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dotster001 · 1 year

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Found Chapter Two

Requested by @somany-fandoms-solittle-time

Summary:Lilia x gn!reader. Now that you've been reunited, Lilia is forced to remember how hard it is to care for you. But he's not the only one starting to remember....

A/N: hopefully y'all enjoy this, cause I have a whole series idea for this 😁

3k celebration masterlist

Part One

You were dreaming. You were the maid to a queen, and you were watching what looked like a court case.

"You're nothing more than a tyrant!"

You and your fellow maids all stiffened and murmured amongst yourselves. This stranger from who knows where dared to speak to your queen that way? Didn't she know how dangerous that was? People were beheaded for less in this kingdom!

The queen's face turned beat red as she prepared to issue a sentence, and a loud one at that.

Before you could hear it, you were hit with a dizzy spell, and sharp pain in your stomach.

"Louisa," the maid next to you looked concerned, "do you need to sit down? Did you take your potion today?"

"I'm fine," you groaned, but still felt yourself smile.

"OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!"

All the maids nodded. This was the expected verdict.

You looked down at your ring with the fuchsia gem, and smiled through the stomach pain. Everything would be alright.

….

Lilia couldn't keep his eyes off you. He was so happy you were here and alive, but damn, he was so nervous you'd vanish.

It wasn't too long before he caught the whole story. That you were from another planet or dimension and just…showed up. He supposed it made sense why he hadn't seen you in so long. You were somewhere outside of his reach. He could only imagine how lonely it had been. If it was anything like what he'd gone through, it was a horribly painful existence. Going lifetime to lifetime without the man you'd bonded your soul too. His heart broke thinking about it.

"Father? Is everything alright?"

He was snapped out of his thoughts by Silver's concerned whisper. He'd been staring at you again.

"Mm. Yes, I'm alright," he took a bite of his lunch to prove it, which did little to assuage his sweet boy, but he still nodded and looked at his own lunch.

"That's Diasomnia," he heard from Trey Clover, who had been telling you all about the other dorms.

He rattled off a couple more insignificant facts about the thorn fairy, some of them incorrect, much to Lilia's amusement.

Then he saw the red headed freshman playfully bump shoulders with you.

"I gotta take care of something," he said to his lunch table, before poofing over to yours.

"Were you talking about me?" He giggled as you shrieked at his upside down form that had materialized between the two of you.

You took a moment to catch your bearings.

"What the actual fuck," you breathed.

"I heard you talking about Diasomnia, and me, and my young Lord so I thought I'd join the fun."

"You heard all that?" The red headed freshman asked incredulously.

Lilia turned to him, feeling the joy drain from his eyes, that is, until the freshman shivered. Then Lilia had some sick glee return to him

The conversation continued casually, you pretty silent for most of it, Eventually, he figured continuing the conversation with you would do nothing. At least with an audience. He had a whole year, probably longer, considering the headmage was useless. He had time to reconnect with you.

After popping back to his own table, grinning like a lovesick fool, he was met with Silver and Sebek's concerned gazes.

"What? It's fun to prank the freshman, fu fu fu!" He laughed. They both shared a glance before shrugging and continuing dinner in peace.

….

"Did you hear? Housewarden Rosehearts overblotted."

The murmurs were all over the school, and Lilia wanted to kick himself. Of course you'd get into trouble. You always did. Even in a world where the mortality rate was so low, you somehow were so hard to keep alive!

"Sevens, Y/N, why is it so hard to hold onto you?" He whispered to himself, as he watched you wander the school with your two freshmen friends.

He didn't have time to think too hard about it before,

"Lilia!"

"Fa-Lilia! Lord Malleus is-"

"SILVER HAS ALLOWED OUR LORD TO GO MISSING AGAIN!"

He sighed inwardly, before throwing a final glance your way. If you ever did remember your past lives, he would definitely ask if this is what you wanted when you both talked about the family you were going to start. Not that he'd trade it for anything, but it felt unfair that you were getting out of all the hard work.

….

"Their next target is Malleus Draconia."

Malleus had a tendency to never actually be informed about housewarden things, but the one time someone actually came looking for him, Lilia selfishly decided to take the meeting himself.

Only to be told that his boy was likely to be the target of the Savannaclaw Housewarden at tomorrow's event.

"That's a rather large accusation, prefect."

Of course he believed you. But he wanted to hear your voice again. Keep you talking to him. Keep your eyes on him. He simultaneously felt like dirt, but also like the happiest man to ever exist.

"But it's true!" You cried. "He's been taking people down with his signature spell for weeks now."

Lilia leaned back, pretending to think. Not that the thorn fairy's general had to actually think twice about that. He just…needed to stare at you for a moment.

"I have an idea," he muttered. "That is, if you're willing to listen."

You nodded, and he did his best to hold back a grin.

….

"Pearce." His voice whispered in the darkness.

After months of taking the night shift to guard him, you'd learned to pick up his emotions from his voice, and the shimmer of his glowing pink eyes. This was a new one though. If you had to guess, it was a mix between desperation and fear.

"Evening," you said, trying not to let this deter you.

"Pearce."

"What's wrong?" You said, giving into morbid curiosity.

"Run away with me."

You stiffened.

"Li-"

You heard shifting, and his hands were cupping your face, his face slightly more illuminated, but features still obscured.

"How long have you been able to-"

"These ropes could never hold me. Pearce, run away with me. The queen's army is coming to the castle. If I'm there to let them in, great. If I'm not, they'll just double their forces. They're all going to die either way. But at least we could-"

You cupped his cheeks and softly kissed him. He stiffened before returning the kiss. Softly. Tenderly.

You separated and pressed your forehead to his, closing your eyes so that you couldn't see the heartbreak in his.

"I can't."

"Don't say that," you heard him choke on his words, as he clutched your face harder.

"You have a duty to your people, I have one to mine. I swore to protect my king. And if I have to die to fulfill my oath-"

"Stop."

"-then I'll die happy."

"Y/N! Wake up!"

You groaned as Grim slapped your face with his soft paws.

"What? What time is it?"

"We gotta help those Diasomnia guys, remember?"

"Right," you sat up and rubbed your eyes blearily.

On top of the already weird dreams about lions, now you were having some weird fantasy tragedy dream. Although, that story sounded interesting. If you remembered the dream later, you'd have to write it down and write a book or something.

"Why would they want to go over the plan so early in the day?" You groaned again

….

"Malleus Draconia is twice the king you will ever be!"

"Lilia, shut up," he heard you whisper. Of course it would be your voice snapping him back to reality. He'd lived a long time, but he'd only ever witnessed one overblot. If the ink rising in the air was anything to go by, Kingscholar was about to be the second one he witnessed.

Why did he just say that? Was it because of his love for his adopted son? His anger at the injustices done on the students? The need to show off so you could see how cool he was?

"Vanrouge!" Housewarden Rosehearts snapped. "Go get the headmage."

He watched Riddle pull his pen. He should really stay. This was partially his fault. And it was so damn hard to keep you alive…

"Lilia, please, we need backup," you pleaded. Sevens, those eyes. He'd kill for those eyes.

He nodded and poofed away, praying he was back fast enough to ensure you stayed alive.

….

He was always terrified when he saw you sleeping, no matter what life time it was. He'd seen you stop breathing far too many times, so it was always the first thing he looked for; the tell tale slow filling of your lungs.

Of course it hadn't been the overblot that had put you here. It would be something as simple as a disc to the head.

"Enjoying the view?" You croaked as you slowly woke up, causing him to snicker.

"I wanted to apologize, but you were preoccupied."

"Is preoccupied the medical term for a concussion?" You winced.

He laughed, a boisterous laugh that he hadn't released for several generations.

When he'd calmed himself momentarily, you sat up a bit, and gave him a soft smile.

"You don't need to apologize. I get it, you were upset that he was insulting your friend."

Friend? He could burst into a fit of laughter all over again. He supposed, you did believe he was a normal college student, so friend would be the accurate word for him and Malleus. Normally.

"Uh, yeah," he said, fighting back another laugh. "Still, I swear I'm far more intelligent than that normally."

He was really trying so hard to dig himself out of this hole.

"It's college. You're allowed to be a dumbass from time to time."

He bit his lip as he nodded. Was it truly unethical to just tell you everything? To just tell you you were supposed to be with him because you always used to be? To tell you that he was far older than anyone you'd ever met? That you were far older?

It would be unethical. You had to make your own choices, unimpaired by him. He just had to have faith that you'd choose him. He had no reason to believe otherwise! You'd always chosen him before.

Why should it be different this time around?

#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland x reader #twst lilia #lilia vanrouge x reader #lilia x reader #lilia vanrouge

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fishyfishyfishtimes · 4 months

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Technically, every time I refer to Ahti, the little fellow in my profile picture, as Ahti II, I'm actually being somewhat incorrect. Ahti as I always draw him should really be called just Ahti, or Ahti Saarelainen, when we're being fancy. Otherwise I would be blowing his cover! But, let's slow down a bit.

I've yet to lay down Ahti's backstory in proper detail yet. As I've mentioned a few times before, he is a prince! The Baltic Sea is home to a merfolk kingdom named Osmeri, and Ahti II is the next in line for the throne. Osmeri royals have a tradition that spans at least a few centuries, where the young heir(s) must momentarily leave the life of royalty behind and live as "commoners" in another land. The official reason is to keep the royals in touch with how things work for average people and get them to socialise and familiarise themselves with everyday people, another reason might be to give the teenaged heirs one final vacation... and now it's the twins' Ahti II and Hienohelma's turn!

Ahti and his sister need to hide their true identity lest they end up in danger, of course. They go by the surname Saarelainen and live with their grandparents in southwest Finland. The native language of Osmeri, Surish, has an accent that sounds very much like a Swedish one to Finnish ears, so most people assume Ahti is a Swedish-speaking Finn, which is a minority group inside Finland (most live along the coast). He hides his merman tail most of the time so really, he's just some teenage boy. You don't tend to assume that the guy who sort of looks like the crown prince of another damn country is actually that crown prince in a silly disguise.

