#with ronan he had an easy ride and endless healing

[jacqcrisis]

My favorite part of this game is when Astarion is just hanging out in a convo with another character.

Look at him. We just beat Grym and then trekked all the way back to the arcane tower for gods' know why. He's at half health. Lae'zel is talking about cutting off body parts again. My man is so ready to toss himself off the tower to get a nap, it's written all over his face.

[randykorn]

2019 Writing Roundup

Under the cut because I have never been succinct in my life and this is no exception

JANUARY: Welcome to Aglionby

“Okay, okay,” Maura said, holding up her hands for peace, swinging her gaze between Blue and Gansey.  “We don’t know everything-“

“We hardly know anything, really-“ Persephone interjected.

“But I will tell you what we do know.  This boy is on a quest for a lost king.  This boy is touched by death.  This boy will either save this town, or doom it.  And you, Blue, are going to help him do it.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“It means that there’s a prophecy,” Maura said, “that we’ve been monitoring for quite some time now.  It means that the cards say that you’re both at the heart of it.  It means that you’re both going to face danger and decisions that will change you forever.”

“It means that it’s starting,” Persephone said with a laugh that struck Gansey like lightning.  “It’s finally starting.”

FEBRUARY: Welcome to Aglionby

Slowly, he unfolded the letter, already dreading what he’d find.

Henry Cheng called.  Went to Hirshhorn.  Be back soon.  Safe dreams.  -Gansey

The crumpled letter was hitting the opposite wall before Ronan even realized what he’d read.

This close to the full moon, Hirshhorn would be an endless maze, easy to enter but impossible to leave.  And that wasn’t even accounting for the line’s gathering energy.  Gansey would be in there alone, without Ronan to guide him and keep him safe by navigating the fluctuating magic.  But Gansey wasn’t alone, was he?  No, he had-

“Henry Cheng,” he hissed.

Henry Cheng, who modeled for Ronan’s art classes and gently kissed him in empty hallways, never forcing Ronan to speak, instead trusting him to act. Henry Cheng, earning Ronan’s voice and truths and fears when he was drunk enough to give them.  Henry Cheng, who promised something softer than Kavinsky, but just as exciting, and likely more real.

Henry Cheng, who seemed to be involved in this fucking prophecy.

MARCH: Welcome to Aglionby

“What in the nine heavens is that?” Henry asked, pressing against Ronan’s seat to get a better view.

Something moved in Gansey’s peripheral vision, in front of the car.  Something large and white and glowing.

“That,” Adam said quietly, sounding just as shaken as Gansey felt, “is The Beast.”

Gansey whipped back around so fast he felt the Camaro shake.  Standing directly in front of the Pig was the largest deer he had ever seen.  Easily twenty feet tall, the sight of it made his stomach drop out, equal parts fear and awe.  It was just as Adam said - glowing white fur woven from moonlight, with a subtle sheen of blue.  Small, silver butterflies fluttered around it, dancing in its glow. Moss and vines draped elegantly between its antlers, forming a natural crown of delicate, pale blooming flowers.

The Beast suddenly struck him as a wholly inaccurate name.  It was far too crude, too rough, too lacking for such a magnificent creature.  What stood in front of them contained all the delicacy of the moon and all the strength of the sun.  The Beast simply didn’t come close to capturing it.

It looked at him, stark white eyes meeting his through the windshield, and Gansey found that he couldn’t breathe.  Its gaze bored into him, looking far past his physical appearance.  Gansey felt a shiver run through his mind, his soul, through everything he was and everything he would ever be.  He felt himself pulled into that all-encompassing white expanse as it read him, judged him, measured him against what he needed to accomplish.  For the moment he felt blank, peaceful, and if he hadn’t known better, he would have thought that this soft, floating space within himself was akin to death.

APRIL: Welcome to Aglionby

“I’ll do it,” Adam said, standing up and turning toward The Beast.  “I’ll do it, if you’ll have me.  If you’ll keep him alive.”

He couldn’t change the past, couldn’t help his younger self when no one else would, but maybe, just maybe, he could help this boy here, now, right in front of him.  Maybe he could manage to be what his younger self had always needed, by being what this boy needed now.

Adam climbed up onto the stump, standing tall as the wind whipped and swirled around him.  He still had to look up to meet The Beast’s eyes, but at least they were on more even ground, now.  The boy shook beneath him, beside him, within him, and Adam hoped he was making the right choice.

