#not that he had a completely golden one as an orphan + becoming that caretaker esp with Maylene

[annaofaza]

I'm fascinated that Vash, Knives, and Wolfwood don't know their birth families and how that plays out with their guardians.

Vash's philosophies are shaped by Rem; Knives rebels/reframes Rem's words to suit his own agenda ("There's so much we have to do to make sure it [Tesla's death by human experimentation/callousness] doesn't happen again." To me, it's a "I learned drinking at my father's knee" v. "I saw my father drinking and resolved not to be like him" relationship, and many people have written amazing metas on this!

Wolfwood has had two prominent guardians in his life—Melanie and Chapel (depending on which version, Chapel actually raised Wolfwood for a bit). It's pretty formative in that Wolfwood before the Eye of Michael is a caring individual but also hard-nosed to a certain degree (becoming a caretaker figure, knowing the orphanage is struggling, etc.), while Chapel teaches him that connections drag you down and that you must make an immediate decision (as the world/job is harsh and unforgiving). His experiences with Melanie and Chapel also shaped his self-sacrificing nature: to help with the greater good, whatever that means—but Wolfwood rebels against Chapel as Knives did with Rem, which (unlike Knives and Rem) is a good thing.

Again, none of these characters know their birth origins or express a lot of curiosity about finding out more, and that nature/nurture dynamic fascinates me because they're a) very much their own individuals but b) still burdened by who raised them.

It's a compelling theme in Trigun that it's not necessarily how you start out; it's the experience and guidances (or lack thereof) do. There are a lot of self-determination/fate interpretations among Vash, Knives, and Wolfwood—what path are you on? Did you create it? Is it shaped? Can you go without a path or make a different one? How does it all end? Can you truly escape where you came from? (More thoughts in the tags lol)

[fantasy-things-and-such]

Meet My OCs

welcome back to Meet My OC, a series where i talk about my OC characters and explain them in detail: who they are, what they do, and what makes them tick. Featured today is Chia, from my WIP "White Candy".

Name: Chia Xailan (formerly Ailan Zhuxi) Nicknames/Titles: Lady of Glass; The Saint Date of Birth: August 22nd, 3940 Age: 44 WIP: White Candy Role: Main lead

Character Quote: "I’ve come to terms with the blood that stains hands. There’s no need for you to dirty yours.” (I've updated my Other two MMO posts with a character Quote; going forward, I'll include these.)

Background & personality: who are they?

Chia is a orphan who was adopted by the Maidenhood of Glass. Her parents, Zang and Liela Zhuzi, were killed in a gang war- an all-too-common occurrence in many Cities on Sunside and Moonside of Belarix. Chia stands around 5'8 with a slender build, with white hair and blue/gray eyes. Being adopted into the Maidenhood meant that while she did play with toy blocks and such- she also played with sharp weaponry. Death was just another facet of life, and the Maidenhood taught her that it was a mercy. The maidenhood lets all of their children lead a semi-normal life until they come of age. then they hold a test to see who is worthy and who isn't. It only has one singular rule: Survive the night. only then do they become a Maiden of glass.

Ailan became a expert with knives very quickly. she loved cards, and her caretaker taught her card tricks when she was young- tricks that translated well into knife throwing. of course, she was trained in other skills, namely swordsmanship and archery. she excelled in both After the Test, she quickly rose through the ranks by taking requests and completing them with ruthless efficiency: Without qualm or hesitation. By 35, She had attained the rank directly below the High Maiden. Ailan's very serious and well-mannered despite all the killing she's done- she doesn't enjoy it, it's just another necessity to her. she retired at the age of 41 after she was tasked with killing Clarence and Shi Caspa, and couldn't bring herself to take in and raise their daughter, knowing that she would have to train and potentially kill them. they reunited- unbeknownst to Marie caspa, at the White Rabbit inn as Barmaids.

Hobbies

Chia picked up Card tricks again after she became a barmaid, and she's quite good at entertaining the patrons of the White rabbit inn- be it Mercenary groups or Families or anything inbetween. she's also good at chess- hundreds of games against Matthew(her boss) later.

Relationships

Put bluntly, Chia doesnt know how to talk to a man. she also thinks it's too late to start a relationship, nevermind the fact that being in one would be nothing but detrimental to her. She's not interested. She's married to her weapons.

Chia's relationship segment is short because she has no parents, no siblings, and her caretaker isnt really a parental figure. She has alot of friends, though she hasn't talked to any of them in at least three years, or at least the ones from the Maidenhood. Marie is akin to a little sister to her and Matthew is a employer- and a drinking buddy. He's cute enough to fuck, and that's about it.

Other Miscellaneous facts:

She prefers Wine over Beer

she hates sparkling things(soda, sparkling water)

her favorite food is Warabimochi

She's slightly homophobic(she would not like Tira and Lilli.)

Taglist: @jakkon-and-rose-topic @aesthetic-writer18 @the-golden-comet @ominous-feychild @emilynotfound @wyked-ao3

Lemme know if you want to be tagged in future things/want to be taken off the tag list. Cheers!

[dektortv]

KurayamiTale Final Story

The True Route

This is KurayamiTales True Route, how everything played out in this Universe.

ENGLISH 🇺🇲

A long time ago, humans were in battle with monsters. The humans slaughtered almost all monsters living underground but also lost a lot of warriors themselves. The surviving monsters fought back and never gave up, eventually having to force the humans to seal the underground with a magic spell and trap them. The surviving humans returned home where their leader created a new law stating, "The Underground is a cursed place roamed by these horrible monsters. No one should ever go near it again for their own safety! These creatures are dangerous and only want our souls to become stronger." declared the human leader. A few humans started questioning it but that only angered the leader. "How can anyone look at these creatures and see good in them! They broke our harmony and anyone that feels even the slightest remorse towards these monsters should not be trusted!" he shouted. Years went by, and the human army had started training their next batch of warriors.

Nearby the training camp was an orphanage. There, lived a human child named Frisk. Frisk was an orphan that lived in this orphanage for quite some time now among other kids. Frisk would always watch the warriors train through his window. One day, a man came into the orphanage. He was tall and was wearing golden armor. Frisk instantly recognized him; it was the Human leader also known as Sun. He approached all the other kids while talking to the caretaker. "I'm looking for some kids to raise and train so they can one day fight among my daughter and take my place in battle." The caretaker pointed out a few kids that were very chaotic and needed proper education, so the leader filled out the papers and took them. Frisk was not among them, even though he wanted to join as well. Frisk was just too weak and small, so the leader showed no interest.

During the night frisk thought that he'll proof to all of them that he can be fit for battle just like the other kids, so he decides to run away from the orphanage by taking their clothes and bed sheets to tie a rope and climb down their window.

In a garbage container nearby he finds a plastic bag and puts it over his head just in case someone might recognize him.

Frisk leaves the orphanage and ran deep into the forest, heading towards the mountain. Skipping all of the "keep out" signs and climbing over a wooden fence blocking the way, Frisk began to feel lost and a little frightened. In fear of his surroundings he ran even faster, but suddenly, he tripped - Frisk trips over a root and falls down into the pit of the mountain. Frisk fell down the pit and woke up on some frozen grass. It was cold, and they didn't know where they were. They could feel strong winds ahead, so they moved forward. While continuing, Frisk then saw a goat boy taking care of some flowers. That, was Asriel. Frisk thought that this was a good time to prove himself so he tried sneaking up behind asriel but asriel notices frisk approaching which completely startled him.

Asriel was so shocked by Frisk that he took off running into the Ruins. Frisk paused for a moment and then chased after. Frisk seemed to have lost Asriel. So he continues on. Midway through, a goat lady stopped and greeted them. "Hello, child... My name is Toriel." Toriel seemed to want to grab Frisk's shoulder but stopped herself. "Uhm... how did you end up in this place? Are the other humans not concerned about you...?"

Frisk shook their head and continued following Toriel through the empty ruins. "Dont worry i can show you the way out of here, we dont want any trouble with the other humans..." Frisk stayed silent. There was nobody around, and Toriel seemed to be shaking a bit. After a short walk, they arrived at what seemed to be Toriel's house. There was a beautiful tree on the outside with red leaves. She invited Frisk into the house. "Could you just wait here a little? I left a pie in the oven" Toriel said. But before Frisk could answer, she had already walked into the kitchen. Frisk looked around the house. It was very nice, and Toriel seemed to live here. Frisk walked down the stairs and saw a hallway leading up to a big door. He walked down the hallway, and for a brief moment, he heard someone coming down the stairs behind him, but nobody came. They arrived at the giant door and opened it, finding themselves in a forest with a strong snowstorm.

Its cold and frisk cant see much. Suddenly, frisk is pushed outside and the door quickly closes behind him. Those hands semt smaller than toriels, so frisk guessed it was probably that goat boy he had seen earlier. He stands up and moves into the forest, frisk whole body is shaking and he cant feel his hands. The further frisk walks, the more noise he can hear coming from the inside of the Forest... it terrifies him a little so he decides to walk a little faster but the snowstorm is so harsh he cant see one thing though it. At one point frisk trips and falls over, wondering, he gets up and wipes the bunch of snow away from the ground but what he found send shivers down his spine... it was a rotting frozen human corpse just lying underneath the snow, frisk was startled and fell back a little, the more snow he wiped off the ground, the more frozen corpses he found... frisk became so scared he didn't want to be here anymore, he knew humans were in war with Monsters but never knew the outcome. Frisk kept hearing noises coming from the forest, frisk stood up and runs off deep into the forest, frisk could hear that someone was chasing him.

He decides to run towards more tighter trees in hopes of losing whatever was chasing him but it doesn't seem to work, it was closing in on him even more until frisk slips and falls to the ground. Frisk opens his eyes and sees what was chasing him, it was a skeleton wearing packed clothes and a piece of cloth wrapped around its eyes, this, was sans. "...How did you get here?" Sans asked. Frisk was still scared, he wanted to reply but didn't. Suddenly a bone came storming towards frisk, he ducked just in time and looked at sans completely shocked. "...Came here to assassinate more of us?" says sans. Frisk still scared, managed to make out some words and replied that he isn't here on purpose and fell down by accident. Sans looked towards him and paused for a moment. "Lies." says sans. He ducks and wipes the snow off another human corpse "The amount of Monsters and humans that have died just for this pointless war was unnecessary... i cant risk having you around here human." Frisk quickly replied that he didn't know how brutal this war between the two races had been. Sans stayed silent and prepared to attack.

Frisk had never been in a fight before, and all they could do was dodge Sans's attacks while trying to convince him. "We monsters may have mostly lived in harmony with humans but very few of them didn't trust us..." Sans said. Frisk tries to run but he is stopped. "Though one day a monster apparently got sick of it and decided to attack... killing 2 people after and breaking our harmony." Frisk is surprised by what sans is saying. "Though us monsters and our king swore to never harm any human ever again... why did this monster do it? after the attack, humans became frightened of all Monsters and even though the monster didnt absorb any soul, he still killed people. Thats when your leader came forward stating that all of us Monsters cant be trusted to live among humans anymore and that we should leave, so we did..." frisk looks at sans and ask how it even came to the war if everyone lived seperated from each other.

Sans looks away from frisk and replies "Apparently us still couldn't be trusted... so while we were building a new home for us down in the Underground, one day, they just stormed in killing anyone in their way led by your leader." Sans points one of his gaster blasters at frisk and stops attacking. Frisk takes a deep breath to calm down and says that in that case monsters were the reason for the war after all. Sans looks at the ground and speaks up "...it doesn't make any sense, but responding to violence with even more violence isn't right either..."

Frisk takes a moment to think and says to sans that he doesn't want to cause any more trouble and just wants to leave. As sans was about to speak frisk suddenly falls on his knees, his head hurts and something is off. Frisk begins to feel weak and slowly whispers begin to fill his head they're all quiet but some of them are louder than the others "free us", "Its his fault", "Kill Him" Frisk is starting to lose it, he screams from all the pain while sans watches him, he knows something is wrong. Suddenly everything became quiet, you could only hear the snowstorm. Fris is still lying on the snow with his face towards the ground, sans notices his hand sliding underneath the snow and frisk quickly pulls out a sword, stands up and rushes towards sans rapidly.

Frisk couldn't feel his body, though he was much faster than before and all the swings he takes at sans are very precise. Frisk was finally able to somewhat keep up with sans now. Sans kept fighting and dodging frisks attacks, at one point frisk makes a mistake and sans manages to punish it the same second piercing a bone trough frisks leg and even then frisk shows not a single reaction and continues attacking sans as if his leg was completely fine. The voices in frisks head were too strong and he wasn't doing anything anymore at this point, his body has been completely taken over. Sans was still superior than frisk but who knows how much longer this would go on.

Suddenly frisk snaps back to his senses and falls into the snow now its sans time to strike but he knew there was something wrong with frisk. Frisk notices his bleeding leg and cries in pain. "What was that supposed to be? I noticed your feelings change in an instance" Sans has never been able to make out someone's feeling before, it must be part of his seismic sense to notice it the closer he is to frisk. Frisk shakes his head and tells sans that he doesn't know what happened while still crying. Sans kicks the sword away from frisk approaches him, sans sticks his hand in his pocket and grabs a piece of cloth to wrap around frisks leg. "Try standing up and follow me, you need to leave now because the next time you lose your mind like that im not letting you live a second time." Frisk grabs a stick on the ground and uses it to sustain his balance while following sans. They walk trough what once used to be the small Snowdin. Frisk sees lots of small houses, some of the haven't even been finished building. Theres also a small stand selling Spider donuts but nobody is seen, they must probably been alarmed from the battle and hid. "Sunburn" Frisk could hear some more whispers again but he shakes them off and tries to ignore them. "Stop, from here you're going to just continue on ahead, I'll let my brother know that you're coming he will continue guiding you trough the Underground. One last reminder, if i catch you trying to go after any of these poor Monsters, you'll be dead where you stand in an instant."

Frisk nods and starts heading towards Waterfall. A lot of frozen rivers here which must've all been caused by the snowstorm in Snowdin. Continuing, Frisk encounters multiple light blue flowers, some of them were completely quiet and some were screaming, each one of them a diffrent terrifying scream. Eventually though, frisk finds himself infront of a fish looking house, theres a cross built in front of it and frisk encounters papyrus beating up a dummy next to it.

"...look at that, a human. I almost didn't believe sans when he told me you were coming. Anyways, follow me" papyrus says as he points his spear fowards and heads on. Together, they walk trough the Underground on their way to the Barrier. As you're walking you can see papyrus pull out some noodles from the inside of his hood and eat them, the smell of hood noodles fills you with Determination.

[Currently in the human Village...]

The Orphanage has sent out a report of Frisk being missing and the Human Leader is taking it upon himself to find him, his daughter wants to come help. "Why cant i help? and how do you even know where that kid is." The human leader opens the door and responds "I dont, but i have a guess chara, you're almost an adult, go finish your sword training and dont you dare follow me, its too dangerous." He closes the door behind him and leaves. Chara doesn't like being a warrior but she gets forced to train hard so she could one day become as strong as her father. As stubborn as chara is, she decides to search for more clues of frisks disappearance, she goes trough multiple documents the orphanage provided. "Frisk... Has been an orphan almost since birth... parents were murdered a long time ago by the attack of a group of monsters..." Chara notices the resemblance of frisks parents to the couple that was killed which broke the Harmony between monsters and humans, she goes into her fathers office and searches trough all saved up crimes from the past she could find until she noticed a document from before the war had started talking about the murder of frisks parents. "Both were brutally murdered by a monster that had suddenly gone crazy. they were stopped and imprisoned directly after by Sun who was in the area when it happened, multiple humans saw the murder occur." Chara was very young during the time but one thing was off, her father usually is at the camp all day training, yet why wasn't he that day. "Unless..." Chara goes through more things in her fathers office but doesn't find anything else until she suddenly hears a floorboard creek, chara pulls a knife out of her pocket and cracks open the floorboard. Then, she finds something important to the case...

Frisk and papyrus reach the barrier, sans was waiting there already and sat infront of it. As frisk was about to approach papyrus holds his shoulder as a sign for frisk to wait. Suddenly frisk can feel the air around him become colder like if sans' power within him is increasing. Dust and air rapidly flies towards frisk and Papyrus as they see multiple cyclops looking gaster blasters appear above sans. Silence fills the room for a split second and then they shoot a strong beam all at once towards the barrier in diffrent colors. They keep shooting strongly while the wind pushes frisk slightly back almost falling to the ground. Until suddenly... they hear a loud shatter, light fills the room and the barrier destroys into multiple little shiny dust particles, slowly dissappearing. Sans turns around and looks towards Frisk. "You may leave now..." says sans. Frisk lets out a big smile and makes his way outside. Unexpectedly, this is not where it ends... just before frisk is about to leave, Sun enters.

"There you are! The caretakers of the orphanage reported that you were missing and i just knew these Monsters must have something to do with it! Im impressed i must say, i cant believe you skeleton actually managed to break trough our spell, you actually robbed enough of our souls but that doesn't matter, im not only here to take this child back but also to finish what we started!" Shouts the Human Leader. Frisk opens his arms and stands infront of the leader as sans and Papyrus watch. "Get out of the way kid or you'll end up like the rest of them." Frisk is frightened but stands his ground. "Fair enough then" The leader swings his axe in multiple directions while charing towards frisk. As hes about to take a swing, frisk rolls underneath him and barely dodges. "How dare you support these things, just look at them, they're evil within and cannot be trusted!" He says. Frisk runs around him in circles "If you dont get out of my way you're going to have to just die with them then, i can just say that THEY killed you and everyone will believe me!" Says the leader. Papyrus throws his spear at the leader but it gets deflected by his axe, sans joins in with his bone attacks and gaster blasters. The human leader charges his axe and it shines bright, the blade almost catching on fire. All 3 of them fight off the leader, he was without a doubt one of the strongest humans to have ever lived, though his soul was burning full of revenge. The undeground trembles with every swing and hit taken, a true battle of strength.

After some battling the leader backs off to prepare an attack, his axe glows brighter than before and the room gets hotter, frisk could almost feel his skin burn. "From the ashes of my enemies, i rise like the Sun, the flame in my soul burning stronger the more of you i kill, for I am the golden knight and my power is absolute!" But then, a voice fills the emptiness. "STOP!" Everyone turns their head surprised towards the exit and spots a human girl, "Chara, i told you to stay home!" Chara catches her breath and looks at her father. "Father, were you the one who broke the harmony between humans and monsters? I went trough all these old documents and- and it doesn't make any sense, did you start all this on purpose!" The silence was louder than ever before, Sun approaches chara slowly and replies "No, you know i would never. They attacked us humans first back then, they want to gain the power of our souls to terrorize us-" "Dont lie to me father! Why werent you at the training camp that day and why was this syringe in your office? Why did you hide it?!." Sun puts his hand on Charas shoulder but she pulls back.

He lets out a sigh "Fine, you want to know? You all want to know?! Fine then, back when i was a young child i used to live in the woods with my father, we didn't live near any human civilization and neither was there any harmony between monsters. My father was the greatest warrior i ever knew and he started training me to one day become as strong and powerful as him. But one night, we were attacked. Horrible looking monsters nothing like any of the ones here attacked, i was absurdly scared as i was hiding and was forced to hear them all attack my father, he almsot defeated them but there were too many. The only thing i had left was his axe and since that day i hated any kind of creature that wasn't human more than anything else. One day i moved to a human village wich lived in harmony with monsters, i was mad but i couldn't do anything about it so i decided to play along and join the human army, after i turned their leader and proved myself among all the others, i knew that i finally had a chance to kill them. As i was recruiting new people for our army, i had the idea to create a poision, one so strong that it would make anyone go insane, so insane that they would start attacking anyone in their way. I went out the next day and managed to stick the syringe into a monster without anyone looking... then it was already too late, the monster began to fall to the ground in pain screaming, as everyone then grouped a cricle around it, it snapped and killed a guy and his wife got away but was still bitten, though she died later in the hospital hours after giving birth to a kid."

"After that, the harmony was broken by the Monsters and i could finally come out to turn everyone against them and start the war, unfortunately we didn't manage to end it since a few of them survived and killed some of our warriors too. Nowadays we're recruiting new people, i didn't take frisk from the orphanage because i recognized his name in the papers to match the couple that was killed, when he escaped i guessed i would find him here but i wasn't certain about it."

