#ISMwriting

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

For the drabble ask: Ryuu and Obi and an umbrella?

“They’re all the rage in Tanbarun,” Obi laughs. “Don’t you want to be fancy?”

“No!”

As with most tasks of a tactile nature, Obi’s hands require only one attempt to fix the umbrella’s position on Ryuu’s shoulder. “You’ve got reach on me now. You’ll stop us dripping all over the Miss’ shiny new diagrams.”

“I don’t think arm length and height are as correlated as that,” Ryuu says by way of complaint. “This is heavy.”

“You’ll have to do most of the real heavy lifting eventually anyway, kid.”

“Why?”

“Because.” Ryuu has spent enough years in the shade of Obi’s wing to inventory his smiles, but… “I’m getting old.”

Subcategory one: grins, and subcategory two: smirks, both land well within the scope of Ryuu’s literacy. Here is something entirely new.

Ryuu has no idea how many seconds pass him by in silent freefall. He should be grasping for words that keep slipping out of reach until Obi, as ever, swoops in for the rescue. Instead, the umbrella is the only discomfort in the rainy world. There’s pain, nothing atypical. But the look on Obi’s face makes it a kinder pain than any Ryuu has felt in a long time.

It can’t end. It’s such a desperate thought.

A grin is the last thing he sees before his vision goes black. He splutters; Obi’s gloved palm smears his wet forelock out of his face. “No more weaseling out of haircuts on my watch. I can look you in the eyes now.”

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

AnS, Umihebi, respect the sea

“Here’s some advice. Shit I needed to hear when I was your age.”

Kids’ve got no gratitude these days. The Toghrul chit just stares into the pounding storm, her drenched hair plastered across her stony face.

“Wanna do business with them?” She spits west into the churning waves and prays the curse chokes Wisteria in his sleep. “You won’t. In a few years, you’ll fold up your sails for the last time. Climb into bed with one prince or another, west or east. Maybe both.”

Tough crowd tonight. Toghrul simply watches her little wooden fleet, emptying by one chest of wax-wrapped goods and one Claw sailor at a time.

“You’ll be rich, foreign- not too foreign- and your boats’ll fly a castle’s colors. Your orchards and fisheries doled out as party favors. Your island full of yellowhaired men and their homesick wives and hunting dogs. You think I’m in the skin trade? You haven’t seen shit, kid. You don’t know how fast villages can disappear.”

Something hits home. “I’m guessing this is where you tell me what you really want?” Oh, Toghrul’s a princess in her own right, that’s for sure. She’s got the glower. “Now that you’ve finished robbing me.”

“Take their gold, girlie, I don’t give a damn. But giving them the sea? The sea’s gonna come for you one day.”

Toghrul snorts. “Unless I give you your cut.”

“So accusatory.” Umihebi gestures- come along. Finally, an interesting dinner guest. “But I’m a businesswoman too, at heart.”

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

AnS (and I know I'm going to hurt you with this) uncomplicated makeouts

An unparalleled sensation, Hisame quickly learns, is the moment that Kiki believes she’s won. She must never know that this alone leaves him defenseless.

Tell me, she likes to whisper. Just one thing. Actors who know the game, each pretending the other does not. To what end? It’s hard to care. Not when he smiles toothlessly and spins her three-quarters of a lie. One portion of truth is inoculant enough- for his reward, she sinks her teeth into his throat. He arches under her, gasping answers to her gentle questions through his bursting heart. She laughs into his hungry kiss then, usually. He’s burning, twenty years a Northern loyalist, undiscovered, and he learns from her little indulgent boasts: that she doesn’t hate his wit. Likes that they’ve crossed swords and he has not quite lost.

That her partner has never had anyone. Not even her.

