#idea unsound

[ranjith11]

Proof Of Burden - Corner (Official Lyrics Video): Embrace the Soulful Melodies

Proof Of Burden - Corner (Official Lyrics Video): Embrace the Soulful Melodies Welcome to Proof Of Burden's captivating world of music! Get ready to experience the mesmerizing track "Corner" with our official lyrics video. Immerse yourself in the heartfelt lyrics and powerful melodies that will touch your soul.

[klabauters]

"Larp must be such an exciting hobby!" we are doing yard work in character tomorrow

[miitgaanar]

Whumptober prompt! Requested by @editoress!

No. 1: RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK

Search Party | Panic Attack | “If only we could hold on.” (Icysami x Renegaderr, Strangers.) for the brothers Adelier

**********

Smoke billowed high in the starless night sky, the roar of the flames muffled only by the screaming rats that infested the Court.  They scattered, pleading for mercy as he pushed through the throng, only to be run through by his gore soaked blade in reply.

Words had long since failed him, his voice hoarse from the thick, pungent smoke and his grief-stricken cries.  He had tried calling out to her, silencing the rabble with a swift swing of his sword when they drowned him out—but only the hungry crackle of a raging fire and endless bawling answered.

Mikaila.  Her name rang out in Lemuel’s mind like a bell repeatedly struck, loud and constant and inescapable.  She was gone.  Gone.  No—stolen.  Vanished into the night like footprints in a snowdrift, locked away for the sins of his hubris.

A man fell to his knees before Lemuel, his dark hair streaked through with gray and his eyes alight with terror.  He opened his mouth as if to speak—or maybe scream or beg or cry—but only blood surged forth as Kossaul buried itself deep within his chest.

Mikaila.  The bell tolled once more as the man slumped to the ground, his death rattle lost to the distant sound of a building’s collapse.  Mikaila.

“What more must you take from me?”  Duane hissed, his voice undercutting the anguished mantra.  “Was my life not payment enough?”

“I’ll find her,” Lemuel said, his voice low and rough.  He scanned the groups of stragglers that continued to fight the flames, their faces blurred by the unending flow of tears.  One of them moved to strike him, a plank of still burning wood in hand—but he hardly made it three steps before Lemuel slashed at his throat.  Hot, viscous fluid splattered on the ground, mixing with half-melted snow and staining it a deep crimson.  

Lemuel kicked the man to the side, his body hitting the dirt with a muted thud, and continued his rampage through the streets.

“She wasn’t supposed to be there,” Duane said, the words drowning out the wail of a child from a pile of smoldering rubble.  “She should have been safe at home with Leysa and Simon, tucked away from the cold and the snow as guests began to trickle through the door.”

“I’ll find her,” Lemuel said again, insistent.  Desperate.  The dark, smoke filled sky glowed a dull orange, casting the slums in a hazy light.  Shadows grew longer and darker and loomed with menacing intent, as if they too sought his niece.  “I’ll find her.”

“But you had to see her,” Duane continued, the words sharp and accusing.  “You had to see her just one last time, damning her along with me.”

“Shut up,” Lemuel snapped, his voice cracking as his eyes burned with fresh tears.  The flesh of his cheeks stung as a cold gust of wind blew through the alleyways, drying the tears as they fell.

“The spare finally given his chance at worth,” Duane spat, “only to squander it like an untried youth in a whorehouse.”

“Mikaila!” Lemuel called out, wiping at his face with his sleeve.  The bright green fabric came away smeared with scarlet streaks.

“All you had to do was die,” his brother taunted.  Lemuel pushed onward, blind to the slaughter happening around him.  In the flames of a burning home, Lemuel swore he saw the billowing robes of a Ssaelit priest.  

“And yet, even in that simple task,” Duane sneered, unrelenting in his scorn as Lemuel tore through the residents of the Court, “you were still found to be lacking.”

[adlamu]

unsound liquid | yay more recoil fan art !! (said no one)

[arealflame]

OH MY GOD I FUCKING CALLED ITTTTTTTTTTTT

[tea-knitting-adeliers]

Now, I know that I said not to trust me if I promised Lemuel-free fanfic, but I promise that this time will be different.