Everyone is shocked, the truth was finally revealed. "But father why would you push this hatred towards all monsters? Not all types of Monsters are relentlessly killing everyone." Sun looked at chara and reaches out his hand. "Give me the Syringe chara, they ARE all the same, if we trust them they may take our soul as well! Now help me defeat them together and we can live a peaceful life forever with you by my side." Chara takes a step back "I- i dont think i can help you any longer father..." Suns hand drops and his grip gets loose for a moment before clenching it again. "Give me the Syringe Chara." Chara takes another step back and Sun swings his axe back, it catches fire and swings rapidly towards Chara. But just before it hits sans comes in and blocks his attack by stopping the axes blade mid swing with his hands. He rams the axes blade into the ground and kicks Sun back, papyrus follows ahead by swiping his legs behind him making Sun trip almost falling off the edge of the Mountain but barely hanging on, Frisk grabs Suns axe and approaches him at the edge of the Mountain. The Voices he heard in his head earlier started to whisper to him all at once again "Free Us from the sunburns" frisk gained the strength to lift the axe, ready to strike. "Not so fast you little prick!" Suns axe suddenly becomes really hot almost burning frisks skin making him snap back and letting it drop on the ground, as it drops on the ground a wave of heat throws everyone back. Sun laughs as he climbs back up the edge. Though... his axe was gone, he looked up and saw chara standing there holding the axe in her hands. "Your flames may scorch all of our trust, but you will never burn out the spirit of these Monsters father, im sorry." Chara takes a big slash with the axe, piercing it trough suns whole torso as he drops and falls down the Mountain leading to his demise...

It was finally done, the cause of humans and Monsters broken harmony was defeated. Chara apologizes to sans and papyrus for all the trouble humans have caused over the years but those could not be reestablished anymore. Frisk and Chara returned to their Village and Chara published all the evidence and proof she could find about the truth when the harmony broke such as the death of her father and leader of the human army. The humans were shocked and did not know what to do, they agreed upon providing the Monsters anything they want such as reestablishing their peace. The Monsters accepted everything the humans gave to them but they could never live peacefully among humans ever again after all they had done. They rebuild their home in the Underground and lived happily onwards. Though chara and frisk still show up sometimes to hang around and bring them things. Sans has finally mastered all his skills to their peak with his last ability being the "Focus Hop" by Meditating long enough and focusing the fullest on his Destination, sans could hop between AUs and explore the Multiverse, sometimes he would even meet other sanses that would offer him Missions and bounties to conclude but sans is a True Neutral, he only does what he thinks is the right thing to do so if one of these missions or bounties manage to convince him to help, he may assist the best way possible.

[🇺🇲]Creator commentary: hello people, i hope the final story of KurayamiTale could clear you in on what would actually happen in the story if it was for me. This story may not be enough for some of you and i could understand. This AU wich started out as just a fun little project between me and a friend actually got the attention, interest and support of some people. (Thanks L.fe Android!) I hope this is enough to satisfy most of you and i do not mind if some people make their own fan content about the AU, that being Artwork, Videos, Theories and other things, they are all appreciated and i am thankful for those! Make sure to check this tumblr more often sometime because i do update the existing Creator blog answering questions and post new Wiki links or Art of the AU, Peace!

THANK YOU FOR READING

[loversamongus]

On Pink Clouds | Zuko x reader

a/n: so I watched Sleeping Beauty again the other night because that is my favorite Disney princess movie don’t @ me okay anyways I love the Once Upon a Dream scene when they’re twirling by the water and then at the end when they’re dancing on clouds and I couldn’t stop thinking about how Zuko would probably be a good dancer too and this is what happened enjoy. Also sorry what, did you say you wanted an Anastasia “maybe we should stop spinning” moment, too? You got it.

words: 1.9k

fic taglist: @spiritvines​ @protect-remus​ @emeraldpotato

The air was getting warmer. Which isn’t saying much living in the Fire Nation. But the air was getting heavier, the days getting longer, the sun shining brighter. The first day of summer was arriving and the palace was bustling with preparations for the annual Summer Solstice festivities. 

While this time of year is usually exciting, you could do without the superficial and overly posh advisor meetings that came with it. Discussion about educational reforms and foreign policy, your personal passions and areas of expertise, were suddenly sent to the back burner and replaced with talk of exquisite feasts and which foreign dignitaries to invite. Financially responsible as ever, you tried your best to argue for more budget friendly decorations considering the nation was still recovering from 100 years of war, but your older and more traditional colleagues remained adamant that it was in the nation’s best interest to host a genuine, all-out festival. 

You brought your complaints and concerns to the fire lord himself. Ah, the perks of being best friends with the fire lord. Of course, these complaints and concerns were usually filed off-the-record while enjoying what limited downtime the both of you had. After the final advisor meeting for festival preparations, you met Zuko in his room where a seamstress was finishing up his fitting for special Summer Solstice robes. Silently, you made yourself comfortable in an armchair and only quirked a mocking eyebrow in his direction.

“Not a word,” he said through gritted teeth.

“I’m not saying anything!” You threw your arms up in protest. The seamstress took out the last pin on Zuko’s sleeve and packed up her stuff before shuffling out of the room. “Although,” you continued. “If Advisor Ji were here, I’m sure he would say that ‘you look absolutely ravishing, Your Majesty. The very picture of a traditional Fire Lord.” You followed your impression with a gagging sound so that Zuko wouldn’t miss your resounding disgust for the uppity old man.

Zuko offered his arm to you which, standing up, you gladly took. “And what battle did you get into with him today?” he asked with a smile while leading you down the hallway.

“Ugh, we were confirming the seating plan for the feast tonight because Agni forbid we sit this old noble family next to that family, it just simply isn’t done.” Your free hand waved animatedly as you gave the recap of the past meeting. “But the worst part was, I had said weeks ago that we should consider opening up the feast to people from all walks of life in the Fire Nation, not just the nobility. Like the orphanage.”

You heard Zuko try to stifle a chuckle. “Oh come on! Just imagine those cute little innocent faces munching into all the food and running through the palace hallways and their faces lighting up with the fireworks! They would have so much fun, and isn’t that what the festival is all about?”

“Well, actually, it’s a tradition that was started—“

“Not you, too!” You turned sharply to look him in the eyes. “I am so sick of you old, rich people talking about traditions and manners—“

This time, Zuko couldn’t hold back his laughter. You watched with your mouth still slightly open after being interrupted as he tilted back his head to laugh. “I thought it was a great idea to invite the orphanage, which is why I personally invited them to the feast tonight.”

“You did?” you responded quietly but your lips turned into a bright smile.

“Yeah. I figured Aang could use the entertainment.”

The two of you continued to talk about the festival as well as the abhorrently outdated opinions of some of the advisors all the way to the turtleduck pond. The sun was getting lower on the horizon and once it was fully set, the feast would begin. Despite the setting sun, it was still a hot day, so you took your place sitting beneath the tree near the pond to get some shade. Zuko sat closer to the edge of the pond and took out some bread from where he had somehow stashed it in his robes. Leaning against the tree, you looked up at the sky and sighed.

“I love this time of day,” you said absentmindedly. The sky was illuminated by a soft golden glow and the clouds looked painted with a myriad of pastels. “Look at the clouds today, Zuko. They’re pink.” Zuko looked up for a moment and then glanced back at you to smile before feeding the small gaggle of turtleducks.

With the night’s festivities looming over your heads, the pond was the only place to get some peace and quiet for even just a moment. You’d need it anyways in order to gear up for the feast. The palace would soon be packed with Fire Nation nobles, the Avatar and his friends, and now the orphans and their caretakers, all waiting for the young Fire Lord to officially kick off the festival. Large crowds were never your favorite, which was why you had planned on retiring from the feast after dinner was served.

“But you have to stay for the dancing,” Zuko practically pouted when you told him this plan.

“No, no. I don’t dance. But I’ll tell you what,” you sat up from the tree you were leaning against. It was your favorite spot to get some shade as Zuko fed the turtleducks little pieces of bread. “I’ll stay long enough to watch you dance. That’s sure to be a sight to behold.”

Zuko scoffed. “I’ll have you know I am a pretty good dancer.” A turtleduck quacked. “See? He agrees.”

You laughed a little and reached for a piece of bread to offer to the little suck up. “What, did little Prince Zuko have to take royal dance lessons when he was little?”

“Yes actually!” Zuko rolled his eyes as if it was such an obvious answer. You half expected him to let the conversation go at this point and continue feeding the turtleducks. He could only handle your teasing for so long before starting to lose his temper. But he stood up abruptly and held out his hand. You placed bread in his open palm questioningly.

“Not the bread!” His voice revealed a hint of frustration. “Give me your hand. I’ll show you.”

You huffed and moved to cross your arms. You had just said you didn’t dance after all. Zuko’s pride certainly wouldn’t get you to dance. You were about to tell him that he was just fooling himself if he thought he could get you to dance when you felt his hand close on your elbow, pulling you up from your seated position.

“Zuko!” you whined.

“Would you just do this for me, please?” It was posed as a question but his apparent annoyance made it feel closer to a command. “And then you can leave early later if you still want to.”

He didn’t even wait for you to respond before he began straightening your shoulders and back. He took your left hand and held it out to the side and with a finger, tilted your chin up before resting that free hand on your waist. All other protests immediately seemed to die in your throat.

“Now, I lead. Think you can handle that?” He smirked and then began to step forward. After some hesitancy, you stepped backwards with him. You found yourself inching up on your tiptoes to better manage the height difference. But when he stepped again, and again, you felt forced to look down to see where you should be stepping next.

He stopped and adjusted your shoulders again. “Hey. Just look at me.” He gave your hand a squeeze and you looked up again. You couldn’t remember a time you’ve been this close to him. You could practically see each one of the thousands of golden flecks in his eyes. And you knew he was strong, being a master firebender and swordsman and all, but his grip on your waist felt so gentle and safe. He gave you a small smile before starting the dance again. This time, you moved a little better in time with him.

“See? It’s just little steps here and there. Ready to try a spin?”

Before you could say anything, you felt that gentle hand on your waist push you out a little bit while his other hand guided you under his arm. The sudden movement was not something you had expected and so your feet got tripped up a little. Zuko, however, caught your waist again and repositioned you upright before you could completely tumble over.

With a small laugh, he joked, “Okay, maybe we tried that too soon. We could just spin together instead.”

You started dancing again, taking small steps in slow circles around the pound. You were grateful that these steps felt much easier than the spin you had just been forced to attempt. The movement was repetitive and once you felt you’d gotten the hang of it, you went back to counting the flecks in Zuko’s eyes. You also made special note of the small wisps of his hair that had fallen out of his top knot, no doubt from the spinning.

“You okay?” Zuko checked in with you. Suddenly you realized you had not spoken since being pulled up to dance with him. You shook your head to free it from your thoughts in order to respond.

“Yeah,” you managed to breathe out. “I feel like I’m on clouds.”

“Pink clouds?” He smiled.

“Mhm.” The peace and calm you had felt when you looked up at the sky earlier settled in your chest. With a few more trips around the pond, you and Zuko held small conversations here and there. Your replies always seemed a bit hesitant though, mostly because you were concentrating on the steps. Without a doubt, however, you felt relaxed and at ease in his arms. You supposed that turtleduck really did know Zuko was a great dancer.

You lost count of how many spins the two of you did but you did become aware of the sky darkening as well as the spinning in your head.

“I’m feeling a little dizzy,” you said softly. Zuko shifted so that he didn’t lead you into another spin. Instead, you both settled into the small pattern of steps you had started out with before coming to a complete stop. Regardless, you still held his hand and he still held your waist.

“Probably from all the spinning. Maybe we should stop.” His gaze held yours for the entirety of your dance but only now did you notice the seriousness, an intensity, in his eyes. You urged yourself not to let your eyes wander anywhere past the tip of his nose.

“But we have stopped.”

“Y/n, I—“ You felt yourself begin to lean in with him.

“Fire Lord Zuko!” A man, coming around the corner onto the grounds of the turtleduck pond, interrupted. “Fire Lord Zuko,” he repeated again, this time followed by a bow. “The feast will be beginning shortly.”

Zuko did not turn to face the man but he dropped his hand from your waist. His hand still held you and his eyes remained fixed on your face. “Thank you,” he responded in his most regal voice. “I’ll be there soon.”

The man bowed again before exiting back around the corner. The spinning now gone from your head, you cleared your throat and stepped back from him. Zuko held your hand tighter in response.

“You’ll stay for a dance?” he asked hopefully.

“Okay.” You smiled.

[arcgeminga]

ANSWERED ASK from @starlightofdream​:  ♂ - … My muse’s father [ POPE SAGE ] (for Defteros) ♚ Meme: send me a symbol and i will write a drabble about my muse from the point of view of…

   —  TRIGGER WARNING: strong hints racism and use of strong language (Under Cut)

Sage wasn’t one to lose his temper. He had lived long enough to know when to let go of his anger when it came to common things that time will eventually repair. He didn’t like the unnecessary drama or the unwarranted negativity around such things. He’s lived too long to be bothered by it all.

Which is why today surprised him.

Ever since the day Cassiopeia Euthymia was murdered, and he had ordered the just execution on Gemini Maximus, Sage had a strong sense of responsibility for the two children left behind because of his decree. Months before he had the chance to meet the babies, he had predicted that one of them would be born under a Cursed Star of Darkness. What he didn’t expect was that the cruelty of this era when the youngest child was born. Almost as if fulfilling his cursed birth, the hour he was born, mayhem broke, and the mother was slaughtered.

Yet, when the attendant of that day presented the babies to him, Sage did not see an ounce of evil within them. However, his assessments on the children were pushed back by more urgent matters--and ultimately never spoken aloud. Therefore, his wrongful decree stuck to the youngest like a curse he wished he could take back.

The boys were four years old now. Sage didn’t make it an everyday occasion to visit them, and he left the boys in the hands of caretakers that he had hired from the nearby village. He felt ashamed, and seeing the youngest child--Defteros--reminded him of his crime.

Something within him was itching to see the twins today. After all, it’s nearly been an entire month since he had checked up on their progress. After his various briefing with the current Gold Saints, Sage had Leo Ilias and Pisces Lugonis accompany him down to the living quarters within Sanctuary. It was a relatively small section where the attendants kept to themselves, and it was the only place Sage could send the orphaned children. As the Pope, he was allowed to come and go whenever he wished and dropping an unexpected visit was well within his right as the Sovereign.

It seemed like his visit to the ladies that were in charge of the boys was extremely abrupt.

As soon as he opened the door to the home, he felt the atmosphere become bitter. The little, dark-skinned boy, who had been running around the house with his brother in an impromptu game of tag, tripped and fell hard against the wood flooring. Sage’s eyes widened in shock, as did the Gold Saints who accompanied him--but a cacophony of cruel laughter assailed his ears.

“Look at this dumb bastard!” a woman’s shrill rang throughout the house, her cruel finger pointing to the four-year-old that groaned and struggled to his knees. Whatever toxicity the caretakers had been exposing to these boys, the lighter-skinned tot paid no mind. With heart and intentions pure, he waddled next to his fallen brother and helped him up.

When the little Defteros was on his unsteady feet, Sage’s mood darkened.

It appears he has, yet again, made a wrong judgment for the misfortunate child.

“How dare you!” Lugonis roared as he pushed past the Patriarch in his moment of blind rage; his eyes snapped to the women who laughed at the boy’s injury. At the man’s outburst, the ladies realized the Pope’s unannounced visit and hurried to stand proper as their faces became flushed from being caught in their cruelties. Lugonis didn’t care. He stood in front of the ladies, lecturing them about their lack of compassion for the child.

Sage had allowed Lugonis to yell at the women uninterrupted. He stepped into the house and placed a hand on Defteros’ brilliant, golden hair. The two boys didn’t seem to notice him, with Aspros pointing at a Defteros’ knees and muttering so low that Sage couldn’t hear it. The darker-skinned child was bruised and scratched all over his knees, legs, and ankles. And the culprit of the injuries was none other than the ill-fitted footwear the little boy wore. A lot of what the little boy was wearing did not fit the tiny, thin child. Defteros even had several bruises around his face, but it was hard to tell if they had formed from him falling a lot or if other types of abuses happened. On the other hand, Aspros didn’t have a single blemish--treated much better than his younger brother.

No doubt, this sort of disgusting injustice has been going on for a very long time, right under his nose.

How can a single child completely and utterly destroy the Grand Patriarch of Sanctuary just by being the victim of other’s cruel entertainment?

“Ilias,” Sage called for the Leo Gold Saint low enough not to interrupt Lugonis’ rage. He somehow managed to suppress the amount of shamed-filled agony that pulled at his heart. “Please, go find a better-suited caretaker for these children.” Ilias left with a silent nod, and Lugonis was at the tail end of his passionate rant. Sage felt his chest become too heavy with uncontrollable regret...

He bent his knees so that he can roughly be equal height to the young children. To his dismay, the little boys avoided his eye contact. They were aware of him, but it seemed they had been taught to avoid looking at adults directly. It shattered the older man’s spirit. How could he have been so blind?

“I’m so sorry,” Sage’s apology came in a hoarse whisper. The twin’s shifted their eyes to the ground before Aspros reached out and grabbed Defteros’ hand.

“Come on, Defteroulis,” Aspros hummed as he tugged his little brother away into the deeper parts of the house. Defteros allowed his brother to pull him along, trying his best not to trip over the too-large footwear. “Let’s go play more.”

Sage watched the boys scamper off, then stood up to full height after they had turned the corner to what he assumed was their bedroom. Lugonis had turned his attention from the irresponsible caretakers and lowered his head in guilt.

“I apologize,” the Pisces Saint grimaced as the words left his lips. “I didn’t mean to hurry past you, Holy Father... I just got so angry...” 

“I understand,” Sage inhaled calmly--oddly betraying whatever emotion was building inside of him. “After all, you have that little child. Naturally, a parent will get upset at the cruelties shoved upon innocent babes.”

The time-warn man told his Saint to hurry off. When he was alone with the group of women he had trusted the boys to--his sleeping ire opened its eyes.

[scrabbleknight]

[OC] Mary - “The White Sheep”

Mary - "The White Sheep"

Full Name: Marianne "Mary" Bean

Age: 17 (pre-timeskip), 20 (post-timeskip), 21 (post-rescue)

Gender: Female

Race: Dirtman, actually Human (Ehhh?! Human?!)

Nationality: Pytrian

Notable features: Light brown hair, a large crack-shaped scar along the side of her head (hidden under hair), bright blue eyes

Abilities: Break Magic, Golden Arms, Causality, NDLC (No Doors Lie Closed)

Likes: Caramel egg pudding ("Soft and creamy waa~")

Dislikes: Ice-cream ("My teeth hurt...")

History:

A war orphan, Mary lived with her adopted aunt and uncle at their tavern for as long as she could remember. Due to a head injury, she doesn't remember anything about her parents and her caretakers took her in after finding her on their doorstep along with a large sum of money. Longing for the truth of her past, she set out once reaching adulthood to become an Explorer, a profession made up of adventurers, fighters and scholars, in order to search the world for any info regarding her past. Fortunately for her, she met Red, an eccentric middle-aged man who took her as an apprentice Explorer and definitely knows more than he's willing to say.

Personality:

Mary is a very outgoing & positive person who embraces the weird whenever she sees it. However, she was shunned from a nearby town due to her head scar, leaving her with a badly developed and horribly blunt social skill. She learnt mostly from wandering passersby that visit the tavern, making her very observant and having an odd mix of various knowledge and fields. She does however have a problem of thinking forward, causing her to act impulsively and hurting herself in the process. Despite being cheerful and friendly, there's an obvious air in her act and she would often stare into empty space, emotionless. Whatever it was that she went through as a war orphan that she can't remember, it had greatly affected her mental well-being. There are even times where her personality changes completely when serious, becoming quiet and uncaring. However, these are rare occasions and for the most part, one can expect her cheerful and playful self.

