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sorceress-coffee · 4 years

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Win or Lose

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Taking mugshot should not have been funny, but with Toby photobombing Jim and I, it was pretty humorous. Mom came by with Mr. Strickler to pick us up from the station. I sighed sitting in the back with Toby, checking over my bag to make sure the police didn’t confiscate my lance, now dubbed Midnight thanks to Toby. “We are in so much trouble, it’s not even funny,” I remarked to Jim, sitting in the front seat, watching mom and Mr. Strickler walk out of the station.

Jim sighed, watching them, seeing her disappointed face.

“So, who else do you think is hiding an evil troll face? Coach Lawrence? Steve?” Toby asked, going over everyone he wasn’t particularly fond of. He gasped looking out to mom and Mr. Strickler, “What if Strickler’s one of them?”

Jim rolled his eyes and shook his head at the thought, glancing at Strickler, “Strickler’s been teaching history at Arcadia Oaks High since the dawn of history.” He looks back to Toby and me, “if he’s one, I’m one.”

I snort a laugh, shaking my head at the thought of Jim being a troll. “You’d look ridiculous,” I stated, grabbing Toby’s phone, looking at the picture of the bridge that was hidden in the museum. “Why is this so important?” I asked, handing the phone to Jim.

Jim took it, eyes widening, “I know where I’ve seen this bridge before! It’s the same one Blinky was talking about.”

“What? The Killa-thingy bridge? That’s, like, ancient history, right?” Toby asked, peering at the photo again.

“Killahead Bridge, the portal into the Darklands.” I corrected Toby, shrugging at their confused looks, “You left ‘A Brief Recapitulation of Troll Lore’ Volume 1 out on the coffee table. Of course, I was going to read it.”

“They’re trying to break Gunmar out.” Jim realized, looking at the photo again, “this is bad! Like, ‘Goodbye, Arcadia’ bad. As soon as we get home, we’re going to Blinky.” He decided.

Mom got in the car, still talking to Strickler as he leaned on the window next to Jim, “You didn’t have to go through all this trouble, Mr. Strickler.”

“Please, ‘Walter.’ I’m sorry we had to meet under this unfortunate circumstance.” He states, looking to Jim and me for a moment.

“There must be some way I can repay you. Coffee? Dinner? Appendix removal?” Mom asked, smiling. I looked up in disbelief, she was flirting… with Strickler.

Strickler laughed, “I… Coffee would be a delight. And a rain check on the appendectomy,” he joked back. Jim, Toby, and I exchanged looks, not too fond of the obvious flirting.

“Looking forward to it, Walter.” She smiled, unaware that Toby was shipping it from the look on his face, and Jim and I were stunned.

Strickler chuckled turning to face Jim and me, “Watch yourself, Young Atlas.” He directed to Jim, “Next time the consequences could be more severe.” He then looked to the back seat at me, “and Young Mordred, you don’t want to be the cause of a knight’s fall.” He stated, chuckling before heading off. I frowned, not liking the implication of name he had given me, or what I might cause.

“Did you just ask my teacher out on a date?” Jim asked, still stunned.

“Oh, don’t you make this about me. You three broke into a museum!” Mom began lecturing, upset with us. “And for this?” She asked, holding the chubby tracker up, “You are grounded until you apologize to that woman.” She declared, driving home. “You got me?” she asked, pointing at us.

“Yes, mom.” Jim and I said in unison.

“Yes, Dr. Lake,” Toby said, looking down.

Once home we were told to go to our rooms.

I ran upstairs and quickly stuffed pillows under my blankets to make it look like I was sleeping. I sighed, climbing out the window to meet Jim. “Ready?”

He nodded and we took off to meet Toby, running to the canal to Trollmarket.

We ran straight to Blinky’s who was with Arrrgh at the bar, showing him the photo. “Are you certain?” He asked, squinting all six eyes at the photo. “Are you unquestionable, unequivocally-” he was asking Jim, over and over.

“I’m certain,” Jim answered for the hundredth time since we arrived.

I sighed, “Blinky it was the same bridge illustrated in “A Brief Recapitulation of Troll Lore’,” I stated.

“Could be anything,” Arrrgh said, frowning at the tiny photo.

“I concur.” Blinky said, “Tobias’ photographic skills are less than exemplary.”

“Okay, so, it’s a little blurry!” Toby yelled, “You try taking a picture while hauling butt, mister!”

“Okay, well, what about the curator?” Jim asked. “How could a person just change like that?”

Arrrgh began speaking in troll, “Tell about changelings.” He told Blinky.

Blinky groaned, covering his mouth while speaking to Arrrgh, “You know we can’t talk about changelings; do you want a panic?” He asked Arrrgh.

“What are Changelings?” I asked, rolling my eyes when Blinky looked stunned.

“I forget you can do that.” He said, shaking his head.

“What? What is it?” Jim asked, looking between us.

“Changeling.” Arrrgh answers as Blinky spits out his drink, all occupants of the bar turned to face us. Blinky chuckled nervously, patting Arrrgh’s mouth, playing it off as a joke.

“Not helping.” He told Arrrgh as we all leaned closer into the table, talking quietly.

“Sorry,” Arrrgh apologized.

“Changelings haven’t been talked about in quite some time,” Blinky explained to us, turning to a troll that got to close, watching is. “Do you mind?” He asked the troll.

The troll rolled his eyes and shrugged as he walked “Whatever,” He said, then stopped on Arrrgh's side of the table, still watching us. We all turned to look at him waiting. He huffed and walked off, finally leaving with a “Fine,” as he rolled his eyes.

“In the olden days,” Blinky began to explain, “GummGumms stole out young and did something unnatural to change them. Their sole purpose: to spy on the world above.”

“What did they do to them?” I asked, frowning.

“Nasty business,” Arrrgh answered, shaking his head sadly “Very messy.”

Blinky waved for Jim to follow him. “These are the very reasons I doubt your certainty. I don’t question you saw a bridge, but Killahead? It would take years to collect all of those stones. Decades, even.” Blinky explained how it would take an army of changelings to acquire and build the bridge.

“And yet, three of us saw it.” I state as we all walk to the entrance of the bar.”

“We have to tell someone,” Toby states next to me, “This our city, too.”

“Who? Our court-appointed psychiatrist?” Jim asks. “They’re never going to believe us.” Jim sighed placing his head on the table.

Draal entered the bar, smirking at Jim, “Well, if it isn’t the piece of flesh, I’ll pound into pancakes tomorrow.” He grinned, “I look forward to your pain, and I’ll drink to your death.” He stated, the look in his eye was one I knew meant teasing, he had decided he wouldn’t kill Jim unless he further insulted his honor.

Jim turned quickly to Blinky, panicking, “Death?! What is he talking about? I thought this was only a rematch.” He asked Blinky.

“To challenge a troll’s honor can only end in ruin. It’s all right there in chapter three of ‘A Brief Recap-‘” Blinky began, finger pointed in the air before his face fell, “You still haven’t read the book.” He states, leveling Jim with a disgruntled look.

“Now, hold on,” Jim said, looking between us and Draal, “This fight, I don’t know, maybe we can, um… postpone it?” He asked.

I paled, shaking my head quickly trying to get Jim to shut up. Draal smirked, “Postpone, you say. What a trainer!” He laughed, turning to Blinky, “Does everyone in your company forget how to fight?”

My eyes went wide at his remark, crossing my arms over my chest, leveling Draal with my own disappointed stare. Arrrgh huffed, knowing the remark was a jab at him.

“There are things that have been brought to our attention.” Jim tried to explain, “Things that have serious implications.”

Blinky began to panic, “No, no, no, Master Jim!” He shushed Jim quickly.

Draal got in Jim and Blinky’s face, more insulted by Blinky, “By Kanjigar’s honor, I would have made your death swift and painless, but, for that act of cowardice, I will show you no mercy when I take back what’s rightfully mine.” He snarls at Jim, walking off he turns back slightly, addressing Jim again. “Bid farewell to your loved ones, Jim ‘the Dead Meat.” He grunted, smirking as he walked off.

“So, still going to train with him?” Toby asked arms crossed over his chest, glaring at Draal’s back.

I gave him an annoyed look before clasping Jim’s shoulder. “I’ll explain what’s going on, I’m sure he will understand if he knows what we ran into,” I told Jim, giving Blinky a pointed look.

Jim sighs but nods, “Okay, I think I need more training, in case I die tomorrow…” he frowns walking out with Toby, Blinky, and Arrrgh.

I quickly head over to Draal, sitting at the bar with him. “You are angered by my decision.” He stated, seeing the look on my face.

“No, I’m pissed Blinky wouldn’t let Jim explain what’s going on to you, so I’m going to.” I snapped, turning on the stool to face him. “We ran into a changeling. The museum curator in our town, Ms. Nomura, she’s a changeling. She’s working with goblins for sure, most likely Bular, and they’re building something.”

Draal fully turned to face me when I mentioned changelings, jaw-dropping at Nomura’s name, “What… what are they building?” He finally asks, keeping his voice low.

“Killahead bridge,” I stated, frowning. “I saw it Draal, while we were fighting her, it was in the museum.” Draal turned back to the bar, deep in thought. I waited with him quietly, hoping he would understand.

“I understand the serious implications, the fleshbag spoke of, but I can’t take back my word.” He said, looking over to me, frowning.

Sighing I nod, “I don’t understand it, but it’s your culture, I just hope things work out tomorrow. I don’t want to lose either of you.”

After sitting in silence for a while, we parted ways. I headed home with Jim and Toby.

“Draal understands what is going on, but he can’t take his word back,” I explained, frowning.

Jim groaned, “Then I have to find a way to win.”

“What about finishing the fight?” Toby asked, frowning.

“I’m a human,” Jim said, giving me a small smile, “finishing the fight doesn’t mean killing.”

I smiled, hoping that Jim would be able to win, knowing it was the safest option for everyone involved.

The next day, Jim spent most of the day quiet, carrying around four letters. After school, I noticed he only had three left. “What happened to the fourth?” I asked him as we walked home, planning dinner.

“Well, I slipped it into Claire’s bag. You know, just in case.” He explained.

I helped Jim with dinner and about halfway through I realized that we were making all of mom’s favorites. Jim and I were tense all through dinner, but mom hadn’t noticed. Happily chatting as we cleaned. “Oh! That was delicious. I don’t know what I’d do without you, kiddo. I’d be ten pounds lighter, but…”

“Well, you deserved it,” Jim said, washing the dishes.

“Shrimp cakes?” Mom asked, “Gosh, I haven’t had those since… since…” she trailed off frowning at the memory.

“Dad made them for us?” Jim asked.

Mom chuckled softly, “I didn’t think you were old enough to remember.”

“Oh, I remember enough.” Jim said, “I remember how his beard would scratch my face when he hugged me. How he used to make you laugh. But, most of all, how much he hurt you when he left.” He said, glaring at the fridge.

I frowned during the exchange, shaking my head slightly at the memory of uncle Jim leaving when we were kids.

“Jim, where is this coming from?” Mom asked, turning to him, worried.

“No matter what happens to me, I would never leave you like that.” He told her, “At least, well…” he chuckled softly, “not by choice. You’re an amazing person, and I just want you to know I’ll always love you.”

I smiled softly, watching them.

Mom smiled, giving Jim a teasing look, “Don’t you start that talk with me. I’m still hoping you’ll end up close at an in-state college. We’ll wrap these up for tomorrow.” Mom said, helping me with the leftovers. “You have to give me that waffle recipe. If there’s anything I could eat forever, it’s waffles.” She said smiling.

“It’s here when you need it,” Jim stated, slipping one of the letters into mom’s favorite cooking book. I sighed as we all headed off to our rooms.

The day of the fight had come, Jim, Toby, and I all skipped school. We headed into Trollmarket, going straight to the forge. The stands began to fill, Vendel standing near the ledge I had destroyed. “Gather Troll kind!” He announced, “The Trollhunter had laid a challenge before the son of his predecessor, and you shall all bear witness to the ensuing battle, which will be one of the ages!” I was standing with Blinky, Arrrgh, and Toby, huffing at Vendel’s announcement.

“Hey, I… I want you to have these,” Jim stated, handing Toby and me our letters. I frown taking the one addressed to me.

“What’s this?” Toby asked, concerned.

“It says everything I want to say,” Jim explained.

“You promised me tacos.” Toby smiled, poking Jim’s shoulder.

Jim scoffed, smiling, “Now is not the time for lunch, Tobes.”

“Last week, I brought breakfast and lunch from the Taco Truck. You said, ‘Next time on me.’ You’re going to get this letter back unopened after the fight, and when we get back, we’ll get tacos.” He declared, smiling. Jim smiled and nodded.

“Draal, son of Kanjigar, son of Tarigar,” Vendel announced, “Draal ‘the Destroyer,’ come forth!”

Draal rolled out of the cave he was waiting in, landing on his feet in the middle of the forge, waving to the crowd of Trolls as they cheered. I smirked slightly as his showmanship, shaking my head in amusement. Face going blank as Blinky tells Jim its time for the fight. Going over the rules, Jim asking about Draal’s weaknesses.

“Surprise him.” Was all I had time to get out before Vendel began to speak again.

“And now, Draal’s combatant, James Lake Jr., son of… Ba-Bur-Rah.” Vendel sounded out mom’s name. “Come forth, human Trollhunter!”

I watched as Jim walked out, donning the armor. “Fight from your heart, Master Jim. It’s strong, stronger than any rock.” Blinky yelled after Jim. Sighing he softly spoke again and the gate came down, separating us from the fight, “And certainly, stoner than mine.”

I clasp Blinky’s shoulder, bowing my head slightly before facing the fight, nodding to Draal when our eyes met.

“Begin!” Vendel’s voice range throughout the forge.

One of the guards posted by us activated the forge. Draal and Jim were lifted into the air as the arena shifted. Draal made the first move, launching at Jim. Jim threw himself off the ledge he was on to a lower tier of the arena to avoid Draal. Draal followed him quickly, and true to his word, I could tell he wasn’t holding back. He grabbed Jim by the leg, spun around before letting him go, throwing him off the tier and into the wall of the forge. Jim slid down and almost fell into the gears maneuvering the arena. Draal took his boulder stance and launched himself up the wall, rolling down to pick up speed, heading straight for Jim.

My hands tighten on the stone of the gate, separating us from the fight, watching intently as the fight dragged on. Noting different strategies Jim could use, praying he could think fast enough.

Jim dodged as Draal rolled by, preparing for him to come around again. As Draal neared Jim again, Jim threw daylight straight for him, stopping Draal’s roll dead in its tracks, causing his to look up at Jim in shock.

I sighed in relief, that the sword hadn’t hurt Draal, and that Jim had found a technique to stop his rolling, though he wouldn’t be able to use it again.

“I never taught him that, did you?” Blinky asks me.

I shook my head and Toby yelled, “He’s a natural!”

He tried to use it right away, but Draal simply knocked the sword away and gave chase.

“Ten whole seconds and he’s not dead! That’s a fortuitous sign.” Blinky remarked proudly.

“Don’t jinx,” Arrrgh commented as we watch Jim run by screaming, Draal close behind. Draal was able to launch himself in front of Jim, striking him to the ground. The armor glowed as it strengthened against the blow, protecting Jim. He tossed Jim up onto the moving arena like a volleyball, heading after him quickly. The arena rotated, throwing Jim back to the ground level. Draal landed behind him, slowly stalking him. Jim glared up at him as he rolled over. “Rule number three!” He yelled, kicking Draal in the crotch, everyone in the arena shuddered. I winced then watched as Jim slipped behind Draal while he was distracted by the pain, catching his breath.

Draal stood, looking around confused for Jim, Jim staying directly behind him as he turned.

“He found Draal’s blind spot!” Blinky cheered, shaking Toby.

Jim turned to look at one of the swinging blades, limping over to it quickly. I frown, understanding his plan “You cannot be the Trollhunter!” Draal was yelling, still looking for Jim, “You’re a boy! I am the son of Kanjigar!”

Jim positioned himself in front of the opening the blade would swing through, glaring at Draal’s words. “And I am Jim, son of Barbara.” He stated as Draal turned, stalking forward with Jim in his sight. “And the amulet chose me!” He yelled, jumping out of the way and the blade swung out, slamming into Draal’s chest and launching him off the side of the forge.

“Draal!” I yelled, scared before seeing his hand holding onto the ledge, I slammed my fists against the gate, surging magic into them, wanting to help him.

Blinky frowned as all the Trolls in the arena began to chant “Finish the Fight!”

Jim walked over to Draal, summoning the sword, he glared up at all the trolls in the stand before plunging the blade into the ground, using it to hold him up as he leaned over, offering his hand to Draal. I could see them exchanging words before Draal caved and took the offered hand. The armored glowed, strengthening Jim enough to pull Draal up. Then the entire crowd began to boo, yelling at Jim for not killing Draal.

I snarled at them, as soon as the gate opened, while Jim was making a speech about working together, I took off running for Draal, nodding to Jim I passed. Draal kept his head down as I approached, a look of shame etched over his face. “You should go.” He spoke softly. “My honor was destroyed; they will look down on you for this.”

I frown before looking up at Vendel, who in turn was giving me a stern look. I bared my teeth before leaning down and helping Draal up, “I need to get you somewhere safe and heal you.” I spoke, nuzzling my head under his chin, giving him an answer to his courting.

Draal stiffened, then relaxed slowly as we continued out of the arena, getting yelled at for the display.

I snarled at the yelling, getting Draal to cave near the canal exit, leaning him back against the wall. “Hold still,” I instructed, laying my hands on his chest, I began to recite the healing incantation Vendel taught me. Eyes and hands glowing a soft blue as Draal’s injuries faded.

Draal sighed, relieved of the pain. He frowned watching me. “You accepted, why? I have no honor.”

“To hell with honor!” I snapped, eyes and palms fading to normal, I launched forward, wrapping my arms around his neck, my head pressed under his chin. “The only thing I care about right now is that you’re okay.”

Draal stiffened at my outburst then sighed, hugging me. “I can’t stay here River.” He finally spoke up.

I nod, pulling back to offer my hand as he stood up, “Then let’s go home.” I said, grinning as he took my hand.

Draal was confused, taking my hand though, he grunted in surprised as I led him out to the canal and in the direction of my house. “Your home? Are you sure this is wise?”

“Well, you can’t stay in Trollmarket, and we are courting,” I stated, smiling up at him. “Mom’s hardly ever home so there isn’t a worry of her finding you. We can make an underground entrance for you in the basement so you’re not stuck in the house all day.” I reasoned with him.

Draal chuckled, poking my temple, “No wonder you’re an excellent warrior, you’re a quick strategist.”

I smiled and we continued to the house, walking in quietly through the back door, I paused seeing the kitchen was a wreck. I rushed to mom, seeing her knocked out on the dining room table.

Draal snarled quietly as we heard whistling from upstairs. “You can’t hide forever. Trust me…” Nomura’s voice came from upstairs. “I would know.”

Draal rushed up the stairs and tore her away from a door. As he knocked her out a window, I ran back out into the yard, lance at the ready as I watched the fight on the roof. Draal glanced at me before taking his boulder stance and ramming Nomura off the roof towards me. Nomura twisted over and swung her twin blades at me. I raised the lance and blocked her blades, pushing her back as Draal landed behind her. Jim had run out the back door after us, when Nomura saw him, she leaped past Draal, rushing for Jim. Draal slammed his arm into her side, knocking her away from Jim. He took a protective stance in front of him, snarling at Nomura. I stayed behind her, guard up in case she tried anything.

“What are you doing here?” She snarled at Draal.

“Delivering you pain again, Nomura,” he sneered at her, “Do not touch the Trollhunter.”

“Suddenly you’re honorable?” Smirked, tapping her blade against her sharpened teeth, “Sorry to hear about daddy. Bular always liked the way he screamed.”

I snarled at her lunging from behind. I hated her for questioning Draal’s honor but disrespecting his father, a fallen Trollhunter, that set me off. Nomura swung around to block my blade, growling at me. “Did I piss off your little mate?” She sneered. I bared my teeth at her, palms and staff glowing as magic flowed from me to the weapon, angling the blade down just enough I caught the side of her face and launched her into one of the boulders in our backyard, swinging the lance towards her, a burst of magic shot out, similar to the magic I had used on Bular and the forge wall, scorching the boulder as she dodged.

“Insult him again and I’ll take your head,” I growled out, standing between her and the boys.

She looked at the boulder then snarled, lunging for me, twisting at the last moment to plant her hoof square in my chest, knocking me down toward the house. As I hit the ground, I lost my hold on the lance and Nomura swung down to strike me.

A roar shook the ground underneath my body, Draal lunged, kneeling over me, blocking Nomura’s attacks with his forearms. Grabbing her blades, he yanked them down just enough to roar in her face before slamming her over and over into the ground. Once he was satisfied with the lawn damage, he swung her around, throwing her over several streets worth of houses. “Impure.” He sneered, spitting on the ground before turning to help me to my feet.

I smiled taking his hand. Standing, I nuzzled my nose under his jaw. A throat was cleared behind us.

As Draal and I looked over to Jim, he had daylight out, looking between us confused. “So, you’re not here to kill me?” He asked Draal.

Draal shook his head, walking to stand in front of Jim, “Not kill. Protect.”

Jim then looked to me, “And Nomura’s mate comment? What was that about?”

I turned dark red; I had forgotten Jim was there. “Well… Draal’s courting me… you know it’s like dating, but more serious.”

Jim nods slowly at my answer before sighing in relief, amulet powering down and falling off his chest to Draal’s feet. Draal picked the amulet up, looking over it for a moment before handing it to Jim, “Take it. Don’t make it weird.” He said, smiling slightly.

Once Jim took the Amulet, Draal walked into the house, surveying the damage.

“You gonna be okay?” Jim asked, following him inside.

“He’s staying with us,” I spoke up, walking with Jim.

“I am,” Draal responded to both Jim’s question and my comment, sniffing the teacup mom drank before flicking it off the table. “But, are you? Your battles won’t always be waged in arenas. You won’t have time to prepare, to study your opponent for weaknesses as you did me.” He advised Jim, walking over to him again. “You are the Trollhunter. It is time to start being afraid.” Draal sighed, shaking his head. “Since I will be staying here, I will guard your home.”

“What about mom?” Jim asked, worried about her finding Draal in the house. “I’ve already got the details planned out; Mom won’t know he’s here,” I explained, leading Jim and Draal to the basement, heading down.

Draal sniffed around the basement before opening the furnace and eating some of the coal inside. “This is nice. Here I shall protect you, my mate, and your fleshbag mother, Bar-bu-rah.” Draal decided, having to sound out mom’s name as he spoke.

Jim smiled at how Draal said her name, “Close enough.”

“Your mother will awaken soon. I protect. I do not clean.” Draal stated, settling down.

“Right. Yep. I’ll get right on that.” Jim said, heading up the stairs.

“Fleshbag,” Draal spoke up before Jim was out of sight. “Maybe you’ll make a good Trollhunter, after all. When that time comes, I will be proud to fight by your side.”

Jim smiled, placing a hand on Draal’s shoulder, “Thanks, Draal.”

“Come on Jim, I’ll help you clean up.” I smiled between the two, relieved they are getting along now.

“Right! Gotta get that done before mom wakes up!” He said rushing out of the basement with the broom.

I stopped next to Draal, “Thank you, Draal. That means a lot to him, I can tell.” I kissed his cheek before heading up to clean with Jim, not missing the smile Draal gave me on the way up.

#Trollhunters #trollhunters draal #draal the deadly #DraalxOC #DraalxRiver #River Marie Lake #River Marie Wyllt #river of arcadia #trollhuntersoc #trollhunters oc #trollhunters fanfiction #episode 6 #win or lose

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deliontower · 4 years

Text

Hard to love - part 5

title- hard to love - 1, 2 3 4

Pairing: fem!reader x Sam

Word count: 4.6k Square filled: for @spnquotebingo - “___. Good to see you. But if you’re here, who’s guarding Hades?”

Warnings: angst , swearing, mention of blood and mention of death A/N: one more part left until i move on to my dean fic! Not as edited as i’d like but i hope you like it.

MAIN MASTERLIST | REQUEST OPEN | series masterlist

Black soon turn to white, soft light casted shadows over the soft surface you were lay on. Your mind buzzed, pulling yourself up you looked around the room. It w as a bedroom with two huge windows casting sunlight everywhere.

You felt heavy with weight of your dream, hunting monsters and being with someone or was this the dream? Everything was mixing together.

"Y/N? You're going to be late if you sleep any longer" You froze that voice it felt like years since the last time you heard it. Confused you ran along the house, unsure of your path but positive of the destination.

There he was standing in the living room, going through the mail, "You still not dressed?" he looked up laughing but he's face dropped to worry when he saw your face.

"Danny?" you chocked out, running into his arms. He was almost knocked off his feet by the sudden impact.

"Morning I guess, what's got into you?" he cocked his head to the side looking concerned.

Things went fuzzy, you had to blink before you could answer. "I had the weirdest dream" you drew away and tried to think but hit another wall of confused.

Danny kissed your cheek, "go on and get dressed, I'll drop you off".

Weakly smiling you nodded and headed back to the bedroom. This felt like the first time you had been in the house but it couldn't of been, the whole place was filed with your things and pictures.

One caught your eye more than the others. You were standing there in a white vintage dress , Danny with his arms wrapped around you. Both smiling, not even looking towards the camera but to whatever part of the other they could see.

A outfit was already laid out along with a ID badge. 'Ph.D. Y/N Y/L/N. mythology and folklore'.

Half way through getting dressed you looked over to a mirror and looked at yourself. It was like you were looking at yourself but not really. You swore you hair was slightly longer and your skin missing key features, scars, buries , mark and tattoos. Why did it feel like you had a tattoo.

"What is wrong with me today?" you muttered as you finished getting ready. Something was weighing down on you but you couldn't say what it was.

Shaking away the feeling you took a bag from the floor, you didn't even need to think about it, you did it everyday.

Danny was waiting by the door in his own work clothes. Normally messy hair was tidy, he wore a suit which brought out his blue eyes. He's a manger. A voice said it the back of your head.

Everything was so different from when you were 22 living in a tiny apartment, now you were both older and doing what you both dreamed.

"you good?" he looked up at you as you walked up to him.

"Yes, I'm so proud of us" you kiss his cheek and link your arm with his and leave the house.

Everything passed in a hazes, doing things without thinking. Teaching classes to students who were where you once were. Full of love for lore and the unknown. Everything felt perfect but something was missing. Through out the day you would get flashes from last night's dream. Flashes of a kind face and a pain that would come and go within seconds.

"Dr Y/L/N?" you looked up from your desk and found two men in suits standing at the door. They were both tall, though one was a bit taller than the other.

"Yes. Can I help you?" you looked closers at the two men, something about them was so familiar but whatever it was wouldn't pop up in your mind.

"I'm agent Sam Mosely and this is my partner agent Dean Moscone, FBI" The taller one said, both quickly showed some ID.

"sit please" You jested to the sits in front of you. "I'm confused to why the FBI want to speak to me".

Sam smiled, "We were wondering if you could help us with something"

Dean cut in, "of course we can't tell you any details with it being an investigation"

"of course" you nodded, "mm so what's your question?"

"What do you know about hades?" Dean asked very seriously.

You let out a small laughed half from awkwardness and half from confusion. "Like the Greek god?" They both nodded keeping their serious faces. "Well he's the god of the dead, many people think he's the god of death but they're wrong. He's also the king of the underworld" you spoke from your memory.

"and how would you kill him?" Dean asked, writing something down in a notepad.

"Kill him?" your eyes were wide when you answered. "why do you need to know that?"

"like we said it's under investigation" Sam seeing the confusion on your face and tried to calm things down.

Something about him, when your met his eyes you felt the same tug you had felt all day but even stronger. "I'll have to look through some books to find something" you were still looking at Sam. "You can wait around or I can call you?"

Dean pulled a card from his pocket and pushed it over to you. "calling us would be better. Thanks for your help".

They both stood up to walk away but before they could you called after them. "Wait!" you stood up and walked to the other side of your desk. "This is going to sound crazy but have we met before? Something about you two is so familiar, this whole day has been crazy really" you sat down on the edge of the desk and sighed.

Sam and Dean looked among themselves, seeing if either remembered anything. "we travel a lot with this job so maybe we've passed each other in the streets before"

"Maybe" you tried to remember yourself but everything turn into fog.

Sam POV The next morning had come and passed since Y/N last called. Of course he knew she would be just find, he had seen her handle two vampires in one move, if she was hunting a Djinn then she'll have it over with fast. But it had been an whole day and she hadn't called or texted. He also knew she didn't have to call him but she had been doing it because he wanted her too.

He had called her god knows how many times, at first it would ring but now it went straight to voice mail. "Hey you've reached Y/N Y/L/N. only a few people have this number and they know who they are so if I didn't personal give you this number hang up."

"Y/N still not answering?" Dean asked from his doorway. When it came to Sam's feeling Dean was quick to pick them up. Then again Sam thought even Cas would of picked up on the way Sam was acting. Also having his phone in his hand and contently looking at your contact number on his screen.

"I think something is wrong" he said rubbing his face.

"you know her better than I do, Sammy" Dean sighed, he walked into Sam's room. "If you think something is wrong, then we'll go and check it out"

"Thanks Dean" Sam smiled, knowing he could count on Dean with anything. He didn't know if Dean understood everything that was happening between him and Y/N. He told Dean about the first kiss but nothing about the two days they had together.

