#the misshapen steed

[elevenelvenswords]

Cross-posted on AO3.

The night seemed quiet to Celegorm. Despite the clamor raging on in Tirion, the chaos and utter dismay rising like dreadful clouds of smoke, all noise seemed drowned out around him. He should be grateful for it, for it was with clear intent that he asked Curufin to follow him, to leave that engulfing atmosphere and the people gravitating to it behind. It felt like too much, too soon. The ill news of their grandsire’s passing were not yet gone from his mind, nor the numb shock that they had caused. The sight of his father mourning- the way he tore at his hair, plucking strands clean off the scalp, growling in grief and such bitter anger that it was almost painful for others to behold it. The defilement of their homeland, the strife emerging with violent promptitude between the great Noldorin houses, the ceaseless doubts and fights festering within them all. It felt like impending annihilation. Like a winged shadow it followed their every step now.

Too much, too soon.

Sick to the very core he grew of the preparation for their departure. Of his brothers’ bickering, of his mother’s tears and his father’s foul moods of late. He wished for nothing more than a brief respite. He wished to leave it all behind, even if it was for a little while. Air seemed insufficient in the midst of the city and its mayhem.

Thus he and Curufin saddled their horses and galloped away. Celegorm led, bidding his horse make haste and fly over obstacles rather than go ‘round them. The faster he could get away, the better. Wind whipped across his face and his eyes watered. He blinked the tears away. Saliva frothed upon his horse’s mouth. He patted it on the neck, whispering encouragement to it. His thighs ached with the effort of riding so relentlessly, so recklessly. He squeezed them tighter to his mount’s sides. Resolute in his purpose, he soon left his brother lagging behind.

Climbing atop a hill bordering the northern forest that looked down on the peaks of Tirion, he halted his horse. Curufin joined him soon after.

They talked for a while, filling in the devouring silence. Useless nonsense it was; something about the supplies and how they might ration them on the road, something about Caranthir’s horse growing restless lately and how he might need a new steed that wouldn’t throw him from its back. Nonsense that served as a much welcomed distraction. Celegorm was glad for it. But before long, Curufin wished to depart.

“Safe travels then,” Celegorm said to him, absently poking at a patch of grass with the tip of his boot.

“You shouldn’t linger for too long,” Curufin replied, throwing the reins over his mare’s head. “Father will start to ask questions.”

Celegorm snorted in derision. “Yes, I am sure he’ll be sick with worry. I’ve always been his favourite son, after all.”

Curufin watched him in silence. Seconds trickled by in solemn stillness, a soft wisp of cold air setting the leaves above in bashful motion. No bird song could be heard anymore, nor the comforting buzzing of insects crawling among the foliage. Celegorm suddenly wondered if the hunting grounds he so loved had become a misshapen mirror of his soul. Perhaps the deadness of his heart pulsed out its hatred, and the darkness pooling like hot magma into his chest was infectious, corruptive. Returning to a place of laughter and delight before embarking upon the dreadful journey ahead might have been a mistake, after all. He did not wish to remember those lands as such- quiet, hopeless, engulfed in lengthening shadows and brisk despair.

By the time Celegorm deemed to turn his mournful gaze back towards the road whence he had come, Curufin was already nudging his horse forward, urging it down the slopes of the hills. Perhaps he had bidden Celegorm his farewell, or even asked him to join him, but Celegorm was unhearing.

He turned his attention to the tall trees. Dark and twisted they seemed to him now, heedless of his sorrows and worries. Towering over him like reminders of doom, turned from protectors and guides to beacons of the Great Powers’ scorn. Even so, he walked amongst them. Dauntless or simply uncaring, he couldn’t quite tell.

He walked lightly, pushing branches out of his way, but the purpose of his own pursuit he knew not.

The soft yet indistinguishable crack of a twig made his ears twitch, straining in search of the next sound. Slowly he flexed them, drawing them back towards his nape, intently listening. No other sound followed, but he knew the first one had come from somewhere above, and the culprit lay concealed by the thick branches arching their slender fingers upwards and inwards. Something pressed down upon his fëa, a heavy burden threatening to crush and devour, licking hungrily at his skin. Though no wind blew there and his raiments were thick about him, goosebumps prickled across his skin and he shivered. Malevolence seemed to seep through the tree barks, trickling even by his boots. Like tendrils of dark power it slithered up his feet, his calves, and disdainfully he watched as the thin tentacles probed at his trousers. It seemed to him that they searched for a way in, for a way to reach him. Celegorm considered kicking at them, pushing against them with the strength of his own will, for what further hurt could they truly inflict upon him, after all that had come to pass? But as one frozen in time he stood, and he watched them, and they hurt him not. Carefully he extended his fingers, allowing one of the stretching tendrils to lick at his fingertips. Where he expected cold, warmth pierced through, and the things coiling about his feet squeezed in what felt to him like encouragement. A strange feeling of familiarity rang in those touches, as though intent coursed through their feeble existence.

The ruffling of leaves above stirred him from his curiosity. He still did not turn around. Not at the off-putting scraping sounds upon wood, not at the uneasiness that suddenly coursed through him. If anything, it bound him to his stillness. The slithering vines wriggled at his feet, they clutched at his trousers, and their touch was suddenly all-too-familiar. It bore the will of another, a greater one than himself, and nothing about it appeared harmful to him. No, there was tenderness behind it.

The gnarled arms of the trees above shifted, parted, exposing the clear sky above. A stray ray of starlight glimmered down but by its grace Celegorm was unmoved. The things at his feet withered and perished, withdrawing with alarming quickness, but Celegorm heeded them not. The branches moved once again, and behind him something –no, someone- dragged its body weight.

Celegorm inhaled deeply as that presence and all of the things emanating from it bled away into recognition.

“You may show yourself now, lord,” Celegorm said flatly. His eyes stared straight ahead, darkened, his gaze unfocused and aimless amidst the cold mass of the forest. “I am not yet deprived of my senses.”

Silence settled in for a few moments and Celegorm looked behind him, at long last.

From high above, the creature regarded him with a mixture of curiosity and longing. A ridged beast skull covered its face, white and slender, its curves looping around the wearer’s features. Two twisted antlers curved their way upwards where they divided into lopsided, bony extensions. Akin to a stag’s head it seemed to Celegorm, yet sharp incisors gleamed in the starlight, set within the jaw left slightly agape. In spite of the crudity of that body part, the thing’s gaze spoke nothing of cruelty or ill-intent. It spoke nothing of scorn. Burrowed within two slanted cavities of the skull, a pair of soft green eyes peered down at him, slowly blinking.

A sudden twinge of sorrow stabbed through Celegorm’s chest. Thickly he swallowed as the creature’s two sets of arms moved to grab onto the tree, as claws left their marks upon the bark in its passing. Down it slid, with feline grace descending from its hiding place. The angles at which its body bent and contorted set uneasiness throbbing through Celegorm, but he feared it not. He had seen it do stranger things. He had known its touch and voice, and safety at its hands had always been guaranteed. No matter how terrifying the form it chose. No matter how immense and powerful and wild.

Slowly it discarded the mask; embedded into its very flesh, the skull retracted into the skin and muscle. Visceral and violent seemed that shift in appearance, the metamorphosis of the hröa, and Celegorm watched with the same fascination as ever.

He had told himself that, if the fates wished to grant him one last meeting with the thing he most loved in that realm, his heart would be closed and well-guarded against any assault by the common sentimentalities he used to fall prey to. But oh how sorely mistaken he was.

For there upon the places he ardently wished to escape, before the face of his soul’s dearest song and curse, he felt his heart quiver –and perhaps only for a moment, stop-. How he wished to simply crumble to his knees and leave the tears flow freely; how he wished to take and beg and smash himself bloody upon the shores of the traitorous love that grappled him.

Resolutely he pushed those things aside. Proud and tall he held himself before the huntsman, even as he approached Celegorm.

“Well-met, Fëanorion,” he murmured.

“Oromë,” Celegorm greeted him in return. The name tasted bitter upon his tongue and hard he fought the urge to spit the remnants of it to the ground below.

“I had hoped for a more joyous reunion.”

Celegorm scoffed. Mocking that remark sounded in his ears. Shifting his weight from one leg to another, he frowned at the Vala.

“I had hoped for that too. Yet denied we are in our wishes and prayers of late.” Oromë watched him with calmness that seemed to transcend into mute passivity. Celegorm wondered whether it was intentional or not.

“Each may wish for what they will, yet the fates play their ironies unawares,” Oromë said. The first hints of irritation drove their barbs beneath Celegorm’s at the utterance of such words. “As you may well know by now.”

