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itsonlydana · 22 days

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Sleeping In Their Clothes | hobbit / lotr

how they would react to finding you asleep in their clothes

characters: Thranduil, Bard, Aragorn, Legolas x fem!reader

warnings/tags: mentions of Boromir's death (Aragorn), age gap (Bard), romantic shipping

word count: 5,7k

an: trying something new! Have been struggling to write after some personal issues so please excuse the slow updates on this blog

requests: please check pinned post

+ masterlist + rules + 🌿 reposts and comments are much appreciated, they motivate me a lot and keep me writing <3

Thranduil:

Thranduil’s mood darkens the halls, clouds the air around him bitter and ashen. The elves he passes lower their heads at his strides, at his cloak billowing behind him as thunder rolls over the skies. No one dares to speak, no one dares to whisper or raise their voice at any volume below the hushed glances they share after he disappears behind a corner. The foul stench of anger and frustration traces his path, starting right in front of the doors he slammed after another day of negotiations and down the direct route to his chambers.

He grits his teeth at the servants hurrying toward him and bellows a low: “Get out!” as hands reach forward and there’s enough fury in his eyes for the servants to scatter away like a heap of leaves blown apart by a particularly harsh wind.

Even the thought of skin touching him when he is burning up… he shudders.

There’s only one who he wants close to him right now.

He reaches out for you long before he’s in the bedroom, feeling for your fëa entangled with his in an inseparable union and he makes sure to be gentle, brushing you with his love rather than the anger bubbling hot inside him.

The calling stays unanswered – a deep wave of security and comfort labs over him but by the tenderness of it rather than your usual playfulness, and by the time Thranduil sees the seethrough white curtains around the bed, he knows exactly what state you will be in.

And never one to disappoint him, your unconscious yet dreamy smile is all Thranduil needs to forget about the anger he yielded like a sharp sword; used to cut down any and all offers from the dwarfs and their stubborn and unreasonable trading offers.

Instead of ripping apart conversations and insults, Thranduil’s hands are gentle as he parts the curtains and kneels on the feathery mattress with your shapes ingrained in it. All those nights spent close together and his warrior-heart will never fail to skip a beat at the sight of you wrapped in his robes. It’s one of the older, worn ones as well. Fabric that thins out at the cuffs – not that this would be a problem; you’re not close to reaching them –, a few cuts and holes in places twigs and branches bore themselves into the crimson, featherlight velvet.

Thranduil sees your skin flashing through some of them. The one above your knee, drawn up, another one below your biceps, relaxed because you know nothing can hurt you here, and some more all over your chest, hinting that you are not wearing much else.

He knows you well enough that you won’t be bitter if woken up and so he leans in closer from behind. One hand finds your head, cradling it into his large palm until you, still in dreams comfortable embrace, roll to the side and bury your face inside it, nose pressed right against his steady pulse while his fingers gently trace the curve of your ear.

No time spent together will ever sicken him of this, your complete surrender into his care, the doubtless trust that wherever you laid down to rest, he would sit by and be there. The oath of protection is one Thranduil promised his folk the day he was crowned their King as well, not once has he doubted he would abandon it all for the vow he gave you the night you offered your heart and he gifted you his; you above all.

His thumb just brushes over your temple and the fine hairs that come loose of your braid when your lashes flutter, leaving him to readily dive into the pools filled with love and sleep.

While he maneuvers with cunning, a master of actions and power, playing a game of chess on a board he alone commands, you stand unrivaled with the art of words. Your tongue, sharp and precise, weaves wit and wisdom into every phrase. Whenever he acts rationally and leads by his heart, you would listen first, hearing out heart as well as brain, and come to a conclusion serving everyone.

Your voice has the power to sway wars and balance the scales of battle. When you speak, your tone, thick with the remnants of sleep yet razor-sharp in purpose, reduces him to nothing more than a mere soldier—helpless in the face of your command, whether in war or love:

“I dreamt we were air.”

“Invisible?” Thranduil's voice is laced with a touch of curiosity as he revels in the warmth of your laughter, the puff of hot breath meeting his wrist like a secret kiss. Your presence is a balm, a reminder of everything that is tender and true.

“You, my love, know that this is not true.”

“It is not?”

“No,” you whisper and press a kiss to the tender skin, lingering with your lips over the pulse and the veins rushing blood to the heart, your heart, inside his chest. A puppeteer of words. Even the silent ones.

“I agree,” Thranduil muses, enticed by this playful exchange, “that the wind is what we notice, a fleeting glimpse of nature’s breath. But air – air is the unseen force that dances around us, invisible yet ever-present, until our souls merge with the very fabric of the universe.” He glides his other hand to your legs, slipping underneath his warmed robe.

You squeak as he anchors his arm around your thigh and tugs you over to face him in a swift movement. Faced to lie underneath his larger figure, you shoot him a crooked grin.

“You can see the air just as much as you can see the wind it turns into,” you start and get comfortable in his lap. Thranduil immediately jumps the chance to idly with the robe that’s draped all over your body.

“In the particles that dance in the sunlight,” you continue, your voice soft and thoughtful, “in the flags that hiss and flutter. In the vapor rising from steaming ponds, and in the mist that clings to the earth in the morning fog.” He watches, entranced, as your palm flattens against him, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breath beneath your touch. “I see it here,” you whisper, your voice barely more than a breath, and he follows your gaze as you watch your hand rise with each of his inhales and fall with each exhale.

Your fingertips, soft and gentle, curl slightly into the fabric of his current robe – soon, undoubtedly, those same fingers will find comfort in the folds of this robe, curling into it as you slip into sleep.

And in that quiet, intimate moment, he will see the air too, in the way your breath mingles with his, in the way your presence fills every space around him, making the invisible tangible, making the unseen profoundly felt.

The air catches in his throat and he sees your eyes twinkle.

Then, not looking away from you, he lies down as well. He has no need for the blanket crumpled underneath you both, the sight of you facing him, drawing your knees back to your chest and skin flashing whenever the fabric of his robes part to allow him these glimpses, is warmth enough. He loves you, even if you have a habit of taking what is his. A spray of his scents to drive him crazy, a feather that you take between your teeth as you write, or his robes but all of those mean nothing and all since you have him as well, fully and completely.

So he will request ten new robes, in colors that you like, and await the day he gets to your bedroom and finds you sleeping in them.

“So,” Thranduil repeats slowly. His hand drifts to your face, trailing lines over the smile you give him. “You dreamt we were air?”

“Yes,” the corner of your lips quirk into a quick smirk, one that fades quickly yet leaves traces all over, “and we were invisible –”

“Oh, you little minx!”

“Ahhh – Thran, stop, oh I beg you, stop tickling me!”

Bard:

The brittle stairs heave and sigh, creak and groan under Bard’s boots, once honeyed planks now gray from the flow time, heavy rain and the dampness of the lake coloring the edges mossy green, and with the days passing by, the steps taken as he rushes down to work or tiredly drags himself up, one hand curved around the splintered railing, he wonders how many steps these stairs will endure before his house comes crashing down into the murky lake.

This winter seems to be harsher than the ones before, with the wind howling loud at night and rattling on the walls that he wakes to frames shattered on the ground and the curtains ruffled even if the windows are closed. This winter, he swears the ice is thicker, a nearly impenetrable obstacle for his boat and his clothes are never warm enough but then, in the end, he knows the next winter will be worse and he doesn’t dare to complain out loud, doesn’t think it’s right to curse for hands shaking and feet aching and his nose running.

As exhausted as he is, and Bard is, so exhausted, so tired, so drained, he’s mindful enough to skip the last plank of the stairs. He lifts his feet higher, ignores how the muscles in his thighs complain, and steps over the plank that always sounds like it’s waiting to break through, always moans the loudest when he needs to be quiet as if his state isn’t mockery enough.

Bard slips through the door, opening it barely to keep the cold outside, and when he turns around, finally, warmth takes over.

It starts in his hands, in the tips of his reddened fingers, exposed to nature's icy companions the moment he sneaks out to work before the sun rises. It creeps higher, up his arms and to his shoulders strong enough to carry his family more than he can hold himself, parting ways to fill his cheeks in the softest of glow, a simmering fire that colors his skin an ember-red and travels down through his swooping stomach, lightening a hunger he knows food will not sate, and when the heat reaches his feet, Bard releases a small sigh.

There, in the low and flickering light of a candle burned down to a hardened wax puddle, his eyes immediately find you resting underneath the only window whose curtains are drawn open. Most of you is covered by a dark blanket, hiding your face but that doesn’t matter to Bard; he has every inch, every freckle, every crinkle of laughter and wrinkle of pain memorized.

Not that he should; you’re kind enough to look after his children while he works, accepting no money and hearing no ‘buts’, and here Bard stands, a decade older, widowed and tired, and knows exactly that your mouth will be slightly opened and that your lashes will fan over the rosy apples of your cheeks and that your shoulders will ache because you rather sleep on the bench under the window than take away Bard’s pillow.

Stubborn girl.

Bard crosses the cluttered floor, avoiding Tilda's drawings hung up to dry on the wooden ceiling beams and Sigrid's books and tomorrow, he will tut over Bain’s clothes left hanging on chairs and stools, but tonight he walks past them and their sight burns in his chest.

As Bard gets closer to you, he nearly trips.

That’s not a blanket that you hide your face in, that keeps away the winds creeping through the gaps in the wood behind you, that you use as a shield against the cold yet the greatest thing it fights are the walls Bard pulls up around his heart.

That’s his coat.

The dark blue coat he left to dry over the oven after last night's rain.

You must’ve taken it and that dismantles Bard into millions of pieces, chips away on his walls like nature takes layer after layer away from the stairs outside.

While he can’t know when exactly the latter will be too much to take on any more pressure, he feels the heavy weight of his coat around your sleeping body, and just like the stairs, his personal defenses creak and groan, heave and sigh and crumble down around him in a thumping echo in his ears, that Bard fears his choked breath will wake you up.

He is helpless.

He doesn’t dare to touch you directly, as much as he yearns to brush away the strands of hair fluttering in your even breaths. Bard’s hands are rough from his work and your soft skin deserves better than the callouses and scars he bears, so Bard gently lays his hand on your shoulder, covered by his coat – his coat, Lord how ever will he survive knowing the fabric kissed your body?

“Darlin’,” he whispers in a voice that’s horse and gravely, though it softens as he speaks your name, daring to follow it up fast enough there’s no room for a pause between the term of affection to be separated from your name.

You stir in your sleep, shift to reveal your face some more and the crease between your eyebrows and the effort it takes Bard to hold back from smoothing it out with his thump could have moved mountains. Bard ignores to notice how your nose is buried deep into the coat and that no washing could’ve ever cleaned the heavy fabric of his smell; he swallows hard.

A low sigh blows away the hair and Bard’s eyes fall on the plushness of your lips. You wake up slowly, closing your mouth and you pull the coat tighter around you, holding onto it, while Bard lets go of his restraints.

“Darlin’,” he repeats, and this time you hear him enough to evoke a tired smile.

When you open your eyes and turn towards Bard, the candle flickers in the reflection of them. “You’re back,” you mumble into his coat, “I didn’t hear you come in.”

I know, Bard wants to say, I skip the last stair so the noise does not take away my chance to wake you up.

Instead, he shakes his head: “You shouldn’ be sleeping on this bench, it’s too hard and uncomfortable.”

“Eh,” you push yourself up into a sitting position, the coat still far too large around your frame and you don’t make any attempt to part from it, “This bench is sufficient enough for a short nap, and I–,” a yawn interrupts and you grin sheepishly, “What I wanted to say is that I wasn’t that tired anyway.”

“Sure,” Bard's laughter is quiet but fills the entirety of his lungs and his own lips mirror yours in a grin.

The look you share in the darkness makes him feel like he’s young again, filled with infinite love for a limited body, bursting through his cells and flooding every vein, rushing blood that burns hot for you up to his battered heart. Bard can see your eyes wandering over his face and he wonders if you can tell that this smile is only for you and that he fights a lost battle in telling himself he can stop what’s tugging you closer.

He leans in further and lets his hand fall from your shoulders to run his fingertips over his coat. His knees brush against yours, and Bard tells himself it's only the late hour that makes him tender, that his weary, overburdened mind is surrendering to the forbidden's allure in the quiet moments when no one else is watching. Yet, deep down, he knows this is merely the rationalization of a lost man, drawn to the woman who cares for his children who are not her own in some ways and are in others, who sleeps wrapped in his coat, and who gazes at him as though he could reach up and give her the stars he can see through the hole in his roof.

“C’mon,” Bard nods his head toward the back of the house, an offer he speaks out every night, “I won’t let you go home all alone this late.”

All other nights you shrugged his offer off, had him walk you home over the planks and gurgling water until you kissed his cheek goodnight and Bard snuck back to his home, falling into bed to fall asleep to an aching heart. He prepares for it now, the apologetic smile that usually takes over your face, the tilt of your head to hide your eyes, all of it is memorized to his memory and even though they’re always quiet he hears your “I can’t, I must go home,” like the drums of war that shoot the heart that beats for you.

He awaits it. He will ask again and again, no matter how desperate it makes him seem and how the hurt will take over and push him through the day only for the night to repeat itself.

“Okay,” you whisper.

Bard freezes.

You blink up at him, eyes full of sleep and dreams that shouldn’t have the image of an old man and his children in them, but you’re never one to listen to what’s expected from you.

There’s no ache in his bones as he gathers you up in his arms, your head resting against his beating heart.

There’s no groan in his muscles as he carries you through his house and over the threshold to the little corner where he lays you on his bed, blue coat pooling over you as you smile and pat the small free space next to you.

He doesn’t feel the pain of work, the exhaustion of days of darkness and the fear of surviving the night to get through the week.

Bard kicks off his shoes, discards his dirt-stained pants, and shrugs off the shirt dampened by water, ice, and snow. He vows that tonight, you won’t feel the cold. As he climbs onto the bed, the mattress dips under the weight of his trembling legs. You lift the blankets without hesitation, inviting him closer, and he accepts, silently aching for the warmth you offer. Your body radiates heat as you nestle in beside him, your smooth skin brushing against his legs. Almost timidly, you curl into him, your smaller form pressing against his chest and stomach. His arms wrap around you and when he allows himself to breathe a featherlight kiss onto your shoulder, he catches his musky scent left behind by his coat.

“Sleep well,” he whispers into the crown of your head, feeling the fast beat of your heart under his hand, “my love.”

Aragorn:

Aragorn has been familiar with the pain of war ever since his father was murdered by orks when he was two. He knows how it flits through the body like lightning through water, cracking into all the ends of a being to render them helpless, burning through whatever energy and fight is left, and killing easily and efficiently.

