#ill flesh out the verses themselves later

[nostomannia]

[myristicisms]

trigger warnings for this drabble include; vague mentions of child endangerment regarding miriam's childhood, vague allusions to self harm, minor body horror, mention of needles, and suicidal ideation/thoughts/romanticization of death

this drabble is compliant for miriam's default verse and her baldur's gate 3 verse

God, religion, oddities in of themselves that always had some ridiculous notions and taboos attached to them; Were there a god then why would one worth a grain of salt allow monstrous beings to exist and bring harm to the so-called beloved humans they had made? Were there a god, then why would they allow their cherished humans to commit atrocities against one another with little consequence? There was no god, not to Miriam in any case.

That had been a revelation long since held throughout her childhood, when needles dug deep within her flesh to drain her of blood to monitor and when daggers carved unknown script ( which later she'd found to be Enochian ) into her body with little regard for the sobs of a child begging to be freed and left alone; Death was something akin to a gift, Miriam had thought, it must've been if the damned alchemists had fought tooth and nail to keep her alive even despite the ever constant dizziness and nausea that left her malnourished as a child.

Every night she'd pray to God for relief, and every day she'd awaken in misery, the ever present freezing chill of the shard slowly embedding itself within her spine a constant reminder of her ailment, when the alchemical process first began, she remembered far too vividly how it felt to stand and walk, like daggers shooting through her very being and leaving her exhausted after mere minutes of activity compared to the rest of the children who'd yet to be pushed through the same process; Eventually, though, everyone within the orphanage had endured the curious proddings of lunatic men claiming to be alchemists.

The thought was laughable in of itself, bitter enough to drive the taste of bile deep within her throat - Perhaps in title they were alchemists but as far Miriam cared, they were nothing more than frauds and monsters. And as far as Miriam was concerned, part of this heinous experimentation had been at the fault of the ever rising sentiments regarding religion; Had the alchemic guild not lost funding due to the rise in spirituality for a god that seldom ever answered prayers ( and likely doesn't even exist, given how little they care for their people ) then their plunge into insanity and degeneracy likely never would have happened, Gebel would not have been so ill much the same as Miriam herself.

Alfred and Johannes were among the few ‘ good ones ’ as far as the guild was concerned, although the bar for that was intensely low to begin with. As the years passed on and Miriam grew older, the more she questioned what little faith she'd had, questioned herself too, simply because when one is raised as a weapon, a monster, it becomes difficult to truly know if perhaps the lack of answers was due to a lack of a god, said god not caring one bit, or the answer that lingered and made the most sense; She was not a person.

Not any longer, no. She was a monster, a demon, and beast, one that thrived upon slaughtering whatever hellish creatures she'd been forced into combat with to collect data and absorb their lingering magic within herself.

Hellish, painful, hideous, awful, putrid, vile, monster.

Every night, shattered shards covered in crimson and alabaster would rest upon once pristine wooden floors, shaking fingers prying each one out with the intent of some form of normalcy and yet they only return as swiftly as they're removed. Humans do not experience that, humans do not need to pry crystal from their flesh, humans do not experience the feeling of claws ripping apart their ribcage and intruding upon her very core to develop some form of newfound strength, humans were not Shardbinders and Shardbinders were not human, they were extensions of hell in a way, a conduit of demonic energy that drew other monsters to their vicinity to continue an ever looping and hideous cycle of violence only ever broken by the sweet caress of death's fingertips.

Every morning was new misery, new pain, the ever present shifting of crystals within her body molding her skin into something thicker, something near cold to the touch, and each new piece of herself she'd discover would only further raise the same question within Miriam's hardly beating heart; Where is God? Why won't he stop this madness and end her ever growing misery.

It wasn't until years later down the line, where Miriam begged and pleaded to be slain that finally she'd had something answered to some degree, angrily lashing out at Gebel over her condition simply because she'd been bitter ( fitting given her name, of course ) and he'd had the audacity to try to be optimistic, that she finally understood what she was, who she was to some degree. Shardbinders weren't a thing, a simple label that held no meaning to those who knew themselves and knew their capabilities too.

‘ Our power doesn't make us good or bad. Our choices do. ’

That had been what he'd said to her, what put her mind at ease and chased away the ridiculous notion that just because the alchemists had changed her, deformed her body to some degree and even marred her heart some, Miriam was no monster. She was no demon, nor some hideous and evil beast, because her choices were that of a human's, as righteous as they can be while still allowing wiggle room for growth and flaws, she was no monster and thus there was no god because what god would allow their cherished creations to suffer so terribly by one another's hand?

[synnthamonsugar]

Savathun's Trip to the Last City

Now that we have a clearer picture of what’s going on with Savathun I decided to compile the last year’s worth of her POV lore pieces together.

This is super long, and has spoilers for Path of the Splicer VI / Beneath the Endless Night VII, so I’m putting it under a cut.

Credit to @xivuuarath for reading through this and adding some of their ideas! We talked about more beyond what’s posted here, but this is getting long, so maybe that would be better saved for a part two.

1. Traveler's Chosen (Season of Arrivals)

This piece is told from the POV of a narrator viewing the events through an "ossific den". Based on later lore pieces, I'm certain the narrator is Savathun. Given that ahamkara bones have been compromised by her, and that Shaxx has an ahamkara skull slung up in his station, it’s safe to assume this is Sav’s vantage point.

That said, I don't believe Savathun is observing Shaxx, but rather Zavala, struggling in the wake of the Darkness' encroachment on the system and his colleagues' refusals to evacuate to safety. She seems pleased to find Zavala in a desperate state, and watches as he has a silent conversation with the Traveler. Of note is that she's waiting for it to respond.

He waits for a response and I do as well, tense, curious. [ . . . ] It is no time at all for me, but for him, the hours creep by in silence.

I am ready to choke the voice of his Traveler if it answers him, but there is nothing.

2. Harbinger Mission (Season of the Hunt)

Thank you to @xivuuarath​ for pointing this out since I didn’t include it the first time around. During the Harbinger mission Savathun’s forces are attempting to secure a Shard of the Traveler in the EDZ. Of note is that they aren’t trying to destroy it, but rather siphon the Light from it.

Given that the Shard of the Traveler is what allowed our Guardian to jumpstart their Light when they lost it during the Red War, and is what allowed Uldren Sov to break into the Dreaming City during the events of Forsaken, we can assume it’s useful to lightbearers and mortals alike. Make note of this, because it becomes potentially relevant later on.

2.5. Hawkmoon (Season of the Hunt)

From an unknown vantage point, Savathun watches The Guardian and Crow celebrate their defeat of her Taken at the Shard of the Traveler. Unlike Zavala, she can find no weak points in Crow or the Guardian, only happiness. This awakens something in her.

What is this feeling? I did not ask for it. I do not understand it. I do not want it.

Which gets repeated throughout the lore piece. This is our first glimpse of Savathun having feelings that don't fall into the range of "malevolence" or "plotting". She yearns for her youth with her siblings and the warmth of her old life, and feels burgeoning regret for the people she betrayed.

There is a growing kinship here. Against better judgment.

This is ambiguous enough to be a comment on Crow’s and The Guardian’s relationship, or herself and The Guardian and/or Crow. She's called us her friend before but this might be the first time she's actually had friendly feelings for us.

3. Books of Sorrow: New Verse (Season of the Hunt)

This hasn't actually been posted on Ishtar Collective and I'm too lazy to track down a transcript online, so pardon the source. There's a lot to unpack here.

I walk in a city made of delicate hopes.

Savathun has moved beyond occupying ahamkara bones and is actually physically present.

I hear my name everywhere. [. . .] The sound is nourishment.

Imbaru machine on-line?

I am more than I ever was, and less than I will ever be.

Make note of this line.

I am many and none. I'm a man who sits alone in a cavernous office counting my failures. I'm a woman looking at a silent god. I'm a lost soul on a cold moon. I'm a broken mirror of a man who tries to steer the ship.

Comparing (?) herself to Zavala, Ikora, Eris, and back to Zavala again?

I'm a familiar stranger, flitting between them all, hiding my face.

Again, I think she's speaking literally here.

The people here are small krill dwarfed by the enormity of oblivion.

A neat little comparison of humanity with the krill, who we established in her last appearance she's beginning to feel regret for.

4. Retrofuturist (Season of the Chosen)

Savathun watches a Crucible match, and judges Guardians for being reckless with the gift of immortality. The tone of this piece reinforces the idea she is actually out and about in a corporeal form.

I'm mostly interested in her perspective on Ghosts here. She calls them "A perfect being", and describes their ability to revive the dead as miraculous. She isn't happy that the spectators don't appreciate the gravity of this. Weird sentiment for a hive but ok.

I look up into the blank white face. I feel its Light on my cheeks. It no longer burns me.

The Hive are repelled by the Light. Savathun has grown to tolerate it. Something has changed in her metaphysical composition.

@xivuuarath​ made the excellent observation that she might have been at least partially successful in the Harbinger mission - that she may have secured enough Light to build up an immunity, allowing her to be physically present in the City without being hurt by the Traveler.

Each revival is a choice. I know what to do.

Tuck this away for a moment.

5. Beneath the Endless Night: VII - Ripe (Season of the Splicer)

Okay this whole page is insane so excuse the massive infodump here.

I walk through the City on broken legs. I am conspicuous, but the people here grant me many affordances. I chose this form well.

Confirmation that our girl is actually bumping about in a human-form.

I open my eyes and search the faces of the people around me for familiarity. I did not mean to. I twist inwardly with disgust.

She's sympathizing with the humans of the City. She does not like this, but she is!

When they first reached for me, I reached back in acid mockery, and they opened themselves to me in stupid, naked innocence. I was giddy. My fingers raked their minds. I forced my will through them using only words and met no resistance.

Now I reach as often as they do, and when they reach back, I am thankful. I speak with them. I seek their company. Their companionship.

In case it wasn’t obvious already, Savathun has been running a psy-op on the residents of the Last City, which may explain some of the particularly erratic and troubling behavior from individuals / groups this season.

However the interesting thing is, while Sav used her powers of suggestion to manipulate, the humans unknowingly manipulated her in return. Not through any magic - simply through their kindness.

Savathun is doing more than observing the people of the Last City, she is living with them, getting to know them. Savathun is making friends and it’s literally changing her.

This is not pity, for I know pity. What is this—

A call back to the Hawkmoon lore with her trying to make sense of budding positive feelings.

I clench the gangling black mass that threatens to unspool recklessly from within this shell of flesh. My new arms are too thin, too weak. My new shell still bound with thick mucus. Not yet, I say.

I suspect that the “new shell” she talks about here is not her human-form, but rather something else growing inside it.

A man places his hands on me, on my shoulders, on my back. He asks if I am ill, and he sees my flat eyes, my teeth black with ripeness, and he prepares to scream. I let him keep his mind. I push breath up and through my ruined mouth and speak a simple lie. He stops, smiles, laughs. Shakes his head. He points a finger at me in mocking admonishment before walking away.

A few things to unpack here.

Savathun is physically deteriorating... badly. @xivuuarath pointed out that the body horror of this particular scene mirrors the Emissary’s description of a world with no darkness and creatures that are incapable of death even as they physically fall apart, and if you follow that line of thinking you may infer that she’s forcing herself to live through light alone.

She's approachable enough that some rando would see her in trouble and want to help her, reinforcing the point that she's been wandering about the City and vibing with its residents.

She could have done worse to the good samaritan but chooses not to. She does her mind trick and lets him go about his business. She’s showing mercy... which is something we know the hive absolutely must not do at the risk of being consumed by their worm.

Even here, basted in deception both ample and rich, the Worm cries ravenously. It has grown grotesque, skin taut, overfed, and still it howls for more. It commands me to keep it alive.

I look up, beyond the flickering net of darkness, and see what rests just beyond. Waiting for me. The Worm roars.

NOT DISCONCERTINGLY AMBIGUOUS AT ALL that we don't know if the worm is roaring in terror, pleading or triumph.

TL;DR of what I think is going on.

Savathun came to the City to destabilize it through manipulation, but could not be physically present until she hardened herself to the Light. Camouflaging herself in a human form, she spent time with the residents of the City, and found herself manipulated in return by their kindness. She's resisting the positive emotions, but they're there, which is something we've never seen between hive and humans before. You can't have a crisis of conscience if you don't have a conscience, and Savathun does.

I think Savathun is trying to shed her current form and be reborn in some capacity. I think she's going to try to use the Light to rid herself of the Worm and bootstrap herself into something new. If you'd asked me before reading this lore, I would have insisted that she wanted to become a thought-entity, but the cocoon-like imagery makes me second-guess this assumption.

There are outstanding questions at this point.

Why did she want to prevent Eris and/or The Guardian from communicating with the Darkness in Season of Arrivals? Is there a purpose to the Endless Night beyond eroding willpower and sowing division? Is she trying to save only herself, or attempt to undo the millennia-old injustice she inflicted on her people?

[pynkhues]

C+C question here! Feel free not to answer! I’m getting over a cold that sucked and I was wondering how do you think Rio would be if he had the flu in an established relationship with Beth? Would he begrudgingly let her take care of him? How would they be with each other? Again, feel free bot to answer! I was just curious!

I'm so sorry you've been sick, anon! Colds are the worst. I hope you're feeling better 💖

And ooooo, I feel like Rio would be as terrible of a patient as Beth would be, haha – they're both so stubborn and so used to looking after themselves, that giving into illness isn't really something they're designed for. I wrote Beth as sort of like - - actively rejecting being sick in the Lighthouse Man chapter of Playing House, and I think Rio would be more like her than he'd be willing to admit.

He wouldn't let it get that bad, and he'd I think be more willing to acknowledge that he was sick (and probably be high and mighty with Beth about both, haha), but I also think he'd be the sort of person in this 'verse for whom life doesn't ever really stop, and especially not for a cold. He can't postpone meetings, or delay production schedules, and he won't miss things like Marcus and Jane's soccer game or Emma's recital, and it's that that Beth doesn't get. The acknowledgement but the refusal to adjust your life when you have the resources to do so is insane to her, and she starts calling him Patient Zero everywhere they go and constantly shoving tissues up the sleeves of his bomber jacket or blister packs of Advil into the back pocket of his jeans (and the latter he thinks is going to be fun at least, because he thinks she's groping him, but she just snorts and tells him there's not anything there to grope).

And y'know, the thing is, Rio knows his limits - he's not going to be burning himself out like she does, but - - okay, maybe he's not as good at it as he thinks ("Or maybe you're just getting old," Elizabeth snarks at him later) because it's hard to get out of bed the next morning and harder still to stay focused in the warehouse that afternoon, and when Elizabeth presses her fingers into the aching flesh of his neck, massages them there until his head falls heavy into her shoulder, his sinuses blocked and his eyelids weighing a ton, he feels something in it. Feels it deeper, tighter, when she says I took the kids at your mom and asked Mick to handle the drops tonight, because maybe he realises that there's a difference between being able to look after yourself and having to, and maybe, just maybe, he doesn't have to anymore.

[silenthillmutual]

2020 Creator Wrap

I was tagged by @stvlti to do the 2020 Creator Wrap: Favorite Works tag! Thank you, sm!! c:

Rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 (or so) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought to the world in 2020. tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

Tagging: @lawliyeeeet​ @soupcans @kunoiichi @milk-teeths @darkpaladin and anyone else who wants to!! Though there’s no pressure to do this if you don’t want<3

So... according to my AO3, I seem to have published or updated 63 works in 2020, which is just a whole hell of a lot more than I usually do! So I’ll pick the going from oldest to newest that I’m most happy with :)

CONTENT WARNING though, under 18 please do not read below the cut as two of the fics are M and one is E. Additional content warning: two deal with self harm and one with intrusive thoughts, and one with pregnancy.

01 || Communication (T)

I think this was when I really hit my stride with understanding how I wanted to characterize Daniil, specifically, and more generally when I worked out how I wanted to write his relationship with Artemy. I tend to focus on the ways in which they communicate differently, and I think I pulled off their voices relatively well.

Favorite moment, when I managed to slip some autism into my characterization:

This is a flaw of his - a messy, embarrassing secret, this inability to distinguish jokes and sarcasm from serious discussion. He masks his insufficiency with a flat-toned seriousness. People find it harder to separate the sarcasm and the jokes from his regular speech when he makes no vocal distinction, and he enjoys the discomfort it brings in others. He considers it, to a degree, payback. A taste of their own medicine. And when he wants to make it clear where his feelings lie, he’ll be picky with the words themselves. He is, if absolutely nothing else, exceptional in the area of verbal self-expression. 

02 || sine sole sileo (M)

This is one of my older works and it is far from being my best, it’s terribly out of character and woobifying, but I’m fond of it as my first really long and more emotional work for the fandom. I had fun writing the first chapter out as a Twitter thread, and then expanding on it. It’s multi-chaptered and actually finished, which is something I have a hard time with!

Favorite moment, which I still actually kind of like, despite everything:

He knows the silence behind the doors, too. It’s a stillness that makes the tips of his fingers buzz. How many days has it been now? Three, four? Artemy though he’d changed the sheets, added new notations. Welcomed in the vocals, the strings, the what-ever-else accompanied performances like this in the Capital. His verses hadn’t been well-sung, but the band had started to play with him. He’d come to anticipate the thrumming percussion. A heart with its own rhythm. Footsteps that rose and fell. Words that lilted, that lead, that brought the symphony to a heightened frenzy.

But silence is a kind of noise too. Where the heart doesn’t beat. Where the voices don’t speak. Even when there is nothing, there is noise.

Artemy has to take a breath before he opens the door. He knows he won’t like what he sees, but he’s seeing so much more in his mind than will be there to greet him. His eyes shake and jostle him to great many things: a gun, a hook, a rope, stained bedsheets and curtains ripped from windows. He sees death even before his eyes adjust because he can smell it, and because he can hear it.

Twelve, he thinks.

03 || o tempora, o mores (M)

This fic was my baby! I wanted so badly to write a character struggling with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder the way I do, and while it’s not my best-performing fic for the fandom (I haven’t kept track of which one is, actually) it’s probably my favorite. I worked so hard on this one, trying to replicate what it’s like to struggle with OCD, and it felt so gratifying to do. I’m currently working on a follow-up to this one, and I’m very excited for it as well!

Favorite moment is really the whole thing, but I do like this in particular, because I feel it really resonated with how intrusive thoughts and compulsions work for me:

The self-talk gives him enough of a boost to get him through the doors of the hospital. It feels safer here, where there’s only the ill and the dead instead of the thousand living eyes trying to touch him. No one comes to bother him here, just him and Artemy and sometimes Clara and Rubin until a few days ago –

YOUR FAULT. HE IS SICK BECAUSE OF YOU. HE IS IN TROUBLE BECAUSE OF YOU. IF RUBIN DIES, IT IS BECAUSE OF YOU. “Stop it, stop it, stop it,” Daniil mutters. THE EYES KNOW THE VACCINE DIDN’T WORK. THEY ARE WAITING FOR YOU TO ADMIT IT, ADMIT THAT THERE IS NOT ENOUGH TO PROTECT THEM SO THEY CAN HAND YOU TO THE DOGS. THEY WANT TO RIP YOUR BODY OPEN AND DEVOUR YOU. CANNIBALS, ALL OF THEM. AND YOU CAN’T RUN FOREVER. “Stop it,” he repeats, and tries to dig a jagged nail into his wrist.

It won’t go. Too slippery from the ointment Victor applied. He has something in his bag to help, another jagged edge, a rusted pair of scissors lost to their original purpose. The Morae were busy here, he’d thought the first time he saw them, and had laughed at his own clever joke. But now he feels the red string is his skin.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.                                  (it is starting to hurt these could be infected they are dirty they are rusted,) Eight.                                     (but it has to be ten he has to get to ten it has to be even) Nine.                                     (has to be a multiple of five but even always even, no odd numbers in sight)

04 || vita in motu (E)

Heheh I’m in danger (chuckles).

I’ve only managed to get one piece of hate for this fic which I figured would draw way more ire and make me orphan it, and I’m glad I haven’t had to because I’m stupidly attached to the concept. I was trying not to go for E rated fics for this, but this fic meant so much to me to write and for something marked explicit I put a lot of thought into how I wanted to characterize Daniil for it.

So. Yeah. Publishing it was scary as hell but I’m glad I did. I also got some really nice feedback on it, and more than I expected to. I’m very happy with how it turned out.

Favorite moment was actually much longer at the start of it, though kind of like with o tempora, o mores I actually really like how the whole fic turned out. But I really liked this part because I view Artemy as someone who would be very grounding for Daniil to be with:

“Stay in the moment,” Artemy tells him, and kisses him again, kisses him slowly. “Stay here with me. I love you.”  

 It should be utter nonsense, to give in so quickly to this, but Artemy makes it easy. Daniil would never have seen this in his future, would not have even made this as a joke. Something had to beat down his resistance to the emotional, a pro to outweigh the cons he associated with vulnerability. Keeping tightly bound was the safest bet, the easy one. He could say he lacked emotion, and anyone would buy it. Nothing short of a miracle could drag him back to the land of the living – but then again, nothing short of a miracle could have saved this town. Artemy Burakh is a man who manufactures miracles.  

05 || it’s sacrilege, you say (T)

This is the last fic that I wrote out that I took a lot of time planning instead of going “hey, I think this idea would be neat” and slapping it onto paper. And I think it turned out really well!! I almost wanted to do something darker with it, more akin to Silent Hill, but I have other ideas in mind for that kind of AU that I’ll play with later, one of which will be a sort of crossover with TMA.