[missromantic-x]

Peter Pan and Captain Hook

Shin Soukoku Week Day 4: AU My best piece, hands down. Oh goodness I love how this turned out. The shimmering blue waters of Neverland kissed the golden lips of the sand. Peridot coconut trees swayed in the light sea breeze. Seagulls screeched on the shore, and their shedded cream-white feathers drifted along the beach. Mermaids lazily say upon the rocks, picking lilies for their elegant flower crowns. Their scales refracted a thousand rainbows. The native children tackled each other with stray branches they’d found on the edges of the dense forest surrounding their campground. The sound of laughter and song filled the endless sapphire blue sky. Salt encompassed the air with the twinge of adventure. And there was Atsushi Pan, lounging in the midst of all the grandeur. He laughed to himself, remembering how he’d reached the land through the residual glitter from a dream. He believed he’d been eighteen at the time, but time on Neverland wasn’t sensical, per se, so his memories could have been slightly off. On a night when he’d been trapped alone in the orphanage cellar, one of many normal nights back there, a spunky little fairy had greeted him. According to her, she had come from a far away place called Neverland, where children never grew old and joy was at the end of every corner. But that beautiful peace was disturbed by the devastatingly handsome yet terribly brutal young pirate Captain Rashomon and his motley crew of scoundrels from the mainland. She had been looking for a strong boy to fight the evildoers, and, due to their tough upbringing and will to live and let others live with them, orphaned boys were the best pick. Well aware that he was getting kicked out of the orphanage thanks to his birthday being that day and eighteen-year-olds being legal adults, he gleefully took the fairy’s hand, and pledged that he would be the best hero the island ever wanted. The fairy, whose name he learned was Higuchi Bell, wasn’t wrong when she’d said Captain Rashomon was devastatingly handsome. He looked like the kind of man the female caretakers at the orphanage would be more than willing to spend a night with. He held a regal and mysterious air to him, despite his place as an outlaw. (Then again, Neverland didn’t have any laws.) However, the most notable thing about the captain was his magical blade. See, his right hand had been cut off, supposedly by his old leader on the mainland. In its place was the strangest thing: a piece of black cloth. But this was a magical cloth, one that could extend infinitely and acted almost like a cat’s tail in the sense that he treated it like a part of his own body. This fabric could become a whip or a sword or a combination of both if he so desired. However, Higuchi hadn’t been completely honest about Rashomon’s intentions. He most certainly wasn’t evil, moreso at a loss. He’d worked previously with another pirate whom had drowned at sea, and with that pirate’s body was his most treasured thing. None knew what it was. Regardless, he did pillage the land in search of it, and that was more than enough to call the inhabitants attention. Atsushi stretched out like a cat after a nap, yawning a bit. He’d heard three gunshots in the distance: those were a signature sound of pirates. Pressing himself off the ground, the brittle sand crunching under the sudden force, he leapt into the sky and flew towards the noise. As normal, Rashomon was alone. A small wooden rowboat sat at his feet, and if Atsushi squinted, he could see the Jolly Roger in the distance. But mostly, his eyes were drawn to the pirate. Today, he wore a dark red velvet tailcoat with black swirls, with gold embellishments on the pockets and the edges. His undershirt and jabot were a pure white, a stark contrast to his black pants. Over his left hand was a white glove, and his right hand had changed itself to look like a second glove. On his left cheek, there were elegant face-painted silver swirls that matched his eyes. He looked so beautiful it was hard to remember their supposed rivalry. It also made Atsushi’s leaf-patterned green tunic and black pants look even more basic. The cloth on Rashomon’s arm stretched out to Atsushi, and dumped him into the boat. Once he was settled with a job well done, he hopped in as well and began to row toward the hidden inlet they had discovered during their first battle. Ever since then, it was their self-declared battle space, as well as a place for other secret things. They landed without a hitch, and both climbed out of the boat wordlessly. A small smile crept up the captain’s lips as he brushed aside the palm fronds to reveal the special place. A small gasp came from Atsushi’s mouth as he took in the sight. Lining the entrance and the edges of the roofless cavern were pastel red candles that shimmered with tangerine flames. In the center lay an expensive-looking blanket with a flower centerpiece of yellow and violet. And on that blanket…Atsushi breathed in deeply through his nose…was what had to be the most delicious-smelling feast he’d had in long time. He caught scents of cinnamon, freshly grilled chicken, goat cheese, earthy vegetables, and newly squeezed lemon. “Did you set this all up for me?” queried Atsushi tentatively, unsure if he was dreaming. He never could discern the two in this place. Rashomon’s face was cleaner than a slate. “It is the best I can do for my rival. I would hate to win a fight due to having the unfair advantage of being well-fed, and since I have this food, I may as well share it.” This made Atsushi smile. Every time they did things like this, they were always coming up with excuses like this. They both knew that no secrecy was necessary in the hidden cave, but it was an odd habit the two could not break. Rashomon sat down on the blanket, and Atsushi sat on the opposite end. They ate in silence for a while. Then a thought came to Atsushi’s mind that was completely nonsensical but wildly addictive at the same time. Blushing madly, he whispered, his voice trembling a bit, “I do not think that some outlaw would set up such a nice meal for me. Surely he has poisoned the dish with something foul. In order to make sure he has no unfair advantages, I will pass the poison onto him.” Rashomon looked up from his food, clearly startled, but then he began to smile gingerly. “Ah! To think you have known me for this long and still do not trust me! I shall gladly prove to you that you are incorrect.” He rose from his seat and sat beside Atsushi. The cloth on his hand took hold of the hero’s chin to pull him in closer. Atsushi’s heart beat like a caged bird in his chest, and his stomach tickled with butterflies. He leaned in, still shocked that he had initiated this. At that second, their lips met. He could taste all the flavors of the ocean, from the waves to the driftwood floating in its depths. He could smell the lingering scent of seawater and jasmines. He could feel the curves of those perfect lips on his own. “I forgot how deadly the poison is,” Rashomon murmured. “Once one has a taste, they must have a second.” His fingers tangled themselves in Atsushi’s silver hair. “Alas,” Atsushi mumbled. “The poison has taken full effect on me as well.” He wrapped his own arms around Rashomon’s back, the soft fabric of his coat twisting in his tight grasp. At last, they broke the kiss. The two fell backward, their fall softened by the feathery grass behind them. Atsushi turned his head to look at the pirate. He looked so happy and peaceful, his face finally void of his hardened expression. Now, it was one of pure bliss. Rashomon’s beautiful eyelids fluttered, his dark eyelashes following in suit. “The second effect of the poison is one that makes you lose your sanity. Sometimes it results in people calling each other by their first names, no matter their status.” The sun fell between Neverland’s snow-peaked mountains, and the sky became an ombré shade of yellow and purple. “Then what is the final step of this poison?” He shifted to face Atsushi. “The afflicted say insane things, such as ‘I love you, Atsushi Nakajima,’” “I love you, too, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.” They kissed again. “You know,” Atsushi began, “I’ve heard that you’re a little sickly and overtired.” Ryūnosuke raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t want to win a fight just because you got frostbite or because you because too fatigued and lost your balance. And, they say that people stay together to get warmer, and sleep to get less tired,” he rationalized. “Fine,” Ryūnosuke agreed. “We should be able to spar without issues tomorrow.”

[8verity8]

Arthur Returns

Merlin first noticed something off with his magic while in South Korea. He didn't think much of it though, he was touring a temple by the ocean at the time and chalked the ripple-like sensation to the local magic in the area—it hadn't been the first time. A few weeks later he was in Germany, giving a guest lecture on medicine in medieval Europe, when he was suddenly beset with the overwhelming urge to go home. He tried to push the sensation down, but the longer he ignored it the more he was filled with the sensation that something was wrong. Terribly wrong. He needed to go home now. Merlin’s magic hadn't asserted its will this strongly in over 50 years, and he had learned the hard way that it wasn't wise to ignore it's warnings. Resigned, Merlin asked his assistant to cancel the rest of his lectures on the continent, and made the necessary travel arrangements. Two days later he opened the door to his private residence on the shores of Lake Avalon.

After dumping his luggage in the front entry he made his way quickly through the house and stepped out onto the back patio. There he stopped, his breath catching in his throat at the site before him. Lush grass and foliage dotted the sloping hillside before ending at a small white beach along the shores of the lake. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the cottage where the caretakers for the property lived. He should check in on them. Let them know he was here, he couldn't recall if he had called to let them know he was coming or not. To be honest, he couldn't remember how long it had been since he had last been by the house—was it one year? Two?  Thank the goddess, they knew who—and what—he was. It was easy enough for him to hide it, everywhere but here. Out in the world he could create fake identities, pretend to grow old, and then move on. But Avalon, the place that had become his home, his heart... Well, let’s just say, it was a bit more difficult to maintain the charade.  And he could admit that it was nice to be known.  So, when Henry Andrews, an orphaned soldier from the city, had discovered that Merlin was immortal during the war, well it had just made sense to make him an offer he couldn't refuse. The Andrews family was still the envy of many in the small town of Avalon. They were paid to live on the best real estate the area had to offer.  "One advantage of being immortal," Merlin thought wryly to himself. Merlin had turned down several lucrative offers from developers throughout the years. He didn't even know where the current offers stood, he had ordered his solicitor to turn them all down, no matter how high they were, and to stop bugging him about each one.  His Avalon property was not for sale. He took a deep, refreshing breath, looking out over the lake as he admired the sunlight sparkling across the surface. The feeling of wrongness had diminished as he got closer to the lake, he still felt a pull though, a longing. He needed to sit upon her shores and listen to the song of her lapping waters. With a sigh, he made his way down to the lakeshore, plopping down into the sand just above the water line. His fingers dug into the sand at his side, letting it sift through his fingers, as he watched the sunset over the lake. The tower in the distance turning orange, then pink, to match the inky streaks in the water.  Avalon's waters sang to him as he sat, a song of welcome. The discordant notes of the song building up, then pulling back, as they slowly built towards a crescendo of sound. His magic answered, weaving a seductive harmony that carried his senses away with the wind. He was the water, the earth, and the sand, he was the tower singing in the distance. He was the magic in the air. Singing out in welcome... His eyes snapped open in shock. The song wasn't for him! And then there he was, rising up from the water, droplets cascading down his golden skin as the sun wreathed him in its glow. The Once and Future King had returned.

"Merlin?"  Arthur's trembling voice spurred him into action. He scrambled to his feet and ran towards him. Splashing awkwardly though the water, desperate to reach Arthur. To feel him, whole and solid, beneath his fingers. To confirm that he was real. He tripped at the last moment, crashing into Arthur and sending them both under the water. Merlin resurfaced to see Arthur standing over him, glaring. He had never seen a more beautiful sight. "Merli—" He threw his arms around Arthur, cutting him off. Arthur made a strangled sound, struggling to remain upright under the onslaught. Merlin started giggling hysterically when he felt Arthur's arms wrap around him in turn. Tears started streaming down his face as he quieted, but he couldn't bring himself to let go. "You're back. You've returned to me. You've finally come back," Merlin whispered against Arthur's neck in awe as Arthur gently stroked his back and reassured him he was really there.  "I'm here," Arthur promised, giving Merlin the time he needed to calm down.  After a few minutes Merlin cleared his throat and stepped back, giving Arthur some space and him a chance to take Arthur in.  Arthur's expression was a mixture of fond tenderness and confusion as he looked at Merlin in the dimming light.  "Sorry about that," Merlin apologized feeling his face flush with embarrassment. "I'm sure you have a lot of questions, and here I am botching this whole thing up."  "Yes, well…" Arthur looked equally embarrassed.  "Come on, I can answer all of your questions back at the house once we've dried off and changed into dry clothes," Merlin offered extending his hand.  "Yes, very good," Arthur agreed, taking Merlin's hand, and moving towards the shore.  Merlin was pulled up short when Arthur stopped suddenly. He looked back in confusion.  "Arthur, what—"  "Merlin, why am I naked?" Merlin looked down, noticing for the first time that Arthur was in fact completely nude. How in the hell had he missed that before when he had tackled the man?  "Um," he gulped. Arthur raised an eyebrow at him as he stalled. 

Merlin decided the best course of action was to ignore the question completely.

"Let's get in the house and dry up, and then I'll answer all your questions, ok?" Merlin said hurriedly. "Here, take this..."  Merlin peeled his wet jacket off and wrapped it around Arthur's waist before grabbing his hand and dragging him towards the house. Pointedly looking at the ground the entire way.  He refused to look at Arthur again until the man was properly dressed. Merlin had completely forgotten how beautiful he was, sure he knew in a vague sense, remembered that his King was a good-looking man and all that, but to be hit with it like this, after all these centuries... "This is completely unfair," he grumbled to himself under his breath.  "Hmmmm?" Arthur questioned, dragging Merlin's eyes to him.  "Nothing," Merlin moaned. "I need a drink."  "A drink sounds wonderful. Great idea Merlin... After you find me some clothes, that is," Arthur drawled.  "Yes Sire."  Merlin couldn't help smiling as he rushed to do his King's bidding.

[fantasticworldoffanfics]

DEREK/STILES FEATURE FIC

Fandom: TeenWolf

Just an exceptionally adorable fic that I thought is too good to be ignored….

We Den Our Hearts Here by ladylade

PROMPT: Derek accidentally adopts a litter of orphaned wolf cubs (they can be werewolves if you are so inclined, but are too young to change into human form. Maybe that can be like an age thing, like, Derek walks in one day to check on them and sees a human baby sitting there and he’s like ‘the fuck? Where the hell did that come from? wait a second….’) 

 Stiles is weirdly good with the cubs. They love him. Scott is kind of a mess with them. No one leaves him with the cubs unsupervised. Jackson turns into a big pile of mush when he’s with them. Danny is like 'why does Miguel have all these puppies?’ Stiles explanation of 'Miguel! He does…that thing. In college. Where you study animal…behaviour. For his… dissertation. On wolves. I mean dogs.’ doesn’t really make sense.

Derek hates his life sometimes. 

He doesn’t even know how this happened. One moment he was picking up pamphlets on wolf behavior at the closest wildlife preserve (if Scott and Jackson won’t listen to Derek—or Stiles—then he’s going make this as embarrassing as possible for them), and the next minute he’s discussing wolves with one of the caretakers. And then suddenly he’s got five wolf pups in his back seat as he’s driving home. (On towels, of course, because balls of fluff or no, nothing is allowed to ruin his seats.) 

Aren’t there wild animal laws or adoption wait periods that make this illegal? But Derek’s teenage pack must be influencing him too much, because he doesn’t even try to take them back. 

>>> 

Scott comes over, which means Stiles comes over, despite the numerous times Derek has tried to…dissuade him. (Derek had tried the whole, you’re not pack thing, even though it’s not really true, but Stiles had chosen that moment to become the most insightful person ever, practically glowing as he exclaimed, “Oh my god, I totally am! You lying, lying sour wolf!”) The pups are blockaded in the kitchen, which makes Derek very grateful that he’s rebuilt the house because that means he actually has a linoleum floor in his kitchen, which is much easier to clean piss off of than rotting boards. 

The moment Stiles catches sight of the pups, though, it’s like he’s been given the answer to life or something. Derek thought he’d seen how hyperactive the kid could get before, but Jesus. 

“Ohmygodpuppies!” Stiles says, and then he leaps over the baby-gate and into the kitchen.

Leaps over it, like he’s a deer or something. Derek didn’t even know that Stiles was capable of not being clumsy, much less being graceful.

It sets Derek on edge, because it took even Derek some time before the pups warmed up to him, and Derek’s afraid that they’ll take one look at Stiles and see squeak toy. 

Except, when Derek steps into the kitchen and finds Stiles on the floor, they’re not chewing on him. They’re licking him and squirming happily and rolling around on Stiles like Stiles is the best patch of dirt ever. 

What the hell is going on? 

“Making friends, Stiles?” Scott says from where he’s poked his head into the kitchen. He’s acting like this isn’t the most abnormal thing he’s ever seen. 

 Stiles just makes a happy noise, and the pups yap excitedly, licking at his jaw and tugging at his shirt. 

The ‘what the fuckery’ must be obvious on Derek’s face, because Scott says, “Stiles is really good with animals, especially when they’re young. When we get really shy or scared puppies at work, Doc asks Stiles to babysit them for a few days so that it’ll be easier to find homes for them.” 

Okay. It’ll take some work to fit in this new ‘Animal Whisperer’ Stiles with the Stiles that Derek currently knows, but he can do it. Maybe. 

 But the babysitting thing, well, that’s promising.

It turns out that, while the entire pack would like to watch over the pups, Stiles is the only person that Derek actually trusts to do so. Scott is complete mess; every time that he’s left alone with them for more than five minutes, something gets broken and, more often than not, Scott gets peed on (how Scott is able to work in an animal clinic, Derek doesn’t understand). Jackson fares better with them, but he’s also the biggest pushover in the world and everything they do is completely adorable, even if it’s chewing up Derek’s new kitchen cabinets. 

And sure, Stiles may be a pushover with them, but he doesn’t let them chew on anything except their toys. 

Stiles probably spends more time with the pups than Scott and Jackson combined; every day after lacrosse practice, Stiles is there, even if Derek doesn’t want him to be. Stiles also, much to Derek’s annoyance, names them. It happens without Derek knowing, and by the time Derek finds out the pups already answer to the names. 

“Who said you could name them?” Derek says, and tries to glare Stiles down. 

“Stop pouting, I take care of them just as much as you do,” Stiles says, and initiates tug-of-war with the runt of the group. 

Derek would argue, but Stiles is right. Except about the pouting part. Derek does not pout. 

The runt is Stiles’ favorite, a little grey pup with charcoal streaking back from his face and onto the top half of his body. He named him Timber, and the largest puppy, a grey with tan tints who picks on Timber, ended up with the name Brutus. (“It’s not funny,” Derek says when Stiles keeps trying to insist it is.) He named the two light greys Artemis and Apollo, because the only real distinction between them is their sex and their eyes. All of the pups’ eyes have changed golden except Artemis’, and though she’s still young enough that it might happen, Derek has a feeling that her eyes will stay blue. The last pup, a quiet thing whose coat is black, gets named Fell. 

“C’mon, these are the most badass names ever,” Stiles says. 

“There is something wrong with you,” Derek says, but after Stiles leaves Derek calls the pups by the names Stiles has given them. 

>>> 

This is why Stiles gets to look after the pups: he will corral them in the back of his jeep and watch them at his house. When Derek wants to have a training session in or around his house, Stiles takes the pups because they’re too young to follow the pack when they hunt, and usually the sessions inside the house freak them out. 

Jackson makes a joke about marital separation and custody, and the glare Derek sends the Beta has him in his car before the front door finishes shutting. 

Stiles even watches them when he has lab homework with Danny, which meant that Derek had to buy Danny two pairs of shoelaces before the kid got smart and started leaving his shoes outside of Stiles’ room. 

(“Why are there puppies?” Danny had asked the first time. 

“Uhh,” Derek heard Stiles say from Derek’s perch on the roof, “they’re De-Miguel’s. He’s, uh, he’s doing a study for college. Dissertation! He’s doing his dissertation on early…early behavior development.”) 

It means that, because Derek is not the kind of asshole to need Stiles to watch the pups at last minute, pack meetings and training session have become regular, instead of the haphazard sessions that Derek pulled together whenever he felt the Betas needed to be shown that no, they aren’t in complete control of themselves. Now sessions happen at the same times and same days each week, and pack meetings are set a week in advanced. The structure seems to work even better than Derek’s approach before, especially with Stiles badgering out of Derek what Derek thought the Betas needed the most work with, and then coming back a day later with a monthly schedule that organized each session in color codes for different activities. It scares Derek, because he didn’t even know that Stiles had organizational skills like this. 

Somehow, having a pack of wolf pups has made Derek’s life easier.

Alison comes over with a camera one sunny day, wanting to take pictures of the pups. Derek doesn’t mind, as Stiles is watching over them in the yard and he’s mostly in the kitchen hacking up frozen venison. 

Two days later, there’s a stack of photos on his porch and one framed photo of a shade-dappled Stiles, walking the tree-line with all five pups trailing behind him like goddamn goslings. Derek rolls his eyes, but he puts the picture up on the mantle anyway. 

>>> 

There’s a horrible thunderstorm, which would be okay, except that there’s also golf-ball-sized hail. 

The pups are all in Derek’s bed, and while they’re not big, at just over three months they’re also not small anymore. All five of them have finally been housetrained (Brutus was a stubborn, stubborn pup about that, and Derek understands why Stiles has nicknamed him “Brute”), so they’re allowed the run of the house as long as someone (Derek or Stiles) is in the house with them. And even though the pups have been through thunderstorms (Artemis and Apollo like to watch lightning at the window), the sound of hail snapping branches is like a gunshot. 

With five pups trying to suffocate him and thunder and hail trying to kill the entirety of Beacon Hills, Derek’s lucky he hears Stiles’ jeep pull up. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Derek says after a moment. 

He manages to wriggle out of the bed, and when he leaves the pups don’t follow him downstairs. Stiles is already putting his slicker in the kitchen sink, and Derek can smell the bruises forming on his shoulders from getting hit with ice chunks.  

“What the hell are you doing here?” Derek says, and Stiles jumps. 

“Are the pups okay? Were they inside when the story started? They’re terrified, aren’t they?” Stiles says, mouth and hands flailing a mile a minute. 

It creeps Derek out sometimes, that Stiles seems to know when the pups are in trouble or are scared (this is in no way the first time that he’s done this; the last time Timber got his paw caught under a log and Stiles drove from school, in the middle of the day, to hover over him). 