So stubborn, sheathed in sheer power and agility, and Mitsuhide’s back still hits his mattress with the slightest shove. Tell me, Hisame likes to whisper, swinging a leg over him. Just one thing. Usually he’s too busy crushing Hisame to him, too starved for an enemy’s praise, for the shreds of terrible understanding that only another soldier can give him. When he does talk, Hisame forgets-

No matter. Loose lips are a fine prize. But two knights’ yearning is weapon and armor both.

Prepare for a long winter, he writes eventually. Regret has no place where he is the victor. I’m ready to begin.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

for the micro fic challenge, in the spirit of the holiday: Mel & Ambessa, sharing an uncomfortable meal! Or, if you prefer, Harry's sense of reality is thrown into a tailspin by a fictional mob movie.

Harry could never, ever hold it against her, but the facts are these: Revachol trails the most meagre capitols in the Occident by many billions of reál in GDP yearly. It’s travail enough just keeping her children warm and fed. Small wonder that much of her entertainment is imported.

Bourgeois propaganda. Yes, he knows. He still clutches the dusty reels to his chest like they’re solid gold.

Halfway through the third film, they are seven reels in, and Harry starts to sweat.

“I know,” says the Lieutenant dryly, “that we aren’t simply wasting time for fun.”

Harry is up out of his rusted seat in an instant, the abandoned cinéma echoing cavernously with his pacing.

“The subject chose a flintlock pistol. Small, personalized to look Graadni. The signature said Katya. In the film, when Katya shoots Valery-”

“Detective. Revachol only has so many Occident-made Graad gangster films at hand.”

Some of us lack imagination, Lieutenant Double-Yefreitor, Kim had told him once, mouth curving to soften what came next. That’s what you’re here for.

“If it isn’t real, then why is it here?” Harry jabs his own temple hard enough to jog his hippocampus, the slippery bastard. “I can hear it, I can see it. Why can I see it?”

It plays out so clearly. The cafe, the clocktower, the murder. Stepping in the footprints left by a Graad woman’s fur-lined heels. The old film shuddering on the projector, his father’s heavy hand on his shoulder.

A sigh, never any heavier than Harry deserves. Behind the whitened shield of his glasses, the Lieutenant’s eyes close. Beneath their lids, they move restlessly, laboring. And Harry is ready to sink as deep into his despair as the seventh reel’s bedside death scene will allow, when it abruptly crackles to an end.

Somehow, it doesn’t matter. Kim doesn’t move, concentration furrowing his brow, until - he smiles at nothing, ghostly in the pallid glow of the projector.

“You’re right.” The gloved hand on Harry’s shoulder is light, but sure as a sunrise. “It’s a beautiful film.”

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

us strays (Machine Herald Viktor & Jinx)

I refitted the Jinx and Viktor microfic to include some cut content!

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

Arcane - jinx finds rio?

Veiled in oily Emberflit Alley fog, the door hangs ajar, not a single trap engaged. His hind brain, ever four-legged, whispers, RUN.

Familiar chittering noises waft faintly through the opening. Thugs, topside or bottom, wouldn’t have suffered a monster’s company.

Viktor walks calmly inside.

“You’ve got a freaky taste in pets, mister,” says the girl belly-down on his workshop floor, with deep approval. Across the shop, her bulk squashed belly-down in the tiny kitchen, is Rio.

“Traitor,” Viktor tells her. Rio purrs, her enormous eyes never leaving the girl’s.

She’s carefree, boots kicking in the air. “Rio isn’t a pet,” he informs her. “She’s… a stray. I take care of her.”

“Sure. Go ahead and die on that hill, pal.” Then she’s twisted to scowl up at him. With huge, violently pink eyes.

Interesting.

Viktor’s mind churns, calculating. Then he clicks the steel tines of his fingers, and Rio drags herself to him.

“She likes her head scratched,” he says, demonstrating.

“Why does she look all-”

“People hurt her, many years ago. Changed her body against her will.” The girl goes tellingly quiet. “I chose to help her adapt.”