[wisteriaclaw]

we got a number one victory royale yea fortnite we bout to get down (get down) ten kills on the board rn just wiped out tomato town my friend just got downed i revived him now were heading southbound now were on the pleasant park streets look at the map go to the marked sheet Take me to your XBOX to play FORTNITE TODAY you can take me to moisty MIRE but NOT LOOT LAKE i rlly love 2 chug jug w you.. we can be pro fortnite gamers..

[razziecat]

Is it too late to use the WWII-era method of dropping leaflets from airplanes?

[beguilingcorpse]

i do find it hilarious that for most of gideon the ninth harrow is like “sextus your megatheorem idea is stupid. you’re jumping to conclusions. you have no evidence. your premises are flawed and your conclusion is both invalid and unsound. bitch.” and then when ianthe reveals the lyctoral process at the end of the book harrowhark is the FIRST PERSON to go “oh fuck. the megatheorem”

[pummelingbat]

my @reanimator-holiday-gift-exchange present for @blacksm1le ! the prompt i went with was "Mental Asylum AU with a contained Herbert and doctor Cain. Kind of like a hannibal/silence of the lambs vibe maybe?", and i... i....... i loved the idea so much that i made seven pages. :'^)

this was sooooo fun. if i were better at prose writing i would have loved to spin off an entire fic, but i love love love this setup.

i imagine that, in this universe, Dan left the surgical field because he had an emotional breakdown a few years in. he went into psychology afterwards in hopes of better understanding (& therefore overcoming) his own fear of death. eventually, this fixation led him to Herbert. Herbert i'd been thinking was deemed psychologically unsound by the authorities in Zurich post-Gruber, and deported into long-term criminal psychiatric care afterwards. Dan is easily seduced by his ideology, of course. i'm also picturing Hill as our Dr. Chilton stand-in, very invested in having a high-profile patient... so many possibilities!!! gahh!!! i hope u like it, i looooved working on it.

[nuadha-airgeadlamh]

godhood and the nature of the world

For me some of the most interesting dialogue delivered in the DLC comes from Ymir when you ask him about the nature of the world:

"I fear that you have borne witness to the whole of it. The conceits – the hypocrisy – of the world built upon the Erdtree. The follies of men. Their bitter suffering. Is there no hope for redemption? The answer, sadly, is clear. There never was any hope. They were each of them defective. Unhinged, from the start. Marika herself. And the fingers that guided her. And this is what troubles me. No matter our efforts, if the roots are rotten, …then we have little recourse."

Immediately upon hearing this dialogue I thought of the item description for the Mending Rune of Perfect Order:

"The current imperfection of the Golden Order, or instability of ideology, can be blamed upon the fickleness of the gods no better than men. That is the fly in the ointment."

I think Ymir and Goldmask are essentially stating the same fundamental ideas here, and that these ideas hit upon a key theme of the entire game: human beings should not become gods.

Marika's traumatic origins are laid bare at the Bonny and Shaman Villages. The extermination of her people through such disturbing means no doubt left her horribly scarred. The spirit in the Whipping Hut spells out how the Potentates treated the Shaman:

"For pity's sake, your place is in the jar. Nigh-sainthood itself awaits your within. For shamans like you, this is your lot. Life were you accorded for this alone."

And the Minor Erdtree incantation demonstrates her bereavement:

Marika bathed the village of her home in gold, knowing full well that there was no one to heal.

We know, too, from Ymir that the Fingers were just as broken as Marika, the children of an abandoned mother.

"Do you recall what I said? That Marika, and the fingers that guided her, were unsound from the start. Well, the truth lies deeper still. It is their mother who is damaged and unhinged. The fingers are but unripe children. Victims in their own right. We all need a mother, do we not? A new mother, a true mother, who will not give birth to further malady."

And the Staff of the Great Beyond gives us further context behind this:

The Mother received signs from the Greater Will from the beyond of the microcosm. Despite being broken and abandoned, she kept waiting for another message to come.