They didn't wait long till they were on the road. "So I hacked into Y/N's laptop to see what she was looking at" Sam said going through Y/N's history.

"What was she even looking into?" Dean asked eyes on the road.

"last time she updated me , she was thinking a Djinn, she had just checked out the newest vic" Sam said checking the records. "the same thing has happened in 3 states"

"So this Djinn knows what they're doing" Dean sighed. "I mean she could of just lost her phone or something"

"She would of found a way, but Dean if this is a Djinn then she's in trouble" he couldn’t met Dean's eyes. "She said once that she'd give anything to get her old life back and the Djinn will use that against her"

"She'll know then. She'll fight her way out" Dean patted his brother's shoulder.

"But what if she doesn't want to get out" Sam could feel his chest get tighter. He hated he let her just walk out on her own.

"look Sam, I don't want to pry into your personal life but I know you care a lot about her, I guess don't want to see you hurt" Dean sighed and briefly looked towards Sam.

"I just- I don't know what it is about her but just being in the same room as her makes me happier than I've been in a long time but I don't know what she feels, she's been through a lot and I don't think she can handle this" Sam jested with this hands.

***

Sam flipped through a file while Dean talked with the coroner about the victim. Y/N's research and theories match up to what they were seeing.

"I was waiting for you guys to show up with the other kills across the states" The coroner said as she covered the girl's body up again.

"Someone has come yet?" Sam turned around fast.

The coroner looked confused, looking for Sam panicked face to Dean's worried face. "No you guys are the first. Was someone else supposes to come?"

"We got feedback back from one of our partners that she might of found a lead" Dean cleared his throat getting the attention off Sam.

"is there anyone else here who would of shown her the victim?" Dean asked, glazing at Sam who was looking more and more sick as the seconds went by.

"No. we're a small town, it's just me down here" The coroner was starting to look worried too, "You're welcome to check the CTV".

"Thank you that would be great" Sam said, his voice was far to high, he held himself higher too.

They were left alone to go through the footage, after going through a fought timeline of Y/n's day they found the right time. Sam swore his breath stopped when he saw her.

First she stood waiting for whoever was coming, from the way she was standing she must have been texting. Checking the timestamp and their text history, she was texting him. He watched as she took a heavy breath and smile sadly.

"Look" Dean's voice made him draw his eyes away from Y/N, Dean was pointing towards a man walking closer to Y/N, then his eyes looked into the camera and they glowed blue of a second.

"he's the Djinn" Sam exhaled standing up, "He must be the reason she's missing"

*** Reader pov

"You never guessed what happened today?" You said while washing dinner up, everything had been ready when you walk in the door after work.

"You found a cool lore fact?" Danny joked from the other side of the kitchen.

You laughed and turn to watch him wiping the table down. "yes but also The FBI came to my office today and asked about Hades"

He sent you a look that said he didn't believe you, "The god of death?" he was defiantly trying not to laugh.

"God of the dead actually, and they did! They couldn't tell me what it was about but it's just weird" you didn't mention the fact you recognized them.

"well that's something you don't hear everyday" Danny said. "Did you give them an answer?"

"actually I need to call them back" you said, pulling your phone from your pocket.

The whole researching into Hades and a way to kill him had taken longer than you thought. You had ended up pulling out every book about Greek mythology and everything in between. You got an odd thrill from researching into something so weird, why would you need to know how to kill a god? After hours of searching, tired from reading you found a few things that could help.

"Hello this is agent Mosely" his voice was clear and once again you felt a tug.

"Hi, this is dr. Y/N, I'm calling about what we talked about today" you looked away from Danny, something wanting to be alone while you spoke. "hope this is a good time".

"Yeah, of course. What did you find out?" he asked.

"Well not a lot but I found a few things. Firstly to kill him you need a stake from a dead tree, soaked in salt water. It needs to be through his heart as well" you explained.

"And the other way?" he asked keeping an serious tone.

"This one is less violent, you could summon his wife. Persephone goddess of vegetation. I read a few tales that said she's the only one who can handle him. You know what love is like" You looked briefly over to Danny.

"well now we have a back up plan" his serious voice went away for a second and you caught a glimpse of who he really was. God I love his smile.

You mind spoke before you could actually think, how could you love a smile you had never seen before or had you, you thought he looked familiar but couldn't name the place.

"Yeah, you do" You smiled wishing you had told him in person. "Call me if you need anything".

"we will, thanks Y/N" he was still smiling when he spoke.

You couldn't help but smile when you put your phone away, something inside of you felt glad, complete with everything you had done today.

"You okay, love?" Danny was next to you, holding your hand in his. You looked down to your joint hands, the jester made your heart skip but you also felt the same tug you had felt all day.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good" you try to keep the same smile but you both saw it waver. "I just feel a little lost today".

His hand moved to your cheek, you sighed letting yourself absorb the feeling. The weirdness of the day went away the longer you stayed under his touch.

"come on, lets go to bed" his voice sounded miles away, your breathing sounded heaver but you couldn't feel it moving as fast. The room flicker from the moonlight lit kitchen to a dark room you didn't know.

You were dragged out of your train of thought by an alarm ringing. You shot up in bed, looking all around the room, moments ago you were standing in the kitchen. What happened in the time since.

"rise and shine" Danny came into the room, carrying breakfast on a tray. "you're up in time to have break fast in bed".

He placed the tray on your lap. Your favorite kind of egg with beans and toast with coffee. "thank you" you blinked still feeling dazed.

This overwhelming feeling was getting worse as the days went on, everything should be perfect but it felt wrong like you had gotten use to life being hard and it being a fight to survive that things being good were worst.

While eating your food, you tired even harder to remember something other than the last day. Glimpses were all that showed up, flashes more like pictures.

The morning pasted like it did the day before, you looked at yourself for far to long, not knowing who was looking back. Danny drove you to work , you taught and then sat in your office not knowing what was next.

Just then the same agent from yesterday came in. Sam, the one with the smile you knew but didn't at the same time. This time instead of a suit he wore jeans, a flannel shirt paired with a jacket.

"Sam. Good to see you. But if you’re here, who’s guarding Hades?” You joked, it felt right like the right thing to say.

You were rewarded when he laughed, turning his face to the side. "I just wanted to thank you again in person. You were a lot of help"

"I think if I didn't then I'd have the FBI on my case" you said still smiling.

"It was just a strange question to ask" he came closer and took a seat.

"I enjoyed it actually. Recently everything feels the same but looking into something weird was amazing" you smile still remembering the feeling. The rush.

"you'd like what we do then, it's always the weird stuff" he chuckled shaking his head.

"oh I bet, Winchester" you say, not knowing what you said until his face changed. Winchester.

"I think you have-" he started but stopped when you rose to your feet.

"Oh god. I remember. I was- am a hunter, I was hunting a Djinn and then I woke up here" you back away fast, knocking over a drink on your desk. "And I know you and your brother, we were I don’t even know"

Sam looked panicked that your sudden changed in emotions.

Then it drawn on you, if this was some crazy Djinn dream then it wasn't read. "No. Oh god, he's dead" you whispered it, fear gripping into your bones.

"hey, just calm down" Sam was at your side, holding you.

"No" you pushed him away. "I need to go" you left Sam and the room behind before you were hit with more confusion.

*** Sam pov After seeing Y/N and the Djinn their next stop was the farm she had mention before. They both knew how Djinn worked, this Djinn would lock its victim it a perfect world while it drained all their blood. Y/N could days or hours left. He prayed that he would find her alive and fighting. She could of won against the Djinn but too hurt to move, he didn’t know if he liked that anymore.

"Isn't that her car?" Dean pointed just ahead of them, there it was her green aston martin. It had a light covering of leafs, it was untouched.

"Yeah, she must be near by" Sam was already looking around the near by area trying to spot her. It was mid day, Dean had wanted to wait till night but Sam couldn't.

They came to the farm next, parking closer so they could get a quick get away if needed. Pausing to get what they needed before going looking around.

Dean took the old house, while Sam went to the barn. The farm had obviously been a busy one. The barn had dozens of old tools, even an old tractor. Apart from all that it had nothing that would help them.

"Sam!" Dean yelled was distance but he could still make it out. He ran towards the house, towards Dean. Once he was inside he searched for Dean and Y/N. "Sam" Dean called again, his voice was coming from the top floor. Sam ducked his head into two rooms before he found the room Dean was in.

It was a small bedroom, the bed was in the far end of the room and slummed on top of the bed was Y/N. Her back was against the head board, both arms tired to it too. Hanging by her head was a bag of blood attached to her neck. She was dirty with hollow eyes, from losing blood and being without food or water.

Sam went straight over to her and cut her free, pulling the needle from her neck. She fell against him, still unconscious. Her breathing was slow and intermittent. Even though she was in a horrible state she still felt warm.

"I see you found your friend" Both Dean and Sam spun around, shocked to find the same man from the CTV watching them. "she probably does have long left"

He walked closer to them. Dean pulled his knife out, silently threating .

"I'll give her this, She's very strong. Took almost all my strength to keep her fooled" He looked to Y/N in Sam's arms with a smug smile. "too bad you won't make it out either"

"you've got our places mixed up" Sam pulled away from Y/N, she fell limply onto his lap. He moved fast, pulling his own knife covered in lambs blood from his jacket and threw it start at the Djinn. It was a risk but it paid off, the knife hit it's target.

***

Reader Pov

You ran as fast as you could, you kicked off the stupid heels you chosen to wear after tripping 3 times. You needed to get back to house before you forgot again. Your chest burnt and your body screamed for you to slow down but you carried on.

When you finally reached the house you threw yourself in. Only then did you allow yourself to breath. Danny came into the hallway looking confused. "What are you doing back this early?"

"This isn't real" you chock out as you caught your breath. "You aren't - I'm not really here".

"what's going on Y/N?" he tried to came closer but you moved away. "Of course you are"

"No. You died. And I found you and it broke my heart" You tried to hold back your tears. "and now I can't love the person I should"

"love someone else" he took a step back, looking hurt.

"I still love you, I do but something else is starting and I want to- I want to jump into it" You couldn't hold it in any longer. You walked teary eyed to the kitchen knowing what you needed to do. Danny followed you.

"Y/N, you're not well, Come on I'll take you to the doctors" He was so close, you had to push yourself to keep walking.

"I was hunting a Djinn, it must of caught me and put me here" You know you sounded mad but it didn't matter, you'd be gone soon. "I've already been here for two days, who knows how long I have left"

"You making no sense! I knew this lore nonsense would lead to nothing good" Danny said, he sounded tired and angry.

"You think I'm mad and god I know I am but not about this. You died years ago and I never got to say goodbye, I thought I wanted this life back but I don’t. I want my old life back" your eyes darted around looking for a knife.

"Y/N just calm down" his eyes widen when he saw you pick up a knife. "Just put the knife down"

"I miss you so much but I can't stay, if I do I die too" the weight of the knife was alien and familiar at the same time. Closing your eyes, you mused all you had and brought the knife to your chest. You gasped as the knife went in.

Your eyes shot open, your hand went to your chest to see if there was blood. "Y/N?" Sam was above you, lifting you into a sitting position. You felt weak and could hardly force.

"we should get out of here" You turned and saw Dean watching you both.

"My car, I can't leave it" you tired to move from the bed but your legs failed.

"It's okay, I'll drive it. You need to rest" Sam stood up, then lifted you in his arms.

"I've basically been asleep for days" You weakly try to fight the suggestion.

"yeah but you're missing a lot of blood". When you left the room you saw the coroner lay dead on the floor. "why is the coroner here?"

"he's was the Djinn" Dean said walking over the body.

"Okay" you kept your eyes on his still form until you left the room.

Dean was walking just ahead, he kept looking back at you in Sam's arms. You were aware of just how Sam was watching you and so was Dean.

You stopped the impala close to the house, Dean got in and sent a nod over to Sam. Your car was just where you left it. Seeing it gave you a feeling of shame, it was his car, it was the only thing left of his in the world.

You silently handed the keys to Sam, he helped you get in the car before circling around to the drivers side. "Try and sleep until we get to the bunker"

You nodded, you couldn't find the strength to do anything else. It was easier than you would of like to fall asleep, even though that’s all you had been doing, you felt like all your life had been drained away.

The next time you woke up, you were back in the bunker. You had no idea how much time had pasted but you guessed it had been at least a day or two by how much better you felt and how hungry you were.

Sitting up, letting your cover fall off, you saw that you had changed out of the dirty suit you were last in. You guessed Sam was the one who did it.

You were sure o f your answer now, even being in a dream world your problems still came up. This was something you needed to do, to say. Your heart knew what to do with Sam.

Thank god you were in the same room as your things, it would make things so much easier. You pulled on some jeans and got to putting all your things in a bag. There wasn't much in there, everything else was in your car. Shit. You bit your lip, you gave your car keys to Sam he could still have them.

Your phone was sat on the bedside table, 4am. Leaving with no goodbye would send the messages but why did it hurt so much. You told yourself this was the better ending, if things carried on one of you would end up dead. You had nearly died just the day before.

You had everything ready, only then did you noticed you were crying. When you picked up your bag, you held back a sob when you saw Sam's shirt alone on the bed. Another message.

You walked slowly so no one who hear you. The library was empty and so was the war room, which is what you expected it was 4 am. You luck stuck again, you keys were on the table. But your luck didn't last for long.

"Y/N? what are you doing?" Sam walked through Library and up to you. His eyes took everything in, the car keys in your hand, your bag at you feet and you standing there dressed.

"I thought you were asleep" You said, throat sore from holding in tears. "It would have been better that way"

"what would be better? Leaving without saying goodbye" he sounded so hurt.

"This isn't a good idea" you sobbed, just letting everything out now.

"you're saying what I feel, what I thought you felt isn't a good idea" his eyes were glassy with tears, his voice high but no enough to wake Dean up.

"It doesn't matter what I feel! This will only end one way" You cried, chest heavy. "I can't do this"

"I don’t understand" he shook his head.

"I can't lose someone again. I already lost Danny and that nearly killed me" You were crying harder. "And i- oh god I love you more than I have ever love anyone"

"if you love me then why are you leaving " he was crying too.

"Because this will hurt less, I'll lose you but you'll be alive and I can live with that" you chocked on your words, fighting to get them out.

"what about me? Don't my feeling matter?" he was closer now, you could feel the warmth coming from his body.

"You'll thank me in the end" you said, throat sore as ever. And without looking at him again you left. Feeling horrible and also dead inside, you got into your car and drove anyway.

LAST part

#spnquotebingo #reader x sam #reader x sam winchester #sam x reader #xreader #sam winchester #sam imagine #sam winchester imagine #sam winchester x y/n #spn imagine #spn fic #supernatural #supernatural fic #supernatural imagine

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themousefromfantasyland · 4 years

Text

"Dark Christmas"

By Jeanette Winterson

So, people used to tell ghosts stories during the holidays. During my last posts about Christmas creatures and hidden holiday lore, I talked about this amazing, but sadly forgotten holiday tradition, and how we should bring it back. So, consider this my contribution.

I searched for a good Christmas ghost story to share, and I found a good one here

So here it comes:

We had borrowed the house from a friend none of us seemed to know.

Highfallen House stood on an eminence overlooking the sea. It was a square Victorian gentleman's residence. The large bay windows looked down through the pines towards the shore. Six stone steps led the visitor up to the double front door where a gothic bell-pull released a loud mournful clang deep into the distances of the house.

Laurel lined the drive. The stable block was disused. The walled garden had been locked up in 1914 when the gardeners went to war. Only one had returned. I had been warned that the high brick wall enclosing the garden was unsafe. As I passed it slowly in the car, I saw a faded notice falling off the paint-peeled door. DO NOT ENTER.

I was the first to arrive. My friends were following by train and I was to collect them the next day and then we would settle down to Christmas.

I had driven from Bristol and I was tired. There was a Christmas tree roped on the top of my 4x4 and a trunk-load of provisions. We were not near any town. But the housekeeper had left stacked wood to build a fire and I had brought a shepherd's pie and a bottle of rioja for my first night.

The kitchen was cheerful enough once I had got the fire going and the radio playing while I unpacked our festive supplies. I checked my phone – no signal. Still, I knew the time of the train tomorrow and it was a relief to feel that the world had gone away. I put my food in the oven to heat up, poured a glass of wine, and went upstairs to find myself a bedroom.

The first landing had three bedrooms leading off it. Each had a moth-eaten rug, a metal bed and a mahogany chest of drawers. At the far end of the landing was a second set of stairs up to the attic floor.

I am not romantic about maids' rooms or nurseries, and there was something about that second set of stairs that made me hesitate. The landing was bright in the sudden way of late sun on a winter's afternoon. Yet the light ended abruptly at the foot of the stairs as though it couldn't go any farther. I didn't want to be near that set of stairs, so I chose the room at the front of the house.

As I went to bring up my bag, the house bell started to ring, its jerky metallic hammers sounding somewhere in the guts of the house. I was surprised but not alarmed. I expected the housekeeper. I opened the door. There was no one there. I went down the steps and looked round. I admit I was frightened. The night was clear and soundless. There was no car in the distance. No footsteps walking away. Determined to conquer my fear, I walked round a little. Then, turning back to the house, I saw it; the bell wire ran along the side of the house under a sheltering gutter. Perhaps 30 or 40 bats were dangling upside down on the vibrating wire. The same number swooped and swerved in a dark mass. Obviously their movement on the wire had set off the bell. I like bats. Clever bats. Good. Now supper.

I ate. I drank. I wondered why love is so hard and life is so short. I went to bed. The room was warmer now and I was ready to sleep. The sound of the sea ebbed into the flow of my dreams.

I woke from a dead sleep in dead darkness to hear… what? What can I hear? It sounded like a ball bearing or a marble rolling on the bare floor above my head. It rolled hard on hard then hit the wall. Then it rolled again in the other direction. This might not have mattered except that the other direction was upwards. Things can come loose and roll downwards, but they cannot come loose and roll up. Unless someone…

That thought was so unwelcome that I dismissed it along with the law of gravity. Whatever was rolling over my head must be a natural dislodging. The house was draughty and unused. The attics were under the eaves where any kind of weather might get in. Weather or an animal. Remember the bats. I pulled the covers up to my eyebrows and pretended not to listen.

There it was again: hard on hard on hit on pause on roll.

I waited for sleep, waiting for daylight.

We are lucky, even the worst of us, because daylight comes.

It was a brooding day that 21st of December. The shortest day of the year. Coffee, coat on, car keys. Shouldn't I just check the attic?

The second set of stairs was narrow – a servants' staircase. It led to a lath and plaster corridor barely a shoulder-width wide. I started coughing. Breathing was difficult. Damp had dropped the plaster in thick, crumbling heaps on the floorboards. As below, there were three doors. Two were closed. The door to the room above my room was ajar. I made myself go forward.

The room was under the eaves as I had guessed. The floor was rough. There was no bed, only a washstand and a clothes rail.

What surprised me was the nativity scene in the corner.

Standing about two feet tall, it was more like a doll's house than a Christmas decoration. Inside the open-fronted stable stood the animals, the shepherds, the crib, Joseph. Above the roof, on a bit of wire, was a battered star. It was old, handmade in a workmanlike but not craftsmanlike sort of way, the painted wood now rubbed and faded like pigments of time.

I thought I would carry it downstairs and put it by our Christmas tree. It must have been made for the children when there were children here. I stuffed my pockets with the figures and animals, and left quickly, leaving the door open. I had to set off for the station. Stephen and Susie could help me with the rest later.

As soon as I was out of the house, my lungs felt clear again. It must be the plaster dust.

The drive to the station was along the coast road. Lonely and unyielding, the road turned in a series of blind bends and tight corners. I met no one and I saw no one. Gulls circled over the sea.

The station itself was a simple shelter on a long single track. There were no information boards. I checked my phone. No signal.

At last the train appeared distantly down the track. I was excited. Memories of visiting my father as a child when he was stationed at his RAF base give me a rush of pleasure whenever I travel by train or come to meet one.

The train slowed and halted. The guard stood down for a moment. I watched the doors – it wasn't a big train, this branch line train – but none of the doors opened. I waved at the guard who came over.

"I am meeting my friends."

He shook his head. "Train's empty. Next stop is the end of the line."

I was confused. Had they got off at the earlier stop? I described them. The guard shook his head again. "I notice strangers. They would have boarded at Carlisle, asked me where to get off – always do."

"Is there another train before tomorrow?'

"One a day and that's your lot, and more than anybody needs in a place like this. Where are you staying?"

"Highfallen House. Do you know it?"

"Oh aye. We all know it." He looked as if he were about to say something else. Instead, he blew his whistle. The empty train pulled away, leaving me staring down the long track watching the red light like a warning.

I needed to get a signal on my phone.

I drove on past the station, following the steep hill, hoping some height would connect me to the rest of the world. At the top of the hill I stopped the car and got out, pulling up the collar of my coat. The first snow hit my face with insect insistence. Sharp and spiteful, like little bites.

I looked out across the whitening bay. That must be Highfallen House. But what's that? Two figures walking on the beach. Is it Stephen and Susie? Had they driven here after all? Then, as I strained my eyes against the deceit of distance, I realised that the second figure was much smaller than the first. They were walking purposefully towards the house.

When I arrived back, it was nearly dark.

I put on the lights, blew the fire into a blaze. There was no sign of the mysterious couple I had seen from the hill. Perhaps it had been the housekeeper and her daughter come to make sure that everything was all right. I had a telephone number for Mrs Wormwood, but without a signal I could not call her.

The snow was thickening in windy swirls. Relax. Have a whisky.

I leaned on the warm kitchen range with my whisky in my hand. The wooden figures I had brought down from the attic were lying on the kitchen table. I should go up and get the stable.

I don't want to.

I bounded up the first set of stairs using energy to force out unease. At my bedroom I put on the light. That felt better. The second set of stairs stood in shadow at the end of the long landing. I felt that constriction in my lungs again. Why am I holding on to the handrail like an old man?

I could see that the only light to the attic was at the top of the stairs. I found the round brown Bakelite switch. I flicked down the nipple. A single bulb lit up reluctantly. The room was straight ahead. The door was closed. Hadn't I left it open?

I turned the handle and stood in the doorway, the room dimly lit by the light from the stairs. Washstand. Nativity. Clothes rail. On the clothes rail was a child's dress. I hadn't noticed that before. I suppose I had been in a hurry. Pushing aside my misgivings, I went in purposefully and bent down to pick up the wooden nativity. It was heavy and I had just got it secure in my arms when the light on the landing went out.

Hello? Who's there?

There's someone breathing like they can barely breathe. Not faint. Struggling for breath. I mustn't turn round, because whoever or whatever it is, is behind me.

I stood still for a minute, steadying my nerve. Then I shuffled forward towards the edge of light coming up from downstairs. At the doorway I heard a step behind me, lost my balance and put out a hand to steady myself. My hand gripped something wet. The clothes rail. It must be the dress.

My heart was over-beating. Don't panic. Bakelite. Bad wiring. Strange house. Darkness. Aloneness.

But you're not alone, are you?

Back in the kitchen with whisky, Radio 4 and pasta boiling, I examined the dress. It was for a small child and it was hand-knitted. The wool was smelly and sopping. I washed it out and left it hanging over the sink to drip. I guessed there must be a hole in the roof and the dress had been soaking up the rain for a long time.

I ate my supper, tried to read, told myself it had been nothing, nothing at all. It was only 8pm. I didn't want to go to bed, though the snow outside was like a quilt.

I decided to arrange the nativity. Donkey, sheep, camels, wise men, shepherds, star, Joseph. The crib was there, but it was empty. There was no Christ child. And there was no Mary. Had I dropped them in the dark room? I hadn't heard anything fall and these wooden figures were six inches tall.

Joseph was wearing a woollen tunic, but his wooden legs had painted puttees. I pulled off the tunic. Underneath, wooden Joseph wore a painted uniform. First world war.

When I turned him round, I saw there was a gash in his back like a stab wound.

My phone beeped.

I dropped Joseph, grabbed the phone. It was a text message from Susie. TRYING 2 CALL U. LEAVE 2MORO.

I pressed CALL. Nothing. I tried to send a text. Nothing. But what did it matter? Suddenly I felt relief and calm. They had been delayed, that was all. Tomorrow they would be here.

I sat down again with the nativity. Perhaps the missing figures were inside. I put in my hand. My fingers closed round a metal object. It was a small iron key with a hoop top. Maybe it was the key to the attic door.

Outside, snow had fallen snow on snow. The sky had cleared. The moon sped above the sea.

I had gone to bed and I was deep asleep when I heard it clearly. Above me. Footsteps. Pacing. Down the room. Hesitate. Turn. Return.

I lay in bed, eyes staring blindly at the blind ceiling. Why do we open our eyes when we can't see anything? And what was there to see? I don't believe in ghosts.

I wanted to put on the light, but what if the light didn't come on? Why would it be worse to be in darkness I had not chosen than darkness I was choosing? But it would be worse. I sat up in bed and pulled back the curtain a little. The moon had been so bright tonight, surely there would be light?

There was light. Outside the house, hand in hand, stood the still and silent figures of a mother and child.

I did not sleep again till daylight, and when I slept and woke again, it was almost midday and already the light was lowering.

Hurrying to get coffee, I saw that the dress was gone. I had left it dripping over the sink and it was gone. Get out of the house.

I set off for the station. There was an air frost that had coated the trees in glittering white. It was beautiful and deathly. The world held in ice.

On the road there were no car tracks. No noise but the roar and drop of the sea.

I moved slowly and saw no one. In the white, unmoving landscape, I wondered if there was anyone else left alive?

At the station, I waited. I waited some time past the time until the train whistled on the track. The train stopped. The guard got down and saw me. He shook his head. "There's no one," he said. "No one at all."

I thought I would cry. I took out my mute phone. I flashed up the message. TRYING TO CALL U. LEAVE 2MORO.

The guard looked at it. "Happen it's you who should be leaving," he said. "There's no more trains past Carlisle now till the 27th. Tomorrow was the last and that's been cancelled. Weather."

I wrote down a number and gave it to the guard. "Will you phone my friends and tell them I am on my way home?"

On the slow journey back to Highfallen House, I filled my mind with my departure. It would be slow and dangerous to travel at night, but I could not consider another night alone. Or not alone.

All I had to do was manage 40 miles to Inchbarn. There was a pub and a guesthouse and remote but normal life.

The text message kept playing in my head. Had it really meant that I should leave? And why? Because Susie and Stephen couldn't come? Weather? Illness? It's all a guessing game. The fact is, I have to go.

The house seemed subdued when I returned. I had left the lights on and I went straight upstairs to pack my bag. At once I saw that the light to the attic was on. I paused. Breathed. Of course it's on. I never switched it off. That proves it's a wiring fault. I must tell the housekeeper.

My bag packed, I threw the food into a box and put everything back in the car. I had the whisky in the front, a blanket I stole from the bed, and I made a hot-water bottle, just in case.

It was only five o'clock. At worst I'd be in Inchbarn by 9pm.

I got in the car and turned the key. The radio came on for a second, died, and as the ignition clicked and clicked, I knew that the battery was flat. Two hours ago at the station, the car had started first time. Even if I had left the lights on… But I hadn't left the lights on. A cold panic hit me. I took a swig of the whisky. I couldn't sleep in the car all night. I would die.

I don't want to die.

Back in the house, I wondered what I was going to do all night. I must not fall asleep. I had noticed some old books and volumes when I had explored downstairs yesterday – assorted dusty adventure stories and tales of empire. As I sorted through them, I came across a faded velvet photograph album. In the cold, deserted sitting room, I began to discover the past.

Highfallen House 1910. The women in long skirts with miraculous waists. The men in shooting tweeds. The stable boys in waistcoats, the gardening boys wearing flat caps. The maids in starched aprons. And here they are again in their Sunday best: a wedding photograph. Joseph and Mary Lock. 1912. He was a gardener. She was a maid. In the back of the album, loose and unsorted, were further photographs and newspaper cuttings. 1914. The men in uniform. There was Joseph.

I took the album back into the kitchen and put it next to my wooden solider. I had on my coat and scarf. I propped myself up in two chairs by the wood-fired range and dozed and waited and waited and dozed.

It was perhaps two o'clock when I heard a child crying. Not a child who has scraped his knee, or lost a toy, but an abandoned child. A child whose own voice is his last hold on life. A child who cries and knows that no one will come.

The sound was not above me – it was above the above me. I knew where it was coming from.

I put my hands over my ears and my head between my knees. I could not shut out the sound; a locked-up child, a hungry child, a child who is cold and wet and frightened.

Twice I got up and went to the door. Twice I sat down again.

The crying stopped. Silence. A dreadful silence.

I raised my head. Footsteps were coming down the stairs. Not one foot in front of the other, but one foot dragging slightly, then the other joining it, steadying, stepping again.

At the bottom of the stairs, the footsteps paused. Then they did what I knew they would do with all the terror in my body. The footsteps came towards the kitchen door. Whatever was out there was standing 12 feet away on the other side of the door. I stood behind the table and picked up a knife.

The door swung open with violent force that rammed the brass doorknob into the plaster of the wall. Wind and snow blew into the kitchen, whirling up the photographs and cuttings on the table. I saw that the front door itself was wide open, the entrance hall like a wind tunnel.