The congress of girl and beast is like two binary stars tentatively brushing, then collapsing into one in a rush. Rio curls around the child, her head cradled between the twig legs, while the girl presses her face to the bruise-colored hide and coos. When Rio licks her face, she shrieks, “Gross!” in sheer delight.

Viktor circles them. The girl is fifteen. No, eighteen. No, older. Just malnourished. Unpredictable. Possibly manic, unless placated. He’s seen it a thousand times. Heavily armed. In the beginning, Rio broke half his ribs and almost bit his arm off twice.

“Can I help, too?” the girl whispers.

Yes. Stay. Here, I can help you.

This is the undercity. She can trust nothing that comes for free.

He says, “You wish to assist me?”

“Ye-”

“Absolutely not.” He opens the front door wide. “Shouldn’t you be in school or something?”

She tries every day for three weeks, nearly kills him five times. On the twenty-fifth day, she hauls over her entire repertoire of tools and snarls, “You want it? I can make it. I’ll prove it. So cough up, you piece of shit tin can. Whaddaya want?”

From behind, Rio rushes to slobber over the girl’s wrench collection. And Viktor smiles.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

Micro Fic Challenge

Nefariously stealing this from @bubblesthemonsterartist 's Drabble-drabble challenge!

Send me asks with a:

Fandom,

character OR characters OR pairing,

and a general direction - a short prompt, mood, word, or AU!

I probably won't take every single prompt, but I'll definitely pick out my favorites! Because I unfortunately know myself too well, I won't brave the 100-word drabble, but I will limit myself to 250 words instead.

Feel free to send as many as you like!

Any fandom I've written fic for is welcome! In addition, the stuff I've been into lately includes:

Arcane, Disco Elysium, The Locked Tomb, Akagami no Shirayukihime, and ASOIAF and related fandoms

Ask Me

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

the melting point of precious metals (Mel/Viktor, 1/20)

[Read on Ao3]

Mel steps into the Council chamber and out of the tower, all at the same time, like a magic trick.

Like stones skipping a perfect seven times across still water, her wavering toddler's steps steadied on the arches of Father's feet. Or bronze turned to silver and silver to gold with a wave of her hand and the silken words: A pleasure doing business with you. Like doubtful scowls turned to smiles, greed and trust and adoration in the palm of her hand, all dusted to ash in an instant with a bored shrug of her shoulder. Or air clenching like a fist in an instant's hot vengeance, unleashing light, and a blazing world of fire.

She's pretty damn good, isn't she.

Too good to be jumping the gun, when the fog of ruin still shrouds both her starting line and the finishing, when she can't see her opponents on either her right or the left. A sprint, a marathon, or something tricky in between - she'll know which race she's running before the day is through.

And too good to be getting a big head. Hard to hold up, and so much easier to cut off.

Still, because she damn well deserves it, Mel leans back against a notch in the gear of what remains of the Council table like a child nestling into the cradle of her mother's lap, and she sucks in a cool, bracing breath like she's drinking the simmering orange evening down in a sweet spiced slide, the sea glittering like electricity far below, birds wheeling beyond the great ragged hole torn in Piltover's world.

The falling debris almost adds a majestic touch.

It slams into the floor not two steps to her left with a sharp crack, stone and twisted iron striking stone. A piece of the shattered tower's mortar skitters into her foot and, unflinching, she kicks it away.

Enough magic, she supposes. Time for whatever remains, when it's not around.

"Oh, Councilor Medarda!" squeaks a voice, and Mel turns, brow raised, in time for the page in a vest shining with gold to scuttle past her, his bob of gold hair gleaming twice as brightly, broom and dustpan in hand. Odd - she'd reveled in the echoing vastness of the Council chamber, the drama of every footstep, and here now that it's been cracked open like an egg, innards exposed to the harsh outside air, she hadn't heard the man approaching at all. "I am so, so very sorry - we were certain it had all come down already, of what was apt to come down, I suppose - we would never compromise the safety of our beloved Council members - but to insist that you meet here, of all places, after everything that's happened -"

"It's a terrible idea, isn't it?" she says, smiling when he turns in shock to look at her. Though the terribleness is, of course, surely the entire point. "Which is how you know it was not my idea. Between you and me, that may be a bit meager for the job at hand."