Marika's ascension to godhood placed a traumatized person in a position of ultimate power. Yes, the Hornsent did terrible, unspeakable things to the Shaman people and employed a truly brutal inquisition, but there is no excuse for what Marika did to them through her Crusade. There is no excuse for what she did to the Hornsent, or to the Fire Giants, or to any of the victims of the Golden Order's colonizing mission. The game makes this abundantly clear. Did Hornsent's wife and child deserve to die by Messmer's flames? Does the Hornsent Grandam deserve to remain alone and abandoned, her home crumbling around her? What about the Dried Bouquet, a talisman you find in Belurat:

A quaint bouquet of dried flowers, offered to a small grave.

Raises attack power when a spirit you have summoned dies.

The sorrow that flows from the untimely demise of a loved one is a tenderness shared by all, regardless of birthplace.

The game even draws parallels between the Hornsent Inquisition and the Golden Order's torture methods in the description of the Ash of War: Golden Crux on the Greatsword of Damnation:

Leap up and skewer foe from overhead. If successful, the weapon's barbs unfold to excruciate from within; else, additional input releases barbs in the area. There is something of the Golden Order in the sight of those fixed upon this crux.

After dark, does Limgrave not fill with the screams of the crucified? There is no perfect society— there is no society whose crimes warrant absolute extermination. By giving her the capacity for limitless violence, godhood has made Marika into the perpetrator of some of the greatest crimes in the Lands Between.

We see this effect happening in real time through Miquella's story. While his ideology may initially seem admirable — redemption for those oppressed by the Golden Order, redemption for the Hornsent — on his road to godhood, he abandons everything that matters. The path to godhood is an inherently dehumanizing process and requires of Miquella for him to cast aside everything that makes him him.

Ymir says about Miquella that:

"Ever-young Miquella saw things for what they were. He knew that his bloodline was tainted. His roots mired in madness. A tragedy if ever there was one. That he would feel compelled to renounce everything. When the blame…lay squarely with the mother."

What I believe Ymir is articulating here is that Miquella seeks to atone for his mother's crimes and remove the corrupt order by usurping her position as god, even though he personally is not to blame for these deeds. Hornsent states similar ideas:

"Miquella has said as much himself – he wishes now to throw it all away. He says the act – though undoubtedly painful – will sear clean the Erdtree’s wanton sin. The truth of his claim can be found at each cross. Tis evidence enough to earn my belief."

"Uphold his covenant Miquella shall, and in godhood redeem our rueful clan. Then Marika, and vilest Erdtree both, will at last be from divinity wrench’d."

But in order to replace Marika, Miquella must also commit terrible crimes: he abandons his other half, he beguiles even those who would oppose him into being his very own blind followers. He charmed Mohg and violated his corpse, and Radahn's consent in this whole matter is dubious. In trying to make up for Marika's atrocities by becoming god of a new, kinder age, Miquella leaves behind a whole host of his own sins.

I believe that "the conceits – the hypocrisy – of the world built upon the Erdtree" and "the fickleness of the gods no better than men" are addressing this same idea. Miquella and Marika are no more special or inherently better than anyone else; they become fickle gods and establish hypocritical orders because no human being is perfect enough to wield absolute power with an even hand. Even Ymir himself falls prey to this thinking: he believes he can be a better mother than the ones before him, but he is just as broken as he rightfully points out they were.

This theme goes hand-in-hand with the story's emphasis on the Tarnished as the new inheritors of the Lands Between. From the very beginning, it establishes that it is the Tarnished who are chosen to succeed Radagon as Elden Lord, not the demigods. The intro cinematic announces this:

"Arise now, ye Tarnished. Ye dead, who yet live. The call of long-lost grace speaks to us all. Hoarah Loux, chieftan of the badlands. The ever-brilliant Goldmask. Fia, the Deathbed Companion. The loathsome Dung Eater. And Sir Gideon Ofnir, the All-knowing. And one other. Whom grace would again bless. A Tarnished of no renown. Cross the fog, to the Lands Between. To stand before the Elden Ring. And become the Elden Lord."

Enia translates for the Fingers that the Greater Will itself has abandoned the demigods:

"The Greater Will has long renounced the demigods. Tarnished, show no mercy. Have their heads. Take all they have left."

