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duskodair · 3 years

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further Noel lore, by popular demand (with the old bc why not)

The one constant in her life has always been him. One of them was born first, but they're not sure which. Names don't stick to them. Dozens of monikers have come and passed them by. They barely use names for one another, so it doesn't matter. They know vaguely which order the children they might have once been were born and named, but neither of them actually know to which of them each name belongs.

They come to the orphanage as a pair of red headed infants, identical and inseparable. Among the other children, they are easily lost in the muddle. They grow up holding hands and answer to both names. They come to answer to others as well, as staff members forget and rename them from the pool of other children.

The orphanage is a loveless place. They learn of the distant love of a God who has forsaken them from nuns who have no time for them. They learn to walk holding hands and make their own language to whisper the secrets they learn from watching places that the convent do not want them to see.

The nuns can't keep the right names pinned to the right child and by the time they leave the orphanage, their papers are muddled and merged, inseparable in their scarcity. At fourteen, they do honest work for a few months, pulling in a pitiful wage between them. They answer to the names that the nuns told them they were given as decide that it's not for them.

Knowing their letters, at least, gets them into interesting places. Gossip slips by them. They come home with stories and whispers of crimes committed in distant towns. There's nothing truly behind it, but it intrigues them.

They leave the town they were raised in with the collection money for the convent's charity children. They never saw any of it whilst they were there, so they reckon it's theirs to take.

They do it sensible, though, no grand heist and sudden exit. One day two nobodies walk the streets and the next they are gone, notice properly given and a forwarding address passed along to those it may concern. Perhaps they go where they say they are going, perhaps they do not. The convent only realises the theft far later than it could be solved. And by that point, they are dust on the plains.

'New town, new names' is their policy. It gives them something to do on their journeys. Their childhood gives them a wealth of options as they work their way through the Good Book. She chars for a family as Leah, subtly learning to mimic the habits of those born into money as she beats dust out of the curtains. As Mary she is a gentle lady, down on her luck, willing to watch the children.

She never does a con without him. It starts with petty theft, enough to tide them over. But they grow confident as the years pass, and still the sheriffs fail to put out a bounty for names they've left behind.

Both of them claim to do the most work in their enterprise. She scoffs and says he's far too distracted by pretty stable boys and saloon lasses for his case to be true. He argues that she's too busy staring at her own reflection in things to possibly be doing the most work.

She kicks him, out of principle, before grinning. They're nearly done with this town. Regretfully, they're about to have a family emergency and the gentle seamstress' assistant and the errand boy will have to leave. It will be a while before anybody notices that old Mr McCoy hasn't been seen in a while. Well, perhaps the young ladies he used to shout at might notice, but the twins don't think they'll miss him.

Noel swings out her legs one last time before depositing them in Jonah's lap. She leans back as she considers the best way for Miss Miranda DuVal to break her incoming family crisis to her employer to potentially receive offerings of sympathy. In the last town she'd received a lovely pair of hand me down boots. She's hoping to do much better here, and well, there's some lovely stuff in the Atkinsons' unpaid tab.

The breeze picks up a little. Nothing like a peaceful walk and a casual picnic to enjoy their last day in this town. She looks away from the disappointing straggle of houses that make up the town, towards her brother. He's lying down in the prairie grass, staring up at the passing clouds. She thinks he's probably thinking about a barmaid again. He's got that look on his face.

She rips up a bit of grass and tosses it at him, 'keep your raunchy thoughts off your face. I don't want to know'

He tosses the grass back at her, 'I can do what I please. It's my own bleedin face'

With that, he rises, pushing her legs from his lap.

'Now come along, sister dearest, I'm sure we are missed. I must see if Old Man Thomas needs any more of those crates lifting, and I'm sure you have embroidery to do'

She lets him read her disdain before rising and schooling her features into the amiable Miss DuVal. 'Of course, brother, shall we go, then?'

She takes his arm and they head back to finish the performance before the appointed hour of departure. They make their arrangements and say their goodbyes. Jonah receives his kisses and Noel her tea gown.

On the road they pick new names, write a new story. When she stumbles in a gopher hole, he christens her Grace. She makes a hand gesture that the nuns certainly would not have approved of and accepts the name.

Town after town they pass through, weaving their way West, across the country. Their cons become bigger and grander and their budget grows.

