#the links html worked fine here and on ao3 but not there

[axel-mania]

Just found out about this femslash ficlet event from someone's fics and posted a fill for Giulia/Rina Yamashita here on the last day: we should get covered in blood, together

It was weird thinking deeply about Giulia again! She was in my favorite Stardom pairing for a long time with Syuri. But I pretty much parted ways with her before she even left Stardom. It was after a long period of angst over her phoning in it, starting in her red belt reign. But you almost can't blame her. The company's issues are epitomized in the one time Giulia and Rina met in Stardom. They bring her IRL good friend Rina in to do an extremely tame silly death match and then the management changes and she's never allowed to do even that kind of deathmatch with Rina again, even after they pretty much confirm it by saying it so loudly in the comments.

[somerunner]

[Video description: In Playstation 1 graphics, an old man walks onto a snowboard course with his walker. He clips the snowboard through his walker, holding it for a second, and blasts off into the sky. Electronic music plays throughout; the beat drops when he flies away.

/End description]

I beg my followers to check out Battle Tapes' music video for their song "Brand New" - since I figure most people don't click on Youtube links, I took the liberty of using some tools to clip just the beat drop.

The rest of the video is just as good as this.

Here's the link; it's inline instead of embedded because it's 3am and I'm paranoid that people on Tumblr go "ew an embedded Youtube link": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp6an4eVzP8

[anitalianfrie]

So. You once believed tumblr to be your safe space, your archive, your goldmine. Instead, thanks to "unforseen" circumstances (fuck you dorna), you now fear for the safety and integrity of your blog and you want to know if there's a quick way to download a lot of posts without having to do it manually (I spent half an hour yesterday doing it. Do not recommend)

Fret not my child, and welcome to

How to save the posts under a whole tag in five easy steps!

Needed preface: while this method works great for images, videos, and gifs, the same thing cannot be said for text post, which will be saved in unreadable html. I mean, you can always feed the file to a compiler, I guess. Or painstakingly copy paste everything on word. Maybe it could work on ao3 too, actually, I should check.

ANYWAYS.

Step 1: go here, and download the zip file. Once you've done it, extract it, open it, and run the program, that inside the folder will look like

this. (the one in the centre. so that we're all on the same page)

Step 2: once you've done it, you'll run to me saying "cate anitalianfrie, this graphic interface looks like a relic from the nineties!" to which I'll answer, yes, but it works and that's all that matters. Then, you'll open the settings (gear on the botton right of the page) , go to the page named "blog" and where you see the option "tags" put the tag you want to download the content from.

(it's located in the bottom right section of the page)

the space will be blank. put the tag without the "#", and with the spaces.

if you want to download from more than one tag at a time, you can! just beware that it's not an intersection of the two tags (aka: not downloading the post that have both tags) but a union (aka: WILL download posts with one, the other or both tags). if that's still fine by you, put a "," between a tag and the other (ex: "my gif, cate.txt").

SAVE BEFORE CLOSING THE SETTINGS

Step 3(optional): the program automatically saves in the folder blog inside the folder your program is in. if you wish to change this, go to the "general" page of the setting. at the top, you'll see this:

go to browse and select the floder you want to put your posts in. (ps. obviously your download location will be different than mine. i've already changed it. the standard would have been C:\User\your_username\wherever_you_extracted_the_zip\Blogs)

SAVE BEFORE CLOSING THE SETTINGS

Step 4: past the link of your blog as https://www.your_blog_name.tumblr.com or https://www.tumblr.com/your_blog_name (ex: https://www.anitalianfrie.tumblr.com, https://www.tumblr.com/anitalianfrie) in the little space down on the left,

and press "add blog" on its right

Step 5: click two times on the blog (it now should be at the top of the page) and click "download"

And voilà you're all set! Wait for the machine to finish the crawl and enjoy your newly downloaded content

[crookedfivefingers]

Ahhhhhhhh hello fellow tenmartha shipper!! I was wondering if you had any fic suggestions? I'm slowly making my way through the tag on AO3 and it's pretty hit or miss...

Also if you haven't checked her out yet, Haleine Delial over on FF.net is the top tier tenmartha writer and I wish she would transfer her stuff over to AO3 where it would get the attention it deserves 😭

https://m.fanfiction.net/u/1248996/?a=s&s=0&cid=0&p=1

Also also, I found a gold mine of fic on live journal over 10 years ago when I was desperately searching for content. This is a permanently open tab on my phone and hopefully you enjoy it if you haven't seen it already!

https://persiflage-1.livejournal.com/306664.html

Hiii! I've been enjoying your journey through my posts! 💜 And thank you so, so, so much for the recs—FFnet is pretty much the only place I haven't bled dry for TenMartha content, so I will definitely be looking into those!

As for my recs...

2/12/25: I will soon be making a new, more organized rec list that stands on its own! If you have recs you don't see here, send them along and I'll add them to the list :) I also downloaded every fic listed here as a PDF, making them readable if Ao3 is down! When I get the new rec list up, each PDF link will be placed beside the link to the fic itself. This is just temporary!

Oh god, okay, so full disclosure: I tend to only read/write smut-containing fics (unless written by a friend or specifically recommended to me), as I am an animal—so my choices are severely limited in that sense… I also don’t read “established relationship” fics, so that’s another limit. But YES. I absolutely have some recs, I apologize if you’ve already read them all!

(This is by no means a complete list)

First just want to highlight my two faves:

wandererinthefourthdimension—In my opinion, the absolute tippy-top of the best of the best TenMartha writers. (I think I've possibly love-bombed her a bit too hard in my obsession with her works, but) she is exquisite. From dynamite characterizations to possibly the hottest smut I have ever read, she is OUTSTANDING. Here are a few:

Bliss

Informed Consent (has an amazing WIP sequel)

Alive (WIP—but for god's sake, read it)

HDUC—Pretty much anything by this magical smut goddess. Good god, this person needs to be on Ao3 as well, but can only be found on FF. It's quite tragic. Here are just a few of my favorites:

(I recently downloaded all of HDUC's fics as PDFs and put them in a folder in case FF.net catches on and figures out just how explicit her content is! Bonus: You can read them when Ao3 is down)

Craving

Contrition

Formalities

Brilliant

Diminished

Some more excellent content:

⭐️ = Added after original post

⭐️ Dream Time During the Apocalypse by rickmaniac101

⭐️ Echoes of Salome by radiantbaby

⭐️Moon Landing by TheGoldenAge

⭐️ Five Times the Doctor Wanted to Kiss Martha Jones in 1969 [And the One Time He Did] by radiantbaby (all ages)

⭐️The Art of Surviving by Nekare

⭐️Break Us Apart, Bring Us Together by Nekare (teen)

Our Lack of Social Skills by zauberer_sirin

Time Enough for Love by nonelvis

Lust in the Dust by Pax in Paradoxo

As Hot as a Wandering Sun by lastnightagain

In Half Light by rose_quartz_cave

Of Great Consequence (self-rec; WIP)—co-written with @pax-in-paradoxo The Purpose of Repose (WIP)(If you’re not too bothered by a fic that involves Ten & Rose as well)

A Shadow in the Human Heart by augustrain (DARK as hell—heed the warnings—and not nearly as smutty as anything else I've posted here, but still so so so good; brilliantly written. It's abandoned as well, but ends at a perfectly fine place for it to end)

I hope there's at least a couple here that you've never read and can enjoy! 💜

[therealbeachfox]

Myths of Gotham: Batman & The Two Cities

Ever wondered what the DCU looks like for all those people who aren't privy to the what's and why's of the multiverse shattering events they live through? I sure do. That's melded with my "The Completely Normal Adventures of a Crime Alley Kid" series into this: An exploration of the stories the kids of Gotham would create to explain the world around them. Featuring a foul-mouthed homeless Crime Alley kid vending an education to the younger set, and one Bernard Dowd adding his historical and cultural commentary on the side.

Also available on Ao3, but I'm posting it here because I think it works just fine as a standalone without the 160k+ words of Henchman-In-Denial shenanigans on the side.

Or ignore that link and read it below the cut!

Myths of Gotham

Supplemental Document 3

Harris (Age-12, Male, Irish/African) [[1]]. “The Origin of Batman and the Robins” Interview by Bernard Dowd. 14th August 202X. BDOH #009, Myths of Gotham Project, https://BerDProductions.net/MythsofGothamProject/bdoh-009.html. Accessed 21st November 202(X+2)

[[1. No further information given, even after being told it’d be for proper attribution. "Harris" is also most likely to be pseudonym. Sorry, researchers of the future.]]

Transcript has been mildly edited for clarity and to remove vocal disfluencies. It is otherwise presented in its entirety without any attempts to correct grammar and other verbal slips. Additional notes by the transcriber may be found in the footnotes.

========

     Alright, everybody needs to settle their shit down, it’s education time. If you don’t wanna sit here and listen to me explain shit, this place has got like twenty other rooms you can go hang out in, k? This aint school, no one’s keeping you here. ‘Xcept you, Carlos. Yeah, well you tried to go chasing after one of the Exquisite Birds the other day, so you obviously need to learn why you shouldn’t be doing that shit.

     Okay, so. We’ll be talking about the Bat Man, but there’s a lotta other stuff we gotta talk about too, first. He didn’t just show up outta fucking nowhere, you know. Now settle down, thank our slumming Posh Boy over there for tonight’s food, and watch what your tongues wag cuz he’s recording all this shit.

     Alright. The Bat Man. Where the fuck did he come from? Why the hell is he here? Why do other cities get flying muscle-men in bright colors and we got a living shadow that breaks bones? Why the hell is our shithole of a city like this? Well sit back and listen a learning, cuz unfortunately it all ties together.

     Alright, so. The first thing we gotta make clear is that we don’t live in the first Gotham. We’re the second Gotham, the johnny-come-lately Gotham, the weird mirror shadow of the first Gotham. Not saying the other Gotham’s the “real” one and we’re some sort of fake, just that there are two Gotham’s and the one we live in aint the original.

     And an important side-note cuz I can see some of you squirming to ask and someone always asks here, I’m not talking about the False Gothams you sometimes see from between buildings or in the reflections of broken windows or stuff. [[2]] Those things aren’t real; they’re just illusions and traps, spun up by something that wants to lure you in with the promise of there being a version of the world where everything didn’t go to shit. It’s all lies. Most kids who go hunting after False Gothams never come back, but there’ve been a few who have, and they’ve got wild as shit stories to tell. But we’re not getting into all that tonight. Basic point is, you don’t get to The Other Gotham by going down weird alleyways. Nah, you just gotta go down.

[[2. Harris appears to be referring to Gotham’s ‘Mirage City’ phenomenon where heated air trapped in narrow gaps between skyscrapers can sometimes warp the light enough to appear to show an altered city skyline between them. The implications of the fact that this phenomenon is most often reported near sites of Justice League confirmed inter-dimensional fracture points is beyond the scope of this project and will just be noted as a point of further study for the reader.]]

     So the way it was told to me by the kids who knew shit back when I was among you all listening was like this: Gotham, that is to say, our Gotham, is The Black City, The Gotham Above. The Other Gotham, the original Gotham, is The White City, the Gotham Below, and it was here first. [[3]] The way it’s told, it’s not just the first Gotham, it’s the first city ever, built (or carved) out of the rock way back before people had figured out things like writing shit down instead of remembering it all, math, or how to build something more than two stories high.

[[3. There have been urban legends of an underground city that exists as a mirror of Gotham since the late 1600s, barely a decade or two after the city’s founding. The two main versions either say that it was some ancient city that sank beneath the swamp and bogs before the arrival of the Europeans, or that it’s an inverse mirror of Gotham that’s formed from all our wickedness and corruption. No evidence of either version of such a city has ever been officially recorded. It’s usually assumed that people who wrote of such things, especially in the earlier centuries, had stumbled upon some of the vast cave networks that extend beneath the breadth of greater Gotham and their stories of giant chambers with rock formations that rivaled the tallest buildings in size were misinterpreted.]]

     So you know those whacked out monsters and aliens and weird-dicked demon things you have the Justice League out there beating the ass of every other week? They had all that shit way back in pre-history times too, but they didn’t have any cavemen in capes and spandex to punch them in the face. And they were everywhere. Big creepy monsters, fucked up demons that crawled out of the earth or shadows or fires and might not actually be from Hell, but acted like such murderous shits you could see how humanity got the idea of Hell in the first place. You had twisting shadows that would infect people’s own shadows and turn them into evil twisted things like them. You had monsters that only existed as silent whispers that’d get in a guy’s brain and tell them all sorts of shit till they honestly believed that wearing other people’s skin and dancing under the moon was a totally normal and not at all fucked up thing to do. You look back at the earliest stories humans ever wrote down and you can see they were remembering all sorts of fucked up shit we don’t got around anymore. Or at least, didn’t have around anymore until recently. [[4]] And it’s because of The Other Gotham.

[[4. Like with many aspects of Gotham’s unhoused youth culture’s mythic cycle, the timeline of this all doesn’t line up with actual history except in the vaguest of sense. It is interesting to note however that Princess Diana of Themyscira’s speech about ‘The Return of the Mythic’ (end note (i)) has somehow gotten incorporated here, and in a way that almost perfectly aligns with with current historical consensus.]]

     So, the way we figure it must’ve happened was like this: Just because they didn’t have superheroes back then, it doesn’t mean they didn’t have magic. Like, we don’t got a lot of it now, but you can’t argue it doesn’t exist, and pretty much everyone agrees that there used to be a lot more of it way back when, whenever that when was. And that when was here. This is the Way Back When. So a bunch of the smartest most powerful magicals [[sic]] got together to try and figure out a way to get humanity on more of an even standing against all these fucking monsters and evil spirit shits everywhere, and what they came up with was the idea for a great big fuck-off prison for the lot of them.

     So they went and found the one place on the planet that had the most Fucked Up energy possible - guess where - and set to work carving it out deep underground. At the bottom of the biggest cavern there was under the three islands and surrounding swamps, they dug out a pit. Not a giant wide pit, but a long deep one. As deep down as they could dig with whatever magic and tools they had back then. And down there at the bottom, they carved out a great chamber in the rock and covered it with all the runes and magic writing and iron and silver and whatever the fuck else you need to keep giant millipedes that eat souls in check. Then, somehow - and if anyone knows how, it sure as shit aint gonna be us - they managed to lure or suck in or capture just about every evil nasty messed up thing on the planet and locked them down in it.

     You can tell when this happened if you know enough history cuz it would’ve taken place right before humanity got its collective shit together and started doing things like building cities and writing stuff down and everything else that they count as ‘civilization’ these days. [[5]] But like I said, none of the cities everyone topside were building was the first. The first city was built right here, under our feet. They started out by carving out the insides of the biggest stalag-whatevers hanging down from the cavern roofs to live in while they did the original work. Then, once they figured out how that sort of thing worked, they started building their own towers, hanging down from above where they could keep an eye on their monster prison. All spires and guardian statues and skyways and at the center of it all, a giant hole drilled straight to the middle of the whole fucking planet.

[[5. ‘The Great Binding’ and it’s coinciding with the beginnings of known civilization (end note (ii)) is one of the newest theories out of the field of metahistory. Notably, UC Berkley’s article on the subject referenced in the end notes came out seven weeks after this interview took place. And as a side note to the footnote, even proponents of The Great Binding have no concrete theory on where such a prison might’ve been placed. A giant pit right on the Eastern Seaboard seems incredibly unlikely, however.]]

     So yeah, the Gotham Below. Sure, it wasn’t being called Gotham way back then. Not sure they even would’ve given the place a name to begin with. If you’ve never had a city before, would you even think it was something that needed a name? Anyways, Gotham Below. And they didn’t have shit to burn down there, but they did have magic. So, as the story goes, they kept the place lit with magic instead of fire. And all that rock remained as white and untouched by soot and ash as they day it’d gotten carved out. So Gotham Below, the White City. And even with all their magic, those people still eventually got old and died, so it was their kids left watching over the great pit prison. Then they grew old and died, and it was their grandkids left watching. And so it went for centuries and centuries and centuries, for however long it took for humanity to start building cities, then for Europeans to develop to the point where the felt like being assholes, and then for them to decide to go fuck up the rest of the world, and then landing on these same islands and decide that this abandoned remote hellhole was the perfect place to build a brand new city cuz there weren’t enough of those yet or whatever.