And yes, he has felt the pain of war on himself before, in the years he spent fighting as Thorongil under the hands of Lords and Kings in the West. Aragorn saw good men fall, saw better men than him die to the growing threat of Sauron and there has been a cloud of thunderstorm in his heart from there on.

Nothing hurts as much as the pain that took over your lovely eyes the moment you saw Boromir lying on the ground in colorful dried crunching leaves, pierced by arrows that had been aimed at you too, though that didn’t matter – to you – then. The scream that came next pierced through Aragorn blindingly white and he could do nothing but try to grab you, as you fell to the ground, scrambling away from his strong arms to get closer to Boromir, your weak efforts nothing but agony for him. You had cried bitterly, hitting Aragorn with curled-up fists and he took every punch, pulling you closer instead of pushing you away.

It only got worse when you realized the Hobbits were gone too.

Aragorn saw the flame of hope flickering inside your eyes, a darkness of grief and pain behind them that he knew and yet he had no idea how to help you.

He still doesn’t.

The sun rose hours ago, red bleeding into gold, Boromir waving a last goodbye in the clouds, and the rustle of the wind brings shivers to the four of the Fellowship who are left. You’re setting up camp for the day; Legolas and Aragorn have not much need for speed but exhaustion can be a much crueler enemy combined with death and grief. Aragorn’s gaze wanders to you ever so often as you stand in front of the burning skies, staring at the pack that was once Boromirs and he casts his eyes downwards to where his heart aches.

You suffer, obviously, and Aragorn, who fought for more years in his life than not, doesn’t know how he can battle your demons.

If he could he would draw his sword and head into the fight, only return bloody-knuckled, the shadows wrapped between his tight fingers. He can’t though, and that may be what pains him more than the obvious heavy weight of witnessing Boromir’s last moments; his inability to take on your emotional baggage. It tears through his heart in aggressive jibes and stings like liquor on an open wound.

This is why he’s the first volunteer when Legolas suggests splitting up.

Aragorn nods at Gimli and they disappear into the forest, leaving Legolas who rests even less than Aragorn, and you, the walking example of why avoiding sleep after such traumatic events should be mandatory: your eyes drop, your hands shake and no amount of effort on your side is enough to hide the sacking of your shoulders. Every day that you walked further away from when you were nine – Mithrandir’s absence not accounted for – you distance yourself more, most likely to hide your suffering yet all that this behavior accomplishes is that Aragorn notices it all.

How could he not?

He cares for you, most ardently, and these feelings brought forth a vulnerability, an open spot in his heart for love to slip in and make itself at home.

Aragorn leaves you in Legolas' care; the trust he places in the elf to protect you in your fragile state is grander than the one he has in himself. One soft whimper as you hide your face in your shoulder and stumble over feet that won’t listen and Aragorn might do something naive as pack his sack back up and hunt the orcs that took the Hobbits, the one coated in Boromir’s blood, on his own.

It would be reckless, ignorant, a troubled journey without Legolas or Gimli or even you.

So Aragorn goes against his heart's urges and patrols – clearing the forest and trying not to think about your frail form, hugging yourself out of desperation and grief.

Gimli and he return hours later, under the warm rays of the sun – the gentle strings far too bright and calming for the last day's events, the wind a breeze swirling through the leaves crunching under his light feet and Legolas lifts a finger to his lips as soon as Aragorn makes eye contact.

He assures his steps are as silent as possible, avoiding the logs and twigs they would collect later for a fire to warm them, and walks past the elf, nodding his head and quietly thanking Legolas for keeping an eye on you.

A hand lands on Aragorn’s shoulder, stopping him in his movement.

“She’s asleep,” Legolas says quietly, leaning in closer, “We shall move forward when she awakes, rested.”

“No sooner,” Aragorn agrees and lets out a relieved breath that had been lodged deep inside his chest. He looks to the elf, then to the bundle of a small human shape underneath a tree. “Thank you, my friend.”

“Aragorn, we need your focus as much as we need hers.” The grip on his shoulder loosens, and the weight stays in Legolas’ eyes and Aragorn almost winces, would he not know his friend only means well.

His voice is gravel, his words soft and exhausted: “I know.” He didn’t know his heart had been such an open show but then, Legolas knows him like no other, a companion that found him and a friend that he can always count on, a partner in battle and nowadays, Legolas seems to have taken on the role of fates worst messenger – reminding Aragorn that this, you, the differences, the looming war and the ones that never end…

When Aragorn approaches you, the pain he carries with him dims, a candle dying out in refreshing winds. Bending his knees, he carefully sits down, resting his back against the tree's rough bark covering your gentle face in dancing shadows and flickering golden spots of sunlight that kiss your closed eyelids. Around your shoulders and over most of your body, Aragorn recognizes the cloak he’d asked Legolas to stow away when Gimli and him took off. Now that he sees you, finally asleep, he is glad the cloak found a better use than being shoved inside a bag where it would have never touched your skin.

He reaches out, soft and slowly, making sure his movements will not wake you and pulls off his leather coat as well, placing it across the uncovered part of your boots and legs.

Aragorn is tired but he will keep watch, protecting you to sleep safely.

He is weak but only for you, so he will fight harder than ever before to ensure the Hobbits return to see the smile he loves so much on your face again.

There is a possibility this will all change faster than any of you could realize, these times are unpredictable and there is a taste of danger on his tongue and in the air. The journey of the Fellowship has barely begun and already the sun bleeds into the horizon in colors that mark the grounds of battlefields awaiting you.

Aragorn clenches his jaw and only unclenches it when he hears the smallest of sighs. Looking down at you, he dares to smooth away some strands of hair, leaving a streak of dirt on your sunkissed temple.

In the grand scheme of things, there is of course the need for the bigger picture and the importance of all that connects to this journey, but in this moment, surrounded by the sounds of the forests and your breathing, Aragorn takes comfort in knowing he has this moment with you to remember all the small things count just as much.

A cloak to sleep in.

The shadow of a tree.

Even the pain seems to have fallen into a slumber, resting to surely come back and hit him square in the chest like it has never left him but Aragorn has never felt this free as in the pain’s short-lived absence.

And he can hear it in the silence and in the way you keep his cloak close to you.

War brings pain but you bring love.

Legolas:

Legolas may agree that abandoning his father's task of informing Lord Elrond of the disappearance of their captive to travel through the lands and destroy a ring in Mordor – whether the Fellowship will make it this far is still unknown – but then Aragorn brought you to the Council and suddenly Legolas finds himself months away from his home, listening to your laughter as you flip rocks over the lake you’re standing in front of.

He can not remember the last time he saw someone be this amused by the ripple of water and the stones skipping across the otherwise calm reflection of the skies that cause the growing disturbance. Then again, Legolas never met anyone like you in general and every aspect of your personality that he gets to watch unfold like the meadows you ride across, the hills you climb up, the more eager he feels to find out what makes you laugh.

Stones, apparently.

“No, not this one!” you chime in and take the stone he picked up out of his hand, your skin brushing his and sending ripples over his skin.

“No?” he inquires and tilts his head in genuine confusion. “This one seems perfectly adequate for this, no different to the ones you chose.”

You scoff, giddy giggling followed. “That’s outrageous! Calling this one adequate when it's clearly in no shape to even compare to these –” you lift your hand to his face and present the collection of rocks that you seem to keep in the pockets of your vest, a grin blooming across your face, “Look! They’re thinner, perfect to hop.. hopefully, four times?”

Legolas smiles, one that’s more tugged into his cheeks and corners of his eyes to really be called one. “I will leave you to find what you think–”

“I don’t think,” you interrupt him and roll your eyes, already turning your back to him again and bending your knee slightly. You turn your head over your shoulder and the sun reflects beautifully in your cheeky gaze, “I know. I feel. Look!” Then you twist your arm, pulling it into your chest at an angle before flicking the stone across the lake.

Five times.

You cackle loudly.

And Legolas picks up the stone you thought not to be perfect and slides it into his pockets, ignoring how his heart skips five times.

The day flies by like the stones dance over water, fast, too fast for Legolas' liking yet by the time the sun burns low on the horizon, he is glad for the calmness that settles over the little camp they’d set up earlier. The others are scattered around the fire crackling behind Legolas, the warmth creeping into his bones and settling high in his cheeks, as he turns his head slightly and catches you staring out onto the water; the red fire and golden sunset basking you in a glow that pulls him into you like busy bees to the sweetest of flowers.

He can’t help but stare, even if it’s everything but appropriate. Your face is lit up, not only by the embers fluttering to you and the last of the sun's rays caressing the fullness of your cheeks but ever since you decided to tag along on this journey, nature bathes you in an aphrodisiac of wind-swept hair that Legolas wants to braid, rosy fingertips that he wants to hold and kiss each one of them. Whenever he looks at you – he could not tell how much, time is a rush of emotions, a whirlwind of hair and laughter, hands playfully slapping him and he counts the days by how often you blink up tiredly after waking up rather than the sun sets and rises – he is astounded of the beauty someone could possess and carry it out freely like it sits in your heart and not in your face.

The sun sets and your eyes are full of wonder and molten gold, an open letter of your adoration for the nature that equally loves you back.

Behind him, Legolas hears Merry and Pippin sing, hears the low chuckles of Aragorn, and lips that curve around a pipe, teeth clacking against shaped and glazed wood filled with smoke. He also hears your intake of breath as the wind swipes over you, gliding over the lapping water first, over the croaking frogs and wreathes around your naked arms. He hears the sound of your hand smoothing over the fine hairs that stand up on your prickled skin.

He hears himself talk, before he thinks: “Here, this cloak will keep some of the cold away.”

Your eyes widen.

His heart skips five times on each breath taken in the moment of silence.

Legolas is sure that you would take the offer one way, but then you nod, lower lip pulled between your teeth as if that could stop the shy smile from tugging up the corners of your mouth, and you scoot closer, lifting yourself up by your hands and leaning in, until your shoulders brush his side.

He almost freezes, not because of the cold – this he can not feel, for multiple reasons, and mostly the advantages of being an elf though the warmth radiating from your body, suddenly so close to yours and the blush that he must blame on the fire – but because the way you slid into his side as he holds up one side of the green cloak leaves only the option to drape the fabric over your shoulder and awkwardly pull his arm away or–

There must be some of his father's braveness in Legolas for he lowers his arm around you, shaking ever so slightly.

You sigh, contentedly, and draw your legs up to your chest. “Much better at this than skipping stones,” you mumble and a tired yawn accompanies your huff of laughter.

Despite the teasing tone, Legolas can’t stop his smile. “Is this.. perfectly adequate?”

“No,” your head drops and maybe you don’t notice but you rest it on the arm, oblivious to the halt this causes to every single thought Legolas has ever had. “This,” you whisper and he can hear the flutter of your lashes trying to stay open, “is just perfect.”

All Legolas can do is hum in agreement, and even this sounds as shaky as his words would have been had he any of them readily and not swallowed up by the swarm of butterflies swooping through his stomach.

The sun disappears behind the line of trees on the other side of the lake, throwing one last wink of gold over you both before the silver light of the moon laps over you like the waves onto the shore. By the time your hair twinkles like the stars you seem to have lost the fight of keeping your head up; it rests against Legolas, just like most of your upper body that followed one last yawn. He sits still, not daring to move much now that you’re this close to him, your nose against his chest, the bones of your knees resting against his thigh, and all of you enveloped in his cloak.

The fabric rustles slightly as his arm slips from your shoulders to your middle, tugging you closer to keep the heat encased in this cloak and moment you’re sharing.

Legolas's other hand glides into his pockets, finding the stone hidden inside. His hand wraps around it, pressing the smooth surface against his palm.

“Perfect,” he repeats.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months

Text

Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and TOMORROW in SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit.

Google's search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads are scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/phone-numbers-airlines-listed-google-directed-scammers-rcna94766

But often these scams are perpetrated by petty grifters who are making a couple bucks at this. These aren't hyper-resourced, sophisticated attackers. They're the SEO equivalent of script kiddies, and they're running circles around Google:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Google search is empirically worsening. The SEO industry spends every hour that god sends trying to figure out how to sleaze their way to the top of the search results, and even if Google defeats 99% of these attempts, the 1% that squeak through end up dominating the results page for any consequential query:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Google insists that this isn't true, and if it is true, it's not their fault because the bad guys out there are so numerous, dedicated and inventive that Google can't help but be overwhelmed by them:

https://searchengineland.com/is-google-search-getting-worse-389658

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Google has long maintained that its scale is the only thing that keeps us safe from the scammers and spammers who would otherwise overwhelm any lesser-resourced defender. That's why it was so imperative that they pursue such aggressive growth, buying up hundreds of companies and integrating their products with search so that every mobile device, every ad, every video, every website, had one of Google's tendrils in it.

This is the argument that Google's defenders have put forward in their messaging on the long-overdue antitrust case against Google, where we learned that Google is spending $26b/year to make sure you never try another search engine:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-27/google-paid-26-3-billion-to-be-default-search-engine-in-2021

Google, we were told, had achieved such intense scale that the normal laws of commercial and technological physics no longer applied. Take security: it's an iron law that "there is no security in obscurity." A system that is only secure when its adversaries don't understand how it works is not a secure system. As Bruce Schneier says, "anyone can design a security system that they themselves can't break. That doesn't mean it works – just that it works for people stupider than them."

And yet, Google operates one of the world's most consequential security system – The Algorithm (TM) – in total secrecy. We're not allowed to know how Google's ranking system works, what its criteria are, or even when it changes: "If we told you that, the spammers would win."

Well, they kept it a secret, and the spammers won anyway.

A viral post by Housefresh – who review air purifiers – describes how Google's algorithmic failures, which send the worst sites to the top of the heap, have made it impossible for high-quality review sites to compete:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

You've doubtless encountered these bad review sites. Search for "Best ______ 2024" and the results are a series of near-identical lists, strewn with Amazon affiliate links. Google has endlessly tinkered with its guidelines and algorithmic weights for review sites, and none of it has made a difference. For example, when Google instituted a policy that reviewers should "discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research," sites that had previously regurgitated the same lists of the same top ten Amazon bestsellers "peppered their pages with references to a ‘rigorous testing process,’ their ‘lab team,’ subject matter experts ‘they collaborated with,’ and complicated methodologies that seem impressive at a cursory look."

But these grandiose claims – like the 67 air purifiers supposedly tested in Better Homes and Gardens's Des Moines lab – result in zero in-depth reviews and no published data. Moreover, these claims to rigorous testing materialized within a few days of Google changing its search ranking and said that high rankings would be reserved for sites that did testing.