For all their griping, they make an excellent team, she thinks, as he combs out her hair for her next performance. Their plan is to land a quiet jackpot in the town of Danser. It's been in their sights for a while, a little passing place, irrelevant. Perfect.

They have a few weeks to go before they arrive, appearances to make along the road. They call themselves Underwood for the branch that Jonah stumbles into as he stumbles around their camp after dark. They turn the branch into a lumber business and laud their wealth to one another.

Noel laughs into the fire as she weaves stories of their loving Papa, whose only desire in life is to see his daughter married off to a reputable man. Jonah grins as he fleshes out the tragedy of their gentle mother, taken too soon.

At least, Noel thinks, she won't have to wear the fashion of a widow too long, as Jonah will, of course, have to return her to the loving safety of her father, if there is nobody left in Danser to provide. She checks the Derringer strapped to her thigh and consigns her new life story to memory. Yes, she thinks, Noel will work as a name for a while.

______

Danser is quiet the day the Underwoods ride into town. On the surface, they bring little change, just a business deal and a wife for the wealthy Mr Tobias Lloyd. Noel rides into town as a bartering token for her family's lumber business, a symbol of an alliance sealed.

Jonah Underwood brings her into town, red hair tousled in the wind as the twins drive, laughing, down the dust scattered road. He's going to stay in Danser as she gets settled.

He'll probably stay longer than expected, loath to leave her. They've never been more than a week apart throughout their short lives. Where she goes, he follows, but this time, he cannot.

Noel is prepared, she thinks, for a husband. Her trunk is packed with all her worldly possessions and the wood of the carriage is steady under her hands.

The town spreads before her, barely a stopping point out from the city. Home, it seems, now. She's a long way from Tennessee. She's a long way from their smaller cons. Jonah meets her eyes. They're ready.

Her fingers dust over the derringer that she carries strapped to her thigh. She smiles. The plan is simple. She can do it. Jonah guides the horses forward into town, nodding to the old man on his stoop outside the general store, before heading to the Emerald Hotel.

She holds her head high as Jonah makes arrangements. The role is easy, she smiles and nods and watches. Noel is quiet and demure, but ever watchful, cataloguing her new neighbours. She plays naive, batting doe eyes at passers by, luring people in to speak with them.

They spend a day getting settled, researching, making appearances. They go to church, make nice. They start tabs and pay them off, respectable like, with the money of dead men. They find out about Mr Lloyd. He's wealthy and removed, just their type. His employees dislike him, after a few drinks, and when Jonah reports back, so does she.

She is all smiles, however, when Jonah presents her with promises of lumber money. She twirls the loose curls that soften her cheeks around a finger, and in that motion, she has him. Soon the hair around her finger becomes a ring and she becomes a wife.

Tobias Lloyd is, fundamentally, a disappointing husband. Everything he tries to teach her, she already knows, and quite frankly, he's barely competent. He tries to run her in circles but his fall short of the ones she's running around him.

Jonah rides between Danser and the city, keeping the financial side of the con running as Noel pushes her hands into the running of the household. She takes control, bringing home arsenic for cleaning and for rats.

She makes appearances with her husband in the Emerald Hotel, a doting wife out for coffee. She wears fine gowns and resists gossip, staying upstanding, but never cold. She likes to think that she's making her mark in the town, becoming known. If she is, she's doing her job properly, settling her character witnesses.

Everything is going perfectly until it isn't. Jonah slips. Noel doesn't even discover how until it is too late and the gunfight is lost and Jonah is bleeding out in her arms, his tab with God unsettled and their victory bleeding away.

She buries him in the churchyard, demure and sweet, watching the stone with the wrong name mark her brother's place. Later, she rides out and screams, hands still stained red with his blood. She remembers his unsettled tab and sets out to match it, so that one day she can join him once more.

She returns to town and puts on her gloves. Tobias loves her, she is the perfect wife, so attentive to his bouts of illness and so concerned.

Noel forms the perfect cover, she plays her part perfectly. With a little sacrifice, she covers for Jonah's slip. She helps collect funds for the new church floor, embroidering kerchiefs with dainty patterns for the pastor to sell. The new pastor admires her faith, he smiles and says one day she'll see heaven. She does her best to ensure that won't be so.

