#c.e. case

[douglasmacdonalds]

I‘m amazed that Beach Head is still cheap while Wingmen is nonexistent. Here’s to hoping Case will republish? 😢

[flokileroux]

Centennial Energy Corp.

A shady energy concern located on Cetecea Island. Many secrets are hidden behind its walls of marble unaware that its biggest threat already resides inside its halls.

[calandrinon]

✅ our calendar years AD and BC are relative to Jesus

✅ and AD stands for Anno Domini

❎ ...which is Latin for After Death

...

I mean

there is a logical process here which requires no Latin knowledge

in that certainly countless authorities have tried to reform the calendar over the centuries

and many have even succeeded!

but nobody has reformed it to the extent that Jesus died in 0 AD

cum spui "fucksakes" în limba română trebuie să știu

[sstan-hoe]

the way I’d let ari absolutely knock my shit out the park but IN A HEADLOCK😭???!!

it would be heaven with his thick ass arm around ur throat while u drool and cream braindead over how good he’s fucking u with his fat cock🥺🥰

(thanks big time for taking requests because ur writing serves cunt in a “Shakespeare could never” honoring way)

𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 — ari levinson × fem!reader

𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 — well smut obviously, p in v, rough sex, unprotected sex (don't do it) ari and his big dick, ari (he's a warning okay)

𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒆 — I would also like to use this post as a little announcement! This is one of my last works that includes c.e. characters, there is another andy drabble coming and the series "They Changed Me Forever" will come to an end. Beginning of November 2023 I will stop for an unknown time, however I will finish Devils Den with them. I will concentrate on others, if I have it in me to write my stucky series I will. However I will not promise it. I also took down the Barber's Production to go under some editing, I'm still unsure if I take them down completely or just put them under private.

Also, no idea what got to me... it isn't as filthy as I intended! reblogs and/or comments are appreciated ♡

NAVIGATION

Pressed against his hairy chest, drops of sweat running down your forehead as he had his thick arm wrapped around your throat to keep you in place.

His cock pounding into your spend cunt, over and over again. Having stretched out for hours by now, and fucked our every braincells that were available. The sound of his hips snapping against yours echoing through the walls.

Ari's cock creamed in your cum, the bedsheets wet, soaked with your mixed fluids. His other hand rubbing over your clit, overstimulating you.

Your body is clinging to his, only by the strength of his arms. You couldn't hold yourself anymore. All you needed was his cock, still after hours you wanted him.

He was breathing down your neck, groaning every time he felt you tighten around his fat cock. Asking you how good it felt being fucked by him, his hungry cockslut who was only there to please him.

"Good, good, feels so good, Ari," you mumbled, imagining you spoke clearly when in reality he could barely understand you.

You chanted those words over and over again. Drool is already slipping from the corner of your mouth, as your head falls back onto his shoulder.

Ari tightens his grip, cutting off a little of your air and enjoying every time your body twitches thanks to him. You became so sensitive, all because of him, braindead and just for his entertainment.

"Mhm, I can feel your orgasm coming little one…, give me one more. This is the last one, I promise," he purred into your ear.

He already told you three orgasms ago, that this would be the last one and every time you believed him. The man fucked you deeper, harder and rubbed your clit in circles.

A loud scream carried through the house, belonging to you who just had her sixth orgasm. Ari was close behind you, pumping you full with his seed, not letting a single drop escape. You closed your eyes, darkness overwhelming you.

You had a desperate need to sleep, with Ari comfortably seated inside of you.

𝑩𝑶𝒀𝑺 𝑶𝑵𝑬 — @smile1318 @wintasssoldier @xcaptain-winterx @georgiapeach30513 @alina02 @broadwaybabe18 @jobean12-blog @buckymcu12 @shara-ne @lou-la-lou @pomegranatearildreams @abbygraceasd @mirikusashes @bye-moonchild @promiscuousbarnes @meyocoko

𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 | @sstanhoe-updates blog where new fics will always be reblogged in case you're not interested in the taglist as it has conditions

[blueiskewl]

A 1000-year-old Viking Silver Treasure Found in Sweden

Discovered outside of Stockholm, the hoard includes a Norman coin whose only previous documentation was in an 18th-century book.

A hoard of Viking silver, described as a once-in-a-lifetime discovery by onsite archeologists, has been unearthed in Täby, a municipality north of Stockholm.

As the Archaeologists, a team of specialists under contract from Sweden’s National Historical Museums, dug beneath the decayed wooden floor of a building in a Viking Age settlement, they discovered a small ceramic pot. Inside lay eight neck rings, two arm rings, a finger ring, a pair of pearls, and 12 coin pendants deposited in a linen pouch.

The neck rings provoked particular excitement. Forged in the torque-style, a symbol of wealth and status for Viking men and women, the nearly 1,000-year-old rings were “extraordinarily well-preserved despite having been made and deposited almost a thousand years ago,” said Maria Lingström, the archeologist who removed them from the ground. “They looked almost completely new.”

The find is part of a larger excavation taking place at a settlement that endured from 400 C.E. through the Viking Age (800–1050 C.E.) and into the Middle Ages. So far, the archaeologists have identified more than 20 houses and buildings, and dug up arrows, quern stones (used to grind down a range of materials), and amulet rings. This most recent discovery, however, is the team’s most eye-catching and potentially illuminating.

“Silver hoards are significant in many ways. They reflect that their owners were very wealthy and are proof of advanced craftsmanship,” said Johan Anund the group’s regional manager, “but they also reflect ancient rituals and religion” said , “the excavation also revealed more than a thousand other artifacts”

The hoard of coins evidences the international nature of commerce in Viking Age Scandinavia, and includes silver from England, Bohemia, Bavaria, as well as dirhams, a type of Arabic coinage. The collection makes up what the Archaeologists termed “a perfect example of [the era’s] far-reaching connections and blossoming trade.”

The cache also includes a 10th-century coin minted in Normandy, an area in northern France to which Vikings migrated in the early ninth-century, which had only ever previously been documented in an 18th-century book of drawings.

Chief among the questions posed by the haul is why inhabitants would bury their most valuable possessions. “One common interpretation is that people buried their treasures in tumultuous times,” said one of the site’s project managers, John Hamilton. “We have yet to see if that was the case here.”

The artifacts have since been transferred to the Acta Konserveringscentrum, a conservatory company in Stockholm, to be cleaned and documented.

By Richard Whiddington.

[sgiandubh]

Such unsmiling people

The comment that moved me the most after posting that August 10 diatribe came from a very special blogger, @myrthil23. I promised her a longer, thoughtful answer, so here it is.

I share with her way more than meets the eye and with a bit of deductive skills, you could easily place us very specifically on an European map. To be honest, I was surprised (and then absolutely thrilled, of course) to find someone like her hanging on in here. But this is not the only reason prompting a response - her comment made me think a lot about a couple of relevant things.

For those who loathe foraging for reblogs, here goes:

In the colorful Shipper family, the Eastern Europeans are (supposedly) the unsmiling ones. This is one of the stubborn clichés that informed the Western gaze, especially in Communist times. Unsmiling, foreboding and unfathomable people: I am not smiling, I am laughing while writing it, because if anything, Myrthil, @zeya-zg, a couple of others and I do share a superb ability to use bullshit-o-meters, an unsinkable sense of humor and a hefty dose of sarcasm. All of these are basic, compulsory street smarts if you want to survive, God knows how, a nuclear winter of sorts.

Imagine you grow up in a world with empty supermarket shelves but permanently sold-out concert halls, where trivial details such as cotton swabs, potato chips (crisps, heh), political parties or The Last Tango in Paris are virtually unknown. Imagine your family is either cautiously aligned to some public idiocy they loathe everyday at home, teaching you at the same time to never talk to strangers. Or even worse, a political pariah, for reasons that have everything to do with the way you sip your tea, as Ella Fitzgerald would say. The latter situation (mine) was something very much akin to a civil death. And you just knew you could never be, for imbecile but firm reasons, an architect, a lawyer or even an epidemiologist: jobs way too sensitive to entrust the enemies of the people (and their spawn) with.

What is left for you, then, when the view from your window, in 1982, is something not very different from this photograph:

(side note: these people are staying in line to buy 1 kilogram of sugar for each person, which was the monthly allowance fixed by law in my country, from 1980 to 1989; you could only buy those with Government-issued tickets, not unlike what happened in the UK during WWII or what you can see in series like The Handmaid's Tale)

When all is seemingly lost, you will still have, in no particular order: books. Music (including piano lessons). Sports. Each other (although that was overall more complicated than it seemed). Going to the opera and never taking off your winter coat inside, but enjoying every second of it. Impromptu dinners by candlelight during power outages ("wir machen ein bisschen Stimmung"/let's make a bit of atmosphere, grinned my aunt). Foreign languages (a must). Fits and giggles and jokes galore. And the ability to adapt to just about anything, anywhere.

When change finally reached us, many had the almost surreal opportunity to go West. Some came back, others didn't, simply because they chose to continue elsewhere their pursuit of happiness. And yes, Myrthil is right, that fabled West was always something to behold and measure up to. In my case, it was almost too easy, but then I consider myself really lucky: going to live in Paris, at 18, felt both as homecoming and being left alone (and with unlimited credit) in a candy store.

So, here we are. We may have discovered Sylvia Plath a bit late, but I think we are decently knowledgeable about Chaucer. We sometimes may sound Edwardian and if we do, you should probably blame C.E. Eckersley's Essential English (this is how that life-long affair started, for me). And if anything, we bring another, perhaps even more inquisitive, angle to these strange things we are dealing with daily, in here.

But for the love of Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, don't you ever dare tell us what to think and with whom to talk. Don't call us stupid. Don't call us liars. Historical reasons prompted a durable allergy to sanctimonious speech and yes (I can only speak for myself) I will always, always react. Because we do not deserve the arrogance of people who have no idea of how it really was to grow up somewhere in Eastern Europe during the Eighties. Oh, and something else, lest I forget: being pariahs never bothered us - we can cope.

Other than that, we should go along just fine. :)

PS: @claraisabelcampohermoso, you probably don't know how your gif made me smile. Nadia will always be Nadia: a humble, warm person with a terribly heartbreaking story.

[todaysdocument]

Plant Patent Case File No. PP820, Magnolia Plant, Inventor Carl Edward Kern

Record Group 241: Records of the Patent and Trademark OfficeSeries: Plant Patent Case Files

Jan. 11, 1949. C.E. KERN Plant Pat. 820 MAGNOLIA PLANT Filed May 31, 1947 [Drawing of Magnolia Plant with pale pink and magenta petals] WITNESS INVENTOR Addison E. Avery CARL EDWARD KERN, by Rummler, Rummler & Snow, ATTYS. [Full document at link]

[ryin-silverfish]

Chapter 11: Taizong's trip to the Underworld

-Fun fact: "Taizong's trip to the Underworld" is actually a tale that predated JTTW, and its earliest surviving form could be dated to a book called 朝野佥载.

-Another late Tang version could be found in the Dunhuang collections, in which Taizong's bargain with Cui Jue was a lot more complicated. In JTTW novel proper, Cui Jue/Ziyu was just another high-level official who took his work into the afterlife, but in the Dunhuang version, much like Wei Zheng, he was a living person working part-time for the Underworld.

-However, his position in court was nowhere as high as Wei Zheng's, so he took the chance to blackmail Taizong into giving him a promotion, and the whole exchange was full of subtle psychological warfare——Judge Cui offhandedly mentioning "Hey, you heard the ghosts crying next door? That's your dead brothers (whom you totally didn't murder in a coup)", Taizong being scared out of his mind but also trying to keep up appearances while figuring out the appropriate bribe for this guy…

-Fun Fact #2: Dead People Lawsuits were a common trope in Tang legends and folklore, where people explained sudden deaths as the dead getting a summon to the Underworld courts, or, in slightly more fortuious cases, appointed as ghostly officials.

-The novel sadly skips the courtroom scene and handwaves it with a "Yeah, the prosecutor had already been sent to reincarnation", which kinda defeats the whole purpose of summoning Taizong here, but whatever.

-On the plus(?) side, he got a free tour of the afterlife!

-I'm a big fan of Underworld tales in Chinese mythos, because, aside from all the brutal tortures and horrors, it can also be pretty damn funny.

-Like the Ten Kings asking Taizong for some pumpkins ("southern melons") just to complete their Directional Melons Set.

"Wait, pumpkins? Isn't that from the Americas? And aren't they still missing the 'northern melons'?"

-Precisely! This could actually give us some clue about when the book was compiled: pumpkins were most likely brought to Ming China in the 1520s by Portuguese ambassadors visiting Nanjing and Beijing, and the earliest JTTW novel was printed in 1592.

-So, when this segment was added, pumpkins were still considered a rare, exotic vegetable. Further research also suggests that, throughout the Ming and Qing dynasty, "northern melons" was just another name for pumpkins of lesser quality.

-How Taizong managed to find a pumpkin in 639 C.E. to give to our conveniently suicidal delivery guy is beyond anyone's guess. Hey, maybe the immortals of the eastern seas ran a cross-Pacific mailing service with their cranes or something.

-This is clearer in the Chinese version, but the law of Underworld's reality literally dictates that you cannot walk back from the way you come. So…does the road disappear behind you as you go? Are buildings in the City of the Dead constantly shifting and rearranging themselves like an Escher painting in Lego form? Or do you just have to go round in circles, a lot?

[A very rough map of Taizong's route through the Underworld, as I visualize it]

-In Buddhist canon, the Wheel of Reincarnation isn't like, a literal magical wheel. However, in JTTW novel and illustrations, this is very much the case, and might be a result of people mixing IRL scripture wheels (轮藏) with reincarnation (轮回).

-Personally, I'd like to see more creative reimagining of the thing; for example, a giant waterwheel on the Nai River that sifts through souls like droplets.

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

[theblackdahliaemporium]

Offerings in Hellenic Polytheism

┏━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━┓

TABLE OF CONTENTS

i. Introduction

ii. Animal Sacrifice

iii. First Fruits

iv. Dedications

v. Libations

vi. Conclusion

┗━━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━━┛

TW: Animal Sacrifice

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Disclaimer

While I have read about this subject and have tried to provide accurate information, I do not have any sort of post-secondary education on the subject. I encourage those reading this post to also do their own research, books cited in my sources are a good place to start. I also encourage people reading to correct me if I make any mistakes.

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Introduction

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Offerings and sacrifice are one of the central religious acts of Hellenic Polytheism. It is how we build kharis (reciprocity, grace, and favour) with the gods. It is important to know how and what to offer to the gods.

Offering and sacrifice almost always involved two things other than the offering; an altar and fire. There were two categories of altar for different purposes. The bômos, a high stone altar with a flat surface for ouranic deities, and the bothros, a shallow pit, dug into the earth for khthonic deities.

Fire is something that is found in almost every offering and cult activity in ancient Greece. It is important to note that because of the association with hearths and altars, Hestia takes part in all sacrifices and offerings. This is noted in the Homeric Hymn To Aphrodite:

Hestia rests at the hearth, the highest honor.