We the "Tarnished of no renown" enter the story at a major crossroads. The time of fickle Marika and her warring demigods is over: by the time we defeat Radagon and the Elden Beast, she is only an empty husk. We are ushering in a new age in which gods are no longer the primary overlords of the Lands Between, in which the power is vested in ordinary people.

I think the array of endings offered up to us further demonstrates this point. Every unique ending, save one, is based around the ideology of a Tarnished, whether it be Goldmask, Fia, Dungeater, or you as the Lord of Frenzied Flame. The only ending themed around a demigod is Ranni's. I've seen people complain before about how you can't side with the demigods and bring about the worlds they envision —Mohg's Age of Blood, Miquella's Age of Compassion, Rykard's destruction of the very gods themselves— but I think this goes against the primary themes of Elden Ring's story. The time of Marika and her demigods is over: now rises the age of the Tarnished. This is why Ranni succeeds where her siblings fail: she wants no power for herself because she, too, recognizes that nothing good can come of a human becoming a god. She explains as much:

"_Mine will be an order not of gold, but the stars and moon of the chill night. I would keep them far from the earth beneath our feet. As it is now, life, and souls, and order are bound tightly together, but I would have them at great remove. And have the certainties of sight, emotion, faith, and touch… All become impossibilities."

Ranni does not wish to become the god of the Greater Will and the worshipped figurehead of the Golden Order. She wishes to set herself apart so that she cannot interfere in the affairs of the Lands Between, unlike Marika and her regime. Ranni's ending reinforces the agency of the Tarnished, while Mohg and Miquella and Rykard's endings still focus around themselves.

Godhood is a dehumanizing force that turns individuals into the most corrupt versions of themselves; the main story sees us supplanting the old, rotten order of the gods as an exiled nobody.

And I think there's no better summation of these themes than Ansbach's dying words:

"Righteous Tarnished. Become our new lord. A lord not for gods, but for men."

[grumpyoldsnake]

Unsounded is an ongoing webcomic that makes occasional use of the web format! The majority of pages are formatted as if for print, but during climactic sections flame or monsters will stretch off the ‘page’, or borders will disappear entirely and the entire webpage becomes the background for a scene, or “pages” will instead become quasi-animated figures as each click brings you to the next keyframe, fun stuff like that.

You know, it's always struck me as a little odd how little most webcomics actually attempt to adapt to their medium. There's basic strips, the old 2k era 4-square, the endless scroll of Webtoons, and a few weird experimental things like Homestuck, but most webcomics I run into tend to stubbornly stick to conventional portrait-oriented page layouts.

It's… readable, I guess, but that format doesn't seem to work very well for either desktop or mobile viewing. It wastes a lot of screen-space, and usually makes it impossible to actually view the full page without making the text too small to read.

Have you encountered any interesting webcomics that experiment with more landscape-oriented layouts? I'm kinda curious about how well that would work.

So, there's this dude Scott McCloud who wrote about comics in the 90s. His first book, Understanding Comics, is literally the book on comics, it's the one schools make kids read. This third book, Making Comics, is a pretty good practical advice guide I'd recommend, even if it's not his groundbreaking seminal work. In between those two books was one called Reinventing Comics

Reinventing Comics, written in 1993, was basically a book of predictions about how this newfangled Interweb was going to revolutionize the art of comics creation. Like a lot of early-90s stuff "Wow the internet!" stuff, it has a lot of inaccurate predictions, and thus isn't super well remembered (though, unlike a lot of early-90s predictions of the internet, it at least vaguely resembled reality).

Anyway, one of the big things from that book was the idea of the "infinite canvas".

Which was basically the idea that a comic didn't have to be constrained by the size of the screen because you could scroll it. And this was a big idea in early webcomics, you heard this phrase a lot. And you'd see infinite canvas techniques like "What if the characters are falling and the comic is really tall to sell that?"

