#horsemen missing things

[frog-person]

Cool things I found out about the GO set on the set tour

There are multiple missing cat posters around the shops and all the pictures used are actual cats of the crew

On the graffiti in the coffee shop, theres a snake with the names Neil and Terry in it

The records in the record shop are all made up songs albums and bands to avoid having to pay for the rights (my favourite one was one in the window with a shark on a paddle board)

All the stickers in the record shop were designed in one week by a graphic design intern (theres hundreds of them)

Along with the Neil and Terry snake, theres the name of the horsemen in nickname form around the coffee shop (Pollutions is P-Boy)

Not a set thing but the head set designer and head graphic designer are mother and daughter

There are over 7000 books in aziraphales book shop

Of the lesser seen shops that only have window displays, the backdrop of the tailors shop (can be seen in the Maggie and Nina rain scene) is made of scrap air vent pieces

Also not really a set thing but the set is in the same town David Tennant is from

I think its funny the set is in a warehouse behind a tescos

Thats all I can remember rn Ill add more if I remember them

[sihtricfedaraaahvicius]

Missing.

Note: requested by anon!

Warnings: angst, mention of death.

pairing: Sihtric x missing wife!reader/you (f)

summary: You went missing during the attack at Rumcofa.

wordcount: 3,1k

Masterlist

'What of my wife?'

'Lord!' Cynlaef called as he approached, Finan followed closely behind as their horses brought them closer.

'What are you doing here?' Uhtred asked the young man, with clear anger and surprise on his face, 'Aelfwynn in is Buccstan.'

Finan and Cynlaef looked dishevelled upon their horses, their faces painted with sand, blood and the remains of the horror they had recently been through. Uhtred's stern look disappeared quickly when the two men didn't respond. 

'What news of Rumcofa?' Uhtred asked, concerned.

Cynlaef swallowed hard as the Lord looked at him, too afraid to speak about what had happened.

'What of my son?' Uhtred then asked.

'My family?' Sihtric asked immediately, distraught, 'my wife?'

'Your son lives, Lord,' Cynlaef answered, and then looked at Sihtric, 'your wife…'

'What of my wife?' Sihtric took a step closer, 'where is my wife?' he asked again, his voice trembling.

'Many in Rumcofa…' the young warrior continued, but fell silent as he fought his tears.

'Where is Osferth?' Sihtric suddenly asked, as if distracted, 'Finan, where is Osferth? Where is my wife?'

'Finan!' Uhtred raised his voice when neither Cynlaef nor Finan gave a solid answer to their questions.

Then, Finan opened his mouth to speak, but not a single word or even as much as a sound came out.

'Tell us,' Uhtred said, almost threatening, 'where is Osferth?'

'And my wife?' Sihtric asked again, his eyes big and drenched with concern.

After Uhtred and Sihtric were told about the sudden attack on Rumcofa and the devastating death of Osferth, Finan then had to break the news to the Dane that his wife was missing. That you were missing.

'N-no,' Sihtric almost whined upon hearing those words, 'no, this cannot be. Uhtred,' he looked at his Lord with disbelief, 'this… this cannot be,' he turned to face Finan again, 'you are mistaken,' Sihtric said calmly, while it was clear that he was on the verge of insanity.

'Sihtric-,' Finan tried to carefully let the Dane accept the reality of the situation, that no one knew whether you were dead or alive.

'Tell me where my wife is!' Sihtric snarled as he stalked over to the men on their horses.

'I… I,' Finan stammered, 'w-we don't know.'

'We just don't know,' Cynlaef said quietly.

Before Uhtred could grab Sihtric and bring him to a halt, the Dane already stopped dead in his tracks and just stared up at the two bearers of the gut wrenching news.

'Did you see her flee?' Sihtric then asked, hopeful.

'Sihtric…' Uhtred placed his hand on the Dane's shoulder, a gesture to stop him from asking more questions no one had an answer to. An attempt to stop him from bringing more hurt upon himself.

'Did… h-has she fled?' Sihtric's voice broke as he continued desperately, 'tell me she has fled.'

It had to be, Sihtric thought, the one thing I know I have done right was teaching you to flee. How to be invisible and escape death. You fled. You are alive and have fled. It's the only way. It's the only possibility. By the gods, please. Death is not an option… death…

Sihtric grabbed at his chest as he felt a sharp pain, and he fell down on his knees, gasping for air. The two horsemen jumped off their beasts and, along with Uhtred, knelt beside the panicked and disoriented warrior.

'If she lives,' Uhtred said as he embraced Sihtric along with the others, 'then we will find her.'

You shivered as you sat upon a horse. You had no idea whose horse it was, but the horse was all you had while you felt lost. Not where you only truly lost, not recognizing your surroundings anymore, but you felt lost in your heart too. Lost without your husband by your side, or any familiar face in general. 

Sihtric was a good husband and tried to be there as much as he could, but being a warrior and one of Uhtred's most loyal men meant he had to leave you often. And it hadn't been any different when Rumcofa was suddenly attacked.

You felt cold, scared and lonely. You had fled, just like your husband had taught you, which you were grateful for. But now that you were truly on your own, you just didn't know what to do anymore. Sihtric had taught you how to flee, and the plan for you always was to stop at the nearest safe town, where he would then find you. But you had no idea where the nearest town was, or if it was even safe. You had no idea where Sihtric was right now, and how could he possibly know where you were going, when you didn't even know yourself.

Memories of the horrible attack replayed in your head, over and over again, and it truly was a blessing from the gods that you had managed to escape the madness, unseen by the bastards who raided the town. Unlike Finan's wife, who was alive when you last saw her but hadn't been as fortunate as you to escape successfully. But at least she still had her husband there,unlike you. You left and lived, unlike poor Osferth, who never attempted to escape but stood his ground and fought, an attempt he came to pay with his life.

You shed tears as the horse walked you through an endless forest, and all you could do was pray to your gods that you would see your husband again.

No one knew how Sihtric had bruised his hands. And Sihtric would never tell anyone either. He would never tell anyone how he had repeatedly punched a tree with his bare fists, bark cutting and slicing into his flesh as he cried out of anger, despair and with a broken heart. Because no one knew where you were. No one could tell him if his wife was still alive.

And the other men, Finan, Uhtred and Cynlaef, knew that Sihtric was most likely sabotaging his own health right now, but none dared to stop him. Because how do you console a man who does not know if he will see his wife again? Or if he does, if she will be alive. And if not alive, would she still be recognisable enough for him to know it's her body?

Sihtric sat back against a tree and stared into the fire at his feet, wrapped in his cloak while his thoughts ran wild. His jaw was painfully clenched in a desperate attempt to fight his tears and keep his breathing steady. He hoped that somehow he could send you a message, maybe if he tried hard enough. He hoped that he could somehow let you know he was going to look for you, that he was going to find you.

I have to find you, he thought, I will find you. I promise I will find you, my love. He swallowed hard when he looked up at the bright moon. I hope you're looking at the moon now too, my goddess. My love, my wife. I am sorry I wasn't there. I should have been there. I have failed you, and I am sorry. If I… when I find you, I promise you, I will never leave you again. Not like this. Never. Sihtric sniffled while his eyes welled up. You should be here right now, with me, safely in my arms and wrapped in my cloak with me.

Sihtric's breathing became unsteady as he was completely taken by his own thoughts, and the men next to him carefully glanced from the corners of their eyes. Uhtred and Finan shared a concerned look, while Cynlaef was just quiet and darted his eyes between the fire and Sihtric's tired face.

Sihtric struggled to breathe when his mind showed him many false images of your lifeless body, somewhere in Rumcofa. Maybe you were slaughtered near the stables, or perhaps Death had found you when you had tried to flee by boat. Sihtric shook his head as he tried to rid himself of those thoughts. You're alive. You're alive and I will find you. I will find you, my darling, I will find you even if it's the last thing I'll do. A strangled sob left his throat when his tears finally started to spill, causing the other men to perk up and move closer to the distressed Dane in an attempt to console him. 

Gods, Sihtric thought as the fire he stared at was just an out of focus orb now, please. I love you. I love you so. Please let me know you are alive, please.

And then, in the midst of the cold night, a raven cawed in a tree nearby and flew away.

By a miracle you had found a little town you had never heard of before, but safe you were. The people had made a fire and given you food and tea. And while you sat there at the fire, wrapped in one of the blankets the kind people had given you, you looked up at the bright moon and hoped that your husband was perhaps looking at the same beauty in the night sky.

Your broken smile disappeared slowly as tears filled your eyes. You were so cold, so lonely and so scared. You should've been with Sihtric now. That was all you wanted; to be with your husband, safely wrapped in his arms while he'd leave soft, sweet kisses on your neck, jaw and temple. To feel his warm breath on your skin as he trailed his rough fingertips up and down your sides, before squeezing you in his strong arms and making you giggle, like he always did. All you wanted was to hear his soft hums in your ear and to feel his chin propped up on your shoulder as he held you.

All you wanted was for him to know you were alive, and for him to somehow find you. Because you had no idea how to find him. You had never felt more lost, and you had no idea if he was even alive, you then realised. And your tears began to roll down your cheeks.

And then, in the midst of the cold night, a raven landed in a tree nearby and cawed.

'You… you're alive?' Finan gasped and held your hands, still recovering from the battle that had occurred several days ago, 'y-you're alive!' he laughed.

'Of course I'm alive!' you hissed with a grin, 'do you even know who my husband is?' you scoffed, 'I can't die before him. He'll go mad and who knows what that half empty brain of his will come up with. But he…' your smile faded, 'Sihtric? Is… is he alive?'

'Yes! yes, he is alive. But how did you… how?' Finan stammered, still in disbelief you had bumped into him as soon as you stepped through the gates of Bebbanburg.

'I fled Rumcofa, that day… you know, when Osferth,' you swallowed hard and cleared your throat, 'after days of travel I found Eadith and Aelswith. We travelled here together-'

'Eadith is here?' Finan interrupted you.

You blinked at the married Irish man, confused but also very amused.

'Yes, she and Aelswith are there,' you chuckled and cocked your head towards the two ladies who had helped you. 'Aelswith even stabbed someone.'

'She did what?' Finan snorted.

'Yeah, she wasn't even wearing gloves,' you grinned.

You and Finan snickered while the Irish man's eyes kept wandering to Eadith, and then you suddenly punched his chest.

'My husband?'

'Right!' Finan said, 'eh, he's… he's,' he looked around Bebbanburg, which was still a mess as people were already rebuilding the parts of the burh that had caught fire during the battle, 'there!' he suddenly exclaimed at the sight of your husband.

Sihtric sulked through Bebbanburg. He knew he was supposed to help fix the burned down parts, but he couldn't really be bothered with anything anymore. 

Sihtric couldn't recall how many nights he has slept with you now, all he knew was that nightmares taunted him each time he dozed off. He had seen every possible death of you, and he couldn't handle it anymore, but therefore he also couldn't recall how long he had gone without sleep. He was tired. Tired of a life without you. He hadn't accepted that you were gone, and he hadn't stopped looking either, because every day when new people came to Bebbanburg he would ask about you. But as no one knew of your whereabouts, Sihtric was at a loss. He didn't know what to do anymore, except scouting the lands whenever he possibly could, but as Uhtred saw it was destroying him, he had ordered him to stop looking for you every day and night.

Sihtric hadn't listened the first few times he was told to stop, but when Uhtred had slapped some sense into him, he didn't go looking anymore every day. Instead, he went looking every other day. And his heart was broken more every time he came back to Bebbanburg without you.

And when Uhtred told Sihtric once again to calm down and pick up his regular life again, it had ended in a brawl. Sihtric had shouted at the Lord how he had promised that if you were still alive, they'd find you. But you still weren't there. And so Uhtred, in his frustration, had yelled that maybe they hadn't found you yet because you were dead. Finan had broken up the fight and Sihtric, who threw one last punch towards Uhtred, then started spending his days and nights in taverns when he wasn't looking for you, drowning out his broken heart with ale until he couldn't stand or think straight anymore.

And so, like the day before yesterday, Sihtric was in the stables to saddle his horse. He was exhausted after another sleepless night. His lifeless mismatched eyes laid deep in his skull, which was merely covered with his thin, colour deprived scarred skin. His hair was messy, not braided anymore, as you used to do that for him and now he could care less for how he looked. His cloak was draped over his defeated shoulders, and his feet dragged through the mud with each forced step he took. His stomach rumbled, he had no idea when he had a proper meal for the last time, but he had no appetite anyway and he didn't care. Eating was a waste of time, he thought, because he could use that time to go and look for you. Slowly, and rather weakly, he took the reins of his horse and led his companion out the stables. Sihtric dragged his feet one step at a time through the town, towards the gates.

'Oi! Rat!'

Sihtric heard Finan's name calling, but he was not in the mood. The Dane would never say it out loud or even admit it to himself but, deep down in his heart, he felt resentment towards the Irish man. Because his wife was still alive. And while Sihtric saddled his horse, he had spotted Eadith across town too. And Sihtric may be a bit of a fool, but he was never blind to the chemistry Finan and Eadith had years ago. So now, Sihtric thought, the Irish man had two ladies to admire. While he was left with nothing but the fading memory of you, his wife.

'Sihtric!' Finan tried again as he ran over with the little strength he still had, 'stop!' he yelled and finally caught up, just when Sihtric was about to climb up on his horse.

'What?' Sihtric mumbled tiredly.

'Y-your,' Finan said out of breath, and he suddenly realised he was truly getting older with each battle, 'your… your wife!' he panted.

'What of my wife?' Sihtric almost sighed, not understanding what his friend wanted.

'Is here!' Finan grabbed Sihtric's shoulders, then slapped his tired face, 'your wife is here! Alive!'

Sihtric didn't even react to the slap in his face, instead he just blinked confused. He furrowed his brow and shook his head as he lightly shrugged, utterly confused and agitated at this point.

'Just let me go look for her,' Sihtric mumbled and shoved Finan aside, tugging the reins of his horse to follow him.

Finan, who scoffed and then laughed, grabbed Sihtric's shoulder again and spun him around.

'Look, you bloody idiot!' he said as he turned Sihtric to face towards you, as you approached him, 'she is here! She found you.'

Sihtric froze at the sudden sight of you.

This cannot be, he thought, this is a dream. This is merely a dream which will soon turn into another nightmare.

Sihtric stared at you, then his legs gave out beneath him and he fell down to his knees as his teary eyes remained fixed on you.

'M-my… love,' he breathed, barely audible.

You made haste towards your husband, your tired and weakened husband, but you still thought he was the most handsome man you had ever seen. You knelt down in front of Sihtric and took his thin, white face in your hands.

Sihtric felt your warm hands on his skin, and he closed his eyes as tears fell uncontrollably. He was simply waiting to wake up somewhere on the floor, in a filthy tavern, with an empty jug of ale in his hand. But it didn't happen. He didn't wake up. Not even when he caught your familiar scent and felt your soft lips on his. He didn't even wake up when he heard your voice, when you said his name.

'Sihtric,' you said, which sounded with an echo in his head.

'Sihtric, open your eyes,' he heard you say, and you lightly shook his shoulders.

He sniffled and slowly opened his eyes, his vision blurred by tears and the sound of his heart beating out of his chest was overwhelming. He brought his trembling hands up to your face, and he touched you with utmost caution and care, slow and soft.

'You… you,' he stammered, 'are a-alive?'

