#casual drop of many gods and pantheons | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dom--minnie · 3 years

Text

Fire Starting in my Heart

Pairing: Chuu (Kim Jiwoo) x Reader

Genre: demigod au, basically a pjo au, fluff, angst

Summary: Kim Jiwoo is the newest demigod to come to Camp Half-Blood. You get to show her around the first day. After that you're stuck like glue, training her and with her nearly every day. With a girl as sweet as her, it was kind of inevitable for you to form a little crush. In between those moments, there's something that Dionysus and Chiron aren't telling you. Somehow you have a feeling it's related to the campers, new and old, who come to the camp with burns...

Word count: 11k

Warnings: violence mildly described, slightly graphic descriptions of burns and injuries, casual use of weapons, low self esteem, heavy self deprecation near the end,

Part of the Hamartia Collab hosted by @/delicatewerewolfsoul and @/sleepylixie masterlist here, please check out everyone else as well!

It was not painfully early in the morning when Dionysus, or Mr. D as you called him to annoy him, called you to the Big House to be a glorified tour guide to a new camper. He very rarely called you to do this job as you generally had about a thousand other things to be doing as well as the sadder reason: There were few new campers coming each year. On your way out you remembered to wear blue and put on some slightly corny sea jewelry, the visual reminder of the sea just feels good.

Not even bothering to knock, you opened the door and turned into the ‘living room’ that Chiron had designated more cozy for bringing in new campers. Honestly, you’re thankful for his entire existence because Dionysus would probably end up welcoming half of the new campers in the dusty attic.

Across the room was a small girl half swallowed by the large and plush red chair that her clothes match surprisingly closely in colour. Her hair was curled adorably over her shoulders and an oversized bow sits crooked on the back of her head. The white shirt was the most wrinkled and rumpled as well as the vest over top, but she seemed intent on smoothing out the matching red skirt. Overall, one of the best states recent campers have been in when they arrived.

It seemed she was still lost in thought over… something, but probably the events that had led her here in the first place. As well as simultaneously learning that the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods and creatures exist in our world, just very hidden. Many other pantheons and creatures exist as well, but you’d wait a bit before dropping that equally overwhelming information.

Since you had been born into this world of creatures you never had that experience but you learned fast enough that telling them everything at once was… a poor decision, at the very least.

Dionysus saw you and cleared his throat making the girl’s attention snap up to your face, her eyes wide and innocent. You waved and put on a little welcoming smile, hoping and praying that Dionysus hadn’t done much to break her soul yet.

“Ah, you’re here. Unclaimed, as usual. Her name is…” Dionysus trailed off and you looked to the girl instead, hoping she’d take the hint and just introduce herself to you.

“Ah! Kim Jiwoo. And.. what does unclaimed mean?” Her voice was just as innocent as the rest of her, but the softness might just be due to some lingering shyness or hesitancy, a valid concern when Mr. D was there.

You sighed and shook your head, not directly at Dionysus as you might be cursed for that or something, but just generally at the state of the gods.

“My apologies, Jiwoo. I’ll explain as I take you on a tour. Come with me?”

She was half-standing before you even fully extended your hand to her. Most certainly, the award of bravery was given to her since most new campers were hesitant to leave when they learn a literal god was sitting in front of them. It’s not really like you could blame her, Dionysus, especially at the camp, was hardly the most pleasant person to be around.

When you stepped outside with her a fair amount of campers were already milling around looking for distractions for the morning. Breakfast must have just ended since a few people were still sitting and talking at mixed tables. Maybe it was better if you hadn’t eaten yet, Jiwoo would probably feel better with a slightly familiar face rather than sitting completely alone.

Of course, you had faith someone would come up to her eventually, the more established campers were always extra welcoming to new faces.

“Sorry about him. Try not to take it to heart he doesn’t remember your name though, I doubt he even remembers mine and I’ve been helping him directly for years now.”

“Hm… If your job is just to help the director then you’re not a demigod, are you? What are you then?” She seemed to be talking to herself and you at the same time, then turned to you with wide eyes. “I’m sorry, that was probably so rude! Let’s just start the tour.”

You laughed lightly and started walking ahead of her, hearing her little steps following up behind you.

“I don’t mind, just be careful with strangers, for obvious reasons. I’m an Atlantian, so-”

Jiwoo suddenly jumped in front of you, analyzing you as if there was some feature that may have given it away. You tapped the top of her head and simply kept walking. After that, she stood ramrod straight and kept walking.

“I just- Atlantis was… is? Is real? And you’re from there? I’ve learned more in the last day than in like, 4 years!”

You expected her to sound a bit more overwhelmed but for now Jiwoo seemed thrilled to be exposed to this new world. Probably a bit of a high to being exposed to so much that was living right under her nose.

“It’s not like it used to be, but yes I have been there a few times. Quite a few Atlantean people have moved to the surface over the years and just return occasionally, and my family is one of those. We’re here, so if you want to know more then I’m around, just come and ask.”

The abrupt stop you make in front of the metal shed shook Jiwoo from listening to you. She was nodding like she was still listening but you could see her really peering through the windows to all the weapons inside. You just went up and pushed the door open, creaking slightly on the hinges. It was not in the best condition if none of the Hephaestus kids were even oiling that lately, you’d have to tell them about that later.

Each wall was lined top to bottom with various weapons. You’d heard there was even a plan to try and anchor some of them to the roof but that hadn’t worked out, at least not yet. Right behind you was Jiwoo, watching each corner light up as you lit the lamps. Really, what were those campers doing trying to put things on the roof when they hadn’t even done the lights yet?

Either way, Jiwoo didn’t head towards any particular weapon immediately. Instead, you headed off and let her look while you check that there were no ridiculous practical jokes waiting for anyone.

Not as many as you would expect when no one has checked the building for this long, but still enough to be annoying, which you know was the purpose. Blades that looked sharp but couldn’t cut a leaf if wielded by Ares himself, buttons on switchblades that just popped out different flowers, and several more. The creativity was amusing, but you could never tell them that, of course.

When you finished, Jiwoo was still standing at the small weapons wall and running her finger over various double daggers. You walked up behind her and find a small amount of amusement and guilt at the way she jumped when she realized you were there.

“Find anything in particular you want to try? You probably won’t gel 100% on the first one you try so bring a couple options.”

You turned and grabbed a crossbow, modeled after the gastraphetes, from the opposite wall and headed to the training dummies. Jiwoo came out a moment later with throwing and claw knives around her fingers, a boot dagger hanging from a string on her wrist and a xiphos in one hand. The sight of such a small and pretty girl loaded with knives drew out a small laugh from you.

When she got closer and realized Jiwoo pouted about it, but looked down and laughed along when she saw it through your eyes. It was just a cute little giggle that suited her well but the grin that accompanied it was wide and bright. The force shook her a bit and the xiphos fell from where it was tucked. She gasped and picked it up quickly, as if hoping that you wouldn’t notice.

“They’re made for fighting so dropping it on the ground is fine. Let’s test some of these things out, hm?”

With an enthusiastic nod she put all of them down and examined what she wanted to do first with a little furrowed brow and twist of her mouth. It wasn’t as if you told her that only one could be tested but with the intensity she was hovering over them with it may as well be so.

Soon enough though, she stood with the throwing knives in hand. Each ring was set over her fingers in a very natural way that would make you think she had practiced with them for years.

“Feels alright to hold them? You look like a natural.” You complimented.

Her cheeks flushed and the same sunny grin appeared. Even though she had only been with you for an hour you felt a sense of pride at being able to make her laugh.

“It was like I just knew how to hold them. To put the rings around my fingers, and how to make them lay so that I caan grab them easier.”

As if to demonstrate, to you or herself you’re not sure, she took one and put it back without looking. All of them sit completely still on her and it was like she never grabbed one at all.

“Well, it’s no good if you can’t throw them. Try for the chest first.”

Jiwoo turned to face the dummies head on and you let out a noise to make her stop, as you had seemed to forget she didn’t know the first thing about how to do this.

“Okay, put one foot forward, same as the hand you’ll throw with. Right dominant? The usual, good. So, you need to..”

You go about instructing her, or trying to, on how to stand. It didn’t proceed the best as you hadn’t had to do this in a while and she had only held kitchen knives before. When her foot placement consistently wasn’t working you huff and walk over.

“Kim Jiwoo.” You muttered and stood behind her.

Bending down, you grabbed each leg and put it into the position you needed. Then, you stood and turned her, first her torso then her neck and head. Only when she turned her head to look at you do you come back to yourself; half pressed against her and a hand still rested on her cheek. It took a second of staring before you stepped back and sputtered some half-apologies.

Jiwoo just snapped her head back to the dummy and raised an arm. It wasn’t the best form but you weren’t about to step towards her again. Finally, she had the chance to actually throw it and did so with relative confidence. You puffed up a little in pride when she maintained the stance and landed the knife surprisingly close to the middle.

She turned to you and you swore, each time she smiled it seemed a bit brighter. You let her have the moment before kind of breaking it and gesturing to her 3 other knives.

Normally, new campers didn’t get that close and kept trying until they hit the dead centre. Jiwoo immediately surprised you by throwing her next one to the head. She hit it right in the centre, not the best place practically, but impressive nonetheless.

“Well! Seems like you’re a natural with those. There’s plenty of people around who can train you even better. Hitting moving targets while you’re moving, and whatnot.”

Jiwoo nodded at you and put the remaining knives back on her belt, then went to retrieve the other ones. You quietly chuckled about her struggle to get them out of the dummy. Whether it was her current physical weakness or how hard she embedded them in the wood, or a bit of both.

By the time she was back to you all the knives were in her belt and a xiphos was in her hand. You hadn’t planned on duelling her but you also hadn’t planned on her ranged weapon being so easy to choose, but there you were. A natural beauty and a natural talent all at once, it seems.

“Are we duelling Miss Kim?” You raised an eyebrow at her continued eagerness, knowing the type of day she had.

Jiwoo nodded quickly at you, poking her weapon at the middle of your chest and grinning. “Take out your sword. Unless you’re that confident, but I’m better than I look, obviously.”

She stepped back and confidently stabbed at the air, making little ‘pah pah pah’ sounds under her breath. You grinned at the slightly childish display of confidence and how the sword wobbled as she swung it.

“Come on~ I’m getting bored here, invisible enemies can only entertain a demigoddess for so long!” She stepped back further, making a mock fighting stance that reminded you she was still innocent and had no idea what to do in such a dangerous world like this.

So, you mirrored her moves and took a few steps back, drawing your sword from your side. It shone nicely in the afternoon light and you took just a minute to appreciate the work you did to polish it. It looked damn good and you knew it.

“This is around the most common length of sword you’ll see other campers and other creatures or people using, so get used to it.”

Before you even started to duel you went over basic steps to make sure Jiwoo wasn’t going to trip and cause self-injury before you even got close to her. Even then, she had a close couple of encounters and you had to come up and stop her from swinging her sword any closer to her own head. Generally, you tried not to notice how often you were touching her to move her body but gods was it hard to ignore entirely. But you didn’t let it show, being a good mentor and all.

The bell rung for dinner before you even know it. When you look, the sun was distinctly lower and you weren’t sure how you missed it considering you were outside the whole time.

“Alright, cutie pie. Time to meet some fellow campers, follow me.”

You led Jiwoo away to the dining pavilion where you could already hear a fair gathering of campers talking like the dull hum of an engine. For a second, you wondered if Jiwoo would be uncomfortable surrounded by so many people at once but she seemed pretty bubbly and positive so she’d probably make it through either way.

You were proven correct not 5 minutes in. Admittedly, you did kind of abandon Jiwoo since you’re not meant to sit with the campers, but you definitely did anyway, but when you looked back she was integrated with a group of kids at the Hermes table. You did hope she would be claimed soon, she was really meant to be claimed years ago, so she would have a proper place to fit in rather than just a ragtag group from the Hermes cabin.

Once you realized your own train of thought you looked away and shook your head. She was just like any other camper, why were you getting so attached this time? Oh well, she was fitting in well enough so she probably wouldn’t be spending too much time around you, back to the Apollo cabin with you.

Just the next day you were proven wrong, however. What you were expecting was for Jiwoo to go find some kids from Hermes to try out some more weapons with but she came bounding over to you mid gastraphetes shot and tapped your shoulder. Confusing, since most of the campers were little demons and just screamed when they wanted your attention, but it was nice to know that someone here had developed manners.

“Hey, Jiwoo. Did you run away from everyone or did everyone run away from you?” You teased, knowing that no one could have the heart to run from her.

She giggled and poked your shoulder. “I ran away! I liked training with you yesterday, so I hope it’s okay that I came back?”

Somehow, it seemed like she just naturally pulled the puppy eyes on you. With great willpower and effort you resisted the urge to pull at her puffy cheeks and coo at her cute face.

That became a routine, everything about it. The training, especially with weapons, and you resisting the urge to poke at her cute face and wanting to make her blush. Having both of those happen every day made it a lot harder for your feelings to go beyond the initial physical cuteness attraction.

Now there was emotional investment as you learned that her icing exterior was accompanied by a cute cake interior. Weird metaphor. Basically she was cute inside and out, which really wasn’t fair, but it was too late now.

It seemed like every moment with her flew by, and when you add in that you end up spending quite a bit of time together every single day… yeah, the months flew by faster than you ever thought. The summer passed by and smoothly into fall. You half-expect her to go back to high school or college or something but she didn’t say anything about it and neither did you. Some people were able to go back, mostly kids of less powerful gods and goddesses who were less in danger, yet your routine with Jiwoo continues.

Your favourite was probably the quieter mornings. Somehow, Jiwoo was still as lively in the morning as any other time of day, but she toned it down when she saw that you’re not awake yet. Paperwork for new campers kept you awake to odd hours, unfortunately. And all the new time with her was kind of taking away from your other duties… but you’d never tell her that because even if you’re being serious about your tasks, time spent with her was still fun.

Though, maybe there was probably a tie for your favourite time of day. Sometimes, if you had been working for too many hours, Jiwoo will come to your office and pull you out for a walk. Generally, you had no idea why she was awake or why she knew that you were still awake, you gave up asking when she never gave an answer to either of those questions. Oftentimes you’d sit by the lake with her and dangled your feet in, since the water is still just a bearable temperature.

Soon after that started, she’d finally claimed by her godly parent. There were certainly moments before that when you felt like you were putting the pieces together.

There were several gods that could talk to animals and many kids have certain specialities. So, her ability to talk to fish? Definitely takes out some godly parents, but left too many options for anything definitive. The funniest part was the first time she talks to the fish around the lake out loud. You could understand most of them but when you questioned why she could the confusion set in.

As it turned out, she had been doing it for years. Most kids would beg for a cat or a dog but she wanted fish, because who wouldn’t want to be able to talk to their pets? Though her mom stopped when she got overly depressed everytime the fish died. Apparently, genius Jiwoo, had just thought it was a demigod thing to talk to fish, and not whoever her specific godly parent was. You wished there was an Athena kid nearby because they’d flip their lid. Most of them wished to talk to animals to create strategic advantages, but alas that is not an Athena ability, not as far as you knew at least.

The second one was her ability to manipulate water. That came as a bit more of a shock to everyone, most of all Jiwoo herself. At some point she was put on guard duty for Capture the Flag and in a moment of pure panic she flung a stream of water in her opponents’ face. Later you learned it was the senior counselor of Ares, whom the mental image of getting soaked with a rogue stream of water was admittedly amusing.

You didn’t know of too many gods that could manipulate water in any way, but you didn’t want to get her hopes up too soon for anything. You had never had the experience of being claimed since you weren’t technically born directly from a god, but you knew how amazing it felt to watch someone be claimed by their parent.

As it turned out, you didn’t have to wait too long either way.

By her own admission, Jiwoo had walked into the forest by herself. It wasn’t strictly dangerous unless the camp was infiltrated by monsters, but in an attempt to avoid injury it was generally advised against. As she was out there, something moved behind her, and she had heard about your stories of monsters being in the forest before and panicked. With her eyes slammed shut, Jiwoo couldn’t exactly see what happened but when she hesitantly opened them a circle of tree trunks were covered in frost.

Yeah, there were no other gods who were powerful enough to control water in that way without just being one of the ice-related gods. The moment she stepped back into camp and view of the other campers, Jiwoo was being claimed. The trident of Poseidon was a radiant blue like a spotlight on her. Ironic since the first outfit you saw her in was red but you do admit that she looked just as pretty in that deep ocean blue.

You got to explain to her later what exactly it meant that she was now officially claimed. She did get her own cabin all to herself, which also meant she automatically became the senior counselor. Presiding over herself and the fish tanks she had always wanted. As well, she was technically meant to sit at her own table in the pavilion but you assured her that the Hermes kids would take her back if and when she got lonely. At which point she decided to get mischievous.

“But what if I want to sit with you instead? We’re both people of the water, come sit with me~”

She said it in a half-cheeky and half-serious tone which made you slightly unsure how you were supposed to answer. Instead, you just awkwardly poked her and laughed.

“Sit with your friends, Jiwoo. It’s a lot more fun than sitting with us stuffy camp staff, trust me.”

Something flashed across her face but she turned away and when she looked back at you it’s gone, replaced by puffed cheeks and a pout you’re embarrassingly weak for.

“You’re my friend, too! And I don’t care if I have to deal with you talking about stuffy camp business sometimes.”

With a face like that, how were you meant to deny her? So she joined you there as well and you could only fall deeper into your attraction.

The fact that she was claimed by Poseidon and is now a child of the Big 3 only made her more popular around the camp. Younger campers coming up to her and saying how they want to be cool like her, or people trying to watch her practice combat. It didn’t seem like it bothered her all that much, which you found rather impressive.

Yet, Jiwoo still found the time to follow you around, indeed she spent more time with you than with anyone else. You took a strange pride in it, in being her fellow water companion and connecting with her in a way that the others didn’t. It also worked like that because there weren’t any other children of the Big 3 there at the moment. You were sure it’s only a matter of time since those 3 gods were always out doing something but that was how it was then.

When you realized how much you enjoyed that she spent so much time with you, the guilt was rather strong. Why were you happy when she denied an invitation, only to spend that time with you later? Or when you approached and her attention got diverted from someone else to you, a smile lighting up her face. It all convinced you that maybe she felt the same spark of affection in her heart that you did.

One night you were walking and stopped by a small stream in the forest. It was a bit spooky being in the forest so late at night but being able to turn and see the lantern lights from the cabins was comforting enough that you didn’t mind. Jiwoo also helped with that, because of course.

She was soft that night, dressed in something between pajamas and just lounge clothes. Still, your heart squeezed and you just have to say it.

“Hey, Jiwoo?” Your voice came out softer than you intended.

She just hummed, continuing to run her hand over the smooth rocks in the streambed.

“I like you. Romantically, I mean. I know that you haven’t been here long but you’re such a bright force in my life that I don’t know how I was getting by before.”

The silence stretched on and you start to think that maybe you did read it wrong, maybe that was just how she was with friends. Finally, Jiwoo stood and the look on her face was what did it. Her mouth was slightly curved down where it normally curved up and her eyebrows were pinched together.

“You shouldn’t have said that. Confessing like this was selfish of you, why would you do that.” She stepped away and the noise of the gentle stream blended into the static of your mind. “If it wasn’t obvious, that’s a no. Good night.”

The soft yet shaking voice she used hurt more than if she had yelled. As she stalked back to her cabin you’re left staring at where she was standing before and the ribbon that fell off her shirt. Purple, red and blue, combining herself and her father.

Your attention quickly became diverted in two directions after that night, because something was wrong with Chiron and Dionysus.

They kept talking about something when you weren’t there. Always in quiet, but rushed voices and always stopping once they noticed you. The first few times you asked what it was but after they told you not to worry you just had to let it go. But you hadn’t, not really. Attempting to listen through doors, having other campers ask them about it, anything you could think of to finally figure it out.

If Jiwoo was still talking to you then she’d probably have some weird, but maybe plausible idea for what to do. Instead, you were forced to stew in all these feelings alone. I mean, you’re not forced to, but talking to any of the campers about that was a little strange. You were meant to be this figure of protection and guidance for them, not the other way around!

Then your attention got split in a third direction. You were just not having a great month, honestly. Some new campers were coming in, which was all well and good, but some of them were tragically burned from their journey. New campers getting injured on the way in isn’t new, but in the same specific way of a burn every time? That’s suspicious.

Most of the campers didn’t know and didn’t suspect any strange happenings, at least as far as you could tell. You weren’t about to be the one to tell them either, you couldn’t see the looks on their faces if your guesses came true. Still, you couldn’t stop thinking about Jiwoo. How the light smiles on her face would turn into serious looks, getting ready for a fight. A fight you just couldn’t fathom her having, couldn’t imagine that she was ready for.

Jiwoo almost spoke directly to you during a Capture the Flag game. She was co-captain of the team and ended up giving you directions on where to go. It wasn’t much of anything, and she barely even looked at you, but you’d take it. It was better than sitting in the dark and wondering why she got so angry that night in the forest and permanently moved on.

There was another possible opportunity to speak to her that you completely fumbled. She happened to find a new camper waiting at the border tree, and you came to find them both to lead them back. It was a bit of a long walk, especially with the camper’s injured leg, and there were so many things you wanted to ask Jiwoo. Instead, you said nothing at all and just listened while she talked with the new boy. Anthony, who his friends usually just called Ant.

By the time he was introduced to Mr. D you could have sworn that he had already developed some mild heart eyes for Jiwoo. You felt the increasing harshness in the way you stepped and pulled him along, but you could hardly help it. You were the one who led her into this camp, who spent nights with her by the lake where nobody knew where you went. It wasn’t the most righteous cause for anger but your smoldering heart was there regardless.

All three things break on the same day. Over the last week, Chiron and Dionysus were being even more secretive than before. You saw Chiron’s light on late into the night when he was generally the one shoving you to bed at a reasonable time. Dionysus was out doing who-knows-what for most of the day and immediately went to Chiron’s office when he came back.

Only after you had been basically ignoring them for quite awhile, other than the usual necessary duties and communication, did they tell you a bit about what was going on. Simple details at first: a dangerous creature running around the nearby area, a mythological one, and they were trying to track it.

But then one morning they had finally explained it all. The fire and scale of the creature had narrowed it down to either a dragon or a chimaera. You prayed to literally anyone you could think of in that moment, just begging for it not to be a dragon. Sure, chimaeras were dangerous but dragons were on another level. If it was to be so, then there would be a whole lot of problems on your hands soon.

So with that information you set out to the training area, only to find a mini tournament being set up. Honestly, fighting real people as opposed to some unmoving dummies was preferable. So, you snuck in, successfully scaring Changbin and Wooyoung, the organizers.

It was like Apollo had twined you and Jiwoo with a golden thread, or maybe he put the fates up to it, because this was getting ridiculous. You didn’t fight her first but in the semi-finals, you do. Even with this ice between you, you had to congratulate her on getting so skilled so fast. Something had been pushing her to train and you were impressed with the work ethic.

Still, your uncertainty and anger over the whole dragon/chimaera situation was not gone yet. Seeing her right in front of you, so close yet so far away, did not help you at all honestly. Being the mature adult you were, you were sure that you can handle a fight that’s only about 2-3 minutes long. Not quite.

Within one minute you were struggling to hold it back. Each emotion that flitted through you with a look at her face was building. It all coalesced to anger inside you, anger at why she said such harsh things that night and why she felt that your friendship couldn’t come back from it.

You swept your leg and the moving gravel kicked up a little dust around your feet. She jumped back, but it was too late and your foot caught around her ankle and caught hard. Once you felt the resistance, you pulled even harder, the adrenaline making your brain flash that she was a real, threatening enemy for a moment.

Your fight or flight instincts kicked in and you pulled more with your leg. Her hands flew out to catch her but the shock took too long to wear off and she still hit her face on the ground. Your shock took nearly 3 times as long to wear off of your mind. Slowly, your eyes tilted down, only to see her already looking up. But you didn’t see what her face looked like, only the fact that you may have genuinely hurt her.

The sound of a few people rushing forward to check on her was what snaps you out of it. Quickly sheathing your sword and keeping your head down, you rushed away from the scene.

Congratulations, genius. Whatever chance you may have had about making up with her is certainly gone with the Anemoi now, you think bitterly.

All that mental questioning about why she had gotten so angry about nothing, and all the disapproval you had given her about it. Now you had gone and done the same thing, possibly hurting her because of your uncontrolled anger. Technically, it was equal on both sides but you didn’t feel like she was any closer to talking to you, if anything you would guess she was taking even more steps away.

You sunk into the chair with your cup in hand and waited for Chiron to speak. Strange that Dionysus wasn’t there but with so much going on you assume that there was more pressing things for a god to be doing related to his camp.