“They’re fine,” Derek says. “Where are they?” It’s rare when Stiles can be deterred, unless Derek distracts him with something shiny or tootsie rolls. 

“In bed, where I should be,” Derek says, then, “goddamnit,” when Stiles goes sprinting up the stairs. Derek sighs, scrubs his hands over his face, and follows the kid. When he makes it to his room, Stiles’ shoes are in the middle of the floor and he’s curled up on the bed with the pups trying to burrow into him. 

“Get off my bed,” Derek says, and then he has six pairs of eyes glaring at him and judging his entire existence. 

“They’re scared,” Stiles says, as if Derek is the one who has terrified them. 

It’s then that Derek realizes that, somehow, Stiles has become the den mother. Oh no. No. This has not happened. Derek is not essentially stuck in what Jackson somewhat accurately described as a marital separation with Stiles. 

“Fuck,” Derek says. It’s late and this is giving Derek a headache. 

“What? What happened? What’s wrong?” Stiles says. Derek just shakes his head and climbs on the bed. 

“You had better stay on your side of the bed, and you better stay quiet,” Derek says as he finds a comfortable position. 

“You, I—oh,” Stiles says, as Derek resolutely keeps his eyes closed, “yeah, I. Yeah, okay.” 

>>> 

Stiles does not keep quiet, as the kid (unsurprisingly) mumbles in his sleep, and no one keeps to their side of the bed. Derek wakes up in the morning to sunlight and a tangle of pups and Stiles, all wrapped around him. He tries to wake Stiles, or even get the boy off of his chest, but Stiles sleeps like he’s a hibernating bear. 

Derek sighs, and glares back when Artemis glares, one-eyed, at him for jostling her; then she falls asleep again between one breath and the next. Derek decides this isn't the worst thing in the world to wake up to, and follows her into sleep.

[asktheadeptus]

Fulgrim

“Enter every city as though you were it’s first born master.” - attributed to Fulgrim the Phoenician. 

Fulgrim, also known in the time before the Horus Heresy as The Phoenician, is the Primarch of the Emperor's Children Traitor Legion. He possessed silvery-white hair and was quite vainglorious, as his entire life was dedicated to the pursuit of perfection in all things; physical, mental and spiritual. Today, Fulgrim is a four-armed, serpentine Daemon Prince of Slaanesh who is believed to reside on a Daemon World somewhere within the Eye of Terror. Unknown to almost everyone, including his own remaining Chaos Space Marines, Fulgrim expressed remorse, repenting his corruption by the Ruinous Powers during the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V during the opening days of the Horus Heresy nearly ten millennia ago. A Greater Daemon of Slaanesh took advantage of this weakness to possess his body for a time, but Fulgrim used his spiritual imprisonment to further explore the power of Chaos and eventually turned the tables on the daemon and forced it into imprisonment to regain control of his body. Fulgrim emerged from that experience even more committed to the pursuit of the path of sensation offered by Slaanesh and Chaos, and after the Horus Heresy he was rewarded for his devotion with ascension as a Daemon Prince of the God of Pleasure. His current exact location remains unknown to the Imperium and the majority of the Chaos Space Marines of the Emperor's Children Legion who still wander the galaxy in pursuit of their own pleasure and ascension.

History

Early Life

Like all the Primarchs, Fulgrim was teleported away from Terra while still an infant in a Warp rift through the machinations of the Chaos Gods, who hoped to prevent the coming of the Age of the Imperium, or at least to corrupt it so that the spread of the Emperor's Order would not weaken their power or threaten their existence. After being snatched from the Emperor of Mankind's gene-laboratory deep beneath the Himalazian (Himalayan) Mountains on Terra, Fulgrim's gestation capsule came to rest on a resource-poor Mining World known as Chemos. Chemos was a bleak, unforgiving planet warmed by a small binary star and surrounded by a thick nebula dust cloud. The result was a world that was a place forever shrouded in perpetual twilight. Chemos had been settled by humanity during the Dark Age of Technology as a Mining World but it was isolated from its neighbors by the great Warp Storms that marked the Age of Strife. The problem was that the resources of the planet were running out and its people were not producing enough food even for their own needs. Eventually, it fell to a group of fortress-factories to produce all the needed resources for Chemos. The entirety of the Chemosian people had to work every hour of the day, maintaining the vapor mines and synthesizers. Recreation, art and leisure were sacrificed for survival. Chemos was dependent upon interstellar commerce for the provision of food, but the world was buffeted by Warp Storms that made it difficult for traders to reach the planet, thus condemning the Chemosians to a slow death, despite their attempts to impose strict food rationing and improvise other solutions for providing nutrients. Scouts from the fortress-factory of Callax's branch of the planetary police force, the Caretakers, discovered the Primarch's gestation capsule after it plummeted to the surface of Chemos and were so impressed by the beauty of the infant within that they begged the leaders of Callax, its Executives, to spare his life, as orphans were routinely put to death so they would not further strain a settlement's resources. Fulgrim was spared and given into the hands of one of his rescuers, a member of the Caretakers, to raise as his own child.

Named after an ancient deity of the Chemosian people, Fulgrim in time became a new legend to the people of that suffering world. At half the age at which most of the other people of Callax went to work in the vapor mines and synthesizers, Fulgrim proved able to fulfill all the obligations of an adult labourer. He came to understand the ramshackle Chemosian mining technology with an intuitive ease that allowed him to begin to modify it with his extraordinary technical acumen, dramatically increasing its efficiency. By the time he was only 15 Terran years of age, Fulgrim had risen from the rank of a simple laborer to become one of the Executives who governed the fortress-factory of Callax. As a leader, Fulgrim learned of the terrible plight that faced Callax and all the other settlements of Chemos as their technology and population gradually declined in the face of their resource shortages.

Under Fulgrim's direction, teams of engineers traveled far from Callax and the other fortress-factories, reclaiming and repairing many of the most ancient and far-flung of the world's original mining outposts, many of which had not been used since before the start of the Age of Strife. Mining production skyrocketed, and as resources began to pour in large amounts into the treasuries of the fortress-factories of Chemos for the first time in millennia, Fulgrim supervised the construction of even more sophisticated and efficient extraction machinery. This industrial efficiency soon grew to the point that Chemos' mines were actually producing surpluses for the first time in decades, allowing the world to begin to purchase food and other needed materials in large quantities from passing interstellar traders. Fulgrim, now the recognized planetary leader, fostered the re-emergence of Chemosian art and culture, important aspects of human life that had long been sacrificed to Chemos' resource shortage and need for constant labor.

The Coming of the Emperor

Not long after this great triumph, the world's isolation came to an end. From the perpetually twilit sky emerged a flight of Stormbird dropships, heavily armoured and battle-scarred and bearing the Imperial Aquila, the badge of the Emperor of Mankind. When he learned of the Aquila, Fulgrim found his memories stirred. Chemos had no real military forces, but the Stormbirds' landing zone had been surrounded by the Caretakers, the planetary police force of the fortress-factories. Fulgrim ordered the Caretakers to welcome the strangers and take them to meet with him in Callax.

In his private quarters, Fulgrim met with the heavily armoured warriors from the stars, men who represented a true civilization that possessed all the culture and refinement that Fulgrim longed to return to his home world. From amongst the Astartes stepped the shining figure of the Emperor of Mankind, and with one look upon him, Fulgrim said nothing and simply dropped to his knees before his father and offered his sword in service. Fulgrim swore from that moment forward to serve the Emperor and the needs of the Imperium of Man with all his heart. The Emperor taught his son of Terra and of the Great Crusade he had initiated to reunite all the scattered worlds of Mankind beneath a single rule so that humanity would no longer face possible extinction at the hands of the galaxy's hostile forces and could claim its rightful place as the dominant intelligent species in the Milky Way. Imperial records do not indicate the exact date of the meeting between Fulgrim and the Emperor; all that is known is that Fulgrim's vast flagship, the Battle Barge known as the Pride of the Emperor, was completed by the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars 160 standard years before the start of the Horus Heresy, sometime in the late 30th or early 31st Millennium.

Fulgrim returned to Terra with the Emperor to meet the IIIrd Legion of Space Marines that had been created from his own genome. But Fulgrim learned to his horror that an accident had destroyed the majority of the gene-seed that had been cultivated from his DNA to implant the Astartes of the IIIrd Legion and that without their Primarch, replacing it had proven to be a slow and laborious process. Fulgrim addressed the mere 200 Astartes that had been created for the III Legion and his speech proved so inspiring to the Imperial cause that the Emperor named the III Legion the Emperor's Children on the spot, and determined that only they could carve the Imperial Aquila, the double-headed eagle that was his own personal badge, upon the Ceramite chestplates of their Power Armour.

Fulgrim was soon consumed by the idea that he and the Emperor's Children needed to live up to the extraordinary honour the Emperor had shown them by becoming shining paragons of the perfection inherent in both the Emperor's person and his vision for Imperial culture and civilization. The drive for perfection soon consumed the Primarch and his Legion, from the military tactics they employed to the embrace of an unusually artistic Legionary culture and a concern for aesthetics and their personal appearances that was unsurpassed by any of the other Astartes. Fulgrim embodied this pursuit of physical beauty and perfection, for long silver hair flowed down his back, his wide eyes and melodic voice welcomed all who sought his counsel and his full lips often quirked into a wry smile. Fulgrim made sure that his Power Armour was of the finest quality that could be fabricated by Imperial technology and was intricately decorated in the purple and golden colors he had chosen for his Legion. Over it he usually wore a wide variety of intricately embroidered and high-collared cloaks.

The Phoenix and the Gorgon

The brotherhood shared by the Primarchs Fulgrim and Ferrus Manus, the Phoenician and the Gorgon, was well known in the Imperium at the time of the Great Crusade, as the two superhuman leaders formed an instant connection upon their first meeting. This initial encounter occurred on Terra, beneath Mount Narodnya, the greatest forge of the Urals, where Ferrus Manus was busy toiling with the forge-masters who had once served the Terrawatt Clan during the Unification Wars soon after his arrival from Medusa. The Primarch of the Iron Hands had been demonstrating his phenomenal skill and the miraculous powers of his liquid metal hands when Fulgrim, the Primarch of the IIIrd Legion, the Emperor's Children, and his elite Phoenix Guard, had descended upon the sprawling forge complex.

Neither Primarch had yet met the other, but each had felt the shared bonds of alchemy and science that had gone into their making. Both were like gods unto the terrified artisans, who prostrated themselves before these two mighty warriors as though fearing a terrible battle might ensure between them. Ferrus Manus later told the tale to the Astartes of the Xth Legion claiming that Fulgrim had declared that he had come to forge the most perfect weapon ever created, and that he would bear it in the coming Great Crusade. Of course the Primarch of the Iron Hands could not let such a boast go unanswered, and he had laughed in Fulgrim’s face, declaring that such pasty hands could never be the equal of his own living metal appendages. Fulgrim accepted the challenge with regal grace, and both Primarchs had stripped to the waist, working without pause for weeks on end, the forge ringing with the deafening pounding of hammers, the hiss of cooling metal, and the good natured insults of the two demigods as they sought to outdo one another.

At the end of three months' unceasing toil, both warriors had finished their weapons. Fulgrim had forged an exquisite warhammer -- Forgebreaker -- that could level a mountain with a single blow, and Ferrus Manus a golden bladed sword -- Fireblade -- that forever burned with the fire of the forge. Both weapons were unmatched by any yet crafted by Man, and upon seeing what the other had created, each Primarch declared that his opponent’s was the greater. Fulgrim declared the golden sword the equal of that borne by the legendary hero Nuada Silverhand, while Ferrus Manus had sworn that only the mighty thunder gods of Nordyc legend were fit to bear such a magnificent warhammer. Without another word spoken, both Primarchs had swapped weapons and sealed their eternal friendship with the craft of their hands.

The weight of the formidable warhammer Forgebreaker was enormous and unbearable for anyone but one of the Emperor’s Astartes. Its haft was the color of ebony, elaborately worked with threads of gold and silver that formed the shape of a lightning bolt, and the head was carved into the shape of a mighty eagle, its barbed beak forming the striking face and its tapered wings the claw. Anyone who looked upon the mighty warhammer could feel the power radiating from within it and know instinctively that more than just skill had gone into its forging. Love and honour, loyalty and friendship, death and vengeance...all were embodied within its majestic form, and the thought that the Iron Hands Primarch’s sworn honour brother had created this weapon made it truly legendary.

According to legend, Ferrus Manus was commonly referred to as The Gorgon. Some on Terra said the name was in reference to an ancient legend of the Olympian Hegemony. The Gorgon was a beast of such incredible ugliness that its very gaze could turn a man to stone. Many would be outraged at the disrespect in the implication of such a term when referring to a Primarch, but those who knew him best believed that Ferrus Manus quite enjoyed the name, because in any case, that was not where the name originated. It was an old nickname Fulgrim had given his brother after their initial meeting. Unlike the Phoenician, Ferrus Manus had little time for art, music or any of the cultural pastimes the IIIrd Legion's Primarch so enjoyed. It is said that after the two Primarchs met at Mount Narodnya, they returned to the Imperial Palace where Primarch Sanguinius of the Blood Angels Legion had arrived bearing gifts for the Emperor, exquisite statues from the glowing rock of Baal, priceless gem-stones and wondrous artifacts of aragonite, opal and tourmaline. The lord of the Blood Angels had brought enough to fill a dozen wings of the Palace with the greatest wonders imaginable.

Of course, Fulgrim was enthralled, finding that another of his brothers shared his love of such incredible beauty, but Ferrus Manus was unimpressed and said that such things were a waste of their time when there was a galaxy to win back. Fulgrim laughed and declared Ferrus a "terrible gorgon," saying that if the Primarchs did not value beauty, then they would never appreciate the stars they were to win back for their father. After that time the name stuck, and forever after Ferrus Manus was often referred to as The Gorgon.

The Great Crusade

Fulgrim was anxious from the start to make a substantial contribution to the Great Crusade like all of his brother Primarchs, but the small size of his Legion meant that the Emperor's Children were at first placed under the command of the Primarch Horus and were assigned to fight alongside his Luna Wolves Legion. Horus and Fulgrim soon grew personally close during their time together while their Legions participated in the conquest and pacification of the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy in the Ultima Segmentum. Eventually, over the course of several decades, the Emperor's Children's ranks were swelled by new Astartes who had been recruited from both Terra and Fulgrim's homeworld of Chemos, where the IIIrd Legion had established its fortress-monastery at the old fortress-factory of Callax. When the Emperor's Children were judged to have reached an appropriate size, Fulgrim was given command of the 28th Expeditionary Fleet of the Great Crusade and set off on his own course of conquest, adding dozens of worlds to the rule of the Emperor. Among them was the advanced xenos world of Laeran, where Fulgrim's fate would be sealed.

Fulgrim’s Fall

Fulgrim first fell from the Emperor's grace on the xenos planet called Laeran, officially designated as Twenty-Eight-Three, being the third world the 28th Expedition had brought to Imperial Compliance. Unbeknownst to the III Legion, the serpentine Laer species were corrupted xenos worshippers of the Chaos God of Pleasure, Slaanesh. Though the resource-rich Ocean World of Laeran would be of immeasurable value to the Crusade of the Emperor, its alien inhabitants did not wish to share what blind fortune had blessed them with. They had refused to see the manifest destiny that guided Mankind through the stars and had made it abundantly clear that they held the Imperium in nothing but contempt. The IIIrd Legion's advance had been rebuffed with violence, and honour demanded that they answer in kind.

Fulgrim's 28th Expeditionary Fleet of the Great Crusade conquered Laeran for the Imperium, exterminating its hostile native reptilian species, the Laer. Laeran was a water world, its continents having sunk beneath its oceans' waves centuries before when all of its ice caps and glaciers melted. The oceanic world was home to a native sentient species known as the Laer who were reptilian and serpentine in form but also engaged in extensive genetic engineering to perfect their species, creating a multitude of different castes who were genetically designed to best serve their intended function in Laer society. Having no land area, the Laer, whose technology equaled or even exceeded that of the Imperium in certain areas, had moved their entire society onto hundreds of floating coral islands that circled a central nexus in the planet's atmosphere. Each coral island was held aloft by an anti-gravity generator.

What Fulgrim and his Emperor's Children Legion did not know was that the Laer were also an entire civilization that had been corrupted by Slaanesh, the Chaos God of Pleasure and Pain. The central nexus point that all of their coral islands orbited was actually a massive temple dedicated to the Prince of Pleasure at the heart of which lay a potent Chaos artifact, a beautifully crafted, single-edged Daemonblade, that served as the physical vessel for a Greater Daemon of the Prince of Chaos. The Laer evinced all the signs of what later generations of the Imperium would recognize as Slaaneshi corruption, including a need for constant extreme sensory inputs, such as riotous colors and constant sound, and the deriving of pleasure from only the most extreme of sensations, including their own deaths. Completely unaware of the real dangers he and his Astartes Legion faced on the Chaos-corrupted world, Fulgrim ordered the Emperor's Children and the other forces of the 28thExpeditionary Fleet to assault the planet and conquer it for the Imperium within a single Terran month, completely eradicating the Laer species in the process. The Council of Terra had decided that the subjugation of the Laer would cost too many Imperial lives and would take too long. Some estimates indicated that an attempted Imperial Compliance would take as long as ten standard years. There had even been talk of making Laeran a protectorate of the Imperium. Primarch Fulgrim would not countenance such talk, for by refusing the Emperor's beneficence, the Laer had effectively sealed their doom.

During the final slaughter of that serpentine xenos race, Fulgrim and his Astartes discovered the great temple dedicated to Slaanesh that lay on the central floating coral island of Laeran. The Imperium, ignorant of the existence of the Chaos Powers at this time and holding to the extreme rationalism and atheism of the Imperial Truth, did not realize the significance of such a find or what they had really discovered. The expedition led by Fulgrim began to be unwittingly corrupted by the temple's potent and malign influence. After defeating the temple's fanatical Laer defenders, Fulgrim discovered what the Laer were so fiercely protecting -- at the center of the chamber of the unholy temple was a circular block of veined black stone, and embedded within was a tall silver sword with a gently-curved blade and a crude amethyst gem set in the pommel. This sword was not only a potent Slaaneshi artifact but also the physical vessel of a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh.

Once Fulgrim had claimed the blade as his own, the daemon within it began whispering in his mind and corrupting his soul towards the service of Slaanesh. He began to wield the daemon blade more often than his prior weapon, the great sword Fireblade that had been forged for him on Terra by his fellow Primarch and most favored brother, Ferrus Manus. Thinking the whispers in his mind was only his own subconscious speaking to him, Fulgrim began listening to what it offered. Eventually, he discovered these were actually the whispers of the daemon that existed within the blade. After a lot of persuasion from his brother Horus, himself already corrupted by the Ruinous Powers after his injury on the moon of Davin, Fulgrim gave himself over to Chaos, and found his particular patron in the Prince of Pleasure, who offered the Primarch a route to the ultimate perfection he so craved for himself and his Astartes, free of all morality and dependent upon the pursuit of ultimate self-obsession.

The Diasporex Persecution

During the latter part of the Great Crusade, the Iron Hands Legion encountered a nomadic, fleet-based civilization composed of both humans and xenos known as the Diasporex. The Iron Hands shared the Imperial Truth of the Emperor of Mankind and offered the human members of the Diasporex the opportunity to separate from their alien allies and to join the newly forged Imperium, but they declined the Astartes' offer. Their offer rejected, the Iron Hands passed judgement, and in the following months the Iron Hands fleet attempted to annihilate the Diasporex, but they proved to be highly skilled and experienced in the realm of naval warfare, and managed to easily evade crucial battles and even to severely damage the Iron Hands' Strike Cruiser Ferrum. The Emperor's Children of the 28th Expeditionary Fleet were called in as reinforcements, and so, a joint Imperial strike force composed of both the Iron Hands and forces from the Emperor's Children Legion launched an all-out assault against the willful Diasporex. Though the Diasporex knew that a powerful fleet of warships was hunting them and sought their destruction, they refused to leave the sector and move on to someplace safer. The Iron Hands' scout ships soon discovered the truth -- the Diasporex used hidden solar collector arrays to collect fuel for their vessels from a star. This was the reason why the Diasporex remained within the sector. Attacking these vital fuel stations, the two Imperial Expeditionary Fleets drew the Diasporex fleet out into open battle as the human-alien alliance sought to avoid utter annihilation at the Imperials' hands.