Favorite moment is when I actually implied the twist, though I’m not sure you can call it a twist at all when I used proper tags:

Her eyes drift from Daniil to the wall, pivoting to look through the window. “No,” she says. “I don’t know why he made you.”

 The center of Daniil’s chest feels like a flower, budded but unopened. Smooth, perhaps, but heavy to move, and his petals are made of something sharp. Crystal, maybe. And he can feel the petals start to part with her words, though they make so little sense to him. He steps forward, closer, half expecting Aspity to recoil from him, but she stays unnaturally still as he approaches. He reaches out to wet his lips, dry as sand, before he speaks. “Made me?” There’s no tone in his voice. “What do you mean, made me? And who are you talking about?”

 She doesn’t turn to face him. She blinks, and lashes fall on sunken cheeks. “Do you remember how you got here, doctor?” He opens his mouth, but she’s faster. “Not to my home. To Town. Think: Can you remember how it is you came to be here?” Daniil grinds his teeth on the side of his tongue, sharp edges digging into the flesh. The flesh.      The flesh    . “Take your time,” she says, but it sounds like a joke. “The last train that arrived brought the menkhu, and no one else aboard it. There are no other ways into our Town.”

[hdsflowergarden]

“The Wise Sappho”, H.D.

   “Little, but all roses” is the dictate of the Alexandrine poet, yet I am inclined to disagree. I would not bring roses, nor yet the great shaft of scarlet lilies. I would bring orange blossoms, implacable flowerings made to seduce the sense when every other means has failed, poignard that glints, fresh sharpened steel: after the red heart, red lilies, impassioned roses are dead. 

   “Little, but all roses”—true there is a tint of rich colour (invariably we find it), violets, purple woof of cloth, scarlet garments, dyed fastening of a sandal, the lurid, crushed and perished hyacinth, stains on cloth and flesh and parchment. 

   There is gold too. Was it a gold rose the poet meant? But the gold of a girl-child’s head, the gold of an embroidered garment hem, the rare gold of sea-grass or meadow-pulse does not seem to evoke in our thought the vision of roses, heavy in a scented garden.

    “Little, but all roses.” I think, though the stains are deep on the red and scarlet cushions, on the flaming cloak of love, it is not warmth we look for in these poems, not fire nor sun- light, not heat in the ordinary sense, diffused, and comforting (nor is it light, day or dawn or light of sun-setting), but another element containing all these, magnetic, vibrant; not the lightning as it falls from the thunder cloud, yet lightning in a sense: white, unhuman element, containing fire and light and warmth, yet in its essence differing from all these, as if the brittle crescent-moon gave heat to us, or some splendid scintillating star turned warm suddenly in our hand like a jewel, sent by the beloved.

    I think of the words of Sappho as these colours, or states rather, transcending colour yet containing (as great heat the compass of the spectrum) all colour. And perhaps the most obvious is this rose colour, merging to richer shades of scarlet, purple or Phoenician purple. To the superficial lover—truly—roses!    

   Yet not all roses—not roses at all, not orange blossoms even, but reading deeper we are inclined to visualize these broken sentences and unfinished rhythms as rocks—perfect rock shelves and layers of rock between which flow- ers by some chance may grow but which endure when the staunch blossoms have perished. 

   Not flowers at all, but an island with innumerable, tiny, irregular bays and fjords and little straits between which the sun lies clear (fragments cut from a perfect mirror of iridescent polished silver or of the bronze reflecting richer tints) or breaks, wave upon destructive passionate wave.

    Not roses, but an island, a country, a continent, a planet, a world of emotion, differing entirely from any present day imaginable world of emotion; a world of emotion that could only be imagined. by the greatest of her own countrymen in the greatest period of that country’s glamour, who themselves confessed her beyond their reach, beyond their song, not a woman, not a goddess even, but a song or the spirit of a song.

    A song, a spirit, a white star that moves across the heaven to mark the end of a world epoch or to presage some coming glory. 

   Yet she is embodied—terribly a human being, a woman, a personality as the most impersonal become when they confront their fellow beings.

    The under-lip curls out in the white face, she has twisted her two eyes unevenly, the brows break the perfect line of the white forehead, her expression is not exactly sinister (sinister and dead), the spark of mockery beneath the half-closed lids is rather living destructive irony.

    “What country girl bewitches your heart who knows not how to draw her skirt about her ankles?” 

   Aristocratic—indifferent—full of caprice—full of imperfection—intolerant.

   High in the mountains, the wind may break the trees, as love the lover, but this was before the days of Theocritus, before the destructive Athenian satyric drama—we hear no praise of country girls nor mountain goats. This woman has still the flawless tradition to maintain.

    Her bitterness was on the whole the bitterness of the sweat of Eros. Had she burned to destroy she had spent her flawless talent to destroy custom and mob-thought with serpent-tongue before the great Athenian era.

   Black and burnt are the cheeks of the girl of the late Sicilian Theocritus, for says he, black is the hyacinth and the myrtle-berry. 

   But Sappho has no praise for mountain girls. She protrudes a little her under-lip, twists her eyes, screws her face out of proportion as she searches for the most telling phrase; this girl who bewitches you, my friend, does not even know how to draw her skirts about her feet.

    Sophisticated, ironical, bitter jeer. Not her hands, her feet, her hair, or her features resemble in any way those of the country-bred among the thickets; not her garments even, are ill-fitting or ill-cut, but her manners, her gestures are crude, the bitterest of all destructive gibes of one sensitive woman at the favourite of another, sensitive, high-strung, autocratic as herself.

    The gods, it is true, Aphrodite, Hermes, Ares, Hephaistos, Adonis, beloved of the mother of loves, the Graces, Zeus himself, Eros in all his attributes, great, potent, the Muses, mythical being and half-god, the Kyprian again and again are mentioned in these poems but at the end, it is for the strange almost petulant little phrases that we value this woman, this cry (against some simple unknown girl) of skirts and ankles we might think unnecessarily petty, yet are pleased in the thinking of it, or else the outbreak against her own intimate companions brings her nearer our own over-sophisticated, nerve-wracked era: “The people I help most are the most unkind,” “O you forget me” or “You love someone better,” “You are nothing to me,” nervous, trivial tirades. Or we have in sweet- ened mood so simple a phrase “I sing”—not to please any god, goddess, creed or votary of religious rite—I sing not even in abstract con- templation, trance-like, remote from life, to please myself, but says this most delightful and friendly woman, “I sing and I sing beautifully like this, in order to please my friends—my girl-friends.”

    We have no definite portraits from her hands of these young women of Mitylene. They are left to our imagination, though only the most ardent heart, the most intense spirit and the most wary and subtle intellect can hope even in moments of ardent imagination, to fill in these broken couplets. One reads simply this “My darling,” or again “You burn me.” To a bride’s lover she says, “Ah there never was a girl like her.” She speaks of the light spread across a lovely face, of the garment wrapped about a lovely body; she addresses by name two of these young women comparing one to another’s disadvantage (though even here she temporizes her judgment with an endearing adjective), “Mnasidika is more shapely than tender Gyrinno.” We hear of Eranna too. “Eranna, there never was a girl more spiteful than you.”

    Another girl she praises, not for beauty. Though they stand among tall spotted lilies and the cup of jacynth and the Lesbian iris, she yet extolls beyond Kypris and the feet of Eros, wisdom. “Ah,” she says of this one, beloved for another beauty than that of perfect waist and throat and close-bound cap of hair and level brows, “I think no girl can ever stand beneath the sun or ever will again and be as wise as you are”.

    Wisdom—this is all we know of the girl, that though she stood in the heavy Graeco- Asiatic sunlight, the wind from Asia, heavy with ardent myrrh and Persian spices, was yet tempered with a Western gale, bearing in its strength and its salt sting, the image of another, tall, with eyes shadowed by the helmet rim, the goddess, indomitable.

    This is her strength—Sappho of Mitylene was a Greek. And in all her ecstasies, her burnings, her Asiatic riot of colour, her cry to that Phoenician deity, “Adonis, Adonis—” her phrases, so simple yet in any but her hands in danger of overpowering sensuousness, her touches of Oriental realism, “purple napkins” and “soft cushions” are yet tempered, moderated by a craft never surpassed in literature. The beauty of Aphrodite it is true is the constant, reiterated subject of her singing. But she is called by a late scholiast who knew more of her than we can hope to learn from these brief fragments, “The Wise Sappho.”

   We need the testimony of no Alexandrian or late Roman scholiast to assure us of the artistic wisdom, the scientific precision of metre and musical notation, the finely tempered intellect of this woman. Yet for all her artistic moderation, what is the personal, the emotional quality of her wisdom? This woman whom love paralysed till she seemed to herself a dead body yet burnt, as the desert grass is burnt, white by the desert heat; she who trembled and was sick and sweated at the mere presence of another, a person, doubtless of charm, of grace, but of no extraordinary gifts perhaps of mind or feature—was she moderate, was she wise? Savonarola standing in the courtyard of the Medici (some two thousand years later) proclaimed her openly to the assembled youthful laity and priests of Florence—a devil.

    If moderation is wisdom, if constancy in love is wisdom, was she wise? We read even in these few existing fragments, name upon curious, exotic, fragrant name: Atthis— Andromeda — Mnasidika — Eranna— Gyrinno—more, many more than these tradition tells were praised in the lost fragments. The name of muse and goddess and of human woman merge, interspersed among these verses. “Niobe and Leda were friends—” it is a simple statement—for the moment, Niobe and Leda are nearer, more human, than the Atthis, the Eranna who strike and burn and break like Love himself.

   The wise Sappho! She was wise, emotionally wise, we suspect with wisdom of simplicity, the blindness of genius. She constructed from the simple gesture of a half-grown awkward girl, a being, a companion, an equal. She imagined, for a moment, as the white bird wrinkled a pink foot, clutching to obtain balance at the too smooth ivory of the wrist of the same Atthis, that Atthis had a mind, that Atthis was a goddess. Because the sun made a momentary circlet of strange rust-coloured hair, she saw in all her fragrance, Aphrodite, violet-crowned, or better still a sister, a muse, one of the violet wreathing. She imagined because the girl’s shoulders seemed almost too fragile, too frail, to support the vest- ment, dragging a little heavily because of the gold-binding, that the same shoulders were the shoulders of a being, an almost disembodied spirit. She constructed perfect and flawless (as in her verse, she carved from current Aeolic dialect, immortal phrases) the whole, the perfection, the undying spirit of goddess, muse or sacred being from the simple grace of some tall, half- developed girl. The very skies open, were opened by these light fingers, fluffing out the under- feathers of the pigeon’s throat. Then the wise Sappho clamours aloud against that bitter, bitter creature, Eros, who has once more betrayed her. “Ah, Atthis, you hate even to think of me—you have gone to Andromeda.”

    I love to think of Atthis and Andromeda curled on a sun-baked marble bench like the familiar Tanagra group, talking it over. What did they say? What did they think? Doubtless, they thought little or nothing and said much.

   There is another girl, a little girl. Her name is Cleis. It is reported that the mother of Sappho was named Cleis. It is said that Sappho had a daughter whom she called Cleis.

   Cleis was golden. No doubt Cleis was perfect. Cleis was a beautiful baby, looking exactly like a yellow flower (so her mother tells us). She was so extraordinarily beautiful, Lydia had nothing so sweet, so spiced; greatness, wealth, power, nothing in all Lydia could be exchanged for Cleis.

    So in the realm of the living, we know there was a Cleis. I see her heaping shells, purple and rose-edged, stained here and there with saffron colours, shells from Adriatic waters heaped in her own little painted bowl and poured out again and gathered up only to be spilt once more across the sands. We have seen Atthis of yester-year; Andromeda of “fair requital,” Mnasidika with provoking length of over-shapely limbs; Gyrinno, loved for some appealing gesture or strange resonance of voice or skill of finger-tips, though failing in the essential and more obvious qualities of beauty; Eranna with lips curved contemptuously over slightly irregular though white and perfect teeth; angry Eranna who refused everyone and bound white violets only for the straight hair she herself braided with precision and cruel self-torturing neatness about her own head. We know of Gorgo, over-riotous, too heavy, with special intoxicating sweetness, but exhausting, a girl to weary of, no companion, her over-soft curves presaging early development of heavy womanhood.

   Among the living there are these and others. Timas, dead among the living, lying with lily wreath and funeral torch, a golden little bride, lives though sleeping more poignantly even than the famous Graeco-Egyptian beauty the poet’s brother married at Naucratis. Rhodope, a name redolent, (even though we may no longer read the tribute of the bridegroom’s sister) of the heavy out-curling, over-lapping petals of the peerless flower.

   Little—not little—but all, all roses! So at the last, we are forced to accept the often quoted tribute of Meleager, late Alexandrian, half Jew, half Grecian poet. Little but all roses! True, Sappho has become for us a name, an abstraction as well as a pseudonym for poignant human feeling, she is indeed rocks set in a blue sea, she is the sea itself, breaking and tortured and torturing, but never broken. She is the island of artistic perfection where the lover of ancient beauty (shipwrecked in the modern world) may yet find foothold and take breath and gain courage for new adventures and dream of yet unexplored continents and realms of future artistic achievement. She is the wise Sappho.

   Plato, poet and philosopher in the most formidable period of Athenian culture, look- ing back some centuries toward Mitylene, having perspective and a rare standard of comparison, too, speaks of this woman as among the wise.

   You were the morning star among the living (the young Plato, poet and Athenian, wrote of a friend he had lost), you were the morning star before you died; now you are “as Hesperus, giving new splendour to the dead.” Plato lives as a poet, as a lover, though the Republic seems but a ponderous tome and the mysteries of the Dialogues verge often on the didactic and artificial. So Sappho must live, roses, but many roses, for tradition has set flower upon flower about her name and would continue to do so though her last line were lost.

   Perhaps to Meleager, having access to the numberless scrolls of Alexandria, there seemed “but little” though to us, in a cheerless and more barren age, there seems much. Legend upon legend has grown up, adding curious documents to each precious fragment; the history of the preservation of each line in itself a most fascinating and bewildering romance.

   Courtesan and woman of fashion were rebuked at one time for not knowing “even the works of Sappho.” Sophocles cried out in de- spair before some inimitable couplet, “gods— what impassioned heart and longing made this rhythm.” The Roman Emperor, weary to death, left his wreathed drinking cup and said, “It is worth living yet to hear another of this woman’s songs.” Catullus, impassioned lyrist, left off recounting the imperfections of his Lesbia to enter a fair paradisal world, to forge silver Latin from imperishable Greek, to mar- vel at the praises of this perfect lover who needed no interim of hatred to repossess the loved one. Monk and scholar, grey recluse of Byzantium or Roman or medieval monastery, flamed to new birth of intellectual passion at discovery of some fatal relic until the Vatican itself was moved and deemed this woman fit rival to the seductions of another Poet and destroyed her verses.

   The roses Meleager saw as “little” have become in the history not only of literature but of nations (Greece and Rome and mediaeval town and Tuscan city) a great power, roses, but many, many roses, each fragment witness to the love of some scholar or hectic antiquary searching to find a precious inch of palimpsest among the funereal glories of the sand-strewn Pharaohs.

[ishgard]

O, local Gaius Guru, I beg of thee a humble query! Doth thou have any Gaius and Fordola interaction hcs/vague ideas? Like, do you think she looked up to him and/or the Tribunus at all? How do you think they would react - if at all - if they met by chance in Ala Mhigo? The idea of Fordola's thoughts on those four has been on my mind and I wonder what one so well versed in Gaiustrology thinks.

Pfspfsff ‘Gaius Guru’ you mean ‘Gaius GOOB’. also ‘Gaiustrology’… I love this thank you so much for adding it to my vocabulary.

fhaiuege Sorry this is a bit late by now! TBH I’ve refrained from making too many concrete HC’s on this just because I’m so very hopeful we’ll actually get to see something in-game. (Please SE, give Fordola more attention, please.)

But I do have some very vague idea-feelings, nothing I’ve really fleshed out so much, so I’m gonna get rambly here, just covering what we kinda already know a bit and working from there.

First of all, I’m not so sure she looked up to him, not exactly. The scene where the WoL echoes in on her past offers a lot of scraps, like what’s perhaps her first ‘impression’ of Gaius being from her father when they were heading to a banquet:

Fordola: Father, what’s Lord Gaius like? Is he nice? Are you friends?Fordola’s Father: There you go again with all your questions…Fordola’s Father: Lord Gaius is a great and honorable man who looks after all of Ala Mhigo. He’s very busy, and if we don’t hurry, we’ll miss our chance to see him.

We know he thought this was the only way to survive and thrive, but whether he remotely believed in any of it to a deeper degree I can’t really say. (Wild as it is, there are plenty who do go onto believe in the ‘imperial cause’, after all.)

His answer is… placating, not heartfelt.But perhaps he did at least glean what we’ve been led to understand about Gaius’s approach through Rhitatyn; that he encourages people to rise up and seize opportunities for themselves (by imperial-dictated means), and thus acknowledges those who do. (I’m definitely not holding this up as a shiny ‘wow Gaius is so good’ bullet point, either. It’s just a fact of Gaius’s approach and likely one Fordola’s father acted upon.) Nevertheless, it’s more likely her father saw exactly what Fordola saw as she got older.

Fordola’s Mother: By telling the world that you’re no better than a common savage!?Fordola: Am I, though, Mother? Are any of us?Fordola: Can’t you see? Citizenship means nothing to them. If you’re not a pureblood Garlean, you’re no different from any other savage.Fordola: So I’ll play the part. I’ll join the legion and I’ll make them respect me. And when the mob see that, they’ll think twice before throwing their stones.

Fordola: The bastards that killed him, the bastards that let it happen─my father deserved better! I swore I’d do whatever it took to make them pay!

Fordola saw enemies on all sides of her. 

The fact is, the imperials did nothing to help when they should have protected the people. Such a mindset reflects on leadership, going all the way up to the viceroy himself - good intentions or no.

I like to think that if Gaius was ever made aware of this, he did acknowledge it in some way - though now we’re definitely veering into headcanon territory. He does, after all, have a penchant for taking displaced youths under his patronage, and while I definitely do not think it was of the same level for Fordola as it may have been for Cid and Livia, he may have looked in on her and her mother from time-to-time as his very busy schedule allowed which… probably wasn’t a lot at all. And in no way that would have suggested the barest amount of favoritism; just the same sort of way he would later keep an eye on a promising new soldier.

Fordola didn’t join the army until she was older, so while she lived in whatever meager comfort citizenship granted her, she had years since her fathers death to come to terms with the world around her; the imperials who didn’t really give a damn about them, and her ‘countrymen’ who spat on and scorned her for the status that had been bought, ultimately, in her fathers blood.

Gaius was a means to an end. He was a pureblooded Garlean bastard to be sure, but he allowed her the opportunity to lift herself up and show them all in her own spiteful way. I imagine when her and her friends showed up to enlist and whatever officer in charge looked down his nose at them, and they kept on despite whatever hardships imperials and Ala Mhigans alike threw at them - Gaius took notice, ultimately creating the Crania Lupi.

In some regards, I like to imagine Fordola did look up to him in a fashion; receiving praise and promotions, for good or ill, in her eyes, was progress. Being given command of a special unit? Even if it was looked down upon by other imperials, hated by Ala Mhigans, it was damn well something, something she and hers could work with.

Gaining acknowledgement from imperials who otherwise looked down on her, and spitting in the faces of her countrymen who would throw stones are her two foremost goals - to carve her own path to freedom, to show them all. We see her light up when Zenos gives her the floor, ready and eager to lead the charge, and I feel this was just as true under Gaius’s command. Play by the empires rules and show them what’s what, get so good and stand so tall they can’t look so far down their noses at you.

Gaius was an exception to them, though. As many faults as he possessed, he believed in mans ability to rise up and better himself - and Fordola was determined to do just that. Taken further, perhaps in some ways he even had a greater role in influencing that mindset in her, depending on how much they may or may not have actually interacted.

The Tribunus now? I can’t imagine she had high opinions of Nero and Livia one way or the other - imperials same as the rest, more or less, and if better only because they followed Gaius and respected his command and approach to whatever degrees. I can see Rhitatyn as having been an inspiration though - someone like her, someone wielding such rank and trust by the legatus himself.

Nowadays, being where she is and looking back on it all… It’s hard to say how she feels at present. She can absolutely hold a grudge like no ones business (entirely warranted of course), but would she look at Gaius as a hated enemy? As someone who took so much from her - and for what? Now he’s a hobo hunting shadows and more or less denouncing his past sins. That doesn’t erase them, that doesn’t magically make anything better or undo anything that has been done - there’s so much cause for outrage and anguish.

Or does she choose to let it go, to deny forcing herself to suffer under the weight of such hatred anymore? Does she see all the strange sordid similarities between two people who followed the wrong goals, grasping for power and falling so far, nearly to their own destruction?

As for Gaius, I think he’s got shame in spades for the many he led to their doomed fates for a blinded cause. I don’t think he’s quick to let himself be dragged down by despair though - instead it fuels him. ‘Local man too angry to die’, and all. I would like to think, maybe, he’d be glad that she survived, glad that she’s ‘fighting the good fight’ - at least insofar as he’d allow himself. Her fate was long out of his hands, and he has no place to be ‘proud’ or ashamed one way or the other after all he’s done. Nor is it something he’d dwell overlong on - nothing he can do will make amends for what’s been done apart from continuing his fight.

