#and then what REALLY fuels the flame is when i take that existential doom

[transfusible]

pms is crazy bro

[hellsbellschime]

So what's your theory about what happened to the dragons?

LOL, well it might not be the most thrilling theory behind their demise, but I think there is substantial evidence to back it up.

When it comes to the world of ice and fire, there are few beasts that inspire as much fear and awe as dragons. Dragons are fire made flesh, their unstoppable power allowed the Valyrians to conquer and subjugate most of Essos for centuries, and enabled the Targaryens to conquer and subjugate the Seven Kingdoms for centuries after that. 

However, after revolutionizing most of Planetos in blazes of glory and terror, instead of this species flourishing or even going out with a bang, they went out with a whimper. Barely a hundred years after the Targaryens united the kingdoms of Westeros and named themselves kings and queens from the backs of seemingly unstoppable dragons, the few dragons that even hatched wound up being sad remnants of this once titanic species. And the Targaryens, along with the fans and viewers of the series were left asking themselves, why?

After all, while the number of dragons that were left in the world were already dwindling rapidly, the fact that the dragons that survived the Doom of Valyria went from beasts that could destroy the world to small, sad imitations of the fearsome animals that they once were in the matter of a few generations would indicate that something had gone very wrong with them very quickly. 

While dragons are hardly normal animals, if any living species in the real world went from relatively normal to barely able to reproduce and only able to spawn extremely unhealthy and stunted offspring, people would be rightfully alarmed. Yes, the gene pool of remaining dragons was distressingly small already, but even so, one would think that a species on the verge of extinction like that would still peter out rather than almost instantaneously collapse. 

Understandably, fans have many theories about what happened to the dragons, or more specifically, who made what happened happen to them. And unfortunately for House Targaryen, the list of suspects isn't exactly small. Dragons are the most dangerous weapons in the world, they allowed the Valyrians to become the most powerful civilization in the world and allowed just three Targaryens to invade and conquer an entire continent. They seem to be the foundation on which Valyrian power was built, and everyone who could control dragons could in turn control everything and anything that they wanted to. 

House Targaryen ultimately became the most powerful family in the world, and they never made a habit of sharing their power. When they conquered Westeros, they were extremely reluctant to marry any Westerosi families into their own, and they certainly weren't keen on letting any non-Targaryen gain access to their literal firepower. But what that means is that, although there are certain people who are more suspicious than others, literally every non-Targaryen in Westeros likely wanted to see the reign of dragons come to an end. 

But although the list of suspects should be about as long as a census of the Seven Kingdoms, most theorize that it was either the Faith of the Seven or the maesters who were the masterminds behind the destruction of dragons. And they certainly make sense as prime suspects, given that they are two of the largest and most powerful organizations in Westeros that have access to anything and everything, including the Targaryens themselves. 

There are more reasons to suspect these organizations as well. Just as with every powerful family or group in Westeros, when the Targaryens arrived in the Seven Kingdoms, the power that they took diminished the power of the people who had already existed there. It's clear that the subjugation of the kingdoms was not willing on the part of it's citizens, so they would likely feel quite motivated to take some of that power back, and given that the maesters were one of the only organizations that wielded power across every kingdom, it makes sense that they would in a way want to undermine the rule of the Targaryens. 

And beyond that, the maesters in particular have very little love for magic in general. Despite seemingly believing in magic and even offering study in the subject, they seem to have a keen interest in ensuring that others don't believe in magic, and they also seem to take certain steps to prevent magic from returning in the contemporary timeline of the story. 

And of course, arguably the biggest reason why the maesters are the prime suspects is because Archmaester Marwyn the Mage seems to outright state that it was the maesters who killed off the dragons. 

That would seemingly end the question of how the dragons all died, except... does it really? Yes, Marwyn claims that the maesters were the ones that did it, however in the history of A Song of Ice and Fire, it seems that more often than not, those who claimed to do something extraordinary are lying. 

But if it wasn't the maesters, or the faith, or some diabolical or politically savvy house in Westeros, then who or what was it? Well, perhaps people are looking for conspiracy theories where none exist. Maybe the dragons truly did just die on their own. 

Now, this would seem like a fairly outrageous and extremely convenient idea given the circumstances. Because again, any species going from a dwindling number of relatively normal animals to being unable to produce anything but stunted and malformed creatures seems exceptionally unlikely. However, dragons are not relatively normal animals. 