All people revere her in every temple,

Hestia, the most august of the gods.

- Homeric Hymn 5, translated by Diane J Rayor

Offering and sacrifices made towards ouranic deities were made preferably before noon in daylight, while offerings made for khthonic deities were done at night.

When making sacrifices and offerings, worshipers would wash themselves, dress in white, clean clothing, and adorn their heads in wreaths and garland.

Offerings always were accompanied by a request. This request could be for health, crop growth, ect. or just for the god(s) to accept the offering. My blog on Prayer in Hellenic Polytheism discusses this in more detail.

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Hestia Giustiniani, Marble, Second Century C.E. Roman Copy

Image Source

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Animal Sacrifice

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Animal sacrifice was one of the most common forms of offering found in ancient Greece. Many types of animals were sacrificed. Sheep were the most common, with goats and pigs in second and third place. The second most expensive were pigs, while piglets were the cheapest. Oxen, notably bulls, were considered the most honourable and the most expensive. Poultry also had a common place in sacrifice as well.

Domesticated animals were a part of animal sacrifice exponentially more than wild animals were. In the case of the sanctuary of Artemis at Kalapodi, there have been bones of deer and boars found.

It was important that the animal being sacrificed was healthy, well taken care of, and undamaged. The only place in ancient Greece that we know of that commonly had cheaper, smaller, and mutilated sacrificial animals was Sparta. The head and stomach of the sacrificial animal was decorated in garlands and ribbons. In some cases, the horns of bulls were covered in gold.

The colour of the animal was another important aspect of sacrifice. In the case of ouranic deities, the animal(s) would be white, and for khthonic deities, they would be black. The sex of the animal was also lined up with the gender of the god or goddess, though there have been exceptions.

There was a sequence of events when sacrificing an animal. This sequence starts with the procession that escorts the animal to the altar, the pompê. The pompê was headed by an aristocratic girl who carries a basket on her head, filled with barley groats and cakes that cover a sacrificial knife. The animal was guided by adolescent boys. A piper, who could be male or female, played music alongside the procession. Following behind were adult men and women. A vessel containing lustral water is brought along, and sometimes an incense burner.

Once they reached the altar, they stood in a semi-circle, with the altar in the front and the naos (temple) in the back. The basket and the water vessel are walked counterclockwise around the altar. The worshipers then have water poured over their hands, sprinkled on the altar, and sacrificial animal. This part is called the archesthai. It was important for the animal to be seen as willing, so the water sprinkled on its head created a nodding gesture, indicating acceptance. Everyone then grabs barley groats, called oulai, and while a prayer is recited, the barley is thrown at the altar and sacrificial animal. This part is called the katarchesthai.

Right before the animal is sacrificed, hairs are cut from its head and thrown into the fire. If it was an ox, it would be stunned with an axe. The animal's head is held up, and its throat cut. Once the animal bled, the women there would cry out. This part is called the ololygē. The blood was either directly poured on the altar in the case of smaller animals or collected in a bowl and then poured; none of it hit the ground. This part is called the haimassein.

The animal is skinned, which goes to the priest or sanctuary. The thigh bones are separated from the body, the meat is removed, and the bone is wrapped in fat. The thigh bones and small pieces from each limb placed on top are burned. The gallbladder and tail could also be a part of the sacrifice, though later they were specifically used for divination. The splanchna (kidneys, liver, spleen, and probably heart and lungs) is then roasted on the fire and are first to be eaten. A libation of mixed wine is then poured over the fire. Lastly, the meat is prepared, roasted or boiled, distributed, and eaten in a feast. The quality of the meat was distributed based on rank and social status.

In certain circumstances, the animal wasn’t eaten and instead burned whole. This was called a holocaust offering. The worshipers, in this case, would not partake in the sacrifice at all, so there is no feast. Holocaust sacrifices were specific to khthonic deities and the dead. Though still, there have been exceptions where a feast takes place.

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Marble Votive Relief, 340-320 B.C.E.

Image Source

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First Fruits

─━━━━━━⊱༻ ༺⊰━━━━━━─

First fruits referred to the offering of the first of the spoils acquired through hunting, fishing, gathering, and farming. This could be many things from figs, olives, and grapes to bread, milk, and wool. These offerings were placed at the altar, sacred site, or left in bodies of water, for the animals in the area. First fruit offerings gave what the season had to offer.

These types of offerings were popular with more rural deities such as Pan or the nymphai, as well as agricultural deities such as Demeter and Dionysos. The first fruits of many crops are given to corresponding deities when they are harvested.

Panspermia was a common type of first fruit offering found at many festivals. It was a mixture of different fruits and grains that were occasionally cooked in a pot.

These types of offerings in ancient Greece often accompanied animal sacrifice but were still at times done by themselves.

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Dedications

─━━━━━━⊱༻ ༺⊰━━━━━━─

There are two types of dedications that can be made: votive offerings and thank offerings. Votive offerings are any offerings made in the result of a vow, a dedication. Thank offerings were made in gratitude for help from a god in a worshipers life. Votive and thank offerings can include many things: first fruits, animal sacrifice, libations, but most interestingly statues, vases, clothing, tools, equipment, and even altars and temples.

Statues would have inscription on them documenting who gave the offering, and which god it was made too. Statue votives could also be bought or made by the worshipper themselves.

One form of votive was how, during wartime, soldiers would vow to dedicate the shields and weapons of their enemies for success in battle. An example of a thank offering is how when people reached old age and retired, they would dedicate their work tools and equipment to the related god's sanctuary.

Hair offerings were a form of dedication made during writes of passage. For boys, it was done when they reached adulthood and for girls when they got married. The cut hair was then offered to a god, river god, or hero.

Votive and thank offerings were commonly made to the god Asklepios in many of his temples. These offerings were sculpted body parts called anatomical votives. These were offered to give thanks or as a request for the god to heal the affliction affecting that part of the body.

Dedications were usually left in a sanctuary. Once these objects were dedicated to a god, they couldn't be taken back or leave the sanctuary. They are now property of the god or goddess.

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Bronze Votive Bull, Sanctuary of Zeus, Nemea, 400-350 BC

Image Source

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Libations

─━━━━━━⊱༻ ༺⊰━━━━━━─

Libations are liquid offerings poured for the gods and were the second most common forms of offerings in ancient Greece. They were typically poured out of a vessel called a phiale, which is a round bowl. Libations were shown on Athenian vases being poured with the right hand holding the phiale. Libations were directly poured onto the bômos or bothros.

There are two different types of libations found in ancient Greece: sponde and choe. Spondai were most commonly made to the Ouranic gods and had wine as the main liquid. The pouring of the sponde was done with a bowl or hand-held vessel, and the flow of the liquid was controlled. Choai were made for Khthonic deities and primarily had oil, milk, water, and honey as their main liquids. A choe was spilled and emptied from a large vessel into the earth; it was uncontrolled compared to a sponde libation.

Though wine was most common with sponde and milk, oil, and honey with choe, there were still instances where the liquids were used in the opposite type of libation.

Whenever people in ancient Greece would drink wine, a sponde was performed. In symposia, the first libation was offered to Zeus and the Olympians, the second to the heroes, and the third to Zeus Teleios (the finisher). The Agathos Daimon and Hermes were second and third libations in other instances. After, anyone can invoke and pour a libation to other gods.

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Attic red-figure cup, 480 B.C.E.

Image Source ]

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Conclusion

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Of course, animal sacrifice is often out of the question for most Hellenic Polytheists, whether that be due to circumstance or personal views. This means that when it comes to offerings made to deities, we must focus on other types that are more accessible to us.

I might also do a blog on why sacrifices and offerings are done as this blog explains more the act.

I think be doing a blog on altars and temples next. So, if you’re disappointed at the amount of information about altars here, there’ll be more coming soon.

Sources:

Greek Religion by Walter Burkert, 'Working Sacred Things' Animal Sacrifice and Gift Offerings and Libations

A Companion to Greek Religion by Daniel Ogden, Greek Normative Animal Sacrifice

Smokes Signals for the Gods by F. S. Naiden

Ancient Greek Religion by Jon D. Mikalson, An Overview: Greek Sanctuaries and Worship and Greek Gods, Heroes, and Polytheism

Theoi & Khlaire & Magpie

[haggishlyhagging]

Cosmetics occupied a dark place in the medieval imagination for a number of biblical reasons. First and foremost, they were not natural, and naturalness was the benchmark of anyone truly beautiful. The moment a woman resorted to cosmetics, she was attempting to embellish the work of the divine. This in turn led to the second concern, a conflation of makeup with dark magic. Both concerns were combined in the biblical story of Jezebel, which was trotted out to warn women who were thinking about trying a new recipe for rouge.

Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab of Israel, was a fairly terrible person. Aside from being foreign (which we are meant to understand was automatically bad), Jezebel had engaged in some light murder. She and Ahab had a neighbor, Naboth, who owned a thriving vineyard next door to the palace. After he rebuffed their offers to buy the land, Jezebel conspired to have him falsely accused of blasphemy. He was executed, and the lands passed to her and her husband (1 Kings 21:1-14). Subsequently, justices closed in on Jezebel, whereupon she "painted her eyes and adorned her head and looked out of a window." She was later thrown from that window, her blood splattering everywhere. Her corpse was eaten by dogs (2 Kings 9:30).

While most of us would probably say that the thing that marked Jezebel as the wrong sort was, you know, the murder, medieval biblical exegetes disagreed. For them, the worry was the eyeliner and the hairdo. As a result, Jezebel makes a return in the New Testament, in Apocalypse 2:20-23. In Apocalypse, which you might know by the decidedly less cool name Revelation, John of Patmos (ca. 6-100 C.E.) got extremely angry with Jezebel. According to John, God had complained to him that she "calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works; and I will strike her children dead." Biblical scholars considered the references to “sexual immorality” and “adultery” here to be directly linked to the whole eyeliner thing, given that murder was decidedly less attractive to the average man. The fourteenth-century Czech preacher Jan Milic of Kromeriz (d. 1374), for example, announced that during the Last Days, Jezebel would arise from the dead to lead "all who paint their faces" to their Last Judgment and subsequently to Hell. Jezebel's use of makeup thus was more than just throwaway vanity. It is an overtly sexual act that could be conflated with large-scale and vaguely magical seduction, and that had a clearly delineated role in the Apocalypse. In other words, it was not good.

Meanwhile, Jewish and Christian communities could turn to Genesis for their concerns about women using makeup for the purposes of seduction and bringing about the end of the world. Some scholars' commentaries on Genesis warned against the daughters of God who had used cosmetics to disguise themselves and seduce a group of angels, "the sons of God." These women explicitly attempted to improve on God's natural creation and bring themselves up to the level of the divine. Luckily for the hussies in question, they didn't manage to bring about the Apocalypse, as Christian mystics were concerned they would. They were instead blamed for the Great Flood—their sinful nature being one of the things that God allegedly wished to wash from the earth. While cosmetics didn't manage to completely destroy the world in this instance, they came close. Makeup and the dangerous seductive power that women could wield as a result of it were clearly best avoided.

In case Jezebel's dangerousness and the Flood were not enough of a warning, medieval writers set out to underline the diabolical possibilities of eyeliner. Enter, again, the concerned father of daughters, the Chevalier of La Tour Landry. This time he shared the tale of a beautiful princess, whose looks brought her acclaim, admirers, and riches. Rather than remaining a pure emanation of the will of God, however, this princess was augmenting her looks with makeup. As she aged and her beauty faded, she attempted to keep her looks by using yet more makeup, but her face began to wither. The Chevalier assured his daughters that "I heard tell from many that when she was dead, her face became such that one could not know what it was, nor what type of deformation; because it did not seem at all to be the face of a woman, nor did anyone take it for the face of a woman, so hideous was it and horrible to see. So, I think indeed that the layers of paint that she put on it were the cause of this phenomenon."

Some theological scholars saw fit to consider the real victims of the use of cosmetics: men. In the twelfth century at least two theologians, the French Peter the Chanter (d. 1197) and his likely student the English Thomas of Chobham (ca. 1160-1236) tackled the hard question of what, exactly, men should do if they engaged a sex worker in good faith, only to find out later that she had been wearing makeup. Both enlightened minds agreed that in such a case, the clients who hired such women would have in effect been duped. Any woman who was found to be using cosmetics to entice clients was essentially selling falsified goods and should have to return any money that she received for sex.

In the Muslim lands, the seductive power of cosmetics stirred similar concerns, especially perfumes. Jurists grappled with the question of what women could anoint themselves with and came to the conclusion that while it was fine for women to use tints to enhance their faces, these substances shouldn't be heavily perfumed. A light perfume, which could be perceived only by those in close physical proximity to a woman (namely, her husband), was acceptable. What was not acceptable was a perfume that left a trail of scent and therefore seduction. Women who ignored such rules faced legal consequences, as "a perfumed woman who passes by a group of men in order that they will notice her smell is an adulteress."

Women who were tempted to use cosmetics, then, faced condemnation from a number of camps. They faced theological and legal consequences should they decide to enhance their looks through outside help. These concerns were not necessarily for the women but for the men whom they could defraud and seduce thanks to their contrivances. Furthermore, made-up women could cause an honest-to-God Apocalypse, or at least a fairly major flood. Either way it was clear that, in order to ensure the social order, women had to be threatened with legal repercussions.

-Eleanor Janega, The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society

[inklores]

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐀𝐆𝐍𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐌𝐒.

pairing: henry!sherlock holmes x fem!oc

summary: sherlock holmes needs to find his intrepid little sister. clara bedi wants to keep his sharp nose off her trail. (word count: 3.1k)

content contains: fluff, sherlock being bad with women, slight strangers to lovers but they're both smart idiots

author's note: made originally for a class assignment but i'm too proud of it to keep it hidden away in my google docs!! enjoy

FUMES OF SMOKE lifting from the corners of his lips, he thumbed the lapis silk tie the pamphlet was bound by. The rhythmic movement was a rehearsed habit of his, charting keen thoughts that were falling into place.

Tea in the Parlor

Magazine of Modern Womanhood

25 April 1884

“A Problem With No Name. I’ve first heard that uttered so solemnly beneath the breath of a mother amid other mothers over the scent of teacakes and the English brew that her hands had surely processed the week before. Another cried. As your humble magazine writer, there have been women beyond our teatime who had answers to my questions. Those who sort matchsticks in factories, who raise children, who nurse other children. Those who live in the fine estates of Westminster, lodging houses along Greater London, and flats bordering Whitechapel, all have the same problem. The groping truths to their lamentations, brought into light when the children were away and their husbands attended to important business over a glass of sherry at their gentleman’s clubs,—”

Something more than a scoff and less than a laugh escaped Holmes.

“—were provoking. Just what was this nameless problem? A whisper that refuses to be said. The bond of pain, of womanhood, of the searing feeling that something great shall arrive to our fair England.”

— C.E. Babbington.

