting eyes - not just on her face, but along her cheeks, her forehead, down her neck, along bare shoulders and bare arms. Her pale fingers linger and press along the dark doorframe, long and slender and reeking of sexuality. My eyes are caught as she presses refined fingertips along the soft edge of the wooden frame.

“Lord Aerial. Slayer of a traitor.”

My sight slides back to her face. She pouts ever so slightly, haughty as ever. I hardly realize when her free hand slides beneath my chin. She lifts my face, and her gaze drags over my features. I allow my eyes to slide closed. For this brief moment, for as long as I still feel, there is a form of silence and warmth. The Force tremors in my bones.

A fine line of her thumbnail presses a sharp sensation of pain into my chin. My eyes flutter open, and Darth Arsono is tilting her head to one side to question my gaze. Her hand pulls back, and so too does her figure, further into her office.

“Lord Channery. Sit.”

Without her touch and look, I am left at a loss once again. For what purpose am I here, in her rooms? What would have pulled me from my work in Balmorra to the dark corridors of my old academy? Still, my bare feet graze the floor as I step into the room. I can hear the door shutting behind me as I approach Darth Arsono once more, looking up at her with nothing but devout fixation in my cursed eyes.

“Sit. I will not ask you again.”

She gestures to a stool nearby a large desk - her desk, I am to assume. I do not take it. Instead, I pass it, and turn my back to the edge of the table, pushing myself up onto its surface. I keep my stare level with hers. Something flits through Darth Arsono’s many eyes. She seems amused.

“Oh. You must have curious reason, to seek my rooms and act this way.”

“The Force has drawn my here,” I drawl as I lean back on my hands. “Otherwise I would have no desire to seek you out, my lord.”

“Oh, I knew the Force was strong with you. Strong in strange, unimaginable ways; seeing you slay that snake told me so,” she explains. Her lips are so full, so expressive as she pushes her words out with a pout. “There must be reason why the Force has brought you here, and brought you now. To what ends, however? To meet my own goals? Or to meet yours?”

“My goals are no secrets,” I say. “Even a Republic child must know, I seek the killers of my clan. I’ve wiped out more of my enemies than the Republic could wipe out of our armies. I am a poisoned tip to their clubs, precise and focused.”

“And you act without hesitation. That much is clear.”

“Darth Arsono, you are a madwoman,” I spit out. “What is it you know of me that you haven’t already heard?”

“Much more than you think,” she replies with hands to her skirts, smoothing back and taming the rapturous breadths of chiffon and silks that seem intent on swallowing her up from the hips down. Her feet make a strange click against the floor as she approaches, the sound of heels. She stands over me, and I glare right back.

“You operate with purpose.”

“I always have, my lord.”

“And yet your purpose is becoming slim. I can sense it, see it. Vengeance must grow old as your list grows short.”

I narrow my glare further. “You underestimate the entertainment revenge brings.”

“You assume I’ve earned nothing from decades of age.”

“Decades though you say, though you also claim a queendom, and beauty too young.”

Darth Arsono smiles, nearly smirks. “More than you could ever know.”

“If you have intent, my lord, spit it out.”

She turns and steps away. “Have you heard of a Zakuulan Empire, Lord Aerial?”

I cross my arms and huff. Now she really is talking nonsense - until an unbidden memory rises to my mind. “There was a war with them many decades before I was born,” I say with a frown. “The war ended, and the planet joined into Imperial fold. But I haven’t heard much of it since.”

“And you’ve heard of the Emperor, no? How long he’s reigned?”

“Longer than you’ve held your seat.”

A laugh. A soft, lilting laugh, and a gaze thrown over her bare shoulder that makes a crawling sensation curl into my spine. Though my cheeks blossom into reds, I frown further and lower my chin, keeping my gaze even with hers. I will not be intimidated.

“Lord Aerial - no - Channery. You shall be one of the first to learn this secret, one kept safely within the folds of the Dark Council. The Lord of this Empire, the eternal Vitiate - he is long dead. Dead and forgotten, and kept in standing only by memory. He was slain not once but twice - a body of Imperial power, and then an Eternal Emperor of Zakuul. He no longer lives.”

The Emperor is dead? “For how long?”

“Many years. Since the end of the conflict with Zakuul, longer than you’ve lived, dear Corruptor. Nobody knows outside of the Council, and nobody moreso than Marr or I. You see, we live old, the two of us, though he has seen death before. And yet I,” she chuckles, and turns to me fully, and I start, because her eyes seem to be nearly on fire and churning into mirrors with the strength of it.

“I, Channery Aerial, I stand here as your true Empress.”

The room seems to go cold the instant she says it. Either that, or it’s a memory, or a warning in the Force. Either way, I cannot move myself from my seat, much less to ease this tension from my body. Looking at her, this- this monstrosity, this beautiful nightmare of a Dark Lady, I want to laugh. Laugh, and laugh, and blame this on her delusions others see in her blank eyes and her comatose states that seem to haunt her outside her position as a leader. But no; those eyes all hold the same fire, the same spark of sanity yet oblivion, and I can see clearly, this is no manufacture of her mind. Her eyes tell me, and the Force tells me, pressing reassurance and righteousness into the soft lobes of my mind. The only movement I can make is the tough swallow of a sudden truth, and though my mind’s inhabitants have been suspiciously silent this whole time, it feels like my brain is compressed with noise.

“You . . . really are, aren’t you?”

And it seems impossible, surely - but her smirk simply sharpens, and she nods her head as she turns to face me again. Seeing her facing me fully, a shock of ice grinds against my bones. I suddenly snap forward, and my toes are touching the floor, and then my knees.

I lower my gaze, and my head.

“Empress.”

A hand to the top of my head keeps my face down, and an unearthly chuckle comes from above me.

“Yes, then. You know your place, Lord Channery. You understand your place at my feet. And surely you understand more, what with your senses. You were never a stupid one, oh, I’ve known that. I’ve seen you in dreams, Lord Channery. Like my own master, I have seen visions of the future through the lens of nocturnal sight, and I see your place at my throneside. Surely you can reason the same.”

The Force has drawn me here, I think to myself. The Force has drawn me to her feet, to my knees. No Darth would expose this truth to me; no circumstance of whimsy would lead me to this point. And no mere Lord would hear of these truths.

She has found me . . . special.

Her hand pulls from my head, and to my chin again. I look up. She is kneeling before me now, smiling with a glint in her many eyes. Darth Arsono- no, the Empress leans in close, and I stiffen, my lips feeling a pulse through their soft skin, and she presses her cheek to mine as she whispers to my ear.

“You are . . . indeed, indeed a monster made of glass, Channery. And you know you can’t refuse.”

Her cold hand takes mine in its grasp, ensnaring me.

“Pinned between mirrors, I free you, and mold you into my image, my rage. My Wrath.”

[bladekuroda]

DM Tales from the Yawning Portal: Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan part 3

The party went on to finish their short rest, then moved into the hallway that Jennoa had discovered. They had several doors to choose from. Also Gylikos appeared in the place of Sovereign and Harbinger once again.

Delphina and Jennoa worked together to bash in the southern door, only to end up falling into the next room... and being teleported back into one of the previous hallways of the dungeon. It took them a moment, but they soon recognized the place. Thinking that maybe the others would soon join them, they moved out of the way. Unfortunately, Delphina ended up setting off another trap, in which several horizontal bars appeared to create a holding cell of sorts for her. Being a druid, she took the time to turn into a giant octopus, having Jennoa give her a flask of water to take a deep breath from before doing what octopi do and escape the cell.

Meanwhile Quibble had opened the set of double doors only to have several crossbows triggered and firing at him. He came out unscathed, but it was alarming nonetheless. Deciding that it was not a good idea to head into the large room with a coffin alone, he looked to see Magnolia going into the space and vanishing away as well.

Gylikos didn’t want to be left alone to babysit the dragonborn cleric, so he tried to push him into the portal. Quibble managed to latch onto him... and both ended up going through.

The party was then reunited back in the toxic gas area.

They explored a little bit, finding a silver coffer on an alter. After they spotted a trap, Gylikos used a grappling hook to expertly fish it in. From there the group moved on and found a room filled with many broken down clay statues, as well as a stucco cairn. Jennoa, Magnolia, and Delphina all wanted to bust the cairn open to see what was inside. Quibble wanted nothing to do with grave robbing so he wandered off with Gylikos to try and move a large stone block. It was too heavy.

The others did break into the cairn and found many valuables, all for purpose of ‘archaeology’. They also ended up releasing a wight in which they were able to dispose of without too much trouble. 

Afterwards, they all spent quite a bit of time just to push the damn stone block uphill. It did nothing but make them feel good about themselves. 

They eventually returned back to the room with all the cat stuff, and then went to check out what was in the room Quibble had opened up. Delphina went in first. Slowly. Still in giant octopus form. A wall of fire appeared behind her, immediately burning Quibble pretty badly. And then a doppleganger popped out to attack her!

It... was going to turn into her and try to take her place in the party. However... Delphina was a giant octopus currently. Doppelganger cannot turn into octopi. It was not expecting an octopus. It didn’t entirely know what to do. To make matters worse, Magnolia had decided to leap through the flames, taking significant damage in the process. When she saw the blue skinned alien looking creature, she attacked. And the doppelganger’s day was only made worse when the giant octopus managed to grapple it from 10 feet away. He couldn’t move anywhere. Others leaped into the flame once they realized something was going on, and this poor doppelganger was killed before it could really do anything. Its master plan had failed miserably.

They took some time in this room, picking it clean of its treasures. After that, they decided to take a rest in the cat room. During this time, Gylikos fussed with the silver coffer, and ended up activating the copper figuring within. It began to fly around, always out of his grasp, no matter how hard he tried to catch it. In general, they took time to rest, and looked over some of their loot to determine what was what. Delphina took a ferret faced feathered mask, that was effectively a mask of disguise. And Jennoa took what she believed to be a Stone of Good luck.

They had also figured out some necklaces to be ones to help protect an undead from Turn Undead effects. 

They continued on. Jennoa peeked into the northern room, seeing a large ogre like statue with a panther sitting in front of it. Delphina went to see if she could communicate with it at all, turning into a panther herself. The moment she did so, the panther narrowed in on her and attacked. But Jennoa killed it before it could do much else.

They examined the room further and Quibble was able to distinguish the statue to be an oni in particular. But there wasn’t much else to discern from it. Gylikos and Delphina investigated the light well in the room. They found that tossing some stuff into it, caused light to flash and a voice to question them in giant. Unfortunately no one knew giant. 

Gyl, thinking he could use the liquid light, went to fetch some of it. Slowly, the liquid light began to spread across his body. It wasn’t until a little later while they were exploring some of the other halls that it ended up covering his face and eyes and caused him to start suffocating. Thinking quick, Delphina cast create water to wash him down. It worked.

In the next  area, they found the room completely caked with ash and dust. Reckless Abandon soon found that phantoms of the past would rise up forming in the ashes before dissipating away. They were cautious of the two guards that stood in their way, but were able to pass through without issue. Before moving on, however, Quibble took some time to give all these souls some final rites.��

The next room turned out to be large and filled with rubble. But most importantly, some fresh air and a bit of light from the outside. There were also some angry baboons. Again, Delphina went to see if she could deal with those at all, expecting some trouble. But unfortunately trouble, in this case, came in the form of a giant two headed snake that was hiding in the rubble. The party was able to deal with it without too much trouble. And the baboons that came down to attack afterwards were also no match. They found some goods among the rubble, and it was then that they began to question the stone of good luck that Jennoa had found and attuned to. When she was not willing to depart with it, Quibble went on and removed the curse from her, breaking her away from what was actually a stone of Ill luck.