Here's Ahti in his two modes, as a helpful guide:

#ahti II #art #my art #merfolk #merfolk lore #sirpaverse

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colourstreakgryffin · 1 year

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Yandere! Romantic! KNY Kyojuro Rengoku Headcanons

I sadly couldn’t find a pic that showed off his katana more but here we go anyway, Here comes the man of fire himself to traumatise all of us!🔥😍

Kyojuro as a romantic Yandere has the Yandere traits of; Overprotective, Manipulative, Loving/Clingy, Delusional, Possessive, Sadistic, Controlling and Obliviously Passive-Aggressive

In all honesty. Yandere Kyojuro is 1,000,000% one of, if not, the most scary Yandere Hashira of them all. Whilst every other Hashira are openly twisted and it is scary, Kyojuro is f**king TERRIFYING for his twisted nature fusing with that unbreaking cheerful expression of his

He smiles nonstop, even whilst gutting demons or passive-aggressively persisting that the Flame Estate is your new home with very little care over your obvious pain and a truly insane look in his flame-like eyes. He is cruel but doesn’t realise it as his vision is blurred with delusion

Kyojuro actually wasn’t Yandere straight away. He did fall in love with you in a instant, he couldn’t help it but for quite some time, Kyojuro was very normal, he treated you as he does all his fellow Hashira and he valued you as a dear friend

But, the longer he spent getting to know you, learning about the things you’d share with him. His love blossomed into an health-damaging obsession and torn apart almost everything of his perceptions. Are the people around him even his friends or are they bigger threats then demons for trying to steal away your eyes? He doesn’t know anymore. Kyojuro has grown extremely fixated on you, he became desperate to keep you at the Flame Estate for longer and eventually begun manipulating you to keep you cupped in his palms

After Kyojuro’s obsession with you has refined and been burnt into his head, he realises that he must hide it from you to ensure he wont lose his chance and he continues pretending to be the goofy, loveable Kyojuro you’re use to. But behind your back, he’s stealing your belongings, he’s going through your clothes to obsess over your scent or he’s taking peaks at your personal letters

He doesn’t want to hurt you at all, nor does he want to hurt anybody. Sharing this Yandere trait with Mitsuri, Kyojuro much prefers to intimidate, blackmail or scare away the threats(just like Mitsuri) if they’re human then raise his blade unnecessarily. However, for demons, he gladly kills and laughs hysterically at the remains turning to ash, so much that you think he’s going mad

His usually heroic mind is twisting and crumbling into pieces so quickly every second his obsession with you is enabled by you enjoying his presence

Yep. Kyojuro stalks you almost all the time, in and out of public. Though, it’s harder for him, due to his incredible but very noticeable fire-like features but he knows the way around your Estate off heart like he knows the carvings of his katana so he isn’t worried about getting caught at all

Kyojuro manipulates you very subtly in all ways to keep you in line. Emotionally, he’ll whine and cry so you feel bad. Mentally, he’ll twist your words until you believe what you know is incorrect. By the time Kyojuro is finished meddling with your head, you’ll have no choice but to trust him blindly. Though, you want to be as far as physically possible from him

As he’s very unpredictable therefore, very dangerous. He isn’t above punishing you and the way he looks at you with a deranged lovesick glare, you won’t even try test your limits with him anymore. It’s not worth losing a limb or even your life over

Like pretty much every other Yandere Hashira, Kyojuro is scarily possessive and delusional. He loves you so much that he will guard you from everybody when he sees fit and chase away all the annoyances but worse, he’s tricked himself into living in the fantasy where you also like him beyond friendship and that you’re just waiting for him to sweep you off your feet

As a coping mechanism to any lash-outs aimed at him. Kyojuro laughs, he laughs to keep himself steady, he laughs to keep himself from potentially laying his hands on you. He does have quite the powerful will but his mental health is weak to all the soft voices whispering to him. Lucky for him, nobody knows of his worsening state, nor even you for a long time as Kyojuro is extremely good at hiding his footprints

Your life has the upmost value to Kyojuro so he will gladly go down dying to protect you. Overprotective should be his new first and last name as he removes you from everyday conversations with kind strangers and even fellow Hashira. The danger of this world is off the chart and nobody can be trusted

Sharing this Yandere trait with Shinobu, Kyojuro is very split-faced and goes between his Yandere self and his normal self like a flipswitch whilst the other Hashira turn into their Yandere self permanently after a while of being their normal self. Kyojuro, however, is worse at hiding his Yandere nature than Shinobu, though, he values hiding it to better increase his chances of winning your heart naturally whilst Shinobu hides it as a means to manipulate

And when I mean he hides his Yandere self, I mean that he actively holds in rage and jealousy whilst you’re around, he doesn’t attack people unless he’s in proper privacy, he doesn’t really kidnap you but that he convinces you to stay at his Estate

Which is what he believes. Kyojuro will kidnap you eventually but also like Mitsuri, he leaves kidnapping as a last ditch effort and wants to charm you on his own. Why should he force your hand when he can win it?

Kyojuro’s quite obsessive and clingy over his beloved love interest. You belong to him and only him! He doesn’t want anybody talking to you and his blood boils when people dare to compliment you out of the blue. Yes, you are beautiful in that kimono but nobody has the right to say that but him!

On the inside, Kyojuro is like; “I swear to all the gods above, I will spill your disgusting intestines and watch your worthless life drain from your hideous eyes, how dare you lay a single filthy finger on my lovely Dokusha, you worthless flabby sack of sh—“

But on the outside, Kyojuro is like; “Excuse me. I do not mean to be rude by interrupting this important discussion but you see, Dokusha is my girlfriend and I don’t appreciate you trying to make a move on her. Please leave her be”

Going out in public post-kidnap consists of a passive-aggressive Kyojuro preventing you from communicating with anybody and clinging onto you so hard, you feel like your lungs are collapsing from how tight he hugs. He won’t break you, but he squeezes you into him every single second that it seems he wants to absorb you

Since Senjuro and Shinjuro also live in the Flame Estate, Kyojuro had to sneak you in when he finally kidnapped you and has been hiding you away from them ever since. If either his little brother or father found out about you, it’ll be all over. He won’t be able to see you again and he knows he’d snap

Would Kyojuro kill his father if the older man mistreated you and threatened you with violence upon Kyojuro bringing you to meet him? It’d be a horrible situation with Shinjuro. Kyojuro has extreme RAGE bottled up as his father screams at you to leave his house. If Kyojuro really had no self-control, he would have killed his father on the spot but he won’t, he still loves him. He just gets so furious that he must leave to vent the rising pit of fury

Kyojuro is very controlling. Not so surprisingly, he has been taking charge of your entire life by stripping you off your independence and replacing it with him in firm belief that it’ll protect you. He chooses everything for you and chimes out your protests. To him, it’s for your own good

Kyojuro is Sadistic at times… or better yet, he’s unaware of how sadistic he comes off as. Like I said before, Kyojuro is a bit cruel with his treatment of you so that combines. When he has you in his Estate against your will, he chains you up in his basement and leaves you alone at night in that cold, dark place. However, the more horrible part is when you fight back, he begins the inhumane punishments

He’s only hurting you because he loves you. You were misbehaving when you knocked him out briefly with that broom so now, he has to hit you back just as hard so you understand the pain he felt

Kyojuro is a massive affection lover. He lives off giving kisses, giving hugs and so many more gestures. His forced relationship with you is romantic, he wants you as his wife so of course, he redirects all the love his flaming heart has to you. He’ll over-take care of you and pour you in gifts, treats and his warm embraces!

Kyojuro is one of the two Yandere Hashira who strives to have children with you at the world’s current state, instead of after. The only other is Tengen. He’ll make you pregnant as soon as possible so he can begin living out his favourite fantasy; a perfect, happy little family

He’ll never get angry-angry at you nor lose his tolerance enough to be… well, overly-abusive. He loves you too much and each time he must punish you hurts him unbearably. He views the occasional half-beatings as necessary punishment and always sprinkles loving aftercare when finished

The cuts, the bruises and the fracture or two he gave you. All of them will be kissed away as if they never existed

Kyojuro carves you to enjoy your new life in his Estate, he wants you to love the peaceful atmosphere and will shape it at all causes to see you smile sincerely. Want a pet cat? Kyojuro has a box of ten kittens for you! He will bend over backwards happily so you’ll stop fighting back, stop crying

Though, it doesn’t matter how he acts or what he does to cover up his split-face. The real Kyojuro will never return, he’s gone for good and the monster in place of the sweet excitable Flame Hashira you DID have a crush on, is an obsessed psychotic beast that is twenty times worse than any demon out there.

“Good morning, my gorgeous bell! First night out of the basement! Felt wonderful to sleep in a futon again, didn’t it? I imagine you were most happy to sleep with me! I give the best hugs as Senjuro says! You enjoyed your night with me, I know you did! And trust me, there will be a lot more!”

#kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer #anime and manga #rengoku kyojuro #kyojuro rengoku #yandere #yandere romance #Yandere kyojuro rengoku #kny hashira #flame hashira #yandere imagines #kny imagines #headcanons #kyojuro x reader #rengoku x reader #kyojuro rengoku x reader #yandere headcanons

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captainofthetidesbreath · 1 year

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I will say that I did side-eye Abbadina when she said "Morality is innate. We are born feeling what's right. To not harm, to work to be happy, to help our fellows. It is when morality is written and pressed and imposed that those instincts become twisted and used to control."

She is (very much) not incorrect that, historically, moral codes and law have been used to oppress and control peoples, but that doesn't make her correct that morality is THAT simple, that defining these concepts is that easy, that morality is easily intuitive. While the precepts she described are good when phrased THAT broadly, on a pragmatic and granular level, what it means specifically to "not harm" and "work to be happy" and "help" diverges based on experiences and ethical frameworks and cultural points of view and context. There's a great conversation exemplifying this between Caduceus and Fjord in 2.88 about whether it is inherently bad to lie.

The framework that Abbadina described is one that has no sense of scale and is not scalable beyond small groups (and even then still doesn't operate well) and has no understanding of or room for different cultural values. It's also a very black and white way of thinking, to believe one's base instincts are right and everyone who does differently is wrong. It's also an approach that is INCREDIBLY susceptible to prejudice with not as much leeway for examination and reflection due to its nature of "your base instinct is always right".

This idea that everyone is "born feeling what's right" can be incredibly dangerous, and if it was that easy, there never would have been any conflict in the history of the world even before people began to codify things. It's a moral framework very vulnerable to xenophobia, cultural distrust, and believing that there is something inherently wrong with people who do or value things even slightly different than you, so as a result, I side-eye that specific comment from her.