“Mr. Holmes, I hope you’re not mistaking me as someone with whom you are at odds with.”

Clara wore burgundy today.

Or indigo to a sharp eye, moreso if she sat in the dusky shade rather than by the window where sunlight was allowed to stream through the frosted glass tiles. The heat of the afternoon, Clara could tolerate. The brisk cold, the musk of tobacco, pomade, and fine English leather that filled her office—all mingling together to create one scent that floated around the man who stood in front of her— she virtually could not.

Well, “office” may have been a playful nudge to her ego. It was more of a closet with a pen, a hook to hang her coat when there was a chill, a canister of her favorite tea matched with her precious teapot, and a small sideboard that she used to stash her extra paper. Clara had spent enough time in that little closet to learn its quirks and commodities. The shutters would not close in blustery weather unless they were bound by a scarf. The gentleman who would take his Saturday morning coffee and eggs always found something to guffaw about in the newspaper. Clara knew because she could hear the fervor of his chortles from one story up. The fifth floorboard from the door creaked with the slightest movement and she had garnered the will to purchase a rug that softened footsteps over the parquet.

Now if only she could purchase a rug to wrap around the man filling her tiny corner with the fumes of… man.

A tall man. Haughty by the way he stood. He looked strong and sturdy, weaned on the finest food money could buy. Clara wondered if he teethed on crumpets and caviar as a baby. His clothing may have been picked to feign oneness with the people of England, but she noticed a grain on his breasted black coat. His crisp white shirt boasted no wrinkle, cinched around his neck by a silk ascot the color of charcoal. Chestnut curls spilled across his head—sharing no unified form—and fighting to be free of the pomade that gleamed in the dimness of the lamplight. She imagined an artless tumble of locks when he was nose-deep in a case. An errant strand fell over his brow, softening his countenance where his tone failed to.

“Have you anticipated me, Miss Bedi?”

It was Clara’s mistake for stopping short of her movements. Her fingers froze on the handle of her teapot and it was then she realized the incriminating ink stains that blotched her bronzed fingers.

She did not. He knew that. He likely knew what she had for breakfast as well. Hence the cloying pride that laced his query.

A tickle caught in her throat and she swallowed tightly to preserve her pride as she arched a dark brow. “No, I have not, but I applaud your effort. Nobody contemplates and makes a theater out of their face quite like you.”

Looking up from the tea she was pouring, Clara barely caught the indignant twitch in his face, even as his mountainous posture was unrelenting. For a man who was presumed to be discreet, he was quite eye-catching.

He dropped his gaze down to the lonely armchair and side table Clara would enjoy her tea in. It was the one perpetually surrounded by her basket of stained pen tips and folded newspapers— Clara had the habit of saving old prints—bits of thread, scraps of silk in cooler hues, linen from occasional embroiders, and stacks of books from Edith that never make it back to the shelf, being moved around constantly on the empty promise of being read to completion.

It was a detective’s heaven.

“The name ‘Holmes’ is beginning to mean quite a deal in this country,” her eyebrows slanted, copper eyes filled with constellations, “and do you think I would be in my position if I did not know?”

“Precisely why you flinched when I used your name and not your pen name.” His voice was rich as a fine velvet she let her hands graze over at a textile stand, but detached. “Deceit. To hide the plain truth, just as frills and elegant coifs do. Yes, it may dress you like a powder puff—” she parted her lips in protest but his eyes glimmered like opals, he was clearly not done—“but the man holding the pen is entirely different. In that…”

Her grip on her teacup could not get any tighter, for one tremor to rattle the porcelain would have him arriving quicker to the deduction he savored for last.

“He is not a man at all, is he?”

She watched in bated, almost nonexistent, breath—wondering how quickly she could get her hands on the cake spade lying unfashionably by the crumbs of a Dundee cake she had scarfed down the night before—as he fished a blue silk tie that bookmarked the yellowed book she just realized he held.

“How does a C.E. Babbington become… the elusive Clara Eashwar Bedi?”

A wave of cold took her from head to toe. If Clara wasn’t gripping the edge of her desk, knuckles quickly whitening, she was sure her knees would’ve given out. She stared down at the pretty silk tie, and then at the folded pamphlet he slid over the varnished surface, the black ink script almost snickering at her in mockery.

His words came as fluidly as water, uttered with a stone-cold expression she figured was his mask for his famous deductions.

“Four separate purchases of pens and paper from three different vendors.”

Spreading her tracks. No writer who desired anonymity would so foolishly expose herself by making a reputation with one seller.

He was studying her closet-office now. A satin kerchief protected his hand as he chose a stained pen to scrutinize. “Bills from Whitechapel. Cheaper ink—a shadowy writer such as yourself would not earn her dues to spend carelessly on finer supplies than supper for the night. Or silk ties to make her mark. To create a name.”

Cheaper ink bleeds easier. Her fingers, a blatant victim.

“Bedi.” He tasted her last name on his tongue for a moment, eyebrows pinched as if he was trying to paint a map in his acute mind. “When did your father leave India?”

Her throat was dry but she swallowed down her apprehension and managed out, “Fifteen years ago.”

“Does he work on the docks?”

“Worked.”

A flash of humanity lightened his eyes and the man of a chilly, pragmatic acumen faltered. “Apologies.”

The sound that tumbled from Clara’s lips could only be described as something between a shaking sigh and an aggravated grumble. “What is it you want, Mr. Holmes?”

“You write for the Magazine of Modern Womanhood,” he continued, making Clara bite back an exhausted groan. “Yet you affect a pseudonym. Why?”

“I don’t write for the magazine, I write alongside it,” Clara mumbled. Why was she entertaining him? “I don’t have the means to print my pieces independently— as you so cleverly deduced by my purchases of ink.”

“Your pieces… and other submissions, I’d bet.”

“Are you a betting man?” She lifted a brow curiously, daring him to stop this frivolous quadrille of tongues and get to the point.

“A cipher with the fingerprints of my sister was published in the personal advertisements column of your magazine, The Pall Mall Gazette, and The Journal of Dress Reform. It’s our mother’s interest she hopes to attract and with the choice of your publication, she has a good start.”

“God, there’s more of you?” she asked, feigning horror. “Is the world ready for that?”

(But where the name Mycroft Holmes was etched in cold stone and proud, old money, she had the sense the name Sherlock meant something else. Something whisper quiet like a dusty novel on crumpled velvet. Elegant with solitude.)

Sherlock took a step forward, his fingers still thumbing the fraying corner of the book. “Have you any idea where she might be?” He tilted his head. “I’m afraid our mutual acquaintance Edith had more to say of my “ostrich-like” nature than my sister.”

Clara couldn’t help the kick in her voice as she responded, “Appropriate.”

He smiled at her, a Private Investigator brand of Smile that Clara knew well enough from the numerous times a constable had approached the magazine for its inflammatory words, and which only deserved a Young Journalist Smile.

But what he said snagged her attention as well as a good story. Eudoria’s daughter. Little Enola. 

Edith had mentioned her once or twice. Clara might have seen a glimpse of a little brown-headed girl with quick feet, dashing about Ferndell Hall when ladies of a particular ilk huddled around a table, bearing swords on their tongues and determination in their hearts. Clara typically stood behind her bolder friend, Edith, clutching a pen that barely made a scratch against her worn pocketbook. She knew little for the illustrious Sherlock Holmes to knock on her door… but little was more than enough to be cunningly dissected and deduced by him.

“Enola’s missing?” she asked slowly, hoping to stall but Sherlock Holmes was not a man for idle chatter. Her head shook in a disappointing, deceiving refusal. “I’m sorry, but I have the faintest idea as to where she’s gone and why.”

“I find that highly improbable,” said Holmes in a tone that suggested he too was done with this waltz. “You’re protective of your name, or, names —”

“And what will you do if I use your name, Mr. Holmes?” Clara countered rigidly, her heart leaping into her throat. “Loudly? With proper dictation? Letting everyone know your business more than you’d like?”

“Then you’d also find yourself and Edith in a very difficult position, one that I’ve made clear to her and will to you if I must,” Sherlock warned, dropping his voice to a decibel that made a chill rattle her spine. A hint of vague frustration was tangled within his dull humor. 

Clara stilled, watching as he turned over the book and leafed through toward the back cover. Stuffed in the spine was a folded napkin and he paired it with the newspaper clipping for her viewing displeasure. Wrinkled and white and stamped with the crumbs of a pastry, her eyes were naturally drawn to the hasty scrawl in ink:

“C.E.B.

Matter of Bill —

Tea Rooms”

The same dismayed expression from when he dissected her alter ego took ahold of her face once more, even if she tried to disguise it by a clench of her jaw. 

“Macaroons could do with some attention but Edith has enough to worry about,” said Holmes. “She’ll notice the missing book from her seditious collection but not the message hidden inside— a message written to Babbington, who I understand is an intrepid young woman, so I’m sure you’re aware of what the proper connections can do for a man.” The distant, icy blue of his eyes warmed. “I asked of your father— a man who likely worked too hard for too little a reward and you, his daughter, silently fighting in favor of a bill that will help the men and women like him.”

“My,” Clara gasped, “Mr. Holmes, I didn’t take you for a man of politics.”

The stray little curl swished across his brow as he shook his head. “Oh, I’m far from it.”

She hummed curiously. “Then, what do you fancy? People? Poetry? Probably not. It’s your cases that keep you warm at night, which is why you hunt your own sister in blind circles like a dog chasing his tail.” She leaned forward, lowering her voice, “If Edith tells you nothing, I will say even less. Trust your sister… and the future. Good day, Mr. Holmes.”

She made to go around him, ignoring the way her stomach fluttered as she did, until a bleak and dare she say, concerned mutter caught her ear.

“She’s a child.”

“By my understanding, you’ve abandoned her once, Mr. Holmes. In the pursuit of where your mind takes you and little of your heart,” Clara said, more sharply than was her wont. 

“I beg your pardon.”

The anger in his voice flared like a bleeding heart. A man who was a fire next to gunpowder, ready to speak his mind and snatch the rug beneath a pair of unsuspecting feet. She could loathe him for being so perceptive and intelligent, yet plainly missing the changes of the world. But that tone… He was no longer a brilliant mind or a pleasantly distant man. He was a brother who wanted to know where his sister was.

And if there was ever a case that Sherlock Holmes would encounter, it would leave no secrets he could not crack.

Clara turned around, stained fingers toying with each other, teeth worrying her lower lip to a reddening bruise. Amusement danced in her eyes, quenching the frustration that twisted his sharply cut features.

“You have it,” she admitted after a pause, cheeks growing warm. “Because I’m a woman who believes in second chances… and the calling of her heart rather than her mind. And a desolate, hopeless bachelor tugs at that heart, I’m afraid.”

Sherlock’s face contorted incrementally, the corners of his lips curling up just a tad. It was not a smile. Another part of her would have thought so but not the smart part. Still, it was an odd expression that made Clara think it was gracious.

“I’m not aware of such a reputation.” Fond.

“Figures,” she sighed, eliciting a huff of laughter from him. The sound was enough to make her face crack with a smile. “Enola’s sixteen. And if she’s anything like her mother and brother, she won’t go down with a fight nor will she be drawn away from it. And the real fight is coming. I advise you to start there.”

He squinted at her. Then at the napkin. Then at the clipping signed by C.E. Babbington. The fight.

“A problem with no name,” he murmured.

“It has a name, Mr. Holmes. Whether it will be spoken is decided by men like you and your older brother,” she added, rightly hopeful. “Perhaps that will change.”

Silence settled comfortably between them until the pounding of her heart became too loud for her ears to bear. She cleared her throat and pulled the knob to her door, returning her gaze to Sherlock.

“Until next time, Mr. Holmes.” She smiled. “I hope your game finds its feet. My best to your sister.”

He tilted his chin in an understanding nod, hand pressing against the curly blue tie that still sat next to his evidence, her pamphlet. To her surprise, he waited. One hand disappeared in the flap of his jacket and came out holding a fine black pen shot with gold trimming. To a man like Holmes, it was a pen to write some very useful reckonings of the mind but to Clara, it looked more valuable than what she earned in a week. It clinked as he set it on her desk, accompanied by that slight, mysterious smile.

“Trust a bill won’t be made,” Sherlock assured, amused as he approached her. He extended the blue ribbon to her.

“And a secret will be kept,” she enforced, fixing him with a look as she curled her fingers over the forbidden silk tie, folding it into his palm.

His hand was cold, callused like the reward of cracking cases. Yet it managed to send a surge of heat swirling in her chest, akin to lightning crossing a black sky.

(And did she intend the other thing she did too? The split-second brush of her fingertips over his palm and the way the ball of his throat was disturbed by a tight swallow. Savoring the softness of the lapis silk strand against his pale flesh and her copper skin.)

He lingered by the doorframe for more than a second. Sherlock looked at her— perhaps a more bewitching case with the narrowest twists and the sharpest of turns. A shadow of a smile graced his prim lips and he let out a delectable, ruminative hum. “Is that a promise I would be foolish to break, Miss Babbington?”

“Indeed it is, Mr. Holmes.” She watched him depart, a puzzling black figure who had more to his voice than what he decided to speak. 

“Oh, on the subject of hearts…”

Sherlock paused and turned around. He studied the meticulous way she swept her indigo skirt behind her and made him wait until she finally, painstakingly met his gaze. Only then she made him realize how beholden he was to her unfinished prose.

“While surely hopeless for a… perspicacious man with such a baffling pigheadedness,” Clara murmured, smiling lopsidedly, “do keep yours open.”

Before he left with another curt, reserved nod, Sherlock ruminated on her words. Her tone— he barely noticed the way he wondered how all of her other pretty, printed words would sound if they were turned from ink to… to… that voice.

No… she was not a case. She was a quandary. An unsolved riddle that he cracked with the full assumption that the winning hand was in his, only to turn over his cards and see that it was she who had the royal flush.

What fresh hell was this?

[taytayb1993]

Were There Black People in Ancient & Medieval Europe?

Pescennius Niger, (A.D. 135-194), Roman emperor.

"In stature Niger was tall, in appearance attractive; and his hair grew back in a graceful way toward the crown of his head. His voice was so penetrating that when he spoke in the open he could be heard a thousand paces away, if the wind were not against him. His countenance was dignified and always somewhat ruddy; his neck was so black that many men say that he was called Niger on this account. The rest of his body, however, was very white and he was inclined to be fat."

"Now when the confusion in the state was at its height, inasmuch as it was made known that there were three several emperors, Septimius Severus, Pescennius Niger, and Clodius Albinus, the priest of the Delphic Apollo was asked which of them as emperor would prove of most profit to the state, whereupon, it is said, he gave voice to a Greek verse as follows:

"Best is the Dark One, the African good, but the worst is the White One."

 And in this response, it was clearly understood that Niger was meant by the Dark One, Severus by the African, and Albinus by the White One. Thereupon the curiosity of the questioners was aroused, and they asked who would really win the empire. To this the priest replied with further verses somewhat as follows:

"Both of the Black and the White shall the life-blood be shed all untimely.