'I am alive. You taught me how to flee,' you smiled and sniffled, 'and you are still alive too,' you held his cold, bruised hands and took in the fragile state of your husband, 'but only barely it seems. What happened to you, my darling?'

'Life without you,' Sihtric whispered, and finally dared to cup your cheeks, 'I am never leaving you again, never, I promise.'

And then, when Sihtric finally dared to kiss you, pouring out all his love for you, a raven landed in a tree nearby and cawed.

taglist: @clairacassidy @finanmoghra @uunotheangel @hb8301 @bathedinheat @neonhairspray @anaeve @bubblyabs @travelingmypassion @sylasthegrim @andakth @chompchompluke @willowbrookesblog @lady-targaryens-world @skyofficialxx @elle4404 @alexagirlie @sweetxime @solango @gemini-mama @cheyennep3107 @little-diable @jennifer0305 @drwstarkeyy @mrsarnasdelicious @verenahx @urmomsgirlfriend1 @moonchildrenandflowercrowns @foxyanon @djarinsgirl27 @sigtryggrswifey @liandav @diiickbrainn @sihtricsafin

[beaniegaebie]

i don't really have any solid conclusions about this yet but i noticed A Thing in a rewatch and i haven't found it mentioned elsewhere yet so here we go

(apologies for the appalling image quality you're about to see, i can't screenshot easily rn pls bear with)

OKAY so in the scene where crowley confronts gabriel about "shut up and die", something about the arrangement of book stacks caught my eye a little

the majority of the books are angled so that we mostly just see the page edges and not the spines clearly, EXCEPT for a particularly shiny and familiar colour combo right here-

but nothing too weird going on there, i thought, crowley coloured books in a bookshop so what? right up until i registered crowley's line when we get a closer look-

hhhhmmmmMMmmmm yes yes "everything just the way you wanted" huh, very interesting considering that we know how much thought goes into props huh

and for most of the shots we get of crowley in this position those freaking books are just quietly nestled right there in the corner-

look at that god damn framing i fuckin see you, you glorious bastards

so i paused to see if i could figure out what the hell was up with those fuckers and this is when i absolutely lost my mind, your honour

A and C you say?? in crowley colours???? framed like this?????? localised entirely within your kitchen???

anyway long story short they're two books from an Agatha Christie Crime Collection set (24 volumes, three stories per volume) and guess whats on the mfing front covers I'm-

(its a rant for another post but when paired with this other set of initials spotted in s2 i want to scream actually)

ANYWAY back to the books, through an absolutely unhinged comparison of the formatting of gold text blobs i reckon the two we have here are:

(on top) The Pale Horse; The Big Four, The Secret Adversary

(on bottom) 4:50 From Paddington, Lord Edgeware Dies, Murder in Mesopotamia

(I'm fairly confident but if anyone has a better image to confirm/correct this pls do)

now here is where I'll need a bunch of help from some Christie-heads out there bc I haven't read any of these and I've only seen the tv adaptation of one of them, so i dont know for sure if these are like A Clue, or A Cool Thing, or if I've just fully brainrotted myself into a fun lil corner here? wa-hoo

but here's some initial stuff that jumped out at me after skimming the basics:

(some of) the titles: Pale Horse/Big Four - death's horse ofc, the four horsemen mayb? the them+adam?? ; Mesopotamia is a very biblical choice bbz ; 4:50 From Paddington- azi likes trains i guess? idk that one's tenuous lmao ; honestly no idea with the other two but Secret Adversary feels a tad ominous

iirc Big Four just has kind of an unusual history, it was initially twelve short stories that she later compiled into one, and it was published fairly soon after christie's mysterious disappearance/reappearance

in Big Four, poirot fakes his death at one point and doesnt even let hastings in on it and I'm hoping sure its totally irrelevant to the ineffable bois

part of the Pale Horse story is a group of assassins that basically try to pass off all their murders as being actually caused by like ✨satanic powers✨ which is interesting

christie knew a fUCkton about poisonings thats why she wrote so many into her work and, while i don't believe the poison coffee theory myself, it sure is an interesting link with how cyanide is associated with almond smell/flavour and that metatron chooses almond syrup in particular

(ALSO random side note that is mostly meaningless but I've worked in a good few uk coffee shops and have never worked anywhere that stocks almond syrup; almond milk yes, hazelnut syrup yes, but never almond syrup...? prob just the places i worked though lmao)

EDIT forgotten point: I've seen some speculation that the bently's plate reading "CURTAIN" could be a reference to poirot's last story, along side that alternate scene of crowley ordering the sherry for "miss marple", its just one too many agatha christie references for my melted brain to handle and I'm SUS

so this is where i run out of idea steam and hand it over to you lot because i have no clue what this could mean, if it even means anything other than a cool set feature

is there something here actually or am i yelling into the void just for fun?

who knows, who cares!

[yuramec]

Well, they are not official characters (as far as I know) in the comic but I really liked that one drawing that @tboredman made of them.

I was wondering what they were doing nowadays and I made these drawings.

I imagine that Heather (Health) is super popular nowadays, but at the same time she suffers because people do things that are out of the norm for a truly healthy life. (Dangerous diets, dubious products, etc.)

Abby (Abundance) must be up to her neck in work, producing more and more! completely forgetting about the third world where they really need her.

Polly (Peace)... well I really don't know what would become of her, she just misses the 70's where she was in high demand.

And finally, Life, she surely continues with her work, despite how crazy the world is nowadays.

I like to imagine that in their past, they were sworn rivals of the horsemen , however now they are more like "friendnemies" who, although they do not understand each other 100%, understand that they need each other to be who they are.

Their individual relationship with each of the horsemen is something I still have not resolved hehehe.

Anyway. BYE.

[fedorasquidwithglasses]

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is like post apocalyptic mythology

This movie was amazing and has a hold on me.

Spoilers below

So, the whole thing comes off as a story about a demigod or folk hero story. So much of it is references to various mythologies, Christian, Greek, Norse, it’s quite amazing.

Christian; Furiosa is called a dark angel, the fifth horseman of the apocalypse, she’s got halo imagery in the posters. Demetus is followed by four bikers until his end, his four horsemen and he is the apocalypse. At the very end, there’s fruit of knowledge imagery with the five wives that Furiosa saves, but first she gives them the peach, the gift of knowledge.

Greek: The cyclops, the whole story being about trying and failing for years to get home like the odyssey, pretending to be someone you aren’t as a disguise for safety (adding with her pretending to be a boy being much like Achilles’s mother disguising him as a girl to protect him), she is this world’s Odysseus. She also escapes the underworld (the maggot farm) to continue her journey while being told death is a better option.

Norse: The crows, and Demetus’s fate of having a tree planted on him and growing, eating his flesh. As well as when Furiosa drops the water into his eye like the snake dropped venom in the same myth.

Now I probably missed some references, but there’s much more that’s just mythology

She comes from a place, a paradise that’s incomprehensible to some people in the story, and she was ripped away from it.

She escapes multiple fates, but also doesn’t escape some because she tries to go back to save people, her mother, Jack, the wives, and in Fury Road, the people of the Citadel.

She has a moment of death and resurrection.

She has a companion and mentor who helps her survive and she loses him. She meets an old face from her past in a moment before going into battle.

Then there’s Mad Max, who could be considered a folk hero, a name given to men who match the description of the cop who survived the apocalypse and went around helping. It’s quite possible that Furiosa and Fury Road happen long after the original Max is long dead, and the Max we see if a different one who takes the place of the original. In Furiosa’s death, he appears on the horizon, only his back and his stead are seen and it’s very reminiscent of the beginning of Fury Road. We don’t see him help her, but it’s implied he is why she ends up in the maggot farm. He appears both as the mysterious folk hero leading her to where she needs to go, both in this and Fury Road, but also almost like the Reaper or Chiron, there to take her to the underworld and leave her to it. He doesn’t resurrect her, she resurrects herself.

All this is what makes the parts of the movie that seem too out there better. Because it feels so much like a myth or a folk tale that you can forgive the parts that make no sense. The whole story is being told to us, there’s a narrator at the end who even mentions the possibility of the ending being changed because it wasn’t good enough, from her just shooting him through his child’s toy, the same one he gave her then ripped from her, to her killing him in the same way he killed Jack, the first person to truly want to help her, to finally, the tree straight out of norse mythology with a forbidden fruit mixed in.

It was amazing.

[pupyuj]

milan yujin looks so hot sexy and everything it drives my mind into an overide like SHE LOOKS SO MOMM- [GUNSHOTS] anyway ahem need to comPOSE myself before i actually go crazy she looks like shes gna step on me but....i mean just a thought but what if she wanted us to step on h- [ANOTHER GUNSHOT]

🪿🪿

varsity yuj, either way yuj, milan yuj, and love dive yuj are MY four horsemen of the apocalypse okay I DO NOT PLAY ABOUT THEM and milan yujin.......... i need her in so many ways....... anyways here's some food—

i know milan yuj is very mommy core yes BUT WALK WITH ME... her going to those events looking expensive and sexy but then coming home to you and immediately turns back into your cute, starry-eyed, lovesick puppy girlfriend?? in truth, these events only exhaust her... so she quickly melts into your arms when you caress her hair and tell her that did a good job... that's all she needs to hear to completely submit to you 🤭💞

fr moves like a puppy tho bcs as soon as you pamper her, yujin would be all over you! following you around, being so clingy, kissing you everywhere, never being able to take her hands off of you... see, on days like this, yujin would try to annoy you to get fucked roughly and blow off some steam but she wanted to be babied that day 🥺 cuddling to your side while you're both sat on the couch, hugging your arm against her chest and tugging you ever now and again bcs you were in a phone call with a friend and she hated it sm 💔 she missed you! you two were supposed to have quality time together!

"babe," yujinnie would whine :(( looking up at your with her glossy eyes and small pout, she's the cutest! "please?" and she suddenly has your only free hand on her boob?? but you were never one to be swayed easily so you’d ignore her… but then she’s sitting on your lap, hugging you and grinding on your thigh like a needy pup 🥺🥺 “please… i missed you so much.” she’d say in your ear and really that was all you’ll need to end the call and indulge in whatever yujinnie wanted 🥰

yujin loves to put on this cool and charming leader act to show everybody that she’s capable of being responsible and she is! but you like it better when she lets loose ☺️ ‘lets loose’ as in having her leader persona completely crumble as she rides your fingers desperately for hours on end 🤭 and ykw yujin’s annoying ass definitely calls you ‘mommy’ for shits and giggles on a normal, non-horny day but if she’s feeling needy enough you’ll pull a couple of those out of her while fucking her… and it sounds way too good in your ears that you wouldn’t want to stop until she’s a mess 😵‍💫

“mmhn..! m-mommy, more please… i love you, mommy…” she knows all the right things to say to rile you up 🤭🤭 yujin loves staring at you while you fuck her… loves that dark look in your eyes that only makes her more aroused that she should… and she’d take whatever you give her for however long you want her to! 🥺 not at all resisting or asking to stop bcs a thing she loves more than looking hot and in charge is being taken care of by her lovely gf 🤤

[nepthys-merenset]

I got this idea for Dmitry and Lane's first kiss in my head, and basically couldn't rest until I got it out of my head. Sooo...here you go--my first fanfiction in literal years. Enjoy my delulu dreams!

Title: "A Search for Understanding"

Pairing: Lane x Dmitry [Heaven's Secret: Requiem]

Word Count: 1,595

Rating: T

Taglist: @rc-catalog

TW: Mild blood, mutual roughness.

“Sit.”

His keen blue eyes tracked her every movement as his voice, cold as ice, shattered the silence in the room. She closed the door gently, as if she could appease him by treating his office with care, and crossed the room, sinking into the chair in front of his desk. He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest, surveying her silently. Waiting.

Unconsciously, her eyes swept over the desk. Spartan in its cleanliness, it showed that Dmitry—the General, she corrected herself, she had no right to familiarity with him—truly was a military man through and through. Three manila file folders, a letter opener, and a lamp were the only items on its surface.

Her gaze lingered on the letter opener.

Just in case.

***** 

Dmitry had been a military man all his life, long before hellfire rained from the sky and the Horsemen of the Apocalypse walked the earth. The structure made sense to him—added order to his life. As the cataclysms worsened, military discipline and protocol went from rule of law to suggestion to mere relics of the past, but vestiges of the chain of command remained. He clung to the remnants, the last bits of his old life, even as his squad dwindled.

Some deserted, deciding to spend their remaining days with their families. Others were killed. Still more simply vanished, lost to the frozen wasteland.

The files of three such soldiers, their careers tersely summarized in manila folders, lay on his desk. One, he would unseal and finally label “killed in action” when he finished with Lane. Two others were still labeled “missing in action,” a hopeful gesture that he found increasingly inappropriate with every passing day.

He leveled his gaze at Lane. Things had made sense until that goddamn angel had pulled her from the Rift and forced him to save her life. No matter what new nightmare the apocalypse brought, no matter what thinly veiled resentment the immortals showed him on a daily basis, the chain of command between him and the human members of the squad made sense.

He was responsible for Anna, Greg, Lester, Nick, Noah, and the rest of the squad, and he trusted without question that they would obey him. That they respected him as a leader and wouldn’t turn on him.

But you—I can't trust you.

Lane unsettled him. Confused him. He found himself studying her often, trying to find meaning in her fleeting expressions and subtle glances. Sometimes, he could have sworn he saw a glint of red in her eyes, but he forced that thought down whenever it came to him. That was impossible, and besides—he couldn’t possibly be watching her closely enough to notice a thing like that.

Clearing his throat to attract her attention, he flicked the file on top of the pile open and roughly turned it in her direction. “Noah’s file. Years of immaculate service.”

A quick glance—brown, he noticed—before she looked down at the file. His gaze wandered to her lips, following their minute movements as she read.

Stop it.

“No issues worth documenting with any other squad members. And you claim he suddenly attacked you and Boris Romanov with a knife.”

More silence. She only frowned and shook her head slightly, as if to say, I already told you everything.

He cracked, slamming his open palm down over the file. “Explain yourself! What happened in that room?”

She looked at him fleetingly, before her gaze turned left, towards the letter opener—

My gun. She went for my gun the last time—

A quick rustle of fabric as she moved, and he exploded into motion, reaching for her.

*****  

One push.

One push, and she would have the letter opener and her freedom. She launched herself upwards, out of the chair and onto the desk. One knee landed on the desk, the other foot planted firmly on the floor as she grasped wildly for the letter opener.

Her hand closed over it and she brought it to his neck just as his hands closed, viselike, over her wrists. She froze, her hand trembling as the vein below the letter opener pulsed with life.

One push and the life of the man who had saved hers would end.

Indecision paralyzed her. She would be free, but she would be alone. Without the one man who had managed to read her like a book and given her a place in this new world, however begrudgingly.

The blade shook, drawing blood. Her eyes strayed downward.

Red, she noticed. Not like mine.

Unwilling to either continue or relax her grip, she raised her eyes, meeting his cold blue stare. His hands loosened on her wrists but didn’t fall. There would be bruises tomorrow. Of that much, she was sure.

“You could do it,” he murmured, barely moving his lips. His life was in her hands, just as the key to unlocking her past could be in his. “But where would you go from there?”

Anywhere. Or nowhere.

