#and frankly if this was the series finale I would have killed myself if everyone was happy and moving on and all buck got

[evankinard]

Buck showed an astronomical amount of growth in this episode, from his leadership skills (601) to his professionalism when delivering a baby (season 1) to his ability to separate himself and give the baby away to his real parents despite his own feelings (the entire donor arc). to say he hasn't shown any growth because he stayed in a relationship that, up until this point, and despite the audience being able to see thematic clues that it won't last in the long run, is very new and despite the one hiccup that got resolved with a genuine apology he has not had any reason to turn away from, is a disservice to his character and also just. unfair

[lowkeyed1]

great interview, definitely some info i haven't seen anywhere else... ----- ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I don't think you could end the show without losing someone, but how did you decide it would be Graydon as opposed to Airk, Boorman, or anyone else who's life was in imminent danger?

JONATHAN KASDAN: There was some conversation about that. But we all felt that there was something beautifully tragic about Graydon, and as a character, he is our Dark Prince. We always called him the Dark Prince in our construction of the show. One of the questions we always had and hoped to keep alive to some extent throughout the season was, "Is he good or is he evil?" As the show progressed, he's pretty definitively good. His devotion to Elora was so pure, and the way he played those scenes was so lovely and tender. It felt like the thing that would most impel Elora into this final stage of her development was the loss of this completely devoted person. As is often the case with these decisions, and they're sometimes unpopular, sometimes you want the most devastating possible thing. And for her, he felt like that.

Now that Airk has come back to himself, is there any chance he and Elora would reconnect? Or is her heart fully with Graydon at this point?

She's not with either of them, frankly, at the moment. She's intent on taking a little break from the dating world entirely, and we'll see how she does with that. But conversely, Airk is not at all over her. In fact, she's only more attractive to him now that she's empress of the world and the most powerful sorcerer ever and has come into her power so fully. But I definitely think the bloom is off the rose for Elora.

If Elora hadn't changed her mind during that wedding ceremony, how bad would that have been for everyone else?

It would've been bad. One of the things that the movie set up that is a helpful bit of storytelling is this idea that this baby, they couldn't just like chuck her out the window and kill her, and that would be the end of it. There was something about her spirit that needed to be either extinguished or transported or moved in some way that made killing her not a good option, which is convenient as a storytelling device for the movie. They've got to get her back to the castle. She's going to be okay a little longer. But it's really helpful for us here in the series that there's something more at stake than simply, "Will she live or die?" There's something about her that is spirit. It's in line with George Lucas' philosophical, quasi-religious stuff about the Force. There's a great speech in Empire Strikes Back that I was just thinking about last night — that I'm sure my father wrote — which is that we're more than just this crude matter. We're celestial beings. There's something of Elora that is pure light, and it would've been really bad if he'd been able to suck that light out of her mouth.

Boorman gives his own reasoning for it, but why is Kit finally able to use the armor?

Kit's journey is about embracing responsibility. It's a very personal idea to me because I myself struggle with this very question of, "How much responsibility do I want to have? And family and who do I take responsibility for?" She's running away from that responsibility all season. In the end of the season, she finds herself moved by Elora and devoted to her, and above all the other characters, she is the one most equipped to protect her, spiritually and emotionally. Metaphorically, Elora represents the natural spirit of the world, and Kit represents our human role in that. She goes from being very selfish to very generous. It's that journey that makes her worthy of the armor.

We do see Willow and Elora defeat the Crone, but I take it, if you have your druthers that their fight is far from over?

Absolutely. It was always designed to be a three-act story. These things have to have a finite end to them. Because as a fan of these stories, I don't want to think that creators are just continuing it as long as they can to make a buck. It's nice in this day and age where there's an appetite from these streaming services for stories that do continue but aren't endless. This was very much designed and intended that this would be the first part of the story about Elora coming into her power, and then she would have to contend with darker forces beyond that.

They do end this with the charred remnants of Willow's staff and Elora's wand broken. How much is that going to be an obstacle to them? Will they need to repair those things?

You really hit on something with the staff question, and it's been something we've talked about a lot in the writer's room. It was a very intentional decision for Willow to sacrifice the conduit for his power to save Airk. We wanted him to give something up that was meaningful. It felt like a fun way to enter potentially future stories where he doesn't have that way of expressing the magic in himself and to have that be a challenge that he has to overcome.

Early in the show, we see Willow say a prophecy claims Elora Danan has to die. We saw her make it through this time, but should we still be worried about that?

Absolutely. The Crone is the Wyrm's agent. She's this talent agent, she goes out, she makes the deals, she tries to recruit the people. She's the producer, but she's not the talent herself. The Wyrm is the thing. And that dark force that presses against the light is still very much out there in the world to be contended with.

When we get to those final moments of the season, Graydon seems to be waking up on this battlefield that we've seen in Willow's nightmares. Is that accurate?

It's so accurate that the moment we finished shooting Warwick standing up in that battlefield, we were like, "Okay, get Warrick out of there, throw Tony in." We were racing the clock to do it. And Tony was in position not 10 seconds after Warwick had vacated it.

The final battle really reminded me visually of the Harry Potter wand duels. How much of a visual reference point was that for you?

Huge. There's the promise of a lot of things in that final scene. But the big one for me is that in a character like Elora, much like Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter, there is the potential for incredible good and incredible darkness. We wanted to complicate the meaning of that a little bit over the course of the season and not have such hard and fast concepts of good and evil. Particularly Star Wars has a very clear bad guys-good guys thing, and we've made it much more in our series about desires versus ideals and the conflict between those two forces within ourselves. Certainly, that conflict is alive in Elora. The temptation of what the Wyrm represents is powerful. Ellie communicates it in this almost ecstatic way that she plays out the battle with the Crone. It's terrifying and hard, but it's also clearly getting her off a little bit (laughs). We really wanted to play on that and unequivocally with that final scene, stay with the fact that the potential for something really bad is in her too. Something really rather destructive is in her too.

Should we interpret that final version of Elora that Graydon sees as her potential alternate path?

Yes. And as the clear statement of intention by the bad guy.

You said before you'd like to have Val Kilmer appear in a second season.

There's nothing I would like more. The world is unpredictable, but certainly the runway has been laid for him, and we'd love it.

But you did have Christian Slater as a guest star. Is there another 1980s heartthrob you'd love to have on the show?

I'm a huge Billy Zane fan. If I could find a way to use that man in Willow, I would be very pleased. He's under-appreciated, under-loved and brilliant. I'm not the only one who feels this way. He's done some great stuff lately. So I'm hopeful that he's someone we could use someday.

Hulu and Disney+ are a package deal, and with Reservation Dogs, there are now two Elora Danans in the Disney family. Is there some crossover potential there?

(Laughs) No, but we invited them all to the premiere. They weren't able to make it, but we are still fighting for an opportunity to have a coffee between our two Elora Danans. They need to sit and do a photo shoot together or something. It's too perfect. That show is unbelievably great. I would love to have Devery Jacobs guest star on the show. That would be a really fun idea.

Is there any news you could share on a potential season 2?

Only that I'm sitting in my office and continuing to plan and scheme. It's a strange time in the business. It's a transformative time for Disney. So, I couldn't tell you anything that felt certain, except that we're continuing to work on this with every intention of doing more.

Can you tease where you envision it going from here?

The events of the finale have to be dealt with in a meaningful way at the top of wherever the story goes and the implications of the trauma those events caused to our characters and where it lands each of them. I'd love to get these characters out of that desert. Beyond that, they're all looking at very clear conflicts that were deeply positioned in season 1. Specifically, with Jade, the question of her loyalties and where her politics are going to land her is at the forefront in our minds in terms of where that character can go and, and how she's torn between love and country a little bit. There's no shortage of directions that we'd love to explore, but at its core, it is about this conflict between this otherworldly entity and our heroes. And that's far from over.

[littlemourningstarr]

Maelstrom

Pushed to their breaking points, the party has finally reached Thorm Mausoleum. But what awaits within, and below, will change the course of their lives irreversibly. For some, it will shake the very foundation their lives have been built on.

Read below or on AO3!

Pairing: Astarion x Transmasc tav

Part of the Eternally Yours series!

Tags: Transmasc tav, violence, gore, plot heavy, alluding to past SA, everyone is tired and angry

The Thorm Mausoleum loomed in the dark, imposing as it sat atop a slight incline. The air felt thinner here, colder somehow. Sekh swore he could nearly see his breath. Behind him, Shadowheart was walking very close to Karlach, attempting to leech as much heat as possible from her.

Deciding to fracture the group had been a hard decision- but they finally agreed it was best for some of them to stay back, with the Harpers. Whatever this relic was they were looking for, once they had it they would have precious little time to strike.

They began ascending a set of uneven stones, used in place of stairs, when a voice spoke out from ahead, “Our hero thought but a treasure ahead.”

Sekh paused, glancing around. Gods above and below he knew that voice.

“Did not consider the peace of the dead.” Raphael stepped into view, as the group finished ascending the stones. He was masquerading as a man, but Sekh could just smell the sulfur buried under cherries and musk. Having seen him, even just once, in his true form, Sekh could never stop seeing it, as if Rapheal’s edges blurred, flitted in and out of focus.

The devil continued, quite obviously loving the sound of his own voice. The speech was showy, flippant and unnecessary. Furthest back, Sekh was sure Karlach was grinding her teeth.

When the devil finally stopped- did he ever breathe? Did devils need to breathe?- Sekh folded his arms, inclining his head slightly. “A warning,” he mused, “Don’t tell me you’re worried about me, Raphael.” Not that Sekh believed for a moment the devil truly cared about their well-being for any altruistic reason-

But it was fun to tease. Besides, he preferred whatever games the devil played with them to the countless unknowns of the stranger in Shadowheart’s artifact- Astral Prism. Devils were almost predictable, there was always a catch.

But that stranger? Sekh didn’t know how to read them- he just knew they sent a chill down his spine. Yet he hadn’t killed them at Vlaaktih’s command-

Frankly, he’d do almost anything to spit the wretched lich queen.

“Merely protecting my…assets.” Raphael held up his hand, traced a curve in the air, as if he knew the shape of Sekh’s hips, the dip of his waist. The drow didn’t need to glance to his side to know Astarion was frowning over that. “I’ve grown quite fond of you, in my own way. And I felt it only right to warn you of the dangers ahead.”

“How very sweet.” Sekh unfolded his arms, lifted his dominant hand, let the air crackle with the chill of death as he pulled at his necrotic magic. “I can handle myself, Raphael.” Especially with the company he kept- Sekh had little fear when any of his companions were with him. He trusted them with his life, with his death.

“Oh, I’m sure you can, little dark dweller. If I needed reassurance on that, I could simply ask your little vampling.” Raphael turned his glance to Astarion- and why was Sekh not surprised that Raphael knew about them? Why did he have a feeling Raphael knew the moment Sekh had first bedded Astarion?

Damn devils- bloody know-it-alls.

“It would be pointless to try and bar you from entering- you’re far too willful to listen. Honestly, Astarion, is he as much of a handful in bed as he is in simple conversation?” Before the vampire could answer, Raphael continued- obviously not actually caring for the elf’s input. “Instead, let me give you a bit of advice. Because I am oh so fond of you.”

Sekh felt a sudden sting, radiating from his left hand, his middle finger- the ring. He didn’t dare glance at it, lest he give Raphael any more information about him than the devil already had. He could only fathom that the discomfort was stemming from Astarion’s own.

Sekh shifted slightly closer to him, dared to move his hand slightly, trail a finger along his hand. He didn’t dare grab it- he wasn’t interested in any further commentary by Raphael- but he wanted to let the vampire know it was alright. This would be alright.

Lost in his own voice, Raphael didn’t seem to notice. “There is a creature that lurks, in silence and shadow. A creature who, like me, is very much of the infernal persuasion. Should it make its way out of the doors you are about to brazenly swing open, you’ll have unleashed a pestilence upon this realm.”

“So, are we talking an ex-lover?” Karlach spoke up, the sneer on her lips dripping into her words.

Raphael leveled a glare at her. “It is carnage incarnate. Should you meet this devil, do not hesitate, take no other course of action but to kill it. And kill it quickly.” Sekh waved his hand in the air, motioning for Raphael to give him more. Besides, Karlach’s question wasn’t unfounded.  Raphael frowned. “You try my last nerve, love.” He took a step closer, and Sekh could tell he was squaring his shoulders, puffing out his chest.

It was laughable that he could be in a pissing contest with a damn devil.

“It would be in my best interest as well, should the creature remain in the dark- or conveniently misplace its head. So strike fast and strike true- and perhaps the next time I see you, you’ll be wholly intact.”

Lovely parting words, although Sekh did appreciate knowing there was something infernal lurking below. He was glad to have the devil take his leave, when Astarion stepped forward, in front of him. “Wait. Before you go, I have a proposal of my own.”

“Astarion?” Sekh asked, not even able to whisper. A proposal? He had been so adamant about not taking Raphael’s assistance with their parasite- not that Sekh disagreed- that the drow couldn’t fathom what the vampire could want from Raphael now.

Unless…

“A proposal? If you’re hoping to taste my blood, little vampling, think again. It burns hotter than Wyvern whiskey.” Raphael gently twirled his wrist, as if he was swirling wine in a glass, to appreciate its aroma.

Astarion frowned, his brows knitting in frustration. “This is serious business, devil.” He took a deep, steadying breath. “My old…” and two words in, paused. The word master must have tasted like the most vile poison, Sekh was sure. “A long time ago, someone carved some runes into my back. I’d rather like to know what they say.”

“Runes?” Karlach asked, sounding quite fairly confused. Sekh had kept his word to Astarion and told not a soul about his scars. As far as he was aware, Rolan was the only other person to have seen them, to know they existed.

“It’s something of great important to your master. But- is it a love letter?” Sekh could see Astarion tremble, a tremor traveling down his spine. He had never asked for Astarion to elaborate on the details of how Cazador mistreated him- he didn’t want the vampire to ever relive even the memories- but he had a terrible, sinking, gut wrenching feeling that thoughts he had always hoped were wrong were far too true. “A warning, perhaps? Or a deed of ownership? Oh, I can give you all the gory details, Astarion.” Raphael reached out, gripped Astarion’s chin, forced him to tilt his head back slightly. Sekh reached out without thinking, grabbed Raphael’s wrist and squeezed, feeling bone grind against bone.

The devil merely chuckled, as if Sekh’s gesture was cute, and held not an ounce of threat.

“And I will- once the beast that lurks below is vanquished, and sent back to the hells.”

Astarion pulled away from Raphael’s touch, his voice sounding rather calm, despite the unwelcomed touch. “A fairer deal than I expected.”

“You wound me spawn! I always deal fairly- especially with those I find so… endearing. But I am glad that we have an… understanding. Scars often tell such wonderful stories. I think yours might be truly… exquisite.”

Raphael chuckled then, snapped his fingers, and dissipated into little glittering sparks of fire. The wind carried them away quickly, and Sekh turned to face Astarion as Karlach and Shadowheart both spoke at once-

“What scars are we talking about?”

“Astarion you had better not have just contracted us into a devil’s debt!”

Astarion frowned, but didn’t answer the others. He did meet Sekh’s gaze, however. “Do you trust a deal with him?”

“I’d trust a devil over a vampire anyday,” he said, folding his arms- looking rather sullen. “Besides, what other options do I have? Whatever Cazador carved into me is only a fragment of something bigger- and considering the other spawn aren’t here for us to line up nice and neat, I need someone who can decipher it despite the missing text.”

Sekh nodded. “Alright.”

“Alright?” Shadowheart yelled, pushing up close to them. “Sekh we are indebted to a devil!”

Sekh didn’t blame Shadowheart for her concern. They had all been very adamant to avoid Raphael’s first deal. But Sekh also knew these scars were clawing at Astarion, tearing him open with their mysteries. He deserved to know the details of whatever that rat bastard had done to him.

“To kill another infernal,” Sekh pointed out. He turned back to Karlach. “At least one devil dies- right Karlach?”

The tiefling thought on it, before shrugging a shoulder. “You’re not wrong. I’m happy to spill any devil blood. And if it will help Astarion…" She cast a very fond look at the elf. “Then I’m in. I just wish you’d clued us in sooner, fancy boy.”

Astarion looked away, but Sekh could see a smile, trying to pull at his lips. The relief, that it wasn’t just Sekh willing to take a risk for him.

Shadowheart sighed, hanging her head. “I hate you all so much,” she muttered, before taking a deep breath and straightening back up. “Okay. So we find Ketheric’s relic and we kill a devil. Completely reasonable and plausible actions for us, with little to no chance of failure, injury, or untimely death.”

“That’s the spirit fringe!” Karlach slapped Shadowheart’s back, grinning, and Sekh tried to stifle a chuckle. Even Astarion was smiling now- and Sekh hoped the vampire realized that he could have opened up to their companions earlier on. That they were all here for him.

*

The mausoleum smelled of dust and old bones, the air still, cool to an unpleasant level. Each footstep the group took seemed to echo- and they all nearly jumped out of their skins when a skull began talking to them.

A message, from Balthazar.

“I don’t relish the thought of making his acquaintance,” Astarion admitted, as Sekh stepped up towards the large sarcophagus in the center of the chambers. He read the encryption outloud. Thorm’s late wife.

“Seems even the most annoying of men can still be loved,” Shadowheart mused, adding, “but I suppose Astarion is proof of that as well.”

“You wretch,” Astarion teased, smiling with his fangs in full display. Sekh rolled his eyes and left them to their playfight, heading further into the structure. He heard Karlach call out to him, found her standing in front of a large room with a broken open tomb-

Well, that didn’t bode well.

“Buttons- under the pictures,” she noted, nodding towards one. Sekh scanned the room, noted the three- a simple flip them in the right order, it seemed. Meaning there was far more to this room than what they were seeing.

It took some digging about, flipping through dusty books and nearly rusted shut drawers- but Shadowheart found a clue, and they were able piece together the story Ketheric wanted painted- tragic, truly.

Sekh hoped no one would ask why they shed no tears.

They stepped into the now open passage, the grand entrance to something far more than just a family tomb. With no other options, they settled on the large disk- Sekh losing his footing when it began moving and landing painfully down on one knee. He was sure that was not a sign as to how this would go.

Once it had settled, Karlach hoisted him up, and they stared for a moment at the grand, echoing cavern-like tunnels. Smooth rock, polished to perfection- even if it felt like whatever this was had slept for years upon years, beneath the shadow cursed lands.

Deeper into the structure, the lights began to fade. They were faced with a large statue, and Sekh swore he heard a voice, echoing in the dark. He glanced at his companions, hoping he wasn’t crazy- and noted that Shadowheart seemed to be staring ahead in wonder.

“Shadowheart?”

“I cannot believe it,” she whispered, “But this… this must be the gauntlet of Shar. It would make sense that Ketheric would house it, since he was once devoted to the dark lady. And that,” she gestured to the air, to the voice that had rung in all of their heads. “That is Shar herself.”

Sekh frowned, glanced away from Shadowheart, caught Karlach’s eye. The tiefling looked just as uncomfortable as he felt. Shar wasn’t a deity any of them were interested in being acquainted with.

And after the talk Sekh had just had with Shadowheart, after the House of Healing- well, he’d thought-

“She loves me,” Shadowheart said, voice wispy, airy, light, “she must. She protected me from the shadows- she’s given me the chance to prove myself in the Gauntlet. My life’s biggest desire- she is willing to see if I can truly be a Dark Justiciar.”

“Shadowheart,” Sekh said again, softer now, but she ignored him.

“I should never have faltered in her name.” She straightened up, held her head high. “I will prove myself, in her name.”

Shadowheart moved forward, leaving the rest behind. She was allowed to reach the statue of Shar in the center of the room without any hindrance, pressing her hand to the glimmering stone in front of her. The door across the room opened, the air moving in a cold breeze, like an exhale.

Sekh, Astarion, and Karlach had no choice but to rush to keep up with Shadowheart, who moved with a purpose now. She walked as if this temple were her own- like it was her birthright.

It set Sekh’s stomach to uneasy knots. But all he could do was follow her, in the hopes that her fanatical love would die to reason.

They reached and ascended a large flight of stairs, only to be abruptly stopped by-

Gods, were those skeletons?

The rattling bones were quite demanding, and clearly unhappy at the intrusion. They felt strange, a consciousness pulled between them- somehow there were tadpoles trying to react to Sekh’s, even though these were bones and dust.

“What are you?” he asked, before a tremor shook the room. He extended his arms, bracing himself, caught a glimpse of Astarion tipping over into Karlach, who caught him in a firm hold. The skeletons looked about, before one yelled,

“Stupid worm-infested cockhead!”

Well, that was one that Sekh’s mother would have been proud of.

“You have awoken the shadows. Rally on me! A wall of bone and blade against the shadows!”

The room quaked again, this time sending Sekh back down onto his knee- which ached upon impact- as seething masses of black and violet shadows erupted around them. Crawling from their maws were heavily armored undead, all masked-

“Dark Justiciars,” Shadowheart said, and then, dejected, “why would Shar’s dead attack? Am I being tested?”

“Not the time sweetheart,” Karlach said, hefting her large axe. “Kill first, contemplate later.” Without hesitation Karlach turned, swinging her axe into one of Shar’s dead, cleaving the thing clean in two. It fell to the ground with a clang of armor- and if anything had been inside it, it was nothing bust dust now.

Sekh noted the three shadow masses, each birthing new undead as quickly as Karlach could cut them down. They needed to take those down first.

“Karlach, Astarion,” he called, “you two take care of the undead- Shadowheart, you and I need to take care of those shadows- or we’ll drown in the undead.”

Thankfully Shadowheart gave a nod, turning to the closest and calling down a brilliant sphere of radiant light. The shadow shrieked as if it was living, and Sekh let loose a blast of his own shadow magic, letting it coil around the shadows writing in the light. There was a loud rush of air, as the darkened mass burst-

And didn’t return.

Okay. They could definitely do this.

Sekh and Shadowheart turned their attention to the next summoning portal, Shadowheart dropping low as one of the long dead Dark Justiciars swiped their sword clean through where her neck would have been. Before she could retaliate, Karlach was burying an axe in the thing’s back, snarling, “Do not touch my cleric.”

Sekh got goosebumps over the sheer power of her voice.

He trusted Shadowheart to right herself, and Karlach to ensure she stayed in one piece. He focused on the swarming shadows instead, trying his necrotic magic this time, to see if it had more effect.

The shadows growled, he swore, seeming to try and devour the death magic. It flickered, but didn’t go out- and he knew, the shadows it was.

He pulled on Syl’s powers, felt the shadows on his face swarming, hot, stretching along his neck, beginning to curl over his shoulder. The blast he released nearly knocked him back a step, a stream of shadows blacker than night swarming the summoning portal, engulfing it entirely. He tightened his fist, could feel his shadows choking the life out of Shar’s.

They had to be her shadows, right?

He could feel Syl laughing in his mind, enjoying exerting her own power over the goddess. Nothing but shadows herself, he knew Syl thought very little of the goddess of loss.

He didn’t disagree.

The portal screeched, before collapsing. Sekh’s shadows dissipated with it, and he turned, saw Shadowheart was already working on the third portal- thankfully, the last. It had been left dormant long enough, unfortunately, that it had quite the number of undead crawling out, twisting in ungodly ways as they righted themselves.

Astarion, having finished with a straggling Dark Justiciar from one of the other portals, rushed over, leaping into the air and kicking one of the undead in its hollow chest. His landing was a bit rough, as he went down on his knees- but as the Dark Justiciar stumbled, he dropped his daggers, grabbed one of his single handed crossbows, and fired into the opening between armor and mask.

A second and third shot sent the shade collapsing into nothing but rusted armor.

Sekh focused on the portal, Shadowheart already raining golden light down upon it. He joined, letting his shadows mingle within her light, creating a dizzying cascade of brilliant golds and a sheer black void. Both were gritting their teeth, concentrating, until the portal let out a resonating crack and dissipated.