Tobias grows sicker and sicker and Noel worries more and more. At least, in public. Old Man German at the store grows tired of her asking after medicine. There is never any coming in.

Calling for the Doc is a risk, but a necessary one. Fortunately, it pays off, he patiently assures her that he's not a doctor and he cannot cure her husband. He's the best Danser has, however, and all her husband will see. She grows fond of him on his visits, another respectable alibi and connection for when she is alone.

She forges ties and prepares for widowhood. She ties her hair up neat and slips into the saloon instead of the hotel on a Friday afternoon, seeking the Doc, looking to keep herself in his mind. She's going to need a new husband soon, anyway, and it's always a good idea to plan ahead.

#chill to reblog #a town called danser #noel #jonah

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 5 years

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Animorphs in Zombie Apocalypse AU?

• It’s been seven years since the end of the war. Three years since the Animorphs — all six of them — stumbled off of the Rachel on its return, over two dozen ex-yeerk-hosts in tow. It’s beginning to feel like this peace might last.

• Rachel’s in the middle of a business lunch when the call comes in. Her line of fragrances (“Animal Essence by Rachel Berenson: Let out your wild side”) has performed pretty well this quarter. But there are always marketing campaigns to manage and deals to sign, which is why she and her PR manager Linda are in a trendy Brooklyn café when the phone in her purse buzzes.

Jake tries to sound calm, as he tells her that they’re being called in. Because it’s Jake, he almost succeeds. No details yet, he says, just a behavior-altering pathogen. Possibly extraterrestrial origin.

Around her, the room has gone cold and strange and far away. How silly the delicate spread of quinoa and avocado on her plate appears now, how pointless the fan of business cards in her hand and manicure on her nails.

“My cousin,” she says, and then “family emergency,” and then “I have to go.”

• Marco’s head lifts when the din of the crowd goes quiet ahead of him, scanning automatically for trouble. Jordan Berenson is cutting through the crowd on the dance floor. She’s utterly out of place in her full business suit amidst the night club’s flash and camp, her straight posture bizarre among the half-naked slouch of bodies that surrounds her.

“Hey there, G-woman!” Marco calls over the music.

“She’s a fed?” his security guard Rena asks sharply, glancing at the line of cocaine clearly visible on the nearest end table.

Marco waves Rena away. “She’s family.”

He sees Jordan absorb the label with no small amount of surprise. He’s not sure what the fuck else they’d count as: they’re not friends, but that doesn’t change the fact that they fought and cooked and lived and nearly died together during the war.

“I’m here on behalf of the NSA-CDC joint commission,” Jordan says, trying a small smile.

“And what’s Uncle Sam want with little old me?” Even as Marco says it, he knows: he really really does not want to hear what Jordan is about to say.

• Cassie rolls to her feet when the Army transport jeep approaches, heart already beating faster. The hork-bajir preserve doesn’t get many human visitors, and the official ones never bring good news. She glances over at Tobias – who was, like her, listening to Toby tell a surprisingly entertaining version of their war story to a group of youngsters – and sees him tense, feathers flaring.

Please, she thinks, don’t let it be the start of another “human” rights battle. Which just goes to show that it’s been a while since the war, long enough that she thinks another spat over land grants is the worst thing that can happen to this community.

• «Prince Aximili.» The aristh looks nervous enough to be about ready to trip over his own hooves. «Sir, there’s a message for you. It’s from Earth.»

Ax nods automatically, even knowing that the gesture won’t mean anything to his fellow andalites. «Who on Earth?»

The aristh shuffles his back hooves, tail tucked close to his body. «Just… Earth. A human called the President of the United States. She says she’s calling on behalf of the entire planet.»

A war-prince must always project calm and confidence, to reassure all warriors and civilians who might be watching. Ax manages, only just barely, to remain still and inhale slowly. To keep his voice level when he says, «Thank you. I’ll take the call in my private quarters.»

• There are three of them in the cramped observation room. Then four, then five, and finally six. A unit, huddled together and barefoot and unable to speak. They’re not the only ones here for the meeting, of course. Other people await them in the next room: the Joint Chiefs, the U.N. representatives. Collette and Timmy. Peter. Tom, Jordan, Walter and Michelle. The president.

On the other side of the glass, Eva beats her hands against the wall. A guttural moan gargles in the back of her throat. She’s walking forward, not seeming to realize that she encounters a wall again and again.

