#she refused to be a part of a ritual sacrifice at the cost of her reputation and potentially her life

[aceofwonders]

thinking about the possibility of the vyrantium crew and the warden crew meeting at some point like 👀

[janumun]

Nomos (Xavier - NSFW/18+)

Pairing: Xavier/Queen Reader (based on Xavier’s first myth) Word Count: 3.7k Tags: religious imagery/desecration sex, angst, evol bondage, oral sex, orgasm denial, Knight Xavier on his knees repenting to his Queen MC, spoilers for Xavier’s first myth, female dominating, canon divergence, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned

Summary: The Queen of Philos had sacrificed her heart ultimately and along with it, part of her humanity, in the wake of Xavier’s failed Backtrack mission; binding it to Philos’ core for eternity. Now, returned to her, centuries after, Xavier seeks his Goddess’ audience, and her forgiveness, within the stone-cold chambers of her castle. 

But centuries suffered alone, and with her heart now gone, she is a former frigid cast of the woman he used to love. Xavier is adamant on repenting, even if it costs him his life this time round. 

[A fic where Prince Xavier manages to return to Philos but he is too late; his Queen has long thrown her powerful core, her heart, into Philos’ centre and now, she has nothing to offer Xavier but her bitter resentment.]

O celestial body of mine, Slumbering adrift in darkness, Which never heeds the whispers of life, Till it fades into oblivion, nothingness. 

The rolling echo of thunder — knelling an approaching storm — was the only sound that rippled across the heavy, cold silence that had settled itself across the throne room. Wan shadows clung to the wide, dismal stone pillars of the great hall. Barely quelled by the flickering protocore lamps interspersed on either sides of the room. 

A looming, stone figure of the Goddess adorned the space right behind her great throne, staging Her chosen Sovereign to rule and obey, for all of Philos to see, placed by Her will upon the throne. The Goddess; doused in cool shadow, her sculpted eyes stared down glacial and unforgiving, set into regal stone. Her great Sword aimed at length towards the altar Xavier knelt at. 

The flagstone beneath his knee was a harsh and frigid reminder; Xavier considered, not for the first time how it too had frozen in on desolate isolation, just like his Queen’s majestic figure in front. She stood tall and silent — the paradigm of dignity she’d forced herself to be, for the sake of Philos... and for the sake of a lover who’d refused to accept the wretched Crown of a King.  

Solitary and unattended — he’d allowed her to experience the empty desolation that came with a Sovereign’s crown of lonely leadership. And yet, even confined to the yawning silence of her frigid throne room, she’d ushered Philos into an era of prosperity. While he— 

Xavier had failed her; her hopes, her dreams... her yearnings he’d turned blind to each time she’d granted him the soft brunt of her affections sifting like stone against his heart. So in love with her — she would never know — and yet, the distance he’d maintained stretched flimsy in between them; closer than friends, stranger than lovers.  

The burden of her past life, their first life, lived in futility, through a heart that brought her no end of pain until it had burned her life out of existence — and in turn, ended his, in spirit — with her untimely demise.  

And he had — in misguided intentions, she viewed them as — refused to let the cycle of tragedy repeat once more, in the sacrifice of her sole being. As Xavier, prince of Philos. And a mere man in love with a woman. The one heart he could never bear to let go. In the name of a ‘greater good’, his father, the previous King had called it such. For Philos.  

To hell with a nation his father and his wretched co-conspirators had painted from the ground up, drenched in the blood of numerous sacrifices before her. Xavier had wanted no part in the perpetuation of that horrifying ritual.  

Desperation had eventually led him to adopt far perilous measures, to prevent her oblation in this lifetime — two centuries spent in between their tentative meetings, and then several countless more spent traversing the stars and through worlds in search of a solution. To prevent Philos’ downfall without the need to hold on to age old rustic customs. 

And he had promised her, his beautiful lonely Queen, a victory he had failed to bring to her feet. Swore to her in centuries past, when she’d still looked upon him with love naked in her gaze and worry taut in her features, that he’d search for a better path for Philos from among his travel in the stars, while she’d resolved to stay behind as their planet’s sole Sovereign; their Goddess incarnate.  

The tender warmth of her skin as he’d traced her features into memory on their last meeting all those centuries back, within the plaza rife with life; a reminder of what they were fighting for. The way she’d layered her own hand against his, letting her eyes drift shut as if she too wished to forget their fast-looming separation. 

And on the day of her coronation, he’d left her, branded as a traitor. Chancing one last, proud look upon her majestic form as she’d leveled the blade of her sword against his shoulders apiece, in their private ceremony of two, knighting him as her Grandis Knight. 

A fleeting, tentative touch of her palm she’d pressed against his shoulder in farewell, determined eyes staring into his from beneath the weight of her crown as she’d wished him well. 

“The fate of our nation rests within your hands now, Xavier. And should you fail, the entirety of Philos shall have to pay the price for the Prince’s failings.”  

Her delicate hand had tightened against the pressed shoulder of his regalia, not caring for the badges of honor there, digging into her skin. “May the Goddess be with you. Goodbye, Xavier.” 

 Xavier’s eyes flitter shut in resigned recollection; the very last touch of her warmth still fresh in his mind. In the flex of gloved digits against the badge attached to the hilt of his sword, one she’d gifted to him, in lieu of her star tassel.  

Now, as he kneels at her feet, she hasn’t even moved to touch him. Hasn’t deigned him worthy enough to afford even the mercy of her hands on his body, even if just to strike him. In ire or curses; Goddess, his heart and body have missed her so dearly. And yet, this is not the time for personal weakness. But repentance. And Xavier has always been one devoted to his cause, his one sole duty; to live and serve, to die or be tortured by her will alone.  

His Demiurge regent, his sole Queen.  

She observes great clemency as is expected of a Sovereign of her stature, when her steps shift closer; the dignified brush of her mantle pooling about her feet. Soft fur fabric brushing against the polished heel of pale shoes, the slip of bare skin through the part of her flowing robes at her legs, filling his line of sight as it remains firm, fixated upon the ground. For she has not allowed him leave to freely gaze upon her form. And Xavier is her Grandis Knight, committed to propriety of duty, if it is for her alone.  

He, however, dares: gloved digits reaching for the sweep of her queenly cape brushing the stone-cold flagstone. The pads of them skimming the soft of fur that lines its edges. And when she does not move to refute his brazen touch, he curves his fingers into the fabric and guides it up to his lips, lashes descending shut as he lays a kiss against the cloth, in show of the proper reverence she deserves. “I have returned, my Queen.” 

Xavier feels her shift above his genuflecting form, a response she utters in the voice he has missed. “Why?”  

“I will accept whatever punishment you deem necessary for my failure, your Majesty. If it is my life you seek—”  

“Why have you returned now?”  

“Forgive me, your Majesty.” 

“You are far, far too late.” The first hints of displeasure seep into her intonation, accusing strains of heat Xavier prefers to the thick monotone she’d employed previously.

“Forgive me, your Majesty.”  

An explicable tremor breaks across her still form; minute, missable, were it not for how finely attuned he is to her mannerisms, her emotions, her simmering ire.  

“Why have you returned now, after all this time? You made no promises.” She asks once more, cool resignation in her voice.  

He stares fixedly at the sight of her feet, a response she seeks from him, he has no answer to.  

Silence stretches long and taut, infinite, in between them. 

“After the first five hundred years spent waiting in futility...” she deliberates. “I finally concluded that you’d died. Perished among the unknown.” 

His fist, sunk into the unyielding cold floor at his knee, crushes tighter at her words. “...Please allow me to look upon your Majesty’s face.”  

Her footsteps glide forwards, another step closer. Ignoring his entreaty, she resumes, “I continued to make excuses for your failure to return.” She pauses. 

“It brought me some modicum of comfort to know you had not just abandoned me but that you were simply no more.” The terrifying frigid inflection of her voice numbs Xavier’s heart — cool tendrils of dread coiling vines within his chest, like their first life, he’d held her within his arms. Watched the life pool out of her eyes, leaving her dull and lifeless within his embrace.  

She has lost her heart once more, and the mere thought has Xavier’s nerves driven to near devastation.  

But he is here, he knew of the consequences. And he is here, to bear through them, to accept his Sovereign — and beloved’s — ire; no matter if she remains full or half. She is all he draws breath for, all he fights for, the pinnacle of his existence and his desires. His guiding star, his monarch, his God. 

“Forgive me, your Majesty.” He speaks, once more. 

The first signs of emotion other than cool resentment thread through her low voice: furied indignance. “Utter insolence.” 

The heel of her shoe rises before his very gaze — Xavier’s eyes falling shut to accept the brunt of her oncoming strike. One that does not come. He feels her press the harsh tip of it, instead, underneath his jaw, knocking his face upwards so that his eyes meet hers, glacial turbulence within her gaze. “How does it feel to be demeaned as if you were a mere traitor, at my feet? Do you feel as violated and desolate as I too did all those years ago?” 

She is kind, she remains so gentle; her punishment, she considers it humiliation for him to be put at her feet when it is anything but. As if it could ever be. She offers him her worship instead, and so he follows her regal command. 

Pitching his face to dig deeper against the tip of her shoe, his eyes remain devoted upon hers. Gloved fingers he brings to curl, slow beneath the sole of her boot to support, mouth skimming a kiss of reverence to the polished surface.  

Ire and heat fulgurate within her gaze at his brazen actions, she continues to watch as his mouth parts, pink tongue darting forth to slick a slow, deferential path against the cool leather of her shoe. “This is not punishment enough, your Majesty, when your Grandis Knight has been ever prepared to end his life at your feet, were it your will.” 

The spark of heat within her gaze retreats and shutters itself behind its glacial curtain. “Do you remember what it is I told you when you embarked on your journey, my Knight?” 

“I do.” He murmurs, just as she digs the edge of her heel deeper against his cheek.  

She rips herself away from his worship, sweeping right up close against his kneeling figure, until he can catch the drifts of her perfumed scent emanating from her bone-ivory robes. Can feel the brush of the silken cloth adorning her thighs, against the tip of his nose. 

Wretched, blasphemous desire churns vicious within his belly at having the woman he loves this close, after centuries spent without her — a woman that is not his, never will be. Immoral desires of a sinner for Philos’ Mother. A woman — and their nation — he brought to ruin by his own hand; Philos’ branded traitor. 

“I told you,” she speaks, in the neutrality of a Sovereign, “that were you to fail, all of Philos would have to pay the price for the Prince’s failure.” She stills. “And I am Philos, I am centered to Her core. I am Her life-force as she is mine. Our people paid a hefty price for our peace, oh Grandis Knight.” 

Xavier’s face sinks forward, brushing the edges of her silken robes against his cheek. “Forgive me, your Majesty.” In the harsh clench of his jaw; and when she does not move to spurn him, he devotes a kiss of resigned reverence to the cloth above her thigh. Her body loses part of its stillness at the action.  

“Even after all this time...” she murmurs under her breath. “You refuse to address me by my proper name, like a foolish coward.” A slipping fracture of something akin to torment in her voice.  

Xavier lets his mouth glide further up across the lustrous cloth in begging of her pardon, for the ache he has caused, has continued to cause to her. To Philos. For his protection that he has always known held a double cutting edge to itself.  

He drifts towards her other thigh, mouthing proper worship onto it and his Queen — benevolent, tender in heart still — lets the Sinner at her feet do as he pleases. Canting his gaze heavenwards to watch as she allows; her own eyes that burn into his kneeling form, observing him from her place on high.  

Her legs shift, allowing Xavier the fleeting sight of unblemished skin in between the loose flow of her fabric and like a devotee starved, he’s drawn to the catch of her inner thighs revealed with the slight disarray of her robes beneath his questing mouth. Finding her undeniably warm when his lips brush near the junction of her thighs at bare skin.  

“My Knight—” 

“You may call me by my name, your Majesty.” His hungering tongue slips past his lips to lave gentle at her. “After all, I am no more than servant to your Majesty and her great throne.”  

“Grandis Knight, you are—” 

“I am your Xavier, your sinner.” His hot gaze rolls up towards hers and beseeches. “So, please call me by name so you may curse at me.” 

He feels the fire of her indignant resentment sputter within her gaze, receding the glacial indifference of it. Her cold fingers slink into his hair and wrench harsh at the argent strands, ripping a groan free of Xavier’s throat. The very first gift she makes of pain, to him, one he receives with the reverent ardour it deserves.  

Xavier heaves forward once more to settle in between her legs, nosing at the fabric of her mound, breathing in her scent. Teeth catching at the cloth that keeps her concealed from view before he loosens it apart with a violent jerk of his head.  

Moisture glistens tempting in between her folds — the firm press of her digits against the back of his head is the sole permission Xavier requires to engulf her entirely against an open, hungering mouth, a low moan of desire breaking past his throat at the intoxicating taste of her on his tongue.  

He laps up at her; a man starved — one he is, after the emptiness of her endured in his soul, the burdens of his failures and desires commingled in the wet lave of his tongue from base to hood. Slicking the edge of his tongue against the pearl at her apex. Her low sigh follows the incessant push of his face deep into her mound, his nose brushing at the curls of it, accepting the gift of her benevolence.  

“Did you know, my dear Knight—” her voice skitters mildly in pleasure with the press of the tip of his tongue, cleaving gentle into her slit. “It did get easier.”  

Her wetness seeps past her opening and onto his fervent tongue as he dutifully swallows. He feels incredibly parched, open mouth pressing deeper against her as he works her pleasure, tongue slinking into her depths. She clenches around him at the intrusion, knocking a muffled groan free of his throat.  

“When time finally ran out for your chance to return and Philos neared the end of its life, with our people on the brink of desolate death,” her breath jolts. “I marched out there.” 

His brows knit into a severe frown, stroking his need for her ire to sheath itself deeper into his body. He requires it; his Queen’s rightful anger so that he may take all of it and her, let her bruise her emotions into it, until the moment she’s used him up to her heart’s desires and she finally weeps and hurts no more.  

And so, his lashes descend with the tight spasm of her fingers carded through his hair, steering his mouth however she pleases. 

“And I willingly bound my life force to Philos’ core so that it could continue to live. Cut out the part of me that loved and felt until I turned myself into something entirely non-human for the sake of our people. A true God.” A slow, desolate string of weak sound tapers out of her body before it augments itself into mirthless laughter that rings hollow through the great, empty space of her throne room. “It was all too easy to do so, in a world I knew my Star no longer existed. For my heart had beat for him alone.” 

A heavy bludgeon of agony rips through his chest, tries and clambers its way out of his body before Xavier tamps it mercilessly in the gentle scrape of his teeth against her tight bundle of nerves. Her violent shudders, he feels buffets her limbs before he’s reaching out for her on instinctual, fervid desire in the clasp of gloved palms against the sides of her legs, trekking his touch up her thighs. A low moan parts her lips at the touch. 

Xavier’s audacious attempt at desecrating his God further underneath his obsidian worship is foiled in the twin blades of light that cleave around his wrists, whipping them swift and away from her body to shackle them together at the base of his spine. 

His body jolts through the glaze of his desires, part sense rending through the thick of pain knocking at the back of his breastbone to realize she’s forced his submission in the resonation of her Evol against his. Emulated his Light seamlessly in the binds of radiance — befitting of Philos’ Sovereign — wound tight at his wrists. Even centuries past now, she remembers the precise shape of his Light. 

He tests a flex against his restraints, finding they do not give an inch. “You’ve grown far too bold in your time away,” her voice is a cold dagger that scotches itself right beneath his ribs. She heaves him away from her body, reluctant mouth drenched in the strings of slick and spit that trail from his mouth to the soaked space of her legs. “Grandis Knight, what makes you think you’ve earned even an ounce of me to embrace as you would, a lover?” 

“I have not, your Majesty, forgive—”  

Severing through the rest of his apology in the quiet catch of Xavier’s breath when the sole of her heel comes to rise, knocking a firm, uniformed thigh apart to reveal the indecency of his arousal to her gaze, straining painful against the placket of too tight trousers.  

The edge of her heel trailing the inside of his thigh, she switches towards the heavy length of him. Brushing the underside of his arousal, Xavier’s shoulders tense in heavy need at the barely present stimulation. Before her heel sinks firmer against the length of him, jolting a groan free of him. “Does that feel good then?” 

“Yes, your Majesty.” He breathes heavily.  

“Look at you, coming apart under the mere, filthy touch of my foot.” Her brow bunches in an irked frown.  

“No part of you—” His voice breaks apart into quiet, ragged breaths at the stimulation of her heel against the increasingly sensitive strength of his arousal. “—is filthy to me, your Majesty.”  

Xavier tugs against the leash she’s made of her fist at the back of his head and she allows him, in that moment, to arch forwards and nudge the part of her dress aside. Sink into the wet heat of her; a man imprisoned to her tender mercies and the flood of her taste in his mouth. 

He works her open against his tongue, laving at her desires. Back and forth, he doesn’t let a single drop spill past his hungering mouth until he feels the tell-tale evidence of her orgasm in the insistent clench of her walls.  

Her hips gyrate forward in tandem to the suck of his mouth against her tightened bead and Xavier lets his shoulders fall slack to allow her free reign of her release as she grinds herself against his tongue to a precipitous finish. The gush of her desires Xavier drinks down, humming in dazed arousal, to have let her find her relief; used as her personal seat of pleasure, to be tossed at her will alone.  

Her hands flitter about his head, curling on either side of his jaw to pull away from the heaven of her body, and up as she descends, her mouth settling against his in a violent kiss he receives with vehement pleasure.  

Releasing herself, slow, from him only when her desire to breath turns overbearing. The edge of her thumb slips just past his damp bottom lip, urging his mouth open further. Before she spits against his revering tongue and instructs him to, “Swallow.” 

Xavier’s mouth clamps shut on instinct, working the taste of her against himself. Gaze flittering in darkening, vicious desire at the heat of his Goddess’ gift.  

A low hush of withering laughter leaves her mouth. “I’ve tethered a rabid beast to my side.” 

Her thumb and index cup about his jaw, coaxing his gaze to remain on hers, bright, burning. “Swear to me,” she speaks. “Swear that your loyalty shall never lie with another.”  

He feels his Queen curl a tremulous fist into the robes at his shoulders, crumpling the fabric hard in between her fingers. “Swear that you shall remain mine, my Grandis Knight, for all time. That you shall never abandon me again, Xavier.”  

His gaze quivers in fleeting emotions for a moment’s weakness, steel gray resolve returning once more to utter his vow renewed. 

“I have always been yours to have or reject, your Majesty. This Knight — his Body and Soul is yours alone to wield.” 

Making of himself, a promise, he commits to her in the life she shall have; to end at the sweep of her sword, should he ever dare renege on it.  

Declaring himself, at long last, in his clear devotion; to his one Queen and God.  

Tagging: @samanthagnicole , @catboi-anon , @beebumbo , @hellinistical , @dangerousluv1 , @webmvie , @aria-tempest , @raendarkfaerie , @lamentinee , @unhingedsillygod , @tiredas

(Skipping folks who do not have tagging permissions on, so they cannot be mentioned, unfortunately)

I had the angsty pleasure of reading Xavier’s first myth for the first time a few weeks back and with the help of a Xavier main friend and inspiration drawn from Xavier’s prayer pose in photobooth, this fic was born. I hope you enjoyed your read! 

Likes, comments and reblogs are always appreciated, if you are so inclined, lovelies!

If you’d like to be tagged in my future stories, you can fill this short form here. If you’d like to be removed, shoot me a DM! You can also find me on Ao3 and twitter, if you’d like to chat or just squeal with me about hot characters, in general.

[ankh-morporkianpostalworker]

What Dreams May Be Offered - D20's American Dream

In the finale of the first season of Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City, all but one of the Heroes of New York are offered everything the American Dream believes they want, and all of them refuse, and what they're offered and how they reject the offer are great pieces of capstone characterization.

Ricky is offered a life of safety and a chance to live the life his parents always dreamed he would. He asks if it's only his dream, and states that everyone should have their own dream. His parents were immigrants, so this makes sense - to him, everyone being able to get what they want if they work for it is the American Dream.

Sophia is offered her husband back and a quiet home in the suburbs, her deepest desire, and she says no, partially because she just saw him when the Dream momentarily killed her. She rejects this because her duty to the Concrete Fist demands that she and her husband live in the city, and this duty is part of what defines her.

Kugrash is offered the life he gave up. Life as a man free of his curse. He rejects it, saying that he gave up that life, and that he's learned to live with that failure. Kugrash also exposes, for a moment, the corruption of Robert Moses' American Dream by making it a rat like him - a rat from the rat race he saw in hell. As a former stockbroker, he knows that corruption far too well.

Misty/Rowan is offered a life of parties and freedom and luxury, free of the ritual she has to do. She tells it that it doesn't have to enter the real world to be real and that that's why she loves the American Dream. It reveals the hidden depths that have been hidden at, as well as a desire to protect the people that provide for her. She doesn't just take, she gives back, not only in the form of Hope, as Nod alluded to, but in the form of putting her life on the line in a hopeless situation.

Kingston is offered the life he gave up in protection of New York. He sees a life where he doesn't have to sacrifice himself, where his duty is done. Kingston asks "But at what cost?", putting the needs of others before himself, as he always has done, before telling the Dream that, in no unceratin terms, he will stop it, and that he's ready to die doing so.