Shadowheart and Sekh stumbled back, both sucking in a breath, as Karlach kicked one of the undead away from Astarion, shattering its bones with the force. It crumpled to the ground, as just as suddenly as the mayhem began, a silence fell over them.

For a moment, they were all still, coiled tight, waiting for anything to happen. Yet when it didn’t, after a minute, Astarion pushed himself up off the ground, stowing his crossbow, before gathering up his discarded daggers. Karlach settled her axe away, placing her hands on her hips and looking at the piles of bones and armor.

“Well, that was a warm welcome,” she mused. “Shadowheart, mind asking your goddess to lighten up on the hospitality just a little bit?”

Shadowhear frowned, folding her arms, as Sekh crouched down by one of the piles of bones. He poked at the skull, hand recoiling as a tadpole flopped out of the eye socket, wriggling. It was dying.

“Ugh,” Astarion managed, fighting back a gag. “I would rather not be reminded of what those worms look like, thank you.” He kicked a pile of bones, before jumping back, another tadpole dislodged by his action, being shot a few paces forward to land on the ground in a wet splatter. “I am going to be sick.”

“No time for that soldier,” Karlach said, though she pointedly did not look at the dead tadpoles. “How the fuck did someone worm a damn skeleton?”

“No idea,” Sekh admitted, standing up and brushing dust from his hands. “But there’s necromancy at play, serious necromancy.” He planted his hands on his hips, forcing himself to not focus on how cold it seemed now. As if the life was being drained from the air around them.

“So, like your magic?” Karlach asked, as she moved closer to Shadowheart, seemed to be checking the cleric over for injuries. Shadowheart tried to bat her away, but there seemed no stopping Karlach from fussing over her.

“No,” Sekh admitted. “No, I… I’ve never had the skill for necromancy. My spells are simple death magic- but I’m not reanimating the dead. My mother couldn’t even do that- hells I don’t think anyone in my line has been able to for generations.”

“But they could once?” Karlach asked, looking intrigued. Sekh simply shrugged a shoulder- he’d heard his mother say they could, once. But the magic dwindled throughout their bloodline, as they turned more to brute force.

Hence, his mother’s shortsword.

The matter dropped as they weighed their next options. There was another disk, just ahead of the room’s large entrance- but it seemed dormant. The strange pedestal in front of it had a small indent, as if it needed something.

Progressing right led to a broken staircase, while left was actually attainable. They went that path, passing at the landing. Another set of stairs, or a long, shadowed hallway. Sekh felt the air moving, swore he heard a murmur, and Shadowheart was turning quickly, moving into the hallway. Past a large statue of Shar, she pressed her palm to a door, pushing as the rest of the party caught up with her.

The door creaked as it opened, as if it hadn’t been touched in one hundred years. The room was nearly pitch black, the faintest light creeping in. Set a few paces back, a statue of Shar stood, over a large stone bowl. Sekh and Shadowheart moved towards it, Sekh noting the dried blood caked within.

“These are her trials,” Shadowheart said, the awe back in her voice. “She needs a blood offering.” She turned to Sekh then, eyes pleading, “I need to do this. I need to know I’m worthy.”

Sekh bit his tongue. He was terrified of what this would do to Shadowheart- but he also had to respect her desires. He had to trust her.

He moved for one of his daggers, knowing he was possibly the most acclimated to bleeding at this point- but Shadowheart placed a hand on his arm, stopping him.

“Let me,” she whispered. Sekh nodded, stepped back as Shadowheart pulled out a dagger, gave her arm a slice, grimaced as her blood dripped slowly into the bowl- a vibrant crimson compared to the long dead blood of her predecessors.

The gentle splash of her blood broke the silence, and then the creaking metal gates moved, cracking open, providing multiple entries further into the room. Shadowheart pulled her sleeve down, stowing her blade.

“I have to do this alone.” She glanced at Karlach and Astarion, both a few paces back. While the vampire seemed rather indifferent, Karlach was frowning.

“That’s not a good idea, soldier,” she advised, but Shadowheart only shook her head, turning to Sekh. He sighed, shoulders slumping a little.

“I trust you,” he said, and something seemed to spark in Shadowheart’s eyes. “Come back in one piece, okay? We need you.” She nodded before turning, examining the open doorways, before proceeding through one.

Sekh took a step back, falling closer to Karlach and Astarion. “Was that… was that a smart idea?” Astarion asked, and Sekh couldn’t answer. No, it wasn’t- but he couldn’t deny Shadowheart. She was free to make her choices. She was free to face the consequences.

A few minutes of silence passed, before Karlach grew antsy. She shifted from foot to foot, before she began pacing. Astarion had long since abandoned staring at the doors, was poking around the room- though there seemed to be little beyond dust and bone. Sekh could tell that Karlach wanted to charge in- and while he did as well, he was ready to push back if she tried-

Thankfully, there was a sudden break in the air, tendrils of a glorious purple, space ripping open. Shadowheart stumbled out, one hand clutching something tightly. “Hells,” Astarion exclaimed, watching with wide eyes as reality stitched itself back together behind her.

Shadowheart straightened up, then grinned. “One trial down,” She opened her hand, showed her companions the small orb she was holding. “I think this will fit by the disk back up the stairs.” She stowed it away, before walking briskly through the room, back out to look for the next door. Sekh, Astarion, and Karlach had no choice but to rush after her, watching her step into the next room over.

Inside was the same statue, the same cracked stone bowl. Without hesitation Shadowheart dug her knife, deeper this time, into her arm, bleeding for her goddess. She had barely gotten her knife away when the doors opened, revealing the chamber was much deeper than it originally looked.

Shadowheart strode through, chin high, and the party followed quickly after. The room felt colder than the others, and Sekh swore he could see ice forming, on parts of the floor.

He distinctly did not like the feeling the space gave him.

“I don’t like this,” Karlach said, as Shadowheart began up a set of stairs. She barely crested the top when a bolt of radiant light struck down, missing her by mere inches. She jumped back, as a flickering shape descended the stairs, turning the corner and grinning wickedly.

It was Shadowheart, except… not. She was made of shadows, wisps of purples and blacks, her features faded.

“We are our own greatest enemy,” Shadowheart said, just loud enough for the rest to hear- as more shadows stepped out. Once to mirror each of them.

There wasn’t a moment to think, to speak. The party leapt into action, charging up the stairs to avoid having the low ground. Sekh leveled a shot of necrotic magic directly at the Shadowheart facade, as Karlach took on herself. Movements blurred, and Sekh lost track of where everyone was, his opponent seeming to constantly shift.

At one point, he was dodging a sneering Karlach’s axe.

Another, a wicked Astarion was trying to bury both his daggers into his belly.

And then he himself was reaching for his own throat, wanting to chill his bones beyond death.

Sweat trickled down his spine as he pedaled back a step, his other self missing his neck by a thread. He swallowed thickly, drew his shortsword, as the shade studied him. It didn’t speak, thankfully- Sekh wasn’t sure he could stand having a conversation with himself.

He struck out at him with shadows. Sekh dropped to his knees, crying out slightly because they ached with the impact so intensely. They would be all bruises, he was sure. But he stuck out with his sword, got the shade in its leg. It stumbled, and he dropped his sword, grabbing at its thigh and pulling it down, mumbling over and over again as necrotic magic surged forward, enveloping the shade.

It shrieked- a bastardization of his own voice- and began to convulse. Sekh let go, wanted to grab his sword, but even in death throws his other self reached for him, grabbed him and pulled him down into the mess, rolling them over. The shade was twitching, nearly foaming at the mouth as he straddled Sekh, put both hands around his throat and squeezed.

Sekh grabbed at the shade’s arms, his neck aching as his air was cut off. He tried to focus on his magic as his legs thrashed- but his mind spun, black speckles taking shape. He could just feel a chill in his fingers, and if he focused a bit more, he could get his magic back-

The shadow above him jerked suddenly, hold going slack. Sekh’s eyes darted, and he noticed two daggers sticking out of its side, Astarion looming over, face twisted in a sort of rage Sekh wasn’t sure he’d seen on the man before.

Astarion kicked the shade and it slumped off of Sekh, who sucked in a deep breath, forcing himself to sit up. He coughed, his lungs burning, as Astarion reached for him, began to pull him up. Sekh tried to thank him, but his voice was rough, and Astarion’s look alone was enough to shut him up, for the moment.

They weren’t done.

Karlach’s shade was the last to fall- it took all four of them to take her down. By the time she crumpled to her knees, they were sweaty, dusty, and a bit bloodied- but all alive. All in one piece.

Shadowheart stayed focused, immediately searching the shade corpses for another gem. Sekh left her to it, rubbing his throat, before Astarion was pulling his hand away, examining it. “I’d rather never kill you again,” he said, and Sekh could hear a faint tremor to his voice.

“Promise I won’t make you.” Sekh’s voice was hoarse. He swallowed, watched over Astarion’s shoulder as Karlach pulled a small arrow from her shoulder, throwing it onto the ground.

“Can we be fucking done with this now?” she asked, as Shadowheart returned, stowing the second gem. “We came here for a relic- and I love a good time, but this is beginning to be a bit much. Besides, we’ll still have Ketheric after all of this.”

Karlach was right- no one could argue that.

Still, when Shadowheart left the room, seeming to ignore everyone, they all followed. Thankfully, the next trial wasn’t a battle, and was Shadowheart trusting herself to walk on the shadows. And all they found after that was a library that seemed to suck their voices from their lungs, but nothing more.

They headed back up the gauntlet, but moved forward instead of fully retracing their steps, up the second flight of stairs. The room that opened before them was massive, set with an old alter, candles still burning-

And more of these god forsaken skeletons. The air stank of necromancy.

“So the shadows didn’t swallow you,” one spoke, voice a hiss of stale air. “Come, before-” the words broke off as an all too familiar sound of the air ripping open, shadows bursting forth in a booming birth. “Rancid donkey scrotum!”

Alright, Sekh liked one thing about whoever was behind this necromancy- and it was their colorful vocabulary.

“Again?” Astarion asked, head swiveling between the summoning portals. Karlach screamed oh bloody fucking hells and simply launched herself at one, cleaving her axe through the shadows. It shuddered and dissipated.

Good to know that physical force worked as well.

Chaos erupted within seconds. The portals began to birth Dark Justiciars from the temple's abysmal, fetid womb. Karlach hacked away at each one she found, arms straining with the sheer force of effort she was putting into her swings. One cracked the floor, beneath a portal.

Sekh fired shadows from one hand, necrotic magic from the other- trying to split his focus before they were overwhelmed. He had to dodge the Dark Justiciar’s attacks- as the possessed skeletons were little more than a one time use bone shield.

Sekh gritted his teeth, sweat trickling down his spine, along his hairline. He was exhausted, yet it seemed each time a portal broke, a new one arose.

“We can’t do this forever!” Karlach yelled, as she grabbed Astarion as he ran past, swung him forward and launched him into the air. The vampire laughed as he landed, daggers first, into one of the portals.

“I don’t know, I think I’m having fun!” the vampire yelled, before he was knocked flat onto his ass by a Dark Justiciar. He grimaced, glared up at it, and bared his fangs. “Nevermind- not having fun.”

Sekh sent a bolt of shadow directly through its chest, barely able to spare a glance at Astarion to ensure he was in one piece, before he turned back to focus on the portals. He trusted his lover could handle himself.

His palms began to burn from the sheer amount of magic pouring out of him. It felt like they were all trapped within a sordid, violent dance- constantly shifting, focus split between the never ending growing portals and the wretched undead they spewed forth.

By the time the portal growth began to ebb, Sekh’s legs felt like they might give out. He swore even Syl felt exhausted, in his head- so much of her magic channeled to him. His party was a chorus of cursed and panted breaths, fatigue gripping everyone tightly.

Still, the last portal fell beneath Karlach’s axe and Shadowheart’s light, a burst of thunderous noise that gave way to, once again, a bone chilling silence.

The silence lasted but a moment, not long enough for words to even be exchanged, before a large door was opening, revealing an inner sanctum, private like chambers. A single glance between the party, and they moved forward- there was no other direction to go.

There was no turning back, at this point.

The room reeked of rotten flesh- a stench so foul that Astarion covered his nose, actively gagged and tried to silence the noise. Sekh stayed close, reached out to rest a hand on his back as they walked, fighting down bile in his own throat. The large stone table- alter like- in the center of the room was littered with body parts- old bone showing, rot clinging to limbs, blood so congealed Astarion would need a fork, as he had joked once, what felt like lifetimes ago.

The man who greeted them had a voice that seemed to echo, as if it sucked in the noise of the shuffling undead in the room and turned them to sheer silence. He was short, his eyes glowing from beneath his hood, face crossed in scars that looked as if he had freshly opened them- many times.

Sekh didn’t need to be told that this was Balthazar. His chambers back a Moonrise had given the group a similar sickness, had boasted the same horrid stench.

Sekh wanted a very long, very hot bath- he worried he’d smell like decay for months.

“I could put those limbs to work,” Balthazar said, sizing up Sekh, the party, as if they were simply hunks of meat, after his curt greeting. Sekh gritted his teeth, very much over this necromancer, after only being in his presence for moments. His pompous, arrogant, sorry little face-

“Oh I’m so done,” Karlach said, and Sekh didn’t even glance back. He raised his hand, and without hesitation, shot a shadow at one of the ambling ghouls, clean through its chest. Fuck their exhaustion, they’d grind themselves to bone if it meant not listening to this bastard prattle on.

“We’re done playing nice,” Sekh said, against the sound of Astarion drawing his still bloodied daggers. Before Balathazar could speak, Shadowheart rained her radiant light down on the hulking Golem behind him, knocking it back a few steps. Sekh jumped up onto the table as Blathazar turned, running further into the room, trying to get behind the recovering golem, to use him as a flesh shield. “I’ll kiss whoever kills him!” Sekh announced, feeling delirious from exhaustion.

He watched Astarion run at full speed towards Balthazar at that- and he wanted to laugh at how ridiculous this all felt. As if the vampire needed to earn a single kiss…

Karlach moved past the table, leaping to dig her axe into the Golem’s shoulder. It stumbled, blackened blood leaking out in disgusting, thick rivets. The smell was noxious, and Astarion stumbled as it hit him, causing him to miss Balthazar. The necromancer laughed, a noxious cloud forming at his hand and spilling over Astarion.

Before Astarion could right himself, a ghoul lunged, tackling him to the floor. Balthazar was laughing now, a sucking, wet noise that made Sekh grimace.

He drew his sword, leaping off the table, taking a few running steps and skewering the ghoul atop his vampire. It squealed as he freed his sword, kicking it off Astarion and grabbing a hold of his armor, dragging him out of the growing, sickening cloud. They were both coughing by the time they cleared it. Astarion pushed himself to sit up, looking paler than usual.

“Stay here,” Sekh said, even as he couldn’t catch his own breath. He heard the vampire argue- but he stopped listening, focusing on the fact that Balthazar seemed to be trying to summon more of his skeletons. And while they were nothing but a one use bone shield- they were still annoying.

Sekh shot his shadows at him, but the Golem intercepted, throwing Karlach across the room and taking the hit itself. It roared- gods above it really roared- but didn’t stop. Sekh coughed so violently he swore he tasted blood, felt his knees giving out. He fell down, gritting his teeth, a hand splayed on the floor as he swore his insides were caving in.

The golem charged, was only a few steps away- and Sekh watched as an arrow sliced clean through the air and into one of its eyes. Its head jerked back, before another pierced the center of its neck.

Sekh managed to glance to the side, and Astarion had both his crossbows in hand, looking pissed.

“Fuck off,” he said, firing a third shot, into the creature’s other eye. It went down, just in time for Karlach to be back, dripping sweat and blood and looking like the hells themselves. Her axe bit into its neck, the sheer force carrying the blade all the way to the floor.

The golem’s head rolled away, lifeless once more.

Sekh managed to push himself into a standing position, sucking in a painful breath. They needed to cut out the rot, the cause-

As soon as the thought occurred, he heard a bone rattling screech from Balthazar. He turned, watched as Shadowheart pulled back her mace, covered in blood and brain matter, the necromancer going down on one knee. Half his skull was caved in.

She brought the mace down a second time, light exploding upon impact, blinding Sekh. He reached up, shielded his eyes- and when the light faded, Balthazar was left motionless on the floor. As lifeless as his creations.

Karlach dropped her axe, the sound of metal an echoing clang around the room. Beyond that, all Sekh could hear were everyone’s panted breaths and his own pulse pounding in his skull.

“Gods I need a bloody drink,” Karlach finally managed, wiping sweat from her brow. Sekh couldn’t argue that, even though they were far from done.

He didn’t know how their bodies were going to hold out.

He heard Astarion stand up, the vampire groaning with the effort. He managed the few steps to Sekh, grabbing his shoulder and forcing him to turn around.

He looked… well, still pissed.

“Don’t ever tell me to stay back,” he said, voice laced with an anger Sekh had never seen directed at him before, “when you are in danger.”

He squeezed Sekh’s shoulder so hard it ached, but the drow didn’t push him off. “You were in bad shape.”

“And you weren’t any better.” Astarion bared the tips of his fangs, and Sekh squared his shoulders. He knew, down in his gut, that Astarion was allowed to be angry, even if he felt justified in trying to protect the vampire as well. That the elf was angry at the situation.

But gods, he was too exhausted to truly think.

Before he could open his mouth and say something he’d regret, Shadowheart was guiding Astarion’s hand from Sekh’s shoulder. Despite the exhaustion in her eyes, she seemed in good spirits.

“I believe I won something,” she said, and Sekh stared at her, confused- before Astarion barked a laugh.

“Utterly ridiculous,” he said, even as he relaxed, the anger beginning to ebb. “Bloody hells Sekh, kiss her so we can be done with this place and move on.”

Sekh turned his eyes back to Shadowheart, and felt himself relaxing a bit. He reached up, cradled the back of her head and said, “You asked for it.”

Kissing her was quick, playful. He almost laughed into the brief touch, before they broke apart and she was stepping back, laughing into the back of her hand. “That felt like what I imagine kissing a brother is like,” she said, “never again.”

Karlach had picked her axe back up, was shaking her head at them, as Sekh felt Astairon move back into his space, not quite touching but close. Sekh glanced over at him, took a breath- “I’m sorry.”

“For kissing Shadowheart? Please, I do believe she earned it. Besides, it’s not as if I have competition.” Sekh sighed, turned fully and took Astarion’s hand, toying with the ring on the elf’s finger.

“No, you ass.” He lifted Astarion’s hand, kissed it softly, watched the vampire almost blush. “For upsetting you.” Astarion shifted a little, before he took his hand back, mumbling that they didn’t have time for this.

Flustered, but no longer angry. Sekh would gladly take that.

*

Battered but victorious, and with nowhere left to go but broken stairs or a waiting disk, and with a devil still needing to meet their demise, the party decided to at least attempt to finish exploring the temple before following whatever path the disk, powered by the orbs Shadowheart had earned, would take them.

It felt like luck- or a very obvious trap- when they noticed a Displacer Beast, prowling at the bottom of the stairs. Aside of the rats, it had been the only sign of real life within the temple. Sekh refused to refer to Balthazar or his creations as life.

Sekh jumped into Karlach’s arms, clearing the gap in the broken stairs. The tiefling grinned, looked like she wanted to hoist him up like a cat- but instead let him down, moving next to help Astarion.

Sekh watched the displacer beast round the corner, before moving into another room. Even back here, there was a faint whiff of sulfur, displacing the scent of ancient dust. Once the party had all crossed Sekh followed the displacer beast’s steps, entering a room that had him pausing.

Carnage, everywhere. Bodies strung up, piles of bone and old gore, blood so black it threatened the shadows. Sekh wrinkled his nose. “Gods, what happened here?” he whispered, as the overs glanced around, none seeming eager to move into the room.

Was there a single room in this gods forsaken temple that wasn’t gore splattered and reeking of stale death?

Finally, Astarion said, “I’d wager Raphael’s little friend,” before he slipped past Sekh, continuing brazenly into the room. Sekh was impressed that the smell of all that old blood and gore didn’t have the vampire gagging-

But he was determined.

Sekh hurried after, Shadowheart and Karlach a step behind. He could feel eyes on him in the room- they were being watched.

A low chuckle broke the silence, and the party turned, staring up to find a colossal devil watching them, a sparking crossbow that seemed almost comically small in his hand poised right at them.

“What have we here?” he mused, hellish eyes boring into their very souls. “Fresh entertainment? You’ve burrowed too deep, little rabbit.”

Sekh took a single step closer, to be shoulder to shoulder with Astarion. The devil seemed ready to speak more, before he sniffed the air, his brows furrowing.

“There’s a stink of the surface to you, but something else as well. Musk, cherries, and… sulfur. Raphael!” The crossbow shifted slightly, aimed directly at Sekh’s head. “Where is he?”

The devil’s voice boomed, shaking the bones suspended around his strange, bastardization of a throne room. It was then Sekh noticed other shapes coming into view. They were far from alone.

And considering the beating they had already taken, he didn’t think they would survive another.

“You’ve had dealings with him too,” Sekh said, “talk to me. We have no love for that devil.”

The devil- an Orthon Sekh would later learn from Karlach, chuckled, but did lower his crossbow just a notch. 

“Bargaining won’t help you, little rabbit. The last man who tried watched me eat his young, before I fashioned his skull into a codpiece. If you’ve had dealings with that trickster, you know there’s nothing to discuss.”

Dealings- did the Orthon have a contract with Raphael? Sekh felt a presence in his mind, Syl watching through his blackened eye.

He was a warlock, and even if his contract with Syl was different, he still knew how they worked. And there was always a loophole.

“Show me your contract,” he said, caught Astarion whipping his head to glance at Sekh, confused. So quietly Sekh could barely hear him, the vampire mumbled we’re supposed to kill him.

Sekh reached for Astarion’s hand, teased his fingertips along it. He didn’t like to use the parasite, but he focused on his companions for a minute, echoing trust me into their skulls.

Astarion said nothing more.

The Orthon dropped the arm holding his crossbow, and much to Sekh’s surprise, began singing- or, as close to singing as the creature could get. Spoken word, really.

“Your contract is a song?” Sekh asked, rolling the lyrics over in his mind, trying to buy time.

“Parchment can burn, oral agreements aren’t worth the tongues they’re wagged on- but a song, it sticks in your mind.” The Orthon lifted his crossbow again, aiming it back at Sekh. “Now little rabbit, enough stalling.”

And then it hit Sekh. “An audience,” he mused, before adding louder, “You’ve always had an audience.” He gestured towards the Merridan who had formed an unnerving ring above them.

“The Merridan? There isn’t a single thought between them.” The Orthon paused, and Sekh could tell he was considering it. “Kill yourselves,” he said, after a moment- and without hesitation the beasts tore into each other, dying silently.

The devil growled.

“I still bloody hear it, endlessly.”

“Your displacer beast,” Sekh said, not glancing at the beast that had kept a watchful eye on them, since they entered.

“Nyssa?” The Orthon looked struck, hurt at the thought. “Raphael would demand such a sacrifice.” He turned towards the creature, but didn’t lift his crossbow. For a moment Sekh thought the devil might change his mind, might choose to skewer the drow’s skull with an arrow. “Stay still, my beauty.”

The Orthon leveled a single shot at the displacer beast, and Sekh refused to turn and watch the beast die. Necessary, yes, but he didn’t have to like it.

The Orthon bared his near tusks. “I still fucking hear it!” His voice sent the bones around them to clacking together again, and Sekh could tell his companions were tensing, ready for another fight. He had been able to level the odds, at least-

But he wasn’t done.

“You know there’s still one person who has always heard the song.” Sekh folded his arms, and in his head, Syl was giggling, mischievous. Her presence made this easier.