She couldn’t say why she dropped the letter opener, or if it was even a conscious decision. Maybe it was a decision spurred by her longing for connection. Maybe it was the ephemeral memory of the night he’d helped her with her work. Or maybe it was her lost humanity, locked deep below layers of confusion and apathy. But regardless of reason, the blade slipped from her fingers, clattering to the desk with a lingering sense of finality.

Something had changed between them.

They moved as one, both filled with longing—one to understand why she couldn’t take that final step towards freedom, the other to understand why she was the one thing that disrupted the painstakingly maintained order of his life.

He stood, locking his arms underneath her as she raised her other leg, kneeling on the desk. Kicking his chair aside, he turned, pushing her roughly against the window as they thought, unaware, in sync—

I need to understand you.

Her hands tightened around his neck, bringing more blood—red—to the surface. As his life flowed over her fingers, their eyes met—brown and blue. Keen, both searching, both beginning to find what they sought. Answers.

There was nowhere else to go. The room was filled with a sense of inevitability as their lips crashed together in a demanding kiss. She gasped, a tiny little noise, as warmth flowed through her. Her fingers, sticky with his blood, tingled as she locked her hands behind his neck and forgot herself in his embrace.

Is this what it was like before? Before the Rift?

She felt like she was closer to understanding what she had lost—what she may have experienced before those three years had vanished from her life. In his arms, she felt the closest to alive than she had since Cain had pulled her from the Rift. Like a person who actually mattered to someone.

He grunted, adjusting his grip as her back rubbed against the cool glass behind her and her legs wrapped around his waist. He bit her lip sharply. Blood trickled down her chin as she gasped again, tangling her hands in his hair and pulling once, twice. First experimentally, then with force. All the while, their searching lips moved against each other.

A deep, appreciative sound rumbled through the General as he turned again, thrusting her back onto the desk without care. Blood dripped onto the covers of his missing soldiers’ files, marring his perfectly kept records. He didn’t care. He needed to understand her, and he knew he was getting closer.

One arm swept out, clearing the desk, and the lamp flew to the side and shattered against the wall. Consciousness returned along with the crash, loud and abrupt.

With a groan that felt like acknowledgement of the madness that had gripped them, Dmitry pulled back. Lane fought for breath, touching the blood on her chin. Both stared at the broken lamp, its shards glinting reproachfully in the dying sunlight.

What have you done?

He was still the man whose orders she may have to defy one day, the man she may have to betray eventually, to unlock the mysteries of her past.

She was still the woman who may have caused the disappearance of two of his soldiers.

And he was still her superior officer, a man with no order in his life except for the chain of command. His only remaining oath as a soldier.

She hardly dared to move, but she still slid from the desk, and they stepped away from each other. Her hand over her mouth, his hand on his neck. Breathing hard, eyes cautiously trained on each other. Their connection was undeniable, unavoidable, but the distance seemed insurmountable.

He deliberately looked away from her and said flatly, “we’ll discuss this later.” In a vain attempt to convince her that he meant her squadmate’s disappearance, he gestured at Noah’s file, askew on the floor, before dismissing her. “Go back to the estate.” 

She didn’t believe him—she knew he wasn’t thinking about Noah right now—but she grasped at his words like a drowning woman would at a life preserver. She wasn’t ready to explore what had happened, either. But even as she agreed, doubt swirled in her mind. Was he her barrier, or her key?

“Yes, General.”

As she left the room, she glanced behind her. Dmitry dropped heavily into his chair, his head falling into his hands. Light reflected off of the bloody letter opener, still lying just out of his reach, and the door closed behind her.

They would have to continue searching for answers later.

[imagine-darksiders]

Eden's Heir, chapter 5 - First Blood

Darksiders, War X Reader X Strife.

--------

“What is this place anyway?”

Standing at the edge of the iron bars that stretch like rot-black teeth across the platform's surface, War raises his head at your question, letting his eyes roam sideways to cast a surreptitious once-over of the human hovering anxiously just a few paces to his left.

Skin that he now knows is thin as a sheet of parchment glistens with sweat, and your strange, expressive eyes flit about the cavern on a constant search for danger. You certainly are a jumpy little thing, the Horseman decides, regarding the soft, pink tongue that darts out to wet your lips for the umpteenth time. Not that his brother's reckless stunt helped much.

“If…” Your voice trails off and your body turns stiff as Strife brushes past you to circle the grate, his helm tipped down at the light glowing under the bars.

Once he’s moved beyond your immediate vicinity however, your limbs slacken by a notable margin, something that doesn’t go unseen by War, who doubts it slips his brother’s attention either.

“If it’s a dungeon… then, where are the guards?” you finish, eyeing the emptiness with new sense of unease. Then again, perhaps guards weren't deemed necessary here, what with the open space, the towering ceiling of rock bearing down on your head and the inescapable moat of lava surrounding the platform with no conceivable way off. Those factors alone might be adequate to deter any unwanted trespassers. They sure as hell would have deterred you if you weren't bullied here by two Horsemen who wouldn't take no for an answer.

With a gentle clinking of his bandolier, Strife comes to a halt on the opposite side of the iron bars and returns his full attention to you, studying you briefly before he starts to swivel his head about, copying your inspection of the chamber.

“Mm… That was starting to cross my mind as well,” he admits, shooting a blink-and-you-miss-it glance at his brother. He knows his fellow Horseman’s frosty glare well enough to recognise that War had been thinking along the very same lines.

Good. So they’re both on edge.

Truthfully though, neither of them were expecting you to notice. You’re more observant than War was prepared to give you credit for, at least.

“Plenty of space for a fight,” Strife points out. And with that thought now at the forefront of his mind, he starts to sidle back around the edge of the grate as inconspicuously as he can, none-too subtly drawing closer to you whilst pretending – poorly – that he isn’t moving in your general direction.

Somehow, War’s brows knit together even more firmly across his forehead.

For a Horseman who was, only minutes ago, very blasé about your safety, Strife certainly seems concerned about the distance between you now.

Unimpressed by his brother’s odd behaviour and borderline boyish curiosity regarding a human, War simply brushes it from his mind and instead lowers his chin to gauge the sturdiness of the grate. It looks, in a word, durable. Probably even unbreakable… For anyone other than the Red Rider.

The softly glowing light that emanates from within comes from nothing more than a small, pink crystal, floating in the gloom of its subterranean cell just near enough to the top of the grate that he could simply reach in and slide it through the bars. He could… if his gauntlets weren’t twice the width of the gaps.

A quick glance confirms that even Strife’s hands wouldn’t fit.

Fine. Brute force was always more their style anyway.

Flexing his metal fists, War starts to bend down, reaching out and wrapping his metal fingers around two of the bars, muscles clenched, ready to test their strength.

But no sooner has he secured a grip against the solid iron than a distant, but very unbidden sound floats over the gurgle of lava and drifts into his well-attuned ears, faint, but audible enough to serve as the forewarning he’s been expecting ever since he, his brother and their unwilling tagalong arrived.

Flinching, you jerk back a step as War suddenly and without preamble wrenches himself upright and twists towards you until he’s sending a rock-ribbed glare right over the top of your head, his steely eyes trained on the far side of the platform.

In an instant, Strife has followed his brother’s lead, turning his armoured back to you and straining his own ears to hear anything above the lava murmuring its course through the mountain.

“What’s the problem?” he asks, stepping backwards until his heels nearly tread on the hem of your dress, prompting an indignant noise from you that goes ignored, “Heard somethin’?”

His question remains unanswered for several, terrible beats, during which your pulse makes a steady rise from thumping to jackhammering.

At last, War narrows his eyes and grumbles, “Perhaps…”

He doesn’t mention that he’s been hearing things ever since you all set foot in this accursed keep, nor how suspicious it is that in travelling through the halls and chambers, there hasn’t been a single glimpse of another life.

Nostrils flaring, he grunts to catch his brother’s attention and adds, “Keep your guard up. Demons have eyes and ears everywhere.”

Strife wasn’t wrong when he noted that there’s plenty of space in here for a fight…

There’s plenty of space for an ambush too.

“Demons!?” you squeak, kneading the chain strap of your bag between white-knuckled fists, “You mean there’s more?”

“Yeah kid. A lot more. Whole Hell of a lot.” Strife spares a chuckle at his own joke, doing little to assuage your trepidation.

For a second, as War watches you toss his brother an exasperated look, you nearly manage to appear half as unimpressed as he does, something the giant admittedly takes a bit of vindication in.

“Stick to knock-knock jokes,” you suggest, swallowing thickly and eyeing the ledges, “They’re funnier.”

You know something is wrong – very, very wrong – when Strife suddenly has nothing witty or inflammatory to say in response.

With a gulp, you try leaning sideways to see past the armour-clad Horseman, more than a little perturbed that they’re both aiming a narrow glare in the same direction, both of their shoulders locked back like rearing vipers.

Just as you start to get the sinking feeling that you’re missing something extremely vital, a resounding growl suddenly spills out of War’s boxcar of a chest right behind your ear, forcing his lips up over his teeth and just about scaring the living daylights out of you. Whipping your head over a shoulder, you find him standing barely a foot from your back, near enough that his armoured chest takes up the entirety of your view.

How the Hell had he moved so close without you hearing it?

You wrench your mouth open to ask why the Hell he thinks making loud, unexpected noises is necessary when you’re already wound up tighter than a miser’s purse, but before you can utter a single syllable, War’s unconventional noises become the least of your worries.

From out of absolutely nowhere, the entire cavern explodes into a dreadful cacophony of chitters, high-pitched snarls and yips that send you ducking your head instinctively, tossing it back and forth with wild abandon to try and pinpoint the source of the sounds.

“What the Hell!?” you bleat, alarmed that you struggle to hear your own voice. Somewhere below the awful orchestration, the platform shudders, and a new noise emerges, the scrabbling of numerous claws frenetically fighting for purchase on a sheer rock-face.

“Ah, there it is,” Strife’s muffled voice cuts through to you over the ruckus, “Bout time the welcoming committee arrived.”

“What!?” you blurt, feeling for all the world like a record stuck on repeat, “What is that!? What’s going on!?”

Neither Horseman responds, which, you suppose, doesn’t much matter, given the answer helpfully reveals itself to you just moments later.

Louder and louder, closer and closer, the jaw-clenching clamour closes in on you from all sides of the platform until finally, just as you raise your hands to press them over your ears… the cavern is plunged into a shocking and unexpected silence. And your heart just about drops out of the bottom of your shoes.

Everything remains in a state of inertia. Nothing moves. The Horsemen don’t seem to waver an inch, even with their hands poised statuesquely on the hilts of their respective weapons. And you don’t move a muscle either. Even the breath stays trapped in your lungs, turning hot and stagnant as the seconds crawl by.

War and Strife stand on either side of you, each facing the far end of the platform.

Squinting around latter of the two, you train your eyes at the distant drop off, both trying and dreading to see what they’ve seen.

And then, slightly to the left, something hauls itself up and over the ledge.

You can’t help yourself. You wish you could stay as stoic and unaffected as the bristling giants, but you’re just too human, too fraught and unprepared, and your nerves are too shot to clench down on the muscles of your throat and stop the startled exclamation from bursting out of you.

“WHAT THE FUCK!?”

Strife and War visibly jump at your outburst.

Standing before you on the edge of the platform, supported by two stumpy legs, is a creature plucked straight from the pages of a horror novella. Eyes of the same liquid fire that churns far below you leer out of their sunken sockets, luminous against dark, charcoal scales. You stare back at it agog, reminded first and foremost of some fanged, hairless ape with arms too long to suit its rotund little body, and a torso that feeds directly into an oversized chin, completely forgoing any semblance of a neck.

Despite its diminutive stature putting it at least a foot shorter than you, the beast sports a jaw large and wide enough to fit your entire head between fangs that jut from blackened gums like crooked stalagmites.

You think you might just pass out. Hopefully you’ll wake up when this is all over.

Through the gaps of its scaly underbelly, a burning light spews forth, orange and red and scalding like the glow in its bulging eyes. It’s mouth cranks open, and at the back of its throat, that same light seems to emanate from somewhere deep down inside its guts, as if the thing has just swallowed a bellyful of lava.

“Holy shit,” you croak, ungluing your tongue from the roof of your mouth.

Despite your hushed tone, the thing’s ragged ears twitch towards you and it lowers its head – and half its body – to jeer across the platform at you, arms splayed wide, and claws extended in threat. And then, as if you weren’t already on the verge of losing your mind, the damn thing laughs.

At least you think it laughs.

The sound that gurgles from the back of its glowing throat reminds you more of tyres on a gravel driveway.

“What in the name of god is that thing?” you whisper, secretly glad that there’s a wall of living armour standing between you and it.

“An imp,” Strife replies darkly, “And if there’s one thing you gotta know about imps-“

“-There’s never just one,” War finishes in a snarl.

As if that’s just the cue they’ve been waiting for, the cavern comes alive once more as the caterwauling starts up again, and all around you, to your left, right and even to your rear, a surging horde of those same, stocky beasts come scrambling over the lip of the platform.

Using meaty fists tipped with claws, they heave their robust bodies up, growling and chirping in excitement, their too-large fangs protruding from exposed, glistening gums.

In a perfectly rational manner, you let out a spineless shriek and whirl yourself around to face those hovering behind you, your heels clacking noisily on the stone underfoot. “Holy shit, they’re everywhere!” you gasp, so fixated on the ‘imps’ that you’ve all but backed up into the front of War’s bulwark of a leg without even realising it.

In the span of a few seconds, you find yourself utterly surrounded on all sides by a dozen… no, two dozen of the little beasts. Maybe more.

Unseen by you, War and Strife share a quick but meaningful look over the top of your head.

In a moment of clarity that often precedes their numerous battles, an understanding passes between the apocalyptic beings, a unified acknowledgement conveyed in the shadows lining War’s stone-like features and Strife’s hard, determined stare.

Your small, helpless shape huddling against a leg nearly as tall as yourself, is enough to spark a blaze in both their chests.

Together, without a word passing from one to the other, the Horsemen suddenly spring into action.

You nearly topple over backwards when the leg you’d been pressed against abruptly disappears as War spins on his heel and places his spine to you, mirroring his brother’s stance. Chaoseater’s dark blade glints in the firelight as it swings in a wide arch from the Horseman’s back, over his shoulder and finally out in front of him, held at the ready in one, powerful gauntlet.

At the same time, Strife’s revolvers are out of their holsters faster than you can blink.

Hauling them up, he levels his sights at the imps and takes a slow, measured step backwards, then another, glowering menacingly as he all but corrals you into the meagre space between their armoured legs.

You’d probably be more concerned about having a pair of Horsemen bearing down on you like this if your attention hadn’t been snagged by another figure looming out of the darkness of the pathway you’d just been thrown down from.

In swiftly mounting horror, you lift your eyes to track the newcomer as it draws closer to the precipice.

You might not have even noticed it amongst the rabble of demons clamouring at the edges of the platform. After all, you’re currently surrounded on all sides by two dozen snarling, chittering beasts, what’s one more card on the table?

But the newcomer has one, unignorable facet that distinguishes it immediately from the imps…

… It has to stand over ten feet tall.

All the moisture dries up on your tongue, and you realise with a punch to the gut that neither of the Horsemen have yet noticed the figure looking down on you from above.