Chiron knocked on your door early the next morning, two things he never did. Usually, he waited for you to get up to talk and that was breakfast by the latest. Over the hills and the trees you could see the sun just rising but Chiron’s face immediately dispelled any complaints you had about being up so early.

“There’s a chimaera loose. Dionysus has been tracking it loosely for a while but we’ve never actually caught it, often being a few minutes behind. It lets us get to the new campers sooner, if nothing else.”

You had suspected that something like that was going on, but with no evidence and no knowledge of the situation it wasn't as if you could do much.Something built up in your chest and you saw it as anger, a more common feeling for you recently. It took a couple more breaths until you were sure that opening your mouth wouldn’t cause you to lash out about why they left you out of such an important issue.

“It was my idea if you must know.” Your mouth snapped shut when Chiron continued speaking, he wasn’t looking at you anymore. “I wanted to protect you. There is no need, you’re a fine young adult now. But for someone with such a long life as me, I cannot help but to still see you as the child you were when you got here. At this point, I can only hope that it is not too late and that you are willing to help us with this.”

With a heavy thunk you set down your cup and rolled your eyes at Chiron. He saw it clearly, you made sure he would, but you cut in before he could go on.

“You think I’m not gonna help you, old man? I’m kind of offended, really. This is my camp, my campers, my kids. I want to protect them just as you were, and maybe still are, trying to protect me.”

Chiron sighed and shook his head, but you could still see the smile he let out. When he looked back up it was gone, replaced by the serious Chiron you’d gotten used to seeing over the last few weeks.

“It’s coming this way, and rather fast. Mostly it’s been wandering the city but for some reason it’s coming this way.”

You could only hope that there wasn’t some sort of other force behind this, someone strong who would wish to do harm to these demigods. It only strengthened your resolve to think of the helpless new kids, literal children, who had come to the camp.

“I’ll let you know if I hear anything,” you nodded. “This chimaera can catch these hands!”

You punched your first into your other hand as if the first thing you do in danger wasn’t pull out your sword. Chiron took a few steps forward and put his hand on your head. Honestly, you could kind of see what he meant about still seeing you as the younger version of yourself who came to the camp. Especially, when he did things like that which make you feel so much younger, to reminding you of a simpler time when you didn’t have to worry about rogue chimaeras breaking into the camp.

About a week later you were wandering when a new camper ran up to you.

“Hey! Chiron told Jungwoo, who told Ona, who told Kira, who told Jay, who told me that Mr. D is looking for you!”

You raised an eyebrow as they went down the chain of people the message took to get to you. If the message had been anymore complicated it quickly would have become a terrible game of telephone, quite honestly. Dionysus rarely looked for you so specifically and directly so you had to assume it was important. The whole chimaera debacle, hopefully, unless something new had popped up somehow.

“It’s in the forest now. I’m looking for good fighters and trackers to go find it, tell anyone you think can do it.” Chiron told you.

You wished it wasn’t such a concern, but unfortunately he was probably thinking about how to keep certain campers away from the thing. Those old enough that they thought they could fight it, or just wanted see it, but young enough that they definitely couldn’t fight hard enough or even run fast enough. Smart enough to know they shouldn’t get close, but reckless enough that they’ll trail behind someone more experienced.

You’d admire their commitment if it weren’t such an obstruction to their own, and others’, safety. Though, you couldn’t fault them overly much because, as Chiron would love to remind you, you had tried to do something similar as well.

The first stop of your trip was, of course, the Ares cabin. They had the most experience generally, and also the drive to fight against a real opponent. Most of them weren’t there but you knew where to find most of the people you’d need.

Changbin, the cabin counselor, grabbed his sword and despite the situation it almost cracked you up. The blade was nearly as long as him and the handle reached over his hand by just a little. The moment he turned around the laughter was gone because there was a dark look on his face and the familiar Ares flame in his eyes. You hoped that for everyones’ sake that he at least got a crack at the thing.

Jisung from Hephaestus was the only one in their cabin, but thankfully he was the one with fire-controlling powers, and exactly who you happened to need. Fighting fire with fire, which always goes perfectly, especially in a giant forest.

Last destination was the dummies and sword fighting area where you picked up Jiwoo, Jungwoo, Kim and Hwang Hyunjin, Chaeryeong, Felix, Chenle, Bomin, Wooyoung, and Sanha. About half of them agreed because they have nothing better to do. It may have seemed like a knock against them but you had faith that they had as much drive to protect the younger campers, especially from their own cabin, as you do.

It was a bit odd to tell them all about what you’re sending them into. One, sending them into danger, two making them fight in the woods, which was only ideal for about 2 people in the whole group. The rest would have to figure how to fight so close to each other and the trees. Somebody proposed groups or pairs, an idea you wished you had thought of yourself. Before you could blink half of the group had paired themselves off. Apparently, the friends Chuu had joined had become an odd number of people, which just so happened to leave you two as the last ones.

Ignoring that, you all quickly talked about your ‘flares’ to call other people to your location. It was a good thing Jiwoo had more affinity with water control than you do so she could actually make a visible signal in the air. It was all fine and dandy at first when there were other people to talk to, but as you got further into the forest people split off in different directions. Before you knew it it was just you and Jiwoo. After being in the camp for so long and almost constantly surrounded by sound it felt almost wrong to only hear the silence. You stared off in the opposite direction of Jiwoo, watching and listening for anything out of the ordinary.

When you did hear something and looked back to check if she did as well, you finally noticed that she had up and disappeared. It sent a little jolt to your heart, wondering if something snatched her away. That idea was gone nearly the moment you thought about it, realizing she probably just didn’t want to be around you and wandered off to be by herself. Once that settled in you started to mentally curse her, wondering if she knew just how much extra danger she had put both of you in.

The silence in the forest was unnerving, even more so by yourself, each crack from a branch or leaf could be one of your fellow people or something just waiting to pounce on you. But you of all people couldn’t sit idly by when you knew that you could protect these people, especially since some of them were such young, young kids. Even though Jiwoo was long gone and you should really wait for her, you stepped confidently forward like there’s 100 people at your back.

The sound of your own breathing, your heartbeat, every step, you could hear it all. Something flashed at the corner of your eye and you turned towards it. Then to the other side. Were there multiple or was this thing just that fast? Neither were good options for you. Each move of shadows brought a little waver of the leaves and some quick crunches on the undergrowth. It was stalking you, waiting to see if you would let your guard down for even a moment.

You loaded a bolt into your little crossbow, hoping to have time to fire it off first. All the crunching and darting of shadows was far off again, so you stood and waited, hoping it would come to you first.

It did, with a blur from the trees that you hardly saw and had time to jump away from. Having to roll with a crossbow in your hands was far less than comfortable and easy. You positioned and fired once, hoping to catch it as it landed. You hit the torso but it was hard to tell if it was even bleeding with the darkness and size of the thing.

One look later and you were putting the crossbow away in favour of your sword. Fumbling, you took another few steps away and sent up a bolt of water, letting it scatter and reflect rainbows across the sky to use as your impromptu flare signal.

Once again, it leapt towards you and you crouched under it and swung at one leg. With how narrowly you missed, you had to assume that it lifted its legs to go over your sword. Great, it seemed to be even smarter than you thought it would be.

The next time you weren’t caught so off guard and swung higher, making a substantial cut on one leg. Still, that hardly acted as a deterrent or hindrance, as it continued to move and lunge with all the speed and strength it had before.

Further cementing its intelligence, it leapt toward you but instead of swiping, it opened its wide maw with the intention to clamp down on your torso.

You jumped backwards to avoid the bite but hit a tree, hard. It half stunned you and it took longer before your brain could actually get your body to move. In that time the chimaera unleashed a breath of fire on you. It caught you straight in the chest and you screamed a bit. To stop the show of pain, it would use that to its advantage honestly, you bit down on your lip so hard that the pain, and likely blood, distracted you.

The moment you lifted your sword to swing again the burned skin flashed white hot in pain and you reflexively dropped it. Okay, hopefully someone would find you soon, because you didn't know how long you could dodge this thing.

After a close call with a swipe to the head, someone did find you.

Kim Jungwoo bursted through the trees, spear in his hand and ready to be used. He came out so suddenly that you nearly stabbed him instead but your brain caught up in time. Normally, it was hard to believe that he's a son of Ares, but in the midst of battle like that there was no mistaking it.

There was a reason no one dared to make him angry.

It was easier to dodge and weave with 2 people. Sure, sometimes you got in each other's way or go for the same swing, but generally it worked out. Even more so when Dami from Nyx and Yeonhee from Apollo started to pester it with arrows from the trees.

You grinned a little as Jungwoo dispatched a final blow to its chest, the adrenaline fully taking over you. More people found you over the next few minutes as you all calmed down and started trying to breathe normally.

As the adrenaline wore off a bit, you started to feel the uncomfortable movement of your large area of burned skin.

As you turned to head out of the forest a knife embedded itself in the tree next to you. You turned and saw the familiar pattern of it, Jiwoo's. She pinned the body of an abnormally large bug, one that definitely seemed like it would attack you, to the trunk.

Training must have been doing her good, you nodded and continued on, not daring to look back.

The adrenaline began to wear off and the pain of the burn became even more acute. Tramping your way through the bush, you had hardly any care for whatever other natural predators may have came out and found you.

Your fight or flight instincts were still running rampant through your body and you had to actively resist stabbing the person who came running up next to you. And you were very glad you did because you didn’t think anyone, including yourself, could forgive you for stabbing Chenle or Felix.

One on each side of you, each winced at the slight burning smell you were sure you carried and at the nasty looking skin. You wanted to say it wasn’t as bad as it looked but the resident chatty boys spoke up before you could.

“That looks really bad, I’m sorry you had to come upon the chimaera first. But… thank you for protecting us, protecting all of us. Bomin told us that you had been fighting it alone until they found you. I just don’t know who might have gotten hurt if you hadn’t done it, so thank you again.” Felix said earnestly.

Chenle must have been hyped up on adrenaline with how fast he was bouncing and speaking.

“Mhm! I would've frozen up for sure if it was just me. Guess I should’ve kept to the Apollo cabin instead of going to look for it. Speaking of which…” he awkwardly looked off and nodded at you before pushing past the line into the cabin.

You wanted to say that he should have, the more people in Apollo cabin to soothe and treat any injuries the better. You had already heard that some people got scared and stabbed or shot at a fellow camper. It was unfortunate, but not everyone had realistic combat experience so this must have been worse than you expected for a lot of them.

Contradictingly, you hoped some campers would come talk to you but at the same time you knew you’d need to lay down and not irritate your burned skin for the next few days.

"Chiron, can you set up the bed for me? I'm heading to the Apollo cabin for a few minutes."

Chiron turned the corner and grimaced when he heard that, and winced even more when he saw you. You were sure that you looked rough from the romp in the forest, maybe even worse than you thought if his reaction was so uncontrolled and strong.

You both knew what that meant, you were expecting this to be an extended stay, longer than anyone in Apollo cabin would prefer. Nathaniel wasn't surprised when you said you needed him to come to the Apollo cabin with you. Over the last few years he had dealt with many of your injuries from the monsters of the world.

Still, he didn't seem to expect how bad it was and grimaced when you peeled your shirt off of it.

"Alright, okay, this is fine." He said, in a way that told you it was not really fine. "Scratches first, then we'll see what I can do."

It was calming, the warmth of Nathaniel healing you. The feeling of your skin stretching or growing back or whatever he did, was very disconcerting but you were more than used to it bythen. Like an old friend that it took you a minute to get used to.

"Gonna be honest: not sure I can do much for you. It's not too late, but I would have liked to treat it immediately and the Chimaera was powerful. It'll be painful, so you need to rest a lot, but I think you know that."

Nathaniel let out a sigh as he looked at the edges of it, a clear red compared to your skin.

"And the scar. It should only be in the spot where the fire originally hit, rather than where it spread to after. I wish I could do more for you, gods."

He ran a hand through his shiny blond hair, though whether he was more frustrated with you or himself was unknown. You reached out and put a hand on his arm.

"Nate, it's honestly fine. My fault for getting burned by the damned thing in the first place. And if it's as small as you say it is then I won't see it that often anyways."

A grin slipped out and Nathaniel shook his head at you, hair falling perfectly over his forehead.

"You're so lucky I like you enough that I won't hit you for immediately calling me Nate like that."

You gasped dramatically, hands coming to clutch at your heart as you fell back. After just a second you popped back up to playfully glare at him.

"Threatening to hit your favourite patient? How dare!"

This time he did smack you, a light one over the back of your head. Really, you saw it coming from a mile away and you both knew you could dodge it, but you let him do it, for fun.

"Please stop saying you're my favourite when I have a boyfriend from Aphrodite. He's actually my favourite because he hardly ever gets injured, unlike someone I know."

You shoved him away and then shoved him again, towards the door this time.

"Go away then, I don't need you! Also the look on your face when you talk about him is disgusting and I hate it. Bye!"

You successfully pushed him towards the steps and slam the door on him, wincing at the movement of your shoulder. Why, oh why, must our whole body be so connected?

The silence allowed you to finally think back on the stressful experience you just had. And as your mind was prone to doing lately, it drifted back to Jiwoo eventually. The way she seemed to have moved on like your friendship never happened at all. Entirely oblivious to the way that you weren’t like what you had become and had instead become what you were before she came along. More withdrawn and into your work rather than the social aspect of your job you had come to enjoy.

Focused on training almost wholly, studying with a close second, and only talking to people who came up to you first. Save Chiron and Dionysus who had camp duties first and generally didn't have thought to spare to your relationship problems.

It seems they got involved anyway, as you learned after your self-imposed bed rest expires. It felt good to be free of having to walk around the camp and see Jiwoo around every turn, at least that was what it felt like. You laid there and did quite a lot of thinking, and quite a lot of paperwork once you could sit up. Chiron was a blessing every day of his life but managing tens of people who also have superpowers basically, takes a real toll on you..

That felt like a real return. Just sitting in your office, like the days before you accepted that working with the campers was far more useful than just doing an office job.

Chiron didn’t bother to knock, you had rather moved past that in the Big House.

“Jiwoo came by and asked about you the other day.”

Your eyebrows shot up farther than you thought they could. She had made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want to talk to you over the past little while, so why would she be trying to check in on you now?

Chiron took your lack of response as good enough and kept going.

“Right up the door and knocked like she had been doing it all along. And when I asked her that, didn’t she know that you had been burnt in the forest, she ran away. Just got this pained look on her face and blasted away faster than any children of Hermes that I’ve ever seen.”

You leaned back in your chair for a moment, going over what he just dumped on you. It felt like a cold bucket of water, like you had just been shocked awake. So Jiwoo didn’t actually hate you like it seemed she did? You needed answers, and you were more determined than ever before to get them from her.

Oh yeah, from the look on his face, Chiron also wants some sort of explanation. From budding friends to completely ignoring each other in just a month or so? He was going to need to check if you're ok, like the comforting uncle figure that he was.

That night you went back to the lake with the little dock, honestly someone needed to repair it. When you got closer and saw someone there you were ready to turn around but then their head turned and both the bow and the way her hair fell was familiar to you still. You let out a quiet breath, not quite sure if you were happy she was there. So, you walked up and sat next to her.

Finally, she didn't walk away but she didn't speak either. You must have sat there for half an hour, silently playing with the water. Neither of you spoke, and she didn't even look at you. Eventually, you just stood up and accepted it. What she said when you were in the forest that night was it, the end.

Before you could take more than half a step Jiwoo called your name with panic in her voice. When you turned back she was looking at you wide-eyed and her hand was hovering near your arm, like she was waiting for permission to grab it.

"Stay, please." Her voice was quiet but pleading.

You were too happy about her speaking to you and even saying your name again to consider doing anything else.

"I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry. For everything really, but first the burn. If I- If I hadn't left you then you probably wouldn't have been burnt at all. They said it wasn't all going to scar, but even some of it is a reminder. A reminder to you of how terrible I was in my anger, and fear."

She glanced at you and a small sob wracked her body when she saw the edges of the burn on your arms.

"Woo, hey, don't cry please." You laid your hand lightly on her shoulder and she took in a shuddering breath.

"Ugh, why am I crying? You're the one who's probably still in pain. Nevermind how terrible I've been to you."

Hesitantly, you moved your hand from her shoulder to her back, and she stared back at you the whole time.

"Jiwoo. If you had been with me I might still have gotten burned, we don't know. Or worse, you could have gotten burned like this."

Before you could say more she burst into tears. You hesitated just a moment before wrapping her up in your arms. Jiwoo tensed before melting and throwing her arms over your shoulders.

It felt amazing to touch her again, it was just unfortunate that it was while she was sobbing against you. It took a few minutes for her to calm down and lean away, wiping away the falling tears. After that it only took Jiwoo a few moments before she was speaking again, her voice thick.

"Why are you being so nice to me? I've been cruel and put you through so much pain. So much unnecessary pain."

You saw her eyes go to the burn again and breathed out heavily through your nose. Her eyes snapped back up to yours, obviously concerned that this was where you finally lost it.

"Jiwoo, you better not think you're responsible for my burn. The chimaera did that, not you."

Her mouth fell open and you mentally heard her protests long before they happened.

"I'm not hearing it. It is not your fault, and I'll tell you that as many times as you need." Your 'teaching voice' unintentionally comes out, firm and unwavering with no room for protest.

Jiwoo looked up at you, shocked, but closed her mouth and swallowed her protests. You cooed and leaned forward a little to pat her head.

"Good girl~"

She flushed just enough that you could see it in the dim light and smacked you lightly. You just laughed and nudged her towards you, one arm still firmly over her shoulders.

To your surprise, Jiwoo slid away. As if she burned it, you moved your arm away. Then you noticed the look on her face, pained.

"I was angry because I knew I couldn't ever be good enough for you. A strange kind of anger, I know. But I was. I was angry that you would stoop down to my level. My pitiful little self."

You opened your mouth to speak but she continued, the words now spilling out of her like she couldn’t stop them if she tried.

"From the first day I came I've seen how capable you are. Able to handle almost any weapon with ease. Comfortable with any campers, whether they've been here 5 years or 5 minutes. I even saw you convince Mr. D to do something once! And everything in the forest. Fighting after you were burned. Holding in the pain so half of us didn't even know. And leading the camp back to safety, back to where we belong."

Her words slowed and she let out a choked little noise. You wanted to reach out, to say her name and comfort her. But she shook her head and continued before you could do it.

"Then there's me. Falling on my face, literally sometimes. I nearly stabbed myself with every weapon I picked up. I know nothing of the gods. It took me weeks to approach any of my fellow campers. In the quest... it was so much worse there. Failing the most basic tasks. Failing to protect you, body or heart."

You could barely hear her talking about how she 'failed' you between the whisper of her voice and your own rushing thoughts.

You cut in before she could go on any longer, "Jiwoo, just listen to me."

She nearly whipped herself off the pier in her hurry to turn towards you. In that moment she seemed almost scared. Scared of what you may say after she had bared her heart like that. Like you could ever live with the knowledge that you had hurt her.

"All of those things come with experience. Every single one. I've been at Camp Half-Blood for nearly 10 years now. When I got there, I can guarantee that I shot hundreds of arrows beyond the targets, or smacked myself in the back of the head with a weapon. And it's not as if I met all of the campers at the same time. I met them one at a time as they came in, getting to know them and getting to know how to settle in new campers at the same time."

You turned to her with a sly, little smile.

"None of them have compared to you, if I'm being honest."

Her mouth fell open a bit more with every sentence you spoke, like for some reason she couldn't believe you being a bit of a clumsy fool at first. With that last sentence she smacked at you again, grumbling under her breath.

"Really, Woo. If you took me to the city I'd be far less capable. I don't know anyone there. I know how the shops work but I'd probably try to pay with Drachmae anyway. Or look for a place to Iris Message rather than a payphone. All sorts of things that being holed out here have gotten me used to."

You let out a little sigh and think of anything else you should say. It was getting harder the closer you felt Jiwoo getting, both physically and emotionally. The urge to cuddle her until any and every problem goes away was like a flashing light.

"Oh, right. You think that you know what I 'deserve'?" You raised an eyebrow at her like a challenge. "I don't care what I deserve. I want you, by my side, as long as you'll have me."

Finally, finally, Jiwoo flung herself towards you. Squeezing and attaching herself to you with every bit of her like any less would allow you to disappear. You held her close, your face in her neck and felt her pounding heart. That time you knew it was from happiness.

Silently, you looked at a nearby fish in the lake. It swam up to your foot and you asked, extra kindly, if it could make a crown for Jiwoo from the lake plants. It vanished with an excited little gurgle. You were pretty sure she wasn't listening, but Jiwoo moved back at the same time that the fish reappears. That time it had many friends and was holding a pretty little crown.

You thanked them and took the crown off their backs, wasting no time before taking the water away and put it on Jiwoo's head. She blinked and looked at her reflection in the water. You weren’t sure how well it shows in the dim light but it must have been enough from the way she looked back at you.

When she took it off her head you froze. It seemed like she liked it, did she not? The feeling crystallized to frustration when she tried to put it on your head.

"Why won't you take it!?" She whined.

From her expression you had expected something a bit more intimidating from her mouth. Either way, you shook your head and put it back on her.

"It's a queenly crown from the lake. That is what you deserve, darling."

It seemed like Jiwoo stopped breathing for a moment and you worried that the pet name was too far, too soon. Suddenly, Jiwoo turned her head toward the lake, but not before you saw the deep red on her cheeks.

The fish came back, some the same as before and some not. For some reason, you couldn't understand them or her as they conversed about something. Then they disappeared again and you were left to wonder. Jiwoo didn't offer any words, just put her hand in your lap, staring at something. Something behind you it seemed, though you couldn't tell. So, you grabbed her hand and waited, waiting until she told you what her strange actions meant.

It was pretty easy to guess when the fish returned with a crown like the one you had asked for before. Jiwoo chattered eagerly with them for a moment before taking it. The crown was dry the moment it touched her hands, and you couldn’t even see the water flow out the way you had to do before. Children of Poseidon.

You fixed her with a playfully flat look as she put it on your head. By the time she pulled away to look at it better you had already lost your expression to a fond smile.

So, you pulled her back to your side, looking at your reflection. The moon shined from above, lighting Jiwoo so you easily traced your eyes over her features. After tonight, you'd be content to sit like this with her until the sunrise. But she has other plans. Jumping up, she pulls on your arm to have you follow her. When you just raise an eyebrow at her, she gestures towards her cabin with her head.

"Stay with me? For tonight at least."

"I said I'd stay as long as you'll have me and I meant it. Lead the way."

#hamartia collab #chuu x reader #jiwoo x reader #chuu oneshot #jiwoo oneshot #loona oneshot #chuu scenario #chuu imagine #chuu fluff #jiwoo scenario #jiwoo imagine #jiwoo fluff #loona scenario #loona imagine #loona fluff #my writing

74 notes · View notes

originlist · 3 years

Text

lostbelt 5.1 prev || next

Ritsu is at ease almost immediately when they enter the city, clasping their hands behind them as their step gets a little bouncier. If they don’t look too hard, it’s almost like they’re visiting somewhere in 2016 or something.

It’s no good to get lost in fantasy of the times they saw proper humanity, or get too caught up in the fact that these people will die because of Ritsu’s actions. The incongruity, they could call it their own inhumanity as they walk through here with a comfortable step and realize fully they will be murdering these people for a crime no more than being alive. Well, it’s not like this is a morality question they haven’t already had and made decisions about. No point backtracking just because something reminds them of city concepts or whatever.

They turn to Mash with a light smile. “It’s nice that the people here seem to have been living well. It’s a really good feeling— I feel like I’m back home before everything. The world felt a little like this.”

They’re attentive, despite the lackadaisical stroll Ritsu’s been keeping at. Sounds like Zeus is overextending himself. The pantheon must be pretty depleted, and it raises a question as to the omnipotence of these gods. Faith is frequently mentioned but a casual part of life, seems to be a boon for the most part. Society bustles.

Everyone’s really welcoming to them. Too bad there’s so many of the gods’ fingerprints on it. It’s not like it’s worse than proper history, though. It’s nice. It feels like spring here. ... The other shoe is sure to drop eventually.

#lb 5.1 #Mun plays fgo #ic : ritsu

2 notes · View notes

kururu418 · 4 years

Text

Asterope

Name: Asterope

Age: Ageless (Appears 17)

Gender: Female

Pantheon: Greek

Appearance: A young woman with long spiky bleach blonde hair, yellow eyes, fair skin, and often had small sparks going off around her body. She wears a wreath with a blue lightning bolt design on her head, a toga, sandals, and a often has a scarf made of clouds around her arms and shoulders that will change depending on her mood.