The Orthon looked at Sekh, perplexed- but the moment he made the connection, Sekh saw the light in his eyes. He stowed his crossbow, pulling out a blade instead. “If you’re wrong about this,” he said, eyes staring at Sekh, and Sekh alone, “I’ll claw my way from the hells and skin you alive. You’ll scream as I pluck each nerve out of your broken body.”

Sekh shuddered. He didn’t doubt the threat.

The Orthon turned his blade on himself, pressed it at the edges of his ribs. “Well played Raphael. Bastard.”

With no hesitation, he drove the blade into his own body. He toppled forward, falling from his perch and shaking the ground when he landed, dead on impact. He’d hesitated more when faced with dispatching his displacer beast.

For a moment, all four stood in silence, before Shadowheart said, “That silver tongue if yours is impressive.” Sekh smiled, rather proud that he had pulled that off. Before he could speak, however, Astarion was turning him, arms going around his neck as he jumped onto him, locking his legs around his waist. Sekh stumbled back as the vampire kissed him, not seeming to care that the drow was too exhausted to support their combined weight.

Thankfully, Karlach stepped in quickly, grabbed at Sekh’s waist, just under Astarion’s legs, and held them up. It was utterly ridiculous, and Sekh tried to say so, but he couldn’t form a full word, Astarion refusing to give him a chance.

He gave up, got his hands on his vampire’s waist, and enjoyed the kiss for what it was- filled with such strong excitement that Sekh swore he could feel it vibrating, in the vampire’s lips, in his touch, his fingers-

It was the ring Sekh realized, when Astarion finally let him breathe. “You beautiful man,” the elf said, “that tongue of yours is too talented.”

Shadowheart made a face. “Oh I don’t need to hear that from you, Astarion.”

The vampire ignored her, leaning in for another kiss, biting at Sekh’s lips. Sekh could almost fall into it, before Karlach cleared her throat. “Astarion, mind climbing off your man? Holding you both up does get a bit tiring.” Astarion pulled from Sekh’s mouth with a frustrated little noise, glancing past the drow at Karlach. Then, with a sigh, he got back to his own feet.

“That had better count as us killing him,” Astarion said, as Sekh leaned back against Karlach still, breathless, almost dizzy. If killing things for Astarion was going to always elicit that reaction, he could really get into the blood trade-

“I think it counts.” Shadowheart turned away from the group, heading for the dead displacer beast. Sekh watched Astarion walk over to the Orthon, toe at his body, as if checking that he was truly dead.

“You still with me soldier?” Karlach asked, as Sekh finally supported his own weight. He nodded, watched as Astarion returned to his side, now holding the Orthon’s crossbow. Sekh raised a brow, must have given him a look, because Astarion scoffed.

“What? The beastie’s dead, he won’t be needing it.” Karlach took it from the vampire, looking rather eager to examine it. “Now I just need Raphael to resurface.”

“Who knows where that’ll be,” Sekh mumbled.

“Wherever he feels like it- my own bedroll if he sees fit.” Astarion scrunched his face up at the idea, and Sekh couldn’t resist-

“I’m really not looking for a threesome with Raphael, but if you’re that eager-”Sekh was cut off when Astarion pulled him in for another kiss.

“Please do not finish that sentence,” he said, when the words were well and truly dead on Sekh’s tongue. The drow grinned, and Astarion rolled his eyes at him, but kept his little smile. And as exhausted and weary to his very bones Sekh felt, it was always worth it for just one of those smiles.

*

The orbs that Shadowheart had been harboring did prove to move the disk that had been dormant. It carried the party into the sheer depths of the temple- and they couldn’t even fathom how deep it truly went.

The remaining orbs opened a door, revealing a towering statue of Shar, presiding over a large pool. The water looked crisp, so clear that Sekh could make out the details etched into the stone floor beneath it.

“We made it,” Shadowheart said in wonder, looking up at Shar’s likeness. “Only by her grace. I need to pray.” She settled down onto her knees, bowed her head- and the silence that fell was deafening. Sekh could hear each of their breaths, his own heartbeat- and something else, like a bated breath, an almost whisper.

They weren’t alone. But he wasn’t sure they had ever been alone in the temple.

He stepped forward, into the pool, the water sloshing against his boots. He could feel its chill, felt goosebumps rising on his arms, along his back.

“Don’t rush in without me,” Shadowheart said, standing up then, wading into the pool herself. It lapped at her calves, then her thighs-

And she walked, ready to let the depths swallow her.

Something seemed to shatter then, pull them into the frigid, watery embrace. The breath choked from Sekh’s throat, and for a moment he was suspended in water that should have been ice, felt it stabbing at his lungs, his eyes, his throat-

And then it was gone, and he was left coughing up water and spit, laying on the ground. He heard his companions around him, all seeming to be in a similar state. He forced himself onto his hands and knees, winced as he took a breath and it felt like daggers were residing in his lungs.

Around him, everything was different. The ground they were on was just a hunk of rock, suspended in the air. The sky was rolling purples and blacks, above and below.

“The Shadowfell,” Shadowheart said, as they all began to stand up on unsteady legs. “We’re in Lady Shar’s domain.”

Sekh glanced over the edge of the rock, noted that everything seemed endless. As above, so below, it seemed.

In the far distance, they could see a larger stone, ornate seeming, with something in the center, bathed in a pale light that seemed wrong in Shar’s realm. Shadowheart, without hesitation, leapt off the side of the rock, landing on one below. Seemed they would need to make their way down and pray for sure footing.

It took time, with too many slips, Shadowheart the only one who seemed true in her step- but when they reached the final landing, Sekh realized it was a person bathed in light. A tall, sturdy built woman, in rags as old as the dust in Shar’s temple. Despite this, despite the dirt smeared along her face and hands, she radiated a sort of vigor Sekh wasn’t sure he’d ever felt before.

And when she spoke, her voice felt as if it would move mountains.

She addressed Shadowheart directly, ignoring the party- and it took only moments to realize she was Kethric’s “relic”. Her captivity was what granted his immortality.

She was the Nightsong. 

She was what every Sharran dreamed of ending.

Shadowheart’s eyes were near rabid, focused solely on the Nightsong. When she spoke of a spear, she held out her hands, and as if a gift from Shar herself, one materialized.

“Your death, your silence, is everything my goddess has ever wanted.”

This felt wrong.

“Shadowheart,” Sekh said, moving to take a step closer to her. The cleric whipped around, looking at the drow with eyes he barely recognized. The blackest shadow seemed to be encasing her irises, leaving an inky blackness not unlike those bloody summoning circles they’d faced, all day. “Is this what you want?”

To kill a captive who couldn’t fight back? To kill a victim?

“This is my life’s work,” she said, but he could hear it, a moment of falter, in her voice. The Nightsong heard it too- Sekh could see it on her face. She knew her life rested on Shadowheart’s decision.

“But is it what you want?” Shadowheart was quiet, and Sekh closed the gap, reached out, placed a hand over one of hers on the spear. “Is Shar really what you want?”

He thought of her reaction, at the House of Healing. He thought of how radiant she always was, how her magic was a warm bathing light, nothing like the shadows Shar graced.

She was the antithesis to what a Sharran should be.

“I want you to be happy,” Sekh said, meaning it. “I can’t make a decision for you, but neither can Shar. You need to do what you feel is right.”

Shadowheart looked past him, stared at the Nightsong, before she ripped away from Sekh’s touch. And for one, agonizing, numbing moment, Sekh was sure the spear was going straight through the Nightsong’s heart.

Instead, Shadowheart pivoted on her heel, threw the spear with all her might so that it clattered to the edge of the platform, rolling until it fell into the abyss below.

“I can’t believe I did that,” she whispered, looking at her hands. She was visibly shaking. “Shar will disown me.”

“You were never hers, child.” The Nightsong was looking at Shadowheart fondly. She got down on a knee, bowed her head. “You’ve vanquished your wolves, little warrior.”

“What did you say?” Shadowheart’s voice was broken.

“Lay a hand on my shoulder, in friendship, and free me. We will vanquish the blight that is Ketheric Thorm, and I will illuminate the truth.”

Shadowheart reached out, hand trembling, and rested it gently on the Nightsong’s shoulder. The woman smiled, pounded her fist into the ground, cracked the stone, before the light intensified.

She was beholden, resplendent, when she was fully visible again. Fully armored, winged like a feathered dragon, she was sheer glory.

Her smile felt like moonlight, her eyes like stars, before she was gone, ascending into the air and disappearing, leaving in her wake a rush of golden light that pulled at Sekh, at the group.

A way home.

“We need to leave,” Shadowheart said, sounding terrified. “We cannot be in the Shadowfell now.”

Sekh nodded, took her hand firmly in his, pulling her towards the portal. Astarion and Karlach flanked them, felt like a protective wall against the shadows that seemed to be closing in, trying to devour the light the Nightsong had left behind.

They stepped into the blinding light, enveloped in a warmth that seeped into their blood, their bones. Sekh felt some of the exhaustion leaving him, the aches in his joints dissipating. He felt rejuvenated, mended.

Stumbling out of the light, the shadows of the cursed lands felt cold. Sekh managed to hold his balance, could see the light of Last Light in the distance- and the stark, brilliant golden-white streak of the Nightsong, as she flew through the sky.

He glanced to his side, found his hand was empty. He glanced around him quickly, found Karlach and Astarion both orienting themselves- but Shadowheart was missing.

He opened his mouth to speak, alarmed, when suddenly she was flung from the light, before the portal closed, leaving them in darkness. She rolled a few paces on the ground, stopping nearly limp.

Sekh was at her side, saying her name over and over and over before the others could move. She opened her eyes, looking up at him with this distant, sorrowful look.

“I’m abandoned,” she whispered, as Sekh cradled her head.

“Never,” he breathed, “never Shadowheart. You have us.” Karlach and Astarion reached them next, the tiefling gently pushing Sekh aside, carefully scooping Shadowheart up into her arms, cradling her against her chest.

“We’ll be whatever you need,” Karlach said, her voice softer than Sekh had ever heard it. She held Shadowheart so close the drow thought Karlach might simply absorb her, absolve her of the sins in Shar’s eyes with her hellfire.

“The Lady of Loss does not like losing,” Astarion remarked, mouth set in a firm frown, looking just as displeased as Karlach and Sekh. No one needed Shadowheart to elaborate on what happened- Shar had kept her, and whatever punishment the goddess had inflicted-

Well, it was best they didn’t know the details.

They hurried through the dark, Karlach never once losing her grip on Shadowheart. Last Light was a chaotic, seething mass, most of the Harpers and Flaming Fists gone.

But Isobel was still there, seeming to try and keep some form of order. When she saw the party she hurried over. “What was that, in the sky?”

“An immortal,” Sekh said, and while the look of shock and disbelief on Isobel’s face was compelling- there wasn’t time. “The others?”

“Jaheira led them to Moonrise. I swore we heard the world scream, before the… light.” She glanced at Shadowheart, frowning. “What happened?”

“Shar.” Karlach said, her voice laced with venom. Isobel beckoned her closer, motioned for her to set Shadowheart down. The tiefling only held her tighter, unwilling to let her cleric go. Isobel didn’t push further, but set her hands on Shadowheart, closing her eyes. Her hands glowed with iridescent moonlight, the light seeping into Shadowheart, snaking through her veins.

Shadowheart’s eyes opened, as Isobel was still pouring the light into her. She looked over at Sekh, and in that moment she was raw, open, everything and anything.

Sekh lifted one hand, waving his fingers at her, and mouthed- I’m here. He always would be. They all would be. Next to him, Astarion reached out, brushed some of the cleric’s bangs off her forehead.

“You almost had me worried about you, Shadowheart.”

Isobel stepped back then, and Karlach carefully helped Shadowheart to her feet. The cleric rolled her neck, before nodding a silent thanks to Isobel. There would be time for explanations later.

For now, Moonrise called.

*

The fortress was in sheer, tumultuous horror by the time the four reached it. Jaheira’s Harpers were ripping through cultists, a ferocity to them that Sekh hadn’t envisioned.

It did help that Lae’zel was at their forefront, bloodied and grinning.

“Thought you’d miss all the fun!” Wyll said, as the party ran into the fray.

“Never,” Sekh said, drawing his shortsword as Karlach rushed passed him, revitalized from the moonlight gift the Nightsong had left them. He scanned the scene, took in how quickly the Harpers were making ground-

And spotted an all too familiar, growling face. Z’rell. Astarion’s eyes followed Sekh’s stare, before he bared his fangs. “Oh, I’m going to have fun killing her,” he declared, before he rushed her, pulling his daggers out. Sekh hurried after him, watched him narrowly miss embedding a dagger into her side.

“True Soul,” she spat, glowering at Sekh, seeming to ignore Astarion. “What have you done?”

“What we always planned to do.” He leveled his sword at her, adding, “I’m going to enjoy killing you, if I’m honest.”

She smirked, lips tugging along her large tusks. “Have you wanted that this whole time? You hid it well. But I don’t die easy.” She moved before Sekh, but the drow jumped to the side, avoiding her strike. She had her eyes firmly trained on him, ignoring the rest of the battle.

It would be her quick downfall.

“You know,” Sekh mused, as Z’rell flexed her hands, readying herself to cast. “You really shouldn’t ignore my starshine.”

She looked confused- and before she could turn Astarion was on her, leaping from behind. He wrapped his legs around her body, held tight as he sank his fangs deep into her neck. Sekh took advantage, closing the gap and shoving his shortsword directly into her belly.

“He gets quite peckish when he’s feeling ignored.”

Sekh pulled his sword free, and Z’rell collapsed to her knees. Astarion unwound his legs from her, supported himself on the ground as he drank quickly, deeply, letting her life drain directly into him. Sekh left him to it, knowing if he watched Astarion feed for more than a second he risked forgetting the world around them. And most likely, risked losing his head.

They secured the ground floor quickly, the companions heading up to the roof in a storm of blades and seething, crackling magic. When they burst into the cold, perpetual night air, Ketheric was glaring at them, the lines around his eyes deep in his anger.

“What have you done?” he asked.

“You’re mortal again,” Halsin said, his eyes dancing with a threatening light. Sekh knew he was ready to give into his beast and devour the man whole, for what he had done to the land, to Thaniel.

“No.” Ketheric looked at his hands, before he glanced up into the sky, saw the brilliant, dancing light of the Nightsong. “You freed her.”

“Ketheric Thorm!”

The Nightsong landed with enough force to shake all of Moonrise. She was imposing at her full height, the breadth of her wings threatened that of a small dragon. She was ethereal.

“Face me you coward!” She drew her sword, and Ketheric, for a moment, looked less imposing- for just a heartbeat, Sekh saw a tired, old elf, who had seen too much. Maybe had lost even more.

But it was gone, steeled behind an iron resolve. Whatever remnants of humanity might have clung to the strings of his consciousness was smothered.

The man was gone.

Ketheric raised a fist, the air screeching at his command, as bones began to knit together around the roof. The stink of necromancy was thick, as the skeletons began to rush at the party before they were even fully formed. The air kicked up with bone dust, felt blinding- and then a thunderous crack, as the whole structure shuddered.

Breaking the chaos was a large, wet, pulsing tentacle. Sekh’s face twisted in disgust, as he heard Astarion mutter oh hells. It lifted from where it had slammed into the roof, leaving thick, viscous strings of off white, not quite translucent fluid.

Sekh felt his stomach roll.

The tentacle wrapped protectively around Ketheric, swallowing him up into the depths of the fortress. The Nightsong flew after him without hesitation, diving into a large, organic tunnel left in the disgusting thing’s wake.

There was only one thing for the party to do- and with a round of nods, they charged forward, leaping down into the abyss.

*

Being inside an Illithid colony was not something Sekh had ever thought he’d experience. And now, walking through the organic, pulsing flesh like prison- well, he would’ve been quite happy to have missed out on this experience.

“This is disgusting,” Astarion mumbled, as they passed what had to be doors, but functioned like fleshy sphincters, opening and closing like an esophagus.

“For once, we agree,” Lae’zel said, her sword drawn. She was tense, each muscle pulled so taut Sekh swore he could see them, under her skin. 

“Find Ketheric, kill him, and never think about this again,” Sekh said, a mantra more to himself, but the round of nods he received was proof enough they were all just as tired, just as ready to leave this horrific mess behind them.

The followed the throbbing, seething hallways through the colony, making their way across its breadth. When a door finally opened for them, they were struck by the sight of rows of pods- the same pods that had held them once, on the Nautiloid.

Sekh recognized the Flaming Fists uniforms as they walked past them. He could just see, at the end of the room, an opening to another. A brine pool was barely visible, but it's salty stench was all too apparent, even from this distance.

Sekh paused, as some of the party continued- Sekh was sure looking for whoever Mizora had set them up to rescue. Instead of following, he looked around at the pods again- his heart aching at so many victims. Some were still unturned, while others were already slumbering mindflayers, waiting for their command to awaken.

Sekh turned his head, studied a strange Illithid device by the doorway. Its center was glowing, tendrils pulsing and squirming in the air. His tadpole moved eagerly, pushing against his skull towards the device.

He had a feeling he could make it listen to him, whatever it was. He looked back at the pods, before making a decision, consequences be damned. He had to hope it did what he assumed.

“Don’t touch that,” Lae’zel hissed, as Sekh reached out to the pulsing Illithid device, its tendrils squirming excitedly now, opening to allow for his hand. “Sekh’met.”

“Darling what are you doing?” Astarion asked, echoing Lae’zel’s nerves. He looked fidgety, fingers twitching towards his daggers as the tendrils closed around Sekh’s hand. The light was warm inside them, seeped into Sekh’s mind, open to his command.

“We can’t leave them.” He closed his eyes, as Lae’zel yelled at him to stop-

He ignored it. Gods be damned he wasn’t leaving anyone to a fate worse than death down here.

Release.

He thought the single word, and the system bent to his authority. The pods opened, spilling forth a noxious fluid and a mix of victims and Mindflayers.

Sekh opened his eyes, found a familiar face- Zevlor- standing up slowly, sucking in deep breaths. Whatever had happened in the shadows, he knew there had to be more to the story- and he wouldn’t have left the disgraced Paladin to die.

The device released his hand, and Sekh turned fully, saw with horror that the Mindflayers that had been released were up far before the unturned victims- naked and slick with whatever amniotic-like fluid they had been cradled in.

There were maybe three seconds to think. None of the party chose to use them- they simply moved. Lae’zel charged a Mindflayer as it raised those long, clawed fingers, and Sekh instantly felt his mind cramping, crumbling in on itself. He fell to his knees, grabbing at his head, his breath catching. He swore his skull was splintering-

It stopped, when Lae’zel drove her sword through the Mindflayer’s neck with a scream, her rage palpable. The creature’s head tumbled to the fleshy ground, rolling away as the body crumbled.

Sekh’s mind instantly cleared, and he didn’t hesitate- he lifted his left hand and called on Syl’s shadows, aiming for the closest Mindflayer.

It was sheer chaos- screams of rage from his companions, commanding shrieks from the Mindflayers- the desperate yells of the now freed captives. A hellstorm that ended just as suddenly as it had begun, when the last Mindflayer fell, and the room descended into an eerie silence, except for ragged breaths and the off putting, constant wet pulsing of the colony around them.

“You could have gotten us killed!” Lae’zel yelled, turning and storming towards Sekh. “What were you thinking, releasing ghaik?”

“I wasn’t going to leave anyone to die,” Sekh yelled back. Lae’zel tossed her sword down, got directly in his face, so close he could feel her breath.

“Any sacrifice is worth making if it means ghaik death!” The tension in her muscles hadn’t rescinded in the slightest, and Sekh knew she was a moment, a few words, from striking him. He’d never move in time, he was physically no match for Lae’zel, he knew that.

He spoke anyway.

“The fucking Mindflayers died anyway Lae’zel, and we saved people who would have been forced into our same fate. I’d do what I did again in a heartbeat. Have some fucking compassion.” The words were spat, volatile, and Sekh knew in his gut that he wasn’t enraged at Lae’zel, and she wasn’t enraged at him.

Again, they were all simply so bone deep tired.

Lucky for Sekh, Wyll approached before Lae’zel could knock him completely on his ass, settling a hand on the Githyanki’s shoulder. “Calm down the both of you,” he said, “what’s done is done. While you were out here considering tearing each other apart I… may have made quite the discovery.”

The discovery being Mizora, trapped in a pod. Free now, the devil was long gone- but Wyll’s pact had a termination date, now. Freedom was within his reach.

At least that was one good outcome.

Sekh stepped away from Lae’zel, heading for Karlach, who was speaking with Zevlor. The man looked tired, bags under his striking eyes, new lines along his well aged face that hadn’t been there upon their first meeting.

Sekh was caught up quickly, regarding the disaster that struck the tieflings upon entering the Shadow Cursed lands, that led to the deaths of many, the capture of more- and Zevlor’s time in the pod.

“I cannot undo my mistakes,” Zevlor said, his voice solemn, “but I can atone to the best of my abilities. I will search for any survivors, and I will find and free them.”

Sekh nodded- even though it would have been nice to have the Paladin within their ranks, when they faced Ketheric. But he didn’t want to risk any more casualties- and he knew they couldn’t stay to look for more. He didn’t want to risk splitting the party, and splintering them further.

The party left the chamber, able to navigate back into the pulsing living halls of the colony. It was accidental, when they stumbled into a large chamber, boasting a fleet of nautiloids.

Lae’zel swore, and for a single moment, Sekh saw a spark of fear, in her eyes. It was the most terrifying thing he’d ever seen.

“How many have the ghaik turned?” she breathed, “how far have they spread?”

“Too far,” Halsin said, voice deep, far too calm. Despite his serious look, Sekh swore he could feel the rage rolling off him in hot waves. The Druid was as close to a breaking point as the rest of them.

It was Gale who discovered the edge of the englave was in fact a disk that could move. And with no other options, they all climbed on, riding down further into the depths of the beast.

Before the disk could properly land, their tadpoles began to squirm, excitedly. Sekh gritted his teeth against the feeling, felt Astarion lean against him as the vampire reached up to clutch at his own forehead, baring his fangs at the discomfort. Despite his own headache, Sekh slipped an arm around him, helping to keep him standing. “I take it everyone’s tadpole is excited,” the drow said, through gritted teeth.

The chorus of groans from everyone except Halsin was all the answer he needed.

When the disk settled, a sick, wet, suction sound alerting them that it was stable enough to dispatch from, the group made their way towards another large, muscle like door. Larger than the rest.

In his gut, Sekh swore they were standing on a precipice. Something was beyond that, something large, something final. He glanced at the group, but everyone’s eyes were locked ahead, serious, stone like.

Now, or never.

Creeping in with such a large group was difficult, but not impossible as they disbanded, flanking half the room. Ketheric was at the center, raging with a phantom of a woman and a well dressed man. Sekh didn’t know either of them- but as they spoke heatedly, it became sickeningly clear that Ketheric was far from working alone.

That this was bigger than him.

Sekh didn’t recognize the man at first that the woman was sitting on- but when he noticed Wyll, across the room, nearly launching himself forward, only stopped by both of Karlach’s arms around his waist, he had an idea. It was confirmed when he was sardonically addressed as Duke Ravengard. Wyll’s father.

“That crown,” Gale breathed, from where he stood with Sekh and Astarion. The drow chanced a glance at Gale, and his eyes were sparkling, utterly transfixed by the heaping adornment on top of the Elder Brain. Gods below, this was so much more than any of them had ever expected.

Gale swallowed thickly, his hands clenching.

“To have it, to hold it.” He took a steadying breath, closed his eyes. “I’ll never know. Mystra gave her orders.”

Sekh fully turned then, reaching out for Gale, grasping his biceps. “Gale,” he exclaimed in a hushed voice, “you’re not… you can’t be serious about using your orb?”

Gale opened his eyes, and when he looked at Sekh he looked sad, resigned to his fate. “It’s Mystra’s will.”