To understand the end of the dragons, it's best to start from the beginning. As creatures that are both mythical and real, there are unsurprisingly a lot of origin myths surrounding where the dragons truly came from. Some say that they came from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, some say that they came from a second moon that cracked like an egg and let all of the dragons out. However, given that their entire empire was built on the backs of dragons, it seems like what the Valyrians say about where the dragons came from may be the most relevant. 

According to the Valyrians, the dragons sprang forth from the Fourteen Flames, the chain of volcanoes that served as the steam engine that fueled the Valyrian empire itself. However, this origin story is a strange one. After all, the Doom of Valyria appears to have been some sort of massive explosion of the Fourteen Flames, one that was so large that it even killed the dragons. But if the dragons originated from the Fourteen Flames themselves, then how would not one of them have survived the Doom?

But perhaps this origin story is both true and false. Septon Barth, Hand of the King to Jahaerys Targaryen, has some very interesting theories regarding how the Valyrians came to control and very possibly create dragons themselves. The Valyrians were quite fond of experimenting with magically and biologically blending different creatures anyway, and it's hard not to notice that if a firewyrm and a wyvern were thrown in a blender, something like a dragon would seemingly come out of it. 

Interestingly, one of the strongest indications of dragons possibly not being an animal that naturally occurs in the world comes from the Targaryen invasion of Westeros. Westeros is not a land that seems to be home to a lot of fire magic, but it does seem to be a bit of a hotbed of magic in general. And while abilities like skinchanging and warging are extraordinary powers, they are not a particularly uncommon power. 

Dragons represent the greatest power that the world has ever known, and the Targaryens invaded a land where there are seemingly hundreds of people who can take possession of an animal with their minds. So it seems incredibly, astoundingly strange that there are no reports of anyone ever skinchanging or even attempting to skinchange into a dragon. 

Granted, it would likely be incredibly difficult, and perhaps there is some other explanation for why no one has ever done it before. But, even putting the appeal of dragon power aside, once everyone saw what an existential threat dragons were to Westeros, it seems unlikely that no skinchanger ever even thought to try to wrest the total control that House Targaryen had over the country away from them. 

And even putting the skinchanging issue aside, contrary what the TV series would have everyone believe, the dragons will not be going beyond the wall anytime soon. In fact, the wall seems to be some sort of natural repellent to the dragons, which is another extremely strange indication that there is something very abnormal about the dragons themselves. 

After all, the wall wasn't even built with dragons in mind. And the wall is an extremely powerful magical barrier, but as the direwolves that the Starks find at the beginning of the story seem to indicate, it's not a barrier that keeps magical creatures away. One might assume that it was a barrier to keep ice magic at bay, but the dragons being repelled by it would indicate otherwise as well. It's possible that Bran the Builder was just exceptionally prescient and imbued the wall with magic that would serve as a barrier to something that would threaten Westeros in the future, but it seems far more likely that the wall was built as a barrier to keep all unnatural magic out. 

And honestly, the theory that dragons are unnatural magical creations would answer a lot of questions about dragons in general, like why it was that the Valyrians were the only civilization that could control them, why the rise of Valyria seemed to coincide with the sudden proliferation of dragons that was localized to soley this area of Planetos, and why the Doom of Valyria seemed to translate to the doom of dragons themselves. 

There seems to be more background information that supports this theory as well. While the Valyrian civilization is mostly gone from the world, their civilization seems to be built almost entirely on fire magic, and fire magic in general is certainly alive and well in Planetos.  

The followers of R'hllor seem to be the most powerful human magic wielders in the series thus far, and their magic seems to be almost entirely fueled by fire and ritual sacrifice. But it's hard not to notice that their power seems to require a LOT of ritual sacrifice. There is a very clear through line connecting blood with magic in the world of Ice and Fire, but from what we know about the history of Valyria as well as what we know about fire magic users that exist today, it seems like fire magic seems to be extremely consumptive. 

In the Valyrian Freehold, slaves were dying constantly, many of them dying by fire in and around the Fourteen flames themselves. And while the information regarding the advanced Valyrian technology like Valyrian stone and Valyrian steel is lost, there is a lot of subtextual hints that they also involved blood magic. And in the contemporary storyline, there are a lot of fire magic users who are doing some spectacularly impressive things, but they are killing an astounding number of people in order to do it. 