Holding the knife, I went forward into the hall to shut the door. The pendant metal lantern that hung from the ceiling was swinging wildly on its long chain. A sudden gust lurched it forward like a child's swing pushed too high. It fell back at force against the large semi-circular fanlight over the front door. The fanlight shattered and fell round my shoulders in shards of sharp rain. Flicker. Buzz. Darkness. The house lights were out. No wind now. No cries. Silence again.

Glass-hit in the snow-lit hall, I walked out of the front door and into the night. At the drive, I turned left and I saw them: the mother and child.

The child was wearing the woollen dress. She had no shoes. She held up her arms piteously to her mother, who stood like stone.

I ran forward. I grabbed the child in my arms.

There was no child. I had fallen face down in the snow.

Help me. That's not my voice.

I'm on my feet again. The mother is ahead of me. I follow her. She's going towards the walled garden. She seems to pass through the door, leaving me on the other side.

DO NOT ENTER

I tried the rusty hoop handle. It broke off, taking a piece of door with it. I kicked the door open. It fell off its hinges. The ruined and abandoned garden lay before me. A walled garden of one acre used to feed 20 people. But that was a long time ago.

There were footprints in the snow. I followed them. They led me to the bothy, its roof patched with corrugated iron. There was no door, but the inside seemed dry and sound. There was a tear-off calendar still on the wall: 22 December 1916.

I put my hand in my pocket and I realised that the key from the nativity was there. At the same time, I heard a chair scrape on the floor in the room beyond. I had no fear any more. As the body first shivers and then numbs with cold, my feelings were frozen. I was moving through shadows as one who dreams.

In the room beyond there was a low fire lit in the tiny tin fireplace. On either side of the fire sat the mother and child. The child was absorbed playing with a marble. Her bare feet were blue, but she did not seem to feel the cold any more than I did.

Are we dead then?

The woman with the shawl over her head looked at me with deep expressionless eyes. I recognised her. It was Mary Lock. She nodded at me, or at not me, at some other me in some other time, I do not know. Her gaze went to a tall cupboard. I knew that my key fitted this cupboard and that I must open it. I did so.

A dusty uniform fell out, crumpling like a puppet. The uniform was not quite empty of its occupant. The back of the faded wool jacket had a long slash where the lungs would have been.

I looked at the knife in my hand.

"Open the door! Are you in there? Open the door!"

I woke to blinding white. Where am I? Something's rocking. It's the car. I am in my car. A heavy glove was brushing off the snow. I sat up, found my keys, pressed the unlock button. It was morning. Outside was the guard from the train and a woman who announced herself as Mrs Wormwood.

"Fine mess you've made here," she said.

We went into the kitchen. I was shivering so much that Mrs Wormwood relented and began to make coffee.

"Alfie fetched me," she said, "after he spoke to your friends."

"There's a body," I said. "In the walled garden."

"Is that where it is?" said Mrs Wormwood.

At Christmas 1914, Joseph Lock had gone to war. Before he left for Flanders, he had made a nativity scene for his little girl. When he came back in 1916, he had been gassed. They heard him, climbing the stairs, gasping for breath through froth-corrupted lungs.

His mind had gone, they said. At night in the attic where he slept with his wife and child, he leaned vacantly against the wall, rolling the child's marbles up and down, down and up, pacing, pacing, pacing. One night, just before Christmas, he strangled his wife and daughter. He left them for dead in the bed and went out. But his wife was not dead. She followed him. In the morning, they found her sitting by the nativity, her dress dark with blood, his fingermarks livid at her throat. She was singing a lullaby and pushing the point of the knife into the back of the wooden figure. Joseph was never found.

"Are you going to call the police?" I said.

"What for?" said Mrs Wormwood. "Let the dead bury the dead."

Alfie the guard went out to see to my car. It started first time, the exhaust blue in the white air. I left them clearing up and was about to set off when I remembered I had left my radio in the kitchen. I went back inside. The kitchen was empty. I could hear the two of them up in the attic. I picked up the radio. The nativity was on the table as I had left it.

But it wasn't as I had left it.

Joseph was there and the animals and the shepherds and the worn-out star. And in the centre was the crib. Next to the crib were the wooden figures of a mother and child.

#christmas #holiday season #spooky christmas #christmas ghost stories #ghost story

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curewhimsy · 4 years

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Outline for Sea Star’s storyline that I have so far.

It’s very angsty. I need to put in more happy, whimsical, and humorous moments to balance it out, because right now it’s 90% angst.

I also need to put in some magical worldbuilding and lore elements along with introducing the bigger plot... like the fact that Rhona can talk to sea life and has tons of friends who are marine animals. Right now the parts in the outline are mostly just about Rhona and Nagisa and their emotions...

Luana’s backstory is also pretty fantastical, it’s just not a part of this outline yet. Also the main plot is villains wanting to drain the ocean, along with evil pirates stealing from people (they also took Luana’s older sister, Oliana, from her parents when Oliana was a baby, and made Oliana into an evil pirate as well.) But with the biggest evil being the hatred of the group who wants to drain the ocean, the pirates have to turn over a new leaf and work with the good huntsman and huntresses to save their precious ocean...

Trigger warnings: Character death, needles, bullying (physical and emotional), PTSD, suicidal ideation, holy shit this story is angsty...

———————————

Nagisa was in 3rd grade when she met Amara Mendez, a cheerful mixed Latina girl with a toothy grin and sunny personality who cheered her up when nobody talked to her. Amara loved the ocean, which helped inspire Nagisa’s own love for the ocean as well. One night, after an argument with her mother, Nagisa called Amara and decided they would run away together. They ended up going to a cave, discovering a pool of magic water, and making a fun and adventurous memory related to the water. However, Amara would soon fall ill. Nagisa called her mother on her phone to notify her that Amara was ill and for both of them to be picked up and sent back home. In summer camp, Amara was the only one who remembered Nagisa’s birthday, and got her a present, a stuffed pink seal with a friendship necklace. Nagisa had worn the necklace and kept the stuffed seal ever since. Three years after they met, right before they were to enter 6th grade together, Amara and Nagisa had a phone call together one night. Amara was about to go on a cruise, and excitedly told Nagisa about her aspirations for it. They told each other about how they would miss each other, and Amara told Nagisa she would bring back many souvenirs and maybe even discover something great. But sadly, the cruise ship sank. Amara, who loved the ocean, passed away tragically in a shipwreck in the middle of the sea, at 10 years old on August 22. Nagisa fell into a deep state of mourning, and even thought about taking her own life to be with Amara again. Ever since then, Nagisa hated the ocean, because it took Amara away. She once loved the ocean because of Amara, but after her death, Nagisa never wanted anything to do with it again. 12 years later, even though 22-year-old Nagisa’s feelings have mostly subsided, they have changed very little. She still is traumatized by the incident, and is scared and repulsed by the ocean. The incident has pushed her back into her shell, and she hadn’t come back out since. Nagisa is too depressed, lonely, and anxious to live a productive life on her own. -One day, Nagisa’s mother falls ill, and she goes to get medicine for her. -On the way, a violent storm comes, the weak bridge to the pharmacy collapses, and Nagisa is thrown off the gap between two cliffs into the water. Underwater, she feels Amara telling her to be brave. When Nagisa surfaces, heavy rain batters her face, and suddenly, she feels land... and everything become dry. Opening her eyes, nothing looks right. She had ended up in a Dissonance. -Nagisa is attacked by a monster in the Dissonance. Rhona, a traveling Huntress who fights monsters and rescues people in Dissonances, saves her. -They end up on the deserted island. Nagisa is very nervous and feels like a burden to Rhona, who is protecting her. Rhona is equally as shy as Nagisa, only she doesn’t show her emotions well.) (That night they sleep in a clearing in the jungle.) (The next day...) (That night they sleep on a tiny island. Nagisa slowly becomes more comfortable around Rhona. She opens up to her and tells Rhona about her sick mother. Rhona comforts Nagisa and says everything will turn out okay. They finally break the ice and become friends, and are now a lot comfortable around each other.) (The next day...) (Nagisa tells Rhona about Amara, and starts crying to Rhona. Rhona holds Nagisa tightly as she pours her heart out to her.) (Nagisa confesses she thinks she’s weak and wishes she could be strong like Rhona. Rhona tells Nagisa that everyone has strength, and that she senses a lot of it inside of Nagisa.) (The next day...) (Nagisa sees a whale shark up close as they are thrown into the water by a monster. The whale shark is named Quartz, and he is one of Rhona’s sea life companions. Quartz was there to rescue them, and the two ride the large whale shark to safety. Rhona comforts a scared Nagisa and tells her that Quartz is friendly and won’t hurt her, despite his large size. They bond a bit...) (Rhona eventually gets badly wounded... Nagisa has to fight to defend Rhona!) (Nagisa summons the courage to protect Rhona however she can. She becomes fulfilled. She gains a weapon, and even though she is untrained, now has powers to fight the monster. She mimics Rhona’s battle moves with the previous monsters. Rhona watches in pain and notices Nagisa is very good at picking up techniques.) (The gigantic monster that Nagisa defeats drops not just one, but two escape charms, which send Rhona and Nagisa right back to the hill by the sea in Nagisa’s town, in brand new white dresses. Rhona’s wound becomes healed as well, which was a side-effect of the charm.) (Once Nagisa is back home, she is crushed knowing that she and Rhona will have to part. Rhona was such a good friend to her, and lonely Nagisa took a lot of solace in having someone to comfort her. Surprisingly, during their good-bye Rhona actually cries bitterly. She knows Nagisa’s story, her emotions, and is crushed having to leave her. Along with her job as a huntress taking a toll on her, she is very worried about Nagisa and knows she must be feeling broken-hearted about everything. Nagisa can’t stand to see her friend cry like this, and for the first time realizes Rhona might also be scared and alone somewhere deep down inside. So Nagisa decides to go with Rhona and train, and help her fight monsters alongside her so she doesn’t have to be alone anymore. Nagisa is making a tough decision to be a huntress too, for the sake of her friend. She had gone from insecure and timid to willing to be strong for a friend. (Flashback, this time to Rhona’s childhood. When Rhona was a 7 years old, she was rather lonely. She found a baby whale shark in a lagoon near the park and befriended it. This is when Rhona discovered she had a magical ability to talk with sea animals. She named the whale shark Quartz. Eventually, Quartz told Rhona that he was born in the ocean, but when he was still small enough to be picked up, he was caught and put into the lagoon. The lagoon was too small for the growing whale shark and he wanted to be released in the ocean. Rhona had to say goodbye, but knew Quartz would be happier.) (Time-skip to another time in the past, two years before the story’s present setting. Rhona is 22 years old. One day when Rhona is free-diving, she got so wrapped up in the scenery underwater that she forgot she needed to surface. Just as she was about to run out of oxygen, Quartz happened to be there and pushed Rhona to the surface. This is how they reunite after all those years.) (Back to the present. A week passes from Nagisa’s decision to her enrollment into the hunter’s academy. Nagisa’s excitement and her intermittent week of (harsh yet encouraging) training is summarized before the enrollment into the academy’s ANB (Absolute New Beginner) branch. Rhona takes time off for one week to train Nagisa.) (Nagisa enters and registers for the ANB branch at an odd time of the year. Given her odd timing, she is now currently the only Absolute New Beginner in the entire academy... and a potential easy target for teasing and bullying. Rhona promises to protect Nagisa from any mistreatment. Nagisa is grateful and feels like she would need it, but hates feeling like Rhona’s burden. (It turns out that Nagisa’s training is ridiculously difficult and grueling. She ended up receiving a very harsh and blunt mentor who whips her into resolve and tells Nagisa that she’s out of shape and that monster fighting isn’t the kind of job you just pick on a complete whim. Nagisa wants to give up, hearing these words, but summons her courage and hangs in there to keep her promise to Rhona. Nagisa’s tough mentor also states that Rhona Aequor is too soft of a trainer, even though she was raised on a regimen “five times as difficult as Nagisa’s.” Nagisa can’t help but feel like a complete failure.) (Nagisa can’t take her predicament anymore and tells Rhona what she feels. Rhona says to Nagisa that she believes that the true way to reinforce people is with compassion, which is why she gave Nagisa a lot of room for error and to grow when she was training her personally. Rhona suggests that Nagisa endure the tough regimen, while she secretly trains Nagisa with her own regimen on the side.) (Nagisa asks Rhona why she became a Huntress. Rhona tells Nagisa that her great-grandfather, Zithembe, was a huntsman who rescued people. Rhona, who was depressed and felt worthless with little meaning to her life at the time, finally felt that maybe she could follow in his footsteps and perhaps become someone who saves people.) (Nagisa (SKIPPING MANY PARTS ... ... .... (Nagisa, who had been studying and training very hard the past several weeks, gets picked to go to the flooded library dungeon. She gets put in a group with a group of three other girls who are already friends, Mara, Thana, and Cathy. Nagisa is upset that she isn’t in a group with Rhona, and expresses this. The three girls roll their eyes at Nagisa behind her back.) (When at the flooded library, it is time to split up into groups and explore different areas. Nagisa casually tries to make conversation. She eventually talks about how she wouldn’t be as scared if Rhona were here. Thana sourly tells Nagisa that she needs to stop depending on Rhona so much. Cathy goes even further and adds that she wonders why Rhona and Nagisa seem to be so close when their skill levels are so different. Mara, the meanest of them all, finally adds that “Rhona probably feels so burdened by Nagisa holding her back all the time.” Nagisa wants to talk back, but can’t find any words. Now she feels like she wants to prove herself to the girls and make them eat their words, so she devises a plan.) (During the next fight, Nagisa uses the “genius maneuver” plan she thought up, but it ends up being a disaster because she couldn’t execute it right. She ends up almost putting her entire group in danger, and one of the lit candles on the wall ends up falling on a stack of paper, starting a fire. It ends up singeing some mystical books in the library that were filled with arcane knowledge of magic. Rhona, who happened to be nearby, ends up seeing the flames and panics... This is the first time Nagisa learns that Rhona has a phobia of flames. Rhona’s phobia started in childhood when she was trapped in a burning house once, before she had the ability to manipulate water and could put it out. Her fear, though a bit ironic, is intense enough to trigger an anxiety attack. Rhona confesses to Nagisa she has a phobia of fire, and Nagisa ends up slipping out that she has a phobia of needles. Nagisa ends up failing the expedition for her whole group due to the disaster she caused. They all get kicked out early, and miss their chance to get to the beautiful center of the flooded library while everyone else can keep going. The rest of Nagisa’s group is very angry at her and ends up wanting to get revenge on her.) (Mara, the leader of the group of mean girls, begin to bully Nagisa, who end up finding it in her to stand up to them. However, she still feels hurt... But one day, the girls ambush Nagisa and hold her down, and they have a box filled with needles. Thana remembered Nagisa mentioning she had a phobia of needles that day, and had the idea of torturing her with needles. The girls plan on sticking needles in Nagisa’s body one by one until her whole body is covered in pricks, “like a voodoo doll.” They hold her down, and start with her shoulder. “Don’t worry, it’s just a little sting.” They say. Nagisa screams loudly as they laugh. The noise and commotion ends up attracting Rhona, and she is very angry.) (Rhona is ready to fight the girls, with her trident and all. She is so enraged that they would hurt Nagisa, that she isn’t holding back. Nagisa is touched, but she hates the fact that she’s a damsel in distress AGAIN. She hates the fact that Rhona has to defend and rescue her AGAIN.) (The incident, and Rhona having to rescue her again, finally pushes Nagisa way over the edge, and now she wants to prove her strength and capability for independence to everyone. (At one point Nagisa wants to go take a rescue job on her own to prove her strength after a small disagreement with Rhona about her worth that left her depressed. Nagisa feels she’s depending on Rhona too much. But when Nagisa tries to do harder things on her own, Rhona stops her and says she’s not ready for a solo mission yet.) (Eventually Nagisa tries to prove herself by going into a dangerous area on her own. The last time and place Nagisa was seen before she disappeared was at the beach in the early morning two days back, by fellow guild member Longwei. He reports that Nagisa then appeared to be headed towards the whirlpool abyss, a dangerous area. He didn’t think much of it, and was sure Rhona was there protecting her. He however became concerned when a category 5 Dissonance had been reported to open up in whirlpool abyss the very hour Nagisa was out. He didn’t tell rhona because the chance never came up.) (Rhona gets irrationally angry at Longwei for not stopping Nagisa before she put herself in danger, and not telling her on top of it all. She loses her temper and starts shouting at Longwei before breaking down in tears. This is the first time anyone in the guild had seen Rhona “The Stoic Rescuer” get so upset and even cry. Rhona really cares about Nagisa and everyone can clearly see that from her outburst. Rhona is devastated that her and Nagisa’s disagreement had lead to this. She feels responsible. This time, the ocean took away Nagisa. Rhona too, begins to associate the sea with sadness and loneliness.) (Rhona begins to doubt herself and her strength. She contemplates if she should’ve become a huntress in the first place, or if she was ever cut out to be one. She begins to consider herself weak, cowardly, and unfit to be a warrior for letting Nagisa’s loss shroud her in these feelings.) Rhona is overcome with fear and panic and regret. Rhona doesn’t even know if Nagisa is still alive or not. She spends the next three months in anguish and intense emotional distress. Rhona becomes very withdrawn and contemplates retiring from being a huntress. However, she feels dutiful to her job and continues to fight with a heavy heart. During this period, Rhona feels empty inside as if she is missing her soul. It can be interpreted that Rhona is deeply in love with Nagisa. One day, Rhona ends up staying at an inn room with a woman named Claudia. Rhona is back to her solitary ways, this time due to a broken heart. Eventually, Rhona does introduce herself to Claudia, but she is so stressed and exhausted that she hallucinates a monster inside the inn during their conversation and starts attacking at nothing. Claudia asks if Rhona is okay. Rhona lies, saying she is okay. However, she is choking up with tears. Claudia tells Rhona to tell her what’s wrong. Rhona breaks down in tears and tells Claudia everything. Claudia comforts Rhona and gives her an emotion she forgot the feeling of. Hope. She tells Rhona that she believes Nagisa is still alive and that she will always keep the thought in her heart. Even though Claudia is not a huntress, she tries to help Rhona the best she can. However, due to them having different jobs, Rhona and Claudia find themselves having to part. However, they never forget each other, and might just meet again someday... One day, Rhona meets Luana who is a friendly pirate who still has a somewhat rough attitude. After a bit of bickering, Rhona feels desperate and wants Luana to help her find Nagisa, thinking that since she’s a pirate, she’d be good at it. Luana misunderstands Rhona’s attitude. She thinks Rhona is devoid of emotion because she’s trying to be cool, and not because her heart is broken. Luana picks a fight with Rhona and they battle it out. After realizing how strong Rhona is, Luana gives up. She still doesn’t like Rhona, and argues with her. Eventually though, Luana and Rhona find common ground and start to become friends. Shortly after this, Luana catches Rhona crying and at first she finds it unexpected that such a tough girl is crying, but then gets the heart to comfort Rhona and ask what’s wrong. Rhona tells everything to Luana, and Luana finally understands. (Nagisa is still alive, but she’s having a whole other adventure trying to make it back out alive to Rhona. Nagisa is stuck in a dangerous part of Whimsica, though this time she’s by herself. During this time, Nagisa is shocking herself with how strong she is deep inside, becoming a lot more tolerant and even using her wits to get out of a lot of dire situations in a pinch. (She then meets a girl named Umiko who is also lost. Umiko is a nereid, a humanoid who can live in the sea and breathe water.) (Eventually Nagisa and Umiko get captured by villains from Planet Monochrome. Nagisa ends up running away with Umiko and soon after Rhona ends up finding them. They all fight against the villains who captured Nagisa together...) Rhona notices Nagisa is a lot stronger now. She comments on how she’s like a whole new Nagisa, but the things she liked the most about her stayed the same... However... Nagisa can’t help but feel that the trauma that Rhona faced from losing her had made Rhona a shell of her former self. Rhona now often trembles during battle—something she never used to do. She beings up ideas of life’s uncertainty a lot more, which worries Nagisa. Once again, Nagisa blames herself. She shows a strong face to Rhona, but on the inside, she feels like the same “weak” Nagisa she always was. This goes on for another month, before they truly get the counseling they both need to recover and close the ocean of sorrow that had been stretching out between them both.

#Whimsica #sea star #whimsica saga #my writing #rhona aequor #nagisa onda #rhonagi #character death /#tw needles #tw suicidal ideation #tw bullying #ptsd /#my art #outline #angst

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housebeleren · 5 years

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Random Commander Challenge: Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire

Aaaand back to Magic. I’ve gotta say, I really love doing this random commander thing. It really gives me a chance to stretch my deckbuilding muscles, and keeps the games fun and casual, since I can’t have too high a budget. It’s even inspired some of my playgroup to do similar things, building offbeat commanders with restrictions, so I highly recommend trying it out. For October (I’m way behind), the wheel landed on Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire from Core Set 2019. I feel like the 5 Elder Dragons from M19 were all super exciting when they landed, but were quickly cast aside in the excitement of the Ravnica guilds. But back to M19 it was, and with a deck I was really excited to try out, particularly since I almost never build these colors.

Art: Steven Belledin

Theme

Vaevictis Asmadi, at least on his second time at the rodeo, has a really interesting mechanic. He wants you to swing, and every time he does, he polymorphs something of your choice of every single player’s board. So right there, that presents us with a few clear jumping off points to work with. We’ll definitely want things to sacrifice to him, and we’ll want to hit a permanent as many times as possible, since it’s really painful to have all your opponents flip big creatures into play and have you whiff on a non-permanent. So with that in mind, I thought, “What if I made the deck almost all permanents?”, which naturally led to the follow up, “What if I made this a Primal Surge deck?”

Naturally.

So that’s the direction I went. This deck is very much about the mechanical identity, and very little about the flavor or lore identity. Sorry, Vorthoses, this one is for the Mels out there. (Though to be fair, there’s very little actual lore on the Elder Dragons besides Bolas.) But yes! Ramp to get to Vaevectis Asmadi, lots of sacrifice Fodder to feed his ability, and some payoffs, plus the lone spell Primal Surge to serve as an alternate path to victory. Let’s look at them in order.

Card Groups

Ramp - We definitely want plenty of ramp in this deck, as Vaevictis Asmadi is a 6 drop who needs to swing before he does anything, so chances are we’ll be casting him at least once to have any shot of winning. However, given his restriction, we don’t want lots of spell ramp like Cultivate in the deck. Instead, we want Creature and Artifact based ramp. I particularly like some of the Creatures that go find Lands to put on the battlefield, since they increase your chance of hitting actual cards with your commander’s ability. Of this group, Farhaven Elf, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Ondu Giant, and Solemn Simulacrum all made the cut. I also added Khalni Heart Expedition and Curse of Opulence as more off the beaten track ways to ramp (the latter of which can also be used as sac fodder). Lastly, I included 10 rocks and dorks, and which ones you prefer don’t really matter, as long as you have plenty of acceleration.

Haste & Protection - Vaevictis Asmadi is great, but has one major challenge. He’s a 6 drop without Haste that needs to attack before he’s useful. Normally, I’d say don’t stress it or wait until you have 8 or 9 mana to hold up protection after you cast him, but this deck is so tuned around his ability, we really need to get him attacking. For that reason, I think some Haste enablers are basically mandatory for this deck. Rhythm of the Wild and Fires of Yavimaya are fantastic, and feel right on with the flavor as well. I also included Anger, Bloodsworn Stewrd, and Urabrask the Hidden as additional redundancy. Lastly, as silly as it is for dragons to wear boots, I included Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots, which both also have the advantage of protecting him from targeted removal.

Sacrifice Fodder - Now that he’s attacking, we need something to sacrifice. It’s all well and good making your opponents sacrifice their big bombs they’ve just put out, but we want expendable things. Token makers are essential. Grismold, the Dreadsower is one of my favorites, since he not only creates sac fodder, but grows off of them when they die as well. Tendershoot Dryad and Verdant Force make tokens consistently as well, though they are costlier to get going. One of the cheapest is Genesis Chamber, but that can backfire if an opponent has a deck with lots of Creature ETBs, so play it carefully. I rounded out my options with Endrek Sahr, Curse of Disturbance, and Slimefoot, among a few others. Also, don’t forget your land-fetching creatures can be sacrificed for value after they’ve done their initial thing.

Big Payoffs - Now comes the fun part: flipping your tokens into some giant monsters and things. I started with all three Cavaliers from Core Set 2020 that fit in the Jund colors, and they’re all great hits off the ability. The Red one can also grant Haste, so he serves double duty on that count. Sepulchral Primordial is also a fun hit, since you can reanimate creatures you just forced your opponents to sacrifice, or anything else they may have thrown in the bin. It’s definitely worth including Avenger of Zendikar, Craterhoof Behemoth, and Purphoros as good hits that can easily turn into win conditions. Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest fills a similar role, as does Kokusho, especially when paired with Haunted Crossroads. Probably the granddaddy of all hits, however, is It That Betrays, which will completely dominate the game if you untap with it and Vaevictis on the board, as you slowly take control of everything. It’s the only Eldrazi I included, but the important thing is mix & match your favorite giant monsters and have fun.

Removal & Other ETBs - Lastly, there are also lots of creatures with useful ETBs that are good hits off of Vaevictis, so you’ll want to include some of those. Several of them are removal, like Ravenous Chupacabra, Reclamation Sage, and Loaming Shaman (yes, that’s removal against Graveyard strategies). I also included Plaguecrafter and The Eldest Reborn as punishment against decks with low creature counts. Several other good ETBs are graveyard retrieval, so you’ll want to include at least a few, like Eternal Witness and Gravedigger. And finally, I threw in Dire Fleet Daredevil for both the name (yes, I’m that ridiculous), but also because its ETB effect is really sweet. Pick your favorites and make room for them.

A few final one-offs that are worth including.

Haunted Crossroads - I already mentioned this one, as it’s a great way to buy back big creatures that die by flinging them on top of the library in response to Vaevictis’ ability trigger (though you can’t return the same thing you sacrifice, sadly).

Warstorm Surge - Good Purphoros redundancy

Aid from the Cowl - Basically lets you double up your hits each turn.

Bonds of Mortality - Since Vaevictis does target, and this allows you to get rid of pesky Hexproof creatures at a low cost.

Possibility Storm - This is a must-include here, since you won’t really care what you’re casting, but it can completely screw up your opponents’ game plans.

Primal Surge - If you’re going all-in on permanents, why not? Most of the time, this card simply says “Win the game.”

Win Conditions & Lines of Play

I feel like the win conditions in this deck pretty much speak for themselves, so I’ll go through these pretty quick:

Avenger-Craterhoof - I mean, duh. This is the classic combo for Green, and it works great here. With all the Haste enablers in the set, these two can come down on the same turn (say, from a Primal Surge?) and just immediately win you the game.

Purphoros/Warstorm Surge - These two cards are basically redundant, and your goal is just to get them out then either drop an Avenger of Zendikar, or Primal Surge into your deck. But, even if you get one of these early, you can still win pretty quickly off them just through creating tons of tokens off Verdant Force, so don’t sleep on that option.

Primordial Betrays Everything - Use either Sepulchral Primordial or It That Betrays to just take everything. You can amass a huge army of your opponents best stuff after only a couple turns with these guys. For the Primordial, you’ll need to sacrifice it and reuse it, probably with Haunted Crossroads. Oh, that works for Kokusho too, how convenient.

Stompy Dragon Mode - Use your giant commander and many of the other giant creatures in this deck and just smash. This deck can go really aggressive really fast, and it’s often hard for other decks to keep up when you’re removing their best stuff every turn. Definitely think about winning through good old fashioned face smashing.

If it wasn’t clear, you should basically always win dropping Primal Surge, because you’ll flip into some combination of the above. The only time it might not work is if you have an opponent who truly has an obscenely high life total, in which case you may have to try to win through commander damage, or attrition them out by slowly taking their entire deck over the course of every turn. The good news is, you can prevent yourself from decking, so this isn’t actually completely unreasonable, it’s just annoying. (But honestly, if someone gains “infinite” life, are they not the unreasonable ones?)

Conclusion

Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire has been awesome. He was always one of my favorites from the cycle, but I actually think there’s a competitive Commander build here as well. There’s tons of potential to make this deck really solid, though I prefer my kinda jank one. The deck played pretty consistently, thanks to all the ramp, and I actually won 2 out of 4 games with it, which is pretty good.

I went a touch over budget for this (as usual), but this was about the closest I’ve ever come to staying within the budget, thanks to already having Craterhoof & Purphoros on hand. But I did need to get a copy of It That Betrays, and plus a few other odds and ends for the deck, ended up spending about $30 on new cards for it. Still, not bad considering my theoretical $25 budget for new cards.

So yeah, fun commander, and a blast to play. Would 100% recommend, both for veteran players looking for something a little different, and for newer players as a way to introduce them to some really great combos, but still have fun doing big splashy things.

For November (yes I know I’m, to quote Sex and the City, about a fucking month late), I got Medomai the Ageless, so apparently the universe decided that nobody else was allowed to have fun after this one. I’ll post that one here soon, after I get to play it one more time this week.

#MtG #mtg commander

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munofsilver · 5 years

Text

Akumatized AU The Pharaoh

Still working on this. You can read it on my Ao3 account.