Most damning of all is how the Better Homes and Gardens top air purifiers perform in comparison to the – extensively documented – tests performed by Housefresh: "plagued by high-priced and underperforming units, Amazon bestsellers with dubious origins (that also underperform), and even subpar devices from companies that market their products with phrases like ‘the Tesla of air purifiers.’"

One of the top ranked items on BH&G comes from Molekule, a company that filed for bankruptcy after being sued for false advertising. The model BH&G chose was ranked "the worst air purifier tested" by Wirecutter and "not living up to the hype" by Consumer Reports. Either BH&G's rigorous testing process is a fiction that they infused their site with in response to a Google policy change, or BH&G absolutely sucks at rigorous testing.

BH&G's competitors commit the same sins – literally, the exact same sins. Real Simple's reviews list the same photographer and the photos seem to have been taken in the same place. They also list the same person as their "expert." Real Simple has the same corporate parent as BH&G: Dotdash Meredith. As Housefresh shows, there's a lot of Dotdash Meredith review photos that seem to have been taken in the same place, by the same person.

But the competitors of these magazines are no better. Buzzfeed lists 22 air purifiers, including that crapgadget from Molekule. Their "methodology" is to include screenshots of Amazon reviews.

A lot of the top ranked sites for air purifiers are once-great magazines that have been bought and enshittified by private equity giants, like Popular Science, which began as a magazine in 1872 and became a shambling zombie in 2023, after its PE owners North Equity LLC decided its googlejuice was worth more than its integrity and turned it into a metastatic chumbox of shitty affiliate-link SEO-bait. As Housefresh points out, the marketing team that runs PopSci makes a lot of hay out of the 150 years of trust that went into the magazine, but the actual reviews are thin anaecdotes, unbacked by even the pretense of empiricism (oh, and they loooove Molekule).

Some of the biggest, most powerful, most trusted publications in the world have a side-hustle in quietly producing SEO-friendly "10 Best ___________ of 2024" lists: Rolling Stone, Forbes, US News and Report, CNN, New York Magazine, CNN, CNET, Tom's Guide, and more.

Google literally has one job: to detect this kind of thing and crush it. The deal we made with Google was, "You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.'"

They broke the deal.

Companies like CNET used to do real, rigorous product reviews. As Housefresh points out, CNET once bought an entire smart home and used it to test products. Then Red Ventures bought CNET and bet that they could sell the house, switch to vibes-based reviewing, and that Google wouldn't even notice. They were right.

https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/welcome-to-the-cnet-smart-home/

Google downranks sites that spend money and time on reviews like Housefresh and GearLab, and crams botshittened content mills like BH&G into our eyeballs instead.

In 1558, Thomas Gresham coined (ahem) Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good." When counterfeit money circulates in the economy, anyone who gets a dodgy coin spends it as quickly as they can, because the longer you hold it, the greater the likelihood that someone will detect the fraud and the coin will become worthless. Run this system long enough and all the money in circulation is funny money.

An internet run by Google has its own Gresham's Law: bad sites drive out good. It's not just that BH&G can "test" products at a fraction of the cost of Housefresh – through the simple expedient of doing inadequate tests or no tests at all – so they can put a lot more content up that Housefresh. But that alone wouldn't let them drive Housefresh off the front page of Google's search results. For that, BH&G has to mobilize some of their savings from the no test/bad test lab to do real rigorous science: science in defeating Google's security-through-obscurity system, which lets them command the front page despite publishing worse-than-useless nonsense.

Google has lost the spam wars. In response to the plague of botshit clogging Google search results, the company has invested in…making more botshit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Last year, Google did a $70b stock buyback. They also laid off 12,000 staffers (whose salaries could have been funded for 27 years by that stock buyback). They just laid off thousands more employees.

That wasn't the deal. The deal was that Google would get a monopoly, and they would spend their monopoly rents to be so good that you could just click "I'm feeling lucky" and be teleported to the very best response to your query. A company that can't figure out the difference between a scam like Better Homes and Gardens and a rigorous review site like Housefresh should be pouring every spare dime it brings in into fixing this problem. Not buying default search status on every platform so that we never try another search engine: they should be fixing their shit.

When Google admits that it's losing the war to these kack-handed spam-farmers, that's frustrating. When they light $26b/year on fire making sure you don't ever get to try anything else, that's very frustrating. When they vaporize seventy billion dollars on financial engineering and shoot one in ten engineers, that's outrageous.

Google's scale has transcended the laws of business physics: they can sell an ever-degrading product and command an ever-greater share of our economy, even as their incompetence dooms any decent, honest venture to obscurity while providing fertile ground – and endless temptation – for scammers.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

#pluralistic #monopoly #seo #dark seo #google #search #enshittification #platform decay #product reviews #spam #antitrust #trustbusting

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anantaru · 2 years

Text

— he doesn't want you to leave

including kazuha, scaramouche, heizou, itto x gn! reader

genre: fluff, little kisses, they're whipped honestly, tiny bit of gossip bf kuni

— kazuha

speaking truthfully, kazuha simply cannot resist you for the life of him.

in fact, once he had officially secured you as his ever so beautiful s/o, he make sure to show you his gratitude in tiny whispers of sweet words and pleas.

additionally he'd make it his duty to shower you in both, physical and emotional affection.

doubtless, he can't help himself, being wiggled in your embrace feels like heaven, it's surreal, sometimes kazuha is certain he's actually hallucinating, but then your body warmth is dashing into him and that's when he knows it was real.

sometimes whenever he sleeps over, the moment you wake up from your slumber the next day, his arm will most likely be lazily thrown over your hips.

once he's all woken up as well, kazuha will immediately pull you softly to his chest, greeting you with a tired, sleepy smile through lidded eyes.

"five more minutes, please."

your body was enduring additional applied pressure from his arm as you turned around to face your boyfriend, staying near and deepening the profound intimacy from each other.

the easygoing pumps under his ribcage were pacifying and settled a great way to enjoy the romantic love between you both.

upon giving him what he desired at last— that being the five additional minutes he had requested, you, with enough persuasion on your own person, spoke again.

"we can't stay in bed forever kazuha."

well, well, believe it or not but kazuha was actually trying his hardest to get out of bed the whole time but how come you were especially comfy today?

you must be playing tricks on him!

"five.. more minutes please." his voice was a little unclear still, the tiredness was continuing to be laced around his words with his sleepy expression being immediately perceived by you.

what if, and that was just a little thought crossing his dizzy thoughts, what if you stayed in today?

just a couple more hours longer doing nothing at all except of laying in bed.

kazuha wasn't a fan of letting go of you right now, not today, not when you're so secure, so pleasant and cozy in his arms.

locked up in each other, you dozed off again without much persuasion required, the work responsibilities that had been shared by you were nothing more than a fleeting dream out of many.

— scaramouche

"what do you think you're doing?"

his voice slightly broke and before you knew it, scaramouche had already wrapped his arms around your waist, as if he was actually scared you'd leave him behind, haltering your attempt to break free from his hold.

"i told you i can't stay all day kuni."

still unsure of the words he had just heard, scaramouche tilted his head in both confusion and doubt, raising his brow to show the visible puzzlement caused by you.

"are you playing stupid with me again? it's still too early to go home."

ah yes, you figured, it's that time again, even though he wouldn't necessarily admit it to you, and if he did, he'd flip the narrative a tiny bit just to not make a fool out of himself.

scaramouche was a thoroughly clingy boyfriend, it cannot be denied, not with the way he was now melting you into his chest again.

tight, so very much tight you could certainly perceive his scent now, it was especially dominant around his neck.

to add to it, it was a floral aroma, but being held natural, not sweet, he absolutely despised anything sweet it made him sick to his stomach.

"you can just say you don't want me to go kuni, it's okay."

to be fair, he tried, but you couldn't help yourself and loved taunting the hell out of your boyfriend every now and then, more so when it was a slightly uncomfortable topic like that.

obviously you cherished the way he was with you, it didn't matter to you that kuni could become quite clingy either, if anything you were beyond flattered that he felt so comfortable with your presence that he needed you to stay.

"that's not what it is and you know it." slightly averting his eyes with a huffed out irritated sigh, he continued his sentence.

"i wanted to finish the story i told you but you had to cut me off."

his hands travelled on your back to playfully sway over the skin, finally meeting their proper place as he cupped your cheeks at last, drawing your head closer, "so keep your pretty eyes on me."

a fleeting kiss, just one, placed on your puckered out lips as he quickly made you rest your head on him again, not wasting anymore time.

"so where was i? oh, yeah, so the seventh harbinger has a terrible personality!"

— heizou

"would you still love me if i was a worm?"

no ifs or buts, heizou demanded a clear answer now, even the mighty detective from the tenryou commission yearned to be pampered and reassured by his s/o every once in a while.

maybe it was because of the obvious fact on how exceedingly tired from work he had gotten, or of the cosy warm way you had him tucked in your arms.

in each others embrace the world seemed to have stopped completely, pure and free, mind at peace without a single negative emotion crossing you.

some people were natural huggers and heizou perceived you as one of those, it felt as if you wrapped him in sheer love, like a sun leisurely warming up your skin on a sweet summer day.

"yes, i would." confidently stating said fact, he slightly tilted his eyes to meet yours in a sceptic expression, "you're lying."

without any question you dramatically let go off him, obviously teasing and messing with your boyfriend but the second you were attempting to do so, he had already clasped himself on your back, keeping you close.

"i would love you if you were a worm, i'd keep you in my pocket."

oh really now, you rolled your eyes and snickered at the unusual declaration as you slowly cradled your head back to allow heizou to properly hug you again.

"you're lying." confidently, you mocked his answer from before, savoring the feeling of contentment in your bones when he swayed himself closer.

"i would hug you all day, doesn't matter to me if you're slimy." you felt his body gradually press against your own and you obliged, laying yourself back into the bed, letting your muscles loosen up.

with a kiss on your forehead he welcomed you back, sometimes heizou wished to stay like this forever.

laying in bed all day while doing absolutely nothing sounded heavens made to your boyfriend.

"i‘d still love you if you were a worm heizou." - "you're still lying."

— itto

your boyfriend itto, or how he wants to be referred to, as arataki "the one and oni" itto was famous for his warm, bear hugs.

with his arms tightly cradling your body, itto swore there wasn't anything better, no other scenario could rival this momentary moment of peace. (maybe winning a beetle fight but hush)

"itto i really need to go now, i still have so much work to do."

he pouted at your words, more so did he not accept them in his mind.

without a sentence following, you lightly placed your hand onto his cheek to make it easier for you to kiss him before attempting to stand up.

"no wait!" obviously you knew how dramatic he could become whenever you had to take your leave, itto would leave nothing untouched, he'd put all of his might into the challenge of making you stay just a bit longer, so he can cuddle you a little bit more.

"i didn't tell you but, *cough*, i have again, *cough*, lost a part of me during a deadly fight."

narrowing your brows with light wrinkles making themselves visible on your forehead, you crossed your arms around your body, confused by what he meant, "what fight?"

in a single motion, itto dramatically dropped back on the mattress, his hand laid flat on his chest, right above his heart as he squealed out in pain, absolutely crushed.

"a beetle fight, please save me."

the silence was loud, truly and itto didn't open his eyes either, clearly he was waiting for a response from you.

his heart was at last, stabbed with the last inch of hope in him to make you stay as he peaked at you from squinting eyes, watching him flabbergasted.

"ormaybeiwantyoutostaylonger."

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blamebrampton · 2 months

Text

Books talk to each other. Mostly because practically every writer is also a voracious reader, but also because books arise out of times and places and we share a lot of our worlds these days. So it’s unsurprising that several novels I have hugely enjoyed over the past few years share the theme of the antiheroine who is past all giving of the fucks. Naomi Novik’s powerful dark sorceress kept on her own tight leash in the Scholomance books was a joy to follow; Xiran Jay Zhao’s Iron Widow slashed her way into my heart and now Sarah Rees Brennan’s Long Live Evil has added to a list of beloved antiheroines that probably started for me with Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair.

Coincidentally, when considering how to describe Long Live Evil without significant spoilers, I realised that it shared several major themes with Vanity Fair. Young woman unfairly treated by fate decides to embrace her slut era to survive a war zone – both very accurate and wildly inaccurate for both. LLE opens with main character Rae in a hospital bed, teasing her sister about a book series they both adore. Rae is taking refuge in the story they have shared over years because it is one of the few things they have left: she is losing her fight against cancer and has been losing parts of her life, family and memory as that fight has progressed.

My personal hospital experiences have all been to do with major traumas rather than illness, which I vastly prefer because if you don’t die in the first couple of days, you usually start mending and you can immediately make plans to make the best of whatever you’ve broken. Rees Brennan, however, famously wrote a very funny, very horrible, ‘Kids, you won’t believe what shenanigans your girl’s been up to now, it’s only stage four Hodgkins lymphoma!’ post on her Tumblr or LJ (someone who has been hit in the head with taxis fewer times than me will doubtless factcheck that in the notes) about seven or eight years ago and then faced the very serious business of trying to live. The hospital scenes are painfully authentic, as are the stories of people who have left Rae as she slipped further out of everyday life.

For Rees Brennan, a loving family and peer group were there to hold her as close as they could. For Rae, only her beloved little sister, Alice, and Time of Iron, their favourite fantasy series, remain. They read the books together, remember adventures cosplaying and watching the musical, they wonder about the final instalment; for Rae it’s a joy she can still share (even if she doesn’t remember as much as she should), for Alice, it’s her two greatest loves. When a strange woman offers a door into the world of the book and a possible magical cure to Rae, she wants it as much as she disbelieves it.

Stepping into Eyam, the land of Time of Iron, Rae finds herself in the body of a villain doomed to die the next day. No worries! She’s thought and fought her way out of worse scraps than this in her past as a head cheerleader, let alone while battling cancer. She can use her knowledge of the plot to change things! If only she remembered more of the books…

Portal fantasies are common enough, but not all play by the same rules. This isn’t Narnia, where the magical world is more real than our own, for Rae, the world of the book is nothing more a tool to get her hands on the cure. She doesn’t need to care about any of these people, they’re not real. Most of them speak in a formal language that relies on the conventions of fantasy literature (there is an ongoing, warm-hearted skewering of all Game of Thrones-esque texts running through both the story and the in-text ‘quotes’ from Time of Iron) and half the characters are known more by their descriptions rather than their names. So she will play the Beauty Dipped in Blood, with her questionable morals, impractical clothes and centre-of-balance-distorting boobs for the weeks that will pass until the cure is available. Whoever she has to shuffle in the plot to secure a place beside that cure, she will shuffle. While she’s not out to kill anyone, it’s not as though they were ever really alive. Not like her. If she has to be the villain to survive, she will be an impeccable one. The people will cheer evil on!