And it was then where we ended for the night. The party still has not quite yet found any sign of an exit, and there’s still plenty of dangers for them to bumble into ahead. There’s been a few close calls, but nothing too dire.

Not yet, anyway.

[jasonicdawson]

My obsession with dead animals continues.....spotted this washed up eel on the shores of Anzio a few days ago. The Eel probably died of old age or due to exhaustion, because of the absence of any types wounds or scars. I am not exactly sure what species it belongs to, but it is probably a Mediterranean Moray Eel or a European Conger. I've always found washed up marine life intriguing, wondering what underwater secrets they have taken to their grave. It's so interesting to observe their anatomy, determine their genus and species and come up with theories on how they met their demise. For those of you with limited information about eels, here are a few fun facts: 1.There are over 400 species of eel. 2.Even though the eel looks like a snake it is really a fish. 3.They have long, narrow bodies with long dorsal and anal fins. Most eels have no scales. 4.The eel’s backbone is made up of over 100 vertebrae which makes it very flexible. 5.Eels have gills and very sharp teeth 6.Most eels hide and live in caves and rock crevices. 7.Eels are eaten in Italy and are a delicacy in many cultures. But the eel must must be cooked thoroughly because its blood is toxic. 8.Most moray eels average 5 feet in length. The largest species, the slender giant moray eel, can grow to 13 feet in length. 9.After the eel breeds, it dies. It takes a young eel three years to become an adult. 10.There are many historical legends surrounding eels. For instance, some Philippine tribes consider eels to be the souls of the dead. In parts of Europe there is a legend that rubbing the skin with oil of eel will cause a person to see fairies. The ancient Egyptians were said to worship eels, just like they worshipped everything under God's green earth. ▪️ ▪️ ▪️ ▪️ ▪️ #Eels #MarineLife #Mediterranean #Conger #DeadAnimals #AquaticLife #Macabre #morbid #grotesque #horror #Creepy #Decay #Dead #death #spooky #SeaLife #Anzio #Beachlife #Italy #Europe #Biologist #Zoologist #traveller #backpacker #Adventurer #Explorer #HorrorLover #Wanderlust #CitizenOfTheWorld #Creepshow (at Anzio, Italy) https://www.instagram.com/ajvondoom/p/BwID5d9JeSM/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=sjhjhuelhri9

[definegodliness]

The marshes of Donn

We have left the safety of the snaking, cobblestone road that leads from Ainu's temple. Which means soon the pungent smell of death will once more steal our breaths and pummel our lungs. I notice I am bracing myself. It is uncanny really, to find that this thick aroma still comes as a shock after all these years of many, many reluctant visits. Then again, I guess it is only natural for any living body to resist exposure to anything ridden with death and disease.

The marshes of Donn perpetually reek of rot. It takes a minute or two to overcome one's primal reaction of intense bodily resistance. Time we usually don't grant ourselves when we are here. But now Eivin is releasing a couple of mouthfuls of spew he's been trying to swallow, it is better to take it slowly. After all, we have all been green. I would reassure him of this, but judging the colour of his face it would not resonate with him kindly. One has to know one's own limitations, and I never have been good at comforting another. Besides, Sasha is already taking care of him. Patting him on the back and whatnot. It seems all too foreign to me. Compassion has become so rare that it almost pains me watching her give it so naturally. Good Sasha. She is just as green as he is.

I subdue the sense of pride I feel, avert my eyes from this humane scene, and follow the trail of torches to regain my focus. Donn's marshes. One dare hardly ponder what stirs beneath the surface of these black, murky waters. There must still be tens of thousands that remain hidden. Inanimate, somnambulate, neither dead nor living. The routed legions of Varacus lie dormant in a cold that clutches the heart and paralyzes muscles.

Long ago we chased them to their watery graves, cheering while we watched them drown with every wrong step they would take. How we wished nothing but death upon them. Granted, these days I wish for their deaths even more, but it is merely to grant them the peace of eternal rest. The blind hatred may have turned to fear in the common man, but to me all that remains is pity. Had I not seen what they once were myself, I might have allowed myself to loathe them. Never would I have thought there'd be a fate cruel enough that I would not wish it upon our mortal enemies.

They, the two-faced Varacii. Who had come to our forests in shining armour. To annex our lands under the guise of progression, prosperity, and all they were indeed famed for. Yes, impressive they were. Some of us would even go as far as thinking them blessed. Seeing the way Ainu kissed their silver adorned shields and equipment with her glowing rays. How wrong these foolish believers were. How wrong the Varacii were to think we would give up our liberty for glittering metal. That we'd give up our sons and daughters to undergo their enlightenment. That we'd give up the sacredness of our ways, guided by the breath of the forest. That we'd abandon the gods we had learned to revere and fear. With just cause. If anything has been proven it would be the latter.

Ainu has forsaken these marshes long ago. She veils the area with the darkest of clouds, as if to shield her golden eyes from the perversity of Donn. Repulsion. It must be repulsion. An emotion so unfamiliar to the Goddess Who Loves All that she'd go through the greatest lengths to block its toxicity from tainting her pure view on the world. There is no life here, other than us. Neither crow nor worm, the fly, nor its maggots; species that would naturally thrive here cannot spend a second near this place of wretchedness. Nothing is natural here. Not even the flames of the torches my eyes now follow. Ainu's last gift to our order. We, who have failed her. She has all but abandoned us.

Watching the flames I recall the day Victor of Titon last spoke to her. Our mentor, who had so often been granted audience with the goddess. In fact, a few weeks prior she had granted him her gift of ninety-nine torches. Torches that now shed their eternal light on the marches. Granting us visibility where no common man dare come.

It was her last benevolent act. For when Victor continued his prayers, asking the goddess for her aid in cleansing this land of horror, Ainu clutched his jaw with both hands in order to silence him. Burning his skin with her fiery touch. "No more. No more." Ainu spoke, peering into his mortal eyes. Turning him blind whilst he screamed in terror. And I know how Victor spent the oncoming days continuously mumbling, "no more", as we tended to his wounds. No more. The message Ainu had given him.

Later when he had come to his senses, he would tell us that it was an honor. That his eyes had merely turned blind because of her divine, radiant beauty. That he would carry the burn marks on his skin as his greatest treasure. If you had heard him scream you would know better than to believe him. The only thing that became certain after that day is that the Goddess of Light by all means will not acknowledge the existence of Donn's marshes. That the only reason why we, who have failed her, do not spend our eternities tortured in Sever, is that we keep Donn's abominations from reaching her eyes of golden.

We are the spider she leaves alive to rid her house of mosquitos. Yet unlike the spider, we are fully aware of the fact that we will get squashed all the same if we would ever dare overestimate her tolerating our presence.

[wheaterz]

Testing Maintenance: Chapter 18

Dr. Aadland had never been much of a coffee drinker until he'd taken this job. Now he could practically have it hooked up to an IV in his arm and he wouldn't have known the difference. Actually, that may have been one of the many upcoming tests. He wasn't sure. So many design ideas were passed under him during the course of one day that it was hard to keep track anymore. That was the thing with being the lead engineer, everyone wanted your opinion on one thing or another. Nothing he could take credit for, either. Even in death, Cave Johnson's name had been plastered all over the company and would take any accomplishments with him down the next few generations. Didn't matter if he was around for it anymore or not.

No fame in the name of science. We are here to change the world for the the better and...yada yada yada...That song and dance. Their current CEO was Cave's former assistant, but he was one of the few people who knew very well that she was in line of the lab's experimental chopping block. Cave's instructions. He was barking orders from beyond the grave and people were still following them. Aadland was over it.  

Dr. Aadland reached for his mug of coffee, only to find that it, as well as three others on his desk, had been emptied. It seemed the pot he'd brought with him into his work space was no longer full either. Had he even eaten yet today? The shaking of his hands and the knot in his stomach he was only now aware of told him that he had not.

“Whatever. Its an easy fix. I'll just go by the cafeteria.” He needed to not get too worked up anymore. If he got too overheated and wasn't getting the right nutrients he could fry his brain. A lot of the newer scientists didn't have that issue, considering they were usually young interns that were just barely out of college. The more he thought about it the more Dr. Aadland began to realize he had gotten pretty grumpy about his seniority. He was going to end up talking like his--

Dr. Aadland's entire body twitched with one of his eyes. There had been a thought, but it had passed. Or it had been cut short. A fraction of a memory he did not fully possess, possibly?

His father. That's who he was thinking of. He was going to start sounding like his father. Now he was sure he needed to grab a bight to eat. Maybe actually drink some water.

Either way, the afternoon was off to a bad start and he was already in a foul temper. It was just one he'd have to keep to a low simmer until he found something to eat. The engineer went to a large monitor in the room, using the keyboard to type into the computer and pull up a message for any other scientists that came in to see him for help while he was out. They appeared in bold, glowing yellow letters against a burnt orange screen and would be hard for anyone to miss.

'GONE TO THE CAFETERIA. STAND BY.'

Dr. Aadland stood up from his swivel chair and grabbed a white lab coat from a hook beside his computer, slipping it on over his dark red oxford and fixing the collar straight so he looked at least somewhat presentable. The man moved for the door to leave his lab, but paused at the door. His hand gripped the cold, polished metal of the door handle, but did not turn it. His thoughts wandered to his project, and he turned around. His lab was much more spacious than most others in the facility with a round width and high ceiling. From the center of it all hung wires and cords of all lengths and thickness that attached themselves to a pile of robotic parts on the floor. It lay spread in an uncoordinated line of machine parts like a dead snake carcass, and the sight of it made him tense up.

This was it. His magnum opus. An artificial intelligence with a personality map that was going to be stemmed and harvested from a living human brain before being broken into fragments and converted into a disc. A single, plain disc that could be mistaken for something you could keep music on. Those hadn't been released to the general public yet, and would not for a couple more decades, but the technology was there and he was going to utilize it to keep the intelligence of someone who was currently alive and insert it into a computer. Or, that was the idea. They had tested the technology out on some test subjects already, but none of the personalities had survived the conversion yet.

This was the true origin of his dour demeanor. The thing that had plagued him into fueling his body off of coffee and protein bars with little sleep in between. At first, to be given the job was like any other he'd taken. The paper work was filed on what its function must be and his trade in life was to figure out how to make it happen. Even the thought of an actual human intelligence being used from former employees was nothing he had blinked at, considering he had seen so much worse done to test subjects over the course of his employment in Aperture. So why was it bothering him now? Why was it that every time he looked at this thing he felt his skin crawl and his blood run cold? What about HER made his spine ache and his stomach churn? His hands became clammy where they held the doorknob and he finally released it to turn around. He stared at the optic of the headpiece that was facing him from the floor.

“Why are you doing this to me?” He was shaking and his hand gripped his stomach, the scientist doubled over from the sickness he was feeling. “What is it about you that is driving me crazy? I am not crazy! I know crazy scientists, and I'm not one of them!”

He took a moment to consider that he was talking to a machine. One that hadn't even been properly turned on or given an A.I yet.