     Now, this should be obvious, but you can’t keep a thousand million monsters and demons and evil alien ghosts all trapped in one spot and not have shit kinda bleed out over time. When those pilgrims showed up to start building shit here, shit got weird. Now, I haven’t read any of this myself, but the kid who told me all this did, and according to him, if you go back and read through the journals and writings of those guys responsible for building up Gotham originally, you can see that they were fucked in the head. They kept writing about dreams they’d be having, silent streets of gleaming white they’d walk through while they slept and how the visions of great towering spires and skyways and a billion fucking gargoyles filled their pages whenever they tried to draw up designs. [[6]] So that’s what they all wound up making, one bridge and building and road at a time. A perfect mirror of the City Below, but reaching up in the sky instead of down into the earth. Each stalagamitite tower hanging down in one had a tower reaching up in the other. And smack in the middle of original Old Gotham stood the tallest building of all, right over where the pit was drilled far far below. [[7]] The Clocktower aint the tallest building in Gotham anymore, but it used to be. And while the Gotham Below remained pure and gleaming white, up here they hadn’t even finished putting up the first medieval porta-potties before shit was stained with soot and ash and coal smoke and whale oil residue.

[[6. Harris overstates things, but the base assertion is correct here. The writings of Cyrus Pinkney are infamous for their frequent reference to ‘dark and shadowy dreams’ (end note (iii)) and his open acknowledgment of how much those dreams influenced his designs. Not to the extent described here, though.]]

[[7. The Great Gotham Tower. Known better these days as The Gotham Clocktower or just The Clocktower. It was placed at the center of Gotham as it existed in it’s original state, with the rest of Old Gotham laid out around it in expanding circles connected by thoroughfares at each of the eight cardinal directions.]]

     And that’s how we got to where we are: With the White City, Gotham Below, and the Black City, Gotham Above.

Now, you can’t go building an entire fucking city without the downstairs neighbors hearing the noise and poking their heads out to see what it’s all about. This is another case where you can find references across all that early writing stuff they keep in the libraries. People started seeing ghosts. I mean, they were calling them ghosts, but they really obvious weren’t. People up high, watching people below. They’d wear big white robes that looked like wings when they moved. They wore strange masks with big smoke-glass eyes. They moved through shadows like they were part of them, they could climb a building as easy as walking, and anyone who tried to climb up to one would either find them gone, or would next be seen falling off the tallest building in the neighborhood.

     As the history goes, the masks they wore looked vaguely birdlike. A specific type of bird. But it quickly became obvious that whoever these people were, they really didn’t like it when people called them… that specific bird species. So we don’t. Adults still do sometimes, but that’s because they’re fucking idiots. [[8]] If you need to talk about them, call them the White Birds. Or, even better- They’re vain, these White Birds. If you flatter them, they’re less likely to decide to kill you for talking about them at all. The term that tends to get used a lot these days is Exquisite. [[9]] Not sure who came up with it, but we’ve barely had any kids go missing since we started. Still, it’s best to wait until the middle of the day, and talk about them someplace out in the open where you can be sure no one’s lurking in any shadows.

[[8. Beware the eyes of owls

Who watch us all the time

From lofty perches up on high

To the deepest pits of grime.

They watch us as we work and play

They watch us in our bed

Speak not a whispered word of them

Least talons strike you dead.]]

[[9. “Exquisite” is recorded as being Gotham street-kid slang for ‘untrustworthy john/rich person/official’ in the early 1980s (end note (iv)). An article in The Gotham Gazette from 1954 quotes a homeless kid as saying “We all always knew you couldn’t trust him. He was a full Exquisite Bird type through’n’through. None of us is surprised they found all those bodies up’n’in his place.” (end note (v)), and a stylized EXQU was used as hobo code for a place that seemed nice but must be avoided at all costs along the mid-Atlantic coast during the 1930s. (end note (vi)).]]

     So throughout all of Gotham’s history, they’re just… there. Watching from up high in the shadows, the Exquisite Birds. If you see one, no you didn’t. If someone asks you about them, you don’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t like it when people admit they see them, and they’re as quick to slice open witnesses as any other two-bit gang.

     So that’s where shit stood for a few centuries. Then something happened. We really don’t know what, and no one who would is the sort who’d tell us, either. We just know what resulted. Grownups call it the Cataclysm, or the Big One. [[10]] One day, the earth just turned over in a giant earthquake, split open, and half of Gotham fell down. Then, suddenly, there were monsters. Monsters everywhere. Gotham had always been shit, but now you had people dressing up like insects and murdering people with giant roach traps, or gangsters turning from murdering assholes to mass-murdering assholes who’d torture you for five hours then pull out your eyeballs for their collection, or giant piles of toxic mud coming to life and eating people.

[[10. It goes without saying, but at this point, Harris’ version of events deviates radically from the known timeline. The first recorded footage of Batman was taken eight years before the Great Gotham Quake, with the first rumors of his existence being almost twelve years earlier. This condensing down of timelines and assuming all events from more than five years ago took place at around the same time is a known phenomenon with children-created mythic cycles. (end note (vii))]]

     It was chaos. Everything broke down, no one knew what was going on. The rest of the country looked at what was happening in Gotham and flipped out and shut it all down. They blew up the bridges, put mines in the rivers and blockaded the entire city to try and contain whatever the hell this all was. [[11]]

[[11. No Man’s Land did take place, but if it was because elements of the US government were concerned about an outbreak of mythical monsters in the city, that fact remains undocumented.]]

     Now, like I said, we don’t know how everything kicked off, but we know how it ended. Somehow, whether on accident or on purpose, someone broke open the prison buried deep under out feet. Not all the way; none of the truly giant world-ending shit has gotten out. But all those twisted shadows and invisible whispers and nasty spirt ghost fuckers? They slid out just fine. We don’t know if the earthquake cracked it, or if the cracking of it caused the earthquake. We don’t know if the Exquisite Birds did it on purpose, or why if they did. We don’t know if they didn’t stop it because they didn’t care, or they just couldn’t.

     End result, though? Chaos in Gotham and monsters killing and corrupting and twisting everyone they could get their semi-visible claws into. And the Exquisite Birds just sitting there up high, watching and doing jack shit about it.

     These days, we know what to do when shit like that goes down. We know how to feed wishes to the gargoyles and how to call out for the Bats and the Robins, but people back then, they didn’t know any of that. Hell, there wasn’t anything to pray to or to collect those wishes yet. So you had a whole city of people hoping and praying for something to come save them, and nothing for all that power and energy to ground itself in. And there was a whole lotta power in the air. That ancient magic prison had just busted open after all, so along with all the evil smoke demons and monsters and shit, you also had all that raw protective magic leaking out at the same time. And it got mixed up with all those unanswered wishes and pleads as it coiled up through the spires of a city that was the mirror of its own. And there, at the top of everything, it all found it’s lightning rod and grounded itself and WHAM! Just like that, everything changed.

     Now, I’ve seen the old photographs, from back when you got pictures of city skylines from giant blimps and stuff. And the resolution on them is never great, but you can see it all the same. Back when The Clocktower was the tallest building in the city, it had a big fuck-off gargoyle on top of it. Big swept back wings and these curved back horns, and hunched all over looking out towards the ocean for anything that might be sailing in to do harm.

     It’s not there anymore. Supposedly, it fell off during the Cataclysm, but I’ve never heard of no reports of it getting dug outta the rubble. [[12]] We know what really happened to it, though. All those wards on the monster prison had failed, all the watching guardians of Gotham Below had failed, and Gotham Above was filled with unanswered prayers. It all came together at the highest point of Old Gotham, and the Bat Man statue sitting there was imbued with both the power and the motive to protect us. All of us. Bam! Batman!

[[12. The Sentinel of Gotham was an actual statue that stood on top of Gotham Tower for over 150 years. It was an angel-winged figure standing ten feet tall with a sword at its side and a shield held facing out to the bay. It fell off the top of the Clocktower in 1967 along with a significant portion of the north-western corner. The damage would remain until the revitalization of Gotham at the end of No Man’s Land. What happened to the statue is unknown. It was recovered for restoration and assumed display in one of Gotham’s museums, but I can find no further word about it after 1968.]]

     I mean, we all know about the next parts, yeah? Lots of punching, lots of asskicking. Big giant monster with glowing eyes descending from above to kick the teeth in of anyone who’d given in to the whispering shadows, to the monsters wearing human skin, to the demons and their shadows and all the rest. And it was awesome.

     But the kids at the time, the kids like us, they had it rougher. I mean, the way it’s like today isn’t like it was back then. Batman’s been alive for a lot longer now; he’s had time to learn how to be a person and not just some sort of monster-fighting gargoyle. But you can still see it. He talks like most of his throat’s still rock, and he moves like it too. He’s got a punch that sends people through walls, and bullets only make him bleed when he remembers they should and they never keep him down for long. And he still doesn’t really get what it means to be a person, or how to deal with humans. Like, you can tell he tries, but he’s an ancient protective guardian powered by even more ancient vengeance magic and there’s only so much that can do. To the kids of those early days, he was even worse. He didn’t understand that they’d be hungry or lost or alone. He didn’t understand why something like him would be terrifying, and he didn’t get why sometimes you had to steal to eat and survive.

     So some of the smart kids of back then got together and worked out a plan. There was still a lot of that protection magic in the air from the prison getting busted wide open and they got the idea to try and channel it all, but on purpose this time.

((The wishes!!))

     Right, the wishes. This is when that started. They spread the word. When you needed something, when you’d lost something, when you needed someone to help, you would write down your wish and what and who you needed to fix it, and you’d feed it to a gargoyle. Wish by wish, paper scrap by paper scrap, we taught the gargoyles what sort of protector the city’s children needed. There were attempts to get kids to feed them all to one specific gargoyle or another, but it didn’t really work out, everyone just wound up stuffing them into whatever gargoyle they liked best, or was easiest to reach, or was safe to get to. Turns out, you don’t need to feed the wishes to any specific gargoyle, they all talk to each other. What you wish to one gets picked up by all the others. [[13]]

[[13. This tradition appears to have started a year or two after Robin first premiered. It’s unclear exactly how it originated, but it’s now city-wide knowledge, especially among the kids, that you can feed wishes to gargoyles if you want them to come true. Previous writers have compared this to wishing on a star and have suggested that it’s how Gotham’s youth have adjusted for the fact you can rarely see any stars to wish upon in the city. (end note (viii, ix)). ‘Wishes for Gargoyles’/’Wishing on a Gargoyle/Gargoyle Wishes’ is often used by older Gothamites – particularly parents, teachers, and other caregivers – to refer to young foolish wishes, but with a positive connotation (similar to the phrase ‘puppy love’ meaning young foolish love, but with a positive connotation). (end note (x)). And despite what some city officials have worried, there’s never been a need to invest in going around and clearing years of paper pulp out of gargoyles across the city. What exactly is happening to the wishes instead is unknown.]]

     And it worked, is the thing! It barely took a year before there was a second shape following behind the Bat at night. And it wasn’t like the Bat at all. It wasn’t a soot and ash-stained version of the Exquisite Birds, carved out of stone and one with the shadows. It was small, and bright, with the colors of Christmas, Halloween, and the circus all in one. He laughed and told jokes and understood the difference between kids who were crying because they were scared, or tired, or lost, or had just too much happen to them too soon. He knew how to talk to kids and how to help us. He stood between kids who just needed money to eat and the Bat Man’s strict ethics. We’d done it, we’d made a protector of our own. Warmer, more real, more human.

     Kind a little too human, it turns out. Robins aren’t eternal like the Bat is. Robins grow up and grow old. Robins can die. Turns out, Robins aren’t made by a gargoyle coming to life like the Bat Man did. It’s more like, the gargoyles sort of push out the essence of all those stored wishes into a form that’s shaped after themselves, but made of our wishes and hopes and needs instead of just stone and rock. We don’t even know exactly which statues most of them came from.

     We know the Second Robin’s gargoyle. But we’re Crime Alley kids, so of course we know. He went back to it whenever he needed to rest and heal. There are kids who still climb up there to tend to it and feed it offerings. We’re never gonna get Our Robin back, but it doesn’t feel right to let his gargoyle sit abandoned. And there are some kids who think, or hope, that if we can feed it enough wishes and offerings and positive vibes, maybe someday Crime Alley’s Robin will be able to reform to protect us again.

     Until that happens, though, we keep feeding wishes to all the others. The first Robin evolved into Nightwing and became the protector guardian of Bludhaven. Kids who were smarter than me figure it’s because that protective magic is still leaking out of the broken prison and spreading out like a fog. It’s spread far enough out that it can feed them the next city over. Which means they also have those invisible whispers and corruptive shadows and all the rest, which, if you’ve ever talked to a kid from there, you know they absolutely do.

     The Uptown Robin dyed himself Red and moved in closer to us here in the Alley. Personally, I figure it’s because he’s been getting all those wishes and offerings we’ve been giving to Second Robin’s gargoyle. It’s sort of merging the two of them a little. Hell, if it wasn’t for that Red Hood guy showing up, he probably would’ve become the Crime Alley guardian fully by now. I always kinda wondered if the Uptown kids have a gargoyle they keep up like we do ours, they just don’t tell anyone about it. I mean, we scarcely do. We sure as hell don’t tell anyone who doesn’t need to know where it is, that’s for damn sure. [[14]]

[[14. I only asked after the second Robin’s gargoyle’s location once. When I told that information wasn’t shared, I didn’t peruse it any further. All the extra glaring here was just really unnecessary.]]

     Oh shit, good question, yeah, no, the Bat Girls totally come from the same place. Why some go by one and others go by the other is beyond me. There’ve been girl Robins, and it wouldn’t surprise me if there’ve been guy Batgirls. I think it’s because Gotham’s kids feed so many wishes into the system? There’s a lot of need out here, and so Gotham keeps birthing out new protectors for us. For awhile, I thought it was just a case of there were usually two ‘new’ ones at any given time, so one would get called Robin and the other would get called Bat Girl, but then we had two Bat Girls for awhile, and then Red Robin went back to being Robin while the other Robin was also Robin, but then they kept changing names, and…

     Look, I’m sure there are kids out there who have a better grasp on this stuff than I do. I just know where they come from, not what sort of weird rooftop pack/hive dynamics they got going on these days, you know?

     So, couple of other points before we close this all up. First, on the nature of wishes. I know it’s real cathar- ceth-. Fuck. Real good feeling to wish death by a thousand cuts on those fuckers who beat you up and stole all your food, or wish that the dad who beat you has his arms chopped off and whatever, but we’re all, all of us kids, city-wide, we’re really pushing that everyone cut down on the violence level of the wishes. The latest Robin we got came out with a sword. He’s straight up merc’ed a few guys too, and it didn’t work out as well as it feels like it should. We don’t want the next one to be even worse. Robin is supposed to be our protector, not our vengeance.

     If you want someone to wind up stabbed, you learn how to use a knife and take care of that shit yourself.

     We’re pretty sure the one extra invisible Bat Girl was formed out of the Bat’s shadow. She doesn’t talk much because they have to share the same voice, and she’s usually happy to let him use it, but this way the Bat’s able to properly Bat at two different places in the city at once. So she’s like the born wish of a born wish. It’s no wonder she’s so slippery and invisible half the time. Unless she’s actively punching something, she barely physically exists at all.

     And no, no one’s exactly sure what’s up with Signal. I mean, yeah, obviously he was formed out of the Bat Signal. Skin’s the same color as the metal, outfit’s the same color as the light, and he actually shines and glows and all the rest. And he says he’s The Signal. This is like obvious base level shit.