Obviously, little goes to plan. Rae’s illness has taught her cruelty, but she hasn’t forgotten what it is to be kind. Even as she manipulates her role into ongoing main character, she realises that’s not how anyone gets a happy ending. That’s not how she can live with herself. As she comes to think of the other people in the story as real, they become more so, both in how we read them and in how they impact the story. Rae remembers what it is like to make friends, which she never meant to, but, oh, the luxury after years of watching people slip away!

As in previous novel In Other Lands, Rees Brennan has a long list of fantasy tropes to embrace and undermine, and her deft touch with humour is as evident as ever here, but her publishers call this her first adult novel and there is a shift in tone from her previous works. Anger is more real and lasting. Consequences are more significant. Understanding is reached for, even if it’s bitter. One of my favourite things is that she lets her female characters rage, but never judges those who can’t, whether because they’re too powerless or just too tired, and her male characters are allowed to be people if they choose to be — which all but the most vainglorious do.

I hadn’t paid much attention beyond checking the release date for the book, so didn’t realise it was the first in a series. For me, it worked perfectly as a standalone novel, even with the unended threads, which would have perfectly balanced Rae’s unfinished life. That said, I am very happy to know we will spend more time with these characters in the future. I want more. I do want to know if there is a hope for Rae, if this is the fever dream of a fading life, if this is the story Alice has told to ease her sister from the world or something else. There are a dozen characters I hope for, at least three happy endings that would bring joy. But don’t wait for the next books: sink your teeth into this one and believe what it says about the importance of listening to stories rather than just falling in love with characters. Though if you find yourself cheering on Rae, or her servant Emer, the elusive Eric, Horrible Hortensia or almost any of the others, I am the last person who will judge you.

#Long Live Evil #Sarah Rees Brennan #new books

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kerosene-in-a-blender · 4 months

Text

The Dominox as a malicious entity is so interesting to me because there is a clear endpoint to its psychological manipulation of its victims. It's not doing this (entirely) for funsies it's doing this to try and get its victims to a place where they hate themselves so much that they willingly give themselves over to it, because that is how it feeds.

We can see this in the vision Chetney experienced while under its influence. Making toys for and bringing joy to children, and the unrestrained raw animal power he gained when he became a werewolf are both things that Chetney loves and that bring him a considerable amount of joy. The Dominox however seized on the idea these might be incompatible loves, and forced him to experience murdering children while in his werewolf form, many of whom were holding toys he had made for them. How can he consider himself to be bringing joy to children when all he is doing is luring them into a false sense of security and putting them in harm's way? How can he revel in the power and ferocity he gains as a werewolf when that power is destroying the innocent? How can he possibly not consider himself to be monster? Wouldn't it be better if instead of continuing to leave ruin in his wake he just died?

While doubtless there's going to be more to Dorian's Dominox experience that we will see during the live show even the bit that we saw at the very end of episode 97 carries that same undercurrent of, "Wouldn't it be better if you just died?". The vision he sees is of Cyrus in the place of one of the many bodies hung up on chains in that room is Aeor, accusing him of dragging Cyrus into his problems and thereby being responsible for his death. Dorian should have let Cyrus handle his own issues because by trying to help him all he did was lead him to his grave. By trying to help he instead brought ruin to someone he loves. And if that's what he does wouldn't it be better for them if he was gone?

#tldr the dominox is FUCKED and i love it so much #critical role #critical role spoilers #cr spoilers #chetney pock o'pea #dorian storm #cw: suicide

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ewanmitchellcrumbs · 1 year

Note

Upon reading your response to the servant girl question you have me yearning for a one shot to where he and this servant girl had show interest in one another and decide to act on it 🥹🥹🥹🥹 please if you’re not complete swamped with requests

Sorry I've made you wait over two months for this. I hope it's worth it!

Warnings: Smut. Male masturbation. Word count: ~1600

Author's note: No gods, no masters, no tag lists. Only scabs community label fics. If you find yourself tempted to slap a label on this, please block me instead.

She is nervous when her mother tells her she’s managed to secure her a position as a serving girl at the Red Keep. Her mother has worked as a scullery maid in the kitchens for as long as she can remember, and she sees how bone tired she is each evening when she returns home. That, coupled with the stories she’s heard of the Targaryens make her uneasy. Their expectations will doubtless be high, considering they are royalty, and she fears being punished if she is unable to live up to them.

However, as her mother says, it is time she began to contribute towards the household and goodness knows they need the money.

Her anxiety worsens on her first day when she begins to overhear rumours regarding her predecessor and how the position she now holds came to be available in the first place.

The eldest Prince is a little too handsy, I hear.

Forced himself on her, I heard.

The Queen sent her away to the North with hush money.

Pregnant with a royal bastard.

She prays her interactions with Prince Aegon will be minimal. She has no wish to meet the same fate.

Throughout the day she is kept busy refreshing the pitchers of wine that are kept in the respective quarters of each person occupying Maegor’s Holdfast. She turns down beds, lends a hand preparing food in the kitchens and prepares a bath for Princess Helaena’s children.

She doesn’t catch a glimpse of a Targaryen all day, until it is time for the evening meal and she is stationed in the dining hall to refill the cups of those seated at the table.

It’s then she realises she has spent all day worrying about the wrong Prince. Her gaze is immediately drawn to the head of the table where he sits. She summises that this must be Aemond, based on the brown leather eyepatch he sports. He cuts an imposing figure, long white hair drawn back from his face, his angular features illuminated by candlelight.

His stare is piercing, the blue of his seeing eye boring into her with an intensity that sends both a shiver of fear up her spine and the warmth of arousal pooling between her legs. He pays rapt attention to her as she moves around the table, filling cups as she goes.

When she stands beside him to fill his, he looks up at her, studying her carefully. She can feel the faintest tickle of his breath upon her neck and it causes her heart to hammer wildly in her chest. His fingers brush hers as he moves to lift his cup and she pulls her hand back as though scalded, in the wake of the gooseflesh his touch causes to erupt upon her skin.

That night when she climbs into bed, despite her exhaustion, her hand drifts between her legs, her mind filled with thoughts of the One Eyed Prince.

The next week continues in much the same way. Aemond’s eye never leaves her as she serves wine at dinner and she revels in every little accidental touch that he bestows upon her whenever she is in close enough proximity.

It is early afternoon as she places the full pitcher of wine upon the table. She has been into this room every day since she began working at the Red Keep, changed the sheets on the bed and brought wine, but it’s never occupied and nothing within gives any indication as to who it might belong to.

She turns around, with the intention of leaving now that her task is complete, when she is met with the solid expanse of Aemond’s chest. Oh gods, of course this would be his bedchamber.

She gasps as she knocks into him, staring up at him wide-eyed. “I-I beg your pardon, Your Grace.” She stammers. “That was clumsy of me.”

His lips quirk upwards into the faintest of smirks as he looks down at her. He says nothing for a few moments, his eye travelling the length of her before settling back on her face. “You are trembling. Do I frighten you?”

She shakes her head. It occurs to her that this is the first time she has ever heard him speak. His voice is much gentler than she was anticipating.

“No.” She whispers. It is only half a lie, but she dare not tell him of the desire that flutters in her lower belly in his presence. She is certain he must be able to hear her heartbeat, such is the power of how it thuds against her ribs.

“Hmmm.” He continues to loom over her, unmoving.

“I should go.” She murmurs.

“I’m not stopping you.” Comes his soft response.

Reluctantly, she looks away, moving around him before hurrying from the room. It is not until she is a respectable distance away down the corridor that she stops, pressing her back to the cold stone wall and sucking in steadying breaths to calm herself.

She is unsure of what exactly just transpired between her and Prince Aemond, but she knows she wants more of it.

Another few days pass by, the lingering looks at dinner continue alongside touches which she is now sure are deliberate. She feels as though she is a mouse being toyed with by a cat, but cannot find it in herself to mind. Their minimalist, yet charged interactions have grown to be the highlight of her day.

She is peeling potatoes in the kitchens when the Keep’s steward approaches her.

“Prince Aemond has requested your presence in his chambers. You are to go at once. Take wine.”

Her mouth runs dry at those words, a mixture of excitement and nervousness prickling under her skin, that she does her best to mask with a neutral expression. She nods, wiping her hands on her apron and making haste to fetch a jug.

Moments later she arrives outside of Aemond’s chamber door, knocking softly with her free hand.

“Enter.” He calls out.

She pushes open the door, closing it behind her once inside, and almost drops the wine she holds in shock.

Aemond sits naked in a bathtub beside the lit fireplace, his elbows resting on the sides, his tall frame bent slightly to fit within the tight confines. He is not wearing his eyepatch and she is stunned to see that he wears a sapphire in the socket. The wound is not quite so gruesome as she had suspected it might be, the overall effect makes him all the more alluring.

Her cheeks burn as she tries to look anywhere but at him. “So sorry, your Grace.” She says quickly. “I just came to bring you wine, as requested. Please forgive the intrusion.”

She sets it down on the nearest table, turning to leave.

“I won’t be able to reach it from there.” He says, his voice smooth as silk. “Bring it closer.”

She gulps, picking the jug back up and carrying it over to the surface closest to the bath.

It is impossible for her not to stare as she takes in the damp ends of his long, white hair, spread out across the planes of his well defined chest.

“Like what you see?” He asks her, clearly amused by her ogling.

“Apologies, Your Grace. I didn't mean to stare.”

“Oh, but I think you did. And I feel it’s only fair that you return the favour.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take off your clothes. Let me see you too.”

“I-I can’t, that is not appropriate.” Despite her protests, she feels a familiar warmth spread between her thighs.

“I am not my brother.” Aemond says with a shrug. “I will not force you. If you don’t wish to, you can leave. But I don’t think you will.”

“I…want to.” She admits, beginning to push her dress from her shoulders.

“Good girl.” He murmurs, a hand disappearing beneath the water to stroke at himself. “That’s it, everything, even your smallclothes.”

She does as she’s told, but finds she is unable to look at him once stood bare before him, too embarrassed by the intimacy of it all.

“So beautiful.” He tells her. “See what you do to me?”

Her eyes travel to where his fist moves up and down. Much of him is obscured by the water, but she can see enough to know that he is big. Her breath hitches at the sight. “Will you-”

“Fuck you?” He finishes for her. “No, I would not be so foolish as to risk putting a bastard inside of a serving girl.”

She is disappointed by the admission, her heart sinking a little as she continues to watch him fuck his fist to the sight of her undressed.

“Do you ever touch yourself?” He asks.

She nods shyly and he hisses a “fuck”, moving his hand over his length faster than before.

“Do you think about me?”

She does not know where it comes from or how she is able to let the admission go so freely, but the words have left her mouth before she has a chance to think about them. “Every night since I started working here.”

Aemond emits a low groan, his jaw going slack. “Perhaps one day you will permit me to watch.”

She inhales sharply at this, her core clenching around nothing, certain he must be able to see the slick which now coats her inner thighs.

With a grunt and a stutter of his hips, Aemond comes undone, spilling pearly ropes of his spend over his fingers and into the bathwater. His eye is hooded and hazy when he finally relaxes back into the tub.

“You may dress and leave now.” He instructs. “Next time I will allow you to touch instead of just observing.”

The words make her feel light headed. Next time.

#aemond targaryen #aemond one eye #prince aemond targaryen #aemond #aemond stannies #pro aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen smut #house of the dragon #hotd #hotd smut #aemond targaryen fan fiction #aemond targaryen fanfiction #aemond targaryen fan fic #aemond targaryen fanfic #hotd fan fiction #hotd fanfic #hotd fanficton #hotd fan fic

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eretzyisrael · 2 months

Text

Eitan Fischberger

Its recent series of targeted assassinations should send a stark warning to terrorist leaders worldwide: they are not safe. The moment they leave the safety of their underground bunkers—or their fancy accommodations in Qatar, in the case of Hamas leaders—they may find themselves in Israel’s crosshairs. To drive this message home even more powerfully, however, the international community, particularly the United States, should unequivocally express support for the strikes. Better yet, the U.S. should leverage its influence and pressure Qatar to expel the remaining Hamas officials enjoying safe haven in Doha.

Critics of the targeted assassinations will doubtless voice concern over potential escalatory responses from Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as other Iranian-backed proxies like the Houthis and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. But these critics forget that the escalation already occurred—on October 7, to be exact, when Hamas led thousands of terrorists in the most devastating mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

Others might worry that the assassination of Haniyeh will complicate a potential hostage deal for the Israeli (and American) hostages still held captive by Hamas in Gaza. The opposite is true. Perhaps for the first time since October 7, Hamas leaders and their Iranian overlords realize that they are not as bulletproof as they might have thought. Moreover, Israel has in the past exhibited a tendency to “over strategize” and allow concern about escalation and international pressure to stop it from enacting swift justice. This is no longer an acceptable standard for most Israelis. A society that fails to guarantee justice and security for its people by vanquishing those that threaten it is a society on course for collapse.

U.S. leaders should recognize that supporting a proactive Israel also safeguards American interests. Both Shakr and Haniyeh have American blood on their hands. Shakr, for his part, played a key role in the planning and execution of the 1983 attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 American service personnel. And Haniyeh oversaw the October 7 massacre, in which dozens of American were murdered. Justice for these Americans has now been served, at least in part.

#ismail haniyeh #assassination #hostage deal #negotiations #hamas #gaza #fuad shukr

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smilingformoney · 1 year

Note

For that author ask: Perspective Flip

I’ve been wanting to read a fic from Snape’s pov (first person) for a while

First of all, thanks for your patience, Anon. It took me a few days to decide which scene I wanted to try from Snape's POV, and then I had to find time to write it.

Because I hate myself, I didn't choose a fluffy or smutty scene, but went for the ultimate angst and chose his death scene 🙃

Not The End

Content/warnings: blood, Snape lives, but he doesn't think so, soul of ice spoilers

Read on Ao3 or below:

When the Dark Lord gave the command, my heart dropped.

It could not end this way. I hadn’t yet reached Potter, I hadn’t told Persephone I loved her one last time, I hadn’t said my goodbyes to my daughter…

I screamed. I couldn’t help it. The pain of the snake’s fangs sinking into my neck was too great. It felt as if she were trying to sever my very head from my shoulders, but instead she tore a chunk from my neck, penetrating my jugular with precision. She withdrew, and I felt my knees buckle.

I had failed. Failed in my final task, leaving it all for naught. I had failed them all, all who relied on me, whether they knew it or not. Failed my daughter, whose voice I could hear now, screaming for me…

My back hit the wall behind me, just as something exploded some feet away - I closed my eyes instinctively, and when I fell, it felt as if the floor would never reach me. The Dark Lord was speaking, and yet I was still falling…

Except I wasn’t falling. My eyes fluttered open as I realised I hadn’t yet hit the ground… because I had been caught.