#CR spoilers #Critical Role things

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mirthlxss · 1 year

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Baseball Price unhinged drabble

This is such a out of fucking character, indulgent post but @joebeargraves started this with her BASEBALL stuffs and little story and suddenly now this has happened, I had no choice really. This is dedicated to you my lovely hoe, hope it helps ;)

Purely indulgent drabble down below, smutty and probably completely filled with incorrect baseball terms.

warnings: eighteen +, goes without saying. light degradation, fem!reader, lil spank, just general demon behaviour you get it.

John Price is the meanest pitcher in the league, the way he rockets those balls with such malice completely contrasts with the build-up before he pitches. There’s always steely silence in the crowd as they watch his preparations, feet steadily planted on the dirt mound as he brings his throwing hand up to his mouth. One long, languid lick across the tips of his fingers, a short huff of air.

“Better grip.” He’d grumble when you asked about it after your first time watching him. The tension thrums through your body, every game, every time. Thighs clenched, he’d raise his digits and lick, you’d swear John would flicker his gaze upward to you in the crowd, and your heartbeat would drop down to your knickers.

The ace in his team, you always knew that one day you’d surprise him with new merchandise. Price could barely keep himself contained when he finally came on field, the white-hot summer sun blazing down, doing nothing to help his case. The way you fanned yourself on the stands, his old jersey clinging to your breasts, the jostling sway of each desperate waft. The second your eyes clapped onto him it was over, shot up in your seat, bouncing up and down like you hadn’t already caught his attention.

He’d bombed the game, furious of course. You liked him angry, though this was new, the clear diversion of your devotion had stumped him completely. It was routine to clamber down from the stands and meet your pitcher by the players changing rooms, cheer and congratulate him before he went in. This was new, desperate grasp on your waist, the rushed snarl that left him as Price barrelled you inside the changing room, shoving and herding you past the lockers and showers. You stumbled ungraciously into a dim corner, John crowding you with his gait, panting harshly as his hungry gaze ripped you apart.

“Can’t fucking concentrate.” Hoarse growl, a clue to his crumbling psyche. His lips crushed onto yours in a bruising kiss, the hands on your waist dragging you forward to meet his hips, cock strained hard against the material of his uniform. He’d barely been able to hide it during the game, head swimming with the image of you in his jersey.

He took you in the corner, rough and barely lucid as the whistling of his fellow teammates made no difference to the volume of his pleasured grunts, the jersey stayed on, of course.

“Such a supportive little slut, aren’t you?”

“Pretty girl putting me off my game huh, it’s a good thing I love this little hole so much.”

“Wanna come for me? No chance love, can’t decide if you need punishing or not.”

He’d fill you up thick and fast, pulling out with a sordid slap on your bare arse. His hand soon followed, pushing up into the sopping cavern he’d ploughed into, fingers plugging his cum in as you shook against the wall, cheek pressed against the cool tile.

“Grind.”

His fingers left you, soon to be replaced with the smooth sensation of wood. You look down to find yourself clenching over his baseball bat, white already smearing over it as he pushed it back and forth between your legs, angling it just right. The motion dragged it dangerously slow against your clit, already raw from the relentless fuck he’d sprung upon you.

John made you ride the bat until you came, shamelessly grinding yourself into it as he supported you from behind, twisting and thrusting the implement in time with your needy pulses. Only when he was satisfied with hearing your sweet little drawls did he let you collapse back onto him.

Finishing up with a soft smack as he slapped the sticky bat against your core, pulling the bat away and bringing it up to his readied tongue, licking the wood clean of your juices.

#captain price #john price #mw2 price #captain john price x you #john price x y/n #john price x reader #captain john price x reader #captain price smut #captain john price smut #captain john price #mw2 hcs #drabble #i have nothing else to say #but hi satan #fem reader

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department-of-landing-strategies · 6 months

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Incorrect Quotes Time but every quote is sourced from OSP (part 1)

~~~~~

(Percy and Audrey showing first years around as Head Boy and Head Girl)

Percy: Please note, we don't condone violence. Or at least not murder and usually not violence

Audrey: We condone sending a message

~~~~~

(Whatever thing/being the group summoned trying to pass as Oliver)

Possessed!Oliver: What ho, fellow humans! Are you enjoying having skin today?

~~~~~

(Conversations that happen when showing Marcus and Percy muggle stuff are usually weird, and that weirdness is only Percy's and Marcus's fault half the time)

Penelope: Short one?! That's a low blow, sir.

Audrey: The polite term is "manlet", my good man. I will also accept being adressesed as "short king"

Oliver: 's like the term is "twink", motherfucker!

Penelope: No, I'm going with "manlet", that was great.

Audrey: Oh, thank you.

~~~~~

(The amount of conversations the group have had a that involve tea past two sentences are in the double digits, which for a group that involves three divination students may or may not be surprising)

Percy: I have been in a cycle of: putting the kettle on, letting the water boil, walking away from it, coming back ten minutes later - "did I put the kettle on?" - putting the kettle on again, walking away, forgetting about it, coming back ten minutes later - "I don't think the kettle's been on" - putting the kettle on - and then just never making the tea, just constantly re-boiling the same water over and over again until it's all evaporated and I no longer have any water to drink.

Audrey: Are you sure you aren't secretly in hell? Because it sounds like you might be in hell.

~~~~~

Marcus: There is a certain, like, genre of wine mom who will take a sip of something and be like "oooh this is dangerous" - that's the same type of enegry as dads who will walk outside without a jacket and say "whoof! BRISK." And that is ME. I do that!

~~~~~

(Percy learning to fly while in Anamgi form and getting stuck)

Penny: The birb is stuck

Oliver: Oh no, the birb is-

Penny: Wait hold on. [Percy manages to break free] Oh darn it

~~~~~

(Audrey stopping a fight)

Audrey: Oh, it's a Slytherin and a Gryffindor duelling. Don't worry, you'll both lose.

~~~~~

(A drunk Marcus when asked about the topic of sleeves)

Marcus: I'm a sleeve hater with very high standards, alright? If, I'm going to be displaying these deadly wepons I wanna do it in a nice case, y'know

~~~~~

(Audrey has never had any fear and will never fear the Voldy unless she sees him use an unforgivable in person)

Audrey: Tell Voldy, we're coming for him. Dear a terrible dark lord, eat shit. Signed, the group you decided to piss off.

~~~~~

(Audrey watching Marcus try to reign in Draco during Chamber of Secrets)

Audrey: You are having a great time here.

Marcus: I am distinctly not

~~~~~

(Quidditch practice between Percy and Oliver at dawn)

Percy: I'm glad someones having fun here

Oliver: It's me

~~~~~

(Post group horcux hunt)

Penny: Let us never do that again

Percy: Yeah, FUCK that guy!

#i apologise if the sentances read wierd #i basically just copied the quotes almost entirely word for word from the captions #percy weasley #marcus flint #oliver wood #audrey weasley #penelope clearwater

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deva-arts · 2 months

Note

Heyyyyyy Devaaaaaa, you said you wanted OC incorrect quotes. no takesie backsies now

*over text*

Nate: Baby

Sera: fellow associate

Ricky: Hey Nate. If me and Vince were both thrown into a lake which one would you save?

Nate: I don't know, both of you.

Ricky: You can only pick one.

Nate: I would save Vincent because he can't swim and I happen to know you are an excellent swimmer.

Ricky: I'm holding onto an anchor.

Nate: Couldn't you let go?

Ricky: It's a family heirloom.

Nate: I'm done now.

(I don't know if Ricky is a good swimmer or if Vince is a bad one but I do know that Eric would totally do this.)

Nate: Hey guys, what are you playing?

Amon: Go Fish.

Nate: That's a nice, safe game.

Nate: But where are the cards?

Vincent: Where do you keep your spear gun?

Vincent: I told Sasquatch I don't drink water and he freaked out and now he's making me drink eight glasses a day, but it's like.

Vincent: There's water in pop. There's water in coffee. There's little pools of water in pizza.

Amon: Vince, that's grease.

Vincent: It's wet, isn't it?

Ricky: As your best friend-

Amon: Vince is my best friend.

Ricky: As your smartest friend-

Amon: That would be Sera.

Ricky: Uh, as your hottest friend-

Amon: That's Sonia.

Ricky:

Ricky: As your funniest friend-

Amon: Nathaniel.

(Again, I have no idea of the canon correctness, but the interaction just feels right.)

Vincent: Cain said I'd "rue the day", what does that mean?

Ricky: I have no idea.

*after resorting to Google*

Vincent: Okay, here it is- "roux is a culinary mixture, usually made of fat and flour".

Ricky: Cain called you a fat flower?

Vincent: I saved your life! Twice!

Sera: Because you put it in danger! Twice!

Sonia: Sera, I'm asking permission to date your brother.

Sera: What is this, the Middle Ages?

Sera: You know what? Since you asked, no you can't. You gotta beat me in a duel first.

Sera: Unfortunately, I've been incapacitated. This is just a recording I left for you guys to help you along your way.

Nathaniel: How are you talking to us then?

Sera: I'm not. I used logic to determine what questions you would ask and in what order. Then I recorded the appropriate responses.

Amon: Oh, reall-

Sera: Yes, really.

Vincent: Okay, I like cheeseburgers.

Sera: Stop trying to test me.

Sonia: London bridge is falling down.

Sera: Seriously, stop.

That's all I got for now but if you want more I will gladly do more, these are so much fun.

TOLKIEN THESE ARE SO GOOD (and ACCURATE???)

I even doodled a couple of them! You get their vibe so well

#thank you again this was so cool #devarambles #ARK_SYSTEMA #eeeee #Vince isn't doomed in water but he is a very clunky swimmer and can get stuck there. Eric... You're right I think he'd be a pretty good one #Amon is about to dunk Vincent in fishing #Drink some WATER vincent jesus #keep being funny and cool tolkien. if you ever want to do these again feel free

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chaos-event-horizon · 1 year

Text

Ok so. I'm in the DBZ fandom-- shocking I know-- and a fairly prominent anti just got some... Very pointed hate. Now I'm forever in the camp of NEVER SEND ANON HATE. Sending anon hate is DISGUSTING. But the way this person brushes it off and the cognitive dissonance is just *chef's kiss* like good lord imagine being this far out of the loop.

