#quinnwriting

[catgirltheseus]

Magic, Magical Theory, and the General Study of Circles

Magic, in essence, is a way to give the underlying fabric of reality a command, one which it follows to the best of its ability. The simplest (though not only) way to do so is to use the language of magic, the technical name for which is Arcscribe. Arcscribe is a shortcut to commanding magic, the truest and most bare-bones ways to do so being so unfathomably complicated that only the most well-studied scholars on the matter can even parse basic spells.

Thus, Arcscribe is the means used to craft and cast spells. Arcscribe works by taking the projected energy of a circle and translating it to raw magical understanding, which is then carried out by the framework of the universe. Technically, this is fractionally slower than raw manipulations of this framework, the compiling and translation process of Arcscribe taking microseconds. In most settings, this means little, but can obstruct or alter the results of certain magical tasks or experiments.

The basics of Arcscribe involve what are called “structures.” A structure of a spell using Arcscribe is a geometric shape, most commonly a circle. These contain the rest of the spell’s components and manage the process of translation, and generally hold the entire spell together. A structure also determines the complexity of a spell. A circle structure can handle complexity of up to 800 operations, give or take depending on the specifics of the operations.

As a general, but often broken rule, the more “sides” to a structure, the higher the complexity it can handle and the more magical energy it consumes. Semi-circular, triangular, square, pentagonal, and hexagonal structures all increase in complexity over the shape before. The cost of even square structures can become too high for many apprentice mages, however, so many instead use linking to satisfy complex but cheap spells.

Non-uniform or uneven structures are typically not advised to be used, as they can introduce intended exceptions or errors to the spell, and can increase the complexity of the spell. This includes but is not limited to: non-equilateral triangular structures, rectangular or non-square quadrilateral structures, non-circular monogons, etc. Some non-regular polygonal structures are viable for use as structures as they have exceptional properties when incorporated in some spells, such as the “cog” structure or three-dimensional structures. These are typically the upper-end of the achievable complexity scale, however.

Multi-sided structures may serve as too advanced for many novices, however. In this case, a mage might use “linking.” Linking is the process of joining two magical circles using a special structure, the link. A link is a monogonal structure that is distinct from circles, as its only purpose is to join two magic circles. To use a link, one must draw two or more circles and connect the structures of the two with a single line. This line, the link, joins the functions of the circles together, expanding the capabilities of a single casting. The complexity of a link is miniscule, and the increase of using two or more circles is only additive, as opposed to an altered structure which may be multiplicative or exponential.

This does not mean multi-sided structures are completely useless. Linked spells require a much greater ability for memorization, as their formulas are much more complicated (not in the sense of magical complexity that multi-sided structures introduce) and require good memorization or improvisational skills. This would typically only apply to incredibly fine workings or grand-scale spells, but it is good to know the merits of multi-sided structures as they come up frequently in high-level Arcscribe practice.

When spells are linked, this creates what is known as an “array.” Linked arrays may contain more than two spells. In fact, they can contain any number of independent structures, and not all must be linked to one another. A solid array will usually consist of a “driver,” a central structure which handles the workings of all of the linked circles. Most structures will be directly linked to said driver. A driver usually takes in all of the different pieces of the array and decides what to do with them. 

For example: You might have an array of three structures. One of which generates a ball of fire, with no real position given. The second structure would be an instruction on shooting that ball of fire (or any other projectile) in a perpendicular direction to the circle that generates it. The driver would then take the fireball structure and cast it in conjunction with the structure that shoots it forwards.

Of course, this is a massive oversimplification. While a primitive version of what was described above could be made with three structures, an effective or practical version would take at least six separate structures, with three total sub-structures as well. But what, exactly, is a sub-structure?

A sub-structure is simply a structure within a structure. Sub-structures are distinct from linked structures in that they are intricately tied to the workings of a structure. Thus meaning that if it was removed, it would cease to function. Sub-structures may also not be referenced by other structures, only by the super-structure that contains the sub-structure. This means that sub-structures are “invisible” to even linked structures. All information passed between a sub-structure and linked structures must be done through the super-structure.

A super-structure is the name of a structure that contains a sub-structure.

Sub-structures may also have their own sub-structures. Nested sub-structures like this are difficult to memorize and keep track of, as well as increasing the complexity a noticeable amount. Nested sub-structures are given names matching those of metric meters. A sub-structure of a sub-structure is a deci-structure. Then a centi-structure, milli-structure, micro-structure, etc.

Using sub-structures might seem counterintuitive. Communication between all parts of the array is a useful thing, right? Which, yes. It usually is. However, there are two main reasons why one would use a sub-structure.

The sub-structure might be a volatile, dangerous piece of script. Sometimes, even the slightest oversight may have a disastrous consequence for a spell’s working. If a linked structure comes into contact with script that should only be communicating with a single structure, it can harm the entire spell, creating backlash, wild magic, or an entirely new spell that you don’t want. Sub-structures guarantee that a structure can only communicate with parts of the array.

Counter-workings, spells created to block or harm other spells, have a much more difficult time breaking spells created with sub-structures. They require establishing communication with the super-structure and gaining access to the sub-structure through them. This makes weaving a counter-working into a spell much harder and more time-consuming. It also means a successful counter-working is less likely to cause any of the repercussions described in reason #1.

For example: Let us describe a more practical version of the fireball spell.

Our first structure will be our driver, which we will describe last. Second, we need the fire. While the act of shaping fire into a ball could be done within this structure, it would leave us without any way to customize this spell to suit our needs later, so the ball shape will be contained within its own structure. Instead, this structure will simply generate a large swathe of fire.

Third, the shape. This will shape any projectile into a general “ball” shape. This would be a super-structure, as well. The sub-structure we will want to place into this structure would be the specification of energy-based spells. This sub-structure could be its own structure, probably linked to the ball shape structure instead of the driver, but dealing with shaping energy this way is an unsafe practice to leave on its own.

Fourth, a safety measure. Spells dealing with destructive forces should not be taken lightly. There are many ways to do this, but the easiest and lowest complexity for our situation would be to repel heat away from our body. This effect will be in place for only a brief moment, any longer would require a multi-sided structure to maintain.

Fifth, our “throw” structure. This will grant an object momentum perpendicular to the fireball’s circle of origin. This structure will also contain a sub-structure, one which alters the “object” classifier and may move a magical point instead.

Sixth, we create the aforementioned magical point. This magical point exists as a one-dimensional non-existence. It has no mass, density, or any other quantifier. It exists only as a reference position within 4D space. The final sub-structure will be placed on this point structure. It will tether the point to be relative to whatever the closest celestial body is. This means that instead of rushing off at tens of thousands of miles per hour into deep space, it stays relative to whatever the caster might be inhabiting at the moment.

Our driver will begin repelling heat for less than a second, easily enough time to get the spell cast. Then, our point is created right before our fire. The fire is compressed by the ball shape structure, and then tethered to the point. Lastly, we throw the point in the direction we want. The fireball alone won’t actually do much, it��ll act as if a regular puff of fire with no consistent fuel source would and burn out after a few seconds. We also haven’t commanded the point to ever stop, so it will fizzle out the moment the spell does. Ideally, we would also have the fireball burst on impact to create the proper explosion effect. A more advanced and complete version will be included alongside the illustration for both the earlier fireball example, as well as this one.

[illust. A three-structured array for a basic fireball spell.]

[illust. A six-structured array for a functional fireball spell.]

[illust. A nine-structured array for an advanced fireball spell.]

Free Excerpt

Kim, Mira. A Quickstart Guide to Basic Magimatics, Julian, Dallas, 2029. 

Drawing or Projecting? An Analysis.

In Arcscribe, as well as many other magic-languages, there are two main ways of using the script. Each one has their own merits and uses, with some mages preferring one over the other, even scorning users of the alternate method. The subject has become a somewhat heated debate, so I have decided to look into the strengths of each practice to attempt to lay the arguments on the table.

Drawing, the act of physically writing the script of Arcscribe into some kind of surface. The act alone obviously does not generate magic, instead the energy for the spell to activate must be given by a magically-awoken individual. The action of empowering an array is done by touch, with only certain magical artifacts or runestone-blessings being capable of bypassing this rule. Drawing is typically what most spellcasters and mages start with, as it is less cost-intensive, has a slightly lower complexity, and is more forgiving than projection.

Projection, on the other hand, is the act of drawing magic into the requisite shape to form a spell. It may be done without tools or surfaces to draw on, as well as can even have a small distance between the caster and the circle. Projection is usually much quicker than drawing, able to be done within only seconds and is performed with very little somatics. Movements and gestures do play a huge part in the act of spellcasting, even with projection, but spells with lower complexity may be cast with little to no movement at all. 

One of the largest issues with projection is its difficulty. Anyone capable of casting may project a circle of course, but a projected circle requires memorization of the desired spell formula. A misremembered line or stroke could cause a botched casting and ruin the entire spell. Alternatively, the caster could come up with their spell formula as they project the circle. Expectedly, this is even more difficult than memorization as it requires a perfect understanding of spell interaction and writing.

So both methods of casting spells seem to be very useful in their own regards, their differences are where the points of contention come into play. Certain practitioners of exclusively drawn magic claim that projection is a way to bypass in-depth study of spell formulas. This is to say that they believe projection-oriented casters do not care about the method of casting spells, only the results. Whereas some Projection casters believe that drawn magic is impractical in daily use, that the time-cost-effect relationship of drawn magic makes it archaic or basic.

Of course, neither of these opinions hold much weight in actual discussions of magical theory. Discussions of one style’s merits are common and welcome in academic debate, but any practiced scholar of magic understands the needs and requirements of both forms of casting. What I am proposing in this essay is to take an in-depth look at the differences between both drawn arrays and projected ones.

Excerpt from Drawing or Projecting? An Analysis, by Zoe Redd, Coauthored by Finn Hanning

What The Hell Even Is Complexity?

Alright so I’ve started to notice that whenever I make a post about drawing magic or spells I’ve been working on, people in the notes have been getting mixed up on what exactly “Complexity” means. I figured I’d try to educate as many people as I could, seeing as this is becoming a regular thing for my replies and reblogs.

So first, what isn’t complexity? 

Complexity is not just how complicated a spell is to remember or learn.

Complexity is not how much energy is used to cast the spell.

Complexity is not how much of the universal framework is being altered by a spell (I’m not gonna explain the framework here, @catgirltheseus made a really good post about it so go read that and share it or whatever).

Complexity is actually a technical term used to denote how many operations a spell is performing at a given time. But you might be thinking “Sofie, what is an operation?” Which I’m getting to, you dingus. An operation is the amount of times that your magic attempts to interact with the universal framework (NOT HOW MUCH OF THE FRAMEWORK. THOSE ARE DIFFERENT!!). They don’t have to be successful operations. Just attempted ones.

So an operation is just an “action.” And complexity is just the amount of operations. You can have a really complicated and elaborate magic circle with a very low complexity, or a really simple one with a high complexity.

Complexity can get very high very fast! Even the most barebones magic circle, which is just the structure (the circle bit on the outside) has a complexity of around 100. That’s mostly because translating raw magic into Arcscribe (the little runes and symbols we use to write magic circles) and vice versa is already a lot of operations.

So why is complexity important?

Well, in addition to being related to how much energy is consumed (BUT NOT THE DIRECT CAUSE), circles in Arcscribe have a limited amount of complexity they can use, which means you will have to rethink how you’re making your spell if you ever have too much complexity. (And before you elitist YgRune fuckers start blowing up my inbox again, your auto-reshaping structures are fucking LAME. Arcscribe is SO MUCH BETTER, SUCK IT)

You can use different shapes for your structures like squares or triangles which can handle more complexity, but those are hells taxing and only worth the hassle with high-level stuff.

Blog post by @sofapillowchair9012 on Tumblr

Anti-Magic Is Physically Impossible?

I got a lot of comments on my last video where I offhandedly mentioned Anti-Magic as a thing that doesn’t exist and that got a lot of people asking, “Well hey uh… why is that?”

So before we can really talk about what anti-magic might be and why it’s only theoretical, we need to talk magic.

Magic only works because of this blanket of magic that is sort of omnipresent within the universe. We call this blanket the framework and it is what’s manipulated when magic is cast to give it an effect. More than that, it is, in itself, magic. Magic changes the framework, but magic is also the framework. So the magic blanket covering everything is changing itself whenever a spell is cast.

The thing about the framework that makes anti-magic not only not work, but not even be possible to conceive of, is that it cannot be broken. It can be twisted, warped, transmuted, spread thin, clumped up, but never ripped, torn, punctured, or broken. There are no gaps in the framework.

Sure, counter-magic exists, but that is never getting rid of magic, only rewriting it or altering it. For anti-magic to exist, you’d have to be able to puncture or get rid of the framework.

Now, theorists do think that it’s not completely impossible for someone to use anti-magic. The universe is constantly expanding and with it, so is the framework. If, by chance, the universe is ever ahead of the framework, there would be a section of space where no magic exists. Meaning that casting there would be out of the question.

The problem is that actually using that gap to do anything meaningful is… well there’s no real way to know how easy it would be but it doesn’t seem likely that you could actually do anything with this gap since the only way to utilize it would be to… use magic. Not to mention that the framework is ever-expanding so a separated chunk of an anti-magic area would be filled at the speed of light.

But who knows, maybe there is something we can do to get a bubble of frameworkless space. Research into the area isn’t thriving but it is an interesting topic.

Short by @AllTheSpells on YouTube

What Would Anti-Magic Look Like?

My last video kind of blew up, both here and on reposts on TikTok, which was very nice of you all, but the topic of anti-magic gained a lot of traction after it and so I decided I wanted to clear the air on the best theories in the magical research space that pertain to anti-magic.

I reached out to my friend Zoe, who is currently doing her PHD in Arcane Research Studies, for some help on the topic and she wrote a whole speculative research essay about it. So check the pinned comment if you want to read that, because there is way more there than I can summarize in a single video.

So, let’s say Anti-Magic was real, a possible way to manipulate an absence in the framework without it immediately closing over. Magic is the manipulation of the framework using that same framework. Without a framework, you don’t have magic. So how would you cast spells inside of an arcane void?

Well, in short, you wouldn’t. If you could hypothetically keep this bubble sustained, you would instead be casting around it, moving it around like blowing a soap bubble. So really, anti-magic would be a constant game of hot potato with this empty void, one you couldn’t even see.