During the massive naval battle that ensued Fulgrim's personal gunship, the Firebird, came under heavy attack and soon found itself in trouble. Rushing to his brother's side, Ferrus Manus' flagship, the Battle Barge Fist of Iron, came rushing to the rescue of his beleaguered brother. To restore his wounded pride, Fulgrim led a brief ship boarding action where the Emperor's Children wreaked bloody havoc on the troops of the Diasporex. But ultimate victory was robbed from him when the enemy ship's bridge was taken by one of his subordinate commanders. For months thereafter, Fulgrim would resent The Gorgon's actions, unable to truly understand the altruism of Ferrus' deed and the loss of life his selfless act had incurred on his Legion. Under the malignant influence of the daemon-possessed Laer blade that he wore at all times, Fulgrim could only see self-aggrandizement in his brother’s action, instead of the the heroic deed it had truly been. Ferrus' critical comments, the wounding darts that Fulgrim believed were meant to undermine him, were in actuality only jests designed to puncture Fulgrim's self-importance and restore his humility. What Fulgrim perceived as Ferrus’ prideful boasts and rash actions had been deeds of courage that he spitefully dismissed as the influence of Chaos began to claim the Phoenician's soul.

The Horus Heresy

Certain members of the Inquisition who have studied the fragmentary Imperial records of this time now believe that the Laeran daemon sword began to exert a powerful Chaotic influence over Fulgrim, and that the Emperor's Children forces he had deployed against the Laer may also have been tainted by their exposure to the concentrated Chaotic corruption of that serpentine race, who had fully sworn themselves to the service of Slaanesh. Even while wrestling with his own Chaotic taint, the Primarch of the Emperor's Children soon found himself at the center of the events that would bring on the Horus Heresy.

Fulgrim met with the renowned Eldar Farseer Eldrad Ulthran of Craftworld Ulthwe on the Maiden World of Tarsus, in which the Farseer attempted to warn Fulgrim that Horus had been wounded by the Chaotic artifact blade known as the Kinebrach Anathame at the hands of Eugen Temba, the Planetary Governor of Davin who had fallen to the influence of the Plague Lord Nurgle. The wounding had allowed the Chaos Gods to gain a purchase on the Warmaster's soul and he was already turning to their service as he recuperated from the nearly-mortal wound the Kinebrach blade had given him at the hands of Temba on the Nurgle-corrupted moon of Davin. Fulgrim reacted with violent outrage at the Farseer's accusations due to his close friendship with his brother Horus, as his bond with the Warmaster was second only to that he shared with Ferrus Manus, the Primarch of the Xth Legion. This outrage was further enhanced by the influence of Fulgrim's daemonblade, which wanted the Primarch to reject the Eldar's truth and it led Fulgrim to launch an unprovoked and furious attack on Eldrad and his retinue alongside his Emperor's Children Captains and his personal Phoenix Guard. In the battle that ensued, the Emperor's Children slew both the revered Eldar Wraithlord Khiraen Goldhelm and a potent Avatar of Khaine, which forced the Farseer and the other Eldar troops to sorrowfully withdraw, as they realised that Chaos had already claimed yet another of the Mon-Keigh's Primarchs. Yet they had succeeded in killing all of Fulgrim's elite personal Phoenix Guard before their departure. Believing the Eldar had proven themselves a treacherous race that sought to divide and conquer the Imperium by spreading such lies about its leaders, Fulgrim, again under the increasing influence of the daemonblade, ordered the destruction by the 28th Expeditionary Fleet of several other beautiful Eldar Maiden Worlds using hideous virus bombs.

Whilst the exact timing of this meeting remains unknown in Imperial records, it is known that Fulgrim soon met Horus in person after the Eldar had provided their warning about the Warmaster's turn to Chaos, and Fulgrim demanded a personal account of his actions. Instead, Horus, deploying every ounce of his immense charisma, proved able to sway Fulgrim to his cause and the service of the Ruinous Powers. Fulgrim's respect for Horus allowed Chaos to find its own way into Fulgrim's heart, destroying Fulgrim's once rock-solid loyalty to the Emperor, and replacing it with the burning desire to destroy the man who he now believed held humanity back from the perfection Fulgrim so craved and that Horus convinced him only the Chaos Gods could truly provide. Only when Mankind had fully embraced Chaos could it know true perfection, Fulgrim came to believe, and the Emperor and his false Imperial Truth stood directly in the way of his and the rest of humanity's attainment of that perfection. In recognition of the trust that Horus put in his brother, he gifted him with the potent Chaotic blade known as the Kinebrach Anathame. Only the two brothers shared the secret of the poisoned blade's true power, as it was the weapon blessed by the Plague God Nurgle that had almost killed Horus on Davin's feral moon.

Fulgrim was next ordered by Horus to meet with Ferrus Manus, the Primarch of the Iron Hands Legion and Fulgrim's greatest friend amongst his brother Primarchs, aboard his flagship the Battle Barge Fist of Iron in the hope that he could be swayed to the side of Horus and the other Traitor Legions who now served Chaos. Fulgrim had sent the bulk of his Legion and the 28th Expeditionary Fleet on to meet Horus and the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet in the Istvaan System while he and a small force aided the Iron Hands' 52nd Expeditionary Fleet in retaking the world of Callinedes IV from Orks. Great bonds of friendship and brotherhood had long existed between them, and Fulgrim felt that he could convince Ferrus of the righteousness of Horus' cause. Fulgrim's hope proved disastrously wrong and the meeting of the two Primarchs in Ferrus' private inner sanctum in his flagship's Anvilarium did not go well, as Ferrus was outraged that his brothers would turn against their father the Emperor. The meeting ended in violence as The Gorgon made his difference of opinion over continued loyalty to the Emperor known to the Phoenician with his weapons, and he was determined to stop Fulgrim's betrayal of the Imperium before it could begin. Ferrus used his silvery necrodermis hands to destroy Fulgrim's Power Sword Fireblade, but the explosion knocked him out.

Fulgrim intended to kill his brother with his own weapon, the warhammer Forgebreaker, but proved unable to kill his oldest friend despite the promptings of the Slaaneshi daemon that now throttled his soul. When Fulgrim emerged from Ferrus' inner sanctum, he gave a signal to his Phoenix Guard who instantly beheaded all of the Iron Hands Morlocks Terminators who served as Ferrus Manus' bodyguard with their Power Halberds. The Emperor's Children also nearly slew the Iron Hands' First Captain Gabriel Santor. Fulgrim successfully fled the Iron Hands' expeditionary fleet in his personal assault craft, the Firebird, when he ordered his flagship, the Battle Barge Pride of the Emperor and its Escorts, to open fire upon the ships of the 52nd Expeditionary Fleet. This surprise attack crippled them and provided a distraction while Fulgrim and the forces of the IIIrd Legion fled into the Warp to rendezvous with the rest of their 28th Expeditionary Fleet in the Istvaan System.

With their allegiance now settled and their path forward determined, the Chaotic corruption of the Emperor's Children spread quickly throughout the IIIrd Legion, from Fulgrim to his chief lieutenants, the two Lord Commanders of the Legion, and then to its company captains and squad sergeants and finally to all but a small minority of Emperor's Children Astartes who followed the dictates of Slaanesh rather than remaining loyal to the Emperor. The IIIrd Legion's once-laudable quest for excellence and perfection had been corrupted into a desire to achieve perfect hedonism and constant, self-absorbed, sensual excess.

Istvaan III

Before Horus openly launched his rebellion to overthrow the Emperor, an opportunity presented itself that would enable him to get rid of the Loyalist elements within the Astartes Legions under his command. The Imperial Planetary Governor of Istvaan III, Vardus Praal, had been corrupted by the Chaos God Slaanesh whose cultists had long been active on the world even before it had been conquered by the Imperium. Praal had declared his independence from the Imperium, and had begun to practice forbidden Slaaneshi sorcery, so the Council of Terra charged Horus with the retaking of that world, primarily its capital, the Choral City. This order merely furthered Horus' plan to overthrow the Emperor. Although the four Legions under his direct command -- the Sons of Horus, World Eaters, Death Guard and the Emperor's Children -- had already turned Traitor and pledged themselves to Chaos, there were still some Loyalist elements within each of these Legions that approximated one-third of each force; many of these warriors were Terran-born Space Marines who had been directly recruited into the Astartes Legions by the Emperor Himself before being reunited with their Primarchs during the Great Crusade.

Horus, under the guise of putting down the rebellion against Imperial Compliance on the world of Istvaan III, amassed his troops in the Istvaan System. Horus had a plan by which he would destroy all of the remaining Loyalist elements of the Legions under his command. After a lengthy bombardment of Istvaan III, Horus dispatched all of the known Loyalist Astartes down to the planet, under the pretense of bringing it back into the Imperial fold. At the moment of victory and the capture of the Choral City, the planetary capital of Istvaan III, these Astartes were betrayed when a cascade of terrible Life-Eater virus-bombs fell onto the world, launched by the Warmaster's orbiting fleet. The Loyalist Captain Saul Tarvitz of the Emperor's Children, however, was aboard the Strike Cruiser Andronius and had discovered the plot to wipe out the Loyalist Astartes of the Traitor Legions. He was able, with help from Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro of the Death Guard who was in command of the Death Guard Frigate Eisenstein, to reach the surface of Istvaan III despite pursuit and warn the Loyalist Space Marines he could find of all four Legions of their impending doom. Those that heard or passed on Tarvitz's warning took shelter before the virus-bombs struck.

The civilian population of Istvaan III received no such protection: 12 billion people died almost at once as the lethal flesh-dissolving virus called the Life-Eater carried by the bombs infected every living thing on the planet. The psychic shock of so many deaths at one time shrieked through the Warp, briefly obscuring even the glowing beacon of the Astronomican. The Primarch of the World Eaters, Angron, realizing that the virus-bombs had not been fully effective at eliminating all the Loyalists, flew into a rage and hurled himself at the planet at the head of 50 companies of World Eaters Traitor Marines. Discarding tactics and strategy, the World Eaters Traitors worked themselves into a frenzy of mindless butchery fed by their growing allegiance to the Blood God Khorne. Horus was furious with Angron for delaying his plans, but Horus sought to turn the delay into a victory and was obliged to reinforce Angron with troops from the Sons of Horus, the Death Guard, and the Emperor's Children.

Fortunately, a contingent of Loyalists led by Battle-Captain Garro escaped Istvaan III aboard the damaged Imperial Frigate Eisenstein and fled to Terra to warn the Emperor that Horus had turned Traitor. On Istvaan III, the remaining Loyalists, under the command of Captains Tarvitz, Garviel Loken and Tarik Torgaddon, another Loyalist member of the Sons of Horus, fought bravely against their own traitorous brethren. Yet, despite some early successes that delayed Horus' plans for three full months while the battle on Istvaan III played out, their cause was ultimately doomed by their lack of air support and Titan firepower. During the battle, the Sons of Horus Captains Ezekyle Abaddon and Horus Aximand were sent to confront their former Mournival brothers, Loken and Torgaddon. Horus Aximand beheaded Torgaddon, but Abaddon failed to kill Loken when the building they were in collapsed. Loken somehow survived and witnessed the final orbital bombardment of Istvaan III that ended the Loyalists' desperate defense.

The few remaining Loyalists of the Emperor's Children Legion fought bravely on Istvaan III, led by Captains Saul Tarvitz and Solomon Demeter. To prove his worth and loyalty to Lord Commander Eidolon of the Emperor's Children -- and thus to his Primarch, Fulgrim -- Captain Lucius of the 13th Company of the Emperor's Children, the future Champion of Slaanesh known as Lucius the Eternal, turned against the Loyalists that he had fought beside because of his prior friendship with Saul Tarvitz. He wanted to punish Tarvitz for taking command of the defense, which had incited Lucius's fierce jealousy of his fellow captain. Lucius slew many of his former comrades personally, an act for which he was then accepted back into the III Legion on the side of the Traitors. In the end, the Loyalists retreated to their last bastion of defense, only a few hundred of their number remaining. Finally, tired of the conflict, Horus ordered his men to withdraw, and then had the remains of the Choral City bombarded into dust for a final time from orbit.

Lords of Pleasure

Throughout the final days of the Great Crusade, just before the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, the famed composer Bequa Kynska of Terra had accompanied the Emperor's Children's 28th Expeditionary Fleet as a Remembrancer aboard Fulgrim's Battle Barge Pride of the Emperor. Kynska was a jaded musician always in search of further sensations to create more exhilarating and all-encompassing music, which made her an easy target for Slaaneshi corruption. After Kynska accompanied many of the 28th Expedition's Remembrancers to the temple dedicated to Slaanesh on the xenos world of Laeran, she was touched by the Chaotic corruption of that foul place and slowly sought to create the ultimate orchestral piece that she believed could capture the wondrous sounds she had heard within the Laer temple. Her ultimate masterpiece was a symphony she named the Maraviglia and which she performed for Fulgrim and all the assembled Astartes of the Emperor's Children and their support personnel within the Remebrancers' lounge and theatre called La Fenice aboard the Pride of the Emperor. To recreate the sounds she had heard, Kynska created new musical instruments whose sonic powers could also be used for destruction when employed by an individual already corrupted by Slaanesh. As the Maraviglia began, the cacophony of sound unleashed by these instruments acted as a sorcerous ritual that opened a link between realspace and the Warp and allowed the power of Slaanesh to directly touch the audience. During the "performance" it was noted that the musical instruments were able to produce effects variously disorienting, stimulating and downright murderous.

Chaotic mutations ran rampant through the audience and Astartes and mortal humans alike were so overwhelmed by sensation and uncontrollable emotions that they unleashed an orgy of both sensual hedonism and the most base form of murder upon one another. Ultimately, the music summoned five Lesser Daemons of Slaanesh known as Daemonettes from the Warp who possessed the bodies of Kynska and several of her singers and joined in the slaughter. During this part of the concert, several Emperor's Children Astartes left their seats and took up the instruments to try and keep the Chaotic music playing and in the course of their untrained fumblings with the instruments discovered that they could unleash waves of destructive sonic power filled with the strength of Chaos. These Astartes became the first Noise Marines, who would eventually take to the field on Istvaan V wielding this strange, new weaponry as a new unit of the III Legion called the Kakophoni under the command of First Captain Julius Kaesoron. It was during this performance in La Fenice that the Emperor's Children finally gave themselves wholly, both body and soul, to the Prince of Pleasure as his most dedicated servants.

Drop Site Massacre

When the Loyalist Salamanders, Raven Guard and Iron Hands Legions arrived in the Istvaan System to face Horus and the Traitor Legions on Istvaan V, the Emperor's Children eagerly took part in the fighting. Thousands of Drop Pods and Stormbirds were deployed for the drop. The first wave was under the overall command of the Primarch Ferrus Manus and besides his own Xth Legion, the Salamanders led by Vulkan, and the Raven Guard under the command of their Primarch Corax joined him. Vulkan's Legion assaulted the left flank of the Traitors' battle line while Ferrus Manus, the Iron Hands' First Captain Gabriel Santor, and 10 full companies of elite Morlock Terminators charged straight into the center of the enemy lines. Meanwhile, Corax's Legion hit the right flank of the enemy's position. The odds were considered equal; 30,000 Traitor Marines against 40,000 Loyalists. Horus was aware of the location of the Loyalists' chosen drop site and his troops fell upon the Loyalist Legions.

The battlefield of Isstvan V was a slaughterhouse of epic proportions. Treacherous warriors twisted by hatred fought their former brothers-in-arms in a conflict unparalleled in its bitterness. The mighty Titan war engines of the Machine God walked the planet's surface and death followed in their wake. The blood of heroes and traitors flowed in rivers, and the hooded Heretek Adepts of the Dark Mechanicum unleashed perversions of ancient technology stolen from the Auretian Technocracy to wreak bloody havoc amongst the Loyalists. All across the Urgall Depression, hundreds died with every passing second, the promise of inevitable death a pall of darkness that hung over every warrior. The Traitor forces held, but their line was bending beneath the fury of the first Loyalist assault. It would take only the smallest twists of fate for it to break.

The second wave of "Loyalist" Space Marine Legions descended upon the landing zone on the northern edge of the Urgall Depression. Hundreds of Stormbirds and Thunderhawks roared towards the surface, their armoured hulls gleaming as the power of another four Astartes Legions arrived on Isstvan V. Yet the Space Marine Legions of the reserve were no longer loyal to the Emperor, having already secretly sworn themselves to Chaos and the cause of Horus. The Night Lords of Konrad Curze, the Iron Warriors of Perturabo, the Word Bearers of Lorgar, and the Alpha Legion of Alpharius represented a force larger than that which had first begun the assault on Isstvan V. The secret Traitor Legions mustered in the landing zone, armed and ready for battle, unbloodied and fresh.

Though the Iron Hands, Raven Guard and Salamanders had managed to make a full combat drop and secured the drop site, known as the Urgall Depression, they did so at a heavy cost. Overwhelmed with rage, the headstrong Ferrus Manus disregarded the counsel of his brothers Corax and Vulkan and hurled himself against the fleeing rebels, seeking to bring Fulgrim to personal combat. His veteran troops -- comprising the majority of the Xth Legion's Terminators and Dreadoughts -- followed. What had begun as a massed strike against the Traitors’ position was rapidly turning into one of the largest engagements of the entire Great Crusade. All told, over 60,000 Astartes warriors clashed on the dusky plains of Isstvan V. For all the wrong reasons, this battle was soon to go down in the annals of Imperial history as one of the most epic confrontations ever fought.

Fulgrim smiled as his brother Ferrus Manus renewed his attack into the heart of the Traitors' defensive lines atop the Urgall Depression. Backlit by the flaring strobe of battle, his brother was a magnificent figure of vengeance, his silver hands and eyes reflecting the fires of slaughter with a brilliant gleam. For the briefest second, Fulgrim had been sure that Ferrus would pause to muster with the Raven Guard and Salamanders, but there would be no restraining his brother's aggrieved sense of honour. Around the Phoenician, the last of the Phoenix Guard awaited the blunt wedge of the Iron Hands, their golden halberds held low and aimed towards their foes.

Ferrus Manus and his Morlocks charged through the shattered ruin of the defenses, his black armour and their burnished plates scarred and stained with the blood of enemies. Fulgrim's fixed smile faltered as he truly appreciated the depths of hatred his brother held for him and wondered again how they had come to this point, knowing that any chance for brotherhood was lost. Only in death would their rivalry end. The Iron Hands pushed through the defenses, the bulky Terminators unstoppable in their relentless advance. Lightning crackled from the claws of their gauntlets and their red eyes shone with anger. The Phoenix Guard braced themselves to meet the charge, fully aware of the power of such mighty suits of armour. The Phoenix Guard answered with a terrible war cry and leapt to meet the Morlocks in a searing clash of blades. Electric fire leapt from the golden edges of the halberds and the Lightning Claws of the warriors, and a storm of light and sound flared from each life and death struggle. The battle engulfed the Primarch of the Emperor’s Children, but he stood above it, awaiting the dark armoured giant who strode untouched through the lightning shot carnage as brothers hacked at one another in hatred. Ferrus had long dreamt of this moment of reckoning, ever since Fulgrim had come to him with betrayal in his heart. Only one of them would walk away from their final confrontation.

Final Confrontation

Ferrus taunted Fulgrim for his betrayal of the Emperor and siding with the Traitor Horus. He thought his brother mad, for the Warmaster was defeated -- his forces routed and the power of another four Legions would soon be brought to bear to crush their attempt at rebellion utterly. Unable to contain himself any longer, Fulgrim shook his head, savoring the final act of betrayal to come, revealing to Ferrus that it was he who was naive. Horus would never be foolish enough to trap himself like this. He pointed out towards the northern edge of the Urgall Depression so that Ferrus could see that it was he and his fellow Loyalists who were undone. Ferrus looked and saw a force larger than that which had begun the assault during the first wave of attack, mustered in the landing zone, armed and ready for battle.

Dragging their wounded and dead behind them, Corax and Vulkan led their forces back to the drop site to regroup and to allow the warriors of their recently arrived brother Primarchs of the second wave a measure of the glory in defeating Horus. Though they voxed hails requesting medical aid and supply, the line of Astartes atop the northern ridge remained grimly silent as the exhausted warriors of the Raven Guard and Salamanders came to within a hundred meters of their allies. It was then that Horus revealed his perfidy and sprung his lethal trap. Inside the black fortress where Horus had made his lair, a lone flare shot skyward, exploding in a hellish red glow that lit the battlefield below. The fire of betrayal roared from the barrels of a thousand guns, as the second wave of Astartes revealed where their true loyalties now lay. Ferrus looked on in stunned horror as Fulgrim laughed at the look on his brother's face as the forces of his "allies" opened fire upon the Salamanders and Raven Guard, killing hundreds in the fury of the first few moments, hundreds more in the seconds following, as volley after volley of Bolter fire and missiles scythed through their unsuspecting ranks.