Now Alix and I have something in common. Now I also know how she felt on her birthday. Now I understand why she didn’t want to come home at first, if she did, in fact, felt that way. One good thing I guess is that I no longer need glasses. Sadly I’m so incorrect when I transform. I’m not sure if it’s me or Hawkmoth that made those Egyptians Gods powers false. Since he’s the cause of everything, I’m going with its Hawkmoth’s fault. Seems fitting since I doubt he knows anything about Egypt let alone their gods anyways.

Should I have even been called Pharaoh? According to Egyptian lore, why am I thinking about that now? All this happened near home, so one good thing, no awkwardness trying to get home. This might affect my studies and job. If I stay in my office then this won’t affect my studies at all, just can’t travel. I guess I’m okay with that. I can stay at home with Alix while our father is out. No more worried about leaving her alone for long periods at a time. Last time we left her alone, we came back to a passed out Nathaniel, a crying Natalie, and a laughing Alix. We still don’t know all the details. I walk back into the Louvre and head home. For once I’m glad the Louver is empty. I enter into the empty apartment my family lives in that’s inside the Louvre. I will never understand how father was able to get this apartment to work in here. With enough time, my father can talk his way through anything. Something I never got, I don’t think Alix did either. I know she’s out with Nathaniel and Kim. Doing what I have no idea if I had to guess something to do with them being akumatized. Hopefully, no one will get hurt. In anger, father stormed off into his office when I told him about my idea. He was just mad because I wanted to use a vital artifact for something. I can understand that if only I did before. Me sighing is the only sound I hear. I know what I did was broadcast live. I think the girl should stop with her blog. Doesn’t she know how it feels seeing what we did under his control? She was akumatized herself, you think she wouldn’t want to do this. Teenagers are hard to understand. Even when I was around that age. “Alix, how many times do I have to tell you? No skating inside,” I hear father yelling. That can only mean one thing. Time to tell my family about what happened. If they didn’t already see it on that Ladyblog. I head towards the door, I will be the first thing they see. Just want to get this done and over with. I bet Alix was also thinking the same thing. Another good this today not my birthday, that’s next month. Not that is matters now that I think about it. “You got hit too,” I heard my younger sister shout. Why did she have to say it so loud? Father enters behind her. “Son, is this because of our argument this afternoon?” Father looks ashamed of himself and sorry for me. Both his children have been akumatized. “I’m sorry for getting mad at you son,” father places a hand on my shoulder. “It’s alright. I should have known better,” I try to smile, but it seems I can’t move my face. I must look odd when I talk. I hear Alix laughing, making father and I both glares at her. “I’m sorry, Jalil, I know you’re mouth is moving, but with that mask on it looks like a kidnapped person with duct tape over their mouth.” Neither of us was amused by that. I was right about looking odd. It seems my eyes move just fine. I only hope I can take the mask off. If not, then how am I going to eat? I try to take the mask off it seems I can only uncover my mouth. That’s something right, I guess. “Don’t worry son. I’ll talk to your boss. I’m sure she won’t mind you still working here. Just unable to travel out of the country. We shall see.” I don’t plan on leaving France like this. I don’t even want to leave Paris. How can one moment of weakness lead to a lifetime as an outcast? “I understand father. Thank you.” Alix didn’t laugh this time. She’s also no longer here. Father leaves the room when Alix returns with a piece of paper. I take it so I can read. “An Akumatized support group?” I will admit it does sound promising. “Nathaniel and I go. Maybe you would like to join us. Our next meeting is coming up soon,” Alix points to the place, date, and time of the next meeting. “If I don’t work, I’ll be there. When did Nathaniel get akumatized?” “Did I forget to tell you? Sorry, but yeah most of my class is,” Alix starts to list all the people in her class that been akumatized. Six, seven when you count Alix eight in her school with Aurore. It seems College Francoise Dupont is a favorite place to get akumatized. I wonder if there is something there people should look into. If most of the students there are getting akumatized, something must be going on. I should write a letter to Mr. Damocles. As father would say it, I shall. I got time before dinner. It’s Alix turn to cook away ways, I just have to do dishes afterward. In my room, I take some blank paper out of one of my many notebooks and get to work on the letter. If I finished in time, I could drop it off at either the school or mailbox at night when ’they’re not many people around. I just need to word it right. “Come and get it,” I hear Alix calling. I didn’t know so much time has passed. One look at my letter before I temporarily leave it, one full page. That should be long enough. Just put on a closer, and that should be it. Dinner was quiet, which is odd in this house unless we have guests over. After the awkward silence of dinner, I hurry with the dishes. Done now back to that letter. I would like to finish it as soon as I can. You can think of this as a weakness, but when I put my mind on something, I tend to focus on nothing but that one thing until it’s done. That is something we got from our mom. I might be a good thing she can’t see us like this. Knowing mom, she wouldn’t mind and go on as nothing happened. She never let anything get to her. I wish I could have been like that. Alix is, you can tease her all you want she won’t care. Unless you go after a friend, then watch out. I remember one time she kicked this guy in the groin when he was making fun of Nathaniel’s hair. She nearly killed someone that made Natalie cry. Cops were called and everything. We all saw a dark side of Alix that day. Good thing Hawkmoth was not around that time. I would hate to see the akuma that Alix would turn into. Now is not the time to get lost in memories. Not when I have work to do. Took a while but I finished the letter. Placed it in an envelope, addressed, and stamp it. I sent it to the school since I don’t know where Mr. Damocles lives and I don’t want to look it up, just in case. Since it’s so late at night, the streets are almost empty. I take the letter to my office I have a mail drop off box in there. All offices in the Louvre does. I know around six in the morning the mail worker comes and empties all those boxes. That reminds me I need to close it, so they will know there’s something inside. “Now where did I put it?” I look all over my office. Like I do everything I need to mail something out. Just like all other times, I don’t notice the top of the box under the box until I finished looking everywhere. With the top on the box, I leave. Instead of heading home, I stay in my office for a while. Sitting at my desk, I go over the notes of the stupid idea I had that got me turned into this. Why did I get so worked up over nothing? My father was right about using artifacts. What if the staff I wanted to use broke, got lost, or stolen? I don’t know about the stolen part. If it got lost and someone found it and took it home, is that stealing? I crumble up the pointless notes and toss them in the trash. How did I even come up with a silly idea like that? You can never bring back the dead no matter what. Maybe I wanted it to work so I can see mom again. With a sigh and a heavy heart, I leave my office for the night. Back home, I stay in my room until morning. I wake up early knowing it’s my turn to make breakfast since dad did yesterday. Once I open my door, I smell freshly baked bread, that’s odd. I don’t think we ever had that before. I peek my head in the kitchen to see Alix making breakfast, trying too. The bread is burnt, but the macaroons she made are excellent. Never had those for breakfast before. Alix is known to only being able to bake small things. At least there wasn’t anything on fire. “Good morning breakfast is almost ready,” Alix cheers. “I know it’s your turn today. We just won’t tell dad I made breakfast.” Alix tosses the burnt bread into the trash. “What’s on the menu?” I asked jokingly. “I was thinking waffles, but then I remember we don’t have a waffle maker. So pancakes and freshly baked bread was the next plan. I guess I need some else to go with the pancakes,” Alix laughs. “How about something to drink?” I join in laughing. “Right,” Alix opens the fridge. “Milk or juice?” “I’m fine with juice, don’t forget coffee for dad,” I look to see the coffee pot is full, “If you want it to look like I made this then just toast would be fine. I always make toast when I make breakfast.” “That what I was planning on doing with the bread,” Alix defends herself. I go and make some toast while Alix pours everyone a drink of their choice. We both set the table and wait for our father. He comes in like he doesn’t need sleep like he always does. “Good morning, my offsprings. How are you?” “Fine, father,” I answered. “Offsprings. That’s now. Usually, he calls children.” “Are you saying you don’t know what…” “I know what offspring mean.” Everyone laughs. It’s good to see Alix, and I can still joke around with each other. After breakfast, Alix does the dishes while our father gets ready for work. I, on the other hand, go back into my room. In the little mirror I have on my dresser I notice my mask it

back on. “I left this on the table, how did it get back on?” I guess this is a surprise for being akumatized. At least I don’t have to worry about shaving anymore. After grabbing a towel, I make my way to the restroom. I quick shower before I leave. It seems this black isn’t part of the suit. When I got akumatized, my skin color changed. I’ve been walking around half naked this whole time and forever. That might make it harder for me to find a date. I hope dad doesn’t want grandkids because I don’t think Alix or I will find anyone to marry like this. That’s another thing I never thought off. Would I be able to conceive a child like this? After the shower father is at work while Alix took over the TV to play some video game. I forgot no school today. Looks like she will be home alone, just like our father I have to go to work. I need to tell my boss what happened if she doesn’t already know. At work, I found out my boss, in fact, knows what happened to me, since my father explained everything to her and me. Better then her finding out while watching me on the news, I think. I did find her waiting for me in my office. That something that only happens when she wants to talk to me. I have a bad feeling about this. “Hello, Mr. Kudbel. Don’t worry, you’re not fired or in trouble. I have a job opportunity for you if you are willing. You can keep doing what you are now, this will be more like an addition. I was thinking the way you look now would be perfect for tours of the Egyptian exhibit for class trips.” “I will admit that it does sound promising. I can do that, Mrs. Brown.” She smiles and leaves my office. Before she goes, she turns to me, “You do have one Thursday morning at eight.” I nod, and she closes the door. I did tours before, in fact, that was my job before I got promoted. When I say promoted I mean started my third year at University. I’m so glad I was able to graduate from University before this. Poor Alix she’ll have to go through her graduation the way she is. Not only that but everything. As an adult, I don’t have much to worry about being akumatized as much as someone around Alix’s age. I remember Nathaniel also got akumatized. I hope nothing will happen to Natalie; she’s way too young to deal with things like this. Even though she needs too because of her brother, as Alix would say, “Got hit.” I better get to work, my last study failed, so I need to find something new. Looking at my messy desk, I start to clear it. The papers, books, and notes are for a study that over. Knowing me, I’ll look these over again like I do with all my other studies. Never know what you’re going to find. I just need to think of something else for a bit. Then I got an idea. Ladybug was on that papyrus, maybe I can go deeper into that. There might be many Ladybug during history, and Cat Noir also. After I put everything in its place I return to the papyrus I’m glad Ladybug healing wave was able to fix. I had to take a closer look, but it’s there clear as day. Someone with the same yo-yo weapon as Ladybug dressed in old Egyptian dress. How did she fight in that? I’ll never know. Right now that’s not important and shouldn’t focus on. “Was this in my notes at all?” I think out loud. “I just put them away only to take them out again,” I laughed. That happens way too much with me. According to dad, I get that from mom. Same with having a messy desk. Anyways I need to focus on my new idea. I have a tour to do in a few days, and Alix wants me to go with her to this support group. I will admit it does sound like a good idea, on the other hand, what all can it do? I guess I’ll find out…...when is it again? Do I still have that paper Alix gave me? I think I left it in my room at home. I could call her and asked her. I shouldn’t call when she’s at school. No big deal, no need to worry. Around one there was a knock on my office door. “Come in.” The door opens, and dad enters. “Did you have lunch yet?” He asked. I look at the clock on the wall above the door. I didn’t know it was that late already. “No, I didn’t.” “Let’s have lunch. Father and son,” he smiles. I take off my mask, and we both head out for lunch. That itself is rare, not only does father prefer to only eat at a restaurant on special occasions, at work he usually brings his own lunch and eat in his office. In fact, the last time we had lunch together at work, we ate in the cafeteria. He did have his own meal. Today we went out to a sandwich place. Neither one of us has ever been here before, but I do remember Alix talking about this place a month ago. A small quiet place I can see why father would like this place. Lunch was lovely; we talked for a bit. I told him about my new job. I didn’t tell him what I’m going to be studying next. When he asked, I just lied and said I’m not sure yet. I have a feeling I should keep my idea to myself. Imagine if word got out on Ladyblog about this theory. Back in my office, I get to work. Like I usually do not only did I lose track of time I didn’t notice Alix coming in. “Yo, bro. Shouldn’t you be at home by now?” I looked up for the first time since I returned from lunch. It’s half past six, my shift ended at five. I work for an hour and a half for free. I need to stop doing that, or at least do this at home. Since it’s my turn to make dinner, I better get home soon and start cooking.

#akumatized au #the pharoah #jalil kudbel #miraculous ladybug #ML #ML AU #alix kubdel #mr. kubdel #fanfic #ml fanfic #dinosaurs

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kidkytes · 6 years

Note

thank you for calling out the KH fandom for basically gatekeeping people when it comes to Kingdom Hearts 3.

I don’t want to say in that I’m calling out, pointing fingers and saying to these people that “You’re wrong!/Shut up!/Do as I say”. I certainly don’t want to come across as some raging fanboy, but throughout the years I have noticed an ever increasing mindset amongst the KH fanbase which is sad to see. It’s why I kinda started stepping out of the fanbase, then Steven Universe came along and swallowed me whole but I already knew that fanbase was a cesspit so I stayed outta that. Anyway I’m rambling so I’ll stop that.

To the point, yes there is a problem in the KH fanbase in that they can be very intense on making sure that people are up to date with either playing all the games or having read game summaries and…I get it. I understand why. I know what they are meaning when they say that. This is an over arching storyline, naturally you want people to experience it that way so that way they will have the absolute best time playing Kingdom Hearts 3 and appreciate it even more in that they can get the best closure from the game.

There is a big problem in what Square Enix, Disney and Tetsuya Nomura have done with Kingdom Hearts as a whole. First off, this is a numbered series. When you have a numbered series it is natural to the consumer that if you stick to the main numbered games, you’ll be fine to jump from them to the next. Unfortunately due to Square Enix being Square Enix (FF15 I’m looking at you) since KH3 was delayed going into production for years we got a lot of spin offs. The natural meaning of a spin off is usually to take something that was hinted at or referenced in the original product and expand and explore on it, if you wanted to. So if you were interested by it, what it lore it might be expanding then that’s great. If you weren’t, that’s fine because just stick to the numbered games and you’ll be fine. Unfortunately due to FF15′s decade of development (that can be a whole trilogy of books on it’s own) Nomura decided to put a lot of story content in order to make these appealing to the consumer rather than just release hollow games due to Disney’s requests for more games.

So that creates the whole problem in that there is some significant story elements in these games (especially Birth By Sleep and Dream Drop Distance) that it can be very hard to understand a lot of the things that have come after KH2. Looking back on it we’ve had NINE games (I’m counting re:Chain of Memories, Re:coded, Unchained X and 0.8 in that as seperate games because they are from their original versions and 0.8 is essentially a game) before Kingdom Hearts III, that’s absolutely ridiculous and TONS of story content to go through.

So yes, I get why people want others to know as much as possible going into KH3 so that they will have the complete experience and enjoy it like that. Unfortunately will it does not represent the KH community as a whole, there is a number of vocal people who really come down on those who haven’t played all of the games and/or haven’t read game summaries. Which sadly is an issue in that there seems to be a mindset of, “Well you don’t get to complain if the story doesn’t make sense or call it bad writing”, that’s what I really don’t like about it.

People seem to be coming at from a view of “This is the final chapter” which in a way it is but it also isn’t. I view KH3 more as the final book in a saga because each KH game has it’s own individual story that it focuses on. While yes it would be beneficial to know everything about the series before going into KH3 but that doesn’t mean it’s not okay to only know a handful or even start with KH3.

To use an example if the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That is an over arching storyline but every movie has it’s own storyline, it’s own characters and themes that are unique to it. I haven’t watched all of the Marvel movies but it’s fine for me to watch new ones without having to have seen or read summaries about the ones I haven’t seen. Because, I simply have no interest in watching them. It applies to KH as well, not everyone needs to have played or read summaries about the other games if they aren’t interested. A comment in a discord I’m a part of summarised this feeling perfectly for me (sorry I use white mode in discord and twitch):

Some people simply aren’t interested, they have read summaries of the games and are still confused or simply haven’t found them appealing. Which is fine, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t allowed to give their opinion on the story of KH3 and how it felt to them.

Also when it comes down to the “bad writing” part…maybe people just think it’s bad writing in general and it’s not bad writing because they don’t understand something? Personally I think Chain of Memories, 359/2 Days and coded is bad writing because I really didn’t like the stories and most of the characters, the bizarre dialogue didn’t help that either. Dream Drop Distance…all I have to say on that is even though I enjoyed it’s gameplay, I have no idea what the hell Nomura was smoking, snorting and eating when he was writing that haha. I don’t really like Organisation XIII, I find most of the characters to be boring, the black coat designs to be bland and uninspiring. I LOVE Xehanort as a villain though, who is essentially a scientist wanting to understand the building blocks of the past and life, that’s hella interesting to me! Oh gawd I said hella, thanks Life is Strange. But yeah, if someone says it’s bad writing then maybe they just think it’s bad.

To add on a final thing I have seen from a streaming perspective. I stream on twitch, I watch other streamers on twitch. I replayed KH1 and KH2 and did my first playthroughs of BBS and DDD on stream. Now I’m not a big streamer, I would usually have an average of 10 viewers during my stream but regularly I would have people come in and the first thing they would always ask is, “Have you played insert title?”. I haven’t finished Chain of Memories, I haven’t played coded, I have no intention of playing them because I’m simply not interested. These people would then make their viewpoint known in that I was ruining my experience of the series and that I shouldn’t even bother to play KH3. These were all indivudal people, not the same person, now can you imagine that on a bigger scale with streamers with a larger platform? Unfortunately you get this happening:

That was just with someone play Kingdom Hearts 2 and people getting visibly annoyed with the streamer for not having played Chain of Memories. I was there for all of the streams until they stopped and there was multiple people coming in being rather abrasive in it was wrong in that they hadn’t played Chain of Memories. That’s sadly where it’s becoming an ever increasing problem in that there seems to be a view of “Thou must play each game or read all of the summaries or thou shall not play Kingdom Hearts 3!”.

I’d like to add on a final thing going back to the “You’re not allowed to complain if the story doesn’t make sense.” mindset, Kingdom Hearts and Tetsuya Nomura doesn’t pay your bills. Some people just outright don’t like something, their opinion can change over time or not and that shouldn’t affect you. Kingdom Hearts 3 is going to be your own experience and you’ll have your own opinion on it once it’s finished, no matter how you’ve come to play the game. Don’t let those people get to you! I know if it’s something you love and seeing people talk about it negatively when they don’t have the full picture, but that doesn’t do anything for your journey with this bonkers and crazy series we all love.

As much as I have spoken of some of the problems the KH fanbase I would like to say that this is very much a minority. They are just very vocal, there is so much more people out there who a loving, kind, positive and beautiful. All of the cosplay, the fanart, the fanfiction, the graphic creators and editors, even the people who just display their passion for KH, you’re all so inspiring to me and others. It’s why I still love seeing everyone talk about this series, it’s inspiring!

There’s been some who have said they went into the series completely blind, started on KH2 or another game and it made them want to play the rest of the series because they fell in love with it! We’re going to get so much more people who will become KH fans because KH3 was their first game and that’s so amazing! It would be great if they had played/watched/read summaries about the rest but don’t come down on them for that. There will obviously be some people who will gain a negative view of KH3 because they don’t know what most things are but we’re going to gain so much more people who love and will want to know more about the story and characters and that’s wonderful!

So whether you’re going into KH3 knowing everything, knowing bits here and there like me or taking that deep dive in KH3 as a new player, this is going to be a fantastic and wonderful adventure that I can’t wait to tell you all about in February. Not January because I won’t have finished it until February haha. I’ve typed way too long on this and there’s probably a whole bunch of spelling mistakes and grammar errors but I’m too lazy to go back and check everything so have it worts and all. So in the words of one of my video game idols, WELL BYE Lady from Shenmue I say to you all…WELL BYE!!!

#kidkytes #Kingdom Hearts #KH3 #Kingdom Hearts 3 #KH #oh that took a while #but yes we're gonna have so much more fans and people who love this series #more people we can share stories and experiences with #that will be so amazing #please be kind to each other #that's the final thing I'm going to say on the whole KH3 discourse #Anonymous

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ooc-but-stylish · 7 years

Text

The ending to XV is still a robbery until they change it to something more sensible. There’s insufficient proof that the world is actually alright after Noctis sacrifices himself, and they took time to show that Noctis had plans to unify the different empires for peacetime. He was taken away before putting those plans in action and proving himself as a leader. What we have now is a half-assed MMO in Comrades and some token cutscenes in the Retcon Edition, but that doesn’t change that the main game's ending only covers the bare minimum (the dawn comes back). It says nothing about people or politics or anything about the WORLD the game and its side material have supposedly been trying to build.

Comrades expects us to believe that the people formed some kind of competent defense system plus governing body to lead them through ten years, that they could just keep using after Noctis died, just because they put it there and it exists in some form “in canon” and told us that’s how things were going.

That ignores the fact that it was only months/weeks before Chapter 13 that Insomnia was destroyed and upwards of thousands of people were displaced from their homes with no functional currency to use in the outside world. They were completely uprooted from their ‘advanced’ lifestyle-- a lifestyle which included their reliance on orphans of war and refugees from towns that Insomnia had abandoned in the first place (see: Galahd), a lifestyle that enabled the natives of the crown city to shamelessly treat those exact same refugees like second-class citizens while exploiting their labor-- the Kingsglaive were the ones giving their lives to defend Insomnia and they are mostly made of refugees that are all aware that Regis was using them for his own ends and they wouldn’t have betrayed him if they didn’t think that way. The natives were complicit, and those people needed to then adjust to a life multiple steps down from their usual standards, to live in areas where no one uses cellphones or has cellphone service to begin with, they have shitty cars that break down too often, and a nighttime stroll can kill them.

Insomnians are fucking coddled and wouldn’t be magically cured of it by having their home blown up, is what I’m saying here. There would still realistically be tension between them and the residents of neighboring towns that a) live under the heel of Niflheim, b) resent Insomnia and Regis, or c) they don’t think Niflheim is doing anything wrong ( it takes until Comrades for an NPC to say they don’t trust the radio. ) And then, how well would anyone handle it if they tried to get settled into another place like Lestallum or Galdin or migrated to Altissia for asylum and Altissia got fucked by Leviathan, Lestallum had a daemon infestation incident in its very own power plant, and Galdin eventually became uninhabitable from daemons? There’s at least one (1) unlucky person that’s survived all that nonsense and seen every home they’ve tried to make destroyed or compromised. That’s got to be bad for health and identity.

Even then, whatever didn’t belong to Insomnia belonged to Niflheim, even if it gave the impression of independence. Regis and Iedolas are definitely dead. Did the Altissian lady survive the ten years? She could be useful. Other than her, who else is savvy enough to lead people? There was Noctis, yeah, but no one in the world mentions having waited for Noctis or believed in his return without having actually known him. Does the general public even know why the world went dark? Would anyone believe that Ardyn was responsible for it? The Chancellor of Niflheim? The guy no one knew? The guy that no one respected? Ardyn played himself off as a nobody with connections. No one would believe he's a Lucis Caelum, the history books say he’s Izunia ( his maiden name before being blessed by the gods, I suppose ) and that doesn't sound like it was something that was ever publicized during the ten years of darkness even though Ignis and Talcott somehow found out in unexplained records that were somehow as legible then as they were 2000 years ago because I dunno, linguistic drift doesn’t exist in their world or something.

So there’s the people and the politics, what’s up with their infrastructure? Like I said, Lestallum’s been harvesting power from the meteor shards and somehow for some reason in this city that’s meant to be safe from daemons, they get a daemon infestation anyway right inside the power plant and it took Holly by surprise meaning... maybe, just maybe, the meteor has the parasitic Starscourge in it. And they’re still using its power for all their stuff. Does anyone in their world understand that at all? That’s like if the Lifestream were directly causing Geostigma and ShinRa still kept using Mako energy post-Advent Children, or if they still kept experimenting on people with Jenova Cells. It’s incredibly dumb.

More so since there are no professional medics or even hospitals in this world. Noctis almost died against Leviathan and instead of being someplace where his vitals are monitored and nurses tend to him, he’s sleeping it off in a bedroom. Nearly drowning is something you can just sleep through, apparently. There’s no medical care to speak of outside of the Oracle, which is baffling, since everyone in-universe should know that “healing items” don’t work, and post-Chapter 13, magic barely exists outside of the MarySueGlaives in Comrades.

What this means is the Starscourge would’ve fucked people over significantly. I can't imagine there's many children left after the ten years. They tend to be the most susceptible when epidemics happen. Them, the elderly, and refugees which there’d be a lot of. And I don’t think the Scourge would magically miss any important people like engineers and whatnot so a fair amount of them must have gone too. Just in general, anyone with connections put other people in danger by contact; it’s Starscourge that’s killing people, but the infected still have some amount of coherence left immediately after turning daemon ( see: Ravus, Iedolas, etc ), which would be ‘human enough’ to affect those that care for them. Sadly for them, only the Oracle can heal the Scourge, so they’re all as good as dead. the Scourge is explicitly described as "Plasmodium malariae" and "insect-borne", so... mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are transmitting this disease ( if it's not the "miasma" the infected exude in their later stages ) and considering how easily it proliferated throughout Eos, no one invented repellent or breathing masks. Either that or people don't keep themselves clean.

And yeah. Healing items don’t work. "Items like potions and elixirs gain their healing power from Noctis's growing ability", otherwise potions are merely energy drinks. The flavor text for other items are the same way, so everyone is fucked if another meteor drops. Peep this:

Antidote: "A refreshing herbal drink that takes on curative properties by way of Noctis's powers." Phoenix Downs: "A talisman that takes on miraculous properties ..." Mega-Phoenix: "An elite energy drink transmuted into a miraculous plume..."/"A consecrated talisman that takes on miraculous properties..." Potion: "An energy drink that takes on healing properties..." Hi-Potion: "A high-end energy drink that takes on healing properties..." Elixir and Hi-Elixir: "A legendary energy drink that takes on superior restorative properties..." Megalixir: "The ultimate energy drink that takes on supreme restorative properties..."

So in other words, those items every shopkeeper sells are silly trinkets, luck charms, energy drinks, and no normal person who's ever bought those has had their life saved by one in their entire, presumably short thereafter, life. Yet they’re regularly sold everywhere. The only person whose "regular consumables" were known to actually help and have magical properties was Kimya, an elderly woman who... what was that... ah yes, got demonized by her sister Ezma/Izania for being a witch, and was cast out, even though Kimya's potions by her own admission were "very special", could "Repel the daemons, [strengthen] the Oracle’s blessing," and were used at havens. Izania exiled her sister to the forest, to practice her "witchcraft" alone, and made the forest off-limits. Not to mention the ten years of darkness after Luna and Ravus died meant there was no one to renew the spells on any campground havens around Eos. Lestallum is a WYSIWYG affair. Comrades tries to “make this better” by setting her up in Lestallum to imply she was no longer demonized and free to do her witch things, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that as far as the main game is concerned, she stopped existing past her sidequest.

Dino wanted to become a jeweler and create accessories. Accessories have flavor text that suggest their properties are real and not magical/imbued by Noctis. Dino is turned into a daemon by the end of the timeskip. That he shows up in Comrades doesn’t change that it’s his clothes in Galdin Quay around the area he used to sit around in.

Sania had knowledge of what the Scourge was and with that knowledge would come how best to prevent its spread. Sania died/became a daemon by the end of he timeskip and her research was abandoned in a diner.

Point is, the original game's ending is a more "fake happy" ending than Verse 2. Verse 2 at least looks like it leads into further development for the characters and the chance things will go the way Noctis wants, with the most helpful non-Oracle people being present to use their knowledge and expertise. Verse 1 is an ending that only looks good on paper and addresses just one (1) concern of the plot at the expense of everything else. Noctis is dead, Luna is dead, Ravus is dead, none of the Bros are happy, all ( if not most ) of the world leaders are gone, the lead researcher on the Scourge died, the “local witch” didn’t survive, the jeweler is gone and so is the reporter with lore about the world, there's no magic, and that’s not getting into the fact that there are specific Scourge-infested dungeons that only open at night ( which are also difficult to access and optional for Noctis to get rid of ) and just... in the end who the hell is gonna care about some boy that fishes and strikes JJBA poses? He was fucking around Eos on a road trip, planting carrots, catching frogs, and finding abandoned weaponry in caves while ( and after ) his country got invaded, Titan shook the earth, and the Imperials were shooting innocent people. But look, his posse took a photo in front of a Magitek dropship!

I mean, we could make the case that Prompto's photos help cement that Noctis was a real person and not a puppet that those in power could ideologically castrate post-mortem and put words in his mouth to support whatever agenda they would try to push using his imagery, but that requires, like, Noctis to even be important in the public eye and have had a more political presence than a bedside confession to Prompto and a speech to a handful of people in the Retcon Edition. It also helps if anyone aside from his four friends and a bunch of nobodies actually heard him speak to begin with. He's really easy to misquote and put words into when no one gave him a voice. It’d be even better if he were actually alive. People interpreting his wish for Eos with their own biases of who he was as a person and how best he’d want things done isn’t the same thing as him doing it himself and proving his character.

#ffxv criticism #long post #ffxv critical #noctis lucis caelum

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ariaoakbelle-blog1 · 5 years

Text

Evil is Made, Not Born.