Of course, there is another hypothetical, one much more interesting and strange. What if you could create rifts in the framework? Now, it’s a little hard to comprehend what that means since the framework is invisible, intangible, and omnipresent. To simplify, creating a rift in the framework would require a near-infinite amount of energy concentrated into a small space, and even so would be impossible to accomplish without the help of a runestone. 

No anti-magic runestones are known to exist, and would be speculated to only form in areas lacking in framework. Something we know isn’t possible.

But if you could create rifts in the framework, you could completely blanket areas in a field of null magic, negate spells before they’re even formed, and snuff rituals in a snap. The potential applications of anti-magic are almost limitless. Or… hopefully. Zoe speculates that rifts might not be closable, meaning anyone wielding anti-magic would essentially be creating permanent zones of dead magic wherever they cast. With many civilizations being rooted in magic, this could be cataclysmic, turning planets barren with a single spell.

With this in mind, maybe it’s best if anti-magic stayed a hypothesis?

Short by @AllTheSpells on YouTube

The History of the Ancient Order of Angels

… made the planets of established but distant powers the homes of their Order. They would rarely conquer smaller civilizations, which is thought to be a show of power and a way to craft rivals to sharpen their own blades on, so to speak. When the much larger, more powerful Order took over the local ruling power, but the smaller societies were left alone, it incentivized those small groups to band together and grow their strength so that they would not be the next to fall. Unfortunately for them, this is exactly what the Order wanted, progressively stronger and stronger foes to improve their skills and techniques against.

In its lifespan, the Order reportedly conquered 459 different planets with major governments, and countless more with minor, provincial governments. In its peak, it had claim to 388 of those major planets concurrently. The Order’s outreach was massive and how they made use of these planets was no less grand.

Entire continents were turned into cities, using spires and cathedrals of stone risen from the ground using massive and elaborate arrays drawn over kilometers at a time. These cities would house billions of residents, every one of them working towards the unified goal of the Order. With the utter scale of the projects carried out regularly by the Order, it was no surprise their ratio of professionally trained mages was the highest that any civilization has ever seen. Upwards of 90% of the Order was at least an adept scribe.

And with the floor for magical proficiency being so high amongst the Order, it only made sense for the ceiling to be as well. Most notes and documents about the higher echelon of the Order are lost, intentionally so, but from the records that have been kept, it is known that the Order’s leadership consisted of only their best magicians. Classifying someone to be a better magician over another is difficult for a number of reasons, but records show the Order would hold biennial evaluations of all promising mages who were not fit to become Angels. The leaders of the Order would participate in these evaluations as well. The highest-scoring in these competitions would ascend to become, or regain their roles as, the overseers of the Order.

That the overseers also participated in these trials did not mean they were fair events. The trials were plagued by sabotage, backstabbing, and politics. Members of the overseeing council would often have potential rivals or usurpers assassinated before the evaluation to eliminate any possibility of come-uppance. 

One common method of dealing with promising mages was to falsify their Angel candidacy. This led the often-incapable mage to become overtaken by the process of ascension and subsequently be eliminated.

MacIntyre, Cole. The History of the Ancient Order of Angels, Habeston, 2028. 

Wands and Staves In General Magical Application

The application of devices to assist in drawing spell circles has been around since before recorded history. Even back before Arcscribe or YgRune, raw magic was still drawn– hundreds of charcoal sticks spent to make even the most mild spells. Once projection was discovered, it made casting spells a much easier and less resource-intensive act. However, spells were still hard to remember and thus the wand was born.

Resembling the charcoal sticks ancient mages used to draw their first spell circles, the wand would allow muscle memory to take the reins when projecting a spell. This made memorizing a spell a much less arduous task for the mage and would let them project complicated spell circles that they had only a limited study of.

Modern wands have adapted to do much the same thing, becoming longer and slimmer to match quills and pens/pens.

Wands can also be used to carve more permanent circles onto surfaces, forgoing writing instruments. Dirt is often inscribed into a circle using a wand’s point, and many other pliable surfaces will also be able to hold shape long enough to cast a spell through.

Many wands come with a compartment to store powder which, when deployed, may be drawn into to form a temporary spell circle.

Higher quality wands use enchanted tips to carve through stone, wood, or metal. 

Staffs are, in essence, larger versions of wands. While the muscle memory effect may be slightly diminished, bigger and more complex circles might be too much to create with a wand alone. Thus the more cumbersome but larger staff is made use of by mages who find that their work requires a bigger stick.

Of course, there is nothing stopping a mage from using both wand and staff, and many do. As physical objects, they may be imbued with enchantments to assist in travel, day-to-day, or specialized spellcasting.

A wand or staff is never amiss in a mage’s arsenal, despite certain stigma about using these “crutches.”

Unknown. Commonly attributed as an appendix to The Circle-Master’s Pocket Assistant, Author Unknown.

[bokutosbeam]

cute things they do

fandom: haikyu!!

summary: cute things some of the boys do as your boyfriend

pairings: kozume kenma x reader, suna rintarou x reader, tsukishima kei x reader, kageyama tobio x reader

genre: fluff

warnings: neck kisses from suna (if there's something, please tell me!)

quinn speaks: someone pls get me a boyfriend... this is getting embarrassing

— KOZUME KENMA

kenma often stays up late to game. he never expects you to wait up for him, but you often find yourself on the living room couch as he sits in front of the tv and meticulously clicks on his controller. kenma always notices when you lay down behind him, although you usually stay quiet as a mouse.

he looks back to check on you periodically; sometimes you'll be scrolling on your phone or have a book in hand. but once it hits the 1:00 am mark, you always find yourself curling up and falling asleep. so, kenma will pause his game and make sure to grab your favorite blanket -- you've never explictly said this, but he can tell as it's the one you always grab -- and drape it over your sleeping figure.

after that, he won't stay up too much longer. kenma always finds himself curling up right next to you.

— SUNA RINTAROU

you think suna is seriously addicted to back hugs. you'll be standing at the kitchen counter, just grabbing a few things out of the cabinets for dinner, and then your boyfriends will apere out of thin air. arms wrapping around your middle and head resting on top of yours.

when you stand in front of the mirror to put on your various jewlery pieces, he'll be there in just a few seconds. trailing kisses down your neck and shoulders, whispering about how pretty you look.

outings with your friends should be safe right? nope, suna is just a clingy around your shared friends despite the shit that he gets from the twins. suna will just bury himself deeper into you. fingers gripping a bit tighter at your hips, arms a bit more flexed against you, and head buried so far into your hair that you're concerned for his air supply.

what can he say, back hugs are the perfect way to go in any situations.

— TSUKISHIMA KEI

does he do it on purpose? or is it just a reflex after all this time? as soon as you're in arms length, tsukishima gently tucks the hairs that frames your face behind your ears. when you sit across from each other when eating dinner, when your scanning the bookshelves at your local library, and especially when laying in bed together.

you don't dare confront him about this little habit, scared if you mention it he'll stop. so, instead you bask in confusion. every time he tucks your hair back, your checks flush for a few seconds and your eyes go wide before you regain control and continue doing whatever you were doing before his interruption.

little do you know, that's exactly why he does it. he knows that he can easily fluster you with his words, but doing it with his actions is just so much more fun.

— KAGEYAMA TOBIO

anytime kageyama's fingers brush against yours, within seconds he is slipping his hand into yours. no matter where you are or what you're doing, his finger will lace with yours and he won't let go until he absolutely has to.

right before press conferences his coach will have to grip his jersey and tug him along, a sad pout gracing his features for a few seconds as he looks at you longingly. in busy crowds while waiting for the subway, he'll grab onto your hand and make sure that his grip is strong enough to keep you close to him. at home when your sitting at the dining room table, typing away on your laptop and just taking a break to stretch your fingers out. in those situations you find yourself typing with just one hand while the other rubs circles on kageyama's knuckles.

kageyama doesn't quite know why he does it. maybe it's because of the way your palm fits perfectly in his or maybe it's because it keeps him from picking at his cuticles or rather it's because the warmth in your hand that just seems to shoot straight up his body. he doesn't really care to find a reason to his actions, he'd rather just spend more time holding your hand in his.

[sir-severance]

connective tissue - mlandersen0

this is my piece for the fantastic Slenderverse Zine (2019). this was a pleasure to write, and i am honoured to have been a part of such a wonderful project. you can check out the zine here, and read this fic on AO3 here. 

a quick disclaimer - i hope it's quite clear that i do not support the views which the character Shaun Andersen expresses in this fic. this is an exploration into mental health stigma, the entitlement of neurotypicality and the damage which can come about from both sides of any relationship within which someone is suffering because of mental illness. i am not interested in any discourse. please take this fic for what it is, and if you disagree, feel free to write your own. likewise, please heed the content warnings.

thanks, and i hope you enjoy <3

cws: mental health, mental illness, ableism, sickness, anxiety, depression, blood, twins, abuse, therapy, gore, terror, horror

Shaun’s parents often address him in the same breath as talking about Michael, as if the two are immutably connected, their meaning solely defined by virtue of each not being the other. But the parental Andersens could not always retain this facade of equality in front of their youngest child. No, Shaun found the documents when he was ten, long after Michael’s departure.

At the time, the words he found staggered him with polysyllabic ambiguity:

Monochorionic.

Parasitic.

Anemic.

But one phrase unfurled its roots and lodged itself into the squishy whorls of his brain.

The night of the discovery, little Shaun Andersen ran screaming into his parents’ bedroom, tears and terror marring his face the way fresh understanding of horror always does. When his mother hushed Shaun, held him close and begged him to explain what was wrong, the boy’s answer made the colour flood from her face.

All too soon, Shaun found himself confronted with yet more walls: walls so staggeringly bleached that, to Shaun, the paint served not as a reminder of cleanliness, but of spores and fungi and bacteria, swelling into turgid contaminants ready to burrow through his skin and pick his bones clean.

“Twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome,” the therapist reads from her notes. She smiles at Shaun, with too many teeth. “Where did we hear such big words, hm?”

Shaun keeps quiet. In the time since Michael left, the value of silence impressed its qualities upon him. The art of disquiet is something everyone knows about, but few possess the gall to produce. Shaun maintains fixed eye contact with the therapist, while revelling in the security offered by his glasses. There’s a plastic quality to her dimples: an artificial construction of pleasantry that only a child could see through.

She doesn’t care about you.

Shaun believes there’s relief for both of them when the light goes out of her eyes.

“It’s okay, Shaun,” the therapist says. Her voice quavers noticeably. “I think you’re a very smart boy. You’d like me to tell you the truth, wouldn’t you?”

I think you want to tell me the truth and not have to deal with me, Shaun thinks. The therapist continues on regardless:

“Sometimes, when people have babies, things can go wrong. The baby might come out sick, or a bit different.”

The therapist watches him for a response. Shaun tries his best not to blink. Her mouth twitches.

“When a mom has a baby inside, the baby gets their food from an organ called the placenta. It’s kind of like a phone charger — it gets plugged in to the wall of the mommy’s tummy, and when she eats, nutrients from the food are transferred to the baby. These nutrients are transferred by blood. Do you understand?”

You’re talking to me like I’m an idiot. This doesn’t feel professional at all, is what Shaun  Andersen understands. How old does she think I am?

“With twins, sometimes they share one placenta, instead of having one each. And sometimes, blood gets passed between the twins.” Her face creases, like she’s recalling something unpleasant. “This can mean that one twin doesn’t get enough blood — they’re called the ‘donor’ twin — and the other gets too much blood, making them the ‘recipient’ twin.”

The therapist actually looks away before going on, and Shaun is sure it has more to do with practiced decency than genuine upset.

“Michael received the blood your other brother didn’t get.”

It sounds like she’s reading from a script. Maybe she prepared this. Wanted to scare me and  take me off guard so she can get into my head. I’m not going to say a damn thing. Fuck her.

“I’m sorry you had to find out the way you did, Shaun.” The therapist’s mouth twists in a grim approximation of sympathy. “But it’s just a fact of life.”

A fact of life that Michael devoured his twin in the womb.

It’s only now that he’s in some lightless attic, face-down on the floor with his skin prickled against the cold, that this wash of memories coats Shaun with their accusatory foam. There’s a peculiar, pickling scent prodding at his gag reflex; this room reeks of mold and misery. It’s as if the air itself is frothing from an unseen mouth. For Shaun, this triggers a memory encased in nausea. A taste identical to the sour pills the therapist gave him that day spills onto his palate: anti-anxiety medication.

Shaun vomited the first batch he took, so he ceased taking them all together. Instead, he replaced each pill in his medication box with chalky, pastel candy, and made a big show of swallowing one in the morning and one in the evening.

He’s just like Michael, really. As long as there are witnesses, he’ll put on a show.

Splinters impale the meat of Shaun’s mouth, and sawdust cakes his tongue. He hacks and coughs, and writhes on the floor. His knees manage to find purchase in the gloom, but his muscles tremble and quiver with the effort of kneeling. He’s been bashed and bruised, dragged carelessly and tossed aside like a used rag. Tenderised meat before the slaughter.

And Michael’s going to be the same.

Shaun’s breath pulses out in panicked bursts. He can just about see his exhalations curling away in the freezing cold. No, he can’t be this weak — he must shove it back, quash the feeling. He’s worth more than this. If he goes back on the things he said to Michael now — horrible, hateful things — then he’ll never be able to live with himself.

So Shaun breathes steadily, working his way around the anxiety attack the way his therapist never showed him. As his heart rate steadies and adrenaline drops, all that energy and fear circumvents his guts, and heads a frontal assault on his brain. This leads to a conclusion burning through his mind with perfect clarity

This is all Michael’s fault.

Shaun never knew the name for whatever disease ravaged his brother’s mind. Not that he ever asked. The less he knew about Michael’s... abnormalities, the better. He remembers phrasing it that way to his parents, when he finally said no to another trip to see the remains of their estranged son.

Each week flowed the same way: stilted conversation between siblings, and pained platitudes from their parents. All meaningless little words of encouragement deliberately skipping over the elephant in the room — or, rather, the room containing the elephant, with its queasy walls and claustrophobic bars on the windows. No one in there ever used words like crazy or sick — in fact, they gave you a sheet of words to refrain from using when in the presence of the patients. All the relatives and guests of the inmates were expected to behave in this fashion.

This nauseated Shaun. He knew his brother was still in there. And he knew better than anyone how Michael liked to play his little games.

Regardless, Shaun tried his best to make Michael talk, and find something recognisable in the muddy depths of his eyes. But every visit, the dark deepened. No matter how many toys he tried to share, no matter how many stories he’d try to tell, and no matter how many times he affirmed to Michael that they were best friends and one day he’d get out of the hospital so they could play again... he stayed the same.