(Read Narbonic)

Which is basically the one and only example that actually took off, because it turns out that scrolling horizontally sucks and no one really wants to do it except as a one-of gimmick (as Homestuck does). The much bigger impact of the internet was that a webcomic could be infinitely long and still reasonably expect it's readership to have read it all, but I think McCloud missed that one. So while there were a bunch of "landscape" webcomics where you scrolled horizontally, none of them took off, and even the ones that were well received are long gone.

Adams himself would make Zot!, which is a vertical scroll comic that had a bit of a gimmick with parallel story beats being literally parallel. I think he even did some branching paths, and experimented with comics that you could read in different directions or that looped back on themselves.

But then Homestuck just did that better because, as I mentioned, infinite depth ended up being a lot more impactful than infinite width. It turns out that making a comic really wide calls a lot of attention to itself and makes the comic annoying to read. And it doesn't mean you can't do it (Homestuck did it!), but it does mean it can't be the gimmick you hang your comic up on unless you've got a really good reason for doing it.

[forestshadow-wolf]

Soap leading a team into a known structurally unsound building, but they have to check it because of orders from brass, and while he didn't have to go on the OP, he is the most qualified to lead it, and he could never just not go when his skills could potentially save lives.

Ghost had tried to go in his stead because he had tweaked his knee the day prior, and it still ached. But soap could do this kind of work in his sleeps... omay probably not, but Ghost doesn't know how to tell which hairline fractures cut all the way through, and which don't, and which could if given too much weight. There are calculations and variables to estimate how much a floor can hold, but none of those matter to spotting and weakspots.

It's been a while since Soap has had to lead a team, being on a specialized task force, but he falls back into it like riding a bike.

Now the problem lies, not with non-load bearing supports but, with the overconfident grunts. They think just because this step, that one, and the one before were safe, that the next will be too.

And not to say that Soap always knows when or if the wall or floor or ceiling will or won't hold, just that he knows how to test a floor or a wall, he knows where to hold his weight, he knows that one collapse can lead to so many others. And that's all just based on in-field experience. Not to even bring up the weeks of training and education he had to work through to be able to identify external weak points when dealing with structural damage; one of the first things you're taught when you specialize in demolitions is how to do it safely.

But no no ignore the officer, that maybe, a little bit knows what he was doing. Yeah go on ahead of him. Oh hey, yeah, that's a good idea, keep stomping around.

The building, little more than a 3-story house, breaths and groans around them like a wounded animal. It puts him on edge just like every other time. Wounds like to get worse if they aren't babied. And they definitely are not babying this one.

And given all the variables it wasn't all too surprising hear the smallest groan to his left, more feeling than hearing it, that sounded just a little too hollow.

"Stop! Don't move," He barked, like it was a matter of life and death, because it was, "who did that? Who just moved." All the soldiers frozen to the spot as he stared at each one, an intensity in his gaze even he could feel, trying to pinpoint where the weakness was.

Fidgeting and nervous weigh shifting, another whimper. Like yanking on a rope his attention to the boot of a reckless soldier. It was instinct alone that he saw his own hand pushing the grunt off the spot.

But a misstep on his part, a pained cry of wood and plaster.

The drop wasn't the furthest, neither the shortest, 5 maybe 6 meters. He landed on his kit. Debris followed him down, landing on his already aching knee. None too heavy, but none too light, and gravity had it's playtime.

It knocked every bit of air from his lungs, and at first he thought he collapsed a lung. Half a minute later it was clear to be false. But a shit ton of bruising, and maybe a cracked rib or two neither felt good.

He pawed at his radio, still fighting for air.

"Watcher," he wheezed

"Send traffic, 7-1" that was Ghost's voice

He was still gasping for air and it took him longer than he liked to signal for one of the grunts to relay the OP was worthless. Not worth the risk.

"Copy. Soap, how copy?" Ghost sounded calm if only a little lower in worry, hand to tell if nobody was listening. Soap couldn't muster the energy to both hold his head up and respond (he could, but it was a lot of work, so he didn't)

"Need, ice. And new lungs." He said out of breath. His knee throbbed, and no doubt it would be even angrier in the coming hours.

"Your knee?"

"Mh, fucked." He breathed, rallying to pick himself up. "Heading for exfil."