My brother in christ that anon is right you are very much having a proshipping opinion right now. I'm so sorry but your definition for proship is so fucking incorrect. By most anti standards, thinking it's okay to ship with a genocidal world-destroying galactic emperor because he's not real and villainy is hot is VERY MUCH a proship thing jsjwksndjd the fuck😂 I get death and doxx threats for shipping with a NON-GENOCIDAL villain. Who are you trying to fool? How have you gotten to this point without getting bodied? You're like those Furry antis who are shocked when other antis send them hate about smooching animals.

As an aside... Waving away "child exploitation" (you cannot exploit someone who doesn't exist! Jwjsjwodjdn) by saying some shit like "oh we only give the kids we trained to be murder monsters BABY JOBS so it's not ACTUAL exploitation UwU their whole race are forced into being warriors at a young age so Vegeta doesn't actually count as a child anyway" is just... That's so fucking funny to me. "I have decided that this kid, who I choose to believe is never given dangerous jobs despite any and all canon evidence to the contrary, is not being exploited because the man who killed his friends and family and forced him into indentured servitude is BETTER THAN THAT". Like buddy they sent a newborn Saiyan baby to conquer a planet by himself and don't bother even going to check on him until he was old enough to procreate. You have picked one hell of a hill to die on. Laughing so hard I'm crying. Shit like this is the reason I bother following the "#fri//eza" topic/tag. As a fellow Lord Freeza enjoyer I am begging y'all to stop making weird excuses for him before I die laughing.

#discourse #proship selfship

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fluentmoviequoter · 8 months

Text

to being ghosts.

Chapter 2 - Ghosts of the Night

Chapter Warnings: angst with a tiny sliver of fluff, fem!reader getting to know Victor & crew, mentions of death and executions, incorrect depictions of hacking, more world-building (this is additional story foundation, the plot picks up in ch. 3). 5.8k+ words.

The plane lands in San Francisco in the middle of the night. As the witching hour approaches, you remember what Daniels said a few hours ago.

“Vale is mine.”

Your entire plan relies on Victor, and though you doubt Daniels would be able to kill him or harm Victor in any way, you still prefer to operate with caution. Moving slowly and quietly through the dark, you feel like a ghost as you slip by unannounced, leaving the plane and your partner behind. You must find Victor first, or the world falls to men like Daniels, and the New World Charter gets precisely what they want.

Victor Vale won’t be easy to find, that you know. Even with one of his companions telling you which city they’re in, you don't know where to look first. With only a few hours until sunrise, you skirt around San Francisco, the dark metropolis symbolizing what once was and a harbinger of what is to come.

✯✯✯✯✯

“I’m leaving,” Victor announces, though Mitch is the only one awake to hear him.

“Call if you need help,” Mitch replies.

“The absence of functioning cell towers should make that easy.”

“You’re smart, find a carrier pigeon or something.”

Victor rolls his eyes, stopping with his hand on the doorknob.

“If I don’t come back-“

“You will,” Mitch interjects.

“If I don’t come back, take care of Sydney and Dol.”

Mitch turns slowly, his face somber as he nods. “I will, Vic. But don’t make me prove it.”

“I’ll do my best.”

The door closes behind Victor’s trench coat, and Mitch swears California has never been so cold.

✯✯✯✯✯

San Francisco is huge, and though you know what you’re looking for, it’s not easy to find a ghost town in the middle of the woods in the dead of night. With each passing minute, your hope dwindles; the question of what will happen if you fail to find Victor has numerous answers, and none of them are good. Stopping behind a thick tree line, you take a few deep breaths.

East.

The idea isn’t your own, like a ghost directing you towards fellow ghosts. You go east, even though you know that if you are wrong, you are running straight toward the danger you are trying to eradicate. Maybe, just maybe, things get better from here.

Your chuckle at the overly hopeful thought breaks through the darkness.

✯✯✯✯✯

“Where’s Vic?” Sydney asks, rubbing her eyes.

“He went out for a few minutes. What are you doing awake?” Mitch replies.

Sydney shrugs, her fingers grazing Dol’s head as she looks away. Mitch knows she’s avoiding answering the question for some reason but also knows Victor has a better chance of convincing her to talk.

“Is he coming back?”

Mitch remembers Victor’s words about what to tell Sydney: Not a word more than we have to.

“Of course he is,” Mitch answers. “He made a promise to protect you, right? Then he’ll be back.”

“Did you tell him what he wanted to know, about the agent you talked to?”

“We didn’t talk. But, no, I didn’t.”

“What if Victor finds them, and- and hurts them before they can help us?”

Mitch sighs, turning back toward the window. “It’s a risk we have to take. I can tell Victor everything about her but trusting her is his decision.”

“Her?” Sydney asks, a smile growing on her face. “We’re doomed.”

✯✯✯✯✯

You approach a suburb of San Francisco after a long night of walking, and it looks like it was abandoned long before the riots. Walking down the small area previously called “Main Street,” though it’s more of a main building, you doubt anyone else would choose to wait here.

A small collection of houses is barely visible in the distance, and the minutes tick by, closer to sunrise than you realize. Maybe you could rest for a bit before starting your search anew. As you move toward the first house, you pull your NWA badge from your pocket, staring at it and wishing it was different. With your focus on the badge, you don’t notice anything in your path until you run into something.

Or someone you realize as you look up.

“Don’t move,” he says darkly, his pale eyes and blond hair contrasting his dark clothing. “You’re NWA?”

“You’re Victor Vale,” you breathe out.

Furrowing your brows, you wonder how you know that and then ask yourself if you’re right.

“You know my name. What’s yours?”

“I- how do I know your name?”

“Tell me how you found me. You have less than a minute before you can’t say anything.”

“I am just trying to help.”

“That’s not an answer,” Victor says through his teeth. “Why are you here?”

You say your name with your hands raised, your badge still in your right hand. Victor sees it, and combined with your name, he remembers something he was never supposed to know.

2 Days Ago

If Mitch isn’t willing to give him the answers and information he needs, Victor will find it himself. Mitch’s unchanging insistence that this NWA agent he communicated with is trustworthy and can help them makes Victor curious. There is no surefire way to know if someone is good, but if Mitch is convinced, there has to be evidence. Or so Victor hopes.

Pulling Mitch’s laptop from the counter, Victor sits in the dark and types in the password. He scoffs at Mitch’s failure to maintain decent cyber security as the documents on the desktop load.

Opening the NWA file, Victor narrows his eyes as he scans the document. It looks normal enough to him, though one name is formatted differently. Yours.

Present Day

After you say your name, you suddenly feel like it’s easier to breathe, a barely-there pain vanishing as Victor realizes who you are. If you didn’t know his name before, that would be all the evidence you needed to identify him as the NWA’s most wanted EO.

“Why?” Victor demands, pulling you from your thoughts. “Why are EOs worth risking your ordinary, perfect little life? What makes us worthy of treason and getting yourself killed?”

You nod as he speaks, his voice as dark as the forest behind him.

“It’s not about what happens to me, it never has been,” you answer carefully but honestly. “EOs aren’t so different, and you know it. Just because you can do something that scares people like Smoak doesn’t mean you deserve to die or live in constant fear and hiding. I would do anything for good people, including EOs, no matter what the government says or does to me.”

“That’s the what, not the why.”

“Because this isn’t freedom, Mr. Vale. This is just another dictator taking out what he is scared of, anything different than him. He’s no different than Hitler, any of the others. And someone has to do something; I can’t sit on the sidelines and watch innocent people be murdered because they died and came back a little different. It’s not right, and if I can make a difference, why shouldn’t I?”

Victor drops his eyes, gazing at your badge before inquiring, “Why me?”

“You’re the most wanted EO. But I will protect you and your friends however I can.”

At the mention of his ‘friends,’ Victor has to decide if he can trust you. He can take you out with a thought, but taking you near Mitch and Sydney is a greater decision, and one that he cannot make lightly.

You toss your badge on the ground at his feet. “I didn’t want this position. If I could have walked away, I would have, but I couldn’t. Not when I know that my job was putting me in the place to help, to get EOs out of the line of fire. There is a chance to get the world back from the New World Charter; tell me you see that.”

Victor takes a deep breath, his chest rising and falling as he considers your words and actions. You seem genuine, but part of Victor thinks this could still be a trap. So, he gives you an out.

“If you do this,” he begins slowly, “turn your back on all of them – on your country – for us, there is no going back. You will be a ghost.”

Your lips twitch up, the beginning of a smile. “I’ve been a ghost for years, but it’s finally time to do something with that invisibility.”

Victor nods. “If you’re sure. There’s a house about a mile from here where we’ve been waiting. For you, presumably.”

“I’m honored,” you reply, walking beside him. “This makes you a ghost, too, then?”

Victor hums.

“So, I’m in good company,” you muse. “Do you have a ghost name? I know it’s cliché, but can I be Casper?”

Sighing, Victor wonders what it’s like to be able to trust people and show who you really are.

✯✯✯✯✯

The earliest rays of light have just begun to shine over the horizon, turning the inside of the Gulfstream an orange hue. Daniels blinks his eyes open, waking quickly when he remembers where he is and why. Somewhere outside the window beside him, Victor Vale and his EO companions are hiding.

He calls your name, standing when there is no reply. After walking through the plane and failing to find you, Daniels curses and kicks the table beside the laptop you used to track Vale.

“Stupid girl,” he mutters, snatching the computer from the floor and failing to unlock it.

Concerned about what he will say when Smoak checks in, he sticks to his original plan: as far as anyone needs to know, he left to search for Vale and protect you, safe on the plane. Valiance is the best cover for narcissism, he decides. That concern makes way for anger quickly, though, and he abandons the laptop to open the plane’s door.

San Francisco looks different in the light, a deserted metropolis filled with what was lost in the transition to the New World. Daniels doesn’t see the symbolism, of course, too determined to find you and the EO trash you seem to want to protect.

✯✯✯✯✯

Victor is silent as he leads you through the woods, only glancing at you when he switches his path. You can tell he is reluctant, an internal battle occurring in his mind. He has no reason to trust you, though you are glad he is. No matter how long it takes, you will show him that you meant every word and will fight until your last breath.