     We just don’t know who’s wishes he was born from. I mean, it’s possible that somehow the Bat Signal’s gotten tied into the gargoyle network, but that seems kinda implausible to me. Some have said maybe he was born out of the wishes of the police for Batman to show up and help out during the day for fucking once, but he’s way less violent and murdery than you’d expect from something born out of cop wishes.

     Buddy of mine who’s pretty damn smart and is usually better at these things than me thinks Signal might’ve been born from the police commissioner’s wishes specifically. Which kinda makes sense. He’s like the one cop who actually gets upset when someone gets shot twenty times in the back for no reason, and he’s always the one turning on the Bat-Signal and talking to the Bat under it for years and years and years.

     Kid I knew a year back actually managed to ask Signal who’s wishes he was born out of, but Signal just laughed and said something along the lines of “Doesn’t really matter who wished for me. What matters is they wished for everyone to be safe, so that’s what we’re here to do.” Then he blasted apart these giant shadow-bat things with bat-light beams and it was awesome.

     So yeah. That’s where Batman and the Robins and the Bat Girls and all the rest came from, and why they do what they do. Give thanks to Poshkid for the food, remember to put out your fires before you sleep, and if anyone wants to talk about the EBs, track me down tomorrow and we’ll go hang out in Leeds’ Park around noon so we can be sure nothing’s listening in.

[staghunters]

STAGHUNTERS NEOCITIES WEEE

Figured I should make a new post at this point because the other one is getting too long to keep reblogging. I've been tinkering away at the site and it is shaping up! Here's a lil page by page tour under the cut

you can view the site here!

Splash screen!

It's a little bumper so the css can load without it scrabling the home page. It looks alright, but to add some more text to the image, I have to make a new one in the death screen generator, which is not ideal.

The home page!

I've changed the middle window so it fits in better with the rest. Not very visually exciting there in terms of color, but it is for now the best look imo. Text there is aligned justified, I've condensed it a bit more and added the randomized quote section underneath it instead of it being a seperate window on the side.

To do list needs an update but is still accurate. The team is still there, but on the other side, I have set the blinkies to be a bit larger. The music player has been removed because I couldn't find a way to add songs to it that weren't included on the source site. Snufkin is here now. The webrings will need some more. Retronaut is there, but not functioning as it should. it just forwards you to random sites in the ring instead of where it should be, but I can't find what exactly I'm doing wrong with the code.

Another thing that is not working on neocities itself is the "last updated" part. For some reason it doesn't display there what it does display on my local html. Maybe a bug at neo.

And icons at the top on the nav par! Adds some more flair to the place. The footer has also received a minor update: it now has a sitemap link instead of another back-to-home url.

About!

I'm thinking of moving the small window with the short info to the right, but it is here for now. Links that are web-building related are on the right, also for my own referencing. The essentials lists on the left are hidden on load, but can be revealed by tapping the puttons. The lists are in tree-view and the window shouldn't expand over the cassette image once the construction sign is removed. Speaking of, the cassette has a lil playlist.

I might expand on the info a bit more, but that is for me to ponder. I liked including links to tumblr, the guestbook, and a button in case anyone wants to link my site on theirs.

Writing!

Hasn't really changed much. I've been looking at moving the sidebar info to be in the main section upon load, but idk if that would just make things more complicated. Right now it loads to an empty section there, stuff appears once you click a button. PDF support is only available once I'm a supporter of neocities, which i do wanna do but isn't a priority atm just for getting this part running. The links to ao3 will do just fine for now.

Journal!

The space for my rambling. It can be browsed by entry through the post-it, and all that seems to be functioning alright. Added a kitty and a sticker for decoration. The Stop Making Sense bumper sticker will now load a local video of the performance, but once again I won't be able to add this to the site until I get a supporter thing going. It plays/pauses on click, hehe.

Basement!

Decided to add a page for it. Basic info, schedule, link to the room, my letterboxd, and an overview of past movies. It's a nice spot on the site that is also the most cramped, but I like how it turned out.

BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH

In case any page/url error happens, you can send a movie recommendation to B (their askbox is linked when you open on desktop)

UNDER HEAVY CONSTRUCTION

The art and other pages are very much works in progress. Art can be up and running once I upload art to the site, but I'm not sure if I want to post full pieces here. Maybe I'll make it a space for sketch stuff that I'd otherwise discard.

As for the other page: I might be filing it under the writing page as a section, since the only thing here is WvW atm. It's cool that it has it's own thing, but I'm not sure if something that is basically a fanfic warrants such a space. That, or I keep it and drop all my other-media stuff in here so there's more to look at.

That's it for now! I got some ideas on how to continue, but they're not super-duper set in stone.

[cinderflower]

With a lot of people slowly testing out the tumblr waters again, especially artists, here's some old, new, and underutilized features the site offers that I've found super useful and always appreciate personally when looking through artist's blogs. (See under the cut for more)

Have your own custom page setup:

To have your own blog page setup first make sure to enable your page under blog settings > enable custom theme

This lets users view your page at {username}.tumblr.com instead of tumblr.com/{username}

On this view you can add tabs that link out to your specific tags, custom sub-pages, or even other sites (eg. I have tabs that link out to my art tag as well as my AO3 page)

You also get control over setting up your own theme, which does require you to configure your HTML but luckily there are tons of free themes others have made that are as simple as pasting in the code then using the configurations

My personal preferred way to find themes is to navigate to the theme-maker's page from a blog I already enjoy and follow, usually there's a source/credit hyperlinked somewhere on the page (for example, the one I'm using is linked in the bottom right)

This also lets users access your blog's archive (see the next point)

Use tags and also enable featured tags:

If you think of your blog, especially as an artist, as an archive/portfolio it helps if a user can easily find all of your old art and the best way to do this is to tag all of your art

A lot of people simply use "my art" but some use other tags more specific to their username, either one works as long as you consistently tag only your work with it

Fandom tags/OC tags/theme tags/etc also all help with this, if a user is interested in all your content for X fandom or of X original character, this lets them easily find all posts for that fandom or character

You'll also show up in the global tags this way, but only the first handful of tags count towards this, so make sure to prioritize putting label tags you want for global searches first

Featured tags take this to the next level and are a relatively new feature that not many people take advantage of customizing, but you can set your featured tags to whatever you want, and this allows a user to then go into your archive and sort on these specific tags so now they can easily scroll through the tag in your archive without having to manually go page by page

Have a large set of posts already but they don't have the right tags? Mass Post Editor is your best friend here - it opens the archive view for you and lets you click on all the posts you want to update and edit the tags in the archive view across all of them at the same time

Blaze and Customize visibility per-post

Blaze is a new-ish feature that lets any user on the platform "blaze" your post which will push it onto the dashboards of X number of random users - there is no algorithm to determine who gets to see this posts

Blaze was originally original-poster permitted only, meaning only the person who made the post could blaze it but they've since updated it so anyone can Blaze any post that doesn't have it disallowed - you can update the global blaze setting for all posts on your blog to allow or disallow it in your blog settings (by default this ENABLED)

Sometimes you just want to make a personal post that you don't want going outside of the scope of your blog, you can now set whether or not a post can be reblog for each post

Set this to "No one" if you don't want it reblogged, similarly, disable blaze on the post

On the flip side, if you want your post to be shared, make sure this is set to "Anyone (on Tumblr)"! Otherwise your posts will never get spread and never be seen, which is fine for personal use and personal posts, but if you actually want others to find and share your content, make sure this isn't set to "No one"

[elfwreck]

You can include the full text of public domain works if you're doing commentary of them. However, probably only if you're doing line-by-line breakdowns, or splitting them into sections. "Here's the story followed by my essay" is likely to be hit with "remove the story - give a link to it, or break it up; AO3 is not an archive for random works you didn't write, even if they're in the public domain."

(The Communist Manifesto has been removed several times.)

You can describe the original text, or give links to versions of it. For Grimm, you can probably even give links to the Project Gutenberg HTML version.

If the original is very short - say, under 500 words - it may be fine to include that and add commentary after. BUT I AM NOT ON THE RELEVANT TEAM; I am guessing. Not actual AO3 advice, just, "if it were me, that's the approach I'd take." (Worst case: You get contacted and told to remove the original text or reduce it to a few quotes.)

I vote for separate works, but if they're connected essays, then maybe all one work as chapters would be okay. (But there's a limit of 75 tags on a work; you couldn't tag for each story that way.)

Go ahead and clog the category. "I will overwhelm this fandom" is NOT A PROBLEM. People who don't like it can ADD MORE STUFF. There are plenty of fandoms that are "overwhelmed" with content from only a few writers.

"Is this sufficiently fannish for Ao3?" Hopefully it will spawn a discussion.

So, I've started reading Grimm's Fairy Tales and I kinda want to go through and put relavent tags on each chapter as well as commentary. Fannish essays are allowed after all which should be fine.

However, since Grimm's is solidly in the Public Domain I have the legal option to include the main text.

Do you (and your followers) think it would be better to include the original text or would it be better to describe the Fairy Tales in my own words? Either version would include commentary and Story by Story tags.

There's the extra issue of format. If I give each tale it's own work I can put the tags in the tag category. But there's 298 of them which would clog the Grimm's category which is already mostly crossovers. Alternatively, I could do 1 work with the tags in the header.

--

[drivingafterdark23]

Hello, and welcome to the first 18+ Life Series fan event! As your mod, @redstoneglitch, I’ll be explaining how this will go down.

The first thing to go over are prompt nominations: anyone can submit one, regardless if they want to participate or not! However, if you do want to create something, please fill out the sign-up form as well. Once people have submitted, and the prompt form closes, I’ll put all the prompts into a spreadsheet for participants to pick from.

Following that, there will be three creation rounds, each lasting two weeks. Every round, you’ll (1) create for a prompt, (2) post it to the AO3 collection before the last day of the round, and (3) see if anyone has created for the same prompt as you. If so, you’ll lose 2 out of 3 lives. If you don’t post by 7pm EDT, you’ll lose 1 life.

(Anyone is free to join the game at any time! However, joining in later rounds will leave you with 1-2 lives)

After the collection has been revealed, feel free to look around! Get inspired for the next round if you’d like, and make sure to support your fellow artists and authors by leaving a comment on their work.

Between rounds, I’ll try my best to tally up everyone’s lives, and see where they stand. If you’d rather be a part of the spectator team, and not take part in the game, make sure that you don’t use the sign-up form.

Once all three rounds have passed, whoever has 1 or more lives wins!

And now, onto the rules:

You must be 18 or older to participate

Prompts must include at least one life series character

You must fill the prompt to the best of your ability. If that ends up being 100 words, a stanza, or a sketch, that’s completely fine!

Respect the prompter’s DNWs (Do Not Wants). Failure in doing so may get you disqualified

Tag your pieces appropriately

You must post to the appropriate AO3 collection if you’re playing the game. (If it’s art, feel free to upload your work to an image hosting website, post it privately on tumblr, whatever works best for you – Just make sure to use the following HTML code: <img src="link to the file here"/> or click the “Insert/Edit Image” button if you’re using rich text) Feel free to post on different sites after the round is over!

If you’re part of the spectator team, please don’t post your work until the current round’s works are revealed

[kittrrrr]

Hello! Welcome! I'm Kit (Voissy & Kitrrrr are also fine). I mostly reblog stuff, and I do a lot of reblogging at one time, so be prepared for that. I write because my head can't contain my ideas- movation is spotty!

~Pronouns: she/her

~DNI banner credit

~pfp by @/mersinia

~Autistic (why is that so hard to spell qwq)

~Ao3: Voissy (I mainly post what I write here)

~Current main fandom: Loz (legend of zelda), mostly LU, some LM.

~Other fandoms: Undertale, Hollow Knight, Gravity Falls + surprise media sometimes

(Last update: 9/22/24)

~Some important/fun/educational links!

~I reblog more info posts to @dragonsboard

[under the cut]

Note: Some of these take you off tumblr: these will have the site after the link.

-Hand tutorial:

-Just a bunch of resources (books, writing, math):

-free anatomy book!

-If you're struggling w/formating on Ao3: {ao3}

-Art help! (Check the comments too!)

-A link to an anonymous collection {ao3}

-Taking negative feedback (it's written for authors, but everyone should learn) {ao3}

-Autumn Ao3 Skin/////Dark Mode Galaxy Ao3 Skin {ao3}

-A Therian and Otherkin Guide (It's really interesting!) {ao3}

-Making Footnotes on Ao3 {ao3}

-This is a more general guide to Ao3 formating [read: not HTML-focused] {ao3}

-Ideas for leaving comments on Ao3 works/////HTML for extra cool comments!

-Tips and Tricks for Ticks

[thelucyverse]

How To Interact With Beta Readers - for Fanfic Authors

I wanted to make posts both for fic authors and beta readers, because I realized in several recent interactions that some helpful unwritten rules of fandom seem to have become lost to people who are new to it.

This isn't meant to be a call-out post against anyone to say 'you did it wrong!' (really, how could anyone be mad if you just didn't know any better), and there aren't even any definite rules for anything - but I just thought these things might be nice to know and helpful to share around. This first part will be @ the authors, the second part is @ the betas.

Asking for a beta reader

When you want someone to look through your fic, whether you ask in a tumblr post, @/helper in a discord server, in the notes of an already posted work or anywhere else, it's important to state both a) what the work that you want betad is and b) what you want from a beta reader.

The facts about the story.

The first most important facts about the story are a) length (in wordcount, as that is the most-used measurement for fanfiction - you can see it below the tags of an ao3 draft, or at the bottom left of a Word document), and b) rating and warnings. No, please don't just ask 'i have a fic for xy ship to beta' - that's nice information, but not helpful for someone who needs to decide whether they a) have the time to work on the length of fic and b) are willing to be confronted with the kind of content you have written.

In addition to that, you should of course also write what fandom, characters and dynamic it is about, because most beta readers are only willing to beta stories they would also usually read for fun. To make sure that the right people find the ask for a beta reader, you best target the post to them, so tag a tumblr post with the fandom and ship etc, and on discord share the request in a server or channel for the fandom, not an unrelated one.

What format is the draft in?

A word document you can send them via e-mail, a copy-pasted text in a direct message, link access to a google docs? Not everyone is comfortable with all of these methods, and you need to figure out one that works for the both of you.

Also, do you want the changes made directly in the text, in comment functions of the document, or as messages to you? If for example you send someone a Word document, and don't want them to change anything directly in your text, but they aren't comfortable working with the comment function there and end up writing you separate messages telling you what page and line the edits are one, that's going to be a lot more work for you to look through than you might have liked, so make sure to communicate it all beforehand and figure out a way that works properly for everyone.

What do you want from your beta?

'Well, to look over the story, duh?' but it's not that easy. Do you want the beta to:

- Only check for spelling and grammar mistakes in comments next to the text, No other suggestions at all because they would make you feel bad about your work/you don't have the time or want to spend the time on editing anything but honest mistakes/ any other reason?

- Grammar and spelling checks but also suggestions for word flow, repetitive words and phrases that could be changed and stylistic things like adding paragraph breaks (which are always nice to have for mobile reading)?

- [same as above] and also point out possible logic flaws and places where you might want to move a scene forward or back, or suggestions to things you could add to the story, with explanations as to why?

- [same as above] and also give suggestions for text you could cut that is unnecessary to the story or interrupting the flow of a scene in the opinion of your beta reader?

- Include nice messages as to what the beta liked best of the fic, or stay completely objective?

- Point out things they subjectively didn't like and would change about the story if they wrote it themselves, or not?

- Make corrections directly in the story, so afterwards you barely need to look at it anymore before you can publish it, or only give suggestions in comments or messages?

All of these are things some people welcome and others find incredibly annoying and/or hurtful! So make sure to communicate exactly what you are looking for. You don't have to do so in your initial public request, but once you have found a potential beta, you should text them the details before giving them access to your fic.