She nods with her chin, and the page blinks down at his dustpan. "Oh - yes. I was told -"

"Don't trouble yourself. We're already well accustomed to being compromised. Especially to foreign objects falling from the heavens, I think."

The page, pale to begin with, goes white as a sheet. "You're quite right, Councilor. Forgive me. I - I will only be a moment."

Damn him. But instead of gritting her teeth, she favors him with a laugh. The deep one that men like to hear when there's no one else around. It's rusty from days of disuse. Best to limber it up in advance.

"You're forgiven, but I wouldn't have you scuffing your shoes on this mess. They look new. I think we'll survive a few fallen pebbles, after everything." If that falling bit of ceiling had waited only a few seconds longer, it would've cracked this page's head open like a summer melon. But optimism is all the rage these days, and Mel intends to be fashionable indeed. "It's still early, but if you see any of the Councilors below, tell them I'm eager to see their faces. To know they're with me, safe." She lowers her voice in conspiracy. "I think they'll need the nudge. Don't you agree?"

She's looking the page directly in the eyes when his face changes, and she knows she's won. His gaze drops to where her hem meets her sandal, and the victory is so sweet that she doesn't even notice him leaving.

Perhaps, proving the odds after all, she is still -

No. What could be missing, here in the afterglow of her triumph? The metal cupping her skin may have gone cold, but the sun overhead is warm on her neck. Every step snatches pain through some part of her, but what of it? Her smile had come so easily, and she had stood perfectly straight. The way she'd been born to it. As if her spine had never known the compassionless press of a hospital mattress. 

Her movements are slow, painful, and flowing with the sure stubbornness of the tide. She finds her seat. The same seat she has always taken, no matter if the Council table is a whole gear or a jagged, destroyed half of one. Alone, she faces the worst part of all. The waiting.

Or not.

She stiffens. Loud, thumping footsteps from below, winding up and up the curl of stairs to the landing like the final awaited ticking of a great clock. And then in no time at all, a chair seized by the back, and dragged squealing on two legs over to hers.

...

Read the rest on Ao3

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

Fluent in Nonsense (Mel/Viktor, Ch. 1)

[Read on Ao3]

The start is banal enough. They go off-script in front of a U.S. senator.

"I insist that you give the bibliography a thorough search. His presentation could only cover so much, but Jayce's technology is beyond the cutting edge. At least five years ahead of every contemporary project seeking advancements in the study of holography." And then Mel smiles. Confident, but wry. As if to say, It's all right that you dozed through the last six presentations! So did I!

She had not.

"He's even outpaced Dr. Heimerdinger at our very own academy," she gushes. "His guidance would have kept the project ground-tied to optical trap displays. But Jayce harboured dreams of flying higher." You see? Even I can understand this realm of science. And my mind works like yours.

The senator blinks her blue eyes and nods, completely dazed. Johnson was her name, a statistical inevitability. A pouffed and powdered Wyoming fish out of water here within sight of Catalina Island's silhouette, but rich nonetheless in old connections, oil, and various sundries.

"That's... certainly impressive," she hazards. Mel smirks.

Every twist in Mel's gathered braids, every handcrafted thread in Mel's reticulated suit, all the way down to Jayce beside her with the single dark curl falling over his forehead - somewhere, it hints, there's a Superman lurking under all that Clark Kent - is a siren song promising that Mel's smile knows things. They've got it down to a science.

Jayce's grin, right on cue, is GQ cover worthy. "Mel's just flattering me," he says, so American. And on first-name basis with the foreign socialite? The man's instincts were nothing less than prodigious. "The contributions of my team can't be overstated. There's no way I'd be here without them."