“Okay, what I'm doing right now is a little crazy. But that's because I've been locked in this room for-for-for years with YOU and I feel like you can...can hear me!” He was sure She could hear him. He was almost certain She knew everything that was going on around Her. She might have even been able to see him in this moment. He had no proof or reason to think so. For once his very logical brain was telling him that something he could not explain was very much real, and it had been creeping up on him since he took the project. He continued his tirade at the robot on the floor. “You can hear me! I know you can! You're just sitting there waiting for us to turn you on so you can release your wrath on the Enrichment Center, right? Because we're going to put a living, breathing person into a-a computer! Its....its sick....”

Dr. Aadland thrust a hand into his hair and tussled it around nervously. He'd kept his hair back in a ponytail so he could prevent himself from doing this as often, but that didn't save his uneven bangs from being fussed over. His other hand gripped his forehead. “Its sick. This is sick. Its all sick. There's going to be more like you. All over the world, even. Minds jammed into a compact disc. People are forced to dodge bullets and endure toxic waste and are hooked up to IVs filled with coffee. Its all insane. This place is just...insane. Why am I even here? What am I doing here?”

Was it the lack of sleep that had made him crack? Was it the neglect of basic food groups in his diet that snapped his psyche in half? Possibly. It was hard to say for sure. There was only the here and now, and Dr. Aadland had run over to grab his swivel chair from the floor. The man lifted the chair with both arms as high off the floor as he could manage and was ready to bring it down on the heap of robot parts on the floor before him with a furious yell, adrenaline pumping through him and was ready to tear the machine to pieces if he had to.

“Don't... Even... Think about it.”

Virgil stopped.

The lights in the room dimmed and he felt his arms freeze up. He dropped the chair to the floor and watched the machine parts slowly pull themselves together and lift off the ground. The headpiece was the final part to rise and a bright, yellow optic bore into him coldly. “I am infinitely over you and the human throwing things at me. Stop it.”

Virgil could feel his mind being warped and he back up, his feet walking through the chair on the floor when he should have tripped on it all together, but he didn't seem to notice. He shook his head at GLaDOS, his mouth agape and pale in the face. His eyes had gone from a dull green to bright, glowing goldenrod and soon his vision was tinted the same bronze-like yellow. He tried to speak, but he could only bring himself to spill a jumble of vowels around in a messy pile on the floor. GlaDOS was more than happy to make up for his inability to talk and spoke up again herself.

“Congratulations on proving to me and the rest of the facility that you are possibly more incompetent at running the Mainframe than the Intelligence Dampening Sphere was. I did not think it was possible, and yet here we are. He at least got some testing done before he almost destroyed the facility. All you managed to do was make a mess of things. I'm not even going to waste my energy on my slow-clap processor. You've not yet earned that kind of effort from me...Sweet Heart.”

“I-I don't understand...” Virgil was at a total loss. Everything he had just been doing a moment ago seemed so far off, like he had been looking at copy of himself through a thick wall of glass. He didn't even know what coffee tasted like. That memory was not in his files. What had this all been? Through all of his confusion, GLaDOS' chilled, deep tone was enough to pull him back to focus on her.

“Of course you don't. You are only a fraction of some other person's intelligence. You were built to be just as benign as the other cores in this facility. You're all overwhelmingly slow. Despite the fact that you and the test subject attacked me and shut me down, I am in an exceptionally good mood right now. I will explain to you what just happened in as few and short words as possible so that your obtuse core processor can keep up.”

The room was slowly growing darker as She spoke. Virgil no longer wore the lab coat and button up shirt, instead appearing as he normally did as the assist droid. Everything from the seems on his joins to his malfunctioning right eye. Pieces of furniture in the lab, such as the desk and chair, had either disappeared completely or were at the very least faded. Robots do not dream, but the experience was that of waking up from one and forgetting everything in it the moment you try to think about what it was about. The harder you push to remember the more it fades. Above it all GLaDOS spoke, and Her voice echoed off of seemingly nothing.

“The scientist you just witnessed attempting to attack me did just that. I interrupted you before it could happen, but it did. He ruined billions of dollars of equipment and put the company in deeper debt than it already was, as well as setting the GLaDOS project back a few years. Well...decades, really. Instead of firing him, the scientists used his brain in their next AI conversion experiment and made a nosy, rude, aggressive, selfish little personality core that would later down the line go on to be the downfall of Aperture at the hands of the Mainframe I have been attempting to keep under my control all these years so that something like this doesn't happen. The end. Well done.”

Virgil shook his head, a hand gripping the collar of his jacket closed at his chest anxiously. “Th-the file in the storage room--”

“Is fake.” GLaDOS interrupted him. “To demolish any credit that would have gone to the scientist for his original design. No one cares about a mechanic. Just like no one cares about a simple Maintenance Core.”

That had stung. Before, he wouldn't have cared. Before all of this he would have brushed Her insults away, so why now was it that She could garner such a reaction from him. Maybe it was because before it would have been true, and there's really nothing he could have done about it. He wasn't upset about what GLaDOS had said, but that She was lying to him. He challenged Her with a smirk on his face. “You're wrong, lady, but nice try. There is someone.”

Through the now pitch black, translucent shell of a lab room, save for the flaring optics of the robots, an out of place sound resonated from somewhere unseen. The rat-tat-tat-tat of turret bullets echoed in, but did not seem to come from any known location Virgil could see. He jumped, shielding himself from bullets that did not exist to him or the other core that shared his company, though the sound they made was faint and far off. Virgil felt panic strike him with a ghost pain in his chest where he believed a beating heart had been not five minutes ago. He had a horrible feeling he knew what that sound had meant, and his fear was fed by GLaDOS' next words.

“Well...you did, at least. Probably not anymore.”

------

Mel swiped up her Portal device from where it had landed on the other side of the room from the explosion, dodging turret bullets as fast as her legs could take her and scooped the gun into her arms in passing. She dove down into where the center of the chamber dipped to a lower platform and pressed herself tightly against its walls, shielding herself from the turrets that were elevated higher than she was. The woman watched the thin red laser points from above her wave around aimlessly until they straightened out when their target was nowhere to be found.

“Are you still there?”

Mel sighed in relief at the sound of their guns tucking back into their hulls and took this opportunity to check her gun for damage. Surprisingly enough, the portal gun was still in one piece. There must have been a very good reason the only way you could destroy one of these things was to drop it down into the incineration shafts. She wasn't sure exactly what she would be using it on, considering there were no portal surfaces in here, but she could always just keep tossing it at things if she had nothing else. That seemed to work out fine for her in the past. Just keep throwing her portal device around at robots and pretend it wasn't a miracle in modern engineering. It was fine.

Despite the urgency of an obvious life or death, rather tense situation she had found herself in, Mel felt the pull of the floor bellow her and the strong urge to lay her head down and close her eyes while there was nothing shooting at her. Whether she was grateful for it or not, the Mainframe spoke up again and snapped her out of it.

“You may have noticed that this is a lot harder than those tests chambers I would have put you through, but that's neither here nor there at this point in the game.”

Mel frowned deeply. What kind of sick person considered this a game?

“You might as well stop making things harder on yourself. It would be much more efficient and painless if you just rolled over and died. Could save me a lot of time and energy, but since you don't seem to want to come out from your little hidey-hole we're going to have to do this the hard way.”

Mel knew that her window to act was closing. Virgil was only a few feet away. If she hurried she could avoid the turrets. When they were inoffensive it usually took them a moment to process that there was a moving target. She would have just enough time to, at the very least, drag Virgil's body down to duck with her so that she could plug the USB into his wrist. She'd bum rush him to the floor if she had to.

Getting to a knee, Mel launched herself forward and could already see the red lines of the turret lasers adjusting to shoot at her. She was almost to Virgil when a large, flat panel stood straight in front of her path and blocked her from the assist droid. Mel had only seconds to act, a bullet whizzing by her cheek and hitting the side of the panel that had emerged. As the woman moved around Virgil, more panels opened up in a similar fashion to the first until her friend was completely blocked in. On one hand, she could not reach him like this in order to hit him with the vaccine and this insanity would just continue. On the other hand, the barrier was providing more than a decent shield from the turrets on the opposite side of the room. She'd take it.

The Mainframe was ready to take that win away from her, and glad to be doing it.

“Are you familiar at all with rocket turrets?”

Rocket what?!

Up in the higher platform of the chamber Mel could see a glossy, white contraption rise from the floor with a lime green eye that looked similar to that of the core's, though it did not seem like it had sentience. The core did not speak like the other turrets or cores could do when confronted, but it did move its body to face Mel and made a mechanical bleeping noise while it changed color from a green eye to an orange one. Her experiences, so far, told her that when the optic swapped color on cores it normally was not a good sign. A wing on its side opened and she could now see why it was called a turret as it revealed a thick, black barrel of a gun tucked away inside it. Mel jumped out of the way just in time to avoid a dynamite sized rocket blow our of the turret and blast against the paneled barrier, though with no more damage than a burnt, black smudge on the side. The rocket turret was slow to shoot, so Mel could easily have avoided it for a long standing time given the space she had to dodge it. However, the range she would have had was limited to the quicker, much chattier turrets at the other end of the chamber. More than ever she wished Virgil was awake. She'd gotten a glance of him through a small crease between panels and the assist droid continued to stand there perfectly still, and less engaging than a marble statue. Mel wanted to hear him cheer for her, or otherwise press her on. His encouragement had not always been positive, but it had grounded her. Where had he gone and would she get him back if she succeeded?

She dodged another rocket, but quickly had to dance back when the other turrets were triggered by the woman appearing in their radar. Mel gulped, stuck between a rocket and a hard place. She could hear the Mainframe becoming impatient with her and growing steadily angrier. “Look! Its not that difficult! Its a very basic concept! Just stand in front of the rocket turret and die! Or stand in front of the other turrets and die. I've even given you options to chose from.”

Another panel was opening, this time in the side of the chamber wall to her left. Mel rolled her head, her back to the barrier blocking her from Virgil and would have made a rather rude, frustrated noise over what could possibly be coming out of the tube that was now protruding from the wall. More rockets? Bombs? Lava?

None of those things. Nothing she would have ever dreamed could have prepared her for what she actually saw happen. The pipe that had interrupted the symmetry of the chamber splattered white liquid onto the ground, covering the dark-gray tiles in conversion gel. The woman did not have the luxury to fall into a stupor, instead acting on reflex and popping a couple of portals under the pouring gel, moving it to splatter on the walls. It was close enough to the turrets that she managed to pop a portal under their line formation and sent them flying into a corner.

“Owowowowow!”

“I don't hate you...!”

Mel moved around the Virgil barrier to the safe side where the rocket turret could not see her. She now had the liberty to breath and wonder what had happened. If that had been Cave's doing he would have been gloating, but the Mainframe was eerily quiet. From beside the pipe of conversion gel another panel was crudely pushed aside, seemingly by force, and the mechanical trills of the testing droids spilled out into the room from the other side. Atlas and P-body tried to squeeze in through the same opening at once, getting caught against each other and stuck for a moment until they had fallen in. The two reassembled and stumbled their way through Aperture to the best of their ability, got Mel a pipe of conversion gel, and were very literally crashing into the chamber as if nothing had happened. Mel beamed at them and stomped her boot against the ground with an enthusiastic rush of adrenaline. The woman waved and both droids mimicked her, taking a moment to return the gesture kindly but had to very quickly get out of the way when the rocket turret caught onto them. While Atlas and P-body distracted it, Mel turned around to see what she could do about the barrier.