“Well?” he asked, staring upward with a confidence he didn’t really feel, spreading his arms to the sides.  Open.  Vulnerable.  “Will I do?”

Yes.

MAY: TRC Rewrite (unpublished)

Adam was quiet for a while, slowly unwinding his anger as his eyes searched Gansey for some unknowable quality.  Gansey, for his part, let himself be studied in silence.  

This was the moment he had told Ronan about Glendower - about the truth and the pain and the magic - but reversed.  Inverted, a mirror reflected out.  He had watched Ronan like Adam was watching him now, carefully cataloguing everything he knew of his friend and weighing him against a lifelong desire to be believed.  To be known.

He could feel a secret rising up in the air, and he hardly dared to breathe lest he scare it away.

Trust me, his mind whispered.  Trust me like I trust you.

JUNE: TRC Rewrite (unpublished)

For an instant, Ronan imagined the scene.  Gansey waking to find Ronan missing, sighing to himself as he pulled on days-old clothing and grabbed the keys to the dreadful Suburban.  Gansey wandering the streets, worry squirming in his gut, holding off on calling the others - but only just.  Gansey finally making his way to the church as the dawn inched across the sky.  Gansey seeing the blood spattered across the steps, already turning brown, before noticing Ronan’s broken body crumpled on the ground.

For an instant, Ronan wondered if the Grey Man would be smart enough to make it look like a suicide.  

For an instant, Ronan wondered if Gansey would believe that.

Of course he would.  A part of Gansey was always braced for the worst Ronan had to offer, even as he yearned to believe that Ronan was better, now. Ronan was starting to believe that “better” was a myth, that healing was an unattainable platitude forced upon grieving teenagers that no one knew how to handle.

Did he still want to die?  

Sometimes.

Did he want to die under the hands of the same man who had murdered his father?

Fuck.  No.

JULY: TRC Rewrite (unpublished)

A flash of darkness surged out of the trees, landing on top of his car with enough force to dent the roof inward.  Adam cursed as the back wheels buckled and skid sideways, sending the car into a wild tailspin.  He wrestled for control as an inhuman screech scraped against his ears, calling for blood and destruction.  Gleaming claws pressed against the windshield, and Adam screwed his eyes shut as glass exploded inward, several large shards shattering into dust as they hit his skin.  

Cabeswater, protecting him.

But from what?

Adam blinked upward, just long enough to catch a glimpse of an amorphous dark shape against the swirling vortex outside the car, everything in shadow except for the small details.  The teeth glinting in the shuttering light of his dashboard. The claws curling around the space where his windshield had just been, piercing the underside of the roof.  The six eyes glowing like ravenous fire, ready to swallow him whole.

The trees, he thought wildly, abandoning the steering wheel entirely to brace his head with both arms.  I’m going to hit the-

AUGUST: Welcome to Aglionby (unpublished)

There was no ground, no sky, no way to orient himself as he fought his way through the smoke, the darkness, the voices that rolled around him, over him, through him.  His body felt heavy, sluggish, each small movement taking more energy than he was sure he had.

He lifted his hand to his face, knowing it wasn’t the first time he’d done this, either.  The memories fell into place in his mind, identical dominos all collapsing into a single, present moment of uncertain fear.

He was fading.

His skin was transparent; wispy and thin, layered over his bones like an indistinct x-ray.  The bones themselves gave off the faintest glow, making it easier to pick out the tiny veins and arteries that curled through him, rivers that wound their way through the valleys and peaks of his physiology.

This would be great for anatomy class.  The thought startled a desperate, panicked laugh out of him that faded within seconds, and he was left with a terribly hollow feeling.  Something told him he wouldn’t be going back to anatomy class for quite some time.

Noah pulled his hand to his chest, feeling the frantic beat pulsing through him, steadying some wordless fear within him.

Alive.

SEPTEMBER: TRC Rewrite (unpublished)

Adam remembered carefully researching the cheapest way to get to New York, remembered thinking that it would be easy to get lost in the crowd of the city. He remembered slowly filling his backpack with clothes and snacks over several weeks, remembered shoving in his toiletries in the panicked silence of that final night.  He remembered sneaking into his parents’ room and stealing the credit card out of Dad’s wallet.  He remembered biking to the nearest gas station and buying a bag of nuts so he could get enough cash back to fund his trip.