“Fuck her will,” Sekh said, gripping tighter, “Gale, what about your will? Are you ready to die?” There was a flicker of hesitation, in Gale’s eyes, and Sekh’s heart broke. The man wasn’t ready to die, not yet. But he would because his wretch of a goddess deemed it a necessary casualty.

The amount of contempt Sekh had for the gods was infallible.

“Don’t, Gale,” he whispered, “don’t do it. Trust us, trust yourself. We’re going to go up there, we’re going to kill Ketheric, and we’re going to end the Absolute. And you’re going to walk out alive.”

Gale stared at Sekh for a moment, silently, before his shoulders sagged slightly. “Damn you,” he said, though the vigor was gone from his voice, “for making me want to live. Damn all of you.”

“Damn us or thank us later, it matters not,” Astarion said, reaching for Sekh with one hand and guiding him away from Gale, trying to get him to turn around. “Right now we have more important things to focus on.” Sekh fully turned, and knew Astarion was right. The brian, along with Ketheric’s counterparts and the Duke, were leaving.

Leaving him alone.

It was time to act.

The towering man didn’t seem shocked when the party stepped from the shadows. He looked bemused, but tired, the bags under his eyes more prominent than the first time Sekh had met him.

“There you are, as predicted.” The exhaustion from his eyes had crept into his voice. He seemed not the least bit shocked to be surrounded. “What is it, I wonder, that draws one toward death like a moth to light.”

Sekh narrowed his eyes, leveled his stare at Ketheric, but didn’t speak. Let the man have a moment of his own voice- it gave them a chance to orient themselves with their surroundings. As Ketheric spoke about how they could have absconded with the prism, Sekh noted the clanking undead, the swarms of Intellect Devourers-

But mostly, he noticed the Nightsong, struggling against chains that glistened with magic. Chains that held her in place, seemed to silence her- he could see her mouth moving, could imagine her screaming- but the only sound was Ketheric, drawling on.

She was the key to Ketheric’s enigmatic vitality. Bound, she would feed him immortality. But free, as Sekh had seen earlier- her life was her own again.

He reached next to him slowly, dragged his fingers along Astarion’s hand. The vampire glanced at him, only those sanguine eyes shifting, before they moved to follow Sekh’s glance.

He stared at the Nightsong, and in silent understanding took Sekh’s fingers in his hand and squeezed. It was enough- Sekh would trust her fate, and their lives, to Astarion.

“Perhaps you hoped to learn your place in history before you are erased from it.” Sekh’s attention returned solely to Ketheric, brows knitting together as he frowned at the older elf.

“And what is my place, Ketheric?” he asked, venom seeping into his words. Sekh let the anger take hold, let it burn in his crimson and abysmal eyes. Let the fire be stoked by all of the anguish he had seen, over his years- over recent weeks, within his companions. “Please, enlighten me. What will history have to say about me? About us?” He held his arms out, gesturing to his companions, as he took a step closer. Ketheric’s eyes were trained on him.

Good.

“And tell me why I should give a fuck?” Another step closer, putting dangerous space between himself and his companions. He trusted them to know what he was doing. “Tell me why I should care about history, about fate, when all I’ve seen for nearly seventy years is misery?” He reached the edge of the platform Ketheric was standing on, and reached up, taking hold of the fibrous, organic roots and hoisting himself up.

Ketheric let him climb, unobstructed, so Sekh could stand level with him. Or, as level as their height difference allowed.

“Enlighten me, Ketheric, on what divine bullshit you think will be written about any of this, when we’re all stale blood and rotten bone.” Sekh moved closer, close enough to smell the faint whiff of rot that clung to Ketheric, the gravedirt tell tale scent of necromancy. “Tell me what all this suffering was for- give it a purpose.”

For a moment, Ketheric remained unreadable, his stoic face giving away naught a single emotion. But then, there was just a flicker in those eyes- annoyance, at something Sekh had said.

“Whatever my Lord Myrkul deems necessary is what will be written- I’ll make sure of it. He has given me what no other god could grant- my daughter’s life, returned.”

Sekh fought to keep his face neutral- but a daughter he hadn’t expected. They had found Ketheric’s wife’s tomb, but the only other one-

Had been an open grave.

“Myrkul has never had a more devoted follower. For her life, I would grow his cult, and then seize it.” Ketheric fisted one large hand, as if he could squeeze the life from whoever his cohorts were, in a single, vice-like grip. “I have fought many, many wars, great and small, for other gods- but for Myrkul, I would condemn all of Faerun.”

Sekh couldn’t fight off the twinge of disgust that crept onto his face at the mention of the gods. Myrkul rang only the faintest of bells in his mind, but even knowing the bastard claimed divinity was enough for Sekh to despise him without a second thought.

“So your place,” Ketheric said, reaching for his hammer and hefting the mighty thing in his hands, “is to die. To be forgotten in the pages of fate and history, as nothing more than a pebble cast at my lord’s greatness.”

He raised the hammer, and in an instant everyone moved. Sekh stumbled back, lost his footing and fell, the hammer falling directly between his knees- could have caved his skull in, had he not stumbled away.

He heard shouting- Gale, casting in every direction as Ketheric’s undead charged, as the intellect devourers clawed their way forward in quick, jerking motions. Sekh couldn’t spare a glance- Ketheric had already raised his hammer as he scrambled back a few inches, boots not catching purpose on the flesh-ground.

The hammer could have found his chest, caved all his ribs into pierce his lungs, his heart, had Lae’zel not leapt up onto the platform, her shoulder digging into Ketheric’s weight and dislodging his footing just enough. His hammer faltered, and Sekh was able to scramble back another pace, as the elf stumbled.

He stared at Lae’zel with wide eyes, and she gave him a stern stare that simply said get up.

Sekh didn’t hesitate. He pushed himself up, drew his sword, and circled Ketheric with her, as the chaos continued to erupt. There was the shriek of a Mind Flayer, Wyll cursing- and then an enraged scream that could have rattled the very hells themselves.

Shadowheart, letting out some of the rage and ire that had thickened in her blood, since forsaking Shar.

Sekh crouched down, shot a shadow at Ketheric as his hammer just missed him. It hit his hip, yet the man didn’t even seem to notice, pivoting instead to intercept Lae’zel’s strike with his shield. He managed to push Lae’zel back a step, putting his weight behind his hold on the shield.

Sekh stood up, charged Ketheric, blade ready to pierce into him. His hand was crackling with necrotic energy, the magic seeping up the blade, encasing it-

But the moment the blade hit his armor, Ketheric stood fast, the groves and ridges catching Sekh’s sword. The drow gritted his teeth, pushed- and felt the metal give.

The tip of his sword fractured, splintering off, leaving the edge jagged and uneven, as Sekh pitched forward, nearly falling. Ketheric ignored him completely, eyes focused on Lae’zel, and Sekh stared at the now broken sword. The room closed off around him, his pulse echoing so loudly in his head that it drowned out every other noise.

His mother’s sword. The sword she had kept at her side for years and years, before his birth- before she had even met his father. The sword she died with, gripped in her hand, fighting to her last breath. The last thing he had of her.

Shattered. Shattered.

Sekh dropped the blade, was moving without knowing, the rage inside him boiling over, burning his veins like a caustic, noxious devil’s brew. He snarled, threw himself on Ketheric, wrapped his hand around the man’s throat from behind and squeezed, pouring every ounce of magic inside his body into the man’s throat, trying to plant a seething, writhing, death worm in his fucking veins.

For a moment, Ketheric ignored him- but then Lae’zel sliced into his arm- and suddenly the man was stumbling, the arm that had been holding his shield severed, falling to the ground with a heavy thud.

Ketheric stumbled to his knees, gasping for air as Sekh bared his teeth, panted, squeezed and continued to pour magic into him. Against his raging pulse, he heard a cry, enraged and saddened, fueled from a hundred years of betrayal, echoing around the room-

And then the Nightsong, in all her glory, landing heavily in front of them, her sword drawn. Sekh released Ketheric’s throat as the aasimar spat the elf’s name, let himself stumble from his hold on the elf, daring to look back, across the room.

Astarion stood where the Nightstand had once been chained, one of the heavy chains in his hand, grinning wickedly. Triumphant in the silent task that, had he failed, would have condemned them all.

Sekh loved him so fiercely in that moment, it quieted his rage, for a single heartbeat.

He stood up, watched as the Nightsong placed her foot on Ketheric’s chest and shoved, sent him falling back, over the edge of his hellish stage, into the churning, fiery depths at its center. For a single moment- a heartbeat- it all seemed quiet, over.

And then the room shook, trembled in a rage that seemed to terrify Ketheric’s minions. They scrambled, faltering, as a huge mass of bone began to rise, speaking in a voice what wisped like a final breath, a death rattle.

They were staring at a god. Divinity itself, taking the form of bone, Ketheric fused into his mass like a writhing, beating heart.

“Bloody fucking hells.” It was Wyll, speaking against the silence. And to hear the other warlock speak in such words, such a tone- well, it should spell death, for each of them.

“I am the smile of the worm-cleaned skull. I am the regrets of those who remain, and the restlessness of those who are gone. I am the haunt of the mausoleums, the god of graves and age, of dust and dusk.” The creature was huge, hulking, its vice growing to encompass hundreds, thousands of dead, echoing its every desire. “I am Myrkul, Lord of Bones, and you have slain my chosen.”

Sekh took a step back, reflexively, the air acrid with the scent of old bones, the stale stench of rot gone to dirt and dust.

“But it is no matter, for I am death. And I am not the end- I am a beginning.”

It struck done with its hefting bone-scythe. Sekh jumped, having to leap off the platform, crashing down below on his shoulder, feeling bone grinding into bone. He grimaced, bit back a cry of pain, as he heard the sounds of Lae’zel and the Nightsong’s swords cracking against bone.

“On your feet soldier,” Karlach said, pulling Sekh up, ignoring the way his face twisted in pain. “We need you.”

They could only manage this if each of them were present. Only as a single, enraged entity did they stand a chance against a god.

He bit his cheek so hard he tasted blood, but he nodded, moving to try and climb up to the platform behind her. His arm felt like lead, he could barely raise it- and he realized in horror there was no way he could make the climb.

But he had to.

 Sekh hoisted himself up with his good arm, feet digging into the soft webbing, and pressed his chest tight to it, bit at the flesh to keep himself steady as he reached up as far as he could with his good arm. The flesh tasted of decay, had bile rising in his throat- but he swallowed it down, as he pulled himself up again, against the noise of bone, steel, the stench of magic and fire.

When he reached the top, settling on his knees, it was hell incarnate. Every party member, each glorious person he had learned to love, over these weeks, was bloodied and snarling, enraged, throwing themselves without regard for their own well being at the Lord of Bone. Giving everything they had, to tear this monster of a god down.

It would be a dishonor to them to not give the same.

Sekh stood up, screaming his throat raw as he held out his good hand towards Myrkul, letting loose not only whatever necrotic magic remained in his core, but also Syl’s shadows, wrapping around the blast, acting a shield to guide it directly into the cracks within Myrkul’s ribs. The force of it burned like a freezing fire, his skin prickling as if punctured by a thousand needles.

He had never combined the two. But with his other arm useless, he had no other option.

The sheer ferocity they rained down on the god, the divine hulking mass of bone and hate, was unlike anything Sekh had ever seen. Every breath, every heartbeat, every thought and hope and prayer they each had within them was given to this very moment. Bloodied, broken, it seemed none of them cared as they continued to rain blow after blow into the divine bastard- blades and arrows and magic enough to quell an army.

And when the bones began to crack, they only drove harder. Splinters began to fall from Myrkul’s body, sharp shards of bone that broke skin, yet no one cared. Their own pain was fuel-

Fuel that fed a fire, culminating in a sudden true death rattle, shaking the room, as Myrkul collapsed, body sundering into dust and nothing at all. His ribs spat Ketheric out like a parasite, left the man’s corpse to the party, as Myrkul sank into nothingness.

And then, there was silence, except for the ragged, desperate breaths they all clung to.

Ketheric was dead.

Sekh collapsed onto his knees, feeling his energy draining him. He heard weapons falling, as the strength they had exhausted left them. He sucked in a breath, his lungs aching, entire body throbbing.

But it didn’t matter, none of it mattered. Ketheric’s body was there-

And suddenly, the prism was as well, having pulled itself from Shadowheart, glowing like a sun. It seemed to open the air around it, and out stepped that golden paladin, that dream figure-

Hazy, edges blurred, a figure that wasn’t fully real. Sekh wondered what the others saw- if the figure was the same to all of them.

“How are you here?” It was Karlach, standing closest. The dream visitor spoke, a brief reprieve and nothing more- and then began to speak at length about the dead man in front of them, and the god they had slain.

As they spoke, Sekh felt a hand on his back. Astarion knelt down next to him- bloodied but looking intact, despite the worry lacing his face as he noted Sekh’s limp, left arm. Sekh said nothing, as in the distance the visitor droned on about gods, The Dead Three, about a man named Gortash that had Karlach screaming, an unknown woman-

A magical hulking crown that had Gale nearly vibrating out of his skin.

“Take his stone,” they said, gesturing towards Ketheric. At the center of his armor an amethyst like stone- cut in sharp edges- rested, radiating a heated power, a pull. Sekh realized, after a moment of hesitation, that they were all looking at him.

Expecting him to pry it free.

He swallowed thickly. “I can’t,” he admitted, nodding towards his useless arm. He wouldn’t have the strength in the other to pry it free. He shifted his stare to Lae’zel, said her name, but left the rest of the request silent.

She nodded, walked over to Ketheric’s body, crouching over him. With a dagger she was able to work the stone free, standing once it was in hand, the dream visitor looking at it with lovestruck eyes. Sekh didn’t care for the stare. “Remarkable,” they breathed, before their edges began to blur more. Their presence was fading.

They blinked out of sight, but left in their wake a shimmering light, breaking reality. A portal, out of this hellhole.

Sekh went to stand, was thankful when Astarion was up first, helping to pull him up. Sekh bent over, gathered up his mother’s sword- but then Astarion took it from him, holding it firmly in one hand so Sekh could cradle his lifeless arm. 

And slowly, broken, exhausted, feeling half dead yet victorious- the party stepped into the light.

*

Sekh leaned his head against the wall, gritting his teeth as Halsin’s large hands moved along his shoulder. He knew this was going to hurt-

He couldn’t bite back the cry as Halsin popped his shoulder back into its socket, the sick, bone crunching noise making his stomach churn. He felt tears prickling the corners of his eyes, and was thankful that the druid didn’t call him out on it. Instead, Halsin’s large hand rested soothingly on his shoulder.

“Try to move it,” he said, his voice deep, a timber form his chest that could have lulled Sekh to sleep. He was bone-dead tired and couldn’t wait to rest. When Halsin moved his hand away Sekh rotated his shoulder. It was stiff, sore, but his arm was functional again. “Good.” Halsin stood up, offering a hand to Sekh and pulling him up, as if he weighed nothing. There were bandages wrapped up along one of the druid’s arms- nasty bitmarks from the undead that had gnawed into his bear flesh.

They were all battered and bandaged- but back at Last Light. And the shadows were already thinning- the air was beginning to lose its lung piercing chill. They had prevailed.

Yet it didn’t feel like enough. They all knew it- their worms still wriggled and writhed in their heads. And now, thanks to some explanation from Withers, before they had made the trek back to Last Light, they knew they were up against the Gods of Death themselves.

Fuck the divine.

He was too exhausted to hide the displeasure on his face. Halsin hummed, moving for Sekh’s good shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “We may not be done, but we did a lot of good. Don’t lose sight of that.” Sekh nodded halfheartedly, and Halsin moved to brush the hair from his face, tuck it behind one of his ears. The man’s touch was far too gentle for his size- and for the carnage he could invoke. “Your speech to Ketheric was quite the good distraction.”

Sekh barked a laugh, wholly unattractive but real. “I can lie my way out of a lot of things. Had to learn how to over the years- most folks don’t take kindly to drow.” He tried to roll his injured shoulder, and Halsin helped with the motion.

“So was it all a lie?”

Sekh settled his arm again, shook his head. “No. Definitely not. But I can say, my years with my family were quite nice. But why bother with the math for that bastard anyway?” Halsin nodded, bemused little smile on his handsomely lined face.

“You’re still quite young,” he said, “don’t let yourself think it always has to be this.” With that, Halsin gestured towards the door, urging Sekh to get out and get some rest.

Sekh walked out of the small room that was serving as an infirmary, was accosted nearly instantly by a few Harpers offering him wine to celebrate.

He politely declined with a smile, left them to their merriment as he headed outside. He hadn’t seen Astarion since the moment they’d stepped within sight of Last Light- and all Sekh wanted to do was curl up with him and let his bones rest.

Those thoughts were quickly derailed when he saw Shadowheart, standing with the Nightsong- no, Aylin, he had learned- and Isobel- gods, Ketheric’s once dead daughter.

He was convinced he could never make an uncomplicated acquaintance.

He walked towards them, pausing a step back when he heard the hushed tone they spoke in. His concern for Shadowheart was outweighed by a desire to give her privacy- but Aylin caught sight of him, and Shadowheart turned. The exhaustion in her eyes faded just a little, and she smiled.

Gods, it was the sort of sight Sekh sorely needed.

She held her hand out to him, and he took it, felt her fingers lace in with his as he stepped into her space. As he did so, there was a tingling, in his mind- her parasite, reaching out to his, wanting to show whatever Aylin was about to share with her.

Sekh let her in.

The woods, dark, a wild, terrified heartbeat- masked strangers, a wolf- and then a man. A man that Shadowheart’s very soul recognized, even if her mind couldn’t seem to place him.

Sekh watched the scene unfold, when the Sharrans first took Shadowheart from the woods, until it faded to black, and he was back, in the present. “Who was that man?” Shadowheart asked, and Aylin’s eyes softened.

“You know, little wolf, in your heart.” She reached out, placed a hand firmly on Shadowheart’s shoulder, as Shadowheart whispered my father. “He lives, as does your mother.”

Shadowheart brightened at this, eyes wide, staring into Aylin as if she was the moon, and this was Shadowheart’s first night topside. “But I was told they were dead-”

“And by who?” The silence was enough of an answer. “They yet live.”

“Then I have to find them.” Shadowheart’s mouth fell to a determined line, and Sekh squeezed her fingers.

“You won’t be alone,” he said, and she glanced over at him. He’d die before he let her lose her parents a second time- he knew losing them once was more than enough. “We’ll find them.”

Shadowheart pulled her hand free, reached out and wrapped her arms around Sekh’s neck. He pulled her flush to him, clutched at her back, found they were rocking slightly as he pressed his face into her neck.

“Thank you,” Shadowheart whispered, as Aylin and Isobel took their silent leave, to give them space. Sekh lifted his head- his question evident on his face, as Shadowheart added, “For believing in me.”

He smiled, his chest warm, aching. “I always will,” he said, and Shadowheart leaned in, pressed her lips softly to his forehead. “But you got yourself here.”

“I would have killed her,” she admitted, leaning back slightly. “If you hadn’t asked me to truly think, for a moment. I would have done exactly what Shar wanted, because it meant I didn’t need to think, I could just do what I’d been told would make me happy…” She shook her head. “I would have thrown away so many lives.”

“I think you would have faltered, in the end. I think, no matter what I said, you would have let Aylin live.” Shadowheart looked ready to disagree, but her eyes caught sight of something, over Sekh’s shoulder. Sekh turned his head, saw Astarion weaving through the Harpers clamoring about, eyes scanning around him quickly, quite obviously looking for something.

And the moment his eyes caught on Sekh, they never left him.

Shadowheart stepped back, giving Sekh a little smile, as Astarion closed the space quickly, reached out and curled an arm around Sekh’s waist, pulling him close-

And pressing the sweetest kiss Sekh had ever known to his lips. Sekh melted, felt his knees wanting to give out, as he clutched at Astarion’s half discarded armor. The world fell away, for one sweet, blissful moment- the pain radiating in his joints, the aches in his bones, everything was gone-

Except Astarion.

Astarion’s other hand found Sekh’s shoulder, gently traced along the tender skin as he pulled back- despite Sekh chasing him, slightly, never wanting the kiss to end. “Your arm-”

“Halsin popped it back into place.” Sekh offered a smile, but knew he wasn’t fooling the vampire. “Hurt like hell.”

Astarion nodded, before he looked over at Shadowheart. “I believe I interrupted something…”

“Oh no,” Shadowheart waved him off as she spoke. “Trust me- Sekh has said more than enough.” She smiled at them both, reached over and brushed some of Sekh’s hair back, behind his ear. “Get some rest- both of you. Morning will come far too soon- and it seems we’ve got a lot more work to do.”

Sekh nodded, watched Shadowheart slip away, before he turned back to Astarion. The dark circles under his eyes were bruise-like, his skin pale enough that Sekh swore he could make out some of the veins, under that porcelain skin. Astarion was beyond exhausted, just like him.

And he was still the most beautiful thing Sekh had ever seen.

Astarion tipped his head slightly, spoke in a low voice, asking almost hesitantly, “Can we go to bed now?”

Sekh smiled- and despite the torrent of misery this day had been, the smile was so large his cheeks ached. “Nothing would be sweeter, Starshine.” Astarion’s cheeks flushed, slightly, and Sekh’s chest utterly burst, burning moths and butterflies, fireflies of hellish heat swarming inside him, igniting his veins. He had never in his life felt like this, around anyone. He had never loved someone so fiercely that he could explode into the stars themselves at just the sight of them.

Love.

Sekh swallowed the word down, was content to cross the camp with Astarion, walking so close they were nearly touching. They were moving towards Astarion’s tent, Sekh presumed to rid the rogue of his remaining armor, when the air shimmered and sparked, the scent of cherry laced brimstone wafting through.

And then Raphael was there, a smug, pleased little smile on his face.

“Do you know what happens when a devil is struck down on this charming plane of existence?” His voice seemed to shatter the very air, and both Astarion and Sekh paused, as Raphael approached them, speaking at length about how they return to the Hells, how the Orthon they had displaced for him returned to his House of Hope for some reeducation.

Sekh could tell Astarion didn’t give a single fuck about what sort of sordid reeducation Raphael had been enjoying administering. “We delivered the devil,” he said, his impatience thick in his voice, his exhaustion rendering him unable to mask it, “now I want what I’m owed. We had a deal.”

And the sooner they knew the truth, the sooner Raphael would be gone, and they could finally find respite, find peace, for just a blink in time.

Raphael chuckled, as if the vampire’s annoyance was nothing more than a small child’s pout. “Oh, indeed we did, little vampling. And I discovered all there was to know about those precious scars, so experectly and devotedly carved into your ivory skin. It’s rather grim, even for my tastes.” Yet as he spoke, there wasn’t a hint of disgust on his face- simply ill-hidden amusement.

He was enjoying this. It made Sekh want to grind his teeth together.

“You house part of a contract between your dear master-” he began, stressing the dear so achingly lovingly that Sekh felt his own stomach roll. Astarion didn’t even try to hide the look of disgust that crossed his face. “-Cazador Szarr and the archdevil Mephistopheles. Or, former master, perhaps. You do seem to be such a free spirit now.”

Sekh wondered what Raphael would look like, choking on his own severed tongue, drowning in blood pooling from a fractured skull. He felt a bristling in his mind, and let Syl have his sight, welcomed her even. With her distaste for devils, she would probably have some lucious and vulgar ideas to add to the fantasy.

“In full, the contract states the Cazador will be granted knowledge of an infernal ritual so vile it has never been enacted.” Raphael dropped the act of trying to hide his glee, and outstretched his arms as he proudly announced, “The Rite of Profane Ascension.” Sekh felt a cold chill, clawing up his spine. Astarion shifted, slightly, and Sekh wondered if he had felt it too. He knew he had, a moment later, when he felt a chill in his hand, radiating from his ring. Shared discontent. “It promises to be marvelous, very elaborate, incredibly ancient, and oh so diabolical.”