Apologetic was Oromë’s tone, but to it Celegorm was unhearing.

“Yes, as I well know,” Celegorm hissed, his voice steeped in vitriol. “But do tell me, o’ great Vala, who ever daubs his hand in how the fates turn: how empowering, how exhilarating does it feel to watch little puppets wail over their grievances from the warmth and comfort of your throne?”

The Vala held his silence for a few long moments, tension and resentment overflowing in all of their unpleasantness. Celegorm felt like he might choke on it. Silence would not do; no, not this time. Not when his blood ran hot and perilous in his veins, anger simmering and scorching him from the inside. Disdainfully he held Oromë’s gaze, breathing heavily –in and out- in a fruitless attempt to hold onto whatever shreds of composure yet remained to him.

When the silence stretched on for too long, Oromë infuriatingly still –as though he was a mere statue carved in cold stone, ill-suited to emotion-, Celegorm stepped haughtily forward. And “You will speak to me,” he snarled, “I shall receive answers long overdue.”

Pain and defeat and a myriad other nameless things coiled their way within his chest. How they burned, how they smashed their violent protest against his ribcage. How unfair it seemed to him; Oromë simply stood there, a strange expression clouding his face; something like pity, or something like yearning. Celegorm felt polluted down to the very core, yet guilt swiftly gave way to blistering, blinding fury.

“Speak!” he bellowed, chest heaving and eyes burning in the wake of shameful tears. Oromë did not reply. “Speak, incorrigible fiend! Stop standing there like that, stop staring and fucking talk to me-“

Please.

Hard he panted, but he bade his tears stay. All of those traitorous emotions –sadness, grief, loss, desire, love- he reshaped into rage, revulsion, hatred. He thrust them before him as a shield, impenetrable and fierce.

“What does it feel like to watch me burn whilst you stand unhurt, untouchable as ever upon the summit of your own righteousness?” His voice was quiet now, barely more than a whisper.

“I am not untouchable,” Oromë began in an even voice that had Celegorm on the very verge of bursting into inconsolable tears, “Nor do I partake in the marring of those I hold dear to my heart.”

At that Celegorm laughed; mirthlessly, miserably, he laughed. He tipped his head back and sent his laughter to the mocking stars above as his brows knitted together almost painfully. Oromë swallowed in apprehension.

“You do not partake in marring, say you?” Celegorm scoffed derisively as he stepped closer, until his chest almost brushed Oromë’s. More spitefully he continued then, “How dare you say that to me after all that has come to pass? After all that your brethren have done, after all that you have allowed? My grandsire, our king, lies dead, and my family’s legacy teeters towards ruin. We must endure whilst you sit idly.”

Venom dripped from his words, such was the malice with which he spoke each one of them. Vehemence ignited his eyes and fey was his mood, yet if he expected angry protest in return, or some violent rebuke, Celegorm was left sorely disappointed. For Oromë was seemingly serene; his eyes flickered over Celegorm’s face sadly, as though searching for something that was no longer there. And good, Celegorm thought to himself, let him see that his old friend is dead, let him see that it was he that killed his young, jubilant spirit. Any shame that might pierce underneath Oromë’s skin would be well-deserved. Whatever grief Oromë might experience at the fleeting prospect of loss would be but an insignificant fragment of the raging abyss that yawned open before Celegorm. Betrayal was too small a word to encapsulate the hideous uproar of emotions that screeched inside of him; the enormity of the wound Oromë’s inaction had wrought could not be contained in any earthly language, and Celegorm knew many.

His hands closed into trembling fists at his sides, and though his eyes were glossy with tears, he did not let them fall.

“Was my life truly that unimportant to you?” Celegorm slowly asked, his eyes locked with the Vala’s, “Did you weigh the value of my life and found it worth nothing?”

“Tyelkormo…” Oromë raised a placating hand to the elf’s face, in the same manner he did when Celegorm shattered his humerus after he fell from his saddle in his early youth; in the same way he reassuringly stroked Celegorm’s hair whenever the elf came to him with red-rimmed eyes, claiming that his own father loved him no more. In the same way he let his fingertips gently trace Celegorm’s flushed cheeks as he lay naked and trembling beneath the Vala, a serene smile plastered over his face in the soft afterglow of their passion.

How Celegorm wanted to let himself crumble and simply shriek against the unfairness of it all. Let me stay with you, he wanted to sob. Touch me and let our bodies never part, skin to skin and heart to heart. Yet he violently batted the hand away.

“Do not presume to touch me or utter my name!”

At the abruptness of his voice Oromë flinched and retracted his hand, but it was not without a significant effort that he resisted the urge to ignore Celegorm’s abject fury and draw him into his arms anyway.

“My name is forbidden for treacherous tongues.”

“It is the name that I love,” Oromë replied truthfully. Nausea rolled in Celegorm’s stomach, wretchedly his jaw spasmed as he sought to keep his temper in check. The Vala’s audacity was appalling – “It is, without doubt, your name. The name I called for in my forests and in my halls. My Tyelkormo. Whatever might transpire, your name shall forever be spoken in reverence within my halls. And if my brethren will speak it spitefully, in reverence still my heart shall whisper it.”

“Your Tyelkormo?” Celegorm spat through gritted teeth, “What would you know about me?”

“I know much of you, my wild one.”

Oh, the gentleness, the fondness behind those words sent Celegorm’s spirit tumbling towards ruin. Acrid bile rose in his throat and balefully he looked upon the Vala, wondering how much easier it might have been if Oromë would have just struck him, yelled at him, cursed him a thousand times over. He could have simply turned away then, telling himself that there was no reason for him to stay or look back. Like mantra he would turn the feeble pretexts in his mind- I am not wanted here, he despises the very sight of me, there is nothing left between us, whatever threads still endure glisten red with blood. Over and over he would repeat it, like clockwork, until he became sure of it. Yet now it was difficult to pretend. And it was this, perhaps, the cruelty that Celegorm abhorred most.

Fretfully he pondered Oromë’s words, I know much of you, and quickly found that they rang true. For how could the Vala not know Celegorm when his words flew like arrows and struck their mark effortlessly? When Celegorm followed the Vala’s horn without hesitation, making his way through the murky forests with nothing but quivering excitement and unflinching loyalty to guide his way, who could doubt that Oromë had completely, irrevocably enraptured the young prince? In awe he always watched Oromë, be it as he walked down the ballrooms adorned in ostentatious garments during celebrations, or as he eviscerated a beast. Celegorm could still recall what it felt like to grasp a warm, beating heart with his bare hands at Oromë’s bidding. Viscera steamed in the winter’s chill as he pulled it out and found his way to the stag’s heart. So delicate and slippery it felt; blood dripped through his fingers and soaked his sleeve, arteries ruptured as he twisted the organ to pluck it free. And what pride swelled in his chest at the benevolent smile Oromë bestowed upon him.

My wild one.

Celegorm drew in a hitching breath before softly saying, “I will depart from Tirion tonight.”

Oromë’s shoulders seemed to relax –or tense, Celegorm couldn’t quite tell- by a fraction.

“I would tell you that I do not wish for you to go,” Oromë sighed, “but I know past affections won’t move your heart. I know your ears will shut out any claims of love-“

“You are right in your assumptions,” Celegorm interrupted.

“-but I will tell you this,” Oromë continued patiently, “This is folly. You are marching to your own death, far out of my reach. Your voice I won’t be able to hear, your prayers will go unanswered. You trifle with powers that are beyond your darkest fantasies. Hear me now, Tyelkormo, and take heed: go not thither. Step not where I can’t follow.” A pause followed then, and true melancholy rippled through Oromë’s voice as he added, “I don’t want you to suffer.”

The first seeds of doubt sprouted inside of him then, driving their roots through sinew, thin yet firm.

“I will not be daunted by omens and portents made stupendous by those that would see me and my kin diminished,” Celegorm grimaced. “I pledged my loyalty to my sire and his cause, our cause. I have sworn to follow and never turn my back on my family again. My fealty is not a feckless thing.”

“And yet you cast it aside in favour of precarious promises and vengeful ambitions.”

The snide remark made Celegorm bridle. Oromë couldn’t understand his motives, such accusations were untrue. Streaks of pride might swirl amidst the many reasons why Celegorm chose to walk that path, but other things ran deeper than that. More viciously they waged their war beneath his flesh, they ached in his very bones and bound him to that decision. Yet no longer did he possess the strength or patience to defend himself, to offer explanations that would merely earn him a condescending chiding.