But then, in speaking to the Vox Phantasma, it doesn't offer to fulfill a dream. It knows that Pete, in that moment, has everything he wants - friends, a home, and a sense of purpose. Instead, it makes a fascinating mistake. The American Dream tries to compare itself to the Vox Phantasma through identity - it tells Pete it wants to be who it knows it is, a reference to Pete's gender identity, which pisses Pete off. Ally, as Pete, then requests to make an Arcana check to see the Dream as it truly is, and, in classic Ally fashion, roles at Nat 20. This Nat 20 allows Pete insight into the eldritch Dream, and that the American Dream must remain formless.

So, yeah.

[shirubae]

Silvaze ‘06: Part 7 - Absolution

Previously: Silver and Blaze defeated Iblis once more.

With Iblis reduced to flames, Silver initiates his plan to sacrifice himself to seal it away - well, it's not his plan. It's the same ritual he watched the Duke of Soleanna perform. He's relying on someone else's idea again.

Eternal Sun. The flame of fate that lived within a royalty’s spirit! Fall into slumber with my soul! Iblis, the Flames of Disaster!

But Silver's body won’t accept Iblis, lacking a flaming soul or a royal spirit.

Blaze, on the other hand, has both. "You're My Companion" kicks in as she takes the Chaos Emeralds to finish the ritual, instantly absorbing Iblis. However, she has yet to fully assimilate the cursed flames. She demands that Silver use Chaos Control to stop time and then seal her into another dimension, isolating herself and Iblis.

But Silver can’t. He can't bring himself to save the world, a marked change from his former manhunt. Ironically, he can no longer justify erasing one life to save the future. Why? Because it’s Blaze. He has just re-learned to appreciate her, and refuses to give that up. Amy’s example rocked him to his core; faced with a choice between the world and Blaze, he is choosing Blaze.

Blaze calls Silver out on his hypocrisy. In Japanese she recalls telling him salvation requires sacrifice, while in English she recalls they agreed to save the world no matter the cost. Despite her encouragement, Silver still can't doom his companion. He loves her too much. She’s his friend, right?

This finalizes the quandary of Sonic 06: is it better to live in ignorance with those you love, or to focus on your duties to make a better world? 06 has made it clear that the two sides are not always compatible, and sometimes a choice must be made. In this case, the game argues that a hero must be able to put aside their personal treasures for the greater good (a very Japanese message, imo).

And while Silver may have chosen Blaze, she seems to have chosen the world.

Silver's Victory... and Failure

Silver asks “You’re my friend... right?” Even after they’ve gone through so much together, Silver is unsure of how Blaze feels. He cares about her, but doesn’t know if she reciprocates. And some fault could be placed on Blaze for this! She is so guarded in her emotions that Silver has little evidence to go off of.

Even now, Blaze avoids Silver’s question and doesn’t confirm that they’re friends. Why won’t she just say yes? Well, she could be dancing around her true feelings for him. But she also calls him naive (青い) one last time; both for being unable to send her away, and because he still thinks they’re only friends. Instead, she chooses to let him figure it out for himself.

But she also admits that she’s always liked his naivete. Her use of the word has been scolding, but also appreciative. It may sound like he’s only caused her grief, but Blaze has benefited from the relationship too.

Silver's naivete has challenged Blaze. It has shown her unique angles on issues that she thought simple, it has inspired her to maintain sympathy for others, and it has gotten her to speak out where she may have otherwise stayed silent. Not to mention she’s watched Silver grow so much, and she is captivated by his progress. She has always held him in high regard. She's accompanied Silver not merely to keep him in line, but because she loves him.

In fact, this scene is the only one where Blaze outright smiles (and I don't think Silver ever smiles lol). Blaze has been suppressing her warmest feelings for Silver, and only feels comfortable sharing them in this most dire moment. It makes clear that Blaze is choosing the world because of Silver, not instead of him. This is what he wanted, this is his mission, and she's determined to help see it through.

But because of Silver's inability to act, there must be consequences. As Blaze completely assimilates Iblis, she briefly goes Burning Blaze. Then her body melts away, wishing Silver good luck. The clouds open above the hedgehog and the Chaos Emeralds, revealing a bright blue afternoon. All he is left with are two "good luck charms" and an (青い) sky. He rubs his eyes, weeping over these cruel mementos of his failure.

Silver’s mission to save the future is finally accomplished, but not by him. Not only did Blaze have to finish it for him, but he couldn’t even bring himself to do the one thing she requested. Despite all his growth, at the very end, Silver failed to overcome his immaturity, his impulsiveness, his love, and it cost him dearly. At least Blaze liked that about him.

Note: I’m not even gonna try to explain Blaze’s fate. There’s plenty of theories out there. I’m more concerned with the narrative implication: Blaze is gone from Silver’s life, and that’s all that matters.

Dreams of an Absolution

Episode Silver’s credits song is Bentley Jones' "Dreams of an Absolution". It's since been adopted as Silver's general character theme, but its power truly lies in its original context, right after Blaze's sacrifice.

Jones wrote the song with a breakup in mind:

“Originally, I wrote "Dreams" about a bad ex-boyfriend who wanted to get back with me, and I couldn't shake off the past, and I was in this weird grey area that I didn't know if I wanted to move forward together anymore.” - Bentley Jones

The lyrics address a separated couple who might get back together, but one of them just can’t forget their past. It would be presumptuous to ascribe too much of this artist’s very personal meaning to Silver and Blaze’s relationship, but it does carry the same theme of being unable to move on. They're opposites: Jones can't move past his emotions to get back together, while Silver can't move past his emotions to split up.

Two cutscene themes for Silver are derived from “Dreams of an Absolution”: “You’re My Companion” and “Is It Right?” (listen for the “and every night” notes). They play whenever Silver hesitates: either failing to kill Sonic or failing to sacrifice Blaze. This further strengthens the theme of paralyzing emotions. The song is basically “Ahhh I’m so emotional and I don’t know what to do!”

Additionally, "absolution" means a formal release from guilt, obligation, or punishment. It means freedom. This could reference Blaze absolving Silver of his mission, freeing him. But "absolution” also reflects Silver's overwhelming shame for letting Blaze down, dreaming of sweet release from his survivor's guilt. The autotune on Jones' voice is distortion as Silver calls across dimensions for forgiveness. The chorus sings that he will “save your life” or “make it right”, but only in his dreams.

These wistful regrets play into Silver’s urge to right past mistakes. However, he has already chosen to work forward rather than dwell in the past. He must live in this bright, stable future, haunted by his failure to Blaze.

Or does he...?

Next up: Tidbits from Last Story and a final wrap-up.

[Back to the masterpost]

[honourablejester]

Well that got my back up right off, oof.

I was browsing through the TV Tropes character page for Ravenloft, because it gives a nice intro to older lore, and I came across this entry on Addar, Darklord of the Phantasmal Forest:

“Mentioned in the writeups for the Shadow Unicorns, Addar was promoted to Darklord status in the Kargatane's Book of Sacrifices netbook. Hailing from a sylvan forest on an unknown Prime world, Addar chafed against the traditions of unicorns submitting to elven maidens as bonded steeds, seeing such an act not as a bond of partnership and purity, but a symbol of humiliation and servitude. Though the other benevolent fey spirits of his forest recoiled from such bitter, poisonous prejudice, darker spirits rejoiced in it. Most prominently, a female nightmare, who began to contact Addar in his dreams, seducing him with stories of a new forest, far away, where he would become a great champion and worshiped like a god, much like the guardians of his own forest. Even as Addar's ego grew on this noxious fuel, the elder fey strove to break him of his arrogance; they arranged for an elven princess of unparalleled purity and grace, a mighty paladin-in-training, to be given his name and told she was to invoke the pact with him. When she came to summon him, however, Addar fought with all his might, recoiling against what he still saw as an attempt to enslave him and reduce him to a mere beast of burden. His defiance allowed the nightmare to slip between the worlds and attack the elf-maid, setting the forest alight with her burning mane and hooves. Free of the spell, Addar began to flee, only to realize the elf-maid was caught by the flames; choked by the smoke, she couldn't hope to escape on her own... but Addar's pride would not allow him to let her ride to safety on his back. Instead, he turned and abandoned the screaming princess to her death, following the nightmare into the mists. Upon her, he fathered the first Shadow Unicorns, and became ruler of the Phantasmal Forest; a foul and dismal place of dead, dying trees whose black, noxious soul nourished only weeds and evil plants, inhabited only by dark fey and predatory beasts.”

So, okay. I just gonna … I’m gonna side with the Darklord here? Yeah.

Not on the whole ‘seduced by a dark spirit with promises of being worshipped like a god’ thing, that’s fair enough as a villain origin. Carry right on. But the bit where he saw being bound to someone as servitude, and the response of the people around him to that …

Right. So. To sum up. Addar saw being bound to an elf as being bound into servitude, and the fey around him saw this as possibly racism and definitely pride, and their ‘benevolent’ solution … was to send someone to punitively and magically bind him into said servitude against his will, specifically for the purposes of ‘breaking him of his arrogance’?

Um. Explain to me how that’s not slavery?

It doesn’t matter how pure and beautiful a paladin she was. It doesn’t matter that the bond is normally not slavery because (I’m assuming) the other unicorns consented. In this case it absolutely, one-hundred-percent was slavery, because Addar did not consent to it and they tried to magically force him anyway, and I feel like every ‘benevolent’ fey involved in the decision should have slipped immediately over into Lawful Evil, for valuing their tradition over the will and consent of one of their own.

Like, this is phrased in such a hostile way to his interpretation of what was happening to him? I just … I love how this frames him as entirely unreasonable here. That his wanting not to be bonded to anyone is ‘bitter, poisonous prejudice’, that his recoiling while being bound against his will is only struggling against what he saw as an attempt to enslave him, as if he’s wrong about that and it was blindly willful of him to fight. That this binding is explicitly meant to correct him of his arrogance, that he’s being bound to someone to humble and punish him, and somehow this is not slavery? That it’s his defiance that allows a dark spirit to slip into the world, but if you didn’t force him against his will, maybe he wouldn’t have to fight and let nightmares into the world? It’s his ‘pride’ that causes him to abandon the woman who attempted to enslave him to her death, not an entirely reasonable unwillingness to help someone who just tried to force him?

Sorry. I had a surprisingly strong reaction to this, is all.

But. This is just the TV Tropes summary of the story, so I went to look up the original, in case TV Tropes was leaving stuff out or putting a slant on the story in the process of repeating it. And … sort of. The original does gentle a few things:

Addar was not aware of the nightmare’s nature at first

The fey spirits were not aware of the nightmare at all, since she was only approaching the unicorn in his dreams

The spirits could feel a corruption in his soul as a result of the nightmare’s temptations, and without knowledge of her presence, his hatred of ‘servitude’ was the only thing they could tie that corruption to. This doesn’t make their ‘solution’ any better, but it explains a bit why they were so adamant, if the nightmare was having a tangible magical effect for the worse on him

The spirits didn’t think of it as ‘breaking him of his arrogance’, they thought of it as teaching him ‘a lesson about the virtue of sharing and partnership’

The elf they chose had no knowledge whatsoever of any of this, she was just told that Addar was a unicorn who wished to bind with her and was given permission to perform the ritual

She spammed the ritual repeatedly despite his resistance because she didn’t know what was happening and thought he might be trapped somewhere

He realised she was in danger, and turned away from her truly because he didn’t want to bear any elf, and he thought another unicorn for whom that wouldn’t be a problem would reach her in time

Things the original story doesn’t help, though:

It still seems to imply that a unicorn must bind with someone pure, whether they want to or not, and everyone is apparently fine with that

“Such bitter thoughts, coming from an average person, would normally be seen as mere prejudices, and might even go unnoticed by most others. But it was no less than an appointed guardian of Goodness and Nature who was spitting those poisoned words, and that was seen with concern by some inhabitants of the forest, and with joy by others. These last were, of course, creatures of darkness and foul spirits, who were barely tolerated by others as part of the natural balance.” Virtue and goodness mean surrendering your right to autonomy, but for other people wanting to not bind yourself to someone is okay?

“She was training to be a noble warrior-priestess, and the ancient spirits dictated that Addar should be her steed. So, she was told Addar's name and given permission to tame him. The spirits thought he would finally accept the noble partner and once again become true to his nature, leaving the perverted ideas behind forever.” She’s beautiful and virtuous, so she deserves to ride him, and he should leave all ‘perverted ideas’ of bodily autonomy behind him

The ritual is still explicitly a forceful spell, an enchantment that does not require the consent of the unicorn, and can wear away their strength to resist: “Addar, who was finally losing his powers to resist the enchantment, suddenly felt free once again, when the nightmare took his place.”

“As he turned around one last time to see the princess choking to death, he knew in his corrupted heart that he was never going to allow anyone to ride him, under no circumstances. He would be king of his own forest.” This is meant to be the heart of why he’s a Darklord, the epitome of his corruption, and yes it’s extremely selfish to refuse to carry someone out of a literal fire that was burning her to death, and yes to the whole ‘prideful desire to be king and ruler no matter the cost’ thing, but on the other hand is it really meant to be evil to not want people to feel free to use your body against your will just because of your species?

I just … this whole thing sort of rubbed me completely the wrong way. It’s an odd thing to get riled up over, I know. But the whole … Ignore bodily autonomy, ignore consent, take someone’s species as license to bind them into service, declare them evil for not wanting to allow that, if they object too many times just magically force them anyway …

Look. The base fact is, the binding of the ritual is slavery and is not a ‘partnership’ and ‘a prize and honor for both beings’ in this case, for the sole and simple reason that Addar did not consent and everyone else ignored that and tried to force it on him anyway. Partnership requires consent on both ends, and forcing someone into servitude against their will is sort of the definition of slavery.

I just … I’m gonna side with the Darklord here. Not on the whole ‘allow myself to be corrupted and move to my own world where I’ll be king’ part, but on the whole ‘refuse to allow someone to use my body against my will and rebel when they attempt to magically force the issue’? Absolutely yes. The spirits were completely in the wrong there. The elf maiden not so much, because she didn’t know and acted in innocence towards someone she thought had consented, and it’s definitely tragic that she died for that, but I’m mostly going to put the blame for that on the spirits as well. Addar maybe should have helped her when he saw her dying, but they’d given him literally every reason not to by tricking her into, essentially, trying to enslave him and override his will. If someone tries to magically enslave me no matter how hard or long I fight, and winds up in mortal peril because of it, I’m not going to be too pushed about helping them out of that mortal peril either. Gonna be honest.

I reacted really strongly to this. Oof. Sorry.

It’s just … is it just me, or does D&D sometimes have some problems with consent, particularly when it comes to issues of magic, as well as some really dodgy views of ‘virtue’ and ‘evil’, particularly when it comes to magical species and what’s expected of them?

[castle-dimitrescu]

what do you do to reward people for their love and their bravery. i wonder if your daughters take part in rituals to sacrifice people.

If you are worthy enough to earn our trust (yes, ALL of our trust, including my daughters) then you will receive multiple possible rewards. You could be given your own private bedroom in the castle, free access to all of our wines, liquors, and drinks in general, you will be promoted to our personal guard or assistant, you could gain complete access to the castle, we will swear to protect you at all costs, you get to choose the deserts after supper every Friday evening, and last but by no means least, you get access to my personal secret chocolate stash (shhhhh, dont tell my daughters! Especially Dani, she eats it up like a dog gulping down a bean burrito from Taco Bell)

As for the second question, of course they participate! They adore doing rituals, especially sacrifices. The only one who doesnt do certain rituals is my youngest daughter, she refuses to sacrifice animals because she feels bad about it. She'll happily sacrifice a human but animals are precious to her.

[lukeios]

The plot holes of Eldarya

Hello wonderful people of Eldarya fandom! Along with some other players we have prepared a little something for you: The list of all the plot holes in the first season of Eldarya. 

The list has over 2000 words in total. I am so, so proud of us and I would love to give special thanks to @aokane-eldarya who wrote probably over 1/3 of this by herself! Everyone who participated is tagged, so make sure you check out their blogs! 

And of course, before we start: this is not an attack on Beemoov - it’s merely a critic of their writers. More under the cut. 

@kyriechristeeleison

- Chrome surviving Leiftan's attack. Leiftan isn't an amateur killer and wouldn't let him stay alive.

- Game said Leiftan never kills children and yet the next episode he tries to kill Chrome.

- Chrome saying he contacted Leiftan, event though the other episode informed us he "summoned" him. 

@cintanna-rants

- A plot hole between Valkyon's spin-off and the game. In the spin-off, he dreams about his mother even though in the game he couldn't have seen her at that point. 

- During the Leiftan & Erika vs Lance fight in the last chapter, Lance acts like he thinks Erika is just a simple human, yet in chapter 26 he fainted precisely because he discovered she was an aengel and thought he knew why Leiftan wanted her.

- Leiftan “sacrifices” to tell Valkyon about Lance’s weakness (a neck injury). None of this is mentioned in the last battle nor ever again. Why did Leiftan sacrifice for then? What was the point of making him betray his pact with Lance and risk his life if that info doesn’t matter? 

@aokane-eldarya

- Leiftan threatens Lance to kill him, as well as all the other members of his race, if he hurts Erika: not only does he do nothing when Lance kidnaps Erika (while we have the proof in episode 30 that Leiftan is still able to subdue Lance), but Valkyon is the only other dragon in existence.

- By extension, he didn't react as expected (if we refer to his personality) to the story of the potion.

- Leiftan who is the demon of the crystal: he was able to act normally while having a part of his mind threatening the Oracle, which is absurd (nonrespect of the principle of the cost of use of magic ). During his imprisonment, Miiko talks about the fact that the corruption stopped suddenly and Leif explains that he stopped because Erika suffered from it. If Leiftan had had the power to stop the corruption caused by the Naytili crystal (and therefore, by someone other than him), he would have done it immediately since he knew from the start why she was suffering. In any case, it was not Leiftan who stopped corruption, it was the use of the Fenghuang flute.

- Leiftan tells Erika that he did it all for her. But the fact is that he started acting before Erika arrived on Eldarya and she doesn't think it's strange. 

- In the spin-off, Leiftan says he will respect that Erika doesn't follow him, suggesting that he will pursue his goal. In the end, as soon as Erika holds it against him, he decides to abandon his projects and accept his "mistakes". The funny thing is that it's been weeks, even months that we know what Erika thinks, he could have given up before.

- Episode 30, the "Lance VS Erika and Leiftan" confrontation. The writing suggests that Lance doesn't know Erika's race, which is wrong. It will also be noted that Lance didn't think of using the dragon spell that had allowed him to imprison Leiftan the time he came to destroy the crystal.

- In episode 15, the history teacher tells us that the daemons refused to sacrifice themselves.

- Then thanks to Fafnir, we learn that, in reality, Lilith and her supporters were for the sacrifice, Dagon and his supporters were against; they killed each other.

- Episode 30, Erika says that she and Leif must sacrifice themselves because their ancestors refused to sacrifice themselves.

- It will also be noted that hundreds of dragons sacrificed themselves for the Blue Sacrifice, but that it lacked just the equivalent of a daemon / aengel for the vegetables to be nutritious.

- Erika who doesn't remember that Dagon was one of the daemons invoked by Naytili

- Leiftan had a redemption. When he died, there was a white feather. Leiftan should have fought with his angelic aspect and not only with his demonic aspect.

- Depending on the situation, the terms aengel and daemon are used either to denote the same thing or to denote two different things.

- Lance refers to Erika and Leiftan by saying "the aengel and the daemon", even when Erika says to her "I am a daemon".

- Ezarel fights with a foil, a training weapon that cannot hurt. He uses it as thrusting and cutting weapon whereas it is only a thrusting weapon.

- The Guard sends civilians to unprotected villages; Lance just had to go there to use them as leverage.

- Lance, who is experienced, attacks by arriving by sea, a disadvantageous position because exposed, to arrive on a beach in a basin with only one narrow exit, with then the optic of crossing a meadow also exposed. The Guard decided it would be funnier if it got stuck on the beach itself.

- Lance is ready to negotiate: he agrees to allow the Guard to evacuate the faerys on Earth (The same faerys he wants to destroy). The famous faerys which are not there because evacuated in the villages. It will also be noted that suddenly the total population of Eldarya is reduced to only the inhabitants of the Guard.

- Lance donated ingredients for two gates: two gates to evacuate hundreds of people. I thought it was too expensive per person.

- Lance sent Enthraa, a mermaid who can't get out of the water, to kill Erika and Miiko ; Erika and Miiko thought it would be a good idea to be within the range of Enthraa.

- In episode 30, the hamadryads meet around the ancient tree of Yvoni. The same tree that had burned and the remains of which had been removed.

- One day, Leiftan and Lance released a monster who swallowed all the knowledge of the library. We still don't know why.

- Everyone knows that the dragons have sacrificed themselves. Even Lance. It was while reading books in the library that his hatred developed, suggesting that there is information that we don't have about the Blue Sacrifice. We still don't know this info: Lance just seems to blame the faeries for letting the dragons sacrifice themselves, nothing else.

- How did Lance and Leiftan become partners? We don't know. Why does Leif say that without him Lance is nothing? We don't know.

- How did Ykhar know that Leiftan was a traitor? Where did the hostage go?

- Ykhar and Chrome who tell an experienced killer that they are going to report him.

- Chrome who says that Leiftan manipulated him to join him whereas, in a previous episode, Leiftan reminds Chrome that it was he who called him.

- Some members of the Guard speak several languages, but no one can read the instructions on a package of pasta. And since Erika seems to have no idea where the language is located, it must be a package of alien pasta.

- Ewelein was to give us a gift. We are still waiting.

- The faerys had recent humans books, like Twilight. Ykhar didn't know what television was: yet, her favorite book was Barjavel's " The Night of Time", in which we talk about television.