The final straw comes one dismal, rainy Friday afternoon. Shaun and his dad sit next to each other, opposite Michael with a table acting as barrier between them, saying nothing.

An aide took them both aside before they entered the main facility, and explained that Michael is being trialed on another type of medication. The visit is going as miserably as the weather foretold.

Michael looks barely human. Something is altered in the familiar shape of his body, like a bent coat hanger hastily reformed into an approximation of its original structure. The older Andersen brother slumps back in his chair, his skin several shades whiter than the wall behind him. His mouth is cracked with dehydration, and his hair is tangled with sleeplessness and grease. But worst of all are his eyes. They sit listless and devoid of comprehension, with blank pupils gazing aimlessly at his family, through them, and beyond them. A candle snuffed out before shrinkage of the wick.

Shaun remembers the emptiness of his therapist’s eyes. The glee in outwitting her. The pleasure of looking into those sad, brown depths.

There is no joy in peering into Michael’s skull.

Without warning, Shaun’s temper seizes him with all the ferocity a young boy’s hormones could. He slams his clenched fist down on the table, rattling metal. All conversation in the room ceases, a veil of corpselike silence.

Michael, however, doesn’t react. He doesn’t even acknowledge the sound.

The words jump from Shaun’s mouth like oil from a sizzling pan, murderous in their venom.

“You’re such a freak.”

Before the aides can reach him, Shaun’s dad grabs him by the shoulder and yanks him out of the room, into the hallway. Shaun can tell he’s furious, but there’s so much anger pumping through his blood that he just doesn’t care. He needs to do something, anything, to puncture the film over Michael’s eyes. Anything to make him so much as flinch.

But Michael remains unaffected.

As expected, the facility removes them both immediately, and Shaun is given a one-month visitation ban. This doesn’t bother Shaun in the slightest — in fact, he feels victorious, and righteous in his fury. There’s no way he’s coming back. Not this time. Michael squandered his last chance.

Even so, he’ll never forget his last view of that room, before his father pulls him away.

Tears spilling freely down Michael’s stony face.

From then on, the pre-trip talk with his parents is a minefield to navigate. They try so hard to make everything light and cheery, to speak about Michael like he’s still a part of their family, but Shaun overhears them speaking about their visits when they think he’s not listening. Now, more often than not, Michael’s arms are bound throughout their visits. Other times, they’re only able to converse with their son from behind a pane of tough glass.

Sometimes, they came home early.

‘Oh, Mikey’s feeling a touch under the weather today,’ their mother chirps. ‘But he says he misses you lots and lots!’

Her happy tone belies the true quality of their visit. It doesn’t matter. Shaun never asks for further details. Eventually, Shaun is old enough that his moods are ascribed to the terrors of puberty, and he is left to his own devices.

In retrospect, the seven years between Shaun’s Michael-detox and their first meeting as adults seems superfluous. The difference the years wrought upon Michael shocked Shaun.

Where once there existed a timid, chubby little kid with the brightest of smiles, now stood a gangly, hollow-looking man, with eyes like pits of coal. Though the corners of Michael’s mouth upturn upon seeing him, Shaun doesn’t register any warmth.

Somehow, this infuriates Shaun more than his brother’s tears ever could. He’d always assumed that even though his brother is older, Michael would remain the same size — adulthood somehow being barred for the mentally ill. Resentment boils away in Shaun’s stomach seeing how much taller his brother is, how clean-cut his features are. But this isn’t the thing which incenses Shaun the most.

It’s that, in those eyes, those chasmic clefts gouged out in his pale flesh, Shaun saw quiet patience.

Intelligence.

Forgiveness.

Just the mere hint of any kind of pity from his brother makes Shaun’s thoughts curdle with rage. How dare he be okay? He’s supposed to be sick! Isn’t that the whole reason why he got  locked up in the first place?

Shaun knows these are irrational and angry thoughts, but would rather cut out his own tongue than internalise them as ‘unfair’. He slaved away the better part of his life playing second fiddle to his parents’ worry and concern, always visiting Michael, paying more attention to Michael... all while their favourite son plays the part of a theatre dummy.

So Shaun makes the decision there and then. He is under no obligation to take care of this man forced upon him by blood — but he will. He will be the most selfless, compassionate human being his brother has ever seen.

Then they’ll see who has the right to forgive.

The walls of the attic Shaun can’t see feel like they’re closing in on his aching body, dragging themselves closer with hidden, noiseless claws. If you hadn’t lied about seeing the  Tall Man, he wouldn’t be as sick as he is, his thoughts hiss, and he thinks that the walls are growing mouths and speaking to him, indicting him, readying to pluck his head from his shoulders and smack it on a pike.

Yet, as his fear increases, tiny increments of light make themselves known in Shaun’s vision. Eventually, he’s able to zero in on a shape just out of each — something large and mostly crimson, with a long curved blade extending from its middle. Sickly, distended panic courses through Shaun like a white-hot fever when he recognises the shape.

It’s a fucking chainsaw.

The enormity of the situation crashes into his nervous system. He’s being laid out, prepped and ready for consumption. Oh God, he drugged me to tie me down and cut me open, and then he’s gonna go find Michael and do the same thing-

Keep it together! Express some reticence, for fuck’s sake. You’re not going to break down. You’re not going to give in. Michael’s the one who hurt you, kept hurting you, all this time. Without him, you would have a real family. A home. A future. Not biting the dust spilled on some dank  basement.

The attic betrays nothing but the acrid stench of death. People have died here. People have been tied up and carved open like autopsy specimens, all for the gain of their sadistic owner. Shaun, despite his terror, continues to squint at the weapon.

You’re about to bite the dust anyway...

When Shaun sees the blood staining the steel, he screams.

Another flashbulb memory comes searing into his head: his brother’s wafer-thin form keeling over in the snow. That chokehold of panic throws Shaun into immediate action, forcing him to run and cradle the body of his brother. He’s so desperate and terrified, not knowing if this is really Michael, what this body could be capable of...

And yet Shaun grabs hold anyway, all grudges suddenly forgotten, and oh fuck it must be Patrick, because his nose is bleeding and his limbs are as heavy and wet as the white beneath their boots. Shaun hauls him the best he can, inwardly cursing his lack of strength, and as he drags Patrick over to the frozen table he can only pray his mental fortitude is made of stronger stuff.

“I came here to apologise.”

“Really.”

The sarcasm pours out of Shaun without a second thought, so heated it almost scorches the icy air. But there’s no way he could ever dam this wave of fury.

‘There’s still a lot you don’t know...’

It takes everything Shaun has to not to let his poker face flicker, but the rage beneath makes him want to seize Patrick by his lapels and bash him against a wall. How dare he. This freakshow of a bodysnatcher can’t even keep his brother’s body alive and well long enough to stand up while having a conversation, and yet has the nerve to patronise him?

Shaun hears, ‘I’m sorry for Stormy,’ as if from the other end of a tunnel. All that’s brewing in his head is the conundrum sitting in front of him. Two personalities, one body. They’re interchangeable now, one and the same. Twice the twin, half the skeleton. Michael, playing patient zero to a contagion which wrecks and wrings until bloodied flesh is all that’s left behind. Patrick, a disease forged in the womb and soaked into the being of a boy who could have been something different.

Should have been.

Never will be.

No one could reconcile the two but Shaun.

So it must be a sickness, an illness, a disease. And everything bad that ever comes from sweet Michael’s mouth is a result of his condition.

If that’s the case, is it so awful to want to be as far away from them — from him — as possible,  whoever — and whatever — he is?

Patrick is only sharing the broken-down condo which remains of his brother’s body.

Taking back his stolen property.

And where does that leave Shaun?

As the unspoken martyr, of course.

There’s only so much room in my head for bullshit, Shaun seethes. I’m not going to live my  life cleaning up after him — not for Michael or Patrick.

And that’s it - that’s the one thing that people never let him have. The realisation which hits upon their return to the motel, where Michael cowers beneath the words spat from Shaun’s molten mouth. He always possessed a thought process blessed by rapidity, but a tongue cursed to be silver. Shaun is nothing but a host to a panoply of pain as essential to him as his own veins.

As essential as the blood flowing between Michael, and the brother he never met.

When Shaun storms out into the cold, determined to be somewhere, anywhere that puts great distance between him and the entity Michael/Patrick Andersen, he feels the full force of the Virus, nesting, breeding, multiplying beneath his skin. There’s no room for guilt and worry and pain — just the cure.

To never be near his brother again.

When Shaun saw Patrick’s nose bleeding, he had to swallow back bile. He knew in an instant that their brother never left, not really. Once, connective tissue held the bonds of their brotherhood fast. The transfusion continues. The real question is — who is the donor, and who is the recipient?

Even his own family emphasised the importance of their blood-bond, unable to comprehend Shaun’s behaviour.

“He’s your brother, Shaun, and he needs your help,” his mom tells him one night, barely holding back the tears. “I know he can be difficult to deal with, but this isn’t his fault. He didn’t ask to be sick.”

And Patrick didn’t ask to die, Shaun wants to scream. No one blames Michael for  cannibalism, do they?

Now he’s facedown in the wood, sawdust clinging to the hot streaks his tears leave behind, and that mortifying image which plagues his nightmares comes looming large from the recesses of his mind; two twin boys, floating without care in a shared amniotic sac, their umbilical cords respectively attached to the same fleshy hunk in lieu of a beating heart.

Shaun feels like his foetal never-brother. Severed. Shrink-wrapped in his own sac, the very thing keeping him alive. And then eventually swallowed whole.

It’s time for Shaun to cut the cord for good.

Why couldn’t you just be normal? The tears start for real now, fat and salty and rolling down Shaun’s face in a tempest. His internal monologue is louder now, drowning out the background noise of his softer (yet much more insidious) conscience.

Stormy would still be here if you weren’t so fucked up... I could have had a normal life if it  weren’t for you...

There’s no time left for forgiveness. Because of Michael... Patrick... because Shaun willingly exposed himself to this pathogen again and again, he is going to die here, in this glacial attic, with no one around to know or care.

But, as the lights are turned off, and a dark, unfamiliar laughter fills his every sense, a set of horrid thoughts riot in the screeching crowd of his brain; the thoughts that could never quite be buried.

Michael didn’t know what he was doing... Michael didn’t know what he consumed…

Shaun once made the mistake of asking his mom what his other brother was going to be called.

No-one ever asks to be infected.

Shaun’s eyes shut against the darkness for the last time.

“I always liked the name Patrick.”

[bighousela]

Franklin's Brain

Nominated at Cardiff Independent Film Festival! 

Check out CIFF above, film screening on Sunday May  7th, tickets are free!

(2017) 13min | Short, Sci-Fi

Director: Scott QuinnWriter: Scott QuinnStars: Keely Beresford, Oliver Hembrough, Nathan Sussex

http://www.filmoria.co.uk/franklins-brain-2017-short-film-…/

https://www.facebook.com/FranklinsBrain

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6469622/

http://www.twitter.com/LiamDHobbs

http://www.twitter.com/ScottQuinn_

Genre Sci-Fi Drama

Studio Thirteenth Productions Ltd.

About Short Sci-Fi Drama. Hopeless outsiders, Tom and Franklin (human consciousness in a box) desperately seek meaning in their lives, in a World they have tried to escape.

Plot Outline Set late in the 21st Century, reclusive Tom lives and works alone on a small scrap yard; his only companion, Franklin, is a box containing the thoughts and memo… See More

Awards Nominated - ‘Brian Hibbard’ Award - Cardiff Independent Film Festival

Starring Nathan Sussex, Oliver Hembrough, Keely Beresford

Directed By Scott Quinn

Written By Scott Quinn

Produced By Liam Hobbs

FRANKLIN’S  BRAIN - Short Film Trailer

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odLj13iGOYE)

[catgirltheseus]

Spiders

There are spiders under my house. Tiny creatures, all carapace, blood, and hair. All under my feet every day of every month. My parents never go into the basement. Not because of the spiders. They don’t know about those. There’s just nothing down there for them. They don’t horde, they don’t store. And so they’ve never been down there. Not that I can remember, at least.

I don’t know when the spiders showed up. Maybe when I was born. It was my tenth birthday when I first opened the basement door. My parents thought I’d run away. It was a bad coincidence that no one had shown up to that birthday party. When I appeared back in my room three days later, starved and non-verbal, they barely even questioned where I’d been. They were happy. I was not.

Therapy was the logical next step. I was traumatized, so they said. And they were correct. But saying “I was devoured by spiders” isn’t taken very well by most people. So I lied. I told them how I got lost in the woods after running away. How sad it made me that no one showed up to my birthday party. I was a little sad about that part, in retrospect.

I had nightmares for a year. Of those little furry legs crawling over my body. Chelicerae biting at me, tearing little pieces like ripping a paper into itty-bitty shreds. The creatures dying under me as I squirmed, pustules of black ichor that burst, coating me in their blood. Of the moment I finally died. Living a memory more than a dream.

I went back after one year. With dark circles under my eyes from months of restlessness, I wrenched the basement door back open and descended.

Fortunately for my parents, it only took me a few hours to show back up this time, starved once again. They hadn’t even noticed me missing. For years after, I knew what would happen if I returned. I put up with the nightmares. With the not-knowing. For a time. I was fourteen the third time I died. And the fourth. And fifth. If my body hadn’t started shutting down from starvation, I would have entered the basement for the sixth. I spent two nights in the I.C.U. and was readmitted to my therapist. I told them the truth and received a bottle of tablets. It worked. Whenever I saw a spider, I still flinched. Still felt the hundreds of little bodies burrowing into my skin and crawling through my hair. But my sleep was safe.

I died for the sixth time when I was seventeen. Not to the spiders, though. Hydroplaning off the slick empty road and slamming my car into a tree, I choked on blood and glass.

And woke up in my room. I walked for hours back to where I had crashed. Rain-drenched and sore, I climbed back into the blood-washed divers’ seat and turned my phone back on. A hundred missed texts and calls brushed past me and I dialed a number.

“Hi mom. I crashed my car.”

I stopped taking the tablets after that day. Insomnia took hold, as I expected it to, and I returned to fearing the night. The spiders didn’t seem surprised to see me a month later. Just hungry. I stopped counting how many times I went down there after that. Dozens. Hundreds, maybe. Weeks spent being torn apart, bleeding, screaming, crying. More time dying than actually alive.

It must have been confusing for them, my parents. To never see me leaving the house and, at the same time, rarely seeing me in it. Never knowing where I was or what I was doing. With how sunken my eyes, hollow my cheeks, and dreaded my expression, they probably thought drugs. If they knew… they would have wished it was.