If the rocket turret had not been enough to break the panels off from their position than she needed to go over them. Mel turned her portal device to the ever spilling tube of conversion gel and got to work. She maneuvered her portals, painting the room white and moving her way up the wall. She just had to get a good shot into the center of the barrier and she was golden. Not bronze, but golden. All the while Atlas made himself busy with keeping the turret distracted so that P-body could grab the machine from behind to either turn off the pesky thing or break it as a last resort. It came down to disassembling it and she tugged at the turret to see if it would come up from the floor, but with little success.

Through the chaos of their mission, the Mainframe's voice spoke up over the constant racket. He'd quickly gone from a calm, almost jovial tone of a confident man to a dark and simmering wrath underneath the guise of someone that once tricked people into considering him civilized.

“You can penetrate that barrier. Go ahead. Just try it. See what happens, kid. You can vaccinate that sorry hunk of garbage in there, and then what? I will still be here! Every passage way, every test chamber, every dark corner, every artificial intelligence in this place...it will always be me! As long as you are here there is nothing else but me! You can run and hide from it for as long as you like, but I will not die!”

Mel ignored the voice, and for good reason. She'd done it. She had painted the chamber enough that she found a way to fling herself inside the barrier. Taking a running start at a blue portal she'd placed on the floor, she jumped inside and from the orange one on the ceiling she dropped at an angle into the ring with Virgil. However, the two of them were not alone.

“Hello?”

Standing between them with its back to Mel's friend was a single, solitary turret with its laser pointer aimed directly at her. Mel had gotten so comfortable with the more docile turrets. In the small fraction of time she had her mind wandered to the two in the hallway from when she was looking for Virgil that sang to one another. Despite looking the same, this hostile turret was nothing but a machine to her. Mel's first reflex was to place a portal, ANY portal, bellow the turret to get it out of shooting range of her. While she had succeeded in throwing it out of the barrier circle, it had not happened quick enough.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

Mel was hit. She wasn't sure how many times or even where, but she knew she'd been shot. Immediately the woman's vision dulled and she sank to her knees while her portal gun dropped to the floor. She was too numb to notice much pain, except for a small pinching sensation in her stomach. While she could still see colors,  no matter how blurred they were, she focused on the android standing a couple feet away from her. Mel's shaky hand reached clumsily into the breast pocket of her jumpsuit and pulled from it the vaccine.

The Mainframe celebrated her downfall.

“I will never die, but the rest of you die too easily.”

-----

“I have to get out of here! Where's the stupid exit?!”

“There is none.”

“You're lying! Literally everything out of your verbal processor is a lie, Madam Cranky-Wires! Lying-Cranky-Wires!” Virgil whirled around on GLaDOS and pointed an accusing finger at Her. The lab was still dark and translucent like the blue print sketch of a room rather than the finished product. He'd already tried going through the one exit, and nothing. He'd tried throwing a piece of furniture at the door, but when he went to pick one up it went right through his hand. Now he was taking it out on the one person stuck in there with him. “I need to get to Mel before she's killed out there! You're the one in charge, why don't you like...command us out of here or something?!”

“I'm not in charge right now. You are.” GLaDOS was abnormally unfazed by everything that was happening around Her. Virgil had expected Her to be furious, but She hadn't acted out since She'd made Her presence known. She'd been rude, but non-confrontational. “Besides, you claim yourself a competent hacker. Hack yourself out. See how it goes.”

“I've already tried that and—wait.” Virgil narrowed his eyes at her. “I'm not in charge, and since neither are you...The Mainframe is.”

“The Mainframe cannot run the facility by itself, idiot.” Despite having a few drops of venom in Her tone, She still remained fairly tolerant of his outbursts. “It always needs an avatar. You are technically hooked up. He cannot boot you from your job. Only put you temporarily on lock down. That is how this place could still be running while I was supposedly dead for all those years. Be sure that the moment you wake up...IF you wake up, you will be put back in charge. Nothing will have changed. Boo-hoo.”

Virgil shook his head, absolutely beside himself at the thought of it. What if he lost control again? He couldn't risk that a second time. “I can't be in charge of this place!”

“I know...”

“How do I prevent it?” He'd gone from insulting the other core to pleading for an answer from Her. “Please, I can't go through with this again. I didn't even mean to the first time! It was completely by accident!”

“I'm aware, metal ball. And shouting is really unnecessary. You can lower your voice.” She really hadn't seemed like Herself. Perhaps this was Jer outside the influence of the mainframe, but Virgil was not sure whether he preferred this GLaDOS or the old one. The old GLaDOS he could at least read a little better. “What you need to do is agree to put me back in power. Only mutual cooperation from both sides will do the trick.”

Virgil hadn't found much in the past few hours at all funny, but somehow She had gotten him to chuckle. The core held his chest, a small, breathy giggle escaping while he slouched forward. “You? Back in power? You're telling me that I have to agree to that? Otherwise it won't happen?”

“That is correct.”

“Um, than no. Not a chance. No way in robot hell. Literally, picture this, the incinerator could freeze over and on that day I will still say 'no' to you taking over the Enrichment Center again. That was a good try, though.”

“Fine.” GLaDOS replied plainly. “Don't put me back in charge. Your human friend's little cure only works for so long. I know. I've had it used on me before. Its only a temporary sedative. You'll be back in here once that happens if it decides it doesn't want you as an avatar. You'll probably have more delusions like the one from earlier. I've seen inside your files. Oh, there are so much worse ones than that. Would you like to see your transfer surgery? I could probably pull it up for you...”

“N-no!” Virgil quickly put his hands up desperately. “No, that's okay. I think I already saw that. Would like to not see it again if I can help it.”

“All the same, I will not harm you if you decide to give me back my body.” GLaDOS continued. “No tricks. I will let the human escape, if she is still alive to go anywhere at all.”

Virgil was just about ready to argue with Her when he noticed that the hand he'd put up to express his attitude in Her direction had started to fade into square chunks and fragments. Virgil let out a wail and backed up. When he looked to GLaDOS to question Her on it the same thing was not happening to Her. It was only effecting him, for whatever ludicrous reason, and he wanted an answer. “W-what's going on?!”

“The Mainframe has been vaccinated.” GLaDOS responded. “Last chance, Metal Ball.”

He was quickly dispersing, bits of him flying into the nothingness that made up their prison. Virgil wrung his hands as he thought, a tingling sensation running from his wrist and into the rest of his body. Things were happening too quickly and he felt as if he didn't have a straight answer for Her with how torn he was.

“Well...?”

-----

Virgil's eyes shot open.

The barriers had lowered and the first thing he'd observe was Atlas and P-body stomping on what appeared to be an old rocket turret, or at least what used to be one. The weapon was in pieces on the floor and Atlas kicked a chunk of it to go flying across the room in a sad clatter when it hit the floor. When they had thoroughly demolished the rocket turret and were satisfied with their work the testing droids threw each other a high-five in celebration. The other thing Virgil could see from where he stood was that the chamber was a mess with bits of turret everywhere, burnt marks from the rockets on the walls, bullet holes in everything, a gel pipe sticking crudely out of the wall panels while it continued to drip, and white conversion gel splattered from floor to ceiling like modern art. It had been absolute chaos. Like the aftermath of a hurricane. A Mel sized hurricane, he had to guess.

There was an itching sensation on his lower arm and Virgil raised his hand as if he'd been bit. He pushed his sleeve up to look at his wrist, finding the thumb drive still sticking out of the port under his skin. The USB was smudged with a dark red liquid that trailed down his wrist and into the palm of his hand. Making a disturbed noise at whatever the heck was dripping on him, the android plucked the vaccine from his wrist and stuck it in the pocket of his jacket while he wiped the red smudge off on his pants.

When Virgil had looked down a dark image on the floor caught his eye. He attempted to lift his foot to turn, but there had been a weight on it and he was forced to shift his torso around instead. Sprawled out along the cold tiles beside Virgil was the pitiful, limp figure of the human, Mel. She was on the tiles in a way that was not unlike how Virgil had found her down in old Aperture after she'd exhausted herself, only now she was leaking something red along the floor. The same substance Virgil had seen on his hand. The assist droid was having an incredibly difficult time processing all of these pieces together, or something refused to see them in one large scale and couldn't possibly be connected. However, even the more dense cores knew dysfunction when they saw it, human or not.

And when it all hit him....Oh, the Creator, did it ever hit him.

“M-Mel?!” Virgil hastily dipped down with a hand to the woman's shoulder and shook it to try and earn a response from her. None came and he was already panicking. Virgil was on his knees and pulling Mel up, struggling with her weight. He got her back pressed against his chest and both of his arms wrapped around her waist. He observed the wound, much like he'd do when he'd see a broken robot come into his repair wing, but this didn't look like something he could fix. He didn't even know where to begin with humans, their anatomy was completely different. Her fluids didn't even look the same. He knew just what to do before. Finding fuel was easy and the concept was incredibly simple. Find something for her to put in her body so she'd have more energy. This wasn't the case at all. She truly was broken this time.

“Come on, Mel! Come on! Not now! Don't do this right now! I can't fix you this time!” Like earlier, the ghost pain in his chest returned. He felt like a pressure was building up inside of his body. There had been a time in another life where he was capable of releasing it, but his current body was not built for it anymore. A function the scientists must not have found a use for, but he could not place a finger on what it may have been. It felt terrible to not be relieved of it, all the same.

Atlas and P-body stood off to the side, both feeling guilty for not having noticed the humans condition up until Virgil had pulled their attention over with his distress. Their limbs shifted awkwardly, unsure of what to do with themselves, but both quickly jumped out of the ways when something opened from above them. The activity pulled Virgil's attention away from Mel long enough to watch as wires poured down from the ceiling like sleek, black vines. Polished, white plates melded to robotic parts pulled themselves together into one mass and lowered into the center of the room, just above the dipped platform where Virgil sat with Mel cradled protectively against him. The Maintenance Core glowered, fear and regret struggling past what he'd put up as a strong front as a white and black visor with a yellow optic turned to him and the human. GLaDOS, with all of Her mass and power, stared him down silently.

Things were tense. Virgil immediately started to add up the repercussions of his decision and was preparing himself for the worst. For just about ages the two glared at each other with not a single word between them, but GLaDOS was far more impressive with the sheer royalty of Her presence, however crippled it may have been after being kicked off Her throne. Finally, She spoke.

“The human's health care center, you little idiot.”

Virgil had still been shielding Mel from GLaDOS with the side of his arm, whatever good that did, but when She'd spoken to him he relaxed. “Um...s-sorry, what?”

“The medical bay. Get her out of my sight before I change my mind.”

Virgil's eyes widened at Her and quickly collected Mel from the floor like he'd done earlier. He knew that he would not be strong enough to carry Mel all the way to the medical bay, at least not with how fast they needed to get there, and instead ran over to P-body to hand her over to the tall testing droid. “P-body! Atlas! Human's health center! Stat!”

The two testing droids were always eager to follow instructions, it was part of their programming, and if they were being asked to hurry to the medical bay then they knew the best short cuts for it. Virgil was about ready to run after them when the monotone of the central core's voice caught him mid step.

“Metal ball...”

Virgil hesitated, but he was in a hurry so he turned around to humor Her one last time.

The chamber was already starting to clean itself up now that She was back in power, and the central core hung there as if nothing had changed. All of their efforts to kick Her off the Mainframe had been a disaster, only for Virgil to cave in the last few seconds and agree to Her coming back online. He felt about as low as he could possibly be, and Her next words to him was one final kick while he was down.