In the distance, I saw the Dark Lord’s robes sweep behind him as he left the room, leaving behind his favourite servant to bleed to death.

I turned my head as much as I could, and I swore I was hallucinating.

How could she be here?

She was in the castle, hopefully safe but doubtless fighting - why would she be in the Shrieking Shack?

She must have followed me. The stupid, brilliant girl that she was, refusing to leave my side even at the end of all things.

“Abbie…” I mumbled, not daring to raise my voice with such pain searing through my neck. Even so, I was determined to speak, to tell her all I could. “I -”

“Shut up!” Abbie yelled, and I felt my blood on my cheek. No, that wasn’t right - it wasn’t blood at all. It was her tears, my daughter’s tears, sobbing as she held my dying form. Too much pain, too much, for one so young…

“Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking die on me, you idiot.”

If I had any strength left, I might have chuckled. As it was, I managed only the faintest of gasps. Despite the horror she was enduring, my brave daughter kept herself together enough to withdraw her wand and incant a spell I had taught her many years ago.

“Vulnera sanentur… vulnera sanentur…”

Whether the spell was working or not, I had no idea - the sting of skin stitching together would be drowned out by the pain I was in as the snake’s poison spread through my veins.

It turns out the old adage is true: your life really does flash before your eyes in the moments before you die.

As she continued to cast her spell, fighting back against her sobs, I recalled the day our roles were reversed; the day I had cradled her unconscious body in my arms as she bled out, and it had taken all the occlumency I could muster to push down my fear and focus on healing her wound.

She could not save me, I was sure of it. But she could keep me alive a little longer, long enough that I could complete my final task, that I could die knowing I hadn’t failed her in the end.

I had spent my entire life keeping my thoughts, my feelings and my memories locked securely inside my mind. Now, I opened the floodgates and allowed it all to rush out, the memories streaming out of my eyes, my mouth, my ears.

“Potter,” I mumbled. “Take… it…”

I hadn’t even realised he was there. I had expected Abbie to take the memories to him. But suddenly he was there, a vial in his hand, scooping up as many of my memories as he could. I looked up at him, and for the first time, I looked past James’ face and into Lily’s eyes, a glistening emerald green; and despite it all, despite the hatred and distrust between us, still Potter seemed to fear for my life.

He backed away, his hand wrapped securely around the vial, and I knew my job was done.

I felt the poison begin to take me, and my vision was fading. Instinctively, I grabbed my daughter’s arm, holding her for the last time as tightly as I could with the little strength I had.

“Abbie… remember… remember I love you…”

She had to know. I had told her, yes, but not enough, not nearly enough. I should have told her every day, every time I saw her. I should have made sure she knew I loved her more than I ever believed was possible.

The stubborn girl didn’t give up. I wanted her to embrace me, to let me die holding her, but instead she applied a salve to my neck, and fresh tears fell from her eyes as she cursed loudly, my death not yet over.

“He’s poisoned!” Abbie cried out in a broken voice. “Help me sit him up.”

I felt several pairs of hands lift me from Abbie’s lap and place me against the wall, but I lacked even the strength to lift my head.

She would never give up. That, I was sure of. She would fight until my last breath, never admitting defeat. She was too stubborn, too brave, to take any other course. She loved me too much.

A bezoar, Potter suggested. Yes, a bezoar, just like the one I threw down her throat all those years ago, back when I was so foolish as to think I could live a life without her, until she had threatened to take it away herself and I pulled her back from the brink by sheer luck that I carried a bezoar at all times.

It was a habit befitting a potions master… a habit that I had difficulty breaking even after leaving the post.

A habit I still practised to that day.

A glimmer of hope. A spark of possibility. A dream that perhaps - maybe - if I was fortunate… it might not be the end after all.

That hope was all I had left, and it gave me the strength I needed to lift my hand to my pocket. Yes, it was there, I could feel it… the smallest of stones, sitting in the depths of my pocket, waiting for this day.

“Here…” I mumbled. “M’pocket…”

A hand reached into my pocket, and then my daughter was pushing the stone between my lips, tilting my head back.

“Swallow it!” she begged. “Swallow it or I’ll kill you myself!”

Swallow… yes. I felt as if I had only seconds to live, my vision was fading, my thoughts were slowing… but my love for her still burned like a fire in my heart, and so I drew strength from there, strength enough to swallow the stone.

It was mere moments before the stone’s magic began to rush through my veins, but the moments stretched themselves thin, my heart pounding as it fought back against the poison.

It must have worked, because she cried out with relief and buried her head against my shoulder. And… yes, my strength had come back some, as I lifted my arm to cradle her head. I tried to smile. Whether I managed, I didn’t know, because she was sobbing with her head pressed against my heart.

“You idiot!” she cried into my robes. “You stupid - fucking - dickhead - moron - asshole! Don’t you ever - ever - do that again!”

Yes, it was working, alright. I could feel the antipoison rushing through my veins. My heartbeat rose again, my vision cleared… and there she was, looking at me now. She was covered in her tears and my blood, her hair was a mess, and she was beautiful. An angel come to save me from the brink of death.

I blinked slowly. I felt light in the head, and although my grip on consciousness was fading still, I knew now that I was only passing out.

“Abbie…” I mumbled. I had so much to say to her. I love you. You are extraordinary. I love you. I’m going to sleep now. I love you. I promise to wake up. I love you, I love you, I love you.

“May I… pass out now?” I asked.

She laughed. Despite everything, she laughed at the notion that I would ask for permission.

“Yes,” she said. “Just make sure you wake up again.”

I smiled.

“I… promise…”

And I meant it.

Then I slept.

#severus snape #pro snape #dad snape #snabbie #soul of ice #snape fanfic

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months

Text

You can’t shop your way out of a monopoly

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then SAN FRANCISCO (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

If you're running a business, you can either invest at being good at your business, or good at Google SEO. Choose the former and your customers will love you – but they won't be able to find you, thanks to the people who choose the latter. And if you're going to invest in top-notch SEO, why bother investing in quality at all?

For more than a decade, Google has promised that it would do something about "lead gens" – services that spoof Google into thinking that they are local businesses, pushing down legit firms on both regular search and Google Maps (these downranked businesses invested in quality, not SEO, remember). Search for a roofer, a plumber, an electrician, or a locksmith (especially a locksmith), and most or all of the results will be lead-gens. They'll take your call, pretend to be a local business, and then call up some half-qualified bozo to come out and charge you four times the going rate for substandard work:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/fake-online-locksmiths-may-be-out-to-pick-your-pocket-too.html

Some of them just take your money and they "go back to the shop for a tool" and never return:

https://www.riverfronttimes.com/news/when-a-fake-business-used-a-real-st-louis-address-things-got-weird-32087998

Google has been promising to fix this since the late aughts, and to be fair, it's a little better. There was once a time when a map of Manhattan showed more locksmiths than taxis:

https://blumenthals.com/blog/2009/02/18/google-maps-proves-more-locksmiths-in-nyc-than-cabs/

But GMaps is trapped in the enshittification squeeze. On the one hand, the company wants to provide a good and reliable map. On the other hand, the company makes money selling "ads" that are actually payola, where a business can pay to get to the top of the listings or get displayed on the map itself. Zoom out of Google's map of central London and the highlighted landmarks are a hilarious mix of "organic" and paid listings: the British Museum, Buckingham Palace, the Barbican, the London Eye…and a random oral and maxillofacial clinic in the financial district:

https://twitter.com/dylanbeattie/status/1764711667663831455

Hell of a job "organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful," Big G. Doubtless the average Londoner finds the presence of this clinic super helpful in orienting themselves relative to the map on their phone screens, and it's a real service to tourists hoping to hit all the major landmarks.

It's not just Maps users who'd noticed the rampant enshittification. Even the original design team is so horrified they're moved to speak out about the moral injury they experience seeing the product they worked so hard on turned into a giant pile of shit:

https://twitter.com/elizlaraki/status/1727351922254852182

Now, when it comes to locksmiths, I'm lucky. My neighborhood in Burbank includes the wonderful Golden State Lock and Safe, which has been in business since 1942:

https://www.goldenstatelock.com/

But you wouldn't know it from searching GMaps for a locksmith near me. That search turns up a long list of scams:

https://www.google.com/maps/search/locksmith/@34.1750451,-118.369948,14z/data=!3m1!4b1?entry=ttu

It also turns up plenty of Keyme machines – these are private-equity backed, self-serve key-cutting machines placed in grocery stores. Despite Keyme calling itself a "locksmith," it's just a badly secured, overcaptilized, enshittification-bound system for collecting and retaining shapefiles for the keys to millions of homes, cross-referenced with billing information that will make it easy for the eventual hackers to mass-produce keys for all those poor suckers' houses.

(Hilariously, Keyme claims to be an "AI" company):

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200114005194/en/KeyMe-Raises-35-Million-to-Further-Its-Mission-of-Building-the-Premier-Locksmith-Services-Company-in-the-Nation

But despite the fact that you can literally see the Golden State storefront from Google Streetview, Google Maps claims to have no knowledge of it. Instead, Streetview labels Golden State "Keyme" – and displays a preview showing a locksmith using a tool to break into a jeep (I'd dearly love to know how the gadget next to the Slurpee machine at the 7-Eleven will drive itself to your jeep and unlock the door for you when you lose your keys):

https://www.google.com/maps/place/KeyMe+Locksmiths/@34.1752624,-118.3487531,3a,75y,350.19h,90.21t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ssHrtqjqvgFir3NBauMy13Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!4m15!1m8!3m7!1s0x80c2959cd65dbb1b:0x4b3744cf87492a71!2sBurbank+Blvd+%26+N+Hollywood+Way,+Burbank,+CA+91505!3b1!8m2!3d34.1750025!4d-118.3493484!16s%2Fg%2F11f37_3lq8!3m5!1s0x80c2951cedbf4d39:0xe8ff9fd5872e66e9!8m2!3d34.1755176!4d-118.349!16s%2Fg%2F11mw7nr4fx?entry=ttu

It's pretty clear to me what's going on here. Keyme has hired some SEO creeps and/or paid off Google, flooding the zone with listings for its machines. Meanwhile, Golden State, being merely good at locksmithing, has lost the SEO wars. Perhaps Golden State could shift some of its emphasis from being good at locksmithing in order to get better at SEO, but this is a race that will always be won by the firm that puts the most into SEO, which will always be the firm that puts the least into quality.

Whenever I write about this stuff, people inevitably ask me which search engine they should use, if not Google?

And there's the rub.

Google used predatory pricing and anticompetitive mergers to acquire a 90% search market-share. The company spends more than $26b/year buying default position in every place where you might possibly encounter a new search engine. This created the "kill zone" – the VC's term of art for businesses that no one will invest in, because Google makes sure that no one will ever find out it exists:

https://www.theverge.com/23802382/search-engine-google-neeva-android

That's why the only serious competitor to Google is Bing, another Big Tech company (Bing is also the primary source of results on Duckduckgo, which is why DDG sometimes makes exceptions for Microsoft's privacy-invading tracking):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Controversies

Google tells us that the quid-pro-quo of search monopolization is search excellence. The hundreds of billions it makes every year through monopoly control gives it the resources it needs to fight spammers and maintain search result quality. Anyone who's paid attention recently knows that this is bullshit: Google search quality is in free-fall, across all its products:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

But Google doesn't seem to think it has a problem. Rather than devoting all its available resources to fighting botshit, spam and scams, the company set $80 billion dollars alight last year with a stock buyback that was swiftly followed with 12,000 layoffs, followed by multiple subsequent rounds of layoffs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

The scams that slip through Google's cracks are sometimes nefarious, but just as often they're decidedly amateurish, the kind of thing that Google could fix by throwing money at the problem, say, to validate that new ads for confirmed Google merchants come from the merchant's registered email addresses and go to the merchant's registered website:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Search is a capital intensive business, and there are real returns to scale, as the UK Competition and Market Authority's excellent 2020 study describes:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fe4957c8fa8f56aeff87c12/Appendix_I_-_search_quality_v.3_WEB_.pdf

But Google doesn't seem to think that its search needs that $80 billion to fight the spamwars. That's the thing about monopolists, they get complacent. As Lily Tomlin's "Ernestine the AT&T operator" used to say, "We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company."

That's why I'm so excited about the DOJ Antitrust Division monopolization case against Google. Trusting one company to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," was a failure:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-google-monopolizing-digital-advertising-technologies

I understand why people want to know which search engine they should use instead of Google, and I get why, "There aren't any good search engines" is such an unsatisfactory answer. I understand why each fresh round of printer-company fuckery prompts people to ask "which printer should I get?" and I understand why "There are only six major printer companies and they're all suffering from end-stage enshittification" isn't what anyone wants to hear.

We want to be able to vote with our wallets, because it's so much faster and more convenient than voting with our ballots. But the vote-with-your-wallet election is rigged for the people with the thickest wallets. Try as hard as you'd like, you just can't shop your way out of a monopoly – that's like trying to recycle your way out of the climate emergency. Systemic problems need systemic solutions – not individual ones.

That's why the new antitrust matters so much. The answer to monopolies is to break up companies, block and unwind mergers, ban deceptive and unfair conduct. "Caveat emptor" is the scammer's motto. You shouldn't have to be an expert on lead gen scams to hire a locksmith without getting ripped off.

There are good products and services out there. Earlier this year, we decided to install a (non-networked) programmable pushbutton lock. I asked Deviant Ollam – whom I know from Defcon's Lockpicking Village – for a recommendation and he suggested the Schlage FE595:

https://www.schlage.com/en/home/products/FE595PLYFFFFLA.html

I liked it so much I bought another one for my office door. Eric from Golden State Lock and Safe installed it while I wrote this blog-post. It's great. I recommend both of 'em – 10/10, would do business again.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#vapor-locksmith

Image: alicia rae (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kehole_Red.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

Budhiargomiko (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wasteland.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #enshittification #locksmith scams #google #google maps #monopoly #doj #seo #big tech

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imagine-darksiders · 2 years

Text

Cold Hands, Warm Heart

Chapter 20 - Serpent's Peak

Death X Reader.

Summary: On your way to Serpent's Peak, you and Death run into an old 'friend,' who has yet to learn the extent of a human's gregarious nature...

------

'How very peculiar it is,' Death muses to himself as his ghastly steed plods sure-footedly over the desert ash, 'that up until now, I never would have imagined that a Horseman could make such a comfortable pillow.'

The eldest Nephilim lowers a deadpan look at the top of your head where you've propped it against his chest while the rest of your body slumps deep in the saddle, leaving you tucked securely into his front - dead to the world, so to speak - nestled between a pair of sturdy thighs.