The flesh has already rotted off her extremities, leaving bone and putrescent muscle exposed underneath the peeling curls of skin.

“We’ll find a cure,” Cassie says. Even as she tries to breathe through a nightmare come to life, a flashback made present. “We’ll find a way—”

“My mom is dead.” Marco’s voice is as steady as the hands of a man sawing off his own leg. “No heartbeat. No brain activity. No respiration, digestion, circulation.”

Tobias looks back into the room, then at Marco. «But…»

“She’s an organ donor.” Marco’s eyes are dry, but he sniffs hard to keep them that way. “Wanted her body used for science, for humanity, when she couldn’t use it anymore. She’s dead. We’re respecting her wishes.”

Eva’s mouth gnashes at the air, teeth and jawbone exposed where her lips have already decayed. Her fingertips leave streaks of gore on the plexiglas.

“We know it spreads by fluids,” Jake recites dully. “That even a few drops can infect an entire water system. We know that it kills the hosts within hours of infection, and then uses their bodies to try and reproduce itself. We know it can be killed by fire, and by beheading the host, but so far that’s all we know.”

«How many humans have suffered its effects so far?» Ax asks.

“We don’t know,” Jake says. “Lowest estimate’s a few thousand.”

“And the highest?” Cassie asks.

He turns to look at her. The answer’s there on his face, in the way he can’t seem to stop himself from reaching out to take her hand.

• “How bad is it?” Ronnie asks Cassie that night.

She pulls him into her arms, desperate to sink into warmth and soft muscle and still-living flesh. “Remember last time humanity got attacked by an alien pathogen?” she asks. “Remember how that ended for the invading parasites?”

He has to know that she’s dodging the question. But then he wasn’t in the room when the graph tracing the U.S. watersheds spread slowly from blue to red, the entire continent glowing sickly crimson within weeks. The heading at the top said Conservative Estimate. They never saw the non-conservative one.

• Please remain calm, the president’s broadcast says, and stay inside your homes. Boil any water before drinking, she adds, even though they don’t think that that will do any good. Better to give people something to do, some way to feel like there’s still hope.

• Rachel goes up against entire hordes. She becomes elephant, alligator, grizzly and cheetah. She perfects the necessary motions to grab and rip, to sever the spinal column in one bite or one slash. She wades through firestorms as a salamander or rhinoceros, swoops in on kafit wings or surges upward on lerdethak tentacles to rip bodies to bits. Sometimes the others join her. They get infected a dozen, a hundred times, and each time they morph and survive.

• Which is where Tobias’s suggestion comes from.

«I say we arm the populace,» he says.

It’s the six of them, sitting around Marco’s kitchen table — one of his kitchen tables in one of his houses — after yet another bout of endless killing and very little progress.

“Meaning what?” Jake says.

“The civilian death toll’s already high enough, if you ask me,” Marco says. “Seeing as how everyone and their aunt is out there with hunting rifles and modified dracon beams blowing their neighbors away.”

Cassie winces. He’s not wrong. The riots have cost more lives than the plague, according to the latest estimates.

«We’re safe,» Tobias points out. «Or we can fix ourselves. Because we’re morphers. We have the cube… why not use it as widely as possible, on as many people as we can find?»

“That’d be illegal,” Jake says.

Rachel lets out a dull laugh. Cassie can see her point. They’re way past that by now.

“And when the vampires start morphing too?” Rachel asks. “What then?”

“Don’t call them that,” Marco snaps. “They’re dead bodies with parasites inside, not…” He laughs, humorless. “Vampires, revenants, the undead, that’s all stuff you play for pretend on some television show. It’s makeup and bad writing.”

“Yeah,” Rachel says, “just like aliens. Just like shapeshifters.”

«I sincerely doubt that the infected would have the necessary mental abilities to sustain focused attention upon achieving an animal shape,» Ax says. «Tobias’s proposal would indeed break several laws set by at least half a dozen species… and it may be the only way to save this planet.»

“How do we make sure the civilians are using the morph tech responsibly?” Jake asks. Which shows that he’s already thinking about it. Already halfway there.

• They make an announcement on the only remaining television channel. They send out a broadcast on every frequency that emergency radios will pick up. They go even more old-school, and pass out fliers. Anyone who wants the morphing can come. Can wait in line, sometimes for hours, to press their fingers against the box in Marco’s hand. Acquiring DNA is their own problem. So is the two-hour limit, for all of the warnings that Cassie repeats ad infinitum to the waiting crowds and the folks at home.