“As lovely as your usual flare is, Raphael,” Sekh managed, working hard to keep his voice even, “please cut to the point.”

Astarion didn’t deserve to have the truth dangled in front of him, like it was the putrid blood of a rat and he’d been starved for weeks. The man had been tormented enough.

“You wound me, my little dark dweller. A sordid and horrid thing such as this deserves true showmanship.” He moved closer, the scent of cherries making Sekh nauseous. He swore Raphael was going to ruin the fruit for him. 

The devil reached out, dared to grip Astarion’s chin, force his head up slightly- examining him like one would a bitch for breeding. Like he was livestock. “If Lord Cazador completes the rite, he will become a new kind of vampire- something far beyond what his kind has ever dreamed. The Vampire Ascendent.” He squeezed Astarion’s chin, before letting him go. The vampire reached up, rubbed at his jaw- then looked disgusted at himself for the silent admission that Raphael’s touch had even registered.

“He’ll retain all the strengths of his vampire form, even find them amplified- and yet, the hungers, the arousals of man will return to him as well. And, unlike you dear Astarion- he will have no need of a parasite to shield him from the sun. The ritual, of course, has its price, as all worthwhile things do. Cazador will need to sacrifice a number of souls, including all of his precious spawn, if he is to ascend. Imagine how he felt, when his darling Astarion went missing- when he was but so close to the end.”

This time, Astarion shuddered. Sekh wanted to reach out to him, but feared that even his touch would be unwelcomed, in that moment. His fingers flexed and curled into his palm, resisting the urge. Astarion’s face was unreadable, in that moment.

“You, Astarion, are all that is missing for Cazador to complete the ritual. Your scars bind you to it, and your soul will set off a very wave of death unlike any this plane has ever seen- giving Cazador his true life.” Raphael flicked his wrist, smiled as sparkling embers burst in the air- unable to resist just a bit of drama. “Our deal is done, my little vampling. Now, I have other pressing matters that require my attention.”

Another snap of his fingers, and Raphael was gone, against the smell of smoke and burnt sugar. Astarion hummed, folding his arms, and Sekh turned to him, still couldn’t read the look on his face. “You’re quiet,” Sekh said, softly, as he felt Syl severing the connection with his eye- giving them unrequested privacy.

He appreciated it.

“It’s a lot to take in,” Astarion admitted. And then, in a single instant, the wall that seemed to have built crumbled- Sekh saw anger, fear, and even betrayal in those gorgeous eyes, along the lines that framed Astarion’s mouth.

Sekh reached out then, offered his hand. Astarion unfolded his arms, took it, accepted the touch. Sekh laced their fingers tightly together, took a step closer to Astarion. “Cazador is a vile, worthless, rat bastard.” Astarion almost smiled, almost, and Sekh reached up, brushed some of his falling curls from his forehead. What he had to say hurt, but he said it anyway. “You’ll never be free so long as he lives.”

Astarion closed his eyes, took a single, deep breath. “I hate how right you are,” he admitted, through gritted teeth, bared fangs. When he next opened his eyes, they burned with a hellish fire, an ire ripping its way up directly from Astarion’s soul. “I knew he wouldn’t leave me alone, even when I was just another wretched toy for him to play with. But if I’m the key to this power he craves,” he paused, took another breath, “why, he’ll hunt me to the ends of Faerun. I’ll never be rid of him.”

Astarion turned, pressed his mouth to Sekh’s palm, then his wrist- felt his pulse, beneath his chilled lips.

“I need to take the fight to him,” Astarion whispered, “and I need you to help me.” Astarion closed his eyes, pressed his cheek to Sekh’s warm hand, let the drow cradle his face.

Sekh let go of his hand, wrapped his arm around his waist, pulled Astarion flush to him. “Always,” Sekh promised, “whatever you need, Starshine. Only ask.” He paused, swallowed thickly. “And it's yours.”

Astarion opened his eyes, looked up at Sekh through thick, silver lashes. The drow’s heart hammered in his chest, ached, and he knew Astarion could feel the spike in his pulse from just a single look. “Is that a promise?” he asked, softly, and Sekh nodded.

“I swear it, Astarion. Whatever you need of me, you’ll have.”

The vampire hummed again, before he closed his eyes, content for a moment to focus on Sekh’s warmth. The drow held him, knew that it was true- he would never be able to deny anything Astarion asked of him.

He loved him so much, he would burn the world, himself, for him. He’d blot out the sun in blood, forsake any divinity, let himself be torn asunder and burnt in the hells, if it meant that Astarion could have his freedom, the life he deserved- one he could be fond, even proud of.

[its-elvie-innit]

Finally crying over wilbur soot, and I guess that's progress

For those that haven't followed my random untagged text posts, because there's like a thousand of them why would you, wilbur is one of the biggest influences on my life. He's connected, unintentionally, to so many of my very few happy memories of my developmental years and that USED to be a point of pride. My favorite youtube video from my favorite youtuber, one of the only people who could really make me laugh, was a collab with soothouse where wilbur was at the forefront. I remember the nice guy ballad and Karen please come back from middle school, which is a feat when your brain has repressed so many memories!!!!

His jubilee line series/ album was a focus for me on my trip to England to see family, and was the song playing when I realized I was content for the first time after six long years of violent depression where I wanted to kill myself at least weekly, where I was convinced I would be dead by a certain (young) age. Countless other memories. And he's one straw away from the final fucking straw, of so many of my happy moments being discredited and ruined. I wanted to listen to muffin, so I did, and ynb popped up. I tried the first six seconds and I couldn't, it made me want to throw up. The fucking betrayal I felt, when I vividly remember the feeling of community and belonging from the premiere, the bright day, the ache in my back from sitting on the floor next to my computer. I felt so full, and it feels like he really fucking emptied that out of me. First it was the reddit group in 2018s disbandment, then it was kwite and the stupid quick action, then it was dream ruining the dream smp, and now it's wilbur spanning nearly eight whole years of sparse memories. If quackity turns out to be violent, or manipulative, or shitty, I don't know what I'll do. I really don't.

It's not even the fact that he's abusive, because if I couldve avoided him and his music, if I knew, it would be different. it's the fact that he lied. He lied to all of us, to me. He pretended to be a good person. Wilbur soot lied to us, to me, as being a safe channel and a good fucking person. Why couldn't he just be honest? Why did he have to throw it in our fucking faces? I will never be able to relive or remind myself of the FIRST moment I was ever content with life after SIX years of terrible everyday, weekly bullying, of summers spent without showers and crying in my bed at four am, of so little sleep that I ended up waking at six pm every day without that song. Yes it's selfish, but this is my blog and frankly I think I'm allowed to be upset about this fucking third violation of trust in a year.

It's everyone, it's skydoesminecraft, it's aphmau, lionmaker, it's every creator I've ever dared to find enjoyment in and it sucks!!!!!! It just sucks!!!!!!!!!! And it hurts, and it's hard, I just fucking hate it and I hate him and I kind of want him to die, not really, but kind of because how dare you. How dare you taint so much of me. How dare you. How dare you How dare you How dare you. How dare you hurt someone like that. How dare you lie about it. How dare you pretend at being safe. How dare you.

Shelby didn't deserve that. She really didn't. We didn't deserve lies. We really didn't. No one deserved anything. I was so, so excited about lovejoy concerts, not because of lovejoy but because of WILBUR and what he represented to young me. The lovejoy pins. The songwriting. The inspiration. The joy, the laughter. Videos with technoblade, videos that had wilbur, ( the liar, the creep, the abuser) in them. Techno meant, means everything to me. He's tainted that too. And I'm so fucking mad, and I want to scream, and I hate this man I really do. Why did you have to do it? Why couldn't I have your songs off in my memories? Why couldn't I have never known you? Because YOU lied, and YOU hurt people. And that's the situation of so many of us right now, and i hate this stupid fucking loser so much because of it. Get kicked in the shins and knock your knee out, and have it be a reminder that you chose to be THIS fucking asshole the rest of your life.

With the most viscious voice I can muster, @sootings FUCK you

[animefinatic]

Just me playing devils advocate with the Rumbling. Spoilers for aot

Since the new episode drop all sorts of discussions and memes are on the internet including once again casting judgement on Eren and the ‘Yeagerist’ both in show and fans irl.

I myself am an Eren apologist or Yeagerist. While I don’t seriously feel the need to defend myself, I’ve grown pretty grey when it comes to morals in an anime. I could simply say I have watched this man grow and suffer for too long in the series to suddenly switch on him at the end. I could say I’m loyal to a fault, where if I can justify the action I will support you regardless be it a fictional character or a real person. If I can justify the means I will probably support you and your decision.

However I feel everyone is focusing on innocent children are dying and it’s wrong(which I agree is sad). But I feel there’s some things I feel people are magically forgetting about.

Eren was just a kid when Birthcontrol, Reiner and Annie came storming in from Marley and attacked Paradis. And many many other people, children included, died in the aftermath of the wild titans that were let into the wall. On top of the following death that came when the government couldn’t hold the refugees from the breached wall and sent them on a death mission that was essentially population control. All that because they were attacked first. Innocent lives have been lost long before Eren had ever gotten the power needed to start the rumbling.

Paradis island and the Eldians in general were under a constant threat by Marley. Did we all just forget the wild mindless titans are people? Actual eldians from Marley that were punished by being forcefully turned into mindless titans and were let loose onto Paradis that have been tormenting the people on the island the entire time. Meaning this whole time the scouts have been unknowingly killing their own people for survival. And had to kill them after knowing this truth just to officially clear the island of titans for good(minus the wall Titian’s and the shifters of course.)

The people Eldians on Paradis have NO IDEA what exists over the wall. The average person was left in the complete dark and only the royals knew the truth and forced everyone to continue living in the walls. The whole argument was ‘well Eldians started it’ but the royal family just locked themselves away on Paradis and kept everyone ignorant. Eren and Armin dreamed of what was over the walls to be free of Titian’s. Imagine finally getting through the nightmare that is fighting all the Titian’s to know they weren’t the last of humanity. But CIVILIZATIONS have modernized. And not only that they’ve already labeled your kind, specifically paradis as the enemy. The worst of humanity, monsters. What would you do? What do y’all expect him to do? You think he’s going to just take that sitting down?

What other option did he have? Being diplomatic and peacefully talking it out seems good on paper. And quite honestly following the peaceful route was gonna get them all killed. That episode where they went to Marley and sat in on that meeting. Eren essentially deadass heard everyone make Paradis the scapegoats for everything wrong with the world, even other Eldians are throwing Paradis eldians under the bus. After that speech it’s no wonder he left the group to execute his plan ‘with’ Zeke (we know he double crosses his own brother). There was no hope to peacefully talk it out when the whole world has decided paradis island is the enemy. And for all the damage and distraction Eren did not attack until war was officially declared on Paradis island first. They was gonna send destruction on a higher scale to the island had Eren not made his move. He simply brought the war to them.

In the end it was literally Paradis against the world. Eren is going to choose his home and his friends over the world that’s already declared them an enemy. And frankly I can’t and won’t blame him for attacking first. In a perfect world I would have loved for all eldians across the globe to stand together. But because they’ve already been brainwashed and condemned paradis eldians I could just say their deaths are an unfortunate collateral damage. Seeing the sheer destruction and mayhem the rumbling is causing is shocking and I was left speechless. And Eren himself hates he has to do this but he’s going to do whatever it takes to make sure the eldians of paradis island are free. I can agree the rumbling is horrifying but I can see why it happened. In the new episode even the commander of the Marleain army can acknowledge this is the cultivation of all their hate being returned back to them.

[rainydaze-rhys]

Do all 25 for borderlands. Yknow. For funsies.

There will be a readmore line here somehow because on god I’m about to say so much. let me preface: all my hot takes on the matter are a solid 4 years old at minimum, I do not keep up to date on the blands fandom, my enjoyment of the series exists exclusively in isolation these days, etc., etc., if things have changed then I simply do not know about it

1. the character everyone gets wrong

Handsome Jack. He is not a good dad. He is also not in his 30s. That man has an adult daughter and has been married twice. I refuse to believe he was anything under 50 during BL2.

2. a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

DHKDGDJSHDJDJ I sure did forget this was one of the questions. Um. My faves are all verse and no one would refuse to do one thing or another.

3. description of the worst take you’ve seen on tumblr

I saved this for last and then still couldn’t bring myself to remember anything so this doesn’t get an answer because I simply do not want to remind myself of those takes

4. what was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?

Back in my borderlands days I was afraid of blocking people so I simply did not do it. Took me until only a couple years ago to finally realize “Oh this rules and significantly improves my online experience” and now I block all the time, but this is an entirely separate blog from my borderlands one so it doesn’t have any crossover

5. worst discord server and why?

This one I can’t answer. Discord wasn’t a thing for my original dive into borderlands. We all were just on tumblr constantly and then me and a few friends also talked on Skype

6. which ship fans are the most annoying?

Handsome jack/Rhys. I mean I was there. I was in the thick of it. I could see it. But oh my god the braindead takes on it and the aggressive insistence that it was basically canon! The number of people who actively harassed people who liked the actual in-game love interests! The amount of times I saw people say “I don’t personally like this so I’d rather people not discuss it around me” only to be bombarded with dozens of responses discussing it in detail! Wretched! One of the all-time worst collective cases of people insisting the biggest and most popular ship was effectively canon and getting mad at anyone saying otherwise

7. what character did you begin to hate because not because of canon but because of how the fandom acts about them?

Handsome Jack. lol. lmao.

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

Handsome Jack is a dogshit father and every single fluff piece or “Happy father’s day lol” post or headcanon about him being a good dad to Angel is dead wrong to an astounding degree. He put her in a cage and used her as a computer for her entire life and frankly she should have gotten to kill him

9. worst part of canon

Borderlands 3.

I was going to say “I kid” but I don’t. It has its moments, but god, it sucks so bad. Killing Maya, replacing Angel with Tannis, writing off Lilith, doing what they did with Aurelia (she would NOT fuck that man), flanderizing the characters from TftBL (Vaughn’s… whole situation…), and— god I just remembered mid-sentence that New Tales exists. That one was actually worse than BL3 somehow.

10. worst part of fanon

Handsome Jack. I’m just gonna keep saying this for basically every question that asks about the bad parts of fandom because literally… him and the people rabidly defending him. (<- he is my favorite character and also I think he deserved worse than he got. these are not mutually exclusive)

11, number of fandom-related words you’ve filtered

See above re: blocking people, I didn’t filter things at the time and on this blog I follow almost no one who posts borderlands content

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

Fiona is weirdly unpopular given that she’s literally a protagonist. The same with Lilith, actually, now that I think about it; people seem to either be “meh” about her or frothing-at-the-mouth enraged about her. And they’re wrong! Fiona is a great character who deserved to actually fucking exist in bl3, and Lilith is really well written as understandably arrogant and capable! Also, Nakayama and Vasquez. I can’t take credit for being into those two because other people with extremely good taste did it first and influenced me, but it remains true. And ELLIE. I know “unpopular” isn’t strictly true of her because I think most people would say they like her, but Ellie is a gold star across every game she’s in and I wish there was even more of her and I wish people appreciated her more. Love Ellie.

13. worst blorbofication

. handsome jack.

14. that one thing you see in fics all the time

So many borderlands fics are a/b/o. Mpreg is like the DEFAULT. It boggles the mind. “Rhys Borderlands is Handsome Jack’s PA and then he goes into heat in his boss’s office and Jack is such a ruggedly masculine alpha he takes suuuuch good care of him!” Gives me the ick. One thing they don’t tell you about naming yourself after a video game character is the rammys when you try to read a fic and see Your Own Name in those situations.

15. that one thing you see in fanart all the time

I actually don’t really remember the fanart well enough to say about this. I vaguely remember a lot of art of Rhys Borderlands strung up like a puppet controlled by Jack, but beyond that, I’unno

16. you can’t understand why so many people like this thing

Can I be very fully and entirely honest. I don’t love Tim. I don’t hate Tim! And I’ve turned around on him a lot, his appearance in the Handsome Jackpot DLC in bl3 is phenomenal and he’s a great character! And it’s a super interesting concept! I just still don’t love him.

17. there should be more of this type of fic/art

I want more fics where Angel survives and gets out from under Jack’s influence. Let the Crimson Raiders be her new parents. I want her to be Maya’s best friend and I want her to date Gaige and I want her to be there in person to kick Jack in the dick when he loses badly and then dies.

18. it’s absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on…

The Pre-Sequel. The Pre-Sequel. The Pre-Sequel. YES the gameplay can be tedious at times. However. I love the Pre-Sequel so much. Love the writing. Adore the plot. Cherish the individual Vault Hunters. The Claptastic DLC remains one of my favorite DLCs. Love Elpis. Fucking love Janey Springs. Hate the way they left so many loose ends to be tied up plot-wise and then just kinda went “lol nvm all that” in the next game.

19. you’re mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like…

IYKYK ;)

20. part of canon you found tedious or boring

A lot of the Pre-Sequel is going back and forth across very large open areas using Stingrays which are a vehicle I do not love. A lot of BL3 is also going back and forth across very large open areas using vehicles which control like the Stingrays. There are so many quests that are just “drive around and kill 30 guys and pick up 8 items then drive here and kill 30 animals and pick up 8 more items then drive back and kill 30 guys and give me the items.”

21. part of canon you think is overhyped

I don’t really think there are overhyped things unless BL3 entirely counts as overhyped, which… not anymore. Honestly most of the stuff that’s hyped is fairly understandable. The most popular DLCs are inevitably the ones which are the most well-written with interesting mechanics.

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

I already said the Pre-Sequel. Uh, if “everyone else” includes the writers, then TftBL, because they absolutely just threw all of that except Rhys and Vaughn in the trash and then ran those two through a meat grinder.

23. ship you’ve unwillingly come around to

No “unwilling” about ‘em, I’m usually pretty much open to whatever, but I also don’t even poke my head into the tags these days so I haven’t experienWAIT no I just remembered Zer0/Rhys is a thing. I used to not like it. I do now. Silly goofy.

24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

“Is it okay to like Handsome Jack?” I will not be elaborating because thinking too much about the endless debates gives me hives

25. common fandom complaint that you’re sick of hearing

Once again I am too disconnected from the greater fandom these days to actually know and be annoyed by what people are complaining about.

[mimisempai]

Dear Loki…. Chapter 1/7

Summary:

Loki, bored while waiting for Mobius in his office, starts to explore the drawers of his lover’s desk and finds a bunch of letters addressed to him...

Notes:

I love letters and I wanted to write the story of Mobius and Loki in the series through Mobius’ eyes for a long time. On AO3 Rating G

"Mobius!"

Loki walked through the door of Mobius' office, but found only the empty room.

He sighed and went to sit at Mobius' desk waiting for his return and dying of boredom after a few moments, he started to open the drawers of Mobius' desk.

He smiled, amused, as he opened the first drawer, where pencils and pens were arranged by size.

He opened the second drawer and seeing that it was papers he closed it again when his eyes fell on one of the words that surprised him.

Dear Loki

He couldn't resist the temptation and pulled out the piece of paper.

As he did so he saw underneath it a lot of other papers that began with these words.

Dear Loki,

Because I don't know if I'll ever be able to tell you all this so I'm writing it down on paper.

Today we met for the first time. But I feel like I've known you for so long.

When the analyst came to me to tell me that you had just been apprehended by the TVA, I thought, "Finally!

Finally I was going to be able to talk to you, get to know you, and maybe help you see who you really were.

You refused my hand in the elevator and frankly I can't blame you for that.

Loki smiled as he recalled that moment.

"I’m Agent Mobius, by the way."

"Are you taking me somewhere to kill me?"

"No. That’s where you just were. I’m taking you some place to talk."

Of course he had refused Mobius' hand considering his situation at that moment. He had had nothing but disdain for this little man who dared to mock him, a god.

"I don’t like to talk."

"But you do like to lie, which you just did."

"Because we both know you love to talk."

"Talkie-talkie."

Loki remembered that he had been boiling with rage inside. Not only because of Mobius' slight mocking smile, but especially because he had seen through him. Just with those few words, Mobius had shown him that he wasn't fooled by Loki. He had been able to see beyond his usual tricks and that was an unforgivable crime for Loki. 

But fortunately everything had changed.

Loki resumed his reading.

I know I hurt you and right now I have no idea how you're going to react. I hate myself for using this kind of method. I hope one day you will forgive me. All those words I said to you were mostly just to make you react, or to make you realize that the truth was not what you believed.

If you only knew how disgusted I am with myself for having to show you those images of your mother, for having put that sadness in your face and in your eyes.

Loki swallowed, the memory of Mobius' words echoing in his head and the images of his mother's death flashing before his eyes.

"You weren’t born to be king, Loki."

"You were born to cause pain and suffering and death."

"That’s how it is, that’s how it was, that’s how it will be."

"All so that others can achieve their best versions of themselves."

But the bitter memory soon faded.

The fact that he was able to see his mother again and repair their relationship softened the bitterness and pain he had felt that day.

Mobius had not told him anything else at that time except what Loki already knew. Loki knew that this was what everyone thought. He was used to these words spoken in anger or disappointment. But Mobius had said it to him in a calm tone of voice, and it had stung Loki to the core.

Loki knew it now, Mobius did not believe in his own words, he had said it again and again to Loki, obviously feeling guilty about these cruel words.

And if Loki had not been convinced, the next lines of Mobius' letter would have convinced him.

You are so valuable Loki. You are worth so much more than your mistakes. If you saw yourself with my eyes you would know. You would know that I believe you are capable of great and beautiful things. And I hope to be there to see you believe in it and accomplish it.

I hope that you will be able to accept the hand that I will hold out to you despite these words between us.

I hope with all my heart that you believed my words when I told you that I didn't see you as a villain.

Loki remembered with emotion that decisive moment in his relationship with Mobius.

Of the impact of those words on all the events that followed. 

Of their impact on his life. 

Of the surprise he had felt at Mobius' words when he was expecting to receive the final blow.

"It’s the cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear."

"A desperate play for control."

"You do know yourself."

"A villain. "

"That’s not how I see it."

Mobius had said those few words to him and when Loki had looked up at him, he had seen that he meant them. Because never had someone looked at him with such kindness as Mobius had at that moment. It had been completely new. Even though at that moment he was still wary and full of doubt, those words from Mobius had begun to help him change. For the better.

Thinking back warmly to that moment, he resumed his reading.

In my wildest dreams, I imagine that one day we will read this letter together, or that I will be able to tell you everything I can't or don't feel entitled to tell you yet.

That we will laugh about these events.

Or cry about them.

Or that we will remember them as the foundation of our relationship, whatever it may be.

With hope.

Mobius.

Loki, moved by the depth of Mobius' feelings revealed in the letter, thoughtfully ran his thumb over the signature at the bottom of the letter.

Mobius had never once thought badly of him.

This letter was only the confirmation of what Mobius had been telling him since the beginning.

Stunned, he was about to grab the next one when the office door opened, startling him.

"Loki? Ah you're here!"

Casey had just entered.

Loki, wanting to hide what he had just done exclaimed theatrically, "Casey!!! My friend! How are you?"

Casey looked at him suspiciously before saying, "I'm fine, thanks. Mobius told me to warn you that he wouldn't be back for a few hours. Although I'm not a mailman, I came to deliver this message to you."

Loki clapped his hands and exclaimed, "Perfect! I'll wait for him here then."

Casey, long accustomed to Loki's whimsical behavior, replied, "Fine, then I'll go."

Loki smiled and waved goodbye.

Once Casey closed the door behind him, Loki sighed, "Haaa, not back for a few hours, huh? Let's see what you wrote to me, love."

He grabbed the next letter and, leaning back in the desk chair, stretched his legs out in front of him.

He began to read.

Dear Loki...

_________

Still not beta'd

Still not my native language

Still hoping you'll enjoy this story 🥰

Still thanking you for bearing with me 😝

Other chapters here

[blazewatergem]

28, 27, and 13!