It's likely testament to Despair's smooth, unhurried gait that you were able to fall asleep on the back of a moving horse at all... Then again, Death supposes, you have been running on the very last reserves of your adrenaline. Perhaps, at last, your body has simply said 'enough is enough.'

Either way, Death remains fastidiously exasperated that he's once again been reduced to a glorified headrest.

“Humans,” he gripes under his breath, “No respect these days.”

But, oh.. isn't it telling? Isn't it betraying that he hasn't shoved you forwards and ordered you to wake up? That he hasn't pushed Despair into a loping gallop to cross the desert in record time at a pace that would surely startle you awake?

As if he can sense his rider's innermost ruminations, the spectral horse twists his massive head sideways and throws a knowing look towards Death.

Glowering back into those rotten, hollow eye-sockets, the Horseman grumbles, “Whatever it is you'd like to say, kindly keep it to yourself.”

Despair's ears prick forwards and betray his amusement before he simply swings his nose forwards again and continues to clomp steadily over the rolling dunes.

Blowing a deep 'hmph' through his nostrils, Death returns his attention to the slumbering crown of hair pressed up against him.

Half of your skull sits directly over the fragments of broken lantern that house what's left of his Nephilim kin, and after a moment, he finds himself scowling pensively down at the glowing wisps of soul remnants that drift out of his marred chest and curl into the air around your head. Absently, he wonders if you, like him, can hear the septic whisperings of his people and the hateful, jaundiced things that spill from long-dead lips, always lingering in the shadowy corners of the mind, refusing to remain silent.

… He hopes you can't, for your own sake.

Death has had countless millennia to fortify his cerebral muscle. After all, he's painstakingly learned how to tune out his brother, Strife. Ignoring thousands of vengeful spirits wailing out for retribution is a cakewalk in comparison.

Deep in your well-earned rest, you start to shift, mumbling something incoherent as you turn your head to its opposite side and inadvertently uncover the entirety of Death's mark of shame.

Or his 'badge of honour,' as Absalom had bitterly called it.

The Horseman's index finger taps idly on top of his thigh, the rest of his hand curling just a little more tightly around Despair's reins and causing the leather to creak softly in objection to the sudden pressure.

Corruption had made it quite clear that he intends to use Death to restore the Nephilim to life.

The only lingering question is... how? It's a puzzle that unsettles the Horseman more than he'd care to admit. Doubtless, the plan will involve the Well of Souls somehow, just as Death's plan to resurrect humanity will inevitably lead him to the same, holy place.

The Horseman isn't blind. He knows that if he hadn't've been of some obscure use to Corruption, he likely never would have made it out of the Tree of Life unscathed.

Absalom always was the most callous of the Nephilim elders. All that talk of family and brotherhood back there in the Tree had sounded so hollow in Death's ears.

But there was something else that Absalom said that had perturbed Death just as much as his pre-conceived delusion that the Nephilim could ever be restored to life...

He'd made a very clear, very real threat against your life...

Obviously, the Avatar of Corruption intends to target you directly. And why? Because he truly believes that so long as Death is exposed to a human's influence, the Horseman is being 'corrupted' in an entirely unique way. Absalom thinks you're turning the Horseman soft - so soft that Death wouldn't threaten what little remains of planet Earth by resurrecting the world-ending Nephilim race.

The Horseman is just about to scoff to himself when his eye spots movement from the human leaning against him. Glancing down at you, he realises with a jolt that you've begun slipping just a little too far to the left, and without hesitation, he brings up an arm and catches you with the inside of his elbow, gently nudging you upright in the seat once again.

Soft. What a laughable idea.

But for all his effort not to jostle you, your body suddenly gives a rough jerk and you startle awake, letting out a gasp as you lurch forwards in the saddle and crane your neck over a shoulder, only to find a familiar bone-mask peering down at you, cocked inquisitively - not whatever monsters had been plaguing you in your sleep.

Recognition lights upon your face like daybreak and you breathe a tiny sigh of relief, raising your hands to scrub the exhaustion from your eyes.

“Bad dream?” Death asks after a moment, allowing you the time to collect yourself.

As the seconds tick by, your heart gradually stops rattling the bars of your ribcage and you shrink backwards into the Horseman's torso, busying yourself with trying to capture the green wisps of Despair's mane that simply drift between your fingers. “Mmm,” you affirm with a yawn, “Guess I'll have to just get used to those, huh?”

There's a quiet solemnity to your tone that ages you far beyond your years, and Death knows he shouldn't ask, but... then he glances down at the crescent welts his nails have left in your bare shoulders, and just like that, another brick in the unassailable wall he's built around his heart breaks off, falling away into a shapeless and unknowable abyss.

Perhaps it's selfish of him to hope that those marks don't scar. They're too potent of a reminder that he can hurt you so easily without even trying. He'd forgotten, just for a moment, that in spite of your durability so far, you're still extremely fragile, and he'd left behind the proof of that frailty all over your skin.

For all he knows, your bad dream could very well involve him. The least he owes you is a chance to air your fears.

Death clears his throat - ashamed that a Horseman has to brace himself at all to pose such a mundane question - and asks, “Would... you like... to-”

“- to talk about it?” you finish for him, feeling his abdomen solidify against your spine, “Nah, that's okay. Not even sure I can remember it properly now that I'm awake..” You can sense his palpable relief as tightly-bunched muscles unwind themselves behind you, informing you that he's either glad you can't remember an awful nightmare, or relieved that you aren't asking him to talk you through it.

With a roll of your eyes at your emotionally-suppressed companion, you yawn, “It was probably about something stupid, like that one where i'm being chased by a killer, but I can't move faster than a shuffle.”

Absently, Death tries not to think of Absalom's threat to hunt you down.

Grimacing to himself, he hums in acknowledgement instead and falls into a dour and pensive silence.

As the desert starts to give way to grey, cragged cliffs that jut like knives from the ash, you ride past the bones of some immense and ancient creature whose gigantic ribcage sweeps skywards like a monolith to an old god, utterly Lovecraftian in scale. And when Despair carries you under their shadow, you audibly gulp, unable to stop yourself from imagining the kind of terrible beast that must have roamed these lands once upon a time...

Or perhaps still does.

Subconsciously, you curl your spine into Death's sternum and duck your head.

“Hey,” you swallow, looking for distraction, “You uh, you want to talk about your bad dream?”

Death tears his eyes off a distant figure skulking about in the sands several hundred metres away and tips his chin down, blinking at you curiously. “My bad dream?”

“Yeah, you know. Earlier?” you stress, waving a hand through the air as if to pluck the memory right out of it, “When you nearly attacked Ostegoth? He said you were... holding onto a dream, or something?”

“Ah...” He clears his throat, straightening up. “That...”

It wasn't a dream. It was more of a waking nightmare – a vision planted in his brain against his will. First and foremost though, it was a memory, one that's plagued him since the day it occurred – of a vast and holy garden, soaked scarlet with the blood of his species.

The Battle for Eden certainly isn't a pleasant memory, by any stretch of the imagination.

But to you, of course, it must have seemed like he was caught in the tangled throes of a bad dream.

He'd come to consciousness at the base of the Dead Tree with Absalom's poisonous words dripping in his ears, disoriented and alarmed, but somehow still knowing that he had someone to protect, and when his eyes snapped open, all he could see in the old goat's place was a broad, imposing figure with a jagged maw and a stare as yellow as the corrupted crystals protruding from Absalom's back.

Ostegoth was not Ostegoth in that instant.

You however? You were somehow still you, in a sense. Namely, he knew he was in the presence of somebody he had to look after.

At the time, War's face had flashed through his mind's eye, but it was the sound of your voice that had eventually cut through the memory, breaking whatever spell Absalom had infected him with.

But as for your query...

“I... do not recall, exactly,” he lies. That chapter of the old Horseman's past isn't something he enjoys discussing openly, and although he shouldn't give half a damn in the slightest, he doesn't want you hearing the grisly details of the Eden slaughter. Damn him to Oblivion and back - your opinion is starting to matter more and more to him of late.

“You mean you don't want to talk about it?” you venture.

In response, the Horseman merely offers you a non-committal hum, privately disgruntled by the notion that you're finding it easier to read him with each passing day, which doesn't bode well for his reputation.

“That's okay,” you yawn after it becomes clear he isn't going to divulge anything further, “I don't want to talk about mine either.”

'Ah,' Death muses, 'So you do remember it...'

All returns to silence for a while as Despair steps out onto a wide, wooden suspension bridge that spans a seemingly bottomless chasm, his hoofbeats clomping like the steady beat of a drum against the ramshackle surface below you.

In a moment of foolish curiosity, you make the mistake of peering over the side, only to audibly gulp and tear your eyes off the green, rancid miasma swirling far beneath the bridge. The chasm opens like a maw, inviting a misplaced step that will see all three of you plummeting down into its cragged depths.

A shiver travels up your spine and you're grateful when Death gives the reins gentle tug, guiding Despair further from the edge and into the centre of the overpass.

Sconces have been strung up along the bridge's parapets, burning brilliantly with green, flickering flames that match Despair's ghostly aura, whilst far off among the distant cliffs and mesas, vast structures have been built with undeniable purpose – doorways and rickety, wooden catwalks wind their way between spires so tall, they seem to stretch endlessly into the soft-hued sky.

It feels so strange to you that you can be in the middle of a grey, semi-arid desert, and you still find glimpses of civilisation.

And yet, as you cast your gaze about, you can't find a single sign of life...

'Land of the dead, indeed,' you muse silently, appraising a colossal cluster of yardangs that sit in the face of a jagged, slate-stone hill.

Directly ahead of you, at the other end of the bridge, a doorway has been built into the front of the rock, but not one of regular scale, oh no. This one looks to be tall and wide enough to allow even the Warden to pass beneath it... Or beings the same size as him at least...

'Hmm. Troubling food for thought,' you admit, lips pressed into a thin line... You're going to miss that friendly, rock-hewn giant... Sullenly, you lower your eyes to the saddle horn and curl your fists into the fabric of your skirt, hoping and praying that the makers and construct alike are recovering okay after... after Eideard...

If only you could let them know somehow that they haven't lost three friends today... that you and Death are all right.

The rhythmic clopping of hooves on wood dulls to soft thuds when Despair steps off the bridge onto the sand and points his skeletal snout towards the vast opening in the hillside.

In no time at all, the three of you pass beneath it and enter a hollow cavern that sweeps in a continuous, uphill slope, cutting straight through the centre of the yardangs. You're immediately put on edge by the stone tunnel that seems to close in on you once you find yourself inside. Dark and grey and serrated like sharks' teeth, the walls curve upwards to form a natural ceiling way over your heads and you can't help but tilt your neck back to gaze up at the wind-forged roof, dropping your mouth open to speak.

You suddenly find yourself interrupted by a snort from the Nephilim behind you.

“Let me guess,” Death remarks, and in a tone that's so clearly meant to be a mockery of your own, he deadpans, “Woah.”

You purse your lips for a second before blowing out a half-offended laugh and twisting yourself about to jab him lightly in the stomach with your elbow.

“Shut up,” you grin, getting a satisfying 'oof' out of him, “This place is impressive. I can't help it!”

Catching your elbow in his palm, he gently pushes it away and replies, “I doubt you would be so impressed if you'd run into the denizens of this realm.”

“We've already met Ostegoth,” you argue, “And he was perfectly nice, despite... you know. You.”

Electing to ignore your dig, the Horseman scoffs dismissively. “The merchant is not a denizen of the Dead Kingdom. He's a visitor - and I cannot stress enough that you're exceptionally lucky he was.”

Clicking your tongue, you idly track a ball of ebony feathers that goes gliding through the cavern over your head. Dust, it seems, is still on look-out duty. “You keep saying that everything here is going to try and kill me, but we haven't even run into anything dangerous yet.”

“Yet,” he stresses, scanning the tunnel walls up ahead, “You know as well as I do that such peace is liable to change on a dime.”

“Are the people here really so bad, or are you just being paranoid again?” you tease.

Death's jaw creaks open behind his mask as he leans back with an affronted sputter. “Of all the... - It isn't paranoia if it's true.”

You're careful to keep your face angled away from him when one side of your mouth pulls into a smirk. There's a gleeful triumph in knowing you can get under even the Horseman's tough, chilly skin.

Shrugging a shoulder, you simply quip, “Sounds like something a paranoid person would say.”

Bristling like an agitated stalker, Death grumbles something in that language you don't recognise before reverting back to the common tongue. “Getting awfully bold, aren't we? I'm still quite livid that you followed me to the Dead Plains, you know.” And as if to embellish his point, the Horseman lifts a hand to rap you admonishingly on the back of your head with a single knuckle, gently enough that you only laugh in response and duck forwards to escape another blow.

"Okay, okay! Sorry~!" you grin.

But behind you, as soon as he realises what's he's just done, Death goes eerily still, staring down at his poised hand with a crease slowly forming between his brows. The motion comes as more of a surprise to him than it has to you, in that it's a familiar motion, one he hasn't practiced in several thousand years, not since War picked a fight beyond his capabilities and came to Death bloodied and bruised but grinning, with a look of utmost triumph gleaming in his eyes. Or when Fury and Strife were much younger and challenged one another to be the first to sit astride an angelic beast.

The pair of them were lucky it just so happened to be Azrael's personal mount, and as such, it hadn't the fiery temper of its kin.

Bumping his knuckles against their skulls usually let his siblings know exactly what their eldest brother thought of their foolish escapades. A cuff around the back of the head or behind the ear is harmless to Nephilim youngsters, but enough to communicate, 'You're an idiot, but I still care,' without having to vocalise the sentiment.

What's notable in this instance, is that Death has taken something he's solely reserved for familial interaction and used it on you...

Has he... done this with you before?

If he has, does it mean anything?

Does it have to mean anything?

You're saying something in front of him, but he's hardly taking in the words, at least until Despair draws to a stop without having been asked to do so.

“Hello~? Death?”

He blinks, shaking his shaggy mass of black hair and casting his attention out towards the surrounding area, instantly on high-alert.

He's given pause however when you raise a hand and point to his left, at the cavern wall.

“Don't those things belong to that demon we met in the Forge Lands?”

“Demon?” His guard shoots up again momentarily until he spies the glyphs dangling above a hollow offshoot that's been cut out of the wall.

“Oh,” he grumbles, letting his shoulders slump, “That demon.”

Rather curtly, he squeezes Despair's sides and adds, “We've no need of his services.”

“Hey, wait!” you return, craning around in the saddle to look back at the portal, “What if.. I wanted to ask him a favour?”

Death doesn't ask his steed to stop, but Despair's hooves come to an abrupt halt in the sand anyway.