One of the grunts came to help him to his feet. "Copy."

His knee only protested more the way to exfil. And it squeezed like a vice so tight he could barely walk by they time they touched back on base. If he couldn't see, he'd almost think it fell right off with the pressure. And yet there it was still, didn't even look swollen under his loose pantleg.

Ghost was waiting for him when he hobbled his way out, and gear heavy oh his joints, sore to hell and back, but alive.

"We need to get that looked at," Ghost took him under the shoulder to take some of his weight, and he reached for the gear in soap's hand. We. Not you. Like it was his injury too. We. Like it hadn't even crossed his mind for soap to go alone.

"Ice tonight, doc tomorrow." He sighed, too tired and sore and bruised to even think about all the shit that would entail. He was tired, and hurt, and his leg was gonna fall off. And Ghost looked like he wanted to argue, but he just nodded because they both knew what it was like when all you wanted to do was play like the dead and do nothing else for 12 hours.

"Doc tomorrow." He spoke like he was reminding soap while he opened Soap door, with key that soap gave him, like it was his room and not soap's.

"Tomorrow." Soap agreed, sitting gingerly on his bed. Ghost turned, grabbing ice for him. Buttons and clips and velcros undid as soap pulled at them. Dusty, sweaty, dirty shirt and jeans went into a pile too. And he clipped his leg brace around his knee, and pulled the straps tight.

He doesn't even remember laying down, but he was asleep before Ghost even got back with the ice

[elany]

Yk what I want? I want a very early stages post canon labrumisu, but from Chilchuck's POV.

Imagine mister 'interparty romance is the devil' visiting court just to see these three circling each other like a pack of uniquely unhinged cats. And of course he sees it immediately, he's nothing if not perceptive and he's seen this happen so, so many times before. Kabru is hardly subtle in his fascination with Laios, who trusts him in turn more than nearly anybody else. He can see how close Mithrun and Kabru still are, even when there's little reason for the former captain to even stay in Melini. He can see where this is going. And he can see the disaster it's gonna end up in.

So he's just staring at them in horror, trying to figure out what in the world the dynamic here even is and glaring daggers at Kabru all the while for seemingly being the linchpin of this entire bullshit situation. King, his adviser and a fucking foreign noble?? Who thought THAT was a good idea! Is nobody else seeing this?? (no lol) Why is nobody objecting to this politically unsound love triangle that could literally ruin the kingdom they've only just established??

The anger! The distress! The despair when he first sees Laios getting all giddy when Mithrun so much as talks to him. Because hell, now he can't even blame the entire situation on one pretty boy insisting on having fingers in every possible pie, on political and personal level both!

And then they just. Quietly get together. All three of them. And Chil's just watching from the sidelines in complete bafflement because he's invented infinite worst case scenarios for how this will implode in all of their faces and destroy their friend group and topple the entire country and--

Instead they do. This. He'd be relieved if he wasn't so goddamn mad that he's spent months worrying about this shit just for them to resolve it in the least dramatic way possible.

Fuck this, he's taking a holiday.

[angstandhappiness]

Interesting

what percent of bastion is inspired by howl from howls moving castle?

Not much. Bastion was originally a replacement in RP games for Sydney Losstarot from Vagrant Story :) Sydney Losstarot also was a melodramatic man whore and cultist cursed from a young age to be enslaved to a dark sorceress that lived in his head. If you're going to steal a character, kids, steal an obscure one.

I do like Howl a lot - love the books especially - but he's quite different from Bastion? Much more wholesome. Howl always reminded me of Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady, honestly. What if you made Henry Higgins a wizard rather than a dialect coach, and Eliza Doolittle into an elderly hatmaker with secret witch powers.

[tea-knitting-adeliers]

Group 19 Interlude — the Smuggler and the Wright

In which values are tested and injustice is challenged.

In nearly all ways, Tali Sena considered herself to be average. Average height, average build, average intelligence, not exceptionally beautiful or ugly. Her life too, had once been average.

She had been a weaver. Elim had made constructs, the two of them had met through a mutual friend. It sounded cliche, but it was love at first sight. They married fairly quickly, and everyone had been happy for the young couple. 