TELL US

😂

I need you to know I didn’t see the image until I opened the ask. The noise that left me wasn’t human 😂 😂 😂

13) What is a subject that is incredibly difficult for you to write about? What is easy?

I think my worst subject would be, quite frankly, smart villains. As in, the characters that oppose mine. I want to try and make everyone as 3D as possible, but sometimes…sometimes I just have to accept a certain fucker is evil.

Easy for me is emotions! Whether it’s a character talking about their loves or a character having a dramatically painful moment of realization, I love getting into my characters feelings and trying to get my readers to feel them too.

27) Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why?

*eye twitches* I have a couple of volunteers for this category. Pardon my rambling.

Nova from my FNAF: Security Breach fanfic, Supernova Shining By. This…This one. She’s holding up the story. I’m trying to find the perfect balance between snarky bitch(really! I mean that!) and clever inventor, and she’s just. Doing her own thing!! She’s off the leash! I haven’t been able to work on this story because of her! But she’s already the main lead, I can’t change her now.

Zefara, who I funny enough FINALLY found the voice for her!! I’ve been struggling with her for a whole year, she’s undergone three physical changes and five personality changes!! It took Silver and I role playing with her in the Magnus Archives universe(which Silver is writing for and I am in love with now because of her) to FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY get Zefara right!

The last character…I can’t tell you his name. I’m sorry, but I haven’t revealed him yet except to one person, and I’m trying to keep his HUGE role a secret for one of my stories. But he’s an ass. He’s crude. He’s constantly belittling and even misgenders another character on purpose at one point. He’s nothing like me, but He’s my own character. He makes my skin crawl, and I look forward to finishing his part in my story…brutally. If you want spoilers, we’ll have to DM.

28) Opposite of 27! :D

Whew! I got a few people for this too!!

Vivian for my Marvel story, Fuck Your Sacred Timeline! I’m gonna make her look like me, act my own thoughts and hopes out, and I’m so excited to share her! She’s…I can’t stress this enough, I’m so weirdly proud of her as a almost extension of myself and I enjoy her showing the characters I love, some good love.

Aloisa from Good Night New York, she’s been another pleasure to write with her calm demeanor and her own quiet support business. Again, so fucking excited to share her with you all once I can. Something about her soothes my soul.

Jinx from Heiress!!! Ahhhhh she’s such a badass!! Chapter three will be focused on her, I’ve been going feral with this one, and I’m so hyped!! She’s definitely OP, but I’ve been doing my best to get comfortable with writing for me yknow? I think she’s a real show for that.

…Ok, ok, one last one: Ricky from my series The Lost City. He’s so baby, but also he can kill you. That’s not an exaggeration either. His love with Tobias, his care towards their (future) son, and the sibling relationship he has with Alessia. I love him so so much.

[peppermintbee]

OMORI has poor writing (Part 1)

OMORI stans, just block the #omori hate tag now because I’m going to use it to vent my frustrations with this game. If you love this game, I am not going to try to convince you otherwise. I am glad you enjoyed it so much. I am glad it means a lot to you. I’m not here to take that away from you. I honestly wish I felt the same way!

However, if you are like me and finished the game feeling disappointed, underwhelmed, and maybe a little frustrated, then I am here to say you are not alone. OMORI--while having the right set pieces for an interesting game--is a narrative mess.

I’m splitting this into two posts. This first post is about problems with the plot. The second is about problems with the message/moral. 

(Note: I use “OMORI” in all-caps for the game title, and “Omori” in title case for the character name.)

Spoilers and criticism below.

Part 1: Plot Writing Lies

There’s a book by Brian McDonald called Invisible Ink which is about how to write a compelling story (you can read this great book online for free here). There’s an explanation of the writing “lie” that I find myself frequently thinking of. A “lie” in this context does not mean something is literally untrue, it means something FEELS untrue, unrealistic, improbable, or unlikely. For example, if a character gets shot in the leg but manages to do parkour, this is a “lie” since it seems unrealistic for that to happen. If a character witnesses their beloved parent’s death and shrugs it off, it’s a “lie” because that reaction seems highly unlikely.

In OMORI, the plot is held together by multiple little lies that--try as I might--I just couldn’t bring myself to believe.

1. Sunny’s friends care about him, and vice versa

A major theme of the game is how friendship can overcome any obstacle. Friendship gets Sunny over his fear of heights, spiders, and water. Friendship is what Sunny remembers before the final boss fight, and allows him to face his guilt and defeat it (and prevent him from committing suicide). With the photobook and dialogue you are reminded over and over and over and over and over again that Sunny’s friends love him unconditionally.

However, I just couldn’t bring myself to believe it. The childhood memories are cute but shallow, boiling down to simply hanging out and eating treats. Plus, Kel and Aubrey fight constantly, with Aubrey even physically hitting Kel when he steps out of line. Hero and Mari behave more like babysitters than true friends to the younger kids. 

But at least the other kids interact with each other. Sunny, on the other hand, showed nearly no affection or consideration towards his friends. He floats through the memories like a ghost--he could have been completely absent from all the photos and it would have made little difference. I was ready to accept this as Sunny being an unreliable narrator and not thinking he was a good enough for his friends, but this never contradicted. Instead we are given even more memories where Sunny just silently exists there being “cute.”

[Sunny enriching the lives of his friends by LARPING as a cat.]

Because of the lack of meaningful interactions between them, there was nothing in the game that made me think that these 12-15 year olds would have a strong enough bond that would survive 3-4 years of no contact after finding their friend hanged. In fact, that discovery only drove them farther apart. The only person who I could believe actually had a close bond was Basil, who almost literally filled that trope of being the friend who would help you bury a body (or in this case, help Sunny cover up the accidental manslaughter).

The writing fix for this would be simple: instead of showing us the same boring birthday and beach scenes over again, give the kids memories of overcoming some age-appropriate adversity together: heartbreak over an unrequited crush, anxiety over homework, sports injury, lost dogs, divorced parents, running away from home, bullying, etc. Set a precedent of the friends supporting each other through good times AND bad times. Without such backstory, Sunny’s friendships allegedly giving him the courage to overcome his guilt feels like a lie.

2. Sunny abandoning Basil in the bathroom scene

One of the most confusing moments in the game was Sunny’s negligence when Basil has his first breakdown in his bathroom. This part of the game is player-controlled, which is a strange writing decision because all you can do is click on Basil and various bathroom amenities over and over which completely saps the urgency out of the scene. When you try to leave, Basil begs Sunny to stay, but (due to a lack of player options) Sunny walks out without a word. With no option to talk to him OR get help for him, it makes Sunny seem exceptionally cruel to Basil. In fact, I was starting to wonder if the game was setting up for some sort of twist that Sunny DIDN’T care about his friends, which would fix some of the confusion in point #1. However, as we know, that is not the case. Therefore, Sunny’s negligence/apathy towards Basil’s pain feels like a lie.

The writing fix would be to make it MORE clear that Sunny is intentionally running away from Basil. Make it a cutscene, or, give a false choice such as “Leave Basil? Yes / Yes”. After Sunny leaves, Kel should make some remark about Sunny looking odd, “You look sort of shaken up, is there something you want to tell me?” then hit it home with Sunny shaking his head. This would make it more clear that Sunny is intentionally hiding Basil’s state, as opposed to just being a bad friend. As it stands, it just felt like a writing mistake.

3. Basil and Sunny working together to stage Mari’s death as a suicide

This is the plot hole that I see the most complaints over, but it’s so big I have to address it. Accidentally pushing Mari down the stairs I understand, but the rest is too absurd. Below are some of the “lies” that the writing tries to get away with:

That Sunny and Basil wouldn’t just claim she slipped and fell.

That either boy would even come up with this sick plan.

That they wouldn’t back out of this idea during the multi-step process (carrying her downstairs, outside, getting the jump rope, tying a noose, putting it around her neck, stringing her up, hiding the evidence... This is a series of multiple decisions, not one quick accident like the initial push.)

That it’s not the image of Mari’s death that traumatized Sunny, but the image of what they chose to do to her body that traumatized them. I understand the image of Mari hanging is more dramatic, but they literally did it themselves so why is that more haunting than Sunny killing her?

That Mari’s true cause of death wouldn’t be immediately obvious to the parents, the police, the friends, EVERYONE. (I’ve seen fans try to get rid of this plot hole by hypothesizing that the parents knew and covered it up, but the evidence of this is circumstantial at best. The father saying, “You’re not my son,” is unreliable since it happens in Sunny’s headspace. Divorce is common after the death of a child, and, at the very least, Sunny’s mom doesn’t show any evidence of knowing what happened. The way it is written, only Sunny and Basil know the truth.)

The ridiculousness of this twist is so extreme that it completely broke any immersion I had left. Frankly, the reveal that the happy, loveable Mari committed suicide is a far heavier and more realistic twist than a crazy murder-cover-up story is.

Additionally, it seems like Basil was only written into this scene in order to make Sunny the true victim of what happened. After all, Sunny may have pushed her, but it was Basil who came up with the demented cover up. (This is apparent from just the photos but the datamined Truth Album confirms it.) By having Basil come up with the plan, the game splits the guilt between the two of them to make the kids easier to sympathize with. It’s problematic because if Basil was not in the scene, there would be no way to justify what Sunny did to Mari. So why is what they did easier to accept when they worked together?

Fixing the writing lie: Sunny lies and says that Mari slipped. Remove Basil from the scene, and instead have Sunny confide in Basil which forces Basil to become a co-conspirator and burdens him with the terrible truth.

4. Sunny’s friends forgiving him and Basil for what they did to Mari

Last but not least, the story heavily implies that Hero, Kel, and Aubrey will forgive Basil and Sunny for what they did to Mari. I found this to be almost as unbelievable as the staged-suicide stunt.

It feels like a lie since the group’s friendship is never established as anything beyond shallow hang outs from 3+ years ago (see point #1).

It feels like a lie because this is hot off the heels of Aubrey being so distraught over Mari and the following fall out that in the last three days she 1.) attacked Sunny and Kel with a nail bat TWICE, 2.) Stole Basil’s photobook, and 3.) Shoved Basil in the lake. This trauma is still very fresh for her.

It feels like a lie because the complexity of the staged-suicide is so extreme, one would be hard pressed to forgive ANYONE for doing that, be it friend, foe, parent, sibling, lover, etc.

I’ve seen fans argue that the ending is not about forgiveness, it’s about telling the truth, and I want to believe that. Really. If the ending was about Sunny starting his redemption arc by telling the truth no matter what the consequences are, that would be a meaningful lesson. But the writing does not support that. The ending headspace segments are focused on assuring Sunny that his friends will support/forgive him no matter what. To do this, the game shows us the shallow photobook memories (again) to show how much they allegedly care about each other. Then, when fighting Omori, Sunny remembers these quotes from his friends, which directly correlate to their unconditional support:

KEL: Friends... Friends are supposed to be there for each other.

AUBREY: I hope you can find some peace... or you know... some happiness.

HERO: We made the mistake of leaving each other when we needed each other the most. This time... we’ll stay together.

BASIL: Maybe one day... things can go back to the way they were before.

The really direct evidence that this ending is about getting forgiveness is this quote from Basil in Sunny’s headspace:

[BASIL: “AUBREY, KEL and HERO are good friends. You have to trust that they’ll forgive us.”]

This is one of the last scenes before Sunny tells his friends the truth, proving that obtaining forgiveness from his FRIENDS is in fact the leading motivation for Sunny’s actions.

Fixing this writing lie is easy. Instead, adjust the writing to be about telling the truth, not about how much the friends will still love Sunny. Have headspace Basil say, “Even if they don’t forgive us, Aubrey, Kel, and Hero deserve to know the truth. It’s the only way to make things right... or close to it.”

Conclusion

OMORI is undeniably a cute game with a strong visual identity, and has a premise that could make for a very compelling experience. However, the sloppy plot and weak character writing cause the potential of this game to be squandered. There are other issues as well that I chose not to cover for the sake of time, such as the poor pacing of the dragged out dungeons and the bizarre, unrealistic behavior of characters in the “real” world. 

However, there are a few more glaring problems with OMORI that I have to address: In part 2 of my critique, I break down what may be the biggest problem with OMORI’s writing: the message.

[ Link to Part 2: OMORI’s Message is Mishandled and Distasteful ]

[h-i-raeth]

The Animated Batfam Show I’ll Probably Never Write

(But have in fact plotted out. Extensively.)

So I made a post that seemed to generate some interest based on the evidently relatable scenario of plotting out an extremely self indulgent Batfam Animated Show

(Because we all know that if DC so much as hinted that they were going to release such a thing an astronomical number of people would go absolutely feral, myself included.)

....& In lieu of the qualifications or artistic ability required to get in touch with a DC executive and make an elevator pitch, I’m going to go ahead & post my outline for The Batfam Animated Show I Wish There Was.

Each season will have its own post that goes episode-by-episode later but here’s an overview:

[Disclaimer: The DC timeline is, frankly, a mess & tough to find an easy reference for. Trying to be married to it would only ever be an exercise in both futility and frustration. Lots of things are referenced and/or changed loosely and it’s largely canon compliant pre-series start, but once the series gets going things are ignored or shifted around for the purposes of self-indulgence, in favor of original plots, or to streamline the narrative. I’m open to crowdsourced “Um Actually--”s re:the timeline/canon events, but my disclaimer stands. I also simply do not care about the distinctions between separate timelines if events are not mutually exclusive.]

Structure is aiming more for Teen Titans than Young Justice, with a slightly more serious tone but plenty of shenanigans as well. Focuses on Dick, Cass, Jason, Tim, and Damian (and Duke when we reach him) with Bruce, Alfred, Babs, and Steph featuring more peripherally because there’s only so much you can fit into one project.

But it aims to at least touch on all of the extended Bat Family either through cameos, references, guest appearances, or shenanigans.

Season One:

We start off with Damian’s intro to the family because A) it’s a good jumping off point & B) one of the whole reasons I wrote this was the idea of a Gala episode where Damian gets introduced to society (while at the same time Bruce tells Clark & Diana about his having a son) titled “Debutante” because, c’mon, that’s a snazzy idea.

In any case, it’s a Dami-centric season. Starts with Damian showing up, goes into his backstory, has shenanigans as he adjusts to life at the manor, clashes about moral codes, and culminates in events based on Ra’s trying to snatch Damian’s body as a vessel & Damian deciding to go all in on staying with the family.

Season Two:

We are ignoring canon events to give you a season that focuses on Cass, because I wanted to do the first five seasons in reverse-acquisition order (as opposed to reverse-age order, because I like Cass being Just A Little Bit Older than Jason, and I have plans for Tim’s season that need some distance between the start of his season & the end of Damian’s).

Highlights include: Steph comes back to Gotham, an adventure with the Birds of Prey, Bring Your Kid To Work Day, & an ongoing original plotline featuring Cass, the Titans, and Deathstroke that sparks the end-of-season episodes, while offscreen on the last episode, Bruce is “killed” by Darkseid because the next season...

Season Three:

...Focuses on Tim, and starts after Bruce gets back from his little adventure in time, because I want to address Tim’s little field trip, but fitting that and Battle for the Cowl and just... All of that, into a single season in real time? Does not spark joy. So, we do a sexy little time skip.

Events that happened during the time skip get addressed in a condensed manner through enlightening conversations and flashbacks, everyone adjusts to the new family dynamics and actually communicates (with shenanigans as the framing device.) Canon is cherry picked and Ra’s is the villain for the finale episodes because it ties everything into a neat little bow.

Season Four:

Jason-centric, and ignores canon events in favor of an Arkham breakout of all the heavy hitters in the Rogues Gallery, including the clown, who has been almost entirely absent of the narrative up until this point except as a reference, primarily so that I could have a fear toxin episode where Dick reveals that he once, however temporarily, killed the Joker, but also because I thought it could be fun & that it fits.

We get a fair number of flashbacks, cycle through some of the more notable rogues and their shenanigans, Duke Thomas’s parents meet their unfortunate fates (modified to streamline the narrative), there are allusions to but not direct inspiration from Death of the Family, and the Joker sets the kids up in a giant board game of death in the finale which culminates in some very therapeutic violence.

Season Five:

Dick-centric, and we’re going for a very Grayson focused Night Of The Owls inspired season, because I like the Court & it sets us up for allowing Duke to join the family. (This one’s not properly plotted out yet because I’m planning on actually reading the source material before I do so, and I’m also still deciding whether to include the Robin War in this season or leave that arc for season six. Leaning on including Robin War in season five & having season six have a finale with multiversal stakes but with the bulk of the season being shenanigans including Duke, though.)

Season Six:

(….Is also not plotted out on account of not having made a definite decision about the culmination of season five, and on account of needing to do more research, but rest assured that it’ll focus on Duke & feature the Row siblings in at least one episode. Leaning towards multiversal stakes for the finale episodes that’ll allow cameos for extended Batfam members that otherwise wouldn’t be featured, and intended as the wrap-up for the series.)

Thus Concludes The Overview Of My Purely Notional Batfam Animated Elevator Pitch

[zkfanworkweek]

ZFAW Fan Content Creator Interviews: HayleyNFoster

Hey everyone! We hope you’re all excited for ZFAW, and to honor (ha!) ZFAW’s commitment to supporting and celebrating fan content creators in the Zutara fandom, we’re going to be rolling out a series of interviews with well-known and widely-beloved content creators over the next few weeks. We’ve got artists and fanfiction authors, some names you recognize as well as a few phenomenal up-and-coming talents, and we can’t wait for you to meet them all!

For the second interview in this cycle, we have our best propaganda creator and this fandom’s hottest new artist/undisputed queen of the animatic, @hayleynfoster!

1. Tell us about how you came to ship Zutara. What does this ship mean to you?

When I was around 14 or 15 and caught Avatar: The Last Airbender on television, I was drawn in by the art style, the humor, and the wonderful characters. I caught the episodes out of order, and the first one I saw and wasn’t prepared to be sucked in by was The Waterbending Scroll. It intrigued me at that age, and the line “I’ll save you from the pirates” combined with the tension between Katara and Zuko in that whole scene was electrifying. I remember my teenage self thinking these two have so much chemistry! And when I saw a commercial on Nickelodeon that featured fanart submitted by fellow Avatar fans, I realized that I could do that to! So I set about making Zutara fanart for myself. I stumbled onto Youtube, practically in its infancy, and discovered that people set clips of Zuko and Katara set to music (And this was still in season 1 days… so people who made these amvs were the real mvps because they were able to make compelling narratives in their amvs with like practically nothing to work with!). The AMVs really spurred my interest in this couple, I remember distinctly one Zutara AMV using the Dido song White Flag utterly capturing my imagination. I found fandom shortly after, getting into deviantart and forums. But the ship really began to mean something to me when, as I was working on my drawings in the computer lab at school, a buoyant presence hovered over my shoulder noticing my Zutara art on the computer screen. The girl was someone I had never really talked to and had only seen from afar but she immediately started excitedly saying she shipped Zuko and Katara too! In this simple shared obsession, I made one of the best friends I’ve ever had and we’re still friends to this day. We would theorize and fangirl over Avatar like it was nobody’s business; we poured over bootleg San Diego Comic Con footage that showed spoilers for season 2 before it aired; we lost our freaking minds when we finally saw The Crossroads of Destiny. We had watch parties every week as Season 3 of A:TLA aired, and comforted each other when the show ended as it did (much ranting was shared). Those are some of my happiest memories from high school… all because this one pairing from this wonderful show. Even though Zutara didn’t happen, we still chat every now and then about it. Zutara will probably be a lifelong obsession, always bubbling under the surface. And without it, I would have never realized that animation was a viable career path. It really did inspire everything including the work I’m doing to this day in the animation industry. I owe a lot to this ship and to Avatar: the Last Airbender.

2. What inspires you to create zutara fanworks?

The resurgence of Avatar: The Last Airbender this year really helped sort of spark that dormant love I had for Zutara. The show’s ending still disappointed me on the rewatch, but Zuko and Katara’s relationship arc was as captivating as ever, so I turned to some fanfiction and looking at people’s pretty Zutara art and AMVs to just revel in fanon instead of getting to hung up on the actual ending of the show. But then I realized, with quarantine and my work load being pretty light, I had time to actually make all new Zutara art for myself, art I was never fully capable of making as a kid, but now could do with my 7 years of industry experience and just… life experience. And I was inspired to do some corrective animatics to satisfy my own desire for a different ending. I just really like exploring these two characters, doing different and interesting things with them, and frankly I’m inspired to make cute, fluffy, romantic art simply by virtue of living in a really sad and depressing world. Things are so crazy right now, creating art about two characters I love being in love, is comforting. And it helps to have inspiring music and amazing Zutara amvs to just sort of stir up my emotions and imagery in my head to make into animatics and art.

3. Be selfish - if you could request one fanwork based on your own art/fanfic, what would it be? What would you absolutely love to see someone create?

Ohhhh… Well, It’s always nice to have people write fanfiction that puts words to my animatics. I am not that great at coming up with dialog myself, so I’ve just chosen to indulge in visuals and emotions for my boards. But when I read things like RideBoldlyRide’s take on my Reunion Animatic, it makes me pretty giddy. (They finally have voices!) :) And this is the MOST selfish thing I could request, but I’m not shy about saying how much I love well done amvs, so I will literally kill for someone to make Zutara AMVs to songs I like… Like, most of AURORA’s songs but especially Exist for Love, Sunseeker by The Naked and Famous, Promises or Take Me by Aly & AJ, Adore You by Harry Styles, Human Enough by ONR, Never Let Me Go by Florence + The Machine, and/or Almost (Sweet Music) by Hozier just… I can see the AMVs so clearly to any of these songs in my head, but I don’t have the tools or skill set at my disposal to make a compelling fan video. When I was in high school, I originally thought I wanted to go into video editing simply because I loved making very crappy AMVs (they were so bad you guys), but I figured out being a storyboard artist was more in my wheelhouse. haha

4. Any words for people who are new to the fandom and/or nervous about sharing their work for the first time?

If you’re new to the Zutara fandom, just have a good time! Don’t waste too much time arguing with people over your shipping preferences. I wasted so much of my teen years having pointless shipping wars with people on DeviantArt, and I’m just so much happier nowadays because I’m just making Zutara art in my little corner of the internet, and honestly, in the politest of ways, I don’t give a shit if people don’t like my art or Zutara. haha I think that’s sort of a key thing for people thinking of posting creative works here in the fandom, just make art for yourself, satisfy your own desires for the pairing, get your creative sparks flying, and create just for the joy of creating. It’s always nice to get comments and such, but simply making the art should be what spurs you on, not the external validation. And have a good time, don’t worry too much - I say as someone who worries about EVERYTHING. But honestly, making art for A:TLA is some of the most relaxed I’ve been because I make it just for me. I’m lucky others seem to like it too!

5. What’s an idea for a fanwork that you have but haven't gotten around to making?

I have an idea for a second generation storyline with my Zutara kids that involves Kya (the eldest firebending daughter) falling in love with an airbender boy (tentatively named Gora in my headcanon who’s a bit of a rabble rouser and one of Aang’s kids he had with a Kyoshi Warrior), and then they start a socialist revolution in the Fire Nation in order to dismantle all of the hierarchical societies across the Avatar world… Together Kya and Gora Fan the Flames of revolution… ehhhhh... Get it?? Oh! Oh, and then Katara, who had put in legit liberal reforms in her time as Fire Lady listens to her daughter after resisting in the first part of the story, but then realizes she can actually play a part in the dissolution of the royalty and is also active in the revolution realizing that moderate liberal reforms are no substitute for a society free of serving royalty (which she had always been uncomfortable with but had rationalized with herself that she was doing good in her capacity as Fire Lady.) I just feel like there’s a lot of cool potential for discussing these ideas and also having some aspirational change in the Avatar world. lol For aesthetics and just happy fluffy times, I can indulge in Fire Lady and Fire Lord Zuko stuff, but really at the end of the day, I take issue with the structures in a society that have to exist for monarchies to exist. Soooo, I kind of want to do my own corrective story for that… if I ever have the time or guts. On a less ambitious note, I would love to do a Zutara sparring animatic to practice doing action, but I need a good story; I am not good at doing fights just for fighting’s sake. Those are just some things I have rattling around in my head.  