Do not be afraid of cancelling on a beta if you don't think it is going to work out! Whether because they aren't comfortable using the format you like to use, are a language teacher who can't stop correcting the long sentences you choose to keep as a stylistic choice, or just someone you don't vibe with, whether it's before or after they have started beta reading - be kind, but let them know that it just isn't working out, and that you would rather stop now before either of you wastes any more time and effort. If they want you to, you can tell them what you would have liked them to do differently, but don't ask someone to change how they are, and don't give unsolicited criticism, no, not even to a beta reader.

Decide on a time-frame

When are you going to send them the fic? Chapter by chapter over the next days, or the entire work? When do you want or need the work to be beta read? Is it for a challenge or gift exchange and needs to be finished on the same day, or can they wait for the weekend? Even if you don't have a specific deadline, when do you want them to send it back at the latest?

Working with a beta reader

After - or, if you are in for example a google docs at the same time, while - your beta reader does the corrections, you should look at them and decide which corrections you want to keep, and which to disregard. This is entirely your decision, it is your story, you don't need to feel bad if you don't take all of the suggestions for your work, even if you end up only correcting the spelling mistakes and ignoring everything else, it's your decision and this is fine.

If your beta gave suggestions for additional scenes or sentence changes, you can let them know once you have new text for them to correct, but keep in mind that they might no longer have time or energy to beta now, and don't be disappointed if they tell you this or don't reply. They already helped you, and you can always look for a new beta if you feel that your story still needs it.

Crediting your beta reader

Where are you uploading your fic, and how does your beta reader want to be credited? You best talk about this beforehand as well, as some betas only want to work on something when they will get the credit on a platform they are also on.

When posting on tumblr, it is usually expected to @ the person who helped you and write their url or tracked tag in the #s as well, but make sure to ask beforehand, as maybe they don't want other people to know they beta because they don't want to get swamped in work requests/ they don't want their url associated with for example explicit work/ they want you to tag a sideblog for the fandom instead of their main url.

On ao3, you can link to another author's dashboard or profile page (ask which one they prefer) in the notes by first going to the work text - rich text, writing their name, clicking the link symbol, pasting the url, going back to HTML text and cut-pasting the code to the note you want to have it in. You can do the prep work in a new work instead of your actual draft so you won't accidentally cut any of the work text. Again, ask the person beforehand whether they want to be linked there, or just want a nickname or their tumblr url credited.

You can also gift people works on ao3, and while this is in no way a requirement and most beta readers won't ask for it, just about everyone is happy to receive ao3 gifts! You can ask them beforehand if they want that, but as people can accept and refuse gifts on ao3 themselves, you can also let it be a surprise.

If your beta put a lot of work into your fic and wrote parts of it themselves, you can also make them a co-creator of the work on ao3, but only do this if you know and trust the person, as they will gain access to the fic and will be able to edit everything just like you.

Let me know if I missed anything, and I will update the post!

Tips for beta-readers themselves here!

[warriorteam1924]

tagged on this one by Rachel, thank you i guess it means i’m a fic writer then.... let’s go and check this out. 

i’m in the mood for a bit of explanation here, even if some of you might mind. 

“gets on my knees and apologizes to anyone who speaks [language]” well, yes, my english isn’t perfect, but nothing in this life is, so that’s fine. yes, there are mistakes in what i write, but i hope native language speakers understand it’s not mine and i’m doing my best. 

“no beta, will die like men” well, sometimes, i ask my beta, but she’s busy most of the time so I don’t want to annoy her. I do have an alpha reader though. 

“title in lowercase (and then some)”  not sure what it means honestly. I just give my fics titles that i think fit best. 

“still has to copy paste the code embedding a link” i suppose it’s for AO3? on tumblr, i copy link to get them properly added to my masterlist

“ANGST”, yes please, life is not rainbows and butterflies. I write it to get it out of my chest. 

“this pairing will never be canon, but god i will never cease” well, i just write whoever i feel like writing, i dont care if it’s canon or not. 

“hozier title song”, i do use songs as titles, but surely not hozier since i never heard of their songs. 

“do not and will never understand what work skins are”, true i don’t know what they are. i just write and post stuff. 

“soulmate AU”, no god no, please stop, let’s be inventive and creative and imaginative....

“could not write smut to save their lives”, given how many smut fics ive written this doesn’t apply. 

“learnt html because of  writing fics”, not really. 

“küdos? comments”, yes please, i’m happy to know what you thought of what i wrote. Reblogs without comments or tags are useless, just like for any sort of creation. doesn’t let anyone know what you thought of it. Likes are okay i suppose. last but not least, this works in both ways. don’t expect comments or reblogs or kudos or whatever if you don’t do it yourself for the others. that’s not how it works. 

“I’m filling this instead of working on a WIP”, well there is always a WIP as far as im concerned. and there is always something do to. 

“chapters [49/....], well, yes sometimes i dont know how long a series will be.

“without my beta, this would be unreadable”, hum, i enjoy having a beta honestly, but i suppose unreadable is a bit strong.  

“updated : 2012 - 02 - 01″. hum, yes i left as far as the eye can see a bit behind for several reasons, but im planning on getting back to it real soon. 

“no plot, brain empty”. what’s the point in writing something just to write something? i hope what i write now has sense and that there is a real plot or meaning behind it. 

“has written smut and has no fear”, and i will gladly do it again. maybe less raw now and more in the feelings. but i do enjoy writing smut. and i’m good at it.

“ [updates chapter] [instantly checks inbox]”, ahahaha, no. I don’t expect feedback from anyone. I write for me and I’m happy to share. I’ve learnt that if you expect anyone to like or give feedback you’ll be disappointed. so i don’t do it anymore.  

“tooth rotting fluff”, hell, what could be more boring? i really hate it, even though i get some requests from time to time. 

“ what do you mean *I* have to write the next chapter.”, well, yes this is *my* story, no one else will do it for me. again, it prevents any disappointments. 

“schedule. schmedule” ,no idea what this is. I just write what i want, i have plots and plans in mind, but life happens.... 

“gratuitous googling”, yes, i do use internet a lot, for words mostly. or facts, to make sure what i write is as accurate as possible

“non existent understanding of medicine”, well hopefully no ahah

i was tagged from here (X) if anyone wanted to check this out and get the blank bingo. 

tagging if you’d like (please create a new post, im begging you) @born-to-lose @painandpleasure86 @deakys-chesthair @julescape​  

thanks again for the tag and thanks for reading it if you did

stay safe and take care 💖💜

[jenniboo311]

🌠 And welcome to tech tips with Jenni 🌠

Today I'll be telling you how to embed an image (including a gif) on AO3. This can be done in both the fic text itself, and in fic comments (in case your reaction just can't be explained in words alone 😂)

Read below the cut for more

Step 1: Host your image. I like to post mine on Tumblr, as relying on other image hosting sites can be flaky. Sometimes they require you to have an account that's active every so often in order to keep your links active and nobody has time for that. So I post it on Tumblr (you can also post it on Tumblr privately, it still works).

Step 2: Grab the link. If you posted on Tumblr, you'll want to find the post and right click (or long press on mobile) on the image itself and click share and copy THAT url. Don't just copy the url of the post itself, it won't work. You need the url of the image itself.

Step 3: HTML. Don't panic, it's not as scary as it seems. The HTML code will go in the comment box, if you're embedding an image in a comment, or the HTML section of the fic editor (not rich text), if you're embedding it in a fic.

<img src="" />

This is as basic as this code snippet gets. You will paste the URL from Step 2 in between the two "". This will work as is. If it doesn't work, revisit step 2. If it still doesn't work, double check the code snippet is exactly like the above. If it's still not working, make sure you're in HTML mode and not rich text in the fic editor.

Step 4: Get fancy (optional). If you want to go a step further, you can do things like provide alternate text for when an image doesn't load, specify the size that the image will display, give it a border, align it.

To provide alternate text, you would use alt="some text here". So you'd have:

<img src="URL here" alt="some text here" />

The following is better done in a CSS (style sheet) and is deprecated, but as that gets into complicated territory and we don't want to delve into that, this will work fine for now on most browsers: To specify image size you would have:

<img src="URL here" alt="some text here" width="NUM" height="NUM" />

Where NUM is the number of pixels. This might prove awkward since some people use mobile and may have a smaller screen etc so you can also use percent rather than pixel size. You would just enter in a number with the percent sign:

<img src="URL here" alt="some text here" width="100%" height="auto" />

But as I said, it's deprecated and discouraged, so results may vary.

Step 5: Profit. 😂

I'm here if you get really confused, send me a DM or an ask 😊 Hope this is helpful. Would also love to hear from you if it helped you!

Good luck!

[i-prefer-the-term-antihero]

Really random question:

How did you @ your other blogs in your description? I've been trying for a while and it won't work for me ;-;

Oh, yes! This is more complicated than you might think. But I’m happy to help out!

(Apologies in advance for terrible picture quality)

Open tumblr on your computer

Click on “Edit Appearance”

Click on “Edit theme”

Now, you’ll see your description box on the side.

Mine looks like this:

Now I know! I know! That’s terrifying to look at. But it’s simpler that it seems.

The description box on tumblr uses html, though it doesn’t tell you that it does. You can use it just fine without knowing a thing about html. But, as far as I know, if you want links in your description, you gotta use html.

(I’m gonna continue explaining this as if you don’t know anything about html, if you do know it, you can ignore much of this!!)

Each paragraph in your description will start with <p> and end with </p>. So if you want something on a new line, use those around the words in the paragraph.

If you want something italicized <i> put these around it </i>

If you want something bolded <b> put these around it </b>

And finally, links. Links are a little more tricky, so bear with me.

Links are as follows:

<a href=“insert url here”> insert link text here </a>

So, say I want to link to my Ao3. Here’s how I do it:

<p>If you want to read more from me, you can <a href=“https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_prefer_the_term_antihero”> check out my Ao3!</a></p>

From this, all that will be seen within the description is:

If you want to read more from me, check out my Ao3!

And the “Check out my Ao3!” will contain the link.

For a tumblr blog, all you gotta do is go <a href=“blog url”>@blog</a>!

Note! There are tumblr themes themselves which allow you to do links. And mine does!

Here’s how it looks:

When editing theme:

On the blog itself:

I generally do use those, and while they’re much easier to use, I don’t find they’re as helpful, as they’re not within the description, and thus you can’t see them on your phone.

I hope this helped!! Let me know if you have any more questions!! Thanks for the ask!! 💛

[jenroses]

Dear Good Omens Fandom *

*And others.

It’s time to talk about footnotes.

Okay, so there are a number of different ways to augment text in a print book to provide more information. When expanding on an idea, on a page, one often puts a footnote to a SHORT paragraph that appears on the same page. In digital versions, all the footnotes are often at the back of the text and linked to via some variant of a hyperlink. 

Functionally, in a print book, most people will read the paragraph or sentence the footnote is in, drop their glance to the bottom of the page, and look up again. Grade: B+, perfectly serviceable.

Functionally, in a properly coded digital document such as an Ebook or web page, one clicks the footnote symbol or number, reads, and then either clicks it again or hits the back button to get back to where they were. Grade: C-, if you exit on the bookmark you may never get back to where you started, if you hit a back button, the document may reload if your browser is being techy, but if it is coded right, you probably can usually get back to where you need to be. 

If it is not coded properly or at all, F-, not functional, will not read.

When providing references or receipts, one uses references, often a numerical list or alphabetical list at the back of the book, chapter or article. The point is that if someone wants more information, they can get it. In a nonfiction article, this works well. 

You provide your reference in whatever style is appropriate to the publication, people can find what they need, the document is rarely long enough to care about flipping back and forth. Online, even easier. People can click through, open in a new window, whatever.  Grade for nonfiction: A+. Provides extra information in an accessible way. 

Grade for fiction... eh. Just use an appendix in a print book, author’s note, end note, whatever. Footnotes for receipts pull me out of the story. Grade: B- (or C+)

And online? Use an end note or chapter note. You rarely need to provide links in the text in fiction, just use an end note and say, “By the way, if you were wondering about such and such, here’s where it came from and what it’s about.” Easy peasy, flow is fine. Grade: A

So in a fandom which grew up with a fully footnoted actual physical book such as Good Omens? The temptation is to stick with the original for style, but please, my darlings, I beg you, do not do this. YES, you can absolutely provide snarky asides, quips and expanded information. You can do it without interrupting yourself mid sentence. 

But it will be more functional in a digital environment, ESPECIALLY for people who use “whole work” viewing rather than chapters, people who download for reading later, and people who are visually impaired who need screen readers... if you use another method.* You do not have to send people on a wild goose chase to find footnotes, which many will simply give up on and ignore, and in which case, why did you bother? *It works like this. Put an asterisk in where you want your aside. Finish your paragraph. Break your paragraph. Add another asterisk and italicize your text. Voila.

Using this alternate method has multiple benefits. Your quip, witticism, background note or digression does not interrupt the flow of the writing. People read the footnote just about precisely where they need to. They do not get lost. They don’t have to follow links. Screen readers are 100% fluent with this method. And it copies from Google Docs to AO3 (if you use rich text paste and not html) seamlessly with nothing getting lost in the transition. 

The eye sees the asterisk,* scans down for another asterisk, finds it, reads, and scans back up a very short distance. 

*Like this.

Since pagination doesn’t happen in AO3 or google docs or websites or screen readers set on “scroll”... you simply do not have one of the components required for proper footnoting. Footnotes go at the foot of the page. And a 100,000 word fanfic doesn’t have pages. It has chapters.

And that’s a problem on Archive of Our Own. You see, people tend to upload one chapter at a time. Footnotes are often numbered within chapters starting from 1. But if you do that, and someone has loaded your entire story, the minute they get to chapter 2, those careful footnote links you crafted bounce them up to chapter 1′s footnotes. 

The Asterisk method completely avoids that. It removes the coding stage. It removes all bouncing around. It works no matter how people load your work. And that, mes anges,* is functional. And it looks fine. It’s intuitive. And it doesn’t make me want to throw my phone out of the window of a moving car because we’re out of cell range** and I’m having to follow hundreds of footnotes back and forth and I couldn’t load the whole document because the footnotes wouldn’t work that way and now I can’t get the next chapter of your fucking amazing writing.

*my angels, French **true story, happened today Nov. 24, 2019. The wanting. I didn’t actually do it because I’m a goddamn grownup.

Grade for using the asterisk method? Five huge sighs of relief, and an A+ from every single person who uses a screen reader or can just about manage a scroll but can’t deal with finding the back button in the dark for whatever reason*.

*rheumatoid arthritis, stiff hands, lotsa lying down reading here.    

The show did not have footnotes. It had occasional voiceovers. It’s okay to adapt your technique to the needs of the technology. 

Bless everyone who has painstakingly gone through and linked to footnotes and back again. I know you worked really hard on it. Please stop doing it. This method is so much easier. 

If you want to see how this works in a full fic, I happen to have one here. Mitzvah

End note

There is no real correlation between the quality of the story and the quality of the footnote method. I see a wide variety of methods in many stories throughout the fandom. You’re not wrong per se, if you don’t do it my way. But you’re doing more work than you need to, and wasting time you could be doing literally anything else. This is probably best taken as a “going forward” recommendation, because no one, literally no one expects you to go back and redo hundreds of footnotes. 

If you reread your own work, and you have a lot of footnotes, it is wise to read it on multiple devices and in multiple ways. Does it make sense without footnotes? Some people will never look at a single one. If someone tries to use the footnotes, do they work in subsequent chapters if they’re not in chapter by chapter mode? If someone just reads in order, text first, footnotes last, are they going to have any idea what the footnotes are referring to? I have done literally all of these things in different fics in the fandom.  

[talpup]

Light In the Darkness:69

Summary: Yami Sukehiro just wanted to join the Magic Knights and make his mentor proud.  He knew there would be trails.  He knew trouble would come his way.  Knew he would be faced with discrimination for being a foreigner and a peasant.  What he didn’t know.  Didn’t expect.  Was that literal Chaos would come his way.  That he and his mentor’s sister would be at the center of world ending trouble.  Or that he would fall in love with his mentor’s sister and face more than discrimination; but the jealously of Nozel Silva who loved the same woman he did.