Empire over the world shall be held by the native of Carthage."

And then when the priest was asked who should succeed this man, he gave answer, it is said, with another Greek verse:

"He whom the dwellers above have called by the surname of Pius."

But this was altogether unintelligible until Bassianus took the name Antoninus,​ which was Pius' true surname. And when finally, they asked how long he should rule, the priest is said to have replied in Greek as follows:

"Surely with twice ten ships he will cleave the Italian waters,​

Only let one of his barques bound o'er the plain of the sea.""

-Historia Augusta, Life of Pescennius Niger

"This proved to be the greatest disaster of the war; for twenty thousand of Niger's followers perished. And this evidently was the meaning of the priest's dream. It seems that while Severus was in Pannonia the priest of Jupiter in a dream saw a black man force his way into the emperor's camp and come to his death by violence; and by interpreting the name of Niger people recognized that he was the black man in question. Upon the capture of Antioch not long after this, Niger fled from there toward the Euphrates, intending to make his escape to the barbarians; but his pursuers overtook him and cut off his head. Severus caused the head to be sent to Byzantium and to be set up on a pole, that the sight of it might induce the Byzantines to join his cause. After this he proceeded to punish those who had belonged to Niger's party."

-Cassius Dio, Roman History, Epitome of Book LXXV

Septimius Severus, (C.E. 145-211), Roman politician and emperor, born in the city of Leptis Magna in Libya under Roman province in North Africa, and son of a Punic father and a Roman Italian mother.

Noted: He had rivalry with other Roman emperors, such as Pescennius Niger, during the Year of the Five Emperors.

When he was governor of Gaul, he married a Syrian-born Julia Domna, who was also an empress. The two bear two sons; Caracalla and Geta.

Septimius began his progress to become emperor by assassinated the dissolute ruler, Commodus in 192 C.E., but Pertinax immediately succeeded as emperor, which caused an enraged mutiny among the Praetorian Guards, and they assassinated him when he tried to bribe them. Didius Julianus proclaimed emperor when the throne put in auction to the highest bidder who is willing to pay the supporting of the Praetorian Guards. The Roman population was not happy at this scandalous affair, which eventually emerged an open challenge to Julianus's rule by three candidates. In this case, this started the Year of the Five Emperors.

In 195 C.E., Septimius gone to war with the Parthian Empire and claimed victory when conquered northern Mesopotamia.

While constructing his hometown Leptis Magna in Libya, the Roman frontier was attacked by Berber tribe, Garamantes. So, Septimius launched a campaign in northwestern Africa against them, drove them deep into the rural desert as he captured their capital. He also expanded more frontiers at that region.

Here is something interesting. While there are some resources of scholars concerning diversity in history and ancient civilization, especially when it comes to describing someone's physical appearance, there are some sources that Septimius Severus had a dark skin complexion. Some scholars denied his appearance even though there are unhidden facts that he could be a brownish skinned man. I, myself, can confirm that his complexion is dark, but not as dark as the color black. I can describe that his skin tone as the color of some furniture made of wood or describing what kind of shade his appearance is. I wouldn't know, honestly, nobody could be certain consider that he has mixed ancestry of Punic and Roman Italian. Let's get to the point. According to Historia Augusta, while Septimus expecting the construction progress of the wall of Luguvallum in Britain, he met an Ethiopian jester. He angrily ordered his men to remove from his sight. Septimius was probably disgusted by his garland fashion. The Ethiopian replied to him, by the way of jest, saying "You have been all things,​ you have conquered all things, now, O conqueror, be a god."

Here is something when it gets weird, when arriving in a town, he wished to perform a sacrifice as he is misunderstood on part of the rustic soothsayer, he was taken into the temple of Bellona, and, at other places, the victims were black. Septimus was disgusted at this, so he left and returned to the palace. He had the black victims be part of the attendants, followed him to the very doors, despite, however, he didn't care. You can read this part here, on passage 22.

Well, that's it for Septimus Severus, let's look up more persons.

John II Komnenos, (C.E. 1087-1143), emperor of the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire), son of Alexios I Komnenos and Irene Doukaina. His nickname: "the Handsome".

Here is some source of my research according to this:

John's nickname of "the handsome" and his general character is explained as follows by the historian J. J. Norwich: "Even his admirers admitted that he was physically ill-favoured, with hair and complexion so dark that he was known as 'the Moor'. He had, however, another nickname too: Kaloiannis, 'John the Beautiful'. This was not intended ironically; it referred not to his body, but to his soul. Levity he hated: luxury he frowned upon. Today most of us would find him an insufferable companion; in twelfth-century Byzantium he was loved. First of all, he was no hypocrite. He was genuine, his integrity complete. Second, there was a gentle, merciful side to his nature that in his day was rare indeed. He was generous, too: no Emperor ever dispensed charity with a more lavish hand." (266-7)

You can read these informations here.

Manuel I Komnenos (C.E. 1118-1180), son of John II Komnenos and ruled the Byzantine Empire after his father.

In case you're wondering that woman on the right picture is his wife, Maria of Antioch.

As most people already knew that there were black people southern parts of Europe in the medieval era as there were in Ancient Greece and Rome, there should be evidence like archaeological material things that they contributed like every civilization in the world. If there are some ruins left over there, there should be written manuscripts and paintings on walls and vases. There should be some portrait paintings still laying in very old abandoned houses or castles. In this case, you would also find some Moorheads on the knight shields, flags, and on signs hanging above the entrance of taverns.

According to most historians concerning the medieval history of Spain and Portugal, the moors conquered Hispania in 711 C.E. and was probably the first region that ever conquered by them before Sicily as since these regions are to Northern Africa. Even this historical event is true, most people don’t believe the moors are black. When they think about moors, they think about Arabs and Muslims. Well, they’re right on that part, and I honestly don’t think that all moors are black, even I believe there were black people in medieval Europe, but there were black people among the moors and they could be called black moors. Moorish people could be comprised of multiple people from Northern Africa and Western Asia or Middle East. In the Moorish conquered lands of Europe, the population could be diverse, composed of Gothic tribes of the Germanic people (whom I believe they’re tribe of white people), Arabs, Berbers (Amazigh that they called themselves) Romans, Greeks, Jews, black moors or negroes.

I don’t think black people in the Middle Age never called themselves black, negroes, nor moors, such black is just color, it not a race, nation, or tribe. You should know that not everyone in Africa are not the same people consider it's just a continent. Same thing with Europe, especially in the Roman Empire as there were different ethnicities among this empire; most people there can trace their origin of their kind. Most blacks can trace their origin while some of them don’t. Probably they don't know who they really are. I can conclude that most of them can trace their origins outside being labeled as by other people, most of blacks believed they’re originated from Egypt, Libya, the Phoenicians, Jerusalem, and Arabia.

In what is now called the U.K., there could be most black people settled there. They were probably labeled as Dubh Galls or Black Gentiles by the Danes while the other locals were called Finn Galls or White Gentiles. Dubh Gall also means Dark Stranger in Gaelic, maybe refer to the Danes, but more generally lowlanders. While there were different clans of Vikings, the Danes seems to be the only clan outside the rest of them, to have dark complexion. Most of them might have mixed ancestry of both Finns and Dubhs. The Danes would be labeled as outsiders or strangers as they should be the ones being look upon.

Here is a page mentioning the Danes from the book The Black Foreigners of York and White Foreigners of Dublin by Alfred P. Smyth, part of Saga book of Viking Society, vol. 19:

"In 866 the “Great Army” of Danes crossed the Humber from its base in East Anglia and captured York on the feast of All Saints. Five months later, on 21 March 867, the Danes successfully repulsed a Northumbrian attempt to regain the city. In the battle-rout which ensued the Northumbrians lost both their kings, Osbert and Ælla, and the Danes became the undisputed masters of the kingdom. Contemporary Irish annalists described the Danish assailants at York and the slayers of King Alli, as Dub Gaill or “Black Foreigners”. These Dub Gaill were so called to distinguish them from their fellow vikings and rivals the Finn Gaill or “White Foreigners” – the name applied by Irish chroniclers to the Norwegian invaders who harassed their own shores.

It is clear from other references to Scandinavian activity of the ninth and tenth centuries within Ireland that the “White Foreigners” had a predominantly Norwegian origin, and that their opposite numbers were Danes. We know from the annals that the Finn Gaill had been established in Western Scotland and Ireland before the arrival of their Dub Gaill enemies, and Scandinavian sources, together with archaeological and place-name evidence, make it clear that the earliest settlers in the West were Norsemen. The oldest Irish source which actually equates the “Black Foreigners” with Danes is the twelfth-century War of the Irish with the Scandinavians (Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh) which speaks of “Danish Black Gentiles” (Duibgeinti Danarda) who tried to drive the “White Gentiles” out of Ireland in 851."

There are some hidden mentions of Blacks or their names with the word, in most different languages, black in medieval Scotland such as Kenneth the Niger and James Douglas, who was also called Black Douglas.

"The little knowledge we have is chiefly from Barbour, who tells us he was a youth, ‘bot ane litill page,’ when his father was imprisoned. Barbour has also preserved a word-portrait of his hero. He was, it is said, of commanding stature, well formed, large-boned, and with broad shoulders; his countenance was somewhat dark or swarthy, but frank and and open, set off by locks of sable hue. Courteous in manner, wise in speech, though he spoke with a slight lisp, gentle in all his actions. Terrible in battle, and at all times an enemy to everything treacherous, dishonourable or false."

-The Good Sir James Douglas, k1330 (douglashistory.co.uk)

I thought about add this paragraph for St. Patrick Day, but I'm going to add a link for you to visit this website as I'm going to share my thoughts on this subject. I think most of the Irish or Celts were pale while there are some foreigners living among them, and I think the black people also settled there in Ireland after migrating from neighboring regions such Scotland, and Hispania.

"The term 'Black Irish' has commonly been in circulation among Irish emigrants and their descendants for centuries. As a subject of historical discussion the subject is almost never referred to in Ireland. There are a number of different claims as to the origin of the term, none of which are possible to prove or disprove. 'Black Irish' is often a description of people of Irish origin who had dark features, black hair, dark complexion and eyes."

-Black Irish - Who Were The Black Irish? (ireland-information.com)

Here's my conclusion: As I am fond of world history, but history tend to be hidden. There is truth, mystery, and lies in history as, despite all that, there are hidden evidence and information. As for the blacks or black moors in ancient Europe, I found it interesting as I already knew the origins of so-called black people which it also one of the things that make acknowledge of the world as it made me neutral. Most people believe in lies as they if they rather to live in the world of lies (which it is.). I know I would get some backlash from those who disagree or accuse me of being a bigot. To make this clear, I'm not stealing history and culture from anyone, nor lying in that matter, I just sharing some facts as I did my research. I also posted links containing with information, especially from historians and scholars. I can agree or disagree. I'm not proclaiming that all Europeans were black, even I believe there were blacks living among them. You can do your research on your own, and there are links on this topic. Well, that concluded my topic, and it was hard work but it's probably worth it.

[callsignbaphomet]

[[Kay, so the whole thing seems to fit so no need to link it but I'll still drop the link to the Doc in case it's easier to read there than here.

Link

No TWs needed for this one, at least I don't think so but as always lemma know if there needs to be for something in here.]]

Norway November 17, 880 C.E. 06:07

             Jelani burst through the door while clutching a small bag containing the last of the potions and salves Sanaa ad Loke had made to deliver. While standing at the door he looked around the snow-covered village, at that time the village would be buzzing with the sounds of people greeting each other as they made their way to whatever chores or jobs they had but the village was quiet and mostly empty. It was usually at that time that Jelani would be making his way over to his grandfather to help herding and tending to the sheep but today was a little different. Most of the people in the village had gone to help a village that had been attacked by knights, word of the attack reached them in the north and to help Ingvarr had sent a few of his people to offer aid and protection from further aggression. Most of the houses were empty and there was a silence in the atmosphere that felt almost uneasy. Jelani was used to seeing many people around the village at that time, some going to check on the cattle, others to relieve guards of their post so they could rest, the blacksmiths were on their way to make weapons and armor though most of their time was spent fixing broken or old pieces that held up buildings and houses.

The ten-year-old boy ran towards the stables to see if Loke's horse, Helga, was prepared. To his surprise Helga was ready but neither his brother nor his parents were anywhere near the stables. Jelani looked around but before leaving he reached out to pet the old mare's snout. Helga was the oldest of the mares but the gentlest one. She was used to being patted and scratched by everyone in the village, young and old, her age had granted her a patience that at times felt almost supernatural. Helga stretched her neck and sniffed Jelani's open palm as he stood on his toes to pet her.

“Hello, Helga.” Jelani said in a playful tone as he gently patted Helga's nose.

“There you are, little one!”

A voice boomed excitedly behind Jelani as he was lifted into the air. As he was turned around, he smiled when he saw his grandfather smiling back at him. Haakon gave Jelani a tight hug but before walking away he petted Helga.

“Your parents are looking for you. Why didn't you wait?”

“I'm sorry, papa. I just wanted to see what was taking so long.”

“Oh, you're that excited about the journey?”

“Yes!”

“You're not even a little scared?” Haakon laughed as he walked back to his son's home with his grandson in his arms.

“Uh-uh.” Jelani answered enthusiastically.

Haakon let out a hearty laugh as he hugged his grandson tightly. Truth was he was nervous about letting Jelani go to the village that had been attacked. Knights tended to hang around an area they’ve attacked to wait for allies to show up to provide aid and attack the allies. To make matters worse there was a recent spike in raider activity and these were brazened. There was also the matter of the distance. If it’d been up to Haakon neither of his grandsons would be making the journey to deliver supplies and medicine but Loke insisted, he wanted to help and where one sibling went the other was right next to the other. Ingvarr and Sanaa were sure it was perfectly safe. Loke was a mature, capable and fiercely protective man so neither saw anything wrong with letting their thirty-two-year-old son look after his ten-year-old brother. Haakon trusted Loke to take care of and protect his younger brother but there was an uneasiness stirring within him. As they reached Ingvarr's house Haakon put Jelani down but before he could run off to find his parents Haakon held him back and knelt to look him straight in the eyes.

“Jelani, I need you to listen to me closely, all right?”

Jelani turned and paid attention. Haakon’s tone had turned serious, and he wanted to see why.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, little one. However, this is the first time you’ll be away, so I need you to promise me that you’ll be good, and you’ll listen to your brother, all right? You do everything he tells you to when he tells you to.”

“I will, papa, don't worry.”

Haakon forced a smile on his face, he was worried, and he grew even more so as the uneasiness in his stomach grew. He looked at Jelani up and down as he rested his hands on his small shoulders and afterwards hugged him. He desperately wanted to tell him and Loke not to leave but he had no real excuse to tell them. Telling them not to go off the strength of a bad feeling didn't seem like a good idea. He was probably nervous to see his youngest grandson away for that much time.