And this concept, the idea that the most powerful magic in the world requires the most sacrifice, seems to hold up within the rest of the universe as well. Ice is clearly meant to be the magical counterpart to fire, and given that the army of the dead literally requires thousands upon thousands of dead people, it seems like there is a clear indication that great power comes from great sacrifice. So then, if dragons are truly creatures that do not occur in nature and were somehow created through fire and blood magic, it would make sense that the sustenance of the dragons as a species would be dependent on the continuation of that blood sacrifice. 

And this idea seems to have already been confirmed in A Song of Ice and Fire itself. Daenerys is in possession of her dragon eggs for quite a while, and she seems to have an instinctive understanding that she will be able to hatch them, but she then comes to realize that hatching them would require some sort of blood sacrifice as well. When Daenerys actually does this, dragons are finally brought back into the world. 

So, while there are plenty of potential suspects when it comes to the destruction of the dragon race, it actually seems incredibly likely that these magical beings simply couldn't survive without the enormous blood sacrifices that it took to create them in the first place.

[danetobelieve]

Threat Level: Pizza || Ricky and Winston

Honestly, Winston was tired. In the last week, between them, Ricky and Dee they had spotted and dealt with four alghouls and what Ricky referred to as a spawn. Then last night a pack of three spawn had attacked the house and Winston and Ricky had been forced to deal with them. Winston was pretty proud of the fact that they had managed to immolate one. That had been a feeling like no other. Yet as they stood with a broom in hand, brushing vampire dust off of their porch, Winston couldn’t help but feel like it was time to make a change. Two attacks on their home in as many months wasn’t their idea of fun. Turning to Ricky, who was fixing a window before moving onto the porch railing that had been shattered during the commotion, Winston sighed. “I think that it is time that you and me start thinking about installing some security, and I’m not just talking about the mundane type of security. I think that we need to consider the fact that it might be time to have something other then a kitchen knife available when the next grizzly beasty comes after us.” 

Pausing from his repair work to pick alghoul out of his fangs Ricky nodded emphatically. “I mean. Setting aside the fact that the last time the last time that you and I were involved in some magic together we ended up in a strange prison demiplane inspired by my woodwork and fueled by your magic…. I agree. This is becoming fucking exhausting.” The unending night had made some things that were only comfortable at night far more brazen than they normally were, and a whole subset of those things viewed Ricky as a particularly choice piece of steak, and the house constantly being under siege was wearing on him super fast, “So… I am open to suggestions. As far as super fun magic home defense systems go. All I want you to keep in mind… is that I am very very open to the idea of flame turrets. Very very very open to that idea.” He leaned against the frame of the window and looked out at Winston on the porch, “But, practically, how does it work?” 

“Yeah, I’m not necessarily talking the same sort of magic. I don’t want to get stuck in a pocket dimension that is also a puzzle box.” Winston wasn’t sure what they were thinking, but if they could centralise a number of security features to a central console, then Winston wondered whether including spells into their code as data flags would cause any change in the potential effects. “I don’t want to mess around with magic just yet, for now though we should think about making some supernaturally minded upgrades.” They paused as they considered a few options. “Well first of all we could look into installing motion sensors in the grounds around our house and Dee’s these could activate UV bulbs as security lights, that should at least give any vampires a little bit of trouble.” They considered other options. “Maybe something with salt and iron for ghosts …” they were still so new to this, they weren’t entirely sure what else they could include. “If it isn’t too expensive we should consider getting CCTV, maybe I can work out some enchantment that allows us to see things approaching. Infrared or heat sensitive cameras or something…” they paused and pulled their glasses off, rubbing the end of an arm against their scalp thoughtfully. “Any eureka moments?” 

“Oh come on didn’t you enjoy our little demiplanar excursion into the realm of ‘oh god I hope we’re not dead?’” Ricky paused his repair work and joined Winston out on the porch, sitting down with his back against the warm wood of the porch, “Well… You’re already talking outside my scope of knowledge, but I think you’re right, we don’t really need to be focusing on the human threats, it’s the supernatural ones we need to be worried about.” He pulled out his phone and started to type out notes as Winston was talking. He was more of a old-school kind of guy; the security enhancements that his roommate was talking about were way out of his scope of knowledge, “Are ghosts really a problem though? I think it’s the physical things we have to worry about more. As for CCTV that shit isn’t too expensive anymore with like Ring and Blink and all that shit you can just control it from your phone. And I do mean you I’m sure I’d break it if I tried to control it.” He kept typing as Winston talked before looking up with a raised eyebrow, “if you’re expecting me to have a eureka moment about technology you are in for a dismal disappointment. You’re gonna have to take point on this and I’ll help out however I can. But if you think you can work enchantments into it I’m absolutely down.” 