Please remember this fic is rated mature and has warnings of violence, abuse, sexual tension, eventual sexual behavior, and other possible triggers.  For a full list of story tags please check the fics AO3 (link to that at the top of my tumblrs homepage).

NOTES: No one mentioned any need for markers to avoid the assault scene with the intention of sexual assault and rape.  So that made it easy to format to html for ao3.

***Also I'm seriously considering participating in No Content November.  While I have some super amazing regular and occasional commenters for this fic, it's really disheartening to see yet another fellow writer friend give up posting for lack of feedback.  Yes we write for ourselves.  And I'm sure that friend won't stop writing.  But we post to interact with readers and fellow manga/anime fans.  Just because the content the you read is free doesn't mean it didn't cost the author time and effort to write it.  We're not machines.  We have lives and feelings.

Readers pay for content with enthusiasm, feedback, questions, a simple thank you, or smash of the keyboard.  PLEASE interact with your content creators!  You have no idea what hearing from you means to us.

Anyway, I have a couple more weeks to decide though I'm leaning to yes.  Not just to support my fellow writer friends, but because the feedback on some of my BNHA fics is less than 1% hits to comments and I'm seriously considering a full stop on posting those.  Not only will this break give me a chance to decide if I want to continue or stop posting my BNHA stuff but it will also give me a chance to get further ahead on writing this fic as I really do like the large buffer I have between the chapter I'm posting and what I have finished.***

Chapter 69

Teris paused and looked in the direction that Jax, Gendry, and Quince had set off in at first light.  The three had continued to travel with them two days after Jamie and his team had splintered off.  They had entered the Diamond Kingdom a week ago. And by Zara’s reckoning they were three to four days out from Morris’ seat of power. Teris just hoped that the Wizard King was right.  That their getting there was really going to end this mess. Otherwise it was going to get ugly fast.

Though they had a hard go.  Setting a pace each day that left them exhausted and dreading the morning. Teris knew they were the lucky ones, with thus far the much easier task.  She worried about Yami, Julius, and her friends.  She worried about all the Magic Knights.  Nozel, she, and the rest were so close to achieving their goal.  If they failed now all the others efforts to the southeast and southwest would be for not.  No doubt there were horrible injuries, if not a few deaths by now.  Teris shook her head.  No.  She couldn’t allow herself to think on such things.  Not here and now.  She’d go mad with it all, wondering how Yami, Julius, and the others she held dear were doing.

At least Teris knew Yami was still alive.  She turned back to the southeast.  Even from such a great distance she could clearly sense his mana. It was as if in place of them being able to trust letting their mana feed off each others they had been left with the ability sense the others mana no matter the distance.  It was probably because their mana was so turbulent that she could sense his from so afar.

While Teris had mourned the lost of their ability to boost each others mana; preferring it over this ability to sense Yami’s mana no matter the distance. She now found herself grateful for it. She may not know exactly what state Yami was in.  But she knew he was alive. That she would see him again.  And be able to hold him and feel his arms around her.

Reaching the point Teris had descended to, Nozel came beside her.  Wordlessly, he held out a water skin.

Teris shook her head.

“Drink. You need to stay hydrated.”  Nozel told.

Teris wasn’t sure it was an order; but she pretended it was and took the skin.  She drank deeply, not having realized how thirsty she was. Cold as the nights were.  The days were baking and brutal.  It was late September.  How was it still so hot?

Satisfied by Teris’ drinking, Nozel nodded slightly and surveyed the landscape below.  “Zara’s map showed a creek on the other side of that hill.”

“If I never see another rocky hill again I’d be happy.”  Teris muttered.

Nozel smirked, dryly.  “You and me both.  This would be so much quicker and easier if we could use our magic.”

Teris looked at him hopefully.  “Can we?  Please!”

Nozel shook his head.

“You’re the Captain.”  She argued.

Nozel huffed.  That had been the first playful comment she had made toward him since the incident with Jamie on the cliff.

“Even Captain's have orders to obey.”  Nozel reminded.

“Fine.” Teris sighed, handing him back the water skin.

From the corner of her eye Teris watched Nozel take a drink without first cleaning the spigot as he did when forced to share with anyone else.  So he still liked her, she thought sadly.  She had hoped all that would have changed after the dreadful encounter with the kiss.  Or after he had seen how well Yami and she got on after having been together for nearly ten months.  Teris blinked at that, realizing just how long Yami and she had been together.

“You alright?”  Nozel asked, seeing her expression change.

Teris blinked again, shooing away her thoughts.  “Yeah.  Fine.”

“You sure?”  Nozel pressed.

The acting Captain glanced at her unbuttoned blouse, faint scarring still visible on the flat of her chest.  He didn’t doubt that Teris was at full strength.  They wouldn’t have allowed her be out here if she wasn’t.  Nevertheless, Nozel couldn’t help but worry about her.  Concerned over the quick pace he was having them travel.  He wondered about Teris’ thoughts and emotional state too.  Being back in the field after what she had been through on the Summer Solstice.

Teris tapped down her annoyance at his obvious concern and gave him an overly sweet smile. “Yes, Captain.  I’m sure.”

Nozel looked her over realizing he had once again pressed the boundaries of proper Captaincy and strayed into being a friend and Intended.  His lips twitched, angry at his failing.

His tempter bled into his words as he said, more harshly then intended. “Then get going.  We still have a long way to travel before we reach the proposed camp.”

Teris did as he said, wondering what would happen if it got too dark before they reached the predetermined locations.  Without Jax or Jamie it would completely be on Nozel to decide.  Knowing Nozel, he’d likely make them press on unless the way, weather, or lack of celestial light made progress too treacherous.

They reached the bottom of the hill, Fuegoleon and Zara waiting between the one they had just descended and the one yet to be climbed.

“What’s the hold up?”  Nozel asked, stepping beside his Vice Captain.

“I swore I saw something.”  Fuegoleon said, eyes searching the barren landscape.

Nozel knew better than to suggest an animal.  Fuegoleon could at times be overly cautious; but he wouldn’t delay their progress if he didn’t feel real concern.

“Where’s Randall?”  Teris asked, her eyes and Nozel’s joining Fuegoleon’s and Zara’s in looking for sign of movement.

“I sent him to scout on ahead.”  Fuegoleon answered.

“Using his air magic?”  Nozel questioned.

Fuegoleon nodded and apologized.  “Sorry Captain.  I know we were instructed not--”

“No.” Nozel cut off his Vice Captain’s words.  “If you saw something. It’s best we know quickly and without calling further attention to ourselves stumbling about.”

Fuegoleon relaxed a bit at Nozel understanding.

“Is it possible that these are some of the men you use to run ore with?”  Teris questioned Zara, eyes still searching for color or movement.

Zara shook his head.  “None that I worked with.  It’s the rainy season further north.  Soon after the ground will freeze over.  These are the few months we spent at home.  There were others though.  Those not working--”  He cleared his throat knowing better then to admit that the Clover Kingdom employed people to bring ore from the north through the Diamond Kingdom.  “During this time they switched from smuggling ore to other things.”

“Such as?”  Nozel question.

“Anything profitable really.”  Zara answered.  “Many did that sort of thing all year if they had a gang skilled enough and willing to take the risks it brought.”

“Name a few of these other so called profitable things.”  Nozel commanded, blue eyes narrowing as they surveyed the surrounding hills.  They were in the worst possible location.  Sandwiched between two hillsides with not even a boulder or scrub bush as cover.

Zara shrugged.  “Food.  Magical items.  Labor.”

“People?” Fuegoleon questioned, making sure he understood correctly.

Zara nodded.

Nozel sneered.  “Slave traders.”

Zara blinked thinking he had already warned his Captain and team of this. “Did I not mention--”

“Shut up.”  Nozel commanded Zara, readying his magic as he watched and waited.

Teris glanced from Nozel to Zara and back.  “This isn’t his--”

“Not now.”  Nozel softly barked.

They heard small rocks being disturbed.

“Where’s Randall?”  Fuegoleon asked, more to himself.  He silently cursed. Had he just sent his friend to his death?

Randall appeared at the top of the hill.  Fuegoleon released the breath he’d been holding.

Nozel knew better than to relax.  Something wasn’t right.  That’s when someone else appeared beside Randall.  Tendrils of mercury formed around Nozel, ready to fight.

Fire blossomed from Fuegoleon’s hands.

“I can get to him.”  Teris said, fairly certain she could control her light travel enough not to permanently blind Randall.

Nozel knew what she meant.  Even if light travel didn’t take so much out of her, they still didn’t know the situation well enough.  Even if it was anyone other than Teris, he still wouldn’t have allowed it.

“No.” Nozel told her.

Teris’ hand glowed as she aimed at Randall’s captor.

“Not unless he makes a move or I give the word.”  Nozel told his team.

“Magic Knights.”  Another voice called from behind them.

Nozel cursed.  He and Teris spun around while Fuegoleon and Zara kept watch on Randall and his captor.

“Stand down.  You’re surrounded.  And so heavily out numbered that I almost feel sorry for you.”  The voice said.

Fuegoleon glanced at Nozel.  He didn’t want to give up yet; but would follow his Captain's lead.

Nozel waited, calculating what to do.  He could rain down mercury; but if there were foes on both hills it wouldn’t be a dense shower.  If the man was telling the truth about his numbers, without knowing where they were hiding, Nozel could miss a large portion of them.  Even if the man was lying and Nozel was able to take most of them out; not knowing where they were and the wide dispersion of rain would likely leave many still able to move or attack. His mercury rain was dense and capable of poisoning.  But if injury was only a small open wound it would take time for the effects for poisoning to incapacitate.

“Watch Randall and the one that has him.”  Nozel ordered Fuegoleon. “Teris.  Zara.  Be ready for my word.”

Zara turned his focus back to the hill they had just come down.  Teris switched her aim to the man that had spoken to them.

The man wasn’t standing too far from where Nozel and Teris had stopped and talked.  Nozel remembered a gouge in the rocky hill face not far from that area, big enough to hide six or eight.  He wondered how many such chasms scarred the hill; no longer thinking them natural, but created by these people for this very reason.

“Your bravery will get you and your people killed.  Killing you will mean me and mine don’t get paid.  Those who serve the Beast must always be paid.”  The man said, referring to himself in the third person.

“Then let us continue on our way.  We’d rather die than surrender to the likes of you.”  Nozel said.

Beast gave a humored smile.  “The likes of me?  Now you’ve gone and hurt my feelings Magic Knight.  You don’t even know me.  Fine.”  He sighed.  “I’ll show you what you’re up against.  Just how futile fighting is.  Half of you stand.”

Nozel’s eyes widened at the force before him.  Even if the man was blustering and this was all of his force; it was still a good sixty to seventy people.

“Stand down.”  Nozel told the others.

Facing thirty plus on the hill Randall was on, Fuegoleon did as his Captain told.  Zara followed suit.

“We can take them.”  Teris said.

Fuegoleon glanced at her, angry that she was once again challenging their Captain.  That’s when he saw the numbers on the hill Nozel, she, and Zara were facing.

“Stand down, Teris.”  Fuegoleon told.

His voice made her turn.  Seeing the numbers on her cousins side, Teris lowered her hand, the glow of light fading.

“That’s so unfair it’s not even funny.”  Teris ground out in complaint about the near hundred scattered about on the two hills.

“We’ll get out of this.”  Nozel swore to them, softly.  “We just have to survive to be able to do so.”  He turned back to Beast and called. “Well?”

“All your people.” Beast said.

Nozel’s brow furrowed.  His eyes darted over to Teris, Fuegoleon, and Zara making sure they all had obeyed his command.  He glanced back at Randall who still stood captive at the top of the hill.

“This is all my people.”  Nozel said.

The Beast pointed.  “Don’t lie to me!  You think having them travel hidden and separate will keep them safe?”

“There is no one else.”  Nozel told, wondering what kind of game the man was playing at.  Maybe he had some kind of vendetta against Magic Knights and simply wanted a reason to kill them?  But why then give them the option of standing down?

Thirty meters away an Invisibility Mage muttered.  “This isn’t good.”

The Gravity Mage with her suggested.  “Make Teris invisible and I’ll make her float up out of harms way.  She’s the one that matters. We can just let the others die.”

“We’re tasked to protect her.  What you’re suggesting would put her in danger.”  The Invisibility Mage whispered back, harshly.

“In more danger than she’s already in?”  The Gravity Mage retorted.

“No one’s attacking right now.  If we do as you suggest they will be. Can you guarantee that she won’t get hit in the crossfire and killed?”  The Invisibility Mage questioned

“This is a mess.”  The Gravity Mage rumbled.

“I told you not to hover so close, Daryin.”

“So this is my fault?”  Daryin asked.

“In a way, yes.  If we hadn’t followed so close they might not know we were here.”

“But Teris would still be captured, Gwen.”

“But we’d still be free to watch over and protect her, unnoticed and unchallenged.  I’m making us visible.”

“What! Gwen!  No!”

All eyes turned to the two newly appeared mages.

“That’s better.”  Beast smiled.

Beast, along with several others, jumped; his Air Mage depositing them safely before the Magic Knights.  Others lept and landed around their other two prey.

Beast grabbed Nozel by the throat and lifted him up.  “You’ll pay for lying to me, Magic Knight.”

Teris made for him.  “Stop it!”

Fuegoleon reached to stop her; but was too slow.  Beast released Nozel, who crumpled to the ground coughing and sucking in lungfuls of air.  Beast grabbed Teris by the arm, pulling her to him.

Teris knew she wasn’t strong enough to pull away.  Instead she allowed her feet to follow the direction she was yanked, using the added momentum.  Her knee rose and smashed Beasts in the groin with all the power she could physically muster.  Only her knee hit something hard and solid that made her jerk and wince in pain.

Teris wobbled on her still good leg, held up by her arm by Beast.

With a huff, Beast smirked down at her.  “Think you’re the first wild one to try such a thing?  I learned long ago to protect my favorite weapon against women such as you.”  He leered over her, getting in her face.  “In fact I may just use that weapon on you later.  Take a sample to better know the worth of what I’m selling.”

“Leave her alone!”  Nozel pushed to his feet, only to be kicked back down by one of Beast’s men.

Fuegoleon and Zara stepped toward Beast, only to be halted when the man standing over Nozel kicked him for every step they took.

Teris spat at the Beast.  “I’d kill myself before I let you near me. You think you’re the worst I’ve faced?”

Beast hooted.  “You are a feisty one! Aren’t you!  I like that!” He got back in her face.  “I may just keep you and break you myself.”

With great effort Fuegoleon kept his temper.  Seeking to inform and divert the mans attention away from Teris, he said.  “They’re not with us.”

Beast looked over at him.  He pushed Teris roughly away and stepped toward Fuegoleon.

Nozel barely caught Teris before her head hit a gagged rock.

“What’s that?”  Beast asked.

Fuegoleon looked up at Beast refusing to be intimated.  The name, though not creative, suited the man.  Beast had to be nearly seven feet tall. He was built like a mountain, his muscles seeming to have muscles.  Though Fuegoleon had seen a number of men who were bigger than Tobin Giantsbane and Yami Sukehiro, he had never seen a person that made the two Black Bulls seem small.  Till now.

“I said, they are not with us.”  Fuegoleon repeated, wondering who the two were and how long they had been secretly following them.  His first thought upon seeing them was that they were Magic Warriors or some sort of spy's working for the Diamond Kingdom.  But that didn’t seem right.  “If you look, you’ll see they’re not wearing Magic Knights cloaks.  I know you think they were traveling hidden and separate to keep them safe.  But, we didn’t know they were there.”

Beast looked back between the two groups and laughed.  “And here I thought the Clover Kingdoms Magic Knights were suppose to be elite mages.  You got caught in our trap and were being followed by those two and didn’t see any of it coming!”