ANYWAY, I’ve rambled a lot and idrk that I answered your magnificent question whatsoever so much as just wandered a slew of thoughts and ran off at the mou-... fingers? Here’s to hoping we see them interact even a little in 5.2 though, for better or worse. :’‘‘3c

[365daysofsasuhina]

[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day Three Hundred Six: Growing Love ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata ] [ SasuHina ] [ Verse: Like Magic ] [ AO3 Link ]

Not all witches have bad reputations.

Sure, some will curse you and turn you into a newt. Others will foretell a terrible fortune and feel no pity when you fall to your fate. But some use a mixture of good magic and good will to - rather than hinder - help!

A few miles west of a large city lives one such exception. Tucked away in a copse of trees atop a knoll, a cozy little cabin can be found. Perfectly shaded with dapples of sunlight, it’s surrounded by large gardens filled with plants both magical and mundane. Insects and faeries flutter around the blooming faces of the flowers. And at night, orbs of light and fireflies dance among the leaves.

It truly is an enchanted place.

But even more intriguing is the witch who lives there. A beautiful young woman with dark locks that shine amethyst in the sun. Eyes like pale pearls are large and curious, framed in a heart-shaped face and topped by a blade-cut fringe. Each day she tends to her gardens, dousing them with spring water and carefully pruning the plants she needs for her potions. Drying specimens hang all about the cabin, filling the air with a spicy aroma.

For Hinata, you see, is a witch with a special talent like many of her sisters: and hers lies with potion making. Nearly any concoction you would ever want can be brewed by her. Something to help you sleep, something to bolster your courage, or even to find true love. Never shall she craft a poison, only ever using her powers for happy, helpful things.

Needless to say, such a talent often sees her busy, visited by one townsperson or the next searching for a potion to cure their current predicament. Young or old, rich or poor, she serves all in need of her powers.

Eventually, a rather...peculiar stranger comes a’knocking on her door.

“One moment!” she calls, putting the finishing touches on a health tonic. This particular brew is meant for an old woman with a rheumatism who lives just up the lane. Only once it finishes tempering and turns a beautiful crystal blue does Hinata move it from its beaker to a bottle, the stopper keeping the magic contained within.

Setting aside her tools, she then moves to the door. A tug shows someone with their back to her, donning a dark traveling cloak, hood drawn.

“...can I help you?”

After a pause, the figure turns to reveal a young man. Fair of face but clearly unsettled, he asks, “...you’re the potion witch?”

“Yes, I am. Have you a need for a potion, sir?”

“I...I’m not sure. May I come in?”

With a blink, Hinata then gives a nod, stepping aside to let the stranger in. “Is something the matter, sir?”

I worry there is something...wrong with me.”

“In...in what sense, sir?”

Facing her, the young man lifts a hand, which tightly grips the fabric of his shirt over his chest. “...it’s my heart.”

“Your heart…? Does it pain you, sir? Flutter?”

“...it does nothing. It beats, it lives...and yet it feels...empty.”

The witch gives a tilt of her head. This sounds less like an ailment of the flesh, and more like one of the metaphorical. “...you cannot feel love…?”

“No...yes? I…” He runs a nervous hand through his hair. “...for my kin, I feel great affection. Their happiness is my greatest concern. But I am no longer a boy, and my father expects me soon to wed. But no matter who I meet, who I attempt to court...nothing.”

There’s a delicate pause. “...have you considered that those you seek may not be the sex you expect…?”

“I’ve already ruled out such a notion. Man, woman...something else, it doesn’t matter! Not once have I felt even a flicker of affection for another person! Am...am I…?” True distress colors his gaze. “...broken…?”

After a pause, Hinata softens with a smile. “Not at all, sir...in fact, I’ve heard of such people, those who find themselves with no inclination to love. It is rare, but I’ve never seen it to be unnatural. And yet...you feel this is not right?”

“No...it causes me anguish! I long for it, I truly do...but I feel nothing. Like some kind of...curse…!”

That word makes Hinata frown, brows furrowing. “...I see...if you feel this way so unnaturally, then...I-I agree, something is amiss. A curse like that...I’ve never heard…” Moving to her collection of tomes and scrolls, Hinata browses their spines before pulling forth a book. Fingers flip pages, eyes looking for the right words. “...here...I think this may be what we’re looking for…”

She lays the book flat atop her table, fingers skimming over the parchment. “‘The cure for an emptied heart’. It’s mostly flowering plants, those that symbolize love...rebirth...I think I have them all!”

“You can make it…?”

“I can. It has to brew for three days and three nights, so we will have to be patient. But I think I can do it!”

The man’s shoulders wilt in relief. “Thank you...then, should I pay you now…?”

“Let us wait to see its effects. I’ve never made this potion before, and you should get your results before I’m rewarded. Return here in three days, and I should have it ready for you!”

“Thank you…!”

“Thank me when you’re cured,” Hinata insists. “...oh, wait!”

He turns as he reaches the door, awaiting her query.

“What is your name?”

“...Sasuke. Uchiha,” he replies.

“Well...I hope this works for you, Sasuke.”

“As do I.”

The moment he leaves, Hinata begins bustling, filling her cauldron with pure water and gathering her ingredients. All sorts of flowers are freshly plucked from her garden, humming happily as she sets them in her basket. After being put through a mortar and pestle, the blooms and their leaves are stirred ever so carefully into the simmering water, which quickly dyes a pale pink.

Now...three days, and three nights. I’ll have to be mindful of the fire… she muses to herself, a thoughtful finger tapping at her chin. And each morning, more blooms will have to be added. It’s a good thing she’s taken to growing so many flowers of affection!

From there, well...there’s little more to do than wait.

Other clients come and go, Hinata hanging up a second cauldron when necessary, making sure to keep the first over enough heat to keep simmering. Slowly adding more water to keep it hot, and crushing more blooms with each morn, she carefully keeps the brew optimal, checking her notes and the book’s instructions often.

And then, soon enough, the final day ends, and Sasuke is set to return the following morning. By now, the potion has deepened to a passionate red, just as described in the recipe. Oh, she hopes it works…!

Come morning, she has the brew carefully ladled into a bottle, examining it in the light of a windowpane. It shifts and shimmers, and even now still feels warm to the touch.

A few knocks later and she lets him in, seeing the anxious excitement upon his face. “Have you done it…?”

“I have!” From behind her back she draws the bottle, Sasuke gingerly accepting it. “Now...it says to drink it with closed eyes, for love is blind. You should only need a few swallows.”

“...right.” Hesitating for just a moment, he carefully unstoppers the bottle.

“How does it smell?”

“...smell?”

“The books says that some claim it smells like clues to lead you to your true love!”

“...ah…” Carefully taking in the potion’s scent, he murmurs, “...it smells of flowers, and spices...maybe fresh air, and...freshly baked bread…?”

Hinata’s head tilts. “I see...well, I suppose you should g-give it a try…!”

Sasuke nods, letting his lids flutter closed. Carefully bringing the bottle to his lips, he takes a few long swigs. For good measure, he stands still a long while before daring to open his eyes.

“...well…? Do you feel any...different…?”

“I feel...warm.”

“...warm?”

“Pleasant. Content. Like when you first wake in your bed in the morning.” Sasuke stares out ahead, seeming to mull over his condition. “...is that normal?”

“It wasn’t noted in the book, but...I doubt it’s an ill side effect.”

“...I see. Well, I…” He turns, looking to her thoughtfully...and then his eyes go wide.

“...are you all right?”

“...I…?” A hint of color blooms across his nose. “...I think it...worked…”

After a pause, Hinata seems to realize what he’s alluding to. Is he…?

“...I’m sorry,” he then offers quickly, turning aside and looking flustered. “I...that’s not…”

Hinata too goes a soft shade of pink. “W-well, I...I suppose that’s a good sign…? It seems to have worked. Maybe you should...v-visit some of your suitresses? Just...just to be sure?”

“I...yes, that’s probably wise. But…” Sasuke risks a glance. “Does this mean that...that I -? And you -?”

She gives a sheepish smile, chin ducking toward her chest. “Perhaps...we’d best see what other effects this may be having before we...j-jump to conclusions. But...well, I suppose magic has a way of seeing things we can’t…”

“...right.” There’s a long, painful pause. “...I’ll return to town, then. And, er...report back to you.”

“Very well.”

“I suppose that way, we’ll...know for sure.”

“Yes, you’re...you’re right.”

...another pause.

“...ah, your...your payment…”

As Sasuke shuffles around, Hinata stops him with a hand on his arm. “Perhaps...we’re not quite done yet. We aren’t yet sure if this is the true effect you wanted.”

He hesitates. “...right. Well...I’d better be going. And I’ll return when I know more.”

Hinata nods. “...until then, Sasuke. And...good luck.”

“...thank you.”

Watching him go, Hinata rests her cheek in a hand once he’s gone, feeling its warmth. Oh dear...what have you gotten yourself into…?

                                                      .oOo.

     This is...super random, but the first thing I thought of with this prompt! I had another sub-idea, but...ran out of time, so this is what we've got! I love witchy!Hinata...it's such a cute AU. And of course Sasuke has to show up and get involved ;3      I doubt I'll do more of this just because there isn't much of a STORY to it, but...it was a neat little mini plot! We'll have to see what tomorrow's prompt brings. For now tho, I'm EXHAUSTED, so I'm gonna head off. Thanks for reading!

[distase]

Dear Esther. I sometimes feel as if I’ve given birth to this island. Somewhere, between the longitude and latitude a split opened up and it beached remotely here. No matter how hard I correlate, it remains a singularity, an alpha point in my life that refuses all hypothesis. I return each time leaving fresh markers that I hope, in the full glare of my hopelessness, will have blossomed into fresh insight in the interim.

Dear Esther. The gulls do not land here anymore; I’ve noticed that this year they seem to shun the place. Maybe it’s the depletion of the fishing stock driving them away. Perhaps it’s me. When he first landed here, Donnelly wrote that the herds were sickly and their shepherds the lowest of the miserable classes that populate these Hebridean islands. Three hundred years later, even they have departed.

Dear Esther. I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been here, and how many visits I have made overall. Certainly, the landmarks are now so familiar to me that I have to remind myself to actually see the forms and shapes in front of me. I could stumble blind across these rocks, the edges of these precipices, without fear of missing my step and plummeting down to sea. Besides, I’ve always considered that if one is to fall, it is critical to keep one’s eyes firmly open.

Dear Esther. The morning after I was washed ashore, salt in my ears, sand in my mouth and the waves always at my ankles, I felt as though everything had conspired to this one last shipwreck. I remembered nothing but water, stones in my belly and my shoes threatening to drag me under to where only the most listless of creatures swim.

Level 1: The Lighthouse

Donnelly reported the legend of the hermit; a holy man who sought solitude in its most pure form. Allegedly, he rowed here from the mainland in a boat without a bottom, so all the creatures of the sea could rise at night to converse with him. How disappointed he must have been with their chatter. Perhaps now, when all that haunts the ocean is the rubbish dumped from the tankers, he’d find more peace. They say he threw his arms wide in a valley on the south side and the cliff opened up to provide him shelter; they say he died of fever one hundred and sixteen years later. The shepherds left gifts for him at the mouth of the cave, but Donnelly records they never claimed to have seen him. I have visited the cave and I have left my gifts, but like them, I appear to be an unworthy subject of his solitude.

At night you can see the lights sometimes from a passing tanker or trawler. From up on the cliffs they are mundane, but down here they fugue into ambiguity. For instance, I cannot readily tell if they belong above or below the waves. The distinction now seems banal; why not everything and all at once! There’s nothing better to do here than indulge in contradictions, whilst waiting for the fabric of life to unravel. There was once talk of a wind farm out here, away from the rage and the intolerance of the masses. The sea, they said, is too rough for the turbines to stand: they clearly never came here to experience the becalming for themselves. Personally, I would have supported it; turbines would be a fitting contemporary refuge for a hermit: the revolution and the permanence.

When you were born, your mother told me, a hush fell over the delivery room. A great red birthmark covered the left side of your face. No one knew what to say, so you cried to fill the vacuum. I always admired you for that; that you cried to fill whatever vacuum you found. I began to manufacture vacuums, just to enable you to deploy your talent. The birthmark faded by the time you were six, and had gone completely by the time we met, but your fascination with the empty, and its cure, remained.

Those islands in the distance, I am sure, are nothing more than relics of another time, sleeping giants, somnambulist gods laid down for a final dreaming. I wash the sand from my lips and grip my wrist ever more tightly, my shaking arms will not support my fading diaries.

Donnelly’s book had not been taken out from the library since 1974. I decided it would never be missed as I slipped it under my coat and avoided the librarian’s gaze on the way out. If the subject matter is obscure, the writer’s literary style is even more so, it is not the text of a stable or trustworthy reporter. Perhaps it is fitting that my only companion in these last days should be a stolen book written by a dying man.

The mount is clearly the focal point of this landscape; it almost appears so well placed as to be artificial. I find myself easily slipping into the delusional state of ascribing purpose, deliberate motive to everything here. Was this island formed during the moment of impact; when we were torn loose from our moorings and the seatbelts cut motorway lanes into our chests and shoulders, did it first break surface then?

When someone had died or was dying or was so ill they gave up what little hope they could sacrifice, they cut parallel lines into the cliff, exposing the white chalk beneath. You could see them from the mainland or the fishing boats and know to send aid or impose a cordon of protection, and wait a generation until whatever pestilence stalked the cliff paths died along with its hosts. My lines are just for this: to keep any would-be rescuers at bay. The infection is not simply of the flesh.

They were godfearing people those shepherds. There was no love in the relationship. Donnelly tells me that they had one bible that was passed around in strict rotation. It was stolen by a visiting monk in 1776, two years before the island was abandoned altogether. In the interim, I wonder, did they assign chapter and verse to the stones and grasses, marking the geography with a superimposed significance; that they could actually walk the bible and inhabit its contradictions?

We are not like Lot’s wife, you and I; we feel no particular need to turn back. There’s nothing to be seen if we did. No tired old man parting the cliffs with his arms; no gifts or bibles laid out on the sand for the taking. No tides turning or the shrieking gulls overhead. The bones of the hermit are no longer laid out for the taking: I have stolen them away to the guts of this island where the passages all run to black and there we can light each others faces by their strange luminescence.

I quote directly: “A motley lot with little to recommend them. I have now spent three days in their company that is, I fear, enough for any man not born amongst them. Despite their tedious inclination to quote scripture, they seem to me the most godforsaken of all the inhabitants of the outer isles. Indeed, in this case, the very gravity of that term – forsaken by god – seems to find its very apex.” It appears to me that Donnelly too found those who wander this shoreline to be adrift from any chance of redemption. Did he include himself in that, I wonder?

Dear Esther. I met Paul. I made my own little pilgrimage. My Damascus a small semi-detached on the outskirts of Wolverhampton. We drank coffee in his kitchen and tried to connect to one another. Although he knew I hadn’t come in search of an apology, reason or retribution, he still spiralled in panic, thrown high and lucid by his own dented bonnet. Responsibility had made him old; like us, he had already passed beyond any conceivable boundary of life.

I threw my arms wide and the cliff opened out before me, making this rough home. I transferred my belongings from the bothy on the mount and tried to live here instead. It was cold at night and the sea lapped at the entrance at high tide. To climb the peak, I must first venture even deeper into veins of the island, where the signals are blocked altogether. Only then will I understand them, when I stand on the summit and they flow into me, uncorrupted.

I would leave you presents, outside your retreat, in this interim space between cliff and beach. I would leave you loaves and fishes, but the fish stocks have been depleted and I have run out of bread. I would row you back to your homeland in a bottomless boat but I fear we would both be driven mad by the chatter of the sea creatures.

I find myself increasingly unable to find that point where the hermit ends and Paul and I begin. We are woven into a sodden blanket, stuffed into the bottom of a boat to stop the leak and hold back the ocean. My neck aches from staring up at the aerial; it mirrors the dull throb in my gut where I am sure I have begun to form another stone. In my dreams, it forms into a perfect representation of Lot’s wife, head over her shoulder, staring along the motorway at the approaching traffic, in a vacuum of fatalistic calm.

This hermit, this seer, this distant historian of bones and old bread, where did he vanish to? Why, asked the farmers, why asked Jakobson, why bother with your visions at all, if you are just to throw your arms up at the cliff and let it close in behind you, seal you into the belly of the island, a museum shut to all but the most devoted.

He still maintains he wasn’t drunk but tired. I can’t make the judgement or the distinction anymore. I was drunk when I landed here, and tired too. I walked up the cliff path in near darkness and camped in the bay where the trawler lies beached. It was only at dawn that I saw the bothy and decided to make my temporary lodgings there. I was expecting just the aerial and a transmitter stashed in a weatherproof box somewhere on the mount. It had an air of uneasy permanence to it, like all the other buildings here; erosion seems to have evaded it completely.

The vegetation here has fossilized from the roots up. To think they once grazed animals here, the remnants of occupation being evidence to that. It is all sick to death: the water is too polluted for the fish, the sky is too thin for the birds and the soil is cut with the bones of hermits and shepherds. I have heard it said that human ashes make great fertilizer, that we could sow a forest from all that is left of your hips and ribcage, with enough left over to thicken the air and repopulate the bay.

I dreamt I stood in the centre of the sun and the solar radiation cooked my heart from the inside. My teeth will curl and my fingernails fall off into my pockets like loose change. If I could stomach, I’d eat, but all I seem capable of is saltwater. Were the livestock still here, I could turn feral and gorge. I’m as emaciated as a body on a slab, opened up for a premature source of death. I’ve rowed to this island in a heart without a bottom; all the bacteria of my gut rising up to sing to me.

I have become convinced I am not alone here, even though I am equally sure it is simply a delusion brought upon by circumstance. I do not, for instance, remember where I found the candles, or why I took it upon myself to light such a strange pathway. Perhaps it is only for those who are bound to follow.

Level 2: The Buoy

Dear Esther. I have now driven the stretch of the M5 between Exeter and Bristol over twenty-one times, but although I have all the reports and all the witnesses and have cross-referenced them within a millimetre using my ordnance survey maps, I simply cannot find the location. You’d think there would be marks, to serve as some evidence. It's somewhere between the turn off for Sandford and the Welcome Break services. But although I can always see it in my rear view mirror, I have as yet been unable to pull ashore.

Dear Esther. This will be my last letter. Do they pile up even now on the doormat of our empty house? Why do I still post them home to you? Perhaps I can imagine myself picking them up on the return I will not make, to find you waiting with daytime television and all its comforts. They will fossilise over the centuries to follow; an uneasy time capsule from a lost island. Postmarked Oban: it must have been sent during the final ascent.

Dear Esther. I have found myself to be as featureless as this ocean, as shallow and unoccupied as this bay, a listless wreck without identification. My rocks are these bones and a careful fence to keep the precipice at bay. Shot through me caves, my forehead a mount, this aerial will transmit into me so. All over exposed, the nervous system, where Donnelly’s boots and yours and mine still trample. I will carry a torch for you; I will leave it at the foot of my headstone. You will need it for the tunnels that carry me under.

Dear Esther. Whilst they catalogued the damage, I found myself afraid you’d suddenly sit up, stretch, and fail to recognise me, I orbited you like a sullen comet, our history trailing behind me in the solar wind from the fluorescent tubes. Your hair had not been brushed yet, your make-up not reapplied. You were all the world like a beach to me, laid out for investigation, your geography telling one story, but hinting at the geology hidden behind the cuts and bruises.

I have found the ship’s manifest, crumpled and waterlogged, under a stash of paint cans. It tells me that along with this present cargo, there was a large quantity of antacid yoghurt, bound for the European market. It must have washed out to sea, God knows there are no longer gulls or goats here to eat it.

There must be a hole in the bottom of the boat. How else could new hermits have arrived?

It’s only at night that this place makes any sluggish effort at life. You can see the buoy and the aerial. I’ve been taking to sleeping through the day in an attempt to resurrect myself. I can feel the last days drawing upon me – there’s little point now in continuation. There must be something new to find here – some nook or some cranny that offers a perspective worth clinging to. I’ve burnt my bridges; I have sunk my boats and watched them go to water.

The buoy has kept me lucid. I sat, when I was at the very edge of despair, when I thought I would never unlock the secret of the island, I sat at the edge and I watched the idiot buoy blink through the night. He is mute and he is retarded and he has no thought in his metal head but to blink each wave and each minute aside until the morning comes and renders him blind as well as deaf-mute. In many ways, we have much in common.

I’ve begun to wonder if Donnelly’s voyage here was as prosaic as it was presented. How disappointed not to have found the bones of the holy man! No wonder he hated the inhabitants so. To him, they must have seemed like barnacles mindlessly clinging to a mercy seat. Why cling so hard to the rock? Because it is the only thing that stops us from sliding into the ocean. Into oblivion.

An imagined answerphone message. The tires are flat, the wheel spins loosely, and the brake fluid has run like ink over this map, staining the landmarks and rendering the coastline mute, compromised. Where you saw galaxies, I saw only bruises, cut into the cliff by my lack of sobriety.

I don’t know the name of the wreck in the bay; it seems to have been here for several years but has not yet subsided. I don’t know if anyone was killed; if so, I certainly haven’t seen them myself. Perhaps when the helicopter came to lift them home, their ascent scared the birds away. I shall search for eggs along the north shore, for any evidence that life is marking this place out again. Perhaps it is me that keeps them at bay.