Never mind the startled cough somewhere to Jayce's left.

No, Jayce is too busy commanding the senator's attention, who blinks up at him like a lost puppy finally thrown a bone. Thank god, she's thinking, a hound among foxes. "I promise," says Jayce emphatically, like a proper boy scout, "that this project is only the first step. Our innovations will not only turn Piltover into a haven for equality and opportunity, but I've got a feeling we can get the rest of our great nation to follow in the footsteps of our success."

The pretty words haven't even finished flowing by the time the senator's glazed look sharpens into something else. It's more perfect than Mel had dared hope. "Jayce's holography is only one project of many in his labs, but there's nothing like a strong, focused foot forward." Mel only has to reach out a little, and the final blow lands. Her fingers touch the back of Johnson's pale hand. "At the next hearing, I'm certain we'll come out the victors. If offered, your support won't be soon forgotten."

"I thought my support went without saying," says the senator, aghast, and relief sweeps through Mel like soaring. "It's not just about the presentations, isn't it? It's not just about the projects. It's about the people behind them."

"Speaking out language, Senator." Jayce is barely keeping himself in check, all but vibrating with excitement. God, forget her original plans for him, unfurling slowly over the coming months. She's going to buy him every drink he can keep down at the first bar they can crash between here and Academy Row. If he was shy about loosening his tie in front of her, well - nothing her hands couldn't fix.

Then it's like the senator simply can't help herself. "I have to tell Ambessa how impressed I was today," she says, her eyes having the audacity to look a little watery. Like she thinks she's being generous, like she's the damn Pope giving Mel a ticket straight to the pearly gates. "Home can't feel too far away, if you've got such great people who need you here. Everyone says California is lucky to have Piltover, but I say America is lucky to have you." A cool, wrinkled hand squeezes hers, truly a reversal of fortune. "She'll be very proud, Mel."

"I'm sure," says Mel, strangled, "you'll be wanting a copy for the hearing, yes?"

No distractions. The first Medarda to trip over a finish line won't be this one.

So Mel smiles. The senator smiles. Because Mel knows things. She slips her hand free without even looking like she's yanking it away, her skin crawling. And then Jayce holds out the binder and the senator reaches for it like they have the Holy Grail itself stuffed somewhere inside it. Mysterious and unknowable, but that won't matter. Jayce's research, presentation, and bibliography could be a Betty Crocker cookbook for all this woman cared.

The senator takes it. Mel's year-end spreadsheet practically updates itself before her eyes.

Then with a start, it hits her - the research assistants. She'll break the news to them herself first thing in the morning. Americans are such a noisy bunch, her ears will be ringing with the undergrads' happy screaming all day long. Mel smothers a stray grin or else, by her calculations, risk looking smug.

"We'll give the team your best," Mel says pleasantly. "We must arrange to have dinner after the hearing is done. I know the applications to defense will be of particular interest to -"

"Ridiculous."

Ah.

[Read the rest on Ao3]

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

the rent is too damn high (kikiyuki, 1/?)

Invest in real estate, Father had said. Get a trust fund Milennial or two to sign a lease and grow your wealth for you, he'd said.

In which Kiki winds up investing in something far more baffling - and valuable - than a building.

Read on Ao3 here

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

A1, B4, C3, D2 (oh well, I hope got your instructions right 😅)

Ozhar - culture

Detail (culture): Sending the Zve packing has let his people wear bright colors, hang out outside, and make noise without fear for the first time in living memory. So Ozhar wears bright colors and stuff for their benefit. But, he still secretly prefers dressing traditionally and letting his skin blend and camoflage him into the woods.

Quoye - religion

Detail (religion): Like other night-dwellers, Quoye has believed that there is only one god, but they’ve fled and gone into hiding. The night people just have to find them. She also used to suspect that there was religious significance to the daylit world, until she met Ozhar and came to the conclusion that nah, they’re probably all just nerds after all. Quoye’s people do hold in common with the daylit world a sort of trickster character, but the night-dwellers don’t acknowledge it as a god.