Beast roared with amusement, his people following suit.  Their mocking laughter echoed off the hills.  Teris looked spitefully up at them. If only she could control her magic well enough to incinerate them all without turning her comrades to ash.  She had done it at the Battle at the Border and on three other occasions; but that had been before the Summer Solstice.  Before her mana had been churned into a raging, never ending whirlwind that she had to keep tightly harnessed at all times.  It left her feeling angry and ashamed that she couldn’t protect her squad members and friends, and get them out of this.

“Don’t feel so down on yourself Magic Knights.  I can’t speak for your stalkers over there, but us...  No one, no matter how good, would’ve seen the trap we laid.”  Beast said.  “We’ve got this gig down. Still, we’ve never once caught us a group Magic Knights.  There’s going to be a bidding war for the lot of you.  Get ready for the best payday you’ve ever seen boys and girls!”

The surrounding gang of mages cheered.

Nozel gripped Teris’ arm as he surveyed the surrounding enemy.  He was Captain.  This was on him.  Anything that happened to them was his doing.

“You don’t do anything unless I say.”  He whispered to Teris.

Teris’ eyes turned to him.  “What if--”

“That’s an order.”  Nozel rasped, harshly.

After the attention Teris had already drawn to herself, Nozel wasn’t about to let her attempt something that would further these people’s attention and aggression toward her.  As much as the thought angered and disgusted him, Teris was in the most danger here.  Men like this didn’t respect a ladies honor.  Their Leader had already threatened as much.

Nozel would never allow such a thing to happen.  He was sure Fuegoleon, Randall, and Zara felt the same.  They’d fight to the death before they’d let something like that happen to Teris.  Just the thought that someone had dared to threaten her with such a thing filled him with such rage that his hands clenched.

“Nozel.” Teris winced.

He looked at her then followed her gaze.  His bruised throat throbbed even more as he struggled to swallow a swell of new emotions.  He quickly opened his hand, releasing her arm to find a red print marring her skin where he had held her.  “I’m--”

“Button up.”  Fuegoleon whispered, lips barely moving as Beast stepped over to survey the two that had been following them.

Fuegoleon trusted Randall and Zara enough to not look at his cousin in such a way.  But men like this, even if Teris was covered up completely, would still stare and desire.

With slightly trembling hands, Teris did has her cousin instructed.  The scars on her chest were still slightly visible under certain light but hiding them didn’t when faced with the heat of day.  She would've taken off the thin over blouse, leaving her in just a tank top, if it hadn’t provided some sort of protection from the sun.

“We won’t let anything happen to you.”  Zara promised her.

Staring at the two that had been following the Magic Knights, one of the gang members asked.  “Are you sure you believe they aren’t with them? Could be that they’re nobility and the Magic Knights are protecting them.”

“Look at them.”  Beast gestured to the two.  “Even if they weren’t dressed like that, they don’t have the right look about them.”

“The right look?”  The gang member questioned.

“Their hands.  Their eyes.”  Beast made his way back to the Magic Knights and pointed at Nozel and Fuegoleon.  “I reckon those two are nobility.  The girl has the right glare and attitude too.  If it wasn’t for her hands, I’d have guessed she was high class as well.  But there’s no way a fine noble lady would have hands like those.”

Teris scowled, fighting the urge to look at her hands.  What was wrong with them?  So it had been almost a year since Mistress had forced a manicure on her.  But were her nails really that bad and different from Fuegoleon and Nozel’s?

Beast looked her over.  He didn’t know what he had said to garner such a hate filled look from her,  likely just continuing to exist was enough.  The girl certainly had the hateful, haughty eyes and bearing of a noble.  Maybe she had been one once or her house was near its end.  Or maybe she had picked up the behaviors of the two noblemen she traveled with.  Maybe one, or both of them, were grooming her as their courtesan.  No.  That didn’t sound right.  If either of these two men had such designs on her, they’d make sure she was taken care of and looked the part.  No man, even a prissy noble, liked their hands to be prettier than their woman's.  Though there did seem to be a curious dynamic between the girl and two nobles.

No matter, Beast thought.  If he were interested in a persons life story he would be doing something different.  He looked up to where his man was holding the other Magic Knight.  “Do it!”

The Magic Knights in front of him turned in time to seen their comrade fall to the ground.  Before they could react Beast’s people knocked them out as was.  He looked over at the other two that had been following the Magic Knights.  “Anything more you want to say before we put you go to sleep too?”

“Our Master will not stand for this!”  Daryin yelled, unwilling to be hushed by his companion.  “You’ve made a grave mistake!”

Beast laughed, his people following suit.  “And who is your Master?  Tell me of his fearsome accomplishments.”

“He is Death himself.”  Daryin said, lifting his chin proudly

Beast stopped at that.  There was only one man he knew that was referred to in such a way.

“Pip.” Beast called to his second in command.

Pip stepped forward, her long hair tangling in the wind as she came beside him.  “Boss?”

Beast nodded to two of his people, silently ordering them to knock out the tag-alongs.

The two Agents of Chaos crumpled to the ground.

Beast lifted his hand, giving his gang the signal to wrap it up and move out.  A few others came down to help pick up and take away their haul.

“See that the Magic Knights and those two are put in different cell blocks.  Then put the word out with our contacts.  Let it be known we have a man and woman claiming to belong to the Agents of Chaos.  Say that they were following a team of Magic Knights.  And that we will wait three days before putting them on the market just in case the Master of Chaos has an interest or wishes to claim any of them.”

“Sure thing, Boss.”  Pip nodded.

Beast looked around at his people.  Raising his voice so the gang could hear, he ordered.  “No one harms the men or touches either of the women.  They may not be ours to toy with just yet.”  He heard some of his men grumble and complain, and told.  “Either way, you can be sure we’ll get paid a pretty sum for them.”

He wondered what two Agents of Chaos were doing following a squad of Magic Knights.  That was if they had been telling the truth.  But if they knew of the Master of Chaos, then they would know he was not someone to be mentioned so casually, even in the hope of freedom. There were far worse things than being sold into indentured servitude if caught misusing the Master of Chaos’ name.  And pretending to be in league with him when not would see those worse things come to pass.

69.2

It had been four days since Mereoleona let Yami back on the front lines of the battlefield.  Still, the Crimson Lions Captain had continued to watch him closely.  Yami could feel the Vermilion’s eyes on him as he fought, making sure that he stayed in line.

The fearsome Lioness could watch him all she liked, Yami thought.  He had learned his lesson and learned it well.  He was not someone who sat back and cared for returning fighters.  He didn’t have the temperament or emotional aptitude for it.  Because of that he had made a whole host of new enemies among his fellow Magic Knights; having thrown them water skins from afar which had smacked them in the face, or simply told them to get their own damned refreshment. His eyes had never left the battlefield the entire time he had been back there.  Those two long, seemingly endless days of not fighting alongside his fellows had killed him.

Returning from the front line, Yami collapsed under the shade of a tree, accepting the water skin that was handed to him.

Sitting a few paces away, Mereoleona commented.  “You’re doing well out there.  Never stepped out of line once.”

Yami said nothing.  Though still on the lookout for the Smoke Mage Lotus Whomalt, he had stopped actively searching for him.  He sighed, grateful that Teris’ cousin had let him back out to fight.  He wasn’t about to ruin it by speaking up.  Just give him a hour or two of rest and he’d be ready to go out there again.

The Crimson Lions Captain got to her feet.  She had to report to Commander Greywright.  “Rest up.  We go again in four hours.”

“War is stupid.”  Yami grumbled.

Mereoleona looked down at him.  “Don’t tell me you were one of those idiots that thought it glorious.” “No.”  Yami said.  He might not be the smartest person around; but only a fool would think war was glorious.  “Still, I didn’t think it was like this.”

“It’s not.”  Mereoleona confessed.  “Not really.  Remember.  We’re only fighting as a distraction.  If this were a real war without trying for peace, it’d be different.  Though no less stupid. Battles are fun and may have meaning.  Wars.”  She shook her head and sighed.  “They’re nothing but foolish endeavors no matter how noble the cause.”

Yami made a face of disgust.  The reason for this particular war was certainly foolish and far from noble.

“Get some rest.  That’s an order.”  Mereoleona told him, walking off.

Yami wasn’t the best at following orders; but currently that was a command he had no trouble obeying.  He laid back on the dusty, packed earth.  Stretching out, he closed his eyes.  As usual when he had a moment of peace to himself, his thoughts drifted to Teris.

His sense of her mana told him she was alive.  But that didn’t mean she was safe.  Then again she was traveling with two men who loved and adored her nearly as much as he did.  He trusted Nozel and Fuegoleon. Knew the two men were highly capable.  Between Teris herself, Nozel, and Fuegoleon; Yami was confidant that no harm would come to her.

Yami recalled his birthday before the Crimson Lion and Silver Eagle arrived.  He hadn’t meant to take things so far that morning.  But could anyone blame him?  He could still hardly believe Teris’ boldness.  Referring to herself as his gift.  Not that he hadn’t liked it.  He had liked it a bit too much as the resulting outcome had proved.  What he had liked even more was that Teris felt comfortable and free enough with him to show such a side of herself. Yami growled, his thoughts sending his blood south.

Eyes closed, hands laced behind his head, Yami drowsily told his growing erection.  “I’ll beat you later.  Just let me rest.  And, no. I’m not talking to you.”  He told, sensing Bronn’s presence.

“Didn’t think you were.”  Bronn said, sitting a couple meters away with a tired grunt.  “I think every man here is telling their spear pretty much the same.  Why do you think so many little ones are born nine or so months after peace is made?  Not that you’ll be doing any of that.  You got yourself a fine bred lady and will have to wait. Won’t you?  That’s if she’s good on her word and doesn’t end up wedding that royal brat like she’s told.”

Yami opened an eye and looked at the Vice Captain.

“I could introduce you to some clean lass’ who know how to keep quiet about their dealings.”  Bronn offered.  “Black Sheep need never know.  I’ll even pay for your first go.  Consider it thanks for saving my ass out there this morning.”

The offer was so ludicrous it didn’t even bare response.  Yami closed his eye.

“Come on, kid.”  Bronn urged, sitting forward.  “If it all works out with Black Sheep the way you’re hoping, you’re gonna need some sort of experience.  I’ve been in the baths when you’re there. That thing you’re packing will do more than scare the girl. It’ll--”

Yami’s eyes flashed open.  He sat up, hand on the hilt of his katana.

Bronn held up his hands.  “Got it!  Got it!  No talk of sex talk where Black Sheep’s involved.  Geesh, you really do got a temper.  Don’t you.”

Yami slowly released the blades hilt.  Laying back down, he grumbled.  “I liked it better when you hated me.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Boy.  I still hate your troublesome, disrespectful ass. I certainly still think you’re making a big mistake pursuing that girl.  Whether she’s willing to give it all up or not.  Royals are nothing but trouble.  Black Sheep even more so.  Look at the mess you’re in with these zealots and the folk hired to kill you.”

Yami didn’t respond.  He didn’t care one lick what Bronn thought.  He only wished he hadn’t stepped in to help the Vice Captain, and instead left him to die.  Then Bronn wouldn’t be here bothering him, trying to figure out a way to repay him.  It didn’t matter that supporting and defending each other was what Magic Knights did. This was the two of them.  Yami had saved Bronn’s life; and Bronn couldn’t go on feeling he owed Yami his life.  The debt had to be paid.

Annoyed, Yami gritted his teeth.  “You want to thank me.  Go.  Away.”

Bronn looked at him out of the corner of his eye.  Was the young man that stupid?  That’s not how this sort of thing worked.  Yami had put himself at risk to help and save him.  In order to clear the debt, Bronn would either have to do the same or provide a service of great cost.  The woman he had in mind to service Yami was certainly that. Most of her clients were nobles, with a few wealthy merchants here and there.  Before Gilly, he had occasionally visited her.  The woman, looking for a good dirty romp without weak men or creepy kinks, use to call upon and take him without fee.  It had certainly been a boost to his ego.

“What’s with that face?”  Yami asked.

Bronn turned to the younger man, mind clearing of lewd memories.  “What’s that?”

“You look proud.  Almost—happy.  It’s creepy.  Stop it.”

Bronn picked up a small rock and threw it at him.  “Shut up!  I’m happy a lot.”

“When? I’ve never seen you happy.”  Yami quipped

“That’s because you’re around and you piss me off.”  Bronn said, throwing another rock.

The two started when rock passed through Yami.

“What are you doing.”  Bronn demanded.  He got to his feet knowing it wasn’t Yami.

Yami stood as well, hand instinctively gripping the hilt of his katana. “It’s not me.”

“Shut up and step through the portal.”  Bronn snapped, recognizing a different form of transportation magic.

Yami growled but did as he was told.  Bronn spun around, looking across the camp to where he had sent him.  He cursed seeing that it hadn’t work.  Yami was still fading.

Yami appearing in front of him, Bran blinked in surprise eyes clearing. The bees he was controlling to listen in on the enemies plans released from his hold.  “Yami!  What are you--”  His head pulled back, brows furrowing.  “You look weird.  What’s the matter?”

Yami looked down at his hands.  He could see through them now.  Despite that, he could still feel himself.  He was still able to grip his blade.  Bran stood, the both of them seeming to have the same idea. The two reached out trying to grasp the others arm.  Bran’s hand passed through Yami’s forearm.  Yami’s hand doing the same with Bran’s.

Yami continued to fade.  At this rate it wouldn’t be much longer before he completely disappeared.

“Captain Heath!”  Bran yelled, worry taking over his voice.

Bronn stepped through a portal with someone in tow.  He slapped Bran’s head.  “Quit screaming.  That singing fool can’t do anything about this.”  He said of the Purple Orcas Captain.

Yami stepped back when the woman that had arrived with Bronn stepped into his space.

“Let her do her thing!  She’s scenting you.”  Bronn snapped at Yami.

Yami frowned, but stayed put.  He looked down at the woman as she stuck her face into his chest taking long, deep breaths through her nose. Though he couldn’t physically feel her face passing through his chest; it was still a weird feeling.

“Hurry it up, lass.”  Bronn urged.

The transport was nearly complete.  Yami nothing more than a faint ghost.

“Done!” The woman declared.

Bronn felt a wave of relief wash over him.  As Yami disappeared, he swore. “We’ll find you.”

“Where is he!  What was that?”  Bran exclaimed.

Bronn frowned.  “Dimensional travel.  Only a few types of magic can even track it.  Lucky for us, such travel couldn’t have taken him far. We’ll have you look from the sky, and Etta here try to sniff him out.  But first, go inform Greywright and Mereoleona what’s happened.  Tell them we’ll need someone capable of busting their way in once we find him.”

Bran stepped to the Black Bulls Vice Captain.  “I want--”

Bronn grabbed Bran by the shirt collar.  “I don’t give a damn what you want, boy!  Now get!”  He shoved Bran in the direction of the Magic Knights Commanders tent.

Heath arrived, having hear Bran's call.  “I know you’re his Vice Captain but--”

“Not now, Bard!”  Bronn snapped.  “They got the Lord of Destruction. Again.”

Heath straightened at that.  “Who?  Surely not the Agents of Chaos again.”

“I don’t know who.  Muscle Head has all sorts after him.”  Bronn said, snidely.

The Captain noted Bronn’s weakened mana.  “At least let me help you out.  Restore you before you go.”

“Fine. Sing us one of your little shanty's and make us feel better.” Bronn allowed.

He might’ve made light of Heath’s magic; but the Purple Orcas Captain was a powerful mage.  And though he’d never say it, Bronn was exceedingly grateful for the mans efforts.  By the end of the short song, Bronn was refreshed, his mana levels back to full.

Looking to Etta, Bronn urged.  “Let’s go lass.  I got a debt to cross off.”

69.3

“Teris. Teris.  Wake up.”

Teris opened her eyes and found herself in an all too frightening familiar situation.  She really had to stop waking up in cells.  If she could just quit being captured all together that would be great.

She touched the base of her skull, wincing at the painful bump that was there.  Blinking, she looked up.  A small smile of relief crossed her face at the sight of Fuegoleon, Nozel, Zara, and Randall.