The shadowed escarpment grants you no clues as to its immediate features. But the sheer size… the implied weight that sends loose pieces of stone tumbling from the bottom of the overhang and out of sight as the creature clomps heavily up to the edge…

It cuts a broad silhouette. Wider than a car. Wider than a bus. And taller than Strife and War combined.

“Uh, guys?” you whisper hoarsely, your lungs as dry and empty as a dead lakebed.

The colossal shape crouches, and whatever hope you might have had at getting out of this in one piece is shattered like glass on a marble floor.

With a physics defying kick of tree-trunk legs, it jumps.

War and Strife turn their heads just in time to witness the sinister figure leap from the edge of the overhang, hurtle across the space the Horsemen – and you – had just cleared, and land with a resounding ‘boom!’ on the platform with enough force to send shockwaves rippling outwards through the solid stone underfoot.

You’re almost shaken right out of your heels by the impact, barely sparing yourself a tumble by grabbing the edge of War’s steel faulds and hauling yourself upright again, not even budging the Horsemen an inch. If he cares at all, he doesn’t react, and you could almost believe your strength is so insignificant to him that he didn’t even feel you use him as leverage at all.

Straining your neck back, you take your first proper look at the beast that just threw itself down here with you…. And then you nearly collapse all over again.

You thought it looked big up on the escarpment, but seeing it now a mere dozen feet or so in front of you, you couldn’t have underestimated its size more dreadfully if you’d tried.

“This isn’t happening,” you ramble to yourself, eyes bulging in their sockets as you tip your head back to take in the gruesome sight towering over you, “Please God, tell me this isn’t happening.”

Not that you really believe a god had any hand in making this scary son of a bitch.

The monstrous creature walks like a man, upright and bipedal, with swollen, musclebound arms and a small head perched upon its neck. But there, the differences diverge. Dull, leathery scales the colour of rust shine under the firelight, entirely hairless like the imps. Its immense bulk is supported by strong, digitigrade legs that bend inhumanly at the knees and ankle, carrying it forwards as it tromps noisily across the stone towards you.

Roving your stare up the length of its body, you audibly gulp at the sight of two, inverse wings protruding from somewhere between its robust shoulder blades, a layer of bulging fat stretched between the bones like a membrane to evoke the twisted image of a gargantuan, oversized bat.

From the top of its skull, a pair of horns sweep forwards in threat, black as charcoal and pointed at their tips.

Perfect for impaling or goring, you note with a swirl of dread.

But perhaps worst of all, more-so than the bear-trap jaws and the honest-to-god Morningstar fused to the end of a powerful tail, is the weapon it carries in one of its meaty fists that makes War’s sword seem comically small in comparison.

It looks like some sort of club. Albeit one made entirely of metal, with spikes protruding from rotating cylinders that churn mechanically as the beast spins them idly with its free hand, showing off a nauseating array of skulls engraved in the surface.

Well, if you weren’t dead before, you soon will be.

As if the demon weren’t already unconquerable enough, everything above its rotund waist is protected by a layer of medieval, grey armour, which begs the question; What could possibly be out here that would prompt a beast like this to wear armour?

You’d wondered the same about War and Strife when you took a moment to consider them properly.

There’s always a bigger fish…

And if there is a merciful god in this ever-expanding universe, you can only pray to it that the fish don’t come any bigger than this.

You can’t tear your eyes off the demon – for a demon it must be - not even as War takes a deliberate and unexpected step in front of you, obscuring you from its sight, but leaving your flank exposed. The doesn’t stop you from peeking around his side of course, quaking with each of its footfalls as you gape up at those crushing teeth.

Imps scatter left and right as their apparent champion tromps a path through their ranks, defying any to get caught underfoot.

Then, with its armour clanking and its bulbous tail swinging lazily from side to side, the beast lumbers to a halt, nostrils flared with interest.

Suddenly, that massive, terrible jaw falls open and –

“Horsemen.”

A voice as deep as Earth’s molten core booms out of the demon’s throat, buzzing through your chest and spreading from the tips of your fingers to the soles of your feet.

Honestly, you hadn’t expected it to be able to talk…

At your side, Strife shifts his weight, muttering a foreign, gruff word under his breath, his eyes narrowed so thinly, they only permit a crack of golden light to shine through. His guns remain poised at some of the imps, but you’ve no doubt they could easily be redirected at the slightest provocation.

“I’m glad you decided to drop by,” the monster continues, its booming voice rivalling War’s for volume, low and rough as if it’s spent a lifetime gargling rocks, “My pets were starting to get hungry.”

On cue, the imps perk up with gleeful snaps of their teeth, eyeing you greedily between the bridling Horsemen.

Breathing out a quiet whimper, you’re so entrenched in staring at the larger creature that you don’t even register War squaring his stance, sliding one of his legs back to cover your exposed flank.

“Oh yeah, they look real famished,” Strife drawls, his eyes sweeping the room continuously, “Bet I can guess what’s on the menu…”

Gnashing his teeth impatiently, War brandishes his sword and raises his voice to issue a thunderous command. “Give us the artifact, demon! Or I shall be the one feeding you and your pets to my blade!”

In his hand, Chaoseater thrums eagerly in anticipation.

Meanwhile, still trying to swallow your heart, you don’t dare speak, petrified that you might draw attention to yourself, but even so, there still exists the smallest part of you that vies to apply some sort of order to this circumstance, an explanation or – Hell – just a plain old escape plan. You’re not in the know here, you’re completely out of your depth. You realise, with some ironic twist of fate, that you have little choice now but to trust these two, unpredictable Horsemen, because in a situation that spans entire universes beyond your understanding, you have to look to them to know what comes next.

Peeling your tongue off the roof of your mouth, you manage to squeak out a thin, reedy, “What… what do we do?”

At the sound of your voice, Strife’s helm twists ever so slightly over his shoulder to send you a fleeting glance, only to immediately do a double take, his scowl lifting as he catches a glimpse of your haggard face and glistening lashes.

Creator... Did you always look that small?

“…Hey,” he utters, his voice a note gentler in addressing you, “Just sit tight, Sweetheart. We’ll take care of this.”

Startled by the unexpected softness, your eyes snap sideways, blinking desperately up into his.

You want to believe him, so, so badly. Because if they can’t fend off these demons, then you haven’t got an ice-cube’s chance in Hell of getting back to your father, or Earth at all, for that matter.

But even you can see how awfully the odds are stacked against you.

Not only are the Horsemen outnumbered, but they’re also outsized, outgunned, and outmatched in every conceivable way. All of this, you convey in your pinched brows and clenched teeth, practically broadcasting your doubt to Strife, who meets it with his own gaze, steady and fearless, everything you’re not.

You still don’t understand why he and his brother dragged you here, nor why they’d bother to keep you alive.

Who are you to them?

Who are humans to them?

“Oh…?” That dreadful, rumbling cadence utters, drawing Strife’s furious glare back into place once more as the demon inhales deeply through its nostrils, exhaling sparks of fire. “That smell…”

You see the Horsemen physically tense around you. War’s shoulders nearly double in size as if he’s making a concerted effort to appear larger than he is, and a reverberating growl vibrates the heart thrashing behind your ribcage.

Whipping forwards again, you dare to poke your head a little further out past War’s faulds, only to immediately lose the colour in your face, regretting your decision the moment it’s too late to withdraw it.

Your eyes have locked with the cold, jaundiced stare of the demon.

Trapped by the hypnotic allure of something that had, until now, been completely unknowable to you, you watch as it peels its black lips aside to unsheathe the extent of its jagged, gleaming fangs, spilling orange light from the back of its throat. “Ah,” it breathes, exhaling insidious satisfaction, “I see you’ve brought me an appetiser.”

Where your heart had been lodged in your throat, suddenly it plummets into your stomach again, sinking with a heavy stone of dread. You let out a gasp, only to have your choked exclamation drowned out by Strife’s sharp retort.

“Hey!” he yells, pulling the demon’s gaze away from you.

Snarling, it twitches its head in his direction, fangs bared in threat.

Undeterred, the Horseman lets out a throaty noise of his own and growls, “How about you pick on someone your own size?”

While you’re somewhat taken aback by his interference, you don’t really think you need to point out that neither he, nor his brother are anywhere near the size this demon boasts.

Apparently, it agrees with you.

Throwing its head back, it lets out a raucous, bone-chilling laugh, its fleshy chin wobbling with the force. “I will pick you from my teeth, Horsemen!” it chortles, lowering its head to flash a bestial grin, “And when I’m done with you, I’ll wash the taste of your flesh down with this tender morsel’s blood!”

The crimson and grey bulwark in front of you draws himself up, proverbial hackles rising with his boiling temper. The reverberation that spills from his chest is as inhuman as he is. 

Legs like jelly beneath your hips, you unconsciously reach out and grasp for the back of War’s faulds again, steadying yourself on the cumbersome armour.

Sucking a breath in through his teeth, Strife pretends to be pensive for all of a second as he bounces one of his revolvers and responds, “Ah. No. Sorry, big guy, but that’s not really gonna work for us. Y’see my brother and I-“ He notches his head sideways at War. “-Just agreed to keep an eye on the human, so it’s gonna make us look real bad if you go and kill her now.”

If War wasn’t so busy taking stock of the battle ground, he’d spare just a few seconds to slap a palm to his forehead.

All around you, the excitable chatter falls silent and still as each and every pair of demonic eyes swivel around to look directly at you.

The juggernaut’s crooked jaw twitches. “Did you say… human?”

A heavy weight seems to drape itself over the platform, bearing down on your head until the blood screams through your ears.

“Uhm…” Strife falters, his eyes darting from left to right until he at last lets out an eloquent, “Shit.”

Just as you start to wonder – again – why your humanity is such a point of interest, without warning, the demon hoists its weapon into one hand and aims the end of its bludgeon at you.

“KILL THE HORSEMEN!” it bellows at the top of its lungs, shaking the stalactites that dangle from the ceiling, “But leave the human to me.”

In response, the imps start to howl and bay like dogs on the hunt, slamming their fleshy fists against their chests whilst the demon turns its fetid gaze down to you once more, and you can’t do anything but watch on in horror as a thick, fat tongue slides out from behind its lips and sweeps across crooked fangs, leaving a trail of drool trickling down its chin. “I want to have the first taste.”

A pitiful noise falls out of your mouth, but once again, it’s swallowed by the sharp ‘click’ of Strife cocking the hammers back on his guns.

“Over my dead body,” he spits, then raises his voice and calls out to War, “You wanna take the big one!?”

Grunting in affirmation, the larger Horseman gives a roll of his almighty shoulders and huffs, “Gladly. It seems more fitting.”

“Why?” Strife quips, sending a sly grin at his brother, “Cause he’s mean and ugly?”

Curling his lip, War snarls at the smaller demons as they begin to rush forwards as one shrieking horde, ushered by the trumpeting of their master. “Yes, and you can take the imps,” he retorts, ramping up his volume as he breaks into a slow, forward charge that rips your hand from his faulds, building momentum with each, pounding footstep, “They’re loud and bothersome!”

Unleashing its most primal roar yet, the demon lurches into motion seconds later, following the weight of its head and horns as it lumbers towards a frontal collision with War, who meets its challenge with a battle cry so fierce, you wonder how it doesn’t rip the flesh from his throat.

“He can’t fight that thing!” you exclaim, incredulous. As much as you don’t like the surly giant, you’re not exactly vying to see him flattened by one swing of the demon’s fist. He might be your ticket out of here, after all. And if he goes down, there’s no way Strife could take on every demon in here and keep you alive.

You’re suddenly broken from your fretting when a towering, silver silhouette steps in front of you, filling War’s vacated spot with another wall of gleaming battle armour.

“Don’t worry about War,” Strife calls down to you over his shoulder, taking aim at two imps who have broken away from the ranks in the vain hopes of getting to you first, “He’s a professional, he does this all the time.”

You find it hard to imagine any profession where charging headfirst at a colossal demon is considered the norm, but then there are a lot of things about this world that fly straight over your head.

Around the edge of Strife’s armour, you can see the imps scurrying closer, and every synapse of your brain suddenly jolts, sending a shot of adrenaline down through your blood vessels, waking up your overwrought muscles and telling you to take flight.

That, of course, is when the first bullet is fired.

Instinctively, you yelp and duck your head as a veritable explosion sounds out across the chamber, amplified by the high ceiling and hard surroundings. Somewhere up ahead, an imp’s beady little eyes roll back into its skull, and it crumples to the floor, sporting a clean hole straight through the centre of its forehead.

“Holy shit,” you breathe aloud, privately impressed. But you hope he has more than one round in the chamber because there are a lot of –

‘BANG!’

Again, you flinch, while Strife’s arm barely jerks as another round erupts from one of the guns, this time finding its mark through an imp’s eyeball. Blood explodes out the back of its head, and your stomach lurches, forcing you to retreat behind Strife’s back again lest you start dry heaving all over the floor.

Swinging your gaze around, you blurt out a sudden shriek, thoughtlessly plastering your spine to the Horseman’s backside and slapping frantically at his leg, screeching, “Behind you!”

With a grunt of surprise, Strife flicks a look over his shoulder and sees the other half of the impish army swiftly closing in from the rear.

A second passes, the briefest interval in which he’s struck by the humbling realisation that you’re sticking close to a Nephilim for safety.

And then suddenly, Strife comes alive.

Deft fingers flex rapidly against the triggers of Mercy and Redemption as he sweeps them in a wide, graceful arc, squeezing round after round out through their chambers and into the heads of the oncoming horde. Vibrating with glee, Strife lets his muscles do the work. They remember the motions. He revels in the familiar buzz of tingling nerves and the roar of gunfire thrumming in his ears.

There isn’t even a second between one shot and the next. His torso twists lithely despite all of his armour to shoot over your head, taking out a line of imps in the span of a few seconds. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. The demons don’t even pause to take stock of their dead, too confident that their sheer numbers will be enough to overwhelm the Horsemen. They simply clamber over the one that falls in front and continue, salivating, mad with blood lust.

It’s almost too easy.

Strife tips his head back, yawning obnoxiously as he whips Mercy towards an imp that’s made it just a bit too close to the human for his liking. A blast to its gut is powerful enough to send it flying back into some of its brethren, knocking them off their stubby feet.

Yes, he’s big enough to admit that he might be showing off, just a little, but with the eyes of a fabled human on him, Strife can hardly help himself.

He has to resist the urge to glance down and check that you’re watching.

Unbeknownst to the Horseman however, you’re not so much impressed by the display as you are downright horrified. Mouth hanging ajar, you forget to breathe as you watch Strife move. Precise twitches of his arms and wrists bring another target into the firing line, minute adjustments that happen too quickly and too numerously for you to keep track of.

You remember watching some old Westerns with your father when you were very small, gathered in his favourite armchair to witness the skill of Hollywood actors who posed as gunslingers and desperados, each claiming to be the ‘quickest draw in the West.’ You used to believe you were seeing the best of the best, back before you grew older and learned that magic can easily be faked by special camera angles and cuts and fine editing.

But even if it was real, even if all those actors and stuntmen were authentic and really could shoot a man’s dime out of the air blindfolded with one hand tied behind their back, they wouldn’t have held a candle to the skill you’re witnessing first hand.

Calm as an old oak tree and with the grace and power of a machine, Strife stands fast against the braying swarm, never missing his mark, never stopping to reload, never even flinching from the recoil.