Sivas Gora - politics

Detail (politics): Sivas Gora plans to geographically grow her direct authority slowly, but one of the first towns she asserts control over is the home of a legend of one of the only Zve to have ever been taken down by the people. It wasn’t killed of course, but rather buried deep underground somewhere in the woods near the town. Sivas has declared it a punishable crime to have any contact with a Zve outside of driving it away, and the townspeople immediately get super quiet about all the good fortune they’ve been enjoying for the last couple hundred years or so.

Sechen - magic

Detail (magic): Like all other Zve, Sechen isn’t a living creature, but is a sort of magical machine powered by the living fire. This fire is quite literally the fires of creation, and Sechen has the ability to create most anything with it. However, like all his other impulses, the impulse to use this power comes from a force outside of him and comes pretty much never. Intellectually, he doesn’t know what it’s for or how to use it. If he’s ever killed, he’ll leave only the fire behind.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

D1 and C4

Rival character - culture

Name: He’s forgotten it, but it was Sample Number One-Thousand One-Hundred and Sixteen. Ozhar renames him Sechan, of Manyfalls. 

Background: Sechan is a Zve, which means he can live in both the daylit world and the night world and move between them easily. He’s spent most of his life hunting his prey, then studying and exploring his piece of the continent with his fellows. He learns about Ozhar early on, and hears that he’s the world’s first and only Zve slayer. Throughout Ozhar’s journey, Sechan challenges him many times and is always beaten handily. When Ozhar kills the important Zve leader - who Sechan thinks of as his father, since Sechan is meant to take his place someday - Sechan loses most of his memory, but retains much of what he knows about Ozhar and goes to find him. Ozhar finds him and shelters him on his way to see Sivas Gora, but Ozhar’s only advice to him is to get off the continent with the rest of the Zve before they’re forced out.

Detail (culture): The Zve respect strength and intellect in their ideal forms, and they expect neither out of the prey they hunt. Sechan is an expert on history and a master of a short sword-like weapon common among his people. Whenever he’s defeated by Ozhar, Sechan, like all other Zve, is expected to know when he’s beaten and concede the defeat. Sechan also feels obligated to impart knowledge whenever he’s beaten. This comes in handy when he loses his memory later, and Ozhar is able to remind him of the basics of who he is.

Sivas Gora - religion

Detail (religion): Sivas doesn’t buy much into the religions of her race because it’s said that it’s impossible for her lower caste to make it to Rai, the best possible final life. Instead, her caste believes that there’s purpose and possibly an afterlife to be found in the fringes, the strange warped world where neither day- or night-dwellers dare go. Sivas doesn’t believe that her gods live on the planet that hangs close on the horizon, but instead that they’re probably in disguise and wandering among the people, unable to leave or reveal themselves because the divide between day and night has trapped them. Sivas wishes she didn’t have any beliefs at all, but she feels continually drawn to her caste’s beliefs and customs.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

I hope I’m doing this right but can I ask for A3 for the NaNo 2020?

Protagonist - politics

Name: Ozhar, the Empty Hand

Background: Ozhar had humble beginnings as a daylit shepherd, known in his traditional village for being strong enough to carry pretty much any of his animals on his shoulders. One day a Zve approached the village, scattering its people into the woods. Ozhar confronted it, and since the armored skin of a Zve is impossible to pierce with any known weapon, Ozhar wrestled it with his bare hands like he would an animal. He ended up throwing it, and instead of keeping up the attack, the Zve simply gave up and left. Just like that, Ozhar became one of the only people known to legend to successfully defend himself against a Zve in combat. However, the villagers all think that Ozhar killed it - which would make him the ONLY known person to slay a Zve at all. Word gets around to Sivas Gora the pretender queen, who asks for his help with a great reward on the horizon. Ozhar keeps up the lie that he’s a Zve slayer and goes on a long journey to figure out how to get rid of the Zve forever, getting tricked and then joined by the night-dweller Quoye along the way. He winds up defeating a powerful Zve leader, who becomes the only one that Ozhar actually kills. This turns a great many Zve into pure fire for anyone to use, and the rest of the Zve lose intelligence and leave the entire continent in a mass exodus.