- Oluhua said that it was not possible to use Leiftan's blood to transfuse Feng Zifu, without explaining why. She was not on Leiftan's list of traitors, so we still don't know what Oluhua knows.

- Miiko announces to us that there is a ritual acting as a lie detector. She must have forgotten its existence when she had to find the traitors of the Guard.

- Erika learned to understand the familiars. She quickly forgot about it.

- Erika is described as a high school student in the CGU. In the story, she is around 23-24 years old since she finished her studies.

- the Guard claimed to be able to detect dragons. Lance and Valkyon are proof that this is not true.

-  Nevra, as a vampire, is able to smell blood from a small cut. Her sister was unable to smell the blood in Ykhar’s room.

@lukeios

- (Death TW) Ykhar's death and her body looking pale after 2-3 days in the room. Total disregard for research. The body should be in stage 2 of decomposition.  

- The clothing and armors. Dressing a warrior into an armor that shows stomach - the most vulnerable part of the body - is somehow inappropriate, even for a fantasy setting. If they had other clothing used for battles OR the game would be pure fanservice - it would be ok.

- For some reason Lance's sword from The winter illustration seems like too much. It looks too broad, like a piece of a metal wall. It doesn't seem like it would be useful in a fight - it seems way too hard to use that thing than it would be necessary. Mind you - if something like this is happening in a fantasy setting, an explanation is mandatory. Is the sword extremely light? Is it made of a material that is changing shape? This point isn't exactly only about the sword. Beemoov keeps on throwing things at us without a proper explanation and if the explanation is even present, it's not explored enough. 

- Our pet is killed in episode 30. Does it change anything in the page section of pets? Is the exploration frozen? I don't think so. 

@waywardpeachworld

- Stealing food from Earth for many years without a way to preserve it. Not making a connection with any humans because "they are evil".

- Miiko told the MC there are humans in Eldarya who are searching for her. Where did they go?

- The potion fiasco. What happened to all the photos of the MC? Aren't her parents wondering "who is this girl who looks like us?" in the albums?   (according to an anon, the potion was able to erase any proof of her existence on Earth. No photos were left. Thanks, Anon! )

-They can make very powerful potions that literally erase somebody from the memory of everyone who had known them in a different realm but still cannot make a “potion” to preserve the crops they steal. 

- Ez's crimes were mentioned once and never again. This information seemed too important to just be left alone.

@glassmoonfortuneteller

- How at the beginning of the game, they mentioned us several times Erika’s special eye color (purple with golden light) and how this was an important clue to know what kind of faelienne she is. It’s never mentioned again even after we found out she’s an aengel. Apparently it wasn’t that relevant.

- How the guard has a portal to Earth near the HQ facilities but Erika never seemed interested in it to go and see it for herself since she arrived at Eldarya, especially since she was determined to know everything about the portals when she still had hope of going back to her world during the first episodes.

- When Lance kidnapped Erika, she finds out Enthraa is a traitor and that she’s working for him. After she’s rescued and goes back to the HQ, she doesn’t say this to the other members. They found out about it only when Enthraa ambushed Erika and Miiko in later episodes and gets killed.

- How food was rationed and limited at the beginning of the game, but in later episodes this doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore.

- How Lance said he found out about the sacrifice of the dragons in the library archives, but during Erika’s history classes in the HQ they said there weren’t any records about the blue sacrifice and all they knew was passed down through generations through oral traditions and tales. If that’s true, then Lance and Valkyon would have known about it since they were kids with adults telling them about the stories of the creation of Eldarya.

- What happened to Marie Anne after she was captured and purified of the faerie blood? She’s not mentioned again after that.

- Humans in Eldarya were mentioned once, and that’s it.

- How Erika is characterized as a very kind and empathic person but didn’t seem affected when she found out Ykhar was killed.

- How Leiftan was the one who killed Ykhar since he was with Erika and the other guard members in Memoria the whole time.

- Alajea’s fear of water is not a thing anymore.

- Why Erika took Valkyon leaving with Lance as a betrayal, she was right there when that happened and saw that he did it to protect her. 

@nelielombrelune

- Miko told us dragon’s ingrédients were necessary to open portals, but later she finally said those weren’t really “dragon” stuff but they called it like this because, you know, everything there is a mess.

- Humans were supposed to be a threat on Eldarya (Miiko mentioned secret societies like Illuminatis, Templars or Freemasons but we’ve never heard about them anymore)

- There is no real food in Eldarya and the Guard has to open portals to Earth to steal foodstuffs for Eels survival. They don’t know how to cook and eat raw pasta in the firsts episodes but a few episodes later they throw tea-parties where Karuto & Erika bakes crepes and cakes. 

- In episode 20, Leiftan says he's been waiting for Erika for years. Except that he does not seem to know who she is, nor her species or where she comes from, how she came here, nor her connection to the Oracle...

- When we’re in Ashkore PoV he said his ancestors killed the daemons

- Once upon a time we had to choose a “job” (infirmary, library, and I don’t remember the third one), but we never hear about it in the next episodes.

- On the illustration where Leiftan saves Erika from falling off the cliff, his wings are white, he’s got only 2 and his horns have disappeared 

- In episode 30 Lance calls Erika “the human” though he knows she’s an aengel

- What about the war ? Lance killed his brother, Erika and Leiftan sacrificed themselves and then what ? Did Lance just leave after all the time he tried to destroy Eldarya ?

- “In episode 29 Miiko (I think it was her) says that they will have enough water for everyone because they filter rainwater but in episode 19 someone has said that it barely rains in Eldarya...”

@momiyi-chan

- Three enemies of Eldarya (Triades, Illuminati, and Templars) are mentioned but never make any appearance. It is said the Templars are trying to get MC to rescue her. Where are they?

- Until episode 20 the Guard was looking for the pieces of the crystal, that were scattered on Eldarya. That was never mentioned again. Crystal became irrelevant.

- Who taught Naytili to corrupt the crystals? Leiftan and Lance were very interested in learning that skill, but it was never touched again.

@hsakurausasuke

- Mary Anne is still rooting in prison. It's like she disappeared.

@velleitxs

- Erica cannot decide if she is an aengel or a human with the blood of an aengel

@susymei 

- Episode 15, we never learned the consequences of telling or not telling the Guard, that Ashkore was stealing food in the HQ. 

- Ashkore doesn’t kill Huang Hua because Erica likes her, and yet he wants to kill her few episodes later. 

- Episode 26. We can kind of flirt with Lance. There is some tension on the cliff (if you pick right choices) and he protects us from the heat of the volcano. The episodes afterward completely forgot about those choices - it’s like Episode 26 never happened. 

@valethari

- The episode in which Gardienne becomes a mermaid to go back from the Kappa Island to the HQ: She almost drowns and her S/O saves her and carries her up the stairs to the infirmary effortlessly and princess-style. When Colaïa was the one in the dungeon and Karen, Alajéa and Gardienne tried to bring her to the sea again, they said she was SO heavy because her tail is pure muscle, and between THREE people they had a lot of trouble carrying her.

Well, that was pretty long! Thank you for reading all of those! Have a nice weekend guys and stay healthy <3 

[chilling-seavey]

Passchendaele WW2 Extension - The Unfamiliarity of Familiarity

September 12, 1945

Elizabeth came to the heartbreaking realization that her son wasn’t going to be coming home. Evelyn dealt with the concept that her brother wasn’t going to be coming home. Daniel ignored the fact that he even had a son to keep from destroying himself over the fact that he wasn’t going to be coming home.

As summer was moulding into autumn, Britain was rebuilding itself. Life in the first months post-war was busy as buildings in the cities were needing to be rebuilt and grief was fresh on the families who lost loved ones but the nationalism of the victory in Europe was unbeatable. Freedom and safety. And yet looming emptiness.

Without the fear of war, Daniel was starting to recover day by day. His PTSD from his time fighting had never been as bad as it was during the prior six years and Elizabeth was silently grateful that she didn’t lose him too. She had lost count over how many times she had metaphorically taken the gun from his hand since his own homecoming in 1915. She was only thankful that hints of her once sweet-hearted Daniel were coming back…even if it meant he refused the memory of his eldest child.

He let himself touch her again and she treasured the soft kisses in the kitchen and gentle brushes of his hand over her shoulders at the vanity or the feeling of him holding her close in their shared bed long into the night. Her heart ached for her son but it beat for her husband. The sense of somewhat normalcy was nice after years of trauma.

If you asked Daniel about his family, he would always reply with a statement about his generous wife and his angelic daughter but his voice would catch in his throat for a moment before he ended his reply with an abrupt stop. Ignoring it was better than dealing with it and if he accepted the fact that his son might have been very well dead, he might not have ever recovered.

Daniel sat on the porch in early afternoon on a particularly sunny day. He was tired from a romantic sleepless night with his wife the evening before and from constantly having to suppress feelings and memories for his own sanity. He was a grown man now – not the same nineteen year old who saw the horrors of humanity under the Belgian rain – one who now only fought to keep the worst of life out of his mind.

Evelyn had found her own place in the city that summer and she was working in a clothing store that she always admired growing up. At nearly twenty-five, Evelyn was a blossoming young woman with a whole life ahead of her and she came out of the war stronger than ever. In her small London apartment, she had a photograph of her big brother sitting proudly on her mantle. The ones that filled the Seavey’s mantle back home were still turned to face the wall every morning like ritual.

Lunch had just finished – Elizabeth had made Daniel’s favourite – and she set him out on the porch to wait as she cleaned up the dishes and started on tea. He read quietly, holding the old worn book in his hand that once belonged to his brother. He had taken up more of an appreciation for reading as he grew up…it always made him feel like Christian was with him. The late summer air was crisp and warm and the breeze made the windchimes sing a pretty song.

Their small town seemed to always be quiet – quiet in fear during the war and quiet in calmness after it. It was serene and familiar now; the same little front walk that Daniel and Elizabeth walked up together the day they got married…the plentiful grass where Evelyn would host little tea parties with her dolls…the long driveway where Charlie learned how to ride a bike. Daniel didn’t think of it much but all the memories were there whether he wanted to remember or not.

He busied himself with his book and waited for his tea.

Their street didn’t see too much traffic as it was tucked away just outside the main town admits the trees and land so the car making its way down the gravel road urged Daniel’s eyes to glance up over the top of his book. He ignored it and went back to reading.

The car approached closer, crunching the gravel under the tires as it drew closer to their house. Daniel waited for it to pass by, trying to read the same word over and over again.

The crunch of gravel stopped and the steady drone of the engine had Daniel glancing up again as the black taxi turned into his very own driveway. It was a long driveway framed with trimmed green grass on either side and Daniel watched as the car finally stopped near the middle. There was no movement. He watched curiously; the book still held lazily in both hands as he waited for the visitor to emerge from the car.

Finally, the back door opened and a man stepped out, carrying only a small bag in his hand. The man thanked the driver quietly and closed the door and the car pulled backwards out of the driveway.

Daniel stared at the man standing on his lawn, book held in the air and eyes narrowed in concentration towards the figure. He was tall and had slightly unruly brown hair with a bit of scruff lining his jaw. He was grown-up and tired and his broad frame appeared near frail and almost delicate, cheeks slightly hollow and yet there was a presence about him that made it seem like he was meant to be right there. He wore a freshly pressed air force uniform and cap, his gaze downcast.

Daniel blinked, letting his book close on his lap as he waited for the young man to speak…to declare himself…to explain his sudden appearance. But the man looked up towards the small porch, staring back at Daniel with his brother’s very own face and his very own eyes. Daniel’s breath shuttered in his chest with realization and he let the book fall to the ground as he stood on shaking legs. He didn’t believe it. He didn’t believe who he was staring at…what trick his mind was playing on him.

The young man’s eyes were brimming with tears and he dropped his bag to the ground weakly, taking a small step towards the porch. He was almost unrecognizable to his father after six years of fighting and a few months of his father shamefully ignoring his pictures at all costs. He was grown now, a young man of twenty-seven, but when realization set in, all Daniel could see was his innocent five-year-old son standing on the lawn.

Daniel didn’t recall even touching the front porch steps or the front walk and before he could even register his next breath, he was engulfing his son in a hug. The Seavey men both let out equal sobs at the same time, clinging onto each other so tightly that it appeared they were never going to let go again. Daniel smelt like home…like childhood…like familiarity and Charlie wept into his father’s neck until he was soaking himself in his tears. Familiarity was something so foreign to him now.

Daniel could feel everything; his son’s hands clutching the back of his shirt and the thin frame that nearly had him disappearing under his crisp uniform and each shuttering breath he took. Faith had dwindled over the years – after a near lifetime of loss and sacrifice you can’t really blame him – but Daniel held his son and looked up to the sky and breathed out an honest, “thank you”.

Elizabeth was inside making tea, finally letting it steep long enough to pour and she filled two mugs before glancing out the window to find the porch empty. Her concern for her husband rose in her chest and she moved to the front door to peer out to search for him. She froze in place at the sight on her lawn; her husband wrapped up in an embrace with who she could easily place as her son. Charlie’s eyes rose from his father’s shoulder to his mother as she stepped out onto the porch.

He only cried harder, reaching for her with a strained and sickeningly innocent, “Mama.”

Elizabeth nearly tripped down the stairs in her rush for him, taking her son’s face in her hands and showering him in kisses as her own tears fell and she shifted around his other side to join their hug.

“Oh my gosh, my darling boy.” Elizabeth cried, petting her hand through the ends of his shaggy brown hair at the back of his neck.

Stuck between his parents in their familiar embraces, Charlie sobbed himself sick, clinging onto both of them until he could hardly hold himself up and he doubled over and vomited onto the grass. A few of the neighbours were watching with concern from the moment they heard the crying and they stared at the family pitifully.

“Come on, darling. Let’s go inside.” Elizabeth spoke as strongly as she could, picking up her son’s back from the ground and set a hand on his back.

Charlie was choking over every breath, his relieved and yet sorrowful sobs echoing down the street as his parents led him up the front steps. He leaned on Daniel the whole way inside and Daniel didn’t dare let him out of his reach, joining him on the couch as soon as they got into the parlour and letting him curl up into his side.

Daniel knew his pain well – or at least part of it – and he let his son cry out his emotions in the comfort of his arms until his tears were streaking his shirt in dampness. Elizabeth brought over a pot from the kitchen in case he was going to be sick again as well as a glass of water and she sat on his other side. She helped Charlie take a sip of water and took off his cap and unbuttoned the top few buttons on his unform to help him breathe a little better.

“You’re safe.” Elizabeth whispered, petting her son’s hair as he cried in his father’s arms. “You’re home now.”

Daniel kept his wide eyed stare between his son and his wife, his heart hammering in his chest. Only a few minutes earlier he was living life as a father of one and now…his son was returned to him and sobbing out his terrors in his arms. It was so sudden that they hadn’t had a chance to even wrap their minds around the fact that he was home now, all they could offer was their familiar presence and the love of a parents’ touch that Charlie had been deprived of for six and a half years.

[pickwickwampus]

The following is all spoilers for my fanfic. If I ever get around to writing the rest of it, then you'll spoil a lot of it for yourself by reading this.

from what I remember, the story leaves off with Mallory and her friends in the library, researching the Cracklewood Carver. They're too slow.

A few chapters ago, Mallory overheard the ghosts in the school saying:

"If the protections keep rotting—" "He believes it's dark magic, that the sacrifice is no longer necessary." "Preposterous! Dippet performed the sacrifice for many years, as did his predecessors, before him." Mallory and her friends stood frozen behind an ugly statue of a gargoyle, a statue which decided to move with a cringe-inducing grinding noise. Crap, she hoped no one heard that. "Indeed, yet it is what Albus believes." Except neither ghost looked over. The stone gargoyle finished scratching its arse, and went still. "Foolish. Darker things, beasts from beyond the—"

The ghosts in Hogwarts didn't start talking about the failing protections on the castle that week. They've been moaning about the failing protections for almost a year, since the last summoner of the Carver, Armando Dippet, died. The ghosts aren't allowed to directly tell anyone about the protections, but that doesn't prevent them from loudly talking about it where someone could overhear them.

And someone did overhear the ghosts, and figured out what they were talking about.

The protections around the castle were powered through the sacrifice of three children to the abomination Ithaqua, the beast Mallory & the Daily Prophet knows as "the Cracklewood Carver."

Previous headmasters made the sacrifice of three magical children every seven years to protect the school, but Dumbledore refused. Dumbledore also refused to go public with previous headmasters' crimes, or seek justice for the Carver's previous victims. Dumbledore wasn't interested in the ritual or what it summoned, or even the exact cost. He just understood that one of the rituals involved summoning an abomination and making a deal with it, and said, "no." He's meant to be a figure displaying cognitive dissonance and lazy thinking -- he'll paint large swaths of people with the same brush based on who their family is, and all that characterization is meant to paint him as someone who isn't even fundamentally well-meaning. He just likes to tell a story where he is, and refuses to self-reflect even up until it kills him.

For a while, the retired previous headmaster was doing the ritual without Dumbledore's permission or knowledge. But Dippet died that past February before the ritual could be completed, and now a new deal must be struck, and the ritual must be performed, otherwise Ithaqua will get its revenge on the castle and its inhabitants for breaking their bargain. (Alternatively, someone could kill Ithaqua, which is exactly what happens.) A Hogwarts student learned of the ritual and the consequences for not carrying it out, and sought to do the ritual, himself, believing Ithaqua was responsible for the visions his classmate Celeste was having of the school in smoking ruins. (Ithaqua wasn't the threat Celeste and the other seers saw.)

Few in the Wizarding World could harness the power of Divination, but all who could saw their impending doom. Hogwarts Castle was in grave danger. The portents were clear, both to the prophets and the cartomancers could see it. But the Ministry wasn't doing anything about it, claiming the diviners were all in league with Dumbledore. In this story, Voldemort stole the stone in Harry's first year, prompting Dumbledore to raise the alarm with Fudge several years early. Fudge reacted predictably, claiming Dumbledore was out for his job.

It terrified Terrence. Hogwarts was his home, a sanctuary that has stood for near a thousand years, and Celeste Avery said she saw a vision of it in ruins. And no one was doing anything about it.

If asked, Terrence would've told himself his motives were pure, to protect the school, but if he'd examined his feelings he would've realized he felt he couldn't leave the school behind. He wanted a tie to it, a means of being relevant to it, and on some level wanted recognition that he was necessary to the school.

The demon overpowered him. It preferred the deaths of wizard children liable to change the destiny of the magical world, but the wills of the previous summoners were too strong for it to get what it really wanted from them. That changed with Terrence Higgs. Ithaqua could see marks of fate around those three children — it wanted to destroy them and eat their potential. It wasn't attracted much to Rowle or Harper, but to Mallory, who drew the beast most of all, because of what she's willing to do.

The subtext around Mallory and her muggle parents is that they discovered the wizarding world, and immediately discovered that wizards had abrogated themselves of their duty to others. They had the cure to heart disease, could regrow organs and bones, prevent most kinds of illnesses, and yet muggles all around the world were still dying of those illnesses. "Secrecy" wasn't a good enough reason to them to allow the deaths of all those people. So Patricia, Tony, and Mallory agreed to use Hogwarts as a means of making potions available to muggles, Statute or no Statute.

That's a large part of why Mallory's afraid of people reading her mind, why she's tied her ability to be a "hero" to her access to the school. And that's the kind of plan Mallory thinks is a good idea when she's eleven. Within a year her plans will include the overthrow of the entire wizarding government and who knows what she'll be doing by the time she's 20.

So Ithaqua wants her dead. And Mallory's gift of revelation, the small part of herself that is actually a demon of revelation tied to the understanding of hidden things knows this, and is trying to tell her that:

A man formed out of wax loomed before her. She lit the wick and he burned with a Silver Flame. Pressure, like her ears were about to pop. Lipstick smeared across a girl's cheek. The taste of blood in her mouth. And now in her hands she wielded a blade of Silver Fire, and burned it burned it burned—

Things were going very badly for Higgs, who as rapidly deteriorating from the demon's deal. He kidnaps both Mallory and Harper, forcing them into a second confrontation with the beast. Gemma Farley, who had been independently investigating, is struck down trying to stop him. Mallory watches Gemma fall, and sees the girl's lipstick smeared across her face, like in her vision.

"Gemma?" Higgs choked, "how did you— you can't be here."

"Seriously?" she scoffed, "you seriously thought I wouldn't find out? I keep records, Terrence. A forged letter to the Headmaster. You made me help."

"For Hogwarts," he croaked, "for Hogwarts, if you knew you'd agree — you did agree —"

"Merlin, Terrence," Farley's face crumpled, "no, no — how could I agree? They're first years. I don't understand. This isn't about blood, I know you're not a blood purist," her mouth open, she shook her head, "I don't understand."

"The Dark Lord's back, you agreed. You heard what the ghosts said last year. Dumbledore wouldn't commit to the sacrifices needed to protect the castle. Three students to save hundreds, you know that makes sense."

She shook her head, "no."

And the last thing Mallory sees before she crosses through the fire is Farley's crumpled body, her cheek smeared with red lipstick.

(I didn't roll the dice yet on whether Gemma lives or dies.)

This time, the arena is a rapidly flooding basement in an abandoned house on the edge of the forbidden forest. Her wand is snapped, but that doesn't stop her.

Mallory asks him if he knows the unlocking spell. Harper says he can't accidentally-on-purpose do accidental magic.

"Yes you can," she says, annoyed that he was arguing this now, when it seemed self-evident that any witch or wizard could use magic without a wand.

"No, you can't. That's — just because you saw Dumbledore or some other wizard do it, doesn't mean you can— you're not bloody Merlin."