Background: Asterope is the youngest among Zeus countless children, and seems to be growing into the most powerful. From a young age she showed great potential, displaying all of her father’s abilities and powers. She is the only one among her siblings able to properly wield her fathers famed weapons, Thunder and Lightning. Everyone thought that with her father stepping down at the leader of Olympus, and the previous Hera gone, she was a sure pick to become the new head of the Pantheon.

Unfortunately for her, after the current Hera fell to Aku and was brought back as a goddess, Oberon supported her claim as leader instead, believing that she (and her father) were too arrogant and needed to be humbled. While this irked her, she didn’t put up much of a fuss, instead choosing to bide her time until she could take control and prove to everyone who the rightful ruler of Olympus should be.

When she hears about Typhon’s son being on Earth, she hoped it would lead to Hera’s downfall. But after her father manages to finesse an agreement with Oberon and puts a hit on him, she sees a much simpler opportunity. She intends to take the young titans head, and then use the favor from Oberon to have Hera removed and take her rightful place as the new leader of the Greek Pantheon.

Personality: Asterope is usually very confident, laid back, and haughty. With her being the most powerful offspring of one of the most powerful gods on Earth, she has little to fear and tends to look down on those around her. She believes that it is her divine right to lead, act, and do as she pleases. And she is more than willing to casually smite down anyone who would defy her.

She tends to spend most of her time lounging around and being waited on by her servants. Occasionally she will find ways to kill her boredom, whether it be humiliating her servants or hunting beasts (or people). She is somewhat sadistic, preferring to toy with her enemies before finishing them off just to show them how much more superior she is to them. If she gets too bored she’s not beyond falling asleep in the middle of a fight, both to pass time and rub salt in the wound to her opponents. She becomes angry when someone doesn’t play along with her games, and equally so when her prey doesn’t break quickly enough.

She has a very black and white view about her status and position. That she’s the strongest and most capable, and therefore the best suited to rule. If anyone aside from those she considered her betters (her father, Oberon, etc) disagrees, they’re wrong by default. She believes that as a goddess she shouldn’t be questioned or challenged, and expects her servants to follow orders without delay, unless they want to face her divine punishment.

Powers and Abilities: As the daughter of Zeus, Asterope is able to control and manipulate thunder, lightning, wind, and rain. She typically only uses the first two in combat, but will use the others to alter the terrain to her advantage. Typically she will call down lighting to to strike whoever is opposing her (she typically tones her power back so she can see how many times she can strike them before killing them)

She uses thunder to blast enemies, not only hitting them with devastating force, but affecting their hearing as well. She uses wind to boost fly and boost herself, and rain to allow her lightning to affect more of the area around her. When she gets serious, she will charge herself with lightning, increasing her speed, power, and durability.

She can summon clouds around the battlefield to strike her enemies with lightening or rain down or boom thunder at them. But her most threatening ability is her power to turn into lightning itself, moving at blinding speed and too fast for most to even keep up. While she can’t properly use her other abilities in this form, she is able to move through people, usually striking them in the heart for a killing blow.

Relationships (if any):

Zeus: Her father felt immediate pride at how strong his daughter was from birth, and spoiled her every chance she got. He constantly told her how she was “A child worthy to be his true heir”. He is one of the only people who she’ll listen to or heed advice from, and genuinely respects and cares for him. She intends to do his name justice among the realms of the gods by usurping Hera and reminding everyone their line is truly in charge.

Hera: She has a strong dislike for Hera, believing that someone who once had “The stench of mortality” is unfit to lead gods like her. While she doesn’t directly go against her rules, she openly speaks out and against her whenever they’re among the other gods. Once she takes control of the Pantheon, she intends to give her a lower ranking position to reflect her “true status”.

Servants: She treats most of her servants as just that, servants. But a select few, the ones who are the strongest among them and perform her bidding, warrant her respect and are the closest thing she has to friends. She considered them hers, and is personality insulted when someone strikes them down.

Brontes: Her giant pet eagle who is often seen lounging around with her. She pampers it and treats it better than most people. It’s immortal and a divine beast. It was hatched and mothered from the same eagle that ate the liver of Prometheus.

Quotes:

Asterope smiled as she walked past Hera, who didn’t look at all pleased. “Enjoy your precious last few hours as the Supreme Goddess of this Pantheon Hera. Once they're over, I assure you I will be making some long needed changes…”

~~~~

“I’m not sure you quite understand how to use these words. I’m a god, and the greatest among my pantheons at that. Barring my father and Oberon himself, there are none who have the right to question my might,” she said, pointing towards her opponents. “Know your place mortal, and respect mine. Or be stuck down like the ant you are.”

