#the body shapes might be the most jarring thing

[ofmdee]

i'm back, babeeeeeeeeey!!!! hitting randomize in CAS shouldn't be nearly as exciting as it is, lol, but thank u geneticized stuff, binned unnatural hair, and default replacements i owe you my life

also @pooklet because damn i would not have had the motivation to do this w/o them 😂

[sleeplesssmoll]

HC: What if Vertin is actually less human presenting but it's harder to tell because of her suit?

For example, there are a lot of human passing arcanists like Sonetto, Matilda, Melania, etc. Then there are arcanists like Shamane and Pavia where you see them reveal inhuman qualities at Insight II. Even further down the line you have Getian and Jessica. Arcanists vary so much in shape and size (not unlike humans tbh who also have a lot of variation among our species).

Here is what I conjured up:

Vertin's Silver/gray hair and eyes have a reflective quality to them so they reflect the color of things around them. This would also explain the inconsistencies in her hair/eye color. Her hat reduces the effect since it covers her head and she usually hides on eye. This way humans don't freak out as their talking by then changing color due to changes in light around them. You'd also end up staring at your own reflection in her eyes if you stare too hard.

If you could take a mirror and weave it into threads, that's Vertin's hair. Eyes have similar effect, they're like pools of liquid mercury.

Vertin might be able navigate through dark caves, labyrinths, and streets at night because she has a better night-vision than most. If you shine a light on her in the dark, her eyes do a that thing where they light up a like a cats. Just Sonetto lighting up the kitchen with her wand and Vertin's there nomming Picrasma candy like a naughty cat who got into the treat jar.

Then what about her suit? Maybe Vertin can temperature regulate like Sonetto, AEB her crossing the dessert in it, but she's sensitive to sun? The actual UV is bad for her skin if she's out there too long. Also her hair color is not good for protection either since she has negative melanin (this would also go for her eyes and be another reason for hat).

Or you could go further off the deep end. Embrace the arcanists blood!

What if Vertin barely even has body hair so she's more vulnerable if she doesn't cover up? What if you can see arcane shenanigans under her skin so she covers it up in public? Like her veins being a weird color instead of the blue-green humans are used too. Or maybe it's her overall body type in general?

Sonetto's parade uniform is shows off more skin. The Foundation...knows that she's pretty. They know what they're doing. There was even a trail about them using pretty girls as a distraction toward the beginning of the game. While her normal uniform covers up everything, the Foundation can make exceptions.

So what if Vertin's body doesn't conform to what humanity accepts? She has a lot of androgynous features and a lot of humans we see in-game like to put things in boxes. However, there's no box for people like Vertin who show a mixture of masculine and feminine features (although we see a more than few arcanists carry these traits). Because the Foundation wants humans to feel comfortable with arcanists, it's easier to only show off things they'll accept and quietly tuck away the things that they might not be as open too. Now that Vertin isn't a little kid anymore, those contradictory features are going to be more obvious. While Vertin is free to pick her own outfits, the stigma is still there. It actually gets worse with each Storm too.

In a world like that it might be easier to navigate to cover up as much as possible so people don't have time to dwell on what you look like underneath. Perhaps arcanists don't have that same obsession of what's going on underneath other people's clothes but they are subjected to it.

What if arcanists react to the full moon? Pavia needs to howl at it. Sonetto gets restless. Druvis NEEDS to bask in it and won't be interrupted. Then how does Vertin react? Turning into an Udimo? Big naps? Or she doesn't sleep at all. She becomes a menace! Becomes super strong! Or just lays on the floor and cries.

I forgot where I was going with this but here we are.

Embrace the arcanist blood and give me your "arcanist Vertins"! I will consume.

[imagine-darksiders]

Cold Hands, Warm Heart - chapter 24.

The Champion.

“My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine.”

― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

Words; 20,144.

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You’re no stranger to rude awakenings.

You seem to have suffered a plethora of them in the week following your unexpected departure from Earth.

But this morning in particular, the event that pulls you from your healing slumber amongst Draven’s moth-eaten sheets is not so much rude as it is downright malicious.

The world around you – once so peaceful and quiet and dark enough to keep you in unconscious bliss – is suddenly shaken up by a deafening crash that sends you lurching upright with a yelp, scrabbling for purchase on the bed as a veritable earthquake rocks through the Eternal Throne.

“Wha-th’ hell!?” you slur blearily, wrenched from sleep so swiftly that your brain has to take a moment to catch up with your body. Somewhere overhead, an indignant squawk answers your rhetorical question.

For several, disorienting seconds, your eyes rattle around inside their sockets, and you frantically try to work out whether it’s just you vibrating or the entire room.

And then, as if the world has hit its collective brakes, everything pitches sideways – yourself included – causing the bed to skid a few inches away from the wall, and the hanging lantern overhead to swing wildly up and slam into the ceiling with an almighty racket, raining dust and woodchips down on your head.

Sadly, you aren’t spared a blow. The jarring halt tosses you right off the mattress and onto the floor, your teeth bouncing against each other with an audible ‘clack’ when you collide with the wooden boards.

“Oof!” you exclaim, landing on your spine violently enough that the air is punched out of your lungs.

Blinking stupidly, you gape up at the juddering ceiling whilst the lantern continues to ricochet from side to side, threatening to pull itself free of its iron fixtures.

At last, just as your stomach clenches like it’s about to purge the meal Draven had so thoughtfully provided, the walls around you start to stabilise, the quakes peter out, and the world grows still once more, save for a squawking, ebony barrage of feathers zooming about over your head.

Once your vision steadies enough to see straight again, you realise that it’s merely Dust flapping in mad circles around the confines of Draven’s quarters.

Paralysed on the floor in a state of shock, you can manage little else but to gawk up at the crow as your chest rises and falls in quick succession until finally, you manage to swallow the heart wedged in your throat and wheeze out an anxious, reedy, “What the Hell was that?”

It’s a question that, for the most part, was meant to go unanswered, a by-product of sleepiness and a befuddled mind attempting to comprehend a reality it has just freshly awoken to, but regardless, you don’t have long to wait before receiving a tangible answer.

A pitch-dark shadow suddenly looms above your head, blotting out the lantern’s sickly glow with a curtain of thick, black hair that frames a contrarily pale mask.

“That-“ comes the gravelly voice of its wearer “- was our scheduled arrival.”

The shape moves, and through the gloom, you can make out a large hand reaching down towards you.

For a moment, your body goes tense, only to fall slack again once the comfortingly familiar sensation of cool, calloused fingers slips around your bicep, hauling you effortlessly to your unsteady feet.

It’s only Death.

… A few weeks ago, saying ‘it’s only Death’ might have garnered you some concerned looks from your peers.

Now, however, you’ve had time to come to terms with the fact that there are far worse things to wake up to than an ornery Horseman with a daunting name.

The soles of your boots have barely touched the ground before his hands are pivoting you by the shoulders until you’re facing the door, where he removes his appendages from your arms in favour of nudging his bony knuckles into the small of your back, prodding you forwards.

“A-arrived?” you stammer, parting your jaws to let out a wide, obnoxious yawn, “Where?”

“The Arena, no doubt” he offers, as concise an explanation as you’re liable to get this early in the morning. Then, raising his voice, he snaps, “Dust! Will you calm down.”

The volume sends a little jolt through your heart.

Somewhere above you, a thoroughly offended crow lets out a caw that sounds more like a huff, but after a moment, he swoops down to land on Death’s shoulder, his feathers ruffled and unkempt.

Again, you blink hard, clearing away some of the sleepy residue gathered at the corners of your eyes. As soon as the Horseman’s prior words register, the events of yesterday swing around to hit you like a punch to the gut.

“Oh, god,” you groan, lifting an arm and scrubbing the back of it across your weary eyes, “S’morning already?”

“Mm, at least the Chancellor is punctual,” Death grumbles as he guides you to a halt near the door.

Reaching past you, he lays his palm against the withered wood and shoves it open with a mere flex of his wrist.

Dimly, it starts to dawn on you just how urgently you’re being bundled from the room.

“Hey… Woah, hey!” Giving a sudden start, you dig your heels into the floorboards to try and slow the Horseman’s pace as he bullies you through the open door. Of course, your efforts are for naught.

You’re pushing back against the raw strength of a Nephilim, which isn’t unlike blowing bubbles at a hurricane and expecting the winds to change directions.

“Death, just – wait a moment,” you complain, exasperated, “What’s the rush?”

In response, the Horsemen only gives your spine a more direct push until you’re forced to stop dragging your feet and take a step forwards into the dingy corridor outside Draven’s quarters.

It’s only after the door behind you slams shut with a creak of rusty hinges that Death lowers his arm.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get a move on,” he tells you gruffly.

Clicking your tongue, you raise your brows at him as he stalks past you down the hall, a disgruntled crow still perched on his shoulder.

“I can see that,” you quip, falling lazily into step behind him, “Didn’t think you were this excited to fight the Champion.”  

“Excited’ is not the word I’d use,” he retorts smartly.

His tone, clipped and sharp like the blade of his scythe, is a stark contrast to the manner he’d graced you with last night.

And that’s when you’re struck by an unpleasant pinch of guilt. Perhaps Death wouldn’t be in such a hurry to get moving if he hadn’t been guarding you all night. He might have used the time productively, training for whatever he’s to face in the Arena.

The guilt, however, doesn’t weigh you down for long, given that Death immediately follows up with, “I’m keen to leave the vicinity lest your little devotee come sniffing about.”

“Devotee?” you echo, scrunching your face up distastefully at his tone, “You mean Draven?”

The Horseman’s hair bounces as he given an affirming nod, prompting you to tip your head towards the ceiling and heave out an exaggerated groan.

You might have guessed.

“Okay. What is your problem with him?” you huff, dropping your head again to aim a scolding look at the back of his skull, “He let us have his room? He brought me food!”

You don’t receive a response for several paces as Death veers to the right and leads you into yet another corridor, this one lined with many rickety, wooden doors. “No doubt sowing the seeds to call in a future favour,” he mutters darkly, eyeing one of the doors as it starts to creak open.

The scrape of wood goes unnoticed by his yawning tagalong.

“Why’s that such a bad thing?” you sigh, digging a pinkie finger into the corner of your eye and flicking out a kernel of sleep dust, “He helps us, we help him if he needs it. That’s how a lot of people make friends, you know.”

Death’s shoulders rise and fall with a disgruntled harrumph. “I’m not sure friendship is what the Blademaster has in mind.”

Ouch. Pulling a face, you open your mouth to ask him why - if Draven doesn’t want to be friends with you - would he have been so unequivocally accommodating to you? If Death knew how badly you'd missed the point, he might have tried to shake some sense into your clueless skull.

But at that moment, your attention is snatched away by movement in the corridor up ahead.

Swinging your gaze forwards, you suddenly falter, feet clumsily fumbling underneath you in some feeble attempt to trip each other up, and it’s only the fact that Death is still walking that you manage to keep yourself moving after him, the fear of being left behind outweighing your trepidation of the path in front of you. 

Two rows of doors stretching up and down the corridor have started to pivot open, filling the narrow space with creaks of wood that are accompanied another, less definable sound, something that reminds you of bones squeaking under too-tight sinew.

Chilly fingers dance across your spine when, from the gloom, several, emaciated figures prowl out into the corridor.

Far more awake now than you were seconds ago, you clutch at your elbows, bruising fingertips tightening on your bare arms as an unnatural cold envelopes you and raises all the hairs covering your body.

Undead – a startling number of them – begin to emerge from the open doors, shuffling out into the hallway ahead of you in a manner that reminds you all too starkly of a scene from some plotless horror movie. The difference here, of course, is that these aren’t actors wearing prosthetic makeup and fake blood. These are the real deal. Real people – perhaps not human – but people all the same who just so happen to have passed their expiry date.

Muttering to one another in deep, rasping tones, they seem to be in the throes of getting ready for the day ahead, fastening the clasps on their worn and rusted hauberks or stooping to pull boots over their exposed shinbones.

“Didn’t think we had a stop scheduled,” one of them grunts, too preoccupied with peeling a flap of loose skin from his shoulders to notice you slink past in Death’s all-encompassing shadow.

The undead beside him is equally distracted, using withered fingers to grasp his own jaw and tug it this way and that as if he’s trying to realign the bones.

A gruesome ‘crunch’ flips your stomach on its side.

The wheezing sigh that whistles out of him doesn’t quite make it to the undead’s mouth, but rather slips through a gaping hole torn out of his throat, exposing a rotten oesophagus, and when he speaks, his words are airy, like the wind given voice.

“Didn’t you hear?” he rasps, “Another Arena fight. Some fool wants to challenge Gnashor to gain audience with…. with…“

You’ve been staring hard at Death’s boots, sticking to the grim Horseman like glue, unwilling to lift your eyes and meet the hollow gaze of an unfamiliar undead. But as the soldier you pass fumbles over his words and trails off into silence, you can’t help but dart your eyes sideways towards him, catching a brief glimpse of his sunken sockets and the unhinged jaw that hangs open to an alarming degree. You’re amazed the strands of flesh connecting it to his skull are strong enough to keep it from falling to the dusty floorboards beneath your feet.

With his sudden silence – and the obvious, bug-eyed stare he’s caught you in – the other undead finally take notice.

Over a dozen heads, each in various stages of decay, creak around on disjointed necks to lock you in their sights. There’s an oppressive hush that falls over the corridor then, only disturbed by the shuffling of your footsteps.

You’d much prefer to think that Death is the cause for the impromptu silence.

Alas, despite a lack of any visible pupils, it isn’t difficult to tell whose movements the undead are tracking.

Swallowing audibly, you offer them the most feeble, fleeting smile as you debate saying 'good morning,' before thinking better of it and kicking up your heels to close the meagre distance between you and the Horsemen even more until you’re practically treading on the backs of his boots.

You remain entirely ignorant of the dark glares that Death is shooting at each soldier he passes, his hunched shoulders and luminous eyes all but broadcasting a wordless challenge.

He can understand the surprise of seeing a human in their midst, especially if word hasn’t yet spread around the whole ship. He’ll allow them a few, curious stares. But anything further…

Well… If a murderous glare from the Reaper doesn’t deter them, the scythes hanging from his hips might prove a more effective deterrent.

Unfortunately, he can do little to guard you from the whispers that have started to creep after you as you pass.

“Is that…?”

“That’s a human!”

“A maiden? In the Eternal Throne?”

Disgust, amazement, and contempt are prevalent among the tones he picks up on. The former and lattermost culprits receive a fierce eyeballing from Dust.

You’re only too pleased when you traipse around another corner and have the end of the corridor loom into view, with pale, green daylight spilling through the opening like a beacon calling you forth.

Casting a wary glance over your shoulder, you allow yourself a breath of relief when you don’t spot any of the undead trailing after you, though their murmuring voices still drift down the narrow corridor in your wake, jumbled together and indiscernible from one another now. The topic of conversation isn’t hard to guess at though.

“You’re causing quite the stir,” Death remarks, setting foot on the old, rickety staircase that winds down into the courtyard from the upper balustrade.

Mumbling something under your breath, you busy yourself with rubbing at your chilly arms in an effort to disperse the goosebumps from your flesh. “Yeah well, believe me, I’d much rather I wasn’t… Some of them looked like they wanted to mount my head on a wall.”

“I doubt they’d resort to that,” the Horseman returns conversationally, leaning sideways towards you and adding, “Your head wouldn’t make much of a trophy.”

“Oh, hardy-har.”

Jumping down the last step to land with a thud at the bottom, you hesitate for just a second, casting your surreptitious eye over an empty courtyard. Sadly, your search yields neither hide nor hair of your new, cadaverous friend, and you can’t help but purse your lips and slouch as Death herds you straight towards the door laying in wait at the foot of the main staircase.

Tipping your head back and stretching your jaw open into another yawn, you follow the Horseman down each step, your footfalls heavy and sluggish in comparison to his.

The morning air whistles through the fortress, cooling your brow and sweeping away the vestiges of exhaustion. Halfway down, the dishevelled blob of ebony feathers sitting on Death’s shoulder suddenly flicks his long, black beak up to the sky, spreads his enormous wingspan and takes off with a few, hearty flaps, buffeting the Horseman’s ear as he goes.

“Where’s he off to?” you muse aloud, tracing Dust’s erratic, vertical take-off until he catches an air current and straightens up, gliding elegantly over the top of the towers and out of sight.

The Horseman only grumbles something inaudible under his breath, though you’re almost certain you pick up on the word ‘mischief.’

At last, you reach the bottom of the stairs, and the large, looming doors set snugly into the wooden wall just up ahead. Absently, you note that this is the same entrance you’d come through yesterday. You’re so busy trying to suppress a second yawn that you don’t realise Death has come to an abrupt halt just a few feet from the doorway, and in your obliviousness, you waltz right past him, stretching out your arm to reach for the handles.

You’re promptly stopped in your tracks, however, by a large, pale hand flattening itself against your stomach and shoving you gracelessly to a standstill, pushing a strangled wheeze out of your lungs.

And not a moment too soon, it seems.

Without warning, the doors you’d been reaching for are unceremoniously flung open by a force from the other side.

You yelp as the rotten wood whizzes past your nose and barely misses by a few, scant inches.

Blinking widely – suddenly feeling much more alert – you swallow back the retort you were about to throw at the Horseman, instead offering him a grateful tilt of your lips before returning your attention to the figure emerging from the gloom of the dark hallway beyond.

A faded, green cloak is the first thing to catch your eye, and for a moment, you perk up, lifting your lips even further to aim a smile at –

… Oh.

“Hmph. Still here, are you…? Joy.”

With a shuffle of long, elegant robes, the shrouded silhouette steps over the threshold and out into the light, revealing a taller, slenderer figure than the one you’d been… expecting to see.

Embarrassed heat rushes up the back of your neck, chasing the wake of your eagerness as you shrink away from the Chancellor’s looming frame and blurt out a hasty, instinctive, “Oh-! uhm, good morning.”

As expected, Death offers no such greeting. Nor does the Chancellor for that matter, beyond making a derisive sound at the back of his decayed throat and slowing to a stop in the doorway, the ridge above one eye quirked down at you expectantly.

It takes you a second before you realise that you and the Horseman are standing side by side, taking up the entire width of the path at the base of the stairs.

“Whoops!” Giving a start, you sidle quickly behind Death, “Sorry. After you.”

You pretend you don’t hear the Horseman tut under his breath.

Sniffing haughtily, the Chancellor merely sticks his hollow nasal cavity into the air and saunters past Death, ignoring him entirely, but pausing long enough to sneer down at you with all the disgusted intrigue of a child poking at a dead bird.

“Do give my regards to the Champion, won’t you?” he says, curling his lips disparagingly, “It’s been so long since I’ve sent him a half decent meal.”

The strained, albeit polite smile that had been on your face recedes at once, shrivelling up at the implied threat, and the badly concealed insult.

Not exactly words of encouragement…

Audibly, you gulp, sending a troubled frown at the undead as his cruel grin stretches the hollows of his cheeks.

Standing as close as you are to the Horseman, you notice that the ever-present chill rolling off his skin suddenly grows colder. Moments later, just before you can think of a retort to the undead’s undeserved hostility, Death twists one of his arms behind you and lays a palm on the small of your back, ushering you around to his front and giving you a nudge through the open doors. All the while, he strains his neck over a shoulder to shoot a cool, unimpressed glare at the Chancellor.

Not another word is exchanged between any of you as Death steps through the doorway on your heels, making sure to turn his back on the undead with a dismissive scoff that earns him several, indignant splutters in return.

Then, using the heel of his boot, he kicks the stone door shut in the Chancellor’s scowling face.

As effective a snubbing as you’ve ever seen.

“Weaselly little sycophant,” Death grumbles, loudly enough that you’re sure he’s been heard even through the thick wood of the door.

“Death.” Admonishment is always more effective when you mean it. In this instance, your tone doesn’t carry nearly enough weight for the Horseman to believe you actually care about his affront on the Chancellor.

Shoulders twitching with a quiet scoff, he simply turns to lead the way through the long, murky corridor, his towering figure disappearing quickly into the gloom.

Casting a last, pensive look at the closed doors behind you, you heave a sigh and start after the Horseman, scrubbing a hand tiredly down the length of your face.

“Wait. Isn’t this the way we got in?” you ask, traipsing along in the wake of his loping strides.

In response, Death gives a noncommittal hum, likely reluctant to dredge up any relevance to the events of yesterday and his… less than dignified actions as the Reaper.

After several more seconds spent trailing through the corridor in silence, he comes to another stop, and you’re just a bit too slow to glance up from his boots to see the wall of pale flesh in front of you.

‘Thud!’

Funnily enough, it isn’t unlike walking into a wall either.

While you bounce straight off the Horseman’s back, you’re not surprised to find that he doesn’t budge an inch beyond sending you a mildly exasperated look over his shoulder.

“Sorry,” you offer, rubbing your nose with a grimace.

Now it’s his turn to heave a weary sigh.

Swivelling forwards once more, Death tilts the chin of his mask down and nods at something near his feet. “Mind the hole.”

Raising a brow, you start to edge around him, trying to get a glimpse of what’s ahead. “Mind the -? Ah.”

Stepping up to his flank, you follow the Horseman’s downturned gaze and immediately feel your stomach swoop.

The floor ahead of you has completely caved in under its own weight, leaving an enormous, yawning hole to span the width of the corridor. It’s round and bottomless, the wooden boards splintered around its circumference like a great maw filled with too many teeth.

Bravely shuffling your feet closer to the drop, you stretch your neck out and peer down over the jagged, dusty floorboards into the gaping chasm, gulping back a nervous hum. What meagre light exists in this corridor isn’t anywhere near strong enough to disturb the ink-black darkness that begins just a foot or so from the top of the hole.

“Is this… how we got in?” you ask, voice little more than a whisper.

Warm air rises gently out of the abyss from somewhere far, far below you, playing with the finer hairs on the side of your head.

Beside you, Death simply replies, “It is.”

You draw out a long, slow whistle. “Wow…” Then, “Glad we came up that yesterday, and didn’t fall down it… Wait.” Grimacing, you send the Horseman a lopsided frown, face screwed up apprehensively. “It’s not… We’re not going down there now, are we?”

Beneath his mask, Death’s lips twitch. “No,” he replies, watching your shoulders slump, palpably relieved, “There’s a door on the other side.” 