Mallory ignores him and keeps gathering what she needs, "I've done it before."

"No, you haven't. You've done it on accident, not on purpose — you need a wand. It's like Tonks, Hopkins, with the metamorphmagi. It's blood — you can't---"

"Yes, I can," she said, firmly.

He looks at her as though she's delusional, but she gets a flash of certainty, that he now believes she isn't a muggleborn at all, and finds herself off-balance and almost embarrassed for him, past the terror of the moment.

I ended up writing that she burns the lock off, or part of the door to get out, since the lock is magically locked and she can't do an unlocking spell.

When she can do it, it's like touching a live wire, almost. Half the time the feeling's so intense that she gets distracted and loses it. But when she doesn't lose her grip, the sensation feels a bit like ecstacy, like a synchronization up and through her body, sparking from the bottom of her spine to the crown of her head. And if she holds it there, makes a mental motion of clenching, but without pressure, then sometimes she can push it out through her hand. Right now, she was pushing out the concept of heat. Mallory felt quite familiar with fire, with hot objects and the way fire burned. She'd practiced this enough back in South Brent for her to expect this to work. It's easier here, she thinks. There's something in the air, a sick kind of pressure radiating cold, and the heat in her, an ever-burning brightness that she could never remember not feeling, lashed out in protest. This fire wanted out, and Mallory was more than happy to oblige it. [she heats up the metal of the handle until it's glowing red hot.] "Alright, now we just need to cool it off, but quickly." Harper just stared at her, eyes bugged out in stunned disbelief.

The kids escape as Higgs succumbs to the demon. Almost all of Blackthorn's devices fail, except for one:

And then something decidedly strange happened. The pocket mirror, so carelessly tossed into the muck, popped open. And like something out of the creepiest horror movies, a hand reached out of the mirror. Only it wasn't just a hand. The hand became an arm, then a torso, and then the towering figure of Professor Blackthorn, standing right on top of the tiny mirror.

Corvinus Blackthorn arrives with the sword, puts them in a circle of protection, and challenges the abomination.

She catches a glimpse of desiccated flesh and sharp, jagged bone through the trees. The space between the trees is narrow, light swallowed up by an oppressive, weighty darkness. A tail made of jagged broken bones lashes out, gouging blackthorn. Deep gouges in his chest and arm. Bones uneven and ugly, with rotting meat sloughing off with every movement.

Catches him across the chest and he slams into the trunk with all the grace of a ragdoll. Blackthorn is thrown, arm shattering and sword wrenched from his grip. Silver fire paints an arc where it fell, igniting pools of water and debris.

The circle was broken.

It floods the forest floor with ice water, and tries to mutilate Blackthorn, but it doesn't work because Blackthorn's body is made of clay, not flesh. Mallory picks up Blackthorn's sword, burning herself very badly, and enters a space between time where she can see it clearly, and strikes the monster down as it attempts to kill Blackthorn, then collapses. It's Mallory's strike that kills and damages the monster more so than Blackthorn's, for Blackthorn is more like the beast than Mallory.

I think I decided to have Narcissa's POV be the aftermath chapter, revealing that the aurors pursued Blackthorn to the forest, and suffered heavy losses. Their actions were why the abomination was so slow -- it's attention was split.

Tonks was injured badly, and Narcissa was secretly visiting Andromeda to offer hospital care and muse about the past:

"Is it dead?" Andy asked. Is Dora safe?

"I'm not sure," Narcissa wetted her lips, hesitating before she finally said, "Bella's old master was there. I think that's why they're holding their tongues. They'd have to reveal they let him back in the country." Andy almost flinched.

They never talked about Bella, never spoke about the third Black sister, not even in passing. The way Andy acted, it was though she wished to forget they even had an eldest sister, but Narcissa couldn't forget, not even if she wanted to. Bella was etched into her eyelids, carved into her flesh like a silver sickle-blade. Their sister, skin smeared with blood, coming home with gleaming eyes and a wicked sharp smile.

Andy used to smile to express comfort, joy, and wonder. But Bella's were a whole different matter.

Narcissa could make an entire catalog of Bella's smiles, and there'd still be more to file away. She had these sweet smiles, the sort she'd make when someone asked her a question they would regret ever asking. Then there were the moments she'd catch her sister reading some book on advanced meta-magical theory, taking notes in her scrawling script. Those smiles were relaxed and easy, like lounging in a chair warmed by the fire.

Most common, though, were the sharp and fleeting smiles of their youth. Mother never understood Bella. She couldn't understand Andy, either, but it was Bella she came down on the hardest. Bella, who had to be an example to her younger sisters, elegant and demur. Bella, who couldn't sit still for more than five minutes at a time, and was brighter than Andy and Narcissa put together.

She was gone, now. She'd been gone for years, found dead in her cell a week before Beltane, four years ago. But in truth, Narcissa knew she'd been gone for near a decade before she died. Bella's body just took its time catching up with her mind.

It was absurd how another person could become so necessary, like a part of yourself you didn't realize could go missing. She'd sometimes see some book on arithmancy and casually think to herself that Bella would enjoy it, only to remember that Bella was dead. Bella would never enjoy it, just like she'd never live to see Draco grow into an adult wizard or have her own children. It still felt like a bludger to the chest, even after all this time.

And once she started looking, Bella was everywhere. She found Bella in the smell of stale cigarettes and cheap muggle whiskey, found her in old records playing on the wireless, in powerful and complicated works of magic that she knew Bella would've found enthralling. Bella haunted her in the familiar scowl on that little girl's face, in the bright, quicksilver smile of her son. Narcissa saw the girl Bella used to be, before the Dark Lord twisted her into something ugly and seething.

No, neither she nor Andy could bear to speak of Bella, but their every interaction was defined by her absence.

Bella had blamed herself for Andy's departure, just as Andy blamed herself for Dora's decisions. In a sense, they were both a little right.

Bella was the one who introduced Andy to all that muggle nonsense. Cigarettes and the cinema, their teenage nights were spent drinking and partying. Bella, she knew, had drowned herself in booze and recreational potions to escape their family, escape the twists of her own mind, mutating all that was good and whole into sharp angles and magic. Andy, though, became enamoured by the muggles. It was their world that captured her imagination, and muggleness of any kind became the quickest way to provoke those warm summer-day smiles. The trifling distraction became her life. After Andy eloped, it seemed that Bella's smiles had vanished with her. Bella's mirror calls became flat and lifeless, the ever-present gleam in her eyes, gone. Even Blackthorn's antics weren't enough to move her to good humor.

But it was never Bella's fault, not really.

Yes, the subtext here is that Narcissa was infatuated with her sister, willing to excuse her violence, and that Mallory strongly resembles Bellatrix Black. The audience is supposed to be given the sense that this Bellatrix is a bit of a departure from canon Bellatrix.

(I wanted to write like, the most fucked up possible Family Black.)

Andromeda wants to be put in touch with Blackthorn, believing he will be able to heal here daughter, but Narcissa refuses, believing Blackthorn is a plague on their family.

After Hogwarts, Bella ended up turning down the Lestranges to earn her Mastery, studying under Professor Blackthorn, instead. But from what Narcissa understood through various mirror-calls throughout the years, most of this "studying" was really them jaunting around the globe. Narcissa remembered reading about him in the paper, once. The Floating City of Mojipar had fallen from the sky, hundreds dead. And at the center of it all was the necromancer, Corvinus Blackthorn. The picture had been haunting, a city crumbling, flames eating through homes as it hurtled toward the ground. The worst part was, she could so easily imagine Bella there. Bella, with her sharp grin and gleaming eyes, laughing amidst the chaos.

Narcissa is unable to stop Andromeda from leaving to visit him, and despairs about how she wishes she could freeze the memories of her sisters in amber. It's all supposed to be very creepy.

I was considering writing the battle also from Tonks' POV instead, which would've let me throw in a number of conflicts between Dumbledore and Blackthorn, but I ended up rolling those ideas into a later chapter.

the story picks up again with Mallory recovering in a house outside Koldovstoretz, a wizarding school in Russia with Blackthorn's former mentor, and old wizard named Yegor. She learns picking up the sword badly injured her, because it was a cursed sword. That combined with the oath she broke took a heavy toll, and most of this time she spends recovering in bed.

(I hadn't decided when Andromeda visits, but it was supposed to be mildly revealing.)

Bored, she starts rummaging through the room she's staying in, and discovers it contains Blackthorn's effects from when he was Yegor's apprentice, as well as several shoeboxes worth of letters between Bellatrix Black, Narcissa, Blackthorn, etc. Most of these conversations are one-sided, because Mallory only has the letters Bellatrix received, not the ones she sent, aside from a few Bellatrix sent Blackthorn. There are also pictures, and Mallory notices that she looks a lot like Bellatrix and Andromeda.

I wasn't sure how I was going to present the letters. Probably as stand-alones. My notes for the letters look like:

The first letter comes from Andromeda, who has recently learned that Bellatrix has run away rather than become the fiance of Lestrange. Her parents may have mailed her too, but it is likely Bellatrix burnt those letters. Andromeda may reference letters from her parents. Discusses how Bellatrix's leaving has been taken by the family. Mentions how badly Narcissa's taking it.

The year is 1974, and Bellatrix Black is 23 years old, a journeyman headed to Ugadou to finish her education. Andromeda is 21 years old, and has a one year old baby with Ted Tonks. Narcissa is 19, already married to Lucius Malfoy. Sirius is 15, in the throws of rebellion. He might've already run away. Regulus is 13, and entering his third year at Hogwarts. One letter should mention some kind of awkward romantic encounter between Corvinus and Bella.

1976 — Flight from Britain Andromeda asks Bellatrix, in an oblique way, for help going into hiding. For a while she's been fine, staying in MACUSA territory with Ted and the baby, believing themselves outside the reach of the family. But she's recently gotten a letter from Narcissa, who is concerned that the family Head (Arcturus Black III, Orion's father) is being radicalized further by Voldemort. And Narcissa heard a rumor that the family knows where she's hiding.

1977 — The Last Days A letter from Narcissa, it's only two words: "Please don't." A letter from her mother or an aunt, saying something like: You have my greatest sympathies and I fully understand your dedication to this wizard, but given the challenges that are now facing this family, you don't feel you have a responsibility to return home?

It's implied that something happened after that, since there are no more letters. Later it would be revealed that Bellatrix was goaded into visiting her family home, where she was captured and presented to Voldemort as a sacrifice. This did not go how the Black family expected it to.

At this point, the audience is supposed to have drawn the obvious conclusion that Mallory is Bellatrix's daughter, otherwise I wouldn't have spent so many pages fleshing out Bellatrix's character.

Mallory learns that Bellatrix ran away from home after she graduated Hogwarts to study higher magics. This plan would've failed, except Blackthorn took an interest in her and made her his apprentice. Bellatrix and Blackthorn were at one point in a serious relationship. Bellatrix was Blackthorn's former apprentice, and he entered into a relationship with her as her apprenticeship concluded.

Blackthorn and Bellatrix's relationship provides some context for why Blackthorn came to Hogwarts at all (when he learned that it was Mallory who was attacked,) and why he contrived to have her stay at his mentor's house. Mallory learns a bit about wandlore and her own ability at divination when Blackthorn helps her select a new wand. He gives her gifts and other things which Mallory finds vaguely suspicious — she's not sure if it's about Bellatrix, or if he's interested in her in particular, but his generosity and willingness to advise her has her concerned. He finds out she snooped and read the letters, and talks to her about how her gifts are hereditary and mark her out as a target.

That night, she hears Dumbledore arrive, and overhears a conversation that terrifies her.

She's not a distant relation of a squib of the Black family. Andromeda Black was approached a few nights after Voldemort's "death" by a haggard Bellatrix, carrying a baby. Bellatrix demanded Andromeda take the baby, keep it secret, that she had something she needed to do. Then she went and tortured the Longbottoms.

Andromeda took the baby to Dumbledore, believing it to be Voldemort's heir. Dumbledore also drew that conclusion, named the baby "Mallory," for "bad," and left her with a squib family (Mallory's dad Hopkins is the son of a squib related to the wizarding family Hopkins,) who couldn't have children. He intended to use her in the war when Voldemort came back, either as bait or as a weapon.

Mallory also learns she's discovered hints about her parentage before, and every time she figures it out, Dumbledore erases her memory. Blackthorn is furious, and says she ought to know the truth.

Blackthorn also insists that Bellatrix was a double-agent, a spy who'd been imperius'd by Voldemort but broke the spell and decided to get revenge by spying on him for Blackthorn. Mallory finds Blackthorn's claims somewhat contradictory and confusing, but is distracted by Dumbledore:

Dumbledore plans to erase her mind again, so she quickly writes down everything important in her notebook, with the hope that Dumbledore won't find out she did this in her mind, or the notebook itself.

Her memory is erased, her note is found, but she wrote it in hard pencil and a ghost of it remained on the paper behind it. Mallory's gift of revelation means that two days later, she notices a page has been torn out of her notebook, and that the imprints remain, and bothers to get back some of the message.

When Mallory returns to Hogwarts, she discovers from a letter from her parents that Danny is in a coma. And Snape takes her to detention for breaking the statute of secrecy. They obliviated Danny's memories of magic, and because magic was such a large part of his life, it erased almost all of his memories.

I was planning to write out an arc where we follow Danny from when he got Mallory's phone call, to him stealing and conning his way all the way to Scotland to save her. He manages to get to Dufftown, and finds an alarming military occupation in town, one that becomes relevant later when the audience learns that more muggleborn families are disappearing -- it's not Voldemort, but muggles preparing to go to war against wizarding kind.

Danny almost gets to the castle, but is turned back by the wards repeatedly until eventually he attracts the attention of a teacher who inexpertly obliviates him.

Mallory attempts to smuggle him healing potions, but she's too late. And she doesn't understand why obliviation killed him, when so many get obliviated every day, even large obliviations, and are fine.

She declares revenge, but most of all won't accept that he's dead. She tries to get in contact with Blackthorn again, saying she'll do anything, contact anyone (implicitly threatening to contact voldemort, since he apparently returned from death) if it means bringing him back.

Blackthorn agrees to help her. He says he knows how to return a soul from death, but doesn't have the objects he needs. That he's also trying to return someone from the dead. Mallory takes that to mean Bellatrix, though she's wrong. He's trying to bring back his daughter who he murdered (without knowing she was his daughter), accidentally setting a bloodline curse on himself. If he brings her back, he's free of the curse. He tells her that she needs to learn how to protect her mind first, from obliviation and from legilimancy. And once they do that, he will teach her and help her. He expresses interest in having her check in with him frequently, because he's worried she's going insane.

This works well with Mallory's existing goals of learning to protect her mind, so she agrees, though remains suspicious.

After several months, Mallory begins to suspect that he's not interested in her because of Bellatrix, or because he thinks she'll be as smart as Bellatrix, but that she's most likely his daughter, not Voldemort's.

"Why..." Mallory trailed off, "why didn't you take me in, after Bellatrix... after what happened." Moreover, she wanted to know why she hadn't been placed with someone she was related to, since wizards seemed to care about blood so much.

"I was out of the country," a pause, "after, you were six years old, raised by muggles — raised by a family that cared for you." Another pause, "Andromeda refused to keep you. Too much danger. The danger passed only two years after she gave you away. And everyone — Andromeda, Bellatrix, myself, none of us wanted to see you with Druella or Cygnus. Your grandparents. Your other aunt, Narcissa, she wasn't an option, either. No." Shakes his head.

"But not you. That's everyone else, not you."

"I am not a fit parent. I travel to dangerous places, put myself in peril. Less, now, but" he breathed a sigh out his nose, "I'd rather no one know who you are — someone would hurt you. Right now you can walk down the street, draw no stares or whispers. You have time to learn as you will, face few who would wish you ill."

She wasn't stupid. Mallory might not be a super-genius like Felix or (apparently) Bellatrix, but she was bright enough to make the obvious connection. There were holes in this theory. Bellatrix shipped Mallory off to Andromeda's, instead of Blackthorn's. He said he'd been off on a sabbatical, slaying demons or whatever, and was unreachable. But Mallory thought that seemed unlikely. Surely he would've kept his magic mirror on him. He managed to find time to call her when he was in the middle of Death Valley, after all, while he was hunting down some kind of crazed demon-summoning cult. He called to give her a lecture on doxies. There was no way he wouldn't answer the magic mirror for Bellatrix. Kind of blew a huge hole in the side of that ship, though it wasn't sunk just yet. There could be another explanation. Perhaps he couldn't pick up the mirror for some other reason he wasn't telling her. Maybe he'd been captured by the free goblin army, made to summon demons for their plot to overthrow all wizardry and bathe in the blood of their long-hated enemies. Or he could've spent those four years in a Solomonari dungeon before finally escaping. And then he finds out his kid already has a family, and that she's happy there, so he leaves Mallory alone.

...or maybe he was busy getting avada kedavra'd out of his body, necessitating a new one being built out of clay.

In other words, Bellatrix's mother kidnapped her and delivered her to Lord Voldemort to be murdered by Lord Voldemort because Bellatrix was planning on marrying Lord Voldemort's alter-ego.

And Bellatrix didn't actually know Voldemort was Blackthorn's alter ego. (The fic "Tom Riddle's Grand Adventure" was meant to explain how Tom became Corvinus. The short version is he ends up being run out of Wizarding Britain and ends up in Grindelwald's warzone until he stumbles into Yegor, who advises him against making more horcruxes, so instead of an incompetent insane Voldemort, you get a competent insane Voldemort who spends a significant portion of his time teaching defense against the dark arts at a russian magic school. Both are extremely evil. This was never a redemption story.) until that day.

Mallory also can't help but notice that he's not a good person. At first she wants to believe he is, because facing the reality that her birth parents are monsters seems overwhelming to her. So she spends time around him, around his associates, and the more she does the less she finds herself able to make excuses for him or for her birth mother. What they did doesn't make sense. And they say it'll make sense when she's older, but she realizes that all they're doing is trying to get her to sell out to their values and become like them. And she won't.

And this ties in strongly with the way the wizarding world treats family -- how the text of the HP books says "family isn't important" but the subtext all but screams that it does, and how so much HP fanfic follows suit. It always bugged me, so I decided to invert that. While the characters and in-game universe all explicitly believe it matters who your family is, over and over the old families get hoisted by their own petards. The very magic they think makes them superior royally fucks them over and over again. And Mallory's birth family acts to screw her over or hurt her, even when they're saying they intend to help. More importantly, she starts seeing how there are lines she doesn't want to cross, things she won't do for power or even Danny.

Mallory begins to hate the wizarding world with a vengeful passion. The teachers are corrupt, the adults have tremendous power but use it for selfish and stupid purposes, and their entire world seems hell-bent on becoming as authoritarian as possible. She decides to bring down the British Wizarding government. And when she discovers the others are just as bad or worse, they become targets as well.

Dumbledore eventually learns about Mallory's connection to Blackthorn and some of her plans, resulting in a renewed attempt to obliviate her. Mallory keeps her memories and flees, this time successfully, to her muggle parents. They board a plane and attempt to head to the US, where some relatives live. Once off the plane they're accosted by security. It turns out the muggle government knows Mallory's a witch, and is actively hunting down any muggleborn families to study them and then murder them, believing wizardkind to be a threat to their control. They've figured out a way to get around wizarding mindwipes using the power of being able to write things down on a computer and send files with that information to any location in the world, including locations the writer doesn't know, themselves.

Blackthorn comes to the rescue, though only as she's already escaping, having decided there is another government she must destroy, and that's around when Mallory learns he's Voldemort. She's repulsed and terrified for her parents, who she fears he'll kill. He assures her he won't. She realizes the only reason why she should believe him is that he is cursed to not completely fuck her over by a bloodline curse.

I had some text from these scenes but I lost some of the word docs in 2015 when I switched computers. It's laid out that he can't kill Mallory because their ancestor put a bloodline curse on the family that makes it suicide to kill or weaken your descendants. Most of his family went mad because they did lots of child abuse.

Mallory finds all of this disgusting. Like, his main motive for not murdering her parents is that he is restricted by a curse. He knows she'll grow up strong and take revenge on him if he kills her loved ones. She realizes she can never trust him, because he's doing "good" things for the wrong reasons. And she realizes that one day she'll have to destroy him.

She at various points confronts him about how he murdered people, about how he took on the role of Voldemort. He says things like, "Voldemort wasn't me, it was a mask" or "it was all for a greater purpose," but to Mallory, those are poor excuses. It's more or less meant to parody and mock a lot of stories that seriously use those excuses as a reason for the main character to get along with Voldemort.

Voldemort reveals that he'd planned for Dumbledore, but had hesitated with carrying out his plan -- he was going to pass off Blackthorn as Voldemort's distant cousin. That would explain Mallory's parseltongue (the lisp from chapter 1, how she has blanks and a headache after encountering salazar slytherin's portrait and snakes in the common room, etc are supposed to be after-effects of obliviation.) and Blackthorn-as-a-parent prevented Dumbledore from more memory wipes.

If he just took her to Koldovstoretz, Dumbledore would pursue her. And they couldn't keep her presence a secret forever. Mallory decides she wants to go back to Hogwarts anyway, because she doesn't want to be near him.