6. Are you participating in ZFAW? If so want to give us a hint as to your plans?

Yes! The most I can say is I have one animatic almost finished and one that’s still being thumbnailed. The rest are probably going to be comics or emotive single pieces based on the fanfics I really like right now. :)

[beybladefanboy]

My Honest Feelings About Reiji

Yeah… it’s about time I addressed this in a serious more rational manner. This is mostly for myself so I can process this mess of feelings but my followers or anyone else that gives a heck can know as well. As you’ve probably noticed if you’re in the former category, I’ve been posting about Reiji a little excessively lately. I’ve made no secret as to why: I have a crush on him. To people who’ve been following me for a long time, that might be a little startling. To me, it threw my entire world out of whack. Suddenly I was looking at someone who had very legitimately traumatized me as someone of romantic interest. Yeah, I’m not overstating that. Fictional character Reiji Mizuchi from the metal top show scarred me as a kid and I’ve only barely started to overcome that in recent months. Honestly, when I see other fans of Reiji talk about how they liked him as a kid or somehow didn’t know he existed until they were older I can’t help but feel baffled because my experience could not be any more different.

(I’m gonna put the rest of this under ‘keep reading’ because it’s very long and I don’t want to flood people’s feeds.)

My History with Reiji (and Beyblade as a whole)

I first got into Beyblade when I was ten years old when I saw my then five year old sibling watching Metal Fusion off of Netflix and I randomly decided to join them. I ended up getting really into it and joined them through most of the first season from that point on. I watched a few shows with my sibling like this but none of them captivated me quite like Beyblade did. I even told them not to watch it without me after a while, I was very attached to the characters and the world. I saw it as a really fun escape from my frankly shitty everyday life. I… was completely unready for what the show truly had in store. When my sibling and I first got to Battle Bladers, everything seemed fine, it was the final tournament and they were set on defeating Ryuga who I was definitely scared of at that age but not in a way I’d call abnormal.

Then out of nowhere Reiji came along… I didn’t care about Hyoma, even back then, but seeing Reiji destroy Aries like that, making Hyoma completely helpless as he watched what was essentially a friend to him get torn apart like that was completely out of left field for me. Yes, they did build up a feeling of unease during that battle but I still wasn’t expecting it to go far. Why would I? I was TEN. The most brutal piece of fiction I knew at the time was Warriors and that was a book series that was constantly brutal, not a supposedly kids show that got brutal out of nowhere. Remember, I joined my sibling watching Fusion part of the way through the season. I didn’t see much of Tetsuya or Gingka’s first battle with Ryuga, the two most brutal things before Battle Bladers, and even THAT was nothing compared to Reiji. And of course, he wasn’t done. Yu’s battle with Reiji was stressful for me and the cliffhanger ending (which might’ve been our final episode of that night if I’m remembering correctly) honestly freaked me out. So far, Reiji already scared me in a more intimate way than Ryuga did. And I mean “intimate” as in it felt more personal. Ryuga just blindly beat up everyone he fought, cackling in an over the top (albeit very entertaining) way. Reiji got into his victim’s minds, made them feel trapped and powerless as he broke their minds. Ryuga, in the moment, was only aiming to cause physical damage, which ended up temporarily killing three people. Reiji was aiming to cause psychological damage right then and there. He broke their spirits and their minds until there was nothing left but an empty terrified husk and as a kid, that seemed like a fate worse than death. That alone deeply disturbed me.

Now, for the episode that truly traumatized me: Entrusted Emotions, otherwise known as Kenta vs Reiji. At this point, I knew what a battle with Reiji entailed yet that still didn’t prepare me. I was more attached to Kenta than the previous characters Reiji battled so it threw both my sibling and I over the edge into tears. That I know is true. This next part might be me mixing up memories but the way I remember this happening was my sibling and I were crying so loud, like full on hyperventilation crying over this damn fight that our parents came out and yelled at us for being loud. Eight years later, I can remember the exact scene when my sibling and I broke:

This imagery… This depiction of a feeling of powerlessness… stuck with me even when other memories of this show became hazy in my years of absence. And it wasn’t something I could discuss or truly process. My parents were unsympathetic (or at the very least would’ve been if I truly am mixing up memories), my sibling was even younger than I was, and none of my friends at the time knew about the show. Thankfully, it wasn’t enough to quit the show. My sibling and I watched Battle Bladers but for some reason, I barely remembered seeing Gingka’s fight against Reiji. I can distinctly remember getting angry over Phoenix being alive so I know I saw those episodes but every time I’ve gone away from the show, I’ve forgotten about both Gingka and Yu’s battles with Reiji. Back in December of 2020 when I was getting back into Beyblade again, my sibling and I both thought Kenta did defeat Reiji and were genuinely shocked that he didn’t. Only then did we start remembering details of Gingka’s battle with Reiji and they were very slim. We couldn’t for the life of us remember how he beat him. Obviously that can easily be attested to a poor memory, especially since it had been three years since we’d last watched the show. However, there’s another element to this. I’ve been trying to pinpoint the cause of my former phobia of snakes for a while and now I know for a fact it was Reiji. I went so many years of my life unable to even look at pictures of snakes without screaming. They freaked me out so much and I couldn’t figure out why because when I wasn’t actively into Beyblade, the show barely crossed my mind and there were times in my life I couldn’t remember Reiji at all. Now that I’m reflecting on this, I realize exactly what I was doing: whether subconsciously or otherwise, I was blocking him out of my memory. That’s something you do as a defence mechanism when you’re traumatized. If the fact that the first four times I watched Battle Bladers I couldn’t stand to see Reiji on the screen without curling up into the fetal position, getting tense, crying and/or shaking wasn’t enough, that realization made it clear just how bad my fear of him was. He gave me an unreasonable phobia and I didn’t even realize he was the cause until I rewatched it in December because I’d blocked him out of my memory. Hell, I even admitted that I often tried to forget Reiji exists the very first time I posted about him on Tumblr. This isn’t like my feelings for Ryuga where I went from a simple fear/annoyance of him to realizing he’s a good character and liking him. My former hatred for Reiji was a shield for the trauma he inflicted on me.

Why I Stopped Hating Him

Between the time I saw Beyblade as a fifteen year old and when I got back into it in December, I took a Zoology class. I know that doesn’t sound terribly relevant but stick with me. In the class, we had a unit on reptiles so snakes obviously came up. At the time, I hadn’t seen Beyblade in a while so I couldn’t pinpoint the reason for my phobia. What I did know was that I was being very unreasonable toward my friend who loved snakes due to my irrational fear of them. I started to feel guilty about that a while before that class so when the unit came up, I decided to actively make an effort to overcome my fear of snakes by learning that snakes a) couldn’t hurt me and b) weren’t as scary as the irrational part of my brain believed they were. My fear started to ease out a little during that time. I convinced myself that snakes were more afraid of me than I was of them so I was able finally able to look at pictures/videos of snakes without being afraid. However, while I was starting to think snakes were cool, I was still a little unsettled by them. Then, a few days in advance, we were informed that some visitors would bring in snakes, among some other animals, for us to handle in class. We had the option to opt out, because snakes and spiders are pretty common fears, but I chose not to. I saw this as a chance to truly overcome my fear once and for all. I not only stood in the class while there were snakes but I decided to hold two snakes, or rather, let them wrap around my arms and settle there for a while. If you read my fanfictions, this probably sounds familiar. Some of you may already know but the scene where King handles that snake in the pet store is directly based on my own experience. He even held a red tail boa, which was one of the snakes I held (the other was, ironically, a kingsnake). This was a pivotal moment for me: my phobia of snakes lasted for eight years and I was able to make it disappear in one day. Now I’m rather fond of snakes. I'd like to hold another sometime. I just haven’t had the chance due to the pandemic.

Anyways, months after that was my second rewatch of Beyblade (the second being three years prior). I went in remembering Reiji though again, didn’t remember that Kenta lost to him or that he battled Gingka and honestly I was still scared of him. The psychological horror aspect was still there, fear of snakes or otherwise and I didn’t see any reason to like him or even consider him anything more than a minor villain. Then came my rewatch with my friend, Shadow, who was watching it for the first time. Upon seeing Reiji’s battles with Hyoma and Yu, he hated Reiji just as much as I did and we were both pretty scared of him as adults. After that, I made a post on Tumblr talking about how much I hated Reiji. I knew he had fans, I’d even met some online at the time, so I tried to be civil about my feelings but I fully admitted I couldn’t understand what people saw in him. People even told me he had hidden depth, I just literally didn’t see it. Later that week, Shadow and I watched the next four episodes, which included Kenta vs Reiji and Gingka vs Reiji. I warned him about the former beforehand and his hatred of Reiji peaked in that episode. Then we watched Gingka vs Reiji and… I finally started to notice what people meant. He completely broke when Gingka defeated him and not in a satisfying or even villainous way: he was screaming about being scared and turned to stone. That’s… really brutal. I didn’t remember any of this from either of my previous watches, likely because my trauma blocked it out, so I was startled and couldn’t help but feel sympathy for him. That was the first time I felt anything other than fear or anger toward him and suddenly I didn’t know what to think of him anymore. Shadow also admitted that his hatred for Reiji completely vanished, pointing out that his breakdown was like one of a person who realized their entire life was a lie. It wasn’t so cut and dry anymore. I couldn’t help but still fear Reiji and hate his actions but hating him felt so wrong, especially when I started piecing together some of the other hints of his frankly dark backstory. I said for a while after that that I disliked Reiji but really, I was just confused. I thought he was an interesting character and I was able to refer to him casually (rather than blocking him out of my memory) but he was still distant from my mind as I was watching the rest of the series with Shadow and working on fanfiction about Ryuga.

Writing About Him

It was around April when I started to work on L-Drago’s Return, the sequel to my story about Ryuga surviving Fury and coping with the loss of L-Drago. I wrote the story solely as a coping mechanism and didn’t expect people to want a sequel. I discussed the idea of L-Drago returning with a fan, now a friend of the first story and came up with enough material to write a full sequel. When I was writing plans for the big tournament of what would become chapters five and six, I was thinking about what characters would be most interesting to bring back for Ryuga and potentially Kenta to battle. One of the characters I thought of was Reiji. I don’t fully know why he came to mind but I really liked the idea of him and Ryuga meating to showcase the similarities and differences between them, as both of them were long-term abused by Doji, at least in my interpretation. However, I didn’t particularly want to write a Reiji battle. With L-Drago back, I knew I would have to write more in depth bey battles and to do that, I would want to rewatch the clips and do a lot of research on the beys to make sure I write their movements accurately. I didn’t want to do that for Reiji. I was still kind of scared of him and I just really didn’t want to see him hurt Kenta or Yu again. However, I still wanted Kenta to beat his sorry ass so I admittedly took the easy way out: I had Ryuga have his own battle then rush in during the middle of Kent and Reiji’s battle so all I had to do was write the part where the battle started going well. I’ll admit, it was lazy. The research I did on Reiji was pretty minimal and I’d do more if I was writing it now but at the time, I just wanted those comparisons between Ryuga and Reiji and for Kenta to beat him so I did what I felt I could. However, there was still one other problem: what do I do with Reiji now? Having him disappear again, when my explanation for him disappearing was that he never left the Dark Nebula building, drowning himself in his past traumatic memories while Ryuga did everything he could to avoid the thought of his past felt really unpoetic and just kind of sad. I was stuck on what to do about this for a while. So I started looking at Reiji content on Tumblr and saw some pictures of him with Tsubasa and Yu. Then I got the idea in my head of Tsubasa taking Reiji to therapy and giving him the home he never had before. My way of getting from point A to point B there was admittedly kind of stupid: Ryuga basically throws Reiji at Tsubasa and is like “take him to therapy, I don’t wanna deal with him bye” which is admittedly a Ryuga thing to do and was definitely my viewpoint at the time if I’m being honest. I felt bad for Reiji, I wanted him to get better, but I didn’t want to be involved… or did I? Alas, after finishing L-Drago’s Return came the third and currently last Ryuga story of mine: Ryuga x King. That story isn’t fully out but I will admit that Reiji appears more than once and writing this tamer more human Reiji made me like him more. It was obviously all fanon but it helped humanize him in my mind. After all, I was still trying to make him the same person he was in canon, just after experiencing some change/development. It was also around this time I started reading fanfiction about Reiji. Nothing romantic, just a few one-shots I found on AO3. Around that time, I also posted this:

I don’t think I even thought that hard about it at the time but I was considering Reiji a character I could potentially like, as a character that is. I did like the way I’d written him and I was starting to appreciate how well he was written in the series but the one roadblock in my way was my own fear. He was under “conflicted” in my character tier list I made around that time. Heck, I made the category for him and in the video I made explaining/building the tier list, my reasoning for putting Reiji there boiled down to: “He’s a good character, but he scares me so I don’t know what I think of him anymore.” However, I didn’t ruminate much over it. After all, I was busy writing Ryuga x King at the time. When I finished that story and was suddenly left without a main project, I found myself bored and restless. Then, for some reason, I decided to write about Reiji. (I won’t be sharing it since it’s private writing so I’ll discuss it) It started as just me trying to overcome my fear of him without… you know actually watching the episodes he was in… Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking. Honestly, I don’t think I was thinking at all. It was like I was so caught up in the moment that I didn’t process exactly what I was doing, even as I was writing something involving Reiji that was inherently romantic by nature. When I did stop and think, I was baffled because despite everything I’ve said, I was still scared of him. Reading about his actions at Battle Bladers or even just that memory made me shudder. I was scared of him yet drawn to him. I had so many feelings suddenly hitting me all at once and they were all at odds with each other, filling me most with confusion. My friend unwittingly made it worse by suggesting I could be having some reaction to trauma or stress. None of this is okay, I told myself, even though I knew deep down I couldn't fight it. I thought, how in the world could I ever fall for someone who made me feel so horrible?

I wanted to forget about Reiji like I kept doing in the past but the group chat I’d recently joined made that impossible, as they kept bringing up Reiji and unintentionally putting me in situations where I had to defend him, which was a position I did not want to be in but I saw no other choice. Finally, I decided the only way I could know what my feelings are was to rewatch Battle Bladers. Technically, I only really needed to rewatch the ones Reiji was in but yeah there’s no way I was gonna skip Ryuga. When I watched it, I wasn’t nearly as scared of Reiji as I once was. He still unsettled me and the part where he defeats Kenta almost got a tear out of me but… I simply wasn’t as afraid. I kind of went in with the mindset of “Reiji’s like a snake. He’s more afraid of me than I am of him” which… yeah sounds kinda weird when I put it like that. To be more detailed, I remembered how he’d crumbled when Gingka defeated him and could sort of see through his shield. I also started to see more of those little hints of depth his fans insisted were there so many months ago and realized that he really does talk like an abuse victim. I didn’t feel much sympathy while watching those battles… until Gingka. My god, I went into Gingka vs Reiji expecting an epic victory and yeah it kinda was but… wow Gingka. I don’t know how I didn’t remember this but he was straight up taunting Reiji and toying with him like Reiji had done to his opponents. You’d think that would be satisfying but it wasn’t. Like I said earlier, Reiji didn’t act like a villain that had been defeated, he acted like a scared child then TURNED TO STONE. I’m sorry but what kind of ending to his character was THAT?! If the writers were trying to make Reiji pure evil, they failed. They flat out say that Doji is using him and he was genuinely terrified when Kenta and Gingka gained the upper hand. And not in a “you’ve foiled my plan” type way but in a “I’m going to be hurt if I fail” way. Why else would he say “it hurts!” during his battle with Kenta? What else could he possibly be referring to?! Wow… it’s like once you see those little details, you can never unsee them.

My Current Feelings

So… after all that, where do I stand with Reiji? Well… yeah, it’s a crush. I can’t really deny that one. I don’t relate to him as much as Ryuga but I do feel a similar warm feeling when I think of Reiji. The arc I went through with these feelings was like a puzzle: as I put each piece together more and more, I started to get a clearer picture of who Reiji was and that made me start to appreciate the little details of him as well: his voice, his mannerisms, his eyes. I can’t help but like him now. I still have my moments of being unsettled by him but my other crushes, Ryuga, Kyoya, and Tsubasa are the same way. Tsubasa when he was taken over by dark power, Kyoya when he snapped early on in Fusion, and Ryuga… yeah, let me get a list going for him XD. So… I’ve mostly accepted my feelings for Reiji, especially after writing this. It’s a shame he didn’t get more screen time, I feel like some kind of redemption arc could’ve worked for him. He didn’t have to be a regular on the show: I just want to know that he’s okay. Well, at least there’s my fanfiction. Kinda funny that part of the reason I wrote him into my story was for his fans and now I’m one of them. Funny how that worked out. If you read this far, I honestly applaud you because I really just wrote this to sort out my messy feelings. So uh… thanks for reading :)

[yelena-bellova]

Fault Line: Prologue - Steve Rogers x F!Enhanced!Reader

Prologue - chapter one

Masterlist

Plot: Y/n’s life is a game of hide and seek and so far she’s beaten everybody. But her winning streak may not last as long as she’d hoped it would.

Warnings: none

Word Count: 2.4k

A/N: OKAY. I have too many fics going at once but I got this idea and couldn’t let it go. I tried writing a Steve x Reader series a while back and it sucked quite frankly, so I spent a little more time developing this one. Steve doesn’t appear in this chapter but plenty of familiar faces do. Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! (no beta reader because we die like men.)

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Bosnian winters were brutal. It got down to freezing temperatures, the pavement was iced over, you couldn’t go a day without being hit by a snowstorm…It was by no means remote but if you were hiding from something, not many people thought to look there. Which meant I was safe.

I casually strolled through the crowded Sarajevo marketplace, the only care in my mind being what I should eat for lunch. As soon as I stepped foot into the city, I knew I was on borrowed time. Not that it mattered, quick escapes were my forte. I spotted a falafel stand run by a middle aged man, one of the only stalls I hadn’t stopped at in the last few days. 

“Jedan, molim,” I said, smiling sweetly at the vendor as I watched him make the dish. As he prepared to hand me the finished product, I faked innocence and rushed to dig through the empty pockets of my coat. The man handed me the food wrapped in paper and raised his eyebrows expectantly. I looked up from my coat pockets and tilted my head, “Izvini.” Before he could understand why I was apologizing, I was gone…Having vanished into thin air.

When I reappeared, I was no longer in the marketplace. I was outside the abandoned shack in the Bosnian forest I’d been calling home the last couple days. I was living a ways out from the country’s capital so the search for the disappearing woman remained unsuccessful. Triumphant in having scored lunch, I turned on my heels to head inside my temporary home.

I hadn’t expected the dozen armed soldiers with their guns aimed at me.

“You boys wanna come in for a drink?” I quipped in English, gesturing to the front door, “I’m not sure I have enough for everyone but I can pop out to the store and get some more.” “I’d stay here if I were you,” a shadowed figure said from the front porch, “It didn’t take us long to track you and it won’t be hard to do it again.” Americans. In Bosnia. Interesting…

“Mind telling me who the hell you are?” I called, squinting to try and make the voice’s body out.

A man came forward, stepping in between two of the soldiers who still had yet to lower their weapons. He pushed back the hood of his winter coat to show his face, “Agent Coulson, we’re with S.H.I.E.L.D. We’d like you to come with us.” I looked behind and around me, waiting for someone to make a move. “So I’m supposed to just go with a group of soldiers with their guns pointed at my head? Is it that simple, Agent Coulson?” “It can if you want it to be,” he replied, for as threatening as he should have been he wore a small smile on his face, “We’d like to talk to you.” “About?”

“About how someone like you has been jumping from Russia to Colombia without a plane. Or India to Canada. Or Jamaica to Scotland.”

I raised an eyebrow and casually took a bite of the stolen falafel I still held, “So you have been tracking me.” “Miss Y/l/n, it would seem that you’re highly gifted,” Agent Coulson continued, taking a step closer to me, “We’re here to help you, not to hurt you. I’d like to bring you back to headquarters to talk to you about your abilities.” I smirked as I chewed, “I’m not a mercenary that organizations like yours can just hire for an assassination.” “That’s not why we’re here. It’s not what you can do for us, it’s what we can do for you.” “Hmm,” I sarcastically smiled, “And what is it that I’m getting out of going with you?”

“A life where you don’t have to steal baklava for lunch.”

Having lived how I had for so long, I prided myself on my good instincts. There was good, there was bad and every once in a while there was a grey area. A combination of right and wrong that was subjective to each person’s perspective. As my eyes scanned over Agent Coulson, a professional yet non threatening presence, and the soldiers ready to kill me if I dared to fight back, I decided that I had just landed in a very grey area. If I didn’t go with them, I wasn’t sure what they’d do. If I did, I wasn’t sure what they’d ask of me.

Then again, I was a bit of a grey area myself.

I held up my food, “It’s a falafel.”

————

It had been a long time since I’d been back in the states longer than the five seconds it took to steal a bag of Cheetos from a convenience store.

Agent Coulson had deposited me in a stark white interrogation room and promptly left. After the twenty minute mark passed without anyone entering, disappearing and landing in Cairo began to sound more and more attractive. Just as I was seriously considering it, the locked door opened.

“Miss Y/l/n,” a dark skinned man greeted, “You’re a hard one to pin down.” “Really? Cause according to Agent Coulson, it was as easy as breathing for you guys,” I replied, tightening my crossed arms.

“It got easier once we developed the right tech,” he said, coming to sit in the the chair directly across me, “But apparently you’d never heard of us until today ergo you didn’t know we were tracking you which begs the question…Who were you running from?”

“Wow,” I chuckled, “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?” “I don’t like to waste time.” I snorted before giving him a once over. He wore an eyepatch, all jet black clothing complete with a matching trench coat. He looked the part of Man In Charge perfectly. “If you’re gonna ask me for my life story, I’m gonna need to know a little bit about you too.” “All you need to know about me right now is that I’m a man who sees potential in you.” “Potential?” “Potential.”

“That’s not what people typically see in me,” I narrowed my eyes and shook my head.

“No, they see a thief, a cheat, and I’m willing to bet,” the man leaned forward and put his arms on the table that separated us, “Somebody sees you as a threat.” Oh, if only he knew…

“If you’re a government agency then you already have a file on me, meaning that there’s not going to be much I have to say that you don’t already know,” I spoke up, making sure to continue matching the guy’s intense eye contact. 

He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head in concurrence before turning to the double sided glass window. It didn’t take more than five seconds before the door opened and Agent Coulson stepped through carrying a manila folder. He handed it to my questioner before disappearing through the doorway once again, I almost wished he would stay. He was the only person I knew at the moment.

“Looks like you’ve been all over,” the man observed as he flipped through the folder, “Gotten yourself into a lot of trouble and whenever someone catches you, poof! Like magic…”

I was excellent at hiding, but I knew when I was beat. As nice as leaving sounded, S.H.I.E.L.D knew too much about me for me to run.

“I don’t know,” I sighed, lowering my gaze to the table.

“Don’t know what?” “I don’t know who I’m running from,” I continued, “But they’re there. If I stay in one place for too long, someone breaks into whatever rusted shed I’m living in or ambushes me in the middle of a bazaar…Somebody wants me.” The man had stopped browsing my file and was intently watching me recount my story, “How long’ve you been on the run?” “Five years,” I explained, suddenly not comfortable with meeting him eye to eye  “I was fifteen, woke up in God knows where with no memory of how I got there. While I was wandering around trying to figure out where I was, a group of men tried to grab me. Fortunately for me,” my lips twisted into a smirk, “I can make a quick getaway.”