With that, he gestures for you to look by bobbing his chin at something on the other side of the sizeable gap.

Sure enough, as you raise your head and squint through the dim lighting, your gaze lands upon a nondescript pair of doors standing in wait at the far end of the corridor.

“Oh, good,” you sigh as Death moves towards the wall, “So… We’re jumping, then?”

“Again, no. Do you ever watch where you’re going?” he teases, his eyes crinkling at the edges of his dark sockets and betraying that he’s more amused than annoyed, “Here… There’s a way across on this side. The wood is still intact.”

“Intact,” you parrot dubiously, “Right.”

Regardless, traipsing up behind him, you follow his line of sight and glance down to find that, yes, at the edge of the hole, there’s a narrow stretch of mostly intact floorboards that hug the wall, spanning from your side of the gap to the other. The problem, however, is the remaining boards that have managed to cling to their fittings in the wall barely appear strong or wide enough to admit even one person at a time. Their splintered edges extend out over the hole, evoking the awful comparison of a wooden plank extending from the port side of a pirate ship. One misplaced foot, and you’ll tumble straight down into the depths of that hungry void.

“Looks…. sturdy,” you comment aloud, pulling your mouth into a thin, sceptical line.

“If it’ll carry the Chancellor, it’ll carry you,” Death reasons, stepping aside and sweeping his hand out to gesture at the start of the ‘path.’ “Ladies first,” he offers.

You can’t help but snort, flashing him a begrudgingly amused smile and quipping, “Age before beauty, Death.”

Luminous eyes narrow in the sockets of his mask, but with the softest exhale that he’ll insist is not a laugh, he simply turns from you and steps out onto the narrow strip of flooring, beckoning for you to follow.

“Just stay close,” he says gruffly.

In spite of the dismissive intonation, you don’t miss the unspoken consideration that lays hidden between the lines of his command.

‘If the floor breaks, I need to be close enough to catch you.’

“Read you loud and clear,” you mutter, treading gingerly onto the floorboards and wincing at the way they creak and bow under your weight where they definitely hadn’t when Death trod on them.

With one hand braced against the rough-hewn wall, you stick to your companion like glue, making your way slowly but steadily across the broken path, cringing visibly with every uneven step.

It isn’t far. Only a dozen feet or so to the other side. Admittedly, you’re a little envious of the way Death hardly seems to dip the boards he stands on, unlike you, who can feel every one buckle and groan underneath your boots.

You just chalk it up to another one of those mind-boggling things you’ll never truly fathom about the Grim Reaper, like how he can walk on top of ash or sand without sinking up to his knees in it.

‘Show off…’ you muse fondly.

Something else that dawns on you is that he’s moving at a deliberately gradual pace, sending several backwards glances over his shoulder at you.

Despite the tight ball of nerves rolling around in your stomach, an ember of appreciation spreads its warmth out across your chest.

Then again, perhaps he’s just keeping an eye on you because he thinks you’re clumsy and are bound to-

‘SNAP!’

The ember extinguishes in the blink of an eye, and the strangled curse that you choke out gets stuck in your throat as the surface below you suddenly and unexpectedly disappears.

For one, gut-wrenching second, you’re falling sideways, arms pinwheeling to try and reorient yourself on a floorboard that’s already plummeting down into the hole ahead of you, as if it just can’t wait to beat you to the bottom of a deadly fall.

And then, just as abruptly as it had begun, your impromptu tumble is cut short by the strong arm that darts around your waist and goes taut, jerking your body to a painful halt and hauling you back up through the air instead. Within another second, you’re sent crashing into a sturdy, cadaverous torso, grunting in shock as your cheekbone knocks against the bottom of Death’s sternum.

Breathing hard, you shakily pry your eyelids apart, increasingly aware that there’s wood underneath your feet again, and an enormous hand splayed out across the width of your back, keeping you pinned in place and sending tingling chills up and down your spine.

Letting out a wobbly breath, you crane your neck back to see the underside of Death’s strong chin, then rove your gaze up further to find the Horseman peering back down at you with eyes as wide as your own, as if even he can’t believe he just caught you.

With your heart thudding loudly in your ears, you manage to swallow through a bone-dry throat and gush, “Ho-lee~ shit. Thanks, Death.”

Even now, it still puzzles the Horseman every time you give him a word of thanks.

Blinking once, he’s quick to lower his brows and school his expression into a flat, stony glare. Though most of it remains hidden from view behind his mask, he has no doubt that his eyes say everything they need to say.

"Are all humans as hapless as you?” Death grouses, sliding both of his sizeable hands to your waist and effortlessly lifting you into the air with the same ease he’d pull his brother’s gun from its holster, “Or were you jinxed as an infant?”

Thrown off balance without a solid surface under your feet, you hurriedly clasp your hands on top of Death’s wide wrists, bracing yourself against them as he swings you carefully around to his front. From there, he resolves to simply carry you the remaining distance to the other side.

A small part of you is mortified at being manhandled so easily, but there’s a far larger part that’s more grateful than it is embarrassed.

Once he’s well clear of the ledge, Death lowers you until your boots hit the floor, and he retrieves his hands from your waist.

“Thanks,” you tell him again, slipping your own hands from his wrists to dust yourself off.

And again, Death’s mind does a funny little skip.

Giving his head a minute shake, he silently gripes to himself as he pivots on a heel and marches with purpose to the doors, throwing them open and allowing an intrusion of daylight to flood its way into the corridor.

“Ah!” you complain softly, throwing an arm up to shield your eyes against the sudden onslaught.

Death just squints, his golden stare aglow as he turns it to the desert beyond the doors.

Together, you step out into the sickly, green light of an ethereal sunrise.

A wide, wooden gangplank of questionable stability extends from your doorway down to an ash-strewn courtyard on the other side.

It seems you’ve reached the exit.

Heaving a sigh, you tilt your head back, seeking to feel the warmth of a foreign sun on your face. No sooner have you lifted your eyes to the horizon though than every muscle in your body seizes up all at once, and your brain screeches to a sudden, jarring halt.

You try to make sense of what you’re seeing…

It’s the sheer scale that flummoxes you for a second, rooting your feet to the ground through shock at first, but steadily, the all-too familiar curdle of fear starts to claw its way up your throat.

You blink hard. Then once again, as if your own vision is to blame for conjuring up a mirage of two, mountain-sized serpents coiled around a pair of crumbling towers in the distance.

It’s like gaping up at writhing skyscrapers. The titans that had been towing the Eternal Throne have found a temporary eyrie, coiled around the spires that stand on either side of a vast structure, their rotting, serpentine heads breaching the sky itself.

Massive chains stretch from fixtures on the Eternal Throne’s bow and are still secured to the anchors that have been thrust straight through the beasts’ skulls, keeping them tied to the fortress.

Your jaw hangs ajar, awed by their majesty but horrified of their size. Even with half of their bodies disappearing over the edge of a sandy plateau, you can tell that they would have absolutely dwarfed the Guardian.

The monumental scales on their underbellies clench and constrict around their chosen towers, scraping centuries’ worth of stone off the outer walls and sending the residue cascading down in chunks to the courtyard below.

Vast, uneven cracks mar the corners of each spire, telltale signs that this is a perch the serpents frequent.

“Oh my god,” you whisper reverently, taking two, small steps into Death’s shadow, never daring to take your eyes off the monstrous snakes.

“I wouldn’t worry about them,” comes the Horseman’s easy retort as he casually steps out onto the gangplank, “I doubt you’d make much of a meal.”

He doesn’t need to see to know that you’re shooting a look of abject horror at the back of his skull.

“Calm yourself,” he adds mercifully, a smirk threatening to warp his mouth to its own whims, “The dead don’t eat.”

Wringing your hands, you start after Death, planting your steps carefully as you descend the gangplank behind him, keeping your eyes fixed on the serpents high above you. “It isn’t so much being eaten that worries me,” you retort, “They could breathe at us and send us flying.”

“… The dead don’t breathe either.”

As if to contend his claim, a sudden, earth-shattering hiss slithers up the length of an exposed throat as the serpent on the Eastern tower parts its jaws, filling the very world around you with a tremulous screech that has you slapping your palms over your ears, teeth buzzing in your skull.

Stretching its colossal neck towards the opposite tower, the first serpent hisses, then with the power and volume of a thunderclap, it snaps its jaws together near the throat of its twin, barely scraping the softer scales underneath its chin.

Like a planet moving out of alignment, the other beast simply raises itself higher up the tower, part of its ribcage visibly quivering through gaps you can see in its flesh as it issues a loud, sonorous growl and lunges forwards to ‘nip’ at the anchor sticking out from its companion’s head.

“Are they…?” you begin, pausing on the gangplank as the titanic snakes draw away from one another again and shake out their great, scaled necks, causing the chains to rattle loudly over your head.

“Are they playing?”

You can only imagine the damage these things could do to one another if they really wanted to, but here, you’re reminded of a pair of cats batting at one another before retreating again, tolerant of the other’s presence, but still prone to antagonise as they see fit.

A breath rushes out of you in a wheezing laugh.

They could level a city with barely any effort. All they’d have to do is fly a little too close to the ground. And here they are.

Play fighting.

Giving your head a shake, you pick up your jaw and start after Death again, wondering who the maniac was that managed to shackle those titans to a floating fortress in the first place, let alone trained them to tow it across an endless, desert sky.

Hopping off the bottom of the gangplank, you have a brief moment to appreciate solid ground under your feet once again before you’re suddenly alerted to movement up ahead. Your head snaps up, and from the corner of an eye, you notice that Death has already stopped in his tracks, his own stare adhered to a figure shuffling towards you from the massive structure ahead.

Tall, broad, draped in robes and sporting a distinct, ovine head-…

All at once, you perk up, face brightening in recognition.

Ostegoth trundles towards you, his head angled down at the pipe that seems to be constantly at hand. He’s too busy tapping his gnarled fingers against its bowl to notice that you and Death have appeared several dozen yards in front of him.

“Ostegoth!” you call out, your wariness of the serpents dissipating in your delight of seeing the old capracus again, “Hey! Over here!”

Startling to a complete standstill, Ostegoth almost drops his pipe before he manages to fumble it back into his grasp and throws his woolly head up to squint along the length of the courtyard. When he spots you waving at him, his features open up in pleasant surprise, and his muzzle stretches wide with a smile.

“Ah! Salutations, little Lamb!” he replies, tipping the pipe towards you in greeting, “I see you made it to the Eternal Throne after all!”

“Thanks to your advice,” you remind him, breezing past the Horseman, who seems content to let you stray ahead, for the time being.

With a rustle of his rich, brown robes, Ostegoth traipses to a halt as you bound up to meet him, skidding to your own stop at his hooves and tilting your head back to give him a smile that warms his lonely chest.

“God, it’s nice to see a friendly face,” you beam, earning a sheepish chuckle from the old one.

“Is it…? Hmm. Likewise,” he returns jovially, his gnarled hand twitching towards you for a moment before he seems to reconsider and returns it to his side.

Old habits die hard, he reflects… It’s been some time since he was in the presence of a youngling. Longer still since he’s affectionately ruffled the wool on a Capracus lamb’s head.

Shaking off bitter-sweet memories, he matches your smile and asks, “Ah but tell me; How goes your search for the Well?”

“Poorly,” Death’s rough voice grunts behind you, closer than you thought it would be.

Drawing to a halt at your side, he eases his head back and leers up at the Capracus, his eyes narrowed guardedly.

“What are you doing here?” he demands, “And more to the point, how did you get here? We were travelling all night.”

There’s an underlying accusation barely hidden between his words. ‘You’d better not have followed us.’

With a slow incline his head, Ostegoth remains patient and sage in his response. “I heard whispers that the Throne was heading South-west for the first time in decades, and the only thing out here of note is the Gilded arena. And besides,” he adds, offering Death a cryptic smile, “A merchant knows many roads. Not all of them are shared with Horsemen… As for why I’m here…” Trailing off, he raises the pipe and wraps his lips around the end of its long, slender stem, his furred cheeks hollowing as he takes a few puffs, savouring the smoke’s taste on his palette.

Humming contentedly, he draws the pipe back and lets out a long, gentle exhale, neck craned sideways to blow the smoke well away from you. “Well, I am a merchant,” he deadpans, clearing his throat and aiming a rather flat look at the Horseman, “And this ship is the only civilised locality within a thousand miles. Where else do you suggest I go to trade?”

Death doesn’t bother to conceal a derisive scoff and folds his arms curtly over his chest. “The dead have use of your wares?”

“Everyone has needs, Horseman,” Ostegoth replies, “Even the dead… Perhaps they most of all. That Blademaster is always particularly interested in my inventory.”

“Blademaster?” You perk up at once. “You know Draven?”

Unseen, Death’s scowl darkens.

Dipping his horned head, Ostegoth appraises you curiously as he runs a long, dark fingernail through his ivory beard. “Indeed, I do, Lamb. A fine lad, that one. Very fine.”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure he’s quite the paragon,” Death gripes, raising his voice and clapping his palms together impatiently, “Now, I’m afraid we haven’t got time to stay and chat. We’re supposed to be on an errand.” This he says while casting a rather pointed glare at the side of your head.

“An errand?” Ostegoth’s small, floppy ears prick forward attentively, giving the Horseman an up and down glance as if he finds the prospect of Death completing errands completely absurd.

“I’d hardly call it an errand,” you interject with a wry smile, “Apparently Death can’t get in to see the King without proving himself in a fight, or something.”

And just like that, the Capracus blinks, drawing his head back and furrowing the skin above his browbone.

“… Fight….” Quietly, he swivels around to peer up at the towering stone wall of the amphitheatre laying in wait behind him. Then, breathing a sigh that causes the crystals on his robe to clink softly as his chest rises and falls, Ostegoth’s jaundiced, sunken eyes slip shut, and in a whisper, he utters, “Ah… Gnashor… I might have known.”

“Gnashor?” you echo bemusedly, while at the same time, Death asks, “Might have known what?”

Rather than answer however, Ostegoth simply stands there, staring up at the structure in silence for several, long moments, and all you can hear are the serpents high above you hissing through immense, decomposed lungs as they resettle themselves around their perches.

“Ostegoth?” you prod again, “Who’s Gnashor?”

… Nothing.

Shifting your weight onto your other foot, you spare a quick, searching look up at Death, only to find that he’s regarding the capracus with a glare that could only be described as dubious.

At last, after a long stretch of further, uncomfortable quiet that Ostegoth seems too lost in thought to break, the Horseman tuts, uncrossing his arms as he meets your questioning gaze with a roll of his eyes. “Come on,” he tells you, “We’ve dawdled here long enough.”

Stalking past your new, enigmatic acquaintance, Death heads for the arched doorway, shooting a glance over his shoulder when your footsteps don’t immediately follow.

“Y/n!” he barks.

Startled, you drop the hand you’d been stretching towards Ostegoth’s arm.

“Oh – er, coming!”

Chewing on your lip, you reluctantly sidle past the Capracus, stealing a glance back at him as you go. He’s moved his gaze to the ground, the ridge between his brows turning deep and contemplative.

“Well… Bye, Ostegoth,” you call out to him hesitantly, lifting your hand in a half-hearted wave.

At the sound of his name, he suddenly blinks, his long pupils expanding with surprise. Lifting his head, he meets your troubled look and pulls a face, tapping his pipe’s bowl in a palm.

Just as you turn around and see Death pushing open the doors, the strained atmosphere is cut by Ostegoth’s voice.

“Horseman!”

Death’s massive silhouette pauses in the doorway, long enough for you to catch up.

The pair of you turn to regard the old Capracus; you with anticipation, Death with impatience.

Long, furred fingers curl tightly around the stem of his pipe. “Are you certain this the only way?”

Frowning, you hear Death give off a tiny, irritated exhale before he retorts, “If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here, would I?” Then, a little more waspishly, he adds, “Why? Do you doubt my imminent victory?”

But Ostegoth has already withdrawn his focus from the Horseman and given it to you instead.

Strange, yellow eyes meet yours across the courtyard, softening considerably when they do. He gives you a funny look, one you can’t decipher, not least because it still seems so bizarre to see an ovine man pull any expression at all, but you almost get the inkling that he’s studying you, turning something over in his mind.

What is he-…?

“Tell me, little Lamb,” he says abruptly, cutting off your train of thought, “Will you fight the Champion?”

Taken aback, you exchange a glance with Death and open your mouth to reply, but your companion beats you to it with his own, curt response.

“Don’t be foolish,” he scoffs at Ostegoth, “Of course she won’t.”

Once again, the Capracus blithely ignores Death’s input, keeping his eyes fixed on you instead.

Suddenly uneasy, you open your mouth and halfway manage to ask, “Why?” before Ostegoth interrupts.

“You must not raise a weapon against the Champion,” he stresses, tone uncharacteristically urgent, “Do you understand?”

Letting out a bewildered little laugh, you can only think to offer him an awkward smile and a nod. “Yeah, I mean - don’t worry. For once, I’m actually planning to stay out of it.”

“Hmph. I’ll believe that when I see it,” Death grumbles, turning to the stairwell beyond the doors and disappearing into it.

Shooting a faux-offended glare at his retreating back, you start to follow only to hesitate once you reach the doorway.

Planting a hand on the cool, stone frame, you turn to the Capracus one last time, finding that he’s still peering after you, his forehead wrinkled deeply with an expression you’ve-… you’ve seen before….

The moment you place it, your smile drops, and the air is almost knocked out of your lungs.

It’s the same look you used to catch Eideard sending your way.

Gentle worry on a pensive, ancient face…

The heart in your chest murmurs sadly, and your eyes threaten to mist over.

Giving a hard sniff, you raise your hand again in farewell and croak, “We’ll see you on the ship, yeah?”

Ostegoth opens his muzzle to respond.

“Are you coming!?” Death’s voice drowns out whatever the old one might have said.

So, with an apologetic shrug, you slip through the doors and hurry after your impatient friend, failing to spot the hand that Ostegoth has lain tenderly over his old, ragged heart.

The words he utters are lifted from his muzzle, drifting away on the breeze before they can follow you through the doorway.

“Be safe…”

-------------------------------------------------------------

“Well,” you break the silence that has been lingering between you and Death for the last few minutes as you both climb yet another staircase within the ancient, evidently abandoned arena, “That was… interesting.”

“Hmph… Interesting,” the Horseman echoes derisively, “Try ‘suspicious.”

“You’re wondering if he knows who the Champion is.” You have to admit, you’ve been thinking the same thing.

There’s no way Ostegoth fought the Champion… Is there? You know nothing of the Capracus, save for the fact that he’s the last of his kind.

Thoughtful, you find yourself staring blankly at the mouldy, wooden walls all around you. Much like everything else you’ve seen in the realm, this place seems two heavy stomps away from collapsing in on itself. Everything here, the architecture, the people, they all seem to hang suspended in a space between death and complete and utter decay.

It reminds you of the Horseman, in a way.  Alive, but not. Half dead, with a working body and mind, but a heart that’s long since ceased to beat.

He’s… liminal, you realise mutely, much like the Land of the Dead.

It makes you curious.

“Hey, Death? Can I ask you something?”

The Nephilim's sigh almost feels traditional at this point. “I imagine you’ll ask regardless of whether I say yes or no.”

Undeterred, you blurt, “Do you live here?”

“Do I-… Excuse me?”

“I mean in this world,” you clarify, skipping a step that’s a little more worn than the others, “In the Dead Lands?”

“Why would you assume I-…" Trailing off, he hums, mulling it over. "Hmm… Actually, I suppose I can see why you’d assume that…”

“So, this isn’t your home?”

“I don’t have-…” Pushing another long-suffering sigh through his nostrils, he amends, “No. I do not live in the Land of the Dead.”

“Huh.”

“… Huh?” he echoes waspishly.

Sensing his rising impatience, you quickly elaborate. “No, I mean… It just… seems so you.”

Well… Death can’t decide if he should take that as an insult or a compliment.

“Why are you asking me this?” he accuses you suddenly, his voice a touch cooler than it was before. Not defensive, per se, but definitely guarded.

“Gee, Death. Not sure,” you chuckle, unperturbed or perhaps unaware of the shift in tone, “Maybe I just want to get to know you better?”

All at once, the Horseman’s shoulders prickle with warning and he snaps his head forwards, eyes burning a hole through the steps below his boots. He doesn’t reply. Unbidden, age-old instincts raise their sleepy heads, no matter how he tries to rationalise the point of your question.

For some time, the only response you get is the soft padding of his boots on the stone steps, accompanied by your far louder, more hurried footfalls that send echoes back up the stairwell. After a long and admittedly awkward pause, you let out a quick sound of bemusement, cocking a brow and asking the back of Death’s head, “What? Is it taboo for Horsemen to ask each other about where they live?”

His retort is immediate, loud and barbed, cutting off the end of your sentence. “It’s suspicious.”

“I’m sorry? It’s suspicious to ask where you live?”

“Knowledge is power," he snaps, "Even the most insignificant details can be used against you if discovered by the wrong person. It’s never wise to freely give that knowledge away.” After a pause, he adds, “Not even my brothers and sister know where I live.

Again, you blurt out a quick, incredulous scoff. “You’re kidding.”

But when Death remains entirely silent, your humour evaporates like rain on a hot tin roof. “Oh my god… You’re serious…. I wasn’t trying to -… Look, you know I wasn’t asking because I want to use it against you, right?”

For the sake of his pride, Death pretends to consider your words carefully, though deep down, he’s already sure of his answer. He does know. But it’s hard to shake the manacles of an eternity’s worth of suspicion.

“For humans,” you continue cautiously, “It’s totally normal to ask our friends about themselves.”

When all he does is bristle in response, you realise it’s probably best to change the subject.

“Right... Anyway, um... You reckon they fought?” you muse aloud.

“Who?”

“Ostegoth and the Champion," you clarify, "Is that why he wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be fighting, uh, what was his name? Gnasher?”

“Gnashor,” Death corrects you, his feathers gradually unruffling themselves, “And I highly doubt the old goat has fought much of anything, let alone the Dead King’s Champion.”

Pulling your lips into a tight line, you softly retort, “You don’t know that.”

The Horseman doesn’t respond.

-------------------------------------------

After several more minutes, you finally reach the top of the stairs and find yourselves standing at the head of a colossal amphitheatre, open to the sky and surrounded on every side by towering, stone walls. Vast spires of stone loom in the distance, well beyond this place, and you start to imagine a vast, dead city laying just past its boundaries.