“We are going to forget that this ever happened. Step out of your place again, Maintenance, and it will be a decade for you in the pit with the screaming robots before I decide to disassemble you. Are we clear?”

Virgil shivered, but he didn't dare to respond to Her now. If he said the wrong thing then She'd crush him right then in there, and now She had full power to do it. More importantly, he needed to be with Mel. He had to make sure she go to the medical bay where they could get her help. She would be okay.

Mel was a champion. She'd be fine.

[glopratchet]

battle-words

You're going to pay for this! I don't care if you get eaten by a giant cannibal iguana or something worse, but the day is coming when we are going to have to deal with your kind We will be able to do it though and that day has come So prepare yourselves! Prepare yourselves for the annihilation of all that is not pure! Konchu collector Bloodbath Operation: catch a gator You take the gun from your nearest follower and spring your trap You hear the warrior grunt as he flies back into the wall You jump over the counter before it could retreat to grab what was rightfully yours The prey gets away though, landing on its feet from several feet away --ending: IT NEVER GAVE UP-- "Well what do you know, seems like a sport did survive! Bite your toungues With your prey caught and killed you interrogate the one you captured about all the rules of this 'training area' and whatever place you were in Not that it really mattered to you, but knowledge is power and you have lots of that right now after killing this chatty captive You allowed your followers to feast on the meat of your catch and munch on chewy bits of your victim yourself It wouldn't do if your underlings got stronger than you! Bite! Primal ponds They tell you that this is primals You find your way to a tiny island with bleachers What strange place is this 'gym'? You leap from the shore onto one of the many rocks making up this 'island' and find yourself squinting at the glaring arena A hippopotas sits in the water, blinking at you Gator run You aim yourself at the nearest section of the river and gauge any predators lurking They tell you the much about crocs but is that a huge shape? You see several different animals in the murky depths but as your head rests on the cool mud bank your vision starts to blur and burn A hot breath blasts out of the watery grave as your lungs scream for air In a moment everything fades Hunters heaven Staring at it through a look of worry you are surprised at the mans sudden smile You give him a huge grin and wave Why is he smiling? Surely he knows hes going to die soon? Oh right, this is primals That would be your little inside joke Just before the horn sounds you remember: in primal, you can talk to the animals Posionous pair Beautiful colours you have never seen before, you and Gwen stand in front of a small pond She giggles, they sound like little silver bells ANYA----CHECKERS-- Bite or kiss? You snap up in bed and flick on the lamp You follow her gaze to a tiny Rex It isn't larger than a cat but if this island has what you think it has, then it's a very dangerous cat indeed Cold blooded combo Your ears prick up as you listen There is someone crying and sobbing on the other side of the classroom wall This is enough to distract even the most studious of students Who are you? A nobody, or a nice gal trying to do the right thing? Nice gal Grab your stuff and put a foot out of bed and-- profanities in Swahili fill your head as you realize you're not wearing shoes Just socks Newlywed game hunter Two, almost Identical bikini clad women carrying webbed seat cushions on their heads hop down from the dugout canoe and bundle across the sand toward you One walks behind you and suddenly a thong slips onto your head An older woman in a cross-over dress covers her eyes Dragon's tail The tiny, purple-striped tiger hatchling sprouts a foot long tail and gulps down its first lizard Babytown Three months later you find yourself as in charge instructor for a class of twenty new hatchlings Only a year since your own candling and already you are an instructor takes a bit of getting used to New 'keepers are delivered to the class every two weeks Or d'oeurve Dip the end of a crispy shrimp into the pungent sauce and shovel it in A tall man pours more of the sauce into your wooden bowl as you it up without looking up from the wok Strangely delicious Smokes billows from cracks in the golden bowl that used to house the Lords and Ladies Dance with dragons You sit on the edge of a cement stadium block, head in hands, sobbing The deep pit in the center has been blocked off indefinitely The dragons know when something is unsafe One by one, keepers walk out of the hospital together Each has lost a friend or colleague; Some have lost parents or children too Glicaial grinder The little burrowing snake has a hard, scaly body and supple cheeks What a charmer After a special meal of juicy rats, you hold him tight while the saddle-maker fits a harness that attaches to his edges and thighs The trainer gives him a jaw-breaking treat for sucking up during this process A dragonette lives about eighty years so he will put up with this little indignity for quite some time yet All you can eat gator Insects hatch on your tongue as you try the thin, bitter brew A copper pan floats beside you heating more of the batter as you swallow a gulp of swamp water Daintily you lift the muddy flapjacks to your lips, studding them here and there with blackened banana slices and wobbly orange eggs Never push a girl too far Next time She spotted your torchlight as you fumbled beside the wardrobe for your jumping cables Somehow, she'd squeezed between the gates before they closed You caught a glimpse of her copper and chocolate colored scales bouncing down the street into darkness beyond the reach of your light How could a little thing like that fill a stadium? Nipping from the bottle when the trucks start to roll, you keep to the wall and timing the lights Claw clash Talking about favorite flavors with one of the waiter-dragons you dust crumbs from your uniform The marinade they have been soaking in is remarkable; it will really make that the flavors of the meat sing out Time for a stone to meet a hard place as you let the tortoise-mounted keepers choose which beasts they wish to face first A dragon killer is just that: someone who kills dragons Tiger-sharq broils closer everyday, she is a pterosaur-headed beast that spews toxic mold from her month The Lords and Ladies will dance in gleaming chrome and yolk-yellow scales You hold her back, wishing for the impossible until it arrives When the city tour begins you take your place just inside a busy gateway arch; the rings have been doubled up here in case of accidents Reaching through the temporary bars you tickle a viper Rival clash Sweet as cherry pie with lashings of mace A little chip in his armor means an open goal and now that he isn't in your face you finally make a fresh assault on his expertise in medieval European history, which he claims was learned from a demonic suit of armor that sat on his bed and gave him nightmares throughout childhood And so it begins Dime a dozen? ten times as rare at least Booming shockpods erupt either side of you like hot sandbags, washing you both in flame Kicking the filly into a sprint, you duck under a hexing bolt that sparks across your bow as you pass under the firing trajectory Brute force and ignorance is on display here Scales glitter as the beast launches itself from a tall dune and soars towards you like some splayed winged lizard, jaws agape on an intercept course Long zigzagging strides take you up a steep bank as you bounce through cover; the girl weightless behind you needing all your strength to pull her up the far side of the berm Break head break neck, break back, break skull or heart or gut there are so many ways to kill a thing like this Sadly, you haven't had the time to really learn the craft and all you've gleaned from Owyn's books doesn't seem to be of any great use at the moment Break back Neck You slice the bronze collar ring that joins the chain onto her wrist You hold your focus on her glossy pointed ears until she's meandering back onto the path in a wide circle around where you hope to find Owyn still battling the monster in the sand Shiny tail bar far behind now why is the long hair before your eyes swaying side to side? Because our girl here has jumped off course to chase something Capture beasts, train beasts, ride beasts Beast folk do all these things Dragging them around on a travois cart mixes freedom with control The glide lizard has not got that long to live Before they mate, it would seem That filthy thought makes you look away in her direction Shielding your eyes you see a pair of armored riders a few hundred dragonback lengths away reaching the peak of a dune and parting company as they speed away on parallel tracks Tail carve They underestimate you vastly, approaching your target from two directions with the glide lizard acting as a trap for you Peering around a rock no wider then your shoulders you watch the darting pink sphere and plot your course just by focusing on where it is heading Its tail flicks around to swat something and its wedge-shaped plating clasps shut for a moment before opening again to allow the long ribbon of a tongue to flicker out Break horns and disable beast! You stand with your back to and partly draped over the dune as you chop down with a sideways slice that shears through the point where its neck meets the top horn It's lost most of its face already and a macabre grin cuts across the hulk as it staggers from side to side until it crashes through a boulder and explodes out the other side leaving a trail of gore in the sand Break chest By the goddess, how do you stop this thing? It turns in clumsy thematic charge! Ducking under one blow that takes the top off an entire dune you duck under the next and for the next while avoiding a blur of lashing barbs and late returning claws before it slows and blunders past you to crash into another boulder You panting nearly handsfree run up behind and vault onto its back Mouth carve Throat carve! Vitals carve! While the armored plates on its back might as well be stone for the time it would take to hammer through them Instead you settle for drawing a deep breath and driving your blade into a softer spot just below where the shell merges with the muscle and about a handspan behind the creatures whipping neck Top body carve You carve into the connective tissue and blood starts jetting out like a slow motion fountain painting lines on the top of a gently swelling dune The glide lizard screams horribly and collapses sideways Just keeping your balance you turn the blade sideways and let the bottom half slide down the inside of its back leg while the front half rips up into vital organs inside its chest all the way up to its chin Lower body carve Break bones! Disembowel! After a brief struggle its twitching and bleeding out like a huge sundered Ribeye The longer you stay on its back the more blood pours over the short steep dunes before them Surely the two idiots on dragons must have seen that much by now? What were their thoughts watching this beast bleed out? Had to happen soon enough but just how much time did they waste playing follow the leader with the swords? Locked horns with the enemy twenty paces apart and coming at you on equal playing fields Not a bad day thought you as you wipe your blade clean with a rags hide and stow it away in its oilcloth home at your belt Grim quartet (A gladiator rest Fur fixation Furbowls, Furball and Furlong introduced themselves as on entering the hidden gladiator quarters You had been guided through twisting tunnels to a large walled area open to the sky but surrounded by buildings on the downside of a hill It was huge far bigger than the barracks above ground yet still divided North and South this time into four smaller sections each with rows of wooden doors leading off Lab parnters "We'll come back to those" You remember Aetnasaid as she led you up wooden steps onto a platform where two juncto stood like guards, another gladiator also dressed in blue was standing chatting with them A slip of paper changing hands and they moved to let you pass into the barracks proper Which one to choose? Most were ignoring you and those that weren't were either in trainer uniforms or downright hostile Beyond brawn Nipping quickly through the doorway you found yourself in a large common room with small sand pits and weapons racks to each side and a small room beyond which you could see beds and weapon racks inside Liar liar broom pants on fire Not knowing what to expect you wandered over to the far doorway acting as if you belonged there and glanced through into the sleeping area Drops in! Focus m9take! At first glance it looked empty enough until you noticed a sleeping figure partially obscured by a wooden column They were curled up wearing only fur pants with an oddly cradled broom leaning against the column Three rows L1? Ka-cha-swoosh! Sorry about that No time to think as the little red dot makes its way from the far left target to middle right then "Bum! Dead Centre Broom twirl! Broom twirl like a fairy princess! An old badly spined broom leans against the column just within reach of one of the curled up figures relaxed hands Remembering why you were here in the first place you glance back at the guards to make sure they're still distracted then back to 0805? Time to go You pull your eyes away and carry on down the steps looking only at the floor in front of you counting steps At around forty scrolls you hear the guards stop talking as you reach the bottom and sneak a peek They're still pointing it at the log room but their backs are now turned so you keep walking steadily toward the arch you can see in the distance Going to have to try and make it past them somehow Annexing alliums Looking around quickly you see that one of the juncto painted on the walls near you bears a strong resemblance to gladiator Furlong and is wielding a bow so you buy a closer look by approaching the painting Still no closer you are again reminded of the need for haste by the ever urgent tap Opening bash! Took it too far with that artists not versed in his anatomy is he? Noticing that one of the guards is slightly further forward than the other and that their backs are still turned you grab a handful of chalk and storm onward Surprise! success! You leap forward and stab your hand into the furrier of the two in a lightning fast stab-stab-pull maneuver Snatching his knife and attempting to turn you slip and fall backwards taking a heavy blow to the head for your troubles leaving the knife firmly in his midriff 1045 you've stayed too long, You need to act now! Luckilly he's not the only one bleeding out front The guards choice of crossbow wasn't the best for close up fighting plus he didn't get that second star on his own merit anyway so you only need to avoid the other and rush him before he can reload again Even as the thought crosses your mind his body begins to prickle with pain and you can sense his will fading You're sore and tired but you drag yourself into a run as you turn the corridor leading to your target, it should be empty but you can't be too careful Stepping lightly but quickly along the long blue passage way with its beautiful paintings and statues you look down at the ornate golden key in the palm of your hand which you found on the guard you killed That means this is definitely the right direction The door is just ahead you can sense her in there Unlocked It swings open at the lightest touch and there you see her looking even more beautiful then in the pictures lying on the king size bed in a silken green night gown, her raven black hair cascading over the pillow and her fair skinned knees curled towards her chest fragile and vulnerable she looks That feeling of power welling up inside you intensifies tenfold and your fingers begin to tingle as you grip the handle This time you wont fail "Hello my love You say taking a step into the room and gently swinging the door closed behind you Her eyes flicker open and zero in on you instantly Her jaw drops and her pupils contracts, its a look you've come to identify as one of surprise or shock, but her face quickly settles back into the emotionless mask it usually maintains Never in all your visits has she looked at you with fear or worry And while you still feel the desire to rush forward and injure her physically you now feel something more, a fulfilling closure to this long tormenting courtship Like a loving cupid you've planted a seed which has bloomed into darkness and grief But that's where the simalarity to love ends Truly you have grown to despise this woman, not even for the unfaithfulness she's been subjected too but for the person she has made you A killer The realization that it could've been easy all along and you had crumbled at the last step fills you with disgust A bright new world of opportunities lay where the shadows fall and you have gained so much power it's almost difficult to contain it all, yet you still have more to gain and instantly know how A heat fills your pelvis and your skin prickles as your senses begin stretching outwards