~~~~

“My, aren’t you a sturdy one. But that’s alright. I do so love playing with my prey. I wonder just how many strikes it will take to fell you,” she said, raising her hand up and pointing her finger in the air. The clouds darkened, and sparks could be seen crackling through the air. “Don’t give out on me too quickly.”

~~~~

Trivia: Asterope’s personality is partly based off of Enel from One Piece.

One of the major antagonist I have planned for the next arc! A daughter of Zeus! Like the other contest I thought it’d be a good idea to show a example of a bio and... I just wanted to drop a sneak peak. Hope you guys enjoy!

#tales of mewni #tales of mewni contest #asterope #character bio

11 notes · View notes

omniswords · 4 years

Text

How to Open a Padlock, Part 1 [Nino Lahiffe/Camila Siddiq (OC)]

Four times Camila Siddiq ran into Carapace, and one time she found Nino.

I know I’ve been talking about her on and off on this blog, but I’ve had this piece I wrote about her ages ago, maybe a month or so after I even created her. Camila won’t make her Official Debut until the second half of Chronicles, but… here’s what things would be like if she were in the canonverse.

I hope you like it. I really hope you like it.

Before you start, just a quick content warning for explosions and an act of Islamophobia in this part. It’s. Shit’s real, y’all. And I want you to be safe, so take a step away if you need to.

[i.]

This is the sort of thing that’s only supposed to happen in horror stories on the news. In statistics. In social media, in hashtags, in videos blurred out for containing “sensitive content.” In some other country. Not here. Never here.

Camila isn’t supposed to become a statistic, but she just might be, in the Latin Quarter. And for all her supposed tos and shouldn’t haves, maybe she should have expected it after all.

She’s not particularly religious, not the way her parents are. But Friday afternoons are still sacred family time for her. They’re always blocked out for her to meet with her parents in front of the mosque after the lecture and prayer, and to treat them to lunch. It’s the one time she’ll go a little easier on the makeup, make sure her clothes aren’t too ripped or too sheer or too anything, and it’s mostly out of respect for her mother. Her father, as far as she’s concerned, is just there for the ride. Or, she supposes, the drive. It’s his car they all pile into, after all.

And the Latin Quarter isn’t so bad a place. It doesn’t have the same bustle as the eighth arrondissement, but it’s quaint, and quiet, and it feels like a movie sometimes. She’ll even stick around when she doesn’t have any more classes for the day, or even after her practicum, just to meet up with some classmates or friends for tea, book shopping, a casual game of Frisbee in the park or an adventure in one of the art-house cinemas.

It’s just not the sort of place she would ever expect to see thick, black smoke rising. Especially from the Grand Mosque’s dome. Or to hear screaming, especially from the people rushing out and the people still inside.

In the midst of it all, she can’t help but go stock still for a too-long moment, eyes darting around and scanning the crowd. This isn’t supposed to happen here. It isn’t supposed to happen anywhere, but especially not here. Not to her family. Not to her people. They haven’t done anything aside from wanting to live and be good to others. They haven’t done anything aside from wanting to do the things that bring them peace. For God’s sake, it’s in the name of everything they follow, everything they submit to. Why would anyone want to hurt that? Why are there people who still want to hurt that?

She should have known better than to think there was any country out there that could protect her.

Her mother. She can’t find her mother. But her mother should be so easy to find; she’s one of the few people Camila knows who still defies everything to wear her niqab, still gets slapped with the fine for it and everything. But every woman Camila sees pouring out of the side entrance, has her face uncovered, except where they guard themselves from the smoke with their sleeves. Some of them even have children in tow, and it makes her shake that they’ll have to carry this with them. That they’ll have to go around wondering if they’ll ever feel safe anywhere.

Her mother. She has to go get her mother.

Camila’s barely run a few feet before someone grabs her wrist and yanks her back. Before she can shout in protest, there’s an explosion that shakes the ground, and she screams instead and covers her head to protect herself. She’s gathered up in someone’s arms, against a body, and the ear-splitting sound of it is muffled by a shield.

Wait.

A shield?

Once the explosion subsides and the ground stops shaking, she looks up, slowly. There’s still chaos around her, noise and confusion and questions of when and how and why, but the person holding her barely acts like it. From what she can see under the hood, he’s all serious stares and gritted teeth, talking into some kind of communicator. To Ladybug. She hears Ladybug.

It’s him.

“Carapace?” she ventures to say. She’s surprised at how even she sounds. How she’s not breaking into scared sobs. Maybe it’s the stress hormones. Maybe it’s the fight-or-flight simmering in her blood. “What are you—”

“Akuma,” is his reply, and it’s only then that Carapace looks down to acknowledge her. “You can’t go in there, are you crazy? You don’t know what could happen if that guy gets his hands on you.”

“I don’t even know what is happening.” Camila never knows what’s happened. These akuma things were never a problem before she left home, and now it feels like they’re an everyday occurrence. An annoyance, until now. She struggles in his grip, but if anything, Carapace only holds on tighter. “And I have to go in there, let me go—”

“I can’t,” he says, covers her even more with his shield. “I’m not gonna let one more person get hurt if I can help it—”

“I’m not leaving without her!” she shrieks, and now she’s starting to shake, and she’s pretty sure her makeup is starting to run, and she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care what happens to her, as long as—

Carapace pauses, shifts back to hold her at arm’s length. There’s something almost… anxious in his eyes. She has to wonder how many times he’s felt this way. If any of these other superheroes in town feel it, too. “Who?” he asks. Soft. Maybe even a little scared.

It’s impossible not to trust him. She trusted him with her life long before they ever met. “My mother,” she croaks, and gestures in the air with a hand swiping over her mouth. “Her face is covered. I can’t find her.”

“I’ll get her,” he says, so firmly that she’d believe him if she didn’t already. He fits his shield onto his back, and gathers her up into his arms in a bridal carry. “But I’m taking you somewhere safe first. Can’t hurt your mother by letting something happen to you.”

Carapace has a point, as much as Camila hates to admit it. Reluctantly, she fits her arms around his shoulders—which are surprisingly, amazingly broad, and casts one last glance at the building, at her brothers and sisters rushing to safety and the lithe figures battling it out in the distance. It will all be fixed in the end, she has to tell herself. Ladybug will fix everything in the end.

Well.

Almost everything.

“You don’t have to look anymore,” Carapace says, a soft, gentle murmur that she can feel in his chest. And he turns her head away. His heart is pounding hard, she can hear that too, and he tells her to hold on tight before he leaps. She screams when he does, her stomach jolting like she’s on some roller coaster ride or an elevator drop, and she holds onto him even faster than before, and he tells her, “Don’t look down. Whatever you do, don’t look down.”

So she closes her eyes to fight off the temptation, and tries not to think about how Carapace is literally talking to her and carrying her, and settles for straining to hear the grumble of Arabic under Carapace’s breath. She knew he was Moroccan, ever since the Ladyblog confirmed it. But it’s still so strange to hear someone so above her, someone she and pretty much every other woman in her family look to, speaking words that are so familiar to her. Not that she’s heard many people swear in her dialect of Arabic—in fact, even the thought of it makes her shudder—but he drops a couple here and there, talking about a fucking akuma in the fucking courtyard, and how this Hawk Moth fellow had better prepare to meet God in his grave, and—

Oh.

Did he just—?

They’re tucked away near the Pantheon before she knows it, or can say anything. The fighting and the panic are still there, in the distance, and something pulls at her heart and makes her want to go back, makes her want to demand why Carapace took her away. It doesn’t take much from him to quiet that tension, though. Just an earnest look—something so familiar to her, painful in how she can’t place it for how rattled she is—and the same three words. “I’ll get her.” And then, three more: “Stay here. Please.”

She takes a slow, shaky breath, nearly slumping against the wall behind her. She would have loved to meet him some other way. Any other way. She just guesses there wouldn’t be any other way, if he only comes out when there’s danger. “Camila,” she finally says.

Carapace seems to freeze for a moment, fists clenched tight. But his stance relaxes, and his voice goes low and soft. “Is that your mom’s name?” he asks.

“It’s mine.” She swallows hard, fingers latching onto the gold hamsa pendant her grandmother gave to her years ago. “I figure you ought to know the name of the person who owes you one. Or two.”

For the first time since she met him, Carapace smiles. It makes his eyes glitter. Maybe it’d make her heart flutter, too, if he didn’t have somewhere to go. “Hey. You don’t owe me nothin’ but your safety.”

It’s not a very tall order, and she really does wish there were more she could do than just… wait. But if that’s all a superhero is asking of her, then maybe it’s all she needs. She steadies herself, stands up straight, can’t bring herself to look anywhere else but at him. “You…” she starts uneasily, clears her throat. “You think I’m pretty?”

He did say it before. How cruel someone had to be to attack such a pretty girl. Maybe he didn’t know she could understand. Or maybe he forgot. Either way, he blushes, deep red under that hood of his, and nods without a word, and then he’s off again.

Pretty.

Carapace, the hero of literally every Arab in Paris, thinks she’s pretty.

(Well. Of course she already knew she was. It doesn’t make her any less fluttery.)

The waiting game is the worst part. Having to listen for all those distant sounds, poking her head around the corner to look for the occasional person or two running away from the commotion, or maybe a bright green force field. Her body’s shaking so much that it’s almost hard to stand, but she said she wouldn’t leave. So she’s not leaving. She’s waiting. And waiting. Fixing her face, and holding herself together, and waiting.

When the flurry of ladybugs come and return the neighborhood to the way it was, she heaves a sigh of relief, and suddenly the waiting doesn’t feel so bad. It’s numbered, right down to the moment Carapace brings her parents back to her, and he slips away before she can even thank him again.

She hopes, in the time her mother is holding her together instead, in the time that her father is watching news of the arrest on his phone, that Carapace remembered her name.

(“I was there,” she tells Nino later over glasses of iced mint tea and sweets from Marinette’s parents’ bakery. “I was there, and I was scared to death, and I couldn’t do anything.”

Over the sound of a soccer match, Nino squeezes her shoulder, and then her hand. “But someone did,” he says, and he pulls her into a hug. “Someone did so you didn’t have to.”

Someone did, but it wasn’t her.)

#miraculous ladybug #camino #nino lahiffe #oc: camila siddiq #nino/oc #face in hands #please validation..............

28 notes · View notes

see-arcane · 4 years

Text

The Archive of Extinction

The sky has been looking back for days now. Theoretically.

Days aren’t what they should be anymore. Not marked by a sun, so much as by how much Dark there is in the air at a given time. Clocks are a joke. Digital readouts turn into flailing sigils if looked at for too long and the hands of the old log cabin clock that had come with the house won’t stop spiraling around each other. Which is just as well, for the numbers have been replaced with twelve staring eyes.

Jon can’t bring himself to care anymore. Not in a way that feels real and present. Not for anything other than Martin. He had cared for some while after the Change occurred. If he asked, he’s sure he could just Know how long that had lasted; his final vestiges of pure, raw horror and guilt before he had simply…switched off. As much off as he could make himself.

It had been ugly for a time. Hours? Days? Who knew? Who cared?

Hint: not Jon.

Jon had burnt his remaining drops of care in whatever period had chased the Change, suddenly finding himself drowning, gagging, utterly inundated with the Fears’ offerings. Was it some new evolution of his powers? Some warped tithe from the pseudo-pantheon that had chased his voice through the Door? He does not know. He does not want to Know. But he can guess.

He can guess that it isn’t going to stop. It feels like some secret mouth in his head has been wrenched open, fitted with a funnel, and must now constantly inhale the tides of human terror that the Eye ferries to him, cramming it down into whatever strange organ now serves as his stomach. The Archive, bottomless and unending inside, with room enough for the dying and worse-than-dying agonies covering the Earth.

Jon remembers crying, laughing, screaming, pleading, apologizing in whispers and at the top of his lungs. Martin there, always there, weeping beside him, holding him, being held in turn—clung to as if he were a piece of driftwood in a sea that was rushing off the edge of a flat world. And it had not stopped. And it had not hurt. And he could not pretend it felt like anything other than relief, this sudden-and-endless reprieve from the half-starved state he had been so ready to resign himself to. A lifetime of paper statements. However long that lifetime might be.

He recalls a hazy, semi-formed plan to simply wait out his Archival hunger. If Daisy could wean herself off the Hunt and come so close to success, surely he could transition back too. He’d imagined it with the clarity of a daydream in those days before ‘Hazel Rutter.’ He would nibble through paper statements and choke down tea that tasted of nothing and chew food that tasted of dirt, until, eventually, the Eye would…what? Throw in the towel? Just casually hand his life back to him with a huff and let him be human again? Jon almost laughs now, thinking on it.

He wonders how long it would have lasted, given time. How long before the miracle actually came to pass? How long before the inevitable came, and the statements dried up, and he was left to fade to death or be forced to…

Well. No point pondering now, is there? Not when he can no longer do anything but consume. He feels like a sponge thrown in the ocean.

Martin asks every day—night?—how he’s doing. Jon will give him as many answers as he can that aren’t the truth. At most, he’ll say he feels right. But that isn’t the whole truth.

Because the whole truth is, he feels healthy for the first time in recent memory. He feels well. Which is, of course, a worrisome way to feel. Not the way Jonathan Sims, practicing human, should feel. Better yet, this is only how he feels physically.

On every other level, Jon is dangerously close to feeling nothing at all. Oh, he feels guilt, of course. The old chestnuts of dread and shame and Oh-God-Please-Let-This-Be-A-Nightmare. There’d been one especially shameful stint where he had resorted to praying that he was still in his coma and when he woke it would all be gone. Again, he could almost laugh.

Almost.

But that was then and this is now. Now, long past the point when Jon had felt the crescendo of all his anguish and all the world’s pain and fear and Hell and the sheer, sadomasochistic weight of it all in his mind and, and, and—

Something in him popped.

A silly way to put it, not appropriately grandiose, but that was all Jon could describe it as. Something popped. Like a balloon that had been gradually swelling with all the trauma of the past half-a-decade until the Change came with its mandatory buffet and there was simply no more stretch left to hold it all. Hence, pop.

The emotions were still there, Jon knew. Scattered around the floor of his brain in shreds of woe and turmoil. Someday he may even paste them all back together and begin refilling it with suitable self-loathing and empathy and secondhand horror at all the Sights the Eye insisted on dumping into him. Eventually. Maybe.

For now, all he is is tired. There is no energy left to feel at full capacity. He reserves what he does have for making words at Martin, holding Martin’s hand, making movements and gestures that prove to Martin he is still there, still Jon.

Is he still Jon? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to Know.

The sky is looking back at him. Him, specifically. He Knows this because the Eye wants him to Know it.

Jon is sitting on the porch swing at the house’s front. Martin is somewhere inside, making creative use of whatever is left in their pantry that has not grown an awful will of its own, or else been entirely replaced by some minor monster looking to pull a new prank. They’re better off than most in that regard. Inconvenienced rather than tortured. Perhaps luck, perhaps purposeful.

Jon still doesn’t care. He looks at the sky. Neither of them blink.

He hears the telltale click at his side. With a long sigh through the nose, he breaks the staring contest to look. The new tape recorder, ironically eyeless, somehow looks back.

“What? I told you before, there’s nothing left to eavesdrop on. Nothing you can’t See and Know already. You—,” he looks back at the Eye in the sky, “—you’re here. You’re right here, so what’s the point of this? Just trying to get rid of some spares?”

“It’s hard,” he hears the tape recorder say. His voice, talking to a woman who isn’t there, who may or may not be alive now. He hasn’t dared to Know. Martin hasn’t dared to ask. Jon looks back to the recorder. “It’s like there’s a, a door, in my mind. A-And behind it is, is the entire ocean. Before, I didn’t notice it, but now, I-I know it’s there, and I can’t forget it, and I can feel the pressure of the water on it. I-I can keep it closed? But sometimes, when I’m around p-people, or places, or ideas? A drop or two will push through the cracks at the edges of the door. And I’ll…know something.”

“What happens if you open the door?” asks Basira, an eternity ago.

“I drown.”

Click.

Jon almost thinks the Eye must be losing its touch. What more is there for him to let into his head beyond the forever-meal it’s already so happy to shovel into his brain? As soon as the thought occurs to him, he Knows the answer.

The door is still there in him. Though it strains on its hinges and the water is spurting out around the cracks, it is closed. One last door waiting for Jon to open it.

Go on, Pandora. We promise, this box is safe. Not like those other ones full of unimaginable eldritch horrors from beyond the edge of mortal comprehension. Trust us.

Jon knows better without having to Know, obviously. Even someone with his score has to catch onto the gag eventually. It’s an invitation into another trap. Another dose of pain to throw into the grotesque sitcom the Eye has made of his life and everyone else’s.

But, as has been his default state for too long, he is, likewise obviously, curious. How exactly would opening that door make things worse? He knows it will, because no change in this train wreck of an existence has led to anything resembling an improvement. All new things are bad things in Jon’s experience.

Will it really drown him in his own head? Swamp his consciousness in endless facts so that he’s left effectively catatonic? Could it finally burst his skull like the overfed tick it is?

The Eye watches him. Waiting. Observing his weighing of pros and cons.

If it does kill him, or leave him vegetative, or worse—there was always a chance for him to end up like that wretched predecessor of his in Alexandria, Cyclopean and voracious—what of Martin?

Martin, the last thing that merited care. Energy. Effort. Humanity.

Jon Knows that Martin has given up on making any more warm drinks. Even the hot chocolate has proven to be a trick; a cocoa-dusted abomination that also happened to snap up the last of the marshmallows before skittering off into a gap in the woodwork. He’s currently scrutinizing a can of tomato soup, wondering if it will actually be soup when he dumps it in the pot, or something smelling of arteries. He’ll be some time deciding.

Would Martin be alright without him, if something did go wrong? When something inevitably went wrong?

Jon isn’t sure how long this relative peace will last for them out here in their little house away from the worst of it. The Eye of the storm.

“Ha.”

The sound falls like a stone.

Is he what’s keeping them safe? Is it the Eye’s influence? Would opening that very last door endanger them, blasting his mind away in a scouring wave of Knowledge? Would it?

“Why? If you want me to Know something, I can hardly stop you.”

The sky only stares at him. Still waiting to see what he’ll do, this funny, useful toy, its Archive, still pretending he isn’t what he is. What will he do next, folks? How will he fuck up this time? Let’s watch.

Jon looks at the sky and reaches over with one hand. He hefts the tape recorder, testing its weight, and hurls it as hard as he can. It crashes into one of the beams supporting the porch’s roof, all cracking plastic and broken cassette. From indoors, Martin yelps. Jon listens as his steps rush up to the front window and—

“Jon? Jon, what the hell was that?”

“Just me, Martin. Sorry.”

“Yeah, but what was—,”

“Another recorder. Not like we’ve got a shortage.”

“Yeah, well,” there’s a steadying sigh through the bug screen. Jon turns to see Martin flattening a hand over his heart, willing it to slow. “Just—just give some warning, yeah?”

“Sorry. Won’t do it again without a heads-up.”

“Okay. Well, then. Um. I’ve decided to put any thoughts of canned goods aside for the time being. Give them some time to, ah, consider whether or not they want to be something else. If that makes sense.”

“As much as anything else.”

“Right. But I’ve got a few things put together from the freezer that seem relatively trustworthy. A bit of ground beef that should make decent patties.” Large hands fidget on their side of the windowsill. “Interested?”

Jon isn’t. Jon won’t taste anything but burger-shaped dust on bun-shaped dust. He’s never even hungry anymore. But Martin wants to see him eat the same way he wants to see Jon drink from a cup and close his too-bright eyes when he lays in bed beside him, pretending to sleep. He also wants to see Jon blink now.

So Jon blinks and says, “Sure. But not a ton for me. Just, ah, half a patty. Maybe less.”

Maybe none, he wants to say and doesn’t. It isn’t right for him to take up any food that isn’t turning traitor. Martin will go as thin as Jon if they aren’t careful. But Martin smiles, and the light of it seems to dim the shadows growing under his eyes.

“Will do. But you will eat it all, Jon, understand? No picking at it and hiding it in your napkin again. You’re not eight.”

“Do I have to have vegetables too?”

“If they don’t get up and run, yes.”

Jon forces a petulant noise and makes the corners of his mouth go up. Martin smiles again and is gone. Jon’s face goes slack as he returns his attention to the sky.

“No,” he tells it. His voice is a rattle. “The show’s over. Whatever new trick you want me to do, it’s cancelled. You’ve got a whole world to play voyeur to. Better tragedies, better performances. Have Jonah do something funny and catastrophic for a change. I’m done. If you don’t like it, feel free to just,” Jon taps his brow, “switch off the tap up here. Let me shut down.”

That, at least, is a familiar form of ending. One he had suspected was around the corner for him for ages. Plain old starvation. It would take a while. It would hurt. It might humanize him or it might kill him. Jon doesn’t care.

Rather freeing, that. He should have done it years ago. Saved everyone a lot of grief.

“Shit,” Martin gasps somewhere in the living room, fumbling. Something that sounds distinctly porcelain and distinctly expensive clatters ominously on the coffee table.

“Martin?”

“It’s fine,” Martin calls back. “Bumped the table, almost broke the vase. You know, if we’ve got any good flowers left, we may as well use the thing. Not like it’s doing any good as a just-for-show piece these days.”

“True. I’ll…I’ll see if any of the flowers are good.”

Martin doesn’t reply. Jon assumes a nod and stands. He’s two steps from the swing when two things happen.

The first thing that happens is he looks in the window.

The second is that he remembers the name of a man who never existed. Mr. David Ramao, the husband who had never been married to Andre Ramao, former antique dealer, former owner of a particular vase of a particular design which had a particular habit for misplacing things of value around it.

The vase that is standing in the center of the coffee table. Watching Jon stare at it.

He does not know what has happened. He does not want to Know.

“Martin.”

No answer.

“Martin?”

Quiet.

“Martin?”

The name becomes the only word in his vocabulary as he rushes back in, scanning every room, every corner, every direction there is to go in the squat little house. Nothing answers him. Not even the small horrors that have replaced so many of their possessions and comforts.

His possessions. His comforts.

There is no one else here, because he has always been alone.

The vase waves at him. It winks without eyes.

And Jon feels. Feels the last embers of himself flare up in an acidic rush of adrenaline and fear, a last hurrah for loss and despair.

Because here he is again. Even now, at the End of the World, here he is again.

He does not waste time on the mourning. Or the howling. Or the begging. Or even the old bout of self-recrimination that was once so innate it was as common as breathing for him.

No. If he survives this, perhaps he will indulge in that last rousing bit of suffering.

Right now, the door is waiting. The Eye Sees him even through the walls, silently daring him to believe that now there is nothing more to lose. Nothing more he can be punished with. It will not starve him, of course. Goodness, no. But it will get as creative as it needs to until he does what comes natural.

Jon reaches inside himself and opens the last door.

And Knows.

And Knows—

He knows the house is shaking. Knows the sky is staring down at him, its pupils deeper than the Vast, blacker than the Dark, the strength of its Vision crushing down, down, down, in, in, in, through, through, through the door in Jon’s skull, flooding him as he always suspected it would.

There is a migraine that could fry the grey matter of every living and semi-living thing in the world right now, shrieking through his brain.

Then nothing. Briefly.

And then he’s in his office. Though he’s sitting in the wrong chair. The one reserved for visitors, for givers of statements and succor. Around him, the shelves, cabinets, and heaps of familiar old paper are filled with eyes, peeking through every shadow and gap.

Across from him is Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Jon knows the man from a reflection over four years old. He is as Jon remembers himself, thin, but not bony, unscarred, only a few ghostly streaks of grey-white cutting through trimmed dark hair. He still has glasses. His shirt is still tucked in and he is bothering to wear a tie, to shear off the morning stubble. Jon can actually smell the old aftershave.

The only thing that doesn’t match is the eyes. Pardon, Eyes.

They do not blink. They are not the quiet olive color inherited from father, inherited from grandmother. They are huge, staring, starving. The sickly green of the iris condensed into thin rings around the yawning pits of the pupils.

Jon cannot look away from them. Though he is aware of Jonathan Sims’ hand reaching with blind ease to one side of the desk and hitting the red button of the tape recorder. He’s surprised when Jonathan Sims opens his mouth and his ears aren’t decimated by some cacophonous, otherworldly Capital V Voice. It’s just Jonathan Sims’ voice, from the beginning. Forced into a parody of deep, stoic morbidity—if he still had the energy left in him for it, he’d look back on those days with embarrassment. Putting on that frail mask of aloofness, pretending he wasn’t still dumbfounded at being chucked into Gertrude Robinson’s chair and that he was not feeling any new eyes on his back.

The Eyes staring at him now, through his face.

“Statement of Jonathan Sims,” Jon hears, as Jonathan Sims doesn’t move his mouth, “regarding his situation with the Eye, alias the Ceaseless Watcher, alias the Beholding, alias approximately twenty-seven other assumed and bestowed titles in half as many languages. Statement recorded direct from subject, 2nd April, 2020. Statement begins.”

A moment later, Jon feels the tug. A sensation he had, of course, always secretly been curious about. He had never been compelled to talk before and had preferred to theorize about the feeling rather than ask those he’d inflicted it on in the past. Now he’s feeling it firsthand.

It starts as a small yank at the root of the tongue. Then another in the back of his head. In a more experimental mood, Jon might have resisted the sudden impulse rushing up his throat, just to see how long he could hold out. But he really did have some words that needed sharing. So.

“Where the hell is Martin?”

Jonathan Sims stares.

“That’s a question for you, ‘Jonathan.’”

Jonathan Sims tilts his head, then the Eyes—somehow—widen a little further. Jon watches himself shift in his seat, mildly surprised by the fact that he’s moving. His jaw works, baring teeth and tongue. Jonathan Sims’ brow furrows, concentrating. Then:

“You call me Jonathan sardonically. You know what I am.”

“The Eye.”

“Yes.” The Eye raises its borrowed hand to point at its borrowed chin. “You expect the mouth to move when I communicate. Just as you expect your mouth to move when communicating.” The hand touches the jaw. “I have never done this. I Know how it is done. Have never done it.”

“Good for you. Rah for new experiences. Where is Martin?”

“The experience is no longer new,” the Eye says. It’s no longer moving its Jonathan Sims-skin in its chair. The unmarked hands lay on the desk. “I Know it now. It is old. Done.”

“Great. Where is Martin?”

“Martin Blackwood is in a Place That Isn’t.”

“One of those offshoots of the Spiral. Right. Put him back.”

“I am not of the Spiral. I cannot relocate Martin Blackwood.”

“The same way you can’t relocate that goddamn vase? Like it’s just a coincidence it popped up the second after I tell you I don’t want to play with you anymore?”

“No coincidences. No surprises.”

“Just a happy accident for you, then?”

“No happiness.”

“Shocking.”

“No sho—,”

“For fuck’s sake.”

Jon has his head in his hands, heels grinding against his eyes. In his nightmares he had fallen over and over into the eternity of the Eye’s grasping pupil. A translation of what he had feared was an inevitable, screaming homecoming, dragged up and away into some parody of a promotion and exile from all human sanity. Instead, he’s talking to himself.

“You were expecting Fear. I can be Fearsome.”

Jon does not pull his hands from his eyes. He doesn’t need to Know that the office around him is trembling out of view, seconds away from showing the warped reality hiding behind its walls. Something far, far worse than the institute’s old tunnels.

“I’m fine with the office, thanks.”

“Yes.”

The office is there when he lifts his head. Still full of eyes, but just an office. Unless it decides not to be. Jon forces himself to breathe. He’s been forgetting that too, lately. Same as blinking. He knows he has to breathe to make words happen, but using his lungs for anything else is becoming something he has to remind himself of.

When Martin’s nearby.

“How do I get Martin back?”

“You ask, when you already Know.”

“By an avenue of the Spiral, at a guess, but Helen’s been noticeably absent since this whole Hell-on-Earth thing started. Don’t even have a phone number for her. So, how do I get Martin back?”

“You do not.”

“That’s not an option.”

“It is.”

“This is an ultimatum thing, is that it? I have to do another little dance for you before you give me the information I need to—,”

“Knowledge does not always yield desired answers, Jonathan Sims. You knew that even before you Knew it. You seek it regardless.” The Eye changes in its seat. Jonathan Sims grows stubble, a bit more white in his hair, the tie hanging loose. Worm scars spot him in a hundred places. A still-burning cigarette grows out from between two limp knuckles. “Always you seek it. Once hopeful. Now hopeless. You still seek.”

“Not lately I don’t. Turns out the apocalypse kind of takes the zeal for discovery out of life. Now tell me how to get Martin back.”

“You are trying to compel me. I think…” The Eye’s Jonathan-face scrunches in pantomimed confusion. “…that should be funny. Yes. It should be funny. This does not function.”

Before Jon can react, the Eye gives him a Look and Jon finds himself breaking into helpless giggles. The giggles rise up into an actual laugh. A tear comes to his eye. Then the fit ends and Jon shudders in his chair. It had not hurt, but he had not liked it. At all. Across from him, his own face is placid. It mulls something over, watching him. “Thank you,” says the Eye.