“As I chose to follow you out of my own volition,” Celegorm slowly said, “freely I shall go. My fate is my own and the very heavens will shake and weep at the sight of my wrath if someone seeks to withhold that freedom from me.”

Whatever reaction Celegorm might have expected, it was definitely not a smile. And Oromë did just that- he smiled. Not a cunning, vicious smile, but a warm one.

“There is fire within you, Tyelkormo. I have taught you well. I won’t count this as a sorrowful parting as I don’t want to remember it as such.”

“But I am expelled from you heart,” Celegorm pointed out.

“Nay,” the huntsman shook his head as one of his hands came to gently hold Celegorm’s chin. “I have marked you as mine, and mine you shall remain. The ink needled into your skin will remind you of it. My words, my power, my love thrums through it.” Calloused fingers trailed Celegorm’s lips and it was almost enough to make him sob. “We won’t be so easily parted, you and I.”

With that he released the elf’s face and stepped back, appraising him. A question itched upon Celegorm’s lips, where Oromë’s touch still lingered.

“Will you wait for me?”

It was childish and he was being petulant, Celegorm knew, but he couldn’t quite help it. The Vala looked questioningly to him, so Celegorm pressed: “Will you wait for my return? Will you expect me to come crawling back to you?”

“I know you will. Though whether it is your body or your houseless spirit that will return, I cannot tell.”

Anger flared in him, pride and hurt forced a dark chuckle out of his throat, and Celegorm knew that he had made up his mind then.

Let us see then.

He brushed past Oromë.

I will prove you wrong.

His hand clutched the hilt of his dagger painfully tight.

And even if you are right…

Away he walked, away without further glance or regret.

“Do not wait for me. I will never return to you.”

[xgummibearx]

Fatgum x (F) Reader, Fantasy AU (pt. 4)

A continuation of Part 3, Taishiro learns a new fear as he struggles to rescue you from a strange unknown creature.

((I was going to post part 3 and 4 as one big fic but....I went 4000 characters over the limit))

(x) walked slower now, stepping into a clearing. She could see the familiar gate to the gardens down the path up ahead, but she found herself trembling and not from the cold. Her heart was racing, her feet now frozen in place. She had ran, all through the woods. Her lungs ached in protest as she stopped to catch her breath. Her ears were met with strange cries in the woods, human screams mixed with the howling of beasts that set her very teeth on edge. She had seen it, but it moved so fast it seemed only a shadow that ran through the trees, and she heard still it’s nearing steps that sounded off like a steady drumbeat that seemed to be matching the beating of her heart; as if to catch up with it’s rhythm to snuff it out. Then just like that, it’s footsteps stopped, a low croaking growl filled the clearing that reminded her of the creaking of bones as she backed into a tree. There, across from her, it emerged. It’s bulging eyes were misshapen and poorly matched, it’s limbs moved unnaturally as if someone had haphazardly sewn the poor creature together with naught but ill intentions and suffering for inspiration. It stared, then charged immediately. It moved with such speed and ferocity, she screamed, tears immediately escaping her as she dove out of the way. It’s arms stretched like vines with fingers akin to gnarled tree branches as It grabbed at her, the monster reeked of rotting burned flesh, it’s eyes and mouth reminded her of dying coals as it pinned her to the ground to scream into her face. She sobbed, desperately crying out for help. The name of her love, to any God that may hear, she begged, screaming madly as her pleas collided with the bone chilling howls of the beast; and he heard. Of course, he would hear her. In a maelstrom that would strip wood from the very bow of a ship, he would hear. If all the hounds of hell were crying out at once and she but only whispered his name, Taishiro would hear her.

He broke through the trees with the force of a wildfire, his men following in pursuit with the vengeance of a pack of wolves as they circled the monster before them. The rage and fear in his eyes as he brandished his sword she swore could have made the very snow melt. The beast roared, tossing (x) aside as if she were only a doll. She couldn’t hear Taishiro’s words but she could see his face contort with a scream of rage. They all heard the crack of her skull against stone, her blood crimson against the pure white snow. Immediately, his men rode to her aid; but their mysterious beast was not alone. Two more came through the trees, charging at the knights with gnashing teeth.

They barred the way to their ladyship’s side. Taishiro had never known a rage like this, the anger that festered within him like a thorn made his voice seem inhuman as he roared with rage, charging headfirst at one of the creatures. “You will rue this day!” He swore, an oath of suffering like nothing these creatures could imagine as his blade masterfully struck one in the eye. Another struck his horse. Taishiro collided with the snow as he watched in horror; the body of his steed cleaved in two. He stood, on shaky legs with his sword looking dull and cold against the light cast by the stormy skies. The winds were picking up as the snow fell even more heavily. The rest of his knights had already began the assault, their cries coalesced with the roars of the strange beasts. Such grotesque beings he had never seen before. They seemed neither living nor dead.

He took a deep breath, closing his eyes as his sword began to glow with an ethereal golden light. It burned like a star in the distance as the monsters turned their attention to him; they didn’t even have a moment to gnarl their disgusting their teeth as the light faded from their eyes. Black blood stained the ground and showered him like a cloud of death as he took deep breaths that billowed into the air; steam rising off him as sweat rolled down his face. His eyes were fixed on her.

Snow clung to her hair and skin like pale hands that seemed to be desperately trying to pull her to the world of the living. The cold was making her face pale and grey like everything else around them. Taishiro dropped his sword and ran, his vision tunneling as the knights gathered the corpses of the beasts. “No! No Please! My love please…” His hands were shaking as he lifted her, cradling her against him. Taishiro brought his ear to her chest and he heard her heartbeat; strong and relaxed. He felt her breathing against his neck that was as reassuring as her touch. He smiled; tears of relief filled his eyes as he held her close. “You’re going to be alright…I’ve got you…” He pressed a kiss to her temple, trying to steady his shaking breaths.

Never had he known a fear such as this, never had fear so quickly stilled his heart. “Take the carcasses back to the stronghold, I will send for the high council personally to inspect them…these creatures, were not born or bred by natural means…” He narrowed his eyes, they were still twitching; some of them partially alive and screaming in agony as their blood spilled down into the snow. “What kind of sorcery is this…” He hissed, his hold tightening on (x) as Tamaki approached with his horse.

“My Lord, you may use my horse if you like.” He offered. “I will oversee the transport of the beasts remains…you have more important matters to attend to.” His eyes fell on her ladyship. She was beginning to stir, her head felt like it was pounding as she tucked her face into his chest. Cold, she felt cold. The cold wind that was blowing, the ice cold steel of his armour as he held her. Her eyes slowly opened, her gaze meeting his.

“Taishiro…my love what happened I…” He hushed her softly, his smile gentle as he thanked Tamaki.

“That beast threw you against a rock…” Taishiro explained, getting her on the horse then climbing up behind her. “I’m taking you back to the castle, we are blessed to have skilled healers here.” He added. The wound on the side of her head was not deep, but his heart ached at the sight of it. “Whatever devilry conjured these demons will be begging for something as sweet as pain before I finish with them…” He vowed silently, trying to guide the horse back to the stronghold as swiftly as possible.

Upon arrival they were met with the roaring fire of the stronghold's fireplace as he brought her to the sick bay. (x)’s hand maidens ran to meet him, helping him get her into a soft bed with clean white sheets. The warmth of the stronghold felt like a hot bath. Taishiro thanked the two young ladies, “I can see to her from here…please watched for the healers and bring them in straight away when they arrive.” The two girls promptly bowed, running off the castle entrance. He stood over his precious one, carefully removing her boots as she opened her eyes.

                “I can do that…I’m alright.” She started, sitting up slowly. He turned his face towards her sharply.

“No, you will do no such thing!” His voice was stern, but his eyes were kind. “Please…” His voice softened, “let me take care of you there is no shame in it.” Taishiro begged, cupping her face in his hand. His eyes, that rivaled the dawn…when he looked at her like she had no choice but to allow him to help, only sitting up to hand him her winter cloak. He was gently washing the wound with hot water when the healers were brought in. She recognized their faces,  the sweet elderly women that had all greeted her upon arrival. The three of them wore thick grey cloaks with dark yellow hoods. They inspected her, with warm eyes and gentle hands.

                “She has some bruising…and my what a terrible hit to the head, you are indeed lucky your Ladyship!” One of them marvelled. “Thankfully we arrived when we did, but it doesn’t look like it’s infected.”