Mallory returns to Hogwarts, and desperately wishes the lie they were telling was true, that she really only was Voldemort's distant cousin and that Blackthorn really was a wizard on the side of making the world better. But he isn't, and she knows it. And she can't pretend they aren't her birth parents, because she has the same bloodline curses and problems they do. But she can take everything they know and use it to kill every abomination, every source of power for the old families, including her own. And that causes her to almost implode, because those sources of power are a part of her, and she spends a lot of time battling herself. The central question of this fight being how do you destroy something when part of you is that something? Not "how" as in "how could you?" but "how" as a technical question. The demons in her mind are all enemies, and she plays them off one another and tricks most of them into fighting one another. Except for the part of her that is the demon of revelation, which I didn't get around to figuring out how she'd destroy before I stopped working on this project.

Her demons were:

Yig ◆◆◆ A god of //Revelation//. Reveals itself as a great serpent of knowledge, promising communication and power for worship. Should you break a covenant with it, you will become deformed and snake-like, your wits addled and determination sapped. The gift of parseltongue comes at the cost of a loss in eloquence in human tongues. Words do not come to you easily. The power of parselmagic and the command of snakes becomes yours. Yig took special interest in the Gaunt family and cursed them to not betray their children, and no member of the family has failed to betray their children, so they are very cursed. **Enyo (Death) ◆◆◆** A god of //Domination //inherited from the **House of Peverell** before 1214//, //after the brothers tricked it. They gained the three Deathly Hallows, and later used the three Hallows in a ritual to take on a measure of the god's power, into themselves. While the brothers succeeded, they found that death and sorrow follows those who bear the mark of Enyo, no matter that they gained some authority over the magic of life and death. **Gath ◆◆** A greater demon of //Revelation, //inherited from **House of Gaunt** in the middle ages. The Keeper of the Secrets, The Guardian of the Knowledge, is a slimy shape-shifting mass, which can be summoned with mud and the blood of the invoker. When summoned will reveal much-needed information, but at a great cost. Another, lesser ritual was invoked by the **House of Gaunt,** many years ago. Gives the supplicant a talent for legilimency, to pry secrets from the minds of others, understanding. But in every generation, a member of the family must look into the mind of another, //know them,// and then sacrifice that person and their secrets to Volgna-Gath. If the chain breaks, the knowledge is used to hurt you: you see the least charitable thoughts about you when you look into another's mind. You're overwhelmed with sensation. **Golothess** A lesser demon of //Obliteration //inherited from the **Black** **family, **through **Ella Max** before 1829. A piece of the 10 pieces of Golothess was imbued into each bloodline. Of those lines, three have withered- Clagg, Muldoon, and Bragge, their pieces lost to the world forever. The lost shards weaken the overall power of the ritual. In battle, they are strengthened with confidence, boldness, and power. This effect is strengthened the more they are impaired by drink or other substances. The effect does stack. **Ngyr-Korath** A greater demon of //Obliteration, //inherited from the **Black family **through **Licorus Black** in the 1850's. The **Flint family** also made this pact, but effects from the same pact are not additive. A 20% luck to all actions in the name of chaos and destruction of intelligent life. She has an increased chance of dying young. If the Family refuses to sacrifice a human or other intelligent species once per year, they all become squibs. If the family doesn't remain extant, all with the blood become squibs. **Nyarlathotep** A lesser demon of //Liberation, //inherited through the **Bulstrode Family. **One in every generation of family blood shall have the power to shapeshift. One in every generation will go mad. The exact ritual is a closely guarded secret. Mallory, Draco, Millicent or Nymphadora will go insane. Nymphadora gained the power to shapeshift.

Those are the monsters Mallory must defeat within herself in order to be able to carry out her will.

Shortly after Mallory returns, Hogwarts gets bombed by the muggle military with Mallory and her classmates in it. This sparks a war. I didn't have a lot of the war written out, but the idea was to introduce in all the previous chapters most of the major factions that would be fighting. And they're all fighting each other while fighting the larger threat.

Then there are the threats from other wizarding communities that want to do war.

And there's a cosmic being encroaching on their reality, one that'll destroy muggle and wizarding civilization, and everyone is too busy killing each other to try to stop it. (A kind of written scream about how people won't work together that I didn't understand so well why that happened at the time.)

It all goes very badly.

...

They resurrect Danny and Lily Potter using the three Deathly Hallows. Mallory demands Blackthorn do this for her gratis. He does because he needs her help to be free of a bloodline curse, but the result is less than what she hoped for. Danny's spirit returns, and is put in a clay body, and will not age, much like Lily. He hopes that bringing them back will not only free him of the bloodline curse, but earn both Mallory and Harry's loyalty. It is not enough for either Mallory and Harry, because Blackthorn/Riddle's actions didn't just impact Mallory and Harry. And one of the arcs was going to be them teaming up to murder Tom/Blackthorn. I never got around to figuring out the third person they'd get to resurrect. I made the rule they were only able to resurrect three people. (Three Hallows, three casters, three people brought back from the dead; the ring to summon the soul, the cloak to hide them from death, and the wand to open a gate. Mostly to prevent it from raising the question, "why aren't wizards raising the dead left and right?")

The resurrection was to involve a an arc where they go and enter the realm of death together to bring back the souls of Lily and Danny. I had a few ideas -- one was a completely static world where all time was in form-shapes, the other was a whimsical-but-stereotypical eternal train station, and the third was a sewer that morphs you into deathly things the longer you stay in it. Never worked out which I was going to go with.

...

An important piece of lore in the story was that Mallory was cursed. A lot of descendants of "old families" are cursed. Every person with a gift for divination, or special power has gotten it from a deal their family made with a demon a long time ago. And that demon has cursed their entire line to have a power at a cost. This power is achieved by ripping out a piece of their soul and replacing it with a piece of the demon.

Mallory, due to the number of demons both sides of her family has made compacts with, has a soul that is mostly made out of demon parts. She is barely human, but decides to fight them anyway.

...

This story was specifically designed so that the setting and environment would be geared towards "the world is made up of domination and powerful families." Even magic is written as giving more power to authority. But my main characters reject all of it, and decide to destroy that power through whatever means necessary. But the main way I did this was tying any "family" power to the destruction of all sentient life. So choosing "family" always meant choosing the illusion of "family" for the price of killing everyone a bit, including that family. And that power systematically destroys every family who deals in it, revealing everyone who uses it as someone who doesn't love their families at all, doesn't love anyone.

Mallory doesn't find herself curious about the power "she is owed" by society, because she wants to destroy that society. She does not try to get its approval, or use that information to impress her classmates, nor does she see herself as a reformist or muggle apologist or pureblood apologist or whatever. If at some point the purebloods in the school were to find out her identity and try to make friends with her, she would've roundly rejected them. Her refrain that she would never be friends with these people in the beginning of the story is a decision she keeps throughout the whole story.

(The "exception" is Castor Avery, who betrays his family and joins her team.)

There are a lot of stories about how once someone finds out they're really a member of the Black family, or related to Voldemort, they become inherently aligned with them out of some sense that family trumps all, and in doing so end up becoming like the badguys themselves, though they make token attempts at resistance. This was not that story. Any time Mallory interacts with structures of power, she's gathering information on how to destroy them. She understands that the dark side will offer her gifts and comforts, and even save her friend Danny for the sake of buying her loyalty. She'll accept any gifts without explicit strings, and immediately use that gift or tool to subvert them with no guilt or second thoughts.

Often, those stories also identify the purebloods as literally more powerful than everyone else. And while this story has many characters buying into that frame of view, and the reality of the story buys into it, Mallory doesn't. And that makes them all a bit weaker. Her willingness to deep-down refuse to believe in their authority literally damages their authority, and their ability to do magic around her.

I wanted to show what it feels like for one to feel like the whole world is telling them they have to accept something sick as true, that they even half-believe its true, and then reject it anyway not because reality doesn't look that way, but because you've decided you're going to change it. I wanted to show that as possible.

That was the whole point of making magic such that "authority" makes your magic stronger. I intended to deconstruct the reactionary themes in HP that lead to so many reactionary fics. Mallory explicitly chooses her muggle family. Explicitly chooses to condemn both the wizarding governments and muggle governments. And no matter how hard Dumbledore and others anticipate that she'll become a dark witch, she refuses the path they attempt to pigeonhole her into.

A part of this is how her name is handled. Riddle and Black named her "Carina Rose" and Mallory never changes her name to reflect that. Throughout the whole story, she goes by Mallory Hopkins, and thinks of herself as Mallory Hopkins. When she learns her name was meant as a joke by Dumbledore, she starts thinking of herself as "Hopkins" more so than Mallory, because the Hopkins were the people she chose, and throughout the story she works to keep them safe and away from her birth family.

A major theme was going to be found family vs anticipated loyalty to hereditary family. Mallory's muggle parents were set up as (to Mallory) "good people," in contrast to her biological family, who were blatantly and obviously bad people, no matter how they tried to excuse their behavior with claims that it's "tradition," or that what they were doing was "necessary" for the "betterment of the world." Mallory's biological family was going to give her gifts, attention, etc., all in the hopes of converting her to their side. And the tension in these stories usually is that the main character is tempted, or becomes corrupted, or otherwise falls in with the bad people and starts making excuses for them.

My focus on identifying everything as "bullying" at the time was that this story was planned out in 2014, after I'd endured some pretty severe bullying. Writing this story was part therapy for me, to work out my feelings about feeling as helpless and angry as Mallory did. And to me it felt like the whole world was set up in such a way that the "authority" wins, and the only thing to do was to hide and plot. So I poured out my anger and disgust into this story, made it reflect the lack of care I saw in people.

I no longer think things are hopeless like that, so the world of Mallory is less appealing to me to write in.

[dryad-of-the-dogwood]

Until the End

Fandom: Dragon Age

Rating: M

Word count: 2,505

TW/CWs: Major character death, violence, angst, saying last goodbyes, all that awful stuff.

This is a No Cure for the Calling story, an Alistair and Cousland go into the Deep Roads together story, and I never thought I would write this but Silhouette by Aquilo got stuck in the angstiest part of my head and I sobbed writing it down, but I still did it. Forgive me.

Until the End (read on AO3)

The moment Alistair found her sitting up in bed one morning, staring at the wall with her expression perfectly blank, he knew. Nalissa Cousland was vibrant and intense, whether her emotions were good or bad, and Nalissa Theirin was no different. If there was something too intense for her to feel, that made it too much for anyone in the world, because she was the strongest person he had ever known. And the only thing she couldn’t be stronger than was the Calling.

They had both thought they heard it once, years ago. The Inquisition—or more accurately, Leliana—had told them not to worry, that it wasn’t real, that the Inquisitor would handle it. And she had, somehow, however she had killed a darkspawn magister that kept him from being reborn into the next available blighted body. They had wondered, but not even Leliana had really known the answer beyond some combination of Rift magic, a dead red lyrium-corrupted dragon, and the power of an ostensible elven god. And so it had been yet another thing that wasn’t an answer, just like Avernus’ research had been a dead end, just like Nalissa had never been able to cobble together a cure from the Wilds flowers that had saved Ash warriors’ hounds or get a straight answer out of Grand Enchanter Fiona about whatever had cured her all those years ago. Finally when the mage had broken down into tears, she had admitted she didn’t know, couldn’t give an answer even to save the king and queen of Ferelden, no matter how much she might want to. And that had been the last lead before the trail had gone cold.

So when Nalissa looked up at Alistair, her eyes sunken and shadowed but still the same heart-wrenchingly beautiful sea green he had fallen in love with, he had read it on her face. The dreams were returning, she was hearing the whisper of the song, and her time had come.

It should have been him first. Why wasn’t it him? He had taken his Joining months before she had, he had been the one to perform that Void-forsaken ritual that had saved them at a cost that all these years later they still didn’t fully understand. It should have been him.

But it wasn’t, and he wept as he pulled her into his arms, even if she didn’t. Even if she locked everything away behind the mask of nobility that even after two decades on the throne, he had never learned to wear like she did. She was indomitable, his Nalissa, in everything except the Calling she couldn’t escape.

She very nearly physically fought him when Alistair told her he was coming with her. It was her Calling, not his, she had insisted, had shouted it at him in their bedchamber in a bout of hysteria he had never once seen her give into before. She had pleaded, threatened, tried to give him an order as Warden-Commander, but he had only smiled sadly and offered to travel to Amaranthine with her for trial if she wanted to bring him up on charges of insubordination. Only then did she cry into his chest, not for herself but for him, when she realized there was nothing she could do to talk him out of it.

He had promised her once, when they sat together in the grass on an early spring day during the Blight. He had promised her he would be with her until the end, and he meant it. An archdemon couldn’t keep him away. The fact that he didn’t hear the Calling yet wouldn’t either.

The preparation, that was almost worse than the realization. The landsmeet was a debacle, full of angry lords terrified of more instability so close on the heels of everything else the Age had brought upon Ferelden. But Nalissa hadn’t faltered, and she had given them the best solution she could: her brother, the man with the highest standing and the most experience in the country, even if he had balked at her suggestion. It felt like a repeat of history, Teagan had said, watching another Cousland put forth to the landsmeet as a potential king just like the teyrn’s father had been, only this time with no Theirin heir to dispute it.

But it was the sensible solution, they all had to admit. Couslands had ruled in Highever since before Calenhad himself was born, and the teyrn’s oldest child with his second wife was old enough by then to handle the teyrnir. Eleanor was a bright girl, as stubborn and dutiful as her father and her namesake put together, and she would take Fergus’ place well. Nalissa smiled with something like pride when the landsmeet voted in favor, even if her eyes shone a little more brightly than usual from unshed tears.

The Wardens were even more difficult. Alistair hadn’t stepped foot in Vigil’s Keep in years, but he refused to let her go alone, terrified she would leave for Orzammar without him. When the constables and senior Wardens began shouting and grappling for the Warden-Commander’s seat, he almost wished he wasn’t there to see it. The order, without Duncan, without Nalissa, wasn’t half so virtuous as he remembered. But she stood her ground as she always did, naming a stern-faced woman younger than half of them as her successor until Weisshaupt saw fit to replace her officially. Alistair didn’t know the girl, but he recognized the set of her jaw and the steel in her eyes, because he saw them in his wife every day. She would lead the Wardens well, if they allowed it, and he could only hope they did.

They returned to Denerim before setting out. Nalissa wouldn’t miss her brother’s coronation, even if it hurt to brave the noise of the crowds with the song ringing in her ears, even if she had to wear gloves to hide the mottled bruise-like marks on her hands that neither of them could pretend not to see any longer. She hugged Fergus goodbye for the last time on the steps of the palace, and both she and Alistair tried to pretend they didn’t see the pedestal at the gates, prepared for a statue that hadn’t yet been carved, with both of their names and dates etched into the stone.

Alistair Theirin, 11th King of Ferelden, Champion of Redcliffe, Hero of the Fifth Blight

Nalissa Theirin née Cousland, Queen, Warden-Commander, and Hero of Ferelden

9:10 Dragon - 9:52 Dragon

It was already written in stone, the end of both of their lives. The hardest parts were done, all the decisions that mattered had been made. But Maker, did that still not make it easier to set out on their final adventure.

It felt like a hollow echo, walking through the gates of Denerim and knowing they would never do so again. Camping along the Imperial Highway, like when they were young and free, now just the ghosts of two thoroughly overwhelmed new Grey Wardens tasked with saving the world. They had said their goodbyes to Oghren in Amaranthine, to Leliana at the coronation, written letters to Antiva meant for Zevran and to Par Vollen meant for Sten. Nalissa had even sent one to Morrigan, though who knew if that would ever be read. To their friends, to Ferelden, to Thedas they were already dead, but at least what little time they had left was theirs alone.

They spoke often of the similarities, of the differences, of what Wynne might have said to see them walking into death together one last time. Leliana would write a tragic ballad for them she would never share, Nalissa was sure. Zevran would have pointedly declared it was their last chance to join him in bed for the night, Alistair decided. But though they laughed and leaned into each other and drew every moment of pleasure they could from these last few moments of peace, both marked them for what they were: a collection of lasts.

When they finally made camp in the foothills of the Frostbacks, that final night before beginning the descent, they didn’t sleep. They made dinner together, joked how neither of them had gotten any better at it since the first time Morrigan had tasted the gray dreck they had boiled to the point of a tasteless paste and swore she would do the cooking after all. They danced around the fire, watched their shadows on the mountainside seeming to stretch into infinity. They looked up at the stars and whispered together how beautiful they were, without mentioning they would never see them again. And they made love slowly and tenderly, until they were too tired to do more than lie in each other’s arms sharing I love yous and every moment of the last half of their lives they wouldn’t trade for anything.

When the sun rose, they didn’t pack up camp. They put out the fire and left the tent and bedroll where they were, for whoever might find use for them, without ever quite discussing it. They wouldn’t need them again. There was no return journey to look forward to.

And they stopped at the entrance to Orzammar, drinking in the sun and the sky and the fresh air that didn’t smell of nothing but earth and taint. Nalissa hated the underground, hated caves and tight spaces, and her last breath before they stepped into the dark shook as she drew it, but she would not shirk this path and did it anyway. Alistair would have taken everything from her if he could, the corruption and the pain, the fear and the duty, but all he could do was squeeze her hand tightly and assure her again that he was with her until the end.

The end, he kept thinking, as they passed the guards of the dwarven thaig, as they were allowed past into the Deep Roads, as the great doors swung shut behind them with a final clang that rattled in his bones. His end would be lonelier than hers, he knew. As much as he feared it, as much as he wanted to never see those beautiful eyes empty and unable to smile back at him, he had to see her sacrifice made before he could allow himself to fall. That was another promise he had made, down here in the dark what felt like a lifetime ago. He would never allow her to become what the women taken by the darkspawn were twisted into. She would die a Grey Warden, full of fire and wild roars and singing blades. And he would die however he had to after that, even if it was on his knees at her side.

The sob that passed her lips as they paused in the shadows didn’t even sound like her. It was hopeless, shattered, things Nalissa had never been, and she clung to him desperately with tears spilling between them and soaking their armor. One last moment of fear. One more last.

When she dried her eyes and he did the same, he held her as he always did, tight against him even with the barrier of the armor they hadn’t worn together in years. Her head on his chest, his chin on her crown, their arms holding tightly to keep from shaking. Then he took her face in his hands, thumbs stroking her cheekbones that were now too pronounced, and told her that she was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. And she laughed, a laugh like they were young and foolish again and could still count years together ahead of them instead of hours.

She was fearless again, at the end. When they sensed the darkspawn moving through the tunnels and planned their intercept course, she was already bouncing on the balls of her feet, daggers whirling in each hand, giving him that reckless grin full of confidence and battle high that still took his breath away just as it had the first time. His shield was heavier from lack of use, his blade slower, but hers were so fast they were almost invisible as she cut through a wave of genlock assassins. And it twisted his heart in a way that he would never have recovered from anyway to see her so brimming with life and so close to death at the same time.

When Nalissa fell, she had downed an ogre, a hurlock emissary, and more genlocks than Alistair could count. Even the blade that finally slipped between her ribs was almost a matter of luck, a hurlock whose sword had clanged off a blade she had already parried and back toward her quicker than she could counter. And even though he knew it was what they were here for, that it had to happen before she became something unspeakable she would never want to be, the sound that ripped itself from Alistair’s throat was pure agony.

His sword and shield suddenly weren’t heavy at all, they were feather light and full of lightning as he crashed through two other hurlocks to the one that still held the blade and removed its head in one clean stroke. Nalissa had already hit the stone beneath her but both daggers were still in her hands and she stabbed viciously into the back of another hurlock’s calf. Blindingly beautiful even soaked in blood, fierce and deadly to the last. The last.

Alistair cut down the darkspawn she had injured, looked down to see her chest heaving, and dropped his shield. She looked straight at him even as she struggled for breath, shook her head, but he knelt beside her anyway. And again, even at the end, he could see the tears that streaked her face were for him.

She couldn’t make the sounds, but her mouth formed the words. I love you. And he sobbed it back to her, pressed his lips against hers, one last time, one last time. Her hand tried to raise to the back of his head as it always did, but it made it only halfway before it dropped and she went still.

Miles away in the deep roads, surely there were darkspawn or very unlucky dwarves that could hear the sound of Alistair Theirin’s anguish. Certainly more of them seemed drawn by his roars, bore down on him as he fought like a man possessed, with no shield but a dagger in his left hand that had fallen from hers. And it fell from his too at the end, when a viciously barbed pike caught the gap in armor on his left side. It should have hurt, but nothing hurt more than he did already. Nothing hurt more than falling beside her at last, seeing the faint smile still traced on her lips even as her eyes shone empty into the distance. Not seeing him. Never seeing him again.

But his hand found hers, before the last blow that turned everything dark. One last time.

(Also posted on AO3).

[bcrsenthor]

LORE | MUSINGS | ABOUT | AESTHETIC

JESSICA CHASTAIN // have you met THE BARSEN’THOR / OUTLANDER yet? SHE is a THIRTY-THREE year old DEMIGIRL TWI’LEK. they’re originally from BALMORRA and now show loyalty to THE NEUTRAL. they are best known for being an ALLIANCE COMMANDER, and i hear they’re pretty DILIGENT yet also STUBBORN at times; i hope they survive the clone wars. (YELLOW, 22, GMT, SHE/THEY/HE)

THE PAST

The Barsen’thor, given name Melyn Nos, become a Jedi Initiate at three years old, found on a ransacked ship leaving Balmorra by Jedi Knights Syo Bakarn and Satele Shan.

As a youngling, she was present for the Sacking of Coruscant, and attack by the Empire that destroyed the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. This attack inspired her to dedicate her life to healing.

As a Padawan, she was sent to Tython to train under Jedi Master Yuon Parr.

Yuon Parr fell sick with a mysterious illness, and along with the Trandoshan Qyzen Fess Melyn travelled to Coruscant to find a cure.