In what has to be under ten seconds, Strife has thinned two dozen imps down to the last four, leaving scores of small, rotund bodies dotted around the chamber. The survivors don’t even slow as they reach him. You brace yourself, still cowering in the Horseman’s shadow as the imps launch themselves at you, their claws outstretched and unsheathed ready to slash, to fight.

… Only to end up having their skulls caved in by a bullet before they can even come close to scratching you or the Horseman’s armour, too stupid to break ranks and try to come at him from different angles. But even if they’d tried flanking him, you doubt they’d have had much more luck.

It’s over before it ever truly began.

The last of the imps drops dead to the floor, its forward momentum sending it skidding to a halt on the stony ground, inches from the toes of your heels.

 You almost fall over yourself stumbling away from it, cringing at the rivulet of blood that dribbles out between its teeth.

“See?” Strife boasts as he turns himself around to face you, flashing a cocksure grin down at you before he remembers it’s hidden behind his visor. Huh. Disappointing… Heaving a mental shrug, he carries on, “Nothing to it.”

Nothing to it, he says, as if you hadn’t just watched him massacre a small army without so much as a ‘by your leave.’

Strife seems to notice that your face is drawn back in trepidation instead of awe, and his grin falters slightly beneath his helm.

Breathing hard, you gulp past a stone in your throat and peer around the Horseman, jutting your chin at the demon currently trying to crush his brother into pulp.

“Uh, okay, sure - but what about him!?” you sputter.

Turning to look, Strife silently observes War’s attempt at getting in close enough to land a hit on the leathery behemoth. To its credit, the demon is far quicker on its feet that either of them seem to have anticipated.

To your astonishment, Strife lets out an honest-to-goodness chuckle and cups a hand around where you assume his mouth is, calling, “Having trouble, War?! Come on, I just killed like, fifty demons and you’re still on your first!?”

There were nowhere near fifty, and you wonder if he thinks humans don’t know how to count.

Your head cranks around to stare at him, aghast. “Strife!” you exclaim, his name sounding awkward and unnatural on your tongue.

“What?” comes his breezy reply.

Setting aside the fact that he’s probably distracting War, you’re more astounded that he’s just… standing here, cracking jokes whilst his own brother tries to fend off an adversary nearly three times his size.

If it were your father there, fighting on his own… you’d….

“That-!” you splutter, throwing an arm out and gesturing wildly across the platform, “That’s your brother!” Christ alive, how often have they been in these situations that such casual indifference is warranted?

Strife must see the abhorrence etched across your features because he’s quick to change tactics, realising that he isn’t impressing you by acting aloof.

Holding up his hands, still with a revolver clutched in each, he bobs them back and forth at you mollifyingly. “Okay, okay, take it easy,” he acquiesces, “I’m on it.”

Bemused that you’ve taken such a sudden, unexpected turn towards his brother’s safety, Strife spins neatly on his heel, pauses, then twists around once more to level a contrastingly stern glare down at you. You blink at the abrupt change, recoiling slightly as he extends one of his forefingers and points it between your eyes.

“Stay. Here,” he tells you firmly, no trace of a joke in this order.

“But-!”

“Ah!” he interrupts, “No buts! Just stay there and don’t move!”

In response, you lift your hands indicatively and give him a look that screams, ‘where the hell would I move to?’

Satisfied, the Horseman nods once, and then he’s off, jogging briskly across platform towards the pair of titans battling it out.

Another of the demon’s blows misses War, striking the ground where he'd been standing seconds before, and shaking the platform under your feet.

Hovering here, helpless and useless, you bring your hands up to your chest, wringing them over one another, suddenly feeling a lot more vulnerable out in the open sans a Horseman to act as a buffer.

It’s a selfish thing to think, that your first instinct is to see them as a pair of shields against the horrors of this place, but you’re well past pretending to be a selfless person. It’s easy to act heroic when situations that require a hero aren’t foisted upon you. Survival should be paramount for you now.

You won’t leave your father alone on his death bed.

You won’t leave him without saying goodbye.

Stumbling backwards away from the grate at the centre of the platform, you allow your tired feet to carry you as far from the battle as possible, keeping your gaze locked on the Horsemen as you pick your way blindly around the decimated corpses of the imps until at last, you stop, casting a brief glance over your shoulder to find you’re as close to the ledge as you dare to get. On the corner, furthest from the fight, you watch the Horsemen with your stomach twisting itself into anxious knots.

“Need a hand!?” Strife shouts as he skids to a stop near the demon’s flank, raising Mercy and firing off a shot that ricochets off its metal helmet.

The beast’s head jerks forwards before whirling around to roar at its new opponent.

Quick as a whipcrack, Strife fires another two rounds, the twin retorts echoing around the chamber.

Wrenching its head to the side just in time, the demon manages to catch each bullet on its horns instead of its face. They bounce harmlessly off the solid bone, their casings falling to the ground with smoke trailing from the hollow ends.

Letting out a rumbling growl, War uses the momentary distraction to charge for its legs, aiming a lunge at the beast’s exposed belly.

It’s size, however, is deceptive. With just milliseconds to spare, the demon heaves itself backwards, retreating just out of range of the arching blade. In retaliation, it lifts its bludgeon high overhead and glares down at War, sparks flying from its maw when it bellows, bringing the long weapon down on a direct collision course with the Horseman’s skull.

Unseen across the platform, you slap your hands over your eyes, teeth bared in terrified anticipation.

War’s head snaps up to see the weapon rapidly bearing down on him, and merely curls his lip in response, more vexed than alarmed.

Muscles bunching, he suddenly kicks off on his boots and throws his body to the side, rolling over his shoulder and using the momentum to spring to his feet once more, further away from the beast, and not a moment too soon.

‘WHAM!’

With the force of an asteroid impact, the bludgeon crashes into the hard floor, exerting enough force to crack the rock and send splinters spiderwebbing out from the point of contact.

“Nice move!” Strife praises his brother, only to let out a short bark of shock when the demon swings its tail around towards him as it recovers from the missed blow.

Ducking his head, the huge appendage skims over him, so close that the softer under-scales ruffle the tips of his spiked hair.

“Shit!” he exclaims, eyes tracking the tail when it starts sweeping back towards him, leaving the Horseman with little else to do except throw himself to the ground, stomach first, flattening his body into the hard stone.

“Son of a…” Not his most dignified position…

Hopefully you didn’t see that…

Baring his teeth, he braces himself, waiting to feel the air rush past above him, and then, with a grunt, he rolls onto his side and raises the arm that isn’t pressed into the grit, firing several rounds at the underside of its tail.

A deafening howl erupts from the demon’s lungs as his bullets embed themselves into the spongey flesh, drawing forth thick, oily blood that spatters from the wounds and joins the imp blood on the stone slabs.

The demon snorts furiously through its nostrils, slamming the bulbous end of its tail against the ground in a way that promises retribution as it stumbles backwards, putting a little more distance between it and the Horsemen.

Unbeknownst to you and your unorthodox kidnappers, something has finally occurred to the brute.

Maybe it really is on the backfoot here.

It knows these Horsemen. Word travelled fast after the massacre at Eden, of how four Nephilim were able and willing to eradicate the rest of their species…

The demon had, perhaps foolishly, assumed that with only one half of a quartet, it would stand a chance. But one Horseman alone has already proven more of a challenge than it anticipated. The second, the one with the loud mouth, was supposed to be overwhelmed by the imps… Now that the pair of them have entered the fray though…

The demon’s twisted mind chugs into gear, cobbling together a desperate strategy. Its yellow eyes flit from the red-cloaked Horseman to the one toting guns who’s hauling himself to his feet, its nostrils opening wide in agitation.

It draws in a deep, ragged breath…

... And freezes.

Only for a second, mind. Plenty of time to process the scent whilst the Nephilim regroup.

Below the stench of brimstone, below the freshly spilled imp blood seeping into the stone underfoot, it catches that smell once again.

It’s mouth-watering.

Meat made tender by fear.

Forbidden meat. Exotic… Something no demon has ever had the chance to taste.

Its crooked jaws split open in a wide, cruel grin, and all at once, it whips its head around, beady eyes locking fast onto the tiny morsel wrapped in white, standing near the ledge.

‘There,’ it concludes, zeroing in on its unsuspecting little boon, ‘is how to gain the upper hand.’

Strife’s brows snap together when the demon’s entire demeanour shifts.

Picking himself up, he shares a glance with his brother on the beast’s opposite flank.

‘The Hell is it looking-‘

He connects the dots a few moments too late.

“Strife!” War bellows as the demon heaves its bulk around, away from the Horsemen, and there’s an unbidden hint of urgency in his tone, “The human!”

‘No,’ Strife mouths silently, looking beyond the demon to find you frozen near the platform’s edge, paralysed with fear.

Then, aloud, in a voice that grows stronger with each word, he growls, “No… No! NO!”

He’s moving before he’s even finished the last word.

Two sets of metal boots slam against the ground as two Horsemen hurl themselves into a breakneck gallop, tearing after their adversary as if a fire has been lit under their heels.

War’s hood topples back off his head, leaving his long, white-blonde hair to whip madly through the air behind him as he sprints, only slightly slower than his brother, whose guns are aimed at the demon’s retreating back.

“LEAVE HER ALONE!” Strife roars, unleashing a maelstrom of bullets that strike the tougher scales on its exposed legs, doing nothing to slow its forward charge.

Neither of them understands why there rises such a ferocious surge of rage at the prospect of the demon threatening their human charge, but regardless of why, War’s sigil scar still blazes hotly in the open air, streaking orange across his forehead, and Strife’s golden eyes burn like sparks off a blacksmith’s forge.

The unspoken agreement that had passed between them earlier, connects them again now.

You haven’t moved from your spot in the corner, hunkered down in a half crouch, half cower with your legs locked in place and a swirling, empty abyss carving a hole straight out of your stomach. Your entire body jumps with each of the demon’s footsteps.

It passes the grate, in long, loping strides, hurtling towards you at a breakneck pace, leaving you no time to gather your wits.

Strife’s little stunt lies forgotten in the past where it happened.

This is how you really die.

‘So much for getting back to dad,’ a small, sardonic voice whispers in the back of your mind.

Behind the demon, War puts on a burst of speed, rocketing past the grate and keeping his eyes locked on you like you've lost your mind.

Why are you just standing there?

For a split second, his priorities shift, and in an unprecedented turn of events, it’s his mission that takes a backseat.

Later, he’ll berate himself for allowing his composure to slip enough that he opens his mouth and aims a harrowing order in your direction.

“HUMAN!”

Your bulging eyes meet his across the platform.

“RUN!”

‘Run?’ you grimace, effectively shaken from your stupor by the sheer absurdity of his demand, ‘In heels?’

But it’s as if that one, deafening order had adequately unglued your legs from solid cement.

War hadn’t told you what will happen if you don’t run but you’re smart enough to parse the consequences for yourself.

Run, or die.

Not fantastic options, but you know for a fact which of the two you like less.

Giving your head a rough shake, you suck down a breath and clumsily gather up the front of your skirts as the demon extends one of its hands towards you.

Like a bullet, you turn to the side and start to run, haring off across the platform and cursing with each step you take in your tottering heels. The tender soles of your feet burn with the pressure of running in them, and you’re half tempted to kick them off in favour of fleeing barefoot, but that would take time. Time you’ve stupidly allowed yourself to run low on.

You can hear the demon bearing down on you like a runaway train, feel its sulphurous breath raging against the back of your neck. Bullets twang off the metal armour, and behind you, Strife hollers something which gets lost under the cruel laugh that erupts from the monster chasing you and reverberates through your chest.

The platform’s opposite corner is rapidly approaching.

Blinking through the sweat clinging to your brow, you pump your legs even harder, thighs already burning as you haul your ungainly dress along after you and will the demon not to tread on the back of it as it trails through the dust in your wake.

Suddenly, just as you come to the corner and start to push off on your right foot to dart left, a rush of air whooshes by, bringing with it thick, meaty fingers and claws that appear in your peripheral vision and reach past you, curling into your path.

You know as soon as they appear that the jig is up.

You’re too late to slam on the brakes.

Regardless, you try to stop yourself anyway, pushing your weight down into the toes of your shoes to come to an awkward, staggering halt. But, thwarted by your own momentum, your weight comes unbalanced, and you totter forwards, throwing your hands up to catch yourself as you topple right into the demon’s waiting palm.

Clammy, rugged fingers snap shut around your waist and legs, and you barely have time to gasp in shock before you’re unceremoniously wrenched off the ground.

Triumphant, the demon digs its heels in and brings itself to a clumsy stop at the edge of the platform, a writhing, whimpering human squeezed viciously beneath its crushing fist.

“Ha!” it barks, whirling to face the Horsemen and bringing its struggling prize up in front of its face.

Collectively, Strife and War come careening to a stop several yards from the demon, the former’s guns shaking with rage as he aims them at the brute’s skull, his fingers stiff on the triggers. He’d been microseconds away from firing when it turned. He hadn’t expected it to raise you up to cover its head, leaving Mercy’s sights trained with terrifying precision right at the sweat-streaked furrow between your brows instead.

There are tears pouring down your cheeks, your blunt nails scrabble uselessly at the closest, scaly knuckle, and something hidden deep down inside Strife’s soul starts to raise its sleepy head.

Grinding his teeth together, he eases his fingers off the triggers and spits a venomous curse, though he doesn’t lower his weapons.

“Coward!” War seethes at the demon, Chaoseater humming against his palm, “You would use a human as your shield!?”

With a chortle that raises the hackles of both Horsemen, it bares its fangs into a malicious grin and utters a single, chilling demand. “Lower. Your. Weapons.”

You give up on scraping your nails against its toughened hide and take to thrashing madly in its hold instead, a swathe of distressed grunts and bleats tumbling from your constricting throat. It’s like trying to fight your way out of a concrete coffin. The flesh on its palm is spongey, softer than the rest of the brute, but still inescapable. No matter how hard you try to kick your legs or twist your torso around, the colossal fingers don’t budge an inch.

‘Not like this!’ a frightened voice screams inside your head, ‘Not like this!’

The demon seems content to ignore you. The struggles of its prey are hardly a thing of concern now that it has you in its grasp. Of far greater concern are the two Nephilim bristling like hell hounds with their meal stolen out from under their noses.

Their weapons remain raised, and when neither of them makes a move to do as asked, the demon simply shrugs one massive shoulder and gives its hand a demonstrative flex.

The cry that’s punched out of you breaks apart halfway through, turning into a wet, choked gurgle as your ribs squeeze against your lungs. Head thrown back, your jaw stretches open around a silent plea for mercy.

Strife is the first to react.

It wounds him greatly to do so, but with an effort that physically aches, he lowers his guns until they’re pointed at the ground.

The pressure around your chest loosens by a fraction.

War’s face is set like stone as he glowers up at the demon from underneath his creased eyebrows, white hair cascading around shoulders that heave up and down with unmitigated outrage.

The demon merely raises one of its cragged brow ridges, peering at him, expectant.

“War,” Strife breathes.

His brother’s canines glint wickedly in the light.

Slowly, as if Strife had just asked him to pluck out his own eyes, War begrudgingly allows Chaoseater to drift down, its tip thudding against the stone in front of him.

Another inch of space opens up around you, enough for you to noisily suck down a greedy lungful of air, coughing and spluttering as you try to get your precious breath back.

Above you, the demon’s throaty voice growls over your head like a roll of thunder. “Now… Place your weapons on the ground.”