She looked around, taking in the iron bars.  “You guys okay?”

“That’s what I was about to ask you.”  Nozel said, watching her for sign of injury.

“Got the mana of all headaches.  But I’m good.”  Teris said, sitting up against the bars that adjoined with the boys cell.

She didn’t feel at all reassured that she was being kept in a separate cell from them; and she could see from their expressions and the way they kept on watching the door that they didn’t either.  Teris laid a hand over the belt buckle Yami had given her.  Grateful as she was for it, she hoped she wouldn’t need to use the blade hidden within.

“Has anyone been in?  Said anything?”  Teris asked.

“Zara woke first.  He says it’s been quiet.”  Fuegoleon told.

“Where are the other two?  The cloaked ones that were following us.” Teris wondered.

“That was strange.”  Randall commented.  Though he hadn’t heard much from his captured position at the top of hill, seeing those other two had surprised him.

After Randall woke, Fuegoleon had relayed everything that had been said while he let Nozel think.  Though Fuegoleon would never admit it, he knew Nozel had the better strategic mind.

Fuegoleon and Nozel looked at each other, both wondering the same thing.  The Vermillion turned back to his cousin, Teris’ expression telling him she thought the same.  That the Agents of Chaos or some other interested group had been following them.

Fuegoleon gritted his teeth.  He wondered how long the two tag-alongs had been with them.  If he had failed to notice danger stalking them, how could he hope to protect his cousin and fellows from harm?

The door opened and a man entered.

Fuegoleon fought the urge to make his way closer to Teris’ cell, knowing such an act would only draw further attention to her.

“Magic Knights.”  The man said, setting down a tray of food in front of the men's cell.  He eyed them.  “Not so magical in a mana blocked hold are you?  Beast is taking his time.  Waiting to give first bid of you all to a particularly scary customer.  I almost feel sorry for you if he’s the one who buys you lot.  He’s a real nasty fellow. Slice you all up for parts and throw away the rest he will.”

Teris felt the blood drain from her face.  Is this where Alowishus Spade got the mages for his sick corpse magic?  But what about the two that had been following them?  Were they not Agents of Chaos?  If not, then who were they?  And where were they now?

The man smiled.  “Sorry.  You boys will have to split the meal among the four of you.  I only have two hands.”  He moved and bent in front of Teris’ cell, setting a bowl of gruel on the floor.  “Maybe you’ll be nice enough to share your portion with them.  Are you a nice girl that likes to share?”  He looked her over, licking his lips.  “Want to share with me?  I’ll see you get all the best cuts if you treat me real nice like.”

Teris’ hand drifted back to her belt buckle.  Though she still had her grimoire, it would do her little good in a mana blocked cell.

The man looked back at the door he had come through.  The Magic Knights tensed, none of them liking the feel of this.  Almost as one, Nozel, Fuegoleon, Zara, and Randall reached through the bars when the jailer unlocked Teris’ cell.  They started yelling, both to threaten the man and attract attention of any other guard that could stop this.

Teris pressed back against the shared bars of the guys cell.  The man reached for her.  He managed to grab her leg and tried to pull her away from the adjoining cell.  Teris kicked out with her other leg, knocking him in the jaw.  She pulled her leg back and tucked it under her, squeezing as close to the bars as she could.  If they could make enough noise.  Get someone else to enter, see what was going on, and put a stop to it.

She held onto the bars with one hand, the other free and clasping the hidden weapon within her buckle.  She was tempted to pull the blade out now.  Wanted to threaten the man with it.  But such a thing wouldn’t work.  If anything he’d bring in the weapon he had left outside the cell with the keys.

No. Teris had wait and do exactly as Yami had taught her.  She had to leave the little knife hidden until the moment she had to use it.

The man laughed and tried to grab her leg again.  The reach of her comrades outstretched arms kept him at bay.

Nozel’s hand gripped over Teris’ in effort to secure her hold on the cells bar.  He could see the wild fear in her eyes, which only grew when the man once again managed to grab a hold of her ankle.

Though it had cost the man a good patch of hair and some scraps and bruises, he laughed, not feeling any of it.  Getting a better grip on Teris, he pulled.  Fuegoleon, Randall, and Zara now moved to assist Nozel in holding Teris fast.

The man was able to grip her around the waist now.  He gave one last rough jerk.  The others hold broke.  Teris was slammed against the bars on the opposite side of the cell.  If that hadn’t stunned her, the man adding his weight into the mix as he followed and rammed into her did.

The breath was knocked out of her.  One side of her face screamed, throbbing in pain along area it had met one of the bars.  Teris’ shoulder was grabbed.  Before she could catch her breath, she was spun around.  The other side of her face echoed in pain as she was back handed.  Spots blurred her vision.  It was a struggle to stay calm and remember what Yami had taught her.

The man thought he had won.  He thought that she was some Magic Knight unaccustomed to fighting with anything but magic.  But he was wrong. His arrogance was her strength.  Teris waited a second after he let his guard down.  His lecherous smile sickened as he looked her over.

Teris’ hand once again drifted to her belt buckle.

The mans smile grew.  “You’re one those, huh?  Likes to put up a fight but is all cooperative af--”

His words turned into a cry of alarm and pain as Teris charged him, driving the three inch blade into one of the key areas Yami had instructed her to.  Again and again she hit, the blade puncturing and slicing with every punch she gave to his groin.  Even when she had him against the opposite bars and Nozel was there to wrap an arm around the mans throat, Teris still didn’t stop.

As soon as the man had ripped Teris away, Nozel had taken a step back, frantically searching for weak points in the cells wall.  They couldn’t rely on anyone hearing them and coming it.  And what was to say that whoever came would put an end to this anyway?  The person could just as easily help Teris’ attacker.

Judging where the weakest point was, Nozel had instructed the others and they began pounding themselves against it.  He was pretty sure Fuegoleon had dislocated his shoulder as he had switched sides; but that didn’t matter now.  Together they had loosened the connection point and begun to bend a bar up.

When Nozel saw Teris charge, not stopping till the man was within his reach; he was there to wrap a forearm around the mans neck, gripping his wrist with his other hand.  Blind with rage, Nozel wasn’t going to stop squeezing till he choked the mans life out of him.

The others had managed to lift bend bar enough for the smallest of them to get through.

“Zara! The keys.”  Fuegoleon ordered as the Purple Orca crawled through into Teris’ cell.

But all seemed to stop when Teris fell back crying and bloody.

“Teris!” Zara rushed to her.

Teris pulled away when he neared.

Zara held up his hands.  He glanced at the man.  Seeing him dead, Zara soothed.  “Teris.  It’s okay.  It’s just me.  He’s gone. Dead.  It’s over.  Are—are you okay?”  He felt stupid for asking such a thing.  Of course she wasn’t okay.  “Are you injured?”

Teris touched her face, trying to take stock.

“This blood?”  Zara asked, gently.

At that she shook her head.  She looked down at the small knife she had instinctively slipped back into the belt buckle just the way Yami had taught her.  “It’s—it’s not mine.”

The four male Magic Knights relaxed at that.

“The keys.”  Fuegoleon commanded, again.

This time Zara listened.  As soon as the cell was open, Fuegoleon was through the door and in Teris’ cell.  He scooped her up to her feet with his good arm, the other still dislocated and pinned to his side.

“I got you.  I got you.”  Fuegoleon breathed, hugging her tight.  He looked over her shoulder to Nozel who still held the man in a choke hold.

It was then that Fuegoleon saw what Zara had somehow missed.  The torn fabric and bloodied mess all around the mans groin.  He held Teris tighter, wondering where she had gotten a weapon.  Off her attacker maybe?

Randall placed a hand on his Captain's shoulder.  “He’s dead, sir.  We should get out of here.”

Nozel gave a nod.  Still, he found it difficult to let go of the hold. Slowly, he forced his hand open, releasing his wrist.  The man slumped to the floor.  Pulling his arm back from between the bars, Nozel looked down at the man.

“Sir?” Randall pressed.

With a blink, Nozel forced his mind to focus.  He looked at Fuegoleon, silently inquiring about Teris.  Not that it really mattered.  They had to get out of here whether she was good to move of not.  He saw his friend whisper something to her.

Teris nodded.  She grabbed the Crimson Lions arm, and quickly and efficiently popped his shoulder back into place.

Fuegoleon gritted.  A guttural groan escaped from clenched teeth.

Nozel huffed, realizing what Fuegoleon had asked as a barometer to see if Teris was alright.

Stepping out of the cell, the acting Captain ordered.  “Let’s go.”

69.4

Before Yami managed to cloak his blade in darkness someone grabbed him from behind.  Big mistake, he thought.  Gripping the persons arm with his left hand, Yami threw them over his shoulder.  He twisted the arm till he felt it slide out of place.

The figure below grunted in pain.  Yami lowered his katana to the mans neck.  It was then that Yami saw his attackers face.

Yami halted, though didn’t lift his blade.  “Cin?”

“Yami!” Cin looked up.  He held up the hand of his good arm, staying the gang around them.  “What the hell, man!”

Yami blew a strand of hair out of his eye.  Teris was right.  He really did need a haircut.

Yami took in the surrounding gang.  “Was about to ask you the same.  We good?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we’re good.”  Cin winced, sitting up.  “Stand down everyone.”

Seeing the gangs magical attacks that had been ready strike disperse, Yami relaxed a bit.

Cin looked up at him.  “You mind?”

Yami sheathed his katana.  Holding his hand out to the mans good arm, Yami pulled him up.  As he did so he gripped and popped Cin’s shoulder back into place.

“Son of a--”  Cin shouted.  Some of his people laughed while others looked ready to attack again.  “Damn it!  Your touch is still as gentle as a hammer.”

“Thought I’d gotten better.”  Yami mumbled, mildly chagrined.  Though he hadn’t had as much practice putting joints back into place as he use to.

Cin huffed.  “What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean?  Wasn’t it one of yours that brought me.  I certainly didn’t come willingly.”

“Sorry about that.”  Cin apologized.

Yami looked about at the surrounding mages.  “So you’re running a gang?”

“You could say that, I guess.”  Cin admitted, carefully.  “What about you?  Never thought I’d see you on a battlefield fighting for the Clover Kingdom.”  He looked Yami over.  “A Magic Knight.  When did that happen?”

Yami shrugged.  “Few years back.”

“So, who is she?  Was she worth it?”  Cin asked.

The slight tension that have never left Yami, grew.  “What?”

“The girl who’s father hired us to kill you.”  Cin said, assuming their employer was some girls father.

“Who’s that?”  Yami asked, hoping for a name.  Though he had no doubt who had sent them.

Cin chuckled.  “What?  There’s more than one girl?”

“No. But her father’s dead.  So.”  Yami lifted a shoulder, staring at his old friend.

Cin shook his head.  “I remember when you didn’t have interest or time for girls.  Said they were nothing but trouble and a distraction.”

“Well, she certainly is that.”  Yami admitted.

“Hence why you’re keeping women to the one.”  Cin smirked.

Yami didn’t answer.  Let Cin fill in the blanks however he liked.  Good as it was to see him, Yami didn’t know him anymore.  It had been years since they had last seen each other.  Years since Yami had left the tunneled home that housed a pack of fellow boys who had followed him after he had kicked each of their asses.

A couple of those boys had even doubled up in fights against him.  Cin and Damon had been two of those.  It still hadn’t made a difference.  Yami had laid them out like the rest.  Before he knew it he had a gang answering to him.  Nice as it had been.  He hadn’t wanted it.  Hadn’t asked or demanded any of them follow him. Rather he had done his best to shoo them off.  But they had still followed.  Feeling lost and without purpose, Yami had gotten restless and wandered off one day, never to return.

He had met Julius soon after; and from there his life was changed.  Yami had occasionally wondered what had happened to his pack of friends, but never enough to go back and look for them.

“What happened to you?”  Cin asked.  “One day you were just—gone. You get pinched or something?”

“Or something.”  Yami answered.

Cin glowered.  This was the Yami he remember.  Quiet.  Distant.  Hard to read and difficult to work with.  Which was why he was so surprised to see Yami was a Magic Knight.  Following orders wasn’t Yami’s style.

Yami looked around, wondering if there were any other familiar faces. “The others?  Damon?”

“We all kind of went our own way after you disappeared.  Damon, Rigel, and I stuck together for a while.  Rigel left a couple months back. Got a girl pregnant and wanted to do right by her.”

“And Damon?”  Yami asked, remembering that he and Cin had been inseparable.

“Dead.” Cin answered.

Yami’s lip twitched.  “Damn.”

“Yeah.” Cin said.  He didn’t want to go into further detail.  Yami didn’t deserve it.

“So how much did Nathyn Silva pay you?”  Yami asked.

Cin looked up, knowing without a doubt he had never mentioned a name. Mainly because he didn’t know the name himself.

Working through a broker, Cin never met his clients.  It worked better for all involved that way.  A letter detailing the target, along with half the fee, came in.  He and his gang did the job, and the second half of the pay came in after.  It worked for him.  While he had his ways of figuring out who hired him; he had rarely had a mind to know or need to figure it out.  Nobody had ever tried to stiff him, so he never had reason to put in the effort of learning a clients name.

“I didn’t mention no Silva.”  Cin said.  “I wasn’t even sure I guessed right about it being about a girl.  I just figured it wasn’t a gambling debt.  You were too good at games to wrack up a sum someone was willing to kill you over.”

Yami massaged the tension out of his neck.  “So you’re really not going to tell me, even though I know.”

“Not that I’d tell you if I knew myself.  But I really don’t know.” Cin said.  He looked his long time friend over.  “Sounds like you do though.”

Yami sighed.  “Yeah.  Not that it’ll do me a lot of good.”  He watched Cin a moment.  “How do you want to handle this?”

Cin raised a questioning brow.  “What do you mean?”

Yami looked around at the others still surrounding him.  “Well, you were paid to take me out.”

Cin shook his head.  “Ain’t happening.”

“Come on.”  Yami bolstered.  “You got what?  Fifteen.  Twenty.  At your command.”

Cin shook his head again.  “I saw you on the battlefield from afar.  I had my concerns then.  But a job’s a job.  Now that I know it’s you.  No way.”

“A job’s a job.”  Yami echoed, tempting.

“I thought we left on good terms.  Despite your sudden disappearance.” Cin said.  His anger over Yami leaving without word creeping into his voice.

“We did.”  Yami agreed.

“Then why do you wanna kick my ass?”  Cin questioned.

Yami shrugged.  “For old times sake I guess.”

Cin smirked crookedly and shook his head.  Same old Yami, he thought. “I’ll have you know that I’ve gotten better.  Stronger.”

Yami mirrored the crooked smile.  “So have I.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”  Cin chuckled.

Yami finally, fully relaxed.  His sense of Cin’s Ki told him the man meant what he said.  His long ago friend had no interest in trying to collect his pay by finishing the job.

“So, what are you going to do?”  Yami asked.  “You may not know who hired you, but I’m near positive.  Nathyn Silva isn’t someone you want to cross.”

Ignoring the difficult question, Cin looked Yami over.  Despite all the past hurt and anger, it really was good to see him again.  “You should be asking yourself the same.  If it really is that royal bastard calling for your head, you’re in trouble, Yami.  Folk like that don’t like to be thwarted and have all the money in the world to hire more gangs.”

“I know.  This is his second attempt that I’m aware of.”  Yami told.

Cin blinked at that.  “What the hell did you do?”

Yami smirked and shook his head.  “You’d call me a fool if I told you.”

“I’ll call you a fool anyway.”  Cin remarked.  The two stared at each other a moment before Cin offered.  “Come with us.  With me.  Leave this war and the Magic Knights.”

“And run under you?”  Yami asked.

Cin shrugged.  “Could be worse.  You could die out there fighting a soon forgotten war for a prideful, child-like King who will never be grateful and doesn’t even know your name.  Or get caught unawares by the next hired gang sent to kill you.”