“A favour?” the Nephilim scoffs, swiping his hand dismissively at the raised dais sitting snugly to the rear of the hollow, “That conniving weasel does not deal in favours.”

“Au contraire, my funereal friend...”

A slimy voice crawls into Death's ear-canal like rancid sewage and he suppresses a visceral shudder as Despair shifts around to side-eye the shadowy figure that materialises from the dais in an eruption of billowing, blue vapours.

“What is a favour, if not merely a kind of service... And what is a merchant, if not a peddler of such services?”

Easing himself about in the saddle, Death regards the hovering demon with an air of bored indifference. Unlike him however, you sit ramrod straight up front, all but buzzing with nervous energy.

“The only question I have,” Death drawls, “Is what are you doing here, Vulgrim? Are you certain you haven't been shadowing us?”

Vulgrim, the demon from the Forge Lands, steeples his long fingers together and gives his small, fleshy wings a beat, hovering slowly towards you over the sand.

“Sheer coincidence, I can assure you,” he replies, pressing a taloned hand over his chest in a laughable mockery of earnestness, “I sensed a potential customer passing this Serpent Hole and thought I should seize the opportunity, so to speak... Therefore... ” He drifts higher into the air, spreading his arms out in an gesture you suppose is meant to be inviting, “Here I am, pleased to serve...”

His scheming, green eyes flick to you and he seems to brighten all at once, as if he'd only just noticed your presence. It's all an act, of course, one that Death is acutely aware of.

Vulgrim could sniff out a fresh soul from halfway across a galaxy.

“Well, well, well!” the demon declares, showing off his shark-like grin and leaning closer to leer down at you, “Look who’s still alive and kicking!”

Underneath you, Despair sticks his ears straight back to the top of his skull and bends his hind leg slightly, lifting a hoof from the ground - a clear and undeniable warning to the demon that he’s venturing just a little too close. His rider, in the meantime, shifts his arm forwards as if he only means to adjust his grip on the horse’s reins, but in doing so, he discreetly shields you further behind the sinewy wall of waxen flesh.

Vulgrim - well-practiced in the art of discretion - recognises the act for what it is, and subjects Death to an infuriatingly knowing smirk.

Oblivious to the exchange, yet otherwise leery of the demon, you tip your chin up and eye his jagged fangs.

“Still alive,” you reply, cursing the tremble in your throat, “But it sort of feels like I’m the one being kicked, not the one doing the kicking..” And then, out of sheer adherence to the social graces you were taught, you find yourself asking, “And you? Are you okay? How’s... uh.. business?”

Always quick to fill a pause, Vulgrim has already opened his mouth before the question sinks in and it snaps shut again with an audible ‘click!’

Sly, emerald eyes blink several times in rapid succession until eventually, he seems to regain his composure and surges backwards into the air with a flourish of his hand. “Well, how kind of you to ask!”

And by kind, he means ‘strange.’

“Business is 'sky-rocketing,' as you humans like to say! Souls are flowing, gilt is plentiful, clients are numerous... Ah! These are profitable times to be a merchant! Profitable times indeed!”

Truth be told, Vulgrim could prattle on about his trade until the heat-death of the Universe, and it has been quite some time since he was actually invited to do so. Usually, he only gets five words in before he’s being told his tongue will be forfeit if he doesn’t stop wagging it.

Even now, he can see the Horseman’s eye twitching behind that legendary bone mask while the beast carrying him tosses its wispy mane and paws at the sand under its hooves.

And then, by contrast, there’s you - listening to him with a sort of courteous patience that’s seldom offered to a demon of his rank. There's even a polite - if tentative - smile softening the corners of your lips.

Even his fellow demonic brethren shun the merchant for daring to affiliate with members of a different species.

‘Fools, those demons. The lot of them,’ he muses disdainfully, ‘Ignorant fools.’

Any reputable merchant worth their salt knows that trade will never flourish in an insular environment.

.... Hmm... Perhaps it doesn’t bode well for him that the only creature willing to show him some due respect is a human.

‘But,’ he supposes, curling a long, hooked claw beneath his chin and regarding you thoughtfully, ‘beggars can’t be choosers.’

“Oh! But you mustn't get me started,” he laments aloud, “Why, I'll be rambling on and on about myself and my business until nightfall. And then where will we be?”

“That's all right,” you shrug, nonchalant and deferential, “I bet you must see amazing worlds and meet all kinds of people. Honestly, I bet you could tell me some stories that would have me hooked for hours.”

Another beat or two pass by as Vulgrim's conniving brain attempts to register the positive interaction.

'…. Well!' he blinks, 'This is certainly a nice change of pace from the usual clientele!' Indulging in a chuckle, Vulgrim turns his head coyly to the side and flashes a fanged grin down at you. “Ahah! I admit, I can't refute your astute assumption,” he says, “You'll be hard-pressed to find a merchant as well-travelled as I.”

He's interrupted by Death snorting brusquely through his nose.

“Actually...” you start, turning a little bashful yourself, “That's kind of related to the favour I wanted to ask you.”

The merchant drags his glare off the Horseman to peer at you quizzically, cocking his horned head and humming a note that drips more with intrigue than suspicion. “Oh?”

To your rear, Death echoes the very same sentiment with a stunned, “Oh?”

“Yes! You see, er...” Tapping your fingertips together, you lower your chin and look up at Vulgrim from beneath your eyelashes. “You say you're well-travelled. And we met you in the Forge Lands.”

The demon shares a tentative glance with the glowering Nephilim before turning to face you once more, slowly uttering, “Yes~?”

“And now, you're here!” you point out, “And I just thought... well, I mean... Mm, hang on-”

Restless, you swing your leg over the saddle and try to slip out of it backwards, only to have your efforts thwarted by long, calloused fingers that wind themselves into the back of your top and bunch the material up inside a closed fist, keeping you from dropping any further.

“And where do you think you're going in such a hurry?” Death growls, hoisting you back up and plopping you down in front of him again.

Affronted, you crane your neck around to scowl at the Horseman whilst Vulgrim's gaze flicks between the two of you curiously.

“You keep doing that, you're going to stretch out my only top,” you gripe, “And I was going to ask him a question from the ground. Seemed polite.”

“Questions can be asked from the saddle of a horse,” Death retorts smartly, using his calloused palm to absently smooth out the back of your rumpled top.

You squint up at him as if he's a particularly tricky brain teaser and you haven't yet worked out how to solve him.

“What's got your dander up? You're the one who said Vulgrim's not going to kill me. What gives?”

Using his own words against him? You're starting to sound like Strife.

Despising that you raise a valid point, and all too aware that he's being a little overprotective, Death concedes, flippantly grouching, “Tch... Just ask your favour so that we can be on our way.”

It probably isn't wise to roll your eyes at a Horseman of the Apocalypse, but you've done worse already. Ignoring his resulting scowl, you twist yourself in the saddle to face your amused audience.

“Trouble in paradise?” Vulgrim goads, drawing the Nephilim's throaty growl.

“Ha, no,” you pause to press your lips together and hold onto your smile, “No, I just wanted to ask.. those, er... portal, things you came out of?” Lifting an arm, you point towards his hollow.

Vulgrim turns to follow your gaze, then spins to face you again, his eyes squinted, now rife with suspicion. “Serpent Holes?” he corrects you cautiously, “What of them?”

“You had one in the Forge Lands. That's how you got here, isn't it? You can travel between the realms?”

“I can!” he replies with a little pride now, raising a crooked hand to inspect his claws, “Why do you ask?”

Fidgeting uncomfortably with a chip on your own fingernail, you hope that Death won't take offence to your next question. “I... well, would it be okay if... you could let me use your portal to get back to the Forge Lands?”

There's no obvious sign that Death cares either way about your request. In fact, strangely, it seems Despair is the one who has the most to say about it.

The pallid horse suddenly jerks his head back and stamps his front hooves on the ground, snorting raggedly through his cavity of a nose.

"Hey, steady!" you blurt instinctively. You're so distracted by laying your hand on the beast's hairless neck and asking him what's wrong that you don't pay attention to his rider at your back.

Death's body has locked up tight like a steel rod, and his eyebrows give the barest of twitches before he remembers to keep his expression neutral.

'Get a hold of yourself,' he growls to both himself and Despair, who had almost certainly reacted so impulsively thanks to his rider's own, inner turmoil.

Death thinks of Absalom – Corruption – and of the threat it had made against you.

Admittedly, he hadn't even considered that Vulgrim's portal network could be used to send you back to the Forge Lands... Feasibly, yes, he could let you return to be with the makers. But there's one thought that stays him... one small, nagging thought.

What if he lets you go, and Corruption decides to strike?

What a selfish idea, that the Horseman wants to keep you. What a human idea.

The makers, though certainly capable, are no match against whatever terrible power Absalom has accrued.

Death's former brother had been right about one thing...

Without Eideard, the village of Tri-Stone is more vulnerable than ever. If Corruption really does intend to make a target of you, it could not only put you in peril, but Karn and the others as well.

They can't protect you.

But Death?

Death can.

In another blink, he's made up his mind, and as he does, Despair calms beneath him, shaking out his spectral mane and snorting the last of his agitation.

Whilst you're distracted leaning over the saddle-horn to give the horse a consoling pat on his neck, Death shoots a glare over at Vulgrim, finding him already staring back.

Without uttering a single word, Death gives the demon a tiny, near imperceptible shake of his head.

Vulgrim's eyes sparkle with boundless intrigue, but he must have received the Horseman's silent message, because by the time you turn to him once again, that slimy, conniving grin gives nothing away but his typical depravity.

“Oh, a thousand apologies, my dear,” he croons, saccharine sweet, “It would be my great honour to grant you the use of these Serpent Holes. Why, I would whisk you right down to Earth itself, if I could. Ah, but alas, they are simply not... calibrated to accommodate your species.”

“Cal... calibrated?” you parrot, scrunching up your nose and letting disappointment extinguish the spark of hope that had ignited in your chest.

For a reason unbeknownst to him, Vulgrim catches himself wincing at the look on your face. “Oh, yes... You see, there are countless Serpent Holes all over the Earth. Hidden in plain sight. Why – one can only imagine the chaos that would happen if humans were to step into a portal by accident and end up getting whisked away into the ether!”

Death watches you lower your head dejectedly, and he feels the barest twinge of remorse before he snuffs it out, reminding himself that you're safer with a Nephilim watching your back.

Vulgrim, meanwhile, is having something of a crisis of his own.

“Oh,” you croak, “I... okay. That makes sense.” You pause to look up and offer him a genuine, if sad smile. “Thanks anyway.”

The demon's grin falters and he lifts his claws to scratch absently at his chest. 'That's odd,' he muses, cocking a brow and regarding your expression closely. You aren't angry with him? Even though he didn't give you what you want...

He hovers there awkwardly, his mouth – which under normal circumstances can run a mile a minute – works up and down without saying a word. He keeps waiting for the affront. For the insult.

But it never arrives.

Instead, you're thanking him? For... not helping you?

Vulgrim's wings flutter, perplexed, especially when he hears himself say, “Perhaps there is... something else I can offer you?”

If he had less tact, he'd slap a hand across his toothy mouth and curse himself to Heaven and back. Why did he say that? What possessed him!? And why doesn't he hate the ray of disgusting hope that blooms over your face like a sunburst.

Wringing your hands, you hesitantly ask, “Could you... maybe send a message, instead?”

And just like that, the demon's lips curl over his fangs and he shoots you a dirty look. “I am not a messenger pigeon.”

“.... Please?” you squeeze out, imploring, “Just to tell the makers that me and Death are okay. If you're going that way.”

Defensive, Vulgrim cross his arms and drums his long, black claws against a bicep, his eyes cast to the wall over your head.

The 'please' is... a welcome touch, he's forced to admit...

'Ugh. Lucifer take me.'

Just this once...

“Feh,” the demon gripes audibly, “I suppose I could... if you were to make it worth my while.”

Death narrows his eyes at the demon, who catches the glance and throws his arms up, squawking, “What? I'm not running a charity here, Horseman! Even demons have to make a living.”

“But..." Worrying at your bottom lip, you turn your palms skyward and say, "I'm not sure I have anything I could give you...”

Before Vulgrim can make a snide remark, Death grumbles under his breath and reaches down, flipping open the lid of a pouch that dangles from his hip. “What'll it set me back, demon?”

At once, you whirl around in the saddle and start to protest. “Oh, Death – No. You don't have to-”

Vulgrim however, has already caught the sound of something doubtlessly shiny clinking around inside the leather pouch and his lips split apart to reveal that wide, characteristic grin. “How generous of you, Horseman. But as I said, I'm not running a charity.”

“A pity the same can't be said about running your mouth,” Death quips, “How much?”

Green eyes glint hungrily in the cavern's dim light.

“One thousand gilt.”

Death only just manages not to utter an expletive. His hands grow still inside the pouch and he snaps his eyes up to Vulgrim, incredulously spitting, “A thousand. For a message?”

Unapologetic, the merchant replies, “Delivering messages is a most hazardous occupation. You're asking a demon to enter maker territory claiming to have news of their precious human?” He shudders, bandaged wings quivering. “I'd very much like to make sure I can afford the potions it'll take to heal me after that visit.”

“Hazard pay,” you intone.

The demon spares you an approving wink and echoes, “Hazard pay.”

“Death, it's okay,” you stretch your hand back to place it over the top of his, “I'm not asking you to spend your money on me. Come on, maybe if we run into Ostegoth again, I can ask him to deliver the message.”

From the corner of an eye, you see Vulgrim visibly recoil as if you'd just slapped him.

“Oste-Ostegoth!?” he all but screeches, puffing up like an indignant, winged cat, “That goat! That.. that poacher!?”

“Mm, perhaps you're right,” Death says to you, pointedly snapping the pouch shut and ignoring the merchant spitting brimstone behind him, “No harm in shopping around, is there?”

After a soft nudge from the Horseman's heel, Despair starts to walk forwards up the tunnel's slope, keeping his head raised to affix one, bulging eye on the demon behind him.

“Fine! Fine! Wait!” Vulgrim calls out, flitting after you until he's hovering along at Despair's side. The demon's grin is barely present, more of a strained grimace that pulls at his lips and distorts his craggy features. “You two are quite the discerning customers,” he laughs through clenched fangs, “Very well. Let it never be said that I am a miserly merchant... Four hundred gilt.”

Unconcerned, Death lifts his should in a shrug. “Zero. Ostegoth seemed the helpful sort.”

Vulgrim stops in mid air as if the Horseman's words had stuck him fast. Then, issuing a growl that raises the hairs on your arms, the demon gives his wings a single, powerful thrust and he surges right back up to Despair's side, hovering over you like a simmering pot, barely keeping his irritation from boiling over.