I remember running through the sands of Cromer; there was none of the shipwreck I find here. I spent days cataloguing the garbage that washes ashore here and I have begun to assemble a collection in the deepest recess I could find. What a strange museum it would make. And what of the corpse of its curator? Shall I find a glass coffin and pretend to make snow white of us both?

Why is the sea so becalmed? It beckons you to walk upon its surface; but I know all too well how it would shatter under my feet and drag me under. The rocks here have withstood centuries of storms and now, robbed of the tides, they stand muted and lame, temples without cause. One day, I will attempt to climb them, hunt among their peaks for the eggs, the nests, that the gulls have clearly abandoned.

I had kidney stones, and you visited me in the hospital. After the operation, when I was still half submerged in anaesthetic, your outline and your speech both blurred. Now my stones have grown into an island and made their escape and you have been rendered opaque by the car of a drunk.

I have begun my ascent on the green slope of the western side. I have looked deep into the mountain from the shaft and understood that I must go up and then find a way under. I will stash the last vestiges of my civilisation in the stone walls and work deeper from there. I am drawn by the aerial and the cliff edge: there is some form of rebirth waiting for me there.

I have begun my ascent on the windless slope of the western side. The setting sun was an inflamed eye squeezing shut against the light shone in by the doctors. My neck is aching through constantly craning my head up to track the light of the aerial. I must look downwards, follow the path under the island to a new beginning.

I have begun to climb, away from the sea and towards the centre. It is a straight line to the summit, where the evening begins to coil around the aerial and squeeze the signals into early silence. The bothy squats against the mount to avoid the gaze of the aerial; I too will creep under the island like an animal and approach it from the northern shore.

When I first looked into the shaft, I swear I felt the stones in my stomach shift in recognition.

What charnel house lies at the foot of this abyss? How many dead shepherds could fill this hole?

Is this what Paul saw through his windscreen? Not Lot’s wife, looking over her shoulder, but a scar in the hillside, falling away to black, forever.

When they graze their animals here, Donnelly writes, it is always raining. There’s no evidence of that rain has been here recently. The foliage is all static, like a radio signal returning from another star.

In the hold of the wrecked trawler I have found what must amount to several tons of gloss paint. Perhaps they were importing it. Instead, I will put it to use, and decorate this island in the icons and symbols of our disaster.

Cromer in the rain; a school trip. We took shelter en masse in a bus stop, herded in like cattle, the teachers dull shepherds. The sand in my pocket becoming damper by the second.

The bothy was constructed originally in the early 1700s. By then, shepherding had formalised into a career. The first habitual shepherd was a man called Jakobson, from a lineage of migratory Scandinavians. He was not considered a man of breeding by the mainlanders. He came here every summer whilst building the bothy, hoping, eventually, that becoming a man of property would secure him a wife and a lineage. Donnelly records that it did not work: he caught some disease from his malcontented goats and died two years after completing it. There was no one to carve white lines into the cliff for him either.

Inventory: a trestle table we spread wallpaper on in our first home. A folding chair; I laughed at you for bringing camping in the lakes. I was uncomfortable later and you laughed then. This diary; the bed with the broken springs – once asleep, you have to remember not to dream. A change of clothes. Donnelly’s book, stolen from Edinburgh library on the way here. I will burn them all on the last morning and make an aerial of my own.

When the oil lamps ran out I didn’t pick up a torch but used the moonlight to read by. When I have pulled the last shreds of sense from it, I will throw Donnelly’s book from the cliffs and perhaps myself with it. Maybe it will wash back up through the caves and erupt from the spring when the rain comes, making its return to the hermit's cave. Perhaps it will be back on the table when I wake. I think I may have thrown it into the sea several times before.

Three cormorants seen at dusk; they did not land. This house, built of stone, built by a long-dead shepherd. Contents: my campbed, a stove, a table, chairs. My clothes, my books. The caves that score out the belly of this island, leaving it famished. My limbs and belly, famished. This skin, these organs, this failing eyesight. When the battery runs out in my torch, I will descend into the caves and follow only the phosphorescence home.

My heart is landfill, these false dawns waking into the still never light. I sweat for you in the small hours and wrap my blankets into a mass. I’ve always heard the waves break on these lost shores, always the gulls forgotten. I can lift this bottle to my ear, and all there ever is for me is this hebridean music.

In a footnote, the editor comments that at this point, Donnelly was going insane as syphilis tore through his system like a drunk driver. He is not to be trusted – many of his claims are unsubstantiated and although he does paint a colourful picture, much of what he says may have been derived directly from his fever. But I’ve been here and I know, as Donnelly did, that this place is always half-imagined. Even the rocks and caves will shimmer and blur, with the right eyes.

He left his body to the medical school and was duly opened out for a crowd of students twenty-one days after his passing. The report is included in my edition of his book. The syphilis had torn through his guts like a drunk driver, scrambling his organs like eggs on a plate. But enough definition remained for a cursory examination and, as I suspected, they found clear evidence of kidney stones. He is likely to have spent the last years of his life in considerable pain: perhaps this is the root of his laudanum habit. Although its use makes him an unreliable witness, I find myself increasingly drawn into his orbit.

What to make of Donnelly? The laudanum and the syphilis? It is clearly not how he began, but I have been unable to discover if the former was a result of his visiting the island or the force that drove him here. For the syphilis, a drunk driver smashing his insides into a pulp as he stumbled these paths, I can only offer my empathy. We are all victims of our age. My disease is the internal combustion engine and the cheap fermentation of yeast.

Jakobson’s ribcage, they told Donnelly, was deformed, the result of some birth defect or perhaps a traumatic injury as a child. Brittle and overblown it was, and desperately light. Perhaps it was this that finally did for him, unable to contain the shattering of his heart. In halflight, his skeleton a discarded prop, a false and calcified seabird.

They found Jakobson in early spring, the thaw had only just come. Even though he’d been dead nearly seven months, his body had been frozen right down to the nerves and had not even begun to decompose. He’d struggled halfway down the cliff path, perhaps looking for some lost goat, or perhaps in a delirium and expired, curled into a claw, right under the winter moon. Even the animals shunned his corpse; the mainlanders thought to bring it home unlucky. Donnelly claims they dragged it to the caves to thaw out and rot, but he is proving an unreliable witness.

They found Jakobson in early spring, the thaw had only just come. Even though he’d been dead nearly seven months, his body had been frozen right down to the nerves and had not even begun to decompose. His fingernails were raw and bitten to the quick; they found the phosphorescent moss that grows in the caves deep under the nails. Whatever he’d been doing under the island when his strength began to fail is lost. He’d struggled halfway up the cliff again, perhaps in a delirium, perhaps trying to reach the bothy’s fire, before curling into a stone and expiring.

They found Jakobson in early spring, the thaw had only just come. Even though he’d been dead nearly seven months, his body had been frozen right down to the nerves and had not even begun to decompose. All around him, small flowers were reaching for the weak sun, the goats had adjusted happily to life without a shepherd and were grazing freely about the valley. Donnelly reports they hurled the body in fear and disgust down the shaft, but I cannot corroborate this story.

This beach is no place to end a life. Jakobson understood that, so did Donnelly. Jakobson made it halfway back up the cliff. Donnelly lost faith and went home to die. I have the benefit of history, of progress. Someone has erected an aerial to guide me through these black waves, a beacon that shines through the rocks like phosphorescent moss.

Climbing down to the caves I slipped and fell and have injured my leg. I think the femur is broken. It is clearly infected: the skin has turned a bright, tight pink and the pain is crashing in on waves, winter tides against my shoreline, drowning out the ache of my stones. I struggled back to the bothy to rest, but it has become clear that there is only one way this is likely to end. The medical supplies I looted from the trawler have suddenly found their purpose: they will keep me lucid for my final ascent.

Level 3: The Caves

Did Jakobson crawl this far? Can I identify the scratches his nails ruined into the rocks? Am I following him cell for cell, inch for inch? Why did he turn back on himself and not carry through to the ascent?

From here, this last time, I have understood there is no turning back. The torch is failing along with my resolve. I can hear the singing of the sea creatures from the passages above me and they are promising the return of the gulls.

Donnelly did not pass through the caves. From here on in, his guidance, unreliable as it is, is gone from me. I understand now that it is between the two of us, and whatever correspondence can be drawn from the wet rocks.

Donnelly’s addiction is my one true constant. Even though I wake in false dawns and find the landscape changed, flowing inconstantly through my tears, I know his reaching is always upon me.

It was as if someone had taken the car and shaken it like a cocktail. The glove compartment had been opened and emptied with the ashtrays and the boot; it made for a crumpled museum, a shattered exhibition. I first saw him sat by the side of the road. I was waiting for you to be cut out of the wreckage. The car looked like it had been dropped from a great height. The guts of the engine spilled over the tarmac. Like water underground.

They had stopped the traffic back as far as the Sandford junction and come up the hard shoulder like radio signals from another star. It took twenty-one minutes for them to arrive. I watched Paul time it, to the second, on his watch.

There is no other direction, no other exit from this motorway. Speeding past this junction, I saw you waiting at the roadside, a one last drink in your trembled hands.

I’m traversing my own death throes. The infection in my leg is an oilrig that dredges black muck up from deep inside my bones. I swallow fistfuls of diazepam and paracetamol to stay conscious. The pain flows through me like an underground sea.

If the caves are my guts, this must be the place where the stones are first formed. The bacteria phosphoresce and rise, singing, through the tunnels. Everything here is bound by the rise and fall like a tide. Perhaps, the whole island is actually underwater.

I am travelling through my own body, following the line of infection from the shattered femur towards the heart. I swallow fistfuls of painkillers to stay lucid. In my delirium, I see the twin lights of the moon and the aerial, shining to me through the rocks.

In my final dream, I sat at peace with Jakobson and watched the moon over the Sandford junction, goats grazing on the hard shoulder, a world gone to weed and redemption. He showed me his fever scars, and I mine, between each shoulder the nascency of flight.

When I was coming round from the operation, I remember the light they shone in my eyes to check for pupil contraction. It was like staring up at a moonlit sky from the bottom of well. People moved at the summit but I could not tell if you were one of them.

This cannot be the shaft they threw the goats into. It cannot be the landfill where the parts of your life that would not burn ended up. It cannot be the chimney that delivered you to the skies. It cannot be the place where you rained back down again to fertilise the soil and make small flowers in the rocks.

I will hold the hand you offer to me; from the summit down to this well, into the dark waters where the small flowers creep for the sun. Headlights are reflected in your retinas, moonlit in the shadow of the crematorium chimney.

This is a drowned man’s face reflected in the moonlit waters. It can only be a dead shepherd who has come to drunk drive you home.

Level 4: The Beacon

The moon over the Sandford junction, headlights in your retinas. Donnelly drove a grey hatchback without a bottom, all the creatures of the tarmac rose to sing to him. All manner of symbols crudely scrawled across the cliff face of my unrest. My life reduced to an electrical diagram. All my gulls have taken flight; they will no longer roost on these outcrops. The lure of the moon over the Sandford junction is too strong.

I wish I could have known Donnelly in this place – we would have had so much to debate. Did he paint these stones, or did I? Who left the pots in the hut by the jetty? Who formed the museum under the sea? Who fell silently to his death, into the frozen waters? Who erected this godforsaken aerial in the first place? Did this whole island rise to the surface of my stomach, forcing the gulls to take flight?

I sat here and watched two jets carve parallel white lines into the sky. They charted their course and I followed them for twenty-one minutes until they turned off near Sandford and were lost. If I were a gull, I would abandon my nest and join them. I would starve my brain of oxygen and suffer delusions of transcendence. I would tear the bottom from my boat and sail across the motorways until I reached this island once again.

Of fire and soil, I chose fire. It seemed the more contemporary of the options, the more sanitary. I could not bear the thought of the reassembly of such a ruins. Stitching arm to shoulder and femur to hip, charting a line of thread like traffic stilled on a motorway. Making it all acceptable for tearful aunts and traumatised uncles flown in specially for the occasion. Reduce to ash, mix with water, make a phosphorescent paint for these rocks and ceilings.

We shall begin to assemble our own version of the north shore. We will scrawl in dead languages and electrical diagrams and hide them away for future theologians to muse and mumble over. We will send a letter to Esther Donnelly and demand her answer. We will mix the paint with ashes and tarmac and the glow from our infections. We paint a moon over the Sandford junction and blue lights falling like stars along the hard shoulder.

I returned home with a pocket full of stolen ash. Half of it fell out of my coat and vanished into the car’s upholstery. But the rest I carefully stowed away in a box I kept in a drawer by the side of my bed. It was never intended as a meaningful act but over the years it became a kind of talisman. I’d sit still, quite still, for hours just holding the diminishing powder in my palm and noting its smoothness. In time, we will all be worn down into granules, washed into the sea and dispersed.

Dear Esther. I find each step harder and heavier. I drag Donnelly’s corpse on my back across these rocks, and all I hear are his whispers of guilt, his reminders, his burnt letters, his neatly folded clothes. He tells me I was not drunk at all.

From here I can see my armada. I collected all the letters I’d ever meant to send to you, if I’d have ever made it to the mainland but had instead collected at the bottom of my rucksack, and I spread them out along the lost beach. Then I took each and every one and I folded them into boats. I folded you into the creases and then, as the sun was setting, I set the fleet to sail. Shattered into twenty-one pieces, I consigned you to the Atlantic, and I sat here until I’d watched all of you sink.

There were chemical diagrams on the mug he gave me coffee in; sticky at the handle where his hands shook. He worked for a pharmaceutical company with an office based on the outskirts of Wolverhampton. He’d been travelling back from a sales conference in Exeter: forming a strategic vision for the pedalling of antacid yoghurt to the European market. You could trace the connections with your finger, join the dots and whole new compounds would be summoned into activity.

There were chemical diagrams on the posters on the walls on the waiting room. It seemed appropriate at the time; still-life abstractions of the processes which had already begun to break down your nerves and your muscles in the next room. I cram diazepam as I once crammed for chemistry examinations. I am revising my options for a long and happy life.

There were chemical stains on the tarmac: the leak of air conditioning, brake fluid and petrol. He kept sniffing at his fingers as he sat by the roadside waiting as if he couldn’t quite understand or recognise their smell. He said he’d been travelling back from a sales conference in Exeter; he’d stopped for farewell drinks earlier, but had kept a careful eye on his intake. You could hear the sirens above the idling traffic. Paul, by the roadside, by the exit for Damascus, all ticking and cooled, all feathers and remorse, all of these signals routed like traffic through the circuit diagrams of our guts, those badly written boats torn bottomless in the swells, washing us forever ashore.

When Paul keeled over dead on the road to Damascus, they resuscitated him by hitting him in the chest with stones gathered by the roadside. He was lifeless for twenty-one minutes, certainly long enough for the oxygen levels in his brain to have decreased and caused hallucinations and delusions of transcendence. I am running out of painkillers and the moon has become almost unbearably bright.

The pain in my leg sent me blind for a few minutes as I struggled up the cliff path: I swallowed another handful of painkillers and now I feel almost lucid. The island around me has retreated to a hazed distance, whilst the moon appears to have descended into my palm to guide me. I can see a thick black line of infection reaching for my heart from the waistband of my trousers. Through the fugue, it is all the world like the path I have cut from the lowlands towards the aerial.

I will drag my leg behind me; I will drag it like a crumpled hatchback, tyres blown and sparking across the dimming lights of my vision. I am running out of painkillers and am following the flicker of the moon home. When Paul keeled over dead on the road to Damascus, they restarted his heart with the jump leads from a crumpled hatchback; it took twenty-one attempts to convince it to wake up.

A sound of torn metal, teeth running over the edge of the rocks, a moon that casts a signal. As I lay pinned beside you, the ticking of the cooling engine, and the calling from a great height, all my mind as a bypass.

I’ve begun my voyage in a paper boat without a bottom; I will fly to the moon in it. I have been folded along a crease in time, a weakness in the sheet of life. Now, you’ve settled on the opposite side of the paper to me; I can see your traces in the ink that soaks through the fibre, the pulped vegetation. When we become waterlogged, and the cage disintegrates, we will intermingle. When this paper aeroplane leaves the cliff edge, and carves parallel vapour trails in the dark, we will come together.

If only Donnelly had experienced this, he would have realised he was his own shoreline, as am I. Just as I am becoming this island, so he became his syphilis, retreating into the burning synapses, the stones, the infection.

Returning to my car afterwards, hands still shaking and a head split open by the impact. Goodbye to tearful aunts and traumatised uncles, goodbye to the phenomenal, goodbye to the tangible, goodbye Wolverhampton, goodbye Sandford, goodbye Cromer, goodbye Damascus. This cliff path is slippery in the dew; it is hard to climb with such an infection. I must carve out the bad flesh and sling it from the aerial. I must become infused with the very air.

There are headlights reflected in these retinas, too long in the tunnels of my island without a bottom. The sea creatures have risen to the surface, but the gulls are not here to carry them back to their nests. I have become fixed: open and staring, an eye turned on itself. I have become an infected leg, whose tracking lines form a perfect map of the junctions of the M5. I will take the exit at mid-thigh and plummet to my Esther.

The stones in my stomach will weigh me down and ensure my descent is true and straight. I will break through the fog of these godforsaken pills and achieve clarity. All my functions are clogged, all my veins are choked. If my leg doesn’t rot off before I reach the summit, it will be a miracle. There are twenty-one connections in the circuit diagram of the anti-lock brakes, there are twenty-one species of gull inhabiting these islands , it is twenty-one miles between the Sandford junction and the turn off for home. All these things cannot, will not, be a co-incidence.

Bent back like a nail, like a hangnail, like a drowning man clung onto the wheel, drunk and spiraled, washed onto the lost shore under a moon as fractured as a shattered wing. We cleave, we are flight and suspended, these wretched painkillers, this form inconstant. I will take flight. I will take flight!

He was not drunk Esther, he was not drunk at all. He had not drunk with Donnelly or spat Jakobson back at the sea; he had not careered across the lost shores and terminal beaches of this nascent archipelago. He did not intend his bonnet to be crumpled like a spent tissue by the impact. His windscreen was not star-studded all over like a map of the heavens. His paintwork etched with circuit diagrams, strange fish to call the gulls away. The phosphorescence of the skid marks lighting the M5 all the way from Exeter to Damascus.

Blind with panic, deaf with the roar of the caged traffic, heart stopped on the road to Damascus, Paul, sat at the roadside hunched up like a gull, like a bloody gull. As useless and as doomed as a syphilitic cartographer, a dying goatherd, an infected leg, a kidney stone blocking the traffic bound for Sandford and Exeter. He was not drunk Esther, he was not drunk at all; all his roads and his tunnels and his paths led inevitably to this moment of impact. This is not a recorded natural condition: he should not be sat there with his chemicals and his circuit diagrams, he should not be sat there at all.

I have dredged these waters for the bones of the hermit, for the traces of Donnelly, for any sign of Jakobson’s flock, for the empty bottle that would incriminate him. I have scoured this stretch of motorway twenty-one times attempting to recreate his trajectory, the point when his heart stopped dead and all he saw was the moon over the Sandford junction. He was not drunk Esther, he was not drunk at all, and it was not his fault, it was the converging lines that doomed him. This is not a recorded natural condition, the gulls do not fly so low over the motorway and cause him to swerve. The paint scored away from his car in lines, like an infection, making directly for the heart.

A gull perched on a spent bonnet, sideways, whilst the sirens fell through the middle distance and the metal moaned in grief about us. I am about this night in walking, old bread and gull bones, old Donnelly at the bar gripping his drink, old Esther walking with our children, old Paul, as ever, old Paul he shakes and he shivers and he turns off his lights alone.

I have run out of places to climb. I will abandon this body and take to the air.

We will leave twin vapour trails in the air, white lines etched into these rocks.

I am the aerial. In my passing, I will send news to each and every star.

Final monologues

Dear Esther. I have burnt my belongings, my books, this death certificate. Mine will be written all across this island. Who was Jakobson, who remembers him? Donnelly has written of him, but who was Donnelly, who remembers him? I have painted, carved, hewn, scored into this space all that I could draw from him. There will be another to these shores to remember me. I will rise from the ocean like an island without bottom, come together like a stone, become an aerial, a beacon that they will not forget you. We have always been drawn here: one day the gulls will return and nest in our bones and our history. I will look to my left and see Esther Donnelly, flying beside me. I will look to my right and see Paul Jakobson, flying beside me. They will leave white lines carved into the air to reach the mainland, where help will be sent.

Dear Esther. I have burned the cliffs of Damascus, I have drunk deep of it. My heart is my leg and a black line etched on the paper all along this boat without a bottom. You are all the world like a nest to me, in which eggs unbroken form like fossils, come together, shatter and send small black flowers to the very air. From this infection, hope. From this island, flight. From this grief, love. Come back! Come back...

[justaramblingromantic]

“This blanket is freaking thin!” ft EiRin 😙

50 Random Writing Prompts

Characters/Pairing: Kobayashi Rindou and Tsukasa Eishi/EiRin

Type: Fantasy/Medieval!AU, Worthy of a Namet!verse, Freestyle

Word Count: 2841

A/N: Oh man, I think I drank a bit too much nonsense juice when I wrote this, wahaha! Hope you like, friendo~! Thanks for the ask!! <33

XxXxXxXxXx

He did not have to open his eyes to sense that she was up to mischief, again.

To be more precise, she was trying to sneak up on him, again.

Eishi sighed inwardly. He did not move, lying on the bed with his back still turned to the source of disturbance, the latter trying her best to be as stealthy as possible.