“Oh, my sweet, there you are.” Sanaa called out and Jelani ran to his mother and gave her a tight hug. Ingvarr joined his wife and son and Haakon smiled as he looked at them as Loke emerged from the house and picked up and carried Jelani as he hugged his mother.

“Is everything ready?” Haakon asked as he stood straight, the uneasiness in his voice was almost noticeable.

“Yes,” Loke confirmed, “We should start heading out soon. We have a lot of area to cover.”

“Maybe I should go instead of you boys.”

“Father, don't be ridiculous.” Ingvarr interjected as he chuckled. “Your shoulder isn't fully healed yet. You should rest.”

“My shoulder feels fine.”

“Ingvarr's right.” Sanaa said as she walked over to Haakon and placed her hand on his injured shoulder and gave her father-in-law a warm smile. “You should rest. Besides,” she turned to Loke with a wide smile and pride in her face, “Loke is more than capable of handling this and looking after his brother. I wouldn't trust anyone else.”

“Thanks, mother.” Loke sheepishly said as he tried to hide his face by lowering his gaze as well as the enormous smile that quickly formed upon hearing his mother give such high praise.

Haakon, having given up on trying to stop his grandsons from making the journey to the village, hugged Loke and whispered something in his ear. Loke seemed confused by the words his grandfather uttered but nevertheless he nodded and returned the hug. The old berserker then turned to Jelani who was still in Loke's arms and reminded him of what he’d asked of him earlier. Jelani nodded enthusiastically.

Loke and Jelani said their goodbyes and made their way to Loke’s horse who was ready with their supplies and the supplies Sanaa had prepared for the village. Loke mounted the old mare first and got settled comfortably and then reached down so Jelani could grab hold of Loke’s arm and once he had a good grip Loke lifted his little brother and sat him in front of him as he knew Jelani liked holding onto the reins.

Both set off and headed south. Loke figured it would take them an hour and a half to reach the southernmost part of the island where they’d have to cross into the mainland, the stretch of water was less than a mile wide but usually there were boats in the area that frequently offered passage to others into the mainland so crossing with Helga and the supplies wouldn't be much of a problem. From there it would take them roughly eighteen to twenty hours to reach the village.

The journey to the shore was pleasant. Both siblings got along wonderfully and neither ceased to amuse the other. Despite their twenty-two-year gap both often found plenty of common ground and often spent hours talking. The hour and a half it took to reach the point to cross into the mainland was spent talking about Loke, Ingvarr, Sanaa and Jørgen’s latest brush with slayers that had made their way onto the island and had threatened a small village of werewolves. The four of them managed to repel the slayers before they could do any real harm. Dealing with slayers was like dealing with raiders and bandits, they had no real organization, lacked any real discipline, were mostly opportunistic cowards that heavily relied on the element of surprise and most of the time they were very unprepared. The only thing that drove them was their hate for anything that wasn't human or humans who mingled with non-humans. Aside from that they weren't a real threat. However, something within their ranks was happening. Stronger, bolder, skilled and organized numbers were appearing amongst the slayers. Survivors of their attacks heard slayers refer to these individuals as knights. They were better equipped, knew how to fight and were organized, every move they made was deliberate and calculated. The same hate that invigorated slayers drove knights but unlike slayers knights were observed using magic and other tools slayers deemed corrupt or sinful yet they banded together. Rumors of a group led by knights and backed by slayers had been circulating for about a year, but it looked like the rumors were true. Loke would be lying to himself if he didn't say he felt some level of worry over these knights. They seemed like a threat and the fact that they managed to snake their way into the mainland meant it was only a matter of time before they would find their way onto the island and set their sights on their village. He kept his worries to himself though, there was no need to worry his brother about potential future attacks. He wanted this small journey to be about both of them, he wanted his little brother to have some fun on his first excursion away from their family.

As they reached the shoreline Loke stopped the old mare and dismounted when he saw a group of armed men trying to push back a small boat with elderly people, children, what looked like injured men and women, and a middle-aged woman in it. The woman seemed angry while the elders looked to be a mix of worried, frightened and slightly ashamed.

“Stay here.” Loke said as he looked at the crowd.

“What are they doing?” Jelani asked as he observed the crowd with a bit of caution.

“I’ll find out.”

Loke made his way to the men and the boat. He could hear both parties arguing about trying to gain entry to the island and the other denying them passage. Loke looked to the oldest of the armed men and immediately recognized him, he was a disheveled, scarred old man in his seventies, with hair as white as snow and gray strands between, he had a long unkempt beard and a dead right eye. His body language was as foul as the words he spat at the people in the boat.

“Alvíss? What's going on?” Loke asked as he approached the crowd.

“They're trying to get into the island, and we keep telling them they have to go find shelter elsewhere.”

“Why?”

“Are you blind and deaf, boy?” Alvíss asked with a bitterness in his tone that Loke did not appreciate. “Knights attacked the mainland. Three villages are gone, and five others are barely standing as it is. Now mainlanders want to come to the island supposedly seeking refuge.”

“We are!” The middle-aged woman screeched as her frustration boiled over. “This? This is all that survived an attack by those knights! We're just trying to find a safe place to rest and catch our breath.”

“And how do we know you're not knights trying to attack us?” Alvíss retorted.

“Because you all would have been dead by now.” Loke responded. “If they were knights, they would’ve come prepared and armed. They would’ve easily run you all through and tossed your carcasses aside and kept walking. Now tell your men to stand down! This is absurd! These are scared and injured people, there's children and elderly in that boat, not knights!”

Alvíss’s men lessened their grips on their weapons and looked back and forth between Alvíss and the boat as if waiting for Alvíss to give word on what to do. Loke was right, knights were ruthless and didn't resort to undercover tactics to gain entry into places. Once they had a target in their sights, they usually walked up to it and set it on fire regardless of who was in it. Alvíss was terrified, he wasn't going to admit it, but he was terrified of these knights. He was a human living alongside non-humans and that alone was grounds for knights to execute him as if he were a werewolf or a vampire or any other non-human. He looked back at his men and saw their demeanor lessen, their weapons were mostly down so he sighed heavily and ordered them to keep them down.

“So be it…but these mainlanders are not welcome in our village.”

Loke shook his head in disappointment as he walked past Alvíss and helped the woman pull the boat to shore. He helped the people onboard get off the boat safely as most were either old, injured or small children. Once they were all safely off the boat Loke walked over to Jelani and grabbed his own supplies he had in a bag, patted Jelani on the head while smiling at him and walked back to the group. He handed his supplies to the woman and pointed towards his and Jelani's village.

“Follow the shoreline north and once you reach several ships and boats docked on the shore turn inland to the east. My village is there. On foot it should take you about two hours to reach it. For the sick and injured among you, find my mother, Sanaa, she can help. For everything else ask for my father, Ingvarr, he’s the chieftain. There's some food and water in the bag as well as a bit of salve in case you need any along the way. I promise, you won't be turned away.”

“Have you gone mad, boy?” Alvíss interjected as he pulled on Loke's shoulder to turn him around to make him face him. “What if the knights that attacked them are following them? You’d lead straight to your people. To your family!”

“They're more than welcome to try. We're well over three hundred berserkers, over eighty werewolves of all breeds, over twenty vampires of almost all ranks, realm jumpers, daefiernos of all kinds, dozens of some of the hardiest humans you’d never want to come across, and the most powerful arcanist berserker the world ever saw. I like our chances.” Loke finished his sentence with a mischievous smile that formed as he boasted about the people of his village Alvíss so quickly deemed in danger. However, as he continued to look at Alvíss his smile and expression turned bitter as his next words were coated with venom. “Unlike some people we never turn away those who need help.”

Loke watched as Alvíss, and his men retreated from the area. He was sure they’d return to harass other mainlanders trying to find refuge from the attacks but there was nothing he could do at the moment. His main priorities were to take care of his brother and deliver the supplies to the village. After watching the men leave Loke turned to the woman and the rest of the refugees with a softer stance and expression.

“I’m sorry about Alvíss, he shouldn't have been doing this. My brother and I can escort you back if you need. We only have one horse but–”

 “Believe me, you’ve done more than enough, and we can manage. We’ve made it this far; we’ll make it to your village. Thank you.”

Loke and Jelani watched the small group march on. He felt horrible about not escorting them himself to make sure they made it to the village safely, but he also had the supplies his mother put together for the survivors of the village he and Jelani were traveling to. With a little prayer to the stars for the group's safety he turned to Jelani and helped him off the old mare. Both got Helga into one of the boats and Loke rowed them across the water. Jelani offered to help but Loke entrusted him to keep an eye on Helga even though the mare was unnaturally calm. It would take a serious cataclysmic event to rattle that old mare and even then, some believed nothing could. Once on the other side the boys made sure to tie off the boat once they got Helga out of it. They mounted up and continued on their way south to the village.

“Why did Alvíss try to stop the mainlanders from coming to the island?”

“He's just afraid, little one.”

“Of what? They didn't look like a threat.”

“They're not but…sometimes people get scared and act irrationally. Some even turn hostile like Alvíss did. It's alright to be scared but just make sure your fears never cloud your judgment. Do you remember that werewolf that lost control of himself during a full moon?”

“Aye.” Jelani recalled the incident. The werewolf in question had lost his charm after a fight with a bear he fought off his land. When he couldn't find the charm, he resorted to locking himself in his home that night but he somehow broke free and found his way into the village looking for prey.

“Father, Uncle, Grandfather, and I were afraid when we confronted him. It could've been so much easier to drive a silver blade through him and then bury him in the morning, but we knew better so we restrained him ourselves until dawn. Just because we were scared it didn't mean we were going to turn our backs on someone that needed help. It wasn't his fault.”

Jelani remembered how scared Sanaa was that night. Her husband and her eldest son were pinning and holding down an out-of-control werewolf during a full moon. Few living beings could go hand to hand with a werewolf yet the four of them dared to in order to save the lives of the people in the village and the werewolf's life. They’d spent a few hours wrestling the beast to the ground and once they did, they piled up on him to keep him from attacking anyone else. It hadn't been easy but over one thousand five hundred pounds of near unbreakable armor and muscle kept the werewolf in place until the rising sun ended his thrashing. The man was remorseful and ashamed for having caused so much trouble, but he was grateful none of them resorted to hurting or killing him. Loke walked away with a lot of bruises and a few open wounds that bled profusely but Sanaa quickly took care of them. Loke held no grudge against the man, he was just glad no one was hurt.

“You didn't look scared that night.”

“I was terrified. All I kept thinking was that I needed to keep him from reaching Mother and you. Yes, I was injured a little, but no one was hurt, not exactly. Sometimes doing the right will frighten you but you just have to push through it. All right?”

“Yes.” Jelani giggled as Loke tickled him.

The boys kept riding south and did not stop or slow down. With Loke's supplies in the hands of the refugees there was less food for them, but Loke figured he'd hunt down a rabbit or some other small game to make dinner after setting up a camp for the night.

They rode for hours until Loke figured they had an hour before the sun would set. He looked for a comfortable spot and once he found one, he tasked Jelani with starting a fire while Loke hunted down a rabbit for both. Before leaving Loke told Jelani not to leave the camp as neither of them were very familiar with the area and he could easily get lost. Once Loke headed into the woods Jelani got to work on building the fire, he’d done it several times. He knew how to arrange the wood and how to start the fire as well as how to keep it roaring. When he finished, he walked over to Helga and retrieved his bag and removed two apples, he gave one to Helga who happily ate the apple and the other he cut in half. One half for him and the other for Loke.

Jelani sat by the fire and patiently waited for his brother to return. Out of boredom he pulled at some of the grass counting each blade of grass he pulled out when suddenly he heard a noise in the distance. Both he and Helga looked up to where the sound came from but there was nothing between the trees. The forest fell silent again, no animals could be heard, much less insects and it worried Jelani. He turned to Helga and saw the old mare’s ear swishing back and forth as if trying to pinpoint the location of something that was unnerving her. As soon as he stood up to comfort her the sound erupted from deep in the forest. This time Helga’s ears were pointed back, and Jelani could see the whites of her eyes as she stared in the direction of the sound. He had no idea what it could be. He turned to Helga and calmed her down, it must’ve been something serious as Helga wasn't known for being easily startled. As he soothed the horse, they both heard the sound again, only this time it sounded louder and this time it really scared him.

“Loki?” Jelani called out of instinct. Whenever he felt frightened or was in pain the person he always called out to was his brother.

“Loki!”

No answer. The forest fell quiet again and fear began to stir in the pit of his stomach. A thought then crossed his mind that chilled his bones. What if the sound was his brother screaming? What if his brother was in danger or was hurt? Jelani rushed to his bag and retrieved a small blade and then made sure Helga’s reins were secure, once he did, he ran in the direction of the sound.

As he ran through the forest, he called out to his brother but there was no answer. As he ran around, he listened carefully in case he heard the sound again but after a few minutes he’d gotten turned around and was now lost. He couldn't tell which direction the sound had come from or where their camp was.

“Looookiiiiiiii!”

Fear and desperation were clawing at him as he quickly looked around for any signs of familiarity. He was so far from the camp he couldn't even see the fire he’d started. As he inhaled to yell out for his brother again, he heard the sound coming from behind him but this time it sounded clearer and louder. It sounded like a strange scream, it felt almost inhuman to some degree. Jelani had no choice but to follow the sound and hope that whatever was making that sound wasn't hostile or in danger.

Jelani kept walking in the direction of the sound and soon came across a large clearing and what was once a camp in the middle of it. The grass and shrubs were black, and the smell of smoke was still in the air though faint. Items, clothes, weapons, vegetables, firewood and other items were thrown about either completely burned or half burned, what hadn't caught fire was broken and some other items were thrown about. He looked around carefully as he debated whether he should explore the area or go back to camp. Curiosity won out in the end, so he slowly made his way into the rundown camp to see what was making that unsettling sound. As he got closer to the middle of the camp he noticed several sheep carcasses along with what appeared to be two cats and five dogs. All the animals had been burned but one of the dogs had been decapitated. Jelani stared at the corpses of the animals and felt sick. He wondered what these animals could have possibly done to incur such violence, especially that one particular dog. With a heavy sigh Jelani continued on his way to see if there were any people in the camp.

As he made his way through the rubble, he found a pile of clothes on top of a haystack. The clothes were vibrant in color and looked clean and unaffected by the fire. He grabbed a tunic from the pile, it was much too small for him meaning that at one point there had been small children in the camp. When he set the tunic back down, he noticed a toy next to the pile. It was a wooden toy carved in the shape of a dog sitting on its hind legs with the front paws up to its chest as if begging. The curly tail was pinned to the back and in its mouth were several flowers. The toy was around three inches tall, the finish was smooth, especially with the paint, it was colored black with gray details. The toy resembled Haakon’s dog. Jelani knew taking it without knowing who the owner was would be wrong, but the state of the camp seemed to indicate that something terrible had happened, so he grabbed the toy and moved on.