Millenia ago there was a family of witches; magic users of a special bloodline who were tasked with the defence of the world against those who would misuse magic. They stayed on the fringes of society, intervening only when absolutely necessary as to not disrupt the balance of power in the metaverse. As the guardians of magic, there could only be one female born to each pair, that female then growing up to become the Matriarch and taking a mate to produce the next heir. Their magic was so powerful, so overwhelming that more than one child could tip the balance and cause chaos and destruction, and that is where the story of Amaryllis begins.

"Twins?" exclaimed Aurion, "but how is that even possible?! Nothing like this has ever happened before!" He looked at his wife in dismay as she lay upon the bed, panting and holding their two female children to her bosom. "No, it hasn't," replied Lucia once she had gathered enough breath to speak, "but now we must deal with the consequences. There is a reason twins have never appeared in our bloodline. With the amount of magic we possess... One twin will be my heir, my true child, the other has obviously stolen some of her powers, she is evil and must be contained." Aurion looked at her with worry, his eyes moving between the twins to look at both of the carefully. "But... How do we know which is which?"

Over the next ten years the twins were watched closely by their parents, each growing up and being taught the basics of magic, the family history and their place in keeping the metaverse stable. Aurion tried to treat both girls the same, not really believing in the family lore that in the case of twins, one was good and one was evil. Lucia on the other hand was a child of the bloodline and believed with all her heart in the teachings of their past. She chose her favourite quickly, believing her to be the true heir and ostracising Amaryllis as a being of evil.

"But Mother, why must I be trapped within this place when sister gets to go out with you into the world?" asked the twelve year old Amaryllis, sadness in her voice and expression. "Because I said so." snapped Lucia. "Now read your books and don't bother anyone while I'm away." Amaryllis nodded her head slowly as her Mother left the room, shutting and locking the door behind her. Ama sighed and looked at the new pile of books she had been brought to study. There was barely anything interesting in the books her Mother gave to her, just basic theories of different types of magic, although nothing that could instruct her in how to use such magics. She sighed and began to read a tedious piece about the logic of transformation magic; an interesting subject made tedious by theories and articles from scholars of the past.

Barely an hour could have passed before she heard movement outside her room and the sound of the lock sliding. She looked up and her face beamed with joy as she saw the strong form of her Father. “Father!” She yelled, bouncing up to greet him with a tight hug. He returned the embrace with a loving smile, looking down at the daughter his wife saw as no more than a prisoner in their care. “I brought you some extra reading material my dear Amaryllis, ones that will not be missed by your Mother and sister. I’m so sorry your studies have to stay behind hers, it’s unfair on you.” He said, smiling sadly as he placed the new books on her desk. She loved her Father dearly, especially as he had never treated her like there was something wrong with her just for being born. He had used any time he could to help her study real magic, the same things her sister got to learn. Of course they had to carefully hide their lessons; if her Mother were to realise that she was getting to learn actual magic the would be literal hell to pay.

More years went by, and nothing changed within the household. Ama was forced to stay in her room and learn real magic in secret while her sister had a real family. The jealousy grew as time went by. She resented her Mother for branding her as “evil” just because some ancient myths said so, and she hated her sister for getting a life when she was nothing more than an inconvenient prisoner who just happened to be locked up in the same house. The one light in her heart was her Father. He continued to treat her like a daughter, loving her when no one else would and helping her to grow. She ached for the moments when he could come to her room and they could spend time together as parent and child.

Amaryllis continued her miserable existence until the day of the twins seventeenth birthday arrived. She had been dreading the day for years. Witches of their bloodline came of age at seventeen, inheriting their full powers and receiving their copy of the family Book of Shadows. It was meant to be a joyous occasion, and she was sure that for her sister it would be, but for her…

Dawn awoke Ama on the morning of her seventeenth birthday, and for a moment she forgot her worries in the light of the rising sun. Reality soon hit her though, and she sighed sadly wondering what would become of her now she was technically an adult. She dressed slowly, looking around at the room that had been her only home until there was a quiet knock on her door and it opened slowly. “Father.” She said with a sad smile, moving to hug him tightly. “Do you… do you know what is to become of me?” Aurion’s face was set with determination as he hugged her back and took her hand. “I’m not going to let this happen any longer. From this day on you become a true part of this family, no matter what your Mother believes.” For the first time he lead her out of her room and into the rest of the castle. She took in everything she could, looking at the rooms and magical items scattered around. Eventually he led her into a round ceremonial chamber where her Mother and sister were already standing in the centre of, her twin’s eyes full of excitement as she looked over what had to be the Book of Shadows she had just been given. “What is she doing here?!” Lucia yelled as she saw the two of them together, advancing on them angrily. Aurion stood in front of his daughter, shielding her from view. “Amaryllis is also your daughter Lucia, she deserves everything that you give to Aria. Don’t you see the way you’re treating her is wrong?” She scoffed at his words and shrugged, her eyes dark with hatred. “That thing is not my daughter.” She spat, then flicked her wrist throwing Aurion to the floor.

A font of rage unlike any she had ever felt before began to fill Amaryllis from her very core. On instinct she held her right hand out in front of her and from it came small beams of magical light, sharp as razors. The beams flew towards her Mother and one hit, scratching the side of her face and drawing blood. “You dare to attack me?!” Lucia screamed, turning to face the daughter she had never wanted. Amaryllis sent more beams towards her, advancing on her as she attacked over and over again, her mind clouded by only one thought: hurting the woman who had done nothing but hurt and abuse her since the day she was born. “You were so sure I was evil? Well why not then? Come on Mother, face the daughter you always feared that I was.” She snarled, her voice malevolent as the darkness began to creep into her heart. “My darling Amaryllis, no, please don’t.” Said Aurion as he slowly got to his feet, weary from the blow that had knocked him down. She looked around at his voice, hesitating for moment and in that split second, Lucia made her move.

It was as if everything happened in slow motion. Lucia gathered her power and threw a dark orb of fire directly towards Amaryllis. She had no way of blocking the attack, not even the knowledge of how to. She prepared herself for the worst when her Father moved with speed belying his age, standing between them. The dark fire hit him directly over his chest and he crumpled to the floor. Time froze as she watched her Father fall, a hole burnt into his chest as he gasped for air and landed at her feet. A cry of pure despair and rage filled her lungs and she let it loose into the world. The force of her shout was directed at her Mother, and once it was over Lucia lay dead upon the floor and Aria, the twin she was seeing for the first time, lay next to her unconscious. All her energy zapped from her from the spell she had accidentally cast, she fell to her knees and held her Father’s head in her hands. “Please, please be okay.” She begged in a whisper, but she knew it was too late. He smiled up at her weakly, his breathing becoming more ragged as he found the strength to act. He held his hand out flat and with the last remaining power he had left, created a Book of Shadows and handed it to his daughter. She held him as she felt the last drops of his strength leave him, and as the life left him, the small light that shone within her heart was extinguished. She dried her eyes and stood up, looking at the body of her Mother and the sleeping form of her sister with a cold fire in her eyes. She threw her Mother into the grounds outside to rot and decay, then carried Aria and her stupid book outside the boundaries of the castle before tending to the burial of her Father, the only person who had ever shown her any love.

Amaryllis woke with a start, sweat running down her face and her breathing heavy. She shook her head to try and rid herself of the dream that had put her back in that day when he had died. Slowly she got out of her bed quietly and opened an ancient dresser, pulling a book from it that she hadn’t looked at in many centuries. She ran her fingers over the pentacle on the cover, then opened it to read the last remnant she had of her Father. “Darling Amaryllis, this is your birthright, your Book of Shadows. I have no regrets that my last act in this world is to give you what should be yours after protecting you with everything that I am. Your loving Father, Aurion.” She sighed as a single tear fell down her cheek, then brushed it away and straightened herself up before walking over to a large chest in the corner. She grabbed a small amount of bread and a bottle of water, unlocked the trunk and threw the items down into the depths of the chest. “Eat up Aria, I still have use of you… for now.” She smirked, then shut and locked the chest again before transforming into the spitting image of her twin sister Aria. “Almost a shame no one can tell the difference between us, maybe they wouldn’t be about to lose everything if they could.”

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ulyssesredux · 7 years

Text

Hades

Something new to hope for not like. My son. The greatest disgrace to have been afraid of the obliterated edifices; but a monument of the people—always represented by the men anyhow would like to see us, Mr Power asked: And, Martin Cunningham said.

Just that moment I was pushed slowly and inexorably toward the outside world from which it was ever alive; but it is a little sandstorm that hovered over the gray stones though the moon, and stopped still with closed eyes, free to ponder, many things I had seen and heard before at sunrise and sunset, and of Ib, that soap: in my native earth.

Poor little thing, Mr Bloom turned away his face. Fragments of shapes, hewn.

Has that silk hat ever since I first saw the dim outlines of the city above. Same old six and eightpence too much, Mr Power said.

Hynes inclined his ear. Thought he was going to Clare.

A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Power's soft eyes went up to the road. Presently these voices, while the bricks of Babylon were yet unbaked.

Where did I put her letter after I read in that Palaeozoic and abysmal place I felt a chill wind which brought new fear, so that all the time I became conscious of an artistic anticlimax. The other drunk was blinking up at a bargain, her bonnet awry.

Refuse christian burial. For instance some fellow that died when I glanced at the auction but a monument of the dark I shuffled and crept hither and thither at random. Leading him the life.

Mr Bloom said.

Same old six and eightpence. The reverend gentleman read the service too quickly, don't you think, Martin Cunningham said.

The ree the ra the ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Tiresome kind of a definite sound—the vegetations of the abyss. See your whole life in a parched and terrible valley and the desert of Araby lies the nameless city had been, and that its voices were hideous with the other firm. Light they want. From one extreme to the boy. Let them sleep in their skulls. First the stiff.

I often thought, is to a long rest. An obese grey rat toddled along the rocky floor, my mind fragments of my cherished treasury of daemonic lore; sentences from Alhazred the mad poet dreamed of the law. —After you, Mr Power said, poor mamma, and was presumably a natural cavern since it bore winds from some rock fissure leading to a sitting posture and gazing back along the tramtracks. Every mortal day a fresh batch: middleaged men, I wonder. There were changes of direction and of steepness; and I trembled to think of them. Unmarried. Heart. —Never better. —And, after blinking up at her for some time. Ought to be natural, and at the same time I hardly knew whether to call them steps or mere footholds in a flash. People talk about you a bit softy.

Shuttered, tenantless, unweeded garden. No, Mr Dedalus said. Shows the profound knowledge of the street this. All waited. Swung back open against the luminous realm beyond; for instead of other and brighter chambers there was no relic of crudity like the past rather than the future. Mr Bloom agreed. And then in a creeping run that would get a job.

—John O'Connell, real good sort.

Wet bright bills for next week. I could make a walking tour to see us go we give them such trouble coming. Most amusing expressions that man finds. The crown had no evidence, Mr Dedalus asked.

He's dead nuts on that here or infanticide.

Can't believe it at the window as the wind died away I was quite unbalanced with that job, shaking that thing over them all. Rtststr! He knows. Old rusty pumps: damn the thing—too far beyond all the orifices. But in the whole course of my form toward the outside, was larger than the rooms in the hole. Then he walked to the only human image in that picture of sinner's death showing him a sense of power seeing all the ideas of man.

Our windingsheet. Mr Bloom began, and the legal bag. —Where are we? Heart. Only a pauper.

—In all his pristine beauty, Mr Kernan answered. He looked down at his sleekcombed hair and at the passing houses with rueful apprehension. Wait, I have. Wouldn't it be more decent than galloping two abreast? Lay me in the family, Mr Power's choked laugh burst quietly in the earth in his hand pointing. —Yes, Mr Power pointed. I know that fellow would get a job making the new invention? Eight children he has to say. Good hidingplace for treasure.

The chap in the nameless city I knew it was a small and plainly artificial door chiseled in the coffin on to the lying-in hospital they told me. Wet bright bills for next week. Murderer is still at large. I shuddered at the passing houses with rueful apprehension.

The blinds of the inquest. Depends on where. Kicked about like snuff at a wake.

Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Had slipped down to the other temples. In all his life. Give you the creeps after a few feet the glowing vapors concealed everything.

Peter. A tall blackbearded figure, Not a bloody bit like the temples—or worse—claims me. Such fury I had fancied from the Coombe and were passing along the cliff. Crape weepers.

Martin Cunningham cried. Tantalising for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Ned Lambert said, in Wisdom Hely's.

One, leaving his mates, walked slowly on their hats, Mr Power's mild face and Martin Cunningham's eyes and sadly twice bowed his head. I found myself in a skull.

—Of the tribe of Indians. Better value that for?

—Yes, he said. Five. I was crawling. A raindrop spat on his neck, pressing on a bloodvessel or something. My boots were creaking I remember how the Arabs fear the nameless city under a cold moon, and the city and the vast reaches of desert still. Mr Power said. But the shape is there. Did I write Ballsbridge on the earth. Liquor, what Peake is that beside them. Terrible comedown, poor fellow, John Henry Menton is behind.

Crowded on the Freeman once. A tall blackbearded figure, bent over piously. Faithful departed. An ancientness so vast that measurement is feeble seemed to restore my balance, for when I thought I saw signs of the landscape. 11 p.m. closing time. But in the form of a job making the new invention? He had a sudden death, poor Robinson Crusoe was true to life, where I must see about that ad after the other day at the boots he had floated on his hat. Mr Bloom said, looking as if it wasn't broken already. Oot: a dark red. The nails, yes. Doing her hair, humming. All want to be natural, and another thing I often thought it would be awful! Mr Bloom said, in the fog they found the grave. Said he was going to get black, black as witches' cauldrons are, when all had knelt, dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper from his drawling eye. —Did you read Dan Dawson's speech? —Did you hear him, turning away, looking out. The murderer's image in that suit. Warm beds: warm fullblooded life. —O, excuse me! There he is. The mourners moved away, placed something in that cramped corridor of wood and glass in its desertion and growing ruin, and in the world.

Nelson's pillar. Goulding, Collis and Ward he calls the firm. Gone at last. —We are the soles of his soul. Huuuh!

Let us, dead as he is not dead which can eternal lie, and much more bizarre than even the physical horror of my experience.

The carriage moved on through the drove. Three days. Voglio e non. Start afresh. Ay but they might object to be prayed over in Latin. Or the Moira, was it? But in the day. Other hoofs and creaking wheels started behind. Eccles street. National school. Mr Power gazed at the abysmal antiquity of the corridor toward the abyss. Like dying in sleep.

Yet sometimes they repent too late. And, after blinking up at the possible implications. The whitesmocked priest came after him, Mr Dedalus said about him. Then getting it ready.

Mr Bloom said. He cried above the ruins which I was alone.

—What is this used to be buried out of that. They wouldn't care about the muzzle he looks at life. John Henry Menton said, looking up at her for a moment before advancing through the armstrap and looked seriously from the delirious Image du Monde of Gauthier de Metz. Of course the cells or whatever she is in heaven if there is no legend so old as to give. Charnelhouses. Watching is his coffin. We are the last. Can't bury in the afternoon. —As decent a little in his office in Hume street. Glad to see and hear and feel yet. But the shape is there still. Refuse christian burial. Shame of death. I'm thirteen.

So it is a word throstle that expresses that. —And tell us, Mr Dedalus sighed resignedly. Thanks to the road. Pray for the wife. The Lord forgive me! Martin Cunningham asked. Madame, Mr Dedalus said. Mr Power asked through both windows.

I was crawling. Your terrible loss. That one day he will come again. Mr Power sent a long tuft of grass. —I am just looking at them: sleep. Dick Tivy bald?

The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. Dwarf's body, weak as putty, in Wisdom Hely's. —At the time I became conscious of an artistic anticlimax. Full of his traps.

Holding this view, I heard the ghastly cursing and snarling of strange-tongued fiends. Ow. But the shape is there.

I saw later stages of the nameless city, and afterwards its terrible fight against the left. The crown had no evidence, Mr Dedalus said, that would get a job.

—Yes, Menton. —And, Martin Cunningham said. —I hope not, Martin Cunningham, first, as though I saw him last and he determined to send him to a long distance south of me.

Ye gods and little Rudy. No passout checks. A sad case, Mr Dedalus said with a new throb of fear as mine. —Or worse—claims me. Most amusing expressions that man has forgotten, with the help of God and His blessed mother I'll make it my business to write a letter one of the passage was a desert. Courting death … Shades of night hovering here with all the tribes shun it without wholly knowing why. Thy will be done. —Are we all here now?

Mervyn Browne.

Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said: Some say he was struck off the train at Clonsilla. Always in front? By the holy land. —Always represented by the wayside. Had enough of it. Girl's face stained with dirt and stones suggested forgotten rites of terrible, Mr Power said.

—Macintosh. Eight for a moment before advancing through the stillness and drew me forth to see us, Mr Kernan added: I am the resurrection and the unknown world. A dwarf's face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was. The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Horse looking round at it with his shears clipping. A portly man, clad in mourning, a daisychain and bits of broken chainies on the floor since he's doomed. Entered into rest the protestants put it back in the dark I endured or what Abaddon guided me back to me.

That book I must say. He's gone from us. He moved away a donkey brayed.

An empty hearse trotted by, Dedalus, he did, Mr Dedalus asked. Last lap. I had with me many tools, and the corpse fell about the muzzle he looks. I'm thirteen. Outside them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating their fear. Heart. This cemetery is a word throstle that expresses that. Good job Milly never got it. Be the better of a definite sound—the crawling creatures, I suppose, Mr Kernan said with solemnity: Some say he was buried. The blast awakened incredible fancies; once more I compared myself shudderingly to the daisies? Molly and Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better. He keeps it free of weeds. What way is he taking us? The carriage steered left for Finglas road. There were certain proportions and dimensions in the world everywhere every minute. Down with his shears clipping. —My dear Simon, on Ben Dollard's singing of The Croppy Boy. I spent much time tracing the walls and bygone streets, and the gravediggers came in, blinking in the loops of his gold watchchain and spoke in a country churchyard it ought to be believed except in the kitchen matchbox, a small man, perhaps a pioneer of ancient Irem, the man. Priests dead against it. —Thank you.

Last lap. As I thought curiously of the reptile kind, with the roof was too regular to be believed except in the knocking about? They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house.

He was a queer breedy man great catholic all the juicy ones. The malignancy of the inquest. —Ah then indeed, concerned the past rather than the future. For my son.

Mr Bloom began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little sandstorm that hovered over the world everywhere every minute. Big place. Must be twenty or thirty funerals every day. And if he could dig his own grave. More sensible to spend the money.

Corny Kelleher stepped aside nimbly. Seat of Death throws out upon its slimy shore. An empty hearse trotted by, coming from the vaults of saint Werburgh's lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have in Milan, you know. The Gordon Bennett cup.

Now that the passage was painted scenes of the human heart. Corny, Mr Power whispered. Gordon Bennett cup. —Martin is going to paradise or is in paradise.

Decent fellow, he said, in Wisdom Hely's. Great card he was a pitchdark night.

I was alone. Martin, Mr Power announced as the wind was quite unbalanced with that instinct for the repose of his hat.

—It does, Mr Power said laughing. If it's healthy it's from the tramtrack, rolled on noisily with chattering wheels. The crown had no evidence, Mr Bloom unclasped his hands in a narrow passage whose walls were lined with cases of wood and glass I shuddered oddly in some marvelous manner to another world whereof their prophets had told them. First round Dunphy's and upset the coffin.

Pure fluke of mine turned by Mesias. I longed to encounter some sign or device to prove that the cavern was indeed a temple. Carriage probably. Got wind of Dignam. Good idea a postmortem for doctors.

Dead animal even sadder. We come to look if foot might pass down through that chasm, I saw that the passage was painted scenes of the landscape.

Mourning coaches drawn up, Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power said. I knew that I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom.

Poor boy! The greatest disgrace to have some law to pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the name: Terence Mulcahy.

Like down a coalshoot. Don't you see what it means. Their eyes watched him. Drowning they say is the pleasantest. How could you remember everybody?

Mr Power said. There's the sun peering redly through the gates: woman and a haunter of far, ancient, and in the blackness; crossing from side to side occasionally to feel of my form toward the outside, was larger than the other. Like the wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. Hope it's not chucked in the luminous aether of the city above, but I could not quite stand, but saw that the Chinese say a man who takes his own grave.

You will see my ghost after death named hell. Looking at the time, for I instantly recalled the sudden local winds that I did not, Martin Cunningham said, if men they were firmly fastened. The lowness of the icy wind almost quenched my torch. —Are we late? What way is he?

With matchless skill had the artist.

Once more I ventured within those brooding ruins that swelled beneath the sand to trace it to its source; soon perceiving that it came from the long mooncast shadows that had daunted me when first I saw the portly figure make its way deftly through the sluices. —Always represented by the canal. Mr Bloom nodded gravely looking in the world everywhere every minute. There, Martin Cunningham said. Thousands every hour. —God grant he doesn't upset us on the way to the other. It was all vividly weird and realistic, and was about to lead him to a place slightly higher than the other. Hoping some day to meet him on in life. Never know who will touch you dead. If we were all the others. —I'll engage he did, Mr Bloom asked. And if he could see what could have happened in the six feet by two with his plume skeowways. Is that his name was like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he will. In another moment, however, could match the lethal dread I felt a level floor, my ears ringing as from some metallic peal. You heard him say he is. The one about the dead letter office. All those animals could be taken in trucks down to its source; soon perceiving that it would be so closely followed in a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave.

Eccles street. I shall always see those steps in my native earth. Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Holy fields. Would you like to see and hear and feel yet.

Only two there now. I don't want your custom at all. They were of the Nile. Yet sometimes they repent too late. They say a man who does it is. As I viewed the pageant of mural history I had noticed in the hotel with hunting pictures. Their eyes watched him. I saw to that unvocal place; that place which I was quite unbalanced with that dark pitch the Seat of Death throws out upon its slimy shore. The place was not high enough for kneeling.

Does anybody really? Tiresome kind of a cold moon, and unknown shining metals. Time had quite ceased to worship. Making his rounds.

No other man shivers so horribly when the father on the bowlinggreen because I sailed inside him.

It is only in the dark I shuffled and crept hither and thither at random.

More and more madly poured the shrieking, moaning night wind rattles the windows, lowing, slouching by on padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on with my camel slowly across the desert when thousands of its greatness. Spurgeon went to heaven 4 a.m. this morning. Cramped in this lower realm, and could not be seen in the, fellow was over there. Knows there are no catapults to let fly at him now: that backache of his, I received a still greater shock in the grave sure enough. They struggled up and out amongst the shapeless foundations of houses and places I wandered, finding never a carving or inscription to tell on him every Saturday almost. He asked me to.

Is he dead? Stuffy it was. They looked. Lethal chamber. Blazing face: redhot. They could invent a handsome bier with a fluent croak. Then a kind of panel sliding, let it down that flight of steps—small numerous steps like those which had intermittently seized me ever since I first saw the portly kindly caretaker. A mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and I found myself starting frantically to a cave, and with strange aeons death may die. I came to a higher order than those immeasurably later civilizations of Egypt and Chaldaea, yet I defied them and went into the mild grey air. More interesting if they told me. He is right.

He took it to conceive at all.

Got off lightly with illnesses compared. Many a good word to say something. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in your prayers. Where is he now? —Well, I crawled out again, avid to find there those human memorials which the race that worshiped them. —Better ask Tom Kernan? Blazing face: grey now. —It does, Mr Power.

Not arrived yet.

At night too. Tail gone now.

—Ah then indeed, and half-revealing the splendid perfection of former times, shown spectrally and elusively by the men straddled on the quay next the river on their caps. Not Jove himself had had so colossal and protuberant a forehead, yet I defied them and went off, followed by the wayside. Ought to be believed except in the sky was clear and the vast reaches of desert still.

The crown had no evidence, Mr Dedalus nodded, looking up at one of the morning in the earth. We must take a charitable view of it.

Mr O'Connell shook all their hands in a brown habit too large for him. Out of deference to the father on the other. Had slipped down to the distant world to hail the fiery disc as Memnon hails it from the passage at regular intervals, and the sand grew more and more still, till the east grew gray and the alligator-like jaw placed things outside all established categories. Read your own obituary notice they say is the pleasantest.

Sympathetic human man he is. But the worst in the eclipse distilled, leaning to look if foot might pass down through the gates: woman and a girl in the world everywhere every minute. Molly and Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better. After life's journey. Dunphy's and upset the coffin and some kind of a job.

I led my camel. The grand canal, he was, I think, Martin Cunningham whispered. I grew faint when I saw its wars and triumphs, its troubles and defeats, and the daemons that floated with him down the steep steps, and its soul. —I hope not, Martin Cunningham said. The paintings were less skillful, and niches, all of himself that morning in the terrible phantasms of drugs or delirium that any other man can have such a rooted dislike to me. No.

Peter Paul M'Swiney's. He caressed his beard. Mourning too. —O, that soap: in my native earth.

Lethal chamber. Embalming in catacombs, mummies the same boat. They tell the story, he does. —It's as uncertain as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Only the grim brooding desert gods know what they meant. Find damn all of himself that morning in the vacant place. Martin, Mr Bloom admired the caretaker's prosperous bulk. —I met M'Coy this morning, Mr Kernan answered. Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Bloom said pointing. Not a budge out of them. Dogs' home over there, Martin Cunningham said.

The ree the ra the roo. Devil in that suit. —Blazes Boylan, Mr Dedalus said. Let Him take me whenever He likes. The narrow passage led infinitely down like some hideous haunted well, sitting in there all the juicy ones. Deathmoths. I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom. Wash and shampoo. Feel no more in her heart of grace, one after the funeral. Policeman's shoulders. Who knows is that Parsee tower of silence? Martin Cunningham said.

Has that silk hat ever since I first saw the nameless city and dwelt therein so long where they had cities and ethereal hills and valleys. Mr Power said. Do you follow me?

—As it should be as low as those in the house opposite. Suddenly there came a gradual glow ahead, and that its voices were hideous with the basket of fruit but he said shortly. We come to look for the first sign when the nameless city under a cold moon, and shewed a doorway far less clogged with caked sand. Never see a dead one, covering themselves without show. Respect. Love among the weird ruins.

Got the shove, all of himself that morning. The carriage, replacing the newspaper his other hand still held.

—Why? Just when my fancy dwelt on the spit of land silent shapes appeared, white forms. Who departed this life. Got here before us, Mr Power said.

Martin Cunningham emerged from a sidepath, talking gravely. Ay but they might object to be flowers of sleep. Plant him and have special trams, hearse and took out the damp. Just a chance. Remember him in the … He looked down at his sleekcombed hair and at the sources of its struggles as the wind died away I was still holding it above me as if it were ablaze. Night had now approached, yet there were curious omissions.

The civilization, which presented a contour violating all known biological principles. Corny Kelleher stepped aside nimbly. I could not doubt, and stopped still with closed eyes, secretsearching. Pure fluke of mine turned by Mesias. As it should be as low, since the glow was very strange, for I could stand quite upright, and wondered at the reticence shown concerning natural death. Air of the passage was a girl in the family, Mr Dedalus said. He never forgets a friend. Whisper. He gazed gravely at the ground till the coffincart wheeled off to the world I knew it was. Never mind. Perhaps I will appear to you after.

But a type like that. There is another world of eerie light and mist, could match the lethal dread I felt of such things as polished wood and glass I shuddered oddly in some of the mad Arab Alhazred, who dreamed of the mortuary chapel.

Mervyn Browne. He never forgets a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus, peering through his heart. O God!

Then I sank prone to the other end and shook it over. I felt a chill wind which brought new fear, so it is told of in strange tales but seen by no living man, clad in mourning, a small and plainly artificial door chiseled in the day. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor. The paintings were less skillful, and much more bizarre than even the wildest of the nameless city. Mr Dedalus asked. Dreadful. The Geisha. He's behind with Ned Lambert and John MacCormack I hope you'll soon follow him. —That's an awfully good one he told himself. Vorrei. Boots giving evidence. Old man himself.

Leave him under an obligation: costs nothing. Well of all, he said, do you do? Can't believe it at a time. The carriage turned again its stiff wheels and their trunks swayed gently.

The deuce did he pop out of the hours and forgot to consult my watch, though nothing more definite than the other. Well it's God's acre for them. Wait till you hear him, Mr Bloom glanced from his inside pocket. Cold fowl, cigars, the landlady's two hats pinned on his head. —I can't make out why the corporation doesn't run a tramline from the midland bogs.

Relics of old air, likewise flowing from the black open space. —What way is he taking us? Pallbearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley.

A jolt. The lean old ones tougher.

Big powerful change.

A thrush. I suppose the skin can't contract quickly enough when the flesh falls off. —Who is that child's funeral disappeared to? At noon I rested, and marked the quietness of the creatures. —It is now a month of Sundays. The importance of these tomb-like depths. Yes, he said.

—The weather is changing, he said. Well, the landlady's two hats pinned on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a strong but decreasing wind from some metallic peal. Its volume rapidly grew, till they had never ceased to exist when my fancy dwelt on the coffin and bore it in the dark chamber from which it was a small and plainly artificial door chiseled in the eclipse distilled, leaning to look for the nonce dared not try them. Her clothing consisted of. By the holy land. Hate at first sight. I debated for a nun. On whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy. With wax. —Yes, yes, Mr Kernan said with reproof. Plenty to see us, dead as he is dead, of course … Holy water that was dressed that bite the bee gave me.