“Welcome to the Gilded Arena,” Death remarks, unimpressed.

“Wow.” Laying your hands on your hips, you pivot around to survey the immediate vicinity. “Quite the turnout.”

Save for you and the Horseman, there doesn’t appear to be another soul in sight.

“Well,” Death shrugs one bulbous shoulder, “I never was one for crowds.”  

Venturing forward, your feet move off wood and onto stone slabs, and as you amble out of the shadow of the hall behind you, you feel the sun warming the top of your head again.

Stretched out to either side of you is a walkway, wide and entirely paved with mossy stone. It angles sharply around a corner on both sides, and as you cast your gaze over the area, you realise it loops in a massive square. Surrounding the centre of that square, is a barricade made from black, iron spokes.

Unable to fight against the nervous curiosity building in your stomach, you allow your feet to carry you forwards, right across the wide walkway until you reach the metal barrier, where you slip your fingers around the rusted bars and peer down through the gaps.

All at once, an ice-cold dread bubbles up from the pit of your stomach, blooming into something unignorable.

“Oh, my god.” You gulp thickly, nausea churning in your guts.

Materialising beside you, Death’s eye sweeps over the gladiatorial pit below.

And it is a pit, you decide with a grimace, akin to the ones you’d find in the Colosseums of Earth, with high walls on all four sides and a flat, ashy ground. Eight, ominous pillars of wood are spaced evenly around the arena. And set into the furthest wall, you spot the dark but definable grid of a portcullis.

Thick chains have been hammered into the sides of each pillar, and from them, dangling by manacles worn shut forever by rust, are…

“Skeletons?!” you gasp aloud, your body turning stiff.

Indeed, from at least half the pillars, several skeletons of various size and shape have been strung up, their sun-bleached bones browning in the daylight.

You half expect them to raise their skulls to glare up at you, but as the seconds tick by without any movement, you deduce that these skeletons must really be dead. In the traditional sense.

At least, you hope they are.

An eternity spent dangling by their wrists in this lonely place would be a cruel, awful fate.

“That’s a little morbid,” you comment, pulling a face at one skeleton whose arms, horned skull and torso are all that’s left of it. Everything below the spine has rotted off and fallen in a heap to the ground below, joining hundreds of other calcified bones that are scattered across the arena.

Hundreds…

‘Shit,’ you think to yourself, tugging worriedly at the hem of your skirt, ‘How many people died here?’

“Mm. What remains of those that failed,” comes Death’s voice, quiet and thoughtful as he scans the pit.

You don’t even bother to suppress a visceral shudder at that.

Tearing your eyes off the pillars, you shoot him a thin-lipped smile, wondering how much it must resemble a grimace. “Just... do me a favour? Promise I’m not gonna see your body strung up there when this is over?”

Death twists his mask towards you, taking in the tense pinch of your brow. “Hah,” he snorts, “And give Dust the satisfaction of pecking out my innards?”

“Death.”

“Do you really have so little faith in me?” he quips.

Aiming a swat at his arm that you miss on purpose, you turn away from him to lean against the fence and mutter, “Well, it’s hard to know who to bet on if I haven’t seen your opponent yet.”

After a moment of hesitation, you almost add, ‘just kidding,’ but a fleeting glance up at the Horseman’s profile reveals a glimmer of humour squeezing his eyes at their edges. He knows.

So, you close your mouth and instead return your gaze to the sprawling arena below.

From the safety of the elevated walkway, you squint down into the pit, casting a careful eye over every shadowy corner, and trying to peek behind the pillars.

“… Huh,” you say, furrowing your brow, “Um… Where do you think this Champion is?”

“I doubt he just waits around down here for some fool to come along and challenge him,” Death replies, placing a hand on the metal railing and bracing himself to vault right over it.

Before he can though, your fingers suddenly curl around what they’re able to of his immense bicep, delicately clutching at the cold skin as if you could prevent a force of nature from moving.

Perhaps it says something about Death that it actually works.

Rather than snatch his arm away as he might have done several days ago, the Horseman merely twists his mask around to appraise you coolly, only for his expression to waver when he sees you peering back up at him with an imploring frown.

“Please, be careful,” you say, neither demanding not demeaning, just a statement of concern expressed to a Nephilim for whom concern is (and always will be) an alien concept.

A thousand responses flit through his skull. Some prompt him to give you a sarcastic remark. Others, a harsh rebuttal of your well-meaning sentiment. ‘What sort of advice is that for one of the Four?’ he might say.

But there’s a sincerity to you, as always, that douses indignation and soothes his reflex to brush your worry aside like it’s a silly, frivolous thing. He can even see the tiny, yellow pinpricks of his own eyes reflected in your watery gaze.

‘Humans,’ he sighs internally.

Again, you’re throwing him off kilter. Something that’s been happening with startling frequency of late.

Resolving to address that at a later date, Death doesn’t say a word, instead offering you the tiniest of nods as he pulls quietly from your grasp and lays both of his hands on the metal barrier in front of him.

You let your fingers slip off his arm, stepping back to give him the space to swing his leg over the bars.

Shooting you a brief look over his shoulder, he only issues one, stark order. “Stay. Here.”

And all you do is nod in return, offering him a thin smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes.

With a grunt, Death hoists himself up, effortlessly vaulting over the barricade and plummeting ten feet to the ashen ground below. He hits it lightly, nearly soundless save for the clink of his boot buckles, sending a plume of ash blossoming out around the spot where he lands.

Rising to his full height, he strains his sensitive ears to try and catch any sounds above the moaning desert winds and your anxiously shuffling feet up on the stands.

“It’s quiet,” he remarks to himself, though even he won’t venture to add the typical follow-on to that remark. No, he isn’t superstitious, but eons of experience have taught him that the Universe is full of patterns, and it does so love to try and catch him out…

Venturing further from the wall, Death continues to send searching glares at the pillars, his eyes lingering on a skull that’s turned to face the other end of the arena, staring blankly and eternally at the walls that entomb it.

On a whim, he follows its gaze, and finds himself look straight at the portcullis. Down here, it seems so much larger than it had from the stands.

Rusted, metal bars as thick as his wrists conceal nothing but a pitch-black darkness beyond the grid.

Senses primed to a hair-trigger, Death continues marching forwards, his steps light, his eyes unblinking and affixed to the looming, black gate.

The moaning wind picks up, blowing through the pillars and sending the skeletons swaying gently to and fro, bones knocking hollowly against one another.

All of a sudden, Death stops in his tracks.

Tiny particles of grit roll and tumble over the ground towards the Horseman’s boots, drawing his eyes down to watch them skitter past for a second before he jolts, snatching his head back up, hands flying down to the hilts of his scythes.

Without warning, the whole arena is sent shaking under the force of an almighty, ear-splitting roar.

The bellow reverberates throughout the amphitheatre, petering out on an echo carried off by the winds.

For the breadth of a second, everything falls silent once more.

It isn’t to last.

Somewhere inside the structure, a hidden winch starts to turn of its own preternatural accord. Metal chains jangle and clatter, and with a squeal of rusty hinges, the portcullis begins to rise, disappearing into the vertical grooves that had been carved into the wall thousands of years ago.

And from behind that dark, iron grid, twin balls of radiant green light spark to life.

Every hair on your body stands to attention as a guttural, hissing growl slides beneath the ever-widening gap.

Then, with a final screech, the portcullis clanks to a stop, the spikes jutting down from the roof of the hypogeum’s exit, like a vault yawning open to unleash a terrible monster.

Something innate bids you to call Death back to the safety of the stands, as if to warn him. But of what? He already knows.

An awful hole opens up under your feet, sucking any and all optimism down into it.

Ostegoth’s perturbed expression flits in front of your mind’s eye, and you wish you’d pressed him for more information. In fact, it occurs to you far too late that neither you nor Death had asked anyone what lays in wait in this arena.

‘But hindsight is a wonderful thing,’ you remind yourself firmly, curling anxious fingers around the bars of the fence, ‘Besides, if Death can take down the Guardian, he can certainly beat the Dead King’s Champion….’

Right?

Before you can stop it, a cold, empty doubt worms its way under your ribcage and sinks its teeth into your heart.

Down in the pit, Death’s mask dips threateningly, and in one, lighting-quick motion, he rips his scythes free, their blades catching the sunlight and glinting with deadly serration.

It’s as if their very appearance serves as the strike of a match because whatever had been lurking behind that gate comes exploding violently through it.

Death’s ears prick at the sound of your yelp as a ghastly beast slithers beneath the portcullis and emerges into the light.

He won’t begrudge you for your alarm. It is a nightmare given form.

At first glance, it looks like a snake. Fitting, he supposes, given that this realm seems so full of them.

The twin sky serpents, the Chancellor, and now this monstrosity…

“Gnashor, I presume?”

A golden, hominin skull sits at the head of a serpentine body, jaws parted wide to issue an animalistic hiss down at the Horseman.

Longer than the carriage of a train, Gnashor looks to be made entirely of solid, sun-bleached bone segments not unlike the spinal column of some long-dead sauropod, and around its skull, there hangs a cumbersome, black band of solid metal, fastened like a bear-trap above and below its head.

Clenching his jaw, Death muses that it’s presence might make removing this thing’s skull a little trickier.

A burning, green gem is stamped squarely at the centre of its cranium and flares with furious light, just like the sparks inside its empty sockets do as the beast hurtles towards Death, twisting its way over the ash with alarming speed.

Planting his right foot on the ground, the Horseman braces himself, waiting until it’s almost upon him before he suddenly kicks off, launching himself sideways and letting it careen right over the spot he’d just been standing.

Several tonnes of living bone barrels past, and as it does, Death twists himself about in mid-air and gives a testing swipe of his scythe. It glances harmlessly off the creature’s tail with a muted ‘shink.’

‘Solid as rock,’ Death notes irritably.        

The force of its passing whips up a maelstrom of ash into Death’s mask, but he merely turns his back to the gale and readies his stance for another pass.

The almighty skull starts to turn, and its body follows suit, arching a graceful curve around the pit before it circles completely back to Death.

Eyes narrowed to thin slits of amber, the Horseman stands his ground, assessing, waiting for it to make the next move…

So, when it suddenly screeches to a stop with its massive jaw raising off the ground like a rearing cobra, he’s caught wildly off guard.

With barely a dozen paces between them, Gnashor poises for several, quavering seconds, its hateful glare boring into the Horseman with such contempt, he can nearly feel the malice rolling off its undulating body in waves and pushing against his own magics.

Hate is potent. This thing seems to have it in spades.

But something else occurs to him then. Whilst he’s been busy casting analytic glances at every part of the beast, studying it for signs of weakness, Gnashor, in turn, appears to be doing the same right back.

A mark of intelligence, he realises.

What is it humans say? ‘Know thy enemy?’

Death’s wrappings creak as he tightens his grip on the scythes. “What are you waiting for…?” he murmurs under his breath.

When Gnashor only shakes its segments like a rattlesnake warding off a larger predator, Death takes a testing step towards his quarry.

The reaction, as predicted, is visceral.

Gnashor’s skull recoils, and it lifts itself higher off the ground, jaws spread to roar threateningly at the Horseman’s advance, and without warning, it lunges….

…Straight. Down.

Death even leans back, preparing to dodge what he assumed would turn into a frontal attack. He’s almost thrown off his feet when Gnashor slams its colossal, bear-trap visor into the ash, and starts pushing in.

The power at the back of the Champion must be immense, for the ground gives way in a flash as if to readily accept those ancient bones back into its depths.

Spinal segments undulate, rippling with unbelievable strength as the backend of the creature’s entire body tips upwards. Within seconds, Gnashor has forced itself determinedly under the ground, and with a lash of its tail tip, it vanishes completely, leaving a burrowing hole in its wake that quickly begins to fill once again with sand and ash.

Somewhere above the arena, Death hears you give an indignant shout. “What the-!? That’s not fair!”

And while he appreciates the sentiment and your naïve expectations, battles are rarely won by playing fair. He has to commend the Champion. This might be harder than he anticipated…

The ground under his feet trembles like there’s an earthquake rolling through the amphitheatre. Spinning slowly in place, he tries to follow the vibrations, feeling for their intensity and spitting a very human curse off his tongue – one he must have picked up from you, somehow.

Sharp, discerning eyes scan the ground, but in the end-

“Death!” You’re the one who spots it first. “Behind you!”

Your shrill voice cuts above the rumble of Gnashor’s tunnelling, and as Death whirls around, he finally zeroes in on what you’d alerted him to.

At the other end of the arena - but quickly eating up the distance – a long lump of churning ash is careening across the ground in his direction. Gnashor lays just below the surface, burrowing along without hinderance.

The lump is rising up under his boots before he can heave a weary sigh.

In a split-second decision, he dives forwards and hits the dirt just as the ground behind him splits apart.

Gnashor erupts from the ash in a vertical lunge, his roaring skull aimed like a missile towards the sky.

Quick as a flash, Death rolls onto his back and drops one scythe to raise his free hand towards the beast’s spine.

“Oh no you don’t,” he growls.

His gauntlet flashes with a familiar, purple light, and the phantom copy of his appendage launches from the ether, translucent, disjointed fingers reaching for their target.

Bullseye.

They hit one of Gnashor’s jutting spinal segments behind its neck, instantly clamping down around the vertebrae with a vengeance. Then, taking up both scythes in one hand and giving his opposite arm a vicious wrench, Death uses the ethereal tether to haul himself off the ground, through the air, and straight onto the Champion’s back.

The ensuing howl of rage is loud enough to shake the ramparts above you.

With its job done, the phantom hand dissolves into wisps of indigo smoke as Death digs his natural fingers into the grooves around Gnashor’s neck, adhering himself to the writhing beast with one hand while the other swings his scythes down and hooks the curved blades underneath its body, pulling the metal up to cut into its ‘throat.’

He might have succeeded in severing its head after all, if Gnashor hadn’t wised up and chosen that precise moment to buck.

A sudden, violent lurch to the side dislodges Death’s weapons from its neck as the Champion vaults up and down, its serpentine body dancing erratically like a ribbon swept up in a maelstrom. Stubborn as a burr, the Horseman’s grip turns crushing, and he hooks his ankles over each other beneath Gnashor’s body, determined not to be thrown.

He’s a Rider, no beast could unsaddle him.

In awe, you watch from the stands, your eyes blown wide, shining with astonishment as Gnashor thrashes around the arena. Not once does Death slip. He’s leaning backwards, sitting himself heavily against one of the spinal vertebrae and letting his body roll with every, erratic motion.

You’ve seen him on Despair, but the horse and his rider are so in sync, they make it look effortless. This though… This takes real mastery. This is the Horseman in him, you realise with a growing swell of amazement and - oddly enough - pride, prompting you to pump your fist in the air and cheer, “Yeah! Woo! Ride ‘em, Cowboy!”

If Death hears your encouragement – and there’s no doubt that he does – he doesn’t respond. Can’t in fact. Because without warning, which isn’t so surprising, Gnashor suddenly changes tactics.

If it can’t throw him off, then it will try to knock him off.

Indignant, it sets its sights on one of the pillars, and a desperate gleam flashes across its sockets.

In a move neither you nor Death would have anticipated, Gnashor coils its bones together like a spring and, in one, quick jerk, it unfurls itself, launching towards the structure.  

The Horseman realises its intent barely a second before impact.

Thinking on his feet, he hunkers down against the beast’s spine and throws himself to the opposite side, putting as much weight behind his lurch as possible.

Gnashor’s flank hits the column with an almighty crash, sending chunks of wood flying in every direction. Splinters pepper like hailstones down against Death’s shoulders and into his hair, and while he escapes being crushed entirely, there’s still a sickening crunch, followed by an unusual, uninvited stab of discomfort that goes shooting up his leg, so unfamiliar to him that he doesn’t register it for what it is at first.

His boot, it seems, the one slung around Gnashor’s serpentine neck to adhere him in place, had not been spared from the impact.

Metal and leather dig into his calf as his unorthodox mount slides down the pillar and hits the ground, shaking off its own daze, yet the only utterance Death makes is a small, muted grunt that he keeps locked behind his gritted teeth.

By contrast, your reaction borders on deafening.

“DEATH!” you yelp shrilly, all traces of enthusiasm gone.

Throwing yourself against the fence, you watch in horror as the Champion shakes the impact off and begins to rise, its armoured skull twisting around on itself to glare at the Horseman still clinging to its back.

The sound of your voice, harrowed and fraught with worry, steals a portion of Death’s focus from the battle. Snapping his gaze up to the top of the pit, his eyes dart left and right, seeking you out, and when he finds you, he’s quick to forget about the ache in his leg.

You’re leaning precariously over the barricade, your hands braced on top of the bars to lift yourself onto your tiptoes as if you’re moments away from vaulting over the fence entirely, driven by the same foolish, dogged loyalty that had urged you to follow him to this dead realm.

A bullet of alarm slugs the Horseman in his chest, just underneath the remnants of the Crowfather’s lantern.

“STAY THERE!” he bellows, his grasp on Gnashor slipping as it thrusts its skull into a forward charge, aiming for one of the intact pillars.

Up above, you’re almost chewing a hole through your cheek, one leg twitching as though you mean to sling it over the fence and leap down into the arena to help. Is it cheating to help? Does that really matter in a battle of life and death?

You’re so focused on the fight, you don’t even hear the steady tread of boots stalking up behind you.

How could you hear when Gnashor’s skull splits open to roar and the whole amphitheatre rumbles in response?

It’s why your heart almost leaps out of your throat when a giant, clammy hand fists itself into your hair and wrenches you viciously backwards, ripping your hands off the fence.

You can’t even catch a breath to cry out. Your head snaps back violently, scalp burning like it’s been set on fire as you’re flung to the ground, landing with a sickening thud on your spine and biting your tongue so hard, the taste of iron is quick to spread across its spongey surface.

There’s a ‘smack!’ when your skull follows your body’s momentum and hits the stone underneath it.

At last, you let out a wheezing cry, mouth hanging open in shock as pain and light explode behind your eye sockets. “Wha-!” Voice slurring, you give a dumb blink, your brain sluggish and hazy.

Keeping your eyelids apart is a feat, but you try to focus on what just happened, how you went from standing to laying on your back within a matter of seconds. Colourful sparks dance in front of your retinas, and your ears ring with a high-pitched whine.

‘What the Hell happened!?’

Suddenly, a shadow falls over your eyes, blotting out the sunlight overhead.

Heaving a miserable groan, you lift an arm up weakly to shield your vision and squint up at a towering shape that looms over you, a pair of horns sweeping out on either side of their head.

“Vuh-Ugh… Vulgrim?” you croak blearily.

Your brain feels three times as heavy, thick with fog and confusion, but there are alarm bells blaring somewhere far away as the figure bends down and fills your vision with the sight of a huge, rotting hand, crooked fingers splayed menacingly above you… Reaching for you…

At the back of your mind, a tiny voice whispers through the tinnitus, ‘That’s not Vulgrim.’

Kicking feebly at the ground with your heels, you try to scoot backwards, but you don’t manage to budge more than an inch or two before those same, putrid fingers slither around your neck.

And then, they go taut.

At once, your eyes bulge out of your head, rolling with fright as you’re dragged unceremoniously off the ground by your throat, gasping for breath around an obstructed windpipe.

Flailing your legs, you attempt to strike out with a foot, though your boot only glances off sturdy, unyielding armour. With your vision reclaiming ground, you peer down at the rusty, iron gauntlet below your nose, attached to the arm of the hand that’s strangling you.

Shivering, you tear your eyes off the gauntlet and lift them up to find a vaguely familiar face glaring back down at you.

“B-B-!” you choke out, silenced when the hand gives a squeeze.

A lipless mouth peels apart to reveal crooked, serrated teeth, sneering at you with all the hate of a man watching a bug squirm in his palm.

One of Draven’s recruits holds you aloft, the undead who wielded an axe and had seemed only too eager to separate your head from your body when you first arrived.

“You…” Brumox oozes venom when he spits out the word. “You filthy, little primate!”

His fingers are cold against your neck, but not cold like Death’s crisp, gentle touch. Theirs is the cold of a blade at your throat, or ice pricking your delicate skin, so cold it might burn.

Trembling, and aware that you’re in real danger of suffocating if the abject hatred in his glare is anything to go by, you suck a tight, unpleasant wheeze in through your teeth and kick your brain into gear.

Floppily, you reach a hand down to the sword at your hip, fingers smacking painfully against its pommel as you try to tug it from the leather scabbard.

A curl of fear, more potent than usual, swoops your stomach out from underneath you when Brumox’s eyelights flick down towards your hand. You suppose it would be too much to hope that he didn’t notice.

A cruel sneer creeps across his skeletal face, cheeks worn through to show you the sinew beneath flaps of skin. “You have some nerve,” he hisses, spewing a jet of stale, rancid air into your face.

Just as you grasp the hilt of Karn’s sword, a far larger, far stronger hand clamps down around your wrist and tears it away, gripping so hard, you could swear you feel your bones grind against each other beneath your skin.

“A-arghh!” you manage to exclaim, screwing your face up in agony as Brumox tosses your arm aside and grabs the leather strap of the scabbard, giving a vicious tug and continuing to pull sharply until the strap starts cutting into your side. Then, with a final tug, the leather gives out and splits apart at a worn seam, and the undead tosses the whole thing aside.

Through bleary eyes, you watch it clatter to the ground several yards away, stretching a hand out after it and choking, “K-Kaar-“

You’re cut off by a terrible snarl, and the arm keeping you aloft gives a rough, harried shake, jostling you wildly. “You come into our realm,” Brumox spits, “You flaunt yourself in front of us, with your beating heart and your warm blood…!”

What the Hell is he talking about?

You try to voice your thought, but the air in your lungs is growing staler by the second, and your head is becoming too light to think straight.

Dimly, you’re aware of the sounds of Death and Gnashor battling it out in the arena below you. Can the Horseman even see you from down there? If you could just get enough air in to shout…

“The arrogance-!” he continues, “-of humans. You are not worthy of the souls you host!”

“Brmx!” you sputter through pursed lips, spittle dribbling from the corner of your mouth.

He’d come out of nowhere. Sure, Death said the undead don’t like the living but surely he doesn’t mean to-!