The house collapsed one day. Not for any grand reason like an earthquake or tornado. Just… age. My parents were both out of town that day. I was… the same place I always was. Instead of my room, I woke up in the I.C.U.. In that exact spot I had been after my fifth death. Nearing my five-hundredth.

We moved after that, to the other side of town where the property tax was even lower and the houses just as rickety. This one didn’t have a basement, though. With the passing rain, there was no way to stop it from flooding for a third of the year.

I checked the news for the few days they cleared up my old house’s remains. And then another week after that. Looking for the article that headlined, “Horde of Spiders Found Under Collapsed House; Three Injured, One Dead.” Or something like that. But no. Even stalking the worksite turned up nothing.

There are no spiders under my house. Because there is nothing under my house. Only dirt and stone and pipes and concrete. I haven’t died in almost half a decade. Because I have no basement to go to. Because I don’t drive in the rain anymore. Because my house hasn’t collapsed yet. But sometimes I look down at the floor and wonder:

“Can I still die?”

[catgirltheseus]

Olivia’s apartment was empty, as usual. Luke wouldn’t be due to come by for another five weeks Shrugging her bag off of her shoulders–it landed half-slumped beside a pile of magazines that got slotted under the door every Tuesday at 6:30 AM–and ripping her collar loose of her throat, the dreary-eyed girl recited her steps like it was a poem:

Five steps forward.

Six steps right.

Three more left.

Bed’s in sight.

The entire flat was hers. She had no roommates, no parents, not even neighbors. The building had a strange dichotomy, not all too uncommon for inner city London. The location made the price steep but the quality was intolerable to any who could shell out the cash for it. Almost any, Olivia proved, flopping onto the bed that cut a brownie slice out of the rectangular room. A corner piece too, which Olivia was convinced were better. 

The flat was hers, but all the open space felt intimidating. Like she needed to confine herself to a box that would send even the most fortuitous claustrophobics into shock. She’d made her own room into that box, glorious in its gloom. It wasn’t bland by any stretch; posters, shelves lined with figurines staring down like sentinels, banners, a pink, white, and blue flag, all adorned the walls. Only the flag held much color, everything else bordering so close to emo that Olivia had to ashamedly avert her eyes whenever she saw the unused bottle of black hair dye in her bathroom cabinet.

The window outside took the place of an entire wall and the blackout curtain that had almost smothered Olivia when she’d been carrying it up the stairs dutifully guarded against unwanted light, which was all of it. Sometimes peering over the bustling of people made small by perspective was fun, but even in spite of the reflective outer glass any stray eye wandering up had Olivia flinching. So she didn’t do it often.

She woke up. Olivia hadn’t realized she’d fallen asleep, nor that she’d moved to the armchair in the living room. She slid her legs over the arm and stood up, not even bothering to rub the sleep from her eyes. It never helped, so why try?

The sun had set, but it wasn’t too dark. Bright lights from the stores and streets below radiated into the sky, dashing any young London astronomer’s hopes of seeing more than darkness for the rest of time. Olivia watched the people below, hundreds of them. The odd car drove past but the crowds often spilled into the streets when they were barren of vehicles. This led to incredibly slow commutes, a single wriggling mass of people that barely moved. To avoid being seen–which she wouldn’t be, just paranoia–Olivia retreated to her kitchen. She wasn’t hungry, but then she never was. It was a guessing game to keep herself alive sometimes, finding dehydration or starvation had caught her in its crooked grasp in an instant with violent hunger pains or dizziness.

She stole a Tesco sandwich from the fridge. It’d been a long time since she had bought any bread. Actually making food instead of just buying it pre-made was… it… it took a lot of effort. With school and… everything, the act of actually making food was just too much. Plus, a diet of Tesco sandwiches and fast food delivery only made her feel mildly awful. Olivia slunk back to her room, sandwich and an energy drink in hand.

The sun had come up by the time she left the room again. All night had been spent on doomscrolling and Minecraft, and now Wednesday morning reared its head like a particularly fruminous jabberwock. She made her way to the washing machine, undressed, and tossed in her clothes. There wasn’t time for her to actually wash them, so Olivia didn’t bother turning it on. Back to her room, she pulled on her spare uniform, buttoning up the shirt and cardigan and zipping up the skirt.

The whole thing was actually a bit too big for her, which made sense considering she’d stolen it. Which, though “stolen” was a strong word, was an apt way to describe how it had come into her possession. While her brother had been negotiating with the tailor, because the school was pretentious enough to require a fucking tailored uniform, she had simply taken one off the rack and folded it into her bag. Her brother was more amused than upset when she showed him on the way back. He’d be a terrible role model, were he actually ever around to be one.

The sleeve flopped over her hand which, while cute, was also against the rules and would definitely count as an infraction. Olivia rolled up her cuffs, put on her very long socks, and lifted her bag over a shoulder. She slipped one more energy drink into her bag and left. The hallways of the building were empty since very few actually lived there. Down an elevator she went and out the tucked away door next to a Waterstones. 

Her commute to school was… actually quite a lot. It wasn’t far, but still required ten minutes of walking and two bus rides. London was just that annoying to navigate. Not that using it as an excuse ever worked. The headmistress would slash the tyres of every bus in England and set your house on fire and still punish your tardiness with fifteen detentions. Olivia left an hour early most days because of this. Most days, of course, because if she had slept the night before instead of in the afternoon, she wouldn’t be able to muster up the energy to leave on time.

Olivia passed through what might have looked like any random gate in the side of a brick wall to an uninformed observer, but was instead the entrance to her school. It had been a good day commute-wise, so only a few other students filed in as well. Olivia walked the long garden stretch up to St. Sina Girls’ School and crossed the threshold of the front door.

A ring of hammer and steel, and the day was over. Olivia slumped over the table of the lecture theater in a caffeine-induced haze. This was par for the course when it came to weekdays. Others filed out of the room and Olivia forced herself to stand. She shoved a notebook that hadn’t felt the touch of a pen in weeks into her bag. About a half-dozen other girls still lingered, most just talking and slowly gathering their stuff.

They couldn’t stay long. While Olivia’s day was over, the rest of the school was still alive. Classes stretched into the late afternoon, though Olivia’s ended barely past noon. Her schedule was intentionally light, smaller than it should have been. She was just that special. And her brother had a lot of money. That usually removed even the longest sticks from asses.

She glanced around to see if her one friend had left already and-

Sophia found her way to Olivia’s seat just as the latter girl had slid both arms through the straps of her bag. She moved with purpose, a freight train of dirty gold locks and honestly very little else. The uniform looked positively baggy on her skeletal frame, all the more damning when one realized it would cut pretty close on the average person. Sliding into position next to Olivia, Sophia shot her a quick smile. Closed mouth. Consistent vomiting left the teeth in pretty rough shape and Sophia already had issues with her appearance. Just the body’s way of kicking itself while it’s down.

“So,” Sophia mused, completely aware of the answer she was about to receive, “got any plans today?”

“Go home. Lie down. Sleep.” Olivia and Sophia started walking out of the room just as the next class of students entered.

“That’s so boring! We should do something. Just the two of us, we can hang out and go-”

Olivia turned to her friend, greeted by nothing but the gloom of the school’s halls. Pools of light segmented by crossed wooden bars in the window frames spilled onto the empty floors. A glance at her phone told her it was about 11 PM. She felt… not well rested, but about as rested as she normally felt after sleeping.

Her legs casually guided her to the exit. Hopefully the night bus wouldn’t be too long. Or she could just Uber. The bus sounded nicer, though. She made a point to step over the blood forming in puddles on the ground, as well as the corpse it had once belonged to, long since absent of the Spark.

How long had it been since she’d last eaten something? She couldn’t be sure. Best to stop somewhere on the way. McDonalds would be open but… well, Olivia couldn’t claim to have more self respect than a Big Mac at 12 AM on a weekday but they were still gross. Tesco Express maybe, but then again it wouldn’t be any different to the kinds of things she had at home.

She spent the next few minutes thumbing through stores on her phone, eventually settling on a Subway and ordering in advance. Once satisfied, she looked up to find she had walked outside. So far from the lights of the main street, everything seemed much darker than it should. 

Dark gray bathed everything and drowned it, traversing the admittedly small grounds of the school after nightfall feeling like swimming in uncertainty. Olivia left the empty school behind.

Her sub wasn’t very good. She was a fool for expecting much else, but still Olivia mourned what could have been. Olivia crumpled the wrapper and tossed the remains in the bin. Rising from the table adjacent to the window, she stole a glance outside. People moved about, as alive and thrumming as ever. Very few actually bore the Spark, a divine little sliver that could be picked out with some focus. She focused, not on those brimming with golden energy, but the rest. Some of them, anyway. One dropped. A second. Three hylics collapsed within the sea, all dead. It wasn’t many, maybe the proximity was a little weird but they wouldn’t be noticed at the same time in such a busy crowd.

Olivia stepped away, looting the fridge for energy drinks and sandwiches. Like so many before, they would keep her company as she locked herself in her cramped little room.

A dim reflection’s eyes met her own. The power had flickered, only for a moment but still enough that her computer had slipped into a very untimely coma. Only slightly seething with annoyance, Olivia stood, leaving the computer to its slumber. It rebooted itself as she left, but it was too little too late. Clocks flashed at her, like the needless eyes of half a dozen machines pleading to be reset. She never did. That was, and would always be, Luke’s problem to deal with. Clocks were everywhere, regardless.

Time was such a constant reminder wherever Olivia looked, at least most of the time. Right now? Well, it was exactly midnight, or so the clocks told. Perhaps the sun and moon disagreed. Perhaps every other clock in the world did too. That didn’t matter though, since in the kitchen, the microwave clock was king. Also because Olivia had left her phone in her room.

Olivia gripped a chilled can of caffeinated beverage as she checked the status of the cabling nightmare in the corner of the living room. Luke was smart in technological things, and Olivia too by necessity, but neither of them gave the stray hair of a rat’s ass about neatness in their devices so the router was utterly bound in coiling wires. It was, however, on. Which was good and also unexpected. The abominable contraption liked to skimp on work whenever it guessed it might have a chance and a power cut was often one of those chances.

With the router checked, Olivia made a start towards her room but stopped. It would take too much energy for her to return to what she was doing, and feeling the options with her thoughts, anything in there would. A search for lower energy options began and, much to her surprise, a walk was the easiest thing.

Activity rarely ceased at night in London. It dimmed, naturally. Fewer cars and less traffic, scarcely anybody riding the night buses across the city. Plenty of stores operated twenty-four hours, but their fluorescent-hued interiors felt liminal and lonely, even with the occasional employee staring at you from the other side of the room.

All the places outside London that Olivia had been to were… quiet at night. Empty, still, dark, like a forest where no living creature could step foot. Stores closed earlier, traffic lights conducted nothing and no one. Here, though? Nothing slept too deep.

Olivia crouched in the corner of a Greggs, deeply invested in a gacha game and ignoring the cashier’s weird glares. The wifi, naturally, was shit. An awkward voice called out to her and she glanced up, stowing her phone.

“Hey uh. Y- your pasty is- it’s ready.”

Olivia sidestepped the corpse in the middle of the lobby, careful not to slip on rivulets of crimson that dripped off bone spikes ripping from points around its skin. No trace the Divine Spark had graced the lifeless shell for years.

“Thanks. Have uh… have a good day. Night, I guess.” Olivia took the bag and glanced up. The employee, ironically named Greg as she could tell by his name tag, lacked any trace of a Spark. Unenlightened in every sense of the word. 

His body shook, skin splitting and shredding as the bones in his body began to reshape. Needles of bone speared from him, flesh rupturing and blood pulsing like its own entity. Dropping, the only sound he made as he died was the wet thump of his body against the floor.

Olivia walked out, plastic bag in hand. Fifteen minutes until the next night bus.

“Wanna come back to mine?”

“I guess,” Olivia responded, reaching into her bag and pulling out a pasty and handing it to Sophia.

But they didn’t go to Sophia’s house. They never did, she was stocked with excuses and they never really seemed to run out. By this point ‘come back to mine’ was code for ‘wanna hang out anywhere that isn’t my house?’ Usually at the mall but since it was midnight, that meant prowling the streets. Sophia took the lead, glancing back and smiling playfully. Closed mouth.

They walked, talking about various things that interested one of them, but never the other. Despite being friends, Olivia and Sophia had little in common. Sophia barely touched the internet outside of TikTok and the obligatory Facebook account that she only used for Messenger. Sophia tried to be an extrovert, to little success. Conventionally unattractive and possessing an off-puttingly obsessive personality, most people avoided her like a plague. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in Sophia developing a host of self-esteem issues and dysmorphia and making a single digit amount of friends.

Olivia didn’t have any other friends though–at least not ones that she’d seen in person–so they would hang out whenever Olivia felt she wouldn’t faint at the notion of social interaction. 

[catgirltheseus]

“Weak.”

The word coursed through the air, rattling bone and trembling hands alike. They felt it, the truth of the statement. Understanding a truth beyond just fact. It was and always would be and always has been. Weak. That was what they were.

The moment passed and they were strong again. Their hands stopped shaking, they stood taller and kept their eyes focused.

“Quite potent of a fear effect. I can see that keeping out lesser parties or the casual explorer.”

Beneath a decorated skull, the lizard mused as he read the magic lingering in the air. The lizard’s sister, a human whose face was similarly obscured by a skull headpiece, shrugged.

“Mmh. I’ve felt worse.”

She fiddled with a wand as they idled. It was a thing of craft, a stick of delicately carved ivory that looked as fragile as it did mundane. Such was the facade of an adventurer who regularly fought their own kind. Neither observations about the wand were true. Like most high-tier wands, the piece would be unmarred by all but the most brutal blows. Attacks in general, let alone ones strong enough to break the wand, were rare. Any who would approach within striking distance of the wand’s owner would die to regret it, so it was scarcely at risk of being damaged.

It was being spun like a toy. The human had it balanced on one finger and was gently flicking it to make it spin.

“Let’s just hope that was the best this dungeon had to offer.”

Another human, this one dressed in simple robes, took a drink from one of many flasks he had dangling from his body and grimaced.

“Not so. With stronger defenses come more bountiful rewards,” the lizard reminded him.

“Usually.”

The final voice was metallic, ringing from behind a full visor of steel.

“Usually,” the lizardman conceded with a nod.

They stood a moment more, staring into a stony dark abyss.