“…Rindou.”

The surreptitious movements paused.

“Yes?” she sounded so innocent, as if she wasn’t doing anything shady at all.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in!” she chirped in reply. Since she had already been found out, the redhead abandoned all pretense at subtlety and dove straight at her master.

Eishi rolled over and jackknifed before she could pin him with her pounce. He still ended up with an armful of warm, soft, sweet smelling woman…who was also very happy to nuzzle into the side of his neck and brush herself up against him like an overly affectionate vixen.

At least this time she was clothed, he thought. He still could not help but flush all the same.

“…Rindou,” he chided as sternly as he could. “We’ve already discussed this. You’re being improper.”

This partner of his had always been unruly and mischievous for as long as he knew her. And ever since she took on a living form, his life had only grown even more complicated.

And exciting…in a completely outrageous way.

“Go back to your own bed, please,” he uttered in a strangled tone when she slithered under his covers and cozied up to him even more. She was very distracting. His pulse quickened.

“But it’s warmer here with you,” she protested as he tried to peel her off. “This blanket is freaking thin, so we should share our body heat~”

That sounded like a logical conclusion to make…only he was starting to suspect that she was only using it as an excuse. That suspicion was further compounded by her happily running her hands down his torso, the brush of her lips along the side of his throat, the flick of her tongue darting against his skin where his pulse beat strongly-

“I’m cold,” she purred, wiggling ever closer. “Warm me.”

The thing was, she wasn’t trying to seduce him. Unfortunately, he was seduced all the same. There was something she craved from him, and she was never ashamed or shy to beg it boldly from him. Her tongue tickled his skin. Her warm breath flustered him.

“I need your heat,” she demanded silkily against his neck. “Please, Master, may I~?”

He swallowed. This was the contract that he shared with her, that bound her to him and vice versa.

“Yes,” he mumbled in consent, his arms instinctively coming up around her, even as she smiled and parted her lips, sinking pearly white fangs into his flesh.

That sharp prickle of pain was the familiar prelude to the near blinding flood of pleasure that filled his mind shortly after. He gasped and bit his lip, keeping perfectly still as she settled happily unto him and hungrily lapped at the mark, coaxing more of those crimson, rich drops of blood welling to the surface. Her pleasure, almost hedonistic and pagan-like in its sheer, unfiltered, delight, washed over him as well, effectively doubling his own enjoyment of the act.

Lavender pupils silently dilated. Eishi bit down harder on his lower lip, swallowing the groan that threatened to rise from his throat. His ears buzzed. He turned his face towards her crimson hair, losing himself in the heady perfume of her scent. His fingers dug subtly into her waist, holding her tighter, pulling her closer…

She was much less restrained in expressing her euphoria. His blood sang inside of her, and she reveled in the throb and swell of its sweet, rapturous power. She squirmed on her master’s lap, moaning as his taste became all that she knew, his warmth spreading in her like wildfire. It had always been like that; his light chasing away the constant, cursed cold that lurked in her, and she was hopelessly addicted to this exhilarating feeling of life.

A few minutes later, she forcibly reined in her voracious appetite, careful not to take more than he could give. It was so tempting, though. She brushed her lips eagerly against his neck, lavishing happy, affectionate kisses now that he wasn’t being a starchy prude and trying to peel her off, red as a tomato the whole time. Well, he was still red as a tomato, but-

She pulled back slightly, a little punch-drunk giggle escaping her as she cupped his flushed face and peppered even more playful kisses on his chin and jaw and mouth. He could taste the copper of his own blood on her lips, and shuddered at the sharp spike of arousal that elicited in him.  

“Rindou,” he groaned, breathless. She had that effect on him. “Stop. Stop.”

His hands came up to her shoulders, slowly but firmly easing her off of him. She growled softly at being denied, and curled her own limbs around him stubbornly like a little monkey. Much to his consternation.

His voice, still husky and lust-addled, was now injected with a thread of familiar exasperation. “What are you doing.”

“Not doin’ anythin’,” she uttered. “M’not lettin’ go for nothin’ either.”

Her petulance was not unfamiliar to him. She was already like that, even back when he only knew her in her sword form. This was also partially his fault, for indulging her as he always did.

Which left him with a dilemma.

“…How do you propose we retire to bed like this?” he asked in consternation over her head.

Rindou brightened and pulled back slightly to look at him again, glad that he had asked. Before she could open her mouth to share her opinion, he also had a sudden epiphany and quickly added. “Separate beds, please.”

The redhead frowned at him.

“You used to keep me close with you all the time,” she accused crossly. Even during bedtime, he laid her beside him every single night. Granted, it was customary for most knights to keep their weapons close by in the event of a sudden attack or a night raid, but he guarded her too, to keep her out of the hands of those who desired to harm her or take her.

As such, Rindou really did not understand what was so different now and was increasingly aggravated by his constant rejection. She didn’t like being pushed away by him. It made her feel cold and discontent and violently unhappy.

“…Yes. That’s because you were a sword,” he pointed out warily. Not a siren-like, alluring, impossibly beautiful young woman who seemed to possess no inhibition whatsoever and was also completely oblivious to the difficult position that she was putting him in…quite literally.

Her limbs tightened around him in her annoyance. “I’m still a sword! Just in a different shape now!”

Eishi had to remind himself to close his eyes as her fair bosom swelled with indignation…inches from his face.

She didn’t have to speak the obvious; he was acutely aware of her shape. Especially when it was pressed against him like now, barely concealed in a paper thin, chemise shift. He was not a stranger to her magnificent curves, which was why he was so desperately trying to put some much needed distance between the both of them before he ended up inadvertently doing something gravely improper to her.

Furthermore, this was exploiting the innocent, wasn’t it? Through a series of stressful, dire events, he had bound her to him and now he was also harboring some distinctly ungallant thoughts towards her. Never mind the sacred knightly vows he took of valor, chivalry and protecting those who could not protect themselves, he already felt like a cad as it was.

Rindou could hardly care less about his moral dilemma.

“Am I still yours or not?” she demanded to know, wanting to hear the confirmation that he wasn’t planning to toss her aside and depart like all the others who had come and gone before him. Not that she would let him, but still-

“Say it. Say that I’m yours.”

He opened his eyes, that distant lavender hue sharpening on her face. He just stared at her for the longest time, as if finally finding an answer to a very difficult problem.  

“Yes,” he replied at last, so quietly it was almost a sigh. “You’re mine.”

She beamed at his admission, spoken so slowly and carefully, as if he was tasting the words on his tongue, testing and accepting the full weight of his claim for the very first time.

“Good! Your sword wants to lie with you.”

He had the strangest look on his face at her expectant request. That sounded wrong.

“…You mean ‘sleep,’” he corrected.

She sent him an odd look of her own. “Of course I meant ‘sleep!’ What else is there to do?”

While Eishi was muttering to himself (perhaps he was praying for patience and deliverance), Rindou finally clambered off him and dove under the sheets, settling in for bed, now finally content after having her way. He took longer to follow suit, gingerly lying back down and feeling very jumpy.

She clicked her tongue at his hesitation. “Why are you so scared? I’m not gonna eat ya!”

“You already ‘ate’ me,” he muttered, finally easing in beside her. He was still rather stiff and ill at ease. She snickered and petted him.

“And you’re absolutely delicious~” the redhead sang, turning her head to grin at him. His ears were starting to turn red again. “Fine. I won’t eat you anymore tonight. Promise.”

She did, however, wiggle closer to him and throw her leg over his. She also snuggled into his side so comfortably, like she had always belonged.

“Can you just lie still and not move. Please.” He sounded faintly distressed. The more she rubbed up against him inadvertently, the more his body reacted to her unintentional stimulation. Eishi was very close to cursing the base urges of his disobedient self. Funny; how it always went haywire whenever she was around – he usually had much better control than this.

“I’m trying to get comfortable,” she huffed back at him. She was frowning a little too, as she squirmed. “There’s something hard poking me down there-”

She gasped loudly, as if all the dots had finally connected in her mind and she abruptly realized what that ‘something’ was. She lifted her head so quickly she nailed him right in the chin before he could react and explain himself. That collision hurt her, but since she was of the rather hardheaded sort, Eishi came out worse from the encounter. The poor man saw stars. He clapped one hand over his aching jaw, groaning.

Rindou was too outraged to sympathize with her master’s pain. No wonder he had been pushing her away all this time! She had finally discovered the real reason! She knew why now!

The flames of righteous fury engulfed her. She scowled.

“You! You’ve been hiding another sword on your person all this time!” she accused, sounding thoroughly indignant. “How can you do that to me – we agreed that I’m your only!”

The redhead was very determined to get rid of the usurper. Her hand dove beneath the sheets and fumbled clumsily with the hem of his nightshirt before finally, blindly, finding the offending item that he had cleverly concealed there, nestled right between his legs. Her fingers wrapped firmly around the hilt and she tugged with all her might, like a farmer doing her best to dislodge a long, fat daikon out of the stubborn earth.

Eishi blanched.

“Rindou.” His strangled squeak were an entire three octaves higher than usual. It was a miracle he could still speak when the woman was still going at it with all the vigor of one attempting to extract the Excalibur from the sacred stone.

He hastily grabbed her wrist to stop her, lest she actually succeeded in her endeavor and uproot his entire bloodline right there and then. He gritted his teeth, ears ringing from the brief but excruciating experience. Maybe that was the sound of his yet unborn descendants screaming for mercy, ten generations down the Tsukasa family tree. His eyes met hers grimly, as she stared back at him with wide, surprised eyes.

“That’s. NOT. A. Sword.”

XxXxXxXxXx 

Omake

He hadn’t been very happy with her that morning, for rather obvious reasons, even though she had shown an appropriate amount of contriteness for the misunderstanding last night. Rindou was sincerely sorry, though that had not stopped her from biting back snickers whenever he stood up and hobbled around gingerly due to the soreness between his legs, no thanks to her. He had glowered wearily at her muffled mirth, but otherwise had largely ignored her.

It was a good thing that they weren’t scheduled for patrol duty that day; surely Eishi would have been even grumpier than he already was. Instead, they were sequestered in his office where he was somehow buried in paperwork. Again. Rindou was meek and obedient as could be up until mid-noon, and then she got tired of being boring.

“How long are you going to be mad at me?” she asked him point blank. In her mind, she had already prepared a list to argue her innocence “In my defense, I didn’t know; I’ve never seen a naked body before except my own! And I don’t have that strange little stump you have; nobody ever told me that men have little extra bits of meat hanging between their legs!”

Eishi twitched at her passionate entreaty, and he seemed especially triggered every time the word ‘little’ was mentioned in reference to his…bits.

“You called it a sword last night,” he muttered, offended by her change in opinion. She squinted at him, not understanding his pique.

“What’s it for, anyway?” she asked, immensely curious. It was a curiosity that he was quickly beginning to recognize could be extremely destructive whenever left unchecked. He hadn’t exactly been in the mood to answer her questions last night, too busy curled up in a fetal position in bed. That was after they had made that really awkward trip to the healer’s quarters and the latter had laughed until he was rolling on the floor after he heard what happened.

“That healer said that all men have one. Really? Do they all look the same?? Can I see yours?”

Eishi turned a dark red at her barrage of questions. He stopped what he was doing and stared at her like she was crazy.

“…No. You can’t see mine.” He paused as another worrying thought occurred to him. He frowned. “Also, you’re explicitly forbidden from looking at other people’s swords, am I clear?”

“Huh?” Rindou was confused and getting a bit annoyed herself by his unreasonable restrictions. He wouldn’t show her his and he wouldn’t let her peek at others’ too, how unfair. “Then how am I ever gonna know what it looks like?”

“You don’t need to know what it looks like,” he retorted with an unusual amount of forcefulness, getting more and more flustered by the second. Why were they even discussing this? He was silently dying of mortification and the woman before him had absolutely no idea, as usual. “We won’t speak of this topic any further, so forget all of it.”

But Rindou did not understand what the whole fuss was about. A weapon that only men had and nobody was supposed to talk about…? This sure was one big mystery, and all over something that didn’t seem very useful to her. Perhaps it was like a holy artifact? Something symbolic and only decorative in purpose? Then why hide it away? Shouldn’t he be parading it around everywhere?

She was also quite sure she had overheard the healer mention something about ‘family jewels,’ though Eishi had spluttered and waved him off before more could be said. …A jeweled sword? Definitely decorative, then, she concluded decisively. Her desire to see it grew.

Unfortunately, he was weirdly agitated so maybe she should try her luck again another time. With reluctance, the redhead dropped the topic. At least he wasn’t ignoring her anymore.

“Tsukasa?”

“…Yes?” He was almost dreading to hear what outrageous things she was about to say next. Rindou widened her eyes and projected all the sincerity she could muster.

“M’very sorry I broke your secret holy sword.”

…

…secret…holy-

The white-haired knight emitted a…croak that was almost part bewildered incredulity, part laugh of despair. It was either that or cry. He gave up. He started to massage his temple.

“…It’s not broken.”

She perked up at the good news. It’s not broken! “Then, can I see-”

He groaned, loudly. She was going to be trying her hardest to get into his breeches for the next few days, wasn’t she? Just the very thought of it made him break out in cold sweat.

“…No. Just no.”

XxXxXxXxXx

[gynoidwren]

The First Vampire Of Smolensk

He remembers when he first came down with the illness. This was before any of the problems with the blood. He remembers laying sick in his mother's bed, the bishop standing over him. He remembers dying. And then being buried in a little ditch behind the churchyard, emerging three days later a new man. At first, his condition was not so severe. Anemia could excuse his pallor in sunlight. He could still cross the rivers then. This was yet before it had started to hurt.

But things became worse. A blight fell upon that year's crop and wandering ears began to whisper suspicions about his involvement. He took up a room by the butcher's shop, and took up a job by the butcher. It was honest work, easy. But the people in town looked down on him, shied away from him now all around the place. They picked up their parcels quickly, paid quietly, and left, casting glances over their shoulders as they did. He didn't like this. It was as if they were seeing him for one thing while taking him to be another. But which one was he?

He himself can't decide. Doubtless days where he gazed at the monster in the mirror. Less and less looks back at him. But it came on slowly.

He'd grown so used to the constant hunger at first it didn't register, the constant ache he knew well from his many years spent ill. He is a first-class butcher's boy. More of an apprentice, his work now noticed and appreciated by one only. And freed from his watchful eye, he begins to take things home with him. The first time he drains a chicken. He buries it out the yard in the back, fearful now that his crime may be discovered. He gives it a Christian burial, lays down a cross that only burns him a little. He cries for the chicken.

He shares a room with a boy from the seminary, set to be a priest as their Father should die or retire. He is the most beautiful boy he's ever seen. They're near the same height but he is lanky and taut, like a scarecrow. His eyes are a deep brown, he has the thick hair and strong nose of a Jew. His daring smile teases at more than his humanity. It makes him remember other things he had forgotten. But the boy always touches the icon as he leaves and he does not touch him. The boy teaches him prayers after the light's out. So he says one for the chicken, knowing really it's for himself.

The next day he assumes he's been found out, convinces himself quickly that he could never hope to live like this, but he goes in and finds that nobody notices. A chicken is little looked after in this world, and there is much more going on about the town than his own small drama. It is an easier life than it seems, and all the worse for it.

He quiets away other trinkets. A ram's bone, gnawed on by his growing fangs. A sheep's liver, sucked dry until the flesh turned a filthy gray. And, of course, the blood. It is the thing that makes him feel human again, as it floods his veins and flushes his face, he feels the warmth return. And it shrouds his head in a blanket of love. It is as if he can feel himself take a step back from the thing he has become, gives him distance enough for a moment to cease pretending to be himself. He drinks before he talks with the boy and hides his hands. He sits on the edge of the bed by his side and listens. But how can he hold this inside of him, to know that he is the thing his lover despises? He was never so good at keeping a secret in life. Every gulp of blood, every carcass scraped, begins to reek of betrayal, even as it frees him. He sits next to the boy and tries not to weigh on his delicate voice, his charming bravado, his adorable idiocy. He keeps his secrets. Easier than it should be.

One night he goes hunting in the woods himself, hoping to chance upon a deer, eager to feed. The blood won't satisfy anymore. He needs something else. He goes looking for deer. He follows the crack of a branch through the trees and happens upon something different: a trapped hunter, fallen down a hill through the brush, pinned under a log. The man is unconscious and bleeding. He bends down over him to try and rouse the man awake but as he catches sight of the blood something else awakens in him, and he takes a step back. He would love to tell himself that he had chosen never to do such a thing, but the honest truth is that the thought had simply never occurred to him before. And as it dawned on him now that, really, we were all full of blood, he began to understand what he was. And he chose to embrace it, there in that moonlit clearing beneath the darkened stars. He was free out there. He didn't have to pretend to be a man. Surely a wolf somewhere howled its approval.

He drags himself home, swollen and sated, and lays down next to the boy. He feels faint, but in a good way. To his surprise, that night the collar comes off, and his bunkmate shares more than verses, a secret sin he dares not voice with any other. More shocking still as he reaches out and tenderly takes his hand. And in that moment he feels that feeling again, the floating joy of life, but at the back of his head he wonders whether it is from love or blood. He does not tell his lover that he doesn't know.

He doesn't mean to kill him. He doesn't. He is just overcome by love and it sweeps him away. He is loosed from all the bonds of being himself, and as his passion is spent he finally realizes its grave cost.

The boy doesn't get a Christian funeral, no prayers said over his grave, for his hands can't bear the touch of the cross anymore. Still he joins the chicken under the yard. He cries for weeks. He doesn't understand. He doesn't want to spend eternity doing this. But he is a smart man, or at least once was a smart man and remembers it still, and he finds a better solution.

He shows up early in the morning to the hospital, just before the sun (his enemy) shows its face, to watch all the doctors come in and wait for his “medicine.” He thinks it's funny how you can see each ward represented: the optometry patients clutching their eyes or clad in dark glasses, the broken-boned drunkards covered in bandages (often flanked by police), the maternity ward pushing around strollers full of babies, and the psychiatrics staring blankly, mouthing something lost to themselves. "Which one am I?" he wonders. Which part of me is broken?

As he passes over the bridge they ask to see his passport and he shows them a picture of a man who looks nothing like him. They lock eyes with him and shrug, calling him by a name he hasn't heard in centuries, and he slinks past. Oh, the things he does for the blood, things far worse yet than hunting.

No more loves. No more handsome church boys. No more mistakes. Better to live on the outskirts, a little house in the woods, a life of dark honesty. Better a ghoul than a ghost.

[skepticraven]

15 Reasons Not To Be a Christian

It's sad that this has to be said but it does because unfortunately, too many people take disagreement as hostility. At least if its an atheist who is doing the disagreement. I do not hate Christians. I don’t think they are all bad people. I harbor no ill will towards them. I just happen to think they are wrong. I get asked why I’m not a Christian a lot so I thought I’d answer the question. I could probably write a small novel on this but this seems like a good start for now. 

1) The concept of Christianity is entirely based on the Bible. We have no original manuscript for it so you have no idea what it said originally. The oldest version we have of the Bible isn’t even in the language that would have been spoken in that part of the middle east and in that time period. 

2) The Bible was supposedly written by a lot of carpenters, shepherds, farmers, fishermen, and similar types of professions. Such people would have been totally illiterate during that time period.

3) Based on the date that the original Bible was supposedly written, the Book spent over a 1000 years being copied, translated, and intentionally altered by hand until the printing press came about in the mid-1400's. You couldn't copy it once without making some error accidentally and it was handled entirely by powerful men with plenty of reason to alter it for personal gain. Churchgoers were often illiterate until the past couple hundred years and mass was given in Latin on top of it back then. So most people would be none the wiser if something had been altered. In fact, we know for sure the Bible has been intentionally altered numerous times. There are literally hundreds of versions of the Bible just in English and thousands of sects of Christianity. 50+ Books were either left out of the Bible or later excluded (some were excluded by Martin Luther and some by Pope Clement VIII). If Christians can’t even get their story straight, why in the hell should I believe it? 

4) The Bible plagiarized stories from numerous pre-existing religions: both monotheistic and polytheistic. For example, the Persian scriptures of the Zoroastrians tell the story of how their god created the world and the first 2 humans in 6 days and then rested on the 7th. The names of these two human beings. Sound familiar? The Zoroastrians also invented the concept of heaven and hell and their art portrays the prophet Zarathustra as being surrounded by the same halo of light in which Christian figures are often depicted. Zarathustra even looks like Jesus before they white-washed Jesus. Chapter 125 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead is the same as the 10 commandments only written in negative confession. The story of the great flood was stolen from The Epic of Gilgamesh- right down to using birds to find dry land and the fact that the boat landed on a mountain.

5) I find it morally contemptible that the Biblically conceived God supposedly gives you enough free will to hang yourself with so that is not really free at all. Love him or burn forever? They'd call that abuse if he were human. And if Christianity is so true, why must they drill it into the heads of children before they have the capacity for critical thought? Its easier to get people to accept extraordinary claims as children. That's just brainwashing 101.

6) I find it morally contemptible that the Biblically conceived God supposedly committed an act of genocide against all firstborn Egyptian sons because he was mad at one guy (the Pharaoh). The whole point of the Pharaoh is that he alone controlled Egypt and why could this God character have not just unilaterally eliminated him with a bolt of lightning? Instead, Christians believe he murdered a bunch of random people and children who had nothing to do with the decision to keep or free the Jews. But then again, Christians also believe this God murdered the entire fucking world in a flood because our "free" will became a pain in the ass. Not just people but also animals. I guess those giraffes were really acting up!