Another of them was shooing out Taishiro, “Taishiro we cannot work with you lumbering over us! Go wash yourself of that rancid blood, it isn’t as though she were upon deaths door!” Taishiro looked over (x), trying to think of some kind of protest. She smiled, the colour had returned to her face, and her eyes were sparkling again.

                “I’ll be fine, go tend to yourself and..” She winced a little as the third of the women began tending to the wound. “If it would make you feel better I am hungry…we can have our picnic indoors.” His heart swelled with relief at the sight of her, and her laugh as the old woman shoved him out of the roon made him feel as giddy as he had felt that morning. She was alright, she was safe and hadn’t been taken from him. Taishiro removed his armour with some difficulty without Tamaki, but he made sure to leave it in organized pieces on his workbench so that it could be properly cleaned and maintenanced.

                The bath, though he did not want to admit it was indeed what he needed. He scrubbed away the drying black blood and rinsed out his soft golden locks. Too long he thought, it had already been too long away from her. “I just want to hold her…chase away any fears that remain.” His face burned in embarrassment. He sensed that perhaps there were more fears clinging to him than to her, but she had always been better than him at hiding away those sorts of uncomfortable feelings. Taishiro put on another fresh tunic and some loose pants before making his way to the kitchen. By the time he returned with steaming bowls of soup and fresh bread that was still warm the three healers had finished their work. Taishiro, leaning over to offer his thanks as they all pinched his cheeks and ruffled his hair as doting as any  grandmother would be before heading out.

                Her head was bandaged, but her sweet voice that drew him near, and her touch on his hand as he sat by her side. It was all he needed to feel the dark fears that gripped so tight finally loosen their hold as she pressed her forehead into his. “I am so sorry…” He whispered. “I shouldn’t have sent you out alone, you were so scared...” She shook her head, still smiling as she closed her eyes, feeling his touch and listening to his ragged breaths. His heart was still racing.

                “I was…but as soon as I saw you, it chased those fears away like a candle to shadows.” She kissed his cheek, her lips lingering as she rubbed his back. “You don’t need to worry, or be afraid my love…I’m here, I am still here…” She wrapped her arms around him as he pulled her close, tears rolling down his cheeks as he drank in her presence, taking her touch to memory as he silently wept.

[eviltomb]

a new person has fallen into the ever after. thankfully, a kind mouse and their trusty steed are there to lead them. along the way they meet many fantastical people.

brave mice, a town full of toys, a raccoon and bird trading knickknacks back and forth, a castle ruled not by king, queen, nor pawn, by a ceramic knight, a talkative butterfly, gemstones that live and play, a secret garden in the clouds, a chatty beast and quizzical kitten.

and at the end of their journey. they meet a woman is made of stain glass, colorful light dancing around her and she blows the lights into glass sculptures. those lights enveloped by glass shine anew. a little misshapen sometimes, but she never remade a sculpture. they were fine as they were. she never spoke an she waved her guest through the gate, but they understood her just fine.

she used to sad. she used angry. she used and use to be used.

now, she chooses to be kind. maybe, that is enough.

[cat-winterfield]

is it just me or does the new saddle pad look comically large or misshapen on bigger horses? I don't have a dartmoor or soul steed, but I tested it on some other horses and it looks kind of strange. either way it's way too long for pretty much all of them.

mustang:

paint horse:

jwh:

lipizzanner:

[verkja]

10 Songs, 10 People

Thanks for the tag, @i-can-even-burn-salad :)

Rules—put your library on shuffle and post the first ten songs, then tag ten (or some other number of) people.

Links go to YouTube.

1. Last of the Wilds by Nightwish

2. Rashōmon by Ningen Isu

3. Icewind Dale Theme from Icewind Dale

4. (Don’t Fear) the Reaper by Blue Öyster Cult

5. 1000 Violins by The Cliks

6. Cymbeline by Loreena McKennitt

7. Earthsblood by God Forbid

8. Orphan's Lament by Huun-Huur-Tu

9. Erlkönig sung by Jessye Norman

10. The Misshapen Steed by Agalloch

Tagging... eh, @whumpinthepot , @quietly-by-myself , and @cryptidwritings , if you like - no pressure!

[grxmincvdescxnce]

SPECIAL DELIVERY ⸻ @ofthcshvdes

RECIPIENT ⸻ PETYR STEELE

veyn had only just settled into the lure of the campfire, her gaze falling across the fluttering amber light in mild interest as she went about preparing the evening's meal. now that she was certain the area was clear of any immediate threats, she had the option of relaxing a bit more. not that she really would, of course, — ever the rigid soldier — but at least it was there as an option to take. her loyal steed remains stationed at her side, curled into a nearly soundless, comfortable heap on the ground. her steadier hands toy with the makings of the rusting pot lying center in the flames, her ladle pouring a mixture of vegetables and a stew-like broth into a slightly misshapen bowl when it's deemed appropriate to do so.

".. you're free to join if you care, but ... don't you have a child to attend to this late in the evening?" her voice calls towards what seems to be darkness, the low, whirling wind shifting the flames once more as jakken stirs from his slumber. "or are you not quite as alone as i presume?" 

a figure finally emerges, and veyn allows the slightest of curls to etch across her lips. her arms, unbounded for once, eventually pull towards her so the bowl in her grasp was closer to her lips to sip, ever casual as she awaits the grizzly man’s decision. "would you care to join me for dinner, petyr? or is this less of a social call?"

[publicdomainbooks]

VIII. THE CRYING OF THE PUMA.

Montgomery interrupted my tangle of mystification and suspicion about one o’clock, and his grotesque attendant followed him with a tray bearing bread, some herbs and other eatables, a flask of whiskey, a jug of water, and three glasses and knives. I glanced askance at this strange creature, and found him watching me with his queer, restless eyes. Montgomery said he would lunch with me, but that Moreau was too preoccupied with some work to come.

“Moreau!” said I. “I know that name.”

“The devil you do!” said he. “What an ass I was to mention it to you! I might have thought. Anyhow, it will give you an inkling of our—mysteries. Whiskey?”

“No, thanks; I’m an abstainer.”

“I wish I’d been. But it’s no use locking the door after the steed is stolen. It was that infernal stuff which led to my coming here,—that, and a foggy night. I thought myself in luck at the time, when Moreau offered to get me off. It’s queer—”

“Montgomery,” said I, suddenly, as the outer door closed, “why has your man pointed ears?”

“Damn!” he said, over his first mouthful of food. He stared at me for a moment, and then repeated, “Pointed ears?”

“Little points to them,” said I, as calmly as possible, with a catch in my breath; “and a fine black fur at the edges?”

He helped himself to whiskey and water with great deliberation. “I was under the impression—that his hair covered his ears.”

“I saw them as he stooped by me to put that coffee you sent to me on the table. And his eyes shine in the dark.”

By this time Montgomery had recovered from the surprise of my question. “I always thought,” he said deliberately, with a certain accentuation of his flavouring of lisp, “that there was something the matter with his ears, from the way he covered them. What were they like?”

I was persuaded from his manner that this ignorance was a pretence. Still, I could hardly tell the man that I thought him a liar. “Pointed,” I said; “rather small and furry,—distinctly furry. But the whole man is one of the strangest beings I ever set eyes on.”

A sharp, hoarse cry of animal pain came from the enclosure behind us. Its depth and volume testified to the puma. I saw Montgomery wince.

“Yes?” he said.

“Where did you pick up the creature?”

“San Francisco. He’s an ugly brute, I admit. Half-witted, you know. Can’t remember where he came from. But I’m used to him, you know. We both are. How does he strike you?”

“He’s unnatural,” I said. “There’s something about him—don’t think me fanciful, but it gives me a nasty little sensation, a tightening of my muscles, when he comes near me. It’s a touch—of the diabolical, in fact.”

Montgomery had stopped eating while I told him this. “Rum!” he said. “I can’t see it.” He resumed his meal. “I had no idea of it,” he said, and masticated. “The crew of the schooner must have felt it the same. Made a dead set at the poor devil. You saw the captain?”

Suddenly the puma howled again, this time more painfully. Montgomery swore under his breath. I had half a mind to attack him about the men on the beach. Then the poor brute within gave vent to a series of short, sharp cries.

“Your men on the beach,” said I; “what race are they?”

“Excellent fellows, aren’t they?” said he, absentmindedly, knitting his brows as the animal yelled out sharply.

I said no more. There was another outcry worse than the former. He looked at me with his dull grey eyes, and then took some more whiskey. He tried to draw me into a discussion about alcohol, professing to have saved my life with it. He seemed anxious to lay stress on the fact that I owed my life to him. I answered him distractedly.