They were not criminals, not really. It had all started so innocently. Elim had been working on some projects outside of work, he was running low on First materials. The government needed all that they could get, everything was going to the military. 

All that the Senas needed was something that would not be missed. Cresce would not miss a bit of First Silk. 

It was underutilized in the military, relatively cheap, Elim thought he could find a better use for it. 

In her work, Tali often encountered the stuff, and it started as these things often start, with a little bit off the top of the pile, and she told herself that would be all. It would have been, but Elim had friends, and so it was a little bit more, and then he was making progress on his work, and she could not keep it up, or else she would arouse suspicion.

Cresce would not miss a few Spindleworms. 

And that was all that it was, really. Just a few, taken in the night, hidden in a closet. To harvest the silk was difficult at first, but in time, the Senas would have access to near limitless amounts of it, at least when compared to the scraps that they had previously.

What’s more, Elim was right about the underutilization of it. While a construct could not be made from First Silk, the cheaper material could be used to add extra features to them. 

It really wouldn’t hurt to sell it, right?

Not for money, of course, sem was useless in Cresce, but for goods. For items that they would have to save LP for months or years to afford. Not so much that they would get caught, just enough that they could be a bit better off.

It was never meant to get out of hand. These things never are, after all, and yet they always do. Her small operation grew larger, and soon the Crescian government was hearing stories of a smuggling ring operating out of a small home in Port Morstorben. 

It wasn’t just a few Spindleworms anymore, Tali had procured more, and now she was coming home from work to an entire other job. 

It wasn’t just First Silk anymore. She had traded it for other things, for more valuable things. The government was right to investigate her, but to build up to this size had taken years, and countless connections. She knew they were coming before they even knew her name. 

By the time that the Peaceguard were at her door, she and Elim had packed their lives away and left for Sharteshane. 

She had been happy there, but Elim had a target on his back from the moment that they had arrived. Sharteshanians were skeptical of wrights, let alone a Crescian man who had fled to Sharteshane under mysterious circumstances. 

During their time in Port Morstorben, Elim Sena was no less changed than his wife. Much like her embezzlement had transformed into a smuggling operation, his investigation of the applications of First Silk had transformed into a fascination with all of the things that he had not been taught; his goal of maximizing Crescian effectiveness led to environment scanning weapons, detection systems, concealed garments that would allow a wright to cast through gestures. His friends were rogue wrights, his goals now more abstract. He didn’t want to make anything specific so much as he wanted to see what could be made.

The Sharteshanians were no more welcoming to him than the Crescians had been, and before long, he spoke of leaving.

It was no better, he claimed, to live in Sharteshane, a nation that refused to give pymary the respect that it deserved, to give wrights the freedom to choose their own path, than to stay in Cresce. They were all the same, he stated, so what did it matter.

She was reluctant; Elim wanted to move to Fachlyne. That was suicidal, in her view, and she insisted that she would have no part in it.

Before long, they had paid their fees and boarded a smuggler’s ship, headed to Fachlyne.

The same song and dance, again, with Group 19. Elim was proud of his beliefs, in freedom, in the pursuit of knowledge, and wanted to join an organization that supported that in its members.

Tali understood, in many ways she agreed with him, but she was skeptical.

“The evil of men knows no bounds, Elim. Any cause, no matter how noble, can be twisted, and some rules exist for a reason.”

She was offered membership as well. She declined their offer.

Charles Barnier was an Aldishman, who had reached the age of 162 by the time that he first met the Senas. His wardrobe consisted of a small set of plain shirts and pants. He was not the social type, preferring to spend his days holed up in his workshop, to the dismay of nobody else. He was unusually pale, likely from his hours spent inside, with messy black hair and cold blue eyes. He was a man of unusual intellect, and a man of unusual brutality.

He did not like anyone, and he certainly did not like the Senas. They were not upset by this, the more that they learned of him, the more the feeling became mutual.

It was unclear what exactly he was doing. He shared the bare minimum in meetings, preferring to speak to management by himself. He had no direct neighbors, nobody wanted to live near him, and every so often, his hallway would be sectioned off. 