“I’ll do whatever you want, anything you want,” you offer quietly. “But I can’t do this alone. Saving the rest of the EOs and taking down the New World Charter won’t be easy.”

You receive no reply, chewing the inside of your lip as you watch the ghost beside you. Victor is good, deep down, and you hope he can see that you are too.

A small house, likely a winter retreat or something of the kind, appears in a small thicket. Victor stops you, an arm extended in front of your chest as he turns toward you.

“You show me the smallest sign that you lied about who you are or why you’re here, or if I start thinking this was a trap… I will not hesitate to kill you,” Victor threatens, his voice even and serious.

“I understand. This is your life, and I know that I have to earn your trust. Like I said, I’ll do whatever you need me to do. Blindfold me, make me wait somewhere else, whatever you want. Your cautiousness is your privilege, and I know the risk I’m running if I misstep.”

Victor grumbles something under his breath before leading you to the door. He stops with his hand on the doorknob, his shoulders tensing before he gestures for you to enter first.

As you walk before him, you think about how you never felt this safe in front of Daniels. With him, you were concerned about getting a bullet in the back, but Victor’s presence behind you is a blanket of safety.

“Hey,” Mitch says, adding your name with a smile. “Thanks for coming.”

At your confused look, he adds, “I saw your picture. You’ll be glad to know the pictures have been scrubbed from most downloads.”

“Not yours, though, you’re better than that,” you deduce.

“You get it,” Mitch jokes.

A young girl stands in the doorway, looking between you and Victor as she clings to a large black dog. You recognize her from the file, the suspected EO that you knew you’d give your life to protect. Seeing her reinforces your belief that even without knowing her name, you would do everything and then more to keep her away from the NWA and safe.

Victor nods, a silent acknowledgment that everything is okay for now.

“I’m Sydney,” she says, stepping toward you.

You introduce yourself, offering your hand to shake. After Sydney releases it, the dog licks your hand.

“Nice to meet you too,” you say, kneeling to pet him. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”

“Dol,” Sydney tells you.

“You didn’t know?” Mitch repeats.

“The file listed two associates, just descriptions of you and Sydney, but apparently no one else was lucky enough to meet Dol here.”

As they arrange themselves around you, you can see they have been living a relatively normal life in this house, and you hate what you must do next.

“You’re all going to have to stay inside for now,” you tell them.

Victor’s unimpressed look alerts you that you’ll have to convince them it is more dangerous out there than they realize. Alone in this little pocket of domesticity, they are likely unaware of the degree of the assault targeting EOs across the world.

“I- I lost an EO a while back,” you admit. “Since I was assigned to Task O, I made sure to find them before my partner and send them somewhere safe. Then I would fake their deaths.”

“I told you!” Sydney interjects, looking at Victor. “There was too much life. The faked deaths were creating a rift in how much life I could sense.”

You glance at Victor with your eyebrows raised. He tilts his head to the side, a tiny movement.

“Sydney can raise the dead,” he tells you.

Your eyes widen as you look back at Sydney. “Whoa.”

She nods, pleased with your impressed reaction. “There’s connections, points that you have to pull together, and a few weeks ago I started sensing that there were more than there should have been. But if the world thought that the EOs were dead, but weren’t, I guess that explains it.”

“Continue,” Victor demands, gesturing for Sydney to pipe down.

“Okay, so I was hiding them, essentially, and lying to my partner. But there was this one EO that he got to first. When he radioed that he’d killed him, I didn’t know what to do. I thought that it was hopeless, that for every one I saved, the NWA would kill two or three more. But he had an EO partner, a guy called Rock. I managed to find Rock and keep him from taking out the entire city before I sent him to a safe place.”

“You have no way of knowing if those EOs ever made it where you sent them,” Victor argues. “For all you know, they’re all gone.”

“They’re not,” Sydney interjects. “I wouldn’t be able to feel them if that were true.”

“My point is, it may still be four versus the world. That’s not a plausible fight. If those EOs aren’t where you sent them, changed their minds, whatever, you’re right back where you started.”

“Not entirely true,” you whisper. “I didn’t have you on my side then.”

Sydney moves closer to Mitch, both convinced by your guilt at losing an EO.

“Please just listen to my idea. Give me one chance and if you still think it’s hopeless or impossible, I will leave,” you beg. “Please.”

Victor thinks he can handle whatever comes his way, and he can protect Mitch and Sydney without your help. But, as he looks at them, he decides to give you a chance. What harm can a chance do?

✯✯✯✯✯

Daniels completes a grid search of downtown San Francisco, the empty cityscape more reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic world than the lies the New World Charter is spreading about the coming changes. At the end of the first day since you abandoned your partner, Daniels uses his government-provided satellite phone to call Director Smoak.

“Smoak,” he answers.

“Director Smoak, this is Agent Daniels. My partner and I are in San Francisco to locate Victor Vale,” he explains.

“Very well. How are you doing?”

“All due respect, sir, but I didn’t trust her to join this fight. She seemed put off by your warnings about him as well, so I’ve taken point on this, and she is working from the plane.”

“An understandable and commendable leadership choice on your part, Agent Daniels. Keep me updated.”

Daniels ends the call and begins wondering how he will explain your death. After your treacherous actions, defying a direct order, he doesn’t plan to give you a chance to explain yourself.

Victor Vale, however, could take the blame. He may be able to put people in pain by seeing them, but can he take an entire army on at once?

Daniels smiles to himself as his plan comes together. A ticket is in his future, regardless of what happens to you.

✯✯✯✯✯

Throughout the first two days in the safe house with Victor, Sydney, Mitch, and Dol, you get to know each of them better.

“Wait,” Victor calls as you follow Sydney to bed. “A moment?”

Sydney disappears down the hall, and you turn toward Victor. The movement is a bit too sudden, and he mumbles, “Don’t.”

You stop, laying your hands across your stomach where he can see them. “Sorry.”

Victor watches you closely as he steps back. “What did you do before the NWA?”

“I was a police officer. Apparently I had promise, and when the department was shut down, the NWA decided that my record was worthy of attention.”

Victor’s jaw tightens at the mention of the New World, and you duck your chin.

“What was so great about your record?”

“I- honestly, I don’t know. I made a few arrests, but for the most part, I wasn’t an exemplary cop. I did it for the people, which you’d think would make me a terrible choice.”

“If you’d said no?”

You interlace your fingers together, and Victor watches your every move, prepared to drop you if you move too suddenly or make an unwarranted comment.

“There’s a place, it’s called the Canada Region by most people. It’s where they send agents who don’t agree with the ideals or ignore their orders. No one ever comes back from the Canada Region.”

“So, you risk your life for people you want to see taken down.”

“I know it sounds stupid, and maybe it is, but it seems like a chance to do something that makes it all better. Hopeless dreaming, perhaps, but at least I tried, even if I fail.”

“Failing isn’t the worst part of how that would end.”

“Save one life, and it’s worth mine,” you argue, shrugging.

Victor shakes his head, clearly thinking you’re wrong or unfounded in your beliefs. He doesn’t say anything though, as he leads you to your new bedroom.

“Night, Casper,” he mutters, so low you can barely hear it. “Be careful.”

Coming from anyone else, you’d question their motives in telling you to be careful as you go to sleep, but from Victor Vale, it’s both a necessary sentiment and a warning.

✯✯✯✯✯

When Victor walks into the kitchen, he stops when he sees you and Sydney sitting together. Sydney clearly likes you, even though you’ve only known each other for a few days. Victor assumes it has something to do with having another girl around; he’s never been one for making friends easily, regardless of what they have in common.

“What’s it like now, on the other side of where we hide?” Sydney asks you.

Victor hasn’t told you he and Mitch are keeping things from Sydney, only telling her one side of the truth, but you seem to know.

“It’s not great. A lot of cities were evacuated, but people found new places to live and they’re doing the best they can,” you answer, telling her some of the truth. “If you want to hear cool stories though, I’ve got a lot of fictional book knowledge and childhood stories,” you add.

Dol climbs onto the couch beside you, yet another resident who trusts you, as you tell Sydney about your favorite book and the world it depicts. As you distract Sydney, Victor grows more convinced that you are on the right side of this fight, even if you’re using a bad thing to get into the fight.

✯✯✯✯✯

Victor’s hand wraps around your bicep, tugging you into his room as you try to walk by.

“Tell me about Task O,” he requests, his hand slowly falling from your arm.

You take a shaky breath as you begin to answer, ready to tell the whole truth, no matter how ugly it is, how bad it makes you look, or what Victor decides to do to you when he learns what your fellow agents are doing to people like him.

“Task O is for all things ordinary, as I’m sure you know. At its simplest level, the task force is supposed to track down EOs and eliminate them. The director, Smoak, is over the whole NWA and he has a vicious vendetta against ExtraOrdinaries. My, uh, my partner Agent Daniels is really close with Smoak.”

“Still a boys’ club,” Victor says, causing you to smile before you begin talking again.

“Yeah, it is. Daniels doesn’t like me, doubts me and undermines me constantly, but he’s also the reason I was assigned to Task O. He pulled some strings to get himself on the team, and since I was his partner, I got roped into it too.”

Victor catches your use of was in referring to your partner, yet another point in your favor.

“EOs are being treated like criminals, but NWA agents are judge, jury, and executioner. No questions asked before they’re taken out, and anyone lost in the crossfire is collateral damage in getting the world back to normal.”

“I thought everyone wanted to be special.”

“Well, that’s just because you were never ordinary, were you?”

You smile as you focus on Victor rather than Task O for a moment. He’s nicer than he seemed at first, though he still threatens to kill you every once in a while.

“I just- I still don’t understand how you ended up in the NWA, let alone such an elite task force,” Victor explains.

Your smile falls. “I was young- I am young, and I think they saw someone who went through the police academy and could be easily indoctrinated. The NWA changes people at a fundamental level, like brainwashing. And Daniels was a sniper in the Army, with more awards than any one person should have, so when he saw a young woman who could shoot and do the job, and wouldn’t mind him taking the credit, he picked me.”

Victor’s eyes widen when he notices the tears running over your cheeks as you lower your voice to admit, “I thought about leaving, just running as far as I could when they told me that I was going to have to kill innocent EOs. Getting pulled into the NWA, handpicked by one of their best assets was terrible, but that first meeting felt like the end of everything I wanted to get back.”