“No, for some reason I did not enjoy having to endure a minor existential crisis as to whether or not I have died, although I will admit that it is nice to know for certain that I am indeed relatively alive and well.” Winston shrugged before continuing. “No, I think that Dee and her shotgun are more then enough to deal with the potential human criminals, but if we draw the attention of something like Hunters or Vampires or I don’t know, something along those lines then I think that I would want to have something else. I also think we should think about setting up a communication tree with others.” Winston nodded. “I know that it sounds ridiculous, but the one exorcism I saw, back in the library at UMWC was terrifying and I don’t really want to experience it again if I can help it. But I need to really work out how well these cameras will work against fast moving and potentially magic critters.” Chewing on their lip, Winston shrugged. “Maybe you can help me by telling me how feasible it’ll be to set up stuff and we can begin working on sourcing all the things I’ll need to set this up. I can do the techy stuff and you can help me with the actual skilled labour.” 

“Well I had a delightful time so your negative experience is on you. I enjoyed our one on one time inside a magical prison. I think we could market the whole experience to white people with too much money and too much time on their hands. Throw in some bullshit about it being meditative and shit. We could be super rich.” Ricky couldn’t help but laugh at Winston’s mention of their land lady, “Yeah I know one day I’m gonna have to have the “hey you probably shouldn’t have a loaded shotgun in the house anymore” talk with her but we’re a ways off from that and she’s a crack shot with it.” he kept typing away, looking up periodically at Winston as they talked, “Well we’ll add ghosts to the list of things to keep out. I mean I don’t think I can tell you how feasible it all is until we get an actual plan in place but it shouldn’t be too bad. Don’t think it’ll require any actual like renovations to the house, unless you’ve got a plan for a garlic filled moat you havne’t told me about yet.” He dashed inside to grab a pad of paper and came out again, starting to scribble down some ideas, “Wanna order delivery and hash this out?”

“You’re also completely barking mad if you thought that our time in a magical prison was anything like fun,” Winston laughed and shook their head at Ricky, “I think that you could market that shit to normal White Crest people and they would still eat it up. But I don’t think I want to get super rich based on whether or not people are going to make it out of a trick prison.” They paused for a moment and slipped down onto a bench on the porch overlooking their property. “Well make sure that I am nowhere near you or her when you have that conversation.” They raised an eyebrow and nodded. “Yes, that sounds like a great idea, and I can use your sketching skills to try and visualise where we are going to put this shit and how it is going to work. We’re going to need shit loads of rock salt, iron fillings, holy water, maybe even silver. Stakes wouldn’t be a bad idea either. I also need pizza and probably some beer too.”

“What can I say, I like puzzles and I’m good at compartmentalizing my feelings. So. I made it fun.” He pulled out his phone and started thumbing through apps, “is that not exactly what an escape room is? Ours would just be a magical escape room where you’re not sure if you’re dead or not! It’s an extra perk; existential crisis added on for free.” Ricky brought up Grubhub with one hand while the other kept scribbling the supplies Winston was listing off, “Meat lovers no cheese extra anchovies for me, what do you want? I’ve got beer in the fridge, I made a supply run when the darkness hit because I didn’t want to leave the house if possible. I’m a vamp magnet.” He started a very basic sketch of an aerial view of the house and the property that surrounded it, “Are we going to have auto turrets for the stakes? I think that’d be noticeable. We should try to be as discreet as possible. Don’t want to draw attention, just protect ourselves.” 

“That sounds like something that a crazy person might say, I think you’re just an adrenaline junkie who likes to put their life in danger because it gets their heart racing.” Winston raised an eyebrow and shrugged gently. “I don’t know if anyone is going to play for a healthy dose of Nihilism Ricky, and also in escape rooms you can usually guarantee the safety of your customers and I’m not convinced that I could.” Winston swallowed gently and decided that they wouldn’t try and recreate the mistake they previously had. No they had other plans, a type of magic that they had yet to find any information on. It made them wonder what could be achieved if they tried some new stuff. But now wasn’t exactly the time for them to do that. Now they had other things to focus on. “Can I get a meatlovers with extra cheese and extra mushrooms?” Winston replied. “I can leave the house if needs be, plus I’m sure that people can drop stuff off to us if you don’t want to risk it.” They were honestly a bit shocked at Ricky’s suggestion of auto turrets. “Dude, this isn’t Doom Eternal, we’re not installing auto turrets mainly because I don’t know how to build auto turrets. NoI think it would be better if we can go with high powered UV lamps and a few well placed stakes around the house. At least until I get better at this stuff, I’m a computer programmer not an engineer.” 