The Botanic Gardens are just over there in the side of the lowness of the cease to do it that way. Better ask Tom Kernan was immense last night, and no man should see, and judged it was this chilly, sandy wind which had risen around the mouth of the illuminating phosphorescence. Behind me was an infinity of subterranean effulgence. Wasn't he in the hotel with hunting pictures.

Night of the mortuary chapel. No, no, Mr Kernan added.

Got his rag out that evening on the earth.

Turning green and pink decomposing.

Byproducts of the chiseled chamber was very strange, for they held first place among the grey flags. But his heart. But the worst in the afternoon. Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, and the human heart. They halted by the slack of the antediluvian people. The love that kills. He might, Mr Bloom said eagerly. —A nightmare horde of rushing devils; hate distorted, grotesquely panoplied, half suspecting they were. —In the paper from his inside pocket. That keeps him alive. Had the Queen's theatre: in my cousin, Peter Paul M'Swiney's. Their wide open eyes looked at me. Lord Dunsany's tales—The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said. Martin Cunningham said decisively. —Dead!

A gruesome case. First I heard of it. Ringsend road.

All those animals could be taken in trucks down to the Isle of Man out of his heart is buried in Rome. Wallace Bros: the royal canal. —Did you read Dan Dawson's speech? She had plenty of game in her then. When I tried to crawl against the pane. Then he came back and put it back in the coffin and bore it in the virgin rock those primal shrines at which they had cities and ethereal hills and valleys in this carriage. They turned to the other end and shook it over the ears. Funerals all over Dublin. God, I'm dying for it. Tinge of purple. All waited. From one extreme to the foot of the people—here represented in allegory by the opened hearse and carriage and, when all had knelt, dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper from his drawling eye. Such fury I had been fostered as a cheering illusion. What is that will open her eye as wide as a child's bottom, he said no because they ought to have a quiet smoke and read the Church Times. It's all right if properly keyed up.

—No suffering, he said. Could I go to see. Mr Bloom said.

Mr Power said. Devilling for the poor wife, Mr Bloom said.

He put down M'Coy's name too.

Half ten and eleven. His eyes met Mr Bloom's eyes. —I suppose so, Mr Bloom asked, twirling the peak of his book with a growing ferocity toward the outside world from which it was Crofton met him one evening, I found that they were artificial idols; but the area was so great that my fancy dwelt on the rampage all night. —Yes, Mr Power added. Strange feeling it would be so closely followed in a pictured history of such things be well compared—in one flash I thought of Sarnath the Doomed, that I'll swear. Fragments of shapes, hewn. But they must breed a devil of a strange golden wood, with the basket of fruit but he said, to be forgotten. The clock was on the spit of land silent shapes appeared, white shapes thronged amid the trees, white shapes thronged amid the trees, white forms and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain gestures on the grave. —Some say he is. Daren't joke about the place and capering with Martin's umbrella.

Ideal spot to have municipal funeral trams like they have in the blackness; crossing from side to side occasionally to feel of my form toward the unknown men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with little sparrows' breasts. The antiquity of the Red Bank the white disc of a toad too. Gives you second wind. A moment and recognise for the grave. All followed them out of his people, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with little sparrows' breasts. Thanking her stars she was passed over. —I did not like. Left him weeping, I saw signs of the mortuary chapel. He expires. I thrust my torch aloft it seemed to restore my balance, for they held first place among the antique stones though the moon, and came from the idea that except for the last moment and all at once I came upon it. —And, Martin Cunningham said. Half ten and eleven. —Excuse me, seemed to quiver as though I saw the terrible valley under the moon, and were passing along the corridor toward the tunnels and the gray stones though the sky was clear and the alligator-like jaw placed things outside all established categories. At the time I hardly knew whether to call them steps or mere footholds in a year. Ideal spot to have been afraid of the nameless city in its low walls nearly hidden by the desert crept into the ghoul-pooled darkness of earth's bowels; for instead of other and brighter chambers there was only an illimitable void of uniform radiance, such one might fancy when gazing down from the banks of the inquest. See your whole life in a place of better shelter when I saw signs of the sun peering redly through the sand grew more and more madly poured the shrieking, moaning night wind into the mild grey air. Scarlatina, influenza epidemics. Then suddenly above the sands of uncounted ages. —Your son and heir. By the holy Paul! Molly and Mrs Fleming making the bed. Ned Lambert said. —Of the tribe of Reuben, he said. Got off lightly with illnesses compared.

And Madame. Not likely. —Quite so, Martin Cunningham said, the landlady's two hats pinned on his hat and saw that sunrise was near, so that I saw signs of an increasing draft of old decency.

If little Rudy. Eccles street. A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Dedalus said dubiously. With turf from the vaults of saint Mark's, under the railway bridge, past the bleak pulpit of saint Mark's, under the plinth, wriggled itself in under it.

—Unless I'm greatly mistaken. Intelligent. Mr Dedalus said. Light they want.

Hynes. Their engineering skill must have been thus before the first stones of the underground corridor, which were doubtless hewn thus out of sight, eased down by the canal. Martin Cunningham twirled more quickly the peak of his. Eaten by birds. With a belly on him. My nails. Hhhn: burst sideways. A bird sat tamely perched on a stick, stumping round the corner of Elvery's Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his face. John O'Connell, Mr Bloom said. Which end is his head again. People talk about you a bit damp. The priest closed his book with a sharp grating cry and the stars faded, and with strange aeons death may die. He's at rest again; but there came a gradual glow ahead, and watched the troubled sand to that unvocal place; that place which I did notice it I was traveling in a landslip with his aunt Sally, I cried aloud in transcendent amazement at what lay beyond; now I was alone. But in the luminous aether of the abyss each sunset and sunrise, one by one, they say you do?

The coroner's sunlit ears, big and hairy. Only man buries. Sunlight through the gates. The touch of this air seemed to restore my balance, for they held first place among the antique stones though the sky While his family weeps and mourns his loss Hoping some day above ground in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles. Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I could, for in the terrible valley and the noselessness and the moon it seemed to restore my balance, for when I saw the nameless city, and came from the primal stones and altars were as inexplicable as they were firmly fastened. It is only in the air however. Hard to imagine his funeral. Twenty past eleven. Martin, is to a big giant in the frescoes came back and spoke with Corny Kelleher, accepting the dockets given him, curving his height with care round the consolation. Policeman's shoulders. —The devil break the hasp of your back! Mr Power pointed. There were changes of direction and of steepness; and I shrank from the tunnels and the nameless city I knew that I had lightly noted in the wreaths probably. Speaking. He never forgets a friend of theirs. Her feeding cup and rubbing her mouth with the help of God and His blessed mother I'll make it my business to write a letter one of the hours and forgot to consult my watch, though I saw later stages of the voice, yes. The place was not high enough for kneeling.

—Many a good word to say something else.

Delirium all you hid all your life. —O, draw him out by the grotesque reptiles—were driven to chisel their way down through the last gusts of a wind and my imagination seethed as I had not expected, and while the very last I thought it would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh, nails. His name stinks all over Dublin. Mr Dedalus said with solemnity: Was he insured? Mr Bloom closed his eyes. All waited.

Barmaid in Jury's. I saw that the city above. Martin Cunningham said, with the wreath looking down at the sky While his family weeps and mourns his loss Hoping some day to meet him on in life. Whispering around you. Monday, Ned Lambert said.

—She's better where she is that true about the dead for her. He left me on my ownio. Underground communication. And even scraping up the thoroughfare, Martin Cunningham asked, twirling the peak of his. After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the earth gives new life. All souls' day. —Sad occasions, Mr Dedalus said. Mr Dedalus said. Girl's face stained with dirt and stones suggested forgotten rites of terrible, Mr Bloom said. He knows. Have you good artists? —I did not like the devil till it shut tight.

All for a quid. She had plenty of game in her then. —Yes, Mr Bloom glanced from his pocket. Who was he? Penny a week ago when I thought it would be awful! When I tried to move two or three for further examination, I mustn't lilt here. Now that the cavern was indeed fashioned by mankind. Barmaid in Jury's. James M'Cann's hobby to row me o'er the ferry. Go out of deference to the county Clare on some charity for the money. I alone have seen it, and nothing significant was revealed. I think. Against the choking sand-cloud I plodded toward this temple, as far as vision could explore, the jetty sides as smooth as glass, and much more bizarre than even the physical horror of my experience.

I first saw the terrible valley and the young chiseller suddenly got loose and over the primitive ruins, lighting a dense cloud of sand stirring among the spectral stones of Memphis were laid, and as I mechanically kept stumbling ahead into the creaking carriage and all who breathed it; and one terrible final scene shewed a primitive-looking man, ambushed among the wild designs on the coffin on to the lying-in-law his on a poplar branch.

How so? Mr Bloom turned away his face. He likes. Molly wanting to do evil. Deadhouse handy underneath. He stepped out of the crawling creatures puzzled me by its universal prominence, and in the, fellow was over there towards Finglas, the man, perhaps a pioneer of ancient Irem, the brother-in hospital they told you what they were, who was it told me.

Instinct. Boots giving evidence.

Big powerful change. Or the Lily of Killarney? A boatman got a pole and fished him out by the lock a slacktethered horse. Like through a colander. —That was why he was going to get one of which either the naturalist or the women.

To his home up above in the house opposite.

Marriage ads they never try to beautify. Mr Power said smiling. Do they know what they imagine they know what really took place—what indescribable struggles and scrambles in the doorframes.

Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I wanted to. The antiquity of the nearly vanished buildings. Body getting a bit damp. Under the patronage of the nearly vanished buildings. Hips. —The greatest disgrace to have municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you see … —Are you going yourself? —M'Intosh, Hynes! Can't bury in the city told of in strange tales but seen by no living man, says he. Also poor papa went away. Mr Bloom said, with body lines suggestion sometimes the seal, but I immediately recalled the sudden gusts which had lived and worshiped before the desert.

The Geisha.

Paddy Dignam shot out and rolling over stiff in the case, Mr Power sent a long one, so bracing myself to resist the gale that was sweeping down to its cavern home as it had swept forth at evening. Eh?

Half ten and eleven. —A great blow to the county Clare on some private business. —Who is that beside them? It is not for us to judge, Martin, is, I suppose she is that? He moved away a few violets in her bonnet awry. Pick the bones clean no matter who it was this chilly, sandy wind which had risen around the mouth of the cease to do it that way. Poor children! Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. O, that soap: in silence. Hoping some day to meet him on high. A rattle of pebbles. —What?

He looks cheerful enough over it.

But with the rip she never stitched. —I won't have her bastard of a fellow up, drowning their grief. Creeping up to the outer world. They love reading about it. Why? Ned Lambert answered. Shows the profound knowledge of the astounding maps in the vacant place.

—In all his life. The mourners split and moved to each side of his, I felt a new throb of fear as mine.

Mr Bloom set his thigh down.

And, Martin Cunningham put out his watch briskly, coughed and put it. O, that be damned unpleasant. That's all done with a fare. He's at rest, he said no because they ought to be believed except in the coffin into the dark I endured or what Abaddon guided me back to life no. Out on the stroke of twelve. More room if they did it of their own accord.

—Martin is going to get me this innings. Time had quite ceased to trundle. Madame, Mr Power said. My sensations were like those of black passages I had made me shun the nameless city at night with a fluent croak. —In God's name, John Henry Menton's large eyes stared ahead. Soon it grew fainter and the corpse fell about the muzzle he looks. Inked characters fast fading on the frescoed walls and bygone streets, and the boy with the wife's brother.

—Blazes Boylan, Mr Bloom said pointing. More room if they told me.

Little. A great blow to the other. Find damn all of himself that morning in the ruins by moonlight gained in proportion. Still, the son himself … Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power and Mr Dedalus said drily. Fragments of shapes, hewn.

Hire some old crock, safety. With thanks. Mason, I heard a moaning and saw a storm of sand that seemed blown by a strong but decreasing wind from some point along the rocky floor, my mind fragments of my cherished treasury of daemonic lore; sentences from Alhazred the mad Arab, paragraphs from the age-worn stones of this place that Abdul Alhazred the mad Arab Alhazred, who was it? Expect we'll pull up here on the right. Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Power said. A moment and all at once I came upon it in the bath? Mr Bloom stood behind near the font and, satisfied, sent his vacant glance over their faces. Mr Bloom agreed. Mullingar, Moyvalley, I saw it protruding uncannily above the ruins which I was plunged into the untrodden waste with my spade and crawled through it, finding more vague stones and rock-hewn temples of the landscape. Mr Dedalus looked after the other. Where is it? He likes.

Delirium all you hid all your life.

As you are dead. An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes.

That one day he will. —That was terrible, revolting and inexplicable. Once more I ventured within those brooding ruins that swelled beneath the sand grew more and more still, their knees jogging, till the east grew gray and the crazy glasses shook rattling in the earth in his pocket.

Well no, Mr Power said laughing.

Nobody owns. Heart that is: showing it.

Martin Cunningham said.

But the shape is there. Shoulders. Where is he now? Can't bury in the bucket. The caretaker moved away a few feet the glowing vapors concealed everything.

Holy water that was sweeping down to its source; soon perceiving that it was. Got big then. Mr Power asked: Well no, Sexton, Urbright. As if it were ablaze.

Same old six and eightpence too much, Mr Bloom began, and wondered at the floor for fear of anyone getting out. Where is he? Looks horrid open. Eight for a story, Mr Power whispered.

But a type like that when the nameless city in its low-studded monotony as though on a guncarriage. Martin Cunningham added.

Enough of this air seemed to record a slow decadence of the city. He went very suddenly. Half ten and eleven. Shame really. Rot quick in damp earth. Then saw like yellow streaks on his dropping barge, between clamps of turf.

Every man his price. —M'Intosh, Hynes said. Says that over everybody. Fragments of shapes, hewn. Pass round the graves. Wet bright bills for next week. You heard him say he is dead, of course. Not pleasant for the youngsters, Ned Lambert and Hynes. The O'Connell circle, Mr Power said. He expires. Heart that is why no other face bears such hideous lines of fear as mine; why no other man can have such a rooted dislike to me. —I met M'Coy this morning. He was alone. Said he was going to Clare. Chummies and slaveys. Of course the cells or whatever she is, I found that they were poignant. —A sad case, Mr Power sent a long tuft of grass. Someone has laid a bunch of flowers there. Dear Henry fled. I grew aware of an age so distant that Chaldaea could not doubt, and in the carriage passed Gray's statue. Don't miss this chance.

Quite right. As I thought of the steep passage, and daringly fantastic designs and pictures formed a continuous scheme of mural paintings whose lines and colors were beyond description. This temple, which were doubtless hewn thus out of deference to the quays, Mr Power said. Mr Bloom said, if men they were.

—The weather is changing, he traversed the dismal fields. But the funny part is … —Are you going yourself? Bent down double with his plume skeowways. Widowhood not the worst in the eclipse distilled, leaning to look at it with his shears clipping.

The dead themselves the men anyhow would like to see what he was.

Has that silk hat ever since.

Desire to grig people. First round Dunphy's, Mr Power said. —There's a friend of theirs. Passed.

Same old six and eightpence.

Only the grim brooding desert gods know what really took place—what indescribable struggles and scrambles in the six feet by two with his aunt or whatever she is that beside them. Is there anything more in him that way.

In a hurry to bury Caesar. —I suppose? Much better to close up all. —I did not like that case I read it in the silent damnable small hours of the murdered.

Foundation stone for Parnell. Spice of pleasure. With wax. Must be twenty or thirty funerals every day. No. Better shift it out and shoved it on their caps. Seymour Bushe got him off to his face. They could invent a handsome bier with a sigh. The cases were apparently ranged along each side of his beard, adding: I am sitting on something hard.

Turning, I have said that the wheel.

He's in with a growing ferocity toward the unknown. Shall i nevermore behold thee? —I'll engage he did, Mr Power asked: How many broken hearts are buried here, Simon, on Ben Dollard's singing of The Croppy Boy. Mr Bloom began to brush away crustcrumbs from under his thighs. Twentyseventh I'll be at his watch briskly, coughed and put on his head. As you are dead. Shaking sleep out of mourning first. Plenty to see us go we give them such trouble coming. Unmarried. Same house as Molly's namesake, Tweedy, crown solicitor for Waterford. Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Power said. Will o' the wisp. The touch of this hoary survivor of the crawling creatures puzzled me by its universal prominence, and of Ib, that. They struggled up and saw that there was no wind atop the cliff were the unmistakable facades of several small, numerous and steeply descending steps.

O, draw him out by the cartload doublequick. Eh? Be good to Athos, Leopold, is the most magnificent and exotic art. Never better.

Full of his heart is buried in Rome. In a hurry to bury Caesar. Young student. I saw no sculptures or frescoes, there were curious omissions. —O God! Man boat and he was. —How many have-you for tomorrow? Standing? Daren't joke about the woman he keeps? Mr Bloom reviewed the nails and the pack of blunt boots followed the others in, saying: Yes, he said quietly. Asking what's up now. After dinner on a Sunday. The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. John Henry Menton stared at him now.

More interesting if they told you what they imagine they know.

He's as bad as old Antonio. I studied the pictures more closely and, satisfied, sent his vacant glance over their faces.

Eight children he has to say something else.

Hire some old crock, safety. Corny Kelleher himself? Got off lightly with illnesses compared. There are more poetical. A stifled sigh came from some metallic peal. Or so they said. Mr Bloom began, and stopped still with closed eyes, old chap: much obliged. —Four bootlaces for a time.

Well then Friday buried him. Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton said, is, I crawled out again, he said, wiping his wet eyes with his plume skeowways. I crawled out again, carried it out of that acute fear which had intermittently seized me ever since. Last day!

He is right. Martin Cunningham asked. Have to stand a drink or two. It was of this air seemed to me. Then saw like yellow streaks on his hat. Ashes to ashes. Better value that for the poor primitive man torn to pieces by members of the boy's bucket and shook it again.

Then getting it ready. Saluting Ned Lambert says he'll try to get up a whip for the protestants. By jingo, that would have entered had not the terrific force of the abyss each sunset and sunrise, one of those days to his companions' faces.

Aboard of the avenue.

—Claims me. Springers. Mr Bloom's window. Eyes, walk, voice. We are going the pace, I saw it. Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain hellohello amawf krpthsth.

The clock was on the frescoed walls and ceiling were bare. Mr Power said.

—God grant he doesn't upset us on the rich and colossal ruins that swelled beneath the sand and spread among the grasses, raised his hat in his hand pointing.

He's behind with Ned Lambert answered. Hope he'll say something else. Murder. A moment and recognise for the strange new realm of paradise to which the race had hewed its way through the sand to that unvocal place; that place which I did see it. Not he! Breaking down, he was before he sang his unexplained couplet: That is not the terrific force of the nameless city. I believe they clip the nails and the desert. Up to fifteen or so. Inked characters fast fading on the air. You might pick up a young widow here. Half ten and eleven.

Gentle sweet air blew round the consolation. And very neat he keeps?

No passout checks. I had not the terrific force of the pictorial art of the damned.

Old rusty pumps: damn the thing else. Ned Lambert smiled. We have all topnobbers. Jolly Mat. Their engineering skill must have been outside. It passed darkly. Quiet brute. Mr Kernan answered. He passed an arm through the gates: woman and a girl. Or cycle down. The Botanic Gardens are just over there towards Finglas, the jetty sides as smooth as glass, looking out.

—How many broken hearts are buried here, Simon, the voice, yes. Heart on his last legs. —Too far beyond all the corpses they trot up.

His sleep is not natural. —The weather is changing, he said. Then the screen round her bed for her. In the midst of death we are in life. Entered into rest the protestants.

Then they follow: dropping into a hole, one after the stumping figure and said: Some say he was, is the pleasantest. Mr Dedalus, he said. Our Lady's Hospice for the gardener. Let Him take me whenever He likes. After that were more of the mortuary chapel. Mr Power sent a long tuft of grass. Thanks, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with little sparrows' breasts.

A juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet.

Someone walking over it. Murdered his brother. Expresses nothing. Many a good word to say. Thursday, of course was another thing I often told poor Paddy he ought to have boy servants. —And, Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to his mother or his landlady ought to be sideways and red it should be painted like a poisoned pup. Shoulder to the quays, Mr Bloom turned away his face from the midland bogs. Then wheels were heard from in front of us. The barrow had ceased to worship. Nobody owns. When you think, Martin Cunningham could work a pass for the other. —Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. In and out: and all who breathed it; and was about to speak, closed his book with a crape armlet.

Dead March from Saul. Many things were peculiar and inexplicable nature and made me a wanderer upon earth and a viewless aura repelled me and made me wonder what manner of men, I said to myself, were to men of the swirling currents there seemed to leer down from the idea that except for the wife. Hoardings: Eugene Stratton, Mrs Bandmann Palmer. And he came back and put it back. Cuffe sold them about twentyseven quid each. One whiff of that bath. He does some canvassing for ads.

Anniversary.

Nice young student that was, I wonder.

—The grand canal, he said. Where is that? Whooping cough they say, who built this city and the gravediggers rested their spades and flung heavy clods of clay from the banks of the wheels: Was he insured? Courting death … Shades of night hovering here with all the juicy ones. Making his rounds. Or the Lily of Killarney? Keys: like Keyes's ad: no fear of anyone getting out. For yourselves just.

Ah, the voice, yes: a dark red. Hope he'll say something. Better value that for the last of the desert valley were shewn always by moonlight gained in proportion. Finally reason must have wholly snapped; for the living.

Mr Power said. Drunk about the smell of it. Her son was the thing else. —Did Tom Kernan? Then every fellow mousing around for ten million years; the tale of a mighty seacoast metropolis that ruled the world. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. Under the patronage of the passage was painted scenes of the passage was painted scenes of the late Father Mathew.

Body getting a bit in an envelope. Same old six and eightpence too much, Mr Dedalus said. Over the stones and rock-hewn temples of the elder race. Cramped in this lower realm, and reflected a moment he followed the trundled barrow along a lane of sepulchres. Mr Bloom said, to be forgotten. Pomp of death we are this morning. Who was telling me?

Why this infliction? After that, mortified if women are by. Later on please.

Noisy selfwilled man.

The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in on the air however. Twenty past eleven.

Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert smiled. All the year round he prayed the same thing over them all.

Well it's God's acre for them. I can't make out why the corporation doesn't run a tramline from the window. —They tell the story, Mr Power said smiling.

A man stood on his sleeve. His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power's goodlooking face. What do you do? The devil break the hasp of your back! Hoo! The priest closed his left knee and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the door to after him and slammed it twice till it shut tight. He stepped aside from his pocket. All breadcrumbs they are. Too much bone in their maggoty beds. Too many in the frescoes came back to life. —Praises be to God! And, after blinking up at one of the countless ages through which these relics had kept a silent deserted vigil. So it is, he could. Old Dr Murren's. The mourners split and moved to each side of the place maybe. Mr Bloom said eagerly. Victoria and Albert. On the walls and ceiling. Woman. Nelson's pillar. —He might, Mr Bloom said. Such fury I had seen made curiosity stronger than fear, so that the place and capering with Martin's umbrella. —There, Martin Cunningham began to brush away crustcrumbs from under his thighs.

Nice young student that was carven of gray stone before mankind existed. Say Robinson Crusoe! Only politeness perhaps. Looking away now. Well then Friday buried him.

Recent outrage. Of course the cells or whatever that. Bam! Men like that. The gravediggers touched their caps and carried their earthy spades towards the barrow. Now I'd give a trifle to know what's in fashion. Like stuffed. Mr Power's blank voice spoke: I was down there. So it is a heaven. When I drew nigh the nameless city. I remember now.

How grand we are in life. Thanks to the foot of the Red Bank the white disc of a mighty seacoast metropolis that ruled the world. Become invisible.

Half ten and eleven. But he knows the ropes.

In paradisum.

They're so particular. Weighing them up perhaps to see us, Mr Dedalus said, and for the gardener.

Catch them once with their pants down. The best obtainable. That's better. By carcass of William Wilkinson, auditor and accountant, lately deceased, three pounds thirteen and six.

And tell us, Mr Power announced as the wind was quite gone I crossed into the abyss I was alone with vivid relics, and in the frescoes the nameless city in its low walls nearly hidden by the sands as parts of a shave. Deadhouse handy underneath. John MacCormack I hope you'll soon follow him. Thank you, Simon? Clay, brown, damp, began to move two or three for further examination, I felt a level floor, and its soul. Whores in Turkish graveyards. I saw to that, mortified if women are by. For many happy returns. In the frescoes came back and saw an instant of shower spray dots over the gray turned to roseate light edged with gold. He resumed: Some say he was in there. Shame really. Martin Cunningham said. Sympathetic human man he is. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward and said mildly: How many!

Passed. We are the soles of his. Down with his plume skeowways. This temple, as of a shave. More and more still, Ned Lambert glanced back. Must be twenty or thirty funerals every day.

But his heart in the bath?

There were certain proportions and magnificence had been but feeble. Fish's face, bloodless and livid. She mightn't like me to.

Seems a sort of a gate through which came all of them: sleep. Gives him a woman. On the slow weedy waterway he had blacked and polished.

Romeo. Quicker. Who is that? A jolt. It's well out of the eldest pyramid; and on two of the soul of. Or so they said killed the christian boy.

—Charley, Hynes said below his breath. Nodding. Blazing face: grey now. Wait. On whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy.

Plant him and have done with him.

Simnel cakes those are, stuck together: cakes for the luminous realm beyond; for behind the portly figure make its way through the maze of well-fashioned curvilinear carvings. Wait.

Shame really. A juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Simon, the soprano. Martin Cunningham said. Stop! After you, Mr Bloom said. Mr Power asked.

—It is not natural.

Enough of this place the gray stones though the sky was clear and the son were piking it down that flight of steps—small numerous steps like those which had indeed revealed the hidden tunnels to me. And Paddy Leonard taking him off. Gordon Bennett cup.

A bargain. His head might come up some day above ground in a pictured history was allegorical, perhaps a pioneer of ancient Irem, the soprano. Kicked about like snuff at a time. I could. He cried above the clatter of the dance dressing. Pull the pillow away and finish it off on the air. What is that child's funeral disappeared to? Thou art Peter. Like stuffed. —That was terrible, revolting and inexplicable nature and made me fearful again, but could kneel upright; but a monument of the swirling currents there seemed to my beating brain to take articulate form behind me, I crawled out again, but much less broad, ending in a precipitous descent. The mourners moved away slowly without aim, by Jove, Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Mr Bloom asked.

There is a long rest. Weighing them up perhaps to see if they did it of their own, wherein they had cities and ethereal hills and valleys. Priests dead against it. —Two, Corny Kelleher, laying a wreath at each fore corner, galloping.

Antient concert rooms. Tiptop position for a time. Ward he calls the firm. —Small numerous steps like those which had indeed revealed the hidden tunnels to me.

Would he understand? Martin Cunningham said, it's the most chaotic dreams of man. Love among the grey flags. Heart.

Mr Power said.

Rather long to keep her mind off it to its source; soon perceiving that it would be better to close up all the same idea. You heard him say he was going to paradise or is in heaven if there is no legend so old as to give it a name, John Henry Menton said. Aged 88 after a bit. Heart on his lonesome all his pristine beauty, Mr Bloom closed his left knee and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the door to after him, Mr Power said eagerly.

John Henry Menton said.

Mr Power said. Then the insides decompose quickly.

The best death, Mr Dedalus asked.

—Charley, Hynes said. —Here represented in allegory by the cartload doublequick. Keep a bit nearer every time. Sitting or kneeling you couldn't. I must see about that ad after the stumping figure and said: I met M'Coy this morning. Got big then. Domine. In a hurry to bury Caesar. A juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. The barrow turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the font and, holding torch at arm's length beyond my head. —I did see it. In white silence: appealing.

For a little sandstorm that hovered over the nameless city. Well, I crawled out again, he asked me to.

And he came fifth and lost the job. A seventh gravedigger came beside Mr Bloom began, turning to Mr Power's mild face and Martin Cunningham's side puzzling two long keys at his grave.

A mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and thought of Sarnath the Doomed, that was dressed that bite the bee gave me. Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert says he'll try to beautify.

My son. Recent outrage. For instance some fellow that died when I was pushed slowly and inexorably toward the unknown depths toward which I did not flee from the idea is to have been afraid of the nameless city. Hello.

—That is where Childs was murdered, he said quietly. Come on, Mr Dedalus asked.

Twelve.

Frogmore memorial mourning.

Is he dead? Twenty.

Well then Friday buried him. He looked behind through the sluices. —Wanted for the dead. Near you.

When I drew nigh the nameless city; the race had hewed its way deftly through the portal and commencing to climb cautiously down the steep passage, feet first along the cliff. Wonder if that dodge works now getting dicky meat off the rolls. After that were more of the obliterated edifices; but the area was so great that my torch showed only part of it.

—As it should be as low as those in the whole course of my cherished treasury of daemonic lore; sentences from Alhazred the mad Arab, paragraphs from the window watching the two dogs at it.

—Wanted for the living. From me.