Even as terrifying carnage was being wreaked upon the Loyalists below, the retreating forces of the Warmaster turned and brought their weapons to bear on the enemy warriors within their midst. Hundreds of Sons of Horus] and the Death Guard fell upon the veteran companies of the Iron Hands, and though the warriors of the XthLegion continued to fight gallantly, they were hopelessly outnumbered and would soon be hacked to pieces. Ferrus Manus turned to face Fulgrim, his teeth bared with the volcanic fury of his homeworld. The two Primarchs leapt at one anther, Ferrus wielding Fireblade and Fulgrim holding Forgebreaker. Their weapons had been forged in brotherhood, but were now wielded in vengeance, meeting in a blazing plume of energy. The two Primarchs traded blows with their monstrously powerful weapons, Ferrus Manus wielded his flaming blade in fiery slashes, his every blow defeated by the ebony hafted hammer he had borne in countless campaigns. Both warriors fought with the hatred only brothers divided could muster, their armour dented, torn and blackened by their fury.

The two Primarchs traded terrible blows, wounding one another deeply during their fierce struggle. As Ferrus pushed himself to his feet and staggered towards the wounded Fulgrim, he cried out as he brought the flaming blade towards his brother's neck. But Fulgrim lashed out as he drew the single-edged, daemonically-possessed sword he had taken from the Laer temple and blocked the descending weapon. With the power of Chaos streaming from the blade, diabolical strength flooded Fulgrim's limbs as he pushed against the power of Ferrus Manus, feeling his brother's surprise at his resistance. Fulgrim managed to surge to his feet and lashed out, his silver blade biting deep into the breastplate of Ferrus' armour, and the Primarch of the Iron Hands cried out, falling to his knees once again. Fireblade slid from his grasp as he gasped in fierce agony. As Fulgrim raised the silver sword in preparation of delivering the deathblow to Ferrus Manus, he found that he did not possess the fortitude to deliver the killing blow. In an instant he saw what he had become and what monstrous betrayal he had allowed himself to be party to. He knew in that eternal moment that he had made a terrible mistake in drawing the sword from the Temple of the Laer, and he fought to release the damnable blade that had brought him so low.

His grip was locked onto the weapon and even as he recognized how far he had fallen, he knew that he had come too far to stop, the realization coupled with the knowledge that everything he had striven for had been a lie. As though moving in slow motion, Fulgrim saw Ferrus Manus reaching for his fallen sword, his fingers closing around the wire-wound grip, the flames leaping once more to the blade at its creator's touch. Fulgrim's blade seemed to move with a life of its own as he swung the blade of his own volition. Fulgrim tried desperately to pull the blow, but his muscles were no longer his own to control. The daemonic blade sliced through the genetically-enhanced flesh and bone of one of the Emperor's sons. The Iron Hands' Primarch fell to the ground, his head decapitated. Ferrus Manus was dead by his brother's own hand.

Though Fulgrim had proved the victor, he discovered as he looked down at his battered brother's prostrate body that everything up until that moment had all been a lie. Fulgrim, as if awakened from a long sleep, was shocked by the death of Ferrus into thinking clearly about the situation for the first time since his expedition to Laeran, and he was horrified by what he had done and by the many betrayals that had led brother Astartes to slay one another. Overcome by his grief, he succumbed to a moment of weakness and foolishly agreed to the daemon's whispering suggestion that he could find release in oblivion. The Greater Daemon was then freed from the prison of the sword and fully possessed Fulgrim's body, claiming it for its own, trapping the real Fulgrim's consciousness away within a psychic prison formed within his own mind but symbolically represented by a painting of the Primarch that stood in the place of honour in La Fenice, the theatre of the IIIrd Legion's flagship, the Pride of the Emperor.

Fulgrim and the Warmaster

Following the Traitor's victory at Istvaan V, Fulgrim requested a private audience with the Warmaster. Horus was pleased as his brother presented the grisly trophy of the severed head of Ferrus Manus, as promised. Gloating at this great accomplishment, Horus wished to share this triumph with his fellow captains. But the Emperor's Children's Primarch informed Horus that Fulgrim did not possess the fortitude to fulfill his oath to his brother, so he had done it for him! The Warmaster suddenly realised that the creature that stood before him was not truly his brother Fulgrim, but some sort of doppelganger. Horus threatened harm against this false Fulgrim, informing the creature that he could break him like a straw. The false Fulgrim had no desire to test himself in such a wasteful and fruitless trial of combat. Horus glanced towards Fulgrim’s waist, and relaxed as he saw that this thing masquerading as his brother had come before him unarmed. Whatever its purpose in unveiling itself, it had not come with violence on its mind. For he had come to pledge his loyalty to Horus' cause. He then informed Horus that he was actually a creature of the Warp -- a humble servant of the great power that was the Dark Prince Slaanesh. The Greater Daemon explained to the horrified Horus that he had claimed Fulgrim's mortal shell as his own, and further explained how pleasing it was to him.

Horus inquired as to his brother's fate. The daemon who now inhabited Fulgrim's body explained to Horus that Fulgrim was quite safe, residing within the body now under the control of the Greater Daemon, utterly aware of all that transpired but unable to do anything to intervene. His cries of anguish were a great comfort to the malefic creature. Horus was appalled by this turn of events, and said nothing in response to the daemon's revelations. The Daemon-Fulgrim had pledged its allegiance to his cause and it was a patently powerful Warp entity. Horus thought it best to keep the creature as an ally, for he certainly could not do without the IIIrd Legion at this juncture. However, Horus resolved to destroy the daemon and rescue Fulgrim from his torment when the time was right, for no one deserved to endure such a terrible fate. But Horus wondered what power could unmake a daemon. Horus and the Daemon-Fulgrim agreed to keep its true nature to themselves. The daemon had no particular desire to reveal itself and Horus was convinced that such a revelation would create many problems for him with the other Primarchs dedicated to the Traitors' cause.

Traitor Conclave

Four days after the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V, Horus Lupercal assembled those Primarchs who stood in opposition to the Imperium aboard his flagship, the Vengeful Spirit. They all knew the costs of the coming campaign, and their destinies within it. The Traitor fleets were underway. But after the "unpleasantness" of Isstvan, this was the first time they had gathered as a full fraternity. Eight Primarchs were present, though only half of them were physically in the room where the gathering took place. This included Fulgrim, Perturabo, Angron and Lorgar Aurelian. The absent four were nothing more than holographic projections: three of them -- Konrad Curze, Mortarion and Alpharius -- manifested around the table in the forms of flickering grey hololithic simulacra. The fourth of them appeared as a brighter image comprised of the silver radiance of brilliant witchfire. This last image was of Magnus the Red, who projected himself from afar by sorcerous means, from the Sorcerer's Planet where he was still licking his wounds from the recent Burning of Prospero by Leman Russ' Space Wolves.

As soon as Lorgar had taken his seat at the council table he could not take his eyes off his brother Fulgrim. The Warmaster grew ever more weary of his brother's inability to adhere to established planning and his lack of attention to the important gathering. Before the meeting could properly get underway, Lorgar slowly reached for the ornate Crozius mace on his back. As he drew the weapon in the company of his closest kin, his eyes remained locked on one of them, and all physically present felt the deepening chill of psychic frost riming along their armour. The Word Bearer Primarch accused the thing that mimicked his brother in physical appearance as not being who he purported to be. Before anyone could react, Lorgar's Crozius mace struck the supposed Emperor's Children Primarch. Fulgrim crashed into the back wall, his prostrate form crumpled to the ground. Turning his fierce eyes upon his other brothers he declared that this pretender was not Fulgrim. The other Primarchs that were present, advanced upon the changeling, drawing their own weapons. The Warmaster tried to placate the enraged Lorgar, his merest threat of a confrontation had usually been enough to quell Lorgar from any rash actions in the past. But as they faced Aurelian now, even Horus was wide-eyed in the changes wrought within him since Istvaan V. Clutching his mace in his crimson coloured gauntlets, defying his brothers, he warned them to stay back.

When Horus once again attempted to calm the enraged Primarch, Lorgar was surprised at the sudden realization that the Warmaster already knew that Fulgrim was not whom he pretended to be. The Warmaster informed his fellow Primarchs that he would personally deal with the situation and dismissed them all from his chambers, with the exception of Lorgar. The Word Bearers Primarch could see the truth -- this creature was one of daemons of Chaos -- as whatever was wearing his brother's skin and armour had its soul hollowed out. Something nestled within, puppeteering the soulless body of their own brother. What Lorgar couldn't understand was how this had come to pass and why did Horus continue to protect such a dark secret? Horus explained to his brother that he had not orchestrated Fulgrim's demise; he was merely containing the aftermath.

Lorgar was perturbed that another sentience now rode within Fulgrim's body. Horus was annoyed at his brother's line of questioning, for Lorgar and Fulgrim had never been close. Why did it matter to him? Lorgar explained that it mattered because this vile intrusion was a perversion of the natural order. There was no harmony in such a joining. Not like his own blessed daemon-possessed sons, the Gal Vorbak. A living soul had been annihilated for its mortal shell to simply house a greedy, unborn wretch of a daemon. During Lorgar's Pilgrimage to the Eye of Terror years earlier, he had walked in the Warp itself. He had stood where the gods and mortals met. Lorgar knew this form of possession was weakness and corruption -- a perversion of what the Chaos Gods wished for Mankind. The Ruinous Powers wanted allies and willing followers, not soulless husks ridden by their daemons.

Using his powerful psychic abilities, Lorgar held the daemon at bay. The Warmaster cautioned that he was killing Fulgrim, but Lorgar replied that it was not their brother, but an "it" -- one that he could destroy if he so wished it. Lorgar threatened the daemon that he would learn its true name and banish it back into the Warp. The Daemon-Fulgrim was helpless against Lorgar's formidable psychic abilities. As the Warmaster attempted to restrain his brother by placing his hand on Lorgar's shoulder, the Primarch psychically commanded Horus to remove his hand. Unable to resist, Horus obeyed. His fingers shivered as they withdrew, and his grey eyes flickered with tension. As the enraged Lorgar strode away from the council chambers, Horus commented that his brother had changed since crossing blades with Corax on the surface of Istvaan V. Lorgar replied that everything had changed that night. He then took his leave and returned to his ship to contemplate what he perceived as utter foulness.

Fulgrim's Fate

Those that served in the IIIrd Legion had no idea that their beloved leader was clawing ineffectually at the bondage of his own mind in which he was held. Only the swordsman,Captain Lucius of the 13th Company, had appeared to realise that something was amiss with Fulgrim, but even he had said nothing. The Daemon-Fulgrim had sensed the burgeoning Warp touch upon the warrior and had presented him with the silver daemon blade within which the Laer had bound a fragment of its essence, as he now wielded the far more potent Kinebrach Anathame, a gift from Horus. Though the Laer Daemon sword was now bereft of its spirit, there was still power within the blade, power that would empower Lucius in the years of death to come.

After the conclave aboard Horus' flagship, the Daemon-Fulgrim and the Emperor's Children Legion were ordered to Mars to aid the coming civil war within the Adeptus Mechanicus by the Warmaster. But instead of following his brother's orders, the increasingly mercurial Primarch decided to disobey, and instead ordered his Legion to assault an Adeptus Mechanicus crystal Mining World called Prismatica V. Unable to deal with his lord's mercurial temperament as well as his fellow senior members of the Legion, Lord Commander Eidolon questioned the Primarch's orders. This proved to be a tragic miscalculation on Eidolon's part. Unable to placate his angered lord, the few words he managed to speak on his own behalf inadvertently provoked the Primarch further. The paranoid Primarch believed that the Lord Commander was mocking him and planned to betray him. Quicker than the mind's eye could follow, the Primarch withdrew the Anathame from its scabbard and slew his once-favored son. He then held the severed head of the slain Eidolon over the opened casks of victory wine, the viscous blood dripping from the grisly trophy and mixing with the potent drink which was then shared amongst the senior members of the IIIrd Legion's inner circle.

Far from upset at the death of the much-despised Eidolon, the ascendant champion of the Emperor's Children, Lucius, took note of yet another example of Fulgrim's increasingly capricious behavior. Contemplating upon the change in his lord, Lucius was inspired to investigate further after receiving a series of dark dreams concerning the painting of the Primarch that hang in La Fenice, which had been cordoned off and sealed by a detachment of the Phoenix Guard after the Maraviglia had worked its corrupting influence upon the Legion. Already concerned by his lord's erratic behavior and strange moods, Lucius proceeded to scrutinise the Primarch's every move. His concerns grew even more when he noticed Fulgrim's lack of brotherly-camaraderie and observance of Legion rituals and tradition. But what truly aroused Lucius' suspicions was the realization that Fulgrim's swordsmanship was suddenly inferior to his own superlative skills. His Primarch was not whom he appeared to be. His suspicions were further confirmed when he witnessed Fulgrim employing powerful psychic abilities in open combat against a Warhound-class Titan of the Adeptus Mechanicus during the IIIrdLegion's assault on Prismatica V.

Lucius continued to receive the strange dreams in his sleep, and began to follow the threads implanted by these prescient visions. Breaking a standing order, Lucius defied the Primarch and went to investigate La Fenice, the theatre located aboard the Emperor's Childrens' flagship Pride of the Emperor. This is where the Emperor's Children had truly fallen to the corrupting influence of Slaanesh, awakened by the operatic symphony known as the Maraviglia. Investigating the ruined chamber thoroughly, Lucius discovered above the stage that a great portrait hung above the smashed wreckage of the proscenium. Even in the dying light, the portrait’s magnificence was palpable. A glorious golden frame held the canvas trapped within its embrace, and the wondrous perfection of the painting was truly breathtaking. Clad in his wondrous armour of purple and gold, Fulgrim was portrayed before the great gates of the Heliopolis, the heart of the flagship, the flaming wings of a great phoenix sweeping up behind him. The firelight of the legendary bird shone upon his armour, each polished plate seeming to shimmer with the heat of the fire, his hair a cascade of gold. The Primarch of the Emperor’s Children was lovingly portrayed in perfect detail, every nuance of his grandeur and the life that made Fulgrim such a vision of beauty captured in the exquisite brushwork. No finer figure of a warrior had ever existed or ever would again, and to even glimpse such a flawless example of the painter’s art was to know that wonder still existed in the galaxy.

Gazing at the eyes of the painting, Lucius could see the horror within his Primarch's eyes, a horror that had not been rendered by the skill of a mortal painter. The perfect, exquisite agony burned in the portrait's gaze, the dark pools of the painted eyes seemed to follow his every movement. Lucius came to the conclusion that somehow, his Primarch was trapped within the painting, and that the entity that paraded around as their Legion's lord was an impostor. Determined to free his Primarch by any means at his disposal, Lucius secretly convened the Brotherhood of the Phoenix -- the exclusive warrior lodge of the IIIrd Legion that only allowed warriors of officer rank to join because of the Legion's love of hierarchy. This had to be done with the utmost secrecy, for by this time the corrupted senior officers had become powerful, volatile and self-obsessed with the pursuit of their individual pleasures. Also, many of these senior officers carried a loathing for Lucius, whom they viewed as a despised upstart. Through his skilled oratory, the swordsman was able to persuade his mercurial brothers that the Primarch was not himself. He further challenged their egos and stroked their vanity, tempting them into boldly capturing their Primarch. Shortly after, the Brotherhood of the Phoenix ambushed the Primarch, and despite taking several casualties, manage to subdue their lord by rendering him unconscious.

The Primarch was then taken to the Apothecarion of the IIIrd Legion's Chief Apothecary Fabius Bile, where he was strapped down to one of the examination tables. Here, Fabius, Lucius, Julius Kaesoron and Marius Vairosean attempted to drive forth the daemonic entity from their lord's mortal shell through a protracted torture session known as excruciation. Fulgrim willingly submitted himself to his tormentors' ministrations, and continuously spoke of his perceptions of reality, events that were currently taking place in the galaxy as Chaos grew in power and the envisioned path for his Legion. During the torture session, Lucius suddenly realized that they had been misled. Misinterpreting the situation, they had been duped by their lord. Lucius immediately bended his knee and prostrated himself before his Primarch as Fulgrim easily tore himself free from his restraints. His fellow conspirators all bowed to their lord and master. Content that his favored sons had learned from the experience, the Primarch did not punish them for their transgressions, for he was not the daemon-possessed shell of the Phoenix as he had allowed his Astartes to believe, but the man himself.

Fulgrim decided to share with Lucius his motives for such an elaborate ruse. He revealed that he had indeed been possessed by a daemonic entity for quite some time, an entity that had trapped his disembodied spirit within the great portrait that had hung in La Fenice. Unwilling to accept his fate, the Primarch had bided his time and used the tormenting experience to learn of Warp-craft and the infallible ways of daemon kind. He eventually was able to use this newly acquired arcane knowledge to force the daemon out of his mortal body -- swapping places with the foul entity -- and trapping it within the portrait for all time. Presumably, it was the daemon that had been sending Lucius the dark dreams in order to attempt to free itself from its prison. In an attempt to further educate his favoured champion in the unfathomable ways of Chaos, the Primarch's apparent inferiority in his sword techniques was merely a ploy to manipulate Lucius into challenging him. The Primarch went on to explain that his mercurial moods and lack of interest in camaraderie and the IIIrd Legion's rituals were a natural evolution of his nature to achieve perfection along the path laid out by Slaanesh. Fulgrim announced that he intended to go further than anyone in the realms of sensual experience, intent on pushing the boundaries of reality to the extreme. Fulgrim didn't merely want to accomplish these things for the sole acquisition of power, but to experience the journey -- a journey he wanted his sons to undertake with him. He explained that he had ordered the assault on Prismatica V to claim the crystal the Mechanicus had been mining there so that it might be used to erect a wondrous new city of mirrors dedicated to the exploration of sensual pleasure and self-enlightenment through sensation. But the next step on the Emperor's Children's path towards enlightenment through Chaos, was to rendezvous with the Primarch Perturabo and his Iron Warriors Legion.

Angel Exterminatus

As Horus' rebellion ground on, the Iron Warriors took the time to humble their great enemies, the Imperial Fists, upon the isolated world of Hydra Cordatus that the Sons of Dorn had recently brought into Imperial Compliance. Following their victory, word reached Perturabo that Fulgrim and his Emperor's Children Legion, wished to rendezvous with him to discuss something of great import. Though the Phoenecian had yet to reveal the true purpose of his visit, he had promised Perturabo that it was "wondrous." Perturabo knew that his brother had a flair for the melodramatic, which only seemed to have gotten worse since the IIIrd Legion threw their lot in with the Warmaster. The Lord of Iron counted none of his fellow Primarchs as close, but the Phoenician's adherence to perfection in all things had once provided common ground between the two superhuman warriors and allowed them to talk as trusted comrades-in-arms if not beloved brothers. What the Emperor’s Children had sought with constant movement towards the attainment of perfection, the Iron Warriors earned with rigid discipline and methodical planning; two divergent paths to the same ultimate goal.

Perturabo believed Fulgrim's visit had something to do with the inevitable campaign to be conducted against Mars. The Warmaster needed the Martian theater fully secured before they moved against Terra, and he believed that Fulgrim was there to seek the Iron Warriors' aid in breaking open the forge-cities of the Mechanicum. If he was right, Perturabo wanted his Legion to have a plan in place to achieve that objective. Until the Iron Warriors received further orders, Perturabo would humor his brother and listen to what Fulgrim had to say. While making plans for the upcoming campaign, Perturabo received word that the Emperor's Children had arrived, unannounced, on the surface of Hydra Cordatus. Over three hundred drop-craft had landed beyond the mouth of the valley where the Iron Warriors had made their encampment.

The IV Legion quickly gathered in formation to honour the IIIrd Legion with a vanguard to receive them. Battalions of Thorakitai Imperial Army troops stood ranked in their tens of thousands. Before them stood two hundred Grand Battalions of Iron Warriors, fifty thousand warriors in amberdust-burnished warplate. Such a display of might and magnificence had not been seen since the slaughter unleashed upon the black sands of Istvaan V. Yet Perturabo and his senior officers looked on in awe at the gaudy cavalcade of noise, colour and spectacle that emerged from the IIIrd Legion's drop site into the valley. Fulgrim and his Emperor’s Children were now completely unrecognizable from the honourable warriors that had once formed the IIIrd Legion. Perturabo knew something fundamental had changed within the Emperor’s Children, but could not imagine what purpose the disfigurements and degradations its warriors now sported could possibly serve.