7) The Bible has dozens of current versions and resulted in hundreds of sects of Christianity with wildly varying beliefs. So if they can't agree on what it says, why should anyone else believe it?

8) Most Christians believe in the Christian god because they were born in a country where Christianity is the dominant religion. Most people in India are Hindu because they were born into it too. And the same with Muslims in Iraq. And so on and so forth. If there was any divine truth to Christianity over any other faith, why don’t we see more conversion? Why aren’t non-Christians flocking in? Because it sounds absurd to anyone who hasn’t had this stuff drilled into their heads for their entire life.

9)If you read the Bible, there is actually some pretty sick shit in it besides just the aforementioned genocide. The whole idea of the Bible is that it is supposed to be the divinely inspired word of god. I don’t know why God couldn’t just write his own book but supposedly he told his prophets what he wanted to be written. So if that is true, God is not an entity deserving of my praise or respect. Here are examples of this contemptible god character condoning sexual slavery:   In Numbers 31:17-18, Moses commands his people to kill the men, the children, and any women who aren't virgins. Then tells his people that they may KEEP any woman or girl who is a virgin for themselves. Then in, (Deuteronomy 21:10-14) Moses spells out a ritual to purify a captive virgin before sex. Then in (Leviticus 19:20-22), The Bible tells you that if you bang a slave while engaged to another woman, that you must beat the slave girl and sacrifice a sheep.

10) Either the Bible is bullshit or god sanctions sexism repeatedly. For example: 1 Timothy 2:12, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be silent." 1 Corinthians 14:34-35: “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.” Colossians 3:18: "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord." Deuteronomy 22:20-21 "If however the charge is true and no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death…” Leviticus 15:19-30 I’m paraphrasing here but it basically says, menstruating women are unclean. Anyone or anything that touches she is unclean.

11) This God character in the Bible also sanctions physical slavery many, many times, not just sexual slavery. Here are a few examples: Ephesians 6:5, "Slaves obey your earthly masters with deep fear and respect." Colossians 3:22: "Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything you do. Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. Serve them sincerely because of your reverent fear of the Lord."

12) Either the Bible is bullshit or the God character in the Bible sanctions murder many, many times.:   (Numbers 16:41-49) In this verse, the Israelites complain that God is killing too many of them. So, God sends a plague that kills 14,000 more of them. (Deuteronomy 17:12) says to kill people who don't listen to priests (Exodus 22:17) Kill witches. (Leviticus 20:13)Kill gays. (Leviticus 20:27) Kill Fortunetellers. (Exodus 21:15) Kill someone who hit a parent. (Proverbs 20:20) and (Leviticus 20:9) Kill people for cursing their parents. (Leviticus 20:10) Kill adulterers (Leviticus 21:9) Kill a priest’s daughter who has sex. (Exodus 22:19) & (Numbers 25:1-9) Kill people of other religions. (2 Chronicles 15:12-13) Kill Nonbelievers (Deuteronomy 13:13-19) Kill the Entire Town if One Person Worships Another God (Deuteronomy 22:20-21) Kill Women Who Are Not Virgins On Their Wedding Night (Leviticus 24:10-16) Kill Blasphemers (Exodus 31:12-15) Kill people who work on the Sabbath (Isaiah 14:21) & (Leviticus 26:21-22) Kill the children of Sinners That’s not even a complete list and it leaves essentially no one alive.

13) God is supposed to be this big divine being who created an entire universe full of billions upon billions of planets and stars. And yet the Bible claims he cares an awful lot about incredibly petty, stupid human things. Here are a few of his downright stupid rules. Don't get a tattoo or a piercing. (Leviticus 19:28) Don't eat Shellfish. (Leviticus 11:10) Don't cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard. (Leviticus 19:27) Don't get divorced. (Luke 16:18) Don't wear cloth of blended fabrics. (Leviticus 19:19) Don't eat pork. (Leviticus 11:8) Don't work on Sundays. (31:14-15) Don't have pre-marital sex. (Deuteronomy 22: 20-21) 

14) The Bible contradicts itself all over the place. If the Bible doesn't have any consistency, why would anyone believe it? Again, there are way more examples than I can list here. STATEMENT 1: Genesis 1:26-27 Adam and Eve were created at the same time. CONTRADICTION 1: Genesis 2:7 and 2:21-22 Adam was created first, woman sometime later. STATEMENT 2: Genesis 1:24-27 Animals were created before Adam. CONTRADICTION 2: Genesis 2:7 and 2:19 Animals were created after Adam. STATEMENT 3: Genesis 1:31 God was pleased with his creation. CONTRADICTION 3: Genesis 6:5-6 God was not pleased with his creation. STATEMENT 4: Exodus 20:13 "Thou shalt not kill." CONTRADICTION 4: Look back at #12. I listed a bunch of people the Bible says to kill STATEMENT 5: Genesis 6:19 "And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark." CONTRADICTION 5: Genesis 7:2 "Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens: and of beasts that are not clean by two.

15) There is simply is no evidence for any god, much less the Christian god.  In fact, there is some scientific evidence that debunks biblical stories. Here are a few examples. Darwinian evolution debunks the idea that animals or people were created as they are today. We have archeological evidence of human beings existing long before humans were supposedly created according to the Bible. There is no geologic evidence of a worldwide flood. And even in theory, how did kangaroos get to this ark from Australia? Fly? Millions of species couldn’t have gotten to the ark if they tried. There are an estimated 6.5 million land animal species. That's just land animals. If all this flood water was salt water, it would have killed all the freshwater animals (or vice versa) so Noah would have had to include either all saltwater or all freshwater animals as well. And some species need shallow water to survive so that becomes a problem with a flood that reached the tops of mountains. There is no fucking way all those animals fit on any boat, much less one with the dimensions described in the Bible. Besides, there just is not enough water around to account for the water levels rising above the highest mountaintop. Then Noah supposedly lived to be 950? lol. Come on. People had significantly shorter lifespans in ancient times than they do today for obvious reasons. Only 0.0173% of Americans live to be 100 with the benefits of modern medicine and sanitation. 

Conclusion: I reject Christianity because it does not make sense to me. It's not a phase. It's not teenage rebellion that has stretched into adulthood. It’s definitely not devil worship since I don’t believe in him either. This is just the conclusion I came to after careful contemplation. Nothing more. Nothing less. Hopefully, this was food for thought for someone. As always, I appreciate feedback and thanks for reading!

[blackjacketmuses]

hc; proper xiv au

Because my only XIV ��verse so far is the one where the canon XV boys were dumped there postgame, here’s the bios for a proper XIV verse, where the gang is and always has been Eorzean.

TL;DRS: 

Noctis is a RDM (a family tradition) and 1.0 WoL, and he and his companions fought together -- though while they all had the Echo, only Noctis and his girlfriend Lunafreya had the Blessing, and only they were thrown into the future. He and Luna found themselves in Kugane until 4.0, when they can return.

Ravus is a PLD (has a crystal / was Sultansworn trained), and he grew up in Ul’dah with his sister after their mother died. He was a 1.0 Walker of the Path, tagging along with his sister and her boyfriend through adventures, and lost an an arm and his sister at Carteneau. This broke him, and though he and Noctis’s close friend Ignis (who was blinded) have mostly recovered, now that they remember they search for their lost loved ones.

Ardyn is...complicated. A fallen king from a fallen kingdom -- destroyed by Mhach in the war, though Noctis descends from the final king (Ardyn’s usurping brother) -- and a voidsent, transformed such via Mhach’s machinations. He lives his life away from mortals and traveling constantly, too misanthropic and antisocial to interact with such small and fleeting lives but in pain and lonely all the same.

Ardyn Lucis Caelum

Age: 1500+, give or take 38 years Class: Red Mage / Bard

History:

Ardyn was the king of a small kingdom called Lucis during the War of the Magi, a kingdom that resided where present day Vesper Bay stands. Thus was his kingdom within the reach of the kingdom of Mhach, and when Ardyn was approached by emissaries of the black mages, he kicked them out without question: he refused to bow to monsters.

Mhach retaliated in due time, poisoning the kingdom’s water supply with voidsent flesh and blood, causing a terrible illness to sweep the kingdom, turning people into Voidsent. At first King Ardyn sought the aid of the Amdapori white mages, but was refused. After that, he and his queen, Stella, decided to heal their people themselves, hoping they would be enough.

They weren't. The two of them tried their best, supported by their inner circle (Gilgamesh [DRK], Pyrrhus [SAM], and Hermes [ROG]), but were corrupted themselves...and then Somnus, Ardyn's brother, staged a coup -- claiming that the king and queen weren't helping and were now monsters. Somnus and his men killed Stella and the inner circle, and attempted to kill Ardyn. It failed, and they instead imprisoned him in an underground oubliette.

Years later, Lucis fell, and Mhach freed the now fully voidsent Ardyn. They took him from his prison and bound him into service, keeping him in servitude until the flood. They trapped him in a coffin in the Void Ark, but he eventually escaped 500 years later.

From then on, he wandered Hydaelyn, traveling and never staying long in one place. He picked up the bow eventually, out of boredom, and learned several crafts to pass the time. He disguises himself as a Hyur, and calls himself Ardyn Izunia. He avoids Thanalan as much as possible, but otherwise lives his life unobtrusively. Except lately, with the awakening of the Ark…

Noctis Lucis Caelum

Age:  Chronologically 25, physically 20 Class: Red Mage / Fisher

History

Noctis is the last living Lucis Caelum, a family line that claims to be descended from distant, Magi-era royalty. They prided themselves on being talented mages and swordsmen -- red magic a family tradition, the crystal an heirloom -- and though they all tried to be heroes, they weren't well known despite being rich and influential in Thanalan.

Noctis’ frail mother died giving birth to him, and he grew up raised more by his childhood companions Ignis and Gladio (both sons of his father's friends and retainers). He also later made friends with a boy named Prompto and two Gridanians named Lunafreya and Ravus Fleuret, who came to live with them after the death of their mother. Regis, his father, passed from an illness when he was 16.

When Noctis was 20, there was an odd meteor shower, and he and his dear friends found themselves with an ability called the Echo, and then became involved in events leading up to the Calamity. Luna and Noctis, also having something especially special about them...were teleported away from Carteneau through time by Louisoix, sent five years into the future and forgotten by their friends and loved ones.

They found themselves in Kugane, and spent the better part of a year and a half there, getting by and trying to live their lives -- Noctis doing odd jobs and selling fish on the Ruby Sea -- until Doma was liberated and it was safe to return to Eorzea…

Ravus Fleuret

Age: 33 Class: Paladin

History

Ravus is the eldest child of Sylva Fleuret, a powerful conjurer and Hearer from a family known to produce many padjals. While his younger sister, Lunafreya, was just as strong as their mother, Ravus had no talent at all for magic. So he took it upon himself to protect his sister, studying and learning how to fight. When they were young, their mother died, and they went to live in Ul'dah with a family friend, Regis Lucis Caelum. They grew up alongside his son Noctis and his companions, and he ended up learning from the Sultansworn and becoming a free paladin.

They all followed Noctis and Lunafreya through their adventures and to Carteneau, and Ravus lost first his arm in the Calamity and then his sister -- and her memories of her. He recovered alongside the similarly injured Ignis (a friend and companion to Noctis), and...he really doesn't recall the years between then and the recovery of his memories of Lunafreya. A fundamental part of him was missing, and without it he was empty save for Ignis.

When the memories returned, he immediately began searching frantically for her, refusing to believe her dead, throwing himself at any enemy despite his one arm. He had to find her...

[winedwords]

Aleister| In The Dark |Black

Title; In The Dark

Pairing; Aleister Black/Reader

Words; 5200

Summary; He ate my heart out.

Warning; NSFW. SMUT. AU AF. Heathens!verse. Sex pollen/venom trope. Magic healing dick trope. Thigh riding, oral sex, public sex. Kinda dubcon. Persephone and Hades spin if you drink some wine and squint. morally flexible aleister. porn with the faintest traces of plot. shit editing and proofreading is shit. ye have been warned.

A/N: Repost from the old blog

I don’t know how I got talked into this.

This wasn’t my scene. There were too many people entirely too close to me. The lights were blindingly bright and the strobing made my eyes hurt. The music was so loud, I could feel the bass rattle in my chest and thrum through my veins. Or maybe that was the several shots of tequila that I felt in my veins? Even if this was an outdoors event, there was little to no airflow and sweat clung to every inch of skin from the heat and exertion of my pitiful attempts at dancing.

My roommate and coworker, Adrienne, had talked me into coming to coming here and wearing as little as I was. This wasn’t me, at all. Whereas I would have been content with a game night and a couple of glasses of wine, like the homebody I am, she wanted the lights and the sounds and the feel of writhing bodies pressed against each other. She wanted the crush of uncontrolled euphoria brushing against and dancing with her magic.

I love her to bits, I really do, but this is what happens when your friends worship Dionysus. They would throw themselves into anything hedonistic and it would feed their magic. That magic would then reach these euphoric pinnacles and Adrienne swore that it was better than any orgasm she’d ever had, so I just had to come with her to this club.

My usual night out attire was not appropriate, oh no.

Adrienne had insisted on the tiniest, strappiest neon blue bikini I had ever seen. I’d balked at her as she pulled it from the shopping bag, the microscopic bits of polyester would barely cover anything and I’d told her as much. She’d just laughed and said that there would be others wearing far less and to stop being such a prude. Her Circle would be there and nothing would happen she said, so why not have a night of fun? Like an idiot, I relented.

Yes, it was a Circle dedicated to hedonism and the worship of Dionysus, but I knew that if they had any say about it, no harm would come to me. Not when they would have to face the unholy wrath of the North American Council.

I guess you could say that I was special, even amongst the magic folk.

See, magic is a finicky thing, temperamental and as unique as a fingerprint. Most magic folk do not fall into strictly black magic or white magic, but rather on a spectrum of grays. We are all born with innate ability, affinities and knacks for certain types of spellcasting. Our magic comes from the blood and each individual had different talents. Some, like Adrienne, are ridiculously skilled at charms and summoning magics. Others, like those in the Order of Osiris, were stewards of the dead, shepherding lost souls to the afterlife and banishing malignant spirits.

Then there was me.

The only White Witch born in nearly four centuries.

White magic was beyond rare. Difficult to wield, incapable of actually causing harm, and the only magic capable of healing wounds and curing illness, those with white magic had been worshipped and revered throughout history as living deities. With white magic, everything had a cost, every action had an equal reaction.

The biggest reaction was the prevalence of black magic. My tutors had said that white magic burns so brightly, that it must always be followed by the impenetrable darkness as its shadow. Black magic was expressly forbidden by mainstream casters, for good reason. Blood magic, sex magic, necromancy, there was no taboo that was considered to be off limits. Black magic could steal free will, snuff out life, summon inconceivable eldritch horrors from parts of the universe best left untouched.

My tutors had warned that white and black magic were inexorably drawn to each other, like two primeval magnets. That they were two halves to the same coin, the light and the dark, yin and yang. Precautions had been taken to never allow myself to be anywhere in proximity of a user of any type of dark magic, lest the inconceivable were to happen.

I felt him long before I ever was able to lay my eyes on him. The brush of his magic against me felt like velvet and tasted like single malt scotch.

I’d been followed before. Since my birth, there was always someone watching from a respectful distance. They were always nondescript people, blending in with their surroundings, if it weren’t for the feel of their eyes trailing me. I’d grown used to them with time, knowing they were there at the back of my mind, but also knowing that they’d never approach.

He was disturbingly handsome and not trying to blend in, in the least. He stuck out like a sore thumb in the sea of writhing humanity, as still as a statue with the slicked back mohawk and the clearly tailored black on black suit. He wasn’t dancing like the others around him, I wasn’t sure he was even breathing. He was just staring. At me.

I was close enough to make out the tattoos on his hands and the crescent moon high on his cheekbone through the crowd and I shivered for reasons I was not ready to examine closely right now.

Illuminati. And an enforcer at that.

Why in the world would they be sending someone who should be doing their wetwork and other unsavory bits of business to keep tabs on me instead of their usual nondescript types? Both the Templars and the Illuminati sent the same types of people to shadow me, always nonthreatening and certainly never got this close to me.

Both groups, the Illuminati and the Templars, were tasked with keeping balance in the world, maintaining order, and cleaning up any… messes to keep the ordinary and non-magic from discovering us. They just happened to go about it from each other.

The Templars were an ancient order, able to trace their beginnings to Babylon, with a strict code of ethics and morality. Everything was for the greater good. Duty, honor, and sacrifice were revered amongst them and it was not unusual for them to sacrifice their lives so that others may live. The ultimate white hats and do-gooders. The handful of Templars I had interacted with had reminded me strongly of the Knights of the Round Table and my mentor had laughed, saying that the Templars made up the entirety of the Knights of the Round and that Arthur was practically a saint to the later generations.

The Illuminati were a whole different breed. Young in comparison to their arch nemeses, the Templars, only about three centuries old, and infinitely more ruthless. They would do anything, no matter the cost, to keep balance. Blackmail, treason, deceit, murder, torture, it was all on the table. They had no such scruples about manipulation or power grabs. It was well known that they were the people on grassy knolls, the shadowed faces in corporate board rooms, and the kingmakers in every political system around the world.

I had been followed and tracked by both factions since I came into my magic. The Council had told me to not be worried, that this was par for the course whenever someone was born with significant magic, especially when it was black or white magic. I was warned that eventually, when the time was right, they would make a play for my allegiances. I had been assured that I should barely notice them with time, that they would eventually become fixtures of my everyday background. The Council was right, they had become my personal shadows, the faces and shapes changing but never enough for me to pay them much mind because I was never approached.

Until this one.

As soon as I had registered who and what he was, he was gone in the blink of an eye. Even if he was gone from my sight, the taste and feel of his magic still lingered.

So much darker than my own, that mysterious suited man’s magic felt like smoke and velvet and tasted as heavy as the darkest of chocolates with the after burn of a finely aged scotch. It seemed to swirl around me teasingly, caressing along my skin like a lover’s hand would. Then it was gone. My own magic crackled along my skin pleasantly at the loss and it reached up and out of its own accord to seek his out again.

I panicked, it felt like my throat was closing up, and I began attempting to push through the crush of  the writhing crowd. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before, my magic which I had such a tight control over from a young age, attempting to do something of its own will. The loss of control paired with the tequila and the hum of the euphoria spell that the Dionysus cult had cast was fogging my thoughts and I just needed a moment to breathe and to collect myself.

The bodies of revelers were tightly packed and it was damn near impossible to make any headway to the back of the venue, where there were fewer people. The bass of the music was overwhelming and the strobe lights were dizzying, making progress through the teeming masses of human flesh all that more difficult.

I’d made it a scant few feet when a delicate, but impossibly strong, hand latched onto my wrist. I pulled hard to attempt to get out of the iron like grip, but there was no give. I turned back to confront the person accosting me, but the anger and panic rushed out  of me as soon as I made eye contact with a pair of hypnotic and eerily dark eyes. The woman holding onto my wrist tightly gave a blinding smile and leaned in close.

“Dance with me.”

The will to fight drained from me and I smiled dreamily at her. She was petite, with a delicate heart shaped face and an overly full sensuous mouth. Those eyes had hooked me in and all I wanted was to please her and make this strange woman happy. I moved closer to her, my hips swinging to the rapid fire beat that the DJ was playing over the speakers, and she leaned in to press a teasing kiss to my shoulder.

“God you smell divine.”

Her words tickled and I threw my head back with a giggle, exposing the tender skin of my throat. I didn’t see the way her eerie dark eyes zeroed in on the thumping pulse point in my neck, nor did I see the way her teeth seemed to elongate into sharp points. I was too entranced by this woman, the feeling of being around her seemed to enhance the tequila that was lowering my inhibitions.

“You don’t mind if I taste just a little, hm?”

She didn’t wait for a response, leaning in with fangs bared for my exposed neck. I stood stock still, my head heavy from her hypnotic eyes. I could feel the heat of her breath against my skin and then the pinprick of fangs. I relaxed for the barest of moments into her touch before she paused, a strange gurgling noise at the back of her throat.

Then the fog around my brain cleared, the gravity of what just almost happened weighing heavy. My eyes were wide as she practically exploded into dust, her mouth wide in a silent scream, revealing that handsome suited stranger from before, holding a wickedly sharp wooden stake in his left hand.

He cursed in a language I didn’t understand, his eyes drawn to the small pool of blood at the nape of my neck from where that… creature’s fangs had broken skin. I wouldn’t have even noticed the small scrape if it weren’t for the slight burning irritation that emanated from the area. Dust from the creature clung to the lapels of his dark suit jacket, which was clinging to his broad shoulders in what was becomingly an increasingly interesting way to me.

“Do you like men or women?”

The sound of his voice startled me. Deep, cultured, with just the faintest traces of an accent. My skin was starting to feel almost too tight and the thrum of the bass of the electronic music was vibrating straight to my core. I laughed uncomfortably at his words as soon as they registered through the returning fog that was becoming thicker and thicker in my head.

“What? Get out of here you creep.”

The suited man’s face tightened into a grimace, still deathly serious. His magic flared and surrounded me completely. It was heavy, all encompassing, and so dark that it sung to my own magic in a way I had never known before. It was simultaneously exhilarating and comforting. I couldn’t help the purr that escaped my throat and the answering bright burst of magic. I was so lost in the feel of his energy that I missed the way he shivered and the rapid bobbing of his Adam’s apple.