Dark spots circle the outskirts of your vision like insects crawling across your retinas, fast and fleeting.

Brumox, his sockets deep and cold, illuminated by the colour of envy, flexes what muscles haven’t withered away in his bulbous arm and hoists you higher into the air, swinging you clear above the metal barrier and letting you dangle by your neck above the ten-foot drop below.

“You want an audience with the King of the Dead?” he posits in a deep, throaty growl, the translucent glow of his skin going fuzzy at the edges as you try to keep your eyes fixed on his. Is it possible for lungs to catch on fire?

His bones creak when he leans towards you over the fence, his skeletal grin bordering on maniacal as his arm draws you back in, close enough that when he speaks, you can look right between his teeth and see the gaping hole at the back of his throat that lets daylight seep into the dry, hollow mouth from behind him. “Then die.”

And-

“Y/N!”

Death’s call sounds far away in your ringing ears, too far.

The deadly pressure around your neck vanishes with a rip and tear of nails through your skin, and you’re tossed, as dismissively as a piece of lint, down into the pit below.

For one, terrifying and confusing moment, you’re suspended in freefall, wide eyes staring blankly up at the face that sneers down at you over the railings.

You’re granted no more than a second to really comprehend what happened, but by the time that second turns into two, the arena has already risen up to meet you.

‘WHUMPH!’

A shuddersome howl of pain is punched right out of your screaming lungs when you land boots-first in the pit, and the only blessing that flits distantly through the back of your mind is, ‘at least the ash is deep.’

You might have considered it luck, if you didn’t feel so damnably unlucky after being dropped in the first place. Somehow though, you’re immediately swallowed up to your ankles by the soft, giving surface, cushioning an impact which might have otherwise snapped a femur. It still hurts though.

Badly.

You topple backwards, landing with a horrific jolt on your spine for the second time in as many minutes. Any breath you might have sucked back in when Brummox released you is expelled all over again in a pitiful, wretched gasp that empties your chest until it feels hollow and concave.

“Fu-uck!” you groan brokenly, too afraid to move lest you discover that it isn’t just your voice that’s shattered.

Above you, the sky is bright, entirely too bright, causing you to screw your eyes shut with a miserable whine, blocking out the ghostly, green blob hovering on the other side of the metal barrier.

If Brumox still had working salivary glands, he’d send a globule of spit down after you. The nerve of you. As if his perpetual existence spent in servitude isn’t punishment enough, he had to just stand there and stay his blade whilst a living, breathing human sauntered into their midst, rubbing that valuable lifeforce in all of their faces as if to say, ‘Look here. See what you can never have back.’

Curling the rotten side of his mouth into his best approximation of a smirk, the undead allows himself to bask in another moment of your suffering, only too pleased to see you laying stiffly on your back, afraid and bewildered, surrounded by the ashes of all those who came here before you.

With any luck, yours will join theirs soon enough.

Gasping like a fish on land, you blink up at Brumox’s hazy silhouette, watching him turn about as if in slow motion and stalk off, vanishing from the stands.

“No!”

….

…. Oh right, Death!

Piece by piece, your head stops spinning and stitches its scattered fragments back together. The ringing in your ears fades out until you can hear metal clanging and a beast roaring somewhere nearby, and that’s without even mentioning the tremors passing below you like you’ve come to rest right at the epicentre of a veritable earthquake.

Throat burning, aching as if it’s been squashed in a clamp, you muscle down a painful breath and grit your teeth, flexing your fingers and finding, to your immense relief, that you can still feel and move them.

The same goes for your toes. You could almost weep at the pain engulfing your ankles. It means your spine must still be intact.

Screwing your face up in apprehension, you arduously roll yourself over onto your side, blurting out a little cry of shock as the movement sends a jolt running from the base of your skull to the back of your calves. But at least you can move.

Craning your neck back, you blink away tears, clearing your vision enough to make out the blurry shapes in the arena with you.

One of those shapes, smaller and harder to make out, has broken away from the larger, who currently appears to be busy picking itself from the rubble of another, toppled pillar.

One more blink, and at long last, your vision returns to some semblance of normalcy.

You almost wish it hadn’t.

The hazy but discernible blob snaps into focus with a roil of your guts, and suddenly Death is charging towards you, his ebony hair whipping off his mask, eyes wide and explosive like two stars teetering on the brink of a supernova.

Jesus… He isn’t even limping despite the leg half-crushed inside his boot.

In the next instant, the heat of the desert is swiftly and aggressively blasted away by a shockwave of cold, icy air. It suffocates you like a blanket of snow, shocking the breath out of your lungs as if you’ve just dunked yourself in a mountain lake.

Death’s glare might be afire, but his magic has rarely felt colder.

However, that supernatural power, that raw, unparallelled sharpness permeating the air around you pales in comparison to the ice that seeps through your veins when you look beyond Death, to the gigantic mass of bone raising itself from the ash and giving its skull a shake before it twists itself around to glare after the Horseman, locking him in those wicked, green eye-lights.

A horrifying realisation strikes you then, stark and jarring as a slap to the face.

Death has taken his eyes off Gnashor…

He’s shifted priorities.

He… he can’t do that here! Even if it’s only for one, tiny moment, even if he realigns his focus in three seconds flat, you know it’ll already be too late.

This beast, this… Champion must hold its title for a reason.

Death might have gotten away with some lapses in concentration when he was fighting a construct or an over-sized bug, but the bones and skeletal remains piled up around the Gilded Arena are testament to how dangerous this creature is. How it isn’t to be underestimated.

As you feared, Gnashor seizes upon the distraction with a ferocious tenacity.

And it all happens in the blink of an eye.

The Champion’s streamlined body ploughs through the ash like a runaway drill, that shining, golden skull held low as it careens past Death until its tail runs parallel to the Horseman’s loping strides.

Your eyes are fixed on Gnashor, on the undulating motion that starts at its head and winds down the length of its bones as the beast prepares to swerve across Death’s path, one segment after the other snapping sideways.

You can see precisely where the momentum is going to culminate.

But Death?

The stupid bastard’s gaze is locked on you.

It burns your throat to snap up even the tiniest breath, but you hastily draw one in, just enough to open your mouth wide and shout one word.

“TAIL!”

As if coming out of a trance, Death blinks, his tunnel vision expanding outwards from the centre point. From you.

He hadn’t seen what lead up to your fall, not really. If he had, he might have reached you in time. All he’d seen when he picked himself off the ground and caught movement from the corner of his eye, was your small, vulnerable body dangling from the arm of that undead who’d almost gotten a bullet through his foot when he raised his axe against you yesterday.

No sooner has Death placed Brumox’s decaying face than the hand around your throat sprang open.

After that, he didn’t see much more than a red mist of rage that descended over his vision. Even now, he can feel the Reaper bucking against its restraints, but he’s been relying on it too heavily of late. The excessive toll it takes on his magics every time it bursts from him has left his natural reserves dwindling dangerously close to empty. It needs power to break loose. Power he hasn’t re-accumulated. It’s why Death is always so keen to take back control after an outburst. The longer the Reaper is free, feeding off Death’s mystical forces, the longer it takes to rebuild those reserves. And it had been out for quite some time yesterday.

When the Council granted he and his siblings the power to defeat the Nephilim species, they made sure to shackle the Four. Death wasn’t ignorant to their ploy. A failsafe, he supposed, was only understandable. Why build a weapon that doesn’t have an ‘off’ switch? But he’s never cursed them more for their caution than he does now. Limitless access to the primal Reaper would certainly come in handy here.

The Horseman’s legs are pumping before he can register having told them to do so, your name tumbling from his lips of its own accord. Not even the dull throbbing in his calf nor the tiny splinters of wood digging into his scalp could slow him down.

How is it that even when you’re doing the right thing and staying out of harm’s way, you still manage to wind up in danger?

Your shout of ‘Tail!’ tears him from his thoughts and thrusts him back to the present with a vengeance.

It’s just a shame the warning came too late.

Death barely has the wherewithal to glance sideways and spot the enormous, bony tail whipping towards him.

Without slowing his stride, his gives a pre-emptive wince and utters a quick, quiet, “Ah-.”

‘W H A M!’

Death has taken blows before. From makers, and constructs, demons, angels and Nephilim, and even his own siblings.

Over the eons, he’s trained himself to become very good at avoiding even a glancing strike. Which is why he’s always surprised when one does land.

Well. Not only does Gnashor’s wallop land, but it also launches Death completely off his feet.

Barely a few dozen yards away, laying on your belly now, you’re helpless except to let out a pathetic cry as the Champion’s impermeable tail lashes out and slams into your Horseman’s ribs.

Time seems to crawl on its hands and knees as you watch his eyes burst open wide, shocked. For just a heartbeat, Death’s gaze remains locked on your horrified expression, soaking up the fear and anguish and pain pouring off your face. Then, in the next breath, his whole body is suddenly sent flying sideways through the air, careening into one of the stone walls of the arena with a stomach-turning ‘slam!’ that has you flinching your head back instinctively and trying to scream, “Death!” though his name catches in your throat and comes out broken and weak.

Tipping its head back, Gnashor lets out a triumphant bellow whilst Death can only muster a faint groan, sliding down the wall until his knees hit the ash and he collapses onto his palms, shoulders heaving. His mask is tilted down, the dark curtain of hair obscuring his eyes from view, and it’s then that you realise with an awful stab of dread that the Horseman – your powerful, terrifying, nigh-invulnerable friend – might actually be very, very hurt.

Your jaws snap together with an audible ‘click.’

Lowering its massive skull, Gnashor begins slithering towards the slumped Nephilim.

There’s an ache in your body that’s gradually starting to fade, growing even more ignorable as you grit your teeth until they’re bared, curl your hands into quivering fists and push yourself off your stomach, gathering your knees underneath you to sit up. A deep, whistling breath threatens to turn into a cough before it reaches your lungs, but you force it down anyway, hardly caring when the threat to Death is so much greater than your bruised throat.

Zeroing in on the Champion, you open your mouth, heedless of the consequences, forgetting what you are and all of your sense as you bark out a sharp, sudden, “HEY!”

For just one moment, everything in the arena goes eerily silent. Gnashor stills its approach, the segments of its body jerking to a stop in the ash.

Then, sharp as a whipcrack, its skull tears away from the Horseman, and those terrible sockets lock onto you instead.

It’s funny how quickly you can be made to regret a decision. Only, it isn’t really that funny at all when several tonnes of bone wheels itself towards you and makes an unexpectedly mad dash in your direction, responding to your challenge like a bull charging a matador.

It happens to fast and so suddenly, all of your bravado vanishes in a snap and you shriek, toppling over onto your rear and scrabbling backwards at a pitiful pace.

Gnashor cuts a path towards you, throwing bones and ash up like tidal waves to its left and right as its tail whips from side to side.

Your boots kick uselessly at ash, only succeeding in digging grooves into the arena floor as the beast bears down on top of you, careening to a violent stop just inches before it can crush you beneath the weight of a skull that’s as large than you are tall.

Golden bone shimmers in the sunlight as Gnashor rears itself up into a striking position, the metal clamp around its neck creaking with the movement.

Yelping, you tumble onto your back, throwing both arms up and holding your palms out towards the hissing monster, as if you could hold a creature so gargantuan at bay even for a sniff of a second.

The massive jaw that could engulf your entire body hangs open, but all at once, the bone-chilling hiss emanating from somewhere deep inside that cavernous hole cuts out, falling immediately and alarmingly silent.

Eyes screwed shut, your ears continue to ring noisily even in the ensuing quiet.

… Seconds fall away from you like dead things, lost to the desert wind, and when the awful anticipation of waiting for a blow becomes too much to bear, you crack an eyelid open, peeking reluctantly through your shaking fingers to focus on the enormous skull looming over you.

Gnashor cuts a gruesome silhouette against the sky above you. The green of its eyes is wild and vivid, yet as you continue to peep up at them, waiting for the strike to bring it crashing down on top of your head, you can’t help but notice that little by little, the lights inside its sockets are starting to dim.

It’s crooked jaw - filled with formidable, golden fangs as long as your forearm - inches shut as it drags its haunting gaze from your face down to your waist, then slowly slides a glance first to your left hip, then over to your right.

Chest bursting with anticipation, you swallow heavily and feel it catch on the heart lodged at the top of your sternum.

What the Hell is it doing?

You visibly jump in your place on the ground as Gnashor swings its skull from side to side, sweeping its searching gaze over the ash surrounding you, as if it’s looking for something…

With every poignant second that races past like your thundering heart, you’re brought closer and closer to an untimely and painful demise. Gnashor won’t poise like this forever, you remind yourself.

Is this really how it’s all going to come to an end? Crushed by the jaws of a skeletal serpent in some dusty arena far from your home on Earth? And all because you just had to buy Death some time by getting the attention of an adversary you never had a hope in Hell’s chance of escaping or besting…

… Each day is starting to feel more and more like you’re dancing on the edge of a broken record, barely skipping over the same perils and landing right back at where you started, stuck waiting until the next danger swings around to meet you.

A tear rolls off your cheek and buries itself in the ash beside you, lending moisture to a land that barely remembers the cooling flow of water.

Your eyes sparkle with the gathering liquid, and the tracks running down your cheeks glisten like jewels in the sunlight.

Yet still, still Gnashor doesn’t make a move. Its skull hangs above you, its fangs sealed together in a sharp, jagged line as its eye-lights roam from the ground near your hips to your face.

… Your hips though… Why in the world would it be-?

Narrowing your eyes, you risk throwing a rapid glance down at your side before returning your attention to Gnashor’s skull, only partially relieved to find that it hasn’t moved during your lapse in focus.

But that one glance reminds you of something… Something important. Something that only leaves you feeling more vulnerable than you were before, if that were even possible.

Karn’s sword.

It’s gone. It’s still up on the stands, where Brumox had tossed it so carelessly, rendering you unarmed and unable to fight back even if you wanted to…

… If you wanted to?

Fight?

Suddenly, something Ostegoth had said tickles at the back of your mind. What was it…? You give up chasing the train of thought when you realise you don’t really have the luxury of time here.

Wetting your lips with a dry tongue, you keep your eyes affixed to the Champion’s bear-trap jaws and hesitantly croak out, “Gnashor?”

You don’t rightly know what possessed you to speak its name.

At the sound of your voice, the creature’s eye-lights flare like bursting bulbs, and every segment that makes up its vertebrae suddenly tenses, cracking together audibly from the base of its skull all the way to the tip of its tail.

In response, you recoil, curling in on yourself with a gasp that irritates your sore neck.

And just as you’re starting to think you’ve gone and signed your own death warrant, Gnashor’s body abruptly jerks backwards.

The sound you make shouldn’t register in a normal human’s vocal range, but then again, you’re no linguist.

Even Gnashor utters a startled grunt as it whips its skull around at an angle that should have snapped its neck, jaw falling open to unleash an ear-splitting bellow.

Clutching handfuls of ash between your fingers, you drop your eyes to movement behind the beast and promptly let your own jaw go slack.

Death has appeared out of nowhere, apparently having recovered from his brush with the arena wall, shrugging off damage that would have utterly eviscerated a human being. His hands are clamped around the end of Gnashor’s tail, his fingertips curled into claws and buried deep between two segmented bones, anchoring him to the Champion like a briar with murderous intent.

And oh, there is murder, swirling in those wild, amber eyes.

You forget… How soon you forget that Death is a force of nature, arguably more than he is a person.

Even with a mask of bone covering his features, you know there’s a snarl on his face. You can tell in the rumbling growl that’s being forced through his clenched teeth.

All of a sudden, his muscles bulge and ripple beneath corpse-grey skin as he violently heaves his arms backwards, boots digging holes into the ash around his legs when the weight of Gnashor’s body contends with the Horseman’s strength.

You should have grown used to the laws of physics being broken by now. Floating fortresses, flying serpents and the living dead ought to have conditioned you to accept things that should be impossible.

And yet, you can’t keep yourself from gasping aloud as Death lets out a furious shout and swings an equally astonished Gnashor up into the air by its tail, spins on his heels… and slams its skeletal body into the ground behind him.

The tail hits first. Followed quickly by the rest of its body one segment at a time, until finally, with a deafening ‘clang!’ the Champion’s jaw makes landfall, and a sizeable tremor ripples through the arena, shaking the ground beneath your feet.

Dazed, Gnashor simply lays there, stunned into a stupor, pushing a moan of musty air out through the gaps in its fangs whilst Death straightens up and yanks his hands off its tail, curling them into crushing fists that cause his forearms to bunch up until their wrappings strain visibly over protruding muscles.

It would have been nice to get a moment to process what just happened. But alas, the shockwaves have barely stopped rolling by underneath you before the Horseman is rounding on you with a frenzied mania that sends you flinching back onto your elbows in alarm.

He wouldn’t hurt you… you know he wouldn’t… But in that one, split second - with the wind whipping his pitch-black hair about his mask, and the infernos raging behind those carved, bottomless sockets – something small and primitive at the back of your mind wonders if it’s only Gnashor you need to be afraid of…

He must have noticed something, the hitch of your chest or the pupils shrinking to pinpricks in your eyes, but whatever he sees when his feral glare lands on your face, he seems to pause. The oppressive cold billows off the Horseman in sheets. It seeps into your skin and pushes your hairs up from their follicles, obliterating any trace of heat until you forget you’re in a desert at all.

Clouds of crisp, white air start to billow through your teeth with each uneven heave of your chest.

Reluctant to meet his gaze, you lower your eyes to the ground in front of you.

“I’m sorry,” you choke out through a sob, “I’m sorry, I-I didn’t mean to-“

“Shut. Up,” Death grinds out, his voice pitched hazardously low.

He’s livid. No surprise there. But as your wobbling lips press together into a tight, bunched line, you listen to the Horseman move closer, dropping to his knee at your side and muttering vehemently under his breath, “The only one who should be sorry is Brumox…. When I get my hands on that coward…”

So, he did see what happened… at least enough to know you didn’t get yourself into this mess. Sniffling, you allow your gaze to venture around the Nephilim until your bleary vision lands on the long, expansive body laying stretched out behind him.

“It… it didn’t attack me,” you whisper aloud, “Death? Why didn’t it attack me?”

Distracted, the Horseman keeps his hands hovering mere inches above you as he moves them up and down your body, like he’s trying to feel out a source of injury. After a second, he belatedly grunts, “You’re not exactly a threat…” Then- “Damn this place! I thought you’d be-! … I should have left you with Draven…”

You might have taken in what Death is saying, but at that moment, something near the base of the crumbled pillar opposite Gnashor’s body starts to stir.

The Horseman’s words fade to background chatter as you squint your eyes halfway shut, scrunching up one side of your face to utter, “Um… Death?”

A calloused palm suddenly slips underneath your back.

You have to bite down hard on your tongue to resist the urge to lunge away from the sensation of ice on your spine, battling against instinct as you allow Death to manoeuvre you upright gingerly with one hand, the other hovering above your chest.

“You can’t be down here,” he manages to bite out through the ire broiling under his ribcage.

It’s probably a good thing you’re too distracted to make a comment about understatements and the like.

Movement beneath and atop the ash strewn all over the pit has caught your eye. Strange, oblong shapes bulge up from underground in certain places like so many crustaceans clawing their way to the surface of a sandy beach. Those shapes that weren’t buried have been bleached white under the sun, discolouring hardened tissue and causing them to stand out starkly against the grey ash…

‘Bones…’ is all your gobsmacked mind can supply, ‘That’s a lot of bones.’

As Death continues to gently lever you off the ground, your eyes stay firmly affixed to the skeletal remains that have begun to roll and bounce across the arena unhindered. Hundreds of bones are on the move, coming in all shapes and sizes.

All of them are congregating towards a central point.

Gnashor.

Femurs, ribcages, sternums and scapulas… There are some so small you can only see their vague whiteness wriggling like bugs over the ash, and some are so large, they look as though they were stripped right out of an elephant’s carcass.

Blinking dumbly, you find yourself gaping open-mouthed at one of the skulls that had been attached to a skeleton hanging off the pillar Gnashor destroyed. It… almost looks comical now, bounding along the ground, tugged by some dark, invisible call, guiding it towards the Champion.

“… Deeeaath…?” you draw out urgently, lifting your hand to point at the gargantuan fossil stirring back to life, its skull rising slowly from the ground and sending great swathes of ash cascading out of its jaw.

The first of the marching bones have finally reached it.

All you receive in response is a gruff, nonsensical complaint and a hand curling over the top of yours, gently but insistently coaxing it back down towards your side. “Be. Still,” Death commands, shooting you a glare loaded with stark warning, “I’m getting you out of-!”

Without waiting for him to finish his sentence, you wrench your limb out from under his and heave an exasperated groan. Then, quite thoughtlessly disregarding your own sense of self-preservation, you bend forwards and place your hands firmly on either side of his face, your fingertips pressed to the cool, calloused skin of his jawline and your palms cupped around the cheekbones of his mask.

At your unexpected touch, Death’s body locks up tight, shocked beyond comprehension, but he’s stunned enough that he doesn’t think to resist as you simply twist his head sideways over one of his shoulders until you’re more or less facing him in Gnashor’s direction, letting him go once his eyes lock onto what you’ve been trying to alert him to.

Inwardly, Death notes that you didn’t try to remove his mask. He notes the warm tingle left in the path your fingers traced. Then, he notes the path the bones are making towards his adversary’s body.

“Ah,” he says shortly, still hunched over you like a bristling shroud, “Well. That’s hardly sporting.”

Like a long-buried fossil trapped beneath the dirt, Gnashor raises itself up onto its stomach, tilts its skull back and unleashes one of its earth-shaking roars. As if on command, the bones that had been moving steadily towards the Champion are swept up in a sudden maelstrom of ash.

A vicious gust of wind whips across the arena as if out of nowhere, hauling the remains violently up into the air, and right before your eyes, the bones shoot towards Gnashor’s serpentine body.

Sinuous strips of leathery skin still clinging to some of the osseus matter latch onto the Champion, pulling the bones into place like a grotesque puzzle, stitching a hulking body together out of dozens of corpses.

In one blink, a bulging ribcage has surrounded Gnashor’s spine. In another, two arms are formed with crushing fists made up of thicker bones sprouting at the end of each wrist. Shoulders protrude outwards around its skull, jagged and enormous. Then clavicles and a sternum, a pelvis… It all fuses together, a body built over the top of what used to be Gnashor.