Fulgrim met with his brother Primarch in the private inner sanctum of his command bunker with an enticing offer that Perturabo could not refuse; the means to make it so that the Lord of Iron's every desire could be made real and would never disappoint, never fail to live up to his fondest expectations, and never, ever be eclipsed. Fulgrim came with an offer to unite their mutual forces in battle on a glorious quest. One that might tip the balance of the Warmaster’s rebellion. Though Perturabo was suspicious of his brother's intentions, perhaps this joint venture would grant understanding through common cause. Fulgrim revealed his purpose; they were to venture to the Warp Storm that had plagued Perturabo's dreams all of his life. Within it was hidden an ancient and forbidden xenos weapon known as the Angel Exterminatus. It had been hidden in the grave of its doom, a weapon of such power that the stars themselves turned upon it rather than allow it to escape its prison.

Sisypheum

Unknown to both the Emperor's Children and the Iron Warriors, they were being pursued by a ragtag group of Loyalist Astartes who were survivors of the Drop Site Massacre of Istvaan V and were determined to stop the Traitors at all costs. These Loyalist Space Marines were gathered from survivors that had fought their way out of the killing ground of the Urgall Depression on Istvaan V. They had managed to escape the Istvaan System aboard an Iron Hands Strike Cruiser known as the Sisypheum. Iron Hands Astartes and their mortal serfs formed the bulk of the warship's crew, but surviving warriors of the Salamanders and a single Raven Guard Astartes were also counted among their number. In the wake of the slaughter, escape from the Istvaan System had been a nerve shredding series of mad dashes under fire and silent runs through the Traitors' orbital blockade, culminating in a final sprint to the gravipause, the minimum safe distance between a star’s mass and a vessel’s ability to survive a Warp Jump. The Sisypheum had escaped the trap, but not without great cost.

The months that followed saw the Sisypheum embark on a series of hit-and-run attacks on Traitor forces on the northern frontiers of the galaxy, wreaking harm like a lone predator swimming in a dark ocean. Traitor forces seeking flanking routes through the Segmentum Obscurus were their prey; scout craft, cartographae ships, slow-moving supply hulks heavily laden with mortal troops, ammunition and weapons. Disruption and harassment were the Sisypheum's main objective until contact had been established with disparate groups of Loyalist forces that had also escaped the massacre, and a stratagem of sorts agreed upon. With the Xth Legion too scattered to function in a traditional battlefield role, its surviving commanders found their own way to fight back: as the thorns in the flanks of the leviathan that distract it from the swordthrust to the vitals.

At Cavor Sarta, an Iron Hand known as Sabak Wayland and the lone Raven Guard survivor Nykona Sharrowkyn had captured an Unlingual Cipher Host -- one of the so-called "Kryptos" -- a hybrid abomination creature of the Dark Mechanicum that had previously made the Traitors' code network a cryptographic impossibility to break. With the Kryptos, Loyalist commanders were able to finally access the Traitors’ coded communications. And with this knowledge, the Sisypheum's Captain, the Iron Hand Ulrach Branthan, had ordered the Sisypheum to make the circuitous journey to Hydra Cordatus and the meeting of the Traitor Primarchs that had been indicated by the cracked communications. After learning of Fulgrim's intentions to enter the Eye of Terror and recover the Angel Exterminatus, the crew of the Sisypheum made their way towards the Warp Rift, aided by a mysterious Eldar guide with the intention of thwarting the Traitors' plan to acquire the unknown xenos weapon.

Crone World

The destination of the joint fleet of Iron Warriors and Emperor's Children vessels was the lost Eldar world of Iydris, a world said to have been favoured by the Eldar Goddess Lileath. Iydris was one of the legendary Crone Worlds, which once formed the heart of the lost Eldar empire before they were consumed by the creation of the vast Warp Rift that was the Eye of Terror following the birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh. The lost world was located at the heart of the Eye of Terror, somehow remaining in a fixed position keeping it from destruction in the gravitational hellstorm of a super massive black hole that lay at the centre of the eternal Warp Storm. It was from this epicentre that the galaxy vomited unnatural matter into the void, a dark doorway to an unknowable destination and an unimaginably powerful singularity whose gravity was so strong that it consumed light, matter, space and time in its destructive core.

Their ultimate goal was within the Primarchs' grasp; the Sepulchre of Isha's Doom, which sat at the centre of the citadel of Amon ny-shak Kaelis. The citadel stood astride the entrance to the prison tomb of the Angel Exterminatus. Before launching a full planetary assault, the Iron Warriors launched a preliminary orbital bombardment around the citadel, a standard practise when preparing to assault a potentially hostile environment. A cone of fire gouged the surface of Iydris, burning, pounding and flattening in the blink of an eye structures that had stood inviolate for tens of thousands of Terran years. A barren ring of pulverized earth encircled the citadel of Amon ny-shak Kaelis, leaving its walls, towers and temples an isolated island cut off from the rest of the planet’s structures by a billowing firestorm of planet-cracking force. In the wake of this orbital bombardment flocks of Thunderhawks, Stormbirds, Warhawks and heavy planetary landers launched from crammed embarkation decks. Bulk tenders descended to low orbit and disgorged thousands of troop carriers, armour lifters and supply barques. Titanic, gravity-cushioned mass-landers moved with majestic slowness as two Titans of the Legio Mortis took to the field, and this was but the first wave of the invasion. Another eight would follow before the martial power of two entire Space Marine Legions and their auxiliary Imperial Army forces had made planetfall.

Amon ny-shak Kaelis

Fulgrim looks on as his Emperor's Children, his brother Perturabo and the Iron Warriors fight for their lives against an army of Eldar revenants within the Sepulchre of Isha's Doom at the heart of the citadel of Amon ny-shak Kaelis

The Traitors' assault began five hours later, despite the full circuit of fortifications still being incomplete. For all intents and purposes, the route into the citadel of Amon ny-shak Kaelis was undefended and their route unopposed. Ever mistrustful of the lack of defenses, Perturabo had his Iron Warriors dug in, assuming a perfect formation outside the walls in a layered barbican that protected the Traitor Legions' line of retreat. Fulgrim’s host broke apart into individual warbands, ranging in size from around a hundred warriors to groups of nearly a thousand. Each of these autonomous groups appeared to be led by a captain, though such was the bizarre ornamentation and embellishment on each warrior’s armour, it was often impossible to discern specific rankings. Leaving the fortified bridgehead behind, Perturabo led his Iron Warriors and the Emperor’s Children contingent into the heart of Amon ny-shak Kaelis. The Sepulchre of Isha’s Doom was a monumental palace, sprawling and richly ornamented with bulbous mourn-towers and sweeping, ivory-roofed domes. As the column of Traitors pressed onwards towards the sepulchre, they were being silently and unknowingly observed by the Loyalist Astartes of the Sisypheum. Despite being outnumbered a thousand to one, the small force of Loyalist Legionaries devised a means to find another way into the massive sepulcher.

As the two Primarchs neared their ultimate goal, Fulgrim kept pressing his stern brother with curt impatience to not linger. Perturabo took the time to study Fulgrim and his assembled host. His brother was sheened in sweat, but it was not perspiration that beaded his brow, Fulgrim was sweating light. Though it was faint, it was visible to Perturabo's gene-enhanced sight that saw beyond what even Astartes eyes were capable of detecting. He wondered if Fulgrim was aware of the radiance bleeding from him and decided he must be. His brother’s armour strained against his body and his features were drawn and tired, as though only by an effort of will was he still standing. His captains looked no better, like hounds straining at the leash. A number of Fulgrim's Lord Commanders' flesh was also suffused with a light similar to that enveloping Fulgrim, a deathly radiance that had no place within a living being. Perturabo did not trust Fulgrim one bit, knowing that inevitably he would be betrayed by his brother. The Lord of Iron pressed on, intent on bringing their quest to completion. As they neared their final destination at the heart of the sepulcher, the power at the heart of Iydris spasmed in hateful recognition of the followers of Slaanesh, known to the Eldar as She Who Thirsts, and awoke its guardians from their slumber.

Thousands of crystalline statues threw off their previous immobility. They moved stiffly, like sleepers awoken from an aeons-long slumber, and the gems at the heart of their bulbous heads bled vibrant color into glassy bodies that suddenly seemed significantly less fragile. This army of wraiths were the Eldar dead of Iydris. Soon both the Traitor forces outside the citadel as well as those inside were attacked from all sides by the revenant army. Like automata, but with a hideously organic feel to their movements, the Eldar constructs emerged in their thousands with every passing second. As Perturabo was busy fighting for his life, Fulgrim slipped away in the midst of the fighting. Realizing where he had gone, the Lord of Iron stepped into the green glow emanating from the center of the massive chamber. Perturabo understood that this was no elemental energy or mechanically generated motive force, but the distilled essence of all those who had died there.

Perturabo descended downwards on an unending spiral towards a point of light that grew no brighter no matter how far he descended. The journey downwards was never-ending, or so it seemed until it ended. Fulgrim stood at the origin of a slender bridge that arched out to the center of a spherical chamber of incredible, sanity-defying proportions. The footings of the bridge were anchored on the equator, and a score of other bridges reached out to where a seething ball of numinous jade light blazed like a miniature sun. Iydris, it transpired, was a hollow world, its core this colossal void with the impossibly bright sun at its heart. Perturabo confronted his brother, realizing that there was never an Angel Exterminatus. Fulgrim confirmed for Perturabo that there was no such weapon yet, for he was to be the Angel Exterminatus. Perturabo responded that his brother always did have an appetite for rampant narcissism, but this was the grandest delusion yet. Unamused at Fulgrim's explanation, Perturabo took a step towards his brother, Forgebreaker in his hand, intent on killing him. Fulgrim spoke a single word, its nightmare syllables tore at Perturabo's brain, causing him to stumble and drop to one knee. Fulgrim revealed the reason for his brother being drained of energy.

When Fulgrim had arrived on Hydra Cordatus he had presented the Lord of Iron with a gift; a folded cloak of softest ermine, trimmed with foxbat fur and embroidered with an endlessly repeating pattern of spirals in the golden proportion. A flattened skull of chromed steel acted as the fastener. Set in the skull’s forehead was a gemstone the size of a fist, black and veined with hair-fine threads of gold. As they had made their way towards the heart of the Eye of Terror, the large gemstone at the center of the skull-carved cloak pin had changed from black to a solid gold color and pulsed with its own internal heartbeat. This was the maugetar stone, known as the harvester, which had slowly been draining Perturabo's strength and life force. With the Lord of Iron's sacrifice, Fulgrim would finally be able to achieve apotheosis. The two Primarchs ascended upwards within the shaft of light, emerging into the chaos that was happening within the heart of the sepulcher.

Apotheosis of Fulgrim

The Primarch of the Emperor’s Children hurled his brother aside, and Perturabo fell in a languid arc to land with a crunch of metal and crystal at the edge of the shaft. Blood trailed the air in a streaming red arc from Perturabo’s chest. The Lord of Iron lay unmoving, his body broken and lifeless. The attention of every Astartes within the chamber was irrevocably drawn towards the Primarch, for they recognized that an event of great moment was in the offing. The Phoenician was no longer the same being as had descended into the planet. He floated in the air above the shaft, which no longer poured its green torrent up to the restless darkness above, but simply radiated a fading glow of dying light. Fulgrim’s armour was shimmering with vitality, as though the light of a thousand suns were contained within him and strained to break free. The Primarch’s dark, doll-like eyes were twin black holes, doorways to heights of experience and sensation the likes of which could only be dreamed by madmen and those willing to go to any lengths to taste them.

Just as Fulgrim was about to achieve his ultimate desire, Perturabo had regained enough of his former strength and rose to his feet, the maugetar stone in his hand. Perturabo walked towards Fulgrim, keeping the hand holding the maugetar stone extended over the shaft in the center of the chamber. Perturabo looked his brother in the eye for some hint of remorse, a sign that he regretted that things had come to this, something to show he felt even a moment of shame at plotting to murder his brother. He saw nothing, and his heart broke to know that the Fulgrim he had known long ago was gone, never to return. He had not thought it possible that anyone could plunge so far as to be beyond redemption. Perturabo knew that Fulgrim no longer wanted to be an angel, he wanted to be a god. He informed the Phoenician that Mankind had outgrown such beings a long time ago. Disgusted by Fulgrim's desires, Perturabo hurled the maugetar stone into the deep shaft.

Suddenly, a barrage of Bolter fire erupted and a handful of Emperor's Children Astartes were pitched from their feet. Black-armoured Space Marines bearing a mailed fist upon their shoulder guards charged towards the Traitors. It was the Astartes of the X Legion, the Iron Tenth -- the Iron Hands. Soon the battle was joined, as Loyalist fought Traitor within the expansive chamber. The noose of battle was closing on the two Primarchs at its center -- Perturabo locked on his knees, and Fulgrim hovering in the air as though bound to his brother by ties not even the call of war could break. The Iron Hands were mired in battle with the Emperor’s Children and Iron Warriors, zipping streams of fire blasting back and forth between them. During the battle, one of the Loyalist Astartes, the Raven Guard named Sharrowkyn, had acquired the fallen maugetar stone. He instinctively knew that if this stone was desired by Fulgrim, then it had to be destroyed. Taking a Bolter from a fallen Emperor's Children Astartes, he aimed the muzzle at the strange gold and black stone and pulled the trigger.

The weakened Perturabo was renewed with the sudden release of his life force from the Chaotic relic. Fulgrim’s body arched in sympathetic resonance, for the maugetar stone contained more than just the strength stolen from Perturabo by Fulgrim. It contained their mingled essences, a power greater than the sum of its parts, a power to fuel an ascent so brutal that only the combined life-force of two Primarchs could achieve it. Armour burned from Fulgrim’s body, flaking away like golden dust in a hurricane, leaving his monstrously swollen body naked and his flesh blazing with furnace heat. Spectral flames of shimmering pink and purple licked around his body, a hungry fire waiting to consume him the moment his focus slipped. As the Lord of Iron finally pushed himself upright and stood fully erect, he lifted Forgebreaker onto his shoulder. Fulgrim saw his death in Perturabo's eyes and grinned, knowing that his brother had to do it. Perturabo hefted Forgebreaker like a headsman at an execution and swung the mighty hammer in a wide arc, splitting the Phoenician's body wide open. It was done.

Fulgrim’s body exploded under the impact of Perturabo’s warhammer, and the cry of release was a shrieking birth scream. An explosion of pure force ripped from the Phoenician’s destroyed flesh, filling the chamber of towers with a blinding light that was too bright to look upon, too radiant to ignore. Like a newborn sun, the wondrous incandescence was the center of all things, a rebirth in fire, new flesh crafted from the ashes of the old. Every eye in the chamber was turned to the light, though it would surely blind them or drive them to madness. Through slitted fingers and shimmering reflections, the survivors of the fighting bore witness to something magnificent and terrible, an agonizing death and violent birth combined. A figure floated in the midst of the light, and it took a moment for Perturabo to recognize the impossibility of what he was seeing. It was Fulgrim, naked and pristine, his body unsullied by any of the mawkish ornamentation with which he had defaced his flesh, as perfect as the day the Emperor had first conceived him. Fulgrim’s back arched and his bones split with gunshot cracks. His flesh, once so perfect, now ran fluid and malleable, his form molding and remolding as though an invisible sculptor pressed and worked him like clay upon a wheel. Fulgrim’s legs, extended like the man of Vitruvius, ran and lengthened, fusing together in a writhing serpent’s tail, the skin thickening and sheening with reptilian scales and segmented plates of chitinous armour. Perturabo took a step towards this thing being born from the death of his brother, all the while despairing that this was his brother.

Perturabo had destroyed Fulgrim’s mortal shell. This was an immaterial avatar of light and energy, of soul and desire. What was being done here was an act of will, a creature birthing itself through its own desire to exist. Fulgrim’s face was a mask of agonized rapture, a pain endured for the pleasure it promised. Two obsidian horns erupted from Fulgrim’s brow, curling back over his skull, leaving his perfect face as unsullied as the most innocent child. Fulgrim ascended into Chaos, a prince of the Neverborn, a lord of the Ruinous Powers, the chosen and beloved Champion of Slaanesh. As the newborn Daemon Prince departed, the first of the Traitor Primarchs to achieve daemonic apotheosis, he left his brother with a cryptic message that they would one day meet again, and both brothers would yet renew their bonds. Lifting his hands into the air, a curtain of light rose up from the ground and Fulgrim and all of his Emperor's Children Chaos Space Marines disappeared in a flare of arcane teleportation energy.

With the disappearance of the Emperor's Children, the Crone World of Iydris began to tear itself apart. The force at the heart of the world was no more. The strength of the life forces of the dead Eldar that had kept it safe was failing, and soon this planet would be swallowed by the unimaginable force of the super massive black hole that lay at the heart of the Eye of Terror. Across the chasm, the remaining Iron Hands gathered up their wounded and fell back from the spreading fissures and heaving ruptures opening in the floor. They looked upon Perturabo with hatred, but decided to make their way off-world from the doomed planet. They knew that they could not fight the Lord of Iron and live through the encounter. Perturabo let the Iron Hands depart. Then he led his warriors out of the crumbling citadel. Once aboard his flagship the Iron Blood, Perturabo watched the final death throes of the Eldar Crone World.

The Iron Blood strained to break orbit, but the force at the heart of the Eye of Terror was reasserting its grip on reality with a vengeance. Many of the smaller vessels of the Iron Warriors survivor fleet that had followed the Sisypheum had already been dragged within its embrace, swallowed by the black hole’s powerful energies. Only the capital ships had engines large enough to resist the inexorable pull, but even they were only delaying the inevitable. Perturabo's Triarchs stood patiently around their lord, awaiting his orders. The Lord of Iron informed them that he always moved forward, never backwards. They would go into the black hole. Though his senior commanders believed that it was suicide, the Lord of Iron informed them that Fulgrim had promised that the two brothers would meet again. The Iron Warriors were not meant to die within the Eye, and there was only one way onwards. His men moved to carry out his order, and the Iron Warriors fleet plunged deep into the heart of Terror.

Flames of Rebellion

Over the next seven years that followed the massacre on Istvaan V, Horus' rebellion spread across the galaxy, consuming the entire Imperium in the flames of the horrific civil war known to history as the Horus Heresy. By the time the final Battle of Terra began, the Emperor's Children had become only shadows of their former glorious selves, wholly consumed by the desires of Slaanesh, with every trace of decency long lost. While the other Traitor Legions assaulted the Imperial Palace, the Emperor's Children instead launched themselves upon the innocent citizens of Terra, engaging in a mad orgy of rape, terror and mutilation that only barely began to satiate their all-consuming, Slaanesh-inspired hunger for hedonistic pleasure, pain and sensation. Billions of Terrans were used as human guinea pigs or raw materials in the Emperor's Childrens' constant desire to create ever more powerful stimulants, as daemonic hosts to bring Slaaneshi Daemonic Legions to the fight from the Warp or were simply slain outright to allow a Traitor Marine the fleeting enjoyment brought on by the sensation of brutal murder.

After the Heresy

The history of the Emperor’s Children in the period that followed the defeat of the Traitor Legions at the Siege of Terra is largely obscured from Imperial scholars, for obvious reasons. When Horus was finally defeated by the Emperor aboard his Battle Barge the Vengeful Spirit, the Emperor's Children left a trail of depopulated worlds in their wake as they fled alongside the other Traitor Legions into the Eye of Terror. As their supply of slaves was exhausted by their constant abuse, the remains of the III Legion resorted to raiding the other Traitor Legions for fresh meat to feed their endless perversions, and in the end were crushed by their angry brethren in a series of bloody wars that tore the Traitor Legions apart as they lost the guiding and unifying hand of Horus. Finally, in the course of these conflicts, the Emperor's Children's unity as an Astartes Legion was shattered and they devolved into a series of small, competing warbands. Because of the losses they suffered on Terra and in the period immediately after the Battle of Terra, warbands of the Emperor's Children are rare today in the 41st Millennium. This is a boon for the galaxy as the Emperor's Children love to take prisoners. There is perhaps no worse way to die than at the hands of these superhuman Slaaneshi fanatics -- save for perhaps facing the tender mercies of the Dark Eldar.