He kept walking forward and a horrible stench hit him hard enough to cause him to cover his nose. There was the smell of smoke but something else he’d never smelled before; it was rancid and had a strange undertone he couldn't identify. As he walked forward the smell got stronger which caused him to gag but he tried his best not to throw up. It’d been a few minutes since he heard the strange sound and part of him was glad, but another part was worried.

A few feet from the camp Jelani came across a pile of horribly burned items, the smell seemed to be emanating from that pile. As he walked towards it a trio of wolves stuck their heads up and stared at Jelani. In turn Jelani froze out of fear and as he stared at them, they stared back. Each of their faces was covered in blood and gore and while two of them backed away and proceeded to run away the third one bared its teeth and snarled at Jelani for a few seconds before running away. Once the wolves had run off Jelani exhaled but as soon as he focused on the pile he began to shudder. The pile was composed of badly burnt bodies and at the top where the wolves were was a person looking right at him. Due to the extent of the injuries it was hard to tell if it was a woman, a man or other. He swallowed hard as the person weakly stretched their arm towards him and uttered in a gravelly voice, “Help…”

It was the sound he’d been hearing the entire time. Jelani clutched the toy close to his chest as he whimpered and backed away from the pile of bodies though he couldn't stop staring at them. As he backed up he was grabbed and picked up while his eyes were covered. He cried and thrashed due to the fright of being surprised as well as seeing such a horrific sight.

“I told you to stay at camp! Why did you leave?!” It was Loke who picked him up. He hugged him tightly while keeping his face close to his chest so he wouldn't look at the pile of bodies. Loke stared in horror at the sight before him. Body after body crudely thrown on top of the other, some had been mutilated, others were missing limbs, the state they were in was so gruesome he couldn’t tell what he was staring at. As he continued to look at the horrible spectacle he noticed several of the bodies belonged to children in the same state as the adults and he shuddered as he tightened his grip on his little brother.

“I’m sorry, Loki, I’m sorry!” Jelani cried.

“Are you hurt? Are you alright?” Loke frantically asked as he put him down making sure his back was to the bodies and checked him for any injuries.

“I’m–I’m alright.” He stuttered as he cried.

“You cannot just run off without me, Jelani. It's dangerous out here.” Loke wiped away Jelani's tears and picked him back up. He quickly turned and headed back to the camp, he wasn’t sure if the people responsible for that massacre were still in the area and he didn’t want to risk his brother especially after seeing that the people responsible for such a horrific act didn’t seem to care if children were involved.

As Loke rushed back to the camp Jelani wrapped both arms around his brother's neck and buried his face between his neck and shoulder to avoid looking at anything. The image of that badly burnt person stretching their arm out towards him asking for help kept replaying in his mind over and over again. He wasn’t sure how long it would haunt him, but he wanted to avoid seeing anything else that was just as gruesome or worse. Back at camp Loke sat him down close to the fire and wrapped a blanket around him to keep him warm. As day turned to night the temperature dropped significantly and Loke wanted to make sure Jelani was both safe and warm. As they ate Loke noticed Jelani picked at the food and barely said a word, after Jelani ate the little bit that he did Loke noticed the toy Jelani was keeping close to him. He sat next to his little brother and brushed his hair back to get a better look at his face. Jelani looked up at him with a concerned look on his face that made Loke upset.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Are we in danger?”

“No, we're not.”

“That camp back there, there were children in it, and I saw them in the pile and there was this one person yelling for help while wolves ate them alive. They were all burned and…” Jelani paused as he tried to find the words to describe what he saw and what he currently felt. He was afraid not only for himself, his family and his village but for others as well. These knights everyone was talking about frightened him in a way no other things did. It scared him as much as seeing his older brother try to keep an out-of-control werewolf pinned to the ground while he bit him. The one thing he remembers vividly from that night was Sanaa's worried face and the blood pouring from Loke's wounds. “What if we run into them? Those people that did that to them?”

“We won't. We’ll head out at daybreak and before you know it we’ll be at the village. We're only three hours away from this point.”

“What if they find us while we sleep?”

“I’ll keep watch, little one.”

“All night? That's not fair, I’ll stay up with you.”

“No. You need to sleep.”

“But–”

“I’ll sleep when we get to the village. It’ll be alright, I promise.”

Jelani snuggled up to Loke's side, rested his head on his lap and sighed contently as he pulled the blanket over his shoulders and grasped the toy he took from the camp. He pretended to be asleep at first as he still believed it was unfair that he would get to sleep but Loke couldn't so he could keep watch over both but after a few minutes he fell asleep on Loke.

After Jelani fell asleep Loke relaxed a little and wrapped a blanket around himself. He smiled as he looked at Jelani and gently placed his right hand around him as his blanket covered the upper part of his body. Loke then looked to Helga to make sure the old mare was alright and after looking at her for a few minutes and seeing the old girl relaxed Loke felt as Jelani hugged his right arm in his sleep. A smile formed on Loke’s face as he looked at his sleeping younger brother and he suddenly found himself fighting off the urge to grab him and hug him. He gently caressed him with his thumb and then looked up at the night sky. Thousands of shimmering stars were spread across the sky and his mind drifted to the stories his mother would tell of her people, the Nyota. Stories of warriors whose blood had starlight embedded into it, whose lustrous skin and eyes were adorned with stardust, who wielded power beyond anything anyone could ever imagine. Stories of their culture, of their practices, divine secrets, festivals and celebrations all centered around the very cosmos. To him it sounded exquisitely beautiful. As he continued to look up at the night sky and focused on the space between the stars, that space that seemed to swallow all light, he saw a faint glimmer sliding across the sky and let out a quiet gasp as he continued to stare in awe. According to his mother, her people looked to four goddesses made from the very cosmos itself for guidance, three of them: Aberash, Nuru, and Berhane were said to live among the Nyota. However, there was a fourth goddess that lent her wisdom and guidance though she did so from far away. Nomathemba is said to live in space circling the planet. It is said that if she were to stop circling the planet for even one second a horrific terror beyond the scope of understanding would find something hidden on Earth and would come after it. Nomathemba herself chose to act as a guardian in the hopes of staving off a disaster from which nothing could possibly survive so she continuously circles the Earth until she is sure the threat has been neutralized or until existence is somehow halted. It’s said that her size is so massive that if she were to ever come down from space in her true form she would envelop the Earth five times over. Whenever she was seen among the Nyota it was only ever a projection of herself. However, she could constantly be seen in the spaces between the stars. Once you knew what to look for, beautiful faint colors reflecting off her impossible hues, the subtle glimmers across the sky signified her protective presence.

Of all the stories his mother told them, Nomathemba stuck out the most to Loke. A being of immense power chose to spend eternity protecting an entire planet full of people and creatures who most likely don’t even know she exists and even if her presence was to ever be revealed to the world he was sure there would be several people who would disrespect her as people tend to do to things they can’t seem to understand. That selflessness alone earned her his admiration and appreciation as well as a type of devotion. Ever since he first heard of her when he was a boy she inspired him to protect those he loved and those he didn’t that needed help, not for glory or reverence but because it’s the right thing to do even if it’s a difficult task.

The night passed by with an odd tranquility that Loke was grateful for and once the sun began to rise over the horizon he sighed happily and looked down to see Jelani still asleep next to him. He was aware he said they’d get a move on at daybreak but as he watched his little brother sleep he felt a bit guilty about waking him up so early though between the two of them Jelani was the one that was always awake before him, in fact, he was almost always awake before most of the village.

“Is it morning yet?”

Loke was caught off guard and looked down to see Jelani sitting up and rubbing his eyes as he yawned. He couldn’t help but chuckle and give him a pat on the head that ended in a gentle scratch.

“Aye.” Loke answered. “Did you sleep well?”

“I did.” Jelani smiled but just as quickly as his smile appeared it turned into a concerned frown as he remembered that Loke had volunteered to stay awake all night long just in case. “What about you? Were you awake all night?”

“Yes, but it’s alright, little one, I’ll get some sleep tonight in the village.” Loke smiled at Jelani to reassure him that he was indeed alright despite having spent the entire night awake. Jelani stared back with doubt and a concerned look on his face, but Loke gave him a kiss on the forehead and said, “I promise, now go wash up while I gather our things, then we’ll eat breakfast and head to the village. If the weather is favorable, we should be there in three to four hours.”

Jelani nodded happily and went to grab a few items from his bag. As they rode through the area yesterday they noticed a small creek which is mainly why Loke chose the spot to make camp and spend the night. Once he had the items he needed he grabbed a bright red apple and fed it to Helga.

“Jelani?” Loke spoke up so Jelani turned to look at his older brother who was folding the blankets, “Wash up and come right back. Please, don’t wander off.”

“I won’t.” Jelani responded as ran off to find the creek.

“Is he your son?” Loke was startled enough to drop the blanket. He turned around to look at the source of the voice. A pale woman a few years older than Loke idly stood behind him. Her curly dark brown hair was loosely tied, and she wore furs adequate for the current temperature, her faintly red lips housed a smile though her dark gray eyes seemed off to him. Her posture and stance seemed friendly and Loke didn’t see a weapon of any kind on her but a strange feeling overcame him, so he looked at her cautiously.

“No, he’s my little brother.”

“Oh,” The woman’s smile widened, “he’s beautiful.”

“Yes, he is. Can I help you?”

“Mmm, no, I’m just passing through.”

Loke noticed the woman avoided looking at him directly and instead kept looking in the direction that Jelani had taken off to and every hair on his body stood on end. He moved himself to stand directly in front of the woman though he put enough space between them in order to gain a start in case he had to run to his brother or to maneuver in case she drew a concealed weapon.

“Are you traveling by yourself?”

“Yes, I am.”

Every single one of Loke’s senses were on high alert. The woman’s behavior seemed odd. She kept her answers to his questions brief and vague and while there was nothing wrong with that this entire scenario felt dangerous to him. Natives to the area were aware that the area they currently found themselves in had no nearby villages, the nearest one was three to four hours to the southeast and the closest one to that one was two hours away to the northeast. No matter where she was going she had a lot of ground to cover and Loke noticed a lack of supplies on her, no bags, no equipment, and no horse either. There was also the matter of her accent, it felt forced, like she wasn’t a native speaker of the language. Loke was well aware that depending on where in the country you found yourself in your accent would differ. His and Jelani’s accents were from those that lived in the north of the country, specifically the northern islands dotting the mainland. Those that lived in the middle parts of the mainland had a different accent and those that lived in the southernmost regions had another type of accent. Loke had heard all and was familiar with them all yet he couldn’t place hers. While a person’s accent seemed like a silly and trivial thing to worry about everything about the situation he currently found himself in didn’t seem trivial much less silly. As she averted her eyes to look to where Jelani was once again he moved to block her view.

“Where are you headed to?”

“Visiting old friends.”

“Really? Where are these friends?”

The woman didn’t answer this time, she just stared at Loke and widened her smile, yet her eyes were demonstrating an entirely different emotion, as her body tensed up her eyes intensified with what Loke could tell was annoyance. Loke had a particular talent for reading body language, facial expressions and being able to tell when someone was lying, and he was damn good at it too. The only person he told about this talent was his mother. 

“Loki?”

At the sound of Jelani’s voice the tension in the air dissipated. Jelani hurried over to Loke when he saw the woman and stood close enough to grab onto his leg. This was something he often did to silently let his brother know he was either scared, uncomfortable, in some type of pain, or to let him know he needed him. Jelani had walked back to camp silently and stood still when he saw his brother and the woman talking. Even Jelani could sense that something was wrong by Loke’s serious tone so he quickly made his way to safety, his brother. Loke in turn placed his hand on Jelani’s right shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze to let him know he was acknowledging him while keeping his eyes on the woman. In turn the woman eased her tension, looked down at Jelani and smiled as she crouched down to get a better look at him.

“Hello.” she said in a loud and friendly voice. “So, what is your name?”

“It’s probably best if you continue passing through. We wouldn’t want to delay you any further.” Loke intervened, before the woman could continue to ask Jelani questions he pulled him behind him to shield him from the woman and forced her to focus on him instead of his brother. Now that Jelani had returned from the creek he dismissed the woman. He hadn’t done so before because he wanted to make sure Jelani was with him instead of at the creek where the woman would be able to do anything without Loke knowing.

“I’m in no hurry to get to where I’m headed.”

“Good-bye.” Loke’s tone was beginning to turn harsh, and the woman picked up on that and so did Jelani who tightened his grip on Loke’s leg out of fear. The woman stood back up and without saying a word she left making her way north. Loke kept an eye on her until the forest obscured his view of her and he was sure she was gone, then Loke grabbed Jelani’s hand and walked him over to Helga and sat him on the mare, he quickly put the supplies Sanaa had made on Helga and walked to the front and handed Jelani the reins.

“Who was she?”

“I don’t know. Stay on Helga, if I tell you to run you ride to the village.”

“What about you?!” Jelani yelled out in concern.

“I’ll catch up. You keep riding southeast and you do not stop for any reason. Understood?”

“Yes…” Jelani quietly agreed as he lowered his gaze to hide the tears forming on the corner of his eyes. Loke slowed down when he realized Jelani was frightened and hugged him. “I’m scared.”

“Don’t be. I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you, you know that right?”

“What if something bad happens to you?”

“Nothing bad will happen to either of us.”

Loke wiped away Jelani’s tears and smiled at him. What he really wanted to say was that he preferred something bad to happen to him rather than it to happen to Jelani. From the very night he was born Loke was determined to take care of his brother and shield him from everything that would mean him any harm even if it meant using himself as the shield. He would gladly forfeit his own life if it meant sparing Jelani’s. Of course, a scared ten-year-old boy wouldn’t want to hear that, so he comforted him. After Jelani stopped crying Loke grabbed their belongings and hurriedly put them away and put them on the mare. This took a total of ten minutes and then he made sure the fire they had was safely snuffed out to avoid creating a fire in the forest. Once Loke was sure everything was packed and ready he hopped up on the mare and the three of them left the area and rode southeast to get to the village.

After a while Jelani calmed down enough to start laughing and talking. With the strange woman appearing out of nowhere and interrupting their morning neither sibling was able to eat breakfast so along the way Loke grabbed one of the bags and took out some fruits, mostly berries and such, for them to eat. After about an hour and twenty-four minutes of riding through the thick snow-covered forest Helga suddenly stopped in her tracks, Loke urged her to continue but the old mare’s ears twitched in all directions and subtly moved her body from side to side. She heard or smelled something that was making her very nervous. Both siblings looked around for whatever was causing Helga so much distress but neither of them saw or heard anything. As a precaution Loke tried to conjure his axe though he found he couldn’t, something was preventing him from conjuring the axe and as he kept trying he kept looking around.

“What’s happening?” Jelani asked nervously.

“I’m not sure, little one.” Loke said as he kept his left hand extended to try and conjure the axe and wrapped his right arm around Jelani.