Presently our meal came to an end; the misshapen monster with the pointed ears cleared the remains away, and Montgomery left me alone in the room again. All the time he had been in a state of ill-concealed irritation at the noise of the vivisected puma. He had spoken of his odd want of nerve, and left me to the obvious application.

I found myself that the cries were singularly irritating, and they grew in depth and intensity as the afternoon wore on. They were painful at first, but their constant resurgence at last altogether upset my balance. I flung aside a crib of Horace I had been reading, and began to clench my fists, to bite my lips, and to pace the room. Presently I got to stopping my ears with my fingers.

The emotional appeal of those yells grew upon me steadily, grew at last to such an exquisite expression of suffering that I could stand it in that confined room no longer. I stepped out of the door into the slumberous heat of the late afternoon, and walking past the main entrance—locked again, I noticed—turned the corner of the wall.

The crying sounded even louder out of doors. It was as if all the pain in the world had found a voice. Yet had I known such pain was in the next room, and had it been dumb, I believe—I have thought since—I could have stood it well enough. It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us. But in spite of the brilliant sunlight and the green fans of the trees waving in the soothing sea-breeze, the world was a confusion, blurred with drifting black and red phantasms, until I was out of earshot of the house in the chequered wall.

[thenighteternal]

Agalloch - The Misshapen Steed

[somnolentdesolation]

Agalloch - “The Misshapen Steed” from Pale Folklore (1999)

[dreadwulf]

prompt #1: The Green Knight

(Warning: Major Character Death. Not the Major Character you think. Be warned.)

The Green Chapel stands still and silent when the Golden Knight arrives.

Once he had expected a fine cathedral to await him at the of his journey, but by now he is unsurprised to find a crumbled ruin overgrown with ivy. Only the stone walls remain of this “chapel”. The sunken paving stones admit dirt and weeds between them enough that it is barely distinguishable from the forest floor, and the roof is long since fallen in. Everywhere it is overgrown with thick green leaves and vines, and surrounded by a canopy of trees that opens only enough to admit a slice of night sky directly above.

Ser Jaime Lannister enters watchfully, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

The Green Knight is nearly invisible to him at first: concealed in greenery, grown into the landscape as though part of it. The bark of his skin is encrusted with moss, leaving no visible gap between himself and the plants around him. Judging from the growth, the Knight has not moved in a long, long while. 

Has he stood exactly here for the entire year, waiting for him? It looks more like a statue, or a tree carving. Something long abandoned. Much longer than a single year.

“Ser Knight,” he announces, “I have arrived per our agreement.”

Silence. 

There is only him here, and a tree that looks only a little like a man.

He is early, Ser Jaime realizes. Will be it dawn of the day, or the very hour of their meeting? He may be here for some time. It will be hours to dawn, and it had been another sundown after that when the Green Knight had ridden into Robert’s court on his enormous steed. 

One year hence, the Knight had said. Well, at least he is not late.

The pre-dawn hours are quiet here, and the grove is peaceful. The trees overhead open out onto a pretty sprinkling of stars, and all the noise of the forest and the brook which has lead him here has faded away.  He can see why the locals call this the Green Chapel. It is the sort of place that encourages one to pray, and to contemplate, at least if one is given to introspection and piety. 

Which he is usually not.

The Golden Knight quickly grows restless. Waiting is not a skill of his. He is impatient by nature, impetuous and impulsive. Faced with delay he will rush things ahead, or abandon his course. Unless, as in this case, he has no choice but to wait, and then he will be overcome with unease. 

He paces. His fingers twitch. His gaze darts around, landing on this and that. 

There is no sign of movement from the Green Knight. 

If he had not seen him walking and talking, he might assume this to be only a sculpture, and not a living being. He might wonder if he had been tricked, and if some unseen enemy hovered nearby laughing at his predicament. But he has seen the Green Knight up close, and ran him through with his own blade, and watched as the great gnarled hands pulled the greatsword from his own breast as casually as a thorn from his finger, and tossed the weapon aside as though it were a child’s plaything.  

His hands curl around the same greatsword at his belt. He has carried it for a year, this sword. It was his prize for accepting the Green Knight’s challenge, and ostensibly he is here to return it. When he does, the knight will return him the same blow, and stab him through the heart. 

Was it worth it? What, after all, did he do with his fine sword? 

Ser Jaime sighs and sits on the wet ground. He can grow no more muddy and disheveled than he is already. He left King’s Landing in his extravagant golden armor, wearing his lion’s helm, and riding the finest horse in his stable. But he arrives in the Green Chapel on foot, with no helm, dressed in shabby clothing and battered bits of armor. Even his golden hair is shorn, and only a thin growth of hair remains of his famous golden curls. 

The only thing of value remaining to him is the sword. And to be quite honest, the Green Knight is welcome to it. If he could, he would exchange it for something much more valuable that he had found, and then lost, along the way.

It had taken many weeks to get him here. There were some diversions - misadventures, a strange episode in a Keep, and a good deal of wandering around lost - but he has come a very long way from Robert’s Court to find himself here. He had managed the journey only with the help of his squire.

The girl had joined him on the road on the very first day. She was part of the crowd that had followed him from the gates, those knight-hopefuls who so frequently followed his footsteps around the city. Most wanted some of his glory, hoped for it to spill onto them by mere proximity. Some wanted merely to see him meet his fate, others to be part of that tale if they could. But there was very little glory in this journey. They had been beset by bandits, wild animals, bad weather, and strange side-tracks from almost the very start

There had been six, even eight of them at a time, during the ride through the Westerlands, but as he traveled further and further from the capital and the weather worsened their number dwindled, and by the tenth night there was only her. Her name was Brienne. If she had another he has already forgotten it.

She was a strange girl, ungainly large, and dressed all in armor, in imitation of a knight. She had a face like rotten fruit, softly misshapen. Her straw-blonde hair, ruddy and pox-marked skin, and stubborn pout completed the picture. Her very presence proved subtly irritating. If a maid cannot be beautiful she might at least keep herself out of sight; or else be a servant, who are barely women to begin with.

His followers quickly decided to make a servant of her. This did not go well. Ser Jaime came upon her fighting three of the men on the third night. One of them had blood streaming from his nose already, another was sitting on the ground looking dazed from a blow to the head. The last was seemingly unfazed by the fate of the other two, and Ser Jaime observed him take a good punch to the chin that left him spitting out teeth. They were trying to steal her supper, she said. The girl should be cooking for us all, the men said. 

“She is my squire”, Ser Jaime told them, deciding upon it at that very moment. “She will cook supper for only me.”

“Like hell I will,” the ungrateful wench spat at him. 

Ser Jaime raised an eyebrow. “Do you wish to be a knight or not? First you must be a squire.”

She did at that. She did wish it, very much. He can see it in her eyes -- striking blue eyes, with a determined gaze. 

Brienne did cook his supper, the next night, over the campfire. Not very well, and he did not insist again. But she also tended his armor and sword, and that she did very well indeed. She handled his greatsword with tremendous respect and care, such that it touched him to see. He had long since stopped being impressed by the blade, after carrying it for a year. 

Brienne proved a loyal squire, if not the most typical one. When wolves attacked she proved herself courageous, stood herself well in front of older and more experienced men. When there was work to be done she would be first to do it, and without being asked: gathering firewood, tending the horses. Drudgery she avoided, but practical, necessary things she performed without complaint. 

She had very blue eyes. Sky eyes, clear and bright. He would have liked to look at them, except that she would be looking back, and that seemed to frighten her. She did not like to look him in the face. A shy maid, for all her armor and prickly temperament. He liked to tease her, and tell bawdy jokes with the other men until her face turned a pleasant pink.

A skirmish with the Brave Companions lost three of his would-be-knights and all of their horses,and it lead to their capture for a brief time. When they managed to escape, they were left traveling afoot, and without their supplies. His other followers drifted off then, losing their taste for adventure. Only the girl remained, and walked beside him along the road North uncomplaining through the long days ahead.

She was good with a blade, better than most. Not so good as Ser Jaime, who had a prodigious talent. But on the occasions he challenged her to spar with him, she got his blood up and roaring in a way he had not felt since he was a young man himself, and all his adventures before him.

She was kind. Too reserved to be gregarious, but generous in spirit. She took pity on every foundling, every poor farmer and milkmaid they encountered along the way. She wanted to help them, rescue them all; if he had not restrained her they would have been fighting for the honor of each individual cow from the Westerlands to the Neck. She was much disappointed that they hadn’t. What is a knight for, if not that?