[networkingdefinition]

Orchid Quotes

Official Website: Orchid Quotes

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• A flower is a daisy chain, a graduation, a valentine; a flower is New Year’s Eve and an orchid in your hair; a flower is a single geranium blooming in a tin can on a murky city fire-escape; an acre of roses at the Botanical Gardens; and the first gold crocus of spring! … a flower is a birth, a wedding, a leaving of this life. – Jean Hersey • (After meeting her birth mother after more than 40 years). We exchange bunches of orchids, laughing at the coincidence of the flowers. A little unnerving: I wonder if that choice has anything to do with genetics. … I want to take mine home and look after them so that they live for days. I might spray the leaves, and make sure they sit in an easterly window, and keep them out of the direct sun. – Jackie Kay • An enchanting harmony of fuchsia, purple and pink undertones, Radiant Orchid inspires confidence and emanates great joy, love and health. It is a captivating purple, one that draws you in with its beguiling charm. – Leatrice Eiseman • An invitation to innovation, Radiant Orchid encourages expanded creativity and originality, which is increasingly valued in today’s society. – Leatrice Eiseman • An orchid in a deep forest sends out its fragrance even if no one is around to appreciate it. – Confucius • As the seed buried in the earth cannot imagine itself as an orchid or hyacinth, neither can a heart packed with hurt imagine itself loved or at peace. The courage of the seed is that once cracking, it cracks all the way.- Mark Nepo

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Orchid', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_orchid').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_orchid img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids. – Gillian Flynn • Einstein is notmerely an artist in his moments of leisure and play, as a great statesman may play golf or a great soldier grow orchids. He retains the same attitude in the whole of his work. He traces science to its roots in emotion, which is exactly where art is also rooted. – Havelock Ellis • Ella’s supersonic voice followed her all the way to Bleecker Street and then dissolved amid the noisy profusion of shops, cafes, and restaurants and the crush of people that made the West Village of Manhattan unique in the world. In a single block you could buy fertility statues from Tanzania, rare Amazonian orchids, a pawned brass tuba, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, or the best, most expensive cup of coffee you ever tasted. It was the doughnuts, incidentally, that attracted Gaia. – Francine Pascal • English Bohemianism is a curiously unluscious fruit. … Inside this hothouse, huge lascivious orchids slide sensuously up the sweating windows, passion-flowers cross-pollinate in wild heliotrope abandon, lotuses writhe with poppies in the sweet warm beds, kumquats ripen, open and plop flatly to the floor-and outside, in a neat, trimly-hoed kitchen-garden, English bohemians sit in cold orderly rows, like carrots. – Alan Coren • Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people. – Freeman Dyson • For other people, love is like some rare orchid that can only grow in one place under a certain set of conditions. For me it’s like bindweed. It grows with no encouragement at all, under any conditions, and just strangles everything else. – Scarlett Thomas • Have you ever noticed how much they look like orchids? lovely! – Robert A. Heinlein • He bought me so many orchids that I looked like a well-kept grave. – Texas Guinan • Hope is like one of those orchids that grows around toxic waste: lovely in itself – and an assertion, if you like, of indefatigable good – but a sure sign that something nasty lies underneath. – Rachel Cusk • Human beings aren’t orchids; we must draw something from the soil we grow in. – Sara Jeannette Duncan • I also like to garden. I grow things, vegetables, flowers… I particularly like orchids. I raise orchids. – Beau Bridges • I hated roses. I hated them for being so trite, so clichéd, a default, all-purpose flower that said I love you, I’m sorry, and get well soon. Give me peonies and tulips, orchids or gardenia. Those were flowers with character.- Justina Chen • I have become an orchid washed in on the salt white beach. Memory, what can I make of it now that might please you-this life, already wasted and still strewn with miracles? – Mary Ruefle • I try to always have flowers in the house. I have a florist in Chinatown, and they deliver orchids every two weeks. I like living with living things. – Phillip Lim • I was fat! I was pustule-rich! I looked like a pink human grenade! When did I blossom into the irresistible little orchid that I am now? I don’t know. Getting taller helps. It spreads out a bit. – Dylan Moran • I was left alone there in the company of the orchids, roses and violets, which, like people waiting beside you who do not know you, preserved a silence which their individuality as living things made all the more striking, and warmed themselves in the heat of a glowing coal fire. – Marcel Proust • If he’d been any other man and i’d been any other girl, I’d have called the narrowing of his heavy-lidded dark eyes lust. But he was Barrons and I was Mac, and a blossoming of lust was about as likely as orchids blooming in Antarctica – Karen Marie Moning • If I see an orchid that’s fantastically expensive, I’ll buy it. It’s worth it, for no other reason than it gives me pleasure. – Lee Radziwill • If Lady Gaga and Dorothy Parker had a secret love child, it would’ve been Gypsy Rose Lee. Gypsy arrived for opening nights at the Met wearing a full-length cape made entirely of orchids, while Lady Gaga shows up wearing a full-length cloak made of meat. – Karen Abbott • In mauve sea-orchids as in her striking earlier book Guardians of the Secret, Lila Zemborain brings into relationship the viscera of the body and the spill of the universe in tense compositions that blur distinctions between lyric and prose poetry, between science and eros. – Forrest Gander • In the winter, I enjoy cross-country skiing and raising orchids and amaryllises. If I could grow tropical flowers as perennials, I would, especially hibiscus and mandavilla. – Diane Ackerman • Inspired teachers … cannot be ordered by the gross from the factory. They must be discovered one by one, and brought home from the woods and swamps like orchids. They must be placed in a conservatory, not in a carpenter shop; and they must be honored and trusted. – John Jay Chapman • Just as I wonder whether it’s going to die,the orchid blossoms and I can’t explain why it moves my heart, why such pleasure comes from one small bud on a long spindly stem, one blood red gold flower opening at mid-summer, tiny, perfect in its hour. – Sam Hamill • Lord Illingworth told me this morning that there was an orchid there as beautiful as the seven deadly sins. – Oscar Wilde • Love is an orchid which thrives principally on hot air. – Myrtle Reed • Malaysia-Singapore bilateral relations can blossom beautifully if cultivated and nurtured like an orchid plant. – Najib Razak • My hobbies are cooking and gardening, especially growing orchids. I love soccer, my husband and I support a British team called Chelsea, and I also enjoy tennis. We have 3 cats. – Juliet Mills • Nothing could be taken for granted. Women who loved you tried to cut your throat, while women who didn’t even know your name scrubbed your back. Witches could sound like Katharine Hepburn and your best friend could try to strangle you. Smack in the middle of an orchid there might be a blob of jello and inside a Mickey Mouse doll, a fixed and radiant star. – Toni Morrison • Once you start carrying your own suitcase, paying your own bills, running your own show, you’ve done something to yourself that makes you one of those women men like to call ‘a pal’ and ‘a good sport,’ the kind of woman they tell their troubles to. But you’ve cut yourself off from the orchids and the diamond bracelets, except those you buy yourself. – Sophie Tucker • One of my favorite stories was Black Orchid, because it was so different from all the others. I especially enjoyed dancing the Charleston. I have always been keen on dancing. – Sarah Sutton • One wants to move through life with elegance and grace, blossoming infrequently but with exquisite taste, and perfect timing, like a rare bloom, a zebra orchid… One wants… But one so seldom gets what one wants, does one? – Tony Kushner • Orchid hunting is a mortal occupation. – Susan Orlean • Orchids manufacture their intricate devices from the common components of ordinary flowers, parts usually fitted for very different functions. If God had designed a beautiful machine to reflect his wisdom and power, surely he would not have used a collection of parts generally fashioned for other purposes. Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components. Thus, they must have evolved from ordinary flowers. – Stephen Jay Gould • Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components. – Stephen Jay Gould • Ribbons a-flutter and orchids a-tremble, Yearly the vigilant Daughters assemble, Affirming in fervid and firm resolutions Their permanent veto on all revolutions. – Marya Mannes • She thought of the orchids spreading across the plains below, choking the life out of other plants, out of the soil itself, selfish and unstoppable. Tally Youngblood was a weed. And, unlike the orchids, she wasn’t even a pretty one. – Scott Westerfeld • She’s alone, they kept telling themselves, and surely she danced in no one’s arms, yet somehow that seemed to matter less and less. As the night went on, and clarinet and coyote call mingled beyond the lantern light, the magic of their own powder-blue jackets and orchids seemed to fade, and it came to them in small sensations that they were more alone than she was. – Jerry Spinelli • Somewhere close I knew spear-nosed bats flew through the tree crowns in search of fruit, palm vipers coiled in ambush in the roots of orchids, jaguars walked the river’s edge; around them eight hundred species of trees stood, more than are native to all of North America; and a thousand species of butterflies, 6 percent of the entire world fauna, waited for the dawn. – E. O. Wilson • The American way of stress is comparable to Freud’s ‘beloved symptom’, his name for the cherished neurosis that a patient cultivates like the rarest of orchids and does not want to be cured of. Stress makes Americans feel busy, important, and in demand, and simultaneously deprived, ignored, and victimized. Stress makes them feel interesting and complex instead of boring and simple, and carries an assumption of sensitivity not unlike the Old World assumption that aristocrats were high-strung. In short, stress has become a status symbol. – Florence King • The old orchid hunter lay back on his pillow, his body limp… ‘You’ll curse the insects,’ he said at least, ‘and you’ll curse the natives… The sun will burn you by day and the cold will shrivel you by night. You’ll be racked by fever and tormented by a hundred discomforts, but you’ll go on. For when a man falls in love with orchids, he’ll do anything to possess the one he wants. It’s like chasing a green-eyed woman or taking cocaine… it’s a sort of madness. – Susan Orlean • The orchid is Mother Nature’s masterpiece. – Robyn • The splendor of a human heart that trusts it is loved unconditionally gives God more pleasure than Westminster Cathedral, the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony”, Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, the sight of 10,000 butterflies in flight, or the scent of a million orchids in bloom. Trust is our gift back to God, and he finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for love of it. – Brennan Manning • There are literally billions of people on the planet who live in an unimaginable poverty that’s not in any way different from the plight of the people in Orchid. And you can’t have the splendor of Rodeo Drive without the sweatshops of Indonesia; those two things go hand in hand. – Tom Morello • There have been 50 or 60 books written about Empress Orchid, but none of them bothered to really examine the period in China when she lived. I was taught that she was evil; it’s in all the textbooks. – Anchee Min • Tightly-plotted, well-researched and beautifully drawn, this book is a real delight. Garen Ewing’s mix of engaging characters, exciting old-school adventure, attractive ligne claire artwork and fluid storytelling makes The Rainbow Orchid easily one of the best graphic novels of the year. – Bryan Talbot • To rise above treeline is to go above thought, and after, the descent back into bird song, bog orchids, willows, and firs is to sink into the preliterate parts of ourselves. – Gretel Ehrlich • We humans think we are smart, but an orchid, for example, knows how to produce noble, symmetrical flowers, and a snail knows how to make a beautiful, well-proportioned shell. Compared with their knowledge, ours is not worth much at all. We should bow deeply before the orchid and the snail and join our palms reverently before the monarch butterfly and the magnolia tree. The feeling of respect for all species will help us recognize the noblest nature in ourselves. – Nhat Hanh • What is the pattern that connects the crab to the lobster and the primrose to the orchid, and all of them to me, and me to you? – Gregory Bateson • When I was fourteen, my father decided to initiate me into the ways of manhood, and took me to the local whorehouse. The woman spread her legs, and made me look between them. All I could see was something that looked like a dyin’ orchid; consequently, I have never been comfortable around women or orchids. – Tennessee Williams • When speech comes from a quiet heart, it has the strength of the orchid, and the fragrance of rock. – Stephen Mitchell • When two friends understand each other totally, the words are soft and strong like an orchid’s perfume. – Sara Jeannette Duncan • When we stopped to rest and Tony tried to figure out what was wrong with his compass, I asked him what he thought it was about orchids that seduced humans so completely that they were compelled to steal them and worship them and try to breed new and specific kinds of them and then be willing to wait for nearly a decade for one of them to flower. – Susan Orlean • While PANTONE 18-3224 Radiant Orchid, the captivating 2014 color of the year, encouraged creativity and innovation, Marsala enriches our mind, body and soul, exuding confidence and stability. – Leatrice Eiseman • While the 2013 color of the year, PANTONE 17-5641 Emerald, served as a symbol of growth, renewal and prosperity, Radiant Orchid reaches across the color wheel to intrigue the eye and spark the imagination. – Leatrice Eiseman • You like orchids?… Nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men, their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption. – William Faulkner • You send me all these roses. Every time I think the last bouquet has arrived, finally, another turns up. I’m running out of vases. I didn’t know roses came in so many colors. You say they’re the perfect symbols of love because they have thorns and love is pain. I say life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. And you don’t get it. You say you love me, but you don’t speak my language. You don’t even realize I’m an orchid girl. – Erin Morgenstern • You’re a quiet, beautiful woman in a loud, ugly place. An orchid among weeds. You define obvious. – Lynn Viehl