“You were bitten by a dhampir, woman. They have a rather potent venom that acts as an aphrodisiac in their saliva.”

Well that certainly explained a lot about the way I was feeling. I’d begun to break out in a cold sweat and I could feel slickness that was most decidedly not sweat clinging to my inner thighs. My heart was racing and I could feel the panic bubbling up inside of me. How did I miss the signs of the dhampir? It was clearly trying to influence my behavior and get me alone… I could vaguely remember something about an anti-venom, but the crush of the bodies around me and the fog of the aphrodisiac was clouding my memory and judgment.

“Anti-venoms?”

His smile was wry but unapologetic. His sharp eyes were cataloguing my every reaction, likely calculating how long I had until my senses left me and I was reduced to a babbling, horny mess.

“The blood of the offending dhampir, which is out of the question now, or… a high dosage of the unique cocktail of adrenaline, endorphins, and oxytocin that’s released during orgasm. Now tell me, men or women?”

My mouth was dry and my brain was still whirring to process. My answer was clearly taking too long and he hurriedly pushed his hand through his dark hair with a frustrated sigh.

“The venom works quickly, you only have about five more minutes before the it overtakes your nervous system and begins to liquify your internal organs. Which means someone needs to make you cum in the next five minutes to stave off the effects. Do… Do I have your consent to see you through this?”

I was most certainly not ready for this, to be afflicted with a venom that was going to take away my free will, let alone a man offering to help and asking for my consent before I was turned into a mindless sex machine who’s organs turn to mush. He was dangerously handsome, I could definitely do a lot worse, and the touch of his magic alone pulled me to him. What was I forgetting though? This damn pink fog was beginning to take over my vision and I had somehow inched myself closer to him, so close I was practically plastered against his front, the brush of the soft fabric of his suit making my blood roar.

“I trust you. I don’t know why, but I do. B-but what’s your name?”

He smirked, something dark and hungry crossing over his face, but the venom was pumping too thickly through my body for me to pay too much mind.

“Aleister Black. It’s a pleasure, (Y/N).”

There was no chance to respond, as Aleister had swooped in for a sinfully feverish kiss one hand cupping the back of my head and the other playing with the many straps of the neon bikini at my hip. The cool metal of his lip ring felt like a brand against my lips and a quick nip from his teeth had my lips parting to make way for him to deepen the kiss. My insides clenched at his touch and I was already so, so close. His lips began to trail downwards along my jaw line and he chuckled as I shivered against his lips.

I felt like I was burning up. 

Every nerve was on a razor’s edge, to the point where every touch by a dancing partygoer and every touch of his lips against the bare flesh of my decollete was a pleasurable torture that bordered on pain. I couldn’t say what part of my body’s reaction was due to the guttural, primal attraction that drew me to him and what part was what that…. thing did to me.

It felt like someone put a live wire to my sweat drenched skin when he pushed his thigh between my legs and up against my core. The pressure on my hypersensitive center was delicious, already on the brink of release, and I couldn’t stop my hips, even if I had wanted to, from rutting against his firm, muscled thigh. Mere seconds had passed of my feverish grinding and the fabric of his suit pants were completely soaked by my desire.

My mouth was agape at the combination of friction and pressure in the place where I needed it the most and Aleister seemed to realize it. Both of his hands grasped my hips in a vice like grip and pressed me down hard and faster than I could manage against his thigh. His teeth clamped down on my earlobe and my release jolted through my body like I was struck by lightning.

I writhed in his arms, hips jerking shortly while my eyes rolled into the back of my head. Aleister hummed his approval, raspy foreign words spoken into my ear. My body eventually stopped shuddering, my chest heaving with my inhaled breaths and my heartbeat still fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings. The relief was only momentary however, then the lust was back and just as overwhelming as before.

I mewled in desperation, frantic for something, anything to bring relief to the pressure. The suited man in front of me made sure to double his efforts of dragging my core along his thigh, before gliding a hand underneath the small polyester triangles of my top. The rough pads of his fingers teased, then pinched the pebbled flesh of my nipple, the pleasure-pain sending jolts of pleasure directly to the tight bundle of nerves between my legs. Aleister caught my lips again, his tongue twisting with my own in the most ancient of dances.

The crush of the bodies around us was pressing me tight against him and it just took a sudden shove of a partygoer against me to send me into another orgasm at the rough treatment. Shudders wracked my body longer this time, the release feeling three times as strong as the one before it. It took several deep breaths to finally gain some semblance of control over my motor functions again, the white hot pleasure finally fading.

The pink fog that clouded my brain and my vision seemed to lessen in its density for just the barest of moments, long enough for me to begin to paw at the front of Aleister’s suit pants. He chuckled and swatted my hands away, only to be met with a high pitched whine that somehow came out of my mouth.

“You’re so cute when you pout.”

His affectionate words only served to double my effort in getting his pants off. His much larger hand grabbed both of my wrists and held them tightly, his once amused face now like stone.

“Sorry, beautiful. Not here, and most definitely not right now. I need to get you somewhere safe before others come for you.”

His magic swarmed me, the taste and feel of it overwhelming my already compromised magic. I weakly in his arms and against his magic for a couple of breaths, before I fell unconscious.

An undetermined amount of time later, I found myself splayed lewdly across the back seat of a large SUV, Aleister between my legs lapping at my core with abandon. I had only been conscious mere moments before I was shrieking his name and grasping at his hair. The pressure and pace with which his tongue had been moving lessened considerably as I rode out my pleasure, the shudders of my body slowly lessening.

It was then that I noticed the hastily drawn symbols on my thighs and lower abdomen, the vast majority of which I could not make out.

“What are these?”

My voice was so much breathier than I would have liked and Aleister looked up, the lower half of his face and beard glistening from the fluids of my core. I flushed brightly at the sight, arousal and embarrassment burning through me. His smile was predatory and filled with male satisfaction, the bright white a stark contrast with the darkness of his beard.

“Sex magic. Increases your pleasure while staving off the effects of the venom. I had to do something, you were starting to seize as I brought you to my car.”

The squawk I made would have embarrassed me further if I wasn’t so indignant.

“Sex magic?!  Are you out of your fucking mind? I cannot be party to this!”

I scrambled to get up and he made no movement to stop me, still crouched over my lower body as still as a stone, waiting. I had no idea what he was waiting for, too preoccupied with looking for the skimpy bottoms of the neon bikini, when a muscle cramp unlike any I had ever felt before wracked my lower abdomen. I groaned and attempted to curl in on myself to try to quell the pain.

“You’re going to have to be party to it. The only other choice is to die. Now come to me, this is going to get worse before it gets better.”

The cramp passed for the moment, leaving me exhausted and weak.

“You talk as if you speak from experience.”

He hummed noncommittally, pressing a kiss to the skin of the top of my thigh, his tongue flicking across the gooseflesh that his kiss caused.

“Enough experience to know how long this will last. Your mind is coming back to you, but your body is still prey to the effects of the dhampir venom. It’s going to be a long night.”

I hesitated, just a moment too long, then I choked off a scream as another cramp seized me, this one even more vicious than the last. Aleister’s face was hard, before making short work of his button up dress shirt, the suit jacket in places unknown.

“Do you trust me?”

My eyes were bleary with tears of pain and I could barely make out his face through them. He’d seen me through this far, the only untoward thing he’d done was drawing symbols of profane magic on my body in sharpie, in an attempt to ease the process. There wasn’t even a question.

“Yes.”

I didn’t have the time to read into the flurry of emotion across his face or the way his magic rubbed and purred against me in a decidedly feline way. Aleister had practically lunged upwards  to my lips, his kiss demanding and unrelenting. I groaned and arched upwards into him and into his mouth, returning his kiss with equal ferocity. I was so distracted by the flurry of our tongues, teeth, and the taste of myself that I barely noticed Aleister pushing his pants down his thighs.

It was the heavy press of the blunt head of his cock that made me pull away from his mouth with a gasp.

“Last chance. Say the word and I’ll do my best with my fingers and my mouth.”

His raspy words made me tingle in the most delightful of ways, the need in his voice pulling at the dark and primitive part of my psyche. The heavy pink fog had made its return with a dizzying speed and I frantically shook my head. I was just so… hungry for him.

“If you stop now, I could never forgive you.”

Aleister didn’t respond verbally, surging forward between my slick folds and not stopping until he bottomed out inside of me. My scream was wordless and he didn’t pause for a moment, his hips setting a bruising pace against my own. My hips were stuttering upwards into his, desperately craving every generous inch of him, needing more more more.

I was already on the brink, my magic crackling like lightening around me. It reached up to touch his skin, sizzling against the sweat and he groaned. Aleister began muttering in a language I was wholly unfamiliar with, his magic caressing along my skin so heavily it felt like an actual touch. He shifted ever so slightly and the heavy drag of his length inside of me caught that one spot that made me gasp at the immensity of the pleasure.

“Found it.”

I couldn’t be mad at his smug words, because they were delivered so breathlessly. Every thrust of his hips caught the hidden bundle of nerves inside of me, my hands clutching desperately at him as I mewled and moaned and writhed underneath him.

The orgasm was too big, too intense, and came on entirely too quickly for me to adequately prepare. I tried to say something, to warn Aleister, but his thrusts felt like they were driving the air straight out of my lungs. Then the knot that had been coiling inside of me snapped.

I remembered screaming, a sudden rush of fluid leaving me, and the delighted curses from Aleister’s mouth.

After that everything had faded and blurred into a rush of orgasms, different sex positions, and Aleister, most importantly Aleister. Somehow we had made it to a residential building and made it inside, unseen. My memory was hazy and I didn’t remember collapsing from exhaustion.

I woke in an unfamiliar bed, the silk sheets a sensory overload to my touch sensitive skin. The venom may have been out of my system, but it was still wreaking havoc on me. Religious and occult artwork decorated the walls of an otherwise sparsely furnished room and it took me some time to gather my bearings, the walls seeming to seep magic and the smell of Aleister surrounding me. There was an unfamiliar thrum in my chest and at the back of my mind, I could feel annoyance that wasn’t my own.

It took several moments, but I was able to gingerly make my way out of the bed, every muscle in my body screaming from the overexertion last night and my feminine flesh was almost painfully sore. I shuffled my way out of the bedroom, turning to what must have been the kitchen by the sound of a coffee machine and Aleister’s voice. I felt like I was being pulled by a cord towards him.

He was speaking with someone.

It wasn’t until I got further down the hall and closer to the kitchen, did I realize that he was speaking about me to someone on the phone.

“I understand that this was not what the bosses meant when they said to watch her, but what was I supposed to do?”

He paused, before chuckling.

“I’d like to see what you would have done with a pretty little thing like her begging for you.”

Hurt burned in my chest when he gave a bellow of a laugh. Was this some sort of sick cosmic joke?

“No, no, it was not like that. Dhampir venom. You just don’t get it though Michael. Her magic practically sings to me. That’s… its impossible to describe.”

He stopped speaking for a moment, running his hands through his hair.

“She knows that I used sex magic last night to fight off the venom last night. I just don’t think she realizes that her magic bound us together. It’s for the best though, the bosses will be thrilled that she’s ours now. And it wasn’t even as hard as they were making it out to be.”

Aleister paused at my gasp and took a breath. My magic had bound us last night?

“Dante, I must call you back.”

He hung up the phone, not turning to face me. Even through my shock and hurt, I was still struck by his terrifyingly beautiful appearance and the tattooed skin pulled taught over expanses of muscle. I wasn’t of the mind last night to have explored him as thoroughly as he had explored me.

“Did… did last night mean anything at all?”

Aleister turned towards me, his eyes suspiciously dark and molten, with a small and secretive smile on his face. I blinked and then he was in front of me, body heat seeping through the thin fabric of the t-shirt I wore. He filled my vision, all I could see, smell, and feel was him. Anticipation curled in my stomach and my breath was caught in my lungs.

“You were my mission.”

He hooked a long and tattooed finger underneath my chin and pulled me in for a kiss that was simultaneously chaste and claiming. I could feel my magic begin to crackle in the air as my anxiety began to rise. He could sense that between our neophyte bond, brushing his thumb against my lower lip to give me some comfort. Affection was all I could feel from him, with the barest traces of pity.

“There is nothing I wouldn’t have done to have you.”

I wanted to sob.

“Th-that’s not what I meant, Aleister, you know that.”

He gently pushed an errant strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers caressing slowly down my cheek. His touch was almost reverent and my skin seemed to hum with pleasure in the wake of the path of his digits.

“It’s all that mattered at the time.”

The lump in my throat felt like a boulder, cutting off my airflow. He may have answered my question, but I hated that I still had to ask.

“And now?”

He leaned in, his forehead resting against mine and one thick, tattooed arm snaking around my waist. Aleister’s magic washed over my skin like the heaviest of velvets and instinctively, I relaxed into him. This is what I was warned about, the bonding of magics like ours. We were two halves of the same coin, one light and one dark, forever drawn to each other by forces so much bigger than us.  

“You are mine as I am yours. I would open the gates of Hell and let every demon loose before I let anyone, including my brothers and sisters, touch you.”

Aleister then ducked his head just a little further and caught my lips in a claiming, soul searing kiss. The touch of his lips did not quell my unease for what was inevitably to come. The… circumstances of our joining was sure to start a war.

[themysticmusegallery]

For funsies, I’m laying out a few verses for my muses. Not full AUs, but rather different takes on their stories, essentially what ifs or in the cases of my longer lived muses different sections of their life. I’ll be listing these in each of the applicable blogs under Verses, and these can be requested for memes or RP at any time.

Without further ado, here are a few verses for Victoria Frankenstein:

(A note, these are pretty much all sections of her long life and options for her future, but any can be adjusted to present day circumstances if it helps interaction)

Little Delia: This covers Vicky’s early life before she discovered magic proper, the cutoff point generally being her ill fated doctor’s appointment. Here she lives with her family in a much younger New York. Known as Delia Goldman, she lives without knowledge of magic or magical creatures in a fairly poor part of town. She’s an incredibly shy girl, far more comfortable with her books or her dolls than with people. She’s very smart for her age, but unless she’s infodumping she often trips over her words, and rarely if ever makes direct eye contact. Her home life is often miserable, with her parents growing frustrated with her desire to read and learn about things other than the Jewish canon, how she recoils at social interactions and doesn’t even look her elders in the eye when speaking to them. This sadly is the kind of frustration that leaves bruises. Past a certain point her parents start to burn all her books save the ones specifically talking about their religion, forcing her to make little stashes of books where her parents can’t find them, often scattered around town.

Rat Queen: After being subjected to a charlatan’s “treatment” to try and turn Victoria, then Delia, “normal”. Rather than turn her into a good smiling Jewish girl, they got a hellion. Shortly after her procedure, she ran away from home, and quickly learned of her talent for necromancy, as well as those in the city who would take her head for using such talents on humans. So she began using them on something far more accessible and readily available in the depths of New York: rats. With a horde of undead rats swarming over those who stood in her way or stealing what she needed to survive, she drew the attention of the warlock Mairon the Red and his apprentice crew, Scarlet the pyromancer firebomber, Stick the illusionist trickster, and Mole the geomancer digger. For many years she ran with this crew, for better or worse through Mole’s cowardice, Stick’s arrogance, and Mairon’s advances, until one by one her competitors vanished. One through sickness, one through sacrifice, and one through the charms of fae, till only she and Mairon remained. This particular era of apprenticeship and limitations ended with Mairon’s death at the Rat Queen’s hands, felled by his own secrets that he’d thought were safely locked away.

Victoria, the Rat Queen after her mastery of using tides of dead rodents, is young and in some ways fairly brash at this age, but you can see the cunning that would later serve her well in full warlockhood. Of her group of warlock apprentices, she’s the most strategy and detail oriented. Due to her penchant for thievery, she also is usually the one providing for the others, pulling off jobs even Stick, the group pickpocket, can’t pull off.

Necromancer Ascending: These are more or less the formative years of Victoria’s warlock career, of her building her power base and resources while acquiring knowledge and connections enough to make her respected in the magical underworld. She goes through several names through this period, things like the Bloody Doctor or Lady Moreau, only settling on Victoria Frankenstein very late into this part. In general, the end of this era can be marked by her first execution, an unknowing (at least on the White Council’s part) test of her phylactery and Crimson Engine, a method for keeping herself around even after death.

In this part of her life, Victoria is far more cautious than she would become later in life, as she does not have a method for surviving a missing head till the very end of this era. It is here that she gets a penchant for disguises and false personalities, hiding in plain sight as she begins to merge science, medicine, and magic into her own unique spin on necromancy and biomancy. She’s beginning to develop her trademark personality, but only under several layers of false faces. She has quite a bit of power, but not as much as she would wield down the line, and not as much in terms of resources.

World War-Lock: This is a section of Vicky’s life, during her relatively modern run, taken specifically during the World Wars and the White Council’s war on Kemmler and his Thule Society. In the beginning of their attempted conquest of Eastern Europe, Kemmler and his servants began to court Victoria’s favor and resources. She was, after all, a powerful necromancer in her own right with a horde of her own and inventive magics that the White Council had trouble countering. With her on their side, they would have a much easier time steamrolling over native resistance.

Victoria wasn’t quite so eager. Kemmler and his society of necromancers, to her, stood for everything wrong with warlockdom. Far from “freeing themselves from the shackles of white magic”, they too often bound themselves up in ancient knowledge that clearly didn’t help their inventors to survive and, to her, pointless goals like ruling the world. Still, they were true to their word as far as necromancers tended to go, so she gifted them a few bits of technical knowhow and magical weaponry. Nothing world ending, of course, she saved those for funsies, but potent knowledge and items nonetheless. After a sustained silence on their end, Victoria made a surprise visit to see how her knowledge and weaponry were being used.

It was only then that she learned where the Thule society were getting their bodies to reanimate: the mass graves of the Holocaust. Now, Vicky will often point out that is not a good Jew. In many ways she’s almost the antithesis of that faith, forsaking most if not all of the Law and only celebrating the customs or traditions of the faith when convenient or if she were bored. One could even argue she carries some resentment for the faith due to the harsh orthodox treatment she recieved as a child. Even then, even through all that, deep down she still thought of these other Jewish people as her people. And to see them used like this, as puppets when they’d already suffered so much at the hands of the Nazis...

Perhaps it was one of the many selfish strains that tend to force Victoria into altruism from time to time, perhaps it was a shining moment of righteous clarity, but this revelation snapped something inside the necromancer. She did bring her horde to bear in Europe, but not as Kemmler and his lackeys had intended. Instead of turning them against the White Council, her monstrosities tore through the ranks of Holocaust dead, giving them “final rest” in Vicky’s eyes. She came in as a clad-in-black spectre of death against the Kemmlings, one of the few times she played into stereotypical necromancer style, calling down bolts of fire and earth on her foes from atop Bahamut, her largest zombie and her own personal mobile fortress.

While she did her share of fighting, she made sure to leave the thickest fighting to the White Council. After all, if Kemmler fell by her own hand, what would the Wardens think of it? Simply more infighting to take advantage of, and so she would get targeted as well. So began a very odd and tacit alliance between herself and the Council, rarely if ever acknowledged in word, only in the odd action on the battlefield.

Here, Victoria’s passions and fury are laid bare. She’s horrified and enraged that her own knowledge and tools were used to manipulate her own people when they’d already lived through the worst of humanity, and the magic she slings in this war is a major indication of this. She brings the worst in her arsenal to bear, and is much more flagrant about its use than she might otherwise be.

Deus Ex Thanatos: This is one of the major endings I have in mind for Victoria. Here, hounding from the White Council has hit its peak, annoying and frustrating Victoria into taking a route she might not have ordinarily taken. Finally snapping and wishing to shed any viable connection the White Council could use against her, she goes through a ritual ascention, using countless fossils to make countless microfractures in the time space continuum connected to the Great Dying, the Permian Extinction, one of the largest extinction events in Earth’s history. Taking in a massive amount of power into herself, reaped from the countless life forms dying on the other side of time, she ascended into godhood. Victoria the Necromancer became Victoria the Death God.

Of course, this came with its own set of problems. While she was largely rid of the White Council as an annoyance, she now had to deal with pantheons of other gods who didn’t take to the upstart very well.

So now you’ve got an even more confused, frustrated, unstable, emotional Victoria, who can incidentally command immense power and is unintentionally starting an underground cult among fledgeling necromancers.

Spirit Willing, Flesh Weak: Here, while Victoria wasn’t pushed as hard as her previous verse, she still expanded her knowledge of forbidden magics and pushed her powers forward. Unfortunately, this consistent push towards the dark arts is starting to take its toll on her soul and her body’s reaction to it. Past a certain point, her artificial bodies begin to break down before she says so, leaving an ambulatory rotting corpse before long. While she tries to remedy this by making bodies at a faster rate, but soon that became ineffective as the decomposition accelerated. At its climax, its all she can do to have some semblance of a human face on a skeletal body. At this point, she has become a true lich, fully undead with permanently glowing eyes and barely any flesh aside from a synthetic face.

Here, she fluctuates unpredictably from lamenting over her past appearance and her lack of need for bodily restrictions when it comes to magic. Here, she often truly seems insane, swinging between sad and angry and maniacal laughing in odd intervals. It is here, I think, where she could truly become not just an antagonist, but truly evil as her humanity slips away.