Collapsed over the demon’s forefinger, you half hear Strife bark, “You put her down first!”

Something shiny glints in the corner of your eye.

Shuddering around each breath you take, you roll your head to the side, mouth ajar, and spot a familiar, silver chain falling over your shoulder. It takes you a second to recognise the significance of it, yet when the realisation hits, it hits hard.

You still have your bag…

“You are in no position to bargain, Horseman,” the demon snarls, lashing its tail aggressively, ignorant of your eyes snapping open and your shivering heart giving a hopeful jump.

You still have your bag!

The tiny, silver lifeline dangles over the side of the demon’s index finger, the chain still hot against your bare neck. It isn’t much. Hell, it’s barely anything.

But right now, it’s the only thing you have to work with.

Suddenly frantic, you stretch your arms out and scrabble for it, grabbing the chain and yanking the whole thing towards you.

‘Please, please, please!’ repeats in your head like a mantra as you fumble with the clasp and throw open the lid, plunging your hand inside, digging for something – anything – you can use.

You’re just lucky the demon is so focused on the Horsemen that it only equates your sudden liveliness with renewed attempts to free yourself.

“How about a deal?” Strife pipes up, he and his brother equally oblivious to your discovery, “Demons like deals, right?”

In response, its scowl deepens, and it bares its teeth at him, unconvinced.

Undeterred, the Horseman forges ahead. “So how about this. You-“ He points a finger up at the overgrown demon. “-Let the human go… And we-“ Here, he gestures between himself and his brother. “- promise to kill you nice and quickly. Sound good?”

You don’t even hear the beast’s response, you’re so fixated on the contents of your bag.

Blinking hard to try and clear away the tears on your lashes, you peer down into your bag, shoving aside notes, lipstick, your phone-

Your phone!?

You nearly drop the whole bag in shock.

Of all the…

How!? How could you have forgotten you put your phone in the bag before you left for church!?

It’s less than useless in this situation, of course, but if you make it out of here alive…

A surge of adrenaline smacks you square in the chest, filling you with a much-needed boost of determination to get out of this bastard’s clutches.

Pushing the phone aside, you can finally see all the way to the bottom of the bag.

There!

Your gorge rises with terrified excitement.

A slim, tiny object sits in your bag’s depths, almost lost amongst all the other bric-a-brac, stainless steel, tapered to a point at its tip…

It’s not a knife, nor truly a weapon of any kind. But right now, it’s the best you’ve got.

Nearing the very end of your frazzled tether, you slip your trembling fingers around the metal nail file and pull it from the confines of your bag, clutching it inside your fist with the sharp point sticking out beneath your curled pinkie.

Wriggling around to face the soft, unarmoured flesh in the juncture where the demon’s thumb and forefinger connect, you fill your lungs with a hot, steadying breath, and raise your fist high above your head.

You’re about to pit a few inches of metal meant for filing nails against a demon of biblical proportions.

This will either be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done, or…

No. No, it’s only stupid.

Bravery is for other people, smarter people who would have figured a way out of this by now.

You’re just a desperate human who wants to go home.

Far below you on the ground, War’s eyes track movement near the demon’s head, and his sharp, blue gaze flies up to see your shaking arm poised high in the air above you.

Something small and silver flashes in the light, held in a vice-like grip between your tiny fingers.

Strife sees it just after his brother, and his jaw immediately goes slack.

The demon only sees your arm fall…

… And then all it sees is white.

A blinding pain sears up the length of its bulging forearm, forcing its head back to send a roar up at the stalactites quivering overhead.

Staggering backwards, the demon all but flings its hand open and allows its prey to tumble towards the hard ground with a yelp.

For a moment, all you know is the gut-wrenching sensation of gravity pulling you back down to the ground once again, and then, without warning, there’s a distant clatter of steel, and all of the air is knocked out of you for the second time in less than an hour by something brawny and powerful.

You’ve felt this before. Arms as thick and steady as tree trunks catch you before your back can hit the ground, stopping your descent in a manner that’s only slightly less jarring as it would be to crash into solid stone.

Your eyes fling open, and you once again find yourself blinking owlishly up into War’s rugged face, now completely exposed by the noticeable lack of his usual, scarlet hood.

Behind him, his sword lays patiently on the ground, dropped in favour of freeing up his hands to spare you from a bruised or broken spine.

He’s staring down at you with the same, open-mouthed shock you’re giving back to him. In a small, seldom visited corner of your mind, you realise that he’s a lot less terrifying without his hood.

“Nice… catch,” you wheeze breathlessly, and after a pause, you add, “Again.”

The sigil on his forehead flares brightly for a second as he inspects you from top to bottom, drawing in a breath like he’s about to speak.

Before he can utter a sound however, the platform around you judders under the power of the demon’s uproarious screech.

Wrenching his eyes up and away from you, the Horseman’s teeth snap together into a wordless snarl, and in another shocking turn, he promptly yanks you right underneath his chest, squashing you against armour that’s less forgiving than marble.

Wincing in discomfort, you nonetheless follow his line of sight until you find yourself staring up into the warped visage what might have been your murderer.

The demon’s eyes are rolling in their sockets, and although it might be small, you and the Horsemen can still make out a little splinter of metal jutting from the sensitive flesh at the base of its thumb.

Outraged, it uses the tips of its fingers to pluck your nail file from its wounded hand. A spurt of blood bursts from the wound once the metal is free of its confines, giving you a good indication of just how hard you’d shoved the implement into its skin.

Sparing the file a filthy growl, the demon cocks its arm back and hurls it spitefully to the ground, sending it skittering right over to the grate where it comes to a rest, the once silver blade dripping with unholy blood.

Rounding on you and War, the beast lets out a ferocious growl.

“You… You dare!?” it demands, raising its bludgeon, a fresh and frenzied hatred bursting into existence within its heartless chest. Blood spilled by a human - a creature so much lesser than itself - is a shameful humiliation that it doesn’t intend to let go unpunished. The only way to stymie the flow of its haemorrhaging pride is to kill you, ruthlessly, something that will bring it far more pleasure now than it would have before.

It will instil a fear in you so great, your human kin will know the terror of demon kind without having the privilege of meeting them.

Spine curved back, its arm reaches the apex of its swing, the bludgeon poised behind its head ready to come crashing down on top of you and a seething War.

It’s easy to forget about the long, pink scar trailing down the length of your arm in spite of the person who gave it to you clutching you against his broad, armoured chest. It’s easy to forget that War is supposedly a Horseman of the Apocalypse when there’s a creature here who has already shown so much more inclination to kill you than he has. For a moment, you’re not ashamed when you turn your head into his chest and twist your fingers tightly around the fabric of his cowl, tugging yourself as close to his silent safety as you can get. 

The Horseman jolts around you, somehow growing impossibly more solid, though whether that’s because of you or the giant club casting a shadow over his head, you couldn’t say.

You just don’t want to see your own death coming when it-

A single, deafening shot rips the air asunder, reverberating off the cavern walls.

The sound startles a sharp gasp from your mouth, and you can’t help but peek over your own shoulder to see that the demon’s body has gone stiff as a board.

It blinks once, the maniacal grin wiped clean off its face.

As you watch on in confusion and terror, slowly, from the centre of its forehead in the space between its rigid brows, a tiny bead of blood appears, blooming outwards like a rose unfurling crimson petals.

Still crushed against War’s chest, you stare up at the demon in disbelief, mouth flapping open and shut around words that refuse to come. From the corner of an eye, you see the light glint off silver armour as Strife lowers his smoking gun.

“Deal’s a deal,” he says gruffly, rolling a kink out of his shoulder, “Nice and quick.”

There’s something almost graceful in the way the demon starts to tip over backwards, its colossal weapon sliding from loosened fingers to plummet over the ledge and out of sight.

Its wielder doesn’t take long to follow suit.

Crumbling in on itself, its fleshy wings slump abruptly, as does its tail, and its beady, yellow eyes roll up into its skull as the brain gives out, severing any connection to its muscles. Gravity takes hold of the brute’s mass, and with an encouraging tug, it coaxes its prize down over the precipice.

Thousands of pounds of flesh are claimed in an instant. The demon’s feet slip out from under it, sending it toppling backwards into the pit, vanishing in the blink of an eye over the edge it had once held you upon so precariously.

In tentative silence, you and the Horsemen remain utterly motionless, your ears straining to hear over the high-pitched ringing that slowly fades with each passing second.

Then, at last, you hear a distant, muted ‘kersploosh,’ followed by the rather gruesome sounds of sizzling flesh and the near-satisfied gurgles of lava swallowing its latest victim.

Then, and only then, do the three of you at last breathe varying sighs of relief.

“That,” Strife remarks, turning towards you and his brother, hands planted squarely on his hips, “was awesome.”

If looks could kill, the one you shoot at him around War’s swollen bicep would bring the Horseman to his knees.

You don’t think you’ve ever disagreed with anyone so fervently in your entire life.

[verdemoun]

because i like to pretend every single character was as devastated by kieran's death as i was, i would like to take this opportunity to remind people that if you rescue tilly from the foremans after jack's party, miss grimshaw will mention kieran being missing and that she's going to send some boys out looking for him (screaming crying they DID look for him). but that leaves the question of who. based on who goes looking for arthur when he's away from camp too long, our choices are bill, charles or javier.

obviously, i think miss grimshaw is acutely aware of how much bill torments the poor boy and wouldn't send bill after him

if charles was sent looking for him he would've fucking found him.

so that leaves javier. i think he would've ridden out 2-3 times looking for kieran. first time he was just annoyed, annoyed he was right: said it himself 'once an o'driscoll, always an o'driscoll'. the spineless little man had finally gone running back to colm the second the gang faced a real threat.

second time he had to stop early because boaz got a stone properly wedged in his shoe, and javier realizes he'd gotten so used to the o'driscoll taking care of the horses he had actually neglected to check himself. it feels wrong seeing charles being the one to cart haybales over to the horses, and lenny being the one trying to brush sweat out of their coats before tacking them up. makes a passing comment that the o'driscoll would've had them all done by now, and the saddles would've been clean enough to see their faces in. without kieran, it'll go back to being a three-person chore tending to the herd. he had to admit the kid did a lot of work around camp.

third time he looked along the river, because the few things he knew about the boy was that he liked horses, and fishing. remembers how disappointed the o'driscoll was when javier said there was no way he'd go fishing with him - he was preparing lures for arthur (and how the kid looked that much like a sad, wet cat javier had tossed a bag of crickets at him (was it an apology?), and kieran was happy again because it was much better bait for the local bluegill population than the worms he picked out of the dirt) it became another thing to tease him over, maybe they'd go fishing together.

post horsemen, apocalypses, javier is angry. he's ready to ride out and hunt down the o'driscolls himself, to hit them back even though it's the wrong move. because damnit, kieran was one of them. that meant even if he was a damned o'driscoll, he was part of the gang: the closest thing to family javier had. and no one mentions that javier was the one who went looking for him. no one says he failed. he doesn't need them to point out that he's more angry at himself for not looking hard enough, for not doing enough, not being enough to find the damned kid before that happened to him than he is mad at the o'driscolls.

on nights when he's on guard, and his brain is swimming in the whiskey that he was drinking to stay warm (poor excuse, everything in lemonye is sticky and hot), he catches himself staring over to a wooden marker standing alone in the middle of a clearing, buried facing away from them. feels himself getting angry again, because if he didn't get angry he'd start blaming himself and apologies never solved anything. instead he simmers in his rage, glowering into the night because damnit they were meant to go fishing together.

[bleue-flora]

as much as I like the dsmp story and its message about how there’s a deep down, I can’t help but think about the Bojack horsemen quote about how there’s no deep down and you are the actions you do regardless of someone’s intent or backstory

[context]

I believe you are referring to this quote “That’s the thing. I don’t think I believe in deep down. I kind of think all you are is just the things that you do.” (Which btw yall its real annoying when I have to find whatever the hell you are talking about, no shade just as an aside…<3)

The thing is, both things can be true. Life is about choices, and your every action and inaction has a consequence, (which I think I’ve talked about before but I don’t feel like finding it at the moment). In other words, everything you do impacts the world around you and has lasting effects. You may not know it and are likely very unaware of the consequences (positive and negative). This is because like my post said we are all inherently selfish because we live and see the world from only one view - our own. So yes, you are the actions/“things you do” and choices you make, regardless of the intentions.

At the end of the day, whether you meant to or not, whether you had good intentions or not, if you hurt someone the facts remain the same - you hurt someone. They have a fundemental right to feel hurt and that is always valid, emotions and feelings are always valid, whether it’s logical or makes sense or not. The reason deep down doesn’t change the outcome or the hurt you caused. However, that is about the past action. If you want to learn and grow and form meaningful relationships, avoid conflict… etc. That’s where the deep down comes in. Then it’s important to look at the reasons, not as excuses or justifications but as explanations - a bridge to understanding and shattering our stereotypes, assumptions and judgement.

(Okay, my foot still hurts from you stepping on it, but yeah if it was just an accident then the relationship doesn’t have to just all end over something stupid like it would if I assumed it was intentional.) Yes the impact you make on the world is the sum of what you do and that impact is true regardless if there is a deeper reason behind it. But also, if you only focus on what people do and go no deeper, then you are missing the bigger picture and your relationships will not last long and you are going to live a very lonely and conflictfilled life.

That is why it is important. Not because in the finale of the dsmp Dream’s reveal changes any of his actions, but because it changes our perspective of him and that changes how we act next. Whether we show compassion and empathy or understanding or forgiveness of someone’s actions or run the hell away. (Whether a conflict breaks out over you stomping on my foot so I step on yours back.)

As an engineer, a nerdy metaphor I could use is that it’s kinda like if situations were an equation then the effect and action is the answer (the one side of the =), but sometimes we need to used the other side of the = to solve for x, so we can solve the next equations.

The deep down matters because it should change your action. It matters because in recent years after excusing my behavior because of something or the other, I realized ya know other people might also have a valid reason too. So while my automatic assumption of why they are late to class is that they are lazy, or rude, or don’t care, maybe maybe they actually woke up nauseous and were throwing up which prevented them from being on time, maybe they fainted coming out of the shower, maybe their car wouldn’t start, maybe they had a doctor’s appointment beforehand, maybe there was a car accident making them late, maybe there was a train blocking the road…etc. there are so many reasons, but our mind just jumps to the worst, and we expect grace from others when we are late but wouldn’t give others the same benefit of the doubt. If we had, if instead of judgment and criticism, we checked on them after class to see if they are okay then maybe we learn of their struggle, and maybe they need our help, or maybe we relate and become friends, maybe you share your notes with them, maybe you give them a hug. The deeper meaning changes what you do and like the quote says, what you do is the impact on the world…

[polkadotjohnson]

Because I'm greedy and I just watched something I hadn't previously, I decided I want more. So I'm gonna post two lists, one of the things I've watched in case you haven't watched some of it and I can help, and one of the things I'm missing so maybe you can help me! Please help me feed my obsession its hungreee

Stuff I've watched (most from the imdb list, other things found in the wild) excluding interviews, podcasts making ofs and red carpets:

Early Edition (tv)

The Dark Knight (movie)

ER (tv)

Horsemen (movie)

Last Seen Wearing (short)

Virgin Alexander (movie)

Gateway (short)

Love is an Elevator (short)

Sushi Girl (movie)

Brutal (movie)

The League (tv)

The Cross (short)

The Assassination of Chicago's Mayor (short)

Saving Lincoln (movie)

The Employer (movie)

Ray Donovan (tv)

Heavy (short)

Prisoners (movie)

After Thought (short)

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (tv)

Animals (movie)

AVGN: The Movie (movie)

Intruders (tv)

CSI: Cyber (tv)

Chronic (movie)

A Killer of Men (short)

Ant-Man (movie)

12 Monkeys (tv)

A Quiet Kind of Love (short)

The Belko Experiment (movie)

Be Good (short)

Gotham (tv)

Twin Peaks: The Return (tv)

Blade Runner 2049 (movie)

Galaktikon: Nightmare (music video)

Relaxer (movie)

Ant-Man and the Wasp (movie)

The Domestics (movie)

A Million Little Pieces (movie)

Making Love (short)

All Creatures Here Below (movie)

Bird Box (movie)

Neurotica/Eureka! (short)

Madness in the Method (movie)

Teacher (movie)

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (movie)

Reprisal (tv)

Lacrimosa (short)

MacGyver (tv)

The Flash (tv)

The Suicide Squad (movie)

Dune (movie)

Immoral Compass (tv)

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (movie)

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (movie)

Boston Strangler (movie)

The Boogeyman (movie)

Miracle Workers (tv)

Oppenheimer (movie)

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (movie)

The Rookie (tv)

Late Night With the Devil (movie)

Shortcake (short) (thanks again @thepurpleprince)

Others (?)