All of a sudden Helga let out a loud scream and took off startling both siblings. As she ran Jelani, who had the reins, tried to regain control of the old mare and pulled on the reins as hard as he could to make Helga stop but she wouldn’t. Meanwhile Loke tried his best to hold on to Jelani so he wouldn’t fall off Helga as she ran through the forest as fast as her legs could carry her. As Loke held on to Jelani he looked up in time to see a tight rope being pulled and as a last-minute reaction he pushed Jelani down and tried to lower himself, but he hadn’t been quick enough. The rope missed Helga and Jelani, but Loke wasn’t as fortunate, he slammed into the rope around the chest area and was forcefully knocked off the horse and hit the ground hard on his back. The hit and the slam were hard enough to knock the air out of his lungs so as soon as he was able to breathe in he began to cough uncontrollably while trying to sit up. When Loke regained a little bit of control over his coughing a large and older man walked up to him and slammed his foot on Loke’s chest forcing him back to the ground.

“Do not move!” Another man yelled as he aimed a bow and arrow directly at Loke’s face. Next to that man was another one aiming a short bastard sword at his chest while the man pinning him down gave Loke a sinister smile.

“We’ll deal with this one and then we’ll find the boy.”

As the three men looked at each other Loke had reached for a blade he always kept with him as a backup. Once he had a good grip on it, he stabbed the man aiming an arrow at his face in the foot and as he yelled he slashed at the man holding the sword and cut him just above the knee. As the two men recoiled the third one lifted his foot off Loke, so he quickly stood up and squared off. The man looked on in confusion until he looked at Loke’s hand and saw a knife in his hands and smiled again.

“Clever. Not many of your kind carry man-made weapons. Why bother when you can conjure them with your trickery?”

Loke starred the man down, he knew what he was without needing to announce himself to him. His furs were soaked in what Loke could only guess was werewolf blood, the necklace of fangs around his neck were fangs that once belonged to vampires and the claws decorating his gauntlets were that of various other non-human creatures. They particularly hated berserkers because they couldn’t take any prizes off them. Once a berserker was dead their armor and weapons vanished back to wherever it was that they resided in until they were conjured. There was also the fact that berserkers were well over eight feet tall with massive pieces of armor and colossal weapons. No matter how strong slayers were they’d never be able to carry or wear berserker armor and weapons. Slayers loved to adorn themselves with the body parts of their victims, but these slayers were smart. Loke noticed several small dampening stones among their adornments, which is why he wasn’t able to conjure his weapons or his armor.

The man with the sword had recovered and let out a furious roar as he ran towards Loke with his sword held high to most likely swing sideways to cut him across the body. As the man swung his sword Loke dodged it as the sword clumsily missed him though it was still a little too close for comfort. As the sword slammed into the ground Loke turned his upper body and as the man, who had bent over slightly as his full weight had been used on the swing of his sword, was starting to raise himself back up Loke plunged his knife into the back of the man’s head instantly killing him. Without wasting time Loke removed the knife and turned to face the archer who had taken aim at him. As Loke threw the knife the man fired his arrow. Both projectiles quickly flew towards their intended targets. Loke’s knife dug into the archer’s left cheek while the archer’s arrow hit Loke on his right arm. The arrow cut him deeply but at least it hadn’t gone through his arm, however, the cut in his arm was bleeding profusely and he began to panic. Loke was what several people in the village called a “bleeder”, any significant injuries led to him bleeding in an almost out of control manner. When he was eight years old, he nearly died from a horrible gash he acquired from an accident while he practiced some sword fighting techniques with some of the other boys. Had it not been for his mother’s quick actions and knowledge Loke would’ve died that day.

Loke inhaled and shook his head. He didn’t have time to worry about a cut in his arm, he needed to get to Jelani in case there were more slayers in the area, there usually were. They were known to kill non-humans of any age without prejudice, so he needed to stop them from harming his brother. As he took a step forward the third man turned him around and ran his bastard sword made of silver through Loke. The cold blade had passed through him from underneath his sternum and exited out the back missing his spine by a few inches. Loke took painful and shuddering breaths as he looked at the slayer with a pained and almost angry look on his face, in turn the slayer couldn’t help but smile as he slowly pulled the blade out. The pain was so intense that Loke had lost his balance and was collapsing to the ground, but the slayer held him up as he continued to watch him struggle. Loke gathered his strength and in one swift move he head butted the slayer in the face breaking his nose in the process, as the slayer recoiled, and the wound caused his eyes to tear up Loke used the opportunity to fall on him and punched him as hard as he could for as long as he could. After he was losing his strength due to blood loss Loke stood up and walked in the direction where he’d seen Helga run off to. The more he walked the weaker he got but he willed himself to keep going at least until he could find Jelani.

After a few minutes Loke fell on his knees and hunched over as he coughed. He pressed his right hand against the stab wound and looked at his hand to see it covered in blood, he then looked down to see an alarming amount of it all over himself. He pressed his hand on the wound again, the pain caused him to shudder loudly and hang his head. He tried hard to stand back up but found it difficult.

“Loki!”

At the sound of his name being called Loke looked up and saw Jelani riding over to him and panic began to swell within him. He tried to stand but the pain was unbearable and to make it worse he felt weak and dizzy.

“Run…” Was all he could say as he hunched over and tried to hold himself up with his left arm as he clutched his chest with his right arm.

“Loki?!” Jelani cried out with concern in his voice as he stopped Helga and dismounted. Due to the mare’s size and his stature Jelani fell to the ground but quickly stood back up and ran to his brother. He fell on his knees as he held onto Loke and looked with absolute horror and fear at the amount of blood on him.

“Why did you come back?” Loke asked.

“To find you.” Jelani said as he grabbed Loke’s left arm and began to pull on it. “We have to go before they find us!”

“Listen–listen to me. Listen to me.” Loke stuttered between breaths. He forced himself to sit up and placed his left hand on Jelani’s cheek. “Get on the horse and run, you run, and you don’t stop or look back no matter what you hear.”

“All right, I’ll help you get to Helga, and we’ll go.”

“No! Je–no, Jelani, you have to leave me here. I’ll hold them back and you run and get to the village.”

 “What?! No, I’m not leaving you here!” Jelani began to cry as he tightly hugged Loke who in turn hugged him back.

“You have to, little one. Either way I won’t make it to sundown, but I can at least hold them back so that you can.”

“No, don’t say that!”

“I promised that nothing would ever harm you and I intend to keep that promise until my last dying breath.”

“Please don’t leave me…” Jelani whimpered as he buried his face on his brother’s neck and cried.

“And I never will, little one.” Loke whispered as he hugged his brother. He gathered his strength and picked Jelani up and made his way to Helga. He sat Jelani on the saddle, but he wouldn’t let go of Loke as he continued to cry and beg him not to leave him.

Eventually Loke pulled Jelani off him and handed him the reins; among the supplies was a dagger which Loke removed and held onto to at least have a way to fight the slayers back.

“Loki, please?”

Loke looked up. He hated seeing Jelani cry and if there was anything he could do to ease his pain he would, but he knew it was only a matter of time before he bled to death, by staying behind he could at least spare his brother from seeing him die next to him and at least keep his promise to protect him even if it meant dying at the hands of slayers. Loke gave Jelani one last hug as he said, “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Jelani replied as he hugged him back.

Loke gently pressed his forehead on Jelani’s for a few seconds and then kissed his forehead and with the dagger in one hand he smacked Helga with the other and watched the old mare and his little brother run east towards the safety of the village. After a few minutes he looked up at the sky and begged the stars and the cosmos to keep Jelani safe once he was gone. With some renewed strength and determination Loke held on to the dagger and walked back in the direction he’d come from to hold back the slayers.

As he made his way through the forest he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw a row of ten horses and their riders all staring down at him. Their faces housed gleefully wicked smiles as they looked at him. Loke took a deep breath as he scowled at them.

“Well,” A familiar voice said and from between the riders came the slayer that had run Loke through, his sword still had Loke’s blood on it, “It seems like this one may still have some fight left in him.”

The rest of the slayers laughed but Loke continued to scowl at them. The more time they wasted mocking him the further away Jelani got.

“Where’s the boy?”

“Why worry about a child when…you haven’t even killed the adult?”

The rest of the slayers chuckled in amusement though their leader hadn’t found Loke’s remark funny. He inhaled deeply as he sucked in air through his teeth and exhaled quickly. He dismounted his horse and stood in front of it as he looked left and then right and four of the slayers drew their bows and aimed their arrows right at Loke.

“You look half dead to me.” The slayer replied. He looked and pointed at one of the slayers and said, “Find the boy and bring him back, he couldn’t have gotten far yet.”

 The other slayer nodded and took off. As he rode past Loke he grabbed the dagger tightly, aimed and tossed the dagger at the slayer. The blade sank deep into the man’s back who yelled out and tried to grab it but as he did, he lost balance and fell off his horse. As Loke turned to face down the lead slayer the four archers had fired their arrows. One hit Loke on his right lung, another hit him on his right thigh, one hit his left shoulder and the last one hit him on his lower abdomen. Somehow Loke was still standing despite the pain, the dizziness, and the blood loss. He stood still as he tried to breathe though he found it difficult.

The slayer made his way towards Loke and kicked him in the chest causing him to fall back and land on his back. The landing exacerbated the pain and caused him to cough which made it all the worse as his right lung collapsed and filled with blood. The more he coughed the more blood flowed up his esophagus until it was coming out of his mouth in a red foam. The slayer stood over Loke and smiled as he took in the sight. He took the arrow that was stuck to Loke’s thigh and pulled it out as hard as he could, he did the same with the arrow in his lower abdomen and sat on him while staring at him and smiling. After a few seconds he turned to face the rest of his men and ordered them to find Jelani.

Loke swallowed hard as he watched the slayers take off to the east and tried to take a deep breath but found he couldn’t because of the pain. The slayer sitting on him leaned forward and creepily caressed his throat with his hand as he whispered, “You want to know what’s the best part of hunting down abominations like you? Getting to watch you slowly die. Looking you in the eyes as your life is slowly drained.”

In defiance to the slayer’s eerie claim and obnoxious laughter Loke spat blood on his face. He wanted to say something, but the pain was too much for him at that point. The slayer laughed and was about to say something as well when all of a sudden, a tremendously loud and booming, droning sound exploded from within the forest. Both men looked to where the sound was coming from and stood still and quiet. Loke noticed a faint fog slowly carpeting the snowy ground but was just as confused by it as he was by the sound. As the slayer frantically looked around the sound erupted once more, only this time it sounded louder. It was loud enough to cause the branches of the trees to rattle so hard that the snow covering them fell to the ground.

“What is that?” The slayer asked out loud as panic began to set in. He got off Loke and tightly gripped his sword in both hands as he looked around the forest for the source of the sound. He circled around Loke who was calm. The sound was intimidating but for some reason he didn’t feel the panic that the slayer was so obviously consumed by.

With every minute that passed Loke could feel himself fading, it was getting to the point where it was difficult to keep his eyes open. The only thing in his mind was Jelani and he hoped against hope that he had gained enough distance to safely make it to the village where he’d be safe from the slayers chasing him. With the last of his remaining strength Loke managed to sit up and leaned on a nearby tree and tried to keep his eyes open. He watched as the slayer paced back and forth as he took a defensive stance just in case whatever was making that sound made its way towards him. Perhaps it was due to the loss of blood, but Loke noticed it was getting increasingly cold and the fog was getting higher, he had no explanation for it nor did he care, he knew he wasn’t long for this world so he sat quietly and waited never once regretting his decision to put his brother’s well-being before himself.

As the slayer stared into the forest a low rumble could be heard in the distance and he quickly turned to it as he pointed his sword forward but the more he looked between the trees the more his face turned from angry to frightened. The rumbling grew louder and from the forest nine of the ten horses his men were riding ran past him. The stampede of frightened horses kept running past him though he noticed not one of his men were riding the frightened beasts. Not far behind the stampede the tenth horse emerged from the forest; only this one had a rider on its back, or at least half a rider. The lower part of a man’s body had somehow remained on the saddle but as it rode past Loke the remains fell and hit the snow-covered ground and the slayer ran to investigate.

The remains had been frozen solid, the skin along the pelvic area showed signs of tearing not cutting, whatever had done it hadn’t used a blade to cut the man’s body in half, it had torn him in half. The slayer examined the body further and found the bones, the blood and whatever organs remained were also frozen solid. In his panic he rushed over to Loke who was so weak that he closed his eyes.

“You, monster!” He yelled out as he crouched next to Loke and pulled his head up by his hair. When Loke didn’t open his eyes the slayer shook him and once he saw Loke’s eyes slowly opening he pointed to the frozen remains of one of his men and yelled, “What in the holy father’s name can do that?”

Loke looked to where the slayer was pointing to and saw the frozen remains he was yelling about, but he had no idea what could have done that. The action of tearing a body apart seemed almost bestial and the only thing Loke could think of were werewolves but the fact that the parts were completely frozen seemed impossible for a werewolf. Not to mention he knew of no werewolf that would leave that much flesh on the bone like that. The best Loke could do was groan which angered the slayer.

“You godless, useless wretch!” He exclaimed as he lifted his sword into the air but before he could strike Loke he froze as the sound that had managed to strike fear into his very core erupted once more, only this time it was so close he felt the rumbling deep within his chest cavity. With the deafening sound so close both men realized that it was two sounds emanating from one source. The first sound was a droning boom and after a few seconds a guttural roar unlike any either of them had ever heard came forth and ended in a prolonged snarl.

Loke looked past the slayer and in between the tops of the trees he saw something moving slowly like a predator stalking its prey. He didn’t know what it was, he wouldn’t be able to guess even if he tried. He’d never heard that sound before. As he watched the colossal being move through the trees it faded away.

The slayer raised his sword up and looked behind him when he saw Loke looking up. He figured he’d seen something but wasn’t able to react to it much less say anything. The forest had gone silent, only the wind could be heard eerily blowing from the north. The only other sound that could be heard was the slayer’s own deep and panicked breathing as he looked around. Suddenly right before their eyes something manifested itself before them and in one swift move it grabbed the slayer by the throat and lifted him into the air as it stared and snarled at him.

Loke managed to open his eyes at the sound of the slayer whimpering and struggling to breathe and saw what was causing him so much distress. It was massive, it looked like it stood at the very least eight to nine feet tall. Its legs were long, muscular and digitigrade, each of its two feet had three toes that ended with long, sharp black claws while the fourth toe, the largest one, appeared to be upright with a sickle-shaped enormous claw at the end of it. Further up was a slim yet powerful pelvis and torso that looked completely humanoid, loosely draped around the lower waist was a black cloth that dragged behind it as it walked. The silky material was adorned with bright golden details along the split of the side. On its back were six massive dark gray feathered wings with black details, four of them pointing upwards and the two lower ones pointing down; the middle wings were the biggest and longest ones. Golden metal dotted the spine and split into sections where the ribs were located. At the end of the spine was a long tail that started out thick and ended thin, the gold also covered the top of the tail. Its strong arms ended in humanoid looking hands with five fingers each ending in long black claws, the forearms were covered by elegant black gauntlets with golden details. Each bicep was adorned with two golden rings. The neck was covered by bright white fur, it was puffy enough to cover a bit of the shoulders, it almost resembled a mane except it only covered the neck. The head was hard to come to terms with, to Loke it looked like an off-white skull, he couldn’t exactly identify what type of skull as it looked like an elk’s, or it could be a goat’s or a sheep’s or a reindeer’s. He wasn’t sure, it looked like all of those but none at the same time. The skull-like head housed some very sharp looking dark gray teeth as well as some very long and very sharp and thick canines. Its eyes, all six of them, didn't seem to have any irises, just blood red sclera that had oval-shaped pupils that ran laterally. The top of the skull-like head had four massive black horns. Two horns shot upwards with a slight curvature to the back while the other two curled backwards and ended pointing to the front. Aside from the horns on the head the creature had an intricately woven crown floating over its head. It shone beautifully like a solar halo but dressed in golden light. However, the right side of this crown seemed broken with parts of it impossibly floating near the crown and head of the creature. The right sockets had cracks that went down to the jawline and pieces of the crown were embedded into the cracks.