Ozhar is the only day-dweller to have discovered that the Zve aren’t living creatures, but rather magical automatons powered by fire. By the end of this journey, Ozhar has become a very different person and is gutted when he thinks Quoye was killed in the final struggle. The story begins shortly thereafter.

Detail (politics): Ozhar’s victory earns him a second name and an offer of marriage from Sivas Gora. But, all Ozhar wants to do is go back home and restart his life. His hero status has made him a feared and loved person all over, giving him a lot of potential sway over the people. When he rejects Sivas Gora, she knows she could one day lose a lot of her power to him, so she feels she has no choice but to contain him some other way. 

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

B 3!

Deuteragonist - politics

Name: Quoye

Background: Quoye is a night-dweller exiled from her world completely for reasons she doesn’t like to go into. In any case, she was given the mark of a traitor and shunned, then hunted, by her own people. She escapes into the daylit world and though the transition nearly kills her, she discovers she can survive if she avoids sunlight and regularly steals fire from day-dwellers. It’s not easy to take though, so she becomes something of a thief and a swindler. One day, she goes to the rescue of a day-dweller she had just swindled, saving him from a Zve by pulling him back into the night world with her. She then accompanies him on the rest of his journey to oust the Zve permanently. They quest together for many months and form a strange, sometimes uneasy, but strong friendship. At the end of their journey though, she leaves her friend behind and lets him think she is dead or lost. Shortly after this, our story begins.

Detail (politics): Quoye was actually raised to be king of a vast night-world empire. The culture of her world values servitude in leaders and kingship isn’t passed down through families. Instead, certain children are brought up with the choice to go through a decade-long gauntlet meant to reveal who among them should be the next king. The chosen king then lives the life of a servant to their people, living off the kindness of strangers while they rule and make decisions. Quoye did this and found that the only way to make it through the gauntlet was to find a strange and sometimes devastating balance between compassion and ferocity. The night before she was crowned, she was forced to kill a group of men to save herself, using only an animal bone. She ruled extremely well, but only briefly before she was exiled. Because she gave in to the exile, she thinks she’s abandoned the people she was supposed to love, so she takes on a made-up name (Quoye) and turns bitter and jaded. No one in the daylit world knows who she really is.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

Simple NaNo 2020 Character Asks

Help me start out my NaNo prep!

Pick any letters (characters) and then pick any numbers (detail related to that character) below, and send them to me in an ask. I have to name and give background to the character, and then add a detail for them for each ask.

A. Protagonist

B. Deuteragonist

C. Ruler character (antagonist)

D. Rival character (secondary antagonist)

1. Culture

2. Magic

3. Politics

4. Religion

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

b4

Quoye - religion

Detail (religion): When Quoye leaves Ozhar at the end of his big final battle, she tries to go back to the night world now that the Zve problem has been resolved. She finds that her presence is now tolerated, but that kingship has been usurped by a council of religious leaders, who point out that living in the daylit world has physically changed her. They argue that she’s been tainted, blinded, and isn’t fit to lead, so they’ll be running the empire until they choose a new king. Realizing that the empire ran okay without her, and that she feels tainted on the inside because of all the reprehensible things she did while in exile. So she goes right back to the daylit world. Her rightful kingship hasn’t left her though, and that has physically changed her as well. When she returns to the night world later with Ozhar and stands before her people, she takes on an eerie godlike appearance that awes Ozhar and frightens everyone else.