Victor has never been good at comforting people, but he lays his hand on your shoulder and reminds you, “It was for a reason. No matter what you did or thought you’d have to do to survive, you did it for a good reason, and look how much progress you’ve made.”

Your tears slow as you relax under Victor’s touch. “Thank you.”

As you back out of his room, you see something change in Victor’s eyes: he’s starting to trust you, he’s more civil and trusting around you, and he’s the tiniest bit open, telling you about his past.

“Wait,” you call, stepping back in. “You didn’t correct me. I implied that all EOs are innocent and you didn’t say anything.”

Victor tilts his head as he says, “I thought you went to the police academy. ‘Innocent until proven guilty’ ring a bell?”

“That’s not how you used to operate.”

“You said it yourself, we’re ghosts now, and we have the privilege of hindsight. Doing good wasn’t necessarily an option before, not for people like me.”

“And now?”

“Let’s just say I’ve got your back, as long as you give me reasons to.”

“Victor. Thank you, and sorry for prying.”

“Trading answers for answers is only fair.”

“So, you’ll tell me about midnight now?” you ask hopefully.

Victor waits until you’ve stepped back over the threshold to close the door as he says, “Not a chance.”

✯✯✯✯✯

Nearly a week with Victor has changed you. You’re not as scared anymore, though you do have moments where you think you hear gunshots or Daniels asking if you did your job. Being a ghost and being haunted aren’t strictly connected, and you hope the haunting feeling doesn’t follow you into the fight or the old world as you try to revive it.

Daniels is miles away, slowly moving outside of San Francisco, though you don’t know where he is or how long you have as you fall asleep. In your dreams, he’s closing in much quicker than in reality. Tonight’s nightmare, though, ends differently than the others.

---

Standing in the living room with Sydney, everything is normal, good even. And part of you knows not to trust it, but the other part is desperate to hold onto any happiness you can find.

“What is that?” Sydney asks, moments before the door is kicked in.

Daniels steps inside, dragging Sydney away from you as he threatens to kill her the instant you move. Victor and Mitch rush in, freezing as Daniels points the gun at Sydney.

“What did you do?” Victor demands, looking at you with dark eyes.

You feel a bolt of pain shoot down your spine as you answer, “Nothing, nothing, I promise. I don’t know how he found us.”

“’Us,’” Daniels repeats. “Cute. Vale, over here now or the girl is no more.”

Victor takes three long steps across the room, keeping his eyes on you as Daniels nudges his knees to make him fall to the ground.

“Mitch,” you whisper, praying for someone to do something.

“He can’t help you. He’s dying tonight too,” Daniels says, summoning Mitch over.

You can’t move, can’t scream. The only thing you do is cry and fall to your knees as Daniels does his job, quick executions. Victor fills you with pain as he distracts himself from the bloody scene beside him.

“And the ticket,” Daniels says happily before pulling the trigger.

---

You scream, panting and crying as you sit up in your bed. Flinching, you notice someone lurking in the open doorway.

“You’re okay,” Victor promises, stepping inside. “It was just a dream.”

Reaching out, you grab Victor’s arm, and he allows you to touch his wrist, shaking as you locate his pulse point. He doesn’t know what to say to calm you down, so he sits on the bed beside you and thinks.

“When I was in college, I was pre-med,” he begins, hoping to distract you like you do with Sydney. “We had this big project where we had to pick a thesis, and my roommate and I were arguing over who had the better idea.”

You lean closer to Victor, aware that Eli wrote about EOs or started to, but interested in hearing Victor’s side of the story.

“I chose adrenal responses, fight or flight. My professor was impressed, and every bit of research I did made me more interested in the different types of responses. There’s an article that I think about a lot that argued there was one more: fight, flight, or freeze. It wasn’t widely accepted, but I think it’s a valid idea.”

“So, you were a nerd?” you ask with a chuckle.

Victor turns toward you, glad to see you look more like yourself.

“I prefer the term academically motivated,” he replies.

“That’s the same thing.”

Victor shrugs, letting you continue running your fingers over his wrist, though the touch burns after too long without feeling another’s skin on his.

“Thank you,” you whisper. “Would- Victor, would you use your power on a good person to do a better thing?”

Victor finds the question odd and its implications odder. He keeps his eyes on your hand as he answers, “I guess. Depends on the person and the situation, I suppose.”

You nod, hoping that if the need arises, he will be willing to use his powers on everyone standing in his way, even if you find yourself on the wrong side. Victor has more experience with fights like this, but if the time comes that you ask him to remove you from the array, you can only hope that he will do it without hesitation.

“Why do you ask?” Victor inquires.

“Just a question I’ve been wondering about. Thanks for calming me down and for trusting me. At least a little.”

Your fingers slide off Victor’s wrist, and the burning sensation makes way for a deep cold to settle over him at the loss of your touch. He doesn’t answer as he stands and moves to your door. You’re sure that he would do it again, though, and that he’s a much better man, a better ghost than he lets people see.

✯✯✯✯✯

Sydney seems very attached to you. You can see that she cares about and likes you, happy to spend time with you and talk to you. In return, you try to be kind and compassionate toward her, as open and honest as you can, and unknowingly act like a big sister or mother figure. Mitch is the only one who has noticed how easily Sydney attached herself to you and Victor, adopting you as her stand-in mom and dad without your knowledge.

Before you came along, Sydney’s safe place was Victor, but now it is both Victor and you. Victor is surprised that he doesn’t mind sharing the responsibility; he watches you with Sydney, and it’s clear that you mean every word you say, even what you said when you first met, and in every quiet, private moment since then.

In the quiet weeks of getting to know one another, you’ve inserted yourself into Victor’s dysfunctional family, and no one wants to return to a hidden life without you.

As the other powerless companion, Mitch trusts you, as well, though he never felt he had a reason not to. He was the one who found you and advocated for you to Victor, so your trust is readily returned.

“Which police department did you work for?” Mitch asks, interrupting your conversation with Sydney.

“Why? Wanna hack it?” you chirp happily.

He nods, and you excuse yourself from Sydney’s side to join him at the table. Security is nearly nonexistent after the department’s closure and the government’s dissolution, so you get him in quickly and help him navigate the records he is searching for.

“What are you planning to use these for?” you ask.

“To help,” Mitch answers, blunt and cryptic.

“Good talk, thanks for the informative answer,” you reply.

“I found something else you may want to see,” he adds, turning to look at you. “It’s up to you, but I found Daniels’ Army records. The original documents without any redactions.”

You freeze, pressing your lips together as you consider your options. They’re guaranteed to be graphic and full of confirmed kills, but they could give you an insight into how Daniels thinks and operates. He will be coming for you and the people you care about, so though the decision is hard, you make it quickly.

“I want to see them. How bad are they?”

Mitch tilts his head, enough of an answer that you take a deep breath to ready yourself. As he turns the screen toward you, he lays a hand on your shoulder when you move forward to view the images.

“His first name is Brian,” you read. “I didn’t know that.”

“There’s a lot of information there he probably doesn’t want you to know.”

“Then we should use it.”

✯✯✯✯✯

Victor shows the most change from the time you met him.

“Vic, do you ever wish you had killed Eli earlier?” you ask, flipping through a random magazine you found in a closet.

“Yes,” he answers quickly, without a second thought about confiding in you or exposing his thoughts and secrets. “All the time. Would have saved a lot of trouble, and more lives. Can you help with this?”

You stand, walking to his side and looking at the weapons lying before him. “I found them in the shed outside, but these were all disassembled.”

“This is field stripped,” you say, picking up a pistol. “That’s a tactical training move. Whoever this was knew what they were doing.”

“Can you put them back together?”

Looking through the pieces, you nod. “Assuming all the pieces are here, absolutely.”

You smile at Victor’s willingness to trust you to help with something small, though impactful. As you clip pieces back together, reassembling the weapons quickly, you know that Victor trusts you and that you made the right decision in finding him and recruiting him to your side.

“You know, I thought that meeting you was going to go one of three ways,” you admit.

“How else would it have ended?”

“Well, you would reluctantly trust me and join my plan, not trust me and ignore me, or recognize me as an NWA agent and kill me without a word.”

“I did recognize you as an agent,” he tells you. “I figured I could still take you out after hearing what you had to say.”

You laugh, the first genuine sign of happiness you’ve shown in a long time. “Would have made it more enjoyable too.”

“Maybe,” Victor agrees, turning away from you to hide his reaction to your pleased laugh.

“Being a ghost is starting to grow on me,” you say. “I don’t want to get my hopes up too high or anything, but to me… I think being ghosts gives us a better advantage than anything else. We’re invisible, underestimated, and most people don’t even believe in us.”

Victor reaches around you, his arm brushing you back as he adds, “And when the time is right for us, we show them who we really are and what we’re capable of.”

#to being ghosts.#victor vale x reader #victor vale #vicious ve schwab #vicious

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alexilulu · 20 days

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Books I Read In 2024 #16-18: A Deadly Education, The Last Graduate, The Golden Enclaves (Naomi Novik, Del Rey Books, 2020-2022)

Galadriel Higgins, the subject of a prophecy of utter doom upon the world of magic, is a young witch attending The Scholomance, an extradimensional school intended to both teach young wizards to survive a world that disbelieves in their power and the omnipresent maleficaria that would kill them to devour their potent mana reserves. She's forced to survive the scorn of her fellow cutthroat classmates as much as she is the dangers of monsters adapted to hunt wizards around every corner, in the food they eat, in the air they breathe.

This was pretty fun.

It's impossible to talk about the school story genre that these novels are firmly rooted in without talking about the elephant in the room: noted british transphobe J.K. Rowling. It would be insane to say that these novels do not exist in the context of and surrounding the pushback against Harry Potter that has only vaguely been trampled on by their author's virulent, frankly insane radical trans-exclusionary feminism.

It goes without saying that there are similarities to those novels, primarily because they are both drawing on the structure of british boarding schools more than any desire to emulate its anodyne predecessor, but they fundamentally end there. Where Rowling throws out concepts and fails to account for their existence later, the Scholomance is a feast of worldbuilding related from Galadriel's perspective directly, with her particular views on these things made plain.