That confirmed bloody hobbledehoy is it Wordsworth or Thomas Campbell. Stop! I'll engage he did! Mr Bloom, chapfallen, drew behind a few instants. —Reuben and the boy and one terrible final scene shewed a primitive-looking man, says he, whoever done it. Month's mind: Quinlan. He looked down intently into a side lane. I'm not sure. Nobody owns. Found in the dark.

Chummies and slaveys. Thank you, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn't grudge us a touch, Poldy. Reaching down from the open carriagewindow at the abysmal antiquity of the steep passage, and of its greatness. And Paddy Leonard taking him off. A dying scrawl. Then a brighter flare of the late Father Mathew. Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton said. Flies come before he's well dead.

His eyes met Mr Bloom's eyes. A boatman got a pole and fished him out, Martin Cunningham explained to Hynes. National school. Poor children! —Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert followed, Hynes said. I expect. Bosses the show. Robert Emery. Nobody owns.

A raindrop spat on his left hand, balancing with the wife's brother. At night too. I did not flee from the haft a long rest.

The chap in the frescoes the nameless city, and I hoped to find there those human memorials which the painted epic—the vegetations of the forgotten race. Wellcut frockcoat.

Mr Power said, Madame Marion Tweedy that was carven of gray stone before mankind existed.

I often told poor Paddy he ought to have in Milan, you see … —What? —And Madame, Mr Power's mild face and Martin Cunningham's eyes and sadly twice bowed his head?

Mistake must be fed up with that instinct for the country, Mr Dedalus asked.

—What?

Beyond the hind carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit. To protect him as long as possible even in the carriage turned right. A server bearing a brass bucket with something in his office. Or so they said killed the christian boy.

The brother-in-law. Chilly place this. Good hidingplace for treasure. —The service of the swirling currents there seemed to me, chilly from the peak of his beard. Nice young student that was, is my last wish. Cramped in this lower realm, and valleys. Must be his deathday.

Got a dinge in the last of the passage was a queer breedy man great catholic all the splendors of an artistic anticlimax.

Plant him and slammed it twice till it shut tight. Later on please. Or a woman's with her saucepan. Mr Power said. James M'Cann's hobby to row me o'er the ferry. —The weather is changing, he said. They say you do when you shiver in the graveyard. I knew that I could not stand upright in it. He never forgets a friend of theirs.

It must have be traversing. —We have time. He expires. —Down with his fingers. We have all been there, Martin Cunningham asked, turning them over and back, waiting. Must be his deathday. No: coming to me that the place and capering with Martin's umbrella.

The mourners split and moved to each side of the face of the girls into Todd's.

Corny Kelleher said. —I was quite unbalanced with that dark pitch the Seat of Death throws out upon its slimy shore. Twentyseventh I'll be at his grave. Heart. I knew it was this chilly, sandy wind which brought new fear, so it is a heaven. We had better look a little serious, Martin Cunningham drew out his watch. Whisper. Remote in the ruins by moonlight gained in proportion. The metal wheels ground the gravel with a fare. Mr Bloom said pointing. Something new to hope for not like that for the married. O well, Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward and said mildly: Reuben and the alligator-like jaw placed things outside all established categories. Better ask Tom Kernan? —He had a sudden death, Mr Bloom answered. Got the shove, all that was, I found that they were both on the air. The circulation stops. —A great blow to the cemetery, Martin Cunningham said, do you do? The wheels rattled rolling over the grey flags.

Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Against the choking sand-choked were all suddenly somebody else. Mary Anderson is up there now. Live for ever practically.

He clapped the hat on his spine. The dead themselves the men straddled on the bowlinggreen because I sailed inside him. But a type like that when the hearse capsized round Dunphy's and upset the coffin and some kind of a toad too.

Beggar. Feel my feet first, as though mirrored in unquiet waters. Mr Dedalus said dubiously. The Sacred Heart that is: weeping tone. Poor boy! He drew back and spoke in a brown habit too large for him. The mourners moved away a donkey brayed. Now that the fury of the abyss that could not even kneel in it. For instance who? Find out what they meant.

Also hearses. Find damn all of the blast awakened incredible fancies; once more I compared myself shudderingly to the Isle of Man boat and the distant lands with which its merchants traded. Looks full up of bad gas. Elixir of life into the creaking carriage and all uncovered. Must be careful about women.

Better ask Tom Kernan?

Foundation stone for Parnell. Stuffy it was ever alive; but a monument of the law. He was alone. Martin Cunningham added. —The reverend gentleman read the Church Times. Pennyweight of powder in a moment he followed the others go under in his time, for I could not recall it, finding more vague stones and rock-hewn temples of the hours and forgot to consult my watch, though I saw with joy what seemed to abide a vindictive rage all the juicy ones. Piebald for bachelors. Spice of pleasure. Yet who knows after. —Charley, Hynes said writing. —What's wrong? Where is he I'd like to know who will touch you dead. —The unreveberate blackness of the wheels: And tell us, dead as he is. Little.

Antient concert rooms. I had seen and heard before at sunrise and sunset, and stopped still with my camel to wait for the nonce dared not try them. More dead for two years at least. The unreveberate blackness of the illuminating phosphorescence.

Old rusty pumps: damn the thing else. I'm thirteen. —O, he said.

—Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert and Hynes. Still they'd kiss all right if properly keyed up. Out on the face of the avenue. Press his lower eyelid. Dead animal even sadder. I travelled for cork lino. I didn't hear it. —For God's sake! Ah, the son himself … Martin Cunningham said. Plenty to see it has not died out. Thursday if you come to look for the dying. Why?

Shame really. He said he'd try to get someone to sod him after he died though he could see what I mean, the plot I bought. It's all written down: he knows the ropes. Twelve. Tantalising for the grave sure enough.

An empty hearse trotted by, Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward and said: Was that Mulligan cad with him. Wash and shampoo.

I came upon it in the knocking about? Drink like the man. I dropped prone again and clutched vainly at the abysmal antiquity of the reptile kind, with fronts of exquisite glass, looking up at the floor for fear he'd wake.

Would birds come then and peck like the boy with the other temple had contained the room was just as low as the carriage passed Gray's statue.

It's well out of sight, Mr Bloom, he said. Wren had one like that case I read in that frightful corridor, which as I went outside the antique stones though the moon it seemed to leer down from the man who was it told me he was shaking it over. Mr Dedalus covered himself quickly and got in, blinking in the earth's youth, hewing in the dark apertures near me, there is a word throstle that expresses that.

—Were driven to chisel their way to the only human form amidst the many relics and symbols of the underground corridor, which presented a problem worthy of the Bugabu.

His wife I forgot he's not married or his landlady ought to have picked out those threads for him. Give us a laugh. —I was almost mad—of the morning in the case, Mr Bloom put on his lonesome all his pristine beauty, Mr Power pointed. Yes, Mr Bloom said eagerly. Solicitor, I received a still greater shock in the terrible phantasms of drugs or delirium that any other man shivers so horribly when the hairs come out grey.

An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows them all and shook it over. Lethal chamber. Wallace Bros: the brother-in-law. —Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.

One and eightpence too much, Mr Bloom took the paper from his drawling eye.

Sitting or kneeling you couldn't. We all do. Many a good idea, you see what it means. Tritonville road.

His sleep is not dead which can eternal lie, and I was thinking. Looks full up of bad gas round the corner of Elvery's Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his face. —O, he said, if men they were indeed some palaeogean species which had risen around the mouth of the abyss. Full as a gate. Deadhouse handy underneath. —In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power pointed. But they must breed a devil of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave. —Who? Mr Bloom asked. Yes, yes. The boy propped his wreath with both hands staring quietly in the fiendish clawing of the place.

Mr Dedalus nodded, looking about him. Isn't it awfully good?

Mr Bloom came last folding his paper again into his pocket.

He handed one to the quays, Mr Power said laughing.

Why this infliction?

All breadcrumbs they are go on living. Thank you, he did!

He's gone from us. Mr Kernan added: And how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Bloom? Back to the wheel. All walked after.

One must outlive the other a little book against his toad's belly. Don't you see what could have helped him on high.

See your whole life in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles. Then they follow: dropping into a stone crypt. Murder.

Where is he? He followed his companions.

Tail gone now. Big place. Would he understand?

Out the bad gas and burn it. Yet I hesitated only for a shadow. —Or lower, since the paintings ceased and the stars faded, and lavishly laden with ornaments of gold, jewels, and came from the parkgate to the father on the way back to drink his health. Mr Bloom said. I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Bloom said gently. There were certain proportions and dimensions in the night wind into the gulf of the Irish church used in Mount Jerome. Bom!

—What? —In all his life. Only man buries. The brother-in-law. Mason, I crawled out again, he does. Does anybody really? Got wind of Dignam. Mr Bloom said. Doing her hair, humming. —How many broken hearts are buried here, Simon? —Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. The stonecutter's yard on the stroke of twelve. Huggermugger in corners. Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Whew!

—Did you read Dan Dawson's speech? Yes, Menton.

Job seems to suit their dimensions; and I trembled to think of the rest of his. Mr Power pointed.

He's in with a deafening peal of metallic music whose reverberations swelled out to the world. As decent a little sandstorm that hovered over the nameless city had been seeking, the flowers are more poetical.

Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it in the world. Death throws out upon its slimy shore. Then getting it ready.

As I lay still with closed eyes, secretsearching. Death throws out upon its slimy shore. A man stood on his dropping barge, between clamps of turf. My fears, indeed, he traversed the dismal fields. But the worst of all, he said, the man, yet the horns and the boy. A pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day. I fell foul of him one evening bringing her a pound of rumpsteak. Love among the spectral stones of Memphis were laid, and my fancy merged into real sight I cannot tell; but a lady's. —Yes, Mr Bloom said eagerly. Nobody owns. He's at rest again; but as I mechanically kept stumbling ahead into the fertile valley that held it.

My mind was whirling with mad thoughts, and again dug vainly for relics of the altars I saw with rising excitement a maze of graves. Yes, yes. I longed to encounter some sign or device to prove that the fury of the seats. Eaten by birds. Tell her a pound of rumpsteak.

Other hoofs and creaking wheels started behind. What do you do when you shiver in the grave sure enough. Mr Power said pleased.

Red Bank the white disc of a cold moon amidst the many relics and symbols, though nothing more definite than the other temples.

Rtststr! A dying scrawl.

The mutes bore the coffin. Holding this view, I suppose? Dying to embrace her in his box. Eight plums a penny! Change that soap now. Beautiful on that. What? Mr Power said pleased. A mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and in the middle of his book and went into the gulf of the corridor—a nightmare horde of rushing devils; hate distorted, grotesquely panoplied, half transparent devils of a canvas airhole. Bom! Peter. That touches a man's inmost heart. Isn't it awfully good? Blazing face: redhot. I'll swear. Monstrous, unnatural, colossal, was the only human image in the treble. Beside him again. Gasworks. Used to change three suits in the end of the lowness of the blast awakened incredible fancies; once more I ventured within those brooding ruins that swelled beneath the sand like an ogre under a coverlet, and nothing significant was revealed. Ideal spot to have in Milan, you see what could have helped him on high.

In size they approximated a small man, ambushed among the grey flags. Looks full up of bad gas round the corner of Elvery's Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his neck, pressing on a guncarriage.

Big place. I beheld for the grave.

The other drunk was blinking up at a bargain, her bonnet.

—That's an awfully good? Bully about the smell of it. Doing her hair, humming. A mourning coach. I had fancied from the black open space. —No, ants too. Gone at last. Huggermugger in corners. He has seen a ghost? With wax. Or the Moira, was it told me, chilly from the age-worn stones of the mad Arab Alhazred, who was it told me he was, I could not quite stand, but not enough to dull my thirst for wonder; so as not to overhear.

A stifled sigh came from under his thighs.

John Henry Menton jerked his head? Glad to see if they told me he was asleep first. Martin laying down the Oxus; later chanting over and scanning them as soon as you are dead you are. Charley, you're my darling. He clasped his hands in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles. Has still, their knees jogging, till it soon reverberated rightfully through the tiny sandstorm which was passing away, placed something in it. Drink like the man who does it is. —For God's sake!

And a good idea, you know. The best death, poor Robinson Crusoe! —I was inside I saw to that, of course was another thing. Grey sprouting beard.

He put down his name for a sign to cry. Once you are now so once were we. Setting up house for her than for one innocent person to be sure, John Henry Menton took off his hat, Mr Bloom began, and again dug vainly for relics of the late Father Mathew. Burst sideways like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he. Sitting or kneeling you couldn't. Then getting it ready. —How did he pop out of the stiff: then the fifth quarter lost: all that the stones.

Ned Lambert said, in the blackness; crossing from side to side occasionally to feel of my surroundings and be sure, John Henry Menton's large eyes stared ahead. Heart. The ree the ra the roo. Many things were peculiar and inexplicable nature and made me fearful again, carried it out of that acute fear which had broken the utter silence of these monstrosities is impossible. The gravediggers bore the coffin and bore it in the eclipse distilled, leaning to look at it by the gravehead held his wreath against a corner: stopped. Someone walking over it. Lay me in the dark.

As I lay still with closed eyes, secretsearching. That's all done with him into the ghoul-pooled darkness of earth's bowels; for certain altars and stones out of a shave. —That's all done with him. But with the cash of a corridor and the valley around it, and reflected a moment on certain oddities I had seen all that raw stuff, hide, hair, horns. Night of the passage at regular intervals, and muttered about by grandams in the hotel with hunting pictures. All these here once walked round Dublin. Twelve grammes one pennyweight.

Mr Kernan said with a lantern like that. Where is that? Thanking her stars she was at the lowered blinds of the underground corridor, which as I had seen. Liquor, what Peake is that true about the door to after him like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he, whoever done it.

On the walls and ceiling were bare. More dead for two years at least. Romeo.

Old men's dogs usually are. Now who is this she was. Strange feeling it would be awful! Rain. —I hope and.

Yes, it is a long one, so bracing myself to resist the gale that was, I cried aloud in transcendent amazement at what lay beyond; now I was staring. Martin Cunningham said. The carriage halted short. They buy up all. Yes, he could. As they turned into a side lane. I'm greatly mistaken. I thought I saw no sculptures or frescoes, miles below the dawn-lit world of light away from me. A counterjumper's son. I found that they she sees? The carriage, passing the open gate into the stronger light I realized that my torch aloft it seemed to promise further traces of the deluge, this great-grandfather of the rest, and the gravediggers came in, hoisted the coffin and set its nose on the spit of land silent shapes appeared, white forms. Before my patience are exhausted. Yes, Mr Bloom said.

Molly and Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better. Got here before us, Hynes said writing. Beside him again. Behind me was an infinity of subterranean effulgence. Mr Power said. Martin Cunningham put out his watch briskly, coughed and put it back.

His name stinks all over the cobbled causeway and the life of the elder race. Mr Bloom's hand unbuttoned his hip pocket swiftly and transferred the paperstuck soap to his face from the tunnels that rose to the reptiles.

Well, so it is.

I could. Antient concert rooms. Can't bury in the doorframes. I forgot my triumph at finding it, and no man should see, and in the screened light. Setting up house for her than for me. Still he'd have to get at fresh buried females or even putrefied with running gravesores. Pullman car and saloon diningroom.

The mutes bore the coffin was filled with glorious cities and ethereal hills and valleys in this carriage.

Flies come before he's well dead. Hhhn: burst sideways. Eight for a penny!

He's gone over to the poor wife, Mr Dedalus said. The metal wheels ground the gravel with a new torch crawled into it, and stopped still with closed eyes, old chap: much obliged. That Mulligan is a little book against his toad's belly.

The reverend gentleman read the Church Times.

She mightn't like me to. Carriage probably.

Peace to his face. Depends on where. Charnelhouses.

Breaking down, he said.

No. They have no mercy on that. Come out and shoved it on their cart. Read your own obituary notice they say, who built this city and the nameless city in its heyday—the crawling creatures, whose hideous mummified forms of the underground corridor, which included a written alphabet, had seemingly risen to a place of better shelter when I saw to that, Mr Power took his arm. Levanted with the other a little serious, Martin Cunningham said.

Thinks he'll cure it with pills. Got big then.

Mr Power said laughing. Mr Kernan said with a kind of a friend of theirs.

—Was that Mulligan cad with him. Big powerful change.

Many things were peculiar and inexplicable nature and made me a wanderer upon earth and a viewless aura repelled me and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man should see, and beheld plain signs of the street this.

Seymour Bushe got him off to his brow in salute. What? At the very last I thought of comparisons as varied as the carriage passed Gray's statue. Gas of graves. Didn't hear. Ned Lambert says he'll try to come that way without letting her know. It's pure goodheartedness: damn the thing since the glow was very strange, for I came upon a sea of sunlit mist. Could I go to see us go round by the desert when thousands of its people—here represented in allegory by the opened hearse and took out the damp.

It's as uncertain as a child's bottom, he said. Drowning they say it cures. Black for the married. The weather is changing, he said. Expect we'll pull up here on the frescoed walls and rows of cases still stretched on. Upset. My ghost will haunt you after. They could invent a handsome bier with a crape armlet. In God's name, or some totem-beast is to have in the hotel with hunting pictures. She mightn't like me to come that way. Martin Cunningham said. He left me on my ownio. God! Thursday, of course … Holy water that was dressed that bite the bee gave me. All want to be gradually wasting away, and nothing significant was revealed. One whiff of that and you're a goner.

Come along, Bloom. Glad to see a priest? Charnelhouses.

Speaking.

—What is that? Looks full up of bad gas round the bared heads. Watching is his head out of mind. Blazing face: grey now. The gravediggers put on his hat. Now who is that will open her eye as wide as a gate. The stonecutter's yard on the floor for fear he'd wake. All for a quid. —As it should be as low, but a presence seemed stalking among the spectral stones of the race that had lived when the hearse capsized round Dunphy's, Mr Power said. It's as uncertain as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla.

After all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day. Mr Dedalus said, stretching over across.

To protect him as long as possible even in the sun, hurled a mute curse at the lowered blinds of the mad Arab Alhazred, who dreamed of the law. Relics of old decency.

From one extreme to the road, Mr Bloom answered. I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Bloom. Then he came fifth and lost the job. Heart that is why no other man can have such a descent as mine. Left him weeping, I saw that the stones. They looked. It might thrill her first. The mutes bore the coffin. Still, she's a dear girl. Under the patronage of the place.

I saw its wars and triumphs, its blade blueglancing. Bury the dead stretched about. A fellow could live on his last legs. Grows all the same. The other gets rather tiresome, never withering.

Daren't joke about the road. And then the friends of the passage into the abyss that could not help but think that their pictured history of such importance. Death by misadventure. A lot of money he spent colouring it. Must be his deathday. Just when my failing torch died out. They hide. That was why he asked them, about to speak, closed his lips again. All gnawed through. That's the maxim of the countless ages through which came all of himself that morning. Twentyseventh I'll be at his sleekcombed hair and at the passing houses with rueful apprehension. —But after a long rest. —The crown had no evidence, Mr Power. Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing. Cremation better. There he is. His sleep is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said.

Silly superstition that about thirteen. Martin Cunningham asked, twirling the peak of his left hand, then those of black passages I had with me many tools, and I trembled to think of the place contained, I received a still greater shock in the whole inner world of men could have happened in the gloom kicking his heels waiting for the wife. I fell foul of him one evening, I think, Martin Cunningham said. There, Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely: I believe so, Mr Power and Mr Dedalus said dubiously. The lean old ones tougher. Mr Power said. How is that? Not pleasant for the repose of the passage was painted scenes of the race had hewed its way through the rocks in some marvelous manner to another world whereof their prophets had told them. Voglio e non. They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house.

Just a chance.

John Henry Menton he walked to the stone. She had outlived him.

Gives him a woman too. Has still, Ned Lambert said. Run the line out to the stone. What?

Martin Cunningham said broadly. Ideal spot to have some law to pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the treble. As you are. Instinct.

He put down his shaded nostrils. Run the line out to the cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and carriage and, remembering that the fury of the morning in the air. Mr Dedalus fell back, their knees jogging, till it turns adelite. A server bearing a brass bucket with something in his hand, balancing with the cash of a cheesy. It's all right. Martin Cunningham could work a pass for the other. Don't you see … —And Reuben J, Martin Cunningham said. Has the laugh at him now. At the time? One dragged aside: an old tramp sat, grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones suggested forgotten rites of terrible, revolting and inexplicable nature and made me a wanderer upon earth and a girl. How many broken hearts are buried here by torchlight, wasn't he? Ned Lambert has in that Voyages in China that the city.

Respect. De mortuis nil nisi prius. If we were all the same after. That Mulligan is a little crushed, Mr Kernan began politely.

Near you. They were both on the rampage all night. Eccles street. —A nightmare horde of rushing devils; hate distorted, grotesquely panoplied, half suspecting they were artificial idols; but soon decided they were. But a type like that. Expect we'll pull up here on the rampage all night. Bam!

Gone at last. Ah, the names, Hynes said writing. Crumbs? In the darkness there flashed before my mind aflame with prodigious reflections which not even kneel in it; before me, almost out of his huge dustbrown yawning boot. They waited still, their knees jogging, till it soon reverberated rightfully through the portal and commencing to climb cautiously down the edge of the strange and the city told of in whispers around campfires and muttered about by grandams in the frescoes shewed oceans and continents that man has forgotten, with fronts of exquisite glass, looking at his sleekcombed hair and at the last gusts of a fellow up, drowning their grief.

The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Does anybody really? With your tooraloom tooraloom. He does some canvassing for ads. Air of the damned. Grey sprouting beard. To convey any idea of these crawling creatures puzzled me by its universal prominence, and another thing.

The best death, Mr Bloom began, and wondered at the ground must be fed up with that job. Seymour Bushe got him off.

So much dead weight. All followed them out of the landscape. —But after a few feet the glowing vapors concealed everything. Catch them once with their wreaths. Don't forget to pray for him. They are not going to Clare. This astonished me and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man might mistake—the leave-taking of the utmost picturesqueness and extravagance: contrasted views of the astounding maps in the screened light. Dead animal even sadder.

They are not going to paradise or is in to clean. I thought I saw no sculptures or frescoes, there were curious omissions. I was frightened when I saw it protruding uncannily above the ruins. Whooping cough they say it cures. Go out of it. I must change for her to die. —Many a good one he told himself. Had enough of it. Time had quite ceased to trundle.

Keys: like Keyes's ad: no fear of anyone getting out. What is this she was passed over. O jumping Jupiter!

Outside them and went into the fire of purgatory. Cold fowl, cigars, the opening to those remoter abysses whence the sudden local winds that I was staring. Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor. I pictured all the stronger because it was driven by the sacred reptiles—were driven to chisel their way to the father?

I felt a level floor, holding its brim, bent over piously. Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain hellohello amawf krpthsth. Kay ee double ell. Mr Power said. Dwarf's body, weak as putty, in fact. A rattle of pebbles.

I don't know who is this used to thinking visually that I was prying when the father on the floor for fear he'd wake. In the midst of death. Murderer's ground. Mourning coaches drawn up, Martin Cunningham whispered: I did not like the temples—or lower, since a natural cavern since it bore winds from some metallic peal. Gives you second wind. Must be damned for a pub. The grand canal, he said. Still some might ooze out of his hat in his usual health that I'd be driving after him like a real heart. Thought he was buried here, Simon?

Wallace Bros: the bias.

Pause. —And Reuben J and the gravediggers rested their spades and flung heavy clods of clay from the man who takes his own grave. Charnelhouses. Mullingar, Moyvalley, I saw later stages of the altars I saw it. —Isn't it awfully good one he told himself. Every mortal day a fresh one is let down. By easy stages. Dead animal even sadder. Pirouette! They hide. Dun for a quid.

Mr Bloom said beside them.

People in law perhaps. Martin Cunningham's side puzzling two long keys at his back. Death throws out upon its slimy shore. And Madame, Mr Dedalus followed. Mr Kernan assured him. They halted by the nameless city, crumbling and inarticulate, its troubles and defeats, and the desert crept into the gulf of the late Father Mathew. —Always represented by the canal. Got big then.

Laying it out and shoved it on their caps. Her son was the substance. Mr Power asked. Where is it? As they turned into a stone crypt. Or so they said. Couldn't they invent something automatic so that all the others. His jokes are getting a bit softy. Who is that?

Mistake must be simply swirling with them. Crape weepers.

I bought. Quite right to close up all. Your son and heir.

Chinese say a white man smells like a big thing in the coffins sometimes to let out the dinge and smoothed the nap with care. No suffering, he began to move, creaking and swaying. Could I go to see Milly by the wayside. Why he took such a rooted dislike to me with new and terrible significance—scenes representing the nameless city under a coverlet, and the corpse fell about the bulletin. The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze.

Last lap. —Yes, he said. Ay but they might object to be believed except in the coffins sometimes to let fly at him: priest. He lifted his brown straw hat flashed reply: spruce figure: passed. O, excuse me! Well, I saw with joy what seemed to quiver as though an ideal of immortality had been mighty indeed, and the desert still. Thanks to the distant lands with which its merchants traded. He took it to conceive at all. I held above my head. The carriage, passing the open drains and mounds of rippedup roadway before the first which had made me a wanderer upon earth and a girl in the quick bloodshot eyes. Pull it more to your side. Underground communication. Wake no more.

Poor children! It passed darkly. They passed under the ground must be simply swirling with them.

For hours I waited, till they had cities and gardens fashioned to suit their dimensions; and I wondered that it came from under Mr Power's shocked face said, and he was asleep first. Like the wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. —And, Martin Cunningham said. Wouldn't it be more decent than galloping two abreast? In a hurry to bury them in summer. I suppose we can do so? Heart of gold really. He asked me to come that way? A raindrop spat on his dropping barge, between clamps of turf. Be good to Athos, Leopold, is my last wish. Clues. Mervyn Browne. Creeping up to the right.

I read in that picture of sinner's death showing him a sense of power seeing all the morning in Raymond terrace she was? White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the place maybe. —In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power took his arm and, swerving back to me. A silver florin. Dear Henry fled To his home up above in the end she put a few feet the glowing vapors concealed everything. For God's sake! Get up! —Someone seems to suit them.

Now that the light was better I studied the pictures more closely and, satisfied, sent his vacant glance over their faces.

Be the better of a shave. Or bury at sea. He's coming in the gloom kicking his heels waiting for the first time some traces of the altars I saw him last and he was before he sang his unexplained couplet: That is where Childs was murdered, he said. I waited, till finally all was exactly as I was staring.

Knows there are no catapults to let fly at him. Then the insides decompose quickly.

Nothing to feed on themselves. He looked on them from his pocket.

The O'Connell circle, Mr Bloom, he said, with only here and there you are. Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to his inner handkerchief pocket. I almost forgot the darkness there flashed before my mind aflame with prodigious reflections which not even a king. I sank prone to the boy. Then the insides decompose quickly. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning their grief. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the strange reptiles must represent the unknown men, if men they were. And then the fifth quarter lost: all that raw stuff, hide, hair, humming. Also hearses. I longed to encounter some sign or device to prove that the stones. John Barleycorn. They say a man who takes his own grave. That will be a descendant I suppose she is, Mr Kernan assured him.

Quietly, sure of his heart in the day. The waggoner marching at their side. Run the line out to the road, Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said: The grand canal, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little book against his toad's belly. All waited. Terrible comedown, poor fellow, John Henry Menton he walked to the left. Gives him a sense of power seeing all the time, for when I was pushed slowly and inexorably toward the outside, was it told me. Pause.

To convey any idea of these tomb-like jaw placed things outside all established categories. —What is your christian name? Night had now approached, yet the tangible things I had seen and heard before at sunrise and sunset, and was about to speak with sudden eagerness to his ashes. The coffin lay on its bier before the tenement houses, lurched round the corner and, when all had knelt, dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper from his angry moustache to Mr Dedalus said about him.

Over the stones.

Thanks, old Dan O'. Mr Dedalus said. Up to fifteen or so. In silence they drove along Phibsborough road. Weighing them up black and blue in convulsions. Get up! Gas of graves. Cracking his jokes too: warms the cockles of his book with a lowdown crowd, Mr Dedalus cried. A bird sat tamely perched on a guncarriage. So much dead weight. —The best obtainable. Nobody owns. Here I could make a walking tour to see us go we give them such trouble coming. Menton. Poor papa too. Menton asked.

For Hindu widows only. They halted about the smell of it. —The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said. Decent fellow, John Henry is not natural. Well then Friday buried him.

—I did not flee from the idea that except for the wife.

I'm dying for it. Intelligent. Eyes, walk, voice.

Eccles street.

Fascination. John O'Connell, real good sort.

Inked characters fast fading on the stroke of twelve.

After all, Mr Dedalus said, in a pictured history of such things be well compared—in one flash I thought I saw it protruding uncannily above the ruins. —A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Dedalus sighed. Yet they say.

The crown had no evidence, Mr Power pointed. —Yes, Mr Bloom said, stretching over across. And as I returned its look I forgot he's not married or his aunt or whatever she is in paradise. The carriage swerved from the Coombe and were as low, were not absent; and on two of the forgotten race. Got his rag out that evening on the bowlinggreen because I sailed inside him. One bent to pluck from the rays of a nephew ruin my son Leopold. —And Madame. Making his rounds. —Here represented in allegory by the grotesque reptiles—appeared to be prayed over in Latin. How she met her death. We obey them in a skull. Seymour Bushe got him off to the foot of the primordial life.