Elim had joined with a seemingly unshakable belief in the freedom to practice pymary, in the pursuit of knowledge, but what he had seen of Barnier’s work ate away at those values. It seemed that he had been working with an efheby to achieve his goals, that he had killed countless people in the process. 

They were true, the rumors about what Elim had said in the meeting. He couldn’t help himself.

Dahlia Bates was an old Sharteshanian wright, who much like him, had moved to Fachlyne to get away from the country’s views on pymary. She was an integral member of Group 19’s management, in charge of handling member disputes. She was respected and feared in equal measure, and had a firm belief in the Non-Intervention Policy. 

She pulled him aside after the meeting, and asked him to join her in her office. The room was not overly large, or so small as to be cramped, and her desk sat in front of a window. She sat down in the chair behind it and pulled out a stack of paper.

“These are complaints that you have filed against Barnier this autumn. The season is not yet over, and still this surpasses the numbers I have seen filed in the years before you arrived. Your disrespect to him is appalling. Never in my time here have I met a man so determined to stop another’s research. In my opinion, you are dangerously close to violating the Non-Interference Policy. What do you have to say for yourself, Sena?”

“Barnier has threatened my work. He has put our entire organization in danger!”

“What do you mean?”

“The efheby! It is pure madness! That… thing is a threat to all of us!”

“No one has died.”

“People have died!”

“Who?”

“Countless people! Barnier has left a trail of corpses in his wake.”

“Are they the corpses of members?”

Elim Sena knew where she was going with this. He did not like it one bit.

“They, Ms. Bates, are the corpses of innocent people who did not deserve to get caught up in any of this!”

“So no. In that case, it is not our place to discuss. What happens in his workshop is his business, Sena. I will not tolerate this behavior any longer.”

“That is only half of my complaints!”

“Yes,” she responded, growing visibly upset, “and the rest of them are of equal validity.”

“I will not tolerate child abuse!”

“The girl made her choice, and-“

“No!” He was yelling now, furious with her. “The placement was yours!”

She stood, slamming her hands on the desk. Her tone was even and measured.

“She has the potential to be a remarkable wright, but she is young, and she is arrogant, and those traits require correction. Do not question my judgement, I would not be where I am today if I were not competent.”

“And is this correction!? Is this fair!? Is this-“

Her hand on his face interrupted him, not hard enough to do any damage, but painful nonetheless.

“You forget your place.”

“He will kill her! Is that fair to you? He will feed her to that thing!”

She was angry now, and she spoke with fury in her voice.

“As I have said, Sena, what Barnier does in his workshop is none of your business, and neither is it mine. Now get out of my office before I come back to my senses and put you on trial for violation of the Non-Interference Policy. If anyone was to be concerned for her safety, it should have been the men who gave her to us. They knew who we were.”

He walked home silently, still seething with rage. He opened the door to find Tali sitting at the table, going over some documents. She did not look up, but she did greet him.

“Hello, Elim! How was the meeting? I have request forms, Jocelyne, the Plat girl in the kitchens, brought them over.”

“The meeting was certainly a meeting.”

“Well, is there anything that you would like? I need to fill these out.”

“I would like to kill Ms. Bates. I would also quite like to string up Barnier in the main hall and watch him slowly bleed to death.”

“What happened?”

“I spoke honestly about him,” Elim said, laughing. “I called him a tasteless sadist and said we should cut his tongue out.”

“Who was there?”

“It was the organization meeting. Everyone was there. Of course, Ms. Bates was quite upset with me, and she told me in no uncertain terms that the only lives that matter to her are the ones listed on her little membership list.”

“Is that all?”

“She told me that I should not question her judgement, and that Michelle’s placement was justified.”

“And were you respectful?”

“No. I said she was out of line. She threatened to put me on trial if I refused to stop. I really should have hit her back.”

“She hit you!?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Elim Sena was not the same man who had joined Group 19 what felt like a lifetime ago. That man was one of the countless victims of Charles Barnier. There was not much that he could do, but he did what he could, and so he sat down at his desk and started on another complaint.