Keep Painting, Mom (short/archive)

The Balcony (short)

Elton & Jean’s 9th Grade Biology Project (short)

Failure - Dark Speed (music video)

Iceage - Catch it (music video)

Iron & Wine - Everyone's Summer of '95 (music video)

Ken Andrews - Sword and Shield (music video)

Passion Pit - Constant Conversations (music video)

Puddles Pity Party - Obsession (music video)

X.X.T. - Steve Jobs (music video)

Annabel Lee (reading)

2021/2022/2023 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards

Premature (show)

Awkward Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Conversations (special)

Svengoolie - The Wolf Man (cameo)

Svengoolie - Inner Sanctum (cameo)

Svengoolie - War of the Colossal Beast (didn't see him in it)

The Boulet Brothers Halfway to Halloween Special

The 101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments of All Time (documentary)

In Search of Darkness 3 (documentary)

I Am Not a Flopper (narration)

CCARS - Fire (um… music… video?)

Mermaid - a Short Film (short)

If you haven't seen any of these let me know and I'll give you the link or upload it somewhere or something

Now all the mysterious stuff I can't seem to find anywhere:

Arc of a Bird (saw a clip on Vimeo) (short)

Credits (short)

Head Case (short)

Band (short)

Keen (short)

Double Black (short)

Say When (short) <- doesn't fucking exist (still mad about it)

Tweet Me in NY (short)

Singled Out (tv pilot?) <- watched it

Sketchy (tv) <- watched it

Cass (movie) <- watched it

Under the Pyramid (movie) <- watched it

Cora (short, unreleased 😢) (hehehehehe)

Girls Will Be Girls 2012 (also unreleased)

The Pandora Experiment (also also unreleased)

All the Pretty Girls (??? prob unreleased)

A bunch of other stuff probably. Any help would be immensely appreciated.

[psshaw]

The one downside to Joking About A Video Game In Public is that occasionally, you hear from gamers... and I don't mean the typical people who are telling me things I genuinely didn't know, or who are just happy to joke around and chat! I mean that so far my sideblog has accrued 3 of the 4 horsemen of missing my joke so hard that I end up feeling a little insulted:

Person who acted like I was failing ethics for saying "awww I wish I could have adopted him" about an abandoned egg that I'm pretty sure you can canonically adopt

Person who thought I needed them to explain that a character who was being tortured into madness doesn't "consent" to the torture

Person who saw me say "I would love X if she had a different voice" and went into what I can only assume was a simp fugue explaining why she HAS to sound like that

And I never know what to say... I always wanna give someone the option to re-read everything and realize I'm not taking this as seriously as they are, but then they keep going and by then it's WAY too embarrassing when I stop them

[willowmaidsworld]

Good Omens s3 clue

I realised I never posted this, although I made it ages ago! So here y'all go!

This is going to be long, and I hope it will make sense. Please bear with me to the end, I will eventually get to the Judgement Day, Armageddon, Death (and four horsemen of Apocalypse) and I will mention goats.

I noticed this tiny clue when watching s2ep3. Aziraphale drives to Edinburgh and the Bentley plays classical music. But not just any classical music – it’s Danse Macabre by Camill Saint-Saëns.

I am a musician and I've played this piece in the past, so I knew there was a lot of symbolism to uncover. And that thing is deeper than I thought. I will be speaking about some music theory, but I will try to make it as understandable as possible. 

I think it would be best, if you listened to Danse Macabre: https://youtu.be/…zrJ 

I would like to speak once more about the scene in which Danse macabre appears. Aziraphale is driving to Edinburgh in now a yellow Bentley, and he even has his "car sweets". He is quite satisfied. And he plays this, certainly dark-themed, music. It is a major contrast. 

Danse Macabre, "the dance of death" is a memento mori. Memento mori is a theme we see in art, and it originated in medieval times as reaction to the plague. It should remind us of our own mortality. “Memento mori” literary translates as "remember death". And mark my words, do remember death!

The composition uses tritones, a special kind of a music interval. (Interval is the tonal distance between two tones, you can play the tones together and/or separate.) Tritone is seemingly dissonant because it uses seemingly inharmonious tones. (You can hear tritones just at the beginning, the violins play it.) Because of its dissonance it was called "the devil in music" and was considered forbidden and associated with Hell/demons/death.

Since the music piece and the poem is based on the theme of Memento mori, I had to look into it as well. Turns out Danse Macabre was inspired by a poem by Henry Cazalis. Here is the poem: https://oxfordsong.org/…bre Memento mori doesn't only remind us of death and our mortality, it also reminds us, that everyone's equal in death. Henry Cazalis, the poet, writes: Long live death and equality! The poem is called, of course, Danse Macabre, but I found that it is also called Égalité - Fraternité (when reading stuff about it in French). This is a reference to the French revolution motto: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité (Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood), but Liberty is missing. Is there then no Liberty in death and we are all doomed to obey someone's will, The Ineffable plan? (Good Omens book and season one also deals with topics of free will, look at Crowley and Anathema. She has been doing only the things her dead ancestor told her to do, she overcomes it in the end. I think it nicely illustrates the problematic of a free will. And Crowley values free will a lot.)

Memento mori says one thing - remember death, no one can outrun it. And there I would like to get back to season 1, because who else we meet here than Death itself.

Death is one of the Four Bikers/Riders/Horsemen of Apocalypse. But I always thought Death has a higher rank than the others. If you think of it, War, Pollution and Famine all lead to one thing- to Death. Why would you need all three then? Isn't Death qualified enough to do its job? Also, rewatch the scene where Adam and his friends battle them! War, Pollution and Famine all get destroyed by the flaming sword. But not Death- it spreads its wings and says (quote from the book): "You cannot destroy me. That would destroy the world." And later he adds that they are never far away. And he flies of. He isn't destroyed.

Death didn't appear in season two and I think people are starting to forget it, but Memento mori! Remember Death!

I would also like to remark that Neil Gaiman says the whole story is plotted out and that he has done this with Terry Pratchett. In every Discworld series book (the magnum opus of Sir Terry Pratchett), apart from two or three, there is the character of Death. And I think it would make sense that Death would appear in Good Omens as well, after all, it is also Pratchett's book. I think we might see Death returning in season three, because the Day of Wrath/Last Judgement/Armageddon is coming. And this music piece could serve as a literal memento mori - remember Death, it has not exited the scene yet. (A lot of Pratchett's humour is based on puns, and this seems like a joke/plot twist he would try to use. It's my personal opinion based on how I know his style from his books.) 

And what's next? Armageddon is coming, the Day of Wrath is here! Both sides are pretty eager to do this ending-of-the-world thing and after all, it's what they have been trying to start from the begging of the show. It was delayed by Gabriel's "disappearance", but things are now getting into motion, I think. 

But back to the Danse macabre, because it (surprise surprise!) has quite some things to do with the Judgement Day. In the middle of the composition Cammille Saint-Saëns uses a musical theme from a different work, a Gregorian chant called Deis irae ("Day of Wrath").

Here is a link to Wikipedia page about the chant, you can listen to it there. (I didn't find any recording on YouTube, only other musicians using the quite popular words of the chant and not the actual music.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/…rae 

About the chant itself. It is written from the point of view of a sinner/normal person, and it describes how the Last Judgement shall be. Before dealing with the themes of the chant itself, I would like to say, that Saint-Saëns has used the Deis irae in a major key. Allow me to do a quick music theory intermission.

You can play in two keys, major and minor. These are, if I oversimplify things, sets of notes with different intervals. The melody, played one tone at a time, can be used in both major and minor key. The melody isn't the thing that determines the key of the song, the tones played with it do. And depends on what tones you use, you either get major or minor. Major is (in western culture) associated with happiness and good things, while minor with sadness. (It's not always like that, but for the sake of understanding we are going to pretend it is.) Now, the Deis irae is usually written in the sad minor key. Saint-Saëns decided to use the happy major key with this depressing chant, once again creating contrast. I'm stumbling over contrasts more than usually, so this may be important. End of the intermission. 

In the third and fourth strophe of Deis irae, it's described how the sound of a trumpet will sound everywhere and the Death will resurrect all dead creations to be brought to the Judge. (Death is back again and resurrecting, that sounds familiar, where have we seen that before?)

In the fifteenth strophe, the writer, a sinner, prays for this: Put me with the sheep and separate me from the goats, guide me to the right side! Goats again, there they are! This strophe of course references the chapter 25 in the Gospel of Matthew, the Separation of sheep and goats. Sheep go to the right and goats to the left. I think the side symbolism is pretty clear in Good Omens. Right is the righteous side and left is the sign of sin. And we also know how Crowley cares about the goats. There is also the Jewish tradition of scapegoat. Either way, goats are connected to Crowley, their symbolism of being “on the left side” is clear. This interesting bit can play part in Armageddon.

In the fifth strophe of Deis irae the Book, that is exactly and perfectly worded and that will judge all world, appears. And this book is no other than The Book of Life.

We know about Book of Life from the season 2, Micheal threatens to force "extreme sanctions" (erasing them form the Book) upon anyone who knows about Gabriel. 

Enter a fan theory I read: Nor Heaven or Hell actually have the Book of Life, we never see it on screen. This was mentioned in a tumblr post, and I will probably never be able to dig it up from the depths of the internet, so remember this is not my theory. (Although I find it very interesting.) The post continues and remarks, that when Crowley in the first episode of the second season learns about the Book and the "extreme sanctions" from Beelzebub, he doesn't bat an eye. He is pretty calm and doesn't seem surprised. (He literary says: "That will teach them a lesson", man, we're talking about being wiped from the earth's surface completely!) The writer of the post thinks, this is because Crowley knows that Heaven doesn't have the book and he knows where it is. The writer claims, it was Crowley, who took it as a little souvenir before his Fall, and later has hidden it in Aziraphale's bookshop. ('Cause one single book will definitely stay hidden in all those piles of old books.)

I think this is really interesting because of Crowley’s reaction. He knows what Aziraphale is risking, and he loves that angel, yet he seems so calm. When the bookshop burned down in the fifth episode of season one and Crowley thought Aziraphale died, he went feral: he was angry and furious, and he was destroyed by the fact that he has lost Aziraphale. He mourns and gets drunk. Nothing of this happens in season two! 

So, what are my thoughts on season three? It will get really dark and serious, the Armageddon is coming, after all. I think we will see Death return and the Book of Life will appear. The goats may not be used literally, like on screen, but I think we will get some metaphors.

In all of this, I tried to say one thing. All of the cards are laid out, we have all of the clues. It would be pretty cheap trick to use some ineffable "deus ex machina", that's not Gaiman's and Pratchett's style.

I think everything is now foreshadowed; we have been given all the information. We just haven't made the links in-between. Given the uproar the second season has caused, I think people are forgetting the first season a bit. But it must end with what it started with.

I think we should look at both seasons equally and try to pick up as much as we can, after all the third season will not be based solely on the season two...

We have all the clues, now it's Neil Gaiman who plays an ineffable game of his own devising, a poker that nobody has the rules for and the dealer, Neil himself, is smiling all the time. Ineffable, indeed. If you ask me, he's enjoying it bloody-well.

[trixree]

he is RISEN baby girl

hello hello! yes i'm alive, just very mentally ill. things are on the up and up and i have mega brainrot right now so i decided to try and get back on the "being a person" horse. you may see i've just posted some poolverine smut to AO3 here.

if you've sent me messages during my year hiatus (especially regarding commissions) I love and appreciate you and will be responding SOON, i PROMISE!

long ramble about where i'm at/life update below the cut.

May of 2023, I graduated with my masters. yaaay woo but also booo because it didn't help me get a job at all! i finally landed a paying gig in September of 2023 after sending out quite literally hundreds of applications. i only had two interviews total and a mountain of auto-rejections to show for it and it took an immense toll on my mental health. It started what was (in hindsight) a year of a prolonged downward spiral.

i already really struggled with self worth and turns out riding the merry-go-round of job hunting rejection cranked my depression up to new heights. for the first time in a long time, i found myself so low as to be entertaining thoughts of suicide. my eating disorder peaked the hardest it has since high school. i had also moved out of my parents house and in with my partner May of 2023 and was readjusting to being out of a traumatic environment. i had panic attacks anytime he came into a room too quietly and surprised me for months. I found myself isolated from most of my friends (partly because of my own communication death-spiral depression paralysis) and also because i moved to a different city than all of them to live with my partner again (0 complaints there, i love the city i live in and love my home with my partner and our bird children. however i miss my fucking friends, and the loneliness compounded the Despair Arc i was having.) My fucking health insurance changed because my previous policy holder retired and i lost some medications for a period of time, stressing my body in bad ways. a really bad spell of migraines compounded things chemically for the worst.

i borrowed some money to return to my therapist and my doc recently upped my antidepressant dose, and I can tell that both of those things but ESPECIALLY that last one there has helped already. My partner, closest friends, and even some coworkers have said I seem much better, too. I'm hopeful about it. Optimistic, even!

i did get a job working for a behavioral health nonprofit that provides outpatient psychiatric services in administration. It pays in fucking sheckles and pennies (nonprofits be like) and psych is a challenging environment to say the least. it was another 6-month fight to hammer out disability accommodations with HR. my body is a machine that consumes paid leave. as any of you that have danced an accommdations dance can probably attest, it sucks so goddamn bad. i had basically round after round of requests for my doctors to fill out paperwork that amounted to "will they get better? Are you sure? Alright, please estimate how often this person will need this accommodation in hours per week." of course it took an immense mental health toll, too. i kick ass at what i do and i do it chronically understaffed but it's really hard to feel secure anywhere when you're constantly missing work due to uncontrollable Body Bad Times (migraine, explosive diarrhea, uncontrollable vomiting, my three horsemen). especially if someone has a grudge, and someone did, which added extra layers of complexity.

i'll be honest, it's good to have something to get out of bed to go do 5/7 days of the week (i was going stir crazy without employment) but i'm running myself ragged and barely making it financially. not only was this body i have NOT built for an 8-5, i have less than 15$ to my name right now to show for it and i keep having to borrow money from my family for medication. but i truly love the people i work with and feel like i get to do good for my community where i'm at, and that's something folks!

speaking of health, i kind of got my gut stuff figured out? not really. but also yes! i don't have a diagnosis of any kind but i have a treatment that's WORKING for the constant nausea i was always blogging about last year. my GI put me on domperidone before meals and oh my god, total fucking game changer. no longer am i burping up half-digested food and walking around with 24/7 debilitating nausea AND my appetite even kicks in when i take the damn pills!!! the only down side is that domperidone is not FDA approved in the USofA because of sudden cardiac failure or what the fuck ever so i have to pay out of pocket for all of it. that's a good 150$ per month on top of all my other medication, so that's a bummer. but god, to have something that works!!! it's been so nice. no sudden heart failure yet, fingers crossed.

i have really bad executive dysfunction when it comes to responding to messages (i currently have 100+ unread text messages from friends and family) but i'm challenging myself to work through my backlog of messages in the coming days, so stay tuned if you've DM'd me in the last year. thank you for thinking of me and i appreciate you endlessly.

as for commissions, my life is just too unpredictable for me to be as consistent with those as i'd wanted to be. as much as having the bonus income was really amazing, i just feel like i'm too flakey and unreliable to deliver on that regularly and that's just a shitty thing to do to someone. (please check your DMs if this describes an interaction we had with me.)

i'm sorry if this decision is disappointing to anyone, but i think i'm going to stick to having a kofi live if folks feel inclined to show appreciation for any fic i post and maybe taking a comm very very rarely, once in a blue moon when circumstances allow. I do want to honor anyone that messaged me about a comm during my year hiatus. Please check your DMs. for my casual reader: none of my current projects on AO3 are abandoned. i've never stopped working on them this past year, even if it has only been in my notes app. i really want to start posting more regularly again. i miss the outlet immensely. I think it's good for me, creatively and for a sense of community. i hope you all understand and thank you. thanks for still being here.