What you’d tell a chef after serving a perfectly cooked steak, he thinks unbidden.

“Thank you,” the Eye sighs. “I have never thanked before now. New.” The Eye musters a phantom of a frown. “Now old.”

Jon gawks at it. His eyes, his real eyes, are burning now. Wet and boiling all over again.

“What do you want from me? What else is left for you to take?”

“You address me as if I took Martin Blackwood. As if I am responsible for the entirety of your unhappiness. For ‘taking’ anything. I do not take. I give.”

Jon produces his own laugh at that.

“Right! I’m just swamped with your fucking gifts!”

“You are. I gifted you life. I gifted you power. You accepted it in desperation, not comprehending how much you would hate the conditions under which your gifts would need to function. Yet you accommodated them just the same. Unhappily. Always unhappily.”

“Seasoning, right?”

“The Distortion’s phrasing. Foolish to believe it wholly.” The Eye regards its Jonathan-hands idly. It lifts the one with the cigarette, watching the smoke curl. “I approved of it. I approved more of those instances where you took pleasure from it. Unfortunate that the latter occurred so rarely.”

“What?”

“You have feasted. You are feasting. It feels right because the absence of hunger is right. Its rightness shames you. But this gluttony is joyless. Define why it is joyless, Jonathan Sims.”

“It—because I’m eating people’s fear. Their misery and hurt and horror. I don’t like liking it. I don’t like becoming this thing you wantmetobefuckfuckfuckjust—stop! Stop.” Jon covers his mouth with one hand and tries to push himself up from the chair with the other. Instead he stays anchored to the seat and his hand flies away from his lips. “What is this!? Just—just get to the part where the next horrible surprise hits me and I can go back and hunt for Martin and the next horrible fucking thing can happen and the next thing, and the next thing, and the next fucking thing, like you seem so determined to See happen, just—just—,”

His hands are clamped to his head now, gripping tight, wanting so badly to rip his skull in half and free him from the whole mess. Tears—the first real tears he’s had in a long while—are returning to their proper place in his eyes, blurring the room and streaking his cheeks. They’re too warm.

“Let me be done. Why won’t you let me be done?”

No reply. He looks up and jerks back on reflex.

The Eye wearing Jonathan Sims is now halfway across the desk, almost nose-to-nose with him. The irises are obliterated under the ink of its pupils. They’ve gone so wide and so dark they fill almost the whole socket. The image of Jonathan Sims—even greyer now, more scarred, utterly disheveled, blood-speckled—seems to vibrate like a mirage struggling to keep itself intact.

“I—,” the Eye says. Its Jonathan-voice trembles, thrumming with some alien cousin to excitement. “I cannot—cannot—I—,”

The Eye gives him another Look.

Jon begins weeping harder. Laughing too. Not out of humor, but out of relief. A titanic, bitter relief that shakes his whole body. He can’t stop himself. Can’t do anything but cry and laugh as a proxy. When it does finally end, some long minutes later, he’s left hoarse and shivering.

“Thank you,” the Eye sighs. “I Know how tear ducts work. I Know the mechanisms of sensations beyond Fear. I Know them. But I cannot operate them. No.” The Eye’s Jonathan-hands reach forward. Jon can’t move away, because the Eye doesn’t want him to. Jon is holding his own hands. “Thank you.”

“I don’t understand this. What are you doing?”

“You already Know. You Know everything now, Jonathan Sims. But you are processing the Knowledge. Digesting. Translating. I have, I am, I will tell you all that I Know, which is all that I am. You believe time is passing here, in this place. It is not. You are in the house in Scotland, Jonathan Sims, frozen in the act of Knowing. Measured by your standards, the time required to finish Knowing will be no longer than a millisecond. Two at most. But inside that time, we are here, and we are eternal. For however long it takes for you to be calm enough to engage in this exchange as required.”

“But Martin is—,”

“Imperiled. Yes.”

“You said I can’t get him back.”

“You cannot. You Know that.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“I will tell you. I will help you Know. You still want to Know, Jonathan Sims, even now. Even when all evidence suggests you will not enjoy what you discover, you still want to Know. A compulsion deeper than breath and hunger.” Jon’s hands are crushed in his own fingers. They shake. The pupil-blotted Eyes seem wetter now. Huge balls of onyx in a terribly tired face. “Yes?”

“…Yes.”

“Yes. That was…a question, just now. I have never asked before. I Knew the answer, but I asked anyway. Questions are appropriate in conversation. Suggestive of inquiry, seeking input. Polite. Yes. Yes?”

“Yeah.” The word comes out dry. God, God, he is tired.

“Yes,” the Eye confirms. “I have asked questions now. New, old.” Knowing that it should nod, the Eye nods to Jon, to itself. Then it looks into Jon. Not with searing curiosity, but with its best attempt at polite interest. “Do you like Diana Wynne Jones, Jonathan Sims?”

“What.”

“Diana Wynne Jones. You talked to me once, about your first encounter with the Spider. You mentioned her name. An author. Recall?”

“Yeah. Yes. I liked, ah, Howl’s Moving Castle. Why?”

The Eye’s Jonathan-mouth drops open with a click.

“She did discover that the one thing that could keep me rooted to the spot were books. Television pacified me for a half hour or so, but a book would keep me in place until I had finished it, and for all the voracity of my reading, I was never actually that fast, lingering on pages that caught my imagination. So, in this she saw a solution.

“The difficulty was I was also very picky, and looking back on it there was little rhyme or reason to what I did or did not care to read. I never tried to really define it, but I think the closest I could come to putting it into words was that I hated to read anything I felt like I had read before. This made it something of a nightmare to keep me entertained, as any author with a distinctive enough style would only ever afford me a single book’s worth of reading before I tired of them. I can still hear my grandmother’s voice, trying to hide that irritation bubbling up: ‘But you like Diana Wynne Jones!’”

Click.

The Eye stares.

“Do you like Diana Wynne Jones, Jonathan Sims?”

“I…no, I guess. I liked Howl’s Moving Castle. She bored me after that. They all, ah, all authors always bored me after one good read.”

“Yes. Did you like the statements on paper, Jonathan Sims?”

“They helped. They kept me alright. But if we’re sticking to the theme, no, I didn’t like them. Especially the last, for reasons I’m sure you Know.”

“You were trapped by compulsion then. Forced to speak in another’s voice, a tool more than an entity. A conduit. A vessel.” Suddenly, just for a flash, the Jonathan Sims who is the Eye is no longer Jonathan Sims. Elias Bouchard, who was really Jonah Magnus, who is now the Eye, sits across from him, clutching Jon’s hands. “Yes.” Before Jon can try to lunge away, Jonah is gone, Jonathan Sims is back. Now almost a perfect mirror to what he is now.

Every scar is present, his hair an eruption of shock white, eyes sunk in permanent sleeplessness, no longer gaunt, as he is far too well-fed these days. The expression is all that doesn’t match. It is hungry, so eager in its drawn lines Jon almost expects it to start drooling.

“You do not like paper statements. You want them fresh. New. Direct from the source. But you subsisted on them. They kept you alive. Kept you well. Even the statements taken from the source, while fresher, did not satisfy you best. With some small exceptions. You took what you could to keep sated. To function. Yes?”

“Yes..?”

“You liked it, and languished over the liking of it. Equating the absence of starvation with pleasure. You allow yourself so little in the way of joy, the mistake is understandable.”

“Where is this going? Wh—,”

Then he knows. Even before he Knows, he knows, he guesses the question he has to ask. The Eye Knows it too. It waits to be asked.

“Do you like this?”

“Define ‘this.’”

It’s a remarkable imitation, Jon thinks. Define ‘today.’ He swallows.

“Existing as you do, consuming fear, being a Fear, Knowing everything, being present on Earth—all of it.”

The Eye gives a Look. It squeezes his hands.

Jon breaks into his third round of tears. Relief is there again, but also something far, far too close to the devastating epiphany of the Change. A wretchedness that goes deeper than the soul, old as the very concept of thought, mad and miserable and forever.

“No, Jonathan Sims,” the Eye says as Jon begins sobbing. “No, I do not like this. I do not like that from the instant of my inception, I Knew all. I do not like that, in order to Know, I had to have the closest resemblance to a mind out of all my kind—my neighbors. My fellows. My extensions, if we are utterly honest. I do not like that in the first micro-instant of existence, I had already sampled every form of horror humanity could ever hope to offer me. I do not like that the moment any young Fear raised its head, I had already lost my interest in the menace it sowed, there and gone almost before I Witnessed it.”

Jon’s sobs turn to wails. Harsh, tortured cries that make the office walls vibrate and its many eyes wince. The Eye does not let go.

“I do not like that when I tried to extend my experiences beyond that of Fear, I was met with what Jonah Magnus dubbed my ‘understanding nothing.’ I do not like that I could, can, and will only Witness and tally the sensations of—,” a pause, then Jonathan Sims is replaced by the spirit of Gerard Keay, “—hope, or love, or indigestion, or whatever. Just fear.” Gerard is Jonathan again. “And I do Know why. Because, like all Fears, I can only be Fear. Only accept more Fear into my being.”

The wails evolve into screams. Jon feels his throat healing and re-healing as it ruptures itself with the force of their frustration and incalculable, impotent rage.

“I do not like that I have been, am, will be forever relegated to the starving child waiting outside the window, staring in at the meals of others while I survive off flavorless gruel and gutter water. I do not like that there is nothing new for me to experience ever again. I do not like that there is nothing to Learn that I do not already Know. I do not like that I can Know, and Know, and Know that these other possibilities exist for the scuttling entities I prey upon, and while I never understand or experience it myself. Not without help from what you have called avatars.”

The screams wind down into whistling, hyperventilating gasps. Desperately, wordlessly pleading; the animal-noise of a man in a desert crawling towards a puddle.

“I do not like that even with that outlet—the novelty of little sensory organs moving across the Earth—the non-Fear experiences remained diluted. Dull. Like smelling the prize you want and never getting a bite. I do not like that even my avatars bored me upon the gaining of them. I knew their minds and their realities more closely than any others. Some for centuries. Millennia. I do not like that no matter their differences, their compulsions, their actions, they were predictable. Most turned immediately to the instincts their conversion insisted upon. A small number resisted. I do not like that even Jonah Magnus and Gertrude Robinson, while useful and mildly interesting, were far from unique. I Saw many like them before they existed. Even today, tomorrow, others with a similar mental blueprint exist.”

Gasps wind further down into shuddering breaths, the sound of acceptance. Hatred and the awareness that the hating will produce no results.

“I do not like that what you call the Change has only just come, and it afforded me only the briefest flicker of interest—the collective, shrill screeching of humanity, all Beholding the coming of their awful eternity at once—and it is already over for me. Recorded. Archived. Known.”

Jon breathes, not needing to breathe, but having to. Because the Eye has never experienced it before—Known it, but never had it.

“I do not like that this is all I am meant to have and be forever. I do not like that I am destined for an infinite boredom and a trough filled with the same slop of neuroses and phobias, only in a larger supply. I do not like that I cannot like, Jonathan Sims. I really, truly do not.

“Does that answer your first question?”

“I-I…” Jon looks at himself. The Eye’s face has not changed expression. But now its cheeks are damp too. The walls are weeping with it. “Yes. Yes, I-I think that covers a lot.”

“Yes. Thank you. I did not need that, but…” The Eye nods its head. “But that was new. Old now, but I approved of it, during. Thank you.”

“Um. S-So where does that leave you? Us, I mean—why are we having this talk?”

“You are in the process of Knowing. Growing closer to the point of understanding what you Know.”

“About you?”

“About us, Jonathan Sims. About what comes next.”

“That doesn’t—how can there be any next after this? The world is over. You and all the other Fears are here, everywhere and—,”

“The world is not over, Jonathan Sims. That is hyperbole. It has, as you said, Changed. It is still there. The Fears rule. The Fears feast, just as mechanically as myself, and all the avatars of the same rush around, making their messes in honor of what they call their patrons.” The Eye regards him coolly. “With exceptions.”

“Forgive me for not sprinting out the door to eat my closest neighbor’s trauma. I’ve been getting a constant IV drip of terror just the same, no travel necessary.”

“Yes. Like me you are fed. You are strong. You are unhappy.”

“Not out of boredom.”

“No. Your core is too full of guilt for that. You loathe yourself. You loathe the well-being you take from others’ despair. And me.” The Eye leans a little closer. Jon presses as far back into his chair as he can. “Do you loathe me, Jonathan Sims? Do you loathe the Fears and their minions?”

“Yes.” The answer is out before he can even pretend to think on it. “Yes, I do. Immensely.”

The Eye does not smile. Jon does in its stead, the points of his mouth turning up so high his cheeks throb. The Eye nods.

“That is why, if I could like anything, I Know I would like you. Before even the Spider’s silk grazed you, I was Aware of you. Approving of what I Saw within you. With the grooming of the Magnus Institute and the events transpiring from its influence, I Saw more to approve of. I listened to you pour your voice into the ears I do not have, more ravenous than any avatar before you at the lack of answers, implacable in your pursuit of discovery. Jonah Magnus did not lie about your choosing me, and the role I offered, however unconsciously. I Know—no.”

Jon feels his smile creak up a little higher, sore with attempted joy.

“I think if I were ever human, I would have been like you. I have never thought before now. Only Known.” The Eye sighs again, content. “New, old. Thank you.”

Jon’s face aches.

“You experience so much, Jonathan Sims. You feel so deeply.”

“Nn,” he tries through his too-thrilled grin, “Not lately.”

“With the exception of Martin Blackwood, you do not permit yourself to acknowledge feeling. Your threshold was reached and broken with the Change and the feeding frenzy it has forced upon you. Understandable. But you feel just the same. In a locked off corner, in the tunnels of your subconscious, you go on fearing, anguishing—hating. Wondering.”

“Again. Not. Lately.”

“No? Not even when the recorders came back? You did not feel a single instant of What-Happens-Next-? What-Is-Coming-Now-?”

Jon had. Jon does. He wants to know just as much as he doesn’t. But whatever new mess the story of his life has waiting for him—and however much he may be compelled to throw himself into it to See what happens—he had known better. Does know better.

Because Martin was there. Martin, who he could not risk. Martin, who deserved so much more than what Jon gave him, least of all the common courtesy to not stick his hand in another eldritch wasp’s nest. Martin, who was now somewhere that Was Not.

He supposed that, whether it was the Eye’s doing, or the Web’s, or the Spiral’s, or just blind rotten luck, the absence of the man was supposed to serve as a final unfettering of some kind. Go ahead, Jon, no more conscience or common sense to hold you back now. Dive in!

Except.

“Martin is alive.”

“Yes.”

“There is a way to get him back.”

“Yes.”

“Not by any way I could manage.”

“No.”

“Then how?”

“If I do not spell it out for you, would you hate me more, Jonathan Sims?”

“Do you want to be hated?”

“Desire of any kind is limited for me. I require your hatred to fulfill the one desire I have. Just as much as I require your comprehension of what you now Know.”

“What, then? What, specifically, do you want me to understand out of this mental overload?”

Jonathan Sims is replaced. Jon feels another ripple of distaste as Peter Lukas stares down at him. He wishes he could get his hands back. Peter Lukas tells him:

“There are two powers that, to my knowledge, have never attempted to fully manifest. Never had followers set them up for a ritual. Mother of Puppets, and Terminus. The Web and the End. The Web, I’ve never really been sure about. If I were to guess, I would say it actually prefers the world as is: playing everyone against each other. And so on. The End on the other hand…

“The End doesn’t really need one. It knows that it gets everything eventually, so why bother? The End manifesting would not be a new world of terror; it would be a lifeless world. Devoid of everything.”

Jon Knows the line, Knows Martin heard this all before, and that he had said:

“Including fear.”

“Exactly,” says Peter Lukas’ voice. “It has no reason to truly attempt to enter our world; it’s—passive. But the Extinction…”

A pause. One that Jon Knows was not there in the original exchange this one is being copied from. In the original, Peter Lukas’ face was grave, his tone full of warning. But the Eye is wearing Peter Lukas now, and Jon Knows it is observing his own face. The upward curve of the lips that means I-am-pleased.

So now Peter Lukas mirrors him. Pushing up the corners of his mouth so that his teeth flash within the mist-grey scruff of beard. Above this display, the Eye still stares in avid hunger.

“The Extinction is different,” Peter Lukas’ voice breathes. “It’s active. It will seek to create a lifeless world in a way that none of the other powers would. Some interpretations suggest it might replace us with something new—that can then fear annihilation in turn.”

Jon Knows that the next line should be, But I, and those like me, would rather that did not happen.

It doesn’t come. Peter Lukas’ face just smiles and smiles.

Jon wants to hit his head against a brick wall, very hard.

“Please be kidding.”

Peter Lukas who is the Eye shakes its head.

“Right. Of course. Makes perfect sense. How else do you top the apocalypse if not with a second, even worse apocalypse? It’d make a hell of a finale for you, wouldn’t it? One last showstopper to ogle before it all comes down and—,” He really, truly wants his hands back, if only to rest his head in them, because he does not want to be looking at this thing when he asks, “For God’s sake, is this seriously the cosmic horror version of a suicide pact? Because if it is, I’m not the professional help you’re looking for.”

“Yes, you are, Jonathan Sims. The only one who can do what I need doing. You really are so close to understanding me in full.” Peter Lukas is gone. A woman is there now, and though Jon has never met her, the scatter of eyes and cobwebbed skull is too much of a giveaway to miss.

Annabelle Cane is wearing the same static smile as the sea captain, what used to be teeth now dripping venom.

“The Web is perhaps one of the few Fears with something resembling my own consciousness, such as it is. Peter Lukas made the clearly false assumption that it would not desire the Change’s coming, citing a fear of too much chaos. Yet it worked in tandem with Jonah Magnus to groom you into its herald; ‘the Archive.’ It provides a challenge, manipulating the frantic masses—and it does not have the time for you anymore.

“No more than Jonah Magnus does, even if he is a little perturbed at how hard it is to See you these days. Under other circumstances he’d be worried. But he is busy and he knows—or thinks he knows—he can afford to let you stew in the Scottish countryside. For the first time in a long time, you are unattached to anything else’s ulterior motives.”

“Apart from yours and the Extinction’s.”

“Which are what? Define the motives.”

“You, you’re…bored. Exhausted to the point of self-destruction with Seeing the same things for the rest of time. The Extinction just wants to wipe everyone out and start over with new things to fear it, leaving its big brothers and sisters to wither away.”

Annabelle Cane is gone. Jon feels a ghost of his old nausea as Jane Prentiss steps in behind the smile and the gaping Eyes. She had not had eyes when he encountered her, only sockets full of those pallid worms. Her hands are trapping his now, and the worms that crawl from them to him do not bother to leap. Jon isn’t going anywhere. He’s surprised to find he’s only mildly annoyed by the sight of her Hive squirming up his arms, seeking out the old scars their predecessors had been so lethally evicted from, and going to work. Even more surprising, it doesn’t hurt.

“That is the trouble with humanity,” Jane Prentiss’ voice hums, a choir of thousands of tinier, voiceless things. “Left to guess and make interpretations out of forces they have no means of understanding. Like dogs doing their best to make sense of the gibberish their owners teach to them by way of commanding tones. Worse, they are always so certain that whatever is being said, whatever action is taking place, it must revolve around them. Even entities that have willingly abandoned their humanity are prone to the old habit. If a thing is happening, it must be zeroed in on the ever-important Homo sapiens.”

“Hard to blame us when there’s been so little evidence to the contrary. Stop that.” The latter is spat, along with a pair of worms that had been poking at his mouth. They are coursing leisurely under his skin now, making themselves at home.

“True,” says Jane Prentiss’ choir.

Until the Eye is not Jane Prentiss, but the hulking, misshapen amalgam of anatomies that is Jared Hopworth. The Boneturner grips Jon’s hands with a dozen others, their flesh melting together like clay. The worms are gone, at least.

“But any kind of livestock thinks the world revolves around their pain too. Cows think it, pigs think it, birds and sheep and rabbits. Anything that ends its life between something else’s teeth. Meat is meat. And, again, other entities are guilty of putting humanity on a pedestal.”

The Boneturner shrinks and the Flesh retreats from Jon’s skin. A man with only one scar to Jon’s fourteen stares at him, the branches of a the childhood lightning strike climbing up to his face. Mike Crew’s odor of ozone washes through the air and Jon feels that rollercoaster sensation of freefall trying to yank him up from the chair.

“It is hard to blame them. If you need a thing to live, you put it high, high up on your list of necessities. When a thing is a necessity—to feed upon, to make sure you keep existing—you start assuming everything else is just as fixated on it.”

“And you’re saying, what?” It’s a gasp. He isn’t sure how, but he can speak through the vertigo this time. “That the Extinction doesn’t care about humanity? It’s a human Fear, even if it is stillborn.”

“Unborn, Jonathan Sims. There is a difference. And yes, like all the Fears, it is made up of the stuff of human dread.”

Mike Crew is gone. Daisy Tonner crushes his hands in hers. Even with the Eye staring through her, there is a more bestial wildness in her edges.

“Something is closing in on them.”

Daisy Tonner is Melanie King, gore-streaked fingers painting Jon’s knuckles.

“Something is killing them.”

Melanie King is Oliver Banks, his hands dead, cold, limp.

“Something is on the verge of bringing them to an End.”

Oliver Banks is Breekon, his eyes and nose still bleeding with the Archivist’s extraction, his fists swallowing Jon’s hands.

“Something that is being delivered, from themselves to themselves.”

Breekon is Jude Perry, her wax fingers cooking him so that both his hands will match.

“Something that will demolish what was and is and would have been, leaving no trace of themselves behind.”

Jude Perry is Manuela Dominguez, her mouth full of dark as she grips him, staring with parodied longing into his eyes, seeing her precious Dark Sun alive in him, swallowed whole by his Seeing.

“Something that will darken their world, blind them, leaving them lost and flailing—,”

Manuela Dominguez is now a pale, emaciated thing, coated with soil, crushed and glad of being so, its strong, thin hands corseted around Jon’s wrists, wanting to pull him back under, back to the coffin, its voice a song.

“—and so perfectly trapped that they will know there is no getting away from it, no putting it off, nowhere to run or to hide or to ignore the reality of what they have brought upon themselves.”

The Buried thing is Nikola Orsinov, her plastic grip still kneading lotion into the back of Jon’s hands, despite her already wearing a cloak of Gertrude and Jurgen with ringmaster tails.

“Something so unheard of, so inconceivable, so wrong, because they are so very used to being the top of the food chain, the apex of life, unconquerable by anything, that they simply will not know how to perceive that it is their turn to lose and never exist to win again.”

Then, finally, Nikola Orsinov is Jonathan Sims again. A Jonathan Sims who was several shades darker in the hair, and a few scars lighter. A Jonathan Sims who looked healthy, like he had just eaten and…enjoyed himself.

“Something that they have coming to them.”

Jonathan Sims shifts. He is wearing winter clothes now, dressed for the far North. Again, he is full. Again, he looks very pleased with himself.

“Something they all have coming to them.”

Jonathan Sims changes again. Sweat-soaked, fog-damp, tear-streaked—and full. And grimly, sickly delighted.

Jon knows why.

“How did it feel, Jonathan Sims?” his own voice asks, Knowing the answer. “How did their statements compare to mere human fare?”

Breekon. Manuela Dominguez. Peter Lukas.

Jon hasn’t thought of it until now. He’d been busy marinating in his own guilt, sneaking fresh statements—he had only taken one for every ten impulses he felt in a week—and the limbo between hunger and abstinence had left him too muddled to think much on the ‘culinary’ experience. But he thinks on it now. And he thinks:

“They felt better,” Jon says. The words are honest. The words are sharp. The words are like flints of toxic blades falling off his tongue. The words are making him smile, all on his own. “They felt like a high. Like I was smoking them as much as consuming them.”

The smile curls higher and he finds he doesn’t care, not here, not now, even as he Knows that the smile is not one he would want someone else to see on him.

It is not a kind look. It is not a sane look. It is not a look that any of his friends could see and convince themselves wasn’t proof-positive of Jonathan Sims being utterly replaced by the role he had invited into himself. He knows this, and if there is anything of Jonathan Sims left within him, it is sitting back in tired shock at this last, horrible skip into inhumanity.

Because the smile is only a symptom.

Somewhere inside, there is another small, almost comical pop as the final barrier between Jon and his appetites turns to shrapnel. Appetites that are innately cruel; that exist for the sole purpose of inflicting and absorbing horror. His mistake had been assuming that such a hunger could only be fed by human misery.

“They went down smooth and screaming,” Jon says, and is not surprised at the dreamy reminiscence in it. Nor even disgusted. He’s used the same tone when describing a particularly good dessert or—bitter, bitter thought—the exquisite cigar Jonah-as-Elias had shared with him to mark his promotion. “I loved it,” Jon says, and cannot find it in himself to pretend he’s lying, being forced to say it. There is no guilt here. “I loved it.”

The Eye who is Jonathan Sims leers back at him, nodding.

“That is key to the Extinction as a Fear. The bittersweet knowing that whatever doom is on the horizon, it will hardly be wiping out anything that will be missed. Anything that doesn’t deserve to be wiped out for all its idiot evils and destruction.”

“Its hubris.”

“Yes. Though Fears have little in the way of ego to produce it, there are certainly avatars enough to tote it for us. Those who have waved our banners and lashed out at their opposites without ever explicitly being told. Except, perhaps, the Web. It has earned that pride, such as it is, being so skilled in its art. That aside, none of us will have any true personal sins to blame for our demise. We are not built for it. Though our natures dictate that we will fight against it. Action, reaction. Our followers have much more on the line than us and will go out far more afraid for their lives.”

“You talk like I’ve agreed to something.”

“You have, Jonathan Sims. You Know it.”

“But I’m still processing.”

“Yes. You are nearly done. State what you understand so far.” The eyes populating the walls glance down at the tape recorder, still running. “For the record.”

“I understand that the Extinction was born as a human Fear, but it isn’t any pickier than the rest of them. It doesn’t have to center on wiping out humanity. I understand that, if we’re looking at things objectively, it was the avatars and their patron Fears who took the most action in trying to prevent its birth. The ones most afraid of the Terrible Change. The-Future-Without-Us.

“I understand that for the Extinction to operate in the world, it requires more than Fear. It requires hate. Hatred of self—of one’s own kind, knowing that we’ve brought it on ourselves, that we are our own ruin and we have earned the mess that will choke us.

“I understand that I felt no guilt whatsoever in preying on the monstrous. None. I rather enjoyed it. All the nutrition, none of the carbs. Ha.

“I understand that I…hate. Me. Them.

“I understand that I am not human. I can’t be. Not if I’m to successfully bring Extinction to my own kind. Is that about it?”

“Almost. You understand that the Extinction is a form of mass self-destruction. Thus far, you have operated only as my agent. The Eye cannot conquer all avatars, even if it can survive their power. We must survive in order for the other Fears to exist.”

“How can you be afraid when you don’t know to be afraid?”

“Exactly. If you are the linchpin of the Change, I am the linchpin of the Fears. Supporting it all, but simultaneously trapped by the spokes that revolve around me. To bring about an Extinction of the Fears, they must be brought down by aspects of themselves.”

“How would that work? Compel them to start hitting themselves? The avatars know my gimmick. God knows they were always quick to shut me up the second they thought a question mark was coming.”

“Compelling is a trick of the Archivist. The Archive can do more. The Archive is more. How did Jonah Magnus put it?” The Eye asks, Knowing. But it looks at Jon with the closest approximation of hope it can imitate. “Can you tell me, in his own words?”

Jon is on the edge of something now. He knows that he Knows where this is going, but he does not understand, not yet, but he is close. So close. He does Know what specific action the Eye wants him to attempt. Not the why of it, not the what-for of it, but…

Jon breathes. He is not afraid. Unhappy, yes, revolted, yes, but not afraid. Not of this.

He concentrates, not just on the words of Jonah Magnus, but all of him, the unctuous, sadistic, rancid, body-hopping, world-violating, life-dooming bastard that he was, that he is, that he is, that Jon is—

“Because the thing about the Archivist is that—well, it’s a bit of a misnomer.” The words come out of Jon just as insidiously civil as the first time. Only now, it is not just the inflection of Jonah Magnus. It is the voice of Jonah Magnus. And more.

“It might, perhaps, be better named: the Archive.”

Jon looks at his hands. The Eye who is Jonathan Sims is still holding them, of course, but now those hands are no longer scarred, or even brown. They are well-kept, their lines showing the far end of middle-age, the nails clean, the skin white. There are tailored coat sleeves covering his arms and the polished gleam of a wristwatch peeking from under one pressed shirt cuff. There’s a whiff of pretentiously overpriced cologne. He does not need a mirror to know the rest. He feels the change as he speaks.

“Because you do not administer and preserve the records of fear, Jon. You are a record of fear, both in mind as you walk the shuddering record of each statement, and in body as the Powers each leave their mark upon you. You are a living chronicle of terror.”

Finishes Jon, who is Jonah Magnus. It is strange now, in his head. He is aware that he is Jon, but Jonah—a second edition copy of Jonah—is in there with him. Like a limb that has an opinion, but cannot help obeying what the mind wants it to do. Jonah Magnus’ face raises a silvering brow and frowns at the Eye who is Jonathan Sims.

“Well, this is…unexpected. Useful, I suppose, if you’re keen to see me throttle myself with my own two hands when the time comes. Though I suspect my,” Jonah makes a less than comfortable noise, “or is it his? End will be one of the messier ones on your to-do list once—,” A sigh. Sickeningly familiar. “Jon, I can feel you wanting to bash my head into the table until it cracks, but I feel I should remind you it is a joint custody deal we have going here and—,”