It’s inevitable, really, when the panic breaks out one day outside the elementary school where they’re recruiting. No one can say for sure if the woman was actually infected, or if the man next to her just thought she was.

Eight people are trampled to death in the ensuing crush. Nearly a hundred more are injured, too many to treat in a town that has already run short on dozens of essentials that must be shipped in from other parts of the country. No one can say how many are infected, just that the Animorphs spend nearly a week clearing the undead out of the area around the elementary school before it’s finally safe to use again.

• The reports coming out of the densely-populated East Coast are shocking. There was a battle between human and undead outside Yonkers, and now Yonkers is overrun. All groundwater from the Chesapeake Bay watershed is now considered infected, take precautionary measures. Florida has closed its borders, and is gunning down anyone who gets too close. A riot over a shipment of bottled water took out eighteen square blocks in downtown Philadelphia, and took out the entire shipment of water as well. The wealthiest residents of Boston and Manhattan are moving off-planet as fast as craft will take them, leaving the rest of the planet to die.

And then one day the reports… stop.

No CNN, no NPR, no MSNBC. No U.S., not really, not anymore.

• “I’m going to go lie down,” Jake’s father says, after a long day in the lab. And, “It’s just a headache, I’m sure.”

It’s the last thing he ever says. Eight hours later, Tom becomes the one to shoot him in the head.

• When Rachel picks up the phone, Jordan says, “You know you’re my hero, right?”

Rachel rushes out of the house, phone up to her ear, desperate for a better signal. “How… you…” She draws a sharp breath. “It’s been three months!” Not just three months since she heard from her sister. Three months since anyone that she knows of has succeeded in making a long-distance call.

“Sat phone,” Jordan says. “Government-issue. We’ve all been taking turns using it, in here.”

“Holy shit.” Rachel pulls the gun off of her belt and, almost unthinkingly, puts a bullet between the eyes of the child who has been shuffling toward her on corpse-stiff limbs. “How are you? How’s DC?”

“Not great, actually. INSCOM’s got me and a bunch of other essential personnel in a bunker. Or they did, anyway.” Jordan clears her throat. “The perimeter’s been breached, and there are about twenty of us holed up in this room. Maybe four—” Her voice wavers, steadies. “Four, five hundred hostiles outside, judging from the security cameras.”

“I’m—” Rachel is running down the street, cataloguing morphs. “I’m coming for you, just hang on.”

“Rachel.” Jordan’s voice is terribly sad. She’s three thousand miles away. “Just listen, okay?”

Rachel sits on the ground. Curls into herself. Fetal position, a ball of helpless rage.

“We’re each taking one phone call, and it just seemed really important to me.” Jordan takes a breath. “To tell you that I love you. That you’ve always been my hero. Since… forever, really. And that everything I am, everything I’ve done, is because of you. So…”

There’s a noise in the background of the call. One Rachel doesn’t want to identify.

“Tell Mom and Sarah I love them, yeah?” Jordan says.

Their mom’s been dead two weeks. Sarah is MIA. “I will,” Rachel says. “I promise. Jordan—”

“Time’s up, gotta go.” There’s a click, and the line goes dead.

• Ax lies so smoothly, so thoroughly, that he doesn’t know if he even remembers how to tell the truth. The fight against the pathogen is going well, he tells the Andalite Navy. Humanity is doing well. There’s no need for alarm. No need for drastic action. Yes, he would like to stay here indefinitely, but only to do what he can to assist the clean-up efforts.

• They morph every six hours, setting alarms to make sure that it happens. There is no uninfected water, not anymore, which means they’re constantly exposed. It can’t last forever. One of these days, Tobias knows, one of them is going to go in their sleep. And there’s nothing to be done to fend it off indefinitely.

• The being who appears in Marco’s living room is human and raptor and andalite and most definitely none of the above. (Ketran, Rachel will say later, and then silently shake her head when they ask her what the word means.) They all still recognize the Ellimist when they see him.

“I came to you once with an offer,” the Ellimist says. “Your lives, and your families’, in exchange for relocation to a different planet. I can bring your families back. Save them, and you. A way to preserve the human species, a final desperate measure.”