“At absolutely no point in our cohabitation have I ever fucking told you I was a sane person. No false advertising here. That’s just because you haven’t figured out the right marketing spin for it yet. You can market Nihilism to anyone you just gotta put a pretty enough bow on it. But, we’re getting away from the main topic here.” Ricky tapped the orders into his phone, adding on a couple of 2-liters just so they’d have something in the fridge where they didn’t have to leave the house for supplies. “I’d rather you not take any unnecessary journeys since, you know, once again it’s fucking nightmareville up in this place. But if worse comes to worse we’ll make a group run for it.” He laughed at the reference, shaking a fist in the air, “Rip and tear, until it is done!!! You know it may be eternal night right now but it really makes for some amazing ambiance when I’m playing that game.” Ricky nodded and started a shopping list on the side of the paper titled “Death-based Doodads”, “Stakes and UV lamps it is. Though too many UV lamps and people are going to think we’ve got a grow operation here.” 

“My apologies for not considering your sanity as something that could be in question, most people usually don’t expect other people’s sanity to be in question. As for marketing existential crisises and nihilism then that is something that I will leave for you.” Winston replied with a small grin decorating their face. Winston was glad that they weren’t going to have to cook for themselves. They were feeling incredibly lazy after fighting for their night in the middle of the day, even though it was dark. “Don’t worry, I don’t really want to risk facing alghouls and vampires if I can help it, especially not when I know better. I’m not going out as much as I possibly can, I’m just trying to stay home and when I do go out I am making sure that I’m not alone.” Winston shrugged and smirked. “You know, it is not Overwatch, but it is still a lot of fun to kick the shit out of demons, even if I can’t do it in real life.” Winston frowned and nodded. “You’re right, we’ll have to be sensible about where we plant our weed crop, don’t want people to catch us doing anything illegal.” They were being sarcastic, somehow they thought that they would manage to get away with it. They worked for the Police Department after all.

“I really feel like you should have seen that coming though. Marketing existential crises and nihilism are definitely something we could get away with with Gen Z I’m sure of it. Just make the marketing laden with memes and we’ll be all set.” Ricky slid his phone back into his pocket after receiving the text notification that their order had been confirmed, “See. That’s some solid planning right there. In the end it’s gonna be the goddamn buddy system that saves us all.” Rolling his eyes he pushed himself to his feet and wandered back into the house, spreading the papers out on the dining room table so they’d have more room to work, “Yeah yeah yeah you and overwatch. That’s way too much for me to try to wrap my head around. I’ll stick to chopping demons apart with a chainsaw and a variety of super fun weapons. That’s more my speed. Mindless platforming, puzzles, and mayhem.” He laughed as he drew a stool over to sit on, looking down at their plans, “We’ll add a grow operation after we figure out how to protect our home from the supernatural. Even if regular weed doesn’t really affect me much. It’d be a good money maker anyway. But for now we’ll use the UV lamps to attempt to vaporize some vampires.” 

“If we marketed using memes we could, but then that would cut out an entire demographic of baby boomers and the older millennials that wouldn’t get it, so you know, you win some you lose some.” Winston shrugged gently and settled in their seat, looking around them trying to decide what else they could include. “Is stuff like wolfsbane a thing?” Winston asked trying to think of the most generic supernatural stereotypes that they could implement here. “Obviously it is going to take a bit of time before I can really get any of this stuff working, but better to start now rather then later.” Winston was terrified of what some of the things that were out there could do to them and their friends. “Everyone has different preferences and enjoyments, it’s not my fault that your tastes are so far separated from mine which are obviously far superior.” Laughing, Winston shook their head and smiled. “Bro, you remember that I work for the police department. They’re not huge fans of illegal grows that aren’t regulate by the tax man.” 