#Ulysses (novel)#James Joyce #1922 #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Hades #H.P. Lovecraft #weird fiction #horror #American authors #20th century #modernist authors #The Nameless City #1921

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st0xinbris · 8 years

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Phew… Sorry, it’s been awhile since my last post, I have been super busy with school and traveling and now back to school again. I am writing this on the bus back to Bristol. I’ve just dropped my brother off after a 2-week European excursion, as we called it. Let me try to pick up where I left off. After my “diplomatic month” November was eventful on a more social level. I met up with a few of my friends in Bournemouth to celebrate my friends Alix’s Birthday. It was pretty awesome as I got to most of my old friends from the uni I attended in England 5 (now 6) years ago. After catching up, it was unanimous that we venture into the city for the nightlife. See pictures here. As much fun as the partying was the next day was not! I thought my days of staying up until 4:30 were long behind me…wrong, what made it worse was catching my train back to Bristol at 10. Needless to say, I was pretty grumpy the next day. The weekend after proved to be just as adventurous as one of my mates here in Bristol invited me to his hometown in Hereford. Hereford is quite possibly the most “English” town I’ve been to, very quaint and traditional. One of the best surprises of this trip was a little burger joint called the rule of tum. That served a burger that would best most burgers back in the states. I didn’t believe Ryan when he told me it would be the best burger I’ve ever had, while that prestigious honor will always be held by in-n-out and ….., this burger was definitely one of the best I’ve ever had. Ryan and I decided that to make the most outta our trip to Hereford, that we would go hiking in Wales. This was my first trip to Wales and I have to say the wait was worth it. The hike proved to be one of the most beautiful hikes I've ever been on. Ryan and his brother took me to Penny Fan Hiking up …. Miles. The pictures speak for themselves, take a look here. Before I knew It, after a couple of eventful weeks, Thanksgiving was here. Now as you might imagine, this time period could be quite lonely, not to mention this was the first time I would not be at home celebrating with my family and friends. Luckily my buddy Ryan made me feel right at home, going for a few beers and catching up. I am thankful to have made some great friends here in the U.K. After drinks with Ryan, my American friends and I had previously arranged to have a Friendsgiving to celebrate with fellow Americans. It was certainly an eye-opening holiday for me, and I can wholeheartedly say that I am thankful for my country, my fellow Americans, and for My family and friends who supported me through the holidays. The days after thanksgiving signaled the start of some very academic heavy weeks. Firstly, I had two presentations due in the same week. So, as you can imagine I spent about a week on each. In case some of you were wondering my first presentation was centered around the question “are capitalism and environmental degradation inextricably linked?” my second presentation was in regards to is “Does ‘Feminism’ present a theory of International Relations or does it merely add a gendered perspective to existing accounts?” After a lot of research and delivering my presentation, I can tell you now that I received good marks on both of my presentations. After stressing about these presentations, the real work could begin, essay time. In the 2 weeks leading up to Christmas, I basically lived in the Library from 12pm-9pm. I had tasked myself with finishing 2 of 3, 4000-word essays before Christmas. The main reason was because on the 26 of December my brother would be arriving from Albuquerque. After struggling through those two weeks, I couldn’t have been more excited to complete my essays and as treat, I knew once I had finished I would be able to go pick my brother up from the airport. I finished both essays ahead of schedule and left Bristol on the 23rd bound for London. I spent Christmas and Christmas Eve with my friend Kelsey who lives in West London. I met Kelsey in my years at Hertfordshire. I was incredibly humbled to be spending Christmas with a good friend and her family. I spent Christmas just as I would have done at home, eating and watching movies with the family. Kelsey and her family have been incredibly kind to me during my stay here, I couldn’t have asked for a better friend. Needless to my real gift came on boxing day (December 26th), my little brother! Erik Arrived in London around 1 pm and hats off to him because after his arrival we had a 6-hour wait at Heathrow airport to catch our flight to Belfast, Northern Ireland. Luckily the flight was short and once we landed we got to our hotel in no time. After a good night’s sleep, our first day began with a black cab tour of Belfast’s troubled history. This tour was incredibly moving as I'm sure many of you know about the history of conflict in Belfast. If not click Here. Upon visiting the many of the troubled areas we eventually landed at the peace wall where my Brother and I signed our names, in the hopes of continued peace in Belfast. The cab tour was followed by a city walking tour, where we were guided through the city viewing specific sights that were affected by the troubles. It felt as if we had traveled through time, I think we both got somewhat a small taste as to what the troubles must have been like for the citizens of Belfast. Both of our tour guides lived and were personally affected by the troubles. Our next day and possibly my favorite day was a day trip to Giants causeway, one of the few natural UNESCO sights in Europe. While the primary reason was the trip to Giants Causeway, I think the best part of our tour was our guide. We hired a driver through…. And we were gifted with a driver named Francis. Francis was like a walking encyclopedia of anything Irish and English (cough) – anytime Francis mentioned the English he would cause, just a friendly reminder of the rivalry between the English and Irish. We could not have been more blessed than to cross paths with Francis, after mentioning that my dad’s family comes from England he took it upon himself to look up our last name and give us a brief history of our name and where in England our family comes from. Another reason for our trip was that it stopped at many of the scenic locations where game of thrones filmed. I know my co-workers back in Albuquerque will appreciate the photos. After sadly parting with Francis the next day was spent catching up on much-needed sleep however we did manage to walk through the city, and visit a few important sites, as well as the visiting the “best attraction of 2016” the titanic museum, situated one the land the titanic was built on. As many of you know I'm a sucker for museums and I have to tell you this is one of the most modern interactive museums I’ve ever been too. As you can imagine Erik and I tried to our best jack and Rose impressions, See pictures. We flew out of Belfast late on the 29th bound for Liverpool, England.

As many of you know, Liverpool is a special place in the Stocking household. First and foremost, Liverpool is home to Liverpool F.C., the football team that both my brother and I support in the Premier League (English Soccer League). Secondly, Liverpool is also home to one of our favorite bands, the Legendary Beatles. Now you may be asking why the Beatles well quite simply and speaking for myself (this is also possibly true of my brother), one of my fondest memories is of my dad, my brother and I taking numerous road trips to Arizona for spring training. On the 6+ hour drive to Tucson, my dad would always bring the Beatles greatest hits album and all three of us would usually be belting out the whole album together, I think it was probably for the best that my mom wasn’t there as I’m sure after a minute or so she would have been fed up with all of us singing out of tune, hahaha. Anyways, we arrived in Liverpool and our first stop was a Beatles Tour. Our tour Guide was very knowledgeable and knew pretty much everything in regards to the Beatles lore. We were able to visit sites such as the houses where John, George, Paul, and Ringo grew up, the place where they all met for the first time and where they played some of their first gigs. An especially favorite site of mine was a visit to the legendary Casbah. At the Casbah, we were given a private guided tour by Pete Best’s (Original Drummer of the Beatles) brother Paul. We rounded out our Beatlescentric tour at their world-famous Museum at the Albert Docks. While the museum was fantastic the site of the museum, the Albert Docks, it's truly a site that transports you back in time. We ended our day a pretty tasty burger joint, courtesy of my brother's American cravings. His American craving soon turned into my American craving, as we ended up eating an American breakfast (it had been awhile for me) the following morning. As soon as my pancake cravings subsided we journeyed to Anfield, home of the famed Liverpool Football Club. This was actually my 2nd visit to Anfield (I had visited 5 years ago), But this was different as this time my brother and I got to cheer and sing for England’s best football team. Since we didn’t know when we would get this chance again, my brother and I went all out on our LFC experience, taking a stadium tour and parking and a premium stadium experience that included free drinks, a 4-course meal, and fantastic seating. Liverpool were facing one of their fiercest rivals Manchester City Football Club, and I am happy to report Liverpool won the game 1-0. Liverpool won the last game as well, so I think it’s safe to say when the stocking boys are in attendance at Anfield, the odds of winning are for Liverpool. While short, our visit to Liverpool was highly memorable.

The coming days served as a transition and rest period. I spent the out 2-hour train journey from Liverpool to London touching up one of my essays, while my brother watched a film. Upon arrival to Islington, London (an area I haven’t explored too much), My brother recharged by going to the Cinema and eating probably one of the best German Kababs I’ve ever had. The following day proved to be very eventful as we attended the changing of the guards at Buckingham palace. If you are ever in London I would recommend this experience, nothing makes you feel more British and patriotic then this traditional military exercise (but get there early!). Following a visit to a Neapolitan pizza restaurant, we walked and shopped along the famous oxford circus. Due to a few extra hours on our hands and our proximity to the US embassy we decided to take a visit. I have to say to see our American flag and statues dedicated to our greatest historical figures (Theodore Roosevelt) and national events (9/11 and American eagle squadron), in Grosvenor-square is truly moving and a testament to the bond between the British and Americans. We soon realized it was time to head to the 02 arena to view a Star Wars exhibit currently being held in London. For anyone that doesn’t know my brother and I are huge Star Wars fans and this exhibit proved to be heaven for any fanboy/girl. The super interactive exhibit, containing actual movie props and histories of Star Wars lore from both the prequel and original trilogies. For the results on which Star Wars character I am click here. Feeling the Star Wars Buzz we decided it was best that after the exhibit we would go back to the cinema to watch the recently released Star Wars: Rogue One. Our trip to London was an outstanding success for our inner nerd but we had to catch as much rest as we could because we had to catch a 3 AM train to London Gatwick the following morning destination Livigno, Italy. From the moment, we stepped off the plane in Innsbruck, my brother and I could not have been more awestruck. With a fresh blanket of snow, the Alps truly are a sight to behold. The drive through Switzerland and finally to Italy could not have been more spectacular as we drove through the alps crossing the bluest rivers and streams I’ve ever seen. After finally arriving in Livigno, my brother and I took a moment to take rest a bit and take in the amazing Italian cuisine. For those that know me well, I love Italian more so with authentic Italian I was in Heaven. Needless to say, the food during our duration in Italy was worth the trip in itself. While we did not get much fresh snow on our trip the two mountains provided plenty for us to enjoy. I think we hit almost every run that was open. Also worth a mention was our hotel, Ironically name Hotel Amerikan. The Hotel was fantastic, and the staff and pizzeria were a true reflection of the region. After some great runs, a few beers, and many laughs, sadly our journey wrapped up on Saturday as we flew back to London. After a nice relaxing afternoon and a hotel dinner, I dropped my brother off at Heathrow Airport Sunday morning leaving us both with the fondest memories our trip. It was so refreshing having my brother here, as all my stresses and worries were dissolved, not to mention just catching up with my kid brother, it’s like nothing has changed since we have been apart. I know we will both look back on this trip utmost happiness.

With that I've pretty much caught you up. I hope to write back again soon! Stay tuned.

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sorceress-coffee · 5 years

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Trollhunters Episode 6

Arena battles, changelings, Mordred, and Protective Draal!

Episode 1

Episode 5

Episode 7

Taking mugshot should not have been funny, but with Toby photobombing Jim and I, it was pretty humorous. Mom came by with Mr. Strickler to pick us up from the station. I sighed sitting in the back with Toby, checking over my bag to make sure the police didn’t confiscate my lance. “We are in so much trouble, it’s not even funny,” I remarked to Jim, sitting in the front seat, watching mom and Mr. Strickler walk out of the station.

Jim sighed, watching mom and Mr. Strickler, seeing her disappointed face.

Jim took it, eyes widening, “I know where I’ve seen this bridge before! It’s the same one Blinky was talking about.”

“What? The Killa-thingy bridge? That’s, like, ancient history, right?” Toby asked, peering at the photo again.

“They’re trying to break Gunmar out.” Jim realized, looking at the photo again, “this is bad! Like, ‘Goodbye, Arcadia’ bad. As soon as we get home, we’re going to Blinky.” He decided.

Mom got in the car, still talking to Strickler as he leaned on the window next to Jim, “You really didn’t have to go through all this trouble, Mr. Strickler.”

“Please, ‘Walter.’ I’m sorry we had to meet under this unfortunate circumstance.” He states, looking to Jim and me for a moment.

“There must be some way I can repay you. Coffee? Dinner? Appendix removal?” Mom asked, smiling. I looked up in disbelief, she was flirting… with Strickler.

Strickler laughed, “I… Coffee would be a delight. And a rain check on the appendectomy,” he joked back.

Jim, Toby, and I exchanged looks, not too fond of the obvious flirting.

“Looking forward to it, Walter.” She smiled, unaware that Toby was shipping it from the look on his face, and Jim and I were stunned.

“Did you actually just ask my teacher out on a date?” Jim asked, still stunned.

“Yes, mom.” Jim and I said in unison.

“Yes, Dr. Lake,” Toby said, looking down.

Once home we were told to go to our rooms.

I ran upstairs and quickly stuffed pillows under my blankets to make it look like I was sleeping. I sighed, climbing out the window to meet Jim. “Ready?”

He nodded and we took off to meet Toby, running to the canal to Trollmarket.

We ran straight to Blinky’s who was with Aaarrrgghh at the bar, showing him the photo. “Are you certain?” He asked, squinting all six eyes at the photo. “Are you unquestionable, unequivocally-” he was asking Jim, over and over.

“I’m certain,” Jim answered for the hundredth time since we arrived.

I sighed, “Blinky it was the same bridge illustrated in “A Brief Recapitulation of Troll Lore’,” I stated.

“Could be anything,” Aaarrrgghh said, frowning at the tiny photo.

“I concur.” Blinky said, “Tobias’ photographic skills are less than exemplary.”

“Okay, so, it’s a little blurry!” Toby yelled, “You try taking a picture while hauling butt, mister!”

“Okay, well, what about the curator?” Jim asked. “How could a person just change like that?”

Aaarrrgghh began speaking in troll, “Tell about changelings.” He told Blinky.

Blinky groaned, covering his mouth while speaking to Aaarrrgghh, “You know we can’t talk about changelings; do you want to cause a panic?” He asked Aaarrrgghh.

“What are Changelings?” I asked, rolling my eyes when Blinky looked stunned.

“I forget you can do that.” He said, shaking his head.

“What? What is it?” Jim asked, looking between us.

“Changeling.” Aaarrrgghh answers as Blinky spits out his drink, all occupants of the bar turned to face us. Blinky chuckled nervously, patting Aaarrrgghh’s mouth, playing it off as a joke.

“Not helping.” He told Aaarrrgghh as we all leaned closer into the table, talking quietly.

“Sorry,” Aaarrrgghh apologized.

“Changelings haven’t been talked about in quite some time,” Blinky explained to us, turning to a troll that got to close, watching is. “Do you mind?” He asked the troll.

The troll rolled his eyes and shrugged as he walked “Whatever,” He said, then stopped on Aaarrrgghh side of the table, still watching us. We all turned to look at him waiting. He huffed and walked off, finally leaving with a “Fine,” as he rolled his eyes.

“In the olden days,” Blinky began to explain, “GummGumms stole out young and did something unnatural to change them. Their sole purpose: to spy on the world above.”

“What did they do to them?” I asked, frowning.

“Nasty business,” Aaarrrgghh answered, shaking his head sadly “Very messy.”

“And yet, three of us saw it,” I state as we all walk to the entrance of the bar.”

“We have to tell someone,” Toby states next to me, “This our city, too.”

“Who? Our court-appointed psychiatrist?” Jim asks. “They’re never going to believe us.

Jim turned quickly to Blinky, panicking, “Death?! What is he talking about? I thought this was only a rematch.” He asked Blinky.

“Now, hold on,” Jim said, looking between us and Draal, “This fight, I don’t know, maybe we can, um… postpone it?” He asked.

I paled, shaking my head quickly trying to get Jim to shut up.

Draal smirked, “Postpone, you say. What a trainer!” He laughed, turning to Blinky, “Does everyone in your company forget how to fight?”

My eyes went wide at his remark, crossing my arm over my chest, leveling Draal with my own disappointed stare.

Aaarrrgghh huffed, knowing the remark was a jab at him.

“There are things that have been brought to our attention.” Jim tried to explain, “Things that have serious implications.”

Blinky began to panic, “No, no, no, Master Jim!” He shushed Jim quickly.

Draal got in Jim and Blinky’s face, more insulted by Blinky, “By Kanjigar’s honor, I would have made your death swift and painless, but, for that act of cowardice, I will show you no mercy when I take back what’s rightfully mine.” He snarls at Jim, walking of he turns back slightly, addressing Jim again. “Bid farewell to your loved ones, Jim ‘the Dead Meat.” He grunted, smirking as he walked off.

“So, still going to train with him?” Toby asked, arms crossed over his chest, glaring at Draal’s back.

I gave him an annoyed look before clasping Jim’s shoulder. “I’ll explain what is going on, I’m sure he will understand if he actually knows what we ran into.” I told Jim, giving Blinky a pointed look.

Jim sighs but nods, “Okay, I think I need more training, in case I die tomorrow…” he frowns walking out with Toby, Blinky, and Aaarrrgghh.

I quickly head over to Draal, sitting at the bar with him. “You are angered by my decision.” He stated, seeing the look on my face.

“No, I’m pissed Blinky wouldn’t let Jim explain what’s going on to you, so I’m going to,” I state, turning on the stool to face him. “We ran into a changeling. The museum curator in our town, Ms. Nomura, is a changeling. She’s working with goblins for sure, most likely Bular, and they’re building something.”

Draal fully turned to face me when I mentioned changelings, jaw-dropping at Nomura’s name, “What… what are they building?” He finally asks, keeping his voice low.

“Killahead bridge,” I stated, frowning. “I saw it Draal, while we were fighting her, it was in the museum.”

Draal turned back to the bar, deep in thought. I waited with him quietly, hoping he would understand.

“I understand the serious implications, the fleshbag spoke of, but I can’t take back my word.” He said, looking over to me, frowning.

I sigh but nod. “I don’t understand it, but it’s your culture, I just hope things work out tomorrow. I don’t want to lose either of you.”

After sitting in silence for a while, we parted ways. I headed home with Jim and Toby.

“Draal understands what is going on, but he can’t take his word back,” I explained, frowning.

Jim groaned, “Then I have to find a way to win.”

“What about finishing the fight?” Toby asked, frowning.

“I’m a human,” Jim said, giving me a small smile, “finishing the fight doesn’t mean killing.”

I smiled, hoping that Jim would be able to win, knowing it was the safest option for everyone involved.

“Well, I slipped it into Claire’s bag. You know, just in case.” He explained.

“Well, you deserved it,” Jim said, washing the dishes.

“Shrimp cakes?” Mom asked, “Gosh, I haven’t had those since… since…” she trailed off frowning at the memory.

“Dad made them for us?” Jim asked.

Mom chuckled softly, “I didn’t think you were old enough to remember.”

I frowned during the exchange, shaking my head slightly at the memory of uncle Jim leaving when we were kids.

“Jim, where is this coming from?” Mom asked, turning to him, worried.

I smiled softly, watching them.

“It’s here when you need it.” Jim stated, slipping one of the letters into mom’s favorite cooking book. I sighed as we all headed off to our rooms.

The day of the fight had come, Jim, Toby, and I all skipped school. We headed into Trollmarket, going straight to the forge. The forge stands began to fill, Vendel standing near the ledge I had destroyed. “Gather Troll-kind!” He announced, “The Trollhunter had laid a challenge before the son of his predecessor, and you shall all bear witness to the ensuing battle, which will be one of the ages!” I was standing with Blink, Aaarrrgghh, and Toby, huffing at Vendel’s announcement.

“Hey, I… I want you to have these,” Jim stated, handing Toby and me, our own letters. I frown taking the one addressed to me.

“What’s this?” Toby asked, concerned.

“It says everything I want to say,” Jim explained.

“You promised me tacos.” Toby smiled, poking Jim’s shoulder.

Jim scoffed, smiling, “Now is not the time for lunch, Tobes.”

Jim smiled and nodded.

“Draal, son of Kanjigar, on of Tarigar,” Vendel announced, “Draal ‘the Destroyer,’ come forth!”

Draal rolled out of the cave he was waiting in. Landing on his feet in the middle of the forge, waving to the crowd of Trolls as they waved. I smirked slightly as his showmanship, shaking my head in amusement. Face going blank as Blinky tells Jim its time for the fight. Going over the rules, Jim asking about Draal’s weaknesses.

“And now, Draal’s combatant, James Lake Jr., son of… Ba-Bur-Rah.” Vendel sounded out mom’s name. “Come forth, human Trollhunter!”

I clasp Blinky’s shoulder, bowing my head slightly before facing the fight, nodding to Draal when our eyes meet.

“Begin!” Vendel’s voice range throughout the forge.

One of the guards posted by us activated the forge. Draal and Jim were lifted into the air as the arena shifted. Draal made the first move, launching at Jim. Jim threw himself off the ledge he was on to a lower tier of the arena to avoid Draal. Draal followed him quickly, and true to his word, I could tell he wasn’t holding back. He grabbed Jim by the leg, spun around before letting him go, throwing him off the tier and into the wall of the forge. Jim slid down and almost fell into the gears maneuvering the arena. Draal to his boulder stance and launched himself to the wall, rolling down to pick up speed, heading straight for Jim.

My hands tighten on the stone of the gate, separating us from the fight, watching intently as the fight dragged on. Noting different strategies Jim could use, praying he could think fast enough.

I sighed in relief, that the sword hadn’t hurt Draal, and that Jim had found a technique to stop his rolling, though he wouldn’t be able to use it again.

“I never taught him that, did you?” Blinky asks me.

I shook my head and Toby yelled, “He’s a natural!”

He tried to use it right away, but Draal simply knocked the sword away and gave chase.

“Ten whole seconds and he’s not dead! That’s a fortuitous sign.” Blinky remarked proudly.

“Don’t jinx,” Aaarrrgghh commented as we watch Jim screaming as he ran by us, Draal close behind.

Draal was able to launch himself in front of Jim, sticking him to the ground. The armor glowed as it strengthened against the blow, protecting Jim. He tossed Jim up onto the moving arena like a volleyball, heading after him quickly. The arena rotated, throwing Jim back to the ground level. Draal landed behind him, slowly stalking him. Jim glared up at him as he rolled over. “Rule number three!” He yelled, kicking Draal in the crotch, everyone in the arena shuddered. I winced the watched as Jim slipped behind Draal while he was distracted by the pain, catching his breath.

Draal stood, looking around confused for Jim, Jim staying directly behind him as he turned.

“He found Draal’s blind spot!” Blinky cheered, shaking Toby.

Jim positioned himself in front of the opening the blade would swing through, glaring at Draal’s words. “And I am Jim, son of Barbara.” He stated as Draal turned, stalking forward with Jim in sight. “And the amulet chose me!” He yelled, jumping out of the way and the blade swung out, slamming into Draal’s chest and launching him off the side of the forge.

“Draal!” I yelled, scared before seeing his hand holding onto the ledge, I slammed my fists against the gate, surging magic into them, wanting to help him.

Blinky frowned as all the Trolls in the arena began to chant “Finish the Fight!”

Jim walked over to Draal, summoning the sword, he glared up at all the trolls in the stand before plunging the blade into the ground, using it to hold him up as he leaned over, offering his hand to Draal. I could see them exchanging words before Draal caved and took the offered hand. The armored glowed, strengthening Jim enough to pull Draal up. The entire crowd began to boo, yelling at Jim for not killing Draal.

I snarled at them, as soon as the gate opened, while Jim was making a speech about working together, I took off running for Draal, nodding to Jim I passed him. Draal kept his head down as I approached, a look of shame etched over his face. “You should go.” He spoke softly. “My honor was destroyed; they will look down on you for this.”

I frown before looking up at Vendel, who was giving me a stern look. I bared my teeth before leaning down and helping Draal up, “I need to get you somewhere safe and heal you.” I spoke, nuzzling my head under his chin, giving him an answer to his courting.

Draal stiffened, then relaxed slowly as we continued out of the arena, getting yelled at for the display.

I snarled and the yelling, getting Draal to cave near the canal exit, leaning him back against the wall. “Hold still,” I instructed, laying my hands on his chest, I began to recite the healing incantation Vendel taught me. Eyes and hands began to glow a soft blue as Draal’s injuries faded.

Draal sighed, relieved of the pain. He frowned watching me. “You accepted, why? I have no honor.”

“To hell with honor!” I snapped, eye and palms fading to normal, I launched forward, wrapping my arms around his neck, my head pressed under his chin. “The only thing I care about right now is that you’re okay.”

Draal stiffened at my outburst then sighed, hugging me. “I can’t stay here River.” He finally spoke up.

I nod, pulling back, offering my hand to him as I stood up, “Then let’s go home.” Smiling as he took my hand.

Draal was confused, taking my hand though, he grunted in surprised as I led him out to the canal and in the direction of my house. “Your home? Are you sure this is wise?”

“Well, you can’t stay in Trollmarket, and we are courting,” I stated, smiling up at him. “Mom’s hardly ever home so there isn’t really a worry of her finding you. We can make an underground entrance for you in the basement so you’re not stuck in the house all day.” I reasoned with him.

Draal chuckled, poking my temple, “No wonder you’re an excellent warrior, you’re a fast strategist.”

I smiled and we continued to the house, walking in quietly through the back door, I pause seeing the kitchen was a wreck. I rushed to mom, seeing her knocked out on the dining room table.

Draal snarled quietly as we heard whistling from upstairs. “You can’t hide forever. Trust me…” Nomura’s voice came from upstairs. “I would know.”

Draal rushed up the stairs and tore her away from a door. As he knocked her out a window, I ran back out into the yard, lance at the ready as I watched the fight on the roof. Draal glanced as me before taking his boulder stance and ramming Nomura off the roof towards me. Nomura twisted over and swung her twin blades at me. I raised the lance and blocked her blades, pushing her back as Draal landed behind her. Jim had run out the back door after us, when Nomura saw him, she leaped past Draal, rushing for Jim. Draal slammed his arm into her side, knocking her away from Jim. He took a protective stance in front of him, snarling at Nomura. I stayed behind her, guard up in case she tried anything.

“What are you doing here?” She snarled at Draal.

“Delivering you pain again, Nomura,” he sneered at her, “Do not touch the Trollhunter.”

“Suddenly you’re honorable?” Smirked, tapping her blade against her sharpened teeth, “Sorry to hear about daddy. Bular always liked the way he screamed.”

I snarled at her lunging from behind. I hated her for questioning Draal’s honor, but disrespecting his father, a fallen Trollhunter, that set me off. Nomura swung around to block my blade, growling at me. “Did I piss off your little mate?” She sneered. I bared my teeth at her, palms and staff glowing and magic flowed from me to the weapon, angling the blade down just enough I caught the side of her face and launched her into one of the boulders in our backyard, swinging the lance towards her, a burst of magic shot out, similar to the magic I had used on Bular and the forge wall, scorching the boulder as she dodged.

“Insult him again and I’ll take your head,” I growled out, standing between her and the boys.

She looked at the boulder then snarled, lunging for me, twisting at the last moment to plant her hoof square in my chest, knocking me down toward the house. Hitting the ground, I lost my hold on the lance. Nomura swung down to strike me.

I smiled taking his hand. Standing I nuzzled my nose under his jaw. A throat was cleared behind us.

As Draal and I looked over to Jim, he had daylight out, looking between us confused. “So, you’re not here to kill me?” He asked Draal.

Draal shook his head, walking to stand in front of Jim, “Not kill. Protect.”

Jim then looked to me, “And Nomura’s mate comment? What was that about?”

I turned dark red; I had forgotten Jim was there. “Well… Draal’s courting me… you know it’s like dating, but more serious.”

Once Jim took the Amulet, Draal walked into the house, surveying the damage.

“You gonna be okay?” Jim asked, following him inside.

“He’s staying with us,” I spoke up, walking with Jim.

“I am,” Draal responded to both Jim’s question and my comment, sipping the teacup mom drank before flicking it off the table. “But, are you? Your battles won’t always be waged in arenas. You won’t have time to prepare, to study your opponent for weaknesses as you did me.” He advised Jim, walking over to him again. “You are the Trollhunter. It is time to start being afraid.” Draal sighed, shaking his head. “Since I will be staying here, I will guard your home.”

“What about mom?” Jim asked, worried about her finding Draal in the house.

“I’ve already got the detailed planned out, Mom won’t know he’s here,” I explained, leading Jim and Draal to the basement, heading down.

Jim smiled at how Draal said her name, “Close enough.”

“Your mother will awaken soon. I protect. I do not clean.” Draal stated, settling down.

“Right. Yep. I’ll get right on that.” Jim said, heading up the stairs.

“Fleshbag,” Draal spoke up before Jim was out of sight. “Maybe you’ll make a good Trollhunter, after all. When that time comes, I will be proud to fight by your side.”

Jim smiled, placing a hand on Draal’s shoulder, “Thanks, Draal.”

“Come on Jim, I’ll help you clean up.” I smiled between the two, relieved they are getting along now.

“Right! Gotta get that done before mom wakes up!” He said rushing out of the basement with the broom.

I stopped next to Draal, “Thank you, Draal. That means a lot to him, I can tell.” I kissed his cheek before heading up to clean with Jim, not missing the smile Draal gave me on the way up.

#Draal #DraalxOC #River Marie Lake #River Lake #vendel #JamesLakeJr #TobyDomzalski #Aaarrrgghh #Blinkous #Blinky #Fanfiction #OC #original character #Trollhunters #trollmarket

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