Melyn learnt a powerful shielding ritual from the Noetikon of Secrets that allowed her to protect others from the illness at the cost of her own strength.

Melyn travelled the galaxy to cure other Jedi Masters who had fallen sick, taking on Tharan Cedrax and Holiday along with her as allies.

After confronting and saving the source of the illness, former Jedi Parkanas Tark, Melyn was granted the title Barsen’thor as recognition of her sacrifice and dediction.

As a representative of the Jedi Order, Melyn was sent to mend relations with the Rift Alliance, an alliance of Republic planets that threatened to secede due to fading faith in the Republic.

Here, Melyn met Nadia Grell, a Force-sensitive Sarkhai who would soon become her Padawan.

While assisting the Rift Alliance, Melyn became aware of the Children of the Emperor, Imperial Sleeper Agents programmed with alternate personalities to keep their true identities hidden from even themselves.

The War between the Empire and the Republic was renewed. Melyn and the Rift Alliance were given a new task of hunting down the Children of the Emperor, forming alliances with those who could support the Republic War Effort along the way.

Eventually, on Corellia, Melyn was able to confront and save the First Son, the leader of the Children of the Emperor. As recognition of her skill in mending the rift and saving the First Son, Melyn was granted a position upon the Jedi Council.

Over the following year, Melyn assisted the Republic War Effort wherever possible, eventually taking part in the Korriban Incursion and meeting SIS Agent Theron Shan, son of the then-Grandmaster of the Jedi Order.

Theron voiced suspicion of his superior motives in ordering the Korriban Incursion and looked to Melyn as an ally, calling her to Manaan to investigate his findings.

On Manaan, Melyn met Sith Lord Lana Beniko, a contact of Theron’s who had similar suspicions of her own superiors.

Together, Lana, Theron and Melyn discovered that their superiors were not loyal to the Republic or the Empire, but rather to the Revanites, a group of fanatical cultists who claimed to follow the teachings of Darth Revan.

The Revanites planned to assist the reborn Revan in his plan to resurrect the Emperor of the Sith. The Coalition was formed of forces from both the Republic and the Empire, under the command of Satele Shan and Darth Marr respectfully, to stop the Revanites plans, however, they were unsuccessful.

The Reborn Emperor attacked Ziost. Despite efforts made by Lana, Theron and Melyn, the Emperor destroyed all life on the planet to fuel himself.

A new faction known as the Eternal Empire made itself known, based on the planet Zakuul and ruled by the former Sith Emperor, Valkorion, and his children Arcann and Vaylin.

Melyn and Darth Marr were captured by the Eternal Empire, with Marr being killed when he refused to bow to Valkorion.

Arcann betrayed his father, killing Valkorion’s body. However, Valkorion’s spirit attached itself to Melyn’s. Fearing his father’s wrath, Arcann accused Melyn of killing Valkorion, entrapping her in carbonite as punishment for ‘her’ crime.

Five years passed, and Melyn was rescued by Lana Beniko, the droids T3-M4 and HK-55 and a former member of the Zakuul military Koth Vortena, who hoped she could use her skills to save the galaxy from the Eternal Empire, which had ravaged the galaxy while Melyn was trapped.

While escaping Zakuul, they were assisted by Senya Tirall, a former Knight of Zakuul, who Melyn later discovered was the former wife of Valkorion and mother to Vaylin and Arcann.

Valkorion’s spirit remained in Melyn’s body, sending her nightmares, occasionally speaking to her and offering her his power. She accepted his power only once, to protect Lana from a supposedly deadly attack.

The group travelled to Asylum, where they were attacked by Arcann. HK-55 sacrificed himself to protect Melyn, but despite this she was gravely injured, saved only by Valkorion’s power sustaining herself.

After the encounter on Asylum, the group travelled to Odessen, where Lana and Theron had built an Alliance of individuals from Republic, Imperial and neutral backgrounds joined together by their desire to defeat Zakuul.

Due to her history leading alliances, open-minded nature and strength as a former Jedi, Melyn was unanimously chosen as the Commander of the Alliance.

The Alliance began its war against Zakuul, finding allies where it could and aiming to defeat Arcann.

During this time, Melyn entered into a relationship with Lana, trusting her completely despite their warring factions.

After Melyn’s supposedly final confrontation with Arcann she believed that he had perished, however, he had been saved and spared by his mother Senya. Melyn chose to allow Senya to leave with Arcann, trusting in her ability to redeem her son.

Vaylin took control of Zakuul’s Eternal Empire, and their attacks became even more ruthless, and the Alliance struggled to defend against her.

Vaylin discovered the Alliance’s base of operations and launched an attack on Odessen. During this attack, Melyn was forced to choose between saving the twi’lek Vette or the Mandalorian Torian Cadera. 

Melyn chose to save Torian, and Vette was killed in front of her by Vaylin. In retaliation, Melyn killed Vaylin, which is a choice she lived to regret.

Finally, Melyn’s last task was to travel to Zakuul and claim the Eternal Throne, which would allow her to end Zakuuls reign.

After claiming the Eternal Throne, Valkorion attempted to take total control over Melyn’s body, intending to use her as his new vessel and return to power. 

With assistance from Senya, Arcann and Vaylin’s spirit, Melyn was able to fight against Valkorion and regain control of her body.

Melyn renamed the Alliance the Eternal Alliance, and handed control of Zakuul back to its politicians. The Eternal Alliance remained to maintain the peace between Zakuul and the rest of the galaxy, and to help the damaged Republic and Imperial territories that were suffering after Zakuul’s conquest.

Despite the political pressure, Melyn refused to return to the Jedi Order or ally the Eternal Alliance with the Republic. Melyn wished for the Eternal Alliance to remain a neutral faction, as she saw beauty in the act of the Republic and Empire working as one.

THE PRESENT

Melyn awoke on Odessen, which wasn’t that surprising for her until she discovered that the planet that had previously been populated by her Eternal Alliance now seemed to be populated by no one.

Her confusion and curiosity warred. She found herself considering many different possibilities, but remains unsure of what’s happening.

Stranded and with no other option, she’s left reaching out in the Force for help, hoping that an ally picks up on her message eventually.

PERSONALITY

Melyn used to be considered a model Jedi. Nowadays, she’d give most Jedi a heart attack.

Above all else, Melyn prioritises personal choice. If you make poor decisions because you felt you had no other choice, she will do whatever it takes to give your choice back to you. If you take away the choice of others she will hate you.

She loves learning about other cultures, no matter how different they are to her own - for example, she considers herself to be quite knowledgable of Trandoshan culture thanks to her friend Qyzen.

Debate her about the Force and you will never get her to shut up. She thinks it’s fascinating and loves to hear new perspectives, even if those perspectives are a bit on the darker side.

She’s an idealist, and struggles when put into situations where her ideals aren’t possible. She thinks often of times where she has had to compromise her ideals and feels a lot of guilt for them.

She’s very self-sacrificing and doesn’t prioritise her own safety - except for when her safety is necessary for the safety of others. The concept of fighting for herself is foreign to her.

She’s powerful in the Force, and as a result always carries herself with confidence. She knows that there isn’t much that could harm her. At times, this can make her arrogant and can result in her under-estimating her opponents.

Since becoming Commander of the Eternal Alliance, working alongside Lana Beniko and listening to the teachings of Satele Shan and Darth Marr, her idea of the Force has changed. She claims that the Force isn’t a thing of Dark or Light, though even in her own time such claims were... rarely humoured. Her alignment is mostly Light, for what it’s worth, though she also sometimes utilises her emotions and passions while fighting. She would have a lot to say about this topic.

[thefirstcourtesan]

A Moment At A Time (Mal x MC)

A Minute At A Time By Misha

Disclaimer- Not mine.

Author’s Notes- My first Blades of Light and Shadows fic! This was inspired by the revelation about magic in Chapter 7 and a post by @the-unconquered-queen . My MC Ellora is human and I have enjoyed getting in her head, so there may be more coming. Also this got really angsty, so read at your own risk!

Rating- PG

Pairing- Mal x MC

Words- 1300

Summary- Every time Ellora uses magic, she uses up some of her own life force and she can’t help but keep track of every minute, every hour and she knows she is not the only one.

When Tyril first tells them that using the light requires a sacrifice of life energy, Ellora is irritated with Nia for not telling her, but not terribly concerned. After all, the magic that Nia had taught her was simple and she hadn’t yet had to use it.

Just learning the spell couldn’t be harmful, only a couple minutes at most. She has those to spare. And fighting off the orc captain? That was another couple moments at most.

When that creature attacks them in the Deadwood, she has to use the magic Nia taught her. Once, twice, three times... Three more minutes gone, but still nothing in the large picture.

Before they exit the Deadwood, Ellora calls on the magic twice more. A few more minutes gone. But still nothing. Maybe a quarter of an hour gone. Yet, she can see Tyril watching her each time, obviously weighing her human life span against his own and every time their eyes meet, she is forced to consider the sacrifice.

Maybe that is why she finds herself keeping track, adding them up, one minute at a time.

By the time they reach the Undermount, she is closing in on an hour.

In the Undermount, Ellora is taught more advanced magic by one of the Elven elders. The kind that can save their lives. But the kind that will also take a larger sacrifice. She knows without asking how Tyril feels, but for the first time, she seeks Mal’s opinion. “It’s your choice, kit,” but she can see his fists clench at his side and the expression on his face tells her that she is not the only one doing the mental math.

The process of retrieving and purifying the third shard requires Ellora to use the magic she has learned, not the simple magic, but the more advanced elven magic.

Another hour gone, then two. Still too little to be concerned about. And yet she knows that besides Nia and perhaps Threep, her companions are concerned for her.

She sees the looks Mal and Imtura exchange every time she uses magic, see the way Tyril’s eyes narrow and that he is forcing himself not to say anything because it is her choice.

The journey to White Tower and the final shard is a long one and there are many obstacles in their way. Ellora’s sword is well used in the weeks that follow their departure from the Undermount, as is her bow and her fists, but weapons aren’t enough and she finds herself relying on magic more and more.

Even Nia is wary. “Ellora, you don’t have to do this, I am more than capable...”

And she is, Nia has been incredible, overcoming her nerves and showing her full potential but Ellora is also showing a talent for magic. She might not have known she had magic but she adapted quickly once she made the discovery and besides, she can’t let Nia take the burden on all by herself. At least with two of them using it, the effect is split in half.

Still by the time they locate the final shard, the total has climbed and is now at a day. An entire day of her life gone in the span of weeks.

It is then that Mal brings up the subject for the first time. They are discussing life after shards, the adventures they will have that don’t involve fighting shadow monsters and saving the world, and then he suddenly turns serious, watching her carefully. “When this is over, you’re going to stop using magic, right?”

Ellora hesitates. Is she? It is a powerful tool after all and has saved their lives. Plus, now that she has discovered that she can do magic, it is like finding a part of herself she never knew about. Can she just walk away from it?

Her answer must show on her face, because Mal sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Ki—Ellora, how much have you used so far and it’s been, what 5, weeks? If you keep using it...”

He trails off but she knows what he is going to say, the total will climb. A day in 5 weeks will become 10 in a year. She will take months, even years off her life, if she continues like this.

“It won’t always be like this,” she assures him, “this is special circumstances, I am using more than I normally will. After, it will be different.”

He nods and they change the subject, but she can still feel his worry as she lays in his arms and she doesn’t blame him, because while she tries to tell herself it will be different, she still keeps a running total in her head.

When they find the final shard, they have to fight for it and Nia’s magic isn’t strong enough. The elder at the temple of the light sees something in Ellora and offers to teach her more advanced magic. The king they will need to fight the shadow court.

“Ellora, no, we’ll find another way.” Imtura tells her speaking for everyone.

Tyril quickly adds his own opinion and even Nia tells her to consider the risk.

Mal doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. By now Ellora knows him well enough to know what he is feeling before he says it.

Just like she can sense his resignation when she agrees to learn the magic.

The sacrifice for this spell is more intense. A day or so of her life force each time she uses it.

By her own calculations it takes 3 days worth of life force to defeat the agents of the  Shadow Court and get the fourth shard. That makes 4 days total and the battle isn’t over.

She reaches a week before they even return to the temple with the four shards. A week of her life gone in less than 8. But she reminds herself that it is a week of her life to save Kade’s and that is a sacrifice she will gladly make. And she would say the same thing to Mal if he asked her.

But he doesn’t. They haven’t talked about it again and she knows they won’t. Not until all this is over.

And then she learns the true cost of saving Kade and purifying the shards.

It will take a life.

Nia volunteers to do it. She has given her entire life to the Light after all.

But Ellora can’t let her make that sacrifice.

“No,” she says, refusing to look at Tyril, Imtura and especially Mal, “it has to be me.”

There are angry shouts at her news but no amount of arguing changes it. A life force has to be sacrificed to purify the shards and it is her brother they are trying to save, so it has to be her. She knows it and when the arguing finally stops, she knows they do too.

She says her goodbyes, cracking jokes with Imtura and teasing Tyril before comforting Nia and giving Threep one last cuddle, and then it is just Mal.

“I love you,” is all she tells him, pressing her lips to his in one last desperate kiss, “a minute, a year, a 100 years, no amount of time will change that.”

“Ellora...” Her name is an anguished groan and she cuts it off with another kiss before stepping into the circle to do the ritual.

Since this started she has watched her life tick by in small increments. First a minute, then a day, then a week, and now... Now she must make the ultimate sacrifice. This is how it ends.

End

[nelllraiser]

last shadow on the sun | bea, luce, blanche, winston, & nell

PREVIOUSLY: Plot Drop Page, Plot Overview

LOCATION: Bea’s Necromancy Clearing

TIME: the summer solstice, 10:07 PM

PARTIES: Bea Vural, Luce Vural, Blanche Harlow, Winston Dane, Nell Vural

CONTENT: Sibling Death mention, Body Horror, Torture 

“I shall not wholly die, and a great part of me will escape the grave.” – Horace

The eye in Winston’s hand itched. It always seemed to itch whenever they were doing something that they should be worried about. Winston couldn’t explain it, but now that they were stuck with the eye and it didn’t look like it was going anywhere anytime soon. They were the first to the clearing, they were early and they were waiting when the others arrived. Sitting cross legged, staring at their third eye. They had drawn the circle and Winston had prepared the altar. “I think that I have everything ready, apart from you know the body and the sacrifice.” Winston was nervous. They’d done this so many times and it didn’t always work. They’d never even tried human sacrifice and resurrection and they could only imagine the risks surrounding it. “We’re bringing her back tonight, no matter what happens we’re bringing her back.” It was a promise to themselves. A promise to Bea. 

“Stop moving.” Luce said sharply to August. Since she’d picked him up from Lydia’s home, since he’d willingly stepped into the back of her car, she had him completely under her thumb. The power of it all was… intoxicating, in a way. Absolute control. Complete obedience. The memory of seeing Lydia kiss him, seeing the fight fade from his limbs, that troubled her. With a shake of her head, she kicked the man in the stomach abruptly. He let out a reedy groan of pain and she knelt by his side. “I thought I told you to be quiet. But, you know… it’s fine. No one’s out here to hear you scream.” She shrugged before standing back up to regard Winston and the altar they and Nell had prepared. She’d stayed out of it, not wanting to risk ruining the delicate circle with a slip of her hand or a candle out of place. “Well. I’ve got the sacrifice taken care of. We’ll have no problems from him.” She said before her lips pressed together to form a firm, determined expression. “Whatever it takes, we’re bringing her back.” She echoed.

Tonight was the night. The culmination of all they had done had led them here, and keeping with the theme of their practicing Nell’s focus was front and center, not willing to let anything get in her way of bringing Bea back to them. She would rise, and she’d be whole and proper and the wrong that had been laid on the world by Bea’s passing would be righted, the balance kept by sacrificing August. It hadn’t been a coincidence that they’d chosen today, the summer solstice. Bea had been a light in many people’s lives, acting as a guiding sun. Looking over the altar for what had to be the millionth time, she went back over to August, simply standing in front of him for a long moment. Was he present enough to know that he was going to die? She hoped he was— she hoped he’d feel that same impending sense of inevitability she had when Montgomery had been standing over her, maybe even when the man had claimed Bea’s head for his own. Whatever he was feeling, she hoped he was scared in addition to this unquestioning obedience. Wordlessly, she kicked his knees out from under him, watching the man stumble to the ground before giving him a swift kick to the side. “Whatever it takes, we’re bringing her back,” Nell echoed before looking to where they’d placed Bea’s body on the altar, her head carefully turned towards the East, clumsily connected to her neck with some long strips of cloth. “Let’s get ‘round the circle,” she said before taking her place alongside the marks in the dirt.

After weeks of anger and sorrow, Bea was finally calm. This night would determine if she was coming back. She had seen the work the three spellcasters had done and it was impressive for people new to the craft. They could have waited longer, perfected it, but with the summer solstice, it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Circling the alter, she looked on with critical eyes. They had followed her advice carefully. It looked good, but she didn’t allow that to spark unwarranted hope. Anything could go wrong with a ritual like this, even with her soul being willing and nearby. She had her fail-safes. Nic ready to get rid of her if she came back monstrous and her own willingness to ask Blanche to get rid of her ghost if the ritual failed. She refused to be a ghost forever and she refused to allow her sisters to attempt this again. Finally pausing in her circle, she stopped in front of August. She looked at him for a long moment before phasing her hand through his skull. Blanche had told her that it was unpleasant to touch a ghost and Bea couldn’t hit him as her sisters could. “You are a pathetic little worm, aren’t you?” She asked him, voice rough but soft, though she knew that he couldn’t hear her. “Blanche, can you ask Luce to crush his fingers for me? And tell him it’s from me. Just because he gets the honor of being my sacrifice doesn’t mean we have to honor him with a soft death.”

Blanche stood to the side, almost awkwardly as she watched the preparation. There was nothing else she could do now, other than translate and wait for Bea to rise after they were done. To see what she would tell Nic. She knew he was nearby, lying in wait for the all clear from Blanche in case something went wrong. Swallowing hard, she kept her eyes on Bea as she flitted about the circle, examining it. Blanche had paid no mind to August this time, watching as he obeyed Luce utterly and completely, blankly. A means to an end, she thought bitterly. She only winced when Bea shoved a hand through his skull, looking away as August shivered from the touch. “Hm?” Blanche glanced at Bea, frowning slightly at the request, before considering. “Bea has a request,” Blanche said, her tone soft as she wrapped her arms around herself. She glanced at Nell, and then to Luce. “Crush his fingers. Make his death hurt. Make him feel it.” 

Listening closely to what Blanche had to say in terms of Bea's request, Winston was once more torn by August's involvement. They understood the magic. They understood that this was something that they needed to do and they understood that it was his life for Bea's and since he was the one who had started all of this it was only fair that it was him who sacrificed everything. But there was something that still left a sour taste in Winston's mouth. They were all too familiar with that quote about digging two graves when you went out seeking revenge. But enough was enough. They had lost too much. They were bringing Bea back. The cost wasn't important. "Have we got the personal item of Bea's?" Winston asked, knowing that they definitely did, but they were nervous and making sure that everything was in order was easier then just sitting there and doing nothing. Since they had meticulously checked the set up of the ritual a thousand times -- or so -- this was the only thing that Winston really felt like they could do.

Luce watched as August convulsed slightly, his expressionless face shifting one of discomfort and revulsion. Bea. She shifted her gaze over to Blanche, watching the way the younger woman seemed to hug herself. A part of her felt for the medium. She shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t have to witness this. But, she was their only way of keeping in contact with Bea and, without her, they wouldn’t have been able to do this. They would have lost her. But, that didn’t mean she needed to see this. At her words, Luce cleared her throat, looking down at the exhausted, pitiful man. “August. You can scream now. You can hurt. I want you to feel every ounce of pain and scream for us. Like your life depends on it.” She said before stomping the heel of her shoe into the purple, ruined mess of his hand. An inhuman howl was torn from the man’s throat, piercing through the relative silence of the clearing. She ground her foot down, twisting for good measure before flicking her hair back from her face. “Let’s get him in position.” She said before she took her place at the circle.

Nell’s smile widened as Luce gave her command to August. That would make things much more fun. Hearing him hurt and yell was much more satisfying than watching him simply take it. As for making it hurt...she’d been planning on just that. Years of pent up bitterness between her and August were ready to spring forth from her, brought into a point by Bea’s death, and the contract he’d taken out on Nell. She tried to find that same kernel of magic she’d used when hurting Montgomery and Kaden, still not entirely sure what it had been, but knowing enough that it brought pain. Instead of letting it flood through her, she only allowed a bit of it to pass through, aiming it towards August, thinking of Bea’s request, hoping it would guide the magic. In response, the fingers on August’s other hand bent back on themselves grotesquely, flat against the back of his palm. Deliciously satisfied, Nell settled herself in her position once more before centering August where he needed to be with her hands, being none too gentle. “We’ve got the item of Bea’s.” Then she took off the locket of Bea’s that she’d been wearing around her neck since her sister had died. She’d liked having it as a reminder, something to make sure she didn’t forget exactly what they were working towards, and how they’d gotten here. Handing it to Luce, it wasn’t long before the witch had burnt it to a crisp, who then gave the ashes back to Nell. Spreading them around the circle and letting the ritual begin.