Despair tosses his head back at the demon's proximity, but doesn't otherwise break his stride, electing to keep his ears pinned back unhappily.

“Very. Well,” the merchant spits out from between his gritted fangs, “You drive... an impossible bargain, Horseman. But...” Cutting himself off, Vulgrim makes a noticeable effort to unclench his jaw and force his lips to quirk up at their corners. You watch the change with disturbed curiosity.

“As a mark of my astounding generosity,” he sneers, “I will deliver your message... for... eugh.. for...”

Patiently, you and Death regard the demon as he hunches his shoulders up and works his jaw in several, tight circles, as though he's chewing something particularly unpalatable before at last, he spits out, “For free....” The word sits like poison on his tongue.

Your expression brightens at once and you perk up in the saddle. “Really?!”

Though he looks as if he's rather pull out his own teeth, Vulgrim hangs his head and nods, offering up a weak sigh. “Consider it, ah... recompense, for what my ilk did to yours..”

If Death had less restraint, he'd let his jaw fall to the ashy ground by Despair's hooves. The horse himself feeds off his rider's shock and draws to an abrupt standstill.

Your reaction, however, is far less subdued.

Your cheeks promptly lift around the most dazzling smile, and before Vulgrim can recoil, you take everyone off guard by throwing yourself sideways and slinging your arms around his leathery neck, propping your upper body against his to keep yourself situated in the saddle.

“Thank you, Vulgrim!”

“GAH! Wha-! What!?-” he squawks, lurching backwards and dragging you a few inches away from your seat before Death has the wherewithal to brace a hand on your knee, anchoring you safely in place, and if his rawboned fingers curl a little too harshly around a fistful of your skirt, well, you hardly seem to notice in the moment.

Death's eyes burn like wildfires within the darkness of his mask's sockets and they flick very pointedly to your arms that are still looped around Vulgrim's neck.

You have forgotten, it seems, in a single moment of sheer, blissful gratitude, that you are very much a human, and Vulgrim is still very much a demon.

And here you are, draping yourself over him as if you're greeting an old friend.

The merchant, for his part, has gone utterly still in an aborted retreat, his chin tipped away from you and his long, clawed hands held up in the air, hovering apprehensively over your shoulders as if he expects you to spontaneously explode.

“Horseman!” he hisses urgently from the side of his mouth, “Horseman! What.. what is she doing?”

“I think the better question is, what does she think she's doing,” Death grumbles, and without any further preamble, he slides his forearm around your waist and gives a rough tug, wrenching you away from Vulgrim so viciously that your arms are torn from the demon's neck and you let out a cry of alarm, thrust back into the saddle with a painful jolt to your rump.

A quick glance down reveals the Nephilim's enormous palm is still splayed out across your belly. At once, your brows snap together and you twist your neck about to glare up into the sockets of Death's mask, placing both of your hands on his wrist and attempting to shove him off you. "Uh, what the heck was that for?"

The Horseman's fingers only clench tighter to your stomach, utterly immoveable. “You," he bristles, glaring hard at the merchant over your head, "were embracing a demon.”

Dumbfounded by his animosity, you flick a glance over at the motionless Vuglrim before turning to face Death again, exclaiming, “So?”

He scoffs. “So? So, you don't touch a demon like that. Nobody in their right mind would embrace a demon.”

“I was just saying 'thanks,” you argue.

“You can show gratitude without draping yourself all over him!” Death rebukes, swiftly cutting off the offended retort you try to hit him with, “Not even demons hug other demons. It just isn't... it isn't done.”

It takes you another few seconds, but eventually, something clicks and it begins to dawn on you that you've perhaps just done something irrevocably foolish. “Oh...” you wince, peeking up at Vulgrim, “Oh dear... Did I just commit some kind of demon faux-pas?”

He doesn't respond for a few, terse seconds, but just when you think you might have sent the demon into some kind of cardiac arrest, he gives his horned head a hard shake and lifts an arm up to scratch idly at the base of his neck, exclaiming, “No! No.. It's just... That manner of, ahem, affection, it's... well, it's one of the... peculiarities of human nature that hasn't transitioned over to my species just yet.”

“Oh, I... Sorry..”

A decidedly awkward hush settles over the tunnel, wrapping you all up in its uncomfortable warmth, or perhaps that's just the embarrassment creeping up your neck.

“I... had heard that you humans were affectionate little creatures but...” Vulgrim trails off with a shudder, giving his shoulders a stiff shrug as if he's trying to dislodge the lingering sensation of your skin on his.

“Never imagined you'd be on the receiving end, did you?” Death huffs.

"Not in this lifetime," he concurs, "Not even in the next. But it is rather a comfort to know that even an old demon like me can continue to be surprised. Keeps me on my toes."

“Ahem, If I'm not mistaken,” Death turns his attention down, nudging you in the back with his knuckles, “You were about to ask him to deliver you a message?”

All at once, the demon beside you springs back to his old self, as if he's overcompensating for his brief stint of shock. “Ah, yes,” he clears his throat, dipping his horns down at you indicatively, the past minute forgotten, for now, “Tell me, what am I to relay to your prodigious protectors...?”

They might be able to overcome their embarrassment easy as winking, but you're still reeling from the realisation that you just threw your arms around the neck of a demon who had, not so long ago, offered to buy your soul from Death, and you can't imagine it was for any reason. Still, recognising that this isn't an opportunity that'll last forever, you rub at your elbow and mull over an answer for only a moment before raising your eyes to Vulgrim and shyly start, “Tell them.... I think first, tell them that Death and I are okay. But tell them not to come near the Tree of Life, whatever they do!” you add urgently, “Corruption is still inside it.”

“Very well,” he dips his head in a facsimile of a bow, “Anything else?”

Without question, of course there's something else. “Please, when you see Karn... Will you tell him I'm sorry?" Your hands clasp together, squeezing each other firmly enough that they shake. "I'm so sorry. I didn't want to leave, but I didn't have any choice -” You fail to notice the downcast look Death aims at the ground behind you. “- And, tell him, I'm going to find a way back to him, somehow...”

Vulgrim stares down at you for an inordinately lengthy minute, his crooked features askew, evidently taken aback. At last, he lets out a little chuff and announces, "Goodness, such heartfelt sentiments! You've only known those makers for a few days, surely!"

"What can I say," you shrug, scratching sheepishly at the back of your head, "They're a likeable bunch."

"Debatable," Death mutters under his breath.

"If I can like you, I can like anybody."

The Horseman has to employ a fair amount of willpower to keep his eyes from growing wide. Instead, he thrust a narrow glare onto Vulgrim, decided that you've wasted enough time entertaining the grinning merchant for one evening. "Now that that unpleasantness is settled," he grouses, "perhaps we can finally be on our way?"

Without waiting for a response, he pushes Despair straight into a trot and the horse is only too eager to comply, kicking up his hooves and carrying you away from the merchant at a brisk pace.

“Bye, Vulgrim!” you call, turning to cast a wave back at the rapidly shrinking demon, this time without so much weight pressing down upon your weary shoulders.

Left behind, Vulgrim doesn't realise that he's raised his own hand to mimic your wave. “Farewell, my fetching little friend!” he returns, “Until we meet again, mind yourselves out there among the dead!”

Death gives Despair's flank another squeeze, coaxing the horse into a loping canter that kicks up sand and ash in the wake of his pounding hooves.

Once you've rounded the gentle curve of the tunnel, Vulgrim's waving hand slows to a stop, hovering aimlessly in the air next to his horns.

“Sweet little thing,” he sighs ruefully, “Easy pickings.”

There's no doubt about it, in a wretched place like this, you'll be chewed up and spat back out in three seconds flat if the Horseman takes his eyes off you.

There are very few things the dead despise more than to be reminded of what they lack. A heartbeat. Warmth. Everything they'd taken for granted when they were alive...

At last, Vulgrim notices his elevated hand and he balks in surprise, wrenching it back down to its rightful place at his side.

"Hell's breath," he grouches moodily, dragging his dark talons down the length of his face, "What in the Nine Circles was that?"

-------------------

“That was nice of him.”

Your statement has Death scoffing obnoxiously behind his mask.

“Nice,” he spits, twitching at Despair's reins until the horse slows to a brisk trot. “Nice' and 'Vulgrim' are on the opposite ends of a spectrum. Those two words are antonyms of one another. You might as well claim that Valus is a chatterbox.”

“He said he'd deliver my message for nothing, Death. That's a nice thing to do.”

Grumbling, the Horseman raises his eyes to the tunnel's gargantuan exit, and the rusted, ancient portcullis that hangs from above like a set of serrated teeth, ready to chomp down on whatever might deign to pass underneath. “Whether the demon actually makes good on his word remains to be seen,” he says dubiously.

Humming in thought, you reply, “I think he will.”

“How can you be so certain?”

Offering your palms to the sky, you tip your shoulders back in a casual shrug. “I don't know. He just seemed like he was being genuine.

You instantly feel the Horseman's stomach jump as he barks out a sharp laugh. “Ha!” he exclaims, “Oh, you are a prize sap, human.”

“And you're a cynic,” you throw back, “Maybe he'll surprise you.”

Death's snort tells you exactly what he thinks before he even opens his mouth to refute you. “Yes, and maybe I'll sprout feathers and a halo and start singing from holy scriptures,” the Horseman drawls in a superior tone. Beneath him, Despair blows a rough snort of his own through the cavity in his nose, as if to concur with his rider's skepticism.

Squinting against the pale daylight that bleeds into the tunnel from ahead, your trio passes under the portcullis. Ash gives way to dark, unforgiving stone under Despair's hooves, and together, you emerge out onto a narrow plateau of rock, barely a dozen metres across at its widest point. The plateau continues to rise in a gentle slope and tapers to a sharp point up ahead of you, the end of the road, the summit, and the edge of a sheer and deadly drop.

“We're here,” Death murmurs, drawing his steed to a halt, “Serpent's Peak.”

From way up here on top of the cragged hill, you can only see the sky stretched out in front of you, green as sickness and as boundless as space itself. Halfway up the plateau however, your eye is drawn by a deliberate piece of architecture, namely a stilted arch, hewn from the same stone it stands upon. And hanging from the keystone on a creaking chain that's about as thick as your own calf, is what looks to be a sizeable, cylindrical bell.

“Now what do we do?” you ask, craning your neck around to watch Death as he slides gracefully from the saddle.

“Now-” The Horseman grunts as he lands. “- We summon the Eternal Throne.”

You're about to hop down yourself when Death surprises you by reaching his arms up in your direction and falling still, expectant and waiting.

Your jaw starts to creak open, but you're quick to slam it shut. No sense looking a gift Horseman in the mouth, as it were. So, slinging a leg over the seat, you begin to slip off forwards, trusting that he'll catch you, and almost at once, rough hands - coarsened by time and exertion - slide around your hips, prompting you to brace your own palms on the Horseman's robust biceps.

Grateful for the lift, you aim a sunny grin down at the Nephilim as he hoists you from the saddle and lowers you gently to the ground without even a quiver of effort.

“Thanks,” you chirrup, withdrawing your hands and brushing down your rumpled skirt.

Death's only response is a bored hum of acknowledgement.

Turning to Despair, you reach out and scratch at the underside of his leathery jaw, adding, “And thank you, handsome. I guess you aren't coming to court with us.”

“Sadly,” Death remarks, “The Eternal Throne isn't so easily accessed by hoof.”

Heaving out a ghostly sigh of contentment, the horse's shoulder slouches and he stretches his neck out to give you better access.

“Have you no dignity?” Death gripes at him, getting little more than a brief, heavy-lidded glance in response.

Laughing lightly, you give the horse a departing tap on his nasal ridge before you pivot on a heel and trail after Death as he begins to make his way towards the huge, iron bell that hands from its stony arch near the apex of the slope.

Raising a fist into the air, the Horseman utters his silent command, and in a whirling maelstrom of sickly, green smog, Despair vanishes with a toss of his head, cast back to wherever he goes when he isn't ferrying you and his rider all over the realm.

“Whatever happened to you being afraid of him?” Death inquires, marching assuredly towards the apex of Serpent's Peak, “Fear is the exact response his presence is intended to provoke.”

You give it a moment's thought before lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “Well, yeah, I mean, you were both utterly terrifying, at first-”

Dropping his brows into a dark frown, Death whispers to himself, “...At first?”

“-But it's hard to carry on being scared of someone who seems so keen on keeping me alive.”

“Is that where I'm going wrong?” he huffs, “If I stop saving your life, you'll go back to being afraid of me? That doesn't sound so terrible. You were far more biddable when I struck fear into your heart.”

Aiming a smirk at him from the corner of your mouth, you retort, “Sure thing, tough guy. Say, by the by, thanks for helping me down from your horse so I didn't hurt myself jumping off.”

The side-eye he gives you in return for your cheek burns as hot as an imploding star.

Seconds later, the pair of you draw up just in front of the bell. As you approach you crane your neck back, gaping up at the immense, stone cylinder before you when all of a sudden, you feel a chilly palm catch you in the naval, jarring you to a halt.

Dropping your gaze to your boots, you finally notice the deep, dark hole sitting in the ground just in front of you, a perfect, circular pit that cuts straight down through the mountain, smooth-sided like a borehole, or a well.

“Odd place to draw water from,” you observe, fists alighting on your hips.

The Horseman's hand slides off your belly, and he casts his eye over the bell, then down into the hole. “This particular pit,” he murmurs, “Serves a different purpose.”

“What do you mean?”

Stepping back, Death continues to consider the well for a time, his eyes narrowed to sharp slits.

For several, dragging seconds, only the wind can be heard howling its lonely song across the desert whilst you regard the Horseman curiously.

Without warning, one of his hands shoots down and wraps around the handle of his scythe, drawing it from its holster.

“Stand back,” he tells you.

Blinking owlishly at him, you spare a glance first at the bell, and then you drag your gaze over to Death, your brows knitted together in bafflement. “Uh, it's a bell,” you deadpan, “You're ringing a bell. How is that so dangerous that I need to stand back?”

“... Ringing a bell?” the Horseman utters snidely as he plants one boot in the sand at his back and lowers his torso, poised to strike, “Ringing a bell is for those who drop in for tea and a friendly chat. Legates and bootlickers who wish to curry favour ring the bell. I am not ringing a bell.”

With a weary shake of your head, you draw out a sigh and ask, “Well, what are you doing, then?”

Death's scorching eyes gleam with intense focus and he draws his lips back to expose his teeth, flashing you a sardonic grin that you'll never hope to see beneath his mask.

“I'm getting the King's attention.”

#darksiders #darksiders 2 #Death x reader #Grim reaper x reader #romance #banter #teasing #fluff #Vulgrim #He's back baby #I missed him #Next up Draven >:)

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