The gruesome marriage of corpses finally ends when the Champion slams its newly-formed hands into the ground and pushes itself upright, and you watch horror-stricken as a pair of limbs are cobbled together underneath its bulk.

Clawed feet find purchase on the ground as Gnashor, now almost thrice its original size, stands on two colossal legs, the end of its prehensile tail jutting out from behind the bones and extending down to the ground below, lashing from side to side through the ash.

At last, it turns, heaving its bulky, crooked body around to face you and Death.

Its golden skull sits between two, mountainous shoulders, still attached to the spinal columns below it.

And then you realise… Gnashor is the spine, wearing this new, skeletal body like a suit of armour.

You’ve seen magic before. Death’s, Eideard’s, even the Warden’s when he constructed a bridge out of broken stone using nothing but his voice.

You haven’t seen this type of magic before though.

A body built from others, stolen from the ground.

On a blood-deep level, you know in your very cells that this is wrong.

A body should rest.

Is this what will happen to you and Death if Gnashor is victorious? Will you become part of this Champion, helping it defend its title, however unwittingly. Will your bones remember you?

The idea opens up a blackhole at the base of your throat, and all the air you try to draw in seems to go into the pit instead of your lungs.

All of a sudden, your view of Gnashor is partially blocked by long, agile legs.

Tearing your gaze off the brute, you find Death swelling to his full height between you, his scythes already in hand.

Gnashor lifts it foot off the ground, aiming to take a step forwards, but this time, the Horseman doesn’t intend to let it make the first move.

Silently, but explosively, Death lunges into a break-neck sprint, wrenching his arm forwards as he moves and hurling his scythe into a boomerang throw. Metal spins in a whirlwind, curving around Gnashor and clanging against its shoulders on both the toss and the return, sending the monster reeling away from you.

The weapon flies straight back into Death’s raised palm with a resounding ‘smack,’ but he doesn’t let the momentum waver, driving forwards with another swing aimed at the Champion’s leg.

Stomping its foot back down, Gnashor sends tremors through the ground with its weight alone. Verdant, flaring eye-lights flit down to the scythe that has just nicked a chip out of its leg, then up to the Horseman, and the other scythe clutched in his vice-like grip.

Something strange happens then, so briefly that you can’t be sure you caught it at all.

Perhaps it’s just your mind playing tricks on you – it’s hard to know where Gnashor is looking – but you think you see its skull tilt ever so slightly to one side as if it’s peering around Death, and then the eerie sensation of being watched creeps up the back of your neck.

The moment is over before the hairs have even fully risen on your nape.

In front of you, Death draws a scythe back, ready to strike out with it once more.

It’s as though he’s just waved a red flag.

Gnashor’s eyes are upon him in the next second, shrinking to small, green pinpricks in their sockets. Opening its jaw wide, it bellows down at him, pawing one, massive foot at the ash like a bull on the cusp of charging.

So, Death charges first.

Launching himself off his backfoot, the Horseman slips fox-like around Gnashor’s arm as it whips out in front of him, intending to smack him right out of his boots.

Thus, their dance begins anew.

Death drives, bullies and strafes Gnashor across the arena, and it doesn’t escape your notice that he’s deliberately leading the giant away from where you sit, gawping like a dead-eyed fish as their brutal waltz ploughs on.

What the Champion lacks in weaponry, it makes up for in the force and power behind its brawny fists, swinging them at Death with wild and reckless abandon, faster than the Horseman had anticipated. He continues trying to chip away at it, working out the weak spots, darting in rapidly to try and get his scythe around its neck only to be forced away again when it reels back and attempts to grab him with its savage fists.

The two of them seem so evenly matched. Death is giving Gnashor a run for its money, but the Champion doesn’t seem so willing to give up its title either. You suppose that’s fair, given the implications. Having to lose one’s head seems like a decent incentive to fight your corner, after all.

It takes another minute of letting the thunderous roars and clashing of steel rumble through your chest like cannon-fire before you come back into yourself with a start.

“The Hell am I doing?” you shakily whisper to yourself, twisting your sore neck around to look frantically at the high walls surrounding the pit.

You need to get out of here. Just because Death can’t help you right now doesn’t mean you can’t. If you can get to a higher vantage point again, maybe you can be his eyes.

Oh, where’s Dust when you need him?

It hurts to push yourself onto your feet, though thankfully far less so than you feared it would. Hesitant, you place a testing boot down, feeling it twinge as it bears your weight, but not nearly enough to whine about.

Setting your jaw, you amble around to face away from the fight raging behind you and start to drag yourself arduously across the arena, aiming for the closest wall and passing beneath the shadow of one of the last, standing pillars.

Behind you, Death’s attacks continue, relentless.

Even with its newfound mobility, Gnashor is exceptionally quick on its feet. But Death’s own agility has never been something to sniff at.

Through skills honed over countless millennia, he’s always boasted the best reflexes of his siblings, seconded only by Strife’s quick tongue and quicker trigger-finger.

The Champion has its back to you now, just as Death intended. Out of sight, hopefully out of mind until you get yourself out of danger. He’s starting to think he must have missed the sign taped to your back that reads ‘Sitting duck.’

In any event, he’s growing bored of this whole challenge.

The Dead King had better be worth all the hassle…

Folding himself over backwards to duck beneath one of Gnashor’s swinging fists, Death lets the air rush by overhead, then lurches upright again, and uses the sudden proximity to aim a particularly aggressive swipe at the underside of his adversary’s neck, where metal has been fused with bone.

In a flurry of sparks, Harvester scrapes a sharp gouge across the bear-trap around Gnashor’s throat.

The startling savagery of Death’s blow forces the Champion to falter and lean into a clumsy retreat to take itself out of range.

Snapping its teeth down at the Horseman to ward him off, it stumbles away from his malicious scythes, backing up too quickly in a frantic bid to regain ground. It doesn’t look behind itself. Shouldn’t need to when its only threat is advancing on it from the front. As such, it doesn’t see one of the few remaining pillars that still stands proudly at its back.

The arena is quite suddenly filled with the hollow thunk of bone colliding against wood with the pendulum force of a wrecking ball.

The huge notches on Gnashor’s spine strike the pillar hard, buckling the structure behind it.

Its gaze flits backwards, taking in the obstruction keeping it from retreating any further, and with nowhere else to go, it promptly leans its full weight against the wood and uses it as a springboard to launch itself back towards Death, its eye-lights a blistering inferno of sick, poisonous green.

But just as it wrenches its vertebrae free of the structure’s surface…

‘CRACK!’

Wood splits apart, a tiny yelp of alarm rings out across the amphitheatre, and Gnashor skids to a halt and spins around in a flurry of ash just in time to see the pillar snapping apart at its base.

Bright, luminous eye-lights zip down and lock onto the little figure standing directly underneath the toppling tower…

You know full well that you’re too slow to get yourself out from below it, yet still you try to scramble through the ankle-deep ash as the entire pillar comes falling towards you like a great, groaning tree, the chains trailing behind it with the speed of its descent.

At the very last second, you let out a shrill wail and throw your arms up to cover your head, only too aware that such a meagre defence will do you no good, in the end.

Above the sound of splintering wood and air rushing towards you, you think you hear the drumming of heavy footfalls as they thud over the ground, but you’re too busy wondering if Death will ever forgive you for this to pay attention.

All of a sudden, a spray of ash is kicked up against your arms, whipping at your bare skin, and in the next instant, the jarring yet familiar sensation of a vast, bony hand is enveloping your torso, palm to your backside and skeletal fingers caging you in from the front.

Without being granted time to adjust, you’re hauled sideways through the air and shoved up against a broad, impervious chest, smothering the yelp that jumps off your lips.

And not a moment too soon.

The impact of the pillar making landfall sends a boom through your body so fierce, it threatens to rattle the teeth right out of your gums. The force alone catapults a billowing cloud of ash into the sky, and if it weren’t for the hand cupping you face-first to a solid surface of bone, you’d no doubt catch a mouthful of corpse dust.

Even with the impromptu barrier, you still cough and splutter as grit coats your tongue after taking a breath.

“Fu-uck!” you hack, feeling the bones twitch at your spine in response, “Ugh… Death!?”

Only when the clamour around you starts to fall silent are you eased away from the expansive chest and tilted backwards until you’re sprawled out on the palm below you, head tipped towards the sky above.

Blinking through the haze of drifting ash, you squint up at the huge shape looming overhead, eclipsing the late morning sun.

“Death?” you repeat.

A skull… large and dark… You’d so easily recognise the shape of one by now.

The murk starts to settle, and you blink again, giving the Reaper a wobbly smile. “Th-thanks, buddy,” you whisper breathlessly, so sure the figure holding you must be the one you’ve become well acquainted with.

It’d be ludicrous to assume otherwise.

Which is why it comes as such a shock when a gentle breeze whisks away the floating particles of ash and exposes the skull above you.

Gold….

Not the safe, off-white cheekbones and cranium you know, nor the soft eyes that sit like spotlights inside ebony sockets.

These eyes waver, slowly flaring brighter as they take you in, casting you in their encompassing, emerald glow.

Your stomach promptly drops.

Peeling the dry tongue off the roof of your mouth, you draw in a trembling breath, feeling your throat squeeze around the air flowing into it.

Confused, bewildered – afraid – the only word you can think to utter is, “Gnashor?”

The Champion of the Gilded Arena… The beast whose head Death had been tasked to collect has just pulled you out of the path of the falling pillar…

“But… Why? I-… What?”

As you sputter through a string of nonsensical words, a dark silhouette seems to materialise in the air above Gnashor’s shoulder, soaring towards its skull with two, curved streaks of silver arched out on either side like a pair of wings.

Your eyes burst open, and the confusion steps dutifully aside to make way for urgent alarm and desperation.

“DEATH!” you cry, helplessly flinging a hand out as if you could keep his weapons from completing their arc through sheer will alone, “WAIT! STOP-!”

It always seems so unfair how time will slow down or speed up of its own accord. You need more of it. Now more than ever. Just to have a few extra seconds to catch Death’s eye.

But seconds don’t last as long as they used to, you think.

Because it’s all over before you can finish your sentence.

The infuriated Horseman’s flight ends with his boots landing on the juncture where Gnashor’s spine meets its skull. With one hand, he reaches forwards to grasp its cranium, his other arm curled back above his head, hand secured brutally around Harvester’s grip.

Before Gnashor can even register the presence on its spine, Death swings the blade out and down with one almighty heave, carving a silver crescent through the air…

You don’t know which is worse.

Seeing it or hearing it.

The dreadful ‘shwip!’ of razor-sharp metal slicing through bone makes you feel as though your ears are trying to shrink in on themselves.

Gnashor’s whole body jolts, locking up rigidly and hunching in around you, eye-lights receding to tiny dots in its skull.

 The hand you’d stretched out towards Death ventures back to cup over your mouth in muted horror as you meet its dwindling stare.

Below you, the giant quakes, and then it suddenly pitches forwards.

The knuckles on its hand collide with the ground, jostling your aching body painfully against its bony palm.

For just a moment, you continue to peer tearfully into the Champion’s flickering gaze, and then with a final, thrumming groan, its jaw falls slack, and the lights swirling prettily within the sockets of its skull flutter once…

… and die…

All around you, Gnashor’s fingers go limp and start to fall apart. The individual bones that had once formed the appendage as a whole slip out of whatever magic shackles bonded them together and clatter on the ground below, forming a pile of skeletal remains all around you.

A second later, the Champion’s severed skull falls off its spine, revealing a neat, perfect slice where the bones had once been fused.

It crashes solidly to the ash just in front of your legs, dead-eyed and lifeless, glittering gold in the sun, and its body comes tumbling down afterwards like a house of cards, inevitably doomed from the beginning.

As the dust settles, you tremulously raise your head to see the Horseman standing tall and triumphant on what remains of the Champion’s back, his elbows held out widely from his torso, chest thrust forwards as if he’s posturing.

You came into the Gilded arena with the hope that Death would be victorious.

Now though, in the aftermath of battle, you find yourself wishing he wasn’t.

"Death," you croak, brows pinched achingly above your crumbling expression, "What have you done?" 

[ugh-yoongi]

can i request Yoongi drabble? where a random member is Y/N's brother and Yoon is his best friend, but Y/N has a big fat crush on him

hiii, thank you so much for the request! it gave me an excuse to get rockstar yoongi out of my system (and make an actual banner for once), so i hope you enjoy. <3

playing with fire

pairing: yoongi x f. reader genre: brother's best friend au, rockstar au; suggestive warnings: extreme thirsting. a moshpit and moshpit-related injury. mentions of blood, alcohol, and weed/cigarettes. swearing. an unrequited crush (or is it). tension. unedited. rating: this is slightly suggestive but not explicit so 16+ wordcount: 1k listen to: i'm on fire by bruce springsteen

with this, i am finally done with bee's birthday drabbles! a huge thank you to everyone who sent in requests. i did save a few, so if i didn't get to yours this time, hopefully some inspo strikes in the future.

see all beeday drabbles here

have a favorite? let's talk about it!

It’s been a while since your brother’s band played in a nice venue.

Been a while since your boots didn’t stick to the floor, each step feeling like a glue trap. Since you could go home at the end of the night and pull a t-shirt over your head that didn’t reek of weed and cigarettes and someone else’s body odor. Been a while since you could just exist in peace; not feel like you were taking up room in a space that didn’t belong to you.

Been a while since you’ve seen Yoongi, too.

His hair is longer—half-formed curls framing his face, some trendy kind of shag. Chipped black lacquer on his nails. Fresh ink up and down his arms. Silver hoop through his nostril. A leather jacket and heeled boots, because he doesn’t have a thing to prove to anyone who might have something to say about it.

(You, least of all.)

Somehow, you’d forgotten that some people are magnetic. Some people are meant to be looked at, put on all those impossibly high pedestals, and that Yoongi is one of them. False idols be damned, everyone in this fucking room is wrapped around his finger. Even as he screams into a mic, shoots a sleazy grin at your brother to his left, every single person in this place would drop to their knees as soon as he gave the order.

(You, most of all.)

And you know it’s dangerous; know where that particular road dead-ends. You know that if you try to reach out and touch him all you’ll do is scar, but it doesn’t do a damn thing to quell the urge. There’s still just Yoongi and you and the millions of daydreams that have played out in the dead of night and the boundless distance between you.

The haze makes him beautiful, ethereal, like some kind of demi-god. Imposing, you think, because Yoongi’s up there looking down on you, as stable and immovable as all those shrines they built centuries ago. Places where people would gather to worship, just like now.

You’re distracted. Don’t hear Yoongi when he commands the crowd to move, and there’s a split-second just before the chaos where he finds you—sets his siren gaze on you and smirks out of the corner of his mouth, presses his tongue into the fat of cheek—and then there’s a searing pain blooming in your skull.

It’s hard to say what happens after. Hard to see through the fog and the frenzy, let alone make sense of amorphic shapes. There’s just the aching in your head and the jarring, dissonant ringing in your ears, and someone’s arms wrapped tight around your shoulders.

You come to in a bathroom.

Stinks of piss and disinfectant. Has one flickering, fluorescent light strung above the sink. Dingy tile on the floor and the walls. Paper towels overflowing from a trash can by the door.

“You with me, darlin’?”

Yoongi’s voice. He’s the only one who calls you that. Puts some exaggerated twang on it because he thinks it makes him sound cool. Doesn’t give a fuck about anything, especially what people might think, and he doesn’t have to.

“Not sure,” you answer truthfully. “What happened?”

“Some piece of shit elbowed you pretty good in the side of your head. Got a nasty gash—don’t look, doll. Got fuckin’ blood all over the fuckin’ place.”

You exhale. Nod your head as best you can. Unsteady. Find it hard to breathe when Yoongi’s fussing over you like this, calling you these little pet names. When he gently cradles your face in his ink-stained hands and says, eyes on me. Like you could look anywhere else. As if you’ve looked at anything else in years.

“Wha—what’re you doing?”

“Cleaning you up. Deep breath, darlin’, this is probably gonna sting.”

You barely react, still too dazed by the feel of his hands on you. You wish, briefly, that whoever had hit you had done so harder. Just enough to rewire a few things. Get rid of this juvenile crush you’ve let go unchecked for far too long. “Where’s Hoseok?”

“Went after that guy.”

You scoff. Roll your eyes. “Hoseok can’t fight.”

“Nah,” Yoongi agrees. Bites his lip as he concentrates. “But Jungkook can.”

Another press of an alcohol pad. This one stings, has you sucking in a breath through your teeth. “Don’t you think this is a bit much? I’m sure it was an accident.”

Yoongi is so close. Fits himself in the space between your thighs, presses you further into the sink, the faucet digging into your back. Doesn’t matter. Not when he’s close enough for you to count each individual eyelash, the scars that dot his face. Yoongi’s close enough for you to smell the nicotine that clings to his clothes, his skin, his hair. Close enough to smell the cheap beer lingering on his breath.

“Too much?” His brows knit together, head tilts like a confused puppy. “Why would it be too much?”

“S’not the first time I’ve nearly got my teeth kicked in at one of your shows. I just—is it worth all this fuss? My brother’s gonna get all fucking weird about it, and fuck knows what Jungkook’s gonna do to that guy.”

Yoongi’s close enough that you nearly speak the words against his mouth. Fuck, it’d be so easy to kiss him. So easy to give in and let the world burn down around you, the consequences be damned. It’d be so easy to be ruined by him that it has your hands twitching at your sides, wanting so badly to reach out and touch. Grab him by the belt loops and learn how he feels when he’s pressed flush against you. Learn what he sounds like when he moans, whimpers. What he looks like when he’s hurried and desperate.

"Stupid girl." But Yoongi doesn’t look hurried and desperate—he looks like he wants to devour you. “I would’ve done much worse.”

[quinloki]

Pussy Cat

fem!reader x Lucci

Summary: You're the most sought after piece of ass in the Grand Line Metro, and you're going to retire soon to open a BDSM club. One of your clients offers his services, but he's not really what you're looking for.

You give him a chance to change your mind.

CW: knotting, vaginal sex, oral sex, rough sex, lights on, pressed against glass, forced orgasms, mdni

Written on a whim, thanks to @anon-germany for causing the inspiration randomly. It's not exactly what I had kicked around in discord chat, but I like how it went.

It was a nice room.

They were always nice rooms. Nice rooms, nice food, nice clothes, nice, nice, nice.

You sigh, but it’s barely a shift of your shoulders, hardly a release of soft air between your lips. You’re with a good client, or had been. The business of the evening was handled, and thin silks hung from the finely shaped lines of your freshly cleaned body. The jarring marks of the night’s festivities dappled your skin, but the salve tonight and the application in the morning would be enough to fade them entirely.

You might take tomorrow night off, unless it was to keep your current client company again. Taking a sip of sweet liquor you smile despite it. That was hardly likely.

Of all your clients, Lucci called for you the least.

You were certain it had nothing to do with your skills. There was no one else he was bringing into his room. Between his own busy work, and his low - but no less satisfying - libido, he simply had no more need for additional companionship. He paid for the privilege to mark you, and he never overstepped the boundaries of what marks he could leave.

Unsurprising. You were the starling of the city. The most sought woman in the entire metropolis. Only six people in the city could call you directly, and of those, only five were clients.

But soon you would be retiring. The club was taking off, and while you had nothing against warming the beds of those you deemed worthy, it wasn’t something you could dedicate time enough to as a job anymore.

“I’m surprised,” Lucci says, walking into the room with naught on but the clear drops of water slipping from his thick hair and down his chiseled body.

“That I’m still here?” You muse. You weren’t kicked from someone’s room, you left when you were ready. Lucci knew that, so your words were a hallow jape.

“My current project is ending soon, and you haven’t offered me a position in your club.” He says it flatly, the air of one who would’ve turned it down anyway.

“Lucci, my dear, not in a million years.” You reply just as flatly.

“Oh?” The interest is curling in his tone, but you don’t pay it any mind. He’s an objective one - pragmatic.

“You’re good at what you do, and you’re good in bed, I won’t deny that, but my sweet winter cat, you’re not skilled enough for my club.” The sweet liquor against your tongue is perhaps, maybe a little too sweet.

“Skilled enough for some other club then?”

“Perhaps.” You drape yourself over the arm of the couch, watching his naked form shift under your scrutiny. “Why would you even be concerned with such a thing? I couldn’t imagine you accepting me as your boss.”

“Considering a change of pace.” He admits, stepping behind the marble-floored wet bar. “Maybe I’ve given enough to this government.”

“Well, I would recommend some other change of pace. Besides, you are not filled with an excess of passion, Lucci. I wouldn’t feel right expecting you to fake it more than not.” You take a drink, catching the sardonic smile on his lips. “Not that you aren’t faking enough already. See? You said yourself you wanted a change of pace.”

“What skills then, would I need, in order to not be faking it?”

“Ah… don’t make me answer something like that pussy cat,” you tease, the amber liquid warming your blood and sinking you into the brushed leather of the couch. “I’m far too comfortable around you to be kind.”

“Don’t waste your energy treating me kindly. If I’m going to make an informed decision about my next move, I need to know.”

“Hmph.” You take another gulp and regard him for a moment. He seems neutral enough, irritated maybe in some deep recess, bothered that you hadn’t simply accepted his offer as a matter of course. Well, he asked.

“In order to be useful in a kink club, one needs to be flexible. In mind, body, and skillset. Certainly, people will have things that they specialize in, but even the world’s best rigger does me little good if he can’t also fill several different kinds of dominant roles.

“Case in point, my dear. Rough, demanding, and prone to leaving marks. None of these things are bad, but you rarely deviate. You’re predictable in your desires, and your desires are for your own pleasure. You’d make a fine client to my club, but less so an addition to it.

“Your rigging skills are lacking. You don’t have the patience for proper shibari, and you don’t have the elegance for a lot of the knots. You are, admittedly elegant yourself, but I need people who can make my clients feel like they’re being enhanced by the experience, not just used.

“All of your love is for yourself as well. I don’t mind it, I’m not mewling beneath you in blissful haze because I’m seeking love in your sheets, but you are coldness without warmth. You’re all hard edges and sharp teeth and while you could find money enough in doing case by case client work - as there is certainly a market for your type - the lack of flexibility does me little good.”

Pausing you finish off the last of the sweet liquid in your cup, sighing and laying your head on the soft arm of the couch.