Like any first person novel, the strength or lack thereof in the novel is in how you find the narrator's voice, and what it tells you. It would be incorrect to describe El as an unreliable narrator, but she does have a very fundamentally flawed view of the world caused by her particular situation. Born to the most famous healer in the world in the backwoods of Wales, Galadriel (yes, her mother named her that, I know) grew up outside the Enclave system that was devised by the wizards of antiquity to avoid the maleficaria that hunted their children and the disbelief of the general populace; in this world, mundane non-magic users actively destroy magic just by being near it, robbing it of power until a wizard fundamentally loses the ability to cast spells should they try to prove its existence to them. It's a fun twist on the classical problem, with more than a little influence likely from the World of Darkness roleplaying games from White Wolf, which bear a similar fundamental worldbuilding conceit.

As a result of being raised out in the world, Galadriel has spent most of her life in fear of constant, imminent attempts at her murder. Unfortunately, she is uncomfortably adept with dealing with this, as a result of an affinity she displays for grand, world-ending spells, and lives in fear not just of her death but also losing control of herself and fulfilling a prophecy laid at her feet by her paternal great-grandmother, that she would lay waste to the enclaves of the world and kill millions.

If I had to put the overall vibe of these novels in any one spot, it's YA horror-adjacent coming of age. In order to survive to adulthood, the worthy children of the world (primarily Enclave-dwellers, but a significant proportion of unaffiliated children as well) are pulled to the Scholomance, a massive 4-year secondary school in the void where they can learn safely. Of course, the truth is that it also acts as a massive bug zapper for every monster in the world that can find its way past the wards, and fully half of each class dies every year, until the Graduation Run, where the school seniors are forced to run across a hundred yard grand hall that hasn't been able to be cleared of maleficaria since the 1800s, making it a nest of all the nastiest, most dangerous monsters in the world. So...things are a little dark.

The writing is snappy, fast and evocative. Details are sparse on the particulars of the maleficaria, giving you just enough to build your own image of the various horrific murderbeasts. Like I said before, this is a worldbuilding-first experience, though no less attention is paid to Galadriel's relationships with her classmates.

I won't go overlong into details for book 2 and 3 or trying to articulate all the things I like about the worldbuilding and thought paid to creating a world that works like you might think it does here, but suffice to say I find it pretty damn good overall. Honestly, the quality remains relatively solid over the length of the series, and they were released quickly enough that it feels like a series written for publication start to finish.

For fans of the genre or looking for something to wash the old bad taste of the lucky chosen one out of your mouth, you can absolutely do worse than this.

#Alexis reads books 2024

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pb-dot · 1 year

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WIP Incorrect Quotes 2: Clockmen Edition

I did one of these recently, but since I got a steaming fresh tag from @mrbexwrites and had the villainous characters from Hearts In Clockwork on my mind after my last WIP Wednesday so I figured why not give the bad guys, -gals, and -pals their time in the spotlight for once. Observant readers will notice 12 isn't in any of these and it's because I forgot sorry he's no fun and mostly just rude

Quotes were generated by this Incorrect Quote Generator, although some shuffling was done manually to get the characters to fit well enough just right.

Tagging some fellow writeyblrs for more incorrect quote shenanigans. @sm-writes-chaos @scribe-cas @anonymousfoz @at-thezenith @theskeletonprior

10: Can I get a waffle? One and Creator: fighting and yelling at each other 10: Can I p l e a s e get a waffle?

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Three: Wow, great work on the Halloween decorations. Where did you get the fake skeletons? Two: Fake?

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One: I have a problem. 10: Kill it. One: Can you chill for like, two seconds?

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Creator: I hope you have an explanation for this. Three: We have three actually- Four: Pick your favorite.

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Three: Go big or go home! Creator: Please, for once in your life just go home. I'm begging you. Go. Home. Three: I'm going big!

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Two (brainstorming ideas for pranking Creator): How much could a serial killer mask possibly cost? Four: Well it’s hard to find a high-quality one made out of leather or silicone, but if you did find a good one like that it’d be a couple thousands of dollars. I can try to hook you up with one but I don’t know if I’d be very successful. Two: Huh, that’s pretty interesting actually- Wait, how the hell do you know that? Four: …I am very passionate about Halloween, Two.

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One: I can’t tell if you’re a genius or just incredibly arrogant. Creator: Well, on a good day, I’m both.

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One: Your Honor, I hereby submit the following to the court: One: 10, what the actual FUCK?

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Two: And then they ran into my knife. They ran into my knife ten times. Four: You mean you stabbed them? Two: They ran into my knife.

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Four: I like to think of myself as a semi-responsible adult here. One: Three is 70% of your impulse control and you know this Four. Three: I feel like Four is the more responsible one of us two though. Four: We are both 70% of each others' impulse control. Three: Just two lil beasts in pinwheel hats spinning on the merry-go-round at dangerous velocities, holding each other’s hands so the other doesn’t fall off

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Creator: Come on, Two! How many times do I have to apologize? Two: Once! Creator: …No.

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Four: (about Two and Creator) They make a cute couple, huh? Three: They certainly are standing next to each other.

tag list @ettawritesnstudies @mrbexwrites @teacupsandstarlight @anonymousfoz @wrenofthewords

If you want to be put on the Tag List for this project, please interact with my Tag List Post

#writing #tag game #writeblr #hearts in clockwork #the clockwork boy

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ricardian-werewolf · 5 months

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Chapter 11: Once more unto the breach

Ao3 link.

Summary:

With the chase of the Darkling ending at the Making of the Heart of the World, Dominik is forced to contend with the realities of what it means to really engage such an old foe in open combat. Alina wrestles with her inner demons, and the crows must realize what it means to become the heroes in a narrative that did not begin as theirs.

Notes:

title taken from Henry V by William Shakespeare.

This chapter is a short one to set up Act III: The Fox Confessor brings the Flood, which allows for the climax to take place over multiple chapters.

TWs: The Darkling is his own TW, and canon-typical violence and usage of merzost.

Chapter below the cut.

Light was all Alina could see around her as she pushed her powers into overdrive. The power of the stag and the sea-whip had done epic things, but this, this was sheer insanity. She’d ended an entire, globe-spanning, years-long eclipse. Sunlight poured down from the heavens, bathing her in its incandescent and heated glow. Yet, she willed it even hotter.

For as long as she’d known, the mantle of sun summoner was incorrect. What it really should have been classified as was light summoner. Even the mere spark of a flintlock pistol, and she could summon. The barest trace of light, whether nature or by flame, was all she needed. So, now, as she drew from the lit match Isaak held out, she let that light bloom. It exploded upwards in a single heat-blast that sent the shadows dissipating through the mid-morning sky. Isaak watched with widened eyes as the shadows writhed, and began plunging down, towards them.

“Run!” She yelled, shoving the former captain and long-serving valet of her lover away. “They’ll be wanting me!”

All around her, Alina heard the call of bugles and the snarling of men lost in the fog of war. Raising her head, her eyes bulged. Galloping straight towards her, locked low over his panting and frothing black steed was the Darkling.

And following him? Banners raised, men screaming on foot and horseback, was the entirety of the First Army. But at their head wasn’t Nikolai. Dominik led the charge, saber thrust out, kepi lowered to keep the glare of new-born sunlight off his face. Among the calvary, all 28 regiments of the Army gave chase. The trenches she knew were here were about to be overrun with men.

She had an idea. A foolhardy, stupid, dangerous idea. In order for it to work, she needed to be inside the Fold.

She paused to snatch up the box of matches Isaak had dropped, and pelted headlong for the Fold’s shadowy expanse. Her boots barely even touched the ground, though her chest screamed with the pain, and she felt light-headed. Behind her, the thunder of horses hooves and footsteps grew louder and ever closer. She prayed Dominik would be able to maintain order before the entire army was massacred by Nichevo’ya and Volcra.

As soon as Alina’s feet sunk into the sandy marsh of the Fold’s outskirts, she pulled to a stop. The Darkling’s steed had collapsed, throwing him from the saddle and rolling across the hardened ground. Behind him, the First Army was halting, prepping rifles. She skirted her gaze to either flank - the artillery shells were being unloaded and the guns themselves being prepped to fire.

Amongst the crews she caught sight of flashes of purple Keftas, and grinned. One man, with glasses and unruly brown hair, made that smile widen.

Thank the saints. Tolya or Tamar got Second Army.

Looking to the eastern flank, she noted Kaz and his Crows in heavy discussion with the fox-head mantled Drüskelle. One of them - Matthias - was standing at the side of a massive armored polar bear. Both were peering over a map and making calculations as a few of the bear’s fellows hauled into place what looked like a massive trebuchet and began checking that over.

Alina’s gaze returned to the Darkling, and she noted him moving to his feet. His shadows swirled about him, lengthening the Kefta until it bore a train of court-dress length. She already had an idea of what it was emblazoned on it, and smirked again.

Her smirk disappeared however as she rubbed her hand over the Lantsov emerald, and looked longingly for a glint of golden-blonde amongst the soldiers. Where was Nikolai?

Alina’s lip, gnawed raw already, got bitten again as she let her composure waver.

Steel tempers steel.

She sighed.

Tapping her fist against her thigh twice, she took in a deep breath, exhaled, and stormed into the Fold. Alina was armed not even with a proper weapon, just the hunting knife that had killed three amplifiers, and would kill but one more. She needed to light a match, and let her powers burst.

But first, The Darkling.

Raising her hands, Alina knew the Fold held ambient light despite being wholly dark. She drew on the mere specs of light cast, and created two things for herself. One was a dome of light for protection, and the other was a sword. This wasn’t truly needed, but she’d seen how Nikolai fabrikated metal with just the tips of his fingers, and did so exactly.

The sword hummed with energy as she shrunk the length to be about court-sword sized, and strode off. The dome around her pulsed and fritzed with a manic energy reflected in the crackling sparks in her silver hair. The kefta she wore, torn and threadbare as it was, turned into a gossamer gold confection that hardened into a set of lightweight armor.

Outside the Fold, Dominik raced back and forth on his horse, shouting out orders. Digging trenches, setting up the few maxim machine guns they possessed; readying the men with tots of rum. All of it came down to this. Dominik knew, as he wheeled his horse about to hear Isaak, that Alina had run into the Fold.

Now they would wait to see if it came tumbling down around them, or she died inside. The thought of Alina being martyred again made the hairs on the back of Dominik’s neck prickle with the stench of heresy. He’d already lost Nikolai - again. He couldn’t lose Alina either.