Victoria Redeemed: In this verse, as described in a long-ago Hundred Years meme, Victoria has renounced her ways. Possibly as an opposite reaction to her mind snapping in the other two verses, she finally seems to see the light and basically burns her home and work to the ground, laying to rest the thousands upon thousands if not millions of zombies therein, including her ever present Lassie. Of course with the built up magical energies of that place it may as well have been a nuke without the radiation, thankfully with a series of fake threats she managed to drive everyone else away.

Feeling she needed some isolation to get herself back on a better track, she went far away from her normal stomping grounds and found herself a little plot of land nestled in Oregon, with a peaceful cabin and a plentiful garden. She rarely if ever practices magic, and even then its usually to give the plants a little boost in bad growing years. She’s even given up smoking and drinking, which didn’t come easy but so far she’s clean. Only once she’s relatively confident in her abilities to abstain from black magic will she start to reach out to others.

She has no phylactery at this point, but neither will she avoid justice being sought. She knows she’s done terrible things with magic, but she would like to do some good before she finally goes.

[comebeforegod]

Beware of the Pharisees’ Leaven on the Path to the Heavenly Kingdom

By Kemu, Myanmar

Editor’s Note: Two thousand years ago the Jewish commoners didn’t beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and were deceived by their heretical fallacies, and  thus followed them in resisting the Lord Jesus, losing God’s salvation and receiving God’s punishment. 

Today, at the crucial moment of the Lord Jesus’ return, how should we learn from the failures of those in the past and beware of the leaven of the modern Pharisees? Sister Kemu has first-hand knowledge of this. How did she beware of the leaven of today’s Pharisees and welcome the return of the Lord Jesus? Let’s read her story together.

I once had a serious illness that was beyond cure, so I went to a church for help. When the pastor preached that the Lord Jesus was crucified to redeem us mankind, I was touched by the great love of the Lord. After the pastor prayed for me several times, my illness was miraculously gone. From then on, I was sure that the Lord Jesus is the only true God, who bestows life on us. So, in order to repay the Lord’s love, I often drove Pastor E, who was famous in our local area, everywhere to spread the gospel and bear witness. In addition, I gave him my monthly tithe. Seeing that Pastor E had forsaken his family and career to work and expend for the Lord, I frequently paid his travel expenses. Every time he came to visit our church, he stayed at my home, and in the evenings, he read the scriptures and preached to my whole family. We were as close as family. At the time, I thought Pastor E was a good servant loyal to the Lord; many believers worshiped and looked up to him; as long as I cooperated well with Pastor E’s work and did my utmost to expend myself for the Lord, I would be praised by the Lord; and it was certainly not wrong to follow him along the path of believing in the Lord.

In February 2018, I had the fortune to hear Almighty God’s gospel in the last days. Through reading Almighty God’s words, I understood the mystery of God’s six-thousand-year management plan and knew that God’s salvation work for mankind is divided into three stages: the Age of Law, the Age of Grace, and the Age of Kingdom. In the Age of Law, Jehovah God issued laws and commandments through Moses so that people would know what sin is, how to prevent themselves from violating the laws, how to get on with people, how to worship God, and so on. In the Age of Grace, the Lord Jesus brought the way of repentance and did the work of redeeming humanity. People would be forgiven of their sins on the condition that they repented to the Lord for their sins. And in the Age of Kingdom, Almighty God does the judgment work by expressing words to root out our sinful nature. When we experience the judgment and chastisement of the words of Almighty God, our corrupt disposition can be purified little by little, and eventually we can gain God’s salvation and perfection and be qualified to receive God’s blessings and promises. These three stages of work complement each other and each stage goes higher and deeper than the last and is carried out on the foundation of the last. If we only accept the redemption of the Lord Jesus but don’t accept the judgment work of Almighty God in the last days, we will be unable to get rid of our sinful nature, and we will continue to commit sins and resist God despite ourselves. In that case, no matter how much we have sacrificed for the Lord, or how much we have suffered, we won’t be eligible to enter the kingdom of heaven. Only by receiving Almighty God’s work in the last days and experiencing His judgment and chastisement so as to break free of our corrupt disposition and be thoroughly transformed and cleansed, can we enter the kingdom of heaven. I was grateful to God for selecting me and giving me the opportunity to be saved, and later I spread the gospel to my family.

Afterward, I wanted to tell the great news that the Lord has returned to those brothers and sisters in my original church who sincerely believed in the Lord. I thought of Pastor E. I said to myself: “If Pastor E accepts God’s work in the last days and brings the brothers and sisters back to Almighty God, everyone will receive blessings and benefit from it. But, Pastor E told us many times in the past that we mustn’t investigate Eastern Lightning or contact brothers and sisters from The Church of Almighty God. Will he accept it when I preach the gospel to him?” At this thought, I was somewhat worried. But then I thought: “Pastor E has believed in the Lord for many years. Isn’t his work and expenditure in order to welcome the return of the Lord? If I preach to him clearly, he should be able to accept.” So, I began to pray for this.

In March, Pastor E came and stayed in my home. I didn’t tell him about my accepting God’s work of the last days, for fear that he would not accept God’s gospel of the last days but obstruct me. Instead, I attended online gatherings with the brothers and sisters from The Church of Almighty God every day. On the fifth night, he asked me why I didn’t seek for fellowship with him about contents of the Bible as before. I thought: “He’ll leave tomorrow and I won’t be seeing him for a while. If I don’t take this chance to tell him about God’s work in the last days, that will delay the brothers and sisters from seeking and investigating it.” Therefore, I said to him: “Pastor E, Luke 17:24–25 says that ‘For as the lightning, that lightens out of the one part under heaven, shines to the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in his day. But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation.’ And Matthew 24:27 says, ‘For as the lightning comes out of the east, and shines even to the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.’  It can be seen that when the Lord comes again, He’ll appear in the form of the Son of man and be rejected by this generation. When ‘the Son of man’ is mentioned, it refers to God incarnate. And ‘first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation’ means that God will appear to us by becoming flesh when He returns in the last days. And Matthew 24:27 mentions ‘the east.’ It is likely referring to China. That’s enough to show that when the Lord returns in the last days, He will be incarnated and will secretly appear in China.”

I thought that Pastor E would give this some consideration or seek the truth in it, and so I was surprised when he denied what I had said at once by saying in a loud voice: “That’s impossible! The Lord will return on a cloud and will be seen by all. How can He become flesh? Have you believed in Eastern Lightning?”

I said: “Pastor E, many parts of the Bible prophesy that the Lord will come secretly. It doesn’t just prophesy that the Lord will come openly on a cloud. For example: ‘And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom comes; go you out to meet him’ (Matthew 25:6). ‘Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame’ (Revelation 16:15). In these verses, ‘At midnight’ and ‘I come as a thief’ indicate that the Lord will return secretly. Clearly, the return of the Lord consists of two steps: First He will come down secretly; then after He completes a stage of work He will appear openly. In the last days Almighty God—the returned Lord Jesus—works in China; this fulfills the prophecy that the Lord will come secretly. Almighty God carries out the work of judgment beginning in the house of God by expressing words. He has made a group of overcomers in China, separated the goats from the sheep, the tares from the wheat, and put each with its own kind. Now the judgment work of Almighty God in the last days is drawing to a close. God will send down great disasters the instant He completes the work of purifying and perfecting people, and then He will publicly descend with clouds and appear to all nations and all peoples. At that time, those who have opposed and condemned Almighty God’s work of the last days will see that Almighty God is precisely the returned Lord Jesus and that it is God Himself whom they have resisted and condemned, and will beat their chests, wail, and gnash their teeth. That’s how the scene appears on earth where all the tribes mourn. That also fulfills the words: ‘Behold, he comes with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen’ (Revelation 1:7).”

Unexpectedly, hearing this, Pastor E roared: “Speak no more! What you said is reasonable, but I absolutely can’t accept any Lord Jesus who doesn’t arrive upon a white cloud. Even if I have to die, I won’t believe.”

Seeing his attitude, I was stunned instantly: “Is this the pastor who prayed in tears asking the Lord to come soon? Why is it that he doesn’t have the slightest desire to seek, but is so resistant when hearing the news that the Lord has returned?” Then, I said sincerely: “Pastor E, in dealing with the return of the Lord, we should earnestly seek what the Lord’s words say. Don’t just pay attention to a certain verse and neglect other verses. Or else, we are apt to miss the return of the Lord and be unable to enter the kingdom of heaven. Besides, when we use our notions and imagination to confine God’s work, aren’t we being too arrogant? We humans can’t fathom God’s wisdom, how can we possibly know what the Lord will do?”

Before I could finish my words, Pastor E suddenly stood up with his face red, and walked around in the room, waving his hands around in the air and saying loudly: “Humph, I’ve preached to and baptized thousands of people. I’m sure that I’ve gained at least five crowns in the kingdom of heaven. How could I not enter the kingdom of heaven?” He did not pay any attention to what I said, and just objected to it and condemned it continuously. He even said: “You say Almighty God is the returned Lord Jesus who has become flesh and secretly descended in China? I won’t believe it unless I see Him with my own eyes.”

My husband, who didn’t have much discernment, was sitting nearby and chimed in: “Right.” Faced with this situation, I was very confused and did not know how to refute Pastor E. And seeing that my husband was influenced by Pastor E, I stopped the topic immediately, in case he would be deceived more deeply by the fallacies of Pastor E.

Afterward, Pastor E went to his bedroom in anger. Immediately, I went into my bedroom, knelt down, and prayed to God: “O Almighty God! Now my heart is in turmoil. How should I experience this situation? I don’t understand Your will. Please enlighten and illuminate me.” After praying, I opened a recitation video of God’s words and saw these words of God in it: “The Lord Jesus also wanted to use the case of Thomas as a warning for future people: Although you believe in the Lord Jesus, you can neither see nor touch Him, yet you can be blessed by your true faith, and you can see the Lord Jesus through your true faith; this kind of person is blessed. … If you follow God, but just like Thomas, you always want to touch the Lord’s rib and feel His nail marks to confirm, to verify, to speculate on whether or not God exists, God will forsake you. So, the Lord Jesus requires people to not be like Thomas, only believing what they can see with their own eyes, but to be a pure, honest person, to not harbor doubts toward God, but only believe in and follow Him. This type of person is blessed. This is a very small requirement the Lord Jesus has for people, and a warning for His followers” (“God’s Work, God’s Disposition, and God Himself III” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). That’s right, the Lord Jesus asked us to be pure, honest people. No matter how the appearance, words and work of God are incompatible with our notions and imagination, and whether we can understand or not, we should positively believe. As long as the word and the way come from God and there is the work of the Holy Spirit in them, we should seek and accept, not test or suspect God, and moreover, not look at things based on what we can see with our eyes. Only by doing so can we gain God’s approval and blessing. What about Pastor E’s behavior, though? Because God’s appearance and work don’t conform to his notions, he didn’t seek with a humble heart but said that he must see God with his own eyes before he would believe in Him. Was he not like Thomas? Thomas was not convinced of the identity of the Lord Jesus as Christ; when the resurrected Lord Jesus revealed Himself to His other apostles he still did not believe the fact; and only after seeing the Lord and touching His nail marks with his own hands did he believe it. His kind of faith did not obtain God’s approval. Come to think of it, when we believe in the Lord, though none of us see the Lord Jesus, through His words and work recorded in the Bible, and through enjoying the work of the Holy Spirit, we can determine that the Lord Jesus is the only true God, and thus we follow Him. Similarly, in the last days God returns to flesh as Almighty God. He has expressed all truths for the salvation of mankind. Hearing His utterances, those who sincerely thirst for the truth will recognize they are God’s voice and accept the truth and follow Him. Such people are the wise virgins. So, whether one can accept God’s work is related to whether he likes the truth and whether he can identify God’s voice. If, as Pastor E said, one must see the incarnate God before he can believe in Him, then why is it that the earliest Pharisees, though seeing the Lord Jesus, frantically resisted, judged, blasphemed, and crucified the Lord Jesus instead of accepting Him? After realizing these things, a brightness lit up my heart. Pastor E didn’t want to investigate God’s work of the last days at all. Rather, he was testing God.

In the past, Pastor E and my family were as close as family. However, now we became estranged and were almost like enemies. Thinking of that, I felt very upset. I could not figure out why Pastor E was so resistant to God’s work in the last days, and why he condemned God’s work without any reverence for God. During my seeking, I thought of God’s words that the brothers and sisters of The Church of Almighty God had read to me: “Do you wish to know the root of why the Pharisees opposed Jesus? Do you wish to know the substance of the Pharisees? They were full of fantasies about the Messiah. What’s more, they believed only that the Messiah would come, yet did not seek the truth of life. And so, even today they still await the Messiah, for they have no knowledge of the way of life, and do not know what the way of truth is. How, say you, could such foolish, stubborn and ignorant people gain God’s blessing? How could they behold the Messiah? They opposed Jesus because they did not know the direction of the Holy Spirit’s work, because they did not know the way of truth spoken by Jesus, and, furthermore, because they did not understand the Messiah. And since they had never seen the Messiah, and had never been in the company of the Messiah, they made the mistake of paying empty tribute to the name of the Messiah while opposing the substance of the Messiah by any means. These Pharisees in substance were stubborn, arrogant, and did not obey the truth. The principle of their belief in God is: No matter how profound Your preaching, no matter how high Your authority, You are not Christ unless You are called the Messiah. Are these views not preposterous and ridiculous?” (“When You Behold the Spiritual Body of Jesus Will Be When God Has Made Anew Heaven and Earth” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). God’s words pinpointed that the Pharisees believed in God and yet resisted God in substance. Their nature was arrogant and stubborn. They didn’t know the work of the Holy Spirit, nor did they seek the truth at all. When the Lord Jesus appeared and did His work, they saw that His words and work carried authority and power, but they didn’t seek or investigate. They, because the Lord Jesus was not called the Messiah and did not keep the Sabbath, judged, condemned, blasphemed, and even crucified the Lord without a trace of fear. Afterward, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus shook up all of Judea and more and more people turned to Him. The Pharisees were afraid that if people all followed the Lord Jesus then no one would follow them, so they bribed the soldiers in an attempt to cover up the fact that the Lord Jesus had resurrected. Furthermore, they frenziedly captured and persecuted Christians and were enemies of God. Pastor E’s manifestations are the same as the Pharisees’ that God’s words reveal. He believes he knows the Bible well, possesses some biblical knowledge, and understands some theological theories, so he blindly holds on to his own notions and imaginings. He thinks the Lord can only come on a cloud, doesn’t acknowledge the Lord will first work secretly and then appear publicly, much less does he accept the reality of God becoming flesh. When I refuted him until he was speechless, he still clung to his notions, without any intention of seeking or investigating. He even shouted such words as “I absolutely can’t accept any Lord Jesus who doesn’t arrive upon a white cloud. Even if I have to die, I won’t believe.” From this it can be seen that his nature is one of arrogance and stubbornness. He doesn’t have the slightest acceptance of the truth. And he is a Pharisee revealed by God’s work in the last days. In the past I thought that I would be able to enter the kingdom of heaven by following him. Now I see he is not at all fit to be the leader of a group of believers. His leading those brothers and sisters is exactly the same as the blind leading the blind and then falling into a pit. He’s a false shepherd, so what is there for me to miss when he leaves? I should stand with God and completely reject him. At that time, I had some discernment of Pastor E’s hatred of the truth.

The second day, when Pastor E left, I did not give him a donation or travel expenses as before. That made him unhappy. Soon, he sent my brother a message, saying I was going down the wrong path, that I had led my family astray, and that he had a way to bring me back into my original church. Previously, Pastor E only came to my home two or three times every year, so I thought: “It’ll be months before he comes back again, so how can he make me return to my original church?” So I did not take it seriously. To my surprise, after that, he began to post messages in our WeChat group, telling brothers and sisters not to believe in Eastern Lightning. Immediately following this, the elders in our locality began to seal off the churches to us and told the believers that my whole family believed in Eastern Lightning and to reject us. In addition, they often looked for opportunities to deceive and rope in my husband. As a result, all the brothers and sisters, my relatives, and friends who believed in the Lord in our village, all shunned us, and some of them slandered us. My best friend pretended not to see me when we met on the street, or crossed the road when she saw me coming. Our neighbors, who were normally like family to us and who also believed in the Lord, no longer came to visit our home. Every time I went out, I would hear someone criticize me. My brother, nephews and nieces all turned their backs on me and gossiped about me. My husband was aggrieved and upset to see our family abandoned, isolated, and even slandered. And he was shaken. Every night he would lose his temper with me without any reason.

Thinking about how the brothers and sisters, who were once like family to me, had abandoned me, and how my family did not understand me, I felt it was so difficult to believe in God. I suffered to a great extent, and I often prayed to God in tears. God is faithful. He listened to my prayers and sympathized my weakness. At that time, God often enlightened me with these words: “Do not be discouraged, do not be weak, I will reveal to you. The road to the kingdom is not that smooth, nothing is that simple! You want blessings to come easy, right? Today everyone will have bitter trials to face, otherwise the loving heart you have for Me will not grow stronger and you will not have true love for Me. Even if it is just minor circumstances, everyone must get through them, it’s just that they differ to some degree” (“The Forty-first Utterance” in The Word Appears in the Flesh). Every time I pondered these words of God my heart was comforted, and I came to understand the meaning of suffering. I realized that God permitted such afflictions to befall me just to perfect my love for and faith in Him and that they were God’s blessings. As the Lord Jesus said: “Blessed are you, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you” (Matthew 5:11–12). Although I was abandoned and slandered by our relatives and friends, the pastor and elders, and other believers for my faith in Almighty God, I was chosen by God and could come before Him, follow His work in the last days, and have the opportunity to experience His work and be cleansed, which is my greatest blessing. I should not be negative or weak because of suffering, but instead I ought to feel happy. No matter what circumstances I encounter or what suffering I endure, I must follow God’s footsteps and stand witness for God. Moreover, regardless of how difficult things get, God is at my side and He will lead me through them. Thus, under the guidance of God’s words, I had enough faith to face the situation.

Later, the brothers and sisters from The Church of Almighty God read God’s words and fellowshiped the truth with my family. After a month, they changed their minds about God’s work in the last days and gained some discernment of the God-defying nature of the pastor and elders. We often attended meetings together, reading God’s words and communicating our personal knowledge and understanding of them. We enjoyed the sweetness of God’s words and a happy life, and smiles appeared on our faces again.

One day in April, Pastor E sent a message to me: “Sister Kemu, do you still give tithes? Have you saved some money for donations? I’m holding a gospel meeting, can you support me?” After reading this message, I really felt disgusted and angry, so I replied: “No, I can’t.” A few days later, Pastor E sent me another message, again to try to block me from believing in Almighty God, and I didn’t reply. Seeing his behavior, I couldn’t help thinking of these words of God: “Those who read the Bible in grand churches recite the Bible every day, yet not one understands the purpose of God’s work. Not one is able to know God; moreover, not one is in accord with the heart of God. They are all worthless, vile men, each standing on high to teach God. Though they brandish the name of God, they willfully oppose Him. Though they label themselves believers of God, they are ones who eat the flesh and drink the blood of man. All such men are devils who devour the soul of man, demons who purposefully disturb those who try to step onto the right path, and stumbling blocks that impede the path of those who seek God. Though they are of ‘robust flesh,’ how are their followers to know that they are antichrists who lead man in opposition to God? How are they to know that they are living devils who specially seek souls to devour?” (“All Who Do Not Know God Are Those Who Oppose God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh).

What God’s words reveal is exactly right. Pastor E is versed in the Bible. He often preached biblical knowledge and theological theory to us, making high-sounding speeches. He thinks of himself as a man that knows the Lord best, but in reality he does not know God’s work at all, and he opposes the truth in all things. When he heard about Almighty God’s work of the last days, he did not have a sliver of a seeking heart. Not only did he not accept it, but he also frantically condemned and resisted it and prevented the believers from examining and receiving it. He sealed off the churches and spread fallacies on the Internet so that the believers in my original church guarded against and resisted The Church of Almighty God. After we accepted the last days’ work of Almighty God, he first deceived us with fallacies and asked the brothers and sisters to try to bring us over to their side,  and then told them to isolate and abandon us, attempting to force us to give up the true way. Through his actions, I saw that Pastor E preached everywhere not in order to exalt and testify to God or to bring believers before God, but to make them worship, follow, and support him, to keep them under his close control, and to protect his own position and livelihood. When some believers accepted the last days’ work of God, he was afraid that he would lose his position and livelihood, so he openly opposed God and fought over God’s sheep. Isn’t he an antichrist that fights with God for position? Pastor E didn’t bring the believers before God, but instead he made them follow him in resisting God’s work of the last days and lose God’s salvation of the last days. Isn’t he a devil that devours and brings harm to believers? He is a modern Pharisee and deserves to be cursed.

After experiencing these situations, I clearly saw  the truth-hating, God-opposing nature of the pastor and elders. I completely rejected them and no longer followed or worshiped them. Meanwhile, I came to appreciate the words of the Lord Jesus: “Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod.” The Lord saying “the leaven of the Pharisees” refers to the heretical fallacies of the religious leaders.  Only then did I understand that on the road to the kingdom of heaven, it’s most important to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. If we blindly worship and follow a man, don’t seek truth, and don’t look at things according to God’s words, we will be easily deceived by various heretical fallacies and lose God’s salvation, having nothing at all to do with the heavenly kingdom. I thank Almighty God for saving me and leading and guiding me with His words to cast off the deceptions and shackles of the evil servants and antichrists in the religious world, to return before God, and to enjoy the provision and watering of the living water of life.