It was unlike anything he’d ever seen before and yet he felt no fear as he looked at this terrible being. He felt a sense of tranquility that he attributed to being so close to death, at first. Looking over the being again, Loke focused on certain details like the skin of the being. It was a rich dark brown identical to his mother’s skin tone and for a fleeting moment Loke thought this was a manifestation created by his mother and with the little energy he had he slightly smiled. At least he’d get to see his mother, the woman he idolized since she came into his life, before he died. However, he kept looking at the being and focused on the gauntlets, the colors were different but that they had the exact design as the ones his father’s armor had. The cloth around the waist was a different color but it wore it like the cape his mother’s armor had and then a different thought crossed his mind.

As the slayer struggled to free himself the being holding him by his neck intently stared into his eyes while emitting a chilling rumbling hissing sound. As all six eyes locked onto his the man slowly stopped struggling and in a matter of seconds his entire body went limp, except for the look of sheer terror he sported. He looked as if he had just learned of a terrible and inescapable fate and all he could do was weep. The tall being simply opened its clawed hand and let the slayer drop clumsily onto the fog and snow-covered dirt but he quickly scrambled to stand back up. Once he stood back up, he lifted his right hand up to his right cheek and dug his nails into his own flesh while staring at the being. Loke watched as the man frantically scratched into his own skin until he drew blood and little by little he began to tear into the flesh. Once he began ripping off small patches of his own skin the slayer began to cry out in agonizing pain. His face contorted into one of agony and horror as tears formed in his eyes, yet he wouldn’t stop ripping his skin off. At one point he managed to get a good grip of the pieces of loose skin on his cheek and pulled on it with such force that he tore a chunk down to his neck exposing both muscle and bone and it made Loke recoil.

“Help meeeeeee!” The slayer cried out as he gargled his own blood while he looked at Loke.

Even if Loke hadn’t been mortally wounded and so low on energy due to blood loss and pain he still wouldn’t lend aid to the man, never to a slayer or a knight or anyone that harmed others, especially someone who threatened to do harm to his own flesh and blood. Loke remained still as he watched the slayer cry in agony while he tore off his own flesh. When he yelled for help again the being let out a groaning hiss and the slayer turned around and began to walk away all the while he was still screaming in agony and tearing off his flesh.

Both Loke and the being watched him walking into the forest until he could only be faintly heard in the distance. Loke then turned to look at the being, despite everything there was still no fear within him. The being slowly walked towards Loke and once he was next to him it crouched down and sat next to him, a gentle and soft purring replaced its horrible roar and guttural hissing. It stretched one of its hands out and gently placed it on Loke’s face. It was surprisingly soft but somehow cold yet warm against his skin. With its thumb it wiped away some of the blood that fell out of Loke’s mouth and Loke leaned into the hand and closed his eyes for a moment. The being then leaned forward and gently pressed its forehead against Loke’s who then opened his eyes halfway and with the last of his strength he lifted his bloody right hand and gently placed it on the side of its face. 

“At least…I got to see you…one last time, little one.” Loke closed his eyes, inhaled and for the last time exhaled. As his body went limp his hand dropped beside him, and Jelani remained perfectly still as he closed his eyes and stopped purring. He remained still for a few minutes as Loke’s body leaned on him. After a while he opened his eyes again and gently laid the lifeless body on the ground, he looked up at the sky and sighed. While still looking at the sky he reached up to his crown and grabbed one of the floating pieces of the broken side and lifted his other hand. Using the small shard, he made a cut along the middle of his palm; his blood was as black as the night sky with platinum swirled in it. He took the bloody golden shard and carefully opened Loke’s mouth and gently placed the blood-covered shard on his tongue and closed his mouth. Jelani then laid down beside his brother’s body and watched and waited.

The light of the rising morning sun broke through the horizon and as its warmth washed over his face he let out a soft groan. He sighed deeply but then suddenly he opened his eyes in a panic and stood up quickly. As he looked around in a panic, not entirely sure what he was looking for, he walked forward and bumped into a small pile of wood. He tried to slow his breathing and looked up to see Helga staring at him as she chewed on some grass, the old mare snorted and went back to eating grass, she seemed calm, almost as if nothing had happened. He looked around and saw a fire still burning, his blanket on the ground, a second blanket near his and a bag of supplies between the blankets. Suddenly Loke remembered the events that had happened though he wasn’t sure how long it’d been since it happened. He gasped loudly and checked himself for injuries, but he found he didn’t have any, he didn’t have any blood, cuts or even any scars from the injuries he received. He kept searching for any signs of injuries, injuries he was absolutely sure he had received when he faced the slayers.

“Loki, what are you doing?”

Loke turned around and he let out a shuddering gasp as he covered his mouth with one of his hands when he saw Jelani standing a few feet behind him. He looked like his usual self, not the hulking strange being he’d seen. He ran over to him and hugged him tightly, a little too tightly, as he tried to hold himself together.

“Are you alright?!”

 “Yes!” Jelani answered as he pulled himself away from Loke so he could breathe as Loke was holding him too tightly. “Are you? You’re acting strange.”

“I am.” Instinctively Loke pressed his hand to his chest as if to make sure he wasn’t injured and when he noticed he felt no pain he smiled and hugged Jelani again, a little gentler this time. “Thanks to you, I am.”

“What do you mean?”

“You–you don’t remember? You…the–” Loke looked at his brother and saw the confusion and uncertainty on his face which confused him in the process. He looked over at the tree where he had leaned on when he saw Jelani. There was no blood and the snow at the foot of the tree wasn’t disturbed at all. In fact, the more Loke looked around the more normal everything seemed, which made his confusion all the worse.

“You really don’t remember? What is the last thing you remember?”

“We were on our way to the village and along the way something scared Helga and she ran off. You fell off and when I managed to regain control of her, I came back to get you, but you said you didn’t feel well. You made camp and you went to sleep at midday and didn’t wake up until now.”

“Well…I remember falling off the horse but that’s…not what happened…” He trailed off as he realized that maybe the entire experience had been so exhausting to Jelani that maybe he forgot the events. Maybe he was still too young to retain his memories after shifting into that other form Loke saw. Whatever the reason for his lapse in memory Loke decided it was best to drop it and let it be. For now. He knew he had died; he was well aware of that fact. He may not have been in pain at the moment, but he vividly remembered what it felt like when that slayer drove that sword through his abdomen, he remembered being shot with several arrows and the burning pain of his collapsing lung and how much pain it caused him to breathe. He could still recall how much it scared and hurt him to slowly bleed to death, but the worst fear was knowing the slayers had gone after Jelani and Loke was far too injured to do anything about it. No amount of pain would make him regret dying to save his brother’s life.

As he looked at Jelani the image of that other version of him remained clearly in his mind. No matter how tall or intimidating he looked he was still his little brother. Loke didn’t know how he had come back to life, but he was absolutely sure it was thanks to Jelani, the only regret he felt was the fact that Jelani didn’t remember what he’d done for him.

“Are you really alright, Loki?”

“I really am, I promise, little one.” Loke answered with a smile and hugged Jelani again who in turn returned the hug as tightly as he could, which made Loke laugh. “Now, go untie Helga while I pick up the blankets.”

Jelani rushed over to the old mare and greeted her cheerfully as he untied her reins. Loke walked over to the blankets and rolled up Jelani’s and neatly placed it in the bag. As he reached down to grab his blanket he noticed that there was a feather on it, he picked it up and noticed it was cold to the touch but the more he looked at it the more familiar it looked. The feather was dark gray with some black details on it. All of a sudden, he remembered what his grandfather had whispered to him before he and Jelani left the village, and a wave of shock overtook him.

“Look for the frozen feathers. They’ll keep you boys safe.”

As Haakon’s words echoed in his mind Loke gasped and then stared at the feather in his hand. Technically the feather wasn’t frozen, but it was very cold. When Jelani appeared in that other form Loke had noticed a sudden drop in the temperature that made even him feel chilly. How could Haakon have known about the feather? Loke wasn’t sure but he thought it would be best if he kept it between him and his grandfather for Jelani’s safety. He looked down at the feather one more time and smiled. He neatly tied and secured it to the end of a small braid he had on the left side of his head and continued to roll up the blanket and put it in the bag. When he put out the fire, he made his way to Helga and Jelani and secured the bag on the mare and then hoisted Jelani up on the mare reserving his spot on the front so Jelani could hold on to the reins as he usually liked to do.

“Oh!” Jelani exclaimed as he looked at his brother and touched the feather he tied to his hair. “Where did that come from?”

Loke remained silent for a minute and hoped that seeing and touching the feather would jog his memory of the events but going by the look on Jelani’s face Loke was sure it didn’t work. He simply smiled and said, “I found it on my blanket.”

“It’s cold, I wonder what it belongs to.”

“Maybe we’ll get to see it someday.” Loke replied as he climbed up on the horse. Once he was sitting comfortably on it, he patted Jelani on the head and said, “Are you ready to head out?”

“Yes!”

“Then let’s go.”

[blueiskewl]

Ancient Iranian Carving Seized at a London Airport

An ancient sculpture illicitly carved from a rock relief in Iran will soon go on display at the British Museum before being repatriated to the National Museum in Tehran.

Carved in calcareous limestone, the sculpture depicts a standing male figure with an ornamental headdress. The piece likely hails from the 3rd century C.E. when the Sasanian Empire ruled greater Iran, according to the Guardian.

“It belongs to a period when Iran was the center of a powerful empire stretching from Syria to the Caucasus and Central Asia, and with its capital at Ctesiphon, south of present-day Baghdad,” St. John Simpson, an archaeologist and senior curator the British Museum’s department of the Middle East, told the paper. “The Sasanians were powerful rivals of Rome, and famous today for their fine silverwares and cut glass.”

The relief was seized at the Stansted airport outside of London, where border officers pulled the item aside because of its suspicious packaging—an unpadded, slapdash crate held together by nails. Inside was the carving, which had recently been excised with an angle grinder.

“We almost never come across a case of something being cut out of the ‘living rock,’” Simpson said. “That’s a level of brutalism that surpasses anything.”

Exactly where the carving came from remains a mystery, though context clues may help to narrow the list of potential locations. Roughly only 30 Sasanian rock reliefs are known to exist today, and almost all them came from the small Fars Province in southwest Iran.

Simpson suspects it “comes from somewhere in the Shiraz area” of the province. “Stylistically, it is similar to one known in the region,” he explained. “I think it probably is part of a big sequence. There might be more bits out there.”

The subject of the piece is similarly difficult to determine. “The lack of an inscription makes it impossible to identify the person depicted, but his dress and diademed headdress signifies him as a person of high rank,” the curator said. “His gesture of greeting and submission, with a raised bent forefinger, is a feature of Sasanian art when figures are in the presence of royalty, which suggests that this was part of a larger composition, with the king to the right and perhaps other figures behind.”

Interpol and the National Crime Agency have both investigated the object, but no arrests have yet been made. An internet auction site in the U.K. was listed as the package’s destination address, but the company claimed not to be expecting it.

Because of its poor padding, the relief broke in two pieces during transport. Conservators have since put it back together.

“The British Museum is committed to contributing to the preservation of cultural heritage in the U.K. and globally, partnering with law enforcement agencies to identify illicitly trafficked antiquities,” read a statement from the museum. “Objects seized in this way are brought to the British Museum for identification and cataloguing.”

The London institution obtained permission from the Iranian government to display the carving for three months. After that time, it will be repatriated to the National Museum in Tehran.

Simpson called the newly repaired piece “stunningly attractive,” before weighing in on its potential worth.  

“The valuation could be anything, really. We’re talking £20 million to £30 million-plus,” ($25 million to $37 million) he said. “There’s never been anything like it on the market.”

By Taylor Dafoe.

[literatureaf]

New Regency Lady case and mug with vintage watercolor by C.E. Brock.

In my Etsy shop

What new styles or types of merch would you like to see?

[todaysdocument]

Letter from Ordway Hilton to Robert Stripling Regarding Alger Hiss

Record Group 233: Records of the U.S. House of RepresentativesSeries: Investigative Name Files

[letterhead] Elbridge W. Stein Examiner of Questioned Documents - Handwriting and Typewriting 2301 Park Row Building, 15 Park Row New York 7 5 December 1948 Robert E. Strping, Esquire Chief Investigator House Committee on Un-American Activities Washington, D.C. Dear Mr. Stripling: I have made a careful examination of three specimens of typewriting submitted to me by Mr. C.E. Owens and compared them with the typewriting on various copies of government records which had been previously submitted to this office. The three specimens of typewriting are: 1. A photographic copy of a letter to Mr. Edward W. Case, 211 E. Main St., Westminster, Md., dated May 28 1936 and bearing the signature Alger Hiss. 2. Letter to Mr. J. Parnell Thomas dated August 18, 1948 and bearing the signature Alger Hiss. 3. A sheet of mimeographed questions, ten in all, without further identification. The typewriter used to prepare letter 1. is a machine equipped with elite type, i.e. it writes 12 letters to the inch. From the design of the typefaces it appears to be either a Remington standard, Remington Noiseless or Underwood Noiseless typewriter. In any event the design of letters eliminates the possibility of this typewriter having been used to write any of the material which had been previously submitted. The typewriter used to write letter 2. is also an elite type machine, but from the design of the letters it is clearly a typewriter built by the Remington Noiseless factory since 1946. Some of these machine are sold as Underwood Noiseless typewriters. This typeface design eliminates the machine as having been used to write any of the 1938 material. The machine used to prepared the third specimen of typewriting is equipped with pica type, the large size type which spaces 10 letters per inch. From the design of the typefaces I am able to eliminate this machine from any further consideration as it is equipped with a style of type used on Noiseless typewriters, either Remington Robert E. Stripling, Esq. 5 December 1948 2. Remington or Underwood, which was first put into use around 1946. From the design of the typefaces and their size I am able to state positively that all three specimens of typewriting, letters 1, 2, and 3, were written on different typewriters. Very truly yours, [handwritten signature] Ordway Hilton [typed signature] Ordway Hilton OH:3