She would learn, as he once had. The Knights of Robert’s Kingdom were more tarnished than a starry-eyed squire suspected. Heroes and legends in tales were only men in the flesh, and men with a bit of money and renown all went the same way. Given the best of everything they would indulge themselves, would grow greedy, would came to expect what had once been freely given. They fought not for gods and country but for glory, and mainly fought each other. They plundered wealth and women, sat by roaring fires, went slow, went soft, forgot hunger and killing cold. 

Honor was a facade, nothing more. To become a knight was to learn it. It made him glad she would never be knighted, and fail that lesson.

“Entertain me, squire,” he said to her as they rode side-by-side, needling her. “I have heard all of the songs and stories of this land, and they bore me. Tell me a tale of yourself, Squire Brienne. What adventures set you on this course to become a knight?”

She bowed her head. “I have no tales to tell, my lord. It is only a wish, and an aspiration. But I have no adventures but the one we are on now. But you, my lord, are a famous knight, and must have many stories to tell. I would be honored to hear them from your own lips.”

Ser Jaime had hundreds of tales. He has boasted of his adventures to innumerable audiences as they looked on him admiringly, the great Golden Knight. Wins at tourney, duels with other knights, riding to war for King Robert. But for some reason, as he turned them over in his mind, he discarded each of his favorite stories one by one. He did not want to tell them now; those stories are not for her.

“I also have no tales to tell,” he said.

“Are you not on a quest, my lord?” She looked over at him quizzically, her blue eyes innocent. “I hear tell you are riding to the Green Chapel in the north…”

“I am, and to meet the Green Knight. But even I am not so bold as to tell that tale when I do not yet know its ending. But it sounds like you could, Squire Brienne.”

Again she frowned at him for that title. But she did know the bare outlines of the story, how the strange Green Knight had rode into King Robert’s court and invited the bravest and boldest of his knights to face him in battle, to strike a single blow and receive a blow in return, and for it they would gain his greatsword as a prize. How the Golden Knight had taken up the challenge, and in a blow of great talent and precision stabbed the Golden Knight through the heart, finding the weakest point in his armor on a single try. But instead of falling down dead, the Green Knight had easily pulled the blade from his own chest and mounted his horse. He told the Golden Knight to meet him in one year at the Green Chapel, where he would return his blow. 

“And I see you do not hesitate to keep your word,” Brienne concluded the tale. “You are as bold and brave as all the stories say. But what will you do when you get there?” 

“Fight him, I suppose.” Ser Jaime’s hand tensed around the ruby-encrusted pommel of his borrowed sword. 

“Ser?” She blinked back at him in confusion.

“What, you expected I would meekly bow my head and be murdered? Of course not.” Ser Jaime’s shoulders shook. “Twas not a fair bargain, when he has such dark magic that he can take a sword through the heart and survive. I have no such magic, and it isn’t a fair exchange.”

“But you did not have to strike a deathblow. By the bounds of the agreement you might have only scratched him, and taken only a scratch in return.”

Well, yes. In hindsight, that would have been wiser. If he had taken the time to think it over, he might have put that together. But by nature he rarely takes that time. 

“He was a large and fearsome Knight, and I thought only to prevent the return blow. Of course if I had known he would survive it I would have acted differently. I know it now. And when I see the Knight this time I will fight him with everything I have, and he will fight me with everything He has, and we will see who is the victor.”

“But you made a promise…” She sounded faintly disappointed, and it irritated him greatly.

“It was a trick, girl. A trick to snare a knight by his honor. Would you have me die for a trick? What good will that serve? No, I will keep my appointment as promised, but he will have to work to land his blow against me. I’ll have my skill and my wit to defend me, as he had his magic.”

“Are you not afraid, Ser?”

“Afraid to fight? Never. It will be a fine duel, perhaps the finest of my life, and I am eager for it. It will be the battle that will make my legend, the kind that songs are sung of, and I look forward to that.”

Brienne said that she hoped to see it, and let the matter lie.

She did not see it, of course. They came to the Crossroads instead.

An inn stood at the crossroads, and cast-offs from the Riverlands sheltered there. Orphans and strays. Jaime and Brienne arrived only long enough to see a great many helpless faces before bandits came riding, meaning to plunder the kitchens, and carry off the women and children.

Jaime told the girls to run away as best they could, and aimed to do the same. If they were quick about it, the raiders couldn’t catch them all. 

Brienne, on the other hand, meant to defend them. They would not survive alone in the forest, she said, and if the bandits took away the food, the little ones would starve.  

“Better the bandits take them then, one or the other,” he said quickly, tugging at her. “But we had best retreat. We will not manage another fight in our condition, and not without more men.”

This was entirely reasonable, to him; better knights than he had often advised the same. There was no glory in failure, and certainly none in a pointless death in the middle of nowhere.

“No.” Brienne grew taller under his grasp, and would not be moved. “What good is a knight if he will not defend the innocent?”

“You stupid girl.” He holds her by the shoulders. “There is nothing you and I alone can do against so many men, no matter how skilled you are with a blade. They will surround us and cut us down -- it won’t even buy any time for your orphans. The best we can do is live to fight another day.”

“Someone must do something,” she says stubbornly. “I will not run.”

“Not to no avail! A battle is bravery, but this is suicide. It’s foolish, meaningless. It will make no difference whether you intervene or not - either way the women are taken and the children are killed. You will only add another body.”

“Someone must fight for them,” she insists. “Even if there is no hope. I am not enough, but if there is no one else, then it will be me.”

With that, she had shoved him in the larder, with a sudden and ferocious strength, and barred the door.

“Let me free, you stupid child!” He slammed his weight into the door sharply with his shoulder, enraged. 

He could hear her through the door, her voice steady and clear.

“Someone must fight for them. If there is no one else, then it will be me.”

“Damn you,” he swore at her. “Open the door and I will fight with you. Two against a dozen is better odds than one. Open the door!”

“You have an appointment to keep,” she said, and then there was silence.

Jaime could not see what happened after that, but he could hear it. He could hear the disdainful laughter of the brighands, and the drawing of many blades. He could hear for a time the blades clashing, and much shouting, and one unfamiliar cry of pain, and for a brief moment he was hopeful that she might prevail. She was a talented swordfighter. If they fought her one at a time he had no doubt she could best them.

He could tell, even without seeing, that they did not. The fight turned, became a slaughter. He heard a single cry that he knew in his gut was Brienne, taking a blow she would not survive. There came more noise then, more steel and blows, and then the screams of the women and children being dragged from the Inn. 

He screamed too. He wept, and clutched at his useless greatsword in a rage, wanting to throw himself through the door and impale himself on them like an arrow, these animals who would dare to touch a true knight. None of them seemed to hear him, or proved interested in the larder.

He didn’t know how long he had been left sitting there on the floor, with tears on his face and the earthy smell of raw meat weighting him down in the cool darkness. He waited for one of them, any of them, to remember him in the kitchens and come back, but no one did, and that was how he knew that no one remained. He wondered if he would be left there to rot. To moulder away with the bits of cheese and bread that remained there until he was nought but bones and a borrowed sword.

Eventually, quietly, a small boy with enormous eyes unbarred the door, having emerged from his hidey-hole only hours after the vicious intruders had left. Seeing Jaime huddled in the dark, he fled again and hid himself away in the Inn.

Jaime emerged into the twilight reluctantly. When he looked down the road, he imagined he could see them. The prisoners being taken away in the back of some wagon, women and children and women who were really children still, huddled together and weeping, down the long road and away. It was all for nothing, all of this. The brigands had taken them anyway.

There was no glory in this defeat. There was only a bloodstreaked trench in the mud where a terrible battle occurred, and in the middle of it a sad heap of metal. She was unrecognizable there, cut to pieces. Only a few strands of pale blonde hair remained to know her by.

The blacksmith’s armory had implements enough to break the cold ground. He dug a hole right beside the crossroads while the rain bucketed down on him. His chest hurt from the strangled sob caught in it. He put her in the hole and blanketed her again with the mud. If there had been flowers anywhere in that season in all the land he would have found them and laid them there above her grave. One day, he hoped, grass would grow. 

It was a meaningless gesture, and made no difference to the blue-eyed girl. But it meant something to Jaime.

It was not meaningless to them, the shivering children and the sad-faced women riding away in the wagons. They had looked back, mournfully, at the place in the road where her body lay. Looked back down the long road, into the distance, through the rain and the trees and the tramping feet of the bandits’ horses and out of sight, and they kept looking. They would look back long after the rain and wind had wiped away any traces of what had happened there. They would not forget. When the enemy came for them, someone took up a blade in their cause. Someone thought they mattered. Someone thought they were worth dying for. They did not face their fate alone. 

