#hopefully the people i convinced to read hote now feel well fed

[captainkirkk]

✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩

All the fics I’ve read and really enjoyed in the past week-ish. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes. Please look at tags and warnings on ao3 before reading.

ATLA

all my skeletons out for the taking by 136108

Azula wins the Agni Kai, and the playing field shifts.

The Owl House

Grom Knight by ObabScribbler

Belos is dead. The Collector is defeated. The portal door is working again and everyone now just has to move on with their lives and rebuild normality as best they can. This is easier for some than for others.

When Willow invites Hunter to Grom, he assumes it is so that he, as a non-student of Hexside, can still be there to help Skara in her duties as Grom Queen. Emerald Entrails stick together, after all. Clearly there could be no other reason for Willow to invite him. This is all set to be a simple, friendly combined dance and fight with a demonic entity that reads minds and conjures your worst fears into reality. No biggie.

Except with Boscha and her crew of bullies around and feeling braver than ever, this Grom might not be as simple as they all hoped. Especially when Hunter discovers that being the reincarnated container of hundreds of years of Golden Guards' fears is a bad thing to be around a fear demon.

Clone Wars

and through the spaces of the dark by blackkat (+ podfic)

Jon's attempts to avoid a war he wants no part in are ended when Dark Woman drags him to Coruscant and straight to a posting with the Guard. He intends to keep his head down and do his work, but the mysteries around the Guard - and Fox - immediately have him in out of his depth and on uncertain ground.

Nine Worlds / The Lays of the Hearth Series

Friday Keeps Coming Next by rattyjol

Cliopher's first morning with the Sun-on-Earth was everything he could have dreamed of, until it wasn’t.

or: Cliopher and his Radiancy break time. Again.

soon, they said, if not today by Ariaste

Cliopher passes the Imperial exams on the first try.

It changes everything.

one for sorrow, two for joy by Ariaste

The Emperors of Astandalas did not have daemons.

Cliopher knew this could not, technically, be true. Thinking this thought, even in the quietest whisper in his deepest heart of hearts, was undeniably treason, but…. facts were facts: The Emperors of Astandalas, though worshipped as gods on earth, were each of them born a human being before they were apotheosized by the crown and by law and custom. Every human being had a soul; therefore, every human being had a daemon.

So the Emperors of Astandalas must have had daemons.

But by tradition and ritual and magic and taboo: The Emperors of Astandalas did not have daemons.

you laugh and you gleam with that roguish air by lindsayraindrops

Notorious rebel-poet Fitzroy Angursell is captured and brought to the Palace of Stars. Cliopher... copes.

(A reunion.)

with a winged heart by celebros

"Cliopher. Cliopher. Cliopher."

I blink. It's Conju, standing with his hands on my shoulders, and I go to answer him and realize that I am already speaking, babbling, and Franzel is behind him, wringing his hands and looking near tears. I try to focus on what I'm saying, but it's like a stream, light and splashing past me, too quick to hold, not enough to catch, somehow, somehow –

(A few weeks before the start of the viceroyship ceremonies, Kip finds himself the unwitting recipient of a truth serum)

The Virtue of Being True by electropeach

"You're under an enchantment, Cliopher. The good news is that the protections his Radiancy has placed on you have shielded you; the bad news is that the protections that block the spell are also reflecting it, meaning that instead of you it affects everyone who comes near you. You may have noticed an unusual propensity for candor in your vicinity today?"

A reverse truth serum plot leads to Cliopher having a very strange day.

even a cat may look at a king. by mage-pie (looselipssinksubs) (Note: This fic is marked as abandoned, but it has some really great scenes that it's still worth a read imo)

"Hello, hello, hello!” said his Radiancy’s serval. She said it, in words, in Shaian, in a pleasant voice that came from her little snout quite naturally. “Good morning!” “Good…morning…?” said Cliopher, too shocked to control his voice. His mongoose got out of his bag and scrambled up onto his shoulder with an excited little squeak, her claws prickling through the tunic. “I have good news and bad news!” the serval continued happily. “Don’t you want to know what it is?” Cliopher could only stare. “Good news, I’ve figured out how to talk!” She lashed her tail excitedly, and finished with her voice full of enormous glee, “Bad news… I’ve figured out how to talk.”

The entire city of Solaara wakes up one day attached to magical animals that display each person’s innermost self with no regard for court protocol or even basic manners. It’s pure chaos… and that’s before the Emperor accidentally gives the soul-animals the power of speech.