He remembered the terror of the bus ride.  The freedom.  The hope.

He remembered New York, a blurred haze of uncaring crowds and dirty sidewalks.  He’d been one face among millions, impossible to notice, impossible to find.  The sudden release from his life - from what it meant to be Adam - had completely overwhelmed him, and he’d spent most of the first day squatting in a back alley next to a dumpster, struggling to breathe through his decision.  The second day he’d managed to find his way to the library and began the process of figuring out how to live on his own at fourteen without his father finding him.  The third day, someone far more desperate than him had stolen everything he had while he slept in a park, including Dad’s very traceable credit card.  The forth day, the police picked him up and dropped him into Officer Soltero’s sympathetic but useless hands.

OCTOBER: Welcome to Aglionby (unpublished)

Now it was Adam’s turn to look pained.  “I don’t care to hear his tragic backstory.”

“I think it’s related to the ley line,” Gansey said.  “Ley lines.”

Adam paused.  “You didn’t know, did you.  That there were two.”  Gansey shook his head, his perfect lips pulling into a frown.  “Ronan did.”

“I know.  Ronan seems to know quite a bit more than he ever let on.”

“Why didn’t he tell you?  Haven’t you been poking around here for a while with him?”

“Years,” Gansey whispered, his eyes somewhere far away from here, surrounded by memories that Adam couldn’t reach, emotions that he couldn’t fully see.  “But I’m sure he had his reasons.”

Adam couldn’t imagine how it would feel to be searching for something for years, only to find out that your best friend and partner in magic had held the vital clue all along.  Ronan had been by Gansey’s side for every step of the way, as far as Adam could tell, and he’d still chosen not to mention his obvious connection with magic, with the lines.  He’d chosen to keep Gansey searching in the dark while he’d held the light.  Adam couldn’t imagine the anger he would have felt.  Or, he could, which was why Gansey’s utter lack of animosity was both perplexing and alarming.  Adam didn’t trust silence.  Stillness.  Not when there was reason for it to break.

“I’m sure he didn’t,” he said instead.

“No offense, Adam, but you don’t know him very well.”

“No,” he agreed.  “And I don’t care to.”

NOVEMBER: Carry On Rewrite (unpublished)

If I don’t kill Baz, he will kill me.

I’ve always known this.  It’s been the foundational fact of our relationship, the thing that’s driven us to become mortal enemies for the past seven years.  It’s why he and his family have tried to kill me so many times.  It’s why I hate him.

It’s easier to kill someone you hate, especially if that someone is trying to kill you.

I shift my sword into a two-handed grip.

If I don’t kill Baz, he will kill me.

He lunges for me, bloodied hands reaching for my face, fangs reaching for my neck, eyes swirling with a desperate, wild hunger that will only be sated by my blood, my death.

I don’t think I hate Baz.

I don’t think I want to kill him, either.

I don’t think I ever have.

I drop my sword, feeling it vanish - and with it, any real chance of killing the bloodthirsty vampire in front of me.  Feral, ruthless, deadly.  Broken, starving, terrified.

I’d rather save him than hurt him.

I hope I haven’t made a mistake.

DECEMBER: TRC Rewrite (unpublished)

Noah drew close to the girl for the first time in seven years.

It’s starting.

She sat on a crumbling stone wall, tapping her pen against the notebook open in her lap, diligently scribbling names down as the woman called them out. Later, her family would contact their customers if their names appeared, giving them time to get their affairs in order.  It was a macabre job, but Noah didn’t mind.  Death came for them all, and perhaps it was best to be prepared.

He drew even closer, leaning over to read the names scrawled into the book. He wondered if his own name was there, pages and pages back, or if his spirt had failed to walk the line all those years ago.  He was stuck, after all.  The normal rules didn’t seem to apply to him.

Her hand jingled pleasantly as it slid across the page, the multitude of bracelets tinkling like bells in the night.  He looked up into her face as she frowned down at the page, a mixture of frustration and wonder woven into the slant of her lips, begging to be wiped away with a quick joke or a quicker kiss.  Her hair was pulled into a dozen pigtails with a dozen mismatched hair clips, the variety of spikes making her look like a hedgehog.  Noah fondly brushed his fingers against it, smiling at the way the tight, prickly curls tickled his palm.  He had always enjoyed this, even if this was the first time he’d done it.