When evil comes, so long as at least one person stands against it, there is still some light left in the world. 

He left the shovel there in the road and went back to the Inn. It took some time to locate the boy and persuade him to come out of the trunk where he had hidden himself. He carried the boy with him North to the next village, where he left him wordlessly at the Sept, and turned North again, alone.

The rain never stops now. The ground is crusted with snow and the air is wet and mossy and somehow the rains never wash anything away. It only soaks into the dirt and grime and ice and blood and weighs it down. Makes it heavier. Makes everything impossibly heavy. 

There are more strange things that happen to him then: how the road curves and wanders beneath his feet and doubles him back to the start as though trying to throw him off his course. There were strange dreams, and visions, and he walks in a sort of fever. Nothing seems quite real after the Crossroads, nothing except the sword in his hand and his goal: the Green Chapel. He has an appointment to keep.

He grows only more determined to reach his destination. 

The nights grow colder. He wakes up shivering, rolling over, trying to wake the embers of the fire, and every time his eyes open they are looking for the foolish girl in her armor. They find only blackness and he remembers then the crossroads and the hole he dug besides the road.

He missed her terribly.

He misses her still, sitting here before the Green Knight. It is a persistent ache, a weight that grows heavier by the day. It makes him feel ancient to contemplate. He sounds like one of the rusty old knights who cluster around Robert, lamenting the roads not taken, the women they might have settled down with. Lost loves. It has been only days and yet it seems like years ago, and a road already overgrown and impassable. He can see it already, the enormity of his mistake. His life might have become something entirely different, improbably better. The opportunity came to him, and he wasted it. 

Brienne. The Maiden Knight. She could have been his lady love and his brother-at-arms all at once. Would anything have been so perfectly suited to him as that? He will never find her like again, and even if he did he would not want it; he will only want her, for the rest of his life. 

Jaime muses over these memories through the hours. The journey, the past, the world around him. Time seems to settle into a hazy blur.

The sun rises slowly, impossibly slowly. He cannot see it past the trees, but the world gradually brightens, with gentle insistence. The greens grow ever more lush and verdant all around him. The wall where the Green Knight stands turns from grim grey to a lively grass color, the dark ivy wound around in loops that seem to form an altar of deep mossy overgrowth around the still and sleeping form of the Knight.

His hands worry at the hilt of the greatsword that he had come to return.  He might leave the blade on the altar and go. Would that fulfill his word? 

What did Jaime do with his famous sword, during the year he had it? Only held it aloft for others to see. Used it to threaten, and to cajole. Boasted of it to other lords. But the only time he had just cause to draw it he had chosen to retreat instead, and in doing lost the only thing of any value he had ever found. 

If only he had gone with her. Agreed right at the first, without hesitation. If he had stood at her side it might have ended differently. One had no chance, but two, perhaps, might have survived. He might have taken her with him to the Green Chapel. He might have taken her home to the King. He might have seen her made a knight, and stood proudly beside her at the king’s table. The tales he might have made with her, he would be proud to tell.

The Knight’s form comes into clearer and clearer relief: looming over him, impossibly tall, improbably wide. 

Jaime knows with cold certainty that the Knight is going to wake very soon. As the light grows stronger, the Green Chapel is waking around him with a thousand tiny movements. He can almost make out the subtle sound of leaves uncurling to the sun, and worms crawling in the earth.

The sword, Oathkeeper, quivers in his hands, as though outraged. How did he dare to carry that blade to this place intending to lie? To break his promise? More and more he thinks he did not. He came here for something else entirely. 

Jaime finds, for the first time that he can remember, his hands are trembling. It is one thing to go to battle, but another entirely to go to an execution. His heart beats in his ears with a deep drumbeat of doom... doom... doom...

He’s not here to fight a duel, is he? What, then, is he here for?

Glory? Judgement? Mercy? Absolution? 

Or only the cold, mechanical means of his inevitable end? 

Was all this journey only for that? Is he truly here only to get a blade through his chest? And if so, might it be worth his while? After all, is there any better way for a knight to die? Will it not be a fitting end to his legend?

But he isn’t ready to die. Not willingly. Not without redeeming his honor, making something of himself. If he had another year… but would he do any more with that than he had the last? Than he has with all of the years thus far? Is there any amount of time that would make any more of himself than he has already?

The time he needed was these weeks on the road with Brienne. That showed him what kind of man he’d like to be. But he failed her when it mattered most. Perhaps he should be judged for that. Not a year from now, nor twenty. Today.

The sun rises higher in the sky, and paints the Green Chapel gold. The air warms, and birdsong calls to him on the breeze. The day is relentlessly pleasant, with a promise of endless more such days to follow. A bittersweet longing fills him. It has never seemed half so lovely to be alive as it does in this beautiful place. If only he could have brought her here.

I will be brave, he says to himself. Like Brienne.

All at once there is a great creaking sound of wood bending and tearing, and when Jaime looks up the green altar is moving. Green leaves tremble and wave purposefully, and twigs and small branches snap and fall away to rest in the dirt below. The trunk of the altar pulls itself free, excavates itself from the enclosure in the leaves and branches. Limbs pull free, and something nearly human rises out of the green, the bark of its skin glistening, newborn.

The Green Knight is standing.

Jaime looks up, and up, and up, from where he sits on the mossy floor of the green chapel, and his hand grips the hilt of his sword.

He is ready to fight, by instinct, and to flee, by sudden impulse. He is afraid, he realizes, afraid in a way he has never been before. There is more than a blow to the heart to fear here. There is the fate of his soul, which is suddenly entirely in question. Before his journey he had no doubt of his own worth as a knight, and now he is just as certain in the opposite direction. Is he worthy? He is not. He is not. 

Slowly, he stands. The sun shines down on him through the same corridor in the trees where he had watched the stars the night previous, and its warmth is a rebuke; why should the sun shine upon one such as him? He is the golden knight no more. He is only a man, a man with a sword that does not belong to him. 

His eyes raise last of all. 

Jaime finds through the golden light the Green Knight’s face. The eyes first, through a thin bloom of leaves and moss, and then the nose, the jawline. He has never seen it so clearly before, not even when he had stabbed her through the heart. With slow realization his eyes travel down and up again, taking in the shape of his host, and her nature.

The Green Knight is a woman? Why didn’t he realize it before?

It seems only too clear now. The slight narrowing of the waist and wrists, and in the face… not a pretty face, but undeniably feminine. Full lips, round cheeks, and the eyes...

Blue eyes. Beautiful blue, sad blue, noble and sorry. The lost blue of long-forgotten clear skies. 

When he sees them his hands stop shaking. All is well. His grand sword slips from his fingers and settles softly in the grass, sinks gently into the ground, is welcomed.

“It’s you,” he says. “I’m glad it’s you.”

The girl from the Crossroads is standing before him. 

He doesn’t understand how it is possible. Was she always the Knight? Was all an illusion? Was the Knight in disguise when he met her, or was the Knight once that girl? But it doesn’t matter. Whoever she is, she is here now, and it is good and right that this happen to him. 

Her voice is low and rusty, like a hinge that has not moved in many years, and slow in its opening.

“You... kept... our appointment,” the Knight creaks.

His mouth is gone dry. “One year hence. You gave me time enough. And so I am here.” 

He thinks he sees her smile, faintly. With the crackling sound of breaking branches, the Knight gestures to his feet.

“You... dropped your sword... my Lord.” Ser Jaime glances down at Oathkeeper, already disappearing beneath the twining vines on the forest floor. “Is it not time... for our blades to cross? A duel to make your legend?”

“I made you a promise,” he says faintly, and puts a hand over his unguarded heart. “It seems my word is all I have, and if it means nothing to anyone else, it means something to me.”

She smiles. An oaken hand reaches out and touches him on the face, gently. “My brave knight.”

Her eyes are the bluest skies he has ever seen. He is not afraid. Not anymore.

“Are you ready?” she asks him, still stroking his cheek.

“Yes.” He is eager for it now. “Strike your blow.”

“Straight through the heart,” she agrees. Then she reaches out with her other hand to touch the other side of his face.

She kisses him.

[ashlynniis-bracketeers]

Pestigor Doodle {Warhammer}

Don't mind me, just posting an interpretation of a Chaos-born Pestigor Beastman that I drew last night. BEST VIEWED ON A DARK BACKGROUND.