From across the expanse of marshland and sand, Dominik saw the Darkling get to his feet from his collapsed steed. The Kefta he wore had become almost imperial, and was wholly impractical for battle. With a flick of his hand, he sent a mass of writhing shadows across the expanse of the entire Unsea, and swept away into its massive, roiling darkness.

Dominik lowered his pistol, sighed, and turned his head. He raised the pistol again above his head, and watched in startled horror as the shadows burst from the ground, and rushed toward them.

As the shadows reached the first lines of trenches, they burst from the soil in a volley of inky darts and sunk into the soldier's skins. Screams echoed up and down the line as the men became what Nikolai was, and turned their hungry gazes on their allies. Claws erupted from fingernails, teeth lengthened, blackened, and those wings with their beetle-like clicking filled the air.

But the shadow darts didn’t stop at just one line of men. Dominik’s eyes widened further as the artillery gunners fell to the ground shrieking. The grisha’s summoning couldn’t even stop it. David screamed, clawing at his Kefta as his infection drove deep into his neck and veins, pulsating under his skin like a rotting tumor turned cancerous. Genya lay beside him, oddly still. The scars she bore had worsened with this sudden re-infection and Dominik could only watch in horror as these thousands of men and women turned their eyes on him.

He swung off his horse as they hopped forward, wings flapping, teeth clicking and spitting. All of them seemed hesitant to attack. Over their shoulders, Dominik watched the Darkling’s obsidian black eyes glitter in the morning sunlight.

“Spare the general and the boy. A pitiful waste, but I suppose, sodomy has its merits.” He sneered.

“Where are you sending them?!” Dominik shouted, stepping forward. One of the creatures, bearing the uniform of a fellow general - Pensky - skittered back, screeching. It hissed at him and bared black-needle sharp teeth.

He merely sighed, and raised his pistol straight at the Darkling. All around him, shrieks and screams of the dying rolled over him. The noise poured through his ear canals and sent his heart racing a million miles a minute.

“Everywhere in Ravka, dear General Vertov. I will have this wretched country bend the knee whether it wishes to or not. The Grisha will live in safety. Those with you will die. They have served their purpose.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Dominik saw Oncat give a frightened mew and spring away from Harshaw. The ginger-haired boy almost gutted the poor creature in two. From his right, Dominik heard a cry in Kerch that set his heart lurching from his chest. Kaz Brekker was pinned down by the Wraith - her eyes as inky dark as these other monsters, wings protruding from her back. The shadows hadn’t gotten the boy yet, but the look of horror and pain upon his face made Dominik shoot his pistol without thinking.

The bullet clipped The Darkling’s ear.

The old fool merely scoffed, rolled his neck till it popped, and cracked his knuckles. Then, he spread his hands apart. A wave of darkness some thirty feet high poured from his nimble fingers and roared straight for Dominik.

A bullet to the brain would have been less painful.

The wave hit him like a gut punch to the stomach, and he stumbled back. The shadows flowed through any orifice they could find, sinking into his pores and down his nostrils. It felt like drowning, like dying all over again.

And this time, there was no Nikolai to save him.

Alina was gone, saints knew where.

There was no hope left in this world anymore. He only hoped Isaak wasn’t the same thing as him. He prayed that wherever Nikolai was, what with his death, that he was at peace. Something only a prince could afford.

This country gets you in the end, brother. Don’t forget it.

I’ll do better. I vow it.

Dominik the Bold, hold on just a little longer.

Dominik’s eyes fluttered closed, and he surrendered himself to the shadow tearing its way through its ribcage. He let the creature sink into his heart and embed its sickly-sweet tar-like blood into his veins.

He didn’t even scream.

He let it take him, and as he lay there, dying once more, he thought of Halmhend. He thought of the years in the Great Palace building boats with Nikolai; his parent’s farm in the countryside east of Os Alta.

Then, the darkness became all encompassing and he slipped into the quiet once more.

The Darkling raised his hands and the former soldiers, gunners, calvary-men, Grisha, raised their heads. They crawled forward, wings flapping as they tussled and hissed at one another. However, amongst the motley, there was a break. Crowded in a small huddle, wings folded wide to protect them was Inej. She bore the same inky-black void eyes as her brethren, but she was not driven to the same madness as the volcra-like monsters surged upwards in a stream of flapping wings and high-pitched, eardrum breaking screeches.

“Inej,” Nina murmured, taking the Wraith’s wrist in her hands. She drew on her heartrender powers and slowed Inej’s pulse as the woman’s feral instincts sent her scrabbling to bite Kaz’s neck. He nearly screamed and slashed out with the oyster knife hidden under his sleeve. It nicked Inej’s neck, and she whimpered.

“Easy!” Jesper hissed, reaching across Wyland to grab a bottle of smelling salts. He opened them, waved them under Inej’s nose. The crows leaned closer to watch, and Matthias’s fingers tensed on his sword as he watched.

Inej’s eyes widened, and then, the demon in her receded. Her eyes returned to their dark brown and her claws retracted. The wings faded away into the late morning light, and she crouched down under Kaz’s elbow, her face pale.

The six teens could only watch the Darkling as he regarded his army of shadow monsters surging into the sky. They’d seen Dominik Vertov fall, the pincer movement that sent the First Army sprawling and dead. Some hadn’t taken to the bite, too weakened by famine and war to rise again. Inej and Matthais each offered prayers to the Saints and Djel to deliver them to brighter shores. Inej’s eyes rose to the wall of the Fold, and she grasped her knives a little tighter.

Above her, Kaz glared at the expanse of darkness with beady eyes. Going into the Fold with only the six of them would be suicide. But Alina was in there, and Matthais had sworn his fealty to The Korol Rezni. They’d all seen Nikolai fall, but somehow, for some unknown reason, all doubted his death.

It felt strangely anticlimactic.

“Little humans, and a Demjinn. How interesting.”

The Crows’s heads whipped up as one to stare at Iorek Byrnison. He and his kin had not evidently been the target of the Darkling’s attack. Kaz leaned forward, his right hand gripping his cane and the other fishing in the dirt and sand for something to give him purchase. No one moved to touch him, and for good reason.

If looks could kill, the bears in front of them would be deader than doornails. Iorek snorted, a harsh breath of air that ruffled Jesper’s hair and made Wylan shrink closer to him. Nina craned her neck up and Matthais stood level.

“What do we do?” Wylan asked, fingering a vial of something explosive. The music notes were Beethovan’s 5th symphony. If it had been Scott Joplin, that was for poisons or toxins. Kaz couldn’t remember what the other musicians he used were.

“The little Saint is alone, in there.” A bear murmured, looking uncertain if what he was saying was heresy or not. Iorek didn’t move to reprimand him, so he continued. “And with the Korol Rezni’s army… scattered, this place is alone and poorly defended.” He jerked his head towards the Fold.

“Then, wise Pamserbjørne, what do you suggest?” Matthias asked, gripping his blade tighter. “I fight for the King, but I am not remiss to take my orders from one of his generals.”

Iorek sniffed, moving a clawed paw under the strap of his helmet. He scratched it thoughtfully, then nodded.

“You, the boy with the cane - Mr Brekker.”

Kaz straightened and moved gingerly to his feet. He dusted off his coat, planted his cane more firmly in the sandy ground, and then adjusted his weight for it. At his side, Inej rose to her feet, followed by Wylan and Jesper. The two boys examined their weapons, and glanced at Matthais and Nina, the latter of whom was testing around for any familiar heartbeats.

“The Fold’s undefended, but also a death trap. To go into it blindly is suicide. We’d be better off letting the Wraith here turn back into a demon and killing us. Plus, the Korol Rezni hired us, and I for one would like to get my 40 million kruge payment in hard gold. It would be horrible for the money to go to my grave with me.”

“As if you wouldn’t want to be buried with it, Brekker.” Matthias hissed. Kaz gave him a stony glare edged with a sharp, sharks-teeth grin. The Fjerdan rolled his eyes and muttered something to do with stoning miscreants to death being very en vogue under Grimjer rule.

Iorek ignored Matthais and sniffed Inej’s foot. “The Demjin within her is largely passive. The smelling salts did little to actually repress it. That was entirely through her own extremely strong sense of will.”

Inej blinked, blushed gently and then murmured something in Kerch - a prayer? Kaz wasn’t listening. He turned once more to settling his gaze on the Fold, then he tightened his grip on the cane through his gloves, and leaned forward once more.

“Even with the 40 million riding on this, I would like to see the blasted thing come down. It’s high time Ravka joined this wretched century, even with the last war, and all. I want to see that day come before I die, at least.”

“How patriotic.” Nina replied drolly.

“Oh, shut up.” Kaz snapped back, then schooled himself. He reached for the oyster knife again, and sighed. With a jerk of his head, he limped forwards. Inej and Jesper fell into step beside him, Nina and Matthais behind them. Wylan rode on Iorek’s back, while the other bears dismantled themselves from the Fire hurler and reached for some strange hanging lanterns they took in their mouths.

“It’s lit with Lumiya. One of the King’s fabrikator’s gave the patent to us. We stabilized it as a low burning flame that doesn’t attract Volcra.”

Kaz nodded, his feet working overtime to keep him upright through the shifting sands. Soon, they were standing just a hairsbreadth from the Fold itself, and as Kaz put his hand through it, he shuddered involuntarily. The feeling of it reminded him of Jordie and the barge, the Queen’s lady plague.

Brick by brick.

Where those words had once brought down Pekka Rollins and his empire, now, they gave him the strength to get Jordie’s ghost to stop screaming. He stepped through the shadowy expanse.

One by one, his Crows followed him. All in search of a Sankta brighter than the sun, and bearing this holy woman gifts of light. Only time would tell if that light brought ruin or reckoning.

For time alone was their one true factor each one clung to. It was all they had left, in these cold and dreary days. With the sun above restored, hope could be spread. But while the Darkling reigned, that was stifled.

It would be up to six miscreants, one Sankta, an armored bear and his kin, all to bring down one power-obsessed megalomaniac.

They would not fail. Not this time.

End of chapter 11.

#wyn rambles #Nikolina #shadow and bone #nikolai lantsov #alina starkov #the crows #six of crows #fanfic #ao3 #grishaverse au

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