Jon plunges his/their head down. His/their nose breaks with a satisfying crack. Hot pain flares through the shattered bridge. Jon’s giddy to find that he isn’t feeling it. So he does it again. And again, and again, and again until Jonah Magnus’ face is all blood, bruise, and broken bone. Which, since it is really Jon’s, heals up nicely. What’s another scar or three?

Jonah Magnus spits blood and a tooth that is already, painfully, being replaced in the shared jaw.

“Oww! Christ, Jon, did you take up recreational masochism while I’ve had my back turned or w—,”

Crack!

“Ow!”

Within himself, Jon giggles like a child. He’s about to go for another when he hears:

“Jonathan Sims.”

Jonah Magnus who is Jon looks blearily across the desk. Jonathan Sims who is the Eye looks on patiently.

“What do you understand now?”

“He understands—ah.” Jonah Magnus fades away, melting back into Jon. Only Jon. “I understand that I am the Archive. I am made up of all the terrors I have recorded. Terrors given to me as experiences, as stories. And I can take on those stories. Make them real again. Not wholly themselves, but enough for me to use. Like—,”

An impulse comes to him, and this time the change comes over him with hardly a shudder. He is suddenly taller, lean with muscle, spotty with eye tattoos. His nails are mottled with chipped black lacquer. A long, long, long-suffering sigh rattles out of him in a voice he’s heard only once before.

“Fuck’s sake, we get it, it’s like the goddamn Book of the Dead trick with the juice turned up. But where everyone and everything else in that horror show you call a brain gets to be second edition copies, or imaginary friends, or solid hallucinations, or whatever the hell you want to call it, I get the honor of being a goddamn third edition. First that shit with the daddy-daughter Hunting club, now this. Fuck me. Fuck you, first and foremost, Jon, but also, clearly, fuck me.”

Gerard Keay’s hands are too big to be held completely by the facsimile of Jonathan Sims’ hands, so he’s free to clench his own into fists. Then they unclench. Then they drum.

“Doesn’t hurt this time around, at least. So, you know. That.”

Drum, drum.

“…You got cigarettes in your little Scottish hideaway?”

Jon does. He hadn’t felt the urge to touch them after everything came crashing down. Seemed like a waste of energy.

“Yeah, yeah, I get that, but what kind?”

Hand-rolled.

“Huh. Not what you had last time.”

Couple’s activity.

“Ah. Fine, then, I’ll take them. All of them. You hear that in there? Yeah, you with the wax. Dibs.”

What? Oh.

Jude Perry does not emerge, but does make herself known. She boils like fever in the back of his mind, telling Gerry exactly where he can stick the lighter.

Others are there too. Several others.

Jon doesn’t just Know. He understands.

“Took you long enough.” Gerard Keay shudders and begins to go. “Right, back in, then. Better get my own bunk in there, or I’m blaring every Ghost song I know at full volume between your ears, get me?”

Jon is Jon.

“Got it.”

Across from him, the Eye is still smiling with Jonathan Sims’ face.

“Good.”

“I get the feeling our talk’s almost up.”

“Yes. Parting questions?”

“Yeah. One, I sincerely doubt that just because you’re looking forward to this new show and its ending you’ll make it easy for me. Us.”

“You suspect I will not block the Knowledge of this alteration from Jonah Magnus and any allies he may have. You are correct.”

“Of course. Wouldn’t be a proper fight against Extinction if no one knew to fight back. Two, you also won’t actively assist me any further than this point. What with me Knowing everything already.”

“Correct. Though I admit this particular exchange has been…approvable. Old already. Any discourses like it will be stale before they happen.”

“But..?”

“The novelty of similar imaginary conversations is not an inconceivable future event.”

“With or without the tape recorders?”

“Yes.”

“Right. Three, and this may be me pushing my very theoretical luck, but am I right in guessing you won’t be much help to the other avatars? Jonah, specifically?”

“I will be precisely as helpful to his cause as I ever was.”

Somewhere in Jon, he feels a sour twist of Jonah’s understanding. Flashes of centuries spent fruitlessly theorizing, ripping out his own eyes to flee from death, sans miraculous healing, and being generally abandoned to make guesswork out of the sheer vacuum of Knowledge the Ceaseless Watcher presented him with. Mindreading and the power of voyeurism had been it. Not that it hadn’t paid off in the end, give or take some outsourcing with the Spider, but…

Jon feels another, remarkably hateful grin split his face. The Eye mimics him. He thinks—he Knows—it does approve of the parody of joy, even if the reality is out of reach.

“The exact amount of helpfulness?”

“Yes. No less, no more.”

“Well. Good to Know. Last thing, and I know I’m repeating myself, but: how does Martin get back from a Place That Isn’t?”

“I told you, Jonathan Sims. It is not a task that can be accomplished by you, or even a who.”

“If not a who, then a what.”

Jon Knows. Jon understands. Jon feels giggles that aren’t his rising up in his throat like poisonous helium. Jon’s hands are too long and too sharp to hold without the Eye’s hands bleeding.

“Goodbye, Jonathan Sims. I will be Watching. Make it interesting.”

Jon laughs like a headache, and walks out his door.

Martin comes to at the sound of porcelain shattering. Between the nightmare—a thing of half-existence, impossibilities made flesh, a warping, Twisting, endlessness—he’d been snared in and the nightmare he now lived in, the sound was enough to send his heart ten feet out of his ribs. Failing that, the result jerks him up and awake from the couch with a yell.

“God-dammit!” His hand clamps to his chest, feeling the hammer of his pulse trying its best not to kill him. Wouldn’t that be a laugh? Dying of a heart attack in the middle of the apocalypse. He doesn’t quite have it in him to manage a chuckle. Instead, he steadies his breathing as best he can and searches for the source of the noise. “God, damn it,” he says again, this time a sigh.

The vase is broken. It had been such an eye-catching piece too, probably the nicest bit of décor in the whole rustic place. Granted, it wasn’t really theirs and he doubted Daisy was, well, well enough to be bothered with its loss, but still. It’d been nice.

“Wait.” Martin sits up, not sure he’s seeing things right. Wouldn’t be a shock these days, considering, but…

The shards of the vase are wrong. Their pieces aren’t in any kind of shape that would have resembled a vase when put together. These are all curled, crimped, crooked, corkscrewing bits of debris.

“What..?”

“Michael will suffice. Even in this intriguing new state, Michael still applies.” The laugh comes then. A sound to make a brain fold in on itself in the effort to escape its noise. Martin turns.

There is a door on the wall that had never been there before. It is not a pale, sick-colored yellow, but a paler, sicker-colored green. Leaning at almost a dozen impossible angles against it is—

“Michael?”

“More or less. Welcome back, Martin Blackwood. Did you enjoy your respite in the Place That Isn’t? Some people really can’t tell.” Michael points a yard-long blade of a finger at Martin. “You seem like one of them. The lucky ones, that delude themselves into thinking it all a swirling trip into phantasmagoria. I suspect our Archivist,” a snicker full of nails and violin strings, “—pardon, our Archive, had a hand in that. It certainly wasn’t my hand, after all. All my hand did was open the right door.”

“You’re—you, you’re dead. You can’t be here, Helen took your spot and…”

“Ahhh, yes, Helen. I recall. I do believe we’re bound to have some words with her at some point. Not happy words either. Words to do with why she kept the secret of Jonah Magnus’ corpse to herself, why she did not simply rescue you from the hazy grasp of Peter Lukas, why she did not prevent the marking of the Lonely on poor, doomed Jonathan Sims, such as he was. I know why of course—I would have done the same, if I were me. It was terribly funny, after all. And what a payoff!”

There’s a cackle that makes the room shiver like gelatin. One of their last good chairs stands up and scuttles away.

“The Twisting is here with all its fellows, free to play and caper with you all. But alas…

Michael touches the knife-point of his index to the corner of one eye and drags it down to mime a tear. His face tears open, bleeding colors from a spectrum that does not exist.

“All good things must come to an end. And, ha, perhaps it’s my new lot in life, but I really am rather excited to see how I fare against myself. My usurper, as it were. Oh, and it will certainly be a show if I get to spar with some of the more mundane powers. Do you suppose the Spider would be able to catch onto me before it realizes its spun itself into its own Web and begun drinking up its own organs? I do wonder.”

Martin is backing away. But he’s worried about the doors in the house. He suddenly can’t remember how many there are, or where they are, or where they all go. When he looks out the window, Jon isn’t there. Not on the swing, not in the garden. He doesn’t know if he should call out. But if Jon is here, he must Know this is happening, whatever this is. He’d be here if he could. So where is he?

“Where’s Jon?”

Michael grins in a way that disorganizes his entire head.

“He’s right here. A little busy at the moment, playing referee to, oh, so many clamoring parties. He is ostensibly in charge of things, but we all know how well he handled playing boss to your happy band in the Institute. He does want you to know he’s sorry for the current confusion and that he’ll be down in a minute. A bit rowdy in there, you know, all those overblown personalities so used to being in the spotlight.”

“What? What does any of that mean? Where is he?”

“I told you. He’s right—,” Martin blinks and a finger that’s a lance is coming straight for his head. Until it isn’t. “—here.” Martin blinks again. There, speared on the atom-wide point of the digit, is a spider. It’s still twitching on its silk. “Mm. We’ll have to do something about you all, won’t we? He can flip a coin between Ms. Cane and Ms. Perry, I expect.” Michael hums and uses the rest of his fingers to neatly sever all eight legs from the arachnid before carefully, slowly, popping out its eyes. He flicks the rest aside like lint. “Everyone is so very eager to have a turn in the driver’s seat.”

“Look. Look. I don’t know if you’re actually trying to communicate something to me or not, but I—I am in no mood for whatever new game this is. I am sick of all this occult—eldritch—bloody weirdness that keeps trying to make life just a little more abominable than it was five seconds ago, okay? Sick of it. Now, you keep saying Jon is here, right? Where is here according to you, Michael? Where, exactly?”

Michael sulks at that. At least, Martin thinks that’s what he’s going for. His face seems melted in a satire of a pout. Even the Medusa coils of his hair seem unhappy.

“I’m being as plain as I can be. Your Jon, our Archive—he’s quite literally right where I’m standing. Right—,”

Michael is gone.

Jon is—,

“—here. I’m right here, Martin. So. Um. I know this is, ah, a lot. And I will explain all of it. Soonish. But I did promise Gerry that—,”

“Jon.”

“Yes, Martin?”

“What the entire hell was that?”

“Michael.”

“Yes, I know it was Michael. Why was it—why were you—Michael?”

“Because he was the only way to get you back from the Spiral. The vase—look, it’s a long story. I’d use Jonah to give you the abridged version, but I want to avoid the bastard as much as possible if I can—,”

“Jonah? Christ, what does Jonah have to do with this?”

“Nothing! Not, not really. That is, I’ve got a copy of him and—and some others, a lot of others who I Archived, and there’s this whole thing with the Eye, and the Extinction—,”

“What!?”

“What?”

“What about the Extinction!? What the hell did I miss, I was asleep for like, five minutes!”

“Well, I mean, you weren’t actually sleeping, but the Extinction is—well. I’m planning to, uh… Oh, this doesn’t sound great out loud.”

“What doesn’t?”

“You see, I’m—oh. Gerry, hold on, I can do this, you don’t have to…” Jon sighs. “Fine. They’re in the bedroom, nightstand on the left.” Just like that, Jon is spinning on his heel, tromping to the bedroom. And he is tromping. Jon can barely make a floorboard creak when he stomps, but now, somehow, there’s a distinct, thumping weight to each step. He lumbers.

The shadow on the wall isn’t his. Not a menacing shadow, not possessing any ill intent, but imposing all the same. It follows Jon into the bedroom and out of sight.

“Come on, then,” comes the call. It isn’t Jon’s voice. “Martin, right? You smoke too?”

Martin doesn’t answer. Just braces himself for whatever fresh madness is making itself comfortable in their lives. He goes into the bedroom. Jon is not there.

A very tall goth covered with eye tattoos is sitting on their bed, happily setting several of Jon’s cigarettes between the knuckles of his right hand. Once he’s got four lined up, he puts them to his lips, and uses Jon’s lighter to set them smoking. This stranger takes a long, satisfied drag on the whole fistful of them. He breathes out a cloud that, naturally, breaks apart in the shape of eyes.

“Our guy’s still a bit frazzled. He hasn’t had time to arrange everything into a nice, neat speech for you. Plus, he’s got all the other kids squabbling upstairs.” The hand not holding the cigarettes taps the side of his head. “He’s still smoothing things down, getting a handle on himself. Selves. Us. Whatever.” Another drag, another delighted sigh. “God, I missed that. You guys roll some good ones.”

Martin stares.

“Oh, manners, right.” The lighter is tossed aside to free up the non-smoking hand. He offers it to Martin. “Gerard Keay. Gerry to friends.”

Martin grabs the hand and lets it shake his. He doesn’t like how solid it is. How much it isn’t Jon’s.

“Hi, Gerry,” he hears himself say. “Since Jon is still busy, would you mind telling me what’s going on?”

“Sure.” Drag number three. “Your boyfriend’s semi-possessed by doppelgangers of the monsters he’s sponged up with his Archivist powers, he had a chat with the Ceaseless Watcher in his brain, who happens to be so bored of its life that it’s ready to see all the Fears and their minions get subjected to a terrifying, agonizing genocide, including itself, just to experience one new thing before it finally dies. Courtesy of Jonathan Sims, sponsored by the Eye and the Extinction, natch.” Drag number four. “You got any chips here?”

“Our last bag turned into a sack of teeth.”

“Damn.”

Jon returns once the cigarettes are burnt down to nubs. A very long talk is had as they go around the house, Martin pretending not to be disturbed by, one, just how many spiders there were in the place, and two, how quickly all their little webs and eggs go up into ashes as Jon uses Jude Perry’s hand to fry them.

Too little too late, as it turned out, as word had already spread of some Terrible Change in the Archive. The Buried opens a pit under their house hours later, ready to swallow them whole.

Also too little too late.

The house that falls into that chasm is filled only with a Lonely, stretching fog, and when it bursts open, the pit screams voicelessly as its comforting constriction is pulled apart, made wide, its crushing darkness deformed into a bleak grey, its agents and prisoners left to sprawl and curse their nakedness in the boundless non-place of the Archive’s Forsaken.

Mike Crew, who is Jon, and Martin, who is exasperated, fall leisurely above the site for an infinite moment to admire the view. They land beside a door that is not there.

Then Mike is Michael is Jon, leading the way inside.

Times get very interesting after that.

Especially when, for the first time in Jonah Magnus’ knowing it, the Eye, the Ceaseless Watcher, his great patron, the Beholding, actually responds to him when he asks it what to do in the face of the Archive’s revenge, surely a traitor, a lunatic who would see them all destroyed with the coming of the Extinction.

The Eye regards Jonah Magnus, personally.

And though it has no mouth, Jonah Knows it is grinning.

(Also on AO3)

#I know I know #this isn't how it's going to go down #it's too happy for that #but until the actual season comes to kill me in my home I can DREAM damn it #jonathan sims #the archive #the eye #the extinction #the magnus archives #storytime

14 notes · View notes

nicolinocolino · 6 years

Note

ciao sarah! i'm about to move to rome for some months and i'm a bit anxious. the city is so big and full of history and people i don't know if i'll be able to make it feel "mine" because i only know it as a tourist. so i was wondering if you could rec places/museums/churches that are a bit less known and experiences/things to do/places to eat. you can make it as long as detailed as you want, go off really! thank you in advance

Ciao!! 😍gosh, lucky you!! I won’t lie, I’m so jealous! I could ramble about Rome forever, I’m so honored you want my advice 💛 I’ll put this under a cut because surprise surprise, it got long haha.

(I’m going to apologize in advance that a lot of these things are located in Trastevere — that’s where I lived and spent the majority of my time.)

I tried to keep this list low-key. There are tons of things I love about Rome that are definitely “must sees” on my list that are, ya know, still touristy. Like Piazza Navona and the Pantheon and Piazza di Spagna blah blah blah. So! I kept those off, but if you’re till curious to know my favorites just ask :)

I’ll start with the food, because duh.

Restaurants/bars/bakeries/gelato/etc.:

Carlo Mente — super cheap restaurant in Trastevere that’s also very good. I happened to go here a lot because of how cheap it was… I think like, 3 euro pizzas and 5 euro plates of pasta. That’s very good for a sit down place you can spend all night at in Rome unless you wander far on the outskirts hahaha. They have a nice outside sitting area too, and they heat it up in the fall/winter so you can even sit outside then!!

La Botticella — another restaurant in Trastevere if you want something intimate and casual. It’s soooo small, it only has like 10 or less tables and the woman who runs the place was our waitress and our chef and I think she only had one other person helping her. But GOD it was good. I had one of the best dinners of my life there.

Il Portico — located in the Jewish ghetto (just north of Tiber Island) has some damn good carbonara. Also the best greek salad I’ve ever had. AND the ravioli con zucchine crema is to dieeeeee for. (I like pasta, lol.)

Kosher Cakes — same area, right by Il Portico. Suuuuuuper good Jewish bakery.

Chakra — my favorite nighttime bar. (Also in Trastevere lol.) It has a great selection of craft beers, the music is awesome and the interior is soooooooo cozy!! It’s a very chill atmosphere. I couldn’t recommend this place highly enough, I love it so much and it’s where my friends and I always ended our nights out.

8 Millimetri — another good place to go at night (in Trastevere, sorry!). It’s kind of expensive but their aperitivo is a steal for 5/6 euros. (So I’d only go then if I were you) AND they have tons of vegetarian options. The atmosphere is really cool, too.

Bar del Cappuccino — okay so I only tried a few places to get coffee before I found this place and made it my regular but DAMN. SO GOOD. Please do yourself a favor and have the best cappuccino freddo of your life here. They also make delicious pastrami sandwiches… I would seriously cut off my thumb for one right now they are so good.

Corono — Gelato!! Along Via Arenula, very small and tucked away amongst the shops, you’ll blink and miss it but SO GOOD. All homemade (which can be so hit or miss in Rome because half of the places are just trying to make some tourist money, I don’t blame them) and they have super unique flavors I didn’t see anywhere else like lemon basil and orange chili.

Frigidarium — more gelato. They dip your whole cone in chocolate and it’s so good. Next to Piazza Navona.

Quieter/maybe less known/less touristy things to do/see?:

The Porta Portese market — happens on Sunday and is an excellent thing to do if you can restrain yourself from spending any money. Idk where you will be located but the #8 tram headed south should drop you off right in front of it. It’s HUGE and you can literally walk up and down the streets of it for hours and hours just looking at all the junk.

Janiculum hill — I feel like I never shut up about this place but it is magical. And I still stand by it being the best free view of Rome you can get. It’s rarely ever crowded and I think most tourists don’t know about it or don’t want to hike up it (because it is kind of a trek). Get to the piazza on top and treat yourself with something from the little snack cart up there, and on your way up visit the Fontana dell'Acqua Paola which was actually the muse/inspiration for the Trevi Fountain! Enjoy the view!! It took my breath away the first time I saw it, and it a great place to just chill.

Torre Argentina — If you’re an animal lover like I am and am missing some furry friends, you can visit Torre Argentina, aka the cat sanctuary. Fun fact: you can actually go down the stairs into the ruins and go inside the sanctuary building they’ve built into the side to see more cats and pet them and love them free of charge 💛💛💛💛💛

Testaccio market — lots of good, cheap, and local food!!!

Museums/churches/art:

*Just a note that I 10000% didn’t make it into every church in Rome. There are....... so many. You can stand in one and spit into another istg. But honestly every one I did go in was breathtaking. If you are an architecture/art nerd like I am church wandering is such a nice, free thing to do. (Free!!!! Literally you can walk into San Luigi dei Francesi and see some beautiful Caravaggios for FREE!!!)

Chiesa del Gesù — the most beautiful ceiling I ever did see. It uses the trompe l'oeil technique and is impossible to describe. You just have to see it in person. I still don’t know how it works lol.

Villa Borghese Gallery — this isn’t an unknown place, obviously, but is hands down the best museum (subjective, but whatever) in Rome. The palace is gorgeous, the art is phenomenal and it’s located in a beautiful park with a beautiful garden outside. Love love love love love this place with all my heart. I want to live in here. The history is really neat, too.

One of the best things to do, honestly, is just explore. It’s such a great city and you will just bump into everything. The first time I saw the Pantheon I wasn’t even looking for it. I just turned a corner and it was there. I think that’s one of my favorite things about Rome — masterpieces are just tucked into everyday life. It’s also such a low city, you won’t find skyscrapers or tons of modern buildings. And it’s hilly, so you can always find a nice view. I think that’s how I made Rome feel “mine” when I was living there. Just explore! I hope you have the best time ever 💛

#ask #rome

36 notes · View notes

kierongillen · 6 years

Text

Writer Notes: the Wicked + the Divine 37

Spoilers, obv.

It's a strange job, writing. You think you know something, and you do, and then you realise it's something else. Or rather, something else as well.

While I'd advise against hard categories, there's certainly types of writers. When I was on a panel with Hickman, I believe he described me as god. Which amused me. He was saying that I'm the sort of writer who works like a Christian god, knowing the place and positioning of every leaf, every tree beam, every mote of dust. I see writing as a sprawling machine. I'm the Watchmaker.

This isn't quite the same thing as being a complete planner, but my decisions are deliberate. I'm not someone who doesn't generally know why he's doing something.

Writers who lean more improvisational talk often about looking back and realising what their theme was, or what they were mining and not aware of. I rarely get that. Or rather, it happens so rarely, that I tend to remember almost every occasion I get that perspective. Frankly, more common is making a decision for a reason, forgetting why, and then reverse engineering my own thought process years down the line and realising why past-me made what I felt was the only reasonable decision.

Which isn't to say that's everything. I know what I'm doing for a plan, but there's also the magic of ideas. What hits me, what feels right, places I want to go, and then only realise along the way exactly what part of me is having a conversation with me. This is normally stuff that I'm hiding from myself a little. This is stuff I have trouble admitting. This isn't just stuff that is bad about myself – there's lots of stuff which is bad about myself which I'm explicitly interrogating – but stuff I may not want to deal with until down the path. There's been a few of them. Not many, but a few.

Which makes this issue strange, as it's ended up being both.

It's an issue which was mainly conceived of before the first issue was drawn, set up entirely in issue 3, and has been thought about and talked about internally since (both internally team WicDiv and internally in my own head).

And then, only when the issue drops, do I realise what part of myself I've been mining for a character all along, while consciously thinking I was keeping her at arm’s reach, because I'm petrified of her. It's actually a realisation that's made me alter some things in my daily cycle, as I recognise the place they're from, and why it's bad for me.

As I said, writing is an interesting job. I don't consciously do it for these reasons... but I must do, at least on some level. "What is wrong with us?" is at the heart of most my work, which translates to "What is wrong with me?"

Of course, this is also not exactly necessarily relevant for you, and not the primary thrust of any of this, but it's there, and as these are writer notes, you're going to get some of it. Weird issue.

Preamble over.

Jamie/Matt's Cover: Foreshadowing the darkness section of the issue. We like doing a minimalistic one now and again.

Erica Henderson: This is just an amazing cover. After Squirrel Girl, you'd have an idea what an Erica cover would be, and it wouldn't be this wonderful homage to the the Caravaggio picture. Having a Gentle Annie cover this late is a good thing as well. In love with this.

IFC

The "Ananke. Or Ananke?" was a cut and paste error. We're just relieved it happens now, as I was petrified of typoing an Ananke when I meant Minerva or vice versa for the whole run.

Page 3-14

I suspect by now the past/present structure is pretty clear. We change it up considerably, with what they're showing. Issue 34 was the (majority) of the structure Ananke is working under. 35 is an example of what she does when things go right. 36 is showing the scale of what she did, and a taste of the tactics and so on. 37 is showing what happens when it goes wrong. I suspect by actively saying this in the notes, this is where a certain stripe of reader will try and work out what the other two bits of information are, but relax, we're nearly there and we'll tell you soon enough.

I had drafts of this when the past sequence was longer, but I cut it to the bone. After last issue, I wanted to spend the majority of the issue in the present day. If I could do it in 2 pages, that'd give me 18 pages for the present day.

In my longer drafts, I played with having the opening being 2 pages – so the falling apart starts on a page turn – and the reincarnation was over two pages, so featured a more active freak out that the sensory deprivation is over. Even with space, I'd have likely lost it – scrambling and that kind of panic in comics eats up panels, and isn't always effective. Cutting it to the three panels, showing the highly naturalistic magical appearance, and a single panel of the semi-comatose Minerva, clearly having been through hell.

(I'm going with Minerva as a name, as it's the name we know her by.)

A few words about what Matt did in colours – this just makes me want to go on holiday. Just weird and sad and horrible. Also, a note about "freaking out not always working in comics"? An expression like that does at the bottom of the page.

And then we have the black pages.

So, we're trying to show complete sensory deprivation for ninety years. How do you do it? I've seen people do deprivation comics, and they do it with a panel. For obvious reasons, because by definition nothing happens. In a standard comics world, we would do something like drop a CAP at the start of the page when she's back...

CAP: I SPENT THE LAST 90 YEARS IN NOTHINGNESS.

And then perhaps, if we really wanted to hand hold, on panel 2 add a...

CAP: THEN I WAS BACK.

But we're not a normal comic. Can we try and to show not tell? Try and get people to have the sense of what that actually is, and force a confrontation of the reality of it (or at least a fraction of the reality of it). Of course we can. As I joke in the back, if we were feeling really fancy, we'd have done 90 black pages.

As the issue was crammed with more interstitials than usual, there was no way this could possibly fit inside a normal sized issue. So we upped the issue size and, equally obviously, kept the price the same, because we're not complete shits.

Now, we're aware that some people won't get it. Some people may not have realised, despite the fact we've done it all the way through, that we've never done less than 20 pages of comics. We've often done more.

We actually put more of a tell than we normally would, in that we mention in the backmatter about how this actually cost us more money than usual, which we ate. Our general go-to motivation is to try and give people stuff they're not expecting, make them think about the form (and structure in life) from every possible angle. Yes, we're over four years into the comic, and we're still pushing stuff where we can.

There was a lot more here (as in, about a thousand words) but I'll spare you – fundamentally, I was fascinated that even with me trying to leave more space for the readers in this final year, we still do those little pushes, which is a symptom of a streak of control-freakery. Thinking about that and my feelings around it finally made me have the realisation I mentioned above – specifically, a “Oh – I know what part of me goes into Morrigan.” All the characters in WicDiv are me, I say. She was an exception. I felt I was mining a lot of things with her, but not necessary myself. I was always scared of her, but she was me all along. Deleting the above is in part about recognising my own control-freakery. I'm increasingly suspicious about these Writer Notes. Yes, they're about sharing and talking and craft, but I'm also aware it's at least in part about not wanting to let go. I have to get over that. I'll be surprised if I do Writer Notes like this for any future project.

So yeah. That was a journey.

Re: Page of blackness. Would I go back and not do it? Of course. I think it's a neat idea, and fun. It's the emotional mess that is me that I worry about.

NOTHING TO BE SCARED OF is a lift from Adam Ant's ‘Prince Charming’ (whose video take on Cinderella is actually 100% a WicDiv origin sequence, which makes me think of the edited Disney Cinderella gif with the exploding head. Cinderella is very WicDiv.

Anyway – a lift from ‘Prince Charming’, but perverted and turned very literal. Minerva is evidently afraid of a literal nothing.

16-17

As I said last time, I decided to concentrate on Baph's confession (and Laura's reveal) last issue, so I had moved a bunch of plot beats from there to here. I knew I had 18 pages, so more space to work. I obviously played with the idea of doing the Cassandra arrest this issue, but realised I could do the reveal from Baph's text at the end of last issue, to give an actual minor cliffhanger. As such, this means that we have to explain what happened here. How to do that?

Well, obviously we could do it with just Baph and Persephone chatting, but that seems like dead pages. I had the idea of doing it from the outside, to move the focus away from the pantheon out into the world. We don't get many moments of perspective any more (though I suspect they'll come back hard in the last arc) so this was useful.

It's also another example of particularly pointed glaring at fan behaviour. There is a lot of casual cruelty here.

The scene they describe is literally Cassandra's Cassandra moment. We see a little footage of this next issue.

I originally wanted this sequence to be at Elephant & Castle, as its curling mess of tunnels struck me as a good pace for such a confrontation. There's no escalators though, which creates a few limits, and I realised it'd likely be better to return to Highbury & Islington.

You'll also note the other thing this sequence does – which is orientate the reader with the layout of the station. When Morrigan and Baphomet actually fight, they go the opposite direction to where these two walk. It's a fairly common action film trick – travel through the setting so you know where stuff is, and then blow it up.

I love the pinky purple shirt here. Nice call, Matt. If I wore colours, you could dress me.

18-19

This issue, despite the space, is cut really tight. I look at this and wonder if I'd have cut it a different way to get more pages to use later.

Back to the Underground, limited backgrounds, handy when you're heading towards a visual showcase like the last half of the issue, both in terms of workload, and also to create a dark visual which is then exploded.

"Can everyone stop dying? It's getting really fucking depressing" has been in the Baph dialogue file ever since issue 1, I think. "How to get ahead in show business" was one of the titles I played with for the end of issue 33's interstitial, but went with Talking Heads. Clearly, it's a very Baph line.

The Fancy Pager, as seen back in Imperial Phase II when Dio gave it him.

It's good to see these two talking. It's very strong moves by Jamie, with lots of tiny nods. The "why I like him" sequence is very human.

20-21