You don't really get any descriptions of Nurgle-aligned Beastmen outside of just being "Beastmen, but diseased", let alone directly Chaos-born Nurgle Beastmen. I'm taking into account both 40k (which tends to push Beastmen to the wayside unless they're Tzaangors lmao) and Fantasy/AoS (which is where the bulk of Beastmen lore comes from), so I decided to have some extra free-rein with this design with what design notes are commonly found with Nurgle.

With what I know: Khorne-born Beastmen, i.e. "Bloodgors" (or as I call them, "Sangors" because "Bloodgor" is a clumsy mouthful and Khorne originally wanted Sanguinius and his boys first lmao), have the faces of dogs and either have red, black-and-red, or brassy pelts; Tzeentch-born Tzaangors have the faces of birds (and occasionally bird-like feet as opposed to hooves) and a wide variance in colors and feathers; and Slaanesh-born Slaangors have the faces of cows, goats, and deer and tend to have green eyes. Then there's Nurgle-born Beastmen, which... we know nothing about outside of them commonly having only a single horn. With Nurgle's tendency towards antlers, we can assume deer or moose, but those are not Beastmen variants we have ever seen, nor are they something associated with Nurgle.

Nurgle forces are shambling, diseased things inured to pain, though whether it manifests as a full-body blubbery bloat or twiggy gauntness varies. They tend towards wearing green colors or just being colored some form of green, though it is often hidden under layers of disgusting grime and/or boils and rashes, or ripped open in the form of various exposed wounds, and they adore bone-like colors, slime, and parasites. Misshapen horns and antlers are common on both the head and as cancerous growths on other parts of the body, and being either cyclopean or have three eyes in the shape of their god's symbol. Tentacles are common, most often replacing a limb like an arm. Arthropod parasites are a common motif: The steed-beast of Nurgle is the four-winged Rot Fly, and his champion Typhus the Traveller is a walking host to the swarming Destroyer Hive.

Put that together and I ended up with this: Gaunt with a rot-bloated belly, a green pelt stained with blood, right arm replaced with a parasite-worm as a tentacle arm (that also has its own hyperparasites~), a gnarled antler on a three-eyed bug-head. We have bird heads with Tzaangors, so why not bug heads? More than just mammals.

I hope you like it!

[morklagt]

Band: Agalloch Album: Pale Folklore Released: 1999 Country: USA Genre: Atmospheric black metal, folk metal

Tracklist:

1. She Painted Fire Across the Skyline Part 1 2. She Painted Fire Across the Skyline Part 2 3. She Painted Fire Across the Skyline Part 3 4. The Misshapen Steed 5. Hallways of Enchanted Ebony 6. Dead Winter Days 7. As Embers Dress the Sky 8. The Melancholy Spirit

Agalloch's debut album marks the beginning of their signature blend of black metal, doom, and folk that would come to define their later releases, and subsequently have a profound impact on the Pacific Northwest metal scene and beyond. The passages of howling wind are evocative and add so much to the cold and eerie atmosphere. Perfect for long walks in the snowy woods.

Favorite tracks: Hallways of Enchanted Ebony, The Melancholy Spirit

[gallowsbough]

When the mist began to descend, Yggdrasil had been reclining in a bifurcation with legs propped up, catatonically staring up through the Mistwood canopy. She didn’t think much of it at first; it’s always foggy here. But having attuned to nothing but the wind’s whistling, insects buzzing, and birds calling, Yggdrasil’s ears perk up at other sounds breaking this humdrum. 

A river. Hastened footsteps. Metal screeching against metal. Whispering. Shouting. The slow-encroaching ocean. She turns her head languorously, as though to tune this onslaught of noise. 

The mist hangs heavy before her that she can scarcely see. Yet vivid still are those scrambling steps tripping through the underbrush, their hand batting away a low hanging branch. Farther, the helpless spasm of someone’s leg bracing against their opponent’s strength, only to crumble under its weight. Farther still, someone’s stolid heartbeat, traveling in waves from where they’ve laid a gentle hand on a trunk. With the land as her eyes and ears, she grasps all of this and infinitely more.

So taken by this, Yggdrasil hardly notices that she’s begun to unravel. As though pushed and pulled in all directions at once, some of her body diffuses into the air, little luminous motes suspended like poplar fluff refusing to be blown away— and other parts rapidly hardening until so brittle that it sloughs off into silt that falls down at the slightest movement. Her primal core flares with pain, and burns outward when she curls herself smaller, fighting to keep pieces of herself from floating away, all the while flooded by so much sensory information that she knows none of it. 

A low nicker from below pierces the extrasensory din. 

The mist had seemingly condensed into a dark lake, encircling her perch.  Yggdrasil spies an enormous horse drinking from that pool, and a figure dwarfed in comparison, leisurely pressed against its flank. A decrepit man, whose pale hair appears spun from the mist itself. 

It would be dangerous to venture through the woods alone, and her newfound sensitivity speaks to that as the reverberations of battle travel to her; the urgency of which, faced by these two strange figures, has faded. Yggdrasil moves to greet them, that they might travel together— but as if her gaze has pricked the old man, he leaps onto his horse with the athleticism of someone decades younger. They’re off like a shot.

Yggdrasil tumbles down after them, barely catching herself from impacting into the ground. It is a terribly strange feeling, she decides, that having left the crook of that tree, the muddy of information that had painfully convulsed all around had become wholly transparent. She does not remember ever seeing quite like this. At this juncture, as she flies after that old rider, she thinks that she has never truly seen before.  

Heedless of her deteriorating form, she chases and chases after that horse as until she’s hardly anything but a cloud of luminous pinpricks and misshapen lump of silt. So too does she herself begin to scatter. Reduced to nothing past this gaseous receptacle teeming with knowledge. 

She is not merely chasing them anymore; she is the the soil compacted under furious hooves, the fronds that brush against their limbs, and the low branches that whip across their eyes. The purpose of her giving chase in the first place is lost, as they run and run and run, aimless and urging onward ever faster. They’ve come full circle back to that lake tree, as the old rider urges his steed to pick up speed and— 

The leap is so great that Yggdrasil could believe they’d sprout wings— but they inevitably fall, and their monstrous forms, meeting water, turn to pale mist. They crash like smoke onto that darkened mirror, without leaving so much as a ripple in the water.

She dimly feels a sense of loss. But that, too, is soon swept away as their residual smoke gradually smooths and becomes uniform with the mist that started this all. 

event drabble  ❀  pt. 1 of 2

[thatdreadbitch]

@dadrunkwriting

@tsuraiwrites

Character: Ciara Mahariel

Setting: Somewhere in the Frostbacks, 1 year after the Battle of Denerim

Pairing: Ciara MaharielxTamlen

Word Count: 309

~

Ciara carefully dismounted her horse just within sight of the spot where the sword still stuck out of the ground, its dented, misshapen handle catching spec of soft white snow on the hilt. The crunch of snow beneath her feet the only sound she heard as she carefully walked towards it, the ground around it still blackened with death. “I promised I would return.” She said, coming to a stop when she stood in front of the sword, taking a single purple lily out of the pocket of her cloak and laying it at the base of the blade, watching as the vile blackness of the tainted ground soaked into it and caused it to wilt. “The ground still bears the taint, once the ground has life again, I will give you a proper funeral.” She placed a hand on the hilt, running her fingers over the engravings of her gift to him. A lump formed in her throat. If only I could have saved you. “I shall see you again in the Beyond. Until that day, I shall weather the storm before me. I shall endure as our clan always has in the face of such darkness and uncertainty.” Snow began to pile onto the ground at her feet as the wind grew harsher. The cold bit at her face as she looked at the ring on her left hand, two years ago she would have never imagined this would be her life. But she was determined to make the most of what was left.

The horse whinnied in the background, snapping the warden out of her thoughts. Ciara lifted her hand from the sword and put her hood up once more as she returned to her steed. Giving one last glance back as the wind began to pick up before heading back onto the path to Amaranthine.

[verkja]

Shuffle your favorite playlist and post the first five songs that come up. Then copy/paste this ask to your favorite mutuals. 🎶🎧💜

-@cryptidwritings

Thanks for the ask! Well - message. Game. Whatever these things are. They're fun, anyway. :)

The Misshapen Steed by Agalloch

Harbinger of a Greater Winter by Nest

Beneath the Burning Tree by Funeral for a Friend

Safe in Beregost from the Baldur's Gate soundtrack (honestly shocked these aren't all game soundtrack pieces)

O Quanta Qualia by Azam Ali