[seven-stars-in-his-palm]

okay so a couple of days ago i saw this ask on @fellshish's blog about a need for a full 1941 discorporated aziraphale angst fic, realized i had an entire outline already in the hull, and... this happened:

a "what if crowley didn't miss in 1941" fic, including but not exclusive to the moment itself, the hours leading up to it, and the aftermath; a fanfiction (chapter 3/4)

summary:

It's Fell the Marvelous' awaited debut performance on the West End. He has his marksman, his turnips, and things appear to be going as planned—that is, until said marksman does the one thing he was supposed to avoid. Not missing. (or: the bullet catch goes wrong, and due to a tiny technicality, crowley's afraid aziraphale is gone for good. and crowley himself—for the first time in quite a while—is well and truly alone.)

warnings: full of blood, sweat, kissing while crying, blown up heads, prayers, nostalgic churches, polaroids, alcohol, and aziraphale being a discorporated bastard and bitching his way back to earth while a plot we should probably be focusing occurs as we ignore it entirely. and written extremely slowly. oxymoron but i couldnt get this out of my head fast enough and now you must endure it (should you choose to accept). i think i'm gonna be pretty proud of this though. excited!

(also thank @tforthetea for the inspiration because a conversation with them helped spark this the first time. all hail)

ao3 link for those who didn't check the title, and fic under the cut! :)

chapter 1: number thirteen

One of the things Crowley liked gloating about on occasion was that he was older than Death Itself.

He wasn’t technically wrong, per se. The humans think him mad, and the demons think him stupid, but he was still right. Human concepts, despite their hold on the population and overall importance, were non-existent before or even during the Beginning. The Four Horsemen and other ideas evolved right alongside the humans, so technically, Crowley was older than all of them. He rather liked having something to lord over War (in his head), during the few unfortunate meetings he would have with her. Famine was a non-issue, and Death could not touch him regardless of how much he didn’t like him. There were failsafes.

Now, however, actually being in the room that Aziraphale could potentially walk into and never come out of, Crowley would gladly take all of it back and pretend he never even thought about it at all.

The damned magician. Crowley never caught his name, but if he had, he would wrought him with the most annoyingly small curses that no one would ever believe to be true after today. Tonight wasn’t just about impressing the audience or even repaying that wine-filled debt, it was about them. Tonight, Crowley was to play the trusted stooge, and…shoot the angel. Point blank. In the face. And make it look real. And not discorporate him. And not get them fired. And—

There were a lot of things to consider, alright? To contrary belief, Crowley did, in fact, not think Death was silly or stupid. He’d also been there when It was born, you know. Crowley liked Abel. Watching It happen was, plainly, fucking terrifying. It brought up something new, and change was just as scary as Death. Ask anyone, and they’d tell you.

Crowley has been running that unfortunate meeting involuntarily through his head for the first ten or so minutes of waiting for the actual show to begin, while also listing out the terrible things he would do to the magician man had he ever held the opportunity again. He’d been sort of gunning (no pun intended) to stay backstage and avoid the riffraff, but been ushered out the dressing room the second he’d given his (admittingly harsh) two cents on the situation. Aziraphale said he wanted privacy before the big show, but Crowley knew he was just ticked. Aziraphale was an angel who thrived with a supportive devil over his shoulder.

So, Crowley is just milling around in the crowd as the Allied soldiers and their companions filter in. They come and go—a Lady even comes to check on him at point, mentioning odd vacant gazes and looking over shoulders paranoid-like, but he waves them off before they can pry. He really shouldn’t be so worried—even if Aziraphale…‘didn’t make it through the night’, he’d eventually be fine. As long as he discorporated a certain way, nothing too lethal—some deaths were harder to come back from others.

They’ve been discorporated before, of course. That was how Crowley knew this. Six millennia offered many opportunities for the event. But never, and it was never, at each other's hand. On paper, yeah, they killed each other on occasion, but truly…

Crowley shifts nervously, sending a glare at anyone who got a bit too close, but the brief discomforts aren’t enough to lift his spirits. There was one entity faffing about who refused to bugger off even with direct acknowledgements, though that might be because Crowley was imagining It. Or It really was here, and interested in the affairs of potential angel discorporation. Or a bomb was going to fall here and It was just beating the rush. The theories were far from endless.

Death appeared back there as soon as Crowley had been kicked out. He’s simply been dealing with it since then, and It probably wasn’t helping to lift his spirits. He shouldn’t be so antsy—both logic and mechanics deemed it so.

They’d be fine, Crowley repeats to himself near constantly, finding a proper seat in direct line of sight where Aziraphale will be standing. He readjusts his tie as the humans sit around him, creating a perfectly isolated bubble of red velvet seats. What did it matter that twelve humans died doing this before? They weren’t human. Death had no claim on them. It couldn’t take them even if It so desired.

Crowley scowls at the hooded figure standing near the entrance of the theater, cold scythe gleaming under the warm bulbs of the West End. Its just…standing there. Making no move to come closer, either. Odd.

Crowley sinks lower into his plush seat, as if trying to avoid Death’s gaze. But being one of two immovable objects on this Earth, It’s always on him. If Death had a goal, there would be no point in warding It away.

Seeing Death is a famous bad omen, and would send a chill down his spine had it been anywhere else. At this moment, however, Crowley is simply irritated. If It was looking for another soul in this theater, that was fine by him, let It take them, but It would not be ruining whatever this was. Humans were ever plentiful—there was only one angel deserving of Earth.

Before Crowley can decide whether or not he should be stupid and confront the omen in the room, the lights go dim. The crowd’s murmurs die down, and Crowley has no choice but to stay seated and watch the show. Aziraphale wouldn’t be coming on until the Ladies of Camelot had their first number, but Crowley could easily endure it. The gaze aimed straight at his head could be ignored.

World be damned if It took the angel’s enthusiasm. They’d be fine. Crowley just has to remember that.

-----

Things are, indeed, not going fine.

Crowley is meant to go up on stage any second now. Aziraphale has no inkwell in his gloved hand. No amount of snapping is removing said turnip from line of sight. He reads the pamphlet—then again, then again, then again, but there is no second option for apparently miracleless individuals.

Fucking. Hell.

Whatever false bravado Aziraphale is spewing is null and void compared to the should-be-non-existent nerves running through frantic hands and finding absolutely nothing useful. Crowley flips through the same two pages—give the stooge the bullet, poise, and shoot. The miracle would’ve ensure that the bullet would never leave the barrel. But now—now, well, he really regrets not considering a Plan B. Did they ever consider a Plan B? Apparently not.

Getting there is a blur. Aziraphale is essentially shoving the rifle into Crowley’s care, which is honestly becoming a worse idea by the second. He’s switching between the demon and the audience so quickly that Crowley can’t tell who he’s addressing. They’re deathly quiet, and Crowley would feel embarrassed if his heart that shouldn’t be there wasn’t pounding with too much blood in too little time. His mind is a soup. Muddled, feverish, and incredibly foul tasting. You wouldn’t want to drink it even if you were starving.

“I would ask you,” Aziraphale says loudly, cutting through the fog of utter mental mush, “to take this bullet, and load it into the rifle. Very carefully.”

Crowley nods belatedly, squeezing and turning parts of the gun to get the non-existent warmth running back through his fingers. He takes the bullet, and turns it round a few times while Aziraphale stares at him with excruciating anxiety. Is he stalling? Honestly, even Crowley wouldn’t be able to tell you.

“It's perfectly simple,” Aziraphale mutters softly, pushing the gun a bit closer. “Aim for my mouth, but shoot past my ear.”

Crowley can’t find himself to agree here. He’s staring at him, and that would usually get him to listen regardless of shades, but Death is boring into them like the harshest of theater critics. His skin is slick, almost clammy, threatening to let the gun slip and fire a stray bullet anywhere but its intended target. His back is sore, oddly enough. Irritating.

Crowley has questions, like he always does, but the time has long passed. What he wants to ask is ‘do I just squeeze that little bit there?’ pointing at (what looks like) to be the trigger—but then that would just make Crowley look incompetent, so he swallows it back and nodly lightly. He’s never fired a gun like Aziraphale seems to believe whole-heartedly, but he’s certainly watched it happen. He’s picked up enough of the motions to figure it out on his own.

That thought still doesn’t help when he’s being told to insert the bullet, though. Crowley fumbles through it, opening a mislaid hatch or two, but manages before Aziraphale could raise any alarms. He’s already stood back in position (when did that happen?) when Crowley raises the loaded rifle for all to see, proclaiming as such. He bites back the tremor threatening to appear—he wasn’t nervous. Excited, more like it. Excited to finally get an excuse to make a throw at the angel non-suspicious like.

That was all it was. Really.

Crowley turns the rifle one last time as Aziraphale spins more useless pageantry for the audience to woo at. They’re both grinning, but tightly and annoyingly false. It wasn’t the eyes that were the problem—what, do you think that demons ever got stage fright? Absurd!

It was just...well, there weren’t just humans in this audience. Crowley couldn’t forget the shadow looming at the end of the theater no matter how tight he grips the side of the weapon. But, just like Someone had laid out all that Time ago—Death could only perceive them.

It could not touch them.

It would not touch them.

It would not touch him, if he could help it.

The drums begin their incessant titter as Aziraphale finally turns to Crowley properly, blue cloak glimmering under the warm light of the stage before them. “A-are you ready, sir?”

Crowley would scoff at this if he could. Sir. Only humans ever addressed him that way; angels look down on him, demons sneer at him. Though he supposes this angel would be different—always throwing the curveballs, him.

“When you hear my signal,” the angel says, voice growing quieter, “shoot.”

Aziraphale removes his tophat, revealing preciously white curls. This pings something, the remaining traces of damned sense he’s got buried inside. Crowley isn’t sure what has possessed him—but he shakes his head. It’s all he can do. Don’t make me do it, he nearly warns out loud. Not if you know what’s good for you.

Aziraphale stills, but not before mouthing words that would be akin to an ashamed mumble if he were close enough. Trust me.

Trust me.

Satan, he got him there. That’s why Crowley was here, after all. Stooge. 100% Reliable Marksman.

Right.

Aziraphale isn’t nearly as good as Crowley at hiding his anxious gaze. “Ready?”

Oh, Heavens no. He never would be, but no better time than the present. Or something like that. He can’t recall where it came from.

“Aim…”

Crowley can’t ignore it anymore—he’s shaking. Extremely so, at that. It’s knocking around the air in his lungs very unkindly. It’s quite difficult to aim. His head is bobbing around in the scope.

Just about…

There it is.

Crowley waits—just like he’s done for the last…however long. A long time. His arms are starting to hurt, frankly. He rests his finger over the trigger to ease the trembling a tad.

And the magician remains silent.

Crowley ignores the sweat crawling down his neck. (Wasn’t it supposed to be freezing?) He waits some more—it’s not like one can forget where you are. Benefit of the doubt and such.

Nothing still. Nary a nod.

He’s been staring at him for a minute. The crowd hasn’t uttered a peep. Is Crowley just supposed to…do it? Did they talk about this? They must have. They talked about this. They talked about it, right? Yeah. Yeah, they must have—

"Fire!"

He startled him.

The reason why he listens is easy to explain. Aziraphale made Crowley flinch. A bit of a spook, really, not that bad of a fright. A sudden jolt—a tap on the shoulder, one that said ‘oh, look, you’ve got perfect aim already! Shoot!’

And he did.

What’s the first rule of approaching someone with a weapon again?

Right. Don’t fucking scare them.

The handle is warm. Slick, heavy, shaky. The scope aims with guilty target missing at the helm. A puff of smoke is spewing from the barrel. A thump, a sickening thump, deafening in the cricket silence of a post-trick world.

And Aziraphale…is on the floor.

(Where else would he be, really?)

There, obviously. On the floor. With a blown-up head. Bleeding like blessed Heaven. Bleeding like bloody Heaven, while Crowley has to take in the sight and smell the blessed thing.

It fits. They fit. Like a perfect crown on a decapitated head.

God, his head’s just gone, isn’t it?

A noise cuts through the thick silence like a stubbornly determined knife. Far away, above it all, there it rings. It’s muffled, soft, and almost awkward in the way it cuts through the air. A camera click. A reluctant, malicious camera click.

And that was just the perfect way to say it, no? He blew his brains out. Crowley blew his angel’s fucking brains out with a fucking gun that he’s never fucking held before.

Trust me.

Well. That, no doubt, was Aziraphale’s fault—it’d be a funny old world if angels and demons went around trusting one another.

-----

hgh. hope that was decent. chapter two coming as soon as it can because im invested now :))

[doodlesdreaming]

Out of curiosity, what were to happen if King Konrad came across Death injured as the Horsemen was helping out with his little problem? A rare occurance but not impossible one given Death has bitten off more than he can chew before.

I'm asking out of curiosity, out of kinda missing those drawings of Konrad going bonkers and shouting in French over the lack of a shirt ala Dreamworks' Sinbad when he sees Kale in the winter(lmao), and because I ultimately know nothing of the game or games Konrad is in.

First things first(other then a late response 💦), King Conrard is a headcanon of The King from Dead Cells, created by @yore-donatsu . A charismatic bastard with a heart of gold….if you catch him on a good day lol.

Second:

If this man were to catch the grim reaper on a bad day, there’s no way he’ll let Death hear the end of it. Until his royal head is in danger of being lopped off.