A satisfied smile took over Bea’s face as she watched her sisters take turns hurting August. This was all his doing, she felt no ounce of remorse for the torture he was going through before his death. She watched as her sisters burnt her locket, a necklace she hadn’t taken off for years. It had been filled with pressed flowers from their childhood garden and had always been there as a way to keep her sisters close to her heart. As they began to scatter the ashes, she looked toward Blanche,“Tell Nell to make sure it’s an even spread.” As far as she had read it would make it much easier to bond her soul and body if there was a good distribution. She floated over to her body then, staring down at the grotesque thing. Five weeks dead did not make a pretty sight. It made her nauseous to think of the changes her body had gone through. Imagining things crawling through her and decaying her flesh would have brought bile up if she had been capable of it. “Light the candles counterclockwise now. Start from the east most candle.” The ritual was a slow process, but she could already feel the coil of anticipation in her stomach. Soon they would be making their sacrifice.

A huge knot of anticipation had wound itself up in the pit of Blanche’s stomach. Anxiety that wasn’t quieted as August screams ripped through the air. Vengeance. August Thompson signed his life away the second he tried to sign Nell’s. She felt no mercy for him or for his screams. A part of her wondered if she should feel something, anything, as she looked at him writhing in agony, forced to follow Luce’s orders. A means to an end, Blanche reminded herself. Her eyes flickered to Bea’s ghosts. “Bea says to spread the ashes evenly,” Blanche said, with a quiet sigh. “And to light candles starting counterclockwise. Starting from the candle furthest to the east.” She bit her lip, pushing her hair back out of her face before she addressed Bea herself. “Bea, come here. Stand by me so you don’t hover too close.” Blanche said quietly. “Let them work, they know what they’re doing.” It would be hard enough anyway. Blanche watched moments longer, before she made the decision to turn around, turn her back on the ritual proceedings. It didn’t do much to stifle the feeling in her, but it would make sure she didn’t end up throwing up everywhere.

Swallowing, Winston looked at what they were doing to August and tried not to react. It was sadistic. The pleasure that the sisters were appearing to take in August’s suffering. There wasn’t a doubt in their mind that August deserved this, but Winston was consumed with guilt. Glancing over at Blanche, Winston locked eyes with her for a moment before taking a breath. This was their decision and they weren’t backing down now. Celeste was dead. Bea had been taken from them. They had saved the town but now literally had a third eye in their hand. They’d been forced to burn Selkie pelts for Ricky, to say goodbye to beings who had been ruthlessly hunted. This was their chance to give something back and maybe reset the balance, even if it was just a little. Winston followed Blanche, well, Bea’s instructions and lit the candles as they were instructed, starting at the east and working their way around.

Once the others had completed lighting the candles, Luce poured gin from a flask on her hip into the silver chalice that rested on the altar. The scent of gin filled the air and she muttered the words they’d all practiced countless times over the chalice, handing it to Nell to do the same. The ashes had been scattered, the candles lit, and the offering made. Luce refused to look at her sister’s ruined body and where it lay in the circle-- not until Bea was back. Not until she was here with them all would she look at her sister. Because… if it went wrong, if the resurrection didn’t work, she didn’t want her last memory of Bea to be this decayed corpse before them. No, she would hold onto the memories of her sister from before. Swallowing, Luce prepared herself mentally for the ritual. She needed to be present, needed to be here with the other two. She couldn’t do what they did, didn’t understand the intricacies of the circle or the marks or the words they said. She could only provide the fuel, the extra magical energy they would need to bring Bea back. Next to her, August shivered in fear, though he didn’t make a sound. Good. He could save his screams for what was to come.

Nell accepted the chalice as she chanted, still never sure what to make of Bea speaking through Blanche even though it had been weeks at this point. She wanted to hear her sister’s words in person, to know the rise and fall of her voice once again rather than get them secondhand. Of course she was endlessly grateful to Blanche for what she was doing, what she’d done, but it simply wasn’t the same as having her sister next to her, creating the words of her own will. Once Nell had finished with the chalice, she passed it over to Winston, feeling her magic beginning to flow as the ceremony truly began. They were here not to create new life, but to restore it, to bring it back from whence it had been wrongly robbed. To breathe life back into her sister, to bring the warmth back to the home, and reignite the hearth. These were the thoughts that filled Nell, though they were colored by darkness around the edges whenever she chanced a look at August. They were also here to exact retribution, to right a wrong and restore the balance in that way as well. 

It was difficult to move away from her body. Bea wanted to stay near herself and make sure she didn’t fall into ruin anymore than she already had. She looked wrong like this, but Blanche was right, she had to trust them. She floated over to Blanche, humming as she came to a stop near her. “I don’t know what it’ll be like when they pull me back into my body. I’ve read some people felt it was calm or nothing at all. Others described it as agonizing. I’m not sure what will happen.” She didn’t say it to scare the young woman, but rather prepare her for what could be seen or heard later. As the chanting started, she felt a pull in her chest. It was faint, but she could feel it getting stronger. She smiled slightly as the magic flowed between them all. She hadn’t felt it since she died, but now she was in it. It was a breath of fresh air to feel magic once again.

Blanche glanced at Bea as she spoke. She had wondered what it would feel like to see someone’s soul pulled away - whether or not it would be anything like it was when they moved on past this plane of existence or if it would feel violent. Blanche swallowed hard, and nodded. “Whatever happens…” Blanche said, her throat closing slightly. She glanced over her shoulder, back at the ritual, before looking at Bea. “They’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of you. And may you go in peace, Bea.” Blanche said. “I’ll see you on the otherside.”

Winston watched the chalice as it was passed across to them. They’d long ago memorised the words to this specific ritual and they pronounced every phrase flawlessly. They’d practised this for hours. They weren’t going to make any mistakes that would risk Bea’s return. There was a tension in the air. August lay there. Blanche wasn’t looking at them and honestly Winston couldn’t blame her. Their glasses were slowly sliding down their nose but they didn’t have time to push them back up as they grasped the chalice and continued their chant. A thin bead of sweat rolled down their jawline. Winston knew it was now if they were going to back out. But they didn’t hesitate. No matter how much they wanted to not kill this poor evil bastard, Winston knew that this was the only way. Bea had to come back. Finishing their part of the ritual, they set the chalice down. Knowing that what was coming next was the part that worried them the most. 

Watching as the chalice made its way around them, Luce took a deep breath, steadying the magical energy that lay within her. As she did so, as she began to focus on the power within her, she felt Iggy still in her pocket, the warmth of the fire salamander growing and receding in time to her breathing. This wasn’t fire, it wasn’t the usual magic that they practiced together. But, he was her focus, her familiar, and he was family. Looking over at Nell, at Winston, at Blanche… Her mind went back to the conversation she’d had with Winston. They were all family. In all but name. They’d see this through, in the name of family. Reaching out, Luce took hold of Nell and Winston’s hands as she chanted in unison with the others. Her magic threatened to overflow, to pour out of her in a torrent of energy, but she held it back. A trickle to begin with, just enough to allow the others to adjust to the output. And then, when it was all in place, she’d push as much magic into the ritual as she could. It had to work. This had to work.

Nell could feel their magic energy swirling within the circle, relatively contained for the time being as she made sure to focus their energies in the right place. She was providing energy as well, but she also needed to focus it, to make sure the magic slid into the proper nooks and crannies and followed their intentions to a tee so that everything went to plan, so that she got her sister back. So that she could once again have each of their hands in her’s to face the world together. But for now the hands she was holding were Winston and Luce’s as their power continued to grow. And then— it was time. Time to take back whatever power August had stolen from them, to erase the ugly stain he’d made on their lives. Time for the sacrifice. There was no reverence in this one, not like how Nell usually made her sacrifices. August wasn’t worthy of that. The life within him might be worthy of respect, but not what he’d made of it, not what he’d done with it. She raised the athame, looking straight into August’s eyes as she continued her chanting, wishing she could make this hurt. But for the ritual it needed to be neat and quick, and though she wanted her revenge on August to be long and fulfilling, she wanted Bea back more. The blade fell, making a neat, and perfect line across August’s neck as ruby red drops began to fall. As she spread the sacrifice carefully, she swore she could feel the life leaving him, pooling and preparing, looking for a place to go. They would give it that place. With the same knife, she cut her palm, painting her fingers with her own blood before rising from her spot to approach Bea’s body. Carefully, she drew the soul binding symbol on Bea’s side, at the very top of her ribcage. And thus, the ritual was completed, one final thought pushing the rest of the magic forwards. Come back to us. Please.

Bea watched with a certain amount of glee as Nell slid the knife across August’s neck. This was power. This was absolutely brilliant power. She could not control herself now as she left Blanche’s side, the pull in her chest impossible to ignore now as Nell sliced her palm open. As the Mark was placed in her skin, Bea felt herself pushed back into her still healing body. She could feel as the flesh of her neck began to stitch itself back together. The decay that bloated and twisted her being forced out with magic. She could feel it all but she could not open her eyes to see. She could not move at all. She was stuck in her body, unable to command it. Her mind raged as she attempted to force control that would not come so soon.  She could feel her heart begin to beat, begin to race as panic flooded through her. She was supposed to be able to move already. Her tests had moved quickly after the ritual. Something was wrong. She was trapped within her own body. How would they know that she was stuck in here? They would think they failed and she would be stuck in her own body forever.

Winston felt it before they saw it. The power, the energy that flowed through them. Through Luce, into Winston and then onto Nell and then back around. The loop of power running through itself over and over again. The energy flow was addictive and Winston felt it. A drip. Drip. Drip. Then the collar of their shirt began to soak through and Winston felt their body temperature skyrocket. The phone in their pocket began to vibrate and heat up and Winston refused to let go of Luce or Nell’s hands but they could feel sweat pouring out of them. The energy, the fatigue, the new sensation, it was almost all too much. Then the energy began to build inside of them and Winston felt the heat physically radiate off of them. They struggled to center themselves, to find the inner serenity that they relied on. Looking down at their shirt, Winston spotted the blood, and then looked at Bea. Had it worked? Was this … was this normal? 

Power. It was all she could provide, it was all that Luce was good for. She knew that, she’d always known that, which is why the moment Nell drew the mark on Bea’s side, the moment she’d felt the pull of the magic, she’d given in completely. She threw all of her magic into the ritual, fueling it, letting it rush into Nell and Winston and spurring it on as the energy circulated round and round among them. It poured into the circle, flooded into Bea’s body. Rage, anger, fear, and overwhelming love rushed over her as she continued to throw everything she had into the ritual. A bite of pain sprang forth from the left side of her neck and she felt something warm trickle against her skin, staining the collar of her shirt. Ignoring it, she continued to focus on giving the others everything she had left in her. Her breathing, calm and even became ragged, stuttering while a dull aching pain filled her left arm. Against her leg, she felt Iggy squirm, but she ignored him. All that mattered was Bea.

Nell’s gaze was trained solely on Bea, willing her to rise with a desperation that was unmatched by anything else in her life. It took her a long moment to register something warm dripping down her neck, and her concentration on her sister’s was momentarily broken by her confusion. When her hand came away from her neck washed in new blood, she didn’t understand where it had come from until she looked up at Luce and Winston. Lines. Lines of blood across all three of their necks that mirrored the one that had ended Bea’s life, that had been drawn across her own throat. “Something’s wrong,” Nell said instinctively, knowing this shouldn't be part of it. And there was still too much magical energy diving through the air, moving around each and every one of them. It should have been gone, the ritual over now. A moment after the worrisome realization had sprung from her, Nell let out a surprised cry of anguish, pain erupting at the end of her fingertips from which she’d drawn the symbol with, and where she’d wielded the knife. It took a long moment for her to realize what was happening, the picture of the very skin of her fingers peeling back on itself being too surreal to immediately process. Soon enough, the pieces of flesh were ungluing themselves from her at an even faster rate, revealing blood red sinew underneath them as the unimaginable pain began to rise to her wrists.

Bea wanted to scream, she could feel the pressure on her chest. She needed to scream. And so she did. Her mouth snapped open and a rasping scream left her. Her fingers and toes curled and finally her eyes opened. Bea could not remember why she was on the altar. She could only remember the barest of moments. A sword. Blanche. Wandering. Felix. She had been a ghost. She knew she had died. But she did not know how long she had been dead for. Her body succumbed to her commands now and she curled into herself, before looking up at the group surrounding her. Her eyes were blurry, but it didn’t take too long for her to understand what was happening around her. Something had gone wrong. They all were suffering. “Blanche,” She croaked out. “They’re dying.” Her voice was cracked, ragged, a whisper that she couldn’t seem to make louder. She had to wonder if her voice was going to be scarred like this forever. She pulled herself from the alter, but as she went to stand she was reminded of the wounds over her feet. Letting out a hiss of pain, she fell to her knees, crawling to Luce. “Luce. Luce,” She cried desperate. “Nellie,” She called next looking around wildly unable to focus her eyes long enough to find her.

She was back. The scream cracked Winston’s focus and they snapped out of the ritual that they had been so intent on completing. Now that it was done, and now that Bea was back, Winston felt as if they had a thousand volts flowing through them. Their phone was hotter then ever now and it almost felt like it was expanding a little but Winston ignored it. Sweat poured down their neck and back and they snapped to attention. As Bea fell to her knees Winston raced over to her, completely ignorant of the fact that there was something wrong with Nell or Luce, completely ignorant of the fact that there was something wrong with them. Bea was back. They’d done it. Joy filled their veins and they skidded to a stop on their own knees, wrapping an arm gently around Bea. “Hey, Bea, it’s fine don’t worry, Luce is …” Winston went to look at Luce and immediately knew that something was wrong, trying to stumble to their feet with Bea wrapped over their shoulder, Winston lurched towards Luce, “fuck, fuck fuck fuck. Luce. Blanche, please HELP.” Tears sprung to their eyes. They hadn’t gone this far. They hadn’t done all of this to lose Luce now. 

As she watched Bea’s body begin to shift, her knees curling in toward her chest, as though she’d only been sleeping, a wave of relief rushed over Luce. She was alive. She was back. She was safe. Luce did her best to smile at her sister, tears filling her eyes. But, her smile faltered. The magic that she’d been so focused on using to drive the ritual onwards, it was still flowing out of her. And, for the first time since she was a child, she could feel it seering against her. A foreign heat, snapping and wild, lashed out at her and scorched the skin of her chest. Her arms ached and fell to her sides as she was brought to her knees, her breaths coming in halting gasps. A pressure, heavy and unyielding, it weighed heavily upon her as she struggled to remain upright. Her vision began to go black around the edges, what little she could see an unfocused blur. She gasped for air, trying to will stubborn lungs to motion. All in vain. Darkness closed in and Luce collapsed to the ground. The last thing she remembered was seeing Bea and Winston, rushing towards her.

The feeling of Bea’s soul faded away completely, and all was silent. Something’s wrong. Blanche whirled around just as Bea’s strangled scream ripped through the field. They’re dying. Things happened so fast after that, Blanche registered the blood and skin peeling back on Nell’s arms, she didn’t even know what the hell was wrong with Bea, Winston on the ground and screaming, and Luce falling back into the grass. Triage. Luce was dying. Luce needed help the most. She moved instantly, fumbling for her phone. One quick message - Help. They’re dying. I need help. - later before she slammed into the ground next to Luce. She felt like she was going to puke. No, no. There was no time for that. “Everyone stay put!!” She yelled. “Stay where you are. Now.” It had been a long time since Blanche had taken a CPR course, but she was going to kiss whoever at UMAINE decided a First Aid course counted as a gym credit. She leaned over Luce, a couple hard prods to her shoulder. “Luce? Luce?” No response. She tilted Luce’s head slightly, lifting the chin and bending over her to listen to her breathing. Rather, lack thereof. She was supposed to wait 10 whole seconds before she started CPR. She remembered the instructor. Some uppity old woman who would yell things at them like they would remember it. Well, Blanche did remember it. Hands on too if each other, she was over Luce in an instant, delivering hard compressions to the middle of her chest, practically throwing her bodyweight into it. Fuck. Fuck. What was happening? Come on Luce. She tilted her head back, bending to give her a rescue breath before continuing chest compressions. “Whoever’s least injured, check on Bea!” Blanche demanded. 

Nell knew Bea was the one who’d been brought back to life, but as she heard Beas voice’ changed though it was, she felt as if she’d been born anew. Bea was alive. And just like that it was like a dam broke in Nell, one that she’d been building up for weeks to hold everything behind, her anxiety steadily climbing until this point. But Bea was alive- she was here. “Bea?” she managed to get out through the pain, her arms still peeling all the way up to her elbows and not showing a sign of stopping. She didn’t know if it was from relief or pain that tears ran down her cheeks, the two emotions far too much for her to handle at a time like this. But in the same moment she gained a sister it seemed she was losing another, and the utter joy that had bloomed in her heart was instantly turned back to terror. “Luce?!” Somewhere in her mind, she knew her skin was still coming off in ribbons, the pain of it impossible to ignore as countless scars gathered from her blood magic over the years disappeared with her skin before her very eyes. And yet- there was no greater pain than losing a sister. She knew that from experience, and she wouldn’t let it happen again, not now, not so soon after they’d just gotten Bea back. They’d been whole for all of two seconds before the world was thrown into chaos again. Bea or Luce? Bea or Luce? She didn’t have to make the decision as Blanche rushed in. Nell knew she needed to stand back, let Blanche do her work no matter how much she might want to toss her aside to check on her sister. “Bea?” she asked again, instinctively reaching out for her sister, but pulling back as pain burned fiery hot through her again, her arms painted in red.

Winston cowered by Bea. They were too weak and simultaneously too restless to do anything. They’d never felt this tired in their life and honestly the adrenaline of Bea’s warm body next to them was more then enough to keep them going but they knew that it was only a matter of time before they collapsed from sheer exhaustion. They’d actually done it. They’d done it and now something worse was happening. They listened carefully to Blanche, out of them and Nell they seemed like they were the least hurt and they did a quick once over of Bea. Though they weren’t sure that they were in any state to be administering medical attention. “Hey, welcome back, Blanche’s got Luce don’t worry,” Winston knew that they would likely have to physically restrain Bea, but it was important Blanche did this without distraction, “are you hurt? Are you okay? How do you feel?” They were doing everything that they could to not think about Blanche taking care of Luce. Doing everything they could not to panic about what might be happening to their friend. They said a silent prayer to a god they didn’t believe in. Not after everything. They couldn’t lose Luce now. But they needed to take care of Bea. Make sure she was okay. “Nell, shit, Nell your arms.” Winston didn’t know why it had taken them so long to notice their friend, but their phone was burning their skin right now and as they pulled it from their pocket and threw it on top of their bag they for the thousandth time wished they’d learned healing magic. “We’re going to be fine,” fuck. They had to be.

They kept screaming something but Bea couldn’t understand. Someone was on Luce. Who was that? Blanche? She let out another groan. “Luce! Nellie!” Her vision just kept getting worse. In her panic, she fell away from Winston, and began to crawl once again. Her arms gave out. Falling down she rolled over onto her back. Breathing in and out heavily, she struggled to calm herself. “I can’t see well. Everything is blurry.” How did they know to use necromancy? She had too many questions to ask now. Her head went back against the ground. She was exhausted. Struggling to keep her eyes open, she simply went, “It worked.”

[salty-ironstrange-shipper]

For convenience’s sake, I’ve compiled my dark ironstrange/supremefamily headcanons

----

So I love the Dark!Stephen Headcannon, do you have any Dark!Tony or maybe some Dark!Ironstrange ones?

You guys have found my weakness

Some more dark!Stephen ones because I misread this at first (these are separate from the ones at the bottom)

Stephen reads Tony’s mind all the time. He always knows exactly what Tony wants to hear and how to manipulate his emotions. He plays with his insecurities constantly and often makes it seem as though the world is against them and all Tony has is him.

If someone who Tony cares about can be manipulated to his side, they’re fine. If they can’t, then prepare to watch him slowly convince Tony that you don’t actually care about him and are working against him.

Peter’s fine - he’s still young and fresh eyed, and Stephen has no trouble swaying him. But Rhodey and Pepper? Gone.

Pepper was easy - their relationship was already on the brink. He just pushed it over. But cutting off Rhodey involved weeks of prodding at their sore spots and the Accords and the rogue Avengers, and then it’s too late. Tony won’t even listen to him try to warn him away from Stephen. There’s nothing they can do.

Now onto what you actually asked for when I looked at it again

Dark!Tony

It started after Ultron and Wanda’s magic. Tony hated himself, hated destruction, hated what he’d done to the world. But instead of going the route of accountability and the Accords, he takes a different one — it was his job to protect the world, no matter the cost.

He obsessively builds weapons and uses them indiscriminately against his enemies — villains, terrorists, the UN when they tried to control him, the Avengers when they tried to stop him.

He realizes that he can’t protect the world like this. There are too many variables, too much out of his control. The only solution is to take it under his control.

He starts with New York, makes it his central hub. He strikes hard and fast, so fast that by the time whatever other superheros are left can even begin to respond, the city is his.

Drones that patrol the streets. Forced implants that know when you’re planning to hurt someone — or plotting against him. The city has never been safer.

He clears out the prisons and uses them as shelters for refugees, abuse victims, the homeless. After all, what are the prisoners going to use them for now that they’re dead?

It’s during a trip to one of these buildings — he always finds time for the people he’s so carefully protecting — that he finds a young boy (I’m fudging the timeline, not @ me) who tells him that his aunt and uncle died in the attack on New York and that he’s been shuffled around foster homes before ending up there. It’s not the nicest place, but there’s food and it’s warm and no one dares hurt anyone else.

Tony is so heartbroken by his story that he’s moved to take the boys home and raise him as his own. He won’t be having kids of his own now with Pepper dead, fallen when she tried to report his plans.

“What’s your name?” “Peter Parker.” “Well, now you’re going to be Peter Stark.”