“And all of a sudden it’s back on the table?” Marco demands.

The Ellimist nods, or maybe he’s just bowing his head in grief.

They look around at each other, needing no words to communicate their thoughts.

They were so young, the last time they had this offer, Rachel thinks now. She was just a little girl, too caught up in worrying about being in love with a nothlit and disappointing her father to understand what was really at stake. She missed it entirely, the reason Jake and Marco were the ones to hesitate and grieve. They’d both lost loved ones to the yeerks already. They’d known what was at stake, the way that the little girl she’d been at the time could not have known.

Now she understands. Now, I can bring your families back isn’t abstract or principled. It’s real down to her gut, down to her pores. Now she understands, as do they all, just how much war can take. They’re adults. This time, their eyes are open. Their decision is informed.

This time, Jake doesn’t hesitate when he speaks for them all. “Go fuck yourself,” he says. “It’s our planet, and we’ll fight for it to the very last man.”

#animorphs #animorphs au #au #body horror #gore #character death #long post #zombie au #canon compliant

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tisthenightofthewitch · 5 years

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GHOST // Arise From Leviathan’s Shadow

Mar 25, 2019 / WORDS Tom Valcanis / PHOTOS Elizabeth Sharpe

At Download Australia this year, Ghost had the toughest gig of all. Playing at the same time as Slayer. At the last time Slayer would ever play. Ouch.

Tobias Forge, aka Cardinal Copia, must have marshalled all his diabolical powers to pull punters away from the last chance to experience Raining Blood or Angel of Death. Ghost’s singular blend of pop and apocalyptic metal is a sight and sound to behold. The flock is shepherded by the mesmeric Cardinal Copia as bandleader and high priest of sin. Cardinal Copia might be a character in an elaborate charade; but what of the man behind the vestments? Talking to Tobias Forge out of uniform and relaxing against a boudoir-like velour booth trimmed in a royal purple, he sits cross legged, wrapped in leather battle-jacket. He’s unassuming. He wears well-combed hair that doesn’t touch his ears. Ripped jeans at the knees and a Voivod Dimension Hatross t-shirt. If you didn’t know what he looked like, you’d never guess he led a worldwide congregation of metal fanatics. Even so, Ghost’s many influences he wears on his lapel: King Diamond (of course), Kreator, and a mandatory Slayerbadge. So what lent Mr. Forge such reverence for the arcane and black arts? We find out in a post-Download audience with the Cardinal …

How were the shows? Playing up against Slayer must have been a rare honour and challenge.

It was what it was. We did this for a higher purpose, and that is to come back and do the full thing.

Was it a success giving Australian fans a live taste of Prequelle?

I think it was successful because we came down here, rekindled our relationship with the promoter, and rekindled our relationship with media again, and to the fan base that we had, that it seems to have expanded even though we haven’t been here for five years.

Wow, it has been a long time.

The goal was to get back here and get the promoter to understand that you need to get us back and not play a festival. That was my only goal of coming.

In Prequelle, the album touches on the black death and apocalyptic themes. The end times. With so many crises happening around the world today, would you be forgiven for thinking the same thing today?

Yes, but I don’t think it necessarily has to be apocalyptic. I hope that there are enough people in the world believing in a fruitful, peaceful society, that would actively or are actively working for the apocalypse not to happen, the apocalypse being, I guess, the end of the world. I even think so even with presidents in charge. If he was really, really, really dangerous, for real, no one is that stern of a believer in democracy that they would just, “Oh, but this is the president you chose. He can do whatever he wants in the name of democracy.” If he was really, really, really, really, really close to destroying the world, they would shoot him in the back of his head.

Do you think it’s just divisive rhetoric? People talking tough?

I think the guy in charge as of this moment is obviously a great example of worsened rhetorics. I think that the risk of having him around is obviously multiple different things, but I think it’s the idea of refraining from sophisticated sort of politics talk that is sometimes still needed. There is a certain code, there’s a certain mannerism that I think is worth learning. This goes from everything from a 12 year old talking to a 90 year old. You just need to shape your lingo in order to be able to manoeuvre yourself between different age groups and different people. I speak to, in one way, if I talk to my buddies, I speak in a different way than if I talk to a 65 year old executive. I think that that is an art form, and that most people should master it in some way or form.