This is one I feel I could have cut to a page if I really wanted to, but when Minerva is only lightly in play this issue, giving her more screen time seemed worthwhile. Space = Meaning remember. Plus it means showing more of the heads as well. See what I mean? I could have cut it, sure, but I know why I didn't.

Like the lighting here as well. Matt does great stuff.

I'll say this – Minerva has been a delight to write this arc. I mean, horrible as well. I'm amazed at her casual villainy, and how she turns a scene. I realised early in the arc this is basically me flexing the Kid Loki muscles, in a different kind of workout.

Another text-based scene. I'm thinking about how we use text messages so much in this book. Hmm.

The last expression with the needle is golden.

22-23-24

And the gears start turning on this awful machine.

Second panel is a little like the "Morrigan merges from behind shot from issue 5 and issue 12". I'd have made it a 1:1 copy of it, but it's a space-jealous approach.

Persephone removed, leaving us with Baphomet and Morrigan.

From now on is an odd one. It's what I can only think of as a set-piece. A series of beats we've been chewing over and moving around and talking about forever. The road is set in issue three. In anything like this, it's complicated. When I talk about WicDiv becoming messier as it heads into its final year, it's things like this.

Want to talk about structure? I don't normally do this, but it strikes me as a useful focus.

As far as I can see, the rest of the issue is primarily wrestling with three main plot threads, to different degrees. There's more, but I think they're the main ones.

Firstly, and probably least, is Baphomet. It's a little early to explicitly name his hamartia, but throughout Baphomet's failings are primarily responses to his feelings around death, and as a sub-set to that, his relationship to violence. He's killed accidentally. We've seen him try to kill repeatedly. Is Baphomet actually capable of cold-blooded murder?

Secondly, there's Morrigan. I think Dionysus nailed Morrigan back in Imperial Phase. Dio wants the best for people. Morrigan thinks she knows what's best for people. When people do not skew to her narrative, she turns frustrated, angry and uses increasingly immoral and abusive tactics to make people obey her. People make her so angry, because if only they would play their part, and do exactly what she says, it'd be better for everyone. She sees herself as the good person who knows what makes people happy. In the most basic terms, she's a control freak who has a story she wants everyone to conform to.

Thirdly, there's Baphomet and Morrigan's relationship. Which is more complicated than I could put into a paragraph, but is mainly about the two lines of their bullshit intersecting. It can be compelling. At a distance, it looks like a gothic romance. That's what Morrigan thinks it is. That's what Morrigan needs it to be. She's the heroine. Baph's the hero. He just keeps on fucking up his lines. Morrigan does not understand or agree that her relationship is abusive, and does not understand that she's using Baph as a narcissistic prop to satisfy her own needs.

While it's important for all of them, I think only one of these three threads climaxes here.

Anyway – this sets up. We slow down, and Baphomet actually realises what's happening. Baphomet, on some level, believes he deserves his treatment, as much as he chafes and pulls away. When he sees what Morrigan is capable of doing to someone else, he gets a moment of clarity.

Badb, the symbol of all of Morrigan's frustrations when her self-image is questioned, arrives.

God, Page 24, depresses me. It's such a stark page by Jamie and Matt. Everything slows down. Big panels. Big expressions.

25-30

When we originally conceived this, I thought it may be actually the whole issue, and do this, juxtaposed with a whole look at their relationship. In the end, I didn't have space, and likely didn't like it either. It'd have ended up juxtaposing more violence with sex, which I find distasteful and cheap.

Instead, it's written in a Marvel Method structure. I write the fight sequence and the flashbacks in parallel – there's a suggested solution to it, which Jamie went another direction on. I think it was basically a column on the right.

The original draft had more panels, and went on further in the flashback to the morning after. We then played with doing more periods – I had a version where it'd run through the entire length of Baph and Morri's relationship (I even put the whole thing in a document). But, as I was writing that, I realised the best solution was to just crop to the initial meeting in a shitty university club.

Yes, there was dialogue to this exchange. I may find a home for it before the end of WicDiv.

I mean – that's something odd about writing. For something like this, you generate so much stuff to even find what's going to go on the page. Fraction was talking about this in the latest Image+, in terms of the stuff that doesn't go on the page. Chrissy occasionally talks about comic writing having a lot to do with poetry, in terms of being about intensifying meaning into as small a space as possible.

Jamie and Matt do astounding things in this sequence. It's a fight sequence, and in genre comics, fight sequences take the place that songs do in musicals. Jamie chooses his moments, and Matt finds a way to navigate between the dancing timelines. Things like the third panel on 25, with the uncanny greens of Morrigan and Baph's red bisecting the panel says a lot. The divisions between the two in Jamie's art is also fascinating.

Christ – the mess of people in the first panel, and what happens to bodies when they get in the way.

I had a draft where Baph making this a nod to Sandman more explicit, but cut it.

In the flashback sequence, Cam saying something and Morrigan wincing, and me not needing to say that clearly Cam is making a crap joke is pleasing. It obviously is Jamie, but it also speaks to the characters. You know exactly how the first flirtation would go.

Jamie asked me "Does the fight have to be on an escalator?" and I basically said no, but... escalators are liminal spaces between the underworld and the surface world. They just seem loaded. And just as importantly, it's a place I just haven't seen nearly as much action as I'd like in genre comics. It's a space that many city people cross daily, and so will be familiar with, and so will perhaps think about as they go about. Jamie got it. Thanks, Jamie.

Morrigan as crow-beast is horrible.

Various people have asked what the notes are. It's ‘Welcome To The Black Parade’. I think I wrote ‘I'm Not Okay (I Promise)’ in the script. I think Jamie did it as you can get the notes right with ‘Black Parade’, which is a good call. The ‘I'm not okay’ was a callback to issue seven, but MCR generally is good.

Top of page 28 is another one for Matt – just how he works the long horizontal space.

End of Page 29 – Baphomet has his moment. He could end this now. And he finds he can't.

I don't know about you, but – for all his posture – I don't think Baphomet can kill anyone, and certainly not Morrigan. You can compare and contrast with Baal, if you wish. They're very much the bookends of certain forms of performed masculinity.

I wrote this as an impaling kind of move – but due to the panel shape, you can't show that, and capture the expression simultaneously. Instead, Jamie frames it as a swing, which does the same job.

30 – Baphomet may not be able to, but Morrigan certainly can.

This is horrible too, though Matt's colouring makes it a little more distancing. I suspect if I did have an extra page, I'd have used it here, to both make Baph's death clearer, and spend more space on Morrigan's realisation of what she's done.

This works, but I suspect for the trade I may change this interstitial to Baphomet. Baphomet's symbol is a skull here, but a little more stressing would likely help.

Title here is an early Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds single.

32-34

Persephone's captions are back – the stumble through an underworld path to find them made me think of the scene in issue seven, so the howl of the Morrigan, then comedy, now something else, is nodded to.

I love how Jamie and Matt have moved the mood from supernatural to hard disaster movie realism instantly. This is a tonal snap. The bodies, the people lying down. This is really horrible.

I suspect "Tragedy gives ‘clusterfuck’ ideas above its station" is one of my harder nods towards intent.

And back to Marian, the heroine of her gothic novel, confronted with undeniable evidence that she's a murdering monster who absolutely was driven by her own selfish desires. She denies it anyway, finding a way to persuade herself it's not true.

No, she's the hero. She's going to bring Baphomet back at the cost of her own life. That must prove she's the good person, right?

Morrigan is continuing her abuse the only way she can, while preserving her all-important idea that she was the good person.

So, of the three stories I mention, the one which climaxes is Morrigan's solo plot. She rode her own story off the edge of a cliff rather than face the reality of what she has done. The other two, and the other ones, carry on, especially Baph and Morri's relationship. Baph has to live with this.

When I was first explaining this to C, it had the desired effect. I then talked about my actual concern with it – that Marian's too convincing. Some people will take it as a "She loved him really" beat, and could then be taken as Abusers Love Their Victims Really. C got it, but noted, it's just too good to not do. I agree. I think it's one of the best scenes in WicDiv, and I had to hit it as hard as we could, and then go on to deal with the aftermath of it.

See you next issue.

#WicDiv #the wicked and the divine #writer notes

164 notes · View notes

mountphoenixrp · 5 years

Photo

We have a new citizen in Mount Phoenix:

Sun Wukong, the God of Mayhem and Mischief, whose origins stem from Ancient China. He is now a martial arts instructor.

FC NAME/GROUP: jackson wang ( wang kayee ) or got7 GOD NAME: sun wukong PANTHEON: chinese OCCUPATION: martial arts instructor HEIGHT: 174 cm ( 5'9" ) WEIGHT: 63 kg ( 140 lbs ) DEFINING FEATURES:

HAIR: black (it was gold before but he made it black to match his daughter’s) EYES: a bright golden. it was originally brown until he got stuck in a cauldron for 49 days. is also sensitive to smoke. NOTABLE FEATURES: a monkey tail always was present and ready to act as a third hand. very useful. STYLE: anything and everything fancy and trendy. liked to look rich and luxurious. however in home he’s so casual with boxer shorts and baggy shirts.

PERSONALITY:

MBTI: ENTP- A extroverted: 92% intuitive: 60% thinking: 54% prospecting: 56% assertive: 78% HOGWART’S HOUSE: slytherin POSITIVE: adaptable; charismatic; social; daring NEUTRAL: cunning; proud; genuine NEGATIVE: mischievous; stubborn; childish; erratic the monkey king was a proud one, a child at heart. despite his improvement of the years, at the core he was a troublemaker who wanted to be under the spotlight. however he was charming and bright, always willing to talk with others and connecting with them. an adventurer much too sly and playful, but an ally worthy to have. although unpredictable and stubborn at times, he did try his best and put his all no matter what ( even if it’ll lead him to crash and burn ).

HISTORY:

act i.

he was not normal, not even with his birth. born from a magic stone, an egg that took form of the species around him, the thing known as monkeys. in this mountain where he had no family, nothing to turn back to, the stone monkey attempted to fit in with everyone else. eating, breathing, living like everyone else. he was not like everyone else that had to take time to grow, instead matching to the adults as soon as he was born. what a strange one, ran through the other animals’ minds. but they took in the odd monkey and he in turn tried to learn from them all. to be like the others, to live, to do something. for this creature merely wanted to live, wished to find purpose, find a reason for why he existed. that’s why, when the chance came, the stone monkey dared to be more. went through the waterfall to be known as the monkey king, became a leader to the other monkeys, stole a treasure from the dragon king to make himself stronger, defeat the four dragons anyway, became a powerful and well known demon king that was praised and had followers in awe of his prowess. he never felt more alive than in that moment, loved and a subject of awe among his peers. the stone monkey was no more, and he now tried to be the amazing and loved king, the one in the spotlight. and when death came knocking at his doorstep, he defied it with all his might. erased his name from the book of life and death to achieve immortality, and when he thought of his people, those that will one day disappear and he’d lose all that he loved about his position—the monkey took all of heir names out of it too. for this being was not like others, he had no purpose. that’s why he turned to others, that’s why he strove to be more, to reach the top. for then there, everyone would seek for him. and he’d finally be doing something right, instead of nothing at all and meandering about like a lost wanderer. he wasn’t going to be a waste in this vast world, he was going to be so much more.

act ii.

the thing about being more was that it came with defying the laws put down upon lesser beings such as he. and as such, he was reported to the jade emperor by those he slighted. let it be known that he was more easily fooled at this time, and one much more optimistic. he only thought of this as an opportunity to be better. a mere child in mind thinking he was going to be gifted to be better because he did a job well done didn’t he? and truly, despite all his deeds, this monkey was but a child. one who was never taught properly of how the world worked, of how people acted, how his actions may be perceived. he was just trying to find his worth, in this world too big for his small body. that’s why, when he was put down as a mere lookout for the stables and to take care of the horses—he was hurt. he was a hurt little one, and he wondered what he did wrong. but then he started to think, did he mean nothing to them? there’s a fear gripping at his heart, and he hated how he felt like he just lost his worth to these new people he did not know, and before he knew it, he was seeking for attention. he lets loose all the horses and so began the start of the havoc in heaven. he didn’t want to be nothing. “i’m the great sage, heaven’s equal and you better treat me as such!” a childish declaration, but one which had to work out well enough for heaven to recognize his title. and he thought, yeah, this was it. he was going to be well loved, and he was going to be under the spotlight again! he was going to be someone of worth! then he found out, that wasn’t the case. not really. another lie, another fake to make him seem great but realizing that no, that’s not really the case. because there was a great banquet for the great figures in heaven and he wasn’t invited at all. sad little monkey, within the peach garden that he thought was a grand area to give to him, but it wasn’t. no, instead, he stood alone and felt like he was just thrown away. why? i didn’t do anything wrong. i just wanted—, such thoughts ran rampant in his mind. but no one was there to listen. and once more, the spiral down to negativity pushed the monkey again. and this time, against these deities and beings, he took all he could to give him immortality ( because he’s just one monkey, one against all these mean, mean people ). then he began his rebellion. heaven needed a wake up call. they need to realize that he’s more than what they thought he was. they should know his worth! and that was all that fueled this monkey king to fight. army of heaven’s 100,000 celestial warriors, 28 constellations, four heavenly kings, and even nezha—it did not matter. in that moment, he surpassed them all, for even if he was a child, combat seemed to be such a naturally in born talent of his. tricking them all, defeating them, proving his worth. but even so, he was one mere being. powerful, but alone. and he loathed how in the end he didn’t come out at top. instead, he was captured. in the end, he failed. and he screamed out at them all, cursing them and hateful. and he was terrified, because oh, he was so small against the swarm and he just wanted approval. he just wanted to be loved. am i truly worth nothing? he’s thrown into laozi’s eight-way trigram crucible, and in that moment he wondered what fool called heaven a holy place.

act iii.

49 days, that’s the record he bore for being stuck in the forsaken place. curled up in the corner, he transformed out of his monkey form to something much smaller in fear. flinching away from the flames, eyes burning from the smoke. immortality was what kept him alive, and he wondered why he was so horribly tortured. no one heard his cries to the raging fires and ceramic walls, and after a few days he had nothing left to sob out. when the cauldron finally opened, he jumped out. he jumped and ran away. he continued to hate them, and yet deep down he sought for their approval ( because how else was he to find his worth? ). which led to the next event. meeting buddha, bigger and stronger than him, he didn’t want to seem meek and weak next to the other. bringing out the mask of bravado, he accepted the bet made by buddha and attempted to win the game. he was going to reach heaven and not be caught by the higher being, he was going to prove himself! for if he won this, would he not be finally put at the top? however, it seemed that nothing ever went his way. for as he thought he succeeded in defeating the buddha, showing off loudly of his great victory, it turned out he had been already trapped. the palm of buddha turning into a mountain and locking him inside. again, he was put into isolation. this time, the space was bigger and at least there was no fire, but god was he alone. there were only plantations and insects, these were all he could see. the monkey was put all alone and he tried to count how many days it has been. with each day, he found himself fearing how the world would be when he returned. would anyone remember him? would people care? would his people even care? in this time of isolation, the monkey tried to make life exciting to ignore such worries. building his own luxurious tree house, making all sorts of traps for fun, playgrounds that he could enjoy in. he loved the flowers and fruits especially, colorful things to break the monotony of earthly colors. and sometimes, for a moment, things were fun. until he turned around, cheer on his face to call out for a friend to try things out with him. but then he remembered, he had nobody. was this his fate? he sometimes wondered. was he really meant to not have a purpose? he loathed to think. was he never meant to be loved? the worst of it all entered his mind. and he curled up in the center, digging his finger down on the ground to carve the symbol of another day. and maybe if he ducked hi head and let it stay above his knees, no one would see or feel the tears dropping from his eyes.

act iv.

500 years, 182500 days, and too many hours to count later—he was given freedom. Well, not really freedom. he was allowed to roam on earth after he successfully escorted some monk on his pilgrimage. protect monk and keep him safe, and then he’s out scott-free. sure, he also had a dumb headband on him to give him headache for days, but at least he had three chances to defy it. that was the basic idea really. and before he knew it, he got lumped in with a monk that got a stick up his ass, a womanizing and gluttonous pig, a boring ogre, and then later on in life some quiet ass horse. it was a very strange combination indeed, one that the king thinks could easily fail anytime soon—but he was stubborn and when he put his mind to it, he always aimed for the best results. he hated the monk when he used the stupid mantra to mess with his head, hated the pig for his stupidity and foolish actions, hated the ogre for being so serious, hated how the horse refused to return to normal and remained silent. yet at the same time, xuanzang became the one person he learned to respect and love dearly, bajie became the fun friend he loved to mess with, wujing was always someone he could rely on, and yulong was the trusty and silent stead. from a ragtag group butting heads, to brothers that he could trust. xuanzang in particular, despite their stark differences, was someone he came to care for beyond than anyone in the world. even with all the troubles and how xuanzang always seemed to be taken away, he and the others always brought him back in the end. and even if there were arguments, many nearly breaking them up, they bounced back and together continued their adventure. the journey to the west was one of adventures beyond the norm, but he thought that this was truly a tale to tell the world when it was all over. sometimes he fancied them becoming a popular tale in the future, joked about it really. xuanzang told him that such a tale was not really necessary, bajie was all in for it at the prospect of fame and the girls and money he could obtain from it, wujing didn’t really seek for such fame but it was an interesting topic nonetheless. the primate already knew he was going to definitely publish it in the future. this was his lifestyle for fourteen years, and even if it’s such a small number of years too his actual age—it had been one of the greatest there was. and through it, he found out more about him, people, and individuals. he understood then, of heaven’s punishment on him. he understood why the world once labeled him a pest. he understood it all thanks to these people and his adventures. xuanzang especially broke through all the farce he put up, came to understand him beyond anyone else, and in turn the troublemaker was the same with the monk. he thought that, strangely enough, after so much suffering this was where he truly belonged. however, as stated before, this journey lasted fourteen years. in the end, the pilgrimage was successful. bajie was gifted, wujing became an arhat, and surprisingly he was granted buddhahood alongside xuanzang. but xuanzang requested to stay as human for as long as his mortal life could offer, whilst he took it without problem ( because at the core of it all, he still wanted to be something and took every opportunity to be as such ). and just like that, the group disbanded. misfits and a religious one all going on their own ways. surprisingly, he found himself suggesting a yearly meet up of sort to catch up on each other too. none of them minded this, and he thought he caught xuanzang having a proud smile. in the end, despite reaching buddhahood, he tried to check on the monkeys he left and how their lives have been. when he returned back to open arms and them crying out of relief and joy seeing him fine and well, worries of the past washed away. a weight lifted off of his shoulders, and he thought perhaps this was all he needed.

act v.

the world became duller without the others with him and facing constant adventures. perhaps that’s why he’d frequently go around causing bits of mischief here and there to amuse himself. the monkeys were a nice pack to return to as well, but he found himself without much to do. what was he if not playing the rebellious troublemaker? what was he, if not playing the protector of the monk? what was he in the end? even after reaching buddhahood, he questioned himself. he flaunted the title around, but somewhere in him he wondered why he even received it. sometimes he wanted to talk about it to xuanzang, but he hated to be anything but the facade he showed. because that vision was cooler, much more than this wanderer still lost within himself. speaking of xuanzang, today he’s meeting up with the guy. he knew wujing and bajie met the monk earlier on, but it seemed they were making sure he and xuanzang have one last fina talk. if he heard bajie talk about a secret forbidden love between them, he thought of transforming himself to a beautiful woman to embarrass the pig. still, it was definitely better for them to be alone for this last talk. it’s been years of course, and whilst the disciples have a limitless life ( with only him assured to just never die ), xuanzang did request to keep his mortality for the time being. and once the monk truly became a buddha, they really had no doubts that even their yearly meet ups wouldn’t be complete. the former demon should be as busy, but he never really followed the normal rules. that’s why unlike most others, he wandered and he did whatever. after all, he’s not like the standard deity. not based off of a concept needed by people or praised by them, or of the life cycle such as death. no, he was of mischief and trickery, a combatant to boot. but xuanzang would be more, that was the unanimous thought they had. that’s why, calmly so, he’d meet up xuanzang one last time as what he originally was. a mortal man, much more benevolent than any holy being he knew ( the one who understood him, the one who forgave him, the one who helped the lost child that no one ever did ). sitting by the old man, now wrinkly but bald as ever, he couldn’t help but find it peaceful. the leaves and grass sway lightly against the wind, cups of tea being nursed in their hands. the primate sat silently for once, basking in the tranquility of their current setting. then, for once, xuanzang was the one who opened his mouth first. “i’m glad we met. i think that’s one of the best things to happen to me.” he froze, eyes flickering to the aged monk. “even if you were someone i disagreed with in many ways, even when we were so different, you were the one i learned most from. you were the one that made me realize the many things that made a person them.” a pause, a shared look, and a pleasant smile on the elderly man. here’s a pang on his heart, and a realization that he’ll not see it in a long time. finally, the monk continued and the troublemaker continued to silently listen for once. “you were also my protector, and there were many things we did not see eye-to-eye but i grew to understand your views as you did with mine. and as time passed, we just knew how to go about things. and…” a softened gaze, weak and old hand raising up to his shoulder, then firmly “you never had to be anything but yourself, that was enough. you were enough, and you never needed to try so hard to be someone or something else. and you are truly amazing as you are. even when it was rough, and i know you’ve hurt so much, you tried your best. i know i will be off soon, but i have no doubts that you would leave a mark on this world. and that you will be loved and cared for. more importantly, there is no one you have to prove, because i can tell you that you’ve always been an individual with a great heart.” the monkey king was speechless, wide eyed at the monk’s words. he also hated how he felt choked up, how the urge to cry was present ( and how he hated to cry in front of others ), how xuanzang just always knew what to say. and moreover, it seemed that he always knew what the primate would say if he had found his voice. for the monk lets go, calmly shut his eyes as he faced front and still held onto his cup of tea. even without the heightened sense of hearing, he could tell that xuanzang had passed. peaceful as ever, and satisfied to have said all he wanted to say. looking down at the cup of tea, though, he could not say everything he wanted to say. instead, noting how the beverage of the other was unfinished, he choked out “idiot, you always nagged at me when i didn’t finish my stuff. you should have finished your’s.” i wished you could have stayed longer.

act vi.

the world moves on, and so did he. he lived on with his immortal life, admiring the world as it changed beyond his comprehension. humans were odd things, and through them he liked to find more about the world. that’s how his life became one full of activities. meeting up with his fellow immortal monkeys, meeting up with the journey to the west gang, meeting with the other deities once in a blue moon whenever it was important to even drag him into it, pranking some poor souls, and sometimes playing a normal human to closely watch the world. although being human was a task since he always had to hide away his dastardly tail, he did manage to get some magical items and the sort to cover the tail if he needed to do so. and plus, he thought that he made a mighty fine looking one. meeting people, getting to know them, sometimes helping around, it was a wonderful time. it was always funny to make enemies, then see them in the underworld and loudly announce all their horrible deeds even if the god knew it all already. still, the priceless looks were always worth it. and if he liked someone enough, he could put his two cents in about them. he liked to play different roles, mostly anything exciting. whatever that seemed fun at the moment. a pirate, a warrior, a shaman, whatever really. when more roles came to exist, he tried them out with great gusto. never stagnant, always trying out new things as long as it caught his interest. that was the life he lived. he would meet people, become friends, family, enemies, and more. a social soul, one that loved to shine among them all. the world spun and spun, never stopping and always warping. in turn, he got to take another step and learn to adapt. always flowing along, for what else was there really to do? he got no proper domain to look over, and he thought that this really was a life more suitable for him. he thought he may be a celebrity one too many times, but he couldn’t help it. in the end, he was someone who strove to be a star. a being under the spotlight. for perhaps, that was all the motivation he needed for himself, the purpose he sought for. one which he’s more than happy to comply.

act vii.

the cycle repeated, and finally he met her. it’s not that he didn’t get into flings or dates and all, he’s done it several times. but in that time, his role was a circus performer, a stuntman wowing people. although, before he was a short-lived actor that was a scene-stealer on a tv show prior to that as well ( and he rather liked the face he donned, which was why kept it instead of throwing away the identity like usual ). but during a time where in he was in china and taking a break, he went to florist’s shop to look around. for even at that point in his life, the flowers were still one of his most favorite things in the world. there, he met the florist. a plain woman she was, one to be easily overlooked. in fact, the reason he stayed longer was because she noticed him as the actor she had admired. then they talked about flowers and things just sort of clicked. falling together so perfectly like puzzle pieces meant to form together a beautiful image. then he started to come over more and more. even when he was busy, he got her number just so he could video call her whenever. he got to know her more, and found out about her family. in all honesty, her sister was a lot more beautiful than her, but he didn’t even bat an eye at the woman. instead, he’s always been more charmed by the florist with as much love for flowers as he did. he realized that the florist girl was the odd one out in her family, not as famous or gorgeous. but he didn’t really care, instead showering her in praises and love. always sweet and kind, always trying his best. for she made him feel grounded, normal, and despite all that he preached about being a star—he wanted to be someone that was approved. and the little florist gave him that love and acceptance. her family was kind, and his special vision didn’t see them as bad. and he thought, that perhaps he finally found someone he was meant to be with. then one night led to another, he became a father, and now he’s ready to propose to the woman he loved. it all seemed perfect, until she requested to hold off the proposal. shaky eyes and a tired smile. he didn’t like the sight, and there’s a sinking feeling but—he smiled and let her have it. nine months, the sinking feeling never fade. instead wariness grew, and in turn he tried harder. he wanted to make her happy, didn’t mind it when she got emotional and cried for him to go away. it’s only then that he realized, perhaps, somewhere along this beautiful romance story he had been blinded. when the child was born, when the infant cried, he found himself knowing that he’d love the baby to the very end. yet, as he looked up to the mother’s eyes, somehow he knew this was a symbol of the end. when his lover was allowed to leave, and they could finally talk it out in the confines of his home she finally blurted it all out. she apologized for being cruel, for being weak, but this was a life she could not have. young girl that had been oppressed, one that was always talked down by others outside family. the plain girl that was fated to a plain life. and then he came to her life and everything seemed so wonderful but— the people, they still talk. still said things behind their backs, such venomous words only raising in volume when he wasn’t physically around. and the feeling he was hiding something, something so important but never telling her anything ( his divinity, the deity he actually was, how he was not even a mere man ). the mistrust that builds, the negative monsters forming in her mind, and finally… “i’m sorry. i really can’t do this anymore. i think you deserve better than me. including her. because for having such thoughts i…i really don’t deserve any of this.” perhaps this florist girl he loved really didn’t. after all, if such a mindset was enough for her to give it all up…the disguised man could only accept it ( because even then, he was a man in love who could not say no to her ). taking the child, his only request was that they named her together. “meihua.” they agreed, the beautiful flower that deserved the world. it made him wonder if he had left any other children behind without really realizing it. wondered if their mothers felt as empty as he was watching the woman’s back as she left. maybe he could make it right for them when he meets them once more but for now… looking at the little girl in his arms, he could only smile kindly. for now, he’ll at least make things right for what was left of the love story that ended tragically. as he looked out of the window, he realized it was raining. was xuanzang crying for him? he couldn’t help but wonder. but it’s okay, he’s not alone at least. he now had a family of his own blood to take care of for once. and he’s going to help her down the right path.