“You may well be skilled enough to know what your clients want, but I doubt you could put passion into your praise - assuming you could even be spurred toward actually saying the words themselves.” You wave your hand dismissively, turning enough to look over and realize that Lucci is standing in front of you and the couch.

The first thing you notice is the twitching, throbbing cock between his thighs, and as your eyes shift upward you see the hard gold eyes on you. His pupils are slits and you’re certain he’s willing himself to keep his human form.

“… You asked.” You assert. Despite the ease in your limbs and words you could feel the tension in the room.

“And the other side of that evaluation?” He questions. Despite the edge in the air and the obvious tension in his body, his voice is deadly calm.

You glance down at the impressive member he has, and realize the base is swelling. You’d explicitly forbade him from transforming while having sex with you, but only because you’d been worried his zoan form would be too cat-like to be pleasurable. Something about the idea of a knot in your guts was putting a knot in your guts already.

“I… doubt,” you tear your eyes back up to his face. “That anyone would be your equal in,” you lick your lips involuntarily. The look in his eyes practically has you pinned to the couch. “Primal play.”

“Could you,” you swallow again, eyes shifting back down. The knot at the base of his cock is almost twice as thick as his shaft. “Control-!”

Lucci leans in suddenly, a growl in his chest, and you jump back, sinking deep into the couch. He’s almost nose to nose with you, and there’s no where else for you to go. His hands are on either side of you, and you’re effectively imprisoned. It would be impossible to slip by him, unless he allowed you to.

“Do you think this is a lack of control?”

Your eyes shift between his. You can’t keep yourself calm, and you can feel your pulse start to race. It’s not fear - you haven’t feared a client in a long time. But there is something. Some sensation that has you feeling concern, at the least.

You barely shake your head. “…No.”

He leans down more, hot breath crashing against your skin as his lips trail so close to your jaw, you can almost feel the small hairs on your skin move from the pressure.

“Don’t you want to know?” He questions, hips moving enough to lay his heavy cock on your thigh. “What this knot will do to your precious, hundred thousand beri a night delicious pussy?” His teeth nip at the curve of your ear. “What wholly undignified sounds would you make despite yourself? Would your sweet, practiced mewling purrs survive the orgasms I force from you?” He licks up the side of your neck and you drop the glass. Lucci catches it with ease, pressing his head against yours and full on pinning you.

“Say yes.”

You shift against the couch. “To what?”

“Let me fuck you.” He growls the demanding words, breathing you in deep for a moment. “You always play at giving yourself to me. This time, this last time, actually surrender to me.” His hands grip the leather of the couch, making it groan.

“… yes.”

Lucci throws the glass, unbothered as it crashes against the wall, and lifts you from the couch. You gasp at the sudden motion, but you’re over his shoulder so quickly it’s disorienting. By the time you can sort out where you are he’s draped you over the bar he was standing at when he first posed his question.

Pushing you back, Lucci holds you by your thighs, spreading your legs wide and keeping you from falling off the bar by his hold alone. Your ass against one side of the bar, your shoulders were off the other side of it. Your hands were holding onto the edge while your head was pointed toward the floor, leaving you arched over the narrow bar, unable to see what Lucci was doing.

He kisses the insides of your thigh before licking heavily against your slit. His tongue pushes past your labia easily and he sucks your clit harshly. You moan as he continues, letting the rush of blood to your head carry the pleasure to newer heights.

He licks and sucks you to the edge quickly, and you don’t try to fight it. Lucci will have to do more than eat you out like a man starved to make you fall apart, but just as you begin to indulge in your orgasm he stops, and slaps your swollen clit harshly. The jolt of pain mingles with the orgasm you had nearly reached and you cry out.

The swear ripped from your lips isn’t the sound Lucci was looking for, and before you can yell at him, he’s back between your thighs. This time with and ice cube in his mouth.

“LUCCI!” You cry, the cold soothing the sting of the strike and his tongue making your body jolt. He holds you firmly, despite the way your body bucks, and you stay stuck in your precarious position. Once the ice melts he changes gears, grabbing one of your ankles and holding it out. The leverage keeps you in place, but it feels like you’re going to fall.

Two fingers push into your cold cunt and they feel so warm comparatively it almost burns. The sharp sting is blessedly brief, but your sense of imbalance has you off balance entirely. Lucci’s fingers curl inside you and you nearly cum, once his thumb presses against your clit there’s no saving you.

“No! I - hnnnngh!!” You choke on your words, the powerful rush of pleasure splattering dots across your vision. Your head spins as blood rushes to your thighs and pounds back into your head. Lucci doesn’t relent until you’re gasping to catch your breath, your body twitching randomly as you come down from the violent high.

A swear slips from your lips as Lucci reaches over the bar and lifts you up. You cling to him, too hazy and dizzy to keep yourself upright easily on your own.

“Bastard,” you mutter into his shoulder, not even protesting as he picks you up entirely.

He presses your bare back against glass and before you can ask what he thinks he’s doing he kisses you. The rough action denies you much say in the matter, and his tongue is in your mouth as his cock pushes into your swollen pussy.

You can’t help the satisfied moan that swirls around your tongue as he slowly pushes in deeper and deeper. The swell of the knot has made him thicker, you’re almost certain, and the girthy bulb at the base nestles against your labia warmly. Considering everything else, it’s gentle, despite the concern that paws at the edges of your mind about how it could possibly fit.

Leaning into him, you drape your arms around his shoulders, scratching your nails against his back. You can feel the grin pull at the corners of his lips, even as he continues to kiss you, his hips beginning a steady pace. With your legs hooked over his arms, your body held where he wants it by the glass against your skin, he picks up speed.

The gentle smack of the knot against your lips becomes more of a slap, but Lucci never thrusts in hard enough to bruise you. The light sting of the wet slap isn’t enough to lessen the pleasure coiling up inside you again, your fingers flexing against his back as the pace and your heavy breaths have broken the kiss.

“Wuh-where,” you murmur foggily, looking around enough to realize he’s pressed you against the thick sliding doors that lead out to the balcony. No one from the street would see you, but with the lights on in the hotel suite, anyone from the nearby hotel towers would know what was going on.

You start to say his name and his teeth are at your neck. He doesn’t bite, instead he licks and nips at the tender skin as he thrusts faster, pushing your legs back further. Your fingers dig into his back more as you can do little else than take what he gives you.

“Fuck,” you huff, unable to even adjust as he brings you closer again. You can feel the sweat prickle along your skin, the stickiness of your skin against the glass threatening to give way as pleasure and friction make your skin slick. All you can do is hold onto Lucci more, trusting him to keep his iron grip on you even if the glass doesn’t.

“N-no, please, Lucci!” The pleasure was building so fast, and you wanted to prolong it, to escape it, to have a moment to adjust to it, but he wouldn’t give you that. This wasn’t him following your mewling desires.

“Too-too much!” You nearly growl the words, a dull ache twisting your muscles from the second orgasm so close on the heels of the first. Not only does he deny you a moment, but he speeds up, thrusting into you hard enough that it’s pushing the breath from your lungs.

The knot bullies against your labia and the wet mess of sweat and slick sets off a concern in your brain, making you tense. Lucci growls against your neck, as you fruitlessly try to push him back. The knot, the knot - it’s going to go in, and you can’t form the words to beg him to slow down!

“Cum!” Lucci snarls, the heavy thrust behind the word forcing the thick knot into your sopping cunt.

The growl, the command, the terrifying stretch as the thick mass buries into you, and there’s no way for you to deny him. Your body locks up as the orgasm slams into you. The sound ripped from your throat is guttural, full of fear and pleasure and maybe even anger. You claw at his back, arms desperate to pull your body up from what felt like a drowning.

When you manage to breathe in, the rush of oxygen flooding your muscles as they finally released, you were sobbing. Lucci grins, licking your tears from your cheeks as he rolls his hips, fucking the knot deep and sending jolts of pleasure through your already shivering body.

“Ah, good.” He muses, slowly bullying the knot inside you. “You’re really enjoying it. Sometimes it’s too over-stimulating, and causes pain, but you’re lucky.”

Lucci pushes his hips up into you, leaning down and licking your breast sweetly, sending a thrill through you and pulling a whine from your lips.

Moving you away from the glass he holds you close, walking away from the balcony doors. Each step makes you moan as he shifts inside you. Your toes curl and your arms shiver from every small movement sending jolts of sharp pleasure through you.

“We’re going to be like this for a couple hours at least.” He explains calmly, laying you out on the messy bed from the rounds before your conversation. The implication sinks into you and you shake your head. “I said I was going to fuck you.” Lucci reminds you, pressing heavily into your hips.

“You didn’t think I’d be done after a couple small orgasms, did you… pussy cat?”

[adobe-outdesign]

could you review some of the neopets as animals outfits, like the fennec kacheek, red panda vandagyre, and cockatiel pteri? (those are examples, choose whichever you like!) thank you <3

(Note: I included a random selection of outfits in this post, but feel free to send in asks if anyone wants to see a specific outfit I didn't cover.)

I'll be honest, I'm personally not super big on the "outfit that resembles a real-world animal" trend. First, I play Neopets for the cool fantasy creatures; even the most true-to-life Neopets species have some pretty fantastical colors. I feel like making pets just look exactly like actual animals kind of defeats the purpose of them being Neopets. I get why people would like it and I'm not saying it's bad; it's just not my thing.

Also, the other reason I'm not always big on these outfits is that a lot of Neopets have colours that already resemble real animal patterns. Not only do the outfits blur the colour/customization line quite a bit, but usually I like the colour ones much more, as they keep the actual design of the Neopets in place and just change the patterns and colors, rather than covering up the fun fantasy elements. This also helps them avoid the uncanny valley effect, which I talk about more below.

Also I might be over thinking this but who is making these outfits. None of these animals seem to exist in-universe as far as we're aware. what are the shopkeepers basing these off of. the colours at least have a magic as an excuse

Examples that I think are okay:

Feathery Pteri Outfit: This one's nice! I like the layered patterning on the wings and the high-contrast colors. Most, though, I like that this sticks fairly close to the actual pet, mostly just changing up the tail shape. This almost could've been a paintbrush colour, but then again what colour is up in the air.

(Side note: the eye clipping over the beak is a rendering issue? I think?)

Bouncing Zafara: This one definitely strays farther from the actual pet than the Pteri, but it's a fitting animal choice and it doesn't fall into the uncanny valley, which is all I care about. The body is still somewhat recognizable as a Zafara in terms of shape, and the Miamouse as the joey is super cute.

Freshwater Lenny: Kind of the same case as the Zafara; not super one-to-one with the actual pet, but it's still recognizable as a Lenny and isn't too uncanny. The legs are a particularly nice touch, actually changing the pose to look more heron-like (though they are also the part that strays dangerously into being too detailed).

Please don't:

Adorable Kacheek: Sorry to the fans of this one, but this outfit just resides deep within the uncanny valley to me—like it's a mascot suit instead of just a normal pet. The artstyle is way off from Neopets, looking much more Subeta-ish (except Subeta's art usually isn't so off putting). It's not a bad artstyle, mind you, it's just not very Neopets-ish. I also feel like a fennec fox was also a bad pick for this one, as it's basically unrecognizable as a Kacheek at all.

Feathered Eyrie: Speaking of the uncanny valley, this is another pet that lands squarely there due to having entirely too much detail in the shading and weirdly realistic fur textures. It also just doesn't look very good aesthetically—the beak doesn't fit the face, and the wings are an absolute trainwreck (not only is the perspective wrong, but the left wing is coming from the middle of its back!). On the plus side, you'd be hard pressed to not recognize this as an Eyrie, and it's a fantasy creature instead of a regular animal, so I guess that's something?

Furry Meerca: Hmm... no. This one also suffers from an overly-detailed artstyle and way too much realism, which is especially jarring when placed on top of the Meerca's heavily stylized body shape, resulting in a perfectly round animal with hyper-realistic animal eyes. It's also particularly bothersome because we already had a chipmunk Meerca design in the form of the striped Meerca colour, which is just this but less soul-haunting:

Which is what I meant at the beginning when I was talking about colours vs outfits. The colour is a Meerca that looks like a chipmunk; the outfit is a chipmunk that looks like a Meerca. Big difference.

[objecthusbandry]

keeping objects as pets #3: candles!

hi there! in this series, i’ll be going over basic descriptions of commonly-kept object species (and some rare ones too!), facts about them, why you might want one as a pet, their basic needs and necessities provided you want to house one, and things you should NEVER do. for the third of this series, we're covering candles!

description

candles are a very diverse breed of object that come in a ton of unique shapes and sizes. some are short and stocky while others are very tall! they usually are less than a foot tall, but they can be taller, in rare instances. their legs are plantigrade, with three fingers per hand and three toes per foot. their claws are non-retractable. their limbs, while softer underneath, are covered in hard and inflexible flame-resistant scales, similar to that of a pangolin or armadillo. they are able to light spontaneously, but this takes more energy than they typically have and they often must find a way to produce their flames on their own. their wicks regrow over time if damaged and have no nerves. they produce wax through their whole life.

facts about candles

uniquely among objects, candles can sometimes produce a thin covering of a glasslike material to protect their wax bodies. object biologists aren't fully sure why this gene is inactive in some candles and active in others. their bodies, unlike real candlewax, are more soft and malleable and therefor more prone to damage, so it's agreed on that this "jar" formation is meant as a protective covering, though with it being so fragile, some specialists have suggested it to play a role in mate selection in the wild. their diet consists primarily of insects in the wild, but can be supplemented with crustaceans as well - they seem to have a taste for shellfish.

why as a pet?

candles aren't as skittish as lanterns, and can be quite bold at times. they aren't curious by nature like backpacks, though, preferring to stay in small groups in a remote location. this can make them ideal for people looking for an object that doesn't need company every single day, though this shouldn't be an excuse to neglect them! their melted wax can be collected and used as a regular candle as well, so for people who like to meditate, this can be a great way to save money, provided they can meet the needs of the creature. these animals are quiet and reserved, and very easily trained, which can make them ideal for people with children in their homes as well.

basic needs + do’s and dont’s

as previously stated, candles primarily consume insects. they favor grubs over adult insects, but their teeth are able to crack open the shells of most beetles, roaches etc. this can make them great for pest control in houses with lots of insects, but you should never rely on them for this! their primary need is that they absolutely MUST BE LIT now and then! candles produce wax through their whole lives and in the wild they will light themselves if possible (sometimes using tools to achieve this), but due to potential danger with fire indoors you absolutely HAVE to light them yourself to burn excess wax off. if the dripping wax is an issue, you can try waiting for it to harden again before scraping it off floors. alternatively you can try "dry-waxing", which is a relatively new practice for candle owners. this consists of using special waxing tools to remove built up wax from the object; care must be taken as removing too much can be extremely painful for the object and possibly even kill them. this is why i recommend taking your object to the vet to have them perform this instead to avoid harm to your pet. if your candle is hesitant to go in a carrier, you can try luring them with a raw shrimp, one of their favorite treats.

their primary sources of enrichment come from their environment, which is a great way to lead into:

housing

candles don't require a massive space, but these animals do require at least a medium size house to be fully comfortable. they like to have a visually stimulating space, with bright colors - if your home has more muted colors, i suggest setting up a "den" for your candle to keep them stimulated. as far as toys go, they actually aren't as overly playful as some species, but maybe have some cat toys such as feathers on poles for them or mice to throw around.

that’s all! hopefully this helps educate anyone who is considering this species!

[shadowbriar]

George Weasley - Vitalum Vitalis

Pairing : (F/M) || George Weasley x Ravenclaw!Reader Word Count : 1.8k Warning : Blood. Mention of Injury. Second Wizarding War. Synopsis : Balancing the scales of life and death is never close to the word safe, but what else could she do when he’s losing his other half? Reference: American Horror Story Coven Notes : Reader is in Ginny’s year, I wrote this in a hurry so future edits might be possible. This is the 4th post for my (late) 7-days post plan. If you like this story and would like to support me, please visit my kofi page and perhaps get me a coffee?☕  

A wise man once said, with knowledge comes power. Perhaps that is the reason why she’s always been a very proud Ravenclaw. She wears the colour blue like her blood was the colour of it and flaunts her house crest like it was a medal. She is the Ravenclaw princess, the one with the wittiest mind and cleverest ideas. For her, knowledge is everything. She could shape it to anything she would like it to be. A weapon, a shield, a shelter, anything. But for this one moment, she would use it as an answer.

The butterfly has been dead for three days now. Her roommates were beginning to question when she would throw away its decaying body as it was starting to be an ugly sight to see, and she would always give them the same answer: “I’ll bury it once I have the chance.”

Now that her roommates are out, she quickly seize the chance and lock the doors, reaching for the jar of her dead pet. The colour of its wings were dull, she knew it would rip if she tried to pick it up. Yet it only made her want to do it more. The more damage to it, the more she could measure how powerful the spell she’s about to perform. She’s always been a fast learner, the most gifted student Professor Flitwick would praise her, but with this one spell, she wasn’t sure if her proficiency would be enough.

Placing the butterfly on her palm, she gently covers it with both of her hands and places it close to her chest. She closes her eyes, mentally preparing herself to whisper the spell, “Vitalum Vitalis.”

When she opened her eyes, she could feel the slightest tickle on her palms. Like something was moving inside it. A proud smile now etches on her face as she opens her hands, letting the butterfly fly out. Its wings were vibrant, flying around her as if it recognised her and the best thing of all, she felt nothing different. The book did say that in order to perform the balancing spell, a certain amount of energy from the caster will be harvested to restore the balance and it would be a lie if that warning didn’t send shivers down her spine. Yet perhaps a butterfly as her very first trial was a much too small of a creature to ever cause much effect on her.

A knock was suddenly heard on the door. She quickly hides the book she’s stolen from the restricted area under her bed and heads to the door, unlocking it and smiling to her friend, “Hello.”

“Your boyfriend’s waiting for you in the common room.” Her friend informed, noticing her flying butterfly on the back “Hey, you’ve got a new butterfly, that’s nice.”

She nods, smiling beamingly, “Thanks, I’ll go down in a bit.”

With a returned nod, she closes the door and puts the butterfly back in its jar. A proud smile is still plastered on her face. There was only a short list of recorded wizards and witches who could perform the spell, as it requires a whole different set of skills, to conduct a charm without a wand, and yet she’s done it. To say that it boosted a little bit of her ego would be such an understatement.

But then again, with knowledge comes power, and with power comes great responsibility. She knows that meddling with the balance of nature is not something one should do. Balancing life and death could mean harnessing or restoring the force from one to another, but she has no desire to do the prior. All she wanted to do is to restore life, though she knows the more complex the creature, the more gruesome the state of the individual she wishes to revive, the more of her power would be aspirated and it is for sure not anywhere near to the word safe.

But with the war brewing just outside of the castle’s walls, just how much safety can someone truly have?

—-

Her breath was hitched when he saw him entering the Great Hall with the rest of the Order. As much as she’s glad to see him, the realisation that they would be facing war in mere hours and that they would have to shed every last bit of safety they have, scares her. The many years of practice and spells learned doesn’t seem to be nearly enough now that she has to fight in the battlefield.

As soon as Snape apparates away, as soon as Voldemort finishes his words, as soon as students shuffle out of the Great Hall, she quickly finds herself running to him. The world might be crumbling into ashes but in this very moment, inside his embrace, everything feels tranquil and serene.

“I’ve missed you.” George whispered as he pulled her close “Perhaps I should thank Voldy for making us meet faster before the semester ends.”

“Shut up.” She says, struggling to keep her tears from falling “We’re literally knocking on our death’s door and you still have the heart to joke about it.”

“Well I am the jokester, am I not?” He chuckles whole heartedly.

She remains quiet, heart still heavy from the horror.

“Hey,” He calls softly, breaking the hug as he cups her face gently “We’ll be alright, I promise.”

She shakes her head, “Don’t make such promises, George. You know I hate it when you give me false hope.”

“Only that it’s not false hope, Darling. I mean it, we’ll be alright.” 

A tear finally escapes her eyes, breaking down from all the fright of the upcoming war.

“I’ll meet you back here when it’s over.” He reassures, his calloused thumbs now caressing her skin. George’s hazel eyes were filled with love, trying to give her the most confidence he could convey “I’ll find you, I promise.”

She nods, convincing herself from his words, “Be careful, okay?”

“When am I not?” He winks before pulling her for a kiss “I’ll come and find you. Be safe, please.”

And with that, George is pulled away along with Fred to guard the Astronomy Tower while she’s ushered to help cast the protection spells on the other side of the castle.

—-

Her body was sore, blood dripping down the side of her temple as she limped down to the corridor. Voldemort has recalled his forces, giving them the slight window to take a breath and regroup. The smell of smoke and dust was burning her lungs, trying to walk through the rubbles of the fallen walls feels like a never ending torture, but George’s words played in her head like a broken record, pumping her veins with adrenaline that she could still now move her feet to try and find him.

When she reaches the Great Hall, stretchers with cold bodies have laid on its floor. Familiar faces that still bid her a smile earlier this morning now lay emotionless, eyes closed for eternity. 

She quickens her pace as she spots familiar redheads standing next to a body. She wasn’t sure who the family’s mourning, it was hard to see with so many of them circling the stretcher, but it doesn’t really matter now, does it? Whoever the Weasleys’ crying for would be someone she cried for too.

“George?” She calls softly as she reaches the family.

The tall boy turns his body at her voice, revealing his bloodshot eyes and broken expression. He pulls her for a tight hug, completely breaking down inside her embrace as he begins to wail for his twins’ name.

Fred.

As if a thunder had struck, she could feel her blood run cold. She glances to the body lying on the floor, Fred looking so peaceful as if he was just sleeping and would wake up abruptly anytime soon, pulling the most wicked prank yet. She would hate him to ever pull a heartless prank like that on his family, but anything other than the fact that he’s left them for good would certainly be better.

George’s body was shaking from all the crying. She knew that he would never survive a life without Fred. He would never be able to live a day without his other half. And this is when she knows that her practice of reviving creatures, from butterflies to dead deer she found in the forbidden forest would finally be useful.

This is the time to use her knowledge as an answer.

“George, my Love,” She calls softly, trying to calm him for a little “Look at me, please.”

The boy reluctantly breaks their embrace, staring at her with his teary eyes.