And for a while Tony is happy. But it’s not long before he sets his sights on the rest of the country … with the help of a new ally.

Dark!Ironstrange/Dark!Supremefamily (look, two for the price of one)

Stephen Strange has been watching him, and he likes what he’s found. Like Tony, he’s certain that the best way to protect the world is to control it — and he thinks the easiest way to do that will be together.

Getting Tony Stark to the sanctum is easy. Quick portal under his feet. Convincing him is almost as easy. When he looks at Tony’s mind he sees the wreckage of Wanda’s magic. The remnants of her power are easily disposed of and replaced with his. From there, all it takes is his manipulation, his assurance that they want the same thing and will get it faster together. He sees it the moment Tony agrees.

Together, the rest of the states fall to them. Stephen is no longer welcome at Kamar-Taj — tends to happen when you kill most of the people at a place — and the tower has long been destroyed. So they build a new place out of what remains of the Compound, one that is equal parts magic and science.

At first, Stephen pays attention to Peter because he knows that Tony will like it and feel more connected to him — though it is not hard to connect to a man so lonely now that the world has turned it’s back on him — but he’s surprised to realize one day that he cares for him, is proud of his resilience in a world that has tired to destroy him and how he has managed to keep a sense of childlike wonder despite the odds.

Peter adores them both. He doesn’t understand why the rest of the world hates them. Don’t they know that Tony and Stephen are just trying to keep them safe?

But somehow Stephen is blind to his own feelings for Tony until they’re fighting the last vestiges of the heroes. It’s them against Captain America, War Machine, and Scarlett Witch. Thor and Bruce never returned from space (at least not that Tony knows of), and T'Challa is keeping Wakanda closed off and safe from them, ignoring pleas of help (he knows he can’t keep the world safe, only his people).

Stephen never thought that he would see Tony die. Tony Stark seemed as invincible as any human could, but he was still human. And when Wanda blasts him out of the sky, he knows what fear is. He makes her know what it is.

It’s almost poetic, he thinks. Wanda Maximoff started this with her visions and now the last of the resistance ends with her. It’s the last thought on his mind before Tony wakes up. When they kiss this time, it’s real.

… So this was more involved than I thought it would be, but I hope you liked it.

-----

I love the Dark!Supremefamily AU so much.. can you make some more headcanons for it please?

I meant to do more of these on the last one, but I got kind of carried away, so thanks for giving me a chance to do some more:

Stephen teaches Peter magic. “Don’t tell your dad.” Stephen warns. “It’ll be our father-son secret.” Peter kept his secret because it was the first time Stephen ever called him son.

Tony is extremely protective of Peter. If anyone so much of thinks of hurting him (or if Tony thinks they are …), Tony will know, and that person will soon find themselves wishing for death. Stephen makes it easier by monitoring the minds of the people around them.

One of the things Tony did when he took over was take control of companies - including the one that created the spider that bit Peter. Peter’s there one day with Tony, working on learning everything he needs to know for when he’s an adult when one of the spiders gets loose and bites Peter.

Tony is angry and terrified. Even Stephen’s assurance that Peter would be fine was worthless. He never left Peter’s side while he alternated between unbearable pain and unconsciousness. When Peter finally got through it okay - better than okay, Peter thought, looking at his newfound muscle with eyes that saw so much more - Tony wept in relief.

For years, Peter begged Tony to let him fight. There were still people who considered them villains, who didn’t understand their work, and he was eager to prove himself. Tony always said no.

When Tony finds out about the magic lessons Stephen was giving Peter, he was irate. But Stephen always had a way of bringing him around to his way of thinking. “Peter is young now. He won’t be for much longer. He needs to know how to protect himself in a world that will want him dead. Or would you keep him powerless for the rest of his life?”

Tony reluctantly let it go, but he still refused to let Peter fight. Peter begged Stephen to intervene on his behalf, but he only ever smiled and assured Peter that his time would come. Eventually, he gives in enough to say, “Ask him again after your birthday. You’ll be an adult then.”

So Peter waited until his 18th birthday. Tony had been spending more and more time away from him lately, planning something. Peter didn’t know what since by then the planet was more or less completely under their control, and Stephen was annoyingly enigmatic when he asked him.

But eventually his birthday did come. Starting with a ceremonial sacrifice by Stephen, they spend the entire day celebrating. Peter can’t help not thinking about it when he’s too busy enjoying the attention.

When sunset comes, Tony halts the party to make an announcement. “Now, for what is clearly the most important part of the evening, I have a gift for my son.” Peter sat up in his chair as Tony moved to the middle of the room where a black tube connecting the ceiling and floor. “Peter, as my present, I give to you-” the tube opened, revealing- “The Iron Spider.”

Peter stared at the suit - red and blue and, if you looked closely, gold mandalas that showed Stephen’s influence, with a spider in the center of the chest. “Are you serious?”

“Of course. You’re going to need it after all. Because next month Stephen and I will lead our new campaign as we set our eyes not on the ground, but on the sky, and leave Earth and the Solar System to continue our work of protecting the world. And Peter will be with us.”

Peter was speechless. Stephen just smiled and said “Happy birthday.”

Tony made a toast. “To … the future.”

Their guests followed his lead. “To the future!”

------

Please please give me more dark!supreme family, I'm obsessed Ps. I love your blog

I’ve created a monster

Stephen is the fun dad by design. Early on in his and Tony’s relationship, he would manipulate him into doing things that were overly strict or made Peter upset so that he could be the nice one and help Peter out

Stephen dampens Peter’s memories of his family and past friends so that he’ll be more accepting of them

Tony’s birthday present to Peter was the Iron Spider suit, but Stephen’s was a bit different - Steve Rogers, the only surviving hero fighting them, who Stephen happily killed in a blood ritual that would grant Peter protection, simultaneously giving his son a gift and ridding their family of an enemy

Tony is careful to include Peter as much as he can in the decisions he makes and what it takes to be a leader (cough*dictator*cough)

Peter matures quickly. He knows that his dads and their empire have a lot of enemies, and that they might die one day and he would need to take over

Peter didn’t have a lot of friends. Tony and his A.I. took up his schooling, and he was never able to get into contact with the people he remembered. Once Stephen got involved, he started spending time with the sorcerers, but he still spends most of his time with his dads

Usually, Peter goes to Tony for comfort and Stephen for advice. Of course, Stephen’s advice is usually along the lines of “just send them to the dark dimension” but sometimes that’s what you want to hear

That’s all I’ve got for now

[haberdashing]

And Freedom’s A Fairy Tale Lie (4/?)

When Michael is transformed just before killing Jon, the face the Distortion next wears is one much more familiar to Jon than that of Helen Richardson.

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4

on AO3

Jon realized now as he sat in his chair facing the desks of the archival assistants, three faces with varying levels of interest staring back at him, that it had been a long time since he’d had a meeting like this with them.

Had the last time he’d met with all his archival assistants at once, on purpose, to share information, been that “intervention” Elias and the rest had arranged?

...no. No, he refused to consider that thing that had taken Sasha’s place one of his assistants. By that logic, Martin, or the creature now using his name and appearance, still was as well, and he wasn’t sitting here now, was he?

(Part of Jon half-expected him to turn up at just the thought of it, expected to see a goldenrod door appear out of nowhere and creak open slowly but surely; Jon wasn’t sure if he was more relieved or disappointed when one in fact failed to materialize.)

“So.” Jon clasped his hands together, twiddling his thumbs idly as he spoke. A small gesture, but one he hadn’t been able to engage in for over a month now. Sometimes the little things make all the difference. “I told Melanie this much already, but the rest of you ought to know that the reason I haven’t been in the Archives since April was because I was kidnapped.”

“Again?” Basira asked, her voice calm and flat.

“Again?” Melanie echoed, her voice very much not calm; Jon hadn’t realized until now that their confrontation with Elias hadn’t actually explained the whole Daisy kidnapping him thing, though it had revealed plenty of other information along the way.

“Again, yes.” Jon said, trying to keep his voice steady as he spoke, his eyes focused more on Basira than Melanie.

“Is there a reason you had to gather us all together to tell us this, or are you just here to throw a pity party?” There was a sharp undercurrent to Tim’s voice, a vicious sarcasm that hurt Jon more than his rope burns.

“Yes, there’s a point to all of this, just give me a moment to get there-”

“Is that an occupational hazard around here, getting kidnapped?” Jon wanted to believe that Melanie was joking, but he wasn’t so sure.

“Wouldn’t surprise me at this point, given that apparently becoming a monster’s par for the course now.” Tim glared pointedly at Jon as he spoke, and much as Jon wanted to think that Tim was referring to the thing that had taken Sasha’s place, the fierceness of that glare suggested otherwise.

“No, no, I don’t think the rest of you are in danger of it, it sounded like the circus wanted me specifically, something about my skin being special-”

Tim’s hands curled into fists. “You were kidnapped by the circus?”

“Yes?” Jon hadn’t been expecting for that point specifically to be questioned out of everything he had to go over, all the ground he had to cover in explaining where he’d been for over a month. “The circus wanted me for their grand ritual, the, the Unknowing, they kidnapped me to be part of it-”

“What the hell is the Unknowing, and why haven’t you mentioned any of this to me sooner? Any of you, for that matter?”

“Well, you haven’t exactly been around to tell-”

“I don’t want to hear it, Melanie!”

Basira just watched, leaning back in her chair as if the argument unfolding in front of her was mere idle people-watching. Perhaps it was in her book.

Jon tried and largely failed to suppress a soft, shaky laugh as he spoke up again. “This- this isn’t even the part I thought you’d be interested in!”

“Oh yeah?” Tim looked Jon right in the eye, then, and the fierceness of Tim’s gaze made Jon shiver a little. “What’s the part you thought I’d be interested in, then?”

“The part where Martin showed up... well. Sort of.”

“Sort of? How did Martin ‘sort of’ show up in the middle of your circus kidnapping?”

“It’s, it’s complicated-”

“’Course it is.”

“And it, it wasn’t in the middle of it, it was at the end, it’s the reason I was able to get back here in the first place-”

“Jon.” Tim stood up suddenly, pressing his hands against his desk; he couldn’t very effectively loom over Jon when his desk was several feet away from where Jon was sitting, but he certainly attempted to do so just the same. “What happened to Martin?”

“He turned into Michael.” Jon couldn’t meet Tim’s fiery gaze, instead looking back down at his hands, fidgeting with his fingers as he spoke. “Or- or Michael turned into him. Or both. I don’t entirely understand it, but I- I think that might well be the point.”

Tim sat back down, though his arms remained atop his desk, splayed out haphazardly. “Start from the beginning.”

“Well, Michael- there’s a reason it used that name, why it looked so human. Michael Shelley was one of Gertrude’s assistants, she, she got him to enter the Distortion during its ritual, to become the Distortion.”

Tim snorted. “So there’s precedent, then.”

“What, you think he’s going to sacrifice one of us next?” Melanie’s face paled slightly at the thought, though her eyes were filled with cold determination not to be the next victim.

“No, that’s not- no.” Jon shook his head roughly, trying to ignore how his hands shook at just the thought of it. “And if you’re trying to reference what happened to Sasha, that wasn’t my doing.”

“Maybe not, but you knew, didn’t you? You knew before the rest of us did, and you didn’t say a damn word-”

“I was literally wanted for murder, Tim. Or did you forget that bit? Did you expect me to waltz into the Archives and just wait to get arrested? If you’re going to be mad at anyone for that, I’m pretty sure Elias knew the whole time. By all means, go yell at him for it.”

“I’m not yelling.” Tim slumped down in his chair. “So- so how does the Michael bit connect back to Martin?”

“Well, Michael... showed up, when I was kidnapped. To kill me. Because things weren’t bad enough already, obviously...”

Jon heard a soft snort, realized with a start that it had come from Basira; evidently she was hanging onto the conversation just fine, despite her cool and quiet demeanor that might suggest otherwise.

“I tried to open its door, but it was locked. Even Michael couldn’t open the door for me. After it tried, it... screamed and distorted before disappearing entirely, and then the door opened. And what was within it looked like Martin, a little, like Michael might have looked like Michael Shelley once did, but... wrong. The same giant hands, the same unnatural height. Whatever’s in there wants to be called Martin now, but I don’t... I don’t know how much it really is him. If at all.”

Tim let out a long sigh. “Why does everybody I care about end up becoming a monster?”

Jon’s aimless fidgeting stopped as he considered the implications of that question, tried to figure out how best to answer it.

Sasha, Martin, Jon himself. All three of them had known Tim; all three of them had changed dramatically in the last year, changed due to a connection to the supernatural. It might have been comforting to know that Tim cared about Jon as much as the other two if he wasn’t being called a monster in the process.

Was he a monster? He’d asked Elias if he was still human and hadn’t gotten a straight answer, which wasn’t exactly a surprise, but what Elias had said on the subject wasn’t entirely reassuring. But even if Jon wasn’t human, that didn’t mean he was necessarily a monster, did it? Maybe he was an avatar, like Georgie had said, somewhere in between fully human and fully other...

And part of Jon, that part that was other, was perhaps monstrous, sensed that it wasn’t just the three of them that Tim was referring to. There was another story there, one that Jon wanted to know, but--but he wasn’t going to do that to Tim. Even if part of him wanted to rip out the story no matter the cost. Even if part of him relished in the thought that he could.

Jon had only managed a soft “Tim...” before Tim stood up, pushing his chair in and turning away from Jon.

“The three of you can keep doing... whatever this is. Decompressing, getting your precious intel, I don’t know. But I’m out of here. I’m done.”

“Tim, wait!”

Tim walked off, turned the corner and disappeared as he entered another hallway.

Jon stood up, shakily, seeing Melanie and Basira’s eyes staring up at him as he did so. There was more to tell them, more to explain about what had happened, but-

But all that could wait.

Jon hesitated for only a moment before following in Tim’s footsteps, taking the same path that Tim had, walking as fast as he could manage until he and Tim were almost side by side.

[kintsugi-sheep]

Your Own Battle

I couldn’t focus on the president’s speech. Even if I could, I wouldn’t have cared anyway. The battery at the other end of the stage, with its neon blue radiance and near-imperceptible hum, had secured my attention. Up until:

"And now, the Cobalt Eagle, the Hero of the Cloudtrench Massacre, and my distinguished father, Flavius Chisholm!"

When those words left Gregor’s Mouth I was amazed, in that second, how grateful I was that I wouldn't be joining Catherine in Paradise, sipping martinis on a loveseat made of the finest clouds the angels could fabricate. It'd break her heart to know she raised such a hollow piece of shit.

The cheers and applause of the audience shook everything around me. And as my daughter, Samantha, rolled me out onto the stage, the roaring became painful. I could feel the bones in my arms vibrating, and when I turned to the flashing cameras, I was back in the sky. My sagged skin tightened, goosebumps crawling along my upper arms, and what hairs I had left—mostly on my body, the stress took the last of my pompadour two years earlier—stood at attention. There was darkness and thunder and lightning. The vultures howled as they tore my comrades from the skies. In the dark, it was easier to tell who’d died. Whether their eyes shone blue, violet, green, or red, the light always faded at death. Like watching the lights of a Christmas tree die, and seeing the lightbulbs plummet thousands of feet.

The hum of the battery continued.

Sweet Samantha pushed up to no less than two dozen microphones, each shortened so that I could see above them. In spite of my declining vision, I focused the best I could over the crowd.

In the front row stood McCullough’s widow; I recognized her from the pictures her husband always shoved in the faces of the guys at camp. I didn’t know why he felt so secure showing off his wife to the rest of us while he only ever showed us the rest of his family once. That’s how I recognized the man with his arm around the widow McCullough’s waist as his younger brother.

I reached into the breast pocket of my uppermost coat, looking for the notecards of the speech my son had prepared for me. It’s funny. In spite of having never met or engaged in correspondence with me while I was away, he claimed to know exactly what I, a hero of the Cloudtrench Massacre, should say.

Me, the fifty-year-old veteran who’d been sold on the dignity of fighting for your tribe before my formal education was even finished. Who now sat on stage, sweltering beneath a dense fur coat adorned with metals of all colors. Who was too wracked be the repercussions of our people’s magic to feed, bathe, dress, or wipe myself any more.

The hum of the battery continued.

I searched in the breast pocket of my second coat and found the speech. At the sight of the little white notecards, the crowd started cheering again. Thankfully, in spite of ow war ad ravaged my body, I had retained enough muscle strength to roll my eyes.

I scanned the crowd again and my eyes locked with a man near the front. He had to have been my age, though you probably couldn’t guess it. He was overweight, no doubt fat from the comfort of the sacrifices of other men, of braver men, of me and my comrades. As I sat there, my giant coats concealing my mummified body, I wasn’t really jealous. Having had my stomach scratched out by a vulture, I found that it was harder for me to put on weight.

I tried to begin speaking, but rasped, then coughed, then nearly choked on my saliva before sweet Samantha came to pat my back. After twenty more seconds of me hacking into the microphones, admittedly putting on a bit of a performance, I made it clear that I was fine.

The crowd started cheering again.

The hum of the battery continued. I turned to face it this time, made eye contact with something, and returned to my notecards. It was too late. Now I could truly hear it.

The words of the speech were exactly the vapid shlock you’d expect from a man who wanted to use his estranged war veteran father’s reputation to help secure himself a fourth term as president. I often wondered if the boy was mine. Samantha, on the other hand, definitely wasn’t. Anyone with two eyes and half a brain could see that.

Ricky had half a brain. Not that he needed the other half. Some twisted ritual cost him a half of what was behind his eyes, but it let him cast the most amazing spells. Shapeshifting into demons, controlling shadows, using fear as sustenance, all of it was pretty impressive. He just had to make sure to perform a ritual of gratitude to whatever profaned deity gave him his powers every midnight.

We pushed Ricky to get drunk with us one night. He passed out five minutes early. He was a husk when we woke up in the morning.

I wondered if he’d forgiven me. Looking over at the battery—looking into the battery, into its light—I could see him. “No” his mouth seemed to say. Maybe that wasn’t directed to me. Maybe he was having a bad time.

It sounded like a bad time.

I found a boy, no older than twelve, holding a flag on a pole nearly twice his height. The Colors of Liberation would look nice being waved energetically, rather than perched against his shoulder while the little brat stared blankly at his phone.

Genevieve had a son. She would wake us up every morning with a big, wet kiss on the cheek. Sometimes the guys would stay in bed so that she’d come by and kiss them. It was hilarious when the general would come by to wake them up instead.

She propositioned me one night. I refused, being married. But, as I read the words written by the salesman that was my son Gregor and the beloved daughter who wasn’t mine gingerly rested her hands on my shoulders, I wished that I had accepted her offer.

The way I’d rehearsed the speech, I didn’t study the words. The words were crap anyway. Instead, I’d focused on delivery.

“You can sell anything,” Johannes had said to me, “if you say it the right way. It don’t even have to say the right thing, just say it the right way.”

Johannes said that pretty early on. When I thought about it later, I’d realized that Johannes was probably the first one to realize that we were being lied to. The promises of victory were never met, since a peace treaty was signed. The promises of distinction were pretty unimportant, considering the ninety-five percent fatality rate. The levels of safety in the spells we used, the frequency at which letters were delivered, the assurance that no civilians would be swept into this conflict, all of it was bullshit.

All except one thing.

I couldn’t help but turn to the battery again, Johannes’ face swirling in a pool of our comrade’s essences. The reward of being an icon in this life and the next was the only true thing we were told. And the misery on his face made it clear it wasn’t worth it.

At this point, I stopped. Stopped reading the speech. Stopped focusing on the audience. Stopped trying to support my son.

I just stared at the battery. Stared past the blue light.

Ricky swam bask to the surface, half of his head missing. Drama queen.

McCulloch’s empty eye sockets looked like the were melting, crying. He couldn’t turn away from his wife in the audience.

Genevieve was there, despite having returned home after the war. I don’t know if her soul was just drawn to the battery or if they had dug her up and shoved her in there, but there she was.

The general.

The civilians.

I jumped when Samantha tapped me on the shoulder. I looked over the crowd again.

They were silent.

I saw a small family of refugees. The father, the mother, and the son stood, stone-faced, arms folded across their chests.

Heat spread from my chest outwards. Muscles I hadn’t used in years twitched to life. I planted my palms firmly in the sides of my chair and pushed. The crowd chanted my name. I could feel my daughter’s worry pushing into my back. I could feel the gear’s in my son’s head turn as he plotted how to spin this in his favor. Things inside of me cracked and grinded and popped out of place. I could taste my sweat dripping through my grit teeth.

I stood.

And before the crowd could erupt cheers, I raised a hand to silence them. I pulled my coats from my body. Like stepping out of a hot shower, I was freezing. I dropped them to the floor.

There was gasping. And there were murmurs. I stood before them, the promise of the last generation. I stood there for an hour. Emaciated, scarred, lumps where there shouldn’t be, a series of holes along my right side, the terrible tattoo I’d let Levi carve into me that ended up getting infected, I stood there and told them the painful, terrifying story behind each scar.

When I finished I looked to my friends. Their swimming has stopped and their faces were pressed against the side of the battery. The battery that was to power a great machine and protect these weak, soft people we had sacrificed so much for. Our countrymen.

For another first in many years, I spoke without a rasp. My voice was firm, deep, and sonorous. I hadn’t heard it in so long that I’d forgotten it was possible. Like rediscovering a talent you’d cast to the side.

“We did our part. Fight your own battles.” My shins then shattered beneath me.

Prompt: [WP] As the oldest of the tribe you must explain to the younglings what the final war was like.