“You remember where you’re from?” I inhaled deeply and shut my eyes as I exhaled, “No. Any memories before I started living like this are…blurred. I can almost make out a few, mostly from when I was a kid, but I don’t remember any details about my life other than my name and my age. Got anything in your almighty folder that can fill in the gaps?” “We only know what you’ve told us and what you’ve chosen to shown the world,” he replied as he reopened the packet, “Looks like disappearing isn’t the only trick you’ve got up your sleeve.”

“A girl’s gotta defend herself somehow,” I cocked an eyebrow, by now I’d relaxed my rigid posture and was tracing shapes on the table with a finger, “But if you’ve done as much research as you say you have then you should know I don’t bring any of that out unless I absolutely have to.” “Oh, I’ve seen the security cam footage,” he laughed, folding his hands together in front of him, “You put on quite a show. That’s that potential I was talking about.”

After a beat of silence, I finally asked the million dollar question. “What is it that you want from me, Director Fury?”

He should’ve been surprised, most people were, but it didn’t seem like me digging around in his mind was more of an event than eating breakfast was. “Only when you absolutely have to, huh?”

I gave him a small shrug and waited for him to answer. He kept his eyes locked on me, nodding his head ever so slightly. “Miss Y/l/n, whether you’ve thought about it or not, you have the ability do a lot more with yourself than skipping out on the dinner bill. You could be out there stopping the kind of people that are after you instead of running from them. And if you weren’t interested in the prospect of that even just a little, you wouldn’t still be sitting here.” Now there he was right. I agreed to come with Agent Coulson, I willingly let them bring me into an interrogation room, I’d discussed vulnerable details of my life with Director Fury…There was a small part of me that wanted to be a part of something.

“You wanna keep bouncing between continents praying that you don’t get caught? That’s fine, it’s no skin off my back,” Director Fury held his hands up in mock surrender and promptly lowered them back down, “But you stay and you can be a part of a world bigger than you could possibly imagine.”

The only world I’d ever known was spinning a globe, picking a random location, finding the most remote part of the county, stealing what I needed to get by and living in abandoned houses. I’d never had any sense of security. And while the life that Director Fury was offering me gave no guarantee that I’d live long enough to grow old, it didn’t require me to stay as paranoid as I was in the name of survival. I’d gotten by just fine on my own, but I’d never allowed myself to think of a future where I didn’t have to just get by…

“I already told Agent Coulson that I’m not a mercenary,” I began firmly, “I’m not a weapon for you to utilize whenever you want. I’m not joining some super secret spy organization only to find out after a while that I’m working for the bad guys,” I paused to take a slow breath, “But I don’t particularly enjoy being a criminal and if what you’re saying is true, I’m willing to give it a shot.” Director Fury gave me a single nod and just like that, I’d accepted a job without actually committing to sticking around. Fury turned once again to the double sided mirror and the door swung open, ushering in Agent Coulson, a redheaded woman and a blonde man I had yet to meet.

“You’ve already met Agent Coulson, I’d like to introduce you to Agent Romanoff,” he gestured to the woman, “And Agent Barton,” he looked towards the blonde, “He and Coulson will be some of the senior personnel personally overseeing your transition into S.H.I.E.L.D and I have a hunch you and Miss Romanoff will work well together.” “I work just fine on my own, thank you,” I stated, the thought of trusting someone to have my back sent the walls I’d just lowered shooting back up.

“I hate to break it to you but we work as a team here,” Agent Romanoff said, her voice cool and unaffected by my displeasure. If anything, it seemed like she found it slightly amusing, “Besides, you don’t have anything to worry about. Agent Barton’s my partner.” 

Director Fury made for the door, Agent Romanoff and the still silent Agent Barton following promptly. “I’ll leave it to Coulson to get you settled, but I’ll be watching your progress closely.” I could give the man credit, he knew how to wear the whole Tall, Dark, Man-With-All-The-Secrets hat well except for one thing. He couldn’t keep any secrets from me. Once the room’s occupancy had lessened, my eyes flew to Agent Coulson.

“What’s the Avengers Initiative?”

He wore a small and knowing smile, “A work in progress. For now, let’s focus on getting you through training then we’ll work on finding you a partner.”

Standing up to follow him out the door, I protested against his checklist, “I already said-“ “I know, but there may come a time where you change your mind,” he interrupted, his tone had gone from professional to semi-friendly as we walked down the hall, “This job is rewarding, but it’s hard work. Having the right partner by your side makes it all a little easier. You’ll see…”

We approached a railing that overlooked the main floor of the headquarters. Coulson didn’t think twice about the view while I approached it curiously. There were people everywhere, more than I’d been around in a long time. Something about the sight of so many individuals dedicated to doing the right thing made something inside of me relax. Maybe for the first time in my life, I was right where I needed to be.

Agent Coulson must have sensed my peace, he came to stand beside me and turned his gaze to where mine was. “Welcome to S.H.I.E.L.D.” 

--------

Translations: Jedan, molim: One, please.

Izvini: Sorry.

[gwynpool]

it’s 2AM and i just finished Rule of Wolves (spoilers definitely up ahead)

first, to inform everyone, i read the spoilers when it got leaked in twitter cuz i can’t help myself. (it’s a sickness, i know) i think this is important since it definitely influenced my perspective upon reading the book. also, this is my first time being early in a party so yay me! going in ROW was easy for me because i started King of Scars the day before book 2’s actual release date so everything’s fresh.

secondly, this is really long so i’m sorry. i just have a lot of feelings and need to write it all down. on with the rant.

King of Scars was wonderful to me since it gave me my favorite Shadow and Bone character and the girl who i used to hate for being a mean girl but who I now admire with every ounce of my being. It also introduced a new ship that I am now obsessed with and is ruling besides my love for Jude&Cardan. Not to mention, it gave us Nina, whom though i’m not entirely a fan of due to all my love focusing on Kaz and Inej, allowed the connection between Shadow&Bone with SixofCrows.

Moving on, ROW was a ride and whirlwind of emotions. unfortunately, it wasn’t always the best kind.

I love the fantasy elements of it (tho it was a huge leap especially with the saints power thingy) and the politics because i am a sucker for scheming and stealing thrones.

the zoyalai teasing and angst was painful but in the best way since slowburn is what keeps me going.

nina finding comfort (and attraction, apparently) from hanne made my heart flutter because i haven’t gotten over matthias but this allowed a sort of closure and next chapter for our waffle-loving queen.

the promised wedding by leigh wasn’t what i expected but i’m not complaining since david&genya deserved nothing but happiness.

almost everything seems going well (aside from the fact that aleksander was ressurected apparently)and then everything crashes and burns and i just have to wonder why?

so the promised funeral alongside the wedding one, immediately comes after two? three? chapters as they were attacked during the afterparty of the wedding. and guess what? leigh killed the fcking groom.

the thing is i already knew he was going to die (with the spoilers and all) but i did not expect it to come immediately after the freaking wedding. not even halfway through the book!

being spoiled, i think, took most of the pain from the event but it doesn’t lessen the fact that it was completely unnecessary??? like though the characters grieved, nothing much was affected from his death? also, don’t talk to me about the character development for the survivors from this tragic event because there. was. absolutely. NONE.

and then we have the fricking darling ressurected. i love him in the first book of the grishaverse though i knew he was still a villain, don’t get me wrong. and my heart ached but was also relieved with his death in the third. he also inspired one of my all-time favorite fantasy villain(antihero?) in the form of Adelina Amouteru in the Young Elites series.

Ceased to be a Darklina fan and am now shipping Aleksander with Adelina because their power tho? like clings to like and they are both imbued with unfathomable darkness. somebody write fics please.

but bringing him back was what for exactly? leigh bardugo preached on how toxic the darkling character was and how we really shouldn’t like him in terms of agreeing with his ideals and yada yada. and yet she brings him back because apparently, he’s the only one paying her bills.

his conversation with alina tho had me expecting some darklina crumbs with fan service on the side since the stans were all raving about it on twitter *vomiting noises from toxicity* but i was surprised since it just further reminded us of how he truly is a villain in his very core and would do anything to get what he wants. so all in all it wasn’t entirely awful and it actually made me like Mal a bit. (never was a fan of him but that’s my issue, not the character’s)

setting aside the darkling issue a bit, the POV from Mayu was skippable. i mean obviously it still needs to be read for the Shu politics and the khergud existence but it just made me want to go to the next pov. Same goes for the “the monk’s” POV since you all know how i feel about him and the cult with it’s assembly and shit ended up also being unnecessary towards the end. honestly, i could do without the journey of the starless saint and his cult.

i truly enjoyed the fjerdan plot to my surprise and i like how nina kind of went through the last of us 2 circle of hate journey. it was definitely difficult knowing her pain and all that she went through and still choosing to be the better person. and yet, i can’t help but be more proud of her development. also, the supposed death of hanne got me going for a second and was actually ready to storm leigh’s home to fix her mistake. thank god it was plot twist. that’s all i have to say on the nina POV because i don’t wanna ruin my good feeling on this.

the crows cameo gave us a mini heist and it just made me miss reading their adventures. also the suli scene tugged at my heart.

imma skip zoya’s transformation but it utterly made me feel amazing and i have never been more glad that she’s kind of overpowered. she deserves it so fck all them haters. you can choke.

nikolai’s revelation and decision for the ravkan throne was not all that surprising, even without my knowledge of the spoilers. i honestly had a feeling that he was always his best self when he was strumhond and he only chose to fulfill the duties of the king because at that time, there was no other choice. so him giving up the throne to his beloved soldier, summoner and saint was a quite satisfying choice of route. there has been some others who would contest nikolai’s decision to step down as something unnecessary in the grand scheme of things but i would stand by my belief that nikolai made the best choice for ravka and for himself. not to say that i didn’t want to see both the queen and king side by side ruling but what are fanfictions for?

zoyalai is canon and endgame. finally. i can die now.

now the last two chapters was a toss up. for the first one was the darkling’s sacrifice. okay, so i was also spoiled by this from twitter but when i was reading the book, i keep expecting it to be brought up and it wasn’t. so i honestly thought that maybe that spoiler was a prank. lo and behold it was not and it wasn’t until the very last end. so the buildup was goddamn awful. the whole concept of the thorn wood and sort of atlas moment was just no. like you’re just springing this up now? when we’re supposed to be tying up loose ends but making sure it had history and buildup to well, back it up.

also leigh outright writing genya saying it was not a redemption for the darkling and him being unapologetic about his crimes (basically being a truly evil asshole) doesn’t remove the fact that it still comes off as a redemption arc especially with what is now the synopsis of SOC 3 but ill get to that. he still was the one who did a heroic deed and that fucks me up because it was just devastating to me after making peace with his end in ruin and rising. not because i was hurt that he died yet again boohoo but because it kind of invalidates everything that alina, genya, zoya and countless other victims went through.

on a side note, the darling stans on twitter who keeps defending his actions, i would really advise you to reflect on your decisions cuz it is honestly unhealthy. also, you lot talking smack about nikolai and zoya refusing to sacrifice their lives? stop twisting the story to suit your toxic admiration, nikolai was even first to offer up his life and would do so if it was actually possible. so just go hide in your darkling cocoon and stop hating on other characters to justify your favored aleksander.

the very last chapter aka coronation was good because it gave us inej ghafa cameo as captain of her ship and bonding with our resident privateer and also genya, alina and zoya bonding. but it was bad because apparently the darkling chronicles is still not over and now we’re supposed to grant him death like that’s going to make everything okay? i know forgiveness and breaking the circle of hate and revenge is a huge theme in this duology but honestly, this is just too extreme. with nina it was understandable and the people she hated were born of twisted mindset and circumstances but the darkling? hahahah no. he is a literal immortal who was delusional so now that he’s paying for his crimes, you want to allow him death because you have nightmares? zoya, goddamit no! same to you genya and alina. and so this will be the plot for the third six of crows? why can’t we just stop making this about him. now he gunna steal kaz’s thunder? over my dead body.

in the end, i gave this book 4 stars in goodreads because if i ignore the darkling plot, it was a really good use of politics and fantasy merging in a storyline. i can’t fault leigh for choosing to do this since it’s still her book so i definitely don’t have a right to dictate what i expected from this. also, i have a half a mind to believe that she fell in love with ben barnes and had him in mind writing this so i really cannot blame her because i have been under that man’s charms since prince caspian came out. the spoilers i read made me more open in reading this (backwards thinking but eh that’s how i roll) so i’m not at all crushed by what transpired. it was just weird and was lackluster in its attempt to give ravka some sort of peace. frankly, i just want to read the third six of crows book to maybe find some sort of calm in all this craziness and also delve in some zoyalai fanfiction because it was a long time coming.

shameless promotion but if you guys want to check out my nikolai duology spotify playlist, here’s the link:

[takaraphoenix]

I don’t usually talk about Angel. But damn if s12 of Buffy didn’t leave me with something to say. They really fucked him over in the comics.

I mean, season 8 alone. Just. Holy shit. Making Angel - not Angelus - the main villain throughout the season. Pulling a half-hearted “he was being manipulated into it though :/”, which... I just... “here, you can have superpowers and you will get to bang Buffy” is not really... I don’t... I just...

In the confrontation between Angel and Buffy and the resulting banging, it’s really made clear that he made those choices. The ones that led to literally hundreds of dead people. He was presented with this weird premise by Twilight and he took it and he became Twilight. He chose that, that’s made clear when Twilight actually starts mind-controlling him - because that would not have been something necessary if Twilight had already been controlling his mind.

And then they set it up like Angel and Buffy are these epic actual soulmates, destined to be together by the universe itself. And you think. Okay. So we’re going with Bangel endgame then? And in such a large scale? Wow.

But lol nope mindcontrolled Angel kills Giles and will then be shipped off the series and Buffy will not be able to even look at him again until Giles is resurrected.

This bad boy can fit so much angst already. Was it... necessary to make him feel guilty for killing Giles too? I mean, yes, of course it was, because otherwise Whedon would have to make an actual choice on an endgame romance and he clearly is allergic to the very concept. And after making them soulmates, it had to be something huge and impactful to Buffy herself. So, let’s kill her father-figure in front of her eyes.

In the following continuity, everyone just... pretends that Angel was being controlled all along. And. I guess you have to because otherwise you’d have to hold Angel accountable for the hundreds of people he killed. And that’d be incredibly contradictive to the character, right?

Know what’d have solved that? Not making Angel kill hundreds of people so he can have a Buffy-paradise. It’s that easy. The choice to make Angel the guy who’d been killing Buffy’s Slayers all year long was... an objectively bad one? And let’s not dive into how ridiculous and stupid the whole “the universe wants you two to fuck to give birth to a new universe that will appear as a green lion on fire with wings”, that’s beside the point for this post. (Still had to bring it up though; seriously, just, go with an entirely different concept for s8? Save us from the ridiculousness and Angel from the character assassination. The military, Amy and Warren would have been enough villains to deal with. Didn’t need an “end of the universe” kind of stakes to begin with.)

At this point, I gotta admit I have not (yet) read the Angel & Faith comics. So I’m out of the loop on what they did for, or to, Angel. They helped him resurrect Giles, so yay on that.

This moment from season 10 really stood out for me. Because yeah. You keep setting him back. Angel finally gets his act together and falls in love with Buffy. He has sex with her for the first time and literally loses his soul. He gets sent to a hell dimension and has to crawl his way back to sanity and when he does. We. Uh. Break him and Buffy up for... honestly I don’t think there was even the most whimsical of excuses for that, but he packs it up and leaves for Los Angeles. He finally has a shot at happiness with Cordelia, he was really falling in love with her... whoops we killed her, she’s a higher being now, but also we bring her back so she can be an incubator and have sex with Angel’s son. Which also; we let him have a baby but then the baby gets stolen and raised into a dysfunctional teenager in a hell dimension. We make Angel and Buffy soulmates but we also make him kill Giles and then literally never bring up the possibility of them being a romantic couple again, even though there could have been an angle to work with there.

He’s still the same brooding, miserable sod he’s been a century ago. Because every time that the character gets even just a hint at happiness, it gets snuffed out, validating all of his fears and doubts that keep him in his brooding, sad state.

Season 12 sees him return then and... he’s... with... Illyria now? Can’t really judge how that relationship is since it happens off-screen from the BtVS comics, though I do have... doubts. What with Illyria having been Fred and... now... being Fred part-time due to magic shenannigans. Having a physical relationship with someone who looks like your old friend who died seems already questionable enough without that dead friend getting front-row seats.

Quite frankly, if anything, I was kind of expecting Angel/Faith to be the outcome of the Angel & Faith comics. What with Hollywood’s inability to have A Man and A Woman be paired up without them being paired up. Not to mention, their long history of second chances, starting when Angel quite literally chose Faith over Buffy, when Buffy was out for revenge and Angel protected her from Buffy. So while the BtVS comics were busy setting Spike/Buffy up as a happy relationship, I kind of thought that Angel/Faith would bring... a sense of happiness to Angel and be where that comic series was headed.

That he instead ended up with the ancient god that possesses one of his friends was, once again, a choice. But sure, if Illyria makes him happy. Oops, no, nevermind, season 12 sacrifices Illyria for the greater good and leaves Angel alone. Again.

And that’s it. That’s the absolute ending of things. Angel’s latest girlfriend gets banished to hell with no intel on whether or not she’ll be able to return.

I was already mad about Buffy being screwed over and denied a romantic happy ending in a separate post, but the fact that they gave Angel a romance that seems to make him happy and then banish his partner to hell before the show wraps for good is just... really messed up.

And it didn’t even happen for the sake of pulling a “whoops, Bangel endgame after all”, it’s all very vague and left in the open and everyone is Just FriendsTM and no romantic decisions are being made.

Which is usually something I find satisfying because I like to make the choices myself in the aftermath, but they’ve been taking every little bit of happiness away from Angel over and over and over again and quite frankly, I would have much rather seen him happy, smiling, in Illyria’s arms, than sitting alone brooding in the basement because Illyria got banished to hell.

I understand that the brooding seriousness is an important trademark trait of Angel’s. But... you’re allowed to let him be happy and he’d be allowed to grow emotionally. Or, at the very least, let him be happy in the very end.

[st-just]

Semi-coherent Thoughts on the Poppy War Series

(Because I really need to start forcing myself to write semi-consistently again)

So I’ll say outright that I actually liked the series quite a bit, which does mean I actually got engaged and invested enough to start turning it over and picking it apart in my head after I finished it. So, like, this is probably going to come across as more negative overall than my actual opinions of the books.

Anyway, first off I really do adore Rin as a protagonist (I’d say ‘heroine’, but, well, no). Now partially this is because I always love even minimally sympathetic morally grey (..grey like coal soot, in this case) protagonists. But she’s just also such a complete garbage fire of a person, it’s kind of endearing. Well, that’s a bit callous – her entire personality is more or less a conflict between different kinds of unhealthy responses to powerlessness and trauma. Be she’s also just such a mess, and when she really starts leaning into delusions of grandeur you can’t help but root for her and hope things do actually turn out okay, regardless of how many fivers of blood she’s currently fantasizing about creating.

A big part of that is just how thoroughly awful the entire setting is, and how terrible everyone in it are, of course. Like, there are basically exactly three developed character in the entire trilogy who are unambiguously at least mostly good people (Chen, probably Venka, specifically the amnesiac and semi-delusional version of Jiang, but that’s being generous), and the fact that they stick around with Rin right to the end kind of puts that into doubt, honestly. Beyond that – almost every family has negligent or abusive parents, and literally every political figure is a bloody-handed tyrant ruling through violence and fear. The Hesperians are racist imperialists convinced they have a divine mandate to conquer the world, the Mugenese are every horror story from the IJA during WW2 translated to a pre-industrial fantasy setting, the ruling elite of Nikara are so many racist, scheming, power-hungry snakes with no concerns except their own position....

And, part and parcel with how terrible the setting is, Kuang does an incredible job of making all the worst things Rin does (until the final act, anyway) incredibly cathartic and badass and fun-in-a-fucked-up-way to read. There’s a terrible sort of awe while she turns the main islands of not!Japan into a pyroclastic hellscape. And whenever she gets a chance to enact any of her numerous revenges on some of the many people who abused and betrayed her it’s always poetic, in a Count-of-Monte-Cristo sort of way, and so kind of sickly compelling, even beyond it being some of the only times Rin’s really hopeful and happy. (Also, there are fun villainous monologues and quippy post-murder one-liners!)

Also, all forms of love are a terrible idea 100% of the time and is only going to end in at least one of the parties dead, abused, or (more or less literally) killing themselves in order to keep up with the other/earn their approval/try to keep them together. (I mean, Rin mostly had horrible taste in men, but Chen wasn’t able to stay mad at her for longer than a few months even after the whole ‘genocide’ thing, which he’s just about the only person to react to with any horror whatsoever. And look at how that ended up working out for him, so-)

I’m sure comparing grimdark fantasy to A Song of Ice And Fire is thoroughly out of fashion by now, but the overall perspective really did strike me as incredibly similar to Martin’s, a lot of the time. ‘Legitimate’ power and ‘lawful’ authority are ultimately nothing but polite fictions maintained by violence, terror and brutal oppression. War is a hell suffered most keenly by civilians with the misfortune to live and die in the middle of it, and least of all by the people with the power who actually start and end them. A flawed and unequal peace is very often preferable to dragging everything to hell with you as you die for the sake of freedom. And so on.

Now, to start the nitpicking – this is entirely personal and aesthetic, but it was kind of annoying how each of the first two books ended in moments of megalomaniac grandeur and terrifying empowerment, and then the next book started with a timeskip of things having gone to shit and her back under someone else’s thumb, and then a solid majority of the text is spent getting manipulated, betrayed, and finally crawling and clawing her way back out to the same point (both emotionally and in terms of independence/vision) that she had been at the previous book’s climax.

This isn’t anything even close to unique to TPW, of course – everything going to shit between the end of one story and the start of the sequel is kind of endemic to a lot of genres, really. And it is frankly incredibly in character for Rin to go through cycles flipping between resentment at being manipulated and used, and desperately craving authority figures to tell her what she should do and give her validation as valuable or useful. Still a bit annoying to read, though.

I’m sure it’s more me than the books – not like they didn’t put in the effort – but I could just never get really invested in the whole enemies-to-almost-lovers-to-enemies-again-to-? Thing with Nezha. Like, he’s interesting in that you can do a 180 perspective flip and he’d clearly be just as suitable a protagonist as Rin is, and his life’s very sad and everything. But, like, we get a front row seat to Rin’s internal monologue, and she gets thirsty for plenty of terrible men (and one awful woman), the only thing that makes Nezha special is that he’s not at least twice her age. So I never really got nearly as emotionally invested in them as the books seemed to expect me to. Which does kind of hurt the whole final act of book three.

Speaking of – okay, the ending isn’t awful or anything, but it is kind of disappointing in being exactly what you would expect it to be, as far as Rin’s character arc goes? Which might be just because I was already primed to compare this to ASOIF and she just literally pulls a Daenerys (fire-aligned vengeance/justice character with revolutionary impulses and an autocratic sensibility is willing to burn down the world in the process of freeing it, goes mad with power and paranoia, needs to be put down for the good of the country), but still. Her reading Venka throwing her to the ground to avoid an assassination attempt as a betrayal and burning her to death before she realized what was happening was just really heavy handed, you know? Same with turning on Kitay, who at this point is her actual literal soulmate. (Also sad in a broader sense, because those two are like literally two of the only characters in the entire series I’d actually peg as worthy of/capable of being trusted with political power.)

The specifics aside, I’m a miserable enough person to appreciate how unsatisfying the actual resolution at the end of the book is – imperialism wins! Literally no choice but to sign those unequal treaties and hope you’re eventually able to grow strong enough to force them out! Everything is the same as before this forty-year cycle of wars except much, much worse! - but yeah, I really just don’t actually care about Nezha enough as a character for it to really land. Also Kitay and Venka deserved better, even if literally no one else did.

Anyway, yeah, good series. Would recommend if you like the genre and can stomach all the, well, everything.