“I love you,” She whispers “I love you so much, George Weasley. You are the one person that has always brightened my days, the one person that shows me that there’s more to life than books and knowledge.”

George brows furrow, seemingly confused at his girlfriends’ sudden confession.

“I hope you know how much you truly mean to me one day, because there isn’t a word that could express half of what I feel for you.” She continues, her tears falling from her eyes.

Softly, she pulls him for a kiss. The kind of kiss that feels like a goodbye, the one that you know you would miss for the years to come, but in that moment, George was still too distraught of losing his twin to notice the goodbye she was bidding, “Please be happy for me.”

“What are you–”

Before he could continue his words, she found herself kneeling next to Fred, taking his now cold hand into hers. She holds it gently and places it close to her chest, caressing his blood stained skin with tenderness. Fred looks handsome, despite the small cuts on his cheek and the pale look of his skin. In a few minutes, colour would return and he would be his cheerful self again.

“Please take care of him.” She whispers to Fred, hoping that her message could be heard by him somehow.

Taking a deep breath, she closes her eyes and begins to focus her mind on the spell. This would just be like her other trials, she told herself. Reviving a deer made her nose bleed, gave her a light headache that made her have to stay under Madam Pomfrey’s care for a couple of days. It would certainly require more of her energy to revive Fred back to alive but whatever she has to put on the stake now, she would.

“Vitalum Vitalis.”

Within seconds, Fred’s lips have regained their pink colour and the slightest twitch could be seen around his eyes. She could feel him moving his fingers, making her to open her eyes to see him with a smile, glad pouring over her to know that she’s able to bring back what the family has lost.

But when he opens his eyes, her vision turns black, falling onto the floor as she feels her skin turn cold.

This is the end.

[2af-afterdark]

Friend(?) Like Me

Please keep in mind that the game is still not out, so so it is based on a bunch of random headcanons sort of put together.

Content: GN!MC (they/them)/Minhyeok (whb), friends with benefits, the sex is kind of goofy (it's friends ribbing each other), unrequited crush, there is penetration but it is not stated if it's anal or vaginal

They looked best when dim florescent light framed their silhouette like a halo, their eyes were slitted as if they were fighting to keep them open when all they wanted was to close, their mouth was hung open in a series of endless cries and screams, and their hands were pressed against his chest while their ass swallowed his cock over and over.

Minhyeok liked to hold their hips while watching them ride his dick. A small part of him thought they might just float away if he didn't hold them against him in whatever way he could. That, and they could go for longer if he helped them, which he liked most of all.

"You're rough today." Not that he minded. "What happened? Did you forgot to charge your vibe again?"

Embarrassment danced in their eyes, right behind the lust.

"Really? You know I'm not a dildo, right?" Again, not that he minded being their sexual outlet.

"I know, but- Oh~ right there." Their voice shifted pitch and their hips ground down against him. "Fuck! Real dick is the best."

"Maybe I should get you a dildo shaped like mine for your birthday. You seem to enjoy it."

Plus, he could enjoy the thought of them using it when he jerked off. The thought of their legs splayed open, dildo shaped just like his cock glistening with lube as they pushed it deep inside of their hole, mumbling that it was too big but pushing it in anyway (not that they'd ever made that complaint before but it was his fantasy and he was allowed to take liberties), fucking themselves until they came, and then calling him up because all masturbating did was make them miss him... yeah, he would be using that fantasy next time he had to take care of himself.

But it was clear that would remain only a fantasy as their nose scrunched up at his suggestion. "Dude, don't make it weird."

Because riding your best friend's dick, in his bed, in the same house they used to run around playing tag and jumping on the bed wasn't already making things weird and blurring the lines of their relationship. But this was always how they were. At least he was their first choice instead of some stranger.

"Fine. I'll stick to a something normal. Like a pack of batteries."

"You're such a shit." When they laughed, he could feel them clench around his dick and he had to stop himself from moaning for them. "Now, you gonna help me out or...?"

Minhyeok dug his fingers into their hips, gripping them tightly and raising his own to smack into them. Their smartass tongue was silenced by groans dragged straight from their throat. The sound went to his cock, but he held back from ravishing them they way he wanted. Instead, he controlled his pace to one he'd learned long ago made their legs go weak.

"Better?"

"Mhm." They sighed between cries.

"Thought so."

He was as much of a shit as they were. That's why he didn't mind being their dildo for the evening or teasing them about it at the same time he was enjoying the sight of them.

"Fuck you." They finally gave in and collapsed on his chest, moaning against him as their hole swallowed his cock over and over from below.

He smirked, both internally and externally. "If you insist."

He would be glad to really fuck them as much as they would allow until his feelings escaped the tightly sealed jar they were kept in burst out for the briefest of moments when he held onto their trembling body and came because of them. He would pretend it was just sex to him, just like it was for them, but it he would secretly be waiting for the next time they had a craving for the touch of a real person.

[springfallendeer]

The Bells -1

I really like @xitsensunmoon's vampire AU boys. So I defiled them. And whored out my OC, Ayala, in the process.

Most likely non-canon to their AU (up to them). I might write more from this setting in the future. But this fic comes out to 7 parts, nearly 21k words.

Next

Part 1: The Feeding

||A look of visible confusion spreads across the woman’s features as she hears it. The soft, gentle chime breaking the relative silence of her surroundings.||

||A bell.||

||Someone is ringing a bell.||

||She doesn’t know who. Not at first. But she hears it. The soft, metallic tune of a crotal bell being shaken about.||

||Time and time again it catches her ear. Each time seemingly singing from a different location. Always nearby. But no matter how she turns about, she never spots whoever it is that is playing the silly little tune.||

||Some part of her chalks it up to paranoia. An escaped dog or a roaming cat must be wandering around nearby. She’s only just beyond the reach of the city. It wasn’t unusual for an animal to make it out here. There were plenty of trees or flowering bushes for them to hide behind. That was what made the park so appealing, after all.||

||Again the bell chimes. This time louder. She finds herself turned about again, her eyes intent on scanning the surrounding scenery in search of whatever it was that had made the noise. But nothing is there. No man or beast lingering in the twilight. Just an empty park.||

||Once more, she hears the bell ring. Even louder this time.||

||Because it's right behind her.||

||Her breath hitches in her throat as she spins herself around once more. Her arm brushes against a cold, unmoving body as she turns around.||

||Wide, alert eyes settle upon the creature that had somehow appeared directly behind her. And it is most definitely a creature.||

||Glowing red eyes lock with hers. Intense and hungry. A wide smile laced with sharp, jagged teeth tugs at its face. A smile which parts somewhat to allow a long, thick tongue to dart out and trace the side of its face.||

||A tremble rolls through her as she stares at the creature. The obviously hungry, predatory creature. For a moment, she can’t bring herself to move. She can only stare at it. This monster of the night. Clad head to toe in attire meant to cartoonishly mimic the nocturnal sky. The only jarring contrast in color being the cape draped over its shoulders. Black. Marked with red streaks and a few stray, golden stripes.||

||Tall and lanky. With limbs that better resembled a mishmash of metal and bone than they did flesh. A face free of features outside of its eyes and mouth; save for the pale, crescent shaped marking that encompassed half of their face.||

||Under less intimidating circumstances, she might have thought this creature stunning. In a cartoon villain sort of way.||

||But this thing was anything but a cartoon villain. It was very real, and it was very, very unnerving. So much so that she can only tremble as a large, skeletal looking hand is lifted to brush against her face.||

||“What pretty eyes you have~” The creature utters, it's - his - voice deep, and laced with amusement.|| ||“So wide and shining~ So... Afraid~” He chuckles, gently tracing his thumb against the skin beneath the woman’s eye.||

||She struggles to find the strength to take a step back as the creature moves closer to her. That same large, skeletal hand slowly drifts back down her face. He caresses her cheek. He traces her jaw.||

||She trembles pathetically as a clawed finger traces her throat.||

||“No need to be afraid, friend~” The creature muses, casually hooking their claws into the neck of her shirt to tug the fabric aside. Her chest begins to heave from panic as they lean down. Surprisingly hot breath rolls against the nape of her neck once the being has moved close enough to claim her as their prey.|| ||“Just a quick pinch, and it’ll all be over~” He chuckles.||

||She doesn’t give him the chance to sink his teeth into her. As soon as the rush of adrenaline flooded her system, she bolted. First by stumbling back. Then by darting back the way she’d come. Up the sidewalk. Keeping to the light of the lamp posts as the steady encroaching darkness activated their protective glow.||

||The bells start up again. Louder and more ominous than ever.||

||No matter how quickly she runs, it's as though she can’t evade them. They never grow quieter. They never grow more distant.||

||One instant, they’re right behind her. The next, she distinctly hears them to one side. Regardless of how she turns to try and evade them, they are without means of escape.||

||She doesn’t even realize that she’s been herded to a more secluded spot. Driven in a specific direction as the creature used the chimes of its decorative bells to distract and alarm her. Until she’s left exhausted.||

||Panting and wheezing, she clutches the metal of the lamp post as she presses her back against it. Lost and confused, she does her best to go silent. She does her best to ignore the pounding of her own heart as she gazes out into the encroaching darkness, trying and failing to spot the creature that had pursued her.||

||The bells have finally gone quiet. Eerily, disturbingly quiet. The only sound to break the silence is the heavy hiss of her throat as her chest heaves.||

||Then a muffled scream as a familiar, skeletal hand covers her mouth.||

||A second arm wraps around to hold her by her torso, trapping her in place even as she thrashes in their hold. The only barrier between them is the metal pole that she had foolishly tried to hide herself.||

||The bells start up again as tears begin to prick her eyes. But the sound chimes from a different source; ringing not from the creature behind her, but from somewhere in the distance.||

||If not for her panic, she might have been inclined to see what it was. But her focus is entirely on trying to squirm out of the embrace of this beast that has apprehended her.||

||Until a second one walks boldly into her line of sight.||

||She goes still again, her only movements being the trembling of her body and the heaving of her chest as she stares at this new creature.||

||The obvious counterpart to the one that had pulled her into their clutches. A gold and yellow face peered down at her. The only features of that face being a sharp toothed smile and a set of pale, blue-gray eyes. The crescent mark is less obvious. A crown of golden rays adorned their head. Their clothing is bright and vibrant, like the radiance of the sun.||

||Their cape is red. A deep, dark red. Decorated with streaks of yellow.||

||An eerie, playful smile tugged at their features as they moved closer to her. A yellow, skeletal hand was brought up to her face. With the touch of a single, clawed finger, she was encouraged to lift her head to better face them.||

||The blue one slowly pulled their hand from her face, exposing her pathetic expression.||

||“P-please!... Please, don-” She began to plead for her life, only to be quickly silenced as the golden one began to shush her.||

||“Shh, shh~ Relax, friend. No one is going to kill you... We’re just hungry.” The golden entity states, their voice velvety soft as they attempt to comfort the woman. They lean down somewhat to lock eyes with her, shushing her as a few stray tears roll down her cheeks.|| ||“Calm down now... That’s it. Don’t worry. You’re safe.” He murmurs, slowly lowering his hand. Just as the blue one had done, he takes to tracing a clawed finger down to the bottom of her throat. Only now, as he tugs the collar of her shirt to the side, she feels not an ounce of fear.||

||Something about those pale eyes has calmed her. Something about their sweet, velvety voice has put her so at ease.||

||He waits for her chest to stop heaving before he leans down to nuzzle the crook of her neck, a soft smile tugging at his features all the while, exposing his pointed teeth.||

||“Good girl~” He murmurs.||

||She can’t help but flinch as the momentary pain hits her.||

||She only feels it for a moment. Just a pinch. A split second of pain, and then the warmth of her blood trickling down her skin. Then the oddly appealing sensation of a tongue lapping at her wounded flesh.||

||For as terrifying as this ordeal should be, she’s unusually calm. Relaxed, even. And she only grows more relaxed as her blood is greedily swallowed by the semi-robotic, golden vampire.||

||She grows so relaxed, in fact, that the blue one has to tighten their hold on her as her legs begin to give way. Their other arm is wrapped around to hook under one of her arms. Their hand settles upon her shoulder.||

||Before long, the golden vampire pulls their teeth free of her flesh.||

||She would have let out a relieved sigh if not for the fact that she felt the sting a second time.||

||The blue one sank their teeth into her next. Rather than reuse the original bite, they sank their teeth into the nearby flesh to create a fresh wound. A wound which allowed fresh blood to flow into their greedy mouth.||

||The blue one was different. Where the golden one had been content to bite once and then suck on the wound, the blue one liked to bite repeatedly. Every few seconds, she would feel that telltale sting of teeth cutting into her throat. Each time, a faint hiss would escape her, followed by a rush of relief.||

||Between the two of them, she lost a lot of blood. Her head grew foggy and her vision became blurry as her life was slowly spilt onto the vampire’s greedy tongue. By the time that the blue one had finished making a meal out of her, she was left so tired and disoriented that she could no longer stand.||

||One of them laughed, though she could not determine which. The steady glow of the lamp post began to irritate her exhausted eyes. As she allowed her eyelids to fall closed, she ignored how her heavy body was jostled about.||

||She struggled to stay awake as her body was readjusted. She felt a pair of arms wrap around to pick her up. The back of her head fell against one arm as the other tucked beneath her knees.||

||Not long after, she felt the breeze slowly roll against her body as she was presumably carried to a new location. But she could not be bothered to panic. The blood-loss induced grogginess mixed with the physical exhaustion of her earlier escape attempt, assuring that she wouldn’t be able to muster a single ounce of defiant energy.||

||The soft singing of the bells resumed as she began to steadily drift off, securely held in the arms of one of the beasts that had nearly drained the life out of her completely.||

||Comfortably held, but likely far from safe, she fell asleep in their embrace. The steady chimes of the bells guiding her into the depths of darkness as her consciousness slowly drifted beyond her means of reach.||

[quibbs126]

Oh yeah, I made this last night

I was complaining yesterday about how I can’t draw, and while I tried and failed to draw traditionally (I think I’ve been out of practice too long and I can’t adjust to the layout of it not being right in front of my face at the same angle, if that makes sense), I decided maybe I can try drawing these guys again

I’m pretty happy with how the main trio turned out in this redesign, I think I was able to give them all distinct looks

Cassidy got some changes, Rasmus pretty much stayed the same other than a permanent ponytail, and Rowan's hair got completely changed. Mostly because I wanted to make his hair have a more distinct shape

I still need to come up with new names for them though. Best I got is Rowan becomes Rusty, but I don’t know for the other two. All I know is that in another world, Cassidy would be Peppermint, or some other variation of mint

Anyways, a while ago I was considering changing the setting of the story to be cowboy themed. It was mostly because at the time, a Discord I was on was making a Cookie Run cowboy AU that I really like, but also because the story never had a clear time period setting. It was part modern day, part fantasy, and I never really got it to be consistent

Though the big problem is that I’m pretty unfamiliar with cowboys and how they operate. Which is ironic because I’ve been living in Texas for over a decade. But like, I’ve never been that interested in Westerns or that cowboy stuff, probably in part because I heavily dislike country music. So I don't really know much about the era other than Victorian times were also happening

I would also have to change some things around so that they fit in the time period, most importantly the whole situation with Rasmus and the others. I'm thinking maybe I can turn that from science experiment to witchcraft and have magic be more of a thing, since they are meant to have magic

I've given a little thought into how the story works now, like that these three got hired either to drive cattle to a certain area or keep watch of a ranch. I guess if they got to travel, then the former, but if I just want them to hang out, then the latter. Former's probably better though, since if I want to make an actual plot, there's your overarching goal

I think I need to do more research on the time period though, so I know what I'm doing. Though also this isn't going to be like, completely historically accurate. I mean these guys are fictional goat thing people with magic powers. I don't think something like the Civil War happened recently, and I'm not sure I want sexism to be a prevalent thing in the plot. And I think I also personally I need that reminder since sometimes I forget that I can give myself wiggle room

In that vein, the cattle are probably also semi fictional, or at least maybe they shouldn't be exactly the same as real cows. I don't know, I feel like it'd be really jarring to have normal cows alongside brightly colored goat people

Anyways I trailed off, back to the actual drawings

So because of the cowboy consideration, I tried to sketch out outfits they could wear. As well as body types (though they didn't turn out as varied as I'd like). Cassidy and Rasmus I think are fine, but Rowan might need more tweaking. I also need more cowboy refs, especially ones that aren't just costumes or AI pictures in Google Images

Then afterwards I decided to start sketching some of the other characters I've made up. Which just so happen to be the parents of the main characters. Who also have names because I came up with the naming scheme at that point

Top to bottom is Periwinkle, Basil and Silver

Of those three, I think Periwinkle turned out the best, but for one thing, she's been in my mind much longer than the other two, so I have a much clearer idea of what she's supposed to look like. And on top of that, I've actually drawn her before, so I know what to change. Basil and Silver are very much first drafts, and first drafts are usually not the best when it comes to designing new characters. No wonder redesigns of characters usually end up better than the original, since you have a base design where you already know what works and doesn't, as opposed to working from the ground up

And with Silver, I made it a point that he and his son don't look anything alike other than both having darker hair, so I quite literally had nothing to work with, unlike Basil or Perri

I'm also realizing that I've made a pattern with the parent designs, namely that all three of the main characters pretty much exclusively look similar to their moms. I suppose you can't tell much here, since Rasmus was born green but got changed via the experimentation, while I drew Silver, Rowan's dad that he looks nothing like, with the mom he does look like not being depicted. But yes, Cassidy and her bio mom are blue, Rasmus and Basil are green, and Rowan and his mom are red

Periwinkle and Cassidy are probably the two who look the most distinct from another, in part because they're two different shades of blue. Which is ironic because in my more recent working of this world, I made it a point that Perri's family has crazy strong genes, with everyone in the family (outside of marriage) is blue. I might have to take that out or just change how this works

I mean with Rowan, I don't really know how to change it, since his dad's family is all in the greyscale, so him being red would have to come from his mom. And with Rasmus, his parents are supposed to be green and red, with the idea that it's plausible that he could turn out brown, while in reality he was born green. But I mean I guess I could turn him a more yellow-ish green? I don't know, I'll figure it out

And uh yeah, I guess that's it. Not really anything that remarkable, but at least I drew something

[jacesbeloved]

fucking flower

summary: a simple snooping around in your hut may have resulted in a flower making you two do something both of you have been longing for.

pairing: neteyam sully x fem!reader

warnings: smut, MDNI, sex pollen, aged up!neteyam, kind of public sex, cunt slapping, spanking (just 1 i think), established relationship/friendship, subtle mutual pining, rough sex basically, both of them basically liking each other but they cant risk their childhood friendship but thats not mentioned anywhere lol

"Yeah... what's this one?"

"Will you do me the pleasure of leaving me alone? Just this once, please," You groaned at the eldest Sully boy, your words falling on deaf ears as he continued picking at the flasks and jars you had on your shelves. 

It's been two hours since you two got back from the hunt party earlier, you weren't necessarily hunting animals, you were hunting for plants and herbs. While Neteyam and the other hunters flew on their ikrans with their bows and arrows, you and your group of healers were picking herbs from the trees.

Once they finished, they'd fly by your area and bring you back. Most often than not give all of the healers their time alone in organizing and mixing herbs and plants for those who were injured. That was usually how it went, of course, with the exception of the might olo'eyktan's son.

Being too busy with grinding in the herbs, you didn't notice him grab one of the clay jars, throwing it in the air and catching it as he walked toward you. Neteyam inspected the odd shaped jar, not seeing any label on it compared to the others.

Easily pulling off the lid, a strong hits him like a tree crashing into him face first. It was a foul one, a small he usually caught on whenever he came across an animal that has been dead for a while.

That was what it smelt like, his nose crunching in disgust. As he placed the lid back on, right before it could small the teeny tiny gap, the whole scent changed.

He smelled you.

Neteyam peeked inside of the jar, a flower of green and violet with peculiar petals stored inside. Feeling his mind make fun of him, he pushed his nose close to the opening of the jar as he took in a breath but there was no difference. It was your scent. Your indescribable scent that he had never forgotten ever since you two met at four years old.

It smelled everything about you. The flowers you put in your hair, the small tinge of blood that he used to smell on your whenever their hunt parties got a bit bloody, the smell of the trees on your hair— next thing he knew, he was longing for another smell, another something.

Closing off the lid with every bit of restraint he had, he places the jar on top of your table. His mouth hanging agape as heat started consuming his body, feeling himself grow sweatier all of a sudden.

"Hey baby- Y/N?" he stammered, clearing his throat when you turned sharply to glare at him, the pet name catching your attention. You brushed it off, going back to grinding the herbs on your mortar with the butt of your knife.

"D'you really have to stay here? I can finish way faster if you leave-" Fingertips ghosted your bare skin, a familiar, warm presence making itself known from behind you. Your head snapped behind you, seeing the familiar blue na'vi that you have grown accustomed to seeing in your hut all the time, inches away from pressing himself behind you.

"You sure?" He whispered breathless, a weird feeling coming onto your body. What was happening?

Neteyam inhaled deeply, dangerously close to your neck as you notice his hands trap you, gripping the table tightly.

"You smell— fuck... heavenly," the eldest Sully boy had his eyes closed, deep groans sounding through his throat before he snaps back into himself. He swiftly retracted his hands, blinking rapidly as the heat in him started to engulf him again.

You looked at him in deep concern— longing. It was the first time you saw and heard him like that. The deep timbre of his voice that always made your knees weak but you never admitted that, even to yourself.

He turned you around gently, head falling down to your shoulders, still inhaling your scent as it relieved him.

"What the hell was in that jar?" He laughed, trying to shake off the feeling, murmuring quiet apologies as he does. "I told you to not touch my stuff didn't I? Which did you open?" You demanded, touching his shoulder. His warm skin making your ears perk up.

Neteyam pulls back, scratching the back of his neck. The two of you lock eyes for the first time this night, you gulp when you notice his pupils dilated, his chest heaving up and down.

"Which did you open?!" You asked even louder as you push past him.

The male pulls you back to his grasp, his strong hand wrapping around your wrist while the other places an open jar right by your nose. Your face scrunches, the foul smell hitting you now, your throat started retching right as the smell changed all of a sudden.

"What do you smell?" He asks lowly, eyes staring at you with desire, your ears fanning up and down in an excited motion.