I think that if you have a so called master in charge who looks down upon that, shuns away from that, I think that that’s remarkable. Now I’m obviously just talking about rhetorics and linguistically, but I’m talking about the, as you say, rhetorics and how you speak to the world. I understand that a lot of people like politicians that say direct things and is witty and all that. Yes. Let’s move forward, but I think that there’s also a level of levelheadedness that I think a politician should do. I think that this is just a side step. It will probably go back a little bit to what it is in the rest of the world and what it has been before.

Ghost talks about fire, hell, and brimstone—is that a place you have thought about? A physical manifestation of hell?

Ever since I was a very little kid, I’ve always been interested in religion, and specifically obviously Hebrew religion, just because I grew up in a Christian country. Cinematically as well, I grew up watching a lot of biblical films. I’m talking about The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, stuff like that, The Temptation of Christ. So, I’ve always been very fascinated by things like that. When I came into adolescence and started getting fascinated by occult and satanic themes, of course, I’m an imaginative person, so I do have a lot of visual fantasies about what it is or could be. But my fantasising aesthetic younger self is also holding a little bit more of a rational grown up person, and we’re struggling together to try to figure out how things are. But I could sit here and ponder ’til my dying days, because I have no idea. No one else knows, anyway.

The limited view of Scandinavian spirituality, we get from black metal. The Hel Vete circle. Church burnings. Those on the outside assume Scandinavia is this region steeped in Christian dogma and practice.

Yes. From a greater political point of view, Christianity has not been very dominant in Sweden in the modern day and age, but more on a local and municipal level. Where I come from, there were and there are still more mundane forces in society that is controlled by church or churches. They’re more private churches like that.

So it’s not like Poland, where Catholicism is so intertwined with civil society. Which makes Nergal of Behemoth such a vocal anti-theist, I suppose.

From a little person point of view in a little city, there are definitely things that I have, throughout my life, been rebelling against. But Sweden is nowhere near … we don’t really have the same Christian church presence from a law making point of view that they have in Poland. I come from a pretty secular country where you can basically say almost anything you like.

Almost anything.

Yeah. There are obviously some PC things that sort of makes certain things not okay, but anything that has to do with Satanism and all that, that’s fine.

Satanism seems to be a bit old hat now. People are shocked by seemingly more mundane political things these days.

Yes. I mean, of course. This is a conversation that I have more than often when I am outside of Scandinavia, because I’ve never regarded Ghost as being that provocative. Because I come from, again, a secularised country where freedom of speech is quite cherished. I come from a country where metal has always been very strong, where black and death metal had a big proving ground. Also, it’s part of my DNA, since I’ve been a rock fan for as long as I can remember. I’ve been a black and death metal fan ever since I was 11 years old, something like that. For me, writing Satanic lyrics and throwing around upside down crosses and pentagrams and goats and all that, for me, is so natural that it’s not as much of an appliance as it was for people in the Satanic panic, 1969. Because then it was something that you did because it was groovy with your 20 year old friends. You were also 20 years old, and two years ago you didn’t even know what Satanic was.

So, for me, it was never meant as a, “This is a way to upset mainstream media.” Never, because I didn’t even thought that we were going to be in anything remotely like any mainstream media. Whereas in America now when we have achieved some sort of mainstream following, they regard sometimes our image and my choice of presenting myself and then the band as radical, provocative imagery.

Really? Still?

Yes. I understand intellectually, of course, that it’s regarded like that, but that was never the intent. I find it more mind boggling that a lot of the provocation that we cause is actually within the metal realms of people who are puritan and have a hard time labelling us what we are and why we are metal or not.

So the puritanism comes from certain sections of metaldom itself; thou shalt not mix pop with metal. That kind of thing.

From a progressive point of view, yes. But if we were talking about old school death metal, I would be very opinionated in a way that would probably come off as similarly closed minded. So, I completely understand where those tendencies come from, so I don’t grieve that someone doesn’t like us because we don’t sound as metal as Mercyful Fate does. It’s like, “It’s fine.”

We’ll be touring consecutively ’til the end of the year, and then I’m due back in the studio in January.Between January and May, I hope that we will be doing a few minor tours, possibly returning here. That’s my goal for at least here, to come back within this album cycle and do it properly. Happy?

I think I am, Tobias. I think I am.

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