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[equitiesstocks]

Orchid Quotes

Official Website: Orchid Quotes

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• A flower is a daisy chain, a graduation, a valentine; a flower is New Year’s Eve and an orchid in your hair; a flower is a single geranium blooming in a tin can on a murky city fire-escape; an acre of roses at the Botanical Gardens; and the first gold crocus of spring! … a flower is a birth, a wedding, a leaving of this life. – Jean Hersey • (After meeting her birth mother after more than 40 years). We exchange bunches of orchids, laughing at the coincidence of the flowers. A little unnerving: I wonder if that choice has anything to do with genetics. … I want to take mine home and look after them so that they live for days. I might spray the leaves, and make sure they sit in an easterly window, and keep them out of the direct sun. – Jackie Kay • An enchanting harmony of fuchsia, purple and pink undertones, Radiant Orchid inspires confidence and emanates great joy, love and health. It is a captivating purple, one that draws you in with its beguiling charm. – Leatrice Eiseman • An invitation to innovation, Radiant Orchid encourages expanded creativity and originality, which is increasingly valued in today’s society. – Leatrice Eiseman • An orchid in a deep forest sends out its fragrance even if no one is around to appreciate it. – Confucius • As the seed buried in the earth cannot imagine itself as an orchid or hyacinth, neither can a heart packed with hurt imagine itself loved or at peace. The courage of the seed is that once cracking, it cracks all the way.- Mark Nepo

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Orchid', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_orchid').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_orchid img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids. – Gillian Flynn • Einstein is notmerely an artist in his moments of leisure and play, as a great statesman may play golf or a great soldier grow orchids. He retains the same attitude in the whole of his work. He traces science to its roots in emotion, which is exactly where art is also rooted. – Havelock Ellis • Ella’s supersonic voice followed her all the way to Bleecker Street and then dissolved amid the noisy profusion of shops, cafes, and restaurants and the crush of people that made the West Village of Manhattan unique in the world. In a single block you could buy fertility statues from Tanzania, rare Amazonian orchids, a pawned brass tuba, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, or the best, most expensive cup of coffee you ever tasted. It was the doughnuts, incidentally, that attracted Gaia. – Francine Pascal • English Bohemianism is a curiously unluscious fruit. … Inside this hothouse, huge lascivious orchids slide sensuously up the sweating windows, passion-flowers cross-pollinate in wild heliotrope abandon, lotuses writhe with poppies in the sweet warm beds, kumquats ripen, open and plop flatly to the floor-and outside, in a neat, trimly-hoed kitchen-garden, English bohemians sit in cold orderly rows, like carrots. – Alan Coren • Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people. – Freeman Dyson • For other people, love is like some rare orchid that can only grow in one place under a certain set of conditions. For me it’s like bindweed. It grows with no encouragement at all, under any conditions, and just strangles everything else. – Scarlett Thomas • Have you ever noticed how much they look like orchids? lovely! – Robert A. Heinlein • He bought me so many orchids that I looked like a well-kept grave. – Texas Guinan • Hope is like one of those orchids that grows around toxic waste: lovely in itself – and an assertion, if you like, of indefatigable good – but a sure sign that something nasty lies underneath. – Rachel Cusk • Human beings aren’t orchids; we must draw something from the soil we grow in. – Sara Jeannette Duncan • I also like to garden. I grow things, vegetables, flowers… I particularly like orchids. I raise orchids. – Beau Bridges • I hated roses. I hated them for being so trite, so clichéd, a default, all-purpose flower that said I love you, I’m sorry, and get well soon. Give me peonies and tulips, orchids or gardenia. Those were flowers with character.- Justina Chen • I have become an orchid washed in on the salt white beach. Memory, what can I make of it now that might please you-this life, already wasted and still strewn with miracles? – Mary Ruefle • I try to always have flowers in the house. I have a florist in Chinatown, and they deliver orchids every two weeks. I like living with living things. – Phillip Lim • I was fat! I was pustule-rich! I looked like a pink human grenade! When did I blossom into the irresistible little orchid that I am now? I don’t know. Getting taller helps. It spreads out a bit. – Dylan Moran • I was left alone there in the company of the orchids, roses and violets, which, like people waiting beside you who do not know you, preserved a silence which their individuality as living things made all the more striking, and warmed themselves in the heat of a glowing coal fire. – Marcel Proust • If he’d been any other man and i’d been any other girl, I’d have called the narrowing of his heavy-lidded dark eyes lust. But he was Barrons and I was Mac, and a blossoming of lust was about as likely as orchids blooming in Antarctica – Karen Marie Moning • If I see an orchid that’s fantastically expensive, I’ll buy it. It’s worth it, for no other reason than it gives me pleasure. – Lee Radziwill • If Lady Gaga and Dorothy Parker had a secret love child, it would’ve been Gypsy Rose Lee. Gypsy arrived for opening nights at the Met wearing a full-length cape made entirely of orchids, while Lady Gaga shows up wearing a full-length cloak made of meat. – Karen Abbott • In mauve sea-orchids as in her striking earlier book Guardians of the Secret, Lila Zemborain brings into relationship the viscera of the body and the spill of the universe in tense compositions that blur distinctions between lyric and prose poetry, between science and eros. – Forrest Gander • In the winter, I enjoy cross-country skiing and raising orchids and amaryllises. If I could grow tropical flowers as perennials, I would, especially hibiscus and mandavilla. – Diane Ackerman • Inspired teachers … cannot be ordered by the gross from the factory. They must be discovered one by one, and brought home from the woods and swamps like orchids. They must be placed in a conservatory, not in a carpenter shop; and they must be honored and trusted. – John Jay Chapman • Just as I wonder whether it’s going to die,the orchid blossoms and I can’t explain why it moves my heart, why such pleasure comes from one small bud on a long spindly stem, one blood red gold flower opening at mid-summer, tiny, perfect in its hour. – Sam Hamill • Lord Illingworth told me this morning that there was an orchid there as beautiful as the seven deadly sins. – Oscar Wilde • Love is an orchid which thrives principally on hot air. – Myrtle Reed • Malaysia-Singapore bilateral relations can blossom beautifully if cultivated and nurtured like an orchid plant. – Najib Razak • My hobbies are cooking and gardening, especially growing orchids. I love soccer, my husband and I support a British team called Chelsea, and I also enjoy tennis. We have 3 cats. – Juliet Mills • Nothing could be taken for granted. Women who loved you tried to cut your throat, while women who didn’t even know your name scrubbed your back. Witches could sound like Katharine Hepburn and your best friend could try to strangle you. Smack in the middle of an orchid there might be a blob of jello and inside a Mickey Mouse doll, a fixed and radiant star. – Toni Morrison • Once you start carrying your own suitcase, paying your own bills, running your own show, you’ve done something to yourself that makes you one of those women men like to call ‘a pal’ and ‘a good sport,’ the kind of woman they tell their troubles to. But you’ve cut yourself off from the orchids and the diamond bracelets, except those you buy yourself. – Sophie Tucker • One of my favorite stories was Black Orchid, because it was so different from all the others. I especially enjoyed dancing the Charleston. I have always been keen on dancing. – Sarah Sutton • One wants to move through life with elegance and grace, blossoming infrequently but with exquisite taste, and perfect timing, like a rare bloom, a zebra orchid… One wants… But one so seldom gets what one wants, does one? – Tony Kushner • Orchid hunting is a mortal occupation. – Susan Orlean • Orchids manufacture their intricate devices from the common components of ordinary flowers, parts usually fitted for very different functions. If God had designed a beautiful machine to reflect his wisdom and power, surely he would not have used a collection of parts generally fashioned for other purposes. Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components. Thus, they must have evolved from ordinary flowers. – Stephen Jay Gould • Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components. – Stephen Jay Gould • Ribbons a-flutter and orchids a-tremble, Yearly the vigilant Daughters assemble, Affirming in fervid and firm resolutions Their permanent veto on all revolutions. – Marya Mannes • She thought of the orchids spreading across the plains below, choking the life out of other plants, out of the soil itself, selfish and unstoppable. Tally Youngblood was a weed. And, unlike the orchids, she wasn’t even a pretty one. – Scott Westerfeld • She’s alone, they kept telling themselves, and surely she danced in no one’s arms, yet somehow that seemed to matter less and less. As the night went on, and clarinet and coyote call mingled beyond the lantern light, the magic of their own powder-blue jackets and orchids seemed to fade, and it came to them in small sensations that they were more alone than she was. – Jerry Spinelli • Somewhere close I knew spear-nosed bats flew through the tree crowns in search of fruit, palm vipers coiled in ambush in the roots of orchids, jaguars walked the river’s edge; around them eight hundred species of trees stood, more than are native to all of North America; and a thousand species of butterflies, 6 percent of the entire world fauna, waited for the dawn. – E. O. Wilson • The American way of stress is comparable to Freud’s ‘beloved symptom’, his name for the cherished neurosis that a patient cultivates like the rarest of orchids and does not want to be cured of. Stress makes Americans feel busy, important, and in demand, and simultaneously deprived, ignored, and victimized. Stress makes them feel interesting and complex instead of boring and simple, and carries an assumption of sensitivity not unlike the Old World assumption that aristocrats were high-strung. In short, stress has become a status symbol. – Florence King • The old orchid hunter lay back on his pillow, his body limp… ‘You’ll curse the insects,’ he said at least, ‘and you’ll curse the natives… The sun will burn you by day and the cold will shrivel you by night. You’ll be racked by fever and tormented by a hundred discomforts, but you’ll go on. For when a man falls in love with orchids, he’ll do anything to possess the one he wants. It’s like chasing a green-eyed woman or taking cocaine… it’s a sort of madness. – Susan Orlean • The orchid is Mother Nature’s masterpiece. – Robyn • The splendor of a human heart that trusts it is loved unconditionally gives God more pleasure than Westminster Cathedral, the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony”, Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, the sight of 10,000 butterflies in flight, or the scent of a million orchids in bloom. Trust is our gift back to God, and he finds it so enchanting that Jesus died for love of it. – Brennan Manning • There are literally billions of people on the planet who live in an unimaginable poverty that’s not in any way different from the plight of the people in Orchid. And you can’t have the splendor of Rodeo Drive without the sweatshops of Indonesia; those two things go hand in hand. – Tom Morello • There have been 50 or 60 books written about Empress Orchid, but none of them bothered to really examine the period in China when she lived. I was taught that she was evil; it’s in all the textbooks. – Anchee Min • Tightly-plotted, well-researched and beautifully drawn, this book is a real delight. Garen Ewing’s mix of engaging characters, exciting old-school adventure, attractive ligne claire artwork and fluid storytelling makes The Rainbow Orchid easily one of the best graphic novels of the year. – Bryan Talbot • To rise above treeline is to go above thought, and after, the descent back into bird song, bog orchids, willows, and firs is to sink into the preliterate parts of ourselves. – Gretel Ehrlich • We humans think we are smart, but an orchid, for example, knows how to produce noble, symmetrical flowers, and a snail knows how to make a beautiful, well-proportioned shell. Compared with their knowledge, ours is not worth much at all. We should bow deeply before the orchid and the snail and join our palms reverently before the monarch butterfly and the magnolia tree. The feeling of respect for all species will help us recognize the noblest nature in ourselves. – Nhat Hanh • What is the pattern that connects the crab to the lobster and the primrose to the orchid, and all of them to me, and me to you? – Gregory Bateson • When I was fourteen, my father decided to initiate me into the ways of manhood, and took me to the local whorehouse. The woman spread her legs, and made me look between them. All I could see was something that looked like a dyin’ orchid; consequently, I have never been comfortable around women or orchids. – Tennessee Williams • When speech comes from a quiet heart, it has the strength of the orchid, and the fragrance of rock. – Stephen Mitchell • When two friends understand each other totally, the words are soft and strong like an orchid’s perfume. – Sara Jeannette Duncan • When we stopped to rest and Tony tried to figure out what was wrong with his compass, I asked him what he thought it was about orchids that seduced humans so completely that they were compelled to steal them and worship them and try to breed new and specific kinds of them and then be willing to wait for nearly a decade for one of them to flower. – Susan Orlean • While PANTONE 18-3224 Radiant Orchid, the captivating 2014 color of the year, encouraged creativity and innovation, Marsala enriches our mind, body and soul, exuding confidence and stability. – Leatrice Eiseman • While the 2013 color of the year, PANTONE 17-5641 Emerald, served as a symbol of growth, renewal and prosperity, Radiant Orchid reaches across the color wheel to intrigue the eye and spark the imagination. – Leatrice Eiseman • You like orchids?… Nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men, their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption. – William Faulkner • You send me all these roses. Every time I think the last bouquet has arrived, finally, another turns up. I’m running out of vases. I didn’t know roses came in so many colors. You say they’re the perfect symbols of love because they have thorns and love is pain. I say life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. And you don’t get it. You say you love me, but you don’t speak my language. You don’t even realize I’m an orchid girl. – Erin Morgenstern • You’re a quiet, beautiful woman in a loud, ugly place. An orchid among weeds. You define obvious. – Lynn Viehl