Perhaps the greatest mystery surrounds the fate of the Primarch Fulgrim himself, for it appears that he disappeared entirely. Some say that the Dark Prince of Chaos granted him apotheosis, and he assumed the mantle of a Daemon Primarch -- his mortal shape transformed into a serpentine form with four arms very similar to the appearance of the Laer xenos that Fulgrim and his Legion had exterminated when he began his fall to Chaos. Others claim that he was already possessed by a powerful Warp entity, and so such a fate could not have come about. There are those that claim that Fulgrim has retreated to some Daemon World of his own creation, and rules there still, overseeing such debased extremes of sensation and experience as no mortal can imagine. Some of those who revere Slaanesh regard this mythical place as the holy of holies, and spend entire lifetimes obsessively questing after it. To this day, many of the scattered surviving warbands of the Emperor's Children and the agents of the Inquisition's Ordo Malleus seek the location of this world, but none have yet returned with that information. Following the Horus Heresy, Fulgrim was last seen in realspace fighting Roboute Guilliman, the Primarch of the Ultramarines Chapter and its Successors. During their great duel, Fulgrim proved too crafty and guileful, slitting Guilliman's throat with the toxic Anathame that had nearly slain Horus himself without the intervention of the Chaos Gods to heal him. Guilliman was placed within a stasis field and returned to the Ultramarines' homeworld of Macragge where his body became a focus for the devotion of countless generations of Imperial pilgrims, while Fulgrim retreated into the Warp.

Source: http://warhammer40k.wikia.com

[netherwar-rpg-blog]

Welcome to the Wardens, Arthur! Your application for OC WARRIOR has been accepted with a Bradley James FC.

I was really excited to receive this application because I know how much thought and effort you’ve put into this character! The backstory is written superbly and I am sure everyone who reads it will be wondering what mysteries lie in this boy’s past, and what will be revealed in the future? We’re hooked! Cairius in particular seems really interesting and we can see how that early childhood shaped Arden into a courageous and aspiring warrior! In the growing times of darkness, the Wardens are the best place for young Arden to receive the training he needs to be prepared for battle and I cannot wait to see how he grows with all the future plots!

The application can be found under the cut. You have 48 hours to create a roleplay account (cannot be a sideblog) for your character and we will be updating our opening date soon!

O O C - I N F O

Name: Arthur/Art

Age: 22

Timezone:  GMT-8, PST

Activity Level: I do have a full time job that requires me to be up at the crack of dawn (or earlier, some days), but I’ll be able to at the very least be on for plotting every day after work, and I’ll be able to get to replies at least every other day.

Extra:  I got nothing other than pure excitement.

C H A R A C T E R - I N F O

T H E - B A S I C S

Name: Arden Wood

Gender:  Cisgender male

Age:  26

Class:  Warrior (in training)

Faceclaim:  Bradley James

C H A R A C T E R - D E T A I L S

Nationality:  Morellin

Appearance:

The first word that comes to mind when one looks at Arden is naive.  Such an observation is derived from the boy’s sky blue eyes, usually wide in awe or amazement, framed by golden blond hair cut close to his head.  An aquiline nose fit for any prince and a strong jaw complete his face. His skin is tanned from long days spent tilling the fields, scattered with small scars from minor accidents with various farming tools, and his shoulders are broad and well-muscled for the very same reason.  Some would expect him to move like a lumbering brute, but years of practice and training with Cairius have lent him a swordsman’s grace when he walks.  

Personality:

{ + } Caring, Trustworthy, Loyal

{ - } Naive, Enthusiastic, Impatient

C H A R A C T E R - B A C K G R O U N D

History:

Arden Wood never knew his parents.  

An orphaned bastard, Arden was given the same name as any of his kind: Wood. All Arden knows of his parents came from what his guardian  told him; that his mother died in childbirth, and his father drowned in the bottom of a bottle very shortly afterwards. The man he came to know as Cairius had been his father’s closest friend, and was trusted to raise the baby as his own.

Arden’s relationship with his caretaker was… strained, to say the least.  Cairius had earned himself a reputation of being very standoffish - more prone to stern frowns than kind words, especially to Arden.  On top of that, he kept the boy as sheltered as possible, keeping Arden either in their small cottage or teaching him to farm on their plot.  And Arden was content with that for a while, until he saw some of the other village boys playing with fake swords.  When he asked Cairius for a fake sword of his own, his guardian refused, saying it was too dangerous for the boy.  

So Arden taught himself how to carve his own sword while Cairius was out at the market, though he wouldn’t go so far as to join the other boys.  That was one of Cairius’ strict rules - Arden wasn’t to interact with any of the other children in the village, due to his illness.  And when Cairius returned early one day to find Arden swinging his carved sword in what he thought were skilled moves, the man finally relented and agreed to teach Arden how to use a sword properly.  

Once his training started, Arden’s relationship with Cairius improved, and he was able to weasel some stories from the man’s past out of him.  Each story seemed more and more grand to the sheltered farmboy - stories of guarding hidden treasures and fighting off bandits - but the one that really stuck was the story Cairius told him of being chosen to train with the warriors of Varthal as a teenager.  Everything the warriors stood for just clicked with Arden, and he threw himself into his training with greater enthusiasm than before.  He wanted to be a warrior, just like Cairius.

But perhaps he never could be. Every year since before Arden could remember, a Priest of the Holy Light visited him for a very thorough physical examination.  Though once the young man realized that none of the other children in the village were examined, he asked his guardian why it was happening to him.  You’re sick, boy, was the answer.  When that still didn’t settle the doubt in Arden’s eyes, the Priest began bringing along medicines for him; potions and tinctures to drink every night before bed.  

And of course, no warrior ever really traveled anywhere near Arden’s home, so his dream of becoming a warrior grew further and further away as time passed and he matured from a boy into a young man.  Until word reached the village of the Wardens, that is.  Here was his chance to become something more than just a sheltered, sick farmboy - by joining the Wardens, he would finally be able to make a difference.  He’d finally be able to make his mark on the world by saving it, with the rest of the Wardens - just as a warrior ought to.  

Cairius disagreed.  The discussion of Arden leaving the farm, leaving the village, heated up quickly, turning into an argument before concluding in an explosion.  It ended with Arden taking his caretaker’s battered sword, the knapsack he’d packed should he have been allowed to leave, provisions, and then setting off.

He hitchhiked his way across the countryside, through rivers and roads, to finally find the Wardens, doing what he could to make it to Miwor Town and join them in saving the world.

Reason for joining the Wardens:

Arden left to join the Wardens because he’d always had a nagging voice in the back of his mind that said he was something more than someone destined to stay on his farm for the rest of his life.  He longs for adventure as much as he longs to make a name for himself in the history books, and he’ll do just about anything to get there.  He also wants to meet real warriors, to train with them and become one of them himself.  

Desired Connections:

THE PROTECTOR - From the moment Arden arrived at the Wardens’ headquarters, he knew he wanted to be friends with him.  The man is a skilled warrior - everything Arden wants to be - and he can’t help but want to get as close as possible to him.  Maybe THE PROTECTOR will teach him a few things?

THE LEADER - Something about their first meeting bothers Arden.  THE LEADER seems to know something about him that he doesn’t - it’s almost as if they recognized him.  But how?  He’s just a simple farmboy, after all.

R O L E P L A Y - S A M P L E

He was a few days away from Cairius’ little hut, in a small - but bustling - town Arden hadn’t gotten the chance to get the name of.  He’d walked the whole way so far, trying to find someone willing to share space on a wagon or cart to let his aching feet rest, but no luck.  And sleeping in the grass, as peaceful as it looked, just wasn’t quite comfortable enough for Arden to get a full night’s sleep.  So when he found a quiet alleyway just outside the town square, Arden sighed, setting up his bedroll to lie down and rest his feet and his eyes.  

Until, that is, shouts and screams rang out from the town square, startling the young man back into wakefulness.  “Stop!  Thief!  Stop!” Arden sat up and glanced around, trying to find the source of the screams as he quickly rolled his blankets back up.  A few seconds later, his eyes landed on a portly man with a fancy coat.  The man was pointing off down the street, towards Arden, at a scraggly man clutching a silk bag to his chest.  The crowd parted as the man shoves at bystanders, knocking over a young woman with a small child.  The child started crying, adding to the commotion.

No one was doing anything to stop the thief.  Why weren’t they trying to stop him?  There weren’t any soldiers in sight, and the child was bawling now.  And the thief was drawing closer to Arden.  

It only took one moment, one step to get in the thief’s way, and it only took an outstretched foot to trip him, sending him sprawling for just long enough that the portly man could catch up to him and snatch his belongings back.  But Arden didn’t care to watch the rest of the scene - no, he turned instead to the child crying in her mother’s arms, kneeling in front of her with a soft smile.  

“Hey,” he said softly, reaching out to her. “You’re alright.  It’s just a bump on your forehead.”  The soldiers would take care of the thief.  Calming down the young girl was more important now.

[theaiexperiment]

Man I have been working on this picture FOREVER. Thank goodness I’m finally done now. Anyway I bet some of you people that have role played with me see me either role playing or having Sardonyx mention my other Sonic oc, Gertrue Stripes on here right? Well like I’ve mentioned in a few rp’s in Sardonyx’s dimension Gertrue Stripes raised a large amount of the Freedom Fighters, when their parents were either robotisized or killed and even taught them how to defend themselves. Her husband Azubuike helped raised and train them at first too, but one day he just disappeared. So below the read more is a little one-shot concerning their beginnings to this decision, enjoy!

         It was a dark day in this vast forest belonging to the Acorn Kingdom, as clouds covered what would have been radiant sunshine with some veil of forlorn, grey cotton. What made matters worse was the situation ensuing between an egg-shaped, human scientist and two female mobians in a small village. These two individuals were tasked with taking care of some children whose parents were off to fight in the Great War, or had perished during it. As they shared their last moments of freedom scowling the so-called scientist, a quiet individual looked onto them from afar.

         Eyes of a deep, brown coloring witnessed events unfold around them a fair distance ahead in both silent horror, hatred and admiration towards those who had been captured. Surrounded by the safe haven that was an oak’s dense foliage their owner (a white, female lynx with black spots on the edges of her ears and muzzle) remained undetected by Robotnik’s bulky, metal soldiers... for now at least.

         A deep respect practically flooded the ivory and sable mobian’s core, towards those innocent caretakers refusing to reveal the children‘s whereabouts. They really were valiant allies and good friends indeed. The feline just wished that she could repay their brave actions, one day. Seeing the greedy, human scientist however caused a wildfire of loathing to arise within. She could not BELIEVE the Acorn Kingdom used to trust this man with their very lives, at one point! She vowed to never make a mistake like that again, as his betrayal and elimination of her dear comrades was completely unforgivable.

         As the lynx, Gertrue watched those people become emotionless, mechanical servants of that dreaded doctor frustrated tears rolled down her cheeks. In all truth she wanted nothing more than to fight through those robots and save her friends, but logic and reasoning kept the feline at bay, because other matters needed solving at this time. Descending downwards from her precarious position in an oak tree with nimble, quiet movements, it didn’t take long for the white mobian to land upon grassy terrain. After running across some disguised, forest path for a few minutes she then stopped in front of some dense underbrush. Making her way through the bushes and long grass, she then was greeted by a blaster pointed directly at physique. However once its owner laid golden hues upon her, that weapon was immediately stowed away as a relieved breath absconded from his lips.

         “Oh thank goodness you’re back. I was beginning to worry.” the blaster’s owner (a male tiger) expressed in airy drones.

         Gertrue’s lips displayed a quick smile, as she often adored it when her husband Azubuike expressed his sweet, genuine compassion, for it showed that he cared. She dismissed his previous actions, because BOTH of them needed to keep their guards up during these trying hours. Placing hands upon her hips she then portrayed a confident smirk.

         “Now now my dear Azu, hasn’t our time together taught you that it takes a lot more than some robots to destroy me?” Gertrue said with an air of brief confidence, causing the tiger to momentarily grin before her expression shifted into a considerate frown. “But never mind that, are the children safe?” As if right on cue, a little boy’s voice penetrated their surroundings.

         “Aunt-auntie, what’s going on?”

         Shifting their gazes the adult felines starred at a group of children with calm frowns on their facial features. The group of young ones consisted of a blue hedgehog, another tiger (who was in fact their own nephew), a chipmunk princess, a rabbit girl and a baby fox. These small individuals were all children of people who Gertrue and Azubuike had become good friends with during their time in the Great War. Their protection meant the world to the older cats, as they not only were key components for a better future but also the only piece of their friends they had left. Walking up to the striped cub he held the youngest one in his arms, the lynx gently placed a hand upon his shoulder.

         “It’s Robotnik again, Felix. He’s finally found us so were going to look for another place to... hide now, okay?” Gertrue explained in the gentlest of tones (though it took all of her self-restraint not to hiss at that dreaded word, ‘hide’). She didn’t think concealing the truth to her little nephew about their circumstances was a good idea, for he would probably find out on his own eventually.

         As the lynx explained their predicament to Felix, Azubuike looked at them with a sincere expression of protectiveness, whilst hidden admiration flickered inside his core. Gertrue had always managed to be the most logical yet compassionate person in trying times, and it was one of the many things he loved about her. He just wished she didn’t have to use that ability of hers so often. Throughout these recent years it seemed like no matter how hard both of them tried, they kept facing one ordeal after another. Even as they both retired from the war early to keep an eye on their orphaned nephew, conflict eventually broke into their ‘protective barrier’. Granted the older, striped mobian sometimes wished that they could’ve kept fighting back instead, but he couldn’t leave his deceased sister’s only child unattended. Still despite all these austere, haphazardly events ensuing all around them, Azubuike was going to protect what remained of his family... even if he had to sacrifice his life for their sake.

         As these thoughts were strolling through Azubuike’s mind Felix gazed upon his aunt in uncertainty, whilst little hands held an infant fox with a surprisingly professional grace. One thing about the young tiger was that he often wanted to help people in any way he could. This included assisting the caretakers with their work, every now and then, as a result he eventually learned how to carry an infant properly. The baby he carried was named Miles Prower, though because of a minor... mutation most people called him ‘Tails’. As he slept peacefully in a blanket’s warmth, the striped cub looked at his aunt with concern whilst biting lower lip. Just then a small, feminine voice squeaked forth.

         “Miss... Miss Stripes, are Lilly and Rose... dead?” a little chipmunk girl named Sally asked, with trembling form and tears brimming the edges of her eyes. Since she had no memory of her mother and had little chances of ever seeing her father again Sally often looked upon Azubuike, Gertrue and the two caretakers as parental-figures, so loosing those individuals practically tore the young girl’s heart asunder.

         Seeing the chipmunk on the verge of tears, Gertrue got up once more so that she could focus attention upon her. Caressing her cheek in a motherly fashion, brown eyes gazed into weeping, sky blue orbs with sympathy alighting inside them.

         “They are not dead sweetie, they’re just... not going to be the people you and I know for a while.” she explained, before getting up with a renewed fire burning inside dark-brown pools. “This isn’t the end though... I promise that once we find a new base I will teach each and every one of you how to stand your ground. As far as we know we’re about all that’s left of Nigel’s Kingdom. All of you are going to be inspirations to the world I just know it, and know that I’m going to help you achieve your destinies any way I can.“

         At this speech Azubuike couldn’t help but frown in concern. Placing his hand upon Gertrue’s shoulder, he then motioned her off to the side for a bit. Once they were a few feet away, he folded his arms over each other and spoke in hushed drones.

         “Are you sure you want to do this, Gertrue? Raising these children is one thing, but now you’re offering to train them for battle. I thought you didn’t wan-”

         “I’m sick of running away, Azubuike!” the lynx proclaimed through an outburst of fierce drones. Seeing her husband’s worried expression, she then released a weary sigh and spoke in a softer voice. “I’m sorry, dear. It’s just that... I’ve been on the run for such a large portion of my life, and I’m sick of it. I don’t want to live in fear at all now. I want to set an example for these children, so that they can see that some things are worth fighting for.”

         Rather than become angry with his own wife, the older tiger nodded in understanding. Unlike most people, Azubuike knew the FULL story behind Gertrue’s past. The lynx had a very... difficult life. She entered from one conflict into another loosing both her parents and siblings in the Dragon Kingdom, then going off to another country right as it was in the middle of some great war. He could only comprehend how conflicted she must have felt, during those times. He just wanted to make sure that she was fully committed to this change, and seeing those embers spark alive into inside her brown irises proved was more than enough proof of the white feline’s determination. Now grinning from ear to ear at the sight of his wife’s seriousness, he then couldn’t stop himself from bringing her into a bear hug.

         “Thank goodness. I was starting to miss the days when you had that fire in your eyes, as we stopped the enemy.” he said spinning around in happiness, as he did Gertrue couldn’t help but laugh.

         “Hah! I should have figured you couldn’t go a few years, without getting into a scrap or two.” she teased, whilst he placed her down. Once he did however a thought skimmed across the lynx’s mind, causing her to frown again. “Problem is... I have no clue as to where we should go now.“

         At this confession the older, male feline placed his thumb and forefinger on lip’s edges, before countenance smiled from a long-forgotten memory.

         “Do you remember when we found that abandoned base, not too far from here?” he asked.

         Once his inquiry absconded into air’s currents Gertrue’s eyes widened in realization. “Of course! How could I have forgotten that?” she said, before turning towards the group of children with renewed hope radiating from facial features.

         “Alright kids, we may have been knocked down but we’re not out. I know things are difficult now, but we’re not going to give in.” the lynx proclaimed in authoritative drones, as all young eyes gazed upon her with newfound faith and admiration. “If it’s a fight Robotnik wants, than it’s a fight he’s going to get. Once we get to our new home I will personally teach the fighting skills I’ve learned throughout the years. However I’m not teaching you how to fight in order for you to just get revenge on someone. No, I’m going to show you how to fight... for your freedom.”

[trappedindisneyrp]

Age: Eighteen

Sexuality: Pansexual 

Diagnosis: Generalized anxiety disorder

Bracelet color: Red

Reason for admittance: Suicide attempt

FC: Thomas Hayes

PATIENT HISTORY

BIO WARNINGS ; MENTION OF A SUICIDE ATTEMPT.

On a cold stormy winter’s night, there was a knock on the Lost Boys Home for Orphans. 

This, of course, was a normal occurrence for the orphanage. Every now and then a woman who was too scared to show her face or in a rush would drop a baby boy down on their doorstep, the boy would be brought in and cared for until his eighteenth birthday. 

When the caretaker of the orphanage that night stepped out to see a little baby on his doorstep he happened to catch a glimmer of a plated name tag. The golden tag read “Peter Pan.” 

While growing up, Peter had a fairly normal childhood. He wasn’t a problem child and he seemed to bring character into the boy’s home.

Even from a younger age, Peter had a large imagination that he liked to share with others. 

It started with small fibs and quickly shifted into elaborate fabrications for the other boys. He led the other boys in the house on pretend adventures: battling pirates, outsmarting evil mermaids, and escaping Indian made traps. 

The headmaster really never saw these pretend adventures as being a problem, until Peter reached his fifteenth birthday and was still playing make believe with the younger boys. It seemed that even though his body was aging, his mind stayed the same as the five year old who had begun these adventures. 

Peter was completely free-spirited and young at heart, but this also meant that he neglected the responsibilities of those who were also his age. By this time, Peter was failing all of his classes at school.

It wasn’t that he was causing trouble during class, it just seemed that he lacked the drive that most students have. Peter refused to complete any of his assignments and just doodled whenever there was a lesson. 

While most sixteen year olds have an idea of what they want to do with their life around this time, Peter seemed to have no aspirations for the future. He believed that he could spend his whole life at the orphanage with the other Lost Boys. But, a rude awakening was soon to come for this boy in the future. 

Two years passed and it was finally the marking of Peter’s eighteenth birthday, the day he was officially a man by definition. But, his heart and soul still stated otherwise. 

The headmaster entered his boy and shook his hand, giving him a proper sendoff along with a lecture. He was entirely shocked that the headmaster was actually making him leave the house without any accommodations. In a few simple moments, it seemed that the only world he knew was completely demolished.

He wasn’t ready for growing up, nor was he ready for what the harsh reality would throw his way. 

He gathered all the money he had managed to make off of playing cards with the other boys and rented a motel room for the night. Inside the tiny room, Peter broke down completely and decided that he would take himself out of the game of life. 

The worries soon begun to consume him as he took a few pills, the room started to spin and he felt himself black out. Was this death? 

When he opened his eyes he realized that he was stuck inside the Disney Treatment Center, trying his best not to have a panic attack he decided to pretend this was another one of his adventures. The only thing he could do at this point was fake it.

THE DARKNESS

Generalized anxiety disorder (or GAD) is characterized by excessive, exaggerated anxiety and worry about everyday life events with no obvious reasons for worry. People with symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder tend to always expect disaster and can't stop worrying about health, money, family, work, or school. In people with GAD, the worry is often unrealistic or out of proportion for the situation. Daily life becomes a constant state of worry, fear, and dread. Eventually, the anxiety so dominates the person's thinking that it interferes with daily functioning, including work, school, social activities, and relationships.