Or get pulled into a crazy zealots sick ceremony, Yami thought. “Tempting.  But I can’t.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.  The Yami Sukehiro I knew did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.  If he wanted to leave this mess and join me, he would do so without a backwards glance.”

“I would have at that.”  Yami agreed.  “But there’s things you don’t know and would never understand.  Things I barely understand.”

“It’s that girl.  Isn’t it?”  Cin guessed.

“Mostly.” Yami admitted.

“Then we’ll go get her.”

“Now that does sound tempting.”  Yami said.  He wondered if Teris could sense him while he was in this dimensional sphere.  If she couldn’t, he had little doubt that she was going as crazy as he had during the Battle at the Border.  He had to get out of here so she could sense his mana and know he was alright.  He gestured to the surrounding space.  “Can we--”

Understanding, Cin commanded.  “Oliva.”

They were returned to normal space.  Yami looked about.  They were on some barren hilltop overlooking the battlefield that was more than ten kilometers away.  Yami hoped that it was enough.  That Teris would sense him and be alright.

“You won’t come.  Will you?”  Cin said, watching him.

Yami shook his head.  Though it really was a tempting offer, he didn’t feel the least bit torn by saying no.  For the first time since waking up in this strange land, he had a life here in the Clover Kingdom.  And it consisted of more than just Teris.  It didn’t matter that Teris would never go for the life Cin was offering.  Yami didn’t want it either.  He was, dare he say, happy with the life he had made as a Black Bull in the Magic Knights.  And he would be even happier once Bronn was gone, and he and Teris were made co-Vice Captains.

Cin sighed.  “I knew you wouldn’t.  You wouldn’t be out there fighting if you didn’t want to be there.”

“Oh, I rather be almost anywhere than on that battlefield.”  Yami said.

“I meant as a Magic Knight.  In this life you’ve made yourself.”

Yami thought of Teris, Julius, and the Black Bulls.  “You’re right there.”

Cin shook his head and sighed.  “I suppose I’ll just have to let you pay the royal bastard back.  And also pay me and mine the second half we’re due.”

Yami had been afraid of that.  Still, he understood.  “Gotta keep them loyal.”

Cin nodded.

“Do me a favor.”

Cin huffed.  “You mean other then let you buy your life and live?”

“Oh, you’re letting me live now?”

“Shut up!  What do you want?”

Yami grinned, imagining the scene and sight of Lord Silva’s face.  “Let me return the funds.”

“You?” Cin questioned.  “You’re not even positive it’s him.”

“It’s him.”  Yami said.  The only way he could be more certain was if the Silva came forward and confessed.

Cin shook his head.  “Guess you haven’t changed as much as I was beginning to think.  Fine.  You agree to pay us the second half we would’ve received for the job.  And I’ll let you pay the Silva back the first half.  But if you’re wrong you’re paying whoever did hire us his portion back too.”

That sounded reasonable.  Yami held out his hand.

“Crazy bastard.”  Cin muttered, shaking on the deal.

“So how much do I owe you?”  Yami asked.

Cin shook his head.  “Now he asks.”  He muttered.  To Yami, he answered.  “Ten thousand yules.”

“Ten thousand!”  Yami repeated.  He didn’t know whether to be insulted, or upset that this would take all of his savings.

“Twenty thousand yules for your life.  Not a bad payday if it wasn’t you and so much work.”  Cin told.

“Maybe the next gang will demand more.”  Yami complained.

“You really think you’re worth that much?”  Cin questioned, humorously.

“I would've kill you and yours easy.”  Yami told.

“Really? And I suppose that’s what happened to the group before.”  Cin joked.

Yami nodded.  “Exactly.”

“What?” Cin questioned, in disbelief.

“Dead. All of them.”  Yami told, not saying that there had been other Magic Knights backing him up.

Cin blinked.  “All of them you say?”

“All twenty.”  Yami affirmed.

Cin gave a low whistle.  “I’ll spread word of that.  Maybe it’ll make other groups think twice before accepting the job if Silva or anyone else thinks to try again.”

“Don’t. They might demand more pay.  But they’ll still come.  Only they’ll have a better idea what their walking into.  With all that’s going on right now, I’d rather not have to try all that hard fending off gangs of assassins.”

“You mean there’s worse than people being hired to kill you?”  Cin asked, not all that surprised.

“It’s a long story that you don’t care about hearing and I’d rather not get into.”  Yami said.

“Fine.” Cin held out his hand.

Yami clasped his friends hand, firmly.

“Just get that money back to our hire as quick as you can.  Me and mine can wait a bit for our second half.  Let you finish up here before bugging you.”  Cin grinned at him.  “It’ll give us a chance to see each other again.  Maybe have a drink or two and talk about old times.”

“And if I’m wrong?”  Yami asked, not showing how much the thought of meeting Cin again disturbed him.  At least once his old friend got the second half of his pay, they would hopefully have no cause to ever see each other again.

Cin raised an eyebrow.  “Thought you said you were positive.”

“Just in case.  How do I get a hold of you to find and pay the correct person back?”

Cin eyed Yami’s Magic Knights cloak.  “We’ll just get a hold of you all the sooner.”

“That’s comforting.”  Yami muttered.

“Don’t worry.  Once we’re done, I won’t be paying you an friendly visits.”

“Those aren’t the type of visit I’m worried about.”  Yami said, even though he wanted nothing more to do with his old friend.

Cin chuckled.  “Then don’t be wrong.  And don’t go pissing anyone else off.”

Yami huffed.  “No promises there.  Seems all I gotta do is breathe for that to happen.”

“You’re the one who wants to stick around.”  Cin looked at his friend, smiling fondly at the memories seeing Yami brought.  “Hope she’s worth it.”

Yami fought a smile at the thought of Teris.  “She is.  She’s worth it all, and more.”

69.5

Beast entered the cell block where the Magic Knights had been held.

“Want us to pursue them?”  Pip asked, by his side.

Beast took in at the mangled cell and corpse, piecing together what had happened.  “No.  They’ve done what was ordered.”

Pip looked up at the towering man.  “Boss?”

“Word came quickly from Death.  We’ll get paid later.”

“But if he wants them...”

“He wanted them released and unharmed.”  Beast said.  He looked down at the dead man in disgust, hoping the girl got away undamaged.  He didn’t know what the Master of Chaos wanted with the Magic Knights; but he didn’t want to experience the mans wrath if they had been injured.  Turning away Beast ordered.  “Have this mess cleaned up. Take that filth out to the pens for the Saber Cats.  They haven’t had a decent meal in a while.”

“Sure thing, Boss.”

“Oh, and put the word out.  We’ll be hosting a gaming battle tomorrow.”

“Boss?”

Beast turned back.  “The two Agents of Chaos.  I was instructed to make their demise as drawn out and painful as possible.  It never goes well when you’ve displeased Death.”

69.6

Once they were free of the compound, Nozel had created an eagle of mercury large enough to carry them all.  He flew at top speed, unconcerned about lasting the day or keeping up his energy for the next.  All he cared about was getting Teris and his team as far away as quickly as possible.  Even so, he had flown in the direction of the Diamond Kingdoms capital.  Despite all that had happened, they still had a mission.  Nozel had flown until he didn’t think his could take it anymore, and then flew some more.

“Captain. Can we stop by that stream and let her get cleaned up?”  Randall asked, from behind him.

Nozel looked back at his squad for the first time since they had taken flight.  His eyes lowered to Teris.  She was covered in dried blood. Though apparently none of it was hers.

Nozel swallowed, struggling to control his emotions.  He noted that though Fuegoleon didn’t hold her, the Crimson Lion hovered protectively over her.

With a nod, Nozel directed the shining silver eagle toward a more sheltered area of the stream.  They had left the dry, rocky landscape behind for a more green, though far from lush, area.  This growth may have afforded them a bit more cover; but it was still bare enough that he felt safe from possible lurking enemies.

The sun was already dipping below the horizon when Nozel had the eagle land.  He looked over his squad and declared.  “We’ll camp here for the night.  Zara, set your traps.  Make them capable of catching small mammals.  We lost our rations along with our packs.”  He gave Teris a small, tentative smile.  “Looks like you’ll get to cook after all if you want.”

When Teris didn’t even register hearing him, Nozel’s forced smile fell.  She had had a scare.  They all had.  Seeing her attacked like that…  Nozel had never felt so helpless and furious.  He would have killed himself trying to get to her.  It had taken everything he had to pull himself back and think clearly when his instinct had been to rage and go mad, frothing uselessly from his cell.

Fuegoleon gripped his Captain’s shoulder, trying to comfort him.  He hoped Nozel didn’t take Teris’ silence personally.  Teris hadn’t spoken since they had taken to the air.  At least she had slept a good portion of the flight.  Though she had woken up with a start, calling Yami’s name.  There had been a moment after her waking where it appeared as if her fright would bubble over; but she had quickly calmed, taking in a shuddering breath as if relieved.

“Randall.” Nozel called, taking a step rather than shake Fuegoleon’s hand off his shoulder.  He didn’t want to be comforted.  He didn’t deserve it.  He had failed his team.

Randall straightened.  “Captain?”

Nozel hated the mans use of the title.  He hadn’t earned it in the first place.  And with all that had happened, he had proved just how unworthy he currently was of holding the rank, even as an acting one.

“Gather some wood and build a pit to roast whatever’s caught.  Then see if you can find a stone sharp enough to skin and cut.”  Nozel looked back at Teris, wondering if she still had whatever blade she had taken off the man.  But he didn’t want to bring it up by asking her.

Nozel watched Zara and Randall moved away to do as they were ordered. Turning back, he looked at Teris, once again fighting a swell of raging emotions.

“Teris.” Nozel said, gently.  When she still appeared dazed and distant, he turned to Fuegoleon.  “Why don’t you two get washed up.  I’ll keep watch.”

Fuegoleon nodded.

The two men looked at Teris, waiting for her to move or show any signed she had heard.  When she just stood there Fuegoleon looked back at Nozel, the two sharing a look of concern.

“Stop it!”  Teris snapped, suddenly coming to life.  “Quit looking at each other worrying about me.  I’m fine.”  She spun around and marched to the stream.

“She’s not fine.”  Fuegoleon told his Captain, softly.

“At least she’s talking again.”  Nozel said, relieved at that.

He had never witnessed it, but Nozel had heard that occasionally people who went through traumatic events had left them changed.  Sometimes all but dead to the world.  Without any type of healer, they would have had a real problem if Teris had suffered something like that. As important as their mission was, Nozel didn’t think he would have been able to go on if Teris had stayed lost in herself.  The thought of returning to face his father’s and the Kings displeasure sent a shiver down his spine.  But none of that bore thinking.  Teris would be fine.  She was strong.  Teris had already been through and survived so much.  He was certain that she would survive this too.

Nozel watched Teris make her way to the stream, Fuegoleon in her wake. Sure she would likely have some underlying issues for a while.  He would too.  But a selfish part of him hoped that this would bring them closer together.  Not that he would take advantage of anything the horrible scare may bring about.  But if some good could come from it, at least there would be that.  Not that any good, no matter how great, that came from this would make it worth Teris experiencing the scare she had.

Teris dipped trembling hands into stream.  Collecting a fistful of course dirt, she scrubbed away the blood.  At first the motions were slow and gentle but then they sped, growing rough.

Tears began to fall.  She brought up her hands, covering her face.

Fuegoleon watched her from a short distance.  He usually knew what to do to best comfort people.  It was a gift he had.  But in this instance, when his cousin needed him most, he was at a loss.  He didn’t know what to do.  Likely because she didn’t know what she wanted.  He decided to go with his own need and hoped it helped without driving her further away.

Moving to her, Fuegoleon knelt on the hard, rocky bank.  Ignoring the muddy damp that instantly wet his pants, he pulled her into a hug.  Teris cried into her cousins chest.  Stroking her hair, Fuegoleon wondered distantly if that was her trembling or him.  Never in his life had he felt so helpless.  Never in his life had he wanted someone dead so badly that he would have bashed their skull in if given half a chance.

The thought frightened him.  The desire to commit such violence.  Even now Fuegoleon wanted to kill the man over and over again, his mind playing over the ways in which he would do so.

Fuegoleon sniffed back his own tears; his fear, anger, and gratitude that the worst of what could have happened hadn’t.  Overwhelmed, he burrowed his face in her head and let the tears fall.

After a time, Teris ceased crying.  “Leon?  Are you wiping your tears on my hair?”

Fuegoleon lifted his head, stroking her moistened locks.  “It’s good for hair.”

Teris laughed at that.  “So that’s how your hair is always prettier than mine.  You cry into it.”

“I usually use the tears of my enemies.”  Fuegoleon played, amazed at how resilient she was.

Looking up at him, Teris soothed.  “It’s alright.”

“That’s my line.  No taking my lines.”  Fuegoleon chastised, lightly.

Teris pulled from him, her small smile falling as she grew serious.  “Scary as that was, I’ve faced worst fears.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”  Fuegoleon told.  He tucked a lock of her hair behind an ear, wondering how her saying such a thing was suppose to make him feel better.

“It’s just--”  Teris swallowed.  Try as she might to push the memory away, she could still feel the slick warmth of the man’s blood. Could still smell the metallic scent that had invaded her nostrils. “I’ve never killed anyone.  Not like that.  Not so close and physical.  Not with my own hands.”  She blinked back tears, hating the sign of weakness.

Though Fuegoleon knew better, he said.  “I’m pretty sure it was Nozel that killed him.  Broke his neck.”  He hoped lie was believable. He doubted Nozel would like taking credit that wasn’t his.  But given the reasoning, he was sure the acting Captain would allow it.

Teris looked up at him.  “Really?”

She should be ashamed at how much better that made her feel.  It didn’t matter who had killed the man.  Even a no good, sick, fiendish person like that didn’t deserve to die without trial.  A life was a life. And as a Magic Knight it was her job to protect and uphold the Clover Kingdoms law; not meet out judgment.  At least that’s the way it was suppose to be.  Sadly they didn’t live in a perfect world where things were the way they were suppose to be.

In her short time as a Magic Knight, she had seen so much death. Delivered so much of it herself.  Teris had known that being a Magic Knight was a dangerous job and there would be death.  But she had never imagined it to be at this scale.  She tried to think of how much more Julius had seen during his many years of service.  How much more she would see over the years, and stopped.  Unwilling and unable to imagine.

“Really.” Fuegoleon told her.

“Am I horrible for being relieved at that?”  Teris asked.

“No. Not in the least.”  Fuegoleon assured.

Teris shook her head, lowering her gaze.  “Poor Nozel.”

Fuegoleon looked at her, amazed.  Even after all Teris had been through, she was thinking of and sympathizing with others.

“I’m pretty sure he’s not all that upset about it.”  Fuegoleon remarked, thinking Nozel wouldn’t have been if this fiction had been reality.  “I think he’s more upset about us getting captured in the first place.”

Teris lifted her head.  “This wasn’t his fault.  None of us realized what we were walking into.  Or that we were being followed.”  She stopped and thought about the other two.

Not only had they not been in the cell block with them; but they hadn’t been in any of the other cell blocks they had passed.  A part of her felt silly for wondering if they were Agents of Chaos.  What would they be doing all the way out here just following?

“Try telling him that.”  Fuegoleon said.  “If I were leading this team I’d be feeling the same.  And so would you.”

“I suppose.”  Teris said, wondering what they could do to make Nozel feel better about his role as Captain.

“Come on.  We can’t take forever.”  Fuegoleon took his cloak off.  “You should wash your clothes as best you can.”  He untied the sash around his waist and removed the blue over coat, holding them out to her.  “You can wear this while you wash and dry yours.”

Thank you to those who have left hearts.  And a special THANK YOU to those who have recently left comments or re-blogged. They really mean a lot.

Next chapter snippet:

Alowishus glared.  He could end King Morris’ life here and now but that would only cause further war and problems as the Diamond Kingdom would be thrown into chaos.  Funny how all his life he had been trying to wake Chaos so he could bring about death and destruction and yet here he was trying to prevent such things from happening.