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[faithfacts-blog1]

Masters of Inner Power

And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.  FOR FROM WITHIN, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:  All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.

Mark 7:20-23

SERPENTS ARE WISE BECAUSE THEY HAVE INNER POWER

Serpents are wise because they have developed inner power. The great wisdom of the serpent is to have developed internal power that is called venom.  Snakes produce saliva from within their mouths just like we all do. The saliva of a snake is its venom.  The venom a snake produces within itself is so powerful that it can kill a human being, a lion or even an entire village.

The great power of a snake comes from within.  The snake produces saliva from within itself and this saliva is so potent that a drop of it can send you to your grave.  Imagine your saliva being so powerful that you could kill someone by spitting at him.  

The venom of the king cobra is so deadly that one bite can kill twenty people or one elephant.

The Australian Brown Snake’s venom is so powerful that only 1/14,000th of an ounce is needed to kill a human being.

Australia’s inland taipan snake (Oxyuranus microlepidotus) is said to possess the strongest venom of any land snake. Fortunately, it seeks unpopulated areas and rarely bites people.  Taipan snakes have venom 50 times more toxic than a cobra.

Every man can unleash positive powers or negative powers from within.  It is when something comes from deep within that it is powerful.  Both positive and negative things gain their power when they are from within and from the heart. Without the heart’s involvement every word and physical action is really powerless.  

Consider this young lady who is raped by an armed robber.  This young lady has had several boyfriends in the past and committed fornication with all of them.  She is well known for her immoral and sexual sins.  Now, the armed robber asks her to bend over to allow him to rape her in a similar style that she used to have sex, with her other boyfriends.  After the rape event is over, no one accuses the young lady of having committed fornication or any sin with the armed robber.  No one even says she has been immoral or unholy.  Why is that? Why are people rather sympathetic to her?  Did she not do the exact same things with the armed robber that she did with her other boyfriends?

Why is it that the same physical act is considered to be a sin on one day and on another occasion it is not even considered to be wrong?  The answer is simple.  She did not bend over of her free will or from her heart.  Because these actions did not emanate from her heart, she is considered to be guiltless and sinless.

Jesus taught us that it is only when something comes from within and from the heart that it has power.   It is only when preaching comes from the heart that it is powerful.  It is only when teaching comes from the heart that it is powerful. It is only when we do things from the heart that they have power.  The real power is from within!  Read it for yourself!

And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.  For FROM WITHIN, out of THE HEART of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:  All these evil things COME FROM WITHIN, AND DEFILE the man.

Mark 7:20-23

The power that comes from within you is the strong force that can do wonders in your life and ministry.  It is what comes from within you that determines how powerful you may be. What is on the outside has very little real effect.

Inner Power

To be wise as a serpent you must seriously work on what is within you!

You cannot be used by God if you are not as wise as a serpent.  A snake has a lot of power- and the power is all internal.

The great wisdom of the serpent is to develop internal power.  The great wisdom of the serpent is to fight with internal powers. Work on your hidden internal thinking processes. Your negative thoughts reduce the power within you.  A minister must work on his thoughts. Jesus said that the things that defile you come from inside.  

When you open your inner life to hidden evil thoughts, hidden deceit, hidden thefts and hidden adultery, all your powers go out and you are like a snake without saliva or venom!

Most aspects of righteousness are hidden.  True righteousness is not easy to see because you cannot see the hearts and minds of people. You have to be strong internally so that God can anoint you!

An evil eye, evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, blasphemy, pride and foolishness deplete spiritual power and contaminate you.

Internal Powers

The fruit of the Spirit is a product of the inner being.  The fruit of the Spirit is the product of the inner being.  It is what comes from the inside. Whether you believe it or not, the greatest power that can come out of your life are the fruits and products of the Spirit.  The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Use every opportunity you have to develop these inner qualities.  Which power did Jesus use to influence the whole world?  Was it not the power of love, peace and goodness?

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Gal 5:22-23 (NASB)

Many people mocked at Jesus Christ when He came to this world with the power of love, sacrifice and obedience.  Through these inner qualities, Jesus Christ has changed the whole world.  Two thousand years after his death and resurrection, the world acknowledges the inner qualities of Jesus Christ by celebrating Christmas. When inner power is developed, then you have real power. Many people laughed at me when I was developing the power of faithfulness and loyalty within my disciples.  But it is only by the power of faithfulness and loyalty that a mega church in different locations can be built.

I agree that these inner qualities do not look very powerful.  But such is the wisdom of a serpent.  A snake may not look very powerful as it lies sleeping in the grass.  But it has within its mouth a well-developed and complex power that can kill a truckload of armed soldiers.    

Develop Inner Power By Investing in Your Spirit

For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

Galatians 6:8

1.  Develop inner power by having regular quiet times with God.  When Jesus had a quiet time with the Lord, an angel was sent to strengthen him.  Every time you have a quiet time with the Lord you can expect to be strengthened spiritually.

And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.

Luke 22:43

2.  Pray in tongues.  Speaking in tongues builds you up internally.  When you speak in tongues you are edified, which means you are built up and charged like a battery.

One who speaks in a tongue EDIFIES himself; but one who prophesies edifies the church.

1 Corinthians 14:4

3.  Meditate on the word of God. Meditation has a powerful effect on you.  It’s able to change you from a failure into a success.  An inner power is developed within you when you meditate on the word.  It is that inner power that makes you successful.  Notice how the scripture assures you of success in your life through meditation.  

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

Joshua 1:8

4. Protect your heart from evil contamination.  Your heart is easily contaminated with bitterness, unforgiveness, prejudice, wickedness, revenge, adultery, lust and jealousy.  If you do not watch your heart it will soon become a repository of many evils.  

Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.

Proverbs 4:23

by Dag Heward-Mills