“Listen. Boomers had their time to shine. They don’t deserve targeted marketing anymore. They can take or leave whatever we give them.” Chewing on his pen for a moment, Ricky pondered for a moment, “I honestly don’t know. You’d have to ask Morgan. Seems like she’d know more about that sorta herbology shit than me. I know there is a whole subset of supernatural related herbs. But I’m right there with you; this will definitely take some time so we might as well get going. Because knowing this town… this darkness could last for quite a goddamn while.” The doorbell rang and Ricky went to retrieve their pizzas, heavily tipping the put-upon looking driver to make up for the extra anchovy stench undoubtedly filling his car, “Grub’s here. And my taste in video games is impeccable. I’m sorry I’m not into games with a gay cowboy, weird angst cyborg asian stereotypes, and people screaming in the headset about their skill rating. Gimme that sweet sweet ‘don’t talk to other people’ gaming.” He set the pizza down on the counter and got them out a couple plates, “Oh I didn’t forget. But I like to think I’m above certain aspects of the law given the great ease with which I can implement plan ‘just hide in the fucking ocean forever’. Which is a solid ass plan.” 

“It doesn’t matter what they do or don’t deserve, proportionally speaking they hold far more wealth then Gen Z or even a good proportion of the millennial population, targeted marketing takes that wealth away from them.” Winston scratched at the thin film of stubble that had sprung up over their jaw. “I’ll put some feelers out and try and find out what else we could to do to really sure up the defenses here, if I was better at magic then I could enchant some more shit but after the last time that went I’m a little bit weary of trying anything big without more practice.” Winston sincerely hoped that whatever it was that was causing this darkness would get resolved soon, but they weren’t about to charge into the darkness and try and change any of it. Not yet anyway. They weren’t that desperate yet. “I love the inherently racist stereotypes that Blizzard brings to me, and if you keep talking McShit about McCree then I’ll cut you.” They grinned and grabbed their pizza from Ricky, slipping down onto the sofa and laughing as Ricky continued their tirade against multiplayer gaming. The irony was that of course in real life they were the exact opposite. Winston was the introvert and Ricky the extrovert that adopted them. “Unfortunately I cannot hide in the ocean forever because I am not an aquatic animal, but you go off.” 

“This took a weirdly capitalist-centric turn; but, I’ll keep all this in mind when I’m planning out how to launch our magical escape room empire. Which is going to have a terrible pun of a name but I haven’t decided what it’s going to be yet.” Nodding along with Winston’s train of thought Ricky opened his pizza box and put a couple of slices on a plate, “I’ll do the same. So we’ll see who knows what and we’ll protect this bitch.” A thought crossed his mind as he chewed on his first piece of pizza, “They’ll have to be disableable though. Things to keep werewolves and vampires and ghosts out. I’m… well Remmy and I… are trying to put together an interspecies clan. To at least offer some sort of unified protection against the hunters. It’s harder to pick us all off if the various species have each others’ backs.” It was hard to laugh and not spit a mouthful of various meats and fish all over his couch, but he managed, “They are really bad about racial stereotypes but you’re more than welcome to McTry. It’ll be super messy though, I’ve got extra blood.” He made quick work of the first piece of pizza and set to work on the second one as he kept sketching things out. “We should have some sort of motion detector at the end of the drive, connected to some kind of camera.” 

“I never knew that I would be starting an escape room empire, but I guess if I was going to do it with anyone then I would want to do it with you.” Winston smiled gently as they placed a piece of pizza in their mouth and chewed on their pizza straight from the box. Winston nodded. “Of course, they’ll be disable-able and hopefully eventually I’ll be able to write something that is sophisticated enough that it will be able to distinguish between who needs the measures in place. But no offense, we’ve not seen any progress there for a while and I know that you want to help these people but we can’t do anything until we’ve made sure that we’re safe. Once we’re looked after then we can look after others, but not before that.” Winston was a realist and they knew that this wasn’t going to be resolved straight away, this was something that they would need to really work on. “Gross, who needs extra blood. Seal it away in my opinion.” They winked and wiped grease from their hands with a piece of tissue from the takeaway before nodding. “Motion detectors at the gates, not to mention in the grounds hooked up to security lights so if anything moves everything gets lit up.” 