Noise shattered the tension in the air, the sound of bone against stone.

“Ack,” From behind her skull mask– mask it may be, it was still the mostly intact skull of a real creature –the human grumbled as she bent to pick up the wand she had just dropped.

Mood thoroughly shot, the armored adventurer strode forwards. Clink, spoke their armor as it settled with each step. They would be known to the denizens of the dungeon as they walked through it. Only a party of rogues could move through a stone labyrinth quietly and there was only a single one present.

Admittedly, she could have made it through the dungeon alone– stealth or not. 

She followed second, a human rogue short enough to pass for a gnome or anorexic dwarf. Surprisingly, she’d been quiet up until now. Silence was at odds with her usually talkative nature, but no one prodded her about it. She had a bad history with dungeons.

Third was the other human woman, adorned with a skull mask and still playing with her wand. She was perhaps the most useless in a dungeon and so she stuck to the middle of the pack. Situational might have been a better word for it. A kinder one certainly.

Behind was the third human and the lizard, both shoulder-to-shoulder. Both were scholarly types and quietly discussed the architecture and assumed history of the dungeon they strolled through. At their helm the armored figure– who most outside this party knew not the race or gender of –slowed to a stop.

“Ambush.”

A rush of movement overtook the 4-way intersection they’d found themselves at. One hallway filled with steel– ready and waiting. Another with shards of bone that stuck from the ground like a palisade. One more with ice and at their backs was the watchful eye of their rogue.

The first arrows struck the ice, sending shavings to dance across the floor. Some struck the plate armor of their lead, but the only well-placed shot– aimed for their visor –snapped against the steel of their raised gauntlet. Others were lost in a forest of bone.

The attack from all three hallways ahead of them quieted, the sound of dozens of bowstrings drawing a prelude to the next wave.

Firing in waves. Their assailants were used to fighting adventurers. A steady stream of arrows would keep their guards up, force them into a retreat. But all at once, with brief gaps for the entire force to restring their arrows? Adventuring instincts would take over. They would play the hero and charge during the lull. And die.

These five, however, were not type-cast to play the heroes. These were villains. And so they acted accordingly.

A second flurry of arrows were also broken, the adventurers making no moves to attack. Moments more passed, three salvos came and went. But the arrows made no headway. They didn’t have the power, the impact to shatter a solid defense.

So arrows were abandoned in all but the north hallway, the one guarded by a sole figure dressed in plate. Green-skinned warriors, who had been waiting behind the rows of equally green archers, moved forwards. Orcs and goblins alike. The two species weren’t always a pair, but it was often likely to see the two join tribes when the situation called for it.

Such as in the cramped halls of a dungeon. Goblins stabbed low, orcs slashed high. The small green fighters bore spears, jagged wood and stone that would shred flesh and muscle. Here they struck ice. The thin structure cracked and shattered from the axe of an orc that crashed into it.

The leading orc, wielding her trusty axe in one hand and a knife that saw use both in combat and mealtime in the other, grunted in irritation as she saw the adventurers had not opted for a pitched battle, instead retreating back into the halls they’d come from. No matter, thought the green-skinned ambushers with a grin that was lost in the darkness. The ambush squad never used the tribe’s best fighters. Only enough bodies to seal off a hallway from a panicked adventurer.

No, their best went to the back, the pincer group.

But, forcing them back into a single hallway instead of an intersection would be an advantage against such a defensive group. The orc stalked over the ruins of a frozen wall, grip slipping on her weapons to make her silhouette's arms appear longer, overwhelming and powerful.

Go on. Fear me. Run. Drop your guards and flee.

It was the second-to-last thing the orc ever thought. The last was,

What?

And then perhaps a desire to scream.

She didn’t fall, held up by bone spears as she was. Instead, her body slumped and stopped moving far before any sound could come out. Every other green-skin paused. The intersection seemed empty, had seemed empty until an enterprising orc was skewered from seemingly nowhere. 

A goblin, strongest of his family and proud of it, grit his teeth in rage. Shouting words that were incomprehensible to most, and then another set that the orcs would understand, he pointed a worn sword at the retreating adventurers.

More arrows were fired, but two of the groups were sequestered to their own hallways and so could not contribute to the volleys without risk of death.

The goblin with the antique sword gabbled to a nearby archer, who ran off and returned quickly with a bag. Scattering the contents with a hand, the dust that was stored inside drifted across the newly-created killzone. The magic-detecting powder shifted colors, as it would in a dungeon and around recently casted spells, but did not react otherwise. But as they settled, the goblin saw the adventurer’s tricks.

Caltrops, made of bone and painted black to hide amongst the shadows. One of their mages had to be activating one when they passed over them.

A command was sent and an orc wind-speaker, one of their shamans, approached. Air swirled and gathered the caltrops, throwing them towards the adventurers. Well before they could fly far enough to cause injury, each one ruptured into long urchins of ivory, filling the hallway with needles.

“More coming from behind!”

The lizardman lowered his hands and turned. Knives in hand, their rogue faced down another pack of goblins, orcs, and… a troll.

It filled the hall, hunching slightly to keep its mass from scraping against the ceiling. Rows of green-skinned warriors walked in front and behind, giving their trump card a wide berth. 

“They’re quite well organized, no?” The lizard mused, reaching into pouches for more bone fragments.

“Haha, yeah,” his human sister stepped up and raised her wand in a conductor’s stance. “Let’s see how long it takes them to rout.”

The wand flicked and an orc died. Neck snapped, 45 degrees. Instant. Another flick, another death. Goblin, this time. Both bodies dropped, and the approaching dungeon dwellers paused.

Laughter bubbled out of the skull the adventurer wore, wand flicking more and more. Bodies followed in its wake. All instantly dead, heads twisted at impossible angles.

Fear.

More so than the instant death, what the adventurer barely more than a girl brought was fear.

More powerful than an enchantment, it was the undeniable certainty of death standing right in front of you, cackling as you knew that fate– the same fate that had struck down your comrades who now lie at your feet –could come for you at any moment. Whether you ran, or fought.

The undisciplined would run, break formation and try to escape her line of sight, trailing bodies as they went.

These orcs and goblins were smart. They knew the press of bodies in a dungeon would be a death sentence and that their only hope was to fight.

And so they made the mistake of pressing on.

“Ohhhh. Smart little goblins, aren’t we?” She giggled, felling five more in the time it took the press of bodies to reach her. By which point, she danced back behind the lines of her comrades.

Clank.

Filling the void was their armored lead, longsword bared against the approaching mob. Hundreds of goblins, dozens of orcs, and a troll.

Good odds.

The first row was pikes. Spears, really. Pikes were too long to maneuver inside the enclosed dungeon, but polearms were perfect to box in opponents. And with their backs against a forest of bone needles and captured on both sides by brick, a spear wall was undeniable doom for an adventuring party.

They swung, not the orcs or goblins, but the adventurer. Cleaving through the wooden shafts and the bodies that held them as if they were air. The longsword came up again as the spearorcs tried to readjust their aim. Blood painted the walls and steel and iron spearheads skated off unmarred plate.

Goblins and orcs alike felt the crushing insignificance. Their lines collapsed. Orcs that couldn’t retreat in the tight hallways were slashed apart, most often in the backs as they tried to run. Arrows, spears, swords, maces. All turned away by the dark steel plate. Any who got close enough to strike was cut down an instant later.

Blood and corpses and broken steel littered the corridor. The final goblin dropped in two pieces, the troll now the only thing between the adventurers and the rest of the orc and goblin warriors blocking their exit.

It seemed unperturbed by the death of so many. Raising the tree trunk of a club it carried, it swept across the hall.

Bodies flew, severed bones breaking under the impact and slamming into the far wall. For their part, the adventurer in plate regarded the troll wearily, sword ready. When the massive weapon closed in on them, they tensed but did not dodge. Their body ragdolled as their attempt at a block was completely crushed. Metal ground against stone, their body rolling to a stop behind their companions.

“Moron,” their rogue snickered.

The cryomancer adjusted the collar of his robes, numerous water flasks sloshing,

“It seems the troll is ah, still an issue. One of you care to deal with this?”

He got disinterested looks and little eye contact at the question. An arm slung itself around his shoulders, the shorter human rogue stretching to accommodate the awkward gesture,

“Aw, come on buddy! That guy’ll squash me flat. Just wave your little wizard fingers around and freeze his eyeballs or something.”

Both bone mages gave their excuses,

“Bone’s too thick. Sorry.”

“I seem to have exhausted myself in our previous engagements. My current mana seems insufficient for the task.” They were obviously lying, just pushing the ice mage to flex a little bit. He hated doing that, a fact they were aware of and enjoyed ribbing him for.

“I suppose.” He raised his hands, grumbling. A half-dozen pops like burning tree bark sounded as the stoppers of his flasks all ejected themselves onto the ground. Water flowed in thin streams, snakes that coiled around one another, soon becoming each other as they converged.

To its credit, the troll wasted no time in trying to smash the water serpent and cryomancer with it. Water crystalized, caustics of light dancing over the walls that suddenly turned to glitter as the ice shattered. The club hit stone, narrowly missing the stumbling mage as he moved out of the way.

Behind him, the armored swordsperson had stood up and was watching the fight alongside their allies.

Shards of ice sprayed across the ground, quickly melting back into water. The troll swept its club sideways, intent on pinning the man between a tree trunk and the wall. Halfway through the motion, it roared. Dropping the club, it clutched at its arm where three spears of ice had punched holes into the tough gray flesh.

[catgirltheseus]

Faith kept men sane. Faith kept men in the trenches. Faith kept men reloading their guns. Faith kept men up at night and was why they slept for the next day. Faith was everything to a soldier.

Faith did not keep men alive. Not many.

They fought and died for their faith. It was what killed them, in the end. With their deaths, the lines held. Because they were there. Their faith brought them to the front lines so they could form a wall of bodies lit with gunpowder.

Faith in God. Faith in each other. Faith in themselves. Faith in the future. It was all they had and all they needed to hold the lines.

Their enemies didn’t need faith. They had power, abilities unnatural and unholy that could snuff lives like water over incense. Drown all of them in darkness. Unless they had the faith to stand. To fight. Rows upon rows of them, dug into trenches, ears ringing day and night with gunfire. It bought them land and time. At a cost.

Costs were calculated that night, as they were every other night. How many men needed to hold this front? Were there enough rounds for their platoon and could a shipment make it in time? And if not, how long would they last before they were running into no man’s land with nothing but a bayonet and grit? Was any of this worth it?

Yes. Any true soldier- true devotee knew that. Infidels would be slaughtered to the last. It was only right to do under God’s eye. If thousands of faithful had to die to see it through, then their sacrifice would be embraced lovingly.

Still, it was with a heavy mind that one such faithful ready to die finished calculating his own costs. They were going to die in three weeks. Sergeant Minister Roland of Danes put his pen down and leaned back in his chair.

The air was smokey, the burners releasing their last aromatic wisps as the embers died. Sparse wood criss-crossed the dirt roof above. Above that, barbed wires and hedgehogs kept their position safe from advancing bodies. Occasional gunfire would also see that the enemy kept to their side of the battlefield.

It was almost intimate, Roland felt. Their back-and-forth. He’d begun to recognize the other commander’s strategies, the routines they had, even some faces past scores of barbed wire and anti-tank blockades. Roland knew the enemy more than he knew most of his comrades. More than he knew most other people. That was how he knew that he was going to die. They were infidels, heretics, witches… but they weren’t stupid. New trenches were being dug, closer and closer. They had enough bodies to overwhelm Roland’s men soon and their equipment was better. Roland had two mounted machine guns to keep the line from being rushed and his requests for more mortar shells fell on deaf ears. 

Meanwhile, any of Roland’s soldiers would be torn apart if they stepped too far over the trench. He’d had to make two decisive strikes in the last week, aimed at destroying equipment over lives. Each had ended with a result that other commanders would have called questioningly beneficial. To Roland, the precious days they bought were a blessing from God..

The face of his watch flipped open as he pressed the latch on its top. His cracked reflection stared back at him from the broken watch face. It amused him, slightly, to check a watch that was broken. But it was important. Maintain habits. Don’t forget. If he stopped looking at his watch, what other habits would he break? Checking supplies? Inspecting soldiers? Praying?

He knew the time, though. Not by the watch face, but his body.

Time to sleep.

Sleep was a luxury, one he could just about afford as sergeant minister. His subordinates would be lucky if they managed five hours. And probably slacking off. Of course, rest came second to nightly prayer. Roland wandered over to a mat placed on the muddy floor and slid to his knees. Weary eyes picked out words from the hymns and scripture placed in front of him. Not that he needed to be reminded of any of it.

Words slipped from his lips like water from a spout and dissolved into the smoke. Divinity filled him, spirit forming whole once more after a day of toil. Faith. Why he fought. Visions of his countrymen, of his God flittered before his eyes. For them. For all of them. Roland was complete. He was-

Knock.

It was a weird thing, to be broken from devout prayer. Roland’s mind was in two places, having not fully come down from the clouds. And so it was only half comprehending that he stood and turned to face the encroacher.

“What?”

He was stern. It was taboo to interrupt someone during prayers, especially soldiers. They needed their faith more than anyone. It was one of few comforts they could afford. The private facing him was nervous and red-faced. He’d run here. 

“Sir- um, sergeant minister sir! Reports are coming in: the lines just north of Losbury are facing- the enemy has erected a barricade. A large one.”

Roland frowned. Barricades? Something like that was barely cause for alarm. The Losbury front was just another trench. They had even less armored support than Roland’s lot so barricades wouldn’t pose much of a problem. It would be a challenge, though, to install proper fortifications under active fire, though. So why would they…

“Strange. But this can wait. I’m due for a rest.”

The soldier shifted and hesitantly opened his mouth,

“You… I meant, sir, that these weren’t put up by hand. They have… support.”

Roland stopped cold. Of course. He was so stupid. If he was in a better state of mind he would have realized immediately.

Anti-tank barriers weren’t news-worthy, even if they were out of place. And any barrier designed to block bullets would be torn through in under a day. It was obvious. These weren’t hedgehogs or dragon’s teeth. They were all-purpose barriers, huge moving walls made of metal. A fortress on tracks designed to flatten an entrenched position in less than a day. Impossible to make by hand or machine. Which meant there was-

A witch. To the north.

“Here? You’re sure? There… there’s no strategic… But if there’s a full push… the higher-ups would know more, I’m sure.”

Roland began mumbling, before catching himself and focusing on the private who looked almost as shocked as Roland.