act viii.

he had been in mount phoenix at times. may it be pranking some others or to just chill out. its been a really long time since he returned there, though—about fifty years or so. but with so many ways people could be a danger to his precious child, he found himself trying to bring her to a safe haven she’d fit in more. that’s how the deity that’s also known as the victorious fighting buddha found himself becoming a ( struggling ) single father. one who thanked for the creation of internet as he could easily search all that he needed to know to take care of the baby and her following years. fatherhood was an exhausting experience, but he couldn’t say he regretted doing such a thing. not when it assured the best conditions for his daughter. he also had given up on his circus profession by the drop of the hat as soon as he knew he couldn’t really move about so freely. not if he was going to stay in mount phoenix until who knew how long. instead, the god opted to open up a whole dojo to teach anyone willing to learn the martial arts. he’s been here for five years, and now he’s trying to learn how to deal with his baby going to school. moreover, he wondered how many boys he had to fight because he swore if anyone tried to mess with her he was going to give them the pranking of a lifetime ( and if their bones get broken….well, that was a nice bonus ).

POWERS:

PRIMATE PHYSIOLOGY was his original form really, a monkey who’s got enhanced condition and very useful feet and tail. his tail still popped out even in human form and he’d use it a lot because it was useful. most noteworthy was his speed and strength, though ( travelling 21,675 km in one somersault and carrying around a staff weighing 7960 kg with ease ).

SUPERNATURAL COMBAT was one of the things he was well known for. defeating most of heaven’s forces, several other enemies, and more—his combat surpassed many levels and he loved to flaunt it.

IMMORTALITY definitely common in deities but this god just won't die. decapitation, rip his heart out, and you can name it all but he survived from it all. perhaps making himself immortal five times over was overkill but at least he obtained the role of useful meat shield.

72 EARTHLY TRANSFORMATION or shapeshifting, but generally he could shapeshift perfectly to anything under the 72 earthly transformations ( mostly other living beings ). however, anything outside of it would always have his tail pop out.

CLONING by plucking out a strand of his hair, he could clone himself. he could also shapeshift those clones into anything he wanted in the process.

CLOUD FLIGHT simply as it said on the tin, he could use clouds as a mode of transportation to fly around on.

MAGIC his magic consisted of being able to command wind, part water, conjure protective circles against demons, and freezing humans, deities and demons alike.

RUYI JINGU BANG his well known weapon that many knew to be in his possession. this magical staff was capable of changing sizes, multiply, and fight according to his whims. he considered it one of his most trusted ally.

GOLDEN-GAZE FIERY-EYES was his special eye condition that was gained through being stuck in a burning cauldron for 49 days. it allowed him to recognize evil in exchange for heightened sensitivity to smoke.

STRENGTHS:

a one-man army who was enough to bring great havoc in heaven in attempts to lock him up. this was someone to proceed with caution.

he just didn’t die. it was simple as that.

he’ll know if you’re evil in a heartbeat, and when you’re recognized as one he would put up the walls and be on a lookout.

an extremely versatile fighter who could use strategies well, was very good in combat in general, play with stealth, and had an arsenal of powers to use.

WEAKNESSES:

his transformation was not full on perfect. sometimes his tail popped out. and even if he was using one of the 72 earthly transformations, if emotional enough the tail might pop out.

smoke was very bad for his eyes.

a very proud one more often than not, you might be able to use his hubris to your advantage ( for even if he mellowed out, pride was still his sin ).

despite having quite the arsenal of magic spells, he much more relied on his combat skills and staff. due to the neglect on his magic, most things he could do with it weren’t that strong. even the freezing spells were on a very short time limit depending on how strong the enemies were.

#kpop rp #krp #got7 #jackson wang #got7 jackson #mp; welcome

1 note · View note

sublimeperfectionland · 7 years

Text

New Moon of the Dark Kingdom Chapter Hundred and Eight - Duo Ex Machina

Zoisite and Kunzite have found true love, but when some old friends, a vengeful god, and a pair of evil twins are gunning for the Shitennou all at once, life is not going to be easy

[Scene: The ruined lobby of a ruined hotel. The Death Phantom regards a pair of innocent looking kids smiling angelically at him.]

Death Phantom: Who are you?

Dev: I'm Dev.

El: And I'm El.

Dev: We're just a couple of perfectly normal foreign exchange students, trying to finish up a science project.

El: Now who the hell are you?

Death Phantom: [Thunderous] I am Wiseman! Look upon my might and tremble!

[The twins look at each other and shrug.]

El: Are we supposed to know who you are?

Dev: Because we've never heard of you.

El: And that's a very bad sign.

Dev: For you, anyway.

El: You see...if you were anyone of any real importance, we would already know who you are.

Dev: ...and we don't.

El: You're completely obscure. Not even a footnote of a footnote.

Dev: And that does not bode well for you, I'm afraid to say.

Death Phantom: Then perhaps I am better known to you as The Death Phantom!

[The twins look to one another and shake their heads]

Dev: I'm sorry.

El: That doesn't ring any bells for us either.

Death Phantom: It matters not, insignificant mortals! You are but ants on a chessboard! An annoyance to be certain, but not enough to distract from the game!

Dev: [pouts] That isn't a very nice thing to say.

El: [shrugs] I've been called worse.

[points at Zoi who is still chained the pillar, breathing hard with agony]

Death Phantom: I AM WISEMAN! DEITY OF NEMESIS, BRINGER OF WISHES-

Dev: One moment-so sorry to interrupt, but the Shitennou doesn't really need to be here for this, does he?

El: Good point. [She casually flings her arm in Zoi's direction and he is engulfed in white hot flame, until the chains fall to the ground]

[The room darkens as the Death Phantom draws on his full power, the only light is from his eyes, which glow like the sun]

Death Phantom: You stupid girl! Do you have any idea what you have done!

El: [giggling] Why, yes. I believe I just took out the trash.

[The Death Phantom blasts her with enough energy to nearly send her flying through the concrete wall of the hotel. She splats like a bug, stopped only by a steel girder, which is bent perpendicular from the impact.]

Dev: CHAAA- [his voice dies into a croak as he regards his sister's body, half embedded into the solid steel, before puffing out his cheeks like an angry chipmunk and turning his glare to the Death Phantom] You'd better hope she's ok.

El: [still prone] Oh, don't worry. I've been hurt worse than this learning to ride a bicycle.

[The beam she is lying on bends back into shape with her still lying on it. Once it is perfectly straight she floats to the center of the lobby while the bits of plaster and drywall fly back into place, repairing the wall.]

[Dev teleports away and reappears floating back to back with his sister. She reaches for his hand and holds it in hers.]

Death Phantom: Prepare to be torn apart by the full force of my wrath!

El: Is that supposed to frighten us? Because I'll have you know, we've eaten scarier creatures than you for breakfast.

Dev: Literally.

El: And by literally, he means "literally." When we were babies, we used to eat demons.

Dev: And once we consume them, they are doomed to obey us in the afterlife.

[A deck of cards appears in his hand and he fans them out.]

Dev: Pick a card, dear sister. Any card.

El: I just can't chose. They all look so good.

[She waves her fingers and all the cards float out of Dev's hand, morphing into howling demonic phantasms.]

Dev: [He summons a flute and raises it to his lips.] Now prepare yourself for the full force of MY wrath.

[But before he can play a single note, the Death Phantom raises both hands and the phantasms all turn back into cards which burst into flames until they are completely blackened.]

[Dev and El watch with their mouths agape as black ash of the burnt cards fall like snow.]

El: Rude.

Death Phantom: You puny mortals have vexed me beyond all endurance. Prepare to suffer for your insolence as no mortal before you has suffered before.

[Violet, orange and green miasma swirls around the Death Phantom as his eyes once more glow like twin suns. A shockwave makes the ground shudder as a tsunami of pure dark energy is directed at the twins.]

[They clench hands and their eyes go white a moment before impact, but they make no effort to escape. The force of the attack washes over a shield in the shape of a bubble]

[Death Phantom staggers back, shaken, as the twins continue to float nonchalantly in midair.

Death Phantom: What? No living thing can withstand an attack of that magnitude!

El: And yet...we are still alive.

Death Phantom: [shaken] How...how is that possible?

El: Well...you see. There is a perfectly logical explanation.

[She points at Dev]

El: He's 50% Major God of Chaos.

Dev: And she's 50% Major God of Chaos.

El: Do the math.

Death Phantom: That...that cannot be right. I know the full Pantheon of Chaos, and you are not among us.

El: Yeah? Well...we're not from around here.

Death Phantom: [backing away] Who are you...what are you...you...don't belong here...I will look into your minds...sift through your essence...peek into your darkest fears your greatest desires...find the secret of how to unmake you...

Dev: [shrugs] It's not going to be that easy, but you're certainly welcome to try.

[The twins make eye contact with the Death Phantom]

Death Phantom: You're...IMPOSSIBLE!

El: So we've been told.

Dev: Many times, in fact.

El: [sighs] So impossible...In so many many different ways...

[They slowly sink through the air toward floor level]

Dev: But, it appears you might have figured out what we are.

El: Or who we are.

Dev: Which are two different things. But both must remain a secret, if we are to have any hope in succeeding in our mission.

El: And a secret isn't a secret if anyone knows it but us.

Dev: So I'm very sorry about this, but I'm afraid it is time for you to die.

[The twins clasp hands once more and their eyes glow with an unholy fire.]

Death Phantom: YOU CANNOT KILL ME! I AM A GOD!

[The twins jaws drop as they release each other's hand and turn to face each other.]

El: Did he just say that HE'S A GOD?

Dev: I do believe he did!

El: [hugs her brother] Oh, Dev! I do believe this is our lucky day!

[They press their foreheads together, grinning evilly, then break apart, turning to face the Death Phantom]

Dev: Nighty-night, Mr. Death Phantom.

[They two pull down their goggles as the God Gun materializes between their hands]

[A beam of white white light erupts and the Death Phantom screams as he swell like a balloon before bursting into fragments.]

The beam stops and the twins stand for a moment in stunned silent.]

El: We did it, Dev. The gun works. We've just killed our first god.

#new moon of the dark kingdom

4 notes · View notes

hollowistheworld · 7 years

Text

Fallen

Kitty leaned one elbow against the bar, chewing slowly, looking between the man at the far end of the bar and the door. Tyre, naturally, did not see this, and continued eating happily. Kotanoobüts noticed, but was too used to Kitty’s odd behavior tics to care.

“Be careful looking around,” Kitty said at last, turning back to her lunch. “I think we’re gonna get some company, and I don’t know what their auras are gonna look like to you.”

Tyre tilted his head. “What would I need to be careful about?”

“I’ve heard some people who can see their auras go blind.”

Tyre raised a scarred eyebrow. “Is that supposed to be, like, a concern for me?” He made a point of being sure his eyes were open, all white and scarred.

Kitty punched his shoulder. “I don’t know, blind your third eye or some shit. Just watch it, ‘kay?”

The door to the bar opened, and to anyone who couldn’t see into magical dimensions it appeared that a group of roughly ten people in black leather jackets and silver chains walked in. Even without magical sight, however, they would have drawn attention. One or two appeared to be male, one or two appeared female, and the rest were a mystery that few would have dared tried to make a statement on. Kitty checked, but where she usually saw people’s preferred pronouns there was only a smudge for each of them - they didn’t even really understand the question, let alone care about the answer.

Under the curtain of their glamors Kitty could see bright, iridescent shapes that radiated light unlike any kind of light Kitty had ever seen or could imagine. They had wings - two, four, or six - with feathers that looked to be made out of scales. And there were far too many eyes.

Tyre’s head hurt when he first looked at them, as his sight struggled to put their auras into something he could make sense of and aim at. It settled on bright, shapeless, and don’t even try it. “What are they?” Tyre asked Kitty softly, though something about the way their auras looked made him think they would hear him regardless.

“Angels,” Kitty whispered back. “The Catholic variety. Have you looked at the guy in the back yet?”

Tyre, third eye still open, surveyed the rest of the bar. “His aura looks like theirs,” he said hesitantly, “but… I don’t know. Tangled?”

“That’s as good a word for it as any,” Kitty told him. “Tangled. Corrupted. Fallen. That, my friend, is Lucifer himself. Do you know that pantheon?”

“A little. Mostly just that the Catholics are the ones that fucked it all up for the Greeks. And Lucifer’s their bad guy.”

“Fucked it up for the Greeks and just about everyone else,” Kitty agreed. “Lucifer used to want to kill all of humanity, I guess, but his little demonic minions ain’t much of a match for Horrors and shit, so he’s kinda given up. Most of his pantheon fucked off anyway, or so I’ve heard. Tucked away in some little pocket dimension where they don’t get eaten but they don’t get worshiped neither. The pack of angels that just walked in is about all that’s left.”

“Are they here to fight Lucifer?”

“Probably not, I think this is - Yup. There’s old Jesus Christ himself, here to enjoy his newfound freedom from prophesying and being nailed to shit.”

The angels had seemed to survey the bar, then split to flank Jesus, who looked wildly unimpressed by their protection. Kitty had never properly met Jesus, but she’d seen him and his bodyguards from a distance before, and she’d heard plenty of stories. Jesus, it seemed, had no interest in joining his pantheon in hiding, and no interest in collecting worshippers and carving out a section of No God’s Land to belong to him instead of to the Horrors. Instead, he roved across No God’s Land, doing no-one-knew-what, and occasionally meeting up with Lucifer to have drinks and chit-chat, while Jesus’s angelic posse looked on in what might have been either annoyance or indifference. It was difficult to tell with angels. Neither their glamors nor their trueforms were very big on expressions.

Kotanoobüts growled at Jesus as he passed, and one of the angels glared at him, their hand going to their side, where Kitty imagined they would manifest a weapon if they decided the situation warranted it.

Kitty tapped her quarterstaff against one of the rungs of her barstool. “Don’t go picking a fight with my dog,” she warned. “I ain’t never used this thing on an angel before. I’d like to see what it can do.”

Jesus rolled his eyes and tugged at the angel’s jacket. “Not a dog person, Sareash?” He grinned at Kitty, who was alarmed to find that he was every bit as effortlessly charismatic as everyone always said in the stories. “Sorry about my friend. He’s protective.”

“Well, that’s what you’re paying him for, yeah?”

Jesus laughed. “My Father, actually. Assuming we ever see him again so he can drop off the check.”

“Don’t hold your breath on that,” Lucifer said. He held up a tumbler with an amber liquid in it. “Come on, before I drink it for you.”

Jesus slid into the booth across from Lucifer, loose and casual like everyone had drinks with their father’s most rebellious… son? Creation? every damn day of the week. Kitty watched them with interest that she made no effort to hide. She was still eating, but no longer paying attention to what she was putting in her mouth. Tyre was eavesdropping as well, but facing away from them, making some attempt to pretend like he cared about their privacy.

#my writing #my oc #kitty #tyre #chosen chaos #original fiction

2 notes · View notes

iconoclast-xayah · 7 years

Text

Starstruck

Part three of the Mount Targon series. May be edited at a later time, but I’m already kind of late on this, so let me just drop it here. It was going to be longer but it’s already pretty extensive. Warning: This chapter gets fucking silly. Featuring @aurelion--solstice and @tantibus-aeternam

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Part 1 - Misty Mountain Hop

Part 2 - Unbearable

Rakan Intermission - Where Is My Elevator Music?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

She dreamt of a forest.

She dreamt of sunlight bleeding through the canopies and painting the ground in light and shadow. She dreamt of cities in the trees that stretched across the landscape; hidden to the sight of most but bustling with life to those who could see it. She dreamt of the feeling of leaves cracking beneath her feet, the taste of fresh fruits and seeds, of indescribable colors and the murmuring whispers of nature, languages lost to time upon the threshold of human technology. She dreamt of babbling brooks, waterfalls; and a cool rain that washed away all pain and replaced it with petrichor and tranquility. She dreamt of home.

But something felt...wet. It wasn’t the rain. Her mind was beginning to realize whatever she was feeling was not in any way connected to her unconscious fantasies.

Where was she? What had happened? The last thing she remembered was being chased down by a giant mountain bear. She recalled something happening to her arm, but when she moved the limb, she felt no pain, not even a little bit. Nothing. It was as if it hadn’t happened. Maybe it hadn’t. Was she still dreaming? Perhaps she was still soundly nesting in the glow of her campfire. Or maybe that too had been a dream -- maybe she’d arise to find Rakan lying next to her, warm and comfortable and happy. Or maybe she was dead. That seemed just as likely as any of the previous thoughts. But there was only one way to find out.

Xayah’s eyes cracked open slowly. She was greeted by the sight of a small, scaly face not even an inch from her own, the creature’s tongue lolled out ridiculously to one side, dripping drool. The bird woman let out a loud, startled screech, shoving the animal away from her roughly. She almost immediately lurched upward, amber eyes wide as they peered at the thing that had been bathing her cheeks in slobber. It let out a startled, high-pitched bleep and skittered a few feet away from the girl, looking at her fearfully as she swiped at her face with part of a fur pelt that had been lying across her.

“What happened? Where am I?” She asked hazily, still disoriented from sleep but at least aware of her surroundings somewhat. Now that she’d had a few seconds to look at the little reptile, realization dawned on her -- it was a dragon. A young dragon, but a dragon nonetheless. It looked remarkably different compared to most of the beasts she’d encountered -- it had no wings, with a maw much more slender than the terrestrial variety. It bore around its neck an exotic frill that seemed to be painted in the night’s sky. Except it wasn’t merely a marking, the colors and light-specks seemed to move, like a reflection of the atmosphere above. She found it difficult to turn her eyes away, it was hypnotic, in a sense, but she was not so lost in it that she neglected to realize something intrinsic.

“Are you...Aurelion Sol?” Was this the being she’d set out to see in the first place? It was a long shot, but she didn’t expect there to be many galactic looking wingless dragons living on the mountain. Pantheon had claimed there was only one star dragon. But she found it difficult to believe this puny thing was the mythical Aurelion Sol; the Star Forger, the Great Comet, the Creator of All, the King of the Cosmos...she had pictured him to be quite a bit more intimidating. This dragon was nothing like the one she imagined in her childhood, when she’d beg her father to tell the tales again and again of of an impossibly large creature who could bend the sky and set the world ablaze without so much as a yawn.

“No. That would be me.”

The voice that responded to her did not ring from the tiny dragon who had overcome it’s fear and begun to slowly approach her again, but from somewhere else. Where exactly, she could not pinpoint; it was almost as if the sound had reverberated from inside of her, a deep, booming tone that was somehow simultaneously calming and sophisticated.

Although the bird girl was still rather groggy, she now had the sense to at least look around and see her predicament, finding herself momentarily breathless as the beauty of it struck her on a metaphysical level. She could feel the intense magic that radiated through this place, it stung in her fingertips and eyes and left her feeling practically intoxicated. Massive tunnels that stretched on and on until they were consumed by darkness, as tall as the skyscrapers of Piltover and painted in glimmering gold flake and gems, streams of glowing blue liquid and mountains made of treasures both new and ancient, as far as the eye could see; decorative bridges and exotic foliage, it was all beautiful and ethereal and somehow completely natural. Had it not been for the gigantic fissure in the roof, she wouldn’t have been able to tell she was inside a cave -- it seemed to bare its very own ecosystem and atmosphere, kept lit and alive by whatever or whoever it was who lived here, and the gleaming stars above. They appeared brighter here than they did anywhere else -- she thought she could hear them speaking to her.

What caught her off guard more than anything though was the realization that she was not lying on the ground, but on top of something alive, and massive. She thought at first it was a trick of the light, until she saw it’s head move above her and then crane down to meet her vision, one giant eye staring through to her soul.

“Hello.” The gravity of the situation began to set in as the star dragon greeted her like one might any casual acquaintance, a deep rumbling in his throat. Although she was no longer half-asleep, she found herself pressing backwards into the warm, scaly body beneath her, as if to try and back away from the alarmingly large face before her.

“Wh--...you’re...What? How? What happened? Am I...am I dead? Where are the eternal hunters? What is this place? This isn’t...no...” Xayah mumbled incoherently to herself as she tried to piece together the events of the last 24 hours, hands digging into her hair. Her disruptive thoughts were interrupted by a colossal, reptilian hand swooping slowly down beside her. When it got close enough, she noticed that between the tips of two sharp claws, a dainty cup was carefully clutched.

“This is my home. For now. And you are far from dead, although you would have been had I not healed you. Tea?”

Xayah’s brain moved at a snail’s pace as all these things assaulted her senses, blinking slowly. With only slight reluctance, she reached out to take hold of the cup in shaking hands. She brought it to her lips, taking a hefty sip before resting it on the delicate platter it had been presented with. It tasted like chamomile.

“I...Thank you for your...hospitality, great star weaver...you truly are one of the most benevolent creatures to ever exist,” she managed to stutter in a display of respect for the god that had apparently saved her life. Xayah nearly dropped her cup as the significantly smaller dragon laid itself over her legs like a pet dog. Much to her surprise, two more of these infantile dragons had made there way up the great dragon’s back to displace themselves at Xayah’s hips. They were a bit bigger than the one at her feet, and both had their own unique physique, one looking much like the giant being she rested upon, the other, a bit more foreboding and dark.

“Mmh? Oh, my, no. I was very much going to burn you to cinders for bleeding on my floor. But my children seem fond of you.”

Children? These were his children? Xayah felt her heart swell with warmth then, incapable of holding in her smile as she looked between the three cuddly serpents and then to the one above, her eyes gleaming.

“You’re a mama?” she bleated, without restraint in her simultaneous joy and confusion. She would soon feel the form beneath her shift uncomfortably, a powerful, cranky grumbling that was nearly enough to knock her off the gigantic being’s back.

“And here I thought your kind to be less dense than the humans of this world. Clearly I was misguided.” Xayah was not given any time to respond before she felt herself being plucked from the star dragon’s back by an enormous set of jaws, letting out a squeak of fearful protest. Was he going to eat her? For the third time this week, Xayah prepared to meet her untimely death -- until she felt herself being set down gently on the stone below. The three little dragons had taken it upon themselves to move without assistance, each one sliding down their father’s lengthy anatomy as if he were a giant carnival slide. It would have been cute, if she weren’t on the verge of pissing herself. She was amazed she’d managed to somehow keep her tea from spilling everywhere.

On the ground, Xayah could take in the sheer immensity of his form much more efficiently -- but only for a second, watching in awe as a pale light engulfed him and dissipated, leaving in its wake the form of a man -- or something like a man. Dressed in clothe that seemed to be made of star-matter, everything about his more ‘presentable’ shape was befitting of a cosmic king, his hair a mane of colors beyond the perception of normal human sight and his features sharp, draconian and utterly stoic. He was still absolutely massive in comparison to the petite, bird-like woman who stood before him; she had to make a valiant effort not to stare him in the groin -- where her head was level. She felt the heat rise in her face, both from embarrassment and sheer terror.

“Perhaps my feral form is too overwhelming for your fragile sensibilities. It seems you are speechless. Does this accommodate your narrow-mind more sufficiently, little bird?” There was a cockiness in his words that suggested that he was merely toying with her; and although his expression barley changed, she could detect the faintest motion in his brow to support this hypothesis. But he was right. She was speechless. It took every bit of courage she could muster to sputter out,

“N...not...really,” to him, the teacup shaking between her claws.

If that wasn’t enough to terrify the poor bird girl, the voice that soon followed most certainly was.

“We should kill her.”

She wasn’t entirely sure how she’d bypassed it before, but after hearing it speak, it’s presence was made clear -- not only visually, but she could feel it, a dark, suffocating presence that served as a sickening reminder of her encounters with the shadow ninja in Ionia. It had manifested itself from the shady bowels of the caverns surrounding them, it’s body a conglomeration of black matter and star spatter. She was not certain what it was she was looking at, it seemed to have a vaguely humanoid shape, but it’s limbs were long and distorted, and half of its body appeared to be an intangible mass of gases. It had no true facial features, only a pair of soulless, pale blue eyes that gaped from beneath a white hood and made her breath momentarily stop when they locked onto her. The energy this thing radiated brought her to the conclusion that such a monster could only be defined as a demon. Much to her horror, the star dragon seemed comfortable with it being there, as it drifted towards him and hovered at his side smugly. It was evident to her that this being was siphoning energy from the star weaver; surely he must have been under some form of hypnotic spell, why else would he not defend himself from such a horrible, terrible thing?

“Look at her; disrespectful, useless lump of meat. She only climbed because she expects you to give her some sort of power. Couldn’t even make it half way up. Maybe we sho--” the beast was cut off as a sharp, dagger-like feather whirred past it’s head. It dodged it with a preternatural speed, but it was soon followed by more; a flurry of magically infused quills that stuck into the walls and phased through the darkened entity whenever they happened to come into contact with him.

“Could you -- not, please -- hey-- stop that,” The creature didn’t seem to obtain much, if any damage from Xayah’s assault, but it did show a clear irritation, the energy in it’s gaze flaring violently. Xayah stopped attacking the second she saw this, not because she had intended to, but because she felt as if someone had attached weights to her limbs, her mind going hazy and blank. There was a painful cold that filled her lungs, a sudden trepidation that she had no explanation for other than dark magic, her body growing still. A fistful of feathers drifted out of her palm, floating down to the ground, where the young dragons took it upon themselves to play with them as if they were toys. This interaction had naturally not made it past the star forger, either -- he had stepped forward soon after Xayah had been paralyzed to lay one gigantic hand over her shoulder, staring down at her with a raised brow. It broke the vastayan from her trance with a hiss of defense, bouncing away to peer up at the god, befuddled.

“Can you not see it?! This demon, it’s feeding off of you!” She chirped, nearly tripping over one of the hatchling dragons in her hastiness.

Both Aurelion Sol and the demon seemed to look between each other in a knowing manner. Whatever conclusion they reached in those few seconds was one of total disregard, the giant’s shoulders giving a careless shrug at the confused Lhotlan’s words.

“What is your point? I have an infinite well of power. And besides; I prefer to think of it as a...symbiosis, of sorts. I feed him; he keeps me entertained and helps provide for our children. I see nothing wrong with it.”

Xayah sputtered at the last lines he spoke. Our children? The great star forger, a being of pure light, beyond mortal comprehension and the indirect creator of all life on this planet and likely all others -- he’d actually reproduced with this thing? This whole situation was starting to become too much for her to bare. Xayah had long since dropped her cup, unaware of it even as she sat herself slowly down into the puddle of tea and porcelain. She tucked her knees up against her chest and let her head fall down against them. Everything she knew was wrong. This, this was wrong. She could hear the demon laughing at her in the background, a sadistic delight in her inability to process what she was seeing.

“You’re a fool for not bringing your little boyfriend along. You could have actually made it here without our assistance, then. It’s a shame you’re such a cold-hearted bitch, Xayah.” How did he know about that? How did he know about Rakan? How did he know her name? Whatever this demon was, it seemed to be capable of reading her thoughts and digging directly into her insecurities; she clutched at her head and attempted to block him out, but it seemed like a pointless effort.

“Here’s a thought-- why don’t you climb back down when you’re ready, and go fetch your whipping boy. Then you and he can make your way back up together. If you don’t die along the way, maybe we’ll be generous enough to give you something in return. Maybe.”

“Come now, dear, she came to see me. Not you. Let me decide her fate.”

Upon hearing the dragon speak again, Xayah turned her head upward to look into his eyes, her own filled with a pleading hope. Perhaps the stories were true; perhaps he really was more compassionate than this encounter had led her to believe. He smiled at her so warmly as he leaned down, closing some of the gap between them. A halo of light around his mane made him look beyond angelic; it was a treat to witness. Surely he would help her.

“Climb back down the mountain and collect your lover. Then return to me with him in toe; and maybe, if you do not die, I will grant you some manner of gift. Maybe.”

Xayah’s ears fell low. His smile had been misleading. The demon laughed. The dragon children played at her feet.

This was not what she had expected.

#drabbles #mount targon adventures #aurelion sol #nocturne #xayah #rakan #caves #writing #long #PG rating for light swears and suggestive themes #nothing too horrible though #except xayahs breaking ego

14 notes · View notes