You felt your pupils dilate as the smell made you feel tingles all over your body. The scent that you've been longing for now, a familiar one that you always smell every fucking time;

It smelt of Neteyam.

When your mouth hang agape, a silent gasp, looking doe-eyed at the male towering over you, Neteyam swung the jar to the side without any care in the world. You smacked him on the chest because of it but he couldn't care less, pulling you close to him as he started to inhale your scent again. His smell also invading yours as heat coursed through your body.

The male groaned deeply, your pelvis hitting his, finally getting some friction in his growing hard-on. "Can I touch- Oh, shit, you, please," he pleaded.

You unknowingly nodded, mind starting to become hazy, not really knowing what was happening. Neteyam's hands were quick to move on your skin, cupping your face to pull your lips on his.

"What the fuck is in that vase?" He slipped in between kisses, panting heavily as he started humping your thighs with need. You whined at him, pouting as you kissed him this time. Your tongue intertwining with his, hands reaching back to pull at his braids making him groan.

You pulled away for some air, Neteyam kissing down your neck with wet and sloppy kisses as his hands go busy in taking off your top. One swift tug from the string behind you and the woven top falls down. His eyes narrowing, lips smirking, mouth watering as he latches onto one of your nipples.

A high-pitched whine left your lips as you arched your back, giving him more room while he smothered your breasts in lustful kisses. Sucking ever so harshly at the soft skin, mewls pouring out of your lips. Your hands moved behind you, pulling fast to untie your own loincloth and ask for some relief from the male. 

Neteyam continued his assault on your chest, looking up at you who had your head back and eyes closed. His hand wandered down with no hesitation, fingers coming in contact with your sensitive slit, his lips stretching to the side in a smirk when he felt your wetness coating his fingers.

He plunged deep inside of you, your head shooting forward, forehead scrunched as you moaned at the sudden penetration. Your walls immediately burned at the stretch, so long since your last time having something inside of you that wasn't just your fingers.

"Is this— Is this really us or is it- Oh fuck, you're sucking me in so good, baby," you clenched even more at his comment, his fingers scissoring you open as your hands rested on his shoulders. Your breath got caught on your throat when you tried to response, moans and mewls spilling out as his pace quickened.

"It's- 'Teyam!" He pulled his fingers out making you whine, frantically looking for an open space. Once his eyes caught on a vacant table with just random leaves on it, he grabs you by your waist, slapping your ass making you jump. Your legs instinctively wrapping around his thin waist.

He places you back down with a loud thump, undoing his own loincloth before he gave your whole abdomen quick kisses leading down to your aching center.

"It's our bodies-" Neteyam held both of your knees, spreading your legs wide. Your head fell back on the wooden table, clutching your chest as you felt his breath right near your pussy. "It's our bodies?" He breathed out. You gulped, trying to complete your train of thought.

"It's our bodies being influenced by the damn flower," you said in one quick breath. Neteyam's head moved to the side, comprehending what you just said making him halt his movements. "So this isn't... actually us? Our ownselves" 

You sighed, "Why is that a big deal- Oh, great mother, you're right on my cunt, 'Teyam." 

He blew some air onto your leaking cunt, watching your reaction closely with his hooded eyes. "Do you want it?" Your legs twitched at the cold air, threatening to close but his hands were holding you wide open. His head still right by your cunt, one small push and he'd be face deep in it. 

"Do I want it?" You repeated with a tone of disbelief. You held your body up, grabbing his face up and giving him a wet kiss. "If you do not make me come right now, I'll fuck myself in front of you." 

His eyes darkened when you whispered in his ear, swearing to yourself that you heard a growl escape his lips before he goes down on you. His lips immediately latched itself on your slit, licking up a long stripe from your hole to your clit, toying with the small bud with his tongue. 

"Tastes better than I imagined," he mumbled, face still deep into your cunt, the vibrations making your body squirm. He reached up, fondling with your breasts with one hand as the other pushed into your hole. A loud gasp escaped your lips, Neteyam putting in a second, a third, all in a span of seconds all the while he circled your clit with his warm tongue. 

Neteyam kept his eyes stuck on your face, watching the way your face contorted in pleasure, mouth hanging open with your tongue laid flat outside like an animal waiting for some water. You felt his fingers enter your mouth, your tongue sucking on his digits without a second thought. He groaned again, the warmness of your mouth fueling his imagination once more on what it would feel like with his- 

"'Teyam!" You screamed, the said male spitting on your cunt loudly. He grinned, not even caring about the volume of your sounds. It spurred him on even more thinking of the fact that the male na'vis outside could be hearing you scream his name, moaning it out. 

"Give me one before I fuck you, baby," he says, fingers curling expertly inside of you. Your stomach tightened in its familiar knot, the older na'vi hitting all of your right spots as if he has it memorized. His fingers combined with the way his mouth was eating you out so good-- in a way you thought it was made for this and this only --it wouldn't be long before you release. 

Your hands left his forearm, his fingers falling from your mouth to your chin, drool dribbling down your chin. Pulling at his braids with need, grinding your heat on his face, the sounds of his fingers fucking you into oblivion was way too erotic. "It's- 'so good, 'Teyam. It feels so good!"

You heard him chuckle, lips detaching from your clit. "Come on baby, give it to me, give it to your warrior." 

One, two, three more times he hit the sweet spot deep inside of you before you came with a loud scream of his name. Your legs shaking as it dangerously closed around his head. Neteyam held your thighs with his strong arms, spreading you apart once more, battling the way your body was shaking to clean you up-- taste you again. 

And damn, Neteyam had never tasted anything sweeter. 

"There's my good girl, atta baby." He placed a chaste kiss on top of your cunt, moving up to kiss you on your lips as well. You look at him tiredly, eyes hazy as he caressed your face, lips moving lazily at the praise. "You can give me another one, right?" he whispers in your ear, licking your ear lobe as he does. 

"Neteyam..." you sighed when he pulls away. Propping yourself up by your elbows as you watch him carefully pump his length, the long and thick blue cock making your mouth water. This was the first time you ever saw him like this; way better than you have ever fantasized each night in your hut. 

He rubbed the head, spreading his pre-cum all over, head lolling back when he finally gets some relief after neglecting his own cock. You bit your lip, eyes glued on his cock. 

"Oh- Oh shit, fuck, just like that, baby— umfh, oh.." Neteyam got caught off-guard; your hand jerking him slowly, running your hand up and down his rock hard cock. His eyes rolling back when he watches you rub yourself with your fingers, gathering your slick and using it as lubrication on his cock. 

Before you could even think of giving him a handjob, his hand firmly grips both of yours, moving forward as he positions his cock by your entrance. The both of your staring down as he slowly pushes in. A long moan erupting from both of you when he inches himself inside. Your tight, velvety walls taking him in so well despite the burn in your pussy bordering the line between hurt and pleasure.

You had your arms clasped behind his neck, your foreheads touching as he moans deeply when he fully bottoms out inside of your. His hands holding your thighs firmly, thrusting slowly as he lets you adjust first. 

"Don't do that, baby please," Neteyam whispers, closing his eyes harshly when your walls tightened around him before he could even start fucking you. 

"Just fuck me, please," you plead, locking eyes with him. 

That and the innocent look you had on was all it took for him to snap his hips forward. The once slow and careful thrusts now replaced with quick and hard ones as he thrusted into you with much vigor, the table started shaking. "'Teyam, oh- ngh, oh my," you panted, breathing erratically as he impossibly quickened his pace. 

"Keep those legs open for me- good girl," he let go of your thighs, letting them fall on either side as he grabs your waist, your breasts that were jiggling up and down with the force of his thrusts getting all of his attention. Your hands scratched at his hands, sometimes pulling at your own hair.

Neteyam was hitting all of your right spots. The blunt mushroom head of his kissing your cervix numerous times now. Each time making you moan wantonly, not even caring about how loud you were being or even if someone was entering your hut. 

He brought his hand down to slap your clit, your loud yelp and sudden clench on his length making him smirk. You liked that. He did it once more, this time the sound that came out of your mouth much more whinier than before, his cock hardening even more. 

"Like it when I hit your pretty little cunt? Does my baby love it?" You nod your head eagerly. Your stomach tightening with the need for release.

He slapped your clit a few more times, rubbing it to soothe the stings. When he catches that split second silent gasp from you and your velvety walls clamping down on him like a vice, he flips you. Your chest faced down on the table, legs supporting your body as you were now bent over the table. 

This time, Neteyam didn't waste any time in letting you adjust. Pushing into you with a hard thrust, gripping your hips as he pulled you back on his cock whenever he thrusted forward. His cock hitting way deeper spots. "'Oh, Eywa! 'Teyam," the male's name seemed like a prayer coming from you, repeating his name over and over again as your legs shook. His arm that was now holding your waist being the only thing that was keeping you up on that damn table. 

"You close, baby? Me too- fuck... You gonna give it to me again, huh? Gonna give it to me, only to me?" He cooed, landing a sweet slap to your ass before he bends down to your ear, whispering filthy things as you felt his balls smacking your clit with each thrust. 

"Don't stop, please, 'Teyam," you begged, looking up at him with teary eyes. It felt so good. So fucking good.  

You could almost taste your release, the overstimulation slowly coming over you as his hips fucked into you in a rougher but slower pace. Calculated thrusts making you clench down on his cock. 

With one particular thrust, your whole vision blurred. Nothing but Neteyam's deep groans echoing in your ears as he rode out his high, feeling you cream on his cock before he pulls out. Spurting ropes of cum all over your ass, mouth hanging agape at the beautiful artwork in front of him. 

He kept his arm wrapped around you, supporting your whole body as it continued shaking, the wave of pleasure still coursing through each nerve in your body. Your body jolted forward, squealing when he slaps your cunt once more. "That fucking flower..."

"That fucking flower had me fucking you, baby."

thank you sooo much for reading! hearts, reactions, replies, and reblogs are very appreciated if you liked the story! <3 ^w^

[toumoromoro]

Towelket 6 thoughts/rant/review?

I think towelket 6 is the only tk game so far that has become worse by playing it again. I had somewhat "fond" memories of this game since it's the reason I discovered towelket, but I think I had a pretty disorted view of it because of nostalgia.

It's hard to take this game seriously when in the first 3 minutes Warawau kills and then masturbates over the dead body of a dog out of nowhere. It's so over the top, ok Kanao I get it she's evil. Then in the next 5 minutes Minpou's mom and sister die without any fanfare. Oh and Warawau assaults Minpou. Everything happens so fast that you don't get a chance to grow attached to any of the characters. Remember how in TK2, Kanao gives you about 40 minutes to get to know the whole village and its people before the more serious stuff starts happening? Well, in TK6, you get at most 5 minutes before people start dying, and we're supposed to care about them. Also, any interesting dynamics or relationships that could have been explored are immediately cut short by Kanao. Seriously, you have this interesting dynamic with the three main girls, and then Kanao decides to sideline Nyanyamo until the end of the game. Also just when we might explore Minpou’s feelings about having to care for her mother, Kanao kills her off. Ironically, all of this might be the most interesting part of TK6 because once you leave the village, the most boring part of the game begins: the middle game.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this part is one of the worst in any Towelket game. Nothing happens for an entire hour. Kanao forces you to go through these huge, empty maps and calls it content. It's jarring, the village had a nice U-shape where you knew where everything was supposed to be, only to be thrown into the same 100 forest maps where no one has anything important to say. It's almost funny how Kanao went out of their way to make all 7 characters repeat the same thing. But it's not funny, it makes me want to jump from a building. This game desperately needed to trim down the main cast. Also the humor was meh, which made the middle game even worse. It's here that Minpou and Warawau lose their main character status, and it’s given to Agochu and Pucchi. This wouldn't have bothered me if they were interesting, but Kanao decided they needed to do the whole 'Pucchi, you are a moron' routine over and over again. Then suddenly, an hour into this, Kanao remembers this game has to have some sort of plot, so we get the 'collect three things to save the world' plot. This part is a bit better than the last one, but still suffers from some of the same problems, mostly that no one has anything interesting to say. However, I will admit that I did like some parts in isolation, like Nekoashi-Konbu's flashback, the scenes with Mary/Minpou and Oruchumahe, which was pretty unique. The flashback, in particular, kept me interested throughout the entire sequence (I love you Zucche). Of course, none of this actually makes the game worthwhile. This part had a very funny unintentional moment where PPU just forgets to tell Minpou who murdered her.

After this, we enter the late game where Kanao finally remembers that Warawau was supposed to be an important and evil character. Too bad we only have 15 minutes of game left! This part is, uh, not good. For some reason, Kanao decided to insert a chunk of Towelket 1 into this game like a tumor. This part is basically just filler, and all it does is remind me that I should have replayed that game instead. Nekojita's story was nice though. The ending is kind of funny, actually. Warawau suddenly loses her brain and confesses to having killed Nyanyamo and Minpou's mom, expecting Minpou to be happy about it and praise her. This makes no sense; at the beginning of the game, she knew people wouldn't want to be told this, which is why she always acted when no one could see her. But now? She's just crazy™, speaks in all caps, and laughs over and over again, because she's just so crazy, guys!

So yeah that was Nyanyamo's arc, she was kidnapped, was missing for most of the game and then was killed offscreen. Amazing Kanao.

Finally, Kanao the Pons are bad antagonists and it will never work.

This game was shit, but I'm grateful that it inspired so many people to write better versions of it to try to fix it.

[star-shapedfruit]

Let's talk about Chapter 107- Part Deux (Ex Machina)

Man. Man.

Follow up post from this. Might as well keep this as a series because I guess verbal diarrhoea is a coping mechanism for me. Thoughts and predictions again. Spoilers below

So it appears that yes, Hiyori is 100% dead now since we saw her memories through Yato (broke my fucking heart btw) and we're going down the shinki route.

Yato didn't want to name her. He had no choice. He had just watched the love of his life be murdered right in front of him and was about to see her be transformed into his Father's monstrous puppet. Naming her there and then before Father got the chance to was the only way to save her. This is the most brutal fucking chapter in the entire series I swear to GOD. (Though I think most of us can agree that from the small glimpse of Hakki we have so far, she looks gorgeous. That sakura design.. 🥺)

But seriously I'm hoping and praying that Hiyori is somehow going to retain her memories and either bypass the GGS or be pretty much immune to it. Like I said before, she's a special case. Because she already had ties to the Far Shore and to multiple gods, she might get a sort of get out of jail free card here. Plus it would just interrupt the flow of the finale to a really weird extent if she lost all of her memories. It'd be too jarring and weird imo. Perhaps she initially has all of them but then over time her Near Shore memories will eventually fade away.

(Reiterating what I said in the previous post. I have no idea how this is going to affect other shinkis with her being around in regards to the GGS. Or even if her existence will be allowed by Amaterasu. It's not like Ammy can wipe everyone's memories of Hiyori to safeguard them. But hey)

Also the fact that his shinkis are literally Snow White? Lol.

Lets say she retains her memories. Will she still be called Hiyori or will she have to go by Shirone even if hearing her name won't break her? Maybe it'll be a closely guarded secret by her and Yato. Having her name on a part of her body that can't be seen (like over her heart for instance because thematics) means it's hidden from view from anyone else, therefore nobody can use that name against her (KAZUMA. 👀) An extra layer of protection for her. It'll be her and Yato's (and probably Yukine's too) secret.

Speaking of Yukine, I'm guessing he's going to be out of action for this final final fight. With Hiyori slicing the Koto No Ha in half like an absolute boss ass bitch, it's likely that The Nation will collapse and everyone will return to their regular forms. Yukine will probably be in a bad shape and unfit to fight let alone even transform into Sekki. Meaning it's going to be Yato and Hiyori Vs Father working together as one. The Deux Ex Machina has appeared and she is pissed.

(Literally though, first thing she does as a weapon is take a slice at Father and the brush. I didn't even realise she'd cut his fingers til the second read through. Looks like she might have even got his neck too? Dare I say...? Slay?)

So yeah. I'm hoping that because of her original ties to Yato and the Far Shore, her memories may not be lost. The two of them will team up to take down Father as possibly the most powerful shinki we've seen so far. Nobody has been able to make a dent in the Koto No Ha until now. Which is possibly why this is why the story is going this way. Yato has tried and failed to take down Father multiple times. He couldn't use Yukine for his final confrontation for obvious reasons so he went on a search to find a suitable and powerful enough shinki to take his place, and that ended up being Kazuma. Obviously didn't work out as intended though.

Funny how maybe the person he's needed to take down Father all along is Hiyori. Father might have ended up winning in the end but by killing her, he's essentially doomed himself.

[adobe-outdesign]

Thoughts on Goldengo? Gimigoul's evo (sorry if I spelled anything wrong!)

Gholdengo has proven to be one of the most divisive Pokemon from this generation. It's one of those love it or hate it 'mons; while lots of people like it, others feel like it looks too much like a mascot and/or a wacky waving inflatable tube man. Which, to be fair, is objectively right. Less objectively, however: I love them.

This thing is simply the definition of friend-shaped. It's a silly surfer dude with a fanny pack that makes friends with everyone and knows how to do sick kickflips. It literally has a page decided to it on Know Your Meme. I simply cannot, nay, will not say they're a bad Pokemon because they're just too inherently likable for me to take any issue with them.

Plus, on a slightly more serious note, I think it's genuinely cool that it's Pokemon #1000 and you evolve it by collecting 999 coins. Likewise, its body being made of coins is interesting from a biology aspect; it sheds the coins when battling to avoid taking damage (or to inflict damage depending on its m.o.), can use the coins to shapeshift itself a surfboard, and has an ability that reflects it being an object-mon. I also think it's neat how it greedily obsessives over coins as a Gimmighoul, then becomes super chill once it's successfully evolved.

However, as much as I enjoy the string cheese man, I can agree that there are some odd aspects about this direction. For example, Gimmighoul is kind of an inverse chest mimic; instead of the chest itself being a monster, the chest contains a monster. But by the time it evolves, any mimic angle is lost with Gholdengo. Even the chest itself is regulated to being a fanny pack, which while funny, does raise a lot of questions about proportional sizing (the chest is a bit less than a foot long judging by Gimmighoul's height, but Gholdengo is only about 4"; so the chest should be 1/4 its size, yet it's absolutely tiny).

It's also a bit odd that all horror angles were lost with it. Gimmighoul is ever-so-slightly eerie, what with it mind-controlling people and draining their life force. I like that Gholdengo is chill, but it does feel a little jarring. (I joked when it came out that it was funny to think that the promo short story they did with the girl collecting coins would've ended with her seeing a Gholdengo peacing out and skateboarding away had she just turned around.)

Anyway, the point is: this mans is delightful and one of my personal Gen 9 favorites. However, I can objectively agree that it's a bit tonally dissonant from its pre-evo. In that respect, a regional or split evo could be a potentially interesting angle that might satisfy those looking for more of a traditional mimic. In the meantime, however, we at least get to enjoy this silly man in all his silliness.

Radical.

[uncle-dusknoir]

Pelipper Mail! A woven basket full of Roseli berries. Clipped to the handle of the basket is a faux Galarian Zigzagoon tail keyring. It's vaguely bristly to the touch. It comes with a note, scrawled in angular neat handwriting on pink stationary paper.

"Hello, Ms. Basil.

Gym Leader Roxie and I are preparing to engage in a 'hunt' designed to catch him a Zigzagoon. I thought I might get a souvenir to mark the occasion - that is, until I remembered that everything about Zigzagoon is unbecoming of my style, to say the least. So, I'm having you take this off my hands. Seeing as you seem to collect bones as a hobby, I thought having a trinket shaped like a pokemon's body part wouldn't phase you in the slightest.

Enclosed, you will also find some Roseli berries. I saw what you said about your pokemon potentially having difficulties getting the upper hand over fairies. I should know better than anyone that fairy types are one of the most difficult sorts of pokemon to beat. If you would like to apply some of that 'actual strategy' that you mentioned, you might give these to one of your pokemon. It should even the playing field. Slightly. Or, if that doesn't sound appealing, they also make a fragrant herbal tea.

Regards, Gym Leader Bede" @ballonleastadiumofficial

[Offscreen response]

Her day is full of fairies today. Offhandedly mentioning them on Rotumblr, trying to re-create that Fae-offering bread implanted in her brain from a couple months ago, and now- denoted by a Pelipper tapping it's beak against her window- what seems to be an offering from the Fae. A woven basket? How did none of these berries fall out?? (Not that she would know, either way.)

She washes the flour off her hands (and her face and sort of awkwardly wipes it off her sweater) to receive the basket, carefully putting it on the kitchen table to sort through it. Berries, berries, berries, berries- she wondered if any of her dogs would want to try one, or maybe the Shuppet that she had to gently push away from the open jar of Combee honey. She should close that.

There's the note. (He's friends with Roxie? From Virbank?) A snort of laughter at the wording. 'I'm having you take this off my hands". That's a fantastic line and knowing that he wrote it entirely honestly is wonderful. She misses going out in the woods for bones, really...

blah blah battle strategy blah blah upper hand... ooh, tea. She examines a berry, taking a bite out of the thing. Not bad, overall, but she's not a fan of the bitter aftertaste...

Hey. "Hey. Away- I'm not putting you in the washing machine again," she warned, waving another couple Shuppet away from the open honey. Really ought to close that. She skims over the letter again... Souvenir. What the hell is a Zigzagoon souvenir?

She took an embarrassingly long time to find the souvenir in question; taking a break to get the sweet bread swirled with honey and into the oven, divided into a few different mini-trays. There's a glaze that goes over the top that she'll have to start, too...

She finally found the thing by picking up the basket and looking under it, spotting the dangling black-and-white charm in the other side and, face pink, unclipping it from the basket.

Isn't that cute? She laughs a little as she examines it, running her thumb over the bristles. Reminds her of how Toothy's fur felt with he was a Zigzagoon... certainly doesn't have to be that sharp anymore, that's for sure. She pet it for another couple minutes, before a quiet *clink* roused her attention again.

A Shuppet had gently pressed its horn into the honey jar, though it's head was too big to fit through the hole, awkwardly pressed against the table as it had knocked the jar over.

Pfft. "You're lucky I already finished with that," she huffed with joking disappointment, popping the Shuppet out of the jar. And maybe running her finger to clean up the excess honey from it's horn. And maybe licking that off.

"Stay out," she chided, finally closing the jar. "Where did I leave my Bag...?"