“Gather everyone. If we can evacuate from the immediate trenches, we can avoid being completely wiped out. We’d need every remaining shell of artillery to keep them from swarming us. Go! Now!”

The private was out the door in a flash, followed by Roland. In his head, their survival time jumped from weeks to hours. Maybe even minutes if the intel about the push was late enough.

A witch.

Roland had hoped he would never be on the battlefield with one ever again. Tide-turners, they were. Forces that could break lines and raze infantry like forests. It felt unfair, really. His men had slaved away on the field for months, taking and losing ground inch by inch, sweating, crying and bleeding with every bullet fired.

And now they were all going to die. Because of a single witch.

Roland had no faith in the moments he ran up the trenches, shouting orders at anyone he passed. He didn’t need it. Instead, it was hope that he clung to. Hope that a paladin arrived in time. That the augurs got lucky. That he got lucky.

Witches were deployed sparingly because they were not soldiers. They were weapons. And they had a weakness.

If the heretics had their witches, the faithful had their paladins. Both could flip a conflict on its head, turning a losing battle into a glorious win. Where they differed was how.

Paladins could not raise behemoths of iron, not summon ten thousand men’s worth of artillery fire on a whim. But they could survive it. They were tanks, walking titans of armor and durability. When a witch was deployed to level the front lines, so too would a paladin. One to walk through the hellfire and weather the brimstones just to cut down the witch by hand.

They were miracles to see on the battlefield. And Roland hoped he would be one to witness an act of the Lord tonight. Because otherwise, he’d die.

His rifle was heavy on his shoulder. It was a simple thing, all but the essential parts made of wood. What parts were steel felt rough and uncomfortable to the touch, enough to make Roland shiver.

Death approaches.

He heard it before he saw it. The low rumble of an engine, earth being crushed under thousands of tons. Iron ringing as bullets sparked off the outer shell uselessly. It sounded close. Roland pulled himself up a wooden beam braced against the trench walls and took a peek.

It was infuriating to even look at. A mockery of the cathedrals and churches Roland grew up in. Gothic spires of black iron rose out of the fortress, billowing smoke out of the crude imitations of bell towers. Arches that disappeared into themselves loosed bullets and shells from wonky crenels and mortars arced up from holes in the slanted roofs. 

Roland’s limbs grew heavier at the sight, but he couldn’t dwell. Running on, he approached a soldier shouting orders at the scurrying privates.

“Hey, hey! What are you doing, where’s your spelled ammo?”

“It’s uh… I- I wouldn’t-”

Roland glanced down.

Corporal.

“God lend me patience, where is your sergeant?”

“Injured, sir,” the corporal snapped to attention, well drilled enough despite the circumstances, “She was hit by unlucky shrapnel, ripped up her throat. Can barely stay awake. I doubt she’s going to make it through the night.”

Their voice was hard, solemn.

“Shit. Get me to your stores, I’m permitting use of any and all spelled ammo.”

A corporal wouldn’t know where spelled ammo was stored. It was a well-kept secret and even sergeants wouldn’t be told where their cache was hidden if they had a superior on site. Measures to prevent sabotage or theft. Spelled ammo was a platoon’s greatest resource. A last lifeline against witches until a paladin arrived.

Moving past lines of shelves in the dug-out room they stored supplies in, Roland found a sheet of wood hidden under a shelf covering what he sought: the coveted ammo they so desperately hid from the enemy.

They were hidden, made to burn unless the right chant was spoken when it was opened. Squads were supposed to protect these with their lives, destroying them in the event that was impossible.

Roland began loading his rifle immediately, before even handing off the box to the corporal who had guided him to the store room.

“Get everyone out,” he spoke, eyes not wavering from the bullets he slid into his clips, “retreat south, bring the ammo with you and start collapsing walls behind you. If a single heretic gets close, fill them with holes. Understood?”

“Yes sir,” they gulped. Hesitantly, they broached, “what will you be doing, sir?”

Grimly, Roland slung the rifle over his back and handed off the box to the soldier, “buying your sergeant and the rest of the injured a few more minutes of life.”

Their eyes lit up, terror and hope and faith and wonder.

“God be with you, sergeant minister.”

“You need Him more than I do, corporal. His blessings.”

They split as they emerged under the black sky. One ran south with their platoon, the other north to muster what little souls were brave enough to die for their comrades.

They wound through the narrow corridor of the trenches, close enough now that the witch’s barricade was a permanent specter in the sky. Soon enough, the trenches grew empty of people, and their run became a lot quicker. Every moment, the ground shook with the weight of the mobile fortress. But they made it to the alcove where injured bodies were lying on filthy cloths in the dirt. He spotted the sergeant, crimson rag wrapped around her neck. Roland knelt at her side, finding the words to say as if he were giving a sermon.

“Sergeant, I’m here. Your soldiers have all evacuated. What haven’t are fighting with me. We’re going to hold them off for as long as possible until a paladin arrives. Have faith, sister.”

He wasn’t even sure she was awake until a hand reached up to grip his forearm. Roland was about to give more reassurance, more faith, more hope, but she didn’t need it. Instead she pulled, rising to her feet.

“Sergeant, you are in no position to-”

She cut him off, not with a word but with a shake of her head. Bending down, the commander reached for her rifle which had been left beside her even in injury. Ejecting the existing rounds, a clip was pulled from her coat and socketed. Spelled bullets.

“That’s a court-martialable offense, keeping those on your person.”

Her head spun, locking eyes with him challengingly.

“Not that I’d say anything given the situation. Let’s go. Don’t tear that wound open.”

The two headed a group of twenty soldiers, emerging from the trenches to bear witness to sorcery unleashed. Spires loomed overhead, the iron castle now close enough its mortars were ineffective. They still fired, turning unoccupied ground into craters.

Twenty or so people stood, unseen as of yet and lined up like a true firing squad. “Ready!”

The click of two-dozen gun’s safety releases was dwarfed by the roaring barricade.

“Aim!”

Guns were sighted, various points of the structure deemed integral were focused on by every barrel of every gun.

“Fire!”

Roland went numb. The sound, the kickback, magnified by everyone around him would have been enough to shock him for a moment. But twenty-some spelled shots, all reacting at once was enough to shake his internals. Blinding light raced through the night, shearing metal. Breaking walls. Punching holes. Killing infidels.

Spelled bullets were just that. Spelled. Divine enchantments were placed on every bullet, set to react with the igniting gunpowder. Upon triggering, the bullet would vaporize anything it touched, especially potent against the magical constructs made by witches. It was like fireworks, the spectacle of two dozen holes being poked into the behemoth of iron that bore down on them. Not one they could admire for long.

“Scatter!”

Everyone ran, some across the no man’s land, others dove back into or even hopped the trenches. They all put distance between one another and stayed low to the ground. All the while, each one had pulled the bolt of their rifles and cycled a new round. They fired. Without instruction, the soldiers all put new holes in the barricade from their new vantages.

By now, the barricade had spotted them, even as they scattered. And so they started dying. Perhaps not the first to go, but the first that Roland saw was next to him. A private with a patchy beard and no hair was struck in the leg with a shell, which practically tore his lower half off. The shrapnel from the blast shredded the rest of him. Roland ignored the pain as he ripped a shard of iron from his forearm and kept running.

Four fell during the next volley of spelled shots, succumbing to gunfire as they briefly stopped to aim. Roland leapt over the long-dead bodies of no man’s land, not even bothering to aim as he pulled the bolt on his rifle and fired. Shots lanced the barricade’s hull, poking holes where Roland could see the heretics running around inside and dying to bullets they couldn’t see or predict.

The sight, gruesome as it might be, filled Roland with pride. Pride and faith. He fired again. And again. And again.

Click.

Empty. An empty clip fell to the ground and a new one filled its place quick as a flash. Roland looked up to shoot again and slid to a stop.

Seconds. That was how long he had left. The time could have been minutes had he kept run-and-gunning. If the paladin arrived soon, it could have been weeks. Forever, even.

It was seconds now.

They both stood there, deep gray robes frayed at the ends. Faultless masks staring with indifference.

Witches were always stylized after an idol from their worship. Men and women, seen as golden calves. False idols. Roland was familiar with many of them, and the armor the two witches wore did not escape his knowledge.

Leon the Vigil. The flower devil. Swirling carvings of devils and angels and flowers decorated every inch of iron plating they wore over their robes, as well as the full-plate mask with tips like pointed rabbit ears. An ancient monster who killed and tortured at his fancy. The world sang at his death.

Rakusha the Empath. Sick servant of Aisling. Their carvings depicted death and plague and trees, a spider web of grisly patterns that ran up the ram horns that sprouted from the sides of their mask. White death of old. Her victims lived for centuries in agony, cursed to undeath.

“Are we sure it’s this one? He’s not even a lieutenant. I was expecting a captain at least. But a sergeant?”

“Not so. This one is a sergeant minister. Look at his clothes. Priestly.”

“My point remains. Awfully reckless for one of such a low standing, wouldn’t you think?”

“Faith makes men stupid, sister.”

“That it does.”

They nodded sagely to one another, mere feet from Roland and discussing him as if he were an insect. A petty annoyance. And, Roland realized, he probably was just that.

A hand slipping into his coat while the other dropped his rifle, Roland pretended to be dumbstruck. It wasn’t hard, since very little of it was actual acting.

A witch could deflect an artillery shell with but a gesture. Even spelled ammunition wouldn’t affect one that knew it was coming. Not that they bothered to make spelled bullets for lower calibers of gun. But from point blank, Roland reckoned no one could block that. Not even a witch. He just needed a chance to get close.

“Y- you… heretic scum! Cowards! Too afraid to fight me on equal grounds.”

“Oh, sister, sister! I think he’s trying something! Look at how poor his acting is! Quite amusing, no?”

“Yes, the zealots don’t have much of a penchant for theater, brutes that they are.”

“I think it would be fun to indulge his provocations, don’t you? See how he regrets laying hands upon one of us?”

“Silly ideas, sister. Let us kill him and leave before an angel shows up. We have acquired what we sought.”

Roland grit his teeth and tensed his legs, ready to run in and end it all– Suicide by witch– but stopped. His eyes locked with another.

A soldier, sergeant rank, with a bloodied cloth around their neck and a stick grenade in their grip. Standing behind the two witches. And in the moment they saw each other, a plan was formulated in silence.

He ran. There was no tension, no preparation, just running. Roland dashed towards the witches, screaming if only to hide the sound of the grenade’s pull cord.

“Infidels!”

The witch– the rabbit-eared one– tilted their mask and raised a hand. Cold enveloped him. Life escaped like water through his fingers. The hourglass of his life, only a second left, shattered and the sand flew to the wind. He was gone, dying. He didn’t even know how, just that everything grew blurry and distant.

One sound rang true though. A soft donk as something bounced off an iron mask.

“Ah-?”

It all came into focus again, just enough for Roland to purposefully shut it all out again. The world went colorless, his ears screamed so loud they shut themselves off, painfully. Shock hit his body like a hundred fists. Sightless and soundless, Roland pictured his surroundings in his mind.

Four feet. Slightly right. Move. Put your feet here. Raise your pistol up and-

A second blast, though this one he was used to. Gunshot. Pressed right below the witch’s chin and poised to shear cleanly through her skull.

Pain. Pain greater than anything Roland had ever conceptualized. Pain enough to rip all accomplishment, hope, and faith from his body. Reason and sense were gone. He didn’t know where he was. What was he doing? Experiencing pain. Nothing else mattered. Everything shut down.

A billion and one years passed, locked in the agony that rivaled death. Hot and cold and broken and bleeding. They meant nothing. This was true agony. Truest of agonies.

It was gone, just as quickly as it had started. Not all the pain. Some remained. His eardrums burst, eyes blinking spots, head hammering, bleeding stump of a right arm oozing blood. That last one was new. His cheek burned, too. His eyes focused onto a strange and yet familiar sight.

A sergeant, throat binding slipped down far enough to see the ruined mess of her barely-healing throat. She slapped him again. Roland cursed and raised his arms to block. The sergeant didn’t strike him again, only standing and pulling him up with her. Roland poised to run, but stopped. There was nowhere to go.

In a circle around them, over a hundred people dressed in similar gray clothing and iron armor, though minus the mask, waited with weapons trained. On Roland, the female sergeant, as well as five other faithful. And the witches-

Roland’s breath caught, then sped up.

There they were. Both alive. Both standing. One’s mask had a large bloodied hole around the mouth and jaw, where Roland’s pistol had shot through the bottom of her mouth. But he had missed her head.

“Sister, we are retreating. You must get healed immediately. We’re bringing these ones as prisoners. Do not speak, you will exacerbate your wounds.”

The goat-horned mask turned to him and he knew that– even despite the lack of eye holes– she was staring daggers at him. Her hand raised and cold iron sprouted from the ground like ribs, circling and encasing all seven captives.

The gloom of the war-torn night’s battlefield succumbed to complete darkness. Roland slumped, feeling the exhaustion and blood loss hit him all at once.

My arm.

Another wave of adrenaline shot through him at the memory. With his remaining arm he pulled out a trench lighter, one he’d fashioned from an empty bullet casing, string, and various other parts he could get his hands on. Its dim flame brought light to the iron cell. Roland sat on the mud ground, feeling it hum softly under his touch. They were moving.

Using strips of cloth and his one remaining hand, Roland pulled a tourniquet around his arm. It was cut just below the elbow, shattered bone still sticking out from the stump. He could still feel the pain of when he’d shot the witch. The agony more than anything he’d felt in his life, magically inflicted as some sort of defense. Still a quiet hum behind his eyes and a specter where his arm should be.

The sergeant minister’s eyes moved up to his fellow officer, though lacking as she might be in the clerical title. She adjusted the neck cloth that glistened in the flickering light, freshly damp with her blood.

“What happened,” he started, “after I shot that witch?”

The sergeant opened her mouth to reply- and caught herself. She still couldn’t speak. Likely, she would never say another word for as long as she lived.

Someone else spoke for her, a master corporal. His insignia was damaged, half his clothes had been torn into by shrapnel. A lot of his body had gone with them. But he still managed to speak.

“You started screaming something fierce. Collapsed right there. I didn’t see it as well as the sergeant did but… your arm. It turned to ash. Your gun went with it. If she hadn’t cut it off… rest o’ you might have gone with it.”

Eyes wide, Roland’s gaze darted to the sergeant, who nodded confirmation.

“God almighty… and we’re the only ones left?”