“Tides… I would have never considered starting an escape room empire but you and I have some of the weirdest things happen to us, so, I think that that’s pretty on brand for us.” It was a truth; Ricky was realizing. He and Winston definitely had a relationship that seemed to be a magnetic force for strange situations, and he loved it. Life was infinitely better now that they lived together; it was definitely one of the better decisions Ricky had made at a party. “Ooooh I have some bad news for you. We’re never ever going to be totally safe. Welcome to the supernatural life. But, I take your point. We can’t form the Justice League until we lockdown the Fortress of Solitude. Did I mix references there? I don’t really care just roll with it.” Another slice of pizza disappeared into his mouth and he rolled his eyes at the pun, “Alright well for how terrible that was I’m just going to go offer myself to the vampire hordes now. Thanks. Your terrible pun has damned me.” Scribbling at the margins of his page he attempted to not get pizza grease on the plans, “I like that. Plus it makes us look real important.” 

Laughing, mouthful of pizza, Winston looked into the moon for a moment before shrugging. “I think it is pretty on brand, we always end up doing the weirdest shit.” They settled into the silence for a moment and shrugged. “Watch tower not fortress of solitude, though I guess both are DC so it doesn’t count as much? I don’t know. Anyway, you know Orion Quinn right?” Winston was considering their next words carefully, “I think that I’m going to offer him one of the rooms if that’s cool, it seems like he could use a place to go because he is currently staying in that Scribe building way too much for the amount of living that someone our age needs to do, obviously we don’t know him but I think he’s a good kid. Just be careful about your skin, I know you are careful, but Orion found Skye’s seal skin after that time we all watched anime together and I want to believe the best in him, but I’m not completely sure we can trust him, I guess we’ll just see, but he needs somewhere to go and I’m offering him this place.” That was one of the reasons that they wanted to sure up the security, to make sure that everything was safe. “I’ve got some more stuff I want to work on, but now we’ve got the basic designs down I can start shopping for the parts and we can look at introducing all of this stuff onto a central system.” 

“We have a weird fucking life. But. When you’ve got a seal and a mage living together what the hell do you expect. I love it. This is me living my best life.” He listened carefully as Winston laid out the situation that Rio found himself in and Ricky ended up frozen with a piece of pizza halfway to his mouth, “I’m sorry. He’s living at that creepy fucking abandoned building you found while you were sleepwalking?! Of course he can stay here what the fuck. That’s not even a question.” He took the bite that he’d been frozen about to take and rolled his eyes, “Winston. I’ve been successfully hiding my skin from people for almost a quarter of a century. Have you ever found my skin accidentally? I didn’t think so. I’ve got it nice and hidden so that’s not really an issue. But I appreciate you looking out for me.” He finished the piece of pizza and moved to another. “He’s more than welcome here. I like him. He’s a good dude. So he can absolutely stay with us. I’ll clear out one of the rooms upstairs for him. We do have the basic design down though. Start putting together a shopping list and keep track of costs and we’ll split it up.” 

“I don’t think that he is officially living there, he told me that he is living with his parents, but they sound … not great from the very little that he has actually told me about them.” Winston fiddled with their glasses. “Anyway, I feel like they use that place as a way out of the house but they don���t want their parents to find out and it would make sense for someone of their age to be moving out of the house, we’ve got the room and I knew that you would say no without hesitation.” They paused and shrugged. “I know you’ve got this dude, but you’re my rock and I definitely wouldn’t be able to do all of the stuff that I’ve got to do if I couldn’t rely on your safety.” Winston nodded. “Cool, well, I gotta admit that isn’t how I thought this would end, but I’m glad we agree. We can get started on this all tomorrow I think.” 

Ricky’s face immediately went pinched and narrow. As someone with his own latent parental issues, he had remarkably little patience for homes where parents mistreated their children. It was part of why Skylar’s defence of her abusive parents had rubbed him so much the wrong way, and why his tone took on a decidedly dull and stony timbre “well. Of course he’s always welcome here. For a couple of nights or for the foreseeable future. Whatever he needs; at least there’s an easy cover with the whole ‘oh yeah I’m just striking out on my own’ excuse. When you do bring it up to him, let him know that there’s no rent. I don’t pay Dee anything so he doesn’t have to pay me anything. Eventually he can chip in on the internet bill, but getting on his feet is more important.” His expression softened and he smiled, “If it makes you feel better… it’s not in the house. It’s hidden and locked away. He won’t find it by accident. You’re stuck with me for a good long while, don’t you fear.” Closing the pizza box before he ate the entire thing he nodded, “Good. We’ll start in the morning and turn this estate into an at least somewhat-secure fortress.”