Each one looked at each other knowingly. They’d all seen their comrades gunned down and torn apart. Roland looked down and contemplated. They were all going to die. Neither side of the war treated prisoners very well. The faithful simply executed anyone they got their hands on. Usually publicly. And the heretics? Human sacrifice. To fuel their war machines. Savages that killed as a way of life.

And so Roland knew there were two ways out. On the altar, dagger to his throat and blood feeding the infidels who would slaughter his country men.

Or-

“Corporal.”

The master corporal didn’t even have the energy to snap to attention like he would have were they back in the trenches. He just looked up. Tired eyes met and Roland stood, limping over.

“Pistol, if you would.”

Roland’s extended hand met the firm grip of a standard-issue personal firearm. Words of devotion to the Lord had been roughly carved into the slide and handle.

“A fine weapon. My thanks soldier.”

Roland stood in the middle of the room, lighter set on the floor casting shadow against the far reaches of their cell. He closed his eyes and remembered a far away place. One better lit than this, with a crowd of shuffling devotees filed into pews and waiting for the clock strike of eleven. Sweat stained his robes, nerves and fervor fought a battle in his soul. His first sermon. In his ears, which were badly damaged in the present but could hear every awkward cough and silent whisper in the crowd on that day, he heard the tolling of bells.

Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.

The clock struck eleven and he spoke,

“This is it. Our last stand has led to capture at the hands of our enemy. Many of our countrymen have fallen, but many more escaped. We saved lives and the heretics retreated. Battered. Injured. A witch bleeds tonight. We succeeded. And for that success, we will die. Fate is cruel, but God is smiling on us. He is proud.

“And just as we chose to save our comrades, we will choose our deaths. Our blood and bodies, should we choose to live now, will become coal for their machines of war. They will force us, even in death, to kill our fellows. To kill those we swore to protect.”

“However, should we choose to die at the barrel of a gun, our lifeblood will be spilled before they can take it from us. Our usefulness as people ends here, before it can be ripped from us. We will die pure. Ready to embrace God.”

Roland had to admit, his sermon skills were rusty. It had been years on the battlefield, where services were short and silent. But what he had was a point. It was death either way, and no one wanted to be the reason one of their friends died.

More weapons were drawn. The witches hadn’t frisked them, nor even taken their rifles. So each one pointed guns to their own heads. Some awkwardly finessing their long barrels against their temples while still able to reach the trigger. Each one had conviction in their eyes. They were ready to die.

Roland thought, at that moment. Of home. Of sisters. Of brothers. Of friends and family and every smile he would miss. Of God, his entire life devoted to the Lord. And he didn’t regret a second of it.

“Glory to God. Goodbye, everyo-”

None of that.

A voice invaded his skull. It rang out and he felt the power of the words pull his mind away. Darkness threatened to consume his vision. Roland squeezed the trigger. Tried to, at least. But he collapsed. Everything became numb.

[catgirltheseus]

Hello, my name is Quinn (any pronouns) and this is my obscure writing blog.

I'm going to just post my WIPs here and anything I finish, if I do actually ever finish something.

Most of the things I write are not checked for spelling and grammar other than a cursory glance.

I can't guarantee anything on here will be especially long or that it will have a conclusion or be good in any way. But it will be there.

I'm (probably) not really going to tag anything, other than just a general tag to filter the stories from the miscellaneous posts. (#quinnwriting)

That's it, thank you.

[bokutosbeam]

fuzzy feeling

fandom: haikyuu!!

summary: suna doesn't think he'll ever find love, but that all changes because of a small dog and his younger sister

pairing: suna rintarou x reader

genre: fluff and a bit of angst (suna gets grumpy)

warnings: swearing and self doubt on suna's part

quinn speaks: i headcanon that rin is a hopeless romantic so here's this!

— SUNA RINTAROU

suna doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to fall in love. he never really gets it when people talk about butterflies in their stomach and dizziness in their heads when around that special someone. the twins are always teasing him about having a cold heart or maybe he just wasn’t meant to have a lover; it made him want to smack them over the head, scared that they’re right.

it wasn’t like suna didn’t want someone to hold at night, to share his secrets with, to giggle with on the couch while watching shitty movies, to cry on when he had a bad day. he wanted all of it because despite what most people might think, suna rintarou is a hopeless romantic.

the bookshelf in his room is filled with poetry and romance novels that he likes to re-read over and over again in the comfort of his own bed. smiling lightly when something cute happens, cursing when the two lovers make the wrong decision, or crying lightly when they finally get together after hundreds of pages. of course he always switches them out with various mangas and classics whenever his friends come over, suna doubts he would ever hear the end of it if the twins found his secret stash.

he didn’t want to dwell on the fact that he’d probably never get to experience half the stuff he reads about, but he can’t help but get lost in his own thoughts once in a while. this was one of those times.

suna looked up from twiddling his hands on the bench at the park, his eyes scanned the surrounding areas to look for his sister. she had dragged him out of the house when there were no more popsicles left in the freezer for her to enjoy and their mother insisted they go out for ice cream, putting a few dollars in suna’s hand and practically pushing them out the door. on the way, they passed by his sister’s favorite park and he knew what was bound to come next.

searching for the little head of jet black hair was much more difficult than he originally thought it would be. panic quickly set in as suna cursed at himself for taking his eyes off the young girl. he moved frantically now as he got up from his seat and made his way towards the play structures, but still there was still no sight of her. moving to look on the bricked walkways that wove around the park, his eyes darted from path to path.

luckily there she was, crouched down and petting a rather fluffy looking dog. setting off in a jog, his sister must have sensed him coming towards her as she waved and held a bright smile on her face.

“look rin! isn’t this puppy so cute,” she squealed as soon as he came into ear shot. the dog was quick to lick her face as giggles escaped her throat.

his chest heaved a bit before spitting out words of worry. “don’t run off like that, alright? scared the shit out of me.” she nodded, not really taking in his concern and continuing to pet the dog.

“what’s it’s name again?” the young girl asked looking up at you.

“cupid,” you spoke sweetly.

“cupid! that’s so cute! right, rin?”

suna wasn’t one to ignore his sister, but he didn’t expect to be face to face with the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. your eyes seemed to shine with the beams of sun that escaped through the trees at the park and your face held a pretty smile that captivated his eyes.

“hello? rin!” his sister bounced in front of him as a way of getting his attention back to her.

“what? sorry.”

“cupid! the dog’s name is cupid!” her squeals made you laugh a bit; most kids had a similar reaction when meeting the little dog. “i love ‘em! can we keep it, rin?”

suna scratched his head at her request, his eyes finally meeting you for the first time. “no, i don’t think we can. this dog belongs to,” he trailed off, looking at you to fill in the blank.

“y/n,” you said. god, did your name have to be pretty too? suna thinks he might have a heart attack.

“cupid belongs to y/n. so why don’t you say thank you and we can go get that ice cream, huh?” the young girl nodded rapidly at his words and shot up to cling onto his left arm. the dog seemed to have a similar idea as it started to tug you down the opposite way of where suna was heading.

was this it? this was all the time that he was going to get with you? it seemed so as it was getting harder and harder to ignore the tugging that came from both his sister and your little dog.

“nice meeting you,” you said with a smile and small wave.

“yeah, nice meeting you too,” he copied your actions and soon you were both on your own ways.

***

he couldn’t stop thinking about you. suna knew it was silly because he got to spend all of five minutes with you, but he couldn’t help replaying those five minutes over and over again. the twins must have noticed it too as they had cut back on the teasing once they saw the far off look in his eyes during class and practice.

his blocking seemed more mechanical than ever and everyone could see it. kita tried talking with him, but he just shoved him off. his mom rubbed his back a bit more than usual. atsumu tried to pry and osamu gave him space. no one knew what was wrong and no one knew how to get him out of this slump.

the team was more worried than ever as they had a game today and sure suna was able to block just fine, but he wasn’t communicating with them and it was sure to cause a big problem sooner rather than later. getting out on the court, he fiddled with his hands a bit as atsumu and osamu tried talking to him but they just got empty hums and nods.

“hey!” a familiar voice caught his attention. from across the court next to him, you wore the same small smile and gave him the same small wave.

“y/n?” he murmured as the rest of the boys looked at each other in confusion as he made his way over towards you as you did the same to meet him halfway.

“i didn’t peg you as a volleyball boy,” you teased lightly as his cheeks flushed. “what position do you play, rin?”

his eyes went a bit wide at the name you had called him, but it made sense as that is what his sister had used and he hadn’t really introduced himself when you first met. “uh, middle blocker.” you hummed at this before poking your head out to look at the team that he was supposed to be playing against.

“their setter gets intimidated really easily and if you put enough pressure on him, you can predict his every move,” you told him, voice a bit quieter than before. he hadn't looked away from you, but was a bit shocked at what you had told him. “anyways, good luck! see you in the finals, huh?”

his brows raised at your statement, presumptuous for both his team and yours. nonetheless he nodded and replied, “yeah, good luck to you guys too.” you smiled and were off again to help with the bickering of your team that you’re sure could be heard from all over the gym.

he gets it now. the butterflies and dizziness.

[bokutosbeam]

early morning thoughts

fandom: haikyuu!!

summary: some early morning thoughts from the boys

pairing: sakusa kiyoomi x reader, kuroo tetsurou x reader, iwaizumi hajime x reader

genre: fluff (hajime's has the slightest bit of angst)

warnings: mentions of tummies, reader in their underwear, self loathing thoughs (on hajime's part), and reader lays on top of hajime (if there's something, please tell me!)

quinn speaks: just some thoughts that were swimming around my head this morning

— SAKUSA KIYOOMI

sakusa’s arm was slung around your waist and his face was buried in between your shoulder blades. your legs were tangled together with his, making it near impossible to shift around in the bed too much without waking the other.

but, sakusa didn’t mind the position he was in. his hand slid underneath your shirt just enough so that his fingers could graze the warm skin of your tummy. inhaling deeply before trying to drift back off to sleep, he caught a whiff of your fruity shampoo and conditioner. the same shampoo and conditioner he kept extras of in his apartment for when you were over and needed to shower.

although as time went on, he found himself using it more often than not. especially when you were away or didn’t have enough time in your busy schedule to spend quality time with sakusa. he also found himself bringing them with him, rather than his regular shampoo and conditioner, on away games that forced him to be away from you for however long.

the shirt you were wearing was his and sakusa could tell by the way it hung on your sleeping figure. usually you would wear little pajama shorts or comfy plaid pants to sleep in as well, but as the weather began to get warmer, you found yourself opting for just his shirt and some underwear.

although he promised himself that he would sleep in on his day off, sakusa couldn’t tear his gaze away from your sleeping figure. the room was still dark, sunshine wanting to peek through the blinds, but nonetheless he could see your face as clear as ever.

mouth opened slightly, hair a mess on the pillow, and fluttering eyes. the last one was a sure fire way to know that you were close to consciousness, so sakusa buried himself in your shoulder blades once more and hoped that you would continue to cuddle him even in your waking hours.

— KUROO TETSUROU

your hand was laying flat against kuroo's chest as your head rested next to it only a few inches away. one of kuroo’s arms wrapped around your shoulders and the other was lightly placed on the one that rested on his chest. stirring lightly, he awoke to the sight of you snuggled up to him tightly. it was one of his favorite sights.

ever since you moved in, he was able to see this practically every morning and the only time this wasn’t the case is when you awoke before him. but this time he was met with your warm and still so sleepy gaze.

it was his turn to trace your features; fingers lightly moving across your eyebrows and then down to your nose and after that your lips. at this, you twitched your nose ever so fast as the movements reminded kuroo of a small bunny. still, he continued to trace over and over again until you really started to stir and it was only then that kuroo decided to back off and let you get back into your deep sleeping state so that he could continue to admire you in the early morning glow.

kuroo would have to get up soon. it was his least favorite part about the mornings; leaving your side and the warm bed that was oh so inviting. sometimes you would whine in your sleep, unconsciously looking for kuroo, only satisfied when he would push a pillow into your grasp and then you would cling onto it before settling into your slumber again. those moments killed him the most.

but soon his alarm rang and he was quick to shut it off before it could disturb you. no matter what, kuroo would always kiss you before leaving in his button down, tie, slacks, and shiny shoes. it didn’t matter where, because no matter what, you would always smile lightly in your sleep at the small action.

— IWAIZUMI HAJIME

your face laid squished down on iwaizumi’s bare chest. your body was practically thrown over him during slumber. iwaizumi didn’t really mind as it was still comfortable for him; his arms coming around your figure and resting right on your lower back as his chin touched the top of your head.

iwaizumi could feel you breathing in and out, it was slow and gentle, similar to waves that would pull and push the water of the ocean. everything about you could be compared to a beauty only found in nature, iwaizumi thought. but for now, he would just focus on your breaths. matching your breathing pattern was something that iwaizumi did without even noticing anymore; he would do it when hugging you for a long time, when your back would press against his chest while watching movies on the couch, and moments just like these whether it be that he is trying to fall asleep or waking up.

sleepovers had been one of his favorite things about being in a relationship with you. when he was a kid, sleepovers always meant cleaning before his friends would come over and then it would be chaos as the group of aoba johsai boys would make a mess of everything he had just done. he didn’t mind it, but sleepovers with you were much nicer.

some of your things were around his apartment already and you came over so often, he didn’t really have time to tidy everything up and you didn’t seem to mind one bit. once you told iwaizumi that his apartment needs to look lived in, not like something out of a housing magazine you would find in the bathroom at your parents' house.

he liked that about you. you always were able to look at something and find the little beauties about it. after he heard you say that, he didn’t bother trying to frantically clean anytime you asked to come over, rather he opted to just do a few chores here and there.

the longer your relationship continued, the more frequent sleepovers were. iwaizumi wanted to ask you if you wanted to just move in already, but held off. fearing that you would say no to him or laugh in his face. he knew deep down that you were far too nice to do that, but he couldn’t help but worry.

more icky thoughts clouded his head as the sun rose higher and higher, but soon your fist tugged at his shirt as you stirred around in your sleep. It was almost like you could sense the dread that iwaizumi was experiencing. this small action reminded him that you were his just as much as he was yours, so closing his eyes once more, he joined you back in slumber with a contempt feeling in his heart.

[bokutosbeam]

moments that are dear to his heart

fandom: haikyuu!!

summary: suna comes home from practice to a pleasant surprise

pairing: suna rintarou x reader

genre: pure fluff

warnings: swearing and some light kissing (if there's something, please tell me!)

quinn speaks: suna has been on my mind for a while now and i hope this satiates my heart's need for suna content <3

— SUNA RINTAROU

suna came home to the sound of a peaceful house. no kitchen sink running, no vacuum sucking, no sound of light sweeping across the hardwood floor. this was odd because the house was sparkling clean and his parents weren’t supposed to be home early enough to get this all done. oh god, his parents weren’t supposed to be home and he was supposed to pick up his little sister from school. suna's heart was beating frantically and he quickly pulled out his phone but he was met with a dark screen and empty battery signal. shit, shit, shit. this was bad, this was really bad.

he was about to rush out of the house before he heard the familiar sound of his sister’s favorite television show coming in from the living room. walking into the familiar room, he saw two figures sitting on the couch. one head of hair was a recognizable jet black color that belonged to his sister and the other was recognizable as well, but it couldn’t be, could it?

your name was called by suna, scaring the shit out of you and his sister. both of your screams made suna’s eyes widen and take a step back, his lips curved up into a small grin but he quickly got rid of it.

“give a girl a warning next time,” you said, holding a hand to your chest.

“yeah! give us a warning rintarou!” his younger sister mocked as you smiled at her words.

suna came around to the other side of the couch and gently placed his hand in yours before sliding next to you. “sorry,” he said, pecking your cheek lightly as a light blush spread across your face. no matter how many times he did that, you always got flustered. “what are you doing here?” he asked. it wasn't accusatory, but rather filled with confusion.

“your mom called, said you weren’t picking up and asked if i could get this one,” you said while ruffling his sister’s hair. at this she giggled and pushed herself into your torso as you wrapped an arm around her lightly.

he hummed lightly before copying his sister’s actions, nuzzling his face into your neck. "thank you,” he mumbled, it was so quiet you were barely able to catch it. “did you clean too?”

“yeah, just a bit.”

he pressed feathering kisses on your neck and was interrupted by the squealing of his sister. “she made me mac and cheese too! ooh and we walked home together!”

“really?” suna mused as his sister shook her head rapidly.

“she’s the best girlfriend you’ve ever had rintarou,” she said matter-of-factly.

“she’s the only girlfriend i’ve ever had,” suna rolled his eyes at his sister's words, but his cheeks blazed a pink shade. poking his cheeks upon seeing this, he pushed your hand away and blushed an even darker color. the teasing of suna rintarou would have gone on forever, but he pushed his face into the crook of your neck again.

now, the only sound now was the high-pitched voices coming from the television and the ticking of the solar dancing toy sitting on one of the windows in the house.

both siblings cuddled up next to you, both of them had very different thoughts going through their brains. the young girl was thinking about how your thigh was so nice to lay on and how the little characters on the screen would get out of the bind they were in. the older boy was thinking about how his mother would probably make you stay for dinner and then after you left, would chastise rintarou for his dead phone. but all he wanted to focus on was the calmness of your breathing and the way your neck was so warm in contrast to his cold nose.

[bokutosbeam]

sweet dreams

fandom: haikyuu!!

summary: an early morning bus ride lets kenma's head run wild with thoughts

pairing: kozume kenma x reader

genre: fluff

warnings: reader lays on kenma's shoulder (if there's something, please tell me!)

quinn speaks: i'm literally in love with this man... the first of many kenma pieces <3

— KOZUME KENMA

the bus ride to karasuno always seemed much longer than it really was, especially when you had to be in the nekoma parking lot at 6:30 in the morning. sleep was still on your mind as you yawned and hugged the manger’s bag tight to your chest.

soon more and more of the boys started to come, all on different ends of the spectrum when it came to tiredness. lev seemed to have downed a few cups of coffee as he was practically bouncing around and yaku couldn’t be bothered to reprimand him as he could barely keep his head from falling forward in exhaustion. yamamoto was nursing a giant thermos of hot cocoa and sharing it with some of the first and second years. kuroo still had his cheshire cat grin on his face, but his eyes seemed to droop a bit. kenma seemed to stare off into the distance, his gaming console held in one hand and in the other his phone and earbuds.

they were an odd bunch for sure, but you had grown use to it by now.

coach nekomata ushered all of the boys on the bus where he would give a small morning pep talk and ask if they had eaten and such. everyone had settled in eventually and the finally the bus started to move out.

kenma could tell by the fluttering of your eyelashes and the way your lips parted ever so often to take in a deep breath, that you were still tired. how late did you stay up last night? were you watching movies or doing homework?

soon you couldn’t resist just shutting your eyes for a few seconds. then, a few seconds turned into a minute and that one minute turned into five and then ten and so on.

a jerk in the road had made your head land right on kenma’s shoulder. his eyes widened at this and a light blush crept up onto his cheeks. from a few chairs in front of him, he could hear the light snickering of yaku and kuroo which only made his cheeks flush more.

apparently you didn’t mind resting on kenma’s shoulder, because soon your hands came to hold his forearm tightly as you snuggled your nose further into his jacket sleeve. he thinks he might be having a heart attack; his free hand grips the arm rest so tight that his knuckles turn white and the cackling of kuroo was louder than ever.

he couldn’t look at you. no, because surely the way your lips parted slightly or the way your eyebrows crinkled every once in a while or the way your small hands seemed to be holding onto his sleeve for dear life, would drive him insane.

still he couldn’t seem to pull himself away from you, the teasing of his teammates and bumps in the road that seemed to annoy him any other time they took this drive seemed irrelevant now. all that mattered was the way your nose sloped and how cute your cheeks looked squished against him.

so, for now kenma wouldn’t worry about how early in the morning it was or seeing his first year friend in few hours. all he would worry about is how soon he could do something like this again with you.

[bokutosbeam]

cute things they do

fandom: haikyu!!

summary: cute things some of the boys do as your boyfriend

pairings: akaashi keiji x reader, bokuto koutarou x reader, ushijima wakatoshi x reader

genre: fluff

warnings: akaashi rest his hand on reader's thigh, ushijima briefly thinks about having kids with reader (if there's something, please tell me!)

quinn speaks: can y'all tell how much i love them?

— AKAASHI KEIJI

akaashi will drive you anywhere. you mention that you need to get a new winter coat, akaashi will drop what he's doing and grab his keys. you're going out to get grocieries for dinner tonight, akaashi is already slipping on his shoes and taking the keys from your grasp.

during long road trips he'll always be behind the wheel while you sit next to him, navigating and playing music. your road trips always seem to stretch on really long as akaashi isn't too much of a fan of energy drink or drinking tons of coffee. he'd rather spend the night in a little inn than driving at night when he's already getting drowsy.

it's not like he won't let you drive or that he thinks you're a bad driver, it's nothing like that. it's just he subconciously does it. he'll hear the jingle of the keys and rush to the front door to accompany you to where ever it is you need to go.

it's okay though. he always does that thing where he rest his hand on the back of your headrest when reversing. you get to see his tongue poking out a little, a habit that's stuck from young age, in order to focus. the way his hand rest on your thigh doesn't have you complaining either.

— BOKUTO KOUTAROU

bokuto's apartment is nicer than yours. it always confuses you when he comes over and makes himself right at home, especially when you see the way he acts in his own apartment.

he's stiff when sitting on his couch, but sprawls out on yours. he barely ever uses his kitchen, but he teaches you how to make his favorite foods in yours. his shower consists of a bottle of shampoo and body wash that your sure have been there since you've started dating, but he always digs into your sugar scrubs, lotions, and various soaps. he's always up late either scrolling on his phone or just laying and looking at the ceiling while in his bed, but within minutes of being laying on your comforter, he's out like a light.

bokuto likes your apartment. it's full of things that just scream your name. the various pieces of art work that hang on your walls are much more sentimental than the ones his interior designer had picked out for his apartment. the different types of plants that are scattered in every corner of your house just give more life to your place.

finally you ask him. why? why does he want to be in your little apartment when its an extra 20 minutes away from his work and when it's almost 1/3 of the size of his and when you've got new problems that pop up every other week.

at first he doesn't answer and you're worried you've scared him off or said something wrong. but then he takes his hands in yours and tells you, "it just feels like home because of you."

— USHIJIMA WAKATOSHI

children have never been especially drawn to him. instead, the stoic look on his face scares them and his large build only solidifies those feelings. it's never really bothered him, or rather he doesn't let it bother him too much. he knows that he's intimidating, even to grown adults, so he doesn't worry about it.

however, as soon as he started dating you, children would flock around the pair of you. every date and outing you've been on with him, at least one kid has approached you. they always come up to you first, still a little uneasy of the big man that stands next to you.

lost kids that cry about their moms and dads, kids who tell you that you're pretty while bashfully hiding behind their hands, kids that ask you to pass them the ball when it stumbles in front of you. you always handle them with grace and cheer.

lost children get to hold your hand as you ask them questions and look around for their parents. you always compliment the bashful children, their cheeks glowing at your kind and genuine words. kids who wave at you and send you big smiles as you kick or throw their ball back.

ushijima knows it's early to be thinking about this, but he can't help it. he hopes that with time, you'll hold the same warmth towards the both of your future children.

[bokutosbeam]

my favorite customer

fandom: haikyuu!!

summary: pining from both osamu and reader leads to a blushy exchange of words

pairing: miya osamu x reader

genre: pure fluff

warnings: reader is a university student, but idk if that's anything (if there's something, please tell me!)

quinn speaks: i can't get this concept of osamu falling for a frequent customer out of my head!

— MIYA OSAMU

from the first time you walked into onigiri miya, osamu knew there was something special about you. maybe it was the way you carried yourself. maybe it was the way that you were sweet to all his workers, all of them receiving a small smile from you and “thank you”. maybe it was the way you asked him how his day was going, completely unprompted as it seemed you just did this out of the kindness of your heart. he could list a million different reasons as to why you seemed special, but he could never pinpoint which one fit the best.

over time, osamu had gotten to know you quite well. he knew what you majored in, he knew what sports you played in your free time, he knew what type of concerts you liked to go to, he knew about your family dog. all in all, it was unlike any other relationship he had ever had with a customer.

but you were so nice and friendly, practically luring him in with your sweet smile and pretty laugh. his workers had noticed it too as they all seemed to never need anything from the man as soon as you walked into the shop; all of them would whisper and make bets behind his back about when you two would finally get together. they weren’t even sure if he knew how he looked at you and how he seemed more gentle with you or how you lit up anytime he would tell you tidbits about his life and how you seemed to focus on his hands and arms as he made the onigiri right in front of you. god, they hoped he noticed soon because it was getting painful to watch.

“the usual?” he asked with a small smile on his face.

you nodded and matched his expression. “is it bad that i have a usual?” you asked aloud as osamu just chuckled.

“no, it just means you like the place.”

“well it is my favorite food spot in the city,” you admitted. osamu’s breath felt like it had been knocked out of him as you said those words. sure you got food here a lot and sure you ordered the same thing every time and sure osamu got a bit giddy each time he saw you enter, but he’d never think that it’d be your favorite.

“well,” he started, “you're my favorite customer.” your cheeks flushed a light pink color at this and you quickly began to fidget with your fingers, but while this happened osamu’s back was facing you as he got out various ingredients. in turn, he missed the way you anxiously moved around and blushed at his words.

after that, you both began to talk again just like normal. you told him about your classes while he told you about how he had played volleyball with some of his friends during his break today. it was painfully the same old, same old and you had to admit you were growing needy for more from the man in front of you. so, as osamu handed you the receipt to sign you decided to use a bit more ink than intended and then you were off with a smile and wave.

just as he was about to stick your receipt on the spike, he furrowed his brows. your signature looked a bit different this time, it was longer and had numbers along with a cute smiley face and a heart. osamu bit his lip and pocketed the receipt as his workers exchanged smiles and money at the sight.

[bokutosbeam]

reminders

fandom: haikyu!!

summary: bokuto can't stop thinking about you

pairing: bokuto koutarou x reader

genre: fluff

warnings: late night walks/runs, reader wears an oversized sweater, and bo is afraid of the dark (if there's something, please tell me!)

quinn speaks: best boy <33 wrote this last night when i couldn't sleep

— BOKUTO KOUTAROU

bokuto sat up in his bed. after tossing and turn for what seemed like hours, he had come to the conclusion that he wouldn't be able to sleep tonight. his head pounded, but not in a bad way that makes you want to squint your eyes and rub your temples. no, it was in a good way. thoughts racing, not even the music playing in his ears could cover them up.

every thought seemed to be linked to you. everything little thing just reminded him of you.

he really should go to sleep seeing as he had practice in the morning, he reasoned with himself.

you always got to school early and would run into bokuto during his morning practices. always sending him a kind smile and shy wave before you continued on your way. sometimes he would follow after you just to see where you were headed and without fail, you would tuck yourself in the same corner of the school library everyday.

even on the days when you seemed tired, bags under your eyes a bit darker and yawns more frequent, you would arrive on schedule every time.

the covers were too hot.

on rainy days, you wore a blue and green sweater to class. it draped over your figure, way too big for you. he wondered if it was your boyfriends or your brothers or maybe a friend? he wanted it to be his, because the way you brought your hands over the sleeve to make sweater paws and the way you buried yourself in the collar when a gust of wind would come into the classroom. it drove him crazy.

he wanted to bury you in blankets and oversized sweater alike on days like that. bring you warm tea and fuzzy socks, anything to make you feel comfortable on the colder days in tokyo.

it was too dark in his room.

the lights flickered off in the classroom as students began to panic. the snow that was falling from the window certainly had to be the cause of the black out. bokuto never really had liked the dark, always opting to sleep with a night light whenever possible and never go on runs too late into the night.

you seemed to notice the way he tensed up and anxiously bounced his leg. with a light tap to his shoulder, he whipped around to face you. one hand outstretched and holding an earbud, gesturing for him to take it. as soon as he placed it in his ear, he swore the best song he had ever heard came on.

his hands were sweaty.

bokuto laid on the floor of the gym, all tired out from practice. he made his way towards the doors, thanking his coaches, teammates, and mangers before leaving with his bag slung on his shoulder and water bottle in his hand.

the closing of the east entrance door made his head swivel. down the stairs you padded, making your way the same direction he was walking. calling out to you, he asked what you were still doing at school so late.

with your explanation out of the way, he told you he would walk you home. it didn't come without some refusal on your part, but after he explained that he wouldn't feel right if your walked home alone in the dark, you agreed. truthfully, while you were relieved -- partially fearing the walk home -- bokuto was more anxious than ever.

but eventually, bokuto would retire. face on one pillow and arm hugging another one, thoughts of what it would feel like to finally hold you in his arms plaguing his mind before his droopy lids fell.

he would soon find out, he figured. on the bedside table a neatly written